#the subtext here is that he spent a lot of time reading as a kid because he was usually sick. and he had no one to play with

[sealrock]

send LOST for a scene from my muse's past in which they felt lost, literally or figuratively

ask meme (closed)

(ty for the ask @aethergazing!)

Evander adjusted the wide-brimmed sunhat around his head for the umpteenth time this hour—it was much too big for the boy, on top of being itchy as the straw poked at his scalp. Despite his discomfort, Evander's mother wished to protect the crowns of her children from the noonday summer sun that baked the lands across Thanalan. While the streets of the Sapphire Avenue Exchange were covered with richly decorated tapestries to block out the overwhelming sunrays, the heat was inescapable thanks to the choking amount of people stuffed in the thoroughfare. Evander gripped Patroclus' stuffed tapir close to his chest—not that he was afraid, mind you, he's too old for that—he just didn't want someone to come up and snatch it, for that would mean excessive crying and temper tantrums.

Merchants hollered out their wares at slashed prices from every angle, city criers screamed louder than the merchants about the latest scandal, and carts of imported goods sluggishly made their way through the crowd of wealthy men and impeccably tailored women. Evander never liked coming here because of the crowds, for one could easily get lost if they weren't careful. But today, he and his younger brother Patroclus were pushed out of the house by his mother so that she could prepare his stepfather's nameday dinner. It happened to be one of the rare occasions that they left the safety of the manor without their parents, especially on a day like today. Evander felt well enough to venture out, but that didn't mean he wanted to. He had a mind to fake being sick but decided against it. He outright refused to wear matching outfits with his brother, however. He could dress himself just fine. 

The boys' nanny, Nanaqo Naqo, an otherwise absentminded Lalafellian woman, had her hands full this day as she triple-checked her list of to-do's while keeping her round ruby eyes on her young charges. She kept Evander flanked on her left and Patroclus on her right. Patroclus dutifully held onto Nanaqo's apron strings as he took in the sights and sounds of the thoroughfare with rapt interest, his green eyes sparkling with amazement. The young lad, no taller than Nanaqo and just four winters old, was dressed in light fabric of the finest quality—akin to a little sailor, with a sunhat similar to his elder brother, his thumb hooked in his mouth the whole while. Their mother thought it was adorable, but it was a habit their grandfather tended to frown upon. Evander skinned his nose up at the display, something he learned from his grandfather. Their mother never attempted to 'fix the issue' as his grandfather complained about. She and Evander's stepfather encouraged and enabled Patroclus to never grow up.

Patroclus and Evander may be brothers, but they share nothing in common. Patroclus was too immature to be on Evander's level of intellect, even if Evander had a five-year headstart. Most of Evander's tomes and journals were tarnished by Patroclus' impish desire to scribble on the pages. Before that, Patroclus would chew on the bindings or rip out the parchment as an infant whenever Evander attempted to bond with him. His mother dismissed Evander's frustration by buying him more books; she would offer hollow comfort in saying Patroclus didn't mean it. He was still a baby, after all.

Babies are no longer babies past the first year of life: Evander learned that from his treasured medical textbook, something he keeps out of Patroclus' reach with his grubby hands. Perhaps the material was too advanced for Patroclus; not everyone could be a (self-proclaimed) prodigy like Evander.

Evander blinked and allowed his eyes to refocus. With his head turned downward, Evander landed on his exposed toes between bejeweled sandals, the lavender tapir squeezed between his arms. Nanaqo never noticed the boy's ruminating as she agonized over fresh produce for what felt like half a day. But she was so preoccupied with her shopping list that she failed to realize Patroclus was missing.

Patroclus was missing.

Evander had a few ilms on the woman to see over her yellow hair, his eyes quickly scanning the area for a familiar sunhat. Patroclus was nowhere to be found.

Evander wanted to say something, but the words never came out. His attempts to silently grab his nanny's attention went unanswered with an irritated wave of her hand. He could see it now: his mother practically inconsolable with grief at the news of her youngest son's disappearance, and his stepfather's wish to turn the city inside-out for his only son. The family would be beside themselves, all while ignoring Evander.

With no other recourse, Evander swallowed down his nerves and snuck away into the crowd. When he wasn't weak from illness, Evander took to studying various atlases and the city's layout, so he had landmarks to guide him back to Nanaqo once he found his wayward brother. He shuffled between tall bodies, hoping not to be stepped on, as he weaved through the busy street. He kept his eyes forward and ears strained for any wailing calls for their mother, but Evander quickly became disorientated over the overwhelming amount of sounds.

Evander got knocked onto his back by a speeding courier, his sunhat tumbling to the cobblestone road. He fell right into an exposed spot of sunlight, the harsh light blinding him. He never let go of the stuffed tapir, however. It was the only thing that kept him anchored, and as childish as it sounded, its comforting presence kept him from crying. He's too old to cry, stony words his stepfather would tell him. No one was around to help him, so Evander had to toughen up.

Shaking off the dizziness, Evander brushed off his dirt-stained clothes and placed the sunhat back on his head. He walked a far distance away, and he still hadn't seen Patroclus. The Sapphire Avenue Exchange was a straight road, but it had many exits to alleyways and hidden corners that any mischievous four-year-old could hide in. Patroclus could be anywhere. The boy dipped into a random alley to escape the din of noise, only to land in a completely different world.

The alley was dark, dirty, and smelled of something foul. The sun wouldn't cast its light here. Evander got strange looks as he walked past adults with nothing better to do than loiter. His pace quickened when he saw, or thought he saw, someone brandish a weapon against a man he was arguing with. Feeling unsafe, Evander stepped back onto the main road and became swallowed once more by the hungering crowd. He was now further down the thoroughfare, in an area he wasn't familiar with. Evander felt anxiety settle in his stomach as he continued to walk, overcome with trembles. It had occurred to Evander that, maybe, he didn't know the streets of Ul'dah as well as he believed.

Evander was lost, and there was no one around to help him. Evander found a shaded spot to sulk in as he watched hundreds of faces pass him by without a second thought. The excursion left his belly griping for food—he would starve here. Evander curled into himself and let his eyes fall shut.

Surely, Evander's mother would mourn him. His aunt Cassandra would've seen this coming thanks to her 'predictions,' not that anyone believed her. The bad men would take him, especially the ones spoken about in the morning newspaper. He would read about missing persons and tales of how they were snatched up by Amalj'aa, fresh sacrifices for their god. That terrified Evander more than anything in the world. His whole life was ahead of him. He was too young to die, not now—

"Evie!"

Evander jumped up, wild eyes spotting a red-faced Patroclus on the other side of the street. His sunhat was missing, leaving his fluffy head of pitch-black hair uncovered to the afternoon sun. He appeared to have been crying... as per usual.

"Evie!"

Disregarding Nanaqo's rule of looking both ways, Patroclus ran to him on wobbly legs and outstretched hands. He crashed into Evander's skinny body before letting out a tired wail, snot and drool straining Evander's sweaty shirt. Evander finally dropped the tapir to hold his younger brother, shaking and unable to form words.

"I want mama, I–I want mama and papa!" Patroclus cried, heaving sobs soon catching the attention of unbeknownst pedestrians. Evander felt annoyance rise once the shock wore off. With care, Evander pulled Patroclus away to look him in the eye:

"You idiot! Where did you go? You know you shouldn't wander off like that!"

Patroclus' cries lowered to whimpers, his freckled face stained with tears, "I–I wanted a candied apple 'cause Nana said I would get one, but then I got lost..."

So that's what happened. Nanaqo took too long weighing literal apples and oranges, and Patroclus grew impatient. Evander huffed out a breath and handed the toy to his brother to hold. Patroclus grabbed it before wiping his runny nose against the fabric. Evander rolled his eyes before rising to his feet. He tried to smooth down his brother's hair like their mother would, but his fingers were too calloused from holding books all day. He didn't have the same loving touch as she did. He cringed as he used his handkerchief to wipe away the drying snot, a gentle motion he would catch his stepfather do, but Evander was too rough. Patroclus didn't seem too bothered, he stopped crying at least. His eyes were a bit swollen, and his cheeks a tinge of orange, but his breathing grew regulated.

"Where did your hat go?"

"... I don't know..."

Another huff. Patroclus could never keep track of his stuff. At least Evander keeps a log of where his items belong to. Now satisfied, Evander gathered his wits to begin the long trek back to the produce stand. But before he could take a step, a shrill voice reached his ears:

"BOYS! Oh, thank the Traders, you're both safe!"

Nanaqo looked more frazzled than usual as she gathered her skirt to rush over to their spot, her tidy bun slowly coming loose from stress. Sweat clung to her flushed skin, usually pale, from exertion. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates and filled with terror. Evander could only imagine what was going on in her thoughts, how she could've misplaced her employer's grandsons so easily. Guilt washed over Evander for causing her such worry.

"What happened?! Are you hurt?! Did anyone try any funny business with you?"

Evander glanced at Patroclus, who looked at him, "No, Ms. Naqo, we're fine. We, uh... we wanted to–"

"I want a candied apple!"

Evander glared at his brother. Nanaqo let out a long-suffering sigh and shook her head, but she didn't chastise them. She smiled, even. Nanaqo's seemingly infinite amount of patience continued to amaze Evander.

"Yes, yes, it completely slipped my mind. Come along, then, before the hour grows too late, I must return to my duties."

Instinctively, Patroclus grabbed Nanaqo's apron string, his other arm holding onto the stuffed tapir for comfort. Evander grabbed the other end, not that he needed to, but it would ease Nanaqo's frayed nerves some to know he was right behind her. With Nanaqo, the three of them walked through the street with ease.

"Um... Ms. Naqo?"

"Yes, Evander?"

Evander didn't want to ask, but he swallowed his pride.

"Don't tell grandfather about this. Or our parents."

He caught a small smile forming on her lips, "I wouldn't dream of it, dear. As long as you two are safe and sound, I won't say a word."

Evander released a quiet sigh of relief.

"And because you've been such a good lad looking after your brother, I'll get you two candied apples!"

Evander felt a youthful sense of glee come over him, and the question went out of his mouth before he could catch himself:

"The green apples? Covered in caramel?"

"Of course!"

[shannonsketches]

lays on the floor i am once again thinking about the goku geets foil in terms of their experience and perspective and parenting

tl;dr: Goku sees letting his child do serious battle as a gift, and Vegeta sees it as a failure.

a lot of the 'goku's a bad father' discourse comes from how he trains/puts Gohan into fights and either doesn't know or doesn't realize that Gohan wants to be a scholar and not a warrior; the reason Gohan keeps joining the fray is because he doesn't want to see people he loves get hurt, right, because that's been his entire experience since Raditz showed up (and remains so until Cell dies).

The discourse re: The Cell Games is interesting though, examining the 'how could Goku not know/how could Goku volunteer his child so blithely' etc and his similar attitude toward the kids fighting in Super('s manga), and it's part of why I say/write/read Goku as deeply inconsiderate but never malicious (and this does tie into the foil with Geets lemme just); Goku's experience with serious combat is fun, and exciting.

Goku volunteering Gohan to fight Cell was something Goku considered a gift to Gohan, to be able to flex his power and go all out on an enemy that could handle it/required it -- that's something Goku wishes he had the power to do, especially at Gohan's age! That's super exciting to Goku. It's not pageant mom forcing her kid to do what she wanted energy, it's Goku being sweet and pure and sharing something he thinks he has in common with his kid. Vegeta says Saiyans live to fight! Goku's entire life has been spent bonding with competitive martial artists! It never occurred to him that someone so naturally powerful and talented wouldn't enjoy fighting.

And Goku does not read subtext, that's not a skill he has, so by the time Piccolo spells it out for him, he's genuinely sorry to have put Gohan in that position.

But in Super('s manga), the larger picture of Don't Put Children in Traumatic Situations still doesn't really occur to Goku, because he doesn't consider battle traumatic, no matter how emotionally intense it gets. Goku doesn't hold onto things. Goku lives and lets live, as long as he doesn't have to kill you. That's his super power. It's why he can be friends with all of these people who have done him and his loved ones and his planet so much harm. He consistently ends earth-shattering battles with, 'that was fun, let's do it again sometime'

Vegeta, on the other hand (see I told you I'd get here, I promised), has had the complete opposite experience. Vegeta considers others heavily, it's what made him very good at being malicious. Vegeta does this for survival. Vegeta's climb to the top is for the vantage point, not the view. He's not looking to the stars dreaming about what else it out there. He's squinting at the dark trying to kill whatever it is before it kills him and his home and his family. again.

Vegeta is a child soldier, who has distinct recollection of his culture being built on the rearing of child soldiers. By the times the cell games come around he is experiencing having a child for the first time, and after seeing (a future version of) that child die in battle, he seems to take on a much different opinion on letting kids fight.

Vegeta comes from a culture in which you send your child off-world to conquer a planet, alone, once they're old enough to walk. The stronger kids go into war zones. Vegeta was giving strategic orders to fellow elites by the time he was five. He was treating Gohan like a soldier when he was five.

But, by the Buu saga, Bulma tells Gohan that Vegeta says Trunks is old enough now to start proper training -- when Trunks is eight years old. Even then, Vegeta's telling Trunks not to push himself too hard in the gravity room, to stop and leave when it's too much for him to handle. Vegeta kills himself trying to prevent Trunks and Goten having to fight Buu. He jumps in to protect the kids when the fight gets too intense in Yo! Son Goku and Friends Return. He begs the kids not to fight Beerus in Battle of the Gods when he's barely conscious. He snaps at Goku any time he suggests them for intense battle in Super('s manga).

Vegeta sees it as not being strong enough to handle a problem, Which totally definitely doesn't have anything to do with some kind of deep-rooted trauma about placing the responsibility of making up for your weakness on your children that Vegeta's had to deal with since becoming a father and he for sure doesn't take it personally when a parent volunteers children to solve problems they had nothing to do with. He's fine! It's fine.

