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artificialqueens · 4 years

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Have Yourself a Super Merry Christmas 2/3--Christmas Present: No Other Version of Me I Would Rather Be Tonight (Branjie)--athena2

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone that read and commented on part 1, I really appreciate it! I’m so happy to be back in this universe and I hope you enjoy this chapter! Please leave some feedback if you’d like! Thank you so much to Writ for beta-ing and brainstorming and also sorting all the girls into Hogwarts houses with me. You’re the best. Chapter title from Jackie and Wilson by Hozier.

*This chapter does have a fire, implied PTSD/anxiety, and some mild religious content.*

Read on AO3

—

Christmas Eve has always been Vanessa’s favorite day.

It was the day she couldn’t move through the house without bumping into a cousin or aunt or person she was supposedly related to but had never seen in her life. The day she ate so much food she didn’t think she could eat dessert, but always did. The day when everyone laughed and screamed and six different conversations were shouted at one table.

Now, it’s Christmas Eve morning and Brooke is in the kitchen and Vanessa is in bed, her body wanting to get up but her mind commanding her to stay because she shouldn’t be allowed to have fun without her family.

It’s gotten easier over the years, the sense of loss. The feeling of wanting her mother to hug her while she cries, of wanting to call her brother and listen to him roast annoying family members, have lessened since the fire. Now, she has Brooke to hold her, A’keria to laugh with, and she tries not to feel like she’s replacing her family. She thinks of what Nina told her at her last appointment. Nina said she could still honor her family’s memories while making her own, that she doesn’t have to feel guilty for having a good time without them, that she isn’t a bad person for being alive when they aren’t.

She’s going to do her best to listen to Nina, to let herself have fun without beating herself up for it. She jumps out of bed and crisps up French toast and Brooke piles hand-whipped cream on top, super-strength making short work of it. She can’t stop smiling, climbing into Brooke’s lap instead of her perfectly good chair, the morning dusted with the Christmas magic she always felt as a kid.

“Is it lasagna time now?” Vanessa asks.

“Yes.” Brooke grins.

Vanessa ties on her apron, quickly spattered with butter and parsley and other unknown substances.

Brooke is layering the lasagna and Vanessa is wiping away sauce that she somehow managed to fling on the wall before Brooke notices. Brooke has that tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows she gets when she’s focused, her tongue sticking out a little, and it’s adorable, but also kind of sexy, and Vanessa thinks with a jolt of excitement that she might have another present for Brooke after everyone leaves tonight.

Vanessa throws cheese at Brooke that sticks to her forehead, and Brooke splashes sauce at Vanessa’s apron, the food fight reaching its peak when Vanessa tries to throw flour but it backfires into her hair, and Brooke laughs so hard she falls on the kitchen floor, Vanessa retreating to the shower.

“How did you get cheese in the bathtub?” Brooke demands when she enters the bathroom for her shower later.

—

“You doin’ okay after the breakup, Nessie?” Her brother pulls her to a quiet corner of the house near the bathroom, though it won’t stay quiet very long considering the amount of cheese their lactose intolerant uncle consumed.

“Yeah.” She punches his arm. “And don’t call me Nessie.”

“Real shitty of her to dump you before Christmas with no reason. And she planned that beach vacation for you next week. That’s just cold.”

“Do you really need to remind me?” she retorts, pulling out the napkin-wrapped cookie she’d stored in her pocket that morning. Her mother would yell if she caught her, but Vanessa needs cookies to forget how the woman in her bed last week suddenly decided she didn’t want to be there anymore, how the first and only real relationship she’s had went up in smoke for no reason.

“This girl that started at my job is cute.” He gives her a knowing look. “I’ve been dropping hints about you.”

“I don’t–”

“She’s tall,” he tempts.

“How tall?” Vanessa shoots back, unable to help herself, swatting her brother when he smirks.

He shrugs. “Maybe five-seven? Taller than you, that’s for sure.” He pats the top of her head. Vanessa considers the day he outgrew her an injustice of the world.

“Come down here and I’ll fight you like when we were kids,” she threatens, and she’s sure he’s remembering the time she clobbered him with her Nikes.

“Okay, okay.” He holds his hands up, then pulls her against his side. “Seriously, you don’t need her ass anyway. Anyone that dumped you is an idiot. The right girl is out there for you somewhere, and she’ll get you that beach vacation you always wanted for Christmas.”

She hugs him tightly. Even though she was planning on having a girlfriend with her and dodging all her aunts’ questions about why she was single, things feel right. Maybe it’s because things have always felt right to her on Christmas, like all the world’s problems could be solved with a snowflake sugar cookie and a sparkly bow. She’s not a kid anymore, but it still feels like the ribbons and wrapping paper and shouting relatives are patching the hole in her heart, making her forget all about the asshole that dumped her.

Can she feel her body hurtling toward that night, less than a year away? Can she feel the ash clinging to her skin as her world comes down around her? The emptiness when she looks around for someone to help her, to tell her where her family is, only to meet silence and smoky air? The loneliness of having no one, no mom or dad or brother or nosy aunt to talk to or hug her?

She can’t, and Vanessa Mateo eats cookies a happy woman.

—

“Brooke?” Vanessa asks nervously after breakfast.

“Yeah?”

“My f–we always went to church on Christmas Eve, and I haven’t been since…you know, and I kinda want to, but I don’t know if I can do it alone.”

It’s okay to ask for help, Nina always says, and maybe she couldn’t ask directly, but this is close enough, and from Brooke’s kind eyes, she gets the hint.

“Of course I’ll go with you,” Brooke says. “I’ll be there the whole time.”

They slide into the pew later that afternoon, sunset throwing bright colors from the stained glass windows all over the church. Vanessa is restless, hand flying to the snowflake necklace Brooke got her, hoping to steady herself. Church had been boring as a kid, and she and her brother had secret thumb wars in the pew. Now, she clamps her hand on Brooke’s knee to gain control of the emotions whirling inside her like a winter wind, moving too fast to settle on one.

In a perfect world, her family would be here, and they’d all love Brooke. But it also occurs to her that if her parents were here, Brooke wouldn’t be, because Vanessa wouldn’t have her powers without the fire. She’d just be normal Vanessa, joking with her family, not knowing Brooke existed, unaware she was missing the happiness Brooke brings her. She wouldn’t change her life with Brooke for anything, but did she have to suffer so much to get it? She’s grateful for Brooke always, but is she supposed to be grateful for all she went through? She knows from Nina that she doesn’t need to justify her trauma, and she isn’t going to.

Vanessa cranes her neck up at the painted ceiling, angels dancing in a soft blue sky. I found her, Miguel, she thinks. The right girl. I found her, and I love her. And she’s tall, too, you jerk. She manages a smile through her thin line of tears. Brooke’s thumb wipes them gently, and then her arm nestles around Vanessa’s shoulders, pulling her close and whispering soft comforts.

Vanessa sings the songs in her head, and she knows her family is singing with her.

—

They set up the dining room with their fancy plates decorated with reindeer and polar bears. Vanessa pulls on her blue Frosty the Snowman sweater with snowflakes on the sleeves and Brooke wears her green one with a sloth eating cookies on the front.

“Why are we wearing scarves in the house?” Brooke questions as Vanessa wraps the bright yellow Hufflepuff scarf around Brooke’s neck.

“Because Yvie wanted to do it and I’m not about to argue with the bitch,” Vanessa answers, grabbing her own Gryffindor scarf.

“Fair enough. I feel like Yvie is the one of us actually capable of murder.” Brooke shrugs.

“True, but Silk is out for blood in bingo this year. She’s still pissed Scarlet beat her last time.”

“Merry Christmas.” Brooke bends down to kiss her, and Vanessa doesn’t have to remind herself to be happy, because she already is.

—

Brooke doesn’t have many memories to go on, but she’s positive Christmas Eve is one of her favorite days.

She replays that memory of herself at six years old constantly, speechless with joy that she has it to look back on. It makes her feel cozy, like she does wrapped in her blankets at night, and that feeling stays with her all day.

The church is nice, but unfamiliar. Brooke assumes her parents must have taken her at some point, but she doesn’t get any flickers of memory in the pew, and she’s almost grateful that her mind is clear to take in the scene: the bright red and white poinsettias on the altar, the stained glass windows come alive with sunset, the smiling paintings on the ceiling.

Brooke knows this is a big deal for Vanessa, and she’s so proud of her for asking for help and doing this when it can’t possibly be easy for her. Vanessa is always praising Brooke but reluctant to praise herself, and Brooke vows to make sure Vanessa knows how strong she is. Brooke doesn’t mind Vanessa’s nails digging into her knee; she just wraps her arm around her in safety and relishes in the sturdy warmth of Vanessa against her side.

Brooke doesn’t know what to do, what the rules are here. Is she supposed to pray? If there is some higher power that let her become a lab experiment, that let Vanessa lose her family, does she want to pray to it? She can’t remember any prayers, if she ever knew them to begin with, but she tells her parents that she’s happy and that she found someone she loves more than anything, just in case they’re listening.

