#but I can't think of a single film that was more clearly in need of a trimming edit

[audliminal]

So having just seen wicked, my main takeaway is what the fuck do you mean 'part 1'. The stage play runs about two hours and 15 minutes which isn't far off from the length of the movie and frankly, a lot of the scenes would be better if they were trimmed down.

[luveline]

hi!! i was wondering if you would write more ab spencer, r, and baby amanda from your single dad au? :o they’re so precious <3

Thank you for your request! ♥︎ fem!reader 1.6k

"How come you aren't hungover?" Spencer asks. 

You can barely hear him over the cacophony of the crowd. You're waiting for Hotch to finish his decathlon, the girls in their sunglasses, Jack and Morgan holding a homemade sign aloft. 

Amanda's sitting on the barrier with her weight against Spencer's chest, her soft brown hair splayed out against his collar like a wave. 

"I know the meaning of moderation," you say with a sweet smile. 

You might be imagining the pinking of his cheeks. "Not moderate enough, clearly," he jokes. 

JJ hadn't picked Henry up until three in the morning. Which is fine, Spencer will take Henry whenever he needs to, as per his self-ordained godfathering duties, but when JJ hadn't appeared at 11 like she'd promised, Spencer had obviously been worried. 

"Things got a little… out of control." You dip your face to his ear. "I've never seen Emily dance like that. It was crazy." 

"I wish I could've been there, but we had a date with Edward Tulane, didn't we, Amy?" 

Amanda tips her head back at her father's affectionate tone. "Daddy, I can't feel my butt." 

"Not your butt!" he says, taking her seriously but chuckling at the same time as he pulls her up and off of the barrier. With some careful manoeuvring, he's tucked Amanda into his chest, one hand held protectively over the bottom of her back. The other hooks behind her knees. 

"Is that better?" 

He speaks to her with the same fatherly fondness as always and every time you find yourself melty like butter in the summer sun. In Spencer's eyes, Amanda is the smartest, most interesting girl alive. You're tempted to agree. 

"I was worried it might be depressing for her," he says, tucking her hair behind her ear. "It's sad for a children's story, you know? But she's really interested, and it's important for kids to hear sad stories. Children who read stories with unhappy plotlines are more empathetic, and have a stronger sense of justice." He smiles at her. "Plus, I think it's her favourite so far. She asked if we could read it again, all in one go. It's gonna take hours." 

"That doesn't surprise me. I mean, she's yours. I thought you'd be reading her Tolstoy by now." 

"I'm saving Tolstoy for first grade." 

He's serious. 

Hotch runs through the finish line and the members of the BAU that are assembled cheer loudly. He doesn't seem embarrassed at all, only proud, ducking down to give Jack a sweaty hug. Then he, Jack, and his new girlfriend move away from the group. The remaining members of your team start to break away, too.

The girls all want to go home and die in their own beds. Rossi and Morgan have separate dates. You're thinking you'll go home and shoot the breeze until a more reasonable bedtime when Spencer turns to you with his usual genial smile.

"Do you want to come over? We're gonna make pasta and watch Fraggle Rock." 

Spencer's changed a lot since he became Amanda's primary caregiver, but some things stay the same. He loves doing things with other people and he'll always extend an invite if he thinks the other party might enjoy themselves. Going over for dinner feels a lot more intimate than his having an extra ticket for a foreign film festival, or late night takeout, though. 

"I don't want to impose," you say awkwardly. 

"Do you think you're an imposition?" Spencer asks in concern. 

"No, just, you know, I don't…" 

"Amy doesn't mind. Do you, sweetheart?" 

"What?" says Amanda's little voice. 

"Can Y/N come for dinner?" he asks. 

Amanda smiles, pearly white teeth and cheeks chubby with baby fat. "Yes! We're gonna make pasta and watch Fraggle Rock!" 

You laugh in delight. 

"We decided in the car," Spencer explains. 

"Here I thought you were telepathic." You direct your smile at Amanda's doe eyes. "I'd love to come for dinner. Thanks, baby." 

Spencer has the cleanest car any parent has ever had. You know he spent days choosing the safest one he could find in his budget, and even more days on a car seat. His apartment is just as clean but way more crowded, stuffed to bursting with Amanda's toys and his books. 

"I'm gonna change, do you mind?" he asks, leading you down the hall into the kitchen. Amanda had tipped half a juice box down his front, and the stickiness is clearly making him uncomfortable.

"No, by all means."

He smiles. "Stay here," he says with a feigned sternness, pointing one of his pretty fingers at Amanda. His daughter only giggles. 

You follow Spencer with your eyes as he leaves. 

"Will you take off my shoes, please?"

You look down. Amanda stares up at you, her round eyes pleading, one foot held a half inch off of the ground. 

You leap to action, and say, "Oh! Yeah, baby, no problem," as you get down on your knees. 

They're simple buckles and take all of ten seconds. Amanda holds onto your arm and lifts her feet one at a time so you can pull them off. Her small toes wiggle in her socks when she puts them back on the floor.

"Feel better?" you ask knowingly. 

"Daddy says shoes are a con-d-struct," she tells you. 

"They are!" you say, though whether you really agree might take some thought. "They're silly, huh?" 

"Yeah. If we walked with no shoes, we would have tough skin like trees!" 

"Like trees," you repeat. You love listening to little kids speak because they're so full of joy to share what they know, and Spencer Reid's kid? She is a walking book of facts. "That's so cool, did daddy tell you that?" 

"Daddy tells me everything." 

Spencer appears in a graphic t-shirt. You've only seen him dressed down through barely open hotel room doors or in photographs with Amanda. It takes a second for your brain to recognise what you're seeing. 

He's a genius, so he understands what you're doing immediately. 

"Oh no," he coos, bending down to take Amanda's shoulders into his hands. "I'm so sorry," —he kisses the top of her head— "I forgot all about your shoes. How will you ever get tree bark feet?" 

It's sweet to see how she responds to his affection. Her eyes squint closed and she smiles softly, giggling when he scratches her shoulders through her dress. 

"Thanks for releasing her, she can't stand wearing shoes when she doesn't have to," he says to you, nudging her out of the way to offer you his hand. 

You take it, letting him pull you up. He doesn't let go of you straight away, instead brushing his thumb over your fingernails, one after another. 

"I've been meaning to ask you to dinner for a while. I– I've never been any good at this part, I thought it would be harder, because Amanda's the only girl in the world I understand no matter how many books I read, and that's not going to last forever, but I…" Spencer's voice steadily quietens, until the tone he's using is dulcet, and his brows have pulled together. He's just as pretty frowning as smiling. "It feels easy, with you," he finishes. 

"Are we having macaroni?" Amanda asks. 

Spencer looks torn. "I was thinking rigatoni," he says. 

"Gross, dad." 

"Farfalle?"

"Bowties?" she questions suspiciously. 

"Is that better than rigatoni?" he asks. 

Amanda dwells on this, leaning her weight into your leg. It's an unthinking gesture that fills you with light. 

"We can't have macaroni?" 

You know from Spencer's bemused sigh alone that she's about to get her way. 

"Do you mind?" he asks you. 

Amanda pins you with a pout, raising her hands into a praying triangle. Her puppy dog eyes are killer and unnecessary. 

"Whatever you want, babe," you say hurriedly. 

She bursts off to her toys with an excited cheer. You're sorry to see her go, petrified of embracing yourself, and still majorly caught off guard by what Spencer said. He's wanted to ask you over for dinner for a long time, does that mean he likes you? And the way he'd held your hand — that's not an ambiguous affection. 

You like Spencer. All the small things that make him him, and the huge things too. His daughter, his books, his genius mind and his clumsy heart. If he likes you too, you might just combust. 

Spencer nips into the living room to put Fraggle Rock on TV. Amanda's sweet voice chases his heels, her singing a mixture of melodic gibberish and passionate recitation. 

You linger as he starts to gather what he needs for dinner. He's either not worried about what you think of his confession or trying to hide that he is, knee deep in a recount of the invention of boxed mac and cheese when you touch his elbow. 

"I know what you mean, about what you said before, I feel the same. It feels easy with you." 

You don't know what it is. But Spencer knows everything, so you aren't worried. 

He beams. His smile warps each word he says as he turns back to the saucepan he's filling with pasta. "Maybe we should get dinner without Fraggle Rock, sometime." 

"I don't know, I don't think it gets any better than this." You nod your head toward the living room, Amanda's singing an adorable echo. 

His smile grows impossibly bigger. 

"Me neither," he says. 

[flagbridge]

I Saw the Phantom Proshot at the NYPL

Happy 36th birthday to Phantom's first preview on Broadway! I was going to save this post for the actual 36th, but I figure all of us need some more Phantom Broadway "original" content since the official Insta accounts are reminding us today that Phantom is no longer (though it should be) on Broadway. I'm going to post about what I saw, and I'll follow up on January 26 with all my answers!

Some time ago, @or-what-you-will and I went to the NYPL's Theater on Film and Tape Archive, and viewed the archival pro shot of the Original Broadway Cast of Phantom of the Opera, filmed live on May 25, 1988. There is only one copy, and its purpose is artistic preservation (not commercial distribution--the library owns it). It was kept under lock and key during the show's run. All information about how to access the archive is on the website. I can't really tell you anything more besides what's out there because it will become identifying. You get set up in a room with monitors and can pause and rewind, although you can't touch the media.

This was not my first TOFT proshot, but it was the best-filmed. Some, there's a single camera just parked, or there's some generation loss because of when the tape was transferred to digital. This had absolutely vivid colors, a multi-camera shot, and brilliant and clear soundboard audio. I heard lyrics I have never heard (especially during Notes when everyone is singing over one another), the sound balancing was so good. It was as transformative as seeing it live.

These are all the notes we took while there (apologize if they can seem disjointed) More below the cut.

ACT 1 NOTES: 

-Multicam shot

-amazing audio (soundboard), vivid colors

-Raoul/Barton is crying in his voice during the auction

-there’s a “voice” that sounds like a woman singing with the overture (maybe a theramin?) We jumped in shock at this. We've never heard this before, not even on soundboard.

-Sarah Brightman comes on stage during the Hannibal rehearsal, moving across the stage with Meg during “Rome not Roma”--so she dances in the front row during the Hannibal ballet

-Hannibal ballet then has 10 dancers and since Christine is in the whole thing, there is slightly different choreo

-there’s a synth under Meg’s “he’s there, the phantom of the opera” 

-Firmin lights a cigarette and Andre (Future Phantom Cris Groenendaal) stops him right before “Think of Me’ which makes the “Defense de Fumer” on the back of the curtain make even more sense

-Think of Me Gala skirt is not as full (but of note, Carlotta’s Elissa costume is much more ornate than we have now or even at the end of Broadway)

-Raoul sings slightly different notes in Think of Me. Steve Barton goes down a few notes on “young and innocent” (it’s not belted) and is clearly wistful. 

-The think of me cadenza is absolutely effortless

-The “Bravi, Bravi” is haunting and perfectly sound balanced!

-Meg can actually sing and the Angel of Music harmonies work

-Raoul (Steve Barton) is nervous before going into the dressing room. He taps his fingers on the banister and takes a deep breath before going in

-He’s also nervous inside the dressing room–you can see him going from seeing an old friend to suddenly having feelings, being attracted to her. When he’s standing behind her he has a slight moment when he nearly touches a lock of her hair. 

-Raoul is wearing a ring on his right hand (signet?)

-Steve Barton says MY Little Lotte

-Christine (Brightman) is excited about meeting the Angel of music and has a wanting and longing in “Enter at LAST master” (in a way that Lily Kerhoas does now and we haven’t had many Christines who do this) 

-The picture is VERY CLEAR and NO WASHOUT when we see Michael Crawford appear in the mirror for Phantom’s entrance. You see everything

-When the door opens for Raoul to the dressing room after they go through the mirror, it opens slowly (vs banging open). It’s the same tempo that Phantom moves to take Christine through the mirror

-1925 Phantom silhouette vibes at the first “sing for me” 

-Not a particularly aggressive cape twirl, but def a twirl. 

-They get VERY close on “turn your face away”, almost kiss (like, Russians, Panaro/Joseph close) 

- he has a nice portcullis sprawl but she does not press against him, there is visible space between them the entire time

-”Caress” and “hear it, feel it” are explicitly seductive, the former in how it’s sung, the latter because he self-caresses on “feel it”

-the “Touch me” in touch me/trust me is half sung/half spoken order, she strokes her hand over the mask and he does not pull away

-He does have a little panic when she faints and he covers her with the cloak. He’s holding her hair when he sings to her there

-At the unmasking, MC holds for a brief moment before covering his face with his hand so the audience gets a peek of the deformity (before “damn you”) 

-Vixen not viper

-Crawls on knees, not stomach. We get…lots of crying and whimpering 

-Christine sees his face a lot during this sequence. MC lowers his hand as soon as he’s on her side of the stage from “secretly dreams of beauty” to “Oh Christine”, when he turns away–but she is looking at him the entire time. MC is angled right by a mirror shard so we can see a bit of the deformity reflected back

-Right before “come we must return”, MC is about to cup her face with both his hands before changing his mind–she starts to reach for him as well. 

-His Mandarin robe is much longer than we have now (ankle length vs calf length) 

-This Giry has witch vibes

-Steve Barton is playing eager puppy Raoul and it shows even though he looks older (Barton was 35 at the time)

-The sound balancing is so good that you can hear lines you don’t normally hear during Notes 1 and Prima Donna–including the Managers thinking that Christine has just been off with Raoul all night. 

-Sarah Brightman does a different pose on the bed as the pageboy during Il Muto. She crosses her legs vs putting her hands on her hips. 

-Firmin yells “the role of Christine Daae” to the proscenium, clearly directed at Phantom

-Barton Raoul’s “There is no Phantom of the Opera” comes off more as “Christine this is just some dude” vs “he doesn’t exist at all.” 

-Raoul loves Christine so much. He strokes her hair gently to comfort her right before “No more talk of darkness”--his eyes are soft and he’s genuinely caring and concerned (vs trying to be a hero) 

-”All I ask is for one love one lifetime”--different lyrics, she does it twice (This is on soundboards from the time)

-Raoul puts his face to Christine’s hands at the proposal. 

-Christine is clearly kissing his cheek right next to his mouth during the kiss (the final lair kiss is a real kiss) 

-Christine’s “I must go” is not as playful as we often see it later. She really is trying to go. 

-Raoul is nervous at “Christine, I love you”--he lowers his head for a moment worried that he said something wrong. He’s excited when she replies “order your fine horses”

-AIAOY Reprise: Michael Crawford is partially slumped over the angel, he’s holding hands with it to the audience’s right, and arm is slumped over on the left. We get a lot of anguished weeping, and little distressed moans as Christine and Raoul sing, there is rocking and head shaking and then covering his ears. It’s a HUGE difference then when he stands up fully for “You will curse” (he does this again during final lair between “unfeeling scrap of clothing” and “pity comes too late) 

-He also roars before standing

-The Phantom laugh/cackle continues well into the chandelier drop into intermission at the light cut out for about 15 seconds. 

Act II

-Carlotta masquerade costume has no mesh in the skirt–it’s much more of a see-through skeleton crinoline, so the feature is the purple tights

-Not surprising since Sarah Brightman is a dancer, but Christine does the proper choreography during Masquerade--she's the center of attention. Barton also does quite a bit of dancing.

-There’s an organ (almost like a circus organ) underlying the finale during masquerade

-Red Death double doesn’t run down the stairs, he stays at the top

-Giry/Raoul exchange after masquerade–both holding the lantern and super closeup

-Reyer is clearly gay–coded. Some voice and hand gestures during Sitzprobe

-Wishing–only one “help me say goodbye” (when did the second one get added?)

-”Far-reaching” gaze, Wandering Child is a duet

-Piangi says “conquest” is assured (at some point, this became “congress”)

-Michael Crawford imitates Piangi until “past the point…”

-Sarah as Christine is listening intently to Phantom’s voice and immediately noticed something is off–she doesn’t figure it out right away but she notices something. She is suspicious the entire time. It's not clear when she knows for certain.

-Christine never flees from him, during the first caresses, he hovers over her body, she turns to kiss him, he turns away, her hand lingers on her back, before she gets up to sing her solo part away from the table

-Michael Crawford’s hands are in in his crotch when Christine’s singing on the other side of the stage (“you have come here”)--he’s moving his palms in his lap the whole time, his hands are shaking, we only get glimpses of him, most of this part it’s focused on her

-There is none of the arm waving circling while their hands are held, she takes his hands, he switches his grip to hold one of hers, and they keep them on him

-She figures it out when she reaches down–she’s holding his hands above him and she pushes her left (our right) hand down and he pulls and she notices something–we can only see to his upper waist but her hand disappears and her expression changes, it’s implied he has an erection

-she doesn’t ever feel the mask, either accidentally or on purpose

-She doesn’t actually ever try to escape. It’s not the current West End or the past blocking–but more accurate in that she is aware of the situation and plays along. She keeps going with the blocking

-they both get up and keep singing, neither drags the other to the centre, they move together and keep singing 

-The last “return”--he sings it at the unhooding, she doesn’t

-”Say you’ll share with me”--he is really pleading and almost crying on “say you want me” 

-The managers don’t come out to try to usher her offstage, she doesn’t signal to them to stay

-When Phantom gives her the ring, she takes it, but doesn’t put it on–she just holds it

-He doesn’t scream at the unmasking, he just looks shocked and sad

-Ratcatcher order is different–it’s after Raoul and Giry’s first lines, that’s the indication that Giry needs to turn around, Giry screams

-Phantom is crying at “flesh” and through “unfeeling scrap of clothing”, he’s also hunched over through this sequence, and then stands to his full height at “Pity comes too late.”

-Phantom makes a big show of raising the portcullis, hands fully raised

-Raoul swats at Erik with one hand (the other is still on the noose) when Phantom grabs Christine on “start a new life” 

-Phantom is probably the “minimum” amount of rough as we see Phantoms be with Christine in this sequence, as in, he’s definitely scary and menacing but he’s not harming her. He does grab her and spin her around on “start a new life with me.” There are a few wrist grabs (which is book accurate). He’s realizing more that his plan is absolutely crumbling. We get some shots of him on the organ looking panicked.

-Phantom makes a low growling noise before “you try my patience”, which is delivered quickly and almost casually. It is not menacing as some later Phantoms do. 

-”Pitiful creature”..MC’s hand is subtly shaking by his side

-The kiss: the 1st one MC stands with “claw hands” at his side, on the second one, the “claw hands” start shaking

-MC hunches over after he burns the noose

-He stands over the monkey, conducting it with one hand, he is mimicking the symbol clashes, he doesn’t touch it or cover its face

-When Christine returns the ring, his hand shakes as he takes it, he’s hunched over again. 

-She does seem conflicted about leaving, but she doesn’t press her hand back around his, she holds out the ring and his hand shakes as she takes it. She doesn’t linger very long. 

-He says a second “I love you” after she’s gone.

-He’s about to say it a third time, he says “I love…” and then see the veil, and grabs it and screams into it, and then turns and sees the boat leaving

-He sobs and keens a lot

-Raoul bends in the boat to caress Christine’s face on “say the word”)--this is halfway across the stage as opposed to during the stage right exit.

-Deliberately cracks voice on the "can" in “you alone can make” 

-MC Cradling the veil like a baby at the very end

SEND ME YOUR QUESTIONS! You can put it in comments, reblogs, AMA or DM's. I will answer all of them on January 26!

[fireworksoffashion]

The fact is that Merlin remained single for 10 years, and not only single, he didn’t even see anyone. During the first season, Merlin showed interest in Morgana, Nimueh, and Freya. And after that there was no one, no one but Arthur, of course. Think about how Merlin spent all his time with Arthur and didn't want to be with anyone else. Even his "magical duty" couldn't force Merlin to stay with Arthur, actually be his servant, serve him (24/7) if Merlin didn't have feelings for him and didn't want to be with Arthur. Because it has been clearly shown that Merlin will go against his duties if he wants to (Merlin denies magic for Arthur's sake; Merlin was sent to Arthur to help make magic legal again, and because of his feelings, he denies magic to protect Arthur). So, if Merlin didn't have feelings for Arthur, he wouldn't have served him for those 10 years and wasn't going to spend the rest of his life with him, and no duties would make him stay. Merlin during these 10 years continued to do Arthur's chore, bathe him, dress him, feed him, comb his hair and "I am happy to be your servant until the day I die" confirms that Merlin was happy to be with Arthur, no matter what. And later Merlin began not only to want to be with Arthur, but to need it, regardless of his role in Arthur's life. So Merlin has no one but Arthur, meanwhile Arthur has had several women over the years. I wonder if Merlin planned to remain single forever or serve Arthur until old age? I think that the authors, by stating them as "two men in love" but adding "pure love", wanted to emphasize that they did not act on their feelings sexually. This means that when Merlin lost Arthur, he was deeply in love with him, but he couldn't even be with him for real. I've written about this before, but that cutscene where Merlin says he wants Arthur to see his magic at least once, made a lot more intimate sense to me.

Sometimes I think they actually filmed the kissing scene because during the commentary Katie says "I can't believe you put that in" to the scene where Arthur says "Hold me". I I wonder how many scenes are there which were not put in unfortunately. Since Merlin and Arthur's "I love you" was filmed and muted, I would not be surprised if more stuff was cut.

[zcinderone]

An ironically conspicuous yet never exploited(except by me as far as I can see) dot that connects everything which could be the ultimate layer of secret to unravel the true identity of Arei's murderer...

It's Levi and this is where the final piece of puzzle comes to make sense of itself: the Monotv recruiting Teruko do CAULKING scene!!!

This is such a detailed and prominant plot that so far made 0 sense as to its connection to the case. Monotv must have enlisted a helper to clean up the mess left in the gym. Since he can't even do caulking, it is 100% valid for the narrative that there are something in this mess he can't handle. This helper would have abundance of time to figure out the mechanism and took the tape. (whereas both Ace and Eden only had cursory glances at the scene also in a rather shocking and intense scenario to figure out how Nico's mystrious setup worked)

(Monotv specifically mentioning he needs help to do certain chores)

Apart from the 4 involved in Ace's case, the only one awake/available late at night was Levi(and we never know for what purpose the story writer specifically left only him awake and readily came out to check the commotion either). This connects everything.

Think about it rationally. It makes absolutely no sense for those involved in the previous case to make an imitation of their own. On paper, only 4 people knew what happened, and Nico ran off leaving the only necessary tool(tape) to replicate this. Should any of the 3 try to imitate a crime only they knew and able to replicate, they are basically yelling they're the only targets from the get-go (and isn't this what's happening right now?)which is beyond absurd. However, if a third party does exist, it changes everything, they would have everything to gain from pulling an imitation since the premise would exclude their possibility permanently.

