#the casual affection this season is KILLING ME | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

veeagainsttheday · 1 year ago

Text

Ed, Killing, and the Kraken in Our Flag Means Death S1 and S2

This meta contains a whole heckuva a lot of spoilers for Our Flag Means Death seasons 1 and 2. Thanks to @petrichorca who gave it a read through and left some helpful comments!

When we first get to know Ed in s1e4, the episode concludes with him telling his first mate, Izzy Hands, about his plans to murder Stede Bonnet and steal his identity so Ed can retire from piracy. Ed and Izzy discuss the plan in a casual manner, like this act isn't shocking or deviant from previous conversations and schemes Ed and Izzy have had before. This is consistent with how other characters, especially Black Pete, have described Blackbeard in previous episodes (‘when Blackbeard kills man, woman, or child…’). While Black Pete is (probably) lying, Buttons was with him until the flip.

As the song ‘The Empty Boat’ by Caetano Veloso plays, Izzy tells Ed, 'You've still got it' and Ed says, 'I know,' turning away to face the empty deck. Only the audience witnesses his true facial expression - the Blackbeard mask falling, a kind of dead-eyed exhaustion (echoed by the lyrics of the song) taking its place.

In s1e5, we see Ed threaten violence against the French captain, but he doesn't actually hurt the man himself. We also see him act as if he's about to go kill the French partygoers before Stede steps in and 'handles it'. At this point I think we the audience would, if asked, have said that Ed seems to have a casual attitude towards killing that you would expect from 'the legendary Blackbeard'. He's scary ('next one goes through your fucking eyeball') and almost cartoonishly violent ('skin him. And use the snail fork'). So we the audience maybe make some assumptions about where the show stands on violent killing - not only that Blackbeard is familiar with it, but that it's a commonplace act for him.

Then we come to a pivotal moment. In s1e6, Izzy pushes back on Ed for not killing Stede, there’s the conversation about doggy heaven, and Ed promises Izzy that he’ll be the one to do the killing. We see Ed hyping himself up (‘You’re a killer bro. So kill.’) and then holding his knife while standing next to Stede behind the curtain in the captain’s cabin. They’re interrupted by Lucius cutting off his finger. Ed doesn’t go through with it; the moment passes as Stede exits the curtain to announce the entrance of the Kraken.

At this point, I as an audience member fully believed that Ed couldn’t kill Stede because of his feelings for him. I wasn’t yet sure what those feelings were, but I knew that Ed had a deep affection for Stede, and for a moment I believed that was all that was holding him back. Then, of course, we see Ed have a PTSD/panic attack trigger from the Kraken fuckery that sends him into Stede’s bathtub, hiding underneath Stede’s robe, where he and Stede have what I believe is the most intimate moment of the entire first season (a reading supported by s2e3). Ed tells Stede, ‘The Kraken didn’t kill my dad. I did.’ We are shown the flashbacks to the way Ed’s father abused him and his mother, and the Kraken story he told on deck earlier is shown again with the figure of the beast in the water replaced by himself, as a young teen, on the dock.

Then Ed tells Stede, ‘If I’m being honest, I haven’t killed another man since.’ Stede tries to comfort him by reminding him how much he loves a good maim, but Ed is still preoccupied with how the fact that he killed his abusive father as a child means that he’s not a good person, and that this is why he doesn’t have any friends, aka, isn’t loveable. Stede tells him, ‘I’m your friend,’ in essence, To me, you are loveable, and Ed reacts by saying, ‘No,’ and banging his head against the tub.

The next important point happens in s1e8, when Jack invites himself to breakfast and regales Stede (very deliberately, as he’s trying to push Stede and Ed apart) with the tale of Ed setting a ship alight and killing many people. (Also note - the show’s first mention of Hornigold! ‘He treated us like dogs! Worse than dogs!’ and ‘Ground us down into nothing!’) While Jack emphasises the horror and brutality of what Ed did, Ed’s demeanour completely changes - ‘No, Stede doesn’t want to hear about that.’ Jack obviously doesn’t listen to Ed; Stede’s face passes from horrified listening to Jack to squinting at Ed like, ‘Is this - true?’ Ed looks thoroughly guilty as the story continues and Stede asks him, clearly doing his best to preserve Ed’s secret in front of Jack, ‘I thought you’d, uh, given up the killing?’ Ed surges forward in his seat and, not making eye contact with Stede, says, ‘Yeah, well, technically the fire killed those guys. Not me.’ The camera then cuts to Jack looking at Stede with a bit of an incredulous expression as if he’s both gauging Stede’s reaction to the entire thing and thinking, ‘Wow BB’s in deep here if he’s making up some weird story about not being the one who lit that fire.’

I don’t think the show intends for us to believe that Ed was consciously lying to Stede in the bathtub scene in s1e6. Instead, we see the complex way that Ed - who is shown to be both brilliant and possessed of an internal monologue that just cannot shut up - has constructed mental barriers to protect himself from the trauma of killing while still achieving the highest possible status in a very violent profession and existing in a world marred by colonial violence perpetrated specifically against people like him.

S1e9 shows Ed continuing to posture to everyone but Stede as Blackbeard, seasoned killer (for example, telling Chauncey that he barely remembers killing Nigel because he’s ‘a real “life is cheap” kinda guy’). At the Academy and briefly after, in the beginning of s1e10, Ed seems set to have given up killing and violence for real, but Izzy’s threats in the cabin in s1e10 send Ed reeling back to the Kraken persona he assumed when he killed his dad. The season concludes with him pushing Lucius off the ship and Krakening up to sail, rob, and raise hell forever - but the final shot shows Ed crying alone in his cabin, his Kraken makeup streaking down his face. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s one of my favourite scenes from a character perspective. Imagine if the season had ended with Ed fully transformed into the Kraken, rather than clearly miserable and heartbroken under his mask?

Season 2 begins with Ed trying to set a record for most consecutive raids, working his crew to death under brutal and traumatic conditions. His list of crimes on his wanted poster certainly suggests a lot of violence and killing, yet the show is careful to show us Ed himself only seeming to kill one person - firing a gun into a man’s back during a raid - and if you look closely, you’ll see that the man was already dying with a dagger through his body. It feels vital to me that the only direct ‘killing’ action we see Ed taking is shooting a man who we presume he can justify as having been already on his way to death.

In s2e1 and s2e2, Ed can’t kill Izzy, though he does try desperately to get Frenchie to do it for him. He can’t even kill himself, trying to get Izzy to do it instead. When he thinks Izzy has committed suicide with the gun he gave him, he says, ‘I loved you, best I could,’ as if any love Ed could give would by its nature not be good enough.

Ed wakes in s2e3 in the care of his old captain, Hornigold; of course, he’s really in the gravy basket and Hornigold is serving as a Jacob Marley-esque psychopomp. They key to Ed realising that he’s really [Buttons voice] ‘down in the old gravy basket’ is the conversation that concludes his attempts to be Jeff the Innkeeper. Hornigold tells Ed that he’s not good with people - after all, he did strangle his father. Ed reacts first with disbelief then cold fury, saying he never told anyone that; Hornigold reminds him that he told one person and Ed flashes back to telling Stede in the bathtub in s1e6; then Hornigold reminds him that the one person he told left him, and we see Ed crying under his Kraken makeup at the end of s1e10. Later, when Ed (finally, even Calico Jack would have had it sooner) realises that Hornigold represents himself, he says that he’s unloveable. Here’s the crux of it - he believes that he is fundamentally unloveable because he killed his father, because he is the Kraken, the monstrous beast capable of lethal violence. That’s why Stede left, his brain is telling him even as he’s dying.

Then Stede actually proves him wrong by returning, saving him from death, and telling him that he ‘love[s] everything about [him]’ in rapid succession. Whether or not Ed fully accepts this information, we do see him very quickly, yes, melt back into Stede’s arms. Which brings us to s2e6, and Stede’s killing of Ned Low.

Quick digression into killing and Stede: Stede accidentally kills a man in s1e1, is haunted by his ghost in s1e2. He’s so haunted by dead Nigel that he spends a lot of s1e2 asking first Oluwande and Jim for advice on being a ‘mur-der-er’, and then asking Black Pete how his former employer, Blackbeard (!!!) handled killing. (How Pete says, ‘When Blackbeard kills man, woman, or child-’ lives in my head at all times, Matt Maher with the line deliveries of all time.) Finally in s1e2, during his court-mandated therapy with the tribal elder, Stede admits that he doesn’t feel bad about killing Nigel - he was a horrible person even when he was a child! Stede's guilt is coming from somewhere else. We see this again in s1e9, when Stede says it is time for him to face the consequences for what he’s done - it might seem like he means for killing Nigel, since that’s why he’s about to face the firing squad, but we know that Stede’s guilt is about abandoning his family (the people he’s hurt!). Similarly, when Stede kills Ned in s2e6, he seems to get over it very quickly. Ned is clearly a bad guy, and although the act of killing him was traumatic for Stede (much like the act of killing Nigel), Stede presumably reconciles it by knowing that he was protecting Ed and his crew (and avenging Calypso’s birthday). Stede as a character is shown to have a tremendous amount of natural resilience. We later see him immolate a guy and dispatch a number of British soldiers without hesitation. Stede is also one of the two main protagonists of the show, and his attitude towards killing seems to reflect the attitude of the show itself - killing colonisers and torturers to protect your loved ones is ok, actually.

(Side note but I found this idea about how zero tolerance policies actually hurt victims very informative on the topic of why it's ok that Stede killed his childhood bully; I got that link from this very interesting post where several people are in conversation about how Ed is not Izzy's abuser.)

Back to Ed in s2e6. He asks Stede not to kill Ned; when Stede does anyway, Ed is visibly saddened and ignores Izzy telling him to give Stede a moment; instead he goes immediately to check in on Stede in his cabin. He knocks on the door and in that soft voice that he only ever uses with Stede, he starts to say, ‘Hey. You okay? Look, I was a wreck after my first kill as well.’ Then he pauses, before rambling, ‘I mean, well, it was my dad, so there's that,’ which feels like a little moment of self-reflection. Like. Yeah. Ed. Baby. You might be super fucked up about the act of killing because the first guy you killed was your dad, when you were a literal child! Also, Ed has never been to (as far as we know) court-mandated tribal elder therapy, so of course his decision to kill his father fucked Ed up for decades! Also as a very clever friend pointed out, we don’t know anything about what the consequences of that were for Ed - how did his mother react, is that why he ran away to sea, etc.

There's another important thing here that the audience knows, but that Ed has never told Stede (or, we have to assume, anyone) which is that the catalyst for Ed becoming the Kraken to kill his father was abuse. The audience is shown through his panic-attack-induced flashback that Ed's father physically and verbally abused his mother and presumably him too. All Ed has ever said to Stede or anyone about it, as far as we know, was his joke to the crew during scary story hour that his dad was a dick. Stede can probably infer roughly why Ed killed his dad, but he doesn't know the details, and he loves everything about Ed anyway, and now Ed knows that Stede does too.

So Ed and Stede have sex, and as many metas have pointed out (like this one!), it's so meaningful that Ed feels safe enough to give up his Blackbeard/Kraken identity the very next morning. He attempts to get Stede to see that it might be nice to not be pirates anymore due to the high chance of death but Stede manages to completely misread it and laughs it off. (To be fair to Stede, they're both horrible at communicating and Ed is not saying what he wants in any direct manner.) Ed proceeds to have his big beautiful brain start to spiral out of control as Jackie points out how popular Stede is becoming as a pirate; Ed panics, tells Stede he doesn’t even know who he is, and leaves to become a fisherman before he can get left (again!).

As Ed rows away from his failed career as a fisherman in s2e8, his boss Pop-Pop (who he has managed to recreate a fucked up father-son dynamic with that like so many things in his show is played for laughs but has pretty dark undertones) yells after him, 'If you were ever good at anything, go and do that, you bum.' Ed rows back into the port of the Republic of Pirates and sees the destruction Prince Ricky has wrought upon the pirate community. Ed's first thought is, Stede, and then he imagines Stede calling for help before straight up murdering two British soldiers. He remembers Pop-Pop's words and says, 'Have it your way,' before diving into the sea, retrieving his leather, putting it on underwater, and emerging from the waves fully dressed. It's fantastically hot and the exact level of drama I expect from this man. The Kraken musical cue is playing as it happens.