—

They set the table and Brooke finishes the whipped cream for her peanut butter-swirl cheesecake, and her and Vanessa are getting the food laid out and giggling over what sweaters everyone will wear when the guilt breaks through, like a wind wailing at the windows that finally shatters the glass.

It hits her hard at holidays, when everyone is over and they’re a big happy family. When everything she has, all the love shared toward her is on display, filling her senses. That’s when it gets hard to look around at it all and think she deserves it. Killing wasn’t part of her missions, but she didn’t need to kill to ruin lives. And she had ruined so many. She stole formulas and medicines that people spent years on, that could have helped countless people who were sick or suffering. She wounded heroes that could have saved more people if she didn’t force them to retreat. She destroyed buildings and laboratories and homes, stripped the people inside of their safety. She shed blood and broke bones and sent people to the hospital with injuries that would plague them the rest of their lives.

And she knows. She knows it wasn’t her fault, that she wasn’t in control of herself. She knows she can’t blame herself, and after so many sessions with Nina, she doesn’t. But she still did those things, and someone who did those things didn’t deserve someone like Vanessa, snatching a steaming roll off the tray. Someone that did those things didn’t deserve the friends on their way over, or the cats at her feet, or the safety and happiness she’s been given–

A hand on her shoulder silences the thoughts. “I could hear you thinkin’ a mile away,” Vanessa says softly. “You okay?”

Nina says she doesn’t always have to be okay, and she knows Vanessa would see through the lie anyway, so she shakes her head.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just–you and A’keria and everyone, everything we have…sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve it, because of what I did.” Brooke sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I just talked about this with Nina, I’m sorry.”

“Shh, you know you don’t have to be sorry,” Vanessa soothes, rubbing circles on Brooke’s back. “If it helps, I just talked about basically the same thing with her. But you do deserve it, Brooke. I know your brain tells you you don’t, but you do. We both do, okay? We deserve to be happy.”

“But–”

“No buts. You listen to me, Brooke Lynn Hytes-Mateo. You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met. You love me, and you take care of me, and you always help people that need it. And I love you, and I’ll always take care of you, and I’ll always help you when you need it.”

Brooke turns around and pulls Vanessa to her chest, hearts pulsing together. She knows how hard it is for Vanessa to talk about her feelings, but she’s let herself be vulnerable twice today, and Brooke knows how much Vanessa loves her. She knows that tomorrow she’ll take her medication, and next week she’ll go to Nina, and she’ll keep fighting.

“I love you,” Brooke breathes.

“I love you too. Always.”

A fist pounds on the door. “Let us in, hoes!” Silky booms.

Silky barges in first, thrusting the pork roast she made at Brooke to parade up and down the kitchen in her green sweater with working Christmas lights, clashing with her red Gryffindor scarf. Everyone else trails behind, arms loaded with dishes and presents that get tossed on the table to resume the fashion show.

A’keria flaunts her sparkly red reindeer sweater, griping that the Hufflepuff scarf she was forced to wear doesn’t match. Scarlet is decked out like a Christmas tree, bright green sweater dripping with tinsel that reflects the light so harshly Brooke’s eyes water if she stares too long, Gryffindor scarf blending into her red hair. Finally Yvie strolls in, in a black sweater with a Santa hat-wearing T-Rex on the front, scarf half-blue and half-green.

“This is my hand-sewn Slytherclaw scarf, because I defy categorization,” Yvie announces proudly.

“You defy somethin’, all right,” Silky mutters.

Yvie walks over to Brooke and Vanessa, smirk spreading on her face at Vanessa’s sweater.

“Tell me you picked that sweater on purpose,” Yvie begs.

“What do you mean? Don’t you be saying anything about my sweater. Frosty is cute–oh, damn,” Vanessa mutters, and Brooke realizes for the first time, unable to hold back her smile.

Yvie roars with laughter and clutches at her side. “I can’t believe you got a Frosty the fucking Snowman sweater and neither of you realized Brooke literally is Frosty. That’s tragic.”

“What’s really tragic is them not being Snow Miser and Heat Miser from Year Without a Santa Claus,” A’keria insists. “I would’ve made costumes just to see that.”

“Don’t you all have something to do?” Vanessa demands.

—

Dinner has been devoured, Silky demanding that A’keria produce a recipe for her cheesy potatoes to ensure she wasn’t being ‘poisoned by rabbit food’, when Yvie gets the look.

Vanessa always refers to it as the That’s So Raven look, prompting Yvie to lecture on the differences between them despite the undeniable accuracy of Vanessa’s comparison.

Yvie stares blankly at the wall, and Brooke herds everyone but Scarlet to the kitchen to give her some privacy. Brooke hates when people are there when she has a flashback, skin prickling with their stares when she returns from wherever her mind was trapped, and she assumes Yvie would feel the same.

They stand around impatiently, and Brooke can’t fight the tension creeping into her shoulders, the sense that something is about to happen, and it intensifies when Scarlet calls them all back in.

“There’s gonna be a fire,” Yvie explains, hand wrapped around Scarlet’s. “At a townhouse down the street–73’s the number–and the fire department can’t get there.”

“When?” Vanessa asks, urgency radiating off her.

“Soon,” Yvie says vaguely. “Right after Silk spills her drink.”

“I’m not spilling anything, Momma’s too smooth for that!” Silky swings her arm around to prove her point and her glass flies off the table, the fragments floating in a pool of orange soda on the floor.

“Damn it, Silk, this is why we can’t have nice things,” Vanessa whines.

“So I guess this is happening,” Scarlet mutters.

“Suit up?” Brooke suggests.

Vanessa nods. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

—

Bright orange flames sear through Vanjie’s vision, smoke billowing around the people assembled on the street. If this goes too far it will be a pile of ash, just like the one–You’re not there, she reminds herself.

“You’re sure about this?” Frost asks seriously, like she’s read her mind.

“I’m sure. Silk said there’s a car accident at some intersection, fire trucks are held up. We have to do this,” Vanjie responds.

“Okay.”

“Silk and A’keria, you’re on crowd control,” Vanjie commands. “Frost”–she has to think of her as Frost now, can’t let the fact that it’s Brooke behind that mask, that she might get hurt, enter her mind– “Frost, you gotta tame that fire. Me, Scarlet, and Yvie are gonna see who needs help.”

Everyone nods and assumes their positions.

“Be careful, okay?” Frost says. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Vanjie replies, trying not to think that the last time they had a farewell like this, it ended with her in the snow in a churchyard.

Vanjie talks to the crowd as Frost fights the flames, trying to determine who got out and who is stuck inside. For all the times she resisted going to Nina, she knows that those sessions and the breathing techniques Nina taught her are the only things keeping her from plummeting into her memories, the only things keeping her alert and on her feet.

You’re not there. You’re not there. She breathes and takes in her surroundings, counting the people on the street, windows on the house. She’s okay.

“There’s a kid on the second floor balcony,” Yvie says. “The fire’s almost gone, but the building isn’t safe. We can’t go in and he can’t come down.”

“Firetruck’s still five minutes out,” Silk informs them. “I don’t know how long the balcony’s gonna hold…”

“I got the kid,” Vanjie declares. The back of the townhouse opens into a tiny, snow-covered patio, the kind she hopes she and Brooke can have some day.

Wailing rings out in the night, a kid standing on the charred balcony, railing melted and gnarled like broken teeth, base warped downward from the heat. A piece of it crashes onto the lawn, and Vanjie knows they don’t have five minutes to wait. The kid’s gonna have to jump.

“Hey!” she calls up. “It’s gonna be okay. You gotta jump, okay? I’ll catch you.”

“I-I can’t,” the kid cries.

“Sure you can. Be really brave and jump, okay?” Another piece of metal breaks off, sinking into the snow. She needs to get this kid out now.

“I can’t! I’m not brave like you,” he sniffles.

The idea pops into her head on a wave of desperation. “You wanna be brave like me?” She peels off her mask—she can just hear Silk scolding her for making mask removal a habit—and sends it soaring over the balcony. “Put my mask on. Pretend you’re a superhero, okay?”

The kid smooths it over his eyes, and Vanjie counts. “On three, okay? One, two…” The kid inches toward the ledge and jumps, slamming into her arms with a loud cry.

“You good, kid?” she asks, lowering him gently to the ground.

“Y-yeah.” His arms close around her in a tight hug. “Thank you.”

“Just my job.” She plays it casual to hide the tears leaking from her eyes. The kid is tiny and warm, like a puppy, against her, and it’s nice. She and Brooke have chatted idly about having a kid one day and damn if this doesn’t make her want one.

He steps back, holding her mask out. “Here.”

Vanjie hesitates. She’s about to tell the kid to keep it, but Silk’s lecture on secrecy runs through her mind. She wouldn’t have cared who saw her and had a mask with her DNA on it before, because she had nothing to lose. But now she has more than she could have dreamed of, a life she wants to protect forever, and she puts the mask back on before taking the kid back to his parents.

