#i'm just *fans self* and i needed a gifset of it

[39oa]

Jason Robertson for ESPN’s The Point

I have a lot of kids and... people who come up to me and [are] like, "Oh, you're Jason Robertson," and they're Asian and they want a picture. Or I remember going to a game, during the season, and I saw a Filipino flag.

[metisket]

They released! Joy of Life 2! I cannot believe.

The last time I watched something as it was airing was the third season of Teen Wolf, and I hated that experience so much that I have never done it again in my life until now. I don't have the kind of brain that enjoys that. I want to watch a thing all at once after reading 15 reviews and seeing gifsets of the last episode. This whole thing? Where I don't know what will happen and no one can tell me? Hate.

Which is to say there's a distinct possibility that I'm going to post A Lot about this, as, like, therapy, so you can block the Joy of Life 2 tag if you don't want to watch this mess.

People need to stop playing stupid games with Fan Xian! These days he is always on the brink of entering his Villain Era, and he might just lose what's left of his temper, murder all the rich people, and overthrow the government. You can see that he has to do an increasing amount of self-talk in the morning to prevent this outcome. Why can the highly intelligent Emperor and princes not see that? I am STRESSED.

I mean, if he does kill them all, it will be because they asked for it. Repeatedly. But like. He himself would not enjoy being in charge, so what's his follow-up strategy? He might just corner himself into being the most qualified. Really, who else could he bully into that? Yan Bingyun? HA.

Maybe he'll make his dad (the Fan dad, not the other dads) do it. Fan dad would haaaaaaate that.

[beevean]

I remembered a post I stumbled upon a while ago. It was a gifset of that moment in NFCV where Carmilla strokes Hector's hair and says "You are mine now, Forgemaster. You have nothing else but me."

But what really made my neurons go into overdrive was the way the person tagged the post.

"I am not yours. I am not anyone's. - Hector & Carmilla"

Would you believe that this one singular line made my brain fire up like fireworks? This is a brilliant way to convey the parallels between the two characters! Well. The potential parallels, since Carmilla is hardly relevant after S2 :^)

It made me think of how the story would have gone if they kept Carmilla as Hector's antagonist and Lenore and the other two were never introduced. (when you think about it, Lenore's main purpose in S3 was effectively hijacking Carmilla's place: while I prefer her concept, narratively speaking she shouldn't exist. I'm not even being mean when I say it. In a hypothetical rewrite, I'd fuse the two characters)

I found some Hectilla fics, mostly written pre-S3 when fans still believed she'd have a bigger role. Needless to say, they're mostly BDSM porn built on a generic dommy mommy/subby puppy dynamic: while Hector's attraction to Carmilla can be explained with anything from "she's hot and charming" to "she's the only one who makes sense in the court and the only one who cares about my work", no such depth is given to Carmilla. She likes Hector because... he's pathetic and breedable.

So, I propose another angle.

If the ideal Lenector that only exists in my head is built on lies, treachery, and shared misery with a hint of growing mutual empathy that nevertheless never allows them to overcome their resentment... the ideal Hectilla is built on fear. They are both afraid of each other, but need each other for their needs. They are also both afraid of the world, it's just that they react to that fear in different ways: Carmilla by attacking first, Hector by hiding and fawning.

And making Carmilla a creature of fear would make her so, so much more interesting, and allow her to be a real visceral victim of trauma and not just a flat radfem stereotype. A lot of what I say here is inspired by this brilliant post by @chumpovodir!

Carmilla sees every man as a potential threat. An old man turned her and kept her as a pet, showed her that "vampiric love" that she has internalized but despises when it comes from men, and other men attacked her kingdom to destroy everything she built, and other men wanted her to die because, well, the nerve of that woman, thinking she could be in charge. She finds Dracula disgusting for being, in her eyes, like that old man who ruined her life, an insane destructive leech good for nothing. She loathes power-hungry men, violent men, men who think they're in charge and can toy her as they please.

Hector is the opposite of that. He doesn't crave any power: he wants to be left in peace. He craves, as it becomes immediately clear to her, acceptance. He's easily swayed with a few nice words, and even when Dracula dies, he holds no malice in his heart.

He's young. He's cute. He's a useful idiot.

The broken little girl in her still sees him a threat, because one day, he might grow up and become a real man, with their fangs and claws and thirst for power.

But - and this is the important part - the threat is now curbable. Hector placed himself in her hands, and she has the power to do with him as she pleases.

Carmilla has put herself in the position of that old man enslaving a cute girl for his sick desires. However, she thinks she's justified. It's not cruelty: it's preemptive self-defense. She can make this dirty almost-man into a docile puppy who will never hurt her, and work for her, and give her pleasure, never pain.

He can be a prized possession, because he is smart and knowledgeable and has blasphemous powers and shares the same goal of turning humans into livestock. This man deserves to live, for now. As long as he never thinks of harming her. As long as he remains a puppy forever. As long as he's hers, because only she deserves to have stuff and other people.

Carmilla takes pride in not belonging to anyone, let alone a man, but she doesn't see the irony in forcing Hector to the same fate that traumatized her. She doesn't see herself in him, because she did nothing to deserve pain, but he does, for the sin of being born the same gender as all the people who hurt her.

Perhaps she refuses to see herself in him, because the thought disgusts her too much.

But what about Hector?

Well, at first he'd cling onto Carmilla, because what else is he supposed to do? Sure, she tricked him and beat him to a pulp to assert dominance, but she still needs him, and her plans still make sense to him, and part of him still wants to hope that when she praised his skills, she meant it, even if in a selfish way. For a while, she becomes his world - a cruel world, but a stable one.

But then... it will become his turn to claim that he's not hers, he's not anyone's.

Perhaps he'll use his parents as reference. He used to be afraid of them, and resentful for making him believe he should have never been born, and eventually he killed them in retailation. Carmilla, too, terrifies him, but because she swings from saccharine praise to violent rage. So there's hope to get the former, if he plays nice. And if he gets the latters, that means he deserved it, right? And besides, she finds him useful, right? Isn't that, too, appreciation? That is why, at first, he accepts his position.

When she put that collar on him, wasn't that her way of showing love? He understands that. He is still, at his core, that abused kid who looks up to authority figures who see him as dirt.

But she also hates him for something he had no control over, just like his parents. She fears him for no rational reason, and that fear clouds all judgment. She could turn on him at any moment. She's no better than Dracula in this regard. Carmilla is far less rational than she pretends to be, and eventually, as he's forced to be with her, he'll see that behind the mask of a confident predator, hides the heart of a frightful bird with a broken wing.

He'd see himself in her, and he wouldn't like it. He doesn't want to be feared at all, let alone for something he can't do anything about, and he doesn't want to belong to such a volatile person. That could set him to the thought path that'll lead him to desire freedom: most importantly, freedom from his traumatic past.

Perhaps, at some point, Hector would even hate Carmilla for what she does to him, fantasize about killing her and all. Then he'll realize that hatred, too, poisoned Carmilla to the point that she almost became pitiable. And hatred also poisoned Dracula to the point of making him irrational. He must avoid falling into the same trap.

Ideally, if Carmilla is doomed to become prey of her fear and hatred, Hector should find the strength to break free of his own, and learn to face the world.

i hate doing the showrunners' work for free :(

[chickenstrangers]

2023 in Review: Meta Edition

tag game: link your top and/or favorite posts/metas/gifs for each month of 2023

Since I already did this post just for my gifs (here) this feels even more self-indulgent but I was tagged by the lovely @ranchthoughts @troubled-mind and @lurkingshan so I will indulge myself and reflect on my writing in 2023.

I properly got started a bit later in the year, and it is interesting to look at my busiest months because I tended to either be in a gif mood or a meta mood, and often didn't overlap the two (in the fall, I made a lot of gifs, so wrote a lot less meta).

I often feel like they go hand in hand though, and gifs (like all types of fan creations) are a form of analysis/comparison/meta commentary. Either I have a meta idea that I can only convey visually, or the process of making a gif takes so much time I start to have meta thoughts about it, and sometimes I write those down.

