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seriouslyhooked · 4 years ago

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Feels Like This (Part 10)

Emma Swan is a once lost girl who is now making good. She has made a way in the world for her and her young son, Henry, and after years of hard work, Emma is in her last stretch of schooling for the career she’s always wanted. Unexpectedly, she finds herself in a tiny nation no one’s ever heard of for her last year of study. She knows nothing about the place except that it’s beautiful, has a world-renowned child life program, and is filled with possibility. Meanwhile, Prince Killian is hardly happy with the title he received at birth. As the second in line for the crown, Killian has long tried shaking his royal duties. He built a career in the royal navy, and has stayed out of the limelight, but his ship has been called to port indefinitely at the request of his brother, the King. Fate (in her many forms) brings Emma and Killian together and the resulting fic is a cute, fluffy, trope filled romp featuring heart felt moments, a healthy dose of insta-love and an assured happily ever after. Story rated M and will have 12 parts. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9. Available on FF Here and AO3 Here.

A/N: Hi everybody! I am so excited to FINALLY be back with a new chapter of a fic that so many of you have fallen in love with. This response has been truly unprecedented in my writing experience. I have had lots of fics that many of you rooted for and supported me in, and I am always so grateful for that, but having a hiatus from writing this story showed me just how invested so many of you are. This is a great feeling as a writer, and that excitement you all have is the only reason I have been able to write more of this fic. My ability to write at my usual pace has been tested this fall, and there’s been some ups and downs in my attempts to reengage, but I love this story and I am so excited to share the rest of it with you all. I hope you will all like this new installment, I thank you again for continuing this with me, and I cannot wait to hear what you think!

“Mmmm, this smells delicious,” Henry said, hovering over the skillet not for the first time this evening, and breathing in the pasta sauce Killian had been working on the past half hour. To the boy’s credit, it did smell absolutely wonderful, a comforting classic anyone would love, and which the three of them had earned, after a day of unexpected meetings and introductions. This pasta was a traditional Montennaran recipe, not far off from a classic Sicilian pomodoro, but with the benefit of a few of this country’s specialties. It was a favorite of his personally, and one of the few meals he’d learned to cook well during his time in the service.

“Seriously. Who knew you could cook like this?” Emma said, still stunned at the display before them. She must have assumed from pizza night and the slow cooking speed of their first date that he was fully a novice, and he was in many ways. But he did have a few small tricks up his sleeves, and one was this sauce, which was easy to make as long as he had the right ingredients. It was quick, but precise, and it gave off the perception that he had mastered something difficult, even though that wasn’t true.

“This dish is a special one for me and for my unit. This is the spread each of us waited for during deployments. You crave so many things when you’re without them for so long, but this meal symbolized something else. The moment we’d touch down on Montennaran soil, this is the first thing we would eat. It represents safety just as much as it does a good meal.”

“You always had this?” Henry asked, his brow furrowed in confusion. “No matter what time?”

“Breakfast, lunch, or dinner. This was it,” Killian said, smiling at the memory of early morning pasta meals that he’d enjoyed more than most other moments in his time at sea. Those were the times when they all felt at peace again, and where they allowed themselves to breathe and heal no matter what dark moments had been withstood. “We took turns preparing it, tired as we’d all be from the tour and the travel, but the pressure was on. The last thing you want to do is disappoint newly anchored sailors. It’s a mistake that may just be your last.”

“No kidding,” Henry said, surprised but taking the words at face value. “It sounds so cool though. Being in the Navy, I mean. You meet all those people, people who are your family too even if you’re not related.”

“Aye, lad, they are my family. Always will be.”

“I can’t wait to meet them someday,” Henry said eagerly. Killian noticed Emma tense a bit but she didn’t need to worry. It was always his intention to introduce them all, because it was his plan to keep Emma and Henry with him forever. “Will it be like today do you think?”

“That depends on how you think today went.”

Killian’s quip earned a laugh from Henry and a soft smile from Emma. He was teasing as if the afternoon had been anything but excellent, when of course that was not the case. Despite the unexpected nature of it all, his family had been on their best behavior and they’d all immediately loved Emma and her boy. He knew in his heart they would, but it took a lot of pressure off and hopefully would help ease some of Emma’s worries about where this was going and if his family would approve.

“Today was totally awesome!” Henry said. “Everyone was so nice and cool. But Gran was definitely my favorite.”

“For now maybe,” Killian said, knowing full well what the draw of his Gran was and how her energy and feistiness made her infinitely lovable. “But give it time. My Mum and Liam both have a few more tricks up their sleeves.”

“What did you think of today, Mom?” Henry asked, and Killian was intrigued to know her thoughts. He doubted that Emma would go very deep with her assessment, but she was always honest with her son, of that Killian was totally assured.

“It was… easy,” Emma confessed, smiling at the memories of the day. “I never expected to feel so welcomed right away, but everyone was so normal, it was nice.”

“Normal is pushing it a bit, love. My grandmother’s revelations alone somewhat undermine my family’s classification as something so benign.”

“Maybe,” Emma said with a shrug. “But the families I’ve seen all have some kind of well-meaning meddling, don’t they? Hers just has a bit more royal flare.”

“Oh, Gran’s got flare all right. No doubt about that,” Henry said cheekily as he took the dishes and silverware from Emma and headed to the dining room to set the table.

It wasn’t a statement the boy had meant to be impactful, but it hit Killian right in the heart. That was another special moment from today. There was no formality with his family and Henry and Emma, and he had witnessed the moment his grandmother insisted that Henry call her Gran as well. To have Henry accept that so quickly was a blessing, and another bright spot in what had been a beautiful day.

“And what about you?” Emma asked him when they were alone. “How did you think today went?”

Instinctively Killian turned off the burner, knowing the food was ready to serve but not wanting it to be ruined. He wiped his hands clean of any rogue tomato and then he pulled Emma straight into his arms in one fluid motion. Without pause, he pressed a kiss to her lips that was meant to be soft and nonintrusive in case Henry returned, but quickly morphed to something heated when Emma clutched at his shirt and arched in closer. By the time they pulled apart, he almost forgot the question, but Emma’s curious green eyes prompted him to reassure her of the truth.

“Today was one of the best days I’ve ever known, love. The most important people in my world came together, and if my instincts are correct, it’s gone just about as perfectly as it could. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that…”

“Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ hanging in that statement,” she said, running her fingers across his cheek as she looked at him, searching for answers. “Talk to me.”

“It’s just that I -,”

“Okay, table’s set!” Henry said, barreling back into the kitchen and prompting Killian to step back from Emma but to keep his hand in hers.

Emma and Killian exchanged a look that silently said they would pick up this conversation again later, but Killian squeezed her hand in what he hoped was a calming and comforting gesture. The hanging words he’d yet to say were hardly bad ones, he just had to admit that as beautiful as today was he wanted so much more. He’d never have enough days like this one for his liking. He would always want more, no matter what came, and that was what he’d have to ask her for if not today then someday very soon.

Dinner proceeded without a hitch, and not only was his cooking a success, but the meal was fun and lively. Henry made for so much conversation, and his thoughts on the day were long and varied. He was so full of excitement and energy that it was contagious, and Killian learned more from both the boy and his mother about what they’d taken from meeting his family. They all talked about the center too, about Marco and Marie and Cecelia, and then at length about Anna and especially Elsa.

“Do you think anything will come from it?” Emma asked Killian at one point, after they’d already dissected how undeniable the moment was between Emma’s friend and Killian’s brother.

“Oh for sure,” Henry said before Killian could respond. Both Emma and Killian laughed at his confidence.

“You seem rather certain, lad.”

“Well it’s pretty obvious. I mean he looks at Elsa the way you look at Mom. They’re totally gonna get together. It was love at first sight. Just like with you two.”

“Henry,” Emma said, chastising him somewhat but in a measured way.

“What?”

“Well not for nothing, but you didn’t even see Killian and I meet how could you know it was…”

“Love at first sight?” Killian offered, grinning at her, knowing in his heart that was exactly what they’d felt the moment they laid eyes on each other.

“Exactly.”

“Oh, come on, Mom,” Henry said, rolling his eyes in a move Killian rarely ever saw, but which looked exactly like his mother when she was exasperated. He nearly choked on his water, but he powered through, biting back a laugh at Emma’s shocked face. “It was totally love. You came home extra happy and you had a dreamy look on your face all the time when Killian started volunteering. And since then you’ve been kinda… what does Mrs. H call it again? Oh right, scatterbrained. Love can do that, you know. I asked Gran about it today and she said it’s a telltale sign.”

“You asked her that?” Emma asked, shocked and maybe just a little bit mortified as Henry nodded like it was no big deal.

“Yup. She knows everything. She said that’s what happens when you’re old, and since Mrs. H says that too I think it’s probably true. Come to think of it, they’d be great friends don’t you think?”

“Mrs. H and Queen Eleanor?” Emma asked, as if the thought of their neighbor and Killian’s grandmother being ‘friends’ was too much to handle. “Well I mean, now that you mention it, there are a few similarities there.”

“Totally. And if Mrs. H was here she’d agree with me about Liam and Elsa. It’s totally love, and that’s awesome. Queen Elsa. It has a nice ring to it. Like she was meant to be a royal.”

Killian didn’t think Elsa was the only one with a name suited for royalty. In his estimation Princess Emma and even Prince Henry were rather fitting as well, but he bit that statement back, not wanting to overwhelm Emma or bring something up in front of Henry that she wasn’t ready for. Instead he steered the conversation in other directions, enjoying himself thoroughly as they all enjoyed dessert together that Emma had put together before watching a movie the three of them. It was a totally natural thing, and at more than one point Killian thought that they really looked like a family. It filled his heart with hope, and he wished one day he could officially claim both of them as his. But tonight, he’d just enjoy how good it felt to be with two such special people who seemed to see something in him too.

“Okay, kid, it’s about that time. It’s late already, so PJs and then you can read two chapters and then that’s all she wrote. You got me?”

“Sure, Mom. But can I read to Killian tonight? I’m at a great part in the story. The pirates are about to board the ship.”

“Um, I’m not – I mean, if you want?” Emma asked deferring to him though she was obviously flustered.

“Sounds good to me,” Killian said prompting relief in Emma and a sound of excitement from Henry.

Henry hurried to get himself ready for bed, and just as he’d promised, he proceeded to read Killian two chapters of his current book. The title was one Killian recognized from his youth, but he was impressed that a ten year old had such command of the story. Henry was a good reader but also theatrical, keeping Killian’s attention all the while. Only when he closed the book did Killian leave the swashbuckling alternative universe the story took place in.

“Quite the tale there, lad. You’ll have to keep me apprised of what happens next.”

“No need, I’ll save it until you come back again,” Henry said easily, gesturing to his bookcase which was full of books in so many shades and shapes. “I’ve got tons of them to read.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Killian said truthfully standing back up and heading towards the door. “Well thanks again for the story, Henry. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Killian,” Henry said, letting out a yawn and settling into bed. “Love you.”

The words placed a direct hit on Killian’s heart, and he was unsure if Henry had meant to say it or if sleep was getting the better of him, but Killian could only go on instinct. He answered honestly, telling the boy he loved him too and seeing him smile and settle to sleep before slipping into the hall and walking right into Emma who had tears in her eyes.

“Emma?” he asked, mindful to keep his voice more a whisper than something that could wake up Henry. “Is everything all right?”

“He said he loves you,” Emma whispered, and Killian nodded, brushing her tears away as he held her close.

“He did, love, and it made me feel ten feet tall.”

“Because you love him too,” she whispered, awed at that as if were some kind of stunning revelation and not a given fact of life.

“Of course I do. He’s an amazing boy, and his mother… well she’s the beating of my heart. How could I do anything but love him when he’s a piece of you, Emma?”

“What were you going to say earlier?” Emma asked, abruptly pulling them back to that moment in the kitchen. He debated holding back, but he decided ultimately it was better to put all of his cards on the table. Transparency was key if they had any shot of making this work.

“I was going to say that you, Emma Swan, are the reason. You’re my reason for everything, this impossible gift I never saw coming, and I’m lost in you. I see this perfect moment and forever when I look in your eyes, I see a life I’m desperate to pursue and real hope for the future. I still can’t believe that you’ve chosen me and that I’m standing here with you at all, and a day as good as this one only reminds me that I’ll always have this want - this need - for you. I love you, Emma, irrefutably, incandescently. In a forever and so much longer kind of way.”

“I love you too. Just as much,” Emma said, her voice stronger this time though her tears still came. They appeared to be the product of joy instead of sadness, but they still clutched at his chest like a vice. The only antidote was pulling Emma somewhere private, in this case her bedroom, and confirming he was right.

Once the door was closed behind them, locking them into a sound tight suite on the other end of Emma’s temporary home, their actions blended together. He didn’t lead the way, but moved with Emma, a dance that felt so much more practiced than it was. Emma pulled him for steamy kisses, and he savored her taste on his tongue as he held her close and moved her back towards the bed in her room. The lights were dimmed, but washed the room in a warmth he felt upon his skin. He was burning up from the closeness and the promise of what was to come, but the only thing he could think was that he needed more.

In the back of his mind, Killian also realized that this moment needed quiet. With Henry in the house, they didn’t have the freedom he might yearn for, but no matter. He had the love of the most incredible woman and she’d accepted his love in return. That needed celebration and merited some long-desired reveling. He wanted to show her how he felt, and though he’d finally said the words and attempted to make her understand, the feelings he had went so much deeper. Looking in her eyes right now, he could tell she felt just as much, but the time for waiting and wondering was over. They had put the truth between them and now it was time to truly immerse themselves in it.

Instinct and hunger soon took over for Killian, melding with the love he felt and the softer feelings in his heart in a wickedly wonderful way. He wanted Emma bared to him as soon as could be, spread out on the sheets of this bed and ready for his taking. They’d been flirting with the pleasures they could have for a while now, and they’d been intimate before, but this was different. This was a first in many ways, and Killian was intent on having this moment be one they wouldn’t rush, and that they’d remember for the rest of their lives.

A primal voice in his brain urged him to take her fast and hard, to make a claim they’d both feel branded by, but Killian anchored himself to an idea of something slower and more sensual. He knew taking his time would prove so much more gratifying, and he wanted to make this as good for his Swan as it could possibly be. He helped Emma out of clothes, noticing the tremble of her hands as he did. She was buzzing with excitement and electricity, but she matched his pace, understanding that if they drove each other crazy for just a little longer it would be sublime.

He was entranced by her entirely, and as her clothes from the day fell away, revealing two extremely unexpected scraps of red lace underneath, he couldn’t help but groan. No woman had a right to be so lovely, to claw at him so surely, and to set him alight in this way, but God did he love it. Emma was impossible, but somehow she was real. He felt her responsiveness to him and tracked the way that she noticed how his appreciative gaze moved up her body. A flush spread across her creamy skin, but she stood there, proud and sure as her hands moved across his body, removing his clothes as he’d done hers.

“I didn’t know that I could want this much,” she whispered, the honey-laced tone of her voice a sweet melody to his ears. “I need you, Killian. I love you.”

“Fuck me,” he grumbled, surprising her by taking her in his arms and lowering her to the bed. She let out a gasp before giving into laughter, her eyes bright and sparkling in the lamp light.

“Believe me, I’m trying,” she quipped, but her feistiness faded somewhat as he shed the rest of his clothes. Now her attention had switched, she was watching him steadily, and unconsciously licked her lips. That was it. His patience broke and he was on her, hands roaming, mouth teasing, and hellbent on more.

“Much as I might love that idea, Swan, tonight isn’t about fucking. Tonight I make love to the woman of my dreams. Tonight I show you my heart in full. It’s so much more than sex.”

“I know,” Emma whispered, running her hands along his cheek. “So show me.”

Bound by her request, Killian set out to do just that. It began with roaming hands and removing the last two scraps of red that shielded her from him. Once she was bare, he let himself explore and learn every spot and lick and nip that made her breathless. He traced the sensitive places on her body that made her hum in pleasure, and cherished each freckle on her skin that had come from the summer sun. He riled her up with his hands and his mouth until she was pleading for release, and then he gave it to her, touching her tender flesh and prompting a thready moan from her lips.

“Killian.” Emma’s croon was ragged and gorgeous, making him harder than he ever thought possible. The sound of her desire reached within his soul and engulfed him completely. Unable to resist, he felt himself growing addicted, unsure if he could ever stop. He needed her sighs like he needed to breath, and he purposefully pulled as many sounds of pleasure from her as he could.

There was nothing like Emma lost in lust. She’d never been more beautiful and he didn’t know how that was possible. As his thumb swirled against her clit and his fingers filled her, she gave more away, revealing herself and her needs in ways that made him dizzy. Every response set Killian aflame, and every breathy sigh and plea for more was a sign he intended to follow until he’d led her right over the edge and she shattered beneath him.

“You destroy me, love,” he found himself saying as he looked down at her and brushed some strands of her curled blonde hair out of her eyes. “Destroy me and make me into so much more. I’m in awe of you.”

In the face of her release, and the sincere words that he meant completely, Emma blushed again but smiled. Her expression was one he’d only ever seen her share with him, and it made him feel indestructible. He’d never met a person with more impact on his soul, and he’d never met a woman who so effortlessly created hope and good in his heart. Emma Swan was everything a man could ever want made real, and Killian still couldn’t comprehend how he was lucky enough to be here.

“I can’t imagine this is real,” Emma said, her words still dazed, but happy and content. “But I know it is. I know you are. I’m in this, Killian. I’ve never been more in.”

“Thank God for that, love,” Killian said with a grin and one more kiss before he trailed lower.

With careful attentions designed for maximum pleasure, Killian hit each peak point on her body, bestowing licks and nips that made her jump and mewl. By the time he’d reached her inner thighs, she was breathing heavy, anticipation clear as day. Killian looked up to her now emerald colored eyes as his hands held her steady, needing to know that this was what she wanted and what he saw was irrefutable. Emma was just as desirous for this as he was, and Killian was never so glad for anything in his life.

When his tongue met her sex, he tasted her need for him. Her body writhed beneath him, but he held her still, knowing she needed this from him now. She was wound up tight, the desire twisting around inside her and making her try to break away, but he built it up wanting to give her something she’d never get enough of. With slow, languid licks, he built the moment for him and her. The higher she climbed, the more crazed he himself became, but he waited until she shattered again to take his own pleasure. Once she had, though, all bets were off.

Their coming together was sensational serenity, walking the line between hard and gentle, tender and heated. Further and further they moved towards bliss, but time was off its normal tracks and their minds were filled with only this glorious moment. Soon enough, and yet not soon enough at all, they met that magic, crashing into climax. Minutes later they remained, both spent and breathing heavy, glowing from the aftermath and intertwined together, two bodies hell bent on never being parted. Killian found himself speechless in the aftermath, though his hands drew unknown figures on her skin. He had to touch her, had to hold her, even though he had just felt heaven itself. Truth be told, Killian was totally complete, and more invigorated than ever. Life had never felt more perfect and nothing had ever made more sense.

These revelations were all thanks to Emma. She was the one who made him believe love could be honest and true. She showed him depths he’d never dreamed of, and right now, as the swift and gentle tug of sleep came beckoning, she was a vision. Smiling at him, holding him close and whispering a promise he almost couldn’t bear.

“Forever, Killian,” she breathed, cuddling towards his chest after pressing one last kiss upon his skin. “That’s how long I know I’ll love you.”

“Forever, Emma,” he replied, though he knew even now she may already have succumbed to slumber. “Forever and whatever exists beyond.”

……………

Sneaking back into the castle now was a stark contrast to the many mornings he’d snuck out for a bit of space. Killian couldn’t resist smiling at how much things had changed since that time, and on those days when he walked out in the hills to watch the sunrise. However, unlike those other mornings, Killian knew the moment he walked through the great oak doors that he was not the only one up at this God forsaken hour. Call it instinct or intuition, but Killian could sense uneasiness in the palace, and as he moved up the corridor and saw light emanating from one of Liam’s studies, his hunch was proven right.

With measured steps he approached the open door. It remained ajar, a beacon to anyone who may pass by that his brother was here but still approachable. What Killian saw when he walked to the doorway, however, was the undeniable truth that Liam was not well, and that he likely had no idea the door was open. He’d been up all night, burning the midnight oil, and studying files and photos strewn about his desk.

“For your information, you’re about…” Killian’s words trailed off as he checked the clock on the mantel to clarify the time, “twenty-two and a half minutes from being discovered by Francine or Claudette. Give or take or minute or so.”

The mention of two of the maids on the morning shift in the palace seemed to ground Liam into the reality of this moment and the predawn light outside. He looked up at Killian and then out the antique windows which offered a familiar view of the palace grounds, now bathed in the early morning sunshine. Liam let out a sigh, running a hand through his dark hair that had already been mussed with some frequency. There was no way his brother had slept this evening. He was wild and unkempt, and so far from his state of normal it was fascinating to see.

“Any other day and I’d be focused on your early morning return,” Liam mused, offering something like a smile. It surprised Killian, given how infrequent smiles had become for his brother, but before he could mention it, Liam looked back to the papers and the books strewn about the mahogany desk. Killian wasn’t sure what he expected, but these archives of the family’s public events was not it. His curiosity grew, and he urged his brother to explain himself.

“But it’s not so ordinary, is it?”

“No, she isn’t,” Liam whispered, slipping up and referring to the woman who had turned his head completely, instead of the morning itself. “I didn’t plan for this.”

“No one ever does,” Killian quipped. “Gran will be the first to tell you that to love is to surrender. Planning has no place in affairs of the heart.”

“That old bird is too crafty,” Liam said shaking his head as Killian’s brow furrowed in confusion. “All these years of talk, throwing opinions here there and everywhere. She never met a moment where words failed her and she never lets a day slip past where she doesn’t share her every whim. But I’ve always written it off as her opinion or some grandiose turn of phrase that sounds ripped from a book of clichés rather than something rooted in truth.”

“The worst are the riddles. The woman loves a riddle,” Killian added and Liam groaned, a sound of actual pain that Killian felt, despite its humor.

“I hate the bloody things. The flowery words, the abstract philosophies. It’s all just meaningless. Or so I thought. A whole life spent listening to this woman, and I never took much of it seriously. To be sure there were some times when she offered sage counsel, but I found it unlikely that she was actually providing me with answers to anything really sentimental. Half the time she’s as vague as can be. I wrote off nearly all her musings for the better part of my life.”

“Yet here we are,” Killian said evenly and Liam nodded.

“Aye, here we are.”

Liam stood from his chair and walked towards the windows. Killian watched as his brother’s arms crossed over his chest, his gaze turned out to the world, looking but not really seeing. He was lost in his own thoughts, struggling to give voice to them, and so Killian was patient. There was no use dragging Liam to conversation. His brother was guarded and grappling for control. Only when he was ready, would the truth come out. A few minutes later, after a prolonged bit of silence, they finally did.

“I’ve long put off the inevitable, brother. Royal expectation demands that I choose a bride, but for years I’ve hesitated, unwilling to commit to any kind of match. The press has questioned my delay for ages, but that talk is mostly harmless. Still, I have always known that would change. A day would come when talk became more, and I needed to settle, to choose duty over heart.”

“You’ve said as much before, brother, but nothing in the law says that you have to forsake your heart for the sake of the country. A love match is allowed. You know this.”

“Aye, I do, but I never entertained the premise, not really. After our parents’ fiasco of a marriage, I ruled it out entirely. My best hope was for what had existed before, something arranged where, if I was lucky, love may bloom. Look at Gran and Grandad. It was love, absolutely, but it was also a merger. There was very little choice involved at all, just logic and good reasoning. At least in those situations you know what you’re getting into. There’s a safety in settling for that which is known. But fuck if I want that anymore. Truth be told the thought makes me sick, and I barely spoke to her.”

“To Elsa, you mean?” Killian prodded and Liam’s eyes brightened as he nodded.

“How can she move me like this already? One day in her presence and I hardly know myself. One day and I know that everything I thought would happen will never come to pass. I’ll never be the man that settles, not when I know she’s out there. I can’t describe it except to say that I have to know her, have to pursue this, have to hope she’ll give me a chance. I’ve never felt this out of my depths. I saw her and the rest of the world just ceased to matter. I wasn’t the King, or a ruler, or a politician. I had no duty and no course. I was just a man, and she was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, plain and simple. I know it’s mad, but damn if it’s not true.”

“If it’s mad, you’re in good company. That’s exactly how I felt the first time I saw Emma.”

