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issaxcharlie · 4 years ago

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We say we're friends, we play pretend (1/2)

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x Fem reader

Summary: Charlie and Y/N were best friends and a couple as teens, after their breakup they meet again 4 years later on the bootcamp of JATP and have to work together. Will something else happen or they are just friends?

Charlie must have imagined something like this could happen. Since Kenny discovered her 5 years ago, she has been a really close friend to the director, participating in some way or another in almost all his projects.

In front of him after years, Y/N Y/L, his childhood best friend and ex-girlfriend. The young actor is not going to admit that he saw every single one of her projects or how moved he was by her in each one of them, many times even thinking of maybe sending her a little message saying the incredible job she did.

But he never found the courage.

It’s weird to remember how he spent most of his life next to the woman, now one of the top youth artists with multiple musicals and movies on her hits list. They always had a strong bond, every single day together. Sleepovers, music classes, dancing classes, homework, parties, movie nights, hockey, illness days, pretty much everything. At the age of 15 they began a very sweet and innocent relationship that ended at 18 when Y/N moved to New York to work in her first leading role.

The break up was on good terms but painful, so painful that both preferred to lose contact completely than to have the other from time to time opening the wound again and again.

And there she was. As beautifil as ever, speaking happily with Kenny while Madison and Owen jump up and down, Jeremy smiles and Charlie looks like he wants to throw up.

“Y/N Y/L, my golden star. She is the official composer of the soundtrack, and she will be supporting you throughout the album process as well as helping Paul and me in other creative aspects, I know she is the same age as some of you but she has a lot of experience in this and all the necessary preparation so don't hesitate to get all the knowledge you can out of her."

Everyone introduces themselves until the guitarist is the only one left, luckily for him, he’s in voice rest these two weeks so he literally cannot speak.

They both look nervous but the moment their eyes meet their complicity comes out and both smile slightly.

“He’s Charlie, he is in voice rest but we are fans of yours. We cried yesterday watching your last musical, it was just brilliant." Owen lets out hardly breathing, Y/N turns with a smile to see the Canadian boy who wants to kill his friend and then commit suicide.

“Thank you! This is going to be such an interesting experience.” The singer murmurs as she winks at Charlie.

2 hours later they had both been avoiding each other, Y/N writing in a corner while the band and Kenny discuss costumes with Soyon, in which at least half an hour has been wasted trying to understand what Charlie is trying to say with the few words he writes with an apple pencil on his ipad in his horrible handwritting.

Y/N gets frustrated and goes to where they are, approaching behind Charlie's shoulder to see the iPad. She quickly identifies the two words, one so crossed out that it looks like a doodle, but years copying each other's homework pays off.

"He's trying to say that if Luke isn't going to wear bandanas, at least consider wearing beanies." The young woman says as she leans on the shoulder of who was her first love.

Charlie freezes at their proximity, blushing a little at the feeling of being close after so long. Luckily his castmates don't realize it because all their attention is on her.

“You are just good for everything huh? Even deciphering hieroglyphs." Owen comments, smiling at her and winking exaggeratedly to make her laugh.

Charlie can't help but feel insecure with the situation. It could be a friendly thing but If Owen really tries to flirt with her, he doesn't know how he would react. Is sad enough not having her in his life anymore, having her as his best friend's girlfriend would just be too painful.

Now, he knows he’s exaggerating, and a lot. But he has to do something about it. Better safe than sorry.

He stretches his neck to meet the eyes of his ex-girlfriend, who is now only inches away. She quickly gets flustered, but hides it pretty well. The problem is that he knows every gesture perfectly and sees through her mask.

“Wh- What, Gillespie?” She manages to say, Charlie can’t help a smile seeing the way she still reacts towards him.

When you know a person completely, every facet, every gesture, every peculiarity, speaking without words is as natural as breathing. And they had both forgotten how amazing it feels to have someone in your life who is this compatible and magnetic.

They start a conversation, she answers to who secretly still believes as her person while he continues making gestures and mimics that no one else understands, writing a word from time to time to make the talk flow better.

"I know. Hey, it's not my fault! So you excuse yourself with the ‘can't talk’ thing huh? how convenient. Yeah, Ok, I will. I said I will!" Her words are the only thing that they manage to get out of the conversation that the secret ex-couple is having, since no matter how much attention they pay to him, they have no idea how Y/N manages to decipher it.

"I have no idea what's going on but I'll take it as a miracle, I was just going to suggest ignoring Charlie these 2 weeks." Jeremy jokes, everyone nods their heads.

“I mean, it’s still a good option.” Madison replies.

The 14 days go by quickly, and with the former couple spending time together daily, rehearsing Charlie's guitar solos together, with Y/N translating his horrible scribbles, or sometimes simply being close to each other enjoying the company, absentmindedly placing their hand on the other's leg or their forehead on their shoulder for a few seconds during the breaks.

Basically the whole team has noticed the flirtatious smiles and the looks, but Charlie was the weakest rival of both and the one who could release some information about it, and without being able to speak they basically ran out of an informant, since the young singer didn’t let go a word about her unexpected chemistry with the guitarist except the typical ‘we are just good friends’.

But without a doubt the energies began to multiply on Monday when Charlie arrived with the green light to be able to speak and start singing in rehearsals. Madison couldn't attend the first few hours because she was at school, so Y/N was going to cover her so the boys could practice.

“The first on the list is Finally Free, the place where we are going to record it only gave us two weeks from now so it will have to be one of the priorities. For the first rehearsal just vibe with the song and we’ll discover where to go from there. Oh, and good luck keeping up with my golden star, you’ll need it."

Y/N starts the first verse on the keyboard, and gets up to sing the chorus in the center, trying to ignore Charlie and looking up at Jeremy. She hadn’t heard him sing for a couple of years, but the same butterflies appear in her stomach and she knows that she will melt if she looks into his eyes.

Unfortunately for her, Kenny doesn't have the same plan, and just before the second verse ends he tells her to walk over to Charlie, who immediately smiles and sings the pre-chorus with much more enthusiasm. The energy they radiate floods the place, both getting closer and closer. By the time the bridge arrives, their foreheads are practically against each other, their lips only an inch apart, and with a confidence and comfort while singing to each other that makes all those who suspected that there was something between them now practically sure.

Luckily there are only Jeremy, Kenny, Owen and Paul in the room, who decide to play a game of divide and conquer now that the snitch part of the equation can speak.

“Y/N, can you come with me for a moment? I have a new idea for ‘Wow’ and a fresh pair of eyes is just what I need.” Paul says, sacrificing himself for the greater good.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll be right back.” The singer takes the opportunity to leave this staring game with Charlie and quickly walks away from the guitarist, who winks at her in a flirting way in response.

The moment they walk out the door, everyone turns to see Charlie, who has no idea what they're up to.

“What?”

"After what just happened you just can't keep pretending nothing's happening. Man, that was more intense than the whole Troyella moments during all three movies." Kenny pretends to be offended for a second and then nods.

"I have never seen anything like this in all my years of career."

“Yeah dude it was electric.” Owen replies, smirking.

“She’s my person.” Charlie mumbles.

If he’s being honest with himself, deep down he always knew she was the only one for him. But that realization was freaking scary. What's next if the only person for you has already turned the page? gave up without a fight? what's left?

"What?" The three ask in unison, and Charles begins to sing like a bird.

“We grew up together and then we lost the way. Like in those romantic movies where just everyone knows they belong together except the childhood best friends and then they end up ruining their lives by being in denial.”

“From what I saw getting back on track shouldn't be too difficult, Charlie. I assure you that whatever you feel she feels it too. Her eyes don’t lie." Jeremy tries to reason with him.

“Leave your teen problems behind. You are old enough to decide what you want and find a way to make it work. But you have to stop pretending that nothing is happening first." Owen scolds his friend.

“Do you love her?” Jer asks.

“That answer is always going to be yes, I just could never stop loving her even If I tried. And I did.” He really did. The surprise he got when the second he had her close to him his heart began to beat like crazy and all he wanted was to hug her and fix everything. It was as if when seeing her eyes time hadn’t passed, as if only the day before they’d been goofing around together. That bond is so big that he doesn’t believe it’s possible to break.

“Then do something about it, bro! Go get your girl back!” Jeremy advises while Kenny smiles.

“Yeah man, it’s ‘Now or never’ like her song, and I guess ours too now? Since she wrote it for Sunset Curve? Well, anyway, it’s like our song says.” Owen exclaims excitedly.

“Ohhh, musical inspiration, let me try. ‘Get up, get out, relight that spark’.” Jeremy sings to Charlie.

“Jer, you are a genius. If you think about it wake up is actually a pretty good soundtrack song for this situation. ‘It's not what you lost, It's what you'll gain raising your voice in the rain’.”

They both keep singing the song until they reach the bridge, Charlie tries to look frustrated but a slight smile escapes his face.

They are right, he still hasn't lost this fight.

👻PART 2 RIGHT HERE

#jatp fanfic #jatp imagine #jatp fanfiction #charlie gillespie imagine #charlie gillespie x reader #charlie gillespie one shot #jatp luke #luke patterson fic #luke patterson x reader

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bisluthq · 4 years ago

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SS Tily does not lay claim to Lover; a thesis

I thought this would take me longer but y’all, I’m done with Part 2 of my Gaylor analyses. Unfortunately this chapter brings bad news for Tily nation. I honestly don’t think many of the songs on Lover are about that relationship. But I also think it’s not as simple as the mainstream Kaylor narrative would have us believe. Let’s dive into this, shall we?

First things first. I think it’s worth noting that many of the songs on this album are not about romantic relationships at all. Like it’s a bit of a marketing ploy to portray it as an album primarily about romantic love when so many songs explicitly aren’t about that feeling. In fact, there are more themes on Lover than on any of her earlier stuff - it’s something she expands on in folklore.

I Forgot That You Existed, The Man, The Archer (which I firmly believe is about her debating coming out), Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince (very obviously about the political situation generally and supported by the doccie title), London Boy, Soon You’ll Get Better, YNTCD, and ME! are all about explicitly different themes. Obviously there are a couple references within those (like ME! has that line about “I never leave well enough alone” which reappears on the 1, and The Archer mentions someone “staying” but I still think ME! is about self-love not romantic love and The Archer is about personal anxiety around identity). Fundamentally, they are not love songs.

I don’t think that’s really up for debate. The only one I can see anyone - say Toes or like hardcore Tily fans - debating is London Boy. Unfortunately for my Tily babes, I do think it’s satire that serves as a homage to Joe and the other British beards, and possibly riffs a teeny bit on her time with Lily. Contrary to some gold medalists in Kaylor mental gymnastics, I fully believe Tay does make reference to Joe in her lyrics (I’ve mentioned the fictional verse for Dress and the reference to “keeping him” in Ready for It). This really doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of Tily songs off of Rep. The British references in CIWYW, KOMH and Delicate are subtle and chilled and actually quite cute. London Boy is an onslaught of non-sequiturs about London, the UK and her beards. Also “stories from uni” fits both Joe and Tom H, but it doesn’t fit Lily who never went to university. All her Lily songs are about hiding out in private; London Boy is all about galavanting around town with “his” friends (Lily and Tay had the same friends though?) It’s simply not about the same person or the same relationship.

I do think there’s a chance it could be poking fun (lightly) at Lily/that period she spent in London because as I’ve already said I think Tay is not above shading ex-girlfriends and it seems like the kind of thing Karlie would’ve also found a bit funny. I think when she got back together with Karlie - which almost definitely happened - she would’ve 100% laughed about the “say you fancy me not fancy stuff” era. That would explain the recurrence of both Motown and queen imagery, which first appeared on KOMH. But where KOMH felt very genuine and authentic, this one is obviously meant to be funny.

Right. So. Now that we’ve established 8 songs are about other themes, let’s get the Kaylor songs sorted: Cruel Summer, Cornelia Street, DBATC, False God and Daylight are all undeniably about Karlie fucking Kloss. They all feature the images and tropes and hallmarks that pepper Karlie songs. They all have the same kinds of emotions. And they paint a pretty sad, troubling and complex picture.

Cruel Summer comes first and seems to mostly be about their first breakup, which she first referred to on DWOHT. We have Tay once again begging Karlie to stay and work it out and not being certain for sure about her feelings.

We say that we'll just screw it up in these trying times

We're not trying (Oh yeah, you're right, I want it)

I mean that’s super sad. Tay’s saying they discussed how they’ll fuck it all up, and she’s feeling like they’re not even trying to fix things. You also have that “I want it” which is interesting considering the “we” that preceded it. “We’re” not trying because only “I want it”. Ouch.

Killing me slow, out the window

I'm always waiting for you to be waiting below

Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes

What doesn't kill me makes me want you more

And it's new, the shape of your body

It's blue, the feeling I've got

And it's ooh, whoa oh

It's a cruel summer

It's cool, that's what I tell 'em

No rules in breakable heaven

But ooh, whoa oh

It's a cruel summer

With you

Here we have “I’m always waiting for you” which yet again suggests Tay is the one who’s more invested. Then we have the shape of “your” body (which is a familiar concept from Dress), but the feeling it gives her here is blue here not gold - maybe that’s why the shape is new? In the past Karlie’s body made her feel golden but now it’s a bluer, sadder feeling. Blue starts recurring more frequently on these late era Kaylor songs. There’s a possible alternate reading, which is blue = Swiftgron (“my love had been frozen deep blue”). It’s a nice theory but it just doesn’t gel with the garden gate below. Also, while both relationships seem to have been colored by commitment issues, the premise of unrequitedness doesn’t really feature on the songs about Di. She asks Di to stay, tells her she’s thinking of her, and they’re “too in love to think straight” but Tay never says Karlie loves her back. Ever. It’s never expressly mutual.

I'm drunk in the back of the car

And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar (Oh)

Said, "I'm fine," but it wasn't true

I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you

And I snuck in through the garden gate

Every night that summer just to seal my fate (Oh)

And I scream, "For whatever it's worth

I love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?"

He looks up, grinning like a devil

Look at that fourth line. It perfectly fits with the Kaylor narrative on Rep and it doesn’t fit the Tily songs at all. She wanted to keep that second relationship private and secret and hidden. And here she’s saying “I don’t want to keep secrets” - this is take two of “I don’t want you like a best friend”. Also the “for whatever it’s worth” reminds me of “here’s the truth” from End Game. It’s the kind of thing you’d say in the midst of a fight.

Then we have her screaming “I love you” and receiving no reply as usual beyond a devilish grin. The more I do these analyses the less I understand how or why Kaylor gets romanticized in the way it does, while Swiftgron gets bashed for toxicity. Like my girl Tay has a thing for chaotic lesbians with commitment issues and Kaylor seems like it was WILD.

Back to the lyrics, this time let’s look at Kaylor anthem Cornelia Street:

We were in the backseat

Drunk on something stronger than the drinks in the bar

"I rent a place on Cornelia Street"

I say casually in the car

We were a fresh page on the desk

Filling in the blanks as we go

As if the street lights pointed in an arrowhead

Leading us home

I find this whole song really interesting because it features one of Tay’s favorite ideas - glamorizing normal people things. It’s like the time with the “motel bar” in Getaway Car. Like she 100% was thrilled to be able to say “I’m renting this apartment” - never mind that it’s basically a whole ass house. I actually think the above verse is really beautiful. I know I give Kaylor a lot of shit but obviously there were beautiful moments and Tay had/has plenty of good memories.

And I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends

I'd never walk Cornelia Street again

That's the kind of heartbreak time could never mend

I'd never walk Cornelia Street again

And baby, I get mystified by how this city screams your name

And baby, I'm so terrified of if you ever walk away

I'd never walk Cornelia Street again

I mean frankly this verse above is super insecure in the standard Kaylor way. Tay’s saying she’s terrified of Karlie walking away and that she “hopes” she never loses her. The tone is sad, forlorn and a little desperate. I also think it’s interesting that she says she’d never walk Cornelia Street again, and that the city screams Karlie’s name and then on hoax she goes ahead and says she left a part of herself back in New York. It’s almost like her fears and anxieties did prove justified. Poor baby.

Windows flung right open, autumn air

Jacket 'round my shoulders is yours

We bless the rains on Cornelia Street

Memorize the creaks in the floor

Back when we were card sharks, playing games

I thought you were leading me on

I packed my bags, left Cornelia Street

Before you even knew I was gone

But then you called, showed your hand

I turned around before I hit the tunnel

Sat on the roof, you and I

Those first four lines seem to be about the good again, and I’m happy for them. I really do think they had good times. Those four lines make me think of parts of YAIL and the toast and weekends and stuff.

The rest of this verse though seems to be about the first split and subsequent reunion. “I thought you were leading me on” she says, and I “left Cornelia Street” presumably to go to London. But then Karlie called her back, “showed her hand” and Tay “turned around” before she reached the point of no return and they worked it out. “Sat on the roof, you and I” is similar in content to “up on the roof with a schoolgirl crush” but very different in tone. She’s not peppy here, she’s not positive. It’s a little bit tortured - and then it continues with “hoping it never ends”. The reappearance of the Tily imagery on Kaylor 2.0 songs makes sense to me, again, because discussing exes in the same social circle as you is just blatant lesbian culture. It makes complete sense that these two women are on Taylor’s mind. She has really really deep feelings for Karlie but she enjoyed the more simple and straightforward relationship she had with Lily.

DBATC is the Kaylor 1.0 breakup anthem:

Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts

Flashbacks waking me up

I get drunk, but it's not enough

'Cause the morning comes and you're not my baby

I look through the windows of this love

Even though we boarded them up

Chandelier's still flickering here

'Cause I can't pretend it's okay when it's not

It's death by a thousand cuts

We have her getting drunk to forget, trying to say “I’m fine” when it’s not true, and just generally missing Karlie.

I dress to kill my time, I take the long way home

I mean, this is Cornelia Street (“never walk here again”) and Dress all over again. It’s the two ideas from before but now on the other side, because they’re actually broken up.

And what once was ours is no one's now

I see you everywhere, the only thing we share

Is this small town

You said it was a great love, one for the ages

But if the story's over, why am I still writing pages?

“I see you everywhere” is very “this city screams your name” and I think “small town” is a metaphor for their social circle. The last two lines are just Tay being hung up on Karlie. She was writing pages in Cornelia Street as well, so this whole idea of telling a story with Karlie is another recurrent image.

My heart, my hips, my body, my love

Tryna find a part of me that you didn't touch

Gave up on me like I was a bad drug

Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club

Our songs, our films, united, we stand

Our country, guess it was a lawless land

Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand

Paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans

My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust

Tryna find a part of me you didn't take up

Gave you so much, but it wasn't enough

But I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts

I mean this is the usual obsession, desperation and general pining Tay has for Karlie. We also have Karlie touching her briefly, which is something she has spoken about before and is really into. Paper-thin plans is probably about the plans to make it work? We have that image reparations later in hoax so I think it’s most likely about Karlie bailing on Tay’s PR game and doing her own thing and/or Karlie’s (accidental?) involvement in the masters heist.

Also, this whole song is very sad but it’s not on the level of desperation I would expect if Tay wasn’t rebounding hard and if they didn’t reunite. She’s pretty sad about how the whole thing went down but she does say she’ll “be alright” which is the opposite of “that’s the kind of heartbreak time could never mend”. I think she wrote this after the first breakup and Cornelia Street came later, after they were back together. That’s when she really went all in into this relationship. It still wasn’t enough.

False God is about their reunion:

We were crazy to think

Crazy to think that this could work

Remember how I said I'd die for you?

We were stupid to jump

In the ocean separating us

Remember how I'd fly to you?

We know Tay ran away to Europe after the mess of 2016 and here she jumps into the ocean separating them and flies back to Karlie. The idea of it being “crazy” that it could work is also a recurrent fear/anxiety she has with regards to Karlie. “I had a bad feeling,” remember?

And I can't talk to you when you're like this

Staring out the window like I'm not your favorite town

I'm New York City, I still do it for you, babe

They all warned us about times like this

They say the road gets hard and you get lost

When you're led by blind faith, blind faith

They’re figuring things out, and Tay is New York - Karlie’s favorite city. “I still do it for you” is an admission of affection, which rarely happens in Kaylor songs, but it’s so sexual that I don’t find it shocking or out of character.

But we might just get away with it

Religion's in your lips

Even if it's a false god

We'd still worship

We might just get away with it

The altar is my hips

Even if it's a false god

We'd still worship this love

I mean sex songs are just peak Kaylor and this is all just so so so gay and I don’t understand how hets can make it make srnse. “We might just get away with it” is the usual Kaylor anxiety by the way.

I know heaven's a thing

I go there when you touch me, honey

Hell is when I fight with you

But we can patch it up good

Make confessions and we're begging for forgiveness

Got the wine for you

And you can't talk to me when I'm like this

Daring you to leave me just so I can try and scare you

You're the West Village

You still do it for me, babe

They all warned us about times like this

They say the road gets hard and you get lost

When you're led by blind faith, blind faith

Standard Kaylor imagery with sensual touching, wine and New York and a direct reference to Karlie’s apartment. I think “make confessions and we’re begging for forgiveness” appears to refer to the reunion.

Daylight is a very beautiful love song for Karlie. The “golden”, the bodies intertwining, New York, and the depth of her emotions all fit the Kaylor story and narrative. I think she wrote this when they were back together. It’s also, as is common with the Kaylor songs, squarely from Tay’s perspective. She wrote it alone, and I think specifically for Karlie when they reunited. Very pretty, very nice. I mean they ended up breaking up and that was bound to happen in like every other song but when they were good Tay did create some gems and they were very happy. I love this song and I do like aspects of Kaylor’s time together.

Now we get onto the songs that don’t neatly fit Kaylor.

Afterglow could be a Kaylor song. But it could also be about the breakup with her rebound. It’s not only by Tay, so we’re looking for broad themes rather than specifics necessarily.

Hey, it's all me, in my head

I'm the one who burned us down

But it's not what I meant

Sorry that I hurt you

I don't wanna do, I don't wanna do this to you (Ooh)

I don't wanna lose, I don't wanna lose this with you (Ooh)

I need to say, hey, it's all me, just don't go

Meet me in the afterglow

I don’t know that this sounds like the Kaylor breakup we heard about. It’s a different premise to False God, DBATC and Cornelia Street. In all of those songs it was a mutual breakup/misunderstanding. “I can’t talk to you” and then “you can’t talk to me” in False God is a two-way communication issue. DBATC goes off at Karlie for taking up every part of her and “giving up on me”. Cornelia Street said Tay thought Karlie was “leading her on” but that was resolved. Then Afterglow goes and lays all the blame on Tay.

I lived like an island, punished you with silence

Went off like sirens, just crying

Why'd I have to break what I love so much?

It's on your face, don't walk away, I need to say

Hey, it's all me, in my head

I'm the one who burned us down

I mean this really does sound like it’s Tay fucking up badly. Not wanting to let the other person in, taking it out on them, hurting her lover.

It's so excruciating to see you low

Just wanna lift you up and not let you go

This ultraviolet morning light below

Tells me this love is worth the fight, oh

This really doesn’t sound like the Kaylor fear and stress. It sounds like the cerebral and emotional connection from Rep. “It’s so excruciating to see you low” seems tied up with the heart to hearts and conversations she was having in those secondary songs on Rep.

Tell me that you're still mine

Tell me that we'll be just fine

Even when I lose my mind

I need to say

Tell me that it's not my fault

Tell me that I'm all you want

Even when I break your heart

I need to say

This just seems like a very different plan for fixing things than the one outlined in the Kaylor songs (which is “let’s bone”). Also “I break your heart” is an anxiety that seems to parallel the burgeoning love in Delicate, KOMH and CIWYW. It doesn’t seem like a Kaylor fear because Tay is always the one who wants Karlie more. I believe this is mostly a Tily breakup song.

Then we get the three happy songs on the album: Lover, I Think He Knows and Paper Rings. It’s actually pretty intense that there are only three peppy, romantic songs on an album largely touted by Gaylors and Hetlors alike as being about a happy long term relationship.

You want my controversial explanation for these songs? They’re fictional. All three are extremely vague and lacking in any of the Karlie/other person imagery. They’re like New Year’s Day and some of the early stuff.

I Think He Knows is a very hetro song. It physically pains me to say that, it really does, but nothing about it seems gay to me. I guess “boyish look” is something you could say about some women but that’s really a reach. Also it’s just very much not a relatable lesbian emotion. I’ve never met a queer woman being like “yeah I think she KNOWS, you know?” about her girlfriend. “She’s so obsessed with me and boy I understand” would make no sense. Us sapphics are compulsive overthinkers. And that’s what comes across on all her songs about Karlie and about Di and even those Tily songs from Rep. That’s largely why Tay’s stuff is so damn gay.

Tay’s permanently anxious - even on her love songs, there’s a thread of anxiety running through it all. This song is missing any of that anxiety. This song also has so, so many male pronouns…. And “I am an architect, I'm drawing up the plans” is an objectively weird thing to say about a relationship. It just doesn’t strike me as sapphic, and it definitely doesn’t strike me as being about Karlie lr Lily or Di. Also Nashville is 16th Avenue and I don’t know why any of the women would be associated with Nashville.

