#her gaining some perspective and realizing that some boys are truly shit was a much needed lesson for her to learn

[childofsquidward]

Books I Read In 2022 (and by read I mean actually liked)

Boy-Crazy Stacey (The Baby-Sitters Club #8) by Ann M. Martin

I'd never wear it, but I'd keep it to remind me of the first boy I ever fell in love with.

⭐⭐⭐(3 STARS)

I don’t have too many fond memories of this book since I found Stacey to be so insufferable when I first read it, but I also read this when I was like 10 years old, so my ability to empathize clearly hadn’t fully developed. Don’t get me wrong, it was still frustrating to be in Stacey’s head, but this was an important lesson for her to learn. I wish she’d also been able to see how an 18-year-old flirting with her when she’s a literal child is not okay, but this is just a thing that happens where Stacey keeps crushing on these much older guys and they flirt back and it is still just all kinds of weird to me.

I also want to add that the book never really goes beyond the message that “some boys are jerks, but not all of them” and I know that this is a middle-grade book, but I feel like not addressing Stacey’s behaviour sends out a rather harmful message. Stacey thinks that doing favours for boys is an honour and she was jealous when other girls would get to, let’s say, bring lunch to the lifeguards. The book never says that there’s anything wrong with this, it’s just something Stacey believes and we never get anywhere further than that. And also the way she treated Mary Anne; yes, Stacey apologized, but Mary Anne being all ‘yeah, I get it, you were in love’ was not needed, Mary Anne is a much better person than me because after everything Stacey did, I would not have forgiven her that quickly. (Also, if I were Mallory, I would ask for Stacey’s share of the money because let's be honest, Mallory pretty much did Stacey’s job for her.)

Details that stuck out to me:

“I was beginning to think that “mother’s helper” was a pretty funny term, since Mary Anne and I were going to be helping Mr. Pike as much as Mrs. Pike. Maybe we should be called parents’ helpers.” - LITTLE LOUDER STACE!!!

Mary Anne mentioning how she remembered the triplets taking swimming lessons when they were younger - I always love little anecdotes of their childhood and the earlier books in the series do this really well (unlike a certain prequel novel that shall not be named). 

The Pike kids trying to take care of Mary Anne after her sunburn was such a cute scene - they’re my favourite charges for a reason!

Adam being nice to Nicky for once - I was floored!

Byron being the sensitive, more serious of the triplets is something that I do remember being introduced for the first time in this book, but I feel like it’s also been consistently highlighted in other books featuring the Pike kids.

[merp-blerp]

My Gaylor Journey: A Year Later 🌈

So, I posted about my Gaylor opinions a year ago today, my first (intentional) post about Gaylor after properly looking into the community for the first time and eventually joining it. I can't believe it's been that long, Jesus! Feels both too long and yet too short of a time. Well, I want to commemorate that; hopefully, I'll make sense, as there's so much I feel and want to say. I don't think I'll ever truly get it all out of me. But here:

I've enjoyed my time here so much! This period has been surprisingly influential for me. For one thing, I've gained some lovely mutuals! I've never had so many before, so it's new, but I enjoy you all. You guys are so kind, smart, and welcoming!

I've also learned so much about queerness, the queer experience, and queer history that I just never would've known before. And I was already very into queer history before. I adore how I listen to Taylor's music now. "Wrong" interpretation or not, looking at her music from a queer lens is so interesting and so easy. I had looked at it from a queer perspective before, but it was more through my eyes. How could this song relate to me and my queerness? Never in regards to the possibility of Taylor's. It's crazy to remember being younger, listening to her music, and getting queer vibes, but assuming I was projecting. Nice to know I was never alone in my thoughts. Looking at the potential real muses is fun, but just daring to look at things another way has been fulfilling alone. I had no clue I could get more connected with Taylor's work, but somehow this community has proven me wrong.

Being here has also saved me from a lot of worrying probably. The Swiftie community since Joe ended whatever he had with Taylor has been very much so changed since I discovered it in 2018, so while I have nothing against nice Swifties, I'm glad I mostly stick to the Gaylor side of things these days. This fandom's less crowded and I like experiencing Tay's art this way. Being a fan shouldn't feel so crazy. Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with one of my college mentors, who's a Swiftie, the day after TTPD was announced, I believe. We were both excited and I spouted out several watered-down versions of Gaylor theories (can never be too careful who you Gaylor in front of), cutting out the gay parts, and what I thought they meant for what TTPD was expected to be; theories like the burning lover house symbolizing "a new phase of her career" starting with TTPD, or white symbolizing rebirth, blah, blah, you know. And absolutely no offense to my mentor, she's lovely, but I was a bit gobsmacked when her theories only had to do with Joe. It was so... bare-bones. Dry. Boring. Don't you wonder what this means for Taylor herself, not just some boy she may or may not be dunking on? She also had so much seemingly incorrect info about the Toe narrative, saying Joe has a music career (he doesn't???) and that Taylor herself confirmed, word of mouth, that she cheated on Joe, which definitely would not be very characteristically "cryptic and Machiavellian" of her to just confirm like that. Just saying it would not be how she tells us a detail like that. I didn't realize people truly thought she cheated till that conversation. They were just very hard to believe things, whether or not you believe in Gaylor or mainstream narratives. She said a lot of her theories came from TikTok, so misinformation isn't shocking in the slightest; people rarely give good sources over there, so if you find someone who does they seem to be a needle in a haystack, sadly. But that conversation reminded me just how much things have changed, both in me and the fandom. Having fresh relationship drama for the first time in 6 years made some Swifties feral and I'm glad I'm not in it. Getting swept up in that shit is easy and I fear I could've if it weren't for jumping ship in time. As Taylor's signaling gets louder and louder again, possibly gearing up for another coming-out attempt, I think I joined just in time. The goddess of timing found me beguiling, I guess.

It just makes me sad that for these types of fans, Taylor's music and craft aren't about her anymore, but about the guys. It's so weird to see fans introduce new Swifties by going over all the supposed muses instead of talking about her and how this song or album communicates her emotions about a situation. They are deeply missing out. Even when I was only in the general fandom, despite my jokes about the boys, I ultimately thought Taylor was the most important factor in her songs. And it seemed like others thought that too, until all this new Joe-Travis-drama eclipsed that. Or till some bad new fans came in just for the drama and to hop on the more trendy version of "loving" her that's going on now. Or maybe I was in my own bubble and it's always been like this. She was never simply "Mrs. Alwyn" and she's not "Mrs. Kelce" or even "Mrs. Kloss" and it's strange to see her get called that as if she's not TAYLOR FUCKING SWIFT. That's not enough? Maybe I'm taking it too seriously or literally, but it feels so wrong to boil her down to just that. I get where it comes from, Taylor's music appeals to the hopeless romantics such as myself, but there's more to Taylor, us, and life than just romance and being someone's "spouse".

Many Swifties rightfully criticize the media for only focusing on Taylor's alleged love life, but some of them hypocritically do the exact same thing, only I'd argue it's worse because they seem to think they're entitled to do so because they're fans or feel like her friends. We don't know Taylor. I don't know Taylor. If she's openly talking about her album(s)/re-record(s) and the craft behind creating it, or her emotional journey creating it, maybe don't yell out to her face about some trivial thing connecting to whoever you think the muse is (looking at you TIFF 2022—I'll never be over that). I'm glad Taylor seems to recognize this behavior and has at least tried to remind fans of the distance between herself and them in recent years; I mean, compare the songs she wrote for fans years ago like "Long Live" and "The Archer" vs "Dear Reader" and potentially "You're Losing me" and "But Daddy I Love Him" if you interpret them that way. They're all wonderful, but more recent songs remind us that she's a stranger to us as opposed to just talking about how grateful she is for us (which I'm sure she still is). I've mentioned in the past that I think this is part of why the TV eras beyond the Red TV era and promo for TTPD have been so laid back in comparison; she doesn't want fans getting way too into "defending" her from [insert "ex-boyfriend" here] like they did during Red TV's release, so she's making it less "exciting". 1989 TV didn't even get music videos. She's never dignified invasive questions with a response to interviewers, so why would she for some fan(s)? You aren't any more special or any less of a stranger to her than those interviewers were. None of us are, including Gaylors (that's why we can't out her, strangers can't out strangers with only pure speculation).

I find it interesting to see how differently the two sides of this fandom treat the potential ex-muses of songs. In the general fandom, there's a lot of animosity, where swifties love to joke about hating or destroying whomever (and I'm chill with jokes), but sometimes it goes way too far. Many Swifties hate most potential exes, exceptions being people like Harry Styles or Taylor Lautner because they have their own fandoms that tend to overlap with Taylor's. But Gaylors rarely do the exact same with exes. Potential exes aren't brought up unless necessary and I've never seen anyone even jokingly hate anyone purely because they are an ex and therefore bad; it might be around, but the fact that I can't find it nearly as easily is something. We'll hold ex-muses (and Taylor) accountable for potential mishaps in past relationships and that's it. Say what you will about Gaylors, but I've never heard of any Gaylors sending someone like Dianna Agron death threats like some Swifties have done with John Mayer.

One huge thing I was not expecting when joining this fandom was becoming slightly disillusioned by the Swiftie title. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with being called that, as I know that's what I am ultimately and it's not terrible to be a Swiftie inherently by any means. But being opened up to the deep homophobia, bullying, and even doxxing in the Hetlor community has really made me feel odd lumping myself in with "Swifties", as they still call themselves, at times. I don't know how I never stumbled across it when in the general fandom, at least not that I can recall (I feel like I would if I did). From what I gather, Swifties have a rep for being a pretty sweet fandom, and many people are, but I can't help but feel sour about it sometimes after seeing what I've seen from some Swifties. I hope one day the homophobia and just basic vitriol with these types of fans can be lightened up by a cultural shift or something. Way too many people are unaware of the layers of the conversation about outing, closeting, speculation, etc. I myself wasn't before entering the Gaylor fandom and I'm glad I am now. I knew lots of history, but didn't properly apply it to how we can see things now. It's very odd, almost embarrassing, looking at some of my old Swiftie posts now, especially ones about Joe and Gaylors, because I don't feel that way anymore. I was never hateful, but I had some wrong ideas. I guess I'll keep them up though, in order to be honest with myself and anyone who wants to maybe dig into my blog. Plus there's not actually anything to be too embarrassed about from what I remember, it's just a very "in my head" type of thing. I'm glad I'm not as emotionally invested in Taylor's supposed exes anymore. Even when it comes to Karlie as an LSK, I'd be fine if Kaylor was broken up or never together. Surprised and maybe a little sad, but I expect to be okay if that were to be a revelation. It feels much healthier.

I even suspect that being here has helped me with accepting my own queerness further, and I thought I had fully done that already. I guess internal acceptance is a forever journey, at least for me. I came out to my grandparents mid last year and early this year, something I was planning on delaying till I went away to college (I'm doing college virtually for now). I think this community helped me.

I deeply wish that both sides of Taylor's fandom could come together, hear each other, and co-exist. I hate that Gaylors are so vilified for simply suggesting a random lady might be queer as if seeing potential hints of queerness in other people and pondering their sexuality hasn't always existed in queer culture and continues to prevail. We still see primarily femme sapphics ask how they can signal that they're queer without saying so, much like what Taylor might be doing with her hairpins and games. Why is it wrong to be on the other end of that interaction, seeing and acknowledging the signals? In my personal opinion, I think it's at least a bit homophobic in and of itself to say that queer people must come out in a loud, upfront, obvious-to-straights way in order to be seen as queer, otherwise they are forcibly slated as the default of straight. Yes, some people have a boundary about speculation, and that should 100% be respected for those folks, but Taylor specifically has set no such boundary as of me typing this out. Why still force her into the straight box when she's never plainly said she's straight, always toeing the line no pun intended, not giving any clear answers for now, which she doesn't owe. Honestly, I feel like it's more likely that if she were straight she would have such an issue saying plainly; straight people don't coyly tiptoe around saying they're straight like that, but that's just my perspective. When the discourse around speculation is brought up, I often see people say something along the lines of, "Well, I wouldn't want someone to speculate on me," and that's completely fine to feel, but that's your boundary. Not everyone feels that way. Some want to be seen without a definitive word out of their mouth beforehand. This is coming from someone who, when offline, sometimes gets a bit internally antsy when people inform me they could tell my lesbian-ness with or without me intending to signal, though not offended. Yet I also sometimes hate to tell people in verbal words. It can be exhausting, not in just a scary way, but in the sense that it can be akin to explaining that you breathe; being queer just comes so naturally for me because it is natural, so explaining gets tiresome, especially since straights never have to. For me, and in general, speculation is not as black and white as "you should never do it" or "you should always do it". You shouldn't cross people's boundaries, but you shouldn't assume people's boundaries either; that can be just as wrong and dangerous.

Gaylors and Swifties are the same fandom, so why can't we act like it, even when we disagree?

Everyone and everything I've involved myself in here has been so enriching and even if all the Gaylor theories were somehow proven wrong, I wouldn't regret my time here. It's meant too much to me. I'm very grateful and excited to see how this progresses for me. I can't find enough words to express it.

To any rude Hetlors out there, I hope you find it in your heart to treat others with kindness instead of throwing shade at those you simply don't understand/agree with. If you're going to hurt others, I don't want anything to do with you. Kindly leave for both our peace of mind.

To the vast majority of you who have been wonderful, welcoming, and kind, especially the ones who were here before I entered the Gaylor fandom, and didn't leave after, I love you all. You can stay. ♥

🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

[commonwealthoccurences]

Companions React: Holding hands with Sole for the first time.

Request: "Hey I took a look at your other two stories and they're really good :D I can't wait to see more from you. ☺️ Could you do how the companions react to holding hands with sole for the first time? And could you make it extra fluffy for x6-88, preston, and hancock please? ❤️"

CW: Food mentions. Idk why so many of these involved food.

Cait:

“Hey! Watch it, will ya’?” Cait shouted indignantly at a passing trader as their Brahmin nearly knocked her over.

Sole reached out and pulled her back swiftly, her hand gripped tightly in theirs to help her keep balance. “Careful. They don’t tend to share the road around here. Important people, traders.” They joked, threading their fingers through hers.

“Important my arse.” Cait glared menacingly after the trader before redirecting their attention. “And what do ya think you’re doin’?” She lifted their joined hands, however she didn’t let go.

“Oh, sorry! I just wanted to make sure you didn’t lose your balance.”

Sole began to loosen their grip, but Cait tightened her grip in return. “Well don’t go gettin’ cold feet on me now. You started this.” 

Sole very politely ignored the slight flush on her cheeks as she began to pull them towards the food stands. “You’re buyin’ in exchange for my lovely company.”

Curie:

While it could be quite cute, Curie’s habit of wandering off in the name of scientific discovery had resulted in far too many moments of Sole having to stop what they were doing and go search for her and whatever had caught her attention in the moment as soon as they realized she was gone. Luckily, this time, Curie exclaimed, “Oh, mon dieu!”

This caught Sole’s attention and they quickly grasped her hand to keep her from wandering off. “Let’s go let Daisy know we’ve done what she’s asked and then we can go check out the water purification system, okay?”

“Oh! Of course.” Curie smiled warmly, interlocking their fingers properly. “Lead the way!”

After a beat, as they made their way to Daisy’s shop together, Curie spoke again, her tone softer and a shy smile on her face. “I quite like this system of keeping track of each other, I think.”

“I do, too. Do you want to stop by Diamond City for Power Noodles after asking about the water purification system?”

“Yes, please! I’d like to ask the vendor about the components to his operation.”

Danse:

Sole groaned, facedown on their bed on the Prydwen. “Let’s get a move on, Soldier. Elder Maxson himself requested you transfer shifts to the first patrol.”

“It’s four in the morning, Paladin. I appreciate Elder Maxson’s faith but I reserve my right to complain when he’s not around.”

Danse frowned from where he was standing in the doorway. “You should consider this an honor.”

“I do, Danse. Of course I do. But four in the morning?” Sole attempted to roll over and stand up, but instead got their legs tangled in the blanket and fell to the floor.

He sighed, staring down at them in mild disappointment. “Would you like assistance getting up?”

“Yes please.” 

Danse crossed the room and leaned down, grasping Sole’s outstretched arms and staring sternly at their pouting face. He pulled them up carefully, steadying them when they stumbled as they untangled themself from their blanket. “You slept in your uniform.” He stated plainly.

“I had to wake up at four as it is. I’m doing what I can. Adapt, right? I’m following your advice, Paladin. Now let’s go get breakfast, please, I’m starving.”

The pair made it halfway down the hall before Danse realized that Sole had never released their grip on his hand. His face flushed beet red as they led the way to the dining hall, the pathways empty. They seemed to be the only ones awake. “Soldier-” He coughed awkwardly. “-your hand?”

Sole slowed down and glanced at him. “Do you mind?”

He paused. “Proceed.” He said in a low tone, avoiding eye contact.

Deacon:

Deacon was quiet. Deacon was never quiet, unless they were in the middle of a fight, and even then usually he was making witty comments in between gunshots. He and Sole were trekking across the Commonwealth, headed to Sanctuary to rest after running to hell and back for the Railroad. “Alright, Deacon. What gives?” Sole stopped and turned to him.

“What do you mean?” 

“You’re quiet. You’re never quiet.”

“I’ll have you know I make a great brooding, mysterious stranger.” Deacon gave them an indignant look.

“Yeah, when you’re undercover maybe. But not with me. So what’s up?”

Deacon sighed and gave in, surprising Sole. Usually, no matter how long they pushed, he remained steeled in his self-confidence and energetic personality. “Just a long day, Boss. Don’t worry about it.” He started walking, letting them know the conversation was over with.

Sole pressed their lips together briefly before jogging to catch up with him and grabbing his hand, swinging it dramatically between the two. Deacon laughed quietly and allowed them to continue their antics. “You know, if you wanted to hold my hand you could’ve just asked, Boss.”

Cheerfully, Sole bumped their shoulder against his. “Where’s the fun in that? Plus, I got you to laugh, didn’t I?”

Deacon groaned. “My facade, it’s shattered!” He cried dramatically as he pretended to stumble. Sole threw their head back and laughed, and Deacon hid his grin.

“This is a very serious issue, Boss, I can’t believe your lack of professionalism.”

“Oh, of course, I’m so very sorry Deacon. Let me know what we can do to solve this issue and I’ll let go of your hand. To keep up professionalism.”

Deacon never got back to them on that, and kept his fingers threaded through theirs the entire way back to Sanctuary.

Gage:

“Look, I’m all for your gung ho attitude of dealing with things, but we’re outnumbered by those things. As much as it hurts to say, we shouldn’t run in guns ablaze.” Gage muttered under his breath.

He and Sole were crouched against a wall in the Nuka World Bottling Plant, up to their waists in diluted soda that had definitely been there way too long. A good handful of Mirelurks had nested just around the corner; Sole could hear them clicking their pinchers together. “You’re right.” Sole sighed. “We need a plan to get back to the exit.”

Gage was still surprised every time the Overboss took his advice seriously. “We’re cornered here, Boss. Unless you have some Stealth Boys on you-”

“Do you trust me?” Sole interjected.

“Christ, I guess so. What’re you thinkin’?”

“When I count to three we run.”

“What? That’s your fuckin’ plan?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“I swear to God, if you get us killed.” Gage muttered. “Alright, fine.”

Sole counted under their breath, just loud enough for Gage to hear, as they attempted to avoid the echo that the large tunnels would cause. As soon as they reached three, both they and Gage took off in a sprint, fighting against the soda-water that threatened to slow them down. Things were going great until Gage’s foot caught against something under the water and sent him face first into the river.

As soon as he hit the water he was back up again, Sole yanking him as hard as possible up and forward at their breakneck pace. “I’ve got you!” They shouted over the angry screeches from the Mirelurks that had just caught sight of them.

Sole grappled at his hand until they found purchase and kept charging forward. They sent a shot towards an approaching Mirelurk and the bullet lodged firmly in the Mirelurk’s body. This bought them enough time to get a few feet ahead and after a brief struggle with the sticky door mechanism, the pair launched themself past the frame and slammed the door behind them.

Chests heaving, they leaned against the metal door, eyes squinted to ward off the blazing sun that glared down at them. “I fuckin’ hate this place.” Gage spat saliva and soda down onto the cracked pavement in front of them.

Sole merely laughed. Gage turned to them in astonishment, wondering just how batshit the new Overboss really was, but said nothing, his hand still gripped in theirs. Their eyes were closed as their shoulders shook, their chest heaving as they tried to catch their breath. “I do too, to be honest. Hated it ever since that stupid maze.”

Gage paused and let out a small chuckle himself. He shook off their hand as casually as he could, but turned and reached to light a cigarette to hide the way his mouth quirked up in the corner. He dug through the bag attached to his hip before cursing loudly. “My shit’s soaked!”

Sole only laughed louder.

Hancock:

“Y’know, sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Running Goodneighbor.” Hancock’s voice came out gravelly.

He and Sole had found a rooftop to settle on after travelling for the day. They had found a couple of lounge chairs and dragged them up the flights of stairs, and told Hancock to sit while they unpacked enough food for dinner. Luckily, they had traded for a few Radstag steaks, which they had started grilling over a makeshift fire. Hancock’s statement caught their attention enough for them to stop what they were doing. “What do you mean?” They asked.

Hancock wasn’t sure if he was too high for his own good, but he swore their voice was softer when they spoke to him, compared to the assertiveness they used for everyone else. He leaned back in his chair and surveyed them. The fire flickered, a bright, warm contrast to the setting sun behind them. “Dunno. I just worry that I’m gettin’ a little top stern with everyone. Goodneighbor isn’t meant to be another Diamond City.”

They thought for a moment, their eyebrows creased. Hancock couldn’t help the way he smiled as he watched them turn the steaks over contemplatively. “Do you want my opinion?”

“Always, sweetheart.”

Sole suppressed their own smile. “I think a good leader would listen to his people and their opinions. A great leader goes out and gains perspective to truly understand what they go through and where they’re coming from. You do both, so I think that makes you a fantastic leader.” They stood from where they were crouching next to the fire and moved to sit next to him.

The sun crept lower on the horizon. They reached over and took his hand to get his attention, not knowing it was hard for Hancock to focus on anything other than them. “I mean it, Hancock. Really. Not many people these days pay as much attention as you do. The fact that you decided to take a step back to make sure you were doing right by your people proves that.”

“Careful, now, you’ll make me blush with all that flattery.”

They laughed quietly but didn’t respond. As the evening quieted further, the birds no longer chirped but settled into their nests and the sun nearly set, they began to swipe their thumb back and forth over the back of Hancock’s hand. Carefully, they raised their entwined hands and pressed their lips to his knuckles. “You trying to flatter me more?” Hancock kept his tone cautiously flirtatious.

Sure, he flirted with them some. Okay, a lot. But never had he thought they would take him seriously, much less respond in kind. Not that he was complaining. “Is it working?” They asked quietly, their lips brushing against his rough skin as they spoke, looking up at him through their lashes. Jesus Christ, they were gonna be the death of him.

“Dunno yet. Why don’t you keep trying and I’ll get back to you on that.”

Hancock wasn’t sure whether it was the Jet or the grin that spread across their face that made him so lightheaded.

MacCready:

“Relax, Mac. We’re just a couple of Settlers.” Sole said quietly, their tone soothing.

They had insisted on doing a bit of recon on the Gunners once they had gotten intel that they were coming to Diamond City for supplies. Mac was positive they were going to be called out at any moment. After all, the Gunners had probably put word out to all of their factions that he was on their watchlist.

Sole had given him completely different clothes, mussed up his hair, and provided a bandana to hide most of his face in order for him to blend in. Lucky for them, there had been a nasty dust storm just yesterday and they weren’t the only ones hiding their faces. They had seated themselves at Power Noodles and begun watching for the Gunners.

As soon as they arrived Mac tensed. He wasn’t one for acting, that was Deacon’s job from what he’d heard, and knowing that people who were out for his blood were so close had him on edge. A few minutes passed as a pair of Gunners made their way to the counter and ordered before sitting and chatting. Sole kept their eyes on MacCready, but it was obvious to him their attention was directed to the conversation taking place behind them.