“That’s reassuring, and yet… it’s the strangest thing, I swear I looked at Elsa and I was halfway in a memory. I was a boy again, but the details were hazy. It just felt familiar, like we’ve met before. My heart had skipped that particular beat. My gut had felt that strongly. Now though I’m lost. I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s more than what it is. Maybe I missed something, but how could anyone ever miss her?”

“Ah that explains these books,” Killian said gesturing to everything here. “But let me guess, no sign of her in these.”

“None. But the feeling still lingers. It’s like I dreamed her up. The recognition is strong, but just barely out of grasp. God, listen to me. I’ve become an absolute melt.”

Killian couldn’t help but laugh at the slang of their youth. Their boarding schools had been filled with Brits and other Europeans, and to be a melt was to be a sop, a sap, someone who had given in to their most romantic feelings.

“Maybe, but if that’s true, God knows I’m happy for it.”

“You are?”

“Of course I am. I’ve always wanted more for you, Liam. You shouldn’t aim for mere contentment, or to just be comforted by honor and duty. The goal is to be genuinely, honestly happy, and this morning, despite the anxiety of newness, I see the start of something in you. Something good.”

“I fear I’ve been too hard on you, Killian,” Liam said, his voice softer and his tone sincere. “Not lately I mean, and hopefully you’ve noticed the shift over the past few weeks, but in the beginning, I didn’t see how you could feel so much. I asked a lot of you, with the parade and royal obligations, and I didn’t realize what the risk was. Slowly I’ve grown to understand that the changes in you I have seen can only be attributed to love. You are happy and it is clear for the world to see. I’ve respected that, but now to know it’s more than hypothetical, I just think it bears repeating. To lose this feeling…” Liam brushed his hand against his heart absentmindedly, as if his chest ached from some physical pain. “Anyway, I hate that I forced that choice upon you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s forgiven, brother. Well, it will be, if you grant me one wish.”

“Anything.”

“I’d like your blessing, and not a royal one, not a King’s well wishes. Just you, as my brother, backing me when I ask Emma to be my wife.”

The look of surprise on Liam’s face quickly morphed into a grin. There was his brother of old, the one who had existed before royal training. He was truly happy and a bit mischievous as well. The two of them had long been told they shared that smile, but coming from Liam, it felt like a most precious gift.

“You plan to ask her already?”

“Already?” Killian laughed. “It feels like I’ve been waiting forever. But I suppose you’re right. It is fast.”

“Fast seems to run in this family,” Liam said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have said that before yesterday, but as it stands, I understand. You have my backing, Killian. Emma is right for you, and if she’ll have you, we’d be lucky to have her.”

Liam came around the table, hugging Killian and showing him the depth of his joy. It was genuine, this support from his brother, and it made a world of difference. No matter what, Killian would ask Emma to be his wife, but knowing that his family felt as good about this as he did settled something in him. Now all he had to do was find the perfect moment. It was hard to be patient, especially when they’d admitted how they felt, and when he knew his feelings for Emma would only ever grow, but he’d find away. More than anything he wanted Emma to have a perfect moment, one they could build their future on forever more.

“And what of you and Elsa? Where do you go from here?”

“The only way I can go,” Liam said, resuming his assured control even though he was at the precipice of something totally foreign to him. “Towards her.”

“Good man. Trust in that feeling. It’s yet to steer me wrong.”

The two of them would have no doubt shared more, but at that moment, the voices of the morning staff could be heard down the hall. Their privacy had expired, the day had dawned, and reality beckoned, yet Killian knew even without proof, that things would work out. For now, there was a tremendous amount of hope for both him and Liam, hope that had been missing for many many years. Things may still be a bit uncertain, hearts needed to be won and vows needed to be made, but in his soul, Killian knew it would all work out. For Gran was usually right in the end, and he and Liam would both certainly surrender to love. Killian, for his part, already had, and honestly, it was the best damn thing he’d ever done. Soon, though, he would need to do more, to take the steps he so badly wanted with Emma, and to build a life with her and Henry worthy of them both. It was a mission he felt down to his bones, and one he simply would not fail. He’d find a way to their happily ever after, whatever it may look like, and the excitement of that would keep him going as long as it took.

Post-Note: So there we have it – a new chapter of this story, and the setup for the next chapter which will have more of the Elsa/Anna backstory for you all. From there we get to move towards my typical happily ever after recipe, a proposal, a wedding, and the joyful thereafter. I think there’s going to be about 4 more installments left total (though one of those will be an epilogue and it may be quite a while before I am ready to publish that). But I promise to do my best to update more frequently than I have been. I have had so many of you sending love and wishes for faster updates, and those requests have not fallen on deaf ears. In fact, every comment and message makes writing that much easier, and I am so grateful for the overwhelming support. I promise I am doing my best to get you all this story, and just hope it’ll live up to everyone’s excited expectations. Either way, I thank you all so much for reading, and I wish you all well and healthy in this time. Sending you all the best!

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thehoneybuzz · 3 years ago

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Chasing Baker

My Nana was my greatest adversary.

In an otherwise charmed life, Nana was an immovable force and the only legitimate challenger to my willpower. Not without the warmth one would expect from a grandmother, Nana could be sharp - like a sun-warmed pane of glass. Lesser hearts might have bent to me when I requested accommodation - but not Nana. Nana set a firm bedtime, insisted on efficient tooth brushing, and rather than negotiate with hair tangles, made short work of them in single, swift wrenches when brushing your hair. No nonsense. When you stayed with her - in one of two twin beds in a room made precisely for grandchildren - you often found yourself in bed with the lights out, with no real memory of having gotten there, swept away in the tide of your sheets. Nana was uncompromising, and no arena was more suited to our mutual stubbornness as the dinner table.

I grew up a notoriously picky eater. After a weekend at my Uncle Jerry's, my mom received a hardcover copy of "The Strong-Willed Child" from him as a gift. He had spanked me for not eating chicken nuggets. As evident by its title, the book was meant to coach my mother on parenting strategies for mitigating my innate obstinance. This would not be the only copy of the book my mother received. Though, I think she could have written one by the time I turned 4. I simply refused to eat the things I didn't like, and that was a long list.

A relative once applauded - clapped his hands together in joy- upon learning that I had graduated from having the crusts cut off my bread to full-blown sandwich eating. The peanut butter and honey sandwich was my signature dish and an absolute staple. I'd like to say I've grown out of it - and I've certainly grown having tried llama steak in Peru, lamb heart at the table of a Lebanese family, and Greenland shark in an Icelandic cafe - but it took me a long time to let go of my habits and permit myself to try, and it took some coaxing. My preferences ran deep.

My diet from ages six through eleven included Eggo waffles, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, an assortment of cereals, a handful of specific fruits and vegetables, and the occasional steak when mom thought my iron was low. My mom - on the advice of a pediatrician who told her that if she force-fed me, I'd develop an eating disorder - catered to this preference. Nana did not. They must have been seeing different pediatricians.

Nana took the clear your plate approach - The approach driven by reward and consequence. Finish your plate, cookies delivered. Fail to try, become hungry and hungrier still as dessert passes you by. I took to swallowing food whole, and my mom took to sending me with granola bars on visitations. She'd line the interior of my suitcase like we were smuggling drugs. I'll admit it was an unusual form of contraband, but the measure seemed necessary in a divorced child's duplicitous world. What my mom saw as nourishment, my Dad might see as undermined parenting strategy even under the best of circumstances - which they often weren't. I was hungry, so decided it best to keep things a secret and wrappers out of the trash.

Despite Nana's apparent best efforts, I avoided the eating disorder. Thanks to my mom, I avoided most foods until my early 20s. I don't know who was right. What I know for certain is that I was loved.

When I sat down with Nana after my trip to Mt. Baker, she clutched her heart as she said. "Ally - to think about you as this little girl - and that you would only eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches - to think of you climbing mountains…" she shakes her head, "… well I just can't believe it."

I started to laugh and asked her, "Want to know the best part?"

She nodded, smile in her eyes, full of that sunny warmth - playful and kaleidoscopic.

"I ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches up and down the side of that mountain, Nana," I told her, laughing, and then we laughed together. Growing up is fun, I thought, especially in moments like this.

Laughing with your grandmother is a gift you receive in exchange for time, and it is a beautiful gift indeed. Here is a woman who bathed you, clothed you, fed you - and by the time you're old enough to understand the magnitude of the life she held before all that, she is often gone. I'm lucky to have this time. Nana is 90 years old now, and my mother's mother passed at 74. I never got to have the conversations I wanted to have with my grandmother, who died. To ask her questions like, 'Who were you?' 'What lifetimes made up the love you gave so effortlessly away?'

There is something about mountain climbing that makes you consider those kinds of questions in real-time. There is something about mountain climbing that makes you feel as if you are in the process of 'becoming.' So when, at the parking lot of Grandy Creek Grocery, I met my fellow climbers and our guides - there was a feeling of anticipation and nervousness about who I'd be sharing that story with. Dropping me off, my mom described it like the first day of kindergarten. The first person I met was Sharon.

I had been worried about Sharon. Weeks before, on the pre-trip Zoom call, she stood out from the digital crowd as the most visibly senior person there. Sharon did not look old - she looked undoubtedly the oldest. I think this is an important distinction - particularly to Sharon. I remember thinking - "I hope she is not on my trip because I'm worried she will show me down." A very judgmental thought and the universe saw to its reckoning. Sharon surprised the hell out of me.

She paced the parking lot, and I jumped out of my rig to greet her. We quickly began commiserating. Baker would be her first mountain. I had Mount St. Helens under my belt, but it's not much in the way of experience. We talked about our training plan, recounting long drives to taller places. Sharon was from Wisconsin, and she had to drive 45 minutes to get to peaks at 3,000 - the same as me in Eastern Washington. We had a lot in common. Where I ran, she had been hiking with weight and jogging. Sharon wasn't afraid of hard work. On our drive to the trailhead, I learned that she had just lost 75 pounds last year. I learned later that when Sharon signed up for this climb, she hadn't told anyone in her family she was doing it. She was 62 years old and had never once traveled alone. What on earth possessed her to climb a mountain? I'd be afraid of that question, too.

Sharon eventually fessed up to her family and made the trip official. That's how we found ourselves on the side of a mountain together. I'm embarrassed to have been so fundamentally wrong - but my confession is not without meaning, and I learned an important lesson. Never underestimate a Sharon.

When Melissa, our guide, described Mt. Baker for the first time, she called it by its indigenous name, Komo Kulshan. She then gave us its epithet - "The Great White Watcher." Having now met Kulshan face to face, I can tell you that's precisely how he feels. The summit looms as you navigate through the trees. Stoic in the face of the wilderness that surrounds him. Ice cold, he waits. In the Lummi language, he's called 'white sentinel.' He is persistent, vigilant, and watching.

I focused my nervous energy on preparing to meet this mountain by learning what I could about him. I learned that Mt. Baker is 10,781 feet tall, an active volcano, and the second most glaciated mountain in the continental united states (Rainier's got it beat, and you don't count Alaska). It's a formidable mountain, known - as nearly all alpine environments are - for its quickly changing conditions and the perils of its geology. This all, somehow, frightened me less than the thought of meeting Melissa Arnot-Reid. Her legend loomed not in the Cascades - where only a single peak resides above the threshold of 14,000 feet by which the Rockies measure their formidable "fourteeners." Melissa's legend loomed as large as Everest, on who's summit she has been six times - the only American woman to summit without the use of supplemental oxygen and survive. 29,032 feet. Melissa was someone I wanted to learn from, and I was scared shitless of her by reputation.

Suffering a bit of social awkwardness around celebrities, I prepared to meet Melissa by seeking to learn nothing about her at all. The antithesis of my mountain strategy - I told myself our experience would be what it was when we met on the mountain. My job was to learn - to ask my questions courageously - and be vulnerable and bold in seeking truth. I spent a fair bit of time wondering if she might be an ass hole, too. The age-old adage, "don't meet your heroes," drifted in and out of my mind.

In the last 15 minutes of our drive to Grandy's, my mom started reading Melissa's Wikipedia page aloud to me as I navigated the road, undoing months of my concerted preparation. I let her continue, greedy for information. "It says she trains by depriving herself of things - that she'll go without food and water."

"Probably a good idea if you're ever going to be stuck on the side of a mountain without it," I told her. I braced myself for a response. In the past few months, my mother had a growing sensitivity around topics that might suggest I could die on the side of a mountain. Admitting, so blatantly, that mountain climbing was a dangerous sport left me vulnerable to excessive mothering accompanied by exclamations of "Don't you dare!" Instead, my mom sort of nodded and continued, "I'm surprised her baby came out healthy."

My brow furrowed. I hated my mother for saying it. I had avoided a lecture from the mother of the mountaineer but failed to account for the mother of the daughter aged-almost-thirty. My uterus is a topic of conversation around my mother's table. Apparently, so was Melissas. Not wanting to discuss either, I let my mother's comment go unchecked as she continued to list accomplishments. "This article says she's focused on business, not emotions. That she is an incredible problem-solver." Now her reports felt more like cheating - it felt like an unfair advantage to meet someone armed with publicly available information about them. When you Google "Allyson Tanzer," you won't find much about my disposition under pressure. I told my mom it was time to focus and turned up the music.

When we parked, and I went to introduce myself to Melissa, three things happened. As I introduced myself, she first quickly let me know that she would not be giving out hugs due to the pandemic. Then, taking my hand in a firm grip, Melissa detailed that she and our other guide, Adrienne, had critical guide business to discuss and would be with us in a moment. She reported being thrilled to be meeting us as she quickly dropped my hand. Within thirty seconds, I was apologizing profusely and backing my way into the grocery. What can I say - first time formally climbing mountains, and I wasn't sure of the protocol. I fiddled with a bag of Cheetohs and continued to hope that she wasn't just an ass hole.

I went to the bathroom for something to do and remembered what my mother said. Task-oriented. I figured Melissa probably didn't hate me, after all. Despite my earlier misgivings, I was grateful to know a bit about her character, regardless of how 'honestly' that information was obtained. Thanks, Mom.

Our climb began. We left Grandy's in a caravan and parked near 3000' at the winter routes trailhead. On the first day, you ascend to 6000' and establish camp. You carry about 40 pounds, walking 1 mile and about 1000 vertical feet per hour, stopping for 15-minute breaks in those intervals. Conditions are warm, which means you're doing something the mountaineers call "post-holing" - ramming deep holes (as if for a fence post) into the ground as you step through snow that's washed out underneath. It's slow-going and rigorous. An hour and a half in, Melissa reports that we're standing in the location where she usually takes the first break. Unseasonably warm weather with a heavy snow accumulation has made for an exciting start.

You walk along a canyon ridge formed by a retreating glacier. You realize that time here is not measured in the same cadence that it's known to you. Mountains measure time in millennium, not decades. The formations of rock are carved by years, not minutes. The ground holds a history you can't conceive of - an ancient history of rock and ice. You are constantly struck by feeling small both physically and in your very chronology. I spent the first day happily in awe.

At camp, you maintain - guides (and playfully designated junior guides), boil snow, establish a base, dig a toilet. You assess whether or not you need to poop in a bag and carry it down the mountain with you as you try - for the first time - a rehydrated meal claiming to be chili Mac and cheese. Melissa teaches us how to walk on rope over a glacier. I try to mimic her knots. She redefines your concept of efficiency - breathlessly describing a packing order that accounts for calorie intake, warmth requirements and weight distribution - Every contingency considered. When I win the Ice Ax Rodeo by landing my thrown ax in a particular configuration - all is right in the world. Melissa is a drill sergeant giving instruction. She outlines the next minute - next five minutes - next hour - next day.

Her matter-of-fact nature reminds me of something. When I gave my parents a ride in an airplane for the first time with me as the pilot in command, I provided them near the same briefing as we were parked on the ramp. It ended dramatically with, "And if anything should happen, you have to exit the aircraft first in the following fashion." At which point I launched myself from the plane. I wanted them to be prepared to fight their instincts to protect me. I’m the only pilot on board - and my job is to protect my passengers, no exceptions. They both described a sense of foreboding and peace at the demonstration. It’s precisely how I felt when Melissa explained how she would be rescuing herself from a crevasse. “If you fall, I get you out. If I fall, I get myself out, but I need your help as an anchor to do so.” She took the approach of coaching us in only what we needed for the next challenge. We would learn crevasse rescue on a need to know basis. At Grandy’s, she told us to expect 48 hours of endurance. At camp, we’re at hour 9. She painted a picture of the following day.

"We'll begin between 11, and 2 am. Expect switchbacks up the glacier, a series of flats, and gains over the next hour. In 3.5 miles, we'll gain an additional 2000 feet - meandering a path through the glacier's crevasses, and it will gradually become steeper over time. About 1.5 miles to the summit, we'll hit the Easton glacier culminating in the Roman Wall. Then, because God has a sense of humor, you have a long flat walk to the summit after the steepest portion. All said it will take us between 5-7 hours to the top."

Frankly, it was just about as simple as that.

My eyes opened at 11:50 pm to the sound of movement outside the tent. Melissa had coached us here, too. "You may not be sleeping," she told us as we readied for 'lights out.' Days from the summer solstice, the sun burned brightly above us at 7 pm. "Remember that you don't need sleep; you need rest. That's what you're getting here at camp. You're horizontal; your feet are out of your boots. Close your eyes, and know you're getting what you need." Felt like a lie, but sure enough, with two hours of sleep, I couldn't describe myself as tired.

I did, however, feel cold. Chilly night temperatures had crept into our tent, and dressing for the day was arduous. I knew to keep my clothes in my sleeping bag. It was a trick I learned from a friend made trekking in the Andes for dressing in the cold. I knew to shorten my trekking poles while climbing, thanks to my guide on that same trek. I'd be leaving my trekking poles behind today, though. Ice axes only. We divide into rope teams. The race begins, but there's no starting pistol - only wind.

Fifteen minutes into our climb and we're struggling to find the rhythm. I'm still shaking the bleariness of the cold. The rope between climbers takes on an interesting dynamic. While it connects you to your fellow climber, it also isolates you from them. You have to maintain a certain distance away from one another while maintaining the same pace. It's a dance with crampons on in glacial ice - a delicate dance indeed - and it's where climbing feels like a team sport. You're all in it together.

Voices rang out in sequence like a game of telephone - one of our team would need to climb down. We said short goodbyes and waited as Adrienne (guide) descended with climber to camp. We were lucky - we hadn’t been climbing long which meant Adrienne could climb down and back to rejoin her rope. Guide redundancy is a safety net when groups of climbers work together.

Darkness continued. We continued. As you persist, darkness seems to persist along with you. In the first hour, it grows heavy. Your world begins and ends at the light of your headlamp, and that's where you find it—your rhythm. Crampons crunching, breath steady, and the gentle swish of your layers create a sort of timpani, a medley of percussion sounds. Clink, brush, crunch, and clink, brush, crunch, as ax bites ice, the movement of your clothes, and the toe of your boot kicks crampon into snow propelling you forward. There isn't much to think about in this grinding meditation. You're grounded in tugs from ahead or behind you as you march, slowly up. You can count steps, miles, feet of elevation - whatever keeps you moving. Whatever keeps you going up.

Moments before sunrise, we would lose another on our team. I listened to Melissa coach her. "What we're headed to is going to be harder than what we've just done. If how you are feeling is taking away from your ability to focus on your next step - I can only tell you that it's not going to get easier from here." That's when I saw the decision on her face. Another round of goodbyes - this one a bit more somber. She had worked so hard.

The decision to descend is a difficult one, but it’s one of the most important you can make. There are steep consequences to being in over your head in a place so remote. The summit is a siren, beware. Melissa - aware of the remaining teams intention to summit - advised us to plug our ears as she told the descending climber the Sherpa belief that a mountain won't let you summit for the first time if it likes you. Mountains bring you back. Further, she coached, the decision to go down can lift an entire team's chance of success if you feel you're a liability. Recognizing yourself and your limitations truthfully is a mountain in itself. That's the summit this person made in her decision to descend.

Like a good Agatha Christie novel, our list of characters dwindled. We added layers and continued - five of the original eight. Melissa was right, again. After we lost the second climber, our ascent became a proper climb. From that point forward, if anyone decided to turn around - we would all have to. There was only one remaining guide, and she had to protect all her climbers, no exceptions - me in the cockpit all over again.

She didn't show it, but 62-year-old Sharon was genuinely frightened. She had realized the same thing I did. If she didn't make it - no one would. Sharon kept climbing. Remember when I was worried she would slow me down?

When the sun starts to rise, everything begins to feel possible again. I don't mean to say that things were hopeless, just that with the sun comes energy and a sense of renewal. Color returns to the landscape, and you can begin to be able to measure your progress concretely. The mountain casts a shadow across the earth, stretching miles. You can't believe that you are contained within that shadow, on the face of such a giant who stands so impossibly tall. Melissa stood there, and I took her picture.

She had turned out to be not an ass hole at all. Where I sought to be her student, she aspired to teach - at once brilliant and kind. Her stride - her sport - a work of art. The precise art of what she calls slow, uphill walking. Her shadow and the shadow of the mountain impressed upon me the power of legends.

As the Roman Wall came into view - I knew we had it. We short rope in and make one last push. If Mt. Baker is a joke from God, the ending of the Roman Wall is its punchline.

Atop the incline awaits a long, easy walk to a haystack peak some few hundred yards in the distance. I was bubbling with emotion as my heart rate settled and the view became clear. There wasn't much difference between where we stood and where we were going. We dropped our packs, unroped, and ran up the summit. I was in tears.

Melissa broke her no-hugs-in-the-pandemic rule and celebrated us each in turn. I snapped countless photos and spent each frozen moment smiling. I pulled Melissa and Sharon in close. I had felt something on my heart and only needed a moment's bravery to share it.

I started awkwardly.

"I'd like to say something to you and Sharon," I muttered, barely audible over the wind, as I tugged on Melissa's sleeve. I grabbed Sharon's arm and pulled her in too. I don't remember the exact thing I said or the exact way in which I said it. I remember pausing to make sure I got it right and wondering for a long time if I managed to do so.

I told them that I had come to the mountain expecting to be impressed by one person. Melissa promised an impressive education - on which she delivered. She is of that rare quality - the kind who’s presence improves you. I came to Baker with that expectation, I confessed, I expected Melissa. I paused before telling Sharon, her gloved hand in mine, “You?” I laughed nervously. “I wasn’t expecting. A 62-year-old woman….” I nodded back to Melissa, “And you, the mother of a 3-year-old…” I didn’t want to get this wrong. “You are two people who our society labels and confines. Yet, here you are - on top of a mountain. I have to tell you….” I was choked up in earnest here and struggled to continue.

"It matters.” I said. “What you do matters. It matters to have an example of what is possible. Both of you have provided that example to me and women like me. Thank you." I sobbed. "I am so grateful for it and grateful for you." Melissa smothered me in her jacket as she embraced me, once again, in a hug. Pandemic be damned. My tears froze. While I expected a "There's no crying in mountaineering" a la Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own (it was a climb of mostly women, after all) the admonishment never came.

Sharon grabbed hold of me next and we shared the alpine view. Before I knew it, we were the last two on the summit. The wind howled a steady cheer. Celebrations concluded, it was time to leave. I stayed for just a moment longer, watching Sharon as she left. They don't make anything more beautiful than a mountain, and it's a view worth savoring. I descended, joyfully, to my team.

I didn't bury Jake up there. In Ashes to Ashes, I told the story of taking my old farm dog's remains to the top of my first volcano. He's not so much a good luck charm as he is an omen of protection. I don't need luck as much as I need safety, and he serves his duty well. Jake stayed with me through our descent to camp. I needed a little protection coming down off the Roman Wall, I thought. I wanted him close until we were off the glacier. He lays now at the foot of my tent—a very good place for a very good dog.

There's a natural mindfulness to climbing. I often find myself living in the present step - not thinking about the route that lies below. You forget in moments that the trip up is accompanied by an equally long and perilous journey down. From the summit, your journey is far from over. Yet, time flies by even as you stop to admire the steam vents. The rainbow that surrounds the sun refracts joy and color the same.

You reach camp, celebrate, pack up. Miles and thousands of feet remain even from there. That's when you realize it's ending and when I realized I didn't want it to end.

We spent the next few miles getting to know each other in earnest, savoring time and mountain views, chatting in the way of long-form hikers - about the nature of things and through storytelling. Melissa regaled us with vulnerable truths and comedic parables. We laughed. I kept sipping at the wells of knowledge around me, drinking in the moments. Laughter distracted from hunger, from wet feet, and from the dull and dim realization that all good things must come to an end. We made our way to the bottom of the mountain. Just like that - we say goodbye.