That Nashville reference makes me think that maybe the song is inspired by the music industry generally? If you go look at 16th Avenue by Lacy J. Dalton, there’s a clear narrative about the music industry. I think it’s possible that Tay’s song is referencing the love she feels for and from the music industry and her fans. That would tie into the architectural plans, being 17 (she often speaks about being stuck at that age because it’s when she got famous), and “he’s so obsessed with me” makes sense when you’re AOTD. Even the “attitude” line makes sense in this interpretation.

This bit:

Lyrical smile, indigo eyes, hand on my thigh

We can follow the sparks, I'll drive

Lyrical smile, indigo eyes, hand on my thigh

We can follow the sparks, I'll drive

"So where we gonna go?"

I whisper in the dark

"Where we gonna go?"

I think he knows

Is a little harder to make sense of and seems like it could maybe be about Lily or at least inspired by her - there’s the car/driving theme from the secondary Rep relationship and Lily does have indigo eyes (they’re way bluer than Joe’s). So maybe she used images and diaries from that period to add to the story about Nashville? But overall this smugness just doesn’t strike me as very gay and in general the song doesn’t seem to be about any one woman in her history. Also “better lock it down or I won’t stick around” is so very hetro and like… untortured.

Paper Rings is not about Karlie but I also don’t think it’s about Lily.

The moon is high

Like your friends were the night that we first met

Went home and tried to stalk you on the internet

Now I've read all of the books beside your bed

The wine is cold

Like the shoulder that I gave you in the street

Cat and mouse for a month or two or three

Now I wake up in the night and watch you breathe

This is not about Karlie. We’ve heard repeatedly that they fell in love at first sight so “month or two or three” is kinda wild? Like they full on U-Hauled it with the Big Sur trip and Tay moving to New York and Karlie basically moving into her apartment. They were never cat and mouse? Also Karlie was a supermodel by the time they met one another so “trying to stalk you on the internet” seems a bit of an odd way to phrase it. There would’ve been plenty to find. They both had big reputations. Moreover, they had multiple mutual friends so “your friends” is also an odd turn of phrase. How does this verse fit any aspect of the Kaylor love story?

In the winter, in the icy outdoor pool

When you jumped in first, I went in too

I'm with you even if it makes me blue

Which takes me back

To the color that we painted your brother's wall

Honey, without all the exes, fights, and flaws

We wouldn't be standing here so tall, so

This is also very not Kaylor lol except for the tall part. The chilled out hanging out and swimming and wall painting sounds more like the songs about Tily on Rep.

I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings

Uh huh, that's right

Darling, you're the one I want, and

I hate accidents except when we went from friends to this

Uh huh, that's right

Darling, you're the one I want

In paper rings in picture frames in dirty dreams

Oh, you're the one I want

This seems like it could be Tily because of the “we went from friends to this” (Kaylor were never friends, and had no intention of being friends, they’ve literally only ever dated). But I’m not sure Tay ever wanted to marry Lily? That’s not what comes across in the other Tily songs.

I want to drive away with you

I want your complications too

I want your dreary Mondays

Wrap your arms around me, baby boy

The driving and the chilledness is similar to the Tily songs but I’m still not sold. It really doesn’t feel particularly authentic.

Also, I know I mostly do lyric analysis but I’d like to include this quote from Tay about the song: “This song talks about true love, and if you really find true love, you probably don't really care what the symbolism of that love is. Material things wouldn't matter to you anymore if you found someone that you just wanted to live your life with.” The quote is distinctly hypothetical. “You probably don’t really care” “wouldn’t” “if you found”....

My gut says this is based around positive romantic relationships she has had but is extrapolated to a rosy conclusion. One day, Tay’s gonna want to marry someone with paper rings. But for now it’s a fictional hypothetical. None of the details fit any of her relationships. It’s made up. That’s why it includes the “baby boy” line... because it’s fiction.

And now for the really hot take… Lover is equally made up, although she was - again - inspired by her real relationships.

We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til January

This is our place, we make the rules

And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you, dear

Have I known you twenty seconds or twenty years?

This is continuing the themes from New Year’s Day which always strikes me as a “what if” rather than an actual ode to one of the muses. That final line seems like it could be about Karlie but the absolute calmness with which she sings makes it seem like it’s not about her. The mysterious way is also a brand new image and considering how much she sings about Karlie you would’ve thought we’d have had that image at least once before?

Can I go where you go?

Can we always be this close forever and ever?

And ah, take me out and take me home

You're my, my, my, my

Lover

I mean this doesn’t sound like Kaylor. Part of the anxiety there is always about going places together and being seen. It does have bits that seem like Tily to me; “take me out and take me home” kind of reminds me of the “meet me in the back” and “can we always be this close” seems similar to “is it chill that you’re in my head?”

We could let our friends crash in the living room

This is our place, we make the call

And I'm highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you

I've loved you three summers now, honey, but I want 'em all

The first three lines could be about either Karlie or Lily although I don’t know if Tily had “their place”. Kaylor definitely did.

That last line… is kinda why I think this is mostly fiction. I mean we know it doesn’t make sense for Toe. We know that. And I know about the gymnastics to fit it as a Kaylor song. But the thing is, even if she wrote it around the time that they went away to Wyoming, why wouldn’t she update it when recording it? It literally doesn’t fit the Toe timeline so it can’t be that she wanted it for that. She could’ve made it vague. But no she says “three summers”. Where else have we heard about “three summers”?

September saw a month of tears

And thankin' God that you weren't here

To see me like that

But in a box beneath my bed

Is a letter that you never read

From three summers back

It's hard not to find it all a little bitter sweet

That’s from Tim McGraw.

She just likes that image. It recurs. It’s not about Karlie, and it’s not about Lily, and it’s obviously not about Joe. It’s just a pretty turn of phrase. She loves counting in summers and Cruel Summers and the summer in Betty/august…. It’s not something she associates with one person.

Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?

With every guitar string scar on my hand

I take this magnetic force of a man to be my

Lover

My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue

All's well that ends well to end up with you

Swear to be over-dramatic and true to my

Lover

This whole wedding bit doesn’t make sense for either Kaylor or Tily or Swiftgron. Like she’s constantly questioning Karlie’s commitment to her. And you want me to believe she’s singing vows? Lol no.

And you'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me

And at every table, I'll save you a seat

Lover

Very cute. Very non-specific. Not about any one partner.

So this supposed ode/serenade to Karlie doesn’t feature any of the images associated with her and doesn’t include any details that actively fit their relationship arc as described elsewhere except for jealousy and possibly love at first sight.

These three peppy love songs - which make up the minority of songs on the album - are about Taylor’s manifestations for the future. ITHK could be about the industry more generally. The other two are describing what she wants and what she pictures as ideal for a relationship.

So conclusions: a large chunk of the songs on Lover aren’t about romance. Many, many are about Karlie. Afterglow could be about Lily and some of the regrets Tay had about the split. Paper Rings, I Think He Knows and Lover aren’t about anyone in particular.

Last thought: I agree that It’s Nice To Have a Friend is about lesbians generally. But also possibly about Karlie, in which case the final verse is Karlie choosing the marriage with Josh and in that case the song is fucking devastating and heartbreaking. But tbh a lot about Kaylor is so it’s no surprise 🤷🏻‍♀️

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As usual, I’m up to discuss this. Do you agree? Disagree? Let’s talk! xx

#tily nation where you at #tily #taylorswift #lyric analysis #lover #taylor swift #gaylor swift #kaylor #lover analysis

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angsty-violet · 4 years ago

Text

Date Night

Written for the Secret Santa Star Trek exchange @startreksecretsanta for the lovely @doodlingleluke. I hope you like it. If you have an AO3 account I can also gift it to you there, even if you aren’t a writer.

This is the archiveofourown link because it is quite long. Under the cut is the story if you want to read it here.

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B’Elanna worried over the table and frowned as she once again adjusted the tablecloth. She just could seem to get it quite right, and it was driving her crazy. Finally, she gave a huff and gave up. It could just stay crooked for all she cared. It didn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t like Seven was really going to notice.

Although B’Elanna wanted it to be perfect, she knew logically that Seven wasn’t going to notice much of anything. She had little idea of how human social interactions were supposed to commence and, therefore, didn’t make a big deal when they didn’t go to plan.

Which was actually quite relieving for B’Elanna. She had never done well with the cutesy couple-y things that seemed required of human women. Nor had she managed the throwing objects that Klingon women did. She fell somewhere in the middle, most of the time. For most things, that was perfectly fine. However, for courting? It was nearly a disaster.

That was until she had begun to date Seven. Seven was intensely easy to please as she saw value in functionality over all else. Similar to a Vulcan, a gift that would help in her work never failed to hit the mark. B’Elanna often found she was happy with just an upgrade on a tool or placing her on a shift that played to her strengths.

Which made her nervousness over this date completely ridiculous. Neither of them conformed to human social standards. Even if they did, Seven didn’t know enough to know the way dates were supposed to play out anyway. Yet, B’Elanna found herself worrying over insignificant details like the tablecloth and whether or not the food would be to Seven’s liking.

B’Elanna took a deep breath and reminded herself of what Tom had told her about a successful date. As long as both parties had a good time and were willing to do it again, it was a success. The food, the lighting, the location, or any other detail could be absolutely horrid. As long as they had a good enough time to try it again.

B’Elanna placed the last of the replicated food on the table with the items she had Neelix make for her. That was everything that needed to be done, and she still had 10 minutes to spare. Seven would likely be perfectly on time. She was for everything else, and B’Elanna didn’t see why this would be any different.

Unfortunately, this allowed her plenty of time to pace nervously and try to keep from biting her nails. It was a nasty habit she had picked up during her time in the Maquis. She often bit them when she wasn’t doing something with her hands.

After several minutes of desperate pacing and endlessly changing the music, her door chimed, and she called for Seven to come in.

Immediately B’Elanna’s breath was taken away. Seven had allowed her golden blonde hair to tumble around her shoulders and had changed into a more decorative outfit than her standard jumpsuit. She was holding a bottle of wine in her hands, and this allowed B’Elanna to recover from her stupor and make conversation.

“Ah, I see you brought wine.”

“Yes, apparently, it is considered normal for the person attending the dinner to bring along something to contribute. Neelix suggested a bottle of wine would make a good addition to your meal.”

“I’m sure it will go wonderfully. I can open it while you have a seat. Dinner’s ready, so we can dive in whenever you are ready.”

Seven nodded unsurely and sat at the table. She watched as B’Elanna opened the bottle of wine and poured them each a glass. As soon as the wine was poured, likely with nothing better to do, Seven took a sip. She hummed in satisfaction at the taste and set it back down. For a few moments, there was only awkward silence. Finally, Seven gave up trying to pretend like she knew what she was doing.

“I don’t really know what we are supposed to be doing. From my reading, we are supposed to engage in discourse that allows us to learn more about each other. However, I already know a great deal about you, and you know pretty much everything about me. I don’t know what else there is to talk about beyond those.”

“Well, I think it’s partially about spending quality time together. Sure, we know a lot about each other, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have things to talk about. It’s a little odd, but we could talk about work. We could talk about your progress in the programs you and the doctor are running. There is plenty to talk about. You just need to pick a topic you would like to discuss with me. Or alternatively, allow me to pick a topic I would like to discuss with you.”

Seven looked as though she wished she could be taking notes, and B’Elanna hid a smile. She was so sweet, and she tried so hard. B’Elanna sometimes wished that she was more sentimental. If she was, she might’ve been able to say that Seven couldn’t do anything wrong during date night to drive her away. Especially not something as minor as talking about the wrong thing.

“Alright, then, I would like to discuss this nice tasting meal you prepared for me. It is enjoyable to eat. Did you make it yourself, or did you replicate it?”

“Part of it was replicated, the meat specifically. However, the vegetables are real, and I helped Neelix prepare them for tonight. They came out quite nice with me monitoring what they were putting in them.”

“Yes, they came out quite well. I imagine that many of his dishes could stand for someone to be watching what he was putting in them. Often they are so disgusting that they hardly aren’t even edible. The fact that he gets away with it is astonishing.”

“Yeah, well, he actually is good for morale. He cheers people up. More than that, we don’t have anyone else who wants to be the cook. Even if they did want to, it’s unlikely that we could spare the capacity.”

Seven looked up from her food, intrigued. She had been dying to ask this question for weeks now. “Why are you running on a skeleton crew? I looked in the database, it says that you should have at least 4 times the crew that you have on board. It seems bizarre that they would put such a small crew on such an important ship.”

“That’s sort of a long story. You see, we originally started as two separate crews. There was the Maquis and then the Voyager. However, the Voyager technically wasn’t supposed to be out of dry dock yet. It was finished and still being staffed. However, it was the only ship available to being sent out after the rebel Maquis crew. So, they sent them out with the bare minimum needed to run the ship. They believed that they would only be out there a few weeks. However, then the caretaker pulled the Maquis and the Voyager into the Delta quadrant, and we’ve been here ever since.”

Seven sipped lightly at her wine and processed what she had been just told. “So, you are telling me that this isn’t just a crew made up of individuals? But that it is also made up of two separate crews who were essentially enemies? How is it that you were able to reach an accord?”

Seven was leaning over the table in avid interest. Despite her misgivings about this so-called ‘date,’ it was turning out to be fascinating. She was learning so much and strengthening her romantic relationship at the same time. It seemed to be very efficient, and that pleased her a very great deal.

“See, Seven, that’s the mystery of humans. We were all trapped out here, and we knew that we had to work together if we wanted to get back. It was necessary for our survival. We all took our individual skills and pooled them. Then we made a plan for getting back to the Alpha Quadrant. It doesn’t always happen like this. Sometimes our issues are too much to resolve. When it matters, we can come together to do what we have to.”

“Even though I am now human or working on it. Human behavior absolutely fascinates me. Humans can overcome impossible odds. To achieve things that seem absolutely impossible.”

“Yes, I suppose we do. Well, are you finished?”

Seven glanced down and saw that she had almost finished every single bite and felt that she was pleasantly full. She nodded and handed the plate to B’Elanna to place back in the replicator.

“What are we supposed to do now? We have discussed and eaten. What other date activities would you like to engage in?”

B’Elanna tilted her head and then smiled. “I have a wonderful idea. You’ve been working on dancing, haven’t you?”

Seven nodded slowly. “The Doctor has been instructing me.”

“Well, how about we have a dance together. You can lead because you’re taller.”

“I don’t know if my skill is up to what you have in mind.” Suddenly Seven felt intensely flustered. The thought of being pressed tightly up against B’Elanna almost seemed like too much to bear. B’Elanna seemed to almost read her thoughts and smiled.

“That’s alright. Whatever you are capable of is going to be wonderful. Computer, play Waltz Composition Torres-14. May I have this dance?”

“Seven locked eyes with her and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. She sighed as B’Elanna guided a single hand to her lower back and clasped the other. B’Elanna slowly pressed her entire body up against Seven’s, and Seven began to feel a bit short of breath.

“So, I step back, and you step forward. Then we step to the side. Then I go forward, and you go back and then to the side again. That way, no ground is lost, and no ground is gained. Around in circles forever and ever.”

B’Elanna guided her through the steps several times. Making sure that Seven was well versed in each one. Then they tried it a few times with the music.

B’Elanna couldn’t help the small smile that broke across her face. Seven was so focused that her brow was furrowed, her eyes fastened on the ground. B’Elanna took her hand out of Seven’s and used it to smooth a hand over her cheek. She pressed it gently to her face. Seven looked into her eyes and blushed deeply.

“You’re lovely.”

B’Elanna’s words only made the blush worse. Seven looked away shyly. B’Elanna smiled and continued to guide her through the steps. For several minutes they practiced slowly to the music before B’Elanna decided that she had enough practice.

“Alright. Let’s do this for real. Computer, restart audio.”

The music restarted, and B’Elanna allowed Seven to lead. Seven continued to focus on her steps, but after a few minutes, she had the hang of it. She quit looking at her feet and started looking at B’Elanna. Again, her breath caught. Seven was absolutely blown away by the sight that her girlfriend made. She couldn’t believe that B’Elanna was with her.

“This was a good idea. I’ve decided I like having dates with you.”

“Oh, with me? Does that mean you wouldn’t like dates with other people?” B’Elanna teased gently.

“I’ve not dated anyone else. However, I believe that the experience is enjoyable because it is you. I don’t think I would like it with anyone else. I would see it as a waste of time that could be done doing something else.”

“So, what’s different with us?” B’Elanna’s voice was unsure. She didn’t know if she was going to like the answer that Seven had to say.

“We are different because it does have value. You and I are working to strengthen our relationship. We aren’t just trying to pass the time with idle chatter or social interaction. We do this so that we might have future success in our romantic endeavors. That to me, means that they have great value. I wish to make it so that our relationships will be successful.”

B’Elanna smiled at her and reached her arms around her neck. She kissed her firmly on the lips and Seven hesitated but then pressed forward. For a few minutes, they stood there kissing, before B’Elanna pulled back.

“We need to stop or otherwise I am going to jump all over you.”

“I agree. I don’t believe that I am ready for that level of intimacy yet. However, I also don’t want this date to end. I have had such a good time with you. Is there anything else that we can embark on and spend a few more minutes together?”

B’Elanna thought for a moment. She also didn’t want the night to end. None of their dates had been nearly this good and she wanted to make sure it lasted. She wanted it to be a standout memory. However, the mess hall was loud and not suitable for dates. The holodecks were likely booked completely up.

“What about the hydroponics lab? On Earth a visit to a garden or a museum is a classic date night activity. We likely can’t get into the holodeck right now, but I imagine that right now the hydroponics lab is empty. We could go look at the flowers and talk about their cultivation.”

Seven tilted her head and contemplated it. Then she nodded in agreement. Truthfully, she had no great wish to visit the hydroponics lab. However, the thought of the long walk to, the visit itself and the long walk back adding more time was very satisfying. She didn’t care what they were doing, as long as B’Elanna as doing it with her.

B’Elanna took Seven’s hand and led her out of her quarters. She made sure to grip it firmly, although she wasn’t certain that Seven would understand. Many of the things humans did for affection seemed to baffle her. She didn’t understand hugs. Although she had picked up the purpose of kissing quite quickly. Apparently the more sensual or sexual an action was, the easier it was for her to understand.

It was the things that you did to express your feelings that she didn’t quite understand. Although, who could blame her. Humans were intensely complicated and Seven had spent most of her life.

B’Elanna was right. Seven didn’t understand what the purpose of holding hands was. However, she was willing to go along with it. If it was part of the courting rituals that she had missed or even just a quirk, Seven didn’t mind indulging her. Although Seven was finding that having a point of consistent contact was lovely.

Seven reached for another topic to speak about and couldn’t find much. Thankfully B’Elanna was much more experienced in the art of social conversation.

“So, you’ve been studying Vulcan poetry with Tuvok. How is that going? Are you enjoying the lessons or finding it intellectually stimulating?”

Seven sighed as she was able to carry on a conversation about something she understood. “Yes, I am enjoying his teaching. Tuvok’s take on Vulcan poetry has a number of classical elements but he has a perspective I believe is partially from being around humans so often. He has such interesting viewpoint on some of their beliefs and some of the issues talked about in Vulcan poetry.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It’s very human to have hobbies and interests. It’s part of what makes you unique as a person. Although you won’t find many aficionados of Vulcan poetry outside of the Vulcans themselves.”

“Yes, we spoke about that. He mentioned that he believed that it would be sensible for more Star Fleet Captains to pursue it as a study. He seems to believe that because most of the Captains are human, that they would benefit from studying something very alien. He thinks it would help with their skills as diplomats if they had to try and understand a very different medium from a very different culture.”

B’Elanna thought about some of the botched First Contacts that Voyager had and found that she agreed with Tuvok. Humans, on the whole, were very human centric and tended to think in primarily human terms. Although that was fine, for most of Star Fleet, Captains were held to a higher standard. Many of them likely would do well undertaking a study of Vulcan poetry. Between having to deal with the boredom that came with it and the obscure references they didn’t understand, it would be good training.

“It would make sense that he’d have ideas for how Captains could improve themselves. He was an instructor at the academy for many years. Although he struggled when he was instructing the Maquis crewmembers, he eventually figured it out.”

“I didn’t realize that he was an instructor. Are all Vulcans as good at teaching?”

B’Elanna thought back to her Astrophysics professor and snorted in derision. “Not a chance. In fact, I’d say that on the whole, they are horrible teachers. They have little to no concept about what other people are thinking or feeling. They also have no consideration for the fact that you have other things in your life beyond whatever they are teaching you.”

“Aren’t there human teachers like that as well?”

B’Elanna stepped into the hydroponics lab and considered it. She shrugged lightly not being able to disagree. “Yeah, but you’re more likely to have someone who at the very least admits you might have other classes. Most Vulcans are awful to take classes and studies from. You’re just lucky that you got someone who is so logical that he has to consider the other parts of your life. Otherwise, he might be insufferable. Here, these are the new flowers that are supposed to increase oxygen output from here.”

Seven inspected them and nodded. She didn’t know why she was doing either, but it seemed the way to go. More than that everyone in her life had been encouraging her to rely more on her instincts than anything else.

They lingered there looking at the plants for a few minutes but there wasn’t much to do there. Before Seven had a chance to say anything B’Elanna was taking her hand and leading her out of the hydroponics lab. Seven struggled for a way to say what she was feeling but came up short. B’Elanna seemed to be reading her mind though.

“I know that you want this date to go on and on forever. I want that too. I want to make this night last as long as possible. Yeah, either of us might get killed tomorrow while on duty. However, most likely we won’t, then we will have another date. That one might not be as good but it will be another chance to spend time with each other. Then we’ll have another, and another. Before you know it, we’ll have gone on dozens of dates. Some of them will have been good, some will have sucked. But each of them will have been with each other. I think I can say goodbye to you tonight, if that means I get more chances in the future.”

Seven gazed at her and sighed lightly. For a moment B’Elanna was surprised. It was such a human gesture. She could see that Seven didn’t want to part company and it gave her great strength of will. If she died tomorrow, B’Elanna would be able to die happy. She would be satisfied knowing that even if they hadn’t made it that far into their relationship, Seven was dedicated and wanted to be with her.

“I find myself upset at the thought of us not having any future dates for any reason. However, especially if that reason is your death. However, I can concede that eventually this date must end. Even if we were to spend the entire night together, eventually we would have to return to our duties and real life. I can concede the same thing as you, though. Your willingness to do this again gives me the discipline I need to tell you goodnight.”

B’Elanna smiled gently at her and continued to lead her back to her quarters. “How about this, a single drink, one more dance and then we’ll say goodnight?”

Seven gave her the barest hint of a smile in return and nodded in agreement. B’Elanna led her back into her quarters and to the table. She poured out two glasses of wine, the last of the wine in fact, and handed one to Seven. Seven took it and sipped lightly while sitting back down at the table. She took the chance to commit every part of B’Elanna’s face to memory. She wanted to remember this moment for the rest of her life.

They sipped lightly in silence, just enjoying each other’s company. There weren’t any words that needed spoken. They had already said everything that needed to be said and they would be able to part company with their relationship stronger than before.

After both of them finished their wine, with neither lingering, B’Elanna offered her hand to Seven. Seven took it and allowed B’Elanna to draw her to her feet. B’Elanna smiled gently at her.

“Just one more dance. Then we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see each other again. The day might go slowly, but we can take comfort int the fact that it will happen. Now, dance with me. “Computer, restart earlier audio.”

B’Elanna once again guided her through the steps of the waltz. They waltzed together in silence enjoying their company and the time that they had together. B’Elanna laid her head on Seven’s shoulder and drew here even closer. For a time, they were a single entity split into two parts. Their hearts beat in sync, their breaths were breathed in at the exact same time and their movements were smooth and graceful.

Seven allowed the sheer contentment to fall over her. Oftentimes she had heard others speak about what it was like to be in love. The way that they felt when they were in their lovers presence. The sheer joy that it was to spend company with someone they loved, the way their hearts felt like they were full to bursting and the feeling that they could spend literal hours together and it would never be too much. She had always believed that it was sentimental, overexaggerated tripe.

Now, she knew that that wasn’t true. She could spend and eternity in B’Elanna’s arms and never tire. She could waltz with her until they both perished and it would ultimately satisfy her. She had never known a feeling this deep.

In B’Elanna’s head there were similar thoughts. About all of her failed relationships. Everything that she had lost and gained over the years. How she had never believed that she would ever find someone that could love the Klingon and Human parts of her. Yet, here that someone was. Waltzing with her and not wanting to say goodnight. It was all that she had ever wanted.

For a time, they would waltz. Eventually the audio would end and they would split. After that they would say their goodnights, Seven would return to her alcove and they would spend the time away from each other. They would spend most of the next day thinking about the other. With the exception of those times where their work would temporarily draw their attention away from their thoughts. Then they would do their best to find any excuse to go and see each other.

However, that wasn’t what was happening right then. For these few moments they were with each other and there was no one else in the world. They had no concerns beyond this dance and beyond the other. They would remain locked in that waltz until the real world called for them. After it did call for them, they would part company reluctantly. However, they would always be thinking about the other.

