#like it was so fucking clear by the end what the central point of the story was

[magnoliamyrrh]

by this point when i see balkan ppl who think the solution to things is as ethnically pure as possible ethnostates whichever way this is spun i just want to hit them square in the head with a pan. the most effective way to deal with this? yea probably not. is this what i want to do? yes.

[sstargirln]

❞ ᝰ .ᐟ  stepbro!art 

it starts small. a compliment from patrick, a little too friendly, a little too close. you’re barely noticing art in the corner, and he can feel his patience slipping with each passing second. then patrick leans in. brushes his hand against your back as he laughs. toys with your hair in between his fingers. flashes you a low grin when you lean into his touch. 

art clears his throat loudly, jaw tight. “alright, pat,” he says, forcing a grin that barely masks his discomfort. “it’s getting late. probably time we head out.” art claps him on the back a little too firmly.

he shuts patrick’s front door with a loud click and turns back to you, standing on the porch, with his arms crossed. eyes narrowed. a tremor in his voice as he tries to confront you — but your face is flushed, and your eyes are wide, and he’s getting more and more bricked by the minute. “what the fuck was that, hm?” 

what if dad had seen you? letting patrick put his hands all over you like that. 

art huffs again, cutting off your response before you can even form the words.  “he’s 3 years older than you.” 

“you’re 3 years older than me.” 

“yeah, but i’m – i’m your fuckin’ brother.” 

you scoff. “barely.” 

“what – what is this?” he spits, pointing to your shirt, the low neck, the barely-there fabric. “this for patrick?” 

heat floods your cheeks. “no.” you stomp away to art’s car, flinging open the door and landing in the front seat with a thump. art ends up beside you in the driver’s seat, fingers clenched against the steering wheel, jaw tight. you barely make it 5 minutes from patrick’s house before he brakes hard and pulls over to the side of the road. 

art’s head’s a swirling mix of anger, and jealousy, and desire, and shame, and god-knows-what. but he’s not thinking with his head – he can’t when he’s so close to you, when his dick is throbbing in his pants, so hard it hurts.  

he leans in, you do too, and then you’re in the backseat, hands scrabbling against art’s back as you wrench his shirt off. his nose nuzzling into your chest. sloppy kisses on your neck. 

first it’s his fingers, crooked and twisting inside of you while you shove your head into his shoulder. your moans are loud enough the people driving by can probably hear them. 

then he takes his cock out – thick and puckery red at the top, already dripping with precum as he lines himself up. your head’s balanced on the central console, and he holds you by your waist for support he thrusts into you like a madman. this is the stuff of his dreams, his wildest fantasies – to be inside of his fucking stepsister like this, watching as you tighten around his dick. shriek his name as his hips snap against yours. eventually, he can’t tell who’s making what noise – he’s whimpering just as much as you are, borderline pornographic moans slipping from his lips.

he can’t get enough. it’s his mouth next – he grabs you by the waist and shoves your puffy pussy onto his face. you taste better than he could have ever imagined. he suckles at your clit, shoves his tongue into your folds, and you cum at least 3 more times just on his tongue. 

you drive back home in complete silence, art still shirtless, a stupid grin on his face.

¡! ❞ © sstargirln 2024

[comic-sans-chan]

Fic I'll never write where Dukat decides the biennial Cardassian Festival of Whatever the Fuck (it is never actually specified) should be hosted on Deep Space Nine as a way of bridging the gap between the Cardassian and Bajoran peoples. Sisko and Kira are both Ehhhh about it, but Dukat is obnoxiously persistent until finally the Bajoran government and Federation higher ups are like “K”, on the condition that no Cardassian military (or Order) personnel be allowed. All security for the event will be handled by Odo and Starfleet. Dukat is suspiciously cool with this, which puts everyone on alert, but soon Cardassian vendors and decorators start showing up and they turn out to be pretty chill people, so they let it happen.

While the preparations for the festival are underway, another operation has started. A motherfucker from Garak's past is doing typical motherfucker things on the station. One of these things is scouting Garak's quarters, learning the layout, tracking Garak's routine. It becomes clear very quickly that the rapidly increasing number of Cardassians on DS9 is putting Garak on edge, though, because he seems to be fiddling more with his security protocols, so the motherfucker realizes they need to make their move and they need to make it fast.

They succeed. Sort of. With the circumstances as they are, they had to get a little... creative, but it should do the trick.

By early next morning, every PADD, screen, and computer system on the station is streaming seventy-two different poems on a constant loop. Love poems. Ardent, anguished, often utterly indecent love poems, all with the central theme of being about one Doctor Julian Bashir.

Quark is one of the first to notice the problem, being the type of asshole who opens early despite this only increasing his bottom line by a fraction of a fraction. At first, he's furious that his systems have been tampered with, but after reading a few lines of what his normal menu and advertisements have been replaced with, he's laughing, and by the end of the third poem, he's on the floor.

"Odo!" he shouts, banging on the bastard's door twenty minutes later. "Odo, open up! We've got a problem!"

Odo slinks under the door and slips up between it and Quark's pounding fist with a glare. "Quark! I'm not on duty for another hour. What could possibly be so urgent?"

Quark's sharp little rat teeth are splitting his face clean in half as he holds up the PADD. "Take a look."

Odo scrolls through a couple poems, then squints and scrolls through several more. "Erotic love poetry? I didn't peg you for the type."

"To like erotica? Hoo, I thought you paid better attention than that, Constable."

Odo returns the PADD with a dry expression. "To read."

"Oh, you're hilarious." He taps Odo's chest with the PADD. "The whole station is filled with this stuff. My bar, the Replimat, the Celestial Cafe, the promenade. Someone's either desperate to make a statement, or we've been sabatoged."

Dramatic sci-fi music swells and we get a close-up of Odo’s eerily hairless face and nasal cavity.

The next few hours are dedicated to trying and failing to seize back the servers and briefing the bridge staff on the situation.

"Are we sure these are all about Doctor Bashir?" Sisko's voice booms across Ops. He's on his second cup of coffee and a pile of useless PADDs lay beside him.

Julian has remained stoic throughout the discussion and he remains so now, avoiding eye contact with anyone who's smiling a little too wide. Like Jadzia. "Oh, definitely," she says. "He's mentioned by name in three of them, and several others make a point of highlighting the subject's 'golden sand dune skin', 'aristocratic' features, and 'voice that never stops singing.' Sounds like Julian to me."

A few snickers break out, but Sisko is taking the matter seriously. Thank fuck, Julian thinks. It actually looks like it's giving him a headache, which would make two of them if Julian was capable of having headaches. The captain's rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "And the source..."

"There's a clear data trail back to Garak's quarters. Whoever did this, they wanted us to know where it came from," Kira reports. A muscle jumps in Julian's cheek.

"I tracked Garak down for his statement on the issue," Odo says, gruff, "and he told me he had nothing to do with the virus. In fact, he denied ever having laid eyes on the poems in his life. He's claiming he's been framed." He rolls his eyes.

"Okay," Jadzia says, "we all agree he's lying, right?"

"But which part..."

"Oh, they're Garak's. I've read enough Lloja of Prim to be familiar with traditional Kardasi meter and syntax, and that isn't even going into all the parallels drawn between our doctor and Prime. Sand, heat, rainforests. Bit of Romulan imagery in there, too, if I'm not mistaken. A lot of flowers and vines. Wasn't Garak a gardener?"

"I see no reason why anyone would want to embarass themselves like this," O'Brien cuts in before Jadzia can make it worse. "Even if he is trying to distract us or something, this seems counterproductive in the long term. Everyone’s watching him now, not just us. The rumor mill is running rampant. Not exactly a spy’s MO."

"He did blow up his shop once."

"Because someone was trying to kill him," Julian pipes up for the first time, looking concerned. "Do you think this might be another cry for help?"

"Oh, it's a cry for something," Jadzia quips, and Julian shuts the fuck up.

"Dax," Sisko snaps, like the good benevolent Wormhole Alien Jesus he is, and Dax shuts the fuck up, too. Sisko gives them all the stink eye. "Constable, you're nearly as familiar with Garak as the doctor is," he says, and holds a hand up before any jokes can be made. "What do you think?"

"I don't think he's behind this, sir. None of the pieces add up, and he seemed genuinely agitated when I spoke to him, in his way. At present, I believe he is as much a victim here as the rest of us."

Sisko sighs. "All right. Do we have any idea who is behind this?"

The room is silent for a time, before Odo reluctantly answers for everyone, "Not yet, sir."

"Find out," Sisko demands, "and Chief, get these damn poems off of my reports. Dismissed."

Julian is out of the room before anyone else has stood up.

The rest of the day is spent ducking in and out of his office, only treating those who ask for him by name and keeping all conversations strictly professional. Any mentions of poetry, the festival, Cardassians, or Garak are firmly sidelined, and on a couple occasions, rewarded with a none-too-gentle hypo. He skips lunch altogether and extends his shift by two hours to avoid the dinner rush.

By the time he's leaving the Infirmary, it's late. Unfortunately for him, not late enough that the halls aren't still speckled with observers to his personal soap opera. With the Festival of Frank’s Hot Dogs less than a week away, DS9 is becoming increasingly crowded with tourists, mostly Cardassian, but a surprising amount Bajoran, too–apparently this festival was a rare bright point during the Occupation, when their oppressors were not only lenient with them for once, but generous with food and drink and freedoms. It doesn't hurt that the only Cardassians on board are civilian rather than military, so the atmosphere is rather more colorful, courteous and conversational rather than cold, dark and aggressive. It would make Julian smile if he wasn't so busy being gawked at.

"I don't see it," one Cardassian man grumbles and Julian's accursed augmented ears pick up. "He's even smoother than a Bajoran."

"Oh, yeah," his companion replies, "just think of how easily he'd slide around."

"Tanett!"

"Oh, hush, Grandpa. You're just xenophobic. He's cute."

"Well, you be careful who hears you say that. That Garak fellow is in the Order, you know. Ears everywhere. You don't want to know what things a man like that is capable of."

"Wasn't he exiled? Hardly intimidating now. Apparently all he's capable of anymore is whimpering over an alien like a pakrela."

Julian covers his ears and walks faster.

But that just brings him within range of a cluster of Bajorans. "Oh, there's the doctor now," one is saying, up on the balcony. 

"The one the Cardassian tailor wrote about?"

"That poor fool. He thought they were friends, but here this whole time it was perverse. I can only imagine how much that hurts."

"Happened to my friend once. He thought a glinn was being kind because he was having a crisis of conscience and wanted to help him escape. No, he just wanted to–"

He could go to his quarters, but a flash of memory - Garak's bright eyes at the end of his bed, his figure encased in shadow - sends him in the opposite direction. Before long, he finds himself on an oft-unused Observation deck, since it offers no view of the wormhole or either Bajor or Cardassia's suns. It's blessedly empty, as usual, and Julian settles on a bench and stares into the dark nothingness of space for a long time.

At some point, he finds that his hand has retrieved the PADD from his medical bag, and the screen is lit up automatically with the first poem.

He reads well into the night.

—

The next morning finds Garak with a tall glass of rokassa juice and two eggs, staring intensely into a mysteriously operational PADD at the far end of Quark's bar. Quark pops out of his backroom like a jack-in-the-box.

"Ha! Well, if it isn't the man of the hour himself, gracing my fine establishment so soon after nearly destroying it. Do you know I've had to have menus printed, like we're in the dark ages? Do you have any idea how extensive my menu is? I ought to sue you for damages." He catches a glimpse of the PADD's screen and its decidedly unpoetic contents. "Hey, you fixed it? How?"

"It was just a simple virus. Viruses can be purged," Garak says without looking up. He barely seems aware of Quark's existence.

When no other words are forthcoming, Quark huffs. "Well, can you purge it from the rest of the station, then?"

"I gave the program to the Chief last night."

"And he didn't immediately come here to fix my bar? I'll have to file a complaint.”

Garak offers no reply. Just continues to stare into his PADD.

There are other customers he could be seeing to, but Quark can't pass up this golden opportunity. He's known Garak a long time and known of him even longer, and now that he has the guy's guts all neatly lined up on several dozen isolinear rods, he's never felt closer to the man. He makes a point of knowing things about his customers, but before yesterday, the most he knew about Garak was that he was an assassin, a tailor, a mean, weepy drunk, and friends with Bashir, Odo, and a smattering of other shopkeepers. That was it. But now...

He leans over the counter, closer to Garak's unblinking face. "You know," he says, with a smile rising slow on his cheeks, "if it's humans you like, I have a couple holosuite programs that might be just what you need."

Garak's gaze ascends as if on a motor, smooth and mechanical.

Good. He’s considering the bait. Now he just has to get him to bite. "All completely customizable. Skin, eyes, hair. You like long legs, they've got long legs. Scrawny, they're scrawny. Whatever you want. Although if you're really hung up on the one face, that can also be arranged. For the right price." When Garak just looks at him, Quark switches tactics. "Or maybe it's the uniform that does it for you? I've got 'em, but I'd suggest something out of my lingerie databases. I've still got some little Cardassian numbers filed away that I think even a man with your discerning tastes could appreciate. Just imagine, Doctor Bashir in a–"

He doesn't see the hand coming until it's already crushing his windpipe. Quark claws at it for several long, desperate moments while Garak continues to look.

Leeta scuttling over and yanking him away is what ultimately puts a stop to it, and it's while Quark is gasping in dramatic bursts of air that Leeta says in a rush, "Garak, please! Whatever he said, he didn't mean it!"

"Oh, I meant it," Quark coughs out with a high, strangled laugh, "he just didn't like it."

"Whatever conclusions you've drawn in the last twenty-six hours, allow me to dispel them," Garak says primly, as if he hadn't almost committed murder in broad daylight. "I am not a xenophile and I do not have feelings for Doctor Bashir. There are no less than two-hundred Cardassians currently aboard the station, and I assure you, none of them like me. Those poems were obviously planted."

Oh, but Quark is a little pissed now, unwise as that is. "Please, Garak," he says, "who has time to write that many poems about Julian just to mess with you? Two or three, maybe, but over seventy? If you're going to lie, at least don't insult our intelligence."

Garak's eyes flash and Quark ducks behind Leeta, repentant. Leeta sighs. "Garak, what's so bad about loving Julian?" she asks softly. "I thought the poems were really touching. It’s sweet how much you care for him."

But he's already staring into his PADD again. "I'm sorry, Miss Leeta, but I am a bit busy. Perhaps we can discuss my hypothetical feelings for your paramour another time."

"Julian and I have never been serious," she tries to assure him, but he's engrossed again, or at least pretending to be. Her and Quark share a look and leave him to it. Lesson learned.

"Let the bastard be pent up and miserable, then," Quark grumbles from the other end of the bar as he pours Table 3's drinks. A prickle on his neck has him looking up and there Garak's eyes are again, piercing, and Quark rushes off to deliver the drinks.

The three young Cardassians there are much more friendly. One has their nose stuck in one of the useless poetry PADDs while the other two smile at Quark while he sets out their orders.

"Three Raktajinos, extra bitter," Quark says, and is thanked. Polite. One even praises the drink's exoticness. Klingon coffee, exotic. Heh. "Your food will be out in a few."

Before he can finish turning, though, a hand is touching his arm. "What is the title of this anthology you include at every table?" the young man asks.

"Oh, that's not..." He sighs. "It's new. I can't remember."

"Find out for us, please," he says. "Works like these can be hard to come by on Prime and we make it our business to collect them. Whoever this author is, they're very unique."

"If these aren't banned on Prime already, they will be soon," his friend comments with a giggle.

"No doubt."

"'In my desolation, I am as weeds: Cut my roots and Let the waters take me, To drown and bloom anew, in You,'" the one with her nose in the PADD reads aloud, and shivers. "They'd burn the whole Central Archive down just for this one. It's so explicit."

"Let me see that," the boy demands, as the other one is already surging over to read over the girl's shoulder. Watching them fight over the PADD has Quark thinking back to the isolinear rods in his safe, and he hums thoughtfully, glancing over his shoulder.

Garak isn't looking.

—

Glinn Halon Duvur. Former underling of Gul Dukat. Out of uniform, vacationing on Deep Space Nine with his wife and nine children. Spends his days gambling while his kids play unsupervised in the holosuites and his wife visits old friends. 

Beloved uncle sent to trial by the Obsidian Order in 2356 and executed that same day for crimes of attempted sabotage against Cardassia.

Garak watches the man wander down the promenade sans his proud lineage, jingling a fat little bag of gold-pressed latinum and yet-unconverted leks. He wanders out of range, so Garak switches to the next camera and there that unfortunate face is again. He drums his fingers on the desk. It won't be long now.

An alert rings in his ear and he almost initiates the shockfield on impulse, but the flash of smooth, brown skin on a monitor stays his hand. The knocking comes, and that haunting voice calls out, "Garak! Are you there?"

Garak rests his head next to the surveillance screens.

Predictably, the doctor tries to input his override, but the door remains shut. There's a long pause.

"Garak..." Julian sounds irate. Garak hums. "Did you deprogram my override code? Nevermind how illegal that is, that's dangerous! What if you're injured? Or fall ill?"

He says this just after attempting to abuse his station privileges for personal reasons. Infuriating hypocrite.

"Oh, my barging in at random, odd hours is no less than you deserve, Garak," Julian says as if in response to Garak's thoughts. "You set that precedent in our relationship yourself."

Terrible man.

"Fine. I'll give you some more time, since you want it so badly, but I'll be back and when I am, that override had better work. If it doesn’t, I promise there will be hell to pay, my friend."

Beautiful man.

"Goodbye, Mr. Garak."

Goodbye, Doctor.

Glinn Duvur dies two hours later of alcohol poisoning while his wife is in bed with Gul Rilimn's wife.