It was clear to them MacCready wasn’t gonna last much longer, and they didn’t blame him. They’d heard stories about the Gunners and what they were willing to do to get their way. His body language was becoming more and more obvious the longer they sat there before Sole snapped their attention back to him and nodded. It was time to go, they got what they wanted. They slid off their stool casually and slid their hand into Mac’s to get his attention.

He flushed under his bandana but followed suit, hopping off his stool and allowing them to lead him towards the back of the stands. Their hands were distractingly soft and as the distance between them and the Gunners grew he felt himself relax a bit more. They stopped him once they had reached the stands and no one was in sight.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” His voice was quiet and Sole squeezed his hand sympathetically.

MacCready felt himself blush again and squeezed their hand back before letting go. “Uh- I. Thanks. For that.” He looked away from them and scratched the back of his neck.

“Anytime, Mac.”

‘Do you mean that?’ He almost asked, biting his tongue to stop himself. It was just to blend in and get him away from the Gunners. Right?

Nick:

It was nearly midnight and Nick, not needing sleep, was still filling out paperwork. Sole had insisted they were going to stay up with him to help, but they were obviously nodding off to his left. He sighed and set down his pencil, turning towards them. “You know you can go rest.” He had repeated this about ten times already that night.

Sole’s voice was groggy when they replied, “No, I said I would help.”

Nick stood from his chair and gathered a few files. He knew the only way they would go to bed is if he dragged them there himself and implied that he was done working for the night. “Look, you can head to bed, I’m going to put these where they belong and then go read.”

Sole cracked one of their eyes open and then shook their head. They pressed their fingertips to their eyes before blinking rapidly and picking up their pencil, beginning to reread what they had written so far. Nick held out his hand over their paper, directly in their line of sight. “Go to bed, Sole. You can barely stay awake.”

Grumbling to themself, Sole took his hand and allowed him to help them up. He led their stumbling figure to their bed, which he had gotten specifically for nights like this. He kept their hand in his to help them balance as they reached down and tugged their shoes off, then plopped down on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. Their voice was quiet when they asked, “Stay? I-” They stopped themselves from explaining.

It had been a brutal week and they’d had a few close calls. It dawned on him. Of course they didn’t want to sleep; they didn’t want to be alone. Nick nodded and didn’t let go of their hand as they laid back and he settled into the armchair beside their bed. Their breaths evened out swiftly and he settled the stack of files in his lap, returning to fill out the files with his available hand.

Piper:

“Knock knock!” Sole called into the Publick Occurrences building as they stepped in.

Nat leapt up from where she and Piper were sitting on the couch and barreled into Sole, flinging her arms around their waist. “Hey Nat.” They laughed, hugging her tightly.

“Hey Sole, what brings you to our part of the Commonwealth? Picking up some goods from Myrna?” Piper got up from the couch, moving to greet her friend.

“You didn’t tell her?” They asked Nat.

Nat shook her head sheepishly. “Ask me what?” Piper’s tone grew suspicious.

“I was gonna take her for lunch and told her to ask you if it was alright.” 

Piper raised an eyebrow at Nat. “I forgot.” She muttered, gaze directed at the floor.

“Tell you what. Let’s all go, I’ll buy. It gives you a chance to take a break from editing, Piper.” 

Piper found it hard to say no in face of Sole’s easygoing grin. She nodded her assent and slipped her shoes on, watching as Sole helped Piper into her coat, fondness overtaking her stern expression. “Are we ready?” They asked cheerfully.

“Looks like it. Nat, hold Sole’s hand for safety, okay? There’s been a lot of new traders coming in and we don’t need you getting lost.”

“What about you?” Sole asked jokingly. “I’d better hold onto you, too, I’d hate to lose you.”

Piper stammered, suddenly finding interest in the dirt on her boots. “Oh. Uh- yeah. I mean- yeah, that’s fine. Sure.”

Sole’s grin grew as they headed out. As soon as the door was locked behind them, they took Piper’s hand and the trio made their way across Diamond City for their meal. Piper never really got her ability to form sentences back while her hand was in Sole’s. Safely.

Preston:

“Where are we headed, General?” Preston asked, striding to stand next to them.

Sole had put out word that they wanted to see Preston for ‘something extremely important’ earlier that morning and had requested he find her later in the evening in the garden. The garden was a great source of pride for Sole, as they had built the thriving area quite literally from the ground up. They stood near the fence, rinsing tatos under the faucet, and glanced up when Preston spoke. “Good to see you, Preston. Let me finish this up and then we can head inside.” 

Truth be told, he was nervous. Sole was usually quite direct with why they wanted to see him, but it seemed they had remained intentionally vague. He was sure they were headed somewhere, possibly to help out another settlement, but that didn’t explain why they weren’t communicating their motives like they usually did.

He shifted uncertainly as they finished rinsing the tatos, piled them in their basket, and moved towards the garden gate. Preston jumped to action and pulled it open for them, anxious to do something. He followed them quietly as they moved to the connected house and pulled open the door. They gestured him inside before they led him to the kitchen and set the basket down. He began to wonder what to do with himself when they asked, “Have you had pasta before. Not Power Noodles, but pasta?”

“Um… what?” Preston stared at them in confusion. “No, I can’t say I have.”

“Come here, I’ll teach you how to make it.”

“Of course, but I have to ask General, why did you want to see me?”

Sole smiled. “You deserve a night off. You’ve been working hard lately- it didn’t escape my notice -and I figured you wouldn’t take a break if I didn’t give you something else to do. So I’ll teach you how to make pasta. We just harvested razorgrain today, so there’s plenty.”

So Preston stepped into their kitchen, a little more certain of himself with that weight off his shoulders, and listened intently as they gave him instructions. They ground the razorgrain into a fine powder with Sole’s makeshift mortar and pestle, split a Mirelurk egg in half, and added it to the flour. As they continued their pasta-making-mission, Skeeter Davis’ voice rang out quietly from the nearby radio, and Preston found himself more at ease than he had been in a while.

The evening moved swiftly into night as the pair sat on Sole’s couch, trading stories over their home cooked meal. Passing settlers turned as Sole’s laughter rang out through the air every now and then, Preston’s following soon after each time. The conversation lasted long into the night before the pair grew quiet and simply listened to the crackling fire that kept the evening chill at bay.

Sole reached out carefully and interlocked their fingers with Preston’s, catching his attention as he glanced from their hands to their face, eyes wide. “Is this okay?” They asked quietly.

Preston nodded and squeezed their hand, an infectious smile crossing his face, to which Sole began smiling as well. Sole began telling another story of their adventures as Preston sunk back into the couch. He’d felt a little selfish thinking it, but he understood why people enjoyed taking breaks.

X6-88:

“I hate it. Six, this is awful.” Sole gripped the rail that lined the glass walkway at the very top of the Institute, staring down in horror.

“The pathways were built to Institute standards. They are perfectly sound.” X6 replied patiently, having gone through this before.

“It’s glass! I don’t trust it. There’s a reason I’ve never come up here! The lower walkways are bad enough.”

X6 stifled his impatience before reaching out and prying their hands off the railing. “Six!” They cried, grasping onto his hand desperately.

He pulled them closer to him, putting his arm around their shoulders with their hand still firmly attached to his, and began guiding them towards the elevator at the end of the pathway. Externally, as usual, he had set his face in a stern expression. However, he found himself suppressing a sense of smug satisfaction at the turn of events.

Once they reached the elevator, he forced himself to begin unwinding himself from Sole. As soon as he began loosening his grip and lifting his arm, Sole grabbed back onto him. “Not yet.” They stared down, just as tense, as the elevator began descending slowly. X6 didn’t protest, and settled his arm back onto their shoulders, their hand gripped firmly in his.

[eivor-basim]

ezio (in all seriousness now. mind your step 🥰🥰🔪🔪)

hey you can put your pixel knives away, i love ezio. and i'm not gonna steal your video game boyfriend i promise <3

first impression

i first played ac2 when i was 13 or so. at the Very First Glance he annoyed me a bit because he reminded me of boys my age who thought they were all that. a pre-fuckboy, if you will. but then he was so soft with his family. i really felt the pain of losing them with him. and he was adorably awkward flirting with cristina and being baffled by leonardo. so i quickly realized that ezio actually deserves so much love. and also a hug... pls allow this man some damn comfort ubi. plus of course, the fancy renaissance assassin robes and being so overpowered in fights just made it so FUN to play as ezio. i appreciated his badassery

impression now

now, playing an ezio game feels like coming home.

no matter what life throws at him, ezio finds a way to move forward and make something of it. always with a joke and a spring in his step. i love that resilience. and i've come to love the charm that annoyed me at first. because it's not putting on a show, that's just How He Is. he's warm and charismatic and funny. and manages to maintain that in spite of everything.

also, his humor isn't a façade veiling a lack of character or wisdom as can sometimes be the case with the fun-loving roguish archetype. over the course of the games, he really grows to be a man of principle and gains truly insightful perspective. these quotes he just drops:

"When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it. And I had love, but I did not feel it. Many decades would pass before I understood the meaning of all three. And now, the twilight of my life, this understanding has passed into contentment. Love, liberty, and time: once so disposable, are the fuels that drive me forward."

"I have lived my life as best I could, not knowing its purpose, but drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. And here, at last, I discover a strange truth. That I am only a conduit for a message that eludes my understanding. Who are we, who have been so blessed to share our stories like this? To speak across centuries?"

"To say that nothing is true is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile and that we must be the shepherds of our civilization. To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious of tragic."

"My story is one of many thousands, and the world will not suffer if it ends too soon."

i cried looking those up and reading them again btw!!

this man goes through so much pain. he builds the brotherhood up from nothing, only to lose it. and then builds it again. he does ALL THAT only to realize his whole life has served to convey a message he will never understand to a person he will never meet. yet even so he still finds contentment. he finds love and happiness. and he does it all with the signature ezio auditore da firenze flair. and looks hot doing it

(i really do need to note, this pixel man is FINE. i have to say his brotherhood look is my favorite but he is consistently hot)

i love him i love him i love him

favorite moment

there are so many??? and tbh i just started my ezio trilogy replay so the details are a little fuzzy, especially on brotherhood and revelations

one moment that always rips my heart out is when he assassinates his first target and yells "the auditore are not dead! i'm still here! me! ezio! ezio auditore!" and you can just hear his voice breaking a little

i love the little conversations between him and leonardo. leo really becomes one of the few constants in ezio's life, which forms such a distinct and powerful bond between them. and leo is just a walking ray of sunshine

ooh i really love the entire venice carnival sequence. also both ezio and claudia's assassin induction ceremonies. when ezio yeets cesare off the roof. and all of the moments with the quotes above

like i said, impossible to choose. and i still feel like this list is incomplete since i'm about to replay and will likely rediscover a bunch of old faves

idea for a story

hmm i don't know. i really feel like ezio's story is well executed and comes full circle in canon tbh. in the past i've enjoyed fics that actually do give ezio a chance to talk to desmond and explore the bleeding effect creating overlap between their lives. if i wrote a story, i might focus on ezio and claudia, because i feel like her character is very underutilized in-game.

unpopular opinion

i suppose a lot of my interpretation of ezio would be unpopular among those who see him as a womanizer and put him on a pedestal for that. other than that, hard to say tbh. i know many people don't like ezio with sofia, and i think they're very cute together. i guess also, i don't think ezio ever fully recognized claudia's ability. i think his perception of her was clouded by the gender roles of the time. in my view, he improved over time but never managed to shake off that bias

favorite relationship

romantically, this is difficult because ezio has great chemistry with lots of people and almost every ship makes me think oh yeah that'd be cute. i don't really have an otp with ezio, you know? i do really like him with leonardo and sofia tho

platonically, claudia. the murder siblings dynamic is everything. also, yusuf. their interactions were always so charming and hilarious, and yusuf's death clearly hit him so hard-- why ubisoft

favorite headcanon

ezio paints portraits of his targets, but i also like the thought of him painting portraits of his loved ones. ones that just feel more tender and personal when you're looking at them. and going out to the countryside to paint landscapes with leonardo-- artist couple!!

this is a communal headcanon at this point lol, but in-game ezio tries coffee and suggests adding sugar and milk. so i like to think he's the inventor of The Most Extra coffee drinks, like a triple caramel cappuccino with extra whipped cream and sprinkles type shit

finally, i think at heart he's very sentimental. he probably holds on to all sorts of knick knacks that remind him of the people in his life and the places he's been. he catches a whiff of, idk, a certain type of flower and is instantly transported to picking those flowers for a crush as a boy. gets all misty-eyed thinking about it. ezio is soft!!

send me a character!

[bangtanblurbs]

young forever

song: young forever by BTS

first experience: strangely enough i have a very visceral memory of when forever young dropped. it was during finals week of my final year in undergrad. the song released on a sunday in the wee hours (or perhaps a monday? - days tend to run together during finals week). i didn’t have many assignments due that year since my course load was light and i was really just coasting into grad school the year afterwards (at the same institution i attend for undergrad). i remember logging onto youtube and catching the video as it premiered. i was stunned. HYYH pt. 1 and HYYH pt. 2 were heavenly to me, so of course young forever was greatly anticipated for me - the aesthetics, continuation of the story, and also simply getting new bangtan music. the cotton candy color pallet loaded onto my phone screen, and RM’s beautiful voice can through my earphones... i was immediately in love. 

every member looked completely stunning. the message i got from the video was... incredibly powerful. the maze. the lyrics. all of it resonated with me, a young woman -- 22 years old -- soon to turn another corner in life. i sat in my dorm room preparing for a busy week, as i was the RA in my dormitory and needed to help my students move out that week... as i prepared for my graduation and transition into my next step in life... i was also shipping out to macau, china for the summer in a few weeks so i geared up for that. this video dropping was almost a breath of fresh air from everything going on. i was able to really sit and enjoy it, but also reflect on my past, present, and the future to come. 

feelings: well, i have quite a lot. as someone who has been chronically obsessed with the story of peter pan since age seven, i’d say that youth is something i value - perhaps a bit too much. what’s interesting though is young forever isn’t necessarily about youth in the rawest sense... it’s also about dreams, reaching the point in your life where you’re happy, with yourself, your circumstances, ultimately your place in life. which i suppose most people equate that with youth, the innocence and naivety of it all. for me, thinking about forever young is kind of about that anxiety we carry as we get younger - have a made good use of my youth? did i squander it, getting caught up in the day to day or bogged down by my demons? the worry that our youth is our prime and when it’s gone, where do we go next? retire? it’s kind of funny thinking about this now as I’m 27 instead of 22. do i feel any older? no, not really - i feel the same. the same energy, the same zeal for life. do i look back on the days when i was younger and think that my youth is gone? no. for me - youth - it’s a state of mind. it’s an ethos, a way of proceeding forwards in my life. i didn’t always think this way - perhaps that was wrapped up in my anxiety about getting older. i used to lament my birthday each passing year - god turning 23 felt the absolute worst for some reason. it’s funny now though - how i almost feel younger, lighter, now than i did. youth should be a feeling of unburdened peace right? ideally it would seem so - but the reality in our world today... youth is pain. youth is struggling. youth is stumbling through the dark and trying to figure out who the hell you are, who the hell you want to be. i still feel like i’m stuck in that place, that place of wonder - of reaching out, exploring, experiencing... i feel as naïve as ever despite the pain that courses through some of my life. 

so back to young forever - how does the song make me feel? it makes me feel at home. at peace. forever we can carry our youth, forever we can approach our lives with childish curiosity, with the energy to follow our dreams, with a dedication to our passion, and an and endless realization that change is the only constant in our lives. despite the ups and downs that might come with living with this mindset - i wouldn’t want to live any other way. what’s the point of continuing to grind hard every day in the cruel systems our society has built if we can’t at least say we did it with voracious appetite to experience fully our surroundings, emotions, and imaginations?

personal connection: it’s rather hard for me to nail down all of my personal connections to young forever. as i mentioned, i have a really strong connection to the story of peter pan. i’ll briefly explain why and how that plays in here - but i must warn you... if you’re uncomfortable with strangers oversharing on the internet, perhaps this isn’t the blog for you to read. i’m quite comfortable bearing my soul to people i don’t know. for some reason vulnerability has never been something i’ve struggled with - perhaps it’s the naivety i love about myself. anyways... here we go.

when i was 17 my best friend passed away from cancer. it was relatively quick. just a summer we spent together gossiping in a hospital room, machines beeping while we tried our very best just to giggle about boys and lament our torturous IB courses. i’d known her nearly my whole life. meeting in second grade - and bonding quickly over a love for the whimsy of peter pan’s story. we’d gush on the playground about flying away to neverland - where we could do whatever we wanted. explore, sing, fly. but she was gone then. gone far too soon. frozen in a youthful state in my mind. her passing is still the hardest thing i’ve ever been through in my life, and i’ve been through some scary shit. immediately when i hard young forever i thought about her. i thought about how she lived. she was fearless. the bravest and strongest person i ever knew, and still to this day, have ever known. knowing her - experiencing her soul - it changed me. once she passed away i had to be strong, my classmates looked to me as their rock, my parents forbid me to cry, everyone pushed me into adulthood way too quickly. i was just a seventeen year old girl. i was having a crisis - i wanted nothing more than to speak to my best friend as i navigated choosing my next steps after high school. but she wasn’t there, and i wasn’t allowed to feel. i was terrified. my youth was gone. nothing seemed fun anymore. youth became pain as i looked around at my peers who were back to normal in a matter of weeks. giggling with one another, moving along with life. i became a robot. quickly i threw myself into school work. i was already a high achieving student but i climbed higher. i worked harder. i had decided that for the life she couldn’t live, i would live it for her. i’d go to the best college i could, i’d do all the things i never dreamed i could. i’d do it for her. but i wasn’t living. i had let my youth go. i was fading away. just a shell. 

it’s funny. or perhaps it’s not. young forever is a comfort song. a comfort song with some incredible darkness in it. the anxiety in namjoon’s verse, yoongi’s speaking to hiding feelings - pushing forward despite what he carries, hoseok’s verse about letting himself go and just giving what he has to keep pushing. their words - that’s how i felt. the song dropped around four years after my friend’s passing. i needed it before then. although perhaps it wouldn’t have “saved me” because music doesn’t save, music gives us the strength and comfort we need to save ourselves (i’m not a fan of taking way my own agency in MY story), it might have offered me a light in an increasingly blurry world. 

a year prior to the song’s release i’d spent a summer in china. my life changed there. i lived with seven incredibly bright middle school girls. that experience, i never thought it would start to heal me the way it did. they were under immense pressure (the education system in china is total bullshit)... and they told me “caroline, youth is pain. it’s not beautiful. it’s a period where we struggle the most.” i’d never heard this. the typical western perspective is that youth is “the most beautiful part of life” - it’s where you fall in love, it’s where you get hurt and you pick yourself up, it’s where you find yourself, you feel invincible. but that’s just it - it’s also where you can get incredibly lost (like the maze in the video). not all of us experience youth without pain. this perspective helped me to heal. i wasn’t so alone - i wasn’t squandering my youth, sure - i was treading water - but that was okay. i could cry. i could feel. and so, at this point i began to write my own story again. rather than living for someone else, i decided to throw the book out the window, to pick myself and run like hell towards what i wanted. to accept the freefall of life. that’s youth. that’s the most beautiful part of life. the part where you free yourself from whatever chains society has on you. youth is only associated with being a child because that who should be the most free. when truly youth, youth is that period in your life when you learn to live for yourself, your dreams. dream, hope, keep going. don’t fucking stop.

so this brings us to 2016. i was weeks away from a new journey abroad when young forever dropped. i was doing better. life felt lighter. i still had a long way to go, but some things i’d gotten right. i gained confidence, i navigated my interpersonal relationships with more poise. etc etc. going to china the second time, it changed me more. i did things on my own i’d never dreamed of doing. crossing multiple national borders, making friends with people i couldn’t communicate with. i opened my heart to it all. and i fell in love with myself. for the first time. i fell in love with how completely i embraced my freedom and coupled it with my drive, my passions. that is what young forever is about. it’s about the struggle but the continued commitment to the state of mind that once you’re free - once you embraced that childlike state of being - you can achieve so much happiness. 

which brings us to now - how do i connect to the song now? much in the same way that i did before. carrying these emotions connected to this song so deeply into adulthood has been incredibly touching. i’ve matured with bangtan. from 2015 to now. i’ve only grown in how i embrace my youth. sure, i have to conform at times, play the adult, but the motto “dream, hope, keep going.” that’s what i live by. nothing can change that for me now. i’m still fucking lost, but i’m running like hell. i have my setbacks, my demons, my challenges, but i’ve never been so fucking free. that’s young forever for me. thank you for reading my story. 

song breakdown:

musically: something i truly love about young forever is that it’s really atypical in how it flows musically and the entire structure of the song. it’s creativity run wild - it’s a story and build. and i love that. it starts off slow, soft, with a sweet sadness. the highlight isn’t the backing track, it’s the honey rap voices. it’s absolutely perfect. understated and building. with each new voice that comes in the beat speeds up. it’s like running. which is fitting. because the story in the song is that of bangtan. the lyrics say it, the boys are worried - worried about how well they’ve done, when they’ll stop gaining success, concerned that all of this life will end, wondering who they are in this - the performance the journey. they are quite literally running towards their dreams. we see this in the song lyrically. 

once the chorus comes, we need an increased speed in the beat and the song picks up with the chanting of the mantra. “forever, we are young.” us together, bangtan and ARMY. the song fades into the beautiful clapping beat, the refrains of dream, hope, keep going. musically the song is beautifully understated in a way that can only draw out the listeners’ emotions and highlight the charged encouraging lyrics. the story here is clear and only more illuminated by the musical choices. 

vocally: young forever is such a treat. it’s a rap heavy song, but not in a way that takes away from the beautiful second half of the song which is full of beautiful vocal line refrains and ad libs. it’s a chant song. a comfort song. and perhaps that’s why it’s stuck with me for all these years as one of my ultimate favorite BTS songs. 

when the song begins we are greet by namjoon’s beautiful low rap register. he delivers the rap melodically slow. you can appreciate the way his voice carries emotion and the tempo of the beginning story, of the emotional journey the song embarks upon. following namjoon’s beautiful voice is yoongi. who assumes a slower rap style initially. he has a few parts where he treats us to shout rapping as well - which give us kind of a pleading emotion - we can hear his lament for the pressure placed upon him as he stands in the spotlight. finally, rapline is rounded out by hoseok - i’m gonna say it - this is one of hoseok’s best slow verses. he offers his usual spicy tone, giving the trap style endings to each line. the emotion hits it’s peak with the punch tones and hoseok’s strong committment to his lines expressing his desires, his drive. 

the second half of the song is dominated by the beautiful tones of vocal line. taehyung leads us into the chorus with his beautiful deep register, followed by jungkook’s high tones. the juxtaposition of their voices coupled by jin and backed by jimin’s beautiful melodies is absolutely stunning. rapline takes turns coming in with the refrain “dream, hope, keep going.” all of this mixed together is simply stunning. it’s like hope in vocal form. we have the low and the highs, the singing voices and the speaking refrains. most devastatingly is jimin’s forever ever ever - piercing the background of the song. highlighting the longing - the conviction - to youth - the spirit of it, the beauty of it. the chant portion of the song is also what makes this song so devastating to hear live. everyone comes in, blends together and makes the message resonate completely. 

lyrically: here. we. go. a DEEP DIVE. i think firstly, it’s important to start with the fact that we have a song, young forever, that was released as the epilogue to two devastating HYYH albums. HYYH was the epitome of youth themed albums. it encapsulated everything we associate typically with youth. love songs, songs about pain, songs about healing, songs about not being enough, songs about our dreams, songs about being lonely... it’s all there. both the beauty of youth and the beautiful pain of youth dominate HYYH pt. 1 and HYYH pt. 2. then, those messages, those themes, were sealed with epilogue: young forever. why? well, my feeling is this is bangtan’s way of leaving us with the reality that youth isn’t something that’s fleeting. it’s not an age or state in time. it’s something we carry within. it’s how we approach the things we confront in our lives, how we live and move forward through adversity towards our passions and dreams. 

now - with that out of the way it’s time to dissect some lyrics. there’s quite a lot here in the three rap verses so i truly hope to do them justice. 