Based on the aforementioned points, I will make a tentative prediction about one event we are likely gonna see in ep 15（or 16 depending on pacing）: A scrum debate will happen soon, concerning whether or not Ace&Eden really is the only option scope for imitation crime, for they will most certainly discuss the very reason why they imitate and promptly realized the absurdity thereof. The narrative would seem really off if they don't dabble on why, accepting imitation for the sake of imitation. Some will take the stance that such attempt would be illogical for a rational conspirator in the first place, others will insist on the lack of direct evidence of a third party.

(I just realized the dev could've intentionally let Ace kick the tape out of sight because they have much greater incentive to do so but it's very close to premiere so I won't elaborate since either way my theory itself is the same)I am basing this theory on the assumption that the tape went missing under the dialogue box cg is dev's mistake, because the tape on the ground scene always includes Ace on the ground and the moment he stood it changed which feels too abrupt and dev might just forgot to add that, and there is not a single scene that showed the tape missing without such blockade.

More importantly, there were some clues to back my assumption in the "i'm not fxxing dead!" scene. The tape is placed rather near in front of Ace, a little to our right. Yet, when he stood up he knocked Eden out to our left. It would seem shaky if we take this alone by face value as it could just be a dramatic effect, but what happened afterward is the camera itself clearly turned left to film Eden gradually standing, and turned right to focus on Ace and then turned further right to focus on Teruko, which clearly suggested the actual positioning is: Eden Ace (tape?) Teruko (tape ?) . Problem is, the tape still exitsted right before, and went missing right after Ace stood up under the Teruko "yeah i figured" dialogue box, few secs before Eden stood up, therefore her positioning would exclude her possibility of getting it. And Ace couldn't get it either since four eyes were, and the camera was mostly on him, even depicting him reaching his wound with two hands.

I think If the dev did had such meticulous intent for this hidden scene to be the key to locking the culprit, they would most likely be equally meticulous about either the tape's positioning or Ace's act to make unequivocal sense that one of them would have a clear window to obtain it, which in turn suggests they probably never had such intention to begin with.

Also, we got to consider factoring in complementary details like the starched clothes ball(Levi was the only one who mentioned being in the laundry room some time at night in ep10),Eden mentioning "someone's been following her" (I'm 100% sure this is what the dev planted to make sense of why a 3rd party could overhear Eden&Arturo&Arei event), Arei's missing glove(both Eden and Ace wears glove, Levi doesn't), enough strength to throw the rope near the ceiling(they emphasized early in one scene how high the ceiling is and eden is the smallest girl) Whit trying to make an argument about another motive Levi could have for killing Arei yet got cut off, and trying to redirect the crew's attention back to Levi's secret itself for some reason and got cut off again in ep13 11:22 12:44 (this i think is super super important and it seems only I was mentioning this). These solid details are all adding to the likelihood of Levi, and I really can't find as many other details to back Eden or Ace.

I also had a secondary theory back when ep13 dropped might worth mentioning: could the fish simply be symbolic? Sleep with the fish(godfather thingy)? Levi's background story suggests he is very likely involved in mafia conficts. J even asked him if he was "in" the mafia to which he prompt answered No. But very interestingly the dev specifically gives him a pondering "..." scene immediately after his respond to show he seemed to be thinking about the definition of his involement, then J pushed him to elaborate and he digressed.(starting from ep13 1:28) And Levi did have Italian surname.

I don't have that much confidence in this intepretation alone to begin with as I thought it is a bit old school. But since my major theory makes sense, this one doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore.

[dre6ming]

Wedding plans -TDBR

Pairing: Austin Butler x reader

Warnings: none, fluff, a little crying

Plot: making wedding plans with Austin is so wholesome

Word count: ~1.9k

Masterlist

TDBR series

Tag list - add yourself

A/n: this was a request and I apologize it took me so long to fulfill it. Request are still open but keep in mind I’m very slow when it comes to posting, but feel free to send them

Thinking back to 9 years ago when you met Austin, you never thought you'd end up here, drowning in tulle and chiffon, laughing with your best friends, tripping over lace veils. "What do you think of this?" You make a little pirouette to show the ample skirt, feeling like a princess head to toe. "It's cute." Taylor says, drinking some lemonade, brushing her bangs back. "Yeah, it's nice" Roxanne adds clearly not loving the dress as well. "So it's not it!" You say dropping your arms at your sides, sighing heavily. "Maybe the next one?!" Timothee sounds hopeful, but part of you feels that is only because, this is the 10th time you all dedicate a day for dress shopping. "Ok I'll go try it!" You say a bit defeated, lifting the front of the dress so you don't trip. You take one more look at yourself in the mirror as you walk away, you liked this one, but to be fair you liked every single one before this one as well, they are all so different and unique, but they are simply not your dress.

The next dress you put on, gives you shivers. It's made of silk, with pleats and boning, accentuating your waist perfectly and the dropped shoulders make you look angelic and sexy at the same time. This is it. "I found it!" You squeal, coming out of the dressing room in a heist, giggling and kicking your feet happily.

"Wow!"

"OH my god this is it!"

"You look wonderful!"

"I'm going to cry!"

"Please don't cry mom!" You giggle, blinking back tears, as you turn around to take a look in the big mirrors. The dress hugs your waist, the silhouette complimenting you so beautifully, your breasts look amazing in it too and magically it's your size, so no alterations will be needed. "I can't believe it! I finally found it!" You say, your voice breaking as you still try very hard not to cry. Taylor comes up from behind you, hugging your shoulders and resting her chin on your shoulder, her eyes watch you through the mirror and you notice her glossy blue eyes, tears in them as well. "I can, because it was meant to be!" She sniffs, kissing your cheek before sticking a veil in you hair. You take a better look at it in the mirror, immediately panicking when you recognize the piece, starting to take it out of your hair, but Taylor stops you before you can.

"Taylor I can't, this is..."

"Your something borrowed!" She assures, smiling bright. The veil somehow works perfectly with the dress, like it was meant to be. Looking at it you remember as clear as now the day you saw Taylor in a boutique not much different from this one, find her dress and her veil. She got married to Joe wearing this, the memories of one of her best days are tied to this piece of material. "Ok ok..." you breathe out, smoothing your dress. "What about gloves? I know Taylor already gave you the veil, but mom insisted I give you these?" Timothee says, handing you a pair of silk gloves. "Thanks Timmy!" You say hugging him tight as you put them on. The look seems now complete and you feel complete.

You walk through the dark apartment, tip toeing, trying not to make too much noise, knowing Austin is probably asleep. He was away filming some projects for the past week and you were supposed to be here when he got home, but he insisted that you don't rush your day with the girls and Timmy. "Y/n?" You hear Austin's groggy voice and it stops you right in your tracks. "Baby?" You feel his arms circle your waist in the dark and your body turns to slime. He places a kiss on top of your head, inhaling your scent. "I missed you!" Austin tells you honestly, squeezing you so tight you think you might burst at the seams, but you love feeling like this, engulfed in him. "I missed you too!" You sigh into him , happy to feel him on you, rubbing your cheek on the soft hairs on his chest. "I found the dress." You announce , biting your lip excited for his reaction.

"The dress? You mean THE dress?" Austin takes a step back looking at your face, trying to see if you're lying. "The dress!" You nod, smiling at him. He grabs your face and smashes his lips onto yours. You let him take control, while his mouth dominates you, his tongue explores your mouth and your heart flutters in your chest. "Can I see?" He asks breathless, "No! It's bad luck!" You chuckle, shaking your head, threading your hands in his soft hair. "Hmm ok, then show me everything else you got done while I was gone?" He arches a brow, smirking at you. "Oh yes yes, come on!" You say jovially, grabbing his hand, dragging him to your shared bedroom to get your wedding binder.

"Ok so I got done with the sitting chart, I might have done it a little risky, but, it'll work." You open the glitter decorated binder and show him the sketch you made. "So we sit, Katy and Orlando at the same table as Tom and Daya, ok" Austin says, reading closely over the guests , seeing where your brain has decided that they each should sit. "And I thought we could get away with having Baz sit with your dad and sister, I mean it would be a family table, right?"

"Mhm, yes , it works, honestly this looks fine to me. But what about your mom and dad?" Austin asks, not being able to make full sense of the chart. "We'll have a long table, we sit in the middle, my bridesmaids of my side your groomsmen of yours, for dad I'm saving a seat at the table with Baz and your dad, he hasn't RSVP ed yet" you explain and he nods following your chain of thought. "Ok it sounds like a plan, I think it would work, but I think Ash wants to bring Robbie, would that be fine?" He asks, referring to his nephew. "Hm sure, then I'll have Baz and Cathrine as the table with Pedro, move around Roxy and Joshua, then Ashley and Robbie and Zac can sit with Joe" You try and Austin seems to consider it for a minute, even if he know he'll agree anyway. "Good thinking baby!" He admits and you move on to showing him the flowers you picked "No purple star flowers?" He asks, looking at the white gardenia bouquets, thinking how you left out your favorite flower. "I have a theme, ok? It's white and creams and stuff." You defend.

"But honey, I think we could play with the colors a bit, don't you?" Austin suggests and you swipe on the next doc, titled: back up flowers. "Are you sure they look fine, tho?" You question, fearing the white and purple bouquets would be too much or too out of theme. "There's my girl!" He says, kissing your cheek. "They look like something that should be at our wedding, don't they? The purple star flowers, the sunflowers and you even put my favorite in, the pink magnolias" Austin can be so over the top sometimes, but he's an actor, so that's so in character. "I wanted to have something from the both of us."

"Well I think it look so beautiful way better then the white boring ones you had as a first option" he argues. "Oh ok miss I know everything about flower arrangements" you joke, kissing him, throwing the binder to the side, turning to face him and straddling his hips. "I want it to be perfect!" You whisper, playing with the baby hairs around his forehead. Austin grins and pulls you closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. "It's you I'm marrying, it's already perfect." His hands squeez your hips and you sigh, inhaling the smell of him. "I know, I can't believe it's happening!" You admit absentmindedly, drawing circles with the tip of your finger on his shoulder. Austin sighs and kisses your neck, his hot breath fanning over your skin, leaving goosebumps down your spine. "Me neither." He admits, laying back on the pillow, with you on top of him, head resting on his heart. You enjoy the soft beat of it, as your cheek absorbs the heat of his skin. "I cried yesterday, in the shower." You tell him and he tenses underneath you. One of his hands moving from your waist to your chin, forcing you to look as him, his blue eyes wonder over your face, looking over every freckle, curve and shadow. "Why?"

Austin is a bit scared to ask, he fears you might get cold feet and put an end to all of this, which to be fair he wouldn't mind, he loved you ten years without you being he wife, he'd love you a thousand more just the same. "I'm scared, I - my parents made it sound like marriage ruined them. I don't want it to ruin us." Tears prickle your eyes as you speak, and his thumb caresses you cheek catching a falling tear. "It won't, we are not them, we love each other too much. Y/n I want you to marry me because I can't see a life without you, but I want you to know, if you even feel like this isn't what you want, I'll love you just as much for as long as I live." Austin confesses and you can't even find a speckle of doubt that he means every syllable spoken. "I want it, I want to have your name, I want to be your wife, I'm just defrosting my girlhood heart, cause I used to love weddings." You tell him, pulling closer to his face and connecting your lips to his soft ones, time standing still, as your bodies stay intertwined. "I know baby, take your time!" Austin says rubbing you back and you hide your face in the crook of his neck, yawning, which makes him chuckle. "Sleep mrs Butler, I'm home now!" Austin lulls you, pulling the duvet over the both of you, as you fall asleep on his chest, snoring softly.

"Have you written your vows?" You ask halfway asleep, which makes Austin laugh, knowing that no matter how tired you are you'll always make sure to have everything checked for the day, before letting your mind disconnect. "Oh my Virgo baby, ever so organized. I have!" He tells you in a low voice, barely above a whisper, hoping you'll finally let yourself sleep. "Hmm, can I hear them?" You ask, blabbering, Austin grins knowing your having the fight of your life to stay awake right now. "Yes, in a month on august 13th." You groan and wrap your arms around his neck, falling asleep without another word, and Austin does the same as he massages your back, the soft brush of your breath against his neck and the comforting weight of you on him, being his favorite sleep medicine.

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[bekolxeram]

I know we've been manifesting S8 Air Ops since that photo of a hangar was posted by a member of the scouting team. And I know the other side has been mocking us for being delusional when other bts photos of an aircraft came out. So here I am, taking my shipper's goggles off, and diving into the aviation side of things. I have to admit, it left me with more questions than answers.

They already have a hangar for Air Ops in S7, they don't need another one

No. The 911!Air Ops we see in S7 is the Helinet hangar at Van Nuys Airport. Helinet is a company that rents and operates helicopters for news stations, film crews, medivac service or regular charter flights. You can compare images from 7x02 and 7x03 with Google Street Views of the Helinet Hangar.

You can also see N67TV and N29HD here.

Helinet is where ABC usually rents its news helicopters from, so it's cheaper and more convenient to film a couple scenes there when helicopters are needed. It can't be used for regular filming though, because Helinet has a business to run, and when a helicopter takes off, it's so noisy that you can't even hear each other talking, let alone shooting a scene. (I recommend watching the whole video, if you're interested in accuracy when it comes to writing fics.)

It's a plane related emergency so it must be related to Tommy

Also no. Again, I've written a piece about how Tommy was not the air tanker pilot in 2x14 before, and if he was not qualified for that, he's not qualified to fly an airliner either. It's not impossible that he flies a small turboprop aircraft like a Cessna 172, but he would never have the time to get certified as a commercial airliner pilot while working as an active firefighter since 2005.

And this is a prop for an Airbus airliner.

It's actually pretty easy to tell an Airbus aircraft from a Boeing one, as the shape of the rear cockpit windows is pretty different between the two. It's just a matter of which Airbus model it is. I believe it's a narrow body single aisle aircraft from the A320 family.

Wide body Airbus aircrafts, like this A300, have their side cockpit windows more tapered to the top. It also applies to other Airbus twin aisle aircrafts, like the A330 and the A340.

On the A320 though, the side windows are flat on the top.

So it's a pretty safe bet that the aircraft we see in that bts photo is one from the A320 family. I can't pinpoint which one it exactly is, because again, I can just see a tiny section of the cockpit, not the rest of the aircraft.

So the hangar must be for the airplane then?

The hangar itself is a former Air National Guard maintenance hangar at Ontario International Airport (ONT/KONT). It's especially used for filming. There are bigger hangars at the same airport for filming, but this one looks the best on camera.

They don't need a hangar for scenes inside of the plane, they have cockpit and cabin mock-ups at the studio for them.

You can clearly see the cabin door right here from recent bts footage. It looks just like a training facility for flight attendants.

They only film on location if they want shots of the entire aircraft from the outside. Like in 1x04, the scenes of Athena responding to an alleged unruly passenger were filmed in a set. The plane crash rescue parts of the episode though, were filmed in an actual retired 757 in a tub of water.

(Lone Star worked with this exact company for 3x08. Though, that plane was a 737 I believe.)

I can't think of any disastrous scenario happening in a maintenance hangar, where the aircraft is powered off with only maintenance staff present, no passengers or crew. Well, there have been cases of planes crashing into a hangar, but even then I don't see the need for the 118 to be there. Every major airport has at least one fire station on site with dedicated foam and crash units. In fact, there is a fire station right next to this hangar IRL.

Another problem, although I'm not sure because I don't have the actual measurements, is that the celling of the hangar looks quite low. (Refer to page 44 of this document) It was originally built in 1955 to house fighter jets. The F-102, the type of aircraft operated there in the 60s and 70s, has a total height of 6.5 meters. The tail of an A320 on the other hand can reach 11.76 m from the ground. (The shortest variant of the A320 family is actually even taller, 12.51 m.) So there could be some tail bumping action if you try to tow an A320 into this hangar.

So Air Ops is still a possibility?

Yes. This hangar is quite a bit larger than the Helinet hangar, but still not as big as the actual Air Ops facility. A helicopter is obviously much smaller than a passenger airliner that can seat over 180, you can easily fit multiple helicopters in there with plenty of space left for other set props. But the problem is, they don't have enough helicopters.

They have that one replica of N211FN that they used to film the search and rescue in 7x03, that's it. All the other helicopters you see on screen, including the real N211FN that actually flies, belong to Helinet. Sure, they can get some more fake helicopters that are empty inside just for looks, but I don't see the need to spend so much extra money just to show Tommy's place of work unless it's related to some major plot points. For now, I don't see how that would fit into the story.

There is also the possibility that the hangar has nothing to do with anything aviation related. I mean, they've filmed countless ads, music videos and movies, including Ford vs Ferrari there. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe that's why that crew member eventually got the green light to confirm the hangar is indeed for 9-1-1, it tells us absolutely nothing.

[earlgreytea68]

okay, so I finally finished the Barbra Streisand memoir. I learned a lot and I developed a great deal of respect for her because she is clearly an extremely talented person, but also...it was a slog to get through. It was really interesting to me the picture I got of her talent and influence and how hard she works but also how much she...isn't someone I actually wanted to spend time with? lol

BEWARE, LOTS OF VENTING ABOUT THIS BOOK BELOW, DON'T READ IF YOU IDOLIZE HER

It was also extra-interesting because I don't usually read memoirs, and this year I read three, and I think I assumed that all memoirs would be so sanitized as to not really give me much of a picture of the people behind them, like, Idk, I assumed they'd all be so slanted toward the person whose memoir it was that it wouldn't be like I could actually come to any conclusion about the person from the memoir. So, for instance, when I finished reading "Spare," I was like, okay, sure, Charles and William seem like awful people, but how much can I trust Harry's account of things? But then I finished reading the Barbra Streisand memoir and it made me like Harry even more lol, I was like, no, he is clearly a very sympathetic person, because not everyone tells their story in a way that makes you always on their side.

I should be clear, like, it's not like Barbra Streisand comes across as a monster or anything like that. As I said, it's very clear she's very talented and has worked very hard and had to deal with a lot of sexism throughout her career. But it's also clear that she's a very particular type of person who thinks that everyone else should spend all of their time working, and if they have a life outside of work, that person is immediately suspect and she never wants to work with them ever again. She tells story after story where she's like, "I sent him the script on Friday afternoon. He said he was just walking out the door for a weekend away, but he would get back to me on Sunday or Monday when he got back. Disappointing." Yup, that director was fired shortly thereafter. She's making a record and she asks this guy to be her producer, and she keeps them all in the studio basically night and day, and at one point she sees him looking at his watch, clearly impatient to, you know, go home to his family, and she's like, "Welp, I'll never work with that guy again." She's directing a movie and she wants everyone to stay late to film something and the crew is like, "No. We're not staying late. We're going home," and she's so betrayed by this. She says they all would have stayed if she'd been a male director. She might indeed be right about that. But that doesn't mean that her attitude that everyone around her needs to work around the clock is justified, just because guys treat their employees that way, too. She doesn't tell these stories because she thinks she comes across as a jerk, and that to me was what was so telling about them. Maybe because I've worked for bosses who truly do take offense when you want to have a life outside of work, and I decided those people just weren't for me. It's cool if that's how you want to live your life, but this is probably why I just had this sort of visceral reaction against her. But it was interesting to me that I had that reaction at all! Like, it's her life story and she could make herself look as awesome as possible, you know?

Also, the picture of someone who hit it big when she was like 20 and has been fawned over ever since was just so tiring. It's a thousand pages of this. EVERY SINGLE STORY SHE TELLS IS JUST EXHAUSTING.

She acts the part of Juliet for Lee Strasberg, the guy who invented method acting. He tells her she's the best Juliet he's ever seen.

She directs Yentl and shows it to Steven Spielberg. He tells her that he wishes he could offer her some advice but he can't because it's the perfect movie and he has zero notes. She's the best director ever.

She's researching mental illness and goes to see mentally ill patients. Worried about how she should interact with them, she asks the doctor, "Am I doing this right?" The doctor says most people get it wrong, but she has gotten it right. She's even the best at interacting with mentally ill people. She's a natural at everything!

Like, literally, every single story is like this. By the time she was designing dresses better than Donna Karan and then taking credit for Bill Clinton's reelection strategy, I was just like, I can't anymore lolololol. Then she has this rant at one point about how people can't handle truth but she thinks telling the truth is always the best option and I wanted to be like, ....she thinks this because she thinks the "truth" is always that she is literally the best person who has ever tried to do everything ever. I mean, maybe she is! But the fact that she doesn't realize that it's not like this for the rest of us is just exhausting.

My most illustrative story of this: She tells this story about how she was away traveling and she hired some gardeners to put chrysanthemums out on her NYC penthouse terrace while she was away. She requested pink and white chrysanthemums. When she got back, they had planted rust and yellow chrysanthemums. She is HORRIFIED. She calls up the gardener in outrage and the gardener is like, "They didn't have pink and white, so we just put in rust and yellow." She says they should have asked for permission before making that substitution.

Okay, so far, I guess so normal-ish story, like, still seems like a little bit of an overreaction but she's probably right that they should have checked on the color change, Idk, I don't have gardeners planting mums for me, so I've never thought about how I would react to that lololol. BUT THEN. THE STORY GOES ON. She is so, so offended by these mums that SHE CANNOT BEAR TO EVEN LOOK AT THEM. She draws all the curtains in her penthouse and sits basically in gloom and darkness, sulking about these mums. Then one of her friends comes over and doesn't know she's having this fit about the mums and is like, "It's a beautiful day! Why do you have all the curtains drawn!" and starts opening the curtains and......THE MUMS ON THE TERRACE ARE NOW PINK AND WHITE.

Now. You know what the explanation for this is? Probably the gardener she yelled at came back and replaced the mums for her because she was freaking out so much. But you know what Barbra's explanation for this is?

When you want something so badly, the universe finds a way of giving it to you.

............

