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weepingvoidpenguin · 5 years ago

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The Gods’ Blessing (Pt. 2)

Part 1 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5

Summary: In your world, everyone had a soulmate. That’s just how things went. Everyone had some sort of Indicator that their other half was out there, be it telepathy or a red string that connected these two strangers. Yours was one unspoken of, in fact, you’d never heard anyone say that they had the same Indicator as you. And because of this rarity, you longed to meet the person who could gift you with what you lacked, maybe not so much so to be with the person but more so to finally see what others took for granted. Yet, you held onto the hope that one of your best friends was your Meant-To-Be but he has his eyes on another girls and the little green monster slowly engulfs you at the deterioration of your hope.

Warnings: Light swearing, some spelling errors or reader insert errors

Word Count: 4,554

Author’s Note: Heya! Thank you all for the love on the first chapter! I love all the comments made, they all warmed my heart! lol. I tagged those that wished to be tagged so if you don’t see your name and would like to be tagged in the next part please let me know! Again, thank you so much!

The rest of the weekend flew by uneventfully. There was lots of studying, lots of waiting, lots of Spider-Man not showing up. You couldn’t say you were surprised, only mildly disappointed. You knew he was busy, of course he was, he stops muggings and villains all the time. So then why couldn’t you shake the feeling of hoping he would make time to see you?

You were being ridiculous, you knew that. But all the logic in the world couldn’t subside the pull in your chest at the thought of seeing him again. It was the same pull you had when you first met Peter. Overtime you’d learned to ignore it, though that didn’t make it any less there or painful.

For the second time that night you looked away from your window, deciding he wasn’t going to show up and locked the escape shut before turning off your light.

Maybe tomorrow, you thought and shook away the silly intrusion before falling asleep with your anticipation hidden cunningly behind your fatigue.

“So how do you think you did on the Bio exam?” Ned asked, following you to the lunch room and taking his normal seat beside you.

“I think I did pretty well, there were only a few instances that I wanted to implode but all the other instances I just wanted to leave so that’s good,” you joked and thanked Ned for helping you study last week.

“So how was the exam?” MJ asked once she sat down at the table and pocketed her phone, no doubt just having gotten off the phone with her soulmate.

“Good,” you simply said, throwing Ned a wink and chuckling amongst yourselves.

“How was your weekend?” Ned asked MJ and she immediately went on a spiel recounting the events that unfolded over the weekend for her.

Peter and Liz soon took their seats at the table together and they greeted everyone but the only thing you could center in on was their intertwined fingers. MJ saw you staring at where their bodies connected and she kicked you under the table, pulling you out of your daze. Your panicked eyes landed on hers and you saw the pity in them. She wanted to comfort you, to tell you that you would eventually meet the person you were destined to meet and all the heartache for Peter would pass like a dream but she couldn’t say anything. Not with them sitting right there.

The lunch period couldn’t pass quickly enough, your twisted heart made the seconds seem like hours and the minutes like decades. It was all you could do to pry yourself away from the table and head to your next class seconds before the dismissal bell rang. As if that would help though, you had the next two classes with Peter.

“(Y/N), wait up!” Peter shouted behind you, getting lost in the crowd of teenagers.

“Go away, Peter,” You whispered to yourself, hating the envy you felt towards Liz and the betrayal you felt from Peter. But he had never betrayed you, he never made any promises to you. It was clear practically from the get-go that his interest lied in Liz and only Liz so you should be happy that he finally landed his dream girl. One that he’d been working so hard towards, almost as hard as you tried with him.

“(Y/N), hold on a second I have to – woah, wait, are you okay?” Peter asked once he caught up with you and saw the red of your eyes.

“Peachy, Parker,” you responded and pulled your sleeve out of Peter’s hold.

“Parker?” He asked, caught off guard by the name you addressed him by. You only called him Parker when you were upset with him. He’d heard that name a handful of times in the past few years and every single time it made his gut wrench. “Why are you mad at me?”

“Mad?” You scoffed, walking through the door of your Math class, “I’m not mad, what gave you that impression?”

Peter took his usual seat next to you and leaned over the rail on the desk, “(Y/N), please just talk to me. I'm sorry for whatever I did, I just hate it when you’re mad at me,” he reached out to grab your hand in his but you stuck it in your backpack to grab a pencil instead.

“You’re not sorry, though.” You shook your head and glued your eyes to the blank whiteboard at the head of the room. You were acting irrationally, you knew that. He didn’t have a clue as to what was upsetting you and rightfully so. He’d been oblivious to your feelings for years now so you didn’t know why you expected him to just randomly figure it out.

You sighed and rested your head on your hand, “It’s nothing, Peter,” you spoke much softer now, “Please, just drop it,”

Peter opened his mouth as if to continue arguing but decided against it and faced the front of the class. Usually, you and Peter filled the classroom with your laughs and jokes but this period passed in silence as did the next one you had with him.

You wanted to ask him how long he and Liz were an item but he’s too smart for his own good and he’d connect the dots. But then again, maybe he wouldn’t. He hasn’t connected them thus far. You figured it had to be over the weekend. They’d been so cuddled up against each other while watching the movie that it made sense that they would come back to school the next week feeling even more comfortable with each other.

You figured you could casually ask Liz later in the day but you didn’t even think you wanted to. You mean, did you really want that answer? Did you want to know when they started dating and how it began and who asked who on the date? No. You didn’t. So you remained quiet the rest of the day, afraid your voice would betray you if you spoke.

“Mr. Stark, why am I here?” Peter asked the billionaire in front of him.

Once the final bell rang signaling the end of the school day, Peter walked out the front of the building as he always did but was shocked to see Happy front and center waiting for him. Apparently, Mr. Stark had wanted Peter to come over and meet the team since everyone was together again for the first time in years.

Normally, Peter would be ecstatic to go. He loved seeing Mr. Stark and he’d been urging to meet the team for so long now but all he wanted to do was swing (no pun intended) over to your place and talk to you. He figured if you wouldn’t talk to him as Peter then maybe you’d talk to him as Spider-Man.