namjoon’s verse starts like a story, “the curtain falls” the end of a performance, often used as metaphor for the end of a certain point in one’s life. “the curtain falls and i’m out of breath / i get mixed feelings as i breathe out” clearly the chapter that’s closing for him has been an exhausting one, but he’s not sure about moving forward even though now he has the time to finally reflect and see what he wants next. to me, this speaks directly to where bangtan was at this point in their career. they’d been through the bullshit - the trainee days, the ridicule, the exclusion from the typical korean music system... they’d made it. I NEED U had one awards, RUN did as well, 2016 bangtan had begun to see the fruit of their labor pay off - but with that, what’s next. where do they climb next? what’s to come? there’s that feeling of unease for namjoon. “did I make any mistakes today? / how did the audience seem?” are the next lines, bringing in that sense of reflection. even though now he can breathe - he worries, what’s his impact, how do people feel about what he’s given them, did he have shortcomings? these thoughts flood in and set the mood for the next steps forward. these questions only become more as the pressure continues. the next and final three lines of namjoon’s verse group well together and offer us much more hope that the foreboding in the start of the verse: “i’m happy with who i’ve become / that i can make someone scream with joy / still excited from the performance.” the peace in these final lines, it’s kind of like the rest of the song - starting with the hardship, the unease, what must or has been overcome - mellowing out to realization that things will keep going on. namjoon is at peace with where is at the end of this chapter, he is glad he can stand on this stage bringing smiles to faces, and finally - the buzz of just being able to do music, that remains with him through all of the constant pressure. something about these lines, they’re beautiful.

just like that, yoongi’s verse begins. he provides the same metaphor to the listener. he is standing on an empty stage. the performance is over. the chapter is closing. HYYH is becoming the past for BTS. the struggles, will they be over too as they move forward with their progressing careers? “i stand on the empty stage while holding onto an aftertaste that will not linger for long” he begins - he knows that the high of this moment, the place they’ve reached in this time... it can’t be forever, the emotions of it all are beginning to fade into something else. he then moves on to offer some more insight into how he feels about that unknown of moving on: “while standing on this empty stage, i become afraid of this unpleasant emptiness.” this line seems telling to me - yoongi is someone that gets a lot from recognition, achievement, sharing his works with others. leaving the stage, moving away from this performance moment... it’s hard on him... he feels empty, his moment, his purpose - they’re over... at least for now. the anxiety seeps in. “within my suffocating feelings / on top of my life’s line” he starts to try and explain deeper his emotions, suffocation, a feeling of panic, likely anxiety or pressure induced. what’s next? will it demand more? he’s on top of his life’s line - he feels like he’s reaching his peak, not knowing where to go next, plateau? down? yoongi then lodges into almost a picture perfect description of what society can make us do in moments of pressure where we are feeling anxiety or panic - “without a reason, i forcibly act that i am fine / this isn’t the first time, i better get used to it” he’s going to put on a strong face, suppress how he really feels because at some point there could be another audience, he remains on the stage even if the curtains have closed. he forces himself to do so, and it’s a habitual thing for him. it sounds like truly this is habitual for yoongi - really needing to mask his fear, his panic, his anxiety for the sake of those watching. it tears me up, because it seems like he also knows that this will continue in his future. and the he realizes that keeping the mask on, it’s not something he’s able to do or perhaps interested in doing “i try to hide it, but i can’t.” the final lines of his verse leave us with some unease - they’re unclear - but perhaps they’re speaking to the fact that performing won’t be his forever... “when the heat of the show cools down / i leave the empty seats behind,” so at some point -- the excitement, the hype, it will be gone... those who want to see him, they’ll be gone too, and he’ll move on to what is next. or perhaps this could allude to the fact that the pressure of those watching goes away and he will finally feel comfortable? there’s a lot here. a lot left up and open.

and finally we round out rapline with hoseok’s verse - which leads us into the chorus and refrains. the first three lines of hoseok’s part go hand in hand with one another - they’re a natural progress of coping with one’s emotions and situation: “trying to comfort myself / i tell myself the world can’t be perfect / i start to let myself go.” the chapter is closing and hoseok is trying to tell himself, it’ll be okay. almost like listening to the song young forever - seeking comfort. a home. realizing that things aren’t always going to go his way, he can’t have this moment forever, and sometimes things are going to be ups and downs... the final line is perhaps the most startling, letting oneself go. realizing that there’s some pieces of yourself that are okay to let go, whatever is holding you back, keeping you stuck, sometimes we need to shed that to go forward with the youthful exploration that keeps life invigorating and exciting. or perhaps hoseok is thinking about the day in which he will let “j-hope” go and just be hoseok, without a stage in the traditional sense. “the thundering applause, i can’t own it forever” he moves on saying that this life won’t be his forever, at some point he will need to move on - realize that this moment is down, lose himself to it, and see what is next. yet - even with this knowledge hoseok continues “i tell myself, so shameless / raise your voice higher” it seems that there’s a conflict he’s facing - letting this moment go or screaming as loud as he can to hold onto it, and shamelessly so - letting go of all the constructed norms for how he should behave. perhaps, holding onto his YOUTH even as he grows older in age and should grow away from a youthful mentality. he is raising his voice and hopefully pushing forwards, perhaps just away from this stage and onto an even larger one. it seems this is the case “even if the attention isn’t forever, i’ll keep singing” he states. he will hold onto his passion, keep moving forwards with his music, his voice, his connection to whatever it is that wants to be connected to him - because this is his very soul and being. finally - hoseok closes out his verse “as today’s me, i want eternity / forever, i want to be young.” it seems that hoseok is choosing to be who he is at this moment, his youthful self, as long as he goes on. he will leave this version of himself, this beautiful, loving, hopeful version of himself as his mark on the earth for eternity. 

moving into the chorus we have the iconic title line “forever we are young” which to me, it’s about taking youth forward with you in all that you do. taking your passion, your drive, your love, your hope -- pouring it into all that you do and not letting the outside spoil you and take that from you. keeping your passions and running towards them. that’s the core of the message in young forever. 

jungkook then croons “under the flower petals raining down / i run, so lost in this maze” bringing us to think about how seasons change - flower petals can fall because of their abundance but also because they we are moving into winter. either way, the analogy of flowers is hopeful to me. blossoms on trees - the return in time. not the same blossoms, but just as beautiful as the previous ones. perhaps he’s speaking to the fact that the blossoms are falling now as the chapter is ending - which leads into the feeling of lost, of being in a maze... but the reality is, the flowers will come again. the can come again. so long as they keep running - there’s a chance for this beautiful moment to happen once again. that’s youth. perhaps you have your ups and downs, your moments in the sun (your spring days) and your cold days... but keep running, keep your energy, dream, hope, keep going. and you can return. 

jin then offers the other refrain “even when i fall and hurt myself / i endlessly run toward my dream.” THIS is youth. this is it. that almost stupid attitude of not recognizing when you’re down and out... not recognizing when perhaps you should stop. turning up the energy at your weakest point even when authority is telling you to let it go. this is the essence of youthful hope and energy. even if they’ve failed, even at their lowest point, they’re cementing that they won’t stop until they achieve their dreams. once again. dream. hope. keep going. just keep fucking going. 

finally the other refrain that is repeated throughout the chorus: dream. hope. forward. forward. is the direct translation. but, many would say it’s dream. hope. keep going. this is youth. our dreams, childish and pure. our hope, what we pour into ourselves, what we surround ourselves with - the light that keeps us going. and then constantly moving forward continuing even when our odds look bad. this shit resonates. bangtan did it. they dreamed, 7 boys at a small company. they hoped, holding onto one another, working hard, baby steps forward. they kept going. no matter the ridicule, the setbacks, they pushed forward. these words - they mean the world to me as i’ve pushed through shit in my life. i’m only where i am today because i, by some miracle, internalized this youthful mantra. allowing myself to dream, those moments of hope, pushing forward no matter what. that’s youth. that’s young forever. 

performance: well this is shaping up to be quite a long post. i want to discuss both the MV and how live performances typically proceed. i’ve also attached to this post my personal video of young forever at the HYYH: the epilogue tour in macau. sorry for my screaming in advance. 

MV: the MV is really interesting for the HYYH universe, although the same could be said for save me, which is technically in the universe... BUT the fact that the MV steps away from the storylines and almost takes us into the minds of the characters bangtan is playing is an interesting choice. we start off the video with the boys in a chain-linked fence maze, wandering around, and flashbacks for each of there characters. the overall aesthetic of the video fits with the lyrics and these feelings of uncertainty... the feeling of being lost... wandering from phase to phase in life. early on we see a scene of yoongi burning photos from the HYYH era - truly this song is about death to the past a new beginnings, overcoming the past but moving forward with the pieces of you that are important. the highlighting of the text “꿈 희망 전진 전진” or dream, hope, keep going - making it the mantra of the song. keep moving, keep running. almost it seems like the characters are running away from their demons as well. the members running off into the sunset together? it’s all about endings. new beginnings. but taking them on with determination and an attitude of childlike awe, glee, dreams, and determination. 

performance: we’ve all seen the iconic wembley performance. we’ve probably all cried over it more than once. maybe it’s your comfort video? maybe it’s secretly mine (ha!). i can tell you, experiencing this song live... there’s really nothing like it. it’s understated. there’s no dance. nothing like that. 

in the performances - namjoon appears alone in a starlight stage with the lyrics scrawling on a screen behind him. the lights are all dark, deep blue tones everywhere, it feels dreamy. the entire crowd is brought into a dream like state. it’s fitting, its absolutely fitting and incredibly stunning. yoongi then appears to namjoon’s left and hoseok to his right to be spotlighted for their respective verses. the emotion is everywhere. the song is even more incredible with a live band. you cannot imagine it. the chorus arrives with a change in vibe, a beautiful sunset is projected and the vocal line appears from the floor. all of the members stand shoulder to shoulder and belt the chorus and refrain. and you would not believe how devastatingly beautiful it is to hear ARMY shouting along. forever we are young. kkum, huimang, jeonjin, jeonjin. shouting together. again and again. clapping with one another. waving ARMY bombs. it’s completely emotional. i cried. i cried on the strangers next to me, that didn’t speak my language. there is nothing like it. 

i must also note, the concert i was at we were all distributed lightsticks and banners with 꿈 희망 전진 전진 written on them. this song has been important since it released. it’s the core of bangtan’s rise. it is so important to these boys. and to many of us fans as well.

now - a word about what happened at wembley. bangtan had no idea that ARMY would sing young forever TO them. at WEMBLEY. fans who likely do not speak korean. chanting their mantra to them “kkum, huimang, jeonjin, jeonjin” and singing “foreverrrrr we are younnnnng” and saying they will keep going. they will walk their journey towards their dreams. something about that, it’s incredibly toughing. you and i cannot imagine how that must have felt for bangtan. the moment must have been completely surreal. one of the world’s largest stages, playing one of the most meaningful songs of their careers - a song meant to memorialize their climb to fame, their accomplishments, their youth that they likely felt the LOST during this climb to where they are now. jimin himself said that night “this song. wow. this song helped me a lot when things were really hard.” young forever means so very much to bangtan. it always has. and their fans chose that very song. we chose that song (rather we were there or not). it’s our mantra too. whatever we go through, we are on this journey, and we are not alone. we are not alone. we can muster the strength to carry on with that same youthful zeal for life. watching that video... it’s moving. it’s completely incredible. to be a part of this journey... just wow. 

tl;dr: in conclusion... young forever is one of the BTS songs that has the most touching meanings, and it came at a very delicate time in their career. a time when they were finally getting the recognition they deserved and sought for a long time. a time when they were pivoting from “young” to “young adult.” a time when they likely struggled with a loss of their youth. all of this... it’s powerful because it’s not alien for those of us normal people. we all feel this. i’ve felt it as i’ve gone through tough shit and came out the other side changed, only to have to find my way through the maze and back to myself. youth and being young, it’s a state of mind. i think bangtan sincerely know and believe this. that’s what makes the song and the message it carries so incredibly powerful. so meaningful to us all. thanks for reading yet again. 

[jack-is-lost]

Warning: this is David x Michael pairing. Expect the vampire gayness.  Had a random story idea, and I'm not entirely sure if it has been done or not. If so someone link me cause I want to read it! Even if it isn’t e x a c t l y the same premise but somewhat close. 

Anyway, a mid-twenty female character from our world (where TLB is a movie), wakes up one day in the TLB universe reincarnated as Michael Emerson. I'm talking right from the baby stage. Of course, going by some logic here, they don’t know much of anything clearly till probably around the age of six. Up till then the original female character is somewhat aware that they are a boy and that’s about it. Which, that alone takes some getting used to.  Once reaching the age where they are past the fuzzy toddler brain stage is when they put two and two together. Especially when they realize their baby brother is Sam, and that their last name is Emerson. Sure, it could all be a coincidence, but the older they get the more ‘this’ version of Michael is just trying to fool himself. 

Now, with a complete understanding what world they live in — that vampires do exist and probably other supernatural creatures do too, Michael starts to learn more about lore and such from a kid age. Constantly reading books and watching horror movies. Treating it pretty similar to the Frog Bros but less obsessively preparing for a battle, and more wanting knowledge for protection and understanding. Their old life also helping with that. This Michael knows that if things keep going the way they are, he will eventually end up in Santa Carla. And with his dad picking up the habit of drinking more and losing jobs, it really seems like it will.  The day comes, the divorce happens, and Michael internally prepares himself to walk right into vampire territory. The old life within him, the lady who had probably died too young and magically teleported into a different alternate world/timeline, is entirely too aware of how things are unfolding. At first it feels like a 3D experience of the movie — life like, too surreal, and straight from the perspective of Michael. Except they have been living his life, their new life, since day one now. This is their life and their choices.    Michael ignores Star the night his brother drags him off to the concert. It isn’t because she’s not pretty. Especially when the light of a bonfire nearby danced upon her feminine frame. A part of him just wants to ignore that moment, the potential building connection between such characters. The other part just doesn’t.. exactly have the sudden desire to trail after her swishing broom skirt. It might be because he isn’t the ‘original’ Michael anyway. Or it might be his old life inside his brain that doesn’t have that sexual attraction to her.  Still, he knows his mother will catch the eye of a certain nerdy-looking old vampire if he didn’t intervene. So he drags his brother off to the VHS rental store. Only to be a couple minutes too late and walking into a room full of vampires and unexpected customers. Michael reached for his mother’s arm, to gain her attention and maybe coax her to leave early without seeming to weird and suspicious. Yet, at the same time, bright cool eyes lock onto his and something within Michael’s gut flares. It turns and sinks and thrashes like a beast trying to claw its way out. Maybe it is fear, awareness of what everyone in this small movie store is, but Michael can’t look away. Just as Max can’t look away from Lucy, David’s gaze tares into him.  It isn’t Star that leads him on with soft words and equally gentle dark eyes. Quite the opposite. The movie would diverge from this point on, lasting longer than a weeks time frame. It is David that seems to coax him further into the fray, a genuine interest in him joining the fun. At least it would seem that way but Michael knows it has to do with Lucy — with Max’s orders. That is why he declined the bottle at first, playing it off as a complete disinterest in ‘wine’. So David had to try a different way, a more blatant way. Of course, it doesn’t come up again, surprising Michael the longer their fun goes on, until a noticeable connection between David and him. It is obvious there is chemistry going on. Michael blushing when David swings his arm across his shoulders, pulling him in closer to his side, is a dead give away.  Eventually shit goes down hill when somehow Sam turns into a half-vamp, and there is legit fear Lucy might be tricked by Max soon. Michael tries to help Sam, roles almost entirely reversing in this scenario. He ends up protecting him from the Frog Bro’s who catch on a little too quick to his little brothers change. The Lost Boys are not too far behind on helping too, surprised Max did some of the dirty work. It was unusual for their Sire to do something and not just delegate. In the end, Michael takes blood directly from David, avoiding being sired by Max — breaking the power the older vampire would have hold of him, so he can beat the dudes ass without issue! Rest assured, at this point, the end of the movie never truly happens. Not exactly, anyway. Instead a whole battle at Max’s place ensues instead, causing enough damage the place is on fire at the end. It was necessary, like a card up a sleeve, for Michael to be free from Max’s power. The old vampires words causing all the lost boys to freeze when they attempted to attack, and Michael being the final blow to him. Star, Laddie, and Sam become all human again. Which equals out to a pretty happy ending, and of course Lucy becomes aware of things in the midst of all this. Especially with Sam’s odd behavior. The last one still half is Michael and he can’t turn back without killing David, and at this point he doesn’t want to kill the vampire. Their bond is too strong, their growing love well established. It is without some issues, but Michael decides to fight against fully changing for as long as possible. Eventually he cannot and thus he takes the final plunge to internal darkness.    His family still loves him and understand Michael’s choice. Overall it is a pretty happy ending with a side dish of angst. Through out the final chapters, Michael entirely forgets he was once a woman in another life. That past life almost a foggy, distant dream at this point. He is Michael Emerson and as David pulls him into a bloody heated kiss, it feels like he was born for this.  Now, who wants to help flesh this story out??? =D

[uservillanelle]

Killing Eve ― 3x04 (Review)

Last episode was... something else for me. Episode 3 will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart because of Villaneve’s kiss and all that, but this episode. It has to be my favorite this season and if they keep up like that... not only will we have a PERFECT season, but it will be impossible for me to pick a favorite episode. I’ve watched it probably close to 10 times already and I’m not going to wait any longer. We have bunch of stuff to discuss! So let’s start!! (This will be a LONG review, so I apologize in advance lol!)

The Titles

It’s so interesting that they chose this season to experiment with episodes. Back in episode 2 we had the very first additional credits sequence which I, personally, liked a lot. However, maybe they didn’t like it as much? Since they didn’t use it anymore. I wonder why they haven’t placed the credits sequence in the premiere instead? It would still be unpredictable gesture, so I’m still wondering about it.

ANYWAYS! By titles, I meant the NAME titles this episode. The past two seasons we were used to having titles that indicate the names of PLACES e.g. RUSSIA, LONDON, TUSCANY ect. They are still doing that, in different way, the letters are smaller now and they use this interesting “blinds” effect that the letters appear and move like blinds would if we opened/closed them? Really nice touch, I must say. It’s something different, something we haven’t really seen before in the show. 

Now the names. I’ve read a couple of people saying something like “why the name titles? we obviously know who the person is? so what’s the point of that?!” I found that quite funny lol! I mean, YES, we know exactly who they are but that’s not the reason why they’re using those name titles. Name titles, in this case, are to show us WHO the show is focusing on for the time being. That also means that the normal sequence of events will be disrupted since there won’t be any scenes switching between different characters. For some reason I felt like something like this happened before but then I remembered that something like this was used in another show called Dare Me! That’s why it felt so familliar and Killing Eve is exploring that type of narrative and honestly, I dig it. Yeah, it might get confusing for some people, having to bounce back and forth between the timeline and the events, but it’s perfect for those of us who has a sharp eye for details. It’s for the viewers who analyse and put pieces together. It’s exactly what Eve is doing at the end of the day with all the kills, isn’t it? So thinking about it, makes it all even more fascinating. Damn. I’m REALLY falling for the show... aren’t I?

The titles makes it SOO much easier for me to write these reviews as they basically tell which character they are focusing on right now and that’s what I did in my reviews lmao! I’ll just follow the characters in the episode so I’m sure you guys will be able to catch up with me with no problems!

Niko

So... THE MUSTACHE IS GONE. 

I didn’t see it coming. The way they released all those trailers/sneak peeks featuring Niko made it seem like he was finally getting his fresh start and like, I had a feeling we might even get an episode fully focused on him and maybe Eve or something? So, that’s how well they mix things up. My mind, yet again, has been BLOWN. 

Before we talk about the elephant in the room, I just want to say that Niko was a good person. I might not have been a huge fan of him, but I felt IT. Speaking of fans, I think it’s normal to NOT like him because he is playing the boring husband type and obviously he stands between Villaneve. But other than that, he IS a good, ordinary person. It’s a fact and Eve knows it. Niko keeps Eve grounded, safe, STABLE. He is all those things she found boring before in season 1 and didn’t appreciate enough I feel, because she was too used to them as all of us are. 

He gets to play the part of a normal, ordinary man who got scared when he found out that his wife is chasing an assassin, who soon enough possibly murdered Eve’s colleague and a dear friend. Yet, it didn’t seem to slow Eve down nor did she notice any of the red flags in front of her face that straight up screamed DANGER. I think most of us would’ve reacted to things like that the way Niko did. Yes, we would’ve been a boring man/woman who the viewers hate, because they crave for danger and psychotic obssession filled with hatred and lust and a LOT of craziness. It’s what we crave now, watching the show and WAITING for Villaneve to happen. 

This morning I’ve been watching a few of reactions of the episode and I got to explore different perspectives of people reacting to the same thing. I love that. I want to know what other people see in things, you know? And so... one of the people made a point about KE writers killing off whoever they want, probably to surprise the viewers as they probably don’t know how else to drive the story. Meaning that Kenny or Niko didn’t have to die. But that’s the whole point... one thing is to claim that they are doing whatever they want with the show, but another is to actually COME UP with ideas for a decent, I mean.. not even decent, AN AMAZING plot that people would be shocked and amazed by at the same time. You can only go this far without having to touch any of the main characters, you know? There comes a time when you have to make big, serious choices in terms of the story and this season Suzanne is GOING FOR IT. Like I mentioned in my previous post here, the first two seasons were amazing, but it only NOW feels like things are getting real. Suzanne took over and she’s getting shit done. She’s taking this responsibility and making huge important choices that will shift the main plot AND Villaneve in certain direction and so far it’s going sooo smoothly and brilliantly. 

I mean, yes, Niko deserves to start over and have a nice life but the moment Villanelle found out about Eve... Niko’s fate was decided for him whether he liked it or not. And having him simply disappear from Eve’s life AND from the show as if nothing... I’d see it as waste of character’s potential. So instead of not having Niko around but have HIM affect the story in such a profound way, I think killing him off was a great idea. This way... his character gains so much more meaning and it helps to drive the main story forward, but most importantly it will change and affect Eve in ways we have never seen before. So, I think I’ve read somewhere that Owen McDonnell (Niko) wanted his character to go out with a bang, and he truly did. Yes, it was a very brutal, shocking death but it was definitely a very strong one.

Now, the soundtracks STRIKE yet again. I’m talking about Niko’s soundtrack, Dear Diary by The Moody Blues is soo well fitting for his character while showing him trying to start over with his life. It carries this... sort of bittersweet feeling, but at the same time it’s so... freeing? And the lyrics speak his story without Niko having to say anything at all. 

“ Woke up too late. Wasn't where I should have been For goodness sake, what's happening to me?” 

Yeah, he WOKE UP a bit too late and realized that the life he had wasn’t really for him anymore.

“So many people by the score Rushing around as senselessly They don't notice there's people like me”

And we basically see him drive through the town and watch people going with their lives and not really notice him for who he is now, for what he had to go through. Probably none of them had to go through so much trauma and had their lives in danger the way Niko has.

“If they weren't so blind, then surely they'd see There's a much better way for them to be”

Perfect description for Niko the previous two seasons. Now that he’s “woken up” I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought that way. Again, this show picks the soundtracks for a reason and I’m not sure if in first two seasons the songs described and spoke instead of characters, but this season they are really going for it. 

Eve

Oh boy, where do we start?

So... from now on Eve spends her nights at Bitter Pill office. I mean, after being shot by a crazy assassin girlfriend, who, found out where Eve’s living now, it’s more than understandable for her to NOT want to stay in her apartment any longer. But staying in the office is not the best idea either. I mean, she still can go back to her apartment to clean up and all that? Guess not this day. Which happens to be her BIRTHDAY. I was convinced that Villanelle sent her the cake of a bus was only to remind her off their mindblowing kiss, because let’s remember back in 1x04 Villanelle had just murdered Bill and threw a birthday party to Konstantin. And it wasn’t his birthday. Yes, she tried to get on his good side, but I really thought this would be yet another example of Villanelle’s behavior. Turns out.. it IS Eve’s birthday... and my mind is blown yet again. I NEED to know what day is her birthday. Like, seriously?! And.. Niko hasn’t messaged her despite it being her birthday. Like.. you two have huge issues still, but hello? It’s your wife’s birthday... or maybe he forgot? But here is Villanelle not forgetting about Eve’s special day... and the fact that it’s a goddamn bus... WE GET IT, VILLANELLE, YOU’RE A HOPELESS ROMANTIC.

