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modern-inheritance · 3 years ago

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Modern Inheritance: Limits

Summary: “Brom, I just want them back! I don’t want anyone else to die and I want them back!” “I know, kid.” “…I hate this fucking war.” “…Yeah. Me too.” Everyone has a limit on what they can endure without cracking under the strain. Some people can move that limit when they must, push themselves a little further to shoulder more so that others don’t have to take it on or see them hurting. But often it’s those people who break the hardest when their limit is finally reached.

~~~

Arya stared up at the plaster coated stone of the embassy ceiling. The events of the last twenty four hours played over and over in her mind, threatening to drown out her attempts to rest.

Ajihad was dead. The man everyone had been so sure would lead them to the gates of Urû’baen was gone.

Even after a lifetime of loss, Arya felt Ajihad’s death hit particularly hard.

The man was a genius strategist and unparalleled negotiator. Under his guidance the Varden had not only survived but thrived even as Galbatorix increased his campaign against them.

That wasn’t all. He was not just a military leader. Ajihad had been a personal friend to Arya, Fäolin and Glenwing. Despite being decades younger than the elves, the fallen commander always kept his eye out for them and encouraged all three to speak openly to him if any problems arose. He was kind, just and one of the most honorable men Arya had met during the entire hellish war.

Unbidden, the memory of one of the last occasions Arya had spent one on one time with the Varden’s leader crept into her mind.

It felt like months had already passed, but just over two weeks ago Ajihad had strode into Arya’s tiny room in the medical wing with a thermos of her favorite tea balanced on a fresh set of her fatigues in one hand and a packet of notes in the other. Arya had expected him to give a few short condolences and exchange hurried niceties before launching into a formal debriefing about her captivity, the events that led to it, and the information that she had either collected or divulged during that time. It was procedure, after all, and with the Urgals army fast approaching Arya understood that there would be little time for anything but the necessities.

But the Varden’s leader did nothing of the sort. Instead, using mugs borrowed from the cabinet of the nurse’s station, Ajihad sat and shared tea while he talked with the recently revived elf. They sat together, Ajihad somehow still looking regal and powerful while relaxing in a ratty old chair and Arya sitting cross legged on the edge of the hospital bed, barefoot and shirtless but very grateful for the pants and sports bra that provided more protection than a the hospital’s light pants and open backed shirt.

Ajihad spent well over an hour telling her of the things that had gone on since she last left with Saphira’s egg. Everything from an incident where Coop, the one legged veteran who owned the Varden’s traveling bar, had used his prosthetic to knock out the instigator of a drunken brawl, to the Ingeitum clan’s recent efforts to restart production of small tanks and new artillery, was discussed. It was informal, relaxing almost, and for Arya it brought an almost desperately welcome break from the constant questions about her state of mind and the well meant but invasive queries about her captivity and torture.

The tea had long since been finished when Ajihad paused, the boyish grin left from telling of Coop’s improvised assault fading from his lips. He steepled his fingers and settled his elbows on his knees before asking if Brom had told her about the current situation between the Varden and the elves. When Arya answered in the affirmative, an edge creeping into her tone, he simply nodded. He knew that she would do everything possible to put relations back in order.

Still. She could see the questions in his eyes.

He didn’t ask them. Instead, Ajihad gave her sincere condolences on the deaths of Fäolin and Glenwing. He did not apologize for their deaths, nor did he dither on about what could have been or should have been done, but he recounted their strengths and character, how much they meant to specific people in the Varden, and how much their support had meant to him and Nasuada during the early years of his leadership. It was heartfelt, and held no awkward silence or uncertainty as to how to address their deaths. Ajihad knew the importance of acknowledging their loss, while also understanding Arya’s need for privacy in processing their deaths.

As he took his leave, Ajihad pulled three objects from the pocket of his vest and gently folded Arya’s fingers over them. The subdued gleam of two hammered steel badges, bearing the Varden’s seal and hanging from black ribbons, met her gaze when she carefully revealed the gifts. Under them, another medal, plated in dull brass with a sky blue ribbon, detailed a wolf leaping over a wall of snarled barbed wire.

As she tilted the medals in her hand, Arya’s breath caught in the back of her throat. Etched carefully into the metal so that they became clear when light shifted, the glyphs that she, Glenwing and Fäolin had chosen for the motto of their tiny special ops unit shined back at her.

With a sudden lurch Arya sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, chest aching.

Even in their deaths, Ajihad had provided Fäolin and Glenwing permanent proof that though they were not human, they would always be a part of the Varden. It was a thought that Ajihad turned to solid fact during his time as leader, ensuring that the elves felt accepted and trusted in the fight against Galbatorix. It was why losing him felt like losing a another part of the family Arya had found in the Varden’s ranks. A family that was quickly shrinking as the conflict reached the start of it’s crescendo with Eragon and Saphira’s arrival.

At the thought of family Arya’s mind turned to Nasuada. Barely into adulthood and carrying the same strength and wit that Ajihad often displayed, Nasuada’s love for her father was obvious. The two doted on each other as much as they butted heads, stubborn and unyielding in their conviction to help the Varden despite the danger.

If only I had been faster. She still couldn’t shake the sound of the young woman’s wail that reverberated through the tunnels. Even in the warren of passages that the Urgals had escaped through she had heard the agonized sound clearly. I should have used magic to drive the Urgals back. Then maybe Ajihad, Murtagh and the others would have gotten out.

Arya tightened her grip on the sheets, feeling her nails dig into her palms through the material. No. I can’t do this now. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the lump in her throat down. Took several slow, deep breaths and settled back into the bed. There’s too much to do, too much at stake. Doubt and grief can come later. We’ll mourn later.

Right now, sleep. Then take the day one step at a time. The Council meeting tomorrow. Prep for travel back to Ellesméra. Keep an eye on Eragon and Saphira, make sure no one tries anything while we’re in chaos. Make sure the Council doesn’t try to steamroll Brom’s advice.

She breathed in again, closed her eyes. Loosened the fists she had made and forced her tired body to relax as she let it out. The tightness in her throat hadn’t gone away fully, and the heavy feeling in her chest remained. But it could wait. It would have to wait.

Keep on keeping on. It’s all we can do.

Resigned to sleep yet still uneasy, the elf subconsciously rolled over in the bed and reached out for the comforting, familiar warmth of Fäolin’s body beside hers.

Her hand fell through open air to land on cold, empty sheets.

Arya’s eyes snapped open.

~~~

Brom rubbed his face, chewing once again on the stem of his empty pipe. Arya had banned him from smoking in the embassy, but he was in no mood leave his room, much less go outside.

A heavy shroud covered Tronjheim in the wake of Ajihad’s death earlier that day. People were openly crying in the tunnels and crowded together for solidarity in their grief. The Rider didn’t want to be drawn into it. Instead he preferred to reflect on his emotions and the events alone with a shot of strong bourbon and his pipe. Sometimes one or two close friends were welcome, but the number of people he counted as such had dwindled over the course of the war till less than a handful remained.

Brom sucked in a breath through the pipe, tasting the remnants of his years of smoking in the wood. He hadn’t known Ajihad all that well, but the man made quite an impression on him the times that they had met face to face as well as when the two exchanged letters about the Varden. Brom found his decisions sound and his leadership to be well in line with the values that the Varden had been founded on. His death was a blow to the group for sure, both in a strategic sense and an emotional one.

The question of who would take over the Varden now haunted the Rider’s mind. Brom had been almost completely out of contact for the fifteen years he watched over Eragon in Carvahall, never mind the handful of years he spent infiltrating Morzan’s mansion. He had no idea who would be best to succeed Ajihad, but knew one thing: the Council was not to be trusted with the final decision.

Brom growled in quiet frustration. In his opinion a majority of the current Council were a bunch of power hungry, manipulative jackasses.

But still…the Council was an important part of the Varden’s structure. Without them t–

Brom bolted to his feet, chair clattering to the ground as a ragged scream ripped through the embassy. The Rider was out the door and in the hall when a resounding crash followed not a moment later.

Brom staggered as Arya’s door opened easily, fully expecting it to be locked when he jammed his shoulder against it. He stumbled into the darkened room and stopped, feeling a twinge of tightness in his chest as he took in the somewhat familiar scene.

Arya was sitting on the floor below a fresh hole in the plaster that hid the pipes and utilities anchored to the stone walls. Her shoulders, littered with angry red and raw scars that peeked out from the loose collar of her nightshirt, shuddered every few moments. Her left hand clenched over her face to hide her eyes while her lips pressed tight together to prevent any hint of sound.

Her right hand was limp at her knee, torn and bloodied. Deep bruises already bloomed at her first two knuckles where skin still remained.

Brom carefully stepped over scattered chips of plaster and sank to his knees in front of the crumpled elf. “Hey now…” Arya’s jaw clenched tighter and she turned her face away from him at his soft words, still covering her eyes. “Don’t do this, girl. We’ve talked about this.” Gently but firmly, the Rider grasped the woman’s left wrist and tugged.

A long second passed as Brom kept up the pressure, feeling the silent trembling through the limb until she finally dropped her hand. Arya looked up at him through the tears that streaked her face.

“There we go.” He gave her a soft smile. Eragon was his son, it was true. But family reached further than blood, and he’d be damned if he didn’t see the woman before him as his daughter. He had watched her grow from a small child, eager to fight in the name of her people, to a woman that now endured a multitude of wounds in the hope that her deeds would lead to a better future for all the races.

It wasn’t the first time he saw her like this. Wasn’t the first time he had consoled her after years, decades of pushing aside her own feelings for the sake of others, for the sake of the war, finally shattered through her carefully constructed walls. She had seen him the same way before as well. They both knew it was not likely it would be the last.

So he did what he had done before. What they both had done. “Don’t hold back, girl. I’m right here.”

Arya shuddered. Squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. But she didn’t resist when Brom pulled her into his arms.

Instead she gave a choked cry, seized a fistful of his shirt, and sobbed hard into his shoulder.

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ilummoss · 5 years ago

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One thing I really liked about Mace Windu: Jedi of the Republic is that it is really one long philosophy discussion, mostly concerning the war and the Jedi’s new role in it. It’s also a story about who Mace Windu is (vs how some perceive him).

Most of the discussions are the Jedi speaking amongst themselves, but it also includes some “debates” between Mace and the main villain of the comic, evil-money-grubbing-droid*. Many of these discussions also echo each other or other events in the comic in a way that is either intentional or someone accidentally striking gold. *(The droids name is technically AD-W4, but honestly evil-money-grubbing-droid fits it way better. This thing makes General Grievous look like he has a healthy outlook on life.)

This is going to get long so buckle up (or blacklist the long post tag).

The comic starts on a discussion between Ki-Adi Mundi and Mace about the war and the Jedi’s new role in it. This discussion is then (spiritually) continued between other Jedi characters. It follows through the entire comic.

They continue to discuss how the Jedi strive to lead by example and Mace wonders if it would be easier to guide the Republic down the right path from the front of the battle lines.

Mace later discusses his doubts with the ugliest Yoda ever painted. (It pains me to think that this is what Yodel/Yodito will look like in just a millennia.)

Mace and Prosset Dibbs also discuss this very same thing, but here Prosset is the one who brings his doubts to Mace.

(*Prosset speaks several times about sensing an unease in the force, which is interesting, considering how we know that the Clone Wars is a trap that has just sprung shut around the Jedi.)

Then we have my favourite moment:

A discussion about how they are peacekeepers is literally interupted by the war. We have the entirety of Clone Wars right here. The purpose of the Clone Wars even. This is an important conversation, but the Jedi do not have time for it. Because of the urgency of the war. It’s the worst and I love it.

There are also some good moments between Kit Fisto and Prosset but I’ve discussed those before, so I won’t be going into them as much here. To summarise, Prosset falls into despair over all the people who have died on this planet as a side-effect of the Separatist’s ruthless exploitation of the planets natural resources, and the failure of the Jedi to protect them.

Prosset then accuses Mace and the Council of having turned their back on the orders teaching and advancing their own agenda (though he is unclear about what said agenda would be), that Mace is fighting this war for his own sake. He then goes even further and accuses the Council of tossing away the lives of this planets inhabitants as collateral, declaring that the true reason behind the mission is a power grab, that they too are aiming at explotating this planet, something we as readers know is false. They were sent there to figure out why the separatists are interested in this place. We have also seen Mace throughout the comic focus on protecting the civilians and trying to find a way to shut down the Separatist operation there, explicitly so that it won’t end up destroying the planet.

But the confrontation between Prosset and Mace echoes an earlier confrontation between Mace and AD-W4.

This moment follows AD-W4 introducing his motivations* and Mace declaring that the Jedi fight for peace throughout the galaxy (”the greatest cause there is”). It also ties into AD-W4′s misunderstanding of who Mace is, what actually drives him, which eventually leads to his mission there failing. *(Evil-money-grubbing-droid openly states that he is only fighting for money, that he doesn’t care about who’s wrong or right in this conflict, only that the conflict continues so that his services are needed and he can make more money.)

This bit about a void is terribly interesting however, because Mace also speaks about being driven by the need to fill a void in this comic, but not in relation to himself, but to Prosset.

“I have experienced first hand what insecurity does to men. How a mind warps with it’s obsessive quest to fill the void. With power. With wealth. With lust. With truth.”

Prosset denies it, but he has twisted, warped what is actually happening around him, into something that he can deal with. The Jedi Council have to be bad guys, there has to a conspiracy, because the truth that this is just out of their power and an uncountable amount of innocent people are going to die despite all of them trying their hardest is too much for him to handle.

Prosset also threw out a vague accusation that Mace is fighting this War for himself, something we see again in Mace’s final confrontation with AD-W4. During their fight the droid repeatedly taunts Mace:

“An excuse for your violence. You’re a hypocrite. Perhaps I am force-sensitive myself.”

It is certainly not a flattering picture of Mace Windu these two adversaries paint up. But this confrontation in turn ties into a mission from Mace’s youth which we are introduced to in flashbacks, where Padawan Mace Windu and Jedi Master Cyslin Myr has been sent to a planet suffering under a plague to investigate the disappearance of the Jedi in charge of an outreach temple there. The temple has been taking over be a “Master Drooz” a charlatan exploiting the suffering population, which has left young Mace outraged.

*(Look at this, more Jedi philosophy. In this comic? What a surprise ^u^)

This moment is pretty clearly here to introduce us to Mace’s struggle with his anger, a characteristic both antagonists of this comic has honed in on. But this anger is connected to how deeply idealistic Mace is at heart, something they miss. As they confront the swindler, Drooz mocks them for what he sees as “squandering” a chance for profit and power whilst Mace’s answer underlines how those things grow pale in comparison to higher goals.

This confrontation ends on a Palpatine parallel as subtle as a hammer blow to the head.

This is the last part of the flashback, and it’s positioned right in the scene where Mace finally subdues Prosset, standing above him with his lightsaber pointing down. And then Mace knocks Prosset unconscious and says that he will be brought to the Jedi council. Master Myr’s lesson was heard.

A fire burns in Mace, that is true. It is something Mace must struggle with and control. But he has learned to keep that fire tempered. He is no longer that hotheaded Padawan, but a disciplined Jedi Master.

The fight between Mace and AD-W4 ends in AD-W4′s defeat, but with evil-money-grubbing-droid gloating that his actual mission was still completed.

Except AD-W4, like how the fake “Master Drooz” did not understand the Jedi and what drives them, does not understand Mace.

AD-W4 thinks he has Mace figured out, so he missed that Mace was really using himself as a distraction, whilst young Jedi Knight Rissa Mano rigged that ship to explode. As Mace tells AD-W4 during this fight: “Do not mock, nor underestimate, that which you do not understand.”

Mace actually believes in peace. Truly and deeply so. This belief, this want to do good and protect people, is what drives him forward. By believing that Mace was driven foremost by his anger AD-W4 misjudges his entire situation.

“My righteousness is anything but self-motivated. There is definitive right and wrong. Good and evil.

Mace is going after AD-W4 not because he wants the fight and victory, “the power trip”, but because what evil-money-grubbing-droid is doing is wrong. The destruction he brings to this planet and it’s locals and his very indifference to it, is evil.

This comic isn’t trying to pretend that Mace Windu is perfect. The very obvious Palpatine parallels reminds us of the moment in his future where Mace will not manage to temper his righteous fury. But this is not yet that point.

Which brings us one final time back to Prosset. The crux of Prosset’s Fall lies in that this war is horrible and should not exist. The people of this planet should not be hurt and killed by it.

But, as Mace points out here, it is not up to the Jedi to decide if there will be a war or not*. Peace is already lost. Not fighting will not protect these people. *(The greatest irony of the Clone Wars is of course that it is an artificial conflict designed to benefit one person solely. There is someone who has decided that there should be a war and has moved everything into place for it. Palpatine could decide to end this any day, but the very core of his character declares that he never will.)