—

“I just can’t believe it,” Kira is bitching. Jadzia smiles and sips her drink, looking out over the Replimat balcony at all the happy brunchgoers. “A Cardassian writing poetry about something that isn’t conquest or the wonders of dictatorial rule or, at best, the pride of the traditional family nobly bowing and scraping. I’ve never seen it.”

“It would certainly seem to run counter to Cardassian values.”

“And about Julian!” she shrieks in her inside voice, slapping her hands down on the table. “Garak the spy, writing love poetry about Julian. Going on and on about his–his...”

“Ass?” Jadzia offers.

“Eyes. His eyes! Ohhh, I knew he wanted to have sex with him, everyone knew that, but to write about his eyes like... like that? It’s practically Bajoran.”

“That’s true.”

Kira stops long enough in her tirade to eye her, and presses her lips into a thin line. “How are you so calm about this?”

Jadzia takes another sip. “I’m just fascinated,” she says. “I’ll admit, I’ve been looking at this more through Tobin’s eyes than my own. Have I ever told you that he met Lloja of Prim during his exile?” 

“He did not.”

“He did, and Lloja flirted with him outrageously. It was embarrassing, looking back. Of course, nothing ever came of it, because Tobin was always hopelessly blind to those sorts of things even without the language barrier, but his children liked to joke that many of Lloja’s poems were about him.”

Kira’s jaw is hanging. “Were they?”

Jadzia grins and shrugs. Kira laughs.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Perhaps,” Jadzia allows, “but I do wonder... Being able to call nervous, asexual Tobin the lover of Lloja of Prim would have been quite the notch in my belt. Think of the stories I could have told! And now here Julian is with the opportunity. I know it’s not the same, I mean, it’s Garak. But, you have to admit, to write about him like that...”

“He must really love him,” Kira finishes for her, stumped. “I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

“I didn’t see it, either,” Jadzia confesses. “I was still wrestling with the idea that they were actually friends. I thought their association was strictly professional and all the books and flirting were just a front.” She cradles her head in her hands suddenly and sighs. “Ugh, but those poems. The poems are so good! Kira...”

“I know,” she moans. “They’re heart-wrenching. Which one are you on now?”

“Thirty-nine. I came back home, but I came back gone.”

“Ouch.”

“I know.”

A shout from below interrupts them and they both shoot out of their seats. Below, a Cardassian man has just had a beam fall on top of him. Jadzia and Kira bound down the stairs to him, Jadzia already slapping a hand on her comm badge. 

“Dax to Infirmary, a man has just been crushed, possibly impaled. Send a medical team to Replimat and be ready for emergency beam out.”

“Acknowledged, we’re on our way,” Girani says, but already Kira is looking up at Jadzia helplessly, the man’s wrist laying limp between her hands.

“He’s gone.”

“Shit!” Jadzia hunches over, hands on her knees. “That’s the third one today. Are Cardassians always this accident prone? No wonder you won the war.”

“No,” Kira says. “They’re not. You don’t think...”

“I don’t know,” Jadzia says grimly, and looks around at the crowd that’s formed. All Cardassian, all terrified. “But we need to find out.”

—

A Cardassian is sitting at the bar. This isn’t an unusual sight now, with the Festival of 90s Funk and Beyond coming up, but seeing one so young and looking so hunted is odd. Quark approaches him casually.

“What’ll you have?”

The Cardassian’s eyes dart. “Uh...” He leans over suddenly, cups both hands over his mouth, and whispers, “E. G. Special.”

Christ, these kids are going to kill him. “Coming right up,” he says in a normal person voice, and reaches under the bar for a glass. A little drink-mixing magic later, a beautiful fizzy blue drink is sitting between them, with an isolinear rod tucked neatly in the straw.

The Cardassian takes the drink between both hands excitedly, and Quark snaps his fingers in front of him. “Oh! Right,” the kid stutters, and all but launches the latinum at Quark’s face. “Thank you!” And off he goes, out of the bar with the glass still tight in his grasp.

“Idiot,” Quark mutters to himself, crouching carefully down to pick the latinum up off the floor without dirtying his expensive pants. “You’re supposed to take the straw, not the entire glass. That’s it, I’m switching to plastic. These little rebel brats don’t deserve my ni—Oh, hello, Constable! I didn’t see you there. What can I get you?”

Odo looks as unimpressed as ever. “That’s a funny question since last I checked, I don’t drink.”

“Ah, right, because you’re a liquid. How could I forget. You know, one of these days, I ought to serve you up with a little umbrella, see how people like it. I’d bet you taste bitter.” Odo harrumphs, and Quark makes himself busy with wiping down the counter. “Well, out with it then. What nefarious scheme am I up to now? I love to hear your little stories.”

Four isolinear rods drop onto the counter, right where Quark was just cleaning. “Hey now,” he says, throwing a performative glare at the changeling. “Careful. If you shatter glass in my bar, you’re cleaning it up.”

“I just had the most interesting conversation with the Tokal family,” Odo says, steamrolling right over him. “It seems their four darling children had somehow come into some questionable reading material. They tried searching for it in the Central Archives and yet, despite it being clearly Cardassian in origin, they could not find it. And I don’t need to tell you that when a piece of Cardassian reading material isn’t in the Central Archives...”

Quark, from his plastered position on the floor, stares up into Odo’s face directly horizontal to his and smiles. “What?”

“It’s illegal,” Odo sneers, stretching his body even further over the bar and nearly sending Quark starfishing. 

“Okay! Odo! I get it! But what does that have to do with me?”

“Quark!”

“Okay, okay! Whatever it is you think I’ve done, I’ll stop! I’ll stop, okay?”

“I know you’re going to stop, because I am going to confiscate every copy of Garak’s poetry that you have absconded with and destroy them.”

Quark gasps. “Book burning? In this day and age?”

“Garak did not give his permission for you to sell his work! He didn’t even want anyone to see it in the first place! Those poems were stolen. Now, I expect a list of every person you sold a copy to and a full and complete refund to be issued by tomorrow morning. Do I make myself clear?”

Quark glowers. “You’ve made yourself something, all right.”

“Quark...”

“Okay! All right. Consider it done.”

-

Turora Lumok. Obsidian Order operative and old colleague. Usually in deep cover in the Organian sectre, but has abandoned post to explore the space station. Barren, unattached. Cold. A model agent, if you ignore her unfortunate habit of going rogue and eliminating civilians on a whim. 

Recruited into the Order by Enabran Tain’s former right hand, Euluk Bucun, who was assassinated by Elim Garak in 2341 under orders from Enabran Tain for suspicions of treason. Turora Lumok disciplined shortly afterward by Elim Garak for complaining that she had wanted to be the one to kill that bitch.

Garak watches as the woman pretends to touch up her makeup while scouting for cameras. “Oh, Lumok, you always were woefully obvious. Have you been expecting me? I wonder why.”

Satisfied with the positions of the cameras, she puts away her mirror and strolls out of sight.

Garak shakes his head. “Fool. You forget how long I’ve lived on this wretched station. I don’t need to see you every second to know where you are.”

But then, the smell of antiseptic. Starfleet issue soap. Herbal shampoo, unique, robust. Gels. Oils. Sweat. 

He’s near.

Forcing calmness with a deep, measured breath, he takes off his eyepiece and slips it into his sleeve. He pays for the food he barely ate. He stands. He turns.

And is promptly thrust into the dark, deep woods of Julian Bashir’s eyes. “There you are, Garak! I’ve been looking all over for you,” the doctor says as if it’s just a regular day on Deep Space Nine. His hot, mammalian body caging him tightly in place against the table betrays the ruse. “Who was it you were talking to?”

Garak tries to step around him. Julian steps with him. “Oh, only ever myself. Forgive me, but you’ve caught me just on my way out. I have a strict appointment at 2.”

There’s Julian’s hand now. On his shoulder. Garak is calm. This is normal. “Well, why don’t I walk you there then.”

“My dear Doctor, I couldn’t rob you of your meal. Clearly you’ve just walked in.”

“Actually, I’ve found I’m craving something a bit different now.”

Garak makes to step around Julian again, and still Julian’s steps match his. It’s like they’re dancing. He doesn’t let this deter him. He’s not sure he’s capable of letting anything deter him now, with his heart trying to pound out of his throat. He keeps stepping doggedly forward, and Julian keeps mirroring, still with that damned hand burning through his tunic. “Well, you only have so much time before you must return to the infirmary, I know. Do not allow me to delay you in securing a table at a different locale.”

“Oh, but you’ve already delayed me so long. What’s a few more minutes?” A peek of teeth, a hint of warning. “Though I will admit... I’m not sure how much longer I can wait.”

“Then don’t.” Finally, Garak manages to elbow past this madness and shoot out of the restaurant. The station is so crowded these days, it’s short work to get lost in it. In a sea of ridges and black hair, Garak slips his eyepiece back on and lets the wave take him. 

“Garak!”

Oh, for the Union’s sake—

He does not run. He does not stumble. He walks normally and not desperately, keeping his eye on both the path to the turbolift and Lumok. She’s down the corridor now, pretending to check her makeup again like an imbecile. Just a few paces more. Almost there...

“Garak, you’re the best dressed one here! You are not difficult to spot, you ridiculous dandy! Oh, no offense, Ma’am. Lovely scarf. Excuse me.”

There.

In the reflection of the mirror, Garak makes eye contact with the rogue and taps in the correct sequence on the device sewed into the seam of his pants just as the turbolift doors close behind him.

Like that, Turora Lumok is beamed into space and dies instantly, without a soul to mourn her, and Elim Garak walks back to his quarters with a hand over his mouth and a warmth on his shoulder, without a soul to mourn him, either.

—-

The Festival of Fierce and Fantastic Frogs is two days away and already it is being protested.

Outside Quark’s Bar is a growing army of dissident children with voice amplifiers and holoprojectors shouting to the stars that if they don’t get their porn back, they’ll tear it all down. Signs are projected in the air with essays cycling through them that look to be several pages each, a small holographic fire barely reaching ankle-height is lighting up the length of the promenade, and – perhaps most disturbingly – a comically inaccurate approximation of Odo is rotating at the center of the group, fitted in the typical regalia of the Cardassian military and holding a Klingon bat’leth. It is certainly... something.

“They’re Cardassians,” Quark is saying as he pours out some root beers. “They’ve probably never seen a protest in their lives, they don’t know what they’re doing. The Union puts an end to things like this pretty fast on the surface.”

“Heh,” Jadzia says, “what happens on DS9, stays on DS9.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Kira asks.

“It’s something Julian likes to say. Basically, they figure they can get away with speaking their minds here.”

Kira drums her fingers on the bar, staring into the flailing protestors thoughtfully. 

Right then, Odo arrives back on the scene. It looks like he’s trying to get through, respectfully, but the protestors are not making it easy. Jadzia and Kira come to his rescue just as about fifteen Cardassians start forming a blockade around him.

“I walked around as you do, investigating the endless stars,” one young woman is yelling at him while he stands there with big helpless baby eyes, “and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked, the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind!” 

“I don’t know what that means,” Odo says consolingly.

“Clearly!”

“Okay, okay, let him through!” Kira wiggles her way between the crowd and Odo, snatching him by the arm like a fish with a hook. “He’s not your enemy here, he was just upholding your laws!”

“The Cardassian government has no jurisdiction on a Bajoran station!”

“He made his choices!”

“Beautiful Julian would be ashamed of you! Repent! Repent!”

Kira and Jadzia manage to reel him most of the way through the protesters and he shapeshifts the rest of the journey. The protestors try to follow, but Quark bustles over to stop them. “No, no demonstrations inside! Remember who your allies are,” he says, and they all cow back. “Thank you.”

Odo ripples his form a couple times to make sure everything’s back in the right place and harrumphs. “Allies, Quark?”

“Yes, allies. It’s terrible what you’ve done to them. You can’t police art, Odo–-this is culture we're talking about here, the very bedrock of society.”

“And I’m sure this virtuous attitude of yours has nothing to do with the incredible profit you made and lost at the expense of our mutual friend.”

“Oh, I did him a favor.” Quark uncaps another bottle of Kanar and gestures back to the entrance, with its swarm of frothing Cardassian children. “Look, he’s got fans!”

“How has Garak been handling all this?” Kira asks Odo, sharing a look with Jadzia. “I haven’t heard a peep out of him since he gave us that antivirus program.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Didn’t you have breakfast with him yesterday?”

“Hmmm, that would have been routine. Except he didn’t show. When I made it back to my office, I found a message from him apologizing, telling me he’s so busy with orders he’s lost all track of time.”

“How has he been getting commissions?” Jadzia asks. “His shop’s been closed all week.”

Odo rolls his eyes. “Oh, I’m sure the reality is he’s simply avoiding the issue. Dr. Bashir has informed me he’s been treating him like ‘the black plague’ as well.” 

“Julian’s one to talk. He practically pole-vaulted over a vedek the other day to get away from me.” 

“Speak of the devil,” Quark says, looking towards the door, and everyone turns just as the commotion starts–or, more accurately, the commotion abruptly stops. 

The protestors have all gone quiet, in apparent awe as they part around Julian like the red sea around Moses. He’s smiling stupidly as he stands in the center of them, nodding at something a Cardassian man is exclaiming. It’s an incredibly awkward scene, and Quark starts choking at some of the things his ears are picking up. “They’ve deified him,” he tells them, and Jadzia bursts into giggles at the idea, but Quark isn’t joking. “Really. He might as well be one of the prophets to them. You read the poems. You know.”

Ugh. Kira wrinkles her nose in disgust. The worst kind of blasphemy–horny blasphemy. “What is he even doing here?” she asks. 

“Getting his head inflated,” Jadzia says dryly, because now that Quark has mentioned it, it’s pretty clear from the shit-eating grin on Julian’s face that that’s exactly what’s happening. 

“Poor Garak.” Quark says it absentmindedly, but the comment gets several eyes turned on him. He’s shaking his head as he watches the scene unfold. “First, he falls for a human… humiliating… but then that love becomes public knowledge and several young beautiful Cardassians decide that he’s onto something, and now that human is going to get more action in a week than he’s seen his entire life. I’ve witnessed the rise and fall of more than a few star-crossed romances, but this might just be the saddest.”

“Julian wouldn’t have an orgy the same week the whole station found out Garak’s in love with him,” Jadzia says, insulted on his behalf.

Quark hefts a tray up onto his shoulder. “He just did,” he says as he leaves to go do his job, and Jadzia whips her head around to see Julian escorting two attractive Cardassians away from the protest. Her jaw drops.

“Bastard,” Kira spits, surprising everyone, herself most of all. Those poems must’ve affected her more than she realized.

Odo clears his throat unnecessarily. “I’m no expert on the behavior of solids, but it seems to me that neither party is handling this situation well.”

“I’ll tell you how the pakrela should be handling this,” an older Cardassian sitting at the far end of the bar cuts in, with a twitch to him that makes it clear he’s more than a few deep. “He should be settling his assets, because he doesn’t have long now. Whatever his human is doing is the least of his worries. Ha. Hehe. Being a traitor wasn’t enough for him. No, now he’s gone and corrupted the next generation with his degeneracy. Exile was too soft a punishment. Uh-huh.”

Kira opens her mouth to tell him to fuck off, but Odo touches her shoulder. “You speak as if you know him,” he notes mildly, because of course, the exact reason for Garak’s exile isn’t public record. It’s barely even private record. The Order doesn’t work that way–or didn’t, as it stands. It is interesting that this man is acting like he has classified information despite being a civilian. 

But then, sometimes day drinkers just like to spout speculation as fact.

The man looks into his glass and laughs at his reflection. “Who doesn’t know Garak these days? But that’s temporary. He’ll be forgotten soon enough, just like the Order.” He finishes his drink and gets up. He insincerely mutters some friendly Cardassian farewell and starts to walk past them, but Kira can’t let it go.

“Excuse me, but what’s your name, sir? You’ve been so informative.”

He looks at her for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he says, and elbows past the protesters.

—

“Solt Mebol, left behind a widow and child six years ago when he was tragically killed in a transporter accident. In reality, he accepted an undercover mission which required him to fake his death and have his bond dissolved. A significant sacrifice. Certainly not one many Cardassians could have made.”

The Cardassian stares at Garak sitting on his couch. Turning, he tries to exit his temporary quarters, but the door won’t open.

Garak tuts. “Oh, you know better than that, Mebol.” He taps his disruptor with his forefinger, resting harmlessly against his knee. “The festival isn’t for another couple days, yet here you are. Catching up with old friends before the festivities, I assume? Only I haven’t found you in anyone’s company but your own. You must be lonely. Please, let me alleviate your loneliness for a while.”

The Cardassian sighs at the closed door. “Solt, is it?”

“I can tell you the names of your wife and child as well, if you’d like, and the city they live in. Do you know your wife never rebonded? Unusual behavior for a Romulan. Quite dangerous, as I understand it.”

Solt steps carefully into the small living space and sits in the chair opposite Garak, with the coffee table between them. “As one of the last living members of the Order, I don’t suppose you would consider letting me go?”

Garak smiles pleasantly. “I would be delighted.”

“Would you? I had a deal with Central Command and they’ve been good to me so far. You, however, have been known to…” He eyes the disruptor casually turned in his direction.

“Yes, I imagine I must be something of a mystery these days to my people. I have been… squirrely, is what I suppose a human would say, and I must as well now that I’ve been painted with their brush. Oh, it is an incredible sin, I know. That I should enjoy the company of an attractive alien while in exile.”

Solt snorts. “You expect me to believe those poems were the natural result of a fling?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything you do not wish to. I only say that it’s convenient that I should be seen as even more traitorous just as a swarm of Cardassians should enter the station.”

