#i just. like their complicated friendship and work relationship that becomes muddy

[ebitenpura]

New outfit! Or, actually, a repurposed old one that happens to be Lana's signature look from SoR. I've mentioned it once before, but since Eight's clothes melted off in the carbonite, she gave her old set to him after KOTXX as a show of good faith, hoping that it would act as a deterrent to other Sith and that he could go with her authority if he dressed in something representing her, as he was very much Lana's "hand" since Ziost.

Besides that, she (and Theron) started to fuss over him post-KOTXX after their relationship veered into more personal areas beyond a mere boss and underling, and they started to actually become friends, not just a handler and weapon. Lana often expressed frequent concern that he wasn't wearing enough armor in battle (as an Echani who can only wear revealing or light armor), so she'd often try to shield him and his modesty with her cape; gifting the rest of her armor was bound to happen regardless of how much clothing Eight was wearing on a given day....or how irritated Lana was by him not listening to her recommendations, again.

[stuckasmain]

Moulin Rouge - movie thoughts and comparison

I mentioned this in my last post but later in the week after seeing the show, we watched the movie. There’s a lot to be said and my feelings are complicated (just as they are the for stage version). It has a lot of elements I love and a lot of issues at the same time so let’s just get into it.

It has the movie advantage. Big budget flash - pardon the pun- spectacular. The huge cast plays to its advantage and its detriment. We get a wide array of weird, wild and wonderful. Body type, ethnicity, etc. You get a well rounded image of what the district is like. At the same time it sort of takes away in that- the focus is on no one. A lot more  bohemian friends (the musical knocks it to the main three and helps develop that friendship a tad more), more people working at the rouge in general and we get less of a look at they’re relationships to each other etc. It’s? I love there’s more , realistically there would be, but it also takes away from everyone at the same time, if that makes sense.

The editing is everything. It’s the silly, whimsical and funny sort of deal. There’s fast forwards/speeding characters up, random explosions of sparkles etc. My favorite things are everyone tossing their hats into the air and they literally go through the roof, the gun hutting the Eiffel tower, Zidler moon. The musical does a similar effect in the opening number(s) with the confusion and whimsy it hits up with.

Period costuming! For the most part! While I can appreciate and understand the musical going the more bedazzled and more 80s route for the clothes… something about it being a jukebox musical and running around and talking in a more modern fashion while dressing completely like it’s 1899 is so good. Something about Christian wearing white tie- looking incredibly awkward in it might I add- and going 🥺 across the room is everything. More of this! Period dramas- period anything! Take note!

Props for featuring the actual can can

One of my leading criticisms however, as much as I am a complete sucker for a montage scene I feel like there’s too many and it starts to muddy what exactly is happening. There’s context lost that the musical later fills in. Here however “she’s dying” *two month montage of her very much doing the opposite* I know it’s to reveal the illness but still. Montage + to many characters = loss of context/gravity

The duke is great. I love a “oblivious man child who gets violent when he doesn’t get what he wants” however he’s also not really a active threat until the last chunk. They keep putting him off and his threats off until it becomes real in the last act— he’s funny but I think i prefer to musicals take of having him more outright villainous and actually taking Satine away for huge chunks of time. Making a good reason for jealousy and fear of her mistreatment.

john leguizamo. I don’t actively seek out movies he’s in but he’s a treat whenever he does appear. That being said the difference between the two Lautrec’s is wild lmao. Similar but the musical has him WAY more focused on his own pining.

Ewan McGregor Christian 💕

I also mentioned this in the last post but I think the play in the movie is weaker however Satines death is stronger as it knows to do the grand celebration before, thus making it hit all the more harder by it simply ending.

[hachichimitsu2]

style + stylenny for the ship bingo!!

I’m sure this surprises literally no one, but Style is my kryptonite. I’ve always been fond of the childhood best friends to lovers dynamic even as a young lad, and shipped these two as an 11 year old before I even knew the concept of slash shipping at the time. I like how they represent everything BEST about this dynamic. How true friendship is sweet and heartwarming yet complicated and muddy when things turn its darkest, only for them to realize that they need each other in their lives, whether platonically or not (The post-covid specials being a clear testament to that statement). Their friendship isn’t surface-level or shallow, it takes a lot of effort on both parties to truly understand and forgive each other. It’s imperfect, just like how most close friendships are, but it’s real and unfiltered. I think media can underestimate how much effort true friendship is to maintain, and I like how in South Park, Stan and Kyle’s relationship is always being put to the test. These two aren’t afraid to call each other out and disagree on things, which is refreshing since I see the concept of friendship watered down to just “two people getting along” without delving deeper than that. I see a lot of people dropping out of Style since YGO / Assburgers, but I actually liked how their relationship has been on rocky footing and reaching a slow decline, only to become stronger than ever in the post-covid specials (happy ending). Those hellish 5 years were worth it, almost like a rebirth to how their friendship towards each other truly means now. I like their breakups, the angst and the drama that ensues since I’m a complete sucker for that, but I also love how the show navigates how Stan and Kyle are like without each other and how they have a tough time communicating when either one is at the lowest point of their lives. It’s always heartbreaking seeing them at odds with each other, to the point that I actually feel Cartman and Kenny’s sentiments as they are desperately trying to get them to be friends again. I also like the moments where they just enjoy each other’s company, are vulnerable to each other and cooperate with each other against the batshit insane shenanigans they got themselves into. How Stan and Kyle are the voice of reason in a backdrop of a strange, morally gray town. Whether you ship them romantically, platonically, or whatever, you can’t deny the fact that they’re an important figure to each other’s lives and are able to have a happy future when they settle against their differences and be there for one another. It’s so beautiful, and it brings out the human side of me where I’m just like “ew what’s this human emotion that’s bubbling deep inside me, ok the essence of human connection is beautiful I guess”😭 I can also say the numerous amount of style fan content I’ve encountered have elevated my love for this ship, and while I don’t agree with every single fandom interpretation of the ship out there, I appreciate how almost all interpretations centers around their unwavering bond with one another. And I eat that shit up.

I love Stylenny as a concept! I mean, I like Stenny, K2 and Style, so an OT3 way of this ship would actually work for me. I like the idea of Style “babying” or warning Kenny to steer clear of trouble, only for Kenny to find it hilariously condescending considering that he’s been through a whole lot more than the two of them. I like the idea of Stenny working together to save Kyle from his own demise like in “Ginger Cow”. I like the idea of K2 being a positive influence to Stan when he’s at his lowest. I like the idea of Kenny reuniting Style just like in the post-covid specials. Overall, I’m just a huge fan of poly ships, because you can explore different types of dynamics that help benefit everyone in the relationship, and I think it’s pretty cool that you can easily do that with Stylenny. :)

[atlabeth]

everything happens for a reason part 11 - zuko x fem!reader

Memories, where'd you go?

part 10 | masterlist | part 12

a/n: alternative name for this fic: y/n gets a crush on every pretty girl she meets. yue, katara, and now suki. she can't help it (and she questions why they're all connected to sokka in some way lmaoo)

anyways, this is kind of filler but it establishes some more with relationships and finallyyy gets us into ba sing se at the end. i know it's a lil annoying because there's a lot of episode-to-text writing, but i promise it'll get more freeform as it goes on

also i know that i just posted something yesterday but i have literally zero patience. like i cant hold chapters i have to post them as soon as i write them loll

wc: 5.3k

warning(s): some feels over zuko as per usual, but overall a pretty tame chapter

chapter title comes from memories by panic! at the disco!

Zuko could barely sleep anymore.

He didn’t know when his life became so complicated, but he wasn’t a fan of it.

Back when it was just him, his crew, and the open sea — it was simple. He had a job, a straightforward mission. Find the Avatar, capture him, return home to the Fire Nation and regain his honor.

Now, the waters were more muddied than ever. Now on the run from the Fire Nation just like the boy he was chasing, all he really felt nowadays was anger.

Angry at the world for setting him on this path, angry at the Avatar for refusing to see what was necessary, his sister and her friends for turning against him, angry at the waterbender for making things so damn hard.

He didn’t want to hurt her. A part of him wished that she had never come back into his life, if it meant he wouldn’t have to constantly be fighting against her. He hated himself for the thought, but maybe it would have been easier for her to remain a memory of a lover than his active enemy.

Late at night, when he was reaching fruitlessly for sleep that would never come, he saw her face. The carefree energy from their childhood morphed into the shock and disappointment from both the North and their fight with Azula, and…

It made him wonder what in Agni had happened to them.

He—

He didn’t know. The way he felt about her, it was different than anything he had experienced before. Zuko didn’t know what it was, but he understood that it was special. And now… it felt like he had just thrown it all away.

Zuko couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened with her in that town — what he had done to her.

He had burned her to try and get to the Avatar, and he hadn’t even allowed a glance back at the damage he had done. He had heard her cry out in pain, pain he had caused, and he didn’t even look back.

What had happened to them? What had happened to him?

He kept telling himself that the mission was the only thing that mattered. And it was, wasn’t it? Capture the Avatar, regain his honor, get his old life back and finally be enough for his father. He didn’t have time for friends, or for these feelings he had, or— or for anything but capturing the Avatar. Because the Avatar was the key to everything, to his honor, and that was all that mattered.

But now…

Now, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know what was right, or what was wrong, or what path was the one he had to take.

Zuko just wished things could be like they used to be.

~~~~~~~~~~

She didn’t really know when everything had become a mess again.

It all started out fine, like it usually did. Toph had become fully integrated into the group, any past squabbles put to rest in the name of a stronger friendship emerging between all five of them. Katara continued to work on Aang’s waterbending (oftentimes Y/N joining them in their sessions) while Toph slowly but steadily beat earthbending into him — literally.

They had all been working hard for so long that, by decree of Aang, it was ‘vacation time’. They would all get to pick out places they wanted to spend as a break, and after it was over they would get back to work.

Aang had chosen some sort of field with musical groundhogs, and Y/N had opted to revisit an Earth Kingdom village that she had passed through on her journey to the North. Sokka had complained the whole time about how they were ‘wasting valuable planning time’, but had finally conceded after the promise of ‘all the planning his heart could desire’ from Katara after their mini-vacations were over.

Y/N was actually feeling somewhat relaxed for once, but she had forgotten the golden rule — never let your guard down. Everytime she let her guard down, something bad happened without fail. So it shouldn’t have been any surprise with what happened in the desert.

Because after one trip to the Misty Palms Oasis and a journey into the desert with a professor to a long lost library, Appa had been taken by desert raiders.

It was… less than favourable. During their escape from the library, Professor Zei had insisted on staying behind, and now the five of them were stuck in the middle of the desert with no way out and zero guidance. Add some brewing tensions between Aang and Toph because of her being there when Appa was taken, and they had a recipe for a huge disaster.

And a disaster they had. Multiple disasters, actually.

There was only so much she and Katara could do to hold the group together, but by some miracle, they made it out of the desert with only one Avatar State mishap.

(And an incident with cactus juice, but… she didn’t really want to talk about that.)

....at least they had the information about the Eclipse. That was about the only thing keeping her together at the moment.

They had to get the information to the Earth King so they could formulate an attack with his warriors, but without Appa, they had to resort to more traditional methods of travel. Add in one passport problem, and that was how Y/N found herself braving the Serpent’s Pass alongside a refugee family with a baby on the way.

It was… intimidating, to say the least. Despite being surrounded by her element, Y/N didn’t feel any safer from the challenge that faced them. She took a deep breath, trying to tamp down on her fear the way her mother had taught her, as she followed the group, but her thoughts were soon interrupted.

“Hey.” She turned to see who the voice belonged to and was greeted by the girl that had teased Sokka early — Suki, if she remembered correctly. “I haven’t seen you around; are you with the Avatar or that family?”

“I’m with Aang,” Y/N explained. “I’m from the North, and they offered me a spot with them after they helped us defend our tribe against the Fire Nation. I’ve been with them ever since.” Suki nodded as they settled into a comfortable stride.

“That’s cool. Are you a waterbender?”

She gestured to her waterskin and smiled. “Yeah. I’ve been training with Aang and Katara ever since I left.” Y/N then turned her gaze back to Suki, raising an inquisitive brow. “Your makeup — what’s it for? I heard you talking about the Kyoshi Warriors back there; is that some kind of thing with Avatar Kyoshi?”

Suki grinned, her every expression heightened by the sharp reds and blacks above her eyes. “We’re a group of all-female warriors that use the teachings of Avatar Kyoshi and her partner Rangi to defend our home and the place she founded, Kyoshi Island. I’m the leader of our village section.”

“Wow,” she murmured, her eyes falling to the ground for a moment before finding their way back up to the warrior. “That’s really cool. You’re really cool.”

She laughed and shrugged. “Thanks. I’ve been training as a warrior for almost my whole life, so it just comes naturally. I like being able to protect people, and there’s no better way to pay back my home for all it’s done for me like protecting the whole village.”

“Wow,” she repeated with a small laugh of her own. “That’s really brave. I gotta say, I’m kinda jealous — I would love to see what would happen if Master Pakku met you all. Katara literally had to beat the sexism out of him in order to train to be a master.”

Suki chuckled. “Sounds like what I had to do with Sokka. Guess it’s a thing with Water Tribe guys, huh?”

At the mention of Sokka, she internally laughed. There had to be some kind of connection between the two of them, the way their interests kept aligning. “Sokka… he’s had it hard. I can’t blame him that much for any kind of attitude he had before he met you. Pakku, on the other hand? He had to have had something better to do than fight teenage girls.”

“You would think so, right?” Suki agreed. “And Sokka… I know. He’s got a heart of gold underneath all that, he just needed a little push to get it out.” As Y/N glanced over at the girl, noticing a slight pink tint under the white makeup, she gasped.

“La’s fins, are you two a thing?” she exclaimed with a grin.

Suki flushed even harder as she suddenly became very interested in the ocean around her, but she couldn’t help the smile on her lips. “No! I mean— yes— but… but—” she stopped to gather her thoughts before making eye contact again with a sheepish smile. “We’re not… really a thing, but… I do like him a lot. I didn’t really think I was going to see him again after they left the island, so this is really nice.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Y/N asked. “I can already tell that he cares about you — have you seen how careful he’s being with you?”

“Well—” Whatever kind of excuse Suki would’ve made up was interrupted by a rock falling out just under Than, one of the refugees they were with, saved in the nick of time with Toph’s earthbending.

“I’m okay!” he reassured, but no sooner had the words left his mouth before the Fire Nation ship in the distance started firing.

“They’ve spotted us!” Sokka yelled. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

Aang flicked his glider open and deflected the blast, and Katara grabbed Y/N’s hand as they all began to run. Another blast rocked the mountain, causing several boulders to fall just above Suki. Y/N didn’t even have time to shout out a warning before Sokka tackled her out of the way, but it was ultimately more of Toph’s quick earthbending that saved him.

“Suki, are you okay?” Sokka brushed dust and pebbles off of her uniform as he examined her, and once he was satisfied he grabbed her hand and helped her up. “You have to be more careful! Come on!”

As the two of them caught up to Y/N and Katara, she gave Suki a knowing look. The warrior only blushed once again and glanced away.

After hours of navigating the pass, they were only about halfway through. Sokka made the executive decision to set up camp for the night to give everyone time to rest, and then they would get up at the crack of dawn to finish their trip. It only took a few minutes for Y/N to get a fire going, and soon everyone had settled in with their sleeping bags. Sokka got up from his spot as Suki wandered closer to the edge, and Katara nudged Y/N with her shoulder.

“Hey. How are your hands doing?”

“They’re fine,” she answered with a small smile, flipping her hands over as proof. Where there were once red burn scars on her palms only tiny white marks remained — one benefit to healing via waterbending was that most injuries were able to fade away completely after enough sessions. Her burns weren’t very serious and she was able to heal them almost immediately, so both her and Katara were sure that the marks would be completely gone soon.

The mental scars wouldn’t fade as easily.

“That’s good. And you’re taking care of them, right? Like, you’re not beating up people while we’re not looking?”

Y/N grinned. “No. I think I’ll leave that to Toph.”

Katara chuckled and nodded, turning her hands over in a final examination before nodding. “Good,” she repeated. The silence between them, although comfortable, stretched out for a little too long before she spoke again, this time much quieter. “He did this to you.”

“Katara…”

“I know,” she said. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this from me, or really at all, but… I’m worried about you. Zuko isn’t good for you. Every time we’ve run into him, he’s hurt you. And you deserve so much more than that.”

“You don’t understand,” she countered. “You don’t know Zuko like I do. You weren’t there when I was. I know you think I’m insane for still believing in him, but I— I can’t let go of him, Katara. I know the Zuko I love is still in there somewhere, and I have to try and find it. For me and for him.”

Katara’s eyes were full of nothing but sympathy as she sighed — it was obvious she didn’t believe her words, but in true fashion she was still trying her best to be supportive.

“Okay. I don’t understand it, but… I don’t think I can change your mind.” Y/N chuckled sadly and nodded, Katara’s piercing gaze meeting her own once more. “It’s just… Why are you playing with fire when you know you’re going to get burned?”

And for once, Y/N didn’t have an answer for her friend.