Before the cake arrives, we have a scene of Eve cleaning up in the bathroom, checking out her bruise and then the moment with Bear. Everything made total sense. Eve brushing her teeth, smelling herself, probably aware that she’s in desperate need for a shower, then again smelling her hair until Bear points it out for her. Yes, SMELL is the reoccuring theme in Killing Eve. So that was alright. Everything was going smoothly UNTIL Bear spotted the UNDERWEAR. Now, I did some digging to find a confirmation that it indeed was underwear and not some random piece of clothing or whatever... and in one of the recaps online they did say it was underwear. My question is... WHY? Why did they include THAT specific bit? The fact that Eve needs a shower was established more than ONCE, out loud and through a solo scene in the bathroom. So it got me thinking... and by thinking, I almost immediately got an idea... If it’s still not clear for you, let me remind you just how the last episode ended... with Eve sitting on her bed listening to Villanelle’s recording with her eyes closed. And now... the underwear being spotted and throwin in a bin and all the smell? Okay, I’m so going to say it now. Eve masterbated while listening to Villanelle’s voice. Okay. To me it happened and the underwear bit is a confirmation of that. And if that’s not the case... please let me know because I NEED to know what the hell did that bit mean. But until someone does that... I already know what happened and I’m happy with it. 

Now the cake moment. So not only does Villanelle know where Eve’s apartment is but where she works?! This gurl is putting some EFFORT for her girlfriend and on top of that buying a very expensive cake which Eve threw off the rooftop moments later. The reason for that is.. Villanelle. Duh. I was completely mesmerized by that scene. Again, THE SOUNDTRACK. I love, love, LOVE this score that was playing during the scene. It’s probably another new addition to Unloved album, but if anyone has seen it somewhere or has a link, please let me know!! The lyrics do all the work in this scene too...

“Set me free”

It all started in season 1 episode 7 when Villanelle told Agniya that she’s free to go and do whatever she wanted to. She replied with “I don’t want to be free” so she was killed off. Now, Being FREE has been mentioned SEVERAL times this episode. Including the lyrics in the soundtrack AND Sandra Oh talking about Eve trying to FREE herself from the Twelve and basically from the life she has been living before. Such a huge theme for Killing Eve. What does it mean for Eve to be free? Is it the same thing as it is for Villanelle? Again, in the scene with the accountant’s wife, Bertha, Villanelle tells her “You’re free now. You can be whoever you want.” and the other replies only with “But.. I don’t want to be free”. What an iconic parallel. So, for Villanelle, being free is being alone, as it seems. And in this case Eve is desperately clinging to Niko because she, like Bertha, doesn’t want to be free. Or more like.. she THINKS she doesn’t want to be free. So all those small gifts coming from Villanelle including the cake tells Eve that she CAN be set free. And.. as we can see from how the episode eneded.. Eve is now finally FREE. 

She opens the box soo carefully, not knowing what to expect from Villanelle and then sees the cake. Immediatelly gets flashbacks to their moment in the bus and how they fought and most importantly, KISSED. And next thing you know... we see how a gush of air blows in her face with the sound of someones BREATH. The sound of it is soo familiar. We know exactly who it is. Villanelle, breathing in Eve’s face. And for a second she closes her eyes. Gives into it... into Villanelle but then something shifts, the struggle within her continues to take over and she grabs the cake once she gets emotional and throws it off the roof. Only to instantly regret it afterwards. The complexity of this scene and of Eve’s character is just.. on one hand she hates feeling like this now that she knows she has feelings for Villanelle, but on the other hand she likes it... she admits it and a part of her just wants to give in. We saw the same thing, only reversed feelings, in previous episode. She finally gave in and kissed Villanelle only to headbutt her right after, once she realized what she did and how WRONG it’s supposed to be. Here, she gives in for a moment.. closes her eyes and then realizes how fucked up that is and what a terrible person and WIFE she must be so she throws it off and THEN the feelings for Villanelle comes back... I just have to say.. I’M LOVING THIS! I hope that at the end of the season Eve WILL fully accept her feelings for Villanelle and become new version of herself, new version of Eve who is FREE. And I can’t wait to see what kind of person will independent Eve be like.

Next. Eve and Jamie. I’ve seen pictures of them in Jamie’s house and I did NOT like that atll. I still have a feeling something might happen between them and god, do I hope I’m wrong. But that scene as they were just chilling in his living room was so great for Eve because she needed someone to have this frank conversation with. She has been focusing on herself lately so much that she didn’t think other people did mistakes or terrible things like she did until Jamie proved her wrong. FINALLY we are getting some information about the dude. Even if it’s not pretty. At least it’s the truth. Eve really needed to hear it and especailly the ‘choices’ part. Someone had to remind her that SHE is in control of her own life and it all depends on the choices she makes at the end of the day. 

Speaking of choices, as soon as Eve gets a reply from Niko, she gets hopeful and goes even as far as to meet him. I appreciate that she is putting so much effort in trying to fix things between her and Niko, but at the same time I feel she’s only doing this for herself... meaning, that she doesn’t want to lose the person that keeps her somewhat SANE still and used to ground her. And in the middle of this, she gets so distracted with this thing with Niko, she doesn’t even realize that it’s not actually Niko who’s messaging her and really, I don’t blame her for not realizing it, I, myself, the first time watching didn’t catch the sight of Dasha in the beginning and yeah I was also played like Eve. But this is where I noticed a nice similarity/parallel between Eve and Villanelle. Eve’s all distracted with Niko and desperate to patch things up, she’s not realizing how someone else might be manipulating/using her. DASHA is doing exactly that. And she does the same thing with Villanelle at the same time. Now, Villanelle is all about family this season, whenever she hears about family, suddenly she’s distracted and the same is with power. I mean.. is she really that naive to trust Dasha again? It looks like Villanelle believes everything Dasha tells her, or almost everything. And so Dasha gets to manipulate her into doing what she wants her to do.

Gotta mention the teddy bear Eve found in one of Jamie’s rooms she’s staying at. Literally the previous night Villanelle sent her a teddy bear with recording and even here... at some strangers house she finds a teddy bear. Seems like she can’t get away from Villanelle no matter how much she tries. “What do you want from me?” She’s asking Villanelle because she clearly isn’t leaving her alone. 

The last scene with Eve witnessing Niko’s death... all I can say is GIVE SANDRA OH A GODDAMN EMMY ALREADY!!! Her seeing Niko suddenly being stabbed with a fucking pitchfork in the neck forced her to freeze and stare in terror and that chuckle of disbelief that followed afterwards.. as if saying “am I dreaming? Is this really happening? It can’t be” because Kenny JUST died... what are the fucking odds someone just stabbed Niko in front of her eyes?! I would lose my SHIT... and Sandra expressed it so beautifully... her slowly approaching the scene but then has that massive lump in her throat and she can’t breath and next second she’s losing her balance and falling to her knees in complete defeat and just stares at his body... powerless to do anything about it. This scene and the scene where Konstantin tells Villanelle that Eve is alive.. these two scenes HAVE to bring Jodie and Sandra EMMY’S because thats ART of acting and pure talent and I can’t imagine them NOT getting the awards they deserve. And they deserve EVERY single one. 

So there is literally NO ONE left for Eve. Bill’s long gone, Kenny as well, now Niko. I think that will be the last straw for Eve. I really don’t know how she will be able to come back from this or.. keep going. She’ll have to do it to avenge the people she loved. But she really has no one except Villanelle now. And I think.. yeah, Villanelle will also only have Eve when she’s done with her “family” and realizes that Konstantin/Dasha were playing her and Eve all over again. 

Konstantin

You’re in some DEEP shit, mister.

Question time. Why Konstantin went to visit Irina? What was the point of doing so? Was it only so he could ask about the German car that his wife’s boyfriend owns? Or was it purely on Irina’s part? Because the conversation they had proved once more that Konstantin is NOT fooling anyone. Everybody knows he’s working for himself. Eve pointed it out during Kenny’s funeral, then Villanelle with “You’re full of shit” and now Irina, paralleling Villanelle by saying “you’re full of shit” and walking off. This girl has grown so much and she’s soo mature already and smart and a fucking badass! I missed her. And by putting her father in his place she mentioned ending up “dead” .. you know what that sounds like to me? FORESHADOWING. It is exactly that, isn’t it? For Irina to straight up tell him his future if he doesn’t stop whatever he’s doing. And I guess he won’t stop.. or will he?

So... was it him who stole those 6 millions? I thought it was Sergei... but it kind of seemed like someone set him up. Was it Konstantin? Because when he went to visit Bertha and she mentioned about how her husband worked out who took the money... and Konstantin’s face during that scene... he is literally shitting his pants lol! That makes me believe he had something to do with this and he defintitely has... but what exactly did he do? And now that Bertha knows about the email and some information about it, Konstantin doesnt hesitate to reach out to Villanelle to ask her to get rid of the accountants wife only to save his own arse. Once again.

Next up: Konstantin’s relationship with his DAUGHTERS. Am I the only one who sees that Konstantin is treating Irina AND Villanelle the same way?! They basically have the same dynamic. Both Irina and Villanelle curse at Konstantin, have their small tantrums with him and can put him in his place. And both of them have already done so. And let’s not forget... the producers ALSO call Villanelle and Irina his DAUGHTERS so it’s confirmed. Everybody knows it. And recently I saw a BTS video of this latest episode about Konstantin and hearing Jodie then say “then there’s Konstantin’s REAL daughter” and then there’s dramatic close up on Villanelle LMAO! The jealousy and the way they edited it... damn. Okay, let’s just agree Villanelle is Konstantin’s daughter. 

Now, did he visit Geraldine?! Because when we saw Carolyn drive back home, she saw Konstantin walking from the same direction her place is located. And her daughter was home at the time... so did Geraldine lie about Konstantin not visiting her and being there or she didn’t even know when Konstantin sneaked inside? I’m getting really suspicious now.

Villanelle

GO AWAY, HICCUPS

Villanelle? Listening to MUSIC? What did I miss? Back in season 1 she was interested only in national anthems. Now she’s listening to other kind of music?! Music to me is EVERYTHING, it’s a massive escape, it’s something that helps me get through every day and it evokes FEELINGS. It is associated with feelings so much and what does it say about Villanelle? That she has FEELINGS. The layers are slowly being peeled off her as Oksana is coming out and I can’t wait for the next episode. I’ll write another small analysis/discussion about Oksana and Villanell soon as I feel this deserves a separate discussion.Going back to the topic of music, at the end of the episode Villanelle arrives HOME and is wearing headphones indicating that she probably was listening to music on her way there. I’m sensing BIG changes. Villanelle is truly progressing and developing and we are getting to witness it!

Okay. the part we all have been waiting for. THE HICCUPS. The very first time they start is EXACTLY after Konstantin mentions “FAMILY” Villanelle is really invested in her family now and was in previous episode so now knowing that Konstantin found them probaly quickened her breathing and she got nervous/excited. The hiccups are involuntary contractions. You can’t control it. And at the same time they tend to be constant. We have never seen Villanelle have them before. And they only start after she hears “FAMILY”. This reminds me of a scene in 1x02 where Konstantin tells Villanelle Eve’s name for the first time and then suddenly the champagne’s bottle pops. It’s a sign. And the hiccups seemed to stop for a short period of time, right until Bertha approaches Villanelle and tells her that she wants to be a FAMILY and hugs her. Seconds later hiccups come back. The concept of FAMILY must be very foreign to Villanelle. It’s something she never really had and so now learning about her family, something so unknown to her, is affecting her body. And the way I see it... the hiccups are like a constant reminder to her, that yes, she never had family and that she’s finally interested to find that family again. So the hiccups symbolize the LOSS of something she never had. In this case, her family. Because we see her get off the train at the end of the episode and she reaches out to touch her neck. This scene for me has so many different meanings it’s sooo fascinating? And one of the meanings, probably the main one, is that she reaches out to her neck once she realizes that hiccups are finally gone. And that is exactly when she’s back at HOME. Back where her FAMILY is. So it’s like... she’s no longer alone, the void from before has been filled because she found her family now. 

Now, the very first time I watched the episode and that last scene.. I was like “shit, did she, by any chance, feel Niko’s pain?!” I mean that’s IMPOSSIBLE. Because Niko has just been stabbed in the neck with pitchfork and yeah it just occured to me. But then... I realized that maybe it’s not Niko’s pain she’s feeling but EVE’S. We see Eve freeze and struggle to breathe and have lump in her throat and that’s when Villanelle stops having her hiccups and she has this MOMENT. Almost the same moment as Eve had when she felt Villanelle’s BREATH on her face.The connection thesr two have... I mean.. VILLANEVE IS ENDGAME, OKAY?!

We got a tiny problem now. Dasha FRAMED Villanelle. It got me thinking.. this is basically a betrayal. And could that mean.. that maybe Dasha did something similar to Villanelle in the past? Like, framed her with some kill? Could it be that huge thing that happened between the two of them? I hope we will find out at some point this season. And I mean.. the way Dasha killed Niko is NOT Villanelle’s style at all. Villanelle had PLENTY of chances to kill Niko herself and she didn’t because she knew well enough that if she hurts Niko, Eve will never forgive her for that. So she didn’t. But Eve doesn’t know that. She wasn’t a part of that conversation Villanelle had with Niko and Gemma. What Eve does know... is Villanelle’s handwriting. The iconic “Sorry Baby” should be a perfect example. Let’s not forget the postcard Villanelle sent to Eve in Amsterdam. Yes, Carolyn took it, but maybe... she’ll give it to Eve once she knows what happened? I mean there is NO way Eve will believe that crappy note is Villanelle’s. Not even her handwriting. Plus... if Villanelle wanted to kill Niko, I don’t think she would’ve done it in front of her eyes. And even if she did... I think she would have wanted Eve to SEE her do it. At the end of the day, Villanelle wants Eve to know about each and every kill she does. And Niko wouldn’t be an exception. She’d leave a PERSONAL note/message for Eve. What did Dasha leave?! “Still Got It”? Really bitch? Is that a note to Eve or Villanelle? If it’s to Villanelle... you just prepared your grave, Dasha. I can only imagine Eve finding out it was Dasha and ending up killing her to avenge her husband. And Villanelle being there to gladly assist her with everything she needs.

Carolyn

Never thought frog sounds could be this relaxing

She’s still dealing with Kenny’s death. In her own way. I mean, I understand Geraldine completely when she confronts her mom and basically tells her that she wants them to talk about Kenny’s death. If I was in her place, I would want to talk about it too. But Carolyn doesn’t seem to operate in that way. Plus, she dropped the line “there are things you don’t tell me, that are for quite different reasons” and she means it about Konstantin. She saw him leave her house. Geraldine said nothing about it. So... is she working with Konstantin now? What’s happening?

The dynamic between Carolyn and Konstantin though. Both of them are double agents and ready to betray one another at any given time despite knowing each other for YEARS. One minute they are working together as they were in season 2, then now Konstantin is doing his own thing, and even maaybe going behind Carolyn’s back with her own DAUGHTER?! I don’t believe this. I don’t think Geraldine knows about him visiting the house.. or does she?!

She comes back home, lies down and turns on frog sounds to relax herself while grabbing a pillow to press against her own face. Makes me wonder if she did it because she kept on repeating that she MISSES Kenny’s smell, but why would that pillow smell like him? So maybe she only wants to run away from the world and shut off by grabbing the pillow? Though for a moment or two I really got worried she might be suffocating herself lol! Careful with grief, Carolyn!

Dasha

The old hag of the hour. 

You fucked up, Dasha. BIG TIME. But before we get into the killing, I have to mention the scene where she meets the Lady of the Twelve. That’s what I will call her from now on. So, she’s either a keeper, or someone higher. I don’t think she is one of the Twelve, but she might be very close to them. Probably an assistant or something? Because she obviously has the power to HANDLE the HANDLERS. In this case, Dasha. I mean, I only saw her once and I already have the hotts for this lady, but she’s one of the bad guys and... WHEN DID THAT STOP ME BEFORE? I’m literally in love with a psychotic assassin LOL! 

Can I just point out the fact that the Twelve KNOW about VILLANEVE??? Apparently they have spies EVERYWHERE, like Eve said back in season 1 episode 3. “They are completely invisible and they could be literally everywhere”. That explains someone spotted Villanelle going around London, buying expensive ass perfume only to visit and fight with her girlfriend. And the Twelve know it. That’s a HUGE thing. They are treating it like a huge thing and they do not like Villanelle chasing Eve. That makes me think... so why would Konstantin let Villanelle know that Eve is alive if he is also working for the Twelve?! The same is with Carolyn and Eve!! Like?? Who is working for who now and who is betraying who?! I need explanations and QUICK!

Now Dasha proposing she can kill Eve... is this yet another foreshadowing moment? I know, the lady told her NOT to do it, but I have a feeling Dasha will try to hurt Eve at some point... and I hope Eve will be ready for it. As much as I would LOVE for Villanelle to save Eve.. I want Eve to handle Dasha by herself and take her revenge. I want dark!Eve at the end of this season. Am I asking for too much?! She already killed once. Might as well do it twice lol!

 So Dasha is supposed to “drive a wedge” between Eve and Villanelle. And when I realized Dasha stole Niko’s phone and was texting Eve to come to him... my first thought was “Okay, so is Dasha really trying to bring Eve and Niko back together?!?” But that is complete NONSENSE! I mean, I don’t think even a professional therapist will be able to bring them back together OR let alone recommend them to try to fix their marriage so how in the HELL would Dasha do it? It didn’t make sense.. but how else can she really fuck up Villaneve? Apprently by getting rid of Niko!! Dasha, sweetie... you ONLY BROUGHT THEM CLOSER BY ELIMINATING THE ONLY OBVIOUS OBSTACLE IN THEIR WAY!!! The hell was she thinking?! Does she really believe Eve will fall for her bullshit? Or does she expect Eve to find out it was HER and that’s when Dasha gets to kill Eve?! I don’t think she’s that smart. Either way... Dasha is done. I can totally see her dying this season, or possibly somehow magically escaping but I doubt it. Eve and Villanelle will deal with this bitch and it will be SOO delicious to watch them get their revenge.  

Overall Thoughts

JESUS. This was a LONG ass review. I honestly apologize, but if you reached this point, THANK YOU SO MUCH!! You’re all amazing for spending your time reading my nonsense lol! It’s just that this episode had soo many great things worth discussing and so many symbols and meanings that make the show so complex and fascinating and god... I could talk about it for hours. I probably spend around 3-4 hours writing this so yeah, the proof that I have a serious fixation lol! 

But like I said.. this episode is my favorite this season. Perfect. I can only imagine how great the next 4 episodes will be. Also, can’t believe we are already halfway into the season. It’s crazy how quick the time flies!

And as always, if you have any thoughts/reactions/predictions you’d like to share don’t be afraid to message me or drop in my askbox!! I’m always up for discussing things like that!! 

[murswrites]

Insane ⎯ John Shelby One-shot

Pairings: John Shelby x Solomons!FEM!Reader Fandom: Peaky Blinders MASTERLIST Word Count: 1.7k (ish) Warnings: Cursing, drinking, description of puking  SUMMARY: When you and your best friend go out for a drink at an unfamiliar pub, you run into John Shelby. A man who you just happen to “hate”.  Request from @encounterthepast​: If requests are still open could I go for John with "He’s driving me crazy” and “Have you totally lost your mind?” ... ? Thank you!! (Also I'm loving your social media AU)

A/N Hi! Thank you for requesting!!! It means a lot & I’m glad you’re enjoying SBE <33 I’m really proud of this? I actually thought about what I was going to do b e f o r e writing it... which is new to be quite frank. Y/F/N means “Your friend’s name” & Y/F/E/C means “your friend’s eye color.” I tried to keep them gender neutral since I made the reader female :D, enjoy!

Y/N Solomons was a name many knew. It was one many feared, except for John Shelby, of course. That sarcastic little fuck was always flirting and trying to hook up with Alfie Solomons’ sister. The fear that surrounded her, was due to her brash and no-nonsense attitude. Y/N, apparently wasn’t that way when she was young, she was sweet and wholesome. The war changed her, many say. But Alfie and John knew otherwise.

The fact that they were in the war beside (not literally) her, gave them a perspective many didn’t have. Alfie hadn’t wanted his little sister to be a war medic, but she was adamant about helping. The war didn’t change her, for say, it just caused her to grow up at an alarming rate. She went from the ripe age of twenty-four to practically forty in those long four years during the war. Being in your twenties usually meant partying and doing illegal things.

For Y/N, it was quite the opposite. She went through so much, trying to save so many lives, and losing so many due to the lack of supplies. It was hard, but she made it through by becoming numb to it all. And John Shelby seemed to be the only bloke able to get through her stoic surface. Managing to make her irritated with a smirk or snarky compliment. 

“Look, it’s that angry woman.” John would sometimes say, or he’d say something that held a double meaning. “I bet you like being in control everywhere, love.” The pet names were annoying enough as it was. Y/N hated and loved the attention in a strange way. She never got the attention of men anymore, it surprised the younger Shelby boy. Y/N’s beautiful, everyone knew that.

Everyone also knew that she was Alfie’s sister and that often scared men away. But not John, John’s adamant. He’s insistent that Y/N has feelings for him too. So he tries, for months he tries to woo her in any way possible. Little does he know that it is in fact working. Y/N took a long time to master appearing unamused and uninterested. It was hard work, but holding her angry resting face became a habit, a mask… hell, even protection.

Showing no emotions gave her an advantage. When all others showed everything with their faces and body language, she was left to read them like books. John Shelby was one of those people, he was young and she knew that. Along with reading him like a story, she could tell that he wasn’t pulling her leg. That he actually found her to be interesting and he wasn’t interested in forming a contract between them too. One to mutually benefit the Solomons’ and the Shelbys. 

Y/N wouldn’t lie, he intrigued her. How he blatantly flirts with her even with Alfie present. It entertained her, watching Alfie lose his shit over harmless flirting. “I don’t like that boy one bit.” Alfie often spat out while stroking his beard thoughtfully. 

—

 “He’s driving me crazy,” You mumbled while holding your head in your hands. Y/F/N and you were out drinking, it had been a long day with Alfie moaning and complaining about everything under the sun so Y/F/N thought it’d be nice to forget it all for one night.

Y/F/N turned to you, a drink in hand, and raised an eyebrow, “Alfie?” You chuckled, that was a reasonable question. All damn day, your brother had been cursing up a storm and complaining about everything in sight. 

“No, John fucking Shelby,” The annoyance in your voice was clear as their eyes widened. You haven’t ever openly complained about John’s pestering, perhaps it was the alcohol pushing your thoughts out. You picked up the full glass– it was whiskey, Irish, your favorite –and downed it in one go. “Always askin’ me out and fucking flirting with me… it’s annoying as fuck.”

“Maybe if you sleep with him, he’ll stop?” The slap you sent to Y/F/N’s arm startled them, your eyes were cold and hard.

"Y/N Solomons doesn’t lie with any man, especially not a fucking Shelby.” You spat your words out bitterly, tapping your glass on the counter to let the barman know you’re empty. The bar that the two of you sat in, wasn’t the usual place you chose to forget in. It was dark and kind of gross. But that didn’t matter, the alcohol was making your brain fuzzy, that was what mattered. All that mattered was that John’s taunting was forgotten.

But it seemed like the original plan was stunted, the many memories of John giving you a cheeky grin or saying something obscene surfacing in the presence of the shitty alcohol. “Now that’s not a very nice way to talk about me.” Immediately, at the sound of hearing the bastard’s voice, you groaned loudly. 

“Just my fuckin’ luck. Where are we Y/F/N?” Their Y/F/E/C eyes looked toward the floor sheepishly, they planned this. “Of course.” The sound of your voice made your best friend flinch, expecting an outburst. John Shelby stood behind your chair, you could feel his presence easily. Since he often made an appearance during the meetings between Alfie and Tom, you saw John frequently. It was annoying, not enjoyable. 

You turned in your chair at the feeling of John’s hand on the back of it, raising an eyebrow in question. “Why, you’re at The Garrison, love. Best dam pub in Small Heath.”

“That’s debatable.” Y/F/N muttered under their breath. John calling you love was a normal occurrence, something he often did. You never paid any mind to the flirtatious comments that often left his lips. For some reason, tonight, the name caused heat to spread throughout your body. Your nose, ears, and cheeks felt warm. The thought of John seeing the blush oddly worried you. As if seeing you react would only entice more flirting. 

