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greensagephase · 7 months

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Hi!!!

So, following with the student/ teacher dynamic between Pav and Miguel headcanons I have...

ATSV Miguel curses in Spanish on a regular basis, right? Well, Pav likes how the words sound. He knows he isn't supposed to say them and he has a slight idea of what they mean (Lyla refused to explain it to him on detail) and on extremely rare occasions he slips and curses under his breath. The first time it happened everyone was speechless. Miguel tried to brush it off, but it took him completely by surprise too. He froze for a moment before trying to act as if it didn't bother him. It isn't that Pav was being rude or anything, he just finds the sound of them funny and hearing them over and over again... they stuck with him. Miguel knows Pav isn't an innocent five years old, but he still finds it odd when that happens, mostly because he knows Pav is mimicking him (Hobie finds it amusing and encourages it, specially if it is in Miguel's presence)

I believe Pav is a genius in history, an actual genius. He is an expert on the subject. Whenever Miguel and him are on a mission in his universe, he starts telling him all this facts and historical relevance of whatever place they're in. If they go near a statue or an important building, he just starts talking about it. Miguel didn't ask but he doesn't mind it as long as Pav keeps his focus on the mission. He just infodumps Miguel and Miguel already accepted this as both a curse and blessing. The thing is, Pav doesn't consider himself a genius, he just really likes history. He isn't aware that the amount of knowledge he has is impressive. It gets to the point that even Miguel is starting to doubt his own knowledge of history when Pav talks about different perspectives on certain historical event like colonization or the americanization of cultures ever since globalization became a thing (I don't know if that's the actual term, but I think you know what I mean) He just talks about so casually and he explains it so easily as if it is the most normal thing ever. It gets to the point that Miguel finds himself actually listenting instead of thinking about the mission. He wonders what Pav woukd think of his dimension. Miguel thought at first that he was just repeating whatever Hobie says, but no, Pav is the closest thing you get to an encyclopedia, specially if it's about his own culture. He has a deep understanding on the subject, but unlike Hobie, it isn't something he makes known (That's also a reason why Pav and Hobie are besties. Because Pav can keep up with him) . Miguel thinks that Pav's passion on the subject is amusing, endearing even, but he won't admit it.

Miguel, never, ever yells to Pav when they're alone. He raises his voice, he huffs, he groans and sighs, but he never yells at him. Jess and Peter think that Miguel doesn't yell because Pav is way too diplomatic to yell at him (Nobody can hate him. He is too gentle and kind for that) but the real reason is that Miguel has a soft spot for Pav after spending a lot of time with him.

Miguel knows Pav birthday. Pav doesn't know how because Pav doesn't know Miguel's birthday, but Miguel knows his, and he congratulates him (privately, obviously) If Miguel is in a good mood, he might even get him something, like arroz con leche from his dimension.

Pav once insisted on welcoming the new spider person and leading them on their first mission. Miguel knew it would be a disaster, he knew it, but Pav insisted so much that Miguel got fed up and let him. Pav told Miguel it went fine because they managed to capture the anomaly, what he didn't mention was that the poor new guy was so scared that even Pav got nervous and froze against the anomaly. Miguel knew that though, Lyla and Jess told him, and he was watching Pav the whole time from his lab. He didn't let Pav welcome anyone ever again

Miguel isn't the only one who has a soft spot for Pav. Lyla likes him a lot too. He is always super respectful to her and treats her as an equal (and sometimes even an authority) as the AI assistant of Miguel. Lyla checks from time to time on Pav when he finishes a misison and he likes to hear him talk. She asks about his girlfriend and teases him, but also gives him some advice from time to time. He sometimes tells him embarrassing stuff about Miguel to liftt his mood whenever she thinks Miguel was too hard on him.

Pav thinks Miguel's technology is awesome, but he likes to keep things traditional. Miguel has offered him a few upgrades to his suit, but Pav doesn't see the need for it just yet. He only accepted some of them (the ones that didn't change his suit drastically) He isn't closed to the idea, but he likes his suit just as it is. Miguel has given up on trying to convince him. At least Pav accepted some of them.

And, last but not least, nobody knew Pav was Miguel's student until Jess casually mentioned it to Gwen. The moment she hears it, she tells Miles and Miles (as subtle as ever) runs to Peter and asks him. Peter just shrugs and confirms it, surprised that Miles wasn't aware. Miles and Gwen started observing Pav carefully after that. Miguel isn't actively trying to keep it a secret, but as always, he simply doesn't see the need to talk about it. Miguel sees his job as the leader of the Spider Society as his first priority and he spends most of the time on it, so when Pav and him go out on missions or have meetings, most of the other members are home or on other missions.

Puff!!! Sorry if that was a lot! I do wanted to explore Pav interests here. We saw so little of him and I wish he has more screen time next time. Seeing how passionate Pav was about Americans disrespecting his culture and how he gives us a tour the moment he ends his introduction, I do think he is a history nerd and I wanted to hear your thoughts on it.

Anyways, love you!!! Take care!

(I loved the last chapter of Nonviolent communications. Seeing Miguel heal slowly made me feel warm and soft inside. I loved seeing him make progress)

@coralskybunny Hii!!! I'm so sorry for how long it took me to answer your ask!! But omg, I love how you've continued to explore Pav and Miguel's student/mentor dynamic!!!! I definitely wrote too much (I'm sorry), but I just loved these headcannons so much and I hope we get to see Miguel in this mentor role once everything settles down with the younger members!! I need it!!! Now on to the headcannons and my thoughts!

The first one about Pav cursing in Spanish because he's picked up the words from Miguel - I’m dead!! Just imagining Pav saying curse words in Spanish because he finds the way they sound funny 🤣 but then everyone freezing!! Why did I just imagine Miles and Miguel staring at each other like -

because they're probably the few that actually know what the words mean (imagining Miles going to Miguel like "you're teaching Pav curse words in Spanish?")! But then Hobie encouraging it - especially in front of Miguel - so Hobie!!! 🤣

Pav being a genius at history (I love this headcannon especially as a history person lol) and sharing bits and pieces with Miguel when they’re both at his universe!! With this, I can imagine there are times when Miguel is going solo, or maybe he just has to split up from the group and he swings past a building or statue that Pav has talked about with him, and then you have Miguel just remembering all the information he now knows about that specific building or statue, or even area thanks to Pav!! Also, I can totally see Pav being highly knowledgeable about colonization and Americanization (I think this term works if we’re focusing on American influence alone) and getting into it, like I can see that this is one of the top five topics he’s so passionate about!! Also, Miguel wondering what Pav would think about his own universe, or maybe even other universes - now that you have this headcannon in my head, I’m thinking maybe Miguel shares some of his own knowledge from his own universe, at least, and the two just compare the impact of colonization across their universes (do you think we could even get Hobie in on this conversation?)?

Miguel not yelling at Pav, omg!! I couldn't yell at Pav even if I wasn’t friends with him. He’s definitely too diplomatic to be yelled at!! I would feel so bad yelling at anyone but especially at someone like Pav :( But back to Miguel, the way he would definitely not yell at him because of his soft spot for him!!! He would probably just wait it out, you know, cool off and then just talk to him once he's ready!

Miguel knowing Pav’s birthday but Pav not knowing Miguel’s is so realistic!! I feel like no one would know Miguel’s birthday - actually, I remember back in October when people were celebrating his birthday and there was some confusion because some people were saying it was in May, so it’s funny that even we were like when is his birthday? But the fact that Miguel congratulates Pav in private (so realistic) and he might even give him something, especially food, AND ARROZ CON LECHE?! SO SWEET!!! I would be so happy if Miguel gave me some as a birthday gift!!! I can see Pav also making him something in return even though he doesn't know Miguel's birthday lol!

Okay but the one about Pav leading a new member - I’m getting so sad thinking about an excited Pav (imagine how excited he is about this like, he's telling everyone about it!), but then it doesn't go well, so much that he freezes because of how panicked the new guy gets 🥺 no, the way I would immediately comfort Pav!! So, Miguel doesn’t allow Pav to do it again, but do you think he talked with Pav about it later on? Like, maybe he offered some advice on the low without letting Pav know that he knew what happened? I’m thinking that after some days maybe Miguel did but what do you think?

I love the headcannon that Pav is respectful to Lyla, so much that he sees her as an authority figure!! I think this is so realistic!! Pav, from what little we have, does seem like such a respectful person even to an AI assistant, when some people might disregard her!! Okay, and Lyla checking up on Pav, giving him advice, and cheering him up by sharing embarrassing things about Miguel when he has been too hard on Pav - this is how I imagine Lyla to be with Pav!!!

The headcannon of Miguel trying to give Pav updates for his suit is so sweet, and I can actually see Miguel offering this to members he’s really close to!! I can definitely see Pav not wanting to alter his suit so much it ends up looking like a different suit, which I absolutely just LOVE (Pav’s suit is one of my favorites in ATSV)!!! I love that Pav accepts some of the updates though, since he finds Miguel’s technology amazing!!

Omg the headcannon that nobody knows that Pav is Miguel’s student until Jess mentions it, is so on point!! I can see both Pav and Miguel not trying to hide it but they’re also not making it a purpose to mention it around!! Do you think Pav also doesn’t say anything so Miguel doesn’t get bombarded with questions about it? I can see maybe some of the members being shocked, maybe some also want Miguel to mentor them but Miguel isn't open to doing that with so many other members, so Pav stays on the low with it but I don't know. What do you think?

@coralskybunny Please don’t worry, it was not a lot!! I really love how you’ve expanded Pav’s interests because I totally agree with you!! We got so little of him and I really, really hope that he receives more screen time in BTSV and hopefully in future projects (I’m hoping for more movies on the other characters!!). I do think that Pav is a history nerd, and that’s he’s very passionate about his culture and setting the records straight, meaning he’s not afraid to express when someone is saying something that’s wrong about his culture!! As you said, I think this is true because of how he immediately does a tour after his introduction - no other Spider member does this, so I think this was a little hint to Pav and at least one of his interests/passions, which I hope gets explored in the future!!!

Thank you for sharing more of your headcannons of Pav and Miguel having a student/mentor dynamic!!! 🥺 I was remembering the previous ones the other day and just looking forward to one day seeing them drawn as you mentioned!! How is your drawing going, by the way? I hope your drawing journey is going well!! Take care, and love you, too!! I hope you're having a great week so far!! :)

(Also, thank you!! I'm so happy you liked the latest chapter of NC, and that you're enjoying seeing Miguel heal 🥹I'm so happy and proud of him!)

#asked and answered #miguel o'hara #pavitr prabhakar #across the spiderverse

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saintgoths · 2 years

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i have an idea ever since you posted ellie and rose, how about a crossover of rose in the TLOU but instead of the magical attributes she has how about her being immune just like ellie? can they have a romantic crush as well please?

anon you have done so much damage to me! i hope i didnt take too long writing this i just wanted a good imagine between the both of them. my asks are still open for imagines until i continue posting chapters of a song of thorns once again!

PECULIAR AFFINITY

WORD COUNT - 2,202

RATING - G [JUST FLUFF, BONDING AND ANGST, ALSO ROSE WINTERS MEETING SOMEONE LIKE HER BUT IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE].

It’s been about three weeks since Rose Winters has moved into the society of Jackson and in the start, she hadn’t really found the appeal to hang around with anyone and mostly kept to herself. Aside from her distant state, the girl was conveyed to be kind, respectful and graceful no matter how much she tried to blend in the crowd, her appearance still struck the attention of a specific trio.

Like other members in Jackson, the three observed that she was one to herself, so they didn’t try and bother her, but they wouldn’t have minded it if Rose came up to them in the time period, she felt most comfortable in. Yet, Jesse, who was the only male in the trio, was the one who had the assurance and fortitude to come up to Rose; he always made sure he greeted her during the morning and bid her a goodbye during the night.

Had complimented the fingerless black gloves she would always wear, Jesse would also make a mental note that it was something she never took off, had theorised that maybe Rose thought it went really well with her outfit. Rose normally wore an olive-green jacket with a dark grey dip hoodie beneath, with blue distressed skinny jeans with a pair of white height top sneakers. The girl was never seen without her black baseball cap as well and from time to time she held a notebook that appeared jittery.

Uprightly, it appealed to her appearance, Jesse couldn’t deny that Rose was truly a pretty girl, with her blonde hair and light-coloured eyes, Rose wasn’t an individual you could overlook, as much as she didn’t want to, she stood out.

“Good night, Rose,” Jesse once again welcomed, Rose hadn’t seen Jesse throughout the entire day, and if Rose was being upright, Jesse was the only friend Rose had right now, justly, it was a fault of hers since she didn’t really make the effort to interact with others.

“Hi Jesse,” Rose attentively greeted the tall man, her smile wide and cordial, inquisitive to whatever Jesse had to say. Whenever the two met up, Jesse would usually talk her ear off before they parted ways, Rose actually liked the fact that she didn’t have to be the first one to begin the friendship between her and Jesse, prior, it would usually be her and the bonds wouldn’t last for long.

“There’s a party going on right now, I’d like for you to come,” he genially requested with a generous and noble appearance on his face that restrained Rose to say no.

How could she say no? Jesse had been so kind to her for her to accept the invitation was the least she could do. Although her face expression was unsure, she shrugged her shoulders and arms in approval, “why not.”

Contended, Jesse patted her head, delighted and blithe of her endorsement. “I knew I could count on you!”

Thankful that Jesse didn’t leave Rose’s side when he brought her to where the rest were. Even though majority of them greeted her they carried on to what they were doing before she entered the atmosphere, the ones that were mainly receptive and accessible to Rose were Jesse’s closest friends Ellie and Dina, two gorgeous open-minded women, friendly and communicative. Well, the most communicative one was Dina, Ellie said a couple of words ere she resumed drinking from her plastic cup.

“Oh, by the way this is Ellie’s eighteenth birthday party,” Jesse briskly mentioned with an insightful and impish look on his face while Ellie lightly groaned in comedic disdain for the man.

“My birthday doesn’t really matter, but you two still threw a party anyways,” Ellie muttered, aside from her evident ache of the event, she was still grateful that her friends were thoughtful enough to do this.

Quiet, Rose watched the trio speak and annoy each other, heartfelt, Rose had thought what it would have been like if she was in a friendship group like them.

“Why do you wear those gloves all the time?” Dina curiously questioned, surely not in a manner to make Rose feel uncomfortable, Dina’s stance was more inquisitive to Rose’s rather attachment to the pair of fabric.

It grew hushed between the group and Rose awkwardly looked at her fingerless gloves anteriorly she looked at Dina. “I just like wearing them,” Rose languidly replied, ostensibly not wanting to speak more about them.

The three were keen enough to observe that Rose was put off by Dina’s question, Jesse curved to look at Ellie in hopes to save the graceless conversation. “Ellie, how about you take Rose to get some drinks?”

Able and gaffed, Ellie pushed herself off the tall table prepared to direct Rose to where the beverages were. “I’ll apologise for Dina, she doesn’t mean it in a rude way when she asked about your gloves and all, Dina is a cool person,” Ellie gracelessly atoned during the moment they strolled down the premises.

“It’s okay, I can tell that Dina’s a nice person and she didn’t mean it that way,” Rose briefly glanced down at the pair of fabric that capped majority of Rose’s hands.

“Nice gloves though,” Ellie shortly complimented.

Beholden and contended, Rose graciously simpered at the auburn-haired girl. “Thank you, and happy birthday by the way.”

“Appreciate it,” Ellie genially breathed as she reached for a drink for the blonde-haired girl. When she passed the bottled beverage to Rose, she took another one for herself, the new citizen hummed a thanks before she started to drink the brew, the two women stood in the same spot in comfortable silence, possibly the muteness was there because they didn’t know what to talk about, Ellie had thought it would have been precise if the two had known each other earlier but it could be conveyed that the freckled girl was too shy to make a move considering Rose always seemed like she wanted to be on her own.

“The moment you came into Jackson, I wanted to speak to you but it seemed like you just wanted to be on your own.” Ellie aimlessly mentioned.

Rose courteously smiled. “Well, in the beginning I did want to be left alone, so you got that right.”

Ellie gently laughed through her nose at Rose’s comment, her drink close to her chest while the loud noises of teenagers sprayed the room. Ellie took a brief look at the comers of her surprise birthday party and looked back at Rose with a suggestive look on her face. “Do you want to talk outside?” She neighbourly suggested to the new girl who benevolently beckoned her head in agreement.

Ellie with conviction led Rose outside the building, her tattooed arm hastily caught the attention to the Winters girl, a recognisable imprint and blemish stunning the capped girl, to Rose it was evident that Ellie had tried to use the permanent ink to mask the scar. Yet the imprint was far too detectable for Rose to overlook it.

“We had a bonfire before we went inside,” Ellie gingerly conveyed to the girl as she led Rose to the large logs they could sit on and get comfortable. “Everyone was actually too scared to come up to you when you first came,” Ellie gently laughed as she remembered the comments people would make of Rose, they weren’t negative, the comments were oriented about how unapproachable and mysterious she seemed.

“Well, I didn’t think my resting face was that bad,” Rose replied evidently humoured, “I guess my face was the main thing that stopped me from having friends, I guess.”

Ellie peered at Rose contrite and apologetic. “No, I didn’t mean it like that, you’re not ugly---”

“I know what you mean, don’t worry, Ellie,” Rose giggled at Ellie’s sorrowful demeanour as she placed her thumb over the opening of her bottle and rested her chin against the back of her hand. Thoughtful of the blemish on Ellie’s arm occurred in her head. “For a long time, I’ve always wanted to meet someone who was just like me,” Rose tenderly muttered, somewhat warmly contended that someone shared the same issue as her.

Confused, Ellie gazed at Rose who gently gestured to the tattooed area on Ellie’s skin, immediately caught onto what the new girl implied about, the auburn-haired girl eyes widened, taken aback and surprised. Speechless, Ellie rested on the large log, stunned that she has met someone just like her.

