#i think she could have been a great relationship guru in another life

[elizabethrobertajones]

Oh wait oh no... Astarion is in his 200s, Halsin is in his 300s... Astarion is destroyed by no one saving him sooner... Halsin is tormented by his own inaction and inability to have saved the Shadowlands sooner... exactly the sort of guy to eat the exact pain Astarion is radiating and become tormented that he was alive that whole time and somehow didn't magically know to fly to Baldur's Gate and save him in all that time...

And I'm here getting ready to smash the barbie dolls together with no remorse about the 1000 psychic damage Halsin might take on acquiring a mean little vampire boyfriend...

Oh well :)

[donutloverxo]

A Royal scandal 4

Modern royalty au

Image from Instagram

cowritten with @lizzygal​

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Summary - Modern ruler, His Majesty King Steven G Rogers, is on a quest to make his long term secret relationship the real thing. He is a man in love and wants his lover and partner to be his queen.

Warnings - Smut (m/f), dub con/non con, sex tape, scandals, mentions of past domestic abuse, soft dark Steve, possessive Steve, spanking, power imbalance, mentions of previous domestic abuse, somnophilia, talks of virginity.

Pairing - King!Steve x reader

Word count - 7.8k

Story masterlist

Valkyrie, or simply Val, watched the entire thing unfold before her eyes and was helpless to stop any of it. All of it. All she could do was watch. Much like one would watch a train accident happen before their very eyes.

She had tried. In truth she had.

However, Sarah was the Queen Mother and Val was a member of the Royal Guard.

There was little she could do.

“Your Majesty,” she purred one last time, in one last attempt to save a situation that she knew deep in her heart was not going to go well at all. “Perhaps you would prefer to go inside and I’ll bring them into the reception area?”

Everything was wrong. So very wrong.

Outside the palace was normally empty.

As it was located in the center of the capital. An old historic building from imperial days that covered numerous city blocks, was where the government was run and where King Steven resided. Press knew better than to hang around outside the imposing palace gates as the king never left out them and was uninterested in opportunities to have his picture taken. As did the Queen Mother.

And yet, that morning, a whole gaggle of photographers were lined up and waiting for the visiting royals. Or so they had shared with Val.

Her Grace, Hope van Dyne, never went anywhere without getting her picture taken. In Val’s opinion, she probably had the phone number to every tabloid office in the world.

Sarah’s voice was kind. Soft. Gentle. It made Val want to wrap her queen up in a blanket and make her go inside so she could deal with their unwelcome guests. She stood beside Val at the top of the steps of the palace, provided with a great view of the black sedan that had pulled in through the gates. The flashiest possible way to enter the palace instead of through the underground garage like everyone else.

“Oh no. That’s hardly necessary. They wanted a scene. Let us give them one.”

Not liking the sounds of that at all, her brown eyes flickered over to look at the slim woman with a head of artfully styled strawberry blonde curls, a button nose and rose petal lips. She was every bit as regal as her title, even if she had not a drop of royal blood in her body.

“You can’t think that they actually called the press to say that the Duchess Hope was the woman with His Majesty on the video from the royal banya?”

Sarah’s cool blue gaze flickered to her royal bodyguard before returning back to the sedan so she could observe her former friend climb out, followed by her raven-haired daughter who waved to the photographers on the other side of the iron gates.

That was exactly what Sarah suspected the second she’d seen it in the morning paper. Though she doubted she would ever find out who had started that rumor.

“Have you found out why they’re here?”

Grimacing, Valkyrie shook her head, unhappy to not have an answer for her queen beneath the cloudy chilly winter day. “Not yet Your Majesty. We have reached out to the Maharaja’s Staff and are waiting to hear back. Soon though we suspect.”

Any second now Val hoped her phone would ring so she could tell the queen.

Which led to Sarah turning her head to look away from her guests as they climbed the stairs. She looked away from the large fountain that the sleek luxury car was parked beside and gave her last true smile for what she suspected would be till lunch. Reaching out, she placed her hand on Valkyrie’s wrist. One of her preferred bodyguards. She’d been loyal and had on two occasions nearly given her life in service of her country. “I trust you will find out and inform me as soon as possible. Do not fret. I doubt they will be leaving anytime in the near future.”

Only a lifetime of service kept Val from cracking a smile.

Instead, her dark eyes watched the silver haired Queen of the Netherlands climb the steps towards them. Smiling. Dressed expensively with a heavy coat made from numerous small furry animals.

Queen Janet van Dyne approached as if it hadn’t been years. She came to stand beside Sarah and greet her in such a way that would make for a perfect picture. Or so Sarah noticed. She greeted her as if they were still friends who spoke frequently on the phone and still sent one another gifts. As if their children had married and everything was fine.

“Sarah! How wonderful to see you, you have not aged a day.”

Janet reached out with gloved hands trimmed in mink, leaned forward to place a polite kiss on Sarah’s cheek in greeting and was more than a little surprised when Sarah stepped away. Her own hands remaining clasped in front of her and out of Janet’s. Greeting or otherwise.

“Janet,” was all that came from Sarah’s mouth. A look went from Janet’s coat down to her dress and then shoes, pausing there before coming back up. “Is that the dress you wore to Lizzie’s grandson’s wedding?”

Surprised by the greeting, or lack thereof, Janet paused and then smiled brightly, knowing that though the cameras could not hear them they could capture this image on film. “Yes. We’re focusing on becoming sustainable out in the west. Going green isn’t merely a project meant as royal busywork.”

Sarah could actually feel Valkyrie stiffen beside her at mention of the Green Initiative that Steve had tasked her with and had been far from busywork. It was something that Sarah could go on and on about, one of her many efforts that she busied herself with and yet, she found she didn’t want to expend that much energy on her once friend.

Hands still in front of her, fingers laced together where she could feel her wedding band. Sarah tilted her head slightly to the side. “I wouldn’t know. We remain a governing monarchy here.”

Janet blanched. Her lips formed a straight line, nearly as straight as the way her spine stiffened.

Though Sarah was unable to enjoy it as she turned her attention to the daughter. Hope van Dyne. Formerly Princess Hope but now Duchess Hope, after having been stripped of her title and recently reinstated to a lesser one, in Sarah’s opinion anyway.

Hope looked lovely as ever.

Tanned. Dressed exceptionally well. Smiling exuberantly.

It almost warmed Sarah’s icy heart.

“Sarah! How are you? You look wonderful!” Exclaimed Hope, sounding genuinely thrilled to see the woman who might have been her mother-in-law had things gone differently. She stepped on up with outstretched arms and was greeted with a serene face that looked at her in confusion.

Sarah said nothing. Not a word. Sarah maintained eye contact and looked at Hope as if waiting for the younger woman to say or do something.

Thus leading to Hope blinking in confusion and lowering her arms, looking to her mother for assistance as this clearly was not the welcome she expected.

“Is something wrong,” Hope asked a bit nervously as a winter breeze ruffled the fur on her mother’s coat. Sneaking under the cashmere of her own, as she hadn’t had time to properly shop for winter here. This was her mother’s idea. It was her last hope. Her father had refused to hear her and not even her mother could plead her case this time. This was it.

“I was about to ask you the same.”

Val watched Hope’s confusion and fought hard to not say anything at all, and it was becoming painful to watch in her opinion. Her gaze veered over to all the photographers that were watching more than taking pictures. Even they seemed to realize this visit was not starting off smoothly.

“I’m-I’m sorry?”

Val risked a look over at her queen. Her queen who was peering at the young woman who had referred to Val’s people as ‘war criminals’ or ‘superstitious backwoods fools.’

Unable to take another moment of it, Valkyrie cleared her throat.

Finally making Sarah take mercy on Hope who really should have known better in her opinion. “In civilized societies, a duchess would curtsey to a queen. Perhaps things are different for those who are merely ceremonial in purpose.”

***

Someone called your name and for a second, you were terrified that Wanda had come for your ass.

Not that you could blame the best friend you’d had since high school.

Upon heading into the offices of the royal palace that morning, you had intentionally avoided her , secure in the knowledge that she was pissed at you and you really did not want to have the fight you knew was coming someplace public like the office.

So, you’d been groveling via text and promising to go out with her that night for a girls night, swearing on your honor that you would tell her everything! Because Wanda was no fool.

Wanda saw the new dress you had on. Wanda saw your new shoes. Wanda noticed your perfect makeup and styled hair. Wanda also brought up the facts that you’d not been home that night or early morning, as well as the crucial one regarding your flatiron that was still in the bathroom the two of you shared.

Needless to say, you had a lot of explaining to do.

There was no getting around it. You were going to have to tell her about Steve. Sure, you’d swear her to secrecy until everything came out. The palace had made its announcement this morning about King Steven being in a relationship that he would make public soon. A second public statement had come from the Palace PR Guru, Maria Hill, stating that without a doubt, the king was not involved with Duchess Hope after a few rumors had burnt their way through the palace and news cycles.

Besides, Wanda should know. Wanda deserved to know. You and Wanda had come on this adventure post university together. Wanda had to know before it came out in the form of an official palace announcement, or else Wanda might very well skin you alive.

Hearing your name on a female tongue had you snapping up, your attention diverted away from the emails you were checking.

Wanda?

No.

It was not Wanda.

It was an Indian woman in a well-tailored pantsuit. Her dark hair was swept up in a chignon. Her lips a shade of red that had you lowkey thinking about asking for the name and shade of said lipstick. Her dark eyes bore right through you. As if spearing you from your chair and to the wall of your office.

“You are the King’s Chief of Staff?”

While your natural first instinct was to report that was what it said on your door. Professional-you put the kibosh on that right away. Inner you was somewhat intimidated by this powerful woman who looked as if she knew your every last secret.

Head held high this woman so informed you in a tone that let you know she was here for nothing less. “The Maharaja has sent us. Duchess Hope of the Netherlands has stolen from us and is here with the intention of pleading political asylum. While the Maharaja would like nothing more than to have her brought back for trial of the theft of our priceless treasures. I will settle for what was taken and no less.”

Ok. Well. Maybe you thought too soon.

Maybe Wanda was preferrable over this person.

“Oh…goody…” came from your lips with a frown.

“General Odinson sent me here. He told me that you would be able to help resolve this issue for me post haste.”

Oh of course General Fucking Thor Odinson would send this person your way so he didn’t have to deal with this international nightmare of an incident.

Letting out a deep breath, you held up a finger. “Let me just send this out real quick…what’s your name?” And you typed as quickly as humanly possible on your encrypted laptop.

“Ekta. I am with the Maharaja’s Royal Guard.”

Because of course she was. Why wouldn’t she be? Why wouldn’t Hope have stolen from the Maharaja and bounced? Though you’d never had the pleasure of meeting her face to face, you’d heard more than your share about the infamous Duchess, then Princess, Hope.

Typing. Typing. Typing.

“You’ve got any pictures or detailed descriptions of what the items stolen look like? I’m sure His Majesty will be very curious. And, you know, the more information of what we’re looking for the better.”

And done.

With a tap on your laptop, you’d sent out an email to the Finance Minister. Then up you stood.

“Of course,” Ekta answered coolly.

Not that you blamed her. If you were in her shoes, you would have been super pissed off too. Being robbed was never fun.

“Let’s go see if we can track down His Majesty. If not, we’ll make an appointment with his secretary and then go see who is in the office of our Royal Guard. Someone is always in there and I know that Carol, she’s Captain of the Guard, is working right now.” You explained, as if you felt that telling this unhappy woman all these things could somehow make everything right. Probably not. But you still had to try. It was in your nature to fix problems and you most definitely wanted to fix this problem.

Ekta said nothing.

She merely followed you out of your office and into the hallway which was lined with doors and walls of tasteful and probably expensive original art.

You looked to the left.

Then to the right and nearly died then and there at your luck.

How had you gotten so lucky?

There, mere feet away and closing, was not just Carol but His Majesty, deep in discussion about something that was irritating them both.

You had an inkling that you knew what was at the heart of their discussion.

The sight of you made them stop talking and pause in their tracks, which told you that you had been the one that they were seeking.

Before anything could be done, you bowed. “Your Majesty, just the person I was hoping to find.” Up you flourished your hand to gesture at Ekta, who you could feel was beside you, practically putting off rays of righteousness. “We have a visitor from the Maharaja’s Royal Guard. This is Ekta. She is here because of something that concerns the Duchess Hope.”

The reaction that came was almost immediate from both Steve and Carol.

A look as if Steve had suddenly smelled a dead animal came over his face. Carol however cocked her hip to the side, lifted her chin in a dark blue pantsuit, almost demanding in a knowing sort of way. “What’d she steal from you guys? Art or jewelry?”

For the first time ever, you noted a moment of Ekta’s veneer breaking. Like she was taken off balance. “The duchess stole from you too?” Then, almost as an afterthought came, “Your Majesty?”

And this was news to you too.

You had no idea that Hope had taken souvenirs with her that weren’t free to take when she fled the Royal Palace for India all those years ago.

When Steve spoke, his teeth were clearly clenched together. “Yes. Both. She raided my mother’s room as well as the halls for art and pieces that are priceless. Sacred treasures from my countries history that can never be replaced. She filled her suitcase with on her way out.”

“Every now and then an item will appear on the black market. We can only assume that she is selling them when she is in need of money.” Carol helpfully added.

Beside you, you could practically feel Ekta tremble. Shake out of control one could say.

“Is the Duchess Hope here?”

For that you had no answer.

Carol however had one. “Yes. Her Majesty is taking tea out in the gardens with the Duchess Hope and her own mother.”

After being brought abreast of that development, you had a statement to make. One you thought was obvious. But none-the-less, out it came. Maybe none of them knew? “It’s snowing outside.”

Thus leading Steve to turn his attention on you. Finally. And when he did so, he looked at you as if you were only his Chief of Staff. He looked at you kindly without the heat in his eyes from earlier that morning, when he’d woken you up by pushing himself deep into your body until the both of you reached a climax that made your eyes cross and left an impression of his teeth broken into your shoulder.

“Yes. Mother wanted to be sure that the Duchess Hope did not steal anything else from within the palace walls whilst they are here.”

Well then.

Even you had to admit. The Queen Mother could be downright frosty when the occasion called for it. Pun intended.

“She’s having tea with Queen Janet and Duchess Hope outside? In the frigid temperatures?”

You couldn’t quite make yourself believe it. You blinked. You looked from Steve who appeared casual after his statement, like he just told you the winters here were cold. Over to Carol who was pulling out her phone from her pocket. Acting like you hadn’t said anything out of the normal.

“Your Majesty, I’ll take care of Ekta and deal with this issue. If anything arrives concerning this issue. I will contact you. Nakia will come fill my place today.”

If Steve was greatly upset by any of his, he made no outward indication of it other than a nod of his head that he both heard and understood and accepted what Carol had told him. His attention was instead focused on you.

“I have a meeting concerning the Switzerland trip about the proposed embassy. Go get your notes. You’ll be joining me.”

***

Her Grace, the Duchess Hope van Dyne, had finally made it in the palace after that psycho, the Queen Mother Sarah, had the audacity to serve tea in the garden as flakes of snow drifted down. And if that weren’t barbaric enough, afterwards, she then led them around the winter garden as if Hope gave a damn.

Hope had problems and Queen Sarah was not very receptive to any of her attempts to thaw the ice that had formed around Sarah’s heart. Nor did her mother, Janet, have much luck.

When did Sarah turn into such a bitch?

Sarah should have been ecstatic that Hope would even return to this shithole. Sarah’s son was still single, he needed a queen and his backwoods hovel wanted a queen and Hope had royal blood. What more did Sarah need? Did she need it written down?

When did Sarah turn into such a horrible host?

Hope remembered a distinctively different Sarah. When she had lived in this palace, Steve’s mother had coddled her, practically waited on her hand and foot to be sure that Hope was happy and settling in so far from civilization. Where was that Sarah now?

Somehow, Hope had managed to break away, pleading a need to use the powder room around the time her toes and fingers went numb. As she hadn’t had the time to properly shop for clothes to wear in this frigid shithole. India had been so gloriously warm. She’d loved India. Hope would have loved to stay there but things had gone south.

Eventually, like everything else, it’d blow over.

Until then though, she needed someplace safe to stay. She needed to stay somewhere that the Maharaja couldn’t get her. What she needed was diplomatic immunity. However, that wasn’t going to happen since her father refused to even see her, so she’d just have to settle for sovereign immunity. Granted, Hope hadn’t expected it to be this difficult to see Steven and tell him that she was ready to get married now. For crying out loud, he should have been groveling at her feet for her to come back to him. Especially after that sex tape which had been burning up the internet and royal circles. If there was anything that Hope could do, it was bounce back from a scandal.

This was just ridiculous.

The Queen Mother should have been inviting them to this lunch with her son, instead of practically throwing Hope and Janet out. Which was exactly why Hope was wandering the halls in the search for Steven’s office. Toes tingling in her fashionable pumps. Her fingers burning from the warm air in the administrative offices.

Hope would need a whole new wardrobe once she got Steven onboard with her plan. As his current plan of ignoring the sex tape was absurd. These things needed to be tackled head on. With her as his queen by his side, Hope could handle all of it.

Ah, she found herself pleased at the sight of the royal seal over a doorway marking it as the king’s office.

Valkyrie followed her closely. That bitch.

As soon as Hope was queen, she’d be one of the first on the firing block. Following her around like some manner of commoner who might fill their pockets with royal gold. It was absurd. Hope was born a princess and one day she would become one again.

Hope remembered Valkyrie from when she was a young member of the guard and now, she was a Captain and just as irreprehensible as Carol, who Hope also despised. Both of them had to go. Reaching out with a hand that held a ring belonging to the sister of the Maharaja, Hope opened the door and marched right into the office of Steven’s secretary. Who was apparently gone for lunch.

Not that the room was empty.

Nakia, who had been seated on a couch in the office, stood. Dressed in a dark blue suit that all the royal guard wore. Her face stony at the sight of Hope and then darkened further in disgust. She stood tall. Regally. Holding her head high when she spoke down to the former princess. “The king is busy.”

Not that Hope would settle for anything less than seeing Steven in person immediately. She stepped forward. “The king is having lunch with his mother in fifteen minutes. I know for a fact he’s not doing anything of importance. Get out of my way, or I’ll have you selling souvenirs from a cart outside the palace when I am queen.”

At such a statement, Nakia found herself wanting to both laugh and spit in the face of this western woman. One who had referred to her people and country as little more than a backwoods hellhole full of illiterate stone pounders.

How often Nakia had dreamt of being so close to the Duchess Hope, how she thought of ripping out this woman’s forked tongue.

“Let her in,” came Valkyrie’s voice in their native tongue from the eastern regions of the land.

Sending Nakia’s dark eyes past Hope. A knowing expression claimed her features. “His Majesty is in there waiting for our queen.”

A shrug came from the senior guardswoman.

Nakia would be the first to admit, she had not been hopeful when the crown prince had been coronated as a teenager. No one in the country had been particularly hopeful but now, nearly everyone supported their king. His Majesty was a good king who served them all as much as they served him.

Nakia was protective of her king. She wanted her king to marry his Chief of Staff yesterday. Her land was in need of a queen, a woman’s touch one could say.

Knowing what was at stake with the coming lunch that her king would attend with his mother and lover, a visit from the Duchess Hope would not put him in the best of moods. The Queen Mother always grew quiet when King Steven was in such a mood. Why would Nakia allow such a thing to happen?

“Perhaps if he tells her she isn’t wanted here she’ll leave sooner? Let her in. That is an order.”

Pursing her lips unhappily, Nakia stepped back.

She wasn’t about to open the door to His Majesty’s office for this interloper. However, she would no longer stand in the way. Nakia even made sure to send a look that screamed impending homicidal violence. Spurring Hope quickly through the door without another syllable directed at Nakia.

Which was fine with Hope.

Hope couldn’t get away from Nakia quick enough.

Wanting distance sent Hope into the king’s large office without much thought. Looking as if it belonged in an old Victorian estate with dark wood, so many books, old art and thick dark Turkish Rugs.

What Hope did not expect was how much the prince had grown.

No longer a gangly young man whose mother had to have padding sewn into the robes that he was coronated in. This man sitting at his desk was big in every way. Exuding power in a manner that most could only dream and for a second, seeing Steven look at her with shocking blue eyes and stubble darkening his face, she was rendered speechless.

“What do you want Hope,” came Steven’s voice, more than a little annoyed. Far more emotion than she’d ever seen from the young man. Who was now very obviously a man.

This was not the Steven she remembered.

Before her was not the young man she remembered at all. Every last bit of him was very much a king and Hope suddenly, possibly for the first time in her life, found herself regretting many of the past choices she made. It seemed her mother was right. She’d been far too hasty in her youth. Her mother had told her that the prince would mature like a fine wine. Hope had written that off as nonsense meant to trap her into an arranged marriage like so many women before her.

Now?

Now she was looking at a tall powerful man close a very modern looking laptop and turn his attention on her in such a way that made her gut coil. What would it have been like to be the woman in the video? And where the hell did that thought come from? She had been wrong. So so very wrong.

Finally, gathering herself, Hope peered around the office and fussed at the pearl buttons on her coat. “I saw the video…” A noise came from Steven that she’d never heard before, yet, she went on. “…and since we’re still technically engaged, I thought I would return to help you put out the fires of this scandal.”

