#no matter how many versions there are of clois

[stardustinthesky]

Lois, I have loved you from the moment I saw you.

[charliemwrites]

Greater Bad - Part 5!

This is the final chapter of this series. I had so much fun working on it, making myself write a character that was genuinely just really mean most of the time and not chickening out by softening him (mostly).

Again, a gigantic, smooch-filled thank you to ceilidho for letting me write this based off her drabble/concept.

(The concept comes from @ceilidho’s concept/drabble of “military asset Soap” and heavily inspired also by @391780’s Nikto version. Please go check out theirs because they’re brilliantly written.)

Content: Dub-Con/Non-Con Elements, Unreliable Narrator, Semi-Safe/Not-Sane/Dub-Con Intimacy

You still smell the same.

Clean water, soap and skin. It saturates the back of his tongue when he inhales deep. The sharp, cloying scent of printer ink has been replaced by the buttery aroma of bread and sugar. It’s better. His mouth waters, canines too big and sharp in his mouth, jawing aching to bite down until he’s teething on bone. Scrape his imprint into marrow.

Some shrink mentioned it in those first sessions, before Laswell and Price realized their precious Johnny wasn’t lost in the hole in his temple.

The human olfactory sense is strongly associated with our memory. What smells like home to you, Soap?

The jagged puzzle of his mind didn’t have a piece for home. But it had one for his – you – and that’s just as good.

The humidity in the shower leaves him drowning in the scent of you, lungs heaving. If they’d waterboarded him with your perfume, he wouldn’t have struggled at all.

“Easy, easy,” your voice derails him.

Velvet and smooth, purring in the bottom of your throat. It bounces off the walls and cracks across his skull, a concussive force, disorients him. He grips tighter to keep his balance, swaying into you. You’re all slick and soft, caught between his body and the wall, nothing but naked skin and those big eyes that drive him more mad.

His face is still buried in the vulnerable curve of your neck; you taste just as good as you smell. You jump when he nips, a high noise caught on your clumsy tongue. He growls, wants to hear it. Wants to be overwhelmed by you until all his senses are blown out.

“I’m not saying no,” you soothe, hands skittering down his biceps.

Of course you’re not, not his girl. It’s not a matter of yes or no, not for the two of you. The moon doesn’t agree to orbit the Earth, the sun doesn’t choose to shine. You’re the gravity keeping his feet on the ground.

“Slow down a bit,” you murmur, “We’re not in a rush, are we?”

Just hearing you say “we” sends his heart thundering double-time and euphoria flooding his poisoned veins. “We” - you and him. You squeak as he thrusts hard against your lower stomach, where you’re pillowy and perfect from a life of plenty.

He doesn’t even process what you’ve said for a few moments, too busy nibbling “we” into your shoulder. Only when you thread shaky fingers into his hair – too excited to keep them steady, sweet thing – does his head surface over the swelling waves of desire to hear you properly.

“Missed you,” he explains, raking fingers over your thigh in hopes it’ll bruise. Your mouth parts on a gasp, inviting him in. He ravages your mouth, teeth snagging your plush lips. Needs to leave his mark everywhere for always. Don’t you get that? How could you ask him to slow down when your skin is still pristine, your cunt all tight and unspoiled – a fucking tragedy that.

“Ye missed me too, aye?” he asks. Of course you did, of course. Made this pretty little cottage for the two of you, filled it with so many things that he could never forget where he is again.

“I ken ye did.” He does you the favor of answering, since you’re too busy with his fingers in your mouth. You’ve gotten better with your priorities since that first reunion, laving your tongue over and between his digits rather than waste it on idle chatter. “Can go slow once I show yer mine. Been too fuckin’ long they kept us apart, little bird.”

Your fingers curl around his wrist. Must be satisfied with how wet they are, then. He presses down on your tongue one last time before pulling away.

“B-but you took care of them… we don’t need to—ah!”

He smirks as your entire body jolts. You’re already starting to warm up, but your saliva makes the slide between your delicate folds even easier. You’re just as silky as last time, clit shy at the top of your slit. He coos in your ear, gets you flushing and hot from filthy promises.

“Ye wan’ this just as much as I do,” he growls. Poor thing, he knows you like your little games and he’s being impatient. But it’s been too long and you’re playing with fire. “I ken ye do. Tell me ye do.”

You stutter in shock – if he still felt guilt, he’d feel bad for doubting you – and stumble over your words. He stills his hand to help you, bracing his arm over your head. The stretch of his body seems to distract you, mouth parted but frustratingly quiet as your round eyes roam scars and muscle.

He clicks his tongue and pinches your clit to catch your attention. You yelp, little nails sinking into his chest. He rumbles. It feels good, but he’s on a mission.

“Tell me,” he repeats when you blink up at him. “Tell me.”

“I-I just want to be able to go again,” you babble. “If I’m too sore…”

He chuckles. Is that all? “That won’ stop me, love. We’ll go plenty.”

You whine as he draws tight circles over your clit, coaxing it hard and swollen.

“I d-don’ wanna be t-too… sore! Christ!”

He huffs, caught between amusement and exasperation. Voice of reason you are, he knows you’ve got a point. Big as he is, and he knows he’ll lose any sense of restraint once he’s inside.

“I’ll make it good, bonnie,” he promises, biting kisses along your trembling jaw. “You’ll cum crying if tha’s what it takes.”

With that matter settled, he drops his head to your pretty tits. Water has beaded all over them and he jealously licks paths between each drop, flattening his tongue over your hard nipples. You moan and squeal as he sucks and nips, teasing them sensitive and achy. One of your hands tangles in his hair and tugs. Tingles race down his spine, scattering any sweet thoughts of going slow or gentle or with restraint.

You’re babbling at him but nothing could be more important than the rosettes he’s biting into your breasts. And you must agree because you’re getting so wet, leaking all over his rough palm, bucking your hips. He tilts the heel of his hand for you to grind against while he prods at your slick little hole.

You really have been good, somehow even tighter than he remembers. Of course, you were; he never doubted you. No wonder you were so insistent on prepping. He’d split you in half as you are now – fuck but that’s tempting.

“S-Soap – John. Please don’t… stop.”

“I won’ stop, birdie,” he soothes. Nothing could make him stop now.

Two is probably too much for you, but he loves the punched out little noise you make when he forces them in. The way your entrance clings and squeezes around his knuckles. How your spine goes tight and stiff, tilting your head back so that he has access to your singing throat. Pretty face all scrunched up as you struggle to adjust, stinging too much to even squirm. A flighty little bird right in the palm of his hand.

You’re so hot and wet inside. Feel fucking heavenly. Coating him in arousal, in need. His cock is aching to replace his fingers, feel you strangling him down to the base. Grinding against your thigh isn’t tiding him over anymore.

“Yer hand,” he grits out, “on my cock. Now.”

You shudder and circle the head, fingers tentative. Little tease.

He thrusts his fingers into you hard in retaliation, hips driving into the loose tunnel you’ve made. You must know what you’re doing, goading him on like this, plucking at his fraying patience.

“More,” he snarls, “or I’m going to use you like a fleshlight.” (Sooner than he was planning, anyway.)

You whimper and close your hand tighter, rubbing your thumb just under the head. Relief makes him generous, scissoring those two fingers inside you, easing you open. Lets you grind your clit on the meat of his thumb.

He crooks his fingers and finds a spot that has you mewling all sweet and precious. Does it over and over just to get your hand squeezing rhythmically around his shaft, precum dribbling over the back of your knuckles.

Christ, it’s been so long that he thinks he could blow just from this. Your voice in his ear, drooling pussy wrapped around his fingers, grinding into the open circle of your hand. But he needs to be inside you when he cums, he has to.

You don’t even seem to notice the third finger until it’s halfway inside, prying you open. Your legs buckle, knees shaking. He catches you with an arm around your waist, but it squishes you against his chest, the arm you’ve been stroking him with nearly immobilized. He can only stand the lack of stimulation for a few moments, occupying himself with his tongue down your throat.

“Enough,” he rasps, kicking the shower off.

Dazed, you blink at him in confusion, half-lidded and guileless, panting. He wants to fucking ruin you.

You yelp as he scoops you up, fingers still slippery where they grip your thigh. He croons as you cling, asking in a high, nervous voice where he’s going.

“Poor thing, dick’s not even in yet ‘n yer all addled.”

The dripping head of his cock grinds against your sopping slit as he carries you back to the bedroom. He remembers how much you liked it before – and you still do, your blunt little teeth buried in your bottom lip as you whimper.

It’s still dark, the crescent moon no use to your weak eyes. Like hell you won’t look at him when he finally claims you proper.

He slaps at the wall switch, a tiny lamp flicking to life across the room. You’re bathed in soft golden light, deep shadows swimming where it doesn’t reach. You and him, gold and black, light and dark.

He eagerly lays you out on the blanket, drinking in the marks decorating your upper body. You even have teeth prints on your arm that he doesn’t remember putting there – fetching, though.

You wiggle further up the mattress, and he follows, flashing a grin as he plants his hands on either side of you. The size difference is stark like this, the breadth of him subsuming you. Safe, tucked away, all his. Your breathing is loud as he bullies his way between your plush thighs again. You have to spread them so wide just to accommodate.

“Lemme see,” he says, voice barely leaving his chest. “Lemme see her. It’s been so long, baby.”

He can already tell you’re about to start up the fussing again – so shy, his little bird, but he’ll get you singing nice and loud now. No more of this demure chirping facade. You both know what you really are.

You squeal as he forces your thighs up, far enough apart that you babble that you don’t bend that way. Of course you do, though, you’ve just done it. Not that he really hears you by that point.

No, all his attention is on that gleaming, puffy pussy. So fucking pretty. Sticky and throbbing, your hole hardly showing the stretch of three fingers. Dripping as he watches, a dewy glob of arousal sliding down the seam of your cunt, towards your ass.

Just the slightest shift and his cock is nestled between your folds, the glans chafing against your hot clit. He measures the depth of it against your abdomen, head cloudy on the nervous whine that eeks from your throat.

Even with prep, he might break you anyway.

He hopes he does. Break you around him, shape you to him so that no one else will fit – not that anyone else will ever get the chance.

It’s not a conscious thought that gathers saliva on his tongue, purses his lips. You jump when he spits, rubbing the head of his cock through your combined fluids. Your cunt looks good in white. Like a bride.

You’re too needy, wiggling with nervous anticipation. He has to hold you down while he sinks into you – poor thing too blissed out to control yourself. One hand around your wrists above your head, the other pinning your hips at an angle to drive in as easily as possible.

One snap of his hips, and he’s buried to the hilt. You cry out, shuddering and dry sobbing. His vision goes spotty with the pleasure of it, your little pussy squeezing. You’re so…

“Fucking perfect.”

He shushes you, unable to bend to kiss you without making the stretch worse. Settles for rubbing circles into your hip, twisting to lace your fingers together. Now that he’s finally, finally where he belongs, it doesn’t seem such a monumental task to muster some patience.

“B-big,” you whimper. “You’re t-too big. I d-don’t – I can’t…!”

“You already are,” he coos, “little girl taking this fat cock, I’m so proud. My girl is so brave, my little bird. Bonnie lass.”

He’s rambling now, a dirty stream of consciousness. But that primal urge to fuck you open and loose and stupid is already clawing at him again. The tight clutch of your cunt calls for him to break you in, mark you up on the inside. Claim you as his irrevocably.

You feel him drawing back, eyes flying open wide. Writhing, half-formed protests on your tongue - that you’re not ready, that he’s too big, that it still hurts.

As if that’s any reason to stop, when anything needs to sting a bit to leave a lasting mark.

“Only way to make it hurt less,” he reminds, burying inside again. This time he rolls his hips, grinding the head of his cock along your satiny walls, against the hard barrier of your cervix.

Whatever you’re about to say is swept off in a wave of moans, washing over your wet tongue and down the back of your too-empty throat. Every time you try to gather them, he fucks back into you, hard enough to bounce you up the bed before he tugs you right back down.

Eventually you give up on doing anything but keening for him, massaging his cock from root to tip in those twitching walls. You loop your legs around his waist, ankles locked at the small of his back, knees squeezing against his ribs.

“Tha’s it, love,” he slurs, “jus’ take it.”

He lets your wrists go to clutch at both of your hips, angling them as he straightens his back. On the next thrust you scream, curse, throw your hands up to brace against the headboard. Smart girl.

His restraint unravels with each thrust until he’s pounding into you, slamming the bedframe into the wall. Your eyes are rolling into the back of your skull, jaw loose, spilling pathetic, weepy “ah, ah, ah” noises in time with his hips. He’s not going to last long at all. Not when you feel so goddamn good, finally claimed.

He presses his thumb against your clit and grins wickedly as you thrash. Tears leak from your unfocused eyes. You babble incoherently as he rubs a little rougher than he should, but your walls are sucking and clutching at every centimeter of him, so he doesn’t stop.

Even when you seize up, back bent into a sharp arch, clamping down so tight that he goes lightheaded.

“Soap! John… John it’s too much,” you sob. “John – Johnny!”

His orgasm blindsides him, makes him fuck you so hard that something in the bed cracks. In the haze, he flattens you to the mattress while bucking into you, not taking any chance of coming unseated. You whine in his ear but go limp, resigned to his cock spurting at the entrance to your womb – as deep as he can get – your cunt milking him for every drop.

He comes back to himself when you tap weakly at his hip, uncoordinated.

“Hm?” he asks, a little miffed that you’re disturbing his afterglow already.

