#she loves them both but she hates that that love can’t co-exist if that makes sense??

[fullparttime-writer]

Goodbye, Mother (For Now)

Another summer has passed, and as Helios makes his slow descent, the time has come for mother and daughter to say goodbye. They have been doing this for thousands of years, and yet it has never gotten easier for either of them.

“You will be okay, Mother?” the Queen of the Underworld asks as she looks at her fellow goddess. Demeter looks at her with a side smile, reaching out a hand to brush a cheek.

“Yes, my daughter, I shall be okay.” Even as she says her words, the air around them has gained a noticeable chill, reminiscent of the cold loneliness a mother feels without her child. “I know you shall return safely next year. For now, you must fulfil your duty in the Underworld.”

Persephone smiles. “Of course I shall return, Mother. Nothing could ever stop that, and if Hades ever tried, you know damn well I can overpower him.” This gets a laugh out of Demeter as the ground starts to shake beneath them, the earth itself forming into the shape of a man.

“I heard my name?” The older-looking God grins as he approaches Persephone, who turns to face him. His smile turns more gentle as he brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Are you ready, my love? You’ve said your goodbye?”

The Queen nods. “Yes, Lord Hades. I am ready to take my seat by your side once more.”

Hades nods respectfully to Demeter, who returns the gesture as she watches the couple sink back into the Earth which she herself fertilises. The leaves on the trees around her begin to die.

It would never get easier for any of them. Demeter mourning the loss of her daughter for six months with no choice but to watch as she returns with her husband, the decaying plants and biting winds reflecting her mood; Hades losing his wife for six months, forced to rule without her by his side to comfort him and keep him warm; and Persephone, Persephone, Persephone. A woman torn between two worlds, duty to her mother and duty to her husband. And what, she thinks, of her duty to herself?

[sepublic]

Minor detail but I love how when asking Willow and Gus for advice in For the Future, Camila makes sure to protect Luz’s privacy by not clarifying that she plans to stay in the human realm; Instead, she keeps it vague as “make a bad decision for herself” and I really appreciate it.

Camila can tell Luz needs someone she can confide in and trust, she needs her mom to listen to and respect her decisions after Camila insisted on the Reality Check camp, which might’ve felt not that bad to Luz at first, until she realized how it subtly messed her up afterwards (Big mood). So Camila’s trying to make up for things because she knows that betrayal created a gap, and she’s already just gotten Luz to ask for advice in the previous episode. Luz told her mom about her decision, so Camila isn’t going to expose Luz for her own good or anything like that.

Likewise, Willow and Gus don’t press any further; They do care and that’s why they give advice, but they respect those boundaries too, esp since it’s clearly Luz’s, and might not want to give away that Camila asked them to begin with; That may still understandably bother Luz, which is another factor as to why Camila waited until now, and even then she’s still vague about it. And as kids (with Willow having also had frustrations with her dads before), Willow and Gus can appreciate what Camila is doing.

Similarly, they want to help Camila show that she herself can be supportive to Luz to reassure both Nocedas, and not just do that work for Camila; Doylistically, I imagine this is why Amity didn’t know Luz’s decision, so we could focus on Camila talking to Luz about it. Plus Willow and Gus have Hunter to deal with… And also Willow herself! And Camila keeping it vague does somewhat downplay the potential severity to make it not seem as urgent to the kids, who encourage Camila that she can handle it; Neither party can be blamed for this, not for not fully understanding, nor for wanting to avoid violating Luz’s privacy or putting more burden on other kids (Something Camila even notices in Willow and tries to help her with).

And I love it, I love that trust and respect and the way Camila isn’t getting desperate again, she’s still looking for help but she’s learned. Only when Luz is comfortable with revealing that, will Camila bring it up openly to others for advice. And I think that’s something that resonates with a LOT of kids, especially ones struggling with mental illness and suicidal ideation and shame, while also needing help, as Luz does. Indeed, the wording of “bad decision” reminds me of parents fearing their kid is considering suicide, which furthers the metaphor in a way that gets past the censors.

Man there’s just a melancholy air and uncertainty behind Luz almost casually reassuring her mom she doesn’t have to worry about making Luz happy anymore, that she’s made up her mind and is ready to tell everyone when the time is right, all while clearly cherishing the last moments she has with everyone. It’s really helpless and it just adds to that feeling of inefficacy in this episode, that Camila can’t be the perfect, compatible mother her daughter needs her to be; That every accidental yelp towards the isles is just pushing Luz to the deep end.

And Camila wants to get it in the right words that she doesn’t have to embrace it to still understand and be supportive and co-exist, while Luz is grappling with xenophobic gaslighting that’s insisting otherwise to her; All humans hate it and Luz is the deviant, her mother is normal. If Camila can’t like it, she won’t support Luz, so what difference does it make if Luz can have it for herself but not her mother??? It’s scary in a realistic way; Not some big monster or fright, but more quiet and gradually happening as someone slips through your fingers, something mundane that a lot of people deal with. It’s the dilemma of being a parent; I wonder how much this resonates with people who have loved ones struggling with suicide like that.

Remember how Camila tried to bargain with Luz about being better after realizing she ran away, that she pushed her daughter away; Like parents in the bargaining stage of grief, reasoning they could’ve and should’ve been better. While Luz is lifted into the air, golden and incorporeal like an angel or ghost, by rope tied around her? And that whole scene just contributed to Luz’s self-destructive desire to repent and keep herself from causing any more damage, at any cost. Isolating herself is the first step…

All of this culminates into Camila asking kids for advice, when normally she needs to be their guidance, because they know Luz in ways she doesn’t and vice-versa and again she’s desperate; But never crossing a boundary again and it just shows her growth after the first episode, where Camila does recognize what went wrong and isn’t committing a similar mistake again in the hopes of a solution. And it works out, Camila finally reaches her own resolution when she gets through to her daughter and saves the both of them by repairing their love and relationship!

Makes it all the more agonizing then that just when Camila finally gets it, just when Luz wants to live, Luz is murdered by the man/system that made her feel worthless and split the Nocedas apart, with Luz’s decision over her life, originally for good, taken out of her hands anyway… Luz floating in purgatory, implicitly regretting that she didn’t appreciate her life enough. But then she gets brought back because of the isles that wanted her to stay as well, that Camila wanted her daughter to stay in. Because the Titan asked Luz to choose herself, and Camila had set Luz up to do that earlier so she did and that’s how Luz got her second chance at life, and the full life she deserved.

They went through hell and back for this, literally, with the literal Hell actually being the solution, and the figurative one coming from the one trying to ‘prevent’ it. This woman has gone through so much pain and such a turbulent life but damn if Camila didn’t earn her and Luz’s happy ending, together!!!

[coraniaid]

Buffy for the character asks?

General opinion/how much I care about them:  What can I say about Buffy Summers? When she was fifteen years old a representative of an ancient mystical order told her that she alone had the power to stop bad things from happening in the world, thereby confirming something she had hitherto only strongly suspected.  She had to keep a fundamental part of her life secret from the world for years but she never learned how to tell a convincing lie because she was too busy thinking up puns.  She had a 95th percentile SAT score despite mostly studying in between fighting vampires in a cemetery every night and cutting classes to sneak out of school and fight yet more vampires during the day.   All her favorite teachers died or never noticed she existed.  She is both a quintessential only child and somebody who would fight a god to save her annoying little sister.  She blackmailed the management of a fast food chain so that they would let her keep doing a minimum wage job she hated with co-workers whose last names she can’t remember.  She burned down her old high school gym and blamed it on mice and blew up her new high school library while she was at her graduation ceremony and she sunk her hometown into a giant hole in the desert and drove away in a school bus.  She died twice before she turned twenty-one.  She is one of my favorite fictional characters in any medium.

A ship I love: I didn’t really talk about why I love Fuffy in my Faith answer, so let me try now.

Of all of Buffy’s shadow selves, Faith is the one who spends the most time actually in her shadow.  She doesn’t get later character development that takes her in a different direction and makes her her own person; she didn’t start out as something else entirely and get reworked later when the plot required it.  She doesn’t even get the illusion of a family and moments of happiness, like Drusilla has in Season 2.  When Faith’s not hanging out with Buffy she’s sitting alone in her motel room or lying in a coma or counting down the months in jail.  She exists to be a version of Buffy who is not Buffy, who is worse than Buffy, who doesn’t have friends or family or any external support.  That’s really all she is.  And she knows it.  And she hates it.  How could she not?  “You get the Watcher, you get the Mom, you get the little Scooby gang … what do I get?”

Because Faith is Buffy – the part of Buffy who never came back after she ran away from home and got kicked out of school; the part who can admit to craving a little more than low-fat yogurt after a night patrolling; the part that never got to make friends with Xander and Willow in Season 1 and never had a Watcher who cared about her –  so on a fundamental level Fuffy is about Buffy accepting those suppressed and hidden angry parts of herself.  But it’s also about Faith accepting the forgotten and ignored parts of herself that are present in Buffy: the idea that she can be a hero, that there are people in the world who care about her, that there are people who she can trust.  It’s about asking what if all of the Season 3 subtext – Faith’s whole arc this season paralleling Angel’s a year ago, and “what are friends for?” and “It’s kind of a Slayer thing”, and Joyce marching in the Slayer Pride Parade – was text, and what if the show existed in a world where the characters could act on it?

And because of how Season 3 turns out, it’s also about Buffy and Faith forgiving themselves, and each other, for doing almost unforgivable things to each other.  Because there were never meant to be two of them, and they’ve never been able to tell each other what they mean, and because “kill me, you become me”, but she tried and it didn’t help.  And it’s about crappy presents and knives to the throat and forehead kisses and shared dreams and hopelessly entangled destinies.  It’s ”She could be terrified.  Maybe [...] she’s sorry and she’s alone” and “You think you matter, you think you’re a part of something, and then you get dumped” and “All my life there was one person who tried to be my friend” and “I tried so hard to help you and you spat on me” and “Willow said you needed me.  Didn’t really give it much thought.”

As much as I wish Faith was in Season 7 more, part of me is glad that this is all we got, because I really don’t think the show could ever have done all this justice. And the little we get is enough to make me a bit crazy.

A non-romantic relationship that I love: I already talked about Buffy and Willow, so I will try to subvert expectations a little here and go with Buffy and Giles.  Not the fandom version of their relationship I like to complain about where Giles is an uncomplicated Good Dad, but the messy and complicated and heartbreaking version where he just won’t allow himself to be that person.  

I mean, I think it’s very clear from the show that Giles really does care about Buffy far beyond the extent he is supposed to as a Watcher (he tries to go and fight the Master in her place! Even though he knows it would kill him!  Even though this is Season 1 of the show and we’ve not yet seen Giles fight a single vampire!) but that everything about his training and his past tells him that he shouldn’t.  Buffy cares about Giles a lot (“You can’t leave me, I can’t do this alone” / “it’s a little like having Mom back”) and it’s clear that she would really like Giles to be more involved in her life (she wants her Mom to invite him around for Christmas, she goes to his house for Thanksgiving, she tries so hard not to show how hurt she is when she confuses his attempts to be dispassionate with genuine disinterest) but Giles is convinced that he cannot be that sort of parental figure for Buffy and it would only hurt her if he tried, and so – by purposely distancing himself from her and not letting her get close to him– he ends up hurting her in exactly the way he fears.

And the tragedy is that I think Giles really does believe the line he keeps feeding Buffy about how important it is not to be “distracted” by “personal concerns”.  When Quentin Travers told him he had “a father’s love” for Buffy, Travers meant it as a rebuke – and that’s exactly how Giles takes it.  He thinks getting closer to Buffy would be bad for her!  He thinks by leaving her in Season 6 he is helping her become self-reliant and a better Slayer!  Of course he is wrong, but that’s what he thinks, and it is consistent with how he’s always thought.  It’s not character assassination or some unjust subversion of his previously established personality: it is a natural and predictable and awful thing for him to do.  And he does it because he cares about her and doesn’t know what to do about that!  He thinks she’s a much better person than he is (“she’s a hero, you see.  She’s not like us”) and he doesn’t want to bring her down to his level!  “If you care so much about [these people], why didn’t you leave town?” Ethan asked him in The Dark Age, and Giles didn’t have an answer!

The NOTP: Going to cheat a bit here (honestly, mostly because it feels a bit mean to keep picking on Xander at this point), and say that the ship I don’t like isn’t with a specific person but rather with an idea that I see applied to all sorts of ships.  Namely the idea – not supported at all by the text – that Buffy’s various romantic interests are Good People who teach Buffy important life lessons and make her a better person or protect her from the dangerous world around her.  I mean, sorry, but this is not how it works! This is a boring fantasy you have projected onto the show in place of what it was actually telling you.  The feminism of BtVS is paper-thin, but give it some credit!

In canon, Buffy absolutely does not learn from her boyfriends.  She does not rely on them for emotional support.  They all cause her more problems than they help her.  She rescues them.  She makes them better.  Honestly her boyfriends all kind of suck.  Because that’s her type!  She likes losers with no friends who are kind of obsessed about Buffy Summers! (Losers just like Faith!)