Their happy reunion springs more tears in Vanjie’s eyes, and her head spins around frantically for Frost. Vanjie spots her and runs, colliding into her and hugging her to make sure she’s really okay, heart slowing from its pounding. They’re both okay, and she breathes for the first time since they got outside.

It’s only when she pulls away that she sees the red painting the side of Frost’s neck.

“You’re bleeding,” Vanjie says.

“One of the windows exploded and a piece of glass got me. I’m fine, it’s nothing,” Frost insists, but Yvie emerges and shakes her head lightly.

“She’s gonna need a couple stitches. It’s a small cut but it’s too deep to heal without them,” Yvie explains.

“Please? I’m fine, really,” Frost begs, and her voice is so small that Vanjie almost tells Yvie to forget it. It pains her to do this, but Frost will be worse off if she doesn’t.

“I’m sorry, baby, but you need them,” Vanjie says.

“It’s okay.” Frost sighs in acceptance, taking Vanjie’s hand. Vanjie grips back, sharing some of her strength with Frost.

“I can do it for you,” Yvie offers. “I had Ra’jah teach me. Then we can just go to your place, no doctors.”

Everyone agrees, and ten minutes later the masks are off as A’keria gets Brooke set up on the couch, helping calm her, and Vanessa follows after Yvie to get her med kit.

“Yvie?”

“Yeah?”

She grabs Yvie’s arm to make sure she listens. “When you do the stitches, tell Brooke what you’re doing before you do it,” Vanessa instructs. “They never told her what they were doing at the lab. She gets scared when she doesn’t know.”

Vanessa had almost punched a wall when Brooke admitted that the lab would do their procedures without warning or explanations, and Vanessa had told Ra’jah to go slow and explain everything she did so Brooke wouldn’t be so scared and expect pain every time she saw a doctor.

“I understand.”

Vanessa gets Brooke some Tylenol, knowing not to push her into taking something stronger. Brooke refused anything that made her mind cloudy, anything that made her feel like she wasn’t in control. She swallows the pill and Vanessa drops next to her on the couch, hand wrapping around Brooke’s sweaty one.

“I’m gonna disinfect it now, okay? It’ll sting a little,” Yvie checks with Brooke, who nods.

“Chicks dig scars, you know,” Silky says.

“They do?” Brooke asks, cringing as the disinfectant meets her skin.

Yvie explains that she’s going to start stitching it up. Brooke winces as Yvie pulls her skin together and Vanessa holds on tighter, lifting her other hand to stroke Brooke’s back with a whispered ‘you’re okay’ before turning to Silky.

“First of all, don’t be calling me a chick. I’m a tiger or some shit.” Vanessa glares at Silky. “And you know the scars don’t matter to me, baby,” she soothes, knowing how self-conscious Brooke could get.

“It’ll be a small one,” Yvie adds in reassurance. “Plus it’s behind your ear, so it’s barely noticeable.”

Scarlet talks about how she’s started online education classes and might become a teacher, and A’keria exudes her calm and has them all in tears over the time she moved Silky’s desk chair little by little until Silky completely missed it and fell on the floor, and Brooke is relaxed as Yvie tapes a gauze pad over the wound.

“All done,” Yvie says.

“It’s present time, bitches!” Scarlet yells.

—

Brooke slips her arm around Plastique as they pose for the camera. The air is alive with conversation around her, the ballet studio Christmas party in eager discussion over the upcoming tour.

“You nervous, Brooke?” Plastique asks, once they’re away from all the phone flashes.

“Maybe a little. It’s my first tour as co-director, you know?” She sighs. “I can’t believe this is really happening.” Some small part of her wishes her parents could have been here to see it. Next May marks 12 years since she lost them. Most days she’s fine, the absence just a dull ache in the back of her mind, like a missing tooth you only noticed when your tongue brushed the empty space. But sometimes, when she’s around lots of people, people that could feel like family if Brooke would just let them, the absence burns like a raw wound.

“You’re gonna kill it. I’ve only been your assistant a year, but I know you got this.”

“Thanks.”

“Soooo…” Plastique begins, the word drawn out until she runs out of breath.

“So?”

“I think 2018 should be the year we get you a girlfriend.”

Brooke sighs. “Look, I appreciate the thought, but we’ve got the tour coming up. I don’t have time.”

“I just want to see you happy, B,” Plastique says softly.

“I am happy,” Brooke insists. She is. She has her dream job, friends, a tour set out in front of her in just three months. So why does it feel like she’s lying?

“I know you are,” Plastique deflects. “It’s just sometimes I feel like a part of you isn’t. Like a part of you is lonely. You deserve someone that loves you.”

Brooke doesn’t say anything. Plastique knows about her parents but she’s never brought them up, if dancing around the topic counts as bringing them up.

Brooke plasters a smile on her face. “After the tour wraps up, maybe I’ll go on one of those dating apps.” Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have someone to share things with, someone who would love her even when she got quiet sometimes, lost in her own thoughts.

Plastique claps her hands and then pulls Brooke on to the dance floor. Brooke goes with it, letting her body take over and clear her mind, the night blurring by as she twirls around with Plastique.

Can she feel her body hurtling toward that night, just three months away? Can she feel the pain as the bones in her arm and leg shatter, as her ribs puncture her insides? The emptiness in her mind when she tries to speak her name and remember who she is? The loneliness crushing her when she goes over a year with no friends to laugh with, no one to talk to at all?

She can’t, and Brooke Lynn Hytes dances a happy woman.

—

Brooke forgets all about the cut behind her ear as the living room fills with shouts, Yvie shrieking that the dinosaur succulent holder she got will look great in her and Scarlet’s apartment and A’keria demanding everyone look at her new jewelry.

Brooke unwraps new cookbooks she can’t wait to read, plus new boots and clothes and more blankets, so she can roll herself up into what Vanessa calls a blanket burrito at night.

Vanessa loves the new cooling pajamas Brooke got her, and the stuffed lion she got just because it was cute. Vanessa opens the red dress she would drool at in the window of her favorite store, along with sneakers and a fancy purse, and everything is better than Brooke could have dreamed.

She’s surrounded by family, and she doesn’t fight it. She lets herself smile and laugh and feel loved.

Brooke fiddles with a bow as Vanessa opens her last two presents.

Vanessa’s eyes widen as she sees the flowers neatly arranged in a shadow box.

“Wait. Brooke, are these…”

Brooke nods.

When they first moved in together, after Brooke got shot and was recovering mentally and physically from what she’d been through, Vanessa would bring home flowers every Friday. Soft lilacs one week, sunny orange tulips another, deep irises the next. Vanessa had said she knew they couldn’t magically heal Brooke, but she thought they might cheer her up a little. Even on her bad days, when the worries and anxiety preyed on her and told her she was worthless, the flowers could bring a smile to Brooke’s face, give her hope that she would be okay.

Vanessa didn’t know, but Brooke had taken a flower from each bouquet and watched tutorials on how to preserve them, keeping them in her dresser so they would always be near.

She decided to give them to Vanessa, so they can both have the memory of those days, bodies becoming accustomed to each other, peeking over the vase of flowers and smiling during breakfast, hopeful of their future.

“Brooke, they’re beautiful,” Vanessa breathes. “I love them so much.” She reaches for Brooke’s hand, and Brooke gives her a quick kiss on the cheek before turning to her present.

She rips the paper and lifts the lid and gasps.

Three framed photos lay in the box.

Photos of herself.

Brooke’s jaw hangs open but nothing comes out.

She’s maybe nine years old in the first one, dressed as Clara in the Nutcracker, smiling between people she recognizes as her parents. Another of her in a black graduation robe, parents on either side of her. The third is her alone, maybe 20, in a light blue ballerina dress with matching pointe shoes.

Brooke’s fingertips brush over the glass, grasping out for these versions of her from years ago, for a life and family she can now look at whenever she wants and not have to force their images in her mind.

She turns to Vanessa, eyes asking the question she can’t speak.

“Plastique called me a few weeks ago,” Vanessa begins. “She’s moving apartments and found those. She took them from your office at the studio after the crash. She wanted you to have them.”

Vanessa reaches for her, and Brooke knows then she’s sobbing. Vanessa just holds her as her body quakes, tears soaking Vanessa’s collar. Brooke will never have the words to thank her for this, but from the way Vanessa strokes her hair, Brooke thinks she knows.

“Shit, you got me crying like a Hallmark movie up in here,” A’keria mutters.

Brooke pulls away with a laugh, holding out her last box to Vanessa.

Vanessa pulls out the train tickets with a look of confusion. “South Carolina?” she asks.

Brooke grins. “I know how much you like the beach, and A’keria said some girl did you wrong with a beach vacation before, and I wanted to do it right. The ride is kind of long, I hope that’s okay. I—a plane, I just can’t.” Brooke knows she’s made a lot of progress, but all she has to do is think of flying and her ears fill with screams and her whole body plummets.

Vanessa silences her with a squeal, pulling her in for a hug.

“At least you can put your thousand swimsuits to use, Vanj,” Silky proclaims, and Vanessa whips wrapping paper at her.