He does not want Trunks or Goten anywhere near a real battlefield (Bulma and/or the other adults seem to be helping to enforce this; in Res F, Trunks and Goten are not invited to go to the Freeza fight, and in the Moro arc both of them were asked to go be rangers in 17's absence again, complaining that nobody told them there was a fight happening at all), because it's got nothing to do with them. They shouldn't have to fight for their -- or anyone else's -- lives. That's the adults' job. That's his job.

Because to Vegeta, it is a job. Soldier, guardian, prince, lord, whatever. It's a role he has to fulfill, and his pride (and a whole lot of trauma-informed necessity) drives him to be the best at it, period, the end. It's an obligation that he must fulfill, because he's decided he's personally responsible for [gestures to the earth] all of this and its survival. It's where he keeps all his stuff!

For Goku, it's a game. He just wants to fight the strongest guys, and it's his understanding that everyone else wants that too. If he's not the best, GREAT! That's more to look forward to. A whole new rabbit to chase to who knows where. It's adventure! It's exciting! So of course the kids would want to get in on it! He LOVED doing this kind of stuff when he was a kid.

Goku has two hands! ...for former villains Vegeta and Piccolo to try to wrestle away from all the other, much worse villains who do not want to play with him.

[ygodmyy20]

Opps this post got forgotten! But if I don't post it today when will I!?

Okay so, I've been thinking for awhile on the question: why do I like terumob and why did it take over my brain? What is it about it...what caught my interest. As someone who was very NOT into ships when i first got into mp100, why did I crashland into this one?

This post has been in progress for like....weeks now? Nearly a month? 3 months? Yea.

Okay so. Here we go. THOUGHTS! On terumob and why the fuck I like it. Below the cut.

Like I mentioned, when I first finished Mob Psycho 100 in June of this year I wasn't into any ship. I was actually REALLY NOT into ships. I really liked gen. I wanted to explore the characters and I loved the complex relationships between everyone but I didn't want it to be overshadowed by romance. I purposely steered clear of any and all ship art.

But then I started to see some TeruMob fanart and I was like "Aw man, they are so cute and squishy." And I started to like them....just a lil bit. ONLY A LITTLE BIT.

BUT then I read more Teru-centric fics, read Teru analysis' and then I was like. Oh shit, Teru is 100% so into Mob it's like....this kid has it bad. He has a major crush. And even on the rewatch I am like WOW yep, confirmed in my brain, Teru has it bad. The subtext of his pinning is JUST so there for me. I didn't even have to look hard for it. I suddenly was very in on the Teru-one-sidded part of the ship.

But here's the thing, I'm not a big fan of ships like that... feels too unrequited. Hard for me to really like it. I need to have some level of something from both sides. Just how I am.

So that still leaves the question.

When and how does Shiego liking Teru work? Is there any subtext for that or am I just making it all up because I want the ship to work for me?

(which also is fine ya'll, no judgement if you ship two characters that barely interact, thats the fun of fandom stuff!)

I mean, all things considered, Shigeo likes Tsubomi. Scratch that, he REALLY likes Tsubomi. Shiego loves very strongly, like all his emotions. And he definitely likes Teru, they are good friends, so I kept thinking: where and how does that cross into a crush to me, for these characters?

Teru cares a lot, he adores Shigeo—Shigeo is kind, he is powerful, he is everything Teru wants to be. But are there places where I see this same level of intensity from Shigeo?

Annnnnnnnd then I got to their fight in season 3.

Everything Shiego did to Teru was so pointed. So raw and angry. Like I said, I think Shigeo feels his feelings very strongly and, I don't know, just the fact that he PERSUED Teru to humiliate him EXACTLY in the same way again, tells me that their first meeting had an intense impact on him. We don't see a lot of his feelings on his meeting with Teru, besides the brief ??? in that episode. After meeting Teru, it's just...life goes on as normal for them. But deep down I don't think Shigeo ever really tackled his complex feelings about Teru and their first meeting.

So it all comes out, its all be stewing for AGES, and what comes out is mean. It's aggressive. It's almost sarcastic? It's what happens when we let things chew us up inside and comes out all twisted.

Teru evoked such a strong reaction from Shigeo, even if Shigeo didn't admit it or express it, that I can't help but think, after things have settled, after he has spent more time adjusting to his whole self...after they both take time to really examine themselves and grow....

....that Shigeo wouldn't develop stronger feelings for this boy who also turned his world upside down. Who made him feel such strong emotions, who changed his world too.

Teru was forever changed by meeting another esper his age.

I think Shiego was too.

And I think where I started to love them was after the finale, after Teru's acceptance of Shiego for who he was.

I don't want to pigeonhole any of the espers into only being able to date other espers. But I also....yes, Shiego is a normal kid, but he is also Shiego.

Teru is a person who understands the strength it takes to keep that power, who has seen Shiego at all sides. His best and his worst.

But gosh this scene....

OUGHGGH

JUST THROW ME IN A RIVER WHY DON"T YOU

Yeah this whole scene just.....just yea. OUGH.

But yeah I just feel like Teru's crush would only grow after that. He would see Shigeo as a person over an all powerful esper.

While I like to think Shigeo's would develop over time and them smack into him like a runaway freight train. Because Shigeo FEELS so strongly, for all his emotions. He feels sadness strongly, he feels love strongly, he feels anger strongly—he just feels everything SO strongly. That is why he is powerful, that is why he is who he is, that is why ??? became what it is.

Anyway. My thoughts have ended and that's all i got. Thanks for coming to my ted talk of rambling mess that has been in progress for months that I realized whelp with the anniversary of the end of S3 nearly here, mind as well post it.

[nights-at-crystarium]

Fragments - episodes 19-22 author notes

You can find similar breakdown posts on older episodes in my pinned!

Obligatory ShB spoiler warning.

First off, the two panels that took a silly amount of time just because I wanted to reflect Vivi’s impressions on the city.

Episodes 18, 19, 20 open up with Vivi being concerned with the most pressing matters:

Can’t fight if you ain’t pretty (or got just 1-2 outfits to be pretty in, that won’t do either)

I still really like the panel above, especially their pose. Episodes 19-22 show how they gradually get rid of physical boundaries. They didn’t even touch back when they first met (episode 15).

Vivi’s casual about physical affection with friends, just one of his core things.

Of course Vivi would trust and choose the company of a pixie, a supernatural being, over a (presumably) human who only reinforces Vivi’s worst opinions on humanity at that point in time, concealing himself and swimming in secrets. Get rekt nerd.

At least Vivi isn’t openly hostile, just.. Dismissive? I saw some other WoLs who outright hate Exarch for abducting the Scions and almost getting themselves, the WoL, killed at Ghimlyt Dark. Vivi, however, just wants to be left alone.

Tfw the love of your life is being stolen by your dear friend. Or vice versa? Or both at the same time? Anyway, Vivi and Feo Ul form a new cool kids' club and Exarch isn't invited.

Can't relax in your favorite secluded spot for a godsdamned moment without some pesky dragoon randomly popping out of nowhere.

While I hc Exarch being able to sense living presence around the Tower, imagine doing that 24/7 for every person. I like to think that he learned to filter it out, turn off/on at will. And while he's in a public place, with his glamour up, he doesn't need to upkeep the "radar", he's just chilling and is possibly lost in thoughts, and that's why Vivi startles him.

This scene bears more symbolic meaning than plot importance. And, uh, some foreshadowing? Forelighting? x'D While Vivi doesn’t fall (heh) for his savior, he’ll reflect upon this at a later time.

Vivi’s normally careful and stately. Yes he’s an elf but he do be carryin’ himself like a cat. There’s a lot of control and assertion behind his trademark nonchalant posture. So, NORMALLY, this wouldn’t happen. Maybe he got distracted by the shiny? And where’s Feo Ul?

Exarch, however, the man that chokes on air unprompted, in a moment like this acts before he could think. As some people correctly noted, the old man’s QUICK. The “screentime” stretches out as Vivi’s life almost begins flashing before his eyes, while for Exarch it's gotta be a mere second or two.

I’m extra proud of the colorwork here. As if blood’s gone from Vivi’s face, as if his entire body went cold, but life slowly returns to him, starting with that hand. You bet this’s brimming with subtext.

Exarch uses his left hand over the right, for better friction and probably because he doesn’t like the attention to his right hand.

I like that this panel’s caused confusion, it worked as intended :9 An all too vague dark joke that almost cost Vivi his life. In his head it went like “yeah anyone can fly once, when they’re about to go splat”, but he wasn’t only preoccupied with the jumps, but also didn’t KNOW yet that he HAS TO speak with a fae like almost with a child, or a lawyer. Simplest terms. No ambiguity. EVER. They’ll misinterpret you unwittingly, or on purpose.

And so they did. Or didn’t? Feo Ul’s spent a long time offscreen, but whether they chose not to help, or even gave Vivi a little push, will forever stay a mystery because why not.

Lesson learned.. On both sides.. Hopefully. Also, fret not, Exarch WILL say fuck one day, one day~

Vivi's lucky. Incredibly so. He's aware of it, doesn't see it as anything special, like you don't see anything special in being able to read this. Perhaps jumping up an unknown structure while being accompanied by an exceedingly curious and mischievous creature is risky even for his kind, but Vivi's so used to getting away with so many things that he doesn't stop to consider it for the tiniest moment.

The first genuine exchange of smiles.

Silver lining: now they have better chances at getting along and returning to that world-saving duty.

Update from January 2024: I came back here to tell you something that took me so long to realize about episode 20′s description:

And all he saw was the Light, and then he knew that Death wore white in this world.

I randomly popped off with this prose, which on itself is a cool thing, but now I realize the extra meanings it could take on. Thinking about 5.x and Elidibus has me feeling unwell in the best way. THAT VIVI ALSO WEARS WHITE HERE IS UH. A coincidence. But it also kinda works as the Warrior of Darkness becomes somewhat of a local Reaper in the First, and then, well, then we have that Light corruption arc :3c

Vivi's calm and tender enough for a pixie to trust him with their wings.

Feo Ul ate and drank several times their size, and all that hero talk.. Ugh. Time for a nap.

Drawing this made me yawn at least 3 times. You’re not immune either.

He’s activating his scanners :>

Vivi's definition of nice is "not nagging, begging or preaching, and using bare facts and logic to convince the hero to do the hero thing".

Literally the next page if you’re reading in order :’> Riiiiiiiiight. That hero thing.

We don’t question whether Vivi invited his loveliest branch, or if they invited themselves. The fact is, they’re there and Vivi’s totally cool with it.

Exarch must be watching. And probably foaming at mouth as Feo Ul keeps leading in the race for Vivi’s heart. They don’t only earn the hero’s trust, but get in his bed and, gasp, brush his hair.

Vivi's getting comfy in his role somewhere between a disney princess and Feo Ul’s pet.

A writing-related tangent incoming, but, since you’re here, I assume you’re already somewhat interested in this kinda stuff.

So, there’s the script, the plain text that waits to get illustrated. The screenplay, if you will. I don’t just sit down and draw enough random things to fill a few pages, I approach this as an actual cohesive serialized story.

I changed a good half of this episode when I began storyboarding it. In the initial script from some months ago, Vivi said "I slept so well". Something about this didn't sit right with me. It’s the most basic mistake of telling instead of showing. I asked myself, would he, a person who takes good sleep and dreams for granted, say that out loud? Nah. I removed that bit, and drew him stretching deliciously. He also asked Feo Ul if they guarded his dreams, they smiled vaguely but warmly just like in the finalized version, but then Vivi simply muttered "I could get used to this" and gave them headpats. I decided to elevate this scene by adding this tiny rollercoaster, which brought Feo Ul's greyness to the forefront, and thickly hinted that Vivi doesn't only sleep well, but has nice dreams that he probably starts cherishing after this.

To be fair, this isn’t super important for the main plot, I just wanted to highlight the difference between Vivi and Exarch, the latter being in a hate-hate relationship with sleep. Vivi’s affinity with dreams is a door I like to keep open for the possible future story (talking post-EW events).

Now you know this’s the face they make before going apeshit.

Imagine if this prank didn't exist and instead Vivi simply said "I slept so well, this's so important to me". I’m proud of the writing muscle I’m growing on the fly ;w;

Ardbert's chance to act and feel normal, thwarted in the next few seconds.

I'm so glad that people are picking up on this!! “Hey man” is Vivi’s way of providing whatever comfort he could. An illusion of normalcy. He’s emotionally intelligent when it matters.

..But he should’ve also considered that Feo Ul can and will ruin the vibe :’>

Another screenwriting thing: this episode lacks an establishing shot, i.e. the obligatory zoomed out view on everyone in the room, but I think this’s a rare case of “less is more”. Along with the light vs shadow, it reinforces the feeling of separation. Vivi and Feo Ul are shown together, interacting, doing cute stuff, while Ardbert’s alone. Sorry not sorry for the hurty :’>

This’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for reading and paying so much attention! People start to notice and analyze the things I’m weaving in, and it’s the best kinda interaction I as a creator could wish for.