Buffy textually hates it when Angel talks down to her: we see repeatedly how furious she gets when he treats her “like a kid” or makes important decisions about their relationship on her behalf.  She doesn't mind physically upstaging Riley (“I was holding back a little”) and secretly likes it when he gets hurt because, to quote Dawn, “she says you look even cuter when you’re all weak and kitteny”. The iconic twin shots of Spike and Buffy in The Gift and After Life are deliberately staged so that Spike is looking up the stairs at Buffy and she is looking down at him (“you’re beneath me”, as she told him in Fool For Love).  And as she says later in Conversations With Dead People:  “Their opinions don’t matter.  They don’t know.  They haven’t been through what I’ve been through [...] I feel like I’m better than them.  Superior.”

So, you know, the preferred power balance is pretty explicit here! I don’t think the show is being excessively subtle. And yet people keep insisting that, oh no, Buffy learns a lot from her boyfriends, or that she can’t possibly cope without their support, or writing fanfics where they swoop in to town to rescue Buffy from trouble. But that is not who Buffy is!  She is not some unsophisticated naif or damsel in distress.  She would hate that so much!  Ship Buffy with whoever you want, but let her be Buffy!

… but also, yeah, rewatching the second season really reminded me how awful I’d have found Buffy/Xander and how glad I am that the show stops hinting at that after Becoming.  Sorry, Xander.  You can take solace in being … well, a loser with friends?

My biggest headcanon about them:  Some time after Chosen Buffy definitely goes back to college and gets that English degree she deserves.  I don’t want to think about Buffy living in a gloomy castle in Scotland and still being forever isolated from the world or about her becoming a cop with superpowers or whatever other nonsense the comics insist happens to her after the show ends.  I want her to be able to have some time off and read some poetry and make Willow jealous academically.

An idea for a fanfiction I would like to write/read about them: One day I will finish my Season 7 rewrite in which Drusilla is the Big Bad and Faith gets broken out of prison earlier and Amy and Willow get to have a proper resolution and Kennedy is another Slayer from the start and Marcie and Ethan come back for cameos and people remember that Jesse and Kendra ever existed and Dawn actually gets something to do.  But first I will probably have to start writing it.

Something that makes me think of them: Nothing makes me think of Buffy.  I choose to be like this (for some reason).

[beckettj]

Rum and Wagers

Roses are red Violets are blue Rum is much cheaper Than dinner for two Especially when your best friend co-owns a bar and gives it you for nothing. Single on Valentine’s Day, Emma goes to bartender and best friend, Killian, for alcohol and advice on how not to be single for next Valentine’s Day.

3050 words of Valentine's Day fluff.

Read on Ao3

“I hate Valentine’s Day! It’s nothing but a huge corporate scam!”

Emma huffed as she reached the bar. She grabbed the cheap, cardboard, heart-shaped beer mats and flung them across the room onto a vacant table, as far away from her as she could possibly get them. She dropped onto a barstool, rested her elbow on the bar and leaned her face against her fist.

Killian stood behind the bar, tea towel in hand, drying off recently washed glasses. He raised an eyebrow, watching her in amusement, and failed to hold back a chuckle.

“You were all over Valentine’s Day last year,” he recalled. “In fact, I distinctly remember being the one to watch over your lad whilst you want off to some swanky five-star hotel with the twat-that-shall-not-be-named.”

“Because you were and still are depressingly single and now I’m in the same damn boat,” Emma groaned. “I can’t believe I’m single on Valentine’s Day.”

“Well, you know what they say, love. Roses are red, violets are blue-”

“Oh, no.”

“Rum is much cheaper than dinner for two,” he finished with a grin, brandishing a brand-new, untouched bottle of rum from beneath the bar. “Especially when your best friend co-owns a bar and gives it you for nothing.”

He retrieved two rum glasses and set them on the bar, promptly uncapping the bottle and pouring the liquid into both glasses. Emma chuckles as he went overboard on the measures. He always knew when she was looking to get drunk.

He set the bottle down and reached out for one of the glasses.

She looked at him curiously, “Drinking on the job?”

He lifted his glass and gestured around the empty bar with it, “I realise you’re caught up in your moping, Swan, but it’s utterly dead in here. The Rabbit Hole isn’t exactly the hotspot for a romantic Valentine’s Day date.”

Emma sighed as she picked up her glass, “Are you saying we’re the only two single people in Storybrooke?”

“Well, the only two sociable single people at any least,” Killian remarked. “So, cheers to that.”

They clinked their glasses together then simultaneously necked the entirety of their contents, placing the empty glasses back down on the bar with a light, synchronised thud.

“Hey, if it makes you feel any better, Neal is just as single as you are,” Killian pointed out.

“So much for not naming him,” Emma muttered. “And I don’t know about that. I’ve heard the rumours about him cosying up to Tamara.”

“Ah, you’ve caught that then?”

Killian picked up the rum bottle again, pouring out more alcohol.

“I mean, it’s fast, right? What’s it been, a month? Is it even a month? That doesn’t add up, does it?” Emma questioned.

Killian opted not to answer, instead taking one good, long swig of his rum.

“This is the part where you tell me he wouldn’t have cheated on me,” Emma prompted.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you that, Swan,” Killian replied. “Unfortunately, I believe the prick is more than capable of disrespecting you like that.”

Emma happily took the second drink waiting for her.

“You deserve better than Cassidy, love,” Killian told her. “I hope you realise that.”

“And you tried to tell me that all along,” Emma spoke with a long, regretful sigh. “Why the hell didn’t I listen to you?”

“I’m both your bartender and your best friend,” Killian pointed out. “I exist to listen to all your problems and give you astonishingly good advice that you’ll inevitably ignore.”

“Maybe it’s time we change that,” Emma proposed. “So how do I avoid being single by next Valentine’s Day?”

Killian paused, brow furrowing as he considered, and then shook his head, “Maybe it’s best we don’t mess with the trusted, old-age system of you electing to ignore my advice?”

“Oh, come on! Don’t hold out on me now! Not when I’m finally ready to listen to you,” she encouraged.

She finished her drink and promptly took matters into her own hands, leaning over the bar to pick up the bottle of rum and pour out her latest drink.

He hastily grabbed the bottle out of her hands, stopping her from pouring any further. The contents of her glass threatened to spill over the brim, forcing her to lean forwards and sip some from it before she was able to lift it without spilling any. Killian placed the bottle to the back of the bar, out of her reach but still well within his.

His own glass would need topping up soon enough.

“You do realise, Swan, that you’re asking dating advice from a guy who is, and I’ll quote, ‘pathetically unacquainted with the dating world of the twenty-first century’?” he challenged, his arms folded across his chest, a bemused smirk meeting his gleaming blue eyes.

Emma took a swig of her drink and frowned, “Someone said that about you? I mean, they’re not exactly wrong; I don’t think you have dated anyone since high school and we graduated in oh-one. Of course, I know you had that weird friends-with-benefits kind of set-up with Tink in college but that hardly counts as dating. Anyway, I digress… who, who said that about you?”

“You did.”

“I did?”

“Aye.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Ooohhh,” Emma drew out upon vaguely recalling the conversation. “In my defense, I was very drunk last night.”

“Mmm,” Killian hummed as he finished his drink and began topping it up. “It appears tonight is headed in a similar direction.”

“What else is there to do when you’re single on Valentine’s Day? Which reminds me, you’re holding out on me,” Emma downed a good chunk of her drink and pointed at him with her glass. “This astonishingly good advice you spoke of earlier, put your money where your mouth is and hit me with it.”

“On this, I’m none the wiser, else I wouldn’t be single myself, would I?” he reasoned with her.

He proceeded to take a big gulp of his drink, lowered it from his lips, then promptly decided to take another large swig.

“Well, you’re no help! I’ll have to work it out for myself, won’t I? The way I see it, I’ve got a few options,” Emma mused. “So, single men of Storybrooke… there’s Gold-”

Killian broke into a hard burst of laughter which almost caused him to choke on his drink, “Your ex’s father? You’ve gotta be bloody joking!”

“If you let me finish, I was about to rule him out,” Emma returned. “How desperate do you think I am?”

“Not desperate at all,” Killian responded immediately, “which is exactly why your list of single men in Storybrooke goes as follows; Leroy’s not your type, Sidney’s ruled out after you punched him in the jaw, Whale’s… well, Whale, Graham – if I recall correctly – was a fling way back when and nothing else, and August was friend-zoned after the first drink, the poor sod.”

“And your list of single women in Storybrooke goes; Belle who punched you in the jaw-”

“That was a huge misunderstanding, and you know it, Swan!”

“Zelena who, well, good luck to you if you go down that road, and Lily who can’t hold a serious relationship to save her life,” Emma recounted. “So, what are we to do, Killian? We can’t be doomed to be single forever.”

He hastily downed the contents of his glass and poured himself a healthy refill, even topping her glass up despite it not even being half-empty. He took another big gulp of his rum then set it down. He scratched the back of his neck, and his jaw twitched as he finally looked her way again.

She stared at him expectantly and, when he remained silent, prompted, “What?”

“What?” he returned.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He downed his refill of rum then dared to innocently question, “What?”

“You’ve just shipped a boat load of liquid courage,” she pointed out, “and you’ve got that look on your face.”

“What look? I don’t have a look.”

“You do have a look! Your eyes are all narrowed, you’re frowning, your jaw keeps twitching and you’re scratching your neck like a cat with fleas,” she challenged him. “That’s your ‘I’ve got something to say but it’ll make things worse’ look.”

Killian gave up on the glasses, gulping down the rum straight from the bottle. He set the near-empty bottle on top of the bar. Between them, they’d made light work of its contents.

He eventually spoke, “In all our discussions about your options in the last month, there’s one eligible guy in Storybrooke that you’ve yet to consider.”

“Really?” Emma sounded unconvinced. “It’s a small town. Single guys around here are hard to come by. I thought we had them all covered. Sidney, Leroy, Whale, Graham, August… who am I missing?”

The dregs at the bottom of the rum bottle were coaxed down Killian’s throat.

“Me.”

The empty bottle hit the bar with a resounding thud.

Emma laughed.

“I’m entirely serious, Swan.”

Emma composed herself, lifted her head up and everything had changed. She saw Killian in a whole new light, not as her best friend or her bartender but as a man who had always looked at her as if she were his whole world; the very man who she had called – day and night – whenever she and Neal had argued, the man who would drop everything to be by her side, the man who had always known whether she needed alcohol, an ear to talk off, a shoulder to cry on, or a punching bag, and provided it without ever being asked.

The words started to pour out of Killian’s mouth, “I can’t keep pretending that there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of you, that you don’t brighten my day every time you walk into this mere tavern. I can’t keep pretending like it didn’t crush my heart to see you with Neal, that I didn’t feel a glimpse of hope every time you two argued, that it didn’t kill me every time you decided to reconcile with that prat.”

“Killian.”

“The bloody fool doesn’t even realise what he’s given up,” Killian continued. “You’re amazing; you’re smart and you’re strong and so breathtakingly beautiful. You’re a shining light in a dark world-”

“Killian.”

“-like a lighthouse guiding me safely home to shore. And I could have stood here and given you the advice you were looking for, told you to give online dating a go, but I couldn’t run the risk of standing here, forced to watch once more as an unworthy man treats you like dirt on the bottom of his shoe when you deserve to be treated like a princess-”

“Killian.”

“-and whilst I treasure our friendship deeply – it’s that which has kept me holding my tongue so bloody long – I know grander treasure lies beneath the surface of what we share already, if only we’re both willing to fight for it. Because I would, Emma, I would fight for-”

“Killian!” Emma snapped, finally succeeding in cutting him off.

Or, at the very least, she had thrown him from his rambling thoughts for he gulped at her pointed tone and promptly backtracked, “I’m sorry, Emma, forget I said anything. I – rum! The bloody thing is like a tru-”

“Fucking hell, Jones, kiss me already!”

He didn’t need telling twice; he leapt impressively over the bar and before Emma could even marvel at that feat, his lips crashed against hers and her thoughts melted away; the rest of the world and her worries with them. His warm, gentle hands rushed all over her body, desperately exploring, as her hands gripped tightly to his hair, keeping him close, entangling her fingers in his dark locks. The rum on his breath harmonised with hers and her heart leapt in her chest, the little hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, for they clung to each other – lips, hands, fingers, legs – as if fighting for their lives. Her mind was convinced she’d been reborn, experiencing her first kiss all over again for the kiss is unparalleled to anything she’d ever experienced before, as if she’d been doing it wrong.

She chased after his lips when he moved back, initiating a series of small, yearning, fast kisses – his lips remaining attentive, coming and going like waves against a ship – neither wanting the moment to end, both gasping for oxygen and made breathless by the desperate passion of the initial kiss. She couldn’t let him go, clutching onto his neck for dear life. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, claiming him as hers, and chuckled teasingly against his lips.

“I want you,” she murmured, her lips dancing and brushing against his as she did so.

His voice was steeped in desire, low and impossibly enticing, “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say those words.”

She smiled against his lips, “Good things come to those who wait.”

“I’m done waiting.”

“Good.”

Despite his words, he pulled his head back and she leaned after him.

“Wait,” he spoke gravely.

“You’re a fucking tease, Jones,” she complained.

“I don’t want a one-time fling.”

“I don’t want a one-time fling,” she returned.

“I’m done with flings.”

“I never started.”

“Uhh…”

“Other than Graham.”

“I want this, beyond tonight.”

“Me too.”

“Good.”

He took a few steps forward and she clung to him in the way a crying child clings to its mother, fully prepared to delve into a tantrum should someone so wickedly take him from her. He placed her down gently, perched on the edge of the pool table. He was too far away, half a step away, and she pulled him in by his jacket, smothering herself in him.