Brooke unwraps her second present, and her eyes aren’t even dry before more tears fall. It’s the pink music box she’d seen in the mall, almost like the one she’d seen in her dreams. Vanessa must have figured it was important to her. Another stolen piece of her past reclaimed.

“You gotta open it,” Vanessa explains. A smirk wins out on Vanessa’s face as Brooke lifts the lid, and she can’t figure out why until she sees…train tickets?

“Not again,” Silky moans. “Y’all need to get your asses together on the matching presents.”

“I thought maybe you’d want to see Toronto again,” Vanessa explains. “I’ve never been, and we can see it together.”

Fresh tears well up and Brooke’s warmth intensifies. She can’t remember much about where she used to live, and now she’ll get to experience it all with Vanessa. Visiting her old life with her new life at her side.

“I literally can’t right now,” Scarlet snorts as they embrace.

“I think this brings new meaning to ‘make the Yuletide gay.’” Yvie observes.

Scarlet pins a bow on Yvie’s head and A’keria amasses a boulder of wrapping paper that gets kicked around, and Brooke grins with a joy she knows she deserves.

—

“Bingo, bitch! That’s three in a row!” Silky booms, hoarding her candy prizes like a dragon.

“This isn’t even statistically possible,” Yvie whines.

“I don’t bow to the laws of statistics!” Silky declares. “How dare you think you could beat me!”

Vanessa rests her feet on Brooke’s lap under the table, shaking her head with a smile at the chaos around them, Silky climbing on a chair for a victory dance.

Everyone is stuffed with cheesecake and cookies when they finally leave. Vanessa pulls Brooke to their room and teases that she has one last present while taking off her sweater, and Brooke lets Vanessa’s touch fill her with enough love to split the room apart.

“Can we cuddle?” Brooke asks after, both of them breathless and tingling.

“Of course, baby.”

Vanessa wraps her arm around Brooke’s waist, and Vanessa Mateo and Brooke Lynn Hytes fall asleep happy women.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #silky nutmeg ganache #akeria davenport #yvie oddly #scarlet envy #branjie #lesbian au #superhero au #angst #have yourself a super merry christmas #athena2 #s11 #tw ptsd #tw fire #tw mild religious content #concrit welcome #submission

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kyashin · 6 years

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Voltron: The Fandom of You

Soooooo, hi. I want to talk about Voltron fandom, because I have some positive things to say about it. But first, I want to talk about due South.

due South is one of my favorite shows, and the fandom produced some of my favorite fan content. All around, it was a fantastic contribution to the universe. Well done, humanity.

For the uninitiated, the show is: Canadian Mountie Benton Fraser, the most upstanding and honest (and sarcastic) person imaginable, first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his father; and, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, he remained, attached as liaison officer with the Canadian Consulate. It was a buddy cop show, and for seasons one and two, his cop buddy was an Italian-American dude named Ray Vecchio. Some people shipped it.

The show was canceled, and then, after enthusiastic fan campaigning, lovingly revived for two more seasons with Paul Gross––the actor who played Fraser––at the helm as executive producer. Unfortunately, David Marciano was unable to reprise his role as Ray Vecchio, so yikes! Now what? The entire premise of this thing was “sincere Canadian Mountie and cynical American cop shenanigans”. The solution was to replace Ray Vecchio. Literally. Like...in the show.

The first episode of season three has Fraser arriving in Chicago after a vacation in Canada to find this hot blond dude with a way different accent claiming to be Ray Vecchio, who is dark-haired and different-accented and just...you know...an entire different human being. Aaand let’s skip to the end of the episode where it turns out that Actual Ray Vecchio is undercover with the mob, so this new dude is gonna pretend to be him ‘til Vecchio gets back. New dude’s name is Ray Kowalski. People also shipped that.

But the fans who’d like, worked feverishly to get their show back on the air weren’t counting on having half the duo they wanted back erased from the show. !!!!!!!!!!!

Enter the Ray Wars. (Seriously, there’s a whole thing about them on fanlore.)

And a disclaimer: I wasn’t in the fandom for the height of the rage and fury, but I did saunter in as things were winding down, and even then some of the wreckage was still smoldering. That whole kerfuffle was Fandom Infamous for a super long time––and people who’ve been in Fandom long enough definitely know the Ray Wars by name AND reputation. For years, I’d see the Ray Wars held up by others as one of the ultimate examples of “intense fans” and just how Not Good a Look fandom can make for itself.

Here’s the thing though: the Ray Wars took place in the late 90s. No social media, no widespread understanding of fandom throughout the population. Fans were, like, on mailing lists and shit. The people who created AO3 were posting fic on web hosts like Geocities and Angelfire. Some people still called the internet “the web”, AOL was the gatekeeper to the internet things for a lot of people, and fans were figuring out that we could do ~*~*~*this*~*~*~ to make our user names look super unique and cool (not that I did that, just to be real, real clear). In that time, fandoms were very, super insular worlds with very tall, very robust fourth walls separating fans from creators and actors.

And for decades, these niche-occupying fans were accustomed to consuming very heterosexual content––shows and movies and comics and video games––and then writing whole-ass essays about how you could interpret this same-sex ship as legitimate within canon if you tilted your head 23 degrees, closed one eye, ignored the heterosexual ending, and stared long enough at these four screenshots from that one scene in episode 13.

You’d see flinches of contact between Fandom and The Established Source Material Creators sometimes. but it was rare. Anne Rice, for example, haaaaaaaaates fanfiction, and she’d go to great lawyery lengths to erase all she could find of it from the internet. Generally speaking, though, creators lived over there, and fans lived here, and we didn’t have much of an opportunity to interact with each other outside of, like, letters and conventions. There were still disrespectful fans, but you had to, like, make an effort to be a direct nuisance to the cast or crew.

Also, admitting to liking “slash” fanfiction as a woman back then got you “you just like slash because you’re too jealous to imagine your favorite male characters with women” at best and “that’s disgusting” at worst. ...Eh, there was probably worse, let’s be real.

So you can imagine the reaction many of us had when Paul Gross was interviewed about due South’s upcoming third season in 1997 and said of Callum Keith Rennie, the actor who’d play Ray Kowalski, “I tell you, slash fiction is going to go crazy when they see the new guy. He is really good-looking and sexy, the dangerous side of Fraser. It will be totally homoerotic.” THESE WERE THINGS AN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SAID. IN 1997. KNOW WHAT ELSE HAPPENED IN 1997? ELLEN DEGENERES CAME OUT. AND THEN LOST HER CAREER BECAUSE OF IT FOR A LONG-ASS TIME. WILL AND GRACE WASN’T EVEN A THING YET (1998). NEITHER WAS THE ORIGINAL UK VERSION OF QUEER AS FOLK (1999).

Like, holy shit???

And the thing is? He wasn’t baiting. The show intentionally included a LOT of subtext between Fraser and Ray Kowalski, to the point where the last episode of the show showed Ray having a literal identity crisis because he could tell Fraser wanted to go back to Canada permanently and like, “who am I without him” and then the series ends with the two of them sledding into the actual sunset no I’m not exaggerating that happened WHAT EVEN WAS THIS BLESSING IN 1999.

Were they canon? Eeeeeh. Kinda? It was 1997, I’d call whatever they were groundbreaking, at least for me. And the reason I say it wasn’t baiting is because all Paul said was, “Slash fans will like this,” and many of us did. So, y’know. Truth in advertising. Well done, Paul.

AND NOW IT IS THE YEAR OF OUR QUEERS, 20gayteen, and SO MANY THINGS have changed for the better for LGBTQ folks in the last two decades. Like, Voltron fandom is WILD to me sometimes (in a fantastic way) because some of the fans are actually young enough to have been born after the AIDS crisis, after Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered, after Don’t Ask Don’t Tell––after all these horrible, devastating wounds were inflicted on our beautiful queer family. There are actually fans in Voltron who believe, without a sliver of doubt, that a same-sex pairing can and will become canon.

That’s bananas to me. That there is hope like that! Belief like that! Because I was born at the very end of the AIDS crisis and I didn’t hear the word bisexual until I was, like, twelve, let alone have enough of a support system around me to embrace that label for myself. B A N A N A S.

So of course––of course––there’s a part of me that hopes a same-sex pairing will happen in Voltron. Just thinking about how Dreamworks almost made Miguel and Tulio a canon couple in The Road to El Dorado in 2000 makes my heart twinge with disappointment. (Yes, Chel is great, but.)

See, I’m super attached to Voltron even when the writing is clearly stifled and bridled in by the people whose job it is to sell lots and lots of Voltron toys. I read klance fic and reblog VLD fanart and I have one (1) friend who also watches the show. We talk about it sometimes, and I throw fanart of Shiro at her because he’s her favorite. She doesn’t ship anything, and I am a cheerful little klance-shipping demon. I am in a fandom of two, and it’s pretty great in here.

But.

Voltron’s a lighthearted kid’s show about humans and aliens piloting mecha lions in space to save the universe from space colonialism, and while I will be dizzy with glee if a same-sex couple becomes canon in this show, I want it more for the intended audience of Voltron: kids.