Sharon drove me back to Grandy's. We chitter like school girls - adrenaline and nostalgia collide in our post-climb delirium. We talk about the future. I realize that we are good friends. I am humbled by just how wrong a person can be to believe something about someone for no good reason.

Mom picks me up, and with her embrace my adventure is over. I’ve come full circle - safe and sound, parked in the lot of Grandy Creek Grocery.

Melissa found us there and knocked on our window.

"Your daughter is really special. The MOST special,” my hero and friend told my mom. Mom beamed with a special pride reserved exclusively for mothers of strong-willed daughters. I had been misreading things - the adventure had only just begun.

There are eight years between Melissa and I. I’m not sure I’ll be chasing Everest in that time, but I know I won’t be finished. I’ve got thirty-three years to catch Sharon at 62. In the mountain blink of sixty-one years, I’ll be as old as my Nana and I hope at least half as wise. Good thing there are so many years - for there is so much left to climb.

#mountaineering #mountains #travel #adventure #adventurephotography #traveling #travelblogpost #mountainclimbing #mt baker

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agreatperhaps12 · 5 years ago

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There are a lot of misconceptions about Warren Peace. Five times Layla Williams saw through the bullshit, and one time Warren returned the favor.

happy holidays, @katiewont :)

Misconception No. 1: Warren Peace loves a good fight.

Warren Peace does not go looking for fights. Fights find him.

See: Stronghold chucking a lunch tray at him the first week of class. Dumb and Dumber challenging them to Save the Citizen. Stronghold’s date going full supervillain at homecoming and nearly dropping a school-size anvil on an unsuspecting suburb.

That’s just the highlight reel for September.

When another villain interrupts Warren’s History of Heroism midterm with another school invasion, Warren’s first thought is: Could everyone around here chill for five fucking seconds.

No. Literally, not ever. See: three weeks later, when Warren is standing in line for lunch with the entourage of freshmen he’s long since given up trying to shake off. It has not even been five minutes since Warren and Stronghold defeated their latest challenger at Save the Citizen, and Zach is already doing a clumsy live-action replay.

To Stronghold, “Did you see his face when you were like?” Zach swings his arm with the spectacular confidence of someone not standing in a very crowded cafeteria. To Warren, “And then you were like—” Zach mimes shooting fireballs from his fists, complete with sound effects. “Totally brutal. You looked scary, bro.”

“He always looks scary,” Ethan says, smiling at Warren like that’s a compliment.

Warren glares down at his tray. He and Stronghold have been defending champions of Save the Citizen for over two months, Hero Team every time. He doesn’t get how people are still managing to make him feel like the bad guy about it.

“How was play-pretend battle?”

Layla has emerged from the crowd to stand beside Warren, with a smirk that makes a stupid something flutter behind his sternum. Layla stopped coming to their Save the Citizen matches after their dozenth victory, because “violence should be the last resort in any hostage situation” and “Save the Citizen completely undermines a valuable opportunity for Sky High students to learn strategic negotiation skills.” Warren doesn’t know what she does with the free period.

Take me with you, he thinks.

“The match was epic,” Zach says. “Will got to throw a car.”

A bashful smile overtakes Stronghold’s dumb, Labrador face.

“And Warren almost barbequed Evans,” Ethan says.

Jesus, could they shut up about it already.

“Really,” Layla says, eyes on Warren while he pays for his food.

“Yeah,” Warren says, in a deadpan to rival Magenta. “It was epic.”

Layla frowns, but instead of launching into the pacifist manifesto that Warren is expecting, she holds up her bagged lunch says, “Want to eat outside?”

Before Warren can answer, Stronghold says, “Outside?” like he’s never heard of such a place. “It’s freezing out there.”

“It’s almost forty degrees,” Layla says, “and I had to come in early to finish a project, so it’s been over—” She checks the clock. “—five hours since I’ve felt roots under my feet. I’m eating outside.”

“Okay, but like.” Stronghold glances at Warren. “Do… you want me to come?”

“No, you’ll just be a baby about it,” Layla says gently. “Warren doesn’t get cold, do you?”

She looks to Warren for confirmation of a fact that Warren is one hundred percent sure he’s never told her. He shrugs to hide his wrong-footedness.

“Great.” Layla claps a hand on Stronghold’s shoulder and uses it to steer him toward the others, who are already sitting at what used to be Warren’s personal lunch table, once upon a time. She shrugs on her jacket, flips her hair out, and looks to Warren. “Shall we?”

Warren follows her outside warily. Sitting down across from her at the picnic table closest to the edge of school grounds, he says, “So, what is this, exactly?”

Layla pauses in uncurling her lunch bag. “What do you mean?”

Warren shrugs. “We don’t really hang out. Alone.”

They did, a little. Back when Layla was using Warren to make Stronghold jealous. But that pretty much ended with the homecoming debacle—after which Layla and Stronghold spent a few weeks trying to get their romantic relationship off the ground, decided they worked better as friends, and went back to normal.

“What are you talking about?” Layla says. “We hang out at the Paper Lantern all the time.”

It’s true that Layla eats at Warren’s workplace a few nights a week, when her mom is too busy with day-saving to make family dinners at home. But Layla is always doing homework, and Warren is always doing Work work, so, “I don’t think that counts.”

“It does,” Layla says confidently. It’s the kind of confidence that only Layla can pull off, because rather than coming across as arrogant, she gives the air of a mysterious woodland nymph, whose secret knowledge mere mortals wouldn’t understand.

“Okay,” Warren says, because he has precious little personal experience to back up any assertions about how friendship is supposed to work. “But this isn’t the Lantern.”

Layla raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to go back inside?”

“No,” Warren says. He doesn’t want Layla to leave, either. There’s a sureness about her that Warren finds comforting. She’s never been afraid of him—probably because she could kick his ass. Warren likes that about her. But he also likes to know where he stands with people.

By way of explanation, Layla says, “Did you know that when you get stressed out, literal steam comes out of your ears?”

“What?”

“Mm-hmm.” Layla pulls an apple out of her lunch bag. “A little. It’s easier to see when your hair is pulled back.”

Warren brings a self-conscious hand to the rubber band he used to tie his hair up during Mad Science Lab.

“It happens a lot when Zach is doing his Save the Citizen play-by-plays,” Layla observes. “Thought I might spare you an entire lunch of that.”

“Oh.” Warren’s hand drops into his lap, blind-sided by the unexpected kindness. “Thanks.”

“Any time.” Layla maintains eye contact while taking a bit of apple. Warren shifts in his seat and drops his eyes to his pizza. “You could tell Coach Boomer to assign Will a different partner,” she says after a moment. “Save the Citizen isn’t mandatory.”

Yeah, except it kind of is. No one’s ever voluntarily stepped back from a winning streak like Warren and Stronghold’s. Benching himself would never be worth all the extra side-eye in the halls. Not to mention the explanation he’d have to give Boomer. What kind of superhero-in-training refuses to fight?

Except for the one Warren is currently sitting across from, of course. Who’s looking at Warren with such doe-eyed earnestness that it almost squeezes a “Yeah, maybe” out of him. But Layla is a difficult person to lie to, so he says, “I thought we weren’t going to talk about Save the Citizen.”

Layla sits up a little straighter. “Right,” she says. “Consider it forgotten.”

“Thanks.”

Not that Warren doesn’t trust Layla, but she is the kind of person to press points she thinks are important. Before her mind can cycle back to Save the Citizen from some other angle, Warren says, “Sorry I dragged you outside in the middle of November.”

Layla tilts her head to the side. “You didn’t drag me. I dragged you.”

“Yeah, but for me,” Warren says, and there’s that stupid fluttering feeling again.

“And for me,” Layla says. “I wasn’t lying about needing to get out for a bit. Being inside all day, with the linoleum and cinderblock.” She wrinkles her nose. “It’s creepy quiet, when you’re used to feeling everything alive around you.”

He’s never actually thought about it, before. How Layla has her finger on the pulse of something so vast and intricate, even when she’s not bending it to her will.

“Even in November?” Warren says. “Isn’t everything, like… dead?”

Layla laughs. “No. Just taking a long nap.”

“Huh.” Warren looks around the grey-brown landscape of the schoolyard, with its bare branches and faded grass, with new eyes. It’s a nice idea, that all these lifeless-looking things are just waiting to wake up.

Misconception No. 2: Warren Peace doesn’t give a damn about his bad reputation.

Anyone who dyes a single streak of hair, wears fingerless gloves, and walks around like he’s got nothing to prove has something big to prove.

For Warren Peace, that is: I do not give a fuck about my family legacy.

Before starting high school, Warren figured a couple kids might recognize him, by name or by strong family resemblance. But Warren’s dad had already been locked up for a long time. It wasn’t like he made the news anymore. Worse came to worst, Warren thought he might have to field a few awkward questions about it.

Homeschooling did not prepare Warren for how big a household name Barron Battle was.

The first week of school was all open seats around Warren in class and at lunch, cold and curious looks over shoulders on the bus, “Check it out, that’s Barron Battle’s devil spawn” and “I can’t believe they even let supervillain kids in.”

It was treat or be treated like dirt, and Warren chose the former.

Fast-forward to junior year, and Sky High students know Warren Peace for the asshole he is, rather than the asshole his father was. Warren is comfortably back to pretending like his dad doesn’t exist. It mostly works.

Except during a History of Heroism unit on the most notorious villains of the twentieth century, when Warren’s class is staring at a PowerPoint slide that depicts the leveled Brooklyn neighborhood where Barron Battle and the Commander had their final showdown.

Warren ignores his classmates’ not-so-covert glances as Mr. Magnificent rattles of statistics like ‘seven dead and dozens injured’ and ‘nearly one billion dollars in damages.’ Magnificent has to pause his lecture to silence the white noise of whispers that has swelled up, and Warren wants to sink through the floor.

It’s like the first week of freshman year all over again. Warren is projecting I don’t care vibes so hard, there’s a good chance he’ll spontaneously combust.

What feels like an eon later, the classroom lights come up. Warren shoves everything into his backpack and heads for the door before anyone can try to talk to him. As usual, Layla is out of Hero Support early and waiting in the hall to meet Warren for lunch. Her patent sun-bright smile slips as Warren escapes the classroom.

“Whoa, where’s the fire?” she says.

“What?” Warren stops up short. “Nowhere. There’s no fire.”

“I was kidding,” Layla says, and winces at herself. “Poor choice of words. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Warren rakes his fingers through his hair. “I can’t come to lunch today. I have to—work on something.”

Normally, when Warren is feeling like shit, there’s nothing he’d rather do than sit with Layla in their little oasis of calm at the schoolyard picnic table. But right now, Warren needs at least thirty minutes to pace around the empty auto shop classroom, literally and figuratively cooling off, before he subjects himself to more human company.

“Okay,” Layla says, hugging her notebook to her chest and looking at him critically. “Are you—”

“Yeah. It’s—whatever. I’ll see you later.” Warren shoulders his way through the crowded hall toward the shop room, head down.

Smooth, he thinks at himself. Very smooth.

Shut up.

Warren assumes the first chance he’ll have to apologize to Layla is the next day at lunch. But when Warren shows up for his shift at the Paper Lantern at five, Layla is already sitting at her usual table. Weird, because Layla usually doesn’t come to the Lantern on Thursdays. Weirder, because when she does come, she typically arrives sometime after eight, when the dinner rush has mostly cleared out.

“What can I get you?” Warren says, drawing his pencil out from behind his ear as he approaches Layla’s table. They do try to maintain some appearances of an employee-customer relationship, to appease Mrs. Zhou.

“Hmm.” Layla examines the menu. “I’d like one kung pao tofu, one green tea, and—” She looks up at him. “—for you to explain why you fled your History of Heroism class today.”

“I didn’t flee,” Warren says. “I stormed out.”

“All right,” Layla agrees easily. “Why did you storm out of History of Heroism?”

Warren crosses his arms. “None of your business.”

“Okay.” Layla holds out her menu.

Warren blinks. “What?”

“You’re right, it’s not my business,” she says. “I just thought you might want to talk about whatever it was.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay.”

Warren squints. “Okay…”

“Okay,” Layla says again, and flaps the menu in her hand.

Warren takes it slowly, waiting for the catch. But Layla just pulls a binder and notebook out of her backpack. “Honey with the tea, please,” she says, and clicks open a pen.

“I know,” Warren says, and leaves Layla to her homework. He spends most of the next half-hour trying to untangle why he feels disappointed rather than relieved.

The thing is, Warren sometimes gets a “What was that about?” or “Dude, what the hell happened back there?” from classmates after he goes nuclear. Like after his cafeteria fight with Stronghold in September. Those questions always feel voyeuristic. Prickly and probing.

With Layla, though, the question feels less invasive and more inviting. For the first time, Warren wants to explain himself. He wants Layla to understand. He doesn’t want her to see him as some moody, unapproachable asshole. But he also doesn’t know how to approach her, or the subject, now that he’s already shut it down.

He’s been talking himself in and out of going back over to Layla’s table for ten minutes when Mrs. Zhou sidles up to the pass-through window where Warren is brooding.

“If you’re going to stand around making eyes at your girlfriend, take your fifteen and go over before the dinner crowd arrives,” she says.

Warren’s face heats, and he looks around to see whether anyone is in earshot, even though he’s pretty sure none of Mrs. Zhou’s whitebread suburban customers understand Mandarin. “She’s not my—never mind.”

Deciding he’d rather be having any other conversation besides this one with Mrs. Zhou, Warren forces himself to walk over to Layla’s table and sit down.

“We learned about the Barron in class today,” he says, abandoning any attempt at preamble, “for a lesson on notable supervillain takedowns.”

If Layla is surprised by Warren’s sudden attempt at conversation, she doesn’t show it. She hooks her pen through the spiral of her notebook, closes it, and waits for him to continue.

“Magnificent was showing pictures from the last time Dad and the Commander fought in New York,” Warren says, “and people were looking at me like I was involved somehow, even though all that shit went down when I was still in diapers, and those people have been in my classes for three years, like—I know, we all know Barron Battle is my dad, why can’t everyone fucking get over it already—”

Layla lays a hand on his forearm, cutting Warren off and drawing his attention to the fact that his clenched fist is smouldering like a hot coal. “Shit. Sorry.” Warren shakes out his hand, and Layla pulls back. He wishes she wouldn’t.

Layla waits for the red glow of Warren’s knuckles to dim and then says, “Mr. Magnificent is an idiot. It was totally inappropriate to include your dad in a presentation, especially without asking you first.”

Warren shrugs. “A lot of people’s parents end up in his presentations,” he says. “They’re just usually on the right side.”

“He still should have asked you,” Layla says. “Also, you helped save the entire school in September. If people still think you’re anything like your dad after that, they’re idiots and you shouldn’t care what they think.”

Warren wants to say “I don’t.” What comes out is, “This is high school. Everyone cares what everyone thinks.”

“I don’t,” Layla says.

Warren wants to contradict her, but from what he can tell, Layla genuinely doesn’t. “You have to care a little,” he says.

Layla raises her eyebrows like oh, yeah? and points to her characteristically Whoville-style twist of braids and glittery clips. “You think these hairdos made me a lot of friends in middle school?”

“I didn’t go to middle school.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Layla says.

“Then why do you wear your hair like that?”

“Because I like it.” Layla twirls a stray piece of hair around her forefinger. “And I don’t need to be one of the pretty girls to feel good about myself.”

“You are pretty,” Warren blurts, and immediately has to suppress the urge to set himself on fire.

Layla’s eyes go wide. The last time Warren saw her blush this deep, he’d just called her out for crushing on Stronghold. But instead of straight-up embarrassed, this time Layla’s blush is weirdly, shyly pleased. “You think so?” Her chin is tilted down so that she’s looking up at him through her eyelashes, which is not fair.

“Me?” Warren points at himself, like an idiot. “I don’t—I mean, I do, but it’s not just—you are pretty. People know that. It’s an objective fact.”

“Really.” Layla’s cheeks are still pink, but her smile has a playful slant now.

“Yeah,” Warren says, more defensively than he intends. Christ, he was so much better at this when they were fake-dating, when none of Warren’s smirks or swagger could mean anything. Now, without the protection of pretense, everything feels altogether too personal. Warren is not good at personal.

“Thank you,” Layla says, and bites her lip in hesitation before tacking on, “you’re pretty, too.”

Whatever that comment is—reflex, or politeness, or something else—it is officially too much. “I have to get back to work,” Warren says, overloud in the quiet restaurant, and bangs his knee on the underside of the table in his haste to stand up.

“Okay,” Layla says, trying to hide a smile behind her hand. Before he can turn away, she adds, “Warren,” and points to either side of her head.

Warren stares at her blankly for a second before he catches her drift, yanks his hair down from his ponytail to hide his surely steaming ears, and practically runs back to the kitchen.

Misconception No. 3: Warren Peace thinks he’s got the best power.

“I feel like I should warn you,” Layla says as she turns the key in her front lock, “my house is kind of crowded.”

Warren frowns. “I thought you were an only child.”

“No siblings,” Layla says. “A lot of roommates. You’ll see.”

What Warren sees is a menagerie that would do Ace Ventura proud.

“Watch out for the—everything,” Layla says, leading him through a flock of peacocks, a few dogs and several cats that slink by too quickly to count.

“Why… is this?” is the only semi-coherent question that Warren can formulate as he shoos a parrot from his shoulder and shakes his pant leg free of a fox’s jaws.

“You’re not the only one who has to live with your parent’s superpower,” Layla says.

Layla’s mom, apparently, is a zoolinguist. The only place in the entire house not overrun by furry or feathered residents is Layla’s room.

“Wow,” Warren says as he crosses the threshold.

Layla’s bedroom is situated on the back corner of the house, and the two external walls and ceiling are all paneled glass. Presumably to usher in maximum sunlight for the greenery that crowds almost every inch of space besides Layla’s bed and desk. Warren has to shed his winter coat immediately to avoid overheating in the humidity.

“Yeah,” Layla says. “Sometimes I forget how weird it is. Will’s the only friend I’ve ever had up here.”

Layla is the only friend Warren has ever had in his room—which she immediately declared “entirely predictable,” on account of the punk rock posters plastered across his walls. Layla’s room is way more predictable, if you ask Warren. Or at least, Warren would have predicted this, if he’d known literal greenhouse was a legitimate option.

“It’s nice,” he says. “Peaceful.”

“Isn’t it?” Layla takes Warren’s coat and hangs it on a hook behind the leaves of an elephant ear plant. “Mom had the place renovated before we moved in. I think she figured, if she was going to let every animal in the neighborhood have the run of our house, it wasn’t fair to exile my plants to the backyard.”

“Do they all live here all the time?” Warren says, pointing at the floor to indicate the veritable petting zoo downstairs.

“Some of them,” Layla says. “Mom is good at finding homes for most. I think donations from her fans are single-handedly keeping every shelter in the city afloat.”

It’s rude to ask about superheroes’ secret identities, but context clues give Warren a pretty good idea who Ms. Williams might be. Charismatic Megafauna is basically a one-woman PETA operation, liberating animals from factory farms and delivering them to free-range pastures as often as she commands her elite squadron of apex predators to take down baddies. She’s a more controversial figure than the Commander and Jetstream, but she does have an extremely dedicated cult following.

“Her power sounds amazing,” Warren says.

“Most of the time,” Layla says. She collects a watering can from beside her bed and begins to fill it with a knee-high spigot beside the door. “But there’s a lot of animal suffering in the world. It can get exhausting for her to be tapped into it all the time, you know?”

Warren pauses to consider. “Yeah, I guess that would be overwhelming.”

Layla turns off the tap and carries her watering can to the closest table laden with potted plants. “Everyone’s superpower looks spectacular on the news,” she says, with a very un-Layla-like smile. “No one’s around to see it when your power makes you so sad you can’t get out of bed.”

“Except you,” Warren guesses.

Layla drops her not-really-smile. “Except me.”

Warren shuffles along the row of plants beside Layla while she waters them. He waits until she finishes refilling the can and starts a new row before asking, “Does that ever happen to you? Your powers getting you down.”

Layla studiously waters a flower with orange starburst petals. “Plants have more…auras and vibes than thoughts and feelings,” she says, and tickles the flower under one leaf. The plant visibly perks up under her ministrations, and Layla smiles. For real, this time. “Their pain doesn’t feel as sharp to me as animals’ pain does to my mom.”

“But,” Warren prompts.

“But sometimes, yeah,” Layla says, and moves on to the next plant.

Warren casts around for something comforting to say, but comes up with nothing better than, “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Layla says, “but it’s the exception to the rule. Most of the time, I wouldn’t give up feeling this—” She rubs her fingertips over a browning leaf to paint it green. “—for anything.”

Warren shouldn’t be jealous of Layla’s powers. Especially after she’s just admitted what a burden they can be. But Layla has also just confirmed what Warren has long suspected: Superabilities, even the ostensibly powerful ones, are not created equal. Warren’s pyrokinesis is, fundamentally, a weapon. A blunt tool to wield when the situation calls for violence. Layla’s power, on the other hand, seems more like a sixth sense. A trapdoor to another plane of reality.

How much of Layla Williams’s worldview draws on the alien insight of plants that no other human being, least of all Warren Peace, could ever possibly understand?

Layla interrupts Warren’s inferiority spiral with, “I’ve never talked about this with anyone but my mom.”

Warren watches Layla coax a stem into standing up straighter. “Not even Stronghold?”

He should not take as much pleasure as he does in Layla’s dismissive laugh. “Especially not Will.”

“Why not?”

“For a long time, he didn’t have any powers, and he was so jealous of mine, it seemed mean to complain about them to Will.”

“And now?”

“Now, he’s in the honeymoon phase with his new powers,” Layla says, “and it seems mean to bring him down.”

Not even Warren believes Stronghold can be that fragile. “I’m sure he’d get over it.”

“Maybe, but, you know. The things we do for our best friends,” Layla says, with a what can you do shrug, and returns to the faucet for another refill.

“So, why tell me?”

Layla chews the inside of her cheek. “I guess because you already have a complex about your own powers the size of Texas, thanks to your dad.”

“What?” Warren balks. “I do not.”

Layla squints. “Don’t you, though?”

“No. I—shut up.” Warren looks away, feeling hot all over.

Layla bends down to turn off the tap. A moment later, her hand on Warren’s shoulder startles him into looking back at her. Her big, brown eyes are wide with sympathy. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not upset,” Warren snaps.

“Okay.” Typical Layla, letting him feel whatever he’s going to feel and say whatever he’s going to say and refuse to throw hands about it.

Warren’s spark of anger sputters and dies. He huffs out an exhale. “It’s not only about my dad,” he admits, quietly, mostly to the floor.

Layla’s hand remains on his shoulder while she waits for an elaboration. Warren very carefully does not acknowledge it in any way, for fear it might stop.

“Fire is...useful,” he says. “But it can only destroy things. I can’t create. Not like…” He waves a hand around Layla’s room. “All I’m good for is fighting, and sometimes I wish—” Warren shoves a hand through his hair. “I dunno. It’s stupid.”

Layla’s hand squeezes his shoulder. “First of all, you are not your power,” she says. “No matter what Boomer or anyone else says. Second, fire is creative. It creates light and warmth.”

“If I’m ever transported back in time to an era before electricity, I’m sure that’ll be extremely handy,” Warren says, aiming for wry and not quite making it, because the tickly feeling that flitters to life in his chest whenever Layla says nice things about him is going wild.

Layla rolls her eyes. “Third of all, you do not need a superpower to create and nurture things.” Before Warren can stop her, Layla has pushed her watering can into his hand.

“What?” he says. “I don’t know anything about plants. I’d probably kill them all.” He holds the watering can out to Layla, who does not take it.

“Don’t act like you don’t have a book of Keats in your backpack right now,” she says. “If you know ‘To Autumn,’ you already know the most important things about plants. Everything else is technicalities.”

Warren gives her a doubtful look.

Layla sighs. “Trust me. Which you should, because I know literally everything about plants, and I’m a very good teacher, and I would not let you hurt any of my babies. Okay?”

Layla holds out her hand, and Warren has to channel all his concentration into keeping his cool enough that he doesn’t burn her when he takes it in his own. Layla grins, and Warren feels a little light-headed with the thrill of it.