He kissed her again and showed off, proving men can be capable of multi-tasking by ripping her shirt from her body simultaneously, the buttons bouncing and rolling along the floor, forgotten instantly. He pulled back from her, and she reached out urgently for him, too far away, as he hastily removed his shirt from his body.

He pounced on her before his shirt could hit the floor, his presence guiding her down onto the pool table, sending the neatly arranged balls spawling across the table. He craved her as much as she craved him, more so perhaps. Where the fog of Neal and past lovers had finally lifted, allowing Emma to see him clearly for the first time, Killian had been biding his time, awaiting the very moment for most of his life. Her enticing figure had featured in many a dream since their high school days and he wasn’t fully convinced he wasn’t dreaming. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d been duped by such cruel, lifelike dreams, fast asleep on the bar, empty bottles of merchandise surrounding him. If it were a dream, he hoped no one woke him; if it truly were a bloody miracle, he aimed to impress.

He danced a series of kisses down her neck, burrowing his nose against her skin, soaking in the sweet, combined scent of rum, cinnamon, and the raspberry air freshener she insisted on keeping in her old car. His onslaught of kisses continued lower, against her shoulder, down her collarbone and to the top of her chest. His tongue was keen to join the party, gliding over the top of her right breast as his fingers worked at the clasp of the bra strap on her back, her own hands working at his belt, the brushing of her arm against his crotch only fuelling his longing for her.

“Bloody hell.”

A new voice broke their moment.

They froze. Emma’s bra dropped. Killian’s belt released, his pants dropping to unveil white boxers beneath; ones which left very little to Emma’s imagination.

Or Liam and Elsa’s.

The couple stood at the bar, staring in shock at the sight before them. Killian raced to hitch his pants up and chucked his previously abandoned shirt at Emma, aiding her urgent attempt to cover up.

“Now I’m glad the pair of you have gotten your shit together and stopped staring longingly at each other’s backs but for fuck’s sake, Killian, not on my bloody pool table!” Liam sounded simultaneously pleased and irate.

“Amazing timing as always, Liam,” Killian muttered and helped Emma from the pool table. “Come on, love, I have a private room above.”

Killian got Emma as far as the bottom of the stairs before Liam called out after them, “Oh, do me a favour and don’t go public with this ‘til March or else I’ll have to fork over a hundred dollars to Will; sneaky bastard claimed February right from under me!”

“You and Will wagered on this?” Killian remarked in surprise, all the while pulling Emma further up the stairs.

“Mate, the whole bloody town is in on this thing,” Liam returned. “In fact, it’s her best mate, Mary Margaret, who’ll be quids in should you hold off ‘til Match.”

“She could do with the money,” Emma mused as they reached the top of the stairs. “For the wedding.”

“And I could do with you, in my bed, right now,” Killian growled out impatiently.

“Your wish is my command.”

It was a wish she not only granted that night, but regularly in the nights which followed until his bed became their bed and by the next Valentine’s Day neither one of them was desperately single, instead madly in love, celebrating not only Valentine’s Day but the anniversary of the day they became more than friends. As far as the whole town were aware, it was nothing more than Valentine’s Day for March the third had been the day Will had ‘walked in’ on their ‘first kiss’ and promptly cursed them out for not ‘seeing the bloody obvious’ three days earlier.

Mary Margaret gained an extra one-thousand-one-hundred dollars to put towards her fairytale wedding.

Emma and Killian never got an explanation for why twelve people were so willing to place a hundred dollars on a bet involving the two of them; they did both agree never to speak of the tampered wager but conceded that a bottle of rum could well uncover the truth hidden between them…

----

Tag List (taken from the CSMM list - let me know if you want adding/taking off).

@teamhook @laianely @booksteaandtoomuchtv @exhaustedpirate @anmylica @hollyethecurious @kmomof4 @winterbaby89 @undercaffinatednightmare @resident-of-storybrooke @tiganasummertree @stahlop @lfh1226-linda @darkshadow7 @fleurdepetite @captainswan-kellie @motherkatereloyshipper @soniccat @jrob64 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @jonesfandomfanatic @myfearless-love

[zinnynia]

give ur opinions on every half life cast member go into details i want to see how ur brain functions

My opinion on the Half Life cast? I don’t have any/many opinions about most of them, so I’ll just not talk about those characters.

I’ll be going from least - most thoughts and opinions, starting with Lamarr.

Though, not really about Lamarr, but headcrabs in general. Out of every alien and enemy in Half Life, Headcrabs and Headcrab Zombies are the scariest to me. Idk man, they’re terrifying, and the concept itself is depressing.

D0g + Eli and Russell are all three very cute characters. I always love seeing them interact with Alyx, and their relationship with her is very sweet. D0g was made by Eli, and Alyx kinda just continued to add more to him, making him the D0g we all know and love. I haven’t completed my Half Life: Alyx run yet, but so far, Russell and Eli seem like really nice parental figures for her. Russell is funny, and has genuinely made me smile and enjoy his company in stressful situations, and Eli just seems like an overall great father. I think I have daddy issues.

I don’t really like Adrian. It’s not that I hate him, or like him at all. I mean, the art of him is kinda cute tbh, and maybe the angst and shit, but he doesn’t really hit the spot like Alyx, Gordon and Barney. I mean, his concept is kind of cool, I guess, but I really wish we could see more of him. Maybe in Half Life 3 (if it comes out), the G-Man could possibly use Adrian against Gordon, as sort of a way to “distract” the gang and make Adrian join the Combine ranks. ..I could be cooking some fanfic ideas for y’all, so PLEASEEE cook up some Combine Adrian AU fr fr. Make him hot too (I might have a thing for the Combine Ngl).

Alyx is girliepop. She ate, slayed, and left no crumbs. What I really like about her is that she doesn’t really idolize Gordon, like what most of the Resistance does. She treats Gordon like a normal human being, and has shown from time to time that she genuinely cares about him. I think she’s well written, but what I don’t really like is that she’s the “love interest” of Half Life. I don’t really think there needs to be romance, because the story is already pretty good. I also find Freemance kind of… iffy. Gordon kind of knew her when she was a baby, and I can’t imagine popping out 20 years later and some kid I knew started crushing heavily on me, or their dad starts shipping us together. But that’s controversial, and if you ship it, you do you. Not my business, and it’s all fictional. Plus, they’re both consenting adults, just the idea is kinda weird.

The G-Man’s concept really intrigues me, and I feel like a lot could be built off of him in Half Life 3 (if it ever comes out). I’ve written a Half Life OC kind of based around it, actually! Basically, the G-Man manipulates and uses resistance members to distract the gang, taking and stealing them, along with Alyx. This causes the gang to feel stressed and discouraged, hopeless even. Barney is nowhere to be found (he’s safe and untouched), so it’s just Gordon and Eli. I feel like a lot could be done with this, and builds more on the G-Man’s manipulative and antagonistic character. It would also be cool if the Combine joins forces with the gang, and defeat the G-Man, then agree on a truce, leaving Earth or co-exist together. I also just feel like I’m intrigued by the G-Man so much, mostly because I’ve written my story’s main antagonist similarity to the G-Man coincidentally.. and that’ll be a story for another post.

Last, but not least… Gordon and Barney omggg!!! Barney and Gordon are both my most favorite characters of Half Life, Barney especially. About a year ago, when I laid eyes on Barney, something inside of me literally just…. Clicked. I was like “I like this man. He’s my favorite character now.”

^^^ Pieces of artwork I made when I first got into Half Life))

I didn’t really understand it, until I really started to look into the fandom, realizing him and Gordon were best friends, and how he practically missed Gordon for 20 years, holding onto crowbars and thinking about the beer he owed Gordon. This REALLY hit me, as I’m in an oddly similar situation.

^^^ The him))

My childhood best friend and I were pretty close, despite knowing each other for only 2 years. We got split up, but met again, but never got the chance to reconnect and actually chat. But throughout the years, I always bought lockets, and sometimes items with sunflowers. Lockets, because he and I were BIG Undertale fans back then (also FNaF and Pokemon), and our parting gifts were paper heart lockets. Sunflowers, because of flower symbolism (wishful thinking, happiness, etc etc) and the idea of “Summer.” We always did everything together, like paper crafts. Another funny thing is that, after finding him again recently, our dynamic is somewhat similar to Freehoun in a way. Me being the more chatty one, while he’s a little more silent. My problem is that I'd rather hear him talk, because he’s really everything I’d want to talk about (no homo 4 him pls I swear). It’s also funnier that he’s a science guy and works out, and is taller than me. It’s giving……. Gordon to Barney.

It’s also funny that a lot of the fanfics I’ve read and liked remind me a lot of us. One fanfic had Gordon and Barney have a conversation, talking about how they can’t “resume” where things left off. That reminds me about a thing he told me one night, about how we weren’t the same people we were in 2nd and 3rd grade, but truthfully I didn’t love him (platonically) for who we were, but for who he is. On the topic of fanfics, I’ve written my fair share (2), and they’re all vents about him in the form of Freehoun! Though, they aren’t technically romantic, they could be interpreted as romantic.

^^^ Old artwork I made based off of my fanfic "Never Again."))

And speaking about Freehoun, I’m actually not much of a “Freehouner.” Sure, it’s cute, but I think they’re just really cute friends. The things they’d do in Black Mesa, and the beer. The way Barney looks at Gordon, and how upset his face was when he had to part ways in Episode 1. Anyways, it took me 7 years to finally have him back (technically 2 + 5, but we didn’t get time to really chat, so I add the 2 years), and I told him “I’d wait another 7 years if it means I’d get to talk to you again” and I also did kinda write him a 2 page (platonic) Valentines Letter that he DID kinda print out cus it was a google doc. Letters are kind of our thing, because I always gave him letters back then when I had a way to send them (via people/connections).

Plus, Gordon is kinda fine...... And Barney's really cute. Like??? PLEASEEEE who decided to make two good looking best friends like tf? And can we PLEASE TALK about how sad Barney looked at the end of Episode 1???? Shit still has be crying.

[goldenlilium-ocs]

To Be Loved

In which an 11yr old Juliette ponders what her relationship with her father may have been like. This was written purely for my indulgence so it is unedited.

TW: This is not meant to be an overly sad fic, those who know the oc know this has a happy ending. However, there are insinuations in this piece of writing that may be triggering to those who don’t have the best relationship with their family.

“Do you think my dad would like me?”

Kassidy’s hand faltered over the stove. Children were inquisitive, she knew that. It was hardly scientific, just a fact. And Juliette, Juliette just might be the most inquisitive of them all. She spent her days outside of experimentation wandering the labs, always asking the scientists about their projects and looking for answers to whatever she could think of next. Why didn’t bubbles instantly pop? Why did helium make your voice squeaky? Why couldn’t she drink the pretty coloured liquids in sealed vials? But she had never asked about the captain. It hadn’t been a subject off limits, the eleven year old knew exactly who she was supposed to live up to.

But she had never questioned his character or their forced estranged relationship . 

Kassidy turned the gas off, setting the spatula aside as she made her way over to the kitchen table. The surfaces was littered with paper, each depicting coloured sketches of her old co-workers and landscapes seen only on television. There had never been a need for a father in Juliette’s life. Any male influence came from the scientists in the lab, and occasionally Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. Kassidy had been willing to take on both parental roles, and she had never required help.

“What makes you ask that, sweetie?” Kassidy ran her fingers through the child’s hair. Blonde, so unlike her own. So like the absent father who wasn’t even aware of her existence.

How must it feel to bear the weight of a ghost your entire lifetime? There was always a side to the girl that Kassidy would never know. She’d look down at her daughter and see the face of a stranger from another time. Did she get these things from her father or grandmother or maybe even a great grandfather? 

Juliette set her crayon down, swinging her legs aside as she twisted to face her mother. A damn good mother at that. “Because I’m not like him. I don’t have any powers or medals or friends. What if he’d be disappointed that the experiments didn’t work? What if I let him down?”

The truth was, Juliette wasn’t made to be liked, or even loved. She was made to be used...

How does a child grasp the concept that while she is not unlovable, she will not be loved by all? How does anyone grasp that he or she may be unloved by the people that matter? Had Kassidy herself not had a change of heart the moment she’d laid eyes on her baby, would there be anyone in this world to truly love this girl? Would she even know of love’s existence? It’s meaning? 

“You don’t need powers or medals to be special, Juliette.” Kassidy knelt down now, her eye line level with the child’s. “You may not have his powers, but you have his heart. That man would know that. He would look at you and you would be all that matters in the world. It happened to me and it changed my life.”

Juliette gnawed on her lip, taking in Kassidy’s words. “But what if he can’t love me because he’ll never know me?”

“That’s not always true. I named you after Juliette Adam. She was not somebody I had ever known, and yet I know I loved her for the person she was.”

“Was she a scientist?”

“She was a writer.” Kassidy smiled.

“But you hate reading.” The child laughed.

 “Well, she was also a girl. A girl who wanted to look after other girls. When you look out for your people and do good by them, that’s an act of love.” Kassidy smoothed out her hair. “You’re a very smart girl, Jules. You’ll make your father proud no matter what you choose to do with his legacy. Nobody gets to tell you who you are other than you. Okay?”

At her daughter’s nod, Kassidy relaxed. “Okay, clear this all up and set the table. Maybe I should be the one worrying whether or not he would like me. You’re precious cargo, you know.” She rose to her feet, returning to her cooking while Juliette tidied away.