I met a kid last year at Osaka Pride whose mother said, “He came home from school and told me, ‘I don’t feel like a girl or a boy,’” so this young mother brought her child to Pride to learn more about the community that her baby might belong in. And that lovely little human stayed on the fringes at first, apparently shy, until their mother told them, “Go on,” and then they spent the next ten minutes literally jogging around all the booths and beaming at everyone: the trans women in neon dresses cooing at how cute this little sunbeam was, the booth folks selling rainbow-themed merch, the couples hand-in-hand without shame or fear. And when they came back to their mom, they were completely carefree. And I thought, I wish that had been me.

And maybe it could’ve been, if every single cartoon I consumed as a child wasn’t coding gay men as villains, overtly implying that LGBT people had a direct link to actual pedophilia, and aggressively promoting heterosexual romance as The Only Acceptable Way of Love. If I’d grown up in a world where Ruby and Sapphire were on TV being happily in love every week, I might’ve realized what was in my own heart sooner than college.

So there is part of me who understands why people are so emotionally connected to the possibility of a ship like klance becoming canon. I’ve felt that urgent hope, that wild hunger, again and again and again and again in my life, and the only time I’ve ever had that hope realized in canon was in 2016 watching Viktor and Yuuri skate together in Yuri!!! on Ice. I cried. A lot.

I understand the emotion fueling the very, very bad decisions being made. In the simplest possible terms, the people who repeatedly harass the Voltron cast and crew are people who want a thing and are prioritizing getting that thing over the mental health of real people. I think it’s a symptom of internet detachment. When one is flinging words into a void, one doesn’t have to see how they’re received. Their actions––if I haven’t made it clear––are objectively harmful, and I don’t condone them.

But what I want to say––what I wrote this whole thing to say––is that Voltron isn’t a terrible fandom, and it isn’t the first fandom to have loud, overzealous fans who cross the line and make people inside and outside the fandom alike think, Yeesh they’re/we’re all lunatics. Voltron fandom is not The Worst, because I guarantee you if The Ray Wars were happening today, there’d totally be people on Twitter attacking Callum Keith Rennie directly for daring to replace David Marciano. It could have been so, so much uglier than it was, and it was already Bad.

In 1997, the fourth wall still more or less existed, and LGBT content––let alone respectful content––was scarce to say the least, so Fandom Discourse at the time remained generally contained to fan-on-fan unpleasantness. Today, that fourth wall is utterly gone, and I think all fandoms have to adapt to that and learn a whole new code of etiquette. LGBT rep is important, but there are respectful and effective ways to get it that don’t involve harassing the cast and crew. The voice actors and creators and crew of Voltron deserve basic human decency, and to be seen as people first and content creators second. It’s entirely possible for the majority of fandom to interact respectfully with the creators––it’ll just take time and patience, like most things that last.

So listen, everything’ll be fine. Try to have patience with each other. To quote a manga I’ve been translating: “There will be times in your life when you won’t be able to avoid being angry. Don’t make little things bigger than they have to be. Laugh and forgive.” Or, in this case, laugh and ignore. If you like a thing, awesome! Tell people! Or don’t! And if you don’t like something, carefully consider the consequences of what you do after you realize, I don’t like this. I don’t ship sheith at all, but for the last two years I’ve managed to leave alone the fans who do ship it and not send Shiro’s voice actor and his family angry, threatening messages. It wasn’t even difficult, guys. I just, like, read some klance fic instead.

I felt compelled to make this because I keep seeing posts from Voltron fans calling Voltron fandom a raging garbage fire and sure, there’re people playing near dry kindling with flamethrowers more than is advisable, but Voltron fans have created and will continue to create some beautiful content and friendships just for love of a show, and that’s lovely as fuck. If you’re feeling ashamed of your fandom and you haven’t done anything wrong, remember that you’re fandom, too. Keep being respectful, kind, and good. The terrible people won’t go away, but they won’t define the fandom for you unless you let them.

Be kind to each other, and things will improve.

And if anyone tells you your ship is bad, don’t talk to that person anymore, because that person probably has some dry kindling and a flamethrower.

And hey, if you’re at the end of this post and you’re like: Wow, this was way too short, and I would like to read more things this person has written, there’s always my Team Voltron-in-Japan AU. It has klance and Nyma/Allura and I enjoy writing it.

Wow, I’m hungry. Bye! :D/

#voltron #vld #voltron legendary defender #fandom #due south #klance #sheith #other pairings #etc.

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turtle-paced · 7 years

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GoT Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

Just in time for the next season, here are my notes for 6.10! I can’t believe I actually did this project. I’ll have the numbers for the season and the series thus far up before season seven premiers, along with my favourite and least favourite seasons (and episodes therein).

6.10 - The Winds of Winter

This episode has a previously on. It concludes at 2:19, and unfortunately informs us that the Dornish plot continues to be a thing. On the funny ha-ha side, it also all but gives away R+L=J. Spoilers!

Miguel Sapochnik, save us!

(4:18) From a nice shot of the Sept of Baelor to pffffffffthahahahahaha oh my god, what is Cersei wearing? This is every bit as ridiculous as Sansa’s extremely empowered costume change at the end of season four, and Ellaria Sand’s extremely evil costume switch between seasons four and five. Female power is a black dress with bizarre shoulderpads, apparently. Swing and a miss, costume department. Swing and a miss.

(4:34) That said, I like this sequence of everyone getting ready. Better still, I like that we see that Cersei’s already dressed while the other major actors are still preparing. If this trial had been built up to better, this would be a kickass way of creating tension. (It’s still pretty good.) The show’s inattention to time and space, however, undermines all build-up, simply because we have no idea when disparate plots occur in relation to each other. The trial stops being a looming deadline, and becomes instead a thing that hasn’t happened yet.

(5:17) Ah, the first notes of a bit of music that really stands out. I’m not sure how I feel about this bit of musical direction. On the one hand, it’s so distinctive within the show, it’s used well with what’s on screen, and as a piece of music I rather like it. On the other hand, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the score.

(5:39) It’s Loras! He’s the heir to Highgarden, his sister the Queen made a deal for his safety, and he’s still unwashed and shaking in a corner, same as he’s presumably been for half the season. Plotwise, Margaery’s deal continues to be amazingly bad. Ethicswise, I do appreciate how this anti-homophobia storyline has just the one gay character and his role in it is to suffer and die.

(6:40) “Your grace? The trial will be getting under way soon.” Right, so, Tommen got prepared for this occasion, then sat down in a chair and did nothing. While we’re talking characters as objects, by the way.

(6:46) Apparently Cersei decided her outfit wasn’t ridiculous enough already and decided to add more shiny. I’d kill to know what this handmaid thinks of this costume change in-universe.

(7:16) Sex workers: 1. Female butts: 1.

(7:19) Boobs: 1. Theft of services jokes: 1.

(8:20) The best establishing shot of the sept thus far gives me a count of 112 people present.

(8:48) This makes me so mad. This didn’t have to be written like this. The writers could have had the fucking decency to instead have Loras say “you know what? Screw you all. I loved Renly. I’m not ashamed to say it.” It’s not out of book canon, given Loras’ “when the sun has set, no candle can replace it.” Show!Brienne is more true to Renly than show!Loras is. As for plot effects, they’re planning to blow up every character who hears this speech. Fuck it. Let him have his dying moment of awesome. Shell game this shit, keep everyone focused on how Margaery’s deal just fell apart, before blowing the place up.

(9:43) On the upside, I love how the iconography of the Seven is kept in view.

(10:20) While the idea of Margaery’s driving motivation being to protect Loras is a good one, this plot is yet another victim of authorial laziness. You’re telling me that the best that politically astute and highly intelligent Margaery could do, given the resources of her family on hand and the relatively small potatoes crime Loras is accused of, was to have Loras forfeit his inheritance? Really?

(10:31) Not to mention “I will never marry and I will never father children” is one hell of a nonsensical plea bargain term. Given the depiction of the Sparrows thus far, and their none too subtle analogue to modern conservative Christianity, you’d think the High Sparrow would order Loras to marry at the first opportunity, get him into the heteronormative box. Failing that, get him into the Kingsguard or the Night’s Watch, somewhere where everyone knows he can’t get married, obviously (and with that “no marrying” clause, Loras’ status can still be reconciled with the heteronormative agenda of the Sparrows). The writers don’t understand religion or politics, news at eleven.

(11:21) Yep, this show is going there. We get to see a religious symbol carved into a gay man’s forehead for the crime of being gay. There was no reason to write this. We got the point that the Sparrows are evil and homophobic ages ago. The fact of the proceedings gets that point across. We got the point that Loras was suffering ages ago too. And in a few minutes, every character here will be blown up, rendering these events entirely pointless for the ongoing plot. Why show us the utterly gratuitous torture of a gay character, explicitly linked to their sexuality? What about this specifically is worth the screen time?

(11:34) I mean, it’s in detail and everything. We get to see Loras flinching in pain, we get closeups of the blood. What is the point. What is even the point.