During Mace and Prosset’s fight Rissa is echoing the point Yoda made at the beginning of this comic. If the Jedi don’t keep moving, if they don’t fight, things will get even worse and more will die.

The Jedi have to move forward and commit fully to their choice, because anything else will get people killed. It’s not about not doubting or questioning, but that sometimes you must move even when there is doubt.

This is the conclusion to the discussion going on throughout this comic. The choice to enter the clone wars wasn’t uncomplicated or easy. The Jedi clearly have great doubt about it, both as an organisation and individuals. But sometimes all you have are bad choices, and the responsibility to choose.

#mace windu #jedi philosophy #the jedi order #jedi order #prosset dibbs #mace windu: jedi of the republic #meta #long post #my meta #posting this today at this time might be a bad idea but I do not have the patience to wait xD

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weirdponytail · 4 years ago

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Modern Inheritance: Limits (Semi WIP)

Summary: "Brom, I just want them back! I don't want anyone else to die and I want them back!" "I know, kid." "...I hate this fucking war." "...Yeah. Me too." Everyone has a limit on what they can endure without cracking under the strain. Some people can move that limit when they must, push themselves a little further to shoulder more so that others don't have to take it on or see them hurting. But often it's those people who break the hardest when their limit is finally reached.

Arya stared up at the plaster coated stone of the embassy ceiling. The events of the last twenty four hours played over and over in her mind, threatening to drown out her attempts to rest.

Ajihad was dead. The man everyone had been so sure would lead them to the gates of Urû’baen was gone.

Even after a lifetime of loss, Arya felt Ajihad’s death hit particularly hard.

The man was a genius strategist and unparalleled negotiator. Under his guidance the Varden had not only survived but thrived even as Galbatorix increased his campaign against them.

Unbidden, the memory of the last occasion Arya had spent one on one time with the Varden’s leader crept into her mind.

Still. She could see the questions in his eyes.

With a sudden lurch Arya sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, chest aching.

Keep on keeping on. It’s all we can do.

Resigned to sleep yet still uneasy, the elf subconsciously rolled over in the bed and reached out for the comforting, familiar warmth of Fäolin’s body beside hers.

Her hand fell through open air to land on cold, empty sheets.