Sorry, I find that so unbearably obnoxious, this idea she has that either (a) the rest of us just don't want wealth and success and adulation and talent as much as she did; or (b) the universe loves her so specially much that it changes the colors of flowers for her???????? I cannot believe she thought this was a story that she needed to include in her memoir, because I found it so uniquely horrifying a story. And it also made me think differently about her relationship with her mother. She doesn't like her mother. I'm not being cruel here, she literally says it right in the book: she doesn't like her mother. She tries to paint this picture of her mother as being jealous and resentful of Barbra. And maybe she is. There are certainly bits in the story where she seems to be. But there are other bits where she's not. Barbra focuses in on a concert that the mother missed, and it does seem super-rude and insulting and offensive and I was horrified. But then later on, her mother is at another concert and she just gives it this passing mention, like, no big deal, so...it's not that her mother never went to concerts? Or something? And then she admits that her mother kept a scrapbook of Barbra's entire career from the very beginning, and I think maybe we're meant to see that she did that so could seethe over it and hope to throw bad reviews back in Barbra's face or something, but it just seems also like maybe her mom was proud of her? And the reason I think that I get that they had a fraught relationship is because Barbra keeps making snide little comments, like, "It's not my fault that my mom didn't work harder to be famous herself." Like it's just that easy. Like you just snap your fingers and you become famous. It was that easy for Barbra, and so she assumes that the rest of us just don't want it enough. One of the stories she tells about her mother throwing a tantrum is after she gives her a book about 1940s movie stars that she inscribes, "This could have been you, Mom!" And in the memoir Barbra is like, "I truly believed that my mother could have been a movie start if she'd just tried for it. She was so beautiful and talented." .......THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS. And I kind of totally get why her mother was offended by Barbra just kind of endlessly judging her as lazy for not going out and getting herself a more fabulous life Idk.

Anyway. It was just interesting to me that the more I read the story of this life, the more I could see the seams of it, so to speak? Like, in revealing what she thought she was revealing, she was revealing so much more to me, if that makes sense? Like, she said that people are constantly demeaning her as "controlling," when she's just trying to make the best product she can, and I get that, but also every story she relates she's like, "I told the lighting guy how to do his job and then he got offended." And I'm just like, Well, you're running around constantly telling people how to do their jobs. When those jobs are not your job and arguably they are the experts. But she doesn't seem to treat anyone with basic deference, because she's so used to knowing better than everyone else. She never phrases it as, I asked the lighting guy to light me this way, which was telling in and of itself. She always tells them. There's one point where she describes making two accomplished screenwriters live in her guesthouse for a week and work night and day on this screenplay, and she just casually is like, "I told them which scenes each one of them should write, and sometimes I told them to write the same scene and I'd pick the best one," and I was just, like, horrified at the idea of these two accomplished people being forced to work around the clock as this woman literally pits them against each other? She framed this as an exciting collaborative project but the words she used to explain what her role in the collaboration were made it clear that no, she was the boss in the position of power ordering them around. Maybe, in a way, she just never has grasped how much power she had over other people, because of imposter syndrome or something, Idk.

This is all to say: It made me rethink how I was reacting toward Spare. Which wasn't to say I thought Prince Harry was lying, just that I thought maybe his version of the truth was skewed toward justifying his own behavior. But after reading the Barbra Streisand memoir, I've realized that, actually, that might be harder to do and maintain over hundreds of pages than I realized. I finished Spare liking Prince Harry more than I did when I started it, and now I like him even more lol

(I haven't talked much about the Britney Spears memoir, largely because I have concluded that that memoir is just such an acute picture of a traumatized soul who hasn't even begun to heal. I wish her well. Harry is also a traumatized soul but he's had literal decades of working on healing so his memoir hits different that way, while still being so clearly about his trauma, all the same)

[blancheludis]

Whumptober 2024 Day 10: "I can't think straight"

Fandom: Batman Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth Tags: Cuddle Pollen, Good Parent Bruce Wayne, Implied/Past Child Abuse, Implied/Past Prostitution, Family

Summary:

Jason knows what is going on. Someone slipped him a drug, the kind that leaves you awake and always wanting more, and set up a nice little roleplay fantasy with Robin and the fucking Batman. The thing is, he craves touch so badly, he cannot think of a way out. Too soon, they are in a car and it is too late to run.

(Only then Batman leaves all of his clothes on and does not demand anything of Jason. Maybe Jason does not know what is going on.)

- Jason, cuddle pollen and his family getting him through a hard time.

Jason is trying to be as still as humanly possible. Something is very wrong. Underneath his skin, his flesh buzzes, falling and rising in waves but continually insistent. Heat rolls through him, roaring at every touch, demanding more, hungry for something.

He has been drugged, that much is clear. His thoughts are sluggish and when he moves, his eyes have trouble following, turning every step into a stop-motion film with a lot of pictures missing.

He wishes suddenly, fervently, that his mother was still alive. She would know what to do, would be able to tell him whether to fight or to succumb. Because this, the hunger, is worrying.

Jason knows the kind of drugs that people slip into drinks to make others drowsy, pliant, knows the way limbs grow heavy and every pair of arms holding him upright is welcome. He knows that, afterwards, there is just enough memory left to feel ashamed.

This is different. If anything, he feels energized, ready to jump up and fly, ready to take something that is just out of reach, ready to be devoured by it.

He leans against a wall to steady himself, but the cold cement has him flinching back, too abrasive against his feverish skin. He needs something softer, warmer.

Jason breathes. He looks down at himself and sees red and green and - somebody put him into a Robin costume. He cannot think of a single reason for that to be a good thing.

"Robin," someone calls, voice low and gravelly. 

Jason's brain might not be in top working condition, but he knows what he will find when he looks up. And, yes. Batman. Or a pretender. Someone with a very specific fantasy in mind.

Batman reaches out and clasps a hand on Jason's shoulder. Immediately, thousands of nerve endings fire and the heat soars. More, he thinks. Before he even knows what is happening, he is pressed against Batman's side, some animalistic instinct inside him purring with pleasure.

He knows what is going on. Someone slipped him a sex drug, the kind that leaves you awake and always wanting more, and set up a nice little roleplay fantasy with Robin and the fucking Batman. Jason screws his eyes shut. He is actually very glad that his mother is dead, because no one should witness this.

"We're leaving," Batman commands and the hand on Jason's shoulder tightens, if not painfully so.

Jason nods, because what else is he going to do? Some deal apparently went down, no matter whether he was present for it. He is at least seventy percent sure that he is here not willingly, but when has that ever fucking mattered?

The world spins around him. The only thing he can clearly focus on is the point of contact where his body is pressed against Batman, warmth and want constantly firing, making him want to curl in on himself and, overpoweringly, get so much closer.

They walk. Jason is distantly aware of his feet moving, one step after the other, and then they stop. A car is in front of them and Jason knows this part. He gets in, immediately grieving the loss of body contact.

Soon enough, Batman slips into the driver seat. Strange. This would be much easier with both of them on the backseat, which - ah, does not exist. The motor comes to life with a quiet hum, the vibration echoed by Jason's bones.

Oh. They are going somewhere else. Don't ever let them get you to a secondary location, someone once told him. Probably someone well-meaning but otherwise completely uneducated in how real life works.

"Robin," Batman says, his tone sharp. It has Jason sitting up straighter on instinct. "Are you all right?"

What a stupid question. He is drugged, does not know how he got here or where here even is. Or what kind of job he got offered for.

"Yes." See, he can be polite. He can play his fucking part.

Except - is he supposed to initiate? In the car? Or wait until they are wherever they are going?

He is cold and his skin screams, demanding some kind of contact, so that makes his decision easy. Leaning over, he very deliberately puts a hand on Batman's thigh, closer to the knee, so he does not appear too eager. The muscles underneath his palm tense, and not quite in an inviting way, but the warmth is overwhelming.

He shifts closer. "I can blow you right here," he offers, his hand already looking for a way to get into Batman's costume.

The car comes to a stop so abruptly that Jason would doubtlessly have crashed into the console if not for Batman's arm shooting out to hold him back, muscles like iron, not moving an inch. The part of Jason's brain concerned with survival, drug or not, notes down that this was not a good idea; no more offers for blowjobs before they reach their destination. By far the bigger part of him, however, simply purrs in pleasure at Batman's arm in grabbing distance. The logical next step is to try to curl around it, chasing the release of endorphins.

"Robin." Where, before, Batman was sharp, he is now brittle. "Jason?"

That is not good sign. Real names mean something is wrong. Obviously, there was some kind of script and Jason mucked it up. Usually, these things are not so complicated.

"Sorry," he mutters, face pressed against Batman's arm. "Was I supposed to wait?" If at all possible, the arm tenses even more. "I can make it good, though."

With firm movements, Batman pushes Jason back into his seat. When he makes to pull his arm away, a truly pitiful sound escapes Jason's throat, somewhere between a whimper and a sob. Batman freezes and then, mercifully, leaves his arm where it is. Jason does not hesitate even a moment to make the best of this situation and rearranges himself into the best snuggling position he can while in a car. It probably does not look very sexy, but he already offered the blowjob and even that is honestly more than irresponsible while driving.

The car starts moving again and Jason tries to see where they are, but the stop-motion thing is still going and his position does not offer the best view anyway. He will just have to trust that they will let him out again once the job is over. Or that post-drug Jason will find a way. He usually does.

---

Despite every lesson he ever learned, Jason falls asleep. The next thing he knows is that Batman is carrying him. The body armour is anything but comfortable but the drug apparently does not care much because Jason's skin is singing, soaking up warmth like this is his last opportunity to do so ever. Which he hopes it is not.

"We're almost there, Jason," Batman says in his low rumble, which warms something entirely different in Jason, some spot behind his sternum. "You'll be all right."

As long as they keep touching, yes, he definitely will be.

He can barely spare any thought for their surroundings, only that this very much does not look like a bedroom. The craving gets worse, however, so he does not care whether they end up on a bed or anywhere else as long as they finally get to it.

Then there is a couch, which Batman sets him down on, way too gentle for someone with that mass. When he withdraws, Jason does that whimper again, but it is only for a moment, then Batman sits down next to him, pulling Jason into his side. They are both still wearing too many clothes, but the buzzing inside Jason gets bad enough that he can barely hear himself think.

"What happened?" a different voice asks, appearing out of thin air for all that Jason knows.

He does not look up. If this is going to be a three-way thing with Batman and Nightwing, he does not want to know. Introducing panic into this scenario will not make anything better. He is not sure why else there would be a third person here. It might be the pimp who sold Jason. Might be someone with worse drugs to give to him.

"Some kind of drug or pollen," Batman says in his deep rumble. Jason notices the vibrations in his chest more than the actual voice. "I'll get a blood sample and see what we have on hand."

There is some rearranging Jason and a slight sting, but then Batman just holds him in this kind of side embrace for a minute, warm and solid, not demanding anything for now.

"Is he all right?" the other voice asks, sounding closer now.

"He cannot be left alone. He needs body contact."

Jason snorts at that, tries to muffle the sound against Batman's side. Body contact. This sounds like a line out of a very bad porn clip. Oh no, the poor kid is sick, he needs to be warmed up with body warmth while naked.

A sudden thought stills him. If this sounds like very bad lines in a script, it is entirely possible they are filming this. Even drugged out of his mind, Jason knows he would never agree to that. His life already is a shitshow, he does not need any more physical evidence for when he finally makes it out of there, out of Crime Alley, and into a better life.

He struggles - or tries to. His skin screams when he withdraws from Batman, distracting him enough that he does not notice that the other voice apparently does have a body and has sat down on Jason's other side. He freezes, tries to think. But the other person is not wearing body armour and he is so, so warm. Later - if there is a later - he will curse himself thoroughly, but right now there is nothing he can do as his body moves on autopilot, seeking out this new heat source.

The person hums. It does not vibrate as much as when Batman does it. "Cuddle pollen, then?"

There is a woosh of fabric and a black shadow moving at Jason's side. "We are not calling it that," Batman says, sounding ridiculous in his indignation.

"Master Dick seems to disagree."

Master Dick? Okay, okay. Definitely bad porn. Also worrying, because now there is a third john he has to worry about, even if he is apparently not here yet. Those are the worst anyway, always coming in when things are winding down, all hungry and still full of energy.

"Alfred."

Jason does not know what to think anymore. What kind of scene is that? Batman and Robin make sense. Master Dick might make sense but in a completely different scenario. And then someone named Alfred? Nobody has even removed their clothes yet. Nobody does any touching other than hugging.

"So, he is not in any immediate danger?" Alfred asks, shifting so Jason can fit more comfortably against his side.

"No. Stay with him," Batman orders. "I'll be back shortly."

And Batman leaves. What are they waiting for? Is the drug going to make Jason worse?

Jason looks up at the man holding him and is taken aback once again. He is old, wearing a suit, and looks down at Jason with unexpected softness.

"No offense, sir," Jason says, knowing better than to speak but unable to stop himself. Things are just too weird. "But I thought I was here for some Batman-Robin roleplay, not to fuck a random old guy." 

Too bold, too crass. Alfred's face falls, and although he recovers quickly, the damage is done.

"We will have a talk about that once you're back to yourself, Master Jason. Nobody will touch you in that way, I promise you that."

Jason does not know this guy, does not know what is going on. Yet, he finds himself strangely soothed by the words, relaxing into Alfred's loose, fully-clothed hold.

---

He drifts off again, and then Batman is back. The sharp sting of the needle barely registers because all Jason's brain can concentrate on is Batman's big hand sprawled on his back, drawing circles that make fireworks go off in his brain.

"Now we just have to hold him." Batman says in his low rumble, growing tense when Jason shifts closer to him.

"No reason to sound so reluctant, Master Bruce," Alfred responds, still calm, still utterly non-threatening.

Batman makes a sound like he is choking. "You're not the one he offered to - offered sexual intercourse to, Alfred."

Alfred stills briefly, every muscle in his body going taut, belying his age. The moment passes. Alfred does not mention Jason's earlier slip of tongue. Maybe this is not porn, after all.

---

Jason wakes with a headache. He is still down in the cave, still wearing the Robin costume and - he is lying on a couch with Bruce? He stares at the strange scene with the nagging feeling that something is very wrong. That is until Alfred enters with a tray and three steaming mugs on it. Three. Meaning one is for himself. Meaning something is definitely wrong. He puts down the tray and pulls a chair closer. As he sits down, he notices that Jason is awake.

"Master Jason, are you feeling better?" Alfred greets him, the kind of intensity in his voice that is usually reserved for serious wounds or missions that went wrong in another way.

Jason does not feel wounded. Well, he is sore all over, but it feels like the kind of sore on gets during a fever not after a firefight.

"I'm fine," he says and attempts to sit up without jostling Bruce. Were they cuddling? 

Bruce might be a worse sleeper than Jason, though, because he immediately stirs, going from asleep to alert in no time at all. The first thing he does is seek out Jason, looking him over and reaching for his shoulder as if to make sure he is really there.

"Everything all right?" Bruce asks, neatly slotting in to a pattern that leaves Jason only more concerned.

"What happened?" he asks, also looking down at himself now. Perhaps he missed something. No, all limbs accounted for, no body part in more pain than the others.

"You don't remember?" Bruce narrows his eyes, somehow looking uncomfortable now. "You were hit with some kind of pollen."

"Cuddle pollen," Alfred interjects helpfully, although he does not sound amused. Now that Jason thinks about it, neither of them look very happy. 

Then the words hit, and Jason's memory returns with a vengeance not long after. The drug, the hunger, offering to - So, that was not a nightmare.

"Fuck," Jason says, with feeling.

"Language," Alfred scolds him immediately, although somewhat lacklustre, like he is trying to hold onto normalcy but manages only barely.

It is not funny, but Jason bursts out laughing anyway. He can admit to himself that it sounds slightly hysterical, and if he can hear it then Bruce and Alfred can, too, so he should really stop. He should really not make things worse. It is hardly going to get worse than him offering a blowjob to Batman, of course. He did not even do that the first time they met, when he thought Batman would make him disappear or, worse, put him in an orphanage.

"Jason?" Bruce asks, too gentle for the situation. Jason does not want gentle. He does not know what to do with gentle.

"I'm sorry," he says, not quite sure what he is apologizing for. There is too much to choose from.

"You have nothing to apologize for, dear boy," Alfred says. He does a better job at looking neutral than Bruce does, but Dick often jokes that Bruce's face was made only for scowling.

Jason straightens, withdrawing completely from Bruce. There is no way he can have this conversation while touching the only positive father figure he ever had in his life.

"If I remember correctly, I offered to f-" he clears his throat, tries again. "I offered to sleep with you."

Nobody denies it. Nobody offers something to explain the ugly truth away. In fact, Bruce does something worse.

He asks, "Why?"

Alfred shoots a glare at Bruce but does not say anything. Clearly, he does not approve the bluntness of the question but wants to know the answer nonetheless.

What a way to go, Jason thinks. How could he even answer this? How far back should he go? Why people from Crime Alley who are drugged jump to the worst conclusion available?

He shakes his head, exhausted already. "I mean, it all made sense at the time," he offers and really does not want to go further. He has to, though, judging on the blank look Alfred and Bruce share. He drops his gaze, stares at his own hands as he wills them to stay relaxed. "I couldn't remember I was Robin, but I wore the costume and then Batman took me to his car. I knew I was drugged. That's honestly the only scenario I could think of."

That was not the answer anybody wanted to hear, even though it is not the worst he could give.

"And you just went along with it?" Bruce asks, sounding hoarse.

Perhaps Jason should remind them that Alfred brought drinks. Instead, he keeps his eyes down, unwilling to see their reaction to any of his words.

"I mean, have you seen Batman?" he scoffs. He does not laugh. It is not a joke. "Not like I could fight him off, drugged or not."

Tension thickens the air. When Jason chances a glance, Bruce's face has hardened into Batman's, at once impassive and thunderous. 

"So, you get dosed with an unknown substance and immediately think someone bought you for sex?" Bruce asks, voice deadly calm. And then again: "Why?"

Jason is very sure he is not the only one who fervently wishes they were not having this conversation. Yet, he is not brave enough to deny them answers. A part of him has always been waiting for Bruce to come to his senses and send him back to the streets. If he had had the full picture earlier, he might have never taken Jason in.

"You know where I'm from," he says trying for nonchalance but ending up desperate. "It's not exactly uncommon." Bruce knows that. They are fighting that every night.

Bruce inhales deeply, while Alfred is deadly silent. Jason does not dare to look up again.

"Has anything like that happened to you?" Bruce asks. His tone is not the one he uses for interrogations but also not the one for victims. Beyond anything else, Jason is glad for that.

Quietly, he says, "It happens every day, Bruce."

"That's not an answer."

As if Jason does not know that. Now, he does look up, fuelled by the hot, churning anger that helped him survive long, cold winter nights on Gotham's streets.

"Maybe I don't want to fucking answer," he snaps and cannot quite regret it. 

Bruce opens his mouth, but Alfred gets there first. "Master Bruce, enough."

First, Jason is grateful for Alfred's intervention, but then he actually looks at him and sees the concern, the grief, and knows Alfred will not let this go either but simply disapproves with Bruce's interrogation methods.

"I'm not broken," he says, raising his voice to almost a yell. "I don't need to talk about this. It's over. I'm here now." Although perhaps not for very long. Who wants a ruined kid?

"Nobody said you're broken," Alfred says, just as stern with him as he was with Bruce.

"You don't need to mince your words. You think you need to pity the poor traumatized Crime Alley kid." Jason is on a run now. He has become complacent here, feeling secure in the Manor when the first thing he learned about life is to never, ever let himself feel completely safe. He snaps his eyes to Bruce, accusatory "Did you think I was stealing your tires for fun? That's loads better than standing on street corners. Doesn't pay as well, of course. But that's all you'll ever hear from me."

Bruce's face grows, if possible, even more blank, every little thing he might feel pushed so far down that not a hint of it shows. "I just need to know if -"

But Jason is done. "You need to know nothing. My blood tests were clean.” Feeling more than a little petty, he adds, “And I rescind the offer, I do not want to sleep with you anymore. Happy?"

Nobody is happy, but Jason cannot feel guilty about it. This is his life, and if he does not want to talk about it with a sanctimonious asshole like Bruce Wayne, who is living in his Manor above all the stink of the city, that is his right.

"Jason," Bruce snaps. Once again, Alfred comes to his rescue.

"Enough," he thunders, looking at both of them in turn before settling on Jason. "Master Jason, why don't you go up to your room and get a shower. I'll prepare breakfast."

For a moment, none of them moves, suspended in the thick tension, unwilling to cede the fight, although Jason is not quite clear what fight they are having exactly. Is it just Bruce wanting to know everything that is going on, as usual? Or does Jason really have to fear for his place here?

Finally, Bruce stands, not even glancing at Jason. "Thank you, Alfred."

---

The door to Jason's room opens, not long enough after they all left the cave. Jason wishes he could be alone with his racing thoughts a while longer, but, at the same time, he is glad someone interrupted them. They tend to end in a spiral and pull him mercilessly down. 

"Master Jason, I'll put your breakfast on -" Alfred stops, noticing Jason on the windowsill.

Jason has not made it into the shower yet, has not even taken off his clothes. As soon as the door closed behind him, all energy went out of him, all fight. Bruce must think the worst of him, must wonder right now whether it was right to take Jason in. He cannot - he does not want to go back.

"It wasn't like that, Alfred," Jason says, small and quiet, still unwilling to talk about it but also knowing he cannot ignore it. If he can make Alfred see, then perhaps they can convince Bruce, perhaps Jason does not have to talk about it with him.

Alfred nods, but puts down the breakfast tray on Jason's table before coming closer. He silently gestures at the remaining room on the windowsill. Jason makes place for him gladly.

"Nobody is judging anyone here for what happened in their life," Alfred says once he is seated, looking at Jason without a trace of doubt in his expression. "Master Bruce is simply worried, but you don't have to talk about anything that you did or that was done to you ever. You can, if you need to, but we will not judge you either way."

Jason hums. He wants to believe Alfred, but he knows that Bruce never lets anything go. Except for, perhaps, talks about his feelings.

"Is he angry?" The words slip past Jason's lips without permission. He hates how he sounds, like a child left at a train station, wondering whether his parents will come back to him.

"No," Alfred responds immediately, leaving no room for argument. "Last night shook him. Us. But not because we're angry or because we think we have a right to know everything about you. We are worried, and we want to help."

Jason is silent for a long moment, wondering whether he could simply believe Alfred, whether that is something he is still capable of. Believing that some people are good and only want what is best for him.

"Do you want a hug, Master Jason?" Alfred then asks, open and gentle, utterly unafraid.

Jason tenses. "I'm not drugged anymore." There is no need to coddle him. No need to touch him after what he revealed.

"I know," Alfred says and shrugs like there is nothing more to it. "That is not why I asked."

"I'm not weak." What he means is that he does not want pity.

Alfred studies him, before saying, "Master Dick hugs people all the time. Do you think he is weak?" The worst thing is that he sounds so calm about it, like there is nothing wrong with making a false assumption.

