#even if there's no canon grounds for it i really love the idea of lauren and axel just fucking DESPISING chase

[eyesontheskyline]

Love your work, you’re an incredible writer and it’s always a good day when you post 🫶🏼 I’m intrigued on a couple of things. Firstly, who do you find the hardest to write in character? Your characterisation is brilliant so I’m curious as to what you found the hardest?

Also what is your process during writing in general. I appreciate that with no such thing you had the episodes to flip, but when you’re scripting AU how would you go about doing so? I know some word vomit (I mean this nicely) and then mould away whereas others go with a rigid structure.

You’re exactly the kind of writer that inspires me to write myself… but also the kind of writer I’m forever envious of because of your effortless writing style haha!!

Aaahhh this is so kind, thank you! (Sorry in advance, this got long.)

So who do I find hardest to write in character... Out of everyone, JJ, definitely. The rest of them, I feel like the rhythm of their speech is distinct and I know when I've got it. (Obviously someone else might disagree with that and think I'm doing a terrible job of someone else lol, but I feel like I know when it feels right to me, when I can hear it in their voice in my head.) And I'm like, reasonably confident about how they'd react to a situation or etc - although that's obv very open to interpretation, and I'm aware I'm sometimes leaning into a fantasy a bit. But JJ... I don't know if I know her well. I don't know if the writers know her well, honestly. So I always struggle a bit with her.

Process is... mixed? With no such thing I figured out the relationships that were most important to me to 'fix' or develop and then what beats I wanted to hit to get there. For example, I hate that Emily spends S7 trying to win Morgan's trust back without ever finding out about the shitty things he said about her in Lauren. So I wanted her to hear about it, confront him, and give her the chance to forgive him and for them to choose to move forward together even though things aren't quite the same. I hate that Reid just acts out like a little kid about Emily's death / return and then that's that, but then when Emily comes back in S12 it feels like they're on a much more equal footing - so I wanted to give him the chance to be an equal adult in their friendship, because he absolutely has the capacity for that level of empathy, and that depth of love for Emily, and the writers just defaulted to babying him a lot. So I started with those ideas and literally rewatched all of S7 while taking notes then figured out the beats I needed and where to fit them in. (Stupid amount of detail, sorry, but doing it this way meant I didn't get caught up in trying to write around every 'missing scene' or feel pressure to address every single episode equally, which is the mistake I've made trying to write alongside canon before.)

My current WIP reckless (just enough) started out as 'I haven't written pregnancy / birth since doing it, maybe it would be good to try that', and then I also had a vague 'what if Emily was pregnant when Doyle was arrested' thought, and then thinking about how that would change the choices she made when he escaped made me think of doing it as a three part thing... From there, I started trying to write a detailed outline but I kept getting myself lost in the weeds, so I started just writing. There was a lot more trial and error this way - like writing entire scenes and then realising they were completely useless and scrapping them, which I did some amount of with no such thing (and also someone else's solid ground), but definitely less.

The ending of the final part is still unfinished and kind of in the air - it's out of my comfort zone tonally, and I just can't really figure out the transition from where I am to where I'm trying to be. (The solution to that problem is nearly always reworking the thing before the part I'm stuck at but I've tried that about 10 times so far, so... we'll see. Help lol.)

So yeah, I'm word vomiting this time, and I word vomited someone else's solid ground pretty much entirely - that started from like two lines of dialogue and a vague idea of how I felt their characters had grown since we last saw them together and 'I haven't written smut in a while, I wonder if that's a thing I can still do'. If I need a plot-shaped plot, I need to outline.

Write!! Do it!! And please know that effortless is not the word for my writing loool, I put a ridiculous amount of effort into this. And I edit a lot. I write terrible sentences, terrible scenes, I spend half an hour trying to get a character to move from one place to another or describe some specific action before it occurs to me (like it's brand new information every time) that I can just change it so they don't need to do the thing I'm struggling to describe... But once I'm in the rhythm of doing it, it becomes the thing my brain wants to do when I get a little bit of free time, and that's a fun place for me to be, and much healthier than all the 'how to be a perfect parent' facebook groups I squandered several years crying over. I spent a few years without access to the writing part of my brain, and I'm just... grateful to be back here. I still feel rusty - I was getting to a point pre-pregnancy/pre-covid (unfortunately these are the same event for me lol) where I could be a lot more expressive with language than I am right now. I honestly feel like I'm struggling just with communicating ideas at this point - if I can make myself understood, it's a win, at the moment. But I'm so so glad to be working on it and to have people interested in reading my things.

So yeah please write if any part of you wants to write, and you'll get better as you go! And if you ever want to bounce ideas or scenes or whatever off anyone, I'm always open to talking with more people about writing and Hotchniss and Emily Prentiss loool.

[this-should-do]

Barney x Lauren for the Ship Ask Game. I know the latter hardly exists outside of pure fanon, but I gotta say that I appreciate the sheer dedication and effort put towards creating a character whose existence is near hypothetical. Yes, Barney Calhoun totally definitely had a girlfriend or spouse at some point in time prior to the ResCas (which, if you're unfamiliar with 'Lauren', this post puts it quite nicely [https://www.tumblr.com/shrimpkidd/694596732780249088/theory-about-lauren] Or, TLDR; it is most likely that Barney's to-do list in the Half Life: Blue Shift manual is referencing the surname of an established coworker [that of Otis Laurey], rather than the forename of a partner who is not mentioned anywhere else in or out of the series). Considering the speculative nature of Half-Life as a series, it's not too much of a shocker that people went hog-wild with this idea. It's cute I suppose? Not that I particularly have strong feelings on the subject matter either way. I just think it's a neat tidbit of fandom trivia, y'know? Dubious canonicity aside, I've seldom ever really seen people bring her up at all nowadays. If I could be bothered I'd love to figure out how to incorporate Lauren into my little interpretation of Half-Life, but that's for another day.

oh no shes def a canon character in my lil brain, and she and barney did date for a while, but personally i wouldnt say i ship it in the traditional sense, its kinda complex

the way ive sorta got it is that she and barney started dating in college or in the short time barney was inbetween college and working at black mesa, and into barneys time at black mesa as long distance partners, but the romantic relationship part kinda died off within a year or so at the longest, but they still remained friends afterward given that hes still making sure to get her presents n all

im havent yet solidified what exactly their relationship was like, cuz on the one hand it coukd have been a they dated genuinely but long distance killed it, but theres also the fun concept of lauren kinda using barney as a beard with or without his knowledge becuz they were already kinda friends so she knew he porbably wouldnt like freak out too bad if he knew she was queer (cuz ykno its the 90s and comin off the 80s and the aids crisis)

so in terms of shipping, i guess i dont ship it, But i do think this relationship is one thats important for barney in terms of life experience and expanding his social circle

i guess dont ship it cuz shes just a name literally and its alot harder to like develop and get attached to it lol

if she had been a character we see and meet and if there were more to develop off of the way there is for barney and gordon (since gordon is personality wise nearly blank but we get to see interactions between him and barney and hear about things theyve done together that shows a close relationship hypothetically)

in terms if positive stuff allot of it i kinda already addressed in laying the ground work to even answer this ask proper lol, she is another person in barneys social cirlce, and if shes also queer him knowing eould suplly him another person to help him to overcome his own internalized stuff, not that im saying its her job to help him bit like her queerness should he know about it is a little example that he personally knows tht he can compare his own experiences with and see live happily as she is should she come out to him, as opposed to her having to coach him thru it ykno? it as a ship is also just fun in terms of just a sweet little normal relationship if they are genuinely dating (meaning we ignore my idea of them not being in a relationship by thebtime of thebrescas) just barney being goofy and working hard to have that long distance relationship and its cute how he makes a note to remind himself to get her flowers, i dunno theyre just sweet regardless i think :)

[cozy-the-overlord]

Requiem

Summary: He let go, and he fell.

Word Count: 910

Pairing: None

A/N: So here’s an idea that I got from an ask game forever ago (thanks Lauren!) that I randomly decided to stay up all night writing two nights ago because I was depressed after listening to folklore for the millionth time. This is probably the shortest thing I’ve ever written, and there’s not a lot to it-- just a canon-compliant exploration of what was going through Loki’s head when he fell from the Bifrost at the end of Thor.

Thanks for reading!

Warnings: Suicide Attempt/Suicidal Thoughts

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae @whatafuckingdumbass @the-emo-asgardian @imnotrevealingmyname

If you want to be tagged, feel free to send an ask/message :)

Read it on Ao3!

He fell.

He let go, and he fell.

It was a choice, but it wasn’t. Because what else could he choose? He had already fallen, fallen from a pedestal that had never been his to stand upon, a throne that had been snatched from beneath him before he had the chance to sit. He had already come crashing through the marble floor, in the sight of one who had never bothered to hold him high to begin with.

How much farther could he fall, really?

He let go, and he fell. Thor was screaming, a sound guttural and horrified, the type of sound that should have cut through his brain and throbbed in his eardrums, but it didn’t.

Loki felt nothing. He was too busy feeling everything.

The figure above them was still, even as the swirling cosmos snuffed him out like a candle, the screech of silence drowning out his brother’s shrieks.

I could have done it, Father!

But there was no truth to that cry, was there?

Father.

Not father.

King-slayer.

Kin-slayer.

Traitor, traitor, traitor.

They lied, he sobbed. They lied.

No, Loki, they scolded.

You lied.

He let go, and he fell.

He was drowning.

Loki knew what it felt like to drown. He had almost drowned once before, when he was but a child, in one of the great mountain lakes of Alfheim by which they had spent their summers. The water had been clear, so clear that one could see straight to the mussel shells that glistened in the sand below, so clear that the bottom looked only just below his feet …

Don’t go out too far, his mother had warned.

Wrong, wrong, they hissed.

Not-Mother.

Never-Was-Mother.

Will-Never-Be-Mother.

He gasped for air and choked on the frostbitten nothingness that pierced his lungs.

He hadn’t known he had gone too far out. The sandy floor had been right there, so close he could touch it … until it wasn’t and he couldn’t and the lake swallowed him whole. The water sucked his childish cries from his chest, pulling him deeper and deeper until his throat caught fire and the frothing white blinded his vision, until death’s gaunt specter loomed over him, a leering grin stretched across its skeletal cheeks—

It didn’t matter now. It hadn’t even mattered then, when Thor had pulled his sobbing mess of a brother—

Not-Brother

—pulled his sobbing mess to shore and deposited him in the sand like a load of laundry. It was only delaying the inevitable.

He let go, and he fell. The void pulled him deeper, far deeper than that Alfheim lake could ever dream of, embracing him with a chill that ripped his skin from his bones. He would have screamed, but his throat had turned to ice.

Everything had turned to ice. He was made of ice, freezing, flying, falling, waiting to shatter upon a surface that never emerged, begging for an end that never came.

Let the ground come, he pleaded with deities he knew couldn’t bother to listen, please, just let the ground come and let it all end.

But he only fell.

Colors danced before him, bright and distant, too far to bring comfort but just close enough that he could hear how they laughed at him.

Red, like the banners that dangled in the Great Hall in honor of his brother’s Name Day.

Gold, like the light that glowed on his father’s face as he lay motionless in his bed.

Blue, like the morning glory that climbed his mother’s garden walls.

Green, like the blankets she had swathed him as an infant, a stolen beast in a sparkling cradle.

He sobbed, screaming soundlessly until his throat bled raw as he plummeted through the nullity. It was torture, icicles gashing at his heart with every swollen reminder.

Because he loved them. He loved them so much, more than he could ever bring himself to describe, even though they were never real, even though they didn’t care about him, even though he had failed them in very possible way a person could fail someone. He loved them, and he hated himself for it.

If only he had drowned in the lake.

He let go, and he fell. For decades, centuries, millenia, there was nothing but him, engulfed by nothingness as he plunged through obscurity.

Until he hit the bottom.

He had hoped he’d shatter. It was a lovely dream, really—to crash through the planet’s surface and shatter into a million tiny pieces, shards of ice that could just melt away and cease to be. The sun would rise on a mended galaxy, one where Loki Laufeyson had never drawn breath.

But he didn’t shatter. He hit the ground with a horrible thud, one that rattled his very skull and crushed what was left of him against the jagged rock, broken, yet dishearteningly whole. He lay there, too fractured even for tears, praying for the familiar specter to swoop in and bring the nightmare to an end.

But there was nothing. It seemed even death had abandoned him.

Until a bright light seared his vision white, and a huffing laugh cracked through the fog.

“Look at this thing,” the throaty voice chuckled. “It’s not worth the effort. Just put it out of its misery.”

Yes, he thought, please. Just put it out of its misery.

Their voices melted back into the hum of existence, a hum that was beginning to sound suspiciously like an engine. The light was quickly fading.

Loki closed his eyes.

It’s okay. It’s over.

But it wasn’t over.

It was only the beginning.

[trickster-tabby]

Logan, let us in!

After years of managing to stay away from him, Logan has a run-in with his abusive father. The things his father says to him finally push him over the edge...

Pre-AA (most of my ships aren't canon in this fic)

Not canon to my au

Pairings: intrulogical

Warnings: transphobia, physical and verbal abuse, religious trauma, crying, panic attack, suicide

❤️Logan is a transgender man❤️

Logan folded his coat over his chest to shield himself from the snow falling around him. He was so glad he'd moved into a snowy area, as his land was always covered in a gorgeous blanket of white.

He was a few miles away from home, after a walk through the woods. He had no idea what was about to happen.

"Hello, Lauren."

Logan flinched as he heard a terrifyingly familiar voice call him by his deadname. He slowly turned, dreading the face he was about to see.

"Kiddo, I said hello." Logan's father, Reginald, emerged from behind a tree with a sickening "friendly" smile. Logan shuddered at being called "kiddo", as he did let even Patton call him that.

"H-hi Dad... What are you doing here?" Logan pulled his coat around himself tighter. He'd opted to not wear his binder since he wasn't going to be in public. Now he was silently cursing himself for choosing a bra instead.

"I just wanted to see my little girl! It's been so long since we've seen each other, kiddo."

Logan's breath hitched.

"Though I see that you clearly still think you're a boy."

Logan took a step back.

"After all this time, you still can't see that you are a girl? I thought I raised you better than that."

Logan spoke up against his better judgment. "Dad, I've known that I'm not a girl since I was four. This is who I am and you can't change that."

He knew he'd made a mistake as the faux-friendly expression on Reginald's face shifted to anger. Reginald stepped towards Logan.

"N-no, wait I'm sorry-"

Slap!

Logan fell backwards. He hadn't been hit by anyone in years, and he'd forgotten that fear.

"No, wait, Daddy, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

Logan continued to scream apologies as Reginald pinned him to the ground and hit him repeatedly.

"You worthless little shit! I tried to raise you as a good Christian woman! And you choose to be a filthy sinner instead!"

Logan sobbed out, which Reginald made very clear was a mistake.

"Don't try to cry now, Lauren. You've had too many chances to repent, I'm not giving you any more."

Logan screamed as Reginald raised his fist.

Everything went black.

---

Logan finally came to, covered in a thin layer of snow. He pushed himself up and looked around to see that the snow around him was tinged red. He'd been bleeding.

Had that really happened? He'd been free for so long, and now he'd finally come back with a vengeance. Logan had never been beat unconscious before.

And now that he knew where Logan lived, nowhere was safe anymore.

He could only think of one way out.

---

Logan stumbled onto his front porch, unlocking the door and sighing as he dropped his coat and kicked his boots off.

"Welcome home, Firefly!" Remus came over and nuzzled Logan's hair, before noticing the blood. "Lo, are you okay? What happened?"

Logan didn't answer. Instead he pushed his way out of Remus' arms, heading straight upstairs.

Remus followed him to the bedroom, growing more worried by the second.

"Logan, really, are you okay?!"

Logan paused just inside the bedroom. He looked back as he started to close the door.

"I love you, Remus. Never forget that."

As he shut and locked the door, Remus realized what he was saying.

Logan was going to...

"Everyone, get to Logan's house immediately!" he cried out.

As the others appeared, Remus hastily explained the situation.

"Shit, does anyone know how to pick locks?!" Roman said.

Patton pulled out a lockpick and a knife, sticking them in the keyhole of the door.

"Hurry, Patton! Please!" Anxiety was in tears, barely able to breathe as he processed what was happening. Deceit placed his hand on his shoulder comfortingly.

Patton desperately twisted the pick and knife around, to no avail.

He heard a soft click from behind the door.

"Guys-!"

"I heard it too. Logan, please, don't do this! We can help you, just please Logan, let us in!" Remus threw himself against the door and sobbed out.

Everyone screamed for Logan to stop, let them in, listen to them... Until they heard a gunshot.

Everyone froze.

Patton slowly finished picking the lock. He looked up at Remus, who was staring blankly at the door.

"Rem..?"

Remus looked down, slowly nodding and reaching for the doorknob.

