#it pisses me off how they will simultaneously justify their other relationships that they seem so discontent with with phrases like

[cryolyst]

~

[oceanmonsters]

(creating a new post because the original one was being passed around radfems circles and the notes were absolutely toxic - link to original even though it seems to have been deleted by op)

I wasn’t initially gonna reblog this because I was like well, I don’t think traditions like these should be completely beyond reproach / criticism and although I did have my ears pierced as a baby and am personally glad of it, it isn’t something that I would do to my own daughters if I had them. But then I checked the notes:

and I take that back because the people replying to this post prove exactly why it’s fucking needed. Because white women (especially white radfems, whom most of these are) really don’t know how to behave themselves when talking about woc / other cultures. “It makes girls into objects to decorate and look pretty” “A sense of control over their environment which heterosexual and het partnered women seldom get to have” “not owning her body that began with her mother piercing her skin against her will” these people are acting as if woc are literal child abusers for doing something that yes, although it may be a gendered ritual and not one I personally agree with, does very little harm to their child in the long run.

First of all, there are actual cultural / religious roots to the ear piercing of children (x) and yes, it was done to both female AND male children, although it has become more of an aesthetic thing nowadays and boys being pierced is much rarer. I don’t have any concrete sources on this but I’d be willing to bet it’s to do with the influx of western culture starting with colonialism that brought the idea that earrings / jewellery are unmanly and therefore unattractive. In fact, jewellery in general and especially gold jewellery does play a significant part in Indian culture and I know Indian boys who have gold chains that they wear around their necks and have since they were a child, although I don’t know the specific significances of these. My point is, if you actually bothered to research the culture for even two minutes, you’d see that this was about more than just “omg girls being decorated for men to look at!!!”. And even if you don’t agree with the culture of piercing children’s ears, which, as I said, I don’t particularly personally, it’s really not the massive deal that some people in the notes wanna make it. I’ve had my ears pierced since I was a baby and trust me, they have never ever held me back in life. I never even considered them much. You know what probably did affect me more? The general messages I was being fed to me by society that I had to look feminine and pretty, and have “girly” interests. Makeup culture. Beauty culture. My earrings are really very very low down on the list of things that had a big impact on my life. “Why don’t you wait until they’re at least 15” “Because it’s about establishing from a young age that they’re possessions / for male decoration / that exist to be looked at!!!!” etc. etc. No, a lot of the time it’s literally so that it’s done early on and then they don’t have to go through it later. Piercings can be traumatic at any age. My friend decided to have hers done as a young teenager and it left her so scared of them closing up and having to pierce them again that she literally wouldn’t even sleep one night without earrings on. Meanwhile, I had it done as a baby and didn’t even remember. Again, is this something I would choose to do to my daughter? No, but at the end of the day I don’t know a single person who got their ears pierced as a baby who is genuinely upset and resentful about having it done, because it’s really not that much of a big deal. “It sends a clear message that your body doesn’t belong to you” “it’s our culture to train infant girls that they exist to be looked at”! My parents, contrary to apparent popular belief about desi parents, have never encouraged me to exist for male consumption. If there is one thing my mum and dad have tried to impress on my my whole life it’s that education is the most important thing and it comes before boys or relationships or anything like that. My dad has told me on no uncertain terms that my education, my life, should always come before relationships and marriage. And yes, my mum also decided to have my ears pierced when I was a baby because that is the norm and she wanted to get it over with when I wouldn’t even remember it so I wouldn’t have to get it done later if I wanted them pierced. Even recently she’s told me she’s felt guilty about it when she hears people saying things like this and that makes me so angry because my mother is not perfect, but she deserves a fucking lot more respect than these people are treating her and women like her with.

These are the three that pissed me off the most:

White feminists really do not know how to talk about woc without projecting their own narrow ideas of cultural misogyny onto everything they do. Like they’re literally taking the actions of women from cultures they know nothing about and trying to analyse them and pile patriarchal reasoning onto them - and basically assuming that all woc who aren’t from western / “developed” countries are a monolith who all share a hive mind designed around upholding the patriarchy and can’t think for themselves, unlike the enlightened western feminists who have the critical thinking necessary to see through everything.

Radfems will use the violence and misogyny faced by women of colour in countries like India etc. to prove their points and then will turn around and show their faces with posts like this where they demonstrate that they don’t really care about them except to prove a point, and that any compassion and sympathy that they have for them ends when they don’t act in ways that aligns completely with their beliefs. You’ll talk about how misogynistic and terrible things are for women in countries like India but as soon as they don’t completely conform to how you think they should behave (mostly because of the societal pressures they face) they’re suddenly agents for the patriarchy who are seeking “a sense of control over their environment which heterosexual women seldom get to have”. “It’s not clear to me what it has to do with being white or not” what it has to do with being white is that white radfems absolutely refuse to treat women of colour with respect and acknowledge that we have different experiences to them except when it’s to shit on our culture for treating us badly without actually caring about us as human beings!

Do I think desi culture is absolutely beyond reproach or criticism in the way it treats women? No, there are certain aspects of it that absolutely disgust me (as do aspects of almost every single culture in the world). However, if you really cared about the misogyny and violence faced by women in these countries, you’d use your voices to uplift them and listen to their problems and support the causes they think are important and will improve their lives instead of just using them as a stage to soapbox about your own opinions. But of course, you couldn’t do that! Because they might think the wrong things are important! Because they don’t see the world through your special enlightened western feminist eyes who can see that earrings are the real root of the problem!!!!!

Again, I don’t personally agree with this tradition and I don’t think it should be above criticism, but it certainly isn’t awful or horrible enough to justify the sheer amount of vitriol directed at women of colour who do it - as op was trying to say from the beginning, it’s really not that deep. And in addition, what this post has done is reminded me why even if I do think a cultural practice should be criticised, I absolutely don’t trust white feminists to be the ones doing it. This isn’t me saying “my culture is perfect and beyond any reproach or criticism”, this is about white women not knowing how to behave when talking about women of colour of other cultures and being unable to talk about them without acting as if they know everything and projecting their own preconceived ideas about why the people of that culture behave the way they do in order to get their own points across about the society they themselves live in while simultaneously throwing the women of that culture under the bus by treating them as if they are completely helpless naive victims or agents for the patriarchy who are complicit in their own oppression, and either way are not enlightened enough to see through their culture in the way that only western feminists can.

[petitprincess1]

My Heroic AU (Warning: Long Post)

So, I don’t know why, but I have this dying need to explain my Heroic AU, especially since I got newer followers. I just want explain more about this to even those that have read my fics, but are more curious about it.

Central/Main Idea: Mine are more on the chaotic good side of things than lawful because I find it more fun and they kind of explore the whole “if villains can kill and destroy and people just accept it, why can’t a hero do the same, especially when justified and with a corrupt justice system?” Basically, whenever a hero does anything like kill or destroy, no matter the reason, they are automatically seen as corrupt or they have a dying need to be stopped, even more so than villains. My Heroic characters basically exist to prove such a thought wrong…even if they aren’t the most mentally balanced people.

Also, the images I’m using were created by @themcnobody when they did a commission for me and I posted it up, so I don’t think this counts as reposting, but I’ll remove them if they don’t want me using them.

The Crew:

Clemencia/Felicity Clement Age: 19-20 Height: 5 foot 3 Job: Assassin/Hitman for Hire Background: Clem was born powerless in a family full of superheroes both on her father’s and mother’s side. Around the time when she was born, White Hat made her family move to a more crime filled neighborhood to lower the crime rate. Unfortunately, due to them being stuck in a bad neighborhood and not having powers, Clem was stuck sheltered for over 19 years. 

However, that changed when she left out on her birthday without her family knowing…and she instantly got followed and almost attacked from a drunkard. Luckily and unluckily, Clem was “saved” by Demencia, who was following the drunkard because they were in debt with the BHO. Dem was going to attack Clem for fun, but she instantly got out of her murderous mood when the girl just expressed her gratitude and she just left her. 

When she came back, in the middle of her party and in front of her entire family, she expressed having a newfound inspiration with her life and finally knowing what she wants to do. And says loudly and proudly, “I want to be an assassin like Demencia!” Everyone was quiet. No one clapped. No one cheered. The only person even seemingly intrigued was a man wearing a top white hat in the back. Personality: She is an endless ball of energy, mostly due to her having so much fun with her unicorn powers and she will always try to use them whenever she can (even if it’s just simply changing her pupils to look like hearts or stars or even question marks). She loves basically being the spoiled little princess of the group, but she also knows when to get serious. And when she is serious, she can be pretty deadly, even though she hides it all with a huge smile on her face and with her excited demeanor all while summoning a battle axe. 

Clem also is a huge dork that loves to make multiple references from games to movies to music, it doesn’t matter. It’s just something that she loves to do. She’s the second most mentally dysfunctional person in the group, often constantly doubting or questioning her decisions She also is obsessed with loving Demencia as much as she is obsessed with killing her or capturing her. All because of that night of Dem saving her and she wants to show her extreme appreciation by being either her greatest enemy or amazing lover. She’s fine with either one. Just as long as she can be with her love.

She loves Slug like a brother and will often play as a lab rat for him by testing his poisons. It doesn’t do any harm, since her horn also has a bit of eldritch magic in it. And other than Demencia, White Hat is another person she’ll die for. She adores him and believes she owes everything to him.

Also, her horn is real and it constantly fries at her brain, while also simultaneously keeping her alive. It be like that sometimes.

~~~

Slug Unglück Kaiser Age: 31 Height: 6 foot 2 (with boots on) 6 foot (with boots off) Job: Medic/Scientist Background:  Basically, his mom and dad are a villain and a hero couple, one of the very few that actually are harmonious together. They actually were (and still are) rivals to each other, but they just think of their “little” fights are just a little game to them. Anyway, they have Slug and his father instantly wants his wife to stop all heroic duties, warning her that now she that she has something precious to her that villains will immediately seek out that target or use him as her weakness. Of course, her being a hero, she ignores him and says she’ll be fine and continues fighting crime. This continues perfectly for a good 5 years, until she ended up going to a mission where they had Slug captured and were using him as leverage. They basically wanted her to give up her life of crime, tossing her a gun, or else her son would die. Not wanting to waste too much time and having already made the decision. She pulled the trigger…killing herself in front of Slug.

The father didn’t blame Slug for her death at the time, but he does immediately try to get him to a life of a crime, despite the fact that he was born normal. His father does this in any way he can whether it be making him see gruesome murders or manipulating Slug or lying to him at every turn, it doesn’t matter to the father. Slug’s grandparents, on his father’s side, hate that their son is doing that to him, so they instead subjugate him to more loving things, this includes making candy and baking. And Slug loves it! So much so that he starts doing it at home more and more, which makes the dad nervous, the last thing that he wants is for Slug to make take himself out of wanting to be a villain. So, the lies, deception, and manipulation increase to full on verbal and mental abuse over the course of 5 or 6 more years. Luckily, Slug always had his baking and candy making to calm him down. 

During one night, while his grandparents were over, his father gets into a very heated argument with his parents while Slug is trying to tune it all out by making his own sugar syrup. The arguing gets louder and louder to the point where Slug felt like he needed to say something, to at least get his viewpoint on things. This gets his dad pissed off to the point where he, blindly in a rage, grabs the pot that Slug was making the syrup and threw it at his face (simple syrup, which is just sugar and a bit of water, can be from 200-240°F), which luckily only hit the left side of his face from reacting quickly. His grandmother immediately tries to calm the burning, while his grandfather keeps his father away from Slug. His father ends up escaping Hat Island and is at large.

Unfortunately, for Slug, while they did get him to a hospital, the syrup gave him four degrees burns, which means you’re to the point where you have brown, leathery skin and you need skin grafting, a part of his lip was burnt so badly that it revealed some of his teeth, and that his left eye was damaged, not blind, but he can barely see out of it. Which is why he needs goggles. Personality: He’s kind of a direct opposite for Flug, like how Flug looks soft but he’s actually intimidating, Slug looks intimidating but is a complete softie. He is pretty blunt person and will always take the more logical route than the emotional, so he tends to seem very cold and analytic, but then will pretty much stuttering out apologies once he’s realized his mistake. He also self-taught himself poisons and engineering to start his own candy van with his friends. 

He also tends to carry candy around as a habit and just something to chew on when he’s thinking or nervous. Plus, he also manufactured his candies to be weapons, just so that no one can get suspicious of him when reaching into his jacket.

 He’s 100% loyal to White Hat and is pretty much ready to kill or harm anyone who dares speak against. He’s even ready to fight against Black Hat if need be, even though he knows it’s a losing fight.

Clemencia is like a little sister to him and he’ll always have her back, but he does tend to make her powers short-circuit on purpose if she does anything too insane.

~~~

White Hat Age: Old…but 300 years younger than Black Hat Height: 6 foot 6 (with hat on) 6 foot 4 (with hat off) Job: Owner of White Hat Incorporated/Consultant Background: …He won’t let me tell you. Personality: How does one describe him? White Hat is the worst out of everyone. Depending on who you are, he can be sweet and nice one second, but then snapping and downright terrifying the next. He likes to refer to people, at least mostly when he’s alone, as his puppets because he can easily trick people that he’s an all-around. I mean, who’s gonna question the man that’s the number one hero and was documented doing so many heroic deeds? No one, which makes this perfect cover up. And no one is safe from him, if you’re a hero or a villain or just an employee and you defy him, trick him, backstab him in anyway, you are probably not gonna live for much longer (in other words, you’re gonna get a visit from Clem) or if he sees value in you, then he has no problem in re-teaching you the rules here in White Hat Inc. 

Other than that, White also loves to be around humans, however. They oddly fascinate him with how interesting they are, especially with how they can easily make their lives harder by making one wrong decision or how they can ruin their day with one intrusive thought. And yet, a lot of them still find reason for continuing to live. Extraordinary. Plus, he also adores the food made on Earth and will sometimes take that over souls or flesh any day.