We now see Ed murdering British soldiers in the coolest ways possible, demonstrating his skill at fighting in hand to hand combat. One way to read him taking Pop-Pop's advice is that this is what he's good at - killing and violence.

But you know what Ed’s even better at? Protecting the people he loves. His mother, himself, and Stede. Each time Ed becomes the Kraken, he fulfils that. He protects his mother from his father, himself from Izzy after being warned that ‘[Edward] better watch his fucking step’, and Stede from the invading colonisers who want to destroy their freedom. But something has changed the third time he does it - this time, he can tell Stede that he loves him and he doesn't mean it as a tainted thing, but something that he knows Stede will treasure. He's both loveable and capable of loving. He always has been, of course, but now he knows it. The Kraken, the part of him that is capable of killing, was always a defence mechanism for Ed, but the third time he understands it and himself enough to know that it doesn’t make him a monster.

#ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 meta #ofmd meta #edward teach #blackbeard #our flag means death meta #our flag means death

204 notes · View notes

d1xonss · 4 days ago

Text

Desert Rose

Chapter 67 ~ Alexandria

✧ Paring : Daryl Dixon x Rose

✧ Era : Season 5

✧ Word Count : 7.4k

In this chapter ~ Alexandria: the place of which took in survivors to give them sanctuary just like they had dreamed of. But something seemed off. Like there were holes in the story the others couldn't quite piece together. Like everything was...too good to be true.

It seemed as though after everyone collectively took one final deep breath; the gates ahead started to open slowly, almost tauntingly. Aaron helped Eric through first, guiding him through the small opening before passing him off to someone else, only then opening the gate further once he saw he was in good hands on the other side.

Though our group tensed a bit when we heard some rustling coming from the bushes to our right, Daryl quickly shooting the mystery creature with a bolt before venturing over to retrieve it. Turns out it was only a opossum. But the timing of the event couldn't have been worse as we were now faced with a few judgmental looks from the people just inside, Aaron still wearing a half smile on his face as if he weren't affected at all.

"We brought dinner." Daryl said dryly as he held up the animal by the tail.

One of the men visibly grimaced at the sight, causing my eyes to narrow slightly already at the lack of welcome. "It's okay." Aaron reassured with a gesture of his hand, "Come on in guys."

The invitation caused us all to move in slowly, hesitantly, feeling Daryl inching closer to me by the second while scanning the surroundings of the place. The sound of the gates closing again from behind me caused me to look over my shoulder, watching them shut with a slam. The sight caused a strange feeling to stir in my gut. I suddenly felt like a caged animal. Like I was trapped.

"Before we take this any further, I'm going to need you to hand over your weapons." the man with the curly hair demanded, his words only making me clutch my bow tighter, "You stay, you hand them over."

"We don't know if we want to stay." Rick countered back.

Aaron looked back and forth between the two men nervously, "It's okay, Nicholas." he muttered.

I held back a snort at the mention of his name but somehow managed to keep it together. After all it kind of made sense. "If we were going to use them, we would've started already." Rick informed casually, keeping his cold tone.

"Let them talk to Deanna first." Aaron said.

"Who's Deanna?" Abraham questioned from the back.

Aaron's attention turned back to us, "She knows everything you'd want to know about this place. Rick why don't you start."

There was a beat of silence as Rick considered the suggestion, before a walker's snarl alerted all of us from outside the thick walls. We all turned back to see one of them making its way up to the gate, passing the RV as it hobbled.

"Rose." Rick said simply with a nod.

I wordlessly walked back over to the entrance and loaded an arrow in place, squinting my eyes and taking a second to aim before firing it right in the corpse's head, watching it fall limp with a thud. The scene had apparently caused a few heads to turn as Nicholas gave me a funny look that I couldn't quite read. Acting as if he had never seen anyone kill one of these things before.

"It's a good thing we're here." Rick commented a bit sarcastically.

There was a bit of awkward silence that followed before Aaron cleared his throat, gesturing for us to follow to guide us where their supposed leader would talk to each one of us. I scanned my surroundings cautiously the whole walk there and was amazed to see so many clean houses and neat gardens, along with people talking and laughing just down the road without a care in the world. Like what was outside these walls didn't even exist to them. Being here made me oddly uncomfortable, I just didn't know why. I felt as if I had just walked into the twilight zone.

My guard didn't drop as we all collectively waited for Rick's "interview" to be over, my eyes anxiously watching the door he disappeared behind as I noticed it was taking a little longer than any of us anticipated. A part of me thought that maybe Rick was giving this woman a run for her money, and rightfully so, needing to know what we would be getting into when living here. From how little I've seen, it seemed as though these people were clueless and ignorant when it came to the world we lived in now. That none of them really knew what lied out there; the way they painted this place as the perfect picture, it wasn't difficult to figure out.

Suddenly the door swung back open, catching all of our attention to see Rick exiting followed by a smaller woman who I only assumed was Deanna, a welcoming smile on her face as she stood heightened and proud. She couldn't have been taller than five feet and had straight, red hair that came to about her shoulders. She looked to be around mid-fifties and carried herself in a way that surprised me just the smallest bit.

"Alright, who's next?" she asked as Rick parted from her presence.

My eyes never strayed away from her while my arms were folded tightly over my chest, and it didn't take long for her eyes to meet mine from across the sea of people. She smiled a little brighter at me, but I couldn't even manage a fake one at the moment. Too many thoughts were running through my head to even pretend I was happy to be here.

"You look like fun." she stated, unable to tell if her words were meant to be as sarcastic as they came across. The nod of her head stopped me from responding as I reluctantly stepped forward. Facing the inevitable. I followed the woman inside the room, soaking it all in as I heard her shut the door behind us, excluding the others from the words we were going to exchange.

I looked around the office space, slowly moving around the couch that sat in the middle of the room, "Do you mind if I record this?" her voice cut through the quiet.

I glanced over my shoulder, "Excuse me?"

"Our conversation; do you mind if I record it?" she clarified, pointing toward a video camera that was pointed right at the hot seat I would probably find myself in.

My shoulders slumped in a shrug, "Knock yourself out." I muttered simply before turning my attention elsewhere.

The slight attitude I had didn't seem to affect her as she was quick to sit her happy ass down on the couch in front of me and press record, the camera sitting just a few inches behind her up on some kind of tripod. I took note of how neat the room was, along with the horrible decorations she seemed quite proud of. I knew that judging the interior design choices of this bitch's office wouldn't really affect how this all played out, but I found it funny. Especially since it was so God awful, the colors clashing was enough to make my eyes sting.

"Please have a seat." she broke the silence once again.

I watched as she motioned to the very chair I had predicted before, pursing my lips slightly before slowly complying to sit down on the piece of furniture. I maintained eye contact as I got comfortable, wanting her to know I wasn't nervous in the slightest. Though I had my speculations that this community could be dangerous, it turned out to be the complete opposite. These people seemed to be soft. And again; it didn't take a genius to recognize that.

"I'm Deanna Monroe, and you are?"

I took in a breath, "Rose...Dixon."

Her smile stretched a bit wider, "It's very nice to meet you Rose." she spoke politely. I nodded my head awkwardly, my hands fumbling a bit as I waited for her to get on with it. "If I may ask...what did you do before all of this?"

"Why does that matter?" I questioned in confusion, "Who I was back then is definitely not the same person I am now."

She nodded at me, "That may be true. But I still believe it matters."

I took a long and exaggerated sigh before just biting the bullet, "I was a cop."

"Oh, like Rick?"

Her question threw me off slightly, though I still didn't miss a beat, "He told you that...?"

She shook her head, "Not at first. But I eventually managed to get some answers out of him. He was a tough one to crack, I must admit." she joked.

An uncomfortable silence followed as I processed her nonchalant words. There was no way she was going to get that much information out of me, no matter how much she wanted to press. It surprised me greatly that Rick even told her what he did in the first place.

"No, not like Rick." I eventually answered, "Undercover."

"Wow, I didn't know we had a detective in the group. How exciting." she beamed, seeming to be slightly impressed.

I clicked my tongue, "Again...I'm not the same person I was back then. I'm not a cop anymore."

"Maybe not...but it was what you were good at in the beginning. That counts for something."

I just shrugged in response. I couldn't wrap my head around why this would matter to her instead of absolutely anything else. My assumption was she was going to ask what we've been through outside the walls, the things that haunted our dreams yet made us impossibly stronger. I expected her to pry into the things that none of us wanted to repeat out loud, but perhaps I was wrong.

"So...why do you want to be here?" she continued.

"I'm only here because I want my family safe." I answered with no hesitation, "They always come first."

She nodded in understanding, "You care more about them than you do yourself." she said more as a statement then a question, "I feel the same way about my husband and my sons, I get it."

My focus then tore away from her momentarily to focus on the little red light on the camera, blinking at me every so often. The simple thing put me in some kind of trace that I couldn't snap back out of. How was this place even real?

"And I can only assume you're married."

My gaze snapped back over to her at the sound of her voice again, confusion crossing my features, "Yeah..."

"Rick seemed very fond of you, he talked about you nearly the entire time he was in here. I managed to put the pieces together myself."

My eyes widened at the implication behind her words. How was this happening again? "No, no, Rick- he's not- we're not-" I huffed in annoyance, my patience already stretched thin at her assumptions, "It's not like that at all, I can promise you."

Her expression shifted into something sympathetic, "Oh, I'm sorry that was quite rude of me, wasn't it?"

Yes. "No, it's...fine," I waved off, "Rick...he's just been like a brother to me since the start. The first person who really saw through my bullshit, or...whatever."

"I see." she nodded, "Seems like he's your partner in crime, no matter what the relationship looks like. It's admirable. And you all really look like a tight knit family out there and have been through so much I can imagine. Maybe even suffered a loss?"

It felt as though my blood ran cold at her last words, the sudden change in topic throwing me for a loop. No one should mention those touchy subjects to begin with. But the fact that she continued to try and get things out of me the way she was, it really started to get under my skin in the most uncomfortable way you can imagine.

"What...?" I asked in an oddly calm tone.

"It just seems as though you've all lost so much...but especially you." she continued, motioning to my face as she traced a line down her own neck.

The memories that I had tried so hard to suppress forever, all came flooding back to the surface the minute she brought up the reminders on my skin. It felt as though her gaze was like fire as she studied them, burning me with her eyes as if it would give her the answers she was searching for. My heartbeat quickened and I found it harder and harder to not lunge at this woman for her lack of human decency. But one glance behind her head and the reminder of the camera recording kept me still. My family needed this place, and if I screwed up our chance because I couldn't keep my cool, I would feel terrible. I just needed to breathe.

But my lack of response caused her to continue, "I found I'm good at reading people. Especially when it comes up so clear."

That was it.

"Can I ask you something, Deanna?" I asked as I leaned forward a bit in my seat.

For a moment she looked a bit thrown off, "Oh, of course." she nodded, an intrigued smile on her face. In the back of my mind, I knew she was completely oblivious of what she did. But I felt I had to say something to make her understand, so she wouldn't offend anyone else like she just did to me.

"Have you ever once been outside these gates?" I asked, pointing out the window.

She followed my finger for a moment, "Well, no...not since this all started."

I hummed at her unsurprising answer, "Have you ever once...lost someone close to you in the cruelest way possible?"

"...No. No, I haven't." she answered after a brief moment.

"Have you ever once been in a situation where you come across strangers...and they made you wish you were dead?"

She didn't reply. She didn't need to. Because I wasn't done.

"I've been here for what, around twenty minutes now? And here's what I've figured out. You probably have a select group of people who go outside the walls from time to time when you're low on supplies, but other than that; no one leaves. Your whole community likes to stay behind the gates playing make believe with your tea sets, pretending like what's happening out there isn't really happening. So much so that you're trying to convince others like us, that we should come in here and play pretend right along with you. Or at least that's what you want us to think."

Her eyes began to grow wide, hanging onto every word I was saying as I couldn't seem to stop. It just kept pouring out like word vomit.

"You probably only want people like us in your community because you need someone to start doing your dirty work for you. You have no idea what it's like out there, and I'm not talking about the dead. The people out there trying to survive...they're much worse than you could possibly imagine. And forgive me if this came off as rude, but I felt you needed to know the blunt truth of who you're dealing with now."