Ellie didn’t know if she should laugh or cry, yet she loudly exhaled in an emotional consolation and release. She covered her face with her free hand during the moment she pulled herself together as Rose watched Ellie gently break down, moreover, the crack Ellie got herself together, she curved to look at Rose who had an understanding expression on her face, comprehensive on how tiring it was to be different and to hide a part of herself from the world. “Where’s your bite?”

As she sat up straight, Rose peered and examined the atmosphere to make sure that no one was there to see them. When the light-haired girl was sure that they were safe, she gently, pulled off the fingerless glove that capped and masked the blemish that was imprinted on the meat of her thumb that spread to her palm. “I got the bite a year ago, when I was sent to look for supplies for the group I was in, it was a Stalker that got me. I was so scared for what was going to happen to me.”

“When I came back with the supplies, I countlessly apologised to the group, I remember my mouth went numb and sore due to the number of times I said I was sorry, looking back at the way I reacted it was quite stupid,” Rose scoffed at herself at reminiscence of the day, “but I think there would’ve been numerous of people who would’ve apologised for being stupid enough to get bitten.”

Saddened by her words, Ellie patiently watched and listened to Rose during the time period she charitably explained about her experience. “Yet, I was sorry for my mother and I was sorry for my already deceased dad who sacrificed so much for me.”

“And what did they do?” Ellie’s voice was gentle but tousled, her face inquisitive and impertinent to Rose’s story.

Rose looked over at Ellie, her smile short but genuine, grateful for what her previous group had suggested for her but also grateful for Ellie’s listening ear. “They said that when they notice me changing they will mercifully kill me, it was the only thing they could do. To protect themselves, their children and all,” Rose sheepishly replied, “and then nothing happened, but the bite was healing, we were all confused, as days progressed, three days, five days, a week, a month, three months, five…” she shook her head mildly surprised she was still here. “But nothing happened.”

“On the other hand, the only thing that changed were that everyone I knew died.”

Rose had mentioned that it was her mother who had knitted fingerless gloves Rose had always worn, the girl had slipped back the mitten to cap her left hand once again whilst Ellie had conveyed, she had somewhat been through the same thing, but in Ellie’s tale, she wasn’t looking for supplies and just wanted to play with her friend Riley for one last time.

“We were in a mall full of infected, I don’t know what we were thinking, but we were living our best lives before everything happened.”

Exchanging the composure and diligence Ellie had shared for her and calmly listened to Ellie’s narrative.

“To watch everyone, you loved die around you because of a bite, and you outliving those who’ve barely lived their life, outliving those who were alive before the infection took over, despite the fact that you have the same infection that killed almost every single person you have known, it gets exhausting, and I feel guilty and remorseful, like I—I don’t deserve to be here.”

“I’m still waiting for my turn,” Rose softly commented, she shared the same guilt and remorse Ellie had felt for years, the same emotions and conscience Ellie had retained.

Ellie tenderly laughed at Rose. “I once said the same thing to someone,” the freckled girl conveyed. “I’m still waiting for it to overtake me.”

“Then together, we should wait it out,” Rose smiled, “grow paranoid due to expecting the infection to take control of us even if it could take decades or more.”

Ellie laughed once more ere she swallowed the liquor from her bottle. Once she finished her sip, she focused on the blonde girl who gently simpered at her behaviour. “I don’t mind waiting out with you, for decades or more.”

Rose’s gracious beam grew in content and of satisfaction of the additional fresh pact she had made with Ellie, moved and enthusiastic about the future experiences she would share with the woman who shared the peculiar affinity with her.

Comfortable in each other’s presence, the two resumed and talked each other’s ears off until they flame from the bonfire finally settled and perished.

thank you to those who have made it to the end! liking, commenting, reblogging or following would be much appreciated! my asks are open for more imagines/oneshots about TLOU characters before i resume posting a song of thorns! i dont mind doing more crossovers but i would happily do it if it involve other characters i know.

magneticsiren

♆

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vyladromeave · 3 years

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Garte Ro’meave: What Is This Guy’s Deal?????

(And why he is likely a Shadowknight)

You all know him, you all hate him: Garte Ro’meave is the Lord of O’khasis, as well as Garroth, Zane, and Vylad’s father. He has quite a reputation both in universe and among fans, despite never physically showing up within MCD. So just who is this guy and what the hell is his deal? I’m compiling a bunch of the stuff we know about him here in this post. For fun.

Mid S1, Garroth mentions a time when Garte fell ill and had a near-death experience. It is my firm belief that when Garte fell ill, he actually did die from his illness. However, through dealings with the Shadow Lord, he was revived with a greater lust for power, and sought control over the surrounding land. Thus his miraculous recovery, and corruption of character soon after.

Lemme break it down for you.

(WARNING THIS POST IS LONG. IT’S OVER 4K WORDS. PROBABLY 5K IF YOU COUNT THE SCREENSHOTS. SERIOUSLY I WARNED YOU.)

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GARTE’S ORIGINS

So it’s no secret that MCD’s lore is... inconsistent... You can find hints of the current story and what most fans consider to be truly “canon” within the early bits of the old story. So who was Garte in the early episodes of MCD? I think this transcript of a conversation between Aphmau and Lord Burt is a pretty good introduction, so let’s check it out:

Sooooo yeah. If you’re like me, you’re probably sitting here thinking, “What the fuck are these guys even saying?” Because literally none of this is correct in the current standing of MCD lore. Don’t worry, you’re not crazy, and don’t try to think too hard about what’s going on here because Yeah: It’s not canon. It’s old, outdated, and the small bits of lore from this conversation that manage to stay relevant are almost completely retconned and overwritten.

MAINLY: This conversation is one of many alluding to the King and the Shadows, concepts which will go on to become Garte and the Shadow Lord.

In early S1, there are plenty of instances of the King and the Shadow Lord being mentioned in conjunction. I’ll leave a few of them here for you, but don’t spend too much time trying to make sense of them. I could go on about them and what they might mean for these early versions of the overarching story of MCD, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because it isn’t consistent with what we know in the current day.

Yeah. This is just a small amount. And mostly? All of this is an artifact of poor writing. A lot of MCD’s story and lore was changing as Jess was creating it, and this is a remnant of those inconsistencies. With our current understanding of the Shadow Lord in MCD’s lore, we know that he is actually Shad, previously a Divine warrior. Garte is the Lord, not King, of O’khasis, with a family and life of his own. Seriously, this is the same era of MCD where Zoey was a fairy and not an elf. Meaning none of this factual currently, and can’t really be trusted.

However, that doesn’t mean we should completely discredit everything here, and I wholly believe this is a sign of something greater going on between these two. Just keep in mind that even in the earliest version of this story, the concepts that went on to be the Shadow Lord and Garte, Lord of O’khasis, were intrinsically linked.

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GARTE, GARROTH, AND ZANE

Ok, time to get into the real stuff. Let’s go over how Garte’s first two sons view him. Both of these images are from S1 Ep52. Here is what both Zane and Garroth have to say about their father:

I’d also like to put this line from S1 Ep68 here for consideration:

Analysis aside, here is what we have stated plainly by the text:

Garte is the Lord of O’khasis.

Garroth suggests that Garte’s rule is not a kind one, and that he might as well be a dictator (or perhaps a King? ;] ) instead of a Lord.

Garte is explicitly seeking to become King of the land.

Garroth trained as a knight while he was supposed to be preparing to inherit the position of Lord, which went against Garte’s wishes.

Garte later had Garroth engaged to the firstborn of Scaleswind as part of a treaty to encourage peace between the two villages.

Garte “disowned” Garroth when he ran away, but Garroth still seems to be considered part of the family (at least for business purposes?). For example, Garroth is still needed for the engagement with Scaleswind, and he is still considered next in line as the future Lord of O’khasis.

Garroth has reason to believe that should he reject the engagement again, Garte will use his power/influence to “do something terrible.”

Zane does Garte’s “dirty work.” (To the point where Garroth seems to believe that Zane’s presence in Phoenix Drop is actually Zane carrying out Garte’s will.)

And although it’s not very present in these images, Garroth repeatedly stresses during this time that Zane’s actions in Phoenix Drop are extensions of Garte’s. Therefore, any actions they take against Zane will be seen as actions against Garte, and by extension to, all of O’khasis.

So, Garroth dislikes Garte for repeatedly pushing him into things he does not want to do, and in turn Garte dislikes Garroth since Garroth keeps going against his wishes. But how does Garte feel about Zane? For that I’d like to bring in one more small quote from S1 Ep54. (The “he” referred to in this quote is Zane, if that wasn’t obvious.)

Zane is “loyal” to Garte and “does his dirty work.” He acts as an extension of Garte and his wishes, and he is given power in return. I think the S1 Ep68 line, “Zane knows where I am, therefore our father knows where I am,” is very indicative of Zane’s role here. It’s easy to assume that Garte likes/favors Zane, given Zane’s loyalty to him. But from what we know about Garte here… I’m not so sure.

To me, it seems like despite all his attempts to get in Garte’s good graces, Garte still favors Garroth over Zane as the future Lord of O’khasis. Exactly how he feels about Zane is unclear, but Garte clearly does not care enough about Zane enough to make him future Lord of O’khasis instead of Garroth, despite how easy this could be for someone as powerful as Garte. Why? The answer is simple: tradition.

Garroth gets to be the future Lord of O’khasis, not because he wants it or is fit for it, but because he was born first. Garroth is set up to be married to the firstborn of Scaleswind because he himself is firstborn, and tradition states that to do otherwise is taboo. Garroth goes against Garte’s wishes time and time again, but Garte never truly “disowns” him, even though the second son in line is more than willing to do what Garte wants. Why? Because he couldn’t disown his son, he could never have something less than a perfect, ideal family, because to him that would be wrong, abnormal. (This is also why Vylad’s existence and Zianna’s affair bother him so deeply! But more on them later.) Despite how loyal Zane is to Garte, he can never be the future Lord because he was not born first. And despite being this all-powerful dictator with ridiculous influence and military power, he refuses to simply instate Zane as the future lord over Garroth, simply because to him, that just isn’t the way things are meant to be. Zane has power BECAUSE he is loyal to Garte, because working under Garte makes him an extension of Garte’s power, and not because Garte actually favors him.

(This also works really well into what I think Zane’s mentality is through all this and how it shapes his motivations, but that’s a post for another time.)

Let’s also note here how Garte views his children as tools instead of people. Garte has Garroth engaged against his will to form a peace treaty between O’khasis and Scaleswind. Garte has Zane “do his dirty work,” to the point where Garroth even assumes that Zane finding him in Phoenix Drop is under Garte’s guidance instead of on his own, which is interesting. Essentially, he seems to have no love for his sons, and only uses them to further his own rule. He is a heartless dictator as a ruler, and is heartless as a father as well.

Essentially, Garte is a heartless ruler, father, and husband, who puts tradition above all else, even his own family, in his pursuit for further power. Wuh oh!

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ZIANNA AND THE AFFAIR

It’s not a real post about Garte without talking about the affair! The best insight we get about this is from Vylad on S2 Ep61. Here’s another funky cool transcript for your convenience.

We get a couple things from this. First of all it lets us double down on the whole “strict traditionalist” thing, given his insistence on literal children learning in depth about politics because Garte Says So. The strict traditionalist thing also additionally feeds into why Vylad’s existence bothers him so badly.

I also want to point out Vylad’s insistence that Garte would have his biological father killed if he knew who he was. It’s implied here that Zianna also believes this, to the point where she has hidden his identity from his own biological son. I don’t have much else to say about this in relation to Garte, I just think this demonstrates really well the dynamic going on with him in relation to his own family here and just how little the people who care/cared about him trust him now (and how little they continue to trust him even in the short amount of time where he is doing better).

Lastly, I want to point out how Garte’s opinion of Vylad changes over time. I think it’s important to note that Garte, this man who we have established is obsessed with tradition and rules, is able for once to put that aside while Vylad is a child, even if it ends up coming back later.

This section’s a bit short, and that’s because mostly I want to use all the information here to build off some points in the next section:

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GARTE’S ILLNESS (AND WHO HE USED TO BE)

This is kinda what inspired this whole post, mostly because it’s maybe the most overlooked piece of information we have on Garte. This line is from S1 Ep68, I’ll paste the screenshot here so you can read it for yourself.

As far as I know, this is the only time in the entire series that Garte’s illness is mentioned. There’s a couple things that are interesting to me here. For instance, Garte is a powerful lord who is well respected by his people. You’re telling me that with all the magic in the world, all the doctors and trained professionals, and with all the power and money he had at the time, he only barely avoided death? (And probably actually didn’t if he is a Shadowknight like I think he is but more on that later.)

It’s very likely that this was not a normal or natural illness. It’s possible that someone else was responsible for it, or at least responsible for its unlikely severity. Either the illness itself was odd and caused in a way that made it hard to treat, or the treatment he was getting was poor. (It’s possible the Shadow Lord himself might be responsible, but there’s literally no basis or proof for that. There is also the possibility that Garte was never really ill at all, that some other significant injury happened to him, and him being “ill” is the coverup. But again I have no basis for this, besides the fact that this would maybe explain away the inability to get proper treatment.)

Despite all this, the most notable thing to me here is that combined from what we learned about him around the time of Zianna’s affair, we can tell that his attitude and general character went back and forth a couple times. Here’s a timeline to help visualize this:

(The “…” around Garroth’s birth is representative of the fact that we technically don’t know how he was acting around this time or before, but assumedly he was still a kind and respectable leader up until his first point of change after his illness)

The main thing I want to point out is that basically everything we know about Garte only applies to what he’s like now during his, for lack of a better phrase, Nasty Bitch Phase. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch at all to say that Garte acts the way he does today BECAUSE of whatever happened to him during his illness. If there was ever any good part of Garte, we as the audience have never seen it or it’s results. After recovering from his illness, Garte’s character shifted so drastically that Garroth goes from highly respecting him and wanting to be like him, to being afraid of him and what he might do. Garte changes so much that his own wife no longer recognizes him. It’s important to note that there was a time before the current Garte we know today, where he was a kind and just ruler who cared about his family. He was powerful as the Lord of O’khasis, but was not completely driven by his lust for strength and control. So nearly everything that we’ve learned up until now gets tossed in the garbage when discussing Garte pre-illness

The only incident that led him to act somewhat kinder after said illness was when Zianna had an affair and Vylad was born. This incident didn’t leave him with lasting kindness, (nor is it clear just how much better he actually was at the time. Depending how long this good period was, it’s possible that the “teaching children about harsh politics before they are ready” incident happened during this time.) and he reverted back to his Nasty Bitch Phase over time, but ultimately this is the only time after his illness where he was closer in personality to the “good” person he used to be.

This is really exemplified by his treatment of Vylad. We know that in his Nasty Bitch Phase, Garte becomes deeply rooted in tradition and presentation. When Vylad is born, for a short time this doesn’t matter to him. Vylad, despite breaking the idea of the perfect nuclear family by his very existence, is treated like Garte’s own for a short time. And as Garte shifts back into his Nasty Bitch Phase, this value of tradition returns and his resentment for Vylad grows. But until then, that’s one of the few things we really know about Garte’s personality and what he values, gone for presumably a couple years.

What this illness was, what caused it, why the treatment was poor, and why it changed Garte drastically into who we know him as in Minecraft Diaries is never explicitly stated. It seems like a rather permanently extreme shift of Garte’s mood, character, and ideals, to be nothing more than a worse-than-average illness. Leading me to my theory…

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GARTE RO’MEAVE IS A SHADOWKNIGHT

Let me be clear that this is never explicitly stated anywhere within Minecraft Diaries, although I think given what we know about Garte it’s very very very likely. The short version is that the “near-death experience” Garte had while ill was him seriously actually for real dying, and the miraculous recovery is due to him then being revived as a Shadowknight.

(And let me also be clear that this is not an excuse for his actions and how he treats people, but rather an explanation. Trust me I hate Garte as a person as much as the next guy. I just think it’s interesting to dissect who he is as a character and WHY he acts the way he does. I don’t care if he has 1 billion issues, it does not change the fact that he is a living shit stain <3 thank you.)

With that aside, let’s go over a couple characteristics of Shadowknights and how they relate to Garte.

DEATH

Let’s talk about Garte’s illness from a narrative standpoint. Without reading between the lines at all and just taking Garroth’s information at face value, what does this illness bring to the table story-wise? All it really does is give a (not very good) reason for Garte’s behavior. However, if the illness as a narrative device is useful for Only This, you have to ask… Why not just have Garte be a shitty person to begin with? Why waste time telling us about how he used to bea good person and isn’t anymore because of this illness, if this change and it’s cause has no significance otherwise?

The answer is that there is more going on here than what is initially visible. It’s not a waste of time, it’s trying to clue us in to a larger situation. It’s drawing significance to this moment in time, trying to get you to think about what could have happened here to cause this drastic change. Think on everything we’ve seen in MCD (especially things introduced around this time, I’ll touch on this in just a bit.), what do we know that could alter someone like this? Well, becoming a Shadowknight seems to usually result in a drastic personality change. And to become a Shadowknight, you have to die. And a near-death experience from an illness sounds like the perfect time for Garte to die and be reborn somewhat inconspicuously.

And if this isn’t the significance of the illness then… what is? Genuinely I cannot think of anything else that we have been introduced to over the course of the entire series that this could be referencing or related to. It even parallels the Lords of Brightport and Pikoro potentially being put through rituals to become Shadowknights. We literally have a precedent for this sort of thing!

POWER

This theory explains why he gains a sudden lust for power. We have seen how becoming a Shadowknight can twist the person’s personality into something more malevolent multiple times within the series (most notably with Laurance in S2, although it is present with basically every Shadowknight that has made an appearance on the show). I can very easily see a Lord’s desire to do well for his people twisted into a desire for power over them. Many other Shadowknights within the series are driven by similar desires as well, seeing as Shadowknights are often created and sustained off the concept of desire itself. Vylad, in S2 Ep66, when attempting to describe what it feels like for him to be a Shadowknight, basically describes it as constantly wanting something that you cannot have. Gene was revived in the Overworld because of his desire to take vengeance on the people of his village. He is a perfect example of how a desire strong enough can result in a Shadowknight being born in the Overwold. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if Garte was desperate enough, he could become a Shadowknight in a similar fashion.