But he knew he couldn’t decline so he hopped in like a good boy and let Happy drive him to the Stark compound.

“Nice to see you too, kid,” Tony shot back, a little offended that Peter wasn’t happier to see him.

“Sorry,” Peter apologized, “I didn’t mean for it to come off that way I just have a lot of homework to do,”

Tony eyed him suspiciously but nodded and threw an arm around Peter, “Usually, I’d leave you in misery on the weekdays but I wanted you to meet the team since everyone is here and I don’t know how long before that happens again. So, we’re taking the opportunity now,”

Peter nodded, a bit of excitement in his step though his mind was elsewhere. Tony opened the door for Peter and everyone’s eyes landed on him, causing Peter to feel smaller than he was. There was a silence as everyone took you in but thankfully someone had the decency to break the ice.

“He’s a kid,” Mr. Banner spoke up after a short while.

Tony scoffed, “You should’ve seen the things I was doing at his age, you could hardly call me a kid,”

Bucky eyed you with sadness in his eyes, Peter was so young, too young, to be exposed to the horrors that they all had to face. But he knew Tony wouldn’t make him do something he didn’t want to do. In fact, you’d heard Tony explicitly order Happy to keep Peter under watch and make sure he wasn’t recklessly throwing himself into danger. Whenever a big fight came up, Tony wanted Peter as far away from the battle as possible. That was about the only thing Bucky could appreciate about Tony.

Once the awkward stillness of the ambiance subsided, Peter actually had a pretty good time with the team. They joked about missions they had and recounted everyday life events. When they weren’t out there fighting for the world, they were almost normal.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that Tony had forced Peter to say his good-byes to the team that Thor had said something that encased his mind for the rest of the night.

“Young Parker!” Thor boomed, his arms outstretched for him, “I cannot wait to see what the world makes of you!”

Peter smiled at Thor, “Thank you!” He beamed at the compliment.

“We spent much time deciding what to do for you and your other half. Your lady and you will do wonderous things!” Thor chuckled with a gleam in his eye.

Peter raised an eyebrow, “Deciding? What do you mean?”

Thor’s happy demeanor changed quickly to one of panic, “Nothing! I speak foolishness,” he tried to cover up but his curiosity got the better of him, “Have you not figured out who your partner is yet?”

Peter shook his head, “Uh, no. Not yet,”

Thor’s head lightly cocked to the side, “How could you not? You’ve been together for so long already,”

“You know who my Soulmate is?” Peter asked, surprise evident in his tone.

“Well, of course! We wouldn’t have spent a millennium creating you just to forget who you are,” Thor boasted, pride on his shoulders.

“Creating?” Peter repeated, his mind not being able to wrap around Thor’s words.

“All right, buddy.” Tony patted Thor’s chest and tried to pull him away, “You’ve screwed up enough as it is,”

Thor’s joyous mood was not dwindled by Tony’s interruption, “You have great things ahead of you, Peter Parker. Great things ahead for both of you,”

“Come on, Thor.” Natasha intercepted, dragging him away from a bewildered Peter.

Peter looked up at Tony with an eyebrow raised, “What was that?” he merely asked, pointing lazily at the thundering God.

“Don’t worry about it, Kid. You’ll understand soon enough,” Tony half explained and called for Happy to come over. “Drop him off, will ya, Happy? And maybe pick him up some food on the way, he’s too skinny,”

Peter shook his head and walked out the door with Happy knowing Tony wasn’t going to tell him what he wanted to know.

You had just managed to finish your homework by the time the sun set outside so you grabbed a mug of warm liquid and perched on your fire escape, hoping that a certain someone would join you. An hour had passed and still nothing so you went back inside to grab a blanket and wrapped yourself in it and turned on your favorite show to begin watching it outside, hoping the distraction would make the time go by faster.

You had eventually become so immersed in the characters on your screen that the shaking of the fire escape caught you by surprise and you grabbed your phone from midair to prevent it from crashing onto the floor.

“Jesus!” You said, resting your hand on your heart to calm its pace.

“Nope, just me,” Spider-Man joked and cocked his head to the side, “What are you doing out here?”

You cleared your throat and took a sip from the warm mug in your hand, “Thinking,” you twisted the truth a bit.

“About?” He asked, taking his normal seat next to your window and stretching his hand out to have a drink.

You handed him the mug and wrapped yourself deeper in the thick blanket, “Everything. I’ve just been thinking a lot recently,”

“As opposed to other times?” He asked, pulling his mask up ever so slightly to drink.

You chuckled and elbowed him, “Quit being a jerk,”

He chuckled too and lifted his hands, “Sorry, it’s just kind of sad seeing you out here,” he admitted, setting the cup down in the little space between the both of you.

“So you visit me because you think I’m sad?” You asked, a hint of irritation in your voice.

“No! Not at all!” Spider-Man tried to defend, waving his hands in front of him before sighing, “It’s just, I like spending time with you and knowing that you’re upset makes me want to make you not upset, ya know?”

You eyed him suspiciously but then giggled at his lame explanation, “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t think I’d like to see you upset either,”

“No?” He asked, a visible raise in his eyebrow area through his mask.

“No,” you confirmed and looked away from him, afraid he would see the blush on your cheeks.

“So, then what’s upsetting you?”

You sighed and rested your head against your window, “Remember how I told you that my crush on this guy was unrequited?” You asked, still looking away from him, “Well, I’d always hoped that maybe I had a chance with him but after today I know there isn’t one,”

“How come?” He asked, scooting closer to you so your shoulders were touching despite you being wrapped in the blanket.

“He’s with someone,” you said, resting your head on his shoulder, “Someone I can’t compete with,”

He didn’t say anything for a while, just let you stay there on his shoulder while he tried to connect the dots in his mind but he couldn’t come to a resolution. “Why do you have to compete? Why not just tell him and see what he says?”

You snorted, “Would you tell the person you liked for three years that you had feelings for them?”