The pub was growing hot and you suddenly felt the urge to vomit. You quickly grabbed your purse and practically ran from John and Y/F/N, clutching a hand over your mouth on your way out. Thankfully the night air of Small Heath was cold and bitter. It helped you as you nursed the vomit from your bowels violently. It felt like you puked for hours before you walked away from the bush and leaned on the brick wall in an alleyway. 

—

“Jesus.” John’s voice brought you from your thoughts, why was he here? “Are you alright, love?” That stupid nickname… you cursed under your breath as John took a swig from a flask. He held the silver flask out to you and you gladly took it. The taste of vomit making your stomach churn even though puking now would only cause pain.

The alcohol burned your throat, but you welcomed the pain since it tasted better than the puke. “I’m fine.” You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, itching to get away from the young man. It wasn’t that he disgusted you or made you want to punch him (although he often did). It was the feeling that your lack of sobriety made you feel with him standing there, with that shit-eating grin like he knew what you were thinking without even knowing.

John wasn’t ugly, you knew that, he even knew it. He annoyed you to no end, constantly flirting and trying to gain a reaction from you. The pet names, the jokes, the sinful glances… it wasn’t like you didn’t secretly crave the attention. You were beyond touch starved and you knew it was your fault. From being a blatant bitch to downright turning men down, soon they stopped trying. Add being Alfie Solomons’ sister to the mix and you’ve got the potential for a natural disaster.

Shelby’s and Solomons’ don’t mix. Everyone (not everyone. Those in the Peaky Blinders and Alfie’s boys knew)  in both Camden Town and Small Heath were aware of the icy slopes that the businesses were on. That any rock in the boat could shoot everyone off-board and into the murky water of the cut. These thoughts are the reason why you hesitated when John fucking Shelby kissed you with enough force that you had to grab the lapel of his suit coat. 

It was why your eyebrows screwed in confusion before you realized what was happening, right before you melted into his touch, you pushed him back harshly. John’s breath was ragged and fast, like he’d just been underwater. “Have you totally lost your mind?” You spoke over one another, “That was amazing.” 

John caught onto your words, his pale blond eyebrows also furrowing. “What–” 

“This would never work.” Your voice was stoic, John sighed as he realized that you retreated back into yourself. He saw the real you for only a moment it felt like, but it was a wonderful moment. When your hands held onto his suit and pulled him in. How heavenly your lips felt against his own. 

He nodded, jaw twitching, “We could make it work, Y/N. You and I– we’d be the most powerful couple in all of England.” You scoffed dryly, of course, he was thinking of business.

“And here I thought you actually liked me–”

“What? I do! No– that’s not what I meant, I meant that nothing could stand in our way, we’d be dynamite.” A laugh forced its way through your rouge lips, how hilarious… you thought to yourself. He was worried about his image and not how he truly felt. John’s cheeks were surprisingly red as he rubbed the back of his neck, this was an odd sight to see. The flirtatious Shelby boy… all meek and shy.

It made you feel powerful, like you held the strings that controlled him. You knew it wasn’t true but it was quite the sight to see, him blushing before you. All because you tripped him up with your confidence, so you did the one thing you’ve been forcing yourself to not imagine for the past few months. You grabbed the lapel once more, only this time, you were initiating the contact. 

John replied immediately by holding your cheek and neck lovingly as you two kissed passionately in the dark alleyway. The feeling was strangely euphoric, the adrenaline rush high, and your hands moving across one another’s bodies. Trying to feel every part of them. Soon though, you had to break apart for precious air. Your hair felt a mess and John’s cheeks were even redder than before, if possible. He had a smile on his face and you had half the mind to smack it off.

“You’re insane, John Shelby.” You whispered into the night, enjoying the feeling of his embrace.

“Says the Solomons girl.” John quipped back.

“Ouch.”

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 4: The EED: Emotional Exposition Dump. Or why THIS is not friendship

So here we are. The last part of this 45 page three parter, meant to be about what Sam really means to the crew. And what have we seen so far in the previous parts? That Sam is not just their underappreciated, but downright exploited slave (yeah, did you know that in ancient Greece slaves supposedly had more rights than Sam in this one? At least they could buy out their freedom one day), that Dobson has no idea how to genuinely pace a story, turning what could have been a decent 100 page story if planned out and presented with more care into a 45 page short snore fest and that Hat Andy’s idea for jokes are either based on abusing token buttmonkeys, turning annoying memes into even more unfunny jokes or making dark comedy with dead orphans.

At least when South Park makes jokes about children dying, they are appropriate in that dark setting and the death is still in some way handled or refered to as a horrific event. In Dobson’s case however, it just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Sorry, I just can’t get over the orphanage thing. If Dobson wanted the reason for Sam leaving be that he finds out someone he cared about from his old life is dead, that is one thing. But did this asshole have to destroy an entire building with countless victims to do it? Couldn’t he just have one person die and the rest be still at that place? Honestly, I think it would have been funnier and more meaningful emotionally, if Alex and Co actually interacted with people from Sam’s past and in doing so learn more about him as a person, by genuinely visiting a still standing orphanage. Give the comic some meat on the bones and in doing so actually create the impression this comic is truly about Sam and not just about characters doing random stuff in relation to finding him. Instead Dobson goes for a literal overkill, which he then does not even treat as a tragedy but as a joke.

Dobson, THIS is a better and more dignified joke about orphans than the shit you did.

You got outclassed by Chuck Lorree of all people on this planet, you disgrace of a storyteller. A storyteller who can’t even keep his own barely existing continuity in the Alex-verse straight, now that I think of it. After all, according to Legends, the orphanage was closed and all the orphans were sold out to others, with Sam being the last of the litter

Which again is just unintentionally more horrific than Dobson likely intented. But you know, dumb people don’t know when they do dumb shit.

But I digress Let us just get into the last part. In which we finally see the “emotional” pay off of everything that happened so far.

 Spoilers, this is my reaction to that pay off.

And here is what everything led up to now.

 Sam ran away, because he wants to say his final farewell to his sister figure, we never knew about at all and about whom we do not learn one single thing really.

 Where do I begin with how this revelation fails?

Let’s start with the fact that this in execution does not have the emotional impact that was intended. And why is that? Because Dobson doesn’t bother to actually introduce us to the sister as a character.

If I may digress a bit to talk about One Piece here: In the manga, oftentimes Oda will “interrupt” an ongoing story arc to feature flashback chapters, through which he tells about past events referenced in the “present” chapters prior. Through those flashbacks he further gives meaning to why in present time the characters facing certain foes or having to win in their current situation, is so important, even on an emotional level. In short, those flashbacks are no interruptions, they are integral in giving those story arcs emotional weight.

Because now we are not just “told” why we should care about things and people, we have been shown why we should care. The old rule of “show, don’t tell” being followed on.

A good example from a more “recent” storyline I can think of, is through the flashback chapters of the Dress Rosa story arc, where we are not only being shown how De Flamingo took over the kingdom of Dress Rosa and brought pain and misery over its people for years to come, but also the past of characters such as the gladiator Rebecca and Mr. Soldier, her father figure that raised her up from the time she was 10 and De Flamingo took over… only for the flashbacks to also reveal properly how Mr Soldier is not just a father figure for her that took her in, but her biological father Kyros, who had been turned into a toy by one of De Flamingo’s henchmen via a power, that also took Rebecca’s memories of her dad away so she never identified the toy as her dad.

This way Oda achieves multiple things at once; Among other things, he establishes how evil De Flamingo is, how tragic Mr Soldier and Rebecca’s lives really are, adding to us the readers wanting to see them and Luffy beat De Flamingo into a pulp and it makes the later “present day” moment when Mr. Soldier and many other victims turn back to normal and Rebecca regains her memories and is reunited with her dad so much more sweeter. Cause now we care.

Truth be told, I myself believe that Oda is one of few storytellers on this planet, who truly has “mastered” the technique of emotional flashback storytelling.

A technique Dobson could have used in this part of the story, but didn’t. Cause honestly, the way he tells how Sam’s sister was “important” to our poor cabin boy is not emotionally engaging from a storytelling perspective. We are told she is important, but we learn genuinely nothing about her, not even what her name was and what she looked like except from that one picture in the locket from over 15 pages ago. Nothing about how “close” she and Sam truly were is revealed through showing, only telling and as such we don’t even begin to care for her relationship with Sam and how her loss is genuinely important to him. So the main goal of this story, to make us the readers feel something for Sam aside of pity for how he is treated by his supposed friends, has not been achieved.

 … Dobson, you are a hack. You can’t even use flashbacks, a basic technique in the realm of storytelling, to show us why we should “care” more, heck, even at all, about Sam and his loss.

If you just had adjusted a few things, you could have had something good here.

By adjustments I mean the following: Take the first page of this chapter as well as the first panel of the second page, and combine them into the final page of the previous chapter. In doing so creating a proper cliffhanger for part two. Then start chapter 3 of with a few pages (lets say 6 or so) showing young Sam and his sister interacting in the orphanage in doing so turning her from a nameless plotdevice into a genuine person to care about. And then use content of page 2 and 3 of this chapter, to elaborate on their relationship, potentially with small cuts always between present day Sam at the grave explaining himself and saying his farewells, with pictures of the past showing what they meant to each other.

 But nope. This very basic idea a fanfic writer now has come up with, a fanfic writer who never studied literature or took writing classes by the way, something I doubt you did at college the more I read your work, has never crossed your “superior” mind.

Also, I find Sam’s text on page 3 really, really backwards in a way. Like, I get that we are meant to consider it a good thing Sam is this way. You know, being genuinely selfless and wanting to make others happy. And don’t get me wrong, generosity and selflessness are virtues I hold in high regard. But the way Sam talks about how he just wanted her to be happy while sacrificing any fulfillment of basic needs for himself feels more like a pathological disorder in that case than something to reach for. In fact, psychology speaks from different forms of generosity and the thing Sam describes here is likely “compulsive giving” or “unrelenting generosity”, a pathological variant that can be highly toxic for all people affected by it.

Funny how Dobson, a person who wants to claim he is all for mental healthcare, is essentially “promoting” the positivity of a psychological disorder via Sam.

 Then again, this also feels more like Dobson putting words into Sam’s mouth (in a literal sense) to retroactively make Sam’s treatment look less horrid. Cause now Sam doesn’t just do all the work because he is ordered around, he deep down is “happy” doing all of the work and gain not even some basic respect in return, because he cares so deeply for his friends.

… I feel myself get livid again here.

And the next few pages don’t really help me “calm down”.

 Cause now the “justifications” just go on. The thing that is meant to be a heartfelt farewell turning into Sam “justifying” that hey, it must be good that he ended up with Alex and her crew. Cause after all, by being abducted years ago and being treated as a slave who in the ginger’s eyes is worth less than lint, he likely avoided dying of shitting his pants and a crushing roof. Ignoring the fact that he was going to be sold out anyway back then and would have potentially ended up with a more generous master than the crew of non Captain Syrup.

Also, just all of the shit going on in page 6. Sam asking his “sister” to be at peace, when likely, if the girl could still talk, she may even just ask Sam the following: Who the heck are you. Cause really, if you think about it, if Sam did all the nice things for her in secret, did the girl even realize she had a “big brother” figure to watch over her? Also, him saying he is happy and he is doing quite alright for himself?

All the pictures of him sighing and looking in misery in this story alone, plus the cavalry of strips I posted about how Sam is abused in the first part of this post series tells me another story.

Finally, Sam’s message “At least now, we are both free”? Sam, she is dead, likely having died in pain when a house crushed on her, weakened by a deadly disease and traumatized by other children around her dying of said disease. And you are stuck with a bunch of people that haven’t shown to care for you up until this story and the only reason they may even care for you now is out of “sympathy” because you lost your sister figure, not because they genuinely love and care for you as a person. As far as I am concerned, you would be better off being the slaveboy of some nymphomanic pirate princess in the world of Berserk than you are on this plane of existence.

And now that the “emotional” farewell is out of the way, Dobson can go back to focus on the characters he really cares about in this shit anyway: Little Bitch Annie, lesbian chocolate rain Miroku and Deadpool’s pubes.

 Oh Alex, you are such a rascal. You really make me want to shoot you with a crossbow, stab you in the eye, hurl you out a window and shove explosives where the sun won’t shine.

Yeah yeah, you are a pirate, but that doesn’t mean you need to be that awful as a person or even protagonist.

Christ. For someone who complains how toxic Walter White is to the point he believes “sympathizing” with the character turns you into a nazi, Dobson certainly is blind to how awful Alex really is, particularly as protagonist in a comic series intented for little kids. Compared to her, I can think of freaking slasher movie villains with more of a moral compass. Like say what you want about Jigsaw, at least he never victimized genuine children or teenagers.

And Talus, thanks for ruining the “emotional” moment Sam “earned” by pointing out how weird it is he kissed a gravestone. Also, I am glad I know what happens in the next pages or else I would assume Alex’s great idea includes to dig up his sister and turn her into a life sized doll for Sam to cuddle.

No, their ideas to assure he is emotionally save and to redeem themselves for years of taking him for granted/hurting him, is to throw him a surprise party.

… you know, I think you may be the only individuals in fiction, that Pinkie Pie would think do not deserve to throw a party or get one thrown for.

 But I guess Sam is just so nice, he even throws you a party for no apparent reason.

Either that or now that his “sister” is dead he will overcompensate even more and this is the next destructive stage of his compulsive generosity.

… Sam, I am sorry for your loss. But you need to get help. Once by the authorities who will hopefully get rid of Alex and then by some psychologist who helps you redefine your own self worth.

By the way, I find it funny that the banner he made also actually only mentions Talus, Atea and Captain Daphne with a bad hair day. It just confirms that Peggy either never bothered to join the others or that Dobson developed an early onset of dementia and totally forgot about the fact that the midget is a genuine character in this trainwrack. And I am convinced the later is the case, which really just makes me wonder how someone is able to do that. To forget a major character of the thing they create and want to turn into a money making franchise. Imagine if Disney did e.g. a sequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, only to forget about the god damn dwarves themselves.

At least Talus finally realizes he is unworthy to get a party thrown or be Sam’s friends. Good. Now jump into a wood chipper and free ourselves from your existence you dog beaver thing.

Content of the next page in a just alternate universe… Alex: You are a better human being than I could ever be and this is all because my creator is a hack who does not know how to create genuinely likable personalities.

The reality:

 FUCK YOU, ALEX! FUCK YOU AND THE BIKE PUMP YOU FLEW IN ON! Atea and Talus have learnt more than you about what it means to be a friend and they don’t even bother to punch you in the face for still being the biggest red haired  raging cunt since Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

If this is how Dobson thinks “friends” should treat each other, it is no wonder he has a friendless background. Hey, Hat Andy, if you want to emulate manga, may I suggest you just become even more blatantly about it and simply copy paste One Piece? Cause Luffy at least knows how to be a friend. How much does he care for his friends, strangers and even at times former enemies of his?

He cares so much, that e.g. when a special military force that beat the crap out of him got hands on his crewmate Nico Robin, he did THIS:

He declared war on the world government. Fuck, even Jack Sparrow, who is an opportunistic jackass, in a movie where everyone stabs the others at least three times in the back, was less selffish than Alex, when he gave up his chance on immortality as Captain of the Flying Dutchman, just so Will would live in some form.

Metalbeard from the Lego Movie cared more about doing the right thing than anyone in Alex the pirate did. You created the worst friends and “heroes” I have ever seen in a webcomic since the entirety of sinfest. Congratulations for that accomplishment, Dobson. It really takes a special kind of anti-talent to show such level of not understanding the power of friendship as one of the most basic tropes in storytelling, to the point a show about pastel colored equines managed to profit of it for nine years.

 WOOOOO! We are the worst, we are the worst!

And look, Uncle Pennywise’s scrotum is back.

Anyway, here are the last two pages of this thing, to end on what is meant to be a whimsical note because Sam actually gets something from Alex that is not a beating or verbal abuse.

 Too bad anything that would feel heartwarming about this is drowned by a) me actually remembering all the shit Alex, the crew and the writer pull to get to this point (from abusive neglect of the characters to pathetic emotional manipulation on a narrative level) and b) the weird rapey face Uncle Peggy makes in the picture. Like Jesus, did Dobson try to emulate the Burger King here?

But hey, this story is over. And who knows, perhaps from this moment on, Sam will actually be treated better overall in the comic and Dobson will spend time actually developing an overall plot and the world of this com-

Tom Kenny: ONE COMIC STRIP LATER

And it is back to business as usual.

... How much would I need to pay for someone on the internet to write an alternate ending to the story where it turns out Sam actually poisoned the food at the party and while Alex is slowly dying, a now evil Sam who has finally broke under years of abuse, is going to become a genuine threatening pirat? that is after he villain monologues to Alex how much she sucks before scalping her?

Wow, I am entering a dark place right now. I think I need to take a break.

So I am going to give my final verdict on this story with the next post around the weekend most likely. Cause that is how much time I will now spend rereading One Piece and watching the Pirates of the Carribean movies in addition to playing the Pirates level of Kingdom Hearts 3, in order to forget this shit and remind myself why I think pirates are cool.

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 8 Review/Remix

RWBY finally comes back from a 2 month break, and what does it do? It scares us all half to death and then obliterates the other half with insane new story concepts and body horror imagery. Gods I missed this show~...

We return to this chaotic mess with the scene you might be expecting the least, Qrow and Robyn in their prison cells. Qrow is awoken by the sound of ships and explosions outside, and find that his three block mates are similarly left sleepless. Jacques is particularly nervous, probably because he assumed Whitley would be here to bail him out by now. Qrow picks up on an incoming sound that sounds... different, and indeed a wall is blown down in a fiery explosions that starts sending down rubble. One section of the Hard Light cell walls have been taken down, but before anyone has time to act Robyn notices a crow vehemently cawing at her before some rubble comes down above her. And... that’s the last we see of Robyn or Qrow this episode. He transformed to be a smaller target for debris and she might not have made it out quickly enough even with his disguised possible warnings.

Back to more pressing matters, we take the perspective of... the Dragonborn in the opening of Skyrim?? Wait, no, it’s just Nora regaining consciousness to see Klein has given her an IV and is saying she’ll be on the mend real quick. So that’s some good news after a few months of worry, and hey! The fan theory was wrong, she didn’t go blind from the lightning! Before we can even dwell on her wellbeing for too long, Blake opens the door for Ruby Weiss and Whitley to carry in Penny’s unconscious body. As Blake points out, Penny is leaking a green fluid most likely comparable to blood. They set her down on a cot near Nora, and Whitley is pissed about getting his clothes stained again in the span of 48 hours. But I think robot fuel/blood is at least easier to wash out than red wine. Ruby of course wants to know if Klein can help Penny as well as he has Nora, but his wheelhouse of expertise does not cover advanced robotics. The saving grace is that Pietro made her so close to human so Klein has some idea what can actually be fixed, starting with sewing up the gash in her abdomen. A thunderous rumble is heard in the distance, and suddenly the lights go out. Whitely complains about this too, but it is rather valid. Nothing quite seems to be going right, even Atlas’ power grid is against them... Ruby gets a call from May, and we learn they parted ways so May could go regroup with the Happy Huntresses and save her city. They compare notes and it’s made clear a bombing run took out part of the city’s power, though less clear is who was doing that bombing, Atlas or the Grimm? Ruby apologizes for their current inaction while they tend to Penny, but May reassures her that this may end up being more productive than trying to find something worth doing outside the city. Great googly moogly, it’s all gone to shit, and there’s very little difference a few more huntresses can make to the Mantle efforts. Ruby is left in overwhelmed despair, there’s so many problems and she doesn’t know how to solve all of them. Klein butts in with a sneeze to say she should take it one problem at a time, focus on the most immediate and possible to achieve and work outwards. For one thing, it’d help a lot of they had lights and power. 

Willow surprises everyone by showing up in the doorway to let them know about a backup generator on the edge of the estate property. She’s still the lady of this house, and she has enough self respect to not lie around getting drunk in the dark. Whitley greets her with a mix of disinterest and distain, and she notices Klein has returned to the manor and offers an off guard greeting. Weiss backs up her mom’s info drop with the fact that SDC executive members indeed have access to backup power sources if the city ever suffered a power outage like this. She doesn’t like that they have that kind of privilege while other folks suffer, but it’s for the greater good this time. This gets Whitley thinking, and my boy has a full Jimmy Neutron BRAIN BLAST! Since Jacques made him heir to the company, and the man himself is possibly dead under rubble, Whitely has full access to the Schnee Dust Company and all its resources. Since Ironwood put down the Dust embargo in Volume 4, their fleet of cargo ships are sitting empty and ready for use in a hangar. As we saw earlier this very chapter, there are automated drones that answer to the SDC rather than the Atlas military. They can use those ships and drone soldiers to give all the people stuck in Mantle a way out to fly away safely. Fantastic work, young man! You make your family proud... well, the family members who don’t commit war crimes for profit. But to do that they need the power back on so he can use Jacques’ computer, so that’s what Ruby and Blake set out to do. Getting inside the small building outside of the mansion is easy enough, and its just the flip of a switch to get the generator booting back up. In the meantime, the two share a genuinely sweet conversation. Blake reassures Ruby that the fact she’s trying to make things happen is all the world could ask of her, and an optimistic attitude like that is hard to stick with for long in this harsh world. Life in the White Fang and with Adam robbed Blake of her own similar mindset, but she truly admires and looks up to Ruby for how great a woman she is. Sadly, like most things, this moment is ruined by a Grimm. While all the lights are coming back on and Whitley gets to work, a bolt of lightning reveals that the Hound is just outside the window behind Ruby... Willow and Klein are casually sitting around waiting I guess, when they hear the loud crash of glass breaking and Willow reflexively reaches for her bottle of vodka. Weiss checks in on her teammates over comms and they tell her they need some help so she makes sure Whitley will have the business handled before she rushes out to save her friends. Ruby is getting tossed through a fresh hole in the wall, and Blake’s attempt to attack it while she regains her footing is just batted away. Blake assures Ruby that it’s just a Grimm, they can handle it as long as she can stay focused. Blake goes on the offensive again while Ruby tries to get her Silver Eyes going, but the Hound swats the Faunus girl away and tackles Ruby before sprouting its wings again with her in its clutches Blake uses the ribbon on her weapon to do what Ren had earlier in the Volume, though she anchors the other end in the ground as a tether rather than ride along as it leaves.

Weiss finally arrives at the scene of this chaos and reports the Grimm sighting back to Klein. Hearing the news of this beastly intruder leaves Willow so shaken she drops the bottle and glass she was pouring herself. Klein tries to reassure and calm her, but she’s too overwhelmed and runs out of the room... just as Penny reactivates with red eyes. Full on hacked now, and  Klein gets shoved to the floor for all his concerns about her being on her feet again. But she barely takes two steps before the real Penny resurfaces and tries to fight back for control of her own body. The struggle is deep enough to summon a whirling wind around her much like Fria had last Volume, but this one is green because Penny. Back outside, Weiss is about to summon something when a couple Centinels burrow up behind her and tear through it. From the looks of it, I think it was going to be the Nevermore from all the way back in Volume 1, so that’s a pretty cool callback to how important that fight was, and the imagery of glowing wings behind her was beautiful while it lasted. The Hound breaks free of Blake’s tether and is about to soar away, much to her dismay, when it sees a bright green glow coming from in the manor, clearly Penny going through her identity crisis. Ruby puts two and two together and realizes why the Hound has been saying “Take the Girl.” The girl is Penny, whose blood is still on Ruby’s clothes so it got a little confused while tracking. She warns her teammates, but the Hound chooses that time to drop her like a sack of potatoes and there goes the last of her Aura. Blake tells Weiss to go back inside and stop the Hound while she handles the Centinels out here, and they split up, but before Blake can reach her leader a new creature erupts from the ground and it’s bigger and more gross than the last bugs. It spits acid that comes up through a tube along its belly, and I’m confident in calling it an Alpha Centinel. Back in the eye of the storm, Klein tries to reassure Penny that she’s okay, which is phrased a little but I assume he means as “you’re in a safe place and your injuries have been treated, you don’t need to defend yourself like this”. The man is just a butler, he doesn’t know what we do about her internal struggle against antagonistic programming and her wrestling with her sense of self. Whatever new orders Watts has given her, she really doesn’t want to follow them. Luckily, there’s someone at her side to comfort her and hold her hand, and that’s Nora. Passing along the comforting words she got from Blake earlier this Volume, she tells Penny she doesn’t have to just be and do what other people expect of her. She may feel like a part of her is making her do what she doesn’t want to, but don’t forget about the rest. She’s more than just that one part of her mind or persona. It’s nowhere near the same situation as Nora’s own identity crisis earlier, but the words have the same positive effect. Penny gains control again and the wind barrier subsides. Weiss reports in that the Hound is heading inside and she’s on her way to intercept, and gets the bad news that Willow fled the room to go who knows where. Well, we know now cuz we see it, she went to what I assume is her own bedroom (god forbid she and Jacques still share a bed after 8 years of the most sour their marriage has been). On her vanity there’s another bottle or two of booze, and her Scroll. She wants to retreat to what she knows best, but hesitates and then gets spooked by the shattering sound of the Hound breaking in through the window above the front door.