As he opened the door, his breath hitched as he saw Logan, sprawled on the floor with a bloody gun having skidded out of his hand.

Remus slowly walked over and knelt down next to Logan, pulling him into his lap. He laid his forehead against Logan's as he finally let himself cry.

Patton looked guilty, as he'd only needed to pick the lock faster.

Roman was in shock, having only ever witnessed a gunshot wound once before when he was a kid.

Deceit pulled his hat to his chest and bowed his head, flowers sprouting from the floor where his tears fell.

Anxiety couldn't move. He'd just lost his best friend, someone he'd known since birth.

Logan's cats, a siamese named Wilbur and a sphinx named Lulubelle, came and butted their heads against Logan's arm, seeming to understand and mourn for him.

Thomas looked up from his work, feeling a shift. It was as if something had shattered within his heart, like someone he cared about was gone.

[oakensherwood]

Okay, let’s talk about Maid Marian. Let’s really talk about Marian. So often I see her character disparaged as a damsel in distress without agency of her own, but that is honestly so far from the truth. In fact, Maid Marian is considered to be one of the earliest examples of the “strong, independent woman” character archetype. Not only is it untrue to call her a damsel in distress, it’s also unfair.

As with many stories, Robin Hood is a story filled with men. I love it, but there’s no denying it’s a story filled with men. As the only prominent female character in a story that has been retold for close to 1000 years, centuries of ideas about femininity have been funneled into this singular character. Among the array of male characters, we see many ways to be masculine: smart, witty, artistic, strong, brave, charitable, loyal, both fighters and lovers. All of the characters have been adapted through the years, but Marian can still be distinguished as the only canonically present female character in the main cast.

Other women we traditionally see include Alan’s bride, the Prioress of Kirklees Abbey who murders Robin, Marian’s serving woman, and a few queens. Various contemporary novels, films, and TV representations have added women to the cast to even it out, but Marian is still the only primary female cast member. As such, centuries of what it can mean to be a woman have been reflected through her.

Let’s take a look at what exactly that has looked like through the years.

One of the things I love best about Robin Hood as a legend is that it is constantly evolving and changing for the needs of the audience. Across centuries and decades it has been changed to suit the ideas of the day. Even the oldest extant documentation of Robin Hood is not considered the “original version” because there is no way of really knowing when or how these stories started, or how long it took for them to be written down. 

So, just as there isn’t a standardized Robin Hood, there isn’t a standardized Maid Marian. We know that she was added later in the Robin Hood tradition, during the 15th century as part of May Day celebrations, and quickly became a common character in future iterations of the Robin Hood story. Her origins are still murky at best, and it’s impossible to pinpoint the very first time she was introduced. 

Her many origins include a shepherdess named Clorinda from Child Ballad 149, an unrelated Marian character in 15th century May Day games who happens to also have a lover named Robin, and a historically based woman named Matilda Fitzwalter appears in Anthony Munday’s “Huntingdon” plays from the 15th century. Furthest from our understanding of Marian is a play titled Robin Hood and the Friar, very merry and full of pastime, proper to be played in May Games. In this play we find Marian as a “trull” a.k.a. prostitute, employed by Friar Tuck. A far cry from how we know both Marian and Friar Tuck today. So far, she’s a working woman, a noblewoman, a romantic interest, and a prostitute. 

The best known and most enduring of these early variations is Child Ballad 150 (you can read it in full here). In this ballad, we see Marian dress as a boy, and go into the forest fully armed, to seek out her lover, Robin Hood. When she finds him and does not recognize him, they begin to fight and Marian handily beats him in their sword fight. Robin immediately asks her to join the Merry Men, they recognize each other, and return to camp for feasting and a “happily ever after” full of adventures. 

- Child Ballad 150

“With quiver and bow, sword, buckler and all,

Thus armed was Marian most bold.”

This ballad is reminiscent of introductory stories of the Merry Men -- Robin meets a stranger, they fight, the stranger wins, and Robin offers them a place in his band. 

We can clearly see in Child Ballad 150 that Marian was considered Robin’s equal and a regular member of the group from early on her individual tradition. Other parts of her early tradition survive as well -- she’s a romantic partner for Robin, and a noblewoman.

As we progress forward in Robin Hood traditions, we continue to see the story change. Notable changes occur during the Victorian period, when general interest in Robin Hood stories was revived thanks to the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) and Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883). Marian does not appear in Ivanhoe and is mentioned only once in Pyle’s book, and is effectively written out of the story entirely. 

Despite this, we see other novels and stories released as Robin Hood grows in popularity, and here is where we begin to see the idea of a damsel in distress begin to gain traction. As is true in every retelling of Robin Hood, the story changed to suit its audience and to suit the ideas of contemporary society and intended audience. 

Victorian literature is full of interesting and lesser known works of Robin Hood, as a result of a Victorian obsession with medievalism and with Robin Hood. Maid Marian and Robin Hood: A Romance of Old Sherwood (1892) by J.E. Muddock features a very distressed Marian who does need rescued and has very little agency. Other Victorian works take a similar tone and cast Marian as a damsel, but this is not the narrative that ultimately survives this period of Robin Hood resurgence. 

Thomas Love Peacock published a novella simply titled Maid Marian (1822). Interesting to note, because Robin only appears briefly as a supporting character in Ivanhoe, this is actually the first true Robin Hood novel as a story by itself. Here we see an active, and independent Marian, evocative of Child Ballad 150.

‘Well, father,’ added Matilda, ‘I must go into the woods.’

‘Must you?’ said the Baron, ‘I say you must not.’

‘But I am going,’ said Matilda.

‘But I will have up the drawbridge,’ said the baron.

‘But I will swim the moat,’ said Matilda.

‘But I will secure the gates,’ said the baron.

‘But I will leap from the battlement,’ said Matilda.

‘But I will lock you in an upper chamber,’ said the baron.

‘But I will shred the tapestry,’ said Matilda, ‘and let myself down.’

- Thomas Love Peacock, Maid Marian (1822)

Matilda does indeed go to the woods, takes on the name Maid Marian, and rules the forest with Robin Hood. Other Victorian works take a similar approach to Marian and show her as involved and capable including Maid Marian, or the Forest Queen (1849) by Joaquim Stocqueler, which follows a more traditional Robin Hood storyline filled with adventures and danger.

Later classic works include an active Marian as a member of the outlaw band, as well. Roger Lancelyn Green (1956), Charles E. Vivian (1927), and Paul Creswick (1917) all write a Marian who speaks for herself and works with the outlaws, often dressed as a man. 

Hollywood enters the scene of Robin Hood retellings as early as 1908, but the oldest surviving Robin Hood film is Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood (1922). This silent movie, groundbreaking in budget and sets, features Marian (played by Enid Bennet) as a strong character who holds her own throughout the film. After this, we see another groundbreaking film, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. This film is widely thought to be the gold standard of Robin Hood films, and I am definitely in that camp. Marian has more agency in this movie, and the lovely Olivia plays a rather coy noblewoman. While we don’t see her taking up a sword in this film, we see her developing the plan that ultimately rescues Robin from the hangman’s noose, successfully warning Robin and his men of Prince John’s plans, and standing her ground while on trial and defending her ideals. Yes, she is rescued from prison in the climax of the movie, but she also plays a vital role in rescuing Robin earlier in the story.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) begins with a woman of action, but at the end sees Marian rather helplessly forced into a marriage and moments away from being sexually assaulted when Robin literally catapults himself through the window to save her. 20 years later in Robin Hood (2010) Cate Blanchett’s Marian is fully capable in combat and is shown to be a responsible and dedicated lady of Loxley, working the fields and caring for her home.

Meanwhile in a contemporary TV adaptation, Marian is depicted as a Robin Hood figure herself, known as the Nightwatchman. (2006, BBC’s Robin Hood) Although the writers later did a disservice by (unpopularly) killing her character as a season finale, Marian was still depicted as competent and in charge of her own choices and actions, and in fact rescues herself from an unwanted marriage. 

Contemporary Robin Hood literature also features an active Marian. Jennifer Roberson’s Lady of the Forest (1995) and Lady of Sherwood (1999) present Marian as a noblewoman who, over the course of the text, takes control of her own story in her capacity as a member of gentry, Lauren Johnson’s The Arrow of Sherwood (2013) sees an incredibly historically inclined retelling of the Robin Hood story, and includes a dedicated and politically savvy Marian. She doesn’t run into the forest, but makes a real difference through her smart decisions and political manipulation. Robin McKinely’s The Outlaws of Sherwood features Marian as an excellent archer, better than Robin, and she easily slips in and out of the outlaw camp as needed, is skilled in woodscraft, and is a valued and substantial member of the outlaw group. Honestly, I think it would be difficult to find a literary retelling that doesn’t include an active Marian character. 

So where do our ideas of Marian as a damsel in distress ultimately come from? I have a few theories.

First, we see the archetype of damsels in distress throughout other fairy tales and folklore, so it’s tempting to assume that Marian is the same and portray her as such, and there are examples of her character playing that role either in whole, or for part of the narrative.

There are unfair assumptions made about medieval women in general, that ignore the powerful positions women could hold, and the amazing things that women did during this period. When people picture medieval women, they are often embroidering tapestries, being forced into unwanted marriages, being beaten by their husbands, and dying in childbirth. There is truth in stereotypes, but there’s also room for deeper understanding of the historical context, and a wider story to be told that includes women standing up for themselves and exercising their own strength and skills. (It’s not good feminism to overwrite real women’s history.)  

We see this stereotype most often in movies and TV adaptations, which are highly visible and memorable, cementing ideas about the Robin Hood legend (and Marian) in the general psyche. 

Children’s picture books, perhaps one of the first introductions a person might have to Robin Hood, tend to play out the story like a traditional fairy tale and Marian is again likely found in an upper tower, calling for help. 

Some find it demeaning for Marian to ever require saving, or to be saved by anyone other than herself. I feel differently about this. People rely on other people, and it’s not inherently weak to ask for support from someone, especially from a romantic partner. The story of Robin Hood is good fun, but it’s also full of danger and peril. It’s not surprising that various characters need to be rescued by friends and lovers throughout various tales. Robin Hood, Little John, Will Stutely, Sir Richard of the Lea, Alan A Dale’s bride, and yes, Maid Marian. All of these characters have stories where they require smart and daring rescues, and they’re exciting stories! Because Alan’s bride and Marian are women, this does not exempt them from the support of their male friends. They deserve to have someone watching their back. I am not offended by Marian needing help; it’s not only human, it’s a staple for a multitude of characters in Robin Hood lore.

As with much of media, Marian is the single female in what’s otherwise mostly a boys’ club. She has been the single point of reference in this story for women for centuries. I find that incredible. She was my favorite character as a child because she was the only woman, the only person I could potentially see myself in. With a global story such as Robin Hood, that’s not an insignificant role. No matter what her part may be in any given retelling, there are pieces of women from centuries long past and not so distant. I find that fascinating, worth respecting, and that’s why she’s my favorite character to this day.

tldr: Drink your respect Maid Marian juice.

[susiephone]

okay okay okay okay i just finished episode 2 of nightmare time. SPOILERS BELOW, HOLY SHIT SPOILERS. SCROLL PAST IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN. but here are my thoughts

overall:

the lang brothers are geniuses

this could truly be the next twilight zone

the hour-long format is PERFECT for expanding on the hatchetfield multiverse. it’s not overstuffed like black friday was and we get to delve deep into so many different facets of the world

MAJOR PROPS TO THE PIANIST

i also love that this whole thing gives fanfic authors free reign. anything we write COULD be canon in some other timeline. and if there’s an inconsistency? blame it on the multiverse

bill and sylvia: new otp

there haven’t been any songs i’ve really loved yet (besides the theme song), but the stories are so good that i almost don’t care

forever and always:

i fully expected not-emma to be called “kelly”

my theory is that the emma we met from tgwdlm is indeed the real emma perkins, because i don’t think not-emma would’ve been as surprised by the invasion and blue shit as she was. plus, she would’ve kicked infected!paul’s ass

lauren lopez deserves an award for the scenes where she played both emmas. that was incredible.

as horrifying as the ending was, i kind of smiled at the idea of not-emma and paul-23 going off together to live in unholy matrimony, forever. in a way, they’re perfect for each other. and i think they do genuinely love each other, in spite of it all.

i feel like having mariah and robert sing the song together was throwing us a bone since we didn’t see them play a couple in black friday (though angela turned out to be the perfect lex in my opinion)

i thought the fact that clones/androids have the same memories and thinking process as the original was super interesting and it really does muddy the waters as to who’s “real” or not

also makes me wonder if jane was somehow mixed up in all this... the timing of emma’s supposed death and her death, both via vehicle crashes, is awfully coincidential

time bastard:

i didn’t think anything to come out of hatchetfield would spook me more than the ending of black friday. 

then this fucker.

little sad this debunked the theory that ethan is ted’s little brother, but oh well

it made me a little sad that ted really does think of paul as his best friend

the homeless man reveal SHOOK ME TO MY CORE. my jaw was on the ground.

also i loved the grins of the cast, like they’d been waiting for that moment the whole time

i bet the livestream went INSANE

also ted’s vision of dancing with jenny at the wedding genuinely made me tear up. joey’s so good at making me pity ted even when he’s being an absolute shitbag

speaking of which, i actually gasped and went “oh no...” when i realized ted was fucking it up with jenny when he went back in time. i really wanted it to all work out somehow.

i REALLY hope andy and jenny come back

the ending of this had me horrified and tearing up at the same time. it really does remind me of the ending of some twilight zone episodes, where the protagonist brings their fate wholly on themselves, but it’s just so horrible that no one really deserves it.

GET TED OUT OF THE BASTARD’S BOX 2K20.

[wrightiverse]

Hello and this is me annotating/doing director's commentary for the last chapter of Crowd as a victory lap. There's no indulgence like self-indulgence.

“I’ll just make my hot young boyfriend help me,” Robin teases. “When I’m eighty, you’ll only be sixty-nine.”

I love to take a thing from the beginning of a story/scene and revisit it at the end. In this case, 'hot young boyfriend' is a light callback to 'sexy-ass, significantly younger boyfriend' back at the beginning when Robin was sad about the empty nest situation. This is, I think, the first time we specify their exact age gap. It is also the exact age gap I have with my own partner, because I’m very lazy like that. (None of this was written with any reference to what's gone on in the podcast over the last year or so, which is good because it sounds like the whole aging thing for Glenn could have gotten really confusing. Wrightiverse Glenn came back right after Ravenloft, none of that other stuff happened to him. It's all good. Canon is optional.) * * * * *

It’s not like the men in his family have much luck in that area, anyway; Glenn never met either of his grandfathers, and Bill didn’t make it much past fifty.

I think Meryl actually lived for hundreds of years and is still alive in Faerun and they should totally meet, but Glenn doesn’t know all that. * * * * *

Aesthetics aside, it didn't seem like there was much for Glenn to look forward to in middle age and beyond. Nick would grow up and wouldn’t need his dad anymore, and Glenn would be all alone.

From Glenn’s second chapter in Crowd, when Robin is sad about Connor leaving for college:

“I want him to be independent,” Robin is trying to explain into Glenn’s knee, “but also I don’t want to be all alone.” Glenn flicks his ear reproachfully. “You're not all alone. I’m right here, dumbass.”

Sometimes what seems obvious when we're explaining it to somebody else doesn't feel as obvious when it's our turn. Admittedly, Glenn is coming to this with a different set of experiences than Robin is. More on that later. * * * * *

His career would go to shit, because getting old only works for rock stars if they’re actually bluesmen in disguise, like Keith Richards.

I think I got this theory from something Chuck Klosterman wrote, probably Fargo Rock City. * * * * *

He starts his grounding exercise without even thinking about it. Five things he can see: one, an information sign for the city park. Two, a freshly-painted bike rack. Three, some big public art sculpture that looks like a giant rusty hairbrush…

This particular grounding exercise came up earlier in Crowd. I didn't make it up for the story, it's real and many people find that it works well. Feel free to try it! The exercise he alludes to when they’re on the beach, creating ‘safe spaces’ out of vivid memories with lots of sensory details, is also based on a real thing. Lauren, his therapist, is named after the therapist who worked with me on my own PTSD and taught me that and a lot of other good stuff. At least based on my own experience, I can highly recommend EMDR if you can find a good practitioner. * * * * *

It was a hella sweet gesture from the kid.

Connor’s introduction in Name has to do with him carrying shirts past Glenn, and one of those shirts becomes important later to Robin. Given how big the GC3 actually seems to be, I don’t think Connor did the majority of their merch. I assume they used a regular printer and Connor just did small runs of fun custom stuff when he feels like it, meaning not much changed after Glenn quit. * * * * *

Of course, Robin is the only member of the family wearing the shirt right now, because Robin is the only one who doesn’t care that it isn’t cool to wear merch from the gig at the gig itself.

