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evakuality · 3 years

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Mia, episode five

1. One thing Druck is super good at is these aesthetic shots. This whole opening bit reminds me of the scene with Amira when she’s praying in her room. Lots of beautiful shots of the room, curtains and stuff, which are just super pretty with a few hints of colour. I dunno, this is just an aesthetic I like and I appreciate that Druck caters to me. Mia is so cute, too! Like both the way she looks and also how kind she is. She still doesn’t really like Alex a lot (though you could see in that montage from the previous night that she’s warming up to him) but she still feels like she should leave things looking nice. These little post-it notes are sort of cute too, and you can see that she thinks they’re sweet. I don’t like this Bjorn though.

2. Interesting that we get a clip specifically one week later. I have no idea how that must have felt while this was live, and I’m really glad that I didn’t have to live through these long gaps in any of the things I did watch in real time. This one was reasonably low key though, so maybe the wait wasn’t as agonising. If you didn’t know who Bjorn is (I’m assuming the Niko character) then nothing in the last couple of clips would have felt all that alarming. But Mia’s so flirty here - that one conversation at his house must have really charmed her. Pity we didn’t really get to hear a lot of it because he still hasn’t charmed me!! And actually that ‘show a montage of how things are going while a song and/or other conversation plays overtop’ is a huge thing Druck does, I think. I feel like in some cases (Matteo and David after their first pool kiss moment, for example, or Hanna and Jonas breaking up) work quite well. But here, I think we needed to hear more of Alex to actually believe that Mia would be this flirty with him. For me, this is too big a turnaround from her very cold manner with him at the piano and an actual proper look at that conversation might have helped. But also, I am super biased because William and so maybe a more reasonable person might like it okay. This bit with Linn is weird. Genuinely creepy, and I’m not sure why they’re setting her up to feel like this. Maybe some sort of hint of the creepiness to come with Bjorn (I’m assuming it’s coming, anyway).

3. I don’t get this bit with all the pictures at the school. I assume it will become obvious later but I’m not sure what exactly they were trying to do with this. You’d think they run the risk of having the whole Abi chaker clan thing shut down - if this happened in my school there’d be so much trouble. A groups of kids once put post-its all over one teacher’s room and they got in SO much trouble for it, and that wasn’t obscene like this is. This thing here seems so targeted at the Abi thing, using their plan specifically, that it feels like someone outside the group wants them not to be allowed to run their theme. Or someone in the group who wants a different motto maybe. I don’t know, but it feels very mean and very specifically directed at this group of people.

4. Hmmm, I’m with Leonie on this one. I’d be giving Carlos the super evil stare too. It may be ‘funny’ to some of these people, but given that there are younger kids at this school (I assume, right? They still have classes running for the smaller ones at the end of Matteo’s season, allowing their prank to go ahead) this is sure to go down really badly with the school itself. I’m rolling my eyes at the ones who are outraged that the school is considering reporting it - what did they expect? Also, surely they can figure out who was doing it - people were literally throwing handfuls of the pictures over the stairs. Surely they could work out who it is. It’s pretty clear that Alex still thinks this is funny and I’m losing patience with him. Every time it seems like maybe he’s getting less gross he goes and acts like this again. Bleh. I’m not often rooting for Leonie and feeling for her, but wow today I really am. This is shitty and she has a right to be angry.

5. Ew, Alex, why are you stalking Mia again? She’s made it pretty clear she’s not happy with you. Turning up out of the blue like a creep isn’t a good way to go about winning her over again. His ‘we were drunk, what can you do?’ is so... stupid??? They’ve lost money from this, the school is really angry, they could easily have some pretty bad consequences and he’s all ‘meh, it was a drunken prank’? I know money isn’t an issue for him, but there are issues here beyond the money. I’m also kind of annoyed that everyone keeps suggesting she’s upset because she’s jealous. I’ll be really annoyed if the show carries on this way - this isn’t just a silly little prank, and people have every right to be angry and annoyed. Diminishing it to jealousy isn’t cool. Is Leonie also jealous? The people who are angry and upset they’re being blamed and their money has been taken?

6. I do love scenes where the whole girl squad is together. They make me happy and I miss seeing them together so much. But OMG, Alex is blackmailing Mia again???? I mean I guess it worked the first time so why wouldn’t he? But this is seriously shitty behaviour. Honestly, in clip one I was mildly starting to warm to him with the post-its and all, but he’s managed to speed run right back into ‘asshole’ category. This was the problem in the og as well - William was such an asshole, that in order to make him likeable, we had to see a much more genuinely villainous character. Alex is still super dislikeable and so we need someone ‘worse’ to make him look palatable, which I assume is coming. We’re halfway through - we should like him by now. I dunno. Maybe some people do? But he still has done nothing to make me think he’s nice or someone who Mia might be attracted to.

7. Oh a long Friday clip? Almost half the episode? I guess it’s going to be a rough one for Mia then. More reflections again - her whole face in the mirror now, but it’s surrounded by graffiti. I’m always fascinated by the way mirrors and reflections work, and it’s fun to see Mia slightly obscured in her mirrors even now. It’s not as disjointed as it was at the start but it’s not a fully clear reflection either. I may not like the way Noora/Mia’s story goes but I do like some of these things which show the progress.

8. I feel kind of sorry for Jonas, because that break up wasn’t his choice. But seriously, he seems to be blaming this on Hanna a bit and like ????? He chose to make her feel small and unworthy through her whole season. She’s allowed to try to figure herself out outside of him and his wants and needs. Eh, I know he’s hurting and all, but that’s actually his issue and he shouldn’t be pushing it on her.

9. This scene with Mia and Alex bothers me. He still seems to have no idea why she might find his actions (selfish and self-serving and filled with blackmail) offputting. ‘I fixed it, so we should totally be together now’ is such an immature and childish take on this. These types of guys need to grow up and learn that they can’t just buy and/or coerce their way into whatever they want. I like the way they decide to have Kiki walk past just as Mia has to choose whether to say she doesn’t want Alex or not. It adds a poignancy to it and Mia obviously chooses to stick by her friends. I do wish it felt more conflicting, like if Alex genuinely had changed or had shown he has depth or something it would be a bigger ‘wow she’s rejecting him for her friend’ but instead he’s still such an unpleasant character that I don’t care.

10. I’m not sure why Mia does the brushing off of the makeup - I feel like it made more sense when Noora did it (I mean I watched it once a very long time ago so who knows, but my memory is that it was her way of trying to reject being ‘pretty’ and having guys liking her because it was messing her up). With Mia, I don’t understand. Someone help me out?

11. I still don’t get what Mia sees in Alex. Again, I know I have a really big bias against him because of William and I know it was always going to be tough for him to be someone I care about. But even so, this feels like a huge whiplash when she says of course she likes him. I’d get it if we’d seen any of his development, but every time he took a mini step forward he shoved himself right back into dislikeable territory. Once again, I mourn the actual conversation between Mia and Alex. This all feels far too fast, and the fact that this is suggesting his blackmail is all good is very worrying. All the post-it notes in the world can’t make me think he’s nice enough to want to kiss.

Overall, I didn’t really like this one. I feel like the pacing is still off; I don’t believe the speed at which Mia has fallen for him and honestly it hasn’t been very long since Kiki was with Alex and had her heart broken. The fact that Mia even saw her and told him she doesn’t like him only to turn around immediately and change her mind is strange to me. Mia has always come across as a caring person who tries to do the right thing and help out her friends. That she has apparently no qualms at this point is difficult for me. They’re acting the hell out of this, but I can’t buy it. Unfortunately. Sadly, because this is based on a very flawed original, I don’t think it’s going to make me enjoy these two. There are things that I’m interested in seeing as we go forward but most of those have zero to do with Alex.

#druck #mia - episode 5 #didn't like this one #update on feelings about Alex - still don't like him #honestly I don't see why Mia goes after him #none of this makes sense to me

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3wisellamas · 3 years

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OK KO Cast on the Infinity Train:

KO doesn't think he has any issues, that he's a happy, well-adjusted kid -- but then he gets on the train with a number in the high 400s and he's just like "What." He might be able to repress his negative emotions and hide them from himself, but there's no hiding them from the train!

Enid's number is pretty damn high with her identity and trust problems, though at least she gets through those pretty early. She might actually be the one who, if she meets up with any of her friends, would actually put in the work to get her exit first, but refuse to take it until the others got theirs as well.

Rad would literally just start out at, like, 35 or something, since like Jesse his main problems are his shitty friends and his need to be A Man. But, he'd take FOREVER to bring it down even to 34! Less because he's not willing to better himself and acknowledge his sensitive side, and more he just gets distracted by a car full of cats. ;v;

Dendy just wouldn't be on the train, period. MAYBE she'd get on with, like, a 12 from going a little too far with her experiments or insecurity about her heroic-ness next to KO, but that's about it. Which is a shame, I feel like she'd really get a kick out of learning how it all worked!

Now we're getting into the good stuff: Mr Gar. His number would be QUITE high (still triple-digits though, maybe 700s?) and the instant he understood what that meant he would immediately hide it, and go into denial that he has any issues at all, causing it to slowly increase until an entire army of denizens finally smack some sense into him. Like in the actual OK KO episode that dealt with him going into an artificial game world to reduce his numeric fear level, he'd probably need a lot of help from others to be able to face his past, and deal with it in a healthy way instead of just shoving it under the rug.

Carol...I get the feeling she'd actually be pretty high too, though not as high as Gar, at least as long as we're talking about season 1-2 Carol. Like Amelia, she's got a dead boyfriend to deal with, but with the added baggage of getting pregnant with and raising his son after his death! And of course, depending on the timing, we could be talking four or five digits for season 3 post-Big Reveal Carol, or even more during the finale.

Lord Boxman would be...about average number-wise, honestly. Like 200 or so. All the train really wants is for him to say "Yeah, my whole deal with friendship and being a control freak is because I really need to move on from my friend who betrayed me all those years ago." But...he won't say that, this is Boxman we're talking about. On a mechanical, robot-controlled train. One-One better watch his back, because he's coming for him!!

The Boxbots, if they're even eligible for numbers, are for the most part gonna be very high three-digits to start out with, since being mass-produced as plaza-destroying weapons and slave labor for an abusive dad who constantly invalidates their emotions and forces them to compete for his affection makes for a pretty crappy life overall. (Specifically, I'm thinking low 900s for Ernesto, 990s or an even 1000 for Darrell, 800s for Shannon and Raymond, and maybe high 300s for both Mikayla and Jethro) But, ironically, I think they might set new records for getting their numbers down quickly? Just give these kids some patient denizens willing to show them love and teach them how to stand up for themselves and they'll be alright. ;v;

Professor Venomous will start out with numbers all the way up his arm. I have exactly zero doubt he'd be the Simon in this scenario, since the man can't face a single one of his thousands of problems to save his life. Plus...I'd think the Chrome Car would be particularly rough for him if he happened to pass through it, which we know he totally will. Getting off the train, if he even ever does, will NOT be easy.

Fink probably gets a decently high number, from all of her boss' secrets she's had to keep, like around 250 I'd guess, but she just doesn't care. This is a train where literally anything can happen, and she is GOING to cause problems on purpose! :3

Foxtail's number is HIGH. Though she'd likely figure things out and seek to bring it down soon enough, there's gonna be a lot of cars she just straight-up suplexes out of frustration along the way. And I'm not talking every denizen in the car, I'm talking literally disconnecting and suplexing the actual train car. Also, she'd be the one to try escaping via the Wasteland, though at least she shouldn't have too many Ghom problems (rather, they'll have problems with her!)

Elodie would REALLY depend on where you pull her from. Pre-POINT Prep arc, you're looking at a SERIOUSLY high number, that'd likely only go higher -- though I do get the feeling that, EVENTUALLY, she'd figure out that she's fucking up and try to atone, like Grace, but not before she's a train-wide celebrity just basking in it all. Post-POINT Prep-but-pre-Dark Plaza Elodie might be a little better, more willing to acknowledge she needs to work on her friendships and how she interacts with people, but she still might be a bit of a disaster at first. Season 3 Elodie would be the most willing to listen and deal with her flaws -- still a high number though, I really get the feeling she ended the show still very much a work in progress, with a lot of issues we didn't quite get to see.

Crinkly Wrinkly ends up on the train with a number of -100. He gets off by murdering someone and bringing it up to zero. One-One just shrugs and sends him on his way.

#based off that adventure time / infinity train crossover post i just reblogged #ok ko #ok ko let's be heroes #infinity train #spoilers #don't mind me i'm just having fun ;p

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hermitreunited · 4 years

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The most important thing about Klaus is not whether or not he is sober. Klaus’ arc in s1 is not about him getting sober.

This is a statement in service of another point, but I’m going to need y’all to agree with me on this one, so let’s spend some time on it. Klaus’ worth is not dependent on his sobriety, and his storyline is not about a character who starts the season wanting to get clean and who then does by the season’s end. That is a thing that happens, but that’s not his motivation. The drugs are a way of externalizing an internal issue.

It is laid out pretty clearly in the conversation between Klaus and Ben in 1x09. Ben is encouraging sobriety, Klaus’ counterpoint is that sobriety has gotten him nowhere. “I can’t talk to the person I love. People still don’t take me seriously. I want to be numb again.”

Klaus would like to be loved and taken seriously, but when he can’t have either of those things, he would prefer to be numb. When the show starts, he is numb and high, but when Luther asks him to summon Reginald, a person I don’t think Klaus is particularly interested in seeing again, Klaus does attempt to sober up and give it a shot. In 1x08, he tells Luther that he finally did what Luther asked - he is sober now and he spoke to Reg - but Luther doesn’t believe him. Klaus is right, being sober is not a fix to the problem of not being taken seriously.

It’s not until the end of 1x10 that Klaus manages to achieve that, by manifesting Ben to save the others. After that, Luther trusts that Klaus enough that he asks him for Ben’s opinion on the plan. It’s also a sign that his control over his powers is growing, so the part where he wants to be with the person he loves is very likely within reach as well.

This is Klaus’ storyline, this is concrete progress towards something he’s wanted the entire time. His first line on the show is to tell someone that he believes in them! And he finally gets his family to believe in him in the final 10 minutes of the final episode of the season, because that is his actual storyline. He gets sober halfway through the season. His sobriety is window dressing, it is a plot line to show and explore his struggle, but it isn’t his sole struggle or his core desire.

Sobriety is not the most important thing to Klaus, it is overrated, and it’s not the most important thing about Klaus. Sobriety doesn’t give Klaus some kind of innate goodness that he is otherwise lacking. Drug use turns down the volume on the ghosts, an external issue, and numbs the painful internal issue of not having his deepest needs met. Sobriety doesn’t fix either of those things. Sobriety is not the point.

SO ANYWAY let’s talk about Dave

We don’t see a lot of Dave in s1. He’s not onscreen very much, he doesn’t have a lot of lines. The way that we know him is through Klaus, and the function of Dave’s inclusion in the story is the profound effect he has on Klaus. He plays a key role in Klaus’ character arc. A character arc that is NOT about sobriety.

Dave doesn’t demand that Klaus be sober. Dave falls in love with him when he’s not sober. It’s pretty heavily implied that they shared their first kiss while they were both not sober together! Dave’s death is what makes sobriety a requirement for Klaus to be with him, Dave himself doesn’t require that from Klaus.

Klaus’ sobriety is not a factor in whether or not Dave loves him, or whether or not Dave respects him, or whether or not Klaus has worth. Dave is an oasis of goodness in Klaus’ shitty life - or, to phrase it another way, he is an island of relief. Dave shows Klaus what love can feel like.

“For all the valid reasons we have for wanting the addict to “just say no,” we first need to offer her something to which she can say “yes.” We must provide an island of relief. We have to demonstrate that esteem, acceptance, love and humane interaction are realities in this world, contrary to what she, the addict, has learned all her life.” - Dr. Gabor Maté, ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction’

Dave doesn’t change Klaus for the better by forcing Klaus to give up drugs. Dave’s death is not the thing about Dave that has the biggest effect on Klaus or his storyline. Death is not the ending for Klaus that it is for most people, at least, it doesn’t have to be.

Speaking of things that Klaus didn’t have to be - he didn’t have to be a soldier in the Vietnam War. Fandom likes to joke about how Dave smiled at Klaus and that was all it took for him to elect to stay in a famously brutal war zone. But it’s actually less funny than it is indicative of a miserably lonely loveless life, isn’t it?