“Hard to breathe,” you squeak.

He huffs. Alright, suppose he can understand that. Besides, he wants to see you.

And what a sight you make, splayed out and shaky on pleasure. Sweat at your hairline, lips swollen and bitten. He can still feel your pulse against his cock.

He sits himself up, eyes trailing down to the place where you’re joined. His cum is already seeping out a bit at a time, a thin creamy ring around his still half-hard cock. You keen a bit when it twitches.

“Pretty girl,” he coos.

You groan softly, flopping an arm over your glassy eyes as he pulls out – slow because he’s reluctant to leave.

But the sight of your slick diluting the milky white of his cum is too much to resist. You jolt at the first swipe of his tongue, react much faster than he’s expecting. Flip onto your front and try to scramble away. He growls at his stolen prize and pounces.

Under normal circumstances, you’re no match for him. Trembling and spent like this, you don’t stand a chance.

He grabs your calf and yanks you back, chuckling at the helpless stretch of your arms. You try to plead your case, but he’s hearing none of it. Plants his hand against your back as he shuffles onto his stomach, your thighs over his shoulders, knees digging into muscle. He tilts your hips with his other hand, thumb fitted in the crease of your pelvis, and brings you to his mouth.

Your struggling has made more spend leak out, and he laps it all up hungrily, tongue flat and ravenous. Sweeping from clit to hole to gather any stray droplets, even skimming over the tight furl of your ass. He licks into your loosened hole, high on pride at the difference he can feel his cock has made.

“’S too much,” you wail, “J-Johnny, please. I-I can’t, it’s…”

In retaliation, he slurps loudly at the fresh arousal blooming across his tongue. You hiccup, try one last time to wriggle away. He can’t have that.

You shriek as he fucks two fingers into you, voice thick with a fresh wave of tears. But you stop trying to escape. He doesn’t show mercy now that you’re behaving, coaxing more out, licking around his own knuckles. When he sucks at your overstimulated clit, you jerk and whine.

“I’m – I’m gonna… feels… w-wait, wait!”

It’s too late. He’s already laved his tongue over your trapped clit, crooked his fingers. You cum again with a shout, wetness splashing across his mouth, chin, down his neck. He groans, deep and rough in his chest. Doesn’t even give you a moment to recover before he pulls away, licking his lips.

“Do tha’ again on my cock.”

You’ve learned better now though – you lay there like a good girl as he stuffs you full again. Even better, you keep rewarding him with your soft cries of pleasure.

You really are made for him.

--

He likes the couch you picked. Not very big, but cushy. Besides, the two of you don’t need a lot of room anyway. Not when his lap makes a perfectly good seat for you.

You’ve been quiet all morning – probably still waking up from the coma he fucked you into. Eating babka from his fingers, licking them clean between bites. Docile and sweet, melting against his chest with your face tucked against his collarbone.

“Sore?” he asks.

“Mhmm.”

Your sweet little voice is all hoarse and soft. He’d coo if he didn’t think he’d be pushing his luck with skin so close to your teeth.

“Maybe I’ll massage you later,” he offers, smirking at the grumpy little “hmph” he gets in response.

He encourages you to sip a bit of water before your voice emerges again.

“What happens now?”

He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand the question.

“Now I get the life I’m owed,” he answers. All that fighting, suffering, bleeding, dying – and for what? A hole in his skull and his own goddamn people thinking he’s a monster. Even you, at first. You’ve learned, though. He’s sure of it. The rest can swallow bullets for all he cares.

“What if they come back?” you ask.

He hums. “Might contract with someone. Not opposed to killin’ on principle – just sick of doin’ it to someone else’s tune, aye?”

“Wh-what… what about…”

What about you. Poor thing, afraid Laswell and her ilk will snatch you up and dangle you in front of him again. Or worse – some other sod drooling for a slice of heaven in the pits of hell.

He doesn’t loosen his grip even when you shift a bit – needs to feel you in his hands.

“Got a plan for that, don’ you fret, little bird,” he soothes. “Still got one friend, I think. Jus’ gotta find ‘im.”

You exhale slowly, accept another piece of babka. “We’re stayin’ here, though?” you mumble around the mouthful.

He chuckles. Sweet little thing.

“Worked so hard on the place, might as well. Don’ care so long as I’ve got my bird, aye?”

“Mm.”

“How ‘bout a kitty, eh? Get ya somethin’ to keep ye company when I’m away.”

You swallow audibly. “I wan’ a dog. Big one.”

He chuckles. “’Course ye do. Aye, love, a big fuck-off dog to keep ya safe.”

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Masterlist

[leighlew3]

What were the aspects of Supergirl (show in general or character) that resonated with you personally?

First and foremost, Kara herself... as someone with a ton of trauma, who would have every reason to do not so great things or wield her power for evil, yet does good things and channels her energy into trying to help people -- she's amazing. She is someone who feels isolated a lot of the time and struggles with anger issues but ultimately is such a light and a good person and somebody that just wants to do good for the world, even when it's not always appreciated or understood. Even if it means constant self sacrifice.

I relate to pretty much all of that.

I also loved the idea of Supercorp obviously, because it was such an epic tale in how they were so similar but so different and so inherently fated to be side by side. It could've been so successful if canon romantic on the show instead of just baited. Taking the decades-old lore of Super vs Luthor and instead turning into Super & Luthor -- a story of hate turned into a love story -- that's an incredible concept, and so rich and full of so much storytelling potential. Them just being friends is the 'lite' version of turning that lore on its head. But to go even deeper would've been nothing short of revolutionary.

Alas, instead they chose to tarnish the show's legacy and taint the good it DID do elsewhere in LGBTQ representation (because YES a show can have ancillary rep but still queerbait a lead dynamic -- especially when it's bait that existed before any other rep was even introduced on the show) ...by choosing to be one of the worst examples of queerbait in TV history (due to all of the romanic tropes and parallels and teases and lack of denials by TPTB who very clearly wanted people to stay tuned in based on hope for canon endgame since that very first Clois parallel in 2x01). It was also just an absolute waste of creative potential and true travesty that ultimately only hurt the show and cast and fans and everyone involved, whether everyone is ready to admit it or not.

Anyway, I enjoyed the fact that so many of the characters -- from Kara and Lena (these two especially), to Alex, Nia, and Kelly... so many of them came loaded with one form of trauma or another, but they still were ultimately inherently good people, a great example of 'found family', and heroic as heck in the end, no matter how dark it got at times for some. In large part because they had each other. I mean, I wish they all weren't LITERAL superheroes or supernatural by the end because I think the show (amongst numerous other issues) lost sight of their own messaging that "anyone can be a hero even without powers" but -- they really were inherently such good / ripe characters, the women especially (plus Brainy and J'onn).

Sure, they all (again, the women especially) often were sadly let down by superficial or just plain poor writing and overall creative direction a lot of the time, especially in the end -- but at the core, everyone could find something to relate to in at least one character, if not multiple characters, and that's great.

I know much like fans of Dana Scully in the 90s, a LOT of girls/women were inspired to get into STEM over this last decade now because of Katie McGrath's portrayal of Lena Luthor. And even more people related to Lena's trauma as a survivor of lifelong abuse at the hands of her family and especially her unhinged brother. Seeing that someone can slip into darkness as the result of years of sadistic mind games and abuse of all kinds but still come out the other side a hero, empowered, and a good person who helps others and is capable of loving and deserving of being loved? That's beautiful, and Lena offered that to SO many viewers, so it's no wonder she was a top fan favorite second only to the lead herself. And seeing how that impacted people, was so very moving.

Seeing people impacted by Alex's coming out arc in Season 2 was amazing. Having the first trans superhero on TV was amazing. And so on...

Look, there's a lot the show did wrong. In fact, possibly more was done poorly or wrong than well or good, overall, unfortunately. Alas, there were some little sparks of light to be truly appreciated.

But again, for me, I connected most to Kara's story, her strength, her dichotomy, and her indelible sense of HOPE... despite every reason at times to give up. And to the Kara/Lena love story, in all its infinite, incredible, and still mostly untapped potential.

[karaspal]

that superman movie better have lois and clark already in a relationship because people are just being annoying now. “lois should fall for superman first.”, “lois should fall for clark first.” it doesn’t matter how they get together. we’ve seen countless versions of the beginning of their love story. they are all interesting in their own way. the good clois stuff come after they get together so i hope the movie doesn’t spend time telling a story we’ve seen so many times before. and, honestly, there is so much more to lois’ character than who she falls in love with first. she is not just a love interest, she is a main character who will save the day alongside clark.

[letters-unsending]

No. 39

////

Seer! Villain

////

“There are futures…where we are close,” Villain whispered.

“Those are different universes, [Villain].” Hero stopped walking. He looked down at the pavement. The stone shone dark—wet from the day’s rain—and he thought of stars.

“They’re still us. They have similar stories and lives.” Villain paused, searching over his shoulder. He doesn’t dare to look at Hero fully. He doesn’t need to. “If they can do it, there’s no reason—“

“How many times have you had this conversation?”

“We,” Villain insisted, “we are having this conversation right now.”

“You knew I would stop.” Hero twisted his foot. Gravel scraped beneath his toe, scratching and skittering. “You slowed down and looked right here before moving on.”

Villain jaw worked on a lie. His throat tightened and bobbed, but only a sigh came out, slithering and sharp through his teeth. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve already ruined it.”

“I haven’t ruined anything.” Hero strode forward and pulled Villain back by his arm, forcing Villain to face him fully. The blue streetlight slipped over Villain’s nose and the flat set of his mouth.

“If you keep on looking ahead, [Villain],” Hero continued and Villain frowned at where his hand lingered, thumb pushing into his bicep, “the only thing left for me to do is to fall behind. You have all these conversations with me and I’m not even there.”

“You don’t understand.” Villain tugged backward, but Hero’s hand was firm.

“No, I don’t understand,” Hero hissed, “and I will never understand you as well as you know every version of me.”

Villain’s jaw shook again. He turned toward the street. The sidewalk and storefronts shimmered, cloyed with mist. From the sloping eaves and sagging signposts, water dripped, and everything seemed to spill together, liquid, scintillating.

“I need to do things right, [Hero].”

“Not everything is meant to be right.” Hero leaned forward. His breath curled in the cool air. “You can’t just bend the world to your whim and expect everything to fit the way you want it to.”

“I don’t want the world.” Villain mumbled, stiffening as Hero encroached his space.

Hero released his grip and smoothed his hand down Villain’s arm.

“You,” Villain’s breath punched out as Hero’s touch wandered high, slipping around the back of his neck, “have many more futures when I am with you. And I need this conversation to go well because every time you leave me alone on this street, you never survive. Supervillain always..he always.” Villain’s Adam’s apple rolled against Hero’s thumb. “I can protect you.”

“If you stay, I will do everything in my power to make sure you get out of this. Alive. I promise you.” The world turned liquid again and Villain tried to look at Hero’s face through the blur. “I swear to you.”

Hero squeezed at Villain’s nape, “do you have a future when you do this?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are the people safe?”

“More of them survive when you do.”

“And do I ever get to kiss you?”

[the-hedge-has-thorns]

The Ending of the End (of Daisy Mae Nitti)

The flickering light of the movie screen reflected in my eyes as I sat in the dark theater, alone in a sea of strangers. I’d seen this film already. Twice, in fact, but it didn’t matter. The movie, the actresses, the music, they were my escape. It had become a ritual, these visits to the theater. The cloying scent of buttered popcorn, the sticky floors, the quiet murmur of people settling into their seats... it was the only place I felt like I could breathe anymore.

Robert and I hardly spoke at home. When we did, it was a cold, brittle exchange. He was hardly ever there anyway, staying late at work, disappearing for hours without explanation. When I asked, he sneered or made some cutting remark about my inability to give him what he wanted: a perfect home, a perfect wife.

I touched my swollen belly, the only part of me that still held hope, still held a future. But even that was fading, dissolving beneath the weight of everything else.

It felt like I was disappearing, piece by piece. The books I used to hide under the bed had been forgotten, tossed out by Robert. I gave up trying to learn, to understand the things that once filled me with excitement. It was easier to just let go. Robert didn’t want me to be more than what I was. A housewife, a shadow of the woman I used to be. And now, I wasn’t sure who I was at all.

That was when I met Marcus Sabel. He sat next to me during one of my many solo trips to the movies, his presence warm and unexpected in the coldness of my world. He introduced himself with a soft, knowing smile, his voice deep and soothing like a melody I hadn’t realized I needed. He didn’t ask about Robert, didn’t pry into the parts of my life that were crumbling. Instead, he saw me. The me that I had forgotten existed.

We talked for hours after that first movie, and then again after the next. Soon, our meetings became routine. He had an air about him that was magnetic, a certain elegance that seemed out of place in the world. Every time I was with him, the heaviness that had clung to me like a shroud lifted just a little, and I could breathe again.

It wasn’t long before I became emotionally entangled with him. He was everything Robert wasn’t. Attentive, kind, playful. And he listened, really listened when I spoke. I found myself sharing things with Marcus that I hadn’t spoken of in years.

I told him about my childhood, growing up in Chicago as the daughter of Frank Nitti, "The Enforcer." I told him how Al and Mae Capone had always been a presence, like some twisted version of an aunt and uncle. How, as a little girl, I never fully understood the gravity of my father's world: the violence, the power, the fear it inspired. To me, they were just family.