Spider-Man sat quietly for a moment, looking straight at you before shaking his head, “No, I guess not. Not if I thought she didn’t like me back,”

“Exactly,” you said, crossing your arms, “I’m hoping I just get over him soon but it’s been three years and everyday it gets harder to keep it a secret from him,”

“Maybe it gets harder because you’re supposed to tell him,” he offered.

“I thought we went through this,” you said, “Besides, I’m not even sure we have the same Indication anyway,”

“I get it. I’ve never met anyone with the same Indicator I have either,” he said.

“You have a weird Indicator too?” You asked, sitting up a little bit straighter.

He nodded, looking up at the sky above you and the little hope you had dwindled as he seemed to be able to see the glistening lights. “Yeah, that’s why I was so curious about yours,”

“Well, what is it?” You asked, tensing around the warm mug in your hands.

He looked down from the sky and faced you, “Yeah right! I asked you first,” he teased and was rewarded with a huff from you.

“So?” You persisted.

“You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine,” he offered.

You grumbled and sat back against the window, “Forget I asked.” You waved your hand as if dismissing the subject then looked over at him, “You cold?” You asked, noting that the air had been chilly tonight.

You opened up the blanket and offered him the available sheet. He looked at you for a moment, not wanting to say that his suit kept him comfortable despite the temperature outside. So he shrugged and scooted closer to you, wrapping the sheet around his shoulder and connecting it back in the middle.

You two stayed like that, mumbling about how your weekend went and you’d let it slip that you’d waited for him both Saturday and Sunday. He teased you for waiting for him but it strangely warmed his heart that you had wanted to see him again so soon. He always thought Peter Parker was never good enough for you but now that you were here, resting your head on his shoulder and falling asleep in the safety he offered, he thought Spider-Man just might be.

Peter picked up your sleeping body and crawled back into your room, placing you gently on the bed before tucking you in. He wanted to do something more, to kiss you goodnight, to lay beside you, anything really. But Peter and Liz had just become a thing and in truth he’d been dating her to attempt to get over you. It wasn’t fair to Liz to have Peter and for you to have Spider-Man. They were one and the same. Or maybe they weren’t?

Peter walked around your room, admiring the pictures you’d had hung up on your wall of all of them. He loved how much you cared for them and for that reason he was too terrified to tell you that for as long as he’s known you, he’s wanted more than a simple friendship. He wanted all of you and everything you had to offer but he didn’t think you wanted him. You didn’t want Peter Parker. But your interest in Spider-Man was something he could work with.

He looked back at your sleeping figure one last time before shutting the window behind him and taking his normal patrol for the night.

You awoke to a panicked tapping at your window and you sat up in your bed, your hair sprawled all over the place. You turned towards the source of the noise and saw the masked boy tapping against the glass, leaving a red liquid in its wake.

Blood.

You shot out of bed, making sure to land softly as your mother had been in the next room over sleeping. You hurried to the window after locking your bedroom door and caught Spider-Man as he fumbled over. You did your best to place him on your bed, not worried about the stains that were bound to show up.

“What happened?” You asked, panic coursing through your veins.

“Robber. Bank. Machete.” He wheezed out, toppling over onto you and your hands were now soaked from the warm liquid.

“We can’t do this here,” you said, afraid your mom would wake up and kick him out. “Let’s get you to the roof.” You grabbed your blanket and rushed to get the emergency kit your mom had in the bathroom. Luckily, she was a doctor so she has almost everything you needed. The only problem was that she was a doctor, not you so your stitching would be a lousy job.

You threw Spider-Man’s arm over your shoulder and fumbled out of the window, closing it behind you and walking up the two flights until you reached the roof. He collapsed on the edge and you sprawled out your, thankfully, red sheets so the gravel wouldn’t dig into his back. You placed him as gently as you could on the blanket and began taking out the supplies you needed, placing them beside his open wound.

You almost threw up at the sight. The gash was deep and went from the front of his torso to the back.

“All right, hold still,” you said, dowsing your hands in rubbing alcohol and soaking the wound with it as well.

He hissed in pain and your shaky hands pressed sterile cloth against the wound to soak up the extra blood. You turned the light on from your phone and rested it on the ledge to hold it in place. You threw the dirty cloth aside and barely managed to get the thread through the hole of the needle as adrenaline ran through you.

“Got it!” you whispered, immediately making a thick knot and placing down the needle. “We have to take this off.” You reached around, looking for the opening of his suit but his weak hands kept yours at bay.

“No! Just work around it,” he ordered, barely managing to get the words out.

“Spidey, I can’t do this without seeing the gash!” You tried to argue, keeping your voice as low as possible.

“No, (Y/N),” he somehow fought back and you internally screamed at him, knowing you had no choice.

“Fine!” You shouted and grabbed the area that was already torn and ripped it apart even more to get a better look at the wound.

“Okay, this’ll hurt a little,” you warned and placed your hand against his ribcage to steady yourself while you stitched him up.

The lights from the city disappeared all at once and you were surrounded by nothing but darkness, even your phone was gone. The only thing you could see was Spider-Man laying in front of you, the pain that was evident through his mask no longer there and he stared up at you in confusion as the place where you pressed against him radiated with a cooling touch. You looked down at your bare skin touching his torso and how it glowed with a yellowish hue.

“What the hell is happening?” You asked, not being able to pry your hand from his body until all the blood had disappeared and the gash had closed. “What the fuck?” You asked incredulously, finally managing to get your hand back.

“What are you doing?” You asked him but he gripped onto your wrist and looked around just as confused as you were.

“This isn’t me,” he defended and stood up immediately to place you behind him in a defensive stance.

Pitch black was all that surrounded you, you couldn’t even see the outline of the building around you nor the streetlights glowing. All you could see was the masked hero in front of you and you clung onto him in fear.

Come find us.

A voice echoed all around you, causing Spider-Man to turn in multiple directions, looking for the source of the noise. Your panic subsided as the voice lulled you, calling you forward. You stepped out behind Spider-Man and walked forward, somehow knowing that whoever was calling out to you meant no harm.