Klaus gets sober so that he can interact with Dave again, because Dave gives Klaus what he has always longed for but never had. Dave’s life is what changes Klaus, ten months of him treating Klaus like a human being and not a worthless junkie, ten months where Klaus was given love and respect with no strings attached, because that is what Dave believes Klaus deserves.

That’s a scary thing for a highly self-destructive person like Klaus to believe. If Klaus is deserves love, it’s much less acceptable for people to treat him badly - including himself. Dave is good for Klaus, that much is obvious. Does Klaus deserve to have that good in his life, or not? If it’s possible for him to regain that good but he decides not to bother, doesn’t that mean that he is saying that Dave is wrong, and was wrong for all those ten months? Klaus loves Dave, it says so right on his skin. Klaus loves Dave, and Dave loves Klaus, so how can Klaus love Dave and not love himself? It devalues Dave as a person to decide that he was wrong about Klaus, and disrespecting someone’s personhood is not love.

So, then. Dave’s death isn’t just a catalyst for Klaus to choose sobriety, it’s a chance for Klaus to discover that he finally agrees. Dave is right, Klaus does deserve love, so much so that he will take on an incredibly hard challenge to give himself a chance at gaining the care that he deserves.

Klaus doesn’t change because Dave is worthy of Klaus’ sobriety. Dave never required that from him at all. He changes because of a massive shift in the way he perceives himself, because he learns how to see himself the way that Dave does. Klaus is worthy of love.

If you love Dave and you love Klaus and you love this show, then I suggest learning to do the same. Sobriety is not what matters about Klaus, and someone telling him that again and again and proving it with their unconditional love is ultimately the reason why he later makes the choice to reach for sobriety. Not because he needs to be clean to be loved, but because he is already loved and he deserves to be.

#tua #long post #Klaus Hargreeves #Dave Katz #tua meta #I suppose #addiction isn't a moral failing actually and being sober isn't the mark of a Good Person #kinda roundabout fandom wank #because I've seen a take or two recently that really (clearly) got me going #Dave is more than an addiction cure and Klaus is more than his addiction #it feels so incredibly clear in the show to me #and it's so powerful and beautiful and moving #and you are missing out if you read their relationship as solely about Klaus' sobriety #anyway the Dave section of this is basically just the subtext of my afterlife fic #because I didn't know that it needed to be spelled out THIS EXPLICITLY #but the point is if you agree I have this fic you might like to read #I forgot to tag with my Klaus and Dave tag which is ridiculous #the ship that taught me that love is real and the gays invented it #because guys?? this is real love babey!!#these thinks are Smart

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mcdannomoment · 3 years

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finale feelings

Okay, I have a ton of feelings about the finale, and now that I’ve had some time to think them through, I’ll write them. Please be kind, I’ve seen the series once only, I’m really tired, and I’m sure this was all said before.

Okay firstly let’s just put aside Catherine as a character in and of herself… that whole thing made no sense. Catherine never showed an inkling of having the sort of skills to decode anything, much less being one of only two people in the world who could decode a thing. That was silly and just an excuse to get her back on Steve’s radar. Not to mention that Catherine just never showed much interest in Steve. I’ll come back to Catherine later as she stands as an external prop for Steve’s character, but I think we can just leave it here that Catherine’s character, for herself, made 0 sense.

Let’s focus on Steve.

Steve broke my heart this episode. The worst part is that I don’t think what he did was actually OOC. Steve has a pretty long and uncomfortable history of putting his own needs over Danny’s, starting from when he first met him and forced him to be his partner. I get where Steve was coming from, but this whole army commander take what I need for the mission attitude is the whole problem. Consulting Danny even as a courtesy never entered Steve’s mind.

(more below cut)

Steve just does this with Danny continually throughout the series, like leaving him with a letter to run off chasing Shelburne. Again, he doesn’t bother even consulting Danny as a courtesy before he leaves. He has an objective, Danny doesn’t fit that objective except to keep his seat warm in 5-0. He honestly just never gives Danny even basic autonomy, from things like choosing his lunch for him right through to putting him in situations he’s not comfortable with. Sometimes Steve pushing Danny is definitely a good thing since Danny does get paralyzed by fear (the incident where Steve pushed Danny into jumping across the building gap springs to mind; if they hadn’t have done that they would have died) but sometimes it’s just more of Steve has an objective to achieve, and Danny is a means to achieve that objective (the skydiving incident).

I don’t mean to slam Steve’s character, and I’ve known quite a lot of people like this! They’re good people, they just need a lot more emotional development. Between the two of them I think Danny’s a lot more emotionally mature and empathetic, and they’re quite good for each other in many ways. But Steve is very selfish, in the sense that his focus is always on himself. What he wants, what his objective is, how the things around him make him feel. With where Steve’s head is at, I don’t think he fully and completely understands Danny as an individual human being with his own needs. Hell, he even bullies Danny into including him in his retirement plan and abandoning said retirement plan.

With Steve’s focus always within his own head, and the people around him established as tools he can use to achieve his own ends, I can really start to understand Steve’s severe control issues in season 10 in particular. His mother dying was what sealed his fate, really. I think it was really the first time a person close to Steve fully used their own initiative and choice to go against what Steve said, and Steve trying to force his mother to do what he wanted and become a controllable force in his self-directed life ended up getting her killed. And that screwed him up badly. I don’t think he fully processed his role in his mother’s death properly. He ends up dumping Danny, who is really the love of his life, saying he needs time for himself, that he’d spent a decade saving everyone else. In reality I think Steve is just spiralling from loss of control. He tries to regain some control by cutting out the more unpredictable variables: the other people in his life.

Then Danny gets kidnapped and tortured. This is obviously devastating for Steve, because Danny really is the love of his life. And Steve kind of loses it, but he loses it in a very interesting way. Steve gives up all control to Daiyu Mei. He doesn’t even entertain not letting her control the situation. Danny’s been in danger before, but Steve has never given up control so completely like this before.

Steve’s really broken by this. And it’s the hardest he’s ever taken Danny getting hurt. Because I think he’s less broken by Danny getting hurt as much as it is leftover trauma from his mother’s death and spiralling loss of control.

He winds up leaving Danny when Danny can hardly move and must have only just been released from the hospital, and isn’t that a dick move. He claims he’s going to “find himself” but I think he’s just running away from people in order to regain a sense of control. He can’t control other people. He couldn’t control Danny being taken or his mother making the choices she did in Mexico. If he’s alone, he can gain full control over the situation.

And Danny? Well, Steve sort of has him trapped. Danny can’t leave - he has a son, it’s implied Steve gave him his dog to look after and possibly his house, and while he’s injured Danny can’t go and get himself into dangerous situations that Steve feels the need to save him from. Danny sort of becomes an ornament in Steve’s home ready to welcome him when he comes back. Steve’s been on record several times being pretty aggressive about Danny staying in Hawaii, but he’s never shown remorse for leaving himself, and he doesn’t here.

I hate to characterise Danny as Steve’s “wife” but that’s the dynamic I get from them. You see it so often in married couples, particularly married couples where the husband has to travel for work, whether that’s military, mining, corporate, trucking, what have you. The husband has his goal, his life, and he sees his wife as someone to support that and make it happen. This is exactly what happened in my own family, as I had a travelling father. His need to fulfil himself drove him away again and again, and my mother, trapped where she was by children and the obligations her husband abandoned her to deal with, was left to clean up his mess. It’s what happens when the husband is selfish in the way Steve is - the emotionally more mature wife has to clean up the parts of his life he won’t deal with. In Steve’s case Danny is left with a bullet hole, a dog, a house full of ghosts, and a lot of mourning friends. Not to mention the kids Steve abandons. And there must be more too. Steve leaves a week after Danny is shot. That really doesn’t leave much time for Steve to get his affairs in order. I think he left Danny to clean up his emotional mess.

Minus the bullet hole, I’ve seen my mother go through very similar things. And it can destroy your sense of self. You end up living for the ghost of your husband as he pursues what he perceives as his destiny. It’s a really shitty thing but it’s so common. Every family I know with a travelling husband ended up like this.

Back to Catherine. As established Catherine as her own character makes no sense at all. But Catherine’s role in the finale as an extension of Steve’s character does make some sense. Steve is running away from his stable family, the love of his life, his role as a parent to Nahele, Grace, and Charlie - he’s running from all the progress he has made, because he is afraid of losing control the way he did when he lost his mother, and when Danny was taken from him. Catherine is safe. She’s Steve’s easy emotional release and fuck buddy. She’s familiar. And she’s basically Steve’s mother. A flaky CIA agent who always picks the job over Steve is far more familiar and therefore comforting to him than a stable family life with Danny. In his panic Steve runs from all the progress he has made back to Catherine.

It actually reminds me a lot of a wonderful fic I read, the love that you gave by Teeelsie. I never thought I’d read a cheating fic, let alone a McDanno cheating fic, because McDanno is my all time OTP, but this fic was highly recommended and wow, did it nail it. The fic is more about Steve’s internalised homophobia, but I think the way it relates to the show is in how Steve panics and goes back to the familiar. Back to Catherine. It’s a common thing just in life. It’s also extremely common for these travelling husbands that I think characterise Steve to be cheating on their wives, too. Now I’m just pretending Catherine wasn’t there, because it makes no sense for her to be there (jfc, she wasn’t a codebreaker and how did she know he would be on the plane anyway, and was she just sitting in transit in Honolulu waiting for Steve to get on the plane like a stalker) but I think there’s an element of “emotional cheating” to what Steve’s going through when he runs away from the emotional risk that is staying with Danny at the end.

So basically I don’t think Steve running off was OOC. I think it was very in character. What was so frustrating was that the story clearly isn’t over. Running away will not solve Steve’s many issues, and he really does need Danny - and Danny needs him. Steve desperately needs to learn to stop being so selfish and see Danny and the others as full and complete human beings with their own complex needs. It’s tough because Steve pushing Danny was very good for Danny in many respects, so I want to see them learn to thread that line where Danny doesn’t get treated like an emotional doormat, but he also isn’t allowed to just retreat to the safety of familiarity all the time either - he needs a little McGarrett magic in his life!

But after what Danny told Steve when they were stuck in the building collapse, it’s going to be hard for them after this. Danny doesn’t have to look at Steve and imagine him leaving him any longer. Danny now has the memory of it.

tl;dr Steve is a whacked out, certifiable control freak.

#hawaii five 0 #h50 #mcdanno #steve mcgarrett #danny williams #meta #sorry for word vomit #you've probably heard all this before #i'm new okay

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misterbitches · 3 years

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Dude yong jie’s character is literally unbearable this is like how not to write a vharacter 101

Our first intro to him is stalking, then PUNCHING someone in the LIVER bc the person he “loves” was fucking drunk and he blames his best friend? Then his mom is like “lmao actually um hes psycho” so anything they try to do retroactively like how they peppered in HIS DAD DIED A BLOO BLOO but previously it was also his OWN MOM going “im afraid he’ll lose his humanity” so not only was there no breathing room then it’s bumrushing him into their lives as best friends and it doesnt work. This dude sucks and he isnt even fun to watch. You know how breaking bad has one of the most abysmal main characters of all time but all of us were fucking ENGROSSED but the show made it clear that every enemy he faces, even the DEA, we want THEM to win (it is also a class analysis but woreva) so i am like wtf they show us literally nothing here. He’s just there. Wasting space and being awful. What is the purpose of his character in ssu’s life? Once you rape someone it is fucking over full stop but he didnt even fucking manage to start off in any compelling fucking way. Absolutely bonkers dude Esp bc theres at least a base moral code ie DONT HARRASS GIRLS UR “INTO” and thats why mei fang the absolute mad lad beaut was like “lmao nah i hate u”

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo?????????????????????????????????? WHERE IS THE WRITING HERE? WHAT IS THE SCRIPT? awhat is the PROGRESSION? This is such an insanely fucking dumb plo5 point i rly cannnnjnnntoeiwijshsgsgsgsgsgsgeggwiwowiw GORL

Lets talk abt the good things in the characters (theres none for yong jie hes just there being a little bitch)

Li cheng - himbo dumbass “manly” cutie and the manly stuff is fun cos it gets heaped on and yet every bit of him can be extremely “feminine” and jubilant. Great.

Muren - seems >:O but i rly like that hes actually pretty open in his own way. Side note: he is so thin and willow-y i rly loke tall pretty boys (and all women lmao) and he doesnt do it for me but He suits the character like his body and the way his character is. Also u gotta be weird and he is

Hsinng ssu (girl im never gonna learn how to spell their names it’s too much work cos the eng alphabet andnromanization is terrible) - mild mannered, good son, a homosexual confirmed confirmed g”(awesome!) great friend, good brother (and i guess his reward is being raped, great message!) and someone ppl like

The establishment of the three of them and their distinct personalities happens within minutes and then we meet

Yongjie - what about him? He may have an MI, okay, but we dont know for sure and oh gee that doesnt matter actually bc u have to get urself treated and also not be terrible. Not even psychopaths do the shit he does BC THEY HAVE TO GET HELP. Why the parents didnt get him help and are just realizing their son is terrible? Who knows . His purpose seems yo be “boy obsessed with brother like his actual brother” i dont care id they arent related in that way bc that’s not the fucking crux of incest and it is so insanely Fucked every thing to do with incest is almost always a disgusting powe r issue. WHAT PURPOSE DOES HE SERVE? WHAT DO WE ONOW ABOUT HIM OTHER THAN HE IS A FUCKING JERK AND AN IDIOT AND SUCKS AND I HATE HIM AND THAT HE WANTS TO STALK AND ATTACK THIS REALLY AWESOME FUCKING DUDE OK

There’s no returning point deom rhe line they croased byt theyb set him up for failure. Even in the fight hes a fucking cheater hes a goddamn immature rat they know he fucking sucks but he just sits there and waits for everyone else to move around him. A fucking selfish prick with nor edeeming qualities snd hes also a violent rapist stalker. Really great that thry have no clue how to make this dude actually have any humanity or likeability. Hes the man from 365 days basically except not even that hot and at least he kidnapped her but “WAITED” for “CONSENT” but in that movie’s world nothing mattered and it was bad and the point was to have a horny movie. But this show is for younger ppl and also IT HAS RULES AND IT KNOWS WHAT BAD ACTIONS ARE???? Soooooooooooooo in all these other dumb salacious books there seems to be just a mutual agreement that it’s fucked up but totally normal i their movie’s universee (it isnt and it is still just bad filmmaking)

Also it is up to yong jie to figure put how to get over it and understand that his brother is concerned for him. Bc it is. His brother. There’s a reason that incest is never advisable and thays bc there is no way in that situation that people aren’t somehow being coerced. There has to be a sort of split in the pursuer and the person being pursued bc one person is not thinking that way. (This is why people who find out they are related after the fact and havent grown up together is something thatms really unfortunate. They had no idea and they have to grapple with that but that is another scenario and it happens bc THEY DIDNT GROW UP TOGETHER.) i have experienced this from a (not immediate) fam member and i was the vulnerable one, had less powr, that is how it must go.

Thats why the power imbalance is scary and none of this is acceptable but it begs the question how did they get to this point? But the show doesnt even address that bc they cant bc theyre not original. And power imbalance does not mean automatic absolutely not territory. Theres things we dont like (in my casee i hate age gaps a lot) but i will avoid that.

I havemt seen “right or wrong” and i have no desire but from what ive garnered from ppl i like who liked that episode, the show outlined the moral issues with it. Idk if they did it in a way i would have preferred (again no desire) but at lesst from what ive heard it...tries? Idk i dont see the need for these if they dont give us a reason why these ppl should be together and there’s several lines that cannot be crossed that were. Basically it’s like stockholm syndrome now and there’s no choice for him, it goes beyond power imbalance and “legality” so to speak and now it’s just entrapment.

Theres not even avoiding or enjoying. Even for MODC as stupid as i found the secondary rship and negligent even like ok. Fine. Whatever. His boyfriend is 100 but at least it was semi agreed upon. It is what it is, go forth. I will criticize it but at least it was the story and as stupid and gross as i think it is and they will probs break up (idc what the show says) at least there are set ups that can make us see “why” it works and oh, gee, their whole rship relies on a different fucked up but at least at some point it could possibly be transcended. The foundation of youngjie is “rape entrapment and aw now they are in lvoe” BITCH NOOOO???? Where is the REASON? And why should we root for them? (There is none and when the Thing happens it is now impossible for that not to be absolutely foundational to their rship lmao and that is never something that goes away.)

I would like to say theres nothing romantic int he flashbacks i know thats what theyre trying to twll us but the actor is 30 and that child is like 8.