Another noise came from the king, a derisive snort.

“Wow. That’s cute. Highly amusing coming from you.” Though there was no hint of heat or passion in his words that had been so evident on that video. In her opinion, he didn’t even sound bored. Worse. Steven then leaned back in his seat, peered around her and asked, “Who let you in here?”

Those words, those uncaring words as if she were little more than the two guards outside his office made her burn, bristle.

Which had Hope clearing her throat, bristling one could say. “Actually, it’s more than cute. If you recall, I come from a distinguished royal house. Our engagement is a legally binding agreement.”

For the reaction she got, she might as well have told him it was showing outside.

As she was prone to when there was silence that needed to be filled, Hope pushed the waves of dark hair over her shoulder. She shifted from one foot to the other and watched Steven lean back in his chair.

Finally, as if sensing that she wasn’t going to leave, Steve offered her a shrug. Finding the mere sight of her numbing. He could have cared less what she did one way or the other. So long as she stayed out of his room. He had valuable things in there that he was fond of. “I’m not marrying you. Do with that as you will, you’ll find no sanctuary here.”

This was most certainly not the Steven that she had left all those years ago. It took Hope a second to collect herself, to steel herself. No one had spoken to her in such a way in quite a while. Her brain screamed at her that damage control needed to be done but she was not sure how. In what way? What did she say?

Hope’s brain screamed at her that the plan was failing, everything was going wrong. This was not supposed to happen this way and now she was failing horrendously. What did she do? How could she fix this?

Pricks of pain came from her fists as her nails dug into her palms. Telling Hope that when she unclenched her fists, she would see blood. “You have to marry me!”

Oh this was bad.

This was really really bad.

Across the expanse of his desk, Steve remained calm. Almost to the point of uncaring and such demeanor was reflected in his words. In the way his broad shoulders shrugged and how he rubbed his rough cheek, as if that were more interesting.

“I do not need or want your assistance for anything, forget that video. There is no reason for me to be ashamed of it.”

“Steven! Listen!”

He could see the desperation on her face, hear it in her voice and after so long, he wished he could say that it was rewarding. He wished that he could say it made him feel better after everything that had happened.

It didn’t.

There was just nothing. Little more than cold numbness. Steve felt absolutely nothing.

Nothing was there anymore.

When he looked at Hope there was nothingness.

It reminded him of his father. He hated when he felt that way, when he thought of his father. There was no one on this earth that Steve loathed more. It was his very purpose for being, to not be his father. To end that cycle. To let it die with him.

Most irritably, he shifted in his seat. His eyes found the picture of you both on his desk from a trip to Scotland.

Hints of his father swirled with every syllable only furthering his inner revulsion with himself, his genes and heritage.

“When you left, I did not officially break our engagement as a common courtesy to your father. No more no less. I am a king. You cannot compel me to do anything.”

Pools of blue found Hope again though. A little bit of serene malice hovered between them.

“If you continue to be an annoyance, I will. I am a king now. I have a country to govern. I do not have time for the childish games and pursuits that occupy the western families.”

“Steven this is serious! I could go to prison! In India!”

May his ancestors help him, his first initial response would have been to remind her of her place, remind her of how he should be addressed.

His Majesty.

Exactly as his father would, he swore he heard his father’s voice in his ear.

“You have to help me out! I’m begging you! I don’t care about that other woman. You can have all the mistresses you want!”

A peek down at his watch told Steve that he had minutes to wrap this up and go collect you. Minutes. He had minutes to regain his sanity before he saw his mother.

Minutes.

“Steven!”

Standing from his chair, he shook his head. Doing his best to silence the sound of his father telling him he was not good enough, was not worthy, was not fit to rule. His voice was soft because Steve would not yell like that man. “No Hope. I’m sorry, but no. You remind me of my father. You make me feel like him. You bring him back to life and I cannot live with his ghost. So no. You will have to deal with the consequences of your actions like the rest of us.”

Her eyes went wild.

Steve could see it and was glad he wasn’t within reach of her. He watched her grab a Fabergé Egg from the end of his desk.

Colorful glass accented in gold with rubies around the middle. It fit in her hand but only just, being the size of an ostrich egg and then it went soaring through the air where it smashed loudly into a wall. Denting the dark wood and shattering. Smashing into dozens and dozens of colorful pieces that fell to the floor.

Having felt the very loss of hope itself, she turned to set her storm on him. “You’ll regret this, Your Majesty.” Before turning and leaving, slamming his office door behind her as hard as possible. Leaving Steve with the sound of his father telling him that he wasn’t worthy.

***

Lipstick?

No lipstick?

It was a question for the ages.

A swipe or two of lipstick always gave you the courage you needed in any occasion. But then again, this was not merely any occasion. This was lunch with your boyfriends mother to officially meet her and get to know her, because you were in a serious committed relationship with her son. Because you loved her son.

Oh, and her son was the king, so there were expectations on that already plus with her being the Queen Mother, that was sorta already an expectation of its own.

Lipstick?

No lipstick?

You wanted to look your best because the Queen Mother always looked immaculate. But you also didn’t want to risk getting lipstick on your teeth. Leading you to peer once more into the bathroom mirror.

No. No lipstick. If you put on lipstick you’d be thinking about your lipstick and you needed to focus on making a good impression.

Otherwise, your makeup looked fabulous. Really. Five stars. Two thumbs up.

This had you stuffing your makeup back into your purse and kinda sorta looking up when the bathroom door opened, shut and was locked. Because really. Why would the door be locking?

In the art deco styled bathroom, Steve’s form was very clear and your eyebrows shot up.

Luckily, you were alone, considering how beyond pissed off he looked. One hundred and ten percent not fit to have lunch with his mother. Not with him in this condition.

You had no idea what happened, but something had happened.

He crossed the red and white marble tiled floor. Walked past the gilded edged stalls and stained-glass doors to where you stood at one of four sinks with bronze fixtures and ornately framed mirrors.

To be honest, it was your favorite bathroom of all time. Your Instagram was full of pictures of this bathroom, selfies in this bathroom, up-close pictures of the stained glass.

“Are you ok?”

Beneath his smoothly shaven face, his jaw twitched. “Fine. Are you ready?”

He was tense enough you wouldn’t have been shocked if his joints started to pop, or his teeth cracked from how hard he was clenching his jaw.

Seeing him like this was a no go for Queen Sarah. Everyone knew that she hated to see her son like this and at first you never knew why, not until someone had told you that her husband had the same mannerisms. Steve’s father done the same thing when he had been angry.

While it was common knowledge that Steve was not his father, Steve would never hit his mother.

Some memories could just never be wiped clean.

Having Steve like this was not how you wanted this first lunch with his mother to go. Not one bit. Both of them needed to be on cloud fucking nine. Meaning you were going to have to do something.

“Almost,” was what you told him. A plan already set into motion as you grabbed a few paper towels from the bronze dish that held them between sinks.

One last peek at your hair and you were set. Purse in hand. You stepped on over to press your lips to the flat firm line that was Steve’s mouth. “Could you hold this for me?”

Steve never questioned you or thought twice.

Whether it was from love or trust, or he was too angry over whatever? No one would ever know.

But you seized the moment! Pounced on the opportunity.

You acted as if you were going to check your pumps and instead, set down the paper towels so you could kneel at his feet. Before Steve even had a second to think about it, you had his pants unbuttoned, unzipped and down around his knees. Knowing that the king went commando that morning worked seamlessly into your plan.

His dick hung softly between his muscular creamy thighs.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold my purse with both hands, Your Majesty.”

Though soft, his size was still above average. His penis was solid. Thick. A pink tip peeked out beneath foreskin that was stretched over his member. Soft as velvet, you kissed his slit as you pushed his foreskin up to reveal his shaft.

“Remember the first time I ever saw your dick?”

You sank down on his soft flesh after, sucking him in till nearly all of him fit in your mouth. It rarely happened. Only when he wasn’t erect. When Steve was erect, it wasn’t physically possible unless you unhinged your jaw and didn’t have a gag reflex.

“Oh god…” he gasped out at the warm and wet sensation of your mouth closing around him. Cold air on his ass cheeks. Exposed. Vulnerable. His sac hanging heavy and you down on your knees, taking nearly all of him in your mouth.

Steve clung to your purse like a lifeline.

Thinking back, you hummed out thoughtfully, knowing how fantastic the vibrations felt on him. Knowing that the warm softness that was his dick would soon harden. Until then, you enjoyed how you could take him like this. You relished the smell of him, musky and male. Savored how smooth his skin was on your tongue. Reached up and cupped his testicles that hung down for you.

It’d been at a fundraiser.

A black-tie affair for something or another, who could remember?

The two of you had stolen away towards the end, snuck off when everyone was mingling together and socializing. Slightly tipsy or buzzed from the open bar.

Not the two of you.

No.

Both of you had barely drank. Focused instead on getting away so you could steal some moments together. Moments like these. Moments where your hands were all over one another, your mouths hungry for one another. Frantic for that connection between your bodies that nature demanded and you both were trying so hard to make happen.

Tonight was the night though.

You were determined.

Sucking him deep. Swirling your tongue around him. You could feel Steve starting to thicken up which had you popping off his mouth and surveying the sight of his dick taking on a pinkish hue as blood filled it.

“Are you thinking about it, Your Majesty? About how fucking big your cock is? About how it shocked me? Remember?”

Based alone on the sound that came from Steve, you could deduce that he remembered. Possibly even vividly.

“I remember,” you cooed, licking his pink head and suckling on the end of his dick. Flicking against the hole with your tongue. Massaging his balls. Taking his hardening shaft in your other hand. Needing him to feel only you. Needing him to be here with you. “It was the biggest dick I’d ever seen in my life.”

”You don’t have to.” He had whispered to you in a dark corner of the atrium. Hidden by plants and furniture.

Not that you’d cared.

By that point he had gone down on your countless times and you’d never seen it. Only feeling it through his pants when you’d made-out or groped him, when your bodies rubbed against one another in a frantic urge for completion.

“Jesus Christ Steve! You’re the only man I know who doesn’t want his dick sucked.”

“It’s not that…” he came back with, pausing and finally giving in, allowing you to unzip the black pants of his tux and yank them down. Pull them down and out it popped.

Erect.

Hard. So hard.

Foreskin drawn back to reveal an angry red head smeared with pre-cum.

It was massive, a beast, the hugest dick you’d ever laid eyes on and from on your knees, in a ballgown, made up to feel like a princess. You gasped. You straight up gasped like you were a teenage girl seeing your very first penis. Albeit, the one that was so full of blood it bobbed eye level with you, pointing upwards, was considerably more impressive and probably five inches longer than that first ever dick, easy. As you didn’t exactly have a tape measure on you for comparison.

“Oh my god…” you whispered, well aware that your eyes were wide and mouth was very likely a perfect O. “It’s so big! It’s like the biggest I’ve ever seen! Steve your dick is huge! What do you feed it?”

His voice was a bit concerned. Embarrassed even?

Was he embarrassed about this behemoth in his pants?

“I’m sorry, I know. It can be uncomfortable to give me oral sex. You really don’t have to. I don’t expect.”

But you had cut him off with grabby hands wrapping around his erection, pushing up his foreskin and licking the salty jizz that was starting to ooze out. “Shut up, Your Majesty. Tell me how you want it.” In your ministrations you had lifted up his generous manhood and set eyes upon the heavy balls that hung down between his thighs. “Holy Canada! You have a set of balls to match. You have no idea how much fun I’m going to have fitting those in my mouth.”

When you finally ripped your eyes away from his sexual organ, you shook your head and admonished him severely. “I cannot believe you’d keep this from me!”

Exactly how you knew Steve liked, you sucked on his head and played with the tip of your tongue on his hole. You took him as deep as you could as his erection grew harder and harder in your mouth. Tracing your tongue along the sides and pumping him with your hand until his girth grew so wide, you were unable to touch your fingertips around him.

Up and down you sank on his cock. Till he was rigid beneath your lips and you drug your teeth along at times to heighten the sensation.

Slurping. Squeezing his balls. Hollowing out your cheeks and swallowing any salty release that began to dribble out. You savored the sight of his fingers clenching your purse tightly and his eyes screwed shut.

Between languid trips up and down his length, you pulled off to lick his blunt tip with the flat of your tongue.

“What are you thinking about, My King?”

At first, you didn’t think he would or could answer, which was fine. Your attention was on the round edge of his organ. Licking it. Flicking it with your tongue. Playing with it till you sank back down.

After a few seconds.

After a deep breath from Steve.

After that, he managed to get out.

“Thinking about that night. The night I took your maidenhead.”

Your maidenhead?

Well, that was a trip to past. It sent your eyes up and your mouth back off him so you could speak without a mouth full of dick. “Mmm. Thinking about how you went crazy? How you went all feral and popped my cherry?”

In your hand his penis twitched.

It was too perfect an opportunity to not pounce upon it.

If you couldn’t make him come from saying these filthy disgusting true things to him, did you really deserve to marry this man? “Your Majesty? Does it turn you on to think about my having been a virgin? About how you’re the only man to ever be in my body? Do you remember how tight I was? How hard you had to push to break my hymen?”

Little motions came from Steve. Whether he knew it or not. He was making small thrusts into your mouth that you hummed around, sucked on.

Something hit the floor.

Hands were on your head, fingers were in your hair. A wicked smile curled over your lips and Steve was methodically pumping into your mouth.

He sounded strained. He sounded like he was in pain.

“Felt so good. You’re so good to me. My angel. You were so tight.” He declared, announced, would have shouted to the heavens if he was capable. Each word came out in cadence. Almost in a chant. “Felt so good. Feels so good still. You’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine.” On top of feeling you sucking him deep. Paired with your fingers holding his testicles tight. Mixed with your fist wrapped around his base. It was a glorious storm coming together to make him shatter.

Steve was going to come. He was going to come like right now.

It sent his thoughts spiraling along with his words.

“Love you. Love your body. Love being in you. So warm and tight and mine. All mine. All of you is mine. Want you. Want to fill you. Want want want.”

Gasping out. His breath gone. All air left his lungs when Steve climaxed into your mouth. A pitched noise did come that was followed with his fingers pulling your face against him, his pelvis pushing into you. A moan that made him weak in the knees followed that told him you were pleased with him. You were happy.

If he died in the next moment, he would have been a happy man.

All Steve could feel was pleasure. It consumed him body. It whited out his mind. It made his balls empty into the warmth of your mouth, till he was certain that nothing remained.

Even then you weren’t done.

Helpless. Awestruck.

Hopelessly devoted, Steve watched you drag your tongue around him to clean him up. Catching the last few spurts of ejaculate on your tongue before you showed him, then swallowed his seed.

Rendering him panting and sweaty.

He dropped down onto his knees and he kissed you. Mindless. Unable to think about anything else other than your mouth and being lucky enough to have convinced you to be his woman. Steve kissed you deeply, uncaring about the fact he could taste himself, unconcerned when his tongue curled around yours that he might have gotten some of his own ejaculate. His Majesty didn’t care.

Nor was he overly concerned about his knees being on the cold marble tile when he groaned against your mouth. “Love you. Love you so much. Love you to the moon and back.”

[evakuality]

Matteo - episode seven

Social media - I can’t really talk about this episode without talking about the social media.  Because it was so awful going through it in real time the first time and almost as bad this time.  This is one of those situations where we’re supposed to think at least two of the girls involved in the gossiping string of messages around Matteo’s sexuality (Hanna and Mia) are good and have Matteo’s best interests at heart.  But they are literally as bad as the others.  They don’t ‘know’ anything, but decide that somehow them sharing their suspicions about his sexuality will help him.  But in actuality they’re just feeding the gossip and deliberately outing someone without his permission and well before they actually know that he really is gay.  And actually, this is an issue across the board (with Skam as well, so this is another thing that has been brought through without consideration for what it means) - characters casually out each other all the time.  Matteo literally outs David to Jonas when they discuss why he’s been annoying, for example.  This is AFTER David made it clear that he wasn’t ready to be public with his affections.  For something that later makes it clear that Matteo shouldn’t be outing David as trans, they missed the point that we shouldn’t be outing people in any way.  And it’s worst with these messages.  Of course, we know that in the og these messages or some sort of gossip must have happened but we don’t see it play out in quite such a visceral way.  Seeing it play out, particularly when characters think they’re ‘good’ for outing someone, is really uncomfortable and the fact that Matteo (as the outed person) effectively reacts with a shrug suggests that the people who wrote this do not understand the nuances.  The fandom hurt really badly because of these messages because no thought was given to how this would feel in real time to people in the audience who aren’t out and whose fear is that they could be outed by others.

However, there are good things about the social media this week.  I particularly love Jonas’s messages to Matteo thanking him for telling him and expressing his support.  I also do love the way Sara’s post is used and how she updates and adapts it after Matteo starts to make amends with her.  I love the growth in character it shows as well as the way she takes Matteo’s advice to reach out to Leonie with her problems.  It really reinforces to me that Matteo and Sara would make really great friends.  They do have similarities, they care about each other and there’s a mutual respect when they get past ‘we should be kissing’ - I do hope they properly patched things up later and solidified this friendship.

Clip one - I really love this clip.  I think it’s partially to do with when it happens - Easter is such a time symbolic of new life and growth and change, and the fact that this moment hits at this time is beautiful.  Plus, the colours used are all warm and calming.  It’s really hard to describe but it feels lovely.  So, how is this gorgeous feeling achieved?  First, we start with the feathery thing and Matteo playing with it again.  This calls us back to when Matteo was playing with it just before everything fell down around him and makes absolute sense of why he’s all in his feels as he stares at the picture David gave him.  He rips it off the wall because it’s too much for him and I guess is super confusing about the way David is acting, but everything else in this scene is about reconnection with others.  Hanna via her little treat, Hans via the guru-ing, his mother via text and the discussion with Hans.  It’s all these little tendrils of connection Matteo is sending out into the world.  I adore the conversation with Hans, and I really love that while they do discuss David (and that’s ostensibly why Matteo wants the chat in the first place), it’s actually working through things around his mother that brings Matteo the most peace and makes him feel most connected.  I adore his relationship with his mother - it’s a lot more nuanced and has more depth than the one Isak has with his and there’s something lovely in his fears that she won’t understand him not necessarily because of religion or anything but because of her illness.  And the way Hans brings him some hope and then Matteo is able to recognise that she is getting help and things may not be as bad as he thinks.  It sets us up for when he tries to tell her in person that he’s in love with a boy.  Then the ending when they light candles and leave the church is beautiful.  

Of course, I also do love the stuff about David as well.  ‘I can’t believe it’ Matteo says when he talks about David’s seeming rejection, and it really shows exactly where his head is at.  He can’t bring himself to accept that everything they shared together was fake, particularly when David keeps up contact with pictures, and then Hans’ response to Matteo’s fears: ‘You can’t force him to stand up for himself; he has to do it alone.”  It really speaks to the whole message of the series - figuring yourself out, working out how to be that self in a space which can seem threatening and hostile, is the character’s alone.  That’s as true for Matteo as it is for David.  And it’s absolutely the right advice.  Matteo can’t live David’s life for him; he can only live his own.  And it’s after this that Matteo’s attention turns to his mother and how he can live his truth with her.  The way all the parts of this clip and its message work together really is just lovely.  It helps that it’s long and every part has space to breathe.

Clip two - Another example of Matteo rebuilding the bridges he’s burned over the last couple of weeks.  Again, I like that this episode took place around Easter.  The idea that new growth and renewal and a resurrection into a new self is possible works really well thematically in this one.  And here we have Matteo again using food to nurture, and then Amira nurtures him right back with the baklava.  It’s nice.  And I like that here we see the relationship Matteo and Amira have in a really clear way.  They both effectively apologise to each other without actually using the words at all.  Matteo does it by showing just how ready he is to work and study and how much care and thought he’s put into both the space they’re in and the preparation for their study session.  Amira does it by casually referencing how homosexuality is a necessary part of life.  Neither of them actually explicitly lays out what they’re doing, but both extend an olive branch to the other around things they did or said that hurt the other person.  And by the end of it they’re both willing to accept the apologies as given.  Matteo even literally thanks Amira and it’s very clear he’s not thanking her for the information-as-study-notes she pretends it is.  That they have a solid enough relationship that this sort of silent communication can happen is really lovely, and I love this twist on the Isak/Sana connection

Clip three - I adore the way this clip works in terms of the boys as well.  Again, Matteo’s solution for making it up to the boys is to offer food and drink.  The more comfortable he is in being genuine, the more genuine his food offerings become.  Compare this to the way he was with Sara earlier and we can see that he’s a lot more comfortable in his own skin.  I’m still really furious about the whole ‘Kiki says you’re gay’ thing and how there’s still no acknowledgement that all this gossip is harmful even if it’s well meaning.  But at least the boys actually ask Matteo, I guess.  Putting the ball in his court and allowing him to give his side is good.  But I don’t like the way that ‘you always told us you’re into chicks’ wasn’t used as a moment to explore that actually either a) not realising you’re gay until after you’ve tried with the opposite gender or b) not being willing to tell others about your true sexuality are just as valid as ‘well then he’s probably bi or pan’ - this is of course another thing that has been brought through from the og, but in both cases the third option is likely the least correct one and yet both shows effectively tell us it’s the MOST likely one.  Anyway, I love that the boys are so chill about it all - like, eh Matteo was a dick but hey he’s offering food so it’s all good now.  He apologised, they accepted it and everyone moved on.  It’s nice.