Spider-Man grabbed at your wrist, his fingertips peeking through the tears on his suit and causing the same cooling sensation to erupt from your point of contact. He looked down at where he held onto you then back up to your eyes, realization dawning on him as to what was happening.

“It’s you,” he said, his grip on your wrist tightening ever so slightly, “It’s always been you,”

And your chest burst with emotions galore. That strong pull you’d felt whenever you’d hung out with him intensified by 3000 and it took all your strength not to throw yourself in his arms. Your body called for him, demanded him but you couldn’t just give yourself to him despite how desperately you wanted to.

His grip loosed on your wrist but he pulled on your arm and you did exactly what you were trying to prevent from happening. You pressed your chest against his, loving how firm it felt on your own, and his hands rested on your waist, bringing you as close to him as possible. Your hands went up on their own accord and you found the hem of his mask, bringing it up just enough to expose his lips and he leaned in, holding you as tightly as he was holding on to this moment. A moment he’d waited so long for. And a moment you’d fantasized about over and over again, you just didn’t know it.

His lips pressed against yours and you melted into the feeling. You wrapped your arms around his neck, shifting your head to mold your lips exactly to his and when you say that they fit together perfectly, you meant it. His lips danced against yours, moving in unison as heat radiated through your body to be replaced with the equivalent of a cooling breeze.

Wind whipped violently around you, flailing your hair (unless you have short or curly hair then dismiss this) and smacking you in the face but you didn’t care. You immersed yourself in him, feeling his body flush against yours, his hands pressing your hips against his and then moving one hand up your back to grab your neck, making sure you couldn’t pull away.

Memories flashed before your eyes, memories that weren’t your own. You saw you through his eyes. The affection and call he felt before you’d touched for the first time. You witnessed him get bitten by a radioactive spider and the first time Tony approached him. You lived his most important memories, all without ever seeing a face behind the mask. That was a decision the Gods’ wanted him to make.

Come find us.

The voice called again and both you and Spider-Man pulled away, out of breath from the overflow of magic upon meeting that made you both lunge at each other moments ago.

He scanned your face over and over again, his arms still holding you to him desperately and the smile that sprawled onto his face made you want to see it for the rest of your life. When he finally managed to look away from you, he gasped at the sight above him.

“Look,” he said, twisting you around and holding you from behind.

Your heartrate accelerated as you brought your gaze up at the sky you’d waited so long to see. Your body shook in fear and anticipation and all the other wonderful things building up inside of you. You held your breath and looked up and the sight made your draw drop.

It wasn’t like the stars you’d seen in pictures or movies. They didn’t look how anyone had described. They were so much more. The sky had an abundance of stars, with little empty space between them. You could see hundreds of thousands of balls of light and yet you could differentiate every single one of them. You instinctively knew which balls were planets and which were suns. There was a cloudy streak across the sky illuminated in blue and purple that looked like a vortex into another galaxy. You could see the belt clear as day with no strain or telescope required. Everything was accessible to you. Everything was known to you. You weren’t just seeing the stars you were perfectly and clearly seeing your galaxy. You’d only seen photos like this once or twice in your lifetime and you figured they had to have been created by someone who could see everything that you could because this was magic at its finest. At its most raw and beautiful. And you fell in love with what the Gods had gifted you as it was truly a blessing.

You somehow managed to pry your eyes from the sky and admire the man behind you who hadn’t yet built up the strength to pull his gaze away from the sight above.

Spider-Man was your soulmate. The Spider-Man. Now all you needed to do was find out who the hell he was.

Tags : @wherewecomealive @theolwebshooter @watson-emma @le-yona @alainabooks143 @dark-night-sky-99 @myr5heart @the-ducks-umbrella @shameless-danni @powerstrangerdacre @whutisthus

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starlitsea · 8 years ago

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The first part of the finale.

Listen to monotone robot man. Why would anyone follow this dude?

Baby Elizabeth is soooo cute. ;__;

This conference looks SO AWKWARD with the Enterprise crew just … standing on the stairs in the background. Phlox is the only one who looks cheerful and everyone else looks like they’re waiting for the dentist to pull out their wisdom teeth.

Clap clap clap.

Archer KNOWS they look bad so makes everyone clap harder.

Trip REALLY doesn’t want to clap. If you watch carefully, it looks like T'Pol caught a stray thought from Trip and is just sharing in his sullenness. Archer probably made them stand away from each other because it would be waaaay too obvious otherwise.

Aw, look at this crew. Sourpusses together.

Trip says something. T'Pol answers, but even her words sound completely unconvincing.

They are totally having a private mental bitch session and none of you can convince me otherwise. T'Pol has a bit of a delay before moving down the stairs too, as though she’s finishing listening to Trip grousing in her mindspace. Also, it looks like she’s zoning out a couple of times on the stairs. LOL.

Random woman staggering in wearing a jacket from 1970.

SECURITY!

T'Pol is backing Trip’s POV up to Archer. My babies have come so far since Season One! Also, that quick amused look Archer gives her. Like, oh, backing up Trip, huh?

Look, the bad jacket lady is shoving something at T'Pol while saying, “They’re going to kill her.” She looks like a bomber or a shooter.

Is there NO SECURITY at this Very Important Conference?!

T'Pol looks very concerned by the words of this person who has wandered in off the street.

But no, she’s a dying, emotionally disturbed good Samaritan who has a DYING MESSAGE.

Or a vial with hair in it. Doesn’t the hair look TOO LONG for a baby?

T'Pol has the facts about Susan Khouri and has clearly been doing some digging. Trip just looks befuddled. He’s more concerned about who the hair belonged to. Clearly he thinks there’s some sort of hostage situation.

Trip and T'Pol as a duo standing together is a good thing because this is a crazy truth bomb that is about to be dropped on them.

Phlox is like, yes, I know exactly who the hair belongs to. It’s a baby that contains Vulcan and human DNA.

T'Pol’s face is very calm and considering.

Phlox: I did everything possible to verify these shocking hair results. It’s TnT’s baby!