May

May was my first meta month and my busiest.

top: Bad Buddy, Tragedy, and Queer Futures which is basically my Bad Buddy thesis statement and I loved making a scholarly bibliography for a meta

favorite: Wen as Observer in Moonlight Chicken which had ideas I returned to throughout the year in gif form (here and here)

honorable mentions because I wrote a lot this month: Pat's Shirts: An Extended Analysis (inspired by shirt analysis scholars like @dribs-and-drabbles, because I love taking silly things seriously and I made myself genuinely sad thinking about Pat's Hawaiian shirts); Conflict and Empathy in My School President and Kieta Hatsukoi (two shows very close to my heart for very similar reasons, and I love a comparative essay)

June

top: Metatextuality in Our Skyy 2 BBxATOTS (linking my other OS2 metas here and here because they were all part of the same conversation)

favorite: Ghosts and Hauntings in Moonlight Chicken which was a more experimental writing attempt for me, and I loved the tags from @firstkhaolesbian @ranchthoughts @pondphuwin and @akkpipitphattana. Followed it with this gifset later in the year.

July

top: Photography in Aof's Series again I love to compare shows

favorite: Time and Grief in Eternal Yesterday, my ode to one of the most impactful and beautiful and heartbreaking shows I watched this year

August

top: a comment on the set design for Sand and Ray's houses in Only Friends

favorite: Intertwined Discoveries in He's Coming to Me and the supernatural and queer story lines in parallel

September

top: a comment on ephemerality and wardrobe in Only Friends

favorite: parallels between Beam/Jim and Alan/Wen and why I think the relationships need to be considered in tandem (thoughts I had while making these gifs). I'm also fond of this He's Coming to Me post that was the thought process behind these gifsets)

October and November

no writing of the meta variety because I decided to write 50k words for NaNoWriMo and ended up with (half) a book instead

December

top & favorite: another silly meta! Not Me is About Earrings with an excellent addition by @ranchthoughts

Some no pressure tags if you feel like talking about your writing/any other types of creative work you did this year (does not have to be monthly): anyone I tagged throughout this post already, @twig-tea @slayerkitty @emotionallychargedtowel @dudeyuri @shannankle @visualtaehyun @airenyah @telomeke @waitmyturtles @kattahj or anyone who sees this, consider yourself tagged!

[laufire]

I was thinking about the last gifset and. first of all, please contrast it with marper's first meeting with echo earlier in the season asldkfasjf (they're all going to love each other SO MUCH). second of all, it's reminded me of the discussions about echo maybe being hostile in the ark towards emori, due to anti-freikdreina prejudices. now, I'm not saying echo wouldn't have those and thus wouldn't need to overcome them, but it always struck me as both ignorant of not just echo as a character, but of how bigotry works in general.

echo is not exactly the sharing OR the impulsive type. she's an strategist and someone who clearly analyses her environment and adapts to it (she's a spy), planning for any eventuality. this means she'd look around and see people who a) don't share that prejudice; and b) are more likely to trust and welcome emori (marper if just because they're likely to distrust echo, and ofc raven. bellamy knows echo better which is both positive and negative).

not to mention there's MURPHY. in this very episode he made it clear that he's willing to kill echo to save emori (that he's willing to kill and die for her). this means emori has someone on her corner unconditionally, without reserve, and in a high-stakes show like this, something like that is not to be scoffed at. I mean, I always mention how clarke didn't kill emori in part due to ambition, but I think witnessing and realising and feeling how much murphy meant this made clarke, at the very least, uneasy.

p.s. another detail with echo I liked in this episode but only distantly fits the theme of this post is when she tells clarke "I only wanted to save my people... is that so wrong?" and gives her this... shifty look lol. and clarke looks down, clearly thinking back on how she just tried to take the bunker for skaikru. she had access to the bunker while echo only had access to the arena; both were caught. but clarke has a guaranteed spot and echo, who would've been #1 in azgeda hiearchy at this point, lost hers. ironically, unlike her fans, clarke has always been self-aware of how she is, in no fucking way, a better person than echo lmao.

also, the whole thing reminds me of how emori maneuvers clarke in 4x07. echo is just bolder and clarke more coignasant of what the conversation is actually about. because they're weirdly ~simpatico lmao. in another timeline where clarke was better written (and maybe her fans less annoying), I would've been a clecho gal, methinks xDD

[zelda-of-hyrule-tloz]

˖⁺‧₊ | TLoZ Appreciation Blog | ₊‧⁺˖

Spoiler Warning: This blog is going to be 90% about Zelda herself, I'm sorry (not) I'm unleashing the brainrot inside me

Tag Navigation

#the beauty of hyrule

GIFsets and screenshots of Hyrule

#gallery of hyrule

Fanart

#album of hyrule

Screenshots of characters

#archive of hyrule

Official Art

#the lore of hyrule

Lore & History of Hyrule

#the people of hyrule

Discussing characters (central and NPC)

#hyrule's gossip stones

Discussion of TLoZ/Headcanons

#the symphonies of hyrule

Soundtrack discussion

#korokseedposting

Shitposting

#i am error

Gameplay errors/glitches/breaks.

#mini(sh) details

Cute details/easter eggs.

#missing lore

I try to solve certain lore bits that have kept me questioning!

#in another timeline

I discuss how I would have altered specific details across games as well as what-if scenarios.

#nocturne's headcanons

My headcanons.

#nocturne's fan game ideas

My ideas for Zelda fangames I want desperately and will probably turn into fanfics because I have no self control

#nocturne's rambling

i don't shut up

#realm of asks and answers

I answer asks or whatever :)

#nocturne self-promos sometimes

I self promo sometimes, maybe. Usually I chicken out because I get embarrassed

#unspoken legacies

OCs!! Both mine and others'.

Legacy Character Tags

#courageous spirit of the hero

Link

#wise heart of hylia

Zelda/Hylia (and various alter-egos)

#powerful malice of demise

Ganon/Demise (and various forms)

#shadow guide

Impa

#the myths of hyrule

Spirits/deities in the franchise.

AU Blogging

#tale of the imprisoning war

I talk about if TotK Zelda was playable.

#call of the forgotten concepts

I info-dump about my totk rewrite. Spoilers, duh!

Content you'll see

I will be reblogging a lot of fanart here! I already have a lot in my drafts to reblog soon.

I'd like to maybe post my own headcanons here every so often, since sometimes it's easier to just talk about them instead of writing a big fic.

This will focus primarily on canon, fan-story aus, and headcanons; but I will NOT be reblogging Linked Universe art or other chain AUs. (I love them and have one myself (@meet-again-in-another-life), but at the same time I'm also sick of them and the mischaracterization in a handful of them I'm sorry I'm a coward with a big case of "they would not freaking say that")

princess zelda and hylia haters please leave before you get upset because I will not shut up about her

No NSFW (implied or visible) will be reblogged here.

Content Warning Tags

Workshopping these since I'm not sure what to expect yet! They'll be added as they come up.

Just made this blog because I want to organize stuff a little more! I'd really like to reblog a lot more art that isn't ships, but my side blog is too cluttered!! So I just... made another one. This will focus more on individual characters and familial relationships than any ships, but some might still leak their way through (apologies in advance). If you like Zelink content, though, I try to reblog a lot of great artists and writers that need more recognition at @realm-of-zelink! I encourage going through all the blogs and engaging with their wonderful work. :)

Lore Posts (EoW Spoilers)

Why the Prime Energy?

(This is a big WIP I just have a special interest okay)

[indelibleevidence]

Broken Wings, chapter 1 (Reller, M-rated)

Author's Note: Also on FanFiction.Net and AO3! Updating on Saturdays, because I made sure to actually finish the fic before I started posting it, to ensure I didn't consign it to WIP hell like my other WIPs. XD

Wow, this is going to be a lot of explaining, but here we go! First off, if you haven't read Strikethrough, Crossroads, and the Damaged Goods summaries for the rest of the fics that I haven't written in between Crossroads and this one, go do that first. There's also a one-shot called Stalling that's set a month or two before this fic, but it's not necessary reading to get what's going on here.

This fic contains suicidal ideation, suicidal distress, and a depiction of Remi at rock bottom. If you're in a bad place, it might be better if you don't read this right now. (And I hope you feel less terrible soon.)

Remi is a lot different from the Remi in Crossroads. She's got pretty much all of her memories from her Jane years back now, and is a little bit softer and less sweary, until she's provoked, and then she reverts to 'fuck you' mode. Much like Jane's 4x15/4x16 self in canon, she's overwhelmed by the weight of her past mistakes, as Remi and as Jane. She's definitely not on the 'yay, law enforcement' train, and is still mostly ACAB in nature, but she knows that at least Kurt and his team are well-intentioned, and their eyes are open to the corruption within the system (mainly because of the first set of tattoos). By this point in my timeline, she also has accepted the fact that she's in love with Kurt, but she'd die before she'd ever admit it to him.