~~~~~~~~~

The night went by quickly, which Y/N was thankful for. It meant that the nightmares didn’t last as long.

After a quick headcount to make sure no one had fallen off the pass overnight and an even quicker gathering of their things, they set off to finish their journey.

It went just as well as she had expected — a giant serpent, the namesake of the pass, had attacked them while crossing through an underwater section. Thankfully, she was able to aid Katara and Aang in defeating it with waterbending with no casualties

But in the wake of one disaster there was always another, and before Y/N knew it a baby had been born. She was mostly there for moral support — Katara had it all handled, and Y/N didn’t expect anything less.

But finally, they had made it across the pass, and they were so close to Ba Sing Se that she could almost smell the city air. Sadly, though, that meant it was time for them to part ways — Aang to find Appa, and Suki back to her warriors. After some sad but hopeful goodbyes with Aang, it was time to bid farewell to Suki.

“Are you sure you can’t travel a little longer with us?” Y/N questioned, apparently not above pleading to try and get the girl to stay. “You’re— you’re amazing, and we’d really love to have you with us.”

“I can’t even imagine what travelling with the Avatar would be like,” she smiled, causing Y/N to get her hopes up for just a moment before they fell back down. “But I can’t stay. I have to get back to the Kyoshi Warriors.”

Y/N sighed, her gaze falling slightly downcast. “I get that. I just really wish you could stay. Or that I could meet your warriors. You seriously don’t know how cool you are, Suki.”

“Well, if you’re ever in town on Kyoshi Island, find us. I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out and do you one better than just meeting them all,” she said with a grin. “I think it’d be pretty cool to have the first waterbending Kyoshi Warrior.”

Y/N was unable to prevent the heat rushing to her cheeks as she smiled shyly, once again averting eye contact. “That would be amazing. I’ll have to find my way back there after the war.”

Suki bumped shoulders with her, causing a startled laugh to spill from her lips. “We’d love to have you.”

“Wait, why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye to her?” Sokka questioned as he walked up to the two of them. Y/N winked at Suki and gestured at him with her head, walking off before Suki could protest to find Katara.

The conversation the two girls were sharing was an extremely thinly veiled excuse to eavesdrop on the lovebirds, and when they kissed Y/N actually had to hold back a scream.

Sokka deserved this. She knew how much he beat himself up over every little thing that went wrong, and it was about time he got to relax even for a moment. She only hoped that Suki would be in their corner of the world sooner rather than later.

What could she say? She was already fantasizing about life as a Kyoshi Warrior.

~~~~~~~~~

Although they had parted ways, they soon found themselves reunited with Aang to stop yet another Fire Nation threat.

“For the love of Kuruk,” Y/N murmured as she stared into the distance, her eyes wide at the sight of a large mechanical drill. “That was Ty Lee who just took down all those soldiers. And if she’s here, Mai and Azula are with her too. Guys, It’s one thing to stop this drill, it’s another thing to take those three down with it.”

“The question is, how do we do it?” Aang questioned.

“Why can nothing ever be easy?” Sokka lamented. His gaze remained trained on the drill for a moment before he realized theirs were on him. “Why are you all looking at me?”

“You’re the idea guy,” Aang said.

“Wait, so I’m the only one who can ever come up with a plan?” he protested. “That’s a lot of pressure!”

“And also the complaining guy,” Katara muttered, drawing a chuckle out from Y/N.

“Now that part I don’t mind,” Sokka admitted.

“Well, Sokka— you were a huge help in the North, and you figured out a way to defeat the Fire Nation during that eclipse at the library! Plus, there’s all that stuff that Katara told me you did before I joined.” She patted him on the back. “If anyone can figure out how to take that thing down, it’s you.”

He shrugged nonchalantly, his ego only slightly bolstered. “...okay. I think I can do it.”

“That’s the spirit!” she said with a smile.

Unfortunately, that smile faded as a young guard came running up to the wall. “Excuse me, Avatar and friends — I’ve heard that you’ve dealt with that… that pink girl down there before.” They nodded and he continued. “It would do us a great deal of help if you could come down and look at our injured soldiers, then.”

Y/N and Katara nodded in unison and started to follow the guard, the remaining three trailing after them. They ended up inside the wall, in what looked like an infirmary of sorts with all the cots and soldiers lying around, and the two waterbenders exchanged looks.

“You know what to do?” Katara asked.

Y/N hummed in acknowledgment, and they both knelt down next to separate cots. “This definitely looks like Ty Lee’s work,” she murmured as she bent water up from the pot and molded it over the man’s arm.

“What’s wrong with him?” the general questioned. “He doesn’t look injured.”

“His chi is blocked,” Katara explained. “Who did this to you?”

“Two girls ambushed us,” the soldier said, moving his arm as he regained feeling. “One of them hit me with a bunch of quick jabs and suddenly I couldn't earthbend anymore and I could barely move. Then she cartwheeled away.”

Katara sighed as she bent the water back into the pot. “You were right, Y/N. That was Ty Lee — she doesn’t look dangerous, but she knows the human body and its weak point. It’s like she takes you down from the inside.”

As if struck by lightning, Sokka lit up. “Oh, oh, oh! What you just said — that’s how we’re going to take down the drill; the same way Ty Lee took down all those earthbenders!”

“By hitting its pressure points!” Toph exclaimed with a grin.

The breakthrough brought a steely determination to Aang’s features as he looked out into the distance. “We’ll take it down from the inside.”

~~~~~~~~~

Like everything they did, it seemed so simple on paper. But now that she was actually inside the drill, it felt a lot more nerve wracking. Toph opted to stay outside where she could see and try to slow down the drill with the earth at her disposal, which left the four of them to somehow take it down from the inside.

Sokka led them through a hallway with a myriad of valves and pipes as he thought out loud. “I need a plan of this machine — some schematics that show what the inside looks like. Then we can find its weak points.”

“Where are we gonna get something like that?” Aang asked.

Sokka thought for a moment before he took his machete out and hacked a valve off a pipe. Y/N instinctively took a step back and shielded her face from the hot steam. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Someone’s gonna hear us!”

“That’s the point!” he exclaimed. “A machine this big needs engineers to run it, and when something breaks—”

“Someone will come down to fix it!” Katara finished with a smile at Aang, a sentiment the boy returned happily.

It was surprisingly easy to take down the engineer once he arrived — with a little bit of frozen mist on Katara’s end, they had the plans they needed. Sokka’s expertise combined with the blueprints got them to the beginning of the outer shell.

“Wow,” Sokka muttered. “It looks a lot thicker than it does in the plans. We’re gonna have to work pretty hard to cut through that.”

Katara crossed her arms. “What’s this ‘we’ stuff? The three of us are gonna have to do all the work.”

“Look, I’m the plan guy!” Sokka explained with a gesture to himself. “You three are the ‘cut up stuff with waterbending’ guys. Together, we’re Team Avatar!”

Katara and Aang looked wholly unamused while Y/N chuckled. “Team Avatar. I like it.”

“Thank you,” he smiled. “At least someone appreciates my genius.”

“Tui’s gills, why do you have to keep boosting his ego?” Katara complained. “Let’s just get this done before it gets worse.”

The three of them got in position — Katara and Aang on opposite sides so they could pass the stream of water between them, and Y/N making the point of the triangle to work on the other side on her own. They were hoping it would be more efficient being able to cut through both sides at the same time, but it was proving to be much more difficult than they had imagined — halfway through the three of them were already exhausted.

By some feat of strength they were able to completely cut through the brace, but their hard work didn’t pay off in quite the way they had imagined — when the beam only shifted a few inches she groaned.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she breathed as she wiped sweat off of her forehead.

“At this rate,” Katara paused to inhale deeply, “we won’t do enough damage before the drill reaches the wall.”

“I don’t know how many more of those I have in me,” Aang said sadly.

A large creak suddenly rang throughout the large chamber, and they all looked up for the source.

“Did you hear that?” Sokka asked, already backing up to make an exit. “We took it down! We gotta get out of here, fast!”

Just as they reached the door on the other side, a crackle followed by the sound of a man’s voice dashed their hopes. “Congratulations, crew. The drill has made contact with the wall of Ba Sing Se. Start the countdown to victory!”

A collective silence hung in the air between them, the threat now even more imminent as their situation sunk in. Mai and Ty Lee had proven effective in taking down any Earth Kingdom threat posed at them, and despite Toph’s skill they knew she couldn’t take down something like this on their own.

They either had to figure out a way to destroy this drill, or the Fire Nation was going to make it into the city.

Sokka ran back over to the brace and pushed against it, putting all his strength into the feat but to no avail. “Come…. on! Move!”

Katara started pacing around in a small circle, crossing her arms again as she tried to think of something. “This is bad. This is really bad.”

“Sokka, that’s not going to work!” Y/N didn’t mean to snap, but the grinding of metal on metal combined with her nervousness got to her. She sighed and ran her hand over her face. “I— I’m sorry. But it’s still not going to work.”

He groaned as he leaned against the brace. “We’re putting everything we have into busting these things, but it’s taking too long!”

Suddenly, Aang jumped up from the ground with stars in his eyes. “Maybe we don’t need to cut all the way through! Toph — she’s been teaching me that you shouldn’t put a hundred percent of your energy in any one strike. Sokka, get in a fighting stance.”

Sokka complied and as Aang talked through his points, he demonstrated it on Sokka. “You've got to be quick and accurate. Hit a series of points and break your opponent's stance. And when he's reeling back, you deliver the final blow. His own weight becomes his downfall, literally.”

As Sokka fell over from the attack, Katara lit up. “So we just need to weaken the braces instead of cutting all the way through—”

“—then I can go to the top of this thing and deliver the final blow!” Aang finished.

Y/N helped Sokka up from the ground, his spirits not dampened at all. “Then boom! This whole thing goes down!”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Y/N asked, flexing her fingers to refresh them for all the bending she was going to have to do. “Aang, Katara and I can handle the braces. Focus on getting up to the top before anyone sees you.”

He nodded and they all met each other with determined eyes. “Everyone inside that wall, the whole world — they’re all counting on us.”

“Here, take this. You need this more than I do. ” Katara took her waterskin off and handed it to Aang. “Good luck. And be careful.”

Y/N noticed a slight blush on her cheeks and she had to hold back her smile. That was definitely something she was going to tease her friend about later — when they weren’t trying to stop the Fire Nation from breaking into Ba Sing Se.

“I will,” he assured. Aang slung the strap of the waterskin around his shoulder and took off, and Y/N and Katara got to work breaking through the rest of the braces.

With the knowledge that they only had to cut through half of each column and the revitalization that came from having a plan, their work went by much quicker. Just when they finished the final brace, it all went wrong.

“Good work, Team Avatar!” Sokka cheered. “Now we— Y/N, duck!”

She didn’t question Sokka as she immediately dropped to the ground, something she was immensely thankful for as a blast of blue fire seared past her. Her eyes snapped up to the source of the attack and narrowed in recognition.

“Of course they’re here,” she growled as she pulled herself back up. “We gotta go, now!”

Katara and Sokka nodded and they all started running. Bringing up the rear, Y/N was able to hear Azula’s words right before they split off into an intersection:

“Follow them! I’m going to find the Avatar.”

Sure enough, when she allowed a glance back, Mai and Ty Lee were closing in on them. She flicked open the cap of her waterskin and bent some out, managing to freeze it at just the right moment to block the incoming daggers from Mai. Still running, she melted it quickly and let it fall to the ground before freezing it again, creating some ice on the ground that would hopefully give them a few more seconds of leeway.

“That should give us some time!” she yelled as they turned a corner, finally turning her attention back to the path in front of them. “Any idea how we’re gonna get out of this thing?”

“Maybe!” Sokka yelled back, slowing to a stop as they came to a dead end, a large hatch the only thing at their disposal. He started tugging on the wheel in an attempt to open it, and when Y/N joined in they were able to wrench it open.

“Slurry pipeline?” Katara frowned as she read the sign on the wall and looked at Sokka. “What does that mean?”

“It’s rock and water mixed together,” he explained as they looked into the rushing liquid underneath the hatch. “It means it’s our way out!”

Katara nodded and climbed in, Sokka following close after. The sound of metal footsteps got closer and closer, and Y/N ducked inside just as Mai’s knives clanked against the hatch. Never before had she been so happy to be floating in a stream of slurry.

The rest of their mission went by surprisingly easy — at least, on their end. All it took was some waterbending — earthbending, when Toph joined them — and encouragement from Sokka (though unappreciated by Katara). Whatever magic Aang was working at the top of the drill had done its job, because soon enough the drill had collapsed in on itself.

And now, they had reunited on the top of the wall overlooking the sunset. After the chaos that had been their day, it was nice to just relax for even a moment. And there was no better way to do so than with her friends.

“I just want to say, good effort out there, Team Avatar!” Sokka exclaimed as he threw an arm around Y/N’s shoulder.

“Enough with the ‘Team Avatar’ stuff,” Katara said dryly. “No matter how many times you say it, it’s not going to catch on.”

“I like it, Sokka,” Y/N smiled. “I’ve liked it this whole time.”

“You always appreciate my genius, Y/N,” he mused. “That’s why I appreciate you.” She laughed and leaned her head against his shoulder as he continued to list off names.

“How about… the Boomeraang squad! Eh? See, it’s good because it’s boomerang, and it has Aang in it—”

“Yeah Sokka,” Toph interrupted. “We got it.”

Aang grinned and scratched his head. “I kinda like that one.”

“The Aang Gang. Ooh, the Fearsome Fivesome!”

“You’re crazy,” Toph muttered as she walked away.

“Wait, Sokka—” Y/N pulled away from him and held up her pointer finger. “Aang Gang — what if we combine it, so it’s just the Gaang? But still with Aang’s name?”

And at that moment, Sokka looked more proud than ever. “Oh, you— you are a genius.”

“Oh, spirits,” Katara groaned. “Why do you insist on encouraging him?”

“You’re just jealous of our name-making abilities,” Sokka said haughtily.

She rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “You two are completely ridiculous, you know that? Let’s just get into the city before the trains stop running.”

Y/N and Sokka winked at each other as they all started walking, unable to keep the smile off of her face. She always thought it was amazing — they went through insane things every day, but at the end of it all she was always able to smile because of them. And as her gaze drifted towards the city in the distance, she hoped it would hold true.

She had no idea what Ba Sing Se had in store for her.

-

shit is gonna happen next chapter so i hope you all are READY bc im not

perm tags: @dv0412 @siriuslyslyslytherin @maruchan77

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[katierosefun]

Go Back Couple made me cry it was so sweet and wholesome ;-;;; and it was really clever too! And I thought it said a lot about people it really made me think about how we really see only one or two sides of someone else in a relationship. I saw Hospital Playlist at the start of quarantine and I spent the whole time just being “I miss my friends!!” bc it has such beautiful friendships and platonic relationships (and cute romances too)

Also if you have more recs please share bc once this quarter finishes I really want to watch more dramas I’m collecting recs ^^

ooooh, i just read the plot of go back couple and i’m so curious, and i’ve added it to my to watch lost! and yessss, i’ve been meaning to watch hospital playlist! i think i watched the first 10 minutes of the first episode, but i never got around to continuing, but i most certainly will resume my watch once finals finish for me too :’)) 

oh yes, but as for more recs...well, there’s this list that i compiled a few months back, but since then, i’ve been thinking of other kdramas i’ve watched and liked, so...below the cut! 