“What’s convenient is that you’re still alive. You have friends in high places willing to go to bat for you, in spite of everything you’ve done. It’s a disgrace. You are a selfish disloyal anarchist and no one is holding you accountable, because you just happened to be good at your job once and everyone likes the idea of having you as a potential weapon should the need for one arise. Until then, they’re content to keep you in a cabinet collecting dust and sentiment. You can wave that disruptor all you want, but we both know you make a poor operative now. You’re in love.” 

Garak is still smiling, but Solt can see the signs of a grimace. Dusty, indeed. Too passionate. Too human. “I’m hardly so foolish. You know better than I the dangers of such things in our line of work. You’re little better than a puppet now that you’ve had a whiff of the truth, Mebol.”

“You’re right.” Solt attempts to raise one eye ridge, despite it being unfit for such maneuvers, and leans forward towards that disruptor. “Pull my strings, then, and let’s test that grip Bashir has on yours.”

—

Kira crashes into Garak’s quarters and kickflips past all his booby traps like Indiana Jones’ hotter cousin.

“What the fuck, Richard?” is basically what she says, only it’s in character, so it’s more like, “What the fuck, Garak!”

Garak spins around in his maniacal villain chair with a look of surprise. “How did you get in here, Major?” Miles bustles his way in after her with his impractically enormous toolkit, and Garak lets out an, “Ah,” then, sedately, “I suppose Dr. Bashir filed a complaint about my tampering with the door codes. Of course, there’s a perfectly logical explanation. You see, it–”

“This isn’t about door codes, Garak,” Kira yells. “What I want to know is why our best suspect for the sudden influx of murders on the station was just found drowned in his own toilet!”

“Oh my,” Garak says. “What an unfortunate end.”

“Don’t play dumb. Not now. We know what you’re capable of, but we’re good people and we didn’t want to accuse a victim until we had exhausted the rest of our line-up. Only, interestingly enough, they’re all dead, so now…” she marches over with the fury of the Prophets on her heels and stands imposingly over him, her teeth clenched, “here we are.”

“That is interesting.” He runs a hand down a roll of fabric in his lap, smoothing it. “I suppose you must have some of that ironclad evidence that the Federation so treasures.”

Kira glares at him.

Garak feigns looking around. “Oh, but I can’t help but notice the good Constable isn’t here with you. What could that mean? Surely not that you broke into my quarters without due cause or a hint of warning–at your own word, not even to fix my glitching door. For all you knew, I could have been in here writing one of my vaunted Bashir epics.”

Kira’s hands are in fists now. “The evidence we have would be more than enough to have your face plastered on every viewscreen in Cardassia and you know it.”

“The Federation and Bajoran legal processes do seem a tad inefficient in moments like these, don’t they?”

“Okay,” Miles cuts in, because he has Turbo PTSD and is not in the mood for a flare up. “I think I'll just wait in the hallway, then. Holler if you need me. Good luck, Major.”

Kira and Garak spend a few moments watching him waddle out of the room and then go back to staring each other down. 

“Look, you ass,” Kira starts, “we couldn’t link every victim to the Cardassian government or some third-party organization, but we were able to link enough of them to recognize that these aren’t just random nobodies having ‘accidents.’ Someone was able to break into your computer and embarrass you and you don’t like that so you’re pitching a fit. I can’t have Odo arrest you – yet – but I can tell you to cut it out. This vigilantism isn’t helping–”

That gets a reaction. “Vigilantism!”

“Well, what would you call it?”

“Self-defense.”

“They attacked you?”

“Possibly.”

“Goddamn you, Garak! Just… don’t do this anymore, okay?”

Garak looks at her with innocent astonishment, like he’s still bewildered by her totally plausible accusations. “Well. You have my word, I suppose,” he says, bemused.

—

Gul Skrain Dukat. Blessed with a wife, seven children, two sets of living parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, minus one father. Habitually cheats with lower ranked military officials, slaves, and barely legal adults, unbenownst to his family. Father was interrogated by Elim Garak and executed by the Union over live broadcast in the year 2350 for the crime of being a piece of shit. 

Elim Garak was shortly thereafter levied with an amateurish execution attempt by Gul Dukat. It failed.

The second attempt will succeed, but at a great cost.

The Festival of Filthy Fucking Foot Fetishists has officially begun, but Garak is struggling to feel any enthusiasm. He is surrounded by his people. The station has been dimmed by 15% to better suit Cardassian eyes and misting stations have been set up in limited locations. Extinct and invented flowers crafted by Cardassian and Bajoran artisans decorate the banisters and doorways. A wash of blue, green, and sparkling gold lights up every direction. There is the smell of freshly prepared Cardassian sweets on the air, a gentle warmth suffuses the atmosphere, and children are laughing on the promenade. It’s the first time the station has felt not just tolerable, but nearly pleasant, in years. 

But then, Garak has never felt particularly welcome among his people. As a child, he was an orphan generously cared for by service workers and sponsored by a government official, and as an adult, he was a member of the Order, which granted him more fear and loathing than it did admiration and respect. Companionship, in its truest form, was a rare thing to come by and not something he was encouraged to come by at all.

Perhaps that is why Dr. Bashir blindsided him. 

In any case, Garak is delicately balanced on the line between proper misery and numbness. He gave up imbibing around the same time that he gave up the implant—or rather, the implant gave up on him—but he’s on his third cup now, wandering through the festivities with no particular direction in mind. The exact spot of this last operation isn’t important, only the timing.

He finishes his drink while a group play a spirited game of cold moba in front of him. It shouldn't be long now.

All the nearby screens suddenly flicker from the event schedule to Dukat’s sharp grin and Garak hums. There we are. He knew the bitch wouldn’t be able to resist showing his face.

“Welcome everyone to the biennial Festival of–” a baby wails, “generously hosted here on Deep Space Nine by Bajor and the Federation, and of course organized by our own prodigous Detapa Council. Ah, that wormhole… quite the view, isn’t it?”

Garak looks around for another food stall that serves alcohol. 

There aren’t any stalls in his immediate vicinity, but there is a young Cardassian couple marching towards him while making dogged eye contact. 

Oh no. 

Garak starts to make a break for it. Not too fast, it won’t do to cause a stir, but there are a number of very good reasons for him to stay far away from any Cardassians who might recognize him right now. Especially if the source of that recognition is those damn poems he was too stupid and sentimental to destroy.

Before he can make it more than a few steps, however, he looks up to see another few Cardassians working their way towards him, also making eye contact.

No, no, no.

He makes to move towards the stairs then, only for his eyes to land squarely on him. 

Him, wearing the silky green outfit he lovingly crafted for him a few months ago. Him, shining in the festival lights, casting him in an even more arresting shade of gold than usual. Him, looking determined and coming straight towards him.

Oh, fuck no.

“Garak,” Julian calls out, likely reading the panic on his face and stance and soul.

“Today, I am not a Gul, though,” Dukat is saying. “I am but a humble representative of the Cardassian Union in its totality, and as such, I would like to thank Colonel Kira Nerys and Captain Benjamin Sisko for their hand in this week’s festivities. They have been nothing if not accommodating these last few weeks while our coordinators ran rampant through their halls.”

He should have accounted for the possibility of this. Thinking of Julian had become excruciating as of late, but that was no excuse. Whatever interaction Julian had been hoping to have with him couldn’t be allowed, not now, and not only for the sake of Garak’s traitorous, disgusting feelings. Even if it would give the sweet man closure, it would not be worth his life. 

“Now, it may be a bit unorthodox, but I thought it would be only fitting if the first Reenactment was carried out by our benevolent hosts, and the Lakarian City Acting Troupe were all too happy to take them under their wing.”

More eyes are turning towards the screen now, the laughing and playing and sloshing of cups quieting down. Julian is nearly with him, his approach halted only by the gathering crowd, and Garak can only pretend to be interested in Dukat’s speech while he racks his brain desperately for a solution. Any solution. Anything.

“I trust that the history of Cardassia is in capable hands.”

The screen flickers again and changes to a shot of one of Quark’s holodecks, where a lone Bajoran man stands in a beam of red light.

A hand grabs Garak roughly by the arm, and he nearly cries with relief when he sees that it’s Lumok.

Well, Lumok with the face and attire of a Bajoran, but that ever-present spark of unchecked malice in her eye is quite unmistakable to someone who worked with her for over a decade. 

“Surprised, you ugly old regnar?” she asks under the actor’s impassioned opening monologue.

He sucks in a breath as the sharp edge of something presses into his back. “Impossible. They found your body caught on one of the station’s spires.”

“A simple bait and switch,” she purrs, pressing the weapon closer, slicing through his tunic. A pity. This was one of his nicer ones. “You’ve gotten sloppy.”

He manufactures a smile. “A knife, then? A favorite of yours, I recall, but terribly messy for such a public venue. Not to mention if your aim is even an inch off, I’ll be in and out of the infirmary within the day, as if nothing at all had happened.”

“Don’t lecture me,” she growls. “You can’t do that anymore. You’re not anyone to anyone. Your master is dead, and what did you do the second you were off leash for the first time in your life? You went and choked yourself on the first Starfleet sotl you could find. You’re pathetic.”

It took incredible effort to keep his eyes from rolling to the back of his skull. “Oh, just stab me already.”

“I’m not going to stab you. I’ve done a bit of outsourcing, in fact.” She slid the knife from his lower back to his side and looped her arm through his, pinning him in place with a wide smile. “All I had to do was suggest to my new friend that you were infiltrating the Federation. That you were poisoning them against Bajor from the inside, uniting Cardassia and Starfleet in a secret alliance under the guise of wooing the CMO. No, no, you won’t be killed by one of your peers. Your death will be at the hands of a perfect stranger. A pointless death for a pointless man.” She leans in and whispers into his aural ridge, “It always was so easy to make people hate you.”

The next few seconds are a flurry of chaos. One second he’s watching as Human, Bajoran and Cardassian actors alike are all holding hands and reciting ancient poetry and the next he’s on the floor with a searing weight bearing down on him from calf to shoulder. There are screams and footfalls coming from all directions and Odo’s voice is immediately discernible shouting over the commotion. His back is on fire, he can’t breathe, and there’s a slash in his side, but he doesn’t miss the thump of Lumok’s body a few feet away, dead before she hits the ground.

“Garak? Garak?” the weight on him is speaking frantically, pawing at his head and shoulders. The weight shifts and the hands flip him onto his back. Those same hands pat him down, blazing a path down his chest and his stomach and his sides, stopping at the superficial gash near his rib, and Garak knows who this is before he even opens his eyes.

“Garak,” Julian sighs with relief. Garak was meant to be dead by phaser blast right now, but instead Julian Bashir is smiling down at him like he’s important, kneeling beside him, his hands on him, branding him with their incredible heat. It shouldn’t be possible. No one could be that fast. 

“Doctor,” he manages on a wheeze. One of his ribs might be broken, actually.

“Dukat,” Sisko growls from the monitor in billowing robes and a long flowing wig, surrounded by flowers.

—

“Explain,” Sisko commands.

Having decided that showing weakness right now can only help his case, Garak is sitting hunched to the side, holding his reeling head in one hand. It’s through a hiss that he replies, “A woman named Turora Lumok was responsible for sabotaging the station with those poems forged with my data signature. The Bajoran woman who was just assassinated–she was no Bajoran, but rather one of the last remaining members of the Obsidian Order. She was hired by Dukat to kill me during the festival under the guise of a hate crime. No doubt because of her indomitable reputation, I’m sure. A number of Cardassian casualties these past several days were at her hands.”

Sisko walks to the viewport to stare out into the stars for a moment, processing this. “All his talk of friendship between Bajor and Cardassia…” he trails off, the ghost of a sneer on his lips as he turns back around. “His goal was just the opposite. He wanted to destroy any hope of cooperation.”

“And get me out of the way in the process,” Garak grumbles. 

Sisko hums and wanders over to Garak’s side, looking down at him thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me who assassinated Ms. Lumok?”

Garak stares at the floor through his fingers, his eyes glazed.

“Or who your informant is on Dukat’s involvement?”

“Captain,” Garak mutters, not looking up, “I have sat here concussed after an attempt on my life and shared with you everything that I know, and here you have not even told me who the tailor of your magnificent robe is.” He tugs half-heartedly at a strip of embroidery on the fabric. “I must admit, I am feeling a touch betrayed you didn’t come to me.”

Sisko flicks his eyes up to Julian, who has been standing in the corner with his hands behind his back. “Very well, Mr. Garak. I release you into Dr. Bashir’s care for now, but I expect to continue this conversation soon.” He massages his forehead. “Once I figure out what to do about this damned festival.”

Julian comes over to help Garak out of his chair, but Garak snaps upright and to the door before he can touch him. Sisko takes the opportunity to lean into Julian’s face and whisper, “Get more information out of him.” The doctor nods.

Julian isn’t angry when he steps out of Sisko’s office and sees that Garak is walking in the exact opposite direction of the infirmary, but he is disappointed. 

“Mr. Garak,” he says urgently once he’s caught up to the idiot.

Mr. Garak interrupts him in the same tone, “Now, now, my dear doctor, we both know I have a dermal regenerator in my quarters, so we need not extend–”

“And I think we both know this is about much more than a few bumps and bruises. I’m afraid the time for beating around the bush passed quite a while ago.”

“You’re right, Doctor,” Garak says, coming to an abrupt stop and rounding on him with wild eyes. “There is an urgent matter we must discuss.” Julian’s eyebrows raise, and Garak nods severely. “Oh, yes, let us not ‘beat around the bush.’ We should talk about how you threw yourself directly into the line of a lethal phaser blast on the one in a millionth chance that you might save my life. The cost of such an action being almost certainly your own life, and yet, here you stand, and here I stand. Will wonders never cease.” Julian opens his mouth, but Garak raises a finger. “Nevermind that I was in the middle of an altercation with a very dangerous, very volatile woman who would not have hesitated for a second to dispose of you. She had a nasty habit of that. Now I knew that you were naive, Doctor, Doctor! I knew that! What I did not know – what I never could have guessed after all these years – was that you are an idiot.” 

Julian stares back into Garak’s hissing face, unimpressed. Garak feels a wave of deja-vu and does not like it. It has no place here. And yet, Julian takes in a breath and smiles, raising his shoulders. “All right, Garak. If it’s really so important to you, we can talk about your suicide attempt.”

“What?” Garak bites out.

“You were going to let yourself get shot, yes?”

“I was n–” Garak starts to lie, disgusted, but is stopped by Julian stepping entirely too close. He stumbles back a step, then another when Julian attempts to crowd him again, and the familiarity of the routine has him shutting his eyes, rueful. They’re dancing again. It’s humiliating, the things this man makes him do, how effortlessly he can gain the upperhand. Most of the time without even having to lift a finger.

“You figured out Dukat’s plan and arranged for Lumok to die if she succeeded, but you expected her to. You didn’t expect to be saved,” the doctor tells his blank, unresponsive face. His eyes are still closed, his hands tense at his sides, but he knows Julian’s stepped closer again by the heat of his livid breath. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Very well. I didn’t figure it out. I was informed.”

“So, the captain was right.” He sounds bored, but Garak seizes his chance. His eyes open in a sudden burst of animation.

“Yes, I had an informant. I believe the major was familiar with him, a fellow by the name of Damoc who was recently presumed dead? Though I knew him far better as Mebol. We first met on Romulus, you see. In the event of my death, he had strict instructions to reveal Dukat’s plot in my stead and protect my remaining assets. In return, he was to receive some valuable coordinates, which by now he will have long accessed. I suppose he’s already booked passage off of the station, if he hasn’t already gone.” 

“Quick to abandon you,” Julian says, completely off-script. Garak’s carefully measured breathing stutters.

“Surely Captain Sisko would like to have a word with him.”

“I’m sure.”

“Doctor…” Garak says, lost. “There isn’t time to was–”

Suddenly there are two hands slamming into his chest like they’re iron forks and he’s a slab of meat, rocketing him back into the nearest wall with a loud thud. Garak gasps at the strength of it, astounded, but all his attention is quickly monopolized by Julian’s snarling words.

“Stop trying to distract me, Garak! Stop racing away before I can even properly get into the room, stop begging off lunch, stop ignoring my comms, and stop acting like your bloody life is over just because it was found out that you have feelings for me!” 

“I–I don’t–”

“Lke hell you don’t! Thirty-seven.”

Garak blinks several times. “What?”

“Thirty-seven. That’s how many direct references to our literary discussions are in your poems. All chronologically concordant with the dates of those discussions, and six of which from that classic Earth album I recommended to you a year ago that you swore up and down sounded like a pack of voles had been crammed into a bucket and shaken around. I knew you were having me on. You love Mitski, and you love me.”

Garak’s face shutters. 

Finally, Julian takes a step back. His hands remain on his chest, pinning him in place, but he allows him some oxygen. Exactly twenty seconds pass like this, before the doctor becomes impatient and huffs, “You can’t possibly have nothing to say.”

“What would you have me say, Doctor?”

“I would like you to admit it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve heard it from friends and coworkers and strangers and every tourist on this damn station, it feels like, but I haven’t heard it from you.”

Garak is silent for a long time. Finally, he quietly asks, “You would further humiliate me this way? Knowing what you do? My dear friend…” He, carefully, with only the gentlest of pressure, puts a hand over one of Julian’s. “Please. You’ve read everything I could possibly have to say. What more could there be?”

Julian’s hands are unforgiving, but his eyes soften at the simple lowering of the curtain. It’s not the direct confession he was looking for, the I love you completely, traitorously, ruinously that his poems professed and a deep, broken part of Julian desperately wants to hear, but it is, it is. For Garak, this is as explicit as it gets, and Julian can feel his heart trying to catch in his throat.

