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soloorganaas · 2 years

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what are your thoughts about sirius black and gender and class and trauma and toxic relationships and british homophobia and mental illness and kill the gays tropes and the suffocation of hope and found family

ALRIGHT DANI LETS GO

exec summary: JKR’s class anxiety is a big part of her bigotry and her punishment of characters who run away from her. it shapes a specific set of rules, which Sirius breaks in more ways than most other characters, and it draws out a hatred from JKR that leads her to punish him through her writing in painfully particular ways. that includes inflicting brutal tragedy on the heavily implied/coded queer relationship he has with remus, in a kill your gays trope that is peak 90s/00s. and so Sirius’s storyline overall becomes a morality lesson for queer/enby/neurodivergent kids that teaches them whatever love or found family they have will inevitably be destroyed - and they deserve it

~ spicy meta essay below the cut ~

JKR and class anxiety

class divides people in the UK to such an extreme extent its bizarre for people outside to conceptualise. like most of Europe we had centuries of strict class hierarchies, but ours never got entirely broken down because we never got rid of the royal family and aristocracy. class is such a strong form of division that we truly 'other' people from another class to us and generally avoid the excruciating ordeal of mixing with someone from a class different to us. this isn’t always the case - i know people reading this will feel differently - but it is predominant in the middle class

middle class in the UK is entirely different to the US. it's not at all about income, it's about identity markers that signal you are better, more well to-do, more refined than people of a lower class than you. the majority of the UK are working class, so the middle class work hard at the idea they're better than everybody. except, obviously, the upper class, who they will never be as good as under these rules, so instead they aggressively enforce them to try and cling onto power over those below them. think white Republican women

the middle class enforce this generally through keeping everyone and everything in a nice and tidy box. a good education, a respectable job, a large (but not extravagant! that would be chavvy) house, nice (but not flashy! also chavvy) cars, modest and neat clothes that don't draw too much attention, excruciating and often fake politeness. the most important thing in being middle class is not drawing attention to yourself. if you're loud, if your appearance is out of the norm, if you're queer or trans, if you're disabled, if you're neurodivergent, then god help you. you will be abused and shunned (i'm not joking, this happened to me by my school). this interacts with race in a very complicated way which i am absolutely not qualified to speak on, and isn’t relevant to Sirius, so I won’t be attempting to talk about it - but I don’t want to erase the fact that it exists.

JKR grew up working class but gained so much wealth and notoriety in an educated profession that she shifted to middle class, which is unusual to the point of being forbidden. so when she wrote the later books especially, her need to firmly, clearly follow middle class rules in order to gain acceptance bleeds through her writing

JKR hates Sirius

Sirius breaks every single one of nice middle class rules. every single one. and offensively so. and she hates him for it. I don't think it's a coincidence she only made him a shunned aristocrat until she became famous and classism rose to the forefront - she wanted that power for herself, and she'd never have it, so she punished him for it

Sirius is loud. he's brash. he's talkative. he's argumentative. he's mentally ill. he's neurodivergent. he's gay. he doesn't give a fuck about gender roles. he's extreme, coded a thousand times over as manic depressive. he's unapologetic about all of it. and she can't stand it. no one is allowed to be like that - and especially not the madman side character she created just to provide some spicy background for Harry

so JKR does what every bigoted classist Brit does in this situation and silently, viciously, hatefully and passive aggressively punishes Sirius. she has every character shame him for all his rule-breaking traits by patronising him, looking down on him, criticising him, humiliating him, belittling him, all because he is apparently incapable of being trusted by normal society. Molly is literally JKR's mouthpiece for this, passively aggressively keeping Sirius in line, and getting away with it because she's so sweet and loveable no one ever sees her as a bigot. I have met one hundred thousand women like in her my lifetime. so has JKR. she knew exactly what she was doing

why would these characters turn on him like this, though? Sirius is highly competent, incredibly intelligence and very astute, as shown over the previous books, and both the characters and readers know that. so it has to be something else, something that overrides all of that

it's because of who he is, and that's what we absorb between the lines of the book. that who Sirius is is wrong, and people like him will inevitably be shunned by society around them

12GP, mental illness and Sirius's death

Sirius is (quite literally) characterised as mad, and it's used as a justification for punishing him. by OotP his rebelliousness is explained as a sign of instability. and by god - that instability is toxic. so he's locked in a madhouse for his own good (to keep him alive! to protect Harry!). he's then tortured as painfully as possible to drive him even madder, leading him to the inevitable conclusion of bringing about his own death through his irresponsibility. he has to die, because he has to face the consequences for rebelling

the way that JKR weaves his rule-breaking and depiction of "madness" together is intentional, and truly vile. it's evident in the sharp contrast of his characterisation in PoA/GoF and OotP. he's coded as mentally ill and neurodivergent from the first time we hear of him. he's portrayed as a man of manic depressive extremes (I wrote a bipolar meta here talking about this in more detail), and is clearly suffering from PTSD. we can assume this continues in GoF

alongside all of this, he is so smart, competent and compassionate he manages to keep himself alive and hidden from the ministry whilst living outdoors, basically figures out the entire GoF plot through newspapers and a few rushed conversations through the fire, and is single-mindedly dedicated to his godson

in OotP he is a fundamentally different person - not in a way that is caused by mental illness, but genuine changes in his core character, however it’s still characterised as mental illness. so it becomes justifiable to punish him, to restrict him, to criticise and curtail and humiliate him

and most of all the traits JKR hates about Sirius so much are part and parcel of being bipolar (and also having ADHD, which he's implied to have as well). bipolar people are capable of extraordinary feats when we're manic, which aren't always bad - like, for example, breaking out of a wizarding prison! being on the run for two years just for take care of your godson! we feel everything incredibly deeply - like, for example, devotion to the point of death for your friends, strong emotional reactions to them being mistreated! we have tendencies towards being incredibly creative, smart, and making intellectual leaps that are impossible for other people, all of which are traits Sirius has that make him such an extraordinary wizard, and person. he literally wouldn't be who he is without neurodivergence, and yet JKR portrays it as an entirely negative characterisation, a punishable offence

kill the gays - queer and mentally ill people will never be happy, and they don't deserve to be

Sirius and Remus's story is about two traumatised, scared, lonely kids doomed to be outcasts forever, until they find acceptance and love in found family, and each other. that is the story of every fucking queer kid growing up before like 2015, and everyone now who doesn't live in a liberal town. we look at that story and we know it, we feel it in our bones. i could will write an essay about this in itself but for now:

the way that that story should play out is Sirius and Remus getting to grow up and begin adulthood in a stable environment where they can slowly unlearn their trauma, toxic coping mechanisms and/or terrible relationship models, and form a healthy, mature and long-lasting relationship with each other. but they don't get the chance to do that, because of the First War, and instead their unstable and immature relationship is put under an existential pressure it could never have survived

okay. but then we should be able to see them slowly, if painfully, recover from and/or learn to live with the impacts of that war and eventually get to a stable place where they can deal with their formative trauma as well. except Sirius goes off to be tortured for 12 years, and Remus is sentenced to living as a lonely, isolated and unsupported outcast, who’s lost everything good that he gained in his life

okay... but then when they're finally released from this slice of hell frozen in time for 12 years, they should be able to spend the rest of their lives, guess what? fucking recovering from it all, and maybe, perhaps, being able to salvage a healthy relationship from it. instead they get thrust into another war, where every bit of trauma they've already gone through is magnified, and they have one (1) year together in absolutely awful circumstances before Sirius is killed

at every single turn in their story queer and/or ND people are taught that they will never find safety. they will never be given a reprieve and the chance of stability and happiness they see others have. it's not on the cards for them. it is simply not possible. JKR hams this home three fucking times. it’s brutal. it’s vicious. it’s beyond what anyone should ever have to go through. it’s entirely unnecessary for the plot. it is just punishing them for who they are

it’s a trope we all know well from that era, but the fact that it’s used as a punishment for so many other aspects of Sirius's character is what makes it so doubly awful

conc

nothing about what JKR did to Sirius was an accident. it was deliberate, it was targeted. and it has very, very real impacts on kids growing up reading those books

we should be learning that what makes us different is nothing to be ashamed of, that everyone is different in some way, that difference is all a matter of perspective, that you should be allowed to express every aspect of who you are without so much as a comment, let alone stigma. we should be learning that in a world which doesn't afford us that luxury, we can still build our own sanctuary where we can have that, full of found family and meaningful, lasting love. we should be seeing people like us unlearn the harmful ideas they absorbed growing up so we learn how to do that as well; we should be learning what people like us look like in relationships; we should be made to believe, in our very bones, that happiness is possible for us

instead we watch someone who we see ourselves in be tortured, humiliated, punished and denied every ounce of happiness until their premature death

Sirius deserved better, we all deserved better, and i'll never be quiet for a fucking moment about it lest this wrongdoing go ignored

#finally answering this #it required SO much thought #and it made me really sad #so it took a minute #but it's important #sirius black #wolfstar #harry potter #ty for the ask bb #ch: we choose who we really are #hp #hp meta #meta

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elegantkittycat · 1 year

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i'm watching never let me go and i actually like it and i just checked it on mdl and no one likes it in the comments? and i wonder

i mean, nevermind, to each their own but like, i saw some ppl bringing up palm, and i dunno, guess him not being all teary-eyed over his mother's death and such and i'm like. that's trauma for you. it has like, a million faces. and what, he's known that woman for a month or so? i'm not saying that to sound heartless, but it's a complicated relationship. she's never been there for him, and this time is not by choice either. of course she grew to like him, love him even, but that's a product of circumstance rather than intent, too. she would've been perfectly fine living all of her life without his son. and said son knows that. how painful that must be? it's complicated and i think it was carefully written and well-executed. Palm practically mourns a barely stranger. from his heart and from duty at the same time. a concept and a friend more, than a mother.

anyway,

the day my dad died, and after i was told through the phone i wrote a badass assignment in constitutional law. the best i ever did. i loved him dearly, don't misunderstand. his death destroyed my life and ruined practically everything in it. but you know, even after one year of it happening i don't think i had a grasp on reality much. i may even have joked some. trauma is weird as hell and Palm's reactions, his clinical attitude, his fits of depression and rage and then denial and his clinging to Nueng above anything else all rings relatable to me from my own traumas. but maybe i'm just a shitty human, who knows.

[and really this is just a side-note but Palm seems to be a guy who makes peace with bad facts of life and hardships thrown at him in a minute. he seems to accept the inevitability of suffering, of death, of lows and highs pretty easily and without much fanfare. i got a vibe from his character that he's like a deep, peaceful lake amidst the mountains. just there, calmly existing with everything. sure, when things ripple him badly he's ready to drown the offenders but it's not very personal. except in the case of Nueng.]

another one people seem to go on about, that Palm is a shitty bodyguard. i mean, yeah, really?? the whole point of the series is that he isn't a fucking bodyguard, he's just a boy who was dragged into this and fell in love, unfortunately. XD or is it just me who thinks that? i mean they point it out multiple times but idk. his dad was quite effective i think, for those what, seventeen years he protected Pipop but Palm is just a fisherboy. it is repeated like mantra throughout the show. in school they gossip about him being the son of the bodyguard forced to be around Nueng. which he technically is. Mrs. Tanya is using them both. Uncle Non's subservience and his willing sacrifices and his offering of a son Nueng's age. it's not a malicious abuse of power - it's subtle and seems justified and we're all so brainwashed alongside Uncle Non that we collectively forgot that that's a bad thing – wealthy people using us to their pleasure and convenience.... this show makes very strong points, (it seems way too subtly) imo.... and there's this strong implication in the first ep too, that Palm mostly grew up alone. he learned hard shit but his father was busy being an actual bodyguard in Bangkok, and he couldn't exactly teach his son that at the same time in some faraway village he grew up in... he must've been an absent father. of course Palm's terrible, it's a wonder he grew up to be this respectful and decent at all XD

also i'm not saying that Phuwin's and Pond's acting is the best I've seen but I don't know, tastes really do seem to differ cause i'm so uncomfortable with Chimon's acting (or presence, it's unclear at this point) omg. everyone has the hots for him and i'm just sitting here deeply uncomfortable. that's just a personal thing i guess but when i looked at his character first in this series (i never watched anything with him in it before) i thought he was fishy. and i just can't seem to shake that off. at first i thought it was the character but as it turned out he's a good guy. XD he gives me the creeps tho. idk, sorry man, i'm sure you're nice. maybe too nice. i can't believe a word he says. i'm so sorry.

oh but Perth is flawless. his is an outstanding performance and i'd love to see more of that but man if they really gonna have a series with Chimon i have to man up...

oh, and the Chopper's dad issue is a funny one too XD like, "the villain is so simple and his motivation is just money and he only talks and could've killed his sister-in-law a thousand times" etc...... i thought that was the whole point? like i seem to misunderstand everything here, but i truly genuinely thought that the villain being simple, kinda dumb and well, villain-y in a bad sorta way is intentionally disillusioned? that's why we know it's him from the get-go?! this is not supposed to be a mystery genius, this is to make us feel terrible and uncomfortable and uneasy, because that's the healthy real-life reaction to fucking criminals!? who murder their own family, no less. (i can't believe i'm saying this, being the biggest dark lord apologist in history but come on, this is not that type of fiction T_T ) he's like that because criminals are that simple sometimes?? they are big mouthed bullies sometimes? there is a reason he wasn't high up in the hierarchy and his brother looked down on him and never allowed him to manage big things?? because he's unstable, he's all talk, he's hateful, pitiful and a little dumb?? and that's a villain for you? also you wouldn't believe the LENGTHS simple people are willing to go for money... money is never an unworthy motivation, it's one of the single most important ones for criminals, business owners, bankers, bakers, kids, adults, actors and actresses', doctors, writers, your fave youtubers, moms, dads, uncles, mob bosess... you get the picture. duh.

(for me Uncle Kit's character was actually nice after the endless romanticization of criminals ~ i'm not looking at you kinn/porsche, i love you {kinda} but I'M SIDE-EYEING YOU. WTF WAS THAT AND WHY??!? SO FUCKING SICK AND TWISTED AND SORRY GIRLS but criminals are not all sweaty-sexy misunderstood and miseducated and mentally whacky and forced by their daddies but still somehow genius Vegas'?????? whatever the plural of this name is, i'm making grammar up as i go, sorry, rant over, i love you Vegas BUT WTF ~ )

all in all, i'm vibing to something entirely different than the rest. as per usual, i guess.

i especially loved Palm's mother and the difficult to swallow life lessons packed up in there. motherhood, self-love, selfishness, children, responsibilities, desires, duty, suffocation in a loving relationship, personal freedom... that was a good one. never seen that before in a thai bl either. you either have the devoted parent or the angry not so agreeable but ultimately i-love-you-and-i'm-here-for-you parent. but an absent parent by choice....... i felt like she was brilliant.

and i love Nueng's mother too. the very little we've seen of her is amazing. strong, no-nonsense but with a heart. devoted to her family, ready to kill for them but ultimately she's the one who gets almost killed. she seems the complete opposite of Palm's mother but not at the same time and i'm here for it, okay? i'm in love with that.

also i gotta admit that i haven't watched ep.11 yet but i just cracked up a little and this rant felt good to let out. sorry not sorry

and i would like to emphasize it: this post does not have an agenda to convince you to love a series that you don't enjoy or anything. we are all allowed to feel differently about everything under the sun (and above it and beyond). this is just my singular experience with a piece of media, wich provoked strong feelings and made me think about many aspects of humanity.

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gaysftw · 2 years

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Get to know the characters✨

1. Veronica Stone

29. She/her. Cis, Ace Lesbian. Business woman, mother, wife. Billionaire. Inherented a company from her father after her bitch of a mother sulked off, and after drinking problem after broken engagement after murder attempt after big huge conspiracy against her, she’s still alive and kicking. In fact, she’s more than just alive - she’s thriving. Mostly. She still has a bit of a drinking problem, but with her trusty wife/business partner by her side, there’s nothing she can’t do. Even when it comes to mothering Aiden... Maybe.

2. Emily Stone

27. She/her. Cis, unlabeled. The brains of the family. She’s organized to the T, and every thing she does, she does perfectly. Working on lessening the pressure she puts on herself and healing after her abusive and obsessive father finally properly got everything he deserved after he tried to ruin her life multiple times, but otherwise she’s doing wonderfully. The family she wants is still around, and she will keep it that way. Gentle and warm and sweet and harmless until you cross her even one time. Then the knives hidden in her platform pumps come out and shit gets proper ugly.

3. Sugar

30. She/her. Transfem, pan/aromantic. Kid genius who went to law school and found it incredibly boring. Decided to drop out and become a prostitute because she LOVES sex and finds it wildly run (and finically lucrative). Ends up running a pleasure palace in her house and running a full operation, with a team of people an everything. Very famous for the wonders she can work - both with her own hands, and with her skills in paring up customers with just the right working person. Best friends with Veronica but that’s not public knowledge - and neither is her actual name. She goes strictly by her alias “Sugar” and only Veronica knows any other name to call her by.

4. Aiden Stone

15. He/him. Cis, gay. He ran away at the ripe age of nine after his birth family - they tried their hardest but ended up only succeeding in teaching Aiden to hate himself to the utmost extreme - finally went too far. They weren’t abusive per say, and were in fact very loving and patient and accepting... they just hate who he is. He’s a sociopath with a mean attitude and a sharp bite, and honestly he thinks they deserve better. And they do. So he’s on the street, and he picks up to the life PERFECTLY. Of course, his powers don’t hurt either - being able to conjur someone’s worst fear is enough to bring even the strongest man to his knees. And when Veronica and Aiden meet, it isn’t instant family but it sure is an inevitable one. Now Aiden’s adopted and they’re... all working on their issues.

5. Jordan Wysse

16. He/they. Demiboy, bi. Sunshine incarnate... to most people. Ridden with intense and overwhelming anxiety, Jordan decided a long time ago to be the light he wants to see in the world. Has a hard time talking about negative things and accepting weaknesses and dark emotions. In Aiden, he finds a sort of freedom where they’re both allowed to be much more themselves without endangering anyone else. Jordan always knows when and how to pull Aiden back, allowing him to be a lot more free with his true emotions. Likewise, Aiden resounds a lot with Jordan’s anxieties and negative feelings and is really good at navigating Jordan through all of it. Of course they fell in love, am I right?

6. Lilianna Jax

15. She/her. Cis, lesbian. Goes by Lili. When I say mean gay I do not kid. MEAN mean mean gay. Her and Aiden are absolute besties - they gay judge people together, and only the other person can keep up with each other’s wit and biting remarks. She’s mostly here to enjoy the drama and make fun of everyone as they try to make peace with their trauma or whatever... but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t have problems of her own. Maybe everyone could use a little genuine expression, kind words, and healing. And that’s a STRONG maybe. She isn’t fully convinced just yet, and she’s determined to never be either.

7. Jerico Herron

16. He/him. Cis, Hetero ace. Goes by Jeri and takes pride in the fact that he took his rather creative and fancy name and made it super lame and basic. Had a crush on Lili at first but quickly learned from his mistakes. Is the Stable One of the group, coming from a generally stable home environment and not having to face much adversity.... well, or so he thought. Cause the thing is, he’s an idiot. Negative brain cells in that head of his. And apparently, people have been ripping him apart over it for years. So, yeah, there’s a lot of unresolved trauma. But hey, chin up and focus ahead right? Someone’s gotta keep these ticking time bombs from going off. Jerry finally had real friends, and he’s not about to let them implode around him.