Mae used to dote on me, brushing my hair back with her soft hands and telling me stories. Al had a way of making me laugh, even when I sensed that something darker was happening around us. I was a child, but not blind to the realities of their lives.

Then there was Anna, my stepmother. She had married my father when I was still young, a cool, quiet woman who never quite seemed to know what to do with me. We coexisted more than we bonded. And Joseph, my adopted stepbrother. He was a few years older, and though we didn’t share blood, we shared the same house, the same strange upbringing. Joseph and I were close in a way that made me feel protected, like we were both navigating the same chaos.

Marcus never judged. He just listened, his dark eyes soft with understanding. And when he spoke, it was as though he was drawing me out of the past, pulling me back into something brighter, something safer.

Or so I thought.

I should have seen it sooner, the way Marcus seemed too perfect, too otherworldly. The way time slipped away when I was with him. I should have noticed how strange it was that I never really knew where he lived, or why he was always just… there, as if waiting for me.

One evening, after we had watched yet another film and shared another night of conversation, Marcus invited me somewhere new. “I want to show you something special,” he whispered, his voice carrying promise.

I followed him, trusting him implicitly, despite the warnings that had started to flicker in the back of my mind. We walked through a city I thought I knew, but it changed around me, becoming something more. More vibrant, more alive, more surreal. We passed through an archway I hadn’t noticed before, and suddenly, everything shimmered.

The world transformed into a dazzling party, one that seemed endless, filled with music and laughter and color. I had never seen anything like it. It was Arcadia, Marcus told me. He revealed his true nature then... his face shifting, his eyes glowing with an inhuman light. He wasn’t just a man. He was a Fae Keeper, The Host of Cobalt Souls, and I was his new guest.

In this place, every day was a wondrous celebration, and every night was filled with revelry. It was intoxicating, all of it. The endless joy, the intoxicating beauty of Arcadia. I was swept up in it, losing myself in the lights, the music, the adoration. The Host made me feel alive again, but it was a life fueled by something darker.

I became his revitalizing drink, the thing that kept the party going, night after night. He needed me to sustain the endless wonder, to give him and his court the energy to keep dancing, keep laughing, keep celebrating.

But there was a price. I realized too late that I wasn’t just a guest. I was trapped. Time moved differently in Arcadia, and my body… my body wasn’t my own anymore. The baby I had carried inside me was gone, lost somewhere in the madness of that place. I hadn’t even realized when it happened, or how long I had been there.

And back in the real world? Robert wasn’t mourning me. He wasn’t searching for me. He had a replacement. My Fetch, a hollow, empty version of me. She was perfect, the perfect housewife Robert had always wanted, and he was content with her.

I was forgotten.

And as the music swelled around me, I realized that in this endless party, I would never leave. I was The Host’s now, the drink that would keep him and his court alive forever.

But deep inside, where the music couldn’t reach, I was hollow too. I had lost everything... my child, my past, my future. And there was no escaping Arcadia.

Not anymore.

[ihaveatheoryonthat]

Whumptober Day 15: Breathing Through the Pain

---

Breathe in four seconds, hold seven, exhale eight. It was a cadence Emmet was familiar with-- far more familiar than he’d have preferred. There was every possibility that, if he hadn’t forced the matter, he’d have forgotten how to do so.

So long as he was breathing, he was alright. It proved he was still here, still alive, even when he felt like he was missing a lung. Careful, steady breaths; fill, hold, let go. He couldn’t afford a panicked gasp while working at half capacity, couldn’t risk a lack of oxygen and a spinning head.

He became quite good at it, tracking where he was in the process to keep himself from lashing out at nosy reporters and insensitive comments. If he breathed out until there was nothing in his lungs, he was physically incapable of snapping back and escalating the situation.

The carefully laid pattern hitched at the sound of his brother’s name, and he changed tracks, slowly blowing it out; even when he knew it was coming, it always caught him off guard, caused his breath to catch like a tug on the collar. He didn’t like the way people had taken to saying it, as a resigned sigh or an accusation. It just sounded wrong, even when the pronunciation was perfect.

Practiced from months of forcing the matter, he held his tongue.

Four seconds in, keep going. There was nothing wrong with the air; it was just his own outrage that made it feel so stifling. The oxygen boiled in his chest, and it was hard to hold it the full seven seconds without being scalded, harder still to exhale an entire eight when it rushed from his lungs, super heated and eager to escape.

Emmet’s hands clenched around nothing. Time to start again. Think of it this way: he had a lot in common with a steam engine right now. It was too hot in here to see the evidence, but maybe outside in the cold, the clouds would be visible trailing from his lips.

The man pacing before him turned on a heel, laying out his case, and Emmet managed to relegate a disbelieving laugh to a harsh huff of air. Of course. Yes, surely that was what happened the night his twin vanished.

Ridiculous. Emmet didn’t understand how anyone could believe that, why someone would waste their breath on it. This person had to have known better ways to spend such a precious resource, because the words he chose were utterly worthless. He clearly bought into it, though, eyes alight, cheeks flushed as he outlined his impossible version of events. Maybe he could stand to take a moment and recoup, breath deep enough to realize he’d lost his head somewhere in all of that and start talking sense instead.

He talked about the subway tunnels that had laid empty during weeks of investigation, of what had and hadn’t been found. Ironically, it was as though he was a train, charging ahead relentlessly, his words a deafening rumble in a room that was otherwise quite quiet, and when he was finished, the gasp for air wasn’t so different from a car pulling into station. Emmet was a little tempted to try yanking his chain, just to see if the man might also whistle.

There, see? All that time, and he hadn’t had to moderate a thing; sometimes his body could be trusted to maintain a course on its own. Thinking as much was a mistake, because Emmet was immediately made aware of the rise and fall of his chest, and his controls switched over from automatic to manual once again.

Someone was speaking to him, and he made sure to draw a silent, even breath, so as not to drown them out. If they were making the effort to address him, the least he could do was ensure that they didn’t have to repeat themselves. Swords of Justice knew once was enough.

They reached their point in perfect sync with his pattern; topic established in seven seconds, question posed by the end of the eight.

Emmet took another breath, cloying in spite of the chill that settled over him, and leaned forward so his statement wouldn’t be lost. He’d said it so many times already, at least now he could get it on the record-- maybe then people would stop making him echo it over and over again.

“No.” He said flatly, without an ounce of intonation in his voice. Why bother when it had proven to be such a lost cause? Nobody had been any more convinced when he’d forced his tone to match his sincerity.

“I did not kill my brother.”

[jonroxton]

can you talk about chlark beyond chloe? personally i think it's weird that the writers kept adding kisses and weird romantic moments without any pay off. i don't know much about the fandom back then but i think the writers were baiting fans since clark/chloe seems to be the second most popular ship after clex. second i personally think chloe would never be happy with clark or anyone tbh and she doesn't seem like the type of person who would have kids so the finale was weird to me.

this got looooong :)

0. it WAS weird, and the choice to never not once go for it with them was to the story's detriment. I'll get into it a little later on in this post.

Re: shipping in sv fandom. there was definitely drama (clana was HUGE when the show was airing and every ship was basically derailed by it lol) but I stayed in my clois lane with a small circle of fandom friends much like I do now. a good measure of clois fans were fans of lois and clark from other mediums, come to sv just for lois and clark, myself included. we were pretty insulated as a fandom even back then. I do remember seeing more Chlark after the S5 finale (when Chloe kisses him goodbye), but those dropped off after Jimmy was introduced right away in S6. The most drama I encountered was with Chloisers: Chloe fans who believed wholeheartedly that Chloe was Lois. They hated SV!Lois and were convinced she would die so Chloe could take her name and job and place by Clark's side, thus a Chlark endgame. this was a popular theory amongst that fandom even into s9, when the clois ball started to roll for true.

bait and switch

a lot of Chlark is rooted in this notion that chloe WOULD be the best thing for Clark, the ideal Lois, the true best friend, the human hand guiding him through Earth's troubles. she would be could be the BEST possible lois archetype for Clark. it's not a wrong interpretation. she was specifically written as a lois-and-lana-proxy (teenage lana is a reporter in some AUs and even some as an adult as a tv correspondent) and she's given many lois-ish traits (tenacious, secretly crushing on clark and in denial), but this interpretation is deeply flawed. first, because lois does eventually enter into the picture and she has her own defining traits that, when compared to chloe, make chloe seem much shallower than realized. secondly, within the complete context of the story, her position in the greater narrative is not as ~the one who got away, the way it did very early on in S1-S4, but one who clark tolerates.

they're friends because clark is forgiving and chloe has staying power. their friendship is riddled with insecurities and unknowns the characters create for themselves. their dynamic is defined by conflict, not resolutions. this is not made easy by the fact that chloe is such a strangely written character, but ultimately she is positioned as a counter to clark achieving his happiness. not a thematic narrative foil but an obstacle clark eventually relents to.

2. and it has been so from the get-go

S1 is the best season for them and the single season which actually considers Clark's side in this dynamic. everything about them later on can be explained with how they are in this season. and that's the problem. when they're 14 it's nice teen angst drama and works perfectly to establish the dynamic. when they're 24 it's at best a pattern, at worst regression. we expect certain behaviors, dismiss them too, when it's children, at least I do. clark and chloe never move beyond the dynamic they establish in s1 and early s2. in essence, clark and chloe remain children around each other. they have many discussions in the later seasons that make at least one appear petulant.

so S1 clark has just been told the greatest secret of his existence and he imprints on lana hard that same night (right AFTER jonathan tells him, he meets lana at the graveyard and talks to her for the first time EVER, a lot of childhood imprinting going on in SV). all of s1 follows clark's heartache over lana, watching her from afar and figuring out a way to be near her. this pain is exacerbated by the fact that he believes he caused her her greatest grief: the death of her parents via the meteor shower which he arrived in.

here the first beat of the chlark dynamic is established: chloe's job and passion – the wall of weird and her pursuing the meteor infected oddities of SV - directly affects clark in a negative way (he's suicidal for much of s1-s3). so her crush on him is countered with her unknowingly causing him great grief. om top of that: clark becomes part of this passion of hers and she eventually begins to pursue him as a story to be uncovered, very superman yes. here tho, it causes nothing but strife for them and paints chloe in an awful light (and clark too, highlighting his refusal to open up). I personally enjoy this aspect of them in s1. bc they're so young I give em a free pass and it's a good conflict playing around with old superman tropes, but it makes for a fraught friendship.

3. the second beat

is that neither chloe's crush on clark, nor his asking her to stop pursuing his truth, do anything to stay her. her tenaciousness becomes intrusiveness and inconsideration (many of her accomplishments irt the daily planet are directly bc she betrays clark). she simply will not listen to her friend and does not believe his livelihood and autonomy is worth losing a story over. this is literally the opposite of comics/live action lois lane, who in various versions drops the clark reveal story to protect him. this passion turns vindictive pretty early for chloe, who eventually pursues stories about clark out of jealousy and entitlement (against lana also).

4. the third beat

is that clark doesn't ever see chloe as romantic prospect except this time in s1. the tornado trapping lana pulls him away from any solidifying of the clark/chloe dynamic, and that's that. but we know clark was willing to go for it in early s2 when he apologizes to chloe about running off on her. it's chloe who decides not to go on with the relationship. clark is visibly confused, but also 15 so he can't see that chloe is putting on a brave front to protect herself from clark running off again. I liked this too as it's another play on superman tropes, but my sympathy for them stops here.

5. and stays here

these beats are the entirety of this dynamic. everything about chlark can be distilled down to their childhood. it's why I don't hate them completely, bc I have a lot of love for kids who hurt in such a way and that time is never easy. in s8 (I think its s8) when we get a flashback to when they meet as kids (more imprinting!). little tenacious cute chloe kisses insecure clark bc of the funny awkward tension, acknowledging it, and then immediately takes it back because they're better as friends. (also they’re like 11 lol)

every single romantic moment with them is undercut either by chloe herself, or by the presence of other storylines/romances the writers wanted to pursue. the lack of integrity in chloe and the lack of interest in clark, regardless of how sincere their connection or how messed up, is a central part of their dynamic that needs to be reconciled with their friendship. and its exhausting bc there is never a point they are ever truly comfortable around each other.

6. to a fault

knowing the secret doesn't change chloe's methods. it doesn't make chloe clark's great confidante. if anything, it complicates matters for both because their relationship then becomes about the greater good and clark's great destiny. everything chloe does becomes about that, which in theory sounds awesome, but is executed much the same way as s1!chlark: by reiterating behaviors that highlight the negative aspects of that loyalty and the negative aspects of their characters.

the single time they do actively examine what this loyalty means and how chloe's hero complex complicates things for chlark is with s8 and davis. she protects davis with the skills of subterfuge and secrecy she developed as clark's friend. and it costs her jimmy and a lot of her personal integrity as a character. tho ironically it makes chloe the strongest she's been as a character. this is the first time clark is forced to view chloe as an enemy and he never quite recovers from discovering the dark depths she’s willing to go to. 

it's an arc dealing with the established beats: how far chloe is willing to go for a kryptonian (very far), how much she's willing to do for him (A LOT and all of it illegal), and what it costs her (jimmy). it deals with her jealousy (always second choice) and her motivations (uncovering the truth). this great want that she struggled with for years is turned on its head and examined, revealing just how weird and dark her hero complex is because obviously davis is not clark. davis/chloe served to highlight more than any other arc how it's really too bad that clark never saw her that way, because she has so much love to give and when channeled, it's a great force. only it's a great force for evil. clark has to confront that it’s not just lex but his other closest friend who is willing to go so far. they backtrack hard in s9 and s10 but they keep this underlying wariness in clark towards Chloe throughout. it’s not anything new, but it’s no longer subtext that clark doesn’t fully trust chloe.