FAMILY

This theory also explains his lack of care for family, especially why he doesn’t care Now when he used to be well-known for it. Let’s look at some more lines said by Vylad, from S2 Ep66 at 10:19:

Vylad also says in S2 Ep96 at 14:49 that Shadowknights often leave their friends and family behind when they turn since it, “isn’t something a Shadowknight needs.” Taking these quotes and applying them to Garte almost exactly describes his attitude towards his own family. He no longer cares for his children or his wife, and literally uses his sons as tools and pawns. They are no longer family to him, he has given up his attachment to them in order to further his own goals.

The only time Garte rejects this ideology after his illness is when Vylad is born. I think this can simply be explained by the fact that with effort, Shadowknights can hold onto their attachments to others, and that these attachments often ground them and help them act more like their previous selves. Strangely enough, we have seen examples of things like this with Vylad himself as a Shadowknight. Vylad was perfectly content with having all of his family think of him as dead, but hasn’t actually moved on from them. He reminisces on times with his brothers and mother to Aphmau a couple times, helps his brother Garroth get back to Phoenix Drop when he is incapacitated by an arrow in early S1, and only agrees to work with Aphmau in S2 after he learns that Garroth has gotten into trouble that Aphmau cannot immediately get him out of. Vylad admits to experiencing this urge to leave friends and family behind, but also very clearly makes an effort to care and fight against it, which demonstrates that with effort this urge can be suppressed. It makes perfect sense that Garte makes this same effort when his wife is in turmoil, but isn’t able to keep it up after the conflict has passed, causing him to fade back into the natural habit of disregarding his own family.

GREATER THEMING

As I went over in the very first part of this post, theming between kings and the Shadow Lord has been consistent since the very beginning of the series. A lot of the early lore about this sort of thing revolves around a king who is compelled to revive the Shadow Lord/bring him back to full power, which makes a lot more sense if our “king,” a.k.a Garte, is a Shadowknight, since reviving the Shadow Lord is their main priority.

(And as a side note, we see multiple times in S1 where people and their magickal talents are sacrificed to give the Shadow Lord more strength. Do you think sacrificing an entire Continent of people would maybe be enough power to revive the Shadow Lord for real? And do you think a Lord with enough power to potentially take over an entire continent would be a good asset to have in that scenario? Again there is no basis for this, just food for thought.)

MISCELLANEOUS RELATION

O’khasis, Zane, and the Shadowknights have been linked multiple times throughout the series. Although most of these do not directly mention Garte’s involvement, I still think these are still important to consider. Zane did literally try to open a portal/tear to the Nether within Phoenix Drop in S1, during a time where Garroth stated that it was likely Zane was acting as Garte’s emissary. Jeffory, who served under Zane, is implied to have become a Shadowknight himself in the later parts of S2. Both Zane and Jeffory (but mostly Zane) are involved in “Shadowknight rituals” concerning Lord Burt and the Lord of Pikoro in S1 after Zane’s first Phoenix Drop incident, and it’s implied Zane does this to pursue Garte’s wishes of uniting all the villages of Ru’aun under O’khasis’ rule.

This last piece of evidence might be a weird pull, but it’s also possibly the most damning of all. In Minecraft Diaries Rebirth Ep4, Zane is shown having dealings directly with Gene. Not only this, Gene is serving UNDER Zane. Gene is still established as being high-ranking within the Shadowknights, he refers to the Shadowknights as “his men,” implying possession or superiority above the rest of them. And yet, he is serving under Zane for reasons which are never really elaborated on? Even after Zane aggravates and antagonizes him, Zane is confident that the Shadowknights will not be a threat to him. (In fact, he seems more concerned about treachery and traitors within the Shadowknights than he does about Gene betraying him for his mistreatment.)

We know Zane isn’t really with the Shadowknights, he refers to his own side being separate from the side of the Shadowknights later in the same conversation. And yet Gene takes orders from Zane, and Zane is confident that he will return to him at some point, and also not turn against him. So what compels Gene to serve under Zane despite disliking him, and what could make Zane so confident that Gene will be back? Perhaps if Zane serves Garte, as we already established, and Garte is a Shadowknight ranking higher than Gene.

Think about it. Gene is so valuable to the Shadow Lord because his memory-manipulating magicks allow the Shadow Lord to have better control over the Shadowknights. This value is reflected in Gene’s high rank and respect among Shadowknights, which has been consistently above average since S1. If you think better control over the Shadowknights is good? Try control over potentially the entire CONTINENT. Because that’s the kind of potential Garte as a Shadowknight brings to the table. Regardless of rank, Gene would almost certainly have to defer to Garte in this situation, and Garte most likely values Zane as a pawn above Gene, therefore Gene deferring to Zane. Zane is obviously on his own side with his own ideals and ambitions, but because he is at least somewhat loyal to Garte, Gene is forced to be loyal to him in turn.

Also, I think Rebirth technically has a bit more canonical weight to it than some parts of MCD given that it is more recent, and given how many inconsistencies are in the early parts of S1. Regardless of what was going on in S1, Rebirth is technically the most accurate and canonical source when it comes to MCD, which means that Zane and the Shadowknights relations cannot be disregarded. Their presence this early in the story of Rebirth, especially in comparison to the original MCD, should not be overlooked.

DIVINE

Let’s also remember that Garte is a descendant of Esmund (most likely, afaik it’s never actually specified in MCD but like. Judging by his Mystreet appearance, Garte looks like Esmund and Zianna does not, and it seems like most of the favored descendants Generally resemble the originals for thematic reasons. Anyways.) Corrupting the last remnants of one of the Divine Warriors who killed you and trapped you in Literal Hell seems like a valid villain move to me. Especially if the Divine Warriors and their relics are a potential threat to your plan, having a certain amount of control over one of those bloodlines/relics makes things a bit easier. This is more of a side note than anything, but I think it’s still worth including.

THE WRITING HABIT

This isn’t strictly a Shadowknight thing, but as a last note I’d like to point out just a little writing habit Jess has. She likes to tease smaller ideas for foreshadowing, and then elaborate on them typically a couple episodes later. I’m not talking about your typical foreshadowing, it’s more of a case where you can kind of tell that the story is being written only a little bit ahead of what is being recorded, and so you can literally see parts of the script in the future kinda making their way into little bits of the current so that they are better integrated. (And sometimes “future” is actually the end of an episode, and the “current” is the middle of the same episode. So yeah. great planning.) You can kinda see this all over MCD once you start looking for it, and I think knowing this habit means that we can look for things that are introduced around the same time to see if they are potentially related retroactively.

So some of the things introduced/addressed around this same time? Well literally in the same episode, immediately after Garroth tells Aphmau about Garte’s illness and how he changed afterwards… Laurance talks with Aphmau about how being a Shadowknight is slowly changing his personality and how he acts. Yeah. It’s kinda the first time we’re introduced to the idea of this within Shadowknights, in fact. Literally introduced in one conversation after the other. Coincidence? Possibly. But with all this in mind? I’m not so sure.

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TLDR?

So yeah. Garte maybe died and became a Shadowknight. Or maybe Jess forgot about the whole illness thing entirely and therefore none of this really matters. Or maybe it’s been retconned since then. Who knows! MCD is a silly little enigma of a show and if you enjoyed reading nearly 5k words on an analysis of one of MCD’s worst fathers, then that’s all I can ask for :D

Thanks for reading!

-aiki

#aphmau #Minecraft Diaries #Garte Ro'meave #Ro'meave family #ro'meave brothers #garroth ro'meave #zane ro'meave #vylad ro'meave #zianna ro'meave #minecraft diaries fanart #mcd meta #big post #mcd theory #idk what else to even tag this as actually.

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jessehart · 2 years

Text

casino night pt. i

Jesse shut the screen of his laptop, putting it into rest mode and effectively shutting up the incessant notifications of incoming texts he had absolutely no desire to read. He’d been without a phone for weeks now and he had to admit, he kind of loved being hard to reach.

At least, in the one and only case of his father.

Who, if the last few days had been anything to go by, was absolutely the one blowing his shit up now.

Instead, Jesse sighed contentedly as silence filled the room, checking himself out in the full length mirror across from his bed. He tugged at the bottom of his jacket to straighten it out before moving to button his cufflinks. He’d decided the time for wallowing was done. He was bored and itching for a good night. Fuck, he deserved one, didn’t he? It’d been a rough go and no, he wasn’t interested in rehashing how much of it had been directly or indirectly his own fault.

No, he was in rare form tonight, so ready to let loose for one single night before the shitty shit that was his life could crowd him once more.

He ran a hand through his hair, nodding approvingly at his reflection, before he moved back to the cufflinks again. He paused, head canting to the side at the sound of knocking. He was fairly certain all of his dormmates had already left for the night— fashionably late was a choice and he’d made it— so he wasn’t expecting anyone now.

Still fiddling with the stubborn button, he shot himself one last approving look before he exited his room, pulling open the front door, and—

The stoic visage of Donovan Hart haunted his doorway, looking sharp in a perfectly pressed and tailored Armani suit. His hand fell from his unbuttoned cuff as dread lanced through him. “I thought pest control was included in the tuition.”

Donovan’s smile was wicked, obviously pleased at Jesse’s discomfort. “I was just as disappointed when I found out that education wasn’t either.”

“What are you doing here?”

A judgmental eye trailed down the length of him and he felt the gaze like pinpricks. “When my texts and calls went unanswered for weeks, I reached out to the dean. I was... concerned.” The way he said it made it clear he hadn’t been concerned in the least. Pissed, maybe, that he was being ignored. But never concerned. “Imagine my surprise when he filled me in on the goings on around campus. A girl you, apparently, were involved with going missing. Fights. Second interviews with the police.” He took a step forward, lithe movements that held a lethality in them to anyone who actually knew him. Which Jesse would venture was very few. “And then he was nice enough to invite me along tonight and I thought, it’s been such a hard year for my son. It sounds like he might be in desperate need of some... guidance.”

The threat was clear and a muscle in Jesse’s jaw feathered in defiance. “Well consider me guided,” he said, moving to close the door.

His father’s foot slid into the doorway, keeping the door from closing as he pushed back against it, pushing it back open and crowding Jesse in the doorway. His voice was low, uttered through clenched teeth. “I will not be made a fool of. You’re parading around this campus flashing my money like no one can touch you, but I encourage you to remember just how quickly I could make it all go away.” He waved a hand toward the dorm as a whole. “And then where would you be? What would you have? Would anyone be left?” His father smiled, taunting him, stoking the fire he could so clearly see in Jesse and daring him to rise to it.

Jesse didn’t.

Instead, he remained silent while he burned, feeling each word as they landed where he’d intended. Like shoving fingers into festering wounds, he could feel the serrated truth in them. If he had nothing, he would be nothing. He would have no one. It was the universal truth that stared him in the mirror everyday. It was in every swallow of every drink, in every hit, every bump, every tab. And now it was the shape of his own father, taunting him with the very thing he spent his life running from.

Donovan Hart smiled like he knew just that. He clapped him on the shoulder, the gesture condescending. “See you out there, kiddo.”

And just like a tornado, he was gone, leaving the wreckage of Jesse Hart in his wake.

#drug mention tw #alcohol mention tw #daddy issues tw #this was gonna be a lot longer but i didn't care to keep writing it

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

Note

Jumping off from my previous question/suggestion, might I please ask if there are any superheroes you think would make fine Pulp Villains and any Supervillains you think would make convincing Pulp Heroes?

I'm gonna go ahead and remark that I'd personally suggest to anyone who's trying to create pulp characters inspired by superheroes (which would be probably about 90% of you who may want to do that sort of thing) to flip the script around a little. As in, don't try to create pulp analogues to the Justice League/Avengers upfront, but play around with some of the lesser-known icons and filter those through your idea of what “pulp” means (which is gonna be quite different than my own or anyone else’s).

I’m not gonna really mention characters I’ve already talked about before like Vandal Savage or Namor, instead I’ll pick new ones and see what can be highlighted about them.

Regarding “Superheroes who could make fine/convincing Pulp Villains”, even though he’s a character I've read basically nothing on, Martian Manhunter definitely leaped out to me as an obvious option. He’s a Sci-Fi Superman who takes the first half of the name to an extreme that borders on comical, except he’s not a square-jawed white man, he’s a 1.000 year old green alien from Mars with shapeshifting powers who can look as monstrous as the artist desires. He’s the product of an advanced civilization and genetic modification, and on top of the Flying Brick powerset and shapeshifting, he also has incredibly powerful and extensive telepathic abilities, he can become invisible, phaze through matter, use telekinesis and other weird abilities. A lot of pulp stories closer to sci-fi were based around the idea of taking one of these abilities and extrapolating horrific consequences for them, and J’onn has those by the dozens. He also has an extremely mundane weakness that would allow him to be beaten by Macready with a blowtorch if that’s where the story ended.

He was also a law enforcement officer from Mars who became a police detective and it’s even right there in his name, and again, I have never read anything he’s in (I should probably pick the Orlando mini), I know he’s for all intents and purposes a generally nice man who tends to job a lot in crossovers and cartoons, but the idea of taking all those great vast and horrifying alien powers, combining all of them into a single character who also happens to be the last survivor of a doomed planet (and one who actually lived through it’s collapse), and then making that character a former cop trying to resume his work on Earth?

That is a Pulp Supervillain begging to happen, and a particularly horrifying one at that. And hey, speaking of The Thing-

Now, Plastic Man’s potential for horror has already been explored quite a bit in some of the darker DC continuities like Injustice and DCeased, and it’s quite funny seeing a lot of these turn Plastic Man into The Thing because there were quite a handful of Wold Newton pages that ran with the idea that Macready from the original story was Doc Savage, and that the secret chemicals that Eel O’Brian was hit by that gave him his powers were actually samples of The Thing contained in one of Savage’s labs. Regardless, the idea of a former street crook suddenly gaining bizarre shapeshifting abilities that allow him to reign terror on his gangster associates could make for a great premise as a pulp crime story that veers into horror as the gangsters gradually figure out what is Eel O’Brian’s deal, and then the story can take a more tragic turn.

The thing about Jack Cole’s Plastic Man that modern takes on the character neglect is that, while Plas was a lively roguish anti-hero (arguably the first of it’s kind in comics), he’s still for intents and purposes “the straight man” (HA, right, Plastic Man being “straight”). He’s the relatively sane hero who plays off Woozy’s wackier misadventures and the imaginative madness that Jack Cole paints his adventures with, and it makes for an interesting contrast considering Plastic Man is already a weird character, having to ramp up the strangeness of the world around him so that he still remains the sane man. There are ways to twist this into something quite horrifying, even tragic for Plastic Man as he either struggles to maintain coherency, or embraces the shifting chaos the world’s spiraling into for better or worse (and definitely for the worse towards those on the receiving end of his vengeance, or even his humor).

Now, onto the flipside, regarding Supervillains that could become Pulp Heroes -

Normally I’d not mention the Batman villains here, because I already have a lot to talk about in regards to them as is, they comprise some of my favorite comic characters, but I pretty much have to make an exception for Two-Face in this topic, as not only a pretty obvious option but one with even case studies to prove it, as not only do we have The Black Bat, a 1930s costumed pulp hero with an identical origin story and several other conceptual overlaps with Batman, as well as The Whisperer, a young hotshot police commissioner who dresses up as a disfigured vigilante to kill criminals without consequence (and who’s somehow less of a maniacal asshole in his secret identity than in his regular one), but it turns out that there actually was a 1910s pulp hero called The Two-Faced Man:

Crewe was created by “Varick Vanardy,” the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey (Nick Carter, Doctor Quartz), and appeared in three short stories and two novels and short story collections from 1914 to 1919, beginning with “That Man Crew” (The Cavalier, Jan. 24, 1914).

Crewe is “The Two-Faced Man.”

He is in his forties and has gray hair and a “sharply cut and handsome profile—until one caught a view of the other side of his face and saw the almost hideous blemish that nearly covered it, and which graduated in corrugated irregularity from a delicate pink to repulsive purple.”

Crewe is two-faced in another way. Crewe is a saloon owner in below Washington Square. But he has another identity: Birge Moreau, portraitist and socialite hanger-on. Crewe uses both his identities to solve crimes as an amateur detective.

The only person to know about both of Crewe’s identities is a police inspector who is also Crewe’s friend and who Crewe helps in pressing cases - The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heores by Jess Nevins

And speaking of obvious picks for Supervillains turned Pulp Heroes,

Assuming I even need to make a case for Kraven the Hunter other than just presenting this cropped panel from Squirrel Girl and in particular the art painted on the Kra-Van, or even just telling you to read Squirrel Girl and it’s take on “The Unhuntable Sergei” (I had no idea most of the people saying “Kraven’s arc in Squirrel Girl is as good if not better than Kraven’s Last Hunt” weren’t actually joking in the slightest and I speak as someone who has Kraven among their absolute favorite Marvel characters, it had no right being that good), I’m going to quote the brilliant Rogue’s Review from The Mindless Ones that lays down in painstaking detail why Kraven could make a killer protagonist in that horrifically over-the-top pulp fashion

One thing that strikes me writing this, is how well Kraven could hold his own comic. There’s always room for a book spotlighting a ruthless, hardcore, gentleman bastard, and Kraven’s raison d’etre makes him supremely versatile, so well suited to any genre, any environment. It’s odd that more writers haven’t jumped on the fact that in a universe where off-world travel is possible – indeed, common – a hunter like Kraven would have a field day.

