#god forbid a woman appear on screen looking the way women actually look

[sarahwatchesthings]

Quite possibly one of the dumbest and most irritating things I've ever seen in sci-fi: spontaneously generated female characters who show up with fully styled hair and makeup.

[13uswntimagines]

Just In Case (Emily x Reader)

Request: Emily x reader where the reader is deployed in to the military and got permission to video call Emily while she is at camp and something happens to the base while on the call and it ends the call with no goodbye and then like the team seeing news articles and trying to get in contact with reader but they can’t and Emily eventually gets notified that’s she’s in the hospital

There was nothing quite like waiting for the little green dot to appear next to your Skype name. The way excitement mixed with anxiety and impatience. How your wife never knew exactly what state you would be in, only that you would greet her with a wide (probably exhausted) smile. 

It was rare that Emily actually got to call you while you were deployed. You were the assigned medic to a forward operating special ops unit, meaning you spent more time in the middle of nowhere doing dangerous missions than you did on base. She was excited she’d get to see your smiling face after almost a month (a year since she’d actually seen you in person). 

She jumped when the little dot appeared on the screen (much to Lindsey and Kelley’s enjoyment) and clicked on your little icon. 

The screen blinked, and your wide smile greeted her. “Hey darling, how’s champ camp?” Your little southern twang came through the computer. 

Emily mirrored your smile (your accent always made her swoon just a little), Turning the camera so you could see your two best friends also waving at you. “Super fun. Me and Linds beat Kelley during the scrimmage,” 

You smirked at your wife, shaking your head. You knew how competitive they all were (it had led to some very fun game nights at your house- especially with your wife who adamantly refused to be competitive off the pitch). “Bet the squirrel loved that,”

Emily shrugged. “She’s not taking it so well,” 

She again pointed the camera towards your pouting sister. You cracked a smile at the woman.

“I’ll get her next time, don’t worry,” Kelley winked at the screen. 

You looked off to the side for a second, nodding to whoever was talking to you behind your computer.

Emily wasn’t upset, hell she was more than used to the two of you never really being alone (you were the team leader after all). Instead, she took the opportunity to take in your features. Every new wrinkle of your forehead or dark circle under your eye (that looked more like a bruise or black eye at this point). Was that a new scar you kept rubbing under your chin?

Emily shook her head. She didn’t even want to think about how you got that until you were back safe in her arms. Your job was dangerous, she didn’t need any reminders. 

“How are you holding up?” She asked, drawing your attention back towards her. It was a safe question, one she knew she could ask over a live feed. One that didn’t cross any “clearance” lines you had warned her about (though she was sure that your superiors knew you told her many stories deemed classified over the years in the safety of your bedroom). 

You shrugged, your crooked smile not quite meeting your eyes. “I’m alright. Super tired. We just got to base a little while ago,” 

Your vague answer didn’t surprise her. You didn’t like to worry her, and half of your missions were pretty secretive anyway. It was one thing to share your darkest stories, the things you had seen that you couldn’t un-see, while the two of you were pressed together, and another to try and explain from a million miles away. 

Your wife knew how your job weighed on you. 

“But you’re ok?” She pressed, unwilling to let you deflect the question. She needed to know. You ran a hand through your tousled hair (one of your biggest tells), leaning forward just a bit. “Just some bruises. Promise.” You paused, leaning forward, your fake playful smile reappearing with a wiggle of your eyebrows, “What about you? Kelley’s a beast on the field,” 

Emily cracked a smile, despite her worry. “I’m good babe, but Lindsey’s got a nice one,”

“Ooo let me see,” you said, leaning closer to the screen like a little kid. Emily turned the computer so you could harass Lindsey instead of her. 

“No,” the midfielder pouted, crossing her arms. 

“Come on, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” You wined dramatically as Emily turned the computer around and Kelley butted into the frame. 

“That sounds like some teenage boy-...” She started, only to be cut off by a loud crash and the blaring of an alarm. 

“Fuck,” you hissed, looking off-screen, as more yelling started, and the screen shook. 

“Babe-“ Emily said, and you glanced back at the screen as if suddenly realizing your wife was still there. 

“I love you Em. I’m sorry I gotta go,” you said quickly, looking directly in the camera. 

Then the call ended. The screen went blank and the three women sat frozen. Emily very slowly placed her hand over where your face had been mere seconds ago. “Love you too, be safe,” 

The “please,” was softer, almost breathless. And the sound broke Kelley and Lindsey’s hearts. All they could do was hope you would be alright. 

****

Emily had learned to not read the news reports a long, long time ago, on your first deployment (back when the two of you had only been dating for six months). 

As it turned out, most of the time they had no real information about what was going on. They just reported on the overarching bad thing that was happening, or whatever appeared to be happening, and tended to ignore the boots on the ground (your words not Emily’s). 

But still, she couldn’t help but stare at the articles rolling in about an attack on one of the bases near where she knew you were stationed. Especially after the abrupt end to your semi-distracted phone call. 

“Em, reading it repeatedly isn’t going to change the words,” Kelley said softly, prying the phone from her grasp and sticking it on the chair beside her. 

Emily sighed heavily. “It’s just hard,” she mumbled, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. 

Lindsey, Kelley, and the rest of the table nodded understandingly. They may not have the same relationship with you that Emily did, but they loved you all the same. 

It was terrifying to not know where you were, or if you were alright, but they had to be strong for Emily right now. 

“She didn’t answer your text yet?” Lindsey asked, reaching across the table to grasp Emily’s hand tightly. You might not be able to call, but texting was usually a good way to get a hold of you.

Emily bit her lip, shaking her head tightly. “Nah uh,” 

She pinched the bridge of her nose. It wasn’t uncommon for you to go radio silent, especially when you were on a mission, but it had been 4 days since your phone call and You always sent her a little a-ok when you were finished with whatever you were doing. She was starting to get worried. 

“What about Kara, she’s always with her,” Kelley asked gently, rubbing her back, mentioning your best friend. 

The two of you were practically attached at the hip, but as you always said, experience in a war zone will do that go people. Kara was your right-hand man and always answered Emily, especially when you weren’t. 

“She hasn’t answered either,” Emily mumbled, shaking her head. The women at the table all shared a look. The last time Kara hadn’t responded while the two of you were away, you had been stuck doing emergency surgery on one of your guys in the field after an IED blew up one of the hummers in your convoy. 

“I’m sure they’re just busy. You know the news likes to make a big deal out of nothing. They always do,” Lindsey said reassuringly. 

“Yeah, and no news is good news right?” Kelley added, with a half-smile. 

A dark look crossed Emily’s features. She knew (and feared) what happened when things went wrong. She dreaded that phone call or god forbid an officer showing up with your “just in case” letter (one she knew you always carried with you, but she had never physically seen).

 “Only until it isn’t,” she said softly, her voice deadly serious. The women at the table sobered and nodded, equally as somber. It was a terrifying truth that was easier to ignore than confront. 

“I’m sure she’s just busy being a hero,” Lindsey said softly, leaning over to grab Emily’s hand tightly, as Kelley squeezed the woman comfortingly. 

“I hope you’re right,” Emily sighed. 

“She promised Em, and she never breaks her promises,” Kelley said, equally as serious, trying to hide just how worried she was. You swore you’d always come back to them, and she would kick your ass if you didn’t. 

*****

It felt like Emily’s heart was going to beat out of her chest. It was hammering harder than it ever had, even after a full ninety. She tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for the receptionist to find your room and clear her with the MP’s apparently stationed outside your room.

The second she got the 3 am call, it had been a mad dash to get here. The drive from Orlando to the hospital at the Jacksonville Air Force base was a blur, but she was pretty sure Kelley had broken just about every speed law there was to get her here faster (and to get herself here too, she was your sister after all). 

“I’m her wife. I have permission to see her,” Emily growled at the poor receptionist, who continued to rapidly type on her computer. 

“I’m sorry miss, but due to the circumstances I have to check,” She clicked her tongue, leaning forward to get a better look at the screen, apparently oblivious to Emily’s growing rage. 

Kelley placed a careful hand on Emily’s arm, trying to quell the brewing storm before the receptionist took the brunt of it. 

“Fuck the circumstances. Let me see my wife,”  Emily hissed, completely ignoring Kelley’s “calm down Sonnett,” (your older sister was worried too, but flipping out at a receptionist wasn’t going to help their cause). 

“I’m trying ma’am. We have protocols too, especially after a Rescue and Evacuation,” the woman behind the counter sighed, more frustrated than sympathetic. Emily’s eyes widened. Kara hadn’t said anything about a rescue mission over the phone, only that you were hurt and being transferred to Florida from a hospital in London. 

“A what?!!” Emily screeched, and Kelley grabbed the back of her hoodie to prevent her from launching herself over the counter at the frightened-looking receptionist. 

Before the woman behind the counter could respond, your very tired-looking best friend appeared around the corner. 

“Hey, Em. She’s back this way,” Kara smiled tightly at your wife, nodding towards the receptionist and gesturing down a hallway to her left. 

“Oh thank god,” Kelley sighed, practically shoving Emily into Kara’s arms. Kara caught her, and held her hand out to your older sister, carefully beginning to guide them down the maze of hallways. 

“I have to warn you, she’s in pretty rough shape,” Kara said softly as they approached the door, her hand pausing on the handle to look both women in the eyes. Emily and Kelley both nodded solemnly, steeling themselves as Kara gently pushed the door open. 

“Damn,” Emily and Kelley gasped as they stepped through the threshold and took in your sleeping form. 

Your normally strong form looked so small under the mass of tubes and wires surrounding you (but Kelley notes that you were very much breathing on your own). The whole left side of your face was bruised, and the left half of your chest and arm was wrapped tightly in gauze. 

Emily very carefully approached the bed, her fingers hovering over your right side, afraid to touch you and cause you more pain. 

“Oh baby,” She breathed out, settling into the chair beside your bed, finally grabbing your uninsured hand very gently and pulling it to her lips. 

She heard Kelley ask “What happened?”, but her eyes never left your face. 

Kara blew out a long breath, seemingly trying to steady herself. “Our base got attacked- retaliation for freeing a village probably,” 

Kelley raised her eyebrow at the woman. She wanted to know everything, not the edited version. 

Kara swallowed hard before continuing. “We split into teams. One to pull security and one to evacuate the hospital. We lost communication after one of our own went Rogue. In the chaos, an intruder slipped through us and went to attack the hospital wing. Y/n got ambushed trying to get an injured private to the helicopter,” 

Silence stretched between them as the soccer stars tried to take in the story. It was so you to do everything in your power to help someone else, even if it was dangerous or detrimental to you. 

“How bad is it,” The words left Emily’s mouth barely above a whisper, muffled slightly by your hand still at her lips. 

“She got hit 3 times. One was a through and through to the shoulder. It chipped her collar bone, but mostly just got some soft tissue. The other two were worse. The through and through in her leg nicked an artery, and the other one in her chest did some damage. Luckily she was able to drag herself back to the hospital wing and they could get her stable. The PJ’s got her to London and they did emergency surgery,” Kara listed off, rubbing the back of her neck and closing her eyes tightly. 

Emily didn’t doubt that seeing you like that was probably one of the most difficult things Kara ever had to do, and she felt bad for making her relive that.  

“Is she gonna be alright?” Kelley asked after a few seconds, cracking with emotion. 

Kara nodded. “Yeah, Lena looked over the X-rays. Said that she would need a lot of rehab, but she should make a pretty full recovery. Right now she’s just sedated to help with the pain,” 

Emily felt her heart unclench at the news, made even sweeter by the mention of Kara’s own wife. Lena was a straight shooter, someone who was brutally honest and equally deft at her job (which was part of the reason the two of you got on so well). She wouldn’t bullshit them and give them false hope. 

“Thank you,” Emily croaked. Kara snorted and shook her head. 

“Wasn’t me. She promised you she’d make it and she wasn’t about to let you down,” 

You had dragged yourself nearly 800 yards to the hospital wing, and the only thing they said you said was that you couldn’t die because you swore to your wife you’d come home. Kara was convinced that you had survived purely on adrenaline and stubbornness (that and dumb luck). At least she hadn’t had to deliver your just in case letter. 

Emily smiled softly at your sleeping form, allowing the steady beep of your heart and your warm hand to comfort her “I know,” 

It was easy to relax now that you were here safe in her arms. Sure, you would have a long road to recovery (and getting you to actually follow the doctor's orders was bound to be a fight), but you were alive with no imminent threat hanging above your head. 

She would be there for you every step of the way.

[youamongthemelissas]

hi mwah <3

may i have a scenario with zoro being a brat who doesn't want to go down on his girl, but she just puts in his place by sitting on his face? 👀

ara ara, it seems that the fifteen hours I've been sleeping have made me reap the rewards uwu

well, I really hope you like the result and that those 3,3k words make up for the delay in my writer's block. i've only reviewed it a few times because i'm really really sleepy right now, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes! :(

warning: oral sex (giving and receiving), fingering, face sitting, etc. only for +18. smut everywhere

Zoro and I had known each other for almost two years, but he changed his position from hookup to boyfriend two months ago. Our chaotic relationship started at a horrible party. Everything that night was horrible, except when the handsome guy approached me offering his help when some ramshackle human being spilled water on my shirt. To complete my disaster, the outfit I wore was white and cotton, so it marked the contours of my breasts just right. Damn day I decided to leave my house without wearing a bra. Too embarrassed, I just crawled into the bathroom – which didn't even have a lock – and waited for the crowd to dwindle or for my shirt to dry so I could get out of that unhealthy place. But fate didn't have the best plans for me, as I saw the bathroom door open and a man enter that cubicle.

"This is the ladies' wc, you know?" I informed the guy angrily.

“I know,” he replied simply. "I saw the whole scene, so I decided to come make sure you're okay."

I arched my brow and stared at him with half-closed eyes. Was he feeling okay? I looked for signs of drunkenness in him, but his voice was steady and he looked too sober.

“Very nice of you, but you can't just lock yourself together with a strange woman in a cubicle. You know, I can interpret this as sexual harassment!” I snapped.

“Oh, fine. I was going to lend you my shirt so you could wear it and wouldn’t have to wait for yours to dry, but I see you don't need my help. Bye and sorry for the inconvenience,” and so he left, not giving me a chance to respond.

I cursed the Universe, but then I stopped myself because a tarot reader had informed me that a situation like this could happen throughout the week and I didn't listen. In the end, it was my fault for being a stubborn and skeptical one.

I really couldn't tell how long I was locked in that fetid cubicle, but when my t-shirt dried enough not to leave me practically naked from the waist up, I walked out and saw the same guy as before, he was talking to a red haired girl, actually it looked more like an argument was going on between them by his annoyed expression and her restless gestures. Would she be his girlfriend? Was the discussion focused on me and the bathroom incident? Well, I wouldn't stay there to find out and risk getting hit by the girl for something that wasn't my fault. He was the one who entered the ladies' room with an unknown woman!

And my disastrous night ended when I lay in my bed and turned off the light to finally sleep and erase all memories of the party from my head. But that boy's face has not left my mind.

The days followed normally, and when I was already forgetting the cool guy, I saw him for the second time in a bakery. He wore the same shirt that day of the party and sweatpants. His sleepy face gave away that he had just woken up and had just left the house to go buy bread for breakfast. He saw me but pretended not to. I got the feeling I should have apologized for the misunderstanding, but he was already making the request. Luckily, we were assisted together as soon a second attendant appeared who assisted me as well.

As soon as we paid the bill, we silently left the place and I got a chance to talk to him as we were heading in the same direction.

“Hey,” I called him, being ignored. "Boy, wait a minute"

“What is it, girl?”, he snapped at me sharply.

“I wanted to apologize for the misunderstanding… Seriously, I was just freaked out by a guy walking me into the bathroom…”, I was sincere.

"It's all right. Go on with your life in peace.”

“And you had a girlfriend, right? Like, you were still wrong in the end…” I couldn't hold my mouth before needling him.

This time he stopped abruptly and turned to me, making me smack my face into his chest.

"Girlfriend? First you accuse me of sexual harassment and now besides being a harasser you think I'm a traitor?”

“I didn't accuse you of anything! Except the girlfriend part. You and that red haired girl seemed to be fighting really bad, like boyfriends do,” I clarified.

“Redhead girl?” he seemed to search his memory for what I was referring to. “Nami? God forbid me dating that devil woman! She's not my girlfriend, and we were fighting because…”, he stopped mid-explanation. “This is none of your business, girl. But she's not my girlfriend,” he ended the pseudo-argument.

I nodded and went on my way.

“How long will you follow me? Now I can interpret that you're a deranged stalker”, he told me right after we turned down the same street, after walking close for a few meters.

“I'm not following you, my house is on this way”, I replied.

And that's how I found out that we lived in the same condominium.

Although I clearly remember the first two times we met, I can't say when exactly we started to change our cat-and-mouse relationship and elevate it to a more intimate one. Maybe it was when he fucked me for the first time in the laundry room in the building. I was taking my clothes out of the machine while he put his clothes in another one, and then we looked at each other and as if we had the same idea, he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me up to put me sitting on top of the machine he had just finished stuffing with his own clothes, putting it to work and taking me in a kiss while taking off my panties. When he entered me, I moaned loudly, but the sound was drowned out by the shrill noise of that old machine. Zoro confessed to me later that he chose precisely that one so my moans could not be heard. I think it was the most insane thing I did, because at any moment someone could come and catch us, but luckily for us that only happened after Zoro had cum on my thighs and taken me off that old thing. It was weird walking with my legs sticking together because of his cum, but I didn't have time to clean up, just lift my panties and straighten my skirt before passing the newcomer, who didn't seem to have noticed our presence.

After our first sex, we didn't get apart anymore. We couldn't be alone as we caught fire and had sex wherever we were.

As time went by, we calmed down and our meetings became more spaced, but our chemistry didn't extinguish even a little bit during these almost two years, on the contrary, it only earned us the beginning of dating. And we became more than just hookups, we became friends too, those who know about each other's lives and I got to know Nami, the red-haired friend he was fighting that night at the party. I came to discover that they could never be boyfriends, because she loved money and women.

Everything with Zoro was almost perfect. He was a good boyfriend, and even though we're two hotheads, we never fought. There are always dialogues in our relationship and this helps a lot to avoid unnecessary fights. Besides, sex is wonderful, everything just right, except for one small thing that bothers me. We combine a lot in bed, I always try to please him and give him pleasure at all times. I've lost count of how many blowjobs I gave him and how many times I let him cum in my mouth, but the problem is that he never even gave me oral sex. And that makes me a little frustrated and scared. Was the problem with me? I took good care of myself, but he always shifted position when I tried to get him down on me.

One day, while I watched him playing his favorite game, I stroked his hair.

“Babe?”, I called him.

“Hm?” he mutters, not moving an inch.

“Do I disgust you?” I asked bluntly.

"What? Where did you get this ideia?”, he turns abruptly to face me, doing something wrong in the game because soon there are some curses directed at him in the chat.

“It's just a question.” I shrugged.

“It can't be just a question. For you to ask me that, there's definitely a reason behind it,” he replied, no longer looking at the TV screen, and not realizing that he was being offended by the other players. Damn virgins.

“Nevermind…”, I hesitated, unable to let myself be affected by the comments, which weren't even for me. "Your game friends are very angry with you."

"Fuck them, the issue here is you.", he held my face with both hands, making me look at him. “Tell me what made you think about it,” he looks deep into my eyes, almost reading my soul and I immediately regret opening my mouth. But it was too late, lying was out of the question, because he knows very well when I lie, so I had no choice but to tell the truth.

“You never gave me an oral. So I deduced that the problem is with me”, I said at last and he let me go.

It was his turn to shift the focus to another corner.

“It's nothing to you, it's me who is the problem. I've never done that to any women, and in the movies I see them “squirt”, what if that happens?” He looked a little frustrated and embarrassed.

I got up from my seat and stopped standing in front of him, making him glare at me.

“You have to stop thinking real life is a big porn movie, Roronoa,” I said, putting my index finger on his forehead. “I really admire you knowing how to fuck without looking like a caveman”, I said that last sentence more to myself.

“Hey!” he heard and seemed offended. "It hurts, okay?"

“Sorry, but that is nothing but the truth”, I rolled my eyes.

Even though he didn't suck me when we had sex later, the seed of doubt was already planted in his head.

I know this, because days later he was more committed to making me cum. Before he seemed to care only about his pleasure, but after our conversation, he even put his fingers to work on my clit – which were presented by me –, as he moved in and out of me, until I came on his fingers. It felt good, but I wanted to feel his tongue down there, and wanted to see his head between my legs. I wanted so badly to squirm in pleasure beneath him as he sucked everything I had to offer him.

When the dream day finally arrived, all my thoughts turned opaque as I felt him hug me from behind and lean his body against mine as his lips found the skin of my neck.

“Do you know how hot you look wearing my shirt?” he asked huskily, pressing me closer to his body, making my ass fit into his crotch. And I already felt it was hard. "Even more so I know you're not wearing anything under it."