The woman's mouth was slightly agape once I had finally finished everything I wanted to say, opening and closing as if she wanted to speak, though she couldn't find the words. But the funny thing was, she knew that I had read her like a book. I saw the switch in her eyes when she noticed the moment I had figured her out.

"Do I still look like fun?" I questioned with a tilt of my head.

She nearly looked like a fish out of water as her eyes grew even larger, utterly speechless that I had just spoken to her like that, but I only took this as my cue to see myself out. Surprisingly, I didn't say all of those things to her because she had triggered something. I said those things because she needed to understand the severity of what we've seen before we even considered to build a life here like she probably had envisioned.

When my hand brushed against the doorknob to leave, I paused, glancing over at her one more time, "Deanna?"

She looked back at me, "I'm good at reading people too." I said before pushing on the door to exit the room, leaving her alone again.

Once I made it out of the house, I was met with the others still lingering outside, forcing a small reassuring smile to show that I was okay. Even though the pressure in my chest was still present as I stewed over the things that were said. Though when I attempted to walk back over and join them along the wall, a woman with black hair and thick glasses stopped me before I even got the chance.

"Excuse me, could I get your weapons?" she asked.

I raised an eyebrow at her with a scoff, "No."

She looked a bit shocked at my blunt response, stuttering a bit as she tired to explain her reasoning for wanting to collect them all from us, explaining the armory and how all the guns lied in there.

Glenn sighed from behind her, "Rose, we all had to fork them up while you were in there, come on. Give her a break."

I rolled my eyes at his subtle guilt trip before reluctantly pulling the two handguns out from where I carried them, handing them over to her a bit roughly. She caught them clumsily before clearing her throat timidly, adjusting the glasses on her face before scurrying off to add my weapons to the large bin, wheeling them all away.

My eyes followed her figure as she turned the corner with every firearm we had, reaching out my hand dramatically as it almost pained me to see them go. A few members laughed a little at my dramatic effect, before I quickly noticed that the Grimes were suddenly gone from the small circle.

"Where's Rick and Carl?" I asked.

"Aaron offered to take them to show the houses we're gonna be staying in. They're just right down the street if you wanna head over there." Maggie said.

I nodded, "Okay." I agreed before my eyes found Daryl's, pointing a finger at him, "But watch your ass, I think she's coming for you next."

He let out a small scoff as he nodded, "Alright."

I bided the others a goodbye before heading off on my own, a part of me wanting to take a peek at what the rest of this community had to offer. Everything seemed calm and quiet, but not exactly in the way that I had expected. In fact it surprised me that I didn't see any nosy neighbors watching my every move as I walked down the street and past the many houses. Well...maybe they were watching. But from inside through the windows like normal people.

I didn't know how to feel. The closest thing I could describe it was that it felt like some sort of fever dream. None of it felt real in the slightest, and I knew that if we did end up staying, it would take a lot of time to get used to it all. And I definitely wasn't jumping for joy when it came to the idea of meeting new people. I got insulted my first few minutes here by the woman in charge, I could only imagine how the others must be.

My thoughts were then brought to a halt as I caught sight of a white house that had the door left wide open, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes. For the love of God. I pushed myself to walk up the porch steps with the intention to shut it, but a sudden body colliding with mine sent me back a few steps. The blonde woman let out a gasp of surprise as she seemed to ram right into me, her eyes widening a bit as she quickly stepped back.

"Oh gosh, I'm sorry." she breathed, giving me a warm smile.

I waved her off silently, still trying to process the surprise attack, "I just noticed the door. Is this your hours, or...?

She shook her head, "No, no you're at the right place, I'm assuming you're a part of Rick's group. He's just right inside."

My eyebrows knitted together in confusion as I slowly nodded, "Okay..." I trailed off.

"Oh, I'm Jessie." she said as she quickly stuck out her hand for me to take.

I eyed her cautiously before shaking her hand lightly, "Rose."

"Nice to meet you." she smiled, "Well, I'll get out of your hair, I was just dropping some things off. Welcome to the neighborhood." she said kindly before heading down the porch steps without another word.

What the hell was all that? "Okay..." I repeated awkwardly before slowly heading inside the house that was supposedly ours.

I glanced around to see if I could spot Rick or Carl, but they were nowhere to be seen in the main space. Though I couldn't help but marvel as I took everything in, seeing how clean and neat it all looked, the whole place smelling of lavender and some kind of cleaning product. Everything was painted white, sparkling almost when the light from outside hit it just right, far from what any of us were used to. The hardwood floors seemed shiny and slick, like you couldn't walk around with just socks otherwise you would surely fall right on your ass.

It was almost too nice, too clean and tidy for any of us to accept. It almost seemed as though we had to work for this just like how it used to be in the old world, but no, it was simply handed to us. Though there was still something off that I couldn't place, something about it was not as warm and cozy as I expected. But then again it was something unfamiliar, and things like that usually didn't sit well with me. At least not in the beginning.

Though my attention was torn away from the decor when I heard a series of footsteps coming down the stairs, turning around toward the doorway of the living room to see Carl approaching me with a large smile.

"Hey! How was the interview?" he asked.

I didn't want to lie, but I also didn't want him to know the truth. "It was fine." I said vaguely with a fake smile, "She just asked me some basic stuff."

He nodded, "Cool...oh hey come look at this!" he said enthusiastically, grabbing and pulling my arm towards the kitchen.

He let go of me the moment he approached the sink in front of us, reaching forward to turn it on to see water flowing out of the faucet. A part of me was honestly pretty impressed that they had running water here, but the look on Carl's face, I couldn't help but laugh.

"Running water." he said in amazement, shutting off the tap.

"Running water," I repeated, "Which means showers."

The mere idea of a hot shower caused us both to sigh in sync, which only then made us laugh as we seemed to share the same opinion at how heavenly that sounded. "I'm gonna go take one now." he nodded, coming over to kiss my cheek quickly before he was off to the basement.

After I watched him disappear down the steps, I found myself walking over to the sink to turn it on as well, almost as if I had to do it myself to actually believe it was real. I remembered the times we had running water back at the prison, but it seemed like nothing compared to this. My hand then turned it off again with a small huff, looking around the clean kitchen.

I felt like I was becoming bipolar with how much my emotions were all over the place. Going back and forth between thinking we could have a future here and then being torn thinking it we couldn't fully trust what was being given to us. It was exhausting. But then again everything I was feeling was valid and completely normal considering how much we've been through. Time would do us some good no matter what came next.

"Thinking hard?"

I jumped slightly at the sudden presence, although I recognized his voice quite well. I looked over my shoulder expecting to see Rick exactly like I left him, but my eyes widened at his appearance. He was dressed from head to toe in new, clean clothes with his beard completely gone, his hair seeming a bit shorter as well and still wet from the shower he must've taken.

"Jesus, who the hell are you?" I joked a bit. He chuckled lightly while I stepped up to get a closer look at his clean-shaven face, "Huh...looking good." I complimented.

"Yeah?" he asked as he ran a hand over his jaw.

"Yeah," I nodded, "You look a little less...like a mountain man."

He laughed again at the comparison, my eyes subconsciously looking around the house again before I spoke up, "Uh...so were you aware about the strange woman that was in here a few minutes ago?"

He gave me a weird look but then it seemed to click, "Oh, Jessie? Yeah, she just stopped by to drop off some welcome wagon thing, and then..." he made a gesture with his hands, "Offered to cut my hair."

I hummed with a nod of my head as the silence lingered, the air growing somewhat awkward between us the moment I mentioned her. I couldn't place my finger on why, but Rick seemed to grow almost uncomfortable like he wanted to squirm away from the topic.

But he eventually cleared his throat and nudged my shoulder, "So uh, how did the interview go?"

"It was uh... it was fine." I said casually.

His eyes narrowed a bit, "Fine?"

I nodded again before walking further through the kitchen to look around a bit more, now feeling like I wanted to squirm away from this topic. His footsteps followed me and I silently knew the conversation wasn't over, but yet I tried to distract myself with the fancy magnets on the fridge.

"She said something." he assumed, hitting it right on the money.

I sighed heavily and turned around to face him once more, "Someone always says something when they don't know shit."

"What happened?" he asked softly.

I shrugged, "She just brought up the fact that we had clearly lost a lot, going on and on about how she was good at reading people. She kept pushing and then...that was it. I shut her up after that."

"And what did you say?" he asked.

"Well, I'm not going to reenact for you." I huffed with a roll of my eyes, "All I know is that she wants us to go out and do the difficult shit instead of her own people, that's why she wanted us here in the first place. No one else wants to get their hands dirty. None of these people know shit about what's out there, and they aren't going to get it."

He took a second to listen to my words before hanging his head, "It isn't gonna be easy, and I know that. It feels weird having to go back to how things were before...but what else should we do? Go back out there?"

I shook my head quickly, "That's not what I'm staying-"

"But I'm asking." he said seriously, "Do you think we should go back out there? Do you think this place is real enough...is it worth it?"

Thinking back to before we arrived here, I remembered the promise I made to myself. I wanted all of us to have a guaranteed future, a life that we could build off of. And the chance of having that in a place like this was enough to convince me to come in the first place; but was it actually going to happen? Or would something get in the way like it always does?

"I think we should try." I finally answered, "The kids need this- we all do. It'll just take time...in the back of my mind, I know that."

He gave me a nod, "Yeah, I think you're right. I just hope it goes smoothly."

I scoffed, "When does it ever?"

He gave me a sad, understanding smile without having to say another word, motioning me over with extended arms. I pushed myself forward to lean into him, wrapping my arms around his waist and closing my eyes in content at his comfort after the absolute shitshow with Deanna. He always somehow knew what to say, how to listen. It only reminded me of how lucky I was to have these kinds of people in my life.

Though as we pulled away from each other, I looked down to see how dirty I still was. "Shit I'm sorry, I'm filthy." I cringed as I wiped his white shirt a bit.

He laughed, "It's okay. There's a shower upstairs that has everything, there's even some fresh clothes in the bedrooms stocked up for us."

"Yeah, that sounds nice." I breathed, "Just let me know when the rest of them get here?"

"Will do." he nodded, placing a hand on my shoulder as I passed by him to head upstairs.

It was like a maze trying to find the master bathroom, having to pass a multitude of rooms down the long hallways just to find a fresh change of clothes. But I found it was worth the search, seeing the amount of clean clothes were like a godsent, and the bathroom even more so. Everything was white and clean just like the rest of the house, but at this point that was unsurprising.

I slowly peeled off my dirty clothes that seemed to be clung onto my body with the dirt, walker blood, and sweat clinging to every bit of the fabric. It was a disgusting sensation, the tingling it left behind made me want to peel my skin off with how overstimulating it was. I didn't hesitate then to step toward the large glass shower, ignoring my reflection as much as I could while stepping in and turning on the water.

Splaying myself under the hot stream felt euphoric and I could only imagine what it would be like when I was actually clean. I could practically feel all the dirt and grime just melting off of me as I stood frozen under the showerhead, before my eyes trailed off toward the different kinds of soap sitting in the corner of the glass box. I drenched my entire body in bubbles to clean from the hair on my head down to my feet. And it felt incredible.

I easily could've stayed there for hours basking in the water, but knowing everyone would be heading back soon unfortunately snapped me out of my daze. I finished up quickly after that as I didn't want to linger, stepping onto the tile once more to grab one of the many white fluffy towels from under the sink. After drying myself off and ringing out my hair, I delicately put on the clothes I had brought in with me, noticing they were a little big, yet nothing too noticeable. Still, it concerned me how much weight I lost when we were out on the road.

Just then, there was a knock at the door as I finished buttoning the jeans, "Daryl and Carol made it back." Rick announced from the other side.

"Be right out." I responded briefly, before looking through a few drawers to find a brush to run through my hair quickly. Detangling the knots took longer than I would like to admit, but it felt nice to be able to finally run my fingers through the locks. It was like a little bit of life was brought back into me as I stepped out of the steamy bathroom, like a breath of fresh air returned to my lungs at just the feeling of being clean.

The stairs below creaked with each step I took as I made my way downstairs, my gaze immediately being drawn to the figure outside on the steps just past the screen door. Upon further inspection I saw it was Daryl, my eyes squinting to try and figure out what the hell he was doing. I quietly stepped outside without him noticing, seeing now that he was skinning the opossum he had caught earlier on the nice white steps, getting almost everything bloody without a care in the world. An amused smirk crossed my face as I watched him for a moment, knowing that some things would certainly never change.