8. Hunni Cao

17. She/they, afab. Demiromantic, greysexual. Grew up bonding with her dad bc their mom was super trans/homophobic and when their dad supported Hunni being trans and also gay, she left both of them. Rip lol. Now she’s a MONSTER on the field being the most kick ass bitch on the field. ALWAYS doing some or even several sport as the seasons pass, but off of the field she’s truly just so gentle and kind and a sunshine baby. Friendly giant, bull in a china shop. No one understands how she goes from the Unmovable, Living Nightmare, to tripping and smashing a flower crown Jeri made her and bursting into tears… yeah she’s SO precious. Lili’s girlfriend. Embodiment of sunshine x grumpy and also short chaos gremlin x tall apologizes for chaos gremlin. I love them.

9. Cynthia Lyn

17. She/her, mtf trans. Straight. Was very proud of her name. As a song writer, she loved how melodic and pretty it sounded. Def wrote a song about it. And then… Jeri came along and started calling her Cyn and it stuck. She HATES him for it (…or so she says). As a dedicated, studious golden student and a perfectly behaved child and a well tempered woman, and being soft spoken and well mannered, her world is ROCKED when Jeri comes in to destroy everything like a meteor ending the dinosaurs in one fell swoop. He turned her world upside down, always knowing how to push her buttons just enough to bring out a side of her she didn’t even know she had. Suddenly much more out spoken and hot headed and fiery than before, she’s on a war path to keep her idiot from getting himself killed. She’s out of her shell for the first time and completely different before… and maybe she likes it this way. Jeri definitely likes her this way, and she can’t complain about that. As much as she pretends to hate it.

Took pride in her name being so melodic and pretty and easy in the mouth. As a song writer, she loves saying it over and over again and feeling the rhythm and such. Jeri has a thing against king fancy names and starts calling her Cyn and she HATES him for it. (Or so she says) She says she hates Jeri a lot. Didn’t stop her from writing a song about him 👀. No matter how frustrating the dumb little boy gets, he always manages to take her shyness and crush it completely as sheer frustration drives her to be more hot headed and competitive and abrasive. He helped her come out of her shell and now she is INSUFFERABLE. He loves it that way… and you know what, so does she. Even if she won’t admit it yet.

10. Chuck Lomonosov

11. Boris

#ch: Veronica Stone #ch: Sugar #ch: Emily Stone #ch: Aiden Stone #ch: Lilianna Jax #ch: Jordan Wysss #ch: Jerico Herron #ch: Cynthia Lyn #ch: Hunni Cao #r: Emronica #r: Jaiden #r: Cynri #r: HunnLi

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hello-nichya-here · 2 years

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Why can’t we think of Azula’s time spent in the asylum as the time Zuko spent being banished? Because Zuko’s banishment impacted him in a good way. He needed to be isolated from that toxic inviroment and family to learn the truth and become a better person. And Azula’s 1,5 years of her life were just… wasted away. It was nothing but hell. She learned nothing and her mental state only deteriorated. And the worst thing about it is, Zuko was the one to lock her up in there. Zuko! And she would have probably stayed there forever if he didn’t need anything from her in the first place. Fucking awful writing.

***

I think that’s the main thing that people get wrong about redemptions: that idea that characters only see the error of their ways and become kinder when they go through a ton of pain/trauma.

Suffering doesn’t automatically make anyone kinder, hell, sometimes it only has the opposite effect - just look at Hama. Even when we have a situation like Iroh finally beginning to have doubts about his nation after Lu Ten’s death, it isn’t hard to imagine some AU in which that trauma only fuels his conviction of conquering Ba Sing Se and burning it to the ground, only now it’d be for revenge, not out of a messed up sense of patriotism.

And even Zuko’s banishment, which was mostly a good thing in his life, as he said so himself, since it allowed him enough away from Ozai and from his nation as a whole for him to see what the war was really doing to the world, was also a very traumatic event that caused him a lot of pain - and said pain is taken seriously by the narrative AND he had someone who, while deeply flawed, was on his side and trying to protect him as much as possible.

Meanwhile, Azula’s suffering in the comics reaches absurd levels, she has no one who so much as shows any interest in protecting her, and the narrative oscilates between going “This abuse is her punishment for the bad things she did” and “This isn’t actually abuse, what are you talking about?”

And the worse part isn’t just that Zuko is the one inflicting such immense pain on her, but rather whose mentality is being validated by all of this: Ozai’s. He literally said “Suffering shaw be your teacher” before burning his son, and when he tried to justify this yet again, Zuko was the one who said “It was cruel, and it was wrong.” The comics literally undid all of his growth, made him turn into his abuser, and treated it as something good... all because the writers refused to see that this 14-year-old child soldier is not the devil and that her being horribly abused isn’t her paying for what she did, because, surprise surprise, abuse is always wrong, not just when it happens to their fave. They ruined the character they loved the most because they just had to have him torture his younger sister when she was at her most vulnerable.

They’re literally making the whole world around Azula prove to her that Ozai was right, that mercy and kindness make you weak and that controlling others is not just acceptable, it is pretty much a matter of life or death (or rather a fate worse than death), because the second you’re not the one in control, you get treated like shit.

Seriously, those idiots that think what was going on in the comics is justice need a goddamn reality check. If Azula were a real person they were responsible for, she’d either:

1 - Commit suicide, and half of them would act like it was some inevitable tragedy that they had nothing to do with, while the others act like it was a good thing (again, one that they totally didn’t cause)

2 - She’d turn into Hama, essentially becoming much more dangerous than she ever was before, and make those fuckers get a taste of their own medicine by “teaching them kindness” the way the did to her.

So yeah, suffering often doesn’t teach you shit, and what Azula really needs is actual therapy and people who are willing to see her as human, as a child, and try to look after her.

#azula meta #azula deserved better #zuko deserved better #abuse #azula redemption #azula #zuko #fire siblings #hama #atla comics #the comics suck #atla fandom fuckery #fuck this fandom #double standards

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wistfulrat · 3 years

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this week’s fics! feat. bakeries, bookshops, bisexual awakenings of the angsty and fluffy sort, wolfstar goddads being tender as hell, desi harry reconnecting with his culture, domestic drarry, a lap dance set to akon’s smack that, and more!

But That’s History by @ebbet - 54k - T Harry Potter starts his first year as Muggle Studies Professor only to find that Draco Malfoy has been hired to teach History of Magic.

listen to me. this is one of the funniest drarry fics i've ever read. i was cackling in my bed at 2am because harry’s internal monologues throughout this fic are unhinged. insanely quotable. “what was he, a lothario” and “you were crushing me with your muscular thighs!” are lines that live rent free in my empty head. harry has never played anything cool a day in his life. there’s a faculty meeting where the teachers are planning the yule ball and debating the merits of a DJ when harry decides he must defend his muggle-music-loving honor by dancing seductively to akon’s smack that while a blushing draco loses his mind. i fucking screamed. and the best part is that in between the comedic scenes threading the overall story, you have extremely tender moments of like, padma patil helping harry become a more rooted desi by sharing their cultural traditions, harry proudly donning his sherwani. draco wrestling with his past, going to harry’s lgbtq+ club for students, being sheepish with ron and hermione. ugh, comedic writers with emotional depth are clever and talented as hell!!

Realities, Unfurling by @ebbet - 45k - M Draco Malfoy is released from Azkaban into a changed world.

incredible collage-fic told from multiple povs. 8yrs post-war and everything’s changed. the current state of the magical world unfolds via slice-of-life snapshots from a truly stunning cast. non-binary harry whom is running a non-prof org dedicated to building tolerance and establishing equality for marginalized identities. post-prison-release draco whose life will be changed by the internet. neville’s tender relationship with blaise. andromeda’s fiercely protective mothering. remus and sirius being alive and very hot and just, the tender goddads harry deserved. cho chang being brilliant. baker pansy’s softened edges. found families abound. harry being flustered by their crush on draco and making personalized playlists on an iPod nano.

that all might sound narratively cluttered but the author more than pulls this off. glorious, start to finish.

Knead by @jovialobservationanchor (an @hd-erised fic) - 83k - E This is not a story about Harry renovating Grimmauld Place. This is a story about coffee shops and brewpubs, about Ginny and Luna on a farm with creatures, about magical Oregon, coastal road trips, flying, friendship, and Draco Malfoy's lean arms.

cinematic. a love letter to oregon’s expansive landscapes and lively cities. it’s harry finding home in unexpected places and people. in the vast silence of rolling fields, endless coasts, and starry night skies big enough to feel like you’re adrift in space. and it’s also the lingering, intimate quiet of early mornings in a bakery, sitting on a park bench overlooking the city as you eat ice cream next to your crush. it’s harry watching ginny and luna dance and work around each other like bees. it’s the slow unfolding of harry and draco’s relationship as they fill each other’s quiet. finishing this fic is like waking from a good dream. transporting, immersive, lovely.

Harry Potter and the Bisexual Awakening by @writcraft - 20k - E Harry is perfectly content being single, heterosexual and living in Godric's Hollow with his very clingy rescue dog, Snitch. When Draco Malfoy turns up on Harry's doorstep demanding that Harry teach him how to drive, things quickly become a lot more complicated.

first of all, i feel very seen by draco being a gay-who-can’t-drive. it’s called representation. but mostly i love the ease of harry and draco’s banter, a flustered harry discovering his sexuality, and the way this fic addresses biphobia. also very emo over this exchange: “I think I might be scared of you, but probably not for the reasons you think.” “Yes.” Draco stares at Harry. “I think I might be scared of you too.”

Forged through flowing water by @tedahfromtayla (an @hd-erised fic) - 40k - E When Hermione sets up a diplomatic mission to begin repairing the damage British colonisation did to Indian magical communities Harry isn’t going to pass on the opportunity to visit and help his family’s home country. Maybe he should have asked a few more questions about the personnel she had recruited for it before signing on because Malfoy surely has an ulterior motive to be there.

so much to love about this fic. the beautiful settings, from kolkata to mumbai, to the holi festival and colorful lively streets, to remote cave settlements and old intricate temples. it’s harry in the homeland, reconnecting to his family’s heritage and confronting the weight of imperialism in his history. it’s nipping the white savior complex in the bud. this part: That is what England left behind. That is what it still stands for, despite whatever mask of respectability and honour it presents. . .You don't get to step aside and let someone else deal with the mess. You have to listen and learn and then act, Malfoy, you need to learn how to fix your own mess. This is why we're here. my indigenous ass cheered. HP certainly sells the british fantasy but HP fanfic?? fuck jkr, fuck the crown. i love that this fic doesn’t romanticize england’s history. i love that we get to see the vast resilience and beauty of post-colonial india.

Purity Control by yrfrndfrnkly - 28k - T In which Harry tries to ignore his trauma with fantasy Quidditch but Malfoy's Thereness™ is distracting and all his classmates want to talk about are unicorns, virginity, and Muggle music.

tender 8th year fics where they go from bristly as fuck to understanding and soft 100% guaranteed to make me emo as hell. all the teens have traumas and no one wants to talk about it but eventually Things are Talked About. it’s good of the adults to finally notice. everyone just wants someone to hold their hand. and this part: “You’re the only person around here who’s a bigger mess than I am.” “I thought maybe we could be a mess together,” pls don’t look at me as i weep over their gentle empathy.

Advent, a comic by dustmouth - WIP - T It's Harry and Draco's first Christmas together and Draco is determined to live his full yuletide fantasy, come hell or high water.

dustmouth, patron saint of whimsical drarry. whose illustrations singlehandedly reinvented wizarding fashion. whose cheeky and tender comics are like a soothing balm to the utter depravity of this carnal world. harry and draco being domestic, draco’s xmas spirit brand being “traditional unhinged”!! extremely my shit. we’ll absolutely be reading this all december.

Little Spaces by @dracoladon and @lazywonderlvnd - WIP - E Draco's back from France and working on the spell damage ward at St Mungo's with Hermione, who invites him over for dinner. Without telling Harry. This is a roleplay, which means Harry is written by one author (lazywonderland) and Draco by another (dracoladon).

the switch in distinct character voices works so well for this fic!! tonally i feel like i'm watching an episode of the office. i personally love harry and draco being Pissed Off at how much they want to bone each other. the battle of the tapenade was the most riveting dinner scene i've read in a minute. clever, hilarious, emotionally tense. can’t wait until that inevitable moment post hate-sex when they’re gonna be like “oh noooo it’s a Heart Boner as well!! >:((” hell ya we’re subscribing for chapter updates.

Dragons Don’t Know Paradise by @teacup-tai - WIP - E In 2004, when Remus spends two scary weeks in the ITU due to complications of pneumonia and his HIV condition, Sirius walks around the house like a ghost and Harry finds comfort and strength in Draco through a chat in an online LGBT forum. Harry falls for him, but Draco has a lot of secrets and, before long, will need to come clean—even if he believes that no one is able to understand a dragon.

non-magical bookshop AU. remus and sirius’ relationship is a marvel. the ease of their affection with harry makes me so emo. draco’s friends being insistently present even as he tries to isolate himself. this is a story about acceptance, found families, and falling in love at a distance. the intimacy, the longing, the tenderness. what a fic!! i keep coming back to this part:...he looks at ease, inside his body, a body he needed to fight for. He’d made peace with his struggles and his scars. And Draco realises he wants that. He wants to be at ease inside his body, the body that now carries a virus. He wants to be at peace with his own existence. you hurt for draco so deeply but you get moments like these where he affords himself a kindness that feels foreign and it’s just!! the boys navigating grief and learning to be vulnerable. so good.

#drarry fic rec #drarry #we live and die for desi harry aka hari poddar bc fuq jkr #a lot of soft drarrys this week but in my defense ive been reading hella angst and my depression was not finding that cute #weekly drarrys

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johns-prince · 3 years

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Let's play the speculation game and say McLennon was real. Going with the common idea that Paul dumped John in India, wasn't the "let's all be friends, write together and go on double dates with our wives" angle Paul seemed to hope for completely delusional? Why would someone with John's issues stick around and celebrate Paul's happiness with someone else after being downgraded?

I have great respect for Paul's decision of not being John's nanny/handler for the rest of his life. But I've always been annoyed by his inability to let the man go for good. Paul, you've made your choice, my friend. Enough with the sad songs about not being called back or turning up on John's doorstep with a guitar when the he was spending time with his own family. People hate that but some things in the world really are black or white. You can't have it both ways.

Why speculate when we know it was and is real

Alright so, let me try to unpack my thoughts cohesively get ya tinfoil hats on y’all;

If we go with the theory that during 1967, when Paul and John were practically living together and conjoined at the hip, taking LSD together and sharing those intense and intimate experiences that even Pau’s girlfriend Jane had become envious of— John had come to the realization of what he wanted, finally acknowledged it and came to accept it.

So in India, John tried to confront Paul about their relationship and their “relationship,” and openly admit to Paul that he wanted more, that he was now willing to leave Cynthia and Julian for a life he truly wanted or desired, and that included Paul (but to what extent is what we debate I guess)

And now that I’m thinking about it, we also know John was sort of beginning to spiral downward in 1968. It was obvious his marriage with Cynthia was at it’s end, and he didn’t want to work on it anymore. He was surrounding himself more with druggies, an unsavory crowd that Cynthia really didn’t approve of (Yoko was part of this crowd) and he was actively pulling away.

I think John was realizing that, he just wasn’t happy. That, putting everything he had into becoming one of the most successful musicians in the world, to become bigger then Elvis Presley, didn’t make him happy. It didn’t fix what needed fixing in him, what needed addressing. He was still drowning despite it all.

So you’ve got the trip to India, the boys going in hopes that perhaps the Maharishi Mahesh Yog and his spiritual teachings would somehow give a new perspective on things, produce the answer that would save the band (save John and Paul) from what appeared to be an inevitable downfall. But as we know, that isn’t what was needed.

John and Paul needed to talk. The lack of consistent communication between them for years and years, and the fact John needed a therapist, he needed rehab. So did Paul, during the White Album era.

I don’t believe Paul dumped John, but I do think John could have easily misconstrued Paul taking a step back and not willing to just go blindly, impulsively jumping off a theoretical cliff with him, as being rejected. We know Paul had to sort of take the position of ‘think before you leap’, to be more conscious of the actions and decisions he and the others decide to take, and how it would effect them as individuals, and especially them as a band (because frankly the others wouldn’t) and we know that John could be incredibly impulsive, only thought of the consequences after the fact. That, and who’s to say such a proposition and confrontation from John hadn’t scared Paul? Got him feeling those insecurities of his own crawling up.

Paul wanted a traditional family, he wanted to have a wife and children. But Paul also wanted John, he wanted and loved Lennon-McCartney, and he didn’t think (or he’d hoped) him getting married and having a family would really change anything between them (because John got married and had a kid and they were still able to do go and do whatever they wanted together, so what was the difference—) that he could still keep what he had with John, that they could still stay together after The Beatles split. Get around to writing that musical, and grow old together still writing and making music, still creating together.

How I see it, is that Paul wanted to have his cake and eat it too.

Paul, being fine with keeping the status quo between them, it was safe and enough (right?), but John vehemently wasn’t fine with it anymore, and it wasn’t enough for him. Nothing was enough for him, as we know; John was a very all-or-nothing individual, and expected complete devotion and love from someone, because receiving less felt like rejection and abandonment was only around the corner. This way of feeling and thinking for John was only exasperated by the drugs, his alcoholism, and his spiraling mental health.

Paul could have tried compromising with John, and John still could have taken that as a complete rejection of his feelings and what he wanted, and what he had hoped and thought Paul also wanted.

I believe Paul probably didn’t even know himself what he had done wrong, or that he did anything wrong. I don’t think Paul believed he was downgrading John to anything either.

If only they had talked.

Then they returned from India, and the rest as we know it...

“To me, a summary is something like: “gifted, disturbed boy with tremendous amount of drive to outrun a bad childhood discovers love for music and creative soulmate(s) and gives everything he has to become the most famous musician in the world, hoping it will make him happy. He does, but it doesn’t, and people who don’t have his best interests separate him from his friends, his creation and creative spark, and ultimately himself. He’s too screwed up by addiction, mental illness, and unaddressed traumas to change things, so he retreats further into addiction and mental illness, wishing he could somehow regain his lost spark. He makes a few halfway steps toward doing so, but they’re not enough, and ultimately he is killed in front of his apartment building where, 24 hours later, his wife installs the man she had been sleeping with behind his back.”"

— Michael Bleicher, The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon.”

Right, so both John and Paul made their choices in life. Some choices and decisions that we as fans and outside observers might never be able to understand, or agree with.

But who’s to say Paul (and John), couldn’t, didn’t, or don’t regret those choices and decisions?

I get what you’re saying, I understand. Why can’t Paul move on? He made his choices, why is it 40, 50 years later, that Paul can’t just let John go? Let sleeping dogs lie, all that.

Because Paul loved John, still loves John, to this day.

