#otp rant

[lizardkingeliot]

Oh, love. I'm merely waiting until you're happy. So hurry up, mon cher.

[prisperview]

How could I be so stupid. Bucky wasn't just triggered to remember who he was from Steve's face or the "end of the line" phrase. He was triggered by the fall. Steve's fall into the Potomac. And Bucky remembers his own fall, remembers seeing Steve's hand slipping away, the impact, the cold. And maybe going to save Steve isn't about Steve at all. Maybe it's just about seeing the REAL him for the first time in 70 years. And saving the REAL him for the first time in 70 years

[rantsramblesandrandomthougts]

[sophiasrant]

character who likes being bitten x character who likes to be scratched

[thequeenofsastiel]

Look I'm just saying in the finale one of the brothers was forlorn and talked about missing Castiel while the other was happily eating pie and dismissively said that he missed Castiel too and then proceeded to continue to happily eat pie and maybe JUST MAYBE it would've made more sense for Castiel to profess love for the brother actively mourning him

[bertoyana]

no no YOU DON'T GET IT. charles just got shot and he's crying because he knows he has to break erik's heart. he just GOT SHOT he's bleeding out and he's crying because he knows it has to end. you don't get it!!! he promised erik, all those months ago, that he wasn't alone, he promised him that THIS TIME it was going to be different, and everything that just went down in the beach proved him wrong!! it just proved that erik was right about the humans. and charles swore up and down that it could be differet, that it WOULD be different. and he's bleeding out and yet he's crying because HE KNOWS he was the one that gave erik hope about them and he knows now that he has to be the one to take it away!! erik is on his knees (literally) asking him to be by his side. he's gripping onto his hope and onto charles (which is the same thing to him really) leaving claw marks on him, he's asking him to be by his side holding onto the last thread of hope and charles KNOWS he has to be the one to take it way from him. I'M SICK. james mcavoy YOU ARE SICK be careful out there old man i'm IN YOUR WALLS

we literally start watching this movie knowing how it's gonna end. we know they will go their separate way and that they have their days counted but THEY DON'T KNOW THAT. they were doomed from the start it was never going to work but they didn't know that!! they were so alone their entire lives and they are so desperate to make it work and it WON'T WORK. I'M GOING TO BE SICKKK. ACTION MOVIE MY ASS THIS IS AN HORROR MOVIE GIRL THE LEADS ARE BREAKING EACH OTHER'S HEARTS AND TRAUMATIZING EACH OTHER IN THE WORST WAY POSSIBLE

[alicelairds]

idk why this gives off dair energy, it just does

(dair screencap from @senamarais)

[goffredos]

only bad you ever done was to see the good in me. but i've been living, waiting on the day that the good Lord willing send you out my way. i've seen hard times, bad luck, and all that's in-between; sweetest of the sunflowers - you're the sun to me. for @air-mechanical

[fangirlingdweeb]

Can't believe we really went from this:

to this:

😭😭😭

[balkanlila]

an arrangement between effects of the light and the flesh of the city

My Brilliant Friend (TV) // L'amica geniale, Elena Ferrante // excerpts from my diary

I am perpetually fascinated by the landmark qualities behind Enzo's physicality in a world plagued by disintegration. I especially enjoy how it compliments Lila's outwardly signatures, such as nervousness and a body that is often described as fragile and betraying, all characteristics that are in tune with dissolving boundaries as a concept. There are two spheres this relationship inhabits narratively: one of the cyclical, historical and architectural Naples and one of the confined area that is a room and I am restless in my curiosity when it comes to those spaces interacting and what that means for these characters.