“Garak,” he starts to say.

Garak isn’t scowling anymore. His eyes are shining as he looks away and sucks in an aggrieved breath. “Oh, please, let us skip this excruciating precursor. I have no intention of remaining on this station.”

Julian goes unnervingly still. “Excuse me?”

“I will need time to pack up my shop and settle my lease, but then I promise, you will never suffer the consequences of my unfortunate… condition again.” When Julian only stares at him with mounting alarm in his lovely eyes, Garak grimaces. “You must know I had no intention of pursuing you.” At least, not after the implant had been shut off and he’d realized what horrors he’d stumbled into with the doctor while under its influence, and by then, it was already too late. He was too weak to stop speaking to him, but he was not a complete monster. “I wouldn’t have. My writing was never about nurturing the emotions, only managing them.” A bit of a lie, but only a bit. He does love to languish and he never could resist a good innuendo. Their friendship had been infinitely precious to him, though, and he couldn’t bear the slow death it would undergo now that everyone knew the truth.

The worsening rumors that would spread. The suffering of Julian’s reputation, career, and love life with the Cardassian spy’s drastic affections hanging over everyone’s heads. The danger it would place them both in, the damage it had already done. The way Julian would know every time Garak flirted now, it was never idle. It had never been and could never be. 

It would be a torture hitherto unthinkable. Better to sever the limb before it could rot.

Still, Julian is silent. The pressure on his chest is more a suggestion than a command now.

“Doctor, I…” he swallows back anymore hideous truths. “I apologize. Your rage is understandable, but I swear to you, I have every intention of righting this wrong.”

“Oh,” Julian says then, softly, as if he isn’t speaking to Garak at all,  “you don’t know.”

“Doctor?”

He makes a bizarre human gesture, skimming the heel of his hand off his forehead. “My God! Of course. I thought it was pride, or shame, or paranoia. Anything and everything but this, but of course you would be this ridiculous. Well. That’s an easy enough problem to solve.”

“Doctor–?!”

The hands on his chest are gone. Instead, they’re seizing him by the head and pulling him up to connect his mouth to Julian’s.

Oh.

If Julian’s touch was a brand before, this is lava running down his throat, into his stomach and down, down, down to eat through the twenty inch thick duranium floor. Slow, thorough, and final in its devastation. A transformation that cannot be persuaded. He grapples with it, hands scrambling stupidly over and across his doctor’s shoulders. Whether it’s to pull him closer or push him away, he doesn’t know. He’s too busy being brutally altered to give it much thought.

His hands settle for burying themselves in his hair at some point. When doesn’t matter. Time holds no power here. It happens, and then he knows how soft Julian Bashir’s hair feels, and there is no going back.

The loss of control becomes alarming enough that he finally manages to pry himself away, gulping in desperate, anxious breaths of frigid station air. It works. The fire and the madness that followed it calms down and he manages the strength to push Julian back, but the wet smack of their lips disconnecting will echo in his dreams for the foreseeable future, as will the dizzy grin on Julian’s face inches from his own. There’s a hand on his ass keeping him from tumbling through the hole in the floor and a couple unlucky passersby gawking at the gruesome scene and Garak is a different creature entirely, incandescent and strange, forged anew in the curious fires of mutual attachment. 

He feels insane.

“Doctor, you cannot truly be this naive.” 

Julian looks anything but naive right then. He can’t focus on that, though. He needs to focus on the fact he was nearly assassinated; the fact that the kindest man alive nearly died with him out of some misguided terran idea that all lives are of equal value and importance.

And yet, Julian is leaning in to kiss him again, so Garak puts a hand on his chest and says, “You know what I am.”

Julian’s expression turns complicated and it’s clear he understands. Garak’s roiling emotions can’t settle on being relieved or horrified. How to go on after this? After knowing intimately what he almost had, with the smoke of it still thick in his eyes and his throat and his heart?

A gentle hand on his jaw brings him back to the moment, where Julian’s eyes are serious. “I know,” he murmurs.

Garak sucks in a wet breath.

“The question is,” Julian continues, even quieter, “do you know what I am?”

His head is spinning. “Doctor?”

Julian just smiles sadly, and it's clear that there are some long conversations in their future. But for now… “About that dermal regenerator in your quarters,” Julian begins, and Garak is relieved to find out that whatever stupid, lovely thing he’s become can still appreciate an innuendo.

—

Not long after, in the middle of telling Sisko all about Mebol over Julian’s comm badge while its owner watches expectantly in a state of teasing half-dress, he’s horrified to find that whatever thing he’s become is also rather eager to please.

—

A couple days later, the two of them are picking from a generous cut of flaming taspar in the Replimat.

Or, Garak is picking, anyway. Julian is stuffing his face. Ordinarily, this would mildly scandalize him, but the fact it’s taspar, one of the most traditional delicacies of his homeworld, being shoveled enthusiastically into that pretty face makes it so he can feel only hope.

Rather than giving into that inadvisable feeling, he takes a dainty sip of his tea and tries to look nonsuspect. Cardassians from all sides and angles are staring.

“About Miss Leeta…” Garak begins.

Julian wipes his face with the side of his hand. Disgusting, but oddly compelling. “What about her?” 

“When will you be breaking the news to her?”

“Oh.” Julian smiles, bemused. “She knows.”

A tightness in his chest dispels slightly. “Does she?” he says faintly.

“She’s the one who first brought it up. We performed the Rite of Separation days ago. She said it was great timing, what with the festival and all. We didn’t even have to leave the station.”

“So you were together then.”

“Well, in a sense. We weren’t in love, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Garak takes another sip, lowering his eyes. “I wasn’t worried. Only concerned for the young lady’s feelings.”

Julian’s face is incandescent. A Cardassian to his far left is openly gaping. “Of course, of course.” He leans suddenly over the table then, moving a hand forward to rest on his knee. “So, should I take this line of questioning as an indicator that you’re open to a relationship with me?”

Garak shifts a little in his seat, moving his knee further under the table and its shadows, but otherwise doesn’t pull away. “It would be unwise,” he says quietly, without actually saying no.

The hand squeezes. “It isn’t as if people won’t assume anyway.”

“Rumors can be dispelled. Redirected. Altered.” He reaches forward to take a small saucière and pours a bright red sauce over a couple groatcakes. “There would be no coming back from a confirmation.”

Julian’s hand falls away. “Would it be so bad?”

“I don’t know,” Garak says, splitting a cake up into three neat sections. “Would it, Doctor?”

A Bajoran couple walks past their table then, and while one purposely avoids eye contact and seems to be giving them a wide berth, the other throws a meaningful glare Julian’s way. This is the fourth judgemental or pitying look he’s received since they came in for brunch. Julian calmly returns the look, refusing to be the first to look away, until finally the man averts his eyes and Julian looks back to Garak with a stern smile. Garak inclines his head.

“Be careful, Doctor,” Garak goes on. “Rumors can ruin lives. End careers.” He scoops up a bite of his cake, dripping with red sauce, and lifts it to his mouth. “Kill,” he finishes, and eats.

At that, Julian leans back in his seat with his arms crossed tight. Garak gives him his time. It’s a relief to have finally made a dent in Julian’s lovesick, idealistic conviction–and Garak can admit, after the last few days, that it is lovesickness. Julian’s decided he loves him back and there will be no stopping him from pursuing this, but there may yet be some tempering. A small, equally stubborn, sentimental part of Garak despairs at the whole horrid affair, but the behemoth of his good sense squashes this part down with little difficulty. 

It’s this moment that a smattering of young Cardassians, accompanied by one Jadzia Dax, arrive at their table. Immediately, Garak recognizes them as the ones that nearly intercepted his meeting with Lumok and his stomach drops. Julian, on the other hand, brightens back up.

“Well, hello there,” he says warmly.

Jadzia responds first, with each elbow leaned on a Cardassian’s shoulder and a knowing sparkle in her blue eyes, “Hello to you.” The Cardassians all echo with similar greetings, some shy, others giddy.

One young woman standing at the front, with her hair in three elaborately plaited braids and little makeup, is looking at Garak with particular interest. “You’re the one who wrote the poems about Julian.”

Garak looks at the girl coolly. “Do you mean Dr. Bashir?”

She goes blue. “Oh, um. Yes. I do.” She tucks an imaginary lock of hair into her perfectly coiffed hair and lowers her head respectfully. “My apologies, Doctor.”

“Hey now,” the doctor scolds with good humor, “none of that. We’re all friends here.” 

The girl throws another searching glance Garak’s way. “Friends?”

That’s enough of that. “This is certainly quite the surprise,” Garak says genially, plastering on his most pleasant smile. “Is there something you needed? As Deep Space Nine’s resident Cardassian tailor and reputed troubadour, I’m always happy to be of service.” Julian sends him a sharp look, which he ignores. 

Jadzia is looking as foxy as she ever does, with a grin nearly to her spotted ears. “Julian asked me to bring them here,” she says too happily, and Garak has to sit back in his seat to process that. Julian scratches his neck with a guilty smile, obliviously alluring. It cannot be overstated that there are, still, eyes on them from all directions and angles.

“Garak, sir,” the Cardassian woman-child begins again, earnest, “let me start over. My name is Inia Milam. I am the President of the Ivory State Liberation Library. We collect–”

“Madam,” Garak interrupts her quietly, stunned. “This is hardly the time and place.” He blinks, still shocked stupid by her brazenness, and leans towards her, peering into her distressingly young features with beseeching desperation. “And I am hardly the audience.”

Milam doesn’t appear to process his warning at all, though. She just continues to look inquisitive. She has that gleam in her eyes that is common in Cardassian women, calculating and intelligent, but there’s something else there. Something indefinable that he’s seen hundreds of times over an interrogation table, but without the fear to staunch it. Without the hopelessness. It makes his stomach flip. “On the contrary, you are exactly the sort of person we look for.” She bows her head. “Dr. Bashir promised that if we assisted him a few days prior, he would introduce us so that I could formally welcome your book of poems into our shelves. I apologize if this comes as a surprise. I wish only to thank you for your excellent contribution, E. G., and tell you that we hope to welcome many more pieces from you in the future. I’ll be in touch. Dr. Bashir.” She nods to him, returns his gentle smile, and walks confidently away. The rest of the group mirror her, voicing similar words of polite farewell and appreciation, and leave.

Garak forces himself not to track their departure and instead picks up his fork again, as if nothing world-shattering has occurred at all. The cake is tasteless in his mouth.

Julian is concealing nothing of his thoughts, however. He’s staring openly at Garak, as if he’s a bomb and he’s trying to figure out which color wire to cut.

Ultimately, it’s Jadzia that breaks the tension. “Well,” she says, “that is some harem you’ve got there, Julian.”

“Jadzia,” Julian barks. She laughs.

“I’m teasing, I’m teasing.” Uncharacteristically, her impish smile turns regretful. “Now that that’s out of the way, I do have to bring your friend in for questioning,” she says, and that explains that. “I’m sorry, boys. I stalled Ben as long as I could.”

Garak polishes off the last of his meal and takes one last gulp of his tea to wash it down. With that done, he stands with a placid, conciliatory smile.

Julian puts a hand on his shoulder before he can take a step. “I’ll come see you after my shift.” Those lovely, dark, deep eyes search his, pinning him like a moth above his fireplace. “Okay?”

Garak inhales. “Without end,” he murmurs, waits for Julian’s eyes to light in understanding, and then aloud says, “I am at your disposal, Doctor. Good day.” With that and a firm, friendly pat on Julian’s hand, he limps away.

Jadzia rather pointedly watches him limp to the exit for a few long seconds before throwing Julian a rakish grin. “Well, well,” she says largely. Julian pretends not to notice, and Jadzia pivots on her heel after Garak.

“Before we lock you up and throw away the key, could you sign my datarod,” Julian hears Jadzia asking, and he shakes his head, unsuccessfully trying to rub away his smile.

Without end Do I think of you and so Come to me at night. For on the path of dreams at least, There's no one to disapprove! Ono no Komachi

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I think one of the biggest patterns we've been seeing in critical reviews of OFMD is just this very blatant refusal to engage with the show on its own terms.

Obviously, it's fine to not like a show for whatever reason. OFMD hits the perfect sweet spot of emotional, dramatic, and funny for me, and not everyone is going to feel the same way. More than personal preference, though, I've so often seen a failure to understand the show on the most basic level.

OFMD is a romcom. The relationship between the two leads is The Point of the Show. That's why it absolutely baffles me when I keep hearing people say "there's no plot" - yes the fuck there is! It's right there! You wouldn't get mad turning on a romcom and being like "why are they focusing so much on the relationship between these two characters >:( where's the plot?"

I think part of the problem is there's not a lot of Western shows that are so focused on a storyline like this, but OFMD is very clear about what it's doing. It's a character-driven story to the extreme. The big end-season plots about the English aren't actually about the English, so the action beats and villian characters don't get the same attention they would in another show because they're not the point, they exist only to tell us things about Ed and Stede and force them into situations to drive development for our central relationship.

OFMD never compromises from what it is. It's a campy queer romcom, and it's about pirates but it's not about pirates. And if you refuse to engage with the story it's trying to tell you about the relationship between these two guys, if you're not willing to try to empathize with them, then yeah. You're probably not gonna like the show because you're not interested in what it's giving you and you're demanding it give you something else instead.

[kasugayamaisforlovers]

Experimental thought for my MotA gurlies: So I'm rewatching MotA to get a better handle on Gale and what's hitting me on the second time around is how human John feels versus how mythologized and illusive Gale feels? 

Exhibit A: You're Bucky and he's Buck?

We as an audience are introduced to Gale in episode 1 via the recitation of the Buck(ies) lore by Marge. And yeah, sure, John and Gale jump in to add color around the edges but tonally it’s a far cry from how anyone else in the show is introduced and, while John is intro’d the same lore, we come to know John with an intimacy that unravels any notions of manicured or whitewashed anything. We never really get this for Gale. 

Exhibit B: No Engine Cleven.

So before the fight between Curt and the RAF guy in episode 2 Curt’s regaling (pun intended) the homies with the story of Walla Walla wherein Gale buzzes the control tower with 3 of his 4 engines feathered. Now it's pretty clear from the dialogue that Gale's still got a functional engine, but Curt's telling the story and he insists on changing the details so that Gale's got no engines. 

The boys drink to ‘No Engine Cleven’--the myth.

Flashcut to the end of episode 3 and Gale's fort has taken a gnarly beating. By the time he gets in view of the runway in Algeria he has to feather all 4 engines. And he fucking does it: he manages to land sans engine power! He glides the crew to a safe landing, as if foretold. The No Engine Cleven prophesy made real.

So much of Gale feels like mythology, it's all stories and tidbits other characters seem to know on faith: Gale’s not a sports guy, Gale's an excellent pilot, Gale is Buck. And to be fair on each of these points we do get a little bit of bonus content. (Gale tells John about his dad which we come to understand is the crux of his sports dislike. We see Gale fly and know from his continued  survival and other characters' reactions that he's good. See exhibit 1 visa vis ‘Buck’.) 

Exhibit C: the deference.

Ok so bonk me with the rubber mallet if this is a reach but like the deference that characters (other than John) show Gale also makes it feel like Gale's something special/held apart. Like yes, I do get he's both hierarchically above a lot of the other characters and simultaneously one of the more central characters. We don't see a whole lot of interactions between characters and like Jack Kidd or Chick Harding to really compare how folks are acting towards Gale vs someone else higher up the ladder. But listen

Let’s take Croz as our test example as Croz interacts with Jack and Gale.  When Croz interacts with Jack he's definitely in a subordinate role. There's a scene wherein he recommends Bubbles for desk work and a later scene wherein Croz has inherited said desk work and is nervous about whether he's a good fit. Both times he approaches Jack with respect and the deference of a subordinate but there's nothing more to it. Jack’s a guy and Croz is a guy and so Croz feels like he can talk to Jack.

Take that in comparison to the first time Croz and Bubbles meet John and Gale. Croz and Bubbles want to pin a US map with the locations of the various crew members’ hometowns. There's a shyness in Croz’s behavior here that I think goes beyond ‘you guys are Majors’ and more toward ‘omg the popular kids. The dudes that set the tone for everyone else' there's a sort of starstruckedness to the interaction. (Help I can't think of another time he talks to Gale.)

My point is, the other boys talk to Gale and John like they're the big dogs. The Buckies occupy a space that’s nearer the men than command (Jack, Chick, etc) but higher than say a different crew member, or even other pilots (say Brady or Dye). But whereas we get some real interiority on John we never get to really dig in on Gale and it leaves Gale feeling like a marble statue. (Dare I say like a John Waynian archetype of masculine stoicism and competency and controlled violence? Is that too far?)  Like a mythical hero at least.

[nelkcats]

Nature is watching you

It had been days since the Justice League had begun fighting the most powerful entities they had ever seen. Days since the earth itself had been against them.

It all began when the weather changed from one second to the next: Heavy storms in Metropolis, hail in Gotham, blizzards in Central City. Then carnivorous plants grew at every point on earth (and it wasn't Poison Ivy, they checked), by which point it was obvious that a larger force was to blame.

John Constantine identified them as "Vortex" and "Undergrowth", though he couldn't quite explain what they were, however he warned them not to confront them, letting them get bored would be the safest thing to do (the man looked uncharacteristically pale as he commented the last part). The League did not listen to him, worried about civilian casualties and confronted both beings anyway, they had fought Gods, surely it wouldn't be different.

It became clear that they made the wrong decision when they noticed most of their members were incapacitated or injured after a couple of days, and the beings had not been harmed in the least. Vortex laughed as Undergrowth looked at them, disgusted.