I can just imagine the opening scene – herds of weird cthuloid bat creatures grazing in the gloomy green nitrogen fields, bathed in lethal, bone splintering fog, when, suddenly, LIGHT! from above and an unholy bellowing: “CTHGRGN fthgrgnARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGN!”

They look up in fear and then they start to run – ploughing into and over each other, tentacles flailing, as from the space-ship’s docking bay Kraven silently plummets, barely dressed for the cold, a glowing knife smothered in elder signs jammed between his teeth.

You should have seen him one night previous, sipping alien tokay around the Captain’s table with the other guests, discussing the morning’s hunt; and the way he insulted the Skrull dignitary by forgetting himself and accidentally sporting his favourite piece of formal wear: his boiling unstable dinner-jacket of many colours, fashioned from the hide of one of the Ambassador’s super kinsmen.

Whoops!

Midway through Kraven explaining how the best way to irreparably damage a symbiote is to wait until its bonded with you and then seriously maim yourself, the Skrull decided it might be a good idea to simmer down, while his beautiful Inhuman lover hung on every word.

The deeper I get into this the more convinced I am that the MU’s hunter-killer extraordinaire wouldn’t limit himself to bloody planet Earth. And neither would he limit himself to this dimension, or universe or timeline. The guy’d be just as at home leaping, sword raised, onto the back of a T-Rex in the Savage Land, as he would be ploughing through werewolves in the graveyards of Arkham or tracking a howling Demon across Mephistopheles’ realm.

He’d work perfectly in all these environments because he has a damn good reason to be casting a bloody swathe through them: wherever there’s big game, you’ll find Kraven.

The next choice I guess is an oddball, but not that much of an oddball if you know already what is my main frame of reference towards Marvel

I don’t think people appreciate enough that the main reason Shuma-Gorath has anything resembling a fanbase has nothing whatsoever to do with the comics he was in, but entirely because, when Capcom designers had a list of Marvel characters to pick from to work on Marvel Super Heroes, they took a look at the diet Cthulhu and went “gimme THAT one”, and then went all-in in giving the alien squid monster a funky personality along with a great stage and music and animations and all that great fighting game character stuff, and now he’s maybe the most popular Dr Strange villain along with Dormammu and Mordo, despite having ZERO film appearences or major showings in comic sagas.

Capcom's designers redefined Shuma-Gorath from a nebulous cosmic evil into a comically smug cartoon bastard who can rant about devouring all dimensions and souls horrifically while also cracking poses and zingers like “How do you expect to win a fight with only two arms?” and having dinners with Dhalsim or hosting Japanese game shows in his endings, and it kills me that none of this ever made it’s way into any depictions of the character outside of MvC.

So that’s kinda what I’d go with. I’d take Capcom’s Shuma-Gorath, depower him a bit obviously from his canonical power, and run with the premise of his MvC3 ending where he decides that, well, if he's the unlikely savior of this pathetic planet and these wretched human dogs like him so much, and he’s clearly having a much better time here among them than he ever had drifting among the stars cealessly consuming life, then maybe he can take a break from all that eldritch business and keep up hosting the Super Monster Awesome Hour and maybe fight whatever PITIFUL villains think can take HIS planet. I mean, he’ll probably still end up destroying the planet by the end, but why not give this hero business a try?

Just until he gets his full powers back of course.

I mean you can’t deny he DOES look pretty good in that bowtie, surely The Great Shuma-Gorath wouldn’t be so unmerciful as to deny these vile wastes of flesh something good to look at in their brief and miserable lives.

#replies tag #marvel comics #marvel #dc comics #dc #pulp heroes #pulp villains #martian manhunter #plastic man #kraven the hunter #two-face #shuma-gorath #marvel vs capcom

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evolmaze · 3 years

Text

not like this

summary - you go to a party ready to hang out with your friends, but your best friend has other ideas that involve you, a closet, seven minutes, and a close friend you swore you’d never tell

pairing - jin x reader ft. other members of bts and other o.c.s!

genre - fluff, angst | ftl!au, nonidol!au

word count - 5.0k words

warnings - mentions of drinking, otherwise nothing else!

a/n: this is totally inspired by that one episode of New Girl where Nick and Jess are stuck behind the door and Nick tells Jess that he doesn’t want kiss her, “not like this” hence the title lol. Not quite the same plotline, but was definitely my inspiration for it!

masterlist

You had always loved Saturday nights, the one day a week where you could literally do nothing all day and not feel guilty about it. The one night a week where you got to see most of your friends, hang out, and of course, get tipsy and play a bunch of stupid games; tonight was no different.

You had arrived at your friend Alexa’s house, a little late, and by the looks of it, you were the last to arrive. Your friend group wasn’t enormously big, just around six or so depending on the night, any more and things usually got out of hand. There was you, Alexa, your mutual friend Lia, and then the boys: Yoongi, Jin, and Namjoon. You all had become friends while in university, and you’re happy to say you were able to remain friends afterward. Sometimes the boys would bring their other friends, ones they had met through work, and tonight you were happy to see Jimin, Tae, Jungkook, and Hoseok here as well. You didn’t know them as well, but every time you hung with them, they had been nothing but kind. If you’re honest, the people you knew best here were Jin and Alexa, the three of you had lived in the same dorm freshman year, and since then, you had been inseparable.

“y/n!” Alexa called excitedly, crossing the room to greet you. “I was afraid you weren’t gonna make it!”

“Sorry,” you exclaimed, “Literally got halfway here and realized I had forgotten the chips!” she laughed, taking them from you, and setting them on the counter next to the taco dip; a classic staple in your university days. “I see everyone else is already here.” you mused, scanning the room.

“Yeah, don’t worry though, Jimin and Tae literally got here five minutes before you,” she laughed, and set a hand on your shoulder, slightly turning you towards the back of the room. “But he’s been here all night, asking me every couple minutes if I’ve heard from you,” she whispered, you were sure she was wiggling her eyebrows at you.

You looked across the room, and saw Jin, laughing with Hoseok and Jungkook. He hadn’t seen you yet, and selfishly you loved that you were able to stare at him carefree, taking in all the things you loved about him. You hadn’t seen him in a while, school kept you both busy, and with both of you working part time jobs, a couple weeks had gone by since your last hang out. God how you had missed him.

“You’re staring..” Alexa chuckled, as your best friend, and friend who had also known Jin the longest, she knew all about your crush on him. She was actually the one who called you out on it first, and from then on, she loved to tease you about it, but in all honesty, if she didn’t know, and wasn’t there for you to give advice or listen to you rant, you’re sure you would have gone insane by now.

“Ahhh, yeah,” you laughed nervously, tearing your view from him, and facing her. “God, it’s getting worse isn’t it?”

“Noooo,” she said, obviously lying, but you appreciated the false confidence. “Okay, maybe, but you’re in love, how else are you supposed to cope with that?”

“Oooh, I’d say drinking my sorrows away so I don’t have to think about how he’ll never like me back.” you laughed, grabbing a drink from the cooler. Alexa looked at you, concerned. “Lex I’m fine, seriously. I’ve come to terms with it, and at this point, he’s just a placeholder till I find someone new.”

“I’ve always said this, and I stand by it: Jin is so fucking stupid. Thick as a brick.”

“Yah!” he suddenly called from across the room. “Alexa are you talking shit?” you laughed, trying to figure out how much he heard.

“Absolutely not,” she said, looking towards you. “But y/n totally was!”

“Lex!” you yelled, embarrassed. You looked up, making eye contact with Jin, and his face lit up.

“y/n! Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” he said, coming over to you. Alexa winked and left to go talk to Lia. He came up to you, immediately crushing you in a hug. Your face was right up against his chest, you could smell his cologne, and god was it intoxicating.

“Sorry, I literally just got here!” you said, pulling your head back to look at him, he smiled down at you, his arms around your waist. You could stay like this forever.

“Hmmm, I suppose I can forgive you then.” he joked, slowly letting go of you, his fingers lingering a little too long. You tried your best to remain calm, and not think about the way it felt to be held by him. He cleared his throat, taking a slight step back, you looked at him expectantly. “Whatcha drinking?” he asked, and you held up your drink you had grabbed earlier. “Oh,” he laughed, ears turning red in embarrassment, and you grinned, god you loved this man.

----

The night had progressed rather smoothly, you were impressed. Usually, nights like this took a turn for the worst during a game of Pictionary, but so far, things had been fine! Everyone seemed to be having a great time, and you couldn’t have been happier. Currently, you all sat in a circle playing a childish game of never have I ever. You knew these were childish, but secretly you loved them, all the games you never got to play in high school cause you didn’t go to parties. Except instead of fingers down, everyone also took a shot. Currently, Jimin and Lia were tied for first place with each having nine out of ten fingers down. You only had four down, but it didn’t really matter.

“Never have I ever recreated the scene from titanic in front of the whole school only to realize Rose was played by my professor,” Tae snickered, looking directly at Jimin.

“Not fair,” he laughed, putting a finger down, and taking a shot. “That’s targeting!” everyone laughed, and Jimin grinned, taking a seat back down.

“Okay okay okay,” Alexa said suddenly, gathering everyone’s attention. “Let’s switch up the game, we’ve been playing this for an hour, and if Jimin has to take one more shot, I don’t want to be the one responsible for taking him to the hospital tonight.”

“I’m fine!” he laughed, and it was mildly true, everyone here seemed to have a pretty high tolerance, and being out of university, it seems the activities had mildly mellowed out. No excessive drinking tonight.

“Okay, what game are you thinking of Lex?” Lia asked, and Alexa paused before getting a thoughtful look on her face.

You watched as she looked towards you, a knowing glint in her eyes. “Since we’re on a roll with high school parties games, why not a fun couple rounds of seven minutes in heaven?” The group was split, some laughed in encouragement, while others, like yourself, seemed confused, you all were friends wouldn’t that be weird? “Okay wait, let me finish. We’ll switch up the rules so it’s not weird. The two people can go in there and decide what to do, kiss or take two shots each.”

You laughed, it seemed stupid still, but why the hell not? You were probably a little tipsy at this point, so why not indulge in this juvenile game. “How do we decide who goes in?” you asked.

“We’ll start with a random person to go in the closet, and then the group decides who goes in after them. But the catch is, the person alone in the closet has to face the wall so they cant see who comes in with them. So since they can’t see each other, in order to drink or kiss, they have to correctly guess who it is. Make sense?” Everyone nodded, and you eagerly awaited to see who was first.

“Who wants to go first?” Jimin asked, and the group went silent. “What about y/n?” you looked up, confused.

“Why me?” you questioned.

“Why not?” he questioned back, and you laughed.

“Okay fine,” you agreed, looking down at everyone as you stood up. “Alright, whichever one of you comes in, be ready to take shots!” everyone laughed, and you grinned, making eye contact with Alexa, that same stupid glint in her eye.

“Don’t sound so sure,” she laughed, and you blushed, quickly turning towards the closet. You opened the door, and entered, shutting it behind you. You wondered who they would send it, though with Alexa's knowing look you had a feeling it wasn't going to be good. It was a mystery how much time had passed by the time you heard the door open behind you.

“Hello mystery stranger,” you called, waiting for the door to shut again before turning around.

“You have seven minutes, y/n!” Alexa called, followed by a chorus of cheers. “Guess correctly and you can thank me later!”

You furrowed your eyebrows at that, that must have been a clue, right? “Hmm, how should I go about this, because I’m assuming you’re not allowed to speak, right? That’d make it too easy,” you pondered, and with no response from the person in front of you, you presumed you were right.

“Okay, I have an idea.” you declared, holding your hands out in front of you. “My hands are in front of you right now, grab one of them.” You waited patiently for them to do so, and soon enough you felt something hit the side of your hand. “That’s my hand, grab it.”

They grabbed your hand, and you immediately registered that they had large hands, long fingers, there was no way this was Lia or Lexa, they both had comically small hands. On second thought, so did Jimin, so that left the rest of the boys. “Here’s what I’m thinking, I’ll ask you a series of questions, and if the answer is yes then squeeze my hand once, if it’s no, then squeeze my hand twice. Make sense?”

One squeeze. “Okay, cool cool. Let’s see,” you pondered, trying to think of a question that would get the most people out at once. “Oh! Okay, do you have roommates?”

Two squeezes, “Okay, well that rules out Jungkook and Tae since they live together. Do you have a pet?”

Two squeezes again, “Well alright, then you’re not Namjoon or Yoongi either. So you’re either Hoseok or Jin.” you stalled for a second, wondering what the odds were that this was Jin in front of you. Alexa wouldn’t do that to you would she? Who are you kidding, she’s tipsy, of course, she would. Your heartbeat increased mildly at the possibility that this was Jin and the possibility that you two would kiss, but you knew deep down that if it was him, you’d rather just take shots because kissing him in this closet was not at all how you wanted to do it.

“Final question,” you said aloud, figuring out what you would ask. “Do you feel strongly about the financial crisis in Ecuador?” A laugh from the person in front of you confirmed your suspicions, it was Jin. Whenever the two of you were together and ran out of things to talk about, he would always ask you the most random of questions, that one is one of his favorites.

“I feel very strongly about it, almost as strongly as I feel about the American peanut butter famine of 1834,” he joked, and you laughed, it was such a dumb joke, but it got you every single time. It absolutely had nothing to do with him, and you thinking he was the funniest person alive, not at all.

The two of you quieted down, and you heard Jimin call for four minutes left. Suddenly, you remembered why you were here, and what you had to decide. “So,” you said, trying to decide how you were gonna get out of this. “How’s it going?”

“Oh you know, just grand,” he said, and you heard him shifting his weight from one foot to another. It was then that you also realized he was still holding your hand, cute. “You have a decision to make, don’t you?” he asked, and you blushed, thank god for the darkness of this closet.

“I think it’s a group consensus, no?” you asked.

Jin chuckled, and you felt his thumb run over your knuckles, your mind raced at the feeling. “I mean sure, but I’m cool with either.” You were pretty sure that you died of cardiac failure after he said that, there was no way he had just said that. “Plus the idea of taking two shots right now makes me wanna die,”

“Hmm, you did kinda suck at taking shots,” you joked, trying to ease your nerves, and he playfully swatted your shoulder. Your hand hung loosely at your side, and you took the moment to wipe the sweat off on your jeans. “So you’re cool with either? You’re sure?” you asked, your voice slightly panicky.

You sensed his arm moved as it wrapped around your waist, pulling you closer to him. You held your breath, what the fuck was going on. “I’m sure, are you?”

You felt your head get fuzzy and you weren’t sure if it was from the alcohol or the way you could feel each of his fingers as they rested on the small of your back, but you definitely weren’t sober anymore. “I don’t want to kiss you in the closet,” you said quickly, your hand instinctively balling into a fist. “Not like this.”

“What do you mean?” he asked quietly, a touch of hurt in his voice, your heart ached at the sound. “Would you rather take the shots?”

“No, no, no,” you said frantically, releasing his hand and taking a step back. Even though you knew this was low risk, you’d have to absolutely be blind to not understand the elephant in this closet with you two, you still felt terrified of rejection. “I-I can’t see you, I want to be able to see you.”

At that moment, the door flung open, the light from the outside streaming in, and all you saw was Jin’s face as he looked at you as if he had never seen you before. You wanted to cry, but instead, you pushed past him, and grabbed a bottle of peppermint schnapps off the counter, quickly downing two shots, before going out onto the porch. You absolutely needed some air.

The commotion from inside followed you faintly as you shut the door, everyone was confused, but drunk enough to move on rather quickly, sending Jungkook into the closet, before sending someone else in after him. You paid them no mind, too busy feeling sorry for yourself that even when the moment was perfect, you still found a way to ruin it for yourself. He had literally told you he wanted to kiss you, and you had ruined it with your stupid insecurities, go figure.

The sliding door opened and you looked up as he stepped out onto the porch, blanket in one hand, and two water bottles in the other. “Mind if I join you?” you said nothing, but nodded in response, and he offered you water, and you took it before he sat next to you. You watched out of the corner of your eye as he wrapped the blanket around him, and it was in that moment that you remembered it was November. Unconsciously, you pulled your knees up, wrapping your arms around them, wishing you had grabbed your jacket. “Here,” he said suddenly, opening up one side of his blanket cocoon. “We can share.”

You peered at him hesitantly, before opting in because even your pride was willing to leave for warmth. He wrapped the blanket around you both, and you moved closer to him in an attempt to get the blanket around the both of you completely. Aside from your shoes peeking out, the both of you were completely submerged, he must have found the biggest blanket in the apartment. You peered up at him and watched as he stared at the street before you, not thinking twice of it, you rested your head on his shoulder. “Jin, I’m sorry for freaking out earlier.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, looking down at you. “You were uncomfortable, I should have been more aware.”

“I wasn’t that uncomfortable,” you muttered, and he chuckled.

“y/n you were actually shaking at one point,” you laughed at that, he was right.

“Okay, fine, but I was only uncomfortable with the circumstances, not the idea behind them,” you paled when you realized what you said, but when Jin wrapped his arm around you, pulling you even closer to him, you relaxed a little.

“Oh so what you’re saying is that I didn’t need to take two shots?”

“Hmmm, maybe not,” you mused, and he laughed. “And neither did I.”

“So why did you?” he asked, the smile dropping from your face as you thought about how you were gonna explain this.

“Jin, I-” you said, your heart rate picking up with each passing moment; it was now or never. “I really like you, I have feelings for you so strong I feel like going crazy sometimes. I’m sure you already knew because Alexa has a big mouth, and I’m the least subtle person on the planet, but that’s why I took the shots.”

“You took the shots instead of kissing me because you like me?”

“Ah no,” you grumbled, getting stressed that he wasn’t getting it. “I took the shots because I didn’t want my first kiss to be in the dark, especially with you.”

“Ahhh, I see what you mean,” he said, a faint smile on his face. He looked down at you, and you felt all the air leave your body as you registered the look in his eyes. It was the exact same as yours had been earlier when you saw him. He had never looked at you like that, at least to your memory. He had, you had just never noticed.