7. And that's the rub

in the end. chloe and clark have many storylines they're in together and chloe's important.... to develop clark and as a counter to clark. clark never instigates anything, not once, for 9 years! when the show did give us Moments TM, clark is reacting, not actively making choices to connect to her. if anything, clark is incredibly awkward about chloe when they become intimate. he doesn't seem to know what to do with her crushing on him (the elevator scene is a great one to show just how awkward chloe makes him feel). more than that. clark never tells her his secret. and later on, chloe doesn't tell him half the crazy wild shit she does to protect him bc she knows he would disapprove. I still hold that the only reason they work is bc clark is a forgiving character and would give her chance after chance after chance. that's the watsonian explanation, but the doylist explanation is that the writers just never cared to explore them beyond this point.

8. and what was beyond that point?

they would've been a great counter to lexana in S6 and early clana (clark finally having a gf who knows). it’s playing the clark/Chloe as a straight lois/clark proxy before actually pursuing lois and clark. it could’ve been the precursor to davis and caused an even more personal conflict! the kiss at the end of s5 was their chance. they could've written chlark devolving much the same way lexana did in s6 (or not). but again. the writers never went that far and clearly never wanted to. it kept chlark forever in this stage of childhood friendship always on the brink of collapsing, tittering either way. it's also tough to speculate bc clark's just not into her. in fact he becomes more and more wary of her, to the point where he believes she can do horrible things, and he's right. the stories continually make their methods complete opposite.

they go out of their way to show chloe realizing how happy clark is with lois. and even play a joke on the fandom by literally turning her into lois and seeing the sparks between her friends. it's almost... cruel but it does serve to show how clark is when he's smitten and he's never looked at chloe that way except during the dance when they were kids. other unrequited dynamics have at least some spark from the desired, but nil from clark. clark is into chloe in late s1, but she shuts him down, and when he seems to be into her again (damn that s5 kiss was a good one lol), she shuts him down again. it's just a weird writing choice all around, and that they kept nuggets of it throughout the show is the thing I cringe at most whenever I rewatch.

9. bait and switch 2

with hindsight it is definitely ship baiting and that sucks for that dynamic bc without it their friendship would’ve been the stronger, or at least not full of so much negativity. all it did was remind everyone that chloe’s been duped since she was a kid and that clark is both stupid and strange for never noticing and letting her get away with shit just bc she’s the most loyal. I don’t ship them and even I get frustrated lol

[patrice-bergerons]

a ghost story

read on ao3

Jon is upset and reasonably so, he thinks.  You spend a year of your life chasing the perfect flat, only to then find a pesky ghost take residence a mere month after you moved in, and see if you don’t get upset.  “Do you know how many viewings I attended, huh?” Jon yells as he chases after the thing with a broom.  “How hard it is to buy a decent flat in London?” 

“Jon, that’s really not necessary-” it yelps as it whizzes around the flat with little grace and the light in the hallway blows out.  But it does not leave.  It does not leave either when Jon throws salt at it, nor when he reads from a Latin book he’s been assured will chase away evil spirits, nor when he attacks it with holy water.

This ghost is not a poltergeist per se but Jon wishes it was. He is pretty sure poltergeists don't smile at you with such cloying fondness or sigh with such melodrama or keep asking if you want tea only to realise that yep! they still cannot handle physical objects. Poltergeists, at least, are not incompetent.

Worse still, the ghost seems to know things about him. His name for starters, but it does not end there.  It knows things about his childhood. How he likes his tea. Best way to calm him down after a nightmare.

Worse still, couple of times Jon comes back from work and finds his flat covered in a thick fog, and when he yells "Martin (for that is the ghosts name) this is not funny I swear to God I will exorcise you-" the fog draws in on itself until it's Martin standing there once again. "Sorry," he says, "I did not see you there," and he is smiling like he always is, as if his face isn't stained with tears and his eyes shining with unspeakable grief.

Do you want to talk about it? Jon almost asks.  But he is a banker, not a charitable free therapist for troubled ghosts, so he doesn’t.

(But he does chatter away as he cooks that night, about his day at work and Tim and Sasha, and Daisy, the bloodthirsty lawyer.  For some reason, Martin likes the stories about them the best.  Last strands of fog curl in and disappear as he tells Martin about how Daisy tore Jon’s boss, Elias, a new one because he was apparently violating quite a few financial regulations, and how red and angry his face was.)

Worse still, he convinces Jon to buy an Alexa, something Jon said he'd never do, because everyone knows it is corporate spyware. "It gets so boring when you are at work," Martin says with a frown that reminds Jon of fog before he quickly replaces it with a grin. "Besides that way, you’d never worry about running out of toilet paper again.  I would order it for you.  I’d be a useful ghost."

Worse still, Jon finds himself thinking ‘wait until Martin hears about this’ when Tim gets into trouble for fraternizing at work or when he sees a particularly funny looking duck and he even finds himself buying a poetry book- God, reading from a poetry book, because Martin can't turn the pages on his own. 

"You have a nice voice, you know that?" Martin says, his voice barely above a whisper. 

This is a statement of fact. 

Jon was in a band when he was in uni. He knows he has a nice voice and there is no reason why he should feel a blush creeping up his neck or this lump in his throat. As if-

(But it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter.)

Worse still, Martin tells him everything one night when Jon is more than a little tipsy and it is storming outside, a tale punctuated by sobs and more hurt than should fit in a lifetime, than should be allowed. 

"He wouldn't..." Jon has to stop for a moment because his voice cracks. "Martin, I can't imagine any version of me that would hate you for that, or blame you for it. I can't-" He stops again. I can't imagine any version of me who wouldn't choose you over everything, everyone else. Over the whole wide world. But he cannot say that, not out loud, so he says instead- “you told me yourself he loves you.” I love you. “It was his choice to make, and he made it, and it’s a bit insulting, frankly, that you won’t take his word for it.”

“Yeah, you are right, of course you are right.” Martin smiles and Jon wants to hit him with a broom again--not that he was actually successful at the hitting part the first time around. Stop. Trying. Hiding your pain. Behind a smile.

(Stop trying to hide it from me.)

And worst of all, on one sunny day when Jon wants to inquire about his thoughts on adopting a cat, he finds Martin waiting for him in the living room. "I am ready, I think, to move on," Martin says, gently, apologetically as if he can very well see Jon's heart breaking in his ribcage. "I have been- well, ready for some time but..." He reaches his hands as if he can touch Jon's. He cannot. "I've never been very good at letting you--any version of you--go."

"Are you-" Is that Jon's own voice that rings so distant in his ears, so foreign? "Where will you go?"

"Where my Jon is, I think."

Of course.  Of course.  The Jon who chose him over the universe.  His Jon who loves him.

"Will you-” He puts his best to a smile. (Because two can play at this game, after all.)  “Will you tell him I tried to exorcise you?"

Martin laughs.

"Well, he once sent me to be chopped up by a witch, so..."

In every bloody universe, then.

"All versions of me are a bit of a bastard, then?"

"A bit?" Martin asks, his voice breaking too, and Jon wishes he could- What does he wish, really?  That he could hug Martin, just the once?  That he could hold onto his dignity, like he so often can, instead of breaking down like this?  That he could ask- but he cannot ask.  

He knows he has no right.

That he has to let Martin go.

*

"There is one more thing before I go," Martin says later, after their tears dried a bit, a sly smile playing on his lips. "Take out your phone."

Jon would have bristled at him for being ordered around like this, once.  It seems like a lifetime ago.

"Google show me the Facebook profile of Martin Blackwood," Martin says when Jon takes it out.

Google, helpful as ever, complies and Jon finds himself looking at the same curly hair and friendly face on his screen.

"He works at a library and he is single," Martin grins, "I think he might be a bit lonely, and I know you are just his type."

[vyctoyr]

Green

Green is now officially my most hated color Just look at the two hideous stripes! On the screen, dividing, forcing me back To the past, to set up everything on an old phone Nothing more anachronistic, really Thank going form the present iOS To three or four versions back

When I opened my messenger I saw a snapshot of dialogues Of course, but they are not my current dialogues They were from the past, they belonged to another Another time and place, another me I felt so estranged from that grumpy Emotional, constantly disgruntled Moping, sulking, and difficult person Who was still using Snapchat on a daily basis

For the longest time I reflect upon the past I did not think it was possible that I was so cruel So mean and so unfair, to many of you It all felt so distant, so distant that not only the past But also my contortively contrite reflection of that past Has begun to seem distant and fuzzy It is like revisiting another me Looking over yet another me, a me even more anterior Even though it was only three or four years back

I saw those faces, those faces once I mingled with Shared laugh with, held secret grudge against Umbrageous, youthfully so I bottled up dissatisfaction and pressed on Letting an anger popping out As passive-aggression and occasional violence Upon you, you who didn't deserve much I know revisit again the realization of why you left me

It must have been a different time Cuz it absolutely amazes me, how much has change How much time has elapsed left and right From that episode straddling burgeoning high school And an even more rebellious and confrontational college

I remember how I lost my voice completely In the most discussion-heavy seminar I felt insecure, still do, but no longer pathologically so I felt awkward to be sitting in the same room with you Listening to your quirky accent critiquing Marx and Foucault It was the worst participation grade I would ever receive But hey, don’t you worry, I’m over that now Now I can, not without hesitation, granted, speak in a class It’s amazing how timidity could very slowly flag away

I realize how people are capable of changing They don’t change just the minute you tell them to But they do change over time, step by step A little by a little, petit-à-petit I wasn’t sure that was possible, and I wanted everything to be perfect Now I’m happy, I came out the other end Knowing that nothing can ever be perfect I accept the obligatory gradualness of all things that exist After all, a little bit more patience is the paper-thin divide Between the present me, and the me two versions back Who couldn't yet quite tell Scriabin form Spinoza

I accept that life isn’t a Winslow Homer painting

In the end, let me say that: Insecurity is a nasty bitch, but I also learned Over the years, I learned to negotiate slowly with her And now, she has mellowed down quite a bit Either that or I must have become an equally nastier enemy

But every fourth prelude and fugue is a nasty one The screaming melodramas are most certainly nasty You see, Bach knows, the sagacious numerologist knows To be nasty is necessary if one aspires to beauty Even though one of them died fearing 13, The other from a massive stroke, a botched surgery An 18th century surgery, unsterilized metal cut open your eyes

Artistic confidence is something worth swooning over Or really, any form of confidence for that matter Has a cloying, syrupy taste that lingers Like Juliette’s chocolate foam, her Yule Log maybe Or when an opalescent Pysanky clashes into Cousin Matryoshka You end up with a floor of coruscating fragments In vain and in a tizzy, I’ll glue them back together By marrying the Russian with Ukraine Through Isaiah’s mirthful Siciliano For the virgin plants her indehiscent seed

[afterglowlws]

Hi there! I like supercorp content but gave up on Supergirl in season 3. What were you alluding to when you said a romantic boundary has been crossed?

Hi! Sorry if this is super long winded but I have so many feelings about it still 😭😂

I think there’s been several things throughout each season that were really romantic, but something about the entirety of season 5 was just different. It was the most romantically framed they’ve ever been; the romantic music, the outfit choices, the Clois parallels, the parallels to other canon couples, the romantic tropes, etc. You’ve had all that in previous seasons as well, but this season established them as soulmates on top of it all. It established that they can’t live without each other, and that they don’t want to either.

Seeing the way Kara was desperate to apologize and get Lena back was already walking the line, but I think there were a few different things that ended up completely crossing it. The first thing is their willingness to bend their morals for each other. We have Kara, who absolutely swore to never kill no matter how evil the person was. Kara, who swore to never choose a singular person over saving thousands/millions/billions of people. Season 5 starts with Kara thinking she killed Lex (and trying again upon seeing him alive during Crisis), and she is 100% okay with this because she knows Lena is safer because of it. We also see Kara once again risk the world and all of her friends lives to save Lena. We saw this briefly in 3x05 when she was willing to let the city’s water supply get poisioned rather than drop Lena. But in season 5A she was willing to put the entire world at risk rather than inflict any harm on her. And then again in 5x13 where she got all her friends killed in AU because she revealed her identity to the world to save Lena. Revealing her identity for Lena, in and of itself, is super romantic to me. And then we have Lena, who straight up killed her brother to keep Kara safe. I also find it interesting that Kara went against Alex’s direct order and broke a federal law to steal Lex’s journals for Lena because “a friend like you has no boundaries.” That line was just...an interesting choice, especially when you parallel it to when Lena told James that a season or two ago.

Another thing is all of 5x13, which was the AU episode where Mxy took Kara through all the different timelines. That episode established them as soulmates. Established that Kara can’t live without Lena, and that Lena is heartless without Kara. This part is up for interpretation but to me, Lena’s heart was symbolic of Kara’s kryptonite being Lena not loving her. The show itself kind of backs that claim with all of their ‘stronger together, weaker apart’ posts. But anyway, in the Metallo Lena AU she started blasting Kara with kryptonite. Kara doesn’t try to fight back, run away, or even move...she just lays there and says ‘I won’t fight you Lena.’ That same ‘evil’ Lena had tears in her eyes when she saw Kara, even though she had no clue who she was, because they’re that connected across any version of reality. I could write a whole essay about the Metallo AU alone, but there’s just one more timeline I want to quickly highlight. I found it extremely interesting that Kara’s ideal timeline was when her and Lena were ‘partners’ from the beginning. They had a whole cult of followers praising the pairing of a Luthor and a Super. Kara was bothered by her cult following in the past, but being praised for her partnership with Lena was ideal to her. Lena working alongside her was ideal to her. A world where Lena was her #1 and none of her ex’s seemed to exist..was what she wanted. I think it’s telling.