I have no idea how widespread the ‘no wearing merch from the gig at the gig’ thing is, but that’s the rule I learned. * * * * *

Robin is chatting away about something, but it’s hard to follow with all the noise and distraction around them. Glenn decides to let it ride, and allows himself to zone out and just watch Robin talk.

As requested by my brilliant co-author, this is a callback to when Robin spaces out watching Glenn talk on their first date. Both Robin and Glenn are consistently very prone to tuning out when the other one is talking, but neither of them particularly care. As Glenn says on their dinner date - sometimes a man just wants to think out loud for a while and get a ‘hell yeah’ in response. * * * * *

It's vastly unfair that Robin looks so good in direct sunlight, but he probably pulls it off because he's the one person in Los Angeles who isn't trying to look younger than he actually is.

Glenn should spend less time in WeHo. * * * * *

There’s already more gray in Robin’s hair than when they met, although Glenn will only accept partial blame for that. Either way, the old man’s on track to be a full-on silver fox before he even hits fifty.

It felt necessary to drop a reminder that despite how Glenn talks about him, Robin is not actually that damn old. I mean, I'm sure that sounds very old to some of you, but when you're in your mid-to-late 30s like Glenn, somebody in their late 40s is not unreasonably decrepit. I think it has more to do with their respective energies than actual birthdays. * * * * *

“What is it?” Robin has noticed Glenn’s gaze, and he touches his own face to check if there's something on it.

Glenn grins. "Nothing, just ogling."

This is another callback to their first date:

“Do I have something on my face?” Glenn asks, and rubs at his mouth.

“No, you’re good.” Robin says. “You’re great.”

Because I adore a full-circle moment, that's why. * * * * *

“Your eyes were intense," Robin laughs. "It looked like you were going to start growling redrum at me."

This is my own fault for saying in the last chapter that Glenn was rambling about Kubrick moon landing conspiracies when he comes back from his walk. I tried like seven different ways to get them on the subject. I still don’t know if it feels natural. * * * * *

Glenn stabs an accusatory finger toward Robin. “Did you suggest not doing the show because you knew I’d argue with you and talk myself into doing it?”

Can’t outro this story without at least a little argayment.

Glenn usually finds him in the bathroom at the end of the night, looking grumpy about being up past his bedtime and holding some girl’s hair back while she barfs.

With what we've learned about Robin over the course of Crowd, we now have the context to understand that for Robin, this drunk girl is very much the ghost of Christmas Past. I don't imagine he goes to many of these parties.

* * * * *

It doesn’t bother Glenn a bit. Life isn’t a movie, the cheerleader doesn’t have to put on leather pants and start smoking in order to get her bad boy and her happily ever after.

I know that there’s more going on in Grease than that, but consider: would Glenn know that?

* * * * *

He and Robin are very different people, and they always will be. They don’t make sense on the surface, but they both know who they are, and who they are fits together perfectly.

Circling back to Robin at the end of Name, expressing his anxieties:

Robin rests his forehead on the steering wheel, avoiding Glenn’s eyes. “Like I don’t make sense for you, and everybody can see it.”

Some of the circles that I closed in Crowd were ones that were opened in Crowd, but some went back further. * * * * *

Love bubbles up in Glenn like a shaken-up soda, and he finds himself standing up suddenly and grabbing Robin’s shirt collar to tug him down for a kiss.

I wanted to mirror the ‘Hot Dad surges forward to kiss him, hard’ thing from the beginning, but given the established height difference, Glenn can’t just go for it unannounced unless he’s gonna stand tippy-toe. Thank you @whotaughtyougrammar for this art of what happens when Glenn tries the collar-tug and Robin doesn't notice fast enough.

* * * * *

Robin is caught off guard and stumbles half a step back, managing at the last second not to drop his drink. “One second, sweetheart, just one second. You surprised me. What was that about?”

Glenn gives him a lopsided grin. “Luck?”

“Oh, well, then. For luck.”

Luck and how to change it is a big theme throughout the whole series, both in the sense of ‘good fortune/unearned blessings’ and ‘random, unforeseen chance.’ More later about that. * * * * *

When Glenn presses his tongue forward to slip between Robin’s lips, he tastes lemon and sugar.

Same as the first time they kissed, when he’d been drinking whiskey sours.

* * * * *

“Right, yeah,” Robin breathes, but he doesn’t let Glenn out of his arms quite yet. “You know,” Robin adds, “Nick was telling me earlier that he’s going to sleep over at Grant’s tonight.”

So I'll be there when you arrive / The sight of you will prove to me I'm still alive / And when you take me in your arms / And hold me tight / I know it's gonna mean so much tonight * * * * *

She’d found him there, and she'd saved him, like she always did.

We didn’t know Morgan’s name when we first wrote the scene where they discussed her in Name, so we wrote around it as though Glenn was reluctant to name her out loud. We maintained this throughout the rest of Crowd except for the line where Glenn says that he’ll tell Robin about the phone call with Morgan. Felt right. Her presence is very much felt but Glenn, at least, is not in the habit of talking about her unless he has no other option. * * * * *

They ran out of the venue and down the street, hand in hand and giggling like kids playing hooky.

@shrack was the one who began writing our Glenn with very physical methods of showing affection. I liked it a lot as a vibe and carried on with it. He and Morgan are also very young here. Glenn would be 21 or 22 at the oldest, which is barely older than Connor is now. I've always attributed some of his immaturity to the fact that he became a parent pretty young. (Glenn is 36 when Name starts and Nick is 13, meaning Nick was born when Glenn was 23 and probably conceived when Glenn was 22.)

* * * * *

It was like falling in love with every single person in the crowd, all at once. Glenn felt like he would never be lonely again as long as he could have that feeling.

Facing twenty thousand of your friends / how can anyone feel so lonely? * * * * *

By then, the GC3 performed in venues so cavernous that Glenn couldn’t see anything outside his own spotlight. He could hear the audience roar approval at him, making a wall of sound that he could feel like a physical force. It was loud enough to drown out the screaming in his head, loud enough to let him forget that she wasn’t out there among them. It was the closest he could get to forgetting, so Glenn did it as much as he could.

Part of a success that never ends / But I’m thinking about you only... * * * * *

Slowly but surely, he’d been learning how to go through life with his mind and heart focused on someone else’s well-being. It didn’t come naturally: that wasn’t the kind of family either of them knew. Still, they’d promised each other that they could do better than how they were raised.

I am never here for iterations of this dynamic that assume Glenn is the fuck-up and Morgan was the perfect parent. They both became parents at exactly the same moment, you know? The world does not need one more story with an incompetent sitcom dad and his smoking-hot wife who does all the actual parenting. * * * * *

Nick is long since asleep, but Adele fucking Close has stayed up until these sickening hours of the early morning.

Conveniently, Glenn’s brain has overwritten all his memories with the correct name and pronouns for Nick, because writing around it is a pain in the ass otherwise. * * * * *

“Hello, Glenny.”

Bill calling Glenn “Glenny” that time at Ravenloft really stuck with me. I don’t know if they ever revisited that in the actual podcast, but it was so slimy and chilling somehow. * * * * *

“I fucked up,” Glenn says bluntly, and his mother narrows her eyes ever so slightly at his cursing.

Glenn gets in his own head early in Crowd about comparing himself to Penny, and Robin later worries about putting himself on ‘the same level’ as Morgan. Neither of them are quite galaxy-brained enough to realize that there’s more than one person in Glenn’s life who uses a lot of terms of endearment for him, considers themselves old-fashioned, and wishes everybody wouldn’t swear so much. * * * * *

“Thank you, mother,” Glenn grits out. He sounds absolutely nothing like himself, not that she minds. “I appreciate your help.”

I assume that part of the reason Glenn has such a hard time offering genuine apologies is that when he was growing up, too much of his apologizing was forced rather than sincere. * * * * *

“You are out of chances. If you continue to neglect this child, I will get the state involved, and I will take custody myself. I’ve already spoken to the Freemans, and I have their full support.”

Morgan’s parents are not mentioned very often and don’t seem to be a big part of the Close boys’ lives. I imagine that whatever tenuous relationship Glenn had forged with them post-accident was pretty much destroyed by Adele forming this alliance with them and telling Glenn about it. * * * * *

Her patient demeanor is meant to remind him that she's here to clean up his mess again, like she always does, and his proper response is humble and apologetic gratitude.

And that is why Robin being patient can set Glenn off so bad, such as after the bike accident when they were arguing:

Glenn doesn’t really hear most of what Robin’s saying. It’s all just soothing, pointless stuff in that obnoxious tone that means Robin thinks he’s the smart, calm, mature one here and Glenn’s the immature asshole who lost his temper again. He’d never say it, but Glenn can tell what he’s thinking.

I hope it came across clearly in that part that Robin doesn’t actually see the situation that way and isn’t saying or thinking anything to that effect, but Glenn feels like he is because he’s had this somatic/emotional reaction triggered. Spatially he's arguing with Robin, but his body and a lot of his brain thinks he's arguing with his mom. Trauma can be like that. * * * * *

His mother keeps talking like he didn’t say a word. “We can all stay in each others’ lives, Glenny. I’m not trying to cut you out, I’m trying to help you. I know you think I’m a monster, but I’m just trying to do what’s best for my family.”

Sometimes the monster will tell you it's not a monster. * * * * *

From that night forward, Glenn will always know that he’s not a good person, because he almost takes his mother up on the offer.

I don’t think being tempted by this offer means Glenn’s a bad person, but we write Glenn as somebody who wishes he was a good person but is really afraid that he isn’t. He was at a very low point here and he needed help. Feeling drawn to the only help on offer, even if it was from a toxic source, is pretty understandable. * * * * *

"I'll get Nicky ready for school tomorrow and you can sleep in. We’ll finish talking about this when you feel better.”

Man, I hate that abuser thing when they start being sweet as soon as you muster the energy to fight back. You get a little bit of steam built up and then they dodge you like a matador so that it dissipates again. To be clear, Nicky isn't Nick's deadname or anything, it's just the somewhat baby-ish diminutive form that Adele uses for him, like how she calls Glenn "Glenny." * * * * *

“Family is important,” his mother says sadly. Just before she closes the door, she gives him a look that’s an exquisite mix of regret, tender affection, and a tiny spark of hope. Adele would have been a great actress, but Glenn can’t imagine who that particular performance was for.

Performance skills run in the family and Adele comes by her acting chops honestly, although she doesn’t know it. I picture one of those situations where a young woman from a good background gets pregnant by some rakehell actor and her family covers up the scandal by raising the baby as a new sibling. That would mean that as long as Adele’s “older sister” never spilled the beans, nobody in their family at this point knows that they’re related to Meryl. If Nick ever decides to do one of those ancestry DNA tests, things are going to get interesting. * * * * *

He certainly didn’t find it very compelling. Family? All the family he will ever need is sleeping soundly down the hallway, tiny arms wrapped tight around a stuffed plush Babar.

I wanted Nick to have a stuffed animal that was sort of his parallel to Mr. Lion. Robin is drinking with Mr. Lion in the beginning of Crowd when he’s upset about losing Connor to college, and Mr. Lion appears again when Glenn comes in to talk to Nick and Connor after Robin’s accident.

“I… I guess I don’t know.” Nick looks down, avoiding eye contact by staring into the darkness under Connor’s bed. Mr Lion is under there in a clear plastic box, along with some other stuffed animals. Even when Nick first met Connor, the stuffed animals were already banished underneath the bed instead of on top of it. But over the years, Connor’s never thrown them away.

Mr. Lion is one of the various ways we played with the theme that Connor is, as Nick puts it, “somewhere between a kid and an adult.” Connor is a very confident and clever guy, but you don't magically get a giant box of maturity and life experience on your 18th birthday. At various points, he asks both Nick (at the campus concert) and Glenn (after Robin’s accident) to try to understand that he's still growing and figuring stuff out. Nick has definitely been deprived of some chances to be a kid, but in some ways Connor has as well. He started hanging out with Glenn after Penny and Robin split up, and although he and Nick obviously hit it off, Connor was closer to Glenn for a while. In a different universe, that might not have turned out as well - I mean, tell me you wouldn't side-eye that arrangement in real life. I sure would. Robin just sort of flings his hands up at the role Connor plays for the Close boys, but I strongly suspect that shit would not have flown on Penny’s watch.

It’s funny - he thought Connor was so grown-up when they met, but the guy was only 16 when the Wrights moved in next door. He wasn’t much older by the time he was over at the Close place almost every day, helping Nick with homework or cleaning questionable leftovers out of the fridge. It didn’t strike Nick as weird at the time, It was just another thing about his life that wasn’t like anybody else’s. He never questioned what was in it for Connor. Back then, Nick didn’t even realize how lonely he himself was - he wouldn't have figured out why a kid whose parents had just gotten divorced might want to come over to the chaotic Close apartment to get away from the quiet in his own home.

Everybody was doing their best, and everything worked out for the best, but Connor over the course of the stories is sorting out the balance that works for him in terms of responsibility and playfulness. Fortunately, now that he has less responsibility for Nick, he can enjoy Nick more as a friend and brother. In Name, Robin and Glenn both sort of assume Connor will act as a babysitter to Nick while they go off on their first date; by Crowd, Connor is hanging out playing Smash with Nick and Grant as the gents get ready for their dinner date, but he's there socially, as a peer. Him being goofier and more immature also frees up Nick to do the same, since if Connor is cool and Connor is being playful, then "it's not a little kid thing, it's a bro thing" They both get to be kids now in a way that they weren't before, and I love that for them. Anyway, the point of Mr. Lion and why I wanted to give Nick a stuffed animal as well was to draw the parallel between the sons more directly and to anchor the stuffed animal component. So far there hadn't been any moment in which an actual kid was holding an actual stuffed animal.

[aeide-thea]

every time i remember lauren hissrich’s insistence that the geralt-jaskier relationship depicted in her show is “just an example of male friendship” (source), i get a little angrier: not because i can’t live with it if a pairing i’m shipping isn’t explicitly endgame or even canon, but because it’s such fucking shoddy textual analysis on hissrich’s part! between the bath scene and its, you know, entire vibe (but also specifically jaskier’s mention of geralt’s “lovely bottom”) and a reading of the lyrics of “her sweet kiss” that takes the geralt-garroter connection from 1x01 into account (which, it’s such an unusual word, we the audience are going to notice when it crops up twice and we’re right to!), there’s explicit textual support for the idea that at the very least, jaskier’s been yearning for geralt in a way that’s more than platonic, although i will grant that geralt’s feelings are left more ambiguous.

and the thing is, fine, be extremely wrong about what you’ve actually depicted in your own show, i get that it’s not what you were going for and i’m even fine with that—although like, if you’re changing the racial balance of the show to make it less narrow than sapkowski’s (which is great!), why is it the idea that these alterations might include geralt’s sexuality that’s the bridge too far, that makes you characterize anyone who floats said idea as “a hysterical asshole” (source)? but anyway, my problem isn’t really that hissrich didn’t want to go there, or even that she can’t seem to see that her show did, in fact, go there despite her; it’s that you know she can’t see it for the same reason queer women get characterized as ‘gal pals’ so often it became a ‘laugh so you don’t cry’ meme, namely that heteronormative blinders are so fucking restrictive that they override straight people’s ability to see the most straightforward interpretation of what’s in front of them, such that a scenario requiring, honestly, more mental gymnastics is the one they’ll arrive at first, and then look at queer people askance for bringing up the interpretation that takes less contortion, that they themselves scurried hastily past with their eyes screwed shut…

so: it’s not the not-seeing that makes me angry, really. it’s that hissrich doesn’t see it because straightness is always the default, because queerness is the desperate reach, the reading you have to prove, when in any half-decent world occam’s razor would’ve taken hissrich’s face in its metaphorical hands long ago and said to her, ‘look: if it saunters like a queer bard and smolders like a queer bard, it’s probably��� a queer bard, whether or not his witcher loves him back; and the effort you’re expending to deny the most straightforward reading of things jaskier explicitly voices makes you look, frankly, both homophobic and also just astonishingly insensitive to how stories (and people) work!’ and the former obviously offends me, on a number of grounds including my own queerness; but the latter really just seems like a disqualifying failure of perception in someone whose job that literally is? except, of course, that we live in a world that’s itself so determined to deny queerness that individual instances of that denial are totally normalized, even though in any logical world they’d be the ones pushing a biased angle…

[dent-de-leon]

Do you have any theories on how Shiro's current storyline might play out in canon?

This is like…a very big broad question. There’s really a lot of directions you could go with this. Ultimately, here’s a breakdown of some possibilities I’ve considered:

We go ahead and Devil’s Due comics this shit. For those who don’t know, there was a comic series based off 80′s Voltron where Sven was…different. He didn’t die–like VLD Shiro. Instead, he ended up having problems connecting with his Lion–remember how Kuron was shut out by Black at first? You later find out that, the reason why Voltron denied him, was because he’d been compromised. Brainwashed by Haggar and Lotor’s fiance Merla. He turns against the team and ends up becoming an antagonist for a bit. I think it’s very possible we might see Kuron pull something like that (albeit against his will). So you have this scenario where Kuron is maybe warring with himself but he still splits from the team and actively becomes a “villain” for a bit.