Clip four - probably one of my favourites of the season tbh.  I just really adore that Matteo finally understands Sara and her PoV once he allows himself to really connect with the way he’s feeling about David.  We know David’s reasons for being hot and cold with Matteo are totally different to the way Matteo is with Sara and yet the effect on the two is similar.  And the way he gets there is lovely too.  He starts with a recognition that while he’s been ‘cleaning up his act’ emotionally with all these people in his life, Matteo actually also needs to do it physically in his own space.  And he makes a really good job of it, he’s thorough and he clearly feels better as he makes his space look nicer.  But then we get the slowed down, emotional moment when he picks up the pillow that David used and he falls right back into everything he’s been feeling.  And it’s while he’s wrapped up in that moment that he’s able to make the connection to Sara and how he’s treated her and so begins probably the most important conversation in this episode.  Matteo finally a) apologises to Sara for his behaviour and b) actually tries to reach her as a friend on a genuine and real level.  

Again, in a way that works for me when Emma didn’t, Sara recognises and accepts that Matteo was shitty but has a right to his own life, and in her own way tries to ‘set him free’ by asking about how things are with David.  I just love the genuine connections they share here.  He’s able to tell her that all he’d wanted was to fit in and be ‘normal’ without having to explain himself (but that it was shitty to her) and she’s able to finally tell him the things that have been bothering her for weeks.  It’s sad actually that the fandom never really understood Sara and just reacted as if everything she did was over the top and ridiculous given the timelines of their relationship.  They fail to remember a) that she was being strung along by Matteo who was often actively using her and thus was definitely confusing the situation so she could build it up unrealistically and b) that she was dealing with all this stuff with her family without support from anyone her own age and at a time when her parents will have been concerned about their own things.  She couldn’t tell Leonie, she didn’t tell Matteo and so she was desperately trying to use this relationship to patch over everything else that was going on for her.  It’s totally understandable, realistic and heartbreaking.  I feel very sorry for Sara here.  She’s small and weak and vulnerable and only wanted some love and affection, to feel like she had some small ‘good’ thing in a world that was falling apart for her.  I really like that she’s wearing the same outfit here as she was in her angry and aggressive post.  It connects the two things in a way that enhances the impact when she changes the description.  They leave not best friends as yet, but with a hope (as expressed by Matteo) that they can grow from here and have a genuine friendship.

Clip 5 - Another clip that’s given some time and space to breath.  This has always been the strength of Skam and its remakes - that the small moments are able to take up space in a way that they often aren’t in ‘bigger’ shows.  I love that finally Matteo is able to casually listen to, and even join in on, discussions about sex.  He’s still on the periphery to some extent and that’s still part of his character.  He’s never going to be the outgoing ‘in the middle of the party’ person, but he’s comfortable in a way he really wasn’t earlier in the season.  Part of his comfort, of course, is that he’s been open to the boys now and they know what’s up with David.  As with Skam, they’re charmingly invested in his relationship and want to try to help him out.  I love that they’re all finally on the same page - these boys have tried across the whole season to be there for Matteo in this way and he’s kept on rejecting them (and then acting as if they were shitty friends) because they kept on targeting the wrong thing.  But now that he’s open and they know who he’s trying to deal with, he’s ready and willing to take on board their advice.  I also love how this was changed to suit Matteo.  The whole ‘straight up, no smiley’ thing disappears and in its place is more of the whole ‘when I felt this way, I did this’ thing that Jonas in particular has used to good effect with Matteo.  Making him feel like he’s part of the crew in this specific way (eg that the other have similar experiences and can help that way) is what this character needs.  Isak needed something different (more of a ‘we’re all blokey blokes together’ thing) and I do absolutely adore that scene with him and his guys, but it wouldn’t have worked with Matteo who has always been a more sensitive and emotional character than Isak.  

And of course the scene when David arrives.  For obvious reasons this scene can’t go the way the one with Isak and Even did, but what I love is that it fits with Matteo’s character.  For Isak it was always big, sexy emotions and desire.  For Matteo, it has always been about yearning for connection and companionship.  He has never been wanting sex in the way Isak kind of always did (even if girls never really did it for him) and so it’s natural that it wouldn’t happen here.  There is still protection of David’s secret, which is the point, but it’s done in a way that makes sense for Matteo.  And actually, the tension and relief in this scene is huge.  Relief because obviously we and Matteo (finally!!!!) saw David again after 15 long long days and tension because the last shot is of his face crumpled in something that looks like pain.  It’s blatantly obvious that something big is coming and soon.  Both Even and David respond to an ultimatum but their reactions are different and from here on out obviously the stories do change quite a lot just because of their different experiences.  It’s clear that Even thought he could bluster his way through the situation, while David knows he has to be honest.  And we can already see on his face just how hard that is going to be.

[zutaraplatter]

Avatar: The Last Airbender Critique

There are already a million of posts like this one, and I might be saying things that’ve already been said a million times but I’ve recently become reheated about the ATLA ending and wanted to let it out -_- No one asked, this is true, and this may or may not be a way to stall from this final project I still have to complete, but here’s 10 things I didn't like and/or would change about the show that likely shouldn’t need changing because they should have been done in the first place.

1. Katara should have apologized to Sokka after TSR

It should have happened and it didn't. In my canon-avoiding mind, Katara and Sokka have a heartfelt conversation where she apologizes for the awful things she said, Sokka says he forgives her and he's sorry if he wasn't as there for her as much as he should have been, which he follows up with "but I'm happy you listened to Aang and took his advice," leading into my next point

2. Katara should have said that not killing Yon Rha was her choice

And thats why it was the right one. Not because Aang already said it was wrong. No no. It was the right choice because that's what she chose. I love my mom to death and can't imagine losing her in any way, let alone the way Katara did. And I can't say for sure that if I was in her shoes that I know what I would have done f that yes I do I would have killed that motherfucker. But I also know that if Katara decided not to kill him, then that was one of two correct choices because they were Katara's choices to make. Not Aang's or anyone else's and this should have been clarified. I know it's a kids show but I said what I said. Next point.

3. Katara should have said more after telling Aang she was unsure at the Ember Island Players

Katara hasn't had any trouble saying how she feels, especially when it comes to helping others and making them feel better, whether she was right or wrong. But she holds back or overly softens blows and seems to even shrivel up at times when it comes to Aang. And me no likey. I had a boyfriend who I adored and admired and just genuinely looked up to. I'm also a shy and anxious person who hates confrontation, but because I loved him, I never refrained from telling him when he was wrong. I might have been a little shaky about it but I did it tho because when you want to be with someone you walk through the grass and stomp through the mud. And I personally feel like either in that moment or later on in an added scene that Katara should have voiced to Aang how unheard and disrespected she felt about his words before TSR and his actions on the balcony. I hate being uncomfortable and my secondhand embarrassment is toxic but I would love to see a scene of this. I always imagined Katara saying stuff like "But I'm not you Aang, and I'm not an Air Nomad," or "Zuko could understand why I needed to go, and I'd hoped you would too," or...I'm out of ideas but you get the idea. And you know what, I know I'm a hard Zutara shipper, but them having this conversation would honestly make me respect their relationship a whole lot more should it be believably written to end on a good note (I don't see how it could be but hey I'm an open minded person and I did think they were cute together once upon a time). Basically, all I'm saying is that Katara is no small voice and she should have been written that way when with Aang. Boyfriends can make you shy but should never make you weak. Period. Next point.

4. No rock! ONLY GROWTH!!!!!!!!!!!

I still squint my eyes whenever I remember that rock that unblocked Aang's chakra. What even was that? The laziest writing possible in my opinion. That's what. And Aang deserved better. What should have happened should have been that Aang started to lose to Ozai. And then as Ozai's about to deliver the finishing blow, Aang has flashbacks of everyone he's trying to save and honor, ending with a very prominent flashback of Katara with the guru's disembodied voice reminding Aang to let go of his attachments to become all he needs to be...then BOOM! Baby boy is back on his feet, chakra unblocked, he kicks Ozai's ass, I'm crying hysterically on the floor, as are the rest of us, and he wins. Then at the end of the series, instead of a kiss, he gives Katara an apology. She accepts, everyone else comes to join them on the balcony, cinematic group hug, camera pan into the sun. I don't know lol. Basically what I'm saying is that Aang did not deserve some deus ex machina. He deserved to grow and become his best self like everyone else got to.

5. Aang should have heard differently in The Storm

Katara is a very fate-minded person and this is when I saw potential for her to become a toxic character in regards to Aang. When he admits that he ran away from home 100 years ago, Katara tells him that that was basically a good thing because he was meant to be here and now. Like...no? What Aang did, though understandable for someone so young, was still wrong. Yes he would have maybe been killed but I'm like 10000000% sure they had a plan to protect and evacuate the literal avatar. And what was technically "meant to be" was a new avatar. But hey, what's done is done and kicking Aang while he's down is a no-no in this household. But that doesn't change the fact that Aang needed and deserved honesty. Maybe the fisherman could have said this, I don't know, but I feel like Aang should have been told by someone that although running away was wrong, it's a blessing he and Appa were able to survive and be able to help save the world now with his amazing friends found-family. Maybe this is too harsh, and maybe even outright wrong, but I felt like Aang deserved a truer answer here to support and comfort him.

6. MAILEE!!!!

Do I even need to go into detail?

7. Spiritual sigh*

Don't make me go into detail -_- I will say though that although Aang and Katara are both amazing individuals capable of earth shattering things, they were not a healthy fit for one another. This is evident in the original series and especially in their children from LOK. They both deserved the best but better than one another.

8. ZUTARAAAAAAA

This is a Zutara blog you KNEW this was coming, as it should. There's just too much. There's too damn much. I would give a real paragraph to this too, but, I mean, there's already so much proving that this was the pair. Fics, metas, rants, this site. Scroll through my blog or any of the ATLA related blogs I follow and...dude. These two were meant to be together and I'll mourn the narrative brilliance WASTED for no good reason every day for the rest of my life. No reason these two shouldn't be married with three kids. sob. I will take this part to say thank you to the amazing fic writers that gave Katara, Zuko, Mai, and Aang what they deserved that the writers didn't have the guts to give them themselves. Next point tho.

9. AANG AND ONJI

Good God almighty. Why not this? WHY NOT THIS? I'm putting on my bullet proof vest and I'm going to say this; Aanji is cuter than Zutara. Now before you scorn me or whatever, let me explain. Zutara for me is like steak. No. Chicken parmesan. I like chicken parmesan better. The point though is that Zutara is savory. You know? I don't see them as cute, I see them as Obviously. Aanji on the other hand is like a bag of my favorite candy. They are like a brownie. A cookie. Girl Scout Samoas!...I don't know what words are anymore. This post got way out of hand. I guess what I'm saying is that for Zutara, I scream, but for Aanji, I squeal. I hope that makes sense. But here's the main point I want to make. Onji never knew who Aang really was. And Aang was always, at his core, himself. She very obviously had a crush on Aang for his personality and that was crazy cute and frankly preferable to Katara's "I...guess he is." (you know exactly what I'm talking about) Anyway, I kept wanting more of them together. I wish all the time that we'd gotten to see her again, with a more fleshed out character and all. And in the way that I imagine the show should have gone, she could have been the perfect love interest for Aang, during this episode or way later, even in the comics! Another WASTED opportunity for greatness and I will, again, never recover T-T

10. Iroh get your ass back here

Maybe this is a misguided critique but I hated that Iroh just left Zuko alone in the fire nation at the end of the series. Baby was in trouble in every sense of the word and Iroh was just like "See ya! You got this nephew." I'm expected to believe that? I'm expected to accept that? No no no. He should have at least stayed for a few years to help Zuko stay upright and, you know, alive. And by "upright" I don't mean "good." I just mean been there to support him because Lord knows he needed it, at least in the beginning of his reign. It was cute that Iroh was able to settle down with his own teashop after all those years of violence and mourning and running and this and that. I was more than happy for him for being able to have that peace finally. But I still think it could have waited a little while longer so he could support Zuko.

That's it I guess. I know not everything I've said makes the most sense in one way or another, but I enjoyed putting it together all the same. Thank you for reading and have a great day. I'll go finish my final now.

(Edited for a typo)

[seancekitsch]

You Need Hands: Part of the Prize Buck Series

Warnings: smut, talking about abusive relationships, talking about drug use, unsafe bondage practices bc i am not a sex guru i am a writer of two flawed people, codependancy, praising

Klaus is surprised, to say the least when you come into the apartment raging, fingernails chewed off and eyes red as if you'd been crying on your walk home from work. Work was your only place, save for home, where you seemed truly happy. He notices your shaking and the barely contained rage behind the clench of your jaw.

“Hey! Hey, is everything alright?” he puts a hand out to stop you from pacing, and you turn on him, eyes glassy and red.

“Do you know what she said about us?”

What the fuck? Who would have said that? You talk to his siblings. Your boss. And. Oh. Okay, you talk to Gwen, your roommate from your University days that you recently gotten in touch with again. Klaus doesn't like her. It’s hard to get on Klaus’ bad side, but she seemed… pushy. Not pushy. What's the word he’s trying to use? Controlling? Scheming? Yeah, those are the ones. Accuracy cuts deeper, you always tell him. He pets your arm, feeble in trying to calm you down but after a few ragged open-mouthed breaths, you’re ready.

“She called us Sid and Nancy,” you continue, “She said we live in a sex den above a bodega slowly killing each other, if not outright doing it. She thinks you’re gonna get me high again. She basically met up with me up to judge me and tell me everything I’m doing wrong. I didn't even get to tell her about that paella we made last week for your whole family.”

“Oh, she’s kidding right? I’d make a terrible Nancy.” That makes you pause in your tracks, confusion lighting up your features.

“No- Klaus she thinks you’re Sid.”

“I’m not Sid.” He reaffirms, pulling you in and wrapping his arms around your frame. Noticing how the candlelight catches on your hair, making you look like a biblical angel, one of those terrifying fiery things, hard to look at but you’re all his. He knows how you feel right now, better than anyone. He’s used to being the one discounted and lectured. His own siblings, as much as he loves them dearly, only just started trusting him in the span of the past two years. It felt like something divine, that despite how mean and secluded you were at first, how you trusted him so deeply so quickly. He’d known you for almost a year, and in that year dragged you to another century, gotten you involved in a cult, exposed you to his family, ghosts, challenging and difficult situations other people could have easily cracked under without disease plaguing their mind. Klaus is capable of great cruelty and recklessness, he knows it. He knows you shouldn't trust someone who has seen and done the frankly fucked up shit he has, but you do. And he trusts you fully in turn, if not more. Even when you refused to be open with him, pushed him away; the days when you would have rather stuck pins in your hand than speak to him because he was loud and you were too weak to handle it.

He exhales a breath he didn't know he was holding when he feels your head dip and fall against his chest.

“Is she right?” your voice is far away, empty. Needing some empty comfort. “Are we killing each other? Do we suck?”

“Hey, c’mon, don't be upset,” he shushes you, “We’re good for each other. We have jobs! No relapses! Bet your ex could never say that.” He couldn't, your ex was part of the reason you were here, which Klaus wasn't exactly upset about because it meant he had you and no one else did, but you probably could have benefitted from years free from an active addiction that was more or less funded by the competitive nature of your work and home life.

“I’m not upset. I’m pissed.”

That solves it for Klaus. When you're pissed, you clam up. He doesn't want to emotionally lose you for the rest of the day, or worse, the whole weekend.

“We’re not killing each other,” he confirms, “Pretty sure you can't kill me anyway.”

You snort and swat at his ribs, but then your hand doesn't leave him after the hit, instead slinking from his side to his back, coming to rest on his shoulder blade. You're holding him, which means he hasn't lost you.

“Oh, wicked thing, I’ll show you how good I am for you.”

You sigh, and feeling the pricking of your nails on his back, he takes that as permission. His hand begins roaming your body, groping at your chest, squeezing at your ass as you grab onto him, holding him for stability as he keeps moving, his large hands making you moan.

“Klaus…” you trail off. What are you trying to say? What are you asking for? You don't know.

“How many days have you been clean?” He whispers against your skin.

“One hundred and ninety three.” You know it exactly.

“See? She’s wrong,” and he goes back to peppering your face with kisses as his hands work to pull your skirt out of the way. Its dirty the way he pulls your clothes out of the way to fondle at you, to rub against your cunt through your underwear, to pull that underwear aside and find you wet and waiting. His other arm wrapped around the small of your back, holding your rumpled skirt gathered in his hand.

“I’ll be real good for you,” he affirms, slipping a finger into you, and then another. You grip onto his shoulders now, enough to keep you standing when your legs want to crumble under his thrusting. He pushes in with ease, like you were made to take his fingers, your breath hitching and tiny whines falling from your lips. His forehead dips to press against yours, sweat beginning to form on his brow. Its dizzying, how deep his long fingers can be inside you, how full and whole you feel as he holds you against him, making you shake and moan as he props you up, letting you feel like a ragdoll at his mercy.

“Hey,” he nudges you with his nose, “Hey, Lover, look over there.”

He shifts his head to the left, and your head follows. You're face to face with the image of yourself in the cheap and grimy thrift shop mirror you had bought. You see how strong his lean muscles are, how they move against you, hold you close and safe.

“Look how fuckin’ good you look.” You nod, you have to agree, heavy bedroom eyes stare back at you, your lips parted almost pornographically. Is this how Klaus sees you all the time? He picks up the pace, eagerly moving his hips along with his hand, needing to feel some release and friction himself as he works you over, your voice raising an octave as he gets rougher, until your eyes close tightly; your body stiffens, shakes, and you can hear him praising you. You're doing so well, that's it, all for me, right on my hand, you're so sexy. Your voice comes out in a shudder. Trying to thank him as your muscles twitch and you look into his beautiful green eyes.

“No, no, no, shhhh,” he hushes you again, smoothing your hair down as he leads you to walk on wobbly legs over to the bed to sit, not bothering to fix your skirt. Your eyebrow quirks as he moves to remove his belt fully, not just unbuckle it to remove his pants.

But you wise up quickly, watching him grab your hands and start to wrap the belt around your wrists. You have bondage rope somewhere around here, but this is hot, and he told you to be quiet, so you don’t make a sound. He moves your hands at the wrist, checking for you to make sure the belt won't hurt you, then pushes you back onto the bed, staring at invisible patterns on the ceiling as you lift your hand for them, belted wrists landing at the other edge of the bed. You can feel him push your skirt up even more, then you feel his skin on yours, his bare thighs rubbing against the inside of yours, then the sensation of Klaus rubbing his cock against you. Fuck, you love his cock. You love him. He watches your expression, your gasps, your sighs from lips plumped by bruising, your eyes fluttering shut as he rubs against you. You're a fucking goddess. He doesn't deserve you, despite trying to carnally prove that he does. Youre so fucking good, you’ve helped better each other. Fuck what anyone says. He just hopes you believe it too.

“So fuckin’ good, Lover. Oh, I’m gonna worship this cunt,” he sighs, more to himself than you.

“Don’t make me wait, Klaus,” you command, but then whine as he enters you. Everything feels like so much, so much.

“Sensitive, Fraulein?”

“I can handle it.”

“Of course you can,” he agrees, setting his pace

He hikes one of your legs up onto his hip, then hikes his leg up onto the bed, getting a better angle to fuck you, but also to lean in and kiss you, his mustache brushing your chin, lips attaching themselves to the underside of your jaw as he kisses you fully, pressing his love into your skin.

He covers your body with his own, protective, possessive, and devoted; he fucks you through another high, making you scream into his mouth as he doesn’t slow his pace, once again shushing you and singing your praises. I love you, you look so good like this, let me live the rest of my life like this between your thighs. You want to let him take, and take, and take. Such a thoughtful, loving, loyal person. He gives. You want him to give.

“Klaus,” you sound breathless, “Klaus, come inside me, please.”

You beg, wanting him completely. He lifts your other leg, before climbing completely on the bed with you, his sweaty chest dropping against yours, palming at your breast as he buries his head into the crook of your neck, needing to feel the closeness of you as he comes.

He comes quietly, with a staggered gasp and your lips kissing his hair. One of his hands finds yours bound above your head, and grasps them both in his. He kisses your neck as he stills, body relaxing as he comes down.

You stay like that for almost a half hour before the phone on the wall rings and snaps you out of your loving haze.

[ghinanotlinetti]

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005) is a show that aged really well!

Ever since the world entered unprecedented times, more people are looking for comfort and what better way to feel comfort than to re-watch beloved series and movies? Nothing compares to the rush of nostalgia that comes from watching a movie or series for another time. It’s a little embarrassing, but I can’t help it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show I enjoy watching to this day because of it’s superb story-telling. It’s been years since the last episode aired. I remember waking up to watch it in the morning as a kid, or in the afternoon after school because I had no friends to play with (I also grew up in a desert and it was too hot to be playing outside anyways, I could never part from my beloved TV and air-conditioner). I remember that empty feeling that washed over me after watching the last episode. Followed by the enjoyment of watching reruns. I felt the show was done with so much justice, I wasn’t disappointed at all, and we had fanfiction too. Everything was splendid! Then they stopped the reruns but I was too busy because with IGCSEs and A-Levels to be upset. Re-watching wasn’t what it is now; today, streaming has made it so convenient to just keep on watching what you actually want. It’d been years, quite a while, since I last watched ATLA when I watched it on Netflix in early 2021. This time, I watched it from beginning to end with my older sister; it became our dinner show, a show we watched on the couch whilst eating dinner. Our last dinner show was How I Met Your Mother, another nostalgia show, but I don’t enjoy re-watching that show in my adolescence, and this show got away with too much *glares in fatphobia, misogyny, transphobia, racism, etc.*.