It picks up on Penny’s scent from the blood stained on the floor, but by the time Weiss charges in through the front door it’s gone. The next five minutes of the episode have major horror movie vibes, and I love it. Weiss slowly looks around the foyer for any sign of the beast, when Willow screams over her Scroll to look out above her and indeed the Hound drops down to backhand her into a piano. Instead of staying to attack her, it goes to follow Penny’s scent again and leaves Weiss to check in with her mom after that sudden warning. Biggest triumph thus far, Willow threw her bottle against a wall and instead pulled up the feed from her series of surveillance cameras around the manor on her Scroll to track the Hound. It’s near Winter’s old bedroom, and Willow doesn’t seem to understand that it’s tracking a scent like a bloodhound. Maybe she just doesn’t encounter Grimm a lot or they’re just usually not this competent and singularly focused. She recognizes the direction it’s heading next with great horror, and what we see next gives us that same dread. Whitley still has blood on his clothes, and he dismisses Willow’s warning cuz he probably doesn’t think she has anything to say worth hearing after his years of dealing with her drunken state. He’s almost done setting up the automated orders, when he hears the door starting to open and angrily snaps at what he assumes is Willow coming to check on him since he didn’t answer the call. But he is dead wrong and hides behind the desk immediately, because it is indeed the Hound come to potentially kill him. He’s doing his best to hide, but it expands its vocabulary to tell him it knows he’s here. Just as it’s about to round the corner, an Alpha Boarbatusk charges in and pins it to the wall. Weiss isn’t the only Schnee in the house who can summon, and Willow will not let her son die this day. He’s about to bolt out of the room while it’s preoccupied with the summon, but turns back to hit Yes on the computer and get the evacuation plans started. Good job kid, you did more to save Mantle than your father and Ironwood combined. The two sprint down the hall with the Hound in hot pursuit, but get some respite from an ice wall forming between them and the Grimm thanks to Weiss arriving from the opposite direction. She’s out of breath, but assures them she didn’t forget about either of them, most likely as a callback to the conversation she and Willow had last Volume about Whitley being left behind when Weiss and Winter sought independence. The unarmed Schnees express their gratitude and retreat from that wing of the house, and Weiss prepares her summons for combat with the beast breaking through the ice.

Back outside, Blake is struggling with the Alpha Centinel and complains about how gross it is. She avoids its scythe blade-like arms with some clever use of elementally charged shadow clones and begs for Ruby to wake up and give her some backup. But that can’t last forever and eventually it holds her by the neck ready to slice. Before it can, though, Ruby wakes up and bisects it first. She laughs weakly and tells Blake she heard what she was saying. They hear a scream coming from inside the mansion and head inside to meet up with the others. Weiss and the Hound hear it too, and the Hound stops doing its best “Here’s Johnny” impression through the hole in the ice to go chase down this new sound. We see the source of it, and it is in fact Penny losing control of herself again to the new programming. The red eyes stay this time, and she shoves Klein aside once again to stiffly and mechanically walk out to the foyer. As fate would have it, Willow and Whitely are there too, and they naturally question the fact that she’s emotionlessly walking past them when last they saw she was bleeding and unconscious. She responds that she’s going to open the vault, and then apparently self destruct. Not to state the obvious, but we really can’t let that happen so lets hope the power of love will break through to her. Before Penny can even get down the stairs, the Hound arrives to try and grab her and she catches his hand effortlessly, and then the other, so they’re stuck in a shoving match stalemate. The Hound solves this problem by growing a new arm out of its back and using it to grab Penny by the head. It slams her around like a ragdoll, still repeating “Take the Girl”, and holds a claw up to her throat when RWB arrive at the bottom of the stairs. Blake and Weiss are unsure how to intervene, but Ruby goes stone cold serious telling it that’s enough. In the literal blink of her eye, a Silver Eyed blast blinds it and sends it falling out the window behind it leaving Penny to tumble down the stairs unconscious again. They hope and pray the threat is over as they check her body, but the real horror starts now. 

The Hound claws his way back up through the window, and part of his head has been blasted away to reveal a dog faunus with one intact silver eye. In a voice likely not used in a long time, he continues to repeat his orders to “Take the Girl...” Ruby is mortified and shell shocked to see a living person within the frame of this beast unlike any she’s known prior, and I’m sure the wheels in her mind are turning to wonder if Summer Rose suffered a similar undying fate at Salem’s hands... and if that’s what will happen to her if she is captured? He begins shambling towards them and they try to carry Penny away from him but end up cornered. Whitley gets an idea and he and Willow start pushing on the knight statue nearest to them. Just as the Hound, whose human portion I have been inspired by a podcast to call Johnny, is about to grab the girls the statue falls down and crushes him to death. A choir chants in Latin as the Grimm fades away... and for the first time leaves behind a skeleton. Ruby seems shaken to her core as she confirms to the others that that was in fact a person they saw in there.

Ending that side of the story entirely for the week, we go back to the rubble in the jail cell to see Cinder has found Watts and the two make a flying get away. So that’s fun, we’ll have to see if they make it back in time to intercept JRY trying to sneak through Monstra. Until then, I’m gonna sleep like the dead. Ciao!

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

Non-Sequential [Ch. 17]

Pairing: Pre-Serum Steve Rogers/Steve Rogers x Reader

One night, Steve Rogers met a beautiful dame named Y/N. He hadn’t intended on letting her get away. But fate had other ideas. Y/N appeared and disappeared in his life so hauntingly that Steve started to wonder if she was an angel meant to watch over him.

Word Count: 3,400

Chapter 16

“She hates me,” Steve whispered the moment they were alone.

Bucky sighed.

Before calling Steve, Bucky hadn’t realized his actions would put him between Y/N and his best friend. He wanted to be there for both of them. Except he couldn’t side with Steve when he had been a complete and utter idiot. And he had no problem saying that to the punk, either.

“You know Steve…” Bucky sighed again. “You got pumped full of glorified steroids that made you grow a foot and gain over a hundred pounds.” Then he shook his head. “But it clearly didn’t do a thing to that head of yours, because you’re still shit with women.”

Despite the truth behind the insult, Steve still glared at Bucky.

“Thanks. Real helpful.”

Bucky took a step toward him. “She doesn’t hate you, Steve.”

He dipped his head. His newly shaggy hair fell a bit in front of his face. “She should.”

“You messed up,” Bucky told him bluntly. “So, fix it instead of feeling sorry for yourself.”

Steve gave him a little side smirk. “When did you get so harsh?”

Bucky scoffed, knowing Steve was only trying to tease him. “I happen to like Y/N a lot. Always have. But I’m done watching you hurt her because you’re an idiot.”

He started to walk away. His gut was telling him to go check on Y/N. But she had Steve now. It was his place now.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve called out before he could make his leave.

He turned around.

“Thanks for taking care of her,” Steve told him softly.

Bucky just stared into his eyes, trying to find a hidden message in his soft blue eyes. Was there jealously lingering? A subtle threat to stay away from Y/N?

But all there was in Steve’s face was sincerity and gratitude.

So Bucky just nodded awkwardly and continued on his way.

———————————

The next morning, Y/N heard a light tap on her door. She opened it to see a guard waiting for her on the other side.

“His Majesty has breakfast waiting in the Great Hall. He wished for me to ask you to join him,” the Kingsguard asked her carefully.

Y/N narrowed her eyes. “Is…” She had to stop herself from saying ‘Steve’. “Is Captain America attending as well?”

The guard seemed to have been prepared for such a question. Still, he shifted his weight uncomfortably and then nodded.

“Send His Majesty my apologies, but I have to take a raincheck.”

The guard wasn’t surprised by her response. T’Challa must’ve given him the heads up about the current situation.

Y/N gave him a forced smirk before slowly closing her bedroom door again. She’d hide out there for the rest of Steve’s visit if she had to.

————

Bucky sensed a presence heading towards his farm and somehow just knew it was Steve. He kept doing his gardening.

Before their little fight, Y/N had recently made a comment about how much space Bucky had on his property and what a shame he didn’t use any of it to plant flowers or fruits and vegetables.

“So, this is how you been spending your days…” Steve said as he looked around at Bucky’s farm, all the animals, and newly planted crops.

Bucky glanced up at him, wincing as the sun hit his eyes, but continued gardening. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“You seem to really like it here,” Steve sighed.

Bucky paused to look into his friend’s eyes and nodded, “I do, actually.”

“I’m glad, Bucky. Really glad.” His words couldn’t be more sincere.

“You talk to Y/N yet?” Bucky had enough of the small talk.

Steve shifted his weight and stared at the ground. “She won’t see me.”

Bucky wanted to say, ‘Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.’ But he refrained from doing so.

“Has she….” Steve put his hands on his hips and took a breath. “Has she said anything to you? About what happened? About me?”

Bucky finally stopped gardening. He plunged his trowel into the dirt so it stood up straight, half buried in the ground. He brushed his hand on his Wakandan tunic and finally got to his feet.

“Why do you think I called you, Steve?”

No response.

“She’s not talking to anyone. She won’t even talk to herself.” Bucky shook his head. “Yeah, Y/N’s mad at you. Real mad. But she doesn’t hate you. She could never.”

Steve never looked more guilty.

“The two of you have already been through so much. Hell, you guys fought time to be together. Yeah, you fucked up and Y/N’s not making it easy on anyone. But you can’t just leave her when things get tough because you think that’s what’s best for her.”

Steve smirked. “When did you get so wise?”

Bucky punched him lightly in the shoulder. “When my brain finally got cleared up with a little help from a Wakandan princess.” Then he gestured around them. “All I do is sit alone with my thoughts. Kind of hard not to get perspective on things.”

Steve just nodded in understanding.

But Bucky’s face had now gone dark and serious. “This is the hard part.”

Steve squinted, but just waited for him to continue.

Bucky ran his hand through his sweaty and knotted hair. There was no easy way to say what he was about to say. “I…I know what happened to Y/N.”

Steve took a step toward Bucky with a glare. “You just said she refused to talk to anyone.”

Bucky rubbed his face. “She didn’t tell me anything.”

Steve waited.

“I know... because I was there.”

Steve swore his blood ran cold. He immediately started pacing, distressed with all the directions his mind was going, all the scenarios he was imagining.

“Was it you?” Steve finally rasped.

“What?” Bucky blinked.

“Were you the one that did all of that to her?” Steve had never used such an angry tone toward Bucky before. And quite frankly, it was catching Bucky quite off guard.

“No! I would nev-” But Bucky stopped himself short, because who knew what he would’ve done to Y/N had he been ordered to?

Bucky sighed and shook his head. “Just…come inside, will you? I’ll explain everything that I know.”

An hour later, Steve was clenching his hands together into a fist. He had to do something to stop them from continuing to shake with pure rage. He was seated, forearms resting on his knees.

His eyes were glossed over with tears.

Bucky just watched his best friend like a lost puppy.

He hated being the one that had to tell Steve everything that happened to Y/N. But she showed no signs that she’d ever open up and talk about it.

“I’m-I’m sorry,” Bucky finally whispered with his head hung low.

Steve blinked at him.

“I should’ve done more,” Bucky continued.

Steve should’ve stopped his best friend’s guilt. But he was dealing with his own emotion, still shocked by everything Y/N had been through. He didn’t have it in him to talk down Bucky.

“I know you stayed away because you think being near her makes her travel to dangerous places in your life,” Bucky went on with a quiet tone, like he’d break something if it he spoke any louder. “But if you’re using that logic… it was me that nearly got her killed, not you.”

Steve sat up straighter, but still couldn’t find any words.

“You truly believe that loving her is what puts her in danger. But just being friends with me put her into the hands of Hydra.” Then his sad eyes met Steve’s. “Still think you’re the worst thing to ever happen to her?”

——————————

Y/N was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling. It was a screen display of sorts, making it appear as if she were on a jungle floor, looking up. It was almost disturbingly realistic.

Her mind is racing with both how to approach Steve and how to make sure she never has to see him again while he was in Wakanda. It was strange to want nothing more but to run into his arms while simultaneously wanting to slap him across the face for abandoning her.

Just when she was in the heat of her turmoil, she started feeling that tingle that had conditioned her blood to run cold with fear.

Her eyes widened as she sat up in bed, quick as a whip.

She swore under her breath as she tried to work the Kimoyo beads around her wrist just like Shuri had taught her.

A wave of relief washed over her when a hologram of Shuri projected from the bracelet.

“Finally using your Kimoyo beads, I see.” The princess beamed.

“Shuri! It’s happening. I don’t have much time. I just needed someone to–”

But she was already gone.

———————————

Bucky and Steve quickly turned to the door when they heard multiple people approaching Bucky’s hut outside.

Bucky put a palm on his friends chest, silently telling him to tease at ease.

“Bucky! Captain Rogers!” Shuri called in a panic as she knocked on the door.

Bucky rushed to the door and flung it open. Shuri was on the other side, with half a dozen Dora Milaje in tow.

“It’s Y/N.” Shuri said, clearly out of breath. She must have ran all the way here.

Steve now jolted forward from Y/N’s name alone.

“She’s traveled,” Shuri quickly added, not wanting to add any more suspense.

Then the princess held up a bracelet of Kimoyo beads. “But I’ve finally gotten a reading of when she travels.”

———————

The first thing Y/N heard was crickets. By some miracle it was warm and dark. There was a relaxed feeling in the air. Dare she say it was even a little soothing?

Y/N looked around, quickly taking in her surroundings. It looked like she was at a fort – no, not a fort. It was a camp.

“Camp Lehigh!” Y/N gasped, remembering Steve telling her about the place he had trained for the army, before he had even received the super-soldier serum.

It seemed to be late enough in the night that no one was wandering the camp.

Her observations were halted when she caught a figure through a window.

It was Steve. Pre-serum Steve, to be exact.

He was sitting on a cot, alone in a cabin.

His hands were fidgeting in his lap. Anyone could tell – even watching through a window – that the boy was nervous.

Y/N’s chest tightened when she realized this must be the night before the procedure.

She took a step toward the cabin, but then quickly stopped herself.

She didn’t have to go to him. She could easily find some extra clothes or a military blanket and hide this out until she returned to the present.

But it was in that moment that Y/N realized how much she missed Steve. But it wasn’t just Steve, it was their past. Believe it or not, even with her time traveling, it seemed like she’d been brought back to simpler times. Times when Y/N was just a friend visiting Steve. This was before they fell in love, before Steve took responsibility to ever single bad thing to ever happen to Y/N.

And Y/N realized she missed it.

She missed the innocent way young Steve used to look at her and talk to her.

So, Y/N found herself tiptoeing toward his cabin now.

Her fist hesitated above the wood before knocking lightly.

“Come in,” Steve answered.

Even those two words were unable to hide his nervousness.

Y/N slowly opened the door and slipped into the cabin.

Steve jumped to his feet when he realized it was not a comrade or scientist entering.

He quickly looked away from her and even shifted his body so he was angled in a different direction than her.

Y/N smirked, forgetting for a moment how shy and innocent this version of Steve was.

It was strange to know there could ever come a time when Steve didn’t avert his gaze. That he would drink in her naked body, claiming it and taking in every detail as if she were the most beautiful being in the world.

“Sorry,” Y/N quickly muttered, not wanting to make the poor boy uncomfortable. She quickly whipped a blanket off one of the extra cots and wrapped it under her arms, almost like a strapless dress.

As soon as he knew she was covered, Steve quickly turned back to face her. He was beaming at her.

“What?” Y/N asked, almost with an accusatory tone.

“Nothing. I…I was just thinking how much I wish you could be here. And then you just – you appeared. I feel like I just got a wish granted by a fairy godmother or somethin’.”

However, Y/N didn’t find it as amusing as him.

Her response made Steve’s face drop slightly.

“You OK?” He asked.

She just nodded. Then she moved to sit on a cot. But she didn’t choose the one that was right next to his. Instead, she chose the one that was opposite of his, on the other side of the room, putting unnecessarily extra space between them.

Steve didn’t miss it and hesitantly sat on the edge of his own.

Y/N was grateful that her bruising was basically entirely gone. She didn’t feel like answering questions.

“Y/N?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you alright?”

Y/N finally looked into his eyes.

“It’s just…” he continued, “You won’t even look at me. And you’re so… You’re so far away. Did I do something wrong?”

Y/N swallowed and looked down at her bare toes.

“Not this version of you,” she finally muttered without even meaning to.

But even with his bad hearing, Steve still caught it. His eyes widened.

“What did I do?” Steve whispered.

She just shook her head and shrugged. “I shouldn’t – I can’t tell you things like that.”

Steve sighed and nodded, understanding why she couldn’t say more. “Well, I’m still sorry. I wish I could say I’d stop myself from clearly being an idiot. But we know that I can’t really change the future.”

Then he looked up and gave her a sheepish smile.

Silence settled in the cabin and once again their ears were filled with the sound of crickets outside in the summer air.

“Maybe I shouldn’t go through with this tomorrow,” Steve mumbled, eyes refusing to leave the ground.

Y/N instantly stood up. “What?” She gasped and then moved to sit on the edge of Steve’s cot. “Why would you ever say such a thing?”

“Maybe I’m not as good of a person as everyone believes I am,” he mumbled again.

Y/N reached under his chin to make Steve look her in the eye. “That’s impossible. Steve, you’re the best man I’ve ever met.”

“Are you sure? Because I’ve never seen you like this, so certainly I messed up big time.”

Y/N sighed.

As soon as she started thinking of how to handle this situation, her eyes became coated with tears. “Yeah, you messed up. Big time.” Then she let out a laugh as she wiped away some tears.

“Are you going to forgive me?” Steve asked, clearly scared of her answer.

Y/N’s gut reaction was to say, ‘Of course. You’re the love of my life.’ But Steve didn’t know that yet.

She sniffed and rubbed away more tears. “It’s going to take some time. But I know we’ll get through it.”

Steve seemed relieved by that. “I’m sorry…for whatever I did.” He told her again. Then he shook his head. “But I do know - not matter what - if you’re mad at me, I’m real bent out of shape about it. Can’t imagine anything worse, really – you being mad at me.”

Y/N couldn’t help but giggle at it.

Seeing and hearing the sound made Steve lighten up a bit and smile at her.

And just like that the tension seemed to be released from the cabin.

“Are you nervous for tomorrow?” Y/N asked him softly, bringing the attention onto him now. She moved to the cot next to his so she could face him. 

Steve winced at the question, but then reluctantly nodded.

Y/N reached over with the hand that wasn’t holding her blanket up and squeezed his hand. “It’s going to be fine. I know, because I’ve seen it.” Then she winked at him.

Steve swore his heart stopped from the gesture.

“Does it…Does it work?” He asked.

She gave him a side smirk and nodded.

“You’ve always had a big heart, Steve. I didn’t think it was possible for it to get any bigger. But soon you’ll get to act in the name of it. If you’re doubting Dr. Erskine’s decision to pick you… you shouldn’t. He couldn’t have chosen anyone better.”

Steve blushed at the compliment. “Thank you for saying that.”

“Now…enough of all this. We need to talk about something more important.” Y/N told him with a newfound mischievousness.

Steve tilted his head to the side. “What’s that?”

Y/N smirked, “That new crush you have on Agent Carter.”

His eyes immediately widened and he blushed. “How-What-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Y/N laid down on the cot and faced him, like a giddy teenage girl at a sleepover.

Steve laughed and did the same, laying on his side to face here.

Their faces were barely two feet away from each other.

Y/N asked him questions about Peggy, loving to see what Steve was like with a schoolboy crush, especially knowing that soon it would be more than just an innocent crush. No, soon Peggy would be his first love.

They giggled and joked around. Steve’s mind was taken off of the experiment that was just hours away.

In return, Y/N was reminded of how Steve and Y/N’s relationship started. Before The Avengers, before Hydra, before Steve put saving the world before anything and anyone… Y/N and Steve had merely been best friends.

It was silly to think that ending her relationship with Steve would magically stop her time traveling. Because even if they weren’t in love with each other one day, Y/N realized she would always love Steve.

As the sun was just about to hit the horizon and make its way into the sky, Y/N had fallen asleep on the cot across from the Steve. She couldn’t remember the last time she had fallen asleep so easily. So deep in a sleep, in fact, that she didn’t even feel the extra blanket Steve had draped across her before he too tried to get some sleep.

When Y/N awoke, she was in her bed back at the Wakandan palace.

She jumped up and quickly moved about to find clothes.

She rushed out of her room so quickly that she even startled her own guard, who quickly muttered into his Kimoyo bracelet that she had returned. Y/N didn’t know who he was talking to, neither did she care.

Y/N only cared about one thing right now.

When she finally arrived at the door, she stared at it for a moment.

She took in a deep and shaky breath. But she finally found the courage to knock.

The door slowly opened and revealed Steve giving her a surprised look from her standing outside his bedroom.

Y/N still wasn’t used to his beard and long hair. It almost made him seem like a stranger.

“Y/N,” Steve gasped in both surprise and relief from seeing that she’d returned from her travels unharmed.

Y/N took a hesitant half-step forward. “Hey,” she whispered.

“Hi,” Steve whispered back.

Then Y/N couldn’t control herself any longer. She flung herself at Steve, closing the couple of feet left between them.

Steve seemed utterly relieved by the gesture and didn’t miss a beat with wrapping his arms tightly around her. She buried her face into his neck and took in his scent.

Steve didn’t know when he’d be able to let her go again.

-----------------------

Chapter 18

Ehhhhhh??? Let me know what you think. 

[hellobrockie]

Some very long Rambly TROS thoughts

Holy fuck there is so much wrong with this movie.

Let's start at the beginning. Kylo tracks down the wayfinder/holocron crystal thing that will lead him to the sith homeworld. We learn that Palpatine was behind both the Snoke and Vader voices in Kylo’s head-basically the dude has been manipulating him for 30 years. Kylo states very clearly he's gonna kill this motherfucker. This is very in line with the Last Jedi- Kylo wants to destroy everything- the Sith the Jedi the Resistance- because he’s tired of the constant push-pull of rejection and manipulation. BUT THEN HE DOESNT KILL PALPATINE???? At first the film argues that he doesn't kill Palps because Palps promises him the big FINAL ORDER fleet? Okay...but I don’t think Kylo really gives a shit about a big fleet of ships when it's offered by the fucker who has been scrabbling his brains for shits and giggles. Once the ‘Rey Palpatine’ thing comes to light, we are lead to believe Kylo went along with the whole final order plan because he wanted to kill Palpatine together with REY???? Ahh okay? 

So now we switch back to Rey. She's basically a jedi, cool. And I guess the Skywalker saber just fixed itself, with literally no scars or anything. A great visual representation about how this film feels about character development that happened in The Last Jedi. So Rey breaks concentration and fails the courses. According to the film, this happens because sheisapalpatine. If you had two brain cells you would realize Rey could be upset for normal reasons ...like that in order to the Resistance to win she’s going to have to put Kylo down like a dog. Its kinda cool that Leia is her teacher (more on that later).

Soo then we spend the next hour on a pointless adventure with the Trio™. Which would be fun, if they were ever established as a Trio. Arguably the real trio might be Rose-Finn-Poe. More on Rose later. Here is a list of incomprehensible things that happen here:

Kylo reforges his mask. Because Reasons? The knights of Ren. Because Reasons?