"Oh honey, won't you gut our opossums in the kitchen?" I spoke sarcastically.

He glanced up at me from his hard work, a huff passing his lips, "Ah, ya think yer so funny." he drawled out with a shake of his head.

"No, I know I am." I joked as I walked over to take a seat next to him, "So, how'd you like Deanna?"

His eyes met mine once more as he didn't say a word, only taking his clean hand to poke his nose up with his pointer finger. Stuck up.

"Oh, yeah." I agreed.

The day seemed to pass by in a flash as the sky was now covered in complete darkness. Once everyone managed to finish up the interviews with Deanna, it was decided that we would all stay in the same house for the first few nights. We didn't want to be apart from each other, whether it was for protection or emotional support, I thought in the end it was a great idea. I mean, they took our weapons and tried to split us up into separate homes after we hadn't even settled in the slightest. Thinking about it now rubbed me the wrong way.

We had pushed all the furniture aside in the living room to make more space for people to sleep on the floor with some blankets and pillows, everyone starting to get settled for the night. I sat myself by the window as I watched for anything outside, but there was nothing. No movement at all as it was just completely peaceful on the streets of the community, like everyone had turned in for the night already just as we were. But better to be safe than sorry.

Though suddenly there came a quiet knock from the front door which caused us all to immediately become alert. Some sat up and grabbed a hold of the handheld weapon nearest to them, and I even found myself lifting the flannel I had on to hover over one of my throwing knives. As if the intruder who wanted to kill us would knock politely first.

Rick was the one who stepped up towards the door, glancing to all of us as he silently raised his hand for us to back off a bit. He then slowly opened the door, only to reveal Deanna standing there with her hands folded together, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes as I slumped back a bit.

"Rick, I-" she started, but then got a bit distracted with how different he looked, "Wow." she muttered as her eyes widened.

He groaned quietly in irritation and looked back towards the rest of us, rolling his eyes the moment he caught sight of the look on my face. "I didn't know what was under there." she continued, "Listen, I don't mean to interrupt I just wanted to stop by and see how you all were settling."

Her eyes made a scan around the room and her words trailed off, seeing us all in the same space, "Oh my, staying together...smart." she said more to herself than anyone else.

"No one said we couldn't." Rick stated.

"You said you were family, that's what you said. Absolutely amazing to me how people with completely different backgrounds and nothing in common can become that. Don't you think?"

Rick ignored her comment, "Everyone said you gave them jobs."

"Mhm, yeah. Part of this place; looks like the communists won after all." she replied.

"Well, you didn't give me one." he pointed out.

"I have." she confirmed, "I just haven't told you yet, same with Michonne. I'm closing in on something for Sasha and I'm just trying to figure Mr. and Mrs. Dixon out...but I will." she finished, looking directly at me.

I held her firm gaze until she turned back to Rick once more, "You look good." she complimented quietly before turning around on her heel to leave.

I bit the inside of my cheek and waited until Rick finally shut the door before looking back up at him knowingly, "Don't start." he warned with his finger pointed right at me.

That's when I finally let out the laugh I had been holding, hearing a few others join me from the couch, "You look good. " I mocked, only for him to push the side of my head away from him to get me to stop teasing him. But even he couldn't stop the small smile from spreading onto his face.

Although even after the laughs and the late night discussions, and after everyone else dozed off, I still couldn't sleep for the life of me. I laid wide awake on my back with Daryl's arm loosely wrapped around me, as we were side by side on the ground with a blanket beneath us to soften the hard floor. Though for the past hour, I could feel him fighting sleep, trying to stay awake when he noticed I hadn't even shut my eyes.

"You can rest." I said, so softly I thought he wouldn't hear me.

His head jerked forwards slightly upon hearing my voice, sighing quietly with droopy eyes, "Nah. I ain't sleepin if you ain't sleepin." he said stubbornly.

I laughed quietly, "Okay." I whispered, snuggling into him again and feeling his grip tighten around me instinctively. But it seemed as though only a few moments passed, before the man was snoring loudly right next to my ear.

I held back the laugh that threatened to escaped, before deciding to slowly slip out from under his grasp. Because I couldn't sleep, I figured it wouldn't hurt to get some fresh air and stare at the stars for a while, not wanting to disturb any of the others. Even though we were locked safely behind the gates and allegedly safe from the walkers; we still weren't completely safe from the people surrounding us. Maybe that's why my subconscious was keeping me awake, or insomnia really was something I would never get rid of.

My feet carefully tip toed over the many bodies covering the floor, seeing everyone was fast asleep after only a few hours of shutting the lights off for the night. Stepping lightly on the floor, fearing it would creak under my weight, I slowly opened the front door to walk outside before closing it behind me with a soft click.

I hugged my knees to my chest as I sat on the steps of the house, goosebumps rising on my flesh from the slight chill in the air. Looking at the stars was something that brought me much needed peace, I don't know what it was about it. But it was special. Following them with my eyes, I began to make out different patterns that I was able to recognize, or ones that seemed brighter than others. Perhaps those were planets. But then out of the clear blue, a shooting star flew across the night sky in a flash, and my heart skipped a beat, my emotions rising at full force.

"Hi Bethy." I whispered, letting a single tear fall on my cheek.

What was once something that made me sob for hours on end, now brought me peace. Knowing that somehow, somewhere, she was okay. Maybe that's another reason why I loved looking at the twinkling lights, because I was constantly looking for something that would bring me back to her.

"Hey." I heard a voice call out quietly from my left, my eyes widening seeing it was Aaron standing there awkwardly, waving from the sidewalk.

Quickly, I averted my eyes and wiped my tears away with my sleeve so he wouldn't see me in such a vulnerable state, even if it was just for a moment. And though I wasn't looking at him, I still heard the sound of his footsteps trailing up closer to the steps.

"Can't sleep?" he asked softly.

I sniffled once more, running my sleeve under my nose as I still didn't meet his eyes, "Something like that..."

"Mind if I sit?"

I shrugged and clearly didn't give him a real response, though he took the silence as a yes as he slowly sat himself down right next to me. I looked back up at the sky for a moment or two, continuing what I had been doing before he interrupted my thoughts. Only now I seemed to be doing it to avoid his gaze, avoid questions that I preferred not to answer. It was no shock that he grew curious as to why I was sitting on the steps alone, crying softly to myself, but I just prayed he would somehow keep his mouth shut.

"Who're you looking for up there?" he then asked almost casually.

My head whipped in his direction again, and his eyes suddenly grew wide when they locked with mine. Probably because of the death glare I unconsciously gave him. "Sorry," he whispered, "I shouldn't have asked."

The man then ducked his head down to hide the embarrassment he surely felt, a beat of awkward silence passing before I let out a quiet sigh. "My sister." I eventually answered.

He peeked his head up slowly with a sad, but growing smile on his face, "What was her name?"

"Beth." I said now looking back at the sky. I then shook my head, "She wasn't related to me by blood...but it got to a point where it felt like she was. She passed not too long after you found us and...it's just been hard without her around."

"I'm so sorry." he said sincerely.

I shook my head, "It's not your fault."

Silence fell between us, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was nice to know that he wasn't going to pry or push me to talk about the things I didn't want to, he was just simply going to listen. If I was being honest with myself; I though he was nice, liked him even. Trusting people was just hard to do these days when you don't know exactly what their true intentions are.

"I had an older brother." he suddenly confessed, "And I, uh...lost him pretty early on. But what sucked the most is that...I didn't fully understand what happened to him at the time, he was just...gone."

He had turned. That was the worst way to go in my opinion. When it wasn't quick and easy, it turned into something even more awful if that were even possible.

"I'm sorry." I said.

He shook his head, "It's okay."

"No, I mean for everything. For not trusting you about this place, for pointing a gun at your head...for being a major bitch." I huffed, "I was just nervous about this whole thing- hell all of us still are. But we're here and we're trying...that's what matters right?"

He nodded, "Yeah. And it's okay, I understand the weariness. I mean a guy coming out of nowhere saying he was watching you, trying to get you back to his camp. Stranger danger is pretty serious." he chuckled.

"So, you do agree it was kind of creepy?" I asked.

He sucked in a breath, "A little...but my heart was in the right place."

"Well, why didn't you just say that from the beginning? You would've gotten us here a whole lot quicker with that line." I said sarcastically.

He perked up a bit, "Really?"

I blinked, "No," I laughed, "That was sarcasm at its finest. You should get used to it."

"Oh." he muttered, beginning to quietly laugh with me, "Well...thanks for trusting me, at least a little."

I rolled my eyes, "Yeah, don't make me regret it."

"I won't...scouts honor." he stated as he crossed an x over his chest, beginning to stand up to his feet.

Scouts honor? No way.

"Hey, Aaron?" I called out before he fully had the chance to leave. "Were you...a boy scout at some point in your life?"

He paused for a moment before nodding slowly, almost suspiciously at how I figured that out, "Yeah...I was an eagle scout for a few years. Why?"

I waved him off, "Oh, no reason."

He nodded again, "Right...well, goodnight." he said with a wave before heading down the sidewalk to turn in for the night.

Once he was finally out of my sight, I allowed myself to laugh, a little baffled that I was able to guess that bit of information just from his personality alone. I guess it was no longer an insult now since it was true.

But when the silence returned, I took a minute to just close my eyes and let my mind stop racing, reminded of the things I couldn't stop pondering over. I hoped that this would work out for the best in the end. Coming here was a big thing, instead of dipping our toes in the water of uncharted territory, we full on jumped in. But I was doing it for them, and that right now was the only thing keeping me here. It wasn't the big fancy houses or the running water. It was all for them.

~ Thanks for reading!

Taglist ~ @justareader95 @hayley1998 @ryoujoking @sipsthecoffee @winterassassin1804 @marsmallow433 @catlalice @writingstreetspirit @silentlysurffering98 @mystictf @remuslittlesister

#daryl dixon #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon the walking dead #daryl dixon x oc #daryl dixon twd #daryl dixon x original character #daryl dixon series #the walking dead #the walking dead fanfiction #the walking dead daryl dixon #the walking dead daryl #the walking dead series #twd #twd fanfiction #twd daryl dixon #twd daryl #norman reedus fanfiction #norman reedus #desert rose

24 notes · View notes

kathlare · 14 days ago

Text

threads that bind

Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman

Summary: Lando receives a call that stirs old emotions and unresolved feelings. Their conversation is charged with honesty, vulnerability, and a longing for connection, as both navigate the complexities of their bond amidst the chaos of their respective worlds.

Wordcount: 1.4 k

Warnings: just fluff

request over here!

November 5th, 2023 - Sao Paulo, Brazil

Lando Norris stepped out of the McLaren garage, the hum of the crowd and the celebratory atmosphere around him barely registering in his mind. The rush of adrenaline from securing second place at the Brazilian Grand Prix still pulsed through his veins, but a different kind of nervous energy had started to build as he made his way toward the post-race interviews. Before he could get too far, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out instinctively.

The name on the screen made him stop in his tracks. Amelie.

He stared at the screen for a second, a knot forming in his stomach. They hadn’t spoken properly since... well, since he left Mexico at the end of October. They’d been on strange terms ever since that messy encounter at the afterparty, which still felt too fresh in his memory. The awkwardness of it lingered. He wasn’t sure if he should answer the call or let it go straight to voicemail. His thumb hovered over the green button for a moment before he gave in.

—Hello?— he said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

—Lando!— Amelie’s voice came through, bright but with an undertone of hesitation. —Congrats on the second place, that was incredible!—

Lando’s lips twitched into a smile, but the nerves didn't go away. He cleared his throat, feeling oddly shy. —Thanks. I mean, it’s not first, but I’ll take it. Max was just... too quick today, but yeah, I’m happy with the result.—

There was a brief pause on the other end, and he could almost picture her biting her lip, as if she was unsure of what to say next. It felt strange talking to her again after everything—after all the time apart, after how things ended between them. The silence stretched, and Lando shifted uncomfortably on the spot.

—So,— Amelie finally said, breaking the tension, —How’ve you been? How’s Brazil treating you?—

Lando leaned against a nearby wall, absently twirling his phone between his fingers. The buzzing energy from the race still lingered, but now it felt distant, almost like a dream.