#star trek voyager #secret santa #writing #seven of nine #b'elanna torres #seven of nine/b'elanna torres #fluff #dating #dates #established relationship #developing relationship

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sanctamater · 4 years ago

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romance headcanons.

name: amelia comstock. ( née van nostrand ) nickname: amelia has titles, not nicknames. however, childhood nicknames of ‘mel’ and ‘melly’ were once common for her to hear. very few use these nicknames now. gender: female. romantic orientation: bisexual . preferred pet names: darling, dearest, sweetheart. she loves pet names! too bad she never actually hears them. relationship status: married ( unfortunately ) to Our Prophet Zachary Hale Comstock™. she is too good for him and needs to go home. favorite canon / fandom ship: i am sorry but i am boomelia trash. uptown girl and downtown boy? yes. wild rich girl sees so much more in tired lower east end boy? yes. the struggles both of them would have to face? also yes. im sorry but i want them to have a happy ending. favorite crossover ship: hee hee ho ho anything i’ve written with ocelot @parallaxedcaptain on her bedelia and her frollo blog and now on discord.

opinion on true love: amelia is a romantic at heart. she was, after all, raised by victorians who grew up in the romantic era -- she is filled with ideals of romanticism and romantic literature. yearning and pining and looking into the eyes of someone and feeling rooted or struck or enchanted. she believes in true love - and above all, in love itself - whole heartedly. her notions of love of course have been shaped by the media she consumed in her youth and her own sheltered childhood which enabled some teenage boys to take advantage of her when she was younger. even then, when she was acting out and harming others, she was still a romantic at heart - just hardened to the idea of it and believing that she was undeserving. of course, at this point in her life, she has been indoctrinated and groomed into believing that she ‘loves’ zachary. she does not. he picked her to be his wife and made her into the image of what he believed a perfect wife was. is she attracted to him? yes. does she pity him? yes. does she want to save him? yes. but i don’t think she loves him; and i will not entertain the concept of her really and truly loving the man that indoctrinated and abused her. she thinks she loves him. columbia and the prophet have done a number on what amelia sees as love or understands as love - she’s never full; but always starving. how ‘romantic’ are they?: very, of course; just as she is a romantic at heart, she is romantic in gesture and word. amelia enjoys casual touches; the brush of fingertips against the exposed underside of a wrist; linking arms; pressing her cheek into another’s arm -- the gentle brush of a hand over hair, a lingering glance. she loves to touch, and loves being touched. she is a firm believer in quality time and enjoys spending time with those she loves in any setting - be it public or intimate; though values intimate settings above all else. of course, none of this is anything she can indulge in around zachary, but again, columbia and the prophet have both warped what she considers to be love and understands to be love. ideal physical traits: amelia loves taller people. and muscles. broad shoulders. she also loves delicate / strong hands and blondes. ideal personality traits: kindness. amelia values those who are kind to others as she knows that any one who claims to know and love god will never know god if they are not kind. she values honesty, given that many in her past have been duplicitous. amelia also loves it when the person she is interested in can have fun while understanding when to be serious. she loves to have fun, she loves to revel and adventure - she wants someone who will be the same way, wants someone who will go on these adventures with her. however, she also knows that life cannot always be exhilarating and those who know how to balance it and know when and where to be serious and stick to that are also attractive to her. unattractive physical traits: uncleanliness. unattractive personality traits: cruelty. she cannot stand cruelty of any sort; cannot stand anyone who is a habitual liar nor can she stand those with inflated egos and too great a sense of self importance. all traits her husband displays lmao. zealots, fanatics - she cannot do it. she is someone who deals with everything and every one in moderation: too much is never a good thing.

ideal date: amelia would love to be taken out. to spend a day walking in gardens and in the sunshine; and then she would enjoy spending the evening at a small, intimate dinner and perhaps end it with dancing until the stars are beginning to fade. she likes to feel valued and wanted and as though she and her partner are the only people in the world - she likes feeling grounded and, well, loved - and that means being someone’s focus just for one day; just as she would focus on them as well. do they have a type?: yep, lmao. so far it’s all been tall, broad shouldered men with nice hands and very strong gazes/beautiful eyes and slightly taller blonde women with cold exteriors and sharp wit. average relationship length: depends? in canon amelia’s had dozens of flings she embarked on with the expressed intent of hurting the other partner; but in my main verse, she’s been married for almost twenty years. preferred non-sexual intimacy: closeness. being able to comfortably exist with each other in quiet and feel no need to fill it with nervous or meaningless chatter. she loves to run her hands through another’s hair or have that returned to her - she likes to lay with another; just close, just breathing, just quiet. commitment level: i once joked that every ship with amelia ends in marriage and children and i am not lying. she is wife material. your muse will marry her or want to marry her. extreme level of commitment. the ultimate ride or die. opinion of public affection: given that it’s 1912 and she’s an extremely religious woman and one of their religious heads - she doesn’t like it and will not engage in anything beyond holding another’s arm. no kisses, no hand holding - nope, nadda, zilch. it makes her uncomfortable and she believes those things are best reserved for the home life and away from prying eyes. past relationships?: er, a lot. in canon, again, she’s had many flings and then eventually married either booker or zachary. so. idk. A Fair Few.

tagged by: stole it from @prkh :>>> tagging: STEAL IT

#🕊️❝ sanctify them by truth: your word is truth ( headcanons. )#: )

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genmusings · 3 years ago

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* ◞ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒 .

𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 : gentry thylane barton . 𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒(𝑠) : goes predominantly by gen , genny on occasion , and gigi begrudgingly in the presence of old family friends and relatives . 𝑎𝑔𝑒 : twenty - three . 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ : tbd . 𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑡 : libra sun , libra moon , cancer rising . ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑛 : roswell , georgia . 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 : cis woman . 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑠 : she & her . 𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 : bisexual .

* ◞ 𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 .

𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚 : janae roberts . ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟 : blonde . 𝑒𝑦𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟 : green . ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 : 5 ft 7 ' . 𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑠 : a stick and poke heart above her right collar bone , a winking and now faded smiley face above her left elbow , but out of all the girlish and now a bit unfortunate markings , the most unfortunate had to have been a three week long ex’s signature in grandiose cursive above her hip bone . though the fact that she had amassed a collection of thirteen tiny tattoos without ever stepping foot into a tattoo shop could be considered fairly impressive , comical would be a better word , tragic even , considering at least four of them were someone else's faint and fading initials and another three were shaky and smiling faces scattered at random across her skin . the only two with any meaning outside of fleeting infatuation or drunken shenanigans is the 444 on the back of her neck or the divine feminine tattooed in red beneath her left breast . 𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑟𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 : three in tight succession on each earlobe . her tolerance for pain is low , and while aesthetically she loved cartilage piercings , they're not quite cute enough to persevere . 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 : think , carrie bradshaw . . . or jenna rink with an edge . her sense of style is what most would consider funky eclectic , and rarely ventures outside the realm of 50 shades of pink and bold pieces no matter the occasion .

* ◞ 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐋𝐔𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 .

𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 ( 𝟻𝟶𝟶 ) 𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑟 : a self - proclaimed hopeless romantic who , not unlike summer , has an aversion to love . born the product of an already disintegrating relationship , gentry was granted an innate understanding of the ache that followed in the wake of " love " lost , recognized quickly just how messy relationships could be somewhere in between her father's first and sixth failed fling . but she had been weaned on the hollywood ending , loved love almost as much as she loathed it . . . she knew better than anyone that the end to all her favorite romances could very well become a tragedy — if it happened to her mother and father , who's to say anna scott and william thacker were still living out their happily ever after in notting hill — but that didn't stop her from following in her father’s own love sick ( or was it lust drunk ) footsteps , always falling so quickly , so deeply into an intense like that the lack of love pained her . there has always been a certain disconnect , a complete lack of sureness in relationships ( platonic , romantic , and everything in between ) she feared might never be remedied .

𝑡𝑜𝑚 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 ( 𝟻𝟶𝟶 ) 𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑟 : gentry doesn't see the best in people nor the worst , instead she aged unfortunately into the same curse that troubled tom — the tendency to see everything as she wanted it to appear . . . she had always been well versed in the art of playing at pretend , her father was more than a few quick texts every other week , her mother more than a memory told from someone else's jaded perspective , and every single person she shared a commonality with , no matter how insubstantial , could very easily be the love of her life . being so out of touch with reality , a side effect of films stepping in in place of a parent , had kept her childish and chasing after all the pretty things that made her feel something akin to what she felt watching one of her romances . but aside from bringing new meaning to the term hopeless romantic , the comparisons between gentry and tom don't stop there . she , like tom , is quick to settle for things that don't necessarily please her ( a friendship , a relationship , her career ) so long as it suited her childish notions of an easy life and an easy love . she , like tom , often reduces people to a few personality traits or hobbies that perfectly align with her own . and she , like tom , handles rejection very poorly .

𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑦𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑏𝑜𝑗𝑎𝑐𝑘 ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑛 : tbd .

* ◞ 𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒 .

from filling a diary chock - full of cotton candy fluff — all those pretty , pink glitter gel penned sweet nothings you yearned to hear from a revolving door of fleeting flames and fascinations — to crossing through them over and over again until the page began to tear the following week . donning thin , rose hued sunglasses and head scarves to ride passenger seat in your vintage convertible : the perfect pink accessory that would have been made even more perfect should you ever learn to drive it . grandmother’s timeless heirloom pearls come unstrung , undone , bouncing and bobbling across grand harlequin tile floors , traded in for a pearl ball gag nestled pretty between the swollen pink - red of your lips . blowing out all twenty - three ( at least the housekeeper in charge of preparations had remembered how old you were turning ) of your candles at an elaborate party for a crowd that would barely remember your first name come sunrise , and wishing for it to not be so on each one . a distinct brand of jaded birthed from your skewed love for skewed love . your at home remedy for everything from heartbreak to the flu an hour long bubble bath , a popped and fizzling bottle of veuve clicquot all to yourself , and a good night's rest in nothing but a matching pink lingerie set . plucking the petals of a rose in a game of i love them , i love them not and convincing yourself it's fated or doomed in conclusion . boasting valentine's day as your absolute favorite holiday . a pale pink birkin bag filled with jasmine and tuberose scented hand creams , a few too many hidden nerf bullets , and a worse for wear and glitter smeared copy of romeo and juliet . a perpetually unmade bed . and using xxx and pink heart emojis in lieu of actual punctuation .

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victorluvsalice · 4 years ago

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AU Thursday: Fallout of Darkness -- Another Meme

I unfortunately don’t recall where I got this one, though I do remember picking it up in the #fallout 4 tag -- I think a number of people were using it for their Sole Survivors. Which is what I did! With the added twist of “let me do this universe’s Alice as well!” So you get double the information for the same price! :P

Note: This is vaguely set I’d say about halfway through the plot of Fallout 4 -- Victor and Alice have had the run-in with Ug-Qualtoth and gotten Alice sunlight immunity (see this post for more details), and they’ve met at least most of the other companions. Also yes, pets -- Victor does indeed adopt the “wounded dog” encounter in my verse! (And if anyone knows of a mod that lets you send her to a settlement for real. . .) Please remember I haven’t actually played much of the main plot myself, so things may be a little vague/prone to changing once I get further in!

name ➔

V: Victor Fitzwilliam Van Dort – my mother wanted me to have an "aristocratic" middle name, for some reason.

A: Alice Pleasance Liddell – yes, just like the historical Alice. I guess after Lizzie decided I should be "Alice," my parents decided to go whole hog with the reference.

are you single ➔

V: [with a warm look at Alice] No, I'm not.

A: [with a warm look back] Not anymore.

are you happy ➔

V: [still with that warm look at Alice] Very much so.

A: [smiling] A lot happier than I was in the past, that's for sure. Which is kind of sad, given it's post the nuclear apocalypse now. . .

are you angry ➔

V: [thoughtful] I – I was for a while. Not so much anymore – the worst of it has cooled. But – there's some things I think I'll always be angry about.

A: I think my answer's about the same. Given some of the nonsense we've been through, some low-level anger is just to be expected, honestly.

are your parents still married ➔

V: . . .they were when the bombs dropped.

A: Mine were when that bastard Bumby set our house on fire to cover up what he'd done to my sister.

NINE FACTS

birthplace ➔

V: Burtonsville – it's a tiny village in England. I don't actually remember it, though – my parents moved to Boston when I was only about a year and a half old. I grew up here in Boston and the surrounding area.

A: Oxford, England – my father was the Dean of Christ Church at the college when he was alive. I have fond memories, but I haven't been back since the fire.

hair color ➔

V: Black. Mother occasionally insisted it was dark brown, but – black.

A: Black, though weirdly I actually was almost a redhead as a child. It darkened straight through brown to this as I grew up. I've never been sure why it got so dark, though I suspect all that time lying in Rutledge, getting probably-inadequate nutrition and light for a growing girl, didn't help matters.

eye color ➔

V: Dark brown.

A: Green, though Victor likes being poetic with descriptions like "emerald fire" sometimes.

mood ➔

V: . . .er – generally anxious? Trying to be helpful regardless?

A: Sarcastic? To hide that I'm more worried than I let on?

gender ➔

V: Male, he/him.

A: Female, she/her.

summer or winter ➔

V: Summer – I'm not a fan of the cold. Though spring's my actual favorite season – I love seeing everything come back to life.

A: I feel like I should like winter more, because of the longer nights, but now that we've actually fixed the sunlight issue. . .yes, summer. I'm not really a fan of the cold either.

morning or afternoon ➔

V: Afternoon – I've never been that much of a morning person, and mornings tend to be – stressful in the Commonwealth.

A: To be fair, so are the afternoons, but – yes, generally you're not dealing with threats still wiping the sleep from your eyes in said afternoons. And in my case, they're closer to night, which is still the time when I feel most myself, so. . .

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE

are you in love ➔

V: [exchanging a very warm look with Alice] Yes.

A: [giving it right back] Very much so.

do you believe in love at first sight ➔

V: Maybe not true love, but attraction? A sense of connection, kinship? Certainly – that's how I felt when I first met Victoria, and later Emily.

A: I can get behind that – my mother said she felt a pull toward my father when they first met. . .but I don't think love at first sight exists. You need to get to know someone – form a solid bond first.

who ended your last relationship ➔

V: [darkly cheerful] The American and Chinese governments, throwing nuclear missiles at each other! [sighing] No, that’s not quite fair – yes, they drove us into Vault 111, but the ones who actually murdered my wife and girlfriend were Kellogg and the Institute. The former more obviously than the latter, but. . . [voice cracks] Damn it, what was wrong with putting everyone's life support back on. . .

A: [puts a comforting hand on his arm] In my case, I never really had a romantic relationship before – even friendships were kind of fleeting, or long-distance. I've gone along with flirtations in the past to get meals, sure, but none of those ever turned into relationships. The closest I had was – well, Heather getting blood-bonded to me, which I didn't even mean to do. I was just trying to help her, and I didn't realize at the time. . . [bites her lip] I ended that – sent her away before she could get hurt by my enemies, explaining that what would make me happiest would be for her to be with her grandmother and stay in college. I wanted to go back and maybe try to help her some more once I was done with LaCroix's bullshit, but then. . .I hope she had a good life, in the end.

have you ever broken someone’s heart ➔

V: Not knowingly – goodness, what started off my, Victoria, and Emily's threesome relationship was an attempt not to break anyone's heart! It worked out very well, until. . . [shakes his head]

A: [squeezes his arm gently] I probably broke Heather's heart by sending her away – she looked so sad as she walked out the door. But it was for the best – I dread to think what would have happened to her if the Sabbat had realized I had a ghoul! Other than that – depends on if anyone I've drunk from was hoping for more than just a "quickie." I doubt that, though.

are you afraid of commitments ➔

V: I'm afraid of them being forced on me because of people randomly promoting me every time I even get close to an organization. [sighing, reaching up to fiddle with a chain around his neck] But – maybe a little. Seeing – seeing your wife get shot in front of you. . .then your girlfriend's half-rotted corpse beside her. . .it sticks with you.

A: [nods] Being the only survivor of the house fire that killed your family sticks with you too. As does two of the most prominent men in your life being the bastard who killed them and was trying to wipe your mind, and the bastard who killed you and turned you into a bloodsucker. Add in my own rather unromantic nature, and – yes, I did pretty much avoid commitments for a while. [smiles at Victor] I think I'm a little better about it now, though.

have you hugged someone in the last week ➔

V: Oh, yes – Preston and Piper just the other day, in fact!

A: I'm not usually much of one for being touched, so I don't hug much. . . [thinks for a moment, then hugs Victor] But I'll happily make the answer a "yes" in this case.

have you ever had a secret admirer ➔

V: Does the brief period of time where Emily was crushing on me before Victoria noticed and decided to let her and me know it was okay if we wanted to date too count? Otherwise, I really don't think so. I wasn't popular with girls before meeting Victoria.

A: Bumby never made it clear whether he wanted to just turn me into a prostitute or fuck me himself as well, but I wouldn't count him anyway, because he was a horrible waste of flesh. So I have no idea – don't think so. Heather was – very open about her admiration.

have you ever broken your own heart ➔

V: Again, what happened between me, Victoria, and Emily was an attempt to avoid that. . .I can't say I have. It seems like others always break it for me.

A: Sending Heather away did hurt me a bit – not in the same way it hurt her, but it was nice to have someone else around the haven. . . [looks up at Victor] And I did resist romance initially here. Fortunately tall, dark, and handsome here didn't let me break my own heart.

SIX CHOICES

love or lust ➔

V: Love, definitely. [going pink] I mean, lust can be nice, but. . .

A: Love – even alive, I wasn't particularly interested in sex. And as a vampire, any urges that way now go toward sucking on people's necks. Which I guess is sex-adjacent, but still. . . Maybe "love" for serious relationships, "lust" for getting a meal.

lemonade or iced tea ➔

V: Oh, I haven't had either in ages. . .and I recall needing a lot of sugar for both to enjoy them. . .I guess lemonade. I think I had that more often.

A: Literally can't drink either these days, for multiple reasons. . .but I'm going with lemonade because I have fonder memories of that. And – hmmm. I wonder if it’s possible to make a variation with that “plasma fruit” Ted came up with at Wildwood Cemetery. . .

cats or dogs ➔

V: Dogs! I had a dog growing up, Scraps, who was my best friend! And Victoria, Emily, and I were going to get a dog shortly after. . . [pause, shakes head] And now I have Dogmeat and Mutt! They’re a good pair.

A: Cats! My best friends growing up were the family cat, Dinah, and her two kittens, Snowdrop and Kitty. Being a vampire does tend to make animals rather mistrustful of me, sadly, but I had some luck feeding ferals pre-War. And we managed to trap a cat recently who didn’t immediately try to claw me and run away – I’ve named her Kit-Kat.

a few best friends or many regular friends ➔

V: A few best friends – I'm n-not good with lots of people, and I just. . .I'm always so awkward, s-socially. I'd rather have a couple of people I know I can trust.

A: The same – I don't trust easily, after all the bullshit I've been through. Give me a small circle of people I know have my back over a larger group of more casual friends any day.

wild night out or romantic night in ➔

V: Romantic night in. I'm not much for parties. I like staying home with the people I love and just – being together.

A: Sort of like "love or lust" above, this kind of depends. I like a romantic night in for any actual relationships, but I did my fair share of clubbing to find someone to drink from back in the day.

day or night ➔

V: Well, I do like a good sunny day, but. . . [looking at Alice] I've really come to appreciate the nights in the Commonwealth. And not just because of the stars.

A: [smirking at him] Flatterer. . .but yes, night. For the longest time, it was the only time of day I could be out in. . .and even though it's wonderful now to be able to go out during the day and enjoy that, night is still when I feel most myself.

FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS

been caught sneaking out ➔

Victor: No, but that's because I never did. I grew up in the middle of a plague – I didn't have much incentive to sneak out! It took until I was fourteen for cases to drop enough in our part of Boston for my parents to be comfortable sending me to a school with other children, and by then I was so used to staying at home, sneaking out never occurred to me.

Alice: Oh god, yes, the New Plague, that was horrific. . .on my end, yes, I was. I tried to sneak out a couple of times as a small child to have adventures in the garden late at night or in the middle of storms. . .if my parents didn't catch me, though, my older sister did. I think I only actually got outside once, and even then it was only for a couple of minutes before Lizzie caught up with me. Mostly because she was trying to sneak out too, and didn't want her little sister tagging along.

fallen down/up the stairs ➔

Victor: . . .yes. To both. I – I can be pretty clumsy if I'm n-not paying attention to where I'm going.

Alice: [giving him an odd look] I've fallen down stairs – rushing around as a child on imaginary adventures – but never up. I'm – not entirely sure how you manage that.

wanted something/someone so badly it hurt ➔

V: [tugging at the chain around his neck again, which is revealed to have a blue butterfly pendant and a gold wedding ring strung on it] Yes. Something I can't have, I'm sad to say.

A: [playing with her own necklace, which is an old iron key shaped like the symbol for Venus] Same here. I'd like to think your Victoria and Emily and my parents and Lizzie are in the same place, at least.

wanted to disappear ➔

V: Oh, plenty of times. I have an unfortunate knack for saying the wrong thing and then wishing I could melt into the floor. And – well, I suppose every time I've been hiding from enemies and wanted to just turn invisible counts. . .

A: I wanted to disappear in the asylum a couple of times, in the sense of 'just stop existing.' Survivor's guilt does a number on your brain, let me tell you. . .though I can actually disappear these days, thanks to Obfuscate! Though, annoyingly, I genuinely can't do it if someone's looking.

smile or eyes ➔

V: Oh, back to these? [thoughtful] I – honestly, I think eyes. Victoria and Emily's eyes are one of the things I remember best about them. . . [smiles at Alice] And my current paramour has some of the most beautiful eyes in the Commonwealth.

A: You're going to make me blush despite being dead if you keep on like that. Though, what's good for the goose is good for the gander – while I like your eyes, it's your smile that really warms my undead heart.

shorter or taller ➔

V: Um – shorter out of necessity. I haven't met many women who are six-foot-three.

A: Similarly, I'm five-foot-five, so I kind of have to go taller.

intelligence or attraction ➔

V: . . .I assume this means intelligence or looks, and – I can't deny I like a pretty face, but the main reason I got together with the women I did is because I could hold a good conversation with them. Intelligence.

A: My attraction seems to be based on actually getting to know a person, and I don't suffer fools gladly. Intelligence all the way.

hook-up or relationship ➔

V: Oh, relationship. I never had a hook-up. I can't – I can't just do the "one night stand" thing. I need something a little more.

A: Another one where my actual feelings versus how I'd act to get a meal clash – though admittedly, I never had a "proper" hook-up. I'd just get someone in a quiet spot, suck a bit of blood, and let them get on with their lives. But now that things are better, I'm only too happy to commit myself to a real relationship.

FAMILY

do you and your family get along ➔

V: Well, it’s something of a moot point now, but. . . [he waggles a hand, making a face] I have to admit, I never liked my parents much. They weren’t very “hands-on” in raising me, and I often felt like they considered me a burden. Or a bargaining chip for social status. I did my best not to rock the boat just because upsetting my mother never ended well, but. . . [sigh] It wasn’t good.

A: By contrast, I had a perfectly lovely family life – my parents were kind and encouraged my sister and I in our various pursuits, and Lizzie. . .she was the best older sister a girl could have. I felt like I could tell her anything, and even if the age difference made playing together difficult, she did try whenever she had a spare moment. The reason I have such an “enthusiastic” imagination is because Mama, Papa, and Lizzie never tried to stifle it. I was – I felt so loved and happy the first eight years of my life. . .and then Bumby took it all away. [she looks away] I – it’s not fair.

would you say you have a “messed up life” ➔

V: [completely deadpan] I was frozen at the age of 27 in a vault designed to store people long-term for unknown reasons, and was finally thawed 210 years later, to find my wife and girlfriend dead, my son kidnapped, and the world above having been turned into a wasteland of vicious wildlife, super mutants, and raiders. With parts of it still irradiated because people are STILL launching small nuclear missiles at each other. Also the people who kidnapped my son can apparently make synthetic humans and use them as spies. And in the middle of all this, I’ve somehow ended up the leader of a bunch of little farms and such that composes a ragtag peacekeeping force that is still better than the actual assholes in power armor who have moved in. You tell me.

A: I can top that – turned into a vampire at age 20 after moving to Los Angeles to make sure I was far away from a murder I’d committed, then ended up roaming the world after a literally-explosive end to my time there as everyone’s errand boy. Was in Boston when the bombs dropped and got staked when my hidey-hole collapsed in on me, meaning I too got essentially “frozen” for 210 years, until a raider attacking this fellow here yanked the stake out and I responded by sucking him dry. Leaving me in a post-nuclear apocalypse trying to survive in a world where anyone’s blood might be at least slightly radioactive. Also we discovered that vampires are in fact the result of a little bit of some Lovecraftian horror worshiped by the people over at Dunwich Borers leaking into our world and infecting our souls. So that’s fun.

have you ever run away from home ➔

V: No – again, grew up in a plague, never really wanted to leave the house because of it.