Trip’s FAAAAACE.

Trip turning to T'Pol all: Wait, we had a baby?!

T'Pol looks a little unsettled by all the looks but is otherwise like, yeah, of course? in her demeanor.

Of course, the very next scene she is meditating so she isn’t THAT calm about it. Aaaaand obviously she knows who is at her door.

Trip strides in all: “We gotta talk about this.” We can only wonder how they left the conversation after sick bay but it doesn’t look like they got anywhere with it if this is where they’re starting. I assume there was a lot of Trip going, ARE YOU SURE? And Phlox going: Did I stutter?

Anyway, Trip sits down and steeples/smooshes his hands against his face. This is not an easy conversation.

T'Pol’s like, OK, I am not sitting next to you as it appears you may behave irrationally. Also, I dunno what’s going on either.

Trip’s all: Science! DNA! Verifiable facts! Logic!

T'Pol: Are you calling me a liar? I’ve never been pregnant. Like, ever.

Trip: Then WTF is going on?! I’m so confused and distraught. (Though really, if we look at the date of the first time they had sex, unless the Vulcan gestation period is VERY short, I don’t think they could have a six month old? Like, I guess human females pregnant with a half Vulcan baby actually have a TEN month long pregnancy? And she would have probably had to get pregnant when they were chasing the Xindi and like … hidden it for months as their ship was on the verge of breaking down???)

T'Pol can’t explain how it’s possible and Trip is just … not dealing very well.

T'Pol: Do you believe me?

This is a really important question. This is a crisis here. Like, this is basically her LIFE PARTNER (and father of her child(ren)!) questioning whether she is telling him the truth.

And we don’t see her expression but we see Trip’s expression, and slowly, slowly, he says, “Yeah.” He believes her. Phlox must be wrong. If she’s never been pregnant then she can’t have a baby.

He is having some MIXED feelings here. On the one hand, we KNOW he loves the idea of having kids with her. He LOVES THEIR KIDS. He was SO DAMN HAPPY about Lorian. On the other hand, at least T'Pol is not a giant liar McLiar McLying face who had his baby and hid it from him only to have dangerous people kidnap it?

And ever since he said that he believed her, she’s been moving closer to him. And she sits down in front of him now, so close, now that they are finally able to be in the same space, and she tells him, she knows that it’s their baby.

He’s like, Wait a minute, did you NOT just tell me two seconds ago that you’ve never been-

She hasn’t.

And now he’s all angry and confused and going crazy again. WTF is going on?!

Here you can hear the emotion leak out of her. She can’t explain how their baby exists, but it does. There is definitely a baby out there that is theirs.

And Trip’s face is just a picture of WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING? How do you know that?!

She just rapid-fire responds with: I’m Vulcan.

His disbelieving face is the best. It’s like she said, I know because I’m a witch. And he just slumps a little like, Samantha, why didn’t you tell me you were a witch BEFORE we got married?! (Okay, I actually dislike so many things about Bewitched, but this is just the example that popped to mind!)

Archer has faith in humanity. Yes, reference that theme song!

He’s rebutted with: We can’t afford to operate on faith.

Archer: No, ‘cause I’ve got faith of the heart! I’m going where my heart will take me! I’ve got faith to believe, I can do anything!

Archer is like TnT are going bananas, please tell me what you found out.

Yeah, now Archer has to call on Malcolm for a shady favor.

Malcolm hanging out at the actual docks. LOL.

Ugh, now Malcolm is back in the shady covert organization. All for Archer.

Everyone’s like: where did this baby come from? The mysterious secret dude doesn’t even know.

The bad guys are plotting. The TnT baby is so cuuuuuute that no one can resist. She’s a cutie patootie.

Terraists are always totally crazy (see LoGH, I mean Terraists).

Megalomaniacs always have scale models of buildings in their rooms.

I still don’t see any security at this conference!

Why do politicians always look so sleazy?

Archer is being pretty decent at getting information for once. Not enough underlying threat, though.

Travis’s subplot again. Hi, subplot. Travis is mad because Gannett broke up with him.

Trip needs some one to talk to so he goes to Phlox, because as you know, starships were not equipped with Counselors back in the day.

Trip gets right to talking about the baby. He wants to know about it, if it’s a boy or a girl. After what T'Pol said, it’s become real to him.

He’s so gobsmacked that she’s a girl. He’s in awe. He is fucking INVESTED. Immediately. Instantaneously. As soon as he let himself believe in it. (He is gonna back SUCH A GOOD DAD.) Now he wants to know if she’s okay, being a hybrid. (I mean, he’s seen Lorian so he knows it’s possible for her to be fine.)

Phlox says humans and Vulcans are pretty similar (yeah, all that Seeder stuff) so to the best of his knowledge, she’s perfectly healthy. (Nuuuuuu, whhhhyyyyyy.)

Trip is relieved and smiles a little bit. Then Phlox is a little TOO free with the info and tells him that she has his eyes. He laughs. Lorian had his father’s.

And T'Pol’s ears. Lorian had those too.

Trip’s still flabbergasted. It’s so much to take in.

Phlox is like, yeah, it’s totes weird since T'Pol’s never been pregnant. (And as her DOCTOR, he should know.)

And then Trip says: She could have gotten pregnant and not told me about it.

I will cut him a little slack because the situation is so completely bizarre and they were definitely having their fair share of problems, but, seriously Trip, you need to have more faith (of the heart)! That was beneath you.

Phlox does not bat an eye that they’re clearly sleeping together (well, he half orchestrated the whole thing), but the way he says, “Ah,” is so heavy and chiding. “And she had the embryo removed, also without your knowledge. I believe you know the answer to that theory, Commander.” Phlox is shaming him for his line of thought and Trip acknowledges it and that he’s wrong to think it. He knows that he should believe in her.

Phlox is like, OK, I will give you a pass this time, but you better not be a dumbass about it and say anything like this to T'Pol.

Trip thinks hard, nods, and says that’s good advice. He just won her back after a hard fought struggle. He’s not enough of an idiot to throw that away again.