Im not missing the point bc i see it with my eyes and it sucks. If you cant even write the character well then how do you interest something heavy and work out the links? The only solution is yongjie dying i mean fucking off forever and hsing ssu not letting him into his lifeXni doubt we will get that but at the very least they cannot end up together and that will be their crowning fucking achievement over the waste of time bullshit plot this was. Imagine actual conflict that wasnt so deeply fucking traumatic and, oh, again WHERE ARE THE PARENTS? They fucked up SO FUCKING BADLY. This gives people the wrong idea about how these things work. God he is truly a shitty character and his ass isnt even fat so wtf bitch why am i here!

#history 4: close to you #history 4 #a thot #god my anxiety was thru the roof turns out i needed to eat

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cynthiaandsamus · 3 years

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Custom Toonami Block Week 71 Rundown!

Code Geass: Lelouch establishes the Black Knights floating iceburg country complete with representatives and shit and somehow no one on the team monitoring Lelouch notices he disappears right when Zero is exiled, like yeah half of them are in Lelouch’s pocket anyway but you’d think him just yeeting himself out of the country would be difficult to hide from the oversight committee. Anyway Brittania being Brittania is going to have a political wedding with the Chinese Disturbingly Loli Empress and their literal oldest Prince, like they couldn’t even pick a slightly younger prince to make this less creepy, it’s literally the First Prince who’s like 40, I’m sure Charles has fucked more recently and they have a younger prince but no we have to really hammer home how creepy this is. So yeah now that Lelouch’s new band is under the Chinese banner, having them make peace with Brittania and sell them out would be bad so Lelouch decides to crash the celebration and… challenge Schnizel to Chess, because reasons. And both of them just proceed to completely ignore the rules of Chess for shit that’s thematically appropriate before Nina tries to stab Zero and Schnizel says he has all he needs about who Zero really is. Also Milly’s here and I feel bad for her because all of her friends are several degrees down the sanity cliff now and she’s just there trying to hold their cliché student council group together while wondering if she really will have to marry Lloyd or not because it’s been a year and they threw together this Chinese marriage in like two days so who knows anymore. Anyway Xingke crashes the wedding because of his adorable backstory with the Empress and Lelouch crashes Xingke’s crashing of the wedding by literally appearing out of nowhere which is pretty good for a guy as shitty at athletics as Lelouch and also Jeremiah is on a chair in a desert and this is important or something.

Inuyasha: So we start the Panther Deva filler arc and it’s pretty good honestly, we have an array of Captain Planet Panthers to fight with elemental powers of varying strength to give Koga, Miroku, Sango and Sesshomaru something to do so it’s not just the Inuyasha Wind Scar Power Hour and we have some good foreshadowing/fluff of Inuyasha eating steak in the modern era and fucking around with Kagome’s cat and pissing it off which is a good thematic throughline about how petty cats are and the whole thing has this sunset coloring and it’s really pretty. Anyway Kagome gets captured, you know how it goes, Koga’s pissed because Inuyasha is always letting Kagome get captured and he has a fucking point, bitch is captured more than Princess Peach at this point. But turns out the Panther Demons run behind a barrier and too bad for them Inuyasha just got a new anti-barrier sword to try out.

Yu Yu Hakusho: So Suzaku’s kind of broken, he can dispel his clones to heal himself which apparently gives him all of his energy back because he went from exhausted to just being able to re-do the clones again and start blasting Yusuke so he heals and rests indefinitely as long as one of the clones is alive that’s fucking insane. Anyway apparently despite just healing, Suzaku got his guidance system damaged by Yusuke’s first attack and his aim has been getting progressively worse so he just has to sit there with stormtrooper aim winging Yusuke now and then to torture the poor guy despite going Super Saiyan last time Yusuke only had one shot in him but now he does the whole Life Chakra deal and gives his life for one more even Super Saiyan-yer burst and Shotguns Suzaku’s clones into dust and somehow transmits energy to Keiko through the tv to protect her. It’s pretty convenient that Yusuke learned an AOE attack right before fighting someone that needs all of their clones to be killed at the same time to stay down but yeah, arc over, pretty fun, Yusuke pulled so much power out of his ass he literally dies but some spirit mouth to mouth with Kuwabara saves him with surprisingly little consequences for either of them while Hiei says he’d never drag himself down to save anyone and I’m sure that won’t come back to haunt him. Also Yusuke FINALLY tells Keiko he’s a Spirit Detective given this is like the third time she’s been held hostage by a demon she probably should’ve figured this out sooner.

Fate Zero: Caster’s sitting there talking about how Saber is his waifu and like dude Saber is EVERYONE’s waifu but apparently it’s not actually Saber he’s after but a Saberface so he’s not wrong but he’s also not right. So yeah, he orders more child murders which knowing this guy there isn’t a situation that calls for less child murders. Also Lancer’s teacher asshole dude is cheating by using two E-Tanks for his servant after being all ‘haha old magician families are just better lol’ he has to use two dudes to make his servant fight and still got rolled by Iskandar. Also Kiritgusu bombs the fuck out of his building which given this takes place in 1994 is probably in very poor taste. Also Kirei meets Kiritsugu’s battle maid and shit goes down but everyone’s like “Okay Caster’s more insane than usual so we should probably take care of that” and Gilgamesh claims he’s gonna teach Kirei about pleasure while shirtlessly drinking wine so there’s that.

Konosuba: So Dio-voice Dullahan is back and he’s pissed because Megumin keeps getting off to destroying his home. Though through a combination of luck, Darkness being a meatshield, Aqua’s absurd water/holy power and Kazuma’s dumb luck along with Megumin blowing up the henchmen, everyone plays a role in defeating him in the most ridiculous manner possible. Despite not actually getting any money from it, it’s nice to see the group come together and actually accomplish something in their own way. Makes me think maybe this series won’t just be dicking around about nothing forever, which is fun don’t get me wrong but I don’t think I could stand 52 episodes of one note character jokes with absolutely no progression.

Sailor Moon Crystal: Tuxedo Mask blows the load on the whole Silver Crystal deal to the whole town so now everybody knows about it and can keep an eye out for it. So despite Tuxedo Mask being nothing but helpful Luna assumes he still may be bad and has the power to brainwash a whole town despite his only notable skills thusfar have been standing on telephone poles like Itachi Uchiha and cheerleading. Anyway Luna takes everyone to Zordon’s Morphing Control Center under the aracade which you think would’ve come up by now and reveals she’s a moon cat which you think also would’ve come up by now. Luna’s really just been “We gotta do the thing cause I say so” this entire time. Anyway they wreck the tv broadcast and kick the King’s ass but we have a Disc One Final Boss as Queen Beryl shows up and uses her Conqueror’s Haki to knock out the other Guardians without touching them while Usagi has an existential crisis about her crush maybe being problematic. They give motivational speeches to each other, basically Usagi telling him that they both have to try harder despite feeling powerless and them immediately wilting and saying she’s hopless so he can have a turn giving her a speech and then she gets surprised when he knows she’s Sailor Moon despite literally just telling him she’s the leader and has to help everyone and shit. Anyway, you know how this goes by now, Ancient Moon Laser Beams, bad guys fall, Queen retreats and Usagi wakes up in Mamoru’s apartment ready to reenact Fifty Shades of Moon. Hey an actual fucking cliffhanger for once, that’s kinda neat.

Durarara!!: Mikado’s plan finally comes together and he meets with Ms. Yagiri while Celty confronts the girl with her head who says her name is also Celty. We get Mikado’s backstory about basically creating Reddit to make The Dollars a Stand Alone Complex, a gang that doesn’t actually exist outside of the rumors of its existence, man this kid’s been watching too much GitS. Still despite it going predictably awful with guys doing shitty things in their name by some miracle some of Mikado’s wide-eyed optimism gets through and his belief in the good of humanity makes the Dollars a gang that’s good at its core. And now they use that good to outnumber the Yagiri goons and let Mikado get away while Celty jumps off a roof on her bike and has a mental breakdown which people seem to hear for some reason. Also Seiji broke out and is using his yandere energy to hunt down Mikado.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Code Geass #Inuyasha #Yu Yu Hakusho #Fate Zero #Konosuba #Sailor Moon Crystal #Durarara!!

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detectivedreameater · 3 years

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Home For The Holidays || Erin and Marley

TIMING: Christmas Day PARTIES: @corpse--diem and @detectivedreameater SUMMARY: Erin and Marley celebrate Christmas together for the first time, and some things come to light. CONTENT: Alcohol, Kissing/Touching, Domestic Abuse mention

Over the past few weeks, Erin had been checking in on Marley regularly-- and she’d helped her get a scheduling journal set up, which meant Marley’s pile of sticky notes had been reduced to only one corner of the room. Although there were still a few random ones placed around, like over JD’s food bowl, in the bathroom, and in her bedroom, the place was much less of a mess of them now. And it was working fairly well. She hadn’t had another seizure or episode in almost a week, and that had to be improvement, right? It had to be. And that meant that things were going relatively well, she’d even been able to convince work to let her at least start working on cases on paper. Field work would be assessed later, but she didn't let herself think about that just yet, and how her...condition might affect that. She was trying that whole ‘“looking on the bright side” thing. Might as well give it a shot, right? She had nothing left to lose anymore. Well, except Erin.

Today was their scheduled weekly organizing day, where Erin would come over to help Marley plan out her week and set reminders. It was also Christmas. It was...oddly sweet that she wanted to do this for Marley, and Marley was still trying to get used to the idea of letting someone help take care of her. It felt almost sad having to depend so much on one person, but after their fight, the realization that she needed this or she was going to spiral was one she couldn’t ignore any longer. She’d pushed away almost everyone in her life, and things kept reminding her of what the world wanted her to believe she was-- a monster. But she wanted to be better. And ignoring her condition would only end in one way, and even if it still pained Marley to admit it, she didn’t want that. She’d survived Roy’s attack for a reason, and she wasn’t going to throw away this chance again. Even if she still felt like half a person, losing blocks of time and bits of herself. One thing at a time, she reminded herself. One thing at a time. Today, she would concentrate on Erin. From her office, she heard the jingle of the keys and the door open and she leaned back, looking towards the entryway. “In here!” she called out, flipping the case she’d been working on closed. Today, she would try and give herself a break.

This wasn’t the way Erin expected to spend her Christmas. She wasn’t complaining, of course. There’d been far too many points this year that made her doubt getting this far. Being here, being alive only made the desire to squeeze as much goodness as she could out of today. Couldn’t get worse than last year. Alone, fresh from burying her father with a refrigerator full of organs in the basement. Bags hung from each arm as she trudged up to Marley’s front door and let herself in. Didn’t think about how normal that was now that she was here at least a few times a week. It was her new normal as much as Marley’s. She didn’t mind it. Building that trust back up was a slow roll, and Marley was expectantly impatient and angry during these organization sessions. This was hard. For both of them. They were both mending and learning all at once but real progress was being made.

“Hey, Merry Christmas!” Her voice rang out into the apartment as she kicked the door shut behind her. JD scurried somewhere, the little thumps of his feet padding along the floor. Apparently he wasn’t ready to say hello just yet. The feeling was mutual. She dumped the bags gently onto the kitchen counters before moseying over towards the office and greeted her with a bright smile. “After we’re done getting you squared away, I brought along some goodies. Hope you didn’t make any other plans for today because I’m not going anywhere,” she teased gently, pulling off the thick winter peacoat on her back. “How’re you feeling today?”

“Same as everyday, Pinky,” Marley answered back dryly. “Er-- yea. Happy-- Jesus birthday or whatever.” She didn’t really celebrate this holiday, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. The first few foster homes she’d been in had tried-- but getting a gift for ten plus children was hard, and Marley wasn’t a fan of hand-me-down barbie dolls. Except to pull their heads off of and color on them with red paint. Sometimes she’d leave them around the house for the other kids to find, and laugh when they screamed. So most homes had stopped gifting her anything, because what else generic did you get a young girl? She looked back over at Erin. “What else would I be doing, anyway? Oh, right-- drinking at bars alone. Yeah, sounds great on a day like this.” Rolled her eyes, but it was playful, as were her words. She peered curiously at the bags on the counter. “What’d you bring?” she asked, already standing to head over to them. “No, we can do that later. Let’s do this first.” Maybe this time Erin would fall for it and she could get away with not having to think about how shitty she felt every day, and how, after she’d started writing everything down, her black outs could no longer be ignored.

“I don’t know but that sounds depressing any day,” Erin remarked, raising a brow in her direction, more concern than judgment in her voice. Just wasn’t a way she enjoyed picturing someone she cared about. “Hey, no peeking!” she hopped after her, covering the tops of them with her hands. “After we do what we need to do, you can see,” she said with the exaggerated conviction of a mother scolding her child for wanting a snack before dinner. It wasn’t like this was her favorite thing to do either but it was a necessity not even Christmas could stop. A reliable routine mattered more than ever. She grabbed her journal from her bag with one hand and Marley’s hand in the other, tugging her to the kitchen table. “C’mon, c’mon, let’s get it over with,” she smirked. Left Marley and the notebook at the table and started plucking down post-it notes, focusing on the ones that had less to do with daily reminders and more on the things that needed immediate attention. “I know it’s tedious and annoying, but it’s important. You know?” She paused briefly, glancing up from the neon papers in her hand. “Do you feel like this is helping? She asked, genuinely curious. It seemed like it was, and getting organized was never a bad thing, but it meant more than that in Marley’s case.

“Well, considering I mostly did that to cruise, it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Marley pointed out. But she hadn’t done that in a long time now. Because she’d had Anita, and even when she’d ruined that, she had Lydia. And then after that...she had Erin. Maybe not in the same ways as Anita and Lydia, but Erin was the last person standing in her life. And her company, though reluctantly accepted at first, was welcomed now. It was...nice. Marley frowned playfully. “But mooooom,” she whined, rolling her eyes. Trudged back to the office and sat back down, opening up the notebook. “Unfortunately,” she grumbled, scribbling in the corner, “it helps a lot. Maybe too much. Not sure I like knowing how much of my day I actually lose.” She flicked one of the sticky notes-- the one with all her timestamps on it-- and glanced over at Erin. “Who knew brain damage was so serious, right?” she joked, even if her face remained stark. She wasn’t sure if they were okay enough to joke about this sort of thing yet-- but Marley didn’t really care. It was her injury, she could joke about it if she wanted to. “But, uh-- seriously. It helps.” She shrugged. “Now hurry up and finish, I wanna drink this really expensive tequila one of my colleagues sent me.”

“Cruise?” Erin started to ask before it dawned on her. “Ah. Right. Gotcha. Knowing who you are as a person, that makes more sense,” she teased. Wasn’t how Erin handled that kind of thing but she was the last one to judge someone else for it. Sometimes it struck her how different they were for how close they’d become over the last six months. There were probably more differences than similarities, if she was being honest. Turns out a deep need for revenge and enduring traumatic, violent attacks could be a pretty decent bonding agent though. Worked well enough for them, anyway. But it was a relief to know that this was helping. That the hours and hours they were putting in here were amounting to something tangible. “Good,” was all she said, not trying to put Marley too much on the spot and scare her away. Stood beside her as she moved back to the table, absently running her finger along her shoulder as she read through the notes. “Hey,” she said, stiffening a bit. “What’s--uh, this one about?” She asked, dropping one in front of her. “Call foster home about birth certificate.” She dropped the note in front of Marley and sat down beside her, shuffling through the others, not thinking too much about her question. “Is that a work thing, or…?” The other implication of her question dawned on her and her eyes jumped up to Marley’s. “Is that a you thing?”

Marley thought very little about Erin’s close proximity to her, or her hand on her shoulder, as she watched her shuffle through the notes Marley had left around for her to organize. It almost felt relaxing, even if in the back of her mind, Marley still felt that strange prickle of anger inside of her chest. When Erin spoke up again, she stopped scribbling in the journal and looked down at the note she had set down in front of her. It was Marley’s turn to stiffen. She’d forgotten about that note-- which was entirely the point of these sessions, but that didn’t matter in the end-- until this moment, and something clicked in her head about how she meant to throw that one away. She picked it up off the desk and crumpled it, dumping it in the trash under the table. “It’s an irrelevant thing now,” she murmured, understanding that her response alone gave Erin the answer even if her words did not. “There’s no point in getting it anymore.”

Erin narrowed her eyes at the abruptness in which Marley crumpled up the note, tossed it aside like the contents meant nothing. If there was anything she’d learned it was that Marley spoke more with her actions than her words, especially when it came to this sort of thing. “Oh-kay,” she answered, seemingly moving on with the organizational process. “Guess that means you’re not going to answer my question?” She asked, jotting down a note for Marley’s calendar for later in the week. Without looking at her, she tilted her head, discarding another note, raising an eyebrow. “Or maybe you did.” Marley didn’t talk about her parents often--or ever, really--but it made sense why, if that note held any truth for Marley.