“I just, I just want to be able to see you,” you said quietly, unable to move, stuck in the way he looked at you. “I’ve never kissed anyone before, and I don’t want to mess up.”

Jin grinned, “You can’t mess up, y/n.” he assured you, and you blushed.

“I don’t know, I’m pretty clumsy sometimes,” you pondered, you honestly had no idea how to do it, so chances were that you would mess it up. Jin was older than you, a year or so, and you’ve seen him with a number of girls, so you were pretty positive you were the inexperienced one in this pair.

“It’s pretty simple,” he mused, reaching up to tuck a strand of your hair behind your ear. “I could teach you.” Your heart skipped a beat at his sultry tone, he was absolutely gonna be the death of you. “I’m sure you’d be a quick learner.”

“I’m sure you’d be a good teacher,” you said, and his ears turned a nice shade of pink. You mentally grinned at your ability to fluster him, even in this frenzied state.

“So what do you say?” he asked, running his hand down your arm to grab your hand again. Goosebumps appeared in succession, as you realized where this was going. “Is it bright enough out here for you?”

“It’s perfect,” you whispered, grinning as he smiled at you. “You’re perfect, you know that right?”

“Says you,” he cooed, “You know how long I’ve waited for a moment like this? I like you so much, y/n, it actually drives me crazy how amazing and perfect you are.” You blushed deeply at that, unsure of how in the world you had ended up here, but hearing him say the things you had always wanted him to say made your heart race so fast you were sure you were dreaming.

“So what’s the first step?” you asked, trying to keep your voice calm as you wrapped your arm around his neck. He moved, so you were facing each other now, the blanket falling slightly. You unconsciously tangled his hair in your fingers. He closed his eyes, obviously enjoying whatever you were doing.

“Well you’re doing great so far,” he sighed, his tone breathless. “I was right, quick learner for sure.” you smirked, your fears long forgotten as you felt him lean into your touch. You had no idea that would have such an affect on him, you’d definitely remember that for later.

“What next?” you asked, and he opened his eyes. They were darker than before, and you were sure you were hallucinating. He wrapped both his arms around you, pulling you even closer. His face was inches from yours, if leaned forward you would bump noses.

“Well I’ll pull you close, close enough to kiss you of course,” he whispered, and you chuckled. “Then I’ll probably compliment you some more, telling you how much I like being around you, how beautiful you are, how long I’ve wanted to do this.” he paused, smiling at you. “Then I’ll lean in closer, and ask if you’re sure you want this.”

“And I’ll say that I do,” you said, “That I’ve wanted this for a long time, I was just too scared to say anything, how dumb was that, huh?”

You both chuckled at that, agreeing that you both had been so scared for no reason. “That’s good to hear,” he grinned, playing with the hem of your shirt. “Cause that’d be really awkward if you didn’t feel the same.”

“Oh I feel the same,” you said quickly. “Don’t even worry about that.”

He smiled at you for the millionth time that night, and even though you should have been used to it by now, you still felt like you were floating. “Well now I’m gonna lean forward, probably a little too slowly just to tease you, and maybe I’ll pause just in front of you,” he whispered, pausing with almost no room between your lips.

“And then?” you asked quietly, afraid to break the moment. “What should I do?”

“Whatever you feel like.”

You leaned forward, closing the gap between the two of you. His lips were as soft as you had imagined they would have been. You weren’t sure what to do once you two had touched, but you felt him move away before kissing you again, this time with more pressure. You hesitantly did the same, and you felt his grip on your tighten, so you must have been doing something right. He pulled away again, and you opened your eyes to see him grinning at you. He leaned forward so his mouth was by your ear.

“You're doing great,” he said, chills running down your spine. “You’re a natural.”

He kissed your cheek, before reconnecting your lips, you moved slowly, testing the waters on what you thought might work, gauging the success rate by how Jin reacted. You weren’t sure how much time had passed before you pulled away again, but you could see that his lips were red, and you imagined yours looked the same.

“You’re amazing,” you said, heart seizing at the way he looked at you, and it was in that moment that you knew things were going to be okay. “Definitely the best teacher I’ve ever had. I might need a few more lessons though.”

He smirked, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time for more lessons. It’ll cost you though,”

“What’s the price?” you mused, fingers dancing around his face, tracing the outline of his jaw, his ear, his collarbone.

“A date, with me, this weekend, at a restaurant of your choosing.”

You hummed, pretending to contemplate the idea, “I guess I can do that, but I charge too, ya know.”

“Oh yeah?” he taunted, curious what you were gonna say. “For what?”

You wanted to do something equally as romantic and sensual as him, but in that moment you were overcome with an urge to just hold onto him, to hug him. So you tightly wrapped yourself around him, stuffing your head into the crook of his neck. He returned your embrace immediately, slightly caught off guard by your change in tone, but welcomed it nevertheless. He ran his hands up and down you back as you took a deep breath. You turned your head towards him, tentatively placing a kiss on his neck. You felt him shiver slightly, the goosebumps rising on his skin. “For that,” you whispered, kissing his neck once more, before returning to your original embrace.

He wasn’t sure what had just happened, but somehow you had managed to be adorable and extremely hot within the span of seconds, and it was in that moment he realized you would be the death of him. He held you for a while, enjoying your embrace, enjoying the way you fiddle with the hair on the nape of his neck every so often, enjoying the way he was finally holding you the way he had always wanted to.

You couldn’t have asked for anything better than this, you were so happy, you couldn’t believe your luck. Time passed, and with each minute, intoxicated by his scent, you felt yourself growing tired, wordlessly, you dozed off, the alcohol tiredness finally taking effect, and it wasn’t until Alexa knocked on the door, did Jin realize what had happened, and how much time had passed.

She quietly opened the door, “Glad to see my efforts didn’t go to waste,” Jin grinned at her, pulling the blanket over your sleeping form.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Sorry I was so blind before, I owe you for what you did. If you hadn’t messaged me last week, I don’t think this ever would have happened.”

“No kidding, you both are scaredy cats, and we both know y/n never would have said anything, she liked you too much to risk it,” she said, and they chuckled. “Are you okay out here? It’s cold out here, things have calmed down inside, we’re watching a movie if you want to come back inside.”

“I’ll be in in a second,” he said. “Thank you again, Alexa, I owe you one.”

“Just put in a good word for me next time you and Jimin hang out, yeah?” she said shyly and Jin gasped.

“Really?” he asked, an excited look on his face.

“I don’t know, maybe, he’s cool, he’s handsome, those aren’t bad things.” she explained, a blush on her face, Jin wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she sighed. “Okay I’m going, don’t make me regret asking for that. See you in a bit.”

She shut the sliding door, and Jin looked down at you again, still in awe of what had happened. You shifted in your sleep, in an attempt to get more comfortable, you snuggled closer, if that was even possible. “So Jimin and Alexa, huh?” you whispered, causing Jin to jump at the sound of your voice.

“You’re awake?” he asked.

“Kinda,” you mused, “I heard the door open. I’m glad she said something, cause you’re both right, I never would have said anything, liked you too much.”

He smiled, a deep blush on his face. He wondered how long it would take for your words to have a lesser effect, he secretly hoped it would never come. “Do you want to go watch the movie? Or do you want to sleep?”

You contemplated your choices, “Let’s go say goodbye, and you can come over?” you lifted your head to gauge his expression. “Unless you don’t want to, that’s fine too.”

“No, no, no,” he assured you. “I’d love to come over.”

You smiled, and kissed him again before standing up. Jin followed you inside, grabbing your hand the first chance he got. Your friends all watched as you came in, and Namjoon was the first to congratulate you both.

“It’s about time you did something, Jin!” Yoongi nagged, and Jin let out a shout of protest. You laughed, making eye contact with Alexa. Thank you you mouthed to her, and she smiled, so genuine and full of love. You’re welcome she mouthed back, a knowing look on her face. Next to her, Jimin sat, and you wiggled your eyebrows at her as Jin grabbed your jackets. She blushed, and you grew excited at the new prospect of their relationship. Jimin grabbed her attention as he asked her a question, and you watched as he rested a hand on her thigh, you had never seen her so bubbly and excited, you made a mental note to ask her about it later. Jin returned to your side, handing you your coat. You bid farewell to everyone, and made your way to your car. The drive home was filled with compliments, loud singing to the radio, and plenty of kisses from Jin as you drove.

By the time you got to your apartment, you felt tired again, and you could tell Jin was finally falling victim to sleep as well. You grabbed some of his old sweats that you had stolen from your dresser, and handed them to him. You shamelessly watched as he undressed, slipping on the sweatpants, but opting out of the sweatshirt. This wasn’t the first time you had seen him shirtless, but it was certainly the first time you hadn’t looked away when he looked at you. Wordlessly, you smiled at him and stripped yourself of your shirt and bottoms. He felt his stare and you turned to take off your bra and put on an old t-shirt. You pulled on some shorts, and turned back to face him, he was laying on your bed, arms behind his head, his muscles on full display. You blushed at the sight, climbing into bed next to him, immediately leaning into his touch as he pulled you onto his chest. You felt it rise and fall with each breath he took, it was incredibly calming.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, tilting your jaw up to kiss you. Your legs went weak at the feeling, and you laid your hand on his chest. “So so beautiful, I’m so lucky.”

“Says you, world wide handsome,” you joked, and he laughed. Things were gonna be just fine, you could feel it.

#seokjin #seokjinfluff #jin fluff #bts imagines #bts fluff friends to lovers #bts fluff imagines #fluff #angst #bts #bangtan #namjoon #kim namjoon #jeon jungkook #min yoongi #park jimin #jung hoseok #fluff imagines #friends to lovers

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lambourngb · 3 years

Note

The thing from your tag about not understanding the bus stop tears when they weren't even exclusive - I was thinking about this too. Decided I think they were about more than Forrest, they were about the bigger decision Alex was making about Deep Sky (and going deep and cutting everyone off) by not going with Forrest, vs. riding off into the sunset with a cute guy (Michael - Forrest was kind of the standin).

Yeah, I think Alex was teary because what he was saying goodbye to was his attempt at normalcy?

Which in typical Alex Manes style was a bit of an emotional disaster? He kisses Forrest in his big moment in 2x13 triumphing over his dead dad and then immediately leaves town? I love that. Then they are so non-exclusive that Alex doesn't even mention Forrest to Michael or Maria during that year long gap ? Please tell me that the guy who said "sometimes the most important part is showing up" didn't just go radio silent on everyone who cares about when he was away. I won't buy that, because it means the character stepped backwards during the time jump.

Honestly, that whole attempt for Alex ended up being doomed by the reveal of Deep Sky [suspending my disbelief that Alex didn't notice or comment on the ring much earlier], so maybe the tears were for that. He's never going to be the guy who puts aside his self-assigned duty for happiness.

As an aside - I really loved the snarky argument with Forrest, he's so dismissive with the "babe" comment and the being exclusive jab, it was echoes of season 1 Alex! I missed his sarcastic ways. And being basic unapologetic malex trash- I viewed the way Forrest disclosed what Deep Sky was to Alex in a more sinister way. It smacked of reverse psychology - "Don't do it, this group has the secrets of the universe, once you're in you won't get out, I'm level A, but you're already going to be level E, but don't do it you'll be lost to them, yes they know about JFK and the Rushmore room which was built to explain our culture to future civilizations, including aliens, but oh yeah please don't do it I don't want to lose you" that speech was just designed to appeal to Alex's need for information.

So we're back to the self-assigned duty and sense of responsibility that Alex has. I mean, as a romantic Malex person, I too want to view Alex's decision as one he's making to protect Michael, but if you look at the whole view of Alex as a character, and the actual text of the episode - he never says Michael's name to Kyle, instead he talks about learning more than his dad ever did. That's the motivation. Besting Jesse one more time, like it was when he went off to learn how to win battles in the Air Force.

That need to know things, to never go in blind, has cost Alex in terms of his relationships in the past, and maybe that's why he's teary. Maybe he's recognizing that part of him that won't let him rest?

I'm interested in this journey for Alex, for him to examine the ego behind his belief that if he knows what's coming he'll be able to stop it. He is just one man. So far he's pitted himself against Project Shepherd and now Deep Sky.

#rnm 3x01 #rnm spoilers

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soundsof71 · 4 years

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So, considering you are a passionate fan of music released in 1971, I feel justifiably obligated to ask you what you think of Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina' album. 😂 (Also, it would make me beyond happy if you could post more about Buffy, my friend! Thank you! ❣)

Buffy Sainte-Marie + Crazy Horse - what’s not to love? LOL I confess that it was the Crazy Horse connection that caught my attention first. I had a general idea who Buffy was, had seen her on TV a few times, but I was a big Crazy Horse fan. News that they were her backing band for this album was easily enough for me to scoop it up.

They weren’t doing anything much with Neil Young in 1971 (other than this album, on which Neil also appeared!), but they had released a tasty solo album in February 71, produced by Jack Nitzsche (who also produced this, and would later marry Buffy), and featuring Ry Cooder (also featured here, although did not marry Buffy).

(btw, the first place that Buffy, Ry, and Jack worked together was on the Nic Roeg film Performance, starring Mick Jagger. People obviously remember Mick in that, but musically, Buffy was the best part!)

She Used To Wanna... also features Jesse Ed Davis, a Native American guitarist and singer who was a frequent “usual suspect” at these sort of “sure, invite everyone!” jam albums of the era, and played a prominent role at 1971′s biggest concert (at least in the US), The Concert for Bangladesh on August 1.

(I know you know RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World, the documentary about indigenous music’s influence on rock and roll, which has chapters on both Buffy and Jesse Ed. I just watched it again recently, and love it! A reminder of Buffy’s pivotal role in classic rock history. Not mentioned in the film: she relentlessly championed the work of her fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, helping them get their first record deals.)

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I haven’t listened to She Used To Wanna Be A Ballerina for a while, so I definitely need to do that, along with posting more pictures of Buffy. (I can’t believe I’ve only posted two!)

But I’ll tell you what still stands out to me about that record years later. “Smack Water Jack” is an underrated track from Carole King’s Tapestry that got a ton of airplay at the time. Quincy Jones did an instrumental cover as the title track for his terrific 1971 album, too, but it has somehow faded to obscurity since then. Buffy takes a playful trifle, and turns it into a powerful fable of men of color who explode into violence in response to the violence visited upon them, and self-satisfaction of whites in authority who answer their demands for better living conditions by killing them on the spot.

No need for a trial when you can murder them in the streets, right? “You can't talk to a man when he don't wanna understand / And he don't wanna understand” hits different when Buffy sings it, and in 2020 for that matter.

It’s also just a terrific performance whose combination of soul and rock and roll and driving piano in a sort of Old West-sounding context would have made this sound right at home on a record like Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection or something by The Band. I’m limited to five video embeds per post so I can’t embed it here, so I'm linking instead: anyone who hasn’t heard this definitely needs to.

Her cover of Neil’s CSNY track “Helpless” has things I like even better than Neil’s original, including Merry Clayton standing in for CSN. Buffy’s version is more muscular (thanks again to Crazy Horse), and taps even more deeply into the isolation of the song that the star power of CSNY somewhat obscured.

Buffy’s version also made a brief but memorable appearance in the 2018 film Hotel Artemis, starring Jodie Foster. A weird little movie that I loved maybe more than it deserved LOL but I recommend nonetheless:

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I know that this album gets attention because of the unusual number of covers, including one by Leonard Cohen, and a cover of a cover that Leonard had made famous on top of that, called "Song of the French Partisan” (hers is the far superior version imo, a song of French resistance to Nazi occupation from the perspective of a woman hiding a resister), but there are a couple of standout originals too.

I love the title of this record, and the title track is a delightful little stomper that playfully cautions against equating the intentions of grown women with the childhood fantasies they’ve grown out of. More Merry Clayton goodness here on backing vocals too.

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“Soldier Blue” is a powerful song first written for the 1970 film of the same name, billed at the time as “The most savage film in history” -- and maybe it was. It used the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre as a metaphor for Vietnam, and it's still shockingly brutal. It was the third-highest grossing movie in the UK in 1971, though, and the single became a top-10 hit for Buffy there.

It didn’t do as well here, either the song or the movie. Perhaps not shockingly in retrospect, Soldier Blue was pulled from American theaters after a few days, the Vietnam metaphor not at all lost on the Nixon administration.

As horrifying as it was, this is about when I was reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (first published in 1970), and Soldier Blue resonated with me in a whole lot of ways. Here’s the song in the opening credits of the movie.

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I was also really struck by “Moratorium”, which is the story of “Universal Soldier” (from her 1963 debut, but a bigger hit for Donovan in 1965), coming from the opposite direction. In the earlier song, she blamed war on the soldiers who think that fighting is honorable, but here, she has empathizes with the young men, boys really in many cases, who’ve been lied to by their countries, their parents, and even their friends. They’re not vainglorious. They’ve been duped by people they trusted.

(I don't think she takes enough into account how many men sign up to fight because they want to embrace and celebrate their worst, most violent impulses, which was of course an undercurrent of “Universal Soldier”, but I appreciate her empathy here. More than one thing is true at a time.)

Buffy goes even farther, though, calling on soldiers to support and validate demands for peace as explicitly supporting them, summed up in the unforgettable cry, "Fuck the war and bring our brothers home!"

1971 was the peak of antiwar demonstrations in the US, with the biggest crowds ever seen in this country until the 2017 Women’s March. The May 1971 demonstrations pretty much shut down Washington, culminating with Vietnam Veterans Against The War throwing back their medals on the steps of the US Capitol, incredibly powerful stuff to see on TV in my formative years, and Buffy was right there in it. Anti-war songs were a cottage industry for sure, but nobody was writing with the nuance and empathy that Buffy was.