Jane is referred to as a third person throughout this fic, because neither Remi nor Kurt are at the 'Jane and Remi are just two time periods sans memories for one person' stage of acceptance. Also because it's easier for me, as a writer, to differentiate between those different time periods and mindsets by just using the names she was going by at the time. I do think that in another year down the Damaged Goods timeline, both Remi and Kurt will stop referring to Jane as a separate entity, but Remi kind of needs it right now, and though Kurt is further down the line as seeing Jane as a part of Remi, he's still getting there too. So things might seem a little bit disassociative identity disordery, and I apologise to anyone who might stumble upon this who actually lives with DID and hates what I did with this. But Remi is compartmentalising a LOT, though interestingly enough, now she's seeing Jane as the better person, whereas before, she loathed Jane with the fire of a thousand suns. The difference a few memories can make...

This fic is complete, so I'll post updates on Saturdays, I guess. This is my first time actually finishing a multi-chaptered fic before starting to post, but I really didn't want to start posting another WIP that was going to hang around in limbo (I'm sorry, Remember to Forgive and Taken for Granted fans! I will get there, I hope!).

Lastly, I really have to thank nachosandcheeze for her enthusiasm for this AU, and her encouragement for me to keep writing for it. She's not the only one who's been lovely about it (and thank you to everyone who cares about my weird little enemies to lovers universe where Jane never quite made it back to her brain - really, you guys are fantastic!), but she's been pretty consistently poking me with metaphorical sticks, and making Remi gifsets, and squeeing over Reller, etc. - to the point where I showed her the half-scene I had written from a fic several fics away from where I'd left off with Crossroads, just to get it out of my brain. And she loved it so much that I wrote a bit more, and a bit more, until over 16k later, I ended up with this. So thank you again, nachos. You're proof that nagging a fic author for more story does actually work, sometimes! :D

*

Absently tracing the carving on the stone with her finger, Remi glanced over to the small vial of clear liquid on her nightstand. It sat on top of a small, leatherbound booklet—El Libro de la Eternidad—which she’d smuggled out of Peru, along with the stone brick from Machu Picchu. Maybe she should feel guilty that she’d stolen a couple of pieces of Peruvian history from its citizens, even if one of them was a loose brick, but after all the things she’d done in her short fuck-up of a life, her conscience was way past that. And the brick contained a carved message for her: RB 4 RB, Roman Briggs for Remi Briggs, along with binary code that pointed to Roman’s data caches, and a message that had made tears sting her eyes.

Hey, sis.

I got you something. I never solved this one.

 I hope you can. I did my best.

May you outlive this… for both of us.

Your brother, always,

Roman

Even during his bitter feud with Jane—Remi still flinched to think of him ZIPped and claustrophobic in his FBI cell, even though she now remembered Jane’s reasons, and her anguish at her brother’s state—Roman had still been looking for a cure for her. He’d had his own, the one she’d stolen from Dr. Roga and used to cure herself—after all, Roman had died before he’d had the chance to benefit from it. But still, he’d hunted down more Stanton cells, which meant that now, Remi had a cure for ZIP poisoning all lined up.

She had everything she needed. If Roman’s cache intel was right, New York billionaire hypochondriac Ken Lee would trade El Libro de la Eternidad for the Stanton cells. Dr. Roga could synthesise a new cure, if Kurt approached her. And Remi would need that cure, because the ZIP on the nightstand would be going into her body, as soon as she laid the plan out for Kurt.

There was just one more thing left to do.

Setting aside Roman’s carving, she accessed the video recording setting on her phone, and held it up so that her face was visible. She’d made a video for her future self once before, to further Phase One of her grand plan by introducing Jane to Oscar, and verifying his trustworthiness.

And you know how that turned out, her internal critic whispered.

Swallowing hard, Remi made herself focus on the task at hand, ignoring the guilt gnawing on the synapses at the back of her mind. How was she going to start this thing? Saying hello seemed redundant.

“I know you’re suffering right now, and I’m sorry for that. You don’t remember your old life, and that’s intentional. Please, trust me when I say you shouldn’t go hunting for the finer details. I’m sparing you a lifetime of pain and futility by taking the ZIP, even though you might not be able to appreciate that.”

She sounded whiny as hell, but how else could she put it? She had to make future Jane understand that this was for the best.

“The only options, as I see them, are suicide or ZIP. I’ve got enough here that I should be able to wipe out any trace of my old memories. You might get a few flashes, but I hope you don’t. You don’t need to go through this again.”

If you weren’t such a coward, you’d just put a shotgun barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger. Maybe Jane would think she was cowardly. But she wasn’t afraid to die. She just didn’t want Kurt to have to suffer, knowing his wife was dead along with Remi.

“I’m doing this, instead of killing myself, because you have good people around you, people I’ve already hurt enough, and don’t want to hurt any more by making them lose you. You have loyal friends. A husband who loves you very much. Things will be hard for you at first, but you’ll build a life again, like you did before. And this time, you’ll know who did this to you, and why, and you won’t have me telling you to disregard your instincts and undermine the people you care about. I was misled, and betrayed, but I made bad choices, too. I was too stubborn to see it for so long, but the first time we were ZIPped, Jane found happiness, and a new purpose, and even though I still don’t think law enforcement is the shining star of morality… If you’re working with Kurt and his team, you’ll be working towards good things. Hold onto that.”

She took a breath, picking up the ancient Peruvian brick again.

“The one thing I want to tell you about is my—our—brother, Roman. Or Ian. That was his birth name, just like yours was Alice. Ian Kruger. Later, Roman Briggs. He wasn’t perfect, as I’m sure Kurt will tell you. But he was a follower his whole life, not a leader. He followed me, and our adopted mother, because he loved us, and didn’t want to be rejected. Jane hurt him too much, and he turned on her, and on Kurt, but deep down, he was a good man. He just wanted a loving family, to belong somewhere.”

She held the brick up in the camera’s sight. “I want you to keep this. Take care of it. This points to his last message from him to me, on his data caches. To Remi, I mean. Not the old version of Jane.” How did things get so confusing? “I have the actual message saved on my phone, so you should be able to see the message itself there. As for the brick, I took it from Peru, along with something to bargain with for a cure for your ZIP poisoning. Roman was looking for a cure for me, even while he knew I—the old Jane—was working to bring him down. He just wanted his sister back, I guess.”

If she kept this up for much longer, she was going to get too damn emotional, and there was no way she was willing to break down and cry on video. She had to cut this short. “Roman and I went through hell together, and that’s one of the things I don’t want you to remember anything about, so I won’t go into it. But we survived our childhood by relying on each other, and then our teenage years were the same, in a different way. We used to pass a South African rand coin our parents gave us back and forth, giving it to each other as a gift. It wasn’t worth much back then—and it’d buy even less now—but its symbolic value for us was priceless. For Roman, it was a comfort object. Jane buried him with it, so I don’t have it now, but I wanted you to know about it.”

She dug her fingernails into her palm, a technique she’d first used at the orphanage to keep outwardly calm, while a torrent of emotions churned within her. The pain centred her, making the grief easier to bear.

“Things went so wrong, but I never stopped loving Roman, even as Jane. And he never stopped loving me.”

She sighed, knowing she should say more, should give Jane more closure, but knowing she’d never be able to get through it on camera. Maybe she’d write Jane a letter, before Kurt ZIPped her.

“I hope you can build a life again, and find happiness. You sure as hell couldn’t do worse than I did. Please, look forward, not back. There’s nothing here but pain. Good luck.”

She threw down the phone and buried her face in her hands, breathing deeply, striving for the numbness that could get her through the final days of this life. Soon she’d fly to New York, and wipe the slate clean.

The end of my memories can’t come soon enough. I can’t do this anymore.

*

Three days later…

Kurt stared from the vial and hypodermic needle to his wife, a rapidly growing pit in his stomach. What…is happening here? What the hell, Remi?

“It’s okay,” she said, shrugging as though this was a foregone conclusion, a logical end to everything they’d battled through on their way to this moment. “I’ve made my peace with it. There’s nothing left here for me now. This is Jane’s world, and I don’t belong in it. At least…at least this way, you can get her back. Or as close to it as it’s possible to get.”