—It’s been... good. Busy, obviously. Brazil’s always wild. But I’m getting through it, you know? Can’t complain. Just glad I’m not back in the garage yet. Got a few minutes to breathe before the madness starts again.—

Amelie let out a small laugh, her voice warm despite the distance between them. —Sounds like you need it. You’ve been killing it lately. Max has nothing on you, you know?—

Lando snorted at that, running a hand through his hair. —You’re just saying that because you’re biased. I’ve been getting my ass handed to me by him all season, but hey, I’ll take the compliment anyway.—

—Oh, please. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard you say that, I’d be rich by now.— Amelie’s tone was teasing, but Lando could hear the affection underneath it. That familiar spark that used to make his heart skip a beat was still there, even after all this time.

He leaned his head back against the cool concrete wall, staring up at the blue sky above the paddock. —Yeah, I guess you’re right. Anyway, how about you? You’re flying out to Argentina soon, right? How’s everything going with the tour?—

There was a soft sigh from Amelie, a sound that instantly made him feel protective, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. —Yeah, tomorrow. It’s... exhausting, honestly. But I’m not complaining. It’s my dream to be out here, doing what I love, and the crowd’s been amazing. Just... missing some normal, you know?— She paused for a second before adding, —And I guess I’m missing you a bit too.

Lando’s heart skipped at the admission. It was funny, how even after all this time apart, hearing her voice still had that effect on him. He gripped the phone a little tighter. —Yeah? Missing me, huh? You sure you’re not just missing a distraction from all the fans and the tour madness?—

—Could be both. But you’re right, it’s been a bit weird, hasn’t it? I mean, I’m just flying around, you’re racing all over the place... Feels like we’re never in the same place for more than a few minutes. I thought maybe...— She trailed off, and Lando could almost hear the uncertainty in her voice.

Amelie’s laugh came through the phone, soft and melodic, but there was something in her voice that made Lando’s chest tighten. She didn’t sound like she was just messing around.

—Maybe both?— she replied, her tone lighter, but he could hear the hint of sincerity behind it. —It’s a lot of energy, you know? Sometimes I just wish I could sit back with a drink, talk about nothing, and... not think about all the chaos around me. You always were good for that. Just... being there.—

Lando let out a slow breath, his mind racing. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her until she said that. A simple statement, yet it hit him like a ton of bricks. He pushed off the wall, starting to pace a little as the words spilled out before he could stop them.

—You know, I think about that a lot. About how everything used to be... simple between us, in a way. We could just be... ourselves, without all the extra noise. But then... well, everything got messy, didn’t it?— His voice softened at the end, almost like he was unsure if he should continue down this path. But the silence stretched between them, making it impossible not to.

Amelie didn’t respond immediately, and for a moment, Lando thought he might have overstepped. But then, she spoke up, her voice a little softer, more thoughtful than usual.

—Yeah, it did. We were... a mess, Lando. But I think it was more than just that. We never really talked about what we were, you know?— There was a long pause before she added, —I think we both got scared, in different ways.—

Lando felt the weight of her words. Scared. The word echoed in his mind, and he felt the familiar pang of regret creep in. Maybe they both had been, in their own ways. He hadn’t understood it then, but looking back now, it seemed so obvious. It was always more than just a casual thing, more than just some fun to pass the time. He had known it, deep down.

—We were idiots, huh?— he said with a small chuckle, trying to lighten the mood, though it was tinged with a touch of sadness. —I think I was just… waiting for you to tell me what we were, and you were probably waiting for me to figure it out. But instead, we just kept doing what we were doing, pretending like it didn’t matter when it was all we could think about.—

Amelie didn’t answer right away, but when she did, there was a vulnerability in her voice that made Lando’s stomach flip.

—I don’t know what I was thinking. I was so wrapped up in my own stuff, and then you started... well, I don’t even know. I just... didn’t know how to handle it, Lando. You meant too much to me for me to just... keep it going like that. And I didn’t want to hurt you.—

Lando’s heart raced as the words sunk in. She was being honest, too honest, and it made the whole situation feel more real than it ever had. He ran a hand through his hair again, still pacing, but now with a sense of urgency.

—So, what does that mean now?— he asked quietly, his voice tinged with something softer than usual. —Are we just... going to keep pretending we don’t care about each other? Because I don’t think I can do that, Amelie.—

There was a long silence, and for a moment, he thought she might not respond at all. But then, her voice came through, low and almost hesitant, as if she was weighing her words carefully.

—Honestly? I don’t know, Lando. I wish I had an answer for you. All I know is that... when I’m with you, everything feels... different. But when we’re apart, it’s like... it’s easier to just... forget, you know?—

Lando felt the same way. When she was near, everything felt so natural, so right. But when she was gone, when they were apart, the distance felt like it would swallow him whole.

—That’s... not exactly reassuring, but okay. Maybe we’re just... figuring things out, one step at a time.—

Amelie’s voice softened again, the playful edge returning, though there was still a hint of something deeper beneath it.

—Yeah, maybe. One step at a time, huh?— She paused for a beat, and then added, almost teasing, —Well, if you’re done being all serious and moody, I have a suggestion for you. You know I’m heading to Argentina tomorrow, right? You should come see me. You know... before your Las Vegas nonsense kicks in.—

Lando raised an eyebrow at her suggestion, feeling his heart skip a beat. She was being cheeky, but there was something in her tone that made him feel like she really wanted him there. And God, he wanted to be there too. He wanted to be near her again, wanted to hear her laugh in person, wanted to fall asleep with her next to him without overthinking every moment.

—Argentina, huh?— he said, a grin forming on his face as he allowed himself to dream for a moment. —I could probably make that happen. I’m sure I can get a flight sorted before the Vegas madness starts. I’ll just stay in the hotel the whole time. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on being too much of a distraction.—

Amelie laughed, and it felt like a weight lifted off his chest. —I’m sure you’ll be the perfect distraction. I don’t mind it.—

Lando couldn’t suppress the grin that spread across his face. It had been a while since he’d felt this light, this excited about something that didn’t involve racing. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen when he saw her again, or where this would go, but for the first time in a long while, he wasn’t afraid of finding out.

—Alright, Argentina it is. I’ll book a flight when I’m done here. Just... don’t disappear on me, okay?—

—Promise. I’ll be waiting.—

Lando let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, a smile creeping onto his face. Maybe they weren’t as messed up as they thought. Maybe there was still something worth fighting for.

As he ended the call and slipped his phone back into his pocket, he knew one thing for sure: he couldn’t wait to see her again.

40 notes · View notes

jjmorelikeotp · 2 months ago

Text

Okay so I am watching BTVS for the first time in my life & I'm currently on season 6 E 14, and one thing I really really love is how Spike is just so...comitted.

With Angel, I personally had the feeling he was grieving the person he could be, all sad and sappy in his misery that kinda clung around him all the time (ik we're calling spike a drama queen but. THAT MAN? Depressed himbo vibes. No offense.) Even though he had a soul, there was this feeling of self pity in him - and it makes sense considering the fact he probably knew that one true moment of happiness would turn him back into a monster, and that is rly depressing tbh.

Does not change the fact that Buffy being underage when being with him is totally absurd and predatory, there, I said it.

He is kind of the big scary monster guy and sometimes she does seem like a normal 16 year old, and by that, naive or simply, young.

It made me feel like she was prey, not gonna lie.

It is what stopped him from truly comitting to Buffy. I mean yeah, their love was pure and they definetely are soulmates in some way. They truly affected each other's fate.

But this is where Spike is different than Angel as well. He is truly COMITTED to what he's doing, he is all in for buffy. Like, the way he offers to make money for her when she needs it? That offer is NOT a deal-kind-of-offer. He truly wants to help her and it is so casually because he already is in full partner mode, in whatever way she needs. Offering comfort when she has to work a double shift (yeah by fucking outside, mkay, just the spuffy way ig) like that because he is actually afraid she will lose her sanity? Even though they drive each other insane? Yeah these scenes are not talked about enough.

In that same scenario, Angel never even would have showed up. He would have waited in front of the building after Buffy ended her shift, maybe. He never even offered to be in her life like that, while both of them found a million excuses for it. But Spike does not. He just simply does stuff that COULD be the solution if he ever even thought of them being a problem.

And I think that is also why he's so pissed about Buffy going on and off about him - to Angel, she seemed so comitted, but to him, he just does not seem to be able to.

And again, it make sense, but I also think we don't talk enough about the fact that Buffy did indeed kill Angel, when it wasn't even necessary as in "he was soulless and a monster" anymore. Even though she loved him. But only when she had a really really good reason/purpose.

So one thing that might be also pushing her away from spike is the thought of having to do that again, and desperately trying to find the purpose without being able to.

He makes her choose wether she wants to be the prey or the hunter in this. On purpose. To show her her options and her power because she never really got to experience both sides / perspectives with Angel OR Riley.

So while she tries to figure out 1. Her reason why she should kill him (which should be a very very valid one so she can bring up the power to do so) 2. Her life's purpose in general, he just ... delivers purpose, not to her, but as in, her being the purpose. That's what he acts like and That's what she can't handle. Yes, she is the reason he is trying to change, but also, he puts her in the Position of being the purpose of him doing that.

Showing her the self responsibility and ability to be her own purpose and make her own decisions. (After her friends all kind of screwed up that kind of SELF responsibility.) He really does man up in this show, and like I said, these are just my thoughts watching it for the first time (did not see angel the series yet).

He is also holding her accountable even though he has a soft spot for her, and she is not used to that. She treats him like a man, yes, but he treats her like an equal as well and always has. She is used being looked down upon by adults or the council, enemies, blablablah, also her friends who "saved" her earlier this season, or being the superslayer hero and leader who has to do everything. She is always in positions. Even with angel, she was, it kind of stopped when they broke up but even then, he treats her like she does not know SHIT. Something is standing between them and always has been, and while Angel kind of used that as an excuse to keep distant and keep their walls up, Spike uses these exact walls as a reason or challenge to tear them down. Spike never acts like things are not his fault even if they are horrible, he just simply accepts his dark side while still having a normal one, with passions on tv and card games and whatever. He *subconciously* takes responsibility even before having a soul, for stuff he did, he doesn't blame his vampire side or whatever for it.

I think in subtext, Buffy always had a slight commitment to angel, as in "maybe, one day, it can still happen" while angel cut off all those hopes for himself (not his desires, maybe. But his ... solution oriented search or smth) as we can see when he visits her at her mom's funeral.

And one other reason why Buffy is so terrified of that whole Spike thing is because it makes her stop that hope for angel or resolve that feeling of being owned by (her feelings for) him.

And don't get me wrong, Spike is kinda possessive too, but as I see it he is trying to commit to a relationship where she can own herself and that is what terrifies her truly.

(That's what we see him do with drusilla from the beginning)

You understand what I mean? If you got thoughts on it let me know!