Marley watched Erin closely for a moment, as she jotted something down on the calendar. Realizing too late that it was the note she’d just crumpled. She clenched her jaw a little, but knew that even if Erin acted like she was going to drop it, she never really would. And hadn’t Marley decided to stop being so closed off? At least with Erin. She had to try somewhere, right? Rubbing her eyes again, she let out a heavy, audible sigh. “It’s complicated,” she mumbled and remembered how much Anita hated that word and felt her stomach burn. “I just mean-- yes, it’s about me. I was looking into some stuff before things got...really bad.” Because she felt some strange sort of compulsion for it, and the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to know. “I was looking into tracking down my birth parents.”

Ah, there it was. The sound of caving. Erin knew she’d earn that eventually but it came quicker than she anticipated. Maybe Marley was finally coming around, opening up to her in ways she was reluctant to before. Maybe, just maybe, their talk from a few weeks prior had paved the way for more progress than she’d realized. “Oh. I didn’t realize,” she started, and felt silly the moment she said it. Of course she didn’t know, both that she was looking and that this was something that Marley needed to do at all. “Why is it irrelevant now? Do you... not want to know anymore?” She asked, fussing with the post it notes. There wasn’t much more to the task at hand, and the rest of the post-it notes were categorized, but she kept her hands busy writing excessive notes and pretending to sort through them again. She had her full attention but staring at Marley while asking her such a personal question didn’t feel like that was the way to go here.

“Well, it’s not like I talk about it much,” Marley admitted quietly. Or at all. She never shared these parts of herself, they were dark and painful and cold, so she hid them away. With sealed records and compartmentalized memories, she kept them behind locked doors in her mind and in real life. But she was growing weary of them, and whatever was melting its way through her barricades was also telling her it was okay to let someone in. And of all the people to let in, Erin was the least dangerous. And probably the most worthy of it. “I wanted to know why they gave me up,” she answered quietly, her voice fragile in a way it never really had been before. Small and tempered, as if she were afraid. “But it doesn’t matter anymore, if it’s not going to change anything.” It doesn’t matter anymore if she couldn’t even stay inside her own brain enough to be herself.

Erin slowed down her movements, watching Marley cautiously as she explained herself. It was brief, to the point, like it typically was with Marley, but she’d learned to read a little between the lines at this point. She didn’t need to be able to read her to recognize how difficult this was for her to admit, though. This would be hard for anyone. She reached over, placing her hand on top of hers gently. “It won’t. You’re still you, no matter what they say, you know. If you were ever to find out why, I mean. You’re pretty badass, you know--that’s not something they can take away from you no matter what.” She offered a small smile, wishing she knew the best way to navigate this. “But… if you wanted to do that, to look them up, you’ve got my support and you know I’d be glad to help. But you also don’t have to. It’s entirely up to you, Marley.”

The hand placed on top of Marley’s almost made her jump-- it was a gentle action that she was woefully unused to. Her eyes went up to meet Erin’s, finding something in them that she hadn’t really known she was searching for-- validation. A gentleness around the subject, as if she knew the fragileness of it. And of course she did. Erin knew Marley better than anyone else, even Anita. She stiffened and swallowed at the thought, looking away. “I feel like I have to know,” she finally admitted quietly, “because right now, I don’t know anything. I don’t know who I am anymore, or who I want to be, and if I could know why they gave me up-- why they let me get passed around foster home after foster home-- maybe I could understand why things turned out the way they did.” She pulled her hand away so she could fold her arms across her chest, a subconscious way to protect herself. “But I guess just like everything else, I don’t know what I want anymore.”

Erin nodded slowly as listened, absorbing as much of this new information about Marley as she could while still trying to be helpful. If not helpful then just a sounding board, someone for Marley to express her thoughts and fears with. “You deserve those answers. You do. If they’re there. They might not, either, you know? It’s not a fun option but it's a real one.” She bit her lip, watching her withdraw. “It’s not something you have to make a decision about right now, either. You have time. God knows you’ve got so much on your plate as it is so… maybe when you’re ready and you’re able, you still have that time.” When Marley pulled away from her, she reached for the past of post-it notes and rewrote it, sticking it back onto the space where they were usually cluttered. “There,” she nodded, glancing back, a small encouraging smile on her lips. “Doesn’t need to be on the calendar just yet. But we won’t forget about it. How’s that?”

Marley's immediate reaction was to protest. No, this was stupid. No, she was stupid for wanting to do that. For wanting to know about them. They had given her up for a reason-- because they didn’t want her. Why would looking for them, why would trying to find them, make that any different? Why did Marley want so much for that to not be the reason? Too many what ifs clouded her thoughts and she watched silently as Erin stuck the note back on the board. She swallowed thickly. “Okay,” was all she said, looking away again and to the calendar they’d filled out. She unfurled her arms slowly, closing it. “Can we go drink now?” she asked, trying to move her voice from the shaky mutter it had been before to her more usual drone.

The hesitation in Marley’s eyes only confirmed how uncertain she felt about the whole thing. Just because someone wanted something didn’t mean they were ready for it, in whatever capacity that entailed. There was still so much healing she had to do still and Erin was thankful she wasn’t immediately jumping into this. It was still there on the table though--or the board, more accurately. It wouldn’t be forgotten. When she was ready, they could go back to it. She let out a soft laugh and nodded. “Yes, please,” she said, giving Marley’s shoulder a quick squeeze as she moved passed her. “How about you get the good stuff and I’ll get your surprise?” She raised her eyebrows cheekily, trying to reinsert some excitement back into the room. Even if she felt a pang of nervousness when she grabbed the bag with her gift inside. It was probably stupid and definitely overly sentimental, and she was already preparing for the relentless teasing she was bound to get. With a heave, she set the bag on the table with a clunk. “I didn’t know how to wrap it so--here you go.”

Marley was extremely thankful for the change of mood as Erin gave her that look. She smirked under the weariness and felt herself re-energizing already, leaping up from the chair and following her out back into the living room. “One bottle of extra fancy tequila, coming up!” she said, grabbing two of her more fancy tumblers, the bottle that that one co-worker had felt obliged to give her, and some salt and limes. Doctor Lin-King had strongly advised against heavy drinking, but it was holiday, and that meant rules didn’t apply, right? She wasn’t sure, she’d never really celebrated before. The clunk on the table startled her ever so and she looked at the bag Erin presented her with, slowly setting the glasses and bottle down. “What is it?” she asked, cautiously skeptic. She raised a brow, as if trying to peer into the bag, but not moving to open it yet. “Wrap it? You mean like--” A gift. Or present, rather. Erin had gotten her a Christmas present. Marley felt her throat suddenly tightening. “Oh,” was all she said, still not moving to open it.

Erin was busy eyeing the tequila bottle, lifting it to inspect how fancy Marley kept insisting it was. “I’ve never heard of it so it must be fancy,” she chuckled, sitting on the top of the table and popped open the top of the bottle. “Oh, that’s fancy. It might be too fancy for either one of us.” She grinned over at her, watching her tentatively poke at the present but not quite opening it. Clearing her throat, she started to pour into the tumblers Marley brought out, watching her out of the corner of her eye. “Yeah. A gift. Because it’s Christmas, dummy,” she teased her before handing her the other glass. Put her hand on top of the bag to stop her from opening it just yet. Held her glass up towards Marley, her smile softening into something more genuine and a little shy. “So, before you open it--Merry Christmas, Marley,” she nodded once, pausing. “There’s no other scrooge out there I’d rather be spending it with.”

Marley kept her eyes on the bag, even as Erin spoke. She only looked up when Erin put her hand on the bag and held the glass out to her. She took it but simply held it in front of her, still confused, visibly, by the action. She met Erin’s eyes, feeling a strange burning in her chest. It rose into her throat and her cheeks then her eyes and suddenly she was blinking and looking away. “Sorry, I don’t--” she wiped her face on her sleeve, shaking her head, “no one’s ever--” she looked at the gift on the table and wondered if context clues were enough, because the words wouldn’t come. She cleared her throat and readjusted herself, shaking off the strange feeling and raising her glass to meet Erin’s. “Merry-- yeah, Merry Christmas, Erin,” she said quietly, feeling an unstoppable smile twitch on to her face. She smothered it quickly by drowning it in tequila, grabbing a lime and biting into it, before holding one out for Erin. “If Im Scrooge, what’s that make you?” she asked once they were done.

It took more than a few moments for Erin to get it but once she did, her narrowed eyes grew wide and she could feel herself soften even further at the sight of Marley’s composure wavering. More than anyone, even the glimpse of Marley’s tears always got her hard and tight in the chest. Maybe she was biased but she felt like she had a pretty good grasp on Marley, on her heart, and it always ached when she got less than she deserved. “You’re okay,” she assured her quietly, trying to stop her voice from cracking, gripping the top of the table tight enough for her knuckles to whiten. More nervous now about the contents of her present than she was before. She tossed the drink back, thankful it went down smooth--it was really good tequila--and started to pour another as she chewed on the lime in her mouth. Laughed softly, shaking her head. “Hell if I know. Maybe the Ghost of Christmas Future. They always had that cool death thing going on. And a cool outfit.” She smiled up at her, nervously glancing at the present, then back to Marley, and then back down to her new cup. “Will you open it already?” She teased, nodding towards the bag.

“Admittedly,” Marley said with a shrug, “I’ve never actually seen that. Or read it?” She wasn’t even sure what type of media it actually was. It was probably all of them, knowing Christmas culture. And saying that she’d never gotten a present wasn’t entirely true-- the group home had Christmas morning parties, in which each kid got to pick one thing from a table of wrapped gifts, but it wasn’t the same. No one had ever taken the time to pick something out for Marley and wrap and it bring it to her. Maybe her adopted parents had at one point, but she couldn’t remember them, and they’d given her back before she’d had a chance to. Shaking away those stupid memories as well, Marley finally moved to open the gift, finding her hands shaky at best. She set the glass down and slid it towards Erin, a quiet gesture for her to refill it, and prodded the bag open. Inside sat a cool, marble box like object. Marley instantly recognized it as an urn. Confused, she pulled it out and set it on the table, looking up at Erin as if the answer were on her face.

But inside it, she found the answer. The lid was solid but not heavy and she set it gently aside, reaching in to pull out the first object-- an actual real life, goddamn photograph of her and Erin. She didn’t remember when it had been taken, exactly, but they were smiling, and the flash of the camera was reflecting off Marley’s glasses just enough to barely cover the smirk on her lips. And Erin was the one holding the camera, of course, flashing a bright smile. Marley set it aside when she noticed there was more in the box, but the picture still stuck in her mind-- she couldn’t really recall a time she’d been happier than that one.

Underneath the photo was an old certificate. It was the winner’s certificate they’d gotten from beating the Escape Room first, gold stamp and fake signature and all. Marley had let Erin keep it as her trophy, seeing as, at the time, Marley hadn’t really cared to keep mementos from or for anything. Now, she wished she had. She set that aside, too, still not having said a word. Because the next thing inside made her laugh out loud. A roll of duct tape next to a DVD of A Nightmare On Elm Street. And next to that, a bottle of Johnny Walker. She couldn’t even reach in and pull it out because she was laughing and crying and she found herself so caught between the two emotions, she didn’t even know what to say.

Erin watched quietly as Marley finally started to open the bag, unable to stop the nervousness biting at her bones. She hid a half smile behind another big sip of the tequila, watching carefully. “It’s--that’s an urn. A real one. I figured even if you didn’t like the rest of the present, I know you’re morbid enough to enjoy a bonafide urn to put on display in your house.” It was one of the many qualities she loved about Marley. She could talk about the weird, creepy things she did on a daily basis and she could keep up better than most people she knew. Her confidence continued to waver in large leaps as she watched Marley unfold the contents within, unsure if it was the tequila anymore that was making her cheeks flush. She was so silent it made her stomach turn and she was chuckling quietly like an idiot, covering her mouth with her hand. She wasn’t rolling her eyes or giving her that Marley certified look, so maybe she hadn’t fucked up entirely?

“I just thought--well, the note says what I thought. But you know, after everything this year and… everything you’re going through right now, I just thought--” she cleared her throat, holding the glass on her lap, running her thumb against the side. “I wanted something to remind you that despite everything, all the shit we went through and all the stuff we’re still trying to sort through--there is good stuff.” She smiled sheepishly, shaking her head. Her heart pounded so loud she swore Marley could hear it above her laughing. “And if you thought all of that was stupid, you’ve still got your precious Johnny in there to make up for all of it.”

Marley didn’t need to read the note to know what Erin meant. She was still smiling, uncontrollably, her breath coming up as little huffs as she tried to stop the laughter in her throat. She wiped at her eyes again and looked at Erin and suddenly, so suddenly, the feeling in her chest made sense. And with the realization, warmth blossomed throughout her entire body and she knew, without a doubt, that this was happiness. Pure, unadulterated happiness. And the only other time she’d ever felt this way was with Anita, and she didn’t want to think about that right now. She wanted to live in this moment, this moment where she could be happy and pretend like she hadn’t ruined all the good things in her life, and she could pretend she didn’t have a lifelong injury, and she could pretend like tomorrow would be as good as this day. “It’s perfect,” she finally said, moving around the table closer to Erin. “All of it, I can’t even--” she glanced back at it, then to Erin-- “I didn’t get you anything.” And this close to Erin, she could see the flush on her cheeks, and the way her eyes had that little sparkle to them, and the weary lines around her eyes that seemed almost permanent now. And she could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, as she reached out and took Erin’s face between her hands and kissed her.

Marley’s smile was more comforting than she’d ever know. It was downright infectious, actually, and Erin’s lips twitched upward in a grin that nearly matched the one beaming at her. She did good. That’s what Marley’s smile told her more than anything. She liked it, sentiment and sappy as it was. The relief that came with that was unparalleled and she had to blink a few times realizing that Marley was talking. Right. Words. “No, don’t worry about it,” she started, theat drumming in her chest quickening in tempo as Marley drew closer. She looked happy. Really, truly happy--happier than she’d seen her in so, so long. It was hard to not let it affect her, to fall headfirst into that feeling. When was the last time she’d felt that herself? To feel something other than the rage or the coldness the dark had brought for as long as she could remember. Marley’s lips against hers were unexpected but they were warm and despite her brain screaming distantly in the background, they were welcome against her own. Maybe something had clicked, maybe some deeply buried flood of emotions were loosening themselves into the night, maybe she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing at all--but she couldn’t stop herself from kissing her back. She just knew right now she felt good, just like how Marley felt good. And safe. She felt herself let go just a little bit more as she wrapped her arms around her waist and deepened the kiss, pulling her in against her.

Marley moved mostly off of instinct, and feeling. Something like this was natural to her. And somehow it felt more natural, knowing it was Erin. She tasted like tequila and a hint of lime and Marley wondered what in the world had made her want to do this. Maybe it was the idea of being so happy she couldn’t think straight, or maybe that was the tequila. Or maybe she just craved the feeling of being touched, of being wanted. Maybe this had been something that had been building between them for longer than either of them really knew. And maybe other people and past feelings didn’t matter right now. It was a holiday, after all, they should get to enjoy themselves, right? Merry goddamn Christmas was right. She let Erin pull her closer, kissing her harder, desperate and hungry, as she was wont to do. She couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d been held like this-- she knew it was with Anita, but the memory was only a flicker. At the thought, she pulled away, using the moment to take a breather, chest already heaving. “I--” she started, but found she didn’t know exactly what to say, “is this…” she swallowed, looked into Erin’s eyes, “okay?” Another smile twitched on her lips. “It was all I could think of in the moment..” she tacked on, grinning.

Erin would be a damn liar if she hadn’t thought about this before. Passively, quickly, and onto the next thought--but she’d thought about it nonetheless. There’d always been something that had drawn her to Marley from the very beginning, she was attractive, and there was no one who knew her quite like Marley did. There were two very good reasons why this hadn’t happened before, and she closed her eyes when Marley pulled away, trying not to think of either one of them. Two things neither of them had anymore and it was hard not to feel them in a big way right now, even if all she wanted to think about was Marley’s lips. “It’s okay,” she nodded, opening her eyes to find Marley’s bright grin. This was fine. That gnawing, low down fear in her stomach was just nerves. This was fine. She wouldn’t be smiling at her like that if this wasn’t okay. She trusted her, trusted that smile, even if she didn’t totally trust herself. “I mean, it’s good. Really good. Not just okay,” she chuckled, her hand still gripping her waist firmly. When she’d caught her breath, she lifted one hand to the nape of her neck and pulled her lips back down to hers, a little more desperate than before. This was good, it was fine--they both wanted this, wanted to forget, to feel something for a little while. Erin was more than happy to indulge for a little while longer.