Here’s a 1972 performance of “Moratorium”, Buffy and a piano, and more emotionally bare than that:

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There’s obviously lots more to say about Buffy, far outside the realm of protest music that was actually just a small part of her musical palette -- her pioneering experiments with electronic music, her educational philanthropy starting in her 20s, Sesame Street, you name it. Her commercial peak was still in front of her, and while I can’t say that this is my favorite of her records, it does have some of my favorite songs of hers, and 1971 and She Used to Wanna Be A Ballerina is definitely where I went from knowing who Buffy Sainte-Marie was to being a fan.

I'll also note as I do now and again that while this blog started as an offshoot of a book on 1971 that I’d started but abandoned, I mostly listen to music released now. That’s always been my policy, including in 1971. When 1972 rolled up, I was mostly listening to music from 1972, music from ‘80 in ‘80, ‘91 in ‘91, 2018 in 2018, etc., to name just a few other favorites. (Plus The Beatles, okay? LOL I still listen to The Beatles every day. No apologies.) Honestly? It took me until 2011, in my fifties, when a whole bunch of 40th anniversary editions of 1971 albums got released all at once that made me think, “Wait a minute, this was maybe THE pivotal year in classic rock history!”

So yeah, the historian in me dug into 1971, but even though I happened to be alive and enthralled by music in that year, what I’m doing here has nothing to do with nostalgia, or any idea that that was the *best* year in music, even if for the narrow slice of music that is classic rock, yeah, it absolutely is. For soul/R&B too, and for the explosion of women artists outside the even narrower confines of pop as well. This is not subject to debate. No year like it, before or since. It's just that classic rock is a such a narrow slice, and I like my slices wide. LOL Which is also why my blog has less and less 1971 content as I go along.

While my general policy is that my favorite year for music is THIS year, this particular year hasn’t left me as much energy as usual for listening to music. Some of it is These Trying Times™, some of it is my bipolarity and schizophrenia getting the better of me in waves, as is the way with these, uhm, things. (Keep taking those meds, kids!) I listen to music and post about the people making it as a creative act, not a passive or reflexive one, and I just haven’t felt as creative as usual.

(This is also has everything to do with why so many Asks have been piling up unanswered. I apologize if you’re one of the many kind and indulgent souls who’s gotten in touch, but I swear I’m gonna get to ‘em all!)

To get an idea of what I’m ACTUALLY passionate about right now, my “to be edited later” running list of 2020 favorites randomly added to a playlist as I encounter them, to be properly curated later, is at Spotify, cleverly entitled “2020″ -- 94% women, which is about right. LOL

But since I do in fact listen to old stuff (by which I mean 2019 LOL), I made a list of mostly 2020 bangers from women rockers with some tasty treats from 2019 that I haven’t been able to let go of just yet, inspired by a post I saw at tumblr saying that punk music by women is just plain better (also beyond debate), called “Women Bangers: A Tumblr New Classics Jam”. I’ll be posting an essay with a YouTube playlist soon, because god forbid that I only talk briefly about anything LOL and most of these women need to be heard AND seen.

Like Buffy Sainte-Marie, whom you'll both see and hear more often on my blog soon. Thanks for the reminder! Always a pleasure to hear from you and be challenged by you. :-)

Peace, Tim

#ask #musicrunsthroughmysoul #buffy saint marie #women in rock #1971 #she used to wanna be a ballerina #1971 album #youtube #1971 single #crazy horse #essay #me

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

How many fucking times must I talk about this movie?

I feel like this movie doesn’t need an introduction. Everyone knows this film. Its reputation precedes it. It didn’t bomb and it’s not generally considered one of the worst films ever made (at least on the level of films like Robot Monster or The Cat in the Hat), but this movie is easily one of the most divisive films ever made. This film has generated enough arguments that, if we harnessed the energy of all the flame wars it has caused, we could probably power the entire world until the heat death of the universe.

With the impending release of Zach Snyder’s bloated redo of Justice League, I’ve decided to go back and ask myself of this film here… is it really that bad?

THE GOOD

Here comes the most uncontroversial opinion: the action scenes in this movie rock (or at least two of them do). The standouts are the titular showdown, which almost makes sitting through the rest of the movie worth it, and the epic warehouse fight Batman gets into, which is like something straight out of the Arkham games. It’s so good. And aside from that, a lot of the cinematography in the film is good. The film knows how to look good, though unfortunately it does end up being a lot of style with little substance.

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On the subject of Batman, I think Ben Affleck is a great and inspired choice. I certainly think he’s worthy of standing alongside Batmans like Clooney and Keaton, easily embodying both the Dark Knight and Billionaire Playboy aspects fairly well, though the writing does not always handle him quite as well as it should (we’ll get to that soon enough). Henry Cavill, while still a rather dour Superman, is as good as ever as Superman, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was a great choice here, especially since she didn’t have control so that she could insert anti-Arab racism, like some DCEU movies.

Perhaps one of the movies most impressive feats is how, in an uncharacteristic moment of brevity, it manages to condense the backstory of Batman into the prologue, getting it out of the way and not making us sit through yet another Batman origin film. This is literally the only thing the movie has over the MCU; where that franchise just has the character Spider-Man inexplicably in existence without even a hint of his origins, they just get Batman’s tragic backstory out of the way so we can see him beating the crap out of people. If more superhero movies want to take this route and just condense the backstory into an opening montage like this, I’d be down for it.

THE BAD

I really could just say “most of the movie” but that’s such a cop out. Let’s actually look at the problems. Let’s work our way up through the things from least problematic to most, shall we?

The best place to start is what Zach Snyder did to Jimmy Olsen.

Jimmy Olsen is made into a CIA spook who is brutally killed early on, and yes, that was Jimmy Olsen. Snyder put him in to shock audiences with his senseless murder, and also because he felt the character had no place in his series. Does making Watchmen just turn people into joyless husks who like to horribly bastardize iconic characters? Jimmy Olsen is ultimately a small microcosm of the film, but he is the sum total of everything wring with the early DCEU. He is bleak, soulless, and shows a critical lack of understanding about the comics and why people enjoy them.

Now let’s move on to the more exciting problem to discuss: the villains. I don’t even think it’s worth wasting much time discussing what’s wrong with KGBeast. While it is kind of interesting they’d think to use the guy at all, the fact he never dons the costume and dies by the end of the film is unfathomably lame for a character named KGBeast.

Now, onto the main antagonist, and the most infamous part of the movie: Lex Luthor.

Lex Luthor is horribly, horribly miscast. Jesse Eisenberg is a great actor for sure, and he’s effective in movies like Now You See Me, The Social Network, and the Zombieland films. But here he is being asked to play one of the most diabolical cunning geniuses in comic book history, and rather than play him as such, he plays him like a cartoonish twit. This Lex is utterly unrecognizable as Superman’s greatest foe. Does anyone think Lex Luthor would send a jar of piss to someone as a joke before he blows them up? That’s more something the Joker would do on an off day. Lex is not cunning, not intimidating, and not diabolical in the slightest, and yet there are moments where Eisenberg’s acting chops shine through and Lex, for a moment, is almost engaging. Luthor really suffers the way Doctor Doom tends to in film adaptations: the filmmaker clearly doesn’t get why people like the villain, and decide to do some weird, unique take that will only cause to alienate fans.

But perhaps the worst of them all is Doomsday. Doomsday has exactly one claim to fame, and that’s killing Superman, so as soon as he shows up if you have even a passing awareness of the character you know how the movie is going to end, which robs the film of tension for its last battle. The fact he also appears with little buildup and doesn’t have any characterization doesn’t help; Doomsday is just the Big Gray CGI Blob that superhero movies try and pass off as a final boss for the heroes to fight. This has worked precisely once, in Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk and Venom did not make it work, and this film is nowhere close to being in the same ballpark as Venom.

By and far the biggest problem, though, is the movie’s incredible length and its very existence in the franchise at this point in time. This is an epic superhero crossover in which two of the biggest comic book characters of all time fight and then team up… And it is the second movie in a franchise. While they do a good job of establishing Batman rather quickly, Wonder Woman comes out of nowhere. And then at the end, Superman ‘dies.’ We have had one single movie prior to this to make a connection to the guy, and yet here he is getting a temporary comic book death with no buildup whatsoever that we know is going to be reversed sooner than later because the movie telegraphs this to us.

Imagine if, instead of building up the character over the course of a decade and putting him in all sorts of different stories, the MCU went right from Iron Man to Endgame. You go from a simpler, character-driven piece to a massive crossover where a hero dies right away, and it doesn’t give anyone time to care. Tony Stark had multiple films worth of characterization under his belt before they threw him in a crossover, let alone killed him, but Snyder expects you to give a damn about a Superman who just started his career in the previous movie of a franchise.

And the ass-numbing length of the movie is no justification. Even before the director’s cut came out this film was a slog, and the director’s cut really does nothing to earn its existence. All it does is add more runtime to an already tedious and bloated film, leading to the same exact ending and fixing none of the overarching narrative problems of the thing. The problem with any director’s cut is that ultimately the movie is still going to be Dawn of Justice, it’s still going to lead to extremely rushed character decisions, and it’s still going to be a mess. You’d have to redo half of the film to make this into a worthwhile and coherent narrative that’s actually worthy of being an entry in a superhero franchise.

And to top it all off, the movie spends far too much time foreshadowing for its own good. People criticized The Mummy for shoehorning in way too many shared universe elements right off the bat, and if that movie was bad for it, so is this one. The cameos from all the members of the Justice League, while striking, could be excised from the plot with little to no impact, and the Knightmare sequence is just excessive and weird.

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

The answer to this question has never been harder.

On the one hand, this film does have some merit. There is some good casting choices, good cinematography, good action… But then, on the other hand, the film is overly long, pretentious, has poor writing and dialogue, mishandles everyone aside from Superman, and is just incredibly unpleasant.

This film is in many ways the exact problem Christopher Nolan created with his Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan, by grounding the fanciful characters of comic books into a realistic setting, created a climate in which someone could suck any sort of joy or meaning out of comics. The success of his films meant that people would see dark, gritty realism as preferable to joyous, colorful escapism, and the negative effects of his films, however good you find them, are still felt today even as filmmakers are finally shaking off the grit. Dawn of Justice is the zenith of Nolan’s style of superhero film. There is nothing fun, joyful, or engaging to be found here; it is simply the characters you know and love forced into dark, miserable scenarios that ends in death and misery. Where’s the fun? Where’s the color? Where’s the wonder, the excitement, where is any of it? This film paints a bleak and miserable and hopeless picture of a world of superheroes. It really makes me think of this rather famous comic panel:

I absolutely hate this movie, but not because I think it’s bad. I hate it because it has enough good ideas where it should be the best thing ever, but it really isn’t. It’s a miserable slog of a film that does nothing to justify or earn its massive runtime whatsoever. It really does belong somewhere between 5 and 6 on IMDB, because I can almost see why people like it, but it just isn’t even remotely close to being how good its fan say it is. This is not a good superhero movie, and this is not how we should want superhero movies to be. There is a market for serious superhero fare of course, and there’s no reason that these films can’t engage with mature themes or anything, don’t get me wrong. But this is absolutely not the way to do it.

#Is it really that bad #IIRTB #Review #movie review #Batman v Superman #Dawn of Justice #Zach Snyder #Batman #Superman #DCEU

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sepublic · 4 years

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King’s Progress

In all honesty, I feel like King is amongst Luz and Amity as having the most clear-cut, sense of progression and development amongst the cast in Season 1?

Thinking back on Really Small Problems, I really love its portrayal of King here… And, well, ALL of the episodes centering on King, really! Some might say that it’s repetitive to keep having episodes where he makes a mistake and apologizes, and while I can see that… Personally, I’m not too bothered because said episodes are always entertaining, I always love King content, but also…

There’s a very clear sense of progression amongst King’s mistakes, as the season goes along? If RSP were Episode 11, King would’ve likely chosen to spray Willow and Gus with ‘Obivioso’s potion and then reaped what he sowed afterwards. But he doesn’t, and King genuinely surprised me with how mature he was in that episode… He was still immature ultimately, but you could tell he was still approaching things in a much more mature fashion than in prior episodes. King actively chooses not to make Willow and Gus disappear, but he DOES still hold onto the potion… And while it was an accident for them to ‘disappear’, King nevertheless takes advantage of the situation now that it’s happened. It’s not entirely his fault, but he still could’ve made amends any time and fixed what happened- Again, even if it wasn’t totally his fault here.

I guess you could say it’s a lesson on how even if one doesn’t necessarily cause an unfortunate situation… It’s still one’s responsibility to help someone out of it, and/or fix that situation- Even if you benefit from it! Because again, even if you weren’t exactly responsible for what happened, it’s still a little unethical to choose to keep benefitting from that incident. I suppose it hearkens back to that ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ quote from Spiderman… How in some versions of the story, Peter chose to look the other way because the robber offered him something for his silence. Peter wasn’t the one who robbed anyone, he’s just a bystander- But he still chooses to passively benefit from the incident instead of doing the right thing, and calling the cops. And as we infamously know, Peter suffers the consequences when the problem directly affects him, too, and kills Uncle Ben.

King’s dilemma in Really Small Problems is a similar situation. He didn’t make the potion, he didn’t take it from Obvioso, and he didn’t willingly use it- But there was still something he could’ve easily done about the situation, but he chose not to because he benefitted otherwise. And as a result, King still shoulders blame and accountability… Which again, ties back into how circumstances may encourage people to do bad decisions (like Obivioso handing over the potion), but it’s still up to an individual to act on those choices in the end… And King acknowledges this, in another surprising act of genuine maturity!

And, I like that- As I said, it’s a sense of progression. A few episodes earlier, and King would’ve willingly caused the mess, instead of just knowingly benefitting from it, when otherwise he could end the whole thing right then and there (or at least THOUGHT he could). This gets me onto Sense and Insensitivity, and it’s an interesting parallel to The Intruder… Both are King-centric episodes, that focus and expand upon the seemingly inconsequential B-plot of the previous episode! In Episode 3, King competes with Eda on who’s the better teacher… And then in the next episode, we see that he’s actually serious about wanting to mentor Luz, or at least feel listened by someone! His motives are given more depth!

Similarly, Escape of the Palisman has King take advantage of Eda’s mental state for his own gain, only to get her into trouble… Then we have Sense and Insensitivity, which focuses on a similar mistake. However, it’s different… Because in the previous episode, King still put Eda into physical danger by taking her outside. Whereas in SaI… Again, what King does IS cold and harsh towards Luz. But in the end, it’s only emotional damage- He’s not jeopardizing Luz herself by getting her into potential trouble with the authorities or anything. I mean, Luz DOES end up getting kidnapped by Piniet and thrown into his Writer’s Block, but that was never part of the agreement King made with Piniet… At least not knowingly. The possibility for this could’ve been in fine print, but in this scenario I feel it’s less the result of King apathetically disregarding others, and more him just being a general dum-dum, so I’m willing to overlook it.

What’s interesting is that King is upfront about how he hurt Luz, to her face. In the previous episode, he took advantage of Eda’s physical prowess. Here, he takes advantage of Luz’s creative prowess… In the previous episode, King learns not to make others do things for him, nor violate their personal autonomy. In SaI, King then builds upon this lesson, by recognizing that even if he isn’t going to make Luz write for him or anything… He’s still being cold and insensitive and hurting her emotionally. Each time King makes a mistake, it’s still a new lesson in its own way, built upon past lessons… Each mistake of his is less and less egregious, and more understandable and mature. He’s a repeatedly-flawed character and certainly not perfect… But what’s interesting about seeing him continue to make mistakes, is that you can still clearly see how King is at least managing to do better than last time! His mistakes become more and more understandable, with each one he makes.

Progress isn’t always smooth. It can be messy, and fraught with constant mistakes. But it’s worth noting that while King doesn’t retain the ENTIRE lesson with each mistake… He still clearly learns something in the end, and applies it. King doesn’t perfectly apply what he’s learned and not to its fullest extent, but you get the sense that he’s trying, and that each lesson teaches him that while he technically didn’t make the same mistake as LAST time, King himself is still liable to certain other mistakes. He’s learning, more and more, how to be more responsible and less selfish. Going from outright using someone physically, to using their ideas… To not knowingly causing a mess, but still choosing to benefit from it when King thinks he has the power to end it otherwise.

Like Lilith, King isn’t perfect. He tries to learn the lesson in a way that’s most convenient to him- Like that time he took advantage of Eda’s cursed state, and when Eda asks him what happened, King denies his guilt! Like Lilith he definitely learned his lesson somewhat and won’t make the same mistake, but he’s going to otherwise pretend he’s innocent to others. King willingly ignores that it’s not just enough that he learned not to cause a mess, but that he needs to also actively improve upon things when he has the power to do so- Ironic, given King’s frustrations with a lack of agency! He tries to retain the lesson in a way where he minimizes the amount of mistakes he made… But even so, King still manages to learn something. He still recognizes that he had to have made a mistake, and so there had to have been something that was learned… And while King can make it easier for himself by trying to minimize the extent of his lesson (and thus the realization of how far his mistakes went), it still says a lot that he keeps on trying and improving, each time.

Speaking of which, I have to wonder if part of the reason why people don’t really notice King’s development is… Well, aside from OTHER things distracting from his progress (like Eda and Lilith’s relationship or the entirety of Understanding Willow, understandably), in hilariously meta sense? King is lowkey dismissed in real life as just being the fluffy, animal sidekick trope… A lot of people don’t stop to consider that hey, he does have legitimate flaws that he does work upon, that King has a clear sense of progression throughout the season, and in many ways he parallels Lilith, of all people! It’s just like how in-universe, King is overlooked and dismissed as JUST a cute and fluffy pet… In real life, a lot of people do the same and don’t bother considering his potential depth!

It’s kind of the reverse of Infinity Train’s Book 2… How a lot of people noted at the beginning that Lake was clearly a narrative reflection of Jesse. But then near the end, one of our main antagonists ends up acknowledging this fact, in-universe, in the worst way possible- By noting how the Infinity Train possibly set Lake up to function as a ‘reflection’ of Jesse in the metaphorical sense, there by transplanting what was acknowledged in real life, and bringing it up in-universe! In this scenario, King brings up how he’s often overlooked and dismissed as just the fluffy, cute sidekick… And lo in behold in real life, a lot of people overlook King and see him as JUST that trope, instead of at least that trope and more!