1. penthouse (1 & 2, renewed for a season 3, which will be coming in june!) 

where to watch: viki (although with some kind of plus plan, but if you don’t have plus,,,here’s a place where you could theoretically watch) 

favorite track on the ost: idk, i haven’t really been paying attention to the ost because like...this kdrama is also so incredibly focused on opera / classical music, and it’s actually introduced me to a lot of wonderful pieces, one of my faves being mozart’s die zauberflote. 

listen: it usually takes me a hysterically long time to get through a new kdrama, but i was so invested that i got through the first season (complete with 21 episodes!)n within like,,,two or three weeks, and i have about 3 episodes left of the second season (which has 13 episodes!). this kdrama is just that good. it’s basically about these families living at this super fancy apartment complex called hera palace (which is fitting...hera, the queen of the gods, also the goddess of maternity...). honestly, there’s so much going on in this kdrama that it’s kind of hard to explain everything that happens, but essentially, the show opens up with the murder of a young orphan girl and works backwards from there. we learn about each of the families’ secrets, ambitions, and some really shocking twists and turns along the way. 

honestly, i’m surprised by how much i love this kdrama. there aren’t a whole ton of likable characters--literally almost every character is deeply flawed and obvious about it, but honestly, the complexity and layers built into each character is worth it. we really see how environments shape people, especially with each of the family’s children. we see all these moralities clash with each other, and we see how greed and ambition can muddy those waters, even amongst the children. i’ve been super enjoying season 2 especially, because we’re learning even more, not to mention that i’ve been so surprised by the level of character development going on here. i won’t spoil anything, but like...it’s wonderful and impressive, and i cannot believe this kdrama has me actually rooting for certain characters. also, on another note: this kdrama does a lot with addressing exactly how far a parent would go for their kid--and it’s bonkers and wonderful. honestly...an addictive kdrama, full of suspense and drama and with deeply complex characters. 

a fair warning: this kdrama is rated r, although i’m learning that rated r in south korea would probably pass off as pg-13 in the us--there’s more explicit scenes of violence, really harsh bullying, murder (of course), and implied sex scenes (nothing ever shown, very much a “camera pulls away” situation). 

2. pinocchio 

where to watch: viki 

favorite track to the ost: pinocchio by roy kim 

okay, this kdrama is...just really sweet, and again: i liked it a lot more than i thought i would? it’s a little older, like it started airing in 2014--but i just...really liked it. it’s about these two people from separate families (but they grow up together under the same roof, it’s a whole complicated thing), and both of them become reporters. the only issue is that one of the characters has pinocchio syndrome, which is basically that she can’t tell a lie without hiccupping. you’d think this makes for a goofy drama because of that, but this kdrama def. has a lot of heavyhanded/serious moments. it’s so weird to think this kdrama aired in 2014, just because i think a lot of the themes--all of them about truth and what counts as the truth especially in journalism--feel still so relevant today. 

this kdrama also has a lot to say about generational trauma/the burdens we inherit from our parents and our older siblings, and it also has a lot of stuff about taking responsibility for the sins of our parents, etc. it’s so wonderfully and beautifully done, and i’m honestly...again, surprised by just how deeply they ran with this concept. the romance is also cute, although i’ll def. admit there’s some stuff that still makes me “???” but overall, i really enjoyed the actors’ chemistry with each other, and i was still satisfied with the ending! 

3. fight for my way

where to watch: viki 

favorite track on the ost: i don’t think this kdrama has too much of an ost? and i don’t think i was paying attention to the ost in this kdrama either, oops

i’m still watching this kdrama / have i think 5 episodes left of this kdrama, but i’ve been really enjoying it so far! it’s following the story of these four twentysomethings, and they all have these big dreams for themselves. unfortunately, they’re also twentysomethings, and achieving their dreams is...kind of hard. honestly, this kdrama is just so wholesome, and it has its serious moments, but i really love it. the friendships in this kdrama are solid, and the romance is super sweet, and it’s very much so the classic childhood friends to lovers that just makes me :’))

also, just like...it’s hopeful. and empowering. and just like, seeing characters go “i know this is hard for me to achieve and i know it would make so much more sense for me to just sit down with my head low and quietly accept where i am, but i’m going to pursue my dream anyways” just...idk, i feel like it’s a kdrama that a lot of young dreamers can relate to, and i really need to finish this kdrama, but it’s...really sweet and relatable. 

4. space sweepers 

where to watch: netflix 

okay, so this isn’t a kdrama, but i need to rec this movie because it’s...so good. this is a science fiction film following this crew of...space sweepers. basically, earth is now uninhabitable/unsafe to live in, and the wealthy are all living on a repurposed mars. (bro doesn’t that sound familiar?) 

in order to get money, a lot of people risk their lives by cleaning up debris still floating around orbit. these people are known as space sweepers, and they’re basically space janitors, only with a lot more flying and swearing. this crew winds up accidentally getting ahold of this mysterious child, who may or may not have a huge bounty on her head. i won’t go any deeper than that, but...this movie is so wonderful for its found family elements, and each character has such an interesting background, and i’m honestly surprised by how this movie went so deep into each character in such a short amount of time? (although honestly i would 1000/10 want a netflix series following each character’s lives just because) 

admittedly, there’s some issues i have with this movie--like, idk, one character wears dreadlocks, and i’m just :/// about that, because :///// it really shows that south korea isn’t exempt from cultural appropriation. i still like the character, and i still like the movie overall, but that’s just a heads-up. 

but besides that, this movie is really good at showing how sometimes the villain is just a wealthy old white dude, and sometimes family can really just be a ragtag team of outcasts, and sometimes it is really the younger generation that can literally bring hope and etc. it’s very much :’))

and that’s all i’ve got! thank u for asking me about kdramas, because...as you can tell: many thoughts.

[yjsacha]

TASK 003. // CHILDHOOD

“I let you down, wayward and wild, but I'm somebody else's, somebody else's child.”

001. ⟩ where did your muse grow up? how did they like living there then, and how do they feel about it now?

sacha grew up in st. petersburg. he was born there, and even when he traveled for school and hockey, he always felt it was his home. sacha had a complicated relationship with the city. more often than not he was locked away on his family’s property- a sprawling manor with an army of staff to take care of everything he needed. his childhood was a snowy property, a glassy, frozen lake, and a driveway so long he couldn’t even see the gate of his property’s entrance from inside his house. when he was young he used to play make believe that he was a prince, and when he was finally old enough they’d open the gates and let him ride off on an adventure to slay a dragon or defeat an evil wizard. it was a lonely place, so sacha filled up the empty halls with his imagination.

002. ⟩ did they have any childhood pets? if not, did they want some?

sacha had exactly one pet he considered his own growing up. his mother always loved keeping cats around the house, the fancy ones with a pedigree certificate and a monthly trip to the groomers. one of their cats was knocked up by a stray, and had a small litter of ugly, flat-faced kittens. sacha begged and begged, until he got to keep one. she had long, frizzy brown hair and muddy green eyes, traits picked up from her stray father. and sacha loved her, because she was sweeter and odder than any of the prissy felines his mother kept. he named her zhaba after the wide, muddy toads that lived by the lake in the summer. she was ugly like a toad, and her squeaky voice sounded closer to a croak than it did a meow. when he went off to boarding school when he was twelve, he wasn’t able to bring her with him. the day before he flew to germany was the last time he saw her.

003. ⟩ what type of education did they receive growing up? what type of student were they? did it change over time?

when sacha was young, his education came in the form of home tutoring. the only time he ever left the manor was when his mother wanted to bring him shopping with her, or take him to dinner at the manors of other wealthy russian businessmen. his day was divided between learning and hockey, with breaks only for meals. he liked his tutors, and was a bright boy when he was younger. he picked up lessons quickly. when sacha was twelve, he received a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in germany for hockey. he spent the rest of his education there, and his once bright and curious mind seemed to dim. he could never pick up on the language as he had picked up on russian and korean. plus, his teachers all treated him like an athlete. he was there to win them trophies, not learn. so they gave him b’s without making him do any actual work. so sacha became a lazy student, doing the bare minimum and drifting off in class. if the teachers had given up on him, what was the point?

004. ⟩ what were some of their favorite childhood activities?

there was only one activity for sacha. his obsession with hockey started young, at four years old with tiny baby blades tied to his feet and his tutor pulling him across the thick ice of his property’s lake. he would beg his mother or his nanny to bring him into the city to the big outdoor rink, where couples and families all glided around together. he was then gifted his first hockey stick when he was five, tiny and bright green. from there it spiraled, where he’d spend any free second on the ice. then he began joining teams, and he was good. good enough to be scouted to the best of the best, where you would be on the ice from six am to eight pm day after day. his favorite activity was also his lifeblood, his career from before he could count to a hundred.

005. ⟩ do they have siblings? what is their relationship like? if they were an only child, did they want siblings? did they have someone close to them that they considered a sibling?

sacha was, of course, an only child. unless you counted his own mother, who he never actually got to meet because she died on the table almost as soon as he was brought into this world. with his grandparents raising him, he never really considered the possibility of siblings. he was already a mistake, one that was burdened on his family. he was lucky enough they took care of him, he would never be selfish enough to ask for another child in the house. more than anything he wanted a friend. he had his teammates, sure, but he spent his youth either getting tutored at home or sent to a country where he couldn’t speak the language, so had a hard time forging friendships. maybe a sibling would’ve cured the lonely ache that’s always resided in his chest.

006. ⟩ what did they wanna become when they grew up? how did those aspirations pan out?

if you ask anyone who has ever met sacha at any point in his life, they would tell you the same thing: sacha is a hockey player. there’s no room for interpretation there. he could skate as soon as he could walk, and use a stick like it was an extension of himself. and he achieved his dreams. he had trophies at home, a shiny gold junior olympic medal, and so many framed jerseys with ‘babichev’ on the back that he could start a museum. but how did it pan out? he’s professional, his dream, but not at the level he always thought he would be at. but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. he’s playing for a new team, one where he can build himself into the history of. make a legacy for himself. all while finally allowing himself to live a life outside of the sport.

007. ⟩ what does their childhood room look like?

his room was not built for a child. it was a guest room, with ornate furniture, a large canopy bed, and expensive artwork hanging on the wall. he was always too guilty to touch anything, simply using the room to change and to sleep. he had a separate room, a play room as his family called it, that truly reflected his tastes. it was a shrine to his favorite hockey teams, had worn couches for jumping and rolling. there was a toy chest, one from a retail store and not a vintage collection. it was where he spent most of his time when he wasn’t at practice or tutoring he would be in that room.

008. ⟩ where was your muse’s favorite space as a child? is it still the same place, or has it altered? do they have more than one favorite space?

despite the loneliness the manor brought, it was always sacha’s home. especially the sprawling property with the tall trees lining the back yard, and of course the lake. how could it not be his favorite spot? in the cold months he would live on it, hat secure on his head and a puffy jacket zipped up to his chin as he zipped around the expansive surface. a private rink, just for him, out in the fresh air with the sounds of lively nature around him. when he went off to boarding school, he didn’t really have that kind of favorite space. usually the place he felt most comfortable was in felix’s bedroom, though that had more to do with the company than the space itself.

009. ⟩ what was the most important lesson they learned as a kid, and how did they learn it?

the most important lesson sacha learned as a child was independence. it’s a cruel, cruel world out there, and the only one who will truly look out for you is yourself. his parents were there, sure, but he knew they didn’t love him in the way parents should love their child. his coaches saw him as a tool for winning, not a kid. the staff were nice to him because he was the heir of their bosses, not something that truly bred loyalty. he learned that if he created his own happiness, forged his own path, that was the only way to get what he truly wanted and to not be disappointed by those around him. you just can’t rely on those who can leave you at the drop of a hat.

010. ⟩ did your muse have both parents around growing up? if they weren’t raised by their parents, who was their guardian? and what was their relationship like with them?

sacha’s family tree is a complicated one. dead grandparents on his birth mother’s side, so she was adopted by the business partner of his deceased grandfather. his mother was the first kim to babichev. then his birth mother got knocked up by a man in seoul that sacha will never know. then his mother passed during child birth, so the people who adopted his mother then adopted him. his adoptive grandparents turned adoptive parents loved his mother, so when she passed they grieved hard. it was a barrier that was forged between them and sacha, where they couldn’t truly open up to another child, especially one that was the cause of their sweet daughter’s demise. they raised him in honor of his dead mother, but he could tell that was the only reason they kept him around.

011. ⟩ what was their first crush like?

his first crush was forged in a tiny boarding school bedroom. he was the comfort of a common language, of teasing words and shy touches. he was a best friend, the person sacha relied on the most. he was glittering dark eyes and a pretty pouty mouth and canines so sharp sacha swore he couldn’t be human. not a boy so pretty, a boy so dangerous. he was first kisses and first heartbreaks an reconciliation. he was a crush that changed how sacha saw love, how he saw himself. he was an innocence that sacha soon lost, and a pain he still feels to this day. he was ahn felix, the kind of boy who comes into your life and never lets you forget.

012. ⟩ does your muse have any items from their childhood that they hold onto for sentimental reasons?

he has a snow globe of the st. petersburg’s cathedral that he purchased from a touristy cart in the center of the square when he was young. it doubles as a music box, where if you wind the little key it plays a tinkling rendition of the nutcracker. it used to sit on his dresser, the only decoration in his bedroom that was his own choice. he brought it with him to germany as a reminder of his home, and then again to korea. the little plastic snowflakes are dingy, and some of the water has evaporated, and the sound of the music has gone flat, but it’s his most cherished possession.

013. ⟩ what was your character’s favorite homecooked meal as a kid? is it still the same today? if so, how often do they have it?

homecooked meals were different for sacha than most kids. they were always gormet, prepared by a private chef, who changed the menu frequently. their chef studied french cuisine, so often their plates were filled with tiny, decorative portions of duck or pork. on special occasions, though, they took sacha out to the high-end korean restaurant in the city. it was always important to his adoptive parents that sacha always had knowledge of his korean roots, from the food to the language to the country itself. he liked the fancy skewers he would get, with succulent beef and fire roasted vegetables. today he finds himself craving more traditional russian food, the kind that reminds him of his sweet maids who would prepare his snacks for him. korean food doesn’t hold the same novelty when he lives there.

BONUS QUESTION. ⟩ if available, add a few baby pictures of your character or pictures from their childhood in general!

[readatmidnight]

It’s been a while since my last update since most of April and May left me with very little time for blogging. I just wanted to do a quick catch up on what I’ve been reading and what I plan to read in the coming month.

What I’ve Read

Almost 100% of the reading I’ve done in the past two months have been done via audiobook. Bless them for enabling me to finish all these novels while I completed my chores or during my morning commute, I would have fell into a book slump without them. I know at the beginning of the year I said I would cancel my Scribd account, but since I read so much via audio now, the set up is working great for me.

These aren’t even in chronological reading order because I am a Mess.

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid ★★★★☆ This novel is best enjoyed via audiobook, sorry I don’t make the rules. TJR has a way of making her characters feel so raw and real, if I didn’t know any better I would have been searching for the discography of Daisy Jones & The Six after completing this novel. Epistolary novels don’t always work for me (see: Illuminae), because I sometimes find it hard to connect to the story. 100% not the case here, and I loved how utterly flawed everyone was allowed to be. To tell the truth, I didn’t like most of them, but they sure captured my imagination.

The Dragon Republic by R. F. Kuang ★★★★ HELLO IS ANYONE SURPRISED I AM COMPLETE TRASH FOR THIS BOOK. NO? OK. Ahem. With complete objectivity, this book was a stunning follow-up to The Poppy War. It’s more introspective, it deals with PTSD, it brings in all of the threads that complicates and muddies the war Rin is waging on Nikara and with herself. The ending left me literally reeling and screaming in random DMs for weeks. I still have not completely stopped and I fear I will never be coherent again. Give me book three or give me death.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey ★★★★☆ I finished this book about two hours ago and edited the post to include it. Although it contained the familiar tropes like a magical school, a jaded private detective, a dark prophecy, a hidden world of mages, a murder mystery – Magic for Liars combined them in a way that kept the plot fresh and engaging. Imagine if Aunt Petunia never married Vernon Dursley but instead became a private investigator – who’s then called back to Hogwarts to unravel a murder, with Lily as one of the professors on tenure. Except better, because the character work in this book is freaking top notch. Just go read it OK, this is the gay and messy magical school we all deserve.

The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman ★★★★☆ Billed as The Raven Cycle meets Stranger Things, this is one of those rare instances where the book matches the comp perfectly. While I found the pacing to be slow, I thought it suited this character-driven story. It’s all about families and legacies and finding your own paths despite the weight of all that history. I adored all of the characters, especially Harper – my sworld-wielding warrior queen. I cannot wait to see the sequel and watching how entangled relationships will develop.

Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan ★★☆☆☆ I love the idea of hate-to-love, especially with a villain love-interest, so that’s what initially drew me to this book. When I learned that the heroine could converse with the gods, I got even more excited. Alas, it was a bit of a missed opportunity. I saw shadows of a fanfic-worthy broody bad boy in every scene with Malachiasz. I can understand insta-attraction, what I can’t understand is how poorly the character and relationship development was done. The stars are wholly reserved for Serefin, my drunken drama-queen and the only part of this novel I enjoyed.

We Hunt The Flame by Hafsah Faizal ★★★☆☆ I expected this to be a five star read, so while it was good, I am disappointed I didn’t love it more. The prose were gorgeous and I am definitely checking out whatever Hafsah Faizal writes next. However, the writing style’s penchant for beautiful metaphors sometimes felt jarring with the pacing of the book. While I liked the characters indivdually, I didn’t feel compelled by any relationships aside from the one shared between Altair and Nasir in the beginning. I’m definitely in the minority with my lukewarm response to this title, though – there are tons of fans so don’t be put off by my review.

Verity by Colleen Hoover ★☆☆☆☆ The sole star is for the fact that while the plot of this book was so improbable it veered into farcical, it was a page-turner. Toxic relationships is the bread-and-butter of crime, but there was something particularly tasteless about the way adultery and marriage was depicted in this book. Partly due to the casual nonchalance that CoHo tends to dismiss cheating, but also because even with my few remaining brain cells I could still figure out the plot was BS. The way disability was handled in this novel also left a lot to be desired, and the ‘twist’ at the end disappointed me so much I wanted to hurl this book into the sun. This was 7 hours of my good life wasted.

The Bride Test ★★★★★ I cannot remain calm or objective about Helen’s books, I love them completely – because they’re unabashedly Vietnamese, because they’re proudly diasporic, because they’re filled with characters who feel so real I’m mildly miffed we’re not invited to their weddings. Khai and Esme slowly but surely stole my heart over a course of a long haul international flight. I laughed and cried and went through all of the emotions of first love. Along with its powerful emotional resonance, The Bride Test also offered sharp societal critique on the accessibility of the American Dream. These books are so special to me and I am so glad we have more Helen content to look forward to for years to come.

Ruse ★★★★☆ This is the second and final instalment to Cindy Pon’s high-octane and prescient eco-dystopia – if you haven’t read Want, go visit your local bookshop right now and change this immediately. The bar is raised with Ruse, from the character development, the scope of the world, and the ever heightened stake. I loved seeing the gang again, even though Cindy did not pull any punches when it came to making my children suffer. It was such a satisfying and well-earned conclusion.

Wilder Girls ★★★★☆ Whew, this book was harrowing and intense. It felt dangerous and unknowable, with the plot constantly shifting right under my feet – just as the physical world in the book warps and distorts everything from plants to landscape to school-girls. I read it in a rush over two days because I could not put it down. If you’re after a novel with ride-or-die friendship and sapphic romance, this is one to keep an eye out for.

Red, White, and Royal Blue ★★★★★ I am completely bereft that Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry of Wales are not real people – for these two I would take up reading gossip magazines again. This book was rambunctious and as irrepressible as the passion that drives its main characters. The supporting cast are equally impressive, and I love the chemistry imbued into the various relationships in this novel. I can’t remember the last time I rooted so hard for fictional characters to overcome and triumph. Although we can’t have Claremont 2020, can we please please please get a Jude and Nora spin-off instead?

Looks like romance is my new favourite genre, judging by my latest two five star reads. Please give me all the recs, but no mayo toxic romance please. I feel like whenever I stray from the usual diet of speculative fiction, I become very picky in which books I read – which tends to mean that I end up loving the ones I do pick up.

What I’m Reading

I usually have numerous books on the go because I have no self-control. I have two going at the moment, but this number will undoubtedly multiply before I have the chance to publish this post.

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennet – I am about 5 hours into the audiobook and I am already completely charmed by this world and its characters! The rogue-archetype has always been one of my favourite fantasy trope, and to make it even better Santia comes with a snarky talking key. The world building is a marvel, especially the magic system and how it is manipulated by the characters and governing bodies within the novel. I also heard there is a budding sapphic romance in this one – I think I just met the love interest and I already love her as well. Very excited to continue on!

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – I am three chapters into this novel and it’s already taken my very soul apart. Written by a Vietnamese-American son for his illiterate mother, it’s part-meditation and part-confessional on PTSD, inherited trauma, and how a you learn to communicate with a mother-tongue you can barely speak. I am ready for it completely wreck me.

I forgot that I am technically still reading The Priory of the Orange Tree but I am so exhausted with this brick at this point in time, I’m not sure I will ever finish it. The world building (West and East dragon mythology), and the characters (sapphic Queens and her bodyguard) had so much potential – but I kept feeling like an emotional weight was missing.

What I’m Planning to Read

I am an expert is making up TBR and then not sticking to them. So to save myself the embarrassment here’s two I am definitely reading this month, the rest is c’est la vie.

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson I know y’all keep saying that Enchantment of Ravens is lame because it has no plot but I loved Rook and Isobel with all my heart OK. I know nothing about this one except that it has a librarian babe (maybe?). Therefore, I am very excited.

Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim This is part of the Caffeine Book Tours that Shealea organised (thank you!!). This is one of my most anticipated read of this year because fashion and East Asian fantasy? Relevant to my interest. I think we can all agree that this is the best cover of 2019. I want this illustrator to draw my life.

What are you reading and what are you all up to? I miss you!! Hope you’re going to have an amazing month and Happy Pride everyone!!

June Reading Updates It's been a while since my last update since most of April and May left me with very little time for blogging.

[buckyscurvylover]

Half Past The Point Of Oblivion Part 4/5 (Sebastian Stan x OFC NSFW)

Earlier Parts: One Two Three

Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Sebastian Stan/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans/Original Female Character (mentioned) Characters: Sebastian Stan, Tara Sullivan (OFC), Chris Evans (mentioned), Gretchen (OFC) Additional Tags: Friends to Lovers, Queerplatonic Relationships, Jealousy, Angst, Smut, Crying, good food, therapy sessions, Office Sex, Oral Sex, Chair Sex, Dirty Talk, Sebastian's Filthy Fucking Mouth, Light Dom/sub, Sub Sebastian, Like super light, barely even there, Begging To Come, Introspection, confused feelings, masturbation (mentioned), Voyeurism (sort of), Missed Opportunities, Fluffy Ending

Part 3 of The Deadliest Sin

Summary:

As soon as they were both through the doorway, he kicked the door shut behind them with the heel of his boot. His coat dropped by his feet and he pressed himself back into the smooth wood, his palms flat against the panel beside his thighs.

“I need you to tell me if you don’t want this,” he said, his voice gravelly, “because if I come over there now...” He trailed off, absently licking his lips as he slowly and deliberately dragged his gaze from her face, down to her feet and back up.

She licked her lips. “Lock the door,” she replied, swallowing the breathy rasp in her voice.

Following on from the sudden, whirlwind shift in their relationship, Sebastian and Tara try to navigate their way through the mess of feelings. Who will her heart choose, though - Sebastian or Chris?

Part of "The Deadliest Sin" series. Now with added co-writer, @sebastianfloofyhair!

Notes:

I know it's been FOREVER since I posted the last part, and I hope that people are still interested to see this continue.

Since I wrote "Half Past The Point Of No Return", I have begun collaborating with the creator of Tara, @sebastianfloofyhair on furthering this series and it has taken on a life of its own. Currently we have MASSES of fic written, I just need to get around to editing and posting it all, but I'm making a start on it with this part. It's completed and ready to go, I'm only separating it into chapters because it's over 21.5K words! I will get them posted every couple of days, though, I hope.

Disclaimer:

We don't know the actual, real Sebastian Stan (or Chris Evans). This is just a facsimile of him and both he and the story bear no relation to reality. Any similarities in the scenario to Real Life™ are just coincidence. We intend no harm or upset to Sebastian, or his family and friends. Everything is completely made up from the depraved depths of our brains and Tara belongs to SebastianFloofyHair.

They’d eaten their dinner mostly in silence, and by the time Sebastian stood up to carry his plate to the sink, he’d been itching to just get the air cleared between them. They both retreated to the living room, and he threw a log onto the fire before following her to the couch. He lowered himself down next to her, twisting in place to face her, one leg bent in front of him and his arm across the back of the sofa, his head propped on his hand.

“So...” he started. His stomach flipped nervously. “We’re talking right?”

Tara nodded, letting out a sigh. “Yeah. Talking is... needed, I think.”

He stared at her for a moment, the fingers of the hand under his head absently toying with his hair. He frowned slightly at a twinge in his thumb, looking down to where the other hand rested on his thigh and he’d been unconsciously picking at the skin around his nail. He curled his hand into a ball, tucking his thumb under his fingers and looked back up.

“I’m not entirely sure where to start.” he admitted. “I... have so much stuff going on in here.” He lifted his head and tapped his temple twice with his first two fingers before resting his cheek back into his palm. She tucked her socked feet up beneath her legs, turning so that she was facing him with her whole body as he spoke. Her face remained soft, slightly plaintive. “I know. There’s a lot in my head, too.”

He nodded, acknowledging her words, before continuing. “But I do know two things. I know that I love you, and that’s never going to change, whatever happens. And I know that I want you to be happy, even if that isn’t with me.”

Her brow furrowed. She looked down at her hands, clasping them together in her lap. “I don’t... we need to talk about what that means.” She flicked her eyes back up to his face. “I mean, I love you too. That’s... that’s a part of who we are. Havin’ you in my life is important to me. And today, well, since last night... things have just been so confusing.”

His chest hurt. As muddled as his feelings were, seeing them mirrored on her face was so much more painful. He lifted his hand and reached towards her, intending to cover hers but stopped. As much as he wanted to comfort her, smooth away the frown, this conversation needed to happen with clear minds. The last thing he wanted was to muddy the waters with desire right now. Instead, he flattened his hand over his knee, rubbing his palm against the rough denim.

“I know. What I’m trying to say is that... whatever else happens between us, or doesn’t... whatever my feelings might be or whatever yours turn out to be...” He paused and swallowed the lump forming in this throat.

Suck it up, Jesus...

“Whether I’m in love with you or not, I will still always love you. You’re my best friend, Tara. You will always be that to me. I just... I need for you to know that. To believe that.” He stopped suddenly, his eyes focusing more intently on her. “Wait, what... Since... last night?” The crease deepened between his eyes. “I... uh. We hadn’t... I’m a little confused.”

“Things happened with Chris last night, things that I wasn’t expecting,” she clarified, shaking her head. “As you’re well aware.” She lifted her brows and gave him a weak smile. His cheeks burned furiously, but he returned her smile crookedly.

“I’m never gonna live this down, am I?” he joked softly, before gesturing for her to continue.

Tara tilted her head and grinned a little. “It’s okay. I just... You know there’ve been times before when I came close to asking him out, even back in May, in New York, I almost... I would’ve but too much was going on at the time.” She took a breath and let it out, licking her lips. “So last night and this morning, with him, it was...” She frowned, but kept her eyes on his face. “It would be unfair to lie to you and say that I don’t feel something for him.”

It took every shred of his acting ability to maintain a relatively neutral expression. This wasn’t precisely news to him, of course he was aware of her feelings for Chris; they’d talked about it often enough, he’d gently teased her, even, for being almost star-struck around the other man at times. But it still felt like a knife in his belly to be reminded of it so bluntly. He tried to swallow, his throat constricted painfully, and inhaled deeply, holding it for a beat.

“I know.” he admitted softly. “I can’t say that doesn’t hurt, but I know. And I don’t expect those feelings to simply vanish just because I finally decided to act on... well, on us.”

Tara looked at him, her face a mask of uncertainty and confusion. “Finally... you say finally like this is something... something you’ve felt for a long time and have kept from me, Sebastian.” Yes, she’d thought about it before, that obviously there had been something there before and it had become clearer after this morning, but hearing him say it out loud...

He grimaced, scrunching his eyes closed for a moment, while he worked to control the sudden pulse of adrenaline spiking through him. For someone who almost became a writer instead of an actor, he was really bad at words when it came to moments like this. “It’s not...” He opened his eyes, implored her with them. “That’s not what I mean... well, not exactly...” He rubbed his hand over his face with a small groan. “Jesus, I fuckin’ suck at this.” He huffed a sigh through his nose and straightened his back, his eyes on hers before he continued.

“Yes, in hindsight, I think this... these feelings have been there for a long time. But I wasn’t lying to you. Not intentionally.” He saw the doubt clouding her expression and he bit back a frustrated huff at his inability to explain himself clearly. “Fuck, Tara, I was lying to myself . I was... I was so sure that you would never feel that way about me so I... I just refused to go there. I didn’t let myself even acknowledge it after the first few weeks, months of knowing you. I meant it when I said that I couldn’t imagine why you’d have ever been interested in the nerdy theater kid with a funny accent and crooked teeth, babe.” He paused, his eyes flicking across her face, desperate to see understanding there.

Her eyes welled with tears, and she nodded, her voice barely a whisper as she said, “I know you meant it.” She reached forward, putting a hand on his knee and squeezed reassuringly. “You were such a good friend to me then, and I needed that. It would’ve... complicated things too much then and...” she lowered her eyes. “I made the choice to see you a certain way, even if I may have had other feelings at some points...”

“It’s okay... you don’t... I know, and that’s alright. I don’t... hold that against you.” He layered his hand over hers, tightened his fingers around her own, and just that small touch loosened the tightness restricting his lungs, just a fraction. “You don’t have to justify anything, I just... I need you to know that I never regarded our friendship as a placeholder, as... as a consolation prize. What we had... have... that’s really important to me. I need my zucchini.” He forced a small smile, his fingers itching to reach up and wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Please don’t cry. Not over this.”

Tara nodded, turning her hand to slip her fingers through his. ‘I’m trying. And I believe you. I really do.”

“Thank you,” he said. A small part of the heaviness weighing him down lifted from his shoulders and he pushed on. “All the times... the times things almost happened. I... That would frighten me so fuckin’ much, so I... I guess I took the cowardly way out, found someone else to try an’ scratch that itch with.” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head, his eyes dropping to his lap. “It was pretty shitty of me. But I honestly didn’t even put the pieces together, until this.”

“Why... do you think now? What is it now that...” Her eyes searched his face. “What do you want now?”

His brows lifted. “Why did I suddenly stop being stupid now, you mean? I want... “ He shook his head. “Right now, my heart tells me that I want you. All of you. I want to wake up next to you, fall asleep in your arms after worshipping your body, every damn day. But I... I’m me, Tara. I know how I am. I’m terrified that... I don’t want to be just another guy who takes advantage of you. I... the depth of self-loathing I would have if I persuaded you to do this, only to realise I can’t be what you need, because I’m just a lazy, insecure asshole taking the easy route is... well it’d be bad. You’d hate me. I’d hate me even more.” His eyes burned with the threat of tears. “It’d destroy me just as sure as it’d destroy you.”

Tara’s brow furrowed and she tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. “You...” Her eyes widened and she chuckled, trying to hold it back. “You think this is the easy way? How in the hell could this be the easy way?” She shook her head. “I mean, I’m torn to fuckin’ pieces over here. Because I love you and I want to make you happy, but... I don’t want that to be why... if we decide to be together...” She looked down at their hands, rubbing her thumb over his palm. “It’s so hard to know what to do right now.”

He laughed wryly. “Yeah, I officially suck at communicating feelings.” For a moment, he watched her tracing patterns over his hand, resolutely ignoring the tingling creeping along his arm. “I don’t want it to be for that reason either. That’s what I’m so afraid of here, Tara. I... You said it yourself. I keep doing the same shit, datin’ the same kinda woman, then I come back to you to make things better when it all goes wrong. Being with you was always the easiest thing in the world before. We just work. Even when you lecture me about thinking with my dick.” His fingers closed around hers, stilling her movements. “I worry that’s why I want this, even though... even though it really doesn’t feel like that to me.” He sighed. “Yeah, it’s definitely hard. And I am so, so fuckin’ sorry that I’ve made you feel like this.”

“Sebastian...” She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry, please... I don’t want you to apologize to me for how you feel. That’s... important to me, okay? That you tell me the truth and that we not hide our feelings. I think we’ve done that for long enough.” She gave him a wry smile. “If... if we’re gonna figure this out, we have to know the truth. Even if it really fuckin’ hurts.” She looked at him. “And that means I...” She pulled her hand from his, turning on the couch. She ran her hands over her hair. “I have to be honest with you, too. I have to tell the truth.”