[dulacdat]

I think you all love to downplay how much of a cunt lestat is, in general.

he is mean, cutting, vicious and snarky when he gets his defenses up. I do not enjoy the fanon flanderized version that is so clueless, dumb and wide eyed at everything.

you all really took the "lestat might not believe louis ever loved him" and turned it into "lestat doesn't comprehend any emotion exhibited by louis" which easily became "louis is an asshole who doesn't let lestat in in anyway and gatekeeps every single feeling" that's untrue and just makes both louis and lestat so flat.

lestat is a crier. doesn't mean he keeps crying at louis' feet in every interaction while louis is irritated and cold. why would you root for this dynamic lol.

let lestat be the bitch that he is omg

[prisperview]

marvel please i just need one thunderbolts* after credits scene of Bucky coming back to his place after the events of the movie, turning the corner into his living room and Steve is there, sitting on one side of his loveseat with tea and a book saying "welcome home". cmon how much could 1 chris evans cost? I'd finance it myself if I could.

[rantsramblesandrandomthougts]

[reignsserene09]

the evolution of these two are just more than being deskmates, workmates and friends...

Vernetto is more than those, they are the softest, most wholesome couple

in a sea full of toxic, doomed yuri, somehow these two stood the test of time

call them boring but don't deny they represent the goals for a real life relationship

[km3tt0]

I just read “I wonder what lives inside you now, having consumed me” a Starbee fanfic by lestatsthighwarmer in AO3 and I’m so destroyed I can’t even move

It’s such a worth read obviously, just I can’t put myself together right now

[anghraine]

It's genuinely kind of baffling to me that Leila Kalomi so regularly is the Spock "love interest" invoked as proof that Spock can't possibly be gay he had an ex-girlfriend didn't you see the episode with his girlfriend he could be straight or maybe bi but definitely definitely couldn't be gay.

Anyway, this is Leila's description of their previous relationship in "This Side of Paradise":

ELIAS: Did you love him? LEILA: If I did, it was important only to myself. ELIAS: How did he feel? LEILA: Mr. Spock's feelings were never expressed to me.

-

LEILA: Come back to the planet [with the docility sex pollen spores] with me. You can belong again. Come back with me, please. SPOCK: I can't. LEILA: I love you. I said that six years ago, and I can't seem to stop repeating myself. On Earth, you couldn't give anything of yourself. You couldn't even put your arms around me. We couldn't have anything together there. We couldn't have anything together any place else.

Like. Leila herself acknowledges that Spock would never willingly enter any kind of relationship with her unless drugged into it, even as little as taking her in his arms. And Spock, uniquely among the many people exposed to the spores, experiences physical pain in the transition to artificial happiness/belonging/"love":

SPOCK: No. LEILA: It shouldn't hurt. SPOCK: No, I can't. Please, don't! LEILA: Not like this. It didn't hurt us. SPOCK: I am not like you!

Early in the episode, she is very clear about how much she cares about what Spock would choose while fully functional:

ELIAS: Would you like him to stay with us now, to be as one of us? LEILA: There is no choice, Elias. He will stay.

Spock specifically asks her questions that would reveal the spore effect and allow him to make an autonomous choice. Leila refuses to answer until the spores painfully take him over. And even once she herself is freed of the spores' effects, her approach to Spock and his autonomy doesn't significantly change; it isn't really something she values about him.

Compare this to someone like Eve McMahon even in as terrible an episode as "Mudd's Women," in which Kirk is the one affected by the aphrodisiac and Spock is immune. Eve is strongly implied to be interested in Kirk, and she knows he's being affected by the drug that nobody has explained to the Enterprise crew; he asks her not to come into his bedroom, and she ignores that for a moment to carry out the seduction, but she knows it's wrong and is so horrified that she breaks it off and leaves. The even more ethically ambiguous Helen Noel in "Dagger of the Mind" also has an arc that leads to her insisting "This isn't right" when Kirk's autonomy is compromised, and reminding him of what's real. Chapel ultimately accepts in "Plato's Stepchildren" that Spock's no always meant no and could never be otherwise without some violation of consent that she finds horrifying. Leila is not uniquely terrible (Deela in "Wink of an Eye" is a lot more unambiguously chilling), but this isn't just how all women in TOS behave, either.

