Just don't talk--------
-and remember my coffee order.
p12 to Just don't talk
summary: First outing in public, as the two don't even try to hide that they're in love with each other.
As far as bizarre goes, this meeting was up there at the top, yet again.
The comms team had a big chart put up in the meeting room, with timelines, platforms, twists and turns - it was like watching someone explain a plot for some movie script. This is where you'll be spotted kissing for the first time, this is when you post a photo with a family member, this is when you'll go on a vacation together (faked, obviously) and this is when you'll part on separate vacation and soft launch your break up - and this is your break up note for social media.
It was funny, yet a little overwhelming.
"Obviously, this will be adapted as we move forward. As you can see here on the next slide, these are the numbers we are setting as our targets. The amount of revenue generated by this will be affecting the schedule," the assistant presenting this seemed to have a little too much fun with it, up to the point when Lando thought they were getting off on it. He saved his comments - why would he stir the pot too much? Now that he has what he wanted. This is just a charade that they will have to get through. And if all goes according to their plan, all of the people making these presentations will be very surprised one day. He was sort of looking forward to wiping their smiles off.
"talk about romance," Y/N texted Lando secretly. He chuckled and shared a look with her, as if to say "we got this".
The numbers part was where it reached the peak of weird. The pair sat, watching people calculating how much money they will make out of them sharing few kisses in public and estimating how much will this affect their marketability.
Y/N had few issues with their plan. Mainly, it seemed to avoid anything really personal. As if a relationship was only about sharing a holiday and flaunting around with family pictures. She for one hated this part and made it very clear that no family of hers will be involved.
But where were the shared streams, the dinner dates and shared hotel rooms? If this was a blueprint of their relationship, then it would have been a very shit one. But then again, this was the fake dating public part - they could not control what they did in their own real relationship.
But she really hoped it would not be like that.
//
Their first public scheduled public outing - a very simple coffee run together, no hiding, little cute chat and holding hands. Those were the instruction they'd received.
It was one of the rare free days between races. She woke up at his place after spending first stressless night with him after few hard days. They both woke up early, still processing the time difference.
"Hello, sunshine," he whispered, as they laid side by side, legs tangled together. He watched her attentively, studying her face as she let a smile out upon hearing him.
"I don't wanna get up," she mumbled and wiggled her way deeper into his embrace. "Let's just stay here, like this."
She was just too cute to resist, stuck somewhere between sleep and awake. So honest and unguarded. Lando hasn't felt this relaxed in years. He held her tightly as her breath tickled him in his chest.
"I'd love nothing more that to stay here, my dear. But we gotta go out today, remember?"
"But it's just so comfortable here, please," she set her voice higher than usual, as if to convince him to skip school with her.
"Don't be a little tease, otherwise I'll never get anything done ever again," he joked and pulled away a bit in order to give her few pecks on her cheek.
"I'm a tease? What a double standard," she remarked curiously, as she traced his morning wood with her fingers.
He took a deep breath, trying to gather all the morale he had in him. "I can't exactly control that," he said heavily.
"I like it. Can you be my breakfast?" she asked, suddenly full of life. She abruptly sat up on him and demonstratively licked her lips, morning hair all tangled up, no clothes or make up on. How was he supposed to resist that? She smirked as she saw his determination leave and went on to suck him off while holding his hand.
His moans were louder that what she used from him. It was like entering a different room this time. A very pretty one.
//
"Did I ever tell you that you have really beautiful eyes?" she asked all of a sudden, as they were heading towards his fridge for a premade breakfast.
He looked at her as he opened the door. "I don't think so," he answered shyly. She could melt right then and there.
Lando took out two chai bowls and put them on his table. All very casual and comfortable.
She took her first spoon and immediately noticed her favorite smell. "My chef always skips on cinnamon. He believes it's bad for the gut."
"Do you not like it?" he asked, worried he unintentionally fucked up.
She licked her spoon, reminiscing of having his cock in her mouth just moments ago. "No, I really love it. Miss it, actually."
"You need to get a different chef, what kind of a bullshit is that?"
"Life is full of bullshit, Lando."