#looking after her own needs? HAH girl ain't too good at doing that tbh #being worshipped like that without being put on a pedestial would give me a headache too lol #spike #btvs #william the bloody #buffy #spuffy #buffy x spike #buffy x angel #gotta mention spike is still kind of a loser like how bad can someone fuck up with his crush man she beat you up and you still show up at #her birthday party ... bro is whipped #theyyyy doooo have issues. a lot. but that is a topic for another post lol

27 notes · View notes

bee-a-lover · 2 years ago

Text

let’s talk about the shadow and bone s2 ✨controversy✨

here’s my two cents. obviously, beware spoilers ahead.

specifically, this is going to be about how they handled the crows. and as a little disclaimer, you obviously don’t have to agree with me.

what i’ve seen people most upset about is how they took events from crooked kingdom (kaz’s revenge on pekka), or created scenes that somewhat resembled those events (kanej bandage scene, etc) and squashed them into the first four episodes of s2 with no build up. and i can agree that when you view it like that, it’s upsetting and underwhelming.

here’s the thing- i don’t view it like that.

the way i see it, the crows content we got in the first half of season 2 were teasers for what’s to come in their spin-off. a preview for the character development they’re about to go through in their spin-off, and laying groundwork for what’s ahead.

for example, the kanej bandage scene we got in the show was not the bathroom scene from the books. their conversation was not the same and didn’t hold nearly the same weight because it was a conversation from early in six of crows before they had relationship development. what differed was the setting and the actions, but even so, kaz attempting to clean inej’s wounds with his gloves on and telling her simply that pekka rollins killed his brother, having the “tells” convo, WAS NOT kaz opening up about his trauma while pushing himself to clean inej’s wounds without gloves and having that intense intimate moment with her. i keep seeing people say that that WAS the bathroom scene, to which i strongly disagree. what i think will happen is that in the future of the show, we will get the bathroom scene, and we’ll have that on-screen full-circle moment to when kaz was cleaning her wounds in s2 and could barely do so.

and i think that goes for all of the ck-resembling content we got from s2. save for the alby confrontation, which was directly from the books. we did get a version of the slat fight— and based on what i’ve seen with the writer’s talking about the spin-off, we’ll get something equal in emotional weight when the time is right for it. perhaps something with even higher stakes than in the books. because let’s face it, pekka rollins is probably going to be back to haunt kaz. he’s already teaming up with matthias. that guy’s gonna be back, and that’s going to mean something. the new content that will generate is almost like getting six of crows 3 and mixing it into the plot of soc and ck.

and i’m excited for that. i’m excited for the new relationship dynamics we have to work with. inej is getting a taste of her dream going with sturmhond, but we know that isn’t the end for her. she hasn’t had her arc yet where she realizes that she needs to hunt slavers for herself. when she comes back for the six of crows story, it’ll be interesting to see how the realization that something is still missing in her journey to reclaim her life will affect her.

and then there’s kaz, who’s going to be dealing with the realization that revenge is not the end, and like was lightly touched upon in the latter half of the show, he needs to figure out what’s next for him.

and sure, jesper’s getting more comfortable with being a durast where the show leaves him, but what happens when he realizes that his gambling debts have doomed his father? what happens when colm comes back into the picture? those questions from the books are still left unanswered in the show.

wylan in particular i think was done so brilliantly in the show. people were mad that they dropped that he couldn’t read early, but i think it’s genius, because it just leads casual viewers who haven’t read the books away from his other secret even more. people like my mom who haven’t read the books but seen the show just assume that he’s illiterate because he was never taught to read, because he’s presented as just some penniless guy in ketterdam with no money for food. when his true story is revealed, it’ll come as even more of a shock, and put the casual viewer in the same boat as the characters— we thought we knew this guy, but turns out we don’t know him at all. and with wylan and jesper already being in a relationship? something tells me jesper isn’t going to take that well— hence the “merchling” teasing will ensue, and the tension. if anything, their established relationship just ups the stakes. jesper thinking his friend and crush is on the ferolind when it blows up in the books is one thing, but jesper thinking his BOYFRIEND is on the ferolind when it blows up in the show? jesus christ, we aren’t ready for kit young.

what i’m trying to say is, it might help your enjoyment of the show to not view the crows scenes as THE scenes from the books, because with all my heart i don’t think that’s what they are. i’m not saying these “teaser” scenes were necessary, but that goes back to the crows’ inclusion in the shadow and bone plot being forced and unnecessary. which is unfortunate, because the crows deserve to get to the good stuff in their story, but at the moment they’re in a holding position because they just don’t have enough time sharing the screen with s&b to do their story justice. which is WHY GETTING THE SPIN-OFF IS SO IMPORTANT. if you want the storylines we love the crows for, if you want the REAL crooked kingdom scenes with their buildup and emotional impact, we gotta help the crows get their own show. even if that means watching them be filler in the s&b show. which is still completely possible to find enjoyment in, at least from my perspective— you just gotta view it less critically and more like foreshadowing for what’s to come, getting to see these characters build relationships early so that they might in fact be stronger when we get to their story in the show.

and when you view it like that it can be exciting! what’s worse than pekka that the crows will have to deal with? what confrontation will inej wiitness kaz have that affects her view of him like witnessing the alby confrontation in the books did, since she missed it in the show? how will seeing the alby confrontation affect jesper and nina’s perception of kaz (we can still get “who the hell is jordie” guys, jesper doesn’t know kaz’s brother’s name). the s&b show expanding on the crows content, even if the storylines are messy and rushed and unnecessary, is also building their relationships and characters. so when we do get the proper soc storyline, we’re ready for them in a different way than when we started the books.

#six of crows #soc #shadow and bone netflix #sab netflix #shadow and bone s2 #sab s2 #shadow and bone #this is a psa to not give up hope!!

337 notes · View notes

foxufortunes · 7 months ago

Text

So like, I was having a moment thinking about how because exy is not actually central to the narrative of AFTG (again, I've talked before, although maybe deleted it by now, about how AFTG is not a sports drama but a drama contain sports, and this is the difference, not good or bad, just differences in genre) how little weight there is on the games themselves. And this is not me hating it's just musing I muse while writing fanfic. Like way Nora writes matches is fun, but there's not really any weight to them. Correct me if I'm wrong and I've missed, but I've reread the interactions with Ichirou and everything else, and I can't find anything saying there's an actual wager on the finals for Neil or Kevin or Jean. No matter how much we/they hate Riko, it's nothing. Riko doesn't die because he lost, he died because he made a fool of himself trying to kill Neil (and didn't cover up the other stuff well enough). The match was nothing but an excuse for Ichirou. An easy cover up as to why Riko suddenly lost it and ended his life. The game doesn't matter.

And this is a "problem" if you want to call it that (I don't think it's actually a problem unless Nora really did want it to be a straight sports drama, which I don't think she did), throughout in that there's no weight to the matches. This is why a lot of sports dramas plump for single elimination. And, if you want to focus more of the sport, like I sometimes do in my fics, this is where that becomes an issue. Take out the mafia and now the sport has to carry the weight. Now, there's a lot of pros and cons to a lot all the different tournament styles and and single elimination is rarer the more teams you have, single elim often faces readers going "yeah but they're not going to lose because they can't" while the opposite league play like AFTG has the opposite problem of "yeah, why does it matter if they lose?" And that is what happens in AFTG. The games are fun, but there's no weight on most of them. Even the first Ravens game. It doesn't matter. Aside from the Foxes pride, it's not the last game of the season and they needed the points. We don't even know how losing to the Ravens affected their standing in the league. We lost to the Ravens. Ok and? Not even the characters were bothered. There was no narrative weight. And that's what you need to make league play tense. Neil and Kevin and Wymack, and probably Dan, should constantly be aware of who's playing who, and what the ideal loss/win ratio is and what the point difference needs to be. My dad is a fan, and I am not, but he is constantly telling me which teams need to win and how much by to improve his teams standing and prepare them for later in the season. This is casual fan behaviour, Kevin and Neil should be all over that telling us who they need to beat and how much by so we can count what they need to get through. Whether the Foxes were going to make it to the championship or not wasn't a concern for me. It'd be like asking me to be tense about whether they're going to win or lose a match, but during the match no one is describing the match or telling you the score.

#all for the game #aftg #the foxhole court

26 notes · View notes

buckybarnesss · 1 year ago

Note

Something that frustrates me is that Theo can full transform into a wolf and it’s never talked about. Like how is it a big enlightenment thing for the Hales and then the evil 17 year old test tube were-creature can just do it casually and he doesn’t even USE IT FOR ANYTHING

lol fucking theo.

okay.

here we go.

i can understand how this would be frustrating and yeah it kind of is but the thing about theo is that narratively he's a derek mirror.

especially for scott and stiles.

read more because i had thoughts on this subject.

for the two of them, derek has always been there. it started with the three of them and for the type of shit they dealt with on a regular basis derek being there was comforting. even when they were actively being deeply annoyed by him because derek was safe to them in so many ways that i think that like a lot of teenagers they took for granted that he'd always be around because it's derek.

than he wasn't.

and argent left too.

it's the moment where the paradigm shifts and says "you're on your own kids".

it really pulled a rug out from under the two of them.

derek's departure at the end of season 4 in smoke and mirrors was so significant but also understated. i think people really do dismiss the amount of growth that occurred in the derek and scott relationship. fandom gets so hung up on their antagonism in seasons 1 and 2 they don't look much deeper for why they were like that and sort of ignore that season 3 spends a lot of time showing them moving away from that.

stiles and derek are more difficult to parse for some. their relationship whether you ship it or not is mostly in subtext. stiles is fucking attached by season 4.

stiles fears change. it's a huge part of his season 5 and 6a arcs. it terrifies him to lose people he cares about or have his relationship with them change.

i think it's important to remember that in smoke and mirrors, derek is all but dying in front of stiles. he's bleeding out. it doesn't look good. no one knows the dumbass is gonna evolve or whatever werewolf magic he pulled out his ass. he is dying and his last words to stiles are to go save scott.

this is after a season of where derek's been messed with magically by kate, where he's been losing his werewolf powers and lydia predicted his death.

when derek's lying there bleeding out stiles hesitates. twice.

he gets more focus than peter or braeden does in this moment. the focus is derek and stiles. we get like six close up shots of stiles being deeply affected by this and by affected i mean fucked up.

sure, derek doesn't end up actually dying but he leaves with braeden. we have no idea if they've really spoken all that much in the in-between.

stiles's face as they watch derek and argent leave does not give the vibe that he has had closure.

derek being unable to give stiles a proper goodbye is a whole other post.

it's really significant that derek leaving unmoors stiles emotionally even months later and that scott recognizes it. we are shown stiles getting sentimental and gooey over the initials d.h for a reason in creatures of the night. he misses derek.

why all this background when this post is about theo? it's because derek's absence in season 5 is glaring and tangible. it's an unsaid thing that theo is able to take advantage of.

it's a compare and contrast but sort of in opposite directions for stiles and scott.

both derek and theo grew up in beacon hills but left for a period of time before returning.

derek is immediately recognized by stiles and theo is recognized by scott.

both are accused of killing their sister. derek didn't kill laura but theo did kill tara.

derek is a born werewolf who earns his full shift which is an inherited rare gift whereas theo is a chimera artificially created by the dread doctors.

derek rejects the influence of peter and duecalion whereas theo is a tool of the dread doctors.

derek's desperation in building a pack and losing them versus theo's desperation to build a pack and killing them himself using deucalion's teachings about taking power.

derek wanting to kill lydia because he thought she was the kanima versus theo wanting lydia because he wanted her knowledge and she was the key to the hellhound

scott wanting to trust theo is an obvious course correction of how he mistrusted derek in the beginning and how he misses the connection he had with derek.

scott's just desperate for something to work out.

stiles's mistrust of theo is in contrast of how he trusted derek despite scott's insistence that derek wasn't trust worthy.

it also highlights that stiles's is on edge. he cannot afford to trust someone. not again. he cannot let another person close.

which brings us to parasomnia and the benefit of a doubt conversation.

there's a lot happening with stiles and scott during season 5. there's nogitsune fall out, them growing up and the pain that comes with it but also how stiles's behavior is increasingly paranoid and irritable. it's why theo is able to take such advantage.

but i think on some level scott misunderstands that stiles never really distrusted derek the same way he did.

stiles: "yes. okay? we followed him out here. what do you want me to say? that i'm a stalker? huh? that i'm crazy? totally paranoid? none of this is new information!" scott: "now you're gonna try to at least give him the benefit of the doubt?" stiles: "i give people benefit of the doubt! i've given a lot of benefit to a lot of people." scott: "like derek? ...kira? ...liam?"

i can not post scott's face when he's about to bring up derek to stiles.

scott may not know all the details, he may not understand them but what he does understand is derek leaving has stiles fucked up and bringing him up is going to poke at sore spot. bringing up derek was his entire point. adding kira and liam weren't the important part of this segment of conversation. i don't even think stiles ever mistrusted kira prior to when she begins to lose control of her fox.

scott is trying to appeal to stiles's derek feels and stiles just ends up super mad about it.

so to me in the end, a lot of scott and stiles's whole theo issue was really about derek.

(here's how i can make everything about derek hale lol).

theo being able to shift really was only to compare him to derek lol and who knows if he can even still accomplish this after he was returned from hell. he kind of went back to factory settings. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tl;dr season 5 theo is derek-lite.