Their last confrontation was in Gotham so it was no surprise that Nightwing and Red Hood continued to evacuate civilians to a safer location. Jason noticed the moment when one of the civilians ran the other way decisively, the vigilante sighed as he indicated Nightwing that he would go after him. His brother nodded before Red Hood chased after the stupidly brave black-haired, blue-eyed boy, damn, he hoped Bruce didn't see him.

Unfortunately, he was just in time to see him run over to where the League was and stand in front of the two enemies, it was obvious the heroes were trying to push him away but they were either too hurt to move or didn't notice. Jason was about to yell at him to get out of the way when the boy spoke.

"STOP!"

The boy was clearly frustrated, and his face wore an annoyed expression. Jason noted the moment when the rest of the heroes noticed the boy standing in the middle of the battlefield. Supes had a devastated expression on his face.

Jason ran to the boy (who was strangely fast), he didn't know who he was but he would hate to see him die. He wondered if it was too late when both beings noticed him. They seemed strangely frightened? Jason guessed it was a trick of their eyes.

The battlefield was suddenly silent. It seemed like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.

"I told you to stop" the black haired boy spoke again, his voice echoed in the silence, annoyance could still be heard in his tone. It was obvious he wasn't afraid. Without the heroes noticing, the plants and clouds stopped moving.

Quickly coming to his senses and noticing something, Superman shouted a warning as he looked at the hand of one of the beings pointing at the frail boy in front of him. He looked at Red Hood, who was running towards the scene but wouldn't make it in time, before looking at his own body, too damaged to move.

Contrary to what everyone expected, both beings lowered their heads, clasping their hands nervously, as if they weren't sure if they should kneel.

At the end, they lowered their heads in front of the boy in submission, looking defeated and strangely embarrassed.

"Sorry, my King" both said.

Danny snorted as he folded his arms. Jason, who had made his way over to where the halfa stood, looked at the three confused, what the fuck?

[paper-mario-wiki]

I feel like I've ended up in the same spot as so transmasc before me: I have a lovely cis boyfriend who loves my tits which I love for him, but I am getting dysphoric to the point I wanna lift my lips and show a lil teeth when I see his hands coming towards them. Feels bad because they are his favorite and we haven't been fucking as much because as soon as he starts touching me I am out of it™ and get all in my head and freeze up. Any advice?

good god, brother. i am utterly baffled at why you have elected me as the strategist for this problem, and i'm even more confused as to why you have chosen to go into as much detail as you have.

but.

if i were to give you some advice on this

i'd say that you should consider a conversation with your partner about the long-term plan for the relationship. a "relationship" is two lives that are connected, right? and your life is not one where you're gonna have boobs for the rest of it (or at least based on what you've told me i would assume, should you have your way, those bad boys are gettin lopped off at some point), therefore it's pertinent that it be brought up, because it concerns your life, therefore it concerns the relationship, therefore it concerns him, yes?

now, the first and most obvious thing to start with out the gate is the boundary, made clear and concise: the hills are now closed, off limits to tourists. all discussions regarding this come next. make it clear that it's about something quite core to your identity, and something that does in fact cause physical pain (a panic response from the nervous system is pain homie).

this brings some followup questions (and remember, this isn't an interrogation, it's a dialogue to share): how does he feel about this? if he's against, why? for that matter, how much does it bother him? is there something he doesn't understand about your discomfort? is there some concern he has about your financial or bodily well-being with regards to the procedure? is it because it's vital to his attraction to you as a partner? if that's the case, would their removal be a deal-breaker?

now keep in mind, these question can be brought up whether or not you've got immediate plans to engage in the aforementioned lopping-off of your aforementioned Bad Boys, because the actual point of this dialectical exercise is to create a simple, easy to navigate, easy to understand conversation, which will set a foundation for further negotiations-- should you learn something new about each other, or yourselves, or the relationship as a whole.

either way, i do not think that letting it keep happening and keeping it to yourself is a good idea. i can understand feeling guilty about withholding some physical and emotional gratification you could give "easily" to this person you care dearly for, but trust me when i say that it's not the way to let it be. not just because it's unfair to your partner to secretly grow to resent them for a reason you don't want to vocalize, but to yourself as well.

you may not know it, but by keeping it to yourself you're slowly building up a resentment. that frustration actually shows up pretty clearly in your message. and even if what you're frustrated about is only that particular activity, that activity is irrevocably tied to another person. specifically, a person that you consider to be a pretty central pillar in your life. if that resentment grows, it can evolve into anger, hatred, fear, paranoia, and all sorts of nasty things. and even aside from the emotional and psychological damage that can do, it can grow into a physiological issue, where your brain wears out more and more due to the growing emotional distress ripping through your neurons with all sorts of "emergency" chemicals. like i said, the panic response is a physical pain, even if your body doesn't feel like it "hurts".

so. to summarize.

ABSOLUTELY bring it up. if you don't, it could become damaging to your relationship, and also your actual real life physical brain.

when you do bring it up, remember that the goals are to set a boundary, and to reach an understanding through mutual conversation. it's a dialogue, not a lecture.

when you reach an understanding, figure out if the relationship needs to be renegotiated in some way. that usually means new boundaries, or expectations. or maybe nothing! though surely your boyfriend can find more things to love about you.

that's as best as i can muster. you don't have to follow it, but hopefully it'll at least give you some ideas you can use.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

what do you think of the rainy day fight bpp? we’ve heard both sides’ version of the story but what really gets me is how jungkook during festa 2020 didn’t even feel any secondhand embarrassment when jimin was telling the story when all the other 5 members were feeling it lol jungkook was kind of endeared by the memory by the way he was smiling

***

Aren’t they just adorable?

Jimin was doing major damage control in that Festa 2020 live lmao. The members were calling it a romance drama, Jimin took over the telling from Jungkook, saying a whole lot without saying too much, and Jung Kook had the silliest most endeared smile on his face the whole time.

When Jungkook calls Jimin his catalyst, I feel the rainy day fight shows us one of the best examples of how Jimin fills that role for Jungkook.

My quick summary of what the rainy day fight was given what jikook have said about it: There was tension in the group due to how (a hormonal teenage) Jungkook behaved and treated his hyungs. Stern words were exchanged and everybody left the practice room, except Jimin and Jungkook. Jimin then had a frank conversation with Jungkook which ended with Jimin saying something to the effect of ‘if this is how you’re going to be, fine. I won’t care about you anymore.’

I feel like Jimin to that point had been Jungkook’s biggest support and most ardent advocate. I’ve talked before about how the attention Jimin showered on Jungkook in their early years was genuine and partly served the purpose of helping establish the maknae centrally within the group. Jungkook is someone who needs a lot of love, by his own admission, and Jimin is someone for whom giving love is instinct. It’s natural to him. They were both far from home and found home in each other.

I think the rainy day fight was one of the first times it really hit Jungkook how much he loved and relied on Jimin. Left alone in that practice room, rain pouring down hitting the roof tops, Jungkook felt a world in which Jimin treated him like any other bandmate was unbearable. He realized that for Jimin to even make a comment like that, he must’ve fucked up royally. It caused him to reflect and before long, he ran after Jimin.

We all know how the story ends, with jikook finding each other in the rain, hugging it out, and talking way past midnight on the roof of their dorm. The guys have said this happened in 2015 or 2016.

There’s no bigger Jimin Stan than Jungkook, and no bigger Jungkook Stan than Jimin. This hasn’t changed in 10+ years. And this is the thing that I find most interesting about jikook: how consistent they are. Not even the most highly awarded Oscar winner can put on an act for 10+ years, and then even when off the clock, choose to spend 18 months joined at the hip while completing a mandatory military service, all to serve a company’s fan service narrative.

Anybody who thinks Jungkook hates Jimin, would do anything malicious to him, or that Jimin thinks somehow less of Jungkook or would put up with bullshit from Jungkook because Jimin is oh so kind… anyone who thinks this is insane. In my opinion.

I’m talking daft as a brush, mad like a rabbit on crack. Just plain delusional, no two ways about it. Jikook are the og “you are me, I am you.” The rainy day fight is one of the key instances we see this play out, crystal clear.

[utilitycaster]

You mentioned it briefly a few months ago (but it lives rent free in my head sorry!) that the most popular ship from this campaign has almost only AU fanfics and it's really telling me something about the characters from c3, that there is just really nothing to explore about them.

So here's the thing. I do not think the characters aren't worth exploring! There's been good character work (a lot of which gets ignored, actually, because it's not what many of the people who insist that C3 is their favorite as they slowly turn into a corncob want*; see basically anyone on Twitter about Orym), it's just not central to the plot.

I stand by what I originally said and which was validated at a recent Q&A panel: the cast wasn't told that this was going to be the Moon Plot Campaign (they were just told pulpier and deadlier) and Laura wasn't told that Imogen would be as central a character as she was. So I think we have characters who could have, for the most part, had a character-driven campaign around them, but it became clear relatively early on that this was the Moon Plot campaign and that wouldn't be the focus; and because to get all of his ducks in a row for the Moon Plot Matt had to take a heavier hand with the rails and as a result the party didn't have a ton of bonding time early on because they were always taking NPC missions/being ferried around in an airship with no need for watch conversations, and it's hard to go back and fill in those interactions later, which is why they've sort of fallen out of the habit.

With respect to the ship...the thing is, I genuinely believe it could have been good. The reason I'm not a fan of imo/dna isn't because I think the characters aren't good (well, my feelings on Laudna are documented but I do think Imogen is a great character). It's because, ironically enough, every barrier between them did get removed all too quickly in the service of Cottage Endgame and as a result I think many of the people who wanted that are like "wait...that's it?" Like, the gnarlrock fight fizzled out only for the same conflict to come up briefly with Ishta (swordgate) 70 episodes later and be resolved a day later in-game. When they reunited I was like you know what would have made this good? If Laudna had remained angry in episode 65 and turned Imogen down which Laura 100% expected to happen, because they hadn't talked about this and they were awkwardly trying to deal with unresolved feelings for 30+ episodes and perhaps Laudna actually leaned into Delilah wholeheartedly during that time and realized she had feelings for Imogen after all, while Imogen was simultaneously struggling with that rejection and realizing Laudna was going into a dark place but didn't feel like she could get involved, and they both leaned more (platonically) on other characters and Swordgate was the point where Laudna said "oh no, I'm becoming too much of a problem and I do want Imogen to like me" and the soul anchor felt like a culmination of a deeply felt struggle instead of a quick fix for something that had only inconvenienced her a few times and led to a 20 hour long minor spat at best? If we actually got a fucking slowburn? It would have been great! Turns out if you always go for the instant gratification, it makes for a story without any tension! And now we're watching people who were always clamoring for skipping to the good part realizing that in doing so we skipped all the buildup that makes it the good part. There could have been something to explore. It was not explored.

*I think that there are people who for whatever reason do legitimately prefer Campaign 3 for whatever reasons and are in earnest and this isn't about them. While I don't share their tastes I support them and their feelings; we all have our preferences. This is about the people who are already visibly setting up the groundwork for a dramatic rage quit that will make copious, wildly incorrect use of the term "neoliberal" if the campaign ends with the gods still in place while still insisting this is definitely the best campaign and making absolutely brainless statements about prior campaigns not being as political even though this is the least politically inclined or aware group by a country mile. I think the lesson from the above and from here is that you really cannot have your cake and eat it too.

[faramirsonofgondor]

Insane how many TV show characters have incredibly traumatic backstories or go through a shit load of trauma only for the writers to be like “yea and then they became an asshole and ruined all their relationship for no reason whatsoever.” and then they’ll be like “what do you mean that’s so out of character? no it’s not i literally wrote the character.” LIKE YES BITCH and they used to be a GOOD person and friend??? they would do anything for their friends and family??? ANYTHING. they spent eons trying to fit in and they dedicated so much time making sure their family was safe. and now you’re saying that they’re just selfish out of nowhere???

OR EVEN WORSE. when they fucking forgive their abuser for no reason or because their abuser was on drugs or addicted to alcohol. and then they get sober and magically become a better person??? what??? you mean the person who neglected their child??? the person who abused their child??? AND THE SAME CHILD GETS HATED ON FOR BEING RUDE OR EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE AND PEOPLE STILL DON’T TRUST THEM OR LIKE THEM EVEN AFTER THEY MADE CONSIDERABLE EFFORTS TO UNLEARN THE HABITS THEY DEVELOPED TO SURVIVE THE ABUSE THEY WENT THROUGH??? IM SO TIRED OF SEEING THIS HAPPEN IN SO MANY TV SHOWS. LIKE IF IT WAS ONCE OR TWICE I WOULD BE ANNOYED BUT ITS FUCKING EVERYWHERE.

Just to be clear I’m not talking about shows that have established characters perpetuating the cycle of abuse from the beginning, or progressively getting worse over time, because while I don’t necessarily like those plot lines, they can make sense when they’re done right. But I fucking hate it when it comes out of nowhere and ruins all the backstory the character had and goes against all their earlier motivations.

And while I don’t particularly like it in TV shows when a character forgives their abuser, I can understand it when the abuser actually realizes the weight of their actions, doesn’t try to excuse them, and makes efforts to do better. But almost all TV shows where the character forgives their abusers ends up with the one who was abused being labeled as a problem child or too much to handle/too difficult and the abuser gets to be forgiven without any real development or apology or effort.

Like there’s so many different examples of this happening - Jamie & James Sr. from Ted Lasso, Jess & Liz from Gilmore Girls, Buck & his parents from 9-1-1, Shawn & Henry from Psych (I said what I said), like half of the entire MCU, and multitude of other characters. Like all of the kids were emotionally neglected and abused (and sometimes physically as well) and then they “acted out” (they insulted people, were maybe a little bitchy, and acted immaturely) and then somehow them acting out and being immature or eccentric becomes a central point of their character, and other characters are often annoyed or upset with this part of the character. But then the adult who yk, abused their fucking child, is viewed sympathetically by the other characters because they “were having such a hard time” and “were really struggling” while they were abusing their child. And now that their kid is all grown up they “don’t want to have a bad relationship” and “only ever wanted what was best for them, they just didn’t know to how give it to them”. LIKE GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK MAN.

How is it the kids fault they were a bit immature or a bit of an asshole after being abused for their whole life but it’s not their abusers fault for abusing them???? like what the fuck??? Like it makes me sick to my stomach when other characters are like “wow it must have been so hard to raise them” when they literally DIDN’T raise them, they fucking abused them. Don’t even get me started on when they give the abused kid an actual parental figure and the abused kid opens up to them about how hard their life was and the parental figure does their best to support the kid only to turn around and encourage the kid to forgive their fucking abuser. Like what are these writers even on????

Anyways fuck forgiveness for the sake of forgiveness. You don’t need to forgive shit just because your abuser had a sad backstory. Womp Womp for them. Addiction doesn’t excuse abuse. Grief doesn’t excuse abuse. Divorce doesn’t excuse abuse. “Wanting what’s best for you” “being raised in a different time” or being “misguided”isn’t an excuse for abuse. Them having abusive parents isn’t an excuse for abuse. There isn’t an excuse for abuse. You don’t need to (and IMO shouldn’t) forgive an abuser just because they’re at a better or more stable point in their life than they were when they abused you or because they suddenly got FOMO and realized they’re gonna die soon and they don’t want a shitty relationship with you. And if they and other people are pressuring you to forgive them, then they clearly don’t realize the weight of their actions or how serious they were.