Also, he’s in a poly relationship with Clem and Slug because their his two most favorite puppets…and he does care for them. Fun fact: I was/am scared of White Hat because I don’t trust people who smile or are happy all the time. I just don’t. No one smiles that much and no one is that carefree. I don’t like them and that’s why I made him a master manipulator. 

~~~

Also, there isn’t a 606, but there is a Hatbot, who basically is pretty much like 505, except he often does harm others. He just believes that he’s playing with them, since he has the mindset of a child.

And that’s pretty much it. Let me know if you want to know more and this is a lot longer than I thought it would be.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: The Shining Beacon Part 2

I miss RWBY. Specifically, I miss early RWBY when there was less drama (not really but let me pretend), so let’s head on back to Volume 1.

In our opening scene of Episode 3, Ruby and Jaune have managed to find the hall where the rest of the newbies are meeting and honestly? I’m super proud of them for it. These are the two fools who will later argue over who had the map while wandering around the wilds of Remnant. Baby leaders managing to find the rest of their flock? Great job. Well done. Mama’s proud.

This little time skip raises some questions though. Did they ever find the Beacon cafeteria? What else did they chat about the rest of the day? Yang makes it sound like they’ve been gone a number of hours and I for one would love to know what awkward Ruby and even-more-awkward Jaune got up to during that time.

Tis the realm of fics though, not canon. Instead we get another shot of RWBY’s infamous shadow people with Yang standing out like the goddamn sun.

Who could the main character possibly be??

Beats me. What a gosh darn difficult question.

Yang: Ruby! I saved you a spot.

Are... are there spots, Yang? You’re all standing in a giant auditorium. If Ruby comes to stand beside you is another student gonna throw a fit about it? I mean real talk, I went to watch the changing of the guard while spending a month in London and let me tell you, there were people who guarded their spots like a pissed off bird guarding her eggs. (For the record you couldn’t even see anything. This was just human prickliness at its finest). So who knows, maybe Yang knows precisely what she’s doing.

Ruby abandons Jaune to join her, which on the one hand is kinda mean—you can’t invite your new friend to stand around with you?—but Ruby does say she’ll “see [him] after the ceremony,” so that’s nice and all. I know my anxious ass would have been thrilled to hear someone making future plans like that, even if it’s mostly just a nicety. Making new friends is hard.

Of course, Jaune doesn’t make that job any easier on himself. I’ve written before about his Nice Guy tendencies in the early volumes and they come back in full force here. He bemoans Ruby’s leave, asking himself where he’ll find “another nice, quirky girl to talk to?” It’s an easy introduction for Pyrrha, revealing her behind Jaune and quite obviously setting her up as that “nice, quirky” girl who he’ll become closest to as the episodes progress, but jeez, Manic Pixy Girl assumptions abound. Especially given the fact that Jaune/Pyrrha became canon in Volume 3. Obviously Pyrrha will be written with great depth as RWBY continues, but it does rankle a bit to have her introduced as a Ruby stand-in, someone positioned as a way of fulfilling Jaune’s ridiculous “needs.” I’m glad this is undermined later when she takes initiative towards him, i.e. saving him during initiation and angling to be his partner. Her interest is clear even if at that point Jaune will take anyone pretty: Ruby, Weiss, Pyrrha herself.

But I digress.

Ruby gives her whole spiel about meeting Weiss and Yang’s response is, “Yikes. Meltdown already?” heavily implying that she expected Ruby to have a “meltdown” at this school, just not so soon. Which—iffy terminology aside—isn’t at all surprising. RWBY does an excellent job of setting up Ruby’s nerves, from her “bee’s knees” comment to her eagerness in showing Weiss exactly what she’s capable of. The girl is desperate for validation—as is the whole RWBYJNPR gang, in their own ways—and a lot of that comes out as anxious, social awkwardness. If Ruby was at all inclined towards “meltdowns” at Signal then I’d say she did a damn good job holding herself together through everything that happened at Beacon. Granted, being put in a position of power will help with that, at least on a surface level. To semi-quote Oz, how can you expect others to put forth their best if you’re not constantly doing the same? Ruby has the veneer of self-control down now because she had to for her team... which makes me anticipate her inevitable breaking point all the more. We saw in Volume Six how close Ruby got to dropping her ‘I’m an endlessly put together leader’ persona with Qrow drinking himself to oblivion, but she never quite got there. I’m waiting (hoping really) that Ruby’s long-established anxiety will finally be addressed, what with Yang having made good headway in that department and all the shit they’ve gone through adding up to a very justified breakdown.

Let the poor girl really falter for once and let the rest of the group grapple with that. Everyone deserves it.

I’m jumping six volumes ahead though. Here and now Ruby is still telling Yang all about her horrible encounter, segueing into how she “just wanted her to stop yelling” which of course is the perfect moment for Weiss to sneak up behind her with a loud “YOU!” (Jaune’s comment linking to Pyrrha; Ruby’s comment linking to Weiss—RT enjoys writing these little bridges, particularly for introducing new characters).

I love this moment simply for how much it tells us about Weiss. Largely in retrospect. Because while her trailer song is definitely on the nose in some respects—“I’m the loneliest of all”—it’s not until later on that we realize exactly how abusive Weiss’ family is and how isolated she’s been for the whole of her upbringing. This girl has absolutely no experience interacting with people outside of the Schnee/everyone else hierarchy (note in a moment how she assumes that Ruby will want to “make it up to [her]”) so if you’re suddenly surrounded by people for the first time who aren’t fawning over your name and money and dust connections... what do you? How do you get some vaguely positive attention? Oh okay, guess I’ll force it! Here Weiss is claiming that she never wants Ruby to speak to her again, but she’s the one who barged in on their conversation and loudly drawing attention to herself. Weiss is starved for healthy validation while simultaneously stuck in the behavior she’s been taught: asking for attention solely by trying to show off— here’s a rambling summary of the Schnee Dust Company’s disclaimer look at what a good puppet I am—or by insulting others. Weiss mocks Ruby’s genuine offer to buy school supplies together but then doesn’t move away from her and Yang once the announcements start. She doesn’t know how to say ‘yes’ to any offers of friendship, but she also doesn’t want to say ‘no.’

Interestingly, that moment also tells us a fair bit about Ruby. Not just by re-emphasizing how kind she is by extending the offer to start this relationship over, but also adding weight to the headcanon that Ruby is neurodivergent. Weiss’ heavy sarcasm about how they can “go shopping, paint our nails, and talk about cute boys” goes right over Ruby’s head. She responds with a “Wow! Really?” similar to the “...can you?” heard right before she attacks the Nevermore during initiation. Ruby has a history of not just being awkward but missing a lot of ‘normal’ social cues as well.

The girls’ bonding is interrupted when Ozpin begins his speech and boy oh boy do I love this moment too. Anyone who reads my metas knows that I’m a firm defender of our disaster headmaster, especially after volume 6, and looking back this scene is the PERFECT example of how RT tries to make Ozpin seem shady... while really failing to accomplish that. Obscuring eyes/the whole face is a super easy way to tell the viewer that this is an Untrustworthy Character. See: every horror movie where the villain’s face is obscured by shadows, our own dear Adam who keeps his face hidden with a mask, etc. It serves to dehumanize the character, keeping us from seeing some of the most expressive parts of their bodies, and equates one thing they’re hiding—such as a deformity. Yay ableism! /s—with other things they’re keeping from the heroes; secrets, sinister intentions, and the like. The primary exception to this are characters who wear masks for defined and morally acceptable reasons. i.e. superheroes who need to keep their secret identities intact and, notably, aren’t withholding that information from the viewer. We as the audience usually know who they are and thus aren’t inclined to distrust the character based on secret-keeping.

Awesome superpowers aside, Ozpin doesn’t fit within the mold of superhero, so all of this reads as pretty damning:

Like holy shit, friends. With the exception of one moment, 

notably when Ozpin informs them that “knowledge will only carry you so far,” the cinematography goes out of its way to hide his eyes, if not his entire face. Oz comes across as super shady here, compounded by the close up and centered shot of Ruby’s silver eyes to contrast. Compounded further by the exchange Ruby and Yang have afterwards about how he seemed “kind of off”—an exchange that doesn’t precisely fit with in-world logic (how does Yang know what Ozpin is normally like?), but serves as a clear message to the viewer: Something is UP with this guy.

The problem? This isn’t Ozpin’s introduction.

Imagine a series where in Episode One we only hear about a powerful Beacon headmaster. Someone who bends the rules and let’s Ruby in two years early for reasons unknown. Then by Episode Three we see this guy almost insulting the new group of students (Yang’s eyes narrow when Ozpin says he sees only “wasted energy in need of purpose”) and the entire time the camera refuses to give us a good look at him. That would have set up a character who is legitimately creepy. Someone we know instinctively might not really be on our side.

Instead our introduction to Ozpin is this.

He’s smiling and charming and legitimately kind. He listens to why Ruby wants to come to Beacon before making his decision (aka establishing her agency here). He shares a fond “Aww, you know I’m gonna get what I want” look with Glynda. He brings cookies, for god’s sake. Ozpin’s supposed shadiness falls completely flat here because we’ve already developed positive feelings for him, notably while he was with our protagonist and his BFF headmistress. The intimacy in Episode One implies that this is the “real” Ozpin, whereas a formal speech in front of (from the audience’s perspective) a literally faceless mass sets this up as a “fake” Ozpin, one that comes out when he feels the needs to be stern with incoming students. Or, based on information we learn later, when he’s pulling from another personality.

All of which isn’t a criticism of RT’s writing. Rather, given what we now know definitively from Volume Six, I don’t think they were invested in making Ozpin into a legitimately shady character. What RWBY is invested in is poking at or outright dismantling a lot of tropes and conventions, which is essentially what they did here. “You EXPECT the secretive, powerful headmaster to be a morally gray kind of guy... so we’re just not even gonna go there. Not really.”

But back to the actual plot. Jaune ends the scene by sliding up and announcing that he’s a natural blonde, another excellent example of precisely the thing women aren’t looking for in a guy. He knows Ruby now so it’s totally cool for him to re-join her, but using that as an excuse to start talking about his looks? Nah. Remember folks, women generally like it when you treat them as more than just a romantic and/or sexual conquest!

But enough about Jaune. We cut to that night where all the newbie students—way more than we’ll actually see throughout the rest of the series—are crowded together in Beacon’s hall, which from a world building perspective is a really great choice. I love what it says about Beacon as an institution: We’re not giving you rooms yet because we believe that most of you will fail the initiation (or at least that’s the impression they want to give the students). There’s a sense of ‘roughing it’ with simple mats and no personal space, the sort of things they’d have to get used to if they’re out traveling as huntsmen later in life. The overall emphasis on community and team work. Like the teams of four, Beacon is invested in setting up situations where the students are forced to work with one another. Particularly with those they might otherwise avoid.

That’s precisely the sort of interaction we get in a moment, but first: a tangent. Okay. So in previous metas—mostly Volume Six stuff—I’ve gotten a lot of pushback for my use of the term “kids” to describe the RWBY gang. Which I get. Post-Beacon most of them are legally adults by our standards and they’re certainly doing Adult Things nowadays. I do think there’s a lot of interesting nuances here—the fact that our protagonist and arguably most significant character plot-wise (Oscar) are both still underage, asking whether Remnant even views age in the same way we do, whether hitting the magical age of 18 suddenly gives you any more insight or maturity than you had at 17 or 16, acknowledging that they were never meant to be out in the world fighting this war and making these decisions yet, so we shouldn’t conflate traumatic necessity with emotional growth—but for the most part fans don’t want to grapple with those sorts of questions. There’s a knee-jerk reaction (particularly from those who are around the group’s age) of, “Most of them are 18. They’re not kids so stop acting like they are.” RWBY has raised a lot of questions for me regarding how I balance “Kids/teens/young adults are people with agency and more maturity than people tend to give them credit for” with “I remember how much of a kid I still was at 18 and know precisely how much I’ve grown in the decade since. I was not an adult then, no matter what the law said.” It’s a matter of acknowledging generational experience without turning into one of those, “Bah! Kids don’t know what the hell they’re talking about” curmudgeons. I’m an adult with a father who dismisses everything I say because he’s got—and will always have—50+ years on me. I’m well aware that it sucks.

Why am I bringing all this up again? Because this scene is just so kid-ish. It’s wonderfully young and carefree! Ruby is writing a letter to her friends in cutesy grimm PJs. Yang slides over with a comment about how it’s just like a sleepover. They acknowledge that Tai would not be pleased with all the boys around while Yang ogles the shirtless guys and Jaune wanders around in a footed one piece. This entire scene has a distinctly middle school or early high-school vibe. Not that adults don’t hang out and chat in super comfy PJs—we totally do—but rather that viewers know how scenes like these are coded. They’re supposed to look young here and even though experience has most certainly aged them, even though about two years have passed since this moment... that’s still only two years. I have a difficult time accepting that we should now view the group’s decisions as irrevocably Adult and Mature (cough-airship-cough) when such a short time ago they weren’t either of these things. And they weren’t meant to be those things. Not yet. I wish that these later Volumes of RWBY were more interested in exploring the concept of (yes) kids forced into the role of adults, as opposed to trying desperately to pretend that they’re adults already with a more worthwhile voice than people with 10, 20, or in Ozpin’s case, a 1,000 years more experience than them.

Anyway. Enough ranting for one recap.

Ruby shares her fears about not making any friends and Yang has her “You’ve just made one friend and one enemy!” line before giving her little sis a legitimate pep-talk. She explains that there are friends all around Ruby, “you just haven’t met them yet.” A near identical perspective to what we heard from Jaune last episode. Which is hilarious given that ten seconds ago Yang was pseudo-insulting the guy.

Seriously though, how is there not more Jaune-Yang interaction in canon? They’re got so much more in common than just blonde hair and anger management issues.

Cue another segue. Right after Yang finishes talking about future friends Ruby catches a sound off screen and we get our first look at Blake since the courtyard.

Yang quite literally drags Ruby over and it is an excellent display of siblings being siblings.

Blake recognizes Ruby as “the girl who exploded” and honestly I’m sad that this didn’t become a moniker for her in the same way “vomit boy” did for Jaune. Nothing like being defined by your embarrassing moments and ridiculous habits to encourage true bonding! My BFF calls me Trout and I call her Hunter and no, I will not expand on the ridiculousness that was my middle school years.

I mean, Ruby starts to tell Blake that she can call her crater face before realizing that this might not be the best idea. The girl is awkward af and I love her.

Yang: What are you doing??

Ruby: I don’t know help me!

God they’re so fucking relatable.

Yang manages to get Blake’s name out of her and then makes the mistake of commenting on her bow. Granted, Blake doesn’t show any overt signs of discomfort here—that would have been too obvious even by RWBY’s standards—but looking back we can assume that any conversation veering towards the one thing she wants to hide wouldn’t exactly endear her to these girls. Blake gets pretty rude by saying that she’ll continue to enjoy her book just as soon as they leave. Yang gets ruder by announcing, right next to Blake, that she’s a “lost cause.”

The book is Ruby’s in though. Now it’s less small talk and more legit interest as she asks what Blake is reading. The fandom has acknowledge to death the “It’s about a man with two souls, fighting for control” line and how that obviously relates to the Ozpin-Oscar situation, but beyond that I’m interested in the fact that we never learn the title of this book. Normally that wouldn’t mean much (only so much world building you can do and book titles aren’t necessarily the sort of thing RT wants to waste time on), except that Ruby specifically asks for it and Blake delves straight into the summary. I wonder if perhaps this specific text will show up again in future volumes. I don’t have any real evidence for the hunch, just the fact that we now know Ozpin has put stories out into the world that relate to his situation, namely The Maidens fairy tale. I have to wonder if perhaps other lives of his created art as a way of coping with their situation—unknowingly truthful accounts that people like Blake read, oblivious to the ways that this fiction might be setting them up to be more empathetic towards the same situation in real life. It just stands out to me that we’re not given a title or author here; that Blake was one of the ones to learn about Ozpin’s immortality off screen (denying us her initial reaction); that comparatively she was one of the more sympathetic during that awful moment out in the snow. It would be awesome if the “lol Blake is a nerd who sometimes reads porn” aspect of her personality actually sets her up to be one of the more understanding people in Volume 7.

Basically, please give me super nerd Blake who starts warming back up to Ozpin because she finds out he’s authored a bunch of her favorite books lol. Or at the very least she realizes that she’s now living the stories she’s long adored; she’s been given the opportunity to extend real support to someone so very like the characters she’s felt for all these years...

RWBY does love its meta.

Ruby admits to loving books too, particularly the fantastical stories that Yang used to read her. Blake is far more pessimistic.

Blake: Hoping you’ll live happily ever after? 

Ruby: I’m hoping we all will.

Hello, conflict of the entire series. As well as many fans’ hope for how it will all turn out. I’m personally not at all interested in a 7+ year investment with this cast only to watch them end on a bleak, or even bittersweet note. Despite what some might claim nowadays, happy endings are far from overrated. Given the state of the world, happy endings are radical.