Wordlessly, Jason shakes his head and watches as Alfred turns towards him and opens his arms, slow enough for Jason to protest if he wants to. He does not. Instead, he lets Alfred pull him into a hug. It is warm and soft and strong in all the right places. The pollen is gone, but Jason still feels the buzzing underneath his skin subside. He is safe. He is home.

"Thank you, Afred," he says, quiet enough that they can both pretend he said nothing.

Alfred, of course, does not. "Any time, my dear boy. Any time."

[mrs-monaghan]

We know JK is so bothered about a friend peeling perila leaf for his partner. He can't trust his partner even with that simple thing, so should we even talk about intimate choreography, living with producers, going for weeks long foreign trips ? You are saying a man who can't stand a simple perilla leaf peeling is cool with the above things?

No. He wasn't

He wasn't okay with any of that anon. Like, not even a little bit. I think we have witnessed satellite Jeon for so long that we have forgotten what it actually means. JK always wanting to be next to Jimin, Jimin having a calming effect on JK, JK gravitating towards Jimin when sad, satellite Jeon means Jimin is JK's person. It means Jimin is more than just his boyfriend, he is his safe space. JK needs him. He doesn't just want him, he doesn't just love Jimin, he needs him.

Jikook live together, yeah? And this is after all members used to live in one house for years. So they've done nothing but be around eo for over 10 years. AND YET what happens when any content is released?

We have them backstage walking from point A to B together

We have them sitting and standing next to eo all the time

We have JK displacing members to be next to Jimin

We have JK following Jimin

We have them leaving premises together

We have them cheating to be on the same team

We have them staying up all night drinking alone together

We have them practising group choreos together

We have them hanging out at each other's rehearsals.

And all this happens after they left the same house and will go back to sleep in the same bed at the end of the day once they're done filming. When I call them interdependent... I mean they are interdependent.

Jimin is JK's safe space I'm pretty sure this has been established by how hard satellite Jeon works sometimes.

Tweet

He failed. But he tried. Poor baby. 😪

What's my point you ask? My point is, JK has only known being with Jimin almost all the time. When they're good, of course. When they haven't fought and are giving eo space, JK only knows how to have Jimin with him at all times. And this has been the case for years. Then solo era comes along and Jimin moves out for a while, and even though I'm sure he made time for JK, it just wasn't enough.

JK went from waking up to Jimin, seeing him everyday, to seeing him what, thrice a week? Once a week? Who knows? Either way, his Jimin time had been cut considerably short and satellite Jeon was not handling it very well. Add that to the fact that they are supposed to lay low, can't be seen out together in public hanging out like they used to before.. and it was maybe a bit too much for JK.

So no anon, JK was not cool with any of the above things that you listed. We all saw it for ourselves. Coming live without permission and being unapologetic about it. First sign of defying the company. Coming live all the time coz he was bored and needed company. The drinking on every live even though he wasn't allowed to. Deleting insta and making the company lose money coz of it while most prolly not giving a shit. And then white day happened.

😔

This couple holiday that JK has spent with Jimin every single year and once again his boyfriend is not just busy but out of the freaking country! So what happens? Mans breaks down. He's at his limit here, anon.

I only wanna talk to Jikookers rn coz they're the only ones that truly understand how seriously Jikook take this couple shit. Be it matching rings on the same finger, or matching clothes on couple holidays, or matching clothes more often than with other members. And it happens even now, btw.

From JK ending up with Dior merch

To Jikookers spoting that one red CK underwear that clearly didn't belong to JK

And it couldn't be more clear they shop together. This one is neither here nor there but I'm throwing it in here anyway coz why not? 😂😂😂

(They've always had very similar taste)

Then we have spending birthdays together, couple holidays, etc. They've done this forever. So for Jimin to be away on the last white day before they have to enlist and be away from eo for 2 years, I can imagine it kinda hit JK hard and may have been one of the things that got him emotional that day.

So no anon, JK was definitely not cool with any of the above things that you listed.

And we know this, because as soon as Jimin's promotions ended, not only did JK go MIA, but when he popped back up, mofo was fucking glowing

He looked absolutely incredible. There was shine in his eyes and in his smile. It was so good to see him that way. And that has continued to be the case in the lives that he did after that. Sad JK was gone. JK that needed to drink when he came live, was gone.

So now i ask; Was this visible change that happened once Jimin was no longer as busy a coincidence?

[especiallythewomenandthechildren]

As If Destiny (part eight) 🌹

Part Seven 🌹

Warnings: Parent death, sibling death, death and brutality (it is the hunger games after all) characters may be ooc. Reader may not be your fav this part. I read the book a while ago but don't really remember much of Snows way of thinking (I mean I know its toxic and insane but yk the other things) so I will mostly be basing off the film and my own thoughts. Also I can't spell for the life of me so be prepared for bad spelling and grammar. Enjoy loves!

⋆✦⋆⋇⋆✦⋆⋇⋆✦⋆⋇⋆✦⋆⋇⋆✦⋆⋇⋆✦⋆⋇⋆✦⋆

The air of the station was stale, as if taking the simplest of breaths would cost a significant amount of energy. It felt as though even the bugs buzzing around in the spring weather were flying in slow motion. Maybe it really was the air, or more likely, the atmosphere of your mind.

You felt nauseous and dizzy at the arguments that split your soul. The tributes were to arrive today, naturally, Jessup with them. Were you here to give the best first impression or to size him up? A part of you wanted to save him from the horrors, but the lately very loud voice has been telling you that he deserved it. Especially a boy from District Twelve, around the age of those who murdered your brother in the dense woods of the small district.

Your long time waiting for the train arrival was spent trying to settle that internal struggle to no avail. You were staring straight ahead onto the empty tracks when something felt different. The peacekeepers were still stoic, tracks still echo-filled at even the slightest noise. But a slight breeze was felt behind you. When you turned around, that breeze of fresh air happened to be a certain blonde with irresistible eyes.

He was in the rouge academy uniform, as were you, and he held a pristine white rose in his hand. He had clearly expected the station to be empty, so the sight of your drained eyes made him suck in a breath.You let out a tired laugh at his appearance.

"So are we allowed to be here, or are we both going to receive whatever nightmare Highbottom has set up for us?"

Coryo walked to stand next to you as he retorted back with a sly grin.

"At least we will go through whatever the punishment is together."

"Ah, yes, nothing shakes the trouble duo!"

He took a sideways glance at you as he started chuckling.

"Trouble duo? That's really the best you thought of? I thought you were the poetic one."

He joked at you as you gasped in mock offense.

"I'm sorry, do you have any better names for us?"

Yes. Yes, he did. But none of them had to do with Highbottom or any mocking moniker. His personal favorite was "couple." The others were a bit ambitious and would be used in the far future, such as President and First Lady. Not a bad ring to it. But he wouldn't voice out his desires, even if he was on his death bed. Especially after what happened in that hallway yesterday.

However, you were too busy observing for the upcoming train to notice Coriolanus's gaze. When you turned around, he didn't shift away his gaze.

But you didn't question it. Maybe because it has become familiar and a comfort these past weeks. You had ammunition of reasons such as his hyperobservation to explain these glances. Not a single one of them hit the real reason.

The blonde was fidgeting with the rose slightly, which made a slight laugh creep past your lips. It took him a second to realize the cause, but when he did, he slightly blushed.

"I would have gotten you one too if-uhm, I knew you would be here."

Your lips curved into a shy grin at his flustered words.

"I'm not the one you need to charm, Coryo; you did that a long time ago."

You noticeably were avoiding his eyes, and he let it be because he was quite sure he was turning as red as his uniform.

"Can I ask why you are here, Coryo?"

He seemed a bit taken aback at your sudden question. Of course, he knew the reason he was there: to win the Plinth Prize. To do that, he needed Lucy Gray's trust, and this was just the way to do it. But he feared his reasoning was a bit too harsh. It was the last days of this girl's life, and he was just seeing her as a means to an end. Coriolanus didn't want you to think of him as heartless or worse, that he would be using your trust as a means to an end as well.

So he simply replied that he wished to gain the odd girl's trust, and this seemed like a good way to get a head start. You nodded along, agreeing that she seemed like the character who wouldn't do anything without trust.

Although, your eyes seemed to darken after his reasoning. He couldn't decipher the look completely, but it was clear guilt was a factor.

"Y/N?"

Your faraway eyes and mind locked into his at hearing his soft voice.

"Why are you here?"

You stared at him, slightly getting lost in the ever-shifting color in his eyes. You looked downwards as you breathed out.

"I don't know. I wish I did. Something told me I should come, see him for myself. Maybe it will help clear my thoughts on everything here. And I know a part of me wishes to find something in him to justify his murder."

You bitterly admitted. You were still glanced down when Coriolanus responded.

"This isn't your fault; you know this, right? You didn't choose him, and you didn't make the games."

He let it sink in for a moment, enough for it to visibly break through your guilt-made walls. Coriolanus waited for you to finally regain the will to look up at him.

"And if anyone has reason for the things you are thinking and feeling, it's you. They still want us dead. The Capitol says the war is over when it's far from done. I mean, come on, these kids are the next generation of rebels. It's either them or us."

His tone started out light and soft but quickly turned to stone. You wanted to argue with him, to shout at the top of your lungs that they are innocent and no part of the massacres you suffered. But how could you? How could you fight your exact sentiments?

You knew he was right, no matter how much it hurt your morals. They were old enough to feel fear. Old enough for that fear to become hate. Hate to violence.

And they were old enough to kill. The minimum age for the Reaping was twelve. You and your classmates had the ability to take a life at half that age.

After that, the long-awaited train began pulling into the station. You've only ever seen a train in person once. When you gave miniature hugs to your uncle Averic and freshly fourteen-year-old Octavious.

You were only five at the time, and the upcoming horror of the Dark Days were still a few months away. There were others there saying their goodbyes, but you weren't focusing on them. Or how they began filtering out as the time for departure came closer. You were still clinging onto your older brother's legs as your mother, aunt Fiora, and uncle Averic seemed to be in serious talks.

"Otto?"

The young boy seemed to be trying to listen in to their conversation, and it took a little slap to his leg to get his attention. When his eyes, which were the same shade of yours, landed on your own, they softened from his prior harden state of focus. He knelt down to your height as he turned all his attention on you.

"Why are you leaving?"

The boy had to take a shaky breath. He had slightly hoped you would just accept your mother's reasoning that he "just had to go." But, of course, you, being too attentive and curious for any kid your age, just couldn't let his absence go. In reality, he didn't have to leave. He had forced himself to be involved. It took every stretch of persuasion to convince his uncle to let him come along to what was being described as "a small rebellion."

He wasn't to do anything but take note and follow his uncle's lead. Otto dreamed that within a year, he would be given his own battalion, and the next, be his own commanding general. It was not extremely unusual for a young man of age sixteen or seventeen to be in command. Averic Emberidge was a living example. And like his maternal uncle, Octavious Vaun had great military promise. He had life promise.

He had promise.

And a promise given to his young sister. That he would come back.

Otto achieved his goals of military prowess. But the young man, no matter how skilled or trusted, broke his promise to the person he loved most.

But back then, the promise was fresh and believed to be easy to keep. The platform was empty save for one family by the time your own was forced to part. Your mother and aunt switched between the two members who would be off in District territory. You stood back and watched the goodbyes as a man approached.

He was tall, broad, and commanded the air of the room. As if even the rules of the universe had to bend to his will. He had two children and an older woman trailing behind him. All four had bright and magnetic blue eyes.

The Snows were not easy to miss, not even miles away, as though their powerful aura was felt in all areas of proximity.

He stopped right in front of your mother, who stood in a deep green fashioned vintage day dress. The beautiful woman still looked forward, slightly past her brother's shoulder.

"Cloria. Fiora."

He gave a nod after each name. The former turned to him with those still captivating eyes. The latter rolled her own pair at his presence. He acknowledged your uncle and brother as well, but they would have time for conversation later. They were all to be on campaign together after all.

Crassus and Cloria broke away for a very brief discussion while you still stood a bit away from the group. Your uncle noticed you and your lack of an official goodbye and smiled in invitation. You sprinted into his now-open arms as he spun you around, much to your oblivious enjoyment. When he set you down and grabbed your arms to make you focus on him, his prior smile dissolved into a grave thin line.

"Hey, kid."

Uncle Averic's voice wasn't the joyful one you were used to. You knew then that you needed to listen up and closely.

"I know you are a tough little girl. I saw how you beat up your brother, after all."

You smiled proudly while the aforementioned beaten boy scoffed. He was referring to the past few weeks in which Otto taught you how to fight. It was safe to say he wasn't expecting your level of skill and dedication. The fourteen-year-old just wanted you to have basic defense skills, but your speed of skill accelerated the lessons considerably.

"But y/n, things are going to be a little different now. I need you to watch out for your mom and aunt Fi, okay? I know Rhayen will be there, but you are responsible too. You are smart and strong, kid, just don't be reckless. Your mom doesn't need any more stress."

Your uncle struck his hand out, and you shook it in agreement. It didn't hit your young mind all that you would have to endure to keep this agreement.

Your mother and Crassus seemed to be finishing up talks, so you turned to Otto, who seemed to be holding back tears as the gravity of the situation hit him.

"Hey."

His still-changing voice broke. He scooped you up in his arms as he stared down at you.

"I will write all I can back home, and I'll make special letters just for you, okay? I'll draw out the words for you."

You could read, and at a very accelerated level for a girl your age, but Otto was already missing the days where you would draw out what you were feeling in situations you couldn't speak out loud.

"No! I want words, I can read Otto! I want hard words too!"

He laughed at your little pout of demand. Your determination to push yourself even in that small way was one of the many ways you motivated him throughout the war. Otto knew you were waiting for him, so he rushed to come back. But even his speed could not make him outrun fate.

Your mother had come back and had taken you - begrudgingly - out of her oldest child's arms. You watched them board the train and watched the adults' reactions. Each had a different expression.

The older woman who was with General Snow, who you would eventually call Grandma'am along with her grandchildren, looked proud; she looked overconfident and a bit arrogant. Fiora was on the brink of biting her finger off as she bit nervously at her nails.

And your mother. Her eyes were scanning the train, but they saw two worlds. One where the three men would come back, unscathed and victorious. The other was grim and the unfortunate reality of only the news of their death coming back.

You remember as you scanned the faces, all which were focused on the now-departing train, one was staring back at you. Even all those years ago, Coriolanus was always a face of comfort and reliability. Across the platform, you two bore into the soul of the other, trying to make sense of any of the chaos around them. Your family began walking towards the west exit while his the east.

The distance grew and grew, but so did the intensity of your connected gaze. Neither seemed to want to let go. As if you both knew this would be your last look for three years. The last look as unscathed children.

But those children grew up. And you were back on a train platform with those ever-searching blue eyes. Though, no longer did he search for sense or his father, but now for his ticket out of poverty. A ticket in the form of a fascinating brunette.

He walked towards the now-opening doors of the cattle train. The smell was foul, but you followed him. Some tributes got out, either by their own or forced out. A bat also flew out which you noted. The tributes looked at the Capitol duo with a range from curiosity to murderous intentions. You went down the near entirety of the vehicle the two from District Twelve appeared. Jessup got down first and helped Lucy Gray down by her waist.

You and Coryo sucked in a collective breath. Any last-minute nerves had to silence themselves because it was far too late now to back out.

Jessup immediately noticed you both and sent a glare. He stepped closer to Lucy Gray in protection while she was busy taking in her surroundings. The movement of Jessup and his noticeable stare past her made the girl turn.

She was quite beautiful; the screens didn't do her justice. She had coffee brown eyes, matching colored hair, and clear, tanned skin. But it was her expression that added to her beauty. She was clearly suspicious, to which no one could blame her, but as she raked over both you and Coriolanus's forms, she had a slight grin of curiosity.

It was quite a contrast to her fellow tribute, Jessup. His eyes were sharp, and he was clearly displeased at your presence.

But you cleared your throat anyway, although Coryo beat you to speaking.

"Welcome to the Capitol."

He held out the rose for the girl, who took a long good look at it before taking it.

"We are your mentors. It's nice to meet you both."

You said sweetly and had a small smile to which the girl returned but fell flat on Jessup. You put your hand out to Jessup, but not surprisingly, he left you hanging. You gulped down your embarrassment and bit your lip, signs of uncomfort ot unnoticed by Coryo. Lucy Gray looked you both up and down as she sized you up.

"When I was little, my mama used to bathe me in buttermilk and rose petals."

She took a petal off and stuck it right in her mouth. She gave it a good taste followed by a smile.

"Tastes like bedtime."

You turned to Coriolanus, who was still wide-eyed at his tribute's actions. You didn't know exactly what to expect when you came here, but it surely wasn't this.

"So what do our mentors do?"

It seemed like Lucy Gray was going to do all the talking as her friend stayed stone-faced besides her.

"We do our best to take care of you. Lucy Gray, Coriolanus is your mentor while Jessup, you are stuck with me."

Lucy Gray nodded along and examined her mentor once again. Jessup examined you as well but not in the pondering way his companion was. Rather, he looked like he was thinking venomous thoughts of you and as if your being was yet another punishment he had to endure.

Any further conversation was interrupted by several peacekeepers motioning for the two from twelve to get moving. Lucy Gray looked over her shoulder and wished you both luck on that front while she was being pushed towards a small vehicle along with the rest of the tributes.

Coriolanus already began asking the silent peacekeepers if we can escort them, but none were willing to answer. You followed him aimlessly, ready to start your exit and walk to the Academy. You both still had classes today, even though they were modified to center around your mentorship. But Snow wasn't willing to give up.

When a tall and lanky boy tried to make a run for it and distracted the peacekeepers, a certain look overtook Coriolanus. Everything seemed to be blocked out, just him and the door to the truck. You had a feeling what he was going to do and cursed him once you saw his legs start pumping.

I hate you so much, you idiot Coriolanus Snow.

Your chant of dislike was all you could think of as only a split second after him, you followed him into the abyss of the vehicle that held twenty-three (Wovey yet a year away) teenagers who wanted you both dead. A desire they might just get once the doors shut, trapping you in.

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As soon as Coriolanus landed on the truck, he went directly towards the back. Your legs weren't as tall as his, so it took enough effort from you to get on the truck that you fell onto the floor. That was when Coryo noticed you had joined him. His eyes widened in fright, and he moved to pick you up when another tribute shoved him against the back wall. He let out a painful groan as he tried to charm his way out of the situation.

The tribute holding onto him was even taller and considerably broader than the blonde boy.

"I'll kill you right now."

He snarled at Coriolanus and was backed up by a sick girl.

"He killed a peacekeeper back in eleven."

You learned that the peacekeeper killer was named Reaper, and the ill-looking girl was named Dill.

The threat on Coriolanus's life made you get up in a second and get ready to stop any further action. But as soon as you landed on your feet, your position mimicked Coriolanus's as you were being shoved by Coral, the girl from four. You knew she was Festus's assigned tribute and she seemed like a clear delight with her wicked smile.

"I call dibs on killing her."

Her breath, with the scent of fish still lingering, fanned all over your face. But unlike Coriolanus, your face didn't show any fear or desperation. You held her gaze with a glare of your own. You've fought off a lot more menacing figures than her.

While you had no fear, Coriolanus was taken over with terror.

"Don't you touch her!"

He made a move against Reaper, who shoved him back even harder against the wall. His struggle made the red head girl holding you laugh.

"Aw, how cute. Your boyfriend tryin to help you, princess."

Your hostile glare deepened at that. She had so much confidence in her ability and power over you. And while she was much stronger than you, she was sloppy. She didn't even hold back your hands or disarm your legs. You could easily throw her off if she made a move.

Lucy Gray watched the events unfold and glanced at Jessup who seemed okay with letting their mentors suffer fates similar to their inevitable ones. She didn't like not doing anything to help them. They were supposed to help her and Jessup, right? They would be at a clear disadvantage if something happened to them.

Plus, you and Coriolanus were interesting; nothing like what she imagined Capitol kids to be like.

As the rest of the group agreed on the murder of the academy students, Lucy Gray piped up.

"Y’all got family back home? They’ll kill them if you hurt them. Then you."

She made sure her message was clear. The thought of their families being hurt made them pause, as well as the instant death. In the Hunger Games, they at least had a shot at living. Reaper loosened his grip, and she continued.

"Besides, he’s my mentor. I might need his help."

She nodded her head towards the disgruntled mentor. She didn't mention who you were mentoring because she hoped Jessup would speak up. She knew Jessup didn't necessarily care for you, but he knew you might be some sort of help. The dark-skinned boy didn't get to speak up before Coral, however.

"And you a mender, princess?"

She shoved you again, which made Coriolanus flinch, but Lucy Gray motioned with her eyes for him to stay in place. His involvement would only make things worse.

"Better hope I'm not yours."

She didn't like your answer if her teeth-bearing snarl had anything to say about it. Something about it fueled your fury.

"Do you know why they call it the Hunger Games?"

You beckoned her with a slight smirk that angered the aggressive girl across from you.

"I'll still kill you."

She threatened you as she didn't know where you were going with this. The unknown was a disadvantage to her and fueled her fear.

You asked again, and the sweet-hearted Wovey answered instead.

"Because there is no food."

She answered confidently and in that sweet voice, which felt so wrong in this environment. You didn't want to go ahead with your plan of words, but when Coral turned back from looking at the little girl to you, the fire was back.

You stared straight into the angry eyes of Coral with a menacing smile.

"Oh no, there is plenty of food. I mean, look around. I see twenty-six bodies of food."

You could feel the girl's arms shudder, and you saw the rest of the faces go pale. But you weren't done.

"Hunger stands for the hunger in one's eyes. Once that bell rings, that hunger takes over. Hunger for blood, corpses. For survival and victory. And if you lose focus for just a second-"

You made quick work as you shoved Coral's arms off of you and placed them behind her back. You have now reversed places as she struggled against the wall and beneath your far more forceful and effective hold. Attention was still hooked onto as you finished your lesson.

"You're dead."

Your quick move shocked the entirety of the truck, including Coryo. He knew you could fight back from your younger days by the pestering of Festus, in which you gave him a solid black eye for days. Yet, he didn't know just how good you were, much of it still from your brother's teachings and occasional lessons from Rhayen.

You were ready to let the girl, who still wore her scowl but couldn't hide the fear behind her eyes, go. Although, you bent closely in front of her face to let her know your last message.

"You better thank your lucky stars I'm not in that arena with you. I already won my games."

You hissed out the now positively infuriated teenager. The other tributes ranged from absolute horror of you to confusion on your last statement and how you were so cutthroat. No one expected children of the Capitol to have this in them.