Arya’s eyes snapped open.

~~~

Brom rubbed his face, chewing once again on the stem of his empty pipe. Arya had banned him from smoking in the embassy, but he was in no mood leave his room, much less go outside.

Brom growled in quiet frustration. In his opinion a majority of the current Council were a bunch of power hungry, manipulative jackasses.

But still...the Council was an important part of the Varden’s structure. Without them t–

Brom bolted to his feet, chair clattering to the ground as a ragged scream ripped through the embassy. The Rider was out the door and in the hall when a resounding crash followed not a moment later.

Her right hand was limp at her knee, torn and bloodied. Deep bruises already bloomed at her first two knuckles where skin still remained.

A long second passed as Brom kept up the pressure, feeling the silent trembling through the limb until she finally dropped her hand. Arya looked up at him through the tears that streaked her face.

So he did what he had done before. What they both had done. “Don’t hold back, girl. I’m right here.”

Arya shuddered. Squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. But she didn’t resist when Brom pulled her into his arms.

Instead she gave a choked cry, seized a fistful of his shirt, and sobbed hard into his shoulder.

#modern inheritance #inheritance cycle #modern inheritance cycle #modern inheritance story #arya #eragon #brom #saphira #ajihad #arya drottningu #also on my deviantart btw #mic #mi #i promised arya punching walls #brom is everyone's dad

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straightouttaneptune · 5 years ago

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It girl pt. 4 - Superhero debut

Pairing: Mentor!Natasha Romanoff x Mentee!Reader, Platonic!Avengers x reader, Peter Parker x Reader (In the future)

Warning: Reader being a kickass, Peter x Reader is settling in... Not much to warn.

Summary: Natasha had once joked about picking a random new recruit trainee to teach all her skills since Tony had recently become Peter’s mentor. Fury sees this as a legitimate idea, and asks Natasha to choose her protège, code name: “it girl”.

A/N: I’m so sorry it took so long! But it’s finally here, and the reader is on a mission!!! Anyways, it’s been decided that this little series will end with Part 5 or a 6, depending on how long it will be. Enjoy xx

Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5 Part 6

———————————————————————

2 weeks later

“We gotta go to that Stark internship now!” You and Peter told Ned and MJ simultaneously, before rushing out of the campus hand in hand.

“Peter, gimme your backpack.” He tossed his bag to you as you placed his and your bag into a self-navigating drone you pulled out of your pack, the coordinates heading right to the Avengers Compound.

“Alright. Ready?” You turned back at Peter in his spider-man get up, giving him a thumbs up.

He wrapped his arm around your waist, flustering you a little. No matter how many times the two of you did this, the contact with his well-built body always got your heart to pick up its pace. You’d liked Peter ever since he had that crush on Liz, but you’ve never had to suppress your feelings harder than the last few weeks. There were a lot more secrets, touching, grabbing and moments spent together compared to when you were just in the same friend group.

Peter thanked god that his mask covered his obviously red cheeks, and tried his hardest not to stare at your excited, adorable face.

You let yourself feel the cool wind combing through your hair, that drop of your stomach when he lets go of the web to shoot another, the awes and gasps of the people down below and obviously being hugged by Peter.

The two of you land right in front of the door, where Bucky and Sam were bickering at each other again. Something about Sam eating Bucky’s plums again, so now Bucky was going to make Sam mow the entire field.

“Oh hey, kids. Stark, Nat, your kids are here!” Sam yelled into the building, then continued to sass Bucky with arguments that made no sense whatsoever.

“Well, you have cooties, so I saved the plums from Bucky germs. It is safer in my stomach.”

“I hate you. So much.”

You waved goodbye to Peter and rushed up to your room, ready to change into training gear. But as soon as you entered the walk-in-closet, MINT's voice rang through the room.

"Mission gear lock: Deactivated. Welcome, Y/N Y/L/N." Your eyes widened in surprise, rushing to the furthest side of the closet to look at the Mission gear compartment.

To your surprise, the blue shield had been taken down, revealing black combat suits of different uses. The usual one, with all black form-fitting shape, tactical with bullet vests built into the top and knives stored in various places, covert that included zero design and came with a black eye mask, and so on. You pushed the clothes aside to reveal a screen, that asked you to swipe left and scan fingerprint to continue.

You followed the instruction without hesitation, MINT immediately replying with "Authorized personnel. Agent in training, Y/N Y/L/N. Congratulations, Y/N."

You jumped back in surprise as the walls started moving, the clothes that were hung up moved to the other side of the wall to reveal a new one, stacked with weapons and many types of guns.

"What. the. fuck." You mumbled to yourself in astonishment, staring at the various weaponry that seemed too high-tech to even exist on the Earth.

"I see you've already opened my gift." Your head couldn't whip sideways any faster, spotting Natasha standing by the entrance, leaning her shoulder on the doorway. She dressed in her Black Widow suit that you only saw on TV during the NY and Sokovia attacks.

"This is insane. I'm allowed on missions?"

"Only a small mission, with me supervising from the compound, okay?" She held up her finger and gave you a stern look, which you nodded happily to. You were already pumped with adrenaline, ready to take on basically anything.

“Alright. Let’s get you to Fury. Put the one with the... blue design on.” She rummaged through the suits, finally pulling one out. It looked exactly like the ones she wore during the battle of Sokovia, except it looked a little more updated.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, body covered in full-leather or spandex or whatever the material was. You looked good. Even though it was quite the workout to put it on, it felt perfect and comfortable, every inch of the suit hugging you right.

You felt the reinforced shoulder plates, the gun holster on your thigh squeezing lightly, and the best part was, the material was engineered by Tony to make sure whoever wore it, doesn’t sweat out of their minds. The material kept it’s cool even after the workout putting it on, and you didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.

“Alright it girl, let’s go.” Natasha knocked on the closet door before her head poked out. “Grab that gun on your right, and follow me.”

Not even a few hours later, you were dropped off on a lonely hill of god-knows-where in America, left on your own to fend for yourself.

“Agent 13 will only be a few miles away in case anything goes wrong, okay?” You heard Natasha speak into your comms. “And, call me Natashenka on missions. Especially covert ones.”

“Natashenka?”

“Yeah, it’s the Russian nickname for Natasha.”

“Mm, I like it.”

You walked alone for a little while, no enemy or buildings in sight. So it really caught you off guard when a bullet flew straight beside your ear, landing itself in a tree behind you.

You recalled your past training with Natasha, rolling on the ground to find shelter behind a thick tree. Taking out the gun out of your holster, you tried to keep calm as you tried to spot the shooter. You also powered up your shock bracelet just in case.

If you were gonna do this, you were gonna do this right. Kneeling down on one knee, you aimed your gun at the man standing in front of a small army-camp looking building. With a sharp exhale, your fingers pulled the trigger and the bullet flew through the warm summer air.

The bullet buried itself in the guard’s bulletproof vest, knocking him out cold. “Good job, Y/N. But be careful. He’s not dead.”

“I don’t wanna kill anyone!” You whispered into your comms, slowly making your way to the gate. It must’ve been a severely under-staffed base since that guy you took out was the only guard outside.

You stalked into the base, and all you could say was that it looked damaged. It looked very close to collapsing, and you were trusted to retrieve all of the files on the Avengers from this dump.

"Hello, sweetheart. What's a girl like you doing here?" You turned around to face an unexpected number of guards, all standing behind one especially dark, suspicious-looking man.

Your mind rushed to find you a perfect lie to deceive them, so you wouldn't fucking die in there. "Mm. Anastasiya Primanova. Sent from the base in Russia, courtesy of Strucker." You used the thick Russian accent you've heard in movies before, hoping it would sound real. "Y/N? What is going on?" You heard Natasha's frantic voice after you introduced yourself as someone else entirely. You hid the nervous hammering heart behind a cold, dead expression, putting your gun back in the holster. Please buy this, please buy this, please...

"Strucker's dead." He stared at you, inspecting you, but at least he wasn't shooting at you.

"Obviously. I did his dirty bidding. He wrote a will. I was to take over this American base. It's quite the dump. кто ты?" (Who are you?) You used all the techniques in the book, making sure he took you in as 'Anastasiya Primanova', not 'obviously American girl on a mission'. You raised your chin and cocked your head, an unmistakable sign when one is looking down at someone. If you wanted anyone to see you as above them, you had to fake it till you made it.

"Kazimir."

"So, are you going to show me what you've been doing or what?" Your hand rested on the gun in your holster, the other on your hip. He looked like he was conflicted, but in the end, he bought the act. He dismissed the soldiers to go back to their designated posts and signaled you to follow him.

"You shot one of my men." He looked at your side-profile, seemingly still skeptical. But to be fair, that was justified.

"And I'll shoot you too if you keep talking to me." Your pocket knife made a sharp slash sound as you popped it out, looking back at him warningly. "I trained with the Winter Soldiers. Do not try me." Your acting was so on-point, you had to give yourself a pat on the back for it. Threatening him as a first-impression made him fear you, even though he didn't know anything about you. It was simple psychology in the animal psyche, where one learns to fear another if they seem superior to them.

“Oh, my god, Y/N, what are you doing?” A faint panic in Natasha’s voice was evident, but you were improvising.

He took you to every room from floor 1 to sub-levels, and you were down to the last room. Now, you had a perfect image of the whole base in your head. The base was much more complicated than you had thought, it was working perfectly underground even though it looked like a mess on the outside. The Avengers would have to come back to destroy this place.

“This is the archive.” Kazimir scanned his card to show you the inside, before taking off to do whatever evil thing he had on his schedule.

You grabbed his jacket before he could fully walk away, pulling him back forcefully. He showed you a look of hostility, but you paid his resentment no attention.

“Card.” You put out your left palm, and he uneagerly left his card in your hands.

“Thank you.” You eyed him carefully one last time, making sure he had no intention of betraying you or knowledge that you were an imposter. When he only showed bitterness, you let him go.

“Наташенька, I’m in.” You whispered proudly, but discreet in case there were any listening devices or cameras. That was most likely.

“Good job! What was the whole thing with Anastasiya and everything?” She sounded relieved, letting out a small sigh.

“Simple acting... Human psychology... The important thing is, I got the file on the USB.” You stared at the USB in your hand, letting out the breath you didn’t know you were holding in.

“Great. Now, get out of there.”

It was too easy from there. You glared at a couple soldiers on the way, made your way to the elevator and up, and just strolled out of the building. Once you were far enough, you called for the quinjet to take you back in.

“Y/N! Oh god, I was so nervous.” Natasha jumped out of the jet right as the door opened, rushing up to you.

The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and the full realization of what you did started to dawn on you. “I just walked into a HYDRA base, made them think I was their leader and stole confidential files?!” Your organs felt like they were being jumbled up in the washing machine. You felt so dizzy you even had to hold onto Natasha for support.

“Director Fury, Mr. Fury, um, that base, that base was not what you said it was.” You crouched down to sit on the floor of the quinjet, safe and sound on your way back to the compound.

He looked to you curiously, waiting for you to say more.

“There was a place, underground, and hundreds of soldiers. You gotta- you gotta send the Avengers or something in there. There was a room, sub-level 2, where they were doing experimentations on animals, and they said they’ll start-“ You rambled while Natasha sat by your side, her face twisting into various emotions before she set her eyes on Fury with anger.

“We sent her to a fully-operational HYDRA facility?!” She shot up, her eyes wide with rage. Fury appeared more interested in how you went in there and didn’t die.

“You went inside and fooled them all? You saw- no, they guided you through every inch of the place, and you remember it?” He walked over to you, eyes narrowed and tone low.

“Fury!”

“Right. But to be fair, you did a really good job.”

You chuckled, looking up at Natasha who still had a worried look on her face. Her sharp features softened when her eyes met with yours though, seeing how content you looked with yourself.

“Yeah. You did.” She smiled down at you sheepishly, as the quinjet came to a halt in front of the compound. The jet lowered itself on the concrete, FRIDAY’s voice ringing through the speakers. “Destination Arrived.”

A couple days later, practically everyone knew of the ‘it girl’ in the building who fooled over 100 HYDRA men and retrieved inside information and base layout that spies would take weeks to obtain.

You helped Steve make up a strategy for the infiltration, drawing him a map of every exit, every hide-out and all the places to avoid bombing. Sam started to randomly give you high-fives when crossing each other in the hall.

“What’s up, it girl?”

“Not much, Sam.”

*high-fives*

Thor would address you as “Y/N Natashadottier”, completely mistaking the whole Earth’s last-name system. You quite liked it, to be honest. A lot of times you went home to find your mother gone, her things packed with money on the table, clearly gone after your father again. In times like this, you never had anyone when you were younger. But now, you could easily show up at the Avengers Compound, and be welcomed, your room ready for you at all times. So in some ways, Natasha was your undocumented guardian.

Natasha couldn’t be more proud, everyone working in the new SHIELD was buzzing about the ‘it girl’, who was not a mutant, not an enhanced, not a genius, just a high-school girl who reads a lot of psychology books.

Peter also was excited for your big debut in the superhero world, the corners of his eyes crinkling every time someone mentions the ‘it girl’. Tony and Natasha obviously notice this, but they’re keeping quiet to see how fast you’ll get together.

Next chapter: Part 5

Taglist: @mindset-jupiter @fangirlingisajob @theadventurousqueen @gwenmxnstacy @ballerboobitch @the-lady-cersei-lannister @golden--rain @dollofbucky @sakuranomegami @elizabeth-santana-98 @anne2cold @eyeballtoes @marvel-is-a-mood @roseryss @redqueenstorm @orchideax @huntersociopathavenger @petertinglessss @marv-ells @hopefuloperaangelnerd @je11yfishwriter @iloveyou3000morgan @kewl-r @missmulti @grace-barnes-13 @samarcher79 @slow-dance-in-the-dark @intricate-melody @editsbyjenny @brenleestar @a-vvenger @princessizzy36 @sweetcrvture @itsbebeyyy @caws5749 @thenerdiverse

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starlagreene · 5 years ago

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Seven Months

The past seven months have been so hard, and now I’m wondering if it’s all what it’s cracked up to be.

The pain I feel in my heart over all of the things that have transpired weights so heavy on my chest. It’s so hard to breathe. And it’s so hard to think about anything else but this hurt I feel. Even the good can’t outshine the agony I’m in.

How many nights do I have to cry myself to sleep before it gets better? How many times to I have to hope and pray for better before I receive it? Am I so forgotten that no one notices me? Does no one see how much I’m hurting?

Who’s going save me?

The past seven months with you have been the hardest. I don’t know why.

I thought you were saving me. I thought you were healing me. I wanted your embrace and your kiss because the solace I found in you was making me happy again.

At first, you were taking all my broken pieces and fixing them back together.

I think that was the best part. You were doing it all for me and it was making me feel so special and I just knew in my heart I was going to be okay. I felt okay.

For a while.

But then you took a hammer and you just started smashing my heart up again.

I don’t understand what I did to deserve this.

These past seven months have shown me a lot about you.

I’ve never been so emotionally torn about someone. Someone who hurts me and heals me. Someone who helps me and leaves me out to dry. Someone who brings me up and brings me down.

The parts of me that want you know you’re a good guy, but the parts of me that don’t want you are tired of your bull. I haven’t felt so conflicted in my life.

I want to run far, far away from you, but at the same time, I want you to follow me. I want to push you away while you hold me close. I want to turn my head when you try to kiss me, but hope you try again.

You make me crazy.

These past seven months have made me realize it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. It’s a struggle I’m slowly losing. I’m wanting more and more to give up. I don’t want to try anymore.

In these past seven months I’ve learned a lot about love. Love is messy and frustrating and tiresome. And, sometimes, it’s not worth it.

I think I’m better off alone for these next seven months.

#dating #love #heartache #trials

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jjoelswatch · 6 years ago

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Avengers: Endgame spoilers under the cut.

I’ll start this by saying that the movie is about a 8.5 or 9 out of 10 for me, personally, and only one thing really hit it down from being a 10/10. I got in to Marvel about nine or ten years ago, and the first Avengers movie really lured me in for life. I’ve met so many friends through these characters. These characters all mean so much to me because the early parts of this decade were probably my hardest (I hope) in dealing with depression and anxiety, and watching and reading and writing through these various characters’ struggles and victories made my own struggles more bearable. And while I know Marvel movies aren’t ending, for the majority of the characters I’ve come to know and love, their stories on film have come to an end. It’s difficult to not be emotional over it or feel passionate one way or another in how their stories have come to a close. Mostly, I’m just really grateful that someone convinced me to watch Iron Man all those years ago, because I think my life and the people I know and care about would all be very, very different.

With all that being said, here are my not-very-sorted thoughts after two viewings of the film.

What I liked:

That cold open. Man. Chilling.

Nebula and Tony playing that little game in the ship. It showcased really well Tony’s parental aspects and also something Nebula desperately needed (no manipulations, no tricks, just bonding time). I wish we got to see more of those two.

Movie luring you into a false sense of security with Tony and Steve seemingly making amends right after his rescue but then Tony has that mental breakdown and lashes out at Steve. That was raw and painful and so, so good. A quality scene tbh.

Steve leading a survivor’s therapy group. Really trying to live on in Sam’s spirit, I feel.

Steve offering to cook for Natasha.

Scott Lang arriving at the New Avengers compound.

The small, human interactions with Natasha. The scene where she, Tony, and Bruce are lounging around brainstorming and she's like, "if we pick the right time, there's three stones on Earth" and the two smartest Avengers are like :0 whoa she’s right.

On that note, we get to see a vulnerability to Natasha that hasn’t been explored too much. She cries. We learn something about her on Vormir ("Natasha, daughter of Ivan", and then going on to reveal that she never knew her father). We haven't gotten this much personal exploration of her character since Winter Soldier and it was great.

Hulk offering one of his tacos to Scott after he lost his. It was just a small sweet moment.

Testing out time travel. Steve’s deadpan “that’s a baby” really got me.

TIME TRAVEL! When it jumps to that huge ass 2012 text logo my heart of soaring.

Was not expecting that Rumlow and Pierce cameo! That was wild to witness especially because Avengers and Winter Soldier are two very tonally different movies. We get to see the aftermath of Avengers in small, cool ways and it really serves to fill in the gaps. Bonus points for Tony tug-of-warring over the Tesseract with Pierce that was hilarious and reminded me a lot of his demeanor during Iron Man 2 during his hearing with Senator Stern (“You want my property? You can’t have it.”)

Loki mocking Steve and prompting Thor to put the muzzle on him was A+

The nod to the elevator scene (the elevator noise is the exact same as the elevator noise in Winter Soldier; I know this bc I’ve seen the movie 15 times and I’m basically Pavlov’s Dog for CA:TWS). The “hail hydra” moment was awesome, and Steve leaving the elevator with that smirk was so satisfying, but I have questions about that timeline*.

Cap v. Cap. “I can do this all day.” “--I know!”

“America’s ass”. The Avengers just all 100% being on board to Hit That is the team solidarity we need in these dark times.

The sense of utter dread I felt when past!Thanos caught on to their plan. I’ve never felt dread that way before in a movie, maybe not even with Infinity War.

I really wasn’t expecting Natasha’s death. I love/hate how you know from the moment that Natasha and Clint are going to retrieve the soul stone that one of them isn’t making it back. It’s a weird feeling; I’ve felt the feeling of the audience knowing something the characters don’t before, but never quite like this. Clint and Natasha’s struggle over who was to be sacrificed was painful and emotional. It’s also a really good contrast to the scene with Thanos and Gamora in Infinity War. Clint and Natasha’s struggle was truly born out of love (and how cool is it that we got to see the power of the love of friendship so blatantly and barbarically put on show?; “I owe him a debt.”). I really thought Clint was going to die, but was surprised when it was Natasha. Her death is really painful for me and I wish there was a way she didn’t have to die, but she laid down her life for everyone else’s; it’s an honorable death.**