[rappaccini]

okay. i've already autopsied tua but a final overview may be in order. i'll do it one more time.

season one was the only good season of umbrella academy. it had issues, but those issues didn't yet compromise the story or the themes. season one had a stylized production, great cast who at that point were still playing their characters instead of themselves, strong story that mostly carried (though there was some filler), and fantastically coherent themes. the cracks in the foundation were always there. but they could have been fixed.

season two was bad, but entertaining enough to hide its flaws. it had a bigger budget, glossier production value, more action, a cool new setting, more Fun Moments, enough momentum from the source material to mostly fill up the season, and the character assassination didn't have time to reach its consequences yet so everyone acting like the fandomified version of themselves worked for the people who were just here for the fun. it also dropped in the summer of 2020, when people were desperate for escapist entertainment, and there was little superhero fare to compete with (and when the protests happening that summer had people wanting to Say Something about civil rights without actually wanting to change anything). the bar was lower, and season 2 cleared it. but season 2's story broke. look back at the actual story, and you'll see it.

season three was bad, and not entertaining enough to hide its flaws. it had some interesting ideas and good moments, but the whole thing was a slog. the pacing was terrible, the character assassination couldn't be denied anymore, and the momentum from the comics ran out and left the writers to their own devices, which revealed they had no plan, no substantive creative backbone, and no understanding of what they were making. season three could have saved the show with a hail mary of tight writing to pick up the slack, but quadrupled down on the problems and guaranteed it was past the point of no return.

season four was terrible. somehow with a reduced episode count it still dragged, every single character has no growth, the basic logic of the story is missing and the continuity is a mess. and ending the story about abuse victims trying to heal on them concluding that they should all just kill themselves makes the story both pointless and rotten. at this point it was a given. you can't recover from two bad seasons back to back. season two shot the show in the gut, season three let it bleed out instead of healing it, and season four kicked its corpse a few times for a couple klaus jokes, then confirmed that its very existence was a mistake. very meta.

so. what were the cracks in the foundation.

the lack of respect for the source material. as soon as they tried a plot that had no connection to the original comics, they were fucked. but even before season four, they were all over the place. in fact they still haven't adapted most of the comics. john perseus, calhoun, deever, dr terminal, the academy at war with each other in the 1960s, the actual purpose of hotel oblivion, the chimpanzees everywhere, the 1980s period setting, clarissa and oscar, the coming of the squid monster, carla the sparrow, grace having her own secret agenda, the actual character of jennifer? just not here. even the raygun gothic aesthetic is watered down and eventually barely even present.

the spinelessness of the creative team. as early as season 2, they were throwing character arcs and themes in the trash to beg the fans to love them. they had no plan and just wanted cheap thrills.

the lack of internal rules. the time travel mechanics don't make sense. viktor's powers just do whatever. lila's powers eventually just do whatever. the central reveal that vanya's medication had been repressing her powers, set up by klaus using drugs to do the same, is undone by season 2's climax revolving around vanya somehow using her powers despite being drugged. the 'marigold' reveal about their powers makes no sense (why does luther get his body back? we don't know.). there are no stakes with no clear world limitations.

the good victim bad victiming. as early as season 1, the show was arguing that harold jenkins is irredeemable for killing his abusive dad. that should've been your first warning that they were going to try to redeem reginald and have the academy basically kill themselves in the end.

the lack of continuity. as early as season 1, the writers forgot number five had a time travel briefcase sitting in the library, or that helen cho's body was in harold's house when he, allison and diego search it. then they forget when luther got disfigured in season 2. then they forgot how the powers work. then they forget literally everything about the story.

the racism. all the characters of color get the worst plotlines in season 1. allison loses her narrative in season 2 and gets it replaced with a civil rights plotline that concludes that 'hey, there's a black president someday!' diego and lila prance through the jim crow south without dealing with segregation as allison is hatecrimed every episode.

the sexism. look back at how all the female characters are treated. look back at how allison's mistreatment of patrick and claire is glossed over, and lila fully gets away with manipulating diego. look at how vanya's 'redemption' is all about finding maternal instincts she never had until season 2. look at how allison's assault of luther is dismissed the way it never would have been if the genders were swapped. look at how sloane is juxtaposed against allison.

the homophobia. the queer characters were either stereotyped or used as glaad award bait. the queerbait of ben and klaus's entire dynamic.

the ableism. in the comics, luther has mobility aids and his disfigurement is treated like a debilitating condition, not a punchline. his eating disorder isn't mocked. vanya's in a wheelchair after she's shot and goes through months of physical therapy and is still never the same. allison is an amputee. diego has one eye and severe ptsd. everyone's mental illness is taken seriously, including and especially klaus's addiction. in the show these elements are downplayed, absent or fuel for quirky moments.

the show is full of filler. the murder mystery plot, the meritech plot, allison following leonard around, the day that was/wasn’t…. even in season 1, there wasn't enough material to make ten episodes. there was never enough for a ten episode run for any season. and yet somehow the one season with the right runtime still drags.

the spectacle. in season 2 they fully lean into it over substance. case in point: the dance sequence.

actually i'll go into that in detail because the dance sequence sums up the whole show and its downfall.

in season one, the pilot's iconic i-think-we're-alone-now dance sequence was an emotional moment that symbolized how all the characters feel isolated and disconnected from each other, but are secretly interconnected and far more in sync than they realize. the song was catchy, but "i think we're alone now" is literally a commentary on the story it's playing over: now that the academy's abuser is dead, they can finally unwind and love each other, and they can fix their problems by literally "running as fast as they can, holding onto one another's hands." -- and how does the season end? by them doing just that.

in season two, allison, klaus and vanya's salon dance is meaningless because vanya has no clue who these people are, klaus has never given a shit about vanya before (watch season one. he doesn't care.), and allison should hate her at this point in the story. it's just there for fun... but if you swapped vanya with ben it would work as a joyful reunion between these three people. the concept of the dance is fine, but the decision to make it a fanservice moment throws it off.

in season three, the dance sequence comes out of nowhere as a ~wacky random fun moment~ to call back to the first season. the footloose song has nothing to do with the story, it's just fun and catchy. there is no substance to the spectacle anymore. it's just dumb fun.

and season four ends in 'i think we're alone now' for no reason other than to ask the viewer to remember when the show was good. no fun, just dumb.

... let's look back at the themes season one sets up.

the road to recovery takes a very long time, and you will fall off it and have to climb back on.

corporations don’t have your back. they’re soulless and they want to suck the life out of you.

abuse does not make nice people. abuse does not make happy people. there are no good victims or bad victims. (except leonard, i guess.)

it’s difficult to tell where programming stops and free will starts; toxic behavior begets toxic behavior, and we have to own up to it, stop it, and resolve to be better.

redemption is possible. the bad things you did in the past don’t define your future.

you're better together than apart. 

time. changes. everything. it isn’t too late to have the life and the love you wanted. it isn’t too late to realize your talents, or become a better person, or free yourself from a bad situation. it isn’t too late to get together, or to make up or to change your mind. there are no lost causes. the world is worth saving. your enemies are worth showing mercy to. your relationships and friendships and broken families can be salvaged and reshaped into something new and better.

things are fucked, but if we give it everything we have, we can save it, and it’s worth taking up that fight, because nothing is set in stone.

fuck it, be happy. 

remember those?

i'm gonna get into it character by character:

luther.

his entire plotline was meant to be about realizing he was abused, disavowing his abuser and finding his confidence to become the leader he never got to be and go after the love he lost with allison and make a family with her and claire. that was his starting point.

and the fandom hated him rabidly. they said he was just as bad as his father, insisted that he had no redeemable qualities, made fun of his body and his traumas, took the situation with vanya and removed all the moral grays to call him evil over it, and insisted that he was Somehow Abusing Allison.

in season 2, luther has conveniently disowned and confronted reginald offscreen before the plot starts.

he immediately apologizes to vanya, who is an amnesiac and can't actually hold him accountable for hurting her, and the situation is never mentioned again.

his body dysmorphia is played for laughs.

his intelligence and leadership qualities are gone and he's just a bumbling idiot. remember when luther was an astronaut who effectively kept up a faulty space station for four years on his own? could you believe this dumbass was that guy?

he's a punching bag for the fans who hated him.

and season 3 seals the deal. he's still an idiot, he's still hideous.

his romance with allison is destroyed as offensively as possible to reassure the fans who hated alluther.

his romance with sloane is a clumsy attempt to keep the payoff he and allison should have had into the story as they're placating the fans who hate them.

and in season 4, he's... a stripper. he never finds a way to love his body, he just conveniently doesn't have it anymore, and he's still treated like a joke for it.

he never meaningfully takes command of the academy, he just stops trying to.

the wife season 3 insists he loves so much is gone and he doesn't give a shit.

he never even confronts allison for assaulting him, or reconciles with her and has a significant relationship with claire.

he decides to just die.

his entire character trajectory was aborted after only one season. he spent 75% of the runtime with nothing to do, because the fandom hated him and the writers were too cowardly to follow through with his character.

diego.

his entire plotline was meant to be about letting go of his aggression issues by finding his place in the family, reforming his rivalry with luther into a deep friendship based on mutual support and unpacking his 30 year history with vanya in order to finally be happy and in love with her after facilitating her redemption.

and his character's arc is dependent on others....

so in season 2 when luther's arc was canned, so was diego's journey towards letting go of his ego and finding a way to support luther after spending his whole life being pitting against him.

in season 2, when allison's arc was canned, diego ended up with the commission / jfk assassination plot that was never meant to be his. his entire dynamic with number five was hers.

in season 2, because klaus took his vietnam plot in season 1, diego doesn't have one anymore, so there's no way to meaningfully unpack how he feels like his only purpose is violence. instead, his anger issues are totally ignored.

and in season 2, when vanya was split into elliot-page-playing-himself and lila, the romance went out the window too. yes, diego falls in love with lila, but he barely knows her, and all she's done is manipulate, drug, kidnap and hurt him and the academy... yet all that bad behavior is totally ignored in the Show About Abuse And Trauma, because they have chemistry. there's no deep, complex history between them that could have anchored the relationship. the redemption arc itself is rushed and undeserved.

oh, also, he doesn't feel upset about eudora anymore. never mentions how he got her killed, or that he loved her.

then in season 3, diego has nowhere to go but deeper into his romance arc. he has no tension with luther to resolve (and with the show assassinating alluther, there's no 'we both love our girlfriends and want to make it home to tell them that, so let's get over our bullshit and help each other get there' revelation like in the comics). his relationship with lila gets even weirder, with her... deciding to babytrap him, getting a kid killed in the process, and it being framed as quirky and hot. and no eudora again.

and in season 4, diego is a family man who doesn't give a shit when his kids are wiped from existence, whose marriage is about to implode. who decides to just die.

there's just... nothing. he's just himbo #2.

allison.

her entire plotline was meant to be about realizing how culpable she is in the abuse of her family, unlearning those manipulative tendencies and figuring out how to exist authentically, making amends with the people she hurt-- especially vanya and her ex-husband and daughter-- and restarting her life with someone she can love: luther.

allison isn't formally character assassinated until season 3, but she was wrong from the start.

because in season 1, they had her be already past all those things in the pilot episode because they're too sexist to let women be messy. allison is conveniently totally in control of her behavior and has already decided not to use her rumor anymore. she already accepts responsibility for hurting her ex and daughter.

and the writers refused to let her and vanya be angry at each other because ~we don't believe in girl hate~. leading to allison forgiving her for slitting her throat and leaving her to die.

in season 2, the writers wouldn't give her the commission plotline from the comics. allison was the protagonist of the dallas arc, who had a complex story about being willing to alienate her loved ones in order to save them, being ruthless enough to belong at the commission, making deals with the devil to get her powers back and save her the academy.... and unknowingly creating a paradox where she is responsible for the traumatizing incident of watching someone be killed when she was a girl.

instead, allison is saddled with a c-plot about how you have to be nice when you protest, and how fighting back violently against the racist who tried to literally hatecrime you yesterday makes you just as bad as him. rewatch that scene. look at how it’s framed. that’s the takeaway.

and throughout allison's time in dallas, none of the academy check in with her on how she's doing. no one cares. even when she was attacked at a protest they all know she was at, no one asks her if she's okay.

instead of showcasing allison's ruthlessness and dedication to her family, we meet her having conveniently moved on after her daughter was killed, happily settled into dallas with a new relationship, and having given up on ever finding a way home.

instead of showing allison learn to adapt to life without her rumor, we meet her having already figured out how to get a job, make friends, and have a relationship without it. she doesn’t even have to find the courage to join the activists because she did already.

instead of allison learning how to live without a physical voice, she can just talk again. her power's just... back.

instead of allison being rightfully furious at vanya for disabling her, depowering her, stranding her alone in the jim crow south for years, and killing her child... she instantly forgives her. dance party! no girl hate here!

her romance with luther is intact, but the writers know you hate it, so they're trying to please you by giving her a romance with a man who she doesn't trust with any information about her, who doesn't trust her, and who allison doesn't hesitate to abandon five days after luther shows up. but hey they have chemistry, so they were Truly In Love, apparently. no seriously, the raymond romance is bad.

season 3 tries to do the heavy lifting with the messier aspects of allison, but this happens too late, and it mostly functions as a way to assassinate her character to turn her into an angry black woman stereotype so they can kill her romance with luther as meanly as possible, and set sloane up to take her place.

she suddenly cares that her daughter is dead and that viktor technically killed her after an entire season of not caring. and her decision to alienate the academy to save her rings false because she spent two years not caring. why now.

her romance with luther implodes when the writers decide to just do what the fandom wants and make it Toxic All Along, after two seasons of framing it in the most positive light possible. and allison sits front row at his wedding to a woman he barely knows, smiling through it like that wasn't supposed to be her, or like she didn't just assault him.

because viktor and allison have had such an artificially nice relationship, there's no payoff to them learning to love each other again, like viktor encouraging the group to sympathize with allison afterher betrayal.

the effect of this is that at the end of season 3, allison has regressed into the person she was before season 1, but do you even want to see her get better or get along with the academy after she tried to assault luther, killed viktor's stepson, and sold everyone down the river to live in a fantasy world?

good news! all that doesn't matter in season 4! luther and viktor never confront allison for doing that to them. the whole family's over her betraying them. raymond? oh, he's just gone. yeah, he left between seasons. we won't even unpack the implications, or that allison's right back to being a divorcee whose husband abandoned her after learning what she did with her rumor, trying to live without that power. oh and don't worry, she isn't dependent on her power anymore. yeah, we just solved that offscreen again.

claire's here, but is there even a point.

allison and klaus's relationship is intact, but because the show won't seriously examine klaus's addiction, we can't discuss how they enable each other, or how allison's manipulative tendencies or klaus's flightiness and addiction might be affecting claire. no more intergenerational trauma discussion here.

allison has nothing to do because slowly learning how to admit how much harm she inflicted on her loved ones, live without her power, and earn vanya/viktor's trust back was her arc and it's... all over the fucking place.

then, she decides to just die.

klaus.

his entire plotline was meant to be about realizing how much damage his addiction has done to himself and his family, getting clean and conquering the crippling fear of his power that made him an addict in the first place.

then in season 2, he's clean offscreen. no exploration of klaus trying to stay on the wagon for the first time in decades. we're just three years into him being totally fine sober. no complications.

and his relapse is played for laughs instead of treated like a devastating moment.

in season 2, his grief over dave is glossed over. yes, we see dave for five minutes, which is more than the three minutes he got in season 1, but klaus is Moved On Already. no discussion of what this relationship meant to him (... or how ben was affected, being the third wheel). no rumination. just a quick 'here's dave to shut the fans up' and on we go.

in season 2, klaus's excitement about exploring his powers' potential is gone already. yeah, he figured them out offscreen.

his cult plotline replaces his comics story of being a clubkeeper in vietnam and becoming a father (yes, klaus has a baby in vietnam), and the entire plotline is a mean-spirited metanarrative about how dumb the writers think his fangirls are. like. fucking look at the narrative. they're making fun of you.

and yet there are no serious consequences to the implications of klaus immediately turning into his dad the second he gets a little power. he isolated a bunch of people from the outside world, derailed their lives, tattooed them, got them hooked on the idea that The End Is Nigh and Only He Can Save Them, got them to have sex with him, and only stopped manipulating them because he was bored. not even because he realized it was wrong.

his relationship with ben is queerbaited to hell, and has no resolution.

he spends the entire season deliberately keeping ben isolated from the rest of the academy, and this is never meaningfully examined. klaus is an absolute bastard in season 2, and the writers don't acknowledge it.

by season 3, he's just a joke machine and a flamboyant stereotype. he never has a substantive interaction with sparrow ben, or struggles with his sobriety or his addiction in a way that takes it seriously. even his meeting with his mother feels empty.

and in season 4, the mothers of agony plotline from the comics is so disjointed that it's meaningless. in the comics, this is his lowest low, that ben helps him come back from.

any depth to the implications of his immortality is gone. it's just funny that he's a germophobe.

(... immortality? how'd he get killed in the first season apocalypse timeline then. no answer? okay.)

any potential in his relationship with allison and claire is gone.

like luther, his crucial development is skipped over and he spends half the season wandering in circles making jokes.

and he decides to just die.

five.

his entire plotline was meant to be about learning to trust the academy and work within them as a team member rather than running off and doing his own thing. and about slowly learning to be a person instead of a vehicle for the mission.

in season 2, he inexplicably lets the commission go and trusts they're Good Now thanks to new management, after making it clear in season 1 that he can't ever trust them.

in season 2, his antipathy with vanya is transferred to lila. he never accepts responsibility for his role in leading to her isolation.

in season 2, instead of trying to get the family together, he's still working on his own.

in season 3, instead of riding hard for viktor and sympathizing with him, he calmly tells him he'll put him down if he ever steps out of line again and ignores him the rest of the time.

for three straight seasons, he's the plot driver. but three seasons in with no other characters having a coherent arc, the plot driver became all he was. he couldn't slow down or have an emotional moment because he's the only thing moving things forward and all the people who can bring out those emotions are so ooc that it won't work.

then in season 4... oh boy.

he's not the plot driver anymore because there's no plot.

five slowly trying to embrace domesticity could have been interesting... but boy does it fall flat.

five created the commission! no, we won't discuss the nature of him being responsible for his own abuse, or perpetuating the cycle that led to the apocalypse and the academy's misery.

five falls in love... with his brother's wife, who he hates, who hates him because he hog-tied and tortured her parents to death in front of her when she was a little girl. okay.

then he decides to just die.

ben

his entire presence in the story was building to a reveal that he's only staying with klaus because he's in love with him.

in season 2 they queerbait that connection for ten episodes by framing him as a literally possessive boyfriend, give him a 'love interest' in jill that makes no sense, kill him off in a scene that makes no sense because that's not how their powers work, and have the vaguest 'by the way he was in love with you' reveal via vanya that feels like an afterthought.

klaus keeps ben from talking to anyone in the academy for the whole season for no reason. he never mentions why, ben never gets mad at him. there are no emotional consequences. ben spent an entire season able to talk to the academy and inform the world and nothing ever comes of this.

in season 3, ben's a totally different character. none of the umbrella academy have emotional reactions to seeing him alive.

not even klaus.

and he feels nothing for them.

he also feels nothing for the sparrows, who drop like flies around him without him giving a shit.

in season 4 he's a completely different character again.

no interest in reuniting with his sparrow academy mates, or the umbrella academy.

he's a crypto bro for some reason.

the south korea subway ending stinger? idk where that went.

the show does use the comics' likely endgame of ben being the portal through which the final antagonist arrives. but they do it in such a strange, meaningless way.

the romance with jennifer comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. it's unclear why he'd want to become a blob with her. there's no emotion anchoring this plot.

also, jennifer was a large, dark-skinned black woman in the comics and... isn't here. (it's also unclear if jennifer was romantically involved with ben in the comics, or if she might have been one of the kid's mothers. so uh. we'll see how that ends up.)

his tentacles come out of his back sometimes. huh?