Good. This was good. Erin said it was good. Marley nodded once before she was folding back into her, ready to let everything else slip away from her, from them. Leave behind all the shit they’d been through and the people they’d hurt or lost or pushed away. Because this was easy, it had always been easy for Marley. To lose herself, to forget, to let go. To focus on just the physical feeling and not the despair or the loneliness or the pain that would otherwise fill that space. It’s what she’d done for years and thought she would do until the day she died. And the idea-- the thought-- that she could have something more, felt as if it were suffocating now. The idea that she could have had more, but let it slip through her fingers. The idea that she was afraid of having more because it meant opening herself in a way she’d never been open before. Because having more meant feeling someone else’s hurt. And she wanted to forget all of that, leave that all behind. Because right here, and right now, she had enough. She had Erin. She had the feeling, the thought, somewhere in the back of her mind, that maybe this had been inevitable. Maybe she’d always wanted to do this. Maybe she just wanted to feel something real again. She moved in closer, still kissing Erin, deeper, harder, wanting to fall into the taste and the feel. Her hands moved lower, pressed against the table behind Erin for a moment, before she found them grabbing at the bottom of Erin’s shirt, fingers ghosting underneath. What she would give to feel this again. What she would give to let herself believe this feeling. If only it were that easy.

Something changed the moment Erin felt Marley’s hands drifting below her shirt. The touch startled her out of whatever haze she’d fallen into, knocking some sense into her. It was that panic, that fear that had been slowly dredging up from the pit of her stomach since Marley had first pulled her in and kissed her. “Marley, wait--stop,” she breathed, rearing back. Her hand covered her lips and she inched away from the table, away from Marley. Her chest heaved for breath and her mind raced as the panic surged in her. What the fuck where they doing? This wasn’t right. It felt good but everything in her mind suddenly woke up and was screaming at her, reminding her that this wasn’t right. “I can’t--we can’t,” she finally looked up, trying to find Marley’s eyes, slowly shaking her head. “You’re my best friend, Marley. And I don’t want to lose--we just--we can’t.”

The action startled Marley enough that she stumbled when Erin pushed her and stared, bewildered. Did she-- not like it? Hadn’t Marley just asked if it was okay? Had she done something wrong? It felt like stones had dumped into her stomach and she felt suddenly sick. “Why does that matter?” she asked, blinking. Her brows knit together as she tried to understand what Erin meant. Why couldn’t they? It was just kissing and maybe sex. It wasn’t like it was anything they hadn’t thought about. It wasn’t like it had to mean anything. Marley’s cheeks burned with embarrassment and she turned away, wiping a hand across her face. “It’s not like-- it doesn’t have to mean anything,” she said, still bewildered, still unsure why erin was making that face or why she looked as if Marley had just slapped her. “I don’t-- see why it matters.”

Erin’s eyes burned at Marley’s reaction. She felt as embarrassed as much as she did but it was what she said that hurt in a way she didn’t expect. It doesn’t have to mean anything. “It does. It means something. Maybe not to you--maybe you can just… turn that off, but I can’t. I care about you and I just--I can’t.” Didn’t Marley understand that? This wasn’t a one-off thing for her. She couldn’t do that. Not with Marley. Her fingers combed through her hair and she did her best to take another breath, though the red in her cheeks felt like it was burning right through her. Fuck. Fuck. “Even if it doesn’t matter to you, it matters to me. I should--I should probably just… go,” she mumbled. Shook her head, stepped backwards, and took a deep breath, moving back through her apartment to gather her things.

Marley felt her chest tightening again. Why did people keep saying that to her? About her? That she could just turn it off, as if she had any control over how she felt. She didn’t and she couldn’t. That wasn’t how it worked. Marley was just good at putting her feelings away because they never mattered-- they didn’t matter. But she didn’t know how to say that, how to respond to that. Erin was turning to leave now and Marley wanted to scream. “Don’t!” she said quickly, taking a step forward, but remembered Erin backing away from her and stopped, pulling back. “Don’t leave. I just-- I’m sorry. I take it back,” she said, “all of it. Even-- we can pretend it didn’t happen, just don’t leave.” She didn’t want to be alone. The feeling struck her like a wrecking ball-- she didn’t want to be alone. She missed Anita. She missed being held. She missed being touched. She missed everything. She’d been so alone and then Erin had fought her way back in and now Marley had done something to upset another person. “And I don’t just shut it off,” she found herself adding, stepping towards Erin fully this time, “I don’t know why everyone thinks I can just fucking-- not feel or pretend to not feel-- but it’s not true. I feel a lot, okay? I feel fucking everything. But it doesn’t matter-- my feelings just...don’t matter.” She found herself running her hands through her hair, gesturing stiffly. “They never mattered, so why would they now?”

Erin startled again in the desperation in Marley’s voice, but still she moved, her hands on her jacket. She hated this feeling, this ugly mortification seeping through her. “That’s not what I meant--” she said, shaking her head. “Or, I don’t know. Maybe it is. I just don’t know how you do it. I can’t… do that, go home with someone and move on the next day.” She felt herself rambling, knew it was the nerves building, allowing the words to keep spilling from her. She closed her eyes, wiping her hand over her eyes, trying to calm herself into expressing herself more rationally. A heavy breath left her during a brief silence before she felt collected enough to try again. “I don’t mean that you don’t have feelings. Because they matter. They do. But this, what you and I have, it’s too important to me and way too fragile to do what we just did. I’ve fucked up so much already and I can’t fuck up this. Not with you.”

Erin was still grabbing her stuff, she was still going to leave, and something visceral snapped in Marley. She reached out and put her hands on Erin’s, gripping tightly. “Please don’t--” she started, then stopped again. Realized what she was doing and let go quickly, backing away. Her eyes caught sight of the gift again and it reminded her of the happiness she’d felt literal minutes ago. Her skin was buzzing. “I don’t-- I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand how that would it fuck it up?” And she didn’t, she really didn’t. Erin was the exception in her life, someone she’d befriended without sleeping with her. And it wasn’t like she couldn’t make friends the other way, she just never did because she didn’t operate that way. Her chest felt like it was burning. “Just tell me what I did wrong,” she said, a strange desperation to her voice, “just tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it and make it better.” And maybe she wasn’t talking about them anymore, even, but they were the only words that were coming out.

Erin didn’t expect that reaction, couldn’t do more than freeze in place when Marley grabbed her. As much as her brain was telling her to go, her feet wouldn’t move. Not with how Marley was staring at her, pleading with her to stay. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Marley,” she sighed, suddenly tired and reluctant to talk about this. She hadn’t, technically. Up until a few moments ago, Erin hadn’t given any inclination that she didn’t want it. It was still hard to look at her as she tried to find the words, but she put her jacket down. “It would fuck it up because I care about you. A lot. And if we crossed that line, we can’t go back. I can’t go back. I can’t make that separation. And after everything, with Nic just--up and leaving, I can’t do that. I can’t lose someone else. I can’t.” She paused, working her jaw, trying to find the courage to look at Marley again, the pain clear in her voice. Her hand moved to her hip and she looked down again instead, shaking her head. “I’ve got a pretty good feeling neither of us are ready for something like that.”

It made sense, when Erin said it out loud, but the confused look still stuck on Marley’s face. “Wait, so--” she shook her head again, face drawn together in concern as she tried to put the pieces together and understand what it was Erin meant. What she wanted. “You said it was okay, but now you’re saying you...don’t want it?” She looked across at her, then to her jacket, then towards the door. The bottle of tequila, barely any drank. The stack of movies in the living room Marley had set aside for them to cycle through later and laugh at. The certificate on the table. The photo of them. Erin was her best friend, and her only friend. There was a line with her, and if they crossed it, there was no going back. Was she okay with that? Did she want that? She didn’t know. What she did know was that her heart still ached for someone else. And that was enough for her to concede to. She picked up the photo and the certificate and put them back in the urn. “You can leave if you want,” she said after a quiet moment, “I don’t want to mess this up, either.”

“I made a mistake. It was a mistake.” The words flew out of Erin faster and harsher than she intended, and internally she cringed at the delivery... but it answered Marley’s question didn’t it? Her mind raced and she wasn’t sure if was because she was lonely, or because she did feel things about Marley that couldn’t or shouldn’t be reciprocated, or they were caught up in a mess of complicated feelings on an emotional day. She had wanted it despite everything in her now telling her it was a mistake. “Fuck,” she muttered, covering her face with both of her hands, letting loose a frustrated groan into them. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to console Marley. She didn’t want to, either. Didn’t have the strength herself. “I should go,” she nodded quietly, grabbing her jacket again. “I’m sorry, I just--” she started, waiting for the best words to come to her. “I’m gonna go.” This option didn’t feel good either but it felt like the only one that made sense. There was no way they could just--pretend it didn’t happen and sit around comfortably, watching movies and drinking tequila. It was all she wanted to do but it didn’t seem possible now. “I’m sorry,” she repeated earnestly, shrugging, and stepped back out into the night. Her chest burning furiously the whole way back to her car. Another Merry fucking Christmas.

Mistake. The word barreled into Marley’s head and ricocheted around and shattered every ounce of happiness she’d been holding onto. It dredged up memories and voices she thought she’d forgotten, and all she could hear was ‘You are a mistake’, ‘Adopting you was a mistake’, ‘Taking you in was a mistake’. She didn’t say anything when as Erin gathered up her stuff. She didn’t say anything as Erin left out the front door and shut and locked it. She didn’t say anything as she walked over to the tequila bottle, hand shaking, and drowned herself in it as much as she could. And when she saw the urn sitting on the table, she lost it. Turning on her heel, she launched the bottle as hard as she could against the wall, screaming. It shattered and spilled everywhere in the hallway. Next, she turned to the urn, gripping it with both hands, raised it above her head, ready to smash it on the floor in front of her, but-- but-- she couldn’t. She just...couldn’t. Instead, she sank to the floor, hugging the cool marble box to her chest, and fell back against the wall. Mistake, was all she could think as she stopped trying to hold back her tears, I’m a mistake.

#wickedswriting #chatzy #chatzy: erin #erin #home for the holidays #tw domestic abuse mention

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bronanlynch · 3 years

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bi-weekly update

it sure has been a wild time here and tbh I had enough to do one of these last week and just. didn’t?? for some reason?? anyway

listening: the Promare soundtrack went on sp*tify recently so I’ve been on Promare soundtrack lockdown over here. I know Kakusei is the iconic Promare song but Inferno (the opening song) always makes me tear up??? love to experience emotions about a movie in a reasonable and normal way. so anyway my standout track from the OST is Piromare because I am so very not immune to sad soft piano renditions of a motif that is usually triumphant/cheerful/etc

youtube

reading: I have, for once, read a bunch of books. I got a giftcard to my favorite local indie bookshop for Christmas and finally got around to using it to buy two books I’d been looking forward to, Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson (bi polyam Dracula retelling, kind of) and Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell (gay arranged marriage space opera)

Dowry of Blood was very satisfying to me, someone who has lots of opinions about how vampires ought to be sexy and also terrifying, and I really enjoyed this specific take on vampire lore. also the formatting/pagination was really really cool and reminded me more of poetry books than prose usually does. for the first couple of pages there’s only text on one side of the page and then there’s one line on the back of a page and it hits really hard. extremely good and cool printing choices. would def recommend, but it is also explicitly an exploration of getting into and then out of an abusive relationship so. warnings for that in addition to the murder/blood warnings

also look at how sick this cover is (by Marlowe Lune, an artist whose work I really like in general)

I previously read Winter’s Orbit when it was on ao3 as an original work (called Course of Honour) and it was really cool to read a familiar story that I uh. read several times on ao3 but with added layers, because the author added a bunch of worldbuilding and an entire overarching higher-stakes political plot. I really really liked the added worldbuilding, and for the most part I enjoyed the new plot stuff, though at times I felt like it distracted from what I liked the most about the original, and there was one specific scene that was taken out that I was disappointed about. fave thing about the worldbuilding is when something is referred to by normal familiar words (like pigeons or bears) and then the actual thing is like, a fucking dinosaur that only vaguely resembles the word that’s used for it. very fun

also slightly mixed feelings about the framing of empire in the book, since there is some discussion about the consequences of imperialism and the resolution of the plot involves getting more rights and political sway for colonized planets. but the majority of the plot is about preserving an unjust status quo, and the representative of one of the colonized planets is working for the interests of the empire so that they can appear unified in the face of a larger-scale potential threat, which I’m not sure I love. and I also didn’t really care for the way the resistance movement (whenever it came up, which wasn’t often) was portrayed. so. on one hand yes there is a message of ‘empire bad and we should maybe try to be less Like That’ but on the other hand sometimes it did feel like the imperialism was an under-examined backdrop for a romance. like don’t get me wrong, I love the romance, I love the characters, it’s just that some of the politics didn’t quite do it for me and I think I just wanted More of things that just. weren’t the focus of the story

warnings for discussions of abusive relationships in this one, except this time it’s backstory for one of the characters, not something that’s present in the central relationship. and for all of the things that I wasn’t quite satisfied with, the parts of the book that are about like, learning how to be a person again after being in a situation where you’re not allowed to be yourself are still very well-handled and hit me real hard.

I also read a whole bunch of KJ Charles because sometimes all my brain can handle is marathoning romance novels, but I’m not gonna talk about all of them because this is already long enough (have not read the new one that came out today yet though that’s what I’m gonna do after this)

watching: Supernatural season 13 is incredibly boring and bad in ways that aren’t interesting or fun to talk about so I haven’t watched any recently. I did watch the first episode of Lupin, and really enjoyed it! will definitely watch more, though slowly because it takes too much of my brain to marathon it, partially because I know just enough French to almost not need the subtitles but having to read and also automatically trying to translate as I’m listening takes more brain energy. love a good heist though, and it has some good social commentary on race and class and crime

also the main character is very good. fucking superb you funky gentleman thief

playing: still making my way through the last mission of Knife of Dunwall. I made a bunch of progress since I whined at my friend about how hard it was and they told me to just stay in the building that has places to hide (the one you have to make your way through as Corvo, so I already know the layout, which helps lol) instead of the one that’s falling apart with nowhere to hide. who would have thought.

have also watched my roommate play lots of games and have thoughts on those too. Final Fantasy games (or at least the ones I’ve seen anything from, which is 7, 14, and 15) really appeal to me on a character/aesthetic/plot level but the gameplay looks like it would be bad for my brain. and yes all of those have very different gameplay but they would all be not fun for me in different ways. my roommate showed me like an hour of cutscenes from 14 last night that was basically a movie of tropes I love but holy shit I could never play a game where I have to wait for other people to be ready to also play the same part of the game before I can advance the plot

they’ve also been playing Persona 5 Scramble/Strikers (I don’t know which one the S stands for and at this point I’m too afraid to ask), which I do intend to play myself some day. it’s a sequel to Persona 5 with the same characters and damn they really nailed the feeling of seeing your friends again after not seeing them for a while, both in terms of. I care about these characters and am happy to see them again and also, they haven’t seen the protagonist in a while and they’re so happy he’s back and it makes me very soft. would love to reunite with friends whom I haven’t seen in a while

making: haven’t worked on cosplay but we did make some very tasty tortellini soup last weekend, and then last night we made fish & chips which was a lot easier than I was expecting and turned out pretty well? we just used frozen fries instead of like. frying them ourselves but we did make some very tasty lemon-garlic green beans

writing: well. I have a couple of things I’ve been noodling away at for a bit, and then a couple days ago I had a little bit of a breakdown and wrote 3000 words of angst in one sitting for an entire different new fic (Persona boys having a miserable time), and then yesterday decided to get in on a thing in The Untamed fandom of people writing short ““boring”“ domestic oneshots, and I love domesticity so I wrote one, which various reviewers have called “very sweet” and “a callout post” (it is both of those things)

I’m also organizing an event for P5 trans content because someone was shitty to one of my roommates over a trans headcanon and I got so pissed off that I’m running a prompt week now. love to have reasonable emotional reactions to things that happen in my life. why would I think about my actual problems when I could get petty and spiteful over someone saying that a fictional character couldn’t possibly be trans

#this one is real long i'm sorry #contains pictures of food under the readmore #tuesday no problem extended universe #dreaming.txt

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep25 [”I’m Different Now”]:

For the season finale [but not series finale, because they’ve already announced a third and final season for next year], we get a huge plot twist that completely changes our perspective on one of the characters, and their various relationships, in a way that has major implications about the future of the story and how things will progress.