I couldn't hold back the moan as I felt his fingers travel up my waist until they reached my breasts under the fabric. He squeezed it first and then circled the nipple with his finger, making it hard. He knew how sensitive I was in that area. And to my delight, he lowered his other hand to between my legs, and slid it to find my sex, which was already starting to get wet.

When I was in his apartment, I liked to have just one piece of clothing. Walking around his house half-naked was one of the most satisfying things for me, because I knew that anytime we were going to get laid and being too undressed would get in the way of the process. So I opted to wear just a pair of panties or a T-shirt with nothing underneath, as was the case now.

He removed his hand from my body and pulled me away, but only to pick me up and take me to his bed, where he laid me down and leaned over me and started kissing me.

His kiss tasted like the whiskey he drank a few minutes ago. I ran my hands over his body and scratched him lightly on his back, inside his shirt. He ended the kiss and rolled off of me, but only to undress. I watched the scene intently, looking at each piece of skin that was revealed to me little by little. When he took off his underwear and his cock popped out, I felt my mouth water. He was there in front of me, completely naked.

I got rid of his t-shirt I was wearing and crawled until I was close to his body, took his hard member in my hands and started masturbating before putting it in my mouth. Unconsciously, I reared my hips up, and ran my tongue over the glans, tasting the pre-cum. Without waiting, I felt him lean over to smack my ass, and it made his cock almost hit my throat, making me gasp. I pulled it out of my mouth, gasping for air, but went back to sucking on it. When I relaxed, I put him in one piece and this time I got used to that intruder so deep, and I heard him grunt. He loved when I swallowed him like that, but before I could make him cum, he gently withdrew from my mouth and lay down on the bed, turning me to stand beside him.

He kissed me again and wrapped his hands around my waist and slid them to my ass, where he slapped my ass, making me moan into his mouth.

We made out until he was on top of me, making me feel his hard cock on my thigh as he kissed my neck and played with my nipples.

I was already throbbing with lust, and it got worse when he slid his fingers to my clit and touched his fingertip to that sensitive spot, making me arch into him. But he did nothing but tease me, and I wanted him to use his tongue this time to bring me to orgasm. For that reason, I forced his head down and he got the message, surprisingly trailing kisses down my body, but before he got there he stopped and returned the kisses to where they were before, leaving me frustrated.

I sighed in annoyance, and shifted our positions, getting on top of him. I positioned myself right on top of his cock, and I fit my pussy there, not to slide him inside, but to rub myself there. He liked my boldness a lot, but I abruptly left the place until I was positioned right in his mouth. I felt him startle under me, but it was too late because I was already sitting pretty well in his face, with my cunt snug in the place where I always wished it was. He showed no resistance, just ran the tip of his tongue over my clit and I closed my eyes, sighing.

At first, he was stuck and a little lost, but little by little he got used to it and now his whole tongue passed through my intimacy, sometimes sucking painfully. It was good for me and it was good for him too, because I felt him grip my thighs tightly, holding me in place as he penetrated me with his tongue. I saw stars. When he smeared the entire place and when my body showed signs of the first orgasm, nimbly and using a little force he took me off him and put me back on the bed, with my back to the mattress. I thought he had given up, but he again slid down my body and positioned himself between my legs, giving me that wonderful sight. Again he pressed his tongue against my clit.

Seeing him there, with his head buried in the place I'd always dreamed of, made a fire burn in my stomach, and my brain worked tirelessly on the new sensations his mouth was gaving me me.

And he looked very committed and thirsty. He was like someone who had gone days without even a drop of liquid and who had just found an inexhaustible source of pure water. And I was that source. And just the thought of having him thirsty for me was enough to give my boner more ammo and make my hips start working nimbly, looking for more contact. Zoro shaved every day, but there were already two that he didn't shave, so the growing hairs scraped the inside of my thighs when I moved my hips, leaving goose bumps.

His tongue explored every corner of my intimacy and his arms closed tightly around my legs as he brought one hand to one of my breasts and rested it there, squeezing every now and then as my body showed signs of orgasm.

He didn't let go of me when I came for the first time or when I screamed for the second. Instead, he circled my waist with his arms and held me immobile in place as he sipped every drop that dared escape from me. He showed no signs of satiating even when I scratched his shoulders or slapped him in the arms to get him to let go. In fact, it felt like it was just an extra boost for him when I was on the verge of madness, writhing in his mouth and thrashing around aimlessly for support and control of the spasms in my body.

He was both a sadist and a masochist at the same time, which is why I was so attracted to him.

When he released me, I was almost voiceless and completely shaky. I wouldn't be able to form an intelligible word, and his playful smile, which I saw blurred due to the tears pooling in the corners of my eyes, gave away his satisfaction at seeing me in that state.

When I finally composed myself and my heart stopped beating in my chest, pulse, and throat, I took a deep breath and stared at him. He was lying beside me, looking at me and running his hand down my face, lovingly.

“You look beautiful when you're coming”, was the first thing he said.

“You look handsome between my legs”, I returned the answer in the same tone.

He smiled and massaged his jaw, as if in pain.

“Too bad it takes so long to cum, my chin hurts”, he complained and I rolled my eyes.

“You didn't leave me after my first orgasm,” I accused. “For those who were afraid of giving me oral sex, you seemed to enjoy it a lot”, I continued, with a pout.

“I had no idea you were that tasty,” he said, smiling slightly. “Now you better get ready, because your taste has gone straight to the top of my favorite flavors”, he assured me, as he pulled me by the waist to glue my body to his.

I kissed his lips softly, and touched our foreheads, and he kissed me again, obscenely. It didn't take me long to be on my knees for him, determined to reward him for the multiple organs he gave me.

Seeing him from above, with his eyes closed and his expression filled with pure delight, made me want to feel his cock in the back of my throat to the point of gasping for air. But he refused to cum inside my mouth. He lifted me up and positioned me on all fours on the bed and placed the condom on his cock.

When he sank into me, I moaned loudly, too happy that my sex life with my boyfriend was perfect.

[aeondeug]

So while I was reading GtN and HtN I occasionally stopped to be like “Wow, it’s great how these can be just so gay!” And like. That is really great. Super great. I love that about them. But I also remember at least once stopping and going “Wow, it’s great that there’s no homophobia here!” And like at the time I just kind of nodded along to myself. Around when I just finished GtN, I remember being very fond of the bit after the book with like the guy explaining like. The deal with necro/cav relationships in The Media and throughout history and how actually none of these things have ever been romance. This is just a pure relationship, unaffected by naughty things like ROMANCE. WHY DOES EVERYTHING NEED TO BE ROMANCE?! shouts the author of this paper. And I laughed at this. Because it reminded me a lot of people who do this shit with queer love. They do it with history and just go “Why does Sappho have to be gay, why can’t she just have passionate feelings for her BFFs”. Which is mindbogglingly stupid to me and anyone who has so much as LOOKED at some of the poem fragments. But like people do say that shit. And they do this a lot over like queer anything in fiction unless it like punches you in the face with rainbows immediately. “Why do Bubblegum and Marceline have to be gay? They’re just friends!” is a take that I legitimately saw on the day of the finale. And not just once. I saw it a few times. And I’ve seen that happen over so many ships in so many things, whether or not the ships end up canon. “Why does it have to be gay?” and the specific sort of outrage over it I’ve seen in essay length posts is just common, and that sort of outrage reads very similar to the argument that dude made about necro/cav relationships. It reads like that and close enough so that I made a joke about it even. I didn’t think too, too much on this at first though because I mean. We have Abigail and Magnus. They’re right there. A man and a woman, a husband and a wife. So like I was able to simultaneously go “omg it’s just like those why can’t they just be friends WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE GAY people” and also “wow it’s nice that there are spooky negative queer experiences of SADNESS here”. Which has got me thinking. Ok. So we have that essay. Now what else do we have in the books? I suppose could point at the entirety of Gideon and Harrow’s just furious refusal to admit that they might actually be in love with one another. Even though it appears to be obvious to literally everyone else in the galaxy. And is obvious to the readers. Hell, Gideon even has a moment of feeling like she needs to tell Harrow something the day before she dies. Something which is heavily romance coded, I don’t know the word for it. But like a “Wow I feel a need to tell them something and it’ll be my last shot” before a death just kind of always reads “It was an ‘I love you’. They needed to say it and didn’t get a chance”. So we’ve got that and, specifically, we’ve got their outrage at the suggestions. Gideon stresses that she’s JUST Harrow’s cav. And she’s very fucking insistent on that. Part of the why is that she knows Harrow is in love with a fucking dead girl in a casket but like. It just hits a certain way. There’s also Harrow’s just repeated disgust she expresses towards the concept of necro/cav relationships. She needs to explain away to herself that like, well, Abigail and Magnus were ALREADY married before he was named her cavalier primary so maybe that makes it fine. And even then she’s not like super duper comfy with the idea. A taboo has been broken, Harrow feels, and she needs to get really rules lawery to find any comfort with that. Other small things that feel of note to me here are the nature of the ways we know that these two are gay outside of like. Their weird thing for one another. With Gideon we’re introduced to it basically immediately with her joke about titty mags. Harrow specifically makes a comment at some point that some of the magazines Gideon gets are very gross, yes. Her interest in women is explicitly made sexual from the get go, and the idea that The Gays are just weird sex fiends and there is no love there is a frequent one. With Harrow meanwhile we know because she says she’s in love with the girl in the Locked Tomb. Who is very much dead. A thing that is fucky enough that like there is an entire song and dance about “GIDEON THE FIRST IS MAKING OUT WITH A CORPSE??????” and how Harrow is a hypocrite for being so offended by that all. Also the girl is behind the door. She is something that isn’t supposed to be seen or known about or, heaven forbid, woken up. That is all the ultimate taboo and Harrow not only fucking broke that but she looked at the girl and went “Wow I’m in love” on the spot. So we have this collection of things that could be read as some sort of metaphor for like...The taboo nature of queer love. “Why can’t they just be friends?” and issues of purity and the lack thereof. And we have characters who are very clearly in love but who can’t just admit that because they think there’s something fucking wrong with that. Gideon’s JUST her cav and Harrow is also in love with a dead chick. We also have Magnus and Abigail around who are just like. Happily married and fine with things regarding their whole necro/cav aesthetic. Ianthe doesn’t seem to give a shit that Gideon’s into Harrow at all. There’s a fondness for necro/cav relationships enough that there’s an entire romance genre centered on them and like characters in the cast are fond of those, some of them. Things appear to be Fine, at least as far as their friends are concerned. Maybe the asshole writing the essay that kicked this pondering off would have an issue and a stuffy old grandma would pitch a fit. But like their friends don’t have a problem with necro/cav shit. But we still very much have Gideon and Harrow being “Well no. We’re just a necromancer and their cavalier. GOD.” Now part of what got me thinking about this is that I recently decided to start watching Bly Manor. Because fuck it we haven’t yet. And specifically part of why is I remember seeing an analysis of it done by Rowan Ellis which had this bit where like the argument that “Bly Manor proves you can do queer stories without homophobia being a part of it!” is brought up and like...Ellis is like “Ok but we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out”. And lo and behold in the first episode we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out. In an episode showing that she’s like just unable to go back home for...some reason. And that she has some sort of difficulty with her relationship with her mother. No, the show is not having the character literally go “Wow I sure am in the closet and I kind of fucking hate that woe is me I am so gay”. But figuratively? It’s all over the place in that first episode. I’m not sure about the others because I haven’t watched them, but it is there in the very first one. And that’s something horror does very well. It takes things that are scary and uncomfortable and bundles them up in shades of metaphor. It hides them from  you by showing you the thing cleverly disguised. Maybe you do not notice it the first time through perhaps. Maybe you felt that a certain thing like the closet scene resonated very hard with you and you’re not sure why. But you perhaps don’t consciously go “Aha! It is the horror of being closeted!” Upon looking back on it or back through it though you might notice it. And be like “Oh that was there. Holy fuck.” Now maybe you’re also someone who isn’t like. Comfortable. With straightforward depictions of specifically queer suffering. Maybe it’s just too scary. But with this show hiding it in a metaphor you got to sit through that. You got to be brave enough to sit through a very, very scary thing. And afterwords you go to think about it. This is the power of metaphor and it’s something horror has been very, very good at doing for ages. Maybe racism or homophobia or whatever else is too nerve wracking for you to look at face on in media, but maybe you can watch a movie or a show where the horror of those things are very much there but cloaked in metaphor. And so maybe we are getting that with Gideon and Harrow’s weird issues around how “taboo” their feelings are. Two people who are just unwilling to believe that it might be that thing, in part because that thing is “taboo”. Except instead of the taboo being literally “They’re lesbians, Harold,” it’s instead cloaked in a comforting metaphor of necro/cav relationships and some dude who is really fucking offended at people’s space ao3 fanfictions about his historical favs. Which is important because every fucking scrap of anything one gets is an argument. It can’t just be that they’re in love. It’s that you must PROVE it and some asshole with a degree or just a bone to pick is going to come by and be like “WHY CAN’T THEY JUST BE A NECRO AND A CAV” about it all. And like I’m someone who’s known they’re into other women for a long while now. At least half my life. We have conquered that hurdle. But we haven’t entirely unpacked all the weird little societal bullshit that is still in there. Hiding. Lurking. And that societal bullshit specifically frames that sort of love as something gross and taboo and “Why Can’t They Just Be Friends?”. With that last thing hurting a lot. I’ve constantly run across people going “Why can’t they just be friends?” or going “They just have a sisterly relationship!” about things I shipped. Even when those things involved shit like the characters kissing on screen or mentioning that they’ve been dating in a sequel series. I can’t simply like my ships. I can’t simply see myself in romance. Because my sort of love is so taboo that it is, in itself, a debate. Maybe being shown the thing cleverly disguised as another thing might help me unpack that. At the very least it helps me look at it. When it’s something that hurts a lot to this day.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)

This review contains spoilers.

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive was released in recent years by the Criterion Collection, that great home video company that's probably the OG of boutique labels, known for putting out acclaimed, significant or otherwise interesting films in really nice packages. (For some reason I had been thinking they put this out only last year until I actually looked it up. I guess my sense of time has been a little warped as of late, and as much as I'd like to tie this review into pandemic-era life, the fact is other labels have captured my attention lately, as can be evidenced by my embarrassingly large and extremely shameful Vinegar Syndrome haul from their Halfway to Black Friday sale from a few months ago.) Now, nobody in 2021 is going into this movie truly blind, but if I happened to pick up the Criterion cover and perused the back, aside from the list of special features and disc specs, you'd see the below (which I grabbed off their website):

Blonde Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia (Laura Harring). Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project. David Lynch’s seductive and scary vision of Los Angeles’s dream factory is one of the true masterpieces of the new millennium, a tale of love, jealousy, and revenge like no other.

Now, this is a tough movie to evoke with only a blurb, but I'd say that does a pretty respectable job. I however do not own this release. What I do own is the barebones Universal DVD that was released a few months after the movie, back when going into the movie blind would have been far more likely. This is the description on the back:

This sexy thriller has been acclaimed as one of the year's best films. Two beautiful women are caught up in a lethally twisted mystery - and ensnared in an equally dangerous web of erotic passion. "There's nothing like this baby anywhere! This sinful pleasure is a fresh triumph for Lynch, and one of the best films of the year. Visionary daring, swooning eroticism and colors that pop like a whore's lip gloss!" says Rolling Stone's Peter Travers. "See it… then see it again!" (Time Out New York)

Now, the previous description probably couldn't fully capture the movie's essence, but this one makes it sound like an erotic thriller. (Could you imagine somebody going into this thinking this was like a Gregory Dark joint? I say this having seen none of his thrillers and only his hardcore movies, although I must admit an MTV-influenced Mulholland Drive starring, say, Lois Ayres is something I find extremely intriguing.) But you know what? Good for them. Among other things, this movie, with its two all-timer sex scenes, feels like one of the last hurrahs from an era when mainstream American movies could be unabashedly horny, before we were sentenced to an endless barrage of immaculately muscular bodies in spandex (stupid sexy Flanders) somehow drained of all sex appeal (god forbid somebody pop a boner...or ladyboner, let's be egalitarian here). I apologize if I'm coming off as a little gross, but having been able to barely leave the house for practically a year and a half, watching sexy movies like this is one of the few remaining thrills at my disposal. Please, this is all I have.

Now I suppose I should say something about the movie itself, but it might be a challenge given how elusive it is in certain respects (Lynch is notoriously cagey about offering interpretations of his movies) and, as a result, how heavily it's been scrutinized over the years. No doubt any analysis I offer as to the movie's overarching meaning will come off extremely dumbassed. What I will note however, is that for whatever reason, the scene I remembered most vividly is where Justin Theroux walks in on his wife with Billy Ray Cyrus, particularly the candy pink paint he dumps on her jewellery as revenge. We've been following Theroux, a movie director, as he's been having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, having had control over casting his lead actress taken from him, which he proceeds to process by taking a golf club to a windshield of his producers' car and then reacting as above when he finds his wife with the singer of "Achy Breaky Heart".

With his Dune having been notoriously tampered with by producers, I suspect there's a bit of Lynch's own experience in the scene with the producers, which plays like an entirely arbitrary set of rituals deciding the fate of his movie with no regard for his opinion or even basic logic. While I don't know how particular Dino DeLaurentiis was about his espresso, I did laugh. Now, taking the reading that the first two acts of the movie are a fantasy of Naomi Watts' character, who is revealed to be miserable and ridden with jealousy in the third act, the amount of time we spend with Theroux is maybe hard to justify. Is this perhaps her "revenge" on him, his romantic and professional success having been flushed away while he flounders in search of greater meaning to his arc? Aside from possible autobiographical interest, these scenes do play like a riff on the idea that everyone is the main character in their own story, and if the Watts and Laura Harring characters can be thought of as having merged or swap identities, then perhaps Theroux's arc is the remainder of that quotient. (Now, it's worth noting that aside from being insecure and arrogant, Theroux in this movie is a less stylish than the real Lynch. If Watts conjures the best version of herself in her dream, Lynch maybe doesn't want his dream avatar outshining him.)

Now why did the Cyrus scene stick with me all these years when other details had slipped? Mostly because I'd found it amusing, partly because of the extra specific image Lynch produces, and somewhat because of the casting of Billy Ray Cyrus. Now, I don't have any special relationship to the Cyrus' body of work, but Lynch's casting of him, with his distinct mix of bozo, dudebro and hunk, results in a very specific comedic effect. This is something Lynch does elsewhere in the movie, like when he has Robert Forster show up as a detective for a single scene. The Forster role is likely in part a leftover from the movie's origins as a TV pilot, but the effect is similar (albeit less comedic). Melissa George appears as a woman who may or may not be a replacement for Watts in some realm of reality. Other directors obviously cast actors for their screen presence and the audience's relationship to their career, but the way Lynch does it feels particularly pointed, as if he's reshaping them entirely into iconography. The effect is particularly sinister with the presence of Michael J. Anderson, with whom he worked previously on Twin Peaks, and Monty Montgomery as a mysterious cowboy who dangles the secret of the movie over Theroux's character.

Cowboys in movies are frequently heroic presences (see any number of westerns) and are otherwise innocuously stylish (I confess I've come dangerously close to ordering a Stetson hat and a pair of cowboy boots), but the presence of one here feels like a ripple in the movie's reality. A dreamy, brightly lit mystery set in Los Angeles should have no place for a cowboy. It ain't right. (It's worth noting that Lynch at one point copped to admiring Ronald Reagan for reminding him of a cowboy. Is this his expression of a changed opinion? I have no idea, but Lynch has never struck me as all that politically minded.) Neither is the hobo that appears behind the diner. Certainly hobos have made their homes behind diners, but this one's presence and the way Lynch produces him feel again like a ripple in the the movie's narrative. Jump scares are frequently knocked for being lazy and cheap devices to generate shocks, but the one here gets under your skin.

Now about the movie's look. This starts off like a noir, and the mystery plot on paper would lead you to think that's how the whole movie plays, but the cinematography is a lot brighter, with almost confection-like colours, than that would lead you to believe, at least during the daytime scenes. This is another element that likely comes from its TV origins, but it does give the movie a distinctly dreamlike, fantastical quality that a more overtly cinematic look, like the one Lynch used in Lost Highway a few years earlier, might not capture. This is one of the reasons I think this movie works better than that one, and there's also the fact that the amateur sleuthing that drives the bulk of the plot here serves as a more pleasing audience vantage point than the male anxieties that fuel the other film. I also would much rather hang out with Naomi Watts and Laura Harring than a charisma void like Balthazar Getty.