Blake tells Ruby that her dreams are “Very ambitious for a child,” one of the very few indicators we’ve gotten (along with Weiss’ “Aren’t you a little young to be here?”) that the rest of the students recognize on sight that Ruby is younger than them. I’ve literally never heard one child refer to another, same-age acquaintance as “child.” Especially not when they’re hinting strongly that they’re being naive.

Yang is SUPER proud of that optimism though and starts a tackle hug that leads to them fighting cartoon style, complete with stars, cat noises, and dust clouds. The racket of course brings Weiss over. And by “of course” I mean “Oh look, another excuse she can use to go talk to the only people she knows here.”

We get another handful of great lines—Ruby has known Weiss a day but she was “always on [her] side,” Weiss exclaims that Ruby is “a hazard to [her] health”—but the episode is basically over. Blake blows out her candles and that’s that.

Meanwhile, I can’t believe I just wrote nearly four thousand words on a six minute episode. I’m gonna go re-think my life choices.

Minor Things of Note

“You’re lucky we weren’t blown off the side of the cliff!” Hey there, episode four foreshadowing! Also, Weiss, you guys are nowhere near a cliff. You’re so dramatic.

You can really see the difference in their expressions when Oz gives his speech. Ruby and Yang looked pumped and joyous. Weiss is anxious and unsure.

Still super interested in Ozpin actually using his cane as he leaves the stage. Probably just a random animation choice before they worked out all his character kinks, but if we imagine that his host was currently speaking maybe that’s a quirk specific to him.

We never again hear about “the gang back at Signal” that Ruby is writing to. Just like we never see the friends Yang apparently entered Beacon with (and weren’t meant to given that they were also shadow people). Not that RWBY needs any more characters to keep track of, but from an in-world perspective it is a little strange that they were supposedly super close to all these people and then just... never mention them again lol. 

[a-writing-bear]

[PruCan] Chapter 10: Soft-Spoken Calling, They Want Their Shyness Back

Ao3 Link:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11159997/chapters/48518471

This Has been cross-posted onto FF & Ao3 under Aliases: BearBooper

You can read this Fic on Tumblr under ‘Keep Reading’ - Ao3 version is formatted, tumblr version is not. Ao3 is recommended.

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Fandom: Hetalia Axis Powers

Main Pairing: Gilbert Beilschmidt & Matthew Williams (Prussia & Canada)

AU:  College AU - Art Student Matthew and Media/Film Student Gilbert

Age Rating/Mature:  Teen And Up Audiences (12+ due to mentions of mature themes as well as swearing)

Trigger Warnings: Recreational Drugs & minor connotations of anxiety (Future addiction to mention themes such as addiction, rape etc.) WITHIN THIS CHAPTER - Mentions of Anxiety, Therapy, Counseling, and anti-depressants. (please note I am NOT anti-meds.) Family Issues are implied, Distance and abandonment suggested.

“Well. Let’s chat then schatje.”

Matthew shivered, not from the cold but the recall of his appointment. Tim had always been there for him, and was sort of desensitized, if not amused by Matthew’s squabbling and frustrated ramblings.

“Is it green or-”

“Nah left the baggie at home.”

His cigarette hung limp in between his fingers, twirling as he watched the hooded man wave his arms- half exhausted and only vibrant due to his stress. The Dutchman had taken out a box of marls, mainly cus he knew any kush would be noticed immediately- the last thing the two of them needed was the waiter ratting them out and the police on both their asses- and offered the sickly stick to his friend. Matthew grimaced, yet his hands grasped for the box searching for one as if he was desperate. He barely smoked. He justified himself that it was a social occasion that called for one and he could just down a coffee and hope his brother wouldn’t smell the tobacco on his worn-out hoodie. A flick of light from Tim’s Zippo was quick to latch onto the piece and the two silently dragged.

“I just don’t understand what she wants from me. She’s a great therapist but…. I’ve done the work... I’ve done the talking. I don’t- she wants me to call my dad.” the words fell out bitterly and ended so sour and abrupt, even Tim himself knew that the mere mention of Matthew’s father must have meant something was drastically serious. Oliver was not exactly an understanding of man.

“She wants YOU...to talk to your dad?!” Matthew’s throat aches with a slight comfort, his gut relaxed knowing at least it was as incredulous as he thought it was. The Canadian had a shaky relationship with his father (who wouldn’t when your father was an inconsolable dickhead?) and had always been a troublesome mess.

“Alfred said he hasn’t even called him. He’s still pissed. And I don't think my mum needs to know that life is still as shit as ever over here.” They both tutted, Matthew had ditched his smoke, stomping it out prematurely as he went to lean his back on the dusty wall of the diner, huddling next to his childhood friend. Tim had been fidgeting trying to find a comfortable leaning position on the wall and the two slowed down, next to each other in contemplative silence. “Alfred talked with Doc and I’m just kinda not feeling all of it ya know?” his voice drowned in exhaustion.

“...need a hug?” Tim’s voice came out lowly and quiet as if a secret offer, he never really was an affectionate person physically, and hugs from him were reserved for his sibling, his mother and Matthew. Always Matthew.

“Is the cold-professional businessman Tim Lars Van-de-Berg offering me a hug? I’m honoured~” Matthew joked as he stared off into the distance, not noticing the slight tinge of red that graced his friend’s cheeks. Tim scoffed and pushed his shoulder almost flinging him off the support of the brick wall, but caught him with a strong and solid grasp, wrapping an arm around the shorter boy’s shoulder and pulling him in some clumsy semblance of a side hug. Matthew was pressed amongst the warmth of his large jacket and hummed thanking his friend for the attempt at comfort. Matthew blushed once he remembered the question and insinuations his doctor had provided earlier pertaining to Tim.

“Hah. Paisley asked if I had a crush on you. Probably the only laughable thing I heard from her all month.” Matthew was too wrapped up in his amusement to notice the stiffness and the heavier hand that held him, nor did he sense the intake of bated breath of the Dutchman who just ruffled Matt’s hair then moved away. Tim was a lone figure, Always has been and the very idea that he had a remote interest in people like Matt was already so impossible to Mattie’s fragile self-esteem.

“Why do I feel like your brother is unlawfully attempting to woo Laura as of right now?” The conversation was being diverted.

“Doubt it. Al’s preoccupied with his long-distance crush- besides Luca would have prevented any comments.” The two snorted before resigning to go back in and face their siblings; one was hesitant due to his unresolved anxiety while the other was hesitant due to the warmth he had by his side.

“You’re going to Lukas and Matthias’ thing tonight right? Could you drive me? I got another prescription and I’m not sure I want to drive home high or drugged...defo not both.” Tim was not surprised- but he was indeed concerned.

“Are you sure you want to come tonight? I can always tell Mathias you aren’t up-”

“I’m fine. I want to go- It’s not often Lukas and Matthias host, I’ve been meeting to pass Lukas something anyway. I...I need the cooldown ya know?” his voice had pitched higher with defensiveness practically dripping off the vowels. Tim just nodded, ditched and smothered his bud and motioned for the two to go back in- lest they keep his sister waiting. There was gonna be a party tonight- the party being a very broad way of describing it.

The Canadian liked to keep to himself, he may be often alone but it was very rare he was truly feeling lonely; however, there was a group of people he’d mingle with on the weekends. To call them small would be an understatement. There were tons of people who would flock to these quieter house parties but the characters were the types to rather smoke and drink quietly rather than knock the walls down with blaring tunes. He’d know the Norwegian and Danish pair since orientation week and while Matthias bright-eyed smile reminded too much of his brother’s puppy eyes, and Lukas was just as cold towards conversations as an icicle he had enjoyed the company when they were together; they’re bickering felt endearing.

“Laura and Luca are probably hungry, Let's not keep em waiting, schatje.” the dutchman watched as the boy faltered, threw down the finished cig and fiddled with his hoodie. The two of them huffed and Tim had grasped onto Matthew’s palms to pull him in slight haste to get into the diner. Just as they were illuminated by the neon sidelights Matthew had found himself bumping into the back of Tim as the Older boy suddenly came to a harsh stop-

“Gilbert. What are you doing here?” Matthew perked up at the mention of his new crush friend. What was gilbert doing here? Oh...the Diner- he must have meant this dinner earlier. Wow. How convenient. Gilbert’s pale face had frozen as if he was a deer caught in the headlights- wide-eyed and surprised even though he had chosen to sneak behind here.

“Oh, I was...I thought I saw you so I just- heh... Nothing.” Gilbert stood awkwardly, the tall dutchman had been looking down at him and he directed his gaze solely on Matthew. The German knew vague amounts of Tim- he’d seen him around campus at the student bazaars- the man was always somewhere bargaining like some stone-cold dealer. “Right well- would..is it rude if I join you guys as I’m kinda alone tonight?” eyebrows raised from the two as they looked at each other in consideration. Simultaneously they answered: Mattie with a quick yelp of yes, whereas Tim had mumbled something along the lines of “my siblings…?

Fuck Tim, he hated himself cus the moment he saw the endearing smile that graced Matthew’s lips as he started trudging back to the front of the diner, he broke and motioned for Gilbert to join their already crowded dinner plan.

The door had jingled and the 3 men stumbled in, Matthew first as he navigated his way through the considerably empty diner back to the bench where Alfred and the Van-de-bergs were parked. The Van de Berg family was a curious bunch; their parents were living in Amsterdam on a big ranch while the 2 younger siblings had moved out to stay with their extremely capable brother as he went to Uni. Laura, ever the beautiful young lady, had just finished her high schooling but was taking a gap year to take care of her younger brother- Matthew always noted how cheerful she seemed, despite her teasing brothers. The youngest of the 3, Luca, had been dressed in a smart-casual getup, a blue and white striped shirt and a tie that had one of the local private school emblems bedazzled on it; They were certain Luca was just as smart and resourceful as his older brother yet what he lacked in Tim’s brawns, he just evoked a certain sense of charisma and had enough extravagance to scholarship his way into a private academic high school on a full ride-it was the reason the siblings came to live with their older brother.

Laura was the first to give Gilbert a dazzling smile- one that seemed to show some familiarity-

“You two always seem to come back with someone new!” Her voice sounded more amused than bothered by the new company. “We might need a bigger table at this rate!” unlike her warmth, Alfred seemed more off-put at the fact his brotherly bonding had become more of an extended gathering- and Gilbert’s newfound presence was less than wanted.

“Since when do you come here, Gil? And what are you doing with my baby brother huh?”

Matthew merely snorted as he pushed his brother to scoot over, “Alfred you’re the younger one. By 10 seconds.”

“Excuse you! It was 7 seconds-” Tim had coughed awkwardly, now pushed against the side of his brother, Luca cramped between his older siblings but still distracted by something on his phone.

“I was just passing by and caught these two on the way in, awesome right?” Gilbert seemed unperturbed by Alfred’s subtle aggressiveness- he had known the American through some other dodgy gatherings in the past and it was strange to know that quiet Matthew is associated to the blond- let alone related to him. The 3 latecomers ordered quickly, while the others had already received their meals; A bright pink milkshake had already been pushed into Alfred’s vicinity and a large number of fries scattered the tray across the group’s table,

“Mattie bro what do you-”

“Vanilla.” Tim had thoughtlessly interrupted, moving restlessly to lean forward towards Matthew opposite him, and attempted to light a cigarette before being chastised by his sister who was already tutting him and muttered something about being a bad influence on Luca. Alfred was about to say something before Matthie politely smiled at his sibling with a reserved ‘he’s right though- I do want vanilla’ grin that seemed more patient than cooperative. Gilbert had settled for a soda and made idle conversation with Laura who somehow mentioned she had seen him before:

“I’m quite sure I’ve seen you at that cafe on Acre Street?”

“Ah that was a while back but yeah- awesome..” it was only when Matthew's arms had jutted into his side that he noticed Matthew struggling to pour his drink into another empty glass- a glass that had been carelessly pushed towards him by Tim, who was more engrossed in talking to the youngest of the table about his homework-

Gilbert was confused and interested in the lavender eyed boy’s calculating movement, “Are you sharing your drink?” Matthew hummed, and tilted his head in thought, still carefully measuring out the white goop as if they were hazardous chemicals.

“Yeah I can’t have a lot of sugar, Tim and I usually share,” Matthew replied as if it was nothing- perhaps this was what he always did? Gilbert watched as Matthew seemed to be entranced in stirring his newly divided drink more than actually sipping it.

“Mattie used to puke all over..” The other twin seemed to indulge in embarrassing Matthew, and Gilbert only stopped from changing conversation due to the beautiful blush that had graced the Canadian's face, too pretty to prevent. Tim, on the other hand, seemed to nod in tandem with Alfred’s loud stories, as if confirming every cringe moment they recalled. I wonder how long they’ve known each other...

“...and then we had gotten up this huge ass slope and BOOM Matthew just-”

“Al. It’s near 9 pm.” Alfred's excitement halted for a second, before breaking out into a wide grin, and before a flash of over-eagerness came out in front of the van-de-bergs and the Beilschmidt Alfred faked an awfully obvious fake cough, quickly getting up and scrambling out the booth- hand pattingMatthew’s hair (why did people always touch his hair??)-

“S H I T. The car...I can't go... unless you’re ready to go Matt?” He can hear the whining tone ready to come out in Alfred’s quick downturn, Matthew was about to get up before Laura offered to take Al home, “Luca needs to get to bed too, he’s got an exam tomorrow- we can drop Alfie off on the way, the campus is really close! Besides, I know Tim and Matthew have plans tonight.” Tim choked up, his turn to awkwardly cough at the unintended insinuation his sister had thrown out (he says unintended but her eyes glistened with mischief- fuck laura sometimes) Alfred had only looked puzzled whereas Gilbert's eyes were darting back and forth between Matt and Tim.

“Perfect dudes, Mattie please stay safe and Tim.. watch Beilschmidt too..” he squinted and Gil just huffed and stuck his tongue out in playful annoyance at the American. Matthew sunk further into the booth, trying to ignore his brother's weird attempts at being a caring brother.

“Tell Kiku I said hi then and don’t forget to call-”

“Yeah yeah call dad or he’ll kill us- I got it I’ll see you later bro!” one last brotherly pat and Alfred had hightailed it out, two-thirds of the van de berg siblings following him behind, thus leaving the unlikely trio alone. Gilbert couldn’t make sense of it, but it seemed as if Matthew and Tim were telepathically communicating as it had been 3 minutes since the others had left and yet no one spoke a word.

“Soo….uh- you two dating or-”

“Nope.” Matthew blurted out, “we aren’t dating. At all.” clearly a question they get asked often huh? Gilbert’s eyes wandered ad his hands cradled his very watery soda in distraction. Tim’s smoke had finished before a word was uttered. Matthew hoped inside that this was a chance to hint towards his very open singleness-

“Look, I’d like to uh..invite you to our thing later but it’s a closed event.” Tim had jutted forward and was staring Gilbert’s red jewel eyes directly. Had it not been for Matthew sitting next to him fiddling with his straw and humming to himself he would have asked Tim what his problem was. Totally Un-Awesome.

“Rigggght. No, totally get it- I’ve got work anyway tomorrow.” He paused before turning to Matthew. “Just make sure we get time to work on our project alright? I think I should go home too.” Gilbert sighed, feeling a little left out but understood that perhaps he was overstepping into Matthew’s life too much- they barely  knew each other.  Gilbert got up and stalked out of the dingy diner and towards his bike(God, its perfect time for a drive right now)

He left. Left without noticing Matthew’s soft smile melt into a bothered frown as the hoodied boy watched him leave as if someone had kicked him the gut.

“You didn’t have to sound so harsh.”

“Well, you know we can’t just bring an outsider.”

“I know but- ...Gil is alright. He’s nice.”

“You think everyone is nice Matthew.”

Another cigarette was lit as Matthew watched those silver strands of hair disappear disappointingly on what looked to be a motorbike through the window. It doesn’t hurt to be nice all the time, Matthew thought to himself, his milkshake unpleasantly lukewarm in his grip.

[anneapocalypse]

Anne watches MCU: Captain America through Age of Ultron

My trek through the Marvel Cinematic Universe has continued but I really slacked off on making posts about it after the first, uh, three, so here's a catch-up post!

And as a note, I am watching the films in release order, but for simplicity's sake I'm grouping some origins and sequels together here.

Spoilers for everything through Ultron, as well as some mentions of Civil War and Captain Marvel.

Crossposted from dreamwidth.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) & The Winter Soldier (2014)

Captain America to me marks a turning point in the MCU, the moment when these films reach a level of sincerity and groundedness that will become a standard in superhero films. And as such, the Captain America series is one of my favorites within the Marvel universe. World War II has also long been an interest of mine, so it's no surprise that I enjoyed the first film so much.

And when Steve reawakens in the modern day and becomes one of the Avengers, carrying on the ideals that made him who he is, I love that too. I would say Winter Soldier is as much an Avengers movie as it is a Captain America movie (the same has been said of Civil War) because once Cap enters the present day, you can't really have Cap without the Avengers.

In the hindsight of having recently seen Civil War, think this is partly because Steve, more than any other Avenger, is defined by his relationships to other people. His friendships, his rivalries, his loyalties—these are what make Steve Rogers who he is, both in the past and in the present. Steve's whole life is shaped by his friendship with Bucky Barnes. His first thought upon waking up in another time is not of the world he has lost but the people he has lost. And his new friendship with Sam Wilson is easily one of the most delightful moments in The Winter Soldier.