Sebastian’s heart plummeted, his mouth suddenly desperately dry, but he nodded. “Alright... just... whatever it is, just tell me,” he rasped. He wished he had something to drink, but right now wasn’t the time to vanish into the kitchen, even for a moment.

Tara leaned forward and got to her feet. If she was going to confront all of those closed doors, now was the time to do it.

No backin’ out now .

She pushed the loose sleeves of her oversized sweater up to her elbows and brushed the hair out of her face, walking around the coffee table. “The fact that I have to say this over here and not...” She waved a hand toward the couch. “Sitting next to you...” She laughed bitterly and put her hands on her hips. She looked up at the ceiling and blew out a breath. “There’ve been times when it was hard being next to you. Being close to you. Because there’ve been points along the way where...” She lowered her eyes, looked down at her socked feet. “Where I wanted more. And maybe a small part of me thought you did too, but I ignored it. I’d hear you... when we’d be in one place or another and we’d come back drunk and I’d pretend to be asleep...”

Goosebumps rose over his entire body in a rush, every hair prickling at the root, and he doubled over, not entirely managing to bite back a groan as he buried his face into his arms. Mortification warred with arousal, and even after everything that had happened between them today, his body threatened to respond in a wholly unhelpful way. His hands slid into his hair, tugging lightly, and he sucked in slow breath. “I...” he swallowed, finally lifting his face from his arms, his cheeks pink, and shook his head as he waved at the coffee table. “That was probably a good idea, yeah.” He closed his eyes, frowning, and forced his breathing to slow. “Yeah, okay, I’m... go on...” he said finally, his fingers locked around his knees.

“Listening to you would...” She sighed, rubbing her hands over her face. “It would make me think about it. About you. About us . About what it would be like...” Tara looked at him, her eyes searching his face for a reaction. “That time... I know you remember that time, you mentioned earlier... when you couldn’t sleep because you were so worked up. And I told you it was okay to go ahead, do what you needed to do.”

He nodded, and swallowed. Oh yeah . He remembered every damn second of that night. They’d been staying in Los Angeles for an afterparty, and Tara, pleasantly tipsy, had gone up to their shared room, leaving him to continue making the rounds. By the time he’d followed her up he was more than a little drunk and had stumbled into the bathroom to pee before he burst. It wasn’t until he’d finished and turned to wash up that he’d realised that Tara was watching him from around the vaguely frosted glass door of the shower, her hair slicked to her shoulders and a bemused expression on her face. She’d shaken her head fondly and pulled the door closed, and he’d hurried out with a mumbled apology. Sure, they’d both wandered into the bathroom while the other had been showering before, but this time, her figure had been clearly visible instead of hidden behind an opaque shower curtain and he’d found himself instantly, unbearably aroused. By the time she’d appeared, dressed in her pyjamas and her hair wrapped in a towel, he had burrowed under the covers, but his mind kept returning to the shape of her curves behind the glass. He’d tried to be discreet, to hide his discomfort, but had failed dismally, and what had happened after... they hadn’t spoken of it since. He’d assumed she felt uncomfortable the next day, and he was embarrassed beyond belief at his weakness, and silence had seemed the easiest option all around.

She bit her lip, watching his face as he relived the memory. “In the end I... I had to touch you. Somehow. I had to... It was killing me.” She shook her head and turned around, facing the Christmas tree. She let her head fall back and she closed her eyes. “I wanted so much more than just to touch you.”

His vision swam. He’d guarded that memory jealously, even while there had been an unspoken agreement to pretend that it hadn’t happened. Although her hands hadn’t touched him anywhere that she wouldn’t have done normally, the memory of her fingers brushing his skin had driven him crazy for weeks afterwards. “Fuck, Tara, I...” He shook his head, his nails digging into his skin through the heavy cotton of his jeans. “I didn’t know. I didn’t realise, I... I thought that you wouldn’t ever want that from me, like... like you were just... I dunno...” He laughed, confused. “I guess I thought it was just the alcohol. Gettin’ carried away... I didn’t... I was embarrassed...”

“I know... I know you didn’t know and I didn’t... I didn’t want you to. I thought it’d be better if you didn’t.” She turned around, walking back to the coffee table. She sat down on the edge in front of him. “But now, it’s... It’s all come back and it’s probably the worst possible time. But I can’t... “ She tilted her head, her gaze fixing on his. “I can’t ignore that it’s something I feel. That everything that’s happened today has brought it to the surface.” She pressed her lips together, rubbing her hands down her thighs. “And every second that goes by it gets harder not to touch you now. It... it’s like a craving, like if I don’t... I won’t be able to breathe.”

Sebastian’s breath caught in his throat, need crawling along his spine. “I...” His eyes closed. When he answered, his voice was a whisper “I know. I feel it too. Part of me... part of me wondered if I would just... if once we’d done something, once we’d actually... I was afraid that’d be it, that I’d have risked it all for one time...” He opened his eyes. “It didn’t though. It’s fuckin’ terrifyin’ me, to want this so bad, all the time. Jesus, I...” He scrubbed his hands at his eyes, tucking them under his backside to ensure he wouldn’t just reach for her. “I swore to myself I’d be stronger this time. That we’d actually talk instead of...” he shrugged. “Messin’ around.”

Tara chuckled, leaning forward a little to nudge her knees against his. “We’re... doin’ okay so far? But...” Her eyes drifted over his face. “I don’t know how long I can keep doin’ okay.”

“God, Tara...” His breath rushed out of him and he definitely twitched in his pants. “Just... please just tell me what you need to tell me before I...” His tongue swiped over his lips. “I think I need to take a very cold shower,” His chuckle was strained. “Tell me what I need to do. Please. How I can help work this out.”

Tara’s brows lifted and she sighed, shrugging. “I wish I knew, babe. I really wish I did.” She shook her head. “I don’t wanna jump in with both feet and be like, okay, this is... whatever it is, not when I know I have feelings for Chris, too, and they’re just as new.” She paused, frowning a little. “Okay, maybe this thing between us isn’t new , but it hasn’t been explored and it’s just...” Tears welled in her eyes again. “I dunno how I’m supposed to handle having feelings for two people at once. How am I supposed to...” She sighed, exasperated. “Figure it out without looking like a fuckin’ horrible person?”

His face fell, and without thinking he reached for her, his fingers wrapping around her wrists and tugging her over to sit sideways across his lap. One arm curled around her waist and the other cupped the back of her head, snuggling her into the crook of his neck, shushing her with sussurated nonsense. “You’re not, you’re... You’re the best person I know, sweetheart,” he told her quietly. “I don’t expect you to just... stop feeling. I can’t... I won’t say I don’t care. I do.” He leaned back, lifted her chin. “Because I’m selfish and I want you all for myself. But I know I don’t have the right to ask that of you right now and that if I do, there’s a very big possibility that... well, bad things could happen. Losing you. Resentment. All that fun stuff. So I’ll wait. And... if you need...” His eyes dropped to her mouth, before he forced them back to meet her gaze. “If you need for me to not do this...” He tightened his hold on her waist, trailing off helplessly.

Tara sighed again, bringing a hand up to his face. Her thumb brushed across the crease between his brows and she smiled a little. “Let’s go to bed.” Her eyes searched his face. “And sleep. I want you to just... be there. Okay?”

He smiled back, leaning into her touch. “Yeah. That’s very okay.” He settled his hands on her hips, urging her back to her feet and pushed himself up to stand in front of her. Tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, he held out his hand. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

[therewas-a-girl]

so - i got this amazing ask some days ago, and then like an idiot, accidentally deleted it. thankfully for me, outlook saved the copy from the notifications, so here it is

How do you see the Laurel/Oliver relationship? Otp? Notp? Brotp? More than friends, less than lovers? I always thought that their relationship was somehow complicated. Did you think that 5x08 showed that Laurel was really the love of Oliver's life, not Felicity? I love both ladies, but I kinda see Olicity as Otp and Lauriver as, actually I'm not sure what I see them as. They love each other, not romantically, but they're not exactly friends?

anon im so sorry for my carelessness, and for the late reply - free time is scarce for me these days. 

i wouldn’t say complicated - though they sure are! - it’s just that that is not the very first word i would pick for them. laurel and oliver’s story is just really long lol. it spans something around two decades, it has changed so much - just as they have, as people naturally do - so of course, it’s going to be complicated. it’s a really layered relationship - that’s the word i like for them. maybe it should be analysed by ‘historical period’ the way i study political systems in different countries lmao.

they’re not otp for me (though they’re not a notp either), because the way canon built their relationship, the dynamics of it and the dynamics between them, has some really ‘nope’ moments. i dont ship characters where one treats the other like shit. (i dont ship ships where the story treats one character like shit for the sake of another, either)

I do think that through the course of 4 years they finally made it to ‘friends’ status, yeah. in season 4 i really thought their friendship was cemented, because in season 2-3 they felt more like... acquaintances with a dangerous history. they had too much conflict between them to really earn a friend status to each other. (not to mention the way oliver failed time and time again to be what a friend should have been to laurel. and vice versa, ofc. tho i dont think in laurel’s case it’s as flagrant as oliver, but at this point im basing my opinion on general impressions cause i haven’t seen s3 in a while.) but, despite that, many times they protected each other, and supported each other throughout the show, even when they didn't seem to like each other much. 

in season 1, their relationship felt kind of muddy, to me because there is so much going on there. i mean these two used to be childhood friends at some point. then they got together and i think... i kid of think they weren’t friends anymore. i think oliver didn’t see it that way anyway. laurel was in the girlfriend category. and laurel was really young and, i believe, really idealistic, trying to fit into all these ideas that she believes a girl is, and a girlfriend is, and what love means. it’s everywhere in film and our culture that ‘complicated love’ is great and romantic when in most cases it just bad for your health. but we’re not trained to think of it that way. and that may be easy to see when you’re 26 y.o. but it wasn't when i was 17, and i imagine it wasn't for laurel either. i imagine she thought that hear-breaking and intense and painful is the way love is supposed to fee. all movies say so. 

[in parenthesis here, i don’t think oliver cheated on her as much as fandom likes to think he did. there are other ways to make sense of their relationship than to pretend laurel was an idiot or spineless or a ‘stupid girl’. 

he either got with other people when they were in their ‘off’ periods, which we know they had, because everyone says they were the kind of couple that was on-again off-again. or he cheated and she did not know about it. i tend to think it’s the first, from the interaction in the flashbacks between sara and laurel - when sara says ‘we both know at leas 10 girls he’s slept with.’ *slept with* , not *cheated on you with*. and i think this is the case also because it fits with my idea of the rest of laurel’s characterization: an idealistic girl who is so enamored with the idea of love, as well as her boyfriend, that she can’t really see the cracks. someone like that wouldn’t forgive cheating so easily, BUT it is entirely within this laurel’s character to believe she can help people change, and take oliver on also as a sort of project. 

(and when i see people sneering at this, and at laurel for having this idea, i remember, absolutely drowning in irony, about how many fanfics there are out there where ‘felicity changes oliver’ and ‘is oliver’s light’ or just the general romanticising of this idea that love is ‘a woman changing a man’ and being responsible for his ‘goodness’. like, it’s everywhere, so criticizing a girl for having this idea, any girl, feels a little hypocritical, because we all have to work to drain this kind of shit from out psyche.)]

and then the gambit happens and their relationship in s1 is just really heavy with the history of 5 years of accumulated emotion on both sides. not all good kind of emotion. laurel was all about “life, interrupted” and ‘what could have been’ and the possibilities of sth that never was. oliver was all about guilt and pursuit of laurel, the person, in order to find in her what had been keeping him alive - laurel, the idea, aka home, aka the end of all the violent fuckery, a time when things were simpler - throughout the five years he was away. s1 is such a mess of regrets, and broken hopes, of ‘you were mine once how dare you see/try to be happy with- other people’ kind of jealousy, on both oliver and laurel’s parts, and fear of attachment on laurel’s part - being afraid of getting with tommy after how she was betrayed the last time she let herself love someone. being left by tommy too, falling back in oliver. 

there is this poem by warsan shire that always makes me think of s1 laurel and her decision to sleep with oliver right after tommy refuses her again at Merlyn Global, after she tells him she loves him: 

when the one i wanted, did not want me.

I was almost rabid for love. Would’ve lunged at anything thrown my way carcass, shadow, memory, promise shell of a man. I thought it was better to be loved by a dead thing than to be left alone. Then I loved a dead thing and was completely alone

at some point in s1, i do think they were tentatively trying to be friends again, but there was a lot of shit that remained unresolved between them and that stuff doesnt just, go away if you ignore it because its awkward af. 

i dont even know if i take that s4 episode and the whole ‘love of my life’ seriously, to be honest with you. it’s not that it contradicts my idea of laurel’s development as a character. i can very well imagine that after seeing who oliver had become , how much he had changed, laurel might very well fallen back in love with him. laurel loves and admires strength and goodness. she falls in love with potential, as much as with the actual people. so no, it’s not impossible to me that she might have, during the course of season 4, fallen in love with oliver. again. if it were not for one detail. 

oliver didn’t tell her about the pit. laurel believes that for all that happened , he STILL does not see her as an equal. and i cannot believe that someone who has gone through the things laurel has gone through, can love someone who sees her as beneath himself. it’s just not realistic to me. her character would require a deep respect of her person, to allow herself even the smallest possibility of opening her heart again. 

5x08... i honestly only have my own idea of what that episode was. i rationalized it like this: oliver has a serious difficulty letting go of guilt. when laurel told him that she’d loved him all the while, that really cemented oliver’s regret after her death. canon hasn’t given us any hints on the fact that oliver might still be in love with her, romantically. but he does love her, she is a friend. she is someone important in his life. and knowing that she is dead , that kind of pain is deepened by the knowledge of how unhappy she must have been. specifically, how unhappy he made her. this combines with the trait oliver has that, whenever he regrets something, whenever he feels he has wronged someone he loves, that guilt pulls really heavily on his judgement. and he has this compulsion to give people what they want, what they might need from him. 

and that’s how i saw oliver’s dream world. a sort of tiny little prison he and the others were trapped in, where to get out they had to face their enemies and fears. and my idea was that, after defeating deathstroke and merlyn, the real test of strength was saying goodbye to an alive and happy laurel, for both sara and oliver. because in that moment of their lives, laurel - alive and happy and getting everything she had ever wanted, according to what oliver and sara thought she’d wanted - was their deepest wish, their latest and freshest regret. (this totally fails to account for  William in oliver’s life, and how that is also a big regret for him. but that’s details) 

so, yeah that’s how i think about it. basically, they’re friends with a fucked up childhood lmao 

[blacklister214]

Cartoon Gaston V. Live Action Gaston

I’m a HUGE fan of the Beauty and the Beast remake, and one of the things I have yet to gush about is the changes they made to Gaston. I LOVE a complex villain, and the writers did an amazing job delivering a character who is both more sympathetic and more evil than his cartoon counterpart. SPOILERS BELOW!

Friendship With LeFou

Live action Gaston and Lefou have a much deeper relationship than their cartoon counterparts. Original LeFou is from the first minutes getting smacked by Gaston gun. When he tries to raise the potential issues with Gaston courting Belle, not only does Gaston keep interrupting him, but threatens him into silence by yanking him up by the shirt collar. He hits Lefou on the head for making a joke about Maurice that he just laughed at. He forces LeFou to wait for Maurice in a SNOW BANK, potentially for days. They are not true friends by any stretch of the imagination.

2017 Gaston on the other hand does have a friendship with LeFou, even if it is not a particularly healthy one, and completely implodes at the end. Gaston listens to LeFou when he voices concerns about Belle and actually agrees with his points about his differences from Belle. He talks to LeFou about his feelings. When LeFou “goes a little too far” during Gaston, he doesn’t fight him, hit him or otherwise shame him for it. At the end of the songs he even tells LeFou he is wonderful and asks why he hasn’t been “snatched up” by a girl yet. LeFou knows Gaston well enough to calm him during his ‘rage’ episodes. 

Somehow this all makes what happens at the end so much worse, where he forces LeFou to be an accessory to murder, to lie in front of the whole town, and participate in sending an innocent man to an asylum. He also threatens to send LeFou to the asylum, if he doesn’t play along. Finally he throws LeFou into harms way during the castle fight and then leaves him there. 