Because, clearly Paul has some regrets. He regrets how things were handled during the Divorce. He regrets not hugging John enough. He regrets not telling John, when he had the chance and time, that he loved him (and without the help of alcohol) When you love someone so deeply, and suddenly, without warning, they’re taken from you and the world, you regret a lot, and you miss what could have been, the ‘What if’s.’

Paul said that what he and John were, were soulmates. I don’t know how it feels to lose a soulmate. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to know how it feels to get the opportunity to love and be around them.

How awful do you think it is to meet your soulmate, but you cannot freely love them? Can’t just, be, with them? Not in just one way, bestmates, legendary partners, but, as everything that the word Soulmate brings along and includes with it?

That God decided to have them be of the same sex, during a time where it was illegal to love and be with someone of the same sex, and could even be a potential death sentence to be assumed or thought of as a ‘queer.’

So, you take whatever you can with them.

Then that isn’t enough. One grows restless, desperate for more. It can’t happen, not realistically, not without consequences of varying degrees.

Strain, miscommunication to none. They communicate through a musical, artistic language which just isn’t enough. Drugs, alcohol, mental illness and emotional turmoil, it’s all too much. It breaks. Soulmates are still flawed human beings.

You have people who work to purposefully pin them against each other. Parasites and piggybackers.

A nasty divorce and breakup between two lovers that never were.

And then, after ten years, it’s happening. You two are talking again, things are tense and awkward still sometimes, but something’s changed. You’ve planned on reuniting, couldn’t do it this year, because the studio you wanted was booked. So you plan for after the New Year.

Then, your soulmate is killed. Just, taken away from you, like nothing. Violently and suddenly. And all the possibilities... The time... Gone. Ripped away from both of you.

I can’t blame Paul for not letting go. I can’t say I’d ever be able to understand the sort of pain and heartbreak he experienced. He still goes through it! It’s still there. He’s just learned how to manage it a bit better.

I’d say it’s more pathetic then it is annoying— and I don’t mean it in a way to insult Paul. I really don’t. Because John was just as pathetic when it came to his obvious obsession, desire, and love for Paul, too.

Love, that kind of soul-deep love, it can make you pathetic and hopeless. And it’s not something you can just... let go for good.

Wanting, or expecting Paul to let go of John for good... Firstly would be impossible, and secondly, how do you let go of a soulmate? John is a part of Paul, whether some like it or not. Can’t really have one without the other.

Can’t have Lennon without McCartney, and vice-or-versa. Forever intertwined, are they.

#questionsquestionsquestions #mclennon #beatles discussion/discourse #I think all I did was ramble again I'm sorry #this isn't even that good

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spn-romantica · 3 years

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So I watched SPN for years, right up until the end of S11, when they brought back Mary. I heard that S15 would be the last season, and I was like ‘oh ok I’ll rewatch (for like the 8th time) and finish SPN then’ BUT THEN 15x18 happened and I was violently pulled back into the SPN fandom. I still haven’t caught up fully watching yet, but I’ve read so much discourse now...and I have thoughts. Hypotheses currently. I’ll wait to finish the whole show for real to call any of this theories but, I wanted to record my thoughts.

They’re about Chuck. As a villain. Which weirds me out. As an antagonist? Sure. As evil? No. Can’t envision it. I just finished my rewatch of S5 and, damn, but if Chuck is the ultimate villain, S5 reads very differently. :0

But I recently saw a post comparing Dean’s reaction in 1x18 (I believe) to his in 10x05 (for sure) about when someone mentions his mother’s death. In 1x18, it’s Sam when they were children and Dean gets angry. In 10x05, it’s a group of high school girls and Dean just bops his head along to the song. The post was framing it as 10x05 not understanding Dean’s thoughts about his mother, but I think that both episodes understand Dean. When Dean is a child, the trauma over his mother’s murder is still fresh. By 10x05, the event is 70 years in the past. Of course it still affects Dean. Of course. You never really get over something like that. But I’d argue that after 70 years, Dean has moved through the stages of grief to acceptance. It still hurts, but like an old ache, not a fresh, still-bleeding wound.

Interestingly, 10x05 is when we see Chuck, after a long absence. He’s watching the play, probably happy that someone loves his work enough to even make a musical, but he is also watching the Winchesters. The actual episodes of the show, aka the books Chuck writes, are what Chuck knows/cares about regarding the Winchesters. Despite being God, I’d argue he doesn’t pay attention to every second and all the little minutia of the boys’ lives. So, here in 10x05, we have confirmation that Chuck is around to see that Dean has healed from his mother’s death.

Later, in S11, Dean acts as therapist/life counsellor to Chuck/God, regarding Amara and Lucifer. And it works! Dean teaches God about family and about healing. Why does God listen to Dean Winchester, a random human? Perhaps it is because of S1-5. Perhaps it is because Dean and Sam were part of God’s test, as God himself describes it in 5x22.

What was the test? Was it God’s experiment about choice and free will? About freedom vs peace? Or, perhaps, was God trying to understand sibling relationships? He and Amara are two faces of the same coin. They are siblings, but with very different outlooks and it caused a rift between them, caused Chuck to seal Amara away before she could destroy his creations. Chuck regretted this, but saw it as a necessary betrayal. But then, some time later, Chuck’s angelic children experience their own betrayal and sibling rift. Lucifer tries to turn the angels against God, rebel and reject God. He makes demons, for sure, and maybe even Hell. But why? God figures that Lucifer was maybe jealous of the new baby (humans) like others in the show postulates. Or maybe Lucifer had beef specifically with Michael, because humans are little more than amoebas from an angelic perspective. Aside from Castiel, Anna and a handful of other angels, angels consistently view humans as humans might view dust mites. Maybe humans were the cause of the rift between Michael and Lucifer, but it was Michael and Lucifer’s relationship that needed fixing in the end, regardless.

So God is left with the sad conclusion that maybe close siblings will inevitably betray each other and be unable to forgive and heal. He wants to heal with Amara. But he also wants Michael and Lucifer to be able to heal. (It doesn’t occur to God that maybe Lucifer’s problem was never with humanity or Michael; it was with God.)

So God has research to do, to see if it’s possible for siblings to experience such deep betrayal and still heal. He turns to his little hairless apes, the only sentient species on Earth with potential to parallel the angels. He starts testing siblings. Cain and Abel are first up. Needless to say, but the betrayal was too strong and left no room for healing. But on down the line of Cain, God continues testing. Eventually, we come to Sam and Dean.

God has scheduled Michael and Lucifer’s family counselling session for 2010. All the data up to this point says it can only end badly. Maybe it’ll half-kill the Earth, but it’s finally time for Michael and Lucifer to meet and for one of them to die. God isn’t happy about this conclusion, but it’s what the data says. So, finally, the last test subjects, the last in the line who will be the vessels for Michael and Lucifer’s showdown, arrive. Sam and Dean Winchester are to be the last sibling test. The conclusion seems foregone at this point, but there is no point in cancelling the last bit of the test after so long, so it continues. God watches. And Sam and Dean surprise God. Siblings after siblings had failed for millennia to heal. Betrayals too strong, healing too little, too late. But Sam and Dean. no matter how badly they hurt each other, find a way to come back together and heal. They don’t give up on each other, despite millennia of data to the contrary. Still, the angels and demons push and push at Sam and Dean until their rift is as wide and as deep as Michael and Lucifer’s, as God’s and Amara’s (in late S4). It seems, despite the brothers’ best efforts earlier on, it’s all for naught.

But there is a further element of randomness, something God couldn’t foresee. Castiel. God hasn’t had occasion for romantic love in his own experience, so he is entirely blind to what choices Castiel is likely to make. He provides an element of randomness to the experiment, an essential part that gives Dean the ultimate chance to go back to Sam and begin to heal (4x22).

Throughout S5, Sam and Dean heal. There is hurt, still, of course, but they love each other and forgive each other. By 5x22, they’ve surprised everyone. Even the angels have given up on turning them against each other, and have shrugged and settled for using Nick and Adam as the vessels for the showdown. Sam and Dean passed their test. They were siblings who betrayed each other and healed from it. God reconsiders how family counselling will go with Michael and Lucifer. He figured it would be the Apocalypse, the end of the problems between Michael and Lucifer, as one of them dies, as had always happened before. But, Sam and Dean showed God, that though it is rare, it is possible to heal. So God gives Sam and Dean an out. He gives Sam the strength to seize back control from Lucifer, should things go south.

Finally, the showdown arrives. Michael and Lucifer meet. They talk things out. To God’s surprise, Lucifer reveals that he never had a problem with Michael. He had forgiven Michael long ago. But Michael couldn’t forgive Lucifer. He had to be a ‘good son’ and do what he thought God wanted him to do. But Michael didn’t realise, that God doesn’t give orders. Free will all the way, baby! But the whole thing comes as a surprise. Apparently, all this time, the problem relationship wasn’t siblings, it was parents.

Oops.

Good thing God had a back-up plan.

Sam throws himself and Lucifer (and Michael and Adam) into the Cage. Michael and Lucifer have an eternity to figure things out between each other now. But that’s beside the point. The point is, now, that God has to start testing all over again. Not how to fix sibling relationships, but how to fix parent-child relationships.

God restores Castiel, perhaps for a few reasons because God exists outside of time, but originally it may have been just for one. He likes Castiel. He is impressed that Castiel invented free will for himself, broke free of angelic programming (multiple times over), and did it all for love. It’s novel. It’s interesting. God might even think it’s sweet. But God has had time later, and thought about it, and he has a plan. And Castiel is essential.

But Dean Winchester is the key.

Sam and Dean’s relationship with their own father has been strained, but both boys find a way to forgive John his flaws and failings, and love him. Whenever they do get a chance to see him again, post his death, they don’t hate him. They’ve healed. John’s relationship with Sam and Dean is one point of data, Abraham and Isaac another. There are many data points that God can reflect back on and consider.

But as S6 through S10 roll on, God watches Sam and Dean and Castiel. He even watches Crowley and Rowena for another data point. Dean is his main focus, however. (This is a little meta, but as the story focuses more on Dean than Sam post S5, it ties in. Prior to S6, both Sam and Dean were essential - the sibling test. Now, post S5, the parent test, Dean is the most essential. Of course, Sam and Castiel are important too. But Dean is key.)

Dean is a good father. He was a good father to Sam, even when he was only 6 years old himself. He was a good father to Ben. He was willing to die for Bobby John. He’s always good with kids. Not only that, but Dean is blunt enough, brave enough, and crazy enough to tell God to God’s face what he thinks. God needs Dean’s advice, his perspective and opinion on family relationships, but he also needs to see what Dean would do if he were in God’s shoes.

[Edit (1/04/21): After seeing Michael and Lucifer (mostly) heal, and after seeing Sam and Dean heal their relationship, God finally has hope for him and Amara. So God logically wants to retrieve Amara from her prison. But how? Well, he could just wander on up to Cain and do it himself, but what would Amara say? “So I see you’ve come crawling back, eh, Chucky?” She wouldn’t be impressed with God. She wouldn’t understand, because she’s hopeless too. SO how to give her hope? How to make her see that she and God can be okay again? Why, stick her near Dean Winchester, of course! So God sets things up for Dean to get and lose the Mark of Cain, thereby ensuring that Amara will feel a connection to Dean and stick around him/keep him alive long enough for Dean to work his life-coach magic.]

In S11, God and Amara heal their relationship because of the hope Sam and Dean gave God, and also the direct advice Dean gives God. God and Lucifer, not so much.

God needs more data. He needs to see what Dean would do. In comes Castiel’s relevance. God sets things up so that Lucifer can have a son. A nephil. Jack. And God points Castiel in Jack’s direction, trusting Castiel’s ability for unconditional love to keep Jack alive long enough for the experiment. Castiel becomes Jack’s father. But Castiel will never betray Jack, the way God betrayed Lucifer. And, besides, Castiel isn’t the target of this experiment. But it is Castiel’s relationship with Dean Winchester that provides the link needed to get the experiment rolling.

Because Jack is Castiel’s son, he is therefore Sam and Dean’s nephew. Except, God has been watching Castiel and Dean. And, frankly, their romantic love for each other is so obvious even God cannot miss it. Through Castiel, Dean sees Jack as his son too. He loves Jack, exactly like a son. In this way, Dean parallels God, and Jack parallels Lucifer.

But God knows Dean would not easily turn on any child, let alone his own child. So God had a plan for that too. One that Amara helped him with.

They brought back Mary Winchester.

Mary is the one person in existence whose loss would hurt Dean enough to spur him to action. So, she was brought back to die. It was a matter of only a few years of gentle prodding to get everything in position. Jack causes Mary’s death. Dean is faced with a horrible decision. If Jack can kill Mary, what’s to say that Sam and Castiel wouldn’t be next? Mary’s death is like everything beginning all over again for Dean as well. Her first death set off a chain reaction, a series of unfortunate events that spanned decades and nearly caused the ruination of not only Dean’s life, but Sam’s and John’s and even the world. That scar, which had healed as well as it could after 70 years, that God saw was healed in 10x05, has been violently opened up again. It’s the only thing that could force Dean’s hand, that could get him to betray Jack and try to kill him. If Jack had killed Sam or Castiel, it wouldn’t have had the same effect. Both Sam and Castiel had died and come back so many times, and while it would hurt Dean and make him doubt Jack, their deaths would be a sacrifice that Dean would feel obligated to respect, to give Jack a second chance like they would both want. (And God has been laying the groundwork for Dean, convincing him that Jack is evil, will be evil like Lucifer, can’t be allowed to live. All things God has thought about Lucifer over time. Was Lucifer inherently evil? Was their rift inevitable?)

So, here it is. The big test. Will Dean kill Jack? Will he betray Jack and cause an unhealable rift? Or will he find a way to heal, like he did with Sam against all the odds?

And, once again, Dean impresses God. He refuses to kill Jack.

But now we’re in the endgame. Sam, Dean and Castiel are aware that Jack’s life was only on the line because of God. It’s not something they can forgive, or understand. They’re all God’s guinea pigs, and while he loves his guinea pigs, he knows he’s hurt them in the name of science, of knowledge. or healing, and God can’t undo what he’s done. Free will is linear, after all. So it is time for the Winchesters, Castiel and Jack included, to be done with God. God is done with them, too. It’s time for them to be free and at peace. The experiments are done. God has decided not to kill Lucifer. He has decided to try to heal. He can get Lucifer out of the Empty and talk and try to fix things. He has forever to fix things, now that he knows he can. (The last element of this, Jack forgiving Dean for trying to kill him, is something I have limited knowledge of, but I am under the impression happens so... To be added in the edit once I finish the series.)

But the only way the Winchesters will be able to rest, is if they think God, the last and greatest villain, is out of the way. They know they’ve been manipulated their whole lives, first towards the sibling experiment and now the parent experiment, so they need to think God is gone so they can feel secure in their free will once more. Truthfully, God never took their free will. He set them up in situations, maybe even gave a bio-chemical nudge of anger (Dean) or attraction (Sam and Eileen) every now and then. But the choices were always theirs. Still, God knows they won’t see it that way. So he sets things up so that they can defeat him.

He lets them win. He wants them to win. They cannot defeat God, after all. It’s not God’s time, and Death is the only one who can claim God in the end, as the two embrace as friends and walk to the next existence. But the Winchesters need this, and so God allows it. A last gift, to the beings who have been such help, hope and inspiration to him.

With an eye for an eventual S16, 15x20 is written to be ‘an ending’ but also one that could easily be reframed as a bad dream.

For example...

Unfortunately, after Jack, suped up on a extra Grace God lent him, restores the Earth and expends all the Grace (”giving up the mantle of God so that their is no God, no plans, only Free Will”), and Dean, Sam and Jack head back to the Bunker to regroup and gather the ingredients to do the spell to rescue Castiel from the Empty, they’re jumped by monsters who are angry with how much God has fucked with them on behalf of the Winchesters. 15x20 is all a djinn dream Dean is trapped in.

16x01 is Dean waking himself up from the djinn dream, Sam and Jack escaping their own monsters, and then the end of 16x01 is Dean saying something about waking Castiel up from his own dreams in the Empty. The rest of S16 sees the boys save Castiel, reunite with Eileen, start a monster-hunting Bobby Singer/Men of Letters-esque organisation, Dean and Castiel getting together and getting married on Valentine’s Day, Jack getting to live a normal life, going to school, making friends, etc.

If their is no S16 ever (which would be criminal), then 15x20 makes no sense, unless it is plainly a recount of an old, hopeless ending written by God. However you spin it, 15x20 is not the way it seems (like owls).

All things being said, God is an antagonist, but he’s not evil. He’s an asshole, sure, but he never once worked against the Winchesters, never bet against them, never tried to erase or end them. He wanted them to win. He wanted to see the fruits of free will be love, second chances, hope, forgiveness, healing, and happiness, not just betrayal, pain, selfishness, jealousy, disappointment, and hopelessness.

Why is the ending he shows Becky ‘hopeless’? Because God is. He has spent his long existence losing his most loved family members. Amara, Lucifer. How can things end well for God, when they can’t even end well for humans? But Sam and Dean defy the script, again and again. They surprise God, defying the statistics, defying the hypotheses, throwing the experiment into disarray. Giving God hope. Sam and Dean were okay. Dean and Jack were okay. If God had a romantic love, he would find hope from Dean and Castiel being okay. But when God wrote the book he showed Becky, he was writing what he thought would happen. In the end, surely, not even Dean can be enough to hold Sam and Cas and Jack together. But in the end, as we see, as God sees, he is proven wrong and he’s happy to be wrong. He’s hopeful. And he can leave Dean, Sam, Castiel and Jack, and all the angels and all the humans, to rule the Earth and the Heavens. He doesn’t need to learn anything more from them, so he heads to the Empty, with Amara, with Lucifer, with Death (Billie or not, Death is there for God in the end), and they can all depart for a better existence of their own.

If you read all of this, thanks! I eagerly anticipate watching the remaining 10 seasons so I can come back and edit the heck outta this, but until then, if y’all have any thoughts, I’d be interested to hear them~

TLDR: God is a morally bankrupt scientist and the Winchesters are his guinea pigs, but he’s not evil and he does love his guinea pigs, even if he could really treat them nicer.

#supernatural #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #jack kline #castiel #god #chuck #amara #lucifer #mary winchester #destiel #deancas #this is what i get for living on spn tumblr in a post s15 world while rewatching s5 and having memories ranging from hq to 8bit about s1-s11 #be kind i haven't finished my rewatch/finished the show so i probably have stuff wrong #what if god isn't evil just has no inherent moral compass because he has to teach himself everything #and he's taken to using the winchesters as his guinea pigs/life counsellors

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sunnysviolin · 3 years

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tw // self harm

do u think sunny became a cutter after mari's death, perhaps as a grounding technique? trying to stay away from the dream world?

First of all thank you for the trigger warning for this I appreciate that! TW extends to the entire answer, but I will be putting it under a read more because let’s do our best for our friends who are doing their best each day!