[the---hermit]

We Are The Champions by Tuono Pettinato and Dario Moccia

Oh boi this will be more of a rant than a review I feel. I read two books by Tuono Pettinato, One is a graphic biography on Alan Turing, which I reviewed here last year, I think? and the other one is a graphic biography about Kurt Cobain (which I haven't read in ages but I remember really loving back in the day). So when I found out about a graphic biography about Freddie Mercury, one of my heros since I was a kid with a father obsessed with Queen, I had to have it. This book has been on my wishlist for ages, and now that I spent money on it and actually read it I wish it was still on my wishlist. I am very mad at this book and so my review is not going to be impartial at all. I don't like comparing books with one another but it's inevitable, the other books by this illustrator felt honest and emotional, and this one just fell flat. There was absolutely no emotion ever. The authors decided to use a lot of self insert scenes of them explaining stuff which in my opinion was unnecessary and broked a lot of the narration, but that's a personal preference. As for the story it feels like these two men just collected in a book all the infos band fans get randomly in their lives of fans of whatever band they are passionate about. There is no bibliography at the back of the book, which makes me think this was the case actually? From whatever kid of biography I expect a bibliography and some kind of actual research to be made. The major thing that has made me very mad is the fact that they speak of Freddie as a gay man instead of the bisexual man he was. And this enrages me personally because for years I thought Freddie was gay, since everyone around me said that, and only a lot time after I found out my hero was actually bisexual, just like me, and that changed a lot of things. A book published in 2016 should have payed attenton to such a detail. And on the queer topics all songs that have a very queer message are glossed over as songs with totally different meaning (no mention of Bohemian Rapsody being a sort of coming to terms with your sexiality and coming out, Bicycle is said to only be inspired by the tour de France, and I Want To Break Free is just about frustrated houswives apparently). I fully understand that if you are not queer you might miss some of the subtext of songs, but if you are writing a biography about someone you might want to do some deeper research into it. With this being said it was a disappointing book, my expectations weren't met and there's not much else to say about it.

[illmamnim]

Hey guys, you should read Grey Is...

Spoilers for volume 10 (and previous)

A while back, I found this post about "to be loved is to be seen" with a quote by Marguerite Duras: "I don't know if love is a feeling, sometimes I think it's a matter of seeing." And this line captured me, but I wasn't sure why. There's much to say about eye content breeding intimacy, but that's not it. It's not about mutual looking, only looking. As if something only exists when you look at it, and it can so easily be gone once you look away. While love, if you can call it a singular emotion, doesn't need seeing to be felt, it demands it to be understood. It wants to shift your entire focus, if to analyze it or to involve your senses in it. So maybe "seeing" isn't entirely literal, but a matter of focus.

In Grey Is... the lighthouse is a major theme, in both text and subtext. It symbolizes many things, from loneliness to guidance to security, but I'd like to look at it as a representation of focus. Fittingly, I used to compare focus to a flashlight, where one thing is seen clearly but everything else is shaded and almost non existent. Shifting the flashlight itself is possible, but then you have to trust that you'll remember where the object was among the darkness. The lighthouse represents this thought similarly, with a lot more nuance in story.

To White, Black needs to be in his light or else he'd lose him. If White won't pay attention, if he'll lose Black in the darkness, he doesn't know if he'll be able to find him again. This is one of the points Danial analyses- watching over Black gives White purpose. But this isn't entirely true, because it's not a sense of purpose, "Black makes me feel like I exist." as he said to Lana. If love is a matter of seeing, what is existence? What are we beyond how others see us? Is being perceived not what makes and builds us? And if it is, what are the unloved? Unseen? Non existent.

To Black, with his memories obscured and unorganized, this focus is nearly impossible, and so he uses White's light to guide him. The truth is that he doesn't know how brightly he shines. If White assumes that any darkness from him would dim the whole world, Black assumes he can never be a light at all. But he's looking now. White spent chapters trying to fight his need for perfection so that things can go wrong and fix themselves. He's letting the lighthouse spotlight turn, exist in motion, and let Black sail to him on his own.

Taking a small step back from metaphors, this chapter is all about looking and love. Black's on a quest to find missing puzzle pieces of his memories and for the first time allows himself to take off the mask. A mask that protected his loved ones but obscured his view. He looks at Irina, who was there for him more than he thought. He looks at Waseem, not as a sweet kid that can do no wrong, but as someone who's aware of things around him, good and bad. He looks at Ritta and their family, the people he wanted to protect by pushing away and keeping in the dark but who want to be there for him and could only do so through White. He looks at Jad (and recognizes that he can't look back) and sees a reflection of his childhood through the eyes of someone who watched over him. Now he's looking at White, and sees him look away. He knew this already, that White looks away when things get to close, but now he refuses, he won't let him. A half moon in the sky, the way Black shines and the way White dims is so moon-like (Chapter 13: Page 34) and they're shattering this fragile happiness in favour of a solid ground.

There's much more that can be said here, honestly - Jad's blindness, the car lights, even about just this and going panel by panel to dissect it - but it's pretty late and I don't know how readable it is at this point lol

[twst-hottest-takes]

I'm sorry in advance for distracting you from making a part 2 to your leech twin post (congrats on that post having over 200 notes btw ^^). However in my opinion in book 5, I just can't get over how weirdly Neige is written.

Don't get me wrong, I love how nice and friendly his character is. BUT it's weird to me that him and Vil are besties, but there's a one sided hatred in their friendship. Like whenever Vil sees Neige he's like "Omg not this guy >:(...I mean omg hi :D!" And I feel like Neige should have matched that vibe. It's weird to have Neige be so friendly to Vil, when not even Snow White was that nice to the Evil Queen.

I do understand in book 6 Vil was like "I was just being unreasonable, Neige deserves everything." However in book 7 in the jp server Vil's dream was like "Neige is my servant, and literally deserves nothing." Like huh???

It's also weird to me how long this has gone on, and NOBODY noticed??? I mean I assume Vil and Neige have been friends for a while, since Neige has given him a nickname, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Neige is probably just being overly familiar and naive.

The nature of Vil and Neige's relationship seems to be mostly professional. I don't remember anything really stating that they're true friends so much as they just work closely pretty often. So I think Neige just feels a sense of kinship while Vil sees a rivalry.

What we do know from the story (at least as far as I can find in the EN version) is that Neige and Vil debuted together, and have been casted alongside eachother since they were kids. I think that they see each other more often than most celebrities do. Between work and events such as the SDC, Neige just tends to think that they're friends because they have spent a lot of time together--relatively speaking--and Vil has never told him otherwise. I also think that Neige is written to be overly optimistic and he tends to read the best into people's actions and intentions (kind of like Kalim). Vil is very image conscious. He probably doesn't want to start celebrity drama or look petty. So Vil won't explicitly say they are friends, and he'll at least act cordial in front of Neige and the cameras. In any case the game hasn't made it clear what the public perception of Vil and Neige's relationship is, so at the moment I would say that their dynamic is like two coworkers who are in the same department but don't see each other outside of work.

One of them thinks they are friends because they work so well together, and the other hates him just for existing. I bet Neige DOES wish he and Vil could hang out more casually as friends, but Vil makes excuses as to why that can't ever happen and the former just takes his word for it as opposed to reading the subtext. Vil describes Neige as "oblivious" here, and I honestly think that might be the case. We'll throw a bone to Vil as well though: he is an actor and I can see a majority of people not seeing past his professional appearance regarding his peer/costar.

I find it really funny actually. The only thing that would make it funnier is if they had the dwarves telling Neige, "You know that guy hates you, right?" And Neige just not willing to believe it because Vil always acts so nice around him.

We can only hope to get a deeper look into Neige's character later. (Which I would very much enjoy, because at face value I do like him.)

Thank you for the ask!

Don't worry, we'll get back to the eel discussion soon.~

[shrug-em0ji]

had not intended to readmorepost but this is long and rambly and has some sensitive stuff i think?

i mentioned to my coworkers the other day that my mom was a pathological liar (it was relevant, i promise) and neither of them dug for further details but i got caught in this loop of wanting to explain and justify it, probably because its a thing that i used to do a LOT and have only recently gotten better about. but i was thinking about like. why people lie. and my mom and i in particular. and about how when you are hurt profoundly, especially over a prolonged period of time, in ways that people cant see and often dont acknowledge as being worthy of consideration, it becomes really easy to just. fudge the details a little bit. add in an extra pinch of violence. make it sound just a little worse so that when people react their response is proportional to how you felt rather than to what happened.

i have a story that i have often used as an example of the things that happened a lot when i was growing up - i was supposed to be cleaning my room, but i was a kid, and i was bored and overwhelmed by the mess, so i sat down on the floor, on a pile of clothes, and spent 45 minutes daydreaming about my toys coming to life and helping me. when my dad came upstairs to check on me and saw that i hadnt cleaned at all, he got really angry and picked up a little armchair that i had in my room and threw it at my wall hard enough to leave a decently big hole.

for a long time, when i told this story, i said that he threw the chair at me and missed, that i didnt hear him come in, that i had been working and he just wasnt happy with how far id gotten. and i used to get really angry at myself for lying about it - obviously, if im lying to make it sound worse it must not have been that bad, im making a huge deal out of nothing, theres no reason for this to even be a thing that i tell anyone ever. but it was the opposite. i was on the floor, in the only place that i felt safe or like i had any modicum of control over, and someone who was supposed to care for me came in, towered over me, made me feel small and helpless, and then intentionally picked up a large heavy object and threw it across the room because he knew it would scare me. he wanted me to be very very aware at all times how big and strong and angry he was, and how helpless i was to stop him. "even in this safe quiet space that is yours i can break your stuff and hurt you, you are not really safe here at all, i am always in control"

but like!!! i was a kid!!! i didnt understand the concept of subtext! now, when i tell people that my dad threw stuff a lot when i was a kid, im usually talking to people who understand that throwing things is inherently threatening. it is a thing that abusive people do to scare you and let you know that they want to hurt you and they can hurt you if you make them. but when i was growing up this was very much not the case! if i told an adult my dad threw stuff their response would be "well you didnt get hurt so you're fine, nothing to complain about"

so i lied about it, because i was terrified of him and needed people to believe that he was terrifying.

i was reading a book recently - one of the big abuse books that everyone recommends, though i dont recall precisely which - and i got to a bit about incest and immediately felt so unbelievably guilty. i never accused anyone in my family of sexual abuse but i wanted to so badly, and i never understood why. i just felt like id been taken advantage of, like my body didnt belong to me, like i was tainted and ruined somehow, but no one had ever really done anything so i had no reason to feel that way.

and then i kept reading and the author specifically started drawing attention to specific behaviors - not illegal behaviors, not behaviors that get you barred from having custody of your kids, just... weird stuff. a parent drawing attention to their kids body, making sexual innuendos about them, commenting on their imagined sexual activity. stuff my dad did. "you'll probably be really good at sex someday, just make sure you dont end up a whore like your mom" "i miss when you were a little kid, now youre ready to start popping out babies" "people will say anything to make me look bad, i bet theyre spreading rumors about us sleeping together" "youre almost like a wife, theres just a few really important things you cant do"

it made me feel....... gross. and i didnt know why. i didnt understand it. i wanted very badly to not feel that way, but not as much as i wanted someone to understand that i felt that way.

i stopped showering regularly in middle school, when i moved back in with my dad, because i didnt want to be naked in the same house as him and my brothers (for related reasons) but i could never explain it to anyone. i spent a lot of time in the guidance counselors office being questioned about what the problem was and utterly unable to find the words, or really understand it myself. so it got chalked up to being lazy. and i just spent several years absolutely hating myself and not understanding why i felt the way that i did. i wanted to lie to explain it and could never quite get there. and then the other thing happened and gave me a plausible explanation so i ran with it, and have continued running with it for years now, despite the fact that the worst symptoms predate it by 3 years.

im not.... entirely certain why i wrote this out. i think its just been stuck in my head for a while now? and i wanted to say it. i wanted to be able to say "here is a real thing that happened to me and here is how i felt and feel about it and actually i dont care if you think my feelings arent proportional to the events, i need to be able to accept this as a thing that happened if im ever gonna get over it"

so fuck it.

[fruitydemogorgon]

Analysing the ST Season 3 Teleplay

PART 1

(I got the teleplays (official scripts) off 8flix, which I will link here.)

So I spent some time looking through the last moments of the s3.ep8 script, and I think it’s actually more byler-coded than we thought. Obviously, scripts are only meant to suggest the briefest moments, the directors job is to explain the lines, and the message/tone, and the actors job is to portray this.

At first I was disappointed by the Byler scene after reading the script, especially since it felt very bland/lifeless and there was no sense of “suggestiveness” like there was in the final scene (but, as I explained earlier, this is because it’s just a script).

Anyways, here’s the scene:

It’s short, compared to the other goodbye scenes (more on that later*). However, the first line, “Mike is helping pack”, implies that they’ve been in here together for a while, alone. In the final take, though, we see Will walking into the room Mike’s in. It’s still possible they were in here together before, since the script doesn’t say anything about Will entering his room. It’s also possible there’s more to this scene than we were shown (I couldn’t get the video file onto this, so I’ve just linked someone’s video of the scene-credit to Itsstranger on yt).

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fS9f9rmlGQ>

The main thing I’ve realised when watching this scene is the extreme contrast between it and the mileven goodbye. Mike’s facial expressions (which we know are pretty iconic) are completely different. In this scene, we feel that the two characters really understand what the other is saying, even with the deeper subtext that comes with their dialogue.

“Whoa. Dude, that’s the donation box”, Mike says (let’s note that Will ignores him when entering the room, and even begins to leave, but Mike still insists on starting conversation). Mike saying this, and the (concerned?) facial expression that comes with it shows that over the course of the 3 months, he has obviously seen how he was wrong to disapprove of Will still wanting to play D&D, like a “little kid”. 

Will proceeds to say, “I know, I’ll just use yours when I come back”, pausing for a beat, then saying, “I mean, if we still wanna play.” 

Let’s decode this a little more. Will’s first line is pretty blatant, but his second one could have multiple subtexts. “If we still wanna play”, could also mean “If we still wanna hang out together”, or, “If we still wanna be friends”.

To which Mike is quick to answer with, “Yeah, but”, before this next line, he glances to the side, hesitating, “What if you want to join another party?”

Will then looks him up and down, and says, smirking, “Not possible.” The exchange ends here, but their last expressions say much more than the prior dialogue.