“It’s okay?” he finally managed to say, his throat choked with an intense mass of emotions that he couldn’t even begin to analyse right now. “Your identity is what makes you you, Remi. You’ve fought to defend it so damn hard, it nearly drove us apart for good. You’ve spent over a year getting so many of your memories back, and now you want a clean slate again? I know you remember how hard it was for you after Times Square, and after Cape Town.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, still not meeting his eyes. “The first time, you didn’t know who Jane was. Nobody knew. This time, everyone will. And she’ll have you, and your friends. It’s…easier that way. Even though I hated you when I found out what had happened to Sandstorm, at least I had…” She shook her head. “Anyway—Jane will adjust quickly. You can get the woman you married back, as she was.”

The words shook him, in so many different ways. He rubbed a hand over his face, floundering to make sense of everything.

To get his Jane back…it was everything he’d dreamed of for so long. During those ten months that Remi had gone off the radar, he’d been desperate to find a way to bring Jane back to the forefront of her mind. Aside from Bethany and work, it had been all he’d thought about, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a spark of hope for that outcome now.

But it was all wrong. It was a fairytale. Jane had been a product of the situation she’d been in, from the bag in Times Square to not knowing who she was, to thinking she was Taylor Shaw and then discovering she wasn’t, to being tortured by the CIA—and then discovering she used to be Remi Briggs, daughter of the leader of a terrorist organisation. She’d become who she was because of the way things had been back then, the way her new life had unfolded, and there was no way to know how much of that would be replicated in a newly ZIPped Remi.

Remi. God… I… He swallowed hard, something akin to grief seeping into his bones.

“What about you? This is like…like mental suicide for a huge part of you. You really want to kill yourself that badly? Why not shoot yourself in the head? Jump off a building? Overdose on pills?” His voice was harsher than he meant it to come out—demanding, angry.

Terrified. He was goddamn terrified.

Remi flinched at his tone, finally looking into his eyes. “Because you don’t want to live without her. And if I did one of those things, you’d have to face that she’d never come back.”

He rose from the couch abruptly, the twister of conflicted emotions within him too much to handle if he stayed still. Tears filled his eyes as he stalked over to the kitchen, and he rested his palms on the worktop, his back to Remi, as he tried to breathe.

“So you really want to die?” he managed to ask.

“There’s nothing left for me. My mother, my brother, my friends, my cause, my convictions… Everything is gone, Weller. There’s no point in trying to rebuild. I’ve spent the past year not knowing what to do with myself, fucking things up…”

He turned on her, snarling, “There’s nothing left for you? Then what the hell am I? Why do you keep coming back? After everything that’s happened, you don’t care enough to stick around?”

She got to her feet, crossed the room, her eyes sad. “The only thing I care about in this life is you, and I hurt you constantly, just by not being Jane. This way, it kills two birds with one stone. My empty life goes away, and you get Jane back. You get to be happy, and I get to…forget.”

A tear slid down his cheek, and he dashed it away impatiently. “Remi…”

She reached up to brush another tear from the corner of his eye, her fingers gentle. “I don’t want either of us to hurt anymore. We’ve suffered enough.”

Staring down at her, he finally put names to the emotions within him. Fear and pain had been easy to identify on their own, but they were joined by a surge of something else, so strong and fierce and breathtakingly real that he could hardly bear it.

Remi… Fuck, I can’t lose you. I need you.

I love you.

Despite everything she’d done to him, all the mental torment she’d put him through, the bitter arguments they’d had, the misunderstandings and deceit that had shredded their trust in each other…he’d fallen for the whole of her, just as hard as he had for the Jane part of her. Remi was Jane, intensified. She’d called herself damaged goods, and he couldn’t disagree, but so was he. Remi understood him in a way Jane never could have on her own.

And he was suddenly, powerfully certain that she loved him just as much.

Unable to control himself, he pulled her into his arms, giving her a crushing kiss that seemed to shock the breath from her, even as she returned it just as ardently. Part of him wanted to reject this whole conversation, carry her to bed, fuck her until they were both too exhausted to do anything but fall asleep in each other’s arms.

But this was too serious to hide from, even temporarily. He had to make his position clear.

Wrenching away from her, he stalked over to the table, picked up the small bottle of ZIP and brought it to the kitchen sink. Unscrewing the lid, he poured the contents down the drain, then dropped the bottle and turned to Remi, who was staring at him as though he’d gone mad.

“What the hell?” she demanded.

“Listen to me,” he told her, his eyes locked on hers. “I will never use that stuff on you. Ever. It doesn’t matter to me that there’s a cure for ZIP poisoning all lined up. There’s no going back for us. I can’t just inject you and turn you back into the Jane you used to be. It wouldn’t work like that.”

She sighed, looking down at the splashes of ZIP remaining in the sink. “Better the devil you know than the angel you don’t?”

He cupped her face in both hands, making sure she couldn’t look away from his face. “You’re my devil, and my angel, and everything in between. Remi, the thought of losing you scares the hell out of me. You’re my wife, and you may not be the way you were when we got married, but you’re still the woman I fell in love with, deep down.”

She was frowning, shaking her head, and he rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes as she drew in a shaky breath.

“I love you, just as much as I did when you were Jane. You didn’t make it easy to get to know you, but every time you let me in a little more, I fell for you even further. I need you to stay you.”

“What?” She breathed the word, and he opened his eyes to find her visibly trembling. Her expression was a study in contradictions. Fear. Hope. Anger. Longing.

Kurt smiled sadly. “It’s too late. I already know you love me, too.”

She tore herself out of his arms, stepped out of his reach. “Stop it. This has gone far enough, Weller.”

“No. It hasn’t gone anywhere near far enough. You’re so scared of making yourself vulnerable, of being hurt again, that you’re hurting yourself so that I’ll never have that power over you.” He took a step closer, and she backed into the living room immediately.

He’d once mentally compared her to a trapped animal, defensively clawing and snarling out of fear. He saw that same distress in her now, and ached to hold her, even though it would only make the situation worse.

“I thought we were over this,” she said, her voice brittle. “I’m not Jane.”

“No, you’re not Jane. You’re Remi. I see you, the whole of you. I know exactly who you are, and I love you.”

She eyed the apartment door, her fists bunched at her sides and her jaw set.

“Don’t run from this. Please.” He took another slow, careful step, and though she backed up again, her eyes were on him once more.

“You never took off your wedding ring, even when you were telling me you hated me. You’ve opened up to me more than once. You’ve trusted me to keep you safe, and you’ve forgiven me for mistakes I’ve made, and I’ve done the same for you.”

She pulled at the ring on her finger, trying to remove it. “You can believe what you want to believe, but it’s not true. It was just about sex and anger, and then we became friends with benefits. That’s it.”

He caught hold of her left hand and held it between his, before she could take off the wedding band. “You didn’t even want to admit you wanted me, back when we first realised we still needed each other. Even when you were halfway to coming. Is it gonna be the same now?”

She snorted, but didn’t try to yank her hand free from his. “What, you think you’re gonna fuck a confession of love out of me? It’s not the same thing, Weller.”

“Is that what it’s gonna take?” He couldn’t pretend he was surprised. They’d resolved so many of their other issues through arguing their way into sex. Why would this be any different?

Her jaw trembled before she firmed it, glaring at him. “No, because it won’t work. It’s not true.”

With anyone else, he’d take that as their final answer. A rejection that he’d have to accept and move on from. But with Remi, things had never been straightforward and simple.

She tested him at every turn, refusing to take anything he said at face value, and this thing with the ZIP was likely a part of it. He wanted to believe that was all it was—a manipulation, a shock tactic designed to scare him into laying all his cards on the table—but his gut told him otherwise.

She would never have risked him saying yes to her offer to ‘become Jane again’ if she hadn’t been prepared to accept the consequences. She was too proud to back down from something she’d said she’d do. And that meant that she really was at a desperate end point, unable to find a way to move forward from the ruins they’d left of her pre-ZIP life.

Kurt needed her to see that he could help her find the path, if she’d only trust herself to walk it. But first, she had to know he wasn’t going anywhere, that he wasn’t just settling for a doppelgänger until he decided to stop clinging to Jane’s memory.

And they both had to be clear where they stood with each other.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me.”

Remi stared at him, for a moment seeming completely taken aback. Then her protective bravado and anger kicked in. “You say ‘jump’, I say ‘how high’? No!”