"Well aren't you a philosopher," he teased her once again.
They made sure to be at the top of their game. Tried on few outfits, trying to find something that might fit them both, Y/N being in her full on follicular phase and focusing more on removing the outfits from him, rather than putting them on. He acted annoyed, but was over the moon she finds him attractive as well. Once they finally rolled out his apartment, they were quite sight to see.
"Do you realize we did not decide on the most important thing," she said as Lando casually walked over to the driver's seat of one of his cars.
"Hm?"
She gave him a look instead of speaking, letting him figure it out on his own.
He was usually quite oblivious to these hints, but this one dropped fast.
"Absolutely not."
"I share your sentiment, absolutely not. I know how you drive, Lando."
"More podiums than you, so I get the driver's privileges. Stop overthinking and get it the car."
It was a matter of principles - she was not going to let them fall into relationship stereotypes automatically. And also she just did not accept other people driving, making her awfully similar to Lando.
"Have we never sat in a car together before?" he lost track a bit, trying to recall any other time they'd share a car.
"Nope."
It was becoming a stare down at this point. Neither of them backing down.
"My car is parked nearby. We can go separately," she bargained, waiting for him to back off. But he saw right through her, his ego not letting him get her away with that.
He replied without blinking. "Sure. Why the hell not." She wanted him to back down and he wanted the same from her. "Do you want me to drive you to your car?"
He was mocking her and she was not having it.
"Nope, just text me the location and we'll see who gets there first," she challenged, still sort of hoping for him to fold.
"Great, I'll give you a five minute head start," and he nonchalantly sat into his car.
"Fucking idiot," she mumbled under her breath. He heard her and had to bite his lips to stop himself smiling.
She tried to race there first while not breaking that many laws and not endangering anyone, but he still won. He was standing there, leaning on his car with all his glory, as he watched her park angrily.
"Hi, baby," he greeted her and took his hat off. "Better luck next time." He gave her a mocking pseudo-sad pout.
"For each speeding ticket you'll get 30 seconds penalty," she hit him back.
"Worth it and still first," he winked. "Ready?"
"I guess so." He walked over to her and took her hand in his. Already there were few bystanders noticing them.
"We'll be ok," he reassured more himself than her probably.
"I was kinda hoping for more than that," she tried to lighten up the mood, as sudden nerves washed over her.
"You just never stop, do you," he laughed as they walked over to the café and he held the door open for her.
"You wish."
As they entered, he asked about her coffee order and made sure to memorize it for the future. If he was to be a boyfriend, he would be the best one.
She kept looking to the ground as he order for both of them. He saw her slight distress and hoped that she was not regretting this - being out in the open with him. Even though their teams thought this was all fake, it was more than real for him. He would not admit this to anyone, but he was also kind of nervous. But there was not a doubt in his mind about this being worth it. She stood next to him, practically glued to his side and it felt nice as they waited for their order. He had to find a way to cheer her, main reason being that he cared about her mood and the second being their first pictures had to have looking at least little bit like having fun.
"It's actually quite exciting, isn't it?" Lando asked, unsuccessfully fighting his smile. The more he thought about them, the more was starting to like this whole thing.
"What is, Lando?" she replied, coming back to reality and locking eyes with him. It worked like magic. Within seconds, she was smitten through the roof.
He held her hand as a lover would. It was like touching a life wire. Sending impulses throughout their bodies.
"Being able to do this in public," he mumbled under his breath and stepped just a little bit closer. Time to break the rules.
He licked his lips "Ready?"
She was on the same wavelength as him. "Will this be our first kiss?" she teased, shifting towards him.
He put his arm around her waist, pushing her as close as possible. "Uhm."
"But this is ahead of the schedule they'd planned," she teased, totally on board with him.
"And you can watch me try to give a damn."
There was fire dancing in his eyes. She put her arms on his chest, letting herself go into his embrace and closed her eyes, as he put his lips onto hers and kissed her. It was a gentle peck, their lips slowly brushing onto each other, the way that they had many times before. Yet, it still felt special. Carefree. Bold and confident.
There weren't many people in the cafe and the kiss wasn't exactly a long one, but it was enough. They had it documented from several angles. Y/N searched for the photos and saved them all.