I will say that my primary disappointment with The Winter Soldier was that it wasn't really an origin story for Bucky Barnes. There is not a lot of character development for Bucky himself—it is still very much Steve's story. But the focus is again on Steve's relationship with his old friend, and his refusal to give up on Bucky ultimately saves them both.

And I think that focus on relationships is also what makes Captain America a favorite for me.

The Avengers (2012)

I really wish I had written about this movie when I first watched it, because my memory of it is now very much colored by having seen Age of Ultron and Civil War since. Attempting to set that aside, I did enjoy this movie when I watched it, though not quite as much as I enjoyed Captain America.

The Avengers is absolutely not a standalone film. This is definitely the point at which the MCU truly becomes a shared universe, and the origin stories we've had so far are really not optional for understanding these character dynamics.

The tension between Steve and Tony does make sense, both for the characters themselves and as a kind of meta commentary on the evolution of the Marvel universe: Tony Stark's layers of defensive irony set against Steve Rogers' straightforward sincerity.

There are other character beats that work for me in this movie as well. We get the best character development for Natasha, given that she doesn't get her own movie. (CRIMINAL.) That she successfully plays Loki, out-tricks the Trickster, is a truly beautiful moment. Ruffalo's Bruce Banner establishes pretty clearly that he is not Ed Norton's Bruce Banner. And Tony/Pepper manages to grow on me a little bit.

Loki as a villain is... okay. I think it's pretty clear by the end that his plan was never really about dominating Earth, but about causing chaos—which he does, pretty successfully, and in the hindsight of Civil War, said chaos has some far-reaching effects. That part works for me. On the flip side, I really hate mind-control MacGuffins; I think they're a lazy means of getting characters to do whatever the plot requires without having to justify the characterization in any way or deal with the aftereffects, and in my opinion Marvel overuses this trope to death.

Hawkeye as a character is absolutely wasted in this movie, as we have no idea who he is before he is controlled by space magic.

This ties into a larger issue with the Avengers series that, again, feels much more prominent after seeing Civil War: the Avengers aren't a team. Not really. They're a group of solo superheroes attempting to work together. This would be fine for a first Avengers film if the plot were about building them from a group of loners into a real team. But this film isn't about that. It's about dividing them before we've really seen them united. We are told, and not shown, that Natasha and Clint are close friends; beyond that, who on this supposed team actually have a reason to care about one another? And by the end, what has this film really accomplished in terms of building a rapport and making the Avengers feel like a team?

I think the fact that they end the film sitting around a table eating shawarma in stone cold silence says it all.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

The third Iron Man movie begins to bring Tony Stark a little more in line tonally with the other Avengers. Tony loses none of his distinctive character, but his experiences are treated more seriously in this film, with Tony suffering from PTSD. It also explores how the events of Thor and The Avengers have challenged Tony's arrogance as a former lone-wolf superhero driven by technology and his own extreme wealth.

By this movie I'm pretty well over Tony/Pepper. Pepper loves Tony, she cares about him—but she never seems happy with him, only constantly stressed, and as a viewer who loves Pepper, it's honestly not fun to watch. This is something I think Nolan's Batman series better understood; there's a reason Rachel doesn't wait for Bruce. The genius billionaire superhero is a terrible boyfriend. Marvel, unfortunately, doesn't really want to acknowledge that. For Pepper to be happy with Tony, Tony needs to change, and Marvel doesn't really want to change Tony. For Pepper to leave Tony means the hero doesn't get the girl, and Marvel doesn't want that either. So we're left with this tiring, unsatisfying relationship, and I'm super over it.

To add insult to injury, Pepper gets superpowers and doesn't even get to keep them.

The MCU has a Women Problem, and it's really, really obvious in this film. I do like parts of it very much; it's undeniably enjoyable to watch, and I like a lot of what it does with Tony. But it's also representative of some of the cracks in the Marvel fresco as a whole.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Darcy is the most fun character in the Thor movies at this point, and to be honest I kinda like her more than Jane.

The Dark World is another fish-out-of-water story, only this time it's Jane that's the fish. I didn't hate this movie, but it didn't make a huge impression on me, as evidenced by the fact that I can't find any notes for it. :P I enjoyed the stinger of Loki being alive at the end (I knew he was going to be, but it was still fun to watch), and I was pissed they killed Frigga (one of my favorite characters in the Odin family).

And once again, we have a female character infused with a force of tremendous power and she isn't even allowed to keep it. Are we noticing a pattern here, whereby with men, superpowers are celebrated no matter what kind of horror they went through to get them or even how much they hate themselves for having them (hello, Bruce Banner), but for women, superpowers are a horrible curse they need to be rescued from?

Yeah, Marvel has a women problem. NEXT!

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) & Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (2017)

Along with Captain America, Guardians is tied for my favorite series within the MCU. It is unapologetically fun, yet still sincere in its own way, striking a fresh and unique tone for the MCU.

These two movies are excellent and in my opinion, do a much better job of showing a band of loners becoming a team and building a rapport and learning to trust one another than Avengers did.

There is no character among the Guardians I don't love, and the restraint with which Quill and Gamora's relationship is handled (in that they build a friendship, rather than making Gamora Peter's prize for becoming the hero) is damn refreshing. Drax is simultaneously hilarious and sincere—in fact his humor comes from his innate sincerity. Rocket Raccoon exemplifies the kind of insecurities all the characters must overcome to work together. And both Gamora and Peter show self-reflection and growth in the second film, Peter by facing down his own ego, Gamora by acknowledging what her sister Nebula went through without denying her own suffering.

These films, especially 2, are all about relationships, including complicated and troubled relationships, and that's probably why I love them.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Age of Ultron was a weird watch for me.

There were things I liked about it a lot, Natasha's relationship with the Hulk and Clint finally getting some long-overdue character development especially. And yet I came away from this movie feeling more tired than anything else. There were some good character moments, but the story did nothing for me.

Most of all, though, I think my exhaustion stems from how deeply formulaic the Marvel films have become at this point. They're just really, really predictable. I'm already tired of AI-centric plots not thinking of anything more creative to do with their premise than "It tries to wipe out humanity/take over the world I guess." This story feels utterly phoned in.

And even in terms of relationships, this film doesn't really hold up. For one thing, the whole setup of the film is the continued tension between the Avengers, most prominently Steve and Tony, which has never really been resolved. Tony going rogue and activating Ultron isn't so much a betrayal of an established trust as it is simply highlighting the fact that there isn't any.

Meanwhile, Natasha and Bruce are bungled... badly. Much has been said about the conversation in which Natasha seems to be saying that being infertile makes her a monster. A generous reading can attribute this to bad dialogue, appearing to frame the "monster" remark around Natasha's infertility when she is meant to be remarking on the fact that her greatest strength is as a highly efficient killer. But in light of Marvel's Women Problem, that reading really isn't any better. In some ways it's just as bad or worse, as it once again frames power in a woman as a curse rather than a gift. Either way, it's not really a valid comparison to Bruce's specific angst, which is unique to him: he is possessed by a power he not only never wanted, but cannot control.

(No wonder people are confused when Carol Danvers doesn't have to be brutalized to become powerful, or hate herself for being so. It breaks the rules. And thank the gods for it.)

One bright spot in this film is the introduction of Wanda Maximoff, the most powerful heroine we've yet seen in the MCU. Vision, by contrast, feels like a fairly pointless character to me. I feel like everything he did could've been done by someone else, and he's only here because he's in the comics.

I’ve also watched both Ant-Man and Civil War this week, and took copious notes this time, so expect posts for those films soon.

[we-toldjokesonsaturday]

3x21 thoughts

Finally came to terms about the past two episodes of superstore, read a bunch of opinions from the fandom and I wanted to weigh in with some of my thoughts. I tried my best to split it into each of their perspective in order for me to understand where they were coming from. I’m glad most of you agree that the fight was needed and as messy as it is, I still think it wasn’t enough? They still left a lot unsaid, understandably so since they were very driven with pent up emotion and it wasn’t really the time for rational thought. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they argue again. Btw, watch me try to be unbiased and fail big time because I feel like there are some things missed out on Amy’s perspective. So, please feel free to add if I was unfair to either one of them or didn’t address some issues. This is an attempt to paint a full picture on this, so I can stop feeling so incredibly torn between them, it’s torturing.

First stop, the kiss.

That was a really messed up decision on Amy's part because she knows he's in a relationship and to kiss him because she "wanted to” is selfish in every way. The reason behind why she wanted to do it is sad but obvious. She felt like she was losing control, which are usually her lowest moment where she ends up doing dumb things in effort to keep it together and it has constantly ended up backfiring. (See literally every time she has tried to help anyone & truthfully am getting annoyed that it’s always her character who screws up and screws up even more trying to fix it but that’s a rant for another time.) She gave zero thought to how the kiss complicated his feelings and then Kelly’s too. It was partly fuelled by the fact she was feeling vulnerable and desperate to hold on to things she wanted, thanks to the unwanted pregnancy which reminded her of how much she lost and missed out on by having a baby at 19. It was a repeat of what she had gone through and she saw how her life was going to get derailed and is going to change again. Another part of it and equally as important, in my opinion, was that she saw how important he had become to her, even though he’s always been there, she’s never paid attention to how big of a role he played by always being the one who had her back and never judged. Being pregnant made her look at her current situation and see the full picture. That realisation and her recent feelings for him added up and in a way, she convinced herself that kissing him is okay. She took advantage of the fact he always took whatever she threw his way without lashing back or complaining, he was the one to tolerate it and make their friendship still work.

It was obvious how much he himself wanted it and have waited for it. It was the worst timing, but it showed how his feelings never faded one bit. The way he reacted to the kiss after finding out she’s pregnant was so heart breaking. He had no idea what to do and obviously couldn’t understand her selfish reasoning. It must have felt like she was just using him and wanted to kiss him because of her difficult position and it had nothing to do with her feelings since she had never really shown her romantic feelings towards him. It was undoubtedly unfair to him and him walking away was completely justified. There was just no way for him to comprehend what she had done, that she kissed him on purpose, not out of panic or out of the heat of the moment, but on purpose, knowing that she’s pregnant and that he’s taken.

I do kind of wish he would have let it out in the warehouse because would have been far less messy that way instead of everything else that went down after and it looked like she was ready to hear and take whatever he had to say.

Pushing Jonah to talk about it and giving him absolutely no room to breathe just added onto Amy’s pile of bad decisions. He had kissed another woman while in a relationship and that must have messed with his head.  He had to deal with lying to Kelly, kicked into denial mode and ended up taking drastic steps in their relationship. In a way also trying to proof to himself that he could make it work with Kelly, and that he had stronger feelings for her. On top of that, he had to deal with his resurfacing feelings for Amy which in my opinion he thought had faded. He had wanted that for so long and probably gave up hope, so to have her kiss him like that was hugely disappointing and hurtful. When Jonah gave her 2 minutes to speak, he was actually willing to hear her out, and his attitude was such a good addition because for once he was the once dictating how things were gonna go and taking a stand for himself without compensating to her. When he let her talk, she finally admitted to having feelings for him, but I don’t think she made it clear on how serious she is about those feelings. Personally, I think that to him it was still a “crush” or just minor feelings. However, feelings or not, it clearly did not justify what she did and further proved that what she did was purely selfish.

Amy knew she screwed up, she saw the way he was upset and knew she had to do something to fix it. The way he avoided the conversation made it evident that it was something they had to talk about, so she was persistent, oblivious to how the kiss brought up his long-buried feelings for her and that he was not ready to talk about it, because she didn’t want to lose their friendship.

The last time when he brought up the tornado kiss, the both of them simultaneously agreed not to talk about it, Jonah most probably doing that in consideration of her situation at that moment. But eventually, they did confront how awkward things were and worked past it. Even though it was just them avoiding the whole thing, they still went back to being friends and maybe somewhere in Amy’s head, she thought they could work past it this time around too. They needed to confront things, so she pushed, admittedly inconsiderate. But she did it because he was that important to her. Even with all the things she had to deal with that day, and with Adam and Alex around, her main focus was still Jonah.

At the end of the day, I’m assuming Jonah saw that Amy wasn’t around and went to find her, maybe feeling guilty over the whole day after having finally had some time to breath and think. He took a step and even apologised, finally ready to try and resolve their issue but she shut him down.

She gave no thought to the fact that he was having a rough day too thanks to her foolish decision of kissing him. And when he said okay, she still pounded on him because he sounded upset when he had every right to be. In a situation that she brought on herself, he still had to be the understanding one.

“It’s what you want, when you want it.”

I don’t know what other contexts there are involving them, so I’m assuming it’s mainly about the fact she kissed him when she wanted to and now she only wants to talk when it’s convenient for her. And it’s true, plus, she does this thing where puts her opinions on top of everyone else, even in situations where she isn’t the main person. She does it thinking that she knows best, ignoring the person who the situation is about.

Anyways, the degree of complications that the kiss has provoked still hasn’t hit her and she assumes that Jonah is overreacting. Because right now, she has bigger problems to worry about other than a kiss and to her, that seemed to be the main problem in his life. Totally unfair to him and he was right to call her out on it. She had a horrible day and still had to face her pregnancy, the nightmare wasn’t over so to be honest it’s a miracle she’s still keeping it together. But it gave her no right to compare their problems, especially when she had no idea what problems he could be having in his life.

He had always gone the extra mile and cared about her, noticed whenever she was upset and was ready to lend a helping hand. Amy, on the other hand, never probed into his life. I feel like both of them are at fault here, Amy a little more for not being aware enough to care for him the same way he does with her. He was always cheerful and bright, never really showing when he’s down. He doesn’t go to her with his problems, assuming that she has stuff of her own to deal with and that she probably doesn’t want to hear it; Amy being so guarded about herself, she probably isn’t good at reading him and if she does see that he’s upset, she doesn’t know how to approach the subject with him. Her affection always comes off as teasing or sarcasm and rarely heartfelt declaration because she’s just that awkward about being vulnerable. She never lets it show that she cares about him even though she does; note that she does make an effort to apologise whenever they tease him in the store & in 2x11, one of the few times he spoke about his past, she was there to help him, even with the time when he was so disturbed that Glenn didn’t particularly like him when dating Kristen, she did offer a little advice. Obviously, it’s minimal, not nearly as much as Jonah does and could use a lot of improvement. One thing I really need her (and everyone in the store) to change though, is how they always shut down his opinions and never listens. Y’all are rude and insensitive af when he’s literally just trying to help.

That being said, still a douche move for her to compare problems and dismiss his.

“Are you really that pissed off that I kissed you?”

Amy thinking that that’s the reason he’s pissed was astounding considering how much history they have. I don’t think she expected it to invoke such huge complications because she didn’t realise the degree of his feelings, that it goes back so far and how hard it must have been to keep it under wraps. To a certain degree, I think she thought it was gonna be a kiss they can just ignore like they did before. She would have to go back and face her pregnancy making a relationship with him impossible so initially she probably figured that the consequences were just gonna be her and her feelings. Apart from him always being concerned for her, she doesn’t know/never noticed that his caring attitude towards her was more than platonic or “crush”. He never let his feelings slide past their boundary, possibly in fear of losing their friendship. While we may have thought it was so obvious, she never really saw the way he looks at her. He’s dated multiple people since they’ve known each other, so to her, it couldn’t have been more than a simple crush.

“I’m pissed off that I waited around for you for two years and you waited until I was in a relationship and you were pregnant to kiss me.” “Who asked you to wait around?”