It’s also possible that Kuron will be able to maintain more control though. And maybe, once he realizes he’s putting the team at risk, he’ll leave Voltron on his own and go out searching for some answers for his recent memory blanks and behavior. This leads to him investigating into Operation Kuron on his own, and having to come to terms with what that means. There’s a good chance he might resent Shiro, because this is supposed to be his life, and to know that none of this ever was…that he has no real life or past or memories of his own…that’s harsh. He might be loathe to meet Shiro at first. But he could also end up actively trying to save him, it’s really anybody’s guess.

The fact is, I can’t see Kuron not leaving the team at some point (at least temporarily). Just like how I can’t imagine Lotor staying either. Also, I really do think they want to…throw in Black Paladin Keith for a bit more before the real Shiro comes back (and maybe even lead into copilot sheith?) But yeah, we have every indication that the show runners originally wanted to use Shiro to really push for Keith’s leadership arc:

Lauren: “Obviously in the original he was the leader guy, and we just wanted to start him in a different place. He looks up to Shiro, but he’s definitely not the leader that Shiro is at all. And so he’s got a lot to learn. He’s still very impulsive, very rash, and he’s got a hot temper.” (source)

Joaquim: “We had seen Shiro as a conduit for allowing Keith to rise to the leadership role…” (source) 

Lauren: “For instance, way back when we thought we were going to be able to have Shiro exit the show at the end of our Netflix Season Two, we had every intention of Keith being the leader. The team working together and growing throughout the rest of the show, struggling with their differences, but ultimately gelling as a team. We ended up not being able to do that because we needed to bring Shiro back, but the weird thing is that it created these other storylines that are interesting in their own way.

But now we have this storyline that we didn’t expect to happen with this Keith and Shiro dual leadership friction. And Keith going off and leaving, following his way to Marmora, which is something we would have explored a little bit. We definitely would have gone into the Blade of Marmora and found Keith’s family, but not necessarily in the way you see it now.” (source)

Lauren: “I think in our attempt to–because ultimately, what happened is [Shiro] was supposed to exit stage left but we ended up needing to keep him around. And so we needed to factor in something interesting about him so that he wasn’t just the perfect guy who solves everyone’s problems. This is us doing some damage control.” 

Josh: “…I just like that these characters are continually evolving. So they’re changing all the time. Even Keith, now, as we discussed, he’s sort of filling this other void that he had that was giving him shortcomings as a leader. So maybe he’ll be able to fill those gaps. And that goes along for every other character as well.” (source)

You get the idea. As for “our” Shiro, I think his real self is either 1) trapped in the Astral Plane, or 2) trapped in this interim between dimensions and just sort of keeps shifting through. We know already that Shiro knew about Daibazaal’s destruction before anyone else–because Black told him. More than that, she showed him. But why? Why take Keith to the ruins of Daibazaal and show him the comet and Voltron’s formation? To what end? The whole time, Shiro kept saying, “Show me more.” 

But Black never gets to finish. In all honesty, I think she was trying to tell him the whole story. To show him how Daibazaal got destroyed in the first place, and relay that the rift–as Lotor said–is still there. I think she knew the only way to permanently seal the rift. Which is why she took him to the site of Daibazaal–this is where you need to go. During the fight with Zarkon, I think she tried to send him there to really finish the job. Time to beat the final boss. But something went wrong, and the teleportation between realities was distorted. Kind of like how Haggar 

The other–much simpler answer–is that Shiro was in dire danger during the fight so, like Keith suggested, the Black Lion teleported him to save his life. But again, something went wrong, and Shiro wound up trapped in the astral plane instead. But either way, I think Keith is going to have to be the one to make contact with Shiro and save him. This ties back into the overarching theme of Keith and Shiro’s intimacy and Keith’s vow to save him, “As many times as it takes.” Ultimately, I believe this will culminate in a choice at the end of the series will Keith will be forced to choose between saving Shiro and defending the universe. This also nicely echoes–1) the story of zaggar and how Zarkon had to choose between sacrificing Honerva or his planet, and 2) the end of the original 80’s Voltron, in which Ryou Shirogane/Shiro is captured by Sincline/Lotor and Akira/Keith must choose between saving him and Voltron. Take a wild guess, but yeah–Keith’s like “fuck the giant robot I’m not letting him die.” 

In the end, Ryou ends up making the choice for him and sacrificing himself for the greater good. However, considering that in stories like this successors are meant to surpass their predecessors, I don’t believe Keith will fall into the same trap as Zarkon before him. As someone who’s said things like, “Maybe things aren’t so black and white,” I believe Keith will be able to find another way, some third answer that allows him to save both Shiro and the universe. After all, as I’ve talked about in many meta before, the lesson Keith needs to learn is not that he must let go of Shiro. Because, after Kerberos, Keith never really moved on. If the idea here was that he had to, then why have him endure a second grieving process–have him grapple with the agony of that loss all over–just to give Shiro back and then unceremoniously whisk him away again. If the lesson here is, you need to give up on him, you need to mourn and move on, then Shiro would not have come back. Season 3 is Keith’s chance to finally accept that grieving process, but he doesn’t. He ultimately rejects it, and this only strengthens his resolve to find Shiro–no matter what. 

Consider also Keith’s background–“Shiro’s the one person who never gave up on me. I won’t give up on him.” All his life, Keith has pushed others away for fear of rejection, a fact he outright confirms in his vlog. So the fact that Shiro is his one constant, his one and only, the person he “desperately wants to see”…this isn’t about loss and moving on. If you look at how willing Keith is to sacrifice himself for others’ sakes, that much is clear. All his life, Keith���s never even considered the possibility he would be able to stay with someone, that someone would show him the unconditional love he’s found with Shiro. And he fully expects he won’t be able to keep that–“[Keith’s] constantly scared that he’s gonna do something or say something wrong and he’s gonna lose Shiro.” (source) Keith’s lesson isn’t to let Shiro go, to turn down this one positive constant in his life.

This is even more compelling when you look at the bigger picture–Keith’s feelings. Always, Keith has taken to suppressing them. He’s outright ashamed of his own emotions. We know galra experience very intense, volatile emotions, and for Keith, that’s clearly taken its toll. In fact, it seems Shiro is the only one capable of really anchoring Keith through this sensory overload. He even provides physical affirmations of comfort and gives Keith grounding methods like, “Patience yields focus.” And in Shiro’s absence, Keith becomes grievously affected by those overwhelming emotions: 

Joaquim: “He latches onto Shiro at times because Shiro’s sort of the only thing that can really calm him down and keep him in check.” (source). 

Joaquim: “[Keith’s] got this emotional side to him.”

Lauren: “It’s kind of exasperated by the fact that Shiro’s gone. Like he’s having a hard time dealing with it, he doesn’t really know how to feel. And I think he just goes back to that inner part of himself where it’s just—he can’t control his emotions. And that comes from the galra side.” (source).

Why was Keith booted from the garrison?

Joaquim: “You know why Iverson has a closed eye permanently? There you go. He was, you know…not really knowing how to cope with his galra side, so. He raged out a little–”

Lauren: “Yeah, and he was not coping well with the loss of Shiro. Things take an impact and maybe he got a little…a little out of hand.” (source).

“I am…sorry. I am so sorry I, I guess—I have a bit of a temper, so…I don’t know why I’m that way.” Time and again, during season 3, Keith is told he must put his own feelings aside for the sake of the mission: “But you know that he would be the first one to tell you to move on.” “But our mission is bigger than any one individual.” And later, from the BOM–“The mission is more important than the individual.” Most damning of all: “You cannot allow your feelings to cloud your judgement. You have in the past.” Always, Keith is forced to bottle up his feelings, to stamp out his emotions and put the mission first. He already knows loss and sacrifice, and these are not the lessons he needs to learn. They’ve brought him nothing but pain and suffering. 

What he really needs, is to realize that he feelings and personal attachments aren’t damaging, that these things and eventual happiness are all attainable for him and he doesn’t have to choose between his heart and some abstract greater good. If he follows in Zarkon’s footsteps, then we sell the story that love is fundamentally selfish and wrong, whereas for Shiro and Keith it’s proven to be a healing balm. Ultimately, Keith will save Shiro–and in doing so, prove that one’s love can be their salvation. This in turn rings true for Shiro as well, as he’s always been so ready to martyr himself for a cause. He never expected to make it out of this alive–“They’ve found me,” “Keith, if something happens to me, I want you to lead Voltron.” 

Keith is that spark that lights a fire. He’s always encouraging Shiro to keep fighting, to keep moving on. Always urging him forward, convincing him time and again he’s the true Black Paladin, never rushing his recovery and only ever wanting what’s best for him. Keith’s saved his life in more ways than one, because Keith really does believe he’ll get through this. “You’re gonna make it.” Keith gives him hope. And to kill him off when so much of his character development is integral to that? It just would just be such a loss.

And while I hope to see Shiro either return to his role as Black Paladin or copilot with Keith, there still stands the elephant in the room. The final fight, so to speak. That rift must be sealed–and I have a bad feeling someone’s going to need to stay on the other side to do it. Again, I think Shiro is the one Black was trying to convince to seal the rift. So we might see him decide to make that choice to stay behind. Again, I can’t imagine Keith ever leaving him though, and imagine it’s very possible that the two might both end up sealed away on the other side of the rift, unable to return to their own reality. But at least they still have each other. 

[sage-nebula]

I have to say I'm learning a lot about my self from loving Keith. I've learned that I would be the type of parent to yell at anyone who hurt my son, including the other children. I'm so salty at team Voltron right now, and I will continue to be until i see them apologize. I kinda hope Keith and Lotor get along though.

Fam, you have no idea how salty I am at Team Voltron right now. I’m pretty much Done�� with every single one of them at this point.

Let’s make one thing clear right off the bat: It’s clear that Keith, however much he is expressive and is pretty blunt and honest with what he says, has difficulties connecting with others and communicating with them therefore. I’ve talked before about how Keith seems to have C-PTSD, and how this is more than likely the root cause of difficulties he personally has communicating and connecting with his teammates (and regulating his emotions), given that difficulties forming and keeping interpersonal relationships is one of the symptoms of C-PTSD (as is difficulty with emotional regulation, which doesn’t help things either). If he does have C-PTSD as a result of past abuse / neglect (which as I talk about in that post, has been implied by Steven Yeun at the very least), then it would also explain things such as his tendency to be extremely independent, his tendency to close himself off, et cetera. It would especially explain if he doesn’t realize that he’s doing these things in the moment, and that it really only occurs to him if he takes the time to reflect upon it later. (At which point he’s completely overwhelmed and overcome by this trauma that he has no tools to deal with, i.e., his vlog.)

All of that said, I have difficulty blaming Keith for his “part” in this, because while it is true that he isn’t great at communicating or working with others, the reason he isn’t great is because he has a metric ton of childhood / adolescent trauma that he is dealing with and, as far as we know, has never received help with. There is so much of Keith’s backstory that we don’t know, and part of me wonders if we’ll ever even find out (something tells me Dreamworks won’t allow Joaquim and Lauren to show child abuse on screen, but we’ll see), but at the very least, the Galaxy Garrison doesn’t really seem to be the type of place to have therapists on staff (and since they’re a U.S. based military organization, and mental health care is not something we do for our vets … yeah, I highly doubt they do), and we know that there aren’t any therapists at the Castle. I mention in the linked post above that Shiro seems to have helped Keith at least with the emotional regulation part of it by teaching him the “patience yields focus” mantra, and either Lauren or Joaquim have mentioned before that, on top of being an older brother figure for Keith, Shiro was Keith’s “grounding pillar,” which also lends to the idea that he has done his best to help Keith recover and heal from his trauma, despite not being a therapist himself. (But he was a teacher, a commanding officer, and a mentor to Keith at the very least, on top of probably being found family, so he was still able to help some.) But despite Shiro helping some, that doesn’t change the fact that—again, as far as we know—Keith never received any sort of professional help in recovering from his trauma. This is trauma that spanned adolescence, through his formative years; this is trauma that shaped who Keith is as a person, and how he views the world, and while it is possible to learn techniques that can help one overcome the barriers that C-PTSD hardwires into their brain (speaking from experience), if Keith—an eighteen-year-old boy—has never been taught those techniques, I find it really goddamn difficult to blame him for the difficulties he has communicating and forming relationships with others, especially when it is blatantly obvious that he is trying very hard with what he has, that he’s doing his fucking best, and the others aren’t even trying to meet him halfway.

Because that’s the thing: they aren’t, or at least, most of them aren’t. Shiro did in the first two seasons, and presumably the time that they spent together pre-canon. We see Shiro reach out to Keith with genuine care and support multiple times in the first two seasons, just as Keith reaches out to Shiro. (We also have some choice words from Keith to hint at their relationship prior to canon: “If it wasn’t for you, my life would have been a lot different.” […] “Shiro was the only one who never gave up on me …”) Allura was also the only one who was able to reach Keith when he was grieving Shiro at the start of S3; she was the only one to offer him true support and encouragement for being the new pilot of the Black Lion at multiple points in S3 (and was the only one, iirc, to not berate or drag him in 3x03); and she was also the one who tried to reach out to him at the start of S4, both when she told him that they needed him, and when she questioned—sounding aghast—if the reason why he was pulling away from them was because he didn’t feel fit to be a leader. Both S1/S2!Shiro and Allura have, at the very least, seemingly tried to reach out to him.

But as for the rest? Lance is the absolute worst; I’ve talked about it in other posts before and so I won’t go on and on about it now, but Lance has hated Keith from before day one based purely on an image of Keith he had built up in his head as an arrogant, cocky rival. He has never tried to actually understand or get to know Keith, instead preferring to view him as an obstacle standing between Lance and his desires (which are to be the best, and to be acknowledge by Shiro). The only time this even starts to change is in S3, when Shiro is gone (and Shireplica hasn’t really settled in yet); only then does Lance start to wash away his image of Keith as an obstacle and rival, and start to truly treat him as a comrade and potential friend. However, thanks to Shireplica coming back (and everyone believing that Shireplica = Shiro), that seems to have been completely rewound (again) in S4. Once again, Keith is someone Lance grouses and complains at, someone he doesn’t want to get to know or support. Everything Keith does is automatically wrong, in Lance’s eyes. In fact, there’s a Parks and Recreation quote that works perfectly as an incorrect Voltron: Legendary Defender quote. Here we are:

LANCE: “I wasn’t listening, but I strongly disagree with Keith.”

Building on that, it’s fair to say that Lance’s insistence on viewing Keith as an antagonistic obstacle, someone unlikable and unworthy of getting to know, also strongly influenced Pidge’s and Hunk’s perceptions of him from the get-go. In fact, we know for a fact that this is the case with Hunk, because Tyler Labine said so in an interview following S2:

“I think before I kinda took the side of Lance where I was like you’re … you’re kinda a hotshot, hothead, whatever, you know, and Lance doesn’t like him so I don’t like him, right?Not don’t like him, we get along because we have to, but you know he’s not our favourite person.”

Hunk straight up disliked Keith from the outset because Lance disliked him, and it wasn’t until 2x09 that Hunk’s opinion changed (and even then, he rationalized it by saying that it was Galra!Keith that he liked, rather than just Keith, according to Tyler). While we don’t (as far as I know) have a similar quote on Pidge, it’s worth it to note that Pidge and Keith have never really been shown bonding on-screen, but instead, Pidge was one of the most vocal in S3 and S4 when it came to berating and yelling at Keith, responding very harshly to his leadership when they first fought Lotor at the end of 3x02 (“We need an actual plan!” she screams, when this is Keith’s first official attempt at leadership, they were ambushed, and she doesn’t have a plan either), and never letting up throughout the rest of the episodes, either. On top of this, there have been numerous hints throughout all of the seasons that Pidge has a crush on Lance. Therefore, I think it’s very possible that Pidge—who we know thanks to her, “Wait, who’s Keith?!” remarks in 1x01 never met Keith before the first episode—has taken the approach of, “Lance doesn’t like Keith, but I like Lance, and Lance must have a good reason for not liking Keith, so I’m going to view everything Keith does through a lens of ‘why doesn’t Lance agree with this’.” It’s not the most mature approach to take, but Pidge is a fifteen-year-old girl with a crush on a boy. Even teenage prodigies can be a bit childish and illogical at times.