This is Mike’s face after Will says they can still be friends:

This is Mike’s face after El says she loves him:

but more on that scene later.

also, may I mention Will’s smug little grin as he struts away

if you make that face with ur friends, I think there’s something you need to tell them.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that this, in my opinion, was a flirty interaction. In fact, I can’t recall one quite like it in any other moments of the series (At least, not between Mike + someone else, or Will + someone else)

Now, there are only two other personal goodbyes shown in these last few scenes. These being between Jancy (Jonathan + Nancy) and Mileven (Mike + Eleven). Both of these exchanges are between ‘couples’ or ‘ex-couples’, depending on where Mike and Eleven stand at the end of the season (we aren’t properly told). So, it makes you wonder why they would include a Byler goodbye as well. To anyone lazily watching, the scene wouldn’t really add much to the conclusion, and it’d just be more of a filler. But, this is the Duffer brothers, nothing is without value, and every little detail makes an impact. 

AND, not forgetting that their interaction. was. flirty.

Anyways, I’m going to discuss the Mileven goodbye, because boi is there a lot to unpack. 

I won’t show the script for this scene because it’s quite long, but I noticed that the settings says it’s El’s room, when it’s actually visibly Will’s room (because of the unique wallpaper, and the teddy bear is also his-more on that later)

Here’s a link to the scene (credit to M Entertainment on yt)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k13h2Wq_vMs>

I’ll mention here that in this show, bears represent Will, and during this whole scene El is holding the bear (Will) between them. I’ll link the analysis for that here (slides 77-79).

Mike also says “And I was thinking you could come up here for Christmas,” quickly adding, “and Will, too”. Showing that even when thinking about El, he’s subconsciously thinking about Will (sort of).  

He then says, “I was thinking Christmas Day could be super fun, because we’d have cool new presents to play with and, uh...sorry. That made me sound like a seven-year-old.” We all know that Mike has conflicting feelings linking ‘childhood’ and his ‘younger years’ to times when he felt more inclined to Will, and how he now dismisses them as just being that; childish. I’d also like to highlight the use of the number 7 in this show, and how it has many connections to Will and Mike (separately and together).

(Also, Mike seems like waay less of a jack*ass at the end of season 3)

This is how the next few moments were scripted

I feel like with all this reference to ‘presents’, there could be some symbolism behind it. Since he links being childish to liking presents, and he also links being childish to liking Will, I have a little theory that presents = boys/Will. 

Mike also has a very sheepish grin when he says, “I like presents too”, so I dunno.

After this, as El walks away, it keeps cutting to Mike’s face. In the script, it says:

Although it’s possible Mike is angry with himself for acting so ‘childish’, it’s quite plausible that his reaction is him feeling that he needs to end things for real with El. After this, it just keeps getting gayer and gayer.

(El is talking about when he confessed his ‘love’ for her)

is this really something you would deny/pretend to not know about if you didn’t have conflicted feelings about it?

“heat of the moment stuff”, as in he didn’t actually mean it?

let’s take a lil looksies at this kiss...

doesn’t mike look soooo into it?

and his expression as she walks away?

okay, thank you, that concludes my notes on the mileven scene

but WAIT, there’s more

During Hopper’s letter, there are specific instructions in the script to show Will and Mike at specific parts of the voice over. There’s also lots of subtle queercoding throughout the whole letter, but I will talk about the scenes that are obviously referencing Mike and Will. 

As he says this, Mike is at the forefront of both shots

It literally zooms in on Mike in this next bit

Board games also have a huge significance within the group, and it’s a special aspect of their bond. However, it zooms in on Mike right before Hopper says “And I miss playing board games every night”.

In the next part, Hopper reads,

“But I know you’re getting older. Growing. Changing”

(zooms in on Mike AGAIN as Hopper says ‘changing’, whilst everyone else bikes away)

As Mike bikes away, Hopper begins to say “I don’t want things to change”, and it cuts to Will. TO WILL. Jonathan even gives him a little look I-

“So I think that’s maybe why I came in here,” it says, and Mike literally walks into his living room, obviously upset.

“To try to maybe, stop that change” Karen sees him, and he immediately walks in for a hug. 

It continues, but these shots of Mike were not random. And it parallels this scene (in which Mike is crying about Will, not El.)

ANyways, thank u for listening, I am done. if u want me to ‘analyse’ anymore byler/other teleplays/scenes I am happy too.

have a great day, and happy stranger things watching :)

[salchat]

Ice cream summer - Salchat - Supernatural (TV 2005) [Archive of Our Own]

The summer that Dean was ten and Sammy was six they lived in an apartment.  Dean didn't remember the name of the town but he remembered that crummy, beaten up couple of rooms because it wasn't a motel and it wasn’t some stranger's place where he had to sleep on the settee and Sammy slept curled in an armchair.  

The apartment - a walk-up on the third floor of a crumbling, poorly-maintained block had, for a while, been home.  Had it belonged to one of Dad's hunter friends?  Had Dad even rented it, legally, for them?  Dean didn't know.  

He remembered the orange throw on the bed he'd shared with Sammy.  He remembered the echoey stairwell, where Sammy had tried out wailing like a banshee and Dean had got the blame for letting him.  And he remembered the park across the street.

They were allowed to go to the park.  Dad had said, "I'm not going to be around so much for a while.  You boys need to stay here."  He’d glared at Dean at this point and Dean had got the full subtext behind those dark, haunted eyes.  Take care of your brother.   Any trouble and it'll land on your shoulders. 

"Yes, sir," he'd replied, both to the words spoken out loud and the ones his Dad didn't say.

Dad said they could stay in the apartment or they could go across the street to the park.  

They couldn't go two blocks east and see a movie.  

They couldn't go a block west to the library, which pissed Dean off no end because he wasn’t much for reading but Sammy was, and if his little brother didn't have books, he'd be a hell of a lot more difficult to keep in check.

So, they stayed in the apartment and watched TV.  And when, each day, Sammy had had enough cartoons and eaten more than his share of the Lucky Charms or the Froot Loops (which were too expensive really, and Dad never gave Dean enough money for food), they crossed the street to the park.

The grass was patchy and yellow, summer-dusty and hard.  There were a couple of squeaking swings, a battered jungle gym and so on.  And Sammy had spent enough time on the road, being dumped with strangers and having to keep quiet and keep out of the way, to find the place a small heaven of freedom.

He swung, he climbed, he quickly made friends with other kids.  He was like a happy, normal six-year-old, who'd play for a while and then go home and be part of a normal, average family.

Except Sammy didn't have a Mom sitting on one of the paint-peeling benches, gossiping with her Mom friends.  Sammy had Dean.  And a Dad who left early and got back late, or called to tell Dean he wasn't coming and reiterated his orders to look after his brother and not stray beyond their strict boundaries.

That made Dean angry and he had to fight hard to keep the hurt out of his 'yes, sirs' and 'no, sirs.'

Of course he'd look after Sammy.  Of course he wouldn't go places Dad had said not to.  What else was he going to do?  What else did he have except his role as older brother and obedient son?  Nothing, that's what.

Keep reading on AO3.

[erosia-rhodes]

Top 9 Newbie thoughts on Supernatural after Six Months of Madness

I started watching Supernatural a week before the series finale, and full disclosure, it was only because I heard about the gay angel. I loved me some Good Omens, so I decided to check out a series my only previous thoughts about had been, "Is that show still on?" In the past six months, I've watched about fifty percent of the episodes scattered across all fifteen seasons. I've also spent time following the bonkers-in-the-best-way fandom on Tumblr, and here is what I have learned:

1) Everyone who loves Supernatural also hates Supernatural

No one is capable of praising this show without also trashing it. Supernatural is as awful as it is awesome. Watching Supernatural is like hate-fucking your nemesis against a wall; you're totally conflicted about it, but it's enormously pleasurable and you know you're going to do it over and over again. No one has a pure, untainted love for this show. They only have complicated emotions. This is because…

2) The fact that the show needs to be fixed is an essential part of its appeal

Strangely, if this show were better, it wouldn't be as popular. If you love a show that is perfect, you watch it once or twice or thrice, make a bunch of memes, and move on with your life two years later when you find something else to hyper-fixate on. If you love a show that's broken, you spend the rest of your life obsessed with fixing it. It's the crooked photo hanging on the wall that yearns to be straightened (because, you know, this show is bad at making things straight). It's the stray dog you know would be adoptable if you fattened it up and socialized it with your other dogs, and just like some people can't stop rescuing animals, Supernatural fans can't stop thinking about how to fix a show that isn't great, but could be with a flea bath and a trip to the groomers. Supernatural fans are not fans of the actual show, but of the show they imagine it could be, one that only exists in an alternate universe. They are in love with the Platonic ideal of Supernatural. That's also the reason why…

3) The fans understand the characters and themes better than 95% of the people who worked on the show

The people who watch Supernatural have thought about it way, way, way, more than anyone who produced it. I have read complex essays about what the color of people's clothing imply and how the state of the Impala reflects the state of Dean's mental health and other things I'm certain this show did not do intentionally. People can find depth in the shallowest aspects of this series. Any random fan could explain the complicated dynamics of the Winchester family and the overriding themes of the series better than most of the people who worked on it. That includes the LGBTQ stuff, which leads to the fact that…

4) The show is simultaneously too gay and not gay enough

On one end of the spectrum are fans who are offended you would dare to suggest one of the Winchesters might like kissing a boy and they'll shove you in a locker and duct tape your butt cheeks together for it. On the other end of the spectrum are fans who think it's odd that every episode doesn't end with two attractive men dry humping in a dark corner of the bunker library. No one is happy with the level of gayness on this show. It's always got too much "No Homo" or too much queer subtext, which is why I've concluded that…

5) The audience this show wanted is not the audience they got and they are resentful of it

The original pitch for this show targeted a male demographic who’s into toxic masculinity in a non-ironic way. It was about bros and beers and muscle cars and shotguns and hot chicks who will be killed to further the man's storyline. However, when making that show, they accidentally created a show that attracted female viewers who liked speculating about the queer subtext of each scene while looking at pretty men with traumatic backstories fight back their man tears. The show depends on the unintended audience segment to survive, but is bitter about it, which they remind you of time and time again by killing the female and non-white characters and toying with endless queer-baiting. It's like the writers got a plane to Rome, ended up in a gay nightclub in Amsterdam instead, and even though the canals and tulips make it a lovely city to visit, they wanted to go to Rome, damnit, and they'll never let you forget it! I also suspect that…

6) The people who made this show were at constant war with each other

This show has such a split personality. Sometimes it leans into the gay stuff and other times it makes fun of it outright. Sometimes they'll introduce an interesting side character that could make the show more diverse and then they'll slaughter that person for practically no reason. Sometimes they praise free will and other times they force people down pre-destined paths. The writers feel like a dysfunctional family stuck at Thanksgiving dinner endlessly squabbling with each other—who then had to write a TV show together over dessert. That's why it's such a weird hot mess. The show's unevenness makes me think that…

7) Some people's attachment to the show can only be explained by the fact that it imprinted on them when they were young

Some fans have mentioned they started watching Supernatural when they were kids. It's a pretty common experience to go back and watch things you loved when you were a kid and realize they were…not so good. Your memories of them are far better than the reality of them, but you cling to them anyway. The shows you watch when you're young imprint on you in a way you never forget. Supernatural fans are like a baby duck who looks up at a cat and assumes it’s their mother. Then that cat slices open their poor little hearts, leaving them wounded but not dead, forever be toyed with in agony. The only relief is that…

8) The fandom is batshit insane in the best way

I started following the Supernatural fandom on Tumblr in November of 2020 and OMG, it was AH-MAZE-ING. It was total insanity. I didn't understand half of what was going on, but it was more fun than a yard full of puppies doing zoomies. People were posting detailed PowerPoint presentations theorizing how the series would end, citing extensive physical evidence like the background in Misha's hotel room. People learned election results through Supernatural memes. Destiel went canon every other week. When the Spanish dub was released, Tumblr literally crashed! Obama's Twitter was following a Destiel account. There was a Twitter wedding for Destiel on Valentine's Day, which made the one-month anniversary on Pi Day.

It's been a ride, y'all. I have no idea how you guys survived fifteen years of this. The fandom has been so much fun that I actually sat down and watched more than 100 hours of this show so I could understand everything better. It's like the show is an extension of the fandom instead of vice versa. If anything sums up Supernatural for me, that's it. It's all about the fandom and the show is secondary to that. It's like the fans willed the show into existence as part of some partially botched spell. And part of that twisted spell is that…

9) The show will never die until someone finds its bones and burns them

This show has been off the air for more than six months now and it keeps trending on Tumblr consistently. Misha recently trended on Twitter simply because he was at the Oscars. That was it! He didn't even do anything there, he just attended, and some people figured it out by the reflection in a photo posted by someone else! And just as I was proofreading this post, Destiel started trending again because John Cena is a stan or something? This fandom is crazy and unpredictable and I love it like Dean loves pie! If there ever does come a time when this show stops trending, that will be the moment when they decide to reboot it or revisit it.

There is a lot more I could say about this show, but these were the elements that seemed most unique and bizarre about it. I wouldn't say Supernatural is a ride-or-die fandom for me, and I have no intention of watching another 100 hours of this series, but it's been hella' fun to drop in for a while. The show is just as much a dysfunctional mess as the Winchester family and I guess that's why people love it, right?

[freddyfreebat]

Jack Dylan Grazer Discovers Who He Is in Luca Guadagnino's “We Are Who We Are”

After supporting roles in the It and Shazam!, the young actor shifts gears with his turn as a capricious army brat in the Call Me By Your Name director's new HBO series.

by Iana Murray / Photography by Nik Antonio  —  September 14, 2020

A few years ago, Jack Dylan Grazer took a trip to the movie theater. He was in Toronto and it was one of his days off from filming Shazam!, the DC comedy in which he plays the shape-shifting hero’s foster brother. He decided to watch Call Me By Your Name, and he immediately fell for it. Grazer took note of the director’s name that appeared in the credits—Luca Guadagnino—and turned to his mother.