A: I threatened to, once or twice, when upset, but I never followed through. Though I guess my moving to California could be construed as a kind of running away after I killed Bumby. . .but I never thought of Houndsditch as home. Same with Los Angeles, after I left there in the wake of that mess with LaCroix.

have you ever gotten kicked out ➔

V: No, though – sometimes I thought my mother was thinking about it. Whenever my social awkwardness reared its ugly head at one of her parties.

A: My parents were never the sort to do that, and Bumby of course wanted me close at Houndsditch. And I left polite vampire society on my own terms after LaCroix.

FRIENDS

do you secretly hate one of your friends ➔

V: . . .I’m not entirely sure how to classify my relationship with Strong. But I know he thinks more highly of me than I do of him. I – I try to be understanding, but it gets very tiring to listen to him go on about how one day Super Mutants will kill everything.

A: I had to be a lot friendlier to a lot people back in Los Angeles than I would have liked. . .but I don’t think any of them were laboring under the delusion we were actual friends. So no – if I don’t like you, I don’t hide it.

who is your best friend ➔

V: Alice, Preston, and Piper, definitely – they’re the ones I’ve traveled the most with, shared the most with, and just – feel the most comfortable around. [smiles] Oh, and Dogmeat of course.

A: Victor’s definitely my best friend – and frankly, I feel pretty close to Piper and Preston myself. They’re good people. [she smirks] Though Hancock and Nick are definitely the best people to snark with.

who knows everything about you ➔

V: Probably most of the people in the Commonwealth, I’ve had to explain about being frozen and what happened to my son a lot. . .more seriously, I’d say the above three. They’re the people I’m closest to, and the ones I’m most comfortable sharing information with.

A: I don’t know about everything, but – yes, Victor. And probably Piper knows the most after him, given she wanted to interview me for her paper.

#memes #fallout of darkness #tell me where to find shelter #(keeping that old tag for ease of use for the moment)#fallout 4 #vtmb #hopefully this isn't too confusing for everyone #Ted is supposed to be the Tremere living at Wildwood Cemetery along with the other 'rejected Bloodlines Protagonists'#and yes he made Plasma Fruit #because if I'm going all in with this crossover I will go ALL IN #I have a nasty feeling living through coronavirus is going to inspire me whenever I have to write about Fallout's various diseases #also its government #also yes Victor's opinion on Strong is my own #dude I'm trying to like you buuut #Piper and Preston are my current fave companions #but please remember I am kinda stuck in early days in the game itself #we'll see how things evolve as I take on other companions!#however Ada will be respected around here among the robots #she deserves better #queued

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slow-smiles · 5 years ago

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The plan to tell Emma’s parents about her relationship with Killian gets derailed when she is kidnapped by the Dark One. Captain Duckling. Revelations, reunions, adventures, and smut ensues. ~8.7k

The grand finale to the My Princess, My Pirate series. This is part two of four. Also just… ya know, screw the canon timeline, use your imagination.

Read on AO3. Read on tumblr Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

The Swan of Misthaven. Part Two.

Emma awakens with a sharp gasp on the floor of a massive chamber with no windows. The stones are cool under her back, but her skin feels hot, her heart racing. She sits up slowly with a groan. She feels hungover, but multiplied by seventy. A sharp headache makes her feel like her skull is being split in two, oppressive fogginess makes focusing on anything nearly impossible, and a pressing, cloying nausea pushes insistently against her gag reflex. How did she—

The last thing she remembers is the clearing, making the deal with Rumplestiltskin to keep Killian alive, and now here she is. Wherever here is.

The empty chamber is massive, even bigger than the ballroom at the palace, with several support columns evenly dotting the floor in fifteen foot intervals. The air feels dank and heavy, and Emma wonders if this is an underground dungeon of some kind. The stone making up the walls and floor is dark, rough like limestone, and the space is dimly lit by sparse torches along the walls. She doesn’t notice any doors.

She rolls herself to her knees, and at that point the nausea wins the fight and Emma throws up. As she heaves against the floor, her mind is spinning, barely able to pick up a thread of thought aside from where am I and how did I get here.

“There’s no way to avoid the physical aftereffects of having a suppression hex removed, I’m afraid.”

She wishes she could say that when she heard Rumplestiltskin’s voice behind her, she leapt to her feet and demanded to know where she was being held. She does try, but as soon as she gets to her feet and turns, a wave of dizziness and nausea knocks her back to her knees, her hands bracing on the floor. She can’t help the miserable whine that escapes her at the feeling of illness and discomfort running through her.

“And unfortunately for you,” he continues, the click of his boots against the stone ominous in the quiet of the chamber, “the more powerful you are, the more severe the side effects.”

She wrangles enough clarity of mind to say, “What are you talking about?” before her body starts to heave again.

The ringing in her ears doesn’t drown out the sound of him saying, “I must admit, I was surprised to find one on you. The fairies have never dabbled in hexes before to my knowledge, and it was surprisingly well-crafted.”

“What?” Emma chokes out again. Gods, she feels awful. (Even worse than the last time she’d drunk whiskey and blacked out for the entire night. To this day, she doesn’t remember going to sleep or waking up; she had come to, still drunk and vomiting with her pants laying nearby, behind a blacksmith’s forge. Thankfully, Killian had awoken behind the shop next door, doing only mildly better than she, and found her in her sorry state, and they mutually assured their hungover partner got home. This had been relatively early in their courtship, and it was strangely freeing in a way, to see each other essentially at their worst and most stupid.)

“Ding-ding-ding, dearie,” he chirps, so close to her ear, she nearly falls sideways in surprise. How did she not hear him get closer? “You’re a lucky winner.”

“Of what?” she asks, hopelessly confused and desperate for someone to just explain what the hell is going on.

She turns her head to finally look at him directly. His smile is predatory. “Magic.”

Emma barely hears him, or registers his meaning exactly, because her body has quite suddenly decided it’s had enough. Her head drops, she sees white sparkling at the edges of her vision, then sparking across her hands, and before she can say anything in response, she passes out.

***

It’s just over a day’s-worth of hard riding from the palace in Misthaven to the village just across the border where the former Queen Regina lives, and given that they set out in late afternoon, the time comes to set up camp sooner rather than later.

The quiet cooperation between the three of them is not as awkward as Killian imagined it might be. The King and Queen move around each other like a well-choreographed ballet. He’s quietly amused by the two royals in travelling gear (that is far too nice to truly blend in) who are extremely well-versed in camp craft. He fills in where necessary, and by the time the darkness settles, when the light from the moon and stars are barely enough to see by, David volunteers to take first watch. Snow thanks him, collapses into her bedroll, and is asleep in minutes.

Killian finds himself staring at the orange flames next to Emma’s father in silence.

Emma is supposed to be with him for this part, he thinks. Emma is supposed to be here to guide him. And he--

He’s not supposed to be this person anymore. This person whose every waking moment is consumed with thoughts of how he wants to watch the life drain from a man’s eyes. With Emma, he likes to think he’s become someone worthwhile. Someone who is a part of something. Someone who he’s proud to say he will be for the rest of his life.

When they decided that it was finally time to tell her parents, come out of the shadows, he thought he’d be able to be that person. That honorable man worthy of care, worthy of note, worthy of their daughter’s hand in marriage, someday.

“You should get some sleep,” David says, startling Killian out of his reverie.

He looks over at the King, the details of his face made sharper in the shadows cast by the flame. He looks every inch a man of royalty--classically handsome, even in his age. A regal bearing, even when seated on a log in the woods. The crow’s feet around his eyes and the smile lines around his mouth only serve to make him look sage and wise, perhaps even kindly.

Killian answers him honestly, “I’m not certain I could if I tried.”

David looks away into the flames, and a heavy beat passes before he says, “You are the absolute last person I ever pictured Emma with.”

“Pardon?”

David chuckles lightly. “I know Snow doesn’t want to acknowledge anything is real until we have Emma back, but I don’t have the same restraint.” Another chuckle, this time deprecating. “Of all the people in the world, of all the potential romantic suitors she’s met, and it’s you.”

Killian doesn’t appreciate the direction this conversation is going. “What we became was up to her as much as me.”

“Sure,” David says, but it doesn’t sound precisely like agreement.

Despite knowing ( hoping ) that he’s a better man now than he was, he can’t change the fact that he can be a bit of a snarky asshole. “There’s clearly something you’d like to yell at me for,” he says, fully prepared to regret his words but unable to stop them from spilling out, “so why don’t you get it out of your system now.”

The King snorts softly. “Which part do I yell at you for? You’re a murdering thief who is apparently over a century old--yeah, I didn’t forget about that--and somehow you’ve managed to capture my only child’s affection.” He leans back, crossing his arms over his chest.

There’s a part of him that says I don’t know how I did it either (which is only true in spirit, as he still doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve her love, but knows that Emma’s heart was only won when he consistently proved that he was in this for the long haul.) The part of him that speaks isn’t so keen on sharing that vulnerability, so he replies, “Well, give me time, I might just grow on you.”

David grunts. “Like a wart. Or an infection.”

Killian grits his teeth before giving the King his most winning smile. “I suppose it’s a good thing Emma’s feelings for me aren’t up to you then, isn’t it?”

Emma’s father grimaces, and there’s that honest voice deep down, the one beneath the arrogant, brash exterior, telling him that Emma is going to be quite cross with him for trying to get under David’s skin like this.

“Were you ever in the military?” asks David then, the segue so unexpected Killian is momentarily disarmed.

“Yes,” he answers, surprised, but quickly buckles down again. “Can you instinctively sense when someone’s had a stick thrust firmly up their arse?”

David barks out a laugh and steals a glance over at his sleeping wife to ensure he didn’t wake her. “You sometimes stand like someone who was military. And you certainly commanded attention in the Council room.”

“Be careful, Majesty, that almost sounded like a compliment. Might give the wrong impression.”

“Just an observation,” David says. A beat passes before he asks, “So what made you turn pirate?”

Killian doesn’t miss a beat and answers, “The dismal pay of a Navy man can’t hold a candle to looting a ship for treasure.” He winces at the automatic defense mechanism. This is the father of the woman he loves, his future father-in-law if he has his way.

David doesn’t miss the wince, and a thoughtful expression crosses his face. “You’re a piss poor liar for a pirate.”

“On the contrary, I’m actually quite good,” Killian answers.

“Is it really such a bane for you to tell the truth?”

Killian sighs, trying to quell the urge to deflect with a lie or a glib jibe. “It’s not a time of my life I care to revisit often, even in memory.” He looks over at Emma’s father, whose silent, probing gaze prompts him to continue. “Fighting for king and country means nothing when your king is a corrupt, underhanded, immoral man who’d sooner throw his loyal men into a meat grinder than even sniff something honorable.” Killian looks down at his hook, idly dabbing the point with a finger. “My brother trusted him. It was the last mistake he ever made.”

“I’m sorry,” David offers.

Killian smiles tightly. “My brother was the best man I knew. A good captain, honorable to a fault, as stubborn as the day is long. The king didn’t care that he’d died. Probably didn’t even remember Liam at all. I refused to serve any monarchy from that day forward. They took everything from me,” he says, voice hazy with memory, “so I was going to take everything from them. At least among thieves, there was honor.” He turns to David again, “No offense, mate.”

“None taken,” David replies, then chuckles a bit. “Kind of ironic that you went and fell in love with a princess, then.”

“No one is more aware of that than me,” Killian says. “I suppose that gives us something in common--falling in love with women far above our stations.”

David huffs a laugh, but doesn’t respond for a long while; the only sound is the crackle of wood in their fire, and the distant song of crickets. Killian almost wonders if the King had fallen asleep when he speaks again. “Emma must mean a lot to you, if you’d go through the trouble to rescue her.”

“She means everything to me,” Killian gently corrects. “I’d go to the end of the world or time for her. Anything if it means she’s safe.”

“And she for you, I take it?”

Killian smiles. “Yes.” He looks back over at David. “I know that I’m not the ideal you envisioned—”

David waves a hand and interrupts, “No, you’re not. And I’m—” he sighs and tips his face skyward. “Given the lengths that you’re going through to save her—coming to us, getting arrested, potentially almost getting executed, throwing yourself back into this feud with the Dark One—” David looks back at Killian. “Looking at it from that perspective, it’s crazy for me to not approve. Snow and I married for love in spite of the circumstances, and I always hoped for the same for Emma.”

Killian feels like his chest is about to burst. Despite everything, could it be that Emma’s father really can forgive his past mistakes?

“This doesn’t mean I like you,” David quickly says, but it’s without heat.

Killian laughs.

David continues, “If you really want to earn my approval,” he points across the fire to the empty bedroll, “you’ll go to sleep.”

Killian rolls his eyes and replies, “If me having a lie down means that much to you—” Killian mock bows from his seat and then makes his way over to his bedroll. “Then I’m much obliged, Dave.”

“Do not call me Dave.”

“Sorry, can’t hear you over the sound of all the sleep I’m getting.”

David grumbles, but doesn’t say anything further.

Killian stares up at the stars, his thoughts a barely cohesive mess. He wishes Emma were next to him so he could tell her about them, try to make sense of everything that’s happened today. Gods, and it really has all been today. He started off this morning with Emma on his ship, not a care in the world and a tremendous weight removed from their shoulders.

Now, here he is, sharing a campsite with the King and Queen of Misthaven, trying to find his footing with his love’s royal parents, and hoping dearly that he doesn’t make a mess of things.

But that itself seems so trivial in the face of Emma being in the clutches of the realm’s greatest evil, and them having no idea why he’s taken her.

Killian’s never been much for spirituality or worshipping deities. He’s been on the sea long enough to know the superstitions, to know about Poseidon and Ursula and Calypso, and all the other gods and goddesses of the sea to whom many crewmen give offerings and pray in hopes for a safe voyage.

But Killian has seen too much, lived through too many years and too many crews to believe their feeble oils and branches, foodstuffs and whispered words make any difference. A strong wind may fall upon murderers or travelers, a storm may wreck a peacekeeping mission or slavers. The sea is nothing if not fair.

But in the darkness, he prays to any deity that might listen that the world might be unfair in Emma’s favor.

***

Killian awakens with a jolt, the taste of a bitten off shout in his throat and he sits up. The sky has lightened from pitch black and lit with stars to a deep purple, lightening slightly toward the eastern horizon. Early, and not late enough to say that it is yet dawn. He hadn’t been planning on falling asleep, didn’t think it would be possible with the unrest in his mind, but after a few hours of silence, it appears his body made the choice for him.

His heart is racing in his chest, the lingering images from the nightmare scattering but leaving the fear as a gaping maw in his chest. He runs a hand across his face, trying to gather his wits, but he still feels strung out and uncomfortable. Like all of his defenses have been stripped away.

Perhaps he should take a walk. There was a small creek nearby, and perhaps splashing some water on his face will remind him that the nightmare was just that—a nightmare. A garish, twisted vision from his mind that has been stuck on a fear-anger cycle for far too long.

He wishes again for Emma, to speak to her, to have her set his mind at ease, but she’s—

A shudder goes through him as one of the nightmare’s scenes comes to the forefront of his mind again, Emma without a heart, Emma lying on the deck of his ship, Emma crying and begging for him to save her—

With a frustrated, flustered huff, he sits up to find Snow White staring at him. The former bandit princess turned conquering queen has a thoughtful expression on her face, as if he were a particularly interested puzzle.

His breath is still coming in pants, and his heart is still racing in his chest, but Killian is still able to manage a realization. “I missed my watch.”

“You didn’t miss it,” Snow says. “I didn’t wake you. I figured it was the least I could do after I had you thrown in prison and then threatened to have you executed.”

Trying vehemently to turn his manner to conversation rather than lingering on the dream, Killian shakes his head and says, “You’ve nothing to apologize for. Were I in your position, I’d’ve done the same thing.”

Snow smiles. “I appreciate that. You seemed like you needed the rest, at least—” she shifts a bit before she can meet his eye again. “For the last few minutes, it sounded like you were having a pretty bad nightmare.”

Killian stiffens. “I hope I didn’t disturb you,” he replies, and moves to stand, do something with his body that could help alleviate the intense feeling of vulnerability under scrutiny now skittering across his skin.

“You didn’t,” Snow says, a kind warmth in her voice and manner that seems like it should calm him rather than rile him.

“That hasn’t happened in a long time,” he says, as if that explanation should be some sort of comfort. To her, to him, he doesn’t know. His heart still races. He refocuses, remembers how to calm himself. Just because he hasn’t had one in a long time, doesn’t mean he’s forgotten how to get over a particularly intense nightmare.

He shifts on the bedroll so that he faces the flames of the fire. A bit burned down from what they were the night before, it’s mostly charcoal now, but it functions well enough. The slow, steady motion of the flames makes his breathing wind down, and he focuses on the beat of his heart. Draws a breath in deeply, and then lets it out slowly. He repeats this until his body doesn’t feel like it’s about to leap out of his skin.

“If I may ask,” Snow says after the long silence, “who is Milah?”

Killian immediately tenses, his jaw subconsciously clenching; this isn’t the same kind of stress he felt when he awoke. It’s the same kind that came along with David asking him questions about his past last night—and Killian’s about tapped out of defense mechanisms at the moment.

Snow says, “You said her name and Emma’s name a few times before you awoke.”

Perhaps it’s not so much that he’s exhausted his energy to defend his vulnerabilities after the nightmare, perhaps it’s just them. Snow and David, Emma’s parents. They’re the ones who made her, after all, so everything that Emma is came from them. He’s not good at refusing Emma, and her mother seems to hold the same sway over him.

“A long time ago, before Rumplestiltskin was the Dark One, he was just a man. A man with a wife named Milah.”

Gods, but centuries have passed, and it still feels like someone’s pulling his heart out every time he says her name.

Killian continues, “She and her husband had a son, who she loved very much, but couldn’t fix the deep sadness she carried with her. She used to tell me that sometimes it felt as though she were born during a long night, and that darkness lingered with her no matter how often she bathed in the sun.

“And she decided to leave her husband and her son and come away with me.” A knife of grief goes through his abdomen. “We loved each other, and she didn’t see another way out of her unhappiness. So when I left port, she came with me.”

“And her son?” Snow asks.

“We made plans to go back for him that never came to pass.” She’d often confided her insecurity about her motherhood, but had gone no further than that. Privately, he thinks that Milah had been afraid to see her son again, to admit to him that he hadn’t been enough to make her happy where she was.

But that is too intimate a memory to share.

“Later, when he was the Dark One, he found us; accused me of stealing her, as though she were some bauble to be passed around.” He shakes his head, and has to blink a few times to control the wetness at the corners of his eyes. “Milah was brilliant, but she had a bit of a temper. And she just… let the Dark One have it on the deck of my ship. Her words were sharp, and she knew exactly how to hurt him. He didn’t really care for that.”

He tries to be as clinical as possible with the next bit, “So he lashed me to the mast, pulled her heart out, and crushed it. He cut my hand off that day, too, but the pain of that was nothing compared to losing her.”

Snow silently stands and comes to sit next to him, and reaches out to take his hand. Killian doesn’t remember his mother much, but he imagines that being comforted by her might have felt like this.

He blinks harder against the moisture in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. “I understand now, why you were so afraid.”

“Oh, I’m still afraid, believe me.”

“Not like that. We’re all afraid for her, but for you… You’ve already seen this story play out once, and it ended horribly for you.”

“Is this the part where you tell me to have hope that it will end well?”

Snow laughs a little at that. “Yes, because if we don’t have hope that something will work out well, then what’s our motivation to do it in the first place? But beyond the hope, you should hold onto that fear too. The most insane, amazing acts of courage happen when someone is the most afraid,” Snow looks into his eyes with a startling intensity, “and we’re probably going to need some really insane, amazing acts of courage to get Emma out of there.”

As soon as dawn breaks, the trio are on their way. They ride until early afternoon, when they slow their horses to a walk and enter the small village. It’s along a bustling trade route, located between the sea and the next nearest inland city, so it’s well on its way to becoming a full-fledged town.

Snow leads them to a small estate just at the edge of the village. A modest home sits to the left of the front gate, and beyond that is a truly impressive equine complex consisting of several pastures that are clearly well-kept, a large A-Frame barn that could likely house dozens of horses based on the size, and a few dirt and grass arenas for competitive riding purposes. It is a spread that is certainly only rivaled by the royal stables, and those might be found wanting compared to this place.

A youth of possibly fifteen or sixteen years is leading a stocky gray mare out of one of the pastures when he spots them. “Greetings!” he calls out. The mare he is leading seems to protest the quickened pace as the boy strides toward them, but he does not slow. “My name is Henry Locksley. Welcome to Riverside Farm.” The lad seems to have a practiced gaze for horses as he takes stock of their three mounts. “If you’re looking for nightly board, we are happy to accommodate.”

Snow dismounts and turns to the young man. “No, we’re actually looking for your stablemaster.”

Henry looks a little surprised. “Oh, okay. She was in the stable with Roland last I saw her. If you’ll follow me, I’m heading there now.”

“Thank you,” Snow says. Killian and David dismount as well and the trio begins following the young Henry towards the stable.

David asks, “So, Henry, does your family live in the village?”

“My family owns the farm, so we live right there,” Henry answers, pointing towards the home at the front of the property.

Snow’s small “oh” of surprise is almost unnoticeable, but Killian glances over to find her face the picture of shock. She quickly schools her features to neutrality once more. “So your family—they work the whole farm by themselves?” she asks, the epitome of polite interest.

Henry nods, an eager tour guide. “My mother is the stablemaster, my father mostly does maintenance and sales and then whatever else my mother tells him to,” he says with a laugh. “My older brother Roland is a whiz with numbers, so he does our bookkeeping. My little sister Eliza is a hand just like me, but she’s also studying to become a blacksmith, so she’s at the forge in town right now.”

“It’s nice that your family is so tightly-knit,” Snow says, her tone changing to barely-constrained curiosity.

Nodding and smiling, Henry doesn’t seem to sense any odd mood from the group before him. “My mom says that love creates happiness, so keeping those you love close to you is the best way to make yourself happy.”

Killian can’t read the expression that crosses Snow’s face then. “Wise advice,” she replies.

They reach the stable doors, and Henry swings them open. Inside, it looks as tidy and clean as the rest of the farm. The center aisle is made of brick, an exorbitant expense that gives the barn a high class sensibility. The brick is flanked by wood-planked stalls, and the low ceiling plays host to a few small swallows in the support beams. A pair of mangy barn cats roam around, but the central focal point at the moment is the woman with her back turned to them.

She stands bent over next to a mid-sized black gelding, his front left hoof propped up between her legs. She’s softly muttering to herself when Henry calls out, “Hey, Mom, there are some people who want to see you.” Killian, Snow, and David all halt by the entrance, but Henry keeps walking, placing the gray mare into an open stall on the right hand side.

She doesn’t turn yet, still bent over the hoof. “Henry, you’re going to have to ride into town and get Eliza home, because Lady Gerhardt’s horse is going to need a new set of shoes.”

Henry groans. “But I was going to take Blizzard on a training run!”

The woman drops the hoof and straightens, and begins to turn. “You can still do that later this aftern—” Her words abruptly drop off when she sees just who her visitors are. The former Evil Queen quickly composes herself and finishes, “This afternoon. Before you go, can you run and get your father? Tell him to meet me at the house.” And with a quick nod of her head, “And make sure their horses get properly hitched and watered.”

The sorceress who once terrorized thousands of people over a dozen kingdoms is dressed in riding breeches and lace-up paddock boots, with a thin, brown leather vest over a red button-up shirt. Her long hair is pulled back in a simple braid. The raven-black locks that once held crowns, and had been so famously, elaborately styled, is shot through with gray streaks. She looks like any other stablemaster across any of the dozen kingdoms where she’d left heartless bodies strewn across the lands.

Henry glances between Regina and their visitors with poorly-disguised confusion, but Regina gives him a look that quickly has him agreeing and scurrying off to do what she asked.

As the stable door closes behind Henry, Snow steps forward. “Regina.”

“Snow. You’ve aged.”

Not rising to the bait, Snow observes with a noticeable amount of strain in her voice, “You have children.”

“I do.”

Killian meets David’s gaze behind Snow’s back, trying to convey confusion. What should we do?

David just shakes his head imperceptibly.

Snow continues, ��And a husband.”

“Yes. I noticed you brought yours along. Hello, David.”

“Hello, Regina,” he replies, managing a polite tone the just verges on chilly. A shepherd David may have been once, but Killian knows that’s a politician’s voice right there.

Regina’s dark eyes then flit over to Killian, taking him in with a detached air. “This would be a lovely family reunion if you hadn’t decided to bring the Handless Wonder along.”

“Good to see you again, Majesty,” Killian replies, acidic.

Both Snow and David look over at him. “How do you know her?” David asks.

“Former villains support group,” he answers without missing a beat, not wanting to delve into the thorny history he has with the old queen.

“Not important right now,” Snow mutters, and strides forward so that she’s only a few paces from Regina’s side. “We need your help.”

Regina’s mouth purses. “I could hardly be your first choice, unless we're already scraping the bottom of the barrel for help,” she says with a pointed look at Killian before she reaches for a bristled brush in a box next to her. “Why come to me?” She begins to brush the black gelding.

A heavy beat passes before Snow answers, “Rumplestiltskin took our daughter.”