The last thing is actually a deleted scene, but I have to say that had they kept it...it would’ve been very hard to explain from a platonic standpoint. There was a deleted scene from 5x07 where Kara insisted on Lena staying in a DEO safe house for her protection, and Lena told her that she wanted to fight alongside her because she’s not a damsel in a tower. The damsel in distress trope is probably one of the oldest romantic tropes in the book. Kara said it to MonHell, Iris said it to Barry, etc. There are other non deleted scenes that are just as telling as this one, but this scene in particular still just has me screaming into the void so I had to mention it lol.

Like I said I could write an entire essay with all the romantic evidence in season 5 alone, but I’ll stop here for now because I’m sure this was way more than you bargained for 😅😅

[ravenwritesstuff]

Best Laid Plans (13/?)

Fandom: Frozen (modern AU, no magic) Pairings: Helsa, established Kristanna, Rapunzel/Eugene, lotsa frohana Rating: T for now, M later almost for sure A/N: Meh.

She goes to the bathroom where she had changed originally. 

By some mercy all of her things are still there. She does not know why she thought they might not be, but this day is quickly showing her just how unexpected things can be. Her mouth still tingles from the pressure of his and if she is honest she cannot say it was entirely unwanted. 

Still: this precedent cannot stand. If this event is to go forward she absolutely cannot abide this kind of behavior.

It is distracting. It is unprofessional. More than that it hints at the one thing she has not allowed herself to consider for over two years: a future. 

Hans Westergaard may not want anything from her more than a fling, but she cannot know that for sure. She cannot entertain anything that may have staying power and if his reaction to her is even a fraction of what she has felt when he touches her then they are in trouble.

The first thing she does is breaths. She knows she tends to not do that and that is no good. She must breathe. Breath is crucial to brain function and clearly she needs as much of that as she can get. 

She needs to breathe.

She needs to think.

She needs to move forward.

Her first step of moving forwards is to go to the miniature version of her traveling drugstore in the corner of the gold and marble bathroom, and she immediately starts setting herself right. She cannot get out of her wrap and suit fast enough. Even with the rinse down below she still feels sticky. She pulls out her face and body wipes and gets to work, then the lotion. It is not the type that drenched her skin with cloying scent, but instead offered a delicate perfume that she hopes will remove all traces of the reef and everything after. As she works the cream into her skin she feels her body relax. The familiarity, the sense of routine, slows the spinning world enough that she finally feels like she stands on solid ground.

Her body is hers. Her mind is hers. Her spirit is hers. She focuses on that.

She tells herself this routine has nothing to do with erasing his touch, covering it with additional sensation so she can forget the heat he poured into every inch of her. She tells herself that caressing her body with her own hands has nothing to do with forgetting the imprints he left on her. She reasons that gargling sharp minty mouthwash is to take the tang of ocean salt from her tongue and not the memory of his own intimate flavor. She tells herself that she hadn’t kissed him back.

She wishes she believed herself, but the last point is a lie and she knows it.

Still she comforts herself knowing that if nothing else it reminds her that there is life off of this boat, outside of his initiative. These steps, routines, exist outside of him. The vast majority of her world exists outside of him and would continue to be so for as long as she is alive. It is a victory, she tells herself, to not need him. 

All she wants is to plan a great event. All she wants is to elevate her company to the next level so when she leaves she will know they are set. All she wants is to make peace with her fate and leave her family with the resources they need for success. 

She dresses, glad for the shapeless way her shift floats around her body revealing nothing. She untangles the mess of her hair and combs her fingers through the white blonde mass. The salt from the ocean brings out its fullness and body. Without a blowdryer and a round brush there was no hope of taming it to lay around her shoulders and down her back without it exploding into a frizzy mess. Her fingers deftly create a braid that she curls and pins at the nape of her neck, hiding her scar.

Finally she finds her silver locket and clasps it behind her neck. 

She may have been tempting fate wearing this specific piece of jewelry. Hans Westergaard had taken a special interest in it at the wedding after all, but she knows she cannot simply stop wearing it. It is her most precious belonging and she is not about to allow one over-inflated playboy keep her from exercising what little control she has over her life. 

She straightens her shoulder and swipes on just enough makeup to make her feel like she isn’t a ghost: a bit of mascara, concealer, brow fill, blush, and a swipe of nude lipstick. She has never been a gloss girl. Her fair complexion already makes her look younger than she is. She does not need help in that department, especially since she will never grow old.

The thought slips in before she can stop it but it still catches her breath. It has been easy to ignore for the last two years, but she knows she is chasing the end. Time and fate do not just stop because you turn your eye. She feels them both biting her heels. 

In an act she hopes is fortifying she looks herself in the eye in the mirror. 

She says what she has said for many other days to remind herself of her position, her focus, whenever she felt lost:

“The end is coming.” 

The words bend in a strange way in this space. She has grown used to how they unfurled in the small bath off of her studio apartment where she has often found macabre comfort in her single affirmation. What use has she for self-help mantras and manifestation when science has told her the truth? 

The end is coming, and it is coming soon. She has felt it. It is not constant, but just enough that she recognizes its impending presence. This is when she must bow out and relinquish herself to fate - no matter how cruel. She did not choose this, but it seems the universe did. Who is she to argue with the universe?

Her shoulder rolls back, eyes catching in the mirror, and she cannot delay further. If she does it will result in her heaving herself off the deck into the depths of the ocean and not coming back up and that is not becoming for PR regarding an up-and-coming event planning business.

She must face this.

She considers what she has faced to this point and in many ways is able to convince herself that anything she has encountered between herself and Mister Westergaard is quite small. Perhaps, in many ways, it is. Perhaps this ephemeral chemistry has left them grasping at things that do not exist. 

There is no future and she is fine with that. Yes she may have reacted and even enjoyed the attention of his kisses but that does not mean she must succumb to the succulent pleasure he offers. After all he does not know what he is asking.

She does not have a future. 

She does not know how to tell him that.

So she looks at herself in the mirror and decides that after this event she is done. Of course she will do her best at finishing out what she needs to contractually, but she will not accept any more events. From here on in her purpose will be to transfer whatever authority she has to a new trainee. It is the most she can hope to do for a company that was founded on the fact that she is dying.

Her head shakes, hand gripping pure stone counters veined with what she can only assume is actual gold, and this is her purpose. This is why she is here. If she can keep this event under the guise of E&A Events without ever giving away her position as she has done with everything they have done. Then their business will catapult to the stratosphere of society.

They are ready. She knows they are. They all have the skill and capability to reach the heights she never will, but she hesitates. Hiring. The one thing they have never really done. Kristoff was acquired through dating Anna. Rapunzel and Eugene were acquired through Kristoff and Anna drinking at a bar and forcing Elsa to realize they were the perfect fit for their expanding needs. The intern Sven, Kristoff’s friend, fit in well enough to warrant a staff position if available, but he definitely could not fill her shoes. 

They needed someone who was focused on delivering perfection, someone who would balance out her obsession with black and white solutions, someone who could move them forward when her own desire for being more kept them from actually accomplishing anything.

Someone like Hans. Her own mind betrays her and she takes a breath.

She had not lingered in this bathroom to have her own motivational mirror time accost her so she knows it is time to go. Turning towards the door she sucks a serrated breath and reminds herself of the truth.

All that matters is the deal, the zeros on the bottom line, the chance to upscale the business. 

At least that is what she tells herself as she tries to settle an errant, romantic heart.

Romance. The very word simultaneously makes her laugh and cringe. Of course she had wanted someone to share her life with, someone who didn’t judge or query or laugh. Someone sober-minded, driven, responsible, kind… but she shoves aside that narrative. 

Even at Camp for Those Who Probably Weren’t Going to Make It (not the official name but the name given by her and her best camp friend in the summers spent there) she knows how unrealistic this is.

Love can heal, it does heal, but not when it comes to cases like her.

This is no simple saga of a single broken heart that could be bandaged if the right pair of hands came along. This is her own body declaring war on itself while requiring her to be inside of it but also sit back and watch. The cruelty is not lost on her, but she is prepared. This has been her end for a long time. 

She will watch until the bitter end.

So she looks in the mirror. She squares her shoulders. She tightens the muscles in her back. Though not the tallest woman in the room she is above average and feels that is very much to her advantage. She will take every advantage she can during this negotiation for more than one reason.

After all: what is negotiation other than having the best side of a deal? 

Little does she know that she is about to find out.

….

The rest of the party is back and dressed in their original clothes when she emerges onto the deck where they had first started. She takes stock and if she was not wound as tightly as a child’s music box she may have found the mix of mussed and professional endearing. 

Well, at least where her team was concerned. 

Her sister especially struck a chord in her disheveled pigtail braids, freckles shining on her cheeks and nose from their time in the sun, and her negligence to reapply any kind of makeup. Even in her casual professional outfit Elsa could not help but see her sister as they had been as children. As they had been before - 

That thought is dangerous territory in current company and she reigns it hoping no one noticed the flicker of sentiment (and by no one she means Hans Westergaard). The situation has made it clear that she cannot afford any emotional weakness, no chinks in the armor, and she whips and beats her consciousness to submit to meet what she is so sure they need. 

With an effort she is chagrin to admit she meets Mister Westergaard’s eyes to find them carefully resigned, as if he had to muster a similar effort to meet her gaze. Still the moment her eyes meet his she is struck with a heat she cannot explain - especially considering the distance. She swallows nothing, throat working around the promise of relief that cannot be found in such a simple action. 

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she says around the lump in her throat, gaze scanning everything. 

The elaborate spread of food and drink menus have been removed and she feels a pang of hunger that makes this discovery a regrettable one. Simultaneously she is surprised she is even interested in food at this moment. Not just because of her racing heart but she hasn’t been hungry in weeks, not genuinely anyway. She knows what that signals, but has been ignoring it. 

Perhaps this is a good sign?

She tightens her core against the burgeoning hope. She is beyond trusting herself. If her condition has gone far enough she really cannot trust her own mind. The idea sends a spiteful fever through her gut, coiling and venomous. Who was she if she could not trust herself, her judgement? 

She pushes at the hunger and levels her gaze somewhere in the middle of the group: “What did I miss?”

Anna smiles in a way that betrays nothing. She is either getting better at masking her feelings or Kristoff really hasn't divulged anything.

“We all just got here,” her sister smiles. “We were waiting for you.”

Elsa does not dare look at Hans for his response to that comment. 

“Well I’m here now,” Elsa squares her shoulders and shifts her attache case in her hands. “Shall we discuss the initiative?” 

The words themselves rest a tang on her tongue, bright as blood, and she is just glad it does not taste like him. 

“Of course,” it is he, his voice smooth and calm as she hoped she had sounded before. “But you all must be hungry. I have taken the liberty to make sure lunch was provided today so we can spend the afternoon discussing details.” 

It is only then that she allows herself to realize that he has lost his sweater from the morning and only wears the crisp white button down that had been hidden beneath. The long white sleeves are rolled to the elbows. His forearms are lean, roped with purposeful strength, and sprinkled with both freckles and thick copper hair. The sight of even part of him reminds her of how much she had seen before and unease descends upon her like a guillotine.

“Certainly,” Elsa nods, aware everyone is watching for her cue. “Thank you for the consideration, but we cannot presume to take so much of your time. I am sure after a working lunch my team and I will have enough to get started on your project. After all we want to provide you with the absolute best services and we are best prepared to do that in our offices.”

“Of course,” Hans Westergaard steps nearer and even at the distance of several feet she feels her calf cramp against the impulse to step back in response. “But you see I plan on being involved through this entire process. It is crucial that I work alongside you and make sure you understand everything you need to know so you can deliver exactly what I want.”

She levels her gaze, steadies her breath, and sees exactly what he is doing. Just as he clearly saw her own tactic a few moments before and she has never met someone to challenge her like this. 

“That is the beauty of hiring E&A Events,” she smiles instead of screaming. “We can accomplish things for you in less time and with less supervision things that many other event planners cannot. That is why we hope you trust us and our recommendations. Once we outline your expectations we will only have to check in periodically to make sure we are on track.”

A shadow of a smile pulls at his lips as his gaze darkens. “And if I want to have a more hands on approach?”

Her breath catches against her will. Her body heats with each memory of exactly what his hands felt like across her frame and that is not part of the deal. It never will be, but she can feel the tension in the air. She can sense her crew’s suspicion rising at this exchange, inferring indiscretion, and she raises an imperious brow in counterpoint. 

“There are no contracts signed, Mister Westergaard. Let’s sort through the particulars and see if we are a good fit.” 

It is the best she can do to diffuse and redirect a conversation she can only describe as wildly out of hand. Still the look in his eye at her phrasing does nothing to settle the rolling feeling in her stomach. His enigmatic gaze tells her nothing but that she is in trouble.

“Lunch sounds great,” it is Kristoff who breaks in. His voice is just a little too eager.

“Yeah,” Anna chimes in too and Elsa cannot help but wonder just what she has gotten out of Kristoff explicitly and what she has read between the lines. “After all of that swimming I am starved!”