The manufactured warmth of the daytime scenes also results, like in Blue Velvet, in the nighttime scenes feeling like they're in a completely different setting, one which perhaps offers the key to unlocking the mystery, or at least revealing the phoniness of the movie's surfaces. I think of the evocative Club Silencio sequence, which comes as close as anything in the movie to laying its illusions bare. ("No hay banda.") But at times Lynch will throw in disarmingly childlike, inexplicable imagery, like the dancing couples against a purple screen in the opening, something that would seem tacky and amateurish elsewhere but feels oddly cohesive here. There are a number of directors whose work I admire for being "dreamlike", and putting them side by side they all feel quite distinct (you would never mistake a Lucio Fulci film for a Lynch), but they have the unifying idea of imbuing the tactile qualities of film with the truly irrational to really burrow into your subconscious. Other directors have made movies with some of the same elements as Mulholland Drive, but none have put them together in quite the same way.

[sebastianshaw]

Rando Munday ramblings! For new followers, on Munday sometimes I just post a bunch of personal stuff I normally wouldn’t. Not usually anything intimately personal, more like random thoughts and news that just isn’t relevant to the blog in any way, not related to X-Men or RP or writing in general, etc. ....there’s a lot of Hannibal today, sorry, I’m rewatching it.

- I definitely wanna have a pair of critters named Hannibal and Hasdrubal at some point, maybe if there's a third I'd name him Hamilcar. I know everyone will think I named them after Hannibal Lector but actually these are really common names from Ancient Carthage. Like if you look at Carthagian history and records, everyone is Hannibal, Hasdrubal, or Hamilcar, it's like John, James, and Jim. I'd prefer the pair, though, since Hannibal and Hasdrubal were a pair of brothers and famous historical figures, so it would feel much more like a "set" that way (whereas they did not have a brother called Hamilcar) - Speaking of Hannibal Lector, I knew he was based on a real person, but I did not realize that person was a gay Mexican man. That’s...an interesting example of gay history, for sure. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Thomas Harris (the writer of the books that the films and later the TV series were based on) based Hannibal on a surgeon he met while interviewing an inmate at prison for another novel. This surgeon was so intelligent and charismatic that Harris implicitly assumed that he was a doctor in the employ of the prison. Nope---the doctor was an inmate himself. Harris was so shaken by the encounter that it inspired him to create Hannibal Lector, who, in contrast to the typical media portrayals of serial killers as uncontrolled lunatic slashers like Michael Myers or Leatherface, is a charming, culture, charismatic intellectual. To protect the man’s identity, Harris called him “Dr. Salazar” in interviews, so that was always how I knew him. I just now learned not only was his real name Alfredo Balli Trevino, but his victim was Jesus Castillo Rangel, his male lover. Harris describes him as a small, lithe man with dark red hair and, unsurprisingly, “a certain elegance about him”. Though Trevino was given the death penalty for his crimes, his sentence was commuted to 20 years and he was released in either 1980 or 1981. He died in in 2009 when he was 81 years old. He reportedly spent the last years of his life helping the poor and elderly, and he expressed deep regret for his “dark past”---which I suppose makes sense, since his crime was that he killed a lover in a fit of rage during an argument, whereas Hannibal simply killed people in cold blood whom he had no attachment to because he liked eating them (something Trevino never did) and to punish them for rudeness. - I’ve decided to stop buying silk, unless it's from a thrift store and thus my money won't go to supporting sericulture. Ahimsa silk isn't an option either, the bugs aren't technically killed but they're not treated well either. I know it might seem weird to eat meat and wear leather and yet not want to purchase something that hurt moths and larva, but...I have to eat meat for medical reasons, and my leather purchases is limited to boots that I then keep for YEARS AND YEARS so it's very sparing. There's really no such thing as a cruelty-free diet or lifestyle, whether that cruelty is suffered by animals or by other humans, but I can still make choices that at least lesson some small aspect of harm. I need to eat meat, I don't need real silk. ...Haven only wears bamboo silk for this reason and when this came up with Shaw, he absolutely thought she was fucking with him, like even SHE can’t be THIS insane, NO ONE ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT BUGS WTF - The books nearest to me right now are “Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype ” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period, “X-Men: The Legacy Quest Trilogy” by Steve Lyons, two  horror anthologies, the script for “M. Butterfly” by David Henry Hwang, “The Spanish Riding School of Vienna: Tour of America 2005″ book I got from when I went to see the Lippizanner horses perform, and a big beautiful leatherbound English translation of “The Flowers of Evil” by Charles Baudelaire. This is...this is a summary of my whole personality, sans rodents. Also god I need to clean my room. - Something I've noticed is that many sci-fi horror films that do the whole "science went too far against nature!!!" thing....don't actually have the problem result from the lack of ethics involved or because the scientists did something "unnatural", it happens because they didn't follow basic safety precautions, lab protocol, common sense, etc. "Splice" for instance, is a really good example---the problem isn't that they made a part-human hybrid, that's not why shit goes wrong, shit goes wrong because the two scientists act like idiots, adopt the creation as a child, hide it in their barn instead of a sterile controlled environment, and then one of them HAS SEX WITH IT. Or in "The Fly" the problem isn't that Brundle invented a teleporter, it's that he tested it ON HIMSELF while he was ALL ALONE. Even in "Jurassic Park" the issue is less that dinosaurs are breeding and more the result of a disgruntled worker who was given way too much power over being able to run things, and thus shut them down when he wants to. So many "science gone wrong!" movies end up not really being condemnations of science itself, so much as depicting scientists as utter dumbasses. Which, on the one hand, I do like, because I dislike the notion of condemning scientific progress just because it seems icky or creepy or "goes against nature" (so do vaccines, I still like those!) But on the other hand, the movies don't FRAME it as "this is the result of failure to practice science safely and sensibly" they frame it as "they should never have attempted such an unnatural thing and this disaster is punishment for a moral sin" even though the issue doesn't happen because what the scientists did was "wrong" it happens because they do something DUMB. - Bringing it back to Hannibal, I reached the episode where Margot Verger first appears, and if I have one big disappointment about the Hannibal series, it's Margot. In the books, she's a huge butch lesbian, literally and figuratively. In the TV series, she's a pretty femme fashionista like all the other women, and she fucks Will in order to get pregnant. At the time this came out in 2013, I tried to be all resigned and fair-minded about this. I was like "ok, well, they didn't want to be offensive with a stereotype, and I guess that's fair, I guess not hurting people matters more to me than getting the horseback-riding bulldyke hearthrob of my high school years on-screen at last" but you know what? No. Firstly, butch lesbians deserve representation too. How many have you ever seen onscreen, let alone in a mainstream media production? Sure, it's a stereotype, but it's not an inherently negative one, they just get treated that way in media because society sees it that way. But the way to handle butch lesbians and femme gay men and so on isn't to erase them from the screen, it's to start writing them as human beings and not caricatures or jokes or monsters. Margot is a fleshed-out human being, she's nuanced and twisted and hurt like everyone else in this series, she would be PERFECT for that. She wouldn't be just a butch lesbian, she'd be a CHARACTER who just also happens to be a butch lesbian. I don't really think she was changed to avoid "hurting" lesbians, I think she was changed because the director, gay man or not, clearly has a way he wants the women in his series to look (they're all fashion plates, all have long hair, all very sophisticated, etc) and book Margot didn't fit his aesthetic, his design if you will. Because god forbid we just make her a DAPPER dyke, right? Back to having sex with Will, which most certainly did NOT happen in the books...that's not bad itself in a VACUUM, fucking men to get a baby is something real-life lesbians do, I had a friend in college who was actually conceived that way, but like...no media exists in a vacuum, and there is very little depiction of lesbians in media that doesn't feature them fucking men for SOME reason or another. They want a baby, or they start the story with a boyfriend, or they're actually bisexual, or they're even raped, but there's always SOME reason we have to watch a guy fucking them and it's frankly distressing. Like, remember Irene Adler in BBC's Sherlock? It's a pattern. And I'm not saying lesbians who have had a sexual past with men, or who were the victims of sexual violence by men, don't deserve representation, I would never say that, those are very common experiences, I'm not saying "gold stars only", I'm saying that there is a strong pattern in media where it seems almost obligatory that a lesbian has to have sex with or be attracted to men at some point, while comparatively the opposite case, where a lesbian is depicted as exclusively and only attracted to and "with" other women, is seldom there. And it's just kind of a kick in the nads for me, as I think it was for a lot of other lesbians, butch or not, that a gay director took an opportunity like Margot Verger and turned her into just another attractive lipstick lesbian that is okay with having sex with the male protagonist as a treat tee hee (Spoiler: She does end up with Alana though, which I appreciate)

[bighound-littlebird]

The Alarm that Never Sounded: GOT's treatment of the SanSan Romance

by Miodrag Zarkovic

Originally posted here.

When adapting female characters from ASOIAF into the TV show "Game of thrones", David Benioff and Dan Weiss aren't unlike Robert Baratheon: if they can't disrobe it, they're bored with it. Their rendition of Melisandre, for example, isn't an intimidating and imposing practitioner of dark and supernatural powers, but rather a seductress who's able to make people obey her only if she rewards them with sex (Stannis, Gendry) or gold (Brotherhood without Banners). One more example would be their rendition of Margaery Tyrell, who was turned from a teenage girl with a perfect facade and somewhat mysterious foundation, into a promiscuous lady willing to do anything – even have sex with both her brother and her husband simultaneously, as she proposes to the latter in Season 2 – in order to achieve her personal political ambitions that are literally limitless.

With that in mind, Sansa Stark never had a chance to be properly adapted in the show created by D&D. Now, the word 'properly' has a rather wide range of possible meanings, and this essay will attempt to examine at least some of them, but, for now, let's say that the most obvious aspect in which TV Sansa was shorthanded is her screen time. In "A Clash of Kings", the book that was the basis for the Season 2 of GoT, Sansa's POV chapters, along with Tyrion's, are the only ones that depict what's happening in King's Landing, the capital of The Seven Kingdoms and the center of political power in the story. This goes for the first two thirds of "A Storm of Swords" as well, e.g. until the moment Sansa escapes from King's Landing. In short, her chapters couldn't help but be of paramount importance in the narrative sense. In the show, however, Sansa's significance is greatly decreased, and not only because the show doesn't follow the "POV structure" of the novels, but because she's reduced to nothing but a prized captive for the Lannisters.

Yes, TV Sansa is a minor, and she's played by a minor, named Sophie Turner. Her age, due to the laws that forbid the usage of underage children in explicit sex scenes, prevented D&D from using Sansa in a way they adore. And her age couldn't be drastically changed without drastic consequences on her overall arc which is, in ACOK at least, built around her first period. That's why, for example, D&D couldn't cast Natalie Dormer – one of their favorite ASOIAF characters, by the way, because they did alter Margaery to suit the actress, instead of the other way around – in the role of Sansa, because Dormer, while certainly looking younger than she is, could never pass as a minor.

And that would probably be the only thing that makes Sansa off-limits for Natalie Dormer, or some other actress D&D adore, to play her in D&D's adaptation. Everything else would've been doable. Had George R. R. Martin not put her first period in the books, Sansa's age, promiscuity, vocabulary, even wardrobe, would've been changed accordingly to suit D&D's vision of a progressive Westerosi woman, which means the first three would've been amplified, while the fourth one – wardrobe – would definitely be reduced and freed from all the unnecessary parts. She'd probably even hook up with some rogue brute at some point; when she'd find the time for him, that is; after she's done with Joff, Tyrion, Lancel, and god knows who else, she'd certainly figure out cynical killers can occupy her bed just as good as other available men can.

Speaking of cynical killers – enter Sandor Clegane. One more character that, alas, couldn't be played by Natalie Dormer, and therefore not of particular interest to D&D. Sandor in the novels is a truly memorable fellow, who slowly but steadily grows in readers' eyes as the story progresses. At the beginning, he's nothing more than a merciless brute used only for killing people Lannisters want dead. Very soon, however, a reader finds out there might be some traces of soul under that rough surface. More and more we find out about Sandor, more and more intriguing and understandable he gets. Even – more likable.

Now, what makes him likable? The stories Littlefinger tells to Sansa?! Of course not. The stories Sandor himself keeps telling to Sansa are what fleshes him to the extent that was probably impossible to predict at the beginning of the series. Through his conversations with Sansa, we find out every important thing there is to know about him. Later on, when he hangs up with Arya, Sandor is already a fully developed character, whom we aren't discovering any more, but rather following. And he became like that precisely through his exchanges with Sansa.

The show went the other way, and a pretty odd way, at that. D&D decided it was better for Littlefinger to deliver the story of how Sandor's face got burned, and that decision carries some very serious consequences in regards to characterization. For example, Littlefinger appears as someone who does know the secrets of King's Landing, but, at the same time, as someone who doesn't hesitate to share those secrets with persons he doesn't have any control over. Yes, he warns Sansa not to tell anyone about the story; but, he warns her because, and here comes the funny part – Sandor is going to kill her.

Now, why isn't Littlefinger afraid Sandor's going to kill him? After all, isn't that the logical question because it's Littlefinger who offers Sandor's secrets to others? It seems there are only two possible answers: 1) Sandor is not that scary and dangerous as Littlefinger claims, or 2) Sandor is a dangerous fellow, but Littlefinger is the bravest individual alive, because he goes around telling the secrets of people that physically can literally eat him for breakfast; and he isn't shy even, because he doesn't fail to warn Sansa how dangerous is the situation he himself dares so boldly.

Whatever conclusion a viewer draws from there, something is going to be radically changed from the source material. Quite possibly, in fact, a lot of things are going to be altered. After the said scene, both Littlefinger and Sandor are drastically different than their book origins. And the characters we ended up with in the show, are not nearly as complex and intriguing as their book counterparts. This is especially true for Sandor, who's nothing if not scary and dangerous. He is supposed to frighten the living hell out of everyone who isn't his older brother. If you take that away from Sandor, you're only left with his tender side.

But, even his tender side was almost entirely removed from the show. This time, not only by Littlefinger, but also by Tyrion: in the throne room, when Joff orders Kingsguards to undress Sansa, Sandor stands there silently. His face expression suggests he isn't pleased with what he sees, but that's it. He doesn't stand up to his king with firm "That's enough" as in the book. It is therefore on Tyrion exclusively to deny Joffrey the pleasure of torturing the girl whose only crime was that she saw him in a moment of unflattering weakness. As in the books, TV Tyrion enters the room with his sellsword and he defends Sansa from Joff, but the important difference is that in the show it looks like Tyrion is the only one both willing to oppose Joffrey and capable of doing it. In the novel, we can sense that Sandor is ready to do the same thing, only, in his case, it comes with a much bigger risk, which is not without importance.

So, in this particular case, Sandor was sacrificed for the sake of TV Tyrion. TV Littlefinger, however, wasn't forgotten in that regard, because, once again, he's fed with lines that originally belong to Sandor. In the finale of the second season, it is Littlefinger who tells Sansa to look around and see how much better than her all those liars are. Just as the last time around, this change serves neither Littlefinger nor Sandor: the former's creepy-mentoring side is exposed much earlier than it would be logical, while the latter is robbed of yet another moment in which he shows how much he cares for Sansa and how protective he is toward her.

Sansa is a case on its own, as far as wrong adaptations are concerned. She's in the league with her mother Catelyn Stark, as two Stark women that were literally butchered in the show. The thing two of them have in common is the nature of their complexity: opposite to other female characters in ASOIAF, like Dany or Arya or Asha or Brienne or Cersei, Cat and Sansa aren't interested in hurting their enemies with their own hands, or, in the case of Dany, with her own dragons (this goes for Cersei, too, even though she's the one ordering the suffering of others, not committing it: her aggression is always personal, as we can sense in the first three novels). And, what's more, Sansa isn't interested in hurting anyone, actually. Cat does have an aggressive side in her; it's female aggression all the way, but aggression it is. Sansa, on the other hand, almost never desires other people to suffer in any way. There's only one noticeable exception: Joffrey. She does think on one or two occasions how nice it would be if Robb put a sword in Joff, and, by extension, she wishes Lannisters are defeated in the war against her family. However, we have to consider the situation she finds herself in at those moments – imprisoned by the Lannisters and at Joff's 'mercy' all the time; small miracle she wishes them ill. I've never been a girl arrested by the grave enemies of my family, but if I was, I'd definitely pray for their most horrible deaths every single night. And, we have to remember that, after Joff's death, she fails to feel happy over it, even though she tries to a little.

Therefore, it maybe isn't a stretch to say Sansa is probably the one character that is most unlike the author himself. Other major characters, especially POV ones, do resemble Martin at least partially. For males, it's obvious: even though GRRM never fought in a war, nor had any military training whatsoever, men are men; even in our day and age, no male is a complete stranger to war; while depicting all those dramatic battles and duels was quite an achievement (which no personal experience would make any easier, truth be told, because in ASOIAF the combat as a phenomenon is illustrated from any number of angles, each among them presented with an abundance of details), ultimately it was in himself where Martin could find a lot of answers about his male characters, whose position in a society is never independent from their combat prowess or lack of it. Female characters, on the other hand, had to be trickier, just like they always are for male authors – let's admit it, they are not that good in creating great females, just like women writers usually don't produce male characters that are a match to their female characters nor to the male heroes created by male authors. In our day and age, these "gender rules" are rarely spoken of, but they continue to exist, due to gender predispositions that are nowhere as strong as in the mind of an individual. There are exceptions, as in good male characters created by women and vice versa, but they are in a clear minority compared to underdeveloped or unrealistic characters whose only "fault" was that they didn't share the sex with an author. And in that regard, ASOIAF could very well be unparalleled: it is perhaps impossible to find any other story that features nearly as many memorable male and female characters both, as ASOIAF does (truth be told, that fact alone should be enough to inspire analysts and scholars to look at ASOIAF at a different, more demanding light, and not as a genre piece).

Martin's girls, however, aren't completely unlike the man who came up with them. Most of them are willingly participating in "men games", e.g. power-plays and/or wars, which makes for a precious connection to a male mindset of the author. They are thinking and behaving as women (or, in the case of Arya, and Dany to an extent, as girls), but all of them are interacting with something that, in all its glory and misery, can roughly be called "a man's world". Some of the most beautifully written chapters in the series are delivered from female POVs – The Red Wedding and Cersei's "Walk of Shame" come to mind right away; but, in a thematic sense, those and other female chapters don't differ too much from male POVs.

Except for Sansa's chapters, which unmistakably belong to something we can roughly call "a woman's world". Chapters of both male and female POVs in ASOIAF are often rich with testosterone, but Sansa’s ones are almost entirely driven by estrogen: look no further than her captivity in King's Landing, that actually is, as already said, focused around her first period – that decision solely should bring a lot of respect for Martin, because he had to know going that road is never easy for a male writer.

And the funniest thing is, it all fits. Sansa's storyline is distinctive in tone, but not odd. It is a legitimate part of the general plot of ASOIAF. In fact, as her story progresses, Sansa becomes more and more important for The Game, even though she showed no clear inclination to participate in it so far, but at the same time, Martin keeps Sansa away from all those "male" aspects he decorated other female characters of his saga.

And on top of everything, we're presented with her love story, a romance with no other than the man who, prior to discovering some delicate feelings for Sansa, could pose for an ideal brute of Westeros. At the beginning of the story, Sandor Clegane could be perceived as the exact opposite of Sansa. As someone who has no business whatsoever in her world, just like she has none in his. But, with some craft wording and master subtlety, Martin succeeds in illustrating the flood of emotions that go both ways in their relationship. Those emotions are never easy, nor appropriate, let alone allowed – even by Sansa and Sandor themselves! – but they're hard to be denied.

The complexity of their multilayered characters, of their respective positions in a society and in an ongoing war, and of their relationship that resists all known clichés, represent some of the strongest evidence that ASOIAF is much more than a genre piece. There's a lot in these novels that escapes genre boundaries, but nothing more evidently than SanSan. Stuff like that is not your usual fantasy element, no matter how flattering fantasy can be as a label (Homer, Shakespeare, Tolkien – to name just a few all-time greats that created unforgettable stories with supernatural aspects in them). Any author who comes up with that kind of love story involving those kind of characters – and with a legion of other characters, and with no less than four different religions, and with themes of honor, redemption, identity, bravery, equality, ancestry, legacy, freedom, revolution... – deserves to be analyzed not as a genre writer.

Now, one can only imagine what kind of enigma Sansa and Sandor were for Benioff and Weiss. And it pretty much remained unsolved, because, when faced with all the complexity of these two characters, Benioff and Weiss decided to remove it almost entirely, along with their relationship that is reduced to occasional and odd mentioning of 'little bird'. TV Sandor was simplified to a one-note brute that goes around TV Westeros and lectures people about the pleasures of killing, a one-note brute he never was in the novels, not even in the beginning of the saga. TV Sansa, on the other hand, was denied her book complexity by shutting down all her layers, one by one. For example, Benioff and Weiss completely removed her decision to go behind her father's back and inform Cersei of his plan. They simply refused to go down that road. They did something similar to Catelyn, whose infamous line to Jon they didn't remove entirely, but did replace it with a much softer one. It is pretty safe to assume that Cat's and Sansa's complexity did bother Benioff and Weiss from the get-go.