The entirety of the truck's eyes were on you, except Lucy Gray. She looked to Coriolanus to examine his expression. She wanted to know if this was all a front or your sweet nature on the station was. The best way would be to see what the boy, who clearly knew you, thought of the situation. His face was not expressing fear or confusion like the others, but rather a sad look of understanding.

All of the Capitol struggled most definitely during the Dark Days and still with its legacy and effect. But you were one of the few to suffer nearly all the horrors it brought during the war and the only one who still lost after it. The rest of your classmates seemed to move past the traumas, but not you. Maybe it was because of your mother, but it always seemed to play out on repeat behind your still-shining eyes.

Lucy Gray's eyes bounced from Coriolanus's face to yours again. She seemed satisfied and understood. You weren't bluffing. Though, as she looked again at you, she saw your eyes soften. You realized all you had done and said. You had felt threatened, and it had just become instinct to take control of a threatening situation. It hit you that you just became Coral. It was clear she was scared of being here, and her menacing demeanor was a defensive mechanism. And your haunting words were yours.

Lucy Gray took note. Maybe she and Jessup could trust you. But all of a sudden, the truck began shaking harshly and began tipping as the doors opened into the bright light. It shocked you, and due to being closer to the door, you were one of the few to fall. You fell silently but locked eyes with Coriolanus as you did, which was enough for him to let go as well. He was already slipping anyway as Lucy Gray hung onto him, and the truck began tipping.

The mentor was able to land without a scratch and checked on Lucy Gray, who was the same. She looked to her friend, who dusted himself off from where he landed a few meters away from her. Coriolanus watched her make it to Jessup when he began frantically looking for you.

You were more in the middle of the area, which he soon realized was the Capitol zoo. He scoffed at the insult to the districts as he rushed to your side. However, you weren't as lucky as those in the back. You had landed face first into some rocks, which busted a nasty cut above your eye. You had swatted away Coryo's helping hands and slipped off your academy blazer to dab at the blood.

"Huh, look at this. Capitol bleeds."

Your head snapped up to meet the mocking Coral. Coryo looked as if he was going to pounce on her, but you pulled his arm back. He helped you up as you looked past his shoulder.

"What in the world is the weather guy doing here?"

The quite loud presentation voice of the notorious Lucky Flickerman was heard as he tried to get your and Coriolanus's attention.

Lucy Gray and Jessup had moved towards you two while Coral walked off. When Coriolanus heard that he was live for all of the Capitol, he began to panic. His breath became rapid and shallow. You were quick to grab his cheeks to make him look down to you.

"Coryo. Look at me. It's nothing you haven't done before. I'm here with you, okay?"

You waited for his nod to smile back at him, which calmed his nerves considerably. Your tributes watched on, slightly amused. Lucy Gray felt charmed by your clear looks of affection, although it hurt her due to her own recent love troubles. Jessup felt amused that the girl who was just threatening Coral was so taken by a skinny, lanky, and pale boy such as Coriolanus.

You both turned to the other half of your makeshift group.

"Lucy Gray Baird, Jessup Diggs, let us introduce you to our neighbors."

You beckoned them forward, while you opened your hand for Lucy Gray, who took it with an amused tilt of her head. Jessup and Coriolanus shared a look, in which the latter looked at the former's hand and was swiftly met with a clear "no" at the thought of the two mirroring your actions.

When you reached the edge of the cage, you noticed two small children. Coriolanus moved to the other side of Lucy Gray while Jessup moved to you, still a bit back. However, your attention is quickly taken by the questions of Lucky Flickerman.

"Who are you two? What are you doing in the cage here?"

Coriolanus responds and explains the situation to Lucky while you and Lucy Gray focus on the children in front of you.

They seem very taken by Lucy Gray, and she is quite the charmer. She captures the attention of all around with her honey-like voice and witty answers. Soon enough, Lucky focuses on her, eager to learn all about the strange girl. She explains the Covey and the importance of her beautiful dress.

"This dress was my mama’s so it’s extra special to me."

You glanced at her with a shared sympathy as she informed the ignorant host of her mother's passing. She felt your stare shift and turned to you as you gave her the slightest of nods. You didn't know if she understood its meaning, but her knowing eyes crinkled with a smile that let you know your message was well received.

Lucy Gray had a good feeling she could trust you. Maybe if she somehow won, you two could be good friends. She was a charmer and well-liked in twelve, but she didn't really have friends besides the Covey; who were more family than friends.

"Do you know the wonderful mentors for me and Jessup? Seems we got the cream of the cake 'cause no one else even bothered to show up."

You took a gulp and forced a smile as the camera visibly moved to focus on you.

"Well, we've met Coriolanus Snow, yes?"

Flickerman paused to ensure he got the blonde's name right and was met with a nod.

"And who are you, young lady? And did you get that nasty cut from the other tributes when you jumped in the cage? Were you told to jump in?"

His questions flew a million miles a minute, but you responded with grace.

"Hello there. My name is Y/N Vaun and oh no, I fear I am quite clumsy."

You covered up the fact that you might have had your neck slit if not for Lucy Gray.

"And the game makers didn't tell us that we couldn't. They just said that it was a mentor’s job to introduce our tributes to the citizens of Panem. And we thought, well, if they were brave enough to be here, then why shouldn’t we be, too?"

You looked up to Coriolanus to assure your answer was sufficient enough, to which he agreed. Lucy Gray did have one adjustment though.

"For the record, I didn’t have a choice."

Which you couldn't help but tilt your head to the side in agreement to her statement while Flickerman opened up again.

"For the record, I think you both are about to be whisked away."

Suddenly, two strong peacekeepers began dragging you away with Coriolanus. You fought them off to freely walk on your own as you noticed Lucy Gray stop him and whisper urgently, to which he agreed.

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The walk to the academy wasn't too far, but your pace was set quite fast. You and Coryo were already going to attract a lot of attention; missing class for an assumed press event with the tributes was a big no. Your dash to the prestigious institution was a silent conversation between you and Coryo. There didn't feel like much to say as you both were too far in your heads.

Coriolanus turned to you slightly as the question that's been burning in his mind came out.

"Why did you jump in the truck with me?"

You didn't even hesitate as you answered him, still looking forward.

"Are you seriously asking me that, Coryo?"

When you were met with nothing but silence, you turned to him.

"You jump, I jump. You throw yourself in a cage filled with people who want to gut you? Expect to have a friend with you. Maybe it will make you think before you do something stupid next time."

Your answer and vow of companionship caused a satisfied smile to overtake the handsome boy's features. It stayed there for some time before your now dark voice piped up.

"Do you remember the station?"

Your sudden question broke the prior silence. The fair-skinned teen looked at you in question.

"The station we were just at?"

He felt as if he missed something. The thought of being out of the loop unnerved him. You motioned that the recent setting wasn't the point of your question as you elaborated.

"No, I meant right back when the rebellion started. That day when they shipped off."

The heir of Snow's face scrunched up as he thought of the memory; one of his first clear ones. Young Coryo was so confused with all happening around him. Crassus rarely acknowledged the five-year-old's confusion while grandma'am kept on repeating curses about the rebelling districts. Though, as always, Tigris tried to calm down and help her little cousin. She wasn't that much older but she was old enough to understand; her uncle, the sole provider of their family, was to be off across the country. It worried her beyond what her youthful face would show. A face constantly lit up with the warm smiles her young cousin elicited.

But there were moments, although few, where Tigris's attention was elsewhere besides Coryo. One of them being on that now demolished train station, where she watched Crassus Snow depart from the Capital and eventually, their lives. It was in that moment where Coriolanus didn't look to his cousin for comfort but rather the girl with curious and wandering eyes. He had seen you before, but that was the day you truly entered his life. The young man laughed sweetly at the memory.

"You refused to look away even as we were being pulled away."

"Hey, you didn't look away either!"

You retorted back to the reminiscing adolescent. His eyes were still glued forward as you neared your destination. Out of his peripheral vision, however, he noticed a solemn demeanor took you over.

"Funny how different my only two train experiences are."

You laughed without humor, a grim noise.

"The first time, I had the privilege of ignorance. Hands were clean. And the people. Nearly every person I loved in one place. Fast forward today. I'm all too aware of the blood dripping from my hands, and I keep on making it gush."

You paused to take a bitter breath while refocusing your eyes straight ahead. You both were nearly to the entrance of the academy campus.

"Not a single one of them made it out alive. The only one was you."

The boy in mention furrowed his brows at your statement. It didn't strike him until now that you were right. Every member of your family on the platform that fateful day is six feet under. And by the way you spoke, so was little five-year-old you. The thought of your absent family made him reflect. His life wasn't easy in the slightest, but he did have his loved ones, no matter how little the number was. Sure, his grandma'am was a bit eccentric and not whole in the head, but she was a reminder of the glory indebted to the Snows. She was, most of the time, a sweet grandmother and a constant pillar of support.

And of course, Tigris. His life was mostly filled with darkness, metaphorically and literally with the high cost of electricity. But Tigris was always a light shining bright. Guiding him when he was lost in the slightest bit. He left that station with nearly the same family he has today, excluding his cold father. And even though his absence was a painful reminder of their living situation, Tigris often reminded Coryo that was given a chance to be a better person without his father's controlling and cold nature. A chance she tried to make possible at every possible moment.

But you didn't have a single member of your beloved family anymore. It was true your father was alive, but Coriolanus knows he has all but officially stepped out of your life. A move that made the young man resent and hold a place of disrespect in regards to your father. Your feet had carried you through the vast academy doors and down the hallways leading to the class you should have been in half an hour ago.

It was when you were mere feet from the door when a realization hit him. You said everyone you loved was on that platform and he was the only one to live. wait. did you just- does that mean-

"Your little excursion was in violation of about five different Academy rules, Mr. Snow and Miss Vaun. Chief amongst them, endangering a Capitol student."

You had entered the domed classroom, and Coriolanus couldn't further question your prior statements. You had ascended up the stairs with Coryo following close behind. You turned to question Dean Highbottom, who didn't even look up at your presence.

"Neither of us forced the other to go. We went on our own accord."

You responded back to the dean still focused on his papers.

"I don't care how or why it happened. You both put yourselves in danger regardless. I’m moving for the Gamemakers to disqualify you as mentors immediately."

You scoffed at his actions in disgust. He really jumped at any chance to make Coriolanus suffer. Highbottom has now become a plague you now have to deal with as well. Young Snow didn't appreciate his operation against him and you as he questioned his validity.

"You said we had to get our tributes to perform, not that we had to stay away."

"I’ll add insubordination as well."

Coriolanus opened his mouth to retort back when he was cut off by a chilling voice.

"Snow and Vaun fell down in the cage."

The ever-infamous Volumina Gaul appeared with a devilish smile playing on her bright red lips. She crept closer as she continued.

"Snow fell down in the cage but it landed…"

Her riddle was quickly figured out by the pair who answered at the same time.

"On stage."

The quick and correct reply made her wicked smile grow impossibly more.

"You’re good at Games. Maybe one day, you two will be Gamemakers like me. You are quite the pair."

The decrepit Casca Highbottom turned to watch the interaction and grumbled at the head Gamemaker's implication.

"If the Games continue at all."

"Oh, they’ll continue. With performances like young Mr. Snow and Miss Vaun's in that zoo."

The eccentric woman made her way to the end of your row as she questioned.

"Which one of you had the idea to jump in the cage with the tributes?"

You and Coriolanus knew neither of you had an idea that you would end up there. That doesn't mean the brave (and stupid) idea to jump in the truck came from nowhere.

"Coriolanus was the one."

You were quick to respond that the boy couldn't cut you off to mention your own involvement. That doesn't mean he didn't have his own speed in answering.

"Y/N was the one who fended them off, though. She also was the one who thought of presenting Lucy Gray after gaining her trust."

To say Dr. Gaul’s already peaked interest didn't skyrocket would be an understatement. She remembered her surprise, an emotion that appears very little in the woman's life, at seeing the two academy students in the zoo. Their elegance and charisma in their performance were extraordinary. And to see how fast they are to jump to the other's defense and bolster made the peculiar woman ache for more. She may have found not only one but two promising students.

"Holding her hand, Y/N? Introducing her to people? You make it look as if we’re one and the same as those animals."

The disgust was clear in Clemensia's voice as she spoke. She was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when it came to Sejanus, who lived most of his life in the Capital after all. But straight district? That was a whole different level of abhorrence.

Said district - not district boy had his own opinions to voice.

"Coriolanus and Y/N didn’t show those people anything they didn’t already know. That the tributes are human beings. Just like us."

He paused to let the idea sink in for the snobby children of the Capital. You and Coriolanus were not surprised at his little outburst, but that doesn't mean you were happy with it. You were very far from it. Sick and tired of constantly hearing the saintly nature of those in the districts. But the curly-haired boy continued.

"That’s why nobody wants to watch the Games. It’s because people know deep down that winning a war 10 years ago doesn’t justify starving people’s children, taking away their freedoms, their rights."

You stayed silent as your nostrils flared, and your teeth ground against each other. You weren't sure where all this anger came from, but you assumed part of it was all your memories of the war becoming so clear lately. The constant yapping of Sejanus that they are oh so innocent while you remember otherwise did not help the blood boiling. Your symptoms of rage did not go unnoticed by Dr. Gaul.

"And what do you think, Miss Vaun? Are the inhabitants of the districts human or animal?"

The entirety of the class focused on you as you took a second to compose yourself. You took a deep breath, and instead of looking at the woman who proposed the question, you locked eyes with Dean Highbottom.

"They are obviously humans."

The man's eyes seemed to have an odd look of relief at your response, but you weren't finished. Your eyes didn't blink nor flinch as you bore into the older man's eyes. "

Animals are incapable of reaching a man's level of sinister."

The recipient of your gaze flinched at your tone and words. It felt as if you stabbed a blade straight into his already shattered conscience. However, your answer sparked new levels of interest within Dr. Gaul. You seem to be more of a promise than you initially let on. Sejanus was far from impressed by your answer. You never spoke out against the districts before; what caused you to now?

"Some of those kids were two years old when the war ended. The oldest of them were only eight! They didn’t have enough to become sinister."

His tone implied the thought that your description of the districts' "humanity" was ridiculous. The people outside of the Capital were good. Far better than those within it, clearly. But Sejanus's blind opinion of them brought you to new levels of anger. You scoffed out a breath of pure disbelief as you turned to stare straight into the brown eyes of the boy.

"Too young? Eight is quite old enough to do sinister things. Look around, Sejanus. You think any of us, who, by the way, were those eight years old, survived by playing with our dolls?"

You paused, trying to compose yourself, while all pairs of eyes were on you. Well, all except Sejanus. You two have never had a quarrel. If there was anyone who the rest were certain would back up Sejanus, it would be you. But here you were, spitting words of venom and unfortunate truth.

"Death doesn't discriminate by age. War doesn't discriminate by age. Each and every one of us here had to become soldiers and survivors by age five." You paused, "Does that sound like humanity? Like the pure good you preach about the districts? They are just like us. Whether or not you want to see it. You claim us evil and we might be. But tell me who do you think caused us to be so harsh? If we were able to kill at six years old, I am quite sure those sixteen-year-olds wouldn't bat an eye. If you don't believe me, let me ask Otto."

The mention of your brother caused the already dead silent classroom to stiffen. Even Highbottom, who disliked yet another reminder of Cloria Vaun (or Emberidge, depends on what memories), had to throw back another shot of morphling. Sejanus was already uncomfortable with your sudden shift in demeanor and your public argument. His discomfort increased when you began using the words "we" and "us," but the mention of Octavius Vaun made him freeze. You rarely mentioned him and if you ever did, you couldn't bring yourself to say his name. You never gave the full details of his death, but you told him enough to know it was a subject never to be brought up. Now that you did, he, along with the rest of your class, knew you weren't going to be able to be controlled.

And you weren't. You didn't let up your hold on attention for a good while as you kept going.

"Hmm? Or how about we ask all of our classmates that should be here? All those people who should be our friends, lovers, siblings? What about those infants who died before they could take a breath because their mothers died of starvation? Let's go ask their corpses, huh! Oh wait, right. Just go around and ask the Capitol population. We didn't have a body clean-up system back in the war. What do you think we did with the bodies?"

The slow realization and remembrance of whispers of the war crept back to Sejanus's mind. Your voice was steady as you continued.

"We had to get whatever nutrition we could, no matter where it came from."

Clemensia had turned deep shades of green at the mention. At the memories.

"Y/N, please stop."

Her wobbly voice and discomfort did the exact opposite of her pleas. You took a look around the classroom to see your peers avoiding eye contact with you and looking one step away from barfing. The sight made you laugh in dark hysteria as you now addressed the room.

"Really?! That's all it took? Ten years? Ten years and you forgot everything! Now that you don't have to throw the last words of your loved ones in a fire to keep warm! These pristine uniforms and marble classrooms enough?! You forget when you had to survive for weeks off of a single rat carcass? When you had to fight deranged old men for a half-empty bag of moldy peaches for your entire family? When your only drink was your own blood? No memories!? No memories of the insanity causing people flinging themselves off of rooftops and others beating the vultures to cut up their corpses!"

Your voice was in a full, rage-fueled yell by the time you finished. You would have continued if a hand on your shoulder didn't signal to stop. You looked up, ready to fight whoever it was, until you realized it was Coryo. You expected him to be embarrassed of you, maybe angry. But he wasn't. His eyes seemed to be glowing with understanding and a shared irritation. After a minute of you calming down, a voice perked all too happily.

"My, my, what a declaration!"

Dr. Gaul was all too eager at your fury. Her blood was on fire with excitement at your sentiments. The question she initially came here to ask you and Coriolanus was finally ready to be asked.

"What are the Hunger Games for?"

The woman looked between you and Coriolanus, eager for an answer to which the latter responded.

"They’re to punish the districts for their uprising, to commemorate the end of the war."

Her smile was gone at the disappointing answer.

“Commemorate the… Dull, dull, dull. Punishment can take myriad forms. Why not drop bombs, cancel food shipments, stage executions? Why Games?"

Her question was not met by either of the two students she wished but rather the clear sympathizer in the form of Sejanus Plinth.

"Shouldn’t we be asking ourselves whether or not they’re right in the first place?"

"You have a problem with my Games?"

Any answer was intercepted by Dean Highbottom who has more than enough of this discussion and development.

"Perhaps the Capitol students are ill-suited to be mentoring tributes. Perhaps the Game’s time has passed."

It was then when you regained your voice.

"It clearly hasn't. The Games, whatever their ultimate purpose, is a reminder. To the districts, most definitely, but also the Capital. It is clear that most here wish to forget and hide away the horrors we've endured. Forget all you wish, but the districts won't. They have to suffer what we did and we have to remember why."

Dr. Gaul was taking in your answer. And it clearly pleased her, whether that be a good or bad thing. That curiosity and thrill continued as Coriolanus added in some suggestions.

"Maybe we should be viewing those tributes as human beings. I mean, you saw those kids in the zoo; they just… they just wanted to get to know Lucy Gray. If we need people to watch, we should be letting them get closer to the tributes before the Games. To make the stakes personal."

As your apparent partner continued, the gears in your mind started turning.

"Who will watch the Games if they care what happens to the tributes?" Arachne questioned. And you were the one to answer.

"Everyone."

When you answered, Coriolanus looked to you with a ghost of a smile on his lips as you understood.

"You wanted them to be spectacles? What's better than letting them share their characters? Their lives, dreams, regrets. Biggest loves and losses. If you want people to watch, they will when they have people to root for and against."

Young Snow was quick to pick up after you.

"And if we bend a few Capitol laws, we could even have them place bets. The winner of the arena may not be the same as the winner of the people."

You jumped back into the conversation with a slightly more chipper tone.

"Give them interviews to learn who they are. Maybe we can even do skill tests. If you use Coriolanus's betting system, it can give even the weakest of tributes more of a chance. People would not only be able to bet on who they like the most but who has more of a chance. Not to mention they would have the power to change those odds."

Dr. Gaul was at all-time levels of elation at the pair. She knows promise when she sees it.

"I’d like you to write up a proposal of these thoughts tonight, Mr. Snow and Miss Vaun. "

You turned to look at said Mr. Snow when a certain raven-haired girl stood up from her seat next to him.

"Wait. You mean you might actually use their ideas?"

Clemensia thought her two high-achieving friends' ideas would just be left floating and not actually implemented in one of the most important events of the country.

"If it’ll help the ratings, why not."

Dr. Gaul’s words made the realization hit you like that cursed cattle train. Your ideas were shared in a slight haze of excitement and lingering fury. If your suggestions really were implemented, you may have just subjected generations of children to death.

Your revelation was clear on your face as Sejanus looked up to who he called his closest friend. He felt slightly betrayed by your outburst, but more so confused. Though, his anger and confusion dissipated a good amount when he saw the horror of realization upon your face.

On the other side of the star pupils, Clemmie slightly shuddered as the outlandish Gamemaker turned her cold gaze upon her. The young woman put on her charming smile as she tried to weasel her way into success.

"Coriolanus and I are class partners, Dr. Gaul. We do all of our assignments together."

You shared eye contact with the girl's partner who seemed to be just as skeptical as you. You turned in Dr. Gaul's direction, which also happened to be Sejanus's. You looked down and saw his face look glossy and hurt. A pain that transferred over to you at the sight. But that would be for a later time. For now, you looked up and informed the Gamemaker that you would be doing your proposals on your own.

The classroom was filled with the manic laughter of the woman. Doubt started filling up your veins at working with the prominent figure. Her bright teeth shone bright as her diabolical smile grew.

"It’ll be an interesting test."

A test of intellect, character, and survival indeed.

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You and Coriolanus sat at a small table on the edge of the cafeteria. You wished to be nowhere near the prying eyes and gossiping mouths of your peers. But apparently, Lucy Gray asked for food, and you couldn't let her or Jessup go hungry. Yet, you were now an active hand in their death.

That ever so active voice in your head kept on screaming against your heart. Your napkin was full of the food that used to reside on your plate, and now you were just waiting for Coryo, who came in a bit later than you. He was fast and smooth in his movements and was barely deterred from his actions when a voice rounded your table.

"You trying to fatten those kids up so you can finally start taking bets? Make sure they look lively enough to make good interviews?"

Sejanus spewed his remarks as he sat down on a chair at the head of the table. You glanced down in shame, but the words didn't bother Coriolanus.

"You think they’ll give those kids a scrap if we don’t give them a reason to do it? How do you think your tribute will have a chance if he can’t eat?"

You looked between the two. Sejanus seemed to concede at that point while Coryo kept on stuffing the napkin. The brown-eyed boy's voice seemed to soften in pain.