Level of Affection For Belle

Cartoon Gaston doesn’t know Belle as a person at all. He is so delusional about who she is, he believes marrying him would ‘make all her dreams come true’. He sets up their wedding and invites the whole town before he even proposes. When she calls him ‘primeval’ he thinks she means it as a compliment. His big effort in “wooing her” is asking her to come look at his hunting trophies. He tells her she shouldn’t, as a woman, be reading or thinking. He casually drops her book in the mud and later puts his muddy feet on top of (another?) one of her books. When Maurice says Belle has been kidnapped by a Beast, he doesn’t even bother to check her house.

Live Action Gaston DOES know who Belle is, at least a little. He acknowledges she’s as “argumentative as she is beautiful”, but says she is the only woman in town he has feelings for. He’s aware she is resisting his charms and calls her lack of flattery “outrageously attractive”. He makes more of an effort to woo her. He brings her flowers and asks her to dinner (okay asks if she’ll cook him dinner, but still better than ‘look at my trophies’). He doesn’t mock her for her reading, but instead fakes an interest in it, so she’ll like him better. He practices his marriage proposal in the mirror which includes the words ‘no one deserves you’. When the villagers mess with her invention. he tries to make her feel better, telling her that the school master never really liked him either. He tries to give her advice on how become more accepted by the village (which to him is a very important thing). He says that he’s changed and could make her happy, rather than saying that she could change and make him happy. Finally and the most sympathetic thing that he does is that when Maurice turns up with his crazy story about Belle’s abduction, despite that fact he doesn’t believe it, he’s worried enough that he accompanies Maurice on his search for her. He wasn’t just humoring Maurice to earn his blessing, he was concerned about “wolves, frostbite, and starvation.” He gave up his evening and risked the town’s scorn for following Maurice, to ensure Belle was safe.   

For me Cartoon Gaston’s descent into darkest is ALL about ego. Live action Gaston on the other hand has a little Congreve going on, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,” which maybe explains why he goes even darker than original Gaston. 

Evil Actions

For the sake of comparison, let’s ignore that things both versions of Gaston do: 1) Inciting a mob to attack a sentient creature with no proof it’s at all dangerous and one person testifying that it’s not, and 2) dishonorably shooting/stabbing the Beast twice. 

Live Action Gaston one ups Cartoon Gaston on every level. Cartoon Gaston invades Belle’s personal space during his proposal, but he never actually touches her, and being fair to him, her responses during his proposal are politely vague. Live Action Belle states very clearly in their conversation that she doesn’t want to marry him. Live Action Gaston responds by not only grabbing her dress, but tells her her options are basically marry him or starve.

Both Gastons treat Maurice like garbage, but again live action Gaston is the worse of the two. Cartoon Gaston plots to use the threat of Maurice being sent to the asylum to coerce Belle into marriage. Sick, but ultimately Maurice’s imprisonment wasn’t his intended end game. Live Action Gaston strikes Maurice hard enough to knock him out, then ties him up to be eaten by wolves. When that doesn’t work he tries to get rid of him via asylum.  

During the Castle Raid and scenes leading up to it Gaston threatens his best friend with the asylum, offers him up to the castle staff, and then abandons him during the fight. Finally, in a small, but vicious move he tells Beast that Belle sent him. It may seem small, compared to all the other stuff, but still that is a pretty s***** thing to do.

My conclusion is the live action movies’ writers are geniuses, because the most horrific bad guys are the ones that feel like real people, layered and complicated.

[qanoor]

i suppose it is ironic and apt that i am listening to a peppy pop song called “not over you” by tessa violet right now.

*

i woke up around 12.30 & stuffed my face with food i shouldn’t eat & talked to sophie a little & then went back to sleep because that is my method of coping with my anxiety and depression & it doesn’t work but what else can you do. i told sophie about what was going on with sam & i wanted her to say don’t worry, we’ll figure it out so you can live with me and ginny and tavi and miel. (or some combination thereof.) instead she said she was glad that she was moving if it was going to be so precarious whether sam and i keep living together, too. then she asked me, following our conversation/difficulty/post-breakdown anxiety last night, if it would be okay if ginny came over to help her with cleaning her room -- she’d check in on me, it wouldn’t be too long, etc. i said yes i didn’t want it to be rigid, of course it’s okay if ginny stops by briefly too. last night i was trying to ask, trying to ask if it would be okay if ginny didn’t come over really for a bit, at least until we tried to figure stuff out more. how do i say i don’t even know why i’m so hurt but i am. how do i say i fucked up and i’m embarrassed that she witnessed me screaming and yelling at you and saying all those angry things about her and she would never lose her cool like that around me and so i have this vulnerability, this mistake, this roughness, and i am so tired of having to apologize over and over but what else is there to do.

*

i woke up again around 5.50 to a beetle crawling/flying its way across my armpit. i brushed it aside and i wanted to die. i stuffed my face more with those corn puffs i shouldn’t eat & i couldn’t stop until i finished what was left in the bag & i knew it was bad & i read the comments on my facebook post about vegan/vegetarian options for the low fodmaps diet & i wanted to die & i wanted to die & i wanted to die & i couldn’t stop stuffing my face & i couldn’t stop & if you really wanted to stop if you really were disciplined if you were anything but this fucked up useless mess you *would* be able to do it you’re just lazy you’re just always sabotaging your health you call it “mild-moderate bingeing and compulsive overeating” but really it’s your complete lack of control because you’re such a useless shitty person and you never try hard enough.

*

i managed to go to the toilet and i managed to put on a shirt and underwear and pyjama shorts & sophie came out of her room when i was dumping her frozen vegetables that she’d (mistakenly?) left out into the chest freezer, and she was very happy about the new lice shampoo she was trying (she and ginny have been fighting off a strange case of lice for months now, with varying levels of non-success... strangely enough i haven’t got lice yet and maybe i should be more worried about getting it, certainly it would be more consistent with my ocd to be more worried about it, but anyway) because it’s some “natural” thing or something and it smells so much better & she kissed me and i made sure it was close-mouthed because i hadn’t brushed my teeth & it probably would’ve been anyway & she did that silly gasp thing that i love so much & 

*

i was planning to go visit sam in his room after i poured myself the last of the melon juice and mixed it with my fiber supplement (i’m only taking it once a day instead of 3 times like it says because i think i jumped in too fast initially and it might’ve fucked with the absorption of my psych meds, which could also have been a factor in my awful meltdown the other day) but when i actually went over he was gone & i asked anya if he’d left & she said she thought so, maybe, & i felt so horrible and empty & i came back here to my room & i called him & he’s having dinner at his father’s house & he said he’d be back in 2 or 2.5 hours & i asked him how he was doing & he said very shitty & i said i can imagine & i asked him if we could talk when he got back & he said maybe, depends on if i’m doing anything else tonight, i’ll let you know

*

last night it scared the shit out of me that when i keep asking for reassurance from sophie it seems to trigger her, especially in this context, in the wake of a meltdown, into doubting her entire sense of judgment, into wondering if i am doing something wrong after all when i keep asking if i am over and over, or even just more than once at all, and i know -- i know she can’t deal with my need for reassurance, i know, but -- and i said i think this is a textbook response of how abuse survivors/victims doubt themselves & i don’t know what to do with this & also it’s different everything is different & also similar, it’s always like this, nothing is ever textbook and nothing is ever “just abuse” or whatever you want to call it -- there is so much grief and mourning and history between us & it’s hard & i see her being unable to think express answer breaking down in her own withdrawal or constant distraction or -- i don’t know how to describe these things. i don’t know how to describe the feeling of lying on my bed trying to cry silently this time, am i always seeking attention when i cry loudly?, i don’t know how to describe this feeling of things with her always being my easiest reason to cry, how hard it is to cry otherwise. i don’t know how to describe the way it seeps out every last molecule of energy from my body & i’m out for a day & then i try not to be & then i am again & i see how much it hurts us both, this history, this mourning, this retraumatization, this reenactment, every time i have another screaming/yelling fit about something it’s.... and i feel the need to clarify, always, no i didn’t scream/yell again last night, but it was still related to the other night, and why this endless need to clarify, to ascertain, to document.... am i just always trying to prove some kind of innocence, or some kind of “at least” or “it wasn’t as bad as” or something? maybe everything was already premade to be as bad. no, not that. it’s not that either.

*

last night sam said he didn’t want to delve into what he was feeling/thinking about us but i couldn’t leave well enough alone and he said he just didn’t want to pile on if i was really tired & i said no it makes me more anxious to not know & so. & so we got into it again & this time we really did decide, or i helped him decide?, or something. that we should really just call ourselves platonic friends. & this was. he didn’t want to let go of this hope he keeps having that it’ll be something more, that i’ll be more romantically/sexually available and interested, that there’s something still to hope for. & letting go of all this hope is so devastating for him.

*

there’s things that are hard to document, and i wanted to document them as they were happening, but it’s also so maudlin. i said but i’m here for you and he said but not the way i want you to be. and i try to understand i try to understand, god knows i’ve been through this too, was this what i did to amira? & later much later i realized what a beautiful friendship i had destroyed in some sense forever. & i don’t know i don’t know. but i can’t feel the things for him that he feels for me. & he said you don’t know what it feels like, to be so utterly rejected by someone you have such a passion for. & i said but i haven’t completely rejected you! but when did i become this person? i should not have defended myself thusly. i have -- i have -- rejected him so utterly. this has been true for so long. this has been true for years. this has been true since i wrote the jaded poem the night after i first slept with him in summer 2013. this has been true! why do i keep lying to him and to myself?

*

i keep wanting to be this girl, like sylvia plath, who eats men like air.

but it’s dreadfully lonely & it’s not the best relationship model. maybe it’s a better business model, but i never wanted to seal the imprint of a body on a dollar bill.

*

see, he said but i’m a bad friend and i thought about how miel and i had talked about how he seems to be so much more friendly, at least sooner so, with people he’s attracted to. like how he friended evyn on facebook right away but took so long to friend miel. or how he constantly falls for all these queer people who won’t have him and keeps trying and hoping anyway. or how he said he wished he’d talked to lea on okcupid all that time ago even though lea’s really a lesbian. & i thought about the violence that exists in desire. today, sophie said that she can understand that, though -- the only really wanting to consistently connect with people who you also have some kind of romantic/sexual/complicated feelings for, that she’s like that too. this frustrated me & she said she doesn’t really communicate with people who are “just friends” either, & this frustrated me. like i get it but also i think i have learned through years, perhaps years of also doing similar things, that there has to be value in platonic friendships too, and even if everything is fluid there has to be some sort of recognition.... & yes sophie does get that too, and i guess sam does as well, but it’s... it’s... i don’t know. 

what he said was that he wasn’t sure how things would be if he got with someone else (and especially monogamously) and if i moved away & if we didn’t live together & if... & i asked him if he felt like he couldn’t live with me anymore if things were “just” platonic & it was complicated because he both said yeah that would be too hard but he also said he wanted to live with me too when i said i wanted to keep living with him. he was just scared that we wouldn’t be forever anymore

*

this is where it gets so muddy and awful. i don’t really want to live with him. i haven’t wanted to keep living with him in a long time. i never really wanted to start living with him that much, either. we’ve carved out some sort of patchwork semi-halfhearted domesticity and some kind of comfort, some kind of sustainability. but so much of this, for me, has been more about practicality and giving in to something i don’t really feel much agency in...

& so i’m awful. & so i think about -- if he moves out, who will i find to live in his room? would miel even be interested? this apartment is so small and has a tendency to become cramped, but i suppose that is moreso because currently the living room is partitioned off into sophie’s room. & what about -- laundry, that is, the lack thereof in this building, and how it really does require a car when the laundromat is 10-15 minutes away walking. 

& so i think about -- it’s been such a help to get rides from him -- not just for laundry but also for groceries and other things. & i don’t have a car (and neither does miel). & i can’t just live with someone i don’t trust. 

so then there’s -- what if i moved out instead? the moving plans have all combusted spectacularly. i really was hoping for the place that sophie, ginny, sam, me and tavi (and originally miel as well, but that’s a long story) applied for but didn’t get. and now there’s -- which occasioned the terrible meltdown about ginny and other things -- the plan for sophie & ginny to move in with that fucking white straight couple to a different place, and if the white straight couple backs out (which sophie is hoping for) then maybe tavi and a friend could join. (i am bitter that sophie doesn’t even think this is a possibility for me anymore, it seems.) 

anyway, i am really afraid. i am also really afraid that even if sam and i do continue living here together, like it was seeming to be, that he won’t -- i don’t know, that he’ll be a lot less giving now that we’re not even makeshift partners anymore. that maybe he just won’t value me as a friend, that he can’t. that if he gets into a monogamous relationship that that person won’t be okay with him living with his ex. that it really will come down to -- i’m no longer worthy now that there’s not even the vague hope of sex again. & i feel so dirty and wrong and awful. and i feel so angry. and it’s easy to confer the dirtiness and wrongness onto him. 

maybe i am just afraid that i won’t be able to use him anymore. this is such a typical “woman’s role” or whatever. i am a stereotype but maybe there is nothing else to be. so much misogyny in the very syllable of being, internalized or otherwise. it’s so complicated. depending on a guy who has more money (albeit not that much more), who has a car. 

& to look for a new place -- maybe with miel, maybe with someone else (who???) too? i’m so scared. & it’s so hard, with my being on disability & miel’s complicated low-income status (albeit they can probably have their mom as a guarantor on their part of a lease, like they currently have -- i don’t really have this possibility as my parents are in india and that’s very complicated), to even find a place that will accept the precarity of our incomes. i want to be looking for part-time work but that might not do much good either, and it’s the constant -- if i earn “too much” i don’t get disability anymore, but if i stay on disability that’s fucking miserable too. 

i wish it felt like i could get out of the trap i’m in. but maybe i am just always painting myself as the victim and actually i am manipulative, like ginny says, just trapping everyone else in my elaborate web of constraints, instead.

[dellaliz19]

The Problem with The Final Problem: A Surprisingly Long Essay

I think, possibly, that the problem with The Final Problem is that if it wasn’t an episode of Sherlock, it would have been an excellent hour and a half of television.  Because please don’t misunderstand me, the emotional arcs are great in this episode; Mycroft and his relationship with Sherlock, Greg finally calling Sherlock ‘a good man,’ Mrs. Hudson (just everything about her), Mycroft and their parents, John and Sherlock and Rosie, and so on.  Emotionally, this was a decent episode; it’s as an episode of Sherlock, as a mystery, that this episode was so disappointing.

 Let’s start at the beginning; what makes ‘Sherlock’ so great? The emotional arcs between the characters and the villains yes, but at the base Sherlock is about well written mysteries that exist in a very specific framework that are spelled out to us, the viewers in the very first scene we see Sherlock.  To review:

 John meets Sherlock in St. Bart’s and Sherlock asks him “Afghanistan or Iraq?” This is the set up. Sherlock does or says something that relies on knowledge he shouldn’t have.

 Sherlock then painstakingly explains how he knows this thing he’s just said; his deductions that are based on the mundane and the minute that he weaves into a greater sum.  This is the follow up, and the premise of the whole show; Sherlock does a magic trick, and then painstakingly explains to the audience how the trick works; there is no magic in Sherlock, only the science of deduction.  

 This is not a framework that is unique to Sherlock – Scooby Doo used this exact same formula for decades – but it was the framework that the show existed in for its first 3 seasons.  Something strange happened, and then Sherlock, and the audience with him, were slowly drip fed small details and deductions that eventually led up to the reveal; pulling the mask off the monster and exposing the person beneath it, if you’ll excuse the Scooby Doo metaphor.

 This is the mark of a well written mystery; not that the audience can’t work it out, but that they can, when the writer wants them too.  The movie The Sixth Sense is a great example of this; all of the little clues that Bruce Willis is dead leading up to the big reveal let the audience follow along, and feel let into the mystery.  Even if you didn’t get it the first time, you can watch it a second time and see those clues with a different light.  Even the Abominable Bride did this; I had a suspicion on what was happening from about 10 minutes into the episode, and that’s not because I’m so smart, but because the writing and editing had given me these clues. Part of the fun of watching the episode then became watching for other clues to see if they confirmed or disproved my theory; being a detective, essentially.  