What's also removed from the show is Sansa's agency, primarily represented in the novels by her secret meetings with Dontos, a disgraced knight she herself saved from Joffrey. In the show, we got only the saving scene; it was filmed and executed clumsily, but it was there at least. However, until recently, nobody could be sure Sansa did save Dontos, because the man disappeared afterwards (he was briefly seen as joggling balls in "Blackwater" episode, in the scene in Cersei's chambers, but he was unrecognizable for the vast majority of audience). It is reported, though, that Dontos will be returning in Season 4, so yes, Sansa did save his life after all. But, even when he returns, Sansa's attempts at escaping will be two seasons younger than they should've been at that point, and it's hard to see a way D&D can remedy that neglect.

Show-lovers often defend D&D in regards to Sansa, by saying her personality is a difficult and tricky one for portraying on screen, because even in the books she's introverted. Now, maybe she isn't the most extroverted character ever, but she's pretty far from reclusive, as she does communicate with the outside world a lot at the beginning of the series, before she's imprisoned. And even while in captivity, she can't help but communicate with Sandor and Dontos. What's more, around two of them she is her true self, which provides a wide array of possibilities for a good and informative dialogue that, in an adaptation, could compensate for the lack of inner thoughts. With Dontos, she's open not only because she saved him, but also because he explicitly offers his help (and, truth be told, it is he who enabled her to leave King's Landing eventually, so, even though he wasn't exactly honest with her concerning his motivations, her trust wasn't as misplaced as it may seem at first). And with Sandor, she's open for no particular reason – other than those subtle, emotional forces, that both of them can't help but follow and eventually become the closest and most intimate beings to each other.

The way Martin incepted and developed the barely visible, but undeniable romance, between Sansa and Sandor, is nothing short of literary brilliance. With so few words and interactions, he managed so much. The vast majority of readers are aware of restrained attraction they mutually feel, even though they didn't share a single physical aspect of the romantic relationship.

Martin is indeed a master of subtlety, as evidenced by what looks like the endless amount of carefully hidden clues that point to any number of narrative puzzles, realization of which do make an entire story much richer than if taken at face value. And he's never more subtle than with two romances: Rhaegar/Lyanna and Sandor/Sansa. Now, the respective nature of subtlety of those two romances is rather different. With Rhaegar and Lyanna, a reader is – through Robert's retelling – offered a version that is actually the very opposite of what probably happened, and only later a reader can pick up clues here and there, and finally figure out the story of a fatal attraction between the two. But, the clues are presented throughout the text, so much that, even if you don't decipher everything after the first read, at the end of "A Game of Thrones" – the first book of the series – you'll probably sense that Robert's view on events wasn't exactly accurate.

The story of Sansa and Sandor is a very different one. Their relationship is never as much as addressed, even by themselves. Sandor isn't a POV character, and he's not exactly open to people, so his silence on the matter isn't unexpected. But, Martin didn't address their romance even in Sansa's chapters, which are typically packed with inner thoughts of the POV character. It looks like Martin decided to do it the harder way and make their romance somewhat a mystery even for Sansa, which, in hindsight, does seem to be the most logical way: what teenage girl would be fully aware of a romance that "inappropriate", and experienced in those dire circumstances?! As a result of that decision, the readers got a completely fascinating depiction of a romance, that can be described as a train you hear from miles away: at first, you can't even tell is it a train or some similar sound, but slowly, with every second, you're more and more certain that your ears didn't trick you, and very soon the train is so loud that it is the only thing you can hear at all. In the novels, a reader may find something strange at first, when Sandor shares the secret of his burned face with Sansa. Some alarm may be turned on deep inside. And it becomes more apparent each time two of them share a page, with a culmination during the Battle of the Blackwater Bay, when Sandor, after he decides to desert the Lannisters, visits Sansa in her room and offers to take her home to Winterfell.

It might be the only instance in the entire series where Sandor did ask anyone's approval, which does speak volumes about his feelings for Sansa. Considering the manner in which Martin described this romance, Sandor's actions on that day was as good as a confession of his deep attraction to her. Sansa, on the other hand, doesn't have a single moment which could be pointed at as a prime evidence of her undeniable love for The Hound, but this doesn't mean her feelings toward Sandor aren't palpable. It's one more mastery of the writer: through her frequent (and skewed, but in a telling way) memories on the last time she saw Sandor, he was able to show her feelings resonating more and more inside her.

In the show, Martin was denied a chance to do the same thing, even though he wrote the "Blackwater" episode in Season 2. Thanks to the already destroyed storyline, and to god knows how many changes, and to D&D's decision to remove from the final cut some scenes Martin referred to with his scenes, the one between Sansa and Sandor near the end of that episode, served more as a greeting to book-fans who like SanSan in the source material, than as a goodbye between two not unlike souls who shared much, and could have shared a lot more, and maybe are going to if they meet again. In that scene, Rory McCann was visibly better than usual as Sandor, and Sophie Turner was as good as usual, but, just like with anything ASOIAF, the scene doesn't have nearly the same impact and importance if taken out of context.

The exact context of their SanSan is yet to be fully revealed in the books, too. Because of the already mentioned subtlety – a quality that seems to intimidate showrunners Benioff and Weiss, who, in their turn, do retaliate with their on-screen war on subtlety (just recall what they turned other romances into; for example, the romance between TV Jon "Not The Brightest Kid In The Block" Snow and TV "I Know Everything And Therefore I Can't Stop Talking" Ygritte) – Sansa's and Sandor's love story is by no means an open book. Their romance has its own share of mystery, one of which may be: what inspired those two persons to feel so strongly for each other? Personally, I always thought their mutual attraction isn't only based on a "beauty and the beast" model. There is that, but in their case it goes deeper. If that was the engine behind his emotions, Sandor had more than enough opportunities to find a beauty for his beast long before Sansa entered his life. With Sansa, I'd say their mutual attraction is rooted in their personalities. For example, if you take away Sandor's aggression, he also isn't interested in hurting others. He's naturally talented for violence, and he lives in a society that respects that kind of talent, and that is why he's violent for a living, but at the end of the day, the suffering of others isn't any kind of reward for him. Possibly, because he isn't interested in other people that much. Though, when he is interested in someone, the interest is as strong as they come.

(We don't know at this point, but it's not a stretch to imagine that his reaction to the news that his hated brother was killed wasn't unlike Sansa's reaction to Joff's death. "Am I glad he's dead? Well, not exactly, even though I wanted him killed.")

Sansa may very well be like that, too. That would be one of the possible explanations of her AGOT actions. Like the rest of the Starks, Sansa is a complex character that has some issues of her own, without which neither she nor the other Starks would be such memorable characters as they obviously are; it is the fact that they are both willing and strong enough to fight those issues, that Starks stand out for. Without going into details (as if I could!), I expect that in the remaining novels Sansa is going to face the reasons that made her go to Cersei that damned night and with the consequences of that action. And whatever comes out of that soul-searching will be inevitably combined with her claim to Winterfell that Littlefinger brought up in AFFC. And that combination is going to elevate Sansa's arc to even bigger and more important levels than so far, even though so far she was the one Stark that was most engaged – unwittingly, but still – in the bloody dynastic war for the Iron Throne.

And she'll have to cross paths with Sandor Clegane, one way or another. Their relationship was so meticulously built up, it simply has to get some sort of a closure. What that closure is going to be is impossible to predict, because we are talking of one George R. R. Martin, a writer who managed to shock us as he pleased more than a few times.

What is also impossible, is to take anything that did or didn't happen in the show as any indication at what the closer may or may not be. There isn't a storyline in GoT that wasn't drastically changed, and weakened in the process, but Sansa's arc, along with her relationship with Sandor, is among the biggest victims of D&D's inability to adapt.

Whether you happen to like what Benioff and Weiss put in the show, or don't, you'd be advised not to recognize any significance in their decisions for further developments in ASOIAF. Just like show-lovers tend to remind everyone else, GoT and ASOIAF are two entirely separate beasts. And book Sansa and book Sandor, along with everything Martin has in his store for them, can be really glad about it.

[mothermaidenclone-blog]

Ad Astra or This Movie Was the Brad Pitts

Ad Astra was the worst movie I have paid to see since 2015’s Kill Your Friends, which is my least favourite cinema experience of all time. It was a dry and dreary story about emotionally stunted white men in a bleak and boring capitalist version of space, with jarring and superfluous Christian undertones. The plot and everyone’s motives were so non-existent that Brad Pitt had to narrate the whole thing in a monotone so flat and dead I literally screamed all the way from the cinema to the bus stop when it was over, partly out of a frustration so deep it was non-verbal, but also just to finally hear some pitch variation.

*Ad Astra spoilers follow*

There technically were women in this movie. Lots of women, particularly women of colour, occupied high ranking positions and were addressed by their titles, a touch I think is important and that usually tips the scales in favour of a good review for me. We were graced with Adjutant General Vogel (LisaGay Hamilton), Captain Lu (Freda Foh Shen), Sergeant Romano (Kimmy Shields), Tanya Pincus (Natasha Lyonne) and Lorraine Deavers (Kimberly Elise), as well as several unnamed female personnel (Kayla Adams, Elisa Perry, Sasha Compère and Mallory Low). I would like to particularly highlight Natasha Lyonne’s performance as apparently she was the only actor employed to play a human being and not a replicant. She was on screen for maybe twenty seconds, as is sadly the case with most of these women, but was a glorious breath of fresh air as the only character to simultaneously emote expressively and speak with inflection and enthusiasm. The only one! In a two hour movie!

All of these women appear to be respected and capable members of various illustrious teams, but are always outnumbered by men. There are two male generals alongside Vogel and Deavers is initially outnumbered 4:1 on her space craft by men. Tragically, whenever a team is being picked off, it is always the people of colour who die first. Not only is this obviously racist, it is just a disgusting cliché that we just don’t need to see anymore in movies. Deavers dies first when Roy (Brad Pitt) forcibly invades their vehicle, followed by Franklin Yoshida (Bobby Nish), an Asian man, and Donald Stanford (Loren Dean), a white guy, is the last to go. Roy cradles him in his arms and attempts to save his life. I hope it’s not just me that sees something wrong with the order of events there.

A similar scenario takes place in the lunar chase, which absurdly seems to occur in the same crapy looking buggies as the original moon landing, a confusing visual choice considering we’ve just seen a vast and impressive modern concrete moon base. The film takes the time to introduce us to Willie Levant (Sean Blakemore), a black officer who will be escorting Ray across the moon. As soon as we see he has a photo of his wife and child taped to his tablet screen I knew he was going to die - in the year 2019 I should not be able to predict that a black character is going to die because we saw a family photo. Can we just not anymore? Again, aside from the racism, that’s just shitty writing. I like to think that as a species, if we can conceptualise something as vast and seemingly impossible as solar travel, we can also move beyond basic and derogatory cinematic tropes.

I was most excited by the appearance of Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), a woman of colour who occupies a position of power on Mars and introduces herself assertively using her full name. Also, her whole look was excellent. However, this brief release of serotonin was very short lived as she literally walks Roy down a corridor then is immediately cut off and superseded by a white guy with a man bun. Lantos does return later, but alas, as an exposition machine to give Roy some plot news about his dad. Even as she explains that her parents were murdered by his, Lantos falls victim to the dire, emotionless monotone that I can only assume was forced on the entire cast of this film. Then, she is an actual chauffeur and drives Ray to a manhole so he can continue his dad quest. A character brimming with original potential is presented as nothing more than a device.

The final woman to mention is the first one we see, Roy’s ex-wife Eve (Liv Tyler). We see the blurry, out of focus back of her head in the background of a shot before we see her face, and this is incredibly telling, because that’s all Eve is, the simulacrum of a woman. She could be anybody - so why she is Liv Tyler defies belief, I can only assume they held her loved ones hostage - her story is untold and entirely irrelevant. Again, she is only a device, although this time not for Roy’s forward momentum, but this time seemingly to emphasise that Roy is a total sociopath with no emotions whatsoever. We don’t learn Eve’s name for another twenty minutes, and it is an hour and twenty minutes before we hear her speak. Even then, it’s not a live conversation, because god forbid this film have too many of those, but a voice recording explaining that their relationship is over. I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, but everything she said was so generic I have no memory of it whatsoever. She is presented as a ghost, a blurry image on a screen, a memory fixed in time, not a real person with agency and personality. At the end of the movie we finally see her in real time, and that is when she has made the unfathomable decision to meet Roy for coffee. Even her face in that moment gives no emotion away, perhaps because Tyler had no idea how to act this entirely nonsensical decision. To our knowledge, she would not have seen any change in Roy, only received news that he survived a dangerous space mission, which is apparently enough of a reason to get back with this emotionless egg of a man?

I almost didn’t want to devote words to them, but I think it’s important to address just how dire Roy and his dad H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) are. This is their film, they are the reason that all of these women’s stories are passed over. It is made clear over and over again that both Roy and Clifford believe they are the only people capable of completing their various missions. Roy hijacks a ship and inadvertently kills everyone on board because he thinks that it’s his destiny or whatever to get his dad back, never mind that they were all highly trained space personnel who were arguably better suited to the mission precisely because it wasn’t their dad. Clifford straight up murders his whole crew because they are too “small minded” to fly off further and further into space forever on a mission that has yet yielded absolutely no evidence of their goals. A variety of talented human beings are destroyed because of the entitlement of white men, their delusional and unshakable conviction that they are at the centre of the universe and that no one else could possibly accomplish the lofty goals that kismet apparently calls them to.

The way they speak about themselves and to each other is absolutely psychotic. Roy’s solo musings include, “The flight recorder will tell the story, but history will have to decide,” and “In the end, the son suffers the sins of the father.” Clifford imparts his son with the delightful greeting of, “There was never anything there for me, I never cared for you or your mother or your small ideas.” In addition, they both physically flinch from human contact at various points in the move. Now, I totally understand that we live in a neurodiverse world and that many people experience emotions and social interactions in any number of ways, and that is a beautiful thing that makes our world so interesting to live in. However, that these men both abjectly state that they have no empathy is presented within the context of their megalomaniacal ideals that they must accomplish their god-given quests irregardless of how many people they have to kill along the way. It is a facet of their strangely two-dimensional, arrogant and narcissistic personalities, not one part of many complex features that make a complete and relatable human being.

Roy has to literally say out loud that he is a human being at the end of the movie; “I will rely on those closest to me…I will live and love,” which makes him sound more like a learning AI trying to pass a Turing test than anything else. The music swells as Clifford throws himself towards the surface of Neptune in an orchestral deluge that is unsubtly significant in this very quiet film, as though I’m supposed to start crying and think anything other than, “well thank fuck, it’s about time this murderer dies in the cold vacuum of space, I hope Roy stays spinning and screaming here forever too.” We are supposed to feel sympathy for them as the heroes of this movie, despite the fact that they show no care for anyone else throughout the whole thing and act entirely in their own self interests.

Overall, the women in this film are given about five seconds of potential as they introduce themselves variously as decorated soldiers and otherwise capable personnel, before being shoved to the side, or murdered, for Roy. This is obviously objectionable, but is made so much worse by the fact that Roy is an emotionless, entitled, empathy-less white man who doesn’t care if other people have to die for him to get what he wants. That is what these women are being passed up in favour of. I felt like I was watching a two hour long Voight-Kampff test. Space movies like this should be about what we can achieve if we work together as a species, not about how white men will still be the kings of dreary capitalism, even on the moon. We can do better than this.

And now for some asides:

What the actual fuck was the font at the beginning? I guess a red serif all caps should have alerted me to the fact that I was about to watch a horror movie.

As a lover of space horror, I was absolutely gutted that it was a bad CG angry baboon and not a cool gross alien. Also, what was that scene? “Hmm, we need to get rid of this loser because Brad Pitt is the best at space ships and he needs to be the captain. Uhh…what about…space monkeys? Yeah! Space monkeys on a deserted Norwegian ship. That makes sense.”

Can I just have a film bout those moon pirates fighting space capitalism please? I was more invested in them that anyone else in this garbage movie.

Credit for the Bradd Pitts joke goes to the talented and lovely Ed Cheverton

[genxmusings-blog]

Barbies, Brisket, and a Benediction

Before my daughter was born, I bought her first Barbie doll to commemorate the year of her birth. I looked at it as the start of an amazing investment and a great mother/daughter bonding project that we could enjoy for years to come and a legacy to pass down to her daughters and well blah, blah, blah, that particular Barbie is worth about 9 bucks now. 

Fast forward a few years and about 35 or 45 barbies later and we did amass a sweet little fashionable collection of just the ones we loved—okay I amassed a collection of the ones I loved—she didn’t really care one bit with the exception of the Audrey Hepburn set that, let’s just say, you’d be nuts not to go gaga over. I did have one favorite that through many years of buying and selling, I would never part with and still have to this day:

My Kate Spade Barbie. She represented to me something so clean, so sophisticated, so elegant, and carefree—everything I wished I could emulate. I even had that exact wicker Kate Spade bag before the doll even was released which prompted me to buy her. I must have repaired the wicker on that bag and put it back on life support for at least 9 years not having a clue who Kate Spade was when I first purchased it back in the early 2000’s. Well, sadly, we know that the woman behind the image of this doll was far from carefree. 

Her approach to fashion and beautiful things in their simplicity and their linear grace brought me personally a sense of wonder and appreciation for style, workmanship, creativity, flair and the ability to set a trend that allowed women to enjoy a small indulgence in an industry that so often requires an investment that is entirely out-of-reach for most. I love what Mindy Kaling said of her after the news of her death, (Kate) "encouraged women to find the twinkly person inside them. You couldn't walk into her boutiques and not smile." I’m sorry that Kate could not find that within herself. She will be greatly missed.

When I was in-between jobs up in the Toronto area, I walked dogs. For real. Why not? If it only had paid more, I would probably still be doing it today. Each day, I would get my pre-determined route, my set of house keys and security codes (I was screened—no apparent red flags from my past), and my roster for the day. My usual route would often include the trails along the bluffs of Lake Ontario and the groomed trails that would meander off through the woods behind the various subdivisions on the Lakeshore. Other than the occasional rainy day and a few temperamental dog owners who would literally sit and stare at you Devil-Wore-Prada-style as you came in and walked their dogs (no joke), this was actually a very pleasant season of my life. It also was during the fall and Autumn in Ontario along the lakeshore of Oakville is nothing short of glorious.

My mainstay throughout this was listening to audiobooks. Many times, I would extend a walk or two in order to finish a chapter I was listening to because in early iPod days (no Smartphones to do your bidding), it was very hard to bookmark and God forbid you lost your place. One author I would gorge myself on (pun intended) was a caustic, rude, arrogant, wonderful chef named Anthony Bourdain. I had seen him on segments of different cooking shows and caught random appearances as a guest judge or talking head on the fledgling Food Network or some other Bravo late night fare, but I couldn’t get enough of this guy.

His take on the wonders of the Austin barbeque scene and how extraordinary brisket was if you were willing to wait for the very best (which to this day he still stands behind Aaron Franklin’s), made me want to drive to Austin and sample these delights as soon as I finished scooping up Donner and Blitzen’s, the Shih Tzu twins’ poop. Kitchen Confidential was a revelation to me. Secretly I wanted to be that mean, that outspoken, that foul (a little bit secretly sorta), but there was so much more to him. His love of the culture of others and his respect for the purity and sanctity of their roots and heritage, and his devotion to seeing it preserved and passed down without some franchised chain destroying all of its joyfulness and ancestral delights.

To hear that he could not find any of that joyfulness within himself to the point that he felt the need to take his life was absolutely stunning. I would agree with the words of Ted Allen who said, “Tony Bourdain made the world a smarter, better place, and nobody will forget him.”

Why the benediction?

As a believer in Jesus Christ and a follower of the teachings of the Bible, I hold tightly to scripture as God’s Word—as truth—as surely as I know anything else that is true in my life, I stand firm in that belief. I cannot and will not second-guess where people like Kate Spade or Anthony Bourdain placed their faith. 

I have known the most pious spiritual evangelical verse-spewers to be some of the most dreadful unpleasant hypocritical toxic people I have ever met. I have also known some pretty questionable characters who have lived on the fringe of what I would call a conservative Christian lifestyle who do little to evoke the costuming of what the Southern Baptist Convention would dress one up to look like if there were a uniform; yet because of their faith in Jesus Christ, their place in heaven is no less valid. I can question and ponder the choices of other’s all day long--but life is too short, time is too precious, and my own mirror is too much in need of a good polishing of its own.

See through a glass darkly (oil on linen)

This is the benediction I wrote as an exit for Sunday morning church services several years ago and these are the words I will leave you with:

       God bless you and keep you as we journey from this place.

       May Your love encircle every heart and illuminate each face.

       Let His loving arms protect you, and His wisdom guide your way.

       As we leave this sanctuary now, and we celebrate each day.

 May you celebrate each day.