Secondly....I wrote out a huge thing for this and it all got deleted....Let’s see if this also gets deleted....also I forgot a lot of what I wrote

I think it was incredibly deliberate that Omocat never actually blatantly stated that Basil or Sunny self-harmed. If they wanted us to know for sure, they would have included some way to find out that Sunny self harmed I’m sure, and I think that it’s important that Basil and Sunny are never shown to physically hurt themselves. I think that Sunny fully committed to emotional self harm, and that was what was most significant. I think that rather than harming his physical self the White and Black spaces were his emotional self harming techniques. The dream world was his self harming tool. Let me explain a bit more

I really subscribe to Jungian dream theory which I’ve mentioned before, but I’ll mention it again very basically here- You are every single person in your dreams. Dreams are the subconcious trying to understand the things that you have gone through in your life. White Space for Sunny is how he isolates- a punishment he thinks he deserves for taking Mari away form their friends.

Notice how Sunny doesn’t live in the Neighbor room where all his friends are with color and games. He gives himself a laptop that only has a journal and a game where he can pretend to die, tissues to cry with, a sketchbook full of self harming images of the Black Space, and Mewo. Sunny doesn’t even live in the fun world where Mari and Basil get to live. He lives in White Space, and he gets transported back into his self made prison any time he deviates from the norm or interacts with his intense guilt and trauma (When he sees the picture of the violin, when he talks to Basil in the barn, the library, etc.) Then he has to stab himself to wake up. It’s not physical, but it is Sunny harming himself.

Then a part of the Black Space Basil/Strangers is Sunny lashing out in his anger at Basil (hence why everyone but Omori in the Black Space takes the form of Basil), but those Strangers are also Sunny interacting with himself in his mind. Sunny is lashing out at himself, using the form of Basil, and hurting himself in every way he can think because he hates himself for what happened to Mari. He kills Basil, but he’s killing himself. He hurts Basil, but he’s hurting himself. He’s using basil as a proxy because in his mind Basil is the only other person who deserves that pain because they were both involved in what happened to Mari.

It’s only when Sunny answers Kel’s call that he sees that with his emotional self harm and his dissociation, he also hurt all of his friends. His isolation lead to a further splitting of them all along with Mari’s death. He knows he can no longer use the White Space as a coping mechanism because it isn’t helping, and he is reaching a point where he wants to forgive himself and stop hurting himself with the Black Space. That’s why Mari is constantly telling him to forgive himself, and the Something is teaching him positive coping mechanisms like calming down and focusing)

I think that the Black Space is concentrated inside of the lightbulb in the White Space in Sunny’s psyche. The choice to make the lightbulb black felt deliberate to me. It’s always near him, and he can never escape it, but when he destroyed the Black Space lightbulb, he also destroyed the White Space. In that he overcame his negative coping mechanisms and his self harming techniques and was able to understand the truth.

I also think that when we saw Sunny finding out the truth in the game that was Sunny also finding out the truth for the first time. I think that Sunny fully repressed what happened to Mari- that he genuinely did not remember how she died. I say that as someone who has experienced major trauma and I have severe memory loss of that time. I know it happened, I don’t remember it happening. So then Sunny has 1) conquered his need to harm himself and Basil in the Black Space 2) Overcome his need to dissociate and hide himself away in dream worlds and the White Space and 3) Fully accepted the truth of what happened to Mari.

All three of these things have never happened in the previous four years, which is why Sunny is able to confront the side of him that is Omori (aka the part that hates himself) and can defeat that with music, loving his sister, and acknowledging that what happened was an accident and a mistake. He loved Mari and he wants to be able to forgive himself and save Basil.

I personally really really care that Sunny and Basil never cut themselves or did anything deliberately physically self harming, because I think it’s an important message about the existence of emotional self harm. Emotional self harm happens in patterns (Sunny’s self isolation and his constant repeating of the same journey to find Basil that inevitably always fails) and overcoming emotional self harm is ridiculously hard. The parts of us that hurt ourselves internally are just as important as the parts that hurt ourselves externally. I have my own struggles with self harm, but it’s almost 100% emotional internal self harm, and that isn’t as recognized or talked about in society. For Sunny to only hurt himself in his dreams and in setting himself up for isolation and failure in the real world shows that he is hurting himself, even if he never took a knife to his skin.

This got lonnnnnng but I hope I answered you well! Also a minor PSA to everyone because I am really passionate about this I won’t write anything with Sunny self harming (I’m potentially open to writing about other characters slef harming, but I won’t for Sunny 1000%_

#meta #long answer #omori #omori meta #omori sunny #Why I think Sunny isn't physically self harming #I know this got really long #but it all has a reason #white space #black space #redrosecarnage #omori headcanon #tw self harm

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strawberry1212 · 3 years

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Kdrama Sexist/Toxic Male Lead Tropes

(originally made this post as part of another post about Run On but it got to be so long I just thought I’d made this list it’s own post)

-Possessive and easily jealous, and this is often played off as romantic. For a large portion of kdrama watchers who are younger, and for the majority of us who aren’t chased all the time by hot men, this toxic trait can easily be sold to us as an exciting and flattering trait. But this is in fact not respectful of the female lead’s autonomy. I enjoy the little humorous jealousy moments, (I am reminded of Crash Landing on You) but too often this leads to the classic “two male leads each grab the innocently wide eyed female lead and glare at each other” trope. Women are not ropes to play tug of war with! If jealousy over the instances like the girl simply having a conversation with another guy rupture into real problems in the relationship it is not romantic, but possessiveness is often mistakenly portrayed as an expression of love, when really possessiveness is just that: possessiveness over an object.

-Uses violence to solve problems. This is another thing that can be easily seen as flattering--someone is willing to go to great lengths to protect you/defend your honor/whatever the reason is for the male lead to use violence. This trope was deconstructed in the American movie 500 Days of Summer, where the male lead punches a guy “to defend the honor” of the female lead, but she when she is upset and embarrassed at the situation, he gets angry at her for not being excited over his violent sacrifice.

-The typical “tsundere” narrative of abusive language, but paired with romantic gestures, usually the Grand Romantic Gesture trope. I see this all the time, where the guy berates the girl, sometimes to point of just full on bullying, but then he throws his jacket at her when she’s cold, holds the umbrella over her while he gets wet, etc., In other words he may be verbally abusive but it doesn’t matter because he Truly Loves her. And that she should accept that and understand that about him and not expect him to be polite and respectful.

-He treats everyone but the female lead like trash. Well...he often treats the female lead like trash at first too, but this quality is also marketed as flattering. He treats everyone badly but you’re different! In reality this is super toxic. In fact, it is essential that a person treats *everyone* with decency if they are to meet the baseline requirements of being a person capable of giving and receiving love in a healthy relationship.

-He chases her one sidedly. Oftentimes he chases her even when she rejects him, which shows that dominating, male persistence is a behavior to be rewarded. Again, this is a fantasy easily marketable when many of us aren’t chased around by hot men. It is flattering for a person to be so interested in us that they are incredibly persistent, but this fantasy had very unhealthy, and even harmful real life connotations. There is a very important line between friendliness/respectful attention/flirting, and creepy and domineering. I think it is also equally important to note that in this toxic trope, it is important to teach both men and women that no means no and yes means yes. Not that you can’t have playful/teasing banter, but playing hard to get when you really want to be gotten, is an unhealthy coping mechanism for cowardice in relationships.

I think for this one as with other tropes on this list, it appeals to our childish, insecure, and relationship-immature side of ourselves that would rather have everything fall into place than be honest, vulnerable, and have agency in our romantic interactions. What I mean is, the fantasy of a hot male lead persistently pursuing us after a destiny meet cute is a fantasy where we don’t ever have to put ourselves out there. Where don’t have to consciously try to meet new people, express interest in others, set boundaries, i.e. do the hard work of negotiating our place within other people’s lives.

The hallmark of a bad drama for me is when the give and take between the male and female lead is: the female lead has to put up with the meanness and constant mistakes of the male lead as he hurts her (usually in tangent with the Noble Idiocy trope, where he breaks up with her and steps all over her “for her own good” for some bs reason), but in return she gets the Grand Romantic Gesture, and the male lead does most of the chasing. In a healthy relationship, there aren’t constant hurtful arguments, and both do an equal share of the “chasing,” or a better term would be meeting each other halfway in expressing interest in the other.

-Power imbalance. It really disturbs me how Kdramas fetishize power imbalances between male and female characters to create the helpless/incompetent/somehow indebted but also plucky/cheerful/abuse-taking female lead. This can manifest itself very overtly in the many Kdramas between CEOs and secretaries, which I still cannot believe are popular in 2021. Secretary Kim did a better spin on the usual trope--the secretary holds the power of being very good at her job, and therefore indispensable and respected in her own right, but it remains a mystery to me why these super narcissistic and childish CEOs are played off as “adorable manchilds” that always need a little soothing of their ego. But to return to the power imbalance, besides obvious power imbalances of wealth/power/etc., oftentimes the guy has supernatural powers, or by nature of his job has abilities that render him the “protector” in the relationship (My love from another star, descendants of the sun), or the girl is infantilized in some way to need to protection from the male lead (legend of the blue sea, she is a mermaid and therefore dependent on the male lead for guidance in the human world, bring it on ghost as well). I think these latter power imbalances are constructed into the setting of the story because more overt forms of power imbalances are frowned upon now, but they serve the same patriarchal purpose.

This power imbalance inevitably leads to the female lead putting up with some abuse from the male lead because she “needs” him for some other end, and him holding his power over as a way to keep her close. It fits very well into the enemies to lovers trope in this way, especially some contractual enemies to lovers, where due to the power imbalance he is able to exploit/use her in some way, and keeps her close, and she hates him but has to put up with it for her own survival in some way, but they slowly fall in love. It’s super toxic and not at all romantic because they didn’t choose each other at all, they just were pushed together by circumstance, but again it buys into our fantasy of falling in love due to circumstance, rather than our own agency.

-Overly protective (OP) vs respectfully supportive. (RS) Essentially I can divide Kdramas into these two categories, OP and RS. OP romances can commonly be found in love triangles (where jealousy flourishes) and high school romances (where characters usually have less of a personality lol), and RS relationships are more common in working adult romances, where each character is pursuing their career/dreams and they support each other in those dreams. OP relationships infantilize the female character, render her as just an object in need of saving, and power dynamic between the leads is usually he constantly needs to save her, and in return she “softens”/“heals” him which, under deeper analysis, reveals itself to be quite an insidious and harmful stereotype, the kind of psychology that keeps women in domestic violence relationships. RS relationships are also better in that the leads have something going on outside of their romance, and are motivated beyond just ending up together. My favorite of RS relationships are Miss Hammurabi (two judges that work together to confront injustices in the judicial system), Run On (two leads from v different career fields, but they take interest and support each other throughout career ups and downs), and Hello My Twenties (probably my favorite example of an RS male lead--Sungmin supports Song as she uncovers her past traumas and stands up to an abuser, but does so following her lead and not doing her work for her, but rather simply staying by her side supportively).

Conclusion

This is not all the toxicity in the kdrama world--this is just what I can come up with off the top of my head as my least favorite tropes that disempower women and glorify toxic men and toxic relationships. And of course this is not a problem unique to Korea, and is by no means a condemnation of Korean culture, etc., but I simply happen to enjoy the aesthetics and innocence (compared to American shows haha) of Kdramas, so that is the entertainment world I am familiar with, and feel able to comment on.

#miss hammurabi #run on kdrama #jtbc run on #hello my twenties #feminism #kdrama #kdramas

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cherubcow · 3 years

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“Invincible”, Season 1 (2021) Review

Somehow both very cool and very fucking stupid :D

About Created and written primarily by Robert Kirkman (principle writer for The Walking Dead comic and TV show), this Young Adult cartoon basically synthesizes a number of comic book characters (e.g., Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Hellboy, Wonder Woman, Gambit) and tries to balance their heroism with cynical twists and dark realities. It's an exercise like Brightburn (2019) in that it mirrors existing comic writing all too closely in order to make violent twists. The cool stuff arrives pretty much immediately. You can tell right away that the physics have some level of realism, and it quickly gets serious because of this. The easy comparison would be to The Boys (also by Amazon, also about violent heroes, and also very well-produced). So, if you like The Boys (2019–), you'll probably like Invincible only a little less.

(( Some spoilers but nothing too specific ))

Wrong Focus But, the stupid stuff comes from the same error that the Kick-Ass movie (2010) made: it focuses on the wrong person(s). In Kick-Ass, the error was focusing on.. well.. "Kick-Ass", an irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. Invincible makes the same mistake, focusing on.. well.. "Invincible", a (so far) irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. So, despite its virtues, this show cannot escape that it made the decision to go for the Young Adult viewing demographic. It reminds me of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) in that way too: some very cool adult concepts ruined by the dramatic devices of unrepentant teenage stupidity and irrelevance. I didn't even like that stuff when I was a teenager, though Jordan Catalano gets a pass.

Main Cast and Characters The supporting characters were also very stupid. The most annoying was definitely Amber Bennett (voiced by the otherwise cool Zazie Beetz from Deadpool 2 (2018) and Joker (2019)),

who is supposed to be attractive somehow to Mark Grayson ("Invincible", voiced by Steven Yeun, who played Glenn on The Walking Dead)

despite the fact that she constantly judges him, fails to understand him, often fails to give him any kind of benefit of the doubt, and continues to scowl at him and be hurtful towards him even when she has information that should change her outlook towards him. And because she is part of the love triangle shared between herself, Invincible/Mark, and "Atom Eve"/Samantha (voiced by the awesome Gillian Jacobs from Community (2009–2014)),

audiences simply have to bear with it that Amber's annoying character will be present and wasting time until Mark can realize that Amber is in fact toxic and that Eve actually understands him and can improve him in more positive directions. That love triangle should have been a 20-minute distraction, but I'm guessing that it will eat up a season or two more, especially if the writers become cowardly and fail to change things for fear of messing up a perceived "winning" formula. In my ideal story line, they would skip ahead 10 years, drop the teen drama, the love triangle, and the stupid jokes and have Invincible and Eve paired in defense of Earth, with the main tension being from their worry that the other would be horribly gored in front of them during lethal fights against cosmic enemies ;)

Aside, I am aware of Amber’s motivation for being a bad person, I just think her justification is not based in understanding, empathy, and a regard for the gravity of Invincible’s situation. In a strict political sense, Invincible should not commit a lie of omission by keeping her in the dark about his identity — even if for the “noble lie” reason of protecting her — but in a real sense, he is a fucking teenager who just developed his super powers. For her to pretend that he should reveal his entire identity to her — a potentially transformative and even dangerous decision — after a few months of teenage romance paints an absurd portrait of her mind. It does, however, align her with Omni-Man, because where Omni-Man forces Invincible to become an adult in the fighting sense (pushing with full force early on), Amber forces Invincible to become an emotional adult by getting him to understand that toxic people such as herself need to be given boundaries — and he needs to learn to clearly delineate and communicate his real desires. By knowing that he does not want Amber, people who regiment his free time, or people who do not suit him, for instance, he can realize why Eve was an obvious decision: Eve understands, can make time when they have time, and will let him find his decisions. Part of a coming-of-age story tends to be realizing what one actually wants, and Invincible’s hesitation in telling Amber his identity shows that he does not truly want her. This separates Invincible from, say, Spider-Man, who avoided telling Mary Jane his identity not because he did not want her but because he wanted at all costs to protect her.

The next most annoying character has to be Debbie Grayson (voiced by TV-cancer Sandra Oh and who luckily was not animated to look like the real Sandra Oh and who should have been voiced instead by Bobby Lee due to Lee's successful MadTV parody of Sandra Oh).

Debbie basically fills the role of Skyler in Breaking Bad, except that Debbie's character tends to be slightly more understanding before her inevitable and toxic Skyler-resentment and undermining behavior. Despite having an 8-episode arc of change, Debbie's character flips too quickly and lacks the empathy and Omni-Man motive-justifying that would make her interesting (the comic's development may vary). For instance, if she refused to believe that Omni-Man meant his own words, that would make her empathetic and perhaps virtuous even if misled, but instead she dropped their "20 years" of understanding after viewing Omni-Man in action, which makes her appear shallow, easily manipulated, and unsympathetic. That was a definite "Young Adult" genre move because it shows immaturity by the writers to break apart a bond of 20 years so quickly. Mediocre teens might accept such a fissure because their lives have not yet seen or may not comprehend that level of time, but adults know that even long-standing and problematic relationships (which, beyond the lie, Omni-Man's and Debbie's was not shown to be) take a lot of time to break — even with lies exposed.

Omni-Man The biggest show strength for me was of course Omni-Man, who in a success of casting was voiced by J.K. Simmons in a kind of reprisal of Simmons' role as Fletcher from Whiplash (2014).

The Fletcher/Omni-Man parallel shows through their being incredibly harsh but extremely disciplined and principled, forcing people to become beyond even their own ideal selves (this via Omni-Man's tough-love teaching of Invincible — comically, Omni-Man was actually psychologically easier on Invincible than Fletcher was on Whiplash's Andrew character). Despite the show's attempts to villainize Omni-Man, he, like Fletcher and also like Breaking Bad's Walter White, becomes progressively more awesome, eventually representing a Spartan will, an unconquerable drive, and a realistic and martial understanding of a hero's role.

To the show's credit, while it wrote Omni-Man to be outright genocidal and from a culture of eugenicists (again, Spartan), they could not help but admire him and his "violence" and "naked force" (for a Starship Troopers reference), giving him a path to redemption. That redemption comes in part because — despite the show's attempt to be often realistic and violent — its decision to be directed at young adults via dumb jokes, petty relationship drama, the characters’ reckless lack of anonymity and security in their neighborhood (loudly taking off and landing right at the doorstep), and light indy music also made the portrayed violence far less literal. With a less literal violence, the real statement becomes not that Omni-Man really did kill so many people (though he certainly did kill those people within the show's plot) but that he was symbolically capable of terrible violence but could be reformed for good. That's the shortcoming with putting violence under demographic limitations. If it's a PG-13 Godzilla knocking down cities, the deaths in the many fallen skyscrapers don't matter so much (the audience will even forgive Godzilla for mass death if it happens mostly in removed spectacle), whereas if it's Cormac McCarthy envisioning a very realistic fiction, every death rides the edge of true trauma.

By showing light between the real and the symbolic, it is much easier to identify and agree with Omni-Man. For instance, when Robot (voiced by Zachary Quinto of Heroes and the newer Star Trek movies)

shows too much empathy for the revealed weakness of "Monster Girl" (voiced by Grey Griffin), the audience may have thought, "Pathetic," even before Omni-Man himself said it. And this because Omni-Man knows that true and powerful enemies (including himself) will not hesitate to use ultra-violence against these avenues of weakness. "Invincible" can make his Spider-Man quips while in lethal battles, but he does so while riding the edge of death — something that Omni-Man has to teach Invincible by riding him to the brink of his own.

Other Cast/Characters and Amazon's Hidden Budget It was impressive how many big-name actors were thrown into this — a true hemorrhage of producer funding. Amazon has so far hidden the budget numbers, perhaps because they don't want people to know that the show (like many of its shows) represents a kind of loss-leader to jump-start its entertainment brand.