Yeah, Kassidy had this parenting thing perfected. The only legacy she needed to follow was being the mother Juliette deserved.Treating her as a person rather than an object would go a long way. Loving her would be what ultimately shaped the young woman she became.

[impossiblechop]

Since I’ve finally had a second to breath from academic prison, I’ve started reading again.

My reason for reading:

1) Reconnect with my middle school self, who was a book worm

2) See how the person I have grown up to be has changed my tastes in books

I started my journey by re reading a book series that I really loved, it’s the Court series by Sarah J Mass.

When I was younger I loved her books, but when I was younger all I wanted to read was fantasy love stories that I could imagine happening to me some day.

So now re visiting the story has a fresh adult who has learned far more about herself, and just doesn’t dig that basic love story stuff, I definitely was “rolling my eyes” at the mate stuff, the over use of sex in situations I would think both parties would not be up for, portraying men has having to have a certain type of body to be considered beautiful, woman be powerful but still being damals in distress… bla bla I could go on

But! That middle school girl is still me and when Rys first showed up I started crying. Either way this book was a copping mechanism for a little girl going through a tough time.

Anyway, where am I now in my book journey? I want fantasy but I want effortlessly inclusive fiction.

I want books that explore the world and feel real. I want people of all backgrounds and I want to feel like the characters could walk off the page.

I also don’t want it too seem like gay characters were added as a second thought for feel fake because the author was trying to be inclusive.

In my search for such a book I wound up at my local library, looking through the long wall of fiction, only to find they but a little gay flag sticker on books that have gay themes. And when I realized this there were only two books that seemed to exist I started to sigh..

But not hopeless yet I came across a book called FishBowl by Bradley Somer. First the book cover struck me, and it wasn’t fantasy but I thought I may give it a try since what else was I gonna do?

Ima go into detail about some characters I really love, just know if you want some people who are effortlessly themselves and happen to be gay along the way read it, was such a breath of fresh of air in a work that sucks

spoilers ——

Garth Garth Garth Garth 🥹

I can’t tell you enough when I say I have loved a character so much. Normally a character has to have something in common with myself or someone I care about for me to be invested in them

But this character could not be further from me haha

We are introduced to him by the perceptive of another character, and we seem him as a big “scary” construction worker man who the character bumps into

This introduction makes me over look him, because why would there be anything special in him

Then we finally get to see from his perspective, but it’s him talking about a woman who walks past the construction sight with his co worker, and has he looks at her walk it describes how the dress she wears moves with the stretch and twist of her body

In my mind I say gross, I hate men who say they appreciate the beauty of feminine things but really they mean the sexual side of feminine thing 🤮

However as a reader we start to invest in him more when he goes to pick up a package that is hidden from us

We don’t know where it’s from what it could be, all we know is it’s in a small box and he goes through the back to pick it up to suggest he keeps this part of himself quiet, secret, and untouched

At this point I’m curious but still not in love with this character, and technically the rest of his time in the novel doesn’t mean much but this is where I will introduce the super of the apartment building..

He works night and day talking care or the building who feels unnoticed for his efforts by the people who live in the building, he is a hopeless romantic and feels like he can’t be romantic because age or it hasn’t been the chance

He has a moment in the book where he describes how English stifles his romantic flare, that he sounds so undeveloped, rough in English and if someone could hear him in Spanish they would see how smooth and beautiful he can be, which is heartbreaking

I myself feel like an idiot when I try and communicate in the language I’m trying to learn so I can kind of understand but it felt real to hear him think that about himself

Anyway we learn that he loves old romantic movies and songs, he loves dancing and particularly loves the elegant feminine style of clothes

He gets all dazzled up so that when he is down with his last service request he can give himself a night on the town, so he approached the last apartment that is just a leaky sink and he thinks back to an actress who he said had such beautiful ankles (weird it will make sense later)

Now I’m switching back to Garth, he enters his Apartment that he recognizes the faucet is still leaking

Rushed into his room to open his box, and he starts to describe that the shop he frequents is a dress shop who has a special custom seamstress who knows how to make dress that fit him perfectly

He recounts how his body is so masculine, hairy, large, not feminine at all.. he goes on to describe how he is a lover of the art of femininity and when he sees women in dress he wishes to embody that type of beauty as well

In the box is a custom dress and strapy heels, and he comments that his toes are so ugly but his ankles.. his ankles are his best attribute 😩

Are you guys seeing what’s happening here, two people who aren’t even remotely connected, have never even said they were outright fruity

Just lover of romance, of beauty come together in an unlikely place both respecting each others meaning and appreciating there stepping out of their comfort zone

There’s more to the story, the whole book is good but these characters.. THESE CHARACTERS made me giggle squeal and dance

And it was so special because i didn’t get to see there after story, I get to imagine the drive in movie theater dates, the super learning to cook meals for his beauty while the beauty learns to dance with him ✨

Anyway to many more beautiful love stories that don’t fit the binary and are just so much more beautiful for that reason alone

Cheers 🥂 to love found in unlikely places and people being there authentic selfs!

[heliads]

Minho Masterlist

Focused - Drabble

Want You, Need You - Ever since you became a Med-Jack, Minho can’t seem to stop collecting random injuries that absolutely require your attention. You might be catching on. Imagine

Secrets Whispered by the Water - Based on this request: "there is a small pond in the glade. Minho and reader are friends with hidden feelings. one day the reader finds out about that pond so she takes Minho there and they swim and then they confess?" Imagine

there is no other version of this story - Minho may be protected in the Safe Haven, but he’s never felt more alone. Newt is growing to realize that he will never exist in the Glade without something driving him away from peace. It is difficult to miss the one you love when you are separated by time. Based on the quote ‘someone has to leave first. this is a very old story. there is no other version of this story.’ Minewt Oneshot

The City - Based on this request: "an au where they are not in the maze just a huge friend group or whatever and minho and reader are dating, but reader doesnt want kids, angst with fluffy ending, with minho understanding that reader doesnt want kids" Modern AU

Touch - Based on this request: "for minho where reader she hates physical touch but someone comments on it and she tries to change, she cuddles minho more and holds his hand even tho it makes her uncomfortable, minho realises" Imagine

This Night - Based on this request: "minho fic, kinda enemies to lovers where she gets drunk one night and insists on sitting next to him and hes just really snarky and confused? she ends up laying her head on his shoulder and is completely enamoured by his hands? the others notice it and tease them relentlessly" Imagine

One Night Away - Based on this request: "minho x f!reader where theyre both runners and rivals. one day they arrive late to the maze’s gates, which are about to close. reader pushes minho to the gates, he escapes but reader doesnt? next day he sees the reader run to the gates when they open and he admits his feelings for them?" Imagine

Get You Back - Based on this request: "a minho x reader fanfic where she gets taken to wckd instead of minho and he’s helping to get her back, then they’re reunited in wckd when the he, newt, and thomas come to rescue her?" Imagine

Nothing By It - Based on this request: "minho x reader, something like they’re both runners and it’s bonfire night in the glade." Imagine

Outrun Me - You and Minho have been competing since the day you met. Alby making you two co-Keepers of the Runners was the final straw, especially because that means you two have to work together. Imagine

[goddesseverafter]

I recently finished BtVS and the way I see how Buffy sees it, at this point in time/in the story, is:

It doesn’t really matter that Willow and Xander are there for her in this context, because knowing she’s a Slayer and being a part of her Calling now makes them a part of the freakiness, even though they’re not freaks themselves.

But even if they didn’t know she’s a Slayer and that monsters existed, it would make things even more odd and not better, because then there’d be secrets in this friendship and having to make excuses for things like ‘Why can’t we go to the movies together?’

(Speaking of which, it’s probably noteworthy that the actual line is, “You’re the one freaky thing in my freaky world that still makes sense to me,” because Willow and Xander aren’t freaks. I also like that line, because it’s a way of saying, “Our lives are complicated, but my feelings for you [and vice versa] are uncomplicated. Our love is the one thing I’m absolutely sure of.”)

Angel is a vampire and therefore a ‘freak,’ but that’s where she can relate because Buffy sees her Slayer heritage as a burden, which is similar to Angel and how his vampirism is a burden to him. But Willow and Xander see the Slayer thing as a cool thing, particularly early on in the show.

As far as platonic support goes, Buffy feels like she has to take care of everything and protect Willow and Xander and Giles; she always has to be the strong one, which puts a further gap between her and her friends.

Their support helps, most definitely, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re no match for a vampire or demon when Buffy isn’t there to help them – the divide and conquer thing had already been used against them, putting her friends in danger.

Without Buffy, it literally takes everyone to go on patrol and get anything done in later seasons.

Buffy doesn’t have to worry much with Angel, because as a Slayer, she’s just as strong as a vampire. They can hold their own in a fight.

But it’s not all on Buffy for feeling this way. There’s this post written after the poster’s rewatch, which kinda talks about it, that a pattern of their friendships with Buffy cracking showed up as early as S3 … but there’s some S3 spoilers, to warn future readers of this post.

On top of Buffy not being able to relate to them concerning a normal life, Willow and Xander can pretty much have it both ways (a normal life and be a part of Buffy’s freaky world, which they can back away from anytime if they wanted to), so there’s less burden on them, unlike Buffy; and it kinda takes them away from Buffy when they try to live a life outside of her, which gets harder to do after high school – juggling college life, demon-hunting/research, a normal life outside of college life and demon-hunting/research, as well as their own love lives.

[I wanna write some more, ‘cause it doesn’t feel complete without saying the following stuff. I’m not very good at ending things 😅 I ramble on after this].

The original premise for monsters in BtVS were that they were a metaphor — as obstacles to overcome, and as a way to show the worst of humanity, and that a person seemingly innocent can be a monster.

It’s the biggest reason James Marsters (Spike) gave as to why Joss Whedon created vampires to be the opposite of Anne Rice vampires, as well as the fact Whedon hated that the audience loved Spike – the other co-writers of the show kept telling Marsters that they didn’t know what to do with his character in those later seasons.

This post helps put it into words about Buffy and Angel, and their respective series, BtVS and AtS. The themes and messages that both shows convey – everything comes back to Buffy and Angel, because their story is ‘thoroughly entrenched in the very fabric of the Buffyverse.’ And those messages/themes are not about romantic love.

For example, it is after The Whistler approaches him and leads him to Buffy … it is seeing Buffy for the first time [in the flashback in S2E21] that inspired Angel to believe in humanity again, to do better and be better; him falling in love also wasn’t superficial. (See this post). It’s pretty much canon that he was in awe of her spirit and heart which is what led to him falling in love with her [S3E12], so it’s not merely a thinkpiece.

Angel/Buffy’s conversation in S3E11 also helps Buffy early on, to understand why she fights despite the fact that “the bad keeps coming,” and it’s because of her example is where he learned it.

And the series finale to AtS (as much as I dislike cliffhangers, I agree with the creator that it…) was a perfect final statement to the central theme of the show, itself from exactly that same conversation in 3x11.

I think the whole metaphor thing wasn’t all that bad regarding telling a story, because, to copy-paste a post from an aforementioned hyperlink/Tumblr post — where-as “most romantic relationships have only entertainment value, or contribute very superficially to the enrichment of the show and its characters … the morality, themes, message of BtVS and AtS can only be defined by noting Buffy and Angel’s significance to each other.” And that’s so beautiful to me.

But I do wish still wish it were a clear-cut supernatural show like The Vampire Diaries instead of being mainly a metaphor thing; it would’ve helped reduce the continuity and plothole issues present in things like the lore around vampirism.

I love this thinkpiece/discussion, but 😪 I wish this part of that thread (it would’ve been a great canon explanation for the implicit shift in view) wasn’t just a headcanon. “It makes sense that the Council would want its weapon to believe vampires are separate entities from the people they were before. Easier to kill a thing than a person. And it also makes sense that Buffy (or other slayers) wouldn't challenge this until she's older and has a more defined, well-rounded sense of self and the world, ultimately realizing that things that seem overly simplistic often are. I don't think this was the intent in S1, but it's easy enough to fold into the fabric of the lore and the goals of the Council, which ultimately come down to control at all costs. Easier to control a weapon that thinks the way you do rather than for itself.”

😶

Signing off now.

Buffy: Sometimes I wish to go back to the times when everything was normal.

Angel: The times before me.

Me: Dude, she's talking about being a Slayer... which she was way before she met you. I swear, sometimes you're self-centered.

Also, Buffy saying that Angel is the only thing that makes sense in her life? What kind of romance-normative bullshit is that? Willow and Xander are fucking out there, Buffy, and support you day and night.

[phoenixyfriend]

Commander Buir

Follow-up to this post. Not in any particular order, just spitballing ideas, with contributions from several friends on discord.

Like presumably it takes long enough for them all to meet up again that Anakin and Cody do, in fact, end up treating each other like family, just so I can have that good good "well, guess I'm Dad now" energy. Shmi isn't entirely sure what's going on but she's not a slave anymore and her kid seems to like this rando mando, so.

Anakin gets to have a mom and two dads, though one of the dads is arguably younger than him.