"He was my classmate. Back in two."

You sucked in a sharp breath. It was already hard enough for him to be a part of the game, especially being given a tribute from his home district. But his own classmate? If you were Marcus, you wouldn't spare Sejanus a glance or a word. And that was the worst part. Sejanus would try to help in any way he could, but the situation he was in, "the lucky one," wouldn't make it very easy to gain the trust of his former classmate. Coryo stopped his movements to look at the only boy he could call a solid friend.

"It’s not your fault it’s him."

You both knew that it would still sit on his conscience, no matter if he really was to blame or not. His scoff said it all.

"See, I know. I’m so blameless, I’m choking on it. My father bought him for me, you know, at the Reaping, just so he could show me that I could never go back to two."

You couldn't believe it. It was common information to you how much Starbo tried to change his son. That doesn't mean you expected him to go to such lengths.

"Maybe you could use that to your advantage."

Sejanus whipped his head to you as he squinted at you. The girl in front of him wasn't the same angry one in the classroom. No, this was the same one who he called his best friend for years, yet it just confused him even more as to why you would suggest that. You were quick to elaborate when it seemed that neither boy caught on.

"You want the Hunger Games to end, right? You can do something about it. No real change will happen unless it happens in the Capital. You are one of the few who can actually do something and one of the even fewer who wants to."

Sejanus seemed to be contemplating your words when Coriolanus added on.

"The best way to change it is to be subtle. Small little changes and actions cause enough damage over time."

Sejanus looked down at his two friends' laps and looked back up with a smirk starting to form.

"Like napkins of food. Make them strong enough to be remembered. Quite the rebels."

His smirk seemed to be contagious as it spread to Coryo. You had a smile as well that only grew as Coriolanus spoke again.

"Oh yeah. I’m bad news."

His eyes were on you the entire time as a blush crept on you. Your teeth couldn't help but show as the three of you got up and started your walk to the Capital Zoo.

Like your morning walk with Coriolanus, this walk was short but a bit more cheery as your little friend group conversed. You feared Sejanus would hold your prior actions against you, but he understood, as always. Well, that and Coryo's explanation on how you both expanded the odds for the weaker tributes instead of making it worse.

You and Coriolanus were recalling the earlier events of the morning that didn't appear on live television.

"Wait wait, you did what to her?"

You were holding back a laugh as Snow described how you switched up Coral and the overdramatization of it.

"Okay, first of all, I did not knock the life out of her. And she was getting on my nerves. Like if you are gonna threaten someone, at least do it right!"

The two boys shared a look and laughed a bit at you. A laugh that was swiftly met with a glare.

"Wanna see me execute my threat, Plinth?"

He was quickly grabbed by his sleeve by Coryo to ensure his friend's safety. You turned forward with a smug smile at their fear while they walked a good meter away from you. Soon enough, however, your little moment was met a swift end as you reached the zoo.

There were far more visitors than this morning, but many seemed to be a ways away; the tributes being watched from afar. You and Coryo spotted your two tributes on the far left side of the area, laying their backs on a large rock. Marcus was on the other side, so your trio split as Sejanus tried so hard to get him to take the food from his hands. A task that was unsuccessful.

You got closer and saw Lucy Gray smile at Coryo and the food he carried and promised he kept. She noticed the napkin of food in your hands as well, making her smile grow.

The singer walked to the bars while Jessup stood behind, still pensive at your presence.

"Is that for us?"

She took the two napkins out of the Capital students' hands, handing one of them to her friend. He didn't even give the food a glance as he bore into your eyes, displeasure evident.

"I’m not hungry."

You had a polite smile prior, hoping to get off on a better start this time. But his refusal made it slightly deplete. You understood why. You and the rest of the Capital students here, which now included Arachne, must have seemed like a cruel joke life played on him. You were willing to walk away, maybe try to focus on helping Coriolanus with Lucy Gray if Jessup refused you.

But Lucy Gray refused the boy who protected her to go hungry. She pushed the food into his hands like a mother would to her child.

"You think I can’t hear your stomach growling, Jessup Diggs?"

He looked between the food, his friend, and you a good number of times before he surrendered to his growling stomach.

Satisfied, Lucy Gray turned back to Coriolanus and seemed to settle in across from him. You doubted Jessup recreate the friendly posture, but you sat down a bit further down from Coryo. She wasn't much further from Arachne, who seemed to be playing a torturous game with her tribute, Brandy.

Your face contorted in disgust at her actions. The girl was going to already struggle, what is the need to play with her hunger?

"You sure you don't want to play with me first?" You turned your head from the perusing scene to the new voice. In front of you stood Jessup Diggs. He stood there, analyzing you as if you were a puzzle that had no connecting pieces. Your eyes moved down the concrete you sat on as you let out a soft, sad laugh.

"Already bad enough I'm not in there with you. Don't need to rub it in any further."

He squinted his eyes down at you. Every statement that has come out of your mouth has only served to confuse him more. From your very first meeting, the truck, earlier when you were in the cage, and now. Arachne's moves and character were what he expected when he was traveling to the Capital. But you and Coriolanus (and a recent brunette curly-haired boy on the far end of the zoo) were the anomalies. Lucy Gray told him to accept your help as she would her mentors, which was reasonable enough.

But why did it seem like she actually trusted you two? Sure, you jumped in with them, but it seemed for more personal gain than their tribute's benefit.

You looked back up to a questioning Jessup. He didn't understand what you meant that you should be in there with him.

"What's the difference between us? I happened to be born in the right place, I guess."

Your nonchalance intrigued him more than it brought fear. You may be just putting up a facade to make him trust you, but what would be the point? He was gonna die soon enough.

Jessup, much to your surprise, sat across from you as he gobbled down the food. He noticed you looking down and eyed you suspiciously. You just lightly smiled and promised to get him more if he would accept. He turned his head from side to side in thought, which caused the left side of his neck to be exposed. A dark and deep mark appeared against his skin, which caused you to have an instinct to reach out and help.

However, your sudden movement towards his neck caused him to back up rapidly. The action caused Lucy Gray and Coryo to look over in fright. But neither of you looked back as you stared at him apologetically while he eyed you again.

"Sorry, I just noticed and worried me."

You mumbled it quietly, which was oddly enough, reassuring to Jessup. He did see the worry appear in your facial features. The emotion was too deep and genuine to be faked. He slowly got back to his original position.

You kept your hands to your sides as you looked over his wound. Your eyes moved from his neck to his deep brown eyes.

"It looks new. Can I ask what it's from? I may be able to get some medication."

Jessup wondered how much was available to you at just a snap of a finger. Were you the type of person to do that? His assumption of the Capital made him believe so, but your personal actions proved otherwise. Especially your little stunt with Coral.

"Bat bite. Got it when covering for Lucy Gray. Rather me than her."

Your eyes went from warning to a softened glow. He didn't like the feeling of trust building

"I don't want medication though. I want to go out my way."

You couldn't help but smile at his conviction. If he didn't get medication, there was no way he would be able to survive. But that didn't seem to bother him.

"Jessup, if it's from a wild bat, there is a likely chance you can get rabies. Are you sure? It does wild things to those infected."

The effects of it bothered Jessup slightly. He didn't want to die as a deranged man he couldn't recognize, but he didn't want to give the people who took everything from him the satisfaction of his death. He shook his head in assurance, and you were ready to drop it when a thought sprang through your mind.

"I am willing to drop it, but please, be completely sure if this is what you want. Do you have family back home who need you?"

The mention of his family made him clench his teeth, and you were sure you messed up. You were quick to apologize, but that didn't erase the pounding thoughts of the boy's family.

"The only thing they need me for is to clean their gravestones."

Your gaze was sympathetic, but you turned it away. You knew what it felt to be looked at like a kicked puppy after people learned of your mother's passing. You were sure a man like Jessup wouldn't be very fond of pity.

"He looked a lot like you."

Your head went through whiplash due to the speed you turned to the boy. Your eyes were now the analyzing and questioning ones. You motioned for him to continue; to make sense of his statement.

"The boy who killed my family. He couldn't be any older than me, sixteenish. He had your eyes."

Your breath seemed to speed up as it dawned on you what he could be saying. That sweet little Otto was capable of murdering an entire family. Then again, what would he think of your actions in the war? Jessup took in your reaction as he cautiously continued.

"Don't think he don'it before. Kept looking back and forth between my pops and brother. Like he was begging them to change back time."

You were no longer looking at the talking boy, but it was clear you were hanging onto every word. Your eyes fluttered around as you tried to make sense of the new knowledge.

"He had reason if that makes you feel better. They were rebels and took out a good number of Capital forces. Just those two on their own."

He didn't hide his proud smile as he didn't even realize it appeared for a few moments. When he did, he was ready to see you storming off, glare knives into him, or plan ways to make him and his fellow tributes suffer. But you were just looking at him, a sad smile on your lips. You couldn't blame his smile. It was his family succeeding in their beliefs, no matter how it pained you. It wasn't as if you were sentenced to a bloodbath as your final moments.

The lack of aggression you presented allowed for Jessup to precede.

"They stood proudly as they were accused of their crimes. He gave them a chance, but they didn't say a peep. The boy with your eyes was shaky as he raised the gun. My momma couldn't hold back and ran into the gunfire. In just three seconds, my entire family erased. Glad they didn't shoot into the floor."

His face shifted from pride to bitterness to a hollowed smile.

"Always check the floorboards of twelve. Never know what you find."

You wanted to pipe up when you heard the disgruntled grunts of Brandy and the mocking laugh of Arachne. It had paused for the majority of your conversation with Jessup because Arachne was busy being interviewed by Lucky Flickerman. Though now she was back, her little game was resumed.

It burned your blood at seeing her cruel game. No one would ever describe Arachne as nice, but she would never stoop this low. Unless they were the district, apparently. You quickly muttered an apology to Jessup as you got up and walked unamusedly to the red-haired girl. Your hand swiftly snatched the glass bottle before it disappearedinto the bar to tease the starving girl again. Arachne looked up to the intruder, and a deep scowl appeared when she saw your face. Behind you, the sun was bright, as if casting a halo down on you. Oh, how fitting for little miss perfect, the sour girl thought.

You turned to Brandy and gave her a warm smile as you gently laid the bottle down next to her. Her eyes narrowed at your act and were glazed over in dehydration. The girl's hands were lightning as they snatched the drink and gulped it down as fast as was possible.

You left the tribute to her drink as you were met with the nasty stare of Arachne Crane.

"Feel proud of yourself for making her suffer even more? I mean, come on, Arachne!"

You huffed at her, irritated at her childlike behavior. Your back was turned as you began walking back to your own tribute when her voice sneered.

"Wonder what dear old Otto would think of you taking care of the same animals that chopped him up into tiny little—"

At the sound of your brother's name, you had turned back, and as she continued, so did your strides. But it was the sound of glass shattering that made you jump into action.

Physically jump as you pushed Arachne out of the way of the oncoming bottle. Brandy had a clear shot to the front of her mentor's throat but due to your speed and slightly turned position, it didn't hit her target. Instead, the broken bottle jammed itself within the side of your neck as your knees buckled on impact. You felt around the area as hot sticky blood poured all over your fingers.

Your hearing began getting muffled, but the gunshots were piercingly loud, as was the sound of your attacker's body hitting the ground. You saw red around you, unsure if it was one of your fellow students or even more blood.

Black dots began spotting your vision as you fought to keep them open upon the orders of someone. You weren't sure who, but whoever the saving angel was, they were doing everything to keep you conscious. No screams came out of your mouth, but warm salty streams across your cheeks, mixing in with the now pooling blood.

The lack of audible panic made your internal one settle slightly. Your mother surely screamed herself on the path of death as did your aunt Fiora. But then again, maybe your brother died without a squeak.

Your eyelids felt as if they were being welded shut against all your will power. You turned your head to the left, which was the side that hadn't been stabbed. The last thing you witnessed before you lost all reality was a head of pretty white hair with matching gorgeous blue orbs. His mouth kept on moving and forming words, but no sound pierced your ears.

You felt his hands around you, cradling your gushing neck. His hands looked as if permanently stained with red dye as he moved them around frantically. In such movements, his hands happened to fling your now apparent rings in front of your view. The two golden ones on the outside seemed mostly clear if the blood overtook her. That accursed silver of a thousand snowflakes glistened under the sunlight. As much as a ring being drowned in blood could.

Your eyes flickered from the bloody snowflakes up to the eyes of a bloodless Coriolanus Snow. A Coriolanus Snow who begged you to open up your eyes. Who attempted to will it into existence before he was pulled off by peacekeepers. Your body was hastily put on a stretcher and sent straight to the Capital hospital.

Not a single blink occurred from the blue frozen eyes of the Snow heir. How is it that it was only this morning when you were on the other side of the cage? Safer on that side.

Snow was on the verge of a breakdown. One of anger and of fear. He was only mere feet away. Only a few feet away and you still might lose your life because he wasn't careful. A promise was sworn internally within that calculated boy that day.

Never again will you be choking on your blood while he stood aside with nothing happening. You were not going to suffer the same bloody fate as your mother. You would not suffer. He swore the vow repeatedly as he rushed through the streets to meet your unconscious body. The world can take his money, parents, even the Plinth Prize. He would refuse to give it anymore.

He would not give up on you.

He would not give you up.

A/N: so sorry for it being so long! Not very carefully read I'm so sleepy I'm seeing things help. Pls lmk your thoughts. Much love !!

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@notyourwildestdream 🌹@darktrashsoulbear🌹@fantasylovestoryme 🌹@nekee-lilac02 🌹@a-avengerparker 🌹 @queenofshinigamis 🌹@darlingisntit 🌹

[theconstantsidekick]

no because, supernatural is absolutely a train wreck. it's a colossal accident that is happening in front of you that you can't look away from. it is homophobic and non-sensical and downright laughable at times but you know what? I love it. I absolute love it.

season 1 was absolutely beautiful. you don't understand, really, you don't. they had a piss poor budget, you can see that in every frame. but does that stop it from being fucking beautiful? no. it is stylised and ambitious and a fucking visual treat.

and this is like the first fucking episode. the shots have so much character! and that's nothing to say of the characters themselves. from the first fucking scene you can clearly distinguish sam and dean's character clear as day. their motivations, their dreams, their hopes, all of it. it's established so well. their dynamic is unmatched. does it also have a lot of garbage? yes for sure. because what in the name of hell was that episode with bugs? what glue were they sniffing when they green lit that one? no seriously... I wanna try some.

but then they recovered, cause they did faith. my god, what an episode. WHAT AN EPISODE. that motherfucking reaper haunts my every waking hour

like yeah, I love me some baby dean and baby sam going on their small scale ghost hunts while learning deep lessons about who they are as people and what they want from life.

also that 'laugh I nearly died' needle drop? where sam sees jess? god tier editing, GOD TIER.

then they came back with season 2. and here is my most controversial opinion that should not be controversial at all, season 2 is the best season of supernatural to ever supernatural.

what is and what should never be, hollywood babylon, heart, nightshifter, and the whole fucking season actually. not a single miss in my humble opinion. and that finale? THAT FINALE. beautiful, magnificent. ground breaking character writing, everything comes full circle while simultaneously opening up new plot lines to explore.

and my god, yellow eyes is an epic villain. he is a very viciously written villain like, he's... my god. it ain't a walk in the park writing villains, believe you me patient readers, villains are harder to write than the protagonists, always. well, at least the compelling ones are.

now season 3 suffered because of the writer's strike, but didn't miss much either. like yeah some of the hits don't hit as hard as the season 2, but hey, mystery spot, time is on my side, ghostfacers, bedtime stories are nothing to laugh about. those episodes are fucking solid, like most of the season. and there is so much raw emotion is sam's need to save dean, it just makes my weak winchester brothers loving heart throb a little too hard. also...

need I say more?

does the show did look little more washed out and boring? yes. but it's cool, cause we're moving on to season 4.

listen, I kinda just wanna leave all my season's critique at this. i mean, yeah this. this is it. this is the long and short of it; castiel. i don't think i need to get anymore into it

so season 5 is just—

i'm kidding. obviously i'm gonna talk about season 4, at length.

listen, being able to introduce angels this late in the game and then have them be a such perfectly hidden players is a masterstroke of genius. it just is. i am a writer guys... apart from the relentless fanfic as well lol. and when i tell you, introducing a new big player which is also (not so) secretly the next big bad and playing it off as smoothly as they did in season 4, is beyond hard. but the biggest home run these fuckers hit is castiel and the best part is they weren't aiming for a one lol. and oh oh, the way they use their very VERY limited budget to show wings with just flashing the fucking light? CINEMA! that's fucking cinema right there man. i work on film sets, i am telling you, this is the smartest filmmaking choice they make on the entire show. it adds so much visual intrigue while being so awfully easy to execute. BRILLIANt.

now i cannot talk about supernatural without talking about the deancas romance of it all, which i understand not everyone can see or wants to, which is fine. to each their own. you consume art the way you want to, i don't care much as long as you can acknowledge that castiel and dean's friendship was just some of the best written television that mankind has ever seen. is that too grand a statement? yes. does that make it any less true? no.

they even brought back the moody lighting.

and then there's the episodes this season, most of which are home runs in their own regard. just like beautiful writing, the character development for cas, for dean, for sam, even the late john winchester is wild. anna is a wonderful addition, so is uriel, and alastair? they don't make villains like him anymore, they just fucking don't. AND THAT GODDAMN PLOT TWIST AT THE END? man! the finale was just... too good. Chuck's introduction is absolutely wonderful, even if they ruin him by the end but that happens a decade later so wtv, who cares? But,,,, Jimmy. Fucking. Novak. That's all. that's the tweet. yeah. i'm gonna end the season 4 fan fair with jimmy.

moving to season 5.

subjectively speaking, this is my fucking favorite. this season is a writer's dream while also being their goddamn nightmare. so many WONDERFUL characters to play with and such a grand plot but you get to see it all on a very small, consumable scale which is just... it's too smart for me to not mention. i won't start naming the plot points and neither will i name my favourite episodes because what even is the point? all of it was fucking perfect. you don't understand how hard it is to develop characters to such an extent that they become so familiar to the audience that they know their next move before you even put it on the screen. and supernatural had that. they tied everything together with so much care and consideration, just... AAAH so good.

a special shoutout goes to endverse!cas, crowley and death this season. you all know it in your bones that those three were just the absolute scene stealers. especially death's introduction... immaculate.

they did lose a few points for not being as aesthetically pleasing as the past few seasons but hey, gabriel was enough to make a smooth recovery.

but this... this is the end of the road for me people. season 5 is where it should have ended. in no way shape or form am i saying that there aren't a few good episodes here and there after this, because there are. i think season 5 was so fucking solid, tied up so many goddamn lose ends and then just put a cute little hell shaped bow on top and i just... yeah. this was and should have been the end of the road. do not get me wrong, i love me some jack kline, charlie bradbury, kevin tran, rowena macleod and eileen lahey but were they worth the bullshit ending i had to sit through? not really.

i absolutely think if there weren't more episodes of supernatural I would never have become a destiel fan, because i started shipping them when dean made cas a mixtape in season TWELVE! but my god, the good times were so scattered amongst the horseshit that even when i found those hidden gems, they were so fucking drenched in the stink that they lost their value.

the worst of it all is that, i cannot explain to you what supernatural means to me in a million words, because it is a part of me, heart and soul. i fucking AM castiel. i am a gay little angel you hear me? i love this show. i do. i'm glad it went on for however long it did but i feel like once in a while i need to write shit like this or read shit like this to remind myself of the show that it used to be. of it's beautiful cinematography, of it's clever little storytelling techniques. of it's wonderful cast. of how epic their song choices used to be.

FUcking RENEGADE? iconic. wanted, dead or alive? cannot hear the song without hearing sam's off tune goat bleating that he called singing along.

i need to remind myself of how afraid i used to be of lucifer. of how much i cried while watching dark side of the moon; when dean and sam burst the crackers, and how i learnt the lyrics to knocking on heaven's door just because of that scene.

sometimes i just have to walk through memory lane and look back at gabriel's death, the good one, the only one. it was so fucking meaningful. i have to think of "we are making it up as we go" to be able to breathe properly because those moments were so fucking beautiful.

fuck the big ones, i even remind myself of the small ones, of dean's handwriting being in all caps, just like him. of sam's fucking huge laptop with that weird blue black sticker in the middle. of castiel's tie, that just was the right shade of blue, and hung all wrong but just naturally enough to add so much more to his character than any fucking dialogue could. every small little detail of supernatural that made it so damn supernatural. i miss it all.

idk. i'm rambling. whatever.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 16 thoughts

damn. this was another episode i had to stretch out over TWO DAYS because a storm RUDELY interrupted me, but to say i was at the edge of my seat was an understatement. i was entirely invested. every beat was excellent. and most of my notes were asking the question: what is going on? so join me as i walk you through every single time i was confused (but in a good way)

so i read the synopsis and saw there was a mulder's sister mention........ interesting....

it opens with mulder monologuing about his quest in life to find the truth, and i'm into it, and then we see a helicopter... but it's HIM in the helicopter being medevaced?? so this monologue must be taking place at a later date? or is a sort of cosmic narration of his coma thoughts??

he is beat to hell and back and they are putting him in a TUB

scully bursts onto the scene and they try to be like "who are you" and she is NOT playing around, she's all "there's no time for this, a man is dying" queen.......

so he's still going on- either cosmically or in a sort of post-event narration- about "what happened on the ice" justifying his every belief. and also that he thinks that aliens are HERE and they are COLONIZING? which i feel is a bit of a jump. like aliens being a thing, okay, possible. colonizing earth? i mean, also possible, but like... don't they have better things to do?

they have him in the tub to prevent hypothermia but scully is yelling that THE COLD IS KEEPING HIM ALIVE and i'm wondering if she knows that because 1. it's obvious medical knowledge and she is simply out-doctoring these other doctors or 2. they're doing what you would normally do for a patient in these circumstances, but she knows there has been some sort of alien fuckery that needs to be addressed in a different manner

then, right as we hear that HIS HEART STOPPED, we get the little spooky song and the intro. my notes consisted of: HUH?? WHAT IS GOING ON??????

okay. jump back in time. two weeks earlier. yeah let's figure out what led up to this.