There's also an intriguing thread of very distinct mutual hostility and incomprehension between Leila and Kirk throughout the episode, in which neither comes off looking great, but Leila plainly cares quite a lot less about Spock's autonomy. A lot of this is mostly conveyed by performance (Shatner very convincingly bleeds jealousy as Kirk here), but Leila definitely doesn't get the nature of Spock's and Kirk's relationship even as it exists in S1:

SPOCK: Emotions are alien to me. I'm a scientist. LEILA: Someone else might believe that. Your shipmates, your captain, but not me.

Kirk very much does not believe that, just to be clear. I feel it's worth mentioning that this episode was aired directly after the one that concluded with this—

—and right before the one in which Spock insists he's acting based on logic and probability and of course wouldn't leap into danger. Kirk's response is just this:

That is also the one in which Spock torpedoes all his scientific principles in pure panic over Kirk:

SPOCK: Captain, are you all right? Jim? Jim!

SPOCK: Kill it, captain, quickly! KIRK: It's not making any threatening moves, Spock. SPOCK: You don't dare take the chance, captain. Kill it. KIRK: I thought you were the one who wanted it kept alive, captured if possible. SPOCK: Jim, your life is in danger. You can't take the risk. KIRK: It seems to be waiting. SPOCK: I remind you it's a proven killer. I'm on my way.

Anyway, Kirk is immediately jealous and resentful of Leila and regards her as the problem. He doesn't know much of anything about Spock and Leila's previous relationship and certainly doesn't seem to know how ephemeral it was (Leila's descriptions of how limited it was both occur in scenes where Kirk is not present and she pretty obviously tries to suggest it was a real romance when he is there). So Leila doesn't know what the relationship between Spock and Kirk actually is like and how bizarre Spock's spore-influenced behavior is going to seem, and Kirk doesn't know what Spock's relationship with Leila really was like, so we just end up with this wild uncomprehending mutual resentment between them.

Even before Kirk knows what's going on with Spock, he seems to think removing Leila from the picture would fix things. While it's not quite true, when he does figure out how to break the spore haze, his first priority is getting Spock away from Leila and back at his side. Spock makes it extremely clear what drives his refusal to return to Leila and the artificial happiness of the spores, as powerful as it was for him:

LEILA: I can't lose you now, Mister Spock. I can't. SPOCK: I have a responsibility to this ship, to that man on the bridge. I am what I am, Leila, and if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them.

Like, this whole situation is so fucked-up and puts such an emphasis on Kirk's oblivious jealousy of Leila, her lol what consent possessiveness around Spock (combined with the repeated revelations about how extremely minimal their relationship was and remains without literally drugging him), and the spores affecting everyone in basically the same pleasant but unhealthy way (rather than the highly idiosyncratic and physically painless effects of losing inhibitions in "The Naked Time") apart from it being specifically painful for Spock as he begs for it to stop. The whole interest of the episode turns on the essential melancholy of Spock's position: his only options are a) artificially- and painfully-induced contentment that is his sole experience of happiness but foreign to him or b) the fundamental self-inflicted purgatory of life at Kirk's side that is nevertheless truer to what he really is (I am what I am). It is not remotely difficult to read all this in repressed gay terms rather than proof!!! of Spock's attraction to women.

The thing is, of all the obligatory Spock "love" interests in TOS, there are multiple other ones that you could make an argument for. The most obvious is the Romulan commander; he's in his right mind, she's not the source of the dubcon, they have fantastic chemistry even if Spock's manner is deliberately ambiguous, she's super cool and hot and his age, and he definitely respects her. I guess there's Droxine, too; their interactions aren't even dubcon, just strange and bad and don't go anywhere. Even Zarabeth is only mildly sketchy compared to Leila and has a much better motive. But for some reason, the "well akshually" responses to gay Spock posts always seem obsessed with But His Canon Girlfriend Leila in particular.