Even as he understood her reasons for refusing—knew she was just trying to protect herself—her words still stung.

“I love you, Remi.” He shrugged, standing straighter as he laid out his challenge. “If you don’t feel the same way, I need to know. So come on—break my heart.”

God, this is going to hurt.

He believed that she loved him. But whether she’d ever admit it to herself, let alone to him, was another story entirely.

[rhokitten]

As per usual, credit to professorsparklepants who I stole the idea of Fanfic I Won’t Write Friday from.

I saw this Modern Merlin AU gifset and it won't get out of my head. So I may as well write down my thoughts on the idea and maybe it'll go away.

My plotline idea: 

Merlin is (probably) reborn in around the 1990s. He's not entirely sure if he was reborn or if he just slept through the last few centuries. One day in the 2000s/2010s he woke up and had all the memories of his past self as well as his current self. He didn't realize before his past memories returned that what he could do was magic, he'd just thought it was really weird and tried to keep from doing whatever it was.

Merlin is rightly freaked out about waking up centuries after Arthur's death, assuming that something must be coming but whatever it is isn't here yet. He's watching for Arthur but he's assuming that Arthur's return will be very big and showy.

What Merlin doesn't realize is that everyone was reborn, though he's the only one who really has their full past memories. If he'd thought to pay attention he'd realize that the prime minister, one Arthur Pendry Sr., is Uther and his son is Merlin's Arthur. Arthur met Lance, Gwain, Gwen, and the others in college and became friends with them both because they all have weird dreams of being friends as medieval characters as well as because they just get along. Arthur mostly gets along (probably) with his step-sister/adopted sister Morgan (Morgana).

Merlin tries to figure out what happened with magic in between when he was last aware and when he woke up. It seems to him as if the druids took over keeping magic going, keeping it hidden. He gets pulled into a special task force to handle magical police investigations because the task-force leader recognizes that he has magic and because pre-waking up Merlin studied forensics and law enforcement. His partner is just an apprentice mage who Merlin takes charge of teaching magic in between cases. The rest of the police force think they're dating since they can't really explain why they often meet up on weekends/after work.

Merlin runs into Arthur at a coffee shop, accidentally causing him to dump coffee on himself. They bicker but Merlin thinks that while the man looks like Arthur he surely can't be. But Arthur thinks Merlin is cute and familiar in the same way the rest of his friends often are. So he starts following Merlin around, finds out he's a detective, and becomes a nuisance to get Merlin's attention.

Merlin is flustered because he's not really used to that kind of attention. He's confused because he doesn't know why this guy keeps hitting on him when they've barely talked to each other, and when they do talk they spend most of their time arguing. He's anxious because he needs to be prepared for when Arthur returns and can't get distracted by some lookalike. He's worried because what if Arthur doesn't return and this is all some fluke.

Pros of continuing the fic:

Seems like fun. I actually have like half the world building done.

Would be an excuse to get back into forensics.

Cons of continuing the fic:

I've never actually watched Merlin. I'm just a peripheral fandom fan.

What would be the great catastrophe that Arthur is supposed to prevent? Magic being revealed?

I've never figured out how to do good pacing on a police investigation. Could go the route of Sherlock and just hand wave it but that's lazy.

Feels a bit ancient aliens to day "oh yeah, magic is real and nothing has changed from our timeline". I really should do more to flesh out how magic has at least created an invisible society kept secret from modern society and under threat by modern technology.

[lacomandante]

🧶 — any non-writing hobbies/interests?

munday asks!

Yes! I have quite a few, actually. I like to think I'm a jack of all trades. I do historical sewing, and atm I'm currently working on a pair of regency stays. It's a little annoying because I've been working on multiple dresses, only to have to stop because I don't have the correct undergarments to accurately measure if the dress fits or not. So I had to stop what I was doing and make these mockups...I'll get there eventually lol. I also make dolls! Which I never posted photos of when complete, I'll need to do that. Unfortunately I'm very easily fatigued, and sewing is easily one of the most exhausting hobbies I have physically and mentally, which means a lot of these projects take months or years.

Reading, but I feel like that's a given for most people in the rpc. I feel like it's very important to read in order to grow your own ability to write. Currently rereading the Witcher series, alongside Sharpe's Gold and Company. I've also been reading a lot of English accounts of travels through Spain, detailing the landscapes, customs, manners, etc. I think since January I've read over 8 books detailing these things...probably over 2,000 pages combined? I'm endlessly fascinated with historical accounts and I honestly can't get enough of them. Currently reading Letters written during a journey in Spain, and a short residence in Portugal published in 1808. There's a huge gap in the history of Spain during this period so it's been very helpful (although biased) filling in the blanks.

I also do drawing and painting, but this hobby has kinda fallen on the wayside this year. I find myself impatient, but I need to get back into groove of things, as I do really want to improve more.

I would say I do gardening, but...this year my plants almost instantly fried in the California heat, and every time I look into my backyard I just see their decayed husks so. Maybe attempted gardener is best...I have more houseplants than anything, and I struggle to keep my pothos alive, which are pretty easy to take care of....I think I have more of a hobby of buying plants...

Oh! I also do a lot of penpal writing. I joined a Jane Austen FB group and joined a pen pal group in there. I'm more of a casual fan and not really obsessed with her works, but I do enjoy them. I've got three pen pals so far, and they're all older women in England (one I was luckily enough to find that also writes/speaks Spanish so I get to practice!). Two of them are in Kent, and one is in Yorkshire. They're all very sweet and kind and nothing makes me happier than getting their handwritten letters in the mail. I also adore making fancy designs for the envelopes and stuffing them full of stickers and pretty things. Here's a few samples of things I've made (steadily improving lmao) - two for my penpals, and one for Sam :)

I suppose archival work also falls into this? I know how to pirate, burn and rip dvds and blurays, how to convert and preserve files, and I'm currently learning how to preserve and convert VHS. It's really fascinating to me, and I've even learned a little bit of coding and programming on the side for it.

Oh! I also like to make gifsets and photo manips- 10 years of being in the rpc with photoshop skills helps a lot with this. I LOVE making manips of Teresa in other Sharpe films, or in different scenes. I actually have quite a few but haven't posted many of them. Mostly for au's and rp's/fics Sam and I have written and explored.

I also play the guitar, but I say this very lightly. More like I can read tabs, and play some songs, but honestly I'm self taught and would say I'm very much a beginner at best. I really enjoy it but haven't had much time, nor the means to learn more sadly. But I enjoy plucking and learning chords to my favorite songs.

[leverage-ot3]

#this is like the sexiest scene ever and i'm obsessed with it#her passion?? her knowledge?? her relationship to art and artifacts???#(plus she looks like extra pretty)#i'm just *fans self* and i needed a gifset of it (tags via @wistfulwatcher)

Smell it. That's how he knew that Nate was lying.

[ppjeterka]

stealth-hot anon again

you are SO right not a single one of the Sabres is pulling off that Leon Draisaitl smirk, like I'm sorry that man smolders and the Sabres, while very cute, would look like they're just super excited to play a game! None of them are making Connor Bedard reconsider his career and whether it might not be better to just drop to his knees right there if you know what I'm saying.

ugh I feel you with the curse of liking a team that's not super fandom popular... the thing is, I think they will be eventually, but there's definitely ways to speed things up!! obvi reblogging all the videos. All the gifsets. All the gifts that Sabres social media has given us (I think they might be the best in the league at that, like the between 2 stalls series is hilarious, and they let this child-team show some personality which is hard to come by in the hockey world.) Fanart helps, obvs, though I say this as someone who cannot make it. and, unfortunately, fanfic... like sometimes it's a case of drumming up interest with the Narratives and letting the audience build from there which is obvi. V annoying. But also are there any compelling narratives now?? As a longtime Jonathan Drouin-Nathan MacKinnon shipper, the narratives were definitely there, they had all this history, and then it just fell into place this past summer and it took a little while (and some good on-ice performances), but people are getting into it again. Are there any guys like that? (I think Bo Byram and... Cozens, maybe? Is that right?) If there are videos or interviews of that, that is also vvvvv compelling, even if I'm not into the ship it does make me curious to know more about a relationship in general. Owen Power was on one of those very homoerotic college teams, right, does he have any teammates nearby? JJ Peterka and Jack Quinn have excellent chemistry and the Sabres social media know it, which I appreciate. And then there are the individual personalities. Dahlin's aquarium video was hilarious. Tage Thompson might not have a personality (he very well could I just haven't seen one yet) but he is an excellent artist. And Jeff Skinner. We cannot sleep on Jeff Skinner. He is an absolute fandom goldmine, from the figure skating past to the very real personality to the fact that he's def a cutie (appeal to the more mature folk! and everyone else!) to the fact that he's got the NHL record for most games played without a playoff appearance (poor dude), he's a compelling dude and how could you NOT root for him.