Aside from all that, we also get the world’s worst gender reveal party.

Thoughts under the cut.

Just to start off, this episode adapted chapters 96 and 97 like I figured it would, to wrap up this season with a big cliffhanger to hype people up for the final season. And for better or worse, this was a pretty much 1:1 adaptation of these chapters, so there’s not really any differences to talk about that I noticed.

Anyway, I may as well just cut right to the chase and talk about the whole Shocking Gender Reveal Plot Twist[tm], now that that’s out in the open and everyone can stop tiptoeing around it.

It’s not like I’ve really tried to hide it or how I feel about it as a plot point before this, but I really do dislike it on basically every level. There’s a whole lot to unpack about it, but really at the end of the day it’s just one of those old-fashioned plot devices where we’re meant to think that someone being a different gender to what you thought they were is inherently something scandalous and shocking. They could have at least immediately started talking about the idea of her being raised as a man against her will, since that’d at least give it some actual meaning and value, but they don’t, which really says a lot about how that’s actually kinda just a foot-note that the story doesn’t dwell on much, and in practice we’re just meant to be surprised that she’s a girl.

It doesn’t really help that the season just ends right there, when in the manga this whole sequence keeps going in the next chapter, and I think they start touching upon that part of Akito’s backstory then, but the anime won’t get into that until next year at this point, so I think it’s fair to take it as it’s presented right now.

The idea of Akito being a girl is surprising in basically the exact same way that it’d be surprising if we found out that Haru was a Sanrio fan, or something. That is to say, it’d be vaguely surprising, but then we’d all just go on with our lives.

Even at this point you can definitely guess that there’s probably something going on with her being forced to present as a man, but it hasn’t really been explained or touched upon yet, so it’s all pretty nebulous, at least from the perspective of someone like Tohru who barely knows Akitto at all and doesn’t know all the stuff about her past that Kureno does.

In general I’ve never been a fan of this entire trope to begin with, but I think it’s made a lot worse by the fact that, as you get further into the rest of the story, it becomes clear that it’s not even that important, and the majority of what’s going on with Akito’s character has much more to do with the curse situation and how it impacts her relationship with the zodiac members. The whole deal with her character is how being the god of the zodiac from birth forced her to be pretty much raised in seclusion, with her only frame of reference for human relationships being abusive cult behavior. She’s miserable and twisted because she isn’t allowed to live a normal life due to her status, and her possessiveness gets enabled by the people that she clings onto, putting her into a loop of arrested development and mental instability.

And literally none of that has anything to do with her gender, lol. None of it would be different if she was a cis man, or if she had been raised as a woman. Because that whole deal isn’t actually all that relevant to why she is the way she is, why she has the attitude and world-view that she does, and why her relationships are so fucked up. Even if you decided to write out her romantic/sexual relationships with people like Kureno and Shigure by having her be a man, that’d barely change anything about the story as a whole, because even if it was entirely for platonic reasons Kureno would have still decided to stay with Akito and ultimately enable her actions, and Shigure would most likely still more or less do all the same things he’s already done. And obviously to begin with, if Akito was actually a dude that wouldn’t even necessarily mean you couldn’t still have some of these relationships play out this way, so you can’t even really act like the story required her to be a girl for that reason, lol.

And for better or worse, if Akito was written as a gay dude, it could still totally have lead to all the same stuff with her possessiveness over the male zodiac members, and her irrational hatred of the female zodiac members. It’d just be a different, more homophobic sort of trope than what actually happens, in a way that plays out in basically the exact same way. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve gotten a villain who’s a gay dude that irrationally hates women for Reasons [tm], and who has ominous and sinful relationships with men.

Which is also the reason why I don’t exactly think the story would be ‘better’ if she had been written as a gay dude, or as a trans woman, or anything like that. With her whole role in the story to begin with, it’d play out in an obnoxious way no matter what. Mostly I just kinda wish they had completely avoided this sort of outdated, schlocky storytelling to begin with, and just focused entirely on the more interesting stuff about her character.

And in terms of outdated tropes, we haven’t even gotten properly introduced to Ren yet, lol.

I’m also assuming that they’re not exactly planning to change anything about this in the anime, so I’m just going with my existing thoughts about how the manga handled it, since that should still carry over to the anime.

I know that this is all just beating a dead horse with a stick because of how long the series has been out for, but I still just can’t help but be irritated by this whole mess.

I don’t want to spoil it too much, but I think a good comparison to make is the recent Banana Fish adaptation, and how from what I gathered, most people’s reactions to that series’ ending was ‘I know it’s just a product of it’s time, but this is just kinda unironically shitty’.

Ultimately, I think a big part of why this annoys me so much is because I actually really like Akito’s whole character and what the story does with her after this point. I just dislike how it’s shackled to this unnecessary plot twist that ends up dominating the conversation surrounding her even though it’s barely relevant to anything after this in the story.

The stuff with her being the god of the zodiac and how much it fucks up her entire life and all of her relationships is genuinely really compelling, and represents an integral part of the story’s overall message about the nature of abusive families and cults, and the various ways they end up hurting everyone inside them. Her whole arc is about learning how to embrace a life that’s not based around being a god surrounded by their followers, and I think that aspect of it works really well, especially with how it ties into all the stuff with Tohru later on.

I also think that all the stuff with Kureno that gets revealed in this episode is genuinely really interesting, and is ACTUALLY a plot twist that meaningfully shakes things up, and people actually have a reason to be surprised by it. Especially Tohru, since her whole goal at this point is to break the curse, and now she’s literally found someone who’s already had their curse get broken. It’s basically the first major lead she’s found in her whole search for answers, but in the end it kinda just, y’know, gets overshadowed by the gender reveal and her being shocked about that instead.

It’s also still really interesting to me how the Kureno situation is basically the only time where the story seriously talks about the implications of the animal transformation part of the curse, and how someone in the zodiac might internalize that part of themselves. Most of the time, the animal transformation part of the curse is kinda irrelevant, and the series could work in 99% the same way without it. I think Takaya’s literally said before that she didn’t even plan to include that whole aspect of the story until her editor suggested it fairly late into the process, and I think that shows with how it’s kinda just there for some wacky hijinks early on, and then it just gets benched in favor of the actual stuff Takaya wanted to write about.

But with Kureno we actually get a look into what it meant for him to be able to literally turn into a bird, and how losing that ability affected his sense of identity and how he engaged with the world. It’s still ultimately just metaphorical in it’s own way, but it still feels like more of an acknowledgement of the fact that they literally turn into animals than basically any other part of the story, lol. And in general I just think it’s at least compelling on paper that he ends up shackling himself of his own free will, because that sense of freedom and disconnect made him feel obligated to stay with Akito to ‘make up for it’.

I just wish that Kureno as a whole was interesting enough for me to actually care that much about all of this, lol. In the end he’s just kinda intentionally boring, and it’s more interesting to write about his role in the story than it is to actually, like, watch him do stuff as a character. Which I guess is all just part of how much it bugs me that all of the interesting stuff in this episode, and this whole part of the story, feels like it gets overshadowed and drowned out by a dumb shock value plot twist.

There’s also all the thematic stuff with how he’s basically Tohru if she was taken advantage of and had all of her own bad habits enabled until she ended up barely being a functioning adult. He even has his whole personal conflict about feeling like moving on with his life and developing new relationships is an act of betrayal towards someone that he really needs to let go of at this point. But then you just get into the whole Uo thing and how their whole relationship is about as compelling as the whole Cinderella plot that it’s clearly a reference to, and aaaaaaah why is this series so frustrating, lol.

Really, the fact that I can gripe so much about stuff like this just goes to show how much I like the series in general, since I can’t muster up any strong feelings about stuff like this if I just straight up dislike it as a whole. At least for me, stuff like this is much more frustrating when it’s one part of a larger story that I really love. Thankfully there’s more good than bad when it comes to this series, so I can still hold onto it as a personal fave that I just happen to have complaints about.

I’m genuinely really excited for the final season, in spite of all this, since there’s a whole lot I love about the final third of the manga, and in a funny way, the fact that Akito being a girl isn’t actually that big of a deal in the long run, and what actually happens with her as a character after this is more about her status as the god of the zodiac, actually means that I’ll [mostly] enjoy a lot of it. It’s mostly just this specific part where we get the Big Reveal [tm] itself, and the immediate lead-up to it, that bugs me.

Anyway, as a whole, I still think this is a good episode that serves as a fitting cliffhanger for the season. The actual plot twist that most of the episode focuses on is really good, and serves a really meaningful role in progressing the story, and it gives a pretty clear picture of how we’re entering the final act of the story.

Hopefully the final season will start in April next year like the first two seasons did, but it’s entirely possible it might get delayed because of the whole pandemic situation. But I could live with them holding off on starting the final season until it’s ready to come out.

Also, before I forget, they haven’t said anything about it, I’m pretty sure the final season will also be around 25 episodes long. With how many chapters they have left, if they stick to the same two chapters per episode pace that the anime’s had on average thus far, they could easily cover the rest of the story in 22 episodes, which would be a lot easier to expand by an extra two or three episodes, than it’d be to condense it all the way down to 13 or so episodes.

#murasaki rambles #Fruits Basket #can you tell that I have Feelings [tm] about this whole part of the story? lol

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beerecordings · 4 years

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thinking about how in the Marvin’s Cage au or in any version of “Marvin’s the one who traps JJ in the box and then when they find out Jackie kicks Marvin out and brings Jameson home” Jackie would be SO SO over-protective and highkey loving and affirming and spoil Jameson so much because

this little guy has been through actual hell and he’s a nervous wreck who’s never been loved before, of course Jackie’s going to smother him in affection

2. Jackie’s little brother was the one who trapped him so Jackie feels like he has to make up for Marvin’s cruelty and also he blames himself for not seeing the signs and saving Jameson sooner

3. Jackie misses Marvin so much and compensates for it by putting all of that missing love onto Jameson

(and it’s a little unhealthy (okay maybe really unhealthy at times) because he’s projecting his memories of the relationship he and Marvin had when Marvin was young and innocent and loved him so much and he can’t help but see young Marvin in this new little brother. Jackie really wants to protect and foster him so he doesn’t lose that innocence like Marvin did, because just thinking about having to kick out another brother or realize that they’ve done something horrible is enough to make him break down)

okay and then i just wrote like a whole damn essay on Jackie’s anxiety and relationship with JJ after he has to kick Marvin out so i’m putting it under a cut hahaha

He starts giving Henrik and Chase a lot of extra affection too, like suddenly he’s treating them a lot less like they’re just friends and more like they’re his little brothers, and even like they’re much younger than they are. Henrik gets irritated because Jackie is bossier in his caretaking now, insisting that he go to bed earlier than four in the morning and threatening to carry him there if he doesn’t - but Jackie also sometimes just comes and sits with him while he’s working and Henrik understands that this is his way of trying to protect him and allows it because he wants to see Jackie heal. Chase doesn’t mind the extra attention at all, suddenly Jackie is taking time off superhero stuff to stay home and do fun things with him and he’ll even cuddle up with him on the couch a little while they watch movies and stuff! it’s pretty great, but Chase can tell sometimes that Jackie is only acting happy to try and make him happy, because they both miss Marvin a lot. but nobody in the house talks about Marvin. they haven’t even explained everything that happened to JJ.

Jackie just spoils the hell out of him. he brings JJ presents every couple nights, anything from cute socks he saw or a cool rock to hot chocolate and bigger presents from stores like clothes and art stuff. Henrik keeps warning him not to spoil him too much, because JJ is learning pretty well that he can get whatever he wants just by pouting a little and Henrik knows it’s not mature, but Jackie can’t help it!! he wants to give him whatever he needs!!

when Jameson has panic attacks or nightmares, Jackie can’t be removed from his side, or at the very least he’s standing outside his door guarding him. they’ve never seen him quite this worked up about protecting someone!! usually part of the reason Jackie is comforting during anxious or depressive episodes is because he’s so calm and sure, but now he gets upset and weepy whenever Jamie shows the smallest signs of distress, because he can’t stop thinking about Marvin being the one who did this to him. he’ll sit up with Jameson long into the night and tell him over and over again that he’s safe, that he loves him, that he’ll never let anything take him away again.

Jackie has like. a thousand pictures of Jameson just smiling on his phone. he cried the first time Jameson smiled at him (he was the first one of them he did smile at and nothing makes Jackie feel more like a good big brother than that)

he teases Chase and Henrik about being shitty at things lol (”YOU SUCK AT MARIO CART HA”) but with Jameson it’s all this “no no no you’re doing so good buddy!! here i’ll teach you how to fix this one little thing!!” and Chase and Henrik are just like. “jackie we hate u” but it’s pretty funny really

he trained Chase and Henrik to fight - at least the basics - within the first couple months of their creation, but he’s much more cautious with Jamie. Henrik and Chase have to be the ones to teach him the first couple lessons just to prove to Jackie that he can do it and he won’t break. and then? Jackie trains Jameson harder than he ever trained the others, trying to make him as strong as he can, as skilled as he can, trying to make sure Jameson will be able to protect himself even if something happens to him.

Chase and Henrik are watching all this a little nervously. Jackie adores Jameson, melts for Jameson, dotes on Jameson - it’s pretty damn cute, but it worries them a little, especially because, as Jameson matures, he starts to act more adult around them and then reverts back to “i am tiny and need love :333″ around Jackie

it’s when Jackie has a complete meltdown in Henrik’s arms about how he’s constantly, constantly terrified for his baby brother that they realize there’s like... a real big problem going on here. they call up their old family therapist (they haven’t been going since Marvin... left) and they start trying to work this stuff out. Jackie has Jameson under his arm the whole first session, trying not to cry because this place reminds him of Marvin, anxious to have his little brother in a new place, constantly assuring JJ everything’s going to be okay - projecting his own anxiety onto his little brother and telling himself he’s fine, it’s JJ who needs help, it’s JJ who’s been through trauma, not Jackie... Jameson lets Jackie hold him and pats his knee comfortingly. by the end of the session Jackie is thinking maybe Jamie understands him better than he understands himself, and he’s overwhelmingly grateful that his little brother is letting him do what he feels like he needs to do to help himself survive this grief

they have to push Jackie to even allow Jameson to progress as an adult because he’s just so terrified of anything happening to his baby brother. he’s like that mom watching her kid try to leave for the first day of school like “do you have everything you need??? recite my phone number back to me. don’t talk to strangers!! hold your brother’s hand when you cross the street! I already called the school to tell them all about your allergies and to ask the teacher to be nice to you!!! wait give me one more hug!!! i love you!!!!!!!!” and Jamie’s actually really excited to go to the movies for the first time but Jackie’s all stressed and upset. Henrik and Chase are pulling him away like “MOM WE’RE FINE” and Jackie’s waving them goodbye from the door and texting them every fifteen minutes for updates... lol he loves him

and once he gets on board with Jameson growing up and being more independent and adjusts to it, he takes him to all his favorite places and to do all his favorite things because he just wants to share every part of his life with Jameson and give him all the happiness he can

it takes Jackie a really long time to learn to show any weakness around Jameson because he doesn’t want him to feel unsafe, but Jameson is so supportive of him once he starts opening up to him. Jamie is always trying to return all the love he’s been given and he learns all the best ways to take care of all his brothers when they’re suffering. Jackie thinks the world of him for that and tells him he has a really good heart

in the end they mostly just have to let Jackie grieve Marvin (healthy grief takes about six months) and adjust to someone new in the house, and after that he mellows out about it, but Jameson is still his little buddy and he loves him so so much and spoils the hell out of him hahaha. it’s good for Jameson to be mother-henned a little bit for the first few months and improves his self-esteem, really. no matter how he’s feeling he almost always believes that Jackie, at least, loves him and will never betray or imprison him like that bad man in the mask did.

about a year after taking Jameson in to the house, Jackie and Jameson are best of friends and see each other as equals. they both look out for each other when they’re sad or in trouble and love each other so so much. Jackie still brings JJ presents a couple times a month, and now JJ gets them for him too, and there’s nothing that makes Jackie happier.

#marvin's cage

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fakeikemen · 4 years

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I know I am very late to the party but— I just absolutely love Zuko's redemption?! And the way it was handled by the narrative?! The fact that he is held accountable for his mistakes. That he is made to learn and grow from those mistakes. And that the guilt he feels because of his wrongdoings is what compels him to go out of his way to make it up to the people he has hurt. And that the narrative makes him make up for his mistakes in a very specific way to each character to address each of their personal grievances. It's just *chef's kiss*.