(11:53) Tommen is still sitting in his room being a living prop for the stories of other people.

(12:35) “And where is the Queen Mother?” Hey, good question! Why wasn’t anyone asking this a while back, like maybe a quarter hour ago when she was supposed to rock up to the venue, especially considering that she killed a member of the last team sent to take her to meet the High Sparrow?

I will tell you why: because plot.

Unlike the books, the show is currently a plot-driven story - and a bad example thereof. Everything that has been done in this storyline has been to herd these half dozen named characters into this sept to get blown up. And if the High Sparrow, Margaery, and Olenna all have to lose their political acumen (and Jaime forget about the King) to accomplish this, so be it. On the flip side, we’ve seen Tommen consistently attempt to take action to protect Margaery, but in order to keep him out of the sept (and make his death somehow Cersei’s fault, as if Margaery hadn’t raped and abused him) today he has decided he doesn’t want to.

(12:42) “It appears the Queen Mother does not wish to attend her own trial.” Noooooo, what tipped you off? Was it the way she ordered her guard to kill one of the last people sent to fetch her somewhere? Can’t be, because if so, you’d’ve compelled her attendance beforehand and taken precautions against Frankengregor!

This is the final reason why “I choose violence” was a nonsense scene. Everyone forgets it happened and proceeds as if it hadn’t.

(12:49) The High Sparrow even sends his key witness to go get Cersei. If I had a desk I would be beating my head against it right about now. Why? Why would you do this? Why would anyone with an ounce of common sense do this, much less a character established to be intelligent?

I spot two Sparrows leaving with Lancel, making it 109 people in the sept.

(13:10) Lancel spots a suspicious small child existing. What about this has aroused his suspicion? It’s a kid. There are many in King’s Landing. What about this kid is worth blowing off his task of seeing the Queen Mother to her regicide trial?

This is just so freakin’ lazy on multiple levels.

(14:11) “What is the meaning of this?” Hey, another good question! Why did Qyburn lure Pycelle down here? Fortunately, we soon get an answer.

(15:03) And the answer is “sheer bloody laziness, again!” The writers did a copy/paste from ADWD, because its epilogue kicks ass, without trying to make it fit in their own story. Why does Pycelle have to die in such a cold dark place, when he was literally going to the trial before Qyburn intercepted him? I’ll give “ushering in the new” a pass because he’s supporting a ruling queen and that actually is new.

(15:27) Deaths: 1. Pycelle, murdered on Qyburn’s orders. By children established to be quite ordinary children working for Qyburn for sugar plums, by the way, rather than Varys’ trained “little birds.”

(16:03) Wow, lucky stab, to get Lancel right in the spine! If the kid had missed, what then?

(16:20) “What are you doing?” Wow, people are just full of good questions right now. What is this kid doing? The implication is that this kid lured Lancel down here, but why? The best explanation I can think of is that it was a last-ditch, poorly thought out means of keeping Lancel in the sept to get exploded. Speaking of. 110 people in the sept, overwhelmingly nobles rather than Sparrows.

(17:00) I want so badly to like this show for what it is. This sequence in particular is so well done, switching back and forth between Cersei patiently staring out over the Sept from a distance, Margaery waiting and trying to work out what’s wrong, and Lancel crawling towards the wildfire in a desperate attempt to stop disaster. The direction has earned the tension it generates here.

And note how knowing when these events are occurring relative to each other makes the tension work! Even when we don’t know what the deadline is, we can see there’s a deadline, and that Lancel and Margaery are both racing against it.

(17:40) Margaery gets her moment of awesome, working out the problem (specifically noting that the threat must be to the whole sept because Tommen is not present, something that indicates to her that he’d be at risk if he was). The High Sparrow switched his brain off for the duration. One smart person per scene!

(18:02) But the leap to “we all need to leave” was a bit out of nowhere. I’d be expecting crossbows before wildfire, which should get a “send your men to search the building.” That would also mean you can stop the High Sparrow looking like more of a fool than he already does for not securing Cersei, spotting the same thing Margaery does and trying to prevent it.

(18:51) Instead of at this last minute, having the Sparrows prevent people from leaving. Because um reasons.

(19:49) Deaths: 113. Cersei blows up the 110 people I counted in the sept, including Margaery, Loras, the High Sparrow, Lancel, Mace Tyrell, and Kevan Lannister. Two more Sparrows die outside the sept.

(19:55) Deaths: 115. Two more people die getting hit by debris. So that’s 114 kills for Cersei. It’s implied to be more.

(20:05) And Cersei, who until now has killed a grand total of three people all series, smirks over the carnage. I find this horribly inconsistent with her characterisation thus far. This is in large part because of decisions made to “soften” Cersei, especially in earlier seasons. Book!Cersei continually demonstrated her incompetence in her failure to rein in Joffrey - and in her inability to see how what Joffrey was doing was a cause of many political problems. That also showed her own lack of empathy. Whereas with show!Cersei, we see her confiding to Margaery, with palpable grief and disgust, that Joffrey’s violence shocked her.

But character development? That reflection on violence comes after the character turning point that is Joffrey’s death. And while Myrcella’s death and Cersei’s (slight) escalation of violence coincide, they don’t seem to be linked well in the narrative, especially as season six makes no mention of Cersei’s hunt for Tyrion, nor includes any real effort on Cersei’s part to get rid of the Tyrells or Martells. I’ll get back to Cersei’s characterisation in a second.

(20:09) Cersei drinks: 1.

(20:30) Meanwhile, Tommen is left completely alone. Because this happens to kings on the regular.

(20:41) Septa Unella is now here and being tortured. How did she get here? Not a clue. Why is this happening? No in-universe reason, but the writers wanted a villain monologue, so here we are anyway.

(21:25) “I do things because they feel good.” Thus far, no. No, Cersei has not. She has, for the most part, been restrained and temperate, often putting aside her hatred of the Tyrells in the best interests of her family, without being browbeaten or overruled. This she was doing to the mid-season mark. Her affair with Lancel is one of the few things she’s done purely because it felt good to her and damn the consequences, but that affair ended four seasons ago. Her relationship with Jaime in the show also lacks (an intentional depiction of) the deeply embedded unhealthiness of its book counterpart. There is every indication that Cersei and Jaime are sincerely in love with each other and engaged in a healthy relationship that just so happens to be incestuous.

Show!Cersei’s overriding motivation has instead been the welfare of her children, to whom she has been a far better parent than her book counterpart. Crucially, show!Cersei has been able to see that her children are independent beings whose needs and desires differ from her own. Her threats to burn cities to the ground have been linked to the welfare of her children, and she hasn’t done it, because burning cities to the ground isn’t what’s best for her children. Until season six, she used violence directly only to protect her children, not to gratify herself, and in season six, her use of violence was directly linked to the sexual abuse and humiliation she suffered at the hands of the Sparrows. And so we now have a weird double standard where Sansa lashing out at her abuser = good, Dany burning down a patriarchal church = good, Cersei lashing out at her abusers (and her son’s abuser) by burning down a patriarchal church = bad.

(21:36) “I killed my husband because it felt good to be rid of him.”

We closed the previous episode on Sansa murdering her abusive husband in a situation where it was clearly apparent that he posed no threat to her any more and never would again. Cersei, meanwhile, murdered her abusive husband while they were still living in the same household as man and wife, he was still king, and he’d hit her across the face the episode before. One of these women killed her abusive husband purely because it felt good to be rid of him, and therefore one of these women is bad.

Just want to keep that double standard firmly in view here.

I mean, aside from the double standard where Cersei blowing up a church is bad, but Dany burning down a church is good.

(22:02) There is no way in hell that Cersei killed every Sparrow in King’s Landing. As I said, there were only about a hundred people in that sept, and most of them were nobles. She killed maybe twenty, twenty-five Sparrows max.

(22:31) Cersei says here that even confessing feels good under the right circumstances. So I’m taking this “feels good” explanation as a retcon. All those times Cersei says that she’s motivated by love for her boyfriend and children, they’re lies and/or denial. All the times she demonstrates by word, deed, or lack thereof that this is the case - that must be some sort of coincidence.

(24:13) There are certainly implications here, but Septa Unella’s exact fate is left somewhat ambiguous.

(24:31) This guy has just been popping in and out to check on Tommen.

(24:48) I like the detail of Tommen taking off his crown. Hell, I like the framing of this. It’s a stunning shot of the burning sept and Tommen’s removal from it.

(25:11) I even like how unceremonious Tommen’s suicide is. After the very dramatic sept explosion, this quiet death in the aftermath I think actually gets the despair.

That said, I loathe the writers’ statements outside the episode that this was all Cersei’s fault. They wrote a story in which Tommen was manipulated and exploited by everyone around him. In particular, we got a good look at how Margaery fostered in him a sense of dependence on her. There’s a strong case to be made that in the show, Cersei manipulated and exploited him least, and was the person most concerned with his welfare and wellbeing. The only reason she’s not here right now is because of sloppy character writing.