“Come on,” she says, and pulls him toward the row of potted flowers where they left off. Warren follows, as helpless as any of the flora around them to resist the benevolent force of nature that is Layla Williams.

Misconception No. 4: Warren Peace doesn’t get scared.

This illusion is at least partly on purpose. Part of the do not fuck with me ethos Warren has been cultivating for the better part of three years.

In reality, plenty of things scare Warren. Like the idea that everyone is right about him after all, and he’ll end up on the Superheroes Guild’s Most Wanted List someday. Or that deep down, a kernel of grudge in his mother resents Warren for taking so closely after his father. But those are more midnight-existential-crisis concerns than acute fears.

Warren gets scared during battles, too. But the initial kick of adrenaline always seems to knock his consciousness clear of his body, such that he spends most of the fight controlling the firestorm of his fists from somewhere above the action. He usually doesn’t realize how freaked out he is until after the fact, when his brain plugs back into his body and he thinks, huh, my hands won’t stop shaking.

It’s rare that Warren feels, in real time, the bass-drum beat of his heart and a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. But that’s exactly what happens every time he gets close to asking Layla out on a date.

He’s come close so many times. He’s had the tickets in his jacket pocket for weeks. But the prospect of actually asking Layla invites the prospect of Layla saying no, and Warren—can’t.

Sometimes, he can almost convince himself that she would say yes, despite the fact that Layla is kind, beautiful, mystical Layla, and Warren is social-pariah, problem-child Warren. Like last Tuesday, when Layla said “you’re such a disaster” with such heart-stopping fondness, while she pulled a rubber band from Warren’s hair to replace it with one of her own, more comfortable fabric hair ties. Or last Friday, while they were watching a movie at Layla’s place, and she tucked her socked toes under Warren’s thigh on the couch. Or yesterday, when she held her hands out over the picnic table for Warren to warm her pink fingertips between his palms.

And always, in the back of Warren’s mind: “You’re pretty, too.”

But whenever Warren opens his mouth to ask, his tongue goes dry and his palms go damp. It’s such a stupid thing to be afraid of, it makes Warren want to close his head in a locker. Worst case scenario, Layla turns him down. They’d still be friends. She wouldn’t be cruel. She’s Layla. But Warren isn’t used to having so much of himself caught up in another person. The idea that Layla isn’t equally caught up in him provokes a strangled, withering feeling in the pit of Warren’s stomach that he can only imagine would intensify tenfold after the actual rejection.

So, Warren’s been procrastinating.

But time is running out.

It does not help that Stronghold’s flock of freshmen is currently obsessing over Winter Formal like a bunch of… well, freshmen.

“You guys asking anyone?” Zach says at lunch, one day when freezing rain is lashing Sky High too hard for even Layla to sit outside. Zach hooks an arm over Magenta’s shoulder, as if to underline the fact that she’s already spoken for. Magenta rolls her eyes but doesn’t shrug him off.

“I would ask Larry,” Ethan says, pushing steamed vegetables around on his plate with his fork. “If I could stop going full-puddle every time he looks at me.”

Layla and Magenta make sympathetic noises.

“I think I’m gonna ask Abby,” Stronghold says, eyes cast over at a table where Warren assumes this Abby must sit. He hasn’t bothered to keep up with Stronghold’s latest romantic fixation. They’re already two—three?—full crush cycles past Layla. Warren can’t believe he ever felt threatened by a kid with the attention span of a housefly.

“She’d totally say yes,” Magenta says. “I overheard her about how hot you are during the Shapeshifting Students Association meeting.”

“Really?” Will says, at the same time Layla goes, “Magenta!”

“What?”

“Gossip.”

“Okay, Mother Williams,” Magenta says. To Will, “We’ll talk later.”

Layla looks intent on pressing the matter, but Ethan says, “Do you have a date, Layla?”

Everyone turns to Layla, except for Stronghold, whose eyes inexplicably flick over to Warren—who glares him into dropping eye contact.

“No,” Layla says, unconcerned.

“Not yet,” Zach says. “Just a question of who asks first.”

Warren’s heart stutters, and he swallows back a “What?”

Luckily, Stronghold has less restraint. “What?” he says, like he wasn’t ogling another girl 0.2 seconds ago.

Zach looks at Stronghold like, Are you kidding? “Layla’s hot,” he says slowly. Magenta nods in agreement. “Chen, Robinson, and Feinstein are all thinking about asking.”

“And those are just the ones we’ve heard about,” Magenta says.

“Where are you guys getting this intel?” Ethan says. “We’re your only friends.”

“You can hear a lot from the inside of a locker,” Zach says.

“Or from the vents,” Magenta adds.

“Who’s still shoving you in a locker?” Layla says, frowning at Zach.

“Don’t deflect,” Magenta says. “Who are you going to take?”

“I don’t know,” Layla says, very pink and very determinedly acting like she’s not. “I didn’t know I had options until right now.”

Warren didn’t know he had competition until right now. In his defense, he deliberately pays as little attention as possible to rest of the Sky High student body, except for the five freshmen who invaded his space last fall and refused to leave. But of course other guys want to ask Layla.

Fuck.

“What about you, Bucky Barnes?” Zach says, throwing Warren an upward nod. “Got your eye on any hot junior goths we don’t know about?”

Warren scowls. “No.”

“Warren’s too cool for school dances,” Magenta says.

Stronghold frowns. “He took Layla to homecoming.”

“Only to make you jealous,” Layla is quick to correct.

Warren’s eyes snap over to her, but Layla isn’t looking at him. Just stabbing at her salad with her fork and letting her hair partially obscure her still pink cheeks.

An uncomfortable, sour feeling settles in Warren’s stomach. He makes himself look back at Zach. “I don’t do school dances. I have a thing anyway.”

“What thing?” Magenta says.

“A thing,” Warren says, with enough finality that even Zach knows better than to push it.

That is, until Stronghold corners Warren at his locker after final period to ask, “What thing do you have to do instead of Winter Formal?”

Warren continues loading books into his backpack. “A thing.”

Stronghold, in a bid for Warren’s full attention, shuts his locker door. As soon as Warren turns a glare on him, the kid goes bug-eyed.

“I am so sorry!” he says, reaching out to open the locker, only to remember that, duh, it’s Warren’s and he can’t. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Warren must be spending too much time with Layla, because instead of picking Stronghold up by his shirt collar, he merely swats Stronghold’s hand away and unlocks his locker.

“It was only—I know someone who was hoping you’d ask them to Winter Formal,” Stronghold says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Warren fixes Stronghold with a flat expression. “You’re not my type.”

For an aspiring superhero, Stronghold flusters extremely easily. “Wh—not me!” he says, and then leans in and lowers his voice. “You know.”

Warren, who is not in the business of getting his hopes up—no matter how many summersaults his stomach is doing—raises his eyebrows.

“Layla,” Stronghold murmurs, so low that Warren has to read his lips.

Summersaults, cartwheels, handsprings. Warren’s stomach is performing a full-on gymnastics routine. “Did she tell you that?”

“No,” Stronghold admits, and Warren’s stomach immediately flops. “But I am something of an expert on Layla Williams.”

Warren, who has an entire September’s worth of evidence to the contrary, makes a psh noise.

Stronghold squares his shoulders and ticks off on his fingers: “She hangs out at the Lantern all the time. She eats lunch with you, alone, every other day. The way she talks about you—”

“She talks about me?”

“Dude.” Stronghold lays a hand on Warren’s shoulder, looking so delighted with the irony that it takes everything in Warren not to ignite. “You’re so stupid. She’s totally into you.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Right.” Stronghold’s hand immediately slides off. “Seriously, though. If you don’t ask Layla to the dance, someone else will.”

“Noted,” Warren says, like he isn’t already tying himself into knots over that exact possibility.

“You’re gonna ask her, then?”

Warren heaves a sigh. He can’t believe he’s about to confide in Will Stronghold, of all people, but at this juncture it seems like the path of least resistance. “I have tickets to something that night, and I want to ask Layla to go with me.”

Stronghold has the audacity to look innocently perplexed. “So, why haven’t you?”

“I’m, you know.” Warren pushes back his hair. “Waiting for the right time.”

Stronghold looks dubious. “It’s a date, not a prom-posal.”

“I know that,” Warren snaps.

Stronghold blinks, and something seems to click in his head. His expression goes slightly amused and, even worse, sympathetic. “You’re nervous.”

“I am not,” Warren says, but it sounds like a lie even to his own ears. “I’m just waiting for the right moment.”

“Okay, well.” Stronghold blows out a breath and puts his hands on his hips. “Any chance the right moment might be, like, today? Around now-ish?”

Warren narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because Magenta texted me five minutes ago that Andrew Chen is standing next to our bus, waiting for Layla.”

Warren’s heart lurches. “You should have led with that, Christ.” Guess he’s doing this now. Is he really doing this now? He has to, so he is. Warren slams his locker and swings his bag over his shoulder. “Where is Layla?”

“Magenta said she stayed after class to talk to Mr. Boy about—oh, okay, then. Bye! Good luck!” Stronghold calls after Warren’s retreating figure as he strides off down the hall.

Warren is so preoccupied with figuring out what he’s going to say to Layla when he finds her that he nearly runs into her as she exits Mr. Boy’s classroom.

“Warren,” she says, blinking up at him in surprise. “Hi.”

Warren, who suddenly feels like he’s stepped on stage with no lines prepared, takes a second to remember how to breathe before he gets out a “Hi.”

Layla stares up at him expectantly. Right. He’s supposed to say more words.

“I wanted to talk to you about something.”

A pucker forms between Layla’s eyebrows. “Sure. I actually wanted to talk to you, too.”

Warren clenches the tickets between sweat-damp fingers in his pocket. “Okay. Do you want to…” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the mostly empty hallway.

“Okay.”

Layla follows him out into the hall, and they stand in semi-awkward silence until Warren says, “You first.”

“All right.” Layla tucks her hair behind her ears. She already looks embarrassed. Not good. “So, I might be way off base here, but I get the feeling you’ve been working yourself up to asking me to Winter Formal?” Her voice lilts up like a question, but she must find all the confirmation she needs in Warren’s expression, because she immediately continues, “and I just wanted to make it clear that you don’t have to.”

When Warren opens his mouth, “Oh” is all that comes out.

“Yeah.” Layla hooks her thumbs through the straps of her backpack. “I know school dances aren’t really your thing—and they’re not exactly mine, either. So I didn’t want you to think homecoming set some sort of precedent, that you have to ask—”

“I wanted to ask you,” Warren says, finally unsticking his throat.

It’s Layla’s turn for surprised silence. It takes a full two seconds for her to get out, “You did?”

“Yeah, but—not to the dance. Here.” Warren pulls the tickets out of his pocket. His thumb has smudged the ink of the top ticket, so he hands the bottom one to Layla. “Town hall is holding a fundraiser gala next Saturday to raise money to build a park on an empty lot in my neighborhood.”

Layla takes the ticket in both hands and stares down at it.

“There’s going to be food and music and dancing,” Warren says, heart rate accelerating. “I think they’re going to auction off dedications for benches and flower beds and stuff. There will probably be a couple boring speeches by some government officials, but.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I dunno. It sounded like it could be fun.”

Layla still hasn’t said anything, and Warren’s heart is throwing a fit in his ribcage, so he adds, “It’s the night of Winter Formal, though. So if you wanted to go to the dance with someone else and hang out with your friends, I totally—”

“No,” Layla says, looking up at him with bright eyes and a wide smile. “I’d love to go.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Warren says, too overcome by the cold flood of relief pooling in his gut to say anything more substantive than, “Cool.”

Layla carefully slots her gala ticket into the front pocket of her backpack. “Took you long enough,” she says, angling a teasing smile at Warren. “I couldn’t take another week of you opening your mouth like you were going to ask me something and then not saying anything.”

“Thank Stronghold,” Warren says, wondering what his life has come to, that those words just came out of his mouth. Must be the generosity of giddy relief.

Layla’s nose scrunches up in tickled confusion. “Why?”

“He warned me that Chen was gonna ask you to the dance this afternoon,” Warren says. “Sort of lit a fire under my ass.”

“But Andrew—” Layla breaks off with a laugh and shakes her head. “Will.”

“What?”

Layla takes Warren’s hand and starts walking them down the hall. “Andrew Chen’s been sick with the flu all week,” she says. “He’s not even here today.”

Warren’s mouth hangs open for a few seconds. “Stronghold.”

Layla laughs again and swipes her thumb across the back of Warren’s hand, and a great, soft warmth blooms in Warren’s chest.

Well. If he has to be indebted to Will Stronghold for something, this is as good a favor as Warren could have asked for.

Misconception No. 5: Warren Peace is not a touchy-feely person.

Warren himself would have sworn by this one, until a month ago. He has never, in all his life, considered himself a cuddly person. By any stretch.

It turns out that in order to identify as a cuddly person, you need someone to cuddle. Or, more specifically, someone you have permission to cuddle.

Dating Layla Williams finally gives Warren that permission.

He expected it to be harder, weirder, more awkward to transition from being someone who looks at Layla and thinks I want to put my arm around you, to being a person who can actually reach behind her back and curl his fingers over her hip bone.

It’s not hard at all. The first time Layla kisses Warren, up on her toes with her hands fisted in the lapels of his suit, in the dark of her front porch after the fundraiser gala, there’s a shift. A gravitational kick that sends them into closer orbit around one another, so that now it’s routine for Warren to wrap Layla in his jacket and tuck her into his side as they walk. Steal her hand to press her knuckles to his lips. Knock his knee gently against hers under their picnic table.

“Who knew Warren Peace was such a cuddle bug,” Magenta says, tipped back in a papasan chair to peer at Warren upside-down.

Warren is sitting on the shag carpet of Stronghold’s basement with his back against the couch to let Layla play with his hair while they talk over a movie. She’s just tied off an elaborate braid, so now his cheek is resting against her knee while she twirls the fine hairs at the nape of his neck around her fingers.

“Call me ‘cuddle bug’ ever again and I’ll roast you like a marshmallow,” Warren says, too sleepy and comfortable to put any real heat behind the threat.

Magenta, true to form, doesn’t so much as blink. “Hate to break it to you, but an elegant Dutch braid kind of undermines your whole tough-guy act.”

Warren simply shrugs. It’s an occupational hazard of dating Layla, spending a lot more time around her—their?—friends outside school. Warren resisted at first, but at this point, it’s more exhausting to continue holding them all at arm’s length than to let them have the run of his life.

“Layla, in general, kind of undermines his whole tough-guy act,” Zach says. “You know he wrote her a poem for Valentine’s day.”

“Read her a poem,” Warren says. What else was he supposed to do? He couldn’t very well get Layla clipped flowers.

“That’s still sappy as hell, dude,” Ethan says.

“It was very sweet,” Layla says, leaning forward to plant a kiss on Warren’s forehead.

Warren unsuccessfully tries to bite back a smile.

“He’s preening so hard right now, oh my god,” Magenta says.

“Shut up.”

“Don’t tease him, or he won’t come back,” Layla says, but Warren hears the smile in her voice.

“Please. He’d go anywhere you go,” Magenta says, and as Layla’s fingertip traces the shell of Warren’s ear gently, always gently, Warren doesn’t even attempt to contradict her.

+1 Misconception: Layla Williams is a just happy, go-lucky hippy chick.

Outside Layla’s bedroom window, everything green is tucked under snow and the weight of waiting for spring. On the other side of the world, everything is burning.

Record-setting wildfires have raked Australia for weeks. Neither Layla nor her mom can directly feel what’s happening to the outback. But Layla knows her mom must sense it like she does, every time a singed koala or graveyard of splinterlike tree trunks appears on the news: a gnawing sensation that something on the far edges of her mind is vanishing into smoke.

The worst part is knowing there’s nothing Layla can do. Even if she had the means to get to Australia, there’s no way to salvage the aftermath of a forest fire. Layla wields incredible power over living organisms. But it’s like conducting an orchestra. Not much to be done if the entire ensemble is already dead when she takes the stage.

Actually, the real worst part is knowing that the inferno currently eating up Australia isn’t an outlier. The warming world is parching landscapes and revving up hurricanes, and every weather-related threat to her beloved biosphere is only going to get much, much worse. It makes Layla feel horribly, inescapably small.

To avoid sitting around the house and chewing her nails down, Layla takes on more volunteer shifts at the animal shelter. Helps Magenta with outreach for the Shapeshifting Students Association. Spends a couple Saturdays with the local river cleanup volunteer crew. Cooks dinner on the nights her mom is actually home. Overstudies for an exam in Hero Support.

It’s all a good distraction, but at the price of exhaustion. Layla feels emotionally sore. Like she’s been doing the psychological equivalent of running springs.

Case in point: “Layla?”

Layla blinks herself out of her middle-space-stare at the picnic table. “Hmm?”

Warren frowns. “I said, are you coming to the Lantern tonight?”

“Oh, no,” Layla says, and winces her apology. “Will’s coming over to study for Hero Support.”

“Why? You’re gonna ace that thing.”

“I promised Will I’d help him review.”

Warren’s frown deepens.

“What?”

“You should take a break,” he says.

Layla hides a yawn behind one hand and waves the other dismissively. “I’m fine.”

Warren gives her a flat look. Most of his expressions are pretty flat, but Layla has gotten good at reading the subtleties. This one says, quit your bullshit.

“What?” she says.

“You—” Warren spends a couple seconds struggling to find the right words. “Your hair is in a ponytail.”

Layla replays that in her overtired mind, wondering whether she heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

“No sparkly clip things. No scrunchies. You didn’t even do the thing where you wrap a little piece of hair around the elastic to hide it,” Warren says, as though that clarifies anything. When Layla’s expression makes clear that it does not, Warren sighs. “Babe. You’re exhausted.”

“Am not,” Layla says, and feels totally betrayed by her own body when the words are stretched out by a yawn. “Coincidence,” she says, in response to Warren’s unimpressed eyebrow-raise.

“Layla.”

“It’s fine,” she insists.

“Take a break,” Warren says, more insistently. “Stronghold can survive cramming for one exam on his own. Let baby bird learn to fly.”

“He’ll drop like a rock,” Layla says mournfully.

“Probably,” Warren says. “But you don’t have to be there for everyone all the time.”

Layla studies her bitten nails. “It makes me feel better.”

Warren’s ever-warm hands take hold of Layla’s, making her look up. But whatever he has in mind to say is interrupted by the bell. Warren gives her fingers a brief squeeze before releasing them, so that they can collect their things.

“Tell Stronghold to find himself another tutor so you can have a night off,” Warren says, hooking an arm over Layla’s shoulders as they head for the front doors. “Please.”

Layla does not. Which is why, when she says “come in” to the soft knock on her bedroom door at eight o’clock, she expects Will. Instead, she gets Warren, hovering on the threshold with his usual carefully concealed uncertainty, like he’s a vampire who has to wait to be invited in.

“What are you doing here?” Layla says, sliding off her bed. “I thought you had work.”

“Got someone to cover my shift,” Warren says. He’s holding what looks like a magazine. “This was more important.”

“What is… this?” Layla says. “You know Will’s going to be here any minute.”

“No, he’s not,” Warren says. “He’s at Magenta’s”

Layla narrows her eyes. “What did you do?”

“Told him to go find another study partner,” Warren says. “Since you’re already prepared.”

Layla crosses her arms and sinks her weight into one hip. “I told you, I want to help.”

Warren adjusts his grip on the magazine. Layla hears the paper stick to the sweat on his fingertips, but his determined expression doesn’t change. “Then help me.”

Layla blinks. “With what?”

Warren holds up what turns out to be a gardening catalog. “I want to get my mom a couple of indoor plants for her birthday,” he says. “Something pretty but doesn’t require a lot of attention, because she’s gone so much. I thought maybe you could help.”

Layla stares at him. “I love shopping for potted plants,” she says slowly.

Warren exhales a short laugh. “Uh, yeah, I know. And you are a good teacher, so.”

He rolls the catalog up between his hands and looks at Layla with guarded hope that shoots a bolt of affection like heat lightning straight through her stomach. She needs to sit down.

“Come in, then,” she says, and ushers him through the door. While Warren is taking off his shoes, “Just so we’re clear, you are not going to make a habit of rearranging my schedule behind my back.”

Warren stands up straight, dead serious. “Got it.”

Layla indulges a smile and leans up to kiss him. “I’ll forgive you this time, though.”

They sit on Layla’s bed, flipping through Warren’s catalog, as well as a stack of magazines that Layla has pulled out from under her desk. Warren loops his arms around her waist and hooks his chin over her shoulder, listening intently while she explains the care and keeping of flowers. It’s comfortable and easy and requires just enough idle attention to avoid falling into a slump. Layla could do this forever, she thinks.

Not an hour later, Layla is lying with her chin propped on her hands, which are folded over Warren’s chest, struggling to keep up conversation through yawns of increasing frequency.

“You can go to bed, you know,” Warren says, dryly amused, and tucks a strand of hair that has fallen out of Layla’s loose ponytail behind her ear.

“I might fall asleep right here on top of you, if you keep talking about it,” Layla says, closing her eyes and pillowing her cheek on her hands.

She feels, rather than hears Warren’s hitched inhale, and suddenly feels more acutely awake than she has all week.

Three seconds pass before Warren murmurs, “You can. If you want.”

Layla very carefully keeps her body relaxed and does not open her eyes to avoid breaking the fragile moment. “Mmm-kay,” she says, and adjusts to find a slightly more comfortable position. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Warren says, one hand splayed between her shoulder blades, his other thumb smoothing the hair back at her temple.

Layla is so keenly aware of every point of contact that she thinks she might stay awake after all. But within minutes, the soft touch pulls her down into sleep.

#layla williams #warren peace #sky high #my 11-year-old self would be proud #first het fic ever #but i caught feelings writing this and guess now i ship ForestFire #i think it got angstier than your original adorable prompt intended but #what else is new #apologies for the climate change existential crisis that popped up at the end there #i might have been projecting

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tepidjasminetea · 3 years ago

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A nostalgia retrospective at Frozen

I was of the generation that grew up with frozen as the defining childhood event, I think that says a lot about my age, I remember watching the movie in the theatre with my mom and having my little popcorn in one hand and my little cup of fizzy drink in another and being amazed by our lord and savior Elsa of Arendelle. Saying that this movie changed my little barely developed frontal lobe is an understatement, it fucking penetrated it and all I could think about for months on end was Frozen. While writing the script for this I listened to Let it Go and inexplicably I had flashbacks of little petite me compulsively almost replaying that song. Remembering the hold of that movie on me and people of my age during that time feels unreal, it honestly seems like Disney sprinkled in a bit of crack into that song. My general thoughts when I watched it in theatres was that this film was perfect in every sense and Elsa was the hottest woman alive.