Aside from those already mentioned, the show borrows a number of actors from The Walking Dead (WD), including.. • Chad L. Coleman ("Martian Man"; "Tyreese" on WD),

• Khary Payton ("Black Samson"; "Ezekiel" on WD),

• Ross Marquand (several characters; "Aaron" on WD)

• Lauren Cohan ("War Woman"; "Maggie" on WD)

• Michael Cudlitz ("Red Rush"; "Abraham" on WD)

• Lennie James ("Darkwing"; "Morgan" on WD)

• Sonequa Martin-Green ("Green Ghost"; "Sasha" on WD)

There were also connections to Rick and Morty and Community, not just with Gillian Jacobs but also with... • Justin Roiland ("Doug Cheston"), who voices both Rick and Morty in Rick and Morty,

• Jason Mantzoukas ("Rex"),

• Walton Goggins ("Cecil"),

• Chris Diamantopoulos (several characters),

• Clancy Brown ("Damien Darkblood"),

• Kevin Michael Richardson ("Mauler Twins"), and

• Ryan Ridley (writing)

That's a lot of overlap. They even had Michael Dorn from Star Trek: TNG (1987–1994) (there he played Worf) and Reginald VelJohnson from Family Matters (1989–1998) and Die Hard (1988), and even Mark Hamill. Pretty much everyone in the voice cast was significant and known. Maybe Amazon got a discount for COVID since the actors could all do voice-work from home? ;)

Overall Bad that it was for the Young Adult target demo but good for the infrequent adult themes and ultra-violence. Very high production value and a good watch for those who like dark superhero stories. I have heard that the comic gets progressively darker, which fits for Robert Kirkman, so it will likely be worth keeping up with this show.

#invincible #tv review #robert kirkman #invincible tv series #invincible tv show

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lov3nerdstuff · 3 years

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Voluptas Noctis Aeternae {Part 7.32}

*Severus Snape x OC*

Summary: It is the year 1983 when the ordinary life of Robin Mitchell takes a drastic turn: she is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite the struggles of being a muggle-born in Slytherin, she soon discovers her passion for Potions, and even manages the impossible: gaining the favor of Severus Snape. Throughout the years, Robin finds that the not quite so ordinary Potions Professor goes from being a brooding stranger to being more than she had ever deemed possible. An ally, a mentor, a friend... and eventually, the person she loves the most. Through adventure, prophecies and the little struggles of daily life in a castle full of mysteries, Robin chooses a path for herself, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more, and two people abandoned by the world can finally find a home.

General warnings: professor x student, blood, violence, trauma, neglectful families, bullying, cursing

Words: 5.7k

Read Part 1.1 here! All Parts can be found on the Masterlist!

______________________________

Half an hour after dinner had been over with, Robin made her way to the foot of the astronomy tower with Cas, Melissa and Lisa in tow. The latter hadn't been part of the original plan, but due to circumstance Robin had spontaneously decided that six eyes might yet see more than four. Thus the three younger girls were babbling excitedly all along the way now, each wrapped into their warmest robes upon Robin's insistent command, and they did not falter to chat even as Robin wordlessly unlocked the door that led to the tower's staircase.

It was sealed with the same spell as all the other classrooms, and once again she wondered why none of the students had figured out the spell to unlock either just yet… But then again, perhaps it was one of those spells that couldn't be discovered without the permission to have such knowledge in the first place. The castle seemed to have a sentience in that regard, that much Robin could tell from just her limited experience with ancient magic. That however was a topic for another day, and Robin went on to usher her company up the stairs ahead of her now, or else they would never arrive on top of the tower before Morgan was prone to leave. Otherwise, things were all set by now, at long last and after a whole lot of unwanted social interactions.

In the past thirty minutes, Robin had gone on to make another minor change to her plans. Instead of having Snape write them a note to have them stay out past curfew, Robin had simply sought out the professor who was on patrol duty that night and let him know –in her usual intimidatingly neutral manner– that the girls were to be excluded from curfew, and were very well supposed to be up in the astronomy tower on their own for the next few hours. Unsurprisingly, the man had simply taken Robin's word for it, and nodded his understanding and compliance without questioning her non-existent authority in this matter. Nobody questioned her these days; it was as if an unspoken rule had made rounds among the staff of Hogwarts that Robin was sheer unimpeachable, and the occasional un-student-like matters she concerned herself with were either to be supported or overlooked.

Really, if Robin had to guess, she would've said that this was entirely Dumbledore's doing. It had to be, because not even Snape's authority stretched far enough to warrant such a universally easy acceptance of any and every of her unusual behaviours. And giving the patrolling professor instructions on who and who not to hold accountable to curfew tonight, without even as much as mentioning Snape or anyone else of actual authority in the conversation, certainly was such a behaviour.

"Are you sure we won't get into trouble for being up here, and staying here past curfew?" Cas asked as if on cue, right when Robin's string of thought came to a momentary conclusion. "I mean… we're technically breaking more than just one rule right now, aren't we?"

"You aren't breaking any rule at all currently, nor will you if you do as I say." She replied with a half smile, almost a little out of breath when they finally reached the top of the stairs. "And you've always wanted to 'do fun things like me', isn't that what you said last week? This right here is something of the very likes of that."

"True. If you say we're good then we're good." Cas sighed, and the usual wide smile spread on her face as she skipped ahead to the large window that overlooked the landscape beyond the school. It really was a marvelous sight one had from up here… but Robin had no time to dwell on it.

In as few words as possible, she explained to the girls that – supposedly because of her challenge with the boys – she needed to be alerted when Morgan left the castle, as well as when he returned here. To Robin's surprise, all three girls seemed beyond eager to help her with this endeavour, and they agreed to let her know of Morgan's movements as soon as they could. Content with that, Robin left them to themselves and the night as she made her way back down the tower, and further down into the dungeons. Should Cas and her friends do the waiting and watching up there… Robin was only too happy to wait down in the office with Snape instead, where they could let their guards down without anyone getting in the way. She deserved a little break before the inevitable nightmare that was this endeavour with Morgan continued. Before they would have to deal with all those unanswered questions, and the prospect of perhaps inevitable death.

Once Robin let herself into the office as always, she was more than happy to see that Snape was waiting for her already, and he in return wasted no time before locking the doors back up even more meticulously than usual. He obviously hadn't run into Morgan either then… Good. Robin let out a long breath in the knowledge that she could finally relax for the first time in hours. At least for this fleeting moment.

While she went on to make them coffee first of all, Snape explained –upon her insistent request– how exactly he had ensured that Morgan would be leaving the castle tonight. In the end, it had been a simple work of manipulation and deceit to him, and Robin was in awe as ever at both the sheer brilliance and power that came so naturally to Snape it would never cease to impress her. Especially since he had done the exact same thing she had, but around way more edges and corners. To think that he so easily could get anything he wanted… it made her skin tingle, and her mind take incessant pride in the fact that he still had chosen her to be his equal. The shivers of delight that rolled over her upon the thought were a sweet torture, but a distraction from the topic at hand. She placed his coffee in front of him, then sat down across from him in her usual seat and listened on.

First of all, Snape had convinced McGonagall, through saying and not saying the right things at the right time, that there recently had been severe tensions between the teaching staff that were having a negative impact on the students. That much was only too true, after all. Of course his scarce words to the woman had been a mere complaint about the facts, not a notice or suggestion for improvement, but he had precisely known how they would be understood and acted upon nonetheless. McGonagall, good-hearted as she was, had of course sought to take immediate action by herself, seeing as Snape had as always shown absolutely no interest in the issue. And as predicted, there had been only one person the deputy headmistress would be going to in such a situation that was far below the headmaster's reach of interests; McGonagall had gone to Professor Sprout. And Sprout, as talented as she was with her plants, had one of the most unguarded and manipulable minds of all the professors. Therefore she had been the easiest target for Snape's long line of manipulation in return. All it had taken was a few hints strategically dropped into the woman's mind, and she had suggested an evening in Hogsmeade for the staff who wasn't needed in the castle tonight. McGonagall had trusted her colleague's Hufflepuff intuition when it came to groups of people, and thereby it had been settled. The majority of the staff had the night off to go to Hogsmeade. Lastly then, all it had taken was for Snape to see to it that Sprout pitied Morgan enough for his black eye to offer to buy the man a drink, to ensure that Morgan really would be coming along. That's how Damion Morgan had been tricked into going on a colleagues' night out, without being any wiser of the long line that had led up to this point. Brilliant, really.

"And how did you get out of it?" Robin asked with a partially humoured, partially admiring smile, then emptied the last of her coffee and set the mug down on the table between them. "Out of coming along, I mean."

"I did not have to get out of anything." He replied easily, while leaning back in his chair across from her with a not-smirk. "Because I wasn't asked to come along in the first place."

Robin's brows furrowed into an incredulous frown in an instant, while the subtle humour that was currently painted on his face was entirely absent from hers. "What do you mean? I thought you didn't have any official duties tonight… you shouldn't be needed at school."

"True, but I believe my colleagues were well able to anticipate my answer to such an invitation, and therefore simply spared themselves the vanity of asking."

"Well, they should have asked nonetheless. I very well remember what it's like to be left out of everything all the time, it sucks no matter if you actually would've wanted to go or not."

"Would you have wanted me to go, if it hadn't been for the ordeal with Morgan?" He quirked an eyebrow at her in question, even though he already seemed to know the answer she would give. He was merely making a point with this question. Robin let out a sigh.

"I would have wanted for you to have a choice." She finally replied, then leaned as far across the table as she had to in order to catch his hand and hold onto it. If he was making a point, so could she. "I would never choose to spend the evening without you if it can be helped, you know that. Of course I wouldn't want you to go anywhere I can't follow. But I'm not selfish enough to put my own happiness over yours."

In a heartbeat the small table between them vanished, the very table Robin had been leaning her entire weight upon for the last minute, and she let out a quiet yelp when she fell forward until the hard wood's support was replaced by Snape's arms that pulled her up and closer. An instant later she was seated in his lap, straddling his legs while her heartbeat exploded in a sudden intensity and a wild rush of adrenaline carried both waves of tingles and desire through her body. How did he keep doing that?! How did he unravel her so softly?

Still, she met his expression of well hidden amusement with an obviously feigned glare. That much was almost tradition by now, for moments like this happened a lot lately; he always found a reason or opportunity to pull her into his lap when they weren't working, or to trap her against a shelf or bookcase when they were, and it was positively driving her insane. In the best ways possible, the most allconsuming ones. And while he had never openly admitted it, Robin knew that he craved their affections just as much as she did, and needed them perhaps even more. It was a thought to marvel at, really… such a powerful being, so entirely at the mercy of her love.

"You are getting lost again, and I am curious to know what could be so fascinating to think about that it surpasses the current predicament." He said so softly only and yet succeeded to draw Robin out of her mind in an instant. Or perhaps it was his fingers that traced along her back, caressing the sliver of bare skin right beneath the hem of her jumper. The former brought a smile to her lips, the latter a line of goosebumps to cover her skin.

In a haze of her own thoughts as well as the liquid warmth spreading through her veins in that moment, Robin took a leap of faith and tried something she had always been careful to avoid before. She reached out to his mind for once, in the same gentle request for entrance that she usually was subject to herself. The humour faded off Snape's face in an instant, and his eyes widened oh so slightly while yet never parting from her own. Another shiver overtook Robin, leaving even more goosebumps in its wake. She couldn't help holding her breath.

But then, eternities and broken seconds later, the barriers fell, and she found herself surrounded by an overwhelming mixture of emotions. A mind as complex as to truly do him justice, a chaos that yet seemed as perfect to Robin as anything in existence and beyond could ever be. His thoughts were as graspable to her as her very own, everything in his mind was, and to experience that was absolutely breathtaking. Bloody hell… his emotions were a mess. Her own however, the ones she chose to share with him right then, were as simple as love and gratitude. His response to that, the frenzied rush of both relief and adoration she felt immediately in his mind, and the joy this entire process sparked within her brought a radiant smile to her lips in an instant.

'You let me in…' She phrased in words like he had earlier that evening, careful not to squeal in her excitement nor let all too much astonishment shine through. The slightest tug on the corner of his lips told her that this was only a partial success.

'I did.' He answered in thought out words in return, a gesture that was accompanied by a hint of humour, a dash of pride, and still a lot of nervousness. Really, Robin had known that he was way more afraid of certain matters than he let on on the outside, but seeing it so clearly laid out in front of her still brought over her a rush of fierce protectiveness.

'You don't have to let me do this, you know that, right?' She couldn't help asking out of concern though, glad that she didn't have to rely on the tone of her voice to convey precisely what she meant. She would still love him no less if he had his boundaries, if he didn't give her everything she ever asked for. Sharing all that as emotions was far easier than with words. And it allowed for a far more elaborate answer in return.

The nervousness now entirely at ban, Robin found herself dropped amidst an ocean in his mind, an unfathomable depth where she was hit by a multitude of emotions with the crushing force of mountainous waves. A force that took her breath away and brought tears to her eyes at the same time. Yes, he certainly knew both depth and maddening passion to keep up with her very own by far. And in the very same, his reply to her question washed over her and dragged her under.

He would give anything to her, anything and everything, over and over and over again. Not because he had to, but because it was part of the way he loved. Part of the ocean. The way he loved her, an unfathomable depth, a force impossible to resist. Devotion that was a perfect mirror of her own.

For a moment Robin's head was spinning with sheer overwhelm, until she remembered faintly that she had to share her thoughts with him this time. Intentionally, purposefully. Yet, the first thing she tried to convey ended up a jumbled mess of both 'I love you' and 'You are everything' in a string of arbitrary repetitions, that however still served to bring a smile to his face. Then she shared her feeling of overwhelm, but also the deepest adoration of all she had seen, and surprisingly enough was met with a rush of self-consciousness in his mind in return. She found that beyond endearing, but decided better not to show him that in return, only to take delight in it herself. An instant later, he thought that she should stop smirking already, and that made Robin laugh both on the inside and the outside. Something in his mind relaxed, while something else roared up in joy and pride upon having made her laugh. Again, Robin could only marvel at how his mind responded to absolutely everything she did in such a breathtaking way.

'Does it also feel this intoxicatingly pleasurable and yet entirely calming when you let me into your mind?' He asked after a moment, in distinct words once more that Robin now discovered were far easier to decipher than the emotions and ordinary thoughts.

'Obviously.' She thought, but the accompanying smirk came onto her lips for real nonetheless. 'Has no one ever been in your mind before?'

'People have tried, but of course never nearly succeed. The attempts however were always quite painful, actually.'

'It's only painful if you try to keep someone out. The more you accept them into your mind, the better it feels to have them there. But I assume it's also about the connection you have to that person, how close your minds are and how much you trust them.'

'How do you know that so well?'

'Seven years of experience and practice with you.' The smirk on Robin's lips turned into a grin as she showed him brief flashbacks of the countless examples of how the feeling of having him in her mind had changed over time. She saw curiosity and a hint of awe in his own thoughts in return, as well as the uproaring desire to kiss her breathless even though they were still in the office.

Curiosity was precisely what struck Robin then as well, an ineffable desire to discover more about the ways and possibilities of this mental connection, and she found herself unable to resist both this temptation and the unintentional invitation his mind was almost shouting at her now. Therefore, she gave in to either. Leaning in through the distance between them that was minimal in the first place, she touched her lips to his only lightly for now, and yet the result was no less explosive than being dropped into his ocean in the first place. With a tiny gasp she pulled back again, and immediately felt his confusion alongside a little spark of fear.

"That was… indescribable." She breathed with real words of sincere astonishment for once, while yet the thoughts she showed to him were full of reassurance. The negative emotions in his mind became replaced by curiosity and even a little amusement in an instant, and she was immediately pleased with that. Was her own mind quite that responsive as well?

"Would you kindly elaborate?" He quirked an eyebrow at her with an almost straight face, and Robin had to snicker at the echo loop of amusement that followed between them.

"Have you ever tried looking into my mind while kissing me?" She asked, after deciding that they might as well use actual words for now, since she was the one doing the explaining anyway.

"I have not, seeing as I was rather distracted at those moments. I had better things to do than thinking about advanced magic." He rolled his eyes while he answered, but Robin could for once undoubtedly tell that the gesture was directed at himself. Indeed, he was minorly irked by the fact that he himself had never before had the idea to try just what she was suggesting now. Again, Robin found his thought both endearing and relatable.

"Do you think you can look into my mind while I'm inside yours? I still haven't understood that part of the thing we're doing here, if it's a two way street or not." She gave him an encouraging smile, and was met by a really fast string of thoughts and contemplations in return as he tried to give any other answer than that he didn't know either. Funnily enough, his lack of an answer didn't seem to embarrass him in the slightest, not in front of her at least, but only to encourage him to do better and be of help to her in finding an answer together. Oh, Robin loved that beyond measure, and she decided to share the resulting wave of adoration with him in return. It brought his mind to an immediate halt, as if he had forgotten that she could see his every thought in the first place.

"Perhaps we can just try?" She suggested calmly, curiously. "If it doesn't work, we can still look for other options."

Agreement. He didn't need to speak for her to understand that much. A second later, the comfort of his presence was again inside her mind, and for two breathtaking seconds they really closed the circle of their shared thoughts and emotions. A firework of feelings, doubled in every prevalent intensity, a heightening of all their senses. Indescribable indeed. Then however Robin felt her grasp on the spell quivering, faltering, and finally vanishing entirely, with the result that she was abruptly thrown out of Snape's mind completely. At least she could still feel his presence inside her own, or she would have pouted in sheer disappointment. Not that he would have needed the gesture now, the mere thought inside her mind sufficed to make him smirk. Right… beautiful mind, but still an insufferable idiot.

"I can hear your thoughts again, you do realize that, yes?" He quirked an eyebrow at her, and now it was Robin's turn to grin.

"Yes, I'm well aware." She chuckled, then finally moved her hands from his shoulders to caress the skin on his neck beneath the soft curtains of hair. Too bad she couldn't hear his reaction to that anymore. "Any idea why I got kicked out of your mind? And don't say I just messed up, because we both know better than that."

"I believe it might be more difficult to uphold the former connection once the latter is established. Seeing as I am more practiced in the art, perhaps we should try again now that I am in your head first." He suggested easily, and Robin inwardly rolled her eyes, while however she obviously had to admit that he of course was way more practiced in it indeed. Really, he was better at mostly everything if she was being honest now, but she regretted that thought immediately when she saw the smirk tugging on his lips. "I do feel rather flattered, while yet I am inclined to disagree."

"And why is that?"

"Didn't you want to return into my mind anyway? I would hate having to praise you out loud." He quipped, and Robin tugged on a strand of his hair in return, which earned her a small glare. Yet, she only smirked at Snape and took a deep breath before trying and being allowed into his mind once more.

Again, the fireworks and heightened senses overtook them both body and mind, but while still difficult to uphold, the connection this time lingered on. The subtle touches on her back, his fingers tracing her skin, as intense and real as her hands on him, the same feeling, the overwhelming exciting comfort. Only now it all seemed doubled, different, part of a shared existence. And still he wanted her to know his answer to what she had asked, what he would always answer in any way. Robin saw precisely what he had said once before, the utmost belief that she was so much better than him in every way. Her mind replied with instant adoration and sincerest doubt, not of him but of herself. She wasn't perfect. He knew. She wasn't perfect, but everything he wanted in the world and still far more.

Robin's immediate reaction was a roaring wave of love that echoed straight back to her once it reached his mind and was met with its equal, while the thought of how much she adored that he could be so accidentally romantic at times was met with a huff and a growl. She couldn't help but chuckle at how subtly, secretly her thought pleased him nonetheless.