I have seen so many characters who exhibit shitty (sometimes even abusive) behaviour who are given a background of childhood abuse to justify their unacceptable behaviour. We are just supposed to accept the sad back story as an excuse for the character's actions and lo! Suddenly the narrative paints the character in a positive light, all the other characters forgive him without the said character working towards earning their forgiveness. But the fact that everyone is responsible for their own actions doesn't change.

Zuko is such a beautiful subversion of this trope.

From the beginning, the show portrays Zuko very carefully, showing us that even if he is mean and rude and occasionally does bad things™, his heart is definitely in the right place and that at his core, he is a good person.

And yet no one absolves him of his actions. Not the narrative, not any of the other characters and definitely not Zuko himself.

After his first confrontation with the Gaang in B3 Ep13 "The Western Air Temple", where Zuko fails to make a fair argument for himself, everybody rejects him and turns him away. Disheartened, Zuko leaves without arguing any further.

The one exception to the hostile warding off is Toph; who doesn't have any bad experiences with Zuko or personal grievances against him. Her first introduction to Zuko via Iroh's description of him, paints him in a positive light. Further, he seems to be someone who is like her if she goes by what Iroh says.

Once her lie detection skills let her know that Zuko is being sincere, she pretty much backs off:

So naturally Toph tries to reason with the rest of the Gaang:

Katara: And what was all that crazy stuff about setting Appa free? What a liar!

Toph: Actually, he wasn't lying.

Sokka: [Sarcastically.] Oh, hooray! In a lifetime of evil, at least he didn't add animal cruelty to the list.

Toph: I'm just saying that, considering his messed-up family and how he was raised, he could have turned out a lot worse.

Katara: [Sarcastically.] You're right, Toph! Let's go find him and give him a medal. The "not as much of a jerk as you could have been" award!

Toph: All I know is that while he was talking to us, he was sincere. Maybe you're all just letting your hurt feelings keep you from thinking clearly.

Katara: Easy for you to say! You weren't there when he had us attacked by pirates!

Sokka: Or when he burned down Kyoshi Island!

Aang: Or when he tried to capture me at the Fire Temple!

Once again, the narrative makes sure that "Not as much of a jerk as you could have been" is simply not an excuse for the hurtful actions and choices that have been made.

This conversation also focuses on what each of the character's personal grievances from the war are and how Zuko had triggered them by doing something similar. (In addition to Sokka talking about Zuko attacking the Water Tribe and Katara talking about the necklace incident— although the Pirates and the necklace incidents are actually combined.)

The first thing that Zuko does is, stand up to Combustion Man (even if the whole Combustion Man plot is contrived bullshit, that makes no sense, atleast it is properly used as a step of Zuko making amends with the Gaang).

After which the Gaang is willing to listen to what he has to say, so he says:

Zuko: Listen, I know I didn't explain myself very well yesterday, I've been through a lot in the last few years, and it's been hard. But I'm realizing that I had to go through all those things to learn the truth. I thought I had lost my honor, and that somehow my father could return it to me. But I know now that no one can give you your honor. It's something you earn for yourself, by choosing to do what's right. All I want to do now is play my part in ending this war, and I know my destiny is to help you restore balance to the world.

He doesn't try to play the "I was having a really hard time and I wasn't really myself so I did some bad things" card. He never does even as the story progresses.

He accepts that his mistakes made him grow and learn in a way that wouldn't have been otherwise possible but he knows that his choices have hurt people nonetheless. And he takes full responsibility for it.

The Gaang accepts him just as the Firebending master that Aang needs. And while it does look like Aang has forgiven him; the rest of the Gaang are sceptical about him and rightfully so.

And then we get a series of episodes where Zuko— a previous representative of the Fire Nation to these kids, helps these kids to deal with the trauma that was caused by the Fire Nation.

To Aang, becoming a firebender is a dreaded duty looming on the horizon in the near future due to his own personal history of trauma with the element. Aang, whose entire race had been wiped out when the Fire Nation had been at its strongest, whose first experience with fire ended with him burning his friend.

Zuko takes Aang on a trip that results in both of them learning the actual meaning of Firebending. That fire isn't just a representative of death and destruction. That it is life and creation too.

Aang returns with his fear of fire absolved, with a new vision of fire as an element and his bond with Zuko cemented into a strong friendship.

Then there's Sokka, who has lost his mother to the violence of the war. And soon after his father left to fight in the war. It is pretty evident that for Sokka, his father's absence plagues him more. His coping mechanism has made him supress memories of Kya to replace them with memories of Katara instead. But his coping mechanism can't do the same for Hakoda because filling the hole that Hakoda left was Sokka's responsibility.

Other than this, Sokka, whose cultural upbringing taught him that his primary duty was to protect the women in his life, feels like a failure for never being able to protect them from the war. While Katara needs no protection after her training under Pakku, he still strives his best to help Katara when she needs it. But he couldn't do the same for Kya, Yue and Suki (because he knew she was imprisoned and was counting on him to free her but there was nothing he could do about it). This issue is far less acknowledged by Sokka himself.

So, Sokka wants to embark on a solo journey to rescue Hakoda from the prison. He doesn't want to take Katara or anybody else along because of the huge risk it entails.

But Zuko willingly decides to go with him. They make it back together with not only Hakoda but Suki as well. This time, Sokka not only manages to bring his father back from the clutches of the war, he also doesn't fail the woman he wants to protect in the hour of her need.

And he was able to successfully do so because Zuko stood by him as his ride-or-die and selflessly helped him. This allowed Sokka to let go of his scepticism and accept Zuko as a trustworthy friend.

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evakuality · 5 years

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I’ve been thinking of doing this for a long time, but it kind of got kicked into another gear when I got this ask a while back. That gives a broad overview of the similarities and differences between these boys, but I’m also interested in drilling down and looking at them as their respective stories progress. Now I know a lot more about Isak because I have actually seen all the seasons of Skam and have only seen the full season 3 of Druck. So I’m going to stick to the storylines in their own seasons, but bear in mind that there’s a broader understanding of Isak behind what I’m saying. Having said that, I did watch those ‘season x but it’s just Matteo’ videos for s1 and 2 of Druck but it’s not really helped a huge deal. I don’t feel like I have that good a handle on his character as it stood before s3 started. Anyway, the thing about these characters is how fascinating it is that they share a lot of similarities (of course, since Matteo is based on Isak) and yet they’re very different and their stories play out in quite different ways. So I decided to take a look at why this has happened. Episode by episode because as usual I’ve been very wordy.

Season 3 introductions: From the start, we get some very different vibes from the two of them. The music chosen to set the scenes for each is interesting from this point of view. Isak’s is ‘LiQR’ which holds suggestions of needing social lubricant to enjoy the situation. And indeed, there is a lot of that on display: people drinking, smoking etc to enable them to enjoy the party. Matteo’s, by contrast, is ‘turning me on’ with it’s heavy suggestions of sex. That also plays out. Lots of sexually charged behaviour happens before we see him and even when he meets up with the boys it’s all very explicitly sexual. I think in a lot of ways, these things set up how the seasons play out. Isak does need to learn how to rely on himself rather than the easy drug and alcohol-fueled flippancy he’s been used to hiding behind. By the end of the season he’s much more secure in his own sense of self and we see much less dependence on those social lubricants. Matteo has been holding back from his life, including sexually, staying on the edges of those conversations etc (and it’s interesting that when he blows up later in the season at the boys it’s sex talk that he targets as the way they piss him off), and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Matteo waits til the last episode before this is something he really explores.

Then we get the actual introductions of each of the boys. Isak’s in a bathtub surrounded by his friends, outside of the party which is what we see first. Matteo is at the party, but on the wall. He’s isolated himself not just from the schoolmates but also from his friends who at this point are in the bathtub together. Isak is far more integrated into the boys’ conversation than Matteo is, and seems to be far more consciously deploying the ‘I’m a straight guy’ cover. Matteo, as we see later in this episode, almost falls into the pretence without his own impetus, whereas Isak very definitely uses it to convince the boys. There’s a reason for this: Matteo has fallen into a reluctant relationship with his Sara and is still in it. Isak has removed himself from the relationship with his Sara, and has no ties at all with Emma. In fact, he uses her as his cover story before we meet her. Once she’s there, he has to carry through with it or he risks losing his mask with his friends. It’s very obvious that he’s only doing this for their sake by how quickly and how thoroughly he pulls back as soon as they’re gone. Matteo is still with his Sara, and we see him with her before we see him with the boys. He’s dragged into it by her but doesn’t want to be there at all, and yet he plays along. He seems kinder at the start (not to say Isak isn’t kind, but he hides that side of himself a lot more at the start of the season), and he doesn’t want to hurt Sara at all. Isak’s ‘insult her to intrigue her’ thing isn’t something I can see Matteo doing at all, even if he wasn’t already connected to Sara in a deeper way than Isak is to Emma.

The interesting thing here is that, despite the very deliberate facade Isak is wearing, Isak has a real connection with his friends and he has a happy enough life. I get the feeling that if Even hadn’t come along, Isak was reasonably happy with how things were. He may be tired of the pretence but it isn’t affecting his ability to engage in the rest of his life. For example, Isak has a much longer time with the boys in the bath and he’s much more present in the conversation. Matteo is very quiet by comparison, and is faced with explicit sex talk immediately, while Isak’s boys are much less forthright at this point (again, this ties into sex being part of Matteo’s learning curve; that’s all part of being present in his own life by the end). Part of this is because Matteo is isolating himself, putting himself on the edges and he quite clearly doesn’t really enjoy his life. From the start, Matteo is a lot softer with less hard edges, and so he feels a lot of the things in his life more obviously than Isak does. He’s also a lot more internalised than Isak is, even though they are both fairly clearly introverts.

Matteo has already gone through getting with Sara, so his comments to the boys about things with her are all vague; he has no need to convince the boys of his heterosexuality as he’s already got the cover he needs. Isak has to ‘perform’ in front of the boys to make good on his boasts, and indeed he has to make the boats in the first place to let them know he’s into girls when they question him. This is partly his own fault: he talks up his chances and talks a good talk so when Emma arrives he’s put on the spot. Still, even though the situations for each here is different, they’re both left alone with their own thoughts when the boys leave.

Interestingly, they’re both isolated and unhappy at the end of the bathroom section, but how they get there is different. Isak is there because of Emma and how that whole little farce had felt (pretty awful as it went on and he was left alone with her), whereas Matteo was already there before he got into the room and lets it out properly once the boys have left and he can be alone. Neither of them has any focus on the girls they’re with at this party; Isak is performing for the boys, and Matteo is so tuned out he can’t wait to get away from Sara. He’s not performing here, just genuinely totally not into it. They both reject sexual advances from the girls, though at different points in this episode. Emma has literally just met Isak and wants to go down on him, which flusters him because she’s just supposed to be an easy cover and not this forward this soon. Later in the episode, Sara wants to seal their newfound relationship with sex. Both boys are visibly uncomfortable (to the audience) with the idea and find ways to get out of it. Both girls don’t recognise how uncomfortable the boys are, though Sara seems to get it faster. She just always manages to talk herself out of it.

Getting the weed is different too. Isak’s boys are arguing about who ‘has’ to take it, whereas Matteo keeps it as a way of teasing when Abdi wants it back. They both have different responses to the police as well. Isak’s not at his own place, and just wants to get rid of the weed. Matteo fobs off responsibility for talking to them (but only after Linn also does), and plants the weed on Amira. Matteo’s actions are far more shitty to the person who confronts him about it, though both are shitty in trying to hide it somewhere that it will come back to bite someone else if found. This of course means Isak doesn’t know what happened to his weed, whereas Matteo does which in turn changes how they go about getting it back.

Isak in general is far more glib, able to use his wit to get himself out of trouble (eg with the police the way he talks to Emma etc), apart from the disastrous story he tries to spin Eva to get the weed back from her. Matteo is much less vocal even with his friends, and therefore less able to talk his way out of things. They both end the clip (or start the next one) with their Jonas, but Isak’s much more bro-ish. He seems by this point to be over whatever it was that he felt for Jonas. Whereas Matteo is very clearly still pining. This of course changes how they approach their love interests. Matteo seems hit by a truck, whereas Isak is flustered again. Isak sees Even in a very public place, catches his eye across a crowded cafeteria and immediately tunes out everything the others are saying. He’s ready, I think, to find this overwhelming big passion, the thing that will force him to drop his carefully cultivated mask. Matteo, on the other hand, is tuned out of his life already, moving once again away from his friends, going through the motions of the day. He wakes up suddenly when David appears. He doesn’t need to break a facade at all; he’s a bit more self aware I think, in terms of accepting who he is. So, what he needs is someone to push him out of his apathy and make him face life.

The social media stuff the morning after the party is interesting too. Isak is included and involved even if Eskild insults him a bit; he’s cuddled up with the others while they talk to Noora. Matteo leaves before they take the picture and so is once again excluded, even from his own bedroom, though again this is a deliberate choice he makes when Jonas and Hans are talking. Matteo flinching away from Jonas when Hans comes in is fascinating too. He’s hiding everything he’s feeling and it’s part of what’s isolating him so much. We see Isak consciously deploy a persona to cover up for who he is, so he puts himself out there almost as a larger than life version of himself. But Matteo doesn’t want that; his preference is to fade so far back into the shadows that no-one ever notices him and he does everything he can not to be noticed and not to be seen as different.

Having said that, Matteo is a lot more proactive in some ways than Isak (again, not to say Isak isn’t, but Matteo takes more action even at this point). It’s his choice to go and talk to Amira and try to get the weed back. This is partly because he knows exactly who has it and Isak doesn’t, but it plays out over the rest of the season as well. He’s an odd mix, actually, because he’ll let people tell him what he should think and he’s passively willing to go along with Sara but I think it’s because it doesn’t really matter to him. When it does matter, he’s all action and quite determined. Isak will be proactive in defence of his mask or persona, but he doesn’t do much about pushing in other ways. This is seen quite clearly at the kosegruppa meeting vs the abistreich meeting. Isak slips away, sure, but he follows Even outside and kind of lets the conversation come to him. For the first half, Even is definitely the leader and Isak follows, even if he picks it up more in the second half. Matteo, by contrast, speaks to David first, gets him to come along with him to the hallway and is the one offering weed. While they both take an active part in their respective conversations, Matteo is more of a leader definitely at the start. David does eventually engage further in the conversation and gives as good as he gets, but Matteo is the driver for a lot of the first half.

So that’s the first episode. Clearly, while our boys have some similarities and their stories are still mostly the same at this point, the differences in the way they are presented and the way they react have already turned up some big contrasts. It all boils down to what each has to learn, and as I said earlier, for Isak that’s to open up to himself in a more real and authentic way. To drop the mask and be true to himself. For Matteo that’s how to re-engage in life and stop hanging on the sidelines letting things passively come to him. They both actually make some progress with this stuff in this episode, but they both have a long way to go.

Episode two can be found over here.

#druck #skam #my meta stuff #my isak and matteo comparison stuff

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amphtaminedreams · 5 years

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To All the Characters I’ve Overly Identified with Before: Borderline Personality Disorder and Attachment to Fictional Characters

It’s been a month, and I’m still not over how Game of Thrones ended. I’m still not over the way that a character who, throughout the previous seventy something episodes of the show, was only ever ruthless towards people who were deserving of her wrath (within the context of westerosi justice because let’s not forget everyone’s favourite man of honour Ned Stark decapitated a young man for running for his life in the first episode), suddenly massacred a whole city in the penultimate episode. I’m not over the way that writers who spent the previous seasons showing that they were capable of translating the moral ambiguity of George R.R Martin’s characters from page to screen, got lazy and left us with a character whose actions became impossible to defend right as the show was ending. I’m not over the way that such a beautifully complex character who endured so much hurt and trauma was reduced to nothing more than a “crazy woman” by a couple of male writers in her final moments. I’m not over the fact that Emilia Clarke put her heart and soul into the character and did everything she could to bring Daenerys Targaryen to life for David Benioff and Dan Weiss to both literally and figuratively assassinate her.