Recap

Before I dive into the video, I will give a brief background or refresh of the film for the three people who haven’t seen it and those who haven’t seen it in like seven years since its release. Frozen is a 2013 animated movie made by Disney, there’s Anna the cute and clumsy ginger sister, Elsa the sister that Disney made approximately half a million dollars off of merchandise, Kristoff the furry that talks to reindeer, Olaf a snowman, and Hans the evil ginger. The story centers on Anna and Elsa; as a child, Elsa accidentally hit Anna in the head with her ice magic while playing with her. To fix Anna’s brain essentially she had to have all her memories of Elsa’s magic removed. So from that incident onward, Anna doesn’t know about Elsa’s powers, and because of the incident, Elsa started to distance herself. So the sisters barely have any contact for the fifteen or so odd years. The sisters are reunited on Elsa’s coronation day and Anna sings a song about open doors and finally getting to meet people again that hits different in 2021. Anna pisses Elsa off because she wants to marry a ginger man with sideburns. They fight and in the heat of the moment Elsa shoots ice at her sister. The secret is out and Elsa is overwhelmed so she runs away to the mountains to build her ice castle and we get the song that won Disney ‘Best Original Song’ at the Oscars. Anna gets on a horse and goes to search for her sister in the northern mountains. Then her horse fucks off and she finds her way to a convenience store? Is that what you would call it? And she meets our lovely golden retriever boy Kristoff and for a pickaxe, some rope, and some carrots for his reindeer, he agrees to take our cute little ginger north. On the way, they find Olaf who is a sentient snowman that Elsa created with her magic. They go to Elsa’s castle and Anna tries to convince Elsa to return to their home and to make it summer again. I don’t know why she would want that since winter is the superior season. Anyways Elsa is unconvinced and still wants to be a hermit. Anna pushes a little too hard, we get a lovely duet between the sisters and then Elsa blasts Anna’s heart. Oh no Anna’s poor heart is starting to freeze as her hair slowly turns white. Kristoff brings Anna to the trolls that treated Anna’s head all those years ago, coincidentally those trolls also were the ones that raised Kristoff. Then we get the cutest musical number ever to exist, fucking fight me. Granddaddy troll tells Anna and Kristoff that she needs an act of true love to thaw her frozen heart. So Kristoff delivers Anna back to the ginger with the sideburns because they think that the little ginger boy is Anna’s, true love. So while that happens Hans and a couple of people are at Elsa’s ice castle trying to capture her, but she doesn’t want that so she almost commits a double homicide. This is the point where I thought she’d make a great video game character. Some random dude tries to fire an arrow at the distracted Elsa but Hans stops him and the arrow, unfortunately, fires into the ice chandelier above and that thing crashes down on Elsa knocking her out. She then is carted back to Arendelle and put in chains, she pleads for her freedom and Hans is like I’ll see what I can do. Anna arrives at the castle and asks Hans to kiss her, but low and behold the ginger is evil and never loved Anna and just wanted the throne so he doesn’t kiss her and leaves her to die. In the meantime, Elsa escapes from her dungeon and Hans is chasing her down. Anna is rescued by Olaf and they decide to run towards Kristoff because he must love her and then he can reverse the frozen heart. So Elsa is running, Anna is running, Hans is running and so is Kristoff. Hans catches up to Elsa and tells her that Anna died because of her and that it’s all her fault, Elsa is devastated and Hans takes the chance to try and kill her. Anna who is running towards Kristoff sees this happening and instead of running towards her true love she decides to go and save Elsa. Her body turns into ice fully as she blocks the sword from slicing Elsa in half like a piece of white tuna. Elsa sees this and she cries over Anna’s icy figure and her tears thaw Anna’s frozen heart since it is an act of true love because the sisters love eachother. Elsa realizes that love is what she needs to reverse winter and bring back summer, and so she waves her hand a bit and takes back all the snow. Kristoff and Anna kiss, Olaf gets to experience summer, and Elsa’s crippling social anxiety is solved. The end.

The Music

When I was watching frozen I found it so strange that I pretty much remembered the lyrics to everything. I’ve never been much of a musical person I never liked musicals that much but I found that in this movie the music was one of the main enjoyment of it. Perhaps it’s just me in my old age but I honestly felt like these songs aged like fine wine, even the ones that I didn’t like as much or wasn’t musically ambitious I still found them extremely enjoyable. I also liked the score how they incorporated some kind of Scandinavian music in it and it just made the world-building better. Let it Go was just as ear-wormy as I remembered and it was just as powerful as I remember because we’re just coming off of Elsa running away scared and this song is essentially her owning her socially awkward ass and saying yes I want to be a hermit and there’s nothing wrong about it. Which my now more developed frontal lobe resonated deeply with. Now I know this video isn’t about comparing Frozen and its sequel but I will have to mention how I realized how much simpler and more or less conventional pop song-y the first movie’s songs are. I also listened to into the unknown and show yourself on youtube prior and those two songs feel more ingrained in the world and the lore. Which does make sense since the second movie is a bit world-building. But for Let it Go and Do you wanna build a snowman the mystical and magical feel that songs in Frozen 2 have isn’t present. I understand since into the unknown and show yourself are all sorta about a spirit, but I just wished that the main songs in Frozen incorporated some form of Scandinavian music that’s present in the opening song and the score.

The Characters

Kristoff

Recently it has been pointed out to me that I might just have an inclination towards big blonde himbo characters, I simped for Matthias in Six of Crows, and I positively melted at the sight of Kristoff the big blonde boy with a fetish for reindeer. Kristoff was probably my favourite character upon this second viewing. There’s absolutely no concrete or sound reason for it that I can defend with words. Literally, I just have a gene in my DNA that just makes me extremely biased towards that type of character. I love his grounded personality in comparison with Anna’s slightly airheaded disposition. I love that he’s raised by trolls it just makes me feel happy.

Anna

Anna is often looked upon as the lesser sister by Disney’s merchandising and in turn by the little girls who were the primary audience of this movie. One this second viewing with my more mature and refined taste I actually respected Anna as a character and I thought it was good that she was so ordinary because it was refreshing almost and it made her much more endearing. The takeaway I had from the movie was that Anna was kinda a self-insert character, she’s just like the audience going on an adventure and only just learning about her sister’s powers, she’s relatable to the audience. She’s the perfect ordinary relatable gal that everyone loves. The one thing I wish she had was a proper character arc, granted she doesn’t need one, but Disney almost tries to shoehorn in one with the inclusion of Hans and how he wasn’t her true love. Her arc is almost like discovering that true love doesn’t come from someone that she met just two days ago. Because Disney wants to do meta-commentary on their own material but Anna doesn’t even really learn that lesson? Because Hans not loving Anna isn’t a product of them only knowing eachother for two days but instead a product of him being evil, so the thesis that Disney so badly wants to prove was undermined by their own twist villain. And then even worse they imply that Kristoff instead is Anna’s true love even though Kristoff has known Anna for roughly the same amount of time as Hans. So if you are trying to make a point that true love doesn’t happen in a couple of days then sorry Disney you failed…?

Elsa

She’s the main character the story centers around her and she has the most complex emotions, character arc and personality. Her arc is one about her overcoming her fear of her own powers and it fulfills that change in the character somewhat. Near the end of the movie, we see her distraught more than ever because she believes her powers killed her own sister and she is positively depressed. But then she’s able to save her sister with the power of love. And she uses the same power of love to reverse her power, and we assume with the power of love she learns to control it. Which is a bit of a cop-out just having all her internal issues be solved with love, Elsa doesn’t really learn anything she learns that i guess Anna loves her? Which I thought she knew from the beginning. And it would be strange if she didn’t love Anna since the beginning or if she didn’t know that Anna loved her. Elsa’s issue was that no one understood her, and that issue still isn’t solved by the end and Anna’s love certainly didn’t solve that issue so I don’t really think that ending fits with her character. It would have made more sense if Elsa was a villain who didn’t understand love or who shitted on the idea of love then this ending would have been better.

Hans

Out of all the characters, Hans is done the dirtiest. I know I make fun of him for being a dirty little ginger but i think he had so much potential in being a good character and a good subversion of the prince charming trope and they squandered every bit of it for a twist villain. We could have had them sing the same love is an open door song but have them over the course of the movie slowly realize that they don’t really love each other and it finally culminates in the supposedly true love’s kiss not working. Then Anna would have learned her lesson and Hans wouldn’t be a terrible twist villain with motivations that don’t make sense. I felt so strongly after this viewing that Hans should have been redeemed in the second movie somehow.

Olaf

I’m not going to count him as a character because he’s a snowman and his personality starts with comic relief and ends with merchandise sales.

Sven

I love Sven and the relationship he has with Kristoff, it’s cute it establishes Kristoff as a good well-meaning furry so the audience instantly is able to connect with him and trust him.

The Plot

I found in retrospect the movie was so much more complex than I remembered, as a little petite child I didn’t understand that there was so much political intrigue? I’ve been recently rewatching Game of Thrones the good seasons and watching Frozen I thought like wow this feels so game of thrones esque (mostly just Hans’s elaborate but completely ridiculous plan) and I was just thinking how it would have played out differently if Frozen was a Game of Thrones political fantasy movie. Anyways the plot of Frozen is singlehandedly fucked by Disney’s compulsive twitch to make a twist villain. In the beginning, we meet Hans and he’s charming and cute and positively enamoured with Anna. We even get this little scene of him smiling to himself once he met Anna that just doesn’t make sense at all when you watch it a second time and realize this bitch was never meant to love Anna at all. In a much earlier version of Frozen, where Elsa was more of a classic Disney villain (she would eventually become good), Prince Hans in that version was also established as a twist villain. But Disney decided that Elsa as a villain didn’t really connect with the audience so they decided to change the story and make Elsa more sympathetic but they still had to keep the element of Prince Hans being a villain to provide drama and twists. So ok Hans had to be evil, no negotiation let’s assume Daddy Disney said we have to have evil ginger or I will eat ur firstborns, or whatever. But that still doesn’t explain why the setup had to be so bad. The main reason why Hans is such a bad twist villain is that there was never a setup for him to be evil, a lot of his earlier scenes don’t make sense in retrospect when you know that he was scheming for the throne all along. The scene where he and a few of the castle men are in Elsa’s palace and one of the men is about to shoot Elsa and kill her, but Hans stops it even though he admits out loud to Anna later that he needed an accident to happen to Elsa so he could get the throne. Well, Hans, there’s your accident, did you have a sudden stroke of kindness to spare her or are you playing some sort of 4D chess us mere mortals are too stupid to understand? Because clearly having her being shot by someone else would absolve him of any guilt., and he’d definitely look less guilty than if he was going to slash Elsa in half on a frozen ocean in plain view of the castle. I know this criticism is a relatively dead horse so there’s no reason to go too in-depth with it. Hans doesn’t make sense and very easily you could have written Hans to be just a regular guy that serves the purpose of teaching Anna the lesson that true love isn’t found but is instead built over years. Who would be the villain then? Well, it’s simple, we already had the townspeople being generally scared of Elsa’s powers so it’s very easy for Disney to have just made them the antagonists. Elsa can still be captured and brought back to Arendelle with Hans not really wanting to kill her but the townspeople are sick and tired of this winter and they want her dead (this also coincidentally aligns with papa troll’s vision of Elsa’s power inspiring fear and people turning on her). Elsa could escape the prison just the same in the original movie only this time she goes outside and finds an angry mob waiting for her who try to chase her down. Anna sees this and can run to protect Elsa like she does in the original, she blocks a blade and that sends a powerful force that sends the townspeople backward. Anna turns into ice, Elsa cries, bada bing bada boom I just wrote you the last 7 minutes of Frozen but actually making sense without changing anything in the first hour and a half. I liked that the movie focuses on sisterly love and I think that’s ultimately the strength of Frozen and what differentiates it from other previous Disney princess movies.

Meta-commentary

This movie also continues the meta-commentary on Disney’s family-friendly brand image that started with Tangled in this new era of animated movies, or perhaps with Enchanted if we count that as an animated film. I remember not noticing as much when my stupid little child brain was watching the movie for the first time but this time around I found it a bit annoying, especially given that the criticism they ‘address’ is extremely shallow, like ohh instead of marrying after three days Anna and Kristoff wait a few years until they marry, congrats Disney you have earned the progressive animation studios plaque. This is a bit nit-picky for this movie since this one isn’t egregious with the ‘subtle’ commentary, I feel like they’re particularly annoying in the live actions but generally passable in Frozen.

The Plot that never

I think I have to mention in this video that originally Elsa was going to be a stone-cold villain who is redeemed at the end of the movie after learning how to love. This is the same version I mentioned previously where Hans was the twist villain who would try and set an avalanche on arendelle. Elsa and Anna weren’t going to be sisters so....can I just say that the plot as it is...it could have been an enemies-to-lovers story, featuring our first lesbian couple in a Disney movie. It feels like such wasted potential. I’m sure someone can write fanfiction with this idea to satisfy my...needs. #i need this very very badly

The Animation

Arguably the best quality about any animated film is the animation. Even after 7 years I still feel awe and wonder when I watch Elsa raise her ice palace from snow and the animation of the ice is just jaw-dropping every single time I watch it. There’s one specific detail I love seeing and it’s Elsa’s shoes, like everything her skirt lifts up slightly when she’s running you get a peek at her shoes and they’re fucking gorgeous like she’s wearing glass slippers! Holy fuck her feet look so graceful and dainty and Elsa just single-handedly gave me a feet fetish. That’s what I took away from Frozen, sisterly love can conqueror all and feet are hot. Reading articles about the process of making Frozen really shows how dedicated the animators were to this project because they brought a real fucking reindeer in into the studios (allegedly according to this website I read). They studied the way cloth moves when it’s frozen by water and the way snow falls from a tree. It’s incredible and watching the movie you can really tell how dedicated the animators were to this project.

The Legacy

Many believe that the release of Frozen and the earlier animated film Tangled started another renaissance period for Disney, which I think on some level is true since Disney has released quite a few of those ‘princess’ movies that feel like a return to form for the company in the past decade. In a more cynical view, I also feel like Frozen’s success was where Disney realized that merchandise was perhaps the most profitable thing under the sun. If anything the aggressive merchandising of the characters and the songs are what lingers in people’s minds after all these years. The toddlers shouting the lyrics to let it go at the top of their lungs, Frozen theme birthday parties, everyone wanting to dress up as Elsa for Halloween. I feel like the push to make as much money as possible off of Frozen’s success kind of diminishes the film itself. To the general public it isn’t remembered for its beautiful animation or its characters even to a certain extent, but instead, Frozen is remembered for its merchandise being absolutely everywhere which subsequently ended up with a lot of people being fed up with the property. I feel like we can definitely see the merchandising tactic Disney learned with Frozen with the new Star Wars trilogy where new droids were created en masse for merchandising purposes.

Frozen also birthed a sequel that was largely forgettable in comparison to the first movie, which I feel very disappointed about since even more effort was clearly put into the animation on the second movie. I won’t get into the arduous rewrites and script overhauls that Frozen 2 experienced in this movie but I will say that the success of Frozen probably had something to do with the hyper management of the sequel that led it to be so mediocre and forgettable.

The End

The overall feeling I have with this movie is nostalgia and fondness. Obviously, it isn’t a perfect movie and its themes and plot aren’t really that novel or perfectly executed either. I feel like a lot of people have forgotten that Frozen was an enjoyable movie and the reason for why it was so popular was because it was a heartfelt movie that was just pretty good. It’s by no means a perfect movie but I think it was a decent movie that will always have a place in my heart.

#Frozen #anna #lesbianfanficpls

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ourrightside · 5 years ago

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10 Reasons Why Carrie Bradshaw Wasn’t THAT Bad...

Sex and the City is the most elite series I’ve ever watched - and I was so excited to purchase the first season when I turned 18.

I would listen to my mom and my sister gossip about the show when I was younger and feel so left out. But, my mom would refuse to let me watch it until I became an adult. Thank god.

Being an avid fan now, I sometimes scan through Sex and the City articles on the net, and can’t help but notice dozens of articles filled with ‘Carrie’ slander - which kind of makes me nervous.

Although it was true that years ago girls were labeling themselves as the ‘Carrie’, ‘Samantha’ and ‘Charlotte’ of the group - the serious and less glamorous friend got stuck with being a ‘Miranda’; it is kind of an insult now to be deemed as a Carrie.

As we all matured, we realized that being a Miranda is amazing and we should all strive to be just as successful - but Carrie Bradshaw is still a valid character and I’m here to prove why the “sexual anthropologist” is not all that bad.

Now before I dive into why I totally get Carrie Bradshaw, I would just like to point out before hand that I am aware that she is just a fictional character and hopefully you are too. If you are not informed, then I apologize for this harsh revelation. However, let’s continue.

1. She was average looking

While we can all agree that her physique only gets stronger and leaner throughout the series, she was still not exactly perfect looking. Despite her fit body, she was not model like or necessarily tall. She did not have a perfect nose. She did not have the biggest ‘lady parts’. She did not have the plumiest lips. She did not have perfect facial symmetry.

But, she was okay with it. And has mentioned that by the age of 30, she was over being uncomfortable with her looks and decided to move on.

Despite constantly bumping into models and having to accept that men can be total “modelizers” - especially in the capital of the world aka manhattan, she chose to embrace her natural beauty, which in turn has allowed her to walk the runway in her underwear.

2. She was selfish

Yes, the new trend is to be selfish and say no - because that is ‘self love’.

If that truly is the case, then there was no denying then that Carrie was selfish throughout the series.

As human beings, we are selfish by nature. But since we now identify ourselves in societies with expected norms and values, being selfish disqualifies you sometimes from your environment. To avoid being lonely, we try to let go of being selfish or at least hide our selfish traits.

Unfruitfully so, our selfish instincts at times fail us - exposing our true colors. And whenever that happens, people aren’t too afraid of pointing out what you did wrong. It doesn’t make us necessarily evil, just makes us human.

To avoid being Freudian in this post, let’s just sum up that Carrie is harmlessly selfish at times - that includes being late to every event, asking her friend Susan Sharon if she could trade in her cashmere sweater birthday gift for cash, accepting a pair of 600$ shoes from her other super rich friend, and cutting off Charlotte’s possible infertility problem discussion to talk about her Manolos.

The list goes on, I mean - this is just classic Bradshaw behavior. However, this character cannot be deemed as bad. She was just under the spotlight, and if we were under it too, we would find out that we do have these moments as well without realizing it. We are not perfect. However, Carrie does reflect on her mistakes often, which is something we should be doing more.

Sometimes, her selfish tendencies can really get out of hand.

It was not okay when she got angry at Charlotte who did not offer to lend her money after she blew it all off on Manolo Blahnik shoes instead of rent. It was not okay when she threw away Aiden down the drain. It was not okay when she slept with a married man, even if it was ‘Mr. Big’.

We cannot shame her though because we all have hidden skeletons in our closets...it’s up to you however to peak in and see which faults make it or break it for you.

3. She was a working woman

No offense to chastity ball princess Charlotte, who wanted to be a housewife to any rich man who crossed path with her, Carrie Bradshaw was by all means an ‘all star’ business woman. Despite being unconventional unlike Samantha Jones (PR executive) and Miranda Hobbes (Harvard-graduate Lawyer), Carrie Bradshaw was a restless woman that worked in multiple fields all at once despite being so undermined.

She had so many tasks to tackle all at once while juggling multiple projects. She ran around between the fields of Journalism, Content Marketing and Public Relations. She was able to get invited into all the ‘fabulous’ events and meetings because of the hard work she invested in all by herself as a freelancer who lived in a huge place like New York. Carrie finally reached her goal at the age of 40, which was working at Vogue. She even wrote multiple books as well.

4. She was unconventional

Despite the show running in the early 90s, Carrie Bradshaw decided to be a sex columnist. She never gave up on her weird unconventional job and was proud of her career despite the looks or comments people would make. She had a weird exterior in addition to how upfront she was about the physical makings of life.

In addition, Carrie did not believe in marriage until she became a fiancée at the age of 40. She traded in a ring for a pair of shoes and a walk-in closet, unlike most women, who would rather get married in their mid 20 to early 30s with a huge rock on their finger.

5. She was struggling at adulting

Carrie Bradshaw had a deluded concept of adulting that at least most of us had or still struggle with. She was not a healthy adult with financial stability and a well thought out regime. However, she still managed to be fabulous.

She had poor dieting habits, which made her sometimes skip dinner to buy Vogue instead. She believed that shopping and gossiping were the best types of cardio. She was not the cleanest and had a messy apartment at most times. She did not care about the way her living space looked like, which she later on freaked out about in fear of being judged as an imperfect adult according to Mr Big. She paid so much on shoes that she could no longer afford her rent. She believed that investments must be seen in her closet. She drank at least six dollars worth of coffee per day. She would smoke and drink way too much for a thirty year old woman.

6. She was a good friend

Carrie Bradshaw had so many friends that it almost put her PR bestie Samantha to shame. To be honest, Carrie may have not been a perfect friend, but she was as good as it gets realistically.

What made her so realistic in her friendships was her ability to be there for most of her friends’ hardships. She had her ups and downs with her empowered female group because sometimes they would feel like she was too problematic and vice versa. For the most part, it is impossible to be as passionate to your friends as you once were the first time you guys met. But what makes a friend a good one is that they never voluntarily try to find excuses to leave you behind.

Carrie’s love towards her friends in her good and bad times showed that she valued them like family.

7. She was lost

Carrie was probably more lost than she would have liked to be. She had a tendency to dwell on what should have been and could have been. We all have regrets and sometimes she voiced hers out more than other characters within the show. She would sometimes yearn over the years that passed by her. She even went to extremes such as dating a college boy just to remember what it was like to ‘just kiss’. Rookie Mistake, Carrie.

Just like Carrie, as time goes by at any age, we look back at the spur of events that created our timeline and take note sometimes of which events we deem as either life-changing, traumatizing or both.

8. She was experimental

She may not have been as promiscuous as her friend Samantha, but she was unarguably adventurous in all aspects of her life. Although the most obvious aspect may have been her outfits, her wild colors and funny textural accessories were just a preview on how eccentric Carrie Bradshaw truly was. She mentioned that her younger years were a genuine pursuit of fun in every shape or form, which most twenty-something-year-olds cannot deny.

She emphasized that she fears living life as a cautious person because of the hurt she has endured. However, she truly defined throughout the show what it means to be eccentric, empowering the ones who fail the experiments of life to get back on their feet.

9. She was flawed

Carrie Bradshaw believed in the glass half full rather than half empty throughout the series. Despite being unbearably flawed to the point where her friends no longer wanted to listen to her problems, she decided to see a shrink which is something that would have been especially socially-unacceptable in the 90s. Carrie still overcame her mental issues and found other remedies which in turn has led her into accepting the way things played out.

As we grow up, we, like Carrie, need a little bit of help in order to realize that temporary issues will fade away into lessons and the permanent ones that are out of our control can be accessorized into our lives accordingly to the way that we want it to look like.

10. She was in love

Her love towards Mr Big was illogical - almost completely insane. But what made her character so special was the fact that she never continued her relationship with Aiden because she knew deep down that it was Mr Big all along and never gave up on it; despite all the signs that kept telling her that he was bad for her. He was at the time indeed bad news, which made her feelings towards him fluctuate between love and hate.

Now, the psychology behind her and Mr Big does not justify why you should call your ex right now so put your phone down, but it is something to think about.

Carrie took the road not taken for most women, especially during the 90s where gender roles in love where still a bit rigid. While it is true that it is always easier to date lovers who make the effort to chase you rather than pursuing it yourself, the easiness does not create the ‘fairytale love’ that most of us strive for.

Carrie once described her love towards him as a crash rather than a crush. But if something deep down is telling you that someone is your person, shouldn’t that account for something? Shouldn’t we all just go for ‘ ridiculous, inconvenient, time-consuming can’t-live-without-each-other love’, and get it right just like she did?

- Nina xx (yasminasayyid)

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shireness-says · 5 years ago

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Election Day

Summary: This is, arguably, the stupidest thing her best friend has ever done. So how in the hell did Charlie Jones get dragged into it? A 5B Divergence 'verse future snippet. ~1.8K. Rated T for language. Also on AO3.

A/N: @snidgetsafan and I plotted this out a couple of months ago, and it remains an absolutely ridiculous idea. Hopefully in a good way. I love the dynamic of these two idiots.