ATLA was something I could watch for nostalgia and enjoyment because it’s a wholesome kid’s show that’s gaining more fans thanks to the rise of streaming, and rightfully so. There’s lessons I take and apply in my day-to-day life, which isn’t very deep but it’s still somewhat meaningful nonetheless. For the most parts, my feelings towards the show haven’t changed, though there’s things I appreciate more now compared when I was a kid. For example, I’m an enemies-to-lovers enthusiast through and through, I loved Zutara, loved those fanfictions, but now I really appreciate Kataraang a lot. Probably the moment when we al knew like ‘damn this kid is in love with this girl’ was the scene with Guru Pathiik, and that shit hits heavy to this day. There’s no motives or agenda for Aang, he doesn’t try to win her or anything, just wants to be the best friend he can be to everyone around him. Aang is a character I wholeheartedly admire, along with Katara. She’s the brightest bender of them all, the way she took down Azula was epic because she could’ve electrocuted Azula and herself with that water trick but she didn’t, she did a quick water-freeze move with control and that was amazing to watch! Lately I’m noticing that there’s (too many) people that don’t like Katara’s character which is odd because before she was a well-loved fan favourite. I think it’s because now it’s cool to hate the “good” female character that the show wants people to root for; it might’ve began with the take-down of Gabriella from HSM in favour of Sharpay Evans by a Buzzfeed article, and though it’s valid she’s still Sharpay Evans who will bully anyone in her path IRL. She’s the mean girl and that’s fine! Not every character needs to have a redemption arc. The argument I’ve seen to hate Katara (and Gabriella too for that matter) is because she’s annoying, but to me that’s not substantial enough. So? I’m annoying, you’re probably annoying, everyone’s annoying, what else? Katara slander will NOT be tolerated in any of my spaces, and I personally don’t think Azula needs an onscreen redemption arc, she’s our King Joffrey but ATLA is waaaaay better than whatever GoT was. I also really enjoy Toph Beifong! A very fun character to watch, I think she’s great. I love watching the relationship Toph and Katara have, they’re basically sisters and I’m a sucker for a good onscreen sibling dynamics. The book that’s always excited me most is the third, particularly the first half, and my favourite episode now after countless re-watches is The Runaway, fun episode plus Katara and Toph character moments are very well done, I live for great onscreen character moments! My favourite episode of all time used to be The Ember Island Players, I love satire especially when it’s done right and this was done beautifully well! Other favourite episodes of mine are the very first episode, The Northern Air Temple, The Tales of Ba Sing Se, The Crossroads of Destiny, Sokka’s Master, and The Beach. A character that I enjoy now and didn’t quite appreciate so much when I was younger is Mai; any female character who’s good with throwing blades has my heart, honestly (re: Hela from Thor Ragnarok). I see parts of myself in Mai’s character, and they’re traits which I wasn’t prideful of in my youth when I wanted so badly to fit in and be likeable, today I embrace those parts (my quiet side) with kindness. I was so mad for my girl when Zuko called her a big blah, that was uncalled for. And speaking of Zuko I really enjoy watching him and his tantrums, very funny! 

Ever since I was a kid, I really wanted to bend elements so bad, I just think it’s so cool! I used to want to bend fire but now that I think about it I don’t think I have what it takes to harness and control this element, I’d need an Uncle Iroh to set me on the right path for sure. Now I think I’d want to bend air, going with my Aquarius Sun to match element to my personality, plus air is everywhere 👍

To me, superhero shit looks better animated and these days I find myself watching a lot of animation for the art plus stories. I can still watch a live action but it’s not as engaging for me. So I have a profound appreciation for animation productions, and this production is 10/10! Story writing 10/10, characters 10/10, and voice acting is also 10/10! I acknowledge my bias, but even as I’m comparing this with other tv/movie franchises, this one has stayed consistent with its intention and impact. For example, I was a huge potterhead, but I’m now distancing myself from anything that gives profit to R*wling not only because she’s a transphobe but she’s also not a good writer. I think HP was intended to be like ATLA where it tries to give teachable lessons to children ranging from casual (friendship, love, etc.) to the more difficult ones (war, death, bigotry, etc.), but the plot doesn’t match the intention, so the impact depended on viewer’s perspective. We see “love” portrayed as being above all else including death (with the exception of Lily who was sacrificed unfairly in my opinion) because it saves Harry twice, but we know in the real brutal world it doesn’t work like that because love is not sufficient enough, and on top of everything Voldemort is a power-hungry n*zi who doesn’t care about love, friendship, etc. In ATLA, the plot was centred around a moral compass and it wasn’t cloaked by “love” and/or “friendship”, so when Aang makes solid decision to not kill Ozai, it’s followed with him unlocking the power to take a bender’s abilities away from them, leaving Ozai powerless which works and is an incredible victory for him. So whilst there are lessons on friendship in ATLA, it’s not the necessarily the cure for their problems; they work together as a team to defeat Ozai’s army, sure, but they’re also skilled fighters in their own right. One of the main takeaways (in particular from Avatara Roku and Sozin’s friendship and overall story) is that anyone is capable of good and evil, so everyone should be treated like they’re capable of change, and I think this is a valuable lesson to teach children which I thought was well executed in the show. The only valid criticism of ATLA is cultural appropriation, though I’m not from the cultures that the creators took inspiration from so I don’t have points to share on the issue. I’ve lived in Asia for a majority of my life and I’m an ex-political science student so I have my own thoughts on the politics of representation, personally I chose not to look to Western-based productions to represent my culture, so it’s not surprising to me when there’s inaccuracies that’re bound to be there. Overall, I think ATLA is a great show that aged well in comparison to other franchises, and I’ll probably be re-watching in my granny years 💕

That’s all the rambling I can do on ATLA for now! To close I just want to say, fan-made HP content (shoutout to A Very Potter Musical, great satire also kuya Darren 😍) is greater than anything R*wling has and will ever write, produce, create, etc., ATLA does it for me in terms of nostalgia, story-telling, plot, production, etc., and we’re not defined by the things we watch ✌

[firelxdykatara]

um not to start anything “zuko had everything handed to him by the end of the show even though it took him until nearly the very end to realize he’s wrong: a country, a crown, his girlfriend that HE left behind, the love of his uncle that zuko spent most of the show yelling at and being a dick to, and that’s why he just doesn’t deserve ANYWAY I’M JOKING but this is how y’all be talking about aang” who even talks about aang this why????

It sounds to me like some Aang stans grossly misunderstand criticisms surrounding the writing of Aang’s arc in book 3, in particular during the finale.

This is actually a pattern I’ve noticed with distressing frequency, particularly of late: any criticism of Aang at all--of his actions, the narrative scaffolding surrounding them (never having to apologize for kissing Katara without her consent, for example), or of the failings in the way his narrative was handled (in book 3 especially)--is written off as hate and derided by stans who I can only assume believe that the writing of his character arc was perfect and he never did anything wrong that deserves fair criticism ever in his life.

To this, I can only state my firm disagreement.

The thing is, they don’t really have any counter arguments to refute the points that actually get made (which isn’t to say there aren’t bad faith criticisms of his character just like everyone else, but unlike most of the cast, ppl seem far more inclined to act like there are no valid criticisms of his character or his writing), which is likely why they just write it all off as unfounded hatred of their precious bean fave and ignore it accordingly. But that doesn’t, like, make the issues with his writing, or with book 3 as a whole, go away, and the fact that they refuse to engage with good faith criticism (and, in fact, often refuse to engage with criticism at all by pretending there’s no foundation for any of it--I’ve actually seen people try to justify Aang’s actions in, for example, Bato of the Water Tribe by insisting that Sokka and Katara were actually worse and that Aang lying to them shouldn’t be held against him because they were Mean About It which.... yeah I could go off for days about that alone) says more about their lack of actual engagement with the text of the show than it does about the people who are criticizing his character.

The things that we say were handed to Aang--the deus ex lionturtle (which gave him energybending), the Rock of Destiny (aka the thing that gave him back the Avatar State without having to even attempt to do the work to unblock his chakras again himself), and Katara, presented to him as the prize he’d won at the very end of the show--are things that he did not do the work to actually earn.

Which will probably get some peoples’ backs up, so let me rephrase--the narrative did not put in the work to show how he actually earned these things, preferring to waste time with pointless filler in the front half of the season and then only bring up problems and then solve them within the four episode finale because they left no more room for these very plot critical points earlier in the show. Take Aang’s unwillingness to kill Ozai, for example--this is something that absolutely should have come up far earlier in the season (prior to the invasion at least), and the fact that it didn’t says two things: one, that because the writers knew Aang wasn’t actually going to face Ozai during the eclipse, they didn’t think it mattered to follow through on what Aang planned to do if the invasion had been successful; and two, his sudden clinging to his people’s pacifism seems directly at odds with where the entire narrative of the show had been headed to that point. Why is he suddenly insisting he’s the consummate pacifist when we’ve seen evidence in the show of not only Aang reacting in violence and vengeance (towards the sandbenders, and that wasp he killed), but also evidence that Air Nomads were not the sort of pacifists who would roll over and just let someone commit genocide (the fire nation corpses surrounding Monk Gyatso, clear evidence [which Aang never seems to so much as consider at any point during the series, despite the fact that it could have been a point of much-needed growth and maturation, or at least examining his own people’s beliefs and realizing that, at twelve, he had a flawed and incomplete understanding of his own culture] that even Aang’s mentor was willing to kill in order to protect his home and his people)? Why, if he’s so damn pacifistic, did he never seem to consider with guilt any of the lives he took while in the Avatar state and fused with the Ocean Spirit?

And no, by the way, I’m not saying he’s to blame for the deaths Koizilla caused, but I am saying that it doesn’t make sense that he feels no remorse over all of that blood. Particularly since we see that he considers actions taken while in the Avatar State to be his own--he feels guilty when he goes into the AS and scares his friends, and he very specifically removes himself from the AS to avoid killing Ozai, which tells me that he does consider the AS’ actions to be his own. And if all life is sacred to him to the point where he won’t even eat meat (although Air Nomad vegetarianism makes no sense, but that’s another rant entirely) why doesn’t he so much as mourn for the lives lost during the attack?

These are all questions which the narrative itself never considered, and it’s frustrating because many of them are questions which should have been asked--and answered, or at least attempted--in the course of the final act of Aang’s character arc. He had a great set up going into the third book, with Monk Gyatso’s teachings filling in some of the blanks in Aang’s (again, flawed and incomplete--I challenge anyone to try telling me that if they were completely removed from their culture at age twelve, and it was subsequently wiped completely from the face of the earth, that they’d have anything close to a deep and nuanced understanding of it; twelve-year-olds don’t have a deep and nuanced understanding of anything, nevermind an entire culture and worldview, which is why Aang kept parroting soundbytes from the monks without actually understanding them) understanding of Air Nomad beliefs, but this thread was completely dropped in favor of... I’m still not sure, honestly.

Was Aang running away from his problems and effectively lying to his friends (does he ever actually come clean about being completely unable to access the Avatar State of his own volition?) more important than going back to the Guru, or at least his teachings, and coming to understand his own culture? Where was his arc of regaining the Avatar State because he worked for it, because he tried to re-open his chakras and, for example, came to understand what letting go of his attachment to Katara really means? (That’s actually one of the most frustrating bits, because a) he gets to have his possessive and unhealthy attachment to Katara and get the Avatar State back, despite paying lipservice to letting her go at the end of book 2; and b) he never seems to get what ‘attachment’ the Guru was actually referring to--letting go of Katara doesn’t mean he had to stop caring about or even loving her, but it does mean he was supposed to give up his selfish and possessive attachment to her, which means no nodding when some actor in a play calls fake!Katara ‘the Avatar’s girl’ and no assuming they were supposed to be in a romantic relationship despite never actually asking about her feelings and no kissing her without her consent just because he wanted her to feel the same way about him and didn’t care whether or not she actually did [otherwise he would have asked, and he never once even tried].)

Instead, rather than having a season-long arc of re-navigating his chakras, opening them, and regaining the Avatar State under his own power, he gets thrown against a well-placed rock which does all the work for him at the very last second. Energybending, which wasn’t even thought of as a possibility earlier in the season, rather than being a concept he comes to discover on his own as he navigates his chakras for a second time and comes to understand the how the energy flows between each one, is likewise just given to him by a third party, with no work necessary on his part. And as for Katara, well, I’ve ranted at length about that in the past, but their last one-on-one interaction before the epilogue is when Aang kisses her without her consent, and she gets pissed off about it and storms off. There is nothing to bridge the gap between that and make-out city, nothing at any point indicating Katara’s feelings (because, as far as Kataang was concerned, her feelings never mattered) and how they were changing, no apology from Aang for violating her boundaries, no understanding of what he did wrong and why it was wrong. Nothing. Not a single conversation.

That is why we say that Katara was handed to him like a trophy. Because she was. Kataang was endgame not because it made any sense for Katara, but because Aang was the hero, and he saved the day, and he deserved to get his forever girl on top of it. There was never any real attempt to broach Katara’s feelings on the matter--she’s never shown reflecting on their pre-invasion kiss (in fact, by all appearances she completely forgot it even happened), and she is never once asked what her feelings are, not by Aang or the narrative--because, at the end of the day, they didn’t matter. Aang was getting the girl he wanted, and that was that.

We say that Aang was handed these things without working for them because the entire narrative of book three seemed particularly engineered to making sure he didn’t have to. Zuko, meanwhile, had to work for everything he achieved--the gaang’s trust, Katara’s in particular, his crown and his kingdom. (No, he didn’t particularly work to get Mai back, but that’s a whole other discussion, and he would’ve been much better off if she never showed up again after TBR.) He didn’t get to take any shortcuts. Aang’s arc is all shortcuts, at least in book 3, and that’s when they attempted to show how he got from point a to point b at all.

Anyway, the situations couldn’t possibly be any more different, and idk who said that but whomever it is clearly does not understand where the criticisms about Aang and his hamstringed book 3 arc are coming from.

[forabeatofadrum]

God, this feels good

Summary: After coming out, everything changes. Luckily, Victor is not alone, especially when Simon and Bram are in town.

Notes: I’ve had this idea since the very end of season 1 and I finally decided to write it down, because a certain someone (hi Shay) gave me the push I needed. Enjoy.

AO3

--

Pilar is the first to react. She walks over to hug him.

“I love you,” she says as she pushes him closer, “And I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Victor asks. His mind immediately goes to the darker places. Is she sorry about me being gay? Is she sorry because she can’t actually accept it? Is she sorry on our parents’ behalf?

“If I’d known that B was a guy, I wouldn’t have made such a big fuss in public.”

Pilar did lead to Victor kissing Benji, so he can forgive her easily. “I love you too.”

Pilar pulls away, but she’s still holding his arm. Together, they stare at their parents. Isabel looks like she’s on the verge of tears. Armando just looks shocked.

“Mom, dad-”

“Don’t,” Isabel says and Victor’s heart breaks. He can also hear Pilar’s breath hitch. “Don’t, mi amor.”

She gets up and she leaves the room without another word. Pilar and Armando watch her leave. Victor can’t. All he can do is stare at the ground.

Suddenly, there’s a firm hand on his shoulder. He looks up and he sees his dad looking at him with a very serious look on his face. Victor braces himself for the worst and Pilar also starts tugging at his arm, as if she wants to pull him away.

But Armando says: “Your mother will come around.”

Then he also walks away. Pilar and Victor look at each other with wide eyes. It wasn’t the reaction that they had hoped for, but it also was better than expected. Armando didn’t straight up tell Victor that he’s okay with it, but he also doesn’t seem as devastated as their mom.

“Goodnight, Pilar,” Victor says. It’s been a long day.

“Goodnight.”

--

The next morning, Victor can hear his mother crying in the bedroom. That’s how upset she is about the whole situation.

Victor decides he needs to leave the house.

--

“Wait- wait!” Felix says, “Rewind!”

Victor and Felix are sitting at the stairs in front of their apartment building. This is where Victor first came out.

“So, your parents are separating. You kissed Benji. Mia and Andrew know you’re gay. Pilar apologised for being kinda invasive. Your mother is crying about it and your father didn’t really say anything about it.” 

Felix is counting on his fingers.

“That’s it in a nutshell,” Victor nods.

Felix leans back. “Damn what an evening, and here I am, thinking I’ve got big news to share.”

“Oh?” Victor asks.

Felix grins. “Lake and I are dating. Publicly. We kissed in front of everyone.”

“That’s great, man,” Victor says and he playfully punches Felix’s shoulder. But then another thing comes to mind. Can he ever kiss the person he loves in front of everyone?

His face must’ve fallen, because Felix looks worried. Felix uses a finger to tilt Victor’s head and it is kind of weird, but at that moment Victor is just so grateful that Felix still hugs and touches him. He wonders if other guys at school will treat him differently now.

“This changes everything, right?” Victor tells his friend, sounding sad. 

“Yeah, buddy. I think it does,” Felix replies solemnly, “But I’m here for you, right? And if anyone at school or at home gives you any shit...”

Felix trails off, but Victor understands what he’s saying. 

He’s so incredibly grateful for Felix, but there’s still someone missing. 

“I wish I could talk to Simon, like in person. Again.”

“Your gay guru?” Felix asks.

“I mean, I can’t unload this on Benji, right? Not a great way to start a relationship.”

“So, it’s like official-official?” Felix asks, “You two are dating?”

Victor can’t really answer that. He hasn’t called Benji yet. He’s been too busy with all this family stuff. “I don’t know.”

“Well fuck me, ask him out!” Felix says, sounding very excited. He’s very invested in Victor’s life. “You two kissed and you two are definitely into each other. Maybe he’s waiting at his phone.”

“You think?” Victor asks.

“Yeah!” Then, Felix gets up and he pulls Victor on his feet. “The two of us are going into town now and we’re going to find a great outfit for a first proper gay date and you will ask him out, okay?”

“Y-yeah,” Victor says. He’s a bit thrown off by Felix’s enthusiasm, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Felix slings his arm around Victor and together they walk away from their apartment building.

Victor looks back over his shoulder, only to see his mom quickly move away from the window.

--

That evening, his mother wants to talk. Victor fakes a headache.

“Where has it gone wrong? Please, Victor, I just- please- why are you doing this to yourself, to us?” Isabel sounds desperate. Victor leaves without another word and he once again hears his mother sob.

He can’t do this.

He messages Simon. It’s not much. In fact, it’s his shortest message yet.

Help me.

He falls asleep.

--

Victor walks into the kitchen. It’s Sunday afternoon. He’s managed to succesfully stay in his room all morning. He’s so glad that he decided to stock up on snacks, but the snacks aren’t very healthy. Besides, his parents should be at church.

Should be.

His parents are sitting at the dining table, drinking coffee. Pilar is on her phone, ignoring both of them. Victor stops dead in his tracks.

“Shouldn’t you be at church,” Victor asks and suddenly he feels a small rush of anger, so he adds: “Like, praying for me to be cured or whatever?”

Isabel still hasn’t looked at him, but Victor sees that the grip around her mug tightens. Armando looks stricken. Pilar looks up from her phone, impressed.

“Victor,” Armando says sternly, but that’s it.

“Why would you think that?” Isabel asks, still staring at her coffee.

“Because you walked away after I told you?” Victor tells his mother, “Because you cried? Because you still can’t look at me?”

Isabel closes her eyes and tearfully says: “You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

“... right. Of course, this is terrible for you.”

“Victor!” Armando says again. Victor’s never talked back to his parents, but in this moment, he doesn’t care. 

Isabel still can’t look at him. How is he ever going to get over his own mother not looking at him? He opens his mouth to say something, but then someone knocks on the door.

All family members look at the door.

“I’ll go,” Pilar says and she quickly jumps out of her seat. She’s probably also dying to leave.

Later she returns with Felix in tow. Armando’s face is stricken. He probably wishes for some privacy to talk this out, and now Felix is barging in.

“Hi Salazars!” Felix says cheerfully, “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Not at all, Felix,” Isabel forces a fake smile. She looks at Felix and Victor feels a pang of jealousy. She can look at him, but not at her own son? 

“Victor, I found two guys around town. They know you?”

Victor looks behind Pilar and Felix and he’s shocked to see Simon and Bram standing there. They look different, even though it hasn’t been that long since Victor last saw them in New York. Simon’s hair is longer and it looks like he’s growing a beard. Bram dyed his hair blue. 

They’re here.

Victor’s too shocked, he can’t even move. Bram almost pushes Pilar and Felix to the side and he throws himself on Victor.

“Oh my God, hi!” he says excitedly and he kisses Victor’s cheeks and forehead. And again. And again. Bram is showering him with kisses and a part of Victor wants to be able to turn around to see a possible horrified look on his mother’s face. He can’t remember Bram being this affectionate back in New York, but it strangely enough feels comforting. Bram is here for him.