[anexperimentallife]

Random thoughts on washboard abs and Perfectly Pretty People(TM) on American science fiction TV, using Heroes, Stranger Things, and a couple of other shows as examples

(I’m just kind of musing to myself now that my pain meds have kicked in--this isn’t intended to be an in-depth analysis or critique, just some random personal thoughts and opinions that are influence by Vicodin, and that may or may not be on the mark.)

“Heroes” definitely had some issues--mostly starting with the writers’ strike--but one thing I will always love about it is that it at gave us a couple of average looking superheroes mixed in with the Perfectly Pretty Plastic People(TM).

I mean, it was American TV in the early 2000s, and I think there was a broadcasting law here at the time that at least 75% of all cheekbones on American TV had to be capable of cutting glass (unless it was a comedy show), so when I say “average,” I mean these were still conventionally attractive people, just that they didn’t all have that plastic same-face look that makes it so hard for me to tell characters apart sometimes.

Take Matt, for example. Or Hiro. Yeah, they’re both handsome, good-looking guys, but they didn’t quite fit that “shredded” look we’re used to seeing from American TV shows. They looked a little soft around the middle, the way a lot of average people do in real life. Like, in real life, you’d consider them good-looking guys, but in TV reality, the scale is so skewed that practically everyone seems to look like a supermodel, you know?

And it was a surprising and refreshing choice ESPECIALLY for a superhero show. Because it’s usually not enough on American non-comedy TV to look like an average person, or even an everyday attractive person--there’s like, this specific LOOK that it seems like about 75% of American TV characters have, and it’s just... Too much, you know? (One of the things I like about the BBC is they cast more of a variety of face and body types.)

I think things are changing now a little bit. Although there’s still this thing with most shows where I’m like, wow, if catch it in the middle of a scene, how the fuck do you even tell the white actors apart enough to know if you’re watching Agents of Shield or Arrow? (I assume someone watches those shows.)

But now we have characters like Chief Hopper, and--all too briefly--Bob, on Stranger Things. Still good-looking guys, but not the “pretty plastic” mold I’m so sick of. Bob is overweight. Hopper isn’t necessarily fat, but he’s at least a little soft around the middle instead of having a perfectly V-shaped torso. I remember seeing Hopper’s first scene, where he’s shirtless, and just being like, “HE DOESN’T HAVE WASHBOARD ABS HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!”

Oh, and don’t even get me started on female characters on TV. Books could be written. Books HAVE been written. For most of my life, probably 75% the women I’ve seen on TV either looked like supermodels, or played someone’s mother or grandmother, or--if they didn’t fit the young supermodel mode--had their appearance played as some kind of cruel joke. I mean, gods forbid you actually show a fat woman on TV who is treated with respect!

And this isn’t even getting started on racial diversity or disabled characters or LGBTQA+ characters, because that could be an entire fucking series of books on its own.

I’m not saying all shows, but I think the majority. And most of the exceptions, as I said, were comedy shows.

I really hope it’s starting to change.

(Full disclosure here--Yes, I am an allegedly “conventionally attractive” cishet white-passing guy, who has had washboard abs for the majority of my adult life, and was--believe it or not--considered a “pretty boy” in my younger days. But oh my Sagan do I get tired of seeing ONLY people who look like I did when I was in my 20s or 30s on screen. Like, “Fucking great. Generic set of stubbly cheekbones #387. And I bet there’s gonna be a scene at least once every couple of episodes where we catch a glimpse of washboard abs.”)

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/game-of-thrones-women-whats-next/

‘Game of Thrones’ Women: What’s Next?

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Don’t be pissed at the messenger, but we thought you should know, it’s time to let go of Game of Thrones. HBO’s smash series is about to come to a thundering end, and we suggest that you prepare yourselves. However, this doesn’t mean the ladies of Westeros will vanish from our lives forever. The women of GoT have some fantastic new roles already lined up. Here’s what’s next for the women of Game of Thrones.

Though GoT is inspired by the George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and is generally beloved globally–the series has notoriously failed its women. During Season 8, Episode 4 –we all looked on in horror as Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel), the only woman of color on the show was beheaded. (Shrugs in spoiler.) This isn’t the first time GoT has had some serious missteps with its female characters. From depictions of sexual violence to is glaring lack of diversity–Game of Thrones has broken many TV barriers while keeping women in a box.

Many women–including actress Jessica Chastain and director Ava DuVernay have slammed the series for its use of sexual violence as a character-building tool. Assessing Sansa’s (Sophie Turner) journey on the series, Chastain recently tweeted, “Rape is not a tool to make a character stronger. A woman doesn’t need to be victimized in order to become a butterfly.” She continued, “The #littlebird was always a Phoenix. Her prevailing strength is sole because of her. And her alone.”

After a near-decade-long journey on the series, for most of its leading ladies –the actresses are ready to embark on new (and hopefully more female-positive) projects. This is where we can find them next.

Image: Shutterstock.

Maisie Williams

Maisie Williams was just a preteen when Season 1 of Game of Thrones began. As Arya Stark, Williams’ character’s arc has been one of the most revolutionary on the series. As a little girl–Arya was a precocious little fighter, more at ease using swords with her brothers than learning to sew or wearing a dress. Over the past eight seasons, we’ve watched Arya blossom (out of necessity) into a bold killer who will do anything for her family. All hail the Night King Slayer!

Williams auditioned for GoT because she wanted the money to buy a new laptop, but it looks like she’s ready to make a career out of acting. X-Men fans can catch Williams in The New Mutants which will debut on Aug. 2. She also just wrapped filming for the ’90s set film adaptation of the comic book series, The Owners. The movie is also set to star  Sylvester McCoy and  Rita Tushingham.

Image: Shuttershock.

Sophie Turner

Like her on-screen sister, Sophie Turner had little acting experience before she stepped into Sansa Stark’s gown. When we first met the auburn-headed Stark–she was an exhausting and annoying little girl who was desperate to win the affections of a prince. Sansa did not live happily ever after. Instead, she was held captive by Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), raped and tortured by Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) and manipulated by Petyr Baelish aka Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen). However, what Sansa did learn from all of her experiences was to play the game of thrones. As she told Littlefinger right before his execution, “I’m a slow learner, it’s true. But I learn.”

Though it’s a wrap for GoT, Turner is about to step into the shoes of another red-headed legend. She will reprise her role as Jean Grey in X-Men: Dark Phoenix which is set to drop June 7. The newlywed first played Jean in 2016’s X-Men Apocalypse. Following Dark Pheonix, Turner will star in Jouri Smit’s Heavy.

Image: Stephen Lovekin/REX/Shutterstock.

Gwendoline Christie

So, we’re never going to forgive GoT for leaving Brienne of Tarth aka Brienne the Stallion standing in her housecoat in the biting cold begging Jamie Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) to pick her over his evil ass twin sister. It really boils our blood just thinking about it. To beg a man who has THREE (maybe four) kids with his twin sister! The GoT writers tried it. However, that’s neither here nor there.

Before she slayed as Ser Brienne on GoT, Gwendoline Christie was slowly making a name for herself in the entertainment industry. However, she exploded in 2012 after her first appearance on GoT. She’s already starred in the Star Wars franchise and the critically acclaimed mini-series, Top of the Lake. After she lays down Brienne sword, you can catch the 6′ 3″ legend as Jane Murdstone in The Personal History of David Copperfield opposite Tilda Swinton.  She will also appear in 2020’s The Friend with Dakota Johnson and Jason Seagal.

Photo: Getty Images

Emilia Clarke

Are y’all going to crumble when the Mother of Dragons dies? We aren’t. Admittedly we loved Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen for the first several seasons of Game of Thrones, but lately, homegirl has been working our last nerve. She’s clearly showing signs that she has some real anger issues and her lust for power certainly isn’t helping. Still–we will give Khalessi credit for her journey to try and take back her family’s throne.

Though her character is no longer our fav, we absolutely adore Emilia Clarke. She’s already delighted us in several franchise films including Terminator Genisys and Solo: A Star Wars Story. She also gave us all the feels in the movie-adaptation of, Me Before You. Up next, Clarke probably won’t be riding any more dragons, but you can catch her in Above Suspicion which tells the story of the first ever conviction for the murder of an FBI agent and the rom-com, Last Christmas opposite Henry Golding and Emma Thompson. Both flicks will debut in Winter 2019.

Image: Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock.

Lena Headey

One way or another, Cersei Lannister is about to hang up her crown on Game of Thrones. Whether she wins the throne or Dany and Jon Snow take her out –Lena Headey who has played the sinister queen since Season 1 is ready to move on. Headey isn’t a stranger to film or TV. Her career stretches back into the ’90s. While filming GoT— the British-born actress did some extensive voice work as well.

Following GoT you can catch Headey in The Flood, Gunpowder Milkshake opposite Angela Bassett and Paul Giamatti, and the movie Crooks. Hopefully, she’ll ditch that tragic blonde cut though. And honestly, we don’t know how we feel about seeing Headey in pedestrian clothing. God forbid her character is courteous and friendly.

Image: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock.

Oh, Missandei, she had the best twist out in Westeros, and she and #BaeWorm were supposed to live out their days on some warm sandy beach somewhere away from the racists of Westeros. Nathalie Emmanuel’s days as Missandei may have come to an unsettling conclusion. However, Nathalie Emmanuel is just getting started. Before snagging a role on GoT back in Season 3–Emmanuel was known for her work on Hollyoaks. Since then she’s been in everything from The Fast and the Furious franchise to Maze Runner: The Death Curse.

Up next the vegan actress is saying farewell to HBO and hello to Hulu and Netflix. She is starring on two different forthcoming original series. You can spot her in Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral written by Mindy Kaling. You can also see her in Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance which stars Helena Bonham Carter, Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe, Natalie Dormer as well as everyone else and their mama.

Image: Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock.

Carice van Houten

So… no one was that pressed when Melisandre took off her choker and withered away at the end of the Battle of Winterfell. We don’t know about you, but we’ve been ready to pull up on her since she burned Shireen Baratheon alive in Season 5. But we suppose we can’t hold that against Carice van Houten. She spoke to the New York Times about her character’s “timely” demise, “I was actually happy and quite sentimental when I read the script. I thought it could be a beautiful ending to this character.”

Like Lena Headey–van Houten has been a staple in entertainment since the ’90s. Post-GoT, she’ll be starring in Brian De Palma’s Domino opposite her former Game of Thrones co-star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as well as the thriller, Lost Girls and Love Hotels.

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[textsfromumbridge]

In a crowd of thousands (JxB)

AN: I don’t think I’ve ever written anything for those two. Not that I’ve finished anyway. But after reading through so many fics on AO3, I just had to. That and the Anastasia soundtrack reminded me of how I’d bang Dimitry like a screen door in a hurricane. WHOOPS?!

... 

Brienne of Tarth had no problems going unnoticed - in fact, she really did prefer it. Anyone who noticed her would only point and laugh - there was always laughter when the audience finally noticed that she was actually a woman. 

She was aware of her unfortunate looks, and she’d learned to accept them. She knew her height made it even more impossible for her to stay unnoticed, was aware that her figure was not particularly womanly. But she was also aware that her lips, although chapped, were full and kissable, and that her clear blue eyes reminded of the ocean hitting the coast of her homeland. 

Her self esteem had been difficult to gain, but she’d grown with every perfectly spiked ball, with every compliment from her coach, and with every perfect grade keeping her on her scholarship. 

Still, those things also made her stand out, and led to unfortunate nights such as this one, attending a gala for King’s Landing’s best college athletes with the other girls. Their coach, the incomparable Catelyn Stark, had made them, reminding them to behave because “opportunities like these come along so rarely for women’s sports”. 

Sansa, the coach’s daughter and their libero, had nodded before pleading with Brienne to please let her and Margaery (their flirtatious setter) do something about her Look. Yes, the capital L had been audible even then. 

And that was how Brienne had come to wear a gleaming gold dress that, while accentuating her long muscled legs, made her afraid to bend over for fear of being even more noticeable than she already was. 

Wearing GOLD, at a party in King’s Landing? When one wasn’t associated with the Lannisters, it was sure to get one noticed. At least, according to Margaery, who kept up with the Kettleblacks and the Lannisters and everyone in between. Brienne? Not so much. Not at all. 

“It must be!” an excited voice behind her. “Who else is that tall?” 

Oh no. Oh no. She did not expect the mocking to begin just minutes after she walked into the expensively decorated ballroom. 

“Brienne of Tarth,” the smirk was almost audible. “I would recognize you anywhere.” 

First, she took a deep breath. Sure, the voice sounded vaguely familiar, but since she could not place it, it could just as easily be a Red Ron (high school nightmare) instead of a Renly (high school crush). She had to be prepared for the mocking, even though she actually felt kind of pretty in this getup. 

The man was beautiful - there was no other word for him. He wore his dark grey suit well, his hair longer than was fashion, but it suited him somehow. His facial hair somewhere between just scruff and a beard, mouth pulled into a smirk that reminded her of times long forgotten, when Mother and Galladon... No. 

“Even in a crowd of thousands, I’d know those eyes,” the man did not seem to see her confusion. 

He lifted her bodily - he was just a few inches shorter than she was in her heels - and twirled her around the crowded room, roaring with laughter all the while. 

“That used to be much easier,” he put her down, barely breaking a sweat. “I guess you were right about me being old.” 

Even now there was something in her that wanted to laugh along, to remember a joke long gone from memory. Another part of her was just concerned about how many people had been able to look under her skirt as he twirled her like a child, and a third part of her was still stuck on how solid he had felt, so close to her. 

“You,” she stammered, trying desperately to connect the dots with her brain still so frazzled. “Old man?” 

Another laugh - how was it that he was so happy to see her and she still had no inkling of who this man was? She had met him before, she could feel that. But how, when and where? There was just nothing. 

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten all about me,” he pressed a hand against his chest, feigning pain. “All those summers in your palace by the sea? Surely you are still as smart as ever, my lady knight.” 

Oh! It all hit her in a flash, the teenage boy chasing her with a plastic sword, her giggles as she tried to keep up with a young man eight years her senior. 

“Kingslayer,” she happily exclaimed, the old nickname coming to her lips too easily after years without it. 

He had fought the mad King and freed her so they could fight together, so they could save the innocent. He was the only one who indulged her love of sword fights and heroic tales - he didn’t even mind being saddled with this kid when he could be out with people his own age. 

“Brienne the Beauty,” he bowed. 

It still looked so regal, as if his father’s tales of them being descended from royalty had actual merit to it. Her responding curtsey was much less fluid - she hadn’t done this in a decade, ever since The Accident, when his father had forbidden him from returning. God forbid something would happen to his precious favorite son. 

“Jaime,” she leapt at him, and he caught her as always. 

“I always wondered where you’d end up,” he spoke, voice low and tickling her ear. “I hoped I’d find you here. You were always better than anyone else on the Island, in this city.” 

Wrapped around him, she was fully aware that it was probably unseemly that she had pressed herself against Jaime Lannister. But it had been ten years at least since she’d last seen him, half a world away on Tarth. 

“I have missed you,” she said the words and realized just how very true they were. 

“No other knights willing to fight for you?” Jaime was still teasing her, much as he used to once upon a time. 

There were no more knights left on the island after he left, no true knights in the Stormlands where she’d gone to high school, and no knights in King’s Landing until now. Not like her childhood friend and idol. 

“No one like you,” the admission came so easily. 

“There are no men like me,” he boasted, the words familiar as an old song she used to know. “Only me.” 

She huffed like she used to, rolling her eyes at his words while she knew they were truth. He had his flaws, even as a child she’d known that, but he’d never looked down on her even though he could have done so very easily. He’d been so very dear to her then, and his response to seeing her again after all this time told her that he’d held her in his heart all this time as well. 

“By the Gods, this dress,” Jaime took her in, eyes dark. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to the poor athletes tonight?” 

Sure, it was a jape, but certainly not at her expense. 

“What you’re doing to me?” he continued. “I’m just an old man, Brienne. Have mercy on me.” 

The look on his face was new - she’d seen it directed at Margaery from a whole host of boys, seen it sent in Sansa’s direction until Brienne had scared them off, but she had never seen someone look at her like this. And now someone was, and it was Jaime. Vain, proud, stubborn, insecure Jaime, who was never sure if he had friends because of his family and wealth, or because of the hero lurking underneath. 

“I’m sure you can handle it,” she brushed it off, smiling all the while. 

His hand has made its way around her waist again, and for a brief moment she remembered the summer he’d broken his wrist so badly the doctors had worried about him ever using it normally again. But the vision from the past was brief - they were adults now. Jaime seemed ever so aware that she was all grown up now, old enough to purchase her own mead or wine. 

Not that alcohol appeared to be on his mind when he looked at her. 

“You made a friend,” Sansa disturbed the electric current running between Jaime’s eyes and whatever part of Brienne’s body they could reach. “I was worried you’d snuck out and left us!” 

Jaime’s response to the intrusion was to pull her even closer to his side, reluctant to share her with anyone after all the time spent apart. 

“Jaime’s an old friend,” she almost winced at how similar she sounded to some vapid socialite. “He used to visit me on Tarth every summer.” 

Sansa knew the stories, had idealized and romanticized them all until it led to some magical, enchanting reunion that in turn led to a happily ever after. It was why her friend’s eyes were wide and almost teary. 

“Sir Jaime,” Sansa smiled tearfully. “I’m so glad you found each other again, after all this time.” 

There was swooning in Sansa’s future, and Brienne was happy to let her friend have those fantasies. In her worst moments, after the bet, she’d dreamed that Jaime would return to set everyone straight and to sweep her off her feet. She couldn’t blame Sansa for doing the same. 

“Have you been telling your friends about me, Brienne?” Jaime practically purred, and she shivered. 

He appeared pleased at the effect he had on her, and that lit the flame of competitiveness that had gotten her in so much trouble as a child. She was not going to let him pretend he was not all that affected by her in return. 

“Sansa, please excuse us,” Brienne smiled to make the message seem kinder. “It seems I have to curtail the old man’s little fantasies.” 

Her words would not offend Jaime - but he was ready to rise to the bait, muttering under his breath about how there was nothing little about any part of his fantasies. It made her flush all over, still getting used to this new awareness of him that seemed to exist inside her. 

“It was nice meeting you,” Sansa, ever polite, chirped before she ran off in Margaery’s direction for a good gossip session. 

She’d be hearing about this for the next few years, she was sure of that. She was also sure that she wouldn’t mind it at all. 

“I dreamed of you,” Jaime pulled her close again, whispering the inappropriate words in her ear. “And I will dream of you in this dress.” 

Oh, she had to learn to grow immune to his words, to his voice, or she’d be blushing for the rest of her life. If only she would be around him often enough to be flushed red for the rest of her days. 

“Dance with me?” he pleaded, unwilling to let her go. 

“Don’t step on my toes,” she teased, remembering footwork exercises gone awry. 

Not even Jaime Lannister was graceful all of the time - but he was ever so graceful now. 

“I wouldn’t dare, my lady,” he led her onto the dance floor and held on tight as the one-two-three of the waltz began. 

They would not get lost in the crowd, they stood out too much. And as a thousand people mixed and mingled, theirs was a perfect beginning. 

[tatsupyon]

Title: Sweet dreams Pairing: HidaEno Prompt: Dreams/Nightmares Word Count:  2425 Summary:  Enomoto and Hidaka are both studying in college and they end up being roommates. Enomoto isn’t too pleased to have a popular straight guy as his roommate at first but soon Hidaka’s charm makes Enomoto to change his mind.

Special thanks to @heartlessfujoshi for helping me out with this one! This is firt fic I’ll ever post in tumblr and I was so nervous and wouldn’t be able to do this without your help ♥

First day at college. I’m sitting in back of classroom because I’m too shy to sit in front row. There were only few people besides me in the classroom. I take my notebook and pencils and then put my bag on floor next to my chair. Alas, I’m even more nervous than usual.

New school, new people, new life. New chances, full of possibilities. And of course, the possibility to fuck up everything again.

I take a deep breath to calm myself down a little and look the clock. Still ten minutes until class starts. I open the front camera on my phone to see how I look.

On screen appears an image of a slightly pale young man who has dark long hair in a ponytail. Olive eyes are framed by glasses. No disturbing pimples on the nose, food around mouth or anything else awkward. Good. It seems like I won’t make myself look like ass on first day. What a relief.

I put my phone away when I hear noises from the corridor. When I move my gaze to the classroom’s door I see a handsome tall guy enter the class. He’s surrounded by group of girls and they are all chattering happily together. Ah, of course a hot guy like him has got friends already. I couldn’t help myself, I was feeling a little envious. I hope that making friends could be that easy for me also, but it wasn’t. It never had been easy…

I turn my gaze away from that guy and his fangirls and focus on watching outside the window to get my thoughts elsewhere. Sigh. What did I think would happen? Being in college wouldn’t change anything. Popular kids would still be popular and nerds like me would never be popular, and even making friends would be a pain. I could only dream about having a chance to hang out with a guy like him.