Trip shares the fact that his father always wanted a granddaughter and bothered his sister about it all the time. (Was Lizzie married? I think originally he might have been supposed to have an older sister, but she got wiped from canon, so it must be Lizzie who’s being referenced.) For once, talking about his sister doesn’t seem to be painful for him. He’s smiling.

Phlox plays along and says it seems his father got his wish.

Trip shakes his head and blows out a breath, feeling overwhelmed. Here he is, dealing with sudden fatherhood. But to his credit, he already loves this baby he’s never met.

Ugh, listen to these xenophobic Terraists. Watch this robo-dude shoot himself up.

Travis and subplot checking out the shuttlepods. Ah, Shuttlepod One. The scene of many close encounters. You guys should close the door at least? C'mon, Travis.

Trip and T'Pol are the only ones sitting at the table. Like everyone else is standing around giving a presentation and the two of them need to be sitting in case there’s more bad news. Trip immediately volunteers to go on the undercover mission to the moon. T'Pol looks conflicted for a second, listening to him, but makes up her mind that she also wants to go. They’ve gotta get to their baby. Archer sees their resolve and doesn’t argue.

Doctor dude from earlier is the end result of ROCKS FALL.

Why are we mining the moon? Poor moon.

Trip and T'Pol are apparently the ONLY ONES on the undercover mission. Like, uh, you couldn’t send a couple MACOs??? These people have their baby. DON’T YOU THINK THEY’RE KIND OF RECOGNIZABLE?

Anyway, they are quibbling over directions while dressed in truly ugly jumpsuits.

Trip accuses T'Pol of downloading an outdated map.

She’s affronted. The map is fine!

Trip: “Maybe you’re reading it wrong.”

She is so peeved right now. She is pursing her lips in annoyance. THIS is the man she’s in love with? Really? But she restrains herself like a Vulcan and offers gently, “We can ask for directions.”

Trip is NOT asking for directions and tells her to give him the map.

He tells her that he’s figured out the problem and she clings on to this glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. “What?”

“We’re lost.”

Her irritated face is a delight. They’re lost. Also hilarious.

He suggests going in one direction and she inquires as to his reasoning.

He doesn’t recognize the tunnel and she bows her head and gives in.

Well, they’re alone in this tunnel so she wants to have a heart to heart. She knows he’s not convinced that she told him the truth about the child.

He looks really serious here when he asks her what she means.

She looks both sad and a little testy as she says, “You think I might have gotten pregnant without your knowledge.”

He can’t really deny it and looks away, but tries to defend himself anyway. “I never said that!”

“I know.” Jolene’s delivery here is so good? She is acknowledging that he didn’t say that even if he was thinking it, and she knows it was because he didn’t want to hurt her, even if she is still hurt by it. She does a little swallow after she says it too.

He’s not mad or anything but the first thought that comes to his mind just pops out of his mouth: “You’ve been talking to Phlox.”

And by this T'Pol is a little skeptical as to where the conversation has gone and turns it around on him. “Nooo? Have you?”

Now he’s kind of frustrated but not mad. “Look, it’s because you’re Vulcan, inn’t it, that you know all this?!” Like he’s at a perpetual disadvantage and T'Pol is full of some witchy secret mind-reading knowledge that he’s not privy too. She knows that the baby is theirs. She knows that he has doubts. (Darlin’, she could read you without the psychic bond. And don’t forget, you once told her the same thing.)

He’s sick of the bond!

Now, this riles her up. She doesn’t particularly enjoy it either. Especially when it tells her her partner is doubting her!

But the way Trip handles this really shows how much he’s grown and that he really took his talk with Phlox to heart. He tells her that for the last time he DOES believe her and that if she gets any more feelings (I think he was probably going to tell her to talk about them with him first rather than stewing in her own juices) – but he gets distracted by T'Pol staring over his shoulder.

Yup, they finally found the area they were looking for. So Trip was right about that. And then they have to table the conversation because finding their baby is more important.

Ugh, Travis, SOMEONE HAS TO CLEAN THE SEATS OF SHUTTLEPOD ONE.

Also, hasn’t it been a day or two since you guys were originally having sex? You were the one with the friend on the moon base so TnT could sneak in so you had to have been productive at SOME point. Were just helping out between bouts of having sex in the shuttlepod?! Has Gannett just been hanging out on the ship the ENTIRE time?

Hoshi is fixing the universal translators. Malcolm is getting antsy.

Trip’s been singled out and is playing along to get in good with the good ol’ boys club. Uh, Josiah is being a Xenophobic butthead, but the rhetoric sounds so familiar. It’s not lost on me that they have multiple black men AND an Asian being xenophobic buttheads, BTW, but in Star Trek race isn’t an issue anymore. It’s species.

T'Pol comes up and without preamble starts to tell him that she’s figured something out. He grabs her, makes a gesture for silence, and hides her behind him to make sure everything’s clear. Gotta protect his lady.

T'Pol’s telling him about the dead doctor with the air of someone revealing the set up of a murder mystery.

Trip immediately knows that she’s not buying the cover up and they agree to split up and figure out what they can tonight.

Ugh, I don’t want to listen to the alt-right meeting, I mean … no, that’s exactly what I mean.

T'Pol is checking out the scene where the doctor’s body was found and of course she gets shot.

5 thousand unregistered aliens on Earth. Could be 10 thousand. Humanity won’t exist in the future because of aliens among us. Wow is this episode timely. Like LOOK, THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS SPOUTING THIS BS.

Trip, you’ve been found out. Your face is too famous.

Yeah, Archer and Malcolm have found out that your girlfriend is a spy.

Trip gets thrown in the room and the first thing he sees is T'Pol sprawled on the ground, struggling to get up. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

When he hears that, he is so upset that she didn’t respond with “Yes.” That means she got hurt or worse. He sees the guard and rushes at him, demanding to know what he did to her. He is about to go to town on this guy but is held back.

The guard smirks at him and says, “Not nearly enough.”