Rapunzel and Eugene seem all too happy to acquiesce and she can see Hans Westergaard slip into his perfect host skin. His smile broadens, his eyes get less focused, and he moves his attention from lasering in on her to directing the party as a whole. At least he can read a room - but maybe that is what makes him so dangerous. 

Hans introduces the impeccable brunette that had directed her to the Sunset Parlor. Janet, her name is Janet. Elsa fixes onto that, on the humanness of this woman and how she could clearly care less about Hans Westergaard and his charm and his influence and whatever else he brings to the table as she offers the most gracious of smiles and gestures to Elsa’s crew to follow her. 

The group all goes ahead of them.

Elsa had thought Hans Westergaard would go first but all he does is rock on his toes like a dare as the rest push into the interior of the boat. Elsa’s mind flashes to creamy yellow leather and lush mahogany wood and how if the lunch options were anything like the brunch options she may actually have to indulge (slightly). If this is the challenge he wants to lay down she will meet it. 

She turns and follows the group. In no less than three steps she stopped by a strong hand on her shoulder turning her to meet his watching eyes. They have not quite left the main deck and she has watched carefully enough to know that the reflective glass is keeping them from further chatter of indiscretion. That does not mean she is thrilled to be stopped before she is coupled with the relative safety of going into lunch with her team. 

Still she turns with razor eyes: “Stop it. This is not the right time.”

“Oh? Why do I feel like it will never be the right time with you?” he pulls the easy smile she knows is not his and her stomach turns.

“Stop,” she steps back and his hand drops. “You really have to stop.”

Her spine tightens as she tries to not lean away even though he has not moved closer. The kisses between them still sing. She may not be the most experienced girl at the bar but she knows a player when she sees one and there is no way she is letting him get closer in any way. 

He cocks his head to the side, “why?”

“I understand you are an influential man,” she stares at the third button down his chest, ignoring that the first two are undone, and trying her best to not remember… “But we are, well I am not in the habit of pawning off favors for the sake of business. If I gave you the wrong impression or insinuated what you might expect…”

Her blush cuts her off and swallows. 

His voice is low and soft, “I don’t expect anything.”

That rips her eyes to his. She does not know him, but she knows enough to never trust that sentiment. 

“Everyone expects something,” she replies before she can catch herself and her mind goes double time to make up for her misstep, for showing her authentic feelings.

Even if it is true - even if he is born to an entire line that expects something - that does not give her permission to spew all over him. Still she is not about to allow her company to become the laughing stock of higher society because this man can adapt to any circumstance. There are no stakes for him here as far as she can see.

So she straightens her shoulders and does not back down. His chin lowers, slow grin melting across his face. All he does is shift his weight and she has to keep herself from jumping. What if Anna - ?

“What is it that you think I expect that has you so on edge?”

His eyes are hooded, lips soft, and the heat of their kiss is so near to her memory it would only take the slightest effort to pull it to the front of her mind and make a terrible decision, but she reins it in.

“Honestly I don’t want to patronize you with what we were both privy to,” they hold each others gaze for an uncomfortable breath then: “Before we move forward I need you to be honest about your potential contracting of E&A Events. It must have no ulterior motive beyond your event creation and completion. Tell me that you are hiring us for our collective merit, the event we could plan for you, and not for any other reason.” 

He tilts his head to the side with a smirk, “What other reason could I have?”

She flushes, but not of embarrassment. This time the flush rises from - she hates to admit - agitation. She had though they had been on the same page, that he was actually listening to her, but that seems to be untrue. 

“Are you asking me to suppose that you kissed me - repeatedly - was simply out of some sort of goodwill?”

His grin blossoms in full at that and it fills the room to where her whole body tense to stop a step back though he does not move. Even with feet separating them she can feel the heat of him against her and it is not fair. He rests so easy across the space from her that she cannot help but cross her arms over her chest in resistance to him.

“No. I am fully supposing you understand I kissed you because I find you wildly attractive,” his smile stretches so wide she wonders if it hurts even as it stops her lungs.

“Then this cannot go on,” it is a hard rush of the only air left in her body. The exhalation of this truth gives her space to suck in new air and continue, “while I am flattered there is no version of this story that ends the way you want unless that story ends with my company planning you an unforgettable event and us not getting involved in any way.”

The moment the words are out of her mouth she second guesses them. Her mind goes wild with everything she said wrong or could have said better but she is glad that the truth is at least out there. When expectations are set, she has learned, most parties end up happy. Still as she watches him she cannot quite be sure that rule applies here. 

His hands tuck into his pocket and he rocks onto his toes. It isn't disappointment, but there are shades of that along with other things beneath the surface that she tries to not dissect too closely. Her mind comforts herself with the black and white of the situation. These kinds of boundaries are good and what they need to be professional. She had felt unsettled before because she had allowed gray to shade them. If he couldn’t accept her terms then -

“Well,” his tongue wets his full bottom lip and she can feel the gray slipping back in. “I told you I would kiss you like I would never get another chance. If that is all we get, I’ll learn to live with it.”

He smiles, not his mega-watt-light-the-night-sky-smile, but something softer and more secret. It sends a thread of anticipation up her spine that she cannot unravel. 

Still she takes his words to heart. 

I’ll learn to live with it.

He would have to.

After all. She had.

[ previous ]

[handlewithkara]

Lying about your Superhero identity: Why Clois and Westallen (Flash tv) just work and Clana (Smallville), Lauriver (Arrow) and Kara&Lena (Supergirl) don’t

A while ago, I wrote a bit about why I think the way Mon-El lied to Kara about his real identity is fundamentally different from when Kara lies about her superhero identity and the fact that she is an alien (tldr: Mon-El lies about his past, Kara lies about her present and things that are fundamental to her character). 

This made me think about superheroes and their relationships in general. I have long since maintained that if one applied real life relationship standards (whether as a friendship or as a romantic relationship) to Kara and Lena, they just have a really, really awful relationship, steeped in lies and distrust. 

Kara and Lena fans have always claimed that their relationship has a lot of parallels with Clark and Lois. I for one, have always felt that those so called parallels are extremely superficial and tenuous and to me completely miss the core of what Clois are about as a couple. That those things they do NOT have in common (such as being reporters who work together and Lois being drawn to Superman first, the fact that Lois does not go full on hateful psycho when she finds out the truth) are actually really important in regards to what make Clois tick. 

So.... why does Clois work? 

If you look at the core of it, Clark hiding his identity from Lois is, especially if looked at with modern sensibilities, is kind of skeevy. 

I argue: the thing that is most often levvied against Clois as a couple and Lois as a character, namely the fact that Lois initially fawns over Superman while ignoring or discounting Clark in one way or another, is actually one of the key factors that make them work as a couple. 

We can discuss whether the tendency of people to take this as the reason to call Lois is shallow (for overlooking the niceguy(tm)) is problematic in its own way. But regardless of whether it is or isn’t, it is the way that Clois has worked for the majority of its existance. 

Lois being hot for Superman (or “The Blur”) while partially disregarding Clark allows them to set up a situation where both partners are flawed and both are “at fault” (Clark for lying, Lois for being “shallow”). It is what allows the reveal of Clark’s true identity to go over a lot smoother, because there is a lot more room for Lois to be portrayed as either “I should have seen it” or “Maybe I knew on some level”. 

I truly think that the creators of Flash understood that and that’s why Iris initially very similarly has a flirtation with the Flash and at the same time has a good reason to not see Barry as a romantic option (one could argue that this is one of the ways that Flash “softens” or improves  on Clois, because this element of Lois teasing Clark or belittling him isn’t there for Westallen and also the timing for when Iris finds out is very different from the way most longer running Clois stories  (comics, cartoons, tv) do it). 

A lot of the time it seems like some writers are dissatisfied with the concept of “shallow Lois” and feel tempted to “fix” the Clois formula by writing the woman as loving the “Clark” side of the Superhero. This is the case with both Smallville’s version of Clark and Lana and Arrow’s version of Ollie and Laurel, where they made them childhood sweethearts from before Oliver becomes Green Arrow. 

But they all overlook that “sweetening” the woman by having her love the guy under the mask first actually completely ruins the Clois formula. Because if the girl sweet and attached to the hero, it makes the hero lying to her about his secret identity so much more morally worse and makes a bad reaction to it a lot more called for (or makes the story feel like it is missing something when there isn’t one, because then it is even more that the superhero was just basically being mean to the nice girl who loves him). It makes the relationship way more unbalanced and hence causes it to not work longterm. 

I truly believe that the writers of Smallville loved Lana the character and even loved the torrid, tragic nature of Clark and Lana’s relationship. But I feel, once they introduced Lois, they noticed that ... Clois just works. No matter how unsatisfied people might be with the concept of “shallow” Lois, this story archetype just works and almost writes itself, allowing Smallville to transition from Clark and Lana as the driving relationship to Clark and Lois to the driving relationship, allowing the show to stay on the air for many additional years. 

They wanted to strengthen the Clana relationship by giving them a dynamic closer to Clois by having Clark hide his identity from her, not realizing that this actually weakened them as a couple in regards to longterm potential by pitting Lana into the unattractive long suffering woman position. I believe this is the reason why they kept giving Lana so many other partners, in a deperate attempt to “balance” the scales between Clana and give Lana a bit more power in the relatinoship. 

In the comics, the triangle situation of Clana versus Clois arises specifically from Lana knowing the secret and Lois not knowing it, and the core dynamic of the nice girl high school sweetheart versus the challenging high maintainance city girl. Because of this, I’m fairly certain that any attempts to do a Lana/Clark/Lois triangle will not work on the new Superman & Lois show because the Clois versus Clana dynamic (even as it is generally considered as being already decided), doesn’t work even short time when Lana does not at least temporary have it “over” Lois that Lana knows the secret and Lois doesn’t. If neither knows (like on Smallville) and if both know (like potentially on Superman and Lois) Clois is just cleanly superior. 

To me this is also shown in Lauriver versus Olicity, where when you have the Smallville Clana archetype (girl loves the guy before the hero and is lied to), in that circumstance, the girl who knows (Felicity) suddenly gets the upper hand.  

I think a lot of male writers fall into this trap of trying to “fix” the Clois archetype and ruining it in the process, because they view the story only from the point of view of the male character and look at it as “Oh, but wouldn’t it be so angsty if he has this girl he really loves, but he was like forced to lie to her, because he’s like just such a damn big hero and he angsts and it is this big sacrifice” and don’t realize that while it makes a good foundation for hero angst, it makes for a really crappy basis for an actual future long term healthy couple. 

(I might also eventually do another post on this topic where I argue that the Clois trope is a very male centered trope and why it makes sense that it was not chosen for any of Supergirl’s romantic relationships, for the record, I think Supercat was slightly closer to having a somewhat Clois like dynamic, even though there were still some significant spins and changes to it ) 

[unwiltingblossom]

But through it all was you (LucienxMC, MLQC)

It's him. She lied to herself.

It's him. She made herself believe it really was, because the future was what the Queen decided.

Alternate scene version of Gloomy Date, because I have a lotta feelings. Spoilers up to ch24. Consider it M rated

She's been...so strong. For so very long. Since she finally drew upon the strength to die for her world - a word she'd desperately wanted to believe was this one, but now she's forced to accept was yet another timeline she'd had to end to save this one - since she'd woke up in this cold world, she'd had to be strong. She'd never had a moment to be weak, to give up or give in, no matter the cost, no matter how much it hurts. She's been strong even when it hurts, but finally...there's no disaster, no crisis that she needs to avert, and no memories left to bring back.

For once, just for one moment, she wanted to be weak.

He's so close, his breath washing over her and sending her mind immediately back into a world she'd given up, the memories she alone was left to guard. His voice was so insistent, demanding answers she had, but didn't want to give.

She could resist him, still. She could refuse. Even if it hurt to refuse, to push away her screaming desire and pain, she could.

She didn't want to.

She didn't actually say anything, not substantial, at least. She didn't think she needed to. He could always read her so well, looking away from him and denying him the ability to read her expression was her only option to keep her secrets from him, and he'd already suggested that he knew what she was hiding anyway. The uncertainty in her eyes when she finally looked up at him, the pain that she tried to shove down but miserably failed at, and the way she knew her cheeks must have been flushed with how close he was...the subtle way his eyes widened, the rapid flicker of emotions she couldn't read or catch long enough to recognize, he must have been able to tell. Why she so instinctively trusted him, what should have been an almost-stranger, why she couldn't help but reach out to take his hand when he was falling if only because she couldn't bear to watch him fall alone.

His lips parted briefly, and she steeled herself. For him to say it and make it real. For one of his gentle teasing comments. For that biting, icy cold he'd displayed in the bookstore. No sound came from his lips.

One of his hands trailed down her cheek, the back of his fingers brushing a stray lock of her hair from her face.

She opened her mouth to break the stretching silence before it could become awkward - so she could backtrack and rethink her poor choices.  Those fingers pressed to her lips instead, firm and warning.

Against her hand, where it splayed against his chest reflexively, his heart beat unsteady and rapid.

He could stop it with a word. She could stop it with the same one. Either one could break the moment, remind him of his priorities and remind her that the softness and yearning in his eyes was nothing more than an act to fool her into lowering her guard and falling into whatever trap he'd meant to lay for her before his incident. Neither one of them did. That word, 'Queen', hung heavy in the air, but faded into dust as chapped and thin lips finally crashed upon hers. He felt chill, and just a touch clammy under her fingertips when she tugged his shirt open further, but the strength in his hands as he rucked up her skirt belied that apparent weakness.