At first, I thought he was blaming it on her but really it was a comparison on what he did vs what she did. That he stood by and waited, not making a single move while she chose the worst time to make a move. He had so many triggers to make a move, but he never did out of respect for her marriage and subsequently her divorce. Even when he was with Kelly and Amy’s news with Tate and Alex came up, he was so obviously so bothered by it but he never said/did anything. Partly because he was already with Kelly and it would have been out of line to do anything considering how he was committed to another person. Through all of that he never made a move on her because it would have been selfish put what he wanted first, his wants that would have ended up causing damage to either Amy’s marriage, Amy or Kelly. So, Amy being that selfish made absolutely no sense to him.

I wish that Amy took what he said as a comparison because her response would have meant that she hoped he made a move on her but clearly that’s not the case. She obviously took it as him blaming her and thought it was unfair hence throwing it back at him with “Who asked you to wait?”, not realising the depth of his feelings, that he waited because he wanted her that much. I know what I said about him respecting her space after the divorce, but he could have made his feelings clear then. Yes, maybe if he did, she would have reacted badly/strangely to it, but at least it would be out there.

She realised her feelings for him only after he started dating Kelly, so there really wasn’t a suitable time to make a move between getting a divorce and him getting into a relationship with Kelly. Unfortunately, her being pregnant ended up pushing her to do it out of fear of change. She had a time constraint, something that he didn’t have. Not his fault but it is worth pointing out that their circumstances were different.

“I don’t even know what you’re still doing here, Jonah. You can leave whenever you want.” “So could you, but we all know that’s never gonna happen.” “Go to hell, Jonah.”

It was a low-blow by both of them in all honesty. They were vulnerable and so they got defensive, doing the typical things people do in a fight; push them away or hurt them. She said he could leave, pushing him away as though she doesn’t need or want him there. (But this is up for interpretation because I’ve seen some interpret this as the fact that he isn’t stuck at Cloud9 the way she is and it’s a valid point.) He said that in response, knowing it would hurt her because it was the truth. Highkey understandable because hearing her say that she didn’t ask him to wait and that he can leave must have been so hard to hear. It made it seem like he had little to no importance in her life. Amy’s final line to him, regardless of the fact he was actually right, was because that was the last thing she would have expected him to say. She knew that he knew it would hit her right on the mark as it was something she had shared with him in the past, so for him to pull that out was huge and immensely painful, especially with everything that’s happening in her life.

 Wish I could do a TL;DR version but I wouldn’t have written such a long rant if I could

 More opinions no one asked for:

I truly think the pregnancy is a re-do moment for her. Her job at Cloud9 started off with a pregnancy and the series started off with her realising how stagnant her life is. This pregnancy, unwanted and untimely like the first time around, is the exact thing that would force her to make big decisions. The pregnancy scare in season 2 drove her to admit to Adam that she wasn’t happy, and the tornado made them realise that they shouldn’t stay together. She’s always been a person who’s scared of change and always needed something big to push her into confronting her true feelings. I don’t know where they’re taking this plot and I’m scared but also quite intrigued.

Jonah & Kelly; You guys knew from the start that they were gonna break up and sure, it was a horrible way to break up, but I appreciate that moment where Jonah knew he couldn’t go on. After everything he did and the way he tried to make it work with her, it just wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t intentionally leading her on. He genuinely wanted to make it work, because she deserved that, but he attempted and failed. He stopped trying to trick himself into forcing the relationship and was finally honest with himself about his feelings. A huge part had to do with the kiss and how he had to come to terms with the fact his feelings are still stubbornly there.

[calangkoh]

Character Breakdown: Roy Mustang (2003 Anime)

Time to talk about this awful person. He sucks. And I love him to pieces. He’s a fantastic character. It’s often overlooked that the 2003 anime had hella strong characters (complex, realistic, ambiguous, and meaningful to the well-woven themes of this deeply symbolic series while retaining identities outside of being puppets to the overarching plot), and Roy Mustang was one of them. 

I. The Flame Alchemist, Hero of Ishval 

II. His goal to be Fuhrer

III. His relationship with Ed 

IV. His resolution, and what it all means

I. First a quick rundown: we first really learn about the “Eastern Rebellion” in Flame vs. Fullmetal, where we first see Roy’s PTSD, and his status of the ‘Hero of Ishval’. Later, we learn that it was a massacre from Marcoh. Roy is already disgusted enough by his slaughter of the Ishvalan people, but it’s the order to kill the Rockbells that drives him to an attempted suicide. Initially, I was in the same boat as everyone else who found this problematic--that of all the people he killed, it was the killing of two white doctors that affected him most. But it’s deeper than that. We already know Roy is filled with guilt for the slaughter: he developed a human transmutation theory because of it. In a later episode where he needs to use his alchemy for “crowd control,” he retreats into an emotionless persona. (His remark to Hawkeye, while cold and cruel, makes sense with his PTSD.) So, his order to kill the Rockbells wasn’t more important than other deaths he caused, just different, because it made the military corruption all the more obvious to him and the viewer. (People become soldiers to protect their country, especially in Roy’s case. Most likely the soldiers of the massacre held on to faith that their government was doing all of this for a good reason. It takes the deaths of the people you meant to protect to realize that the government doesn’t actually care about them. Then there’s how it reveals the institutional racism that plays a part as well. 03 isn’t sloppy with how it handles race, so I believe that we are supposed to feel weird about him seemingly being more affected by the Rockbells’ deaths. The race issue is an entirely different analysis, however--one that as a white woman, I don’t feel justified to get into beyond what I’ve already mentioned.) It was also the death that he’d end up hiding from.

Mustang is in Resembool for different reasons than Mangahood at the start of the series. One, he’s coming in response to one of Ed and Al’s letters looking for Hohenheim, but he labels his visit as “nostalgia, or misplaced curiosity.” It’s likely that he wanted to finally face the Rockbells, but got sidetracked with the events that unfolded while he was there. It’s no secret he’s cowardly about it. When Ed makes an offhand comment about Winry (”I’m going to see my doctor...you know the one”), Mustang shuts Edward down with cheap mockery (which lacks the usual banter-y smugness...he actually intended to hurt Edward with this comment). When he visits Gracia, he decides not to come into the house when he sees Winry looking down at him from the window. He remarks to Hawkeye, “Dealing with the living is a lot scarier than the dead. Give me a ghost any day.”

Roy is more clearly affected by the events in Ishval than he is in Brotherhood. He’s a more solemn character, and some key differences in his reactions to shared events between the two series really highlights this. When it’s revealed Scar is Ishvalan, Brotherhood Roy just displays a general shock, while 03 Roy looks down sadly and says sardonically “Now we know why he’s killing us.” I’ve mentioned how the useless-in-the-rain scene differs greatly. This isn’t a criticism of Brotherhood Roy (I like him equally, but for different reasons), but just a highlight of how differently Roy is interpreted and written in ‘03. He’s clearly still dealing with the aftermath of the genocide, while Brotherhood!Roy has moved on to pursue a noble goal. Speaking of this goal, the motivation for becoming fuhrer differs as well, which brings me to the next aspect of 03!Roy’s character...

II. As @combustiblegarbage says, Roy’s goal to become fuhrer was never really about becoming fuhrer, but rather about redemption. It’s unknown why Roy joined the military in the first place, but Hughes seems to imply in the above scene that it was for naive reasons of wanting to protect people. 

Maes: ”Did you think if you became a state alchemist you could fix anything? Bring back anyone who died in a controversial war? Invent some utopian world?” 

Roy: *smiles* “I don’t know.”

As far as we know, Roy attempted suicide twice, and by the time Maes visits him, he had developed theories of human transmutation. He considers himself a coward for not going through with killing himself, but believes himself unworthy of living, so the only thing he feels he can do is make his life worthwhile. He wants to do something to make up for his mistakes. And he arrives at the conclusion of becoming fuhrer.

But as we know, this is a misguided goal. His reasoning implies that it’s not his fault for following orders, and that he could do everything better if he was in charge (gosh what a prideful thing to believe). I’ll get into this in my final point. For now, a quick mention on Roy’s acting abilities.

While it’s not as explicit (since we don’t have Madame Christmas), Roy’s womanizing and lazy attitude is just as much of a front as it is in Mangahood. This becomes apparent when he vocalizes his desire to be furhrer and is called out on it. He pauses. It’s a significant pause, as though he’s considering how to play off his treacherous statements as nonthreatening. Then, he goes off on his ridiculous mini-skirts skit, which by 03 Roy’s personality, is uncharacteristically overbearing. (Other than his “I LOVE DOGS” rant, in which I agree with Havoc has to do with him being ‘manic’ from Ed challenging him to a duel, Roy is a person who keeps his cool.) Later on in the series, we see Roy go on a date with Grace from the flower shop. While his team assumes it’s just another date their womanizing boss is going on, by the faces Roy makes and the context of the date, we can tell it’s all for information. We see Roy collaborate with Armstrong as well in the same episode. He uses Havoc’s date with Catherine to get a letter from Alex. Roy is always using situations to his advantage, in ways that make him remain unthreatening to outsiders.

And Team Mustang is more or less aware of this, and has mad respect for him. (I even interpret Havoc’s response to the mini-skirt rant as playing along with the act.)

Havoc: “Mustang cares about that stuff.”

Ed: “Or wants a promotion.”

Havoc: *slams on breaks* “It’s true, kid. Mustang’s no political novice. He’ll do whatever it takes to move up the chain around here. But if that’s all he’s about, we wouldn’t follow him.”

III. Roy’s relationship with Ed is fascinating to me, because he’s simultaneously protective of him, while also being unforgiving and sometimes cruel in trying to expose him to the harsh realities of life. It’s almost as if Roy is fine exposing Ed to these truths as long as he’s in control of it. He’ll be smug or indifferent to Ed’s suffering as long as he has the teen wrapped around his finger, or as long as he’s not left in the dark. As soon as Ed starts getting into trouble without Roy knowing, or without him having the ability to protect him in case something goes horribly wrong, that’s when Roy gets angry. 

At first, Riza’s comment seemed off to me, since Roy never really expressed care when they were in danger. I then realized two things: one being that Roy’s irrationality must happen largely offscreen, and Riza’s comment being our hint to that. Roy seems to always know everything that’s going on with the Elrics before the plot takes off, and there was a three-year gap of military life we don’t know about. I assume that (a) Roy has a period between sending them off on missions and eventually retrieving information on the boys where he becomes overly concerned about them and (b) one reason he seems to know everything Ed does is because he’s overprotective and cares about their safety, and he just likes to play it off as a power move when facing them (as a way to keep them from getting into trouble that he’d be unable to rescue them from). The other thing I realized, is that her saying this is more like a “hey. look at his previous actions in the series with a new perspective,” from the writers. All his smugness with the boys is just as much a front as the rest of his persona. He keeps tabs on them. He tries too hard to be in control of them at all times. He acts manipulative. All of it is his (albeit horrible and unhealthy) way of caring for them while trying to hide it.  

And after this, we see Roy’s more genuine care for Ed. He gives a loving look when he stops Archer from drawing his gun at Ed’s outburst. He gets visibly stressed out by Ed talking to Archer (a man Roy rightfully distrusts) alone and making deals with him. He tries to advise him. After the events of Liore, he aggressively tracks down Ed, and when he finally faces him, he yells at him for not coming to him for protection. 

“I’m not chasing you because I was commanded to; I’m doing it because I’m pissed. Now why did you two run away without asking for my help first?!”

Roy should know that Ed doesn’t really have reason to trust him with all the times he low-key blackmailed him, but somewhere deep down he’s offended that Ed couldn’t see that Roy actually does care for him. He’s angry that Ed didn’t trust him enough to ask for his help and to leave him in the dark, and he’s angry with himself for not being able to be there for him. It all goes back to Roy needing to feel in control of the boys in order to know that they’re safe. 

EDIT: It’s also important to mention how Roy his the truth about Ishval from Ed (another reason Ed doesn’t trust Roy). For someone who believes Ed to be familiar with the harshness of the world and freely exposes him to it, the Liore case was something he couldn’t bring himself to talk about with Ed. He said his reasoning explicitly. It was too much for Ed to handle. He knew it would psychologically break Ed (and it did), meaning Roy never gave Ed anything he didn’t think he could handle. 

[[Though this is a controversial viewpoint, I do believe Roy was a (again, albeit horrible and flawed) parental figure toward Ed. His state in CoS seems to solidify that he felt responsible for protecting him, blaming himself for his disappearance. From the start, Roy takes the Elrics under his wing and guides them. Even Brotherhood!Roy wasn’t as ‘parental’ as 03!Roy was; BH!Roy was much more of a peer/older sibling figure, at least in comparison.]]

IV. Just as Ed and Al had to battle their sins (Ed and Al battling Sloth, and Al battling Wrath was also quite symbolic), Mustang battled his: Pride, or “preoccupation with oneself.” As I mentioned, Roy’s motivation for becoming fuhrer is a less noble goal than it is in Brotherhood, because it’s still motivated by selfish reasons: a desire to redeem himself and erase his guilt (even though it likely wouldn’t succeed), and because of complacency in the corrupt system (a major theme of 03) and that in achieving power he would be able to ‘do it better,’ so to speak. 

Bradley is Pride in 2003 for a few reasons, but the one that correlates with Roy is his statement of believing himself to be a guardian angel to humans by doing things in favor of a (wrong and corrupted worldview provided by Dante) bigger picture. This is essentially an ends-justify-the-means attitude in favor of bringing an ideal to fruition. And this is exactly what Roy says was wrong with his attitude in the car scene, and again strengthens later.

“The end justifies the means when it comes to achieving my ultimate goal. Back then, that just seemed like the right stance for me to take...[in response to Ed saying he wouldn’t be able to become fuhrer] That may be, but I can’t let him get away with what he’s done.”

...

“I didn’t do this for politics. I couldn’t forgive myself for being blind this long. It was the only way to atone for the friends I didn’t save.”

Two major themes of the series are present with Roy in this sense: “Even when our eyes are closed, there exists a world outside of us and our dreams” and the theme of equivalent exchange run parallel with this development. 

The former refers to how no matter how much we want something, we can’t turn a blind eye to how those wants coming true would affect the world around us. We can’t ignore what we sacrifice to selfishly achieve those dreams. AKA, Roy’s dream to be fuhrer.

The latter refers to how equivalent exchange isn’t a clean rule. In Roy’s case, he does the right thing by defeating Pride, and by shounen anime standards, doesn’t that mean he should somehow get what he wants in the end as a reward? 2003 says no. Sometimes you can do the right thing and end up losing everything because of it, but no matter how unappealing that possibility seems, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, because we’re not independent from the world around us. We’re a part of it, and we’re only as good as we collectively make it. The reward should be in that. This further ties into “there never will be a war that isn’t in some part caused by all of us.” 

So Roy’s journey adds to the themes of 03, just as most characters do. His arc is beautiful in that sense. In what it represents. Like Ed, he’s a deeply flawed and sometimes horrible person, but you need these complexities to get your point across. He works wonderfully with the narrative.

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on Spiderman: Homecoming

I’ll put my short, non-spoiler version above the cut for people who haven’t seen it yet: it’s good. It’s really good, head and shoulders above the Amazing duology and it holds its own against the Raimi films more than you would think. 

Specifically, it has two major strengths: first, as many people have noted, Tom Holland’s Spiderman feels like a real teenager way more than either Andrew Garfield or Tobey Macguire did - in part because the movie makes the most of out its science high school setting by giving Holland a secondary cast of other teens to bounce off of, and by making the conflict between his superhero life and his regular life being about high school things generally (making Lego Death Stars, Academic Decathalon meets, detention) instead of just about his romantic relationships. 

Second, as other people have noted, Spiderman: Homecoming feels way more New York  (more of a neighborhood Spiderman, you could say) than previous Spiderman movies. The Amazing movies’ idea of New York was some abstracted Times Square theme park, and with the best will in the world, even the Raimi films portrayed an extremely white New York that didn’t go beyond Midtown canyons and various landmarks. But Homecoming felt like Queens, from the multicultural student body at Midtown Science to Spiderman and the Prowler (you were great, Donald Glover!) arguing over which bodegas have the best sandwiches, to the jokes about how the outer boroughs aren’t well-stocked with tall buildings to web-swing off of, to Spiderman’s interactions with neighborhood locals who get pissed when would-be superheroes web their hands to their cars or repay subway directions with churros. 

Protagonist

So let’s start with Tom Holland. For all that people complain about the Marvel “machine,” one of the things the machine does very well is make sure that their writers and directors nail the main characters, even if that’s at the expense of the plot, because you have to sell the audience on the character to get the audience to care, and because superhero plots are generally pretty secondary anyway. And Homecoming does a really good job of building on the excellent work that Civil War did. To quote myself:

“I buy Tom Holland more than I ever bought Andrew Garfield or Tobey Maguire - Tobey was always a bit too soft and saccharine for me to buy that he was the irreverent snarker behind the mask, whereas Andrew’s performance was way too much of an over-reaction to the backlash against Spiderman III, and came off as way too cool.