The brief moment post-Hulk!snap. The birds singing. Clint’s wife calling him. It brought a tear to my eye.

Thor, Steve, and Tony all standing together again after four years of being apart or, in some cases, resenting one another. I felt whole again. All of them being in agreement that as long as Thanos is alone, they’re all down to kill him. Thor’s eyes lighting up. The three of them walking towards Thanos. They mean business. What a great moment.

Every time Steve’s shield broke apart piece by piece my anxiety increased by 100%. War flashbacks to Tony’s vision from Age of Ultron; the shield was literally broken apart the exact same way.

That shot of Steve being the last man standing against Thanos and his army was beautiful. I want that as a poster.

I’ve never cried tears of relief the way I did than in the moment I heard Sam’s voice and the portals started opening up. I was 100% sure Steve was going to die just before that and I WAS SPARED. The hope/relief I felt in that moment made me cry so much, and I don’t think that’s something I’ve ever experienced before in any form of media, so that’s a unique experience that’s pretty awesome.

THAT. BATTLE.

"Avengers... assemble." Steve Rogers marry me.

STEVE WIELDING THE HAMMER. Thor: I knew it! Me: bitch me too!

Seeing all those badass Marvel women fall in formation with Carol was awesome, though it hurt a lot to not see Natasha among them. She was the first of all of them (the first we were introduced to, at least).

Valkyrie’s Pegasus!

WANDA! “I don’t even know who you are.” “You will.” And then Thanos telling his army to rain fire because he literally can’t fend off Wanda. Amazing.

Nebula’s story arc was really well done.

“I am inevitable.” [empty metal snap] "And I...am...Iron Man."

I sincerely was not expecting to be as affected by Tony’s death as I was. I still very much so like Tony, but everyone and their mom knows that I reside very happily in Cap’s camp. But holy shit. I was not expecting for Tony to wield the gauntlet, but that’s an amazing moment from the comic books brought to film and I’m so glad they did. The aftermath was horrifically sad, watching Rhodey, Peter, and Pepper gather round him, plus the other Avengers-- Pepper telling him he can rest now and the camera just lingers on his face. I was trying not to hyperventilate cry in the theater the first time, and still cried like a baby the second time. Iron Man was the first Marvel movie I ever saw and the first Avenger I was really a diehard fan of. Tony Stark wielded the infinity gauntlet and saved everyone. From Infinity War; “I hope they remember you.” They will.

Watching Thanos get dusted was so satisfying.

Everyone gathered at Tony’s funeral.

Sam!Cap

The cast roll with the signatures of the main cast touched me quite a bit. Also it’s kind of a nice send off because it literally feels like they’re signing off on their ending contracts.

Literally so much else, but these are what stood out the most to me.

What I didn’t like:

They didn't have to do that to Thor. Does it make sense that Thor would spiral into an alcoholic depression? Yes, absolutely. Did he have to be the butt of every joke because of it? No, not at all. At times he felt like he was plucked out of an SNL skit. I just wished they would have handled that better instead of having him serve as a comic relief device so that the first hour of the film isn't too depressing. Like, how do you go from Thor’s entrance into Wakanda in Infinity War to...Endgame!Thor? It was easier to watch the second time around, but regardless, I wish there were just less jokes about him.

What was the point of Ronin? We got five minutes of seeing him in the Ronin suit and doing Ronin things for what purpose? I get that he’s suffering with the loss of his family and it’s meant to illustrate how much he’s been damaged by it, but it kind of seemed pointless overall. Otherwise no complaints about Clint.***

Rhodey taking care of Morgan Stark at the end of Tony’s funeral instead of Happy would have been a nice touch. I’m not very bothered by this one tbh, I’m cool with it, but that’s his best friend.

Steve going back in time to be with Peggy. I really don’t like it. It felt like such obvious fanservice to Steve/Peggy fans and it’s just like...let Peggy go. On second viewing it does seem like Bucky knows from the very start what Steve might do, or that they even discussed it beforehand, but I also feel like Bucky would have told him to not be a damn idiot and come back to them. He also literally bounces right after his friend’s funeral, after a conversation about how Hulk really misses Natasha/how he tried to bring her back with the snap, to which Steve says “I do too/I know”...then....peaces out. Also, I’m not going to sit here and say that Age of Ultron did too much for Steve’s character, but we danced this dance before and learned that it’s the Avengers that are Steve’s family and future. And it’s not just in Age of Ultron that this is hammered home; the conflict in Civil War works because the Avengers are his family. Saving Bucky at the expense of losing his found family wouldn’t matter if this wasn’t the case. It feels regressive to attempt to say otherwise in this movie, especially one where some of Steve’s best development was done by the same directors.

Asterisks/Questions Unanswered/Misc.:

* So in this timeline, Steve fought himself. He told his 2012 self that Bucky was still alive, he made himself seem affiliated with Hydra during the elevator scene in order to get the Tesseract. This isn’t the timeline in which the team gets their hands on the Tesseract, so...this universe still exists because they botched it. When Steve goes back in time to return the stones to their proper timelines, it’s returned to the 1970s, not 2012. So what happens to this universe as a result of that fumble? This would be cool to explore.

** When Steve has to return all the infinity stones to their proper places in time, what happens when you seek to return the soul stone instead of take it? Could Natasha have been brought back this way? I have so many questions. Also, I’d be curious to see Steve’s reaction to seeing the Red Skull as the gatekeeper of the soul stone.

On that note, why was there such an emphasis placed on the soul stone in Infinity War? Saying there’s a certain wisdom to it compared to the other infinity stones. What was that weird soft red void Thanos was in with younger Gamora right after the snap? Why wasn’t any of this followed up on in Endgame?

*** What was the point of the Ronin situation if not to incriminate him enough that it would have been right to allow Clint to sacrifice himself on Vormir?

Can you imagine that your significant other got snapped and 5 years go by and you’ve moved on and perhaps fallen in love with someone else...and then your dead wife/husband returns? Awkward. There has to be some sort of reality TV show in the MCU universe that deals with that. I’d watch that.

The Fornite scene with Thor & co. truly establishes a depressing future where all the game developers got snapped and now all we have is Fornite.

#avengers spoilers #endgame spoilers #long post is long but here it is what you've all been waiting for i'm sure: my very specific thoughts

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years ago

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Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five (29.41% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twelve.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

No matter how many times I watch this, I’m always surprised by how excellent it is. If any other future Marvel film wants to be ‘the best’, this is the movie it has to beat for the title.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha asks about the ballistics on the weapon used against Fury, and Maria responds. I’ve heard people argue that Natasha was not asking Maria specifically and therefore this does not count, but since Natasha clarifies a detail of Maria’s response (to which Maria responds again in order to confirm), I definitely think it qualifies. I have allowed a pass for far, far less in the past.

Female characters:

Natasha Romanov.

Peggy Carter.

Maria Hill.

Sharon Carter.

Renata.

Male characters:

Steven Rogers.

Sam Wilson.

Brock Rumlow.

Georges Batroc.

Jerome.

Jasper Sitwell.

Nick Fury.

Alexander Pierce.

Aaron.

Arnim Zola.

Senator Stern.

Bucky Barnes.

OTHER NOTES:

They start this movie by having Steve go for a jog and make a new friend, with a conversation ensuing that is by touches casual, light, humorous, insightful, serious, and sobering. It’s a pretty weird way to launch a much-anticipated superhero comic-adaptation action movie sequel, to be honest, but it’s also rock-solid character establishment - for the never-before-seen Sam Wilson, and for Steve Rogers whose mental state and coping skills in the modern era are kinda an open question at this point - and by getting us on level with Steve’s day-to-day (rather than Captain America’s, which comes after) they’ve immediately prepped us for a story in which this character confronts and reassesses who he is and what he stands for at a core level, and not just in a symbolic/legacy kind of fashion (a la Tony Stark). It may say ‘Captain America’ on the tin, but this is Steven Rogers’ story. This is a fantastic and well-condensed first three minutes of this film, before they fly off to deliver the action sequence we may well have expected to have received up-front.

Oh yeah, also this opening scene involves jogging around the Washington Monument, which is not a subtle detail, but I can dig it. If they’d had Steve draw attention to some Major American Landmark at some point in the movie and make a patriotic declaration of some kind, then I’d cry foul, but as-is the use of Washington DC as a setting is the hardest they bother to hammer the AMERICA button. The absence of self-fellating patriotism which I appreciated so much in the first film continues to be a virtue in this one. I do dig.

Remember how I really love it when people get hit and fly off the screen? Steve just kicked a dude off a boat and I made the dorkiest ‘hee hee!’ noise ever. Sure am glad the only reason anyone knows about that is that I just told y’all, and not because anyone actually heard me.

One day, we’ll stop getting these kinds of gratuitous butt shots of female characters in tight clothes. But it sure ain’t this day.

In a world of equal-opportunity sexualisation, this Cap-butt would be forgiveness enough for the aforementioned offense. But it still sure ain’t that day, friends.

Other reasons to love that opening scene: they low-balled Sam’s counseling skills to us by having him quickly identify the best way to speak to Steve and to engage with him (as Steve, again, not as Captain America; that’s the key), and that’s what allows Steve to bond with him enough that, put in a tight spot and not sure who to trust, he shows up on Sam’s doorstep later in the film. Really tight characterisation and dynamic-building.

ALSO, Steve’s adventure to the Captain America museum exhibit reminds us all of what he’s lost - specifically, Bucky Barnes - and contextualises his encounters with Sam Wilson within the emotional landscape of Steve’s desire for close male companionship, highlighting the need which compels the formation of that bond while also accentuating the sense of Steve’s present isolation and uncertainty, robbed of any understanding confidante (the bittersweet reality of having Peggy Carter still alive, but losing herself to Alzheimer's, really hits that one home). Again, Steve’s emotional landscape is actually a vital part of the story of the film on both character and plot levels, so there’s a LOT of great show-don’t-tell demonstration in the interconnections of all these scenes, PLUS they’re doing the good work for all the other characters involved AND reminding the audience of the score so that the film can continue to draw from the past as the movie continues, without losing any viewers for whom this might be the first foray into the Captain America story. This movie is just...really well put together, guys. It’s a little shocking, how good it is.

Winter Soldier intro is too cool. Not a pun.

Steve takes a chance and asks his neighbour out for coffee; she declines with a soft no; he accepts even-tempered and assures her he won’t trouble her any further, and she lets him know that he’s no trouble and there’s no hard feelings. It’s all a very painless and respectful navigation of boundaries, and taken on face value (ignoring the part where she turns out to be an undercover SHIELD agent, and everything which unfolds from there), it’s a welcome example of how easy it is to take rejection graciously. Guys, be the Steve Rogers that women want to see in the world.

I want a metal arm. I don’t want to not have my current arms, they’re fine, but in an abstract version of the world where you have things purely for cool points, I want a metal arm.

The fight choreography in this film is great. It’s good watchin’.

Also the soundtrack is top-end.

“...Specimen.”

The movie didn’t need a hetero kiss thrown in there, though. I sure wish there wasn’t a random kiss in there.

“The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it.”

Urgh, why Senator Stern gotta show up, be a pig about women, make his little Nazi declaration, and leave? The answer is, he really doesn’t gotta. You know what’s good shit? Not using misogyny and objectification of women to demonstrate that a bad guy is a bad guy, unless it’s actually a relevant part of the story. One day...

I can’t deal with how cool the Winter Soldier is. I’m almost embarrassed by how much the whole Silent Sauntering Assassin thing works for me.

Sam Wilson brings a tiny knife to a gunfight and still gets the upper hand because he’s perfect.

THE FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHYYYYY

The Winter Soldier is barely in the film in the first hour, and Bucky is referenced in the museum but not discussed by any of the characters, so there’s no lantern hanging on either the mystery of the Winter Soldier’s identity or the conspicuous reminder of a supposedly dead character (another reason why tying the memory of Bucky in so tightly with Steve’s present state of comfortless seclusion is important and clever). If you somehow managed not to be spoiled for it already, the Bucky reveal is a real kicker of a twist.

The degree to which I adore Sebastian Stan’s attention to detail in his performance has increased tenfold since The First Avenger. Dude has got nuances on his nuances.

The part of me that is emotionally susceptible to heroism is very moved by all the nameless SHIELD agents who stand up to HYDRA and die for it.

I join the rest of the world in being really disappointed that what appeared to be Jenny Agutter’s councilwoman kicking Strike Team ass was actually just Black Widow. Sorry Natasha.

The Winter Soldier shows up and murderises a heap of pilots, and the part of me that is susceptible to heroism finds itself in conflict with the part that is susceptible to the Winter Soldier’s ineffable coolness (which is itself at odds with the part of me that wants Bucky Barnes to be safe and happy). This movie got me good.

Rumlow talkin’ some shit about pain and Sam’s just like “Man, shut the Hell up,” and it’s perfect. I love him.

I love this film. I mean I really, really love it. Like, I mean this is one of my favourite movies in the world. Like, if we were playing that ol’ game of ‘if you had to pick ten movies, and those were the only movies you were allowed to watch for the rest of your life’, this would be one of my ten movies. That’s how much I love this film. There’s so much to get into here, so much to enjoy: it’s light and easily-digestible enough for when you just want to be entertained by something that doesn’t demand too much from you, but it also has serious depths for when you’re in the mood to dig in. It has well-crafted action scenes, but also a strong plot with powerful emotional currents. It has wonderful, charismatic actors playing intriguing characters, and most of them are good eye candy, but none of them are just eye candy - there’s a lot of complexity to unravel in the motivations and personal narratives of the leads. It’s a superhero movie, sure, but it’s also a political spy thriller. And, to top it off, it’s not only an excellent stand-alone film, it’s also a fantastic example of how to do a sequel right.

Sequel-making can be a fraught business; you’ve got sequels that are basically just pointless retreads of the original, sequels that are so different they hardly count as sequels at all, sequels that are so busy trying to be ‘bigger and better’ than the original they become ridiculous, sequels so busy attempting to capitalise on the spectacle of the original that they forget to have any of the same heart that gave the original meaningful impact, sequels that ignore that the original had a plot and themes and that maybe that stuff was relevant to its success, etc, etc...there are lots of great sequels in the world, certainly, but as Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World already attested for the MCU, it is very, very easy for sequels to go wrong. For this film, I think it goes without saying that I feel they passed all of the above sequel-killing quality tests with flying (low-key red-white-and-blue) colours, hence my adoration. But, just for kicks, lets talk about how they did it.

For starters, you can pretty much guarantee that this isn’t gonna be a pointless retread of Captain America: The First Avenger, since this movie takes place seventy years later and there are certain essential world elements that have fundamentally changed, such as technology, characters, and the fact that WWII ended a good while previous. But, that’s exactly how they make this story work as a sequel: they use the nature of change to give the film its shape, thematically, politically, emotionally, and in doing so they assure that everything which is different in the present builds directly from the past. Steve Rogers has not fundamentally changed, and that’s a critical anchor, considering he’s the titular character and all, but he is in a state of flux due to everything else that has changed, and his doubts inform the narrative landscape. This is not the world he remembers, and yet, as the plot unfolds and he digs into the conspiracy at his feet, there’s plenty there that is hauntingly familiar, because this is a story about how the past is still alive and kicking in the present, it has just updated to keep with the times.

It’s worth noting that despite Captain America making the jump from the forties to the modern age without any stop-offs in between, the film doesn’t linger on or wallow in the differences in his world in any strict sense - even Steve himself (in that EXTREMELY well-crafted opening scene with Sam) is somewhat dismissive of the specifics, because he’s not dwelling on the oh-woe-things-have-changed, he’s just trying to get his head around it, adapt, and move forward (and the practical realities are easy enough, but the emotional facets? Yeah). The thing is of course, no one else shares this problem with Steve; they’ve all been around, variously, for the parts in between, and the story is still concerned with the context of the world which made all of its characters what they are, and particularly with the war that came after WWII, the war within which HYDRA reseeded and began to grow anew: the Cold War. In particular, it’s the ‘70s/’80s era Cold War, built into the political-thriller superstructure of the film itself and driven home most overtly by the Winter Soldier, heavily Russian-coded and steeped in the potent psychological horror of brainwashing, but there are other signifiers littered across the story as well. There’s former-KGB agent Black Widow, and the reference she makes to WarGames, and there’s Arnim Zola frozen in time by the ancient computer system which now acts as his ‘brain’, and then there’s the stroke of subversive genius in the casting of Robert Redford - the positively Captain America-esque blue-eyed-blond hero of many a seventies Cold War political thriller - as our primary villain, working within the United States government for the benefit of his secret European-originating agenda in true foreign-infiltration style. Of course, we can adapt all of this to fit the radicalised terrorism and technological paranoia of modern times (and those elements are alive and well in the text with the surveillance-state fears represented by the helicarriers), but the historical timestamping is important to the trajectory of the film; times change and things grow increasingly subtle and complicated, but the core dilemmas that call people out to fight are instantly familiar. In that sense, Steve Rogers hasn’t missed much at all.

The war that calls Cap to arms this time around may be more subtle than the openly-fought battlefields of WWII, but it is no less global or insidious; the new ‘improved’ HYDRA may not be led by a literal Nazi who peels off his own face, but the cold political calculations of Alexander Pierce are much more frightening for their realism (an aspect of the film which has become increasingly prescient for the modern era since the movie was released), and the fascist supremacist dogma that compels these villains to attempt to reshape the world with the blood of millions is drawn from the same poisoned well; this is an escalation of the same enemy that Captain America faced before, only much closer to home. And while the passage of time has benefited the old evils in allowing them to entrench and fester and craft re-branded, more socially-accepted versions of themselves, it has not been so favourable to the positive familiar things from Steve’s past: it has claimed Peggy’s memory, and rotted SHIELD beyond recovery. And then, there’s what it’s done to Bucky Barnes.

Fake-out character deaths are a major staple of the superhero/comic genre, and not one I love, since it tends to take the power out of apparent-death scenes and leaves the drama feeling contrived, and while the Bucky reveal is not entirely free from that cynicism, it sells itself well on delivery. For starters, it packs a wallop in additional drama instead of just neatly undoing that which already existed (Nick Fury’s ‘death’ and reveal, on the other hand, is more in the classic line of cheap and inconsequential), and it ups the personal stakes for Steve in exactly the same way as Bucky’s ‘death’ did in The First Avenger. Crucially, the fact that Bucky is the Winter Soldier doesn’t alter the wider narrative in any convenient way, such as providing Captain America with the key to stopping him or resolving the other conflicts of the plot through his connection; the Bucky reveal reconnects the story to Steve’s emotional journey, which is exactly where it started before Shit Got Crazy - there’s a good reason they spent the first half hour of the movie on charting Steve’s mental state. There’s a sharp division between Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier, despite them both inhabiting the same form, and it’s a mirror of the division between Steve Rogers and Captain America: regardless of all assumptions to the contrary, the two are mutually exclusive entities. ‘Captain America’ is not a person, he’s a symbol, and he’s manipulable in that way, he can be propagandised, his image and actions are a tool turned to the purposes of others at the expense of the human underneath; Steve recognises this (and has since the first film), and he holds this secondary persona at a remove and does not define himself through it. This is what Sam’s keen social instincts pick up so quickly in the beginning: treating Steve as Captain America is the wrong approach, it fails to connect, because Steve is not the uniform, Steve has doubts, Steve could give up the shield; Steve is a person. Bucky doesn’t have the same luxuries, in opportunities, in company, or in the cognizant ability to define his own identity, but even without the personal attachment of their history, Steve is uniquely positioned to understand the difference between the Winter Soldier and the person buried beneath the title. If it was not Bucky, specifically, the visceral emotion of the mirrored experience wouldn’t land quite as strong, but either way the Winter Soldier is the realisation of Steve’s deep-seated fear of being made a puppet, an unthinking enforcer too heavily indoctrinated into patriotic subservience to recognise the despotism that has replaced his idealism.