So right from the get-go, Lance didn’t like Keith because he had built up an image of Keith in his head as being some terrible obstacle that he had to overcome, and Hunk and Pidge never gave Keith a fair shake either because Lance didn’t like him. Considering the fact that Steven Yeun has said that Keith is the only one whose “difficult family history” has affected the way that he is, we can reasonably assume that none of them have the same C-PTSD-induced problems with emotional regulation and forming interpersonal relationships that Keith does. In fact, we know they don’t, or else they’d have the same difficulties connecting with others that he does, and they very obviously don’t. So instead of having their brains wired in a way that makes it actually difficult for them to reach out to and connect with others as a result of prolonged trauma throughout childhood and adolescence, Lance, Pidge, and Hunk are refusing to make attempts to bridge the gap and connect with Keith because they simply don’t want to.

Then we have the others. As established, Shiro did make these attempts in the first two seasons. However, in S3 and S4, “Shiro” doesn’t. He’s dismissive of Keith, uses emotionally abusive language (“I’m sorry I had to step in back there”), and even when he seems like he’s going to support him, he takes it back almost immediately (e.g. “Yes, you can [be a leader]” … “You’ll get there someday” — like, which is it? Make up your damn mind). Rather than trying to talk to Keith about why he’s spending more time with the Blade of Marmora in S4, he instead just scolds him for it like he’s a disobedient child, because Keith’s feelings and motivations don’t matter to him (anymore). Keith’s results are all that matter to him. And yes, this is a stark contrast from how Shiro used to treat him previously, because in 2x08 Shiro asked Keith why he yelled at everyone back at the Castle. (“What happened back there?”) He cared about Keith’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations then. Now, he doesn’t. He says he’ll support Keith, but he doesn’t exactly care to listen to Keith’s reasons. Half the time he won’t even spare him the courtesy of looking at him. This is why I find it so immensely difficult to believe that this is the real Shiro, and why I say “Shiro would never treat Keith like this,” because it is a direct contrast to how Shiro used to treat him. And if Dreamworks comes out and says that this is the real Shiro, and that this is supposedly IC? First of all, that’s nonsense, but second of all, I’m livid, because of all the people in that Castle, Shiro is the only one who (presumably) knows Keith’s history, and therefore should know how to talk to Keith, how to reach him, and why it’s important to do so. Hell, even Shireplica supposedly has Shiro’s memories, so he should know as well. The fact that he knows and apparently doesn’t care is a huge problem to me, and a huge impediment to me liking him, but regardless, I’d rather it be Shireplica than Shiro. I’d rather not believe that the real Shiro cares more about results than reasons, that the real Shiro cares more about piloting the Black Lion than he does whether or not Keith feels like he’s part of the team. Either way, the “Shiro” in S3 and S4 clearly doesn’t want to try to reach Keith, either. He makes absolutely no attempt to truly reach out to him, at all. Because trust me, if he did? If he did genuinely try to listen to Keith instead of shutting him down time and again? Keith would have responded. In fact, Keith tried multiple times to talk to “Shiro” and was rebuffed every time. The problem wasn’t Keith in this particular relationship. The problem was “Shiro”.

As for Allura and Coran, well, I can’t remember ever seeing Keith and Coran so much as have a conversation, much less bond. Allura did try, as mentioned above. Even in that fake af goodbye scene (more on that in a second), she questioned if the reason why he pulled away was because he felt he wasn’t worthy of being the leader. She wanted to hear what he was thinking and feeling. She tried to reach out to him, she clearly did care (as also demonstrated in 4x01 when she saw him in the crowd and her face just falls with sadness and worry) … but because their relationship has been on such a slow burn, Allura still doesn’t know him very well yet either. This is particularly true since they went through such a rough patch in S2, when Allura’s prejudices made her act coldly toward him for a while after she found out about his heritage. (Though before anyone starts hating on Allura, remember that she learned and grew from that, so don’t hate on her, thanks.) Thus, though she does try to reach out to him in S4, she can’t do so from a standpoint of a strong and familiar bond. She’s not someone that Keith has really opened up to yet. He does answer her question genuinely, but it’s too late, and she recognizes that.

And yeah, that goodbye scene was fake as hell. Pidge says that they’re going to miss him, but since when? Again, we’ve never seen Keith and Pidge bond, and Pidge was one of the most vocal team members when it came to shredding him for his leadership decisions. Lance says, “Who am I going to make fun of?” as if that would ever be a reason to get anyone to stay, and as if Lance himself didn’t make it pretty clear near the end of S3 that the only reason why he’d choose to spend any time talking to Keith alone is because Keith was the leader, not because they were friends. “Shiro” says that they’re always there for him, and Keith does accept this with a smile, but considering the fact that “Shiro” has been shutting him down and refusing to listen to him ever since his “return”, I find that hard to believe (especially since Keith himself feels that he’s not needed, and didn’t remember any of them when he was about to sacrifice himself in 4x06). And while I can’t say anything about what Hunk and Allura said (and Coran didn’t say anything), I can point out that not a single goddamn one of them missed him AT ALL in the episodes that followed. Setting aside how they were all very willing to let him go off on a mission that could last for weeks or more without a fight, we didn’t get one single instance of them thinking about or mentioning Keith in the episodes that followed. Pidge didn’t mention him at all to Matt when she was showing him around the Castle (when a, “Oh … and this was Keith’s room” downcast moment would have put more truth behind her “we’re really going to miss you” statement from the goodbye). Allura seemed genuinely disgruntled about having to play Keith in the stupid show, and Coran said “just be really moody” as if that summed up Keith’s entire personality. None of them said anything to him (and he didn’t have any dialogue either) when they were talking to Kolivan and Keith in 4x05. Like, say what you will about the four episodes that Shiro wasn’t present in S3, but he was constantly being brought up, the team was constantly talking about how they missed him. By contrast, not a single damn member of Team Voltron gave a fucking fuck that Keith was gone. Allura, Coran, “Shiro”, Pidge, Lance, Hunk—none of them missed him at all. And yeah, all things considered, that really pisses me off.

Because again: I can understand why Keith has difficulties communicating and connecting with the rest of the team, but he also tries regardless. In 1x01 he says “it’s been an honor flying with you boys” despite barely knowing any of them outside of Shiro. In 1x05 (I think—might have been 1x04) he was genuinely upset when Lance walked back their “bonding moment” because he thought they were really going to make progress as teammates and potential friends. He genuinely and warmly welcomes Pidge back to the team, he tries to protect Allura from the Arusian’s “strongest warrior”, he laughs with Hunk at the party, he encourages Hunk in the Weblum (despite Hunk making microaggressions against his galran heritage for the entire episode), he seems genuinely disappointed when Lance says that he has only come to talk to Keith because Keith is the leader now in S3, and so on and so forth. Yes, Keith has difficulties connecting and communicating as a result of prolonged trauma in his formative years that have shaped how he has grown as a person, and yes, as far as we know he has never been taught how to deal with this. However, he’s still trying, he’s still doing his best, he makes legitimate efforts to connect with Team Voltron.

But they do not give him that same courtesy. Lance refuses to like him right from the start, and Hunk and Pidge follow his lead. Allura tries to balance friendship with being the princess / commander, and her relationship with Keith hits a brief rough patch when she learns of his heritage (that she then tries to work through). Coran and Keith are never in the same room alone together from what I recall, and while Shiro did try in S1 and S2, when he “returns” in S3, that effort is completely gone. He no longer wants to listen to what Keith has to say until Keith says he is leaving, and only then does he decide not to argue it (whereas all of Keith’s attempts at leadership were met with disagreement and shut downs, hmmm …). 

So yeah, I’m pissed as all hell at Team Voltron. To be quite honest, they don’t fucking deserve Keith at this point. Especially considering the farcical nonsense in 4x04, he’s too good for them, and I hope he stays with the Blade of Marmora for a while. At least Kolivan shows him some basic respect and consideration. And I, too, hope that Keith and Lotor end up getting along. The last thing I want is for Lotor to join the coalition since the coalition seems to have Shireplica in the commander’s seat, but I do think it’d be neat as all hell to see him join the Blade of Marmora, and to have Keith be one of the Marmorites testing him. That would finally give us our Keith vs. Lotor swordfight, too.

We’ll have to see what happens, but yeah. At this point, I think Team Voltron owes Keith six apologies. They sure as hell better line the fuck up.

(don’t reblog this, please. I do NOT want Discourse™, at all, thanks.)

[beanjuice-duh]

I keep his smile in my life

a/n: @midnigtartist‘s vague reincarnation got me thinking how Thomas felt when Hamilton died. (of course this is not historically canon whatsoever) warning: ANGST & canon-era timeline w/c: 3006

The President’s House was a lovely piece of work. It was a shame Washington didn’t live long enough to see its creation. Though he favored his New York City mansion he was a Southern man through and through. No doubt he would have loved the empty acreage of wide open spaces. A Parthenon planted on American soil. A place fit for a king and yet… it felt too big for Thomas. Thomas Jefferson, who inherited the massive land of Monticello, all 11,000 feet of space from the main floor to the cellars and hidden rooms below for the rest of his ‘property’, felt the president home to be too big. Too many floors, too much negative space to fill for a single, widowed man. He longed for his home in Monticello, an estate so beautiful that it almost masked the countless losses Thomas accumulated over the years. The home was cursed perhaps or perhaps it was Thomas who was the cursed one. For it seemed the house to precious and lovely, nestled in the state he adored, in the country he admired, only saw the worse of him and his life. Still, Martha loved that home. Their home, if it wasn’t for her he wouldn’t have constructed something so bold.

 “Sir, Thomas” A beautiful black woman entered the main office of the Presidential Home. She kept her eyes to the ground as she spoke in soft, submissive tones colored with a rudimentary grasp of proper English. “Yer’ parcel from Mister Ceracchi has arrived sir, as promised, I got it for you right away.”  

 “Bring it here, made sure no one has seen it, right?”

 “No sir, paid off the good man at the docks to hand it off to yer’ friend back in Virginia and told one of my boys to bring it here himself. He can’t read, can’t tell a soul who it be from, sir.” Sally crossed the room and placed the large box on his desk with care. “Took extra care made sure no one saw him give it to me either, sir.”

 “Good…” Thomas ran his hand through his thick hair and eyed the box. He shot Sally a narrowed eyed look and motioned her to leave. “Make some tea and leave me be for bit, darling. I won’t be taking any guests.” Sally bowed and walked herself out of the office. Once the door came together with an audible lock, indicating the iron clasp was in place and Thomas was alone. The president got up from his chair and walked around his desk eyeing the piece with a smirk. A year ago he had enlisted and personally funded an Italian sculpture to finish a project for him. A private one, so private he used a friend’s alias to help with the funding. Thomas, to most, was not a man of boisterous grandiosity. He grew up a rather reserved and shy little Southern boy. However since the loss of his wife, his return from Paris, America brought out a new side of him. 

Rather a certain “American” brought out a side of him he detested. An aggression, a nasty need to slap his macho bravado and take loud stands against him. Oh how he hated feeling heated and yet, now with the election of 1800 over and done. He had his President House in the South like he wanted, the quiet returned and he had the power to keep it that way...he found himself unhappy. He was yearning for that fire in his stomach. Thomas couldn’t seem to find it anywhere else but in that man. His hands grabbed the top of the box and ripped the carton open. Slowly he started to peeled thick, packing cloths from the piece and slowly unmasked the sculpture.

 “Oh…” His lips twitched, his fingers grasped the top of his cane a bit tighter as he bent over meeting the sculpted face at eye level. It wasn’t exactly the same...but he had to admit the likeness was physically perfect. The artist caught the air of ignorance he wanted. The intelligent, determined set eyes, strong nose, that chin and even the lines that indicated the pathetic peach fuzz he maintained. Thomas reached out, his large hand cupping the smooth underside of the sculpture's polished face. The contrast between the pearly white marble and himself was opposite as the real thing. The marble was cold against his rough fingertips but that didn’t stop him from tracing along the curve of his jawline. His fingers fanned out around his chin and very delicately his bent index finger skimmed over the corner of the bust’s lips. Lips that were pressed together in a stern frown. Lips that to most anyone else were wide with a smile or a coy smirk, a cocky curve but when it was towards him there was nothing but a sarcastic scowl or a tightly framed frown. Thomas didn’t mind. 

He lived for that disgruntled expression. His finger lingered around the lips then paused at the middle of the frown. He could feel the small dip where both of his lips met. Thomas’s entire body went ice cold, a sharp memory reared it's ugly head back at him. A memory he pushed aside over and over again. It turned his loins into a quivering wallop of nerves.

 Thomas decided to treat himself in the moment. The president of the United States stared into the empty, marbled eyes of his endorser and fiendish rival. “Hamilton~” He purred, reliving the first time he saw the immigrant man.

“Jefferson.” Hamilton looked up his cut curt and sharp. He could have sliced through a glass sheet with the tone of his voice. He sized up the tall, big haired man that waltzed into his Manhattan office like he owned it. Thomas beamed at Alex and uncharacteristically of him, Alexander stayed seated. He picked up his quill, dunking it a few times into ink; he continued to write as though he was alone. “What do you want?” 

The cabinet battle had come to a close, Alexander was revisiting his debt plan editing out parts that may appeal to the votes he needed. “Hamilton, Hamilton…” Thomas smirked, walking into his office of Treasurer. They had duked it out over Hamilton’s absurd plan to clear up the war debts and establish his bank. Honestly, Hamilton made some promising points, all of which attacked Thomas’s moral character in front of their peers. But Alexander was far from the popular vote, if it wasn’t for Washington’s shining recommendation, Jefferson was sure a vermin like him would have wasted away wherever he came from. A shame really, he was smarter than he seemed. “Can’t we cabinet members take time to chit-chat once in awhile.” “Some of us have work.” Alexander spat back, keeping his eyes on his documents. “Some of us aren’t given the job upon arrival and prance in with no idea what this country needs.” “Oh I know what the country needs, I wrote it, this little thing called the -- “ “Declaration of Independence. Truly a masterpiece, your prime, your peak so you should stop while you were ahead.” He smiled, his face still casted down. Thomas’s nose flared up in annoyance. Kid was quick. Even out on the cabinet floor he rattled Thomas’s good nature. In truth Thomas wasn’t one for conflict, which was probably why leaving America and not joining in the fight suited in so. He was reserved, so why, oh why did this creature from god knows where had to rear his ugly little head and pull out the devil in Jefferson. “Unless you’re here to read my plan, which we both know you are not because it's too many pages for you to understand, you can see yourself out of my office.” “You’ve got some nerve, kid.” He crossed the office floor, his cane clacking with every step. He stood at the front of Hamilton’s desk, casting a shadow down on his work. “You better watch your goddamn mouth or you might find yourself out of a job real soon.” He watched but Alexander didn’t make a sound. He continued to pen down his thoughts on his paper, Jefferson watching, waiting. Of course he was annoyed at the immense disrespect Alexander had for him. At the same time a good portion of his mind was fixated on how fast he scripted down his words, how his penmanship was near flawless as it was quick. Those nimble fingers writing down the feverish thoughts of a malinformed young man. “This isn’t war, Alexander, no one cares about anything that happened on your field. It's over, forgotten, you’re on my battlefield now. So I suggest you watch yourself.” “Funny,  you’re talking about being on your field but last I checked the only time you’ve been on a field is when you’re tossing around the hay with Miss Hemmings.” Thomas’s spine stiffened.

 “At least I didn’t sodomize the men I fought with.” Jefferson’s voice was ice water being doused down Alex’s head. It stung and caused his entire body to jerk. Hamilton missed a loop in one of his words, the mistake did not go unnoticed. Jefferson had hit a nerve now he was going to massage it a bit more. “I wasn’t even there but (bold) my god, did I hear how close you were to Colonel Laurens” 

“Don’t you dare say his name!” Alexander shot up from his desk. Thomas took a step back there was a fire in Alexander’s eyes. The fight of a lion who wasn’t done with war just yet. Alexander sized him up, his body tense for a fight… but this wasn’t how things were done anymore. Thomas wasn’t an enemy with a gun, he was a rival with a pen. Alexander felt the anger rise and fall inside of him, leaving only the empty hate to fester in his stomach. “Are we done?”

 Thomas got the strangest sense of delight out of watching him, it was hard to put Alexander in his place when it came to politics but morale? Thomas Jefferson was liked, reserved, the enemies he made didn’t have much to go by. He didn’t prattle and yell and beg for attention like Alexander. Hamilton exposed his ideals with the utmost aggression but exposed the points that touched him the most. “Far from it.”

 “Did you come here to talk to me about my past? Are you curious about what I’ve done. I didn’t take you to be so bold, Mr. Secretary.” Alexander growled low, “then again, who knows who you /do/ in Monticello.”

 Defiant. Arrogant. Disrespectful. Annoying. Blatantly perverse. Thomas wanted to put him in his place. He wanted to own him and destroy him, make an example out of him. The silence was weighed down by a silent tension. One that churned Jefferson’s Southern aristocratic stomach and instead of bringing a rage or ruffled expression to his face it brought a wide, toothy smile. Thomas didn’t speak, he smiled, his white teeth perfectly sculpted, gleaming. The longer Alexander stared up at his smile the more confused he got. The heavier the silence got until Hamilton could stay silent no more. “I have a debt plan to revise, I don’t have time to play your game, Thomas.”