Memories washed over her mind, carefully guarded and kept in the back of her mind like a painful treasure and an inescapable burden at once, brought suddenly and powerfully to the front of her mind. It wasn't the same room, it wasn't the same bed, and it wasn't the same man. But it was. No matter how deeply she scoured his violet eyes, she wouldn't ever see the love that should have been there, but his weight was so familiar and reassuring, like someone finally pulling her back down to earth after gravity rejected her and hurled her out into the coldness of space. He moved methodical and urgent at the same time, falling inevitable as an avalanche upon her, into her, inevitable as it was that she'd find herself falling back into his arms every time she pulled away, inevitable as it was that her feet would carry her across the world to find him whenever he left, inevitable as it was that her heart would bleed again whenever it felt full of him.

He surrounded her all over again, his taste, his scent, warmth, the sound of him in against her skin, and the way he filled her up perfectly the way he always had. She was overwhelmed, swept away in the moment, and for just this short time, the man she loved was with her again, so long as she allowed herself to miss the way every shift and press of his body into her wasn't exploring her, but searching for answers for himself. And she could. In fact, there was no way she couldn't. Not now, not once she'd decided to give in, just this once, not to him - because somehow she always ended up giving in to him no matter what she did or how she tried to resist - but to herself.

Her eyes fell shut as her mouth fell open.

It's him.

She lied to herself.

It's him.

She made herself believe it really was, because the future was what the Queen decided.

It's still him.

Because in the end, it was true. No matter which world she found herself in, no matter what he remembered, even if he couldn't remember her at all and couldn't even remember the Queen, it would always be him. No matter the life they lived, no matter how things changed, in every world that she found him, 'Lucien' would always be the one she loved. She realized that two months ago, and she couldn't deny that anymore, not in that moment and perhaps never more again. Not really. Her fingers dug deeply into his skin, stretched tightly over a frame too thin and undernourished from living on his own, without anyone around to care when he didn't. Her legs wrapped around his hips as if she feared he'd slip away, leave her alone again like he always somehow managed to do, no matter how many times he made hollow promises to stay. If she held on tightly enough, this time he wouldn't simply vanish in curls of smoke and leave her with empty arms and a heart bleeding out into nothing.

The sounds in his throat vibrated against her ear, that familiar timbre she selfishly believed only she could be privy to across any lifetime. At some point his name started echoing off the walls of the apartment, pleading and insistent, demanding and raw with the grief she'd pushed down so hard and so vigilantly. She couldn't say when it began, and she couldn't make it stop. She couldn't say if the tears on her cheeks were from that feeling of finally coming home to the man she loved, or because it was all just an illusion she couldn't truly force herself to believe. The flush of exertion and sex brought color back to his pallid cheeks, and as shaky as he'd been only a short while ago, he seemed full of energy now, one arm reflexively curled around him in a mimicry of the possessiveness her lover had shown, and the other gripping the metal of the headboard to keep it from banging into the wall.

It might have lasted minutes, or it might have lasted hours. She couldn't keep track of the time, she could hardly breathe through that familiar yet unfamiliar smell of him - not quite the clean and fresh scent of the plants they raised together, not the man who clung just as tightly to her in the night as she had to him. She could hardly think, because his name played over and over through her mind, as if she could pull him back to her, summon him to her side as she had once before, if only she called for him long enough, hard enough, fervently enough.

The nails of the hand around her cut crescent moons into her back, knuckles gone white as his pace stuttered and broke, spiraling completely out of control.

His gaze pierced deeper than ever before, as if he could not only read her mind but insert and suffuse her mind with himself.

He couldn't, because he'd already long been there.

However long or short it took to arrive, their peak arrived with such an abrupt synchronicity, that it might have violently leapt between them in the space of a single heartbeat.

The moment lasted longer than anything in her life; it passed so quickly it might not have existed at all.

For that moment - it existed, she's sure it existed - every timeline, every world passed through her mind once more. Every moment they met, every sweetly cloying word he spoke, every time the delicate butterfly settled in the palm of his hands.

For just that moment - surely it was real, she has to believe it was - all the love she felt in every one of those lifetimes coursed through her veins like a fire so intense it should have burned her into ash from the inside out.

For the briefest of moments - if it happened, did she just fool herself into believing it did? - those violet eyes hazed almost black with lust and pleasure widened just a fracture - colored with that gentle, painful love that she'd seen when they stood in the middle of nothing and everything in the black cabin.

A moment after, they crashed down from their heights, and he collapsed weightily down on her, pinning her body uncomfortably down against her bed, overly hot and constricting as he gave rattling gasps that spoke of pushing himself much too hard.

Those long eyelashes of his swept across his high cheeks, before twisting in pain. Her hand placed over his cheek and she winced at the heat of his skin under her hand.

When she called his name, the eyes that met hers were exhausted, red-rimmed, pained.

They were...

She swallowed, forcing herself to meet that gaze, rather than shy away.

It isn't him.

Her fingers ran through his hair soothingly, hoping to calm both his breathing and his heartbeat.

It can't ever be him.

She recognized the flicker of confusion that flitted through his exhausted haze, among all those other, constantly shifting emotions she'd never been able to identify in this world or the last.

But...

But even so...

She tucked her face against his neck, so that she needn't look in his face, and he finally shifted to lay beside, rather than atop her, an arm slowly winding around her - as if uncertain whether he should...or perhaps whether he really wanted to.

She closed her eyes, splaying her hands against his back as she took the opportunity to keep him close to her just a little longer.

The destiny of loving 'Lucien' every time, in every world...

is the one I choose.

[argyle-s]

Molly’s Supergirl Fic Masterlist (updated 02/19/20)

One Shots:

The Revenge of Scully Danvers -  Cat pushes Alex’s buttons one to many times, and Alex strikes back.  SuperCat

Sensible Precautions  -  Grumpy Space Dad has a problem. Sanvers

The Things We Forget -  Kara has forgotten something important. SuperCat

It Had To Happen Eventually... -  Lena's got some new shoes.

Coffee and Ice Cream -  One of Supergirl's rescues gets caught on tape...

Finding Out -  How the people in Kara's life find out she's in love. SuperCat

A Shoulder to Lean On -  After the Dominator Invasion, Sara gets Gideon to modify Kara’s phone so they can talk. Season 2 AU. Set between Medusa and Supergirl Lives on Supergirl, and Invasion Part 3 and Raiders of the Lost Art on Legends. SuperCanary, Sanvers side ship.

A Modest Proposal -  Kara overhears a couple of guys talking about Nia and decides to take action.  Dreamgirl (Kara x Nia), Alex x Kelly side ship

Quality of Life -  Kara has a hard day, and Nia helps her deal with it.  Dreamgirl (Kara x Nia)

Girl Crush -  Nia overhears Kara talking to Alex about having a crush on her best friend, and thinks she’s talking about Lena.  Dreamgirl (Kara x Nia), very brief mention of Alex x Kelly and past Sanvers.

One Morning on Argo -  Kara wakes up alone in bed and goes looking for her wife.  Dreamgirl (Kara x Nia)

To The Rescue -  Nia has a Dream and rushes to CatCo to rescue Kara, but when she gets there, she finds that she misinterpreted the reason Kara was screaming.  Supercat

Protection - Baker demands Cat tell him Supergirl’s secret identity. Cat’s reaction is not at all what he expects.  Supercat

Methadone -  When Kara can’t have her drug of choice, she finds an alternative.  Kalex

This World Which Is Not My Own -  After the Crisis, Things are Different.  Kalex

Consequence -  A brief moment from Lena’s trial.

She Will Always Make That Choice -  Kara has already made this choice. Kara will always make this choice.

What We Found In the Ashes -  Kara runs into Maggie at a crime scene, and over the course of the next few months, they become tentative friends. When Alex’s mind wipe starts to take an emotional toll on Kara, she’d turns to Maggie for comfort, and finds herself falling for the last person she ever expected.  Kara x Maggie

Unexpected Results -  Lena has a plan to make Kara jealous, but it doesn't go the way she expects.  Kalex

Application for the Position of Kara Danvers New Best Friend -  Alex has some questions.

A Study In Charcoal and Graphite (WIP) -  Alex hates Laundry, and Kara hates wanting.  Kalex

Series:

Caring for Kara (Series):  Supercat.  Sanvers Side Ship.

Just to See Her Smile -  Cat does what it takes to makes Kara smile. Set between Manhunter and World’s Finest. One-Sided Cat/Kara, Kara/James

Something Just Like This -  AU where Cat never left, and no pod showed up at the end of season one. When Kara’s relationship with James falls apart, she turns to Cat for comfort, but Cat’s having a hard time keeping her own feelings for Kara in check. Follows “Just To See Her Smile”.

Future Shock (Series):  Supercat.  Side Ships include:  Supercanary, Superlane, Sanvers, Clois, Susan Vasquez/Leslie Willis, BatCat, Jason Todd/Artemis of Bana-Mighdall, Winn Schott Jr./Kaldur’ahm, Avalance, Lena Luthor/Astra In-Ze, Eliza Danvers/J’onn J’onzz, Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy

The Shape of Things to Come -  With the help of Sara and M’gann, Kara travels back in time to a year before she becomes Supergirl from a future where all her worst fears have come to pass, and replaces her younger self.

Devils in the Dark - Fourteen months ago, an older version of Kara travelled back in time, and merged her consciousness with her younger self in an effort to prevent a nightmare future. Eight weeks ago, she came out as Supergirl, catching Alex’s plane as it fell from the sky. Since that time, the knowledge and skills she acquired in the future have allowed her to make a number of changes for the better, but those changes haven’t been without consequences.Now, in the aftermath of a vicious attack, the tables are turned, and Kara is scrambling desperately to play catch up, but everything seems to be aligning against her. Her allies are starting to doubt her, she can’t seem to control her temper, she has to deal with a darker, more brutal version of Project Cadmus that seems hell bent on burning everything to the ground.The pressure is mounting, and the only place she can find peace is in the presence of Cat Grant, but even that relationship might be doomed when a ghost from Kara’s past walks back into her life.This story is the sequel to “The Shape of Things to Come,” and second in the Future Shock series. It does *not* stand alone.

A Plague of Righteousness (WIP) -  Two weeks ago, Kara defeated Cadmus in the Battle of Little Krypton, but it’s a victory that might end up costing her the war. Cat and Alex are both recovering from crippling injuries. Supergirl's relationship with the US government is in tatters. Senator Crane is doing her best to win the Presidential race and has made destroying Supergirl’s public image the centerpiece of her campaign. To make matters worse, Kara herself has undergone a frightening transformation. She refuses to put on the suit, to address any of the public accusations Crane has laid at her feet, and has withdrawn from almost every relationship she has. The people closest to her are starting to worry that she’s cracking under the pressure. The scariest part is, they’re right. Meanwhile, a few hours North of National City in the small farming community of Parthas, Nia Nal has returned home to begin training with her mother as a Naltorian Dream Warrior, but as she begins opening herself up to her powers, she begins to have a disturbing vision of a hellish place inhabited by monsters. 

Future Shock Setting Guide - This is a collection of notes and setting details about my Future Shock series. It's not a story, and has no narrative.

Little Girls Lost (Series):  Sanvers.

Taking In Strays -  Maggie’s dad became the new Sheriff in Midvale after Sheriff Collins is arrested for Kenny’s murder. A few months later, he finds out Maggie is gay and throws her out. When Kara finds her crying under the bleachers and takes her home, Eliza decides to take her in, and Alex makes a surprising discovery about herself.

[aion-rsa]

Vikings Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The following contains spoilers for Vikings season 6 part two.

Vikings has always been concerned with legacy: that of the Vikings themselves, and of Ragnar and his sons. It’s clear from the show’s coda – Ubbe and Floki side by side on a distant beach, contemplating existence as the sun glows down upon the endless stretch of ocean before them –  that the two ultimately are inseparable. Bound up in this spider’s web of myth and mayhem, too, is the fate and legacy of the show itself. How will it be remembered now that it is gone? In a word: fondly. 

Creator Michael Hirst has left us a show for the ages, one that transcends the war, blood, and murder that first drew audiences to its story. The closing run of episodes is at turns thrilling, stirring, chilling, harrowing, heart-breaking, savage, sensual and ethereal, and is capped off with a mesmerizing, mytho-philosophical finale that retroactively elevates everything that came before it, all the way back to the moment when Ragnar first asked Floki to help him sail west. So how does it achieve this greatness? And what does it all mean? Let’s break it down. 

Groundhog Deity

One of the central themes of the show is the cycle of violence and bloodshed in which Viking society finds itself mired, and the battle between those who seek to perpetuate it, and those who seek to break free from it. It’s a dichotomy that burns down through the wick of the show, and often rages within its characters, most notably Ragnar, Lagertha, Floki, Bjorn, and Ubbe. Season upon season, each promise of peace is swiftly pounded into the blood-soaked earth by the vengeance, skulduggery or megalomaniacal ambitions of a chaotic individual, faction or rival; the old ways refusing to cede ground to the new. But still the dreamers and visionaries struggle, against themselves, against the furious roar of tradition, again and again. This rise and fall happened so frequently throughout the show’s run that its rhythm caused some sections of the audience to grow weary. This repetition, though, this sense of helplessness, is largely the point (not to mention an accurate portrayal of the brutish life endured by most people in the Dark and Middle Ages), and one that’s made more explicit than ever before in the final stretch of the season. Like the characters themselves, we the audience must feel – truly feel – the suffocating hopelessness of it all before we can begin to appreciate the burst of light at the end. 