Tagging: @thejollyroger-writer, @profdanglaisstuff, @captainsjedi, @ultraluckycatnd, @superchocovian, @snowbellewells, @killianjones4ever82, @ohmakemeahercules, @let-it-raines, @lifeinahole27, @kmomof4, @scientificapricot, @spartanguard, @courtorderedcake, @justanotherwannabeclassic, @teamhook, @thisonesatellite

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

~~~~~~

“This is the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” Charlie grumbles to her best friend - former best friend? That may depend on the next two weeks - from their table in front of the town gazebo. Their campaign table. For the mayoral campaign that Vera decided to stage.

You can’t make this shit up.

Honestly, it fucking figures that this is how Vera Mills-Locksley would stage a bout of teenage rebellion. Vera had inherited none of the malevolence but all of the attitude of her mothers - biological and adopted. Generally, that means she’s more bark than bite, more prone to mouthing off than actually doing anything (or at least doing anything genuinely shitty - Charlie’s found herself helping with more than her share of insane ideas over the years). There had been an incident last month about curfew, though, after they and Gideon French had got home a little late from a bit of post-football celebrating. Okay, an hour late. Charlie kind of understands why Aunt Regina had blown her top - this was Storybrooke, after all, where anything could happen. It definitely didn’t help that they hadn’t called or texted. It was probably a small miracle that Fitz or Dorothy hadn’t stopped them in the cruiser.

Still. Vera was… well, Vera, and even if the town agrees that she’s generally a good kid, Charlie knows from long experience that she doesn’t like being told what to do. The really unfortunate moment had come when the redhead had realized that she’d turn 18 only two days before the mayoral election - the election that, until then, Aunt Regina was running unopposed in. For an office that would allow Vera to change the curfew time.

And when you phrase it like that, it’s almost too easy for a teenager with an attitude and an interesting concept of justice to decide that she’s going to run for mayor and drag her best friend along with her.

The Demon Teen in question (title patent pending, and possibly subject to change if it turns out that Charlie can achieve a new level of frustration before the actual election) hums skeptically. “Is it though? What about the time we borrowed your dad’s boat for that party?”

“Ship,” Charlie answers automatically after years spent in the Jones household. Unfortunately, Vera has a point; it definitely wasn’t one of their brighter moments, though in Charlie’s defense, Christian Erikson was just as good a kisser as he was cute. Still, she’d ended up grounded for a month and scraping barnacles, plus treated to a great safe sex refresher course after her dad had discovered Vera and Gideon trying to get things going in one of the crew cabins. All in all, a goddamn shit show. “But fine, second stupidest thing we’ve ever done. You do admit this is stupid, though?”

“Oh, undeniably,” Vera scoffs. “It’s only stupid if we don’t win though.”

“Ok, that is not how it works.”

“Hey, it’s my plan, it works however I want it to. Jeez, it’s almost like you don’t want to be my vice-mayor.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Charlie mutters under her breath, before continuing less subtly. “That’s not even a thing.”

“Again, my plan, so I say it is.” As some poor unsuspecting townsperson walks by, she quickly plasters on a grin. “Would you like a campaign button?” she calls. “Vote Mills-Locksley for Mayor on November 4th!”

“Okay, so if it’s a thing, what does a ‘vice-mayor’ even do?” Charlie continues once Mr. Harris is out of earshot.

“Fuck if I know,” Vera admits flippantly. “Look, it’s a good campaign decision. You’re a Jones, and a Charming for that matter. That means something in this town. I may be more charismatic and better suited —” Charlie squawks in protest at that - no one would ever claim that Vera is well suited to be mayor in any reality - but her best friend plows on ahead “— but you’re more…”

“Trustworthy?”

“That’s the one.” You had to give Vera that - she was always fully aware of how people might see her, considering her bloodline, and somehow still managed not to punch people for it. That was more Charlie’s job, anyways. “Now try to look happy, someone’s coming.”

Charlie squints into the distance, only to recognize the familiar gait. “That’s just Dad.”

At least he comes bearing coffee cups from Granny’s. “There’s my favorite candidates!” he calls as he approaches.

“You know I can’t actually serve any office, right?” Charlie questions wryly (not snaps or snarks or any other adjective the look on her father’s face suggests - just questions). “I won’t be eighteen until May. I am literally just a campaign tactic, and a pretty obvious one at that.”

“Play nice, Bean,” her dad murmurs as passes Charlie a travel cup before changing back to a normal volume. “Now, that’s a hot chocolate for you, sweetheart, with cinnamon of course. And Vera, a s’mores mocha for you.”

“Thanks, Captain Jones,” Vera smiles with that politician smile she’s perfected in the past few weeks. Honestly, for a girl who’s never shown a lick of interest in politics in her life - and Charlie’s been there for the vast majority of it, she would know - the redhead sure has adapted quickly.

“I believe that’s more respect than you’ve ever showed me in your life, Miss Mills-Locksley,” the pirate replies with that same wry tone Charlie uses. She had to learn it somewhere, after all. “It would have been much more appreciated when I found you and Gideon French trying to defile my ship, but beggars can’t be choosers, as the saying goes.”

“I think they also say ‘better late than never’,” Vera points out. “Also, ‘what’s done is done’.”

Charlie turns to look at her friend in disbelief. “Really helping your cause, aren’t you?”

“Out of necessity, diplomacy has become my greatest strength.” God, Charlie hopes she’s kidding. Or being sarcastic. Or literally anything but meaning that sincerely, because the truth of the matter is that there’s only so much a human being can believe and a diplomatic Vera Mills-Locksley isn’t one of those things.

“Yeah, sure it has,” Charlie settles for mumbling under her breath. Mutinously seems like a good descriptor, here, if she’s looking to become even more like her dad than everyone already claims she is.

(It’s the hair and the ears and maybe a bit of the face, honestly. The eyes and the attitude are all from her mom.)

Vera shoots her a bit of a dirty look, but the plastered-on smile is back only a moment later to schmooze Charlie’s dad. “What can we do for you today, Captain?” she makes sure to emphasize, probably to throw them both off. It would be totally in character, honestly.

“I was hoping to procure some more buttons please, future Madam Mayor.”

“Oh my God,” Charlie groans. “How could you have possibly gotten rid of all of those so quickly? We gave you, like, 50 a couple of days ago.” Her dad is arguably - hell, definitely the biggest supporter of this poorly planned campaign. Mom had just kind of rolled her eyes, though Charlie could spot a smile too; Uncle Robin mostly seemed conflicted between pride at Vera’s ambition and disappointment at her effort to spite her mother. And Aunt Regina was flat out pissed, and trying not to show it so that Vera couldn’t accuse her of undermining the sanctity of the election (they were cut from the same cloth, nurture over nature, and Vera totally would). Dad, though… Dad clearly thought that this unexpected campaign was the best and funniest thing to happen in Storybrooke in ages, a callback to his chaos pirate days or something. He handed out buttons at the docks, and at the Sheriff’s station, and at Granny’s - especially if Aunt Regina was there to see it.

“I’m just here to support the cause,” he says smoothly. Not that Charlie believes that for a second; even though she’s sure he is proud, in his own weird way, it’s definitely for his own entertainment too. She halfway remembers him running for mayor one year when she was a kid just to piss Aunt Regina off. Maybe she’s carrying on the world’s stupidest family tradition or something.

“Now tell me, Madam Mayor,” he continues, deftly ignoring Charlie’s irritation and general foul mood - seriously, you’d think he’d be more considerate of his daughter - “what will you do first, once you’re elected?”

“Oh, we’re so not winning the election,” Vera snorts.

“Now lass, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I’m told that the democratic system is full of surprises - ”

Despite Dad’s best attempts at encouragement, Vera just keeps laughing. “Oh no. I won’t. I’m a friggin’ teenager running for mayor, it’s not going to happen. And even if it does, I’ll resign after a week at most. I’ve still got high school and college and drama club, I don’t have time to be mayor.”

“So this is just to get back at your mother, then?” Dad asks. “On the one hand, I’m always happy to see Regina sweat a bit, but as a parent I feel like I shouldn’t encourage this kind of mutiny, lass.”

Charlie takes a sip of her hot chocolate, leaning back to watch the show. Frankly, this looks like it will be the most entertaining part of this whole idiotic affair.

The half a grimace that Vera pulls in response sure is a look, at least. “I mean, kind of? But mostly I’m hoping to get some bargaining power. I figure, if I concede - or at least resign and give the office back to Mom… maybe we can negotiate an extended curfew.”

It’s diabolical, truly. Charlie’s kind of impressed, not that she’ll ever admit it. Her dad clearly is, too, as he barks out a laugh and grins back at Vera. “That’s quite the plan you’ve concocted, Miss Mills-Locksley. A pirate after my own heart. You have my vote.”

“Thanks, Uncle Kil; I’ll be counting on that the Tuesday after next.”

———

They do lose, of course; they’re a couple of teenagers running for office, one more willingly than the other. It was inevitable, no matter how many campaign buttons Killian Jones hands out everywhere in town.

There is a negotiation, however, where Vera agrees to give a concession speech supporting her mother’s re-election in return for a revised curfew. The extra hour on Friday and Saturday nights isn’t much, but it feels like a big victory now that all is said and done. Charlie’s just glad it’s over; she certain won’t be pursuing a career in politics.

(The button, however, stays on her dad’s desk in a special little frame Mom bought just for him. She’s never going to outrun the whole fiasco, but as far as Dad’s concerned, maybe that’s not all bad.)

#captain swan #cs ff #future fic #my writing #Election Day #If I Could See Your Face Once More #Vera is kind of a little shit #and Charlie is so done #I love them both

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jazillia007 · 6 years ago

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Thoughts on 2x13 - Part 1

So first of all, I have to say I'm very glad I didn't watch the episode live with the emotions coming in left and right and all the drama happening in the fandom right after the episode.

I watched the episode knowing what's coming, so that was kinda cheating on my part but it definitely helped to focus on everything else happening in the episode.

Overall I can say it was a terribly written episode – it felt like a episode quickly written in case Good Girls didn't get a renewal (season 2 had obviously finished filming when it got its renewal, so they definitely didn't think about whether it would feel out of character or moving too fast.)

Because – and I don't care if I get hate for this – I could see Brio ending up in a situation like they ended up in this episode. But let's talk about the other things first.

Annie and Noah (because it's quick):

I never really cared about them. I don't care about Noah having a kid – trying to make it all okay he did lie to Annie and raped her by deception. So you guys talked it out and now it's okay? No, thanks. And do I think he will leave? Well only season 3 will tell. Also I was low-key grossed out by Annie sitting on the toilet doing her business while talking to Noah. They still know eachother for 5 minutes and I just think it's gross. (I know there are couples who do this kind of stuff but personally my toilet business is my toilet business. lol)

Boomer – Marion – Redemption – WTF?:

First of all: why did we need Boomer to be alive again? After watching episode 12 I was like „okay maybe there is a reason why the writers messed with us“ but now I just think it was really for the shocker and mostly cringeworthy scenes.

The dining room scene was terrible. Who wrote it? Jenna, was that you?

Boomer being like „I'm gonna change my face and nobody will recognize me“. Like what? This felt straight out of a Korean drama (if anyone is watching Korean drama, you all know what I mean). It was way too long, way too over the top and not funny. And then Boomer is coming at the 3 women with Jeff? How does he know about Jeff? Did I miss anything? Did I miss Mary Pat telling him about her husband? People in the fandom, help me out! Did I zoom out while this conversation happened?

But also: I don't get Beth's reasoning here. Ruby is right! Get rid off the rest of Jeff and call the cops on Boomer! Heck, why didn't they tell Boomer about how he should shut up about Jeff when he is dirty himself. All the business in Fine & Frugals aside he is also a rapist.

And then, you have Marion driving him to the cops?

Okay, I know a lot of people don't like it that they somewhat gave these two a half-ass written redemption arc. Like Marion is a racist granny and Boomer is... well he is Boomer. Basically he is trash, okay?

But putting aside my personal aversion to these two, I actually liked that Marion did what she did. In the end she knew Boomer was stealing from her and all that. And the way he ordered her around in the beginning of the episode, I was like „Marion, grow a backbone!“. So in that regard, I liked it.

BUT Boomer got away too easily. Neither Annie nor Mary Pat got their chance to tell him off. Will he go to prison? Or get away just like that? I believe unfortunately he will.

Like I said it's half-ass written and not satisfying at all. Just like the episode overall.

Beth's „reasoning“:

I know Beth is a woman with flaws. To a point I feel second-hand embarassement watching her making the same mistakes over and over again. She does and did many decisions which made me facepalm throughout each episode. But some decisions were reasonable or at least understandable for someone without any experience and a certain naivety. We can't expect Beth to be this professional criminal, just like Rio is.

As some pointed out she does make rash decisions when she feels cornered but in this episode I couldn't make sense out of her decisions at all.

How exactly would it help her to pay Boomer money for the crazy facial surgery and for everything else? I'm Ruby in this scene who can't make sense of Beth. Didn't she learn a thing?

If you don't take care of your rotten egg it will spread like a disease – if there is one lesson Beth should remember it's this one – and Boomer is certainly someone who would always come back no matter what, to blackmail and for more cash.

Same with her turning herself in. It showed she was always the caregiver in this group of 3 women and I understand she believes that turning herself in would stop Turner going after the Hills and Annie.

BUT again this falls flat because why would you turn yourself in for the murder of Leslie Petersen aka Boomer when he is alive and well? It would've made sense IF Beth, Ruby and Annie didn't know Boomer was still alive and they genuinely thought the body was his. But that's not the case.

I can't believe they didn't come up with something else. Any fan theory/idea was better than what the writers gave us in this episode.

It's such lazy writing.

Beth the „King“?:

This makes no sense to me at all, not just throughout the whole last bit of the episode but the show so far.

I know some in the fandom wouldn't mind Beth doing her own business without Rio. And all I can ask is: but HOW!?

It's not like I wouldn't agree but if anything that would be a plot I could see happening at the end of season 3 if well-written. In the end we want Beth and Rio to be equals and that can't be achieved – even with a 50/50 deal. Why? Because even with the 50/50 deal, Beth is still 100% not involved in anything going on behind the scenes. For example how Rio perfected his counterfeit money business or his „drug“ business.

I'm also pretty sure Rio didn't tell Beth his recipe how to make the fake cash as legit as possible. In the end he can't trust her enough with these details.

Yes, she can google stuff but I had to laugh quiet a lot at Beth being so proud for producing fake cash with Dean's printer. Okay...

(Also on a sidenote: is it healthy to bake money in chemicals in the same oven you would usually cook your meals in?)

And she is bringing in a random divorced mom who is a designer? Since when is she friends with someone else aside from Ruby and Annie?

I know everyone got to start somewhere but if the season finale proved one thing for sure: it's Beth not being ready for what is ahead of her. She is high on power but to me she came out as weak after shooting Rio. This isn't how I wanted to see Beth to get her own business – again makes no sense at all how she can do it and make as much cash as Rio. He worked for YEARS in this crime world – and certainly she is no King to me.

But I think she will realize that pretty quickly in season 3 that everything isn't that easy. And I can't wait for her to come in touch with other – far less pleasant than Rio – gangsters in town. Plus with her way of not dealing with problems it's likely not going to end well for her.

Dean – Redemption? - WTF 2.0:

The worst thing for me in this episode apart from the shooting scene was probably how they portrayed the relationship between Beth and Dean.

It's Boomer redemption all over again. Lazy writing 101.

But fair enough I didn't see it as Beth and Dean coming back together. I just think in this episode full of self-inflicted turmoil and stress she sought comfort in the person she had been with for 20 years. That's all.

Which doesn't excuse that Dean basically got away with the following things:

he is a cheater. Like he cheated multiple times on Beth.

and he used the lie about sex addiction as a reason why he cheated on her because she wouldn't let him touch while she suffered from post-partum depression.

Dean is also a lying liar because he lied about having CANCER in season 1 because he wanted to keep his property aka his wife.

he undermined Beth's abilities as a businesswoman – let's put aside the crime stuff, she is a LOT better at Dean's job which he HATES.

he also reduces Beth to being a housewife and mother and talks down to her – I've not forgotten his sandwich cookie cutter comment.

he is also unable to get another job because we know how he is, he is unable not to con his own customers and possible future employers can see that from a mile away – but Beth is like „well then it wasn't meant to be?“ like what? Are you serious?

And all seems forgotten now and we get to see Beth and Dean and how they probably were as a not really happy but at least functional couple.

It's almost as if the writers try to gloss over Dean's nonsense because if you look at what Beth did and does it's far worse than what Dean did.

And that's terrible! It's not okay. Because Beth had to do what she did because of Dean! Dean is the reason for all the crap going down in Beth's life. If anything she should blame Dean, not Rio and maybe not even herself...

I can't watch Good Girls as a tv show for female empowerment when Beth doesn't get to call Dean out on his bullshit. And he has the audicity to ask „what went wrong with us?“??

You went wrong, Mister! And Beth didn't get to say it because her look says it all but she just wants to avoid any further conflict.

And that's not okay. It's like the writers gave Beth a muzzle in these scenes and wouldn't let her say what she obviously thinks.

And I’m not even sad about Beth and Dean getting along as parents. Like that's a good decision. Because in the end they have 4 kids and they should be functional as parents.

I'm simply baffled how poorly written Beth's and Dean's conflict is or the lack of addressing it. And that the writers apparently want to have these two in the same house for another season.

I simply have no words anymore.

#nbc good girls #thought on season finale #long post #I'm so sorry #second part is posted right away #I hope it's not too messy #I just wrote about anything and everything

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allysartstuff · 6 years ago

Photo

Note: This has been drawn as a reference guide which is free to use if you wish to draw this character. However, please do not repost or claim as your own, thank you. The eleventh born in my Next Gen series.

Lickety-Split

Personality: Brash, insecure, rebellious, bitter, loudmouth, show off.

Likes: The thrill of speed, pranks, stunts,

Dislikes: Being alone, being compared to his mothers, changes, being ignored.

Story;

Lickety-Split is the adopted son of Rainbow Dash and Spitfire and the adopted younger brother of Tornado Rush.

Split is very much his mother’s son. As a young colt, he thrived for the thrill of speed and agility. It was no surprise to anyone that he was an exceptionally skilled flyer, the first of the young five to earn his cutie mark at a race at the age of six. Rainbow and Spitfire couldn’t be more proud parents. They were sure he would make a fine Wonderbolt. Their words of encouragement resonated with Split and he trained and raced as much as possible for a little colt. But over the years, every victory he earned was always followed by hushed whispers he would catch in the crowd.

"Of course he won! His moms are Wonderbolts! It's not fair!"

Never mind how hard he worked or trained for all those years. It didn't matter because of his parents. He still couldn't shake off his mother's shadows. This revelation left him bitter and insecure but he continued to race, that is until he could find an alternative for his flying abilities.

Before his sister Tornado Rush transitioned, Split looked up to his ‘big brother’ a lot so when Rush came out and started transitioning, things became tense between the two. Split, too young to understand and scared of the change, expressed that he didn’t want her to go through with it. Rush was hurt by this and they didn’t speak for a while. He eventually accepted it as he got older and the two have a very living yet typical brother-sister relationship.

However, things got worse when his mother Spitfire got into an accident that paralysed her from the waist down. Rainbow and Rush continued life as normal as they could, supporting Spitfire but for Split, it was all too much to cope with. As much as he hated being compared to his two mothers and being undermined his skills as a flyer because of that, he hated seeing his mother in constant pain even more. He coped with it by avoiding home as much as possible, hanging out with his friends or, if they weren't available, a group of ponies from his school known as ‘the wrong crowd’. This drove Rainbow Dash (who had become a full time carer to Spitfire and a stay-at-home Mum at this point) absolutely mad and for a while, their relationship was strained.

One day, Split and his other rebel friends snuck into a daredevil show, The Washouts. He was in awe of the stunts and danger, realising that this would be the thing to finally get him out of his parents shadows. After the show, he met the Washouts in person and was surprise to see their leader taking a shine to him, a mare called Lighting Dust. She told him she had heard of him and thought he had great potential to become a Washout.

“How about I give you a little private training, eh? Just between you and me?”

Ecstatic, Split agreed. Over a period of several weeks, Split snuck out for training with Lighting Dust at the very far end of Ponyville. They were extremely dangerous and Lighting proved to be a tough and pushy couch with no shortage of malice. Still, Split developed his techniques, found he thrived on danger and quickly learned to brush of any injuries that came about, which were thankfully minor. He also found a friend in Lighting and they spent some nights just Split hearing her talk about her greatest feats.

Eventually, Rainbow got sick of all the excuses Split would come up with every time he came home late with more bruises and cuts. One night, she decided to go and find him, leaving Spitfire in the care of Tornado Rush. To her horror, she found her son performing a very, very dangerous practice stunt with no regards for safety at all. When he successfully finished, Rainbow stormed up to them and gave Split a frantic “What were you thinking? You could have been killed!” speech. Split spat out that this was what he wanted and needed to get out and do something on his own without being compared to her. To his surprise, Rainbow to a deep breath and said she didn't mind him being a daredevil. After all, with the right training and actual regard for safety, he would be amazing. But he had to stop training with Lighting Dust.

“You know her?!” Split had said. Rainbow then told him briefly of her past encounters with her, including their Wonderbolts training and what Lighting had previously done to Scootaloo.

“You’re my son, Split! I can't stand the thought of her hurting you like that.”

That's when Lighting snorted. “Your son? Excuse me, Dash. I know for sure you didn't squeeze him out!”

Lighting then admitted that she was really Split biological mother, much to everyone shock. She proudly gloated to Rainbow how much Split admired her and much preferred to spend time with his cool actual mother rather than his fake, wash up, boring mothers, delighting in Rainbow’s crushed expression.

It was evidently clear why Lighting really wanted to spend time with Split. To take him away from his adoptive family and to get back at Rainbow. Hurt and shaken, Split stepped away from Lightning Dust, telling her he was done training with her and wanted to stay with his mothers.

Surprisingly, a hurt expression flashed across Lightning’s face before giving them a sour look.

“Alright. Fine then.”

For some reason, Lightning coldly revealed that his biological father is Sky Stinger and Split is the result of a one night stand between them. ‘A mistake’, as Lightning put it. An already shaken Split was crushed by the word. Furious, Rainbow snapped, demanding that if Lightning had any sense, she would leave and never speak to her family again. With that and a snort, Lightning left.

Sometime afterwards, Rainbow admitted she knew Sky Stinger and offered to contacted him. After a long time thinking of it and healing from the hurt Lighting left behind, Split agreed.

In the current timeline, Lickety-Split is still in school at seventeen. He still dreams of making his own daredevil stunt group but is quite happy to do races and aerobatics until then. He's also developed an interest in health and safety in sport since his estrangement from Lighting. After reconnecting with Sky Stinger, the pair are working on a healthy father-son relationship. Despite the initial awkwardness, he soon gets along well with Stinger’s wife Vapor Trail and is adored by their brood of teeny excitable foals. His relationship with his family also improved (a tad though, he’s still kinda a knucklehead) and was proud to attend Rainbow and Spitfire’s long awaited wedding.

Bits and Pieces

Split and Forelle have a small thing for each other but they are both too proud and stubborn to admit it.

As a foal, Split was an admirer of Doctor Hooves ever since he stumbled on his (still ongoing) time travel experiments. Every chance he got, he would bug Doc with ideas on how to time travel (many of them having to do with speed). The Doc, while a little exasperated by this foal’s sudden attention, politely listened to every ridiculous theory and even grew to like him. Today, they grew apart and haven’t spoken in years due to Split growing up. Split is horribly embarrassed by his behaviour but does not think ill will of the ol’ Doc and has found memories of him.

Despite being raised by two mares and having female friends, Split doesn't really understand girls, especially when it comes to flirting. Although he loves his friend Lucky and is happy to help him with his love life, he is jealous by the attention the dorky little draconequus gets while he can flirt and show off as much as he likes but no girl will notice him. And he certainly can't have his female friends as potential girlfriends, oh no! That's just too weird.

Split and Lucky argue the most in their group of friends. Lucky has a hard time understanding why Split hangs out with troublesome ponies and why he could just open up a little sometimes while Split is jealous of Lucky’s attention from girls and considers him a bit of a weakling despite having immense power. Yet, they are best friends and are willing to stick through anything together.

Split loves to pull a good prank or two. One of his more memorable ones was when he dumped a bucket load of bugs (which Lucky was collecting) onto Berry Bubblegum, sparking her lifelong fear of insects.

Split has a beloved childhood teddy bear called Paddy. However, while he no longer plays with it, he still loves it to pieces and will happily stomp anyone to the ground if they dared make fun of him for that.

His favourite thing to say is, ‘Let’s split!” which never fails to make everyone groan.

#My Little Pony #My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #mlp #MLP: FiM #mlp next generation #mlp next gen #Lickety-Split #rainbow dash #spitfire mlp #rainbow dash x spitfire #rainbowfire #ocs #original characters #Fan Characters #Upsy Daisy Verse

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cielleduciel · 6 years ago

Note

I have some sensitive questions, and you totally don’t need to answer if they’re too much, but here they are. Did you ever struggle w internal homophobia? If so, how did you manage to overcome it?? And my last question: any tips for softly breaking it to Albanian parents? I know people are individuals but its still the same culture so..