“I want to work with him,” he told her. With eerie prescience, she assured him: “You will.”

Whether Grazer, now 17, has a knack for manifestation, or it was all just happenstance, his wish came true in the form of We Are Who We Are, Guadagnino’s coming of age drama which follows a group of army brats living on an American military base in Italy. Thematically, the show is something of a spiritual successor to Call Me By Your Name: Grazer plays Fraser, a tempestuous 14-year-old with a pair of headphones constantly plugged in his ears. He’s the new arrival at the base with his mothers (Chloë Sevigny and Alice Braga), and quickly forms a deep bond with his neighbour, Caitlin (Jordan Kristine Seamon), as they both wrestle with their sexuality and identity in the midst of domestic troubles and teenage debauchery.

“He’s an enigma to himself,” Grazer says of his character. “He doesn’t really understand a lot of the things he does but he’s so forthright so he convinces himself that he knows everything. He feels like other people don’t deserve his intelligence. But he’s also very volatile and aggressive at times, and not because he’s coming from an angry place but because he’s constantly questioning who he is.”

If Fraser is just beginning his coming of age when we first meet him, Grazer is inching closer to the end. Starring in enormous blockbusters including IT, he became the Loser Club’s resident hypochondriac at age 12 and a superhero’s sidekick by 15. His films have grossed a combined total of over $1.5 billion. Suddenly the stakes are multiplied tenfold during what are ostensibly, and horrifyingly, the most awkward years of your life. Every misstep is now being monitored, examined through a microscope of millions. (See: His 3.8 million fans on Instagram, to say nothing of the countless stan accounts.) Child fame is a disarming transaction like that: a stable career and all the other perks of being a celebrity, but at the cost of normalcy. That unalleviating pressure forces a kid to mature fast.

Grazer is acutely aware of this fact, admitting outright that he’s “not a normal person.” But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I became 70 when I was 7!” he laughs. “I don’t know if I really had much of a childhood. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to grow up really fast.”

Nevertheless, he’s still 17. When we meet over Zoom, his shoulder length curls are damp and disheveled (he just got out of the shower), his black painted fingernails contrast with his brightly-lit, white bedroom as he rests his face on his hand. It’s a Saturday morning and he looks tired: It’s his first week back at school, which has traded classrooms for hours of video calls reminiscent of the one we’re currently on. “It feels like the days are shorter because the teachers don’t want to torture their students by keeping them on a computer for six hours a day,” he tells me. “You do miss the social aspect of being at school.”

If you were to judge Grazer by what’s out there on the internet, you’d expect an anarchic and relentless bundle of energy. A quick YouTube search brings up results like “jack dylan grazer being a drama queen” and “jack dylan grazer being chaotic in interviews for 4 and a half minutes straight.” He trolled a YouTube gamer on Instagram Live. His TikToks are inscrutable.

But here, he’s incredibly earnest, as he excitedly talks about his skateboarding hobby (a skill he picked up after auditioning for Mid90s) and his attempts to learn the flute (“I need to learn how to read sheet music, but it’s like reading Hebrew!”). He’s calm and thoughtful, as if this project we’re discussing requires a shift in sensibility.

For Grazer, acting had always simply been fun. While other kids might take up a sport or get hooked on video games, he performed in musical theater with the Adderley School because he “just wanted to play.” His roles so far have been reflective of his carefree approach to the job: Up until now, he’s portrayed best friends with biting one-liners, or the younger version of the protagonist in a flashback. IT is a prime example of both. In the horror franchise, Grazer plays a neurotic germaphobe running from a fear-eating clown, but in reality, the film felt like “summer camp.” Both films never felt like work; he just learned his lines and got to hang out on extravagant sets with his best friends. Likewise, school amounted to being pulled off set by a teacher in between takes to cram in the mandatory hours.

But with We Are Who We Are, he steps into his first leading role, one that required him to convey longing and confusion through Elio-like physicality and subtext. It’s abnormal to talk about the show as a turning point for an actor who isn’t even a legal adult yet, but Grazer explains that the show required him to radically change his approach to acting. He spent six months in Italy (“It felt like I was in Call Me By Your Name.”) and built up the character beyond what was on the page in collaboration with Guadagnino. “His philosophy is that we know our characters better than anyone else—even the writers—because we are the characters essentially,” he explains.

In many ways, Grazer absorbed that philosophy entirely. He describes the experience less as a performance and more like a “rebirth”—perhaps even an attempt at method acting. Over those months in Italy, the distinctions between actor and character gradually became indistinguishable. “I had no other choice but to act and surrender to Fraser entirely and throw Jack Dylan Grazer out the window,” he says. “I would go out and get a coffee as Fraser and walk like Fraser. That was just me trying to get into [character], but then I slipped at some point and just became Fraser.”

One day on set, he looked at himself in the mirror, and the hardened kid standing there with a bleach-blond dye job and oversized shorts was unrecognizable to him. He could only see Fraser. While talking about his character, he seems to unintentionally switch pronouns, from “he” to “I”, as if the two still remain one and the same.

The process was so transformative that it forced him to re-evaluate himself entirely. “I never really struggled with identity before,” Grazer tells me. “But I think the show opened up my eyes to question myself. Being Fraser forced me to question what I wanted and what I stood for and what I believed in. At some points, the show bled into reality.”

When asked how he has changed, he takes a pause and a pensive swivel in his armchair, unsure of how to answer. “I think I was more ignorant before I did the show,” he says, and he leaves it at that.

Coming of agers are a particularly well-trodden genre, but there’s a naturalistic, raw energy to We Are Who We Are that is distinctive from what we’ve seen before. Each character quietly struggles with their own problems and growing pains—for Fraser, it’s his sexuality. Caught in a fraught relationship with his lesbian mother and an infatuation with another man, his story doesn’t tick off the familiar beats. His personal discovery is instead internal and intimate. "I think every single person born as a boy has this guard. It’s this guard that they don’t even realize they have, where they’re initially like, ‘Being gay? I could never.’ But we’re all born as humans who are attracted to whatever we’re attracted to," he says. "I think that’s how Fraser interprets it as well. Yes, he’s reserved and nervous about it in the beginning because he’s unlocking this new idea for himself. He’s figuring it out, and that’s what you see in the show: him coming to terms with this idea."

As our conversation winds to a close, I ask him if Martin Scorsese ever visited the set—his daughter, Francesca, plays the confident cool girl of the show’s teen cohort—and his eyes widen. “That was actually a really stressful day,” he divulges. Still, he revels in the memory, speaking so fast it’s like someone has put him on 2.5x speed as he shows off his impersonation of Guadagnino. The director was so nervous about Scorsese’s presence that production halted that day.

“Luca was like, ‘I cannot do this today because Martin Scorsese is on my set. I don’t know what to do, this is not good for me. I will have a panic attack before the day ends,’” Grazer says in his best Italian accent. “It’s like if you’re a painter and Van Gogh shows up.” 

Admittedly, Grazer is also a self-proclaimed superfan of the Wolf of Wall Street director, and afterwards, he got to spend several days with his idol, as they went on lavish restaurant outings in Italy and talked about anything and everything.

He takes a second to compose himself. A giddy, Cheshire cat smile spreads across his face. The kid in him comes flooding back.

“...Oh my god!” he yells. “I met Martin Scorsese!”

[dai-bendu-conlang]

Qui-Gon’s Last Words in Dai-Bendu — a Meta/Explanation

So very early into this project, loosingletters and I (ghostwriter) watched The Phantom Menace together, and when Qui-Gon died, we looked at each other and were like “We can make this way sadder in translation, can’t we?” 

And so off we went, with that goal in mind. 

Because we went into this thinking “can we improve this interaction via language/translation?”  we need to first first explain why we don’t love Qui-Gon’s last words in canon, to then explain why we made the changes that we did.

The reasons are as follows:

Qui-Gon’s last words have nothing to do with Obi-Wan, the person he is saying goodbye to.

His last words being an order about Anakin left a weird taste in our mouths

We wanted this to feel more intimate and more emotional

So, we started with ways we could change the connotation of the words being used. We came at it from a lens of assuming that the dialogue was a classic “bad translation” of what was actually said; as in, someone translated the literal meanings of the words into English, and lost a lot of the social meanings that the words might have in their original contexts. 

Here are Qui-Gon’s original last words, in canon:

Obi-Wan: Master! Master! Qui-Gon: It’s too late. It’s too… Obi-Wan: No! Qui-Gon: Obi-Wan, promise...promise me you'll train the boy Obi-Wan: Yes, Master Qui-Gon: He is the chosen one...he will...bring balance...train him!

(Sidenote: upon actually looking up the dialogue, we were honestly shocked by how, like. Bare bones it is. And how pretty much all the emotion of that scene comes only from Neeson and McGregor acting their hearts out. So, kudos.)

When looking at this dialogue, we singled out the following things as points we could build on: 

Jedi cultural values regarding teaching (which we all have a lot of Feelings about)

The word “promise”

The whole idea of balance

And then we proceeded to go to town. 

The Dai Bendu translation of this dialogue is as follows:

Obi-Wan: Jaieh! Jaieh! Qui-Gon: Im enoh...nev forpai paikazah Obi-Wan: Shet. Qui-Gon: Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak. Obi-Wan: Haj dai, Jaieh. Qui-Gon: Enoah kar... daisha. Pauji... kar aimato’ak. Paden... karak.

Firstly, the things we didn’t change, ie: pretty much all of Obi-Wan’s dialogue.

Obi-Wan says, in order, “Master, Master!” (though he uses the Jedi-specific word for it, which also translates to “teacher”), “No.” and “Yes, Master,” just like in the original script. The most significant thing here is that the Dai Bendu word for “Yes” directly translates to “Force-Wills,” which could be read as some unintentional, ouchy subtext that both implies that Obi-Wan is agreeing with Qui-Gon’s point about Anakin being the Chosen One as a final act of comfort (because he’s expressed doubt about the possibility before), as well as conceding to both himself, Qui-Gon, and the universe that the Force has willed his Master’s death. 

Next, the things that changed from the script mostly as a symptom of the ways that Dai Bendu is different from English/Basic. For instance, Qui-Gon refers to Anakin as “the child” rather than “the boy,” because Dai Bendu does not express gender in that way. Instead of saying “it’s too late,” a more word-for-word direct translation of “Im enoh nev forpai paikazah” would be “no time is left,” which both lines up with how we imagine time works in Dai Bendu (link here), and is more natural to the way Dai Bendu handles sentence structure (“it’s too late” is a very English sentence construction). 

And now we get to the meaning changes. Other than changing the structure, “im enoh nev forpai paikazah” also adds “pai,” our consequential prefix, to “kazah,” which is the present-tense of the verb “kaza” or “to leave.” That makes the sentence mean something like “no time is left, and because of that the future has changed.” This is essentially Qui-Gon admitting to both himself and to Obi-Wan that his death is going to change, at the very least, Obi-Wan’s future forever, and also the future of the entire universe (though whether or not Qui-Gon knows this last part, in a Force-saturated moment right before death, is unclear in both the original version and our version). 

Qui-Gon’s next line is “Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak.” Again, we have the consequential prefix, this time attached to “paden,” which means “to guide/to teach,” here in the future tense. The implication of that being something like “teach him and it will alter the future.” Adding the consequential prefix to something which is already in the future tense is considered repetitive — comparable to saying something like “it is so enormously big” in English. A native speaker making the choice to add it here illustrates a conscious emphasis. Qui-Gon is really trying to express how important he thinks teaching Anakin is. 

We also have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about the Jedi as a people who are dedicated to teaching as a cultural value. On top of being archivists and having/keeping a vast collection of knowledge, Jedi do pretty much nothing but study/learn their entire lives. They are dedicated diplomats and so on, but outside of that they seem to want to foster understanding and that in-and-of itself is always a lesson. In TCW, for instance, everything is a teachable moment for someone. The fact that so much careful consideration is put into who you pick as your Padawan, and that you retain a deep connection to them even when the apprenticeship is over, shows that this connection and this act of teaching is immensely important. It is considered a standard part of each Jedi’s life to step into that teaching role at least once — nearly every Jedi takes on at least one apprentice. If you take Obi-Wan as an example, he spent half his time in the PT being a student, and then the other half being a teacher. So here, Qui-Gon is taking one of their culture’s most important values and handing it to Obi-Wan. 

Then we have the word for “promise” we used, “ikio.” While we have a standard word for promise, “aima,” the word that Qui-Gon uses here instead is one with more cultural meaning. “Ikio” refers to a very specific kind of promise, something like “promise me because you love me,” or “promise me because I trust you above all.”  The word dates back to the Jedi-Sith schism, where it was used as an oath to state that you trust this person to take your lightsaber and bring it back to your home temple, should you die in battle.

Which means that, holistically, the line “Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak” both places the highest amount of trust possible in Obi-Wan’s hands, while also stating that Qui-Gon believes him ready of preforming one of their most culturally important values, and trusts him implicitly to carry that out. 

Finally, the line “Enoah kar... daisha. Pauji... kar aimato’ak. Paden... karak.” Some of this is, again, just us having words in Dai Bendu which Basic doesn’t have. “Daisha” is the word for Chosen One, the one referred to as such specifically to that old prophecy Qui-Gon likes so much. It’s a word that all Jedi would be familiar with, but usually in the context of folk tales. It’s like calling someone “The Once and Future King.” (Which also makes Qui-Gon talking to the Council way funnier — “hey guys, I found King Arthur!” “what the fuck??”). Qui-Gon also uses the third person Jedi/in-community pronouns when referring to Anakin, showing that he already thinks of this kid as a Jedi. 