#my blog #thoughts on teen wolf #teen wolf #theo raeken #sterek #just in case

91 notes · View notes

sikkdog · 9 months ago

Text

I decided that i should start reading paragon and i’m only on chapter 10 and i absolutely hate it. It’s possible i’m just overly picky with my fanfic but i honestly think it’s just genuinely bad. I bet(and hope) i don’t have the full story with how will got in prison in the beginning but having hannibal meet formally after will is accused does not feel natural at all. The pacing is something that makes me incredibly mad. On the first fucking chapter i felt like we just went through a season long arc. Hannibal should not be so blatantly in love with will in the beginning, and neither should will. Both of them should take a significant amount of time to accept these feelings in the first place. Will isn’t the only one to struggle with accepting himself. You know how jarring it must be for the goddamn chesapeake to form an attachment to a person he’s playing little mind games with and trying to frame. I also don’t believe hannibal would’ve gained that severe of an attachment if he didn’t manipulate will. Hannibal and will cannot exist without resistance. Will falling in love with hannibal is parallel to him discovering his unconscious. Wills tendencies towards violence are primal and so is his relationship with hannibal. For hannibal it is significantly easier to accept his attraction to him. The main issue with him is his tendencies and wills resistance to them. They both must resist eachother to be together. On the other hand they could just keep resisting eachother and trying to kill eachother and i would be much happier than whatever paragon has going on. Paragon pretty much takes away what makes hannigram so enticing and replaces it with smut.

This is definitely going to be a longer post because i have a lot of criticisms just for those 10 chapters. Pretty much every interaction feels out of character. The hannibal depicted in paragon is solely centered around his relationship with will. Though i don’t usually have an issue with portraying hannibal as obsessive i don’t think that really scrapes the surface of my issue here. Hannibal is a character who’s ego is constantly battling his id. In paragon he is not battling anything it’s like the solely will part of his id was only highlighted and it doesn’t feel as personal as it would if it didn’t completely ignore how he’s a killer. That is also something that pissed me off. We all know who we are talking about when we mention hannibal lecter. Therefore i think that making his killings a little secret that is only gone over in subtext is pointless. Hannibal is only a shell of himself when you completely separate him from violence. One can separate the monster from the man but not without either part being unaffected by the other.

With wills characterization is a whole other thing. Wills character makes me genuinely so frustrated because it is just straight up not will graham. That is not the traumatized man being pushed to the edge by the fbi(and also had encephalitis but it hasn’t been explain how it would affect him on the levels it did in the show.) Will had just spent so much time in prison(still don’t know why) for crimes he did not commit and this time having no one to blame and no evidence to back it up. If anything he should’ve stayed non verbal much much longer. It make’s absolutely zero sense for him to have a few angsty monologues about his experiences in prison and that be it.

Another thing abour will is that he does not act like will in the first place. He is strangely much more casual and talks in ways i can’t picture coming out of wills mouth. He also acts so much younger. It’s not just that, he is portrayed as much younger. He is written as a lot younger and innocent and sometimes it is difficult for me to picture the real will graham whilst reading. I saw something about will being 29 during paragon. First off, ew please stop aging him down to make him more innocent it’s fucking weird. Also it’s just not possible. There is no way a 29 year old was in wills line of work unless he was young sheldon or someone. Seeing will aged down or infantilized always makes me feel really icky and that is exactly how paragon made me feel.

Will and hannibal are nothing like their actual characters and all of their interactions feel so awkward. Honestly every characters interactions feel unnatural and weird in this fic. This is mostly just me criticizing the quality of paragon but in my opinion it’s not good quality at all. The pacing makes absolutely no sense. This causes the characters to have no build up whatsoever and the only meaningful moments they have are just venting about shit. A lot of the times it doesn’t even make sense for them to be explaining how they feel because it’s either way too soon or completely out of the blue. It feels as if the story is attempting to have content but is failing. It is just poorly done form with out of place content and it’s pretty disappointing.

I knew when i picked up this fic i wasn’t going to get something life changing but more of a haha hannibal sex kinky sex hannigram sex yaoi smut sex haha. I honestly think it would be much more enjoyable for me if it was. I know that a lot of people really enjoy this fic and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I see the appeal as a “Oh this doesn’t have to be good it’s just for the silly.” Unfortunately it got on my nerves far too much to be that. One thing i have to say is why is this the bible. Can we pick a new bible like one thats actually good, just saying.

All i want to do with this post is share a perspective i don’t see very often when regarding paragon. I mostly see jokes and praise but i wanted to give some criticism. I don’t mean to do any harm with my opinions, I am simply just stating my truth.

#hannibal #hannibal nbc #nbc hannibal #hannibal lecter #will graham #hannigram #paragon #paragon hannibal #do not burn me at the stake

32 notes · View notes

alicent-vi-britannia · 10 months ago

Text

Why was Lelouch's manipulation effective on Rolo?

One of this year's "resolutions" I set for my Code Geass page was that I was going to give more space to Rolo. Rolo is my favorite secondary character in Code Geass, even above Shirley and Euphemia, but I haven't talked about him much and I wanted to rectify that. This Monday I published a survey to my followers in which I invited them to vote for the analysis of Rolo that they were most interested in me doing. There were three options:

⭐Why was Lelouch's manipulation effective on Rolo? ⭐Why did Rolo kill Shirley? ⭐The parallels between V.V. and Rolo

There was a close competition between the second and the winner, which is what you can read in the title of the publication. Don't worry if you didn't win the analysis you wanted because those analyzes will come gradually. Furthermore, there is an important point in common that we must take into consideration in the two most requested analyzes: Rolo's background.

So who the fuck is Rolo? He is a trained assassin who works for the O.S.I. which, in turn, is in connection with the Geass Order and both organizations answer to the Emperor and V.V. (the devilish brothers). Episode 3 of R2 gives us an overview of him and how he normally acts if Lelouch is not with him (yes, being Lelouch's shy and devoted brother is Rolo's mask, but, as a professor told me in a class a while ago, masks are not necessarily fake and this mask is actually a side of him that not even Rolo himself knew). At the same time, episode 3 drops some seeds (problems) that will bloom over the course of the season:

His extreme loneliness: Rivalz casually comments that Rolo does not talk to anyone at school and, additionally, we see that it is difficult for him to work as a team (there is a scene with Villetta in which the members of the O.S.I. complain to her because Rolo has killed some of them for stupid reasons). All of this results in his poor social skills and him distrusting everyone (and himself). I won't use the enneagram right now, but Rolo is undoubtedly a 6w5 one-to-one subtype and with that information, a connoisseur of this tool can get a general idea of the motivations behind Rolo's strange behaviors.

His budding interest and need to understand the meanings of "having a family" and "birthdays," which tie into the heart-shaped locket that Lelouch gave him (and for which he killed a member of the O.S.I. just for touching it). It isn't until we reach episode 4 of R2 that we are introduced to Rolo's past that we understand this curiosity he has.

Rolo and Mao are similar in several ways. They are both orphans, given a Geass that was too powerful for them at a very young age, and are amoral as a result of their particular lives. Specifically, Rolo wasn't raised as a human, but rather he was trained from birth to be a killing machine. Therefore, he has no social skills or moral codes, he has no notion of what is right and wrong, he has never had a family, he doesn't know how to make friends and, of course, he has no idea what love is nor does he know how to love (this last part is important because that's what his narrative arc is about, by the way).

Rolo was taught to follow orders, solve problems and repress his social, emotional and affective needs. Rolo has convinced himself that it was okay for him to live as he has been because he has focused on the present by completing the missions assigned to him. It's Lelouch who motivates him to think about the future and find meaning in life: "Rolo, what is the future? The future is hope. Without hope, your life is empty. And you have no hope beyond your mission. Rolo, if you capture C.C., what kind of future will it open up for you? Things will remain as they are and nothing will change." It's more or less the same situation that Kallen goes through in the first season since she also has to define her objectives and motivations and, in fact, the mental breakdown that Rolo suffers is similar to the one that Kallen had on Kaminejima Island because both they see how the lie that they believed to be true crumbles before their eyes. In Rolo's case, after all, Lelouch does care more than the mission (or, in other words, that his emotional ties are real).

The difference between the two is that Rolo isn't mentally healthy and here we find other parallels with Mao. Both are, first and foremost, victims of child abuse by people who should have protected them, but decided to use them for their benefit (C.C. in the case of Mao and V.V. in the case of Rolo) and both are hungry for love for their loved ones (C.C. and Lelouch respectively). I would add that they are also children who didn't grow up well. That's why Rolo's locket is shaped like a heart: it symbolizes the love (of Lelouch) that Rolo desperately wants.

Even if Rolo sees himself as a weapon because he has been dehumanized by the Geass Order, he is human and, like every person, wants to be loved (C.C. literally wants to die because she believes there is no love in her life). This need combined with Lelouch's search for meaning based on his agenda (being his little brother) leads Rolo to turn such meaning into his reason for living. "I made you a promise. I promised you a new future. Your future is with me" (or, what is the same, "your future is me").

Of course, there is a difference between Mao and Rolo (which is the same difference between V.V. and him) that I won't reveal now. I will say that, although the relationship between Rolo and Lelouch will evolve into a dependency on the boy's part that will aggravate his mental state, it constitutes a turning point in his narrative arc since, in addition to giving him a goal and motivation, this is the first time that Rolo thinks about himself and what he wants for himself, which is good for Rolo since he begins to value his life and Lelouch won't face consequences for manipulating, lying and using an amoral young murderer with strong emotional deficiencies who has been indoctrinated by a malevolent organization, right? RIGHT?!

No, forget it. Shirley dies.

But I'll reserve that for the next analysis. Honestly, I'm glad this analysis came out first because when I release Shirley's I'll be more direct in touching on Rolo's background and focus on Rolo's fears and feelings and explaining something nonsense called "anxious attachment." React and share, if you want to see it soon, as well as other analyzes of Rolo (I need to analyze his death scene because it is heartbreakingly beautiful and meaningful, even more so with the music).

Thanks for reading me.

#code geass: lelouch of the rebellion #code geass #code geass: hangyaku no lelouch #lelouch lamperouge #lelouch vi britannia #lelouch #rolo lamperouge #mao (code geass)#kallen kozuki

52 notes · View notes

unaloid · 2 months ago

Note

what are ur woy ships,,

CRACKS KNUCKLES ^_^ i answered this forever ago but i have more to say now. big shipping thoughts

skeletondance is my everything they make me ill. i am constantly putting out psychic beams into the universe trying to manifest more images of them. it hurts me so bad hater literally likes hanging out with wander so many times i am 95% sure hater would have been wanderized in s3. they are so weird tho seriouslyyyy

wander is not going to get married, he is very free and easy with affection, and relationships are kind of temporary for him but he values each one in his heart forever. but hater is very set in the way of like "find The One get married live happily forever" very limited view, so for wander to be so casual and, in his eyes, dismissive of romance, would freak him tf out LOL he would definitely get a complex about it. so i wonder how long their relationship would last, if wander just moves onto the next villain after so long and hater is fucked up about it forever, or if hater ends up being special and will follow wander to the ends of the earth. IDK thats where im at right now, i love hater being shy/nervous, and wander being sweet with him, it kills me hes so cute.

love sylava too, i think its easy to depict dominator being a flirt to sylvia, but to me dom is all talk LOL i think sylvia could put her in her place easily. syl called her "friend" and she got all flustered i know it... she was ready to rule a planet together with sylvia, which is like, dom you dont even rule planets what are you doing <3 you just met her and you're already planning your life together.... jk. crazy lesbian moment. so theres a lot of back and forth kind of fighting for dominance between them, i'd like if people put sylvia in charge more!!!!

i love to imagine tumblesquid, like if they were travelling partners to the extent of wander and sylvia now, it was probably so cute. since they are both so peaceful they probably had picnics in fields of flowers all day, and napped in sunbeams, they are so sweeties to me i wish they got to interact properly in the series. jeff is just really interesting. in my mind they broke up amicably cuz wander wanted to keep moving along to the next galaxy to help more ppl but jeff stayed and continued charity in the old galaxy (idk if jeff is supposed to be from a different galaxy or the same one idk but u get the idea..)

so those are the big favs, i also still like wansome as a crackship i realllyy wish they got to have a conversation in the series, i watched the party animal so many times just grasping for something lol. eyesome is crack too. i have fun

as much as i drew wandering eye before, im really neutral to them, just fun to draw cuz i kept having good ideas. to me its wander being like "peepers needs this, this will help him", wander knows what peepers is fucked up about and is trying to help him but it doesnt work. deathglare i cannot imagine reciprocated sorryyyy but i love the onesided obsession and peepers being crazy lol. it adds a lot of seasoning.