The brush pauses on the horse’s flank.

“How long ago?” Regina asks quietly, then resumes brushing the horse.

“Yesterday,” Killian answers. “We won’t be able to get near him without you.”

Regina snickers, “All those years hunting the Dark One and still can’t perform under pressure?”

“Oh darling, I perform under pressure just fine.”

Regina turns an acerbic eye on him. “Not when I asked you to kill my mother.”

“What?” David exclaims, looking between the two of them, but Killian rolls his eyes.

“Still on about that, are we?”

“This isn’t helpful,” Snow snaps. “He knows what can kill Rumplestiltsken,” she points a finger in Killian’s direction. “and you can get us into the vault where he keeps all of it.”

Regina looks mildly surprised at Snow’s outburst, but ultimately settles on impressed. “Why did he take her?”

“We don’t know,” David says.

“He said that he had use for her,” Killian says. “But that was all.”

Regina looks contemplative for a moment. “Product of true love could be useful,” she murmurs. She turns fully to Snow, seeming to warm to her topic, “When did Emma start manifesting magic?”

“Manifest—Emma doesn’t have magic.”

Regina snorts. “Believe me, she does. I could literally feel her magical signature exploding across the land when she was born.” She begins brushing the horse again, but it looks more like a reflexive movement than with any real purpose. “Either she’s a very late bloomer or there’s—” Regina freezes a moment, her lips parted. A furrow appears between her brows.

“There’s what?” Killian prompts.

Regina gives up on the futility of brushing the horse and drops the brush back in the box and steps fully into their conversation with her arms crossed over her chest. “A suppression hex.” Regina laughs, acidic. “Oh, classic Blue. Didn’t want to get her hands dirty herself.”

“Regina, what are you talking about?” Snow asks.

“After I gave up on casting the Dark Curse, but before I was banished,” Regina explains, “Blue came to me while I was imprisoned. I was—” she clears her throat before she continues, “—I was under the impression that I’d used up the last of your mercy, even if you believed me about stopping Rumplestiltskin’s plans. She asked me for a favor, and if I did it, she would counsel you to grant me clemency.”

“But Regina, you—” Snow tries, but Regina holds up a hand.

“It doesn’t matter. She asked me to create a suppression hex. Easy enough, so I did it. I just had no idea who she wanted it for. I’d always thought it was for an unruly fairy she wanted out of her ranks.”

“But she used it on Emma,” David concludes.

“So it would seem,” Regina says. “Maybe to hide her potential from Rumplestiltskin, or even from me. I doubt she ever really bought my change of heart,” she finishes with a scoff.

“Is he going to ask Emma to finish what you started, then?” Snow asks quietly.

Regina purses her lips. “Hard to say. Maybe he’s found a different avenue.”

“How do we get her back?” Killian asks impatiently. His mind has been conjuring worst case scenarios since Rumplestiltskin appeared in the clearing, and as salacious and shallowly entertaining as it might be to watch Regina snipe at the King and Queen, he’d much rather get on with finding Emma.

Regina examines him a little more closely this time, head tilting in a way that, unsettlingly, reminds him of the Crocodile. “You love her, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he answers plainly.

Regina seems to take it in as information, categorizing it in some list in her head before nodding. “We should take this to the house.”

***

When Emma awakens again, the hangover-like symptoms have mostly faded and left behind a strange feeling of sensitivity. Everything is too bright, too loud, too sharp. Like scratching a sunburn, it’s raw and a bit painful. She’d been in and out of consciousness since that first time she’d awoken, but she has no concept of how much time has passed.

At least she feels a little less scattered, the fog she’d felt hanging over her completely gone.

She’s still in the same chamber, but she’s alone this time. Her ability to stand has returned, but she takes it slow. Thankfully, no strange symptoms make a reappearance.

She looks down at her hands, and turns over Rumplestiltskin’s words in her head. He said that she has magic.

There’s not—there’s no way.

There’s absolutely no way he can be right, and yet—

“Deep down, you know I’m right.”

She whirls around, hand flying to where her sword would normally rest before cursing.

“No weapons for you, dearie. Not after last time.”

Now that she can properly focus on his face, Emma can’t find any evidence that she’d put out his left eye with her knife. “What, you looking for an apology?”

Rumplestiltskin’s answering smile is chilling. “Of course not. Apologies are fool’s sentiment. No, no, I usually prefer something more concrete.”

Emma grits her teeth. “Like what?”

He tuts lightly. “Not just yet. We need to wake you up first.”

Before she can ask what he means by that, he makes a few quick gestures with his hands, and she notices the red, filmy mist that she knows is his magic rising around him. With another quick gesture outwards, the magic explodes from him, whooshing around Emma like a sharp gust of wind off the sea, but ripping through every support column in the chamber.

Several of the ones closest to them immediately collapse, the sound like a dozen cannons going off at once. The rest are evenly cracked through at the base and begin to shake perilously, the entire structure around them trembling. Emma braces her knees through the shaking, and looks furiously at Rumplestiltskin. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Fix the columns, Emma,” he says.

“Are you fucking crazy?” she exclaims, eyes darting upwards. The shaking has increased, and visible fissures are appearing on the ceiling where the columns are starting to crumble away. “You’ll kill us both!”

He giggles. “Oh, it won’t kill me. Just you.”

“I don’t have magic! I can’t do this.” Rubble is starting to fall from the ceiling, massive chunks of stone plating crashing to the floor. Emma yelps and jumps to the side when a sizeable piece crashes to the floor not three feet from her.

“Oh, but you can!” he says. “This should be child’s play for how much power you have.”

“This is insane,” Emma says, quieter this time, frantically trying to find an exit. True to her first observation, there are no doors to this chamber. She’s stuck.

Fear burns in her throat, I can’t die, not now, I can’t die, Killian is waiting for me, I can’t die now, we have plans, not now, not when everything is starting to fall into place—

It happens between one heartbeat and the next—another column collapses, this time falling straight in her direction. She dives away from it, tucking and rolling to stand again. The column hits the floor right behind her, the concussion rattling her teeth and throwing her forward.

She falls.

She rolls, tries to get up as quickly as she can, but then there’s a stone from the ceiling falling straight at her.

No time to dodge. No time to run.

Either Rumplestiltskin is right, or she dies.

She thrusts her hands out in front of her, hoping for magic but all she can think of is how badly she wants to get out of here, of how badly she wants to see her parents again, see Killian again, by any and every god, she does not want to die today—

She closes her eyes.

She takes a breath, thinking that this could quite likely be her last.

And then she takes another.

And another.

She opens her eyes.

The stone hangs above her, suspended by a white mist that flows like liquid from her hands. She spares a look around her. Everything is frozen by the white mist, the columns held up, the falling debris stuck midair.

It’s unlike anything Emma has ever seen before, and it’s all coming from her. She can feel it, a strange pull against her heart, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s more like the excitement she felt as a child on the morning of Yule, the anticipation she feels when she hasn’t seen Killian in a month, the physical reaction of joy and love made manifest.

Emma laughs, and with a snap of her fingers, everything is fixed. Like time flowing backwards, the damage is swiftly undone. The stone effortlessly knits back together, leaving no trace of the damage that was done to it. The plating from the ceiling that fell and shattered against the floor pushes back together and floats easily upwards, slotting back into the architecture.

When the last column is standing once more, Emma finally drops her hands.

“What did I tell you, dearie?” Rumplestiltskin says. “Child’s play.”

***

Snow isn’t sure what to expect when Regina says they’ll meet her husband at the house. She only has vague recollections of what Daniel looked like, and even less of an idea of what he’d been like as a person, so to say she doesn’t know what Regina’s romantic tastes are like is a severe understatement. She imagines that Regina’s partner would be a high-born person like herself, a bit prim and classist, maybe abrasively rude in that way rich, egotistical men can sometimes be.

To say that she is shocked to find that Regina’s husband is the one and only Robin Hood of Locksley would be an even more severe understatement than the first.

He is surprisingly warm and welcoming, the friendly dog to Regina’s aloof cat, and something in Snow feels settled, satisfied, happy even. She’d always hoped Regina would find happiness, would find forgiveness and redemption in her own way, and it would seem that she’s found it; more than that, she’s also found someone to share it with who seems to be her perfect complement.

Robin invites them to sit, and offers to put a kettle on so that they can have some tea. While it warms, they all take a seat in the dining room.

It’s hardly the expensive setting Regina grew up with, but it’s certainly nicer than most homes in the village. Solid construction, a fine, tile floor covered in warm rugs, and furniture that runs more along the function line than the style.

They fill Regina in on the particulars of their plan--in as much as their plan has particulars--and Snow takes it as a positive sign that she doesn’t dismiss it outright. “As long as Hook knows what we need to grab, I should be able to get us in,” she says. “But there’s the possibility he’ll see us coming.”

“His visions have never been precise,” Hook points out, but Regina shakes her head.

“When it comes to his own death, I’ve found he has uncanny accuracy.”

“So we split up,” Hook suggests. “He knows I’m coming. If we can manipulate his visions so that he doesn’t know you three are coming with me, we’ll have the element of surprise.”

“Not to barge in,” Robin says, “but as someone with experience breaking into the Dark One’s palace, I may have a solution for you.”

“Experience breaking into his palace,” David repeats.

Robin nods. “I still have the glamour.” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small green clover. “When Regina told me what was going on, I figured this might come in handy.”

“Oh good, a plant. Emma is good as rescued,” Hook says.

Robin doesn’t seem annoyed by the sarcasm. “It’s a six leaf clover, mate. Not only capable of casting a powerful glamour spell, but hides one from magical sight, including--”

“From seers,” Hook realizes.

“It was how I managed to sneak in last time,” Robin explains. “Would’ve worked like a charm had I not been captured. But,” he pauses to wave a hand, “that’s neither here nor there. The magic is still good. It could hide all of us.”

“Us?” This comes from Regina, who is looking at her husband like he has two heads.

Robin just smiles at her. “For better or worse, my dear.”

“How did you escape?” asks Hook, who is leaning forward, gaze intense on Robin. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Admittedly, it was luck. I would have died painfully had it not been for Belle.”

“The heir to the Southern Reach, correct?” Hook asks.

“Yes,” Robin answers. “Both fortunately and unfortunately, she left him many years ago. I helped her get to DunBroch, and last I’d heard, she happily married the queen there.”

Hook sighs deeply. “So she is no exit strategy.”

“No, she isn’t. She’s been out of his grasp for decades now, and I’m not eager to ask her to throw herself back in.”

“Not suggesting she does,” Hook replies. “We’ll just need to be careful with how we plan to get out.”

The kettle whistles from the kitchen, and Robin excuses himself to go fetch it.

“What about Emma?” Regina asks, standing; by some wordless agreement with her husband, she goes to the cabinet near the wall and removes several teacups, saucers, and collections of tea leaves. As she places them in front of her guests, she says, “If Rumple wants her for her magic, then she’s probably strong enough to hurt him.”

“She already did,” Hook says, and that draws their attention.

“How?” David asks.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. Robin renters with the kettle and pours each of them a serving as Hook explains, “We were in a meadow, where you used to teach her to shoot,” he says to Snow, and she feels her breath catch.

Despite accepting Hook’s story as truth, the fact that her daughter loves him doesn’t feel real. It seems more like a story, a fiction recorded in pages for entertainment’s sake. But small things like that—that Emma showed him that field, an intensely personal and special place for their family—say that this is an undeniable reality. Something real that Emma kept perfectly secret all these years.

“Neither of us were armed. Why would we be, it was just—” Hook stares down at his tea, tipping the cup and watching the liquid move. “It was just supposed to be a nice day out. He appeared in the clearing and froze me as soon as I tried to charge at him, but Emma had a knife in her boot.”

“That’s my girl,” Snow says softly.

He looks up at her words, and his answering smile is wistful. “She’s a marvel.” It’s said with such softness, such tenderness, that Snow feels an ache rattle in her chest. It might not feel real in a lot of ways, but with each passing time she hears him speak, she starts to understand a bit more how Hook feels about Emma. She knows David doesn’t quite approve, and she wouldn’t say that she does, yet, but she can’t say in moments like this that she disapproves either.

Hook continues, “Now, this is just a regular knife, right? But Emma threw it and put out his eye. He bled. I’ve hunted the Dark One for nearly three hundred years and never have I seen him bleed. No legend or story or recounting has ever said anything about him bleeding either.”

“He’s vulnerable to her,” Regina concludes.

“He won’t tolerate having a weakness,” Killian says.

“No,” Regina agrees, “but he isn’t so short-sighted that he won’t try to make use of her before he kills her or traps her or permanently imprisons her or takes her heart or—”

“Enough, Regina,” David says. “We get it.”

“And she’s shown no signs of magic at all?”

“Not that I can remember,” Snow says.

“They might not be obvious,” Regina replies. “Maybe when she was a child, she leapt out of a tree and landed poorly, but came away unscathed. Perhaps she was exceptionally good at getting her way, past the point of reason. She likely wasn’t doing it on purpose, or with any sort of finesse.”

“She always had an affinity for injured animals,” Snow says, remembering. “There were no miraculous recoveries or regrown limbs or anything, but even the wild animals seemed calm around her and were willing to let her handle them while injured.”

Regina nods. “Could be a sign of strong light magic. Was there possibly a time when she accidentally set fire to anything? Not like that,” she says at the alarmed look that crosses Snow’s face, “but just a candle lit while she was particularly emotional? Happy or excited or perhaps angry?”

Hook shifts in his seat, a contemplative look crossing his face at that. “I think--” he starts, but he cuts himself off.

“What is it?” Regina prods.

“Nothing,” he says, and Snow can’t help but notice the tips of his ears going red.

Regina doesn’t look amused. “Save me the trouble of deducing and just tell me what you think you saw.”

Hook clears his throat, looking pointedly anywhere but at the current company at the table. “I might have—uh—noticed a lamp lit that I thought I’d put out. After an—” he reaches up to scratch behind his ear, the blush spreading from his ears down his neck and to his cheeks, “intimate moment.”

David makes a choked noise beside her, and Snow elbows him. “Not now, Charming,” she whispers.

Regina blessedly doesn’t press or make any quips. “Strong light magic,” she repeats.

“What does that mean for Emma?” Snow asks, happy to move on from dwelling on her daughter’s sex life.

“It’s the safest kind of magic--drawn from positive emotions, has never caused any recorded emotional spirals, with no known physical detriments. Acts of True Love are made from it. Not much is known about it because of its rarity, but from what I do know,” Regina looks directly at Snow, assurance in her posture and tone, “Emma isn’t like me.”

Snow lets out a breath. It’s a startling statement of personal clarity from Regina—something that Snow never knew her former step-mother would be able to have. To know the damage her own actions caused, to be able to tacitly admit that those actions weren’t something to aspire to, were something to be feared, even… it’s more than Snow ever expected or hoped for.

“So what can Rumplestiltskin do with her power?”

Here, Regina’s expression sours. “If she’s as strong as I think she is? Anything.”

***

“Focus, dearie. Make the mirror show you what you want it to.”

The image wobbles for a moment, and Emma feels like she might snap her jaw with how hard she’d clenching her teeth to just get the goddamn mirror to cooperate. A second later, the image solidifies, showing the Emerald City of Oz. Once she finds it, she lets out a breath and relaxes a bit, the magic holding.

“Impressive,” Rumplestiltskin says. “You are a quick study. Quicker than any I’ve ever taught.”

“Still doesn’t tell me what you brought me here for.”

His answer is acidic, “I promised I wouldn’t kill the pirate; that was the extent of our deal. I am perfectly happy to remedy that if you’re keen to continue prying.”

Emma suppresses a growl. “Fine, but you’re going to have to tell me eventually.”

“And why is that?”

“A lot of this magic is about visualizing, right?” she waves a hand at the magic mirror, still displaying the Emerald City. “I wouldn’t have been able to conjure that if I didn’t know what I was trying to conjure. So whatever it is you clearly want me to do, I’m not going to be able to do it unless you tell me.”

He stares at her silently for a beat, and Emma knows she’s right, but she really, really hopes she hasn’t offended him. She’s heard horrific stories of what the Dark One has done to his enemies, and she doesn’t care to find out if those were true.

Instead of replying to her, he turns, grabs a book off the table behind him, and slaps it down next to her.

This book looks strange--the binding foreign, the printing unlike anything she’s seen in the Enchanted Forest, the paper perfectly white and evenly toned. There’s an illustration in the book, unbelievably detailed and inked across a whole page. “This is--” she says, running her fingers across it, “This is incredible.”

“It’s from another realm,” Rumple says dismissively. He nods at the mirror across from her. “Conjure an image of it.”

The illustration is of a structure unlike anything she’s seen before. It’s like a massive spire, flared at the base and climbing impossible heights into the sky. It’s not stone or brick, but crafted of what looks like crossing iron bars.

Underneath the image is a caption. Tour Eiffel, 1890.

“What realm is this from?” she can’t help but ask.

“The Land Without Magic.”

Emma raises a brow. They built this thing without magic? Interesting. “If there’s no magic there, how can I use magic to see into it?”

“Child’s play,” he says again, like a reminder.

Emma rolls her eyes. Right, because she’s apparently so powerful. Emma was never the greatest at her studies, but at least her tutors were more specific than this.

She focuses her attention on the mirror again. Despite the lackluster instruction, it seems easier this time than it had the first few. Reaching for images from other realms is still a bit dicey, the one from Oz being the hardest so far, and she feels a similar stretch in trying to see this spire, this Tour Eiffel. In her mind, she focuses on the illustration, wonders what would be around it, imagines the people that might walk past it.

This image doesn’t even flicker. It just springs to life on the mirror after a few moments of concentration.

It looks taller than it did in the illustration, she notes, but then she catches a look of Rumple out of the corner of her eye. He looks absolutely astonished, and she realizes he wasn’t expecting her to get it.

She feels a bit of savage satisfaction at that. Serves him right for underestimating her.

His astonished look doesn’t last long, as he stands at attention like an army commander and gestures for her to follow him.

“Come now, Emma,” he says. “I have a task for you.”

#cs ff #captain swan #cs smut #cs au ff #cs au #my fic #canon is whatever i want it to be goodbye

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ultimate-miles · 6 years ago

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Spider-Men II (2017) - Or, the comic book that shouldn’t exist

Spider-Men II is a meandering, unfocused mess of lukewarm ideas with no pay-off, that dabbles in colorism and whitewashing.

Somewhere around the “Venom Wars” and the “Spider-Man no More” arc, there was a sharp decline in the quality of writing for Ultimate Comics Spider-Man. At the crux of it was the death of Miles Morales’ mother – Rio Morales – and the emotional bullying of a kid who wanted nothing to do with superheroing following the death of his mother, but was battered into thinking otherwise by the female clone of Peter Parker (Jessica Drew), Gwen Stacy, and his friend, Ganke Lee.

If “Venom Wars” was the signal that things were going south in the writing department, the death kneel for Miles Morales’ storyline truly began with the story arc “Spider-Man No More”, which was lead directly into a discombobulated series of story arcs that preluded and finalized the death of the Ultimate Universe.

Since then, Bendis’ take on the character – who had a fairly solid start (from Issues #1-19 of UCSM) – declined in a way that I can only describe as a writer simply losing interest in their pet project and disregarding how he handled the character from thereon out. There was no emotional investment in Miles’ day-to-day life, his family unit, friends, and etc. like there was for Ultimate Peter Parker. Ultimate Spider-Man was, as far as Marvel comic title goes, was fully realized story. But, if we’re being honest, Bendis also didn’t have to do a lot of thinking for Peter’s stories because they were often retreads of plots written fifty-sixty years before his time at Marvel.

With Miles Morales, Bendis, was, to some degree, flying blind and more or less had an open field of possibly and stories to play out. He could’ve created a legit mythology for Miles. Yet, when you boil it down, if Miles wasn’t being thrown into a “Blockbuster Event” meant to boost title sales then he was often standing in the shadow of some version of Peter Parker or Peter Parker’s family members in his own title. Simply put: Miles could not be Spider-Man in the same way Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer couldn’t Jason Bourne the hell out of bad guys without the say so of a white authority. Every time Miles’ story circles back to Peter Parker, the limitations of Bendis’ imagination with his Black Male Superhero was clear.

I don’t think anything encapsulates this more than the unwarranted sequel to Ultimate Marvel’s 2012 miniseries, Spider-Men: Spider-Men II – released in 2017 with about the same amount of issues to its name (five).

Spider-Men saw a then-brand new Spider-Man, a thirteen year old Miles Morales – encounter the 616 Universe version of Peter Parker, who accidentally ends up the 1610 Universe after some convenient circumstances involving the 616 version of Mysterio and a dimension hopping device.

Similar to Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1-5 and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #13-14, and Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #1-7, Spider-Men #1-5 runs Miles through the third consecutive gambit of getting “The Blessing™” of someone connected to Peter Parker, or Peter Parker himself. Spider-Men is more or less about how an adult Peter Parker deals with the fact someone much younger than himself (when he started doing what he was doing) was playing the role of Spider-Man following the death of teenaged version of himself (1610 Peter Parker), and eventually accepting that. It was a fun crossover that saw Miles work alongside someone he admired, and most importantly, didn’t lose sight of its tone and who the story was about in the end (Miles).

Spider-Men II, unfortunately, does the exact same thing, but now there’s no Brand New Car Smell, the question of how Peter Parker would react to a kiddy Spider-Man has been answered and Miles has been friggin blessed, officially, four friggin times, by Peter Parker and his unit in every way you can think of.

Whitewashing your Protagonist is a Bad Idea™

The crux of Spider-Men II is to answer the question that Miles Morales asked: “I wonder if there’s a me in your universe?” The original Spider-Men ended with 616 Peter Parker searching – online – for the existence of a Miles Morales in his universe and being “shocked” by the answer. Knowing in advance that the series was only five issues long meant that the answer Bendis would provide – almost five years after the original Spider-Men – would be both underwhelming and rushed with no satisfactory resolution to rest on.

The bread-and-butter of a comic book character is their ability to become relatively different characters or offshoots from the one that was the origin point. Marvel’s brand revolves around allowing writers to reinterpret established characters into someone radically different, or just update them for younger audiences. Sometimes this works for good, other times for bad. Anna Paquin’s Rogue isn’t 616 Rogue, 1610 Rogue isn’t X-Men Evolution’s Rogue, and so on and so forth.

Where the reinterpretation of a character becomes an issue is when it begins to erase a marginalized identity. It would be common sense among anyone with enough sensitively and the ability to look beyond themselves to know: You don’t reinterpret a Black character – like Virgil Hawkins or Ororo Munroe – into a white or non-Black character, you don’t reinterpret an LGBT character – like Renee Montoya or John Constantine – into a Heterosexual character, you don’t reinterpret a female character into a male character. White or male or female characters? Most of the time their fair game – with reservation (Heathers is a perfect example) – there’s usually nothing remarkable or unique about those characters because they’re representative of the norm, the thing people have been socialized to sympathize and empathize with.

Unfortunately, Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli are white, so they have neither sensitivity nor the ability to look beyond themselves. Spider-Men II confirms that, yes, there is a 616 Miles Morales. But, he’s a criminal who makes friends with Wilson Fisk (the Kingpin), and is so light-skinned there is no resemblance to his Black counterpart. He’s just the ambiguously brown stereotype. To brazenly imply that Miles Morales was, as a lot of folk were saying when the title was being published, “Sammy Sosa’ed”, is to imply that the story was tackling the subject of learned self-hatred, self-harm, and anti-Blackness and that somehow figured into 616 Miles’ narrative. Instead, this just atypical comic book racism played straight.

There’s little reason to even sympathize with 616 Miles Morales, and the point of sympathy is merely watching him cry over a woman named Barbra Rodriguez, a gallery curator, then use his criminal enterprise, namely the hired hand Taskmaster (which counts like a DC Comics reject tbh) facilitate a means for him to travel to another dimension to be with another Barbra – who presumably hasn’t met that universal equivalent of Miles Morales. For lack of a better word, 616 Miles Morales is probably the version of Miles Morales Bendis would’ve executed if he hadn’t killed Peter Parker (lbr). He’s a terrible character and a particularly woeful answer to a question better left hanging in the air.

There is no “Mary Jane Watson” for Miles Morales

Bendis’ attempts to provide Miles a love life has been – on all accounts – incredibly bad and unsurprisingly limited to white women. Jason Reynolds might be the only writer to tackle Miles Morales to even remotely consider that Miles’ dating pool might be predominantly Black – but, he’s also the only Black writer to tackle the character, so therein lay the problem.

One of the biggest issues with trying to shack Miles up with a girlfriend is that his character has never been allowed to mature. Where Peter Parker (in the 616 universe, anyhow) was allowed to graduate High School and go to College before he started any serious romantic relationships (Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane) or flirtations (Felicia Hardy) and was, therefore an adult where more adult situations could occur, Miles is a teenage boy who’s mind arguably would change like the four winds about girls, but this is never reflected or explored in his title.