I said at the top that this is, ultimately, a Steven Rogers story to which ‘Captain America’ is an accessory, and not the other way around, and that’s a fact at the heart of what makes this film work - on its own, and as a sequel. The fore-fronting of Steve as a character in his own right and not just ‘Captain America’s real name’ was key to avoiding any cloying patriotism overriding the narrative of the first film, and it’s doubly important now as both Steve and the Captain America brand re-situate outside of their original context. It’s easy to strip back the specific trappings of Captain America and still have this movie function just right, because for all the action and intrigue, it is essentially a character piece about Steve Rogers figuring out his place in the world and reclaiming the moral compunctions which have been presumptuously attributed to the lofty symbol of his alter ego, and not the struggling reality of everyday life. Captain America is what he is and how he is not because it sounds good or because it makes for positive PR or because it’s nice to have legends from the good ol’ days; Captain America is the embodiment of scrappy little Steve Rogers’ grit and determination to live up to what he believes in, come Hell or high water or the gravest of consequences. Steve begins the film at odds with himself, unsure if there’s a place for his shameless idealism within the mess of modern life; he’s going through the motions of being Captain America, but he’s uncertain of what it means to him at this point, or where it’s headed. He finishes the film having gained something vital: a mission, but it’s not a professional job for Captain America, it’s a personal mission for Steve Rogers, and that’s much more important. Captain America is just an idea; Steve Rogers is the reason it matters, no matter what war, what time, what place, or what flag.

#MCU #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Captain America: The Winter Soldier #Bechdel Test #female representation

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takingcourage · 6 years ago

Text

A Vision of Sunset

A Desire and Decorum Gothic AU (Part 4 of 4)

All previous parts can be accessed through my Masterlist

Pairing: Harper x MC

Word Count: 4,025

Summary: A mysterious ally has come to Helena’s aid. Chaos ensues, and the fate of Edgewater hangs in the balance.

Author’s Note: My warning about needing to suspend your disbelief is about to become pertinent, dear reader. As a realist, I fully acknowledge that gothic tropes aren’t very plausible -- but goodness, they make for compelling stories! Thanks for reading this far and for putting up with my first attempt to write genre fiction. I’ve had an absolute blast!

Even with her mouth unbound, Helena was still unable to make any sound in that moment. The sight before her rendered her entirely speechless.

Her rescuer, a tall, lean man with chestnut curls, was not the stranger she had believed him to be after all. She still did not know his identity, but the connection between them was undeniable -- a link more tangible than the tenuous attachment of a dream.

He strode into the stables with confidence, hand resting on the pommel of his smallsword as he took stock of the Duke and his men. Their attention drawn by the newcomer’s presence, all three turned away from Helena, their backs stiffening in anticipation of conflict.

“If it isn’t Lord Harry, back from the dead!”

The duke’s words turned Helena’s blood to ice. Her brother, alive? She squinted at the man in question, wondering just how hard she had fallen when she had swooned an hour before. Yet, how else could the familiarity be explained?

“You know me well, Duke Richards. And you will understand that I don’t take kindly to your invasion of my home, nor your assault on my sister.” He turned to Helena then, greeting her with a roguish smile.

She could do little more than stare back at him, agape.

“It just so happens that I’ve been spoiling for a fight,” Harry confided, easing his way toward the three men. “And I think your actions are ripe incentive for drawing swords.”

Fully engrossed by the sight before her, Helena startled at the sensation of sudden pressure on her shoulder. She shifted, catching a glimpse of black jacket in her periphery. Her gasp came involuntarily.

“Shh,” Luke urged her, his fingers working quickly to dissolve the knots that held her fast. “You should return to the house, Helena. Even with Lord Harry here, things are likely to take a nasty turn.”

Before them were the escalating voices of confrontation, though the four men had not yet come to blows.

Despite his warning, she could not swallow back the question that rose in her throat. “How is he alive?”

“There is little time to explain now.” The last of the bands had fallen loosely to the floor, but he still held one wrist between his gentle hands.

Helena turned toward him on the stool, stomach clenching at the sight of the swollen lump at his temple. She raised her free hand to cautiously trace the purpling skin, wincing at the broken skin beneath her fingers.

He continued under his breath, “I only found out minutes ago when he roused me.” He stepped back with great effort. “If you are well enough to run, you should go back to the house.”

“I would fight beside you.”

The tension in his face softened as he noticed the set of her jaw, and his eyes grew tender. “I have no doubt of that, Helena. But if it comes to the worst, I would not have you here to witness it.”

Even as the words left his mouth, their ears were met with the metallic rush of sword being drawn from scabbard. Luke sprang to action, preparing his own weapon as he entered the fray.

Having been freed from her perch, Helena followed close behind. She scanned the building sharply, eager to find anything that she might use as a weapon. Her eyes lighted on a shovel that one of the stable boys had left behind from mucking stalls. The same heady feeling that had overwhelmed her senses as she ran came to her once again.

Helena took the implement from its place against the wall with every ounce of determination that eluded her over the past weeks. Now that her course had been decided, she channeled everything she had into bringing it to pass.

Luke had already pulled the duke’s attention away from Harry, but the two accomplices remained trained on her half brother. Shovel weighing heavily in her grasp, Helena approached the three men, carefully tracking each of their movements.

The taller man lunged toward Harry, but her brother parried effortlessly and answered with an attack of his own. Her eyes narrowed at the short man’s stance. She didn’t know what he was planning, but what he lacked in strength, he made up for in speed.

Fortunately, she shared much the same advantage, and managed to strike down his sword with the head of the shovel before he even realized that she had entered the fight. He tried again to lift his weapon, but she swept the implement beneath his legs, catching him off balance.

He regained his footing, regarding her open-mouthed as she held his gaze with defiance. Helena took a small step back, leading him toward the open floor at the middle of the building. The man took her challenge, abandoning his partner in pursuit of this new opponent.

It occurred to her that, of the six of them, she was the least likely to suffer harm in the brawl. Although she had taken no training in any form of combat, it was unfathomable that the duke would allow her to come to serious physical harm. Therefore, if she wanted to distract this man, she would have to be the one to strike first. It was imperative that she keep him away from Luke and Harry, no matter how much she disliked violence.

Helena shifted her hands to the center of the handle, wary of her opponent’s capable stance. He looked competent -- certainly more assured of his place than she.

How is one to fight with a shovel? Unfortunately, her mind offered no answer to the query.

“Are you Cyrus?” she inquired, remembering the name the duke had mentioned before. She paired the question with a wide stroke at the man’s legs.

He sidestepped and lowered his weapon in defense. “I am.”

“And you have been spying on me?” Helena stabbed toward his chest, allowing ample time for him to dodge the blow.

Cyrus evaded confidently. “The duke paid me to keep a watch on the stables and report back to him.” He lowered the sword by a hair, relaxing his grip under Helena’s keen eye.

Just a little further, she urged herself, taking another step back.

He followed again, eyeing her as if awaiting a response.

“And you were only too happy to do his dirty work for him, I suppose.” Her indignance, having been forgotten in all that had occurred since her conversation with the Duke, came again to the fore. Helena lowered the shovel to her side, but held on steadily with both hands.

He cocked an eyebrow in consideration. “I must say, I got a pretty good show out of it this morning.” The guffaw that accompanied his words proved her undoing.

Forcing down a rush of anger at the man’s admission, she adjusted her grip, bringing her right hand just higher than her left on the long handle. “I’ll thank you not to pry into my business anymore.” Her words were calculated, but the fire behind them left her trembling.

If the man took notice of her movement, he did not react. Seizing her chance, Helena swung with lightning speed, clipping him with the breadth of the shovel’s head. She recoiled at the sound her weapon made on contact with his skull, whispered apologies passing her lips instinctively at the sight of the man who lay before her.

Cyrus, at least, was incapacitated.

She then took stock of what was happening around her. Harry was managing skillfully, though she feared the sweat on his brow was a show of strain. Much to her dismay, Duke Richards was proving an abler swordsman than she had anticipated. Luke kept pace with him without great effort, but she could take little comfort as long as the fight continued. Perhaps if I can sneak up on the duke, I can catch him by surprise...

Just as she was considering her next move, several things happened at precisely the same moment. Mr. Marlcaster stormed in from the side entrance to the stables, his hasty footsteps pounding through Helena’s ears. Harry’s opponent fell to his knees, neck bare before the man who had bested him. The duke, having cornered Luke into an empty stall, threw down his sword and drew something from beneath his coattails.

Helena inched closer to the duke, heart hammering wildly against the hollow of her chest. Rounding the corner of the stall, the beating stopped altogether.

Between his hands, Duke Richards held a pistol trained on Luke.

Mr. Harper faced his opponent bravely, eyes glinting more with anger than fear at his opponent’s boasts. “You were a fool to underestimate me, stable boy. Helena will be mine. I only regret that you won’t be around to see it.”

Helena’s stomach roiled, her temples throbbing with the rush of blood. She adjusted her grip on the shovel and prepared to deliver the hardest blow she was capable of.

“You mangy cur!”

There was a pause before she identified where the shout had come from, and her eyes bulged when they lighted on Marlcaster’s reddened face.

Changing targets, the duke whirled round. “Has the milksop decided to become a real man, Mr. Marlcaster? You always have been your mother’s puppet,” he derided. Helena could not see his face, but she heard the menacing smile in his voice.

“Not anymore,” her stepbrother replied, facing down the older man with steely nerve. His sword was at the ready, but there was too great a distance between them for him to prove any immediate threat.

“It’s a pity. You’d have come out of this much better off if you’d listened to her.”

Marlcaster took the bait, eyes flaming as he charged the duke.

Helena’s warning shout was lost in the deafening sound of flint hitting frizzen.

The space between the spark and the firing was momentary, but it seemed a lifetime to Helena.

In a blur, Luke descended on Duke Richards, his sword passing through the man’s side with sickening ease. The lead projectile sent down a rain of splintered wood from the ceiling, and gun clattered from the duke’s grip as he collapsed to the stone floor.

Ears ringing, Helena dropped the shovel and took several steps forward. Even from several feet away, she could see that the body had fallen into an unnatural position. The features of the duke’s face were twisted in a horrific mockery of the smile that had haunted so many of her nightmares.

Luke stepped in to shield her, enveloping her in his arms as his broad chest heaved steadying breaths.

“Is he…?” Helena managed once her voice had returned.

“The duke will never harm you again,” he promised against her hair. Helena sagged into him, fingers grasping tight against the stiff fabric of his jacket. She forgot the world around them until Harry’s quiet cough reminded her that they were not alone. Too shaken even to blush, she pulled away from Luke and looked to her brothers.

Marlcaster’s face was ashen, his shoulders shuddering with each intake of air. “Thank you.”

Luke nodded solemnly at the soft utterance, still angling himself between Helena and the body. “What are we to do with the others?”

She cringed at Cyrus’s prostrate form. The other man had fared better, it seemed. He was still conscious, at least, having surrendered the fight in Harry’s favor.

“They’re just a pair of tavern goers looking to earn some coin. I doubt they’ve done anything of their own accord.”

Helena nodded, grateful for Harry’s mercy. Looking between her brothers, she realized that Edmund, while shaken, remained entirely unfazed by Harry’s arrival. She could think of only one possible explanation. “How long have you been keeping this secret?”

The surprise on Edmund’s face told her that she had guessed correctly even before the answer followed. “A matter of weeks. I will tell you all, but this is hardly the time or place.”

Before they could converse further, the main door burst open to reveal a bevy of servants. Helena made out Briar’s shouts before she saw her friend’s face. In a moment, the woman was prattling at her side, prodding her arms and legs with fingers inquisitive for signs of injury.

“We must get you to the house, Helena,” Briar insisted against her lady’s many protestations.

Helena tried to find Luke within the crowd, but it seemed that he too had been swallowed by the tumult. Too exhausted to fight further, she allowed Briar to lead her out through the drizzling rain.

Haggard as Helena had felt when climbing into bed, new vigor came with daybreak. The storm of the night before had broken, and streams of mid-morning sunlight illuminated the room around her as she stirred. In spite of all, the dull pain at her wrists was the only trace to speak for the events of the night before.

The memories rushed back to her at once, falling into a pattern that she could only begin to discern. Her brother was alive -- but how? Would he take kindly to her presence or send her back to Grovershire? Would he force her to marry into some other noble house now that the duke was no longer a prospect? Could she still arrange to marry Mr. Chambers if all else failed? Her mind dizzied with questions, and she was grateful when Briar arrived and put an end to her solitary musings.

Harry and Edmund were already seated around the breakfast table when she went to take her meal, but the other women of the house appeared to remain abed. Helena supposed they were still recovering from the shocks that had interrupted their rest during the night.

If her Lady Grandmother’s immediate response was any indication, Helena thought it very unlikely that the lady would ever cease mourning about the duke. Her distress at Duke Richard’s death was unmatched even by her surprise at the appearance of the grandson all had thought lost.

The countess, for her part, had been more caring toward Harry than Helena would ever have anticipated. There had been genuine tears in her eyes when Harry had embraced her at the bottom of the stairs the night before. As much anger as Helena had harbored toward the woman these past months, she could not help but be affected by sight of the mother and son’s reunion.

Brushing a stray hair from her eyes, Helena found a seat across from Harry. The three exchanged pleasantries as she began spreading preserves over a slice of bread. She had to force her hand to remain balanced under the weight of questions that poured into her mind. One, at least, she knew Mr. Marlcaster could satisfy.

“What was the reason for your secrecy?”

Edmund accommodated her after he’d taken a generous measure of tea. “When I found Harry, he was not himself. It seemed foolish to raise everyone’s hopes if they were only to be dashed again. I thought it best to hide him away in the attic, where he could take tinctures and proper rest...although I think you have discovered this already.”

Helena’s cheeks reddened at the revelation. It seemed at least some of her mistrust in the countess had been unfounded.

By turns, her brothers unfolded the rest of the story. Unbeknownst to her, Harry’s body had disappeared after being laid out for burial, but the disgrace of having had body snatchers on the grounds of Edgewater kept the family from calling for restitution. Harry, of course, had not been stolen, but had woken in the night, badly disoriented and confused. A family had taken him in and cared for him in the interim, but his returning memories had prompted him to seek the estate. Marlcaster had intercepted him there little more than a month before and had smuggled him into the house.

“And the noise that I heard two nights ago?” It was the one point of the narrative which remained unanswered.

Harry’s laugh caught her off guard, pleasant as it was to hear. “The sound that brought you to the attic? It was a howl of wind, and nothing more. The attic has always been full of the worst kinds of noises, especially in these storms. It’s a terrible place for a man to recover.” He glared at man responsible for his lodgings with mock severity.

Edmund laughed at the ribbing, and Helena couldn’t help smiling at the jovial exchange between brothers. It was clear that, whatever maladies had afflicted him before, Harry was now well and fully capable of resuming his role as their father’s heir.

Helena looked up to find Harry’s blue eyes on her, radiating the same warmth that she had seen in her father’s gaze so many times. The similarities stole her breath and sent a sharp pang of longing through her.

Harry pulled her back to the present with a half-smile. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have a sister, Helena. And from everything I have seen and heard, I’m even happier that the sister is you.”

Helena returned his smile, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat. She could not have asked for a better welcome, yet so much still felt uncertain. Her left hand ventured to her skirts, fumbling to grasp something that could not change.

“And above all, I want to assure you of your place here. While I expect to be recognized once more as our father’s heir, Edgewater is much better for having you. If you are content to remain with us, I swear that you will never lack for anything.”

Her grip on the coin tightened and she dodged his gaze. As much as she wanted to accept the offer, she could not deceive him. “Your kindness means a great deal…” Helena breathed slowly, uncertain how to continue. “But I’m afraid I am not suited for the life of a noble lady.”

His teacup clinked softly into its saucer, the noise prompting Helena to lift her eyes from the table. “I have seen how often you visit the stables, Helena, as well as how attentive Mr. Harper has been toward you. If I am not mistaken, there is an understanding between the two of you.”

“I had hoped to marry him,” she confirmed.

“I would not turn you away. Either of you,” he specified, boring into her with a meaningful stare. “And if anyone takes offense, I’ll have them thrown into the lake.”

In her relief, words were not enough to affect a response. Instead, she forsook the table and threw her arms around Harry’s neck, biting her cheek to keep the tears from falling. For the first time since her father had died, Edgewater again felt like home.

At evening, she at last had opportunity to find Luke in the stables. Save for the missing length of ceiling beam, all traces of the night before had been cleared away. Still, Helena shuddered at the patch of neatly-swept flagstones in front of the empty stall. Was he really dead? It seemed impossible that so much chaos could be restored to order.

Helena fell into step alongside Luke as he finished turning the horses in for the night. “They all look so content,” she mused, unable to resist bestowing special attentions on Clover. The animal’s soulful eyes went on staring until she produced the desired sugar from her pocket.

“The time outside today has done them a world of good.” Luke nodded toward her horse. “Clover missed you this afternoon. She’s come to expect you.”

“I hated to disappoint her. I did try to get away, but it was as if everyone in the house had been consumed with madness. We were writing letters and talking of social events all afternoon -- everything has been in an uproar.” She stole a glance at Luke, her heart warming as it always did at the sight of him. "Either way, I would have much preferred to be here with you.”

Closing the door to the final stall, Luke turned his full attention toward the woman in front of him. “And are you well, in spite of all?” “I’m better than I have been in many weeks,” she beamed. “I still cannot believe that Harry is alive. Nor that he is so like my father --” she had to cut the sentiment short to keep her emotions at bay.

“I have not had opportunity to know him well, but I will be forever grateful for his aid last night. I do not dare think what might have happened if he hadn’t woken me.”

“Nor do I.” Helena sobered for a brief moment, but was too consumed by her joy to remain so. “I can tell we’re all going to get on very well. I cannot believe that Edmund managed to hide him away for so long without anyone knowing.”

“Aye. And that explains the poison that you found, I suppose?”

She affirmed with a decisive nod. “Now, since it’s such a lovely evening, would you walk with me?” she requested simply, smiling demurely at the curious gleam in his eyes.

Luke brushed an errant curl from her forehead as he considered her face. “Of course.”

It had been so long since either of them had spent time out of doors, that it took some time to adjust to the sensations around them. Helena could never have predicted that a mild, sunny day might feel so unearthly, but the feeling of sunlight on her skin sent a shiver along the center of her spine.

When they came to the lake, she tugged at Luke’s arm to guide him to a seat on the wooden bench. Blue sky stretched before them, dappled with harmless wisps of cloud. The sun itself was making its descent, attended by strokes of the deepest orange that either of them had ever seen. Discerning the trails of vibrant red and purple, Helena laid her head against his shoulder in deep contentment.