Also when they all meet up again and Cody explains the "General Skywalker got shrunk" thing, there are three reactions: (General) Obi-Wan: Oh, Anakin. Obi-Wan: [gestures to take him, ends up with an armful of clingy padatoddler] Anakin: You can't blame this on me, Obi. Obi-Wan, a little teary, because babies cause emotions: Of course I can, you absurd human being. ------ Rex: That's... my general. Anakin: I am, Captain. Rex: Cool cool cool I'm gonna go stand where I can't, uh, break you. Anakin: I'm not THAT fragile! ------ Ahsoka: [gasp] Skyguy is SKYKID! Anakin: Padawan, this is-- Ahsoka, grabbing him and cuddling: Oh my goodness you're adorable this is the best day ever. Anakin: This is humiliating, Snips, put me down. Ahsoka: Never.

Anakin hates being a toddler because of the lack of independence but Cody keeps picking him up when he's cranky and just holding him until he falls asleep and that's... nice.......

- The brain limitations aren't quite as bad as the situation with Sokanth and Ylliben in the other AU, but - Even if his brain is mostly adjusted he’s still got a tiny body with different needs that he’s not used to. Like, he needs to sleep more but he’s got more energy than usual when he’s awake and it’s all weird.

Cody carrying around toddler Anakin like "God you give me ulcers but you're adorable, you little shit."

Inconveniently tiny body aside, Anakin has a pretty great time in this au. His family are all together and safe and within reach. His wife isn't around, but toddler brain means he doesn't have the Romance Drive, so that's not as bad as it could be It could be significantly worse.

@atagotiak asked: Does Anakin get annoyed about being called cute? - To which I say, He bites the first few times but Shmi tells him that's Naughty so he stops. - Babies are cute so you packbond with them before they’re annoying, Anakin is cute as a self defense mechanism - He’s extra annoying so he needs to be extra cute

You know how you need to keep an eye on toddlers so they don't, like, fall down the stairs or put something toxic in their mouth? - They need to keep an eye on Anakin specifically so he doesn't rewire the ship they're in while they're in hyperspace. - He has less self control on account of being smol. He still has all the mechanical knowledge! Just less comprehension of y’know, consequences.

Anakin, with a sippy cup: This is demeaning. Ahsoka: Your hands don't work great enough to avoid accidents yet. Anakin: It's still embarrassing.

General Kenobi can't just kill Maul, not when Maul is baby right now (sixteen, which is baby enough) so he just. Kinda. Kidnaps a baby Sith. (It's fine. He's fine.)

General Kenobi (not to be confused with Padawan Kenobi) decides to declare Maul his new padawan because someone has to deal with this teenager, and Plo already claimed the rest of Ahsoka's training. And Anakin's three, so.

"What do we do with Maul?" "Eh, I can handle him. I dealt with teenage Anakin getting arrested for illegal pod-racing twice a month, I can work with this."

Maul bites, but only slightly more often than Anakin, it's fine

Ahsoka definitely bullies Maul whenever possible

Consider: Rex holding very still because Anakin wanted to be tall, so he climbed Rex. Being unexpectedly climbed is better than being unexpectedly yeeted. It's still extremely nerve-wracking. - Cody is perfectly capable of running around with a backpacking toddler General, but Rex freezes like a statue. - Ahsoka finds this hilarious

You know how little kids like to be thrown around and swung in circles and stuff like that? This must get even more ridiculous with force users. Can throw a child real high and catch them safely. - Rex panics whenever Ahsoka throws her chibified Master

Literally everyone except Rex loves being yeeted. Even Maul can appreciate a good tactical yeet no shut up he's not having fun this is TRAINING - Rex is Suffering - Cody, a very Tired Dad, deserves to mock his vod'ika a little, as stress relief - Rex, a certified Little Brother, shoves Cody off something tall. Jokes on him, Cody thinks freefall is fun too.

Tia asked: So the people who didn’t exist yet got flung bodily back in time and Anakin did the mental time travel. Why did Obi-Wan not become Padawan Kenobi? (I mean “because I want it that way” is def a good enough answer I’m just wondering if there’s any reason.) - Which, well, it really was mostly "I want to" but here's two options, both of which come down to Blame Daughter and Father. 1. They figured a responsible adult Jedi Master was needed to convince people. 2. Nobody was supposed to get de-aged but Daughter figured they needed to make Anakin less liable to kill things for a few years. - Also IDK the Force God-Manifestations also took away any risk of rapid aging and early death from the clones because uhhhhhhhhhhh I said so

Rex and Ahsoka are fumbling their way through a relationship where ages are just really confusing and awkward, so they're keeping it to just kisses and cuddles for a bit.

Cody is so tired he doesn't even realize anyone's hitting on him until it's been three years of co-parenting with Shmi and his General. - Somehow Anakin knows Cody is in a relationship before Cody does. Cody has never been so embarrassed. - How did he manage to be less observant than Skywalker? -- it was sabotage; all his brain cells were taken up in managing said Skywalker -- Because Skywalker was up at three in the morning whacking a training droid with a stick so he didn't have the energy for Relationships

Also Shmi's come-ons are super subtle, while the General's are... well, Cody's gotten very used to ignoring anything ambiguous on that end because fraternization rules, and also because Obi-Wan flirts a lot with everyone. So.

Please imagine Cody and General Kenobi walking around with Anakin tucked into a toddler sling while they do whatever work they've ended up with at the Temple. - Yes, Cody is helping the Jedi figure out the best plan of attack to take down this slave ring because his grasp on tactics is phenomenal and he knows how to deploy people at greatest efficiency, but also he's got a nosy toddler on his hip who keeps offering his own insane-but-competent ideas. - General Kenobi ends up with a Council Seat just on account of, like, being the kind of person he is. As often as not, he's got Anakin tucked into his robes, chewing on the ear of a stuffed tooka or something.

IDK what Shmi's doing but apparently Legends had it that some of the administrative and support positions in the Temple were held by non-Jedi civilians? So probably something like that.

GENERAL KENOBI LECTURING PADAWAN MAUL WHILE ANAKIN'S BALANCED ON HIS HIP AND GLARING AT MAUL FOR STEALING HIS DAD

General Kenobi: Ahsoka's babysitting. Anakin: I'm her master, I don't need babysitting, this is-- General Kenobi: Fine, then you need supervision, so that you don't blow up a training salle again. Anakin: And you think Ahsoka would stop me? General Kenobi, eye twitching: Fine, I'm leaving you with Plo.

Even if he’s mentally an adult Anakin always needs supervision Look at canon! Anakin was left without supervision for like two days and he became a Sith

Quinlan gets distracted by how attractive General Kenobi is and tells Obi-Wan "dude, you're gonna be so hot once you can get rid of the stupid haircut" and Obi-Wan pushes him into the nearest pond.

They end up with this weird "Uncle Jango" situation (uncle to Anakin, via weird brotherhood-ish to Cody) because Rex and Cody are just like "Uhhhhhhhhh yeah okay" about him eventually, and Jango just like. Drops by. Trying to Earn Affection Of Blood Kin by bringing weird gifts for them and their (ugh) Jedi.

"Okay, Rex'ika, I stopped by Shili--" "What?" "--and apparently this is a delicacy there, so just... your girlfriend will like it." "She's not my girlfriend." "..." "Okay, I can't call her my girlfriend. Jedi have rules about that sort of thing, and--" "This will make your Jedi happy, probably. Just take it, kid."

Baby Anakin got his arm back but for some inexplicable reason still has The Eye Scar. He matches Buir.

[redrobin-detective]

Ok, I’ve tried and tried and tried to write this fic because I see it so clearly in my mind but it’s just not going no matter what I do. But I don’t want the idea to die with me. The closest this came to being written was exile which was an attempt to bleed out some of the energy of this au.

Anyway, so it starts off vaguely similar to canon only more aggressive. There had been underlying tension between ghosts and humans for a while, the dead jealous/angry at the living for disrespecting them. The successful creation of the Fenton ghost portal (and another halfa) was considered an act of war and so the ghosts responded in kind. So basically all of S1 occurs fairly close to canon except ghost attacks are more violent and have increasingly more consequences as time passes. Also the attacks aren’t just in Amity Park with ghosts becoming a worldwide issue but Amity is a focal point. Regular people know the ghosts hate them though they don’t know why. Phantom is very much a controversial figure as he is a ghost but also clearly is fighting off the more violent ghosts. 

One day, not long after the events of Control Freaks, Amity Park wakes up to find three of their own are gone. Danny Fenton, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley are nowhere to be found. There’s a massive manhunt, the parents go on TV and beg for information but they cannot be found. Curiously enough, town hero Phantom was also missing. There’s some evidence they left of their own volition so the Mansons and Foleys eventually relent that the kids fled on their own. The Fentons are 100% certain the kids were stolen/killed by ghosts as a statement. And the fact that Phantom went missing around the same time means he was the one who killed them. Jazz knows Danny was Phantom but had no idea what was going on and knew her parents wouldn’t listen she just, kept quiet and privately tried to piece together what happened. 

Three years pass and finally it looks like the Ecto War is coming to a close. Young, naive ghosts attempted to raise Pariah Dark in a bid to win. It went disastrously but Phantom (who was periodically spotted around the world, deep in the worst battles of the war) and group of loyal allies subdued the king. By the law of ghosts, Phantom was named heir apparent and he declared that the fighting would stop. Humans and ghosts would have to negotiate and co-exist in peace. But he’s not king yet, no he needs to be crowned at the place where it began, Amity Park’s Fenton portal (”where it all began” has a double meaning of the beginning of the war but also symbolically where Phantom began as Kings assume the crown where their living life ended to show their abandonment of their first life and the commitment to their second). Amity is NOT happy to hear that their former hero is coming home.

Amity has been through the wringer, ghost attacks got pretty bad. The Fenton’s throw themselves into their work to cancel out the grief, they create a group of ghost hunters nicknamed the Reds (for their red blood, ghosts are nicknamed Greens) to control the threat. Valerie heads the young adult division and is considered one of the best, she drops out of school to devote herself to it full time. Oh also her dad is now the Mayor as most have died or didn’t want the job. There are still people who like Phantom and see him as a hero (a lot of Casper Kids) but it’s generally an unpopular opinion in town. Maddie and Jack are ready to obliterate the ghost that took their son’s life the moment he’s within city limits. It’s a powder keg ready to blow. It all comes to a head when Phantom and his entourage arrive.

First off, Phantom looks very different, much less human looking than when he left. He’s clearly aged like a normal teen but his eyes look much, much older.  His skin is dead white with a blue tinge to it from his ice core and his aura is super cold. His hair is longer and is very misty that kind of swirls around him and his has fangs and claws. When he’s deep in battle or his obsession, his sclera turn black and he looks scary af. His entourage is ghosts who have sworn loyalty to him, who he picked up along the way after battling beside them for 3 years. Fright Knight, Skulker and Frostbite are recognizable allies. They are not happy that their future King is back in Amity (secretly fearing they’ll lose him once more to his human life). J&M have a shot and are going for the kill when they see something that shocks them; Sam and Tucker are in Phantom’s entourage.

There had been whispers that Phantom interacted with humans, that humans were in his inner circle but this is something else together. And so are Sam and Tucker. Sam is Phantom’s General, she is talented and collected and half feral. She used to be a pacifist but the trials of war and understanding that peace sometimes needs to be fought for made her compromise. She’s covered in scars and an extremely talented fighter. She’s missing her right hand up to her forearm, she can form a ‘phantom limb’ (basically borrowing ectoplasm from her future ghost) to do some things with some powers. Tucker is the support, he uses human and ghost tech to organize, weaponize and generally keep things running. He’s covered in homemade tech (shields and weapons and computers) and he rarely removes. Both he and Sam have kinda forgotten how to interact with and really BE human after so long among the dead. They had attempted to conceal themselves but they had forgotten how strong parental love and recognition is. J&M want to know about Danny, the teens don’t know how to respond but assure them he’s alive. Phantom can’t bring himself to look at them.

This is where I start to lose track of things but there will be parallels of Valerie/Maddie vs Sam as female warriors on opposite sides who are willing to go behind, possibly compromising the things important to them, for victory. Tucker will be contrasted against Jack/Jazz as the one making weapons but also generally keeping the human parts of the team mentally/physically afloat. *Severe* PTSD for all three of them. They’re also unnaturally codependent on each other, get super anxious when one of the trio is out of sight and sleep in a big cuddle pile. They will fucking Kill You if you look at one of them wrong. Vlad will be involved, he had been jailed for war crimes but convinced Walker to stage a coup to overthrow Danny and take the crown before he’s actually declared King and is too powerful. Vlad is more unhinged here, more ghost than human (a hint on what could happen to Danny if he’s not careful). He is eventually defeated but he sacrifices his life for ghost power which, in the end, is what makes him able to be beaten.

 There’s lots of ideas on what it means to be live or dead and where the divide really is, is it a heartbeat or it is how you choose to use your existence. On how duty shouldn’t mean you need to give up everything. Because Jack and Maddie believe that Phantom killed their son and, in a way, they’re right. Before they left, the ghost war had gotten so bad and the rumors of Dark being resurrected were going around. Amity attacks were at an all time high, people in their school were being killed just because Danny went there. He realized he had to choose between Fenton or Phantom and he chose to protect the world. He abandoned his human identity and went off to fight in war. Tried to convince Sam and Tucker to stay but they followed him through hell and back. Because Danny spends so much time as Phantom, Fenton is severely neglected. His long hair is cool and floaty as Phantom but is unkempt and stringy, hanging in his face as Fenton. He’s wan and underweight and looks like a walking corpse. He knows his human half will give out soon if he doesn’t give it more attention but he just can’t there’s too much to do, too many people to save.