They hear a chuckle.

Simon has an amused look on his face. “Can I also say hi to our adopted son, or are you not done yet?”

Bram moves away so that Simon can give Victor a crushing hug.

“Hi,” he whispers kindly in Victor’s ear and Victor might cry. Simon is here, in his living room.

“What- wha- how-”

“Oh, Simon’s dad had a medical emergency, so we’re back in town,” Bram says casually. Simon also gives a small shrug.

“Turned out alright in the end. But you know, we decided to come down anyway.”

“Yeah, now that we know that Jack Spier isn’t in immediate danger, we actually decided to come visit you. Luckily, a certain Felix sent Simon the address,” Bram nods towards Felix.

“Great timing too!” Felix says, referring to their earlier conversation. Victor needed Simon, and now he’s here with Bram in tow. 

Pilar, Armando and Isabel are looking from Victor to Felix, to Simon and Bram. Pilar furrows her brow.

“Wait, who are you? Victor barely has friends.”

“I’m right here,” Felix says to Pilar.

“Apart from you and Mi-” Pilar abruptly cuts herself off. Mia. Victor hasn’t heard of her yet. He’s not sure he can face her yet, so he’s also not reaching out. He’s ashamed. Not of being gay, but for dragging Mia along.

Victor shoots Simon and Bram an alarmed look. His parents still don’t know about his trip to New York. Simon catches the worry.

“Uhm, school,” Simon replies.

This makes Pilar even more suspicious. “Aren’t you, like, thirty?”

“I told you the beard makes you look old, Si,” Bram teases his boyfriend and just watching the two interact makes Victor feel warm all over. It’s a reminder that it’s okay for two guys to love each other.

Simon dramatically rolls his eyes before facing Pilar again. He also casts a quick look to Victor’s parents.

“We went to Creekwood. Uhm, they are starting this new program where they’re teaming up students with alumni to get a taste of life after high school,” Simon lies easily.

He was in the closet too, Victor remembers. Being closeted makes you an excellent liar.

Same goes for Bram, since he adds: “Yeah, and I used to play soccer at Creekwood and I now play basketball, so Ms. Albright hooked us up.”

Victor is quite amazed by the backstory. He doesn’t know if Simon and Bram already had this prepared, but it sounds believable. Only Felix looks a bit confused when Bram continues to talk about the program, but when Felix tries to ask something, Victor coughs and realisation dawns upon Felix.

“Oh, yeah, so cool that you got a great match and talk regularly,” Felix says quickly, “Mine was kinda wack. She was clearly only into it for the extra credits.”

“Yeah, those extra credits are nice,” Simon says and he and Bram share a private smile. It’s quick, so it’s easy to miss, but it’s there.

“Right!” Victor says.

Pilar still seems skeptical, but Isabel and Armando buy it. Or maybe they don’t, but it’s impolite to call Simon and Bram out on their lie. 

“Anyway, we thought we’d surprise you,” Bram says, “Are you up for some Waffle House? I mean, if your parents are fine with that.” He says the latter part while looking at Isabel and Armando, who look like a couple of deers caught in headlights.

“Oh, uhm, of course!” Isabel says, sounding fake cheerful. Armando also puts on a fake smile. 

God, Victor is so grateful for the forced Christian politeness. What would the neighbours say if they hear that the Salazars aren’t being hospitable? Isabel still can’t look at Victor, but she’s looking at Bram. Either she doesn’t seem to realise they’re gay, or there’s progress.

“Cool. I’m gonna get a jacket.”

Victor moves to his room, but he hears Simon yell: “You know, there’s this denim jacket that really compliments the rest of the outfit.”

Victor laughs to himself.

“Also, don’t forget your bus pass!”

Victor returns wearing Simon’s jacket and he is holding his bus pass. “Don’t you guys just drive?”

“We’re gay, Victor,” Simon deadpans and out of the corner of Victor’s eyes, he can see his mother go stiff. 

Bram nods. “We’re gay in New York. There’s no driving happening anytime soon.”

“Fair,” Victor says as his mother turns her back to the others. Then, he motions towards Felix. “Can Felix come along?”

Felix looks a bit surprised by this, and sure, Victor indeed longs to talk about some gay things, but Felix is also his best friend and he always wants to hang out with him.

Bram slings an arm around Felix. 

“The more the merrier.”

Suddenly, a smirk forms on Simon’s face. “How about we invite a certain... Benji?”

“Yes!” Felix and Bram say.

Victor takes a deep breath and he pulls out his phone. He can do it.

He starts to type.

--

Benji is a little busy for now, but he decides to meet up an hour later. A part of Victor had feared for complete rejection and a “sorry, but prom was a mistake”, so he can handle Benji not being there on time.

Victor, Felix, Simon and Bram take the bus to the nearest Waffle House. On the bus, Bram and Felix are excitedly talking about a new action movie, which gives Simon the chance to say: “I got your message.”

“What message?” Victor asks.

“‘Help me’?”

“Oh. That.”

“No need to be ashamed,” Simon says kindly, “What is going on?”

Victor tells Simon everything. He tells him about how he kissed Benji, but also about how it broke Mia’s heart. He confesses that he tries to trust Andrew not to out him, but he’s still scared. He talks about how Pilar feels semi-responsible for the confrontation with Derek in public, how his mother cries herself to sleep, how his father hasn’t said anything about it, and how Adrian isn’t allowed to know.

Mostly, he feels lost.

“Everything is different now,” Victor tells Simon the same thing he said to Felix.

“It is,” Simon confirms. This surprises Victor a little bit. A lot of coming stories are all about ‘how nothing will change’ or how ‘the person is still the same person as before’, but Victor didn’t feel that way. Neither did Simon, apparently.

“I feel lost and confused. That’s why I need help.”

“And I’m here for you.”

They have to get off at the next stop. Bram almost hugs the Waffle House building when they arrive.

“I missed you, did you miss me!” he yells towards the building with open arms.

“There’s no WaHo in New York,” Simon quickly explains when he sees the baffled looks on Victor and Felix’s faces. 

Inside, Simon whispers something in Bram’s ear.

“Alright,” Bram says loudly, “Felix, let’s order.”

“Wait, what does-”

“Bram knows my order,” Simon cuts in. Now Victor understands what’s going on. Simon wants some more time alone.

“Felix, surprise me,” Victor adds.

“On it,” Felix salutes and together with Bram he walks to the counter. Simon and Victor take a seat in a booth. When a waiter tries to take their order, Simon tells them that Bram and Felix are on it.

“Fun fact,” Simon says when the waiter is gone, “I kind of had a crush on a WaHo waiter, hoping it was Bram.”

“What?”

Simon lets out a laugh. “Yes, I was a disaster gay yearning for love. A boy would smile at me and I’d be in tears. I even tried complimenting a maintance worker on his boots.”

“God, and look at you now.”

Simon smirks. “I know right. Glow up of the century. Took me some time to get here, but I did it.”

“How?” Victor immediately asks.

“Well, it wasn’t easy-”

“It wasn’t?” Victor automatically interrupts. Simon frowns. 

Is there something Victor is missing? Ms. Albright told him all about the ferris wheel and about the epic kiss on top of it. The school cheered for them and their families seem accepting.

Simon’s coming out story sounds perfect.

Was it?

“Victor, you said you heard about me at Creekwood, right?” Simon asks, still frowning slightly. Victor nods. “What were you told?”

Victor tells Simon what he knows.

“Oh,” Simon sits back, a bit in shock. Then he lets out a bitter laugh. “Of course the straights want to spin it into a picture perfect story where nothing’s ever gone wrong. That’s all they’re comfortable with.”

What?

Victor and Simon stare at each other and Simon looks pissed off to hear that Victor has heard a (fake?) story about his life. 

The tense moment gets interrupted by Felix. He puts down a tray and happily says: “Alright, one coffee and one big waffle with powdered sugar and honey for Victor Salazar!”

Bram is standing behind behind Felix, also holding a tray, but he seems to notice the tense atmosphere. “Is something wrong?”

Simon moves so that Bram can slide next to him in the booth. Victor does the same for Felix.

“Si, what is it?” Bram asks, but Simon closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh. Then, he turns to Victor.

“Victor, I was outed.”

Silence.

Victor’s heart drops.

Felix chokes on his strawberry milkshake and Bram’s face also goes stricken thinking about the memory. Victor is frozen in his seat. No one’s ever told him that.

“I thought you knew.”

Victor shakes his head.

“Lemme guess, straight people are at it again?” Bram says bitterly.

“Yup,” Simon sighs, “They only talk about the ferris wheel.”

“Typical,” Bram says and he stabs his waffle with his knife. 

“... what happened?” Felix asks when he realises that Victor is still too frozen to speak.

The story that Simon then tells them is very different from what Victor imagined. The ferris wheel kiss still happened, but a lot of stuff went down beforehand. Simon and Bram met anonymously over e-mail. They were both still deeply in the closet. Simon was blackmailed into manipulating his friends and when his blackmailer was in a bad mood, he outed him. Publicly. On the internet. 

For the whole school to see.

Victor knows about Creeksecrets, since Lake practically lives on that site, but he’s never heard about this story. He wonders if Lake knows.

“School kind of became hell,” Simon says quietly and Bram grabs his hand. They don’t care if anyone can see it. “My friends were mad at me-”

“Although they weren’t very sympathetic either,” Bram grumbles.

“True. We talked it out after Bram and I started dating. Leah and Abby are now a couple and Nick is dating Taylor of all people, but yeah they didn’t even try to understand up until Abby started realising she’s bi herself.”

“Some guys were super homophobic to you in the cafetaria and they just sat there,” Bram sounds mad.

“Bram.”

“Ugh sorry. I just- I also still feel guilty.”

Guilty about what? 

Simon sees Victor looking at Bram. “I was alone because my friends didn’t talk to me and Bram didn’t- I didn’t know he was Blue, the boy from the e-mails.”

“If there’s one thing I could’ve changed... I’d speak out that day, but I was afraid. Ashamed. I don’t know,” Bram says sadly, or angry. He sounds angry at himself. He looks down to his waffle. Simon takes away his knife to prevent him from stabbing the waffle out of anger again. “I saw what people were doing to Simon and I hadn’t come out to anyone. My parents are cool now, but I had no idea of knowing.”

“I was outed at Christmas Eve, so I told my parents on Christmas. I wanted them to hear it from me, but I still felt sort of forced to do it. I don’t think I was ready. And you know, I was, like, 95% sure that my parents would be fine with it, but the 5% is so loud.”

“Were they?” Victor asks.

“Yes, kinda,” Simon answers, “It wasn’t perfect and things were tense for a while afterwards. Not because I felt like they weren’t okay with it. In fact, my mom was super okay with it. But it’s like you said: something had changed. I felt lost at school and at home.”

Victor almost stops breathing. This is the thing he’s so afraid of. His family will never be the same and it’s because of him.

But then Simon says: “But I think it’s a good change. I wish it’d gone differently, and my dad tearfully apologised to me about past mistakes, but we’ve grown stronger as a family too. They’re... weidly enthusiastic. Now my dad moderates the local PFLAG and one time on a college tour he asked the guide if they could ‘elaborate on the campus’s gay scene’.”

Everyone laughs at that, even Victor. He can feel Simon’s embarrassment, but it’s also really nice.

“And my mom is a psychologist and she now wants to help other queer kids out. Nora, my sister, tried to bake a rainbow cake for pride, but we don’t talk about that or about our scorched kitchen.”

Another round of laughs.

“Yeah, and my mom loves him,” Bram says and his kisses Simon’s knuckles. Simon blushes.

“I have that effect on moms.”

Not my mom, Victor thinks bitterly, but he doesn’t say it.

“My mom was a bit worried when I told her I had joined a basketball league in New York, cause, you know, homophobia and sports are friends, but when I told her it’s a gay league she was delighted.”

“There’s a gay league?” Felix asks in amazement.

Victor nods. “Yeah, I’ve played with them.”

“And I cheer them on,” Simon adds.

“Yo,” Felix turns to Victor, “I know I’m not gonna tap that ass, Benji is, but if you’re ever going to join a gay basketball league, can I be your cheerleader? I’ll bring Lake!”

“Uhm. Sure.”

“Nice,” Felix says and he holds out his fist. Victor bumps it and he laughs. God, he loves Felix.

“Anyway, I am still in the middle of my inspirational gay story!” Simon says.

“You’re basically at the end, babe,” Bram says.

“The moral of the story is,” Simon says, ignoring Bram, “that it will be challenging, but it gets so much better and honestly I wouldn’t change a thing. Now we’re living in a gay ass city with some great gay roommates living our best gay lives.”

“And if you ever need us, we’re just a call away,” Bram says, “Same goes for Ivy, Kim and Justin. They ask us about you all the damn time.”

“They better,” Victor jokes and after hearing Simon’s story he does feel lighter. His story might go in a completely different direction, but he hopes that he can overcome it too. 

He thinks about Justin, who needed to hide himself. Or Simon, who got outed. Bram, who was ashamed of himself. Ivy, who told Victor about how she got bullied. Kim, who still flinces when someone insist that their gender is fake.

Still, they all got there in the end. If they can do it, then so can he.

“I think my waffle’s gone cold,” he then says.

“Probably, but WaHo waffles are still great when they’re frozen,” Bram says.

“You’ve had frozen waffles?” Felix asks in amazement.

“Yeah, they got that nice crunch, you know?” Bram says.

“Disgusting,” Simon says.

The four of them continue their breakfast/lunch in peace. Now that Victor feels much better, it’s almost as if everyone feels better. He’s still a bit upset from hearing Simon’s story, but then he sees Simon feeding Bram a piece of his waffle and he spills some whipped cream on Bram’s nose and Victor knows that it really does get better.

A while later, the door opens and Benji steps in. He looks around for Victor and when he finally sees him, he smiles warmly. Victor also gets a warm feeling.

Bram looks over his shoulder. “Oh, so that is the mysterious Benji.”

“Shut up,” Victor quickly says as Benji walks towards their table.

“Hey,” Benji says, only looking at Victor.

“Hi.”

“We’re also here,” Felix coughs.

“Oh, right,” Victor says and he quickly introduces Simon and Bram. They shake hands and they don’t show that Victor’s told them all about Benji.

Felix moves his legs so that Victor can get out of the booth.

“Hi,” Victor says again, “You’re here.”

They move away from the table for some privacy.

“Well, you called me for breakfast-or-kind-of-early-lunch with friends.”

“Sorry for not calling earlier,” Victor says. After all, it’s been three days since prom. “I came out to my parents and things got weird.”

“Oh shit, what happened?” Benji asks, sounding worried. 

“I’ll tell you later. Now, I kinda just want to have some fun at the local WaHo.”

“It’s okay,” Benji says and he reaches for Victor’s hand. Victor still feels a bit nervous, since this is all so new for him, but when he feels Benji’s hand grasping his, it feels right.

Over Benji’s shoulder, Victor can see Felix, Simon and Bram looking with excited looks on their faces. They all look away when they see Victor looking. 

“Sorry.”

“Again, it’s okay. I understood. I mean, I did kind of wait by my phone for three days, but you said that you were sure about this and I believe you.”

“You did not!” Victor says, aghast. The image of Benji sitting by his phone is kind of sad.

“I did not. Not really,” Benji laughs, “Still, I’m glad to hear from you.”

“I’m glad to see you,” Victor says, “So happy you’re here, although...” He musters up the courage for the next part. “Maybe next time we go somewhere to eat, it can be just the two of us?”

“Like a date?”

“Like a date,” Victor confirms. After all, he has a new outfit. Felix took him shopping for this occasion.

“Yes, absolutely!” Benji says.

Victor smiles widely. 

“Okay.”

It will all be okay. He’s sure of that.

[alrightzuko]

Literally can't stop thinking about "You have indeed felt a great loss. But love is a form of energy, and it swirls all around us. The Air Nomads' love for you has not left this world. It is still inside of your heart, and is reborn in the form of new love" and how much the concept of this quote pretty much applies to the main characters within atla, especially in regards to their development and central arcs throughout the series and how it plays a big role in their journey, either on a large scale or a more subtle one.

Aang's is the most obvious and is the original context of this quote. His love for the Air Nomads and their love for him is reborn in his love for Katara and vice versa. These two develop an instinctual bond as soon as they meet and get along very well, providing each other with support in overcoming the trauma, a listening ear when things are rough or standing up for the other when they encounter obstacles, especially ones related to their bending. They supply each other with the home and understanding that has been lost as a result of the war. Aang's love for Sokka can be interpreted in the same way, who forms one of the first bases for Aang's second family after the loss of his entire culture. It's not just that though, there's also the gradual trust in each other's leadership skills, reaching its zenith in their preparations for the invasion of the Fire Nation capital.

Katara's reborn love is likewise Aang's as well, and I think the best way to demonstrate this example is paralleling Aang's actions in the second episode of book one when Zuko and his crew attacked the South Pole and Kya's in the flashbacks of the Southern Raiders. Both are people who meant a lot for Katara and who at that point helped in shaping her view of the world, since Kya raised her and Aang even in the short span they interacted reminded her of the joy of enjoying her adolescence and having fun. Both did not hesitate to offer themselves up for the Fire Nation when it became clear that Katara and the village was in danger and both made a conscious effort to reassure Katara during those sequence of events. Of course, Aang and Kya didn't have the same outcome but that's not the point.

Zuko's is Ursa's and Iroh's. It's not a reborn love in the literal sense but for all intents and purposes, the result is largely similar. While we know from flashbacks that Zuko was very close to his uncle even prior to Iroh losing his son and events leading up to Zuko's banishment, the fact of the matter is that Ursa is shown to be his primary caregiver, the person who works to do whatever they can to shield him from Ozai's abuse and someone who inspires a lot of his conceptions about his self image, particularly his persistence in the face of adversity and failure. Once Ursa is no longer in a position to continue doing so, that role is then taken up by Iroh who continuously makes every effort he can to support Zuko through the worst period of his life, providing the love and care he needs in order to heal, standing against the harm Azula and Ozai attempt to inflict against him (often literally) as well as teaching him the tools he needs in order to continue building his separate identity outside of the toxic ideals of his family. Whether that is in relation to Zuko's bending and the way he's been branded as the less talented and therefore a disappointment or in relation to the imperialist mindset of their country and the royal family by passing on the ideals that Iroh himself learned through his journey of self-reflection.

Sokka actually has two forms of reborn loves, which I realised upon some extensive thinking. The first is by far the more obvious, which is Yue and Suki. Yes, Sokka met Suki first but the order of events lend my argument some weight. It's not just that both are his primary love interests (which they are) but they are ones who influenced Sokka's relationship to his role as a protector and to another extent they were people who he could enjoy himself around on more equal terms since he more often than not is the 'plan guy' within the gaang. Yue's death and his inability to do anything that prevents it enhances his overprotective tendencies and it's no coincidence that he faces this particular issue with Suki on the serpent's pass by his own admission. He's later able to overcome it and start a relationship with Suki without the shadow of that incident hanging down on them (pardon the pun). The other one, which is more subtler and might puzzle some, is Hakoda and Piandao. Hakoda as Sokka's father is his role model, the ideal of the warrior that he strives to live up to and who reassures him of his worth and his pride in him. This guidance is also, to a degree, the part that Piandao plays as his mentor; he helps Sokka gain the confidence needed in himself and imparts lessons that tie in to skills as a warrior. In each of the episodes "Sokka's Master" and "The Guru", Sokka experiences low faith in his abilities and is reassured by Piandao and Hakoda respectively (although Piandao's was much more... confrontational). In the end, the purpose is served. Hakoda cannot be present with the amount that Sokka needs but the love he has for him is found in a new shape in Piandao's mentorship.

Toph experiences her first unconditional love during her childhood with the badger-moles, they are the creatures who accept her and her blindness and they're the ones with whom she gains faith in her earthbending. That love is carried over when she meets Team Avatar, Aang challenges the double identity she built in her life that is in conflict of the image her parents have of her, "the obedient little helpless blind girl", and she decides later to leave her home behind and take a leap of faith so to speak. This decision leads her to be able to build healthy relationships where she's comfortable and secure. Katara teaches her that expressions of femininity and her tough persona don't have to be at odds with each other, and that she can enjoy being pampered and still at the end of the day resume acting herself. And we have many instances where Sokka leads Toph around in places where she needs someone to help her to and Toph is comfortable doing so. It's a development from the Toph we first meet, who rejects aid because she needs to establish her own personhood. She grows to be okay with relying on others in a way that doesn't lessen her own independence.

Suki admittedly gave me a bit of a brain scratcher until I drew upon her biggest relationships, the Kyoshi Warriors and Sokka. Suki is the leader of the group, she's someone who believes in herself and knows her capabilities very well and it's not hard to understand that it's because of her position as Kyoshi Warrior. But more importantly, her fellow comrades offer her a support net. She can rely on them to have her back, just as they did during the attack on Kyoshi Island and in the Earth Kingdom. And after the run in with Azula, Mai and Ty Lee and getting separated in imprisonment, she lost that. Her confinement was isolated from any familiar faces and probably very traumatic. Until Sokka finds her in the Boiling Rock, and she regains the lost sense of partnership. From there until the finale, Sokka and Suki are shown to interact romantically, socially and on the battlefield. They joke and have ridiculous fun together while enjoying the Boy in the Iceberg play and they fight together seamlessly on the gondola, during training on Ember Island and in the Airship battle. This is a testament to the incredible trust they built and the camaraderie they share.