“So,” he began, taking her fingers between his own, “our plans have been foiled again. Where shall we go from here?”

“I thought you might have guessed by now,” she teased gently. “Harry will inherit and I will be free to marry you. And to remain at Edgewater, if we so choose.”

Squeezing his hand as she shifted closer toward him, she briefly considered how strange it was that failure could lead to an even better outcome than the one she’d spent weeks hoping for.

His silence lasted but a moment. “We may marry outright? Without need for a marriage of convenience?”

Helena pulled away so she could look him in the face. The setting sun reflected brilliantly against the flecks of green in his eyes, and her heart clenched at the vulnerability of his gaze.

“Harry has given his full support, and the Countess is so pleased to have him back that even she does not protest against it. If my grandmother ever ceases whining about the duke, she may prove upset, but she will hold no power to change it.”

“I never dreamed that we would be given such a chance.”

“Nor I. And I never doubted that you would make good on you promise to protect me, but I never expected what happened last night. You have been my strength through all of this. You are the bravest, kindest, and noblest man that I have ever known.” Her heart was fairly bursting with adoration, words tumbling out with each fresh reminder of why she loved him.

“The night may have had a very different outcome if you had not stayed. Don’t sell yourself short, Helena.”

“It was desperation,” she admitted, fixing her eyes on the dancing hues reflected in the water. She took no pride in her actions, however pleased she was at the outcome they had wrought.

“It was so much more than that. No matter what has happened, you have persevered. You have been through darkness, but you have never stopped burning. Even the fiercest of storms could never extinguish your light.”

Unable to speak through her emotion, Helena captured his lips in a rapturous kiss.

#playchoices #playchoices fanfiction #desire and decorum #luke harper #harper x mc

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wordsnstuff · 6 years ago

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do you have any tips on WANTING to make your character bad/ making them have bad traits??? i always want them to be perfect but i REALLY need them to be imperfect but i'm a perfectionist sooo??? thanks

I think that, when it comes to creating well-rounded, imperfect characters, the main struggle you face is thinking of them as actual people. In real life, we are aware that the people around us are, no matter what, the following three things:

Facing something we don’t know about and cannot understand

Feeling things we aren’t aware of and, again, cannot understand

Riddled with contradictory personality traits that they struggle to find balance between every single day

In order for your character to be perfect, they need to have imperfections. Contradictions. Unfavorable traits. Otherwise, they’re just cardboard cutouts of people and will a. bore your reader and b. bore you.

One of the hardest parts of being a writer is creating characters that you love and you feel really, really close to, and then taking the massive hammer of pain and conflict and smacking them with it. But it’s part of the gig. In order to see what your character is really made of, you have to break them, and that’s where the “bad traits” come out.

If you are a writer, you have to abandon the idea of perfection. Your stories, characters, technique, development, etc. will never, ever be perfect. You know you’re successful as a writer when you can just not ever find satisfaction with a story because you know it can always be better.

So, in conclusion, in order to create rounded characters that embody good and bad characteristics, you must put them in real life situations and let them react as real people would. You have to give them depth through private, personal, and internal struggles that the reader can see but not understand. You must also give up your desire for perfection because it will never bear fruit, and will oftentimes lead you down disappointing paths. Be a good parent to your characters. Accept their imperfections, because they only make the “good traits” better.

If you enjoy my blog and wish for it to continue being updated frequently and for me to continue putting my energy toward answering your questions, please consider Buying Me A Coffee.

I’d also really appreciate it if you would check out my separate blog dedicated to my current work in progress.

#writing #writeblr #writespo #writing tips #writing advice #resources for writers #writing reference #ask #anon #character development #creating characters

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asagimeta · 6 years ago

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Ok so I never do movie break-downs/reveiws but Endgame is a one in a million type of thing, not only the end of an era, but the end of the era that started the enture connected-universe film genre, so I'm allowing myself because this moment is literally something we'll never have again, there is never going to be a "first" end of era again, sure some day the DCEU will do this, The Conjuring verse may do this, Arrowverse will actually do this next fall with Infinite Crisis, etc, but... this truly will be the only "first" time we get this end of era and I have Opinions so follow me down the rabbit hole

I'm only touching on a few points, as a head's up, and I generally really enjoyed the movie! I don't have the time or patience to type out everything I liked about it so there may seem like there's more criticism than praise but I promise you, I thoroughly enjoyed this and thought it was the best of the four Avengers movies by far

-I think my biggest complaint is the bullshit about the soul stone, for two reasons:

1. As a plot point, the soul stone decision being irreversable is just kind of ... weird, mostly because we don't have that much information on how it works, so it feels a little "stakes for the sake of stakes" to me

2. Are you really telling me that the only two people that had no chance of coming back are two of the only main female charectors the MCU has? Are you really, honestly, telling me that?

The MCU has gotten some more supporting female charectors and that's great but Nat and Gamora were only two of a very small feild of actual female LEADS, Mantis and Valkyrie and The Wasp and so on are great charectors but they aren't leads, and I feel like it was just a really bad decision on the filmmakers' parts to choose specifically those two and ONLY those two, it would have eased things a little if they had either brought back the original Gamora (and I'll touch on why this bothers me later) or if they had had a male involved in the Irreversable Soul Stone Death thing, it just feels frustratingly like fridging (I know it isn't but it feels that way) because there really honestly were other ways to go about it, Gamora being sacrificed in Infinity War was pretty unavoidable, but they didn't have to do Nat like that, and even if they did- because I do understand from a story perspective why they would- the ideal thing to do would have been to literally trade one soul for another, the soul stone only needs one soul to operate right? So when Natasha died, shouldn't Gamora have come back out of that thing? That would have been the ideal way to shift it in my opinion, it would create the kind of paradox that would make it impossible for Natasha to just snap back to existence (thus providing real stakes) but without the frustration of our only Gamora being AU!Gamora

And AU!Gamora is a PROBLEM

All of the development Gamora got in the first two Guardians movies is gone now, what she had with Peter is gone, what she had with Nebula is gone, her feelings of having a real family is gone.... and even if AU!Gamora builds those relationships anew, it's not going to be the same, she's working from scratch so she may as well be a new charector, and the fact that the Guardians and Nebula are already established makes it impossible for Gamora to form into the team the way she originally did, she's no longer one of the founding members with Peter, she's now an outsider being pulled into an existing group, she'll never understand the pain Nebula had been in when they fought because Nebula cares about her now and isn't going to fight her and thus express those feelings, she's never going to see just how badly Peter's father fucks him up or watch Peter sacrifice himself (ish) for the power stone because both of those are resolved issues now.....

The Gamora we knew and loved IS dead, we're working with a new one, and although I feel like Guardians 3 is going to be about finding and recruiting her, it still won't be the same and that's very frustrating

-On the topic of how things work, are you really telling me that after all of the "We have to be very carefull not to mess with the past" discussions, Steve just....... Did That? He really just lived an entire ass life mucking around with the past and having exactly zero consequences? Particularly, with Peggy, who we know for a fact was involved in major ways with Sheild? Like, I'm not speaking as a Captain America fan when I ask this, I'm legitimately confused as to why there was so much emphasis on "don't mess with the past" only for people to repeatedly do that, but ESPECIALLY Steve, it can kind of be excused to allow things like Tony talking to his dad- who doesn't know who he is- or Thor talking to his mom- who made it clear that she wasn't going to fight her fate even though she could- but Steve is just a big ol' block of confusion

Not only the Peggy thing, we could maybe excuse that, but he told his past self that Bucky was alive and his past self just... what...? Forgot??? How is it that he made such a significant change to his former self and there was exactly ZERO consequence at all? Not to mention Nebula killing past!Nebula but I can sort of hand-wave that one as having to do with actually creating a split universe (as proven by the Gamora and Thanos duplicates) but Cap ... Cap would have gone on, having had this weird encounter and being very "!!!!!!!!" about Bucky and done... what, nothing?? And if he did do something, why did that have no impact on the future at all?

I'm also conflicted on Captain America's ending as a charector, I'm glad he lived, but I almost would have preferred him having gotten stuck in the past by some Time Travel Bullshit Reason because it seemed OOC for him to leave his found family, put down his sheild, and risk the ENTIRE FUTURE by going to live a life with Peggy, even if that was a split universe, it still feels very .. I don't know the word for it, not "cop out" but too pushed I guess

For his entire journey to have centered on Steve changing as a person and getting used to living in essentially a new world, not to mention finding and saving Bucky and keeping him close, for him to completely regress and go back to America as it was, go back to the life he used to want, go live his future in the past, it all seemed really counterproductive of his journey and I actually would have preferred him going to retire elsewhere if he really needed to

-Tony's death was probably the most avoidable thing to me because they laid out a perfect way for RDJ to exit: Retirement

I know that it was very "full circle" for Tony to begin the MCU with his life and end this era of it with his death and the ultimate form of charector growth for him to sacrifice himself, but it still felt really cheap to me when they had gone to the trouble of setting up his retirement so thoroughly and then still choosing to kill him off, I feel like it was more about "needing" to have an enormous death and choosing to "surprise" everyone by making it Tony instead of Steve versus what actually worked best for the story, Tony retiring to a quiet life that had nothing to do with money or fame or saving the world would have been equally showing of his growth in my opinion

These were my major complaints, but I have one plotline in particular that I really have the utmost praise for and that's Thor's

I know that alot of people are upset that Marvel treated his PTSD as a joke with the beer belly and the drunkness shennanigans but I don't personally veiw it that way, I don't think it was played as a joke, I think it was largely taken seriously, ofcourse I think Marvel DID put alot of the humor to ride on "lol Thor is fat and lazy now" wich is .. unfortunate, but I don't think it was as bad as alot of people are saying

Thor's conversation with his mother is probably my favorite part of the movie, Thor is consistantly shown to be a very sensitive, vulnerable person, wich is a MAGNIFICENT quality for someone who's also supposed to be the poster-boy for hypermasculinity

Thor is everything that Toxic Masculinity loves- He's a literal GOD who's gorgeous and gets attention from the ladies and beats shit up with a hammer, and he drinks, there is always EVERY opportunity to make him the living emodiement of A Fuckboy, but instead he's consistantly shown to be the exact opposite

He's sweet and compassionate and good-natured, he's openly affectionate and not afraid to cry in front of others or to wear his heart on his sleeve, he's gentle and supportive and loyal and a complete mama's boy in all of the positive uses for that term, and Endgame only reinforces all of that

Yes they made it a laughing point that he's gained weight and is an even bigger alcoholic than usual, but they also made it a point that out of everyone who had the opportunity to try to change the past, Thor is the only one who took it, because he simply couldn't stand being without his mother, not Tony who could have tried to tell his father to spend more time with him, or Steve who could have tried to see Peggy, but Thor, who just wanted his mom back

They made a huge point again and again over the fact that of everyone, Thor was taking this loss the hardest, that he had lost the most and felt the most responsible, and ultimately he also grew the most from it, he actually gave Mjolnir to Cap, gave New Asgard to Valkyrie (wich by the way is perhaps my absolute FAVORITE thing about the future of the MCU) and finally stopped trying to live up to what Odin wanted from him by trying to have a pissing math for leadership, he even "gave" Peter leadership of the Guardians, even if it was played for a joke, he never *actually* contested Peter, wich is a big step for him

Marvel isn't known for playing with trauma well, but as Marvel goes, I think Thor was handled well

I also have to say that I'm not mourning Loki yet, I feel like the after-credits scene for Guardians 3 is going to be Loki walking onto the ship going "Hello brother, did you miss me?"

Loki is in a unique position where he really could survive without having been a death from The Snappening, we KNOW that he knew something fishy was going on with the two Caps in the past and Loki is a sneaky devil who wouldn't just let something like that go, he probably devised a system for himself to come back to life or to have escaped Thanos in the first place once he realized in new-2012 that something was wrong, and unlike Tony and Steve, there are no story or contract reasons for the MCU not to include Loki, especially since the Disney+ Loki series doesn't have anything to do with post-Endgame, atleast, yet to be mentioned

Sure split-universe!Loki would have the same problems that split-universe!Gamora has in that his development with Thor and his personal development caused by encounters with people like Hela are now moot, but unlike Gamora, Loki is still an anti-hero, he's still an asshole, and his relationship with Thor is a centuries-long one that has had many ups and downs, meeting Thor later in another villainous position wouldn't be OOC and he and Thor reconnecting over a new enemy would be fairly easy to recreate as opposed to Gamora re-experiencing a relationship with Nebula that has now permenantely changed, becoming a "new" member of the Guardians vs a founding member, and witnessing everything with Peter's family that happened Guardians 2 that can never be recreated- ever

Loki has also never been a leading role in the MCU, a core role yes, but not leading, it wouldn't be a problem for Tom Hiddleston to pop in and out of the MCU as he likes wile his primary series is on Disney+, and as that series is more of an anthology (Loki Screws With History: A Memoir) versus a chronological story to follow Endgame, Disney+ and the MCU don't even have to really consult with how the two stories would mesh, they're virtually strangers to eachother

There's, ofcourse, alot more I liked about this- the all female team-up, the importance placed on Ant-Man, everything to do with Nebula, and more, but this is all I really wanted to discuss or vent on

#Avengers: Endgame #Avengers: endgame spoilers #endgame spoilers #avengers spoilers #spoilers #Marvel

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scripttorture · 7 years ago

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(1/2) Hi - Thanks a lot for your alternative scenario to my Widowmaker question. :) I'm going to be working on a story involving intelligence/black-ops agencies, and one recurring theme I'm emphasizing is that the tortures done by multiple characters are inefficient, pointless and counter-intuitive. The protagonists' cruelty backfires horribly by hardening the resolve of their victims (and the victims' loved ones); guilty members 'betray' their team by reporting the atrocities to the public...

(2/2) Any useful info gathered by agencies (American, Japanese, Russian & Turkish) is done nonviolently, so torture's done for sadism or to INTENTIONALLY demoralize. Any other ways could you suggest to portray 'enhanced interrogation' as needless and unconstructive? Don't wanna accidentally veer into apologia i.e. implying that torture fails and a time-bomb goes off because 'we didn't torture suspect hard enough'; and I fear that in pop-culture, 'moral appeals' alone won't be convincing enough.

You're right that popculture tends to dismiss moral appeals (usually by buying into apologistarguments) but I think whether they work in a piece of fiction depends on howthey’re written.

A purely moral argumentis a lot less likely to have an emotional impact when the character it comesfrom is: privileged, unlikely to ever be in danger, has no experience with victims,has no family background connected to atrocities. Anyone who comes across asunconnected can be tarred by the narrative.

The usual ways that isdone are either by showing the character as a desk jockey with no realpractical experience of the world, showing them as flighty with their head inthe clouds or showing them as using atrocities to score political points.

Moral arguments comeacross more powerfully when they come from people who have seen and experiencedatrocities, whether it’s in the past or present.

My English education isprobably gonna show a little here but I’m reminded of Sassoon’s war poetry andhow angrily some of it was directed against the British public and politics-

‘You smug faced crowds with kindling eyes,

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.’

Moral arguments can beincredibly powerful things in fiction and art. I don’t think we should dismissthem.

The problem withwriting effective moral arguments infiction is well essentially it’s about how you write.

In order for somethingto have an emotional pay off it needs to be appropriately built up in the storyand supported by the narrative. And there’s no one simple way to do thateffectively.

A ‘Big Speech’ can makepeople lose interest but only if it’spoorly written.

I suppose the way Ithink about successful moral arguments is that you’re trying to write what TVtropes would call a ‘Crowning Moment of Awesome’ (I’d link to that but I’mafraid my readers may become stuck in an internet black hole from which theymay never escape.)

Doing that effectivelytakes work. It means carefully balancing everything that happens in the storyup until that moment. It means judging howyou’re manipulating your readers’ emotions.

Any big speech is goingto fall flat if it isn’t backed up by actions and by what happens more widelyin the story.

The way I’ve tended todo that is by having characters take big personal risks to do what they thinkis right. Because I write a lot of pacifists and because pacifists seem to beparticularly prone to this sort of dismissal in fiction (that their beliefsaren’t practical, that it’ll all get better if they just kill the baddies,etc-) I made a deliberate choice to avoid ‘Big Speeches’ and instead show thesecharacters backing up their words to the hilt.

Getting the emotionaltone right is key and it’s also one of the hardest parts of writing.

There seem to a fewmain approaches with torture in particularly. There’s a very stark,minimalistic statement of what happened, similar to an Amnesty internationalreport. In a rich, descriptive narrative that can be incredibly shocking andhorrifying. It’s a sudden shift in how the story comes across and that createsan impact.

Another strategy is to writealmost the way Alleg does. Keeping the pov very firmly with the victim andputting the reader as firmly as possible in their shoes. That means a lot moredescription but not purely of things like pain. It means appreciating thedetails people notice when they’re stressed and scared.

Alleg picked up onthings like the cleanliness of the board he was strapped to, the general senseof the crowd around him, the fact some of them were drinking beers while theywatched. That his shirt was used as a gag. The incredibly young age of some ofhis torturers and the way they talked to him (as if it was all a sportingevent). The way Algerian prisoners responded to him, a Frenchmen, who had takentheir side and was suffering for it.

Pulling back from realworld accounts there are a few other approaches I found particularly effective.They’re more to do with focus thandescription.

Babylon 5 and Farscapeare two sci fis that have a lot of flaws (and I haven’t re-watched themrecently so I can’t swear that totally accurate portrayals of torture isn’toccasionally one of them-) but they’re all very good at giving the audience anemotional impact from atrocities they show.

Babylon 5 is set on thetitular space station, a sort of diplomatic way point designed to be neutralground used to navigate political crisis’s. A central plot point is theon-going conflict between the Narn and the Centauri. At the beginning of thestory this is pretty much purely political, Centauri used to occupy Narn butNarn broke free and has since become much more powerful. Over the course of thestory this shifts drastically. The Centauri take over Narn again and begin apolicy of widespread slavery and genocide.

We rarely see any of this. We do not generallymeet the victims.

But the consequenceshit the narrative like a hammer.

We see the Narnambassador go from being one of the most powerful individuals on the station toa refugee there. We see the Centauri ambassador become a pariah. We see attemptafter attempt to help the Narn people from all sorts of sides. It affects everything that happens in the story,warping it.

Farscape is much morefocused on individuals.

In Farscape the leadcharacter, Crichton, is tortured repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) by peopletrying to get information on wormhole technology from him. And the narrativetakes the time to show the ways it’s affected him. It does this in privatemoments, when he’s alone or interacting with the people he trusts. Graduallyover the course of several seasons he changes. To the point that going from anepisode in the first season to one in the last makes him almost seem like adifferent character.