Add to the fact that there were no longstanding female characters in his mythology, no one Bendis planned on introducing was going to work. Then there’s the fact that most readers were probably rooting for Miles and Ganke Lee to hook up as opposed to dropping a female character on him – because they liked their dynamic and most were content to compare their relationship to Peter/Mary Jane anyway. But Marvel was gonna pull the trigger on that in the same way neither Miles or Miguel O’Hara will ever get their big media break in something that isn’t a animated film (Into the Spider-Verse), or television series usurped from them (Spider-Man Unlimited).

Early issues of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (namely issues #12 and #19) preluded the character who would later become Ultimate Kate Bishop – Katie Bishop. Katie Bishop would play a supporting role as a then fourteen year old Miles’ girlfriend – a year after the death of Rio Morales – from issue #23 of UCSM until the end of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man (which was only thirteen issues long). But, the persisting issue with Katie Bishop is that – unlike Mary Jane Watson (in almost any iteration of Peter Parker’s story) – she was never given any proper build-up or development as someone who would be important to Miles’ arc before the romancing starts.

She’s just dropped into the middle of his story, and audience is supposed to accept it. Then, Bendis and co. ultimately decide the only way to make this character interesting is make her the daughter of Neo-Nazi and a Neo-Nazi herself who follows the Ultimate version of Hydra. Instead of building any kind of goodwill with the reader, Bendis poisons the well altogether and sabotages the character and this was way before the bullshit he, Nick Spencer, and other writers would pull that would lead to creation of Nazi Captain America (el-oh-fucking-el).

The second attempt to give Miles a love interest was in the misfire series All-New Ultimates, wherein a fourteen year old Miles began flirting with the idea of messing around with, for all intents and purposes, a grown-ass woman named Diamondback – highlighting one of the major issues with why Miles and Romance subplots never work out. Following Miles’ move to the 616 universe, Bendis and whoever was responsible for the Spider-Gwen title tried to establish an Instant Oatmeal romance between a eighteen year old Gwen Stacy and a now fifteen/sixteen year old Miles Morales that was both misguided (Bendis really tried to justify it with the line “I’ll be seventeen in a month!” fuckin’ creep), gross and flat-out boring.

Bendis, has, summarily struck out two times in his lack of effort to create a version of “Mary Jane Watson” for Miles Morales. One was underdeveloped (Kate), the other was outright creepy and his living out the fantasy of fucking Gwen Stacy. Michel Fife’s (the writer of All-New Ultimates) creepy and halfhearted attempt to give Miles a “Black Cat” equivalent unilaterally failed with the end of the title itself. Spider-Men II, unfortunately, is Bendis’ third and final miss in the pursuit of Miles Morales’ love life and it’s a big part of why – outside of the whitewashing – Spider-Man II fails as a story.

Bendis attempts to posit that – for every universe that has a Miles Morales, there is a woman named Barbra Rodriguez that he will ultimately fall in love with. 616 Miles Morales’ entire narrative motivation – which renders 1610 Miles Morales’ side of the story completely irrelevant and void – in Spider-Man II is to escape to another universe where there is a Barbra Rodriguez, because his version of Barbra Rodriguez has died. But in the same universe (616) there’s a younger 616 Barbra Rodriguez that just shows up for no reason for 1610 Miles to swoon over. It’s so groan inducing.

Like Ultimate Kate Bishop, as an idea, Barbra Rodriguez isn’t a bad one per se. The issue is, like Ultimate Kate Bishop, that Barbra Rodriguez is dropped into the lap of the reader and expected be swallowed wholesale. In a series of panels illustrated by a perpetually bored Sara Pichelli (who’s interpretation of Miles has become, honestly, more and more ape-like than anything resembling the stellar character design she and David Marquez started out with, but only Marquez remained faithful to before his departure from Miles’ story) in something that resembles the image of the conceited little girl from Monster House selling Halloween candy to a neighborhood she doesn’t live in, the reading audience is meant to believe Miles falls in love with Barbra.

Barbra Rodriguez is a painfully unwritten and boring character to the point where I don’t think you can call her a character – just a prop for a half-baked romance subplot that doesn’t involve the version of Miles Morales readers have picked the book up for. As a character, she brings nothing to the table, as a prop she’s not even interesting. Bendis tries to pull the Star Crossed Lovers Xena-level Soulmates position without ever earning it and as a result Barbra is forgettable. Maybe if he actually introduced her in his last outing for Miles instead of creating a walking stereotype of a grandmother, this might’ve worked better. As it is, Barbra Rodriguez is a last minute thought the story itself fails to capitalize on for anything other than manpain.

Miles Morales isn’t Peter Parker, so naturally, he will never have a Mary Jane Watson. Not even on a metaphorical level, or for the sake of comparison. I honestly think that the only character, if it had to be a woman and not Ganke Lee, that would’ve worked, would probably be Bombshell (Lana Baumgartner). She’s the only female character within his age group he’s actually interacted with and established a genuine relationship.

616 Peter Parker is an Asshole

Peter Parker’s interaction with a then thirteen year old Miles Morales was a fairly fun read. I liked the idea of Peter indirectly promoting himself to temporary mentor because he’s a grown man overly worried about the fact that someone far younger he was superheroing and largely in the memory of even younger version of himself – who he can’t quite deal with being dead (because it’s him). It was cute. The rationale behind Peter’s actions made sense, and it didn’t overstay its welcome.

Peter in Spider-Men II is a jerk for almost no reason. Because the narrative begins in medias res, with Miles and Peter arguing about how they got tied upside down, the reader spends a great deal of their time wondering why the hell Peter is being so antagonistic with Miles – to the point where he bluntly tells Miles that his being Spider-Man was a “mistake”.

Spider-Men II does not really answer this question – but instead spends the bulk of its first two issues being evasive about the issue altogether (because issues #3 and #4 are dedicated to 616 Miles Morales and his relationships with Barbra and Kingpin, with issue #5 “wrapping” things up for 616 Miles). Recapping that Peter Parker searched and presumably found Miles Morales in his universe before the implosion of the UM, Spider-Men II then has Peter pretending to help Miles locate the 616 version of himself, going as far enlisting the help of Jessica Jones – who summarily tells them there are no traces of a Miles Morales equivalent to even be worried about.

Because the reader is either meant to believe or knows that Peter is lying or being dishonest with Miles, a lot of their dynamic is artificial. Whatever Bendis managed to capture with the first crossover event between the two characters has vanished altogether. A lot of the time Peter Parker – who I keep forgetting is basically a diet soda version of Tony Stark, right down to wearing an armored suit with a glowing symbol and owning his own billion dollar franchise (Parker Industries) – comes off as condescending and a spandex wearing asshole. An asshole operates on the belief that he has the right and authority to tell a now fifteen year old Miles Morales when and when he can’t be Spider-Man.

Even weirder, instead of shutting that nonsense down, Miles takes it on the chin is more less like, “aww, gee, I guess you’re right, I’ll go be depressed now” even as Peter offers him a half-hearted apology and Miles can only say “well, you said it”. It’s the equivalent of Cyclops telling Storm she can’t be the leader of the X-Men, but without the holy retribution of Cyclops being smote with lightning. Like, I spend a grand bulk of this series – which doesn’t even legitimately resolve or explore the fraught dynamic between the two – wishing Peter Parker would fall into a hole and die. Peter Parker’s character in this title is downright insufferable. I miss John Romita Jr. and that other guy’s Peter Parker, but I hear he died in the Civil War.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Behind all the mess that is the core of Spider-Men II, there was a fairly interesting idea to explore. Bendis really could’ve focused on how the two Miles Morales dealt with existing in the same space. He could’ve dealt with how Miles was coping with having his mother back, and living in a universe that was not his own – and how the death of the Ultimate Marvel universe affected him.

If he had established Barbra Rodriguez before this miniseries, he could’ve actually dedicated the time barely spent on her to simply furthering the relationship that should’ve started way before this story.

As it stands? 1610 Miles Morales and his exploits are more or less an afterthought to the core of the story itself. Peter Parker is a billionaire asshole throughout most of the plot and honestly not even required to tell the story. You can remove him from any and all plot points involving the “who is 616 Miles Morales?”, Jessica Jones, and the conflicts with Taskmaster, and nothing would change. He is irrelevant.

There’s too much time spent on the whitewashed version of Miles Morales – something that both hinders and illustrates just how far gone Bendis’ writing for Miles has diminished since 2013. 616 Miles Morales wasn’t a bad idea, but the execution of the character is fairly horrendous and racist.

Almost no one talked about Spider-Men II when it was released, almost in the same way there was barely an eye bated when the confusingly branded Spider-Man title (Miles’s 616 outing) was released in 2016 (beyond the “who cares if I’m Black?” bullshit). Everyone was talking about Spider-Men and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man when they were released, a lot of people liked it, some didn’t, but it was rather an indicator of its quality. The almost unilateral silence even Miles Morales fans visited upon Spider-Man and Spider-Men II rather speaks volumes of how bad it got.

I don’t recommend this to anyone who is a Miles Morales fan. You’re better off pretending Spider-Men never got a sequel.

#miles morales #peter parker #brian michael bendis #spider men ii #whitewashing #media: long posts #ultimate miles meta #series: spider men ii #year: 2017 #writer: brian michael bendis #creative: sara pichelli #616 miles morales #616 barbra rodriguez #1610 barbra rodriguez #1610 taskmaster #616 peter parker #616 jessica jones

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ncumenia-archived · 6 years ago

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📱MOBILE-FRIENDLY RULES📱

OTHER LINKS:

lore

bio

headcanons

exclusive ship list

Since English is not my mother language, I apologize in advance if there are some grammatical errors or I use wrong words to describe an action. If something is not clear to you, just let me know, I’ll fix it as soon as I can.

Roleplay Rules:

TAG DUMP HERE!; (NSFW too)

Mun&Muse are both 21+. This blog is selective, 18+ exclusive, canon divergent, duplicates crossover, AU, fandomless, etc… friendly!

Besides the obvious fact I won't rp smut or ship with minor muns/muses whatsoever, do not follow me if you're underage. This because I feel uncomfortable interacting with minor muns due to the huge age gap that might be between us. (Mun is currently 25 as I write this) Please, don't take it too personally, it's just for my own comfort. Furthermore, if your rules and age (mun is 18+, mun is 23, mun is of age and so on...) are not present on your blog I won’t rp with you at all. Lying about your age will result into a permablock and reported. The same applies if you're underage or your age is not stated and you dare to interact in any kind of NSFW way with me (This also includes liking/commenting my nsfw posts or sending me nsfw asks)

I refuse to ship/interact with: aged up muses (Nunu, Annie, Zoe etc…) and only smut-oriented blogs since they both make me uncomfortable. So, please, if you’re one of these blogs do not follow me.

No godmodding. If our muses are fighting, I’d like to discuss first with the other mun, in order to avoid it as much as possible;

I don’t like “follow for following me back, and if you don’t follow me I’ll unfollow you“ philosophy because I find this kinda disrespectful. I’m also available to interact with you even if we’re not mutuals! Usually, the reasons why I unfollow you are these: spamming too much without using a proper tag, talking shit about other people here on tumblr, spreading useless drama or rumors, posting stuff that makes me uncomfortable or if I somehow assume you’re not interested to interact with me.DMS are always open for plotting!

Currently available verses: Canon, Odyssey, Modern/Academy, Bloodmoon, Deity Please, before interacting with my muse in one of these verses make sure to read the lore and, if something is not clear to you, dm me anytime!;

I’ll try to match length more or less, so don’t worry about that. And please, TAKE YOUR TIME to reply. I have a life too, so don’t worry I’m not the one who runs after others! I tend to easily forget threads, so if I didn’t reply to our thread for like a couple of days dm me!;

I do believe in reblog karma, it’s your choice to send me a meme, but please reblog it from the source and not from me if you don’t want to send me one. If you reblog a meme from me without sending me one for more than once, I’ll block you. I’m sorry about this rule, but after some time this becomes quite annoying;

Any kind of hate toward a nationality/gender/sexual orientation and so on will result in a report and permablock. I believe everyone should respect a person, regardless of their gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation. If you don’t, you’ll get permablocked. Period. The same goes for every kind of insult or anon hate toward me, a ship or a friend: not only you’ll be ignored, but, if it is necessary, I’ll report and permablock you.

This blog is against any kind of fake/unfounded rumors and drama. I'll only reblog callouts that provide evidence about the problematic individual, and mostly about extremely serious topics (like minor hunters, abusers or if someone who is seriously in danger) I'm not afraid to callout people if they have a problematic/gross behavior or if they support/justify problematic/disturbing/traumatic topics.

I won’t rp and tolerate extremely disturbing topics like incest, rape (non-con/dub-con as well), pedophilia, child/animal abuse, and similar. The same goes for every kind of ship where these themes are involved. Mentioning these topics during a thread is okay (For example if you’re talking about your muse’s past), but I’d rather talk with the mun first so we can plot things properly.

Any jokes about child death, rape, racism, disability, sexism and so on are not allowed here. If I see one of them, I may go to your dms and telling you that’s not okay writing these things because they’re harmful, and to stop with that stuff. If you’ll ignore/insult/make fun of me you’ll be permablocked. [Added: 09/07/2019]

This blog may contain triggers such as blood, angst, smoke, drugs, gore, mental health etc. I’ll tag everything and I’ll use “read more”. (I’ll tag my triggers using, for example, “tw: blood” without air quotes) Before rping this stuff with you, I’ll always ask you if you’re okay with it, so do please tell me if you have any triggers or I should tag something specific in my blog! For example, my muse, when she’s overwhelmed by certain feelings or recalls what happened to her kin, she bleeds from her mouth and sternal scar. Please, if this makes you feel uncomfortable don’t be afraid to tell me it; Regarding sexual content, it will also be present, especially during Sinday, but I will always tag everything accordingly and put everything under read more.

Please, tag these two topics: needles and stepping on people. I feel extremely uncomfortable regarding the latter because it's heavily connected with animal abuse, and it makes me feel so sick I start to panic. I only ask you to tag these two topics.

I’m a human being, and sometimes I make mistakes too. If I made something that offended you/made you feel uncomfortable, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I want to learn from my mistakes.

Shipping rules:

Even if I’m more than aware of the fact an 18+ mun is legally an adult, I realized I feel more comfortable shipping with both muns/muses who are 20+, especially in the case there will be some nsfw. That’s my personal preference, and this is NOT negotiable and it will NEVER be.[added 06/05/2019]

If you don’t want to keep our ship going on, that’s TOTALLY OKAY. I will NEVER get mad at you, neither asking you the motivation. If you don’t feel comfortable anymore, that’s okay and I respect your decision!

This blog is multiship exclusive, that means I'll only ship with one muse/au of that muse. Furthermore, I'll be highly selective with whom I ship with, and I mostly prioritize people I've been friends with for a long time. [EXCLUSIVE SHIP LIST]

I state in advance I don’t ship my muse with Diana, since she sees her as a mother-like figure. So… This basically would be incest, and I feel very uncomfortable with it. Furthermore, I won’t ship with Taric, Leona, Aurelion, Soraka, Zoe (But this is almost needless to say since she’s a minor, but prevention is always better than the cure), and yordles.

Even if I’m extremely fine with a platonic/non-sexual relationship, I’m also okay with some smut and that may occur with a serious plot, and ONLY if I feel comfortable and I trust my rp partner enough. Unfortunately, I don’t feel very comfortable rping it on Tumblr, and I’d rather rp it on Discord. [Please check the smut rules here] DON’T FORCE IT WITH ME, otherwise the ship will be deleted and probably I’ll block you too.

My muse is a revenant (I’m talking about her canon verse. In Odyssey! and Modern! she’s a living being) and NO, shipping with her is NOT necrophilia (She’s NOT a lifeless, nonsentient, smelly and rotten body who cannot give consent. She has revived thanks to Targon/Moon’s magic, and she’s ABLE to consent and she doesn’t smell bad, she’s not rotting and so on). I’m writing this because I’m kinda sick of this subject because “Shipping with Ernye/Pyke/Thresh/Kalista/Yone is necrophilia1111!!1!!”, and I’m more than sure these people are the first who fall in love with a vampire. If I receive any anon asks about this stuff in which there’s written I cannot ship her with anyone or other offensive things toward me or my muse (both ic and ooc), I’ll ignore and permablock them. No matter who’s the person who sent this. Again: I’m sick and tired of this stuff because basically there’s no problem in shipping with a psycho who can basically kill/abuse you any moment, meanwhile, GOD FORBID a revenant/vampire and stuff like that. So, better safe than sorry. If this bothers you so much you can unfollow me.

Respect my right to say “NO” if I don’t want to ship with your muse. So, don’t force it or I’ll block you.;

About the Mun:

You can call me Silkie, and I’m 25 years old;

Discord for mutuals only;

Pronouns: she/her (They/Them is also fine, if you feel more comfortable with it, no worries);

Chickens, cats, chinchillas, and Castlevania addicted;

I consider myself as a friendly person, so if you wanna know me or rp with me just send me a message! I suffer from diagnosed GAD and depression, so I really need time to open up to people and my activity may be sporadic because of this. And, please: if I make/say something that makes you feel uncomfortable TELL ME ANYTIME since I never mean to hurt anyone here through my words or acts;

Remember Muse ≠ Mun. Ernye’s actions don’t reflect my personality, or what I think about you;

Please DON’T FLIRT WITH ME, it makes me extremely anxious and uncomfortable due to many awful experiences I had in the past, and also because rp is a hobby and I want to have fun, and I’m not looking for a romantic partner. If you ignore my warnings I’ll permablock you. And yes, this also applies to every NSFW question about me. If you dare to do so you’ll get immediately reported, permablocked and the whole chatlog saved. I will also NOT tolerate any kind of NSFW anon ask about me.

The cringy art you see on my profile is made by me unless stated otherwise. Constructive criticism and bits of advice are more than welcome and encouraged ♥

[ If you have read my rules send me “Has the killing moon come for them?” That’s optional, of course, you don’t have to send it to me!]

#mobile friendly rules #the sun is rising (ooc)#oh boy i’m moonstruck again (spamalot)#when I'll make a decent promo post about my blog I'll use this post!

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slipping-through-my-fingertips · 6 years ago

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“I Love You” Will Still Sound the Same

AO3

Summary:

Rachel Berry hosts New Directions reunions every year in McKinley's auditorium, which include a singing competition.

Years after McKinley was turned into an all art school with many competing glee clubs, the former New Directions still got together. Rachel Berry often planned these get-togethers. They were able to indulge themselves in the better memories of high school. Although Kurt Hummel considered his experience to be more negative than positive, he was standing in his father’s house in his childhood bedroom buttoning up his shirt getting ready to relive those four years.

Lima never really changed from year to year. Burt and Carole were happy to have the company of their favorite sons (Blaine often corrects them to “son-in-law” but it was always in vain). There weren’t many holidays celebrated in Ohio anymore, except Christmas and New Years. Some years, the Fourth of July made the list. Still, Kurt and Blaine tried to visit every other month if their schedules allowed it.

“Baby is down for the count,” Blaine announces, entering Kurt’s bedroom.

“Can you believe your parents offered to take the twins to the movies?”

“And your parents wanted to get up every hour with a newborn?”

Kurt smiles as Blaine’s hand brush over his shoulders. McKinley’s auditorium was probably all set up for their annual New Directions reunion party. Students from all the years since Kurt’s graduation came to Rachel’s gathering each June. It was a different mix of people but everyone seemed to stick to their own age groups. At least, they did until the competition started.

Everyone wanted the bragging rights that came with first place. It didn’t matter who was in your group so long as each member was willing to pull their weight. This year Kurt convinced Blaine to limited their number to a duet.

“I can’t believe you don’t want to win this year,” Blaine says.

“We won last year, let someone else take on the challenge.” Kurt slips into his suit jacket, which he leaves unbuttoned. “I just want to sing a silly love song with my bushy hair husband.”

Kurt catches Blaine’s blush in the mirror’s reflection as Blaine straightens his bowtie.

“Let’s go!”

They bid Burt and Carole goodbyes and Kurt can’t help but give them more instructions for baby care. Blaine has to pull him to the car.

Mckinley’s front doors are wide open with balloons tied to the door handles. Once inside, Kurt spots Sam and Puck by the food. As they approach them, Blaine is drawn into their argument about Star Wars, which Kurt immediately tunes out.

“How goes the show, Hummel?” Santana asks, bumping his hip.

“Grows increasingly difficult to leave Blaine with the twins and a newborn every night and twice on the weekends.”

“Britt feels that way too about accepting dancing gigs. I told her to go on tour but she refuses because of, well, you know…” Kurt's eyes fall to Santana’s rounded belly. “Even local gigs, she won’t do.”

“It’ll be harder when the baby’s here. Trust me,” Tina chimes in. “Mike almost didn’t want to come tonight because of our little ones at home.”

“Isn’t Izzy seven now?” Santana asks.

Tina looks pointedly at her. “Yes, which is exactly my point. She’s fine with his mom.”

“Baby talk?’ Blaine asks, having finished making his Star Wars opinions.

“What else?” Kurt kisses his cheek.

No more baby talk is added when Rachel comes over to the group.

“So, what is everyone singing tonight?” Rachel asks. “Or better question, who’s singing with who?”

“None of your business, Berry. I won’t let you steal my song again,” Santana says, with a quick turn back to her bride.

Brittany is sitting with Artie and Jake, Puckerman’s little brother.

“Let’s join a table,” Blaine suggests, adding a roll to his dinner plate.

The couple ends up sitting with Mike, Tina, and Mercedes. Rachel’s menu includes vegan, vegetarian, and meat options, unlike previous years when she had decided to only supply vegan snacks. After the threats of skipping the following year’s reunion, she added more variety.

“Rachel is trying to get a leg up by asking people to spill their song choices,” Blaine warns.

“Shocker,” Mike replies.

“She always does this,” Tina continues. “I’m sure whatever she decided on will be great.”

“Are we bashing Rachel ‘cause I have some thoughts,” Quinn says pulling out a chair. “We may be out of high school but she still manages to get under my skin sometimes.”

Puck takes the seat next to her and Sam chooses the one beside Mercedes. She was mostly joking, Quinn and Rachel had patched up their relationships years ago. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more time for talking as Rachel had taken to the stage to announce their first group performance of the night.

“Heard a rumor that you chose to duet with hubby here, bold choice,” Kitty says, pulling an extra chair to their table.

“We’re all about bold choices,” Blaine smiles at her.

Several group performances start out the night and one marvelous solo before Rachel is practically beaming on the stage. Kurt knows her ‘showface’ as Jesse St. James would call it means Rachel is actually friends with the next performer or performers.

“Okay!” Rachel says. “Two of my very good friends are up next, Kurt and Blaine Anderson-Hummel.”

Blaine leads Kurt up to the stage. There are already two microphones set up, Blaine walks to the one farthest from the stairs and Kurt hands the sheet music to the live band.

“I love you,” Blaine tells his husband.

“Oh honey, I love you too.” Then the music begins playing, Kurt sings the first half of the verse.

“Could you see yourself

Growing old with me,

Watchin’ my head turn to grey?”

With a smile thrown Blaine’s way, the other boy picks up the second half.

“Could you live with me

In my mistakes,

And the ones I have yet to make?”

The audience seems to like the slower song choice. It’s a simple duet and the meaning matches the pairing. During the chorus, the boys take the microphones off of the stands in order to stand toe to toe. Not facing the audience at all, Kurt and Blaine sing in sync.

“So when our eyes have seen their better days

And our hearing starts to fade

Put your arms ‘round my neck, and your heart on my chest

‘I Love You’ will still sound the same

‘I Love You’ will still sound the same”

There’s plenty of applause when the couple finishes. They join hand and take a bow before moving off the stage back to their seats.

“Not trying to win for a second year?” Santana asks.

Kurt shakes his head. “Always knew I was a winner but I’m not a needy winner.”

With an eye roll, Santana turns her attention back to the stage as Rachel announces the next group. Blaine leans over to whisper to Kurt while Rachel talks more than is necessary, “It will, you know.”

“What will?” Kurt replies, confused.

“Every time I hear it, a shiver runs down my spine and my heart pounds just like it did the first time I told you in the Lima Bean. Sometimes when you tuck the kids into bed and you kiss their foreheads and murmur ‘I love you’ my palms get sweaty and my legs tremble. I think I always knew I wanted to grow old with you. There was a time where I just didn’t want to admit to myself how in love with you I was and how it would never fade.”

“You do know, we’re always married. You got me forever,” Kurt says with a fresh blush on his cheeks. “There was also a time where you claimed to be terrible at romance but that speech was pretty damn romantic.”

“I love you.”

Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and rests their joined hands on the table.