Tommen’s arc is a consistent story of the effects of emotional manipulation and abuse perpetrated on a young and vulnerable boy, culminating in his suicide when he cannot handle the sudden violent loss of his foremost abuser, his rapist of a wife. If the writers had the slightest clue that this was the story they were telling, it would have been a worthy and affecting use of screentime. Deaths: 116.

(25:28) All this cheering of “We send our regards!” In-universe failed meme.

(26:10) Arya Stark, world’s worst assassin, stares conspicuously at someone she’s thinking about killing. She’s terrible at this, she really is.

(26:25) Man called ‘cunt’: 1. Bronn’s vocabulary is slightly less limited than that of Karl fuckin’ Tanner, but not much.

(27:12) “Can’t go killing my son-by-law, it wouldn’t be right.” While this is supposed to be ironic, it’s also a pretty weak admission that the plot will be needing Edmure later. Presumably. I think he’s got a good shot of surviving the books, anyway, and wouldn’t be shocked if he was needed for something in the meantime. Re-retaking Riverrun, perhaps, or is that re-re-retaking Riverrun?

(28:28) A rare sign of book!Jaime in his visible discomfort with being compared to Walder Frey.

(29:03) Bookending the season with Cersei burying her children is in theory a very good idea.

(30:12) Ah, a peaceful, sunny green field. Sam and Gilly have arrived near Oldtown at last. What does this mean? Well, it means that Sam, while a guest in his father’s castle, stole a Valyrian steel sword from one of the most powerful men in Westeros and got away scot free.

(30:26) That’s a really nice view of Oldtown.

(30:39) And a nice view of the white ravens leaving the tower to announce to the realm that winter is here.

(30:54) Oh god he’s got a magnifying glass. This scene is going to be “comedic,” isn’t it?

(31:33) I question the decision to make this hall empty. The emptiness makes the Citadel seem unreal, rather than a hub of learning in Westeros.

(31:43) The Citadel is so out of touch that while everyone learned about Stannis’ defeat and Tywin’s death mere minutes after they happened, they still think Jeor Mormont is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Comedy!

(32:47) And Gilly ends the season standing stunned and alone in the Citadel’s reception area! See you next year! Enjoy the wait!

(33:38) It’s the library from Beauty and the Beast! It’s definitely not like the Library of Alexandria and it’s definitely not doomed. At least Sam has something to do while he waits for next season. And a plot. Maybe some character development. Anything but going from point A to point B repeating the same stale “story” he’s had for the past three seasons.

(34:39) While I think it’s perfectly legit for Jon to be upset about being seated so far away from his family in a manner that states “you are not worth as much as they are,” saying this to Melisandre…might not be the most tactful.

(55:12) Halfway through the final episode of the season, eleven episodes after Shireen’s death and almost ten since Davos and Melisandre reunited, Davos thinks to pursue the line of questioning about Shireen. Liam Cunningham and Carice van Houten do their utmost, but there’s no hiding the fact that this discussion has been postponed in a way that makes absolutely no sense for Davos’ character, to serve the plot interest of kicking Mel into another geographical area.

(36:05) “If he commands you to burn children, your lord is evil.” This is why Stannis’ plot came with the whole fate-of-the-world aspect, so readers could engage with the discussion of lesser evils, rather than pile on with STANNIS BAD. STANNIS WRONG. STANNIS EVIL.

(36:50) Goddamn, the acting here.

(37:52) In the conclusion to this scene we’re shown a few things about Winterfell’s politics right now. Davos and Mel are both treating Jon as the authority in this castle. If Sansa really wants to be Lady of Winterfell, she’s way behind the eight ball on this one. Lacking a formal decision about who’s in charge, Jon is acting as though he is in charge in a way that Sansa is not. I have no doubt that Jon didn’t think about it; I can’t believe that Sansa is supposed to be this political mastermind now if she’s missed this fact.

Second, it’s nice to see a little justice around the place. Punishing Mel for Shireen’s burning gets Jon nothing except Davos’ good opinion, and not even that unreservedly since he went with banishment rather than execution; he’s clearly doing it because burning children = bad. But at the same time, he asked Mel to speak in her own defence, listened to her arguments, and modified her sentence. This is a good solid stab at being fair and just from Jon.

Finally, last season I mentioned I don’t see how Shireen’s burning caused the retaking of Winterfell. Did the storms hold off all season because of that sacrifice?

(38:48) Lovely shot of Jon and Sansa.

(38:56) “I’m having the lord’s chamber prepared for you.” So Jon’s been giving orders to the castle staff as well, once more in a way that demonstrates his love and respect for his trueborn siblings. Watch Jon accidentally Bavarian Fire Drill into kingship by acting like the Lord of Winterfell while publicly going against Westerosi bastard stereotype. I really don’t think the writers knew what they were writing here.

In the meantime, what has Sansa been doing? I mean, I know the writers can’t actually think of things for her to do, but this is getting ridiculous.

(39:08) Jon shows a far greater appreciation for the symbolic value of that bedroom than Sansa has. And she’s supposed to be the politically astute one?

(39:18) No. No, Jon, you are not standing in Winterfell because of Sansa. You nearly failed entirely because of Sansa. You lost hundreds of your own men because of Sansa’s incompetence and bad faith.

Jon made a bad decision on the day of the battle. It was a shocker. It was really, really bad. Before that point, he had bad options, worse options, and limited means of telling which was which.

Sansa, however, has been lying since 6.05, withholding not tactical information, but strategic information. Those lies shaped the entire campaign. Sansa tells Jon that they might be able to get the Vale on side? They can go to every Northern lord and say “the Knights of the Vale are riding to our aid, they’ve retaken Moat Cailin, they’ll be available when the plot requires,” thereby offering far greater chances of success and incentive to North Remembers. If Sansa didn’t see how her lies affected the way in which the entire campaign was fought, she’s staggeringly incompetent. If Sansa did see this, she’s staggeringly malicious.

And, possessed of detailed information about Jon’s plan, Ramsay’s likely counters, the composition of both armies, and the terrain on which the battle would be fought, she clearly did not relay this to the Vale commanders and okayed the charge right into Stark forces. That’s plain old incompetence. That incidentally got a lot of people on her own side killed. (Or at least it should have, given the shots of the battle we were shown.)

It may be true that the knights of the Vale only rode north because of Sansa. It does not absolve her of the veritable mountain of bullshit that was denying Jon and through him Team Stark of all the benefit of those knights until it suited Sansa’s personal agenda.

There is no way around it. Bad writing, specifically the rape-revenge plot the writers were so eager to insert and the side effects of this plot, have utterly destroyed this character as a consistent, intelligent, decent protagonist. This would not be an issue if Sansa had stayed in the Vale, or even if the writers had boned up on the most basic information about medieval warfare. The staggering incompetence here is to be found on the writing staff.

Oh, and if Jon doesn’t see this, it reflects poorly on him as well.

(39:36) “Only a fool would trust Littlefinger.” I can’t decide whether that’s Sansa bashing herself, the writers bashing Ned, or both.

(39:42) “I should have told you about [Littlefinger].” YES. YES YOU SHOULD HAVE. This apology is so inadequate under the circumstances I cannot even.

(40:20) A sibling moment of trust and affection, emphasising the importance of sticking together in tough times. I don’t suppose this is going to be undermined later.

(41:13) Olenna’s historical references prove that the showrunners have read the books. At least once. Or they skimmed it, at least. Look, they’re long books, okay.

(41:19) “You murder your own prince, and you expect me to trust you?” So many good questions.

(41:35) Ah, Olenna’s consistently-depicted misogyny. How I’ve missed it. Obara was making a point quite civilly - not delicately, but civilly. No call for rudeness.

(41:44) I think the Sand Snakes were as poorly-written as the next critic. That doesn’t mean I think it’s good storytelling to see diplomatic mastermind Olenna Tyrell be horrible to them (since that apparently demonstrates that she’s clever and no-nonsense), nor entertaining to hear yet more sexism from her.

(42:04) There’s no telling how removed in time this scene is from the beginning of the episode. It clearly has to be a while.

(42:23) More copy/pasting from the books without thought about how it fits into the story the show is telling. “Our heart’s desire” doesn’t work with Ellaria as it works for Doran, because Doran’s the one with almost two decades of investment into seeing the Lannisters brought down.

(42:39) Hey, Varys. Nice to see you here in Dorne.

(43:42) It’s nice that the writers found a way to further whittle down the cast list without outright killing everyone inconvenient. This is just a nicely-timed breakup from Dany.

(45:36) They’re just tying up Meereen with a nice little bow, all its problems magically solved. How wonderful that this seasons-long plot can be left behind in such a state.

(47:51) Dany admits she felt nothing as she said goodbye to Daario. Easy enough to depict. Not like we’ve been getting much of Dany’s interiority all season, since she’s mostly been bouncing from plot point to plot point. Daario and Tyrion have both outlined how she feels at points, but Dany herself has done precious little expressing her own emotions.

(49:05) I would like to enjoy this scene for what it is, too, but Dany and Tyrion have barely interacted. The only time they’ve done so this season, Tyrion was too busy covering his ass to actually help her.