It would end with Danny being outed to the town, not the world, just the town. Jack and Maddie need to recon with the fact that their boy DID leave of his own choice but only because their failure to protect him (from both the portal and ghosts) made him feel he had to take all this responsibility on his shoulders. Danny also has to recognize that he (and Sam/Tuck) can’t do all this on their own and they can trust and rely on the people around him. Phantom is crowned King but he decides Amity will be his base. The trio eat more, sleep some, catches up on school all the while continuing their duties as King and court. The ghosts also see that Phantom’s humanity isn’t a weakness but a strength and will bring peace to the Earth/Zone so they also take some of the burdens off his shoulder. 

Basically I load up heavily with angst at the beginning and end with all the love and comfort imaginable. I just can’t fucking figure out the middle and my motivation will not let me write this shit out. But I can’t let this AU die bc it fucking keeps me up at night.

[heyyyharry]

Happier

(inspired by happier by Olivia Rodrigo)

Word count: 2.4k

I'm selfish, I know, I can't let you go So find someone great, but don't find no one better I hope you're happy, but don't be happier

Part 1: Drivers License

Part 2: Deja Vu

A/N: I edited the original lyrics to match the POV :)

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Harry had come up with a thousand scenarios of how this day would play out. Actually, he’d been thinking of this day since the moment he’d received the news. He didn’t dare to hope that she’d say yes to coming back for a sequel. He’d been sure that they would write her character off, give a lame excuse for how his love interest could not make a return and make his character forget about her completely to move on with a new girl in town. It would have been great if it was that easy in real life. Once someone was written off the script, they were gone for good. Real-life relationships were not that simple. Goodbye didn’t mean ‘never see you again’. You would still share the same friend circle and social bubbles, and it was worse when you two worked in the same industry. Harry didn’t know how he’d lasted a year without running into her, not since the Grammys.

“Didn’t you two date?”

“No.” Harry shook his head, but his eyes stayed glued on Y/N from across the room. She wasn’t looking his way, too busy saying hello to everyone else. “No,” he repeated, more to himself than to his co-star. “We didn’t.”

“But she wrote an entire album about you,” said the other twin. What was her name again? Lulu?

“Luna!” cried her sister, Lex. “You can’t ask him that!”

“No, it’s okay,” Harry said with a tight smile, slightly annoyed by the blonde twins, but he didn’t want to seem like an ass on the first day of filming. “And I don’t know if it was for me. You should ask Y/N.”

“Ask me what?”

Harry flinched when he looked up and saw Y/N padding towards them. She hugged the twins, who seemed way too excited. Harry guessed they were Y/N’s fans. They gave off crazy fangirl vibes, probably just pretending not to know the drama to interrogate him. He couldn’t blame them for assuming he was the villain and definitely could not blame Y/N for portraying him as one. It was more important that he knew who he was and how much he had changed since his last relationship. Maybe they could finally be friends.

“Were they bothering you?” Y/N asked him once the twins had left.

Harry nodded. “They’re your friends?”

“Oh, I met them last year on tour. I’m surprised you don’t know them. They were on Disney.”

“I don’t watch Disney,” Harry admitted with a smile. “Well, not today’s Disney.”

“Understandable.” Y/N nodded and bit her lip. She seemed guarded with her straight back and hands hidden behind her. She eyed him up and down, quite subtle yet noticeable. “How have you been?”

“Pretty good,” he said, nodding slowly. “You?”

“Yeah, but mostly tired because of tour.”

“You’re done?”

“Yup, last night was the last show.”

“Nice.”

Y/N raised an eyebrow. “Nice?”

Harry blinked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No.” Y/N giggled. “You still sound very...you.”

“Well, shouldn’t I?”

“Yeah, you should. But it’s been a year so…I mean, you haven’t changed much.”

“Right,” he said lowly, his eyes falling to his feet. Harry supposed he should say something else, perhaps bringing up another random topic to discuss, but all he could think about was what had happened between them. Things had been messy, hadn’t they? How could they go back to before that? Before her first song about him. Before he’d chosen someone else over her.

Or he could talk about her new relationship. She’d been in a happy relationship for almost six months, right? No wait, hadn’t they broke up two weeks ago? He wasn’t sure because he hadn’t been catching up. If they’d broken up, he’d sound like an ass to even mention her ex’s name. He should just stay quiet.

“I’ll see you later?” she said, gesturing at her stylist who was waiting by the door.

Harry could ask her right now -- the reason she’d agreed to film the sequel to their first movie together. He’d heard from a very reliable source that she’d specifically asked her agent to decline any project that he was in. So did this mean they were good? That she didn’t hate him anymore? He could have gathered his courage and got the answer right then…

“Yeah, see you.”

...but he didn’t.

And so she gave him a smile and a little wave, then happily returned to her stylist.

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“See you tomorrow, Y/N!”

“See you, Annie!” Y/N said as she put the rest of her things into her tote bag. Her new driver had got her schedule mixed up, and so she had to wait here for another half an hour. She was in no rush. It had been a light first day, and she’d had a fun time getting to know the new cast members and catching up with old friends.

She sat on the sofa in the lobby, legs crossed, texting her best friend about her day. She’d purposely left out the short off-screen conversation with Harry, and her best friend didn’t even bother to ask. In their world, he didn’t exist, and his name was censored in every conversation like a curse word that was even worse than ‘cunt’. Nevertheless, she didn’t hate him anymore. She was doing just fine on her own, being busy with her career, and she’d been in a happy relationship after her fall out with him.

She and the guy, a model, had broken up two weeks ago due to long distance and some differences that they could not change. They had ended on good terms and decided to stay friends. They said you could only stay friends with your ex when you still had feelings for each other, or you had never loved each other that much in the first place. For her, it was probably the latter. Her previous relationship had been more platonic than romantic, apparently. So she had nothing but the best to say about him.

As she was going through her camera roll, just reminiscing about the past, she heard footsteps approaching and looked up to find Harry. He offered a smile and gestured to the spot beside her on the sofa. “May I sit here? My ride is late.”

“Yeah, sure.” She hurriedly scooted over.

“Good job today,” he said. “You were great.”

“Thanks, so were you.” She smiled, and they both looked away at the same time. This was so awkward. She hated small talk. She’d never had to have small talk with Harry. Conversations with him used to be so easy and natural and silly. Whatever this was, it wasn’t them.

“Can we just be normal?”

At first, Y/N thought she’d been the one who’d said it, so when she realised it’d been Harry, she was speechless.

He swallowed and sat a bit straighter, still not looking at her. “I don’t want us to be weird and awkward.”

“Okay,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Wanna try again?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, not to sound like an ass but when Joey kept forgetting his lines, I was so pissed off, I could throw a chair at the wall.”

“Right?!” exclaimed Y/N, feeling free to have finally broken out of her shell. “Like, he doesn’t even have many lines. I know he’s new but damn...you can’t get far if you don’t learn your goddamn lines.”

Harry shook with laughter. “Oh God, we sound like dicks, don’t we?”

“Maybe.” Y/N laughed, covering her mouth. “But you know what? We can’t be nice in this industry. It’s impossible.”

“Shhh, if someone heard this, we would be into big trouble.”

“Oh please, I’ve had worse articles written about me than ‘Y/N speaks facts about her lazy co-star’.”

Harry tossed his head back and cackled. “The worst one I’ve got this week was ‘Harry Styles hates therapists.’”

“What?!” Y/N gasped. “No way! That’s so stupid!”

“Right?” Harry rolled his eyes. “I could get all my therapists to speak up for me but I’m kinda immune to bullshit now.”

“Therapists? Like plural?”

“Yeah, one in every city.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

Y/N rubbed her hands onto her legs. “Rough year?”

Harry’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as he leaned back. “You have no idea.” Then he swept his hair out of his eyes, sucked in a breath, and finally looked at her. “I wish I could have talked to you, though.”

She bit her tongue, knowing what she was about to say next would disappoint her best friend so much, but she had to. “So do I.”

Harry looked taken aback before his lips curled into a smile. “It’s silly, isn’t it? I haven’t talked to you in a year, and I feel like I know everything that’s happened to you except that I don’t.”

What he’d just said might make no sense for most people, but Y/N knew exactly what he meant. She nodded and wetted her lip. “You only know as much as everyone else does.”

“Yeah, I got updates on you from the news and our friends.”

“Same.” Y/N smiled back. “I hate how they write articles about your new haircut but not mine.”

“I like your new hair colour.”

“Thanks. I like your new car.”

Then they both burst out laughing. It was fun and also a little bit strange that Y/N didn’t feel the same anxiety talking to him as she used to. It must be because they had grown and were now meeting again as better people.

“Damn, my ride's here,” Y/N said as she read the text from her driver. “I gotta go now.”

“Oh, okay.” Harry stood up and followed Y/N to the entrance. “Hey, just wondering--”

“Yeah?”

“Am I...am I still blocked?” He looked a bit flustered as she tilted her head and squinted her eyes. “On your phone. Because I remember you having my number blocked--”

“I unblocked you on your birthday.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.” Y/N shrugged. “I should’ve sent you a happy birthday text but...I didn’t want your girlfriend to get the wrong ideas.”

“My ex.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They smiled at each other one last time before saying goodbye. Y/N knew it was silly, but she was hoping he would go after her.

Ding.

A notification popped up when she was in the car. She was almost home, and it was from Harry’s number. He’d sent her a link with a message that said, “Hope you like it :)”.

Curious, she tapped on it and was directed to an audio file titled ‘Track 5’. The upload date was last year. About two weeks after their short conversation at the Grammys.

Hurriedly, she fumbled inside her bag for her iPods and put it on before she pressed play.

“Hey, Jeff, I couldn’t sleep so I wrote this song. Listen and let me know if it should go on the album.”

Then came the piano intro. It sounded good, so Y/N wondered how it hadn’t ended up on his last album.

But when he started to sing...

We ended a while ago Your friends are mine, you know, I know You've moved on, found someone new One more guy who brings out the better in you

And I thought my heart was detached From all the sunlight of our past But he’s so nice, he’s so funny Does he mean you forgot about me?

Oh, I hope you're happy But not like how you were with me I'm selfish, I know, I can't let you go So find someone great, but don't find no one better I hope you're happy, but don't be happier

And does he tell you you’re the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen? An eternal love bullshit he might not even mean Remember when you were with me I meant it when you heard it first from me

And now I'm pickin' him apart Like cuttin' him down will make you miss my wretched heart But he’s charming, he looks kind He probably gives you butterflies

I hope you're happy But not like how you were with me I'm selfish, I know, I can't let you go So find someone great, but don't find no one better

I hope you're happy I wish you all the best, really Say you love him, baby Just not like you loved me And think of me fondly when your hands are on him I hope you're happy, but don't be happier

The song was for her. He’d written it when her new relationship had gone public. Y/N sat there, staring blankly ahead until the honking of a car tore open her inner peace, and reality came crashing back in. The driver dropped her off at her house. Instead of going inside, she stood on her front steps and replayed the song one more time. When it ended, she decided to text him: Why didn’t this make it to the album?

She didn’t know where he was now, but it showed ‘typing’ in less than a second, as if he’d been waiting in their chat since he’d sent that link.

You would’ve hated me, Y/N.

True, she replied. Still, I would’ve loved the song lowkey. And added, I love it btw.

He took so long to type that it was driving her crazy. She flopped down on the concrete stair with her phone clutched in her hands, her heart thundering against her ribcage. Anxiety popped like a balloon when his message appeared: Were you happier?

She reread it again and again.

No.

I wasn’t either, he responded. I kept getting deja vu.

Ha, nice reference.

That song is my guilty pleasure. Love listening to you roasting me on loop.

That last message made Y/N bury her face into her palm and giggle like a fool. She thought for a second and wrote: I could come roast you in person now if that’s what you prefer. I think we’ve never had a proper roasting.

Can we meet, Y/N? Or are you busy now?

No, not busy.

Great, I’ll pick you up.

Just tell me where, she responded with a smile on her face. I got my drivers license now :)

[the-other-art-blog]

Hawkeye season finale!!!! SPOILERS

By now I have come to terms with the fact that no matter how much content Marvel gives me of Clint (and Laura), it will never be enough. I just love him too much.

I was satisfied with Wandavision, FATWS and Loki, cause I knew we’re gonna seen them again. But I’m not sure about Clint. Kate, Yelena, Maya, they will come back for sure. However, unless we get a season 2 or some series I don’t see Clint popping up in another project, and even less Laura.

That being said, I pray we get a season 2 announcement. I was hoping to see it at the end of the credits, but nothing. I think a lot of people would love to see them again, even if it’s not as the lead characters. Could they be training the next generation???

I’m gonna be reading as much fanfic content as possible this holidays. Maybe someone will write a coworkers-to-lovers story for ClintxLaura??? I know there are some of them, but it doesn’t hurt to have more.

You know, sometimes dying is the best thing it could happen to someone, at least to save their reputation. Kate’s father died and it made him a saint in her eyes. I know, I KNOW, Eleanor killed Armand, framed Jack and sent Yelena to kill Clint. HOWEVER, it was her husband who got her into that mess. He’s the one who acquired debt from Kingpin. Maybe he was also a shady guy, or maybe he just made horrible decisions and trusted the wrong people.

Clint making his own arrows!!!! YES! YES!!!!!!! Hell yes!!!!!