Then there is the concept of “aimato,” here in the accusative case as “aimato’ak.” Aimato is the word for “cosmic balance,” which is both a very important idea in Jedi philosophy, and also a very big and abstract concept. And like any other big and abstract concept which has a large impact on lives and culture, like Love or Brotherhood or Democracy or God, it’s something that individual people and individual Jedi have different conceptions of and ideas about. This is a culture of warrior-philosophers — pretty much everyone has a slightly different theory as to what aimato/”cosmic balance” is supposed to mean and what it will look like when it is achieved, or if it’s possible to achieve, from "it means that one day the Force shows itself to all people" to "it's about finding balance within only yourself" to "it means that evil will finally stand down" to "it means that all who strive for it will achieve peace" to "it's in tiny everyday moments." People sit around and debate this for hours. 

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan deeply disagree on it’s definition, given their specialties in the Living vs. Unifying Force, and have essentially had an ongoing debate about it for years. It’s an old, comfortable argument both of them know that neither is ever going to win. They could both probably recite the other’s points in their sleep. However, it’s something they end up going back to every time they have a spare moment with nothing else to do. 

Qui-Gon bringing it up here is not only referring to something very important in their culture, it’s almost like referencing an old, treasured inside joke between him and his student, which is something Obi-Wan would pick up on right away. 

So, to summarize; we attempted to modify this very... Anakin-focused last dialogue, and instead make it about Qui-Gon telling Obi-Wan he trusts him above all, specifically to teach (which, again, with Jedi and their teaching focused culture is a HUGE thing) and to continue their discussions and keep their traditions going with this child.

It’s also a fun thought experiment in translation studies — sometimes, things really can get lost in a one-for-one translation of something, when cultural and collaborative meaning aren’t considered and translated accordingly. 

Thank you for reading!

[lesbiansforboromir]

once again you made me deeply emotional over boromir. i don't have the fellowship (much less the english edition) at hand, so i can't even re-read my fav parts with him. any particular boromir-related stuff you may share?

FUCK ok I’ve got a migraine and a passion and I do not know how to use either of them but I’m gonna use this ask to talk about something I’ve been thinking about for months, not kidding on that one. 

Galadriel... was the direct cause of Boromir trying to take the ring- HEAR ME OUT. 

There are some very important things to remember about Boromir when you’re considering his actions and motives.

- He explicitly came on the quest assuming it would lead them all to Minas Tirith, because that’s where he needed to get back too. It’s very clear, he and Aragorn are literally going because Minas Tirith is on the way to Mordor. And every detour and every delay of the Company amps up his frustration and worry. 

- He left Gondor with the certainty that his city would be besieged VERY soon and that they would not be able to break it. His trip to Rivendell is desperation based in it’s entirety, he’s looking for anything that might help. 

- He knows absolutely none of these people from adam and whilst he very much wants to trust them, they have yet to win his loyalty or faith in ANY capacity. I’m sorry! I know everyone wants the Fellowship to be that good good found family foundation but it simply isn’t that for Boromir and never has been.

Okay so when they finally leave Moria and Gandalf’s dead, everyone’s grieving and miserable. They are also worried, Gandalf was their guide and as much as Aragorn’s a tracker he doesn’t have Gandalf’s expertise. Then again, Moria had been entirely Gandalf’s decision in the first place, claiming there wouldn’t be many orcs in there at all in an argument he has with Boromir about how dangerous the mines would be in comparison to the Gap of Rohan. Indeed, if Bilbo hadn’t given Frodo the mithril shirt then Frodo would be straight up dead and it would have been Gandalf’s decisions that caused it. 

So at this point Boromir’s faith in Aragorn’s ability is pretty low. And no one else in the Fellowship has any interest in leading. Boromir deferred to Aragorn’s judgement because Aragorn’s more knowledgeable of Eriador and also just... a dude who needs to be in control, it’s easy to tell. But now Boromir’s not so sure Aragorn’s up to it, since he seemed to rely on Gandalf so much. 

And then Aragorn tells them all they’re going to go through the Golden Wood. Now Boromir knows from the Rohirrim and Gondorian legend that the Golden Wood is Strange And Scary And Dangerous And Men Who Walk in Never Walk Out Again. And he says this, politely. Aragorn tells him he’s foolish for fearing it and essentially that if people got hurt in the Golden Wood then they deserved it. Again, despite the general discourtesy of these comments, Boromir chooses to believe Aragorn’s judgement. 

The next thing that happens is they are accosted by Haldir, treated like possible enemies or spies (despite Haldir admitting that Elrond had already told them they were coming) and a day and a lot of dwarfphobia later Haldir is threatening Gimli with death. No I’m not joking, Haldir says there’s a law dwarves can’t come into Lothlorien without a blindfold. And when Gimli gets justifiably angry about this and wants to go back if he’s being treated this way, Haldir says he WILL be killed if he tries to leave. Weapons are drawn! The only reason this de-escalates is because Aragorn suggests they all go blindfold because ‘it is hard on the dwarf to be so singled out’. I cannot express to you how soon this happens after Aragorn assures everyone that Lothlorien is safe. I also cannot emphasise enough how Gimli does absolutely nothing to deserve this, he’s polite and kind as ever until Haldir instigates it. 

So again!! Another mark against Aragorn’s reliability! And then we come to the CRUX of the matter, the meeting with Galadriel and Celeborn. 

A lot happens here, some of it very funny in terms of Galadriel’s treatment of Celeborn, but the important part is at the end where Galadriel mind-interrogates all the fellowship but Aragorn and Legolas. Again, this isn’t subtext, in-text it says interrogate. And the fellowship discusses it afterwards. Gimli, Sam, Merry and Frodo all agree that ‘Galadriel offered them a choice, to go back home where they would be safe, or to continue on with the quest though there may be far greater perils ahead’. 

But that couldn’t have been the choice she gave Boromir. Because he can’t go home to be safe and sound away from the evil!! He lives there!! This has been Boromir’s fight his whole life, it has never BEEN a choice for him. And from this moment on Boromir’s manner changes dramatically. He questions Frodo about what Galadriel asked him, he expresses concern about Galadriel’s motives, he says he believes she was TEMPTING HIM (remember that for later), concerns which are, once again, sharply and cruelly dismissed by Aragorn. 

There is then a MONTH of a time skip, we get descriptions of the how the other fellowship spend their time in Lothlorien. Gimli and Legolas become friends. Everyone else grieves Gandalf and has a lovely time in Lothlorien... apparently. 

But Boromir has never had any real positive feelings toward Gandalf and did not show any real grief at his loss initially. And whereas the rest of the fellowship seems respectful and awed by Galadriel and Celeborn, Boromir replies to their questions at the end of the fellowship’s stay in Lothlorien with what I would call veiled anger. `As for me,' said Boromir, `my way home lies onward and not back.' Which is a callback to the interrogation, the stark difference between the motivations and priorities of the rest of the Fellowship in comparison to Boromir. Which became VERY obvious to him in that moment. So I would posit that! Boromir did not have a good time at all! Boromir was stuck somewhere he felt unsafe and unwelcome and every extra second they spent in Lothlorien was yet another moment he was away from his currently-at-war home!!! 

Anyway just before they leave the fellowship is privately discussing what road they should take when Boromir makes a slip of the tongue, where he’d always been articulate and clear before. 

‘But if you wish to destroy the armed might of the Dark Lord, then it is folly to go without force into his domain; and folly to throw away-’ He paused suddenly, as if he had become aware that he was speaking his thoughts aloud. `It would be folly to throw lives away, I mean.'

It is very obvious to Frodo what he actually meant here, and this is where essentially Frodo’s inner monologue lays it all out!

Frodo caught something new and strange in Boromir's glance, and he looked hard at him. Plainly Boromir's thought was different from his final words. It would be folly to throw away: what? The Ring of Power? He had said something like this at the Council, but then he had accepted the correction of Elrond.

The important points in this section are that 1: Boromir has started thinking about the Ring of Power as something usable. 2: He did not think this before now, he had accepted Elrond’s words. This is ‘new and strange’. Something changed here. 

And of course it did! Boromir doesn’t trust any of these clowns anymore. 

Boromir’s advice, priorities and concerns have been almost entirely ignored and derided throughout the fellowship, even from the very moment he arrived in Rivendell! And after nearly freezing on a mountain, being chased by wargs, dragged through a mine of Orcs, a Balrog, threatened by supposed allies and then mind invaded by some elf he’s told to be in awe of, whatever will he had to trust and stay faithful to Aragorn’s decisions is barely hanging on. 

And Galadriel didn’t just invade Boromir’s mind, she was tempting him! He says so himself! And considering the circumstances and how he speaks about it, the only logical conclusion is that she is tempting him with the ring, because Boromir’s shown no sign of conflict or interest in the ring before now. So Galadriel was the one who put that concept into his mind in the first place. It’s Galadriel who initiates Boromir thinking again on whether this was in Gondor’s best interests. And Boromir recognises she’s trying to manipulate him!! Which is fucking heartbreaking!! 

'To me it seemed exceedingly strange,' said Boromir. `Maybe it was only a test, and she thought to read our thoughts for her own good purpose; but almost I should have said that she was tempting us, and offering what she pretended to have the power to give.’ (--)  `Well, have a care! ' said Boromir. `I do not feel too sure of this Elvish Lady and her purposes.'  `Speak no evil of the Lady Galadriel! ' said Aragorn sternly. 'You know not what you say. There is in her and in this land no evil, unless a man bring it hither himself. Then let him beware!’

Do you see?? Do you all see?? Am I making any sense at all?? Well I make sense to ME so lets continue- Here, you see how Aragorn puts all the blame on Boromir again? The twisted knot Boromir is in at this point is unfathomable and EVEN STILL! Boromir resists! For a very long time! This is what I mean when I say any characterisations of Boromir being overemotional or somehow out of control get at me so much, NEVER has a man had so much self discipline in his wholeass life. Boromir’s entire civilisation could be being bulldozed by Minas Morgul at this very moment and yet he takes everything that’s thrown at him without malice and internally continues to desperately hold onto his integrity. 

But that’s what’s at stake! His integrity! Because now he’s grappling with what seems like a choice to either keep faith with the fellowship, stay with them and go where they go despite how much his country needs him, or potentially do something drastic in order to bring a the powerful weapon Gondor seems to have ALWAYS been looking for home to finally actually save his people. Because that’s what Galadriel offered him! And whilst he doesn’t trust her, it’s also in his head now as a logical thing to want! He doesn’t trust Elrond either at this point, so why should he believe what he said about the ring! It’s obvious everyone has boundless ulterior motives!!

Oh! Here’s a good place to try and explain my theory of how the ring’s temptation actually works. The Ring can control people one of two ways. The first we see with Frodo and with Boromir, it takes FULL control of their actions for a split second when they are vulnerable. For Frodo it made him put it on on Weathertop. For Boromir it made him attack Frodo. However this effect is exceedingly temporary and the person effected immediately comes back into themselves and recognises that what they did was outside of their control. 

The other way is often thought of as this like pervasive constant pull to the ring that effects you even just by being around it, wearing you down etc. But I don’t think that’s what happens. I think, in order for the ring to start exerting real dangerous persistant power over you, you have to know it’s power and logically want it. You have to come to that conception yourself, you have to think about it. 

And I have a lot of reasons for this but where it pertains here-!! Boromir is a fine, reliable and solid member of the fellowship RIGHT up until Galadriel’s mind meld. It’s not gradual, he goes from making jokes, carrying Hobbits and fighting Balrogs to BARELY being able to control his speech and biting his nails and staring at Frodo creepily. There is barely any easing into it and it starts with Galadriel!!

And you know what! There’s an even more sinister layer to this because like... WHY was Galadriel doing this mind stuff in the first place? An immediate obvious answer would be to test the fellowship, to make sure everyone was solid enough to carry on, to ensure the folk who continued were focused. But... If that’s the case... and Boromir’s test was the Ring... like... he obviously failed that test right? She was reading his mind! And she does it again before they leave! If we’re to assume that Galadriel’s mind powers are greater than Boromir’s ability to deflect them then... surely she would have known! That this turmoil was in him! And if she KNEW then why didn’t she say anything to anyone? To Aragorn?? But I don’t think yall are ready for that discussion yet tbh and I have to stop typing or I’ll go blind.

TL;DR Boromir didn’t want the Ring until Galadriel tempted him with it and made the idea of it saving Gondor a possibility to him. 

[camilliar]

recs for someone new to omgcp

[February 2021.]

Reading, or not reading, OMGCP fics has come up in a couple of conversations I’ve had recently with artists newish to the fandom (ie. @jovishark; @decafffff), who are making OMGCP art (!!!) but haven’t started exploring fic -- but maybe want to? Which of course reminded me that I’ve never bothered to make an actual, concrete recs list for this fandom. So, I mean. Here is one.

The approach is, what do I think about when I think about OMGCP fanfic? What comes to mind, what stands out to me? I have excluded some very popular fics. Some of these I just don’t think are very good, and others I do think are good, and/or I enjoy them, but I don’t see why you’d need me, specifically, to recommend them. I am thinking of a story like maybe i’m waking up, which I discuss below because I link to a podfic of it. It has a lot of merits, to be sure, but it’s the second-most-read fic in this fandom by hits, and it’s got thousands of comments, and it’s by an author whose work is relatively widely praised and circulated. I am not sure what telling you more about this fic will add to the conversation; if you want to find and read it, you inevitably will. I’m happy to, say, answer asks about these kinds of fics, or talk more generally about them via DM or whatever. Feel free.

Also, I don’t think there’s a point to pretending to be objective about fanfic; this list has a perspective and that perspective is mine. In this fandom I largely read stories that navigate the tension around Jack, Bitty, and Parse, in various permutations. This is not to say that I’ve never read fic about the frogs, or that I have no interest at all in other pairings, but I am by no means an expert on Dex/Nursey and can really only speak to the one fic about them that sticks out to me because it goes beyond being merely Dex/Nursey and does something else. This is just to say that I am sure there are great and interesting fics about other things and ideas--but I’m not the person to hear about those from.