'Are you going to kiss me now or do I have to woo you any longer?' He suddenly thought in actual words, but this time around she could hear his voice inside her mind in its near natural depth, every colour and faintest subtone it always had. All the times before, without the circle closing in their minds, it had never been so real, so close. This was new for either of them.

For half a moment Robin laughed at his words and marveled at the sensation, then she smiled, and finally leaned forward until their lips touched in a crescendo of emotions. Indescribable indeed. Addictive, as always, and they found themselves unable and unwilling to stop. Time stood still in perfection like this, just holding each other close while their lips danced to the music of their passion. This was how the world ended, this was how it was reborn.

And this was why they avoided losing themselves in the office, for three feeble knocks on the door startled them both so suddenly that their surprise toppled over inside their shared mindspace. Gasping they pulled back from each other in an instant, while the joining of their minds quivered so strongly that a second later it disappeared altogether. Only then when Robin was alone in her mind once more, she realized how difficult it had been to uphold the connection in the first place, and she almost gasped again at the slightly sore feeling somewhere in her mind. Like an unpracticed muscle, almost, that had suddenly gotten a lot of exercise. Going by the look on Snape's face, he seemed to be experiencing something similar in that moment, and that made Robin smile in contentment. At least they knew now that it wasn't quite a normal mode of legilimency. But it certainly was something to experiment with.

When three slightly louder knocks echoed from the wooden door through the entire office then, Snape immediately rose up from his chair while pulling Robin along and setting her down on her feet in front of him. For a brief moment his mind reached out to her again almost instinctively, sharing a rush of awe that he felt when he looked down at her, taking in her lush lips, stained red from his kisses, the lovely flush on her cheeks and the breathtaking display of lightness and darkness in her eyes. To him she was an emblem of life and passion like this, and Robin inevitably had to smile. He really was accidentally romantic sometimes, or rather his honest sentiments were, while his actions on that basis were usually everything but. For the majority of people it was the other way around, and she couldn't help marveling at that. Perhaps romantic was the wrong word for it after all… he simply was being himself in a way she found absolutely perfect. A beautiful mind on the inside, an insufferable idiot on the outside. Ambivalent and yet oddly fitting as ever. That thought earned her another mostly feigned growl and glare, as well as a subtle hint of pride and amusement he still chose to share with her. Then he finally went to answer the door, and his presence left her mind when he put up his usual public facades.

Robin had exactly three seconds to take a deep breath, to force her appearance back into a normal state with the help of a little charm she cast over both of them for good measure, and finally to return the small table back to where it belonged. Then reality and the events of the day caught up with her, and she sighed at the realization that of course they still had to deal with the Morgan situation, still had to be more than careful and double-check every single step they took. As far as she could tell, Snape seemed to do just that when he opened the door just a gap and with his wand at the ready.

"I, uh, I'm sorry to-, uh… but Robin said…" Unlike what Robin had been expecting, it was Lisa's voice she heard on the other side of the door. The girl's small frame however stayed hidden behind both the door and Snape, even as Robin approached them with a frown. "Robin said that we, I mean I… could find her here?"

There were no words spoken in reply, but instead Robin could feel a hint of warmth, an imprint of Snape's magic barely brushing over her senses in a way she had never noticed before. How odd… Whatever spells he had used, they hadn't been directed at her and yet she had been able to feel his magic, even if only just barely. She didn't get to dwell on how that came to be when he opened the door entirely a few seconds later, motioning for Lisa to get into the office already with a scowl plastered onto his face as always. While the girl complied immediately, Robin made the educated guess that Snape's spells had been a row of security screenings that Lisa however seemed to have taken no notice of. No surprise, his magic was as brilliantly subtle as it was strikingly effective. Perhaps the fact that she could feel it now was a side effect of their previous joining of minds.

"Hey Robin." Lisa's features relaxed the moment her eyes fell onto Robin, who had now taken a perch on the edge of the table. Three steps later, the younger girl came to stand in front of her with a weary expression on her face as she kept glancing over to Snape who had closed the door and was now mirroring Robin's position on the edge of his own desk. Lisa's eyes kept darting between the two of them nervously. "I, uh…"

"We don't have all day, Miss McLain." Snape taunted after a moment of silence, looking both indifferent and annoyed as ever, and Robin gave him a glare before focusing on the girl in front of her.

"I must say I was expecting Cas to come find me herself, but it's alright either way." She started, upon which Lisa seemed to somewhat relax again.

"Yeah, well, Cas did the… spotting, and she said she'd set up the entire thing in the first place, so it was Melissa or I who had to go and well, I was cold anyway and also didn't really mind since it all was so important to you and so, here I am now." The girl rambled, and Robin felt tempted to roll her eyes, not at her but at Cas. Typical as ever, letting others do the work she had no interest in.

"But he did leave now, yes?" Robin still asked to make sure, and Lisa only nodded in return, glancing over at Snape who listened attentively as ever while looking just as bored on the outside. Right… Lisa didn't know that Snape knew of this endeavour, and breaking into a professor's classroom usually wasn't something one wanted the other professors to know about. It didn't matter now, not really.

"We, uh…" Lisa spoke up again at last, focusing back on Robin. "We'll keep watch and let you know if he comes back. Or just… wait until you come and get us, whichever happens first."

"Thank you." Robin gave the girl a half smile, then stood up straight and accompanied her back to the door. "Enjoy the stars for me, yes?"

After giving a court little nod and a shy smile, Lisa scurried back out into the hallway and vanished in the darkness to the right, upon which Robin closed the door again with a sigh. Morgan was gone. And that meant they had to get going.

"If I'm not entirely mistaken, sending someone else was a very Cassandra thing to do." Snape commented after a few seconds of silence, and Robin just had to snort in return.

"Are you still peeking into my mind? Because I was having much the same thought." She replied in subtle amusement, then watched as he got up from the desk and approached her instead. Before she could help it, a smile came to her lips. "I could feel your magic, you know… The screening spells, or rather what I think were screening spells. But I could feel it as unmistakably you."

"Curious…" He mused, while they stepped out into the hallway together. Before locking the office back up however, he halted and motioned for Robin to do it instead. "Would you mind? I'd like to know if I can sense yours as well."

With a huff in both humour and curiosity she did as he suggested, first locking and then warding the door, before looking back up at Snape with her eyebrows raised in question. "And? Feel anything?"

"You. Unmistakably you, precisely as you said." He answered just as they started making their way through the dark hallways. "And yet, had I not seen what you were doing, I wouldn't have known what kind of spells you were using."

"Exactly. I think it might be an aftereffect of what we did before we were interrupted… you know, of connecting our minds like that. Or at least I have never been able to feel anyone else's magic like this before."

"Neither have I." Snape's tone was thoughtful, but Robin could tell that he was no less intrigued by this than she was. After a moment of walking in silence, he finally spoke on with a not-smirk on his lips. "We should continue practicing that connection. I'm curious to discover how far we can go, and what it is capable of."

"And it felt pretty amazing." Robin added with a smirk of her own, glancing up at him to see the sentiment perfectly mirrored in his face.

"Indeed."

______________________________

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keyofjetwolf · 3 years

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“Gabrielle, who did this?”

“I did.”

This is it, this is everything this episode has been building to. Not Caesar, not Xena’s checkered past, not her efforts to make amends and rebuild trust, not the plight of the Britons nor the heroism of Boudicea, not religious zealotry and persecution. It’s just Gabrielle, and this choice she made, and the unimaginable repercussions.

Not that it would, because it’s the entire point of the thing, but I can’t say enough about how absolutely unshakable the show is in this having been Gabrielle’s CHOICE. No one can steer this otherwise, they can’t make it pretty and excusable. Not the audience, and not Xena herself. AND OH SHE TRIES. Immediately, Xena seizes a narrative that makes this not Gabrielle’s fault.

The things to love in this are nearly endless, from the simplicity of the exchange to the way it’s performed (SUPERBLY) and shot. There’s something BROKEN in Gabrielle, something Xena keeps willing to still be there, but it’s gone, and as that becomes too true to dismiss, all Xena can do is hug Gabrielle close. Until Krakoa appears and puts a punchable face on the whole thing, but that’s barely relevant.

Like I said, there’s a lot here to love, but let’s start with the smaller, almost incidental thing: how Xena can’t live in the lie. I’ve brought this up a bunch of times, apologies for the repetition, how Gabrielle has such a firm narrative surrounding Xena that she’s built in her head, and it takes years of life together, day in and day out, for the monolith to erode and for Gabrielle to finally see Xena as XENA, warts and all.

Xena has her own version of Gabrielle too, this isn’t just a problem for Gabby to deal with, but as we see here, that problem has nothing to do with refusal to see what’s directly in her face. Twice, Xena tries to deny that Gabrielle has just done the unthinkable. Twice, that’s it, then she accepts what all evidence is screaming at her and ... well, “moves forward” is what I want to say, but as we know, it’s not that simple. She doesn’t keep denying it, though, that’s where I’m going with this, and I love it as a counterpart to the countless times we see Gabrielle given direct hard proof of Xena’s worst impulses, and still she remains absolutely devoted to the parts she wants to believe, because she wants to believe them.

This is going to keep biting Gabby in the ass, and this episode is where the show begins to double down on it. The framework through which is makes those moves is subtle, and brilliant for that subtlety. I mentioned a few times how Caesar in this episode is a red herring, making us think we’re about to watch Xena once again lose all perspective and reason when it comes to fucking up his day. That’s not why we’re here, sad to say for everyone involved (except, I suppose, Caesar), but including him threads the overall ideas a bit deeper in fascinating ways.

When it comes to Xena and Caesar, destruction is the only way things can ever go. Of troops, of strategies, of land, of their friends, of each other. When Caesar betrayed Xena, the only answer she could ever bring was fire and ashes. Dahak and his followers are Gabrielle’s Caesar. She, like Xena, believed the world they spun for her and trusted the place she would have in that world. Also like Xena, when betrayal came, she was left hurt, broken, and forever changed. But while Xena took all that had been done to her and vowed destruction, Gabrielle embraces creation. She NEEDS this to have been something good, needs it to have meant something. She insists that Hope is her child more than Dahak’s and refuses to accept even the possibility that things could go any other way. It comes in a nicer wrapper, certainly, but Gabrielle throws herself into her *ahem* HOPE just as blindly and every bit as reckless as Xena embraces her darkness.

But nothing in the world of Xena is ever that black and white, and Gabrielle’s refusal to deal with the trauma of what’s happened to her and what she’s done sends her into a different but parallel spiral to Xena. Gabrielle’s judgment in the wake of all this becomes massively and completely fucked, as we’ll see all too plainly with The Debt in a hot second. Gabby is now primed and ready to step off a cliff she’s carved for herself, the repercussions for which will continue to haunt her through Season 4.

All this is even more incredible when you realize this moment in The Deliverer is one the show has been carefully, intentionally building toward, reaching all the way back to a little tiny thing from two years and nearly fifty episodes previous. Hello to Season 1 Episode 3′s “Dreamworker”.

This whole exchange carries incredible weight just on its own, particularly given that it’s so early in the series. We know Xena’s speaking from experience, that when she killed for the first time, when she realized she could (and maybe even liked it?), she stopped being the person she was and took her first step toward the monster she would become.

What we of course don’t know then, couldn’t possibly, is that this isn’t just Xena talking to Gabrielle, but Gabrielle talking to herself. She echoes back these exact words to Xena (who knows, she already knows, how she must hate hearing the certainty of it from Gabrielle).

SO GOOD SO SO SO GOOD. What a kick in face, too, to go back and rewatch the scene in Dreamworker on the heels of this, to see Gabrielle so young and fresh-faced and naive to this broken woman who’s seen and done too much.

But the Dreamworker moments don’t stop! Gabrielle’s “blood innocence” is a central idea in that episode, too, with the first act showcasing how she pretty much isn’t listening to a single goddamn thing Xena is trying to teach her. Denied a sword, Gabby goes behind Xena’s back and buys a weapon of her very own.

Which Xena of course immediately discovers and confiscates. We see the boob dagger come back at random times throughout the series, usually as a little nudge-nudge continuity callback, which I genuinely appreciate. That’s all it ever is, up until it isn’t.

It’s not exaggeration to say the boob dagger changes the momentum of this fight. Xena’s losing, and losing pretty badly, but the surprise weapon and the proof of Krakow’s own mortality throws him off, and gives Xena just enough of an edge to win. Could she have pulled it off without the dagger? She’s Xena, so probably, but looking at the fight as it happened, the dagger was crucial.

SO HERE’S WHAT I FUCKING LOVE ABOUT THAT. Is Xena specifically using the boob dagger to win a statement on how all of this was inevitable? If Gabrielle hadn’t bought the dagger, Xena wouldn’t have taken it, and she wouldn’t have had it on-hand to beat Kravenedge. Gabrielle was the vehicle for this violence, in the distant and recent past both.

But she’s just as much the vehicle for putting a stop to it. Had Gabrielle not bought that dagger, Xena may well have lost this fight, and setting aside this specific conflict, a world without Xena is a darker, bloodier place. Had Gabrielle not stopped the cultists, even as she played directly into their hands, someone else would have been their sacrifice, another would have been chosen to bring Dahak’s child into the world. Odds are high that person wouldn’t have a Warrior Princess at their side. Odds are high that person wouldn’t have the heart and love and willingness to sacrifice as Gabrielle. Dahak’s time is now, and he is coming. He uses Gabrielle to make it happen, but by her actions, it’s Gabrielle herself who stops those plans and saves the world.

When the dust settles and we have the full picture, it becomes clear that all along, It’s Gabrielle who is The Deliverer.

#jet wolf watches xena #xena ep 3x04 #BOY WAS THIS AN INTERESTING DAY AND TIME TO TRY AND FINISH THIS UP AND BRING IT ON HOME #now if you'll all excuse me #i have to go immerse myself in busy work that does not actually require my brain to be present

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writing-for-me-at-this-point · 4 years

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Pragma | Alucard

Request: Hi, I love your blog. Would you mind writing about what it would be like to for Alucard to fall in love with the reader post season 3? Thank you! Keep up the good work!

Word Count: 1826 words

Page Count: 5.2 pages

A/n: hope you enjoy this!

Tags: @catherinedm

All Alucard could do was deny that you held no ill will towards him. He had found you when you were running from a cultist like group, ready to burn you alive just for learning older sciences, he could only laugh at the bitter irony. Your legs were whipped and tired, your chest was bruised and the rest of your body was worse than you could have imagined, and so he took you in when he knew you were not a threat. Or would be conscious for a good while.

"I seem to only get more and more desperate for heartache, don't I?" He whispered to himself as he looked to you, your body was freshly cared and cleaned for, and yet he found on the other end of the room near the opened door. His fear that gripped his heart made him feel like a child, wanting to be held and cared for by those around him, yet cannot seem to overcome going up to an adult for help.

When you woke up days later, cleaned and cared for, your body aching like never before- and the man in the room staring at you like you had just killed his mother in front of him, full of shock and fear. Speaking with him in this stage of your relationship was scarce, only what needed to be said was put into the air, either met with silence or acknowledged with muted nods and small hums.

*****

Alucard was never known for his temper. He was a sweet and gentle boy according to his parents, something he wished to be after seeing his mother be... her, he was never to freak or lash out on those around him. When he realized this, it had been to late, his hands were running through his hair as tears slipped effortlessly from his eyes- curled in his bed with his knees to his scarred chest. He had been helping you walk more, working on your legs and helping them gain muscle, when you had fallen near him while he fell as well.

You both had slipped due to the old rugs folds getting caught in his foot, making him slam onto his back while you managed to land on your knees, and when you turned to see if Alucard was alright he looked at you in pure fear. He shook as he saw you on your knees, on his right side, like her. Just like she was when they both locked him onto his bed, tied with the burn of silver, looking at him with such hate and disgust.

Your eyes held worry though. Worry for his well being. Care. Your heart was opening up. But in that moment, he saw back to that night, her. His face contorted into anger, yelling at you while his lungs burned for air, profanities settled into your mind as he was cursing your existence.

"I trusted you! Gave you everything! And here you are again, having me on my back, a knife to my fucking heart!" He was leaning upright at this point, while you crawled backwards away from him, the fear evident in your eyes but he didn't see. It wasn't you at that moment. It was the flickering image of Sumi and Taka.

Once he had caught his breath, he closed his eyes, hands coming to his hair as he shook violently. You realized what was happening, your father was a soldier and suffered from delusions like this, and your mother would come running to anchor him back into the present once his past came to torment him again.

"Breathe. Alucard, breathe. Evenly. Exhale longer than when you inhale, please." You coached him gently, your hands in front of you in case he were to look up, you weren't a threat to him- he knew that. You told him when to inhale and hold, before letting out the breath that wavered less and less. You needed to anchor him back to the present, he wasn't seeing you yet, but you would make him to help with his sanity.

His breathing evened but tears still came, flowing against the flushed pale skin, and you made your way closer to him. You held out two fingers, mimicking your parents, and waited for him. He saw, and pulled out two gloved fingers to wrap around yours, his shaking would start to still after a few moments.

*****

You hadn't seen Alucard in two days, his mind was taking its toll on him, and you managed to figure out the basics of his situation. His mind was sending him back to the most stressful moments of his life, the wound on his mind hasn't been stitched and is now bleeding into his daily life.

You wanted to learn how to help people mend their minds, ranging from trauma to genetic ailments, the human mind was so vast and complicated so of course it drew you in. In doing so, you met an old vampire in Athens, she was kind and sweet- teaching philosophy and medicine to those she knew would use them appropriately.

Alucard was depressing himself further into his mind, and you needed to help him, though helping him would need to be paced. He needs time and luckily you both have plenty of it. You made your way around the castle and found a few empty notebooks (not wrapped in human skin), a few books on meditation and spiritual awareness, and some recipe books next to fictional ones that held important meanings on self worth.

Should you be looking through his things?

You didn't care. He needed help.

You then split the books into two piles, one for Alucard to journal in and write all his thoughts in and the other for you, to write tips and other important information for Alucard to read so he can understand what is going on and how he can help himself cope with his own mind. The books that helped with meditation would help him order his thoughts and understand how to calm himself in case he couldn't find an anchor, (you hoped the spiritual awareness would be a plus? Dracula had lots of books so it wouldn't hurt.), and books of things you thought he'd enjoy in general when he needed an escape.

Once all was finished, you placed everything into a small net bag, limping your way to the kitchen, you decided the man needed something to eat. After all, food made everyone happy, right? Right. A simple dish of grilled chicken and veggies, with a side of mash potatoes and some water, you slung the bag on your shoulder and made your way to his room.

You didn't hesitate to knock, but you made sure it was soft and non demanding, before calling his name in the same manner. You heard shuffling, but the door never opened and you never were welcomed in, but you knew you needed to intervene and help boost Alucard onto a support line.

"I'm coming in, in a few moments, so if you need to ready yourself please do, Alucard." You heard nothing on the other end, and waiting for about two minutes with your head against the door, you pushed it opened slowly to allow yourself into the dhampires room.

*****

When you had managed to get Alucard fed and on a routine to help himself more and more each day, he had apologized to you for the outburst, and decided that leaving you on your own when you had trouble walking was not the best idea. He was surprised you accepted his apology and brushed his actions off, deciding to help him instead, it was a reaction different than what he had expected.