I think those feels have been felt by a lot of Game of Thrones fans since the show ended. God knows I’ve watched enough youtube video essays and read enough articles and liked enough tweets reiterating the sentiment. Daenerys Targaryen was, in my opinion, the best character on Game of Thrones. I wasn’t angry because she didn’t end up sitting on the throne (though my boy Drogon made sure nobody else ever would either and I guess I can get behind that), I was angry because all the balance that made her character so great was thrown out the window in order to progress the story of her male counterpart and bring a show that probably could’ve done with another 2 seasons to an end. Dany has always had a dark side, she is the “fire” that the title of the book series refers to, but throughout the show, we’ve never seen her indulge that side to the point of no return. We’ve seen her wrestle with it and use it to exact punishment on those who deserve it when needs be, and that was part of what I liked about her. Not to go all feminist essay on anyone’s ass but we don’t usually get to see women in TV who are celebrated for their powers of intimidation, and I liked how prior to season 8, the narrative never made female characters like Dany or Arya or Brienne out to be monsters for killing people the same way that basically every single man on the show did at one point or another. I liked that sometimes she was a little excessive because it made sense, she did have “dragon” in her, and she still had lines she wouldn’t cross, clear values and principles; she fought for the innocent, for women and for children, and for freedom. On a personal level, I loved her because we watched her go from a lonely, scared and vulnerable girl to a strong, ambitious and self-assured woman and that was a trajectory I wanted to relate to.

And then all of a sudden, without any justification or build up at all, she’s a mass murderer of the same “downtrodden” people she always claimed to fight for. Fuck, I’m thinking. I literally watched that episode through my hands because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When I say I cried on and off for about 3 days after I watched the final episode, I’m not exaggerating; I only need to see a screen cap now a month later or an interview with Emilia Clarke and I’m off again. It literally felt as if I was mourning the loss of a real person. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had this kind of attachment to a character. Daenerys Targaryen was probably just the last in a long list of women I overly identified with.

I’m not much like her at all really, I’ve burnt myself from taking the film off my microwaved lasagne and not moving my thumb away from the hot air in time (lmao), however, I think I saw parts of myself in her journey and traits that I wanted to have, thus, I latched on. Before Daenerys Targaryen there was Spencer Hastings and before her there was Cassie Ainsworth and then if we’re gonna throw it all the way back, there was Hermione Granger (and some other characters I was more mildly obsessed with along the way, Katniss Everdeen, Bree Van de Kamp and Cosima Niehaus, I’m looking at you). I still love all those characters now but when their respective shows or films were actually current, I was completely obsessed. I spent my 16th birthday at the Harry Potter studios on the outskirts of London with my family, forget birthday parties or meals out with my friends. I wished more than anything that I had 2 best friends that loved me unconditionally and I did my best to emulate that drive and intelligence and work ethic everyone associates with Hermione. I told myself I was just like her even though I lacked the confidence to put my hand up in all but one of my classes and last time I checked, was just trying to conquer GCSEs not fight an evil wizard snaked hybrid man or whatever Voldemort is. I identified with the loneliness and the need for control that I saw in Cassie, and was like “oH eM GeE, tHat’s sO mE!” at Spencer’s perfectionism. When I was speeding for my exams (and then, unfortunately, for long after), I felt spiritually connected to that whole Pretty Little Liars arc where Spencer started popping adderall on the daily even though I could really only wish for someone to care about me enough to stalk me like A did and the worst possible outcome of my all nighter was not taking in enough content to bullshit my way through a 30 marker.

They would understand me, they would be my friend. They represent me. That was the baseline sentiment of my obsession. And I think that’s the borderline part of me jumping out. See, such a huge part of BPD is feeling unwanted and misunderstood and forgettable and really, deeply lonely. Like it’s a kind of loneliness I think you feel like an actual person can never really fulfil because the (faulty and not necessarily reflective of reality) thought pattern is that they’ll lose interest and leave you sooner or later. Fictional characters are always there, until the show gets cancelled or the character gets killed off, at least, and then comes the completely disproportionate tidal wave of grief. They exist in a different world too, a one that feels a lot less dangerous (even if it’s actually way more dangerous, I mean I really wouldn’t last five fucking minutes in Westeros) and detached from the often chronically muted reality of BPD.

Then there’s the trouble with the sense of self, part and package of BPD for most, which facilitates, you know, thinking that a genius witch or, like, any character in skins (because in hindsight as great as that show was, WHY DO NONE OF THEM HAVE JOBS YET SEEMINGLY AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF DRUGS AND PARENTS THAT NEVER SEEM TO CARE WHERE THE HELL THEY ARE!?) resembles you as a person in any way. Though I suppose I’m learning recently as I begin to reflect more on what I enjoy and value, I’ve never had much more than a vague idea of what my positive qualities are, so when I saw them fully realised in a character it was a treasure trove of mannerisms and traits and ways of carrying oneself to adopt. It becomes a mould into which you can squeeze the ball of meh-ness and uncertainty you feel you resemble. Now I’m realising that although it might take me a little more time and a lot more effort, it’s much more rewarding to become the very best version of myself, but back then, I suppose I didn’t recognise why I was doing what I was doing.

I only got diagnosed with BPD and started learning about it when it was 19, so all the years before that were pretty much spent unaware of the reasons why I had these quirks. As I “recover” (I suppose that’s the right word) and I get back into hobbies and spend more time with friends, I feel like I’m beginning to discover more and more of who I am. I’m starting to accept that there are positive things about me and plenty of things for people to like, right here in this world, not some fictional one.

I still love characters way too much and get overly attached and invested in TV shows but even that doesn’t necessarily have to be something to be ashamed of. When I’ve got into *ahem* discussions with people online about characters before, I’ve occasionally gotten the “why do you care so much, it’s not real life!” in response, and I mean, there’s definitely a point to be made if your passion for something is causing you to lash out at real life people with real life feelings. But when you’re not, when it can give you hours of discussion and entertainment and can drive you to make real positive changes in the world too, what’s wrong with passion? There’s nothing I love more than having a conversation with someone who I can tell really loves what they’re talking about, so why should I be ashamed of having the capacity to become deeply invested in things too? I think as long as it’s not taking over my life as I have allowed it to do so in the past, there’s nothing wrong with having passion for fictional things or for anything, for that matter. As long as it’s not something fucked up, like idk, white supremacy or Rick and Morty (JOKING).

I don’t regret loving all the things I loved because being a huge Harry Potter fan for so many years did give me an escape when I absolutely hated myself and couldn’t find much enjoyment in real life. I hope that if I do have children one day, they’ll love it too, maybe not quite as much as I did but enough for it to give them all the joy it gave me, all the same. So in summary, yeah, fuck David Benioff and Dan Weiss (lmao, I’m joking, they’re just shitty original screenplay writers who could probably do with a class or two on how to write female characters), but also, understand before you make fun of someone for being overly invested in something that there’s probably a good reason for it and that, at the end of the day, they’re usually not hurting anyone. I’ll probably still be stanning Daenerys Targaryen and pretending season 8 episode 5 didn’t happen until the day I die. Let me live, okay?

Lauren x

#bpd #harry potter #Hermione granger #Emma watson #cassie ainsworth #skins #gameofthrones #got #antigot #DaenerysTargaryen #daenerys targaryen #emilia clarke

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signoraviolettavalery · 5 years

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strategist-scientia replied to your post “I know Carina is bringing Malex into the light and I am infinitely...”

Kinda scared now tbh because Carina said "Yes" when someone suggested that Michael is probably reminded of Jesse Manes's hand in causing the deaths of his people whenever he looks at Alex. ��

I hope it’s ok that I use your response as the jumping-off point for some meta, because I’ve been wanting to write this since i saw Carina’s tweets, and the inevitable Malex panicking that ensued. There’s a couple tweets about Michael’s headspace that she made that I want to get into, as I consider where Michael’s character will go next season and what that might mean for Malex.

Now, my immediate response to this is: Yes?? Good?? Carina is saying Michael is going to have a character arc next season, and this is a good thing. Characters need arcs, and frankly, I’ve been frustrated that most of his “arc” this season has just been taking care of other people. Equally frankly, I’m glad that this will be the arc, because Michael is completely traumatized right now. He not only lost his family right after finding them, but he’s witnessed the genocide of his race. I’m glad the show is going to deal with that instead of sweep it under the rug. That’s what Michael s a character deserves. And I know it sucks to put queer characters through trauma and misery and suffering, because it seems like that’s the only thing they ever get to experience in narratives. But in a well-written story, you can’t shield your characters from the world and have nothing bad ever happen to them. There need to be low points in order for there to be development, as long as there are high points.

The other tweet that people have been worrying about is this one, about how Michael will react to Alex and how their relationship will changed, based on the fact that Alex’s family is responsible for literally all of the suffering of Michael’s:

This is where people start worrying that Malex will crash and burn, or that Michael will blame Alex for what happened even though it’s not actually Alex’s fault.

So, first of all, I’m going to point out the obvious: it doesn’t sound like English is this person’s first language (which isn’t a dig at them, but just the observation that there may be a language/communication barrier here). Carina’s “yes” is vague af, and twitter is a really shitty medium to sort-of-but-not-really hint at character motivations and what’s coming.

Moving on from that, my thoughts are that Michael isn’t going to outright blame Alex - after all, Alex didn’t do anything. In fact, Alex has literally shut down project Shepard and blackmailed his father to protect Michael, and if Michael knows about project shepard he knows this. Logically, he understands this. But I do think that Michael will pull away from Alex - just as he’ll pull away from Max, Isobel, Maria, and even Liz. He’s going to need space, and he might get self-destructive in all his relationships, not just the one with Alex, because he’s going to blame himself for what happened. It’ll be difficult to watch, but I think that Alex, who himself has extensive experience sabotaging his own relationship as a result of fear and trauma, will understand where he’s coming from and try to help.

I do also think Michael will have a hard time with Alex specifically. Again, it’s not that he’ll blame Alex, because he clearly didn’t blame Alex for his hand, if his desire to rekindle a relationship ten years later is any indication. But Alex will be a living, breathing reminder of the Manes legacy, which has taken literally everything from Michael, starting with his hand and ending with his family. It’s going to get complicated, because just last episode, Michael was telling Max that he believes that there’s no place for him here (on Earth) - something that Jesse made him believe, and something of which his hand serves as a reminder. And now he has even more proof, painful, heartrending, visceral proof, that there is no place for him on this planet, in the sense that humanity as a whole does not accept him for what he is. And the Manes legacy is largely responsible for this.

But. The irony is that while the Manes family has destroyed his family, his life, his home, and his hope, Alex has been all of those things for him. Alex offered him a home when he had none. Alex told him “you’re my family.” Alex, as Michael said in 1x11, made him believe there’s is a place for him here on earth. Home can be a person, and Alex has been his.

And I think Michael will realize that. If Liz can get over the fact that Max covered up her sister’s murder and was responsible for her family suffering hate crimes for ten years, then Michael can get over Alex having a legacy that he has completely and utterly rejected. But it will take time, because trauma isn’t rational, and because Alex did enlist in the military and become a “Manes man” before he ultimately chose Michael. So Michael will have to reconcile those two things - what Alex’s family took from him, and the fact that Alex himself gave back all those things to him. Honestly, I think it’s going to be the culmination of the arc that they’ve been planting the seeds of this season - that home can be a person. Michael Vlamis also hinted that Micheal probably won’t be deciding whether to leave the planet this season, so perhaps this will be a decision he’ll have to make next season. Alex will give him the spaceship piece and set him free, understanding that Michael has never felt like he belongs on Earth and that now he feels like he belongs even less, and that his family is responsible for it. And Michael will have to realize that despite Alex’s legacy, which he has outright rejected, Alex is his home.

It’ll be a long journey, but I honestly think it’ll be fine in the end. Think of it this way: ships, just like characters, need arcs. I know we all say we’d happily watch an entire season of them just cuddling in bed, but come on. None of us actually would. We’d like an actual story. That’s why we tuned in. We want to see characters facing challenges and overcoming them. And yes, just like with queer characters, we don’t want queer pairings to just keep suffering endlessly. But we do want them to have actual, meaningful storylines. And what Carina is hinting at above sounds like an actual storyline. It’s Michael working through legitimate trauma instead of sweeping it under the rug, and Alex learning to live with the legacy of his family. If done well, this is a good storyline. The alternative is either no storyline, or contrived relationship drama, and no one wants that. Remember when, on The Vampire Diaries, Damon and Elena finally got together and the writers had to come up with a dozen reasons to break them up (the sire bond, Katherine possessing Elena, Damon temporarily dying and Elena erasing her memories of him and about a dozen other “plots’)? We really, really don’t want that. We want an actual arc.

Of course, how much you believe Carina and the writers will do justice to this arc depends on how much you trust them to actually meaningfully write it, and that’s up to each viewer to decide on their own. Based on my own personal experience, I think it’ll be fine, because whatever the various flaws of season 1 of Roswell (and they definitely exist), the emotional beats have rung true to me. I understand why characters behave the way they do, their fears, their traumas, and their progress (with some exceptions). So, I think we’ll be fine.

Part of the reason I’m so confident is because every other time we panicked because of a tweet, a promo, or a promo photo, we turned out to be pretty wrong to panic. Let’s recap:

1x09 This is the OG throwback episode, and when Shiri leaked that photo of Michael and Maria naked in the desert, we panicked. We thought Michael and Maria would have a full-blown romance and Michael would leave behind Alex and forget about him, or that Maria would sleep with Michael while knowing about Alex, or any number of worst-case scenarios.

What actually happened: Alex ended things, with finality. Previously, he’d walked away - and we’re led to believe he’s done this multiple times, which means that he’s also come back multiple times, because to walk away again, he had to come back first. But now, for the first time ever in ten years, probably, he said “we’re definitely over.” The love of Michael’s life broke his fucking heart by making him believe they could never have a future together, and Michael’s response was literal suicidal ideation. That line about “I’m just wishing a meteor would strike me down and end my suffering”? That’s suicidal ideation, y’all.

So yeah, he hooked up with Maria because he needed comfort and a connection with someone - but one that he was 100% certain wouldn’t get romantically complicated and messy. He picked Maria because he had a connection with her but thought there wasn’t a chance in the world that she’d catch feelings.

And then Alex came back to him and he took him back and bared his fucking soul and revealed every single one of his deepest secrets.

1x11 This was the UFO emporium re-opening episode, and everybody panicked that Michael and Maria would talk and kiss and/or hook up in the place of Malex’s first kiss. Come on, guys. Like, I get panic, but this was a bit much.

What happened instead: Michael misses Maria, who was pretty much his only friend, and tries to get back onto the same page they were (flirty banter that meant nothing), but which is pretty hard to do once you’ve slept together. Michael believes he and Alex are completely over, and....he skips the Emporium reopening (probably because it’s too painful). Then, Maria, the person he pretty much considers his only friend, gets roofied and possessed by an alien serial killer. So yeah, he’s concerned, and he watches over her, because Michael Guerin is, at heart, a protector who takes care of people, and frankly, if he wasn’t worried about Maria, I’d like him slightly less as a person. Maria drunkenly indicates potential feelings for him, which he shows absolutely no indication of actually reciprocating (he looks concerned and frustrated at best).

1x12 We all thought Malex was going to break up in this episode, despite the fact that they were already broken up and Michael thought they were “over.” We knew there was a tear-inducing Malex moment and we listened to Tyler’s song and I saw no end of posts going around saying Malex was going to break up.

What happened instead: Alex confessed his love for Michael, called Michael family, stayed by him in the face of literal certain death, and physically and emotionally supported him during a moment of devastating heartbreak.

So yes, I get the worry. I especially get the worry because apparently The Magicians fucked over their queer viewers just last night. Believe me, I understand, and I’m not a person to have faith easily. I’ve been through Supernatural fandom and the great Destiel queerbait that was season 8. I’ve been through Sherlock fandom and The Johnlock Conspiracy of seasons 3/4. I am intimately familiar with the nonsense shows pull on queer viewers, and I understand the context in which queer viewers are wary of trusting and investing emotionally. I’m a queer viewer as well, and I get it. I really do. But my personal experience of Roswell has been one of the fandom panicking (because we’ve been burned so many times), followed by us getting literal fanfiction on our screens, with actual love confessions and words like “cosmic” and all the tropes. So in this particular case, I choose to trust, because thus far, I think the show has done well by Malex for the most part, and because so far, almost all of our worries have turned out to be for nothing. And I’m also excited for Malex to have meaningful storylines and things to work through.

That’s my two cents. Thanks for letting me ramble. Feel free to reblog if you think we could stand to spread some positivity.

#strategist-scientia #roswell new mexico #malex #roswell new mexico meta #malex positivity #roswell new mexico speculation #malex speculation #michael guerin #character analysis #character arcs #seriously thanks for letting me ramble

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