#klaine #klaine fanfic #klaine fanfiction #kurt hummel #blaine anderson #alternative universe #furture fic #my fics

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truxblooded · 6 years ago

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Original Marvel/MCU Avenger:

Full Name: Joanna “JJ” Jane Reeves

Alter Ego: Titan || Captain Universe

Identity: Kept secret from the public

Species: Half-human / Half-Titan (Eternal)

Citizenship: American

Place of Birth: Bronx, New York

Known Relatives:

Ellen Reeves, mother (deceased, murdered)

Jimmy and Harriet Reeves, grandparents (deceased)

Eros (aka Starfox), father (alive)

Alars (aka Mentor), grandfather (alive)

Sui-San, grandmother (deceased, murdered)

Thanos, uncle (alive)

Thane, cousin (alive)

Gamora, adopted cousin (alive)

Nebula, adopted cousin (alive)

Physical Attributes:

Height - 5′9″

Weight 166lbs

Hair - Brunette

Eyes - Golden brown / burning cold blue

Face Claim: Missy Peregrym

Partnerships:

The Avengers

The Defenders

Spider-Man

The Nova Corps

Guardians of the Galaxy

Asgard

Powers/Abilities:

Superhuman strength, spedd, hearing, vision, durability, stamina, and longevity

Rapid Cellular Regeneration

Heat vision, X-Ray vision

(non-superhuman ability) Has a mastery level of freerunning/parkour

(non-superhuman ability) is well versed in several forms of hand to hand combat including Muy Thai, kickboxing, taijutsu, keys, and dirty street fighting

Is capable of picking up Mjolnir, but refuses to ever do it again

After returning from the dead…

is currently the acting avatar of cosmic entity known as the Uni-Power and is thus the currently acting Captain Universe, and thusly has acquired on top of her already there powers and abilities:

Uni-Vision: a sort of cosmic consciousness. Captain Universe can sense things on a subatomic level or at a great distance. This power can also force someone to tell the truth.

Matter/Energy Manipulation: Captain Universe can divert an energy flow in a different direction or convert it into a different type of energy. Diverting the flow of gravitons, for example, allows flight. Captain universe can also change matter on the atomic level, for instance, to transmute one substance into another or to change an object’s shape.

The costume (or the Uni-Power itself): Protects against extremes in temperature and even the vacuum of space.

Bio:

Born to a single mother, Dr. Ellen Reeves - a renowned professor of cosmology - and raised in the Bronx, JJ Reeves was kept completely unaware of who her biological father was, only being told that he’d had left them several months before she was born. While Ellen had done her best to paint a positive picture in JJ’s mind concerning her father’s absence by telling her that he was called away by duty, and only wanted to protect them from a very real danger his presence would bring; JJ only soon came to hate her absent father passionately when her mother fell terminally ill with ovarian cancer. JJ’s hatred for her father would only increase over the years until ultimately becoming a smoldering rage when her mother was murdered because of him.

Ellen Reeves was well aware of what her daughter would face as she grew up… grew into her genetic heritage as the man who was the biological father had explained it all to her. When Ellen was going into her fifth year teaching cosmology at ESU as apart of the Astrophysics department in 1980, she happened to come across an interesting bit of lost research in one of the old unused storage rooms that were going to be cleaned out and repurposed. The research revolved around possible findings of civilization on Saturn’s moon Titan. Her delving into this old research caught the eye of someone in particular rather quickly, and Ellen soon found herself meeting a man who introduced himself as Eron; a professor who was likewise minded in the field of cosmology and expressed interest in her uncovering of the old research that had been stored away and forgotten. For about six months the two worked side by side delving further into the research, expanding new branches out of the work, and grew closed in both their work relationship and friendship. Ellen soon found her friendship with Eron becoming far more flirtatious and moving towards something far more romantic and approached the subject hesitantly with him.

Where Ellen was cautious, Eron was ecstatic over the idea of them becoming more and soon after the two became heavily involved with each other. In 1985, Ellen found out she was pregnant and broke the news to Eron excitedly only to have his reaction be the exact opposite of what she was expecting. Where she expected celebration and happiness, Ellen found herself being seated and have revealed to her that Eron was in fact not Eron… and was not from the planet Eath. His name was Eros and he was from Saturn’s moon Titan, and was an Eternal (or as those who lived on Titan now called themselves Titans).

Eros explained everything to Ellen, going into detail where she asked and showed her everything he was capable of as a super powered being… divulging to her everything relating to his powers of empathy and emotion control. When these were explained, Ellen had begun to develop serious doubts and frustrations over whether or not their relationship, their romance, HIS love for her and her for him, had all even real or had been him manipulating her just to make sure she never discovered the truth about the civilization and settlement of the colony his father and mother had rebuilt and developed on Titan. When Eros explained that he had at first but then eventually fell in love with her on his own, Ellen was still enraged and heart broken to know that there was still a lie and that she had been manipulated despite Eros trying to explain that he had long stopped using his powers after those first six months that they had known each other. Angry and hurt, Ellen stormed out of their shared apartment and headed out for a walk to calm down and to be as far away from the man who had lied to her. By the time night had fallen. Ellen was still out and eventually made her way back home, only to be confronted by a small group of boys who were planning to not only mug her but rape her as well.

Before they could advance on her. Eros arrived and beat the entire group to within an inch of their lives for even daring to lay a finger on Ellen. While still angry with everything that had been revealed to her, Ellen returned home with Eros and while watching him fret over her and their baby, Ellen lost most of her anger but still felt a lingering sense of deceit. Over the months of Ellen’s pregnancy, Eros regained Ellen’s trust and the relationship slowly mended. Around the seventh month of Ellen’s pregnancy the pair had gone over all the possibilities of what would be their child’s future as essentially a child of two worlds. In secret Eros had built up a small facility far up north and nowhere near civilization, away from eyes and ears, where he could eventually take their child to train and learn how to use their Titan abilities when they came into them.

Unfortunately, Eros’s plans were disrupted and destroyed when he received a distress signal from Titan, his father begging him to come back as their home was being attacked by Thanos - A’lars other son and Eros’s brother - and his own personal army he had amassed. Distressed, Eros explained to Ellen what was going on, begging her forgiveness and pleading for her to understand him needing to leave. Promising to be back before their child was born, Eros still left Ellen with several things… just in case. Eros left Earth, the woman he loved and the mother of his child, and his unborn child… and never returned.

On April 1, 1983, Ellen Reeves gave birth to a daughter - Joanna Jane Reeves - at Metro-General Hospital and began raising her as a single mother in a small apartment in the Bronx. For the first few years of her life, JJ never exhibited any signs of being no different than any other human baby, save for the fact that she never seemed to express any signs of pain or had any visible signs of injury on herself despite the normal and occasional accidents all children tend to have as toddlers. It wasn’t until JJ was six that her abilities began to manifest more predominately. Whether she acquired a scratch or bled like any child would from tripping or falling, gain a bump after conking her head on a corner (in fact that corner would be a bit dented or cracked depending on the material), JJ would heal rapidly right before he mother’s eyes. No trace or sign of injury would remain on her. She was never sick and never expressed any discomfort to the weather temperatures. When she ten-years-old and coming home from school one day, JJ was a bawling mess of tears and almost inconsolable. After Ellen got her to clampdown, JJ told her mother through small hiccups and sniffles that she saved one of her friends from being hit by a car and that the car had hit her instead. The car had obviously done nothing to JJ, or so it seemed as JJ’s rapid healing had kicked in and every and all broken bones healed instantly. JJ explained that the car was still damaged badly in front from hitting her and that her friend who she had saved ran away terrified and screaming, calling her a freak and a monster.

Ellen didn’t know how this whole incident would be handled or responded to the next day and took JJ to school herself. When it seemed as though nothing was out of the ordinary at the elementary school the next day, Ellen left JJ to her school day. JJ came home again crying and upset, telling her mom that no one would play with her and everyone called her names and told her to stay away because she was “scary”. Ellen did her best to comfort her daughter and explain that she wasn’t “scary”, she was special like her father and that one day everyone would see that including her. For the rest of her elementary days, JJ was shunned and was soon bullied when she started junior high. It was in junior high her powers and abilities exploded when a group of boys had concerned her after school, shoving her into the lockers and harassing her. Begging for them to stop and leave her alone, it wasn’t until one of the boys had attempted to rip her shirt off that JJ acted out in self-defense and swing wildly at the boy. The blow that landed flung him across the hall into the other set of lockers denting them inwards from the impact of the force that threw him. Terrified of what she had just done and from the boys closing in on her to retaliate, JJ tried to run and when she did she was suddenly gone from the school hall and found herself throttling through the school back doors, snapping them clear off their hinges before careening straight into the side of a dumpster and buckling the metal container in half.

Scared out of her mind JJ ran for home and showed up there in less than ten seconds flat, hysterical and scared. Telling her mother everything that had happened, JJ told her mother how badly she had wanted to hurt those boys, to hurt everyone making her life a nightmare at school. While Ellen understood where her daughter was coming from and expressed her own fear over everything going on, Ellen explained to JJ that while she had the ability to obviously hurt others easily given her newfound abilities, that she now also had a responsibility to use these new abilities wisely. A responsibility that she couldn’t enforce on JJ but hoped that she would utilize. When it still seemed like JJ wouldn’t possibly listen, Ellen took her daughter over to her grandparents house and had her sit with her grandfather for a few hours and listen to him recount his war stories from serving during World War II and everything he and his fellow brothers in arms faced. Eventually he came around to telling her about Captain America, and everything that he had witnessed while fighting alongside the super soldier who had given his life to protect the world. How ultimately the war was won and the Nazis defeated, because people who could make a difference and wanted to see goodness prevail in the face of evil, fought for it; that the “bigger, stronger person stood up for the little guy who couldn’t protect themselves”.

While she struggled with not using her abilities to enact revenge on her tormentors and bullies at school, JJ began exploring just what sort of extents or limitations her abilities had and just what else they could entail. All through high school she tested her durability and found she was completely capable of taking a full force punch from a grown man without even flinching, any and all forms of standard street weapons were capable of harming her but her rapid cellular regeneration kicked in split seconds after the inflicted wounds. Every time she recovered from anything bigger - car impacts, being thrown out high story windows and hitting the ground or parked vehicles, even being caught in a gas station explosion - her body seemed to grow stronger, recover quicker. She tested her strength and she was strong. insanely and inhumanly strong (many an alarm clock was destroyed from unrestrained tired swats, a few even finding themselves backhanded across the room and imbedded in the wall of her bedroom), she could stop a speeding train with just her two are hands. lift a fully loaded SUV like it was an empty cardboard box, punch a hole through three feet of solid steel. And she was fast. She could run from the apartment she lived in in the Bronx with her mom, to the high school (Bronx Science) in ten seconds flat, run from the Bronx to Queens in fifteen seconds, her reflexes were split second reactions and too fast for the human eye to perceive. Around the end of the high school is when she discovered her hearing and vision were superhuman; she could hear her mother’s heartbeat when she focused and could hear the difference that made it her own next to someone’ else’s, she could see things from far distances with utter clarity as if they were no more than a foot from her when she focused… she could see through 99.9% of all materials no matter the thickness with an x-ray vision, finding it impossible though to see through lead (which made sense to her seeing as how x-rays cannot penetrate through lead).

JJ graduated high school and attended ESU much to her mother’s delight and expressed huge interest towards cosmology like her mother, gravitating towards the more thermonuclear physics aspect of it as well as the astrophysics. And it was in her first year at ESU that Sara first encountered Dr. Bruce Banner during a lecture he guest spoke at and her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Prior to Captain America being discovered and uniced, JJ had started acting as a bit of a vigilante of sorts in he room borough of the Bronx. She acted mainly during the night and occasionally in broad daylight but always did so in some form of concealment. When her mother’s illness got to the point where she could no longer teach and the hospital bills were starting to pile up, JJ took up several part time jobs for a courier business, and then even picked up an overnight delivery position for another courier that dealt with warehouses. JJ struggled balancing her college education with her four jobs, taking care of he mother, and protecting the Bronx itself. One of JJ’s defining moments in her early years of vigilantism, JJ faced off against The Abominatrix and in the scuffle to protect the people in the surrounding area and defeat said baddie, half the West Village was turned into a war zone and JJ was on display in broad daylight for everyone to see. Thankfully she had been able to keep her identity hidden decently well and also managed to KO her first “super villain” after a drawn out battle she hadn’t been expecting to encounter on a courier delivery to a private medical office in lower Manhattan.

When the alien invasion incident occurred in New York that introduced the world to The Avengers, JJ happened to be just a few blocks outside of the main hot spot of the fighting that day. Instead of running like everyone else, JJ ran towards the danger. She helped keep the evacuating and fleeing citizens safe, catching falling rubble when alien speeders zipped by and opened fire, and even engaged many of the aliens when they came flying overhead on strafing runs. Her actions that day didn’t go unnoticed despite her attempt to remain ambiguous and disguised by pulling her jacket’s collar up over the lower half of her face, she was tracked down by S.H.I.E.L.D. a few months later.

Agent Coulson had been the first to approach her while she was working on deliveries for one of the courier operations, looking to recruit her to S.H.I.E.L.D., to The Avengers Initiative. JJ denied ever being anywhere near the incident and when Agent Coulson was distracted by a sudden disruption not far from them, JJ used her super speed to give the agent the slip. She was tracked down again later that night. JJ had just intervened to stop the robbery of the little bodega of a 24hr corner store she frequented every night and knew the old Indian man who ran it almost on a personal level of friendship, when Agent Coulson and three other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents confronted her just a block from the store. This time Agent Coulson brought up the subject of her mother and JJ snapped in immediate response to this. She had Agent Coulson by the throat and had him off the ground, daring the other two agents with him to shoot her and threatened to snap his neck then and there for bringing her mother into any of this. That was when HE stepped up from his place still in one of the SUV’s that Coulson and his partners had arrived in. Steve Rogers, Captain America himself, stepped up to calm her down and then asked Coulson and the agents to let them have a moment when he noticed how he had her complete and utter (wide-eyed) attention.

It would be Steve who ultimately recruited JJ into The Avengers and personally took her under his wing to help her train her abilities to refine them into something more controlled. She was introduced to Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, not long after recruitment along with Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye. JJ helped aid Steve during the events of the Winter Soldier and HYDRA’s attempt to completely take over S.H.I.E.L.D. and resurface, where in which she met and became friends with Sam Wilson. Prior to the events involving Ultron, JJ would slowly meet the other Avengers and immediately found herself a friend in one of the several individuals she looked up to in the field of science, Tony Stark, who was more than excited to help her test out and further examine the extent of her powers and abilities beyond what she had been able to push them herself. It was immediately following her introduction to Tony that JJ was introduced to Pepper Potts and found a profound friendship with the redhead. JJ also befriended her other long time idol Dr. Bruce Banner, after having a massive fangirl moment of blushing, stuttering, and just awed silent awkward staring. Right before JJ began helping Sam tracking down Bucky, Steve introduced JJ to the God of Thunder himself, Thor. During events involving Ultron, JJ worked with Sam to track down Bucky despite cold leads. When the fight erupted in Sokovia, JJ was ready to run in and help, but was ordered to stay back for now, only to come in with Fury and Rhodey to help evacuate the trapped Sokovians.

In recent events, the last few months had become increasingly difficult in JJ’s personal life as her mother’s fight with ovarian cancer escalated as the cancer had spread and become terminal. Thanks to Tony, Ellen Reeves was moved into Metro-General hospital and started receiving treatments to battle her cancer back and stave it off, but ultimately Ellen was given less than four months to live. JJ had returned to protecting the Bronx, and only being called in to act as an Avenger when it was absolutely necessary as she wanted to stay as close to her mother as possible. A few weeks after her mother’s admittance into Metro-General, JJ soon discovered another ability of hers - self-propelled flight - with the help of Tony, and also discovered her flight speed surpassed that of her land speed. During an incident with a super villain known as Nightmare, JJ was subjected to hallucinations that started to provoke the rise of another ability she had yet to discover - heat vision.

As Ellen’s condition started to deteriorate more and more, she decided it was time to reveal to her daughter everything concerning her father and who she was because of her heritage. Ellen recounted the entire story of how she first met and fell in love with her father when she first knew him as Eron, and the divulged that Eron was in fact an Eternal from Titan named Eros. And thus explained to JJ that she was in fact half-Titan… half-Eternal… half-alien, and this was why she was born into such powerful abilities. She told JJ the real reason behind why her father was absent from her life, about how her father’s brother, and thusly her uncle as well, Thanos had amassed an army and attacked their home on Titan and was called back by their father to help. She explained that her father had prepared a facility hidden from the world somewhere up far north for her to learn all about her Titan heritage, and be trained there by her father to control her abilities and powers… a plan that never saw it’s enactment. Ellen Reeves then handed over to JJ the necklace she had always worn, a simple chain and astrological like pendant, that wasn’t just some trinket. The pendent had been given to Ellen by Eros, it was the key to entry to the facility and also housed the coordinates to its location. Dumbfounded and understandably shaken by all of this, JJ refused to acknowledge any of it for a while and kept it a painful secret from everyone for a while.

Metro-General hospital was attacked by a force armored humanoids that were later to be discovered as elite chitauri soldiers, Ellen Reeves was murdered violently in front of JJ on direct orders from Thanos to do so. JJ had fallen into a moment of utter depression after that but soon snapped out of it a week later and activated the pendent her mother had given her to retrieve the facility coordinates. She needed to find the facility her father had built, learn about her father, and learn about the monster that had her mother murdered in order to chase him down and seek her revenge.

A few months after her mother’s death and finding out the truth of her parentage concerning her father, JJ received an off-world transmission via the facility her father ha built that she had begun to dub as the “Arctic Hell”. The transmission she received was from the planet Xandar, and it was being sent by The Nova Corp, asking for her to com rendezvous with them on the dark side of the moon for a very much needed discussion. After looking up that the archives in had on The Nova Corp, Sara agreed to meet them and travelled to the dark side of the moon where she not only met with The Nova Corp but also the Inhumans. The Nova Corp had sent one of their centurions - Richard Rider, also going by the codename of Nova, who was also of Earth as well - and after presenting the Corps offer in bringing her to Xandar to train her in ways that one on Earth would be able to help her with, JJ left with Nova to Xandar. On Xandar, Sara was reunited for the first time with her father Eros/Starfox, who she immediately attacked on sight and pumped repeatedly until Nova managed to somehow pry her off. During the extended period of time (six months) that JJ spent on Xandar, she trained specifically under and with Nova, and occasionally got into a few bristling spats with her father whenever he attempted to approach her and make peace. It was during her training period on Xandar that JJ was informed of exactly why The Nova Corp had come looking for her specifically: Her father had come to them bearing news that Thanos was on the move to being launching his campaign in full force to find the Infinity Stones, and had requested they somehow find a way to bring JJ to Xandar to be prepared in facing her estranged tyrannical uncle.

A sudden conflict with Thanos would bring JJ in contact with Guardians of the Galaxy, and have her facing off against her uncle The Mad Titan sooner than expected. While JJ was indeed strong enough and far more powerful than Thanos expected from the half-Titan child of a niece, he still gained the upper hand when he distracted her focus by bringing up her deceased mother he had had murdered to flush both Eros and her out. His distraction sent JJ into a blind rage where he caught her with a deadly now, driving his fist straight through her chest when she charged recklessly. Distraught and enraged, both Nova and Eros took over the fight alongside Star-Lord and the other Guardians. Amidst the battle, something prompted Rocket to leave with Groot, taking JJ’s body with them and head for the Nova Corp base where they kept the power stone that Thanos was there to take for his own. Breaking into the vault, Rocket and Groot managed to take the power stone out and on that prompt that Rocket was still unexplainably feeling, they shoved it into JJ’s chest. The stone revived JJ and violently brought her back to life and super charged her abilities to an overflow that when returned to the battle she was easily able to overwhelm and beat back Thanos to the point he pulled his forces entirely from Xandar and retreated. In one last show of power, JJ destroyed several of the transport ships that were leaving, obliterating them with her bare hands.

In a nearly difficult stand-off, the stone was removed from JJ’s chest and placed back in the vault. JJ’s body would remain on the mend even as she returned back to Earth with Nova to prepare for Thanos to soon show up after he licked his wound and recollected himself. During the time that JJ had returned to Earth, she had begun to suffer from severe bouts of PTSD that would push her in violent destructive outbursts whenever anything triggered the memories of her own death and even that of her mother’s. JJ began to spend more and more time in seclusion as she was too terrified of possibly hurting her loved ones, her body feeling as though it were no longer under finite control anymore when it came to her powers and abilities, feeling as if at any moment she was going to completely come undone and be unable to hold back whatever was trying to burn its way out of her. Whether it was in Tony’s personal garage rebuilding things after completely dismantling them, or off out pouring through the archives in Arctic Hell, JJ kept herself away from The Avengers and her friends while still performing her heroic duties of saving the world from itself and other threats it couldn’t handle alone.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, JJ had gone down to release a baby albino alligator she had rescued on a whim from horrible living conditions in a scuzzy excuse of a zoo that she shut down with local authorities. She had originally taken the baby gator back to Avengers Tower, but after facing a massive backlash from EVERYONE about it being there to the point of feeling like she was being shunned all together, JJ took the gator to a piece of the Florida Everglades that was a protected wildlife reserve. Releasing the gator she had decidedly stuck around Florida to begin helping in the recovery efforts following the destruction of the hurricane. The hurricane’s destruction had done damage far greater than anyone realized right away; the army had been in the middle of transporting The Abomination to Cape Canaveral to have him detained and shot off into containment in a prototype prison facility attached adjacent to the International Space Station. The hurricane had blown its way through and in the destruction of Mother Nature, Abomination was able to break containment and began rampaging through the area towards Tampa.

JJ responded while in the middle of clearing out debris and as their fight ensued, Sara felt herself losing control of herself entirely. Terrified she would harm too many innocent people as they fled if she fought back, JJ allowed Abomination to pummel her for as long as it took for the area to be entirely evacuated. Once she heard the “all clear” from the military, as General Ross had rolled in almost immediately the second Abomination had broken free, JJ unleashed everything. The result - the residual build up of the power stone’s presence had fed and grown off JJ’s half-Titan heritage inducing powers and abilities to the point it was out of control, and thus when she used her heat vision in full force for the first time ever with no restraint, the power overwhelmed her. From the inside out, JJ was ripped apart and incinerated, and the Avenger known as Titan died in a literal blaze of glory while also taking Abomination with her.

While JJ physically died, her soul… her very essence of existence ended up in what she could only call as “the in-between” and found herself in the presence of Someone she didn’t know or recognize, but felt comforted by them just being there. That Someone and her spoke for a while, discussed various topics ranging all through her love of space and the worlds she had seen beyond Earth already, and even discussed more cosmic existences and things she had no clue of. And then, Joanna Reeves blinked… and she stood in the middle of the apartment she had lived in with her mother all her life in The Bronx… the apartment that Tony bought for her when her mother died… her home… and she was alive.

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blogger360ncislarules · 4 years ago

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The CW's sci-fi adventure series, Pandora, might've slipped under your radar when its first season premiered in the summer of 2019.

Since then, its high-octane exploits, ambitious story elements, and drop-dead gorgeous cast have attracted an enthusiastic following among viewers looking for entertaining escapism.

With the Season One finale ending with almost as many questions as answers, Season Two, premiering on October 4, promises even more of its trademark complex relationship shenanigans while the team tries to save the universe. No biggie.

Joining Jax, the titular "Pandora", and her established Scooby gang members, Xander and Ralen, are her new roommate Zazie and a surprise (and not exactly welcome) blast from the past, Jett.

Actors Nicole Castillo-Mavromatis and Akshay Kumar spoke with TV Fanatic via Zoom from their on-location shoot in Sofia, Bulgaria and were incredibly open and enthusiastic about their experiences as the newcomers to the cast.

Making a scripted television program during the time of COVID is a wholly new experience for everyone.

Production on Season Two began in Bulgaria on July 24, 2020. Nicole and Akshay flew out from the UK around that date and had to quarantine for four days before being tested and allowed on set.

Throughout the production, everyone who wasn't on camera was masked and anyone new joining them from the UK or US had to quarantine upon arrival. COVID testing was done twice a week.

At the time of our interview, they only had four days of shooting left on the season.

Shooting ten episodes in two months is, in Akshay's words, "MADNESS" and made for a tight-knit core cast and crew who worked extremely hard, grateful for the opportunity to continue to do their jobs.

"Knowing that we're lucky enough to work in a time like this," observed Akshay,"To be able to work abroad and be treated so well and do our jobs in a time when most people we know don't have any work. It really has hyped up the gratitude of working and the joy of working."

As the newest regulars to the show, Nicole and Akshay felt extremely included and appreciated by the cast members returning from Season One.

Asked if Quintana, Dench, or Radcliffe have taken on a leadership role on set, they both felt that all three stars had contributed to the positive morale and energy of the show.

"They've been incredibly welcoming," Akshay asserted,"And not just to us, as series regulars, but to any guest stars we've had for an episode. They've been incredibly welcoming and you just make friends. Every new episode, you make a new friend. Priscilla, Ben, Olly, they're just very much steering that Good Vibes Only sort of feeling."

Nicole agreed. "The Good Vibes Fam. But not only just them. I think everyone from Season One -- Noah (Huntley) and Vikash (Bhai) -- just everyone who came back from Season One has been super welcoming to all of the NOOBS -- me! It feels so much like a family, it's crazy how much I feel we all get along. It's wonderful."

Speaking about their characters, Nicole and Akshay were both excited for audiences to learn about Zazie and Jett who start out the season as a new-ish romantic duo.

In a small-world twist, the actors discovered when they met and started working together in Bulgaria that they actually lived only twenty-five minutes away from each other in East London.