 He said his name. He said his name with so much disdain Thomas could taste the bitterness in his voice. He was far from done harassing Hamilton now. Thomas didn’t say a word, he gently placed his hand, holding his cane, behind him and reached out with his other hand. To both of their surprise, Alexander did not flinch nor move away. His face did darken a few shades, anger? Most likely. Jefferson’s large hand curled under Alex’s jaw, his finger bent gently tilting him up so their gazes were evenly met. Thomas’s black, cold look as he asserted his dominance the best way he knew how when it came to those he deemed lesser than regular men. Alexander matched him with fiery eyes framed around bags upon bags of sleepless nights and restless days. 

He was baffled how someone could sound and look so alive but look so tired.

It was borderline charming.

 Thomas’s thumb stroked over the peach fuzz stubble  right under Hamilton’s lower lip. His tense frown loosened only just for Alexander to get a breath out past the smallest gap between his lips. His face was tired. Beyond tired it was guarded. Whatever wall Hamilton put between himself and people was wearing down. 

Thomas’s thumb paused at his lower lip. Taking action wasn’t something he was known to do easily...even around Alexander he steadied himself, studied the situation. Jefferson’s temper never flared too much at any given moment. His eyes widened a bit when a hand grazed the side of his face. He met Alex’s eyes, the tired fire never dimmed, as he ran his hand with less reserve and care along Thomas’s facial hair.

 Thomas’s smile was wicked a small fire in him sparked up that left Alexander looking less and less like himself. Thomas didn’t think he’d find Hamilton looking so weakened and tired. The weight of his work was showing, there was no one to show off his bravado too. No crowd to yell at. No one to prove anything to. He was here, alone with Jefferson. A man he despised. “Alexander~” He purred trying to stir the tension even more.

 “What” Hamilton quipped. Even in the position he was in, his smaller frame pressed against his desk as he stood and the space between Thomas was shortening fast, he defied him.

“...you are a brilliant man you know that” Thomas spoke softly, pulling his hand away. His fingers felt numb, as if he roasted them by the fire and every single nerve ending was shot. Alexander arched his brow he wasn’t in shock, he was fully aware of his brilliance. What he didn’t know was why Thomas was telling him this now. “Half of your argument was almost believable.” “I would say the same for yours but it was clear you thought that speech up from the top of your head.” He rolled his eyes, then looked away. “What you did here and in France is greatly appreciated; but while you’re trying to make a country run a mile I’m going to make it run a lifetime.” Thomas wished he had half the fire Alexander had, even if that fire was fueling the wrong side of history. “Maybe if you come down to the South I can sway your mind.” His voice was dangerously low, a gravelly sound that scratched at the back of his throat when he spoke. Hamilton leaned forward a it, unafraid of Thomas which only made the grumble grow. “I’m sure I know how to sway your mind” “You won’t, but I’d love to see you try. That is if you, a god-fearing man, is willing to do what you’re implying, Jefferson?” He was helpless. Thomas never felt a fire like his. A bite that wasn’t fuelled solely on malicious greed. Alexander truly believed in all those wild thoughts that he was going to make history. He truly believed the hours of hand aching writing and planning, he was going to change the world. Thomas...almost believed him to. He wanted to be part of whatever Hamilton was inventing even if it meant being part of the side that would stop him. How far would he go? How hard would he push. The idea of having an equal to combat his views was exciting. “Well Thomas? Are you going to tell me what a man like yourself is going to do with a man like me down in Monticello?” Thomas’s hands blanketed Hamilton’s face, the coy smirk Hamilton sported softened knowing well what was coming. Jefferson didn’t speak, he leaned in and gave him the taste of Virginia’s finest. “Thomas” 

“...Thomas?” The door opened, a short man with his shoulders hunched slightly stumbled in. He had a handkerchief to his mouth as he wandered in all of the sudden. Thomas pulled his hand away from the bust and ran it over his hair instead. He steadied himself, pulling himself out of the heated memory and back to reality.

 “Jemmy, stormin’ in on the President? A little unprecedented.” He chuckled, making a note to remind Sally what he meant by wanting ‘alone’ time. “What’s wrong?”

 James face turned pale for a second…Thomas moved his body shielding the bust from him, hoping he couldn’t see through his nervous smile. However, what Madison told him shook Thomas. Shook him hard and made him reach for the side of his desk for support.

 “Alexander Hamilton has died.”

Thomas felt his hand slip away from the bust behind his back. It simply didn’t make sense. Only a week ago, Alexander penned him a letter in secret of his next trip to the South. Only a few seconds ago, the fire that was Alexander Hamilton roared brightly in the hearth of America. In the fireplace of Thomas’s stomach now...gone? No trails of smoke, no warning. Nothing but singed, blacken marks on cold tiles. Ashes and soot of where once stood something so temptable and grand, a power that threatened to consume Thomas whole was simply...gone. In a moment. That childish smirk. The ink stained palms that heatedly touched every inch of him. The long winding debates over leather bound books. The moment of peace, Alexander looking out Thomas’s home and in that moment of his profile Thomas wanted to preserve that pensive stare in a bust. “Thomas would you...like to release a statement? An address?” Madison pressed, the silence growing unbearable now. Jefferson’s frame shrunk a bit, deflated almost. He gathered the tearless loss in his stomach and forged his own fire. He had to know, there was no other flame to keep him going. “No...no...no address have someone handle that.” He shooed his closest friend away. Madison nodded once, closing the door behind him. Before the door clicked shut, Thomas fell to his knees by his desk. His large hands cupping the cold, marble face of what once was. Shakily tracing the line of his lips, carving out with his nails where the smirk might have fallen on his face. What an ugly burn Hamilton had left on this world. What an ugly scar he left on this tender heart.

[labellerose-acheron]

Name: Queen MK

Characters: Belle Rose Beauton, Onyango Simba Lyons, Copper Thomas Russell, Drizella Catherine Tremaine, Toulouse Henri Bonfamille, Bambino Daryl Basurto, Perdita Mariel Faye, Joshua “Strongbear” Sweet, Maui, Urania of Hesiod, Attina Morgan Triton, Hercules Odysseus Persaud

**i just want to note that i wrote the vast majority of this at the beginning of the month before we got all our lovely new members, so just shout to everyone for being lovely writers and lovely people and making this community special!

Pick a thread from the past six months that you’re proud of and talk about why. Ugh, fuck, okay. I’m gonna try to go character by character bc so many good ones??

Belle: “Letter of Recommendation” - Beautibbs. Man, this thread straight fucked me up. It was supposed to be just something really chill, because Belle was a huge Charms nerd and she totally would’ve been a teacher’s pet to Tibbs. In HP world, I took advantage of the fact that Belle’s father left more recently than in current canon, and wanted to explore that and, surprisingly, Beautibbs was where I got to actually feel it the most. Belle is normally so composed, and the fact that she broke down--well, it was so real. She’d been putting so much pressure on herself and to see her crack was kind of cathartic for me, and for her. The fact that it was totally unexpected was what made it feel even more natural.

Simba: “Stays in Vegas” - Simber. I loved “Stays in Vegas” because the whole marriage thing was something I’d wanted to explore for a while. There are a lot of things about Simba and Ber’s relationship that are not what Simba anticipated in a relationship, and as someone who has spent his whole life thinking about the person he’s going to be with and what that relationship is gonna be like--it’s interesting to break that down. And I like exploring Simba’s insecurities too. Not his whole “I Killed My Dad” thing, but the fact that he is really always afraid of people leaving him in relationships, or that he is “too much” or pushes for things too soon. So, yeah, idk, that was really fun.

Copper: “Pixie’s Stalker” - Coperi. This thread was so good for me, because it had so many layers. It was Copper at his purest. He wanted to help Peri and give her good advice. At the same time, he was trying to think of Tink too, who he has kind of a special bond with. Then, thinking about his own mother, which he never really does, so that was nice too, because he does have some unexplored abandonment issues.

Drizella: “The Perfect Dress” - Double Trouble. What I really love about RPing with Kiara is that she has this natural instinct about the way a thread should go, and it just makes threads with her so pleasant. The chemistry that Zella and Ana have is so good, too. This thread was great because both of them were dealing with things that they weren’t talking about, it was all underground, but they still knew that the other person was dealing with things. It just felt really natural and totally sisterly.

Toulouse: “Miscalculations” - Berlou feat Roscoe. Big shout out to Lauren for this one, because when I first brought her the idea I wanted a duel, I didn’t mention anything about unforgivable curses or anything, but then she brought it up and I was really excited (especially because we didn’t tell Lauryl, sry lauryl.) It was just so great, because I always say Lou would be entirely ruthless if anyone ever hurt his siblings and I mean it. I finally got to show that, and it was so thrilling to write. Getting to write a really dark side of Lou was so great, and the fallout was lovely too.

Bambino: “On the Edge” - Merfawn. FUCK. This thread was so great. Like, I loved it because we didn’t have a plan for it. We just wanted them to RP together and they both run around in the woods, so it would be a good spot for them to meet up. It was Reanna who took it in such a great direction by having Ariel bring up the Prince. It was just such a good instinct and since this was one of my first threads with Reanna, it really impressed me and I just had a lot of fun with it.

Perdita: “Isn’t There Any Hope?” - Fate. How could I not talk about this thread? It started in December, but I can’t help it. The first time Paul and Perdita see each other in 4 months and it was just so full of emotion. I loved that Lauryl and I had discussed kind of the entire timeline of their backstory because it made it really easy to draw from and their chemistry felt really natural. It’s always a worry with relationships that are pre-established, there is going to be no chemistry, but man, do Paul and Perdita have it and you could just feel the love they have (had) for each other and the struggle that they were going through.

Sweet: “A Code in Process” - Sweet Mouse. Ugh, this one was just so good. Mostly because I actually got to perform surgery!! And that was just so fucking fun, and Kiara made it a blast. It really kind of solidified Minnie and Sweet’s relationship during this high stress environment and I just thought that was super rewarding. (Shout out to the Mr. Crowley arc with Nala, Tibbs, and Minnie. It’s been so much fun and I’m excited for the conclusion.)

Maui: “Helping Hand” - Celaui. I think Katie listed this one as well, and well, yeah, totally makes sense because this is the thing that everyone wants out of a starter. The relationship that was built after this initial thread was so beautiful and nuanced and is continuing to grow, and I just love that.

Urania: “Follow Up Interview” - Star Destroyer. Fuck me, I love this thread so much. It was kind of a random idea that just steamrolled into what it is now, and it’s another one of those plots that just feels really natural to me. And I love the dynamic of both Urania and Dornan thinking that the other is below them. They’re totally underestimating each other and I’d love to play with that power dynamic more and dig deeper into it.

Identify a challenge you’ve faced in this rp. Reflect on why this is a challenge for you. Are there any strategies you can develop to overcome this challenge?

Like many people, I struggle with plotting. A lot of times I have an end goal in mind, but I struggle with how to get there. For me, I don’t have a problem approaching people, I love talking and I don’t mind bothering more shy people to talk to me, but I have a problem sharing my ideas, because I worry that people won’t like them.

I’ve just tried becoming more confident with my ideas. I get characters now with secrets, or an end goal that I can kind of use as a jumping off point for plots. It has really helped because I feel like I can almost always find a reason or a thing that my character is grappling with.

Pick one of your characters and talk about their growth (we recommend choosing an older character, but it’s up to you! ) What about their story has surprised you? What are you proud of? How have they changed from their original inception to now?

Copper. Copperrrr. My lil honey. So, lots of people know that Copper is my hardest muse. I really don’t know what the problem is, but it’s just always been that way. Recently, though, he’s come so far, and I’ve kind of finally unstuck him from his shitty thought processes. I think that was the problem, now that I’m writing this lol. He was so resistant to change, but I just completely broke him down. Between Tod and Rajah and Shego, I managed to break him and now I’m building him back up, and that’s really satisfying to me.

He feels much more malleable, which is kind of where I wanted him to start with. So, that’s really nice. And making him a dad was really the right move because now he has this thing that reminds him to stay grounded and to be patient and understanding and more open, because his daughter is going to have magic and he loves her so much, so how could it be bad or wrong?

I am curious to see what he’ll be like as a single dad. Should be interesting.

Zella, also, has been so great. I really wanna push her more, but I’ve loved what has happened with her the past few months. She’s made a lot of mistakes and she’s trying to distance herself from them and start being serious about her future and she’s growing so much (even if no one but me can see it lmao) and I’m excited to see what happens.

Pick another character and talk a little about where you WANT them to go. What are your plans for them for the rest of the year?

Well, like a good mother, I have plans for all my beebs.

Belle: she is growing so much and getting so strong. I want to continue that thread for her. I want her to go back to school (I’ve started planting the seeds for that already.)

Simba: ugh, my babe. He has some hard times coming up based on a plot that will come to fruition at the end of summer. Through that I really want to explore Simba’s plurality of independence and doing what is expected of him and how that will affect his relationships and, in turn, affect how he views his “duties” to his family name.

Copper: be a dad. That’s p much it. I think Copper has had a really hard life, and he deserves to just enjoy being a father and be as good of one to Isabel as he can be.

Drizella: I want her to have everything stripped from her (in the process of doing so.) I want her to become more of a champion for women and move away from her mother’s toxic thinking. I want her to grow closer to both her sisters and to embrace her own path.

Toulouse: ugh, i just want my baby to be happy. I don’t know what it will be that makes him happy, but I know it won’t involve painting, at least not as a career, and I want him to accept that and realize it doesn’t make him a bad son for wanting something different. Also, I do want him to find love again, because tbh I like him better in a relationship lmao.

Bambi: explore his sexuality more. Embrace himself. And definitely get closer with his dad. That’s super important and I want it really badly, because Prince is really the only one who can help Bambi heal from his mother’s death.

Perdita: Well, she knows about her post-partum now, which yay! So, now I want to work on her relationships. I want her to start mending the town’s image of her, because she’s really not as crazy as everyone thinks she is, lol. Like, she is a normal person, I promise. She won’t be having any more manic episodes or huge explosions. (Unless something goes real wrong, lmao.) I also want her to get a better job, that’s more in line with her long term goals for herself.

Sweet: MORE SURGERY. Also I want to explore his past more. I want him to open up to someone about his magic. I also need him to make friends outside of the hospital, pls and thanx.

Maui: I want him to fall. I want him to totally crash and burn. I want someone to steal his hook and leave him with nothing. (Before that, though, I want him to get risen up, and to help a few people so that when he crashes, they can come to his aid and make him realize that he’s good enough without his hook.)

Urania: She wants to take over the world. I want her to take over the world. Simple.

Attina: As one of my new babes, I have a lot of plans for her. I want to explore her relationship with each of her sisters. I want her to go on lots of dates and to get herself crushed and to have successful dates too. Also, long term, I want her to like re-examine her life and figure out that she really is not happy and wants so much more.

Hercules: UGH my lil babe, I have so many plans. I need him to learn to control his strength, though I want this to be a slow process. And I definitely, definitely want him to figure out where he is from. (I have a whole idea set up, but I just need him to get there. It’ll also be a slow process, probably.)

OPTIONAL (REQUIRED FOR THOSE WHO DIDN’T DO THE LAST QUESTIONNAIRE): In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 strengths and talk about why you think it’s one of your strengths.

Setting: I have a very visual memory. Like--I can remember where on a page something was, even if I don’t remember the exact wording, and I almost always remember what people were wearing during important events. So, I know details about where someone are can be really important and I love describing like the things around someone. All my characters’ homes (and their other spaces, like Chapter Three), I have the entire floor plan of.

Action: I was always taught that movement was really important in a story. And my teacher was big about character quirks, so I just naturally incorporated it into my own writing. Body language is super fascinating to me and I love including it into movement for my characters.

Character Detail: I’ve become obsessed with charting out my character’s lives. It might because I’ve gotten older characters recently, but, I find it really important to know like--everywhere my character has lived and their families (including uncles/aunts/cousins). So, I really feel like I know my characters as people. Which makes it easy for me to slip into their skin and know how they’d react to a situation. I know their little ticks and what their motivations are.

OPTIONAL (REQUIRED FOR THOSE WHO DIDN’T DO THE LAST QUESTIONNAIRE): In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 areas of improvement.

Rambling: Sometimes I feel like my posts have a point in the beginning and then the middle is a mess and then I’m like oh crap I gotta like do an action/dialogue/have a point to this lol. I think that kind of thing can work when you have a point, go on a tangent and weave the point through the tangent, but I don’t think ahead in my posts, so that always falls flat. It’s always a happy accident if I can find a way to draw it back.

Proofreading: I know it’s RP and we all write a lot so missing a word here or there or something isn’t a big deal. But, I feel like if I read back through my posts sometimes, I could incorporate later ideas in my post. That’s just something I wanna kind of work on, so I can be more thoughtful with my posts.