That’s the thing about Spiderman/Peter Parker that makes him tricky: he’s a nerd and a bit nebbishy (although he kind of ages out of that a little - there had to be something there that Mary Jane Watson liked), but once he puts the mask on, he gains the confidence to express himself, even if that is as a smart-alecky motor-mouth. There’s a side of Peter Parker that has an ego, a yearning to show the world that he’s not Puny Parker any more - after all, the first thing he did when he got super-powers was to get in front of TV cameras - that makes him prank J. Jonah Jameson to get back at him, or not just fight the Kingpin but relentlessly crack fat jokes at him.

As I’ve said above, it’s really easy to grab one part of that personality and not the other. And one of the things I really like about Tom Holland’s Spiderman is that I feel like you have both...”

So how did Homecoming build on this? First, the nerd side of Peter Parker was nicely contextualized by his high school (which because it’s an elite magnet school is full of nerds) - he’s extremely high-scoring (he’s bullied by Flash because Peter’s constantly showing him up in class, and he’s the lynchpin of the Decathalon team until MJ steps up in his absence) but you get the sense that he feels like he’s maybe too smart for school so he sometimes gets himself in detention and probably hurts his GPA a bit by not doing homework in favor of his own projects; he’s a joiner (Decathalon, band, etc.) because he’s not very socially confident (hence his small friend circle of Ned and MJ, hence his mini-freakouts about Liz’s party and the eponymous dance) BUT he’s also someone who over-extends himself and then quits (holy crap did that one hit close to home), so he’s seen as a bit of a flake. 

Second, that nerd side nicely parallels his super-hero side, with the wonderful euphemism of the “Stark internship” (god, no wonder Flash is jealous). Peter is desperate for recognition, to get called up to the big leagues, to the point where he’s constantly biting off more than he can chew (literally taking the training wheels off too early) to prove himself to “Mr. Stark” and then tries desperately to hold everything together or explain his screwups away when it blows up in his face. (Notably, all of the major action setpieces in the movie except the last one involve situations where Peter’s over-enthusiasm has actually created a bigger problem: foiling the bank robbery causes the bodega fire, his investigation of the alien power source causes the damage to the Washington Monument, his web-slinging damages the fission gun that damages the ferry, etc.) At the same time, he’s trying to live up to the image of what he thinks a super-hero ought to be, whether that’s in posing for commuters and doing backflips for hot dog vendors or making quips at bad guys (notably, his smart-alecking always comes off as a mixture of nervous posing and too much energy rather than coming off as mean). 

But most importantly, at root Spiderman is a genuinely selfless hero - his first thought is to save the bodega owner and the bodega cat, he gives the ferry rescue everything he’s got even if he comes up short as 98% sucessful, he tells criminals to shoot at him rather than at anyone else, and in the film’s master-stroke, he goes all-out to save Adrian Toombs who’s repeatedly tried to kill him the moment he realizes that his wing-suit has gone unstable, because Spiderman doesn’t want to “instant death” anyone. And he’s utterly determined, as we see in the whole third act where he goes right after Toombs despite getting his ass kicked by the Shocker, then pulls himself out from the rubble Toombs buried him under, then gets himself onto the Quinjet then saves Coney Island from the crashing Quinjet, and on and on....

Antagonist

So...Michael Keaton. While not given a ton of time, Keaton does a great job reframing Adrian Toombs as the voice of blue collar upper-middle-class resentment, justifying theft and murder with his hatred of Tony Stark and the 1% on the one hand and the need to provide for his family on the other, and selling you on how this guy gives more and more reign to his dark side while trying to hang on to his hypocritical moral code. Also, it was an inspired idea to build on the idea of the Vulture being a scavenger by making him both a salvage operator and someone who later makes his money by stealing the aftermath of the Avengers’ battles and turns them into weapons. (BTW, even though the wings were re-done as military high-tech, they still had some personality - the way they draped down feather-like when he was resting on the billboard, the way he used them to pick up Peter and maybe use them as blades.)

Critically, the movie didn’t kill him off. See, Marvel’s villain problem isn’t always about how generic they are (although that was a problem for Malekith and Ronan the Accuser) but that they constantly kill off their villains which means that there’s no opportunity to build up a relationship between hero and villain - Robert Redford’s HYDRA true believer or Ultron would be great recurring villains, except they’re dead now. If Keaton ever wants to reprise his role, it would only take a jailbreak to put him back in the mix gunning for revenge according to his own code. 

Also, the movie did a good job seeding future villains. We see the mantle (or rather the gage) of the Shocker get passed on in the film, the Tinkerer seems to get away in the end so is on hand for future movies, we get a great setup for why the Scorpion would go after Spiderman, and we even meet the Prowler who’d make for a great frenemy villain. 

Secondary Cast

The kids are more than all right, they’re damn fantastic. Ned was a great audience stand-in as well as a voice of reason, was great as “the chair,” and even got to use the webshooters, Liz Allen nicely avoided a lot of “superhero girlfriend” pitfalls, Flash was a nice alternative to the over-used jock archetype, and Zendaya was a genuinely oddball presence who makes for a very different MJ than we’ve ever seen before (my friend @elanabrooklyn thinks that she’s basically comics Jessica Jones in all but name, which I would be ok with). 

Marissa Tomei as Aunt May could have used more screen-time, but what there was, was great, from the ongoing gag that she’s completely oblivious to the fact that pretty much all the men in the service sector she meets are in lorb with her, to her very real mix of showing concern and trying to encourage while giving a teenager room, to her final F-bomb - which thankfully cut short the “Aunt May can’t know” storyline. 

RDJ as Tony Stark actually didn’t over-shadow the film as much as people had worried - mostly, he’s there being simultaneously neglectful (answering some text messages, providing some encouragement outside of post-crisis situations, and actually explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing would be a good idea, Tony) and over-bearing (tracking devices and surveillance cameras are not a substitute for communicating, Tony), which is sort of how you’d expect him to handle being a mentor/surrogate father on his first go-round.

Plot

Despite how confident people were about what was going to happen in the movie from the trailers, the film actually did a great job throwing the unexpected at you, whether it’s the suburban lawn-chase sequence that wasn’t in the trailers, or the FBI showing up on the ferry, or the fact that Peter and Ned were directly responsible for the Washington Monument crisis, or why the Vulture and Spiderman were on a plane. 

More importantly, the high school plot really really worked and intersected nicely with the superhero plot - Peter’s indecision about using his Spiderman persona to boost his and Ned’s social standing leading into the suburban lawn-chase, the Academic Decathalon giving the Washington Monument rescue real stakes, and best of all, the moment where Adrian Toombs opens the door for his daughter’s date and the commonplace dad/boyfriend tension goes into overdrive.  

[coelasquid]

Okay, so I realize that we've only seen snippets, characters are complex, developer intent changes, etc, etc. Buuuut....Canon pre-Reaper Reyes seems like a relatively chill dude? Like,THIS is the guy that was supposed to be the hardass "ends justify the means" and "stick to the mission at all costs" type? o_O Would love to know your take on this.

This is like 99.99% speculation and personal projecting, but I’m fond of the idea that Young Gabe was extremely hard working, gruff, bad with people, edgy on purpose, and young Jack was more chill, friendly, charismatic, motivational. So through the amount of time they spend together Jack helps pull Gabe out of his shell, muscles him into working on his social skills so he’s got less of a wall up. He’s got his own friends and life and he’s fun at parties, but he’s still a gruff, intimidating guy with super high standards so he can be tough to work with because he’s a hardass who’s better than everyone at everything.

Jack and Gabe have like a good cop bad cop dynamic for the Omnic Crisis, Gabe is calling the shots but Jack is the approachable go-between that people aren’t afraid is going to bark at them for messing up. When the Omnic Crisis ends the powers that be are like “hey, Jack a good upstanding ‘’’’’’’All American’’’’’’’ guy, he photographs well, he looks good on posters, he’s good at making all our weird special snowflake superheroes get along and work together, he knows how to tactfully navigate conversations with important people without offending them, let’s put him in charge of Overwatch!”

Gabe is pissed because he did the heavy lifting and now he’s not getting the glory, Jack is pissed because he ALSO wants Gabe to get the glory. He doesn’t want to be in charge, he wants to be the Fun Uncle who helps the kids get along with Rules Dad. But now he IS Rules Dad. He can’t be The Fun One anymore because now everything he does matters and everyone in the world is waiting to pick apart every descision he makes and backseat drive all his mistakes. So Jack starts turning into the stressed hardass because he’s juggling so many plates and playing politics with everyone. 

Meanwhile Gabe is realizing a lifetime of Trying The Hardest didn’t really matter, because it still didn’t get him the job he wanted. He’s kind of salty, but also realizing from what it’s doing to Jack that he probably dodged a bullet because he would not have the tact to deal with all the political niceties. So in his own sardonic way, he kind of turns into “the fun one” because he doesn’t have the spotlight on him and can be as sarcastic and back-sassy as he wants without worrying about what it could “do to his career”. He throws a lot of jabs about Jack getting all the glory, but at the same time he enjoys getting to chill for the first time in his life. He doesn’t want Jack’s job or resent Jack for having it now that he’s seen how all the chips fell, but there’s always going to be that little part of him that can’t stop picking that scab and bringing it up when Jack is stressed out or fucking up. Gabe probably thinks of it as pushing Jack to do better and live up to the standards he expected for Overwatch when he was in charge, but for Jack it’s more like rubbing salt in the wound.

Then when he gets Reaper’d he’s just a pissed off man-on-a-mission who doesn’t need to worry about playing nice with others and social nuance at all anymore, so it’s all Reyes dry humour plus his skill and ambition plus his lifelong dream of wearing The Most Over-The-Top Goth Kid Sleeveless Black Trenchcoat ensemble and throwing shotguns at people. Reaper is Gabriel Reyes coming back from the dead with no fucks to give and ALL OF THE fucks to give simultaneously.

Now I’m not gonna say “this is how I think Blizzard is going to make it happen when they actually drop the lore” because that would make me a goddamn clairvoyant to predict that much backstory. I’m just sayin’ that if I was on the writing staff that’s probably how I’d pitch their relationship dynamic because it meshes with a lot of the established lore bits they’ve already dropped like  “Gabe was in charge of Overwatch for the Omnic Crisis”, “Jack got promoted ahead of Gabe because he ‘brought out the best in people”, “Jack and Gabe continued to work together reasonably well despite this for another 20 years until [mystery event] happened”, “Gabe is an edgelord who condescendingly slow claps at people and talks like a smarmy tryhard theatre kid”, and “Gabe is also fun at parties and says quippy things when everyone else is stressed out about serious political problems”

[ujustgottalaugh]

A little change

Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime) Rating: General Audiences Characters: Yuri Plisetsky, Jean-Jacques Leroy, Mila Babichiva, Sara Crispino, Otabek Altin, Michele Crispino, Emil Nekola Relationships: Yuri Plisetsky & Jean-Jacques Leroy 

Was supposed to be for day 4 of @rarepairsonice week but I didnt have anything for it at first but then the inspiration hit me first last night so I wrote it all day today and I thought I might as well post it since the week isnt over yet. I really enjoyed writing this there were some parts I didnt like but oh well. i just hope y´all like this. Just a heads up, there are hints of milasara so I hope you guys enjoy that too ;)

Yuri Plisetsky was busily hurrying through the hallway while simultaneously staring at his phone to check his schedule, occasionally glancing up to avoid bumping into someone. He groaned when he realized he had English next. Languages had just never been his strong suit, not that he was better at any of his other subjects but they were currently analyzing poetry and that was just not something he wanted to do. Like really it wasn’t like he was going to analyze poetry for a living in the future so why even bother.

He suddenly heard squeals accompanied by laughter and what sounded like a lot people all talking at once. Yuri immediately realized and dreaded what he was about to encounter once he rounded the corner.

The sight that met him once he did, didn’t disappoint. It was something he was growing accustomed to and he really didn’t want to because the more he got used to it the more he hated it and his hatred just grew stronger with each passing day. He can still remember when he first came to school a few months ago that he only used to see it as a mild annoyance, an inconvenience, but from there it grew into a full scaled hatred and it was still going strong.

Wondering what could be pissing Yuri off so effing much? What he dreaded everyday him everyday when he walked down the hallway? What terrorized his thoughts everyday? (Okay this might have all been a bit of an exaggeration but Yuri still stood firmly behind his point that it still pissed him off every single day)

The cause behind all this exaggeration annoyance and hate was none other Jean-Jacques Leroy or just JJ for short which he always insisted on everyone calling him. He was the school’s star football player and has won several competitions in honors of his school. This in turn earned him a quite high reputation among his fellow students which resulted in him having a lot of supporters, admirers who all worshipped him like he was some kind of god. It didn’t really help that he had the looks to match his amazing sportsmanship, it just about made him even more popular.

While all this was amazing and all Yuri always wondered how so many people could just look past his awful personality. Yes that’s right mister super star wasn’t all perfect but was in fact the most arrogant and obnoxious person Yuri had ever met his entire life. Everyone somehow just justified his arrogant and obnoxious behavior saying that he had earned it. Like it was somehow okay for him to be a jerk just because he was a little good at shoving balls into a net. Like come on.

No wait, JJ just being JJ wasn’t what Yuri dreaded every day and plagued his every waking thought every time of the day because he could actually live with that. He wasn’t that obsessive, no it was more what JJ brought to the school every single day. And that was his fans.

JJ always has hordes of people following everywhere and they always ended up clogging up whatever space they were occupying. And that space they so happened to clog up every single day of the week just so happened to be the hallway of the school. This made it nearly impossible for anyone to get through and get to their classes or wherever they were going. It was a nuisance for everyone but neither JJ nor any of his “followers” seemed to be able to take the hint, even after Victor Nikiforov, the school body president warned him several times. Nothing ever changed and the so called school body president never followed up on his warnings which was probably because he was snuggling up with his secretary somewhere in the very school which was a rant for another time.

When nothing changed everyone opted to just avoid the group and take longer detours to their classes completely giving up but not Yuri, there was just no way he was going to let this obnoxious jerk win and get his way. Just no way. And he let him know every single day by calling him names and force his way through his groupies as he tried to fight his way to his classes not hesitating to elbowing or kneeing someone if they refused to move out of the way which was what he was doing at that exact moment.

“Get out of my way!” Yuri roared making several of them glare disdainfully his way. He heard several of them whisper punk under their breath as they moved out the way. Yuri smirked triumphantly as he moved easier through the cloud as people continued to make room for him. Well would you look at that so you can change an old dog a new trick or maybe he should say old dogs in this situation?

JJ, who had been aware of the disturbance among his groupies, smirked knowing full well who it was despite not being able to see due to how small he was and also because of the abundance of people surrounding him. “Yuri Plisetsky, is that you? It’s so hard from all the way up here.”

He got his answer in form of a finger that was raised far above the heads of the crowd. How he managed to do that given his small stature was beyond him but it made him break into a wide grin. “Nice to see you too!” He hummed happily to himself as he watched the finger disappear into the crowd again and what looked like the Red Sea parting as his groupies all pressed together to one side in fear of receiving an elbow to the side or getting kneed in the groin. “Late for class?”

“Fuck you, Jerk Jackass!” Yuri swore at him as he emerged from the crowd and gave him one last withering look before disappearing down the hallway.

“So lethal and sharp,” JJ mused to himself as he watched him go. “Yet so very pretty.”

“What was that?” Someone asked which startled him so much that he almost broke his neck because he whirled around so much only to see Isabella Yang, his recent ex, sidle up beside him with an amusing glint in her eyes. He always dreaded the look in her eyes because he knew exactly what comes with it.

Yuri slumped down irritable next to Otabek Altin who was comfortable sitting in a bean bag in the abandoned gym of the school. He wasn’t alone, Mila Babicheva and Sara Crispino were cuddling together on a gym mattress just a few meters away both intently watching something on Mila’s tablet. They glanced briefly Yuri’s way when he came in but quickly returned to whatever they were watching with Sara waving at him in a quiet greeting.

“What’s up?” Otabek greeted looking up from his phone. “I thought you were going to class today because you had too much absence, what happened?”

“Mister McJerk face is what happened,” Yuri replied heatedly as he crossed his hands broodingly. “Always blocking that fucking hallway.”

“You have to learn to act less aggressively towards your crush,” Otabek said before going back to fiddle on his phone.

“How many times do I have to tell you that hE ISN’T MY CRUSH?!!” Yuri roared at full volume making the girls pluck their headphones off and look his way.

“Oh please,” Mila answered in Otabek’s stead looking very amused and entertained while doing so. “You’re so obsessed with him. He’s the only thing you have been talking about lately.”