Nicole came into the Pandora-verse initially a total novice. After booking the role for Season 2, she went back an binged the first season for research. As Pandora Season 1 didn't even air in the UK until lockdown began this year, she really hit the ground running.

Zazie, being completely new to the show, is a wild card. She takes the place (literally, since she's Jax's roommate) of Delaney Pilar who decided at the end of Season One to hang out with Atria Nine on Adar rather than return to the Fleet Academy.

Asked how Zazie contrasts with Delaney who came from an extremely privileged background and had been implanted with a huge amount of tech, allowing her brain to access and hack -- and, unfortunately, made her vulnerable to being hacked by -- the datastream, Nicole was affectionate about her character's personality.

"I would say she is just a really bubbly, cool, fun 'chick'! She just wants to be liked. She wants some friends. She is a bit of a bookworm but she's not super smart so she does have to study, I feel, a bit more than everyone else."

But what's her superpower? Nicole was cagily vague about what's in store for Zazie.

"There are some twists and turns in her storyline. There will be some things that you find out. But, all in all, she's very wholesome, I would say."

On the initial similarity between Zazie and last season's character, Atria Nine, in that they both exude an aura of sunshiney optimism, Nicole could see how the characters compare that way but felt that Zazie brings a bit more spunk to the party.

"And there's more spunk to come," Akshay promised. "An abundance of spunk."

While Zazie begins the season based in the Academy, enmeshed in the day-to-day interactions between characters, she does get roped into the space adventures too.

"As the season goes on, she takes a much more active role in that saving the universe plotline."

Akshay, in contrast, had a bit more experience with life at the Earth Command Fleet Academy, having guest starred on an episode in Season 1 before being tapped to return as a series regular this season.

Jett was not one of the good guys when he appeared on Pandora Season 1 Episode 6.

After Delaney's implants were hacked while she slept, resulting in her walking into the packed Academy lounge completely naked, Jett made it his business to post holo-nudes of her all over the datastream as retaliation for a romantic rejection.

As he became a lead suspect in the hacker investigation, it was revealed that his reputation as a tech-head was a sham.

When Jett makes his entrance on the Season 2 premiere, he is met with understandable hostility from Jax and Ralen.

Despite his contrite apology and promise to do better, his behaviour throughout the episode doesn't do a whole lot to redeem the character.

(Total disclosure: I might've described the character as a total ass off the top of the interview.)

"He thinks he's doing great," Akshay revealed,"but he's really not. He's just digging his own grave."

While it's clearly going to be a steep uphill climb for the character to prove himself trustworthy, Akshay explained his approach.

"When Mark Altman, our showrunner, wanted me back, I thought that the only way that Jett could come back was on a sort of path to redemption but he couldn't come back as this sort of born-again saint. I thought he would try to redeem himself in the only way he knows how.

"For me, it would be kind of weird if he came back as like a brand-new character with a brand new set of ethics. His foundational personality traits -- his flirtiness, ["cheeky, charming behavior" interjected Nicole] -- which can be read as very douchy, I totally agree."

Akshay paused to think on it for moment and added,"That's probably more me than Jett, to be honest."

LOL.

"He is still on this path to redemption and he does get better at redeeming himself, I will say that. He doesn't start very well but he's trying.

"You know, in school, when you try so hard to get someone to like you and you end up just shooting yourself in the foot? That's very much Jett for the first few episodes.

"He grows. He becomes a bit more balanced. He doesn't lose his humor or his cheek which is really nice. We just get to know more about him and why he is the way he is.'

Looking at Season 2 as a long arc, Nicole and Akshay see the show finding its footing as more of a cohesive space adventure.

"I think this season leans more into the sci-fi side of it, the adventure, the high stakes, the heavy action," Nicole confirmed, then qualified it a bit. "But, again, there are romantic scenes and romantic storylines but I definitely feel like they've leaned a lot more into the action of it."

"The action and the bigger threat," Akshay added. "The looming threat that we learned about in Season 1. I think that's definitely much more present. That's definitely more at the forefront, especially of Jax and Xander's characters [decisions].

"What's really great is the emphasis on relationships between characters which is a huge plus. The constant evolution between characters such as Ralen and Jett and where that goes, then Xander and Jax, Zazie and Jett, Zazie and Jax.

"There's so many different webs that intertwine so much more, in a much more human fashion. Friendships are made and broken, then new, unlikely friendships are made.

"All the while, they're all working towards [confronting] the big enemy, the looming threat. So I think that's definitely much more grounded."

Nicole comes to acting from an extensive dance background and while we won't get to see Zazie trot out those skills on-screen this season, she dreams of being able to represent both her natural and nurtured background one day.

"I've always wanted to be able to play a role that kind of represents where I come from, my heritage. Maybe a role that is a Latina. That would be amazing. Just because I feel like I've never really cast in that direction.

"So it would be amazing to play someone of my heritage and 'rep' the heritage. Or as a part of a musical. That would be great."

Wrapping the two wishlist items together, I suggested something like In the Heights, which garnered an enthusiastic response as it's one of her favorite shows.

Akshay's professional credits include roles on films like Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi and regular roles on TV series, The Halcyon and Devs. His heart lies with the action-oriented, stunt-heavy roles.

"I love stunt sequences and I wish I had more of that on this show. I get a real kick out of any sort of role that allows me to just feel like a kid again. And for me, the select sequences I have on this show just blow my mind. The amount of fun I have."

Recalling he had recently watched John Wick 3: Parabellum, he expressed his desire to be Keanu Reeves in that role.

"Anything that's teetering on the dangerous and you-may-die sort of edge. I'm a bit Tom Cruise-y like that.... yeah, I could be the British-Indian Tom Cruise. Let's go for that."

For both Nicole and Akshay, the experience of being part of the Pandora family has been nothing short of wonderful.

"It's a dream!" Nicole sang out without hesitation when I asked for their feelings about the show.

"Honestly," Akshay professed,"It's been such a great ride. Everyone here is so lovely, and everyone works so hard."

"It's been such an amazing experience," Nicole added,"I personally feel like I've learned so much being out here and everyone is just beautiful, so lovely, and the crew is wonderful. The cast is really wonderful. All the directors we've worked with. Our D.O.P., Max, and Mark and Steve. Just everyone."

Pandora Season 2 premieres TONIGHT, Sunday, October 4, at 8/7c on The CW.

#exclusives #the cw #pandora

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wxldchxld · 7 years ago

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10 random headcanons

what do they sleep in? pj’s, normal clothes, nothing?

It depends. I’ve pointed out that Beck travels with a minimal amount of clothing. In most verses that is comprised of a few shirts, two pairs of jeans, and a set of shifter’s robes. The robes are the softest of which… but they’re odd. They’re long sleeved but the ends of the sleeves, from the elbow down, are wrapped. It’s one long continual piece of cloth to wind around her forearm down into the crook of her hand, so that only her thumb and fingers are exposed. The pants are the same from the knee down, and there’s a cape that is affixed to one of the shoulders that can be removed but is a pain. As a consequence she only wears them when she’s very cold, usually under a normal shirt, using the cape as a pillow and then ducking under a blanket.

If she’s hot, she just starts taking off layers until she’s comfortable.

When she’s staying in verses like the one with Ros, she probably just sleeps in her jeans or whatever until Ros undoubtedly finds out and harps on her for not having any actual clothes.

Beck would be super into pajama sets if they were practical. The flannel plaid kind in the winter or just those sets that say something stupid on the shirt and the pants have a matching pattern. Unfortunately looking cute isn’t worth lugging extra clothes around when you travel 24/7. Her most common sleeping outfit is whatever the fuck she was wearing that day.

how many blankets / pillows do they like to have on their bed?

Ummmmm normally that’s a grand total of zero as she doesn’t have a bed. Bunched up clothes are her go-to pillow. She does have a special blanket that has a temperature regulating charm on it. The blanket is rather large but she keeps it because if her dogs so much as stick a paw under it (and they usually cuddle on cold nights anyway), they’ll all be suitably warmed. Likewise in the summer, laying on top of the blanket will lower her temperature if it needs to be lowered.

Cora wove the blanket and enchanted it herself and if it were to go missing or be damaged in any way she would but VERY distressed. It is made of blues and greys with little orange foxes and grey owls alternating in a pattern around the edge.

Again in domestic situations Beck most likely has a pillow. It probably takes some time to adjust to. She isn’t picky about how many, and for the first few weeks she can probably still be found with her jacket bunched up under her cheek. I feel like if she were in this situation for a long period of time she’d come to want LOTS of pillows to cuddle into because Beck likes to be snug.

do they have social media? do they like it or hate it? obsess over it?

Heeeeell nooooo. Beck doesn’t own a phone, a computer, or anything that she can be tracked by. In fact in more domestic scenarios Beck will actively protest having a phone for a very long time. If she ever breaks and decides to carry one, it will be used to call or text like one or two people, and frequently allowed to die/be left somewhere. Beck sure as fuck doesn’t put her name/face out there. She wouldn’t even be comfortable using a fake name for twitter. No. No to all of it.

what are their phobias? do they have any at all?

Being caged/locked up is one of her big ones. She can handle it for a short period of time, and then as hours and days go on she will become increasingly hostile and eventually violent. At this point she has generally reverted into one of her animal forms and is dangerous to interact with.

Needles is another big one. And it’s a lot less about the needle and more about she doesn’t trust anyone injecting anything into her or even taking anything out. In fact getting Beck to use any sort of traditional medicine at all, even a couple of cold pills, is an incredible pain. She will not give blood for charity or even medical testing. If you want to stick her, you’re gonna have to hold her down tight.

Tryhophobia too. For those of you unaware it is the fear of holes. Pictures of those flowers with the small clusters of holes and shit really gross her out and she’ll get really pissed really fast if she’s forced to look at them. I do not know why, I just know it bugs her.

do they like living alone or with another person / other people?

I think Beck, ideally, would like to live with one other person. She has no desire to live in a large communal family. She would be happy with one person, and having close family members not too far away, but also not up in her business. Unfortunately her insatiable desire to travel often overpowers her desire for company. Many of Beck’s relationships end because Beck just can’t stay in one place for very long. Her lovers/friends have to come to accept that they either go with her (which Beck would love) or they patiently await her return. She doesn’t think this is fair, and has broken up with multiple partners because of this.

The fox in her usually lets her be totally content on her own and she’s spent the majority of her adult years in scarce or fleeting company. Holidays are hard, as well as birthdays, but she doesn’t generally crave attention

where do they see themselves in 2 / 5 / 10 years?

Off in the wild, doing the same thing she’s doing now. Even in verses where she’s in one place, like the one with Ros, Beck doesn’t expect to stay there. I’m not saying that won’t change in time, but that is currently where she is in her life.

are they possessive over their things? or over other people? both?

Yes and no??? Beck has a few things that mean a lot to her. For instance Cora’s blanket and her father’s music box would be defended tooth and nail. She has a few other magical items that she doesn’t give up but that’s basically because she doesn’t want them in the wrong hands, it’s not a possession thing.

When it comes to people Beck is… complicated. Beck doesn’t share lovers. She’s cool with them flirting with other people, because she does, because that’s just how she communicates, she is not cool with anything beyond that. She is much more likely to get her feelings hurt if her significant other is say, constantly hanging out with some other chick. She’s insecure in her relationships because a lot of them have fallen through and over all she just doesn’t have great luck staying with other human beings in lasting relationships (romantic or otherwise). So I don’t think that’s really jealousy.

She is possessive in the way that those are her people though. It takes a long time to get this level of loyalty from Beck, because Beck is NOT a self-sacrificing kinda gal, but she will protect what is hers to the death if it comes down to it. She’s also very emotionally protective of her people. Actually Beck has an almost compulsive need to protect most people emotionally. Beck constantly wants to comfort people, even strangers. She doesn’t like seeing anyone sad or scared or in pain, and she’ll go out of her way to stop this. (That was a major mókus moment, and had nothing to do with the prompt but whatever).

what do they never, ever want to speak of, ever?

Beck doesn’t like to talk about her abuse. Especially the abuse she suffered at the hands of her brother. But she does want to tell someone, she wants someone she can put that trust into, she wants someone in her life that understands. She is way too scared to do so unless her back is against the wall for fear that people won’t understand. Beck doesn’t demonize or even dislike her brother. She loves him deeply and worries for him and wishes every day they could go back to being childhood BFFs getting into shit and driving her Aunt B nuts… but they can’t. She knows that no matter how good things might be for a little while, Fen is a sick man and she has an inescapable wanderlust. Eventually if she went back, things would get bad again. But it hurts her. She doesn’t think anyone else would understand this, so she doesn’t say anything about it.

do they have a short temper? what’s most likely to set it off?

Not at all. You’re much more likely to upset her/make her cry than you are to piss her off. Luckily the former doesn’t happen that often either. I don’t think Beck has ever actually lost her temper on this account. I have one thread where she got pissed because she’d been locked up for days, but I count that more as a response to stress than really just getting pissed at someone.

Beck is nonviolent AF and her response to frustration is generally to just leave when someone is getting on her nerves. Occasionally she’s stuck in a situation where she can’t get away from people that get on her nerves/she doesn’t like. And she fox in her says that is her cue to make their lives absolutely miserable. Harry from our Foxy Ladies verse would fit into this perfectly. And Ros should thank god that Adam isn’t there anymore because Beck would have NO patience for him. But she’s not really... mad. Or losing her temper. She just thinks it is fair. They make her miserable and she can’t get away, so she’s going to annoy the piss out of them. Fair is fair.

do they take baths or showers? do they prefer one over the other?

Beck wants to know if getting rained on constitutes as a shower? She’s pretty sure it does. Because sometimes the weather man calls them showers.

Normally, in most verses, Beck will bathe in creeks or truck stops or those places hikers can stop for supplies and shit. It’s maybe like twice a week, sometimes less in the winter, sometimes more in the summer.

If given the choice Beck likes baths. She dislikes things spraying in her face, and she doesn’t like the tiny holes that make up shower heads. They gross her out to look at. But she doesn’t like to soak too long. And daily bathing is something she has to readjust to in more domestic verses.

#agentharrisonofshield #long post #hc: beck #hc

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pinupgalore-lanadelrey · 7 years ago

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“Yeah, I did it. Why not? Look, I do a lot of shit.” Lana when asked if she did witchcraft against Donald Trump You have tweeted magical recipes to get rid of Trump… ‘It was a joke. I read how witches of the entire world tried to federate at these dates and times to put a spell on Trump, I just relayed.” “I guess I was alluding to the fact that I just hope nothing really crazy happens (during his Presidency)."It was a binding spell against chaos. I guess it could be working because it could be more chaotic than right now… although it’s hard to imagine that.”

“I feel like this election jolted almost everyone who was floating around, feeling weird, whatever… right into the current moment,” Del Rey says. “I know several people that had a sort of drifter mentality that are now in the thick of it, considering things, and considering their own contributions, and what matters. I’ve known what matters to me for a long time, so I was already kind of there, but I didn’t really see it going this negatively. I feel like we’re in a bit of a Hitchcockian experience, and you’re in a scenario, and every day you wake up and you can’t believe the things being said and done are real. And I think some people are questioning if this shit is actually happening, like especially with the North Korea issues, which are really the scariest because you’re talking about nuclear annihilation.”

“Coachella - Woodstock in My Mind” I wrote on my way home from Coachella when things were getting hostile between North Korea and the U.S., and all those failed missile launches, which happened the day after the first night of the festival. I feel lucky to be able to speak my mind through music right in the present moment.”

“Around me, in the artistic milieu, we all share the same feeling of uncertainty, of fear, and the talk which arises. Women the subject of this song, are the most affected, the most referred to by the arrival of Trump. I have written this song prior to the big marches which seemed inevitable to happen. This rhetorical hate is not dignified for a head of state. The day after the elections was one of the hardest days in my life. I went to the studio nonetheless, to talk to the others. I want to be informed by reading everything, and see if I can get anything at all. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything that convinces me.“

“Well, I have a song that’s quite aware about the collective worry, about whether this is the end of an era. It’s called “When the world was at war we kept dancing.” But I actually went back and forth about keeping it on the record, because I didn’t want it there if it would make people feel worse instead of better. It’s not apathetic. The tone of the production is very dark, and doesn’t lead to a fucking happy feeling. And the question it poses: Is this the end of America, of an era? Are we running out of time with this person at the helm of a ship? Will it crash? In my mind, the lyrics were a reminder not to shut down or shut off, or just don’t talk about things. It was more like stay vigilant and keep dancing. Stay awake.”

“I have a couple of songs, like “God Bless America,” and another song called, “When the World Was at War We Just Kept Dancing,” which is about what we’ve been talking about: trying to stay positive, and just believing that things are going to be okay. And if it feels like they’re not going to be okay, we’ll try and make them okay individually and then together.”

Accordingly, you have my personal favorite track on the record, “God Bless America,” an unbridled spanker of a song that’s title refrain is followed by, “And all the beautiful women in it”—that’s instantly echoing through your melon and one in which Del Rey remarks, “Yeah, I went there.” She describes the song, of which Mawson shared earlier his reluctance to release as a single, given the tendency of Del Rey to net the mentioned public polarization, “It has some strong messaging,” she says nodding. “Some iconography, with Lady Liberty, fire escapes and the streets, and I do get a little New York feel when I listen back to it.” I tell her the song feels grandiose in production, anthemic in verse… very New York in fact, a sparkling pile of empire and accomplishment. And while New York (and its banks) have churned out the free world leader and a boys club not so concerned about everyone therein being blessed, moreover the “beautiful women in it”—reminding us that grandiosity has its pitfalls—“God Bless America” could easily ascend the ladder as a 2017 rally cry.

I ask her if she feels the appropriative nature of the song title may stir any pots of sorts.”Well, it’s the God word,” she says measuredly. “But the phrase has wider meaning. It’s more of a sentiment. When I wrote it I didn’t feel like it was confined to a traditional portrait of the Lord, as some sects might see it. It was more like, ‘Fucking God bless us all and let’s hope we make it through this.’ She further explains the genesis, “When all the Women’s Marches were happening, I had already written this song, because I had been hearing a lot of things online. And I have a sister, and a lot of girlfriends, who had a lot of concerns about things that were being said in the media by some of our leaders. And I saw an instant reaction from women, and I was like, ‘Wow. There is no confusing how women are feeling about the state of the nation.’ And so without really trying to, I felt compelled to just write a song and say we are all concerned. And it really made me think about my relationship with women. And I felt proud of myself, because I do love the women in my life. And I take care of them, and I ask them what they think about music, and guys, and problems. With this, I was right there with everyone.”

“I wrote “God Bless America” [a track on the album] before the Women’s Marches, but I could tell they were going to happen… I realized a lot of women were nervous about some of the bills that might get passed that would directly affect them. So yes, it’s a direct response in anticipation of what I thought would happen, and what did happen.”

“When there were the women’s marches, I was writing about that. There was enough space in my mind to really absorb everything. Regardless of where someone is at personally, the current landscape jolts you into being present, if you’re not crazy. If you’re a normal person, you’re suddenly aware and watching everything. It’s a very different time for everybody. Because there is something new every day that you read and you’re like, Oh my God, is that real?”

Just a few years ago you were saying you didn’t care about feminism, and now you are writing protest songs and meditations on war and peace. “Because things have shifted culturally. It’s more appropriate now than under the Obama administration, where at least everyone I knew felt safe. It was a good time. We were on the up-and-up.Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly. What if they take away Planned Parenthood? What if we can’t get birth control? Now, when people ask me those questions, I feel a little differently. The reason why I asked Stevie Nicks to be on the record is because she changes when her environment changes, and I’m like that as well.In “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,” I wrote, “Boys, don’t make too much noise/Don’t try to be funny/Other people may not be understanding.” Like, Can you tone down your over-boisterous rhetoric that isn’t working? “God Bless America - And All the Beautiful Women in It” is a little shoutout to the women and anyone else who doesn’t always feel safe walking down the street late at night. That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote, “Even when I’m alone I’m not lonely/I feel your arms around me.” It’s not always how I feel when I’m walking down the street, but sometimes in my music I try to write about a place that I’m going to get to”.

Do you feel unsafe? “I feel less safe than I did when Obama was president. When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent towards women. I saw it right away in L.A. Walking down the street, people would just say things to you that I had never heard.When people asked me the feminist question before, I was like, “I’m not really experiencing personal discrimination as a woman. I feel like I’m doing well. I headline shows just like the Weeknd does. I got tons of women in my life, love women, support women.” I just felt like, Why don’t we talk about the music first? I can tell you that what I have done for women is tell my own story, and that’s all anyone can do.”

Is it harder to be romantic about America when Trump is the nation’s biggest celebrity? “It’s certainly uncomfortable. I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos. I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing “Born to Die.” It’s not going to happen. I’d rather have static. It’s a transitional period, and I’m super aware of that. I think it would be inappropriate to be in France with an American flag. It would feel weird to me now—it didn’t feel weird in 2013.All the guys in the studio—we didn’t know we were going to start walking in every day and talking about what was going on. We hadn’t ever done that before, but everyday during the election, you’d wake up and some new horrible thing was happening. Korea, with missiles suddenly being pointed at the western coast. With “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,” I was posing a real question to myself: Could this be the end of an era? The fall of Rome?”

When we sit down to chat, she reveals those same concerns stopped her attending the women’s marches in Los Angeles, earlier this year. “I drove my sister and her girlfriends to the marches,” she says. “I thought about joining in but I felt, like, not really sure how it would go. "I didn’t really want to be a distraction to that group of 10 girls who were going. I wanted them to think about the actual march and not about me standing right next to them.” But, the star is making her contribution in other ways. A new song, God Bless America And All The Beautiful Women In It, is an ode to womankind (“may you stand proud and strong”); while Coachella - Woodstock In My Mind, mines the contradictions of dancing at a festival “whilst watching tensions with North Korea mount”.

It’s a new dimension for Del Rey’s lyrics - which have traditionally concerned themselves with “looking for love in all the wrong places”. “I kind of got jolted into the real world again,” she says. “Just being in California, it’s such a liberal state, I was bombarded with the news every day. So my studio became like a think tank — during the elections it was a constant conversation with my producer and engineers and assistant engineers. "And then obviously during Coachella, that news broke about North Korea and pointing missiles at each other. That was a bit of a rude awakening.”

“I couldn’t ignore what was going on,” she says. “I didn’t really know the UK would have its own upheaval and confusion right at the same time. I was like, ‘What the f***?’ So were my friends. We were waking up early in the morning and calling each other to say, ‘Did you see that? Then in the studio we noticed we hadn’t been able to stop talking about politics. Then we stopped trying to not talk about it and let the record become about that.”

Int: The song ‘Is it the End of America’ is very political… LDR: It is a comment on the current cultural change in the US. It’s been a year and a half since people started to ask during dinners ‘should we move to France?’

Int: You seem more concerned about the defense of women’s rights… LDR: There were inappropriate things said in the white house, it made people uncomfortable. It was also about the question of closing Planned Parenthood. My friends are single women with kids. They have partners but they have to support themselves. And these organizations are very important for them.

@lanadelrey: Climate change is real my friends. Our future children and our future children’s children’s well-being depends on acknowledging that scientists need to be supported and heard. There’s still so much to learn, but aside from that- we don’t want to go backwards from where we are today and deny facts that we already know to be true. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but if you wait for too long then no amount help will be able to change irreparable damage done. (Fact) A march for science is completely unprecedented especially now when we’ve made such leaps and bounds over the last 20 years. But that being said no one has ever doubted that we need to continue our advancement health and environmental research until recently. I don’t know how important the truth is to you… But to me it matters the most. That’s why science is so cool, because the facts are real whether you believe them or not- and that’s what makes it the most important thing in the world to support-because it will continue to give us the answers we seek and the extra time we want.

‘God Bless America - And All the Beautiful Women In It’ Lana says: “That is a great symbol of a song that is just about what the title says. At the time, I was thinking about the US where women were so vocal online and my friends in person. This was before the Women’s Marches and when there was some rhetoric being thrown around that everyone was uncomfortable with. What if they took away Planned Parenthood and birth control and shut down clinics? What are women supposed to do? So before the women’s marches started, I wrote that song very quickly and Rick loved it. It has really cool earth-tone keyboards on there. It feels like a good grounded song.”

When quizzed in the past about her views on feminism, Lana has not been keen to discuss it. She doesn’t like labels or being labelled as anything. Today she says: “In my life I’ve got a sister and surrogate sisters. Things like that. Women have always been such a big part of my life. We were always just friends, there was never much need to rally. If there ever was a time, it really does feel like now and people are doing that.” Lana, 32, adds: “When I was in my early and mid-twenties, I didn’t really know what place I was going to go to as a woman. I don’t know if I’m going to get married. You’re still figuring things out. When I was younger in school, the word ‘feminism’ wasn’t really used. But it was a very important word for my mother’s generation. It’s a way more relevant question in the last eight months than it was five years ago. Honestly, now it’s my pleasure to talk about it. It feels more of a question that is relevant rather than something that could be used as a grenade against me, which sometimes I am willing to sacrifice just to annoy someone.Not you! There have been people in the past where I have been like, ‘F*** you!’”

#lana del rey #politics #compilation

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