______________

After classes I head back to our dorm where I had lived since yesterday evening. Last night I had been there all by myself because my roommate hasn’t moved in yet and now I’m nervous to see what kind of guy I have to share an apartment with. When I step inside, the hallway is full of boxes, and I can hear chattering from the room that is across a hall from my room. But the voice I hear is a woman’s voice? I had thought that there were same sex dorms at our college?

I was just about to knock on my roommate’s door to go introduce myself when that door suddenly opens and the handsome guy from my morning class steps out.

”Hello! You must be my roommate? I’m Hidaka Akira. Nice to meet ya!” he introduces himself energetically and shakes my hand.

“E-Enomoto Tatsuya. Nice to meet you too” I introduce myself and try to show him a pleasant smile as much as possible.

Shit. I don’t like this at all. Out of all people, of course he has to be my roommate. Popular boys make me feel uncomfortable. And somehow, I’m already sure that this guy will be a really annoying roommate.

I peek quickly into Hidaka’s room. Yup. There were two of those girls I had seen earlier today in class. That explained why I had heard a woman voice’s earlier. Ugh. Hopefully Hidaka won’t bring girls to our apartment every damn day. And most importantly; I hope they won’t spend the night here.

”I’ll call you Enomo then!” Hidaka says cheerfully, and pats me on my shoulder.

“The girls are helping me with moving, and we are having a couple of beers. Wanna join us?”

He looks like a happy puppy when he asks me that. It’s actually nice that he asked me to join them. Maybe he wasn’t that bad after all? I look in the direction of girls, and the message they were sending to me with their glares was clear: go away. They didn’t need any more people to compete about Hidaka’s attention.

“Thank you ,but no thanks. I still haven’t unpacked even all of my own stuff” I replied with a polite tone and escaped into my own room as soon as possible.

So annoying. Just the type that annoys me the most. Popular and always surrounded by girls. The type of guy I love and hate the most. Straight and handsome.

_______________

 I was picking jalapenos off from my pizza while Hidaka was judging me with his gaze. Finally he says, with little offense in his voice, “C’mon mate! Don’t be so picky. For once I cooked for us and this is how you are, thanking me for my efforts?”

His comment makes me roll my eyes.

“First: It is not actually cooking that you order pizza for us. Second: I don’t like spicy food.” I defend myself, and continue removing jalapenos.

Hidaka made a deep sigh and I realize that I must have been little too harsh on him. He had tried his best after all and his intentions had been good so why I am being so bitchy to him?

“But thanks for ordering pizza for us. That was a nice surprise.” I said, and smiled to my roommate who returned a big smile.

It has been about a month since we started living together. Against my pessimistic expectations, Hidaka and I have had a fun time living together. Actually, we were getting along almost too well. During this past month I had developed a huge crush on him already. And the fact that Hidaka seemed to want spend time with me didn’t actually help the situation.

Hidaka had been the one who had suggested that we could eat dinner together every night. While we were eating, we usually told to each other how our day had been. It was nice. It gave both of us warm, homelike feelings, I guess. It also gave us a chance to get to know each other little better.

I was usually the one who was cooking (because to be fair: Hidaka is totally hopeless in the kitchen. I had forbid him cooking after I had suffered through two meals cooked by him) and Hidaka did his part by washing dishes. But tonight Hidaka had surprised me by ordering pizza for us. It’s actually really nice of him. He knew that I had a long evening class so he must have figured that I must be tired and little cranky after it and not in the mood for cooking.

“Next time I know not to order pizza with jalapenos on it for you. I didn’t know you don’t like spicy food. I still have lots to learn about you, mate.”

Yeah, for example you don’t know that little thing about me that I am gay. Oh and also that I’m interested in you.

“Well, now you know. And now I know you like spicy stuff so I can put extra chili on your dish from now on if you like.” I say, and take my first bite of my finally jalapeno-free pizza.

”Oh yeah I like hot and spicy. Both food and women.” Hidaka says, and winks his eye.

Sigh. Here he goes again. Talking about women was the most common topic we had while we were eating. Hidaka is always describing his ideal woman, and rating girls in our class and stuff like that. Thank god Hidaka is usually the one who talks so I had avoided all the awkward questions like “what kind of girls you like?” because the answer would be: not any kind of girl. I want to be fucked hard by a hot, tall hetero guy like you.

“By the way, what kind of girls you are into Enomo?”

Are you fucking kidding me? I was just celebrating that you hadn’t asked me that one. Ah, here we go. Time to lie to him and –

“Or… don’t be offended but… are guys more your thing?”

Huh?

Huuuhhh?

D-did he just…?  Shit shit shit. He knows. Panic mode: ON!

I slowly lift my gaze to see how Hidaka’s face looks. I was sure he would be grossed out by the idea that he’s living with a gay guy and ---

Hidaka is smiling.

“You’re gay, right?” He asks, and there is no judgement in his voice at all, so I nod.

“Ok, cool.” Hidaka says, and continues eating his pizza.

_______________

”Enomo…. Hey, Enomo!”

I’m startled awake from deep sleep by the sensation of someone touching my shoulder. I reach to grab my glasses from off the nightstand, and when I had my glasses on my gaze focuses on teary eyed Hidaka, who is standing beside my bed.

“Enomo, I had a terrible nightmare, and now I’m too scared to sleep alone!”

Is he a kid or something? Like really? He is almost an adult. I’m sure he can handle one nightmare and – I was just about to open my mouth to tell Hidaka to go back to his own room when my sleepy brain starts to finally work properly. Hidaka is in my room. In the middle of the night. Wearing only pajama pants. My gaze wanders around Hidaka’s naked torso for a few seconds before I pulled myself together again.

“Come here then.” I say, and tap the place next to me in bed.

Hidaka looks more than happy, and without any hesitation he rolls next to me in bed and under the same blanket.

My heart starts racing like crazy. He is so close to me. I can feel his skin against mine. My hand is shaking a little when I wrap it around Hidaka before I ask, “What kind of nightmare were you having?”

“I was surfing and then suddenly a shark attacked me. I tried to escape it by going to land but that shark was some kind of crazy mutant shark, and it had legs so it started to chase me! I ran as fast as I could, but it still was catching up so I decided to climb up a tree. There were coconuts in the tree and I started to throw those at the shark so I could knock it unconscious, but that fucker ate all coconuts!”

Yup. It is official now. Hidaka Akira is 100% idiot. But an adorable idiot. My idiot.

I give a small peck on Hidaka’s forehead and try to sound even little bit empathic and not to laugh when I say, “No need to fear mutant sharks anymore. I’ll protect you.”

Luckily, it’s so dark in my room that Hidaka can’t see how much I’m blushing to my own words. Damn. Hidaka might have had nightmare but I feel like I’m having the most wonderful dream at this moment. My crush is laying in my arms. I can be so close to him. Touch him.

Hidaka leans even closer to me, closing his eyes and murmurs, “Thanks, mate.”

No, thank you. And thank god. Thank you all possible forces in the world. Thank you for this amazing moment I am having right now.

Hidaka’s breath against my neck feels amazing. I also enjoy having taller guy curled against me far too much, his head resting against my shoulder.

I start to stroke Hidaka’s messy bed hair and I feel his breath starting to become calmer. It seems that he’d fallen asleep again in no time. I, on other hand, won’t be able to sleep at all anymore. I’m way too excited to sleep. I want to enjoy every second of this rare opportunity to have Hidaka in my bed.

Soon I lose track of time because I had been too focused on watching Hidaka’s sleeping face. I’m still stroking his hair slowly and enjoying his warm breath against my skin. Damn. This really is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. I have to do it - now or never! I pluck up all of my courage and then I press my lips softly against Hidaka’s lips.

After a short kiss I open my eyes and almost have a heart attack. Hidaka’s eyes are open. He isn’t asleep. Oh shit. Shit. I thought he was deep in sleep.

“…Did you just kiss me?” He asks, sounding really sleepy.

I can’t answer. I was too focused panicking inside my head.

Hidaka stands up, and I am sure that he is about to go back to his own room and not talk to me ever again. But instead of doing that, Hidaka soon leans closer to me again, pressing me softly against the mattress, and looks me in the eyes with smirk on his face.

“If you want to kiss me, at least do it properly.”

After saying that Hidaka kisses me. Properly. He sucks my lower lip softly and it makes me feel so good that I moan a little. When I open my mouth, I soon feel Hidaka’s tongue swirling around mine. I wrap my arms around Hidaka when our kiss starts to deepen. He sucks my tongue and bites my lower lip from time to time ,and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. Finally our lips part. I pant heavily, and I’m pretty sure that my face is completely red. Nobody has ever kissed me like that. It felt so great. I wanted more.

I lean forward, and kiss Hidaka again. I hear a soft groan escaping from his lips, and it gives me even more courage. It seems like I’m not the only one who was enjoying of this situation. I could never dream that Hidaka would like to do stuff like this with me? I thought he was totally straight. Maybe he was just being bi-curious? Fuck, who cares. Enjoy the situation now and worry about things like that tomorrow.

We continue kissing each other for a while. My whole body feels hot, and the fact that Hidaka’s hands are touching me here and there doesn’t help the situation. This has to be a dream. Hidaka is holding me like I’m something precious to him. It feels too great.

After our passionate cuddling session, we finally try to sleep again. I feel like the happiest man on earth at this moment. Hidaka, the man I have a huge crush on, has his arms wrapped around me, and he is pressing soft kisses against my neck. Just when I’m about to fall asleep I heard his voice whispering, ”Sweet dreams cutie.”

[grizzlefur]

WWEm - The Philosopher-King We Deserve

Happy WWelentines day. Or something.

Transmission date: Monday 13/Tuesday 14 February 2017.

Guess who's back onyour screens with some fresh new FRIDAY NIGHT RAW? .

daniel, play my theme music .

(daniel is my sound guy) .

(he doesn't exist, but nor does my sound capability, so that's ok) .

we open on an in memoriam for chavo guerrero sr .

who i have no other information on, so i'll go for 'probably wasn't a murderer as far as i know' .

hedge hedge hedge .

but hey, he was eddie's brother .

so a certain amount of reflected love in any circumstance .

titles hit, and oh god i've just remembered what we've got in store this week .

cut to the arena, vegas uses 80% of its annual pyro allowance .

later we have the festival of friendship, a women's title match, and probably more things .

for one of those things, here's steph .

"You know it's going to be a big show when the Commissioner kicks things off!" .

no, cole, that's like 60% of episodes .

you pretty much just know it's going to be a monday .

steph has magnanimously given mick the week off because he was clearly .

stressed and overworked last week that explains everything .

a moment of silence for mick foley, of being reeducated .

and then several more moments of silence because roman has just walked in .

eliciting a deafening 'huh' .

he wants to fight braun now instead of waiting for fastlane .

steph asks the crowd for an opinion on it, then proceeds to ignore it .

roman doesn't care what anyone thinks because he's the big dog guy .

apparently we can't have that match because braun is fighting mark henry later .

(woo) .

roman makes a vague threat, steph forbids him from interfering .

and...now here are anderson and gallows? .

anderson has a new schmullet schmub shirt .

apparently they're here to stand up for steph .

and for everyone who doesn't care for roman's shit .

they want a handicap match against roman .

steph does a teddy long impersonation, everyone winces .

so that match is a thing, and apparently teddy is in the hof class this year .

so roman and the club commence to murderbrawl .

and that match is now .

it's...deeply dull, what can i say .

villainous men stamp on heroic man .

and gallows punches him until the ref calls the dq .

so that happened .

and post-beating magic killer .

or not .

roman counters out because fuck your finisher .

two punches and a convenient chair later, villainous men slink away .

woo .

hey, let's hype strowman/henry some more .

cos that's exciting .

but now, a video package about the beautiful friendship between chris and kevin .

including a mashup of chris putting everyone on the list .

advert for upcoming doc on andre .

but now, the new day .

so maybe we'll have some fun twenty minutes in .

okay, 17 minutes .

fuck you, time code .

introduced as kofi accompanied by his peeps, so i assume he has a singles match .

crowd immediately start a who chant, new day are just like cmon guys we have the who planned, give us a minute and we'll get to it .

holy shit, he's fighting bo .

i was wondering only yesterday if he was still employed .

big e has the blueprints for the new day ice cream machine .

i have no idea if this whole thing will have a payoff, or if it's just them being weird .

corey hates them because he's lactose intolerant .

my man .

we want ice cream chants begin, kofi says fuck the match and conducts them .

meanwhile, bo dances with big e as a distraction tactic, then steals and tears up the blueprints .

the fuck is even going on .

bo hits a twisting draping ddt off kofi's deep sadness, and honestly looks like he's going to get a win for a second .

but he doesn't .

needless to say .

and sos for the win .

and then big e pours bootyos on him and in his mouth .

because the new day .

corey: "Everyone knows you shouldn't feed cereal to an unconscious man!" .

your mum was fucking weird, corey .

now, charly interviews neville about the politely looming threat of one mr gallagher .

neville doesn't give a shiiiiiiiiiit .

jack appears, tries to quote shakespeare, neville's just like no .

jack walks off, presumably to have a match, but calls neville a bloody pillock first .

i am super english, so this is great to me .

and now, more recap videos of the chrevin saga .

while we purple up the ring .

cut to ads and further purpling time, and now we have noam dar v jack gallagher .

austin does an impression of noam saying alicia foooooooooooooox, and honestly? not bad .

i can't say much about this match, because the beauty of jack gallagher glitching out of moves cannot be expressed in words

.

alicia is very excited about noam getting some attack in .

prepare for disappointment, hun .

and headbutt to dropkick for the win .

that was pretty short, but great fun .

because how could those two have a match that isn't .

but here's neville, to suck away my good feeling with his sliiiiiiiightly too slow music .

but now, here's a limo .

containing one (1) samoa joe .

and also hunter .

but now, emmalina video .

which should be the last one, thank god .

because that's up next .

cut back from ads, and we need more time to change the ropes, so have some stock video of cegas and a chrevin video .

including the 'sin cara in an incredibly convincing jericho mask' bit .

which was amazing .

but now, emma .

in a slinky dress .

the fuck has happened to you .

and not even any incongruous gloves .

*sad face* .

...huh? .

"And now, you will see the makeover of Emmalina to Emma." .

and she walks off .

the actual fuck .

has this whole thing been a massive bait and switch for people like me .

god, i hope so .

but now, [insert woman here] interviews bayley .

she's excited .

apparently the title match is going to be the main event .

which is good .

interview woman is grinning too because excited bayley is just so infectious .

and now, chris and kevin .

chris is excited .

introduces the festival in english, spanish and japanese .

tomodachi-matsuri .

love it .

but then hunter collars kevin .

apparently they have something to talk about .

so chris goes off to plan a party .

brief shot of hunter and kevin talking earnestly in a corridor .

with no sound .

hmmmmm .

[plot thicBRRRRAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGHHHHHHH .

fuck it braun, can i not get through a stage direction in peace .

he's fightingmarkhenry, so let's have recap videos of his problems with roman .

just so we all remember where this match is inevitably going .

Previously on [SHOW], do you remember this thing that happened two seasons ago that would seem to have no relevance to the current situation well keep that in mind no reason .

braun and mark start off by just shouting at each other .

they're trying to portray this as an equal match, espite one of them being in the middle of a push to the moon and one being mark fucking henry .

crowd are chanting for something, but it's not either of these two .

mark goes for the world's strongest slam, basically counters himself by falling over .

and...braun does a dropkick? .

sure, why not .

and then running powerslam for the win .

say what you will about him, it's impressive to see braun casually hoist a 400-pound man onto his shoulder .

totally surprising everyone, here comes roman .

stalks slowly towards the ring and glowers, braun responds by punching him in the head

.

bold strategy .

cue small brawl with large men .

two superman punches do little to faze braun, then a spear gets reversed into a powerslam .

stay down, dude .

braun wanders off, licking his lips a weird amount .

roman lies in the ring going OW MY EVERYTHING .

end thing .

now, samoa joe is backstage in the interview room .

which contains only red curtains, a small tree, and a table with a model elephant on .

yknow, that classic interior design aesthetic .

but first, more chris and kevin videos .

and a sportsdude in the audience .

cesaro and sheamus train bayley backstage .

and/or hit each other .

and now enzo and cass come to mock them .

sheamus is so angry he completely fucks up his lines .

enzo being even more of a tool than usual .

is this a heel turn, or are they just the worst faces? .

the eternal question .

and we fade on them arguing .

nothing is resolved .

and now, we get cole interviewing joe backstage .

what the fuck, the curtains on cole's side are blue .

that just makes this look like two videos were really shittily edited together .

and if it's not that, then any other camera angle would presumably reveal this to be the ugliest room in history .

joe's attitude to this interview is basically "Fuck your interview" .

but, yknow, in a well-spoken way .

he is the philosopher-king we deserve .

samoa joe 4 great khan .

cole asks about seth and triple h, joe's just like excuse me which of these men are you interviewing .

god, i love him .

he's just very outspoken about how he's here to murder everyone and we should all just calmly wait our turn .

cole is sitting in front of an empty vase, a wooden flower in front of it, and the most distractingly blandly shite wall art .

the actual fuck is up with this room .

joe's spinning it that he's not just hunter's muscle, he's his associate .

walks away, leaves cole looking mildly traumatised .

but now, LET'S GO .

enteer the happy canadian man who skanked his way into all our hearts .

he's fighting handsome rusev, who weirdly wasn't announced by lana .

at least jojo didn't call him handsome rusev .

i'm still amazed how blatantly they've repeated this angle .

well, seven year rule, i guess .

(in other news, holy fuck dashing cody rhodes was in 2010) .

i like sami's new tights, but he needs to be aware that when he splays his legs while trying to fight out of an incredibly long rest hold, the pattern makes a huge, impossible to ignore X over his perineum .

this is simultaneously a pretty good match and formulaic as fuck .

like, it's basically the same as every other match each of these guys has ever fought, but on the other hand, those were good matches .

corey thinks 'handsome' should be rusev's legal first name .

fuck it, i agree .

that'd be hilarious .

although i can't decide whether it'd be funnier as a middle name .

rusev's mask falls off, he is unmasked luchador levels of distressed .

so he...puts it back on .

well that was a thing .

rusev keeps kicking sami's head off, but they keep growing back .

turns out sami zayn was a hydra all along .

who knew .

weird sequence of not-quite-spots there .

sami seems weirdly reluctant to actually do anything .

and then helluva kick with no setup or anything for the pin .

huh .

so that happened? .

i feel like i fell asleep and missed part of it, but i'm reasonably sure i didn't .

charly? appears on the ramp to interview sami .

oh, it is charly .

thanks for letting me now, sami .

sami gives an inspirational speech about getting back up whenever bullies murder you .

and swings straight in to cutting his hottest promo ever in joe's direction .

mentions mania, the WHOMP WHOMP WHOMPs kick in before he can finish that thought .

and joe blindsides him by not coming in the main entrance .

still wearing a dress shirt .

and just mashes sami into the minitron .

and coquina clutch until death .

cut to charlotte putting boots on and looking at her belt .

but now, stock footage of vegas woooooo .

and a thing about teddy long making the hof .

which would be great, but for the fact that steph told us that in her opening .

so...holla, i guess? .

beautiful shot in this video package of a white guy in the crowd with a sign saying HOLLER HOLLER PLAYER .

there's a lot to say about that .

ah, that's why we got that long-ass video .

it's cruiserweight time .

enter akira tozawa and his kick-ass music .

kendrick is on announce so he can talk about how great tozawa is .

and bet "a whole bushel of bananas" about the other crusierweights' backstage habits .

you do you, brian .

and they keep talking about bananas .

i have no fucking idea where this came from .

oh, by the way, ariya's here too .

in memoriam ariya daivari's back .

akira deploys my second-favourite catchphrase .

which is, of course, HA .

ooh, nasty move there .

tozawa goes for daivari in the corner, he drops down and chop blocks him in the shins so he hits the middle rope with this face .

and that suicide dive .

fuck, i love tozawa .

a few more kicks, and snap german katabasis for the win .

kendrick applauds his effective training .

tozawa entirely fails to notice him .

but next up, kebin to kurisu no tomodachi-matsuri .

after some more recaps of their friendship .

going all the way up to last week .

festival kicks off, as with all vegas festivals, with all the pyro .

and dancing girls .

we have officially gone full vegas .

chris struts in wearing a silver lamé jacket and hat .

this is so goddamn ridiculous it turns around into amazing .

chris is going for maximum ham .

intriduces kevin who looks faintly mortified and disappointed at the whole thing .

chris leads the girls to the ring, kevin stays a loooooong way behind them .

he has no clue what kind of stroke his friend has had .

whoever you are in the crowd with a feather-trimmed FESTIVAL OF D-BAGS sign, i love yoou and want you to succeed .

there are several mysterious objects on stage .