Like Babylon 5 it’sabout consequences. But it’s consequences on a very personal level.

Unlike Alleg’s accountit’s not, necessarily, from Crichton’s point of view. Some of it is. Some of itisn’t. The audience watches the character deteriorate. But we don’t see himgive up and his responses to a large degree aren’t judged. Just presented.

You’re showing torturefailing in multiple ways.

Not resulting in usefulinformation. Negatively affecting torturers/bad guys and causing them to changesides. Making victims more strongly opposed to their enemies (and presumablyacting as a recruitment too and propaganda victory for their own side).

I think the rest of itcomes down to how you construct the narrative and the emotional tone you put inthe story. I think I’ve covered emotional tone.

With a story on thekind of scale you’re telling there are going to be characters who support andargue for torture. But you can use the story itself to show that they’re wrong.

The easiest way to dothat is to show them as…well as delusional as torturers tend to be. Show themclaiming they were responsible forthings the reader knows other people(and non-torture methods) achieved. Show them coming out of a session where allthey ‘got’ was inarticulate noises and claim it was useful. Show their‘information’ being wrong and show that costing their side, in time and lives.

You’re already doing anawful lot more in your story than most fiction bothers to. I don’t think you’reat risk of accidentally writing apologia.

This kind of writingadvice is difficult for me because I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-allapproach to writing, narrative style or building emotional depth in a story.

I think there are veryvery few things that writers should ‘never’ do and I’m very aware that myapproach to writing wouldn’t work for everyone. I spent years strugglingbecause I’d read all these writing ‘tips’ and ‘tricks’ telling me things I‘shouldn’t’ do that were key to someone else’s style and absolutely uselesswhen it came to mine.

Figuring out what worksbest for the way you write is something only you can do. As is figuring outwhat would work best in the story you want to tell.

I hope this helps. :)

Disclaimer

#tw torture #torture as interrogation #ways torture fails #writing torture #effect of torture on victims #emotional impact #writing styles #construction of narrative #thehungryvortigaunt

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fy-soukoku · 7 years ago

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Random Soukoku prompt: Holding hands under the table ♡

The first time it happens, he can’t stop shaking.

The first meeting Chuuya has been in since using Corruption for the first time, since he rose in the sky and tore his enemies apart limb by limb. Mori is congratulating the mafia on the discovery of a new, valuable weapon for their organization, while Kouyou watches with a piercing gaze, rubbing her hand over her protege’s back.

Dazai tries to focus on the meeting, but all he can see in the corner of his eyes is the shaking form of Chuuya, so delicate and breakable even though he is still streaked with blood. But what really catches his attention are his eyes - glassy, soft, framed by dark red lashes. Dazai knows that Chuuya had a very different future ahead of him before his abilities were discovered - but of course, what other future would there be for a boy with such a pretty face and those gentle blue eyes? He wasn’t cut out for this life, Dazai knew that too well. He was too soft, too kind, too gentle to handle a life that would paint his fingers black, stain them with crimson blood that got stuck in your clothes no matter how much bleach you rubbed on them. (And Dazai had tried, but at this point it was in his veins.)

Kouyou’s hand stops massaging his back in careful motions when Mori makes the suggestion that Chuuya officially join the Mafia. She rises, a wave of fury emitting from every pore, and protests against it, claiming that he’s too young to be exposed to such violence.

“He did just create that violence.” Dazai points out, and finds himself under the woman’s scrutinizing gaze. Next to him, Chuuya grabs her by the sleeve, tugging with pale fingers that shine against the pink of her kimono.

“Please, nee-san.” He says, “It’s a better future than I had planned.”

Kouyou’s eyes soften at the boy’s words, and she lets herself sit, gesturing at Mori to continue.

Dazai watches Chuuya from the corner of his eye. He’s watching the interaction, but not adding anything. Observing, absorbing, studying. His blue eyes flit to every new source of sound, as if terrified to miss anything.

He’s smarter than I thought, Dazai thinks. He knows pitching in will do no good.

Not for the first time, Dazai wonders where this kid came from.

What does worry him, however, is that Chuuya continues to pick at his fingernails. They’re well-trimmed, as Kouyou has probably ensured, and filed to an appropriate length. But there’s the dark traces of dried blood glued to the bottom, which Chuuya continues to pick at, scratching the surface of his skin with such ferocity that it’s sure to begin bleeding again. Dazai reaches forward, and grabs his hand, yanking it down, under the table. He doesn’t know why, but the idea of Chuuya being in more pain makes him uncomfortable.

“You’ll hurt yourself more.” He murmurs in explanation, though he does allow Chuuya to turn his palm up and press the pad of their hands together.

Gradually, Chuuya relaxes.

—-

While Dazai has his own talents, things that make him irreplaceable within the dynamics of the Port Mafia, it’s fairly obvious that fighting is not his strong suit.

With a quick mind, a silver tongue, and well-developed reflexes, Dazai tends to avoid conflicts. It’s easier that way, he has found, than doing something as pointless as throwing fists to see who went the hardest. There were other people to do that. Besides, nobody looked good smashing someone’s face into a wall.

Except Chuuya apparently.

Dazai wasn’t expecting the delicate redhead with baby doll eyes to be able to smash someone’s skull in without his ability, but even at sixteen, Chuuya is proving to be one of the best martial artists in the Mafia.

He looks born for it - sculpted from clay and forged in fires to fight. When he lands a kick, there’s a dangerous flickering in his eyes, a spark of pride that lights up the whole room. When he knocks someone to the ground his lips curl up in a satisfied smile, pressing the heel of his boot to their neck.

Dazai walks out into the training room, where Tachihara is gripping his side and grimacing. Chuuya leans down, splays out a hand for him to hold.

“Sorry. I should have been more gentle.” Chuuya smiles, and Tachihara’s hazel eyes soften, a glint in his eyes showing his affection all too clear. Either Chuuya is more oblivious than Dazai thought, or he’s just that concerned about other people’s feelings, because he seems to take Tachihara’s lingering gaze as a symbol of friendship.

“Can I talk to Chuuya, Tachihara-kun?” Dazai flashes the redhead a smile as he stabilizes his stance, watches his eyes widen in fear.

“O-of course!” Tachihara nodded, and bowed to Chuuya. “Thank you for sparring with me , Chuuya-san!”

“Absolutely!” Chuuya responds, and watches the boy run out the door. He turns back to watch Dazai. “What did you need?”

His gaze is too trusting, it almost worries Dazai. He’s fairly certain Chuuya is the only member of the Mafia who looks at him like that, with no sign of hesitancy or distrust. Dazai reckons that he could ask Chuuya to jump off a cliff and the boy would do so. (Though his ability would probably prevent anything awful from happening.) Which simultaneously thrills and frustrates him.

“Fight me.” Dazai says, grinning.

“What?”

He tips his head, holds his hands out. “Fight me, Chuuya. I want first-hand experience of your legendary strength.” He drags out the syllables of the words, taunting him.

“Alright, but I’m not going easy on you.” Chuuya says, and throws the first punch.

Dazai steps to the side, watches Chuuya stumble past him. His hair falls in his eyes, he stares down at his fist, his eyes wide with shock.

“That was fast.” Chuuya mutters. “Very fast.”

“I’ve been watching you.” Dazai smirks. “I’ve been studying your fighting style. You’re very talented.”

Chuuya glares at him, “Are you mocking me?”

“Not at all.” Dazai says, reaching over and winding a strand of Chuuya’s hair around his finger.

“So, what, you wanted to see if you could dodge me.”

Dazai grins. His hand falls onto the dip of Chuuya’s collarbone, traces the shape with feathery touches. Chuuya reaches up, slides his hand to press against Dazai’s palm. His skin is sweaty from training all day, but Dazai can already feel callouses building up along his fingers, rough but soothing against his own.

Dazai squeezes his hand. “Sometimes I wonder if you can just read my mind.”

Chuuya shrugs. “Or maybe I just know you.”

They stand there, under dim lights, sweaty hands pressed against one another, and Dazai’s heart hammers because it’s true. And that’s a little terrifying.

—-

Their very first mission together ends with Chuuya curled on the road, arms around his knees, blood matting his hair to the side of his face.

Dazai steps among the rubble, tries not to watch Chuuya’s shaking form too carefully. He curls his hands into fists and sniffs at the subtle smoke that soaks in the air.

“Are you ready to go?” He asks. Chuuya sniffs, glares up at him, his cheeks covered in a trail of tears, his eyes pink from the smoke around them.

“Am I…” He shakes his head, rests his forehead in his hands. “I don’t know. Okay. I just killed people, Dazai. I just lost control and there was nothing I could do.”

Dazai nods. “Your ability will take some time getting used to-”

“What the hell do you mean by that!” Chuuya springs up, stumbling as he approaches Dazai. “I thought I told you that if it looked like I was going to kill somebody, than that you should stop me!”

Dazai crosses his arms. “Chuuya, we’re part of the Port Mafia. We kill. It’s our job.”

Chuuya stares at the dark gray gravel, where lines of rain seep into the cracks. His eyes are darker than usual, reflecting the cloudy sky.

“I can’t… I can’t kill people, Dazai.” Chuuya whispers at the ground, as if the worms will be able to hear and sympathize. “It… hurts when I do.”

Dazai doesn’t feel any empathy for him. He’s been killing since the tender age of nine, taught that in this world, it’s kill or be killed. Ending a life was as simple as snuffing out an unnecessary flame.

But this is hard for Chuuya, he thinks, as he watches the fragility of his pretty blue eyes glisten in the light. They could shatter and break - even though the holder is so fierce, so strong.

He reaches out his hand, and folds their fingers against each other. Chuuya freezes up.

“I know, Chuuya.” He murmurs, and runs his thumb over his cheek.

—-

They’re laying in bed, the moonlight is folding like origami on the ceiling, and Dazai can’t take his eyes off of Chuuya.

The redhead is angelic with his eyes closed, head tilted back against the clean pillow case. His hair is like a splatter of vibrant paint over white canvas. Dazai almost wants to wake him up to see the shiny sapphire blue of his eyes, but he also knows that Chuuya hasn’t been sleeping much.

Chuuya is curled up on his side, gauzy white button-up slung loosely over his frame. It’s on of Dazai’s, and the thought of Chuuya in his clothing sharpens a protective instinct he hadn’t known existed. And, with the redhead curled up in ball, his tiny nose crinkling as he dreams, Dazai feels more protective than ever - even in sleep, Chuuya is still pure.

Chuuya is pure in general, he thinks, remembering his idealistic views and his soft smiles to subordinates. He’s the kind of guy who helps old women across the street, and brings bowls of soup to the orphans who live along the streets. He’s the kind of guy who cries when someone innocent is murdered, but will not hesitate to snap the neck of anyone who hurts his family.

Dazai has never really felt these things. Old women don’t need his help, subordinates should be run by fear, and anyone who died brought it upon themselves. He thinks it’s the way Mori raised him. Maybe he’d be different if someone else had been in charge of him.

Either way, Chuuya looks like an angel right now, and Dazai can’t look away. He sometimes wonders if the heavens will realize they’ve accidentally cast such an amazing being into this world, and maybe one day they’ll take him away. Away from the filthy world. Away from Dazai.

He sighs, and reaches out a hand to fold around the limp arm laying by Chuuya’s side.

Clutching his hand, he vows to enjoy the time he has.

—

I’VE BEEN WRITING THIS FOR A WEEK AND I HATE IT BUT OH WELL I’M TIRED

#soukoku #nakahara chuuya #osamu dazai #bungou stray dogs #my writing

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norrislovesglobalizationlove · 5 years ago

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Under the sky, under the heavens, there is but one family.

“Under the sky, under the heavens, there is but one family.” - Bruce Lee

A couple of days ago, I watched a Bruce Lee film named Fist of Fury. Seeing Bruce on screen reminded me of the footage where he was asked whether he thought himself as Chinese or North American. He answered the question wisely, at the same time, he was also demonstrating the idea of cosmopolitanism. While I was like “Wait! I’ve learned that in GLOBE!”, I read the news about what was happening in ChungKing Mansion in Hong Kong. I realized I had something about cosmopolitanism that I wanted to share with you guys, I think this might be a good chance for me to share my own thoughts on cosmopolitanism by writing this blog.

I remember helping an old lady who couldn’t speak English find her way to the bus stop, she couldn’t speak my language and I couldn’t speak hers. Anyways, I found a way to give her the direction to the bus stop, I noticed that there was a language barrier between me and her. BUT! Does that affect my decision to help her? Does nationality really matter? Do the languages people speak really matter? Will it be one of my concerns when I help you, or anyone else in the world? Will any kind of national differences get in the way and stop me from helping people who are in need? I don’t think so. I realized that with the growth of nationalism, (it would be ultranationalism in China in that case), people tend to ONLY help others who are from their country or speak their language. For the past 5 years, people have been building their own communities around the world. IT IS OKAY to have your own communities, after all, embracing your culture and having respect for others is one of the keys of cosmopolitanism. Somehow, that’s not what I have been feeling, from my experience, they don’t feel like helping people “who are not their race”, or so-called “my people”.

Don’t get me wrong guys, I think accepting who you are, embracing your culture/ethnicity, are super important. After all, if we throw away our beliefs, culture, ethnic background, the world will just be a homogeneous, boring world. WHY? Because you and I and her and he are all the same, we will lose our distinctiveness. Without culture, there is no society. Somehow, our society is heading in the opposite direction. We Live In A Society where people only care about their cultures, they are bound by the idea of nationality, geographical boundaries, etc. People tend to only care about others who speak their languages, watch their movies, listen to the songs they listen to. Those became the concerns before they decide to help someone. Does that sound ridiculous to you? That means I will only give you a ride if you know who Jackie Chan is, I will only send you to the hospital if you know who Eminem is. What? You don’t know about FRIENDS, man you are not getting any help from me. It even sounds more ridiculous saying this, but in fact, it is what is happening around the world. Cosmopolitanism is not an easy thing to achieve in this world, it will never be. To do it, the first thing we have to do is how to respect others’ cultures. The ideas of loving who you are and loving everyone can and have to stick together for cosmopolitanism to take the first step. It is not like the winner is either you or me, there is no winner. I think that’s the hardest part to do. We have to learn to respect each other first, then we can move on to how to make cosmopolitanism work. That’s the first thing we should know!

Diversity means you embrace your culture, you love your culture, you want to show the world what’s good in your culture. At the same time, it means having room for other cultures to live inside that circle of society(just think of it as a circle). It means respect, not just for your own culture, but for others’ cultures too. That’s what I think is the hardest and the most important part to do because if people don’t realize this, it will just become a cultural invasion that is happening now. There is no conflict between embracing our identities and achieving cosmopolitanism!

You may ask, REALLY? YOU HAVE SPENT FIVE MINUTES SAYING THAT THEY COULD STAY TOGETHER, HOW WE SHOULD DO AND HOW WE SHOULD BE AWARE OF THIS AND THAT AND THOSE, IS IT REALLY THE FACT? IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE?

I am here to tell you, YES, IT IS POSSIBLE!

Here is why.

In the middle of glitzy Tsim Sha Tsui Hong Kong shopping district stands a nondescript building known as Chungking Mansions. Known for its ethnic diversity, affordable curries(which are SUPER GOOD, it’s a must-try if you have a chance), African bistros, sari stores,etc.. It always acts as a large gathering place for some of the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. Even a reporter from CNN stated that the complex was the "unofficial African quarter of Hong Kong"(that’s what wiki said) because the building is mostly lived by South Asians, Middle Eastern people, Nigerians, and Europeans. It was also elected as the "Best Example of Globalization in Action" by TIME. Somehow, I know so many people who claimed that they would never go there because it looked “dangerous”, the building is also taken by people as a chaotic No Man’s Land. (mostly because they don’t know what things really look like in there)

Now you know the story behind Chungking Mansions, let’s talk about what it has to do with cosmopolitanism.

Last week a democracy activist was viciously attacked with hammers and reports had trickled out that the assailants were South Asian, stoking fears that protesters may target minorities in retaliation. Those attackers try to split society, but the effect is the opposite, they are making the people more united. Those fears didn’t come true. Instead, a group of South Asians stood at the front steps of ChungKing Mansions, hanging out water and egg tarts to the protesters when they marched through the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui. They were also showing their support by singing the popular protest anthem and saying “WE ARE ONE” and “WE CONNECT”.

Isn’t that the gist of cosmopolitanism?

“WE ARE ONE“

This is just the point I am trying to prove throughout the whole blog! It is okay for society to have culture distinctiveness and cosmopolitanism, BOTH TOGETHER. Why? Because things like languages, where you are from, what clothes you wear, what food you eat most, WON’T be standing above our moral values. They won’t stop us from DOING THE RIGHT THING! When we are facing serious, ethical problems, when there are lives at stake, when it’s about humanity, when it’s about doing the right thing, we can always come together and help each other out. I think ChungKing Mansions is really proving that culture would never stand above moral values. It doesn’t matter what your race is, we are all human. You can identify yourselves as all you want, HongKonger, Canadian, Pakistani. Those names only represent your culture, and that’s it. They won’t stop us from helping each other. We cannot choose our culture, but we have the ability to do the right thing. Cultural differences can’t affect our decision, at the same time, we are showing respect to other cultures. We embrace ours, respect and accept yours. That’s something we have to work on while we are achieving a cosmopolitan world. No matter what language you speak, where you are born, WE ARE ONE. Somehow before we can achieve it, we still have a long way to go.

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You, you may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you will join us

And the world will be as one

#globalization1a03 #cosmopolitanism #bruce lee #@hongkong #chungkingmansions #we are one #weconnect #john lennon

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jaygraphicarts3 · 6 years ago

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Construction of my Display Box

To begin with, I didn’t have an idea of what to make by display box look like. I was in a completely unfamiliar territory which meant being given the open task of ‘constructing a display box’ with a small number of guidelines gave me no ideas initially. The display box should be a “visual manifestation” of my proposal, to both accompany my proposal but also work on its own to tell the story of my project when displayed. It could include what I have done so far, what I plan to do in the future or just be a symbolic representation of my ideas. The only strict guideline is that the box can be no larger than 10cm (100mm) from the wall. This is so when all of the year 2′s display boxes are mounted they don’t conflict each other and the hallway itself.

Firstly, I broke my assignment down into these 6 steps:

Sketch out the design, including measurements making sure what I want to include in the box fits

Collect materials

Seek a technician to guide me in the right direction of crafting my box, rather than guessing and failing

Ensure the box is constructed well. Secure so that it doesn’t fall apart when mounted on a wall or when my objects go inside

Decorate and embellish the box. This will include putting the objects into it and colouring the box

Photograph/document the process along the way

Doing this meant I had a structured plan to work to and could solve problems one by one instead of creating new ones due to a lack of organisation.

Sketching

When I began to sketch, I noticed the majority of people around me were using rectangles for the base of their designs. I knew this would be the easiest option because I was going to be using wood to make the box, but I wanted the box to reflect the areas I am interested in (typography, branding and motion). I then completely skipped sketching cuboid designs and went straight to more unique ones. The first idea I had was to make the box into a ‘J’ which would then represent the typography aspect of my project. I sketched a few J’s before realising that the curve of the letterform would be extremely difficult, but mainly impractical to reproduce with resistant materials. If I was more proficient with creating more organic shapes with resistant materials then this would have been the design I would’ve chosen. I then remembered when I looked at Lisa Temple Cox’s work, she had some more imaginative shapes to her boxes, but they all consisted of 45-degree angles. I used this in my own design and transformed the curved part of the J into three straight lines, which meant I could then form this section out of nothing but straight planks of wood.