“I can affirm that,” Sara agreed raising her hand which made Mila intertwine their hands. Sara shook her off before she went on gesturing her hands as she talked. “Dude he has literally taken over your life. The other day you threw away your ice cream because it looked like JJ’s face???”

“Shut up both of you,” Yuri snapped feeling embarrassed and fighting the blush that was slowly creeping up his face. “It’s hard not to talk about him when he taunts me every single time he sees me! Just today he dissed me calling me short.”

“Did he now?” Mila mused. “I remember you accusing him of insulting for just looking at you.”

“He was literally looking down on me,” Yuri defended. “And no it wasn’t just because he was taller than me but he had a really condescending look on his face! You wouldn’t understand!”

“Sure,” Mila said rolling her eyes.

“I’m surprised you could tell from way down there,” Sara added with a snicker which just earned a venomous glare from Yuri and a high five from Mila. Yuri narrowed his eyes at her, he didn’t really like the way she was getting mouthy at him lately. He could still remember how much of an angel she was when she first hung out with the three of them but guess that’s what happens when you hang out with Mila Babicheva for so long. She wasn’t exactly a role model student unlike Sara’s elder brother Michele Crispino. Speaking of elder brothers…

“Are you sure you should be hanging out here with us?” Yuri mused, his mouth curving into a smirk. “You wouldn’t want to worry your dear older brother by skipping class, now would you?”

Sara narrowed her eyes unappreciatively at his condescending tone but then she just giggled as she stretched across Mila’s lap as though she found the whole thing hilarious. “Oh don’t worry my brother won’t have to worry if he doesn’t know about anything besides today he’s pretty occupied so he won’t have time to worry about me at all.”

Otabek suddenly groaned as Yuri was about about to ask Sara what possibly could be occupying her brother so much that he wouldn’t think about her since practically unheard of. Everyone in school how overprotective Michele Crispino was of his little twin sister Sara Crispino.

Yuri turned towards his best friend. “What’s wrong? Did you lose at one of those stupid block games again?”

“No, it’s Catherine, my history teacher,” Otabek replied. “She’s only giving us two days to write our end of year history paper.”

The other three gasped in horror, all muttering about her monstrosity and cruelty. Like how was that feasible, there was just no way anyone could do that.

“Oh wait, you have Catherine as your history teacher too!” Sara suddenly exclaimed almost crawling over Mila to swap stories with Otabek about how stuffy and snobby their history teacher was. “The other day she singled me out of everyone and bombarded me questions in front of the whole class! It was so embarrassing!” She empathized the last part by burying her face in her hands.

Mila aww'ed at her as she soothingly ran her fingers through her hair. “She’s such a bitch.”

“I know right!” Sara agreed as she lifted up her head to look gratefully up at the redhead for understanding. “That was such a crappy thing to do.”

Then they suddenly just disappeared into their own little world completely forgetting about Otabek and Yuri only talking to each other, giggling and laughing. Sara seemed to be doing most of the talking while Mila listened attentively to her with a fond smile on her face and twirling Sara’s hair around her fingers. As far as they were concerned they were the only ones here.

“I really hate it when they do that,” Yuri said rolling his eyes. Girls.

Otabek just shrugged not at all minding your that his issue was dropped that fast and just went right back to using his phone. Yuri leaned closer to him to watch him play but quickly lost interest and opted to watch cute and hilarious cat videos on his own phone.

They were all just doing their own phone when suddenly someone bursted into the gym startling all of them except for Otabek who heard him coming by his enormous and hectic footsteps. In the doorway stood none other than a red faced Michele Crispino but he wasn’t alone. Behind him towered a tall guy with light brown hair and blue eyes. He smiled excitedly at all of them seeming happy to be there. Michele? Not so much.

“Sara!” He thundered angrily while his companion pleasantly said. “Dobrý den!”

Yuri looked skeptical up at the stranger. “Is that supposed to be a greeting or something?”

“Oh yeah, apparently,” Michele replied getting momentarily distracted. “No wait! More importantly what are you doing here skipping class?!”

“Relax I’m not skipping class,” Sara lied. “We have self study right now, more importantly, Micchi, why don’t you introduce us to your new friend.”

Sara purposely dragged out her last word as she devilishly smirked up at him making Michele blush.

“He’s not my new friend,” Michele retorted with a glare knowing exactly what she was trying to insinuate. “He’s just some new transfer student from abroad that the teachers decided to saddle me with. His name’s Emil Nekola.”

“Mickey, you wound me,” Emil said sorrowful putting his hand on his chest in pretend hurt. “And after everything we just did together.”

Mila roared with laughter at the implications. “I like this guy and Mickey really? You’re already nicknames basis.”

“No we’re not,” Michele snapping and turned towards Emil for making the others misinterpret his words and stop calling him that stupid nickname already.

Sara rolled her eyes good naturedly at her brother as he heatedly scolded a grinning Emil who didn’t seem to mind. “Sorry about my brother,“she apologized as she got up and slung her bag across her back. “Well I have to get my next class, call you later?”

“Sure,” Mila yawned as she stretched already missing Sara’s warmth. “Go and kick Catherine’s ass for me.”

Sara laughed. “I wish it was that simple.” She said wistfully before bidding them all goodbye and then ushering her brother and his new friend outside, slamming the door shut behind them.

Mila sighed as she stared up the ceiling which drew Otabek’s attention and made him lower his phone. “So…”

Mila turned her head questioningly towards him. “So?”

“So what exactly is going on between you two?” Yuri asked in Otabek’s stead. The perk of being best friends was that you could pretty much guess what the other was thinking. Okay that was a total lie they had been extensively talking about Mila’s recent crush right behind her back but she didn’t need to know that.

“Eh… it’s sort of hard to tell,” Mila confessed not even bothering to ask them how they knew. Even she knew how transparent she has been as of late. Usually she’s really good at keeping things under wraps but Sara was really making that difficult. Damn her and her beautiful captivating eyes. “The line between best friends and girlfriends is really blurry when it comes to girls. It’s impossible to know if a girl likes you as a friend or a lover since they pretty much treat you the same. Which is both nice and horrible at the same time.”

“That sucks,” Otabek sympathized with her.

Yuri snorted. “And you called me obsessed, you were practically all over her today.”

“Well at least I can own up it,” Mila retorted and packed her tablet and headphones away before she got up. “Well later losers, I’m going to ask Georgi to give me a ride home.”

“I’m not obsessed!” Yuri yelled after her as she sauntered away. She just waved dismissively at him without even stopping or turning around. “You old hag!”

“Bye!” Otabek called after her which made her turn her head a bit to smile back at him just as she exited the gym.

“Everyone is just so infuriating,” Yuri sulked. “Why can’t they all be like you?”

Just then Otabek’s phone suddenly rang and he smiled apologetically at Yuri. “Sorry gotta take this and it might take a while.”

He then jumped up from his sunken bean bag and exited the gym hastily as he answered the phone in his mother tongue, Kazakh.

When Otabek answered a phone call and said that he was going to take a while he really did mean he was going to take a while. He received lengthy international phone calls from his family all the time and he never minded talking to them at all. It seemed nice and Yuri even expressed to Otabek as much but he had told him as nice as it was at times it came with its own complications.

Yuri was just lying there in the gym, his thoughts wandering in every direction and just contently enjoying the silence when suddenly Yuri heard shouting coming from the outside. Curious as to what happened he climbed up the wall to the gym’s high window to peek.

The windows were situated at the far back of the gym and they facing the huge football field which was located just behind the gym. There he spotted someone angrily kicking the grass.

“What’s that idiot?” Yuri murmured and realized upon closer inspection that it was JJ no one else had such a stupid haircut and stupidly broad back. Okay maybe Otabek had somewhat same hairstyle but he pulls it off. He’s way cooler than this stupid jock that was now kicking at air.

Yuri snickered, hopping down from where he climbed up and went outside to have poke some fun.

Once outside he noticed Otabek was nowhere to be found, he had a terrible habit of wandering while talking on the phone, Yuri just hoped he hadn’t wandered seeing as they needed to head home soon. Seeing as both Georgi and Mila were already gone he was his only ride home. He wasn’t too worried though, there was just no way he would leave him hanging. That was the one thing he could always rely on.

When Yuri rounded the corner onto the football field and the back of the school gym, JJ was still there. He had stopped kicking the grass however and was just standing in the field with slumped shoulders looking very dejected. What brought him down? Did someone finally finally put him in his place?

“Hey!” Yuri greeted cheerily startling JJ. “Why did you massacre the grass? What did they ever do to you?”

JJ didn’t answer, he didn’t even bother to turn towards and instead sniffled. Sniffled?!

Yuri’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you actually crying?”

Any other person would probably be concerned or something but not Yuri he fed on the misery of others. He was about to mock JJ, walking around his back so they could be face to face when he did but the look on JJ’s face when he saw it dwindled that urge a little bit. Just a bit.

He looked miserable and both his eyes and nose look puffy and red from crying. He was cry from the handsome football star that every student body fell in love except for a selective few which included Yuri.

“Go on,” JJ suddenly urged Yuri breaking the awkward silence between them which Yuri had barely since he had been too busy staring at his face. “Go on and laugh. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To laugh at me. Go on I probably deserve it anyway.”

JJ then just stared at him waiting for Yuri to start laughing at him and mocking like the pathetical idiot he was but Yuri just stared back confused. “What happened to you man?”

JJ sighed and slumped down on the ground not caring how hard it was and how it hurt his ass. None of that really matters. “I got a C.”

Yuri exhaled a breath he didn’t even know he held. So that was what got his panties in a twist. He scared him for a second there.

“Wow so you got a C, big deal,” Yuri replied offhandedly. “I get C’s like all the time. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

JJ glared up at him like he was stupid which he probably was if any of what he just said was true. “I can’t go to the nationals.” JJ deadpanned.

“Natio-” Yuri oooh'ed as the realization dawned on him. His memories was always fuzzy when it came to sports but he has probably heard of that before, and he might or might not have wished that JJ got a failing grade out of petty one time he got into a fight with one of his groupies because of him. In Yuri’s defense he had no idea his wish would come true.

“Yeah oh,” JJ rolled his eyes. His eyes softened. “Now my team will have to go to the nationals without me, they’re going to be so devastated by this. I can’t believe I’m letting them down like this. And coach is going to be so disappointed in me.”

“Wait,” Yuri said sitting down. “You’re not because you can’t go to the nationals but because you’re afraid of letting your team down?”

“Well yeah!” JJ replied in a duh tone. “They all depend and rely on me, I can’t just let them down! I’m a star football player for a reason.”

“Yeah, but they’re football players too, right?” Yuri countered. “Surely they can survive without you, they aren’t babies.”

“Yuri, we have a system in our team, every player has a special function and that system can’t work if one of the players aren’t there especially if it’s the most essential part and it just can’t be replaced that easily,” JJ said in one breath.

“And will the other parts of the system blame the missing part,” Yuri asked feeling like kicking himself for going along with JJ’s stupid analogy but it made disturbingly a lot of sense. “Or will they wait for the missing part and try to go on and function without him.”

They stared at each for a long moment.

“That last part didn’t make sense,” JJ noted. “But I think I understand what you’re trying to say, it isn’t the part’s fault that it isn’t there so it can’t be blamed for it and the rest of the system will just have to make do without the part and it might not work but there’re times that systems work even when they’re missing some parts.”

JJ sighed this time out of relief and not disdain. A small smile formed on his face, it wasn’t one of those stupid fake grins he wore around his ‘friends’ and groupies but a real genuine smile. His eyes despite how puffy they were weren’t red anymore and for the first time Yuri noticed that JJ’s eyes weren’t black but were in a fact a dark blue which just made him even more attractive.

Yuri blushed at the realization of his thought process. What was happening? There was just no way he had a thing for this jerk. Was it because he was being less jerky now? He wasn’t being his usual obnoxious and arrogant self, this was the most real and vulnerable had ever seen him. It was so surreal that Yuri felt his breath catch in his throat once JJ turned toward him.

“Thank you, Yuri,” JJ said. “You’re actually good at cheering people up, you know that?”

Some his usual bubbly energy returned but Yuri didn’t mind that.

They just stared into each other’s eyes in comfortable silence.

“You know what I’ve always wondered?” JJ suddenly blurted breaking the silence.

“What?”

“What’s the color of your eyes? Blue or green?”

Yuri thought about the answer. “What does your idiotic brain tell you?”

“Both?”

Yuri gasped. “How did you know?”

“You’re a jerk.”

“Anymore than you are?”

JJ just laughed at his retort not even finding it offending he reached out for Yuri which suddenly made his heart pound really hard. He caught one of Yuri’s hair. “Why’re you growing your hair out?”

“Because I like it,” Yuri exhaling sharply as it suddenly became a little hot and a little hard to breath.

JJ hummed in approval. “It’s very pretty.”

“No shit,” Yuri replied a little too harshly as he wondered what was wrong with him, why did he suddenly feel so sweaty, but he deep down knew the exact reason which just made him want to make some distance and at the same time like shuffling forward.

Suddenly without so much as a warning JJ leaned forward and Yuri watched in horrified terror as JJ slowly closed the distance only for him to just as suddenly stop midway.

JJ’s eyes didn’t look soft anymore and he was nowhere near his relaxed self he was just a few moments ago. Instead he had a mortified and ashamed look on his face. “What am I doing? I’m sorry I didn’t-”

As Yuri watched JJ beating himself up for suddenly coming onto him he realized that what he felt wasn’t terror but an emotion just as strong but very different. It was excitement. It was swelling up in his stomach and the realization somehow calmed him it was also the reason why what he did next didn’t surprise him.

He roughly grabbed JJ’s collar and pulled JJ into a hasty but chaste kiss trying not to think about what he was doing before he chickened out.

JJ stiffened against the kiss at first but then he slowly relaxed into it, slipping his hands smoothly into Yuri’s hair. He ran his hands through it lightly which made Yuri hum into the kiss and JJ smile at his reaction.

Yuri was the first to break the kiss. He tried to look mad but it was really hard especially since he’s breathing really hard. “What’re you doing moron?”

“Enjoying this?”

“If you tell anyone about this I’m gonna kill you.”

“Ah is my little Yuri acting all shy now?”

Yuri just continued to glare daggers at him. He was not amused at all.

“Okay, no telling anyone, but can I at least continue to kiss you?” JJ hooking his arms around Yuri’s waist who had somehow ended up on his knees between JJ’s legs during their kissing. “Please?”

Yuri replied by letting go of his collar and slung his arms around JJ’s neck. He was still looking down at him since he was still on his knees. He liked the view from up there. He leaned their foreheads against one another not breaking eye contact as his hair framed his face and kissed JJ again. Yuri doesn’t know for how long they made out for but he would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy every single second of it.

[anthropophagusthebeast]