Likewise, I’m not super interested in stories that really reproduce that which is already in OMGCP. I like Zimbits--albeit maybe not in the ways or for the reasons most fans would--but I do not really need to see endless iterations of the same story about them falling in love and being cute together. I don’t think these stories are bad or they shouldn’t exist or that they have no merit by default. Still, I don’t need fanfic to give me more OMGCP. I need fanfic to complicate, to comment on, and to transform OMGCP. Many people don’t work like this! Totally okay! But I can’t rec you fics that do that.

What I have noticed, however, is that over time there appears to have been a shift in how people do write fic for this fandom. (Other than, you know, increases and decreases in activity pending the status of the comic, pairings going in and out of vogue, and so on.) Early on, say during Y1 and Y2, the comic was about the group of friends having a cool time at college together; about whether the burgeoning attraction between Jack and Bitty would manifest and, if so, how; and, especially, Jack’s past coming into fuller view for Bitty and how it would have to be dealt with in order for a relationship between them to work. YMMV on how great the comic executed there, but as Y3 went on these themes increasingly disappeared from the story. I think this means a lot of fic written over 2015-2016 or 2017 has one kind of tone, and was written mostly around these questions; after that, it feels like a new crop of writers and a new crop of ideas started circulating, that is, either embracing Jack and Bitty’s canon relationship and accepting its relative straightforwardness in text--or deconstructing it, imagining what readers aren’t seeing, or how problems not dealt with in the comic would manifest later. People who have read my fic know which of these I’m mainly interested in exploring.

All of which is to say, looking at what I’m reccing here, when the fics were posted or when I first read them probably has a lot to do with why they stick out to me so much. Because there’s no real culture of fanfic criticism--and I mean that in the positivist sense of broad evaluation not explicitly for fault and merit but rather, for context--I think it’s really hard to keep this in mind. But I’m obnoxious and I can’t just be easy about things.

Fic recs

In alphabetical order, somewhat unsorted; if a stand-alone fic has a summary I’ve included it, but in other cases I’ve recced a couple of conceptually related fics or series, which I’ve tried to just describe or explain as opposed to copying the summary off AO3.

There are so many more fanfics I think are great and worth reading! In an ideal world I’d come back and add more later, or create a secondary list that’s more along the lines of “if you like this, read these,” or whatever. But, being realistic, this is a starter kit. I’m open to talking about fanfic.

- - - - - - - - - - -

7-0-2 by Idday; Friends in Low Places and Sorry for the Blood in Your Mouth; I Wish it was Mine by blue_rocket_frost | I’m not sure it would be correct to say that I don’t like Parse/Tater, or that I’m not interested in Parse/Tater. I’m not interested in Patater a priori; I think it could be interesting, with teeth. These fics stick out to me when I think about this pairing, because they feel different. Accusations of a preference for just linking any two white men who happen to be hanging around have validity, but because of what hockey is and how it works and who’s hanging around it, it’s not exactly a leap to imagine what kind of gritty spark the friction between two closeted NHL players would create. A little violence in your sex? A little sex in your violence.

A Sight Worth Seeing by sadtomato | A four-fic Jack/Bitty/Shitty/Lardo explicit BDSM series. Either you want that or you don’t. It’s nothing hardcore, and not properly a four-way, really; more properly a kind of voyeuristic round-robin. There’s a more open and egalitarian view of sex here than I really get from the characters in the back end of the comic. It’s an expansive, propulsive view of sex and relationships that’s really nice to see. I love Lardo's detached coolness, and Bitty as a smooth operator; if you’re looking for some kind of Dom/sub dynamics world, this really isn’t it, but it’s a lively exploration into the sexual dynamics in a group of friends that’s super close to the good-times vibe you get from Haus scenes in the first couple years of extras.

call me son (one more time) by Summerfrost, Verbyna, and blithelybonny | This is a series, incomplete, and you will love it or be massively put off by it. I mean that as a compliment. I love it. The premise is, Bob Zimmermann and Kent Parson have been having sex since Kent was, like, 19. Everyone in this story has been chewed up: by themselves, by each other, by hockey. Plainly, this is a pretty bleak view of what OMGCP, as a story, is supposedly offering. If you want fic that is dark and glamorous, treading the toxic melange of substance abuse, sex-as-sublimation, and so much money you can’t possibly throw all of it away without trying, this series has that sick-inducing shimmer to it. But, again, its strength is its examination of Kent Parson, textually and meta-textually, as someone to be projected onto. Bob, Alicia, Jack, and Bitty all impute certain feelings of their own onto him, displacing their own issues to a character who’s centralized in every fic but defies neat or total comprehension. Some critiques I’ve read of this series feel it’s too dark, and I’ve also seen it argued on FFA that an overwhelming amount of praise heaped onto these stories has made it tough for other writers to make headway in writing Bob/Kent fic. But I’m also not sure you could engage with Bob/Kent fic without going down this road at some point? I’m sure there are ways to scale it back, but ultimately it’s a story about how hockey’s violent, homophobic, old-guard gatekeeping has continued to set the terms for a younger and ostensibly less toxic culture. I fully embrace PWP fics that tread on the power dynamic without fully excavating it, but buried within any PWP is the fact that a 53-year-old man is ensnaring a 19-year-old, no matter how much the latter is, realistically, into it, and legally empowered to consent. Not to mention the dynamics of it being a 53-year-old man who is the father of the 19-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, and a 53-year-old man who is an eminence grise in the field the 19-year-old is trying to make a career in  The sexual element--the vaguely incestuous nature of it--is making textual the subtext of how hockey works, actually: objectification of teenage bodies as older men’s capital.

Coach Z by thistidalwave | Just before the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, tp prospect Jack Zimmermann overdoses on his anxiety medication and is admitted to rehab. His future turns from a clear-cut road to the top into an uncertain path filled with therapy appointments, ignored text messages, a group of boys who aren't there to teach him a lesson about himself, and, of course, hockey. | I keep reccing this fic because it has 360 comments on AO3 but nobody, as far as I can tell, has ever read it; it never appears on rec lists. This isn’t the kind of fanfic I usually go in for, but I can’t help being charmed by it. This is a character study in the truest sense, a kind of Mighty Ducks-but-better view on what Jack’s time coaching peewee hockey might have been like. I have no interest in kids and my own aesthetic is maybe a little darker than this, but I admire this story because it injects vibrancy into a period of Jack’s life that OMGCP has left largely unexplored, and so has the fandom. We know nothing about what made Jack want to go to college, nothing about how he spent his days in between juniors and Samwell. It posits a very sympathetic and patient Jack/Parse dynamic, showcasing the exact kind of ragged teenage push-and-pull that would have led to the circumstances we see in Parse I-III. The outside perspective Jack needs is largely present in an OFC who’s not a love interest. Super unique, somehow both engrossing and low-key.

#dirtbags by angularmomentum | A series that is a Kent Parson/Claude Giroux fuckfest with feelings. I’ve long suspected that Parse is popular in part because he is the character who most easily elides OMGCP with the actual NHL, or rather, NHL fandom; I think he made it appealing to write OMGCP fics where the NHL is a factor. Case in point, this series, which is basically “what if Kent Parson was a real hockey player and therefore part of NHL RPS”? I have only read some NHL RPS, so I’m not the person to assess accuracy, but what I do know is superstar IRL hockey players take turns here as the caricature fanfic versions of themselves, and since Kent Parson is already that, it’s great how seamlessly he integrates into their social fabric. Rambunctious energy peppered with regret and loss, but ultimately this series is farcical, and it doesn’t take its sentimental ending too seriously--which, good.

fated to pretend by nighimpossible | 5 Jack/Kent fics that Ransom and Holster dramatically reenact for the Haus + the truth. | As a fic format, 5+1 doesn’t usually work for me, but this one isn’t just front-loaded with five too-knowing vignettes; it then wraps up by using its +1 better than you might expect. Sometimes I talk about economy of fic, and this one exemplifies it. A zero-waste fic.

go ahead and move along by originally | "Leave, Parse," Jack says. Again. Or: Kent finds himself stuck in a time loop. | Kent Parson is trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario on the day of Epikegster. I’m sure you can imagine, just from that, what happens. And yet I think this fic is super entertaining, reserving some key surprises. What this story is doing is something a lot, and perhaps even the majority, of great Jack/Parse fic wants to do: digging into the question of just why this can’t work in comic canon. Most often this is approached from the past, by writing teenage Jack/Parse deep-dives that examine their lives mid-juniors, or by writing AUs where enough circumstances are shifted that it does work, or via future fics that posit enough growth has happened, and enough things have changed. But this fic makes Parse live the same bad day again and again, testing multiple theories about just how dependent on circumstance and incident real life actually is. Another day, another tone, 10 minutes sooner, not at all--you just can’t know why it didn’t work until you exhaust every possible variable. I worry that this rec has sucked the life out of the story, though--it’s so fun!

I Saw a Life and Strange Lovers by @bluegrasshole | Most AUs in this fandom seem to retell the story in a new setting or with some big detail change, following OMGCP’s rhythm beat-for-beat. I think of this as, “It’s the plot of Check, Please, but” -- they’re doing high school football? They’re acrobats? They’re a/b/o? They’re in a DIY punk band? And so on. These two stories are not that! They’re both 1950s AUs, each deeply felt, and yet hugely different from each other. I Saw a Life is about displacement and fragmentation, two sides of a similar but incongruent social critique; Strange Lovers is a finely wrought social drama about coal mining in Nova Scotia in the 1950s, centered around historical events. I suppose a theme on this rec list is something like, “I don’t even like this, but” -- yes, okay, I don’t even like Dex/Nursey, but--! This fic is so overwhelmingly complete, the AU laid out so carefully that the story breathes with all the background details informing the writing that aren’t actually, in the story; you just know they’re below the surface. (With the exception of one investigation of Jack’s character in a short, separate fic.) I Saw a Life, meanwhile, really tests the limits of the notion that Jack and Bitty are soulmates--not by calling it into question but by asking, rather innovatively, how the setting and place of the comic itself activates that.

Les Hivers de mon enfance by staranise | What do you do when hockey is the language of prayer for your soul, and also the toxic thing that almost killed you? 2009: Jack Zimmermann takes a mental health year. God knows he needs it. | Here’s a fic by someone who’s no longer around so much, but she felt ubiquitous in 2016-2019 OMGCP fandom. Before any of that, though, she wrote this one lovely fic about Jack’s pre-Samwell recovery. The author is Canadian and really irritated by hockey culture, and I think this fic benefits greatly because she is clear-eyed about Jack’s being caught in an exploitative system; it’s hockey he’s in recovery for, in a way. There’s an epistolary element that works for me, too. I read this early on in my time in OMGCP fandom and it really stuck with me.

Lysistrata? I Hardly Know Her! (by which I mean everything) by @tomatowrites | It feels somehow like cheating to recommend OMGCP fanfics by my OMGCP BFF with whom I make an OMGCP podcast where we talk about OMGCP. You know the fics I really want to rec, like truly the ones that speak to some kind of shared depravity, are the ones where Jack is miserably mpreg for the second time and accidentally lets his kid see Kent Parson’s Long John Silver’s shrimp scampi promo spot, which obviously would get twisted into a self-hating three-way. How many times do I have to rec this fic? As many as I need to, is my feeling. If you don’t know, Long John Silver’s is an American fast-food chain that sells, like, fried pollock sandwiches; it is nautical-themed; I have never eaten there; I don’t know where there is one; I don’t eat fried fish. (Shrimp, on the other hand?) All of which is to say that it takes a real genius to investigate a premise that far out. And while a lot of people almost certainly will start reading this humanity’s depths-themed sex scene and back the fuck out, readers with refined taste will note that Kent, the point-of-view character, is right there with you, despairing that he can’t help himself. And so long as you’re in that story collection, honestly, you’ll love petite gems like Jack is transmasc, Jack and Shitty play hockey in 18th-century England, and oh, right, he’s from Georgia. Tomato holds the distinction of being probably the gamest author I know in this fandom, just really like fearless in her pursuit of any range of concept she’s pushed to. (I can push her to?) See, for example, a sublime bandom AU; Bitty is cancelled for buying a maybe-unethically exported Roman fragment of a youth’s torso; or, god, the masterwork that is this future fic series where Jack keeps relapsing and Bitty exiles him to their guesthouse. Do I think you need to read a fic where Bitty is snide about the teen prostitute whose baby they’re adopting? Yes, I mean, he would be snide, don’t tell me he wouldn’t. I could go on, but my main thing here is, if I have to pick just one, I’m going to pick this Lysistrata fic. The premise, literally, is that Bitty reads the Lysistrata and it gives him ideas. Like most of Tomato’s OMGCP fic, it’s a stripping away of the comic’s polite fiction that Jack and Bitty could possibly attain the ideal it reaches in the comic without some kind of messy, efflusive breakdown. Life is like that, you see! Tricky. Like a lot of people, although it’s tough to say precisely how many, I have always intuited that maybe Bitty is kind of a natural top? But obviously when you meet him, as a literal virgin, it’s hard to see how he’d go from zero to self-actualization so neatly. This fic floats a theory, and it has a fun little side plot for Whiskey, something I never thought about or needed before Tomato built it out herein. In conclusion, BONUS: Dex’s gay lobster novel.

only fools rush in and the light of all lights by decinq | This person wrote of the nature of the wound, one of the early, formative Jack/Bitty fics that was oft-recced when I was getting into the fandom in 2016. It forms part of a larger series that deals deeply with how Jack has been shaped by his struggles (? I hate this word) with homophobia and his own mental health. It’s a picture of the character as you might have imagined him much earlier in the comic’s run. The formatting is atrocious and he author’s flair is what Tomato would call “AO3 house style.” It’s a voice that works great for her writing. I think it’s at its best in these shorter fics; the former is about Parse and Shitty stumbling into a relationship almost accidentally; the latter, an eerie PBJ vampire fic. I had begun writing a fic where Parse is a vampire early on in this fandom, only to read this and immediately quit, because you only need one, and this one’s all I need. The Parse/Shitty rare pair fic shares its exuberance with hockey RPS when it’s good: here’s how fun it can be when you’re young, rich, and jocular. And I don’t even like accidental marriage AUs, they’re usually boring, so that says a lot. By all means, read the wound fic; read the entire series. But these are highly unusual.