I sketched the J shape roughly first, before sketching it onto grid paper. This is a practice I have done in the past when sketching logos so I can vectorise them on a grid. I did the same for this box design however so I could keep the dimensions of the J consistent and easier to measure in relation to my objects. In the end, the front side of the box displaying the J came to be 40cm by 30 cm.

Woodwork

Next, I collected and cut various strips of wood, 8cm wide and one larger piece of wood which I then cut into a 30cm by 40cm rectangle for the base of the box. The strips would be cut and placed around the edges of the box to construct the outer walls. Because of this, when sketching my design onto the 30cm by 40cm rectangle, I needed to account for the width of the wood around the edges. The wood had a depth of 9mm, so I considered this when sketching the walls by planning where I would put each slice of would one by one. This meant that when I cut each piece of wood, there would be no gaps or overlap.

After marking the position of each part out with a pencil, the next step was to start securing the walls in place. Because I had to account for the 9mm depth of the wood, I started placing the walls from a single point and then working from this point (in this case, the top left). This was so if I did make any mistakes in my sketching stage, it would be easier to solve rather than having walls spread out over the whole box. I secured the walls by firstly glueing them into place, before using a hammer and nail to further secure them in place. I hammered the nails into holes I drilled into the original wood plank to make it easier to find where the connections were. The hardest part about this stage was constructing the diagonal sections of the ‘J’ shape. I assumed it would be easy as I thought it would be simple just keeping it to straight lines. However, the difficulty came with having to solve the problem of overlap at different angles to 90 degrees. I had to cut into the wood at different angles where the planks would overlap to make the walls fit at a 45-degree angle. To do this, I simply measured how long the largest side of the wood should be to fit and sanded the edge with an electronic sander to achieve a 45-degree end.

At the end of this stage, I had, in my opinion, successfully produced the shape I had in mind when sketching. I was happy with how it looked, without including the imperfections on some of the edges and gaps in between the walls. To combat this, I chose to add another stage to my process which was to use papier-mache to add a cover to my box, in the hope to correct these defects. I also thought this was a good idea because I knew that I wanted to paint my box, so using a papier-mache coat would avoid the issue of paint soaking into the wood of the box.

Papier-Mache

To start with the papier-mache stage, I mixed PVA glue with water roughly in the ratio of 2:1. I started with this as the mixture, applying it to the box and adding small strips of newspaper over the top, but found it was too runny and wasn’t sticking the newspaper down well enough. Because of this, I added more PVA to the mixture which caused it to become a thicker consistency and work more effectively as a glue. As I worked around the box, the main thing which caused me difficulty was, again, the 45-degree angles at the bottom right of the ‘J’. As the newspaper folded over these sections, I found it hard to keep the newspaper flat to the wood without it ripping. This was solved by just adding more newspaper in smaller pieces over the top to ensure every part was covered. Although some newspaper did overlap onto the back, I didn’t cover this part with papier-mache as this was going to be up against a wall when displayed.

As a result of this step, I had a box which was a lot more prepared for both being painted and being displayed as a piece of work. I successfully corrected the imperfections of the woodwork by controlling the amount of newspaper I placed on certain areas to keep everything as consistent as possible. One thing to note, is, as the newspaper and papier-mache started to dry, there were a few instances where the mache started to crack and become unstuck to the rest. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to correct this, but it is something which didn’t cause a huge impact on the integrity of the box so I didn’t find it to be a big issue.

Paint

The last stage of constructing the box itself was to finalise it with a coat of paint. For this, I chose a matte black because I wanted the box itself to be a subtle element of the piece as a whole. This was a lot easier to do and only required one coat now that I had a papier-mache layer. Once I applied the paint, when it was wet I was happy with the quality it gave the box. Once I saw it dry, I noticed the small cracks in the papier-mache were accentuated because of the neutral tone of the black. This highlighted to me the importance of not disregarding small problems when working with resistant materials as they could be made more obvious in future stages. Due to time restraints, it wasn’t possible to fix these cracks, but it taught me how important maintaining high accuracy was, because it’s a lot harder to fix problems than it is to keep on top of them and not create them.

Decorating

To decorate the interior, I aimed to portray my project through the arrangement of my objects. I wanted to represent the animation aspect of my proposal by trying to encapsulate a freeze-frame of a moving image. Whereas a lot of the examples I have looked at of other display boxes feature structured assortments of the objects which look relatively stagnant, I wanted my own box to look like it was possible to ‘press play’ for all of the objects to continue moving. I felt like this would be the best way to subtly hint at animation being a large part of my project, much like the ‘J’ being a subtle feature in the backing subtly representing the type aspect of my project. I also wanted to represent branding but struggled to find a similar way to show this in my box. In the end, I chose to not include branding imagery in my box as I didn’t want it becoming crammed with too many concepts.

Blu Tac was one of my objects, but also played a large part in the decoration of my box. I wanted to use the Blu Tac in a different way to the other objects as I thought it would help carry the look of movement. Because of how insecure Blu Tac is, I used it (along with glue to fully secure some objects) to stick the objects into place. I also used it to generally decorate some of the plain black parts of the box, which would then also have a slight movement to them when the box was moved. Although I knew using Blu Tac was going to be risky as it makes the objects prone to shifting or even falling out of place completely, I felt like I was successful in having a balance between security and using the Blu Tac effectively to add the sense of motion to my objects.

Review

Overall, for my first attempt at using resistant materials in this way independently, I think I have been successful in creating what I envisioned at the start of this workshop. The main strengths I think my box has are:

Unique—it goes against the conventional layout of a display box so it truely visualises my ideas.

Interesting—the ‘freeze-frame’ idea I went with resulted in an interesting experience in my opinion. The objects aren’t just sitting passively in the box, but rather work in synergy to portray a narrative.

Capture my project—Using the shape of the ‘J’ as the main structure of the box is probably what I find to be its biggest strength. It clearly demonstrates the idea of type, but being painted solid black makes it subtle enough so that it still works as a box on its own and the objects inside are the main attraction.

On the other hand, things I would improve if I were to take part in this process again are:

The accuracy of the woodwork stage meant I had to add another stage into my process (papier-mache) without planning it. I would take extra care with measurements and finishing of the wood if I were to do this again.

The papier-mache flaking as it dried is probably due to the wrong consistency being used for the mixture, or even not enough being added. I would make sure to keep everything as flat as possible if I was to papier-mache again in the future. However, if I am accurate enough with the woodwork, I shouldn’t need to do this stage at all.

The insecurity of using Blu Tac I would say is it’s the biggest weakness. It works in my favour because it is what carries the look of movement, but I should’ve done more to secure the objects into place before adding the Blu Tac on afterwards as secondary decoration only.

Looking Back

When comparing my outcome to the works of Lisa Temple Cox and Mark Dion, I definitely think Mark Dion has provided more inspiration for my ideas. The idea of using a freeze-frame to represent a narrative was inspired by his “Landfill” piece. Saying this, I also incorporated some of the rules I found Lisa Temple Cox follows with my own box. Specifically, keeping to 45-degree angles, but I also used the box as a subtle part of the design in a similar way that she does to make the objects the main focus.

The main difference between my work and these artist examples I have looked at, is what it is portraying. Temple Cox and Dion choose to represent peoples’ lives, society’s damage and other topics which relate to a lot of their audience. With my own box, no one has previous knowledge of my idea, so it works more as a demonstration of this. As a result, though, the viewer is still left to interpret their own meaning. This is what I find to be most exciting about looking at display boxes—everyone has their own interpretation. Which is why I decided not to have an obvious message with my box, but rather let the audience have their own reactions to it.

I believe my understanding of gestalt helped me make more informed decisions about the direction I took the construction of my box. The main element of gestalt that I think I used more effectively after researching it was ‘Figure & Ground’. After understanding this, I then knew why a plain black backing would work best for the box itself and why I should let the objects stand out from it. Looking at Lisa Temple Cox’s boxes, I am more drawn to the objects themselves when the box is more subtle. My box itself was the ground and the figure was the objects inside. In my opinion, I successfully created a stable figure and ground.

Moving Forward

In a similar way to the workshops I have done in screenprinting and block printing, although I do not plan to use these processes for my final outcome, they still provide me with a new skillset and mindset that I can apply to my own work nonetheless. With this assignment, creating a display box lead me to think about how the arrangement of objects can create different meanings. This can directly link to composition, and along with the knowledge I have with gestalt, these things can be applied to any area of design, not just being limited to resistant materials. Understanding how an audience perceives a group of objects can be crucial in graphics. I plan to look further into how I can use gestalt and layout design to aid me in my own work. When I start to explore animation, an idea that I have is to use animation to alter the gestalt of certain objects to change their meaning. Similarly, with branding, I want to explore how making this display box could perhaps trigger new ideas with how I can use branding in my project.

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themasterplanner · 8 years ago

Text

These Foolish Things, Remind Me of You

***

In which Edward visits a strip club to forget his troubles, but his troubles haven’t forgotten him.

Based on events in Gotham s03ep15.

Content warnings: explicit, strippers/strip clubs, lap dance, hallucination!Oswald, drugs, masturbation, quasi-necrophilia, alternate history, tripping balls while draining them

Obligatory notice that this is unofficial, fan-made fiction for a franchise owned by DC and Warner Brothers, and created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The song which lends its name is performed by Bryan Ferry.

Special thanks to @millicentcordelia for beta reading and the title suggestion; and to @mrgoldsdearie for the advice and resources.

***

“Oh, will you never let me be?

Oh, will you never set me free?

The ties that bound us

Are still around us

There’s no escape that I can see

And still those little things remain

That bring me happiness or pain…”

Edward Nygma sighed, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and bouncing one long leg. Watching the dancers in their sequins and feathers parade across the stage did nothing to improve his mood, but leaving now would be an insult to the increasingly volatile Queen of Gotham, with likely fatal results.

Two days earlier, an “invitation” had been extended to meet Barbara at The Sirens. The invitation was, needless to say, polite but mandatory.

“I held up my end of the bargain,” he’d said. “I thought we made it clear that after Penguin was out, we’d go our separate ways.”

“Oh, this has nothing to do with business.” Barbara shot an apologetic look towards her lover. “Well, actually, Tabby and I thought you could use some R&R.”

“… What?”

Tabitha, by contrast, was as blunt as ever. “You’re bringing the mood down, Nygma.”

“So,” Barbara chirped, “we know just the place to bring back your joie de vivre! What with the tragic loss of your librarian and all.”

The establishment had been most welcoming to the honored guest of Misses Kean and Galavan, drinks were plentiful and on the house, the seats were the most well placed to enjoy an unobstructed view of the stage, and yet Edward felt nothing at all. He was numb, crashing hard on the frankly excessive amounts of speed he’d been taking just to keep up with the unending daily duties of running a city the size of Gotham – the legal side of it, anyway. He reached for the inside pocket of his shimmering emerald jacket with shaking fingers, and furtively pulled out an elegant gold pillbox. He didn’t even bother swallowing the pills with water – just broke the capsule with his teeth, crunching the contents briefly before swallowing. He knew his neurotransmitters were adapting to the drugs; it took an increasingly higher dosage just to be effective. Just to be able to see –

“Well, this place has certainly gone downhill.” The voice was unmistakable – as was the smell of salt water.

“Now is not the time to be funny, Oswald,” Edward gritted out as the apparition of his friend nonchalantly picked seaweed off his water-logged suit. He stole a sideways glance, but Barbara and Tabitha were too preoccupied in their own conversation, and Butch too preoccupied with ogling the dancers, to notice him. “And you’re dripping all over the floor.”

Oswald wrinkled his nose. “This carpet is unbelievably tacky anyway, my dripping would no doubt improve it. So, for what reason am I here this time?”

“Because I’m stuck here in a strip club with that dolt, Gilzean. Figured you would at least be better company.”

Oswald rolled his eyes. “Can’t say I can properly appreciate the entertainment. For all your vaunted powers of observation, you seemed to have missed the part where I was gay.”

“Well, you didn’t exactly shout it from the rooftops.”

“I would have thought my confession of love would have made that obvious.”

“The one you made to save your own skin, just before I shot you? Spare me.”

Edward didn’t want to think about that. He tried to slap himself awake and regain control, but the drug that surged in his bloodstream had a mind of its own, a mind with an agenda that lined up perfectly with all of Edward’s repressed insecurities and desires.

Oswald seemed undeterred. “You of all people should know that the thing with hallucinations is that they only reflect what you’re trying your hardest not to see.”

“Oh crud.”

What he saw next almost made him wish for the drowned corpse. Oswald had replaced the lead dancer on the stage, wearing nothing but a purple top hat, a matching bow tie, and a purple-sequined pair of hot pants that hugged his perfectly round bottom with much enthusiasm.

“Do you like it?” He twirled around the pole, casually striking a pose that showed off his lithe body perfectly.

Had Oswald always been this gorgeous?

“No. Stop this ridiculousness!”

Oswald only gave him a sly smirk. “That would be more convincing, if I technically wasn’t dead, for one, and two, a hallucination generated from your own subconscious mind.”

He knew where this particular vision had come from. Oswald had told him about this part of his past, this secret that only one other knew. He’d once worked in a club like this to support his mother. He was quite the little con artist; he’d target certain “VIP” patrons, all fluttering long lashes and big blue eyes, pouty lips dripping honeyed words and poisoned flattery until they were completely wrapped around his finger, and they’d give him anything he wanted. His last sucker had been one of Fish Mooney’s underbosses. She didn’t take too kindly to one of her top lieutenants being blackmailed, but she’d offered him a job and a promise to teach him a thing or two… and the rest, as they say, was history. Why had he allowed those two to bring him here?

Edward would never admit it, but while he had eaten little and slept less, and clearly looked it, this Oswald looked like he was in the best physical shape of his life. His petite body was tight and lean, unmarred by the countless beatings and bullets he’d suffered in his rise to the top of Gotham’s crime operations. Magnificent. Ay, every inch a king.

“I didn’t bring you here to see you dance. And I certainly didn’t bring you here so you could try to … serenade me again.”

Oswald wrapped his legs around the pole and arched his back, and spun his body around it with a grace that Edward would never have thought possible from him. “What did you bring me here for, then? To reassure your troubled conscience? To soothe your ruffled feathers?”

The hallucination slid down from the pole and strutted over to Edward’s seat. “To tell you I forgive you for shooting me in the stomach, taking my empire, and desecrating my father’s remains?” Even his voice was a sultry croon, making the accusations sound like an erotic invitation. He wiggled his narrow hips, circling the chair while making sure to stay just inches out of reach, taunting Edward, tempting him to try to touch that lovely soft porcelain skin, those broad shoulders and incredible legs. His thighs looked thick and powerful, the quadriceps swollen enough to lend them bold curves, and his gluteal muscles looked full and hard and awfully inviting in those tight shorts.

When Edward could bear no more, Oswald straddled him and draped a pale arm over Ed’s shoulder – he couldn’t help but notice the obvious muscular definition there from having to support his bodyweight on the chromed pole of the stage. He crossed his legs, hoping no one would take note of his current… impropriety.

Oswald leaned in so his face was two inches away from Edward’s, his porcelain complexion flushed a delicate pink, long dark lashes fluttering against freckled cheeks, a wicked smile on his lips.

“Did you want me to whisper sweet nothings in your ear?”

Edward gulped, his mouth dry. His heart was pounding in his chest. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Hardly.”

“Or, since you’re so bent on me being your teacher, I can show you exactly how I parted so many of Gotham’s elite from their hard-earned money. How I convinced them to give me their deepest and darkest secrets to sell.”

Edward knew this wasn’t real, that the real Oswald Cobblepot was at the bottom of Gotham Bay – but oh, how this felt real. The feel of Oswald’s hands on his chest, his hot breath in his ear. Delicate white fingers brushing through his hair, the smell of cologne and sweat and pheromones.

His bright blue-green eyes, carefully lined with kohl, almost seemed to glow with a malign intensity as he ground his hips against Edward’s – slowly, as if they were underwater. The sequins on his shorts caught the light as his hips swayed and rolled in time with the music, adding to the hypnotizing effect. Oswald’s lips were so pouty and soft, parted wantonly as he threw his head back, exposing his long white neck. Edward’s mind was, more than ever, a roiling storm of conflicting thoughts pounding through his brain. His eyes went fuzzy, unfocused. He needed to break the spell the drugs had on him, fast.

“Enough of this!” Edward commanded. This wasn’t Oswald; this was a grotesque parody of his friend, as repellent in its own way as the pitiful creature who had once shown up at his doorstep covered in feathers and preaching the virtues of kindness. Oswald would have never been this smouldering, this blatantly sexual; Oswald had been so shy, so gentle and patient with him. He remembered how his friend’s voice would go soft around him, how his face would light up when he entered the room, the open embraces and soft kisses pressed against his shoulder. This Oswald was almost… predatory.

The hallucination stopped his grinding and blinked, as if in surprise. “You don’t want this?”

“I told you, I don’t want you,” Edward growled. “I never wanted you.”

Oswald pointedly lowered his gaze and raised a ruthlessly shaped eyebrow. “I don’t think certain parts of you are in agreement with that.”

Edward’s face flushed red, his heart hammering against his ribcage. True enough, he was rock hard, the evidence of his arousal plain to see in those tight green trousers. Already, small drops of lubrication stained the gaudy fabric from the inside.

“Go on,” Oswald said. “Take care of it. You know you want to.”

Glassy-eyed and breathing heavily, Edward shamelessly started to palm himself over his clothing, biting his lips to stifle any noise. The drugs had removed all sense of inhibition.

“Look at you, touching yourself in the middle of a strip club, to a dead man at that,” Oswald hissed. “Have you no shame?”

By now, Edward was too lost in his drug-fueled fantasy to care whether he did or not. Not even bothering to be discreet, he reached inside his waistband to pump himself faster. His breathing quickened through gritted teeth, his skin feeling tight and hot. “Says the man wearing sequin booty shorts.”

“You’re a sick man, Edward,” the hallucination sneered. “But the Penguin saw who you really were underneath, didn’t he, Edward? He was the only one in your pitiful existence who ever looked past the jittery nerd and saw what was beneath. He knew you, Edward, and he loved what he knew.”

Edward groaned, squeezing his eyes shut and bucking his hips as he imagined shutting Oswald’s smart mouth up by filling it with his cock. His body flooded with warmth, his fair skin flushing pink as his heart raced well beyond an unhealthy range.

“If it wasn’t for Penguin, you’d still be rotting away in Arkham. It was the Penguin who plucked you out of the gutter and gave you a position befitting your abilities, and you threw it all away. Like everything else in your life. Even Kristen.”

With a strangled cry, Edward came, not even noticing the looks of disgust on the faces of Barbara, Tabitha, and the others. The last thing he heard was his dead friend’s mocking laughter, and then he passed out, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

***

When Edward woke up, alone, the next morning with the worst hangover of his life and a pair of ruined pants, and completely unable to look Barbara and Tabitha in the eye, he swore for the thousandth time he’d throw out the pills. He couldn’t go on like this. He needed a proper guide on this crazy journey of his. Sooner rather than later.

#gotham #oswald cobblepot #edward nygma #fanfiction #nygmobblepot #things i write #watch this get like no notes

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