(Not to cast stones at anyone or imply that someone is less of a fan, or meaner, for not considering King’s potential depth as a character. There’s a LOT this show has to offer, so it’s understandable that some things are missed out upon, because one’s mind can only take in and process so much. I just think it’s an amusing coincidence is all, and I don’t think anyone is actively to blame, or at least not malicious nor terrible for it!)

#the owl house #owl house #the owl house king #the owl house luz #luz noceda #the owl house eda #edalyn clawthorne #the owl house lilith #lilith clawthorne #character analysis #meta

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pedros-mustache-main · 4 years

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OMG SLEEPOVER ksjdjskdkdke perhaps,,,,,I am yearning for prof!!bri who a little bit of a prick but it’s only because he’s angry that he’s into student!y/n 👀👀👀 also, congratulations on 500, you deserve it all lovely !

annie, i— this is right up my alley, thank you. (also holy crap i went off i’m sorry i put it under a cut not to clog everyone’s dash)

i think the thing is brian absolutely would be an asshole of a prof because he’s so flustered by his indecent interest in one of his students. so instead of shoving the feelings down or even going out on a limb and talking to you about it, he would resort to taking it out on every student he comes in contact with at the university. he tells himself it’s okay, that he can be a bit of an asshole, because the teaching gig is only for the time being—only until a legal and financial fiasco can be worked out with the record label.

anyway, it’s a maths course. he’s good at maths—good at a lot of things, really—but he can’t seem to focus when he meets you that first class period. you approach him after the lecture and rather shyly tell him that maths is not your strong suit and that you’ve always struggled, but the course is required in order to get your teaching certificate. you hope, you say, that he can help you if you get stuck; if he has the time, of course.

he’s so struck by your beauty—simple and classic and refreshing amongst the sea of brightly colored eyeshadows and ripped jeans and graphic tees—that he can’t seem to formulate a solid response. he just gives you a curt nod and mumbles something about the syllabus before you leave the room, your face painted in confusion. he regrets his curtness, but it couldn’t be helped. it only gets worse from there.

as his interest grows—as he watches you interact with your peers and work hard and laugh and surprise your seat-mate with a coffee present from time to time—he shuts your requests for assistance down. he flat out tells you no, he won’t help you when you ask for him to explain your mistakes on the latest exam. he tells you he’s too busy, that it doesn’t matter anyway. you aren’t going to school to be a maths teacher. it hurts him to see your face fall, to hear the thick exam slap against your leg in defeat, but he squares his shoulders. he couldn’t bear to sit next to you by himself, in an empty classroom, and watch you struggle over things he finds so easy. he’d burst. he’d either literally explode into a thousand pieces or just kiss you breathless; he’s not sure which he’d prefer. it changes depending on the day.

your friends and classmates think he’s a right dick, and you’re beginning to think so too. at first, you thought he was just nervous. everyone knows who he is; everyone wants a piece of him; everyone is eager to find out why on earth brian may is teaching maths and astronomy at their university instead of writing new music and touring the world like the rock god he is. you can’t imagine the stress he’s under. so you cut him slack, forget his hard stares and frowns and obvious rejection.

but when he lays into you one period—visibly gets frustrated over the fact that you can’t complete an equation on the blackboard despite knowing full well that you struggle with this exact sort of problem. and when he mutters something under his breath about damned english teachers, you decide to confront him. once and for all before you go to the dean.

you wait until the room is empty before stepping to his desk. your heels click against the tile floor, but he doesn’t lift his head. he’s got one hand in his head of unruly curls, the other splayed across a crumpled piece of paper. you’ve spent hours trying to dissect his handwriting on your exams so you know at once it’s not a student’s work. it’s his own. a song, it looks like. or the beginnings of one.

you almost forgot he was a musician. not just your frustrating, albeit handsome, professor.

you clear your throat and will the nerves away. “professor may?”

he drums his fingers on the desk, and you can hear his foot tapping to an unspecific beat beneath his chair.

“professor may?” you ask again, this time with more force.

he looks up and already you can see boredom in his eyes. boredom and something else. anxiety? it’s unclear.

he heaves a sigh and leans back in his chair. it creaks, and he folds his long fingers over his chest. “yes, [y/n]?”

for a moment, you stand there, flustered. what do you say?

excuse me, sir, could you stop being such an asshole and help me?

professor may, i’d really like it if you stopped brushing me off.

professor may, i’d really like if you bent me over the desk and—

(no, not the time. later perhaps...)

you clear your throat again. “sir, i didn’t really appreciate the way you spoke to me this afternoon, about the maths equation.” you shift your stance slightly, curl the paper in your hand into a tight cylinder. “you know that i struggle.”

at least he has the decency to blush. he sits straighter in his chair. “yes, i know you do.”

“then why did you talk to me like that? in front of everyone?” you curse the fine sheen of tears that cover your eyes, and you shake your head to try and get him to stop looking at you like that—like you’re a china doll about to break. “it wasn’t very kind,” you finish lamely.

“no. no, it wasn’t.” he sighs, shuffles the papers around on his desk, then looks at you. “i’m sorry, [y/n]. i haven’t been the most... agreeable with you, have i?”

you hesitate but then shake your head again.

he stands, and when he does, you instinctively move back a step. he’s taller up close. you swallow hard.

“why do you hate me so much?”

the question pops out before you can stop it, but once the words are out, you are relieved to finally voice your qualms. he seems to have singled you out as the recipient of all his ire, and you’re getting sick and tired of it. it’s spectacularly unfair, not to mention unprofessional.

to your shock, he laughs at your question. actually laughs at it!

heat rushes to your face in waves, and you grit your teeth. “i’m sorry, sir, i don’t see what’s so funny—”

still laughing, he cuts you off with a wave of his hand. “i don’t hate you, [y/n],” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “really i don’t!”

your jaw drops. “you... don’t?”

“no, no, of course not!” his laughter dissolves into simple chuckles, and he meets your gaze. his eyes are soft; you’ve never seen him look softly at anything before.

“then why do you pick on me so much?”

it’s his turn to blush—again—and he rubs the back of his neck like a schoolboy. “it’s... awkward.”

you frown. “i don’t understand. what do you mean awkward? if you don’t dislike me then why do you—” he cringes, looking to the floor, and you loose your breath. “oh.”

“i’m no better than a boy in primary school.”

you have to smile, and even though your heart is beating wildly in your chest, a sense of calm settles over you. “no, you’re not.” you bite your lip. “you like me then?”

he nods.

“like me like me?”

he rolls his eyes, sighing deeply. “must i spell it out?”

you smirk. “i think so—to make up for all the shite you’ve given me.”

brian huffs, but acquiesces. “fine. i like you, [y/n] [y/l/n], more than i should seeing as i’m your professor. it’s rather unseemly how much i like you.”

“i know how you can make it up to me.”

he laughs again, short and loud and a song to your soul. “i just did! i just made myself sound like a fifteen year old kid!”

on a sudden burst of bravery, you reach out and take his wrist. his breathy exhale is like a drug, and you long to hear him make more sounds just like that. he looks at your hand on his wrist before looking back at you.

“take me to dinner, professor,” you whisper.

“that wouldn’t—”

you shake your head. “don’t think about it. just take me to dinner.”

there’s a beat—a moment of clear hesitation and him working the numbers and risks through his brain—before he moves away to grab his coat. he shrugs it on then steps around the desk to touch your elbow.

“do you like thai food?”

jess’s 500 sleepover! (requests closed)

#jess's 500 sleepover #wow this is so specific to myself #i am SORRY #brian may blurb #brian may

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athingthatwantsvirginia · 4 years

Text

All Norman Bates

PART FORTY-TWO OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: mentions of estranged parents, therapy, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 2.8K

Summary: Jess and Ella experience a bump in the road on the way to California.

A/N: Just so everyone is aware, there are only two chapters left after this, including the epilogue :)

Sighing, Jess glanced over at Ella, who sat in the passenger seat with a crinkled brow and the cap of a red pen between her teeth. They were halfway to California, and Jess didn’t think he’d seen her without that same pensive look on her face for the entirety of the trip thus far. But, he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed at her insistence on working over the spring break. Her cheeks were lively with rosy color, and her eyes looked clearer.

They weren’t all good days. Sometimes, she would come home from work or school and fall asleep on the couch almost immediately, lethargic and unable to articulate any of the thoughts which were jumbled in a confusing, depressed mess within her head. Then, when she awoke, she would often find herself needing to cry. Whether she knew what her feelings were about or not, she would let herself cry, like her new therapist was urging her to. Jess would rub circles on her back and make green tea and listen. And eventually, she would feel better. They were working it out together, just like he promised. Most of the time, there was a gnawing guilt sitting in her stomach. He shouldn’t have to take care of her, she would think. She was holding him back. She was weighing him down. Each time she brought it up though, he would patiently remind her of how much she had helped him, how this thing of theirs was a two-way street, and that he didn’t mind.

She would smile, in spite of herself. Slowly, it was getting easier, and she was regaining her passion for things. She was drawing again, even painting, finally making use of the easel Jess had gotten her for Christmas. Jess often made jokes about how big of a role their therapists played in their lives, but they only made Ella laugh, instead of making her angry. It was true, but she was becoming less ashamed of it by the day. It would probably always feel a bit like her and Jess against the world, but their world could be bigger. Help didn’t need to be an evil. She didn’t need to make survival her ultimate goal. Instead, she was working on happiness. And, of course, the antidepressants were playing a part no one could understate.

“You’re gonna make yourself carsick,” Jess warned begrudgingly, turning down the Killers song which played on the radio.

Ella rolled her eyes but didn’t look up from the essay. “You’re the one who gets carsick, Jess. I’ll be fine.”

Again, he gave a slight sigh. Sometimes, the silence could get to even him. When she was working, it was like she was on a different planet. “Whatever, Daria. Just call me the invisible man.”

“You are so clingy,” she teased off-handedly, chuckling.

He scoffed, though a blush rose hotly up his neck and to the tips of his ears. “Am not.”

“Sure, tough guy,” she quipped, then finally looked up from the midterm papers she was grading.

The current one was a pretty decent account of how Van Gogh made the most of his madness through his art. She was pretty engrossed in it, and it was almost free of her annotations. Her harsh grading style had become almost notorious with the T.A. circle at the University. But, sometimes, people really did turn in perfect work. Besides, she knew it was better to bite the bullet and give the advice. It was what the students were there for, after all. And subtlety had never been her strong suit.

For what it was worth, she was working on the drive in an attempt to have less to do once they actually reached California. The plans were to spend the week on the beach, reading and drawing, and popping into Jess’s father’s house every now and again. The visit was partially for vacation, partially an obligatory gesture. Jess hadn’t visited in so long, the guilt was starting to get to him. His father was a douchebag, but he had still welcomed Jess into his home when he didn’t have to. The gesture certainly counted for something.

Watching the darkness of the road ahead, Jess tried to keep his anxiety at bay. He had to remind himself that Ella was with him, they were older, and even more stable than they had been the last time they visited. He didn’t need to feel nervous about the trip, but the memories of his lonely months in Venice were itching at the back of his mind. Sometimes, he would give in and scratch, even if it only made things worse. He bit at his bottom lip, eyes occasionally wandering to the sky. There were stars, lots out in the heartland of America with no light pollution. And there were hardly any other cars, as the night went from evening to late. There were no concrete plans about where to stay the night, just the next decent motel they happened upon. Each time Ella suggested stopping, Jess insisted he was fine to keep driving. He wanted to get as much done as he could manage. Truthfully, he was not looking forward to the silence of the nighttime, when Ella went to sleep and he had to be alone with thoughts of his father turning over and over in his head.

“Do you hear that?” she asked after a moment, brows furrowing. With her attention away from her work, she had begun to pick up on a faint clicking sound.

“Hear what?” Jess said, broken from his anxious reverie.

“Listen,” she said, then gave a hesitant pause. Then added: “It’s getting louder.”

Jess did as she told him, turning the quiet music on the radio all the way down. Sure enough, beneath the rushing of the tires and the occasional screech they had come to tune out after years of riding in the death trap, there was a clicking. And it was getting louder, faster and faster. Then, Jess began to feel a drag in his speed and a resistance in his brakes.

. . .

Too tired even to work, Ella laid with her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling. They were somewhere in Kansas, with shitty cell reception and even shittier motels. No auto repair shop would be open until the morning, the man with the tow truck had said, but he suspected it was the engine, based on the sound they had described to him. Luckily, the man had been kind enough to drive them to the nearest 24-hour lodging. The Ambassador would sit solitary in the tow yard until the morning, when they came to bring it to whatever repair shop had the lowest prices. In all honesty, Ella was just glad they hadn’t been forced to spend the night on the side of the highway. It had taken them almost a half an hour before finally getting Ella’s cell in the right position to handle a call to information, to get the name of a towing company. The whole ordeal had been nerve-wracking, but she was feeling marginally better behind the safety of their closed motel room door. At the front desk there sat a disinterested woman with thick glasses which magnified her light eyes and a magazine open on the desk in front of her. She had told them a lost key was a $50 fee before sending them on their way with little more than a glance.

It wasn’t a shock. Jess’s car had been living on borrowed time for quite a while, anyway. Rusty and creaky and dying. Ella almost felt vindicated. Finally, her predictions had come true. She had expressed doubt when Jess had said he would be the one driving, to give her time to work and relax. He’d been encouraging her to relax more often recently, and she appreciated it. But riding passenger in the Ambassador was anything but relaxing. Ella still couldn’t believe how flabbergasted Jess had looked when he had to pull over on the side of the road, unable to drive safely with the way the gas pedal wasn’t cooperating. Ella felt a bit of foolish nostalgia at the thought of the vehicle. Another site of their youth bites the dust.

“I don’t know,” Jess sighed into his phone, running a hand down his tired face.

He’d been talking to Sasha for the last twenty minutes. It was past ten, but not the middle of the night. Jimmy, however, wasn’t available to talk apparently. Sasha had been suggesting alternative plans for them to get to California, though both Jess and Ella knew there was no way they were getting down there anytime soon if the car was as broken as they suspected. Even if it wasn’t completely dead (which it was), they’d have to wait for parts to come in. Who knew how long that would take for such an old make and model.

Eventually, Jess pushed Sasha off the phone with some muttered excuses and forced goodbyes. His head was swimming with fatigue, and he didn’t think he could deal with another second of his stepmother. Not considering how chatty and cheery she was. Putting his cell phone on the rickety nightstand next to him, he flopped down onto his back. The comforter had a faded floral pattern, but was surprisingly soft. He blew out a long breath and shut his eyes for a moment.

“So she took it well?” Ella asked flatly. She had heard Sasha’s good-natured badgering as she lay silently next to Jess.

“Oh yeah,” Jess replied. “Very understanding.”

Ella snorted a laugh and sat up again, looking down at him. She raked her fingers through his hair affectionately. He sighed again, eyes still closed. Biting at the inside of her cheek, Ella fought back a small smirk at the sight of him in the low glow of the singular bedside lamp. The night certainly hadn’t gone according to plan, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel too upset about not making it to California. She still wasn’t the biggest fan of Jimmy or the Pacific Ocean. She kept stroking his hair, eyeing his long lashes and exhausted pallor. She could tell how sleepy he was, even if he wouldn’t exactly admit the effects of driving so long.

She looked around the small room, big enough only for a queen bed, a small TV, some nightstands, and a bathroom off to the side. The rosebud wallpaper was yellowed with age and there were a few precarious stains on the beige carpet. But the air had a homey smell of dust and she decided it wasn’t the worst place they could have ended up. Fortunately, they didn’t need to find dinner, having already grabbed some takeout about an hour before the end of the Ambassador’s long, strange life.

“At least we won’t have to reconnect with that weird guy who works on the boardwalk,” Ella said, breaking the comfortable silence.

“The guy who sells the hemp hats?” Jess asked, then cracked his eyes open again. “You think he still works there?”

“I bet he’ll still be standing out there long after you and I are dead,” Ella replied.

Jess laughed. “You’re probably right.”

“Maybe I should grade more,” she said distractedly, speaking mostly to herself as her idle hands made uneasiness creep up in her stomach.

Rolling his eyes, Jess grabbed her gently around the waist and pulled her down onto the bed, guiding her head to his chest. “This is an addiction, Stevens. I’m cutting you off.”

“Yeah, well, the first step to healing is acceptance,” she quipped, placing a kiss on his t-shirt and settling in against him. For once, she decided to oblige him and sleep instead of stay up into the early hours of the morning with her red pen. Her therapist had also suggested doing work in moderation.

Jess chuckled breathily. “It’s true.” Then, after a moment: “I think I’m honestly more upset about the car than not getting to go visit daddy dearest.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured.”

“Oh, am I that transparent?” he deadpanned.

“Like a glass house, Mariano,” she teased. “I guess it is the end of an era.”

He nodded. “Yeah. No more weird cigarette burns on the ceiling.”

She laughed. One of the only nights in high school she had ever gotten stoned, Jess had picked her up from her house by surprise, throwing pebbles at her window. He found her eyes red-rimmed and glassy, her cheeks flushed, and her mind spacey. All she’d wanted to do was drive around and smoke cigarettes and listen to Joy Division. At the time, she hadn’t told him about the blowout fight with her father and Fiona. Not until the next morning over breakfast in the diner. When she’d accidentally burned the ceiling of the car with her cigarette, leaving a dark circle, she’d started tearing up. In response, Jess lit a cigarette of his own and pressed it to the ceiling without hesitation, unphased.

Smiling at the memory, she threw an arm over his waist. “And no more barrette stuck in the window crank that won’t come out no matter how fucking hard I try.”