• Same anon as before!! I am an 18-year-old girl that was born and raised in the US. Thank you so much, and take as much time as you need to answer.

• I would also like to add that I’ve struggled with this for a pretty long time now (since I was around 12), so it’s not like I realized my preferences just recently. For years I’ve been telling myself that it’s just a phase or I’m just starved of affection (so I’m looking for it in the wrong place) or that I just haven’t met the right guy yet. I feel disgusted with myself, and it’s very tiring and emotionally consuming. Add in my Albanian relatives on top of it, and I’m just done with it all.

thanks for your patience anon, this last week’s been a bit hectic for me

first off i’m flattered by that first question, bc i was the most self-hating repressed closet gay i knew. i started off as that kid that was like “i don’t have a problem with gay people i just don’t think they should get married and i hate it when they ‘act’ gay”. i went through three boyfriends and two different sexual orientations before i finally accepted i was a lesbian, which took me until april of last year. so if that’s hard to imagine then i know i’m doing good for myself, and maybe it can give you some reassurance too

tbh i don’t think any of us can ever actually avoid or stop struggling with internalized homophobia, given that we’re all inundated with those messages every day in big or small ways. i think at best i just learned how to stop listening to it so much. it took me a really long time though and honestly at your age you’re already way ahead of me than i was, the questions you’re asking yourself now are ones i couldn’t bear to face even in my early 20s

my personal struggle has been very much connected to my family and growing up as a 1½-gen albanian immigrant. if your family and upbringing are anything like mine, then you might understand, and they’re probably just as closely related to your struggle as well. don’t take what i say here as gospel since this is all from personal experience and i’m not even 100% where i want to be yet. but i know how lonely it is for us out there, so i’ll try to be as real with you as i can without getting too personal (idk if this readmore will work on mobile so my apologies and just scroll down really fast @ anyone not reading this)

first thing: don’t be in a rush to tell your parents, even if you’re an adult, and especially if you’re still dependent on them. i assume you’re asking for tips because you already know or have reason to suspect that they won’t take it well. and if you’re still struggling to accept yourself, your parents’ & relatives’ opinions are the last thing you need to be worrying about right now (i know easier said than done we’re albanian i Understand but like. trust me)

second: i really think learning how to stop listening to that internalized homophobia is just a slow process of learning to normalize your feelings in opposition to it. truly the most important thing i did for myself was surround myself with other bi/lesbian women as a way to counter everything else in my life that was telling me to hate myself. the key here is that i did that for years. the logic goes like this: if my world was already and will always be filled with heteronormativity and homophobia, then to fight it, i needed a space i could come back to that’s filled with what i needed to see and could make it feel as normal as i logically knew it was

i didn’t have the freedom to reach out to others IRL so i sought out bi/lesbian women online and immersed myself in those communities. i filled my online spaces with people like me who could show me every day that what i was feeling was genuine, normal, healthy, whole, positive, and worth embracing. when i really began to internalize that, self-confidence and assurance just kind of naturally followed, which made it easier to shout down and ignore the Internalized Homophobia Gremlin in my brain

another thing too, and this’ll sound silly. idk if you’re into video games but they were also a big part of my normalization process. i love role-playing games and for years i used them as a private, risk-free, judgment-free way to “experiment” with women and allow my feelings to “run free” after repressing/ignoring them for so long. i personally know other LGBT people who discovered themselves in similar ways (through DnD, for example). something to consider if that’s your thing. but media of all kinds can be powerful normalizing tools too, if you can find decent ones to your liking

i had to be really patient and gentle with myself though, and you’ll have to be too bc there really is no quick fix, we’re up against years of internalizing this crap since we were born, basically. do whatever you need to fight against it though, bc there is literally, objectively, nothing wrong with you. you deserve to be happy just as you are, you deserve love and to be able to find it with another woman, and remember you’re never alone in this even if it feels like you are. i think that’s the most powerful reminder

back around to your last question, worry about coming out to your parents when you’re on more solid ground, bc it doesn’t sound like you are rn. everyone’s parents are different but as a general rule i’ve found that when trying to broach a difficult subject, you really need to have your back up against a point that you refuse to budge on, and plant yourself there. you can negotiate or make arguments around it but you need that one point that you’re absolutely sure of where you’ll always hold your ground

in coming out to them, that point needs to be your identity and everything attached to it, so your confidence and sense of self need to be as solid and unmoving as a fucking mountain so that they can’t dig into you and undermine your conviction. esp bc tbh it’s entirely likely that you’ll have to have that conversation several times. so that’s why i stress working on yourself first. for your own sake, don’t jump the gun on this

also, it’ll be much easier on you if you’re not always stuck under the same roof, or at least not totally dependent on them. and i know that’s tough and complicated because a lot of us never truly “move out”, per se, and it’s normal for us to stay with our parents/family for a very long time. but if you can find a way, arrange something with friends, etc., i find it really helps with your general confidence to know you have somewhere else you can go unconditionally, without restrictions. and i don’t mean “rush to move out as soon as you can”, bc like i said, i know that’s hard on us for many reasons and it may hurt you more than you think it will. but if it’s a point you can get to eventually, it does help

after all this, if/when you eventually do decide to come out, i recommend you tell only one of your parents at first. whichever one you’re closer with or find easier to talk to (i’d say ideally whoever’s the least homophobic but like. lmao). do it privately and when you’re both in a good mood. i find altogether this makes the atmosphere less confrontational and more personal, a show like you’re “confiding” in them moreso than making an announcement. depending on how it goes i think you can adjust your strategy from there

even still, i can’t say with any confidence that it will go over well, but it’s as gentle a way to break it to them as i know. if on the very off chance you have another relative who you know is sympathetic and won’t go telling the entire rest of the family immediately, i’d say try reaching out to them first, as it’ll give you “practice” talking about it and they may be able to advise you about your own parents better than i can, as well as support you directly. but even this i would only do after you’re more confident in yourself and your identity

in the end, keep in mind that you don’t have to come out either. it’s not like a requirement for loving yourself. many of us stay closeted to our families for a very long time simply bc it’s safer, easier, and smarter wrt our situations. again, i know that’s complicated because of how tight-knit our families are traditionally, and how much we may want to remain close to them for cultural reasons. at some point it may make it difficult to hide (my mom started suspecting i liked girls before i even knew i liked girls. it was scary). but like, i’m 27 and i’m still not out to most of my family (my dad doesn’t even know). it doesn’t stop me from being a proud albanian lesbian, or from having and maintaining a happy & healthy relationship with my girlfriend. it doesn’t have to stop you either

and…. i think that’s really all i can say. sorry for taking so long and also for talking so much. i hope i could help even a little, or if not, at least offer some reassurance. it’s a good sign that you’re reaching out and trying to get a handle on your feelings, so keep at it, and remember you’re not alone out there. there are so many of us in the world living our lives and trying to build a future and support each other. i really think you’ll be fine

#asks #blog chatter #long post

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singledarkshade · 6 years ago

Text

Small Miracle

Part Six It had been a stressful morning.

Jonas hadn’t had a good night. For some reason he couldn’t sleep which meant Rip didn’t sleep so both were grumpy to begin with. Rip then burned the toast he’d been making for his son’s breakfast. Since there was no more bread left Jonas had a tantrum.

Jonas wouldn’t get dressed then he crawled under his covers refusing to come out.

By the time they reached the lab Rip had a headache and Jonas was walking in a sullen silence.

“Okay,” Rip stated sharply, “You will stay here with Caitlin while I work. You will be good for her or there will be no movie night with Cisco or visit to the park. Understand.”

Jonas mumbled something.

“What was that?” Rip demanded.

Jonas looked up at him before replying sullenly, “Yes, Daddy.”

Rip nodded and gave Jonas his bag who then slunk over to the beanbag in the corner.

“I take it someone has been in trouble this morning,” Caitlin noted watching Rip rub his eyes tiredly.

Rip nodded, “Please do not sneak him any sweets or treats. He has a snack in his bag and that is all he is allowed.”

“I’ll try,” Caitlin winced, “But he’s so cute.”

Rip frowned at her as she looked at him innocently.

“Please Caitlin,” he sighed, “I need to be able to discipline him. And I need you not to undermine me.”

She patted his arm, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

Cisco and Sara were waiting for him when he entered the vault.

“You look like hell,” Sara greeted him.

Rip glowered at her, “And good morning to you, Sara,” he turned to the other occupant of the room, “We need bread.”

“I’ll add it to my list,” Cisco replied, “Are we ready?”

“Gideon?” Rip called to the AI within the room, “Are you ready?”

“I am, Captain Hunter,” Gideon Two replied, “All systems are functioning fully and I am ready to make the transfer.”

Rip gave a slight smile before he activated the communicator, “Gideon?”

“I am here, Captain,” his Gideon replied.

“Okay, Sara you and Cisco go to the Waverider,” Rip told them, “I will stay here to perform the transfer.”

Cisco nodded and started out, excited to get onto the Time Ship once more while Sara gave Rip a long look.

“You do look like hell,” she told him again, “Is everything okay?”

Rip sighed, “It was a bad night followed by an even worse morning. I just need to get the transfer done. Once I get Gideon here she can help me make an actual plan and look for a place I can get Jonas settled properly.”

Sara clapped his arm before she left him. Rip leaned against the wall waiting for them trying not to fall asleep, he just wanted to crawl back into his bed and sleep for several hours but unfortunately he didn’t have that option.

“Okay,” Sara’s voice came making him jump, “We’re here.”

Rip took a deep breath, “Thank you, Sara. Cisco, are you prepared?”

“Just finishing the connections,” Cisco replied, “And...done.”

Checking the information on the screens in front of him Rip pushed a hand through his hair and whispered a silent prayer before he activated the transfer.

Transfer Complete.

The words flashed on the screen in front of him and Rip took a slight breath.

“Gideon?” he called.

Silence answered him and fear began to set in, she should have answered instantly.

“Gideon?” Rip called again, desperately praying he hadn’t destroyed his best friend.

“I am here, Captain Hunter,” the avatar appeared before he could panic anymore, “I apologise for the delay but it took me a little longer than expected to settle into my new residence.”

He let out a slight laugh of relief, “Gideon. I was getting worried.”

“You should know by now, Captain that I am always with you,” she told him, “Please check with Mr Ramon and ensure the new Gideon is installed within the Waverider.”

“Of course,” he smiled slightly at her before opening the channel again, “Sara, Cisco, how did everything go on your end?”

“That was so cool,” Cisco enthused, “Gideon is settling in. What about your side?”

Rip sighed in relief, “Gideon is here.”

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

Caitlin watched Jonas sitting in his beanbag looking decidedly glum. The book he had been reading sat in his lap and he hadn’t turned the page in the past fifteen minutes.

Caitlin was an only child so had no experience with kids since she had been one but for some reason Jonas seemed to like her. Having seen the picture of his mother she thought it might be because she had a similar hair colour or maybe it was because she was the only woman he’d spent any time with here.

“Are you reading that?” Caitlin asked softly not able to take how miserable the little boy looked any longer.

Jonas looked up at her and shook his head.

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” she knelt beside him.

A small tear slid down his cheek, “Daddy is mad at me.”

“Maybe a little,” Caitlin admitted, “But from what I understand you didn’t make life easy for him this morning.”

Jonas sniffed.

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” Caitlin asked.

The little boy threw his arms around her and began to cry. Surprised she began to rock him as he held onto her tightly.

“I miss Mummy,” he sobbed in her ear, “But I don’t want Daddy to know I’m sad because he misses her too.”

“Oh sweetie,” Caitlin soothed gently stroking his back, “He knows you miss your mom and that you will be sad at times. That doesn’t mean you can act the way you did this morning. Your dad is doing his best to look after you and he needs you to help him.”

Jonas sniffed wiping his nose on his sleeve making Caitlin wince and grab a box of tissues from the desk for him.

“I’m sorry,” the little boy murmured.

Caitlin wrapped her arms around him again, “I’m not the one you should be apologising to.”

Jonas nodded sadly.

“Why don’t I check if your dad is nearly finished,” Caitlin suggested, “Okay?”

He nodded again and Caitlin pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.

Rip smiled at Gideon relieved she was here before it hit him suddenly that this was it. He was now staying here permanently.

“Captain,” Gideon spoke up, “This is for the best. You know that.”

Rip sighed, “I do but it’s an odd feeling to know I’m staying in one place,” he took a long breath, “I need to take Jonas for lunch then we can connect Sara to the Waverider. Once I’ve done that we’ll work on getting you connected to Star Labs and hopefully wherever I find to live.”

“Captain,” Gideon said as a drawer opened, “These might help in the time being.”

Rip looked in the drawer and smiled. The small transport discs would allow him to take Gideon out of the vault. He found a strap so he could carry her on his wrist as well ensuring that she connected to the phone Caitlin had given him.

“Rip,” Caitlin’s voice came, “Are you almost finished? Jonas wants to see you.”

“I’m just on my way back,” Rip replied, “Has he been good?”

“He’s been fine,” Caitlin told him, “But he needs you right now.”

Rip grimaced worried, “I’m on my way.”

Caitlin smiled in relief when Rip walked into the room. Jonas was out his seat in an instant and ran to him.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” the little boy whispered wrapping his arms around Rip’s legs, “I’m sorry.”

Rip lifted the boy into his arms, “Its okay. We both had a bit of a bad morning.”

Jonas sniffled as he huddled against Rip’s shoulder, “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too,” Rip soothed, “Want to tell me what was wrong?”

Jonas didn’t look him in the eye, “I was dreaming of Mummy and I woke up she wasn’t here. I didn’t want to tell you because you would be sad.”

“You can always tell me anything,” Rip assured him, “I won’t be sad that you dream of your Mummy. I dream of her.”

Jonas hugged him again, “I’m sorry I was bad.”

Rip kissed the top of his head and just held him for a few minutes. Looking up at Caitlin he mouthed a quick ‘thank you’.

“Hey,” Rip pulled back from Jonas, “I’ve got something to show you.”

Jonas wiped his eyes, “What is it.”

Holding out his wrist so Jonas could see the grey circle attached he called, “Gideon.”

“Yes, Captain Hunter,” the AI replied, the avatar appearing on the disc.

“Wow,” Jonas cried, “Gideon, you’re here.”

“I am staying with you and your father, Master Hunter,” she told him.

Jonas grinned at his father, “That’s great.”

“How about we go get some lunch?” Rip suggested. Jonas nodded and Rip turned to Caitlin, “Do you want to join us?”

Caitlin smiled back at him, “I think a father-son only lunch might be a better idea.”

“Let them know I’ll be back soon,” Rip asked, smiling as Caitlin nodded before he and Jonas headed out for some lunch.

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

There were many more people around when Rip and Jonas returned from lunch. Barry was arguing good-naturedly with Cisco about something while Caitlin and the West family stood around jumping in every so often.

“Mr Hunter,” Joe West greeted him.

“Detective,” Rip nodded back as Jonas ran over to Caitlin giving her a hug.

“No,” Barry whizzed in between them, “We’re trying to teach Rip how to be part of a family. Joe this is Rip. Rip this is Joe,” he patted both their shoulders, “Family use first names.”

Joe laughed heartily at that, “Rip it is then.”

“My name is Jonas,” the boy said suddenly coming over to them, “That starts with Joe.”

The adults all laughed slightly as Joe crouched down to the boy’s eye level, “Well my full name is Joseph so my friends all call me Joe.”

Jonas frowned in thought, “Can I call you Joe?”

“How about calling him Uncle Joe?” Barry suggested before Rip could say anything.

“I like that,” Joe told him, “What do you think, Jonas?”

“I’ve never had an uncle before,” Jonas said quietly, “It was always just me and Mummy when Daddy was away.”

“Hey little dude,” Cisco moved to him, “Now you have Joe, Barry, me and Harry when he gets back to be your uncles.”

“What about me?” Wally demanded.

Cisco shrugged, “Big cousin.”

Rip began to laugh at the look on Wally’s face at that.

“We haven’t had a chance to say hello properly,” Iris said walking over to them before her brother could complain, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you Miss...” Rip quickly changed his greeting at Barry’s cough, “Iris.”

She gave him a smile before she offered her hand to Jonas, “And it’s nice to meet you too, Jonas. I’m Iris and I hope we’ll be friends.”

Jonas nodded, “You’re pretty. Like Caitlin.”

“I love him,” Iris looked up at Rip who was smiling proudly at his little boy.

The boy grinned and bounced over to where Caitlin was sitting.

“Sara’s waiting for you,” Cisco told him, “We’ve got Jonas until you’re done.”

Rip looked over to where his son had abandoned him and was being cooed over by the two women.

“He’s fine,” Cisco noted, “You’ve got some work to do.”

Sara sat nervously in the Captain’s chair on the Waverider as Rip worked on some controls. They had decided that once they performed the connection they would allow it a day then the Legends would head back to work.

She could see Rip was a bit twitchy about the whole thing but she understood why. He was gifting them his ship, his home and giving up something he loved to do.

Even though he had lied to get their help originally, and Sara had happily smacked him a few times during their time together, she was going to miss him. Rip was brilliant in many ways, his knowledge of time and history was exceptional but he also knew the Waverider’s and Gideon’s systems better than anyone.

“Are you ready?” Rip asked softly.

Sara took a deep breath, “Yes.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Rip assured her, “In fact connecting to Gideon was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.”

She looked at him and nodded, “Do it.”

It felt like her entire body was slowly being warmed as the connection was created. There was no way to fully describe the sensations she was feeling but Sara suddenly understood Rip’s intensity regarding Gideon so much more.

“Wow,” she gasped looking up at the man standing there, “You feel this all the time?”

“It will settle after a while,” Rip shrugged, “Gideon and I have been together for many years so our connection is deeper. You’ll get used to it. Now all you have to do is set up your codes, Gideon will have a list of what these are needed for. Make them things that you won’t accidentally say ever. I used random phrases or word sequences.”

“Okay.”

“I will leave you to it,” Rip told her, “I want to spend some time with Jonas after this morning.”

Sara nodded before calling, “Rip?”

“Yes?”

“You’re doing well with him,” she told him, “He’s going to be fine so remember to look after yourself too.”

He smiled at her, “I’ll do my best.”

#fic #legends of tomorrow #rip hunter #jonas hunter #gideon #the flash #cisco ramon #caitlin snow #barry allen

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timeoutforthee · 6 years ago

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Like It or Not-Chapter 11

Taglist: @itsausernamenotafobsong, @sea-blue-child, @iaminmultiplefandoms, @princeanxious, @uwillbeefoundtonight, @zaidiashipper, @arandompasserby, @levyredfox3, @falsett0, @error-i-dunno-what-went-wrong, @scrapbookofsketches, @podcastsandcoffee, @helloisthisusernametaken, @amuthefunperson, @michealawithana, @yamihatarou, @heck-im-lost, @unlikelynightmareconnoisseur, @idkaurl

Summary: Logan, Patton, Roman, and Virgil are all struggling in their recovery. Their doctors, Thomas Sanders and Emile Picani think they can help each other out.

Aka Group Therapy AU

Trigger Warnings: denial, unsupportive people, invalidating feelings

Read it on AO3!

“Roman! A word?”

Roman turns away from the door and walks back to his teacher, Mr. Hurley. “Yes?”

“I noticed you weren’t at auditions yesterday,” he starts and Roman takes a deep breath. Yesterday, while all his friends were singing their heart out, he was in therapy with Dr. Picani. And during therapy, he had made a decision. One his drama teacher-slash-director would not appreciate.

“Yeah, about that....,” his teacher raises an eyebrow, “I’m not doing Beauty and the Beast.”

“...what?”

“You know, I’ve been having all sorts of health issues lately, and I think it would be best if I stepped back for a while,” Roman recites, perfectly, just as he and his therapist practiced.

“You look fine to me!” his teacher says, which is one of the responses they had planned for.

“Not all illnesses are visible.”

Mr. Hurley sighs and rubs his temples.

“What am I supposed to do for the Beast?”

Roman winces. He knows his director doesn’t mean anything by it, that it might even be a compliment, considering it was the lead. But having someone in his life immediately assume he would be a beastly, ugly monster is not doing wonders for his self esteem.

If it was up to him, he’d be Lumiere. But lately, no one seemed to ask what he wanted.

“I...don’t know?”

“Do you know how many men are in the theater department?”

“Six-”

“Six!” his teacher cries at the same time. “We already had to make the narrator a female role. That leaves seven male roles, and now I only have five actors?”

And there it is. The crushing guilt he was trying to avoid.

“I’m sorry,” Roman’s voice is surprisingly soft, “I just...I can’t.”

No matter what he wants, how badly he wants this, he can’t have all those people staring at him. He can’t make himself dress up as a terrifying, ugly beast. He can’t have people wait the whole play for a dashing prince and then just be...himself.

“You know, this could have been a big role for you. It would look great on a college application.”

Roman shakes his head, his voice failing. His teacher sighs.

“Fine.”

When Roman walks in, fifteen minutes late, he looks every bit as princely as he likes to pretend to be, except for the red around his eyes.

The other three exchange glances. Thomas smiles.

“Glad you could make it, Roman.”

“Ah, well, you know, you can never predict traffic!”

“Nice try,” Thomas’s smile never falters, “But try again.”

“Why, what do you mean?” He can see Virgil raising his eyebrows out of the corner of his eyes. Patton is looking at him in concern, and Logan is staring at him like he can see right through him.

“You know, part of group therapy is being open with each other, being vulnerable, even with emotions we find uncomfortable.”

“I, uh,” Roman sits down, “It’s just been a rough day.”

“We thought so, considering you didn’t show up for lunch,” Virgil says. Roman shoots him a glare. He couldn’t have, like, five minutes?

“What happened?” Thomas asks.

“I decided not to do the winter musical, which the theater department had some strong opinions about. And my dad and I got into a fight. It’s really not a big deal, I’m just being my overdramatic self,” Roman tries to brush it off.

“Roman, I think you may have trouble with invalidating your feelings.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you tend to brush off your feelings by saying you’re being over dramatic, or that they’re not important. But any feelings you experience are very important to you.”

“Well, sure, I guess, but that doesn’t mean they should be...right?”

“Let me ask you this,” Thomas continues, “Why do you think they’re unimportant?”

“I was crying in a bathroom for ten minutes over not being in a play, doc, I think in the grand scheme of things, it’s not going to matter.”

“I think that’s a little unfair,” Patton speaks up, “I mean, depending on how big of a picture we’re looking at, we could argue everything is meaningless. But that doesn’t mean it truly is. Our feelings in the moment matter in the moment.”

“Also,” Virgil says, “I haven’t known you long, but even I can see how much Theater means to you. You’re giving up that passion, that escape from the real world. It’s a good step for you, and you have to do it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to. Of course you’re upset.”

“That’s true,” Thomas says, “And plus, you said earlier that it wasn’t just that, it was the negative backlash from your director, and also a fight with your father-”

“Did I say that?”

“You did,” his therapist responds, “What was that about?”

“My dad was hoping that without theater, I could try and take up sports again,” Roman says, “And I couldn’t tell him the real reason why I couldn’t, so I just told him I couldn’t, but that wasn’t good enough for him and it just…” and, oh God, he’s getting choked up again, so he just cuts himself off, with a “today has just not been my day.”

“I think that’s a bit of an understatement,” Logan says.

“And that brings us back to undermining our feelings,” Thomas says.

“Okay, I get it,” Roman rubs at his eyes, a little harder than necessary.

“Why do you feel like you couldn’t tell him the real reason?” Thomas asks, a little gentler this time.

Roman laughs. “He wouldn’t believe me.”

“Wouldn’t believe what?”

“That I have an eating disorder. I eat so many fruits and vegetables, and I work out so much, my strength was the only thing that made him proud-” Roman’s mouth snaps shut before he starts sobbing again. This is ridiculous.

“Do any of you have a similar experience?” Thomas asks, “Patton, you mentioned before that your mom caught you, so she knows about your eating disorder. What about you two?”

“My parents do not know,” Logan says and Roman looks over at him, “My mom...actually asks me for diet tips.”

Thomas doesn’t even try to hide that he’s writing that down. That is concerning. “And your dad?”

“My dad has this ridiculous notion that psychology and mental illnesses aren’t ‘real,’ that it’s a new phenomenon instead of a legitimate medical field. I haven’t told him the specifics of why I need to come here, and he’s never asked,” Logan’s hands go to his glasses, like they usually do when he’s nervous, “And I intend to keep it that way.”

“What about you, Virgil?”

Virgil sighs, “I don’t know what Violet knows. She just...sent me to a therapist one day. I tried to tell her I didn’t need it, but she wouldn’t listen, and eventually I came here. She brought up my eating habits during our family session, so I guess that’s why. She makes me eat something at dinner, usually an apple, so I guess she knows. But we don’t talk about it.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, I don’t necessarily want to talk to her.”

“Why?” Thomas keeps pressing.

“I don’t really want to talk to anyone.”

“You say that, and yet you’re here.”

“Not for long if you keep questioning me.”

Thomas holds up his hands. “Okay. If you’re done sharing, that’s fine. Originally, today I wanted to talk to you guys about what’s holding you back from recovery. We talked about what was motivating you all to move forward, but we need to look at any toxicity in life and see if we’re able to cut it off. Does that make sense?”

They all nod.

“So would you say your environments are contributing more to your recovery or your disorder?”

They all go silent for moment, thinking.

“I mean, I think it’s fair to say my environment is great. My mom has been nothing but supportive,” Patton says. And she has. She’s been great, group therapy has been great, his doctors have been great, the only problem is him and this constant empty feeling in his chest. He almost feels bad. Apparently, Virgil picks up on it, because he jumps in.

“Violet’s trying her best, I guess,” he says, “She’s taking me to these appointments and she took me in, which is already more than a lot of people would do.” It’s just me.