seriously, this is all being presented by a man wearing a silver sequinned trilby .

object #1 is a sculpture .

by ralph guggenheim, the premier norwegian minimalist maximalist artiste .

apparently it cost chris $7000 .

kevin is less than impressed .

but tries to be nice for his friend .

object #2 is a painting .

it's the creation of man, but with chris as adam and kevin as god .

that is fucking amazing .

wwe art department, you have earned your salary .

chris tells kevin to hang it in his home .

kevin is like i have two kids, and you're not wearing pants in this .

chris: "It's ART, you don't NEED pants!" .

best quote .

gift #3 is Friendship, the Magician .

who is apparently the illuminati of illusion .

i have no idea .

i'm just typing as these things happen .

kevin is like hey my 9-year-old son can do those tricks .

so Friendship the Magician has made the list .

which he deserves for that lime shirt, if nothing else .

chris admits to finding a magician on craigslist, dismisses him whence he came .

chris makes reference to the fact that he should have stopped goldberg ever making it to fastlane .

dramatic buildup .

is gift #4 a gun .

kevin's face is a picture .

no, apparentl gift #4 is chris calling goldberg out .

this'll end so well .

holy fuck .

dramatic entrance, and it's fricking gillberg .

outstanding work .

kevin runs out, murders him, and comes back to hector chris .

kevin is pissed and confused .

and chris is trying his best god bless him .

does a heartfelt speech about how much kevin means to him and how he's got his back .

d'awwwww .

and promises he'll make sure kevin beats goldberg .

awwwwww, they love each other and they actually said it .

i love that they're advancing discourse tbh .

kevin's all embarrassed because he got chris something but it's not as good as all his stuff .

and it's a new list .

ohhhhhhh .

chris's name is on it .

and it's the list of KO .

kevin beats the shit out of chris and his art .

this is honestly making me sad ;.; .

such a beautiful relationship, ruined forever .

well, if they wanted to reaffirm kevin's heel status, there they go .

and apron powerbomb .

the death knell on this beautiful beautiful angle .

but then, it's a great setup for owens/jericho at mania .

which i'm looking forward to .

smashes chris into the festival of friendship sign, which shatters impressively .

walks out of the ring, casually pushing the original guggenheim over, as referees tend to chris .

cut to ads as we all console our children .

chris is being stretchered off into an ambulance .

while cole talks about his emotional trauma .

all the announcers are unified in their shock and dismay .

but now we have to do another segment, so everybody cheer up .

and now we have something with anderson and gallows .

but we're all too depressed to care .

okay, no .

apparently we're having cesaro/enzo .

so first we have enzo offering his analysis of cesaro .

consisting mostly of switzerland and baywatch puns .

the two are linked in context, i promise .

enter cesaro, who gets a longer section of his entrance than usual before sheamus joins him .

i love these two together way more than i ever thought i would .

corey is pissed that he has to watch enzo after the traumatic events of the last segment .

cesaro throws enzo into the ropes, he stumbles a bit, then goes fuck it and throws himself over them .

don't worry zo, nobody saw .

cesaro is fucking enzo up, and the crowd love it .

cole points out the siiiiiiiiign .

enzo hits a shitty ddt, cesaro briefly sells it before getting bored and uppercutting his head off .

not a finisher we've seen him use for a little while .

well, that was certainly a comedown segment .

but now, the black history month segment .

which today is about rosa parks .

who was also not at wrestlemania .

i want one of these superstars to say "Nevertheless, she persisted." .

didn't happen .

ah well .

next up, it's main event time .

but first, charlotte mocks sasha backstage .

and says she should be fired for getting injured and destroying morale .

cue trashtalk exchange .

and ads for next week .

oh great, we have braun/show .

what did we ever do to you, wwe .

(says the woman who writes a weekly blog taking the piss out of wwe) .

but now, it's women's title time .

i love that this is the main event .

bayley has a sparkly black jacket with the fringes on it, and i approve .

charlotte's dressing gown continues to get ever more elaborate .

billed as 'charlotte flair' again .

they really need to work out whether they're doing that or not .

this match is starting off slow, but we've got time .

and it's just showing off how good both of these are technically .

i do love people who can make mat-based chain wrestling fun .

bayley decides to get dangerous, proceeds by mashing charlotte's face into the turnbuckle .

between that and charlotte switching to her striker moveset, this is turning into quite the brawl .

and a surprising number of submission holds by charlotte .

including a weird leg trap neckbreaker hold i don't think i’ve ever seen before .

and an exposed knee drop, because she has to slowly adopt all her dad's moves .

ooh, and a dragon sleeper .

charlotte has just brought an entirely new moveset to this match .

bayley reverses out, gets an attack phase .

and gets kicked in the face for her trouble .

RAW Las Vegas: Where beauty and joy come to die. .

moonsault off the barricade onto a standing bayley's neck .

ow .

bayley is getting added to my 'please don't kill yourself for our amusement' list .

bayley gets an attack phase, then they both crossbody each other simultaneously .

bayley gets up first, fuelled by the rage of the unheard millions .

inverted exploder of RAGE .

springboard elbow drop, nearfall .

draping ddt because fuck it, bubbly hispanic girls can be randy orton .

nearly falls off the top turnbuckle on her way to a top rope elbow drop .

has the grace to smirk at the fans about it .

these two are just giving it eveyrthing .

beautiful avalanche hurricanrana by bayley, nearfall .

and dana fucking brooke appears .

bayley coldcocks her off the apron, locks the shitting figure four on charlotte .

so dana rakes her eyes to break it .

charlotte gets a figure eight .

and sasha appears to hit dana with a crutch and then hit charlotte in the face too .

bayley to belly .

and the pin .

and bayley finally gets her belt .

between this, naomi, and bray, this mania season is the season of recognising hard work .

everyone cries .

i may be one of these people .

eh, we'll take it out in post .

bayley is beaming, laughing, and jumpng the barricade to hug fans .

she is our champion .

now that was a hell of a match, only enhanced by the narrative .

the crowd are so fucking pumped .

they may never give her back .

the camera is having trouble finding her in the crowd .

the refs have hustled her back into the ring before she gets touched by too many people .

and we fade on her in the ring, having the time of her life .

RAW Las Vegas: Bittersweet, like slightly suspect dessert wine. .

but we can't let it end there .

(because hisorically, it didn't, and all) .

because speaking of hardworking superstars who deserve belts, in the aftermath of Elimination Chamber 2017: Where Everything Was Shit Until Suddenly It Wasn't, we have MONDAY AFTERNOON RAW! .

(yeah, we snuck a weekend-long cut in there somewhere and none of you noticed) .

(good work, daniel) .

(i'll get you taken off the list) .

opening with recaps of chamber, which was often disappointing but overall pretty good .

including the moment when cena went down and the entire world went holy shit .

and we open the actual show on bray entering .

with his lantern light nicely catching off his shiny new belt .

but without his family .

</3 .

but to be fair, bray clearly follows a "i will give you victory if you kill your sons" kind of god .

apparently we're having a title rematch tonight .

and if cena retakes it, i'm done with this shit .

you deserve it chants bring the house down .

bray has a speech about how sister abigail revealed his long road to victory to him .

and how he finally has the whole world in his hands .

...well played .

this is surreal and amazing .

bray will lead us to paradise .

which is nice .

bray announces the era of wyatt and hellfire for his foes, crowd cheer rapturously .

which i'm not sure should be the reaction to that kind of pronouncement .

so here's cena to save us from the devil .

and the lights come up, allowing us all to appreciate bray's new spiky leather jacket .

cena starts off by magnanimously acknowledging bray's win .

calls the crowd brainwashed for saying bray deserves it .

fuck off, john .

and gets a whole thing about how you have to earn shit and bray somehow hasn't done that .

cena proposes they have a match right now .

so here comes aj styles, who's totally involved .

protip, dude: we don't want none .

aj thinks cena shouldn't get a rematch before him for some reason .

he apparently objects to the idea of queue-jumping .

although how aj gets a rematch for a belt he didn't have in the first place is kind of beyond me .

but he wants a rematch right now as well .

well this is awkward .

here comes daniel bryan to resolve the double booking .

opens by congratulating bray again, because we need to constantly remind ourselves that bray winning a belt actually happened .

according to bryan, we have a conundrum .

luckily, there was a super obvious way to resolve it .

so he's done that .

later tonight, triple threat title match, which bray will probably win by dredging up some family .

also tonight, we have becky/mickie again .

and naomi does an undefined thing .

but now, american alpha are great .

walking moodily down a corridor .

very brief vignette of dean stomping through backstage looking for baron .

not sure why that needed to be there .

the editing on smackdown is so avant-garde .

or possibly shit .

hard to tell sometimes .

so now we have alpha/ascension .

so it's time to see whether we're actually going to make this ascension push a thing or not .

they're getting an entrance, at least .

they've tweaked viktor's paint again .

one day, they'll find something they like .

or they won't and they'll keep changing his look until one day he gets paired up with an irritating rapper and fades into obscurity .

could go either way, really .

alpha's gear detailing is now green tiger-print, which i'm not sure i can support .

think of the green tigers .

they're making a whole thing of the ascension stopping to talk strategy, which is honestly pretty great to see .

makes this make sense .

rather than just expecting every teamto be as telepathic and/or perfectly synchronised as #DIY .

speaking of which, after a brief brawl, jordan and gable just simultaneously clotheslined both of the ascension while jumping off the same turnbuckle .

they are the true power couple of wrestling .

the ascension are getting a really good fight in here .

it's like we're suddenly back on nxt .

jason takes his top off, sets up for grand amplitude, but gets bullfought into the ring post while the ascension beat some crap out of chad .

but still, couple of spots later, chad erupts out of nowhere to finish a beautiful grand amplitude on viktor for the pin .

cut to a video of the usos mocking alpha .

so much for that ascension push, i guess .

only space for one tag team story on this show .

the usos basically promise to hunt and kill jordan and gable .

but now, ellsworth and carmella .

he invites her out for a valentine's dinner, she wants to keep it professional .

dean appears to hunt baron, pauses to tell ellsworth that carmella's exploiting him .

daniel bryan appears to resolve the issue .

is like hmmmm baron's not here right now, but you clearly need to fight .

how about this dude? .

dean likes this arrangement, ellsworth is less impressed .

another segment about teddy long, jbl shouts holla a lot while being the oldest, richest, whitest, old rich white guy .

carmella enters, with ellsworth announcing her .

let's be honest, he's not bad on the mic .

but this is the dean match, so apparently introducing his meal ticket is actually his entrance .

dean's music kicks, long beat, baron walks out dragging dean behind him .

cue those two fighting on the stage .

deep six through a pair of tables, destroying something in a satisfying shower of sparks .

black tablecloths cover dean, making it look like baron's dumped him through the floor into the waiting maw of hell .

sombre announcers segue to another thing, ellsworth and carmella presumably slink off .

because now we're talking about nikki/nattie .

and how, as they keep pointing out, nothing was resolved as chamber .

which they're trying to spin as being plot in itself .

pan out to bryan and nikki watching the footgae from chamber and bryan complaining at her .

and here's nattie to complain some more .

bryan apparently has a solution, but they're arguing over him .

cue a fight which apparently numerous security guys cannot split up .

finally, a pissed bryan announces that if they're going to pull this shit, they can have an FCA match next week .

this pleases your genial host greatly .

it's like my favourite match type .

and we get them maybe twice a year these days .

but now dasha is backstage with baron and his ugly moustache .

who is very forthcoming about the fact that he's pissed because he didn't win chamber so he murdered dean .

i think they're going to try and make "Because Baron Corbin." into a thing .

seems like the kind of thing they'd catchphrase .

and now, renee is in the blue curtain room with dolph .

and shockingly, i love her jacket .

dolph is like hey, i despise the new generation of wrestlers for trying to upstage me, so i'mma kill them all kthx .

good to know, i guess .

but now it's time for lynch/james again .

becky gives a girl in the crowd her goggles, makes her day .

and now here comes mickie, with her entrance music by Phoni Oregano .

clip of chamber's talking smack, where mickie (somehow glam as fuck immediately after a ppv), criticises young entitled wrestlers who don't respect her .

i'm spotting a running theme here .

also, apparently the new generation get to, quote, "ride a golden horse around" .

which i'm not sure is something anyone has ever said, or, indeed, done .

it's like she's getting her lines supplied by bad contestants on Catchprase .

it's good, mickie, but it's not right .

and she wants the current generation to respect past women's wrestlers as well .

not just her .

sure, mickie .

you keep telling yourself that .

jbl makes a forced reference to otunga being married to jennifer hudson, take a shot of something stronger than expected in the middle of the day, then go back to work like nobody noticed .

the ref is trying to stop these two fighting, and it's unclear why .

like, i thought that was the point .

i still like mickie's flares/knockoff Star Sapphire gear, and i'm fully aware of what a terrible person that makes me .

i love the strategy behind becky's moveset, which is, when presented with every situation, to think "how can i go from this to dislocating her shoulder?" .

both clothesline each other outside the ring .

apparently in the ad break just then, we missed becky trying to missile dropkick a ghost .

jbl tries to related becky winning matches to the Six Nations, take a shot of a foreign drink you don't quite understand .

that flapjack from mickie is still a good move .

like, it's the mark of a good signature move when you can do a basic move .

people do all the time and make it look good .

mickie is doing the whole rolling around going OW MY SHOULDER thing .

referee calls for a medic without throwing x's, we're all reassured .

and uses the distraction for a mick kick for the pin .

okay, that was really good .

mickie swaggers off while becky sits against the ropes smiling like okay, i maybe deserved that and you're a bitch .

up next, naomi does a thing, but first, let's talk about the upcoming andre doc .

which is hard, given that pretty much all they can say about it is "it's going to happen" .

cut back to the ring and naomi's there with renee .

i feel cheated of an entrance .

you deserve it chants briefly drown renee out .

wait .

apparently naomi's injured off that match? .

fuck off .

but she doesn't care, because wrestlers .

in breaks alexa .

this camera shot finally shows naomi's knee brace, so we have more details than 'an injury' .

alexa is here to mock .

renee disappears immediately .

apparently naomi imagined her injury because she can't beat alexa .

nobody condescend quite like alexa .

naomi does not care for her shit .

alexa's magnanimously giving naomi a week before their rematch .

and walks off, managing to walk backwards up a ramp while feigning a sarcastic knee injury .

that's probably a lot harder than it sounds .

but next, main eventing .

after a black history month thing with a quote from mandela .

and a push for 205 with tjp .

who gets a lot of boos .

we certainly have a rowdy crowd tonight .

but yes .

big match time .

so enter first BIG MATCH JOHN .

to shout at the crowd and cameraman .

loud man, that one .

now aj, who is still asking to be introduced as the face who runs the place .

brief wolfpac hands .

acknowledge your roots, styles .

side note: have they deliberately put the three catchiest entrance themes in the same match? .

john cena sucks/they don't want none/catching flies .

my ears appreciate this .

lights cut back on, luke harper is RIGHT FUCKING THERE .

and just unloads on bray .

this is still weird to see .

lands a brutal superkick .

cena and styles stood in the ring like dude, that's our job .

cut to ads, and we're doing the thing anyway .

currently consisting of cena and styles fighting while bray lies on the outside .

oh hey, he's back .

interrupts cena's five moves to pull him outside and put him through the steps .

only to take a plancha from styles .

okay, this match is pretty damn strong already .

styles drops a lovely diving forearm on bray, who has just decided to stop selling today .

cena makes it in, crossbody, crossbody, back drop, 5ks .

bray counters an aa into the start of sister abigail, only for aj to fly in from out of frame to fuck him up .

and get an aa himself, but kickout .

aj styles does not care for your physics .

bray does a spiderwalk into sister abigail on cena, aj breaks it up .

cut to ads, come back to aj trying to put bray through an unexpectedly resilient announce table .

so he elbow drops him through it from the barricade .

wow .

it's so nice to see bray getting proper main event matches .

aj goes for a phenomenal forearm, cena counters into an aa, goes for another but aj counters into a calf crusher .

which always makes me wince, but i have leg trouble .

cena fights out, turns it into an stf .

until bray sentons onto them both .

this is a hell of a thing .

bray throws aj out, goes for sister abigail, takes an aa, kicks out .

i swear, the aa is such a victim of power creep these days .

aj takes the moment to styles clash cena, who also kicks out .

speaking of power creep .

in other promotions, that move was like getting a boltgun to the head .

now it's a glorified transition move .

aj goes for a phenomenal forearm, cena pushes him off the ropes, sister abigail to cena for the win .

actually a clean win .

i was not expecting that .

it's almost like they're giving him (gasp) an actual singles push .

but yeah, that match was great .

by any objective metric, it was a 100mph spotfest, but those three have enough spots to support that .

bray does his kneeling in the spotlight thing, interrupted by randy's music .

let's address this elephant .

randy walks slooooooooowly to the ring .

much glowering occurs .

in both directions .

fuck, why does randy have a mic .

who provided it .

but first, let's glower at each other some more .

it's unclear where this is going .

huh .

randy is refusing to fight bray as long as he is his master .

and pledging his undying loyalty .

welp, this isn't where i thought they'd take this .

randy kneels for his lord, is told he has 'the keys to the kingdom', then they both .

pose as the lights go down, music hits and the show ends .

the fuck was that ending .

when did smackdown get esoteric .

what, is our bold new direction going to be 'wrestling, but, like, if Jodorowsky did it'? .

i mean, i'm on board with that, it just wasn't what i expected .

i think we're officially through the looking glass here, people

[bighound-littlebird]

The Alarm that Never Sounded: GOT's treatment of the SanSan Romance

Originally posted here: https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/88073-from-pawn-to-player-rethinking-sansa-xx/&do=findComment&comment=4865409

When adapting female characters from ASOIAF into the TV show "Game of thrones", David Benioff and Dan Weiss aren't unlike Robert Baratheon: if they can't disrobe it, they're bored with it. Their rendition of Melisandre, for example, isn't an intimidating and imposing practitioner of dark and supernatural powers, but rather a seductress who's able to make people obey her only if she rewards them with sex (Stannis, Gendry) or gold (Brotherhood without Banners). One more example would be their rendition of Margaery Tyrell, who was turned from a teenage girl with a perfect facade and somewhat mysterious foundation, into a promiscuous lady willing to do anything – even have sex with both her brother and her husband simultaneously, as she proposes to the latter in Season 2 – in order to achieve her personal political ambitions that are literally limitless.

With that in mind, Sansa Stark never had a chance to be properly adapted in the show created by D&D. Now, the word 'properly' has a rather wide range of possible meanings, and this essay will attempt to examine at least some of them, but, for now, let's say that the most obvious aspect in which TV Sansa was shorthanded is her screen time. In "A Clash of Kings", the book that was the basis for the Season 2 of GoT, Sansa's POV chapters, along with Tyrion's, are the only ones that depict what's happening in King's Landing, the capital of The Seven Kingdoms and the center of political power in the story. This goes for the first two thirds of "A Storm of Swords" as well, e.g. until the moment Sansa escapes from King's Landing. In short, her chapters couldn't help but be of paramount importance in the narrative sense. In the show, however, Sansa's significance is greatly decreased, and not only because the show doesn't follow the "POV structure" of the novels, but because she's reduced to nothing but a prized captive for the Lannisters.

Yes, TV Sansa is a minor, and she's played by a minor, named Sophie Turner. Her age, due to the laws that forbid the usage of underage children in explicit sex scenes, prevented D&D from using Sansa in a way they adore. And her age couldn't be drastically changed without drastic consequences on her overall arc which is, in ACOK at least, built around her first period. That's why, for example, D&D couldn't cast Natalie Dormer – one of their favorite ASOIAF characters, by the way, because they did alter Margaery to suit the actress, instead of the other way around – in the role of Sansa, because Dormer, while certainly looking younger than she is, could never pass as a minor.

And that would probably be the only thing that makes Sansa off-limits for Natalie Dormer, or some other actress D&D adore, to play her in D&D's adaptation. Everything else would've been doable. Had George R. R. Martin not put her first period in the books, Sansa's age, promiscuity, vocabulary, even wardrobe, would've been changed accordingly to suit D&D's vision of a progressive Westerosi woman, which means the first three would've been amplified, while the fourth one – wardrobe – would definitely be reduced and freed from all the unnecessary parts. She'd probably even hook up with some rogue brute at some point; when she'd find the time for him, that is; after she's done with Joff, Tyrion, Lancel, and god knows who else, she'd certainly figure out cynical killers can occupy her bed just as good as other available men can.

Speaking of cynical killers – enter Sandor Clegane. One more character that, alas, couldn't be played by Natalie Dormer, and therefore not of particular interest to D&D. Sandor in the novels is a truly memorable fellow, who slowly but steadily grows in readers' eyes as the story progresses. At the beginning, he's nothing more than a merciless brute used only for killing people Lannisters want dead. Very soon, however, a reader finds out there might be some traces of soul under that rough surface. More and more we find out about Sandor, more and more intriguing and understandable he gets. Even – more likable.