Jess snorted a laugh. After the Arctic Monkeys concert they’d attended the previous summer, they’d had sex in the backseat. One of her barrettes had somehow ended up eternally wedged in the window crank. The next day, she’d taken a pair of pliers to it fruitlessly. Jess had teased her, the woman who prided herself on being able to fix anything, mercilessly, ever since.

“And about a million other ‘no mores.’ Who knows what’ll happen in our next car,” he said.

“Only time will tell,” she muttered through a yawn. “I love you, James Dean.”

“Love you back,” he replied.

A gentle click sounded in the cozy quiet as Jess shut off the lamp. Getting comfortable again, he ran a hand up and down over her back and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. Then, he bit at his bottom lip, and his mind flashed to the small red box in this duffel. With the thin gold ring, a tiny amethyst in the middle. He’d bought it months ago, on a random trip to some antique shop with Chris, and he had a few ideas in mind. He hadn’t nailed down a real proposal plan yet, but took it with to California just in case. It had been wishful thinking, of course, since California was neither of their favorite places. And they weren’t going to make it there anyway. Still, it was there. It was happening. He just didn’t know when. It made his insides feel fluttery and excited and almost sick with nerves. But, for now, he decided getting the fuck out of Kansas would be the first step.

Dozing, Ella let her mind wander again to their teenage years. She felt her heart ache with sentimentality, and then brushed it off. Not because she wanted to ignore the feeling, but because all of a sudden she didn’t feel it. She didn’t need to miss Jess when he was right next to her. She didn’t need to worry about the past. Let yourself have a middle. Lorelai’s words reappeared in her mind, soft and comforting.

“Jess?” she asked, voice beginning to grow rough with sleep.

“Hmmm?” he hummed, and she felt the word vibrating in her ear against his chest.

“Do you think that lady at the front desk is gonna go all Normal Bates on us?” she asked.

He sighed, but then it turned into a laugh. “No, Daria, I don’t think so.”

“I bet that’s what Jant Leigh thought too,” she replied, all too serious.

Jess kept his smirk. “Just call me Marion Crane, then.”

She giggled, then was quiet for another moment. Jess slipped his hand beneath her t-shirt and began rubbing small circles on her skin. Usually, she fell asleep within a couple minutes of laying down. Apparently, something was eating at her.

“I think I’m gonna take that job at the University for next year,” she spoke again suddenly.

“Really?” he asked, smirk turning to a small, genuine smile.

“Yeah,” she said, almost shyly. “I’ll have time for actually making some damn art, but I’ll still have a steady income, good benefits...ugh do I sound like a middle-aged tragedy?”

“No,” he said, reassurance in his tone. “I think it’s gonna be great, Eleanor. Seriously.”

“I just...I think I’ll be happy doing it.”

“I do too,” he said, kissing her hair once more. “Congratulations, Stevens.”

“Thanks,” she said with a nervous chuckle, blushing a bit. “And I’ll have that whole sexy professor thing going for me, which is a plus.”

#jess mariano #gilmore girls #gilmore girls jess #gilmore girls au #gilmore girls oc #gilmore girls fanfiction #fanfiction #jess mariano fanfiction #jess mariano oc fanfiction #jess x oc

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padfootagain · 4 years

Text

Girl Crush (VIII)

Chapter 8: Broken Rose

Here we go again with a new chapter!!! I hope you all like it!!

Tell me what you think of this new chapter! There are no warnings, except for a touch of angst.

Word Count : 3387

Harry missed you.

That was the truth that was a little bitter to swallow. He missed you. When he said that he missed you, he meant to say that he missed you to an abnormal amount. He was used to live away from his friends, but it was harder for him to be away from you than anyone else.

It was nice to be back in London, see old friends, catch up with his family. He couldn't and wouldn't deny it. It was nice. He had missed a lot of people he could see again now.

As he planted his fork in his piece of lettuce for the fifth time without eating it, he had to admit that he longed to go back to L.A. He missed the warm weather. Missed the beach. Missed the ocean. Missed the busy and yet unique rhythm of the city. He missed being there.

And the fact that his best friend lived in this city of angels did not help.

He rested his chin on his palm, not noticing the pout that formed on his lips.

He wondered what you were doing right now, tried to calculate what time it was in L.A…

"Harry? Are you listening, darling?"

"Huh?" he looked up at his mum across the table. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"Bored already, are you?" Anne asked him with a playful tone.

He rolled his eyes, sitting straighter.

"Of course not. Go ahead, I'm listening."

"I was talking about your sister, but I think I'll change the subject and instead ask you about the woman who makes you so distracted."

"No one," Harry defended himself, and he wondered why he was so defensive actually. He was always so open with his mother, so why did he react this way?

"No one?"

"No, I'm not seeing anyone at the moment."

"Because of your break-up with Jessica?" she asked further on. "It was quite a while ago now."

"Yeah… no, not really… I don't know, I'm just… not in the mood."

"Or you just don't want to tell your mother?"

"Of course not, mum," he shook his head, as if it were the most ridiculous statement in the universe. "I just don't want to date anyone, that's all. I'm busy."

Anne nodded, but was clearly not convinced.

They were eating in Harry's home in London. It was cloudy outside, and even if it was noon, they had to turn on the light. Harry's eyes drifted towards the window on his right, looking at the dark clouds hovering above the large city. It would soon rain…

Was it about to rain too in California?

"What is bothering you so much?"

"Nothing," he shook his head, focusing on his mother again.

"Why are you torturing that poor lettuce then?"

He finally realized what he had been doing with his food for the past two minutes, and shrugged.

"I don't know," he earnestly answered. "I was just… thinking about L.A."

"What in L.A? A studio?"

"No, no… Just… a friend I miss."

"A friend?"

"Yeah. Y/N, you remember? I've told you about her a couple of times."

Anne snorted.

"More like two hundred times…"

"She's my best friend!"

"What were you thinking about that involved her?"

"Just… wondering if she was okay. What she was doing. Nothing extraordinary."

He brought his glass of red wine to his lips, and that was precisely the moment Anne chose to abruptly ask the question that had been on the tip of her tongue for a while.

"Do you like her?"

He choked on his wine, spilling some of the dark beverage down his chin.

"What?!" he asked back through his coughs, his voice hoarse and barely comprehensible.

"I asked if you liked her or if she truly was just a friend."

"She's a friend!"

"It's funny… because your eyes light up when you talk about her, and you smile the same way you used to smile when you were 13 and had a crush on that stupid girl next door."

"Mum…" he buried his face in his palm. "Don't… do that…"

"You should tell her that you want your relationship to go further."

"I don't want that."

"Really?"

"Really."

Anne knew her son better than he knew himself. And she easily read the signs that there was something more than a simple friendship in his heart that burnt because of you. Maybe he wasn't ready to face it though… or maybe she was just misreading him for once.

"Alright then… don't listen to me."

"I mean… she's brilliant, don't misunderstand me," he went on, and his eyes lost their focus as he thought of you. "She's… hilarious and smart and kind and gentle and… beautiful and…"

A dreamy smile formed on his face, and Anne drank some of her wine, a little smile on her lips.

Yep, she still got it…

"She's so supportive and so annoyingly good at boardgames and she always eats all the icing off her cakes first… and she loves chocolate too much… and she… she knows what all her flowers mean, and she always gives me her blankets because she knows I'm cold all the time and… she always wears pink pyjamas when we play boardgames cause it's raining outside…"

He hadn't even noticed that he was rambling, his brain had not registered the words that were toppling off his lips.

Anne though had not missed any of it.

"I see… she sounds amazing indeed."

Harry finally shook himself, and looked at his mum again.

"Yeah, she is," he nodded, before planting his fork in his lettuce for the sixth time and finally eating it.

"So… you've never seen her as anything more than just a friend?"

He shrugged.

"I… I've never thought about it to be honest."

"Really?"

"No, I mean… I was with Jess when we met, and then… I was away a lot and… she's my best friend."

"You speak of her like she means an awful lot to you though. Maybe more than a mere friend should."

"You think so?"

"Maybe you should consider it."

He grew quieter through the rest of the meal, and he spent his afternoon pacing through his home or staring blankly at the ceiling once his mother had left.

He was lying on his sofa at the end of the afternoon. Rain had started to fall indeed, clouds cracking into thunder.

You?

As… more than friends?

He tried to tear down the idea, but he couldn't help but admit that… it wasn't the craziest thing he had ever considered.

You were…

…his best friend.

The words rang through his head, almost holy, unbreakable.

You were his best friend, and he wouldn't endanger that unless he was certain that he wanted more.

And if he couldn't deny that he had thought a couple of times before of what it would feel like to cup your cheek, or kiss your lips, it didn't mean that he would endanger what you had for that.

He huffed. His mother was being ridiculous…

Or maybe she wasn't.

He turned to lay on his side, his eyes drifting to his suitcase, almost packed, sitting in a corner of the room. One more week and he would be back in L.A, and he couldn't wait.

Maybe he could… tell you about it? Maybe the question ought to be asked… Because he couldn't deny that the more he thought about you this way, the more it made sense to him, the more he was convinced that you would work together as more than you were now.

He couldn't deny that he was attracted to you. Couldn't deny that he wondered how it felt to be loved like that by you, instead of just a friend. Were your hugs different? Were your kisses on the cheek changed then, would they linger on against his skin longer?...

The idea brought a thousand questions, and maybe it was for the best that he couldn't simply drive to your place and ask you straight away, because this needed some thinking but he wasn't sure if he could have resisted.

He rubbed his eyes and let out a groan.

He would decide once he was in L.A. again… what would he do?

A conversation was needed.

A conversation had to take place to see if the two of you were on the same page.

Because Anne's idea was actually quite good, Harry reckoned. And the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if you had ever seen him that way too.

Would that mean that he wanted to jump into a relationship with you? No. He was being realistic about it, and he wasn't sure what his feelings were just yet. But he reckoned that he needed to bring up the question, see if you had ever felt like he could be more to you. Because if you had then maybe it was worth thinking about how the two of you could give it a shot.

It wasn't like he was in love with you or anything, and he would make that clear. He just thought that…

Actually, he wasn't sure what he was thinking. A part of him felt excited at the idea of taking a step further, that was the part of him that sometimes stared at your lips when you talked and wondered how it would feel to kiss them.

But the rest of him only considered the warning signs. What if becoming more than friends was synonym with turning your relationship into something that none of you could handle? What if you ended up breaking what you had built together?

He didn't go home after his plane landed, he was too excited to see you for that. It was the early afternoon, and he reckoned that, giving the time it took to drive from the airport to Mary's flowers, he would arrive to the shop right after your lunchbreak. So, he grabbed a cab, and drove to the shop. He noticed a flower shop on the way though, and decided to buy a little something.

Of course, he had brought you some of the British biscuits you liked, safely packed in his suitcase, but as he drove before the shop, with stales filled with colourful peonies, he knew that he had to stop and get you one of these. They were your favourite, after all.

He was about to pay when he spotted some velvety red roses. And he knew the meaning behind these ones, everyone did, no need to have studied plants to know that they meant romantic love and affection.

He grabbed one of those too, and walked out of the shop with one of each flowers in his hand before climbing back inside his cab.

When he walked out of the car and paid for the ride, carrying his large Gucci bag on his shoulder for the few meters he had left to cross to reach the shop, his heart was beating faster with excitement. Just as he reached the first stales though, you walked out of the shop with a man. You were smiling, the bright sun shining in your hair and making your eyes brighter. He didn't even notice the smile that formed on his lips at the sight of you.

He dropped his bag to the floor, waiting for you to be done with who he assumed was a customer, and he hid the flowers behind his back. His smile was slowly turning into an excited grin as he watched you talk with this stranger, while you hadn't noticed him standing there for now. He didn't mind waiting, he was just happy to see you.

But then, something he hadn't foreseen happened.

This man you were talking to leaned to kiss you on the lips… and you met him halfway.

Harry's smile vanished into thin air.

You… were… kissing someone else…

He watched, frozen, unable to look away despite his urge to do so. The kiss didn't last for more than a few seconds, but time seemed to stretch for him. The shock was hard to overcome, and he suddenly realized that… he had never had to deal with that in your friendship before. You had… never had anyone…

But who was this guy? How did you meet? For how long had this been going on? Why had you never told Harry about him?

He would have been lying if he had claimed that the sight wasn't painful to watch, but he wasn't sure why it was so much so. Maybe he was just angry at you for not telling him that you were seeing someone when you were supposed to tell him everything…

The mysterious man walked away, sending you a little wave and a wink, and the thought suddenly crossed Harry's mind that…

…had you slept with this guy?!

You turned back towards the front door of the shop, and finally spotted Harry. Your face broke into the brightest of smiles, you seemed so happy to see him, so excited…

… did you look at that guy this way too whenever you saw him?

"Harry!" you rushed to hug him, almost tackling him on the process, which was enough to take his mind off of what he had just witness and make him smile again.

"Hey, Y/N! How are you?"

He suddenly remembered the flowers he was hiding behind his back, and realized that he couldn't give you a rose now, could he?

Why was the thought making his heart ache though?

He was disappointed, he recognized at least that emotion. He spotted a bucket full of the same kind of roses he held, and reluctantly placed his flower amongst them.

When he finally wrapped his arms around you, he held you tighter than usual. But you attributed it to the fact that he had missed his best friend, there was nothing more to it. Right?

"I'm great! How was your flight? How was London?"

"The flight was uneventful. London was… wet."

You both laughed, and you finally pulled away to take a better look at him. His hair was a little dishevelled, and he seemed like he was lacking some sleep, but his smile was genuine as his green eyes stared at you, reaching the corner of his eyes and digging dimples into his cheeks. A stubble had started to appear around his mouth and over his cheeks as he had clearly not shaved in a few days.

God, you had missed him so much…

"I've got this for you," he revealed the bright peony he held, and you couldn't refrain a bright grin, nor a small gasp.

"Since when do you offer me flowers?" you giggled, a little shy, but you accepted the gift nonetheless.

He suddenly realized that it was the first time he brought you a flower, indeed…

He shrugged.

"I just saw those on my way here, and I know it's your favourite so… I thought you would like it."

"I do like it. Thank you."

You dropped a peck on his cheek and it made his heart feel all warm and soft…

…why did he feel like that? It was just a peck, it wasn't the first one you gave him either…

"I will try not to take personally that you went to buy to our competition, but…"

You both broke into laughter, before you breathed the sweet scent of the flower in.

"I'm a traitor, sorry," he joked, making you smile.

"That's alright. If you've brought some of these biscuits again, it'll work as a bribe…"

"Biscuits? No idea what you're talking about," he innocently replied, making you laugh again.

"Well then, no favours anymore to make you bouquets for your girlfriends," you teased.

He smiled, but the gesture didn't reach his eyes this time.

"Speaking of girlfriends and boyfriends… who was that guy?" he asked in the most relaxed tone he could summon, burying his hands in the pockets of his large blue trousers.

"Oh… Uhm… his name's Gareth. We've been on a few dates. Wanted to wait until you were back to tell you about him."

"A few dates?"

"Yeah, six dates."

"Six? Right… and how did you meet?"

"At the shop actually. And he… he kept on coming back to see me until we went on a date."

"Cute," he replied, although he felt disgusted in reality.

"Yeah… it's…I think it's getting serious."

"Already?"

You rolled your eyes.

"I mean, not serious serious but… I think… I think he's my boyfriend."

Boyfriend?!

"Boyfriend? Wow! Good for you!"

You heard some loud noise coming from inside the shop, and heaved a frustrated sigh.

"Sorry, I have to go back. Are you free tonight? Dinner?"

He nodded, offering you a warm smile.

"Dinner. Your place. I'll bring the wine."

"Great! And thanks again for the flower! You know me so well!"

He looked at you disappearing in the shop once more, his smile fading as you vanished.

Did he really know you that well though?

He didn't go home just yet, instead, he grabbed his bag and headed for the beach. He stayed there for a long while, staring at the sea, his shoes resting by his heavy luggage.

So… you were with someone else…

He let out a bitter chuckle. At least, that closed the conversation he wanted to engage in before it even started.

He had been a fool for listening to his mother in the first place. Of course, she was his mum, and he listened to her advices and it was only normal that he had not dismissed her idea at once. She usually was right about everything after all.

She was wrong this time though, and he was a little mad at her for making him think of you this way, and kind of, if he were honest to himself, making himself built his hope high for something he shouldn't have even considered in the first place.

Six dates. It was just the beginning.

Six dates… had you slept with him yet?

The thought made him feel sick, and he felt angry all of a sudden. He shouldn't have felt that way though. He didn't have the right to be…

He was just being overprotective, it was one of his many faults, and he knew he had always been like this. Carrying his heart on his sleeves also meant that he was a bit too much sometimes with the ones he loved and cared about. And that was it. He was being overprotective again, right?

He heaved a deep sigh, throwing his head back to drink in the warm sunrays falling upon the beach. It was a nice, soothing feeling, his cheeks soon burning a little but he didn't move. The light painted his eyelids a vivid red instead of pitch dark black.

Was he being overprotective, or was he being jealous?

He knew he had both issues, so which one was it this time?

He felt guilty at the idea of being jealous. He didn't have any right to be.

And yet when he imagined this guy kissing you and touching you…

He winced, reaching for the notebook and pen in his Gucci bag.

He wasn't sure what he was feeling, but he was certain that he had to get it out of his system before it devoured him whole.

I'm selfish, I know

But I don't ever want to see you with him

He heaved a deep sigh, looking up at the waves again, an undying rush of water against the sand. Their rhythm was soothing, almost like a song.

He would fill the gap between the lyrics later, or perhaps his thoughts would remain only thoughts and he wouldn't use them at all. It didn't matter for now. He needed to get it all out of his system. It was easier to face the truth when he wrote it down instead of silently debating it with himself.

He didn't like how he was reacting to all this. It didn't mean that he could ignore it though. He reckoned that the best he could do was to accept it, so he could make the feelings disappear as fast as he could.

I hope you can see the shape that I'm in

While he's touching your skin

***************************************

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