OVERDOSE and Oomph and a little spin-o-rama by jedusaur | None of these are long, or plotty, and they’re all a little experimental. OVERDOSE is an AU set in a world where you know how you’ll die, but no details; Oomph, a little fic where Jack hears hockey pucks talking to him. This is the kind of stuff I used to think I’d find in fandom forever, coming out of Lotrips lurking in the 2000s: short, zany bursts of energy that surprise and delight. a little spin-o-rama peers at Kent’s character through the grim reality of being the hypertalented superstar stuck on a dead-last team. All three are sparse and stylish in a way that’s really smart, practically economical.

Sowing Season by @agrossunderstatement | Parse and Zimms, Zimms and Parse. Kent Parson's life, from the Q, through his early years with the Aces, to Jack's senior year. Canon divergent. A story of love, loss, moving on, regressing, hockey, and found families of all kinds. | Effectively a novel, digging into Kent’s personal history, mostly concerning his life in juniors but expanding into his present, overlapping with the plot of OMGCP. I think there is room enough for endless speculations on what went down pre-canon; this one offers a fuller life for Kent than nearly any others, digging into him as a whole person rather than as a satellite to Jack or the plot of the comic. Which isn’t to say that the Kent/Jack stuff isn’t dealt with here; it explicitly is. But the fact of Kent Parson’s life, if we can begin to imagine it beyond mere text, would exist before, after, and alongside Jack; he gets to juniors without Jack, presumably, and he is the captain of a hockey team without Jack, and Pinkerton lays the foundation of Parse’s character within a junior hockey that Jack also inhabits, more so that Parse existing for Jack, so to speak. And I’m not implying this latter tactic is wrong; I have certainly employed it, and others have employed it to great impact and effect. But, still, the title of this series tells you what you ought to know: Kent and his story are the potentiality of OMGCP, up to a point; seeds being planted. Young hockey players, similarly. The question implied there is, what will be reaped? And the answer to the latter, in a sense, that reaping is a sort of violence. Which makes this series sound pretty heavy, but it’s not -- more like, realistic.

(tell everyone) you were a good wife by @queerofcups | The biggest problem with pretending that he doesn’t know that Kent Parson is fucking his husband is that Jack can’t tell Kent how grateful he is. | The ne plus ultra of PBJ triangulation; I’ve been squealing to the writer about how good it is since August, begging for behind-the-scenes insights, and I’d only do that if I really meant it. The precarious social fabric stretched across these three chapters is fraying before the reader’s eyes. The details are delicious, and I don’t want to spoil them, but they sing in chorus with the plot. My favorite OMGCP fics, honestly, remove the romance narrative guardrails that keep things in the comic itself humming along. I think Dann’s take is to ask who in this comic has power and what they would end up doing with it. (Or not doing, from another angle.) At one point, early on in its telling, OMGCP looked like it was going to be a story dealing with the compounded traumas of hockey’s discontents. Then, of course, it wasn’t. This is a fic that steps back and asks what the fallout of that oversight would be. But that’s just the moldering core of this fanfic; it’s actually embroidered, like I said, with glittering detail. The color of the suit Bitty wears to his wedding is burned into my brain. The gray manicure of a woman Jack knows. The ingredients in a cake. This is one of those fics I still haven’t reviewed because the thought of stacking everything I could say about it into mere AO3 comments is inadequate.

when you’re ready by megancrtr | The Aces’ director of communications gets the call at 3:13 a.m. Jack Zimmermann has withdrawn from the draft. | “What happened at the draft” is so mythological it gets asked in the comic proper, and I’ve never counted how many fics attempt to answer this question--from Kent’s point of view, even--but it’s gotta be, oh, hundreds. This story replays the situation from the perspective of an Aces staffer who just wants to do her job, and gets at the jarring discordance between the plot of OMGCP in its quest for social justice and the business of actual hockey. Important context is that this story was written around the time the comic was playing out the end of Y3 and start of Y4, and Bitty pointedly asked Jack the question, “why can’t we?” This story reframes the question as literal, rather than rhetorical. A sterling example of fanfic being a gloss on its source.

BONUS, podfics

hockeyed up | There are many things on Jack's mind. Namely: hockey, hockey, Bitty, hockey, anxiety, hockey, hockey, anxiety, Bitty, hockey, hockey, anxiety, and hockey. | A fic read aloud by its French-Canadian author. Also a relatively early OMGCP fanfic; composed while the first semester of Y2 was posting, the story suggests a version of OMGCP that was in some ways more and in other ways less complex than what it would turn into not long after. The real power of this podfic, however, is that it’s read by the writer, so you can hear the intended emphasis in every line. Also, because she’s French-Canadian, Sophie’s intonation is what I picture when I read or write dialogue for Jack.

maybe i’m waking up | It’s almost funny. All he ever wanted was to play hockey, to play in the NHL, to win the Cup. This—Samwell, the team, the Haus—was supposed to be just a detour, but now it feels more like a destination he failed to realize he’s already reached.(Or: Jack signs with the Falconers, graduates, and leaves. It's the hardest thing he's ever done. What comes after is even harder.) | Don’t get too excited; this isn’t finished. A podfic of probably the best-known, most-recced fic in OMGCP fandom. Striking for its use of metatext woven into the story, this is one of several early longform Jack/Bitty fics that posits that maybe Jack has a lot more development to undergo before he can really, truly, be okay--or be okay enough to be with Bitty? To be honest, this story strikes me now as too long, but the parts in it that work are effective beyond that which fanfic demands. Meanwhile, this audio version only covers six chapters, but it’s so slick, so well-realized, so true to the story. Podfic as art.

my own dear friends | Ever since the day he met Jack Zimmermann, Shitty has seen it as his solemn duty to aggressively love him. (He just didn't know how aggressive the love Jack needed would be.) | There’s previous little Jack/Shitty in this fandom and a lot less quality BDSM,

the city’s ours until the fall | Kent has been, historically, good at this—forgetting about things until suddenly he doesn’t, and then it’s like the scar has never been there in the first place, just the wound. (Or: Kent Parson lets himself be happy, after all this time.) | I’ve never read this fic and I never will. I cannot imagine how, no matter how good it is, it could compare to the version that lives in my head, with Kent’s voice so totally realized. Vocal fry and pathos, a languid energy that I still think about when I think about Parse.

the model home | It’s going to be better, and that’s great, but sometimes Jack thinks, why can’t it be good right now? | j/k j/k, this is a self-reminder to finally one day review this.

[laurapetrie]

do you think nick is gay? i love reading your gatsby posts 🤍

Hold on, let me crack my knuckles.

Okay.

The bottom line is that, no, I don’t think he’s gay. But if you want lots of textual evidence and exclamation points, you can click here.

Matthew J. Bruccoli, the preeminent Fitzgerald scholar, addressed this years ago, and I think it’s a good place to start. Here’s what MJB had to say on the subject of modern Gatsby theories: “If that's what Fitzgerald wanted, it wouldn't have taken 75 years to figure it out. He would have made it perfectly clear in April 1925. Great works of literature are not fodder for guessing games. This kind of thing is bad for literature, bad for Fitzgerald, bad for The Great Gatsby.”

I love a good deep dive analysis as much as anybody, but - I agree with him. Kids are reading this book in school today, and they’re not looking at it as a 100-year-old work of fiction. They’re looking at it through the lens of 2021, a time when almost everything can be read as having queer subtext. The problem with that in Gatsby’s case, I think, lies with Fitzgerald himself.

People who claim Nick is gay seem to be glossing over the author’s intent. (I’m not going to get into death of the author here, lol.) But here’s the thing: Fitzgerald was really, really homophobic. Like, majorly so. He was terrified of being perceived as gay, and unlike Hemingway, he’s largely escaped posthumous queering. His personal papers are filled with gay slurs, such as describing homosexuals as “another species,” and he could be contemptuous of Gerald Murphy, who was otherwise a good friend. He almost left Zelda when she called him a ‘fairy’ in the midst of one of her mental breakdowns, which he referred to as "[a] wrestling match will a pillar of air." (To be fair, she was ill and thought everyone in Paris was gay, but Fitzgerald was still furious - a man of his time, I suppose.) After this incident, he railed against people possibly "trying to wring some slant or suggestion of homosexuality out of [my writing]." To modern readers, this could sound like he’s overcompensating, but the thing is that aside from Zelda’s mental illness-fueled accusations, there is literally zero evidence to suggest he was homosexual.

After Gatsby, he had a few openly gay characters like Luis Campion in Tender is the Night, and the results are cringeworthy. Campion is a mincing, shrieking caricature. I find it virtually impossible to believe Fitzgerald would have made the moral center of Gatsby a likeable, upstanding gay man, just because I don’t think he was even capable of imagining that a likeable, upstanding gay man could actually exist in 1924-25.

Now let’s move on to the text itself. Grab a stiff drink!

Let me just say before I get to the juicy stuff that there is exactly one scene in the book that I think could feasibly be read as having gay undertones, and it’s Nick’s encounter with McKee at the end of Chapter Two. I personally don’t read it that way, and here’s why: Nick is drunk. He never drinks, and as the night goes on, he slowly loses consciousness. (”It was nine o'clock—almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch and found it was ten.”) The end of the night is a nightmarish haze recorded in a halting voice: “Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain.” When he leaves the party with McKee, he’s already lost a good deal of coherence. As for McKee, he’s spent the entire party desperately trying to gain entrée into New York society with his photography. Fitzgerald makes it clear that the photos are awful, and Tom shuts him down.  Here’s what Fitzgerald writes next: 

. . . I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

"Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old Grocery Horse . . . Brook'n Bridge . . . ."

Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning "Tribune" and waiting for the four o'clock train.

Ooh, ellipses! Did something happen sexually? I think it can be read that way, but honestly, what I see is Nick hovering between consciousness and a total blackout, something that we’ve seen him fighting for the last few pages. He’s not in the bed with McKee - a drunken McKee is in bed in his underwear, still trying to push his photography on an unwilling (and, as far as we know, fully dressed) Nick. McKee is just one of the examples of the futility of the American dream in Gatsby - his photos are mediocre, with generic titles. Nick, who has been drifting in and out all night, finally passes out cold in Penn Station. That’s what the ellipses mean to me - Nick is surrendering to the oblivion of alcohol. I honestly think the focus here is on McKee’s pathetic portfolio, rather than a random homosexual encounter Nick has with a character that we never hear from again. Could it be as simple as drunken-man-helps-even-drunker-man-to-bed? Again, I think it could be read either way, but I think Fitzgerald’s intention was to a) critique the American dream, no matter how trifling the instance, and b) mimic a drunken haze - something he knew a lot about!

Okay, now let’s move on to Nick and Gatsby. Popular culture has this image of Nick as a wide-eyed hayseed who uncritically adores Gatsby and follows him around like a lovestruck teen. This could not be further from the truth. (And, yes, I blame Tobey Maguire for this misinterpretation. 100%!) In the book, Nick is aloof, reserved, critical. For a good chunk of the novel, he doesn’t even like Gatsby, and he remains ambivalent about him almost to the very end. It’s to Nick’s credit that he finally sees Gatsby’s true worth (men can be friends, just fyi), but we have to remember that the glowing praise we see in the book is written after the brutal slaying of a decent man who was never appreciated in life. Nick is the epitome of the unreliable narrator, and we can’t let his beautiful words eclipse the fact that he had massive reservations about Gatsby while he was still alive. TL;DR  - Nick is not in love with Gatsby.

Another small detail that I think is worth noting is Nick’s decision to break up with his girlfriend from home in order to pursue Jordan. He rejects his old flame’s “faint mustache of perspiration,” something he finds unattractive, in favor of “Jordan’s golden shoulders.” The East has rubbed off on him - he wants the dream girl, the goddess. 

To me, Nick is a Prufrockian figure. He’s frozen. He wants to be part of life, but he can’t see past his own doubts and fears - “within and without,” remember? Did the war make him like that? I think one of the things he admires about Gatsby is his whole-hearted pursuit of Daisy. He wants to love like that, but he has “interior rules that act as brakes on his desires.” 

[Side note: The figure of Nick is one that Fitzgerald revisited so often in his work that he referred to these characters collectively as his “sad young men.” These tend to be heterosexual men who lust for romance and highly desirable women, but they are too emotionally stuck to ever make anything of their dreams.]

Now this is the important part, as Springsteen would say. I view the below passage as the master key to Nick’s sexuality:

I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness.

He wants these women. He fantasizes about being with them. There is no reason for Fitzgerald to introduce a scene of Nick blatantly dreaming about random women on the street if Nick doesn’t want them in a very real, elemental way. But, like I said, he’s a Prufrock. The best he can do is lust after them. I’m not going to discuss his relationship with Jordan here because I’ve written about it at length elsewhere. But I will say this: Nick does grow enough to fall in love in the summer of 1922, and it’s not with Gatsby or McKee or any other man. It’s with Jordan, the girl who has been by his side during all this drama. If he’s still “half in love” with Jordan after the horror of Gatsby’s death, he was definitely even deeper in love with her at one point. One of the last things Nick shares with us in The Great Gatsby is his immense regret over leaving Jordan. Why leave us with that poignant image if their relationship was nothing but a convenient cover for his homosexual feelings for Gatsby?

I’m a big believer in reading what you want to read, so if you think Nick is gay, go for it. But I don’t think it has a solid basis in canon - we can see it if we look for it in 2021, but I don’t think Fitzgerald intended any of this when he wrote The Great Gatsby in 1925.