Trip’s face right now? This is the face of a man memorizing all of your features, buddy. So that he can find you later and beat the ever-living crap out of you so that even your own momma doesn’t recognize you. HOW DARE YOU.

Now Paxton comes and is just so ludicrous with his delivery, comparing them to Romeo and Juliet, (Seriously, you guys were SO NOT DISCRETE – EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT YOU), ranting on about them being starcrossed lovers …

Trip is wondering if this is all a huge joke. Is he being punked right now?

He and T'Pol both come to the realization that Paxton is the man in charge.

Then he rambles on about their baby being fine.

T'Pol is so pissed. Trip is so pissed too. He demands to see her.

Paxton yells: “No!” and then starts ranting some more. Trip’s face is like, WTF is even happening?

Paxton starts dissing Vulcans in particular. Then he starts dissing Trip and T'Pol’s relationship in general.

T'Pol wants to punch Paxton in the face and she is logically considering whether it will be worth it. Emotionally, it will be SO worth it. But logically, it could put the baby, Trip, and herself at risk.

I have always thought this, but apparently Trip and T'Pol are SO NOT discrete that even an organization of xenophobic whackjobs knows about them. Goodness.

TnT exchange a look, like, is he serious right now? This is the guy who’s the threat? THIS yahoo?

Yeah, the moonbase is mobile. He’s just letting Trip and T'Pol stand around with no guards? Like, really?

Gannett is being interrogated and wants a lawyer. Travis cannot believe this is happening.

Hoshi is only slightly judging.

Yeah, that’s correct, the entire mining facility is taking off.

Trip and T'Pol thinking that they’ve been caught by an absolute madman here who’s going to warp INSIDE the system.

Trip is like, WTF is holding this together, spit and string? Why would you even make this monstrosity?

TnT are a unit here.

Since when did we arm Mars?! With, like, the outpost from The Martian and lasers shooting out of the satellite dish?

Why are we ALWAYS firing on our poor Moon? Like, LEAVE THE MOON ALONE.

T'Pol literally feels sick standing next to this man.

#adventures in liveblogging #star trek enterprise #st:e demons #this is why I don't liveblog #Trip x T'Pol

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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Hyperallergic: In a Fight for the Soul of Milan, Artist-Occupiers Face Off Against Developers and City Council

The breadbasket-shaped Qatari pavilion with Expo Milano’s on-site McDonald’s branch — with solar panels and a garden on its roof — in the foreground (photo by Benjamin Sutton/Hyperallergic)

MILAN — This city has transformed over the last 10 years, largely due to property development ahead of the international Expo of 2015, which featured over 130 national pavilions dedicated to the theme of food. The event met with widespread criticism even before it opened, not least because its curator, Germano Celant — a stalwart of the Italian art scene, responsible for the promotion of the Arte Povera movement in the 1970s — took a stipend of €750,000 (~$815,000), which many saw as excessive. This reflected the wider internal contradictions of an event that was ostensibly dedicated to issues of food scarcity and abundance (under the title “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”), yet, far from sustaining the planet or even its host city of Milan, appeared to be nothing more than a vast profit-making opportunity. Entrance tickets cost €40, and the food offered inside by participating nations cost more. Beyond the prohibitive expense of the expo itself, activists in Milan protested the government’s use of the project as an excuse to redevelop and gentrify vast swathes of the city. Contracts for the developments went mostly to large multinational corporations, such as Hines, a firm whose motto is “Intelligent Real Estate Development” and whose global headquarters is located in Houston, Texas.

But the remaking of Milan — and the contestation of it — goes back to a time before the Expo. In 2003, architect Stefano Boeri, who was on the Milan city council at the time, undertook a development project in the Isola neighborhood as part of a wider planning scheme by the city council in conjunction with real estate investors including Hines. The development threatened the existence of a recreational and play area. In response, a group of activists, artists, and even local artisans occupied a former warehouse named the Stecca, managing the Isola Art Center on its second floor. In its brief life as a museum, the Stecca had hosted 27 exhibitions involving over 200 local and international artists, among them Ian Tweedy and Tania Bruguera. In 2007, however, the Stecca was cleared and destroyed. In its place, Boeri built Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest), a set of luxury residential towers with tree plantings on large balconies on each of its levels. This novel solution certainly presented green spaces, but not ones that local residents could enjoy, unless they happened to inhabit one of the “forest’s” luxury apartments.

Macao’s occupation of Torre Galfa (photo by Eugenio Marongiu, courtesy Macao)

Four years after the dismantling of the Stecca, a group called the Lavoratori dell’arte (the art workers) was formed in the tradition of the Italian workerism movement, which sought in the 1960s to place labor conditions at the center of leftist struggle. The group, which included activists and artists Bert Theis, Emanuele Braga, Maddalena Fragnito, Aria Spinelli, and Daria Carmi (now councilor for culture in the town of Casale Monferrato), occupied Milan’s Torre Galfa, a disused 1950s skyscraper, under the name Macao; they were evicted by police after 10 days. Though short lived, their gesture pointed to the failings of aggressive real estate investment: a functioning cultural space, the Isola Art Center, had been broken up to build more skyscrapers while others in the city sat empty.

A view of Milan from the Torre Galfa (photo by Eugenio Marongiu, courtesy Macao)

Macao’s action was part of a national movement of occupations that swept Italy beginning in August 2011, when workers occupied Rome’s Teatro Valle — the city’s oldest functioning theater — with the intention of declaring the space a bene comune, or “common good.” They were referencing article 43 of the Italian Constitution and following on a precedent set earlier in the year, when Italy’s water system was declared a bene comune by an overwhelming referendum. By the summer of 2012, the bene comune movement extended from Venice (Teatro Marinoni and Sale Docks), Milan, Rome, and Naples (La Balena) to Catania (Teatro Coppola) and Palermo (i Cantieri Culturali della Zisa and Teatro Garibaldi). Each space worked within the wider network to create a cultural program that demonstrated how public services could be offered via a model that was not state-, council-, or privately operated. Since then, Teatro Valle and Teatro Garibaldi have shut down. The former was evacuated in 2014 by the authorities, despite widespread public support and an internationally acclaimed theater program being offered for free.