All throughout the series the Vikings’ thirst for war and conquest is cloaked in the language of fate, destiny, glory, and the Gods. In a telling sequence half-way through the final ten episodes, these justifications are stripped away to reveal the dark, very mortal truth that lies behind them. Ivar, Hvitserk, and King Harald reunite in a calm and peaceful Kattegat. All three are burnt-out, frazzled, and dissatisfied. There’s a real sense that “the age of the Vikings is gone” and that this is “the twilight of the Gods”. Harald and Ivar admit that there is no pleasure in being a King, despite it being a title both men have dreamed of and longed for, and for which they’ve lied, cheated, betrayed, and killed. In the final analysis, we can see – and finally they can see, however indirectly – that the great cycle in which the Vikings are trapped has been perpetuated not by the Gods – those great scapegoats in the sky – but by bored and angry men seeking in bloodshed distractions from a cold and brutish world whose quotient of misery has only ever been increased by their actions. It is especially sad to see Ivar churned back into this mill given the growth he experienced throughout this season, not only in being a caring, surrogate father to the Rus heir Igor, but in becoming an actual father after his body asserted itself just long enough to plant his seed in Princess Katia’s belly. 

Ivar witnesses two men in a public gathering-place squabbling over a trivial matter, and extrapolates from this that war is a necessary state for the Vikings, because in peace they fight amongst themselves. It’s patently obvious that the lesson Ivar pulls from this incident says more about his pain and psychopathology – his hatred, his emptiness – than it does about society at large. Ultimately, it is he, and Harald, and Hvitserk, and a million other men just like them, who need war. They need external conflict to distract them from their own internal conflicts and inadequacies. Never-the-less, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Ivar’s facile supposition is all that King Harald needs to hear. Before long, the three men and a ready-made army are heading back across the sea to England for a final confrontation with King Alfred and his Christian Saxon soldiers. 

“The Twilight of the Gods”

This climactic confrontation is, on one level, less a battle between two armies and more the continuation of the chess game Ivar and Alfred once played as children, as their fathers – King Ragnar and King Ecbert – cut deals and hatched plots in another room. 

In many ways, Ivar was always marked for monsterhood. He grew up with the fierce love of his mother, Aslaug, which she wrapped around him like a blanket made of steel. By over-compensating for his condition and physical fragility to such a suffocating degree, she left him isolated, conceited and angry. His father, Ragnar, was absent for most of his youth. Though Ivar had Floki to teach and guide him in the ways of the Gods, Ivar didn’t realize quite how much of himself had been missing until Ragnar returned and took him under his wing. Ragnar was one of the few men who seemed to have faith in Ivar’s abilities; who told him that he could be something other than a liability, a cripple, a joke. They journeyed to England together with conquest in mind, but when a storm sank most of their boats, Ragnar swiftly refocused the purpose of their visit, enlisting Ivar’s aid to kill the surviving members of their party (to remove all evidence of their initial intent) and surrender themselves to King Ecbert. 

Ragnar tells Ecbert to deliver him into the hands of King Aelle, so that Ecbert will not be blamed for Ragnar’s death, and the full fury of the Vikings will be directed at their mutual enemy instead. However, Ragnar has instructed Ivar to return home with news of Ecbert’s duplicity, so that both Kings will become the targets of the rage-and-grief-filled Viking horde. Ivar is the perfect capsule for this incendiary message, as Ragnar gambles, quite correctly, that King Ecbert’s sense of fair play, filtered through his Christianity, won’t permit him to harm or imprison a poor, harmless crippled boy. Ragnar thus succeeds in turning the Saxon’s Christian compassion into a fatal weakness, while at the same time teaching his weaponized son that love, violence, deceit, and death are so intimately connected as to be almost indivisible. 

When Aslaug died at Lagertha’s hands, soon after Ragnar’s death, it removed his only other source of love, cloying though it was. He took that love and turned a mutated version of it upon himself, imbuing himself with delusions of Godhood, something his fury at his parents’ deaths only served to magnify.

In the first dramatic round of the final battle against Alfred, Ivar repeats his father’s tactic of weaponizing kindness. He orders traps to be set in the forest with which to painfully ensnare the first line of Alfred’s advancing soldiers. The hope is that Alfred’s Christian compassion will compel him to send the next few lines of soldiers to assist their wailing brothers, allowing the Vikings to ambush them like lambs to the slaughter. And so it proves. Many lives are lost. The fighting is kinetic and savage; the pervading mist and gloom only enlivened by the occasional eruption of fire, like a melding of Valhalla and the Christian conception of Hell. King Harald is killed, finding some solace and peace at last with a dying vision of his brother, Halfdan, whom he’d killed in a previous battle. 

After this, there is a lull in the fighting. Alfred and Ivar meet under a white flag to discuss terms. Alfred will not yield. He will never again reward Ivar for his unprovoked attacks, nor fall into the trap of trusting his word. He tells Ivar to leave his kingdom, leave England, and never return; entreats him to save his people from further pointless bloodshed.  He goes on to declare: “My God is the God of peace and love. Your Gods are savage. They demand sacrifice. They do not know human love.” The final fight that follows is as much the culmination of a struggle between two competing religious and cultural ideologies as it is a battle between Ivar and Alfred; and by the end of this final episode the matter is settled, at least in a thematic sense. 

Alfred and Ivar cleave to their God and Gods on the battlefield, looking to them for guidance and answers. As the situation becomes ever more desperate, both leaders soon find themselves deserted by their Gods, their imagined connection to them severed. 

“What am I supposed to do?” Ivar shouts to his suddenly deaf and mute Gods. “Answer me!”

“Speak to me, please. I’m afraid. Speak!” Alfred beseeches his lord Jesus. 

Stripped of their Gods, both men are forced to acknowledge in whose image they’ve truly been forged: their fathers’. What they do next will decide if history is doomed to repeat itself, and also settle the question of whether it is their own wills or the wills of their fathers that are the stronger. Ultimately, it is love and compassion, in both instances, that proves to be their guiding light, leading Ivar to reject his father’s ways, and Alfred to embrace his father’s – his real father: the monk Athelstan, who was once a friend and confidante of the great Ragnar Lothbrook. 

All You Need is Love

Ivar watches the battle from the side-lines. Hvitserk has long been a tormented, tortured and fractured man, but in combat he’s whole, screeching and roaring through the flames like a mythical demon. But one man can’t best a whole army, and it becomes clear that Hvitserk isn’t long for this world. Ivar’s eyes shine an electric blue, a physical indication known since childhood that his brittle bones are about to break. Ivar knows his actions in the next few minutes will serve as his last will and testament, the means by which the world will remember him. Ivar watches Hvitserk – the brother he’d many times mocked and tormented, whose life he’d tried to ruin, who’d long forsworn to kill him – and charges onto the battlefield to take his place, submitting himself to the same forces of compassion he’d spent a life-time deriding and subverting.  

“I could never kill you,” he tells Hvitserk.

“I love you. I love you brother,” Hvitserk replies tearfully.

“Now go. Go!” hollers Ivar.

Ivar’s rage and defiance seem to shake the very earth around him. He is at one with his army. He fights and lives through them. In the midst of his last stand a young soldier, shaking with fear, approaches him from the mist.

“Don’t be afraid,” says Ivar, an almost Christ-like evocation at this, his moment of sacrifice. The soldier stabs him repeatedly, and, as Ivar falls, his bones snap and break. Hvitserk runs to him and cradles his dying body, while Alfred calls for the fighting to stop. “I am afraid,” Ivar splutters, words no-one thought they would ever hear from Ivar the Boneless. And then there are three more; his final words: “I love you.”   

Ivar has thus broken the cycle. He has sacrificed himself not for hate, as his father once did, but for love. He was finally able to know and to feel human love; and crucially to demonstrate it instead of demanding it, even if it was right at the end of his life, and only for a few moments. Already Ivar had begun to demonstrate humility. On the eve of the battle he told Hvitserk: “Hundreds of years from now, someone will be proud to find my blood is in their body and my spirit is in their soul.” Maybe part of him realized that in becoming a father he’d finally achieved the immortality after which he’d always hungered, and it was enough.  

Hvitserk is carried away on the back of a wagon. We’re given an aerial view of this, lending Hvitserk the appearance of a corpse returning from battle. In many ways he is. Hvitserk is dead, in a sense. The merciful Alfred baptises Hvitserk, allowing him to be reborn with a new name: Athelstan. 

We know from our future vantage point that the loving Christ Hvitserk has now embraced is destined to eventually, and irrevocably, defeat the old Norse Gods. Not only that, but there will be a millennium of distinctly non-loving conquests, wars, decimations, genocides, enslavements and cultural destructions carried out in His name, all of which will make the exploits of the 8th and 9th century Vikings look like the tantrums of naughty children in comparison. But Hvitserk doesn’t know this. All he knows is that he has found peace by rejecting war and embracing love. He has finally found a way to honor his father – or at least the part of his father that loved Athelstan, and came to see Christianity and Paganism as two sides of the same coin. Love and mercy, then, are the instruments that Hvitserk and Alfred use to break free from the ‘endless cycle of suffering and war’.     

Out With The Old

The show’s themes converge, coalesce and crystalize in the New World, too. The journey from Iceland to Greenland to North America is one fraught with danger and death, but characterized by faith and hope and sacrifice. And it is Othere, the Christian wanderer once known as – appropriately enough – Athelstan (no relation), who leads them there. 

 “This is everything [Ragnar] was searching for,” Ubbe tells Othere, in their new land of milk and honey. “And I found it.” Othere cautions Ubbe against behaving in the same ways that he did before – the old ways – lest this land become just like the land he left behind.

They are not alone. The Vikings discover that the land is occupied by a tribe of indigenous peoples they refer to as Skraelings. The tribe welcomes them warmly. Ubbe soon discovers they have a friend in common: Floki, who somehow reached these same shores from Iceland, alone, and now lives on the periphery of the Skraelings’ land as a revered mystic. If it wasn’t for the Skraelings’ kindness, Floki would have died on arrival. They showed him mercy and kindness.

Asked why he left Iceland, Floki says it was because he was ‘imprisoned in sadness’. 

“What made you so sad?”

“I don’t always remember,” he says, with a wistful smile.

Floki here represents the past of the Vikings as we in the modern world have come to know it, a patchwork of tall tales and omissions. Floki embodies how time will continue to wash away both the Vikings’ history and their legend, until there’s little difference between them, and nothing much is left of either. Floki also embodies the idea that the golden age of the Vikings is gone; he remembers that he once was a Viking; he remembers Ragnar, the sons of Ragnar and the people who were important to them, but little else. There was a time when Floki was the greatest soldier of and preacher for the Gods, but he has now let them go, shed them like a dead skin. “I called to them and no longer heard their voices, or they didn’t make sense,” he tells Ubbe. Again, entropy, evolution, death, re-birth, legend, past, future: all suffused. 

The old ways make one last effort to re-assert themselves, even here in this paradise, and Ubbe gets his defining moment – just as Ivar and Hvitserk and Bjorn before him got theirs. One of his party murders the son of the Skraeling’s leader while ransacking the leader’s home for gold. The Skraelings – clearly more civilized than the Vikings ever were – hand this man over to Ubbe to decide his fate. 

This is a pivotal moment for the series. Where once we were encouraged to see Ragnar as the hero, even when he was killing and pillaging his way through innocent peoples, here we perceive this man, this murderer – who has simply acted in accordance with how the Vikings have always acted – as a dangerous savage. We, the audience, have already made a choice about who the Vikings are now, or who they should be – and so has Ubbe.

At first the murderer is to be publically blood-eagled, a particularly savage and painful form of execution that never-the-less guarantees its sufferer entry to Valhalla. At the last moment, Ubbe changes his mind, and slits the man’s throat instead. 

“Valhalla is not for you, my friend,” Ubbe tells him, mere seconds before carrying out his sentence, “Let me put you out of your misery.” Ubbe does not say this to be cruel, to rob the man of his place in the afterlife. He simply doesn’t want to inflict unnecessary pain, and is showing mercy. But it’s deeper than that, too. Valhalla doesn’t seem to matter to him anymore. Ubbe has come to understand that life can be lived without the old ways and their Gods, and be all the better for it. 

On the beach, Ubbe seeks Floki’s advice and counsel. Floki smiles. “You don’t need to know anything. It’s not important. Let it go.”

It’s fitting that Floki is there at the show’s end. Without his innovation as a boat maker, Ragnar would never have sailed west and discovered Saxon lands; would never have met Athelstan. Without Floki, the Vikings would never have discovered Iceland, or Greenland, or the New World on whose shores they now sit. Ragnar is the one who will be immortalized in legend, while the world will slowly forget Floki. He has already started to forget himself. Perhaps that is the point. Warriors live on in legend and infamy, while the people who built the world around them and at their backs fade away. But wasn’t it ever thus? Legends change the world; love saves it. And here we see that love is the more important, and more enduring, force of the two, even if we’re sometimes too proud to acknowledge it, or too blind to see it. 

“I love you, Floki,” says Ubbe, as they stare across the ocean, at their past, at their possible future, at eternity. 

What a beautiful, and truly surprising, sentiment for a show as blood-soaked as Vikings to bow out on.  

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Of course the status quo clings on in Kattegat, and I guess this will be picked up in the spin-off series. Set 100 years after the events of Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla is reportedly coming to Netflix sometime next year.

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