#woy #ask #big kay ramble.

10 notes · View notes

jq37 · 8 months ago

Note

Here's my conspiracy theory for the Ratgrinders and Buddy Dawn: He was always meant to be a disposable pawn. They wanted the Bad Kids to go to the Last Stand and have Buddy be the cleric so they could kill him and leave the Bad Kids to die. And they wouldn't have to worry about failing because (and here's the crazy part):

They have a body double of Lucy prepared.

That would explain why Ivy wasn't shocked to see Fig disguised as Lucy (Ivy already knows there's a second Lucy around) and why the Ratgrinders specifically asked for someone from another school (they could write him off as "not technically part of the party" and thus, his death doesn't affect their grade)

It's really making me crazy that they haven't chased the "Ivy noticing Fig as Lucy" thread harder. I've been obsessed with it for so long at this point. It could just be a matter of Ivy clocking that it was someone in disguise as Lucy because she has high Passive Perception or something, but if not then it's a huge loose end! We've had body doubles on this show before (Lydia had one made by Aguefort I believe) so it is something that we've seen can be done. Still doesn't explain why she'd be so chill with seeing the double just casually at Fabian's house party.

I think Buddy is def a pawn. The only question is to what end. Killing Buddy to leave the Bad Kids to die is def possible--insane overreaction but that's kind of the nature of this season. I don't think they'd be able to claim that Buddy isn't part of their party--he's a transfer but he is a student--but I think they would be able to take The Last Stand if they wanted to and didn't want to go pass fail. Also, iirc, they didn't ask for a transfer. They asked for a *Helioic* cleric. Assuming I'm remembering correctly, that would mean there was something about that specific faith that they were interested in. My OG theory is that they were trying to create another Kristen they could control--like if you wanted to create Batman so you found a rich kid and killed their parents after a screening of Puss in Boots 2.

Even if they have a double of Lucy to swap in once Buddy is axed, I believe the rule is that if your party comp changes at all, you're cooked. And I think swapping your cleric would be a change in party comp. But who knows. Maybe there's something in the bylaws that can combat that? They really need to read those bylaws.

#asks #fantasy high #dimension 20 #d20 #brwolf1995

23 notes · View notes

snow23gem · 2 days ago

Text

Helluva boss sinsmas (finale) episode vent

Okay so there was a lot to unpack in that new episode. NGL it was a great episode overall.

first of we got stolas going through a lot after being stripped of his royal title (especially with his depression) and there's blitz trying to help him out in the best way he can.

Second we got Octavia just wanting to see her dad while Stella and Andre are just being bitches about it. (Poor girl) Also her song was good btw, just so good we finally got to hear her sing. And when she let her anger and unsureness out on stolas it kinda broke me, bc she thinks that stolas doesn't care about her anymore and only blitz, and that she thought she was an obligation to her dad having to take antidepressants, I just hope they are able to make up and understand each other in s3.

Thirdly, we got stolas beating the sh*t out of andrealphus which was extremely satisfying to me bc he was a prick to stolas. And the massive battle scene with stolas, blitz and the IMP gang against Andre was epic, loved the animation designs for Andres hydra spell and loonas wolf transformation (which was pretty cool NGL). And the fact that blitz called andrealphus Elsa was fucking hilarious, I mean that is what everyone was calling him and I'm so glad that they made it canon in the show.

Next, there's finding out that Millie is now pregnant in the series which was definitely unexpected plot twist and it is clear that she is nervous about telling moxxie about the idea of having a baby which would be interesting to see how it affects s3. And I found it sweet that Sally Mae was the first person she told about the pregnancy, and the fact that Sally Mae just casually walked outside the house before telling Millie that she was kinda funny but shows that she understands how personal it is to Millie. Can't wait for how moxxie reacts to Millie telling him she's pregnant in season 3.

Also, I just want to rant about how annoying the new sinner client was in the new episode, I mean she wanted them to kill her ex husband and his partner just bc they are gay, and it she is clearly making stolas feel even more bad for via and his decisions, so I'm really glad that blitz decided not to kill the family bc they reminded him of what could be for him, stolas and their daughters loona and via. Also that woman deserved to be thrown out of the imp building for being a homophobic bitch, I just rlly hate that sinner.

Finally, absolutely loved that blitz saved stolas from the ice dragon it was so cool. I was so fucking happy that they finally kissed. And the mini dance scene near the end of the episode was really sweet and it was nice that blitz opened up to stolas about his sister barbie and tell him not to give up on via. I really do hope that via and stolas are able to talk and make up in S3.

overall, I give it a 10/10

#helluva boss season 2 #sinsmas #s2 spoilers #blitz helluva boss #loona helluva boss #millie helluva boss #stolas goetia #moxxie helluva boss #stolas x blitz #mentioned stolitz #octavia helluva boss

10 notes · View notes

travajoke01 · 4 months ago

Text

I wanna enroll her in a contest so infopost here we come

casual outfit still developing, please stand by

rottmnt OC Chimera Solbritt, she’s a bombyx. Aaaaaand also she’s a witch (i’m almost sorry for Donnie).

Va: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFOBe5rGrqc&list=PL0ZdQpFsexGEB8-p_dN7jflu7y7bB4Upe&index=5 Noël Wells

Her little caterpillar-like buddy is Cat (as in Cat-tools and caterpillar)

Really hate that we saw so little of witches and furthermore they were not so…..thrilling. I’m not a good writer, so i’ll just throw out some facts about her and backstory. Maybe my headcanon will make creators and nickelodeon so angry that they’ll decide to continue the show just to prove me wrong.

So this little cutie has problems with her family (on account of them being killed) and were took in by Big Mama and trained by her great-aunty Moti, so her english is better, otherwise that would be a disaster.

BM took her as last favor to her friend (a witch), trying not to dig Chimy into her illegal business too much, but girl would peak her nose once in a while (she’s a real fan of true crime, how could she miss something like that?).

She’s a product of love of a human (scientist) and yokai (witch), whose bond was a problem for the witch’s town by itself, and a reason of their demise. Chimera was thought to be dead too, but she was teleported by her papá along with Cat, who was supposed to be her nanny, but became a life-long companion. He recorded some things from the crime scene, including her father’s goodbye and face of the killer.

Unfortunately, it took some time to reach her mother (she was in the witch town currently, while dad was above), and since she had no idea her daughter was alive, she took the poison to rejoin her fam.

Knowing that Mira (I really see so much potential In her being evil), would want her own granddaughter dead, Moti knew that girl cannot stay, so by the advice of Chimy’s mother, she took her to the hotel, sneaking there once in a while to teach her and tell stories of her parents.

Of course, Mira was playing the victim, crying and telling that both of her parents died in the accident from one of their experiments.(those damn scientists can’t do anything right).

It was hard for Chimy to study, especially, when she saw Gentry getting the attention and magic lessons from Mira she craved so much. But i guess with having the half of capabilities of others-it is how it is. Or maybe Mira didn’t trust the bombyx just as much.

So to begin her way to the top properly, Chimera had do enlarge the amount of magic she can hold\produce, call it mana if you want. Before that, to learn magic ways properly, she had to use her enchanted umbrella and Cat’s help to make and store potions and elixirs, particularly healing ones. Quite a useful buddy this Cat, after all, a creation of magic AND science.

School days weren’t exactly easy, on one hand, because she enrolled in the already formed collective that got used to each other, on the other, because Chimera was mostly looking humanish, the only things visibly telling that she is certainly not a human were her little wings, teeth, eyes and ears. She’s not unusual enough to blend in with yokai, and way too unusual to blend in with humans. Her fluff, retractable arms, spots and colour, the size of her wings were developed during all these years, heck, even the silk wasn’t always the thing. All of that made it only harder to get used to, she was clumsy and insecure. You can’t say she was bullied necessarily, but she’s never felt being a part of community. It definitely affected her, so she seeks admiration and attention.

Being tired of this buzz of thoughts and failures in her head she quitted the school and embarked on her little adventure outside the New York, (approximately during the time of season 1-2 and the movie) travelled to the temple where she empowered her dark magic (hence the mark’s ob her hands, the more she uses them, the more they grow), and enlarged her mana.

Coming back to NY, she had to pass an exam to show her progress in magic, which wasn’t a problem for her this time, and took private lessons from a wizard.

FACTS TIME

second and third pair of arms are retractable. First pair, normal skin, second-fluffy, third-more like a chitin, they’re thinner than the other pairs. Her height is actually about Mikey’s, but since she’s walking on her “tiptoes” (it’s more comfortable bc of her bone structure) she appears to be higher.

produces silk (uses it to lengthen the range for touch-based spells or to crochet) and pheromones (to attract or to repulse, futile against humans and mutants, they only work on yokai)

umbrella has planetary signs and on the top is a sun sign (solely decorative)

her bailiwick is dark magic mostly (darkness based harm\destruction spells, creating a field of darkness), but she tries to learn other kinds of elementary attack spells, but they’re more tiring for her to perform.

has bags under her eyes,mostly because she stays up late, her sleep schedule is a mess. She just likes staying up late and doing hobbies, with all that learning there’s should be time for fun, right? After meeting the Mad Dogs, she could spend several nights without sleep, learning\practicing spells or looking for a particular one that they need.

Even though she sometimes seems insensitive, she’s very emotional towards animals and animated little creatures (like robots),probably because she feels they are weaker and has an instinct to protect them.

doesn’t like any physical touch if she doesn’t like\know you. For some reason, this irritating, orange masked turtle grew fast on her…maybe her shell is getting thinner. (they’re totally besties, she freaking loves Dr. Delicate touch)

Also she crochets\sews, watches true crime videos, destroys the patriarchy, u know, girl stuff

uses her wings for DAZZLING and casting(it’s absolutely extra), more than for flying, because that would be an easy target and not as fast as umbrella and magical means. So she uses umbrella for fast travel\dodging, but at least she looks great. If she opens her wings people in the close distance can't evert their gaze unless she moves from them or if person wers some kind of eye protecting equipment.

She considers incident in witch town very amusing (Donnie vs witch town),considering her tense relationship with this place.

She genuinely finds Donnie entertaining. Her reaction to his noises and attempts to be a mad scientist is pretty much the same as Luz’s reaction to King (like: awww he steppet his wittle foot~) Does it irritate him? Very much. But at least they both have a topic to infodump (science and magic) and they can’t understand eachother, which is a new experience for Donnie, to be in his brothers’ shoes. But she actually supports Donnie and tries to listen, though rarely understands terminology.

Giggles almost every time boys have an argument (if it’s not very life-threatening situation or it’s a real time to be serious)

She likes Raph’s roughness combined with his sweetness. She would totally crochet smth for him.

Leo is the one she shows her new nails first.

April is a kind of friend she always wanted, she can tell her about her nails with the same interest as about true crime (and learn smth new from April). She would also teach her magic too or escort her somewhere she could learn it.

She has a good developed emotional intelligence but rather from a logical point of view, like “ofc they do not know they’ve hurt u, they’re not u, but if they did it on purpose and u found out about it-ditch them, u deserve better that that”. Hates showing strong emotions like crying in public, it makes her feel weak.

She tells “failing is okay” to smbd mostly to absorb it herself, she will try to comfort them with the words she would like to hear. But it’s only if she cares for you, otherwise you can jump off a roof and she’ll be like “do a flip”.

Even though she seeks attention, she’s an introvert and she needs to “recharge” every once in a while to avoid being overwhelmed. Otherwise she’ll be a real buzzkill.

Totally infodumps boys about serial killers and true crime stuff, Raph and Leo ARE DEFINATELY CONCERNED.

Greets u with “Supies~” and it irritates Don-Don (that does too) because it’s not a real word

She hates dancing, because she hates embarrassment. But somehow Donnie takes it personally and insists on dancing lessons from him ofc. She says yes just to get him out of her hair ,but he takes it seriously. Somehow, it’s fun with him, even though very awkward at first.

eyesight isn’t that great, wears special lenses to be less sensitive to light

learns spanish

sings when she’s nervous

has slight anger issues

#oc info #rotmnt #artists on tumblr #oc #small artist #rottmnt oc #rise oc #tmnt 2018 #rise of the tmnt #oc x canon #character design #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt mikey #tmnt x oc

11 notes · View notes