“If there wasn’t Macao” public assembly to launch the path to collectively buy Macao’s building, Arco della Pace, April 24, 2017 (photo by Eugenio Marongiu, courtesy Macao)

Macao’s initial expulsion from the Torre Galfa did not deter them. The group, made up of artists, cultural workers, and activists, moved to Palazzo Cittiero in Milan’s Brera zone, and from there to its current and third home, an early-20th-century slaughterhouse in the Calvairate district. The group is now fighting eviction, following an announcement by the Milan city council that it intends to sell the building. In the time since Macao’s June 2012 occupation, the space has hosted over 2,000 artists from across the world to participate in exhibitions, talks, workshops, and musical events, while holding regular assemblies and events on the theme of fair treatment of cultural workers. In fact, their situation became semi-formalized in 2014, when the city council held a roundtable discussion on the use and abuse of public space and finally passed a resolution conferring “the management of abandoned spaces to grassroots communities.” However, in August 2017, Beppe Sala, the newly elected mayor of Milan and former CEO of the Expo, appointed Cesare Ferrero, the former CEO of Bnp Paribas Real Estate Italia, as president of the parapublic entity which owns the building that Macao occupies. Ostensibly motivated by a desire to overcome a budget shortfall, Ferrero and his company, Sogemi SpA, are adamant that the building be sold at market value.

Macao has responded with a petition demanding that it be allowed to buy the property at a discounted price via the formation of a cultural association comprising artists, citizens, and activists, and it has, to date, more than 1,700 signatories. But the occupiers are just as interested in purchasing the building as they are in making clear the political motivations for the planned sale of it. Interviewed by the Italian language website Effimera.org, activist Emanuele Braga — among the principal organizers of Macao — argued that the Milan council’s real goal is ending a culture of occupation that challenges the doctrine of private ownership and makes clear the benefits of communal space. Macao has done this through projects such as the Wandering School, created in collaboration with around 30 students from the Dirty Art Department of the Sandberg Institute of Amsterdam, who lived and worked for three weeks at Macao on a laboratory for creative questioning. Following its development period, the project, which aimed to subvert the usual hierarchies of the exhibition space, opened to the public in April 2016 and featured the option of a dinner for two amid an ongoing rave; a rotating series of 24-hour solo exhibitions; and a symposium on alternative schooling hosted by radical educator Cyril de Menouillard.

Macao’s eclectic programming acts as an antidote to capitalist logic — the group is an advocate of the notion, shared by thinkers as diverse as Adorno and Debord, that the irrationality of art making can somehow upset the forward march of a market mentality devoid of humanity. In this light, it’s worth noting that swathes of the newly redeveloped Milan have in recent years been sold off to foreign investors, including the Qatari Emirates, which owns 100% of Porta Nuova, an area of the city that’s worth over $2 billion and was planned and completed to coincide with the Expo. To Macao, this is indicative of an underlying ideological motivation to redevelop Milan in line with a neoliberal vision of property investment. Under this vision, the needs of the community come second to profit.

An exhibition of work by VOINA, Soon we’ll be completely fearless, at Macao in December 2012 (photo by Luca Chiaudano, courtesy Macao)

“This is our body of revolution” during Non una di meno march, Piazza Duca d’Aosta, March 8, 2017 (photo by Eugenio Marongiu, courtesy Macao)

The bene comune movement, of which Macao is now a central focus, aims to address this social malady at both a macro and micro level. For art workers involved in it, the fight is as much about how culture is produced as how real estate impacts the wider society within which the politically committed artist lives. As Eva Neklyaeva, the director of the Santarcangelo theater festival, argued in an open letter of support for Macao:

What is the most exciting art institution in Italy now?

For me, it’s definitely Macao in Milan.

And now it’s under threat of eviction.

After spending some days at Documenta, the most precious thing I’ve ‘learnt from Athens’ is it’s not only about What, it’s about How.

It doesn’t really matter what kind of amazing content we create as art organisations; if we don’t find the way to restructure the production process to reflect the same values we advocate for in our programs (feminism, anti-capitalism, ecological or post-colonial perspective…) – we are doomed.

The Expo was, in essence, the opposite of Macao: a spectacular example of culture being co-opted in the interests of capital. The unabashedly corporate event practically redefined Italy’s idea of commercialism. The boulevard along which the national pavilions were lined appeared as a Simpsons-esque parody of the experience of shopping: a city made solely for the purpose of consumption. A neoliberal model of eating was imported to supplant the naturally communitarian leanings of the Italian population.

Packaged foods, heated up on the spot in microwaves and ovens, in the Thai pavilion at Expo Milano (photo by Benjamin Sutton/Hyperallergic)

As Macao awaits a response from Milan’s city council, it’s clear that a way of life is at stake, and that communal space is essential to it. As Camilla Pin, a curator and activist involved both with the Isola Art Center and Macao told Hyperallergic, “There is an innate will in the process associated with Macao to dismantle segregation after passing a life immersed in a culture based on individualism.”

When I asked the council whether Macao would get a chance to buy the building it occupies at a reduced price, a press officer answered, “The administration needs to evaluate the value of the property in accordance with the value of the market so as to avoid possible damage to revenues.” When I asked if there would be any effort to fund alternative cultural activities in the area, to help fill the gap left by Macao’s absence, should they be evicted, the officer replied that the council would evaluate different cultural proposals and accept the one it deemed most suitable for the property in terms of “social value.” The question then becomes whether the council, with its strong links to real estate corporations, can be entrusted with the cultural vitality of Milan — or whether the logic of Expo is indicative a corrosive neoliberal policy that local inhabitants would do well to resist.

A Macao event at Torre Galfa (photo by Eugenio Marongiu, courtesy Macao)

The post In a Fight for the Soul of Milan, Artist-Occupiers Face Off Against Developers and City Council appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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