Allowing himself to be near you much more often, he opened up a bit after a week of sitting by your side, setting you into the nine circle of his mind. You peeled back the shallower layers at his pace, setting him for a more favorable way of opening his heart and mind up, and seeing how he thought and felt about everything.

He was intriguing and intelligent, you found yourself tearing through your own heart just to open up and show him the exposed muscle, opening yourself up to him inevitably as he did to you. He felt warmth bloom in his chest that only rose up when he was in your presence, and while you helped him heal the wounds inside him, he continued to help you heal and gain your strength back physically.

A mutually beneficial relationship is all.

Yeah, no.

It was a puppy love shrouded in pain and betrayal that was settled into an old wound, the bleed has now stopped, and the clotting had begun, a deep scab was there before the skin would over take it in a tough light pink blanket. There was healing when there used to be a knife digging itself deeper into the soft flesh.

*****

"Do you plan on leaving?" His voice was soft and scared, his breath was shaky while pale arms wrapped tightly around your waist, the sheets covering the both of you blanketed the intimate scene of a boy begging for the girl to love him back- to not leave him, though he thought he deserved it, it started to become less of a thought on his mind.

He accepted himself for what he is and what he has done.

He knows what he wants and what he needs.

You were on the top of both lists.

He was being selfish, but you told him that was good, he was learning how to realize his worth in what he wants. He was still respectful of any decisions you made, but he begged everything in the universe for you to say no, no you wouldn't leave him. You wouldn't abandon him, you'd stay and love him as you do now, and for the rest of your time together.

"Depends." You chuckled, rubbing his arms that were secured on your waist, your eyes were closed as you felt him curl around you.

"Depends?" He mumbled into your hair.

"Do you wish for me to stay?"

What? Of course, he wanted you to never leave him, and he was sure he never gave the impression of being disinterested. Hell! The position you were in now speaks for itself! He sighed, realizing you were just teasing him, and settling his mind down.

"Of course. I never want you to leave."

"Then I never will."

His heart had burst at the affirmation of love, a tear slipped from his eye as he smiled wide, the supernova in his soul sparked his love for you to become brighter and stronger.

"Thank you."

#castlevania x reader #castlevania imagine #Castlevania reader insert #castlevania x y/n #castlevania x you #alucard x reader #alucard x you #alucard x y/n #alucard imagine #adrien tepes x reader #adrien fahrenheit tepes x reader #🐝

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the-cocky-bitch · 3 years

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Ok, I guess this episode of Loki was mildly improved. I only disliked a few things, like everything Loki and everything to do with him. They have really decided to make him a basic classless unfunny joke, huh. Everything about him is wrong and makes for a really tedious watch. I feel like this show will ruin Loki for any future marvel movies. He was one of the most compelling villains (and anti-heroes, on occasion), right there with Erik Killmonger and maybe Hela and Vulture. By that, I mean complex villains, who do truly horrible things and who you want to see defeated, see justice served for what they’ve done, but also some of their beliefs or motives ring true with you. Now all that complexity feels gone, or at the very least, vastly diminished.

Even his body language is wrong. I might have to rewatch the movies to compare (if this show doesn’t kill any enjoyment I have for the character), but he is usually much more agile, much more graceful and much better hidden in the shadows. True, he moves in the shadows a lot to create more drama for his showy reveals, but as the God of Chaos those dramatic reveals were part of the charm. There was a sleek style, both when moving and when attacking, almost stalking at times, his movements were more contained and inward-drawn, his body language was careful and more controlled, like someone who remained vigilant (before his mental break and megalomaniac episode, and even then it’s still there, just more obscured) and watched his back. Like someone who was used to watching his own back, even when fighting with allies. His movements here in the show feel clunky and too much over-the-top for no reason. When he fights, he is efficient, but not the cunning and contained style he used to favour, but more brute force. He is still graceful, but I don’t see anything of his predisposition to ambushes, to take out his opponents by surprise, to cleverly use distractions and illusions and slip a knife in someone’s back.

I think one of the things that threw me off the most for some reason was the repetition of the pose where both his hands are on his waist, elbows flared out and feet widely spread. What is even that? That has never been part of Loki’s body language, doesn’t fit with either his movements in the shadows, his grabs for power, his dramatic moments, or even his despondent or vengeful moments. It doesn’t fit with any of his casual body language, either. He’s always been elegant, and his movements calculated (again, unless he was in a traumatic moment, or in a power grab moment). The overuse of these encompassing and dramatic movements and poses for no reason make them lose their potency, and makes them feel so jarring every time I see them. Another thing, what’s with the constant fake laugh every time he is caught in an act (which is a lot) and he turns around to face the person who saw him this time? It’s like he expect that chuckle that is meant to sound condescending, but just comes off as fake and delusional, to what, stop people in their track? And he is subsequently stunned when, shockingly, his “brilliant” plan doesn’t work.

Also, what was that with the alcohol and getting drunk? We’ve never seen Loki drink so much, not even on Asgard in Thor 1, at the feats. We’ve seen him sip alcohol, but I rather got the impression at the time that he disdained the warriors who got so drunk and so loud and unaware, though, I admit, that might have just been disdain for the permeating warrior culture as a whole. But Loki would have never got so drunk in enemy territory. He should have reacted like Sylvie, and been on his guard and looking for openings, instead of exposing them like that. I keep expecting Loki to be looking for some advantage, some angle to play, but he just...doesn’t. He just bungles his way into messes and doesn’t even try to wriggle himself out, like we’ve seen him do (Loki always got into a lot of messes, but he also got out of a lot of them). He’s acting like a bottom-barrel version of Thor from before Thor’s punishment and subsequent growth, but even worse and without any of Thor’s good character traits. No charm when talking to people, no leadership skills, nothing. Loki also doesn’t have any motivation, nothing that particularly drives him, no complex desires, just go with the flow.

I think the writers must have been trying for Ragnarok!Loki, because that movie was so much fun and got popular real fast. But if that’s what they’re trying to do, they’re a long way off. Ragnarok!Loki was much better thought out. I felt like that was much more natural, a nice character progression for him, where he still looks after number one, but his traumas weren’t so fresh, he was free of Asgard prison and Asgardian expectations, he was having fun. Since Thor had grown, he no longer took Loki’s baits and just reacted with good humour, which forced Loki to face that he might miss the closeness he had with Thor. A lot of people have written excellent essays on why Loki in Ragnarok was brilliant, why it was so important that it was him who started the destruction of the Asgard for what the imperialistic culture had done to him, and they’ve done it much more eloquently than I ever could, so I’ll leave it at that. But all those things in Ragnarok make sense, his more light-hearted behaviour makes sense in the circumstances, and he still delivers powerful emotional moments. But here there is nothing to explain his behaviour and the emotional moments fall flat, because they’ve been trivialized and used too often.

I have a massive issue with the scene where Loki was talking about Frigga. Um, excuse me, but the line “She was good. Purely decent” is so incredibly out of place and so patently untrue, that I had to rewind the scene just to make sure I’ve heard correctly. She might have loved Loki, Loki might have loved her, and he might have softened towards her through all her visits and never giving up on him and then her death might have deeply hurt him, but I would never accept a line like that. His relationship with her might have been much better and much less complicated than his relationship with Odin, or even Thor, she might have been the one to mostly support him and teach him magic and apparently encourage him that he would be able to do anything, but still she remained silent. She remained silent about his heritage in all his years growing up, about his treatment by Odin, about the constant unfavourable comparisons with Thor. She never stopped people from talking about Jotuns as though they are monsters around Loki, even though she must have realized that it’s inevitable that he would learn the truth. She just stayed silent and/or supported Odin publicly, even if she disagreed with him in private. She only stepped up after Loki was imprisoned, that was when she finally decided she would fight for her son and won’t stop. True, Loki was deeply grieved and changed by her death, but part of that was that she died. There would have been a much longer and harder road to full reconciliation if she wanted to repair her relationship with her son that her silence damaged. So for a Loki who never experienced her finally fighting for him, relentlessly visiting him and talking with him, to say that line is absurd. He might grieve when he saw her die and learned that he led the intruders to her, that might soften his bitterness, but it is still wildly out of character for him to say Frigga was purely decent. I would have expected him to look pained, to refuse to speak of her, to say how he loves her, but everything is twisted up, how it’s incredibly complicated. If you’ve spent so long loving someone, you still love them, even when the relationship breaks, even when you hate them for what they’ve done or what they’ve been complicit to. I understand complicated feelings about family. I would have loved to see that here, Loki looking torn, simultaneously grieving for his mother, and still feeling the bitterness and betrayal of her silence. That would have given so much more complexity to him. But instead he went on to wax poetics about her without a hint of bitterness, or hurt. That was infuriating, and that’s with the fact that I actually enjoyed Frigga’s character.

#i'm going to tag this with #anti-loki show #i don't want to spoil things for people who are truly enjoying it #loki #loki show #loki spoilers #loki s01e03 #loki s01e03 spoilers #marvel #this got wayyy too long #anyway

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chickensarentcheap · 3 years

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Never Gonna Be Alone- Chapter 12

Title: In the Quiet

Warnings: very brief mention of sexual abuse

Tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @alievans007, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @tragiclyhip

He wakes to the press of her warm body against his and the smell of her hair. A mixture of coconut and honey; an inexpensive shampoo that she’s been using for more than a decade and he never tires of. It’s the scent of home; the reminder of the place where he’s the happiest and feels the most comfortable and secure. Where he can be himself without judgment; not looked down upon for his weaker moments or when the darker days of battling his own mind have him feeling scared and vulnerable. For years he’d tucked that side of himself away; using booze and pain meds as a way to mask the pain and escape the demons and the monsters of the past. He’d become emotionally absent; refusing to make connections with anyone out of the fear of becoming too close and getting too attached, only to lose them. And he’d convinced himself that he was unable to love or be loved; years of torment at the hands of his father and the horrible decision he’d made while his child was dying condemning him. It seems like a lifetime ago now; a whole other existence entirely. In the last twelve and half years he’s learned to love again; wholly and unconditionally and so profoundly it is physically painful at times. And he’s allowed himself to be loved in return; blessed with a woman that knows his deepest and darkest secrets and sees past all his faults. Who forgives his mistakes and always gives him another chance, even when he knows he’s not deserving of it. And seven children that he’s had a hand in creating; incredible little human beings that adore and trust him without hesitation.

It’s a life unlike anything he ever thought possible. When both the enormity of his horrible decision regarding his son and his profound grief had set in, he’d sought comfort in the bottle and the unpredictability of a dangerous and bloody career. Relegating himself to a solitary and miserable existence; refusing to allow anyone to get too close and using women for nothing more than sexual gratification. Convincing himself that he didn’t deserve anything beyond that; a warm body on a lonely night and that beaten and battered shack in the outback with its rusted tin roof. Knowing if he wasn’t lucky enough to catch that fatal bullet while on a job, he’d more than likely die there on the dusty floor; drinking himself to death or OD'ing on a mixture of painkillers and cheap whiskey. There were days he prayed for it; an end to the demons that had been tormenting him since the moment he’d gotten the call in Afghanistan that his only child had passed away.

Part of him had died the moment Austin had; all the experiences he’d hoped they’d share, all the dreams he had about what his son would achieve and who he’d become suddenly coming to an abrupt end. Logically, they’d ceased to exist months before. When the specialists had said that despite their best efforts with both chemotherapy and radiation, the cancer had returned and was just far too aggressive and advanced; palliative care and pain management the only remaining options. But while his wife had been devastated and immediately began planning for the inevitable, he’d clung to that faint hope that the medical professionals were wrong; some miracle would occur and Austin would beat the odds. Reality soon began to set in, and it was then that Tyler had discovered just how weak and vulnerable he really was; turning to alcohol to numb the pain, spendings hours and sometimes days away from home because he couldn’t bear seeing his son suffer and his wife run herself ragged and fall deeper and deeper in the pit of despair and grief.

He hadn’t been able to handle it; unable to ‘man up’ and be who and what both of them had so desperately needed. Despite the ongoing issues in their marriage and her long and sordid history of cheating -and the rumours that the kid wasn’t even his to begin with- she had deserved so much better. And he had longed to give her that; a shoulder to cry on and someone to help with the burdens of caring for a terminally ill child. But he’d chickened out. His own grief and fears getting the better of him; unable to handle the realization that he was a total failure. So he ran. Volunteering to head overseas instead of staying behind and stepping up. Leaving his wife to handle everything on her own and his son to wonder what he’d ever done to deserve being abandoned.

It doesn’t hurt as much as now. Not just the trauma of seeing your child suffer and waste away, but the guilt and the regret his poor decision had brought about. It’s taken years of therapy to get as far as he has; moments of profound anguish as every single one of the skeletons in his closet came tumbling out. It took reliving the initial pain to kick start the healing; periods of immense grief for the child he’d lost followed by periods of extreme self loathing and time spent in the deepest and darkest bits of despair and desperation. But it HAD helped; the guilt and regret lessening, the hatred for himself losing some of its power. It will always linger just under the surface; the sting of the decision he’d made, how he sees himself as a monster not just because of it, but because of the things he’s had to do while on the job. Killing had never been about satisfaction or enjoyment. It had always been a means to an end; his chances of survival hinging on whether he could be quicker to pull the trigger or if he could outwit, outsmart, and out strength his opponents. And the only times he had gotten some pleasure out of it -other than just recently in Laos and Cambodia- had been five years ago. When he’d brutally and bloodily taken the lives of two of Mahajan’s men in an elevator in Mumbai, and when he’d had no chance but to eliminate that threat that had drugged and attacked him first. It had been personal then; threats made against his wife and his children. And taking the lives of those who would have delighted in torturing and murdering his family HAD given him a sense of satisfaction.

The demons of the past don’t carry as much weight now. Their power significantly decreased. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments when self hate and disgust DON’T return. When his mood is dropping and he’s more prone to returning to the pain and the regret of the past. It doesn’t happen often; medication and therapy helping to keep those moments to a minimum. But they do make an appearance. Self loathing making a comeback; reminding him of all the things he’s said and done that DO make him a monster and telling him that he doesn’t deserve the life he has now. That he’s committed way too many heinous acts to ever be truly forgiven. Absolution would never come his way; he's too far gone for THAT. In the same way guys like him aren’t allowed to love and be loved in return. And that’s when the fear kicks in; the concern that his life is way too good to be true and everything that is beautiful and perfect in it will be taken away to teach him a lesson. His protectiveness stems from it. The fear and worry profound; driving him to hold on to what he has even tighter than usual. On those days it all becomes too much to bear; a tightness in his chest and an ache that reaches to his very soul.

Some of that returns now; the fear that tugs at his chest and gnaws at his stomach. It had started last night; decorating the tree with the kids and coming across the ornament that Millie had made for Austin years ago. It’s always bittersweet; remembering what he’d lost while reminding himself of everything he has now. Had things gone differently and Austin never gotten sick, life would have been dramatically altered. His marriage somehow managing to be salvaged despite her inability to stay faithful, or at the very least being able to co-parent peacefully and amicably. He would have stayed in the military; grief and regret and the feelings of failure never turning him towards alcohol and pain meds to numb the pain and effectively ending what could have been a great career in special forces. Had he stayed with SASR and kept on the straight and narrow, mercenary work would have never even been on his radar. And that’s when things become complicated and troublesome. Even if his marriage HAD still fallen apart, there would have been no chance of ever meeting Esme. It WAS the job that led him to her; years as a hired gun somehow culmination with him coming face to face with who would turn out to be the love of his life. He had always thought he’d loved Sarah; she’d been his high school sweetheart and his first of many things. And it wasn’t until he was thirty-five that his eyes had been opened to just how wrong he’d actually been. Simply by chance meeting someone that would -even twelve and a half years later- take his breath away. Who would see past his jagged edges and the amount of baggage weighing him down and take a chance on him; looking past the mess he’d made of his life and patiently tearing down all the walls he’d build up around his heart. Who still looks at him as if he’s the most incredible man on earth; loving him with everything she has and everything she is and possessing an extraordinary amount of blind faith and trust.

She IS love. Everything that is beautiful and perfect about it. Never given up on him or them. Had Austin NOT died, he never would have found her and would have never known real love in its purest and most unconditional of forms. And his kids wouldn’t exist; seven incredible little human beings that he’d had a hand in creating. And even if he could go back in time and change things, he wouldn’t. He would choose to bear the pain of Austin’s death and the punishment that came with the horrible choice that he made. In the same way he’d accept the Dhaka job a million times over; taking a million bullets to the neck if it meant he’d be rewarded with what he has now.

*****

She lies with her back to him and her head resting on his arm. It had long ago fallen asleep; pins and needles stretching all the way from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. They’d decided to bed down in the sunroom; pushing the love seat and the couch together to form a ‘nest’ and then fetching old comforters and pillows from the downstairs linen closet. Sometime in the early morning hours, she’d moved closer to him; briefly waking from her slumber long enough to move from her stomach to her side and then snuggling tightly into him. It’s a common occurrence if she has a bad dream. A desire for closeness; needing the feel of his much larger and bulkier frame against hers, quickly comforted by the warmth that radiates from it. His own eyes had never opened, body moving instinctively as he slid one arm between her head and the pillow while the other wrapped around her waist; drawing her even tighter against him, palm flat against her stomach and his face buried in her hair.

In the years he’d spent between his first marriage falling apart and meeting Esme, he’d gotten used to sleeping alone; enjoying the space and the freedom that came with having the entire bed to himself. In Dhaka, he’d been more than prepared to sleep on the floor until tempers flared; a heated argument erupting, fuelled by both sexual frustration AND tension, and his worry and fears surrounding what he was actually feeling towards her. It had taken some getting used to; having a body in bed with him throughout the night and waking up with them still there in the morning. But the adjustment had come quick, and by the third night he’d found himself actually enjoying the way she’d move closer to him; loving the feel of her skin against his and the brush of her hair and that soft, beautiful scent that lingered in it. Now he struggles to find rest without her. Used to the sound of her breathing and the weight of slender frame against his and the little noises she makes in her sleep; the soft sighs and the occasional murmur and giggles and the moments she starts to carry on very detailed conversations. All those little things that make her, her. And that he misses horribly when he’s away from home.

She rolls over to face him, eyes remaining closed as she issues a long, soft sigh and her hand comes to rest on his hip. The tips of her fingers dip below the waistband off his sweats; thumb repeatedly brushing against the slice of skin between the top of his pants and the hem of his t-shirt. For several minutes he watches as she sleeps. Eyes taking in every inch of her face; smiling and marvelling at the thought of how he’d not only somehow managed to both find her, but have her fall in love with him. She’s beautiful; the freckles splashed across and down the bridge of her nose, the long, dark eyelashes that skim the tops of her cheeks, the curve of her lips and the smooth line of her chin. It’s in those quiet moments where he only sees the damage done to her; the handful of small scars left behind from Mark’s fists and whatever ‘weapon’ he could get his hands on; electrical cords, wire hangers, heavy work boots and porcelain mugs and plates. There’s more. So much more. Disturbing ways that her ex husband had come up with to torture her both physically AND mentally.