Neither of them quite ready for the storm coming their way.
_________________________________________
@scopeiguess @leclercsluv @sulliamour @starmanv @riverxsq @eviethetheatrefreak @chonkybonky @bicchaan @saachiep81 @chezmardybum @a-beaverhausen @tbsloneely @iamkaku @amberpanda99
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What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point
Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:
Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!
He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.
[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]
(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)
Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.
So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.
The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.
Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.
We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.
So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.
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im sure everyone’s seen the argument by non-wincest shippers that canon weirdcest moments can be explained off as particularly close brothers. i’ve seen wincesties respond by straight up denying it, but honestly, i see where they’re coming from. they do TECHNICALLY have a point, yet still, it fundamentally doesnt sit well with me.
if you isolate all of these little incidents they could be perceived as purely brotherly. its got me thinking about what exactly makes wincest so appealing, and why i as a wincest shipper immediately have an exasperated reaction to people insisting that sam&dean are purely platonic.
i also see this argument frequently bundled with the stance that “weirdcest isn’t a justification for shipping wincest” (which is a whole other can of worms altogether— the puritan culture of ship culture rn), but you gotta take a step back and just ask yourself… why am i so intent on seeing these characters as platonic?
the prevailing argument ive seen is that siblings CAN be terribly close without being incestuous. this is totally fair. i’m not saying that if you are particularly close with your siblings in a sam & dean type manner that you are incestuous. obviously relationships between family is vastly complex & changes with the culture you grew up in.
the only problem here is that people try to go so far to explain sam&dean’s relationship as to not paint it as romantic. if they weren’t related, it’d be insane to think they weren’t romantic. they are consistently and repeatedly put in situations and exchange dialogue that’s used to convey romantic tone in western media. my point here being— the writers know that they are doing. and they are doing it INTENTIONALLY.
yes, certain cultures find extensive physical touch and kisses between siblings platonically acceptable. yes, you can be very close to your siblings without wanting to fuck them. but that is such a reach given what you are being presented with. you are missing the fundamental thematic point of supernatural: family horror!!
by so steadfastly arguing that sam&dean cannot be read as romantic you are purposefully ignoring the the text. you are glossing over the repeating themes of generational trauma and incest that are touched on time and time again, with john’s father abandoning him, mary’s parents being hunters, the struggle she went through to get out of the life but how family trauma & the past permeates itself into your being. you are ignoring the benders, the ghost pregnant with her fathers child, and the time azazel KISSED MARY in HER FATHERS BODY.
supernatural pushes incestuous themes SO HARD. it purposefully plays with & explores the double-sided blade that is family. it touches on a REALLY TABOO subject without being overwhelming or heavy handed. of course its going to attract people who enjoy these themes. OF COURSE we’re going to look at the two homoerotic brother leads and see something between them! it’s intentionally placed in the script! its a valid reading of the text!
this is why i get frustrated when people say that wincest shippers are twisting canon for the sake of shipping, because we’re not. when people say this they are taking a piece of media that is intriguing in how it handles a socially unacknowledged part of the human experience and forcing their viewing of it on others. they are saying that you aren’t allowed to enjoy those themes because it is inherently wrong or shameful to EXPLORE THE TOPIC. i dunno. that sounds pretty authoritarian to me.
it’s totally fine to be grossed out by incest or avoid wincest because it makes you uncomfortable. what ISNT okay is to say its an exaggerated reaction to canon, because it really isnt. in fact, its a pretty normal & sane conclusion to come to after seeing those two. the fact that they aren’t explicitly incestuous might even enhance this idea. it touches on the unspoken secretive nature of family trauma and the complicated, messy reality of crossing boundaries with blood without being cliche or overdramatic.
im going to incite occam’s razor here: yes, they could just be brothers. yes, you can explain it all away as particularly close siblings. yes, you can argue that it isnt explicitly canon. but really, why would you do all that when the show incessantly implies that they’re more? and more importantly, why are you so quick to say that a topic cannot be explored because it’s complicated? is that really the sentiment that we as a society want to hold regarding media?
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