I love that. Ever since I saw it in the trailers, I was so happy. Clint Barton is so smart and I’m so fucking tired of people thinking of him as a stupid person. In Fury’s words, he’s one of “the sharpest men” he knows.

Also, I love that both Stark and Scott gave him tech. I don’t know how aware of that is Hank Pym, though.

Love Kate labeling the arrows.

Jack vs Armand VII

Eleanor’s dress!

Jack, sweetheart, finally some action from the Swordsman. I still don’t like they didn’t make him Clint’s mentor at the circus. But maybe he can mentor Kate now? I’d allow it.

Yelena and the mother of all braids!!!!

She looked so beautiful and badass.

As someone who loves wearing braids, I need a tutorial for that one!

The whole elevator scene was so funny.

It’s ok if you punch her or try to kill her. But don’t slap Yelena, that’s just too aggressive!

Clint stuck on a tree.

So many bros!!! They just kept coming!

Kate and that bro guy!!!

Clint did the trick with the wood arrow!!!!! I wish we would have gotten Kate’s reaction.

So the owl eat those bros, right? This show is dark.

Scott mention! I can’t believe we never got a bonding scene between Clint and Scott. They would have been bffs, talking about their kids and all. But I think this establishes that they are good friends, not just co workers.

Clint vs Yelena

I feel like Clint spent more time pulling his punches in the MCU than proving how good of a fighter he is. That’s also why it was cool to see him as Ronin. He is effective and deadly when he wants to.

But of course he wasn’t gonna really fight Yelena.

The WHISTLE!!!!!!!!

“You had so much time with her”

It was Nat’s choice!!!

Clint honestly considering Kate his partner!

He made it to Christmas morning!

Clint and Laura!

Agent 19!!! She’s Mockingbird! I think they didn’t want to have AOS fans hating on the show so they only teased it. Bobbi Morse could still exist. I like the theory that Mockingbird is like SHIELD’s Black Widow code. Like an elite female agent.

That last shot and conversation was perfect!

I think I’m in the minority here, but I loved the musical!!!!! It’s so bad that it becomes good. Its ridiculousness makes it good.

Now, there was something pretty disappointing and that was Kingpin. I don’t remember almost anything from Daredevil season 2. But they kept teasing this incredibly dangerous guy. Clint and Laura were genuinely afraid of him.

Yet, an amateur superhero like Kate defeated him in 2 minutes! Plus, he should have died. Kate shot an arrow at his chest, then the explosion! And it’s obvious he’s still alive.

We also never really learned why he was so interested in the watch. What did Laura did that he wanted to know who she was? Clint didn’t even saw him. It was disappointing. Fanfic writers, I’m counting on you.

Also, where is Clint’s backstory?!?!!? I would have really loved to see flashbacks about his difficult childhood and how he overcame that, became a good man, husband and father. It would have given so much more meaning to why he wanted to go back to his family.

Clint is a guy who could have became like his father, he could have continued the cycle of violence, but he didn’t. He also could have been alone, or never married at least. That’s what usually happen in this cases in series and movies. Instead, he became the best husband and dad ever, and a person who is always giving second chances. He’s a tough guy for sure, but he’s also so incredibly loving and caring. And that’s rare.

[martianbugsbunny]

OUAT Thoughts Pt.20--Episodes 20-21

I have watched through S2E21; spoilers DNI. Also, spoiler warning for anyone further behind than I am.

—Nailed it! Lo and behold, there is drama about the beans.

—Snow White telling a random stranger *wink wink* about how Regina saved her as a kid is terribly sad. I despise Regina for making that lovely woman so unhappy.

—Has Snow been vibing with Robin Hood? I hope we get to see some of that eventually. Maybe Marion and Snow were friends.

—The Maleficent beast is disgusting. I hate it *truly hateful* *horrified* *screaming in the corner*

—The teardrop potion! Gosh that’s freaky.

—Wendy is a fink. She promised Bae she wouldn’t open the window, and then what did she do? SHE OPENED THE FRICKIN WINDOW!

—This is possibly the most appropriate level of malevolence ever attributed to Peter Pan. He’s creepy. He steals children. He uses them as child soldiers to fight pirates. Also, I’m pretty sure he kills Lost Boys every now and then (but don’t quote me on that one, because I don’t know if it’s from the source material or from an adaptation). Either way, Peter Pan is one of the most disturbing mothertruckers to ever exist in a fairy tale.

—Lol they put an army hat on the dog :)

—I hate both Tamara and Owen. I’m supposed to; I’m supposed to see them as fanatics, and I do. They must be among the most boring, soulless people walking the planet, because for many of us the idea of magic is a beautiful thing. Now, granted, I don’t know what I would actually do with a world of magic, but it’s not like humans never do evil things with the world as it is. Magic is the escapist fantasy of many. It’s an idea that brings a spark of otherworldly joy into our lives. Magical or fantasy worlds have brought me a lot of comfort and inspiration over the years. I can’t even comprehend despising the idea of magic so much that I would be willing to snuff out every single piece of it that showed up.

—Also, that’s another thing. Keeping magic out of our world at the gate would be one thing. Wiping it out when it already exists is a different one entirely. Especially considering this means killing a whole town’s worth of people. No matter your opinion on magic, what Tamara and Owen are doing just isn’t right.

—Lacey is so trashy. She disgusts me.

—But I think I understand now why Mr. Gold is with her. He can’t have Belle, but he can have the woman who looks exactly like her. And, I’d like to believe, he’s still holding out a tiny bit of hope that she could be Belle again someday. His turn back to darkness is both displaced anger about his situation with Belle/Lacey, and the fact that this is the last guy who needs an enabler. Darkness is frankly easier, and Mr. Gold is still afraid of the hard work it would take to be a good person again. He does alright when he has loved ones to keep him on the right track (although he still has the occasional slip-up) but with an enabler, with someone who actively encourages him to be his worst self, of course he’s not going to choose good. Not to mention, he’s so desperate for any remnant of Belle, he wouldn’t risk losing Lacey by trying to be good, even if he wanted to.

—I’m also pretty sure Rumbelle can’t be endgame at this point. Even if Belle does get her memories back, she’s going to be appalled with herself and disappointed in Mr. Gold. Or maybe, just maybe, her getting memories back will involved Mr. Gold doing something genuinely heroic, and that would make them a bit more plausible as a couple. Either way, they’re gonna have a lot of work to do.

—On the bright side, this lil romantic misadventure has given me proof that Mr. Gold is factually the kind of man to help his lady put a necklace on. That is quality boyfriending right there.

—I refuse to believe that Bae is dead. It just can’t go down like that.

—At least he and Emma finally got honest about their feelings. It took them bloody long enough.

—Emma still isn’t being honest with Henry though. I get that it’s a complicated situation, but she promised him a couple of episodes that she wasn’t going to keep him in the dark anymore, and now she’s trying to do exactly that.

—Charming is being a great father/husband right now. He’s there for Emma in her heartbreak, and he’s there to support Snow in her troubles with/about Regina.

—I think I may have to apply the rule of “hoes mad” to anyone who’s still acting like what Snow did was cold-blooded murder. Looking at you, Regina. Cora was ready to kill Emma, Charming, Mr. Gold, Snow, or Bae. Several of those people had swords pointed directly at Cora at varying times. It was a very twisted form of self-defense.

—I appreciate how hard Snow is trying to fix her heart. Maybe saving Regina will help…but then where would the drama be?

—Regina is getting worse. Trying to kill everyone and abduct Henry to the fairytale world is intense even for her. Although, maybe she’ll do better now. At the end of episode 21, she seemed a little more tame.

—You know what, I don’t think it would even surprise me if Lacey stabbed Mr. Gold with the *magic dagger*. And now I get to panic about that for a while. YAY!

[itsclydebitches]

I am briefly pausing my normal RWBY content to talk about something completely different: Kang Soo-Jin. 

I binged True Beauty recently. As in, “I haven’t managed to watch anything new in half a year, discovered this drama, and promptly marathoned 14+ hours of content,” so to say I’m enjoying it is an understatement. I might do another post sometime about why I think the show works so well, but for now, like many (drama only) viewers, I’m specifically grappling with Soo-Jin’s descent into antagonist territory. At first I was just as shocked and disappointed as others seem to be, but upon reflection I don’t think this is badly written in the way many fans are claiming. To frame this as, “I can’t believe they would make wonderful Soo-Jin suddenly OOC and bully Ju-Kyung over a guy!” is ignoring core parts of her character. I’m as sick of the girl-hates-girl-over-guy plotline as the next viewer, but in the interest of acknowledging that there are exceptions to every rule, I think this is one of the times where that choice makes perfect sense. 

Soo-Jin has been abused throughout her life and I’m not simply talking about the fact that her father hits her. Though that’s obviously horrific, what I think is more pertinent to this conversation is the intense competitiveness her parents have instilled in her. The physical abuse comes about because Soo-Jin fails (in their eyes) to be the best, which is where Ju-Kyung comes in. The Soo-Jin we knew in earlier episodes wasn’t faking. She isn’t an inherently evil person who was just waiting for the right time to show her true colors. Rather, at the start of the story Ju-Kyung—crucially—was not in competition with Soo-Jin. Or rather, Soo-Jin did not perceive her as competition. She’s after the best grades in the school and Ju-Kyung is notoriously at the bottom of the class. All she has going for her are her (new) looks and her easy-going personality that makes her popular, two things that Soo-Jin isn’t interested in. Even if she were, those things already come naturally to her too. She’s already friends with Soo-A and, as is commented on multiple times, naturally beautiful without any makeup on. Soo-Jin has been taught—literally had it beaten into her—that she must be the best and in the beginning of the show she pretty much is: popular, mature, confident, smart… just not the smartest in her class. Ju-Kyung doesn’t threaten any of that, so friendship initially comes easily for Soo-Jin, the sort of friendship that allows her to chase perverts off busses or hide her friend’s real face. 

This changes once Soo-Jin’s “perfect” mask begins to slip. They’re heading towards college, she’s running out of time, and she still hasn’t managed to take the top spot in the class. Worse, she drops out of the top ten. This exacerbates the abuse to the point where, as we see, she’s constantly in the bathroom trying to cope by washing her hands. Any tiny deviation from that “perfection”  — like, say, leaving your tutoring session when you realize your lifelong friend just got devastating news — results in the sort of yelling/physical abuse she can only escape from via a locked door. While things get worse on her end, they get better on Ju-Jyung’s. Her grades go up some and she becomes even more popular, attracting not only school-wide attention, but the attention of the two hottest guys too, including Soo-Ho. For a while this is still fine from Soo-Jin’s perspective, but things really take a turn when Ju-Kyung changes Soo-Ho. Meaning, she helps him come out of his shell and teaches him how to be a kinder person… which includes being a better friend to Soo-Jin. The Soo-Ho who suddenly lies and announces that they have to go study just to get Soo-Jin away from her father’s insults, all of it stemming from a small tick he paid attention to, or comforting her while she sobs over the abuse… that Soo-Ho didn’t exist at the story’s start. He was too wrapped up in his own grief and has been that way for a long time. They may have known each other since childhood, but Soo-Jin and Soo-Ho don’t appear to be particularly close in the past—all Soo-Ho’s flashbacks are with Seo-Joon and Se-Yeon. But that starts to change once Soo-Ho himself changes. Soo-Jin’s ability to keep it together is unraveling, Soo-Ho is opening up and becoming more emotionally available (something Soo-Jin even comments on), then her whole class starts eagerly talking up how good they would be as a couple… so Soo-Jin sees a lifeline. Soo-Ho will care for her even when no one else will. Of course he will. She’s already seen him be that person multiple times. 

The problem is that Soo-Ho has his own life and his own problems to grapple with. Between grief over See-Yeon, panic over telling Ju-Kyung how he feels, and the initial rush of dating—what couple doesn’t want to spend all their time together at the start?—he doesn’t have much energy for Soo-Jin. Which from his perspective is fine. They don’t normally hang out together outside of study groups, so yeah, he can put off a conversation with her… not realizing that Soo-Jin is now putting all her emotional eggs in his basket. By the time her feelings are coming to light, Soo-Jin is actively sabotaging her own attempts to get attention and compassion from Soo-Jin. By manipulating them—here’s a new scrunchy to remind you that you’re my best friend and you can’t ever betray me, here I am showing up unannounced at your apartment and guilting you into not spending more time with me, etc.—Soo-Jin has put Soo-Ho (rightfully) on his guard. He’s wary of having a private conversation with her about something she won’t name when he knows Ju-Kyung has been a mess over losing her friendship. He has no desire to listen to her confession of love after she’s just tossed Ju-Kyung’s beloved necklace into the fire. In her efforts to ensure that Soo-Ho pays attention to her, she only succeeds in driving him away. 

All of which makes Ju-Kyung the enemy in her eyes. The new competition. To her mind, friendship and love cannot co-exist because Ju-Kyung stands in the way of that love, therefore one has got to go. (In contrast Seo-Joon, coming from a loving family, is in time better able to accept that he can be friends with Soo-Ho even though he likes Ju-Kyung. We can discuss the problems inherent in giving one plot to the girl and the other to the guy, but as they are, these characters have concrete, in-world reasons for their different reactions to what’s essentially the same situation.) And why does love (“love”) win out over friendship? Because Soo-Jin has latched onto Soo-Ho being her boyfriend as the way to finally “win” at life and fix all her problems. It’s fine if she’s not the best provided she’s dating the best, just look at how much Dad fawned over him. Second place academically is suddenly an option provided the top student is on her team, so to speak. The fact that Soo-Ho is also one of the most handsome, a great athlete, super rich, and one of the few people to provide her with feelings of safety certainly doesn’t hurt matters. And the only thing that stands in her way of securing this life-saving “win” is Ju-Kyung. Who is she? No one compared to Soo-Jin. Her grades are terrible. She’s not wealthy. She’s pretty… but oh, only with her makeup on. 