 So now, let’s look at The Final Problem.  The mystery needed to be solved is essentially; what is Eurus’ plan, and how is she going to accomplish it?  This is a pretty solid basic mystery premise, and the side questions; why is Eurus in a mental institution, and what is her motivation regarding Sherlock are there and, are, to the shows credit, relatively well answered in a way the audience can follow along with.  Eurus, a young psychopath, was jealous of Sherlock’s friendship with Victor Trevor and killed him to have her brother’s attention to herself.  The Redbeard reveal is honestly pretty well done (narratively speaking) and has foreshadowing behind it, as too does the fact that Sherlock was able to just forget her; Sherlock being able to ‘delete’ things from his mind is pretty well explained and foreshadowed, so being able to delete a person is a possibility.

 Where it falls apart is the main mysteries, because the answers to; a) what is Eurus’ plan, and b) how is she going to accomplish it, seem to be a) torture them just because she’s insane and b) mind control. The first one is just weak story telling; the second betrays a total understanding of the Sherlock formula.  

 Let’s discuss.

 First; ‘because they are crazy’ is cheap way to make things that don’t make sense seem connected and always has been, and it’s disappointing here because it didn’t have to be. Insane villains with well written motivations and plans do exist, and they are amazing; Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs, The Joker in The Dark Knight, Moriarty himself from Sherlock and the list goes on.  Yes, Eurus’ motivation does seem to be to make Sherlock pay for his part in her life in Sherrinford, but even that is very muddied and we, the audience, are unsure how we should feel about her.  The show tries to make her seem like this master villain, and then in the span of a few minutes we are supposed to forget about everything she has done to the characters we do empathize with because she was crazy, and Sherlock forgave her, so it’s all good now?  

 The failing in this is probably that it’s way too rushed, not that it couldn’t work. If the entire forth series had been truly about Eurus – and not as the girl on the bus or the therapist or her other disguises but about her as their sister – this could have worked.  You need time for a tonal shift like that to work, and there just wasn’t enough of it; the scene with Sherlock and Eurus playing their violins together with their family there watching is a great scene, but it just didn’t feel earned the way Sherlock telling Mycroft that John was family or Greg saying Sherlock was a good man did.

 Second; mind control. Where to even start with this? Everything else I’ve already said aside, this is the real problem with the episode.  If they’d just left this out, I’d probably have been very satisfied with it, and I think most fans would have as well.  But they didn’t, so here we are.

 ‘A Wizard Did It’ is a trope for where when something doesn’t make sense narratively, the blanket answer is ‘a wizard did it’ and in non-fantasy mediums is often hand waved away with an explanation that doesn’t really explain it, but just gives the appearance that it did and removed the magic from it.  For example:

 “How is Eurus able to have control over the guards over her prison so she can leave to try and fuck with her brothers lives?”

 The answer: “She’s mentally compelled them to her will,” aka ‘a wizard did it.’

 The follow up question: “Wait, how does this work, Sherlock is a show that pretty clearly centers on not having the supernatural be real?”

 The hand wave: “No, she’s just so smart she can do it. Definitely not magic, just super intelligence.”

 Given that Stephen Hawking or Neil DeGrasse Tyson have yet to lead brainwashed cults in the pursuit of science yet, the ‘super intelligence as mind control’ hand wave is pretty weak, and it fails to deliver on that premise that was set up in that first scene, and really makes a good mystery impossible in this case.  There is no way that we, the audience, based on the framework we had of the show, would have come to the conclusion that mind control was the answer.  It was so out of the realm of the possible that it not only feels incredibly out of place in this episode, but it weakens the show up until now.  Remember all those complicated theories we had about how Sherlock survived the fall? Well, maybe he just levitated and floated away.  I mean why not, if mind control exists in the Sherlock universe, so could other supernatural things, right?

 The reason it’s so disappointing they chose to go with this is because it’s not the only choice they had.  If you want to show that Eurus is smarter than her brothers, and emotionally manipulative enough to bring the whole of Sherringford under her control, you could do that many other ways.  How about getting shown small scenes with the Governor where Sherlock deduces that he lost a child, that he was a solider and feels extreme guilt over not being able to save people and his child.  We see the Governor say something strange when Mycroft takes over his office that hints at some unexplained tension that he has with them.  This gets spliced back in with flashbacks of Eurus and the Governor and we become aware of the fact that she has manipulated the Governor into believing that she is innocent, playing on his sympathies as a grieving father so that he believes her to be a patsy to her brothers, these scary men who are so powerful that they can say, kill a well-respected media magnate with no repercussions (and as a bonus, actually have something Sherlock does have consequences).  Throw in a scene where it’s clear that the prison is run like the military where they all follow orders and boom, problem solved, no magic needed, and Eurus becomes much formidable in the trade.

 Or with Moriarty; we instead see them playing chess – a long standing visual representation of skill and strategy, with tons of available white/black metaphors – where we see her feeding Moriarty into the mystery of Sherlock. Baiting him perhaps with the idea that Moriarty thinks no one is his equal and then mentioning the shoes that Sherlock found at his first crime scene, as a subtle taunt that we then learn grew into an obsession for Moriarty (rather than say a mind control thing that robbed Moriarty of all of his agency as the best villain the show actually had which I could probably write another essay about entirely).

 And in conclusion again, I don’t hate this episode, and I can even understand why people love it; when the episode was good it was very good. But if the best I can really say about this episode is that it was emotionally strong and narratively very weak, for a show that has done both so well in the past, that is incredibly disappointing.  

[aqueerdisposal]

an update

regarding the story highlighted in my first presentation of this project

i know -- i am so familiar with the tactics of social justice / identity politics discursive language, strategy, conversation, relationship -- we live in this social sphere where marginalized identities and experiences get weaponized against each other -- i guess it is naive of me to hope that maybe we could hold space for so many traumas and marginalizations -- maybe it is my non-Black privilege here, i feel like it must be, and it is also my grief and trauma at the reductionism that i have experienced and witnessed in so-called ‘communities’ -- and so maybe i will keep fighting for that and -- and maybe there are other fights that are better, more necessary -- i really don’t know -- i don’t know if this is a centering of my feelings as a non-Black POC, as many would say. i am looking for something more in discourse but i cannot find it so i will just remain confused, i guess --

i've been loosely friends with alix for maybe two years? i don't know. i never really got very close to them, but did follow some of the stuff that was going on. i am still so confused 

i found out about the tumblr sam made to ‘expose’ alix’s lies maybe a year ago, i'm not sure. since recently alix submitted their story of sam abusing them to this ongoing (though currently fledgling) academic/creative project, i used their story, along with screenshots from the 'exposing alix' blog, in my first presentation. i initially wanted to use screenshots of the conflicting narratives, as sam documented on the blog, to show how complicated trauma is, how narratives can be so inconsistent. but alix didn't want me to use those, so i stuck to the ones that were more consistent, and which either showed abusive behaviour from sam & her friends, or showed support for alix from their friends. i do wish i could have showed more of sam's side of things, which i still don't know enough of. i also recognize that my prioritizing consent from alix to use this story in my work but not sam's is hypocritical and also damaging. (i also have many complicated feelings about the privacy of 'public' blogs, whether name-changing -- which i did -- is ever enough, etc., whether and how to gain consent from all parties when there is always someone’s voice being left out...)

anyway, the thing is. now a callout has been going around on facebook -- many more people, many of them non-Black people of colour and white people, are coming forward talking about ways in which they have been emotionally and financially manipulated and taken advantage of by alix. i would link to it here but i think that could really be damaging to many people’s privacy and safety, so i won’t. there are a lot, lot, lot of stories in that post. alix’s most recent ex, lola, talks about how they had to pay huge sums of money during a trip that alix made to visit and travel with them in europe. many other people have expressed a lot of hurt and confusion over how alix would constantly ask for money, but then seemed to spend it on custom dresses and fancy expensive makeup and other things while also talking about how they were starving and needed money for basic living expenses. i have also wondered about this, admittedly, and maybe the truth lies in a muddled, muddied space between ‘support femmes and however they spend money!’ and ‘this person is completely and utterly lying’ ... or maybe not, i don’t know. i am inclined to believe that truth is multiple and always more complicated, but perhaps i am naive in this, too. or removed. far too removed, perhaps.

from everything i have seen, and since before this callout, and also as i tried to say in my presentation, i really feel that both alix and sam have been so, so, so hurt, have hurt each other... isn't it possible to acknowledge the anti-Blackness of believing alix, a white femme, over sam, a dark-skinned Black femme, at the same time as also acknowledging the deep woundedness that exists between them (and how this woundedness is so very primarily implicated in anti-Blackness, but still cannot be reduced to a unilateral believing)? and not just that, but i strongly believe that people are not just evil, that first deciding that sam was terrible and now deciding that alix is evil is also a way of getting out of accountability for -- the depth of friendships and relationships that happened here, the messiness that can't be contained. 

i feel uncomfortable with the ways in which these callouts tend to go, here and elsewhere, because it always ends up with endless loops of abuse accusations, various mobilizations of identity politics at the expense of lived experience (while, ironically and perhaps pivotally, the marginalization of some people against others tries to desperately be noted), and with the cycle of: someone is demonized, then maybe later it's spun around again and it's the other person is demonized, and so on and so forth... i feel like it would be worth more to think about -- what kind of trauma and complexity goes into lying, into desperation -- what kind of violence exists before the fact of a relationship, in the very foundation of a relationship (as a white person, it was always possible for alix to fundamentally exploit sam) -- and also, how can we recognize anti-Blackness at the same time as valuing rather than discarding or reducing multiple inconsistent narratives of trauma. it's true that alix's trauma got a lot more attention in some dominating social circles because they were a white femme, and that their abuse is only being recognized now because non-Black people of colour and white people are calling it out, but it wasn't recognized when sam first started being harassed and systematically disposed of. i still think -- why this fixation on whether alix lied about being raped in order to 'scam' people for money -- why this idea of the scam in the face of clearly inconsistent but revealing narratives of trauma -- or, how can their using financial support perhaps 'irresponsibly' (so much lies in this statement, so much that i just don't know how to parse without talking about how the very concept of a 'scam' cannot exist without capitalism)

tom, the guy who alix says raped them (after earlier saying that their resultant bruises were from bdsm, then from heroin use), commented in the callout thread. he talked about having proof -- text messages, pictures, everything -- that alix consented. but here there is something about consent that gets missed -- and i felt scared as i read his comments, not because i think there has to be a singular truth, but precisely because there are so many truths when it comes to consent, often. i don’t think people want to believe this, because it can give ammunition to white men with capital to get away with rape. but i also don’t think that dismantling rape and abuse culture can happen if we maintain unilateral ideas about rape and abuse. the whole function of trauma is inconsistency, often. trauma wounds, burrows, escapes deep into the body. what is at one moment consensual becomes violence in the next. how to be accountable for violence and desperation? tom talks about trying to be accountable at first, but alix just descended into hateful spewage or whatever. i instinctively understand why someone might devolve into hateful spewage, not just because i have done so, but because, again, the very function of trauma is a desperate violence -- so inarticulable, often. maybe it seemed consensual to tom, maybe it even did seem consensual to alix at first. i don’t know, but violence can happen so easily when we live in a violent culture. 

someone also said, in the callout post, that alix raped a friend of theirs. very quickly after this, and tom’s comments, people started describing alix as a monster, as a psychopath. sam joined the thread, bitter that people never believed her until white and non-Black people with cultural capital started coming forward with their stories. this is true. i can imagine that sam has been so alone, so despondently desperate, and so angry, for so long. and to always know that such injustice is the cornerstone of anti-Blackness. 

now alix has deleted their facebook or something. i don’t know what happens now. i’m sure a lot of new developments will occur. or maybe not. right now the focus is on donating funds to sam -- out of white and non-Black POC guilt, perhaps, but also as reparations, and on a very practical level, to help sam out of homelessness. i hope that sam can find some healing and some semblance of safety... 

but i also still do hope that alix can, someday, too. i think one of the saddest things about this kind of fallout is that it becomes about a culture of scarcity, about who really deserves help. ultimately, if people do lie about needing financial and other support, or not getting it when they actually are getting it, it’s because it is never really enough. it’s not right to put this on other people, and alix has surely behaved so abusively to so many people, but there is still the reality of it. i really don’t want to deny that, and as some other people have said, hurt people can hurt people

but now it seems to be about denying that alix was ever hurt at all. and i doubt that alix wasn’t ever hurt. i think anyone who can mistreat and abuse so many people is deeply, deeply hurt. and i do think the fixation on whether alix being raped was ‘real’ or not because of inconsistent narratives is a kind of violence. the point isn’t in the proof or in an attempt at singular ‘truth’ but in the trauma.

[mcnieves]

Emerald City Season 1 Episode 9

“The Villain That's Become” (SPOILER ALERT)  The season-long arc of Emerald City really took shape in tonight's penultimate episode. Much attention was paid to the way in which this show was shot: almost like a Netflix drama, in that it was given a ten-episode direct-to-series order from the get-go. Tarsem Singh not only directed all ten episodes, but he did it all before the pilot even aired. This allows for one, big story that, wherever you may fall in interest, is impressive in its determination to tell it.

There were some crazy twists in "The Villain That's Become," but they also made sense amidst this larger story arc. That's kind of Emerald City's M.O.: crazy, but with its own internal logic that somehow works? Here's everything that went down in tonight's episode.

Tip decides to rule.

Emerald City's best moments continue to lie with Tip and West and tonight's episode was no exception. The storyline picks up seconds after the cliffhanger that saw a back-from-the-dead, magically-infused Tip standing over West's prone body as the witch slowly bleeds out from self-inflicted wounds. Don't go, West. You're part of this show's best storyline. We need you.

West eventually decides to live, after confirming that her sister's magic lives on inside of Tip. Tip's plea to West that she not leave him is affecting in a way that the other storyline's big, dramatic moments fail to fully pull off. I was never sold on the Dorothy/Lucas connection, nor the Jack/Ev one, but Tip and West I believe. They have both been so vastly disappointed by life, but still feel so much. In their coming together, they are choosing to fight back. To live.

The two take off through the woods to find an army to challenge The Wizard's and, potentially, Glinda's, but first West has to get Tip fully on board with the plan. Tip seems casually into it until he realizes that he can turn his body back to the boy he is. It's a powerful moment, one we have been waiting for since the season premiere, and it's understandable that Tip is cool with stopping the mission here. For Tip, this will always be enough. He doesn't covet power, or even necessarily revenge. He just wants to be himself. Having West recognize and accept that this is who Tip is perhaps equally powerful and makes what follows that much more heart-wrenching.

It seems like Tip might turn his back on his rightful place on the throne of Oz in favor of a less complicated, probably happier life, until West gets ambushed by the army of witches she freed from East's muddy prison. They plan to take out all of their hate at East on West. It's not until Tip steps in, turning himself back into a female-bodied person that they agree to stop and follow him, the Princess Ozma and the rightful ruler of Oz. It's a big sacrifice for Tip to make, and one that will surely come back to haunt him. For now, however, I am swayed by the growing friendship between Tip and West, and the fact that, in the end, it was Tip's choice to make.

Lucas tries to kill Dorothy.

Man, Dorothy is having a rough couple of days. After finding out that her amnesiac boyfriend is married and getting dumped by her surrogate kid, she flees Glinda's castle and makes for the last spot she was happy: the little house where she slept in Lucas' arms and played games with Sylvie. It's a short-lived moment of peace for the girl from Kansas because Lucas/Roan shows up to kill her, thinking it is the only way he can be free of his conflicted heart.

It's a real dick move, frankly, and one that only goes to demonstrate how wishy-washy of a character Roan/Lucas is. He's only trying to kill Dorothy because Glinda suggested it might make him feel better (unless she also cast some kind of spell on him?). That is not a good reason to kill someone. Dorothy almost lets him get away with it, but is first saved by Toto (who is seemingly stabbed and then, well, not), and then stabs a pleading Lucas in the side to get him to stop choking her.

It's a traumatic, disturbing scene and one I'm not sure Emerald City has totally earned. It's really unclear why Lucas is being such a homicidal idiot about this whole thing, and the efforts Dorothy goes to not to kill this guy she has really not known that long are a little unbelievable. Especially considering that she has killed and/or tried to kill multiple people over the course of this season.

After the light stabbing, Dorothy strings Lucas up the way she found him: as a pathetic scarecrow. I have to admit, as out-of-nowhere as this turn has been, it has succeeded in making Dorothy into a character that I am rooting for — if only because she is so much cooler than Lucas/Roan. She ends the episode by convincing Ojo's dying wife to wake the Stone Giants for here. I'm not sure if I believe that Ojo's wife would do something so major and potentially destructive for someone she literally just met, but she is probably very  pissed at pretty much all of the ruling powers who left her to rot in that muddy prison, so...