(49:55) Like the Citadel, the Twins has cleared out so the main characters can interact unbothered by pesky extras.

(50:52) Arya got the hang of dramatic baking. No, I don’t know how she got the two Freys alone, killed them, butchered them imperfectly, and found the time and materials to bake them into a pie in a busy castle kitchen, or the reasons she would do this particular grisly act specifically (unlike Lord Manderly who served people who were definitely not his guests as a pie at a wedding), but who cares, it’s Frey Pie. Copy/paste from ADWD, it always works!

(51:09) Arya, confirmed. Don’t ask how she got here from Braavos, either.

(51:24) Deaths: 117. Arya kills Walder Frey. Disturbing and intentionally so, which actually makes it a terrible leaving-off point for her. We already knew she was capable of this sort of violence. So hooray vengeance, I guess, but what does this mean for Arya that we don’t already know?

(52:24) Being a smart, empowered woman, Sansa is now an atheist. The sensitive and nuanced depiction of religion continues.

(52:42) Being a smart, empowered woman, Sansa despises her past self for being a little girl.

(53:36) Show!Littlefinger’s endgame is apparently him on the Iron Throne with Queen Sansa. He also only apparently acts if he thinks the action will bring him closer to that endgame. How did marrying Sansa off to Ramsay, whom Littlefinger know nothing about, while Winterfell was about to be under siege, help in the slightest? It doesn’t and it hasn’t.

(54:20) Forget Sansa for the moment, I can’t believe Littlefinger is very good at politics if he’s missed how Jon’s back in Winterfell getting the castle reorganised and settling disputes between important political figures while Sansa sits outside in the snow doing nothing. When he asks “who should the North rally behind” he’s ignoring the fact that in the castle, yes that castle, the one over there, the North’s already looking in a particular direction - because on the facts, Jon’s the one trying to do the job. And Littlefinger should bloody well know how a man lacking station can wrangle greater authority than his birth might otherwise allow.

It’s the writers. It’s always the writers. They don’t understand how this works, and they consistently have problems finding Sansa things to do.

(54:33) Littlefinger reminding us of Jon’s lack of mother and giving us, for the first time, the information that Jon was born in the south.

(55:22) A good sensible reason for Uncle Ben not crossing the Wall with Bran and Meera, foreshadowing the “while it stands” part…but they still look a fair ways off the Wall to me.

(56:45) Why Bran is so eager to hop right back into flashback town is also an in-universe mystery. Out of universe, well, we got some longstanding mysteries to reveal in a super inappropriate place. But at least we’ll stop getting jerked around by the showrunners on this count.

(57:27) “Ned?” “Lyanna!” See how much better that was done than “that’s my father!”

(58:46) While this scene is mostly really good, they left out one single detail. Rhaegar. This single detail puts everything into context. Hence the flowchart HBO had to release after the episode to show that no, Jon isn’t Ned’s son by his sister. Imagine if this had been foreshadowed, though! That would have been really good!

(59:13) And while Isaac Hempstead-Wright has been really good this season, his reaction shots are missing the mark here a bit, in that I’m not sure what he’s feeling about what he’s watching. Is he confused? Upset? I can’t tell.

(59:32) Then we cut to Jon, so the audience puts it together. Who knows if Bran did? Who cares if Bran did, amirite? What a twist this is!

(59:48) Even more shocking, there are Northern lords. They exist!

(1:00:41) Not going to elaborate on this “the enemy brings the storm” business, Jon? I think most of the people in this room could do with a firsthand account of your fight at Hardhome, backed up by Tormund and crew…

(1:00:58) Now they’re just rubbing in the lack of North Remembers, by referencing Lord Manderly who didn’t do a damn thing in spite of the fact his son was murdered at the Red Wedding.

(1:01:20) Lyanna Mormont’s got a better grasp of rhetorical device than Ramsay Bolton did. “You refused the call” is working for her a lot better than “come and see” did for him.

(1:01:45) Oh boy. Politics. Ever the strong suit of the writers. There were ways this scene could have made more sense if they tried for it, and Lyanna Mormont’s speech hit none of them. The object of this scene, crowning Jon king, is fighting a steep uphill battle against precedent. If Jon is crowned while Sansa is alive (and, like, right there), every lord in that room and their wives have to worry about their bastard siblings and children. Lyanna Mormont’s speech does not address this important issue. All she has to say about Jon’s bastard status is “I don’t care.” Great. Solves everything. Not.

This speech could also have put forward a strong argument against Sansa, leaving the meat of the role to Jon by default (since none of the assembled lord here know Bran’s alive). Sansa’s been married into not one but two enemy houses. Sansa’s a girl. We need a strong (read: male) leader through the winter. Someone could bring up the fact that she’s been lying for months, to the very great detriment of House Stark (but that would have its own backlash with the Vale knights). Unpleasant and nakedly sexist, but within in-universe bounds thereof, not far off how book!Kevan was planning to shunt Cersei, Lady of Casterly Rock, to one side. I can see why the showrunners opted against that.

Or, Sansa could have given this speech. This makes it clear that Sansa’s exercising her own agency, abdicating her claim on Winterfell, and that Jon taking over is an exception to the rules about bastards inheriting. It’s also far better from a character standpoint, as by doing this Sansa would make it clear she’s picking Jon and House Stark, and fuck what Littlefinger wants.

(1:02:23) “I didn’t commit my men to your cause, because I didn’t want more Manderlys dying for nothing.” First, grr, not nothing. The Manderlys stood to benefit quite substantially from an independent North, as they hold the North’s only warm-water port and were angling to mint the North’s currency. (In the books, anyway.) Second, so what he’s saying is, if he’d been told the Knights of the Vale were heading up the Kingsroad, he would have committed to the Stark cauase.

(1:02:34) Jon Snow avenged the Red Wedding? The only thing we’ve heard Northerners say about the Red Wedding thus far is “Robb deserved it!” Not a peep about the other Northerners murdered in that slaughter. The Tullys were more pissed off about it!

(1:03:33) THE KING IN THE NORTH! Is seriously undermined by the failure to address the whole “bastard” thing, the fact that every astute political move he’s made in the past two episodes was essentially an accident by the writing staff, and his major fuckups in the most recent battle!

(1:04:09) Sansa’s sitting there, not saying anything, but looking very pissy again. Well, she could have said something. She could have been saying something all season. And she could have done things to reccommend herself as a leader.

I will say this for the Northerners. They may have picked an incompetent leader, but they at least picked a leader acting in their best interests and in good faith. Show!Sansa has demonstrated that she’ll do the exact opposite.

(1:04:29) Another very nice shot of the smoking Sept of Baelor, from Jaime’s perspective. Still don’t know when these scenes occur relative to each other.

(1:04:45) Oh my god. As if that first black outfit with ridiculous shoulderpads wasn’t bad enough, here’s another one! Now with even more ridiculous shoulderpads!

(1:05:58) Here’s where I’m going to talk about acceptable breaks from reality again. In a fantasy series, I honestly don’t mind if the writers let physics slide a bit. In many ways, that’s the genre for you. But fantasy lets physics slide so it can tell stories about people. That, for me, is the cardinal sin of any fantasy work - not telling a story about people. A candle going out instantly when it’s cut in half bugs me, but I can let it go. A city full of people standing idly by after their major religious institution and their beloved queen were blown up? Nope.

The Dorne scene almost has to be a flash-forward weeks after this event. Cersei should not be alive at this point. Mob rule should have overtaken King’s Landing. Why would even the Lannister guards follow Cersei after she blew up their holy place, and a bunch of their colleagues (since Kevan was there)? Where are the thousands of people who massed outside that sept to watch Margaery take a walk of shame? They’re not dead. They can’t be. Where is the mass protest? How can this coronation even happen under the circumstances? Shouldn’t all these nobles be run off their feet trying to defend their holdings in or near the city?

These people aren’t behaving like people, and I find it far less believable than a candle going out.

(1:06:27) Jaime, like Sansa, also finishes out his season looking somewhat pissy.

(1:06:49) Love this shot of Theon looking at the Greyjoy flag.

(1:08:19) The only complaint I have with closing out the season on Dany setting sail is the fact that Varys is here.

Game of Numbers S06E10

Deaths: 117. I know! This episode is less lethal than Battle of the Bastards! I’m as surprised as you are! Anyway, Qyburn kills Pycelle, Arya kills Walder Frey, and Tommen commits suicide. The other 114 casualties of the episode, including Margaery, Loras, Lancel, Mace Tyrell, Kevan Lannister, and the High Sparrow, are all Cersei’s work.

Boobs: 1.

Abs & pecs: 0.

Female butts: 1.

Male butts: 0.

Sex workers: 1.

Woman called ‘cunt’: 0.

Man called ‘cunt’: 1.

Tyrion drinks: 0. (He does have a decanter of wine close to hand, though.)

Cersei drinks: 1.

#anti got #fine toothed comb edition #cw: violence #cw: rape #cw: suicide #cw: abuse #cw: homophobia #who doesn't love a good nonsensical coronation #season six

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