Note that when I say reborn, I don't necessarily mean in strict terms of life and death, which can be applied to more than one character anyway, or in the literal sense of reincarnation. I mean it more as a metaphor, it's a love that has been lost or can not present right now, either temporarily or in a more permanent sense. And I think that is one of the most profound messages the show can impart to such a wide audience. That love is a form of energy around us and even though the person who provided us with that specific kind of love isn't or can't be around anymore to give it to us, their love is so strong that it changes and comes back in a new love. It's not gone, not forever, it's just... different.

[ollyarchive]

Interview

Olly Alexander on success, sanity and It's a Sin: 'All those hot guys. I loved it!'

Simon Hattenstone

The Years & Years frontman is starring in Russell T Davies’ new drama about the Aids crisis. He talks about bulimia, his ‘dark’ clubbing days – and how he learned to enjoy filming sex scenes

Mon 11 Jan 2021 06.00 GMT

Olly Alexander was so certain he was destined for success that he saw a therapist to help him prepare for his future fame. It was 2014 and his band Years & Years had just signed to Polydor when he visited the shrink.

“I said: ‘The album’s coming out and I really want it to be successful,’ and he said: ‘What happens if it isn’t?’ I said: ‘Well, that’s not an option because I have planned it in my diary since I was a teenager.’”

That diary was less about chronicling the present than a series of promises he made to himself. “I planned my life till I was 25. I would be a famous musician ’cos musicians were the coolest people in the world. The biggest thing in the list was buying my mum a house, and I did that. That was the coolest thing to be able to do with my money.” He smiles. “That was the coolest thing ever.”

Now Alexander might well benefit from another visit to the shrink because he’s about to become a lot more famous. He stars in It’s a Sin, the brilliant new TV drama by Russell T Davies, about a group of young gay men living and dying through the Aids epidemic in the 1980s. The five-part series is funny, vibrant, sexy and heartbreaking.

This is by no means the first time Alexander has acted – he has appeared in the TV series Skins, films such as Bright Star (about Keats), Gulliver’s Travels and Great Expectations, and on stage in the West End alongside Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw in Peter and Alice; a pretty impressive CV. But with It’s a Sin, he knows he has struck gold. “Some actors would wait their entire careers and not get such a good role,” Alexander says, and he’s right. Davies has made a habit of creating groundbreaking TV series (Queer As Folk, Bob and Rose, Torchwood), and this is his best yet.

Alexander’s character, Ritchie Tozer, is an aspiring actor/singer who has just moved to London from the Isle of Wight in search of fame, fortune and a good shagging. He embraces his new freedoms with promiscuous abandon, while also struggling with his sexuality. Ritchie is equally cocky and vulnerable, lovable and insufferable.

Although It’s a Sin takes place in a time before Alexander was born, he says there are so many ways he relates to Ritchie’s life. There is one crucial difference – whereas Ritchie is secretive, Alexander is an open book. If there’s anything to tell you, he’ll tell you, even if he is embarrassed a second later about his indiscretions. It’s an endearing quality, and one that makes him great company.

We meet in his agent’s east London office in December, when Tier 4 restrictions are yet to kick in. Alexander is a boyish 30 – half punk, half catwalk model, with orange hair, earrings, multiple rings, stylish khaki trousers and a handful of inky tattoos. He is garrulous and giggly with a huge toothy grin.

Like Ritchie, Alexander was a stranger to city life when he came to London. He was born in North Yorkshire, went to primary school in Blackpool and Gloucestershire, and a comprehensive in Monmouth, south Wales. He was a natural performer who wrote his first song at the age of 10. “I performed it in my year six assembly.” Can he remember it? He squirms. “Yeah!” Let’s hear it then? “No!” Oh go on! “OK, OK. ‘The leaves are falling outside my window. I’m lay here all alone,” he sings quietly, in that delicate falsetto. He giggles, blushes and continues. “And now I’m a knowin’, the way it’s goin’, we won’t last for ever, for ever my love.’”

Wow, those lyrics are pretty sophisticated – and melancholy. He giggles again. “Oh thanks. It’s about unrequited love. Doomed love. I was getting in early on my themes. I had a bit of help from my dad.” He wrote it after experiencing his first pangs – for a boy in his class.

At secondary school Alexander was a victim of homophobic bullying. He responded with elan. “I would still come to non-uniform day in eyeliner.” Did he fight back? “Sometimes I would scream. I was not a good fighter. We did rugby a lot at my school – a Welsh school. The one time I scored a try, on the way back to the changing room the two popular boys from the year put their arms around me and said: ‘Well done, Olly,” and I was like: ‘I can’t believe it, this is it!’” He pauses long enough for me to get a glowing feeling. “Then they tripped me up and pushed my face into the mud. That was hard to live down.” After that he never went to another games lesson.

When he was 13, his parents separated, and from then he was brought up by his mother, events organiser Vicki Thornton (his real surname – Alexander is his middle name). His father had been a talented but disappointed singer-songwriter who made a living marketing theme parks. Although he gave young Olly a lifelong passion for adventure rides, there were tensions between the two of them. After his parents split up, he broke off contact with his father. When Alexander became successful, his father tried to rekindle their relationship via Twitter. Alexander wasn’t impressed.

With the sod-you eyeliner and supreme belief that he would make it, he sounds incredibly robust. So what else was in that teenage diary? “Pppprrrr.” He blows his lips as if feeling a sudden chill. “It’s a bit dark. I used to write that I really wanted to be skinny.” He exhales deeply. “My mantra was always: I’m not going to eat this again, I’m not going to eat cake again. I’m never going to eat pasta.” He was barely into his teens when he became bulimic and started to list the things he wouldn’t eat. Actually, he says it was worse than that. “I was writing down: don’t eat, don’t eat, don’t eat. Did he have a weight problem? “I was a little chubby at primary school, but no.” What does he think it came from? “It was something I could control. I felt very out of control in the rest of my life. I was struggling with my sexuality, my parents were divorcing, and I wanted to punish myself.”

I want to give him a hug, but I’m not sure he would appreciate it, particularly in the pandemic. Why did he want to punish himself? “It was self-loathing. I didn’t want to be gay. I was convinced I was the reason my parents were splitting up.” He never considered that their divorce may have had nothing to do with him.

He started to cut himself, too. Has he still got the scars? He points to his upper arms and thighs, “because people can’t see there. I was deeply ashamed of doing it. I wanted to hide it.” Are there many scars? “No. A friend saw a plaster on my arm and jokingly asked if I’d been cutting myself. After that, I was so embarrassed that I mostly stopped doing it. Bulimia carried on well into my 2os, but it became less and less frequent. It’s really hard to hold down any kind of job if you’re throwing up food all the time, and ultimately you have to choose.” It becomes a full-time occupation? “Yes, it’s all you think about. And you’re doing so much damage to your organs. I got taken into hospital once with my mum because I had this irregular heartbeat, which can happen through constant purging, and that really scared me. I thought I’d done something irreparable to my body, and my mum was so distraught. She couldn’t understand why her son was throwing up all the food she was trying to give him. She found out because I hadn’t cleaned the toilet properly.”

After studying performing arts at Hereford College of Arts, he moved to London and was liberated. He had a heady time of it – more drugs, clubbing and sex than even he had hoped for, while also getting regular work as an actor. But there was a downside. He saw friends struggle, sacrifice themselves to excess, fall by the wayside. “Everything was about going out and connecting with people at the clubs. I had a great time, but it was also a dark time. A lot of people took too many drugs. A few friends attempted to take their lives and one succeeded. That was devastating. You can see how easy it is for a party lifestyle to turn into something negative.”

Alexander has a strong survival instinct. There was his destiny to fulfil, the house to buy for his mother. He still struggled with his mental health, so he cut down on the destructive stuff. Today, he says, his main drug of choice is the antidepressant sertraline. “I was worried about longterm use, and the doctor said: ‘Well, the latest research shows it can promote neurogenesis, and I was like that’s the coolest thing ever.” Neurogenesis is the process by which new neurons are formed in the brain. “She was basically saying antidepressants are giving you superpowers, and I was like: ‘Amazing, I’ll keep taking them for ever.’” He starts giggling, and he can’t stop. “Neurogenesis – ooh, I love that. I’m going to be neuro-supercharged.”

Years & Years formed in 2010. Founder member and synth/bass/keyboard player Mikey Goldsworthy heard Alexander singing in the shower and asked if he wanted to become lead singer. When Alexander joined, Years & Years were a five-piece band, before shrinking to an electropop trio (Alexander, Goldsworthy and fellow guitarist and keyboard guru Emre Türkmen). Alexander, the main songwriter, has an ear for great sweeping choruses (think Sam Smith meets Pet Shop Boys with a dash of New Order). Their first album, Communion, went to No 1 in the UK, while the song King topped the singles chart and its follow-up, Shine, reached No 2. Many of their songs are about yearning and doomed love – particularly on their second album, Palo Santo – just like the first one he wrote aged 10.

Alexander also became known as an LGBTQ campaigner. He made a documentary, Growing Up Gay, for the BBC in which he talked to his mother in a tear-filled exchange about coming out; he also interviewed people about struggles with their sexuality, the pressure to be promiscuous and take drugs, and addressed schoolchildren about homophobia and mental health problems. Does he think of himself as an activist? He shakes his head. “It does a disservice to actual activists. There’s a tendency to use that word for anyone in the public eye speaking up about any issue. Going into schools and talking about mental health isn’t activism. I like doing that. If I can be helpful, I want to help.”

The week before we meet he was named celebrity of the year at the British LGBT awards. He doesn’t know why – he says he didn’t do anything in 2020. “Maybe they heard about my upcoming role and got in there early!”

He says he has learned so much from making It’s a Sin – not least about acting, and how tough it can be. “Doing an acting job where you have to turn up every day is really challenging. I was so used to my musician lifestyle, which is usually: get up late, get in a car, get driven to an airport, get on a plane, fall asleep, arrive somewhere, get driven to the venue, roll out of the car and do the show. It was too much like hard work every day. I thought I’d got past this!”

We see a lot of Alexander in It’s a Sin – in every sense. He gets more than his share of sex scenes, and says it was fascinating being taught how to do them properly. So he enjoyed them? “All those hot guys. That aspect I loved! And going into it I thought, I’m going to have so much fun doing this, I’m a confident-ish guy, love having sex, it will be great.” That’s so refreshing, I say, to hear actors admit they enjoy sex scenes.

Ah, well, he says, it wasn’t quite that simple – he initially became self-conscious. “I broke down into hysterical tears, like ‘don’t fucking touch me’. I found it really hard.” Then the intimacy coordinators got to work on him. “They were a life-changing experience. Intimacy coordinators are there for safety ’cos there’s a lot of shit that can go wrong between what a director wants and what an actor wants, and boundaries being crossed. They’re there to rehearse everything beforehand with the director and the performers. You talk about animals you might imitate, the sounds you make.” He pays tribute to intimacy coordinator extraordinaire Ita O’Brien, who introduced the Intimacy on Set guidelines in 2017 and worked on Normal People as well as It’s a Sin. “Anything with sex in it, she’ll be involved. She’ll be on all fours at one point, saying: ‘Now I’m going to be like a cow and moo in ecstasy.’ She’s amazing, amazing, amazing.” And yes, he did start to enjoy the scenes.

Did he find them arousing? Now it’s my turn to blush and I apologise for the question. Did he start to enjoy it too much? “No, that’s what I want to know. What if someone gets a hard-on – how embarrassing would that be? Ita said: ‘It’s natural and normal for certain body parts to get excited and if you get an erection that’s absolutely fine, but it’s not appropriate for the workplace.’” He adds a caveat: “Depending on what kind of job you’re doing. And she said: ‘If that happens, you just take a time out. So you’re all there thinking, OK, how embarrassing – because you say time out and everybody knows it’s because you’ve got a hard-on. Hahahhaa!” Did he have to take a time out? “No!” Did anyone? “Not to my knowledge.”

Who did he have most fun with? “I’d say best kiss was the guy who plays Ash [newcomer Nathaniel Curtis]. Great kisser.” And the best shag? “Sexual simulation,” he corrects me. “Best sexual simulation was Roscoe [Omari Douglas, another relative newcomer].” Has he told them? “It’s all coming out in this article, Simon.” And I can sense him calibrating what he has just said. “It’s going to ruin my standing!” But a second later he changes his mind. “No, that’s a compliment right? I compliment them both. Hahahaha!” And he laughs giddily.

I ask about the future. You sense he’s not sure where to go from here, acting-wise – that it can’t get any better than It’s a Sin. Fortunately, he owes the band an album’s worth of songs. He had them done and dusted before the pandemic. “But all that time in my flat going insane made me realise I didn’t like any of the music, it didn’t feel relevant. I just wanted to start again, which is what I did. Now it’s almost ready – again.”

It will be only their third album in seven years. “I know,” he says. “It’s embarrassing. Ariana Grande has had about five out in the time we’ve done one.” In the meantime, he says, Türkmen has had one baby, with another on the way.

What about his own love life? “It’s pretty dire.” Sex? “I’m hopeful to have more sex … it’s very difficult in the age of Covid if you’re single. I actually tried to lock someone down who would be my ‘friends with benefits’ sex buddy, because I saw that Holland were advising people to do that. In the first lockdown I said: ‘Look, we can just have sex with each other. I trust you, you trust me, we’re not together, but this is an arrangement. I’ve not had sex in six months, what do you think?’ But he said no. I was quite upset. So yeah, not a lot of sex in 2020.” For a split-second, the puckish Alexander looks forlorn. Then he grins his toothiest grin yet. “But I’m hopeful that it will pick up in the new year!”

It’s a Sin is on Channel 4 on 22 January at 9pm

[tsukihimeyfan]

Sozin’s Comet’s Deus Ex Machina (and ways to fix them)

I’m sure that most of us AtLA fans can agree that the four part Finale was one of the best moments in animation history, with astoundingly well choreographed fight scenes, fantastic emotional beats, gorgeous animation, and frankly breath-taking music. However, I’m also sure I’m not the only one who was frustrated by one aspect of it in particular, the one blot on an otherwise perfect finale: what I like to call the “lion-turtle and pointy rock” ex machina.

The saddest part is that there was very little they had to change to get to a satisfactory, ties-everything-together ending. For example, take Energy-bending and the Lion-turtle. I saw a post a while ago where they suggested that energybending could’ve been related to what Aang learned from the swamp and the Guru, and it just makes SO much sense (Note: I saw the post months ago and I can’t find it anymore, so if anyone knows who first posted that theory please let me know so that I can give credit where credit’s due). After all, Aang seemed to use the energy of the swamp to sense where Appa and Momo were, and later, during Appa’s Lost Days, Guru Pathik says this:

Meaning he, a non-bender, is capable of reading the energy of others, and of locating people bonded to them from miles away. Let’s not forget that he had also previously sensed everything Appa had gone through with the same ability. Sounds like a really useful skill, wouldn’t you say?

Also, looking at both “sensing” occurrences, they look remarkably similar, so we can be reasonably sure that they’re both employing the same method.

It would’ve been so easy to have Aang take a moment to ask how Guru Pathik met Appa. After all, as far as the Gaang knew, Appa was taken by merchants to be sold in Ba Sing Se, so he shouldn’t have had a chance to meet anyone at the Eastern Air Temple. Did the merchants pass through the temple on the way to Ba Sing Se? Did the Guru try to set Appa free? Pathik would then have to explain how Appa had already escaped on his own, and he helped him find Aang by reading his energy. Aang could then ask the Guru to teach him this ability so that if they ever get separated again he’d be able to find and help Appa easily. Boom - energybending basics acquired.

A highly spiritual person like Aang would no doubt have little problems mastering the sensing ability, especially since he’s used a limited version of it before at the Swamp. Also, if we think about how much the spiritual mentors in the show have tried to drill it into Aang that all things are connected,

we can assume that after mastering everything Guru Pathik could do he would eventually be able to sense even people vaguely connected to him from far away. Being the Avatar, the bridge between the spiritual and physical worlds, would almost certainly also help him master energysensing abilities no other had before. 

Maybe they could’ve added a few 30 second scenes here and there of Aang meditating to hone his energysensing skills. Also, during the whole Boiling Rock debacle, imagine how great it would’ve been if Sokka had asked Aang about his dad and, after pressing his hand to Sokka’s forehead and following his bond to his father, Aang was able to tell him that his dad was alive and well, and that he was somewhere in the direction they’d come from, though at that point he wouldn’t be able to pinpoint his exact location.

“I’m sorry Sokka... I can’t tell exactly where he is yet... I know that’s not really helpful...”

“No, knowing he’s alright is plenty. Thanks, buddy”

After Sokka and Zuko rescue Hakoda, I could picture Aang practicing harder than ever until he could use Hakoda’s bond to Bato and the others to locate them in a prison in Caldera City (which would’ve made rescue before ending the war difficult to say the least, and would explain how they were all there for Zuko’s coronation so fast)

Later, during Aang’s trip to the mysterious island, it would’ve been so cool if, instead of handing him the ability, the lion-turtle just told him this:

... and maybe showed him visions of his energysensing training when he did the forehead-touch thing. Then, during the battle with Ozai, maybe after redirecting the lightning away from Ozai Aang could think to himself “I can’t... he may be a monster, but he’s still my friend’s father!”. Then, he suddenly realizes that just like with his friends and family, Aang has a connection with Ozai too, and that if sensing someone’s energy happens by putting a bit of his energy into them, maybe he can use the same route to take some of Ozai’s energy away from him.

Imagine how amazing it would’ve been if they’d added those little snippets of Aang’s energybending training all throughout book 3, without giving it that name, and then Aang used what he’d learned from Guru Pathik and Huu and what he’d taught himself to rediscover a technique that hadn’t been used in millenia all by himself! (well, with a little “nudge in the right direction” from lionturtle-sensei) We were SO close, all the building blocks were there but... *sigh* we ended up still so far. 

Continued with solving “pointy-rock-ex-machina” under the cut

In Book 2, we’re told that to master the Avatar State Aang has to “let go of his attachments”, but that plot point is dropped completely and all he has to do is get hit in his lightning scar and BAM! Avatar State unlocked, no letting go required! 😒 

He was still just as attached to Katara as he was during Book 2, if not more so. So, in the interest of trying to figure out how to tie up as many loose ends as possible, we could try to hit two birds with one stone by fixing another thing at the same time that wasn’t addressed either. 

We could start with a conversation between Aang and Katara where he apologizes for kissing her when she clearly didn’t want him to at some point during Sozin’s Comet Part 1 - The Phoenix King.

“I accept your apology Aang” Katara’d say, “but from now on make sure to respect people’s boundaries, Ok? Especially girls’ boundaries :) We can talk about this more after everything’s over”

At this point, maybe Aang could be left to think and reflect on his relationship with Katara, on his attachment to her, and on how he’d started thinking about her as “his” almost without any input from her.

Maybe Aang could begin to really understand what Guru Pathik was trying to teach him when he said “you must let go”, and the difference between love and unhealthy attachment to people.

He’d therefore be going into the fight with Ozai with that fresh on his mind.

Then, as the battle raged and he grew increasingly desperate, maybe he’d try a few times to force himself into the Avatar State only to fail miserably. 

At this moment

when he’s been overpowered and cornered (and also has a little bit of “downtime” to think), he could start desperately trying to figure out a way to enter the Avatar State, and wondering why he can’t do it. Katara’s been healing him every day! The scar doesn’t even hurt anymore! Why doesn’t it work???

Then, he'd realize that it doesn’t really make sense for a lightning strike to lock his 7th Chakra, since according to what Guru Pathik taught him chakras are locked or unlocked through changes in emotional and spiritual state, not physical. 

(Note: this is also backed up by what little I know of irl chakras and activating Kundalini in the Yoga school of Hindu philosophy. If anyone knows more about it please feel free to add to this or correct me. I’d love to learn how the concept of chakras in Avatar contrasts with its real life counterpart 😊)

Also, if the lightning had messed with the Avatar State some other way, like by blocking his chi for example, he shouldn’t be able to bend properly either.

So what could’ve caused his problem with the Avatar State? 

Of course! After Katara saved him, Aang became even more focused on gaining her love, and grew even more attached to her than he’d been before! Of course he can’t enter the Avatar State! 

Now, I’m a Zutara shipper all the way, and this would work much better if that had been canon, but this could work even with a Kataang endgame since, as I said before, Aang kind of become obsessed with the idea of making Katara “his” no matter what, a clear earthly attachment, instead of loving her unselfishly and letting her love him in her way:

Notice that he said “we kissed” even though he kissed her, and then “I thought we were gonna be together”, an assumption he made without asking her anything once. Same as in this scene:

Mastering the Avatar State doesn’t mean not loving anyone romantically, as we can clearly see through Avatar Roku’s example (also the “if you want power abandon your loved ones” message is stupid and I don’t like it at all. This would be better imo)

Even during the process for unlocking the chakras, the Fourth Chakra tells us that finding love isn’t contrary to spirituality, and can even be a source of spiritual strength. However, I’ve always thought it was a bit strange that the “new love” Aang found to fill the hole left by the deaths of his people was.... just Katara

Because what Aang lost was essentially all of his family and friends right? So wouldn’t it have made more sense for Aang to envision Sokka, Toph, Appa and Momo as well? You know, his old family vs. his new family?