(i do get hooked when we jump right into the heart of the matter though. as a plot device i will be Sat for this convention sorry)

but my notes were still lingering on what i had just seen. first, that his face was broken as hell, and that makeup must have been unpleasant, and i can't imagine that being filmed being placed in a tub was much fun either

BUT, on the other hand, i think it's good that we're evening out the scales of each character almost dying. while he did get kidnapped in the s1 finale and almost die in the s2 premiere, scully's coma arc was a lot more dramatic, so it is good that it was his turn. we need to see them worried about each other in equal measure.

okay okay. back to the start of the episode. for real. two weeks before this whole ice bathing event, a ufo sort of thing crashed above a ship in the arctic. and the news is saying that a russian agent was rescued from a ship crash. because you can't just say it was a ufo.

cutscene to a women's health center in scranton. and my first thought was, please do not say we are gonna see some character come in with an alien pregnancy. and thankfully that is not where that went. because s2 is too early for that. work up to it a little bit, you know?

the doctor at the health center is watching the news, and he clearly recognizes the man they are shown being lifted from the crash. and he goes to run out the room.

oh? as soon as he escapes from the room.... he is being BEATEN by the dude he just saw on the tv. OH??? BIG NEEDLES???? foaming with green liquid??? the place is set on fire after that?? we have seen these needles with liquid used on aliens before....

dude, what's going on, i wrote in my notes... the girls are scared

okay, so here's what we have so far: three doctors who perform abortions have had their clinics set on fire, and their obituaries forwarded to mulder

(at this point, we see the credits which i'm used to ignoring, but this one has more names on it.... because DAVID wrote the story with MR. CARTER???? okayyyyy putting that yale degree to WORK!!!!!)

wait. we get visuals on the three newly deceased doctors. and they. all have the same face??? and no records on them at all.

they go to visit a suspect, who had a "have you seen this man" ad in his pocket for a local newspaper, so they go to that city and try to investigate

she thinks it's a setup because they have been given weirdly little information, and he thinks there are more doctors out there with the same face that need rescuing... lowkey agreeing with her but i know how these plot devices play out. so.

she's calling the number they gave her and serving looks on the phone, work, but a tip has been made that the next guy is in syracuse, so they're off on a new york road trip

an fbi agent is sent off to the scene, and we see the next same-faced doctor in syracuse, where he is talking with someone about "sharing the planet"... but. well. here's what my notes had to say:

"NOOOO MORE GOO... THE DOCTOR DISSOLVED AND THE BULLETS AREN'T DOING ANYTHING TO THE KILLER? BUT THE GAS IS KILLING THE AGENT... LIKE WE SAW IN THAT EPISODE WITH THE GUY WHO COULD GO UNDERWATER!!"

so we see the fbi agent is very dead, but then he comes right back on screen, and we are dealing with a shapeshifter!!!!! the dead guy has been placed in the trunk of a car with some funky markings on his face. using the likeness of the dead fbi agent, he tells our duo that there was nothing to see at the address they located. and the killer shapeshifts again, leaving me thinking about how cool being a shapeshifter would be.

cut to skinner cam, who has become something like a strange cousin to me. he is PISSED that mulder went on a side quest without his permission because an agent DIED but mulder is very confused because he talked to the agent and he was very much alive? (but it was actually the shapeshifter, of course) and for once mulder is too stunned to speak

scully is at hooooome checking her compuuuuter and she is wearing a flannel!!!!! yes casual wear let's hear it for comfortably scully!!! make some noise!!!

despite looking very comfortable she is not pleased because someone sent her a disturbing email, and she wants to know if mulder got one, too- it's another of the same faced doctors, and this one is in washington. right in their area!

on his way over to her apartment, we run into.... A NEW CHARACTER???? his name is ambrose chapel, and he is allegedly from the CIA... do we trust him? what was he doing outside her place.

they go into scully's apartment and i'm like, dude, we couldn't have done this in a place that wasn't her apartment? but well. why not welcome a strange man in there?

he's going on about the soviet union and the genetic anomalies from twins being studied and turned into clones, who will be used to sabotage the medical system. and all the clones- who are called gregors- are being systematically eliminated in exchange for the knowledge that created them.

pause. no i actually don't want to analyze the alleged soviet gregors who will somehow poison the medical system. i'm looking at scully's apartment. she must have moved back into DC after being reassigned from the academy. so is this the same apartment as her first one? i can't tell. this gregor stuff is complicated and i'm admiring the art on her walls- it looks like little watercolors or postcards of beach scenes. that's so sweet.

so it turns out that this ambrose chapel is the one that placed the ad they had called earlier, and he says the gregors are trying to reach mulder, and they need to work together to protect them, i guess. weird cross department alliance. i don't buy it.

scully is sitting on her couch looked confused as hell. me too girl i'm just trying to figure out if this is the same apartment from s1. sorry to the gregors.

we next see someone in a room full of green liquid that looks like those big tanks of lemonade at the mall. it appears to be a gregor. i imagine that this is NOT lemonade and is instead sustaining some sort of alien creature....

but now we're back with our agents and ambrose chapel visiting a new gregor in a hotel. when gregor opens the door, he is really scared of ambrose. and there's also another lady in the room with him who is hiding. things were going real rapid fire at this point. my notes were just a series of questions, or statements followed by question marks to express disbelief:

"gregor JUMPS OUT of the window but somehow GETS BACK UP? and now he's running away??? so we get a chase scene. WHO IS THIS AMBROSE FELLOW??? and why is there a lady in the room hiding behind a curtain???"

mulder is going after gregor on foot when he gets HIT BY A CAR????

but he says he's fine and tells scully to keep going. ambrose is stalking this gregor like a cat, and gregor has no choice but to climb something to escape.

but noooo!!! the shapeshifter is back!!! the shapeshifter WAS ambrose?? the gregors must be able to sense who the shapeshifter is.

"ambrose chapel" tells scully that the gregor got away, but she steps in some familiar green goo that indicates things are not looking great for our gregor, and he is likely gone. too soon.

"how are you feeling?", scully asks mulder. "like i should have taken the crosswalk", he says LMAOOOOOO

scully is pointing out the obvious: this ambrose fellow is sus as hell. "what happened to trust no one?" "oh, i changed it to trust everyone, i didn't tell you?" LMAOOOO this man cannot stop running his damn mouth

he's all, i ran a background check on ambrose, and he is totally clear, he's been working at the CIA for 17 years! and she asks so WHY, if he has been working here for 17 years, does he need OUR HELP? and also the gregor was CLEARLY running from him, and not us!

he accuses her of being paranoid which 1. kettle calling pot black and 2. rude as hell??? she is speaking total sense here

OHHHH THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!!! and again she is NOT wrong.

"you'll pursue a case at the expense of everything, to the point of insanity, and expect me to follow you. there has to be somewhere to draw the line" and is she wrong??? she does not get paid enough to deal with all of this, and he's endangering them... and he seems to just assume that she will do anything he asks of her.........

"if the pursuit of this case seems like insanity to you, feel free to step away from it" he says, in a way that is very judgemental and accusatory and not at all understanding of how wild this whole thing sounds. and i'm taken back to his opening monologue, how he was going on about the pursuit of the truth interfering with his relationships... exhibit a!!

she points out that SOMEONE DIED and he deflects by saying "those are the risks you take! you either accept them or you don't"

(now, when signing up for the fbi, i do not actually think "murder by alien" was on the risk of disclaimers signed so.)

((ugh he's pissing me off here. i get it, the bloodhound need to sniff out the truth without regard for anything else, let alone something as simple as safety. but could we maybe LISTEN to our partner???? just once????? GRRRR))

(also they keep calling ambrose chapel by his last name and its making me think of chappell roan, my beloved above all else. this is not very h-o-t t-o g-o of mulder to be ignoring scully's concerns)

despite the high levels of tension and voices being raised, she pulls out her shoe that had stepped in the alien gunk and shows him how it has been burned through. his eyes light up in fascination and he says we need to go get this tested now and also can you prepare an autopsy bay? we can't figure out how the agent in the syracuse situation died. and then HER EYES expand with childlike wonder and everything is momentarily right with the world again.

he comes down to the autopsy- perhaps as a form of apology for his earlier rudeness- and watches while she goes over the stuff. and everything looks normal except his blood was clotted somehow??

"skinner's gonna wanna know why you didn't file your report... what are you gonna say?" "just the truth. i got hit by a car!" LMAOOOO okay honesty king

(it was at this point i lost power and had to spend the rest of the night wondering what the hell was going to happen next until i could finish it the next day.... i truly deserve compensation for this happening twice in one week. what sick and twisted force is out there trying to keep me from running this blog, huh?!?!?)

okay we're back. mulder is going into skinner's office.

he must have came up with a report real fast, because he goes to give it to skinner, and he says he didn't call him to talk about that:

"your father has been trying to reach you. there's been a family emergency"

(proving once again that skinner is serving the same functions as a high school prinicpal)

he calls his dad, and his mom picks up... and he asks why she was at "dad's place".... MULDER CHILD OF DIVORCE CONFIRMED?!?!?

scully stops by his office with an address she found to go on, and he says you go there, and walks out. she asks where he's going and he said "home" and did not elaborate. and said nothing else.

(this pissed me off because RIGHT before scully was kidnapped, he had similarly made an abrupt exit on here and i thought that he would stop doing that and start saying a proper goodbye but no. he has not learned. ALWAYS say goodbye and tell your friends you love them when you leave- it is NOT negotiable!!!!!!)

she drives to the address and it is... very creepy... it's the room full of tanks that aren't lemonade but they look like it!!!!! and ambrose chapel (NOT to be confused with chappell roan!) is pushing the tanks over and stepping on the chunks of stuff that comes out of them... very gross...

scully calls mulder and asks him to please call back because she thinks she is in danger, and someone is following her, sitting outside her apartment, BUT HE IS BUSY!!! WITH FAMILY EMERGENCY!!! which she does not KNOW ABOUT because he DID NOT TELL HER!!!!

he arrives at his dad's place and i am not shocked that man is either from or has spent a significant amount of time in massachusetts, specifically martha's vineyard. like yeah. this isn't shocking to me. it just makes sense.

(although if that were the case, he'd be MUCH more obnoxious about the patriots and the red sox, and before he mentioned going to dodger's stadium and having a shirt from the new york knicks.... so what's the truth?!)

his dad is on the porch and is being kinda weird- do BOTH our agents have a strained relationship with their fathers? and his dad shakes his hand and it's Weird. but he sees his mom is talking to someone inside.

SISTER REVEAL??? it was the girl who was inside the house when the agents and ambrose showed up to find the gregor! AND i think it's the same girl that gave them the map back in binghamton... but i could be wrong?

in the morning he gives his mom a kiss and tucks her into bed. aww.

then he walks outside and it looks like he is either gonna start hyperventilating or crying, but his "sister" is on the porch and he goes over to talk to her- what do you say after 22 years?

she says she was returned around age 8 or 9, and placed with a family, and that she couldn't remember anything until doing some hypnotherapy a few years back, and the memories of her family and all of the horrific testing returned.

(and sorry i'm not buying it. idk it just doesn't seem to add up!!!!!)

but he's hugging her so it's probably best he can't hear me say that. my guess is someone is trying to distract him from the truth.

but, she already knows what is going on... she says a bounty hunter is after her "father" (which confuses mulder because... same dad?) but she corrects herself and says the man who adopted her is one of the gregors- and he is an alien- and they'll be after her soon, i guess for maybe knowing the truth?

at this point in the episode we begin a series of phone calls in which both parties repeatedly miss each other's calls and i was like whyyyyy. whyyyyy.

anyway scully is leaving. she's in a jacket and she's taking the bus and i love her so bad. she says where she is going on the phone but i assumed she was lying because it was in public.

and mulder's "sister" is saying that the hit man can disguise himself as anyone. so he's trying to reach scully, who is back at the site of the lemonade-looking alien tanks.

she pulls a lock picker out of her fanny pack because that is my baby.

and when she goes in all the alien stuff is smashed. she's looking at the alien meat on the floor. and she picks something up and. OH FUCK, i yelled at my screen. i hit pause SO FAST. she was holding a PULSATING ALIEN EMBRYO. but some guy is in the back!!!!!

she tries to get him to stop whatever it is he's doing but he says "you cannot hurt us" and then all of the remaining gregors with the same face are in the room!!!!!!

so she puts them in maximum security but the windows on the cars weren't blacked out and i feel that they should have been. and just as i make note of this we see the shapeshifter hit man... NO!!!

scully ACTUALLY goes to the motel she said she would, and they miss calls 2 MORE TIMES... i will start biting!!!!!

and back where the gregors are being watched, the guards switch, and a new fellow walks in... and i guessed it was the shapeshifter, and yes indeed it was, he busts out his needle that turns the gregors to acid....

there's a knock at scully's door at like 11:30 at night and she goes and gets it and it's mulder!!! where were you, she asks, when her phone starts ringing...

and who is on the other end but... mulder.........

no.... shapeshifter......

TO BE CONTINUED?????

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

this is so unfair because had the power NOT been knocked off i could have seen this episode yesterday and then part 2 tonight. but now i shall be forced to wait until TOMORROW to see what happens. soooooo evil.

i should have known we were gonna get another two-parter when we were halfway through the episode and still no mention was made of any ice. you know, the ice we began with?

anyway. i really really liked this episode. the pacing was great, as much as i complained about their argument i thought it was excellent conflict, we learn more about mulder, but i do not believe that is really his sister. sorry. and if it IS her i'll be forced to issue a formal apology but until then i remain doubtful. has anyone considered doing a blood test. this predates 23 and me.

aughhh i need to know how he ends up an ice cube!!!!!! and i will have to wait until tomorrow. and while i technically COULD watch part 2 tonight i want to have a real good bit of time dedicated to breaking it down

(i saw the episode after the next one is about zoo animals and i was like hell yeah this is what i love about this show. we get some heartbreaking alien infiltration content and then some possessed elephants)

((WAIT. ARE THEY REALLY GONNA GET TO GO TO THE ZOO??? LIKE I'VE ALWAYS DREAMED OF?? but it's a zoo of ANGRY animals so it's not even going to be relaxing??? this is SOOOOO unfair...))

[sideprince]

I wrote a reply to this post but OP has deleted it and even though I should probably leave well enough alone, it got to me that I could have sworn I saw this post months ago and then realized it was actually from yesterday. This is a long reply so I'm putting it under a cut, but after I went to OP's blog and saw a post from them complaining how mean everyone was to them on this post, I replied to say I'm sorry if they got any anon hate I don't know about but otherwise none of the comments on this post were mean or hateful, they just disagreed with OP. I pointed out that this is partly because they cited non-canon events as canon, and OP immediately blocked me (this may be why I can't reblog the post even from another user, though that's not how tumblr usually works so who knows). I can't help but feel that OP's post was made in bad faith, as a result, and I've seen enough people on this hellsite who are more interested in protecting their egos than admit when they could have been approached something more thoughtfully, so I'm diving in. If you're going to say a character "is very interesting to study" while doing the exact opposite, then you'd better have the critical analysis skills and textual evidence to back it up.

I think OP has some misconceptions that are frustratingly common, and seem to stem from people not having read the books, or not read them for a long time, and conflating the movies with canon. While I mostly agree with the replies above, I want to take this opportunity to cite the text to refute some of OP's points. I often forget details from the text, but I choose to either look them up before asserting unconfirmed points as fact (Potter Search is a great tool, or you can just do a ctrl+F search if you have the books digitally), or else I usually state clearly that I'm not sure if I remember something correctly and don't have the spoons to look it up.

I saw OP say in the comments in response to someone arguing their points:

"that's your interpretation, I have mine, I think both can coexist within the material we are given."

It doesn't sit right with me that so many people think that referring to their subjective memory of what the text meant to them is the same as actually citing it and offering an explanation. OP's interpretation can't exist within the material given, because some of it doesn't exist in the material at all, and you can't interpret what isn't there. OP is essentially claiming to have done critical analysis, and although no one is required to always critique a text analytically on a tumblr post, I find it upsetting when people claim to do so while failing to cite a single source to support their argument. To me it sounds like someone trying to pass off a creative writing essay as an academic research paper, and in an age of rampant propaganda and knee-jerk reblogs that eschew critical thinking, I feel an almost compulsive need to go through OP's reply and argue it with the textual evidence they conveniently avoided, if for no other reason than to show why it's important to discern between loosely formed opinions and informed ones.

I also want to explain why I don't accept the films as canon, because while I do think that canon can exist across several mediums (such as with Good Omens, in which at least one of the writers of the text is directly involved in writing the TV series), I don't think that applies to Harry Potter because the original author was only marginally involved in the films, in only a consultant role, and had little input on the writing. The HP films are an interpretation as written from the perspective of Steve Kloves, except for OoTP, which was written by Michael Goldenberg. I've gone into it on other posts, but suffice to say these interpretations did not prioritize story and character development and were often influenced by pressure from the studio to prioritize marketing opportunities over storytelling. Important elements like foreshadowing and themes were not carried over from the text to the screen. These changes affected the storytelling significantly and left out crucial elements. This, combined with the films having been written with little to no involvement from the original author, is why I feel the films can't be taken as canon. This doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed by any means, just that they scenes that appear in the films but not in the text, or are presented differently on screen than in the text, are not a reasonable basis for character analysis.

And now, on to OP's ask:

"I think he is a very good representation of a man who felt insecure in his manhood; his male ego was permanently wounded by James' bullying and he decided to make it everyone else's problem by being the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts."

The first thing we have to establish is that the books are told from Harry's perspective, so we have to take narrative bias into account. Calling Snape "the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts" is a subjective statement and I can only assume it's based in Harry's biased perspective as narrator, given that he and Snape have a bad relationship from the outset. I have a brief analysis here about how Snape dislikes Harry because in their first class together he interprets Harry's ignorance of the course material as a lack of curiosity and appreciation for his gifts as a wizard, while also recognizing something of his own experiences with childhood poverty and abuse in Harry. Harry, being ignorant of these factors, just feels singled out for hate by a strict teacher, and their relationship deteriorates throughout the rest of the series, until the end of the final book.

To pull back from the narrative bias, let's look at some of the other teachers are Hogwarts:

McGonagall:

“Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?”  Hermione hung her head. Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets. “Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’m very disappointed in you. If you’re not hurt at all, you’d better get off to Gryffindor Tower. Students are finishing the feast in their Houses.”

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10.

“I’m disgusted,” said Professor McGonagall. “Four students out of bed in one night! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions — yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it’s very dangerous — and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor.” “Fifty?” Harry gasped — they would lose the lead, the lead he’d won in the last Quidditch match.  “Fifty points each,” said Professor McGonagall, breathing heavily through her long, pointed nose.

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 15

In just the first book we see McGonagall punish Hermione for successfully defending herself against a troll and take house points, then sends her back to her common room without getting medical attention, as if a ten year old can be responsible for assessing how badly they're hurt. A few chapters later McGonagall takes several hundred points from students in her own house (more than we see any other teacher do at one time throughout the series), and assigns the students detention on top of it. As we later see in the same chapter, the detentions aren't even served with her directly, but instead the children - again, ten years old - are sent into the Forbidden Forest at night with only Hagrid to protect them, to hunt down whatever creature is vicious and cunning enough to kill unicorns.

Although it's said that Snape favors the students in his own house, he doesn't seem to be the only one:

“Potter's been sent a broomstick, Professor,” said Malfoy quickly.  “Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry. “Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?”  “A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir,” said Harry, fighting not to laugh at the look of horror on Malfoy’s face. “And it’s really thanks to Malfoy here that I’ve got it,” he added. 

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10

Not only did McGonagall make an exception to school practices and allow Harry on his house Quidditch team despite being a first year, she used either school funds or her own (unclear) to purchase a first-rate broom for him. We know the school has brooms, as first years are not allowed their own and they are provided for flying lessons, and because “Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms” (PS ch. 9). And yet, McGonagall ensures Harry has his own broom, and an expensive one, new enough to be the show model in a shop window in Diagon Alley a few months earlier:

“Several boys of about Harry’s age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. ‘Look,’ Harry heard one of them say, ‘the new Nimbus Two Thousand - fastest ever -”

-Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 5

If we're discussing which teachers are Hogwarts are the most "insufferable" then we also have to talk about Hagrid, who might mean well and be affectionate, but is also irresponsible and dangerous.

In Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid:

Punishes Dudley, a child, for his parents' offenses, the final straw being his father insulting Dumbledore (Ch. 4). While Hagrid acknowledges that he shouldn't have lost his temper, he also admits that his intention had been to turn Dudley fully into a pig.

Hatches a dragon in his cabin (Ch. 14), tries to raise it illegally and against the animal's need of care, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, ten year olds) have to fix the situation and get Ron's brother to find some friends to take the dragon away safely and prevent Hagrid losing his job (Ch. 14). In the process Hagrid endangers himself as well as the children, and it's because of this that McGonagall gives them detention and deducts hundreds of house points. Hagrid not only allows the children to endanger themselves for his sake, but to be punished and subsequently ostracized by their peers also for his sake.

The reason he even has a dragon is, as we find out in Ch. 16, because he was foolish enough to accept it from a faceless stranger in exchange for unwittingly divulging the secret to getting past the three headed dog guarding the Philosopher's Stone (and the stranger later turns out to be Quirrel/Voldemort).

In Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid:

Starts his first lesson with a volatile creature (Ch. 6) and, although Malfoy acted irresponsibly, Hagrid was nevertheless the teacher and responsible for providing course material consistent with the experience level and maturity of his students' age.

Gets drunk and has to be taken care of by Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, children) (Ch. 6)

Skipping ahead to Order of the Phoenix ch. 30, we find out Hagrid

Compromised his return from the mission Dumbledore sent him on by bringing a giant back to England.

Brought said giant into the school grounds and left him in the Forbidden Forest.

Asks Harry and Hermione (still children) to look after him if Hagrid is sacked.

Although Hagrid means well, his actions are consistently thoughtless and irresponsible, requiring those around him - often Harry, Ron, and Hermione - to fix the damage he causes. Although I think it remains subjective which teacher at Hogwarts is the "most insufferable" I think Hagrid is a strong enough candidate to qualify OP's interpretation of Snape holding that title as extremely contestable. Of course, since the books are presented through the lens of Harry's narrative bias, and he's fond of Hagrid, respects McGonagall, and dislikes Snape, an uncritical reading could lead one to OP's conclusions. However, a more objective analysis of the text shows that many teachers at Hogwarts are strict, punitive, biased, and wreak havoc on students in ways that make the Snape's actions look fairly tame, or at least the norm. And this is excluding an analysis of various DADA professors like Lockhart and Crouch/Moody, who were insufferable in their own rights (Lockhart was smarmy and dishonest to the point it risked students' lives; Crouch/Moodly transfigured a child into a ferret and humiliated him with torture as a disciplinary measure and deliberately triggered Neville's trauma in class).

OP continues their reply to say:

Add to this that he is a halfblood and only his mother was around, iirc?