the reveal that he was killed by their father and they were all brainwashed makes no sense. especially given that allison has brainwashing powers that are never used to cover this up.

there's never a meaningful payoff for ben as a character.

and vanya/viktor…

to start, seasons 1-2 will call her vanya because that's how the character was written, performed and received. seasons 3-4 will refer to him as viktor. that's why the name/pronouns switch back and forth in this post. those are two different characters.

alright i'm gonna say it: the show basically killed off vanya at the start of s2 and split her into two characters: lila, who's the white violin from the comics-- and has vanya's style, punk musicianship, romance with diego, mutual hate with five, alliance with the commission, status as the most powerful character, and role as the antagonist who needs a redemption arc that rejoins her with the family-- …. and the character that would become viktor, who's just elliot page playing a flattened version of himself for token queer points.

the show literally got rid of its main character one season in, sped past all the conflict with the academy to the part where they're all besties again, and gave all the interesting shit to an oc. and they did it because they cared more about profiting off of elliot page's queerness than trusting him to do his job as a professional actor, and supporting that performance in the face of a fandom that only saw him for his sexuality/gender identity.

season 2 skips over vanya learning to use her power and lose her fear of it. she's just good at it now. also, the character will never use the violin to channel her powers again, and will never again acknowledge her love of music, because elliot page didn't like playing the violin. like, sir. what are you doing playing a character called 'the white violin' then.

season 2 skips over her rage and hatred of the academy. instead of being afraid of them, avoiding them, and being hostile whenever they interact, she's instantly cool with them, dismisses their years of mistreatment and dismissal, and is part of the family with no friction despite trying to kill them, blowing up the world, and killing their niece.

season 2 totally resets her personality. amnesia! she's nice again! we know you hated her when she was angry, so don't worry about that!

season 2 gives her a romance with someone who she has chemistry with, but who fundamentally doesn't understand her. the entire relationship is just fanservice. remember the lesbian vanya truthers who thought elliot page could only play characters who were lesbians because he identified as a lesbian at the time? remember their "give vanya a girlfriend" whining? this entire plotline was for them.

season 2 hands the moment where the academy understands vanya and empathizes with her in a moment of superpower meltdown.... to harlan.

in season 3, diet elliot page just becomes overt. it's great that page's transition was incorporated into the show at his request, and at this point the damage to the character's so massive that at least they're being honest about the character just being a different entity from vanya entirely. like, fuck it. you already gave all of vanya's character to the oc. might as well.

though it's great that the transition is quickly incorporated into the story, it happens so quickly that a very easy plotline for viktor in s3 is just rushed past. he has so little to do, the transition is such an obvious fix, and they just... don't do it.

because viktor magically has full control of his powers, there's no more growth from him. and at this point his powers just do whatever. who even knows what his abilities are. the show sure doesn't.

viktor is a beloved member of the academy with no friction whatsoever, even though they're trapped in an alternate dimension because of him

allison's anger at him is demonized instead of deconstructed.

the harlan plotline certainly exists. very funny that the show casually reveals that vissy ruined sissy's life and never goes into the emotional consequences of this.

in season 4... yeah this character has nothing to do. he never expresses anger at allison over killing his stepson. his powers are even more vague. he's in canada for some reason, just to complete the transformation into elliot page.

then he decides to just die.

the main character of the story was essentially killed off one season in. the whole thing became adrift because without vanya, there's no main character anymore. no central antagonist with history with the academy, no emotional weight to their connection, no payoff to a slow redemption arc that unfolds over multiple seasons. just shenanigans.

lila

took over the vanya storyline in season 2.

lila is vanya from the comics.

vanya's hatred of the umbrella academy and antagonism towards them? it's now lila's.

vanya's alliance with the commission to destroy the world? nope. lila's the commission's ally now.

vanya's status as the most powerful character? now it's lila.

vanya and five's mutual hate? now belongs to lila and five. even the fiveya vibe rubberbanded into That in season 4.

vanya's slow redemption from a hateful villain of the academy into one of its most crucial members is handed to lila. who barely knows these people, has only ever hurt them, and yet is treated with more empathy with them after three days than vanya received in thirty years.

vanya being set up as the character who'll save the umbrellas from the sparrows? nope, that's lila now.

vanya's romance with diego? that's lila's now. no, it doesn't make sense but they have chemistry.

then in season 3... oh god. instead of unpacking lila's severe mommy issues from being abused by the handler, she's just over them now.

the academy immediately trust and embrace her even though all she's ever done is hurt them.

and for some reason, this character who's shown no maternal instincts randomly decides she wants to be a mom because her one night stand with diego, who she knew for a few days, got her pregnant.

and she tries to convince him a little white boy is their kid to test if he'll be a good father and doesn't give a shit when that child turns to dust. what are we doing here.

then in season 4, their romance doesn't even mean anything. neither does their family. they're already on the verge of a divorce. which... yeah, follows, given what their romance actually consisted of.

then she hooks up with number five, who killed her family in front of her when she was a girl. what.

.... and then we die.

the whole thing came apart in season 2. you just didn't notice yet.

and here's where i get cunty and set aside my belief that writers have an inherent responsibility to never kowtow to their fans no matter what, because the fandom is a big part of how things went wrong, and someone has to talk about it.

the umbrella academy begun as a complex metaphor for recovering from abuse, using superheroes in a gothic-adjacent setting. every single character's power is allegorical of an attribute one may take on from living in an abusive home. (and part of the missed potential in lila is the failure to fit her into that metaphor too). and the metaphor is literally in the name: the umbrella academy.

it's an academy. not a family. the characters are only adoptive siblings because reginald needed a legal way to bind them to him. they grew up in a twisted boarding school, which they explain again and again, and call each other siblings out of habit, which they also explain. and they are choosing as adults to overcome the trauma that pitted them against each other to become a found family.

... i'm gonna say it. the pseudoincest is a vital part of the story, the same way it is in the comics. that was how they were going to love each other. their ability to love each other was the sign that the brainwashing failed, and the found family was, like actual found families, going to involve some of those people pairing off romantically. allison and luther. ben and klaus. vanya and diego-or-five. that was the story.

the umbrella academy is both a giant metaphor for healing from a dysfunctional family, and for finding a queer found family (... it's the umbrella academy. that's the part of the allegory that's still unfulfilled. everyone in this story is queercoded, not just klaus and vanya/viktor. the show massively dropped the ball in not exploring this deeper.) and the fandom screamed, whined and harassed their way into having it scribbled out of the story, and the writers were cowardly enough to do it for you. if you're wondering why they kept trying to sneak alluther in through the back in season 2, still had a harcest couple get married in season 3, and pivoted to shipping lila so hard, that's why. it's the most important thing about the story, and you hated it. is it any shock that the story ends with all their relationships stunted, and no love between them.

remember all those themes from season 1? remember how you guys hated them? remember how you concluded that luther is an irredeemable monster, and klaus is an innocent little baby, and vanya is somehow both and neither? remember how you were completely uninterested in watching everyone redeem themselves, and wanted to skip to the Fun Sibling Moments? remember how you immediately dismissed half the characters as lost causes, and directly demanded that the writers not let the characters love each other? congrats, the writers were listening!

the umbrella academy comic is meant for adults. the show was made for a wider audience and the writers were totally unprepared for the fandom of antifan teens they got. and they overhauled the show to make it what that fandom wanted. more fun, less substance. making luther a bumbling idiot and sidestepping his entire arc. making diego a himbo. skipping allison's complexities until it's time to demonize her for them. making klaus into the cartoon version of himself. making vanya into diet elliot page and handing all her storylines to a new character. dismantling the show's core tone to make it a fanservice carnival. creating vissy, allmond and dielila in the first place, and coining the ship names before the fandom even chose them. making alluther toxic all along, and swapping her out with a white-passing replacement. it was all for you.

then when they ended the show, they flipped off the fandom on the way out. of course it was going to end like that. you spent five years playing oppression olympics, making bigotry self-righteous, and declaring you didn't want a transformative ending for these characters. the writers gave the fandom the hopeless, nihilistic, meandering, substanceless, nonsensical ending it was demanding all along.

so. where do we go from here.

first of all, to ao3, for those of you who haven't moved on.

next, to the comics. assuming way ever wants to finish them, now that he's received an overwhelming message that the audience for his story hates it and prefers the bastardized versions of his characters. i get the sense he'll probably leave it unfinished. i don't blame him.

then... the umbrella academy was a massive success. it's going to get a reboot someday. in 10-15 years, we're gonna get it back. my hope is that

whoever has that responsibility has a clear vision and the talent to pull it off, the backbone to stick with it, and more loyalty to the source material. no subverting expectations for the hell of it. no kowtowing to antifandom. make a plan and stick to it and have confidence in it. hopefully, the next showrunner won't be a terrible person.

the next version of tua will be mature. so the adults who will watch will hopefully be old enough to understand what they're seeing. this truly isn't a show for kids. the fandom has proven that. let's not do it again.

that it'll be animated. the incredible visual aesthetic of the show and its edgier elements could never have been captured in live-action. and now that adult animation's starting to arrive, including on netflix, maybe in a decade or two we'll finally get the umbrella academy fully realized.

anyway. that's my piece.

[breadvidence]

adaptation question: how good in bed is each version of javert? (inspired by the recent poll making the rounds)

As I mentioned on Discord: I intended to respond to the poll with an argument for Javert being good in bed & for the sake of comedy rather than sincere belief my plan was an emphatic yes (as much as I want to gnash my teeth over the need for nuance & could make an equally strong case for no & also want to write about how characters who canonically don't fuck have their own value both for aro-ace folks and as an escape from the way erotic-sexual-reproductive drive is treated as a central aspect of being human more generally). Er. So. Thank you for the opportunity to expand my silliness to multiple Javerts!

(As an aside, I will normally refer to a particular adaptation by the actor's name, but will not be doing that in the context of screwing, regardless of several of these actors being very dead.)

The Brick: Quel délice que cet étouffement! Brick Javert might die having lived a "life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion", but what he lacks in experience with your standard use of the equipment, he makes up for in a fine understanding of the erotics of voyeurism, delayed satisfaction, and—of course—discipline. Further, you might catch some sass, but he'll hold still while you tie him up to make sure the ropework is just right when you're done, and after a lifetime of licking boots you can bet he's gonna work through that cramp in his jaw. 10/10, suggest any local DILFs needing a hobby fish him out of the river before he drowns and see whether that perfectionist need to put things in their place can be turned to more recreational ends than the horrific policing of society's unjust structure.

'25: As ever, '25 follows in the Brick's footsteps. It's clear from his self-satisfaction that this Javert is in the know on how closely fear and arousal come to each other. Despite being about as likely to have fucked in the conventional sense as his Brick counterpart, do we really think it matters? We could talk about how Javert's surveillance forces Valjean/Madeleine into an exhibitionistic display of Authority and Javert's desires related thereto, but I'll calm down some instead. 10/10 for accuracy to the original combined with that narrow chance he's got some experience under his belt.

'34: '34 predicts 2012. Less imposing, uncomfortable, he's probably not gonna strangle you, but—other possibilities open, with all that hyperfocus still on hand. Bonus! Great communication skills, will write you very plainly worded notes about what's up. 10/10 for negotiation skills.

'35: Wow, I sure did corner myself into imagining Laughton fucking. Admittedly, "regulations—good, bad, and indifferent—must be carried out to the letter" strikes me as one of the least sexy statements possible (both as an interpretation of Javert's character and in the erotic sense), but may I propose: that vibrating, dampness, and the established trait of Javert as a tease combine to—some kind of positive effect. Ragdoll physics have exciting potential. 9/10, one point removed for willingness to be indifferent.

'58: Is it bad? is it good? you don't remember. 10/10, what a fascinating and novel adventure of Men in Black style forgetfulness to have gone on.

'72: Does his partner feel like a specimen under the microscope? Maybe, but there's a certain magnetism at play. Any Javert's sexual prowess is most easily derived from his interactions with the Valjean he plays opposite, so '72's catastrophically bad depiction of M-sur-M rather curtails my assessment here, but this Javert's intensity and focus point towards intriguing possibilities. He is among the Javerts on this list who seem like they might have gone to bed with a person, an assessment I am making based purely on vibes. 10/10, close enough to canon Javert to hit the above-mentioned potential combined with an air of not being a virgin.

'78: The Javert on this list who has, without a doubt, absolutely fucked. The looks he gives Valjean alone qualify. Also the Javert who I will admit has a 0/10 bedability rating—if the partner in question is a woman. 10/10 in a homosexual context. The kind of man a dear friend of mine calls Little Lord Fauntleroys, this Javert approaches sex with a stiff dignity that might make the uninitiated worry about inhibitions and cold fish, but which actually indicates a deep store of freak-ass ideas and a willingness to, shall we say, experiment (if you can find anything he hasn't already tried).

'98: Built-in lube via hair grease. 10/10 for convenience.

2000: While I have not yet finished this adaptation, I can speak to the bedroom skills of this Javert through his time in M-sur-M. Methodical, attentive, tired but game to persist. 2000 Javert would admittedly rather be napping, but even when faced with an indifferent partner he maintains the pitch of bizarre intensity that is at the root of a Javert's erotic potential. 9/10, point docked for the regrettable impact of fatigue (maybe he should get his vitamin D levels checked?).

2007: He's got anime physics. 10/10

2012: Who'm I to argue against fandom? Crowevert fucks well. Is it despite being a virgin? Is it because he's a virgin? Virginity definitely plays a role of some kind, and Victor Hugo would approve. In stark contrast to other iterations of the character, Crowevert's need to submit himself to a greater authority is expressed as a soft-edged vulnerability rather than rabid intensity, and the resulting sweetness almost makes me blush. Let's draw the curtains and let them be. 10/10, all details can be found in 90% of the AO3 Javert/Jean Valjean tag.

2018: This Javert almost certainly fucked, and if we may draw on what's been communicated by the creator outside the show itself, it was unsatisfactory, the skill all on the part of the professional he paid for the service. Who'm I to argue with that? 1/10, one point added for the transformative work detailing his erotic potential.

[alex51324]

So I finally got around to reading the Gideon the Ninth/Locked Tomb series, which is awesome, and I have a number of observations, but let’s start with this: 

HERE BE SPOILERS!!  Big ones.  Up through Nona the Ninth.

I’ve seen John Gaius’s villain arc summed up as “he got mad and destroyed the solar system because they didn’t use his plan to save Earth/humanity.”  But the actual story, as I understand it, is way more relatable than that.  

I mean, here’s what I understood to have happened:  First, he’s involved in a plan to save humanity from extinction.  Said plan struggles to get funding and resources, until eventually it is put on hold.  (And he develops superpowers.)  Eventually, the Powers That Be reveal the replacement plan to save humanity from extinction, and it has...big, obvious holes in it.  Just does not pass the sniff test.  JG points this out, but nobody pays any attention.  (Meanwhile, he starts attracting more attention for his superpowers.  However, this does not result in any attention for his central message, i.e., “The newly-revised plan to save humanity from extinction is shady as fuck.”)

So he goes about collecting evidence for the shadiness of the New Plan.  Just reams of evidence showing that there is no possible way that there could possibly be enough FTL ships built in time to save more than a tiny fraction of the population.  He tries showing this evidence to world leaders.  He tries showing it to the general public.  (Meanwhile, the powers-that-be have started getting scared of his superpowers; in response he explodes some cows.)   He comes right out and says, “Hey, this small group of extremely rich people are conning the entire world into building & paying for a lifeboat that is only ever going to be big enough for them, and that’s super fucked-up.”

But  the people with seats in the lifeboat say, “That’s the guy who exploded those cows that one time, and cows have feelings.”

And everybody falls for it.  Nobody can be persuaded to care that 99.9% of humanity is going to be left to die, but there is plenty of outrage available for that herd of cows he exploded.  Every time he tries to show his evidence--large amounts of hard and extremely convincing evidence--that there is no second wave of lifeboats (much less any more after that), all anyone wants to talk about is the cows.  

He keeps on attempting to Reveal The Truth up until the lifeboats are on the launching pads and the countdown is starting.  Then, and only then, he goes, “OK, so apparently you only listen to cartoonishly evil supervillains, I can work with that” and starts cackling evilly and waving a nuclear bomb around.  

But the powers-that-be somehow guess that at this point he’s only posing as a cartoonishly evil supervillain at this point, so it doesn’t work, and finally, when it becomes clear that it’s now too late for any rational means of persuasion to work, he flips over to actually being a supervillain.

And man, as supervillain origin stories go, I just find that super-relatable.  

Disclaimer: obviously killing the entire solar system and everyone in it is bad!  And  pursuing a 10,000 year campaign of vengeance against the distant descendants of the people who conned the rest of humanity into building them a lifeboat and then left them (the rest of humanity) for dead is super fucked up. 

But.  If I were ever to go supervillain, it would probably be something like that.  I’ve had the experience of trying to show people that the course of action they’re pursuing is obviously and transparently worse, in all of the ways that they claim to care about than an alternative that they have rejected, and having them just...not care.  If I were given superpowers in the middle of such a situation, it would end badly, is what I’m saying.  

Anyway, I find that very impressive, writing-wise.  JG has obviously sailed way over the moral event horizon, and he’s kept on finding new ways to be evil after the whole genocide-starkiller thing, but the way he got there is a path I could very easily see myself going down.  

Looking back, I think the fundamental error was when he went from thinking, “They should listen to me because I have all this evidence,” to “they should listen to me because I could kill them with my magic powers.”  Everything else--for the next 10,000 years--kind of follows from that.  But I can’t be sure I wouldn’t make that mistake, if I A) was really mad, and B) had magic powers. 

[harrystiddess]

DRUMMER GIRL

A/N: If my scenarios before bed were a fanfic haha

WORD COUNT: 1.1k

SUMMARY: She’s a drummer and a cop and he’s in need of a drummer. Will she “stick” with his offer?