Now, what makes him likable? The stories Littlefinger tells to Sansa?! Of course not. The stories Sandor himself keeps telling to Sansa are what fleshes him to the extent that was probably impossible to predict at the beginning of the series. Through his conversations with Sansa, we find out every important thing there is to know about him. Later on, when he hangs up with Arya, Sandor is already a fully developed character, whom we aren't discovering any more, but rather following. And he became like that precisely through his exchanges with Sansa.

The show went the other way, and a pretty odd way, at that. D&D decided it was better for Littlefinger to deliver the story of how Sandor's face got burned, and that decision carries some very serious consequences in regards to characterization. For example, Littlefinger appears as someone who does know the secrets of King's Landing, but, at the same time, as someone who doesn't hesitate to share those secrets with persons he doesn't have any control over. Yes, he warns Sansa not to tell anyone about the story; but, he warns her because, and here comes the funny part – Sandor is going to kill her.

Now, why isn't Littlefinger afraid Sandor's going to kill him? After all, isn't that the logical question because it's Littlefinger who offers Sandor's secrets to others? It seems there are only two possible answers: 1) Sandor is not that scary and dangerous as Littlefinger claims, or 2) Sandor is a dangerous fellow, but Littlefinger is the bravest individual alive, because he goes around telling the secrets of people that physically can literally eat him for breakfast; and he isn't shy even, because he doesn't fail to warn Sansa how dangerous is the situation he himself dares so boldly.

Whatever conclusion a viewer draws from there, something is going to be radically changed from the source material. Quite possibly, in fact, a lot of things are going to be altered. After the said scene, both Littlefinger and Sandor are drastically different than their book origins. And the characters we ended up with in the show, are not nearly as complex and intriguing as their book counterparts. This is especially true for Sandor, who's nothing if not scary and dangerous. He is supposed to frighten the living hell out of everyone who isn't his older brother. If you take that away from Sandor, you're only left with his tender side.

But, even his tender side was almost entirely removed from the show. This time, not only by Littlefinger, but also by Tyrion: in the throne room, when Joff orders Kingsguards to undress Sansa, Sandor stands there silently. His face expression suggests he isn't pleased with what he sees, but that's it. He doesn't stand up to his king with firm "That's enough" as in the book. It is therefore on Tyrion exclusively to deny Joffrey the pleasure of torturing the girl whose only crime was that she saw him in a moment of unflattering weakness. As in the books, TV Tyrion enters the room with his sellsword and he defends Sansa from Joff, but the important difference is that in the show it looks like Tyrion is the only one both willing to oppose Joffrey and capable of doing it. In the novel, we can sense that Sandor is ready to do the same thing, only, in his case, it comes with a much bigger risk, which is not without importance.

So, in this particular case, Sandor was sacrificed for the sake of TV Tyrion. TV Littlefinger, however, wasn't forgotten in that regard, because, once again, he's fed with lines that originally belong to Sandor. In the finale of the second season, it is Littlefinger who tells Sansa to look around and see how much better than her all those liars are. Just as the last time around, this change serves neither Littlefinger nor Sandor: the former's creepy-mentoring side is exposed much earlier than it would be logical, while the latter is robbed of yet another moment in which he shows how much he cares for Sansa and how protective he is toward her.

Sansa is a case on its own, as far as wrong adaptations are concerned. She's in the league with her mother Catelyn Stark, as two Stark women that were literally butchered in the show. The thing two of them have in common is the nature of their complexity: opposite to other female characters in ASOIAF, like Dany or Arya or Asha or Brienne or Cersei, Cat and Sansa aren't interested in hurting their enemies with their own hands, or, in the case of Dany, with her own dragons (this goes for Cersei, too, even though she's the one ordering the suffering of others, not committing it: her aggression is always personal, as we can sense in the first three novels). And, what's more, Sansa isn't interested in hurting anyone, actually. Cat does have an aggressive side in her; it's female aggression all the way, but aggression it is. Sansa, on the other hand, almost never desires other people to suffer in any way. There's only one noticeable exception: Joffrey. She does think on one or two occasions how nice it would be if Robb put a sword in Joff, and, by extension, she wishes Lannisters are defeated in the war against her family. However, we have to consider the situation she finds herself in at those moments – imprisoned by the Lannisters and at Joff's 'mercy' all the time; small miracle she wishes them ill. I've never been a girl arrested by the grave enemies of my family, but if I was, I'd definitely pray for their most horrible deaths every single night. And, we have to remember that, after Joff's death, she fails to feel happy over it, even though she tries to a little.

Therefore, it maybe isn't a stretch to say Sansa is probably the one character that is most unlike the author himself. Other major characters, especially POV ones, do resemble Martin at least partially. For males, it's obvious: even though GRRM never fought in a war, nor had any military training whatsoever, men are men; even in our day and age, no male is a complete stranger to war; while depicting all those dramatic battles and duels was quite an achievement (which no personal experience would make any easier, truth be told, because in ASOIAF the combat as a phenomenon is illustrated from any number of angles, each among them presented with an abundance of details), ultimately it was in himself where Martin could find a lot of answers about his male characters, whose position in a society is never independent from their combat prowess or lack of it. Female characters, on the other hand, had to be trickier, just like they always are for male authors – let's admit it, they are not that good in creating great females, just like women writers usually don't produce male characters that are a match to their female characters nor to the male heroes created by male authors. In our day and age, these "gender rules" are rarely spoken of, but they continue to exist, due to gender predispositions that are nowhere as strong as in the mind of an individual. There are exceptions, as in good male characters created by women and vice versa, but they are in a clear minority compared to underdeveloped or unrealistic characters whose only "fault" was that they didn't share the sex with an author. And in that regard, ASOIAF could very well be unparalleled: it is perhaps impossible to find any other story that features nearly as many memorable male and female characters both, as ASOIAF does (truth be told, that fact alone should be enough to inspire analysts and scholars to look at ASOIAF at a different, more demanding light, and not as a genre piece).

Martin's girls, however, aren't completely unlike the man who came up with them. Most of them are willingly participating in "men games", e.g. power-plays and/or wars, which makes for a precious connection to a male mindset of the author. They are thinking and behaving as women (or, in the case of Arya, and Dany to an extent, as girls), but all of them are interacting with something that, in all its glory and misery, can roughly be called "a man's world". Some of the most beautifully written chapters in the series are delivered from female POVs – The Red Wedding and Cersei's "Walk of Shame" come to mind right away; but, in a thematic sense, those and other female chapters don't differ too much from male POVs.

Except for Sansa's chapters, which unmistakably belong to something we can roughly call "a woman's world". Chapters of both male and female POVs in ASOIAF are often rich with testosterone, but Sansa’s ones are almost entirely driven by estrogen: look no further than her captivity in King's Landing, that actually is, as already said, focused around her first period – that decision solely should bring a lot of respect for Martin, because he had to know going that road is never easy for a male writer.

And the funniest thing is, it all fits. Sansa's storyline is distinctive in tone, but not odd. It is a legitimate part of the general plot of ASOIAF. In fact, as her story progresses, Sansa becomes more and more important for The Game, even though she showed no clear inclination to participate in it so far, but at the same time, Martin keeps Sansa away from all those "male" aspects he decorated other female characters of his saga.

And on top of everything, we're presented with her love story, a romance with no other than the man who, prior to discovering some delicate feelings for Sansa, could pose for an ideal brute of Westeros. At the beginning of the story, Sandor Clegane could be perceived as the exact opposite of Sansa. As someone who has no business whatsoever in her world, just like she has none in his. But, with some craft wording and master subtlety, Martin succeeds in illustrating the flood of emotions that go both ways in their relationship. Those emotions are never easy, nor appropriate, let alone allowed – even by Sansa and Sandor themselves! – but they're hard to be denied.

The complexity of their multilayered characters, of their respective positions in a society and in an ongoing war, and of their relationship that resists all known clichés, represent some of the strongest evidence that ASOIAF is much more than a genre piece. There's a lot in these novels that escapes genre boundaries, but nothing more evidently than SanSan. Stuff like that is not your usual fantasy element, no matter how flattering fantasy can be as a label (Homer, Shakespeare, Tolkien – to name just a few all-time greats that created unforgettable stories with supernatural aspects in them). Any author who comes up with that kind of love story involving those kind of characters – and with a legion of other characters, and with no less than four different religions, and with themes of honor, redemption, identity, bravery, equality, ancestry, legacy, freedom, revolution... – deserves to be analyzed not as a genre writer.

Now, one can only imagine what kind of enigma Sansa and Sandor were for Benioff and Weiss. And it pretty much remained unsolved, because, when faced with all the complexity of these two characters, Benioff and Weiss decided to remove it almost entirely, along with their relationship that is reduced to occasional and odd mentioning of 'little bird'. TV Sandor was simplified to a one-note brute that goes around TV Westeros and lectures people about the pleasures of killing, a one-note brute he never was in the novels, not even in the beginning of the saga. TV Sansa, on the other hand, was denied her book complexity by shutting down all her layers, one by one. For example, Benioff and Weiss completely removed her decision to go behind her father's back and inform Cersei of his plan. They simply refused to go down that road. They did something similar to Catelyn, whose infamous line to Jon they didn't remove entirely, but did replace it with a much softer one. It is pretty safe to assume that Cat's and Sansa's complexity did bother Benioff and Weiss from the get-go.

What's also removed from the show is Sansa's agency, primarily represented in the novels by her secret meetings with Dontos, a disgraced knight she herself saved from Joffrey. In the show, we got only the saving scene; it was filmed and executed clumsily, but it was there at least. However, until recently, nobody could be sure Sansa did save Dontos, because the man disappeared afterwards (he was briefly seen as joggling balls in "Blackwater" episode, in the scene in Cersei's chambers, but he was unrecognizable for the vast majority of audience). It is reported, though, that Dontos will be returning in Season 4, so yes, Sansa did save his life after all. But, even when he returns, Sansa's attempts at escaping will be two seasons younger than they should've been at that point, and it's hard to see a way D&D can remedy that neglect.

Show-lovers often defend D&D in regards to Sansa, by saying her personality is a difficult and tricky one for portraying on screen, because even in the books she's introverted. Now, maybe she isn't the most extroverted character ever, but she's pretty far from reclusive, as she does communicate with the outside world a lot at the beginning of the series, before she's imprisoned. And even while in captivity, she can't help but communicate with Sandor and Dontos. What's more, around two of them she is her true self, which provides a wide array of possibilities for a good and informative dialogue that, in an adaptation, could compensate for the lack of inner thoughts. With Dontos, she's open not only because she saved him, but also because he explicitly offers his help (and, truth be told, it is he who enabled her to leave King's Landing eventually, so, even though he wasn't exactly honest with her concerning his motivations, her trust wasn't as misplaced as it may seem at first). And with Sandor, she's open for no particular reason – other than those subtle, emotional forces, that both of them can't help but follow and eventually become the closest and most intimate beings to each other.

The way Martin incepted and developed the barely visible, but undeniable romance, between Sansa and Sandor, is nothing short of literary brilliance. With so few words and interactions, he managed so much. The vast majority of readers are aware of restrained attraction they mutually feel, even though they didn't share a single physical aspect of the romantic relationship.

Martin is indeed a master of subtlety, as evidenced by what looks like the endless amount of carefully hidden clues that point to any number of narrative puzzles, realization of which do make an entire story much richer than if taken at face value. And he's never more subtle than with two romances: Rhaegar/Lyanna and Sandor/Sansa. Now, the respective nature of subtlety of those two romances is rather different. With Rhaegar and Lyanna, a reader is – through Robert's retelling – offered a version that is actually the very opposite of what probably happened, and only later a reader can pick up clues here and there, and finally figure out the story of a fatal attraction between the two. But, the clues are presented throughout the text, so much that, even if you don't decipher everything after the first read, at the end of "A Game of Thrones" – the first book of the series – you'll probably sense that Robert's view on events wasn't exactly accurate.

The story of Sansa and Sandor is a very different one. Their relationship is never as much as addressed, even by themselves. Sandor isn't a POV character, and he's not exactly open to people, so his silence on the matter isn't unexpected. But, Martin didn't address their romance even in Sansa's chapters, which are typically packed with inner thoughts of the POV character. It looks like Martin decided to do it the harder way and make their romance somewhat a mystery even for Sansa, which, in hindsight, does seem to be the most logical way: what teenage girl would be fully aware of a romance that "inappropriate", and experienced in those dire circumstances?! As a result of that decision, the readers got a completely fascinating depiction of a romance, that can be described as a train you hear from miles away: at first, you can't even tell is it a train or some similar sound, but slowly, with every second, you're more and more certain that your ears didn't trick you, and very soon the train is so loud that it is the only thing you can hear at all. In the novels, a reader may find something strange at first, when Sandor shares the secret of his burned face with Sansa. Some alarm may be turned on deep inside. And it becomes more apparent each time two of them share a page, with a culmination during the Battle of the Blackwater Bay, when Sandor, after he decides to desert the Lannisters, visits Sansa in her room and offers to take her home to Winterfell.

It might be the only instance in the entire series where Sandor did ask anyone's approval, which does speak volumes about his feelings for Sansa. Considering the manner in which Martin described this romance, Sandor's actions on that day was as good as a confession of his deep attraction to her. Sansa, on the other hand, doesn't have a single moment which could be pointed at as a prime evidence of her undeniable love for The Hound, but this doesn't mean her feelings toward Sandor aren't palpable. It's one more mastery of the writer: through her frequent (and skewed, but in a telling way) memories on the last time she saw Sandor, he was able to show her feelings resonating more and more inside her.

In the show, Martin was denied a chance to do the same thing, even though he wrote the "Blackwater" episode in Season 2. Thanks to the already destroyed storyline, and to god knows how many changes, and to D&D's decision to remove from the final cut some scenes Martin referred to with his scenes, the one between Sansa and Sandor near the end of that episode, served more as a greeting to book-fans who like SanSan in the source material, than as a goodbye between two not unlike souls who shared much, and could have shared a lot more, and maybe are going to if they meet again. In that scene, Rory McCann was visibly better than usual as Sandor, and Sophie Turner was as good as usual, but, just like with anything ASOIAF, the scene doesn't have nearly the same impact and importance if taken out of context.

The exact context of their SanSan is yet to be fully revealed in the books, too. Because of the already mentioned subtlety – a quality that seems to intimidate showrunners Benioff and Weiss, who, in their turn, do retaliate with their on-screen war on subtlety (just recall what they turned other romances into; for example, the romance between TV Jon "Not The Brightest Kid In The Block" Snow and TV "I Know Everything And Therefore I Can't Stop Talking" Ygritte) – Sansa's and Sandor's love story is by no means an open book. Their romance has its own share of mystery, one of which may be: what inspired those two persons to feel so strongly for each other? Personally, I always thought their mutual attraction isn't only based on a "beauty and the beast" model. There is that, but in their case it goes deeper. If that was the engine behind his emotions, Sandor had more than enough opportunities to find a beauty for his beast long before Sansa entered his life. With Sansa, I'd say their mutual attraction is rooted in their personalities. For example, if you take away Sandor's aggression, he also isn't interested in hurting others. He's naturally talented for violence, and he lives in a society that respects that kind of talent, and that is why he's violent for a living, but at the end of the day, the suffering of others isn't any kind of reward for him. Possibly, because he isn't interested in other people that much. Though, when he is interested in someone, the interest is as strong as they come.

(We don't know at this point, but it's not a stretch to imagine that his reaction to the news that his hated brother was killed wasn't unlike Sansa's reaction to Joff's death. "Am I glad he's dead? Well, not exactly, even though I wanted him killed.")

Sansa may very well be like that, too. That would be one of the possible explanations of her AGOT actions. Like the rest of the Starks, Sansa is a complex character that has some issues of her own, without which neither she nor the other Starks would be such memorable characters as they obviously are; it is the fact that they are both willing and strong enough to fight those issues, that Starks stand out for. Without going into details (as if I could!), I expect that in the remaining novels Sansa is going to face the reasons that made her go to Cersei that damned night and with the consequences of that action. And whatever comes out of that soul-searching will be inevitably combined with her claim to Winterfell that Littlefinger brought up in AFFC. And that combination is going to elevate Sansa's arc to even bigger and more important levels than so far, even though so far she was the one Stark that was most engaged – unwittingly, but still – in the bloody dynastic war for the Iron Throne.

And she'll have to cross paths with Sandor Clegane, one way or another. Their relationship was so meticulously built up, it simply has to get some sort of a closure. What that closure is going to be is impossible to predict, because we are talking of one George R. R. Martin, a writer who managed to shock us as he pleased more than a few times.

What is also impossible, is to take anything that did or didn't happen in the show as any indication at what the closer may or may not be. There isn't a storyline in GoT that wasn't drastically changed, and weakened in the process, but Sansa's arc, along with her relationship with Sandor, is among the biggest victims of D&D's inability to adapt.

Whether you happen to like what Benioff and Weiss put in the show, or don't, you'd be advised not to recognize any significance in their decisions for further developments in ASOIAF. Just like show-lovers tend to remind everyone else, GoT and ASOIAF are two entirely separate beasts. And book Sansa and book Sandor, along with everything Martin has in his store for them, can be really glad about it.

[mothermaidenclone-blog]

Spider-Man: Homecoming or Don’t You Always Hear Harps When You See A Girl?

I don’t think I actually saw any women in the four billion trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming that were in the cinema, so I went into this one with the bar set very, very low. I did, however, know that Aunt May would feature because of the whole internet losing their minds over the thought of a middle aged woman existing on screen.

*Spider-Man: Homecoming spoilers follow*

So let’s start with Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been reduced to his canonical high-school age, so it only makes sense that Aunt May should drop a decade or so too. However, this brings her out of the venerable status of being “old” and puts her somewhere in the middle of the ageing process itself. Mainstream cinema is obviously comfortable with portraying women as youthful, and has reserved the honour of showcasing those who have reached “old age” to basically a trifecta of Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith. You can be middle aged in a film, Gweneth Paltrow makes a brief appearance as Pepper Pots and she’s forty four at the time of writing, but god forbid you actually look it. Marisa Tomei is fifty two, and in my opinion is a very beautiful woman, but because she looks something over twenty five it seems that the only way that anyone can deal with it is to fetishise her as some sort of, and I really hate to use the term, MILF. The first reference to Aunt May is Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) saying, “What’s she wearing? Something skimpy I hope.” That pretty much sets the tone for how she is interacted with and observed for the rest of the film, which is a shame because she is shown to be a caring, understanding and supportive guardian with a sense of humour, despite all the tragedy that her and Peter have endured as a family.

How male characters deal with female characters seems to be the main problem with this film, as the women themselves are fantastic. Liz (Laura Harrier) is smart, capable, headstrong and independent and Michelle (Zendaya) is blessed with an excellently dry, nihilistic sense of humour and indifference to the opinion of others that is so rarely afforded to teenage girls in film. Other girls are very much present, around the school and in the quiz team, and are played by a diverse range of actresses. It was particularly refreshing to see no white, blond love interests, or even male best friends or rivals. So what do the boys in this film do when confronted with these amazing girls? Say that they should “probably stop staring before it gets creepy” while actual fucking harp music plays in the background. At one point Peter is actually secretly looking down at Liz in her swimming costume through a literal glass ceiling. It couldn’t get much more on the nose where the gaze is concerned. Annoyingly, despite the aforementioned list of both of these girls’ excellent character traits, both Liz and Michelle become visibly, and somewhat inexplicably, flustered by Peter at some point in the film.

Outside of girls at school, the other two female characters who make a memorable appearance are Anne-Marie Hoag (Tyne Daly) - who I don’t think is actually named, I had to look her up - and Karen (Jennifer Connelly). The former appears at the beginning of the film as an older lady in a position of business control, which got my hopes up, but she is immediately portrayed as a baddie because she is taking honest jobs away from good, hard-working men. The latter is the AI in Peter’s suit, which he names (and almost very creepily named after his crush) and who takes on a strange kind of wingman role (literally and figuratively, wahey). It’s almost as though Peter is so uncomfortable talking to real girls that he has to use a semi-sentient “female” computer program for advice instead.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the number of women that featured in this film and how strong their personalities were. However, all of the men seemed to react to them like penis-controlled pubescent teenagers, regardless of whether they were actually boys or grown men. I know part of this was the comedy of showing Peter as a realistically awkward teenage boy, it’s the charm of Spider-Man that he’s not a ripped, charismatic, fully-developed man, he’s a geeky, smart teenager and that’s a great role model. I just want to throw it out there though, if we normalise the portrayal of strong, funny, smart young women, maybe boys won’t lose their minds when they discover that’s what girls are like.

And now for some asides:

It was good to hear Spider-Man making jokes again, I’ve missed that.

They didn’t even mention Uncle Ben! Hallelujah!

Michael Keaton’s life and career as so many Bat/Birdmen is now the most meta thing ever.