Soo-Jin doesn’t need makeup, so why not win this competition by showing the whole school—showing Soo-Ho—what a fraud Ju-Kyung is? 

From Soo-Jin’s perspective she’s done the math and come out on top. Everything that (supposedly) matters she either has equal to Ju-Kyung, or is superior, therefore it’s obvious that Soo-Ho would choose her in the end. She says at much: If I had confessed first you would have loved me first, so now that I have confessed you’ll break up with her. Hell, even Ju-Kyung believes this. She has the nightmare about Soo-Ho learning that Soo-Jin has feelings for him and immediately, publicly breaking up with her. After all, if he suddenly has both as an option the winner is obvious, right? It’s all about competition, what they’ve been taught to believe is a competition: Ju-Kyung through her bullying and Soo-Jin through her abuse. The difference is that Ju-Kyung has had the whole series with Soo-Ho (and others) helping her slowly unlearn this mentality. Soo-Jin had the rug pulled out from under her in an instant. 

Soo-Ho says no, I wouldn’t have loved you if you had confessed first and I’m not going to date you now. It’s important to realize that this shatters Soo-Jin’s entire world. It’s not about a girl being upset that she can’t get the guy — not even about Soo-Ho as an individual, really —  it’s about an abused girl not knowing how to grapple with the fact that she finally did everything “right” and still couldn’t “win,” coupled with losing the last bit of security she had. Soo-Ho broke the unspoken rules Soo-Jin’s father beat into her and she doesn’t know where to go from there. She literally has no one else to turn to. So she falls back on the only way she does know how to handle a situation like this: by still trying to win. If Soo-Ho won’t admit that she’s better, she’ll force him to realize that by plastering Ju-Kyung’s “ugly” face all over social media. Which, to be clear, isn’t an excuse. This isn’t meant to be a way of absolving Soo-Jin of her absolutely horrific actions, only a means of explaining them. Her descent, while shocking to those of us who loved her initial character, is well written because it’s a nuanced look at what can happen when you abuse a kid her whole life and teach her that competition is everything. Oddly enough, she’ll apply a competitive outlook to everything and deal with her stress in unhealthy ways. Ju-Kyung is a victim of Soo-Jin now, but Soo-Jin is a victim too. Her home life has ensured that she does not know how to accept failure—or what true failure even means—so it was inevitable that when things got bad, she’d  try to fix it in ways that hurt both her and those around her. It’s all she knows how to do. 

So far less “Perfect girl goes ooc and abandons her friend over a boy” and far more “Abused girl falls into a terrible, but predictable cycle that the other stressed high schoolers around her are not equipped to break.” Soo-Jin’s story isn’t bad writing, it’s tragic. Thanks for coming to my three page TED talk ✌️

***

2/4/21 FINALE UPDATE! 

[impalementation]

spike, angel, buffy & romanticism: part 1

I said a long ways back that I thought the switch from Angel to Spike as Buffy’s primary love interest represented an interesting evolution in the show’s attitude towards—and interrogation of—romanticism, and I finally felt like expanding on what I meant by that. This is very long, very meandering, and not terribly academic or well-edited, but I hope there’s something of interest in it nonetheless. It is about 20,000 words in total, and will discuss, in more or less chronological order, the arc of the show’s attitude towards romanticism as it is embodied in Spike, Angel, Buffy and Buffy’s relationships with both of them. I was going to release it as one long post, but because it’s so long, I figured a series of posts might be more readable. Here’s the first one.

* 

“When you kiss me I want to die”: Angel and the high school seasons

Both Spike and Angel are at once capital-R Romantic figures, and lower-case romantic interests, and in both cases that Romantic/romantic duality is what makes them such effective avatars for ideas around romanticism. In the case of Angel, the show is aware from the beginning that he is very much a Romantic idea of something. In “Welcome to the Hellmouth” Buffy describes him as “dark” and “gorgeous”, evoking the “tall, dark and handsome” cliche. He’s mysterious. He gives her a necklace and his coat, gestures out of high school romance fiction.* In “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” Giles lampshades the romance of him: “A vampire in love with a Slayer. It’s rather poetic, in a maudlin sort of way.” Initially, Angel is basically designed to be a teenage girl fantasy, and it’s no coincidence that his successors like Edward Cullen or Stefan Salvatore conform to similar tropes.

*(Think of how five seasons later, a vampire will give Dawn his letterman jacket in “All the Way”. It’s hard not to read as a deliberate echo of Angel’s gift in season one. Once again, a vampire makes romantic gestures towards a high school version of “Buffy”, and later turns on her. But more on this much later in the series.)

The difference between Angel and those other, more typical Supernatural Romance love interests however, is that the show ultimately attempts to subvert the romance of him. As part of its commentary on Gothic themes, season two makes Angel more Romantic than ever (the Claddagh, the tormented past), and makes the romance between him and Buffy central to the story in a way it wasn’t in season one. And then, of course, the season tears it all apart. The first time we learn what Angel did to Drusilla it’s horrifying, but still somehow abstract. Something that seems more like it’s meant to contribute to Angel’s dangerous, Byronic image. As in, something to make him more Romantic. And then suddenly it becomes real. Suddenly, it’s something that Angel could do to Buffy, or the people Buffy cares about. It turns out that his darkly romantic aura was not just an aura, but genuinely dark all along.

In turn, Angel’s devastating transformation is a metaphor for broader disillusionment about romantic ideas. It’s less to me about a “guy going bad after sex”, and more about what it means and feels like to have the scales fall from one’s eyes in that sort of situation. As Buffy copes with the fallout of Angel’s transformation, and later is forced to kill him, I see it as being about the tragedy of having to see the world in ways that are less simple, easy, or pretty as one gets older. As Buffy and Giles say in “Lie To Me”:

BUFFY: Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate. Who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get. 

GILES: I believe that's called growing up. 

For more on this, I recommend this livejournal post on “Lie To Me”, which goes into great depth on the way season two frames stories as pretty lies that one needs to look beneath, and how Buffy’s romanticization of Angel symbolizes that.

The whole arc of the season is Buffy’s failure to see the danger presented by Angel. In this opening scene that danger is foreshadowed. More to the point for this essay, Angel goes on to lie to Buffy about having encountered Drusilla. He doesn’t want Buffy to know about the nature of Angelus – which means that his first inclination is to mask the danger he presents to Buffy. This is one episode after Halloween, where Buffy’s romantic fantasies about what Angel wants (a damsel) nearly get her killed. Nor is she completely over those fantasies, as she notes that the mystery woman talking to Angel had a pretty old-fashioned dress. So against the backdrop of Buffy’s fantasies about her dark and mysterious boyfriend we have the truth about what he is, which is quite horrifying.

Season three then takes this to another level, by not just pointing out the darkness of the romance of Angel, but in fact puncturing his romantic image. Instead of emphasizing his dangerousness, as season two did, season three emphasizes his adulthood. It emphasizes the way that Angel is someone Buffy sees in secret, or away from her friends. He’s not integrated with her teenage, high school life, and doesn’t fit with the peppy, high school movie aesthetic that characterizes a lot of season three. By doing this, the writing indicates that at this point in their lives, Buffy and Angel are ultimately incompatible and holding each other back. Regardless of however much they might care for each other, Angel can’t fully appreciate her teenage longings like dances, and college, and having a boyfriend. And Buffy can’t fully appreciate his adult need to find himself on his own terms. By the end of season three, Angel is less of a shadowy, tragic figure, and more just an adult man who needs to finally grow up a bit.

Season three also starts making jokes where the punchline is that Angel isn’t living up to the romantic aesthetic he embodied in seasons one and two. In “Helpless”, for example, he and Buffy have an exchange where he waxes sincerely about wanting to “keep [her heart] safe, to warm it with [his own]” and although Buffy says the sentiment is beautiful, a second later she deadpans: “Or taken literally, incredibly gross.” To which Angel replies, “I was just thinking that, too.” Or in “Graduation Day, Part 1”, Angel trips on a doorway instead of making a silent entrance and Buffy again deadpans: “Stealthy.” Angel’s romance slips at moments when Buffy herself is feeling weak, either because she has lost her Slayer powers, or she’s investigating the scene of her sister Slayer’s crime. Her Romantic Slayer half is betraying her, and her romantic girlish half is feeling insecure. This is echoed by the reminder that Angel is no longer a straightforward fantasy man--or a terrifying, larger-than-life villain--but a guy who is sometimes both verbally and physically inelegant. 

(Notice how one of the few times season two makes similar jokes about Angel it’s in “Lie to Me”, the very same episode that begins to peel off the layers of deceptions and unknowns about him. Angel slumps around Willow’s bedroom and jokes about “honing [his] brooding skills”, he insists that the vampire wannabes know nothing about vampires right before a guy walks by wearing his exact outfit, and Xander runs color commentary, saying “you’re not wrong” after each of Ford’s observations. In “Lie to Me” one of Angel’s hidden faces is his dangerousness, yes. But another hidden face is simply his human awkwardness.)

There’s an interesting Slayage piece by Elizabeth Gilliland that discusses the idea of Angel as a Gothic double for Buffy, specifically connecting him to the story of Jekyll and Hyde. It argues that Angel’s split identities represent Buffy’s fears that her human and Slayer halves are irreconcilable, and she cannot fully control either half. In season three, the fact that Buffy and Angel must continuously resist a loss of control with each other, and are treated as romantically incompatible, reflects this fear. 

In Season Three, replete with various factors in Buffy’s life that threaten to put her role as Slayer and girl into imbalance once more [...] Angel once again returns [...]. The season culminates in an attempted attack on Buffy’s classmates during graduation, which essentially forces her to “out” herself to her community and combine her roles as Slayer and daughter, classmate, and friend for the first time publicly (“Graduation Day: Part 2” 3.22). The worst has happened: her secret has been revealed, the entire school knows about both of her personas, and she has not only survived, but emerged with a stronger sense of self [...] Buffy has conquered her first Gothic fear, and proven to herself that she can not only exercise control over both dualities of her persona, but allow them to peacefully co-exist. Thus, Angel’s continuing struggle with Angelus can no longer act as her shadow, and he literally and metaphorically leaves her to continue the rest of her journey.

It’s an interpretation I mostly agree with, and see a lot of evidence for. But in keeping with the focus of this series, I think you could also read Angel as embodying a duality between the romantic and the unromantic. In this view, Buffy’s struggle between her human and her Slayer halves is not just a struggle between personas, but a struggle to see the world correctly. In season one, it’s not Angel that revives Buffy in “Prophecy Girl”, because Angel is a vampire trope just like the Master. He cannot help her, because he is exactly the kind of traditional romantic concept--like a candle-lit cavern, an ancient Nosferatu-looking vampire, or a Chosen Hero duty--that Buffy is trying to escape. In season two, loss of control is specifically associated with passion, romance, and romanticism. Buffy’s human half longs for the romantic, but her Slayer half, and Angel’s vampire half, prove that sometimes the romantic is something dangerous and violent. The fact that Buffy’s Slayer identity and Angel’s Angelus identity both end up being outed by the end of the season (especially to Joyce, a figure of Buffy’s human home life), echoes Buffy’s loss of innocence. Season three then continues this suspicion of passion. Buffy fears that like Faith, enjoying the violence and power and desire of being a Slayer, means that she will go down a dark path. She also fears that indulging in her sexual and romantic desire for Angel will unleash Angelus. To some extent, these fears are even borne out, given that her love for Angel results in her attempted murder of Faith, and near death at Angel’s hands. But to some extent they also aren’t, given that she, Faith and Angel all live. 

To me, what really gets resolved at the end of season three is not quite the issue of Buffy’s human and Slayer halves, given that Buffy will continue to struggle with that duality until the end of the show. Rather, what gets resolved is the need for binaries. Binaries are romantic things. When Giles gives his speech to Buffy at the end of “Lie To Me”, it is the language of binaries that he uses:

GILES: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after. 

BUFFY: Liar.

In season three, Buffy thinks she must resist both Faith and Angel. She thinks she can only be either a human girl or a Slayer leader. Many plots in season three have to do with the danger of binaries, whether that’s the witch-hunting parents in “Gingerbread”, Willow dealing with her vampire self in “Doppelgangland”, the various alter-egos in “Beauty and the Beasts”, or Cordy choosing a Buffy-less world in “The Wish”. And no character in the Buffyverse embodies the concept of binaries so starkly as Angel does. Thus by the end of season three, Buffy collapses the binaries within herself by merging the human and Slayer parts of her life, as Gilliland observes, and taking on Faith’s traits. She acknowledges her shadow by kissing her tenderly on the forehead, and bids farewell to the illusions and binaries that Angel embodies. Buffy is leaving that part of her life behind, and starting a new chapter where she can no longer split either the world, or herself, into any one thing or another.

part 2: “Love isn’t brains, children”: Enter Spike as the id