“And that doesn’t invalidate your experiences,” Thomas reassures them, “It just means we have to look somewhere else to find your triggers.”

“My family is not triggering,” Roman rushes to say, but he’s a little too late and a little too unsure.

“Roman, let’s jump back a bit. You said you felt your emotions were unimportant. Have your parents ever said they were unimportant?”

“No,” he says immediately, then, “Maybe?”

“Which isn’t ideal. I don’t think it’s just you invalidating your feelings, I think it’s your whole family. And I’m afraid, and Emile’s afraid, that it might make you feel like you’re unimportant.”

Roman isn’t sure what to do. He knows he should straighten his back and flick his hands up and smile and reassure him that he doesn’t have to worry about that. He should defend his family, because they’ve done so much for him. They only wants what’s best for him.

But he’s stuck. The words aren’t coming up and he can’t raise his head to actually look at his therapist.

Thomas gives it a minute to sink in, then turns to Logan.

“And the fact that your parents don’t understand, that they consider your habits healthy even, is very concerning. It’s hard to step back and recognize that what you’re doing is unhealthy when everyone around you is saying it’s fine.”

Logan nods, thinking. If he had never met with the doctor, if he had never met with Thomas, where would he be now? Still delusional, not even recognizing the signs?

“This is such an important topic, and one you guys need to be aware of. I’m going to put a little star next to it, so you can continue talking about it with Dr. Picani,” Dr. Sanders says, “But we’re out of time for today. Until next time, guys.”

Roman tries to subtly speed walk down the hallway, but the other three catch up to him, anyway.

“So?” Virgil asks.

“So what?” Maybe acting clueless will work.

“So why did you skip lunch today?”

“And where were you during gym?” Logan asks.

“My director caught me right before I went to lunch,” Roman says, defeated, “Our talk wasn’t the greatest, and I just...couldn’t eat right then.”

“But you are coming back tomorrow?” Patton asks. After all, he’s never stopped his behaviors, why should he expect Roman to quit immediately? And really, they all know that. They’ve all had a good streak of eating decent meals for two weeks, but it was only a matter of time before someone had a bad day.

“Yeah,” Roman says, straightening up and looking Patton in the eyes, “I will.” And he means it. He doesn’t want to. But he will.

#sanders sides fic #sanders sides fanfic #roman sanders #sanders sides #THIS TOOK FOR FUCKING EVER OH MY GOD #like it or not #my writing

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ganymedesclock · 7 years ago

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I always feel bad for getting angry at things that are clearly fandom jokes, but at the same time, if the jokes are not something the character would actually do (or an understandable hyperbole of how they actually are) it just... sets my teeth on edge and this may have inspired a lengthy post about Keith’s childhood and fan depictions of that I have seen.

Like. Canon Krolia is established as someone who plans things out. She’s smart, a strategist- she has to be, because she’s a career spy with a long tenure under one of the most dangerous people in the empire. Remember, we were introduced to Warlord Ranveig by Lance commenting that “I’m guessing you don’t get that title by being a good person”, during the Kral Zera he murdered someone onscreen more obviously than we’ve seen before and flung their body aside, and was experimenting on a living creature with quintessence.

Krolia has to have a pretty ironclad set of nerves to, day in and day out, for years, lie through her teeth to this guy, undermine him, and feed intel back to his enemies, her allies. Especially since, while we don’t see the two of them together, Ranveig was like four times her size.

And that’s reflected by her behavior within the episode- “I’m guessing Ranveig is dead, since Commander Trugg is attacking my base,” she says, with complete neutrality like she’s discussing the weather report.

This is also a trained military personnel who’s received a pretty darn long and comprehensive training in the use of a sword. That is to say, someone who has a very keen idea of how this is not a toy, must be used carefully, and is very dangerous, because she regularly uses its danger pointy bit to end the lives of other things.

So the No Fun Humdrum Clockie is here to say: there’s no way in hell someone with those kind of credentials would leave her weapon where a baby could get it, much less put it directly into his lacking-motor-dexterity hands. There’s no way someone as smart as Krolia would look at her kid trying to eat his own foot because he doesn’t realize it’s attached to him yet and go “hmm, what should I give him, this nice safe baby rattle or this deadly weapon that could cause him grievous injury?”

And part of the reason this makes me mad is the assumption that Krolia’s otherness- her being an alien- would make her inept at being a parent without evidence that this is actually part of her experience. The show illustrates that it’s really not hard in this universe for sentient life to understand each other and most of their needs are similar.

It’s frustrating to insinuate that Krolia, as someone smart enough to operate as a high-stakes deep-cover spy, can’t understand how babies work and would just bash ahead cheerfully endangering her son when that’s something she tacitly refuses to do.

It’s frustrating when sympathetic galra are so often framed as baffled or incompetent- like if they aren’t specifically placental mammals themselves they must have no idea what a placenta is! (Just like humans clearly have no idea what the hell an egg is because we don’t hatch from eggs, right?)

Even though the galra in this situation would actually be better set up to understand or, at bare minimum, not be thrown that far by humans being unlike them because the humans in this setting are only just meeting aliens for the first time now- the galra have met hundreds of other sentient beings in this time. Even if you have a bunch of headcanons about humans being different from galra, it runs a pretty high risk of arrogance to act like humans are somehow more different and more special than any other sentient race that the galra can’t possibly understand us.

And when I look at something that’s just supposed to be funny like a picture of Krolia carrying Keith in a baby harness with her sword sheathed in the front of the harness I know that’s not consciously and willfully what the artist is thinking, but it’s still... frustrating, very frustrating, because... child endangerment is not funny.

Depicting a smart perceptive character who is shown to be worried about her child’s welfare and caring about how he’s actually feeling rather than what she thinks he should be feeling, as a negligent parent more concerned with her cultural standards or expectations-

(“Why is my baby so short, and not like a galra? I was definitely not prepared for this, somehow expected that having a partner that’s not a galra at all would still mean my children have stereotypical galra phenotypes”)

-than the actual reality of her child’s situation? Is not funny. It’s just frustrating. And it’s frustrating that most of the times I go into Krolia’s tag, that’s a sizable chunk of the content- depicting Krolia as a Wacky Incompetent Space Mom who doesn’t know how babies work.

Would Krolia probably be a little more militaristic than the average soccer mom? Yeah, but look at the actual reality of her situation. Where’s Keith who grows up in this comfortable environment, and as an elementary schooler knows how to wriggle out of people’s grip and a couple of ways to break out of restraints, and he’s really good at hide ‘n seek, and he has a toy, cloth-wrapped dagger that’s weighted so he can get used to the reach of it but soft-edged so he doesn’t cut himself or poke his eye out because he’s not ready for a real one, not yet.

Because Krolia wouldn’t just be idly going at this with an expectation that her Knife Boy must grow up to be the pride of his Sword Family. Krolia’s raising Keith, however much time she was allowed to spend with him, would be tinted hard with a lens of, she’s not going to have all the time in the world to make Keith safe.

Because she’s gonna know from the start that Keith is half-galra and the empire is not safe for half-galra, it’s barely safe for full galra, and Keith’s the son of a rebel so he’s gonna learn what all Blades do, he’s gonna learn to hide.

And frankly? Keith’s dream of his father in s2e8 carries that sort of vibe. His father talks very gently and carefully in language that a young child would easily understand (which is where Keith’s memories of him stem from) but also talks about staying hidden, where the advancing enemy army can’t find them.

Keith didn’t have a Normal Suburban Childhood with a white picket fence, and he didn’t have a negligent sitcom childhood, because he had parents that loved him, but his parents were a little more worried about whether or not the lurking space empire would come after them and kill them all than they were about “our baby is gonna be a doctor!”

So yeah, the first foster parent that got Keith after he lost his father probably was more than a little concerned that he’d been raised by conspiracy theorists or some kind of cult because why does this kid have a clear sense of what to do if he was kidnapped. Who taught him how to get out of an arm-bar choke, he’s all of eight and should have a strangely committed interest in dinosaurs or dolls or something else normal.

That’s not to say nothing funny ever happened in Keith’s childhood. It’s not to say Krolia never held up her baby boy who was staring lovingly into her eyes and asked herself “what the hell am I doing,” because she’s used to high stakes, she’s used to danger, but she’s not used to having this incredibly vulnerable tiny squishy thing, and bringing him into the world she’s put him where her enemies can reach him, and he’s not ready for the universe, but he can’t be ready, and she’s used to adults that choose and willingly take those risks and not a toddler who have no idea why anyone would hate his mommy or want her- and him, and their whole family- to die.

Where’s Krolia stressing out because she thought she was ready for this but Keith is so very small and so very soft, and that’s how all babies are, sure, but they’ve never been her baby before.

And frankly, given my reads on Krolia and her partner, there were probably more than a few times Keith was upset and Krolia sorta awkwardly handed him off to his dad because oh no, those are complicated emotions, how do you handle those.

Just- there could be all kinds of funny things in Keith’s childhood, that are, I think a lot funnier than “Krolia why does our child have a knife”.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Keith #Krolia #Dad Kogane #readmore

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parachutingkitten · 6 years ago

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Season 3

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I am going to be applying the concept of criticism to a TV show you presumably love and adore as much as I do. If you do not want your idea that the show is immaculate to be challenged, I would not advise reading past this point.

ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: This post contains an insane amount of PIXAL

Mood for this season: This is fine... No... WAIT! WHAT?! NO!!!!!! WHAT IS HAPPENING??!!!!!!!?!?!

You don’t need to, but if you are interested, and haven’t seen my analysis of past seasons, you can find those here:

Pilot

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3! This should be fun. I remember when rebooted was announced, it was the biggest deal, my mom was analyzing the announcement poster. And then it came out, or at least the episodes popped up online in some random language. It was real bazaar. Fun fact, the one and only time I have ever pulled an all-nighter was to watch those episodes. I will never do it again, it was NOT worth it. Anyway, my initial impressions of the season... I hated it. I was pissed they killed off Dr. Julian, I was pissed they killed Zane, I was pissed that they gave him a token girlfriend, and I was pissed that because of her, my boy couldn't do spinjitzu anymore.

Now, if you know anything about me, you know that none of these opinions stand anymore. So, what happened? Well, I gave a shout out to the music department during season 1, and for this season I have to acknowledge the voice acting. Once the English versions of the episodes came out, I fell in love with all of it. Brent Miller, dude, props for this season. I watch his youtube videos and it's always hard for me to imagine him doing emotional stuff, but he does some DAMN good work this season. Also, Jennifer Hayward turned Pixal from my least favorite character ever created to my favorite. I am in LOVE with her voicework here! Also, Lee Tockar with Borg does a great job of making this character who really could have been a rehash of Julian his own unique and quirky character and, especially as the seasons progress, finds his place with the character. Richard Newman as Cryptor, yes, please! His voice is gorgeous! He makes Cryptor sound like he is having the time of his life tormenting Zane and I love it! Basically, the droids really shine this season. BUT... just because the voice acting is good does NOT mean that the writing is any good, whatsoever.

Plot

Yeah... there is a reason I hated it the first time I saw it. A lot of this dialogue is clumsy. A lot of the plot points are a bit on the nose. The whole idea for this season seems really strange. After they defeat the Overlord their next big battle should obviously be... the Overlord... again? And this time ice kills him. I mean, not to undermine Zane's sacrifice or anything, but wasn't the big deal last season that Lloyd was the only one who could stop him, and isn't the deal this season that the Overlord is back but even more powerful? How does any of this work? I have a way I think it might have worked a bit better, but I'll get to that when I cover the climax. There's a LOT of rocky stuff and it's all way to complicated, and I'll get to most of it later in the post, but one thing I would like to applaud this season on is the connections it ties to the previous seasons. As weird as the space episode was, it acknowledged a part of the Ninjago canon a lot of us were wondering about and managed to work it into a compelling mystery. This season addresses a lot of stuff from the past seasons and weaves it into the current plot in a way that makes all of these seasons feel like a part of the same connected universe and line of events.

Characters

So, all the ninja are teachers at the beginning of this... it further confuses the ninja age debate, but aside from that it's... fine.

The characters here I feel all get a bit more cartoony, and lean into definite rolls they play this season. Kai is afraid of technology this season, that is his character. Nya Jay and Cole have their thing this season, that is their character. Lloyd and Garnadon do... whatever they do this season. I feel like the plot kind of forgets about them for a bit. But I feel like everyone else in the season sacrifices some time so we can give some to Zane, which he deserves, but I don't think you had to sacrifice the complexity of the time they had in order to accomplish that.

Cyrus Borg (and Dr. Julien)

I'm going to say it. Dr. Julian had to die. Cyrus Borg and Dr. Julien cannot co-exist. This show has way too many "tech people" first it was Jay, and then his parents are there too, Nya gets the roll later on, Zane takes that up for a while after he finds out he's a robot, and then of course, his dad is going to be a tech genius, and when you want to add another tech genius to you regular canon, and it's not a hip young cool dude, it's a dorky maybe old man in a wheel chair, someone else has to go. Dr. Julien was set up as incredibly old already, so that would be an easy choice. Plus, think if Zane had his dad supporting him through all this? I think his growth would be less meaningful. Yes, it sucks that he just got him back, and now we just barely lose him, yes it sucks that it doesn't weigh down on Zane more throughout the season, yes it sucks that he's dead. He was an adorable crazy old man and we all loved him to death, and everything with Zane made my heart melt. But on a level it's kind of nice to know that he most likely died with his son by his side, quietly enjoying the last days of his life in peace. But hey, let's not dwell on what we lost, let's focus on what we got out of it; Cyrus Borg. I friggin love this man! He's smart, uncontrollably smart. He has crazy ideas he's not afraid to test, not necessarily in a mad scientist crazy sort of way, but in a "why not?" Sort of way. I feel like he embodies the times when someone is like "how does that work?" And someone else goes "SCIENCE!" That's Cyrus Borg. He's filled with so much hope even though the world keeps giving him total crap for doing it. That little half-smile he does just perfectly sums it all up. Like seriously, let’s admire how much this man has been through, the responsibility on his shoulders, and how well he is mentally despite all that. He has some serious willpower and optimism. I can admire that.

Pixal

Alright. My favorite character in the show... I hope I do her justice. Pixal is not particularly well written, and the series has a habit of completely ignoring her for large chunks of time but, I think I admire Pixal more for what she stands for to me personally.

I don't dislike strong females. They're fine. But I am not really the tomboy type. I am the girliest girly girl in the world. I grew up watching princess movies, I wanted to be one, I still want to, I love the color pink, I love wearing dresses, I like being a feminine person, that is who I am. I hate the stereotype that modern TV shows have of masculinizing the girls in their show in order to claim that they're "strong female characters" just because they can beat people up and hate wearing makeup and dresses and stuff because then I feel bad about myself in the process. You'd better bet I threw something at the screen when Nya said she didn't like wearing dresses. Girl, you used to wear a dress on the daily!

Anyway, this season is where Nya turns to form my female representation in the show, into just another whiney girl who "don't need no man" and wants to be completely independent of boys and romance and yet she wants to be like the boys by excelling at the same stuff they do. But then we get Pixal. She is FEMININE don't you doubt it for a single moment, she is a WOMAN and she wears dresses and falls in love with a handsome guy and she supports him. What's wrong with that? But in that, she still has her individual role to play in the team. She's sassy, and she's yet again another a tech genius, but it more comes from her nature as a robot, and what she can control because of it. The scene with her and Kai really exemplifies what I mean to say, she's still strong in her own ways. She keeps the boys in check, something extremely important, especially with THESE boys. She doesn't have to be destroying mass amounts of nindroids to be a good character, she just has to make the pathway in order to do it. She's the control behind the destruction.

But let's not forget that she's a robot. Practically just born. She's young and naive and she doesn't understand her emotions and I LOVE it! Her dynamic with Zane is simply beautiful. Zane has been looking for someone his whole life who understands him, and he gets his dad, but no one else in the world can experience what he is experiencing directly, and then comes Pixal. I think Zane sums it up really well in decoded (Ikr, decoded?) When he says she taught him what it meant to be a robot and he teaches her what it means to be human. There's a great duality there. He finds someone who understands him, but they both have their own issues they need individual help understanding. And of course, they would understand each other! She has half his heart! Which opens up a lot of cool dynamics. I kind of wish Zane and Pixal had a force connection sort of thing and they could feel each other's pain and sense their emotions and stuff.

Anyway, because Pixal goes through the process of understanding her emotions, it does make sense that in the end, her emotions would consume her. Zane gave her... in essence, life and so it makes sense that it would completely shatter her when he was gone. I think the reason I connect with them so much is because, again, I am the most basic of girls, so finding a nice caring, overprotective, but not in a pushy sort of way guy with some emotional issues for you to heal is the kind of life I fantasize for myself, and Zane and Pixal are the quintessential sweet couple that loves, and listens to each other. It's just... love. Even though the situation might be messy or complex, the love is always constant, just pure and absolute. I feel like of all the couples in the show, Pixal and Zane are the only ones who really NEED each other. Jay needs Nya no doubt, but I don't feel she really needs him. Kai and Skylor are their own mess. The garmawusako triangle doesn't even make sense. Cole needs cake, sure, but cake is inanimate and hence doesn't need him. Pixal and Zane lean on each other constantly, and if we don't see how that effects them season 9, I will be pissed.

Romance

I know I just talked about Pixane, but I'm going to keep talking. The beginnings of this relationship are really interesting, mainly because at first one of them doesn't have emotions... which I guess means Zane was in love with an inanimate object? Whatever. In the scene on the train, you really can tell that Zane is kind of confused, but he's trying his best to express his feelings. I also love that all the other ninja already know he's got a crush on her even though he hasn't spoken a word about it to them. He's gotten a pretty good grasp on his other emotions, but he has never once encountered anything romantic before, and I don't think Dr. Julien necessarily built him with falling in love in mind, so it makes sense that he would flounder a bit in his efforts, but because Pixal first experiences emotions with Zane, she doesn't care about any of that, so in the process they just end up being perfect. I love these two to death. I could go on, but I'm going to stop myself.

The Triangle

No. Nothing about this makes sense. The biggest problem I have with this whole thing is that Cole has like... zero reason to be interested in Nya. His reasoning for suddenly liking her, if you can even call it that, is that a robot told him he should, and even then I don't feel like he likes her, he just wants to annoy Jay. It's SO out of character and there's no thought behind it. I can buy Nya second-guessing her relationship with Jay, but Cole just going along with it without question? It's so strange. And there's no reason. The show even addresses that there's no reason for this. When Nya has to cut a blue or black wire, the arguments go

Jay: you're comfortable with blue

Cole: Black... is not blue...

What? What kind of rationale is that? And because of this, the Nya independence streak starts and it's the WORST this season. And Jay gets WAY whiney and childish because of all of this, so he turns into this strangely unlikable character, which again eventually gets better. I absolutely hate everything about this love triangle. It doesn't make sense, it feels insincere, and it makes the characters worse for it. Just for that Cole and Jay are my least favorite ninjas for the season. But even then, I have a hard time putting Cole there because he's so out of character, I don't think I can call what was on the screen Cole. I didn't like either of them this season, which is a real shame, because these two have a great dynamic later on.

Villians

Nindroid army. These guys are fun. They don't make much sense in their creation, but they are genuinely intimidating, the thing that comes to mind is when the nindroids are camouflaged, and it turns out they're surrounding the ninja, that was pretty cool, and kind of terrifying. Cryptor is, of course, a standout. You get the sense he enjoys everything he's doing, knows he's better than everyone else and embraces it. He has emotions, right? I mean, he certainly appears to have negative emotions. His voice certainly emotes. Mindroid is amazing, cute and threatening at the same time, neat little backstory, you can tell he's the smartest one in the bunch. These guys just come with a really cool feel to them. When Borg is taken over, and the factory is all dark and shadowy, and there's only red light, that stuff is cool.

The Overlord on the other hand... takes a big step backwards. You get the sense he's pretty weak, the fact that he uses a cane when he's finally physical doesn't help. He's just not nearly as intimidating as he used to be. When he reaches his "final form" and he's pretty much a giant spider, that's pretty cool, but he still looks pretty awkward. Could be better, but for what we got it served its purpose alright

Pythor was a good reveal. Pretty fun, I love how he and Cryptor play off of each other. Not much to say, because he hasn't changed much, but he's pretty cool this season. His voice makes my throat sad.

Wu? Kinda gimmicky. Not much to say, he's brainwashed and he looks kinda scary for a bit... okay. I mean I'm fine with it, nothing to get too excited over or anything.

Climax

So, spoiler alert, Zane dies. It's sad and emotional and the flashback music hits you hard, and the long quiet afterwards is great, idk why Kai is the one to speak at the funeral, but whatever, and then your heart breaks for Pixal, but then that resurrection music kicks in, and the visuals are amazing, and Zane is back! Perfect. Sad to think their moment gets cut off so quickly, but still, it's just perfect. All the right emotions. However... logically... it’s not exactly sound? There would have been a really easy way to fix this though, that way is to set this battle in the digiverse. It requires reworking some things, but Zane would be equipped to kill him in that realm, he could stay there while the others escaped the digiverse, and when he rebuilds himself, it makes sense, because he’s already within the digital realm, able to control whatever is in Borg tower through that connection. Idk, I think it would have sealed up a few plot holes, but this climax still stands up emotionally really well.

Humor

Jay, our biggest source of comedy, is... preoccupied with something, so all of it slides downhill a bit. Not too many great moments this season. Everything just feels a bit more childish.

Favorite line of the season: honestly, I can't remember any one line that stands out. But, there is a visual gag I really like, where Zane uses super speed to enter in a bunch of codes to try and open a door on the nindroid's spaceship, and the code ends up being 1234. That was good.

Drama

Most of the little stuff, the suspense, and tension, the nindroids knocking on the door to Borg tower, that stuff all works really well. The triangle stuff, you know how I feel about that, the death stuff at the end is handled really well. You can generally, throughout the season feel the weight of what they're doing, and that every move they make really matters. It reminds me a lot of the dark island episodes. There's a lit of hanging on by a thread this season, which works really well. There's a good amount of mystery, and I love myself some mystery, it creates some good ATMOSPHERE. Most of the drama really works, except of course the obvious.

Spotlight Episode

So, this is hard. The obvious spotlight is the finale, but I already covered that. There isn't one particular episode that really stands out, there's no episode that did everything wrong, there's no episode that did everything right, there's just the season, so I want to do this piece on the space episode. Because... it gets weird. Like really weird and it could have gone all shades of wrong so easily, but I think they pulled it off.

The important thing they did was acknowledge how crazy it all was. They obeyed the general rules of space, there was some really good tension, and the stakes for everything felt extremely heightened when they were on top of the spaceship, and then... the ending. The ending hits you. They are full on stuck on this planet and there is no obvious way to get out of it. When Cole says the final line... OOOOFF. You feel it. Oh crap! The ninjas are stuck! I don't have all too much to say, I just wanted to acknowledge that this episode didn't turn out a total disaster. It was handled fairly well, and I'm glad it was :)

Misc

So, if Pixal doesn't have emotions before Zane gives her her heart, why would she go rush in to save Zane and be all like "who cares about probability!" That always confused me.

The way Edna says robot love is kinda creepy.

You think Nya ended up cutting the blue wire? Cuz she knew her future with Jay was inevitable? My theory when it came out was that she cut both.

So, all together, a decent season. Some really good stuff, and some really bad stuff. I like this season more than most I think. It had a big task to fulfill, and I think what we got was pretty decent. It had to bring back the series, introduce new characters, attempt to hand the spotlight over to Zane. I just think now that it's set up, we needed a full season with the characters already established where we can dive deeper into what makes these droids tick and what their creators have to go through. There's a lot of potential for another Zane season, or dare I suggest even a Pixal season. One of my personal faves, just cuz the good stuff is so good, though I do find myself skipping past some parts quite frequently.

Thanks for reading through! Next time we’ll be covering the season that spurred a million plot holes- But it’s somehow still my favorite. I think it’ll be a fun one!

Thanks a bunch!

-Maya (Parachutingkitten)

#ninjago #ninjago season one #ninjago rebooted #analysis #parachuterants

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