stealth-hot anon yay hello again!!!!!!

unfortunately the sabres are doomed by the narrative :(( I wasn't really a big fan of them last year, but I get the sense that they were actually a really fun team to watch (high scoring, promising young talent, admittedly questionable goaltending) and thus the vibes (and filmed content!!) popped off. Then this year started shit and decidedly unfun and killed the vibes that were cultivated last year :( Dylan Cozen's been kind of cold all year, Tage has been alternately injured and/or underperforming, and it doesn't help that Jack Quinn's been out of the lineup for the majority of the season (but it seems like he's coming back soon!), so there hasn't been nearly the same amount of fun off-ice content for fans to sink their teeth into this year...that said, I have faith for next year!!

as for interpersonal player narratives...dylan/bo definitely has good potential but i think the air of tragedy that still clings to the trade needs some time to clear LOL

"Owen Power was on one of those very homoerotic college teams, right," LMAOOOO I'm not really into NCAA fan/shipping culture, but I know Owen and Kent Johnson is/was a pretty big self-sustaining thing? Might need to look into the state that ship is in...

And JJ and Jack. Now that's a duo. Every video they're in together is simply incredible, I have no shame in admitting I've watched all of them more times than I can recall. I think I have 2? 3? WIPs going for them rn?

But yeah, shipping aside, they're just an extremely charming team with great group chemistry and individual personalities. I won't stop clocking into my shift at the sabres fandom mines to get more people to let the light into their lives🫡

[practically-an-x-man]

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

28. Have you ever tagged a fic “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”?

thank you!!! love you bestie!!! <3 <3

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

Hmm.... I have a fanfic idea based on the movie The Voyeurs, with an OC and a storyline and everything, but no intention of writing it. For one, the movie has no fandom (not even a single work on ao3 and all I've seen on tumblr are a few gifsets), and that's fair. It's a good movie, but not the tone that really screams for raving fans. People come for a thriller and to see a few actors with their shirts off, and that's what the movie's made for.

And second, the fic idea is completely self-indulgent and a bit of a fix-it for the events of the movie, but I don't want to write it because I actually like the way the movie ends from a narrative perspective, and I find its permanence to be fitting. The ideas can coexist in my mind - liking the ending from a cinema perspective vs. wanting to give it a happy ending for fun - but I don't intend to put it down on the page at all. It'll just live in my head :)

28. Have you ever tagged a fic “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”?

I have not. My fics have a fair amount of darker content and angst, but I don't think anything's so severe as to warrant the second warning of a "dead dove". Maybe there are a few things that could technically be tagged that way, I admit that I'm not super familiar with what truly defines "so explicit and prevalent it's a dead dove fic", but I've never felt the need to use it with what I've currently written

[nachosncheeze]

Blindspot Mid-Season 3 Parallels

I made a thoughts post for the beginning and middle of the season, and I said there that I'd make another post about parallels because, while I am still working on some gifsets, many of the biggest parallels this season are wider themes that are sort of spread out over many episodes and harder to encapsulate in small clips; words might do them more justice. My thoughts are interspersed here too, but I've tried to keep most of it more observational than opinions.

*** Okay first a side note. A lot of content I have seen for mid-season 3 seems to have felt the need, as I have up to now, to add extensive “I don’t support it” disclaimers about Jane's secret, but it can get a bit exhausting to repeat. So before I say anything else, here’s my blanket disclaimer: Cheating and infidelity suck. Jeller were not a couple when Weller kept tripping over his own penis every time he got a little sad. This post is about thematic parallels, not infidelity per se, so while it's impossible to not reference it, I'm not here to pass judgment on the semantics of whether or not what either of them did “counted” or "was worse". I also recognize that lying to someone about their own child is a dick move no matter why you did it. I'M NOT SAYING ANYONE'S NOT A JERK. EVERYONE SUCKS HERE. Last thought: BLESS the writers for their lil self-pisstake vis-a-vis fan reactions when Rich was talking about Friends in season 4. Anyway, I’m not gonna rehash any of that so I trust anyone reading this to keep this disclaimer in mind from here on out.

On to the parallels.

1. The Return of Ye Dreaded Season 1 Baggage

In my other post I mentioned that a lot of people have identified issues/challenges with the writing this season, but I have to give props to the creative team for finding what each half of Jeller would probably see as the single biggest gut punch and betrayal possible, calling back to their baggage from all the way back in season 1. Weller lied to Jane and withheld critical information about her past and identity; Jane went behind Weller's back working (and also briefly working, wheyyy) outside the law with another man.

Could the writers have found other ways to dredge up those wounds? Maybe, but personally I really don't mind the routes they chose. (To be clear I also don't judge or begrudge anyone who comes down on either side, and I’ve enjoyed fics that explore or give more weight to different sides of the drama.) I also don't mind that this parallel is so much more subtly displayed - and it is a little subtle; I'm working on a gifset for it and it's hard to pick and choose moments that encapsulate or illustrate it in just a handful of images. So many of Blindspot's parallels are case-by-life or shot-by-shot or phrase-by-phrase, I think it's neat that there are some you kind of have to think and squint to see, even if they're annoying to gif.

2. I'm sorry, you did WHAT while I was in hell? And you're telling me this now?!

I think this one probably gets lost in all the surprise/anger about the cheating and disappointment over the cursory on-screen reunion, but I think it’s really worth noting the circumstances in which each half of Jeller found out about the other’s dalliances while they were apart in the hiatuses. Jane found out that Allie was pregnant - and you know she did the math on when that happened the moment Allie said how far along she was - in the middle of a dangerous mission; and Jane had to completely shelf her feelings to complete the mission, get Allie to safety, and save Kurt's unborn child. Weller found out about what Jane had done with Clem just as they were about to embark on a dangerous mission, and he had to completely shelf his feelings and work with Clem to rescue her kidnapped child.

What you have here is two heartbroken people who are barely even on speaking terms at the time, but are nonetheless so devoted to each other and so dedicated to doing what’s right that even in the awful moment they received gut-wrenching news that makes it seem almost hopeless that they could ever bridge that gap... they lock down the pain and rise to the occasion in the fiercest way to keep each other's daughters safe.

I've already made a gifset about this one. :)

3. How Very DARE You. (a huge betrayal of trust)

I’ve seen a lot of commentary to the effect that “Allie wasn’t the same” or "Nas wasn't the same" because of the relationship status, i.e., Weller was single. Absolutely true! At this juncture, please recall my disclaimer. Because there's another parallel there that does make Jane and Weller's betrayals pretty much equivalent imo, but trying to compare the two situations on just "shipping"/sexytimes grounds leaves out a giant elephant from the season 1/2 rooms.

In season 3, Jane holds Weller's heart in her hands, and she betrays that trust in a huge way. But long before wedding rings were involved, Weller was bound to Jane in a very serious, albeit non-ship way. And he, too, made shitty decisions that were clear violations of that particular brand of trust. In season 2 (and even season 1 after Mayfair's arrest) Weller was Jane's boss at times when Pellington was no fan and every other agency was gunning for her. She was entirely dependent on the FBI for her income, the roof over her head, and by season 2 even her freedom and her human rights. His advocacy was sometimes the only thing standing between her and the loss of every one of those things. And the worst part? He wouldn’t have even had to do anything to cost her everything. His inaction was all it would have taken - if he’d gotten angry enough to glance the other way again, or even just gotten distracted at the wrong moment, she could have found herself destitute if not back in an actual torture chamber.