nothing is worth talking about but what else is there to do. yesterday was totally miserable, i failed at everything, and then as usual, as throughout my entire life, my own feelings about my own experience are a burden to others and that makes me a bad person. i wish i had just stayed in bed all day, then i wouldn’t have had to get into anything that just winds up directly engaging me with the fact that i’m beyond help and it’s a problem for everybody else, who would all be having a great time if it wasn’t for me. my whole stupid life. i just don’t want to do anything because i know how it turns out but i just feel so obligated. people get just as mad at you for “not trying” as they do when you try and it’s a big mistake. there’s no way out. nobody gets how all the “little things” amass into one big monolithic thing that only has one message and one character: your life is hard because it’s a waste of time. when you’re a shitty person, one of the problems is that people treat you like some new form of liar, like you’re just making it up that you can’t do anything right, it’s all a routine for the benefit of your captive audience, to disguise the fact that secretly you’re great and capable of anything. as if anybody has ever had a reason to fail on purpose, as if anybody has ever just refused to indulge in their own greatness for some perverse and unknowable reason. it’s so frustrating that while i’m trying so hard and failing so theatrically, there’s this perception that it’s all my choice, i could just Be Better if i didn’t insist on being so stupid and incompetent and uncomfortable. god it’s so fucking funny too that right in the middle of this day that was just one compound failure after another--failure to do something, and failure to simultaneously act like everything is perfect--my parents would bring up humiliating early childhood shit, and some of it not even early ENOUGH childhood shit to justify how stupid it was. i hate thinking about that stuff. while they were at it i should have busted out the story about how i submitted something for this special writing test and the proctor made an example of me in front of the whole entire room filled with my classmates, to show how even someone who you think is “smart” can be a really awful, boring writer with nothing to say. everyone thinks it’s funny that i’m depressed and everyone thinks that the things i hate myself for, i’m doing on purpose and could just stop at any time. i mean if i were capable of being at all different or better, i wouldn’t have to feel like this. i care about my family but so often i just feel like i’m sick of talking to them. i want to just leave them to their own devices so i don’t have to sit there conspicuously looking out the window with nothing to say while they gush over the news of the day or some celebrity event or just like, what it’s like to be a published writer and an overachiever of great talent. like what the fuck am i ever doing in that room, besides anxiously struggling to keep my behavior in check so nobody gets mad at me for having the wrong look on my face, which i invariably fail at. like if only i could just be nominally involved and send a warm greeting card whenever they’re getting together to share their amazing successes and everything. count me out. i get up in the morning and i feel pretty sick, which i announce, and i kind of wish it had factored in to how the rest of the day went, like maybe i could have at least gotten some forgiveness on my energy level or whatever, but it didn’t matter. nothing matters. for some reason i cannot communicate to my husband that i’m trying to plan our trip to the liquor store. i’m trying to say that i can either do groceries now and he can go later if he wants, or if he doesn’t want to do that, then i’ll just do my whole trip later, and for some reason he tells me that he can go AND that he doesn’t have a good reason to go, at the same time, and for several minutes there was just nothing i could do to get my point across so i could get a real answer. then i make this remark about someone having red hair, and honestly most of the reason i said it is that i can never get on the same page as him about what constitutes red hair, so i adjusted my identification to what i think he always says, and he disagreed with me AND explained why i was wrong. it just got me thinking about all the basic material things in life that we cannot agree on, like “what tastes salty to me tastes sweet to him” sounds like a ridiculous hyperbole but it’s a literal example that happens all the time and it just makes me feel so stupid or like i’m going insane, that we can’t even agree on black/white up/down type of designations. i sat there thinking about every example of this and thinking about how i have to stop caring about this, i have to stop caring about this, i have to stop caring about this. i have to stop caring. i’m always telling myself this because it’s the only thing that makes any sense. just stop caring. my caring about anything never makes the slightest difference in the world except that i get upset, and then other people are upset at me for being upset, like it’s something i’m doing to them. and of course while i’m gazing at my bookshelf thinking about my list of things to never bring up again--don’t say who has red hair, don’t say what things taste like, avoid every single topic where your husband is reliably going to say an inside out version of what you experience, just don’t talk about any of this stuff again, it doesn’t matter anyway--he of course is suddenly at my side with deep concern in his voice about whether i’m annoyed because we disagreed about the redhead. i was actually honest and remarked that we’ve never agreed about whether someone is a redhead in our entire relationship, and then we went on to disagree about some more redheads, and i GUESS it was good that i was honest because supposedly that’s always good, but was it really? did it matter THAT MUCH that i didn’t just absently refuse to say if something was on my mind? i mean what difference did it make? i have these fantasies all the time about just never speaking again because i’m always wrong and i always have to back off, but then it’s also “wrong” to not speak, or speak less, that is ALSO something bad and abusive that you are doing to other people in the process of just trying to avoid unnecessary and irresolvable conflicts that don’t go anywhere. then we have to play this game i made him get me for my stupid birthday, or more specifically i caused him to get an extra controller by suggesting that we could actually play together, which i should have known would be a bad idea; things had been ok the previous day but then all of the sudden he started playing to shut me out completely, he cleared every single screen by himself before i even got my crosshairs on anything, i was totally incapable of landing a single point and when i decided to just stop trying as an experiment, it didn’t change anything that was going on on the screen, he just completely took over like i wasn’t even there. it seemed like i had two choices: either quit and just let him have the thing all to himself which is what was effectively happening anyway, OR try to remind him that this is a cooperative-not-competitive game and i don’t really want to play if he wants to score every single point while i just sit there, which would have resulted in him sitting around politely twiddling his thumbs while i struggle to catch up, which sounded even worse to me. so i bailed and somehow that had to be controversial too. i mean i forced him to get this extra controller somehow, and now we have this thing in the house that he went out of his way to get, that we can’t use because i’m not good enough for that activity, or not even a good enough person. yet another fuckup of mine that cost effort and money to accomplish. more things to feel guilty about. like yet again i’m not allowed to just NOT do something where i’m only going to humiliate myself or waste someone else’s time. like what is this societal obligation to just grin and bash your head into the wall over and over again so nobody has to be mad at you for not participating. then we talked to my family and i guess i made an asshole out of myself by trying to escape attention, and i FELT like an asshole while i sat there with nothing to say while my husband led this whole conversation with them--except for the times that we had to talk about my bad, sad, failed children’s art. like i tell this story about an object that i thought was mercifully long gone, but my stepmother brings it up, a “book” i made at a library event when i was a little kid, which i remember so well because the librarians were desperately trying to get me to string more than two ideas together and i just couldn’t, i just couldn’t think of a story at all, not even a ripoff one like some of the stuff i would write later when i was trying to live up to the accusation of being “gifted”, even with them getting visibly frustrated with me and breathing down my neck trying to explain to my little retard self about what “beginning” “middle” and “end” mean. maybe they thought my parents would be mad because probably they paid for me to do this little workshop and if my thing came out bad then they’d be pissed, like when the school photographer jumped up my ass about how i wasn’t smiling enough and i was supposedly acting like I was “angry at the world” when all i was trying to do was not take a picture with my big stupid hideous toothy grin that i felt terrible about, but he was probably just trying to protect himself from angry parents. anyway and for some reason my father’s response to this is to bring up this unbearably pathetic story i did when i was a little too old to be making shit like that, this miserably serious x-men fan fiction that included a talking crayon. this seems to come up whenever i try to bow out of the idea that i’m “talented”, whenever i try to say that i’m not creative, which is really true, somebody wants to mention like the saddest most pathetic thing i’ve ever done in my life. i’m 39 years old and i’m still hearing about it. it makes me feel like garbage every time, at least for the reason that something terrible i did when i was 12 or something is still the most memorable work i ever produced, and everyone laughs and i’m supposed to like, enjoy this somehow, or take up the mantle of amusing everyone with what a piece of shit i am, and do it with a smile and a good attitude. like everyone knows i’m a piece of shit but i’m not allowed to FEEL like a piece of shit about it, what kind of life is that? so finally i removed myself from all of this and just hovered in the kitchen trying to do the one thing that i almost do right every week, which is make this one dinner when otherwise i totally fail year after year to contribute to the meals in this house, and i completely fucked it up. my husband could barely choke it down, it was terrible to see. i really don’t want to do it again, ever. and of course i made some remark about how he doesn’t have to eat it, and that was a bad thing to do too, that also made me a piece of shit, an even bigger one. ruining dinner. ruining the game. ruining my family’s good time. ruining groceries. ruining everything. all i want to do is kill myself but everyone would be mad at me for that, too. some of my most moving fantasies are about people telling me it’s ok if i kill myself. it’s just ok. i don’t have to feel bad about it and everyone understands that i have come to the mature and reasoned conclusion that my life is a huge waste of time; if i don’t like it, and neither does anybody else, then it’s obvious that i should end it, everyone will understand and forgive me and be glad that it’s over. but of course that would never happen. i just can’t win, i’m not competent to just get through a day uneventfully, and whenever i show who i really am or how i really feel everyone hates me for it. i hate myself. who wouldn’t hate themselves for, day after day, failing to do anything good, and then everyone treats you like it’s funny and you should be laughing. there’s just toil and misery and it’s fruitless. the paradoxical insistence that you make a clown out of yourself AND act like you like it AND act like actually you are also capable of great things just like everybody else, OR ELSE you have a bad attitude and everyone has the right to hate you for it. i just want to die, all the time. nothing works and nothing helps. i fantasize about having a brain aneurysm and dying in my sleep, or getting hit by a car, or catching a stray bullet, or anything where i just spontaneously expire and i don’t have to do anything ever again. like right now my husband is fucking grinding coffee in our bedroom which is totally and completely abnormal, just to avoid me. what the fuck am i supposed to do. literally what the fuck am i supposed to do. communicate better than i can communicate. play better than i can play. be more creative and successful than i can be. cook better than i can cook. don’t be sad. don’t be confused. don’t be angry with myself about the same things nobody else likes about me either. don’t kill myself because then everyone else will be pissed off even more. like what could i possibly do to ameliorate things. just don’t be yourself, at all costs, do not ever be yourself. don’t escape. don’t forfeit. don’t quit. don’t have feelings. don’t have a hard time, ever. don’t stop trying to do things you’re bad at. don’t stop humiliating yourself. don’t stop acting like you like it. i wish my mother had had an abortion and i’m sure so did she. just kill me, please. or do i not deserve the fast death, either. i don’t want to do anything. just thinking about how i spent about $100 on trash bags because i was too stupid to figure out what to do. just thinking about walking out in the rain to “help” take the trash out, realizing that there was a problem, and having my husband yank the bad wrong bag i stupidly bought out of my hand and leave me standing there doing nothing while in front of me he dragged all the trash across the sidewalk by himself, shouting and cursing. and this is it, now he’s working in the bedroom. never happened before. it’s me, i’m garbage. i’m shit. maybe i’ll die. i ruined everything. because i ruined yesterday, i also ruined today. maybe it will turn out that yesterday i also ruined tomorrow. and on and on and on it will go. nobody knows what it’s like to just be trash. i’m afraid to stop typing because there’s nothing else to do. i can’t imagine going to yoga tonight. the only thing i feel in my body is this cortisol response. a cold rock in my stomach. imagining people laughing at me writing things like this and talking about what a pill i am after i’m dead. yesterday i was so upset that i started imagining animals, being deep in a forest somewhere and just taking comfort in the company of animals. it was alright until somehow the question came up of do i want to feel better, why don’t i just choose to, and i couldn’t respond to that. i just feel so bad. intellectually i’d like to feel better because then i wouldn’t have this exhausting problem. but it’s hard to imagine from where i’m standing, when i feel like i have this bottomless supply of grief that i can’t just pretend isn’t there. maybe i would like for people to feel more sorry for me, is that it? when i try to admit this stuff i start comparing myself to my most intensely selfish friend and it disgusts me but maybe that’s why we’re friends, because secretly i want everyone to pity me just as much as he openly demands pity. i guess it makes him better than me that he’s more honest about it. but like i don’t need people to somehow uplift the idea of me or anything. i just want to be dismissed. i want people to say “ah yes, claire can’t do this, she can’t do anything, we’ll just leave her out of it,” and then i want them to really do that and not roll their eyes at me or laugh at me or yell at me or treat me like i’m secretly depriving them all of something they deserve. just leave me alone. just believe me when i describe how i’m incompetent, or even demonstrate it! that’s probably the worst thing, just not being believed. when you’re trying desperately to explain your sense of reality and everyone just turns it inside out because it’s not convenient for them. because nobody in the world feels the way you do. i hate the way people treat the suicidal. i hated that documentary where the kid kills himself and his stupid friend dissects his suicide note to explain that it was all bullshit because all teenagers feel that way. well obviously all teenagers do not really feel that way because all teenagers do not kill themselves; they have good days and some bad days, they don’t REALLY hate themselves, they strive to be liked and have friends because they realize it’s possible, they get over it, whatever “it” is. just because someone isn’t eloquent enough to explain to you convincingly that their life is agony doesn’t mean that their agony isn’t authentic, that it’s just shallow childhood bullshit. nobody truly believes that you’re in pain until it’s too late, and then even after that, they develop all these theories about how your pain was inappropriate and flimsy enough to have been dispelled with a cup of coffee and a hug, so basically it’s your own fault for not “reaching out”. and now we’ve reached the desired conclusion, that it’s ok for you to be angry at people who experience lethal psychological pain because they were just being shallow lazy selfish jerks to rudely spoiled your day by choosing to make sure they never lived through another meaningless day again. 

[amystuy]

The first time I visited Tallahassee I had a night where I was much less than sober and wouldn’t leave the blanket fort we had built. The next day I still wasn’t sober but at least was fairly certain I was a human and knew what a human was. The water wasn’t hot for a shower, so you took me next door to OAF house. What a magnificent shower! What an earthy bathroom! I swear I was bathing in a waterfall and I didn’t ever want to leave. Later that year, in the summer, I decided to live in Tallahassee, and as if ordained by the powers that be I was able to live in that house. 

When I lived there I rode my bike 42 miles roundtrip to collect GPS points at a State Park. I rode my bike in the frightening yet incredibly refreshing thunderstorms and once I got lost on campus and sought shelter under a small awning and called you for help. I didn’t have a smart phone and my first trip down to the park I wrote the directions down in a note on my phone. I followed a gravel road in the middle of nowhere surrounded by ‘No Trespassing Signs’ and signs insinuating trespassers could be shot so I turned around and had to call you to redirect me and I was so late to work that day. I biked by Willkillya county and I biked through rural southern neighborhoods that were like nothing I had ever seen before. I felt grateful for hills because the flat road made it so hard to keep peddling for that time in the summer heat, and a hill at least would give me a momentous break once I reached the top. I biked next to a squirrel along the freeway once and it was almost to safety when my bike frightened it and it ran back into traffic, resulting in the most haunting thud I have ever heard. I saw vultures eating armadillos just feet away, I saw alligators just hanging out where people usually swim, I saw manatees just swimming around under the glass boat. And I would come home so hot and there was no air conditioning and I would shower and step out of that waterfall-esque shower and immediately sweat again. I was a cranky and sweaty sleeper and would get mad at you if you tried to cuddle me in that heat.

And I still remember the smell of that house. The kitchen smelled so organic and so distinct. Most rooms smelled like cat piss, some with an added sprinkling of slightly moldy and damp fabric. And the cats would chase the cockroaches and get them stuck on their back and wait for them to die days later.

And there was a moment once when I walked outside, barefoot, eating a fleshy plum, moving some plants out of way, when I smelled all of the rich earth in the air and felt the atmosphere around me and I felt nature in a completely new way. And to this day every time I eat a plum I picture that moment where I’m biting the plum, slurping the juice, moving the plants, and feeling nature and I feel so human.

And I lived with a couple. He knew her and her bodily functions so well I remember thinking about what love truly must mean. I thought about it because he knew about the microflora in her stomach, but at the same time one of them would turn the air circulation on and the other would walk by and roll their eyes and turn it off. And they were high school sweethearts, and they were engaged, and they seemed so sure even though they couldn’t agree on how to manage their energy use. And I don’t know why it struck me so, but I just felt like I could never figure it out.

And I lived next to you. I saw their relationship, and I lived next to you, and I was there because of you, and I was so happy to be there with you. I simultaneously felt certain and so unsure and I don’t even know how that’s possible but it was, because I really felt both at the same time. I had a logic to the certainty, I guess that logic just wasn’t quite right. I always justified it and believed in the deepest corners of my heart that my justifications were true. But also my logic could not drive out that 0.01% of doubt and it unknowingly clinged so hard to that doubt and it didn’t matter how small, it was there. And I don’t really know what it was that wrenched that 0.01% to the surface but once it was there it was so obvious that percent was actually much higher.

And in that house we had a  pretty empty room with a rolly bed and weird black satin sheets and a mounted monitor. We joked about asking the pizza delivery guy to deliver our pizza through our window next to the front door and you made me so hungover with some grape drink I thought I would never be able to stop puking again in my life.  I would practice dance in that room and cry because I would never be the dancer I wanted to be, the dancer she was. I would walk down the street to visit you at work. I would walk by the Whataburger and think about the joke I had with my Dad in Texas when I was like 7 where anytime either of us would say ‘what?’ the other person would say ‘a burger!’ and it always seemed so surprising and funny even though it happened hundreds of times. I would sit there and think about how I must be so certain.

And now I don’t at all care that I won’t be that dancer. And we’ve lived in other houses together and now we live in separate ones. Separate but similar, I think, for both of us but in a way much more distinct to us. And now there is no doubt in my mind that we weren’t meant for forever. I mean it still could have been, and it would have been a great life, but it shouldn’t have been and so it’s not and that really works. While I was in that house I never thought I’d be in this house, in Detroit, not with you. 

But now that house is being demolished, and it’s not a surprise, but it’s going to be gone.