DRUMMER GIRL SERIES

Content Warning: None as of yet!

Read Part II here!

On a sunny day in central Manchester, I found myself at my friend's house, agreeing to fill in as the drummer for her band's gig due to their drummer falling ill. Although playing gigs wasn't my thing, I preferred doing the favor over enduring my friend's constant yapping and crying about it. After two weeks of practice and one gig with the band, Elena and I were forced to get coffee for everyone before our gig in the evening. As we strolled and chatted along the sidewalk, discussing the most random things, I saw my friend suddenly freeze in shock. Concerned, I asked what was wrong, only to find her gripping my hand tightly and pointing across the street with excitement. Curious, I looked over and found myself uttering under my breath, "Oh hell nah" at the unexpected sight before me.

“Oh, you’re doing this”

"Elena, no, I'm not."

"Are you out of your mind? This has been your dream since you were 12!"

"I can't let you miss out on this opportunity."

"Is it that you don't want me to miss the opportunity, or YOU don't want to miss the opportunity to do it yourself?" I said, raising my eyebrows.

"Maybe a bit of both," Elle said mischievously, pulling me forward.

"No let’s go back, I need to.. i need to uh.. take a piss!!” I try to come up with an excuse.

“No you don’t, I know you took a huge dump before we left” I was definitely taken aback by her answer looking at her absolutely flabbergasted.

“I fucking hate you. You're going to do the talking, and if you embarrass me, I don’t know you." I said irritably as I crossed the road, ignoring the sceptical look Elena continued to give me. As I reached the other side, I began to realise that maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, just as I had feared.

It was too late now. I could see Elena approaching the moment I feared.

.

.

“Excuse me” she said poking his arm. It was quite humorous because she was half of the tall gentleman’s size. I was holding onto her hand, standing behind her like a child hiding behind their mom.

‘The moment you have feared yet dreamed of, all your life, is here.’ You thought to yourself silently

You see him turn around and remove his sunglasses, putting his hand forward.

“Hi, I’m Harry.”

“Oh. My. God.” I say to myself as I find myself getting lost in his eyes.

“Are you okay my love?” You hear him chuckle.

He watches me intently as my eyes widen when i realise that i fact had said that out loud.

“Uhh yeah yes I am” You clear your throat. I thought I saw a spider that’s all” I try to cover up the fact that i was totally star struck and defiently impressed by his appearance. By this point Harry was completely facing me with Elena looking at us like she knew about this all along.

“Oh is it? A spider I see” he says seeing through my bullshit.

“I’m Harry” he shakes my hand.

“And you are?”

“Oh I’m Ava”

“Ava. That’s a cute name!”

I just pursed my lips and smiled. That’s all I could do! What would you do if Harry Styles called your name cute? Exactly.

“So you’re drummer I see”

You raise your eyebrows sort of creeped out.

“Haha I saw the drum sticks in your bag. I’m not as creepy as they say” he said leaning towards me, winking in the end.

It’s like i was snapped out of my suspicions to a realisation.

“Oh right sorry yeah. I’m a bit distracted today”

“So how long have you been drumming for Ava?”

“Oh Uhm since I was uhh 16”

“Hmm.. so since how-”

“8 years”

“Wow that’s impressive”

“You wouldn’t be interested in drumming for me would you?” He said after a long pause, unsure of whether he should’ve said it.

“Drumming for you?” I know exactly what he means but I’m too utterly taken aback to say anything.

“Yeah”

“You don’t even know how I play? For all you know I’d not even be able to hold the sticks”

“Well then that that’s just an excuse for you to come in for an audition!”

“Orrrrrr…” I see Elena sliding in and before I can say anything she’s said it.

“We have a gig at Bardo’s tonight! You can come and see for yourself” she says chirping.

He looks at me for to find a glint of expression but sees fails considering I was trying to deny his offer at all costs and I just failed.

“Then Bardo’s it is” Harry says delightfully looking at the both of us.

“Great see you at bardo’s, 7pm” Elena being a little to excited was pissing me off real bad at this point.

“That’s great…See you tonight…” I say almost sounding excited as I walk past him, leaving him stood right there.

I know he’s looking at us walk away I can feel It, so I keep walking silently until we’re out of his hearing range.

.

.

“ELENA! What did you do!” I say pinching the bridge of my nose in distress.

“Your kids will thank me one day”

“No. No kids are thanking no one. I DON’T WANT TO DRUM FOR ANYONE LET ALONE HIM!!” I say whisper shouting

“The only difference is, you do!”

“Elle you Know I’m happy with my job, a job I’ve dreamed of doing since I was 5! Why do you want to ruin that for me?”

“I’m not ruining anything for you. You can do both at the same time! I know that you’ve wanted to be a big shot Artists drummer too. Just because you’re scared of change doesn’t mean you have to ruin the rest of your life for it. That’s what I’m here for. Ruining your life is my job. And so is making sure you don’t give up opportunities like these.”

I can’t help but let out a small smile..

“Well meeting your Celebrity crush of over 8 years and having him offer you a job doesn’t go well together that’s all” I breathe out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“Can’t believe I’m saying this but You’re right. I’m going to go to the gig, give my best, which I do either way and see what he has to offer…. I mean 16 year old me wouldn’t believe this happened if I told her” I say screeching in excitement, holding her hand and jumping and and making incoherent noises like a madwoman.

_

Read Part II here!

Reblog, like and comment! DM if you have any prompts! Hope you guys like this Series!

♡ ♡ ♡

[cumaeansibyl]

okay this is my biggest conspiracy theory except it's not really a Conspiracy Theory because I am not actually positing a shadowy prime mover who planned the whole thing from the start. that always ends up in wildly antisemitic places where I do not go, and also I don't think anyone in history has had their shit together enough to mastermind Schemes of this type. my theories are always more like "this happened serendipitously and at some point maybe someone noticed and took advantage but there's certainly no central figure in charge."

so we start with the normalization of overwork in our society, since roughly forever. in modern times this led to abuse of medical and recreational stimulants -- everyone was on speed in the 50s and coke in the 80s -- but we all kind of figured out that was a bad idea, for the most part. what we still had after the white powder settled, though, was caffeine. totally legal, totally normalized.

but people were still overworked, and they also still wanted to have energy after work, to do fun things with the little free time left to them.

enter energy drinks.

unlike coffee, which still has the feeling of a daytime beverage and also to some extent a workplace beverage, energy drinks are an anytime food! you can even get them in mixed drinks for a night out. they're for work AND play. they come in a wide range of dose strengths, including a shooter for when you're in really dire straits. after all, taking caffeine pills feels like "pill-popping," but having a little beverage is fine, right?

at the same time, there is increasing interest in remedies for a variety of unspecific ailments caused by "toxins," the new buzzword in a very old industry of patent nostrums and dubious cure-alls. the theory is that some sort of unspecified substance has entered your body, and in order to feel well again you need to detox and cleanse -- which in practice involves a lot of induced defecation. And this is supposed to be good for feelings of fatigue, muscle soreness, anxiety, stomach upset, and difficulty sleeping.

See where I'm going with this?

The "toxins" that make you feel terrible all the time are caffeine. Not heavy metals, or refined sugar, or vaccines, or yeast. It's just fucking caffeine.

Well, caffeine and chronic overwork/sleep deprivation, which is not entirely a direct result of the caffeine but is certainly enabled/exacerbated by it. Everyone is working too much and taking stimulants to get through the day and in fact experiencing mild overdose symptoms on a fairly regular basis (irritable? jittery? that's caffeine toxicity) and it's no wonder we all feel like shit.

And then! When you come home from your day of pushing your mind and body too hard! It is ALSO normalized to take downers to level out! Alcohol is also a toxin, and it takes a lot less of it to start doing systemic damage than most people realize. When you wake up in the morning feeling foggy and achy, it may not be enough to register as a proper hangover, but it's almost certainly the combined effect of alcohol and caffeine withdrawal. Both mild! Both nearly harmless and easily recovered from! If you're not doing it on a regular basis and if you're getting enough rest, which you're not, as we previously established.

It's the chronicity that's the issue, the neverending grind of it all. You can't recover from chronic sleep deprivation or overwork with an extra few hours of rest on the weekends. You can't recover from long-term chemical dependence with a 24-hour tolerance break. If you're a wage earner in late-stage capitalism your options for reversing the damage are pretty limited and they all look like deprivation: prioritizing an unbroken 8-9 hours of sleep per night may well mean giving up most if not all of your social life and leisure activities. Fuck that.

And to be clear, I don't consider choosing to stay out late with a vodka Red Bull to be a personal failure of any kind, just like I don't think poor people should never buy themselves anything nice. If work keeps trying to take more and more of your time, you gotta carve out time for yourself somewhere. But... y'all know me. I want people to know the risks.

I think a lot of people don't realize that their bodies are under this much strain. They don't know that we are better suited for a 4-6 hour work day, that 6-7 hours of sleep is genuinely not enough for most people, that as little as 2 cups of coffee might be enough to put them over the recommended maximum caffeine intake. They don't know that they're drinking enough alcohol to cause health problems.

If you know and you decide to do it anyway that's fine, it's your right. I do inadvisable shit all the time. But people don't know, they're not being told, because they can't be allowed to question the material conditions they're being forced to endure -- and then they're being sold a bunch of useless or even harmful bullshit to "cure" the inevitable consequences of those conditions.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 152 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 9

Aqua Hoshigan Status: White??!???!?!?

WELL DAMN. OKAY. LET'S FUCKING GO I GUESS.

With the End Of The Play… miniarc? interlude? wrapping up, Oshi no Ko officially confirms we're in endgame territory and slams down on the gas to barrel full speed towards its conclusion. This chapter was definitely a mixed bag, but I didn't dislike it and I SURE CAN'T SAY IT WAS BORING AT LEAST………….. It reframes a lot of things that lead up to it - I suppose that makes 'recontextualization' the keywork for this chapter, then.

The return to the volume 1 interviews in this chapter were kind of a surprise LOL. Given that the anime trimmed all but Ai's, I kind of took that as an implicit confirmaton that they weren't really that important so it's a bit of a jumpscare to see Gotanda (& Aqua's) revisited here. That said, revisiting them here is more about clueing the viewer that we're caught up chronologically with those flashforwards and thus that everything from this point on is officially uncharted territory, so I still do think cutting them from episode 1 was the right call to make. I don't think it causes any plotholes or incongruities since these interviews are really kind of incidental in the grand scheme of things… also let's be real I don't think any of us are expecting the anime to get that far into the story, even if I would give my left leg to see the anime team work their magic on chapter 137………………………….

That said, it's pretty fucking rich for Gotanda to try and talk big about the movie not being fictional when we heard from the horse's mouth that Abiko and Yoriko just fucking made up the dynamics of one of the most central and pivotal relationships in it out of thin air lol. Not only that, but like…

15 Year Lie is a movie with a pretty clear narrative. This by itself is natrual and expected. Narrative is the shape in which the human brain most readily accepts information but to create a narrative about something is to fictionalise it. Even when it's a narrative about real events - because narratives are, themselves, fiction. They have cleanly defined beginnings and ends, arcs and the promise of neatly packaged payoff and catharsis that is impossible to achieve in reality. To create a narrative about Ai's life in any form, let alone in a movie made for mass general audience consumption, unavoidably necessitates reducing her to a fictional character to observe rather than a fellow human to understand.

Which is… you know, horrifying! Fucked up and ghoulish! It's exploition of Ai in death just as she was exploited in life and I really wish the Movie Arc had actually focused on that uncomfortable undercurrent. This was, after all, supposed to be a movie about Ai.

BUT ANYWAY, CAST SCREENING OF THE MOVIE… we get some detail about reactions to the content but even as characters are literally talking about the movie and Ruby's extremely important role in it they just conveniently avoid discussing the content of it. But surely with all those important scenes that were set up and with the public release of the movie and Kamiki's side of the story to tell, we'll get some more details, right??? [audible copium huff]

Akane's tearful reaction is interesting, though. They're specifically singled out as not being to do with the content of the movie and her expression is a bit ambiguous - you could read is as resigned or relieved just as easily. I think she has clearly recognized something about Aqua's revenge in the movie which prompts that reaction but who even knows what's going on with akane at this point lol. sure not akasaka.

The girls all ragging on Ruby's acting was also kind of… like, yeah, remember when Ruby not being a good enough actress to carry a whole movie was kind of a huge issue??? The fact that this is resolved by everyone saying "yeah it was bad but idk aqua made it good somehow" was kind of silly lol.

I do really like Melt stepping in to stick up for Ruby, though - because yeah, of course hearing that would probably bring up some bad memories for Melt…! I also like that he doesn't try to shallowly flatter her or butter her up - he's frank about where she still needs to improve but hones in on the part that really matters. He really is a good kid.

That said, him sticking up for Ruby and her glomming onto him and calling him 'Master' (ししょ/師匠, shishou, as in the master of a craft addressed by their disciple, in Japanese) does kind of highlight that the MLRB mentorship that got set up in 144… went nowhere??? We can assume by Ruby's response to him here that it happened offscreen but it really does feel like a total waste of time to have spent what was effectively an entire chapter on setting up a new character dynamic that just didn't happen. Like… really, in hindsight, what was even the point of that chapter other than to establish that Melt… was also here??? I guess we still have the final arc for that to resolve into something but.

It just kind of sucks because I think a MLRB friendship could be really fun! I think they have the potential for a good dynamic and there's some really interesting parallels between them both that are ripe for farming. At this point, it's probably way too late for us to expect anything to come of it, so I can only daydream……..

tho it is really funny to me that at this point, since 143, ruby has had more meaningful on panel interactions with melt than she has aqua. What Did They Mean By This.

Gotanda and Kaburagi's talk that followed also left me with pretty mixed feelings. As expansion on/closure for Kaburagi (and Gotanda to an extent), I think this was fine… there's just a few little details that bother me, I guess.

On the one hand, I really like Gotanda's frank admission that there's no way to know whether the movie really captured the 'real' Ai. This is another thing I've talked about over and over during the Movie Arc but nobody making this movie is really in a position to be making that call - the only person who really could is Ai and… well, she's not here anymore to advocate for herself. Seeing Gotanda acknowledge that does scratch some of what was left unitched by this thread but…

Eugh. I don't know. Something about this movie, which is about Ai's life, Ai's tragedy, Ai's final push to be shown to the world as she was and to potentially be accepted being made to be about Gotanda's regrets just feels kind of icky to me. Maybe it just feels especially bad because it feels like 15 Year Lie has become more about every other character involved than her. I'm sure people are sick of me complaining about it, but it really does feel like Ai as a figure of emotional importance to this story is getting increasingly downplayed and dismissed and…… just feels bad, I guess!!!!

Kaburagi's side of this conversation is a lot more engaging, at least. This does tragically represent the end of my Secret Villain Kaburagi Theory and I feel decidedly mixed on the story choosing to frame him so sympathetically… but on the other hand, I do like how this implication of guilt and sense of responsibility reframes basically all his prior actions in the manga. It seems to confirm that he clocked Aqua (and thus by extension, Ruby) as being Ai's child right from the start and explains why he was willing to go so far in pushing their careers along at little benefit to himself - it was out of atonement to Ai.

that panel of young kaburagi and baby ai having lunch together. fuck, man. the fact that she took the burger out of the wrapper like she does in viewpoint b………….. babygirl i loev u so muuuuchchchchchchhchchchchsjsjsskasklsndkdkd

and……………………….. now it's time for aqua's interview. Jesus Christ.

I like the recontextualization of Aqua's interview here and the way we see This Mysterious Interviewer gradually pick apart his responses. I especially got SUCH a thrill out of his 'I won't love anyone' schtick being called out as the bullshit it is - one of my first really meaty OnK metas was of Aqua's interview segment specifically and I zeroed in on this sentiment specifically as being a lie that Aqua was trying to project and seeing the text back that up makes me a very happy Claire

But more importantly though… what Aqua has to say after that makes me particularly excited.

First of all, let's get it out of the way: KAMIKI JUMPSCARE!!!!!!!!! It seems implicit that he was the one doing all the interviews which is very fucking funny considering his presence in the movie itself, but I'm not entirely sure it changes or adds much other than giving Aqua the opportunity to death note speech his ass.

What is fascinating to me about this talk is what it implies about Aqua. Every time we've seen his revenge play come up before this, the very strong implication is that Aqua intends to die at the end of it, either by Kamiki's hand or his own. But here, face to face with the man he's dedicated his entire life to ruining, Aqua doesn't just state his intent to get revenge but his intention to reclaim his future by doing so. We've gotten some pushes towards this since 150 but this is the clearest declaration of his intent to finally seize hold of this second chance and fucking live it that we've gotten out of Aqua… honestly, ever!

And accordingly, we see Aqua return to his white hoshigans here. I don't necessarily know if I want to call this slam dunk confirmed but this WAS really exciting to see given how it falls in line with my interpretation of "white hoshigan = hope = future" and "black hoshigan = despair = futurelessness". Everybody has been spending the last few chapters basically begging Aqua not to throw away his future and hurt the people he loves just to chase his revenge and it does seem like they're starting to get through to him.

Is this development kind of rushed? Honestly, yeah! I would've loved to see this explored more from properly inside Aqua's POV and it feels especially abrupt given how hard he got ignored all during the post-123 section of the Movie Arc. But at this point, it just feels so fucking good to see Aqua say out loud that he wants to have a future, that he wants to finally move forward and live that I can't bring myself to care. I just want him to finally be happy!!!

that said how fucking funny is it that the closest thing aqua has gotten to therapy in years is from his estranged father, a serial killer

break next week…!