Her position only got more fragile and her dependency on him more intense once her cover was blown and Roman was in custody, when they could hang all those same threats against her brother over her head, too. In my opinion, it’s not an exaggeration to say that in the early days of the Sandstorm mission, Weller literally held Jane's whole life in his hands. But he still ostracized her; he called everyone out in a briefing but made little attempt to set a better example for the team to treat her civilly. We also shouldn't lose sight that it was his refusal to talk or listen that created the circumstances leading to her torture, and there didn't seem to be any explicit assurance in those early days afterwards that her personal safety was anything more than a coincidental byproduct - or maybe even a necessary evil - of the transaction forced upon her by the NSA. Those alone go hard against the duty of care, and then somewhere in there, even as the camaraderie between them improved, he still knowingly chose to keep sleeping with the person who was leveling these threats and spying on her most intimate thoughts almost daily. Kurt's shitty behavior didn't come in the form of a single act with a big reveal like Jane's did, but workplace bullying, or a series of middle fingers and emotional slaps to the face against someone who can't leave spread liberally across many episodes, is still a betrayal. When we zoom out from the "ship", each took their turn failing in their responsibilities to the other in a pretty spectacular way.

4. The audience is angry because we empathize (structural parallel)

The lovely @kate-dammit-run and a few others made some really excellent discussion posts back when 3x09-12 aired, that pointed out some pretty significant similarities in story structure between seasons 2 and 3 (and also, how the fandom mood was similar in each case, though I wasn't here at the time so can't personally comment on that). To summarize:

In the front half of each season, the audience is overwhelmingly shown only one half of the pair's experience when they were apart in hiatus, and that sets us up to take sides emotionally. In season 2, we see that Jane was tortured, and continues to feel guilty and beat herself up over everything, taking reckless chances and accepting all the poor treatment leveled at her; in season 3, we're shown that Weller had an awful time the whole time she was gone and that something happened in Berlin that was so dire Roman can blackmail him, and he's continuing to beat himself up over whatever it was. The only thing we know about Weller in the s1/2 hiatus is that he [maybe] knocked up Allie fairly quickly after Jane was gone; the only thing we know about Jane in the s2/3 hiatus is that she was doing K&R and met a host of shady characters that we only know a few of by name. In either case, we watch one of them suffer while they struggle - almost one-sided - to restore and preserve the bond they had, while the other kind of just gets on with things as if nothing happened. The audience is primed to be more sympathetic to one than the other. So while Jane is absolutely a hypocrite this season to be so mean to Weller over Berlin when she was hiding something too, Weller was a hypocrite last season to be so mean to Jane when telling her they thought she was born in Africa could have stopped the whole damn conspiracy in its tracks, and the audience is systematically primed to be angry at each in turn.

5. This hurts... FUCK EVERYTHING *Tasmanian Devil/human tornado noises*

In each season, one of the two is really not in their right mind. For Weller this was obvious from the moment he found Taylor's bones, and was confirmed time and again by his bottles of scotch among other things. Jane loses some stability when she first finds out she had a daughter (seriously, the way she visibly begins to retreat, bit by bit, from those first few episodes as the "your Remi is showing" treasure that is Fewer Fucks Jane™ into something more like the Jane we knew in seasons 1 and 2, is a great move from the writers imo and a brilliant bit of acting by Jaimie). She really loses it though when she finds out about Berlin, and then she's every bit as irrational as Weller once was. The contrast in how they each approach pain and their character growth in that arena are roughly parallel too, even if they're moving in opposite directions. Jane once dealt with pain by lying down and taking it, but after being forced to "find herself out there", she comes back with an approach that's more Remi-esque, which is to say, pain prompts an almost immediate defense that manifests as anger. Weller, on the other hand, used to deal with negative emotions by turning into a bit of a human volcano and erupting everywhere, but after he has Bethany, he's more prone to pleading and earnest displays of emotion as Jane once was, than he is to seething anger.

Love two crazy people who manage to kind of even each other out once they finally talk about shit.

5.(a) You were protecting yourself

This isn't a big theme parallel, but I wanted to add it as an adjunct to the above. @indelibleevidence has pointed out the excellent parallel between how Jane responds to the Avery's death reveal versus how Weller once responded to the Emma's murder reveal. I may gif this later if I have time, because it's really, really apt, and not only does it stand as a parallel on its own, it also illustrates to an extent how Jeller's responses to pain have gone through a role reversal.

There are undoubtedly tons of other parallels between season 3 and seasons 1/2, but those are the big ones that I'm finding most challenging to summarize in gif form. So there you have it! Let me know if you spot any more, I'll make gifsets as part of the series, or add them here!

[redbullseb]

HEYA is there any mcr song that you associate with seb? totally random question, sorry 🥺

HELLO ANON! DO NOT APOLOGIZE.

so there are several aka their whole discography and i hope u will indulge me while i extensively type out which mcr songs are seb's and why ok thank u <3 going by album...

bullets

early sunsets over monroeville: so this song is on the surface obvs about dawn of the dead but god. it's so fitting for ferrari seb bc of the themes re: illusion of happiness and killing a loved one and knowing about the certainty of the end and it's all just so fucking profound. the way the music gets stripped away until it's just gerard screaming "there's a corpse in this bed"??? ferrari seb. also the fact that g was suffering from major dental problems and had to be physically told to pussy up before he marched into john naclerio's basement to blow the boys all away too with the ending of the song always just makes me so. emotional. imagine ur frank anthony iero aged 20 and u just hear That come out of your friend's brother's mouth after only really knowing him as a weirdo introvert tangentially related to the jersey music scene. fucking life changing. i too would drop everything and follow him to the ends of the earth. this song makes me emotional this band makes me emotional. okay moving on before i start crying

revenge

helena: this is like . specifically seb leaving red bull and moving on. also could be ferrari seb. as u might be able to tell i have a lot of feelings about seb's ferrari arc. anyway the lyrics like . goodnight, not goodbye. and more to the ferrari seb point: g was just. filled with so much self hatred and regret and he was in such a bad place in his life when he wrote the lyrics but it has such heart and inspired him to let go of his grandma's death and kicked his ass to getting sober and yknow MAYBE i'm just projecting seb onto like my issues and g's issues bc i'm pretty like. i hate to say it. not a fan of gerard these days? or more like, i’m tired of his bullshit. and his wife's bullshit. that's irrelevant. the point is that this song is widely applicable to all tragedies and it's a seb song

fashion statement: ASTON! MARTIN! SEB! god okay i love this song it's probably my fave off revenge. i love the idea of him coming back in full glory. and we saw flashes of him being hungry in monaco and baku and scream!!! scream!!!!!!!!! this song!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i never told you what i do for a living: MORE ferrari seb. this album is just. ferrari seb how many fucking times have i said ferrari seb. anyway "touched by angels though i fall out of grace" HELLO. no further comment needed methinks.

before i continue: pauline aka @formula-whine makes an excellent case for revenge being an album about red bull seb and is ceo of the emo seb agenda and has amazing art and asks and i will link/reblog them when i am back on my laptop tomorrow but they should be under the emo seb tag on my blog too!

black parade

wttbp: this song is a skip imo except for the rare occasions where i REALLY want to be 13 again hearing this for the first time but omg have u seen the vid of him mouthing along to the lyrics 😭😭😭 he goes so hard he has an air guitar this is a boy who had an (internal) emo phase i just know it. we know he likes the misfits and punk rock and my chem is just one step away. in all seriousness tho the whole message to carry on? and the entire post chorus i.e. “do or die, you’ll never make me / because the world will never take my heart / go and try, you’ll never break me / we want it all, we want to play this part / i won’t explain or say i’m sorry / i’m unashamed, i’m gonna show my scars” isnt that seb in a nutshell throughout his whole career? this man does not give the fuck up and neither should we!

house of wolves: HAVE YOU SEEN THE VIDEO OF G SPANKING HIMSELF ON STAGE WHILE SINGING THIS SONG… anyway red bull seb’s whore behaviour is off the fucking charts like that gifset i reblogged today where he just gives off Man Who Fucks energy??? yeah this song suits him. also recently he was talking about being naughty and what do u know… “tell me i’m a bad man, kick me like a stray / tell me i’m an angel, take this to my grave”?????? HORNY!! frank was insane for this

sleep: ferrari seb yet again. “and through it all, how could you cry for me?” “kiss me goodbye and sleep / the hardest part is letting go of your dreams” also the entire second verse reminds me of like when that whole dts arc where seb tried to fight against charles replacinf him in ferrari and was a bastard on track. side note this song is criminally underrated ngl like i think g’s screams from tbpid will haunt me forever

disenchanted: i already screamed about it eep

famous last words: that one moment in dts when seb’s talking to christian and is like “and then come home.” THAT’S IT. also again the theme about carrying on and perseverance and holy shit i’m actually tearing up mcr has saved my life so many times i never planned on making it past 16 but here i am 20 years old alive and trying and lying in bed typing about them

blood: seb @ the media and social media. yeah

skipping conventional weapons for personal reasons

danger days

this entire album is rb seb and the anti capitalism stuff is current seb like LOOK ALIVE, SUNSHINE! 109 in the sky but the pigs won’t quit!! you’re here with him: sebastian vettel!! he’ll be your surgeon your proctor etc etc LOUDER THAN GOD’S REVOLVER AND TWICE AS SHINY he’s a rock n roller a crash queen a motor baby listen besties the future is bulletproof. the aftermath is secondary. gravity don’t mean much to him. and that is red bull seb. eeee for the sake of avoiding redundancy i’m just gonna list lyrics <3

“if my velocity starts to make you sweat, then just don’t let go”

“i’m unbelievable (yeah) i’m undefeatable (YEAH) let’s ruin everything BLAST IT TO THE BACK! ROW!”