OPTIONAL (REQUIRED FOR THOSE WHO DIDN’T DO THE LAST QUESTIONNAIRE): Reflect on other writers you love– in the rp or out! How have they influenced you? What do you love about their writing that you want to bring to your own?

Man, I love all y’all. Shout out to some of our new babes: Silv does so great with backstory, I’m always so intrigued, and like I said above, I love planning that kind of shit out, so I always get hype when other people do it too. Also Reanna puts so much enthusiasm into everything she does, it makes me excited to RP, and I love that. Bee also cranks out some lines sometimes where I’m like umm?? Wtf?? That was so good?? Chloe too, just, ugh her writing sometimes. It’s so minimal but not in an obnoxious hemingway-way. Her one shots are so succinct. I love reading them.

I can’t wait to get to know our new-new babes tooo!

IF YOU DID THE LAST QUESTIONNAIRE: Alright, now pick an item from the Wishlist you completed in January that you’ve started to pursue. How far are you from completing this goal? Talk about the steps you took to make it happen.

I’m getting ready to (and have started to) explore race/sexuality in an off dash kenya thread w simba and kiara and ber and that’ll be interesting bc they all relate to their race/sexuality differently. It’ll be interesting putting them in an entirely different worlds. Of course, Simba and Ber have been lots of places, but mostly pretty liberal. Kenya is a place where sexuality is not really talked about and there is a bit of hostility towards white people. It’s basically the reverse of everything they’ve known.

I think it’s really interesting to explore Simba’s relationship with his race and sexuality through this, since he loves his family so much and he doesn’t like to lie; but he knows a good bit of his family doesn’t approve. And then, with Kiara, who is half-black/half-white and gay herself, and Ber who is white and queer--it’s gonna be really interesting to see them all navigate that space and still try to find a sense of belonging within it.

Oh, as for making it happen, I have mostly Lauryl to thank, though, I mean I orchestrated some of it myself. Simba was cut off from his family (voluntarily). He reconnected with his mother in July but didn’t reconnect with everyone else until around December, when one of his cousins had a baby. Which led to Simba connecting with all of his cousins again. And then, after everything that Kiara has gone through, Simba wanted her to realize that she does have a place that she belongs, and a family who love and support her; hence why they made the trip to Kenya.

IF YOU DID THE LAST QUESTIONNAIRE: Pick another item on your wishlist that hasn’t happened yet. We’re gonna do a MOCK-PLOT!!!

Zella Follows her Dreams:

This might be cheating, since one thread has already started, but we’re gonna use it anyways.

Milla confronts her daughter about not having any plans for after school. Zella confesses she wants to be a stylist. Milla cuts her off financially.

Zella throws a fit about this and disowns herself from the family, bumming around places. (Marie’s, Jenny’s, etc.) They start asking questions Zella doesn’t want to answer sooo

Zella finally shacks up with Ella.

Ella encourages her to #followherdreams and in return Zella tells Ella to get a fucking backbone (but hopefully she’ll be nicer at this point.)

Zella applies to a few internship programs and gets one!! Then she goes to follow her dreams!!

(I would also like to include Ana in this plot but idk how Ana will react so that is something I’ve got to discuss w Kiara.)

Finally: write a NEW wish list for the upcoming half of the year. It’s fine if you use a lot from your previous wish list if you still haven’t completed them and you still want to!

Smut – well, i still haven’t bottomed as a male; but i’ve done some hetero from the female perspective so that’s fun. My new smut goal is: different positions!! Different places!! Missionary is fun and all but;; gets borin and i like body positions so it’d be interesting to try some new stuff (i am talking about this like it is my actual sex life lmao)

Slow Burn – who doesn’t love a slow burn romance? i think it makes a ship feel so much more real when characters are angsting and pining and things keep them apart, whether it be timing, one of them dating someone else, miscommunication, or just general fear of hurt–ugh just give it to me (but not for months). This hasn’t happened yet and that is #rude someone get @ me.

Murder – i want to kill someone. i want someone to kill one of my characters. either one. both. who knows. Okay seriously; Urania needs to kill someone. 

 Kidnapping – someone kidnap one of my characters. ← still relevant

Abortion – i mean, i just think it would be interesting to have a character go through/have to contemplate getting an abortion. from either male or female perspectives. i have several possibilities /eyes zella in particular or tbh lou /eyes lou too ← also still relevant

Surgery/Illness – i love me some good ol’fashion hurt/comfort. also, sweet loves surgery, so if anyone’s characters need surgery, you want them to get hurt or sick, sweet is your guy. but, i mean we all know i love fucking up my characters (gave simba appendicitis, had lou get impaled, copp got shot like forever ago who remembers that eh?) so if you wanna beat up/attack my characters get at me ← always down for this if u wanna injure ur babe

Travel – i’ve had a few characters (lou, zella, simba) take trips to other places; but i would love to get out of swynlake for some threads. why not? ← always down for travel too

Race/Sexuality – i have a couple of characters who i’d love to explore their racial identity in a negative situation. swynlake is pretty free of, like, blatant racists (excluding magick-ists), so i would be curious to see how simba/sweet/etc deals with that. same with sexuality, swynlake is pretty accepting but i’d love for them to confront some homophobia because both that and racism, is, unfortunately realistic and prevalent. ← this is always something interesting

Big Plots – i LOVE big plots and i want to do them with more than just lauryl sorry lauryl i love u. but i want big plotty plots with EVERYONE! stuff that’ll fuck up your characters or my characters or both or they’ll GROW by the end, just stuff that will be an uphill battle. who wants to fight with meee? ← still RELEVANT

In more specific terms:

I want Belle to go back to school.

I want Simba to also go back to school lol

I want Copper to learn how to be a dad, even if that journey eventually takes him out of Swynlake to somewhere he deems “safer.”

I want Zella to go to her internship or w/e and embrace her differences and unlearn the toxic behavior her mother encouraged.

I want Lou to figure out that painting is not what he wants to do w his life. I also want him to date bc I like him better in a relationship lol

I want Bambi to kind of shed his reservations about being who he is and embrace it (both as the Young Prince and his sexuality.)

I want Perdita to continue to recover from her post-partum and mend her relationship with Paul so that they can successfully coparent their kids (and fall in love)

I want Sweet to make friends outside of the hospital. I also want him to mess up and have his hubris catch up to him.

I want Urania to take over the world.

I want Maui to get bolstered up and then I want him to crash and burn and then I want to raise him up again.

I want Attina to find love, but more than that, I want her to accept that she’s not gonna be able to control her sisters and learn to do her own thing.

I want Herc to learn where he’s from, but even more importantly I want him to accept himself for who he is.

[redwhale]

Ye Olde Flint ‘n Finale Interview Round-Up.

Finale interview round-up post. Whilst there does seem to be some intenional thematic ambiguity to the final Flint/Silver scene, the showrunners also seem to have continually placed an emphasis with specifically bringing Flint to Savannah to set up his Treasure Island fate. Since Thomas’ return is linked to Flint’s fate, I’ve left in quotes regarding him, too. Choice quotes before the cut, and more excerpts/article links underneath the cut. EW: Did you always know you were going to have the Flint-Thomas reunion? Or did that happen organically? Yeah, something like it. I think there was a deliberate choice in season 2 not to show the body which, if I’m an audience member watching a show, I’m always at best suspect and I assume they’re not dead [if there’s no body], no matter how many people tell me otherwise. So we had a vague sense that that was a thing that was going to come back in some shape or another. I think it was sometime during season 3 when this version of it started to materialize and to have an ending that would marry us to the book [Treasure Island]. At the end of the book, it’s recounted by other people that Captain Flint died in Savannah alone, which begs a lot of questions: How did he get there? What was there that was worth retiring from his career? It seemed like that was starting to tick off a lot of boxes, in terms of how to make the transition from show to book make sense.

Lauren Sarner/Inverse:

LS: In your words, what is Flint’s fate?

Jonathan Steinberg: The crew’s understanding of Flint’s fate in Treasure Island is that he dies alone in Savannah in an emotionally not good place. How did he get there? We like the idea of a story about how he was put there as an act of mercy. It turns into loneliness later on, presumably when Thomas dies of old age. That made sense as a way to both acknowledge the book and spin it. To take something that seems like a neutral piece of story about where Flint ends up to be an artifact of this emotionally fraught moment between Flint and Silver. Silver is facing the choice of having to kill him or not. There’s this choice made to create a different story.

LS: But is the story true? After the camera cuts away from Flint and Silver, the men see birds fly up from that area as if Silver does shoot that gun.

Steinberg: There’s a lot of things they could have been reacting to. It was deliberate to have there be no sound to allow for interpretation.

Robert Levine: There’s a choice on Madi’s part about what Silver’s telling her. We wanted to put the audience in the same place of having to make a choice about believing Silver or not.

Do you believe him?

Steinberg: Do we have a sense of what we imagine is happening? Yes, but if I was someone else, I wouldn’t want to watch it with my interpretation coloring it.

TV Insider: Was there really a place in the colonies that rich Brits sent their wayward, i.e. gay, children?

Levine: The founder of the Savannah colony was a reformer who wanted the colony to reshape how the world treated those deemed as dangerous or different. That was a basket we could put Thomas in, and then we had the thread to use for Silver to end Flint’s war without necessarily ending Flint. It also helped Flint find his way back to McGraw [the compassionate man he was before his vengeful turn into Flint.] It’s bittersweet; there’s tragedy in it but renewal as well.

DEADLINE: One of those themes was the one of love and redemption, especially for Toby Stephens’ Flint. After what looked for sure to be his death at the hands of Silver, we see him transported to a reformist penal colony in what is now the state of Georgia and reunited with a kiss and an embrace with Tom Hamilton. Why was that the end for Black Sails’ most dominating character?

STEINBERG: Among the things that we felt from Treasure Island we wanted to respect the cannon and work the show towards was this very specific and very odd mention of the end of Captain Flint, which is only told through hearsay in the book. It explained to be that Flint died alone and in a really rough way in Savannah, and it did feel specific and something that we wanted to try to make some sense of and give some emotional context to.

I also think the idea that we would hear from Thomas again has been around for as long as Thomas has been around. I think we largely subscribe to the idea that if you don’t see a body in a show, it doesn’t matter how many people tell you they’re dead, they’re not dead, and it was just a question of how and when he would return.

DEADLINE: You really mix history and Stevenson’s fiction there…

STEINBERG: Well, there was this historical reality that felt interesting, that Savannah and the Georgia colony began, in some part, as a prison reform exercise. It was a way to create an environment in which prisoners were treated more humanely than they were in England. So, when you add those two things up, the overlap in that Venn diagram starts to look at lot like Thomas Hamilton, and it just felt clean. Especially in a show that has always been about balancing history and this fictional world from Treasure Island that, at the end, they were touching again. That there was a moment in which it felt like both halves of the show had their moment to have a part in Flint’s end and to have a part in sort of putting him in the place that he’d stay until the book starts.

Collider: Do you think that Silver would have eventually come to the same conclusion about what he was going to do with Flint, or was his decision influenced by constantly having people in his ear about it?

STEINBERG: I don’t think it’s a choice he would have made, 10 episodes ago. It feels like it’s a choice that was made only because of the two massively formative relationships that have developed and become that way, in Season 4. A lot of the people who were in his ear were largely manifestations of the voices that he was already hearing in his own head, giving him that internal conflict, whether it’s Billy or Hands or Madi, or whomever. It just felt right, as a way to finish telling his story, that his story ends with him conceiving of this act of mercy. It felt like a way to spin the way you find these characters in Treasure Island, in a way that felt interesting and a little unexpected.

Collider:

How did you come to decide that this is what Flint’s fate would be, and that we would be left questioning whether or not that’s really the truth?

STEINBERG: When you read the book, you’re told that Flint died in a very specific way, and it’s a way that doesn’t immediately suggest story. He died alone, some indeterminate period of time after the exciting stuff happened, and he died in a very lonely, sad place. When we talked about planting flags in the ground of things that we considered to be canon, and you have to account for them, that was one of them. It felt like it was important, and it felt like a challenge to figure out how we could acknowledge that and also make it work for us, and recontextualize it and make it a bit of a mystery. There’s a lot of people telling a lot of stories in Treasure Island, and a lot of people telling stories in this show. If this show is about anything, it’s about the fact that narrative can be a very powerful thing, when used properly. So, it felt right that the ending was steeped in that idea. Deadline:

DEADLINE: Having started Black Sails 20-years before Treasure Island is supposed to start, you brought the series finale right to the brink of the book, was that always the intended ending of the show?

LEVINE: You know, our goal with the ending was to get as close as possible to Treasure Island. It was to try to leave you in a place where you could finish the show and then start at page one of the book, and start reading it, and have it not only make sense in the narrative sense, but also be something of a new story for you. Because now you could fill in a lot between the lines in terms of the characters, and their relationships, and their histories.

I think, in some cases, we wanted it to feel like even if our story was ending properly for the sake of Treasure Island, that for some of them, life goes on.

IGN: IGN: I was surprised that everyone made it out of the series finale alive and, for the most part, with happy endings. What was behind the choice to not load up on the death on your way out? Jonathan Steinberg: I think there was an awareness that when watched in a certain way there was so much tragedy already in the ending. Of all the people who were lost and weren't there anymore, and how close they were to something historically meaningfully that got bargained away, that to then pile that on with even more misery just felt unpleasant. And not true. I think the show's always been a tragedy but I don't think there's ever been a feeling of wanting to wallow in it. And so I think some balance in that sense felt right. And only some of it was really our choice. By the time you get to that point in a story, the characters are talking to you a little bit about where they belong. I think the endings all felt like everyone was where they belonged. We had some say in it, but a lot of it was just letting it all be what it wanted to be at that point. IGN: Over the course of the show, were you always determined to drive everyone up to the doorstep of Treasure Island? Was it the case where if you'd read the book then fine or did you always have the goal of leading us into the novel in specific ways? Levine: I think the latter for sure. That was always the intent. In practice, it wasn't an easy thing to do. The book, when you really start to get granular with it, there are some things that are easily understood and some things that aren't. Obviously, he was just writing his own story and now here we are trying to graft ours onto it. It was certainly the topic of a lot of conversations and a lot of planning, trying to get our ending to a place where it could be as close as possible to the ideal. Which is that you've watched the show and then you pick up the book and can seamlessly continue with the story while also feeling different because you know all these motivations and backstory from our show. It now informs everything there. It was just a matter of grinding it as close as possible as we could get it to be while also making sure we were delivering a satisfying ending for the characters of the show. I feel very happy where we got. We have Billy Bones in a place where it sort of makes sense that he ends up where he ends up in the book. And Silver and Flint. Madi too, I think you can understand her to be the person that's referenced in the book in a way that makes sense. I feel like it's good. I give us a B+. [laughs] IGN: Flint found Thomas, after all these years, but he's also a prisoner now. But is being back with his true love worth it? Is that all that matters to him? Steinberg: I think we spent a lot of time this season exploring that question. Is it enough if you are forced to give up everything but you are given the connection you've been seeking in order to be fulfilled - is that connection enough? I think, in some way, that question is explored a number of times in the last few episodes and we get different answers. And I don't necessarily think that at the end of that finale those answers are fully cooked. I think they're situations that people have chosen for themselves or have been chosen for them, in which they're going to find out. In that moment, it's emotionally effective I think. To see them back together again. And to see Flint in that place. Hollywood Reporter:

HR: How beholden were you to the fates of all the characters in Treasure Island?

It depends on which one, it depends on the details. We tried to have a fair amount of discipline about certain elements of that book and treat them as canon and things we just had to find a way to make sense of. There are some other elements that I think are relayed through unreliable narrators in the book or seemed, to us, to be part of a narrative that was clearly embellished from some history that came before it. Part of the process of trying to land this story into that book was about sorting out the two and figuring out what really is canon. What's Long John Silver's story? It's not necessarily something to be taken at face value. But it was a challenge. That book doesn't contemplate 40 hours of story that come before it.

HR: Did you always know you were going to reunite Flint with Thomas at the end, or did that idea come about later in the writing process?

We had a sense in season two when he died off screen, that any character who dies off screen, you're taking the word of the messenger as to whether or not it actually happened. As someone who watches these stories and reads these stories, it feels unlikely that it actually happened. We knew we weren't finished with him. And then at some point in season three we realized it would be reasonably late in the series when he came back, so in season four it felt right. And it wasn't a choice he would make, it was a choice made for him. TV Insider: TV Insider: The series ended with several characters, including Silver and Flint, sacrificing their revolutionary dreams to be with their true loves. Are you saying that love tops every other purpose—whether fighting for freedom or revenge? Steinberg: Since Season 2, at a basic level, the story has been about the tension between a domestic life and comfort and the desire for meaning and glory and change on a massive scale. A number of the endings are about that choice made by these characters. Or the choice made for them.  TV Insider: Like Silver made for Flint. Why did you decide to reunite Flint and his presumed long dead lover Thomas Hamilton (Rupert Penry-Jones) on a Savannah prison farm?  What do you expect fan reaction to be? Levine: I think fans want Flint to find some measure of peace in this world. The fate of Thomas was always a bullet left in the gun from the time we left his actual death offscreen. The question was when and what would be the most effective way to deploy that plausibly and meaningfully. (There is some really beautiful Silver and Flint discussion across all the finale interviews, and how their relationship can be read, and it’s all very much worth a read. This post was a bit too long already, so I sadly left the excerpts out.)