Jack accidentally kills Lady Ev.

Um, if you thought either of the two previous storylines were kind of crazy, then you haven't seen nothing yet.

When we last saw Lady Ev, she had ascended to queen of her kingdom and had ordered her guards to turn her newly-made guns on The Wizard just as he arrived to pick up aforementioned newly-made guns for his campaign against Glinda. This is a tangled web.

I am going to blame what comes next on the grief of a daughter in mourning for her father because it was relatively stupid. Rather than turning over the guns to The Wizard in exchange for the gold he supplied, she took the guns and the gold and left him in the cold outside. If she really wanted to commit to this heartless, but albeit not terrible plan, then she should have also shot the Wizard. (Seriously, how has no one killed The Wizard yet? He's the worst and relatively fallible.) Instead, she lets him live, also allowing his men hidden inside chests of gold to take her hostage.

When Jack sees this, he goes to Jane for help. She arms him with a gun that he then uses to accidentally shoot Ev in the head as The Wizard was holding a knife to her throat. This is kind of realistic. Who has that good of aim when they've never fired a gun before? This devestates Jack whom Jane tries to comfort by peeling off Ev's face to show that she was only ever an automaton, made by the king to be his dead daughter. It's creepy and sad and actually kind of works within the horror of this storyline, which really began with Jack being pieced back together with tin parts. However, as I was never fully sold on the Ev/Jack relationship, the emotional punch leaves a bit to be desired, despite Gerran Howell's great performance.

Of slightly more interest is the conversation between Jane and The Wizard, aka Frank. When Jane goes to plead with Frank for Ev's life, The Wizard is less than receptive. He never liked Jane because she was never nice to him. She always made him do things for her. "That was your job, Frank," Jane tells him, awesomely. Frank does not like this — or their conversation – telling Jane that, if she calls him Frank one more time, he will kill her. Seriously, how is this guy still alive?

The episode ends with Dorothy marching towards Ev (the kingdom, not the dead automaton) with a Stone Giant in tow. How will she wield her power? I'm kind of dying to find out.

[viralhottopics]

We’re very close. We couldn’t not be: the secret to a friendly divorce

This month sees a spike in couples filing for divorce, many of them vowing to stay friends. But is it really possible or worth the pain?

A few weeks ago, a man came to stay at my house and he and I made so much noise at 1am that we feared we might wake the children. The next morning at breakfast, we had to explain ourselves and apologise.

The man was my ex-husband, and he was telling me an anecdote in the early hours that had us both in fits of laughter. We separated in January 2009, and divorced a year later. He has since remarried, and lives in another city, but often comes to visit our three teenage sons. We have spent several Christmases, Easters and birthdays together.

If liking and being nice to your former partner is the essence of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martins conscious uncoupling, it could be said that my ex-husband and I are living that dream. In the three years since they announced their much-ridiculed approach to family life and relations post-marriage, the idea of the friendly divorce has become increasingly mainstream. As Helena Bonham Carter said of Tim Burton, her former husband of 13 years, I think well have something very precious still. Actor Kate Beckinsale is so friendly with her ex Michael Sheen (the father of their daughter) that shes often seen hanging out with him and his girlfriend, Sarah Silverman.

And then theres the rise of the divorce selfie, taken outside the courtroom, showing smug ex-marrieds beaming away together in the spirit of a bright future ahead of them (with a caption such as We smile not because its over but because it happened). January traditionally sees a spike in calls to family lawyers from couples wishing to uncouple. The first question for many is: can you really have a happy split?

Divorce coach Carol Sullivan thinks so. She runs Divorce Negotiator, which operates throughout England and Wales. Unlike solicitors who represent the separate parties, Sullivan assists both husband and wife and, to stop the escalation, maintains transparency between them. She claims to save a typical couple 80% of the cost of going to a solicitor, and 50% of their time. So far, she has helped more than 1,000 couples, many of whom apologise to each other and go out for drinks despite their decree nisi.

People are doing divorce differently that is, better, Sullivan says. They are more aware that the only winners are the lawyers, and bitterness and vengeance dont get anybody anywhere.

Of course, most people would say theyd like to divorce well, at least in theory, usually for the sake of any children involved. But, in practice, anger and hurt usually muddy the waters.

I am insufferably smug about what my ex-husband and I have managed to pull off, but I wont pretend it was instant. The parting of the ways was painful beyond anything I had ever experienced, but we managed to sort out our financial affairs and living arrangements ourselves. A lawyer friend kindly did the essential paperwork for both of us. We never went to court, and our whole divorce cost 90. Eight years have since passed, and time has done its cliched but excellent bit in terms of healing. Rancour has been and gone, leaving all the things we liked about each other in the first place: enjoyment of each others company, great communication, affection and respect. Plus all the things we have together accumulated over the years, namely three great boys, an important shared history and the recognition that prolonged bitterness eats away at people and benefits nobody.

Its difficult, but this approach is becoming more common. I have a friend whose husband went off with another woman. After her shock and anger subsided, she had him to stay with his new girlfriend several times, and even took coffee up to them in the morning. (Talk about forgiveness.) It was nice for the kids to see I was accepting of her with him, she tells me. I liked him. I liked her. She says she didnt indulge in any power play, at least not consciously.

The prevailing view is that good relations benefit the children, if you have them. Phyllis Maguire-Harrington, 33, is a carer and nursery manager. She sees many families who arent amicable, which has only compounded her belief that friendly divorce is vital even when she found out, three years into their marriage, that her husband had been unfaithful.

It hurt massively, she says now, but our daughter is my world. Even though I ended the marriage there and then, and never once wavered, I always spoke to him and let him see her. My daughter deserves both parents.

There was no court case. The same lawyer represented them both. It was all their own terms; he just did the paperwork. Her ex-husband has exactly the same parental rights as she does.

The couple, both from Wokingham, met at a bowling alley in their early 20s. Kieran Harrington, 35, remembers that she started dancing and I thought, wow! He found her generous, with a lot of time for others. Phyllis says she is very energetic, while Kieran was very chilled and happy to go along with anything she threw at him. They married in 2008 and separated in 2011, when their daughter was a year old.

To be brutally honest, I cheated on her, Kieran says. Its one of those things I cant explain. It was nothing she ever did or didnt do. When she found out, she went ballistic. Id never seen her like that. I deserved it. I tried to get her back, but eventually knew it was hopeless.

It was complicated, Phyllis says, because in September 2007 he had a brain haemorrhage and that altered him. Kieran says that, although he doesnt remember being tempted before the brain haemorrhage, it is nonetheless too easy an excuse. Either way, he says, the two flings with colleagues were a huge mistake. Initially, he says, there was some nastiness from Phyllis, but then it went away.

For a long time I wanted him to be my Kieran, Phyllis says, but he had changed. After the brain haemorrhage, I became more like a carer. I knew he was no longer fully in control of himself, and a psychologist told us he was never going to change. I had a baby and couldnt live like that any more, the suspicious wife.

The divorce came through in December 2014 and Kieran, a prison custody officer, now lives with his father and sister. He and Phyllis still see each other most days, and go on holiday together. They took Erin, now five, to Disneyland Paris for new year and glamping in Cornwall. Neither has another partner.

I did for a while, Phyllis says, and he and Kieran accepted each other, but he wanted to get married and I didnt. I think Kieran put me off for life, she laughs.

These days, Kieran confides in Phyllis about dates and she gives him advice. He admits hed like to get back together with her, but knows thats never going to happen; he also knows that it could all have been very different had Phyllis not been so forgiving. I could have lost a lot more, he says. As it is, the friendship we have having a laugh, watching movies together, sharing a bottle of wine when the little one is asleep is the best I can hope for, given Id still like to be married to her. Ill be a little bit jealous when shes with someone else, but I messed up, so I havent a leg to stand on. Im grateful Ive got this much and know we will be friends for life.

Phyllis agrees: Were very close. We couldnt not be, after all weve been through. But the divorce was the right decision. Would I get back with him? Never. Hes not the man I fell in love with.

***

Specialist family lawyer Peter Martin has been practising at London firm OGR Stock Denton for 40 years, and has worked with thousands of couples. In his experience, roughly 25-30% of couples are able to be friends afterwards, and its not always to protect the children. In some ways, it is easier for couples without children to stay friends, Martin says. Once the finances are sorted out, they are able to get on with their lives. They can become friends again, because they no longer have any pressures on them.

On the other hand, Martin says, couples without children have less reason to stay in touch. Those with children have to continue to communicate, and they are more likely, because of that, to rebuild a friendship. A forced friendship, because of having children, often develops in time into the real thing. Its the sort of thing I see a lot Im thinking of the first dance of a divorced couple as parents at their childs wedding.

Barry Rutter, 69, an actor, is founder and artistic director of Northern Broadsides, a touring company. He credits his ex-wife, Carol, 65, a professor of Shakespeare and performance studies at the University of Warwick, with their excellent relationship after nearly 20 years of marriage and 20 years of divorce. She credits him with not forcing her and their girls out of their home. You can be vengeful and angry and selfish and do all that stuff, Carol says. All those ugly emotions you can keep up for years, but thats just destructive.

The couple met while Barry was on tour in America in 1976. She, with her Californian chutzpah, came backstage to congratulate me, he says.

He had the tight curls of a Raphael angel and a boxers nose, she says. He was bolshie, challenging: a Yorkshireman. Everything around him was different and new.

She moved to England a year later, and they soon married. Their shared passion meant they always had things to talk about. Briony was born in 1982; their son, Harry, two years later, but he died from cot death aged just 98 days. Barrys support in the aftermath made Carol feel an overwhelming sense that our marriage could survive; how amazing it was that he could love me that much.

When he set up his own company, Barry was working so hard, Carol says, I think he started kind of shifting. Rowan, their younger daughter, was four. Carol had a full-time job at the university and Barry came home wanting shiny faces. There was a gap. It was, Barry says, a build-up of events, which I took to be a diminution between us. And my own restlessness. The cliche: the grass is always greener. The official divorce says adultery, but it is never as simple as that. I didnt fall in love, but I was distracted.

Barry says it was raw. I remember we met in the garden shed and she asked what I wanted, and I said all of my freedom to roam, and yet the home and family. It was a stupid, macho, dumb attitude to have. It was my folly. You make choices, and choices can bite.

How did I come back from that? Carol says. I went to see a divorce person who said dont fight, its not worth it; work it out between you. I was able to keep the man separate from the actor and, little by little, the birth of our three children, the death of our son, those things you shared, count. They represent the real core values of you two as people, as against the accidents of making bad decisions.

Barry says it was entirely Carols leading that set them on the footing they are on today. Its got to be about the future: I remember her saying that. I myself didnt have it in me to come up with anything like that. Its a testament to her. Id hope she is my best friend. Shes kept the name [Rutter]. Ive always been rather pleased about that.

These days, their daughters are both married, and they still see each other at least once a month and speak often. Carol goes to watch her ex-husband perform. She says he is perhaps better at expressing his emotions on stage, but he always made her laugh off it, and always will.

Tara Saglio has been a couples and individual psychotherapist for two decades. She believes that most divorced couples have to experience a period of proper separation before they can actively be friends again. As a generalisation, I think it takes five years for people to settle post-divorce, she says. It helps if both parties have reached a point where they can feel equally content, instead of one being miserable and the other blissfully loved-up with a new partner or even of one being blissfully alone and the other in a less than ideal rebound relationship. The chance of friendship depends on the emotional maturity of both parties. In my experience, Saglio adds, it is usually the couples for whom the passion has dwindled or gone, and who dont feel so betrayed or rejected, who can be friends. Sexual rejection or broken trust can skewer things.

Facebook, Instagram and so on can make it harder for couples to move on. Of course, social media always presents a happy if not idealised picture of everyones lives, Saglio says. It is hard to separate fully while having ones nose rubbed in the exs new life. On the upside, technology can be a force for good, depending on how it is used. It makes continued contact quicker and easier. A text or email is more emotionally distant than a face-to-face or phone conversation. A bit of a barrier can be a good thing.

Resolution is an organisation of family law professionals that promotes nonconfrontational divorce settlements. Nigel Shepherd, its national chair, says that avoiding unnecessary argument demands a shift of perspective: By nonconfrontational, we mean focusing on what is required for the future, as opposed to getting stuck in what happened in the past. A Resolution survey found that 90% of cases settle without a judge.

Current divorce law doesnt exactly help people to remain friendly: unless former couples are prepared to wait for two years once they have separated, they have no option but to cite adultery, unreasonable behaviour or (admittedly rarely) desertion on the paperwork. Resolution believes that a couple should be allowed to divorce simply if they think the marriage has broken down, a so-called no-fault divorce, and are lobbying for change. The current process, which pushes the majority into blame, often against their will, can really put the spanner in the works, Shepherd says.

***

Businesswoman Sarah Bevan never lost sight of the fact that she wanted to retain her friendship with her husband, Tim, despite her deep sadness when their marriage came to an end. We were originally friends, and I wanted very strongly to maintain that for the greater good of our family, she says. We always had a lot of fun and we managed to retain that.

Sarah, who is now single and in her 40s, lives in south London, and is setting up her own company. Tim, 50, the MD of a packaging and design company, lives in Hove. The pair met at work in London and married in 1994. They have three teenage children. The friendship was overriding in the relationship, Tim says. Any other issues were put to one side. Thats what carried us. But then I started to do better in my career, which made me more confident and, when other possibilities presented themselves, I was weak enough to succumb.

It was 2004. He admitted he was having an affair (not his first); they finally parted in 2005 and divorced in 2011. Tim says he walked away with two pictures, a stereo and a pink tea towel.

There were no lawyers, and nothing on paper; money was divided according to their own agreement. The divorce cost 560. Rather than argue in court, he wanted Sarah and the children to have a home and security. He credits their friendship today to his ex-wifes openness and strength, and thinks they have both pulled off something pretty extraordinary. According to Tim, both realise they are not going to be jumping into bed with each other again, but hopes theyll be best friends for life.

Shes currently offering me advice on cholesterol, he laughs. Shes still got my back! It helped that neither of them slagged each other off to the children. The family has a group chat online most days and he visits them every Tuesday for a curry evening.

There were phases of extreme anger and massive hurt, Sarah says, but even though hes certainly a difficult character, I love him and we hug and say we love each other. He remains an important part of her life, all the more so because her parents died recently in tragic circumstances. As Tim says, that focused everyone on whats important.

Despite everything weve put each other through, Tim says, weve come out of it. We will be sitting in our deckchairs in 30 years time with our mint tea, looking at the children, and thinking, Weve done good.

How to divorce well

1. Slow down. Reactive decisions are usually bad ones; if you are feeling hurt, or have just discovered your partner with someone else, dont take any legal action until the red mist has gone.

2. Try to be rational. Going through a separation is highly emotional, but try to put that to one side and sit down with a neutral party with the aim of making sensible decisions. Remember that you loved the other person once.

3. Decide on your priorities. More often than not one of the biggest goals is to move on with your life with your dignity intact. The more amicable the divorce, the quicker it will be over, leaving you to get on with the next chapter of your life. It is also a lot cheaper.

4. Go to a good family lawyer. Find a family specialist committed to working out solutions as amicably as possible and in a way that will preserve your relationship with your spouse.

5. Expect a big change in your lifestyle. Your life is going to change dramatically; being shocked by this can often lead to resentment and breed conflict. Your partners life will be changing, too, and they will have the same problems adjusting as you are. Yes, really.

6. Dont do it the celebrity way. You dont have to fight dirty to get the best result in fact, judges will frown upon it when making their settlement.

7. Dont listen to your friends. Turn to them for emotional support but remember that every marriage is different and every divorce is different. Just because friends think it is a good idea, doesnt mean it is.

8. Be the bigger person. Even if your nearly ex is trying to play dirty, dont rise to the bait. It is easier said than done, but I often hear from people who, years later, regret that they allowed themselves to be brought down to that level.

9. Think about divorce before you get married. What will your situation be if things dont work out? Consider how your partner is likely to behave in those circumstances as well. Think about a prenuptial agreement realism does not have to be anti-romantic.

10. If you have children, be nice for their sake. It is only in the most exceptional circumstances that it is not in the childrens interests for their parents to remain friendly.

Peter Martin, family lawyer, OGR Stock Denton

Read more: http://ift.tt/2jaHCUt

from We’re very close. We couldn’t not be: the secret to a friendly divorce