I didn’t fully understand what exactly was wrong with it until I read some of tumblr user marsreds’ metas on the matter, and I have to agree with them that it seems Aang was sort of focusing on his love for Katara so much partially as a way to cope with the loss of his people. To keep it out of mind. That’s not how you build a wholesome romantic relationship, and it doesn’t seem like the best way to deal with grief either. No wonder his Seventh Chakra was blocked.

I would’ve loved to see Aang realize at the moment of truth that in order to access the Avatar State he simply had to let Katara go enough so that he could love her selflessly, so that her wants and needs, and the needs of the world, could come first. He needed to become able to accept her answer, whatever it was, when she gave it. He needed to come to understand that his happiness wasn’t completely (or even mostly) dependent on getting into a relationship with Katara. He had a family he’d found all on his own, made up of friends who adored him and who would’ve given their lives for him if necessary. He was not alone in the world any more. Even if she told him no, he would in all likelihood find new love and be happy.

(in fact we have proof and there’s a perfect candidate right there in the Fire Nation but I digress)

The rest of the finale could’ve played out exactly the same as canon, and in the end Aang would’ve had a better understanding of himself and some inner peace. They could’ve also given us an inkling that Aang would later get to mourn over the deaths of his people properly, surrounded by his loved ones (maybe, ideally, in a hypothetical Book 4-AIR?. God, I wish)

I’ve seen some posts about Aang letting go of his attachment to the Air Nomad’s teachings instead (with maybe that very decision to put the needs of the world above his own being what unlocks his Seventh Chakra), and those are magnificent ideas as well, but I myself would’ve preferred if it went this way because I think there’s something beautifully poetic and satisfying about Aang staying true to himself, finding an alternate solution to violence that would still protect the world, and using the wisdom of His People to put an end to the very war that caused their destruction, while simultaneously giving the worst possible punishment to a man as power-hungry as Ozai

...and leaving him the same way he’s left many of the Fire Nation’s victims in the past: trapped, powerless and forgotten.

I also feel like this ties up all the loose ends better, since it was his attachment to Katara specifically which stopped him from mastering the Avatar State in the first place. And, Kataang endgame or not, it would’ve sent a wonderful message about building and maintaining healthy relationships, perfect for the show’s target audience of preteen and teenage kids.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[the-velveteen-victorian]

Hi Elle! I used to follow you on your old mega-popular tumblr. I really love your new one. :) I know that you've lived in a "super spiritual" community for several years now (not sure if you want me to publicly say the place). What is the community like? Is it more bad than good? What are some strengths and weaknesses of the place/people? Thank you! I've heard mixed things and really respect your insights.

Haha I knew I would get this question one day! If I could title my response, it would be, "Why I've Chosen to Keep My Distance from the New Age Community in the American Southwest." I info-dump and write novels, so get ready! =)

I think there is something to be said for defining things neutrally for yourself overall. Fortunately, I've been able to easily do that in this instance due to: 1. Being introverted and not "needing" a big community experience and 2. Having wonderful friends all over the globe that I am able to interact with all throughout my year. With that being said, if I am being 100% honest and real with you, I truly believe that the new age community where I am is more toxic than good. Here is why. I will have a positive note at the end.

A quick preface: I am not calling out any particular individual(s) and will not be naming names.... quite frankly, there are just too many and I'm not here to humiliate people. Secondly, these traits can take place in ANY community, spiritual or otherwise. But these are things that I feel a spiritual community should be more self-aware of... and sadly right now, they are not.

********ATTENTION: There is a big content and trigger warning here: There will be mentions of sui****, sexual *******, and gaslighting/narcissism, terfs, eating disorders, and other things that could be very upsetting. Proceed with caution and stop reading if you find yourself getting stressed, triggered, or deeply upset.*********

1. Malignant narcissism and community insulation from constructive criticism. I have never seen such a ubiquitous display of malignant narcissism in all my life in a collective, save for some conservative Christian environments in my growing up years. Go onto almost any youtube channel for the Sedona community and you will see very few negative comments… why? (And I have watched this for a long time) Almost ANY criticism of anyone’s channel or blog is instantly removed. There was a time when people who simply noted that some of these small “influencers” were saying toxic things were sent cease and desist letters. The community is very tight knit and displays many marks of a cult. One of these indicators is that they all protect each other and hype each other up on their channels and blogs, while labeling ANY criticism (healthy or not) as someone who is being “triggered.” The younger part of the community cares about looking perfect and having everyone worship them, but has very little spiritual substance. It’s always about who did the alien thing “before it was cool” or “who can do a backflip off of a steep cliff without breaking their neck because their synchronicity is on point.” One youtuber said once that she only wanted to hang out with “pretty” people because they were purer expressions of the divine. The older generation expresses narcissism by assuming they know more than everyone else. Good luck having a conversation on controversial topics with any of them. They are right, you are wrong. If you argue, you are “triggered” and “seeking for truth.” If you don't believe that there are reptilians on the moon with a secret base, you've drunk the kool-aid. Not a good environment to foster open sharing and knowledge. The men have a particular problem with this when it comes to topics of sex and intimacy. If you are a woman and don’t want to “surrender” to your partner (in a lot of vague and unclear ways), you are out of alignment with the divine feminine. Most of the men believe that they should be allowed to "hunt" (look for sexual partners/spiritual twin flames) and that women should do everything in their power to be softly feminine so that they can sync up and recognize each other's souls.

2. A full denial of science and medicine. Look, I get it. We all want to solve our own medical dilemmas and use herbs to cure all ills. I try to solve any (non life threatening) health issues I have the “natural” way first too… often, I have great success! The problem comes when the community rejects all western medicine, most science (that doesn’t affirm their beliefs) and any medical opinion that has… actually been to a real medical school. There is a strong anti-vaccination movement coupled with the belief in using yoni eggs religiously and doing colonics every week (though science tells us this isn’t a great idea overall). I used a different type of yoni egg for awhile to see what would happen, but trust me, your pelvic health is going to be better without them. You will be judged harshly for going to a “mainstream” doctor to get antibiotics for a serious infection and will most likely be gaslit into oblivion regarding “what you did to attract” your infection etc.

I have midwifed for many years now and have extensive “mainstream” training to be able to do this legally. Once, I was working with another midwife on a mother who was having her first baby. The laboring woman had an ideal birth in mind like most people do. Long story short, I discerned while she was laboring that the baby was in intense distress and that the mother was displaying very concerning signs of a life-threatening condition. When I insisted on calling an ambulance and getting the woman to the hospital, the other midwife said that I was interfering with nature. I explained simply that if we didn’t get said woman to a hospital, the baby would most certainly die and the mother’s life would hang in the balance. Her response was that: “Some babies don’t deserve to live and I shouldn’t invite karma by interfering with nature’s course.” I called an ambulance anyway and the mother was taken for an emergency c-section. The mother was very disappointed about not being able to follow her birth plan. However, after the birth (she and baby ended up being okay thank goodness) she sat down with me personally and thanked me for making the decision I did. She said that one of the doctors explained that if I had waited another hour, both she and the baby would be dead. Apparently, this other “midwife” had also had her license revoked a year before for endangering a different laboring person and child. This sounds like a stand-alone freak incident, but I can cite 15-20 other situations just like this one where life-threatening emergencies were viewed as opportunities for good karma and growth… and that western medical intervention would invite bad karma.

Regarding science, if you point to the fact that jade yoni eggs are likely to cause an infection, most of the new age community will scoff and say that they don’t trust science (the logic being that science once explained volcanos as angry gods or something and now cannot be trusted overall). If you don't wear blue-blocking glasses anytime you look at a screen, apparently you've already succumbed to mind control. You get my point… It’s so bad that the new age community is willing to endanger people’s lives and place the blame on the victims for being out of alignment with synchronicity. This one bullet point could be talked about for hours.

3. A lack of discernment and victim blaming. Many have heard about Bentinho Massaro and his crew from that time when they swept through Sedona a couple years ago. The core of the Sedona community started blindly following him… some of them wanted to boost their online platforms by being associated with a well-known figure. Others wanted a guru… and others were just curious and got sucked in by his charisma. All one had to do was google him. He has allegations of physically beating his followers, gaslighting people, torturing animals in his childhood, and ignoring the fact that an alarming number of his followers commit suicide. With all of this knowledge at our fingertips, the popular new age “influencers” went so far as to get in polyamorous relationships with him, validate his platform, and gaslight people who, sadly, committed sui**** because of certain things he said in his teachings. It was insane. Now, many of the people who followed him try to pretend it never happened or that they had no part in it. Many of them claim to have “gifts of the spirit” and to have stellar discernment.

One of the people who got into a polyamorous relationship with this person did an Instagram post where she basically said that if someone is being r*ped they should show their attacker love and surrender to what is happening so that they could experience unconditional love and come back to the "light." I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading at first when I saw it. The part that was heartbreaking was when I read the comments and watched people (not just women and men) berate themselves for “fighting” while something terrible happened to them in the past. A few of them were teenagers. I made it a point to personally message the ones I was able to, and thankfully, a good number did respond positively. This exact issue has occurred on youtube channels, blogs, and in-person encounters. I’m just citing ONE online instance of this horrible, misaligned belief. Keep in mind that the person who did this post abandoned her disabled child with a family she barely knew to pursue a sexual relationship with Bentinho.

4. TERFS/anti-LGBTQ/anti-feminism. This falls under the categories of relationships, sex, autonomy, and social issues, but expands into much more overall.

A chain of videos came out a couple years ago where about 5 women in the new age community each did a presentation on what was wrong with the “divine feminine” these days. They were saying that women had been erased because they were not conforming to gender roles or seeking out conscious relationships. They all referenced that “women are angry” and basically said it was wrong for women to feel this way and that angry female energy was throwing our whole environment out of balance and even contributing to global warming somehow. They empathized with toxic people/men/known violent incels and said that women needed to get over their traumas and be more available for the divine masculine to show up. They dehumanized women by saying they shouldn’t be expressing anger, glossed over sexual a******, and blocked everyone in the comments who took a stand against what they were saying. The general consensus is that feminists are just angry women who need to get over their trauma.

Many people in the new age community also believe that if you incarnate in a particular body with certain biological parts, you incarnated that way for a reason. Changing it extensively is to erase “the spiritual lessons you were supposed to learn.” Basically, they stand against trans people, nonbinary people, gender nonconforming people… etc. I can go deeper with this if you want, but that is the gist of it without writing a novel within a novel.

Most of them take an active stance against intersectional feminism and use exclusive language to shut out anyone who doesn’t conform to the binary. A few of them are more passive-aggressive about how they do this: refusing to show any support for the LGBTQUIA+ community or mention social issues at all, even when someone is pointing out that they did something hurtful or offensive.

5. Appropriating Indigenous cultures and using past lives as an excuse. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a white new age person say that something is their “spirit animal” or seen one wear Native American/indigenous headdresses to tight-knit community events, citing that they were “Native American” in their past life and that they are entitled to use these symbols, items, and cultural lexicons because of it. (Not that this is the main point… but they tell trans people that they shouldn’t be trans or insinuate that people should conform to the gender binary because they incarnated in a body type for a reason… but make an exception for themselves culturally? Super hypocritical.)

A couple of “woke” guys from the new age community walked around for awhile saying that the Hopi had adopted them into their “tribe” and that the were given Hopi names. I spoke to a few Hopi people about what was happening and they were shell-shocked. That is not something that they do for one thing, and for another, they had never even heard of these people! Thankfully, the behavior stopped after the two men were confronted about it, but this kind of thing happens all the time in various ways. There is a new age store here with a racial slur in the title… bring it up to the owner and she’ll kick you out and launch a smear campaign. Tell one of the white new age women that just because she studies “different traditions” doesn’t mean it’s okay to do rain dances or perform indigenous rituals (Native American, Australian, and others) without permission and they’ll blacklist you. I think many of the new agers operate within this Trojan horse of “I want to accept and validate all cultures”, but do not actually care at all about indigenous voices, feelings, or opinions. Many of them talked a lot about collective trauma in our nation during Black Lives Matter, but wouldn’t actively support it in any way themselves.

6. Let’s talk about mental health. This could go under the science and medicine label, but I think it deserves its own paragraph. Boy is mental health stigmatized in the new age Sedona community…. Real mental health professionals are painted as people who just want to “drug” you and keep you controlled. People with mental health struggles are instantly blamed. “Hell is just a state of mind, you need to change your mind,” is a phrase I have heard more often than not. Ancestral healing, umbilical healing, and random reiki sessions are somehow supposed to take the place of a licensed counselor.

A huge chunk of the “spiritual” community supported a pseudo-therapist who (without any scientific basis) was preaching that any woman who wasn’t sure if she wanted to have children or not by the age of 25 was toxic and needed to be ostracized because “something is wrong there.” A bunch of people believed it and re-posted/shared the teaching.

Another instance occurred where an unlicensed “hypnotherapist” without so much as a bachelor’s degree in anything was using questionable methods to hypnotize clients. During one session a person experienced a severe PTSD flashback and panic attack. She was not brought out of the hypnotherapy session properly or cared for. She ended up having a mental breakdown and having to spend time in the hospital. The charlatan who was treating her said that the client was willfully unresponsive to treatment and refused to confront her demons…

Anyone who is on anxiety medication, anti-depressants or anything else to support their well-being and mental health will be judged aggressively and most likely verbally confronted at some point if they are open about being on medication. The charlatans will throw essential oils into your space saying that they can cure anything. Others will try to get someone to talk to a new age leader in the “inner circle” and attempt to persuade the client that western therapists/psychologists just want to drug people and ignore the spiritual cause of unrest. They’ll cite earthing, crystals, vaginal wands, special teas, dietary habits, and color therapy as causes and answers to everything…. All while regarding victims of sui**** as unfortunate souls and lost causes etc.

7. A summary. I need to sum up other issues here quite quickly or I’ll be typing all day. XD Many of the women here are terrified of gaining weight or looking older. They hide behind the thinning veil of “health and veganism” to justify their worrisome habits to feel sexually appealing to supposedly “woke” men. Disordered eating and terror of eating one granule of processed sugar permeates the consciousness. You can be judged for anything from buying pokemon cards to eating legumes…. of all things. Most of the men are sexual predators who prey on younger women, rely on narcissism as a personality type, and don’t let anyone get a word in edgewise when their opinions are challenged. Many of the women validate these behaviors and blame themselves when they get hurt citing “spiritual growth” as a silver lining to cure all traumas. I would say that 95%+ of the people in the community present a perfect picture of themselves online while having crumbling relationships and failing inner lives. You might see a post or video about “conscious uncoupling” of a spiritual "power couple" and then find out later that someone was in a relationship with a narcissistic predator or was experiencing physical abuse. Sadly, many of the victims gaslight themselves in the uncoupling announcement. Many people here are predators in other ways… they might launch a health business that uses essential oils to replace therapy. There are con artists all over the place who can range from simply overpricing their wares in alarming ways to trying to entrap people in “business contracts” that devastate their lives. I have had personal UFO experiences here and do personally think that extraterrestrial life exists, but I would NEVER try to manufacture a fake experience… One of the UFO tour guides was having people hide out in the desert and flash lights into the sky while people on the tour wore special glasses. Then she was charging an arm and a leg to channel “spiritual messages” from the e.t.s for her clients and saying that if they didn’t receive the message, something bad would happen to them. This is the fluffiest and lightest post I could possibly do to communicate how bad it is in the “spiritual community” here. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

The good news? Sedona is so much more than a toxic new age community. It is GORGEOUS and it does have many good, healthy/normal people here. =) I have had such a beautiful experience in this place and can’t say enough good things about it. I have easy access to healthy foods, endless nature to explore and bask in, and a growing community of people who call the new age community out on its toxicity. I read what I want, play Animal Crossing without blue-blocker glasses, regularly enjoy going to listen to goth music at my preferred venue (I’ve been demonized for this lol), and eat what makes me feel good. My partner and I have had a beautiful and successful relationship for nearly a decade now and create amazing memories every day. We have good friends all around the world… and I have a solid, BIG group of academic colleagues/friends locally who DO ethically cite their sources and contribute positively to science and higher learning. If you’re into paleontology like me, you are in fossil heaven! =D If you love astronomy or astrophysics, we’re in a dark sky city! There are so many cool things to do from playing in LOTR-worthy waterfalls, to sampling delicious vegan creations, to playing DnD on red rocks with your friends while a *real* UFO passes by overhead. Get yourself a smoothie and organic wrap from one of our incredible food trucks and drive out into the desert while listening to Nightvale with your love or your friends. =)

If you ever want a list of must-do’s while visiting, let me know. I’ve got your back! The point is that I just harped on the negative above, but the good news is that you can completely avoid all of the junk. Keep it or scrap it when it comes to the Sedona new age community? I say scrap it. But you can still pursue your spiritual interests in healthy ways here while enjoying all the yummy creature comforts that the Verde Valley has to offer. I hope this helps and if just one person comes here and has a safe experience because of my thoughts, then every moment I’ve spent writing this was worth it. =) <3

[snowflake-of-destruction]

“My husband is gonna be home any minute” Kairi talking to Sora(or Xion) about Vanitas  

Read more just for length this time

Send me a couple and a line

“I’m a firm believer in ethical non-monogamy,” Sora supplied the answer to a question that had not been asked from his place on Kairi’s living room floor doing glute bridges, which Xion seemed to be finding a little too interesting for Kairi’s taste. She shoved a surge of possessiveness deep down. 

Possessiveness was one of the chief roadblocks on the road towards inner peace in Sora’s teachings. To believe in ownership was to fear loss and theft, whereas welcoming the idea that the stardust in the world traveled to where it was needed most and did the most good at any given time was to open yourself to all the good that could flow to you and fill the voids in your life better than your so called possessions. Kairi couldn’t deny that embracing what Sora had to offer was working so far. She had been much happier since Sora had become her guru.

“Ethical non-monogamy?” Xion’s pursed lips either spoke to the wine Kairi had poured for her having turned or to her repressing laughter. 

“Open honesty in all relationships about your needs and how you are going about meeting them to start with,” Sora explained cheerfully. The bright orange crop top he was wearing didn’t have much room to travel but managed to ride up anyway as he continued his thrusts while speaking. “Kairi can probably explain it. I have been enlightening her about my and Riku’s way of life.”

“I bet,” Xion hummed, trying to catch Kairi’s eye. “Kai, babe, I can’t believe you’ve been hiding Sora away this whole time. He’s delightful.”

Kairi refused to be caught, keeping her focus on her phone as she typed out a reply to Roxas on the group chat, lovingly referred to as Trophy Spouse Hangout on a Dusty Shelf by its participants, telling him that she was down for drinks at Terra’s, the bar or his and Aqua’s house, but she was going to be late. She had already accidentally double-booked herself today and it was causing all sorts of problems.

Sora flipped to his feet and then immediately pulled up one leg behind his head in a position reminiscent of a position Kairi remembered being called scorpion hold in her cheerleading days. “I think you’re pretty great too, Xion.” He positively beamed at her, the same smile full of light and sincerity that had first made Kairi go weak at the knees before he’d even revealed himself as double jointed. “You should come to one of my classes. I teach beginner’s and intermediate yoga too. Where did you say you knew Kairi from again?”

Xion hesitated just long enough for Kairi to jump in. “My husband’s going to be home any minute.” She waved her phone like it was related. If they thought Vanitas had just texted her he was a few blocks away, then that was on them.

Xion’s intake of breath was audible and she murmured something about needing to meet Demyx about the portable standing hair dryers that he said he could get for the salon she was refinishing her garage into as she darted around looking for her purse and her shoes. Apparently Demyx knew a guy. Kairi knew from Terra (Saint Terra, world’s best sympathetic bartender, witness to much and participant of nothing, collecting stories and keeping a feeling of independence from Aqua and her family money) that Demyx knew quite a lot of guys, but she kept her mouth shut--it wasn’t her business to air out Demyx’s, and it could sound like a warning, which would, again, sound jealous. She had no doubt that Demyx had shady business contacts too.

Sora, as Kairi should have expected, smiled even more widely--something she didn’t know was possible. “Since Vanitas is going to be home early, let me call Riku and the four of us can go out to dinner together. You’ve been dodging it for weeks! You should come too, Xion.”

Kairi really hoped she didn’t wince visibly. “Great idea!” Her voice was higher than normal. “He might be too tired to go out though. Why don’t you go home and change, I’ll ask Vanitas, and I’ll text you if we can meet you and Riku.”

“That’s what you said last time,” Sora pointed out, but allowed Kairi to push him toward the door. “I really want you to meet Riku. I think the two of you would really get along--even better than you and I do probably.”

Kairi didn’t want to meet Riku, no matter how many times Sora assured her that his aura was a complimentary color to hers and the three of them could make a rainbow that heralded in great rain for plains where there had once been a drought. Sora’s strong suit wasn’t science or metaphor, and Kairi didn’t want to burst his bubble by pointing out that rainbows came after the rain--and she definitely wasn’t in a drought and she was fairly certain Sora and Riku were both living in flood land. It would be weird. Just like Sora meeting Xion had been weird. 