“so hit the lights, i’ll do it again / and keep your cars and your dogs and your famous friends”

“ain’t nobody gonna take my life / ain’t nobody gonna get the best of me”

“everybody hit the pyro cue / we’re gonna blow this off and show you what we do”

“this ain’t about all the friends you made, but the graffiti they write on your grave”

“when the lights go out, will you take me with you? / and carry all this broken bone / through six years down in crowded rooms and highways i call home?”

“they don’t believe in us, but i believe we’re the enemy”

the horny part in destroya. all of it

“all the cameras watch the accidents and stars you hate / they only care if you can bleed”

“‘cause you only live forever in the lights you make.”

eep i am so tired but essentially i have a lot of feelings about seb and his legacy also many many feelings about mcr’s breakup. yes they’re back together but i doubt mcr5 is ever dropping and how perfectly sad is that alshdksg they need to make another album just so seb can get his fifth world championship etc etc okay it’s 2 in the morning i am going to bed if u made it this far hello congrats stream death spells for clear skin

[diversetolkien]

I'm very bummed because every Din Djarin x reader fic I find, even the "well written" ones with good grammar, spelling and even maybe plotlines and character development, mischaracterize him. They make him too assertive or they give him traits that seem assertive or they make him sexually aggressive. I'm WHITE, and this bothers me. I can't imagine people who are Maori or literally any other nonwhite trying to find good fic of him and how alienated they prob feel.

Hello there! It’s funny you should say this, because I read my first Commander Wolffe self-insert, and it did nothing but paint him as an aggressive asshole. I think when such characters, especially men of color, are contrary to these portrayals that writers, typically white writes, then we have to have a real discussion about racism and emulating offensive stereotypes. 

Din Djarin has shown not one aggressive trait, and everything done that can be aggressive has been in self defense and because he needed to do it. 

If I’m remembering correctly, there’s really good writing about white victimhood, and white women in particular having a fetish of being dominated and harmed by men of color. This research needs to extend to white LGBTQ+ people as well, because white women are not the only ones victimizing themselves in dynamics with men of color. 

Like it’s...like a domination kink, but make it as racist as possible. Or a victimhood kink, but make it as racist as possible. It’s just fetishization at is worse. It’s just basically race play, and there’s controversy attached to it. 

In general, it boils down to hypersexuality of black and brown bodies.  The article I linked talks about this, specifically from the perspective of black men. That said, in my experience, I feel about of the stereotypes that black men face can also be extened to other men of color. 

This is also hella prevalent in popular ships like Codywan. And I love, LOVE Codywan, but a lot of the writing out there has made cody downright aggressive, as well as taller in stature and more muscular than Obi-Wan. When the clones are the same height as him, and not very muscular at all. At the same time, people are always caught up on Cody comforting Obi-Wan? And that’s Cody’s only purpose? 

Like look at Fives and Jesse outside of their armor. They’re not muscular at all. I understand previous comics made them as such, but Cody is canonically skinny as hell.  

And here’s a Cody and Obi-Wan height comparison, with a helmet. With a helmet he’s barely taller than Obi-Wan.

And HERE’S a really, REALLY good gifset on size comparisons of the two!

Like why are fans making the executive decision to make him buffer? And more muscular? And more aggressive? Especially in relation to Obi-Wan, who is fandoms soft, sad boi, along with Anakin. 

It’s just gross, it’s nasty. The victimization of white characters and the brutalization of non-white characters is rampant in the Star Wars fandom, and in literature. The same thing happened to Finn. 

[agentmarymargaretskitz]

Upon thinking about it more, I do want to say that I was absolutely NOT disappointed with Buck Begins. It was really good! Oliver Stark and Jennifer Love Hewitt and the actors who played the younger versions of them were all amazing!

I also 100% read Buck as being bisexual in the episode. He was absolutely flirting with the guy at the bar! And a bi person is still bi even when they're with someone of a different gender, I would never claim otherwise! I'm bisexual myself, I get it. I was just hoping for it to be explicitly stated in canon is all. Or even if they didn't use the word (like most network shows don't), they they would show him having a fling with a guy or something! I just want Buck to be canonically bisexual so bad, and it felt like a huge missed opportunity.

I just... felt more emotionally from the prior episode. The "Love me anyway" line from 4x04 absolutely broke me. I wish I had felt more from Buck's emotional state in the factory fire. Like I said, I think the lack of reaction from the other characters when the explosion happened. I felt robbed of Bobby and Chimney and Eddie's reactions. If you look closely you can see the fear in their eyes, but... I was hoping for a little more.

(I was also not expecting any sort of a big reaction from Eddie like lots of fans were, because that's just not who he is. There was just almost nothing shown, which was disappointing.)

Thr firefam having his back was peak poetic cinema and I will forever be grateful for that moment.

And I *know* things were different because of Covid. I just... even trying to de-hype it in my mind going in, I ended up feeling a bit disappointed.

Maybe it's just because Chimney Begins was so amazing and I can't help but compare the Begins episodes? Even though I'm trying not to... god I wish I could love it the way so many other fans did!

Also, Nurse Omar is my new favorite side character. I loved how invested he got with Buck's life! And he seemed like the only person who Maddie could actually call a friend at the time. And how he desperately tried to get her to leave Doug, but he couldn't force her to, so he just supported her however he could. He was great and I was glad we got to see him.

I guess I'm just sick of the reminders of Doug. He existed, of course he would be mentioned in the flashbacks, but I didn't want to keep seeing the reminders of what he did to Maddie. Hopefully he can stay in the past now.

So over all, I did like the episode. It just felt a little lackluster compared to some of the others, but none of that is on the actors. They were all incredible. It's more on the writers and the editors.

Maybe it will be more impactful upon rewatch once the season is over. Maybe they'll come back to some of these plot threads and keep addressing Buck's emotional state.

I'm still holding out for a Buddie "we need to talk" cliffhanger at some point. Is there a patron saint or god for bisexuals? Because we need a serious prayer circle 🤡🤡🤡

-Quarantine Anon

Those two knocked it out of the park. I watched the episode over my lunch break and was screaming into my hands for so much of the time.

I did not mean to go off in an angry bisexual rant (the LoT fandom has left some marks on me) and I’m sorry about that. Maybe there was some stuff that gave more hints that got left on the cutting room floor? (Whoever is doing editing, we need to talk about those cut tiny scenes!) And it may be a network thing too. IDK.

“Love me anyway” was absolutely heartbreaking and it’s hard to top. Massively hard. There might have been some self projection going on with me watching the factory fire, I dunno. And if we weren’t in a pandemic, maybe we would have seen more reaction without the masks. Plus, yes- good point on Eddie.

That moment- showing what family is- that is gonna stick with the fandom for so long. I expect to see it in the next 118 firefam gifsets.

Chimney Begins was a goddamn masterpiece of hope and pain and I still remember how it tore me apart. Maybe Buck Begins will be better with age? Who knows?

Omar was awesome and I fell in love with him. I’m kinda sticking with an idea that he was so happy when Maddie didn’t come into work after she ran away because she’d finally ditched Doug.

Doug is a tough subject. He’s a part of history, but one people want to forget. It’s hard to watch that shit. 

Maybe we should fight the editors for the cuts?

YES A BUDDIE ‘WE NEED TO TALK’ MOMENT!!! Does Apollo or Dionysus count for the bisexual protection? Lady Gaga? IDK. But imagine that happening before hiatus and then something again that’s definitely A THING by the end of the season.