They don't recall correctly. Snape, whose father was a muggle and whose mother was a witch, was indeed a half-blood (as is evidenced by him being revealed to be the Half-Blood Prince - I assume I don't need to cite a source as this is a pretty well-known fact and the literal title of an entire HP book, but should you need a reference it's in Ch. 28 of HBP). Both his parents were around in his childhood:

Snape staggered - his wand flew upwards, away from Harry - and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner …

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 26

‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘They’re not arguing any more?’ ‘Oh, yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’ ‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’ ‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

We know that Snape's father was around because he's mentioned both in Snape's memories in OoTP that Harry accidentally invades during an Occlumency lesson, and when we see in Snape's memories that he gives Harry as he dies. Lily asks about his home life by referring to both his parents, implying that his dad is a consistent presence at home. We also know from JK Rowling that Snape's father "didn't hold back when it came to the whip" but this is supplementary and not mentioned in canon, so I don't expect anyone to refer to it when analyzing the text, I'm just adding it as bonus material.

Continuing on with OP's reply:

Snape, Voldemort and Harry all act like foils of each other in that sense, but whereas Voldemort fixated on his blood status as the main reason for his insecurities, Snape fixated on Lily.

So much to unpack here. Firstly, all of this should be backed up by examples from the text, as they are subjective readings that have significant bearing on character analysis.

Snape, Harry, and Voldemort don't act like foils of each other. For one thing, a character doesn't act like a foil, a character either is or isn't one. That being said, I don't know OP's background and there could be a language barrier because English isn't everyone's first language, I'm just being pedantic. Even with that in mind, the statement remains incorrect. A foil is a literary device - a character who contrasts with another character, often with the protagonist. It is not a choice a character makes or an action they take.

In Philosopher's Stone Snape is set up as a foil to Harry in order to misdirect the reader from suspecting the real villain, Quirrel/Voldemort. Snape is presented as secretive, sneaky, and nefarious, contrasting Harry's role as a protagonist who is outspoken, honest, and brave. As the series progresses, Snape, along with Voldemort, are eventually shown to have more parallels than contrasts with Harry. Snape and Voldemort were born into muggle poverty, and although Harry was raised in a middle class home by the Dursleys, they thrust poverty and neglect onto him in a way that parallels his childhood of neglect and want with that of Snape and Voldemort. Snape's father was abusive, as was Harry's guardian, Vernon Dursley. Harry, Voldemort, and Snape all had traumatic experiences growing up in muggle environments. If anything, Snape and Voldemort might be foils to Harry in that they both harbored resentment for their muggle fathers in ways that signified the separation between the wizarding and muggle world, while Harry's experiences with the Dursleys didn't color his image of muggles in a comparable way.

The contrast between Harry, Snape, and Voldemort is in the way each of them deals with their trauma. As Dumbledore says:

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

-Chamber of Secrets, Ch. 18

This becomes one of the overarching themes of the HP series, Harry, Snape, and Voldemort are all examples of how their choices took them to such different places in life from their comparable childhoods.

At school Voldemort was a handsome boy with talent, intelligence, and the recommendations of his teachers, but he chose to pursue power instead of success:

“He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you might have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts. Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Special Award for Services to the School. I know that several teachers, Professor Slughorn amongst them, suggested that he join the Ministry of Magic, offered to set up appointments, put him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all offers. The next thing the staff knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin and Burkes.”

Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 20

Snape chose to become a Death Eater for reasons we can only assume. We know he was in Slytherin during an era when Voldemort was in power and many of his allies had children in Slytherin house. At least two of Snape's dorm-mates, Mulciber and Avery, are canonically acknowledged to have become Death Eaters (both are present at the Ministry when Harry and his friends fight the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries in OoTP Ch. 35). It's unclear whether Snape chose to become a Death Eater out of admiration for them or out of peer pressure, or perhaps a lack of other options, while at school:

'… thought we were supposed to be friends?’ Snape was saying. ‘Best friends?’ ‘We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging around with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?’ Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. ‘That was nothing,’ said Snape. ‘It was a laugh, that’s all -‘ ‘It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny -‘ ‘What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?’ demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

It's unclear what Snape thinks of Avery and Mulciber, as his reply to Lily is downplaying but doesn't defend their actions. We see Snape's indecisiveness later in the argument he has with Lily after he calls her a Mudblood:

'It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?’ He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. ‘I can’t pretend any more. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.’ ‘No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

Although Snape does ultimately choose to become a Death Eater, we see in his reply to Lily about both Avery and Mulciber and later her assumption that they all want to become Death Eaters that Snape doesn't argue for or against her accusations, but instead is evasive and unsure of himself. He opens his mouth to speak when she accuses him of wanting to become a Death Eater, but then closes it again without saying anything - he can neither argue against her point, nor state clearly, let alone with any kind of conviction, that this is indeed his ambition. It can be argued that it's the passivity of his choice that lands him with a Dark Mark on his arm, and it's the active choice he makes to risk his life in order to defect from Voldemort's ranks and turn spy that defines his character and without which Harry could not have defeated Voldemort.

Harry, as the protagonist, is also significantly defined by the theme of choice:

'But, sir,’ said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, ‘it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’ve got to try and kill him, or -‘ ‘Got to?’ said Dumbledore. ‘Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!’ Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat. ‘I’d want him finished,’ said Harry quietly. ‘And I’d want to do it.’ ‘Of course you would!’ cried Dumbledore. ‘You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal … in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you … which makes it certain, really, that -' ‘That one of us is going to end up killing the other,’ said Harry. ‘Yes.'

-Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 33

There's a clear point made by the author through Dumbledore as her proxy here, that choice is what matters, not fate. It's Harry's choices that make him the person he is and lead him to eventually defeat Voldemort. While Snape, Voldemort, and Harry all can be contrasted through the lens of their choices, this does not make them foils, as it is the the theme of choice and how it is exemplified by each character that makes them unique, but their experiences and many of their character traits (boldness, bravery, a personal sense of conviction) that make them parallels of one another. Each of them occupies their own place on the spectrum between the light and dark that the series establishes, Voldemort at the dark end, Harry at the light, and Snape in the grey area between them.

OP goes on to say:

His character is all about male entitlement, he was obsessed with her at Hogwarts and then showed to have no boundaries as he went into her house to cradle her dead body in front of her traumatized kid.

There's a lot to unpack here, and it's particularly challenging because you can't provide textual evidence for something that didn't happen in the text. After the above scene from Ch. 33 of DH in which Lily ends her friendship with Snape, we never see them interact again:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’ He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole … The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colours until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone …'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

The scene in the corridor in front of Gryffindor Tower between a fifth year Snape and Lily leads directly into the scene where Snape begs Dumbledore to protect the Potters (which I wrote an analysis of a few months ago but is too long a subject to derail this post for). We see no more interactions between Snape and Lily, and therefore there is no canonical support for the idea that Snape behaved obsessively or failed to respect her boundaries.

There's also no mention of Snape going to Godric's Hollow at all after her death. Snape holding Lily's dead body is only shown in the film version of Deathly Hallows, and as mentioned, the films are not canon. That moment doesn't exist in the text and can't be considered in an analysis of Snape's character. The scene on the hilltop leads directly into the scene of Snape crying in Dumbledore's office:

The hilltop faded, and Harry stood in Dumbledore’s office, and something was making a terrible sound, like a wounded animal. Snape was slumped forwards in a chair and Dumbledore was standing over him, looking grim. After a moment or two, Snape raised his face, and he looked like a man who had lived a hundred years of misery since leaving the wild hilltop. ‘I thought … you were going … to keep her … safe …’ ‘She and James put their faith in the wrong person,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Rather like you, Severus. Weren’t you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?’ Snape’s breathing was shallow.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

This is the only depiction of Snape immediately following the Potters' deaths. The scene of him cradling Lily's dead body was Steve Kloves' invention and has no basis in canon. If anything, Snape's actions in canon can be interpreted to show that he respected the boundaries Lily set, and that even when her life was at risk he chose to go to Dumbledore - who he thought might kill him on sight - rather than talk to her directly after she ended their friendship. In addition, in all the information the text gives about the night Voldemort fell in Godric's Hollow and Hagrid collected Harry to take him to Privet Drive, there's no mention of Snape whatsoever.

There isn't much in the text to support the interpretation that Snape exemplified male entitlement either. So far we've seen him being as strict, if not milder, than other teachers at the school, his favoritism is also comparable to that of other teachers - implying it's more of a norm than an example of entitlement - and there are no canonical examples to support the argument that he was obsessed with Lily or violated her boundaries. Snape struggles to argue with Lily when she accuses and berates him, and the usual markers of patriarchal entitlement - silencing women, gaslighting, dismissing women's opinions, talking over them - are all nowhere to be found in any of their interactions. The only time we see him lash out at Lily is when he calls her Mudblood (OoTP Ch. 28) which, while inexcusable, he does under traumatic duress, and is not indicative of his usual interactions with her, as exemplified by the fact that she ends their friendship over it. As cited before:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’

There's a clear implication that Snape has never called her this before. An argument can also be made that it speaks volumes of Lily's own biases, or perhaps her own affection for Snape (who, not long before this, was still her best friend), that she excused this behavior from him when it was directed at others, and only took issue with it when it was directed at herself. That, combined with Lily's own acknowledgment that they were "best friends" shows that Snape's relationship with her was a balanced, consensual one even when it became strained, up until their friendship ended.

Continuing with OP's points:

He only saw Lily as a trophy to be possessed, which you can see from the way he hated Harry, because Harry reminded him Lily wasn't his and that Lily had sex with another man.

There's no support for this in the text anywhere and is pure conjecture. I can appreciate it being OP's headcanon, but it's certainly not a result of studying the text and relying on it to form opinions, but rather seems to be OP projecting pre-conceived notions onto Snape as a character and trying to find justification for it. I've written a whole post extrapolating Snape's first class with Harry, but the tl;dr is that Snape, who grew up in muggle poverty and knew Aunt Petunia enough to guess that Harry didn't fare well in her care when he showed up at school bearing signs of neglect, likely expected Harry to have the same hunger for learning that he himself did at Harry's age. Instead, Harry couldn't answer a single one of his questions and showed no curiosity or enthusiasm towards being a wizard as far as Snape could tell.

Nevertheless, even though Snape did seem to dislike Harry, hate is an awful strong word given that it is revealed at the end of Deathly Hallows that Snape has risked his own life to protect him. This isn't particularly surprising when you consider that this goal was established as early as Philosopher's Stone, when Snape protected him, which Harry initially interpreted as Snape trying to kill him:

Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t. ‘But Snape tried to kill me!’ ‘No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a counter-curse, trying to save you.’ ‘Snape was trying to save me?’ ‘Of course,’ said Quirrell coolly. -Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 17

Again, the story is told through the lens of Harry's bias, but that doesn't mean his opinions of Snape reflect Snape's character. As another example, there's an implication in OoTP that Snape, having seen some of the Dursleys' abuse of Harry through his memories during Occlumency lessons, passed this information on in an effort to protect Harry, and that this is the reason why several Order members (Arthur Weasley and Moody in particular) show up at King's Cross at the end of the schoolyear and threaten the Dursleys to stop mistreating him. There seems to be no other explanation in the text for why these adults are suddenly aware of the abuse Harry experiences, except that Snape, who was abused as a child himself, and who is an Order member himself, is the only adult in the series who we see witness Harry's mistreatement firsthand. At no point in the narrative do we see Harry complain about the Dursleys to the adults he trusts or ask them for help, merely to spend his holidays away from them without explanation.

While Snape did indeed dislike Harry and often compared him to his father, his dislike for James had much more significant roots in bullying and trauma than in his concern for Lily's relationship with him. It's established in canon that James Potter and Sirius Black dislike Snape from the outset (as in the scene on the Hogwarts Express in DH Ch. 33). In their fifth year, Sirius - annoyed that Snape is so curious about where Lupin goes each month - tricks Snape into following the tunnel under the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, as Lupin tells Harry:

'Professor Snape was at school with us. ... Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -‘ Black made a derisive noise. ‘It served him right,’ he sneered. ‘Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to … hoping he could get us expelled …' 'Severus was very interested in where I went every month,’ Lupin told Harry, Ron and Hermione. ‘We were in the same year, you know, and we - er - didn’t like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch pitch … anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he’d be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he’d got as far as this house, he’d have met a fully grown werewolf - but your father, who’d heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life … Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was …'

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 18

From this we can deduce that Sirius intended for Snape to die, or at least get severely injured, and that even as a grown adult Sirius doesn't regret trying to mete out this punishment to him as retaliation for curiosity. We can also deduce that Lupin was unaware of Sirius' intention and did not consent to be used as a weapon. For his part, Snape never did reveal that Lupin was a werewolf while at school, or even during that school year, until after Lupin ran amok on Hogwarts grounds, endangering others' lives, including Harry's.

There are other meta posts that go into Lupin's insecurities and vulnerabilities, but in short, he was grateful just to be allowed into the school as a student, let alone to have friends, and was in no position to challenge James and Sirius. Even as a prefect he didn't curb their behavior, as we see when he allows James to bully Snape later that year after their O.W.L.s:

'Leave him alone,’ Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. ‘What’s he done to you?’ ‘Well,’ said James, appearing to deliberate the point, ‘it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean …’ Many of the surrounding students laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included, but Lupin, still apparently intent on his book, didn’t, and nor did Lily. ‘You think you’re funny,’ she said coldly. ‘But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.’ ‘I will if you go out with me, Evans,’ said James quickly. ‘Go on … go out with me and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.'

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 28

James acknowledges that he has no real reason to bully Snape and uses violence as a bargaining chip to coerce Lily into going out with him (James' behavior reflects much more entitlement than Snape's, in my opinion). He also chokes Snape with a bar of soap and then assaults him by dangling him upside down and removing his trousers (threatening to remove his underwear but we don't see it happen).

Lily herself refers to James as arrogant, and it's this trait, along with the trauma from James' bullying of him, that Snape perceives in Harry. He doesn't resent Harry for looking like his father because it reminds him that Lily had sex with another man, he resents him for it because of all the trauma James inflicted on him. The conflict-laden relationship between Snape and the Marauders is a significant driver of the story through several of the books and OP seems subjective to the point of being problematic in ignoring it completely and instead focusing Snape's dislike of Harry onto an invented idea of sexual jealousy that doesn't exist in the text.

It's never stated whether Snape had romantic feelings for Lily, or vice versa, only that they were friends. The closest we see to a hint of this is when “The intensity of his [Snape's] gaze made her [Lily] blush," or when “The moment she [Lily] had insulted James Potter, his [Snape's] whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step …”

Lily's blush could be interpreted as implying she was attracted to him, or conversely that she didn't and felt awkward thinking he might be attracted to her. Similarly, Snape's relief at her insulting James can be interpreted as indicative of his attraction to her, or of him simply being worried about a friend hanging out with people he perceived as dangerous and was relieved to learn she wasn't putting herself in the way of danger by becoming friends with them. Although JK Rowling has said that her intention was for Snape's affections towards Lily to be romantic, and that she may have returned his affection had he not chosen the path he did, this is - like the note about Snape's father whipping him - extratextual and more of an interesting fact than a bit of canon to be extrapolated from the text.

Finally, OP says:

His interest in the Death Eaters was only secondary to his obsession with Lily and I think Lily rejecting him pushed him toward joining the Death Eaters, because, once again, his male ego was bruised and he needed to replace it with something else.

We've already seen that Snape's interest in joining the Death Eaters was a big part of Lily's reason for ending their friendship. Therefore, logically, Lily's decision didn't push him towards becoming a Death Eater, but rather isolated him from having any support system outside of the DEs. She didn't reject him, because rejection is the refusal or dismissal of another person's advances or proposal. They were friends, meaning they had a mutually consensual platonic relationship. Lily therefore didn't reject Snape, she ended their friendship and, as already stated, nothing in canon implies he didn't respect her boundaries.

As we have also seen in canon, Snape was bullied at school and had, at best, a neglectful and dysfunctional home environment in his childhood. In addition, he shared a dorm with students actively interested in becoming Death Eaters, and his one social lifeline away from them was cut off when he called Lily a Mudblood. What OP interprets as Snape's male ego being bruised is actually a much more complex set of social and emotional factors being described throughout the series to eventually reveal the profile of a character - young Snape - who was a vulnerable youth primed for radicalization by a violent faction of zealots. Although the enforcement and upholding of patriarchal norms is often a huge element of these kinds of social movements, that didn't seem to be the driving force for Snape based on everything we learn about his character. Instead, what we see is a boy who comes from abuse, lives in abuse at school, who loses all the support systems that might give him an alternative to the fascist cult he's being radicalized into which - if it's like most hate groups - would have been more than welcome to both take him in and help him cut his ties to anyone else in his life he might escape from them to.

It also goes against the argument that Snape was sexually obsessed with Lily that he continued to risk his life in order to protect her son an defeat her murderer for almost two decades after her death. He knew it would neither bring her back from the dead nor bring about forgiveness, and it goes without saying that sex was no longer an option. Framing Snape's motivation as obsession dismisses the realities of the complex and meaningful relationship we form as people, and the lasting, transformative influence we can have on each other, which is what Snape and Lily's story illustrates.

Finally, OP concludes with:

He remained mysterious up till the end and his back-and-forth with treason was very compelling to read about. So I hate him (as a "person") but he is such a good character narrative-wise and he is very interesting to study

OP openly admits to hating Snape, ie. having a bias against him, while stating he is "interesting to study" - except no part of their answer has shown that they've actually done so. Their arguments are unsupported in several ways, one being that they don't offer any evidence, and the other being that none can be found in the source text. What's ironic is that OP seems to resent Snape's subjective bias against Harry (and misinterpret his reasons for it in baseless ways) while also showing the exact same kind of bias against Snape themselves. You don't have to like a character by any means, but claiming that the kind of unfounded, superficial, and unsupported opinions that OP stated in their response have a basis in any kind of study of his character is ludicrous and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it.

[kanmom51]

Jungkook interview in Weverse Magazine

20 July 2023

My suggestion is go and read this.

I won't be talking about everything JK says. Just a couple of little honorary mentions from me.

Before I start, I do have to say that this man is absolutely gorgeous.

It's going to be a very sad day for the y/n fans when they finally realize that JK and JM are off the market and with no other than each other.

This here.

The pressure on his shoulders, trying to reach one of his end goals.

"...and then I can be more open about the real me."

You might think I'm being over melodramatic here, but I can't help it. I'm sitting here reading and re-reading that sentence and tears are just running down my face.

JK has always talked about hiding his true self behind a mask. He's been wanting to show us more of himself, his real self, his true self, trying to do that over the years.

That's why TTU hits so hard at times, especially their last Seoul performances of the song.

That's also why my heart broke when he told us in the Japanese interview for Film out, that he has come to realize that he will always need to wear that mask, that he might never be able to show his real self.

And now, again, he's trying to take steps to be able to show us who he really is.

We have said for ages now that JK wants out of the closet. It's that but it's also more than just his queerness. His queerness is part of who he is as a person, part of his identity, but that is not the only part of himself he is hiding from us, and his need to be out of the closet coincides with his need to stop masking himself (an interesting term that I am not using in vain here).

Next point I wanted to bring attention to:

That there folks. I literally just mentioned this in my last post. JK is the artist, he does the art. He has others, professionals in their own fields, that do the business side of things, which includes the promotions.

"I'm a dancer and a singer - I don't know about every single aspect of the business". And he is not only talking about the styling or the concepts here.

It's about what your goals are as an artist. What each and every one of the members goals are, and JK, his goal is this:

He wants out of Korea, I've said this once, I've said it a thousand times.

This photo here I found interesting:

Is this JK grainy, unclear, waiting to clear up, for us to see him clearly, his real self? Or is that just me bullshitting? Lol.

Other than that, did you notice the black and white theme going on?

JK acknowledging the change that we all saw in him since his Feb 23 lives.

Kind of also confirms what we've been talking about. JK is a smart young man and he knows what he's doing. The spoilers, the choices of words of songs during the lives, the JM promoting, not by chance and not done without thought.

And here we go again.

Weren't we talking about that JM.

Clear. Upfront. Bold. Emphasized.

Go read the full interview!

[assembledpress]

The Iron Claw: *arguably* 2023's most brutal (and re-watchable) film

Whether you like wrestling or know nothing about it, The Iron Claw is for you. Need me to prove it to you? Here are my 2 reasons:

1. Zac Efron

2. Jeremy Allen White

If reason 1 peaked your interest, that means you like hot muscular men doing hot muscular things (valid), and if 2 was what convinced you, you've already proved you like to watch things with complicated messy and devastating family relationships with a hint of depression. You're welcome!

The Iron Claw, for those unaware, follows the true story of the Von Erich family, a famous wrestling family that supposedly carried a curse after a series of extraordinarily tragic events occurred.

If you know nothing about this story, I won't spoil it for you, especially when the best education on it comes from this film. Not only do you of course witness the lives of each Von Erich brother, but you get wrestling explained to you via a conversation between Zac Efron and Lily James, who really does play the ultimate girl next door turned strong supportive wife so well here.

At its core, this film is about family, and more specifically, about siblings. When you really think about it, siblings have such unique relationships, seeing as they are raised often in the same environment, yet can branch into such individual and vastly different people. But that bond, whether it be a product of nature or nuture, good or bad, sticks with siblings their entire lives. In that way, this film does an excellent job exploring the feeling of protection you feel over a younger sibling as well as the indescribable pain of not being able to provide that protection when a sibling starts on their own independent life path.

It's an emotional watch and one that at times had me speechless at the way this family operated for unfortunately too long. Shrödinger's guns correlated to each tragedy are laced through the film, making this true story feel like a perfectly crafted fiction; there are so many signs pointing to what will go wrong, it doesn't feel like a real human being wouldn't spot them. Along with the writing, where some single lines burn themselves into your brain due to the strength of your weeping, the film proves itself an outstanding tragedy crafted under the "based on a true story" sports film banner.

And I'd be amiss to not go back to my reason 1 and reason 2 of why to watch this film: the incredible actors and their stellar performances. While I think Efron really takes the cake here as the lead of the film, Allen White is excellent, as are Harris Dickinson and Stanley Simons as the other Von Erich brothers. And of course, there's the spectacular Holt McCallany as the Von Erich partiarch. Their performances really deliver the dramatic and emotional impact of the film, and I can't stress enough how their portrayal of a family wrecked is something to behold.

It's so good, you may have to watch it twice, just to fully feel The Iron Claw's one-two punch (this is a boxing joke being made by a film nerd to make it seem like I know about wrestling; clearly, I do not).