[joannalannister]

Hi Lauren! I've been following you for a while after being blown away by your analysis of the houses Lannister and Stark as representing the long summer/autumn and the long winter/spring. I'm not that much into the books, but I love analysing the symbolism in the series. What do you think of 'the rebirth' as a theme for season 6? It's clearest for Jon, but it's also visible for Arya, Sansa and Bran. It fits with your analysis of house Stark & I'm curious what you think!

Hi! Thank you so much, you’re very kind! idk what anyone on tv is doing, but in terms of the books I definitely think you’ve hit on a major theme throughout the series! Rebirth is everywhere, from Daenerys’s rebirth on the Dothraki Sea as a messiah figure (I don’t think it’s coincidence that Dany’s story features crucifixions, and I definitely think she will die to save everyone), to Beric Dondarrion repeatedly brought back to life, to Davos post-Blackwater, among many others.

And yeah, House Stark certainly features prominently in rebirths. Jon’s resurrection as a second messiah in TWOW is going to be a very hard, painful rebirth. I will break my own rule and say one thing about the show: I remember being so happy from 7pm onwards that night after watching Jon Snow’s rebirth, and I don’t even care about the Wall – I’m not emotionally invested in anything going on there (sorry, all my northern-loving friends around here - I care that you care). I consider the show to be a pale shadow of GRRM’s writing, so I can scarcely imagine how glorious it will be in the books, something akin to “the night came alive with the music of dragons.” And then, like, everything will go to hell as Jon struggles with the enormity of this weight on his shoulders and initially rejects his destiny and goes off and spends 40 days in Dorne the Judaean desert or s/t. But for that one moment … GRRM really knows how to hit the high notes, made even sweeter after we’ve suffered through so many lows.

But, as you say, the idea of rebirth certainly isn’t limited to Jon. When Sansa casts off her Alayne persona, and when Arya reclaims her name (casting off and picking up, opposites but two sides of the same coin), both girls will experience a reawakening to their Stark identities and set them on paths that will lead them back to Winterfell.

Another obvious rebirth, Catelyn Stark / Lady Stoneheart, rising as a vengeance-driven fire zombie. She serves as a metaphor for the rise in Northern nationalism after the Red Wedding, but also a warning against devotion to vengeance, to the exclusion of everything else (including important matters like saving the world). “see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.“ 

Even Winterfell** itself is soon to be born again through rebuilding: “It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I’m not dead either.” And Bran … Bran is fascinating. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bran is the lynchpin of ASOIAF, the hinge of GRRM’s most important themes and plot points. We can’t win without Bran. Without Bran, there will be no spring, no rebirth at all. 

After insisting “I’m not dead,” Bran travels North into a cold, dead land, only to venture deep under the earth to commune with the dead. Bran’s time with Bloodraven is a burial of sorts. It’s during this symbolic “death” while under the tutelage of a Machiavellian sorcerer – a man who wants to save the world but who (wrongly, imo) believes that “the ends justify the means” – that Bran increasingly does things that are morally wrong. 

I’ve spoken before about certain imagery suggesting Bran will be reborn beyond the Wall. In addition to the talking door imagery, we have Chekhov’s back door to the cave, which I predicted would fall under siege at least as far back as 2014 and probably earlier (damn I’m good). "The back door is three leagues north, down a sinkhole.” I think there’s some obvious vaginal imagery surrounding this hole in the ground from which Bran will emerge in TWOW, hopefully after he pulls back from his moral event horizon and rejects Bloodraven’s methods in favor of the methods of a True Knight in a symbolic rebirth. 

I’m sure there will be lots and lots and lots to discuss regarding the Starks and rebirth as soon as TWOW comes out, when I’ll have firm textual evidence and quotes and everything. You’re welcome to ask me again then :)

**And just because no post of mine is complete without at least a mention of Lannisters, can we talk about how both Winterfell and Casterly are stone fortresses, but Winterfell is something organic, alive, dormant, hibernating, growing, while Casterly Rock is canonically cold and dark and presses down upon its inhabitants and even has a twisted malevolent weirwood that literally kills everything around it, as if Casterly Rock is a giant tomb. Someone remind me to talk about Tywin as the antithesis of ASOIAF’s rebirth themes another time. 

*

You also asked me about other blogs who might like to talk about the Starks with you, and there are lots! Off the top of my head, you might try @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly, @lyannas, @him-e, @sansalayned, @racefortheironthrone, @poorquentyn, @warsofasoiaf, @goodqueenaly, @sansasnark, and I’m sure there’s other people, so maybe people can reply to this post if you like discussing / analyzing House Stark?

[braverydefined-blog]

important thing that i’ve been meaning 2 talk about for forever  :   john’s ptsd !!   because pretty much no matter the verse ,   if it’s after his brother dies   (  when john’s 20 in main verse or 17 in modern verse  ) ,   he has it.   i’m no expert   &   don’t have ptsd myself ,   so pls let me know if i get something wrong here ,   but i have done my research ,   so hopefully everything’s alright.   (  tw for mental illness / suicide / death.  )

001.  JEMMY’S DEATH.

i feel like everyone expects that a post - war verse john would have ptsd ,   but he has it before the war even starts   (  and in modern verses too ,   but i’m gonna focus on canon verse   &   post - war au’s in this post  ).   when john’s 20 ,   his little brother   (  james ‘jemmy’ laurens ,   9 years old  )   dies in his arms after falling from a roof when john was supposed to be looking after him.   this is the start of everything.   after this he tends to detach himself from others   (  leading to his breakup with francis kinloch a bit later   &   his ensuing one night stand that gets martha manning pregnant and causes a whole other slew of problems for both  ) ,   and his depression gets way worse.   at this point ,   he’s in london studying law ,   and doesn’t have many friends thanks to his father’s influence on his life ,   so there’s no one to pull him back from this depression or try to help him cope     –––––     his only friends at the time ,   francis kinloch and louis de vegobre ,   are still in geneva ,   leaving john 100% alone.   this only makes everything worse   (  my headcanon is that during this period is one of the two times john actually attempted or came close to attempting suicide ,    the other time being when he was a prisoner of war in philadelphia.   both are times when john is isolated from those who care about him   &   has just experienced some kind of trauma.  ) 

already ,   even before he goes to join the war ,   this affects his life in a lot of ways.   he becomes more afraid of attaching himself to people ,   scared that they’ll somehow meet the same fate as his brother ,   and that it’ll be his fault.   he blames himself entirely   &   thinks he should’ve been able to save jemmy ,   somehow ,   and feels incredibly guilty over it.   he develops a fear of heights ,   not for himself but for others     –––––     if someone he knows is ,   for example ,   climbing a tree ,   john’s likely to be having an anxiety attack on the ground until they get down.   he has frequent nightmares about jemmy’s death ,   to the point where he often forgoes sleep and decides to read or work instead.   he doesn’t experience flashbacks ,   which i feel might be an important thing to note since it’s the most commonly thought of symptom ,   but there’s plenty of other ways it impacts his life.

now let’s talk about the affects of jemmy’s death on john during  /  after the war.   during the war ,   his ptsd from jemmy’s death only gets worse.   in addition to the things he experienced before ,   his nightmares now meld the jemmy incident with scenes from the war ,   making them even more persistent and even more terrifying.   he’s reckless ,   nearly suicidal in his quest for glory ,   and sees it as some kind of penance     –––––     if jemmy hadn’t died ,   john wouldn’t be nearly so eager to follow in his footsteps   ;   his self - blame from jemmy’s death is a major part of why he thinks he deserves to die before the war’s end.   it’s even easier for him to avoid sleep during the war ,   claiming he has some writing to do for the general or that he needs to go over his battle strategy one more time     –––––     he sleeps very little until he’s too fatigued to do anything else ,   and only then will he get a full night’s sleep.   finally ,   he doesn’t tell anyone about the reasons behind why he acts this way.   he fully believes if he told someone of jemmy’s death ,   they would see that it’s his fault and hate him     –––––     very few people could get that information out of him   (  if hamilton   &   lafayette were persistent ,   they probably could ,   but i doubt he’d trust anyone else enough to tell them ,   especially given the aforementioned issues with attaching himself to people.  )   

002.   MORE PRE-WAR SHIT. 

another thing that’s important to mention here is my headcanons for what john does just before the start of the war   (  because historically he joined up after the war had already begun ,   but since the musical places him in nyc before the war i go with the musical canon.  )   he was a mercenary ,   almost ,   for the sons of liberty     –––––     he killed brits they needed taken out ,   basically.   kept the tories from getting suspicious of their operations.   and he was good at it     –––––     but he was also only 22 years old ,   and had never killed anyone or been to war ,   so in summary it fucks him up.

he tends to hide it ,   as he tries to hide all of his symptoms ,   but this develops in slightly different ways than his trauma from jemmy’s death.   he’s hypervigilant     –––––     his recklessness may look like he doesn’t care enough to notice what’s going on around him ,   and he tries hard to create an air of nonchalance when he’s not too busy being angry at the british government ,   but he’s also jumpy as hell if startled.   he has angry outbursts ,   sometimes at the slightest of things.   there’s also breakdowns sometimes     –––––     he makes sure he’s alone when these happen ,   but they’re not pretty ,   and usually involve a lot of tears   &   eventual dissociation.   the effects of this are louder than the effects of the jemmy incident ,   and tend to be more aggressive.

003.   WAR SHIT. 

ok now the part everyone would probably expect.   at this point it’s pretty much just additions to the same symptoms he’s had for years     –––––     some of them change with the addition of the war ,   but for the most part they just shift slightly.   like ,   his nightmares start featuring both jemmy   &   the war   ;   even after the war is done in verses where he survives   (  which is the verses i’m gonna focus on for this part  ) ,   he hardly sleeps.   it’s easier for him to sleep if there’s someone else there   (  which sucks for him since in main post - war verse he’s lonely as fuck ,   unless elams or some similar arrangement happens  ) ,   but that also runs the risk of him waking up   &   dissociating   &   his jumpiness making him see the other as a threat for half a second     –––––     it’s only happened once ,   probably with alexander during the war ,   but he’s terrified of the possibility of him hurting someone he loves.

also ,   just as how things were the loudest ,   metaphorically speaking ,   during the pre - war shit ,   things are the quietest in their manifestation now.   this doesn’t mean they affect him any less ,   but he’s more withdrawn in how he shows them.   his recklessness isn’t as strong after the war     –––––     and during the war it could be disguised as just a soldier doing his job ,   but after ,   when he is reckless   (  in bar brawls  &  etc  )   it’s very clearly apparent as a suicidal act.   he doesn’t make as much effort to hide that fact after the war     –––––     in most verses he doesn’t think anyone would really care either way.   his angry outbursts all but stop as he gets older and further from the events ,   but much of this is because his depression only gets worse ,   and tends to overrule most everything else.   

given that treatment wasn’t really ,,   a thing ,,,,  back in the 1700s ,   he’s left mainly to deal with this on his own.   he tries to use alcohol to self - medicate but that doesn’t tend to make it any better ,   so he never really reaches a point where he’s reliant on it  /  never ends up full - on alcoholic.   if he has people in his life he can lean on ,   that makes it somewhat better ,   but as i discussed in this other longass meta ,   in most post - war verses he doesn’t really have anyone     –––––     and even if he does ,   he’s not open about his issues   ;   he doesn’t talk about it ,   and tends to shut himself away when things get too bad.   i do think that ,   if he does have people who care about him   (  poly elams!!!  )   &   that are willing to help him through it ,   he could work to make things more manageable with time ,   but in most verses he doesn’t have that   &   he’s left alone to work through it all.

i was gonna also include a part on reincarnation verse   (  summary  :   he has almost all the same symptoms but with no idea why until he starts to get flashbacks of his previous life  ) ,   but lbr this is already like 1.5k words long and that is way more than i intended to write here ,   so to sum this up  :   john’s life is tragic and he needs a therapist really badly.

[slrlounge1]

4 Creative Off-Camera Flash Techniques For Wedding Photographers

Apex Awards are reserved for those whose images are hand-picked by Curators from the top 1% of images submitted to our SLR Lounge Awards platform. We wanted to do a deep dive into the advanced lighting techniques used on some of our favorite Apex award-winning images to offer you quick lighting recipes to take on your next wedding shoot.

You’ll notice that a wide array of gear was used to create these photos, from pocket flashes to medium strobes, proving that it isn’t what type of gear you have in your kit, so long as you know how to use it to transform a scene. For each image, you’ll find the gear used, EXIF data, a lighting diagram, and a brief description of how the image was conceived.

Wedding Photography Flash Tip #1: Pin Lights

Jared Gant – Instagram | Website

Gear Used

Sony a7R III

Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8

Flashpoint eVOLV 200

MagMod Grids (x2)

MagMod Standard Gels (CTO)

Camera Settings

f/2.8, ISO 500, 1/200th

Lighting Diagram

How He Shot It

“To create this shot, I first wanted to remove all the ambient light, so I placed my couple in front of a dark background and then underexposed by about 3 stops. The only visible light was the light that I was adding to the scene. I placed my lights at 10 and 2 o’clock and pointed them at 4 and 7 o’clock, respectively. Both lights were modified with a MagGrid to minimize light spill. On my count, I had the couple shake and spray the champagne the same direction the lights were pointing, in an X formation, directly in front of me. Be prepared to get a little wet, but it’s all worth it in the end.”

Wedding Photography Flash Tip #2: Colored Gels For Effect

Megan Allen – Instagram | Website

Gear Used

Sony A9

Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8

Godox v860ii

MagMod Creative Gel Set (Magenta & Purple)

Godox AD200

Magmod MagSphere

Camera Settings

Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 @ 16mm, f/3.5 | ISO 2500 | 1/125th

Lighting Diagram

How She Shot It

For this image, it was important to show off the venue in a unique way, while still maintaining the story of Kelly + Lauren’s wedding day. The venue has really cool lights that can change colors inside, so when they changed them to purple, I knew we should match the exterior with the interior! Using two Godox v860iis to light up the trees, I then placed an AD200 behind the couple and aimed it at the door to create a silhouette. Having them twirl to create a bit of movement in the photo took a couple tries to get just right, but in about 3 minutes we had a winner!

[REWIND: 7 Creative Off-Camera Flash Techniques For Wedding Photographers]

Wedding Photography Flash Tip #3: Drone Light Painting –

Krzysztof Krawczyk – Instagram | Website

Gear Used

Canon 5D Mark III (now discontinued)

Sigma Art 20 mm f/1.4 DG HSM

Godox AD200

Drone Phantom 4 PRO

2 Flashlights (Lumecube)

Camera Settings

f/1.8,  ISO 800, 20 sec

Lighting Diagram

  How He Shot It

“The cinematographer I was working with installed 2 flashlights to his drone and they were pointed down to illuminate the ground. He flew the drone 5 meters off the ground and I placed one AD200 at 1/32nd power behind the couple to separate them from the dark background. The flash was also used to “freeze” couple during the long exposure. With my camera set on a tripod, I set my shutter speed to 20 seconds to allow for enough time for the drone to make a full circle around the couple.”

Wedding Photography Flash Tip #4: Color Temperature Throw

Jason Vinson – Instagram | Website

Gear Used

Sony A9

Sony Distagon T* FE 35mm f/1.4

Godox AD200

MagMod Standard Gels (1/2 CTO)

Camera Settings

f/1.4 ISO 640, 1/20th

Lighting Diagram

  How He Shot It

“We actually just got done shooting a wedding at the same chapel two days before this wedding. I posted a sneak peek from that first wedding and the bride from the second wedding loved the image.”

“So I knew she would want something like that. I never like to recreate images, so I went in with the idea to do something similar but with a twist. The second wedding was close to sunset, so I had the idea to light up the inside of the chapel with a big AD600 strobe. So after the wedding, I was all set up to do just that, but luck would have it, the inside lights were perfectly balanced with the sky outside. Instead, I opted for less power with the AD200 with a 1/2 CTO to match the ambient light inside the chapel. After I got this image, I wanted to try and use the low light to my advantage, so used Pye’s whip-pan technique in an up and down motion in combination with changing out the CTO gel for a blue gel to create this image.”

“So moral of the story, when you are working off the idea from another image, even if that image is yours, always try and put a spin on the idea. Then when you get the shot you want, don’t be afraid to experiment.”

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