A handful of force bond scenes. The first one actually isn’t half bad. By wearing the mask, Kylo is rejecting the intimacy inherent to the connection because he is about to  defile it. Grabbing Rey’s necklace is a physical and emotional violation. It's the first time he has ever used the connection for personal gain.  The other connection scenes mostly just play around with the two of them being able to pass each other stuff. They lack the careful editing of TLJ connection scenes. Disclaimer: I’m a pretty hard core Reylo and these scenes really lacked the magic they previously had.This might be un-purpose Kylo is clearly pretty lost as this point.  Dull, lacking in heart like so much of this film. 

Kylo becomes a cartoon power ranger villian spouting Palpatine exposition and attempting to create suspense by almost catching the trio a couple times. Some of the dialogue is almost Revenge of the Sith Anakin level awkward.  It lacks both the unstable angry energy of FA or the sad tired boi energy of TLJ. 

Rey makes force lighting because I guess she was upset and it's a genetic ability now???

Poe gets a female love interest, becuase hes heterosexual. HeTeroSeXUal.

Poe and Finn flirt for a whole hour while Poe checks out some new chick and Finn now has a harem thing kinda. 

Poe is now a spice trader. BECAUSE YOU KNOW HE'S THE HAN SOLO OF THE TRILOGY. Let's just forget that TLJ establishes that Poe is his own character, probably loyal to the resistance since birth. His parents are rebellion alumni.

Two death fake outs. I don’t know why they had to give 3PO his memories back. He lost them at the end of the Prequels and R2 loved him anyway. Chewbacca capture was a missed opportunity to get some resolution to him shooting Kylo in the gut. 

Hux is the spy. Lovely. He is the ultimate weak bitch. Tbh the most consistent character development. Arguably my favorite detail on the entire film. Perfect execution. Domhnall Gleason is a gift. 

Now onto Endor. Endor has so much potential and squanders most of it.

Finn meets other people who left the stormtrooper program. Cool. Weird how it's tied to force sensitivity. I like the idea of the force putting Poe and Finn in the right place at the right time, but I think to imply people’s ability to escape slavery is tied to force sensitivity brings us to the problematic terrority of the sequels. Also the only one who talks to Finn is also black. And Clearly has a romantic vibe. Okay…..

The Rey Palpatine thing is made explicit. Even though anyone will half a brain figured it out 90 minutes ago. More wierd implications…..who would agree to fuck an old man Palpatine? So Rape i guess. Rey’s parents were normal...is this some kinda side material hook to read more about them or some shit??? Kylo refers to Rey’s parents as ‘filthy junk traders’. He's right. THEY SOLD HER INTO FUCKING SLAVERY. However Rey’s parents are good people??? WTF THIS IS THE JEDI COUNCIL ALL OVER AGAIN.

 Soo Kylo destroys the wayfinder to force Rey to work with him. Anti-Reylos will often get their panties in a twist about how it’s an ‘abusive relationship’. This is the only scene that really comes off as manipulative- in a way it never did in TLJ. Partly because they play up this idea of power-hungry Kylo (which has little basis in reality. In FA he just wanted to make Snoke his daddy. And TLJ Kylo is just soo fucking lonely) rather than sad boi Kylo trying to hold onto someone. Damn the TLJ throne scene is soo careful with getting that energy right, balancing the heartbreak with a little gaslighting (sorry off topic).  Then They Fight. Kylo doesn’t even pull out a saber at first because he literally has no intention of killing her. Rey fights because she's mad. Leia decides to intervene at this time, which is weird because Kylo still has no intention of hurting Rey. Apparently Leia sending Kylo a text is enough to freak him out. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN THE TIME FOR FLASHBACKS, MAYBE A ‘YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE’ TO TIE HIM BACK TO HIS NAMESAKE. 

Instead Rey gets him in the gut. She then heals him, something that should have been really intimate. This would have been time to kiss him in that wistful ‘ I wanted to know what it would be like before I exile myself forever way’. This is one of the scenes that desperately needed more breathing room AND GIVE KYLO SOME FUCKING DIALOGUE YOU COWARDS. Healing him combined with Leia stuff should have reduced Kylo to a pile of tears. I think he would find it completely overwhelming that someone thinks he is worth it, worth a part of their life source, worth their final breathes. 

Oh woah surprise Han Solo. This kinda works for me because unlike robot Leia and fairy godmother Luke, Han looks alive. Plus Han is only a memory so Kylo has to save himself, make his own choice. Aww fuck this got me the closest to tears becuase he looks so fucking sad about the fact that he can’t go home. Damn you Adam Driver and you’re big weepy eyes. His mother is dead and I don’t think he ever truly realized that she wanted him back. I guess with the way things went with Luke, he just assumed he was unwanted. Even now, Han is the only one of the 3 Ben can really imagine taking him back. Who knew Han was such a softie.  At the same time there is something so unintentionally sad about the fact that Ben’s whole family can become force ghosts and not a single one gives enough of  a shit about him to show up at the turning point of his life. 

Also the implication that Ben turns to protect Leia’s lifework is strange. Leia’s legacy is the Rebellion, a democratic senate, a planet wiped off the map, NOT SKYWALKER JEDI #2 JJ!!!!! Ben doesn’t even interact with any of the larger powers at work, he just saves Rey. 

Also while Ben’s guilt and shame about killing Han (his true sin) keep him on the dark side, this doesn’t address the 8 million other reasons he left the light. Also why do Leia and Rey never discuss this???? His own fucking family repeatedly rejected him because of his ‘Vadar-ness’ which is ironic considering…….

Then we cut to Rey’s fairy godmother-esque trip to Ahch-To where she arms herself with all of the Skywalker’s personal effects:

Mad that Rian Johnson denied you that ESB fanservice call-back of Luke being able to pull his x-wing out of water?? Don’t worry JJ has got you covered. 

Mad that Leia didn’t have lightsaber? Don’t worry JJ has got you covered, Leia was always prepared to be a back up to Luke because she doesn’t have her own perspective or anything or like a whole fucking political system to run. Also she stopped training because apparently completing her journey would end in Ben’s death...ooo SmArT foreshadowing that Rey using her lightsaber will end in one dead Ben boi. 

Leia and Luke ALWAYS knew about Rey Palps. Which is funny because they threw their own flesh and blood in the trash because he seemed kinda Vader-y. I guess it's wrong to judge people by their bloodlines unless its your own bloodline. I can’t even. 

There is no mention of Ben at all- even though Leia and Luke both died for him and Rey put her whole heart into saving him.  

Now to Exeger or whatever again. Almost two hours in and we’re back at the planet we were on in the first 5 minutes.

Spaceship stuff happens. Take out your checklist to get those pilot and ship cameos. Ooo look its The Ghost! OG trilogy pilot! Lando is there! WOOO! Poe’s girlfriend lived somehow! 

Ben’s last words are ‘Ow’.

Palps wants Rey to kill him because I guess that will make her evil? Since when does killing people make you evil? I don’t think killing Palps to save the world in the same as ‘striking your enemies down in hatred’ or whatever. 

Oh Hey Ben is here. Palps doesn’t care much I guess even though trolling Skywalkers is his whole life’s passion. 

Palps drains the life out of Ben/Rey. They don’t die. Ben goes flying into a pit. Rey has to face Palps alone because I guess even though Ben/Rey are stronger together and are cosmically linked the lone jedi thing will happen anyway?? Is feminism about doing everything on your own rather than building meaningful connections with your equal partner. Honestly only Men would think a women has to do everything alone to prove her worth, Rey has been wanting allies and family her whole life LET HER HAVE IT. 

Also okay sooo Palps did technically kill Rey’s parents and she had about a whole 5 minutes to think about that. Multiple generations of Ben’s family have been tortured by this guy, so I think it would be rather cathartic to see him play a bigger role in the end of Palp.

Rey enters the Avatar State. Cue more fanservice cameos (I love you Ahsoka, but you said it yourself, you ain’t a jedi). In another backhanded slap to TLJ were back on the TheJediDidNothingWrong line of thinking. Anakin is present ...I wonder if anyone else is interested in talking to him…...

Rey dies. I’m not sure why. Palps legit sucked the life of her and she lived, but the Avatar State killed her. 

Ben crawls out of pit. Damn Adam Driver has legs for days. He heals Rey, its kinda sweet but it's also really really weird that he hasn’t said anything. Not saying we need an over the top love declaration but even his emotionally constipated parents managed to get an ‘I love you’ out. 

Ben saves Rey. The thing Anakin thought the dark side would give him the power to do. Interesting bookend. Sad that my boy has such low self preservation, he gives her his life without hesitation. Why do we have to die for other people? It’s much harder to have to live for other people. To move and grow beyond the past. To try and be our best everyday, even when its hard. Isn’t that real redemption? 

Ben kisses Rey. Awww. Its missing some of the elements of a big romantic drama kiss, which I would be okay with ...if it was followed up with a big romantic kiss with a sunset on a new planet before the credits roll. Alas this does not happen. The audience is somewhat befuddled since their had been almost no dialogue referencing their emotional connections. The ‘no one knows me./I do.’ dialogue from the trailer did not appear in film. 

Ben smiles. It has all the boyish charm and innocence Anakin wished he had in the prequels. Aww he really has never kissed anyone. I wonder when the last time he smiled was. HAS THIS MAN EVER HAD A GOOD DAY HIS ENTIRE LIFE. I am emotionally moved until approximately 2 seconds later….

Ben dies. There is no funeral. No mention. Rey doesn’t shed a single tear. This dude literally gave you his life without hesitation. Is Reylo one-sided? Or at least not equally felt? Ow. U The Resistance doesn’t wonder what happened to the Supreme leader. We know at the end of TLJ Luke became a legend, I do not think this happens to Ben. 

The Resistance parties. Cue Return of the Jedi film reel. Poe and Finn are heterosexual. No resolution to the stupid ReyFinn force sensitve thing. Two women kiss. It will be cut out of the Chinese release. 

Rey buries the lightsabers on Tatooine because you know Luke lived there and Leia once wore a metal bikini there. Rey choose the name Rey Skywalker. Which is interesting because she didn’t get along that well with Luke. She finished her training with Leia Organa Solo, Princess of Alderaan who just happens to have been a result of a sperm donation from Anakin Skywalker. She found a father figure in Han Solo. She loved a guy named Ben Solo. I’m not saying she should name herself Rey Solo, but it certainly is better than Rey Skywalker. I mean it's almost like a person's worth and ability aren’t dependent on either a bloodline or acceptance into the galaxies most powerful family. Rey nobody would have been fine.  I’m not going to get into the feminist angle of a self made women tying herself to the legacy of a man. Cue theaterwide groaning. 

Twin suns. Cool. I liked them better in The Last Jedi.

Rey has a yellow-ish lightsaber and maybe made out of her staff. Wonder where she got the crystals from and why they didn’t introduce it earlier. Possible implication she's going the way of the ‘grey’ jedi? idk some Jedi have yellow actually. Ahsoka had a yellow one. Not sure since this film is back on the JediwayisBest bullshit. 

We see Luke and Leia's force ghosts. Ben’s last word was ‘ow’.

In Summary, some odd implications:

Rey Palpatine is quite possibly the worst idea of all time. Worse than midichlorians. The highest level of fanboy pandering and Rian Johnson erasure. Rey has a lot of very real things to be angry about - her rough childhood, the deaths of her mentors, loving someone as dense as Ben Solo, having to come to terms with the fact that her parents didn’t love her. 

Return to prequel-esque thinking on slavery. Apparently it is not that bad if you sell someone as long as you do it with LOVE. 

Making Finn force sensitive is not character development. Its just half assed pandering and additional exposition in a film filled with exposition.

There is some truly awful dialogue in this film. Its shot composition and editing is so sloppy compared to FA or TLJ. 

The force in balance means killing everyone on the darkside. 

Rose is completely sidelined. She is the only Asian character on screen. She is seemingly replaced with a black woman who has a similar background to Finn and is a scavenger like Rey. Yikes. Why does this feel like an anti-interacial relationship thing. 

Said Black women Jarrah talks to Lando, another black character in a bizarre dialogue that vaguely implies all black people are related. I might be really misreading this, but its weird. I would have liked her to talk to Rose instead because female solidarity. 

FinnPoe is played up a LOT. But we are also repeatedly reminded they are attracted to women. This does not feel like woke Bisexual culture. This is pandering without making a commitment. 

Rey’s worth as a character is related to her connection to powerful people in the Star Wars mythos, not her own traits. 

Ben’s character resonates really strongly with abuse victims and outsiders. His lack of dialogue strips him of a lot of his agency.  His estrangement from his family is not resolved. Vader, who arguably did a lot worse things gets a whole dying monologue and force ghost thing. 

Oh hey C3PO said the festival is every 42 year old….OG came out 42 years ago. heh.

In Summary:

Watch the Clone Wars animated series

Fall in love with Ahsoka

Watch Star Wars Rebels or at least all the episodes with Ahsoka and also the series finale, it's got some cool force stuff in it. 

Think about the cool force stuff in Star Wars Rebels and the cool force stuff in The Last Jedi. Woah.

Apply all this cool force stuff to your own personal version of the Rise of Skywalker

Wait for clone wars finale Feb 2020

Rinse and Repeat

Peg Kylo Ren

Oscar Isaac is the Captain on the FinnPoe Ship. 

The Last Jedi was the Best One. Fight Me. 

Find the fanfiction where Rey tells him what a good boi he is which reduces him to a puddle. Find the fanfiction where he cries during sex the first time, the second time, every time. Find the fanfiction where his force ghost gets a hug, where his family welcomes his back. 

Read Fanfiction:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21852886

What I would do instead:

Delete Rey Palpatine

Ditch the mask. You have a fucking Oscar nomiated actor hiding under it. 

After the Endor part, have Kylo join either Rey or the Resistance. Personally I think him hitching a ride on the Falcon would have been wonderfully awkward. And maybe give some closure the calling Finn a ‘traitor’ thing. This is fanservice-y, but no more fanservice-y than the rest of the film. And maybe finally answer the question of who does/doesnt know who Kylo Ren is. Would like a verbal declaration that he identifies as Ben Solo or least Ben or something. 

Ben can still die I guess but maybe give him some kinda funeral. Or reuse the golden dice symbolism. 

Slow everything done. Let the audience feel sad, feel happy. Oh and cut out those fucking death fake outs. 

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Man 2099 v4 #1 and 2099 Omega Thoughts

This is literally the third time I’ve purchased a comic book called Spider-Man 2099 #1 in 5 years. Technically more if we include reprints. Isn’t that kind of ridiculous?

Fun fact, I wasn’t buying any comics (sans some pre-OMD Spidey and Deadpool Classic trades) between 2009 and 2014. It was the 2014 Spidey 2099 run that got me back into the game, for good or ill.

This issue wasn’t nearly as good at series. And Omega was…lol…it was so bad and essentially an extension of Spidey 2099 I’m covering them together.

I remember fondly my hype when I saw Miguel in ASM v5 #25 and my hype for this one shot, back when I didn’t realize it was just part of a larger event.

Oh boy did this let me down.

Let me start with some superficial praise.

The art for Spidey 2099 and Sandoval on Omega were decent. And there was some interesting ideas pertaining to the world of the future, such as the removal of money and instead having everyone’s value depend upon what they can contribute. A society built upon meritocrisy, albeit with harsh reprisals if you can contribute little. Also the idea of corporations fixing things so only insiders can gain employment speaks to the corporatocracy  of the 2099 universe (one severely undermined when we consider Doom is ultimately in charge anyway…). People intentionally using drugs to keep up their work productivity is another great idea, and a genuinely interesting twist upon the original depiction of the rapture drug from Spidey 2099 v1 #1.  Finally people essentially enabling identity theft in exchange for drugs was an interesting sci-fi concept.

But beyond that…this was bad.

When I began covering this event proper with 2099 Alpha my dominant critique was ‘who is this for’.

A reboot of the 2099 line over 20 years since the original line ended and less than 3 years since the revival of it ended? A reboot intended to modernize the 1990s’ take on the future, a take that frankly proved 99% accurate anyway. And finally a reboot that alternated between doing spotty world building, killing off new characters, tie-ins to modern canon events and most of the time communicated its ideas in confusing and baffling ways.

I put forward that it was doomed to displease the old 2099 fans like me because it was erasing what we knew and loved. But it was also so poorly communicating its rebooted vision that new people were going to be alienated.

I’m only slightly going to backtrack on what I said. Because the Punisher 2099 issue was if you like the greatest argument in favour of the reboot. It wasn’t just the best issue in this mess, it was a bona fide awesome story just in general. It actually dived into an aspect of futuristic sci-fi that the 1990s 2099 series (to my knowledge) would’ve struggled to cover as it pertained so much to 2010s life and technology.

More poignantly though, the problem with this event is that there was no over arching vision between the titles. Not every one shot had the same problems but they all in different ways displayed problems that smacked into the very premise of this event.

F4 2099 was literally pointless as it spent a whole issue introducing a new F4 then killed them.

Conan 2099 could’ve been virtually the same if Conan was like 20 years in the future not this new future we rebooted.

Arguably Punisher 2099 relied upon familiarity with the Jake Galloway Punisher 2099 before it subverted your expectations.

Ghost Rider 2099 was fun but the writer clearly LIKED the original take on the character to the point where he essentially minimized changes to the rebooted version making the act of rebooting the character pointless in the first place and failing the mission statement of the event.

Venom 2099 was a weird tie-in for Cates current Venom mega arc involving Knull that was nonsensical as it proposes that Knull is still en route to Earth and thus in theory there is no tension in Cates’ run. Moreover it wasn’t much of a futuristic take on Venom himself and fundamentally hurt as there was no Spider-Man for Venom to act as a dark reflection of.

Doom 2099 in fairness had a cool twist, but a cool twist that didn’t make sense in and of itself and was also reliant upon familiarity with the original 1990s character.

And then we come to these issues.

These issues I’m sad to say just absolutely fundamentally fail conceptually.

He’s incredibly passive and very bland as a character so newer fans coming in with no knowledge or attachment to the Miguel O’Hara of old are unlikely to warm to him. His defining trait is being someone who cares enough about the suffering of others that he will not actively take part in it, but will also not actively do anything to help like his brother Gabe. This is then set up for his brother to die, cue a less good retread of Peter Parker’s origin story but minus much action of Miggy in costume. On paper the idea of a guy experiencing Peter’s ultimate failure and from this being motivated to OBTAIN super powers is interesting but it’s just not examined all that much in the story. What I’m saying is at a time when there is a sea of Spider-Heroes to read about on the stands this version of Miguel O’Hara is lame, derivative and the execution of his character half-hearted.

Then on the other hand you have the older fans’ perspectives. Obviously old Spidey 2099 fans are unlikely to take to this new version just on principle. But when you realize you lost the old character for THIS guy…oh boy does that sting.

Original recipe Miguel O’Hara was cool because he zigged where Peter zagged. He was kind of an asshole, but one with limits on how little he cared. And he became more heroic over time, but never the same type of hero as Peter. And above all he was a sarcastic, sardonic, cynic who you could tell was thinking ‘I can’t even with this Spider-Shit right now’. Case in point, he was okay with straight up killing opponents. He was more unique and much more compelling than this version, as were his cast. Lyla is basically the Aunt May of this story and not the source of humour that she was even in the first 3 issues of the 1990s run. She also lacks her iconic Monroe look, and isn’t even consistent with how she looked in ASM v5 #35.

Losing a cool character for a lame one would be bad enough but then the story straight up invalidates both itself and the entire goddam event.

It does this by having the rebooted Miggy start to see visions of the pre-rebooted (prebooted?) 2099 timeline, meet an aged version of his prebooted self and then have even more flashes of the prebooted timeline. *

Wow…Just….Wow…

Let’s pretend that the vision of 2099 in this event was a temporary thing, an Age of Apocalypse or a House of M just for 2099 and the plan was always to go back to how it was before when the story wrapped up.

That makes this entire event pointless. See the reason AoA worked (and HoM in theory could have worked) is because it was a temporary change of pace.

That doesn’t apply to the 2099 line, a nostalgic, discontinued line of comics and characters that are unlikely to get a full on revival and who’s last attempt at a revival wrapped up over 2 years ago.

THIS event should’ve been a nostalgia trip for the old fans and a chance to introduce that line to a new generation. Instead it discarded the old in favour of something new which was seemingly intended to go nowhere.

Good job Marvel, any new fans you MIGHT have gotten hooked just got fucked over and people like me who pre-ordered this event thinking we were going to get the characters we knew and loved also got fucked over.

And in fact the entire exercise was an example of intentional redundancy.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Oh and it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

So Miguel was thrown back in time when his timeline was starting to be erased and replaced with the rebooted timeline, then he was erased in ASM v5 #34, which began this new rebooted timeline…but he is alive in it, remembers it, can give his past self visions from the old timeline...

…I’m a Doctor Who fan and that’s not any kind of wibbly wobbley timey whimey nonsense. It’s just regular ass nonsense, just like the Man-Spider monster Miguel encounters who repeats ouroboros to him, the same word ReedDoom said in the Doom 2099 issue. How and why would the Man-Spider creature say that to Miguel. How would prebooted Miguel know it said that? How and why would rebooted Miguel see Spidey 2099 in costume spray painting that?

Shit what the fuck does ouroboros even mean?????????

*one google search later*

A snake eating its tail as a symbol of endless infinity…what the fuck does that mean?

That Miguel makes himself Spider-Man 2099 always?

There was a cool idea in the Omega issue wherein we learn Doom essentially erased everyone’s memories with magic so they’d forget the Age of Heroes altogether, but the rise of the characters in the one shots represented that spell breaking down. Too bad it doesn’t add up given how Venom was always going to exist and existed SINCE the Age of Heroes and people obviously remember Thor as there is an entire tribe dedicated to him!**

However the Omega issue’s biggest sin is showing us how truly pointless most of the issues of this event were. Honest to God you only need to read Doom scenes from Alpha and then Spidey 2099 and Omega. Those are the only plot relevant issues out of this whole event.

Over all, these issues and this event have been a humungous, insulting disappointment. Check out some of the art but literally nothing else sans the Punisher.

*I mean if you want to get technical the 2099 universe has technically been rebooted multiple times. The version of it presented from 2013-2017 actually differed from the original 1990s version in various ways, e.g. Miguel’s love life panned out very differently. When I refer to the pre-rebooted/prebooted timeline I’m referring to the version from 2013-2017, just to be clear.

**There are other contradictions in these 2 issues as well, like how poverty and bad health have been erased but…we see they haven’t as there are multiple examples of both in the one shots.