Involving Vanitas wouldn’t be weird though. It would be a bloodbath. Sora, special butterfly that he was, hadn’t listened when Kairi had tried to tell him. ("The truth will set you free. Kairi. I really believe it will unburden your chi if you and Vanitas have a long talk. I'm sure he will find your relationship with me beautiful because it brings you joy. Who doesn’t want their beloved to radiate joy?") Vanitas’s mind was not likely to be expanded enough to receive the idea that some people can only be their truest selves when exploring the idea that, just like with other kinds of loves, the heart and body  isn’t meant to be confined to only one romantic love. She tried not to think of the other component to Sora’s urging (“If you want to continue being anything but my student, I’m going to need to know Vanitas blesses our relationship. Consent from all parties  is important to me.”) Urging Vanitas to take Sora’s yoga classes back when she’d only been a yoga student herself before accepting Sora as her life coach and then more was very quickly becoming a huge regret in her life, and she could only hope Van continued to blow off the idea.

“I’m so glad you arranged for me to meet Xion today, It means a lot. You two make a truly breathtaking couple,” Sora unintentionally twisted another knife of guilt as he left.

“She’s just…” Kairi stopped short of calling Xion a pal and changed gears to just say. “I’ll see you on Friday, Sora.”

She closed the door behind him, only to find Xion watching her.

“Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what? He’s nice. Having Mr. Hot Yoga knock on the door claiming to be the pizza delivery boy while we’re unwinding with a glass of wine and then watching him nervously work out while making small talk when he saw you had company? That’s exactly what I expected when you asked me to come over.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He didn’t even really have a sausage pizza with him,” Xion sighed in mock dismay.

“Vanitas isn’t really on his way home.”

Xion dropped her purse on the floor and wrapped her arms around Kairi’s neck. “Say no more.”

[thecorteztwins]

Something I’ve noticed in fiction and RP backstories is that when a character is LGBT, the parents/family react only one or two ways: Total acceptance with no issues, or rejecting/disowning/beating/attempting to kill their kid/etc And both these things do happen in real life. But what’s also very common, and which I rarely see represented or discussed, is a lot of places between the two extremes. For instance, many families are homophobic, but don’t want to lose their child, and the child wants to be themselves but not cut contact with their family. So you get scenarios like having bachelor Uncle Ted and his also-bachelor roommate Rob, who has been his roommate for 20 years, and may even get invited to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone refers to him as Uncle Ted’s roommate or his friend, and Uncle Ted introduces him that way too, and it’s not until you’re 25 years old that you realize “oh, fuck, Uncle Ted is gay and Rob is his partner!”  As bizarre as that scenario seems, it’s a VERY common story. Again, a great many families will, for the sake of keeping the peace, just reach an unspoken agreement that they won’t acknowledge it or bring it up, and that will do the trick. Another common scenario is that Uncle Rob and Ted have been together for 20 years, but you never knew because in this version Ted was never introduced to you, let alone invited to Thanksgiving and Christmas. In this version, the family will still accept Uncle Rob, but he has to do more than just say Ted is his roommate, Ted can’t be in the picture at all and Rob can’t mention him to anyone, especially not his parents or to you kids. You don’t find out about Ted till you’re an adult and between homes and need a place to stay and shack up at their place. It’s totally surreal but it happens. It happens a lot.  There are also many parents who will be fine with their kid being gay in theory, but upset at the idea of the kid bringing home a partner. Or they’re fine with that, they just can’t let the partner meet the grandparents or extended family, who aren’t as accepting as the parents are, that’s very often the case. They may also “accept” when their teen or twenty-something comes out, but that’s because they expect it to just be a phase, and become concerned when it proves NOT to be. Or, if the kid is bisexual, they may assume they were proven correct when the kid brings home an opposite-sex partner. There are also parents who have nothing against homosexuality or bisexuality or being trans in themselves, but who have concerns related to what risks their child will be exposed to because of it. I once read an interview with a black lesbian who came out to her mother, and her mother’s reaction wasn’t to condemn being gay itself, but it wasn’t positive either---her mother said “You’re already black and a woman, why do you want to add being gay on top of that?” Her mother’s concern was the oppression her daughter would face. Likewise, a family might love their gay son no matter what, but be worried when he comes out as gay because they believe that this means he’s very likely to get AIDS, and they don’t want that to happen to him. My mother’s very accepting of ALL people on the LGBT rainbow, but she has said to me that she is less worried about me as a lesbian in this regard than a gay man, because STDs are harder to spread between cis lesbians. Speaking of my parents, they’re about the most accepting pair I could ask for. My sexuality is a non-issue to them, and they support all forms of gay and trans rights. But they’re also in their 60s, and not part of the LGBT community itself, and certainly not actively following how rapidly terminology and ideas are evolving now in the age of the Internet; the accepted view and words used around trans people, for instance, have changed really radically just in the past 10 years. So, my folks do hold some ideas that modern Tumblr would deem “problematic” such as my mom feeling that gay men are inherently more artistic and nurturing, because that’s what the gay men she’s known were like. Also, while she does NOT believe this anymore, she used to believe that men became gay because their fathers were bad or absent, because that’s what was the common view when she was a young woman in the 80s, and matched the situation of the gay men she met. She likewise asked me if I was a lesbian because sex with women was more gentle. Again, she knows you’re born gay NOW but in the past, those were common ideas, and the ideas that she therefore was exposed to. It didn’t make her hateful or bigoted, she was accepting of gay people even before I was born, let alone before I came out, but it did make her incorrect and going off stereotypes that corresponded to her own experiences and perceptions. So maybe your character’s mom didn’t have a fit and throw them out, but maybe she did also think that now her son would want to go shopping with her or that her daughter would want to take up golf. Also, while both my parents are very accepting of sexuality, they do get a bit more problematic in terms of how they judge gender expression. My mom is uneasy with butch women, and my dad kind of scoffs/is amused by femme men (yet oddly, has no issue with trans women, nor does my mom have an issue with trans men) This is another VERY common viewpoint I encounter---people not having an issue with the idea of same-sex activity and relationships in themselves, but in how “flamboyant” the person is. With many people, they disapprove of flamboyant gay men and butch women, but oddly in some cases it can go the other way around too; there are people who are just fine with the idea of flamboyantly gay makeup artists, drag queens, talk show hosts, fashion gurus, and hairdressers, but are more uneasy at the idea of perfectly “normal” businessmen or soccer moms who just also happen to be queer. There’s entire articles (probably essays) out there about how gay men in particular are marketed by shows like Queer Eye as basically being cute happy helpers to straight people, the cliche Sassy Gay Friend who just exists for the sake of supporting his female friends, etc. I’ve often wondered if lesbians don’t get the same media presence because we’re not seen as “useful” to heterosexual people in the same way (not that it’s any fun for real gay men to be pigeonholed that way either) So your character’s family may accept them but also start expecting stereotypical behavior from them, like giving their girly-girl daughter a tool kit after she comes our, or they may not BELIEVE them when they do because they’re NOT stereotypical, and that’s the only exposure to gay people that they have from media. You’ll notice I’ve thus far given examples only for a kid being gay or bi. That’s because I’m going off things I’ve personally encountered or heard of. I don’t have a lot of stories on how people react to their kid coming out as trans, but I imagine there’s just as much variation; I would check places like AskReddit for coming stories if you’re looking to find examples of reactions that are likewise somewhere in between total acceptance vs total rejection. For people who are asexual or non-binary, I reckon the biggest issue is just that the parents don’t know what the heck that even is, or don’t believe it exists, but I may be wrong, since I also don’t have much experience with this nor heard much secondhand either. Again, I’d seek out real stories from people and see what ideas you can get from those. Everyone’s coming out story or story of a family member’s coming out (or how said family member never came out, etc) is a little different. I hope this was helpful!

[conduitandconjurer]

Meta 

Klaus is opportunistic, but never in such a way as actively hurts others.  Klaus is a conjurer, a conversant with the dead, and therefore a being of change, self-actualization, and transition.  Down to the “hello” and “goodbye” hands.  He’s a harlequin, a trickster archetype, LIMINAL, nonbinary, an agent of unexpected wisdom and, again, change, change, change.  You can’t expect a corvid to behave like a lion. 

There’s apparently some static circulating the TUA fandom about Klaus’s behavior in season two. I’m well into it and still not seeing why, but I think part of the misapprehension is that he uses and then neglects Ben, rendering their partnership in the execution of his power unequal, and opportunistic, providing him the fodder that fueled his cult.  

I’d like to address that as a new fan, on several counts:

1) the desire to see Dave again and the willingness to tamper with the Kennedy Assassination timeline (unaware, so far, as to the world-ending effects) in order to spare his One Great Love from dying in Vietnam.  I will side-burner this one right now because I haven’t gotten to the end of season two yet and don’t yet know to what extremes Klaus will go to see this happen.  

2) His relationship with Ben.  The real reason why he keeps Ben a secret hidden under a bushel is, imho, complex.  This one goes out to @vericey, who thought up the headcanon, but in essence, Klaus has never wanted the powers (the “greatness thrust upon him”) that he was born with, unlike his siblings, who have savior complexes (their own highly difficult psychological battles, which I am NOT discounting here), and who seem compelled to use their powers to save others. It’s both an obligation and a validation for them.  For Klaus, that’s never been the case. HE DIDN’T ASK FOR THAT RESPONSIBILITY, SO TO HIM IT’S CONTRACTUALLY UNFAIR TO ASK HIM TO HONOR IT.  He has no desire to be a conduit to thousands upon millions of dead souls who need him to attend to their unfinished business.  Attuned and emotionally sensitive, he is already daily over-stimulated and overwhelmed by their needs and demands.  Enter Ben, the byproduct of that unwanted ability, who is the sibling who had a statue at the academy. The sibling everyone mourns.  Ben already has more presence among the other Hargreeves kids than Klaus, who is still alive.  The siblings have disregarded Klaus as a junkie since adolescence.  They never bothered to learn WHY he gets high, WHY he has his head plugged into music 24/7, WHY he runs from responsibility. It’s not because Klaus is truly unreliable or selfish: it’s because in order to bear his unwanted special ability, he has to numb the ambience.  But what KLAUS knows is that his siblings would suddenly hold great value in his presence if they knew they could use him to talk to the brother they actually DO miss.  So he mentions Ben only sparingly, and never discusses Ben’s CONTINUAL presence.  It’s a desperate bid to gauge whether or not his family values him FOR HIM. 

3) Which brings me to the cult.  A lot of fans see the Klaus Cult as some kind of comic relief that reveals the depth of his self-centeredness. It’s not entirely untrue, but there’s another layer. Klaus conceals and obscures, Klaus mutes and hides, as a way of coping.  This applies everything from his sardonic sense of humor, to his drug abuse, to hedging on the truth about Ben, to avoiding conjuring unless he must, to taking advantage of people’s preconceptions of “enlightenment” and “holiness” in order to climb the (homophobic, cissexist) social ladder of 1960s America.  

The key to 90% of Klaus’s opportunism is that it’s BENIGN.   What he does may affect others but only insofar as they choose to react in a way that harms them.  He never gives them the tools to hurt themselves; he simply interacts in the same sphere as they do, without action and without judgment.

(Klaus’s outlook on life is very Eastern-hemisphere, and it’s no surprise that when he was traveling the world in the era of oft-high white hippies appropriating Eastern thought, he visited India.)  

 Think about previous examples: robbing a convenience store for like an armful of junk food; trying to steal money from his millionaire dead abusive father; letting Ben haze a racist cop to get his sister’s husband out of jail.  It’s the same thing with the cult.  Ben levitates Klaus, Klaus quotes pop songs by TLC and Destiny’s Child to wow crowds into seeing him as a guru. People are happy and peaceful, and he happens to get lots of money and flourish in queer havens across the country, like San Francisco, where otherwise he’d probably be brutally murdered for being gay.  Does anybody get hurt? Nope.  And to me, that’s what’s crucial. 

 Incidentally: the only time Klaus was ever connected to someone else getting hurt was when Patch died by Agent ChaCha’s gun.  Be assured he blames himself for that, but he certainly didn’t ask to be kidnapped and tortured for days, nor did he ask Patch to go into the hotel room without backup from Diego.  

I think people should bear in mind that while Klaus is a master of nonaction, he is also never selfish in such a way as gets other people hurt.  He is the first person to comfort as well as sensibly aid a sibling in a moment of real crisis. Three examples off the top of my head:

A) Being the only sibling aside Allison to seriously question locking Vanya away in the very room where she was abused by neglect as a child, insisting, “this is Vanya, she used to cry when we stepped on ants!” and “Why don’t we just let her out and ASK her what happened?”  If anything, Klaus is a champion of respecting the will and rights of others. 

B) Putting a hand on Luther’s shoulder while crying himself, when Allison was discovered nearly killed by Vanya (poor Vanya, she’s a whole other kettle of fish and I frankly adore her), as well as being very kind and patient with Luther when he was drunk earlier (and physically assaulted Klaus):

C) Rushing into a police riot zone to rescue Allison while her husband, frightened of her powers, was running into danger: 

Klaus has a compassionate heart.  He just has issues with confrontation and with follow-through, because this is a life he would forfeit in a second if he could. And who can blame him?   Frankly Klaus has the healthiest outlook on Reginald Hargreeves and his abusive bullshit, of all the siblings. He’s the only one who calls Reginald out, establishes healthy self-other boundaries with his “father,” and is then at peace with the ways in which Reginald continues to fall short, certain that these failings are no fault of Klaus’s own.   Just see their conversation in the barbershop in “heaven.”

Let me repeat: 

HE DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS RESPONSIBILITY, SO TO HIM IT’S CONTRACTUALLY UNFAIR TO ASK HIM TO HONOR IT. He will try, when it concerns the welfare of family members, but he doesn’t see why he should be somehow predestined to “save the world” when he never claimed the ability to do so. 

4) And that’s not even touching Klaus’s Complex-PTSD, which began before Vietnam and is still a MAJOR and FORMATIVE part of how he behaves now.  

[firelxdykatara]

So I was at work thinking about Zutara (as you do) and my mind drifted to a kat@@ng argument I tend to see a lot of. About how Aang would be so sad if Katara never returned his feelings and therefore Zutara 100% //can't// be endgame which... a) homeboy is literally 12 and would get over it, and b) BUT WHAT ABOUT KATARA THO. But it got me thinking. Is there even any evidence in canon that Air Nomads believed in wholesale monogamy or marriage? I mean, Aang never knew his parents (1/2)

(2/2) -and Aang was raised communally by the Air Nomad monks and nuns. So like, why would being with Katara (specifically JUST Katara) //forever// be something he'd hyper focus on so badly? Also, Aang is shown wanting to adhere pretty strictly to Air Nomadic teachings but in this instance he gets a pass? It just boggles me tbh. Anyway, your meta and responses are just plain amazing and would love to hear your thoughts on this.

I’ve actually talked a lot about Aang’s willful disregard for his people’s culture and customs when it clashes with something he wants, but I think most of these discussions have happened in private server spaces and I haven’t actually spoken much about it here, so let’s remedy that!

You are absolutely right--Aang’s lifelong monogamous relationship and Katara being his ‘forever girl’ clash with literally everything we actually know about Air Nomad culture. And it’s actually kind of frustrating, because this would have been an excellent chance for some worldbuilding--speak about how the Air Nomads did not hold with typical family structures, that monogamy simply wasn’t done because they practiced detachment and while that doesn’t mean they couldn’t love one another (Gyatso loved Aang a great deal, for example) it means they most likely would not have practiced relationship exclusivity.

Honestly, it would have been really cool to see a culture where monogamy was not the norm, and we get hints of it--Aang never knew his parents, and he wouldn’t have been discovered as the Avatar until years after his birth (I believe they do the toy test when the kids are toddlers or older), which means he was likely removed to the Air Temple shortly after being born. His parents most likely lived at separate temples--nuns had their own, as the temples were separated by gender--and its not a stretch to believe they didn’t have any sort of monogamous relationship. One theory I’ve seen proposted is that the AN practiced something like a yearly or bi-yearly fertility festival, where adults from the temples came together in celebration--of life, of love, of their people, of the element they breathed that informed every aspect of their lives--and I’m not suggesting wild orgies, but that many would pair off, have their own smaller celebrations, and return to the group, and this is where most pregnancies would happen.

That is, of course, pure speculation, but it would be a lot more in keeping with what we do know of the AIr Nomads than Aang deciding, at the ripe old age of twelve, that he’d found his ‘forever girl’ and he would be with her, and only her, for the rest of his life, no matter what.

It’s also very... odd, though, that Aang would even come up with this idea on his own. It’s not like there are tons of examples, as the gaang travel the world, of aggressively heterosexual couples pairing off and spending Forever together, because, well, they’re in the middle of a war and everyone has more important things to think about. And Aang’s crush, while cute and seeming more like puppy-love than anything else book 1 and most of book 2 (he literally imprinted on the first girl he saw when he hatched from the iceberg ok), becomes almost disturbingly possessive in book 3, and it really comes out of nowhere. When did Aang decide, without ever once asking, that Katara must return his feelings? And why? Because, as established, it makes absolutely no sense given what (admittedly little) we know about his own culture and how he was raised.

I realize that the Doyalist explanation is that Bryke are, themselves, aggressively heterosexual, and had decided from the jump that they wanted Aang to Get the Girl in the end, and so were determined to Make It Happen even when, given the story and how the characters had developed, it no longer made any narrative sense. (And yet they never thought to make Katara’s feelings a focus when trying to force Kataang to happen. Odd, that. Or maybe not so odd, considering their treatment of Katara in LoK. But I’m stopping myself here cause that’s a whole other rant.) But the Watsonian one paints a very unpleasant picture, especially given Aang’s actions towards Katara in book 3--during EIP in particular.

And it’s funny how Aang’s complete and total disregard for his people’s beliefs and culture, when it would deny him something he wants, is never mentioned in those ‘but Aang couldn’t kill Ozai, it goes against his culture’ posts. If Aang had demonstrated any willingness to uphold his people’s beliefs before this--like, say, following through on letting go of his attachment to Katara and understanding that if she didn’t feel the same way he did, he was not entitled to her affections and would be able to move on--then I’d be much more inclined to give those arguments credit.

As it is, however, the only reason I agree that Aang shouldn’t have had to kill Ozai is because he was just a child, and he should have been able to preserve the innocence of childhood as long as possible--but I still dislike the way his battle with Ozai ended, because he had disregarded his people’s beliefs over the entire book, he had done nothing to regain the Avatar State except get slammed against a pointy rock, and energybending was handed to him on a silver platter by a lionturtle who literally came out of nowhere to give it to him.

Not only that, but the discussion about what he would do once he actually faced the Firelord came much too late--the subject wasn’t even broached until The Southern Raiders, and thus Aang’s insistence that he can’t possibly take a life seems to come out of left field because a) he never felt any guilt over the lives he took while in the Avatar State at the end of book 1 (and this isn’t to say he was at fault for what Koizilla did while he was fused with it, but he has felt guilt over his actions in the Avatar State that were just as uncontrolled before this, and you’re telling me that he wouldn’t have seen any of that as blood on his hands? that if he killed Katara, or Sokka, or Toph, in one of those rages, he’d have just shrugged his shoulders and blamed it on the Avatar State? no), and b) there was absolutely no discussion of this before the eclipse, leaving one to wonder what, exactly, Aang was planning to do in that eight minute window where Ozai would be powerless. I don’t think it was a dance-off in the cards, that’s all I’m saying.

I’m sorry, I got incredibly off-topic. but the bottom line (TL;DR:) is: I absolutely agree with you. And it’s suspect, from both a character arc and a worldbuilding perspective, that Aang is only committed to his people’s beliefs and his culture in the one instance where he might have been asked to do something he didn’t want to, but not at all when following his own culture might have meant losing something he wanted. This not only paints him as incredibly selfish (something that is hard to dispute when looking at his behavior in book 3, though I would point out that if his arc actually followed a natural progression from books 1 and 2 he would have grown up rather than... that), but puts his culture in an incredibly simplistic light. We never get any deeper insight into what his people believed or how they lived, because Aang latches onto the first girl he sees and is determined to make her his ‘forever girl’, and there’s never any talk of how he was raised or what his people actually believed.

And even when he meets the Guru--someone much more well-versed in Air Nomad culture than Aang is, because Aang went into the ice at twelve years old and never had an opportunity to understand his culture--he almost immediately disregards what the Guru told him when it conflicts with his own desires. Sure, he says ‘I’m sorry, Katara’ when letting her go at the end of the finale (although....why he’s apologizing to her, when he’s had no indication she has feelings for him, and he certainly never asked, is beyond me), but come book 3 he’s right back to wanting to have her, and assuming he will just because he kisses her--without preamble, without any discussion of feelings, without even asking if she wants to be kissed--and flies off before the invasion.

Any way you slice it, it really doesn’t make sense, unless they wanted Aang to come across as selfish and pigheaded throughout the entirety of book 3. But I suspect that isn’t actually the image they wanted to project, and it makes me really sad when I think of what his arc could have been if it weren’t for Bryke’s insistence that he get the girl at the end of the story.