[petitepistol]

headcanon;but it is very messy

oh god strap in because this is going to be 3k words worth of rambling under the cut which you don't actually have to read since i posted it at 5am so it probably does not make much sense!! also I have only just recently accepted that my elena does not follow compilation timeline to the letter because I fucking hate the fact that before crisis placed her age at being a high school student almost immediately preceding the start of the original game and I always saw elena as being at least aerith's age by the time she became a turk so please bear with me as my elena uses a floating timeline to prevent her from being...like a literal teenager for original game fuck that noise they had cissnei be the uwu fifteen-year-old turk and elena gets to be her own character when im writing her so compilation can fuck right off

so first off her dad is a military man, and that entire side of his family? kind of just defaulted into the military for generations. well before shinra at least, the old shit. I'm constantly flabbergasted by the idea that shinra is the dominant military force on the planet when as little as forty years before game them were a fledgling company, and I'm fascinated by what kind of insane shit must have gone down to facilitate shinra going from defense contractor/power company to defacto global superpower, and what they superseded when that happened. so yeah her dad is military, and even after he was put out to pasture he still wound up teaching at a prestigious shinra sponsored academy in junon and both of his daughters attended.

her mom was upper middle class and driven as hell, had a ballet career which got cut short due to injury in her late teens. then she wound up going into nursing by her early twenties and spent some time working in deepground when it was still a run of the mill army hospital where she met elena's father who was...voluntarily a candidate for some biotech stuff that shinra was doing back when shinra was still a defense contractor, go figure he was one of many early examples of mako conditioning. they didn't get along at first but did wind up marrying but never actually settling down because of the nature of his career. she retired from nursing but did medical coding part-time.

elena's sister was born in deepground (canonically from the 'midgar slums' but deepground is pretty fucking close and it makes sense to the era and background worldbuilding), and things went as smoothly as possible at this point in time. elena herself was born in icicle because lol military stationed there (elena being an icicle native was also a very popular piece of fanon in the pre-compilation era and I feel like it may have had some supporting evidence in something like kaitai shinsho but I never really managed to cross-reference that so probably not true and just a gut feeling), and by then things were getting...fishy. details being covered up about the full extent of the side-effects of mako conditioning and rumors that shinra had an egregious amount of influence over the military at large. these things all turned out to be true, but elena's father kept his head down and did his duty because he was a good soldier. he was also in wutai on and off during this, before the situation over there fully hit the fan, so he had more pressing matters to worry about.

anyway, elena was born in icicle but she and her mother and sister weren't there for more than a year or so before it was back at it again in midgar because dad was being put on some kind of assignment that had him closely working with shinra. the general implication of this is he was doing legwork for the implementation of SOLDIER in a few years, but what that means can vary by interaction from being paperwork to mk ultra style endurance testing to teaching an adolescent jenova project specimen how to integrate into military procedure before they drop him in wutai which is slated to become an all-out conflagration very shortly. it all depends but the point is it is sticky and worsened significantly when his wife is killed in a car accident. if this seems familiar it is because I firmly believe elena is the aya brea of ffvii and parasite eve featured similar background story. I'm borrowing deal with it.

by this point, elena is around eight and in school but elena is just barely four and in the vehicle when it happens. mom is killed instantly, elena survives but barely fares better. she's in intensive care for a while and there is a period where they don't even know if she is going to be brain dead or just have permanent brain damage in the first few days. her sister is basically staying at a school friend's house for like...way more than a fortnight while this got sorted out because their dad still actually has orders to carry out, even if he isn't on a battlefield. at one point on of his higher-ups implies that it could be arranged to transfer elena from the civilian hospital to the recently renovated deepground and he turns it down and feels like shit for it because yeah, deepground probably would mean a better chance at his youngest daughters survival because of that cutting edge shinra biotech, but at what cost? he knows well enough now something is wrong and justifies his willingness to let fate take its course with elena by focusing on the fact that her sister is still alive and well and he needs to keep his head down for his older daughter because she needed him too, even though they barely saw each other during the crux of this.

so lo and behold elena does recover and goes through the icky sticky of physical therapy and does just fine. great, right? well yes but the family dynamic is stupidly fucked up. dad has done either really good or really bad on his assignment, and gets put out to pasture in junon to teach at a military academy that is now nearly entirely funded by shinra (yeah so in before crisis it is all but implicit that academy is in midgar but fuck that junon is the seat of military power it would be near there if anything). this is great because it keeps him in work and both of his daughters will benefit. which they do. elena's sister is an ideal student, and the roughness of losing her mother happened at a sensitive period but a period where she was old enough to understand what was going on. she was capable of being a little trooper through all of it, but the cost of it was not being able to emotionally process the loss of her mother and the fact that her little sister was still alive when mom was not. the seeds of discord are sown there and that will be an ongoing thing throughout their childhood and into adulthood. they don't hate each other, but the relationship is fraught with tension and it is far from a healthy dynamic, especially since their father has pulled back almost entirely from fatherhood. he has no idea what he is doing without his late wife, and can't organically interact with his daughters so he defaults to being an instructor. both of them flourish despite this, but it is not a good family dynamic.

paint over this family drama with the fact that wutai is now well and truly happening. the military is effectively controlled by shinra and very very soon the propaganda blitz surrounding SOLDIER is going to push that over the edge and shinra will be accepted on a public and official level as being the army. the slogans are changing and going from an old fashioned sense of unity to focusing on becoming top class and singularly extraordinary. there is an emphasis on joining to be great rather than joining for the greater good. the recruitment plays into the deeply seated neurosis of adolescence for a reason because the younger some kid joins up the more malleable they are to both the shinra rhetoric and the by now very refined mako enhancement process that costs so much but nets such spectacular gains. in fact, it costs far too much to ever justify wasting that kind of money on doing it to women. so yeah it is blog canon that women in the shinra army is not a thing that is encouraged and like hell would they ever be in SOLDIER. the company culture is an old boys club steeped in misogyny and the only reason scarlet succeeded is because she took that and marinated in it and played the game very well. dirge era deepground operatives are little more than a consequence of years of unethical human experimentation left to rot in a basement. we don't really see women in actual military positions in the original game. sexism is alive and well and it serves my characterization of elena and her development.

so yeah it is a time of paradigms shifting and reforming very rapidly. elena's sister takes to this with aplomb, she is a perfect cadet and in elena's eyes a perfect daughter. someone easier to idolize than the SOLDIERs on the glossy recruitment posters and more available than their emotionally distant father. she is pristine and by extension beloved, things elena wants to be as well. elena is too young to realize her sister doesn't have any better of a relationship with their father than she does, but who knows if that would change anything. she emulates her ideal sister but remains a half step behind, which makes perfect sense because elena is four years younger. from a critical perspective that half step is a very close gap because even if elena doesn't realize it, she is just as prodigious as her sister is. the difference is while her sister can follow orders to the letter, elena has the makings of a maverick. not a positive thing in the strict environment of a military academy, no matter how high her scores are. idealization goes hand and hand with a quiet resentment, the latter of which her sister has also harbored towards her ever since their later mother died and elena did not.

that simmering toxicity stays at a low boil until her sister graduates. at the top of the class, even she could not become anything. or at least, to elena it looks that way, as she watches her sister back her things for midgar where she will start as a trainee for an administrative/auditing position for the shinra electric power company. elena does not know what a turk is at this point, even if her father does. he seems as impassive as ever, even if that is not the case and in actuality he is struggling to accept the reality that his oldest daughter is far too smart for his own good and is entering a profession no one would ever want for their child. despite his distance and his lack of connection and all of his failings as a father he does love his children and that will eat away at him until he dies no doubt. but all elena sees is her shining example of an older sister being doomed to desk work. when gun leaves (because she becomes gun the moment she is added to the payroll) the real constant of elena's childhood also leaves. and during adolescence, that is hard for anyone. more so when you realize no matter how sharp your skills are your future is off the chopping block and there is no path for you to take with them.

elena goes from being a prodigy prone to pesky critical thinking to a prodigy with a chip on her shoulder. her technical marks don't plummet, in fact, quite the opposite. she picks up a secondary battle specialty, close-quarters combat, which will set her apart from her sister. she flourishes with equal parts precision and aggression, despite her small size. the academic commendations feel entirely hollow to her though, and in the way teenagers tend to do she convinces herself she is not much more than nothing. the memory of her sister becomes tarnished with the bitterness of her negative self-image. her instructors must hate her for her failures, she tells herself with false objectivity. her instructors include her actual father, who is nearly clueless aside from a vague feeling in the pit of his stomach and he doesn't know if that is due to his oldest daughter going into wetworks or the fact his younger daughter is shattering academic record after record with the sheer force of what he assumes to be ennui driven spite.

at least he is clueless until in the spring just after she turns fifteen she files for early certification to leave academy, just like every other boy in her year as well as every other boy on the continent and beyond. they do it to catch the recruitment push and join the army soon enough to have a shot at making SOLDIER before they age out. but elena can't do that and he knows it and braces himself to have that conversation with her, calling her into his office where she keeps her stance formal until he tells her to be as ease and even in the chair across from his desk her posture is tense. spine straight, eyes ahead. he begins what he thinks is going to be the "you know you can't join SOLDIER" conversation but she cuts him off in what he thinks is a somewhat uncharacteristic display, but to her is just another example of how disgraceful her conduct is and how she needs to get out of academy before brings the value of the whole institution down. she tells him this, she tells him she is aware of her shortcomings and the fact she has no future in a military career and her intention is to go to midgar and learn how to be a civilian on her own terms. he signs off on it because none of her bullet points are actually wrong.

midgar is a city of industry and a city of vice and she hasn't been there since she was a child. it is good to her and it is bad to her, as she unlearns years of quasi-military discipline and figures out how to be her own person. she still sometimes wears the academy uniform because old habits die hard and it is a durable thing. she has a one-room apartment in the slums and a job tending bar in wall market. the hours are early evening to after the last train ends and her circadian rhythm adjusts from 4am wakeups and beds made with hospital corners to the distorted clock that comes from living under a plate with no natural sunlight. there are just as many fights and skirmishes to be had in midgar but none of them are like the training exercises at academy. each one is a beautiful short-lived shrine, sometimes they are fun and on her terms, and other times they are fraught and meant for survival. elena relishes them all as a skillset she once thought was a dead-end turns out to be valuable once more. the major negative point is her sister.

gun is in midgar and wears a sleek black suit along with many other people in sleek black suits. elena hears the term 'turk' for the first time. whether they are urban legends or hired killers or pencil pushers who do double duty waterboarding enemies of a power company turned judge and jury doesn't matter. what matters is the deadness she can see in gun's green eyes when she drops by the bar before closing, oftentimes with equally dead-eyed coworkers. those confrontations are never pleasant, they are a powderkeg. elena would like to reach out to her sister, chase away the exhausted look in her face the way she can with other patrons, but the sentiment gets stuck in her throat and they just snipe at each other. gun is a terrible adult and so are all of her colleagues and they are trying their best to neutralize a growing terrorist threat and they are failing. when they come around in the low light of the bar illuminates the stark futility of everything after midnight.

elena does not know exactly what is going on at the highest level of intrigue but she has a good guess. shinra is shitting the bed, and that includes the turks and SOLDIER, which seems to her to be in the middle of a massive coverup as their public-facing 1sts disappear one after another. she wants no part of it and her agenda switches from mastering the nuances of being a civilian to finding sustainability and meaning outside of shinra as the cracks in the facade split ever wider. when the sector six plate is effectively destroyed, it takes the bar she worked at with it and elena decides it is time to get the hell out of midgar.

her years in wall market set her up with some interesting connections and the owner of a small weapons shop (who she might have married for tax purposes but that isn't fleshed out) sets her up with a distinguished older gentleman who is a complete asshole and happens to run guns all across the continent. despite his immaculate coiffure he is not a people person and requires someone who is both qualified to demonstrate his product and more pleasant to deal with than him, because the market is hot right now. shinra has never had much interest in dealing with flyover country. sure they build reactors in some of the backwaters, but not all of them. and no reactor meant no need for shinra to spend the money on protecting hick villages from increased monster presence. the planet is dying and the monsters are restless in the same way wildlife gets in the real world. the people in those tiny towns do their best to defend their homes and livelihood and that means purchasing weaponry, mostly old stock from competitors that shinra has long since crushed or acquired. shinra lets this happen because it is not a threat to them.

so, for a few years, elena is a pretty face with a bang and it is almost scarlettian. she never comes close to the sex appeal of the actual weapons development director of shinra, but it is enough to help move merchandise. most of the buyers are just people trying to survive in the middle of nowhere, but not always. sometimes they are rougher than that, but the money is good enough that she doesn't care about that, or the fact the man who employed her hates her guts and doesn't care much whether she lives or dies. it is a thrilling rush and it is outside of shinra and more than ever does she want to put as much distance as possible between shinra and herself. because her sister is dead according to a notification that tseng of the turks had been cordial enough to send to her father, news that he passed on in a voicemail to elena with a hollow tone. maybe he was trying to reconnect with her because she was now all he had left in the way of family. maybe he just had the same sense of duty as always. she never calls back to ask.

midgar calls her back though. one day her employer informs her with a vindictive grin that he has sold the business part and parcel and that includes her as an employee. acquired by shinra. the reason, ironically, is scarlet, whom she has been doing a two-bit impersonation of. scarlet is a forward thinker but that doesn't mean she can't be swayed by a stockpile of vintage firearms, and with the viciousness required of her position she can throw weight around and get her hands on anything. the weapons are what she wanted and elena knows this and rejects the notion that she will become apart of the shinra payroll because of this little merger. this is proven wrong in short order as her assets are frozen systematically because the turks are hard up for people. they know her. they knew her sister and they know her, even if they haven't kept tabs on her. as soon as the papers cross his desk tseng seizes the opportunity.

the interview with hr to place elena is a mere formality. there is no other place for her there but in the turks. elena, for all her audacity, accepts this and plasters on a professional veneer. the game begins and the world ends.

[theprivilegedshatlord-blog]

I am the friend known as “H” from CancerChaser blog in Chapter 6

I am here to corroborate what my friend said and provide my side of the story of this situation. Walhartonsclub (WC) told me about CancerChaser (CC) back in 2016 after the first incident where CC was wiling out on WC because of what seemed to a misunderstanding of affording a phone. I initially told WC to ignore him because he was not worth shit or at least is what I initially thought. From there he kept me informed about what CC did throughout.Now to go into when i was first referenced in the chronicles about CancerChaser. From what I knew at the time, CC asked WC to send emails over and over from phone to his email. Have no idea why would he need WC to do that. He could have used something like Imgur. Given that CC had a phone that was not a smartphone based on what I was told, it would probably be impossible. Of course trying to make simple suggestions to him like this is enough to make CC go into a hair-triggering temper tantrum, so there is no use to try to convince him to upgrade. It was 2016, being up to date shouldn’t be too hard, you can even get refurbished smartphones for a fraction of full retail price. My parents have the latest phones and they are older than CC by decades. Why did CC chose WC instead of other friends for these favors is beyond me. So he asked and asked and asked WC to send him these pics over and over. WC complied with generosity. WC likes to please his friends. He has pleased me multiple times. He also tries to be the best person he can be. Needless to say CC took advantage of him.So when it came time for CC return the favor, he was resistant initially. When he finally did start playing, he did until after half of the game was over. The game was Spring Breeze from Kirby’s Super Star on Super NIntendo. Did you know that Spring Breeze is a remake of the original Kirby’s Dream Land on Game Boy with a missing level and boss? So CC did not even bother finishing such a short abridged game. That betrayal was just foul play on CC’s end.

Then CC would later use WC’s insecurities to gain him back and asked for more favors. WC then approached me on rethinking the situation. I initially thought that he probably did not like the game and was bored. I made the suggestion to pick a game that has much less interaction. Like some touch screen DS or 3DS game. WC brought up Warioware Twisted Touched!, so I thought would be a good choice there. My reasoning is that CC probably has no real interest in video games. I have heard that he has play Super Mario Bros. 3 growing up. Which makes me realize that CC is a very casual non-gamer person.

Reading the situation in question at Chapter 5 reveals that CC had been simply holding the controller where the direction pad in the upper right corner and seemingly pressed no buttons which means he was faking interest and had no intention at all to return the favor. He really should have said that he had no interest in playing video games. He was lying to manipulate WC. Which comes to no surprise that CC refused to play Warioware Twisted Touched! when asked. He cannot play easy games. He cannot play very simple games. But he would lie about having an interest only for him to evade that with excuses. With friends like these who needs bullies?

The next time I was involved was when WC was having his panic attack resulting from personal issues that are stated in Chapter 6. I have received certain pictures that hinted that he was contemplating suicide. Being under vacation time from my job, I decided to actually come see WC to check up on him myself. When I saw him, he was sitting on a couch. When he saw me he was excited to see me I asked if he took any of the pills or hurt himself, he told me that he gave himself more time to think about it. Perhaps to think about the people that love him.

He told me about the situation that led up to the panic attack. Best way to describe what was happening without revealing confidential information is that someone was very sick and emotions erupted. I had told him that he needs more time to hang out with friends. We not only did Spring Breeze in full, but also Meta Knight’s Revenge, Dyna Blade, and Great Cave Offensive as well. Games in that collection that are larger than Spring Breeze. We did not get to do Milky Way Wishes that day, but we did eventually got to do it at another time. We also played Brawl Brothers, all I remember is that there was a code to play the Japanese version and we did that and completed the game. It was short at 5 levels long. We also played Events in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. We did not clear all of the event, only some but we did have fun.

At Applebees we discussed the situation further. There I learned that he had sent the same pics to other friends as well which made me concerned. I thought that WC was going to get a wellness check on him or worse be committed to a mental ward for days. I only knew one recipient among the 7 besides myself (I never met CC in person). The person I knew is a mutual friend. The mutual friend never really got to see the messages, so he was unaware (it reached an old phone and when he got a new one, the messages were deleted). The mutual was relieved to know that WC was okay and felt better. And yes the mutual is informed of CC and his bullshit antics; I can confirm that he heavily resents CC, as I do.

So I had to get WC to do damage control to avoid being institutionalized. As information like this can scare people and be irrational. We needed for cooler heads to prevail. So WC told everyone that it was for attention. So WC can still run his panel at a upcoming convention and not be stuck that weekend in a mental hospital. He really needed to avoid the ruining of plans like that.

After all, my cousin once told me about the one time she told exactly one person that she felt suicidal because an aunt of hers  being diagnosed of cancer (from her dad’ side, I’m related through our moms being sisters). Telling her best friend was enough for the BF to call the ambulance and my cousin had to stay in a mental ward for 16 days!

CC’s response was very callous. As far as I know, he never asked what was going on around that time. He just stayed silent and only responded with that shitty “I knew it” bullshit when he received a fucking coverup. WC was crying for help and I answered the call. I live 2 hours away and this asshat lives minutes away in walking speed, yet gives radio silence to someone he calls himself a friend to, is mere blocks away, while I invest in gas and mileage to make sure WC is okay. Some friend CC is. For someone who claims to be “a good friend” in his hate mail; he sure shows no effort in even trying to check up on him. Real piece of scum CC is.

I later go to see the panel and I liked it. Which comes to no surprise in my perspective. The next day I played Streets of Rage 1 with WC. The only other thing I remember is that there was some dude I met who was in a wheelchair because he broke his foot days before.

Now for my thoughts about CancerChaser and his narcissism.

Walhartonsclub would later work for New York Comic-Con and buy the Super NES Classic. Which meant for the later part of September and early October he would be very busy. He also was seeking for connections, so there would not be any room for free time. CancerChaser did not give a shit about the adult responsibilities WC had to do. And despite CC being older than WC, CC would not take no for an answer and start guilt tripping WC. Having enough of CC’s scummy actions, WC finally cut ties. This was met with harassment and hatemail. Which truly shows CC’s irredeemable character in full form.

CC is a fucking disgrace to everything it means to being gay. If I was gay, I would rather live in a fucking fraternity of homophobic bullies that to ever have anything to do with CC. This old man never seemed to learn a single thing about accountability or responsibility. How dare does he interfere with a job? What gives him the right to call his target for the simple reason to give expletives to him? And his emails? Disgusting does not come close. Making empty threats to for law enforcement for intimidation and truly showing his true colors on how he uses people only to claim they are useless after the fact. And his latest unprovoked email where he makes more empty threats and more shitty insults is fucked up. I have heard that CC passed by a block away from WC’s home twice after 2017. That is obvious projection. CC’s knows WC’s location. Clearly CC is the stalker. Stalking close to his target’s home and then acts like he is the victim and being harassed is scummy behavior. I have never seen such a scummy person ever as far as stalkers and harassers go.

I honestly have no consideration for him as a human being. If he receives anything terrible short of death, it is karma. He deserves nothing but negativity and hate. This man is among the lowest of monsters. I have had to deal with people with psychosis several years ago, but this man is worse by the power of 10. There is bad people and there is EXTREME SCUM. CancerChaser is the latter. The only people worse than CancerChaser are child rapists, pedophiles, murderers, terrorists, abusive parents, and human traffickers. All those aside, CancerChaser is the worst kind of person out there. Fuck this man. Fuck him HARD!

And finally I got one thing to announce. I get the feeling that people do not really want to read long as fuck posts like this on tumblr. I am going to fix that. I am going to working on readings of the CancerChaser blog and post them on YouTube so people who don’t really care about reading essays can listen to the situation as well. Because we really to expose CancerChaser and let tons of people know who much inhumane scumbag CC truly is.

[lucidcupid67-blog]

tua positivity post

Listen. I know these characters are all messed up in their own way, but I like to think about all the little quirks that make them more lovely than not. (Don't mind my little rant if you're not into it, I just have so many emotions.) Also - some spoilers.

Luther, for one (ha), is commonly viewed as controlling. It's a little true, I admit, but I also think he's a very protective person. As we see in episode 6, it just takes a little real-world common sense and an understanding soul to help him realize that he "doesn't need a mission to exist." He can be so tender and reasonable when he's not forced to play a role! (Caring for his plant bb on the moon, holding Diego to stop him from beating up 5, looking after 5 when he seems distressed, etc.) There's also an innocence there that I admire when it comes to doing the right or wrong thing, but also makes me shake my head when he takes it too far. You guys, he's really trying his best to be good. He just needs to take a breath and examine the situation he's in from a new perspective.

I've never really known how to feel about Diego, but I know that he has a lot of heart and passion for what he believes in. This might make him act irrational or even childlike sometimes, but it's not bad to have emotions the way he lets himself do. Although sometimes antagonistic towards Luther and Allison, I feel those attitudes stem from a sense of inadequacy as a child; Diego just wants to lead his siblings and protect them like Luther does. He wants a fair and just world, and he's not above taking the shit end of the stick in life to eventually make it to that point (getting a job as a janitor, joining the police force, etc.) We see that a lot through his relationship with Patch, I think. They had similar goals, just different methods.

Allison? I don't really feel like I've seen enough of her character to know her that well, but even though she has manipulated people for her gain, the regret she displays and her efforts to do better are so so important. I doubt there's a single person who wouldn't do the same in her position at least once. Resisting temptation in an attempt to build a real life for herself is a sign of commitment to reality, which is hard to find in 2019. Her efforts to be a good sister to Vanya are so sweet, too. She truly cares for her, which becomes so clear and blunt and obvious in the last few episodes. Not to mention how much she loves her daughter... She's such a caring woman.

Oh my GOD, Klaus though! I've heard so many good things as well as I've thought of them, despite the fact he didn't help Patch. Like, clearly he makes poor decisions. Sometimes he's not all there. But!! He's crazy empathetic for his family and cares for them so much. Comforting Diego when Grace dies the second time, comforting Allison when they got their tattoos, comforting Luther when he found out about his trip to the moon, helping 5 with his eye thing, trying to free Vanya, his kindness towards Ben... Just so much emotion and empathy and devotion. And he never treats Vanya lesser than himself, most likely because they both were treated similarly. Think about it! Klaus has a power, but in terms of usefulness? I'm just saying... His family makes him the lookout for a reason. Him and Vanya both want attention and to be a part of the group. And all the things he went through... All that trauma, I wish he would talk to people about it. He talks so much, but never about the deep stuff because no one listens. After all, "does it matter? it's Klaus." Please give him some real self worth and not the fabricated, showy kind. 

Five is such a great character, too. One of my favorites if I'm being honest. So much irritation and controlled rage in such a small body, christ on a cracker. I don't want to belittle his obvious skills and maturity at ALL because it's a source of tension for him, but I just think he's so cute. He could do with some more genuine happiness, like in his loving relationship with Delores. Not to mention he's so smart and calculating! He's creative and responsible and resourceful and /snarky/ and I'm so here for it. I'm so sad that he feels he doesn't belong anywhere (like all his siblings, come to think of it), because he deserves that much after all the isolation and horrible things he had to do to get back to his family... It all makes him appear so cold and callous, but his family understands how much he really cares. They know who he really is.

Ben is just fantastic. A bookish, witty, caring boy that never got the chance to grow up in the land of the living. Despite that, he very clearly serves as a voice of reason for his brother in his toughest times. He was their support, their encouragement, their glue. Everyone always has something kind to say in his memory. I think the fact that he still acts boyish outside of his wisdom-filled speeches is so adorable and so accurate for a teenage boy. Let him enjoy the wild side of life too, you cowards.

And lastly, Vanya. That poor girl. That brave woman. Despite all of the abuse and the lack of affection or care, she still grew to realize that she deserves a spot in life, too. She deserves the same chance as everyone else. She's sweet, she's thoughful, she's observant, she's talented, she's funny... You can see it if you just look for it through all the repressed and shameful emotions. She knows everything about her siblings: where Luther and Allison went when they were sad, Diego's attachment to Grace, Klaus' drug problems, Five's favorite snacks, Ben's place in the house as their support system, all of it. I just wish she could have felt more a part of it herself, y'know? I mean clearly Five cared for her because he called out for her when he got lost in time, just like he did for Ben and his dad, too. She deserves all the love and DEFINITELY a better relationship than what she had with Harold.