There’d been other abuse as well; moments she’d been forced into sex itself or terrified into performing acts. And while it’s all equally vile and disturbing, THAT bothers him more than anything else. The fact that someone could violate and betray her in such a disgusting way. Someone that was supposed to love her; who’d taken vows to honor her and cherish her and care for her. And when she finally confessed the true extent of the abuse, the full story had sickened him; horrified and enraged at the thought of anyone touching her...the love of his life...in such a way. And it’s amazing. The fact that she’d not only managed to survive the abuse with her spirit and sanity intact, but that she’d been so willing and able to trust him. Giving everything of herself from that very first night in Dhaka; placing both her body and her heart in his hands and having all the faith in the world that he wouldn’t destroy them.

He places a palm over her ear; fingers splayed against her dark tresses and his thumb tracing the faint scar that cuts through the middle of her right eyebrow and travels up into her hairline. And when his hand moves to the back of her head and his lips find her brow, she gives another sigh; long and content, warm breath wafting against his skin. A soft smile curving her lips as her eyes flutter open and meet his.

“Sleeping beauty awakes,” he greets, and combs his hand through her hair, allowing the silky strands to slip slowly through his fingers. Lips pressing against her brow, followed by the bridge of her nose.

The smile broadens and those dark eyes sparkle. “Morning.”

“Morning. You good?”

“For the most part. You alright?”

“I’m perfect. It actually turned out to be a lot more comfortable than I thought it would be. You sleep okay?”

Esme shrugs. “I’ve had better.”

“You got up pretty early. Bad dream?”

She nods.

“You want to tell me about it or…?”

“Not really. It’s not something I want to relive.”

“Was it about me?”

“And Ovi. And me.”

“So a Dhaka dream?”

“Unfortunately. The first time there. And I haven’t had a dream about that in a long time. I was kind of hoping I’d never have one again, but....”

“Like Doctor Klein said, it’s never going to go away completely. It DID happen. We can’t pretend it never did.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to dream about it. It was bad enough living it. Do I really have to go through it all over again? While I’m asleep? It’s been twelve and a half years. Since it happened. And I haven’t had a dream about it in at least three. Now all a sudden it’s starting up again? What the hell is that about?”

“Me going away probably brought up some bad shit. And you’ve been stressed. That’ll do it.”

“I’m always stressed at Christmas. I always work myself up. Over stupid shit.”

“Doesn’t help that your mum sent that stuff from the kids and she’s been calling five times a day.”

“She knows what she’s doing, you know. This is a ploy. To fuck with me. She doesn’t bother for years and then all of a sudden decides to play the role of the perfect, doting grandmother? How long has she spent purposefully ignoring our kids? Treating them like second class citizens? Playing favourites? She pretty much stopped keeping track after Declan. I’m surprised she even remembered we had three more after him.”

“I’m kind of surprised she even remembered ANY of their names.”

“She’s not doing it for them. It’s not because she loves them and wants to spoil them. Her love is conditional. It always has been. And she knew getting in contact would bother me. That it would get under my skin and I’d dwell on it and I’d eventually cave and get in contact with her. Isn’t it enough that I sent a text message thanking her? Or that I’ll have the kids make thank you cards and send them to her? Do I REALLY have to talk to her?”

“Normally I’d say just ignore her and I’d remind you that you don’t owe her or anyone else in your family anything, but she’s only to keep calling. She’s only going to step it up and get worse. And seeing as we’d like to enjoy Christmas and have a nice peaceful holiday…”

“Maybe I should let my phone die and we’ll just use yours. Chances are she won’t message you.”

“The perks of being at the top of her most hated list, I guess. Why don’t you just block her?”

“Because then she WILL get a hold of you. And that won’t end well. You’re due for losing your shit on someone. That hasn’t happened in a while.”

“Not like she wouldn’t deserve it.”

“I’ll just keep ignoring her. Maybe she’ll get the picture and just give up.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just talk to her and let her say what she has to say? Let her run her mouth and hang up on her. Then block her. Boom. Done.”

“I don’t want to hear her shit though. I’m already not in a good place. Mentally, speaking. Why let her make it worse? That’s just asking for trouble. And I really do not want to spend my Christmas doped up on Valium or drunk off my ass. Maybe you could message her. From my phone. Pretend you’re me. Telling her off.”

“I’m pretty sure she’ll know it’s me. But I’ll take one fo the team. She already hates me and wishes I was dead. Can’t get any worse than THAT.”

“Who gives a fuck what she says. Isn’t that what you always say? Fuck what my family says? Let’s NOT talk about them.”

******

She wriggles closer to him; the fabric of her plaid shirt pressed against his chest and her cheek resting on his pillow. A hand sliding under his tee and over his ribs and around to his back; fingertips repeatedly grazing up and down his spine. And he lays a palm on the back of her head and presses his lip to her temple; allowing them to linger there for several seconds before resting the side of his nose against hers. Neither speak as time ticks on. Eyes closed and warm breath tickling skin. The tips of his fingers burrowed in her hair and gently massaging her scalp as hers continue their exploration of his back; travelling over the various and tracing the outline of the tattoo that sits between his shoulders. It’s when she reaches the scar left behind from Nathan’s attack that he pulls back to look at her, finding those dark, soulful eyes staring up at him.

“Does it hurt?”

Tyler shakes his head. “Not this morning.” Some days there’s discomfort there. More a tightness than an actual ache; damage done to the nerve sometimes causing loss of sensation into his hip and down the back of his leg. Other times it feels as if the wound is freshly acquired; a burning and throbbing that reminds him of the moment Nathan had stuck his fingers into the bullet hole to cause more pain and inflict greater damage.

“It’s been okay? For the most part?”

“More good days than bad days. Sometimes it feels like there’s something stuck in there; moving around and pressing against shit.”

“There’s no actual chance of that, right? That they left something in there? I mean, they showed me the bullet. They got it all out. Or at least it looked like it did. Do you think something could have been left behind? A small fragment? Do you think…?”

“I think you need to stop worrying. It’s been five years. Almost six.”

“Even after twelve years, I don’t think you fully comprehend that I CAN’T stop worrying. It’s who I am. I worry about the people I love. And I love you a bit more than everyone esle, so…”

“A bit more, huh?”

She grins and presses a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Just a bit. You know what would be nice? If we could stay here all day. Right here. Cuddled up just like this.”

“It would be,” he agrees, and slides his forearm between her shoulder and the cushions; hand coming to rest on her upper arm, thumb repeatedly brushing against smooth skin. “But..”

“No,” Esme protests, and nuzzles her face into his neck; head under his chin and her nose pressed against his Adam’s Apple. “No ‘buts’. I don’t want to hear any ‘buts’.”

“As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, we DO have kids. Who very shortly are going to discover we’re not upstairs and come looking for us.”

“Let them fend for themselves. We deserve a break. A mommy and daddy break.”

“Few more months, babe. And then two weeks. Just us.”

“In Santorini,” she reminds him.

“Wherever you want to go, that’s where we’ll go.”

“Still doesn’t mean I WANT to move anytime soon. I’d still rather lie here with you all day. Preferably with less clothes on.”

“I was hoping for totally naked, myself.”

“Me too. Just lie, totally naked, and make love. All day?”

“All day?”

She pulls back to look at him; a grin playing on her lips and her eyes sparkling playfully. “What? You don’t think you have it in you anymore?”

“I was more worried about you no longer being able to handle that kind of thing.”

“Oh don’t you worry about me. You know how resilient and tenacious I am. And how I’m fully committed when I’m really into something.’

“I’ve seen all of that first hand. I could handle it. I’d need water and food breaks, but I’d be game.”

Placing her elbow on the cushion below, she props the side of her head in her upturned palm, fingers of the other hand tracing the tattoo that decorates the left side of his neck. “Remember our little apartment? Outside of Sydney?”

“I do. I remember it very well.”

“When you finally got out of the rehab place and were finally able to live there full time? Instead of just weekends home? We had A LOT of those days in bed. Enjoying each other as much as we wanted. Rarely wearing clothes even when we DID leave the room.”

“The good old days, you mean?”

“We had some really good times in that little apartment. It was kind of weird though, don’t you think? Living together and having a baby while still in the process of really getting to know one another? It was strange. How we tackled things. Wasn’t exactly a normal way of going about it.”

“I figured we didn’t start out normal, so why bother going that way?”

“There was definitely nothing conventional about how we met. It’ll make a great story one day. For one of our kids to tell on our fiftieth anniversary.”

“Only thirty eight more years to go. Think you can handle it?”

“I think I’ll be okay. Do you think YOU can?”

“I’m pretty sure that if we could survive the past twelve years...especially the last five...that there's nothing we CAN'T get past.”

“Listen to you all sappy first thing in the morning,” she teases, and hooks a finger around the chain that dangles from his neck and pulls him into a kiss. “By the way, your daughter and I had a very interesting conversation yesterday. While you were out with the rest of the spawn.”

Sighing heavily, he presses a final kiss to her forehead and then rolls onto his back; hands pushing through his hair before clasping them together at the nape of his neck. “If it’s about periods or boys, I do NOT want to hear it.”

“I’ll go easy on you; I think I’ve tortured you enough for the time being. I still say you need to be prepared. Just in case…”

“And I’ll let you do what you need to do to get me prepared. I have faith in you. That you won’t throw me to the wolves.”

“I would never.” She rolls onto her stomach and props herself up on both elbows. “And this isn’t about Millie herself. Just something she’s concerned about.”

“And you promise it’s not about her period or boys?”

“I promise. It actually surprised me. And I thought with having a mercenary husband and after birthing four boys, that there was nothing that could possibly surprise me anymore.”

“Is she okay? Millie?”

“She’s fine. She’s Millie. There’s nothing wrong with her. Like I said, it isn’t really about her. It’s about something she’s worried about. And to be honest, I’m kind of worried about it too. A lot worried, actually.”

“You’re starting to worry ME now.”

“It’s about Alannah. And her home life.”

“About how badly it sucks?”

“Pretty much. I mean, you’ve seen it first hand. You’ve been in that home. You’ve talked to her parents. You know what they’re like.”

“If you mean emotionally absent and full of shit, yeah, I’ve seen it. Those people are fucked up, babe. I don’t know how you can have that much money and have nothing all at the same time. I don’t get it; how people can be that soulless and empty. And that's saying something when it comes from a guy that kills people for a living.”

“Normally this is where I give you a stern talking to about how that’s not all you do, but I’ll let it slide. For now. You’ve been in that home. A handful of times. You’ve talked to them. On the outside, everything looks great. They drive luxury cars, they wear designer clothes, her mother is practically dripping in expensive jewelry everytime I see her. I mean, they send her to a really expensive private school. They put on a pretty good show, you have to admit.”

“It’s what they want people to see. They want everyone to think everything is perfect. That they have a great life. Trust me, there’s nothing great about it. Not for the kid, anyway. And I grew up with someone with no soul or moral compass. That house? Worse vibes than the one I was raised in.”

“Which is saying a lot. You lived a shitty life. You’d recognize the warning signs. You were THAT kid.”

“So were you. You didn’t get your ass handed to you on a daily basis, but the mental stuff is just as bad. If not worse sometimes.”

“So we BOTH know how horrible it is. Growing up where we’re not wanted. And I know my mom always put on a big show for everyone. Acted like life was amazing and that she was the perfect mother. Behind closed doors? Mommy fucking dearest. Both of us deserved so much better growing up And so does Alannah.”

“I agree. She does. So where do we come into this? What’s Millie worried about?”

“It’s not just Millie that’s worried. I am too. I know how bad a crappy upbringing can fuck someone up. I’m a mess. And most of it leads right back to my mom. I’m the first to admit that I’m pretty fucked up. That I’ve got some long term issues I do battle with every day. Because of her. In the same way you have your own things; related to your dad.”

“Okay…”

“I don’t want that happening to her. I don’t want her turning into me. I don’t want her ending up with a guy like Mark because she has zero self worth and doesn’t think she deserves better. I don’t want her being forty years old and married to a second guy -an amazing guy, for the record- and completely unable to fully appreciate him because of some shit experience. I don’t want her turning out like this. I don’t want her spending her life hating herself and thinking she’s garbage because that’s all she was told she was. I don’t want some other guy ending up like you; loving someone so wholly and completely yet having to right another man’s wrong. That’s not fair. To you. Or to whatever guy she ends up with.”

“Babe, you…”

“Don’t try and deny it, okay. Don’t try and play it down. I know what I’m like. I know how bad I can get. You’ve spent the last twelve years having to prove you’re not him. And that isn’t fair. And I’m sorry. For ever making you feel like you’re not good enough or that you’re somehow like him. Because you’re not. You are so far from being anything like him. I’ve never meant to hurt you. And if I knew how to stop being this way…”

“Esme…” He lays a hand on the back of her neck and lifts his head to kiss her. “...stop. I love you. I get it. Why you are the way you are. In the same way you get why I’m the way I am. And you know what? We’re both fucked up. But somehow it works. WE work.”

“I just don’t want Alannah ending up like this. She’s still so young. There’s time to stop it. Before it happens.”

“How? You’re not her mother. What are you going to do? Go over there and over advice? Teach some parenting classes? Because that will go over REALLY well.”

“I’m hardly the person who should be teaching parenting classes. I’m not exactly perfect myself.”

“Your kids think you are. I think you are.”

“You think the sun shines out of my ass and that I poop glitter and fart rainbows. You’re hardly a good judge. But…” she leans in and presses a kiss to his lips. “...I love you for always wanting to stroke my ego. For always looking at me like butterflies fly out of my butt.”

“Your ass is nice, but it’s not THAT nice. And this stuff with Alannah. What can we do about it? She already spends more time here than at her own place. What more do you want?”

“Well she obviously likes being here. You’ve seen her at her own house. She doesn’t smile, she barely talks, hardly eats. Doesn’t even make eye contact with people. It’s like she’s nothing but a shell. And then she comes here and she’s completely different. She’s smiling and she’s laughing and she’s so loveable and sweet. And helpful. She’s a good kid. A good kid that deserves so much better.”

“You’re still not telling me what you think we can do about it. And we’re not moving here, so don’t even bring that up. We’ve talked about that. Numerous times. This isn’t the place for us. Not on a permanent basis:”

“I know. And to be honest, I wouldn’t want to live here full time. I love where we are. It’s private and it’s quiet and it’s beautiful. That’s home. No other place can even come close to that. It’s nice to visit here, but living? Definitely not a good idea. Especially for you. And Tanner. You guys need the quiet and the calm.”

“So what DO you want to do? You say you want to help the kid. How do we help her?”

“Millie brought something up. An idea. And it’s not totally horrible.”

“And that is…”

“She asked if we can bring Alannah back with us. To Australia.”

“As in permanently or…?”

“Temporarily. I think. For now. I don’t know; we didn’t really get that deep into it. She suggested it and I told her that I’d talk to you. So, here I am. Talking to you.”

“We can’t just take the kid. We can’t just toss her on a plane and take her home with us. There’s this thing called kidnapping, in case you didn’t realize.”

“And I told Millie that. That we can’t just take her with us. She DOES have a family. A shitty one, but a family nonetheless. We’d have to go through a lot of steps. Just like we did with Ovi. That was a lot of work. Getting everything in order so he could go with us to Colorado. I mean, we were in Mumbai for a month while the lawyers figured everything out.”

“It was a lot of red tape. And Australia’s a lot more strict than the States. About who they let in. And we’d have to get her signed up for school. She can’t just hang around the house. We both work and the kid has to learn. It’s not like we’d just be bringing her for an extended vacation.”

“But it CAN be done. I mean, I was allowed to stay in Australia.”

“Yeah, because we were getting married and we were having a baby. Two perfectly good reasons to let you stay. We bring some random kid home with us…”

“We’d have to call the lawyer. He’d be able to advise us. On how to handle everything. He’d probably be able to handle all the paperwork. And we’re not talking about adopting her. We became Ovi’s legal guardians. That’s a whole other ballgame. We’d just be taking her on an adventure. Let her experience something new. Give her a real family. People that love her and siblings to play with and drive her crazy.”

“And then what? We just send her back home a few months? Just ship her right back to the bullshit here? That makes NO sense.”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I just thought for the time being, we could help her out. Give her time away from her shitty life. And if in the end she really loves it and wants to stay, then we think about guardianship.”

“You’re talking about taking on another kid. That’ll make eight.”

“Two days ago, you wanted me to get my tubes patched up so we could have an eighth,” Esme points out.

“Yeah, one of our own. A baby. That we make. Together. Not someone else’s kid.”

“But that isn’t going to happen. We agreed on this. After the twins. That seven was enough.”

“But you’re okay with taking on Alannah? Just not with having our own baby.”

“I can’t do it again. I just can’t. I love you. More than I ever thought I could love someone. But I am babied out. And this is a kid that needs our help. You're always the first person that WANTS to help everyone.”

“Usually when I’m helping people, I’m getting sent somewhere to kill someone. Not taking in their kids.”

“I will admit, it’s not a fool proof plan. Or much of a plan at all. And I do have my own concerns.”

He reaches out and pushes a hand through her hair; allowing the dark tresses to slip between his fingers and then looping strands over her ears. “Which are?”

“I worry about us. Me and you. Our plates are full. We have seven kids we’re raising. And we’re doing a damn good job, you have to admit. We make a really good team.”

“Yeah, we do. We always have. Right from day one.”

“But we’re also taking time to nurture us. Our relationship. That’s important. How many times has it been drilled into us? At therapy? That we need to step away sometimes and make the effort to connect and stay close and keep our bond the way it is. We’ve had to work on that. A lot. We’ve both had to step up to make sure we didn’t fall apart. To make sure we remember that we’re not just two people raising kids together. And I don’t want to lose that. Those moments with you.”

“I don’t want to lose that either. It’s a big deal to me. You know that. Keeping things together. Keeping US together.”

“And you’ve been amazing. At putting in the time and the effort. And it’s gone so well. We are so much stronger than we were five years ago. By A LOT. You know how cheesy it would always sound? When you’d hear people talking about loving someone more and more every day? I thought it was so stupid. That there was no way that was true. And in these last five years? I’ve realized how wrong I was. Because I DO love you more every day. And I’m scared something will come along and wreck that.”

“But? I know there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“But I can’t help but worry that we’re letting Alannah down. That we’re just leaving her to suffer and grow up to be just as messed up as us. We have a chance to help her. And I don’t think my conscience will let me just walk away and leave her here. Not without at least trying to help.”

Tyler nods slowly as he considers her words; absentmindedly twirling a strand of her hair around his index finger.

“You don’t think I’m selfish do you? That I want to help? Even thought I’m scared of fucking us up?”

“Actually, I think you’re selfless. Not selfish. If you’re willing to risk something to help this kid....”

“I don’t want to risk anything. That’s the problem. I want to help, but I don't want to jeopardize us. That’s the last thing I want. Because we have come so far and we are so much better now and we’re so much stronger. I do not want this to be a case of a hundred steps forward and a thousand steps back.”

“That won’t happen,” he assures her. “I won’t let that happen. We just keep doing things the way we are. We make each other a priority. Like we've been doing for five years now. Taking on Alannah is not going to change that. If she was a baby or a toddler we were bringing aboard, I’d say no way in hell. Because that would be a lot of work and yeah, things would fuck up. Between us.”

“So what can we do? To help her. You want to, right? Help her?”

“I do. But…”

“I KNEW that was coming.”

“...it’s not just as easy as taking her back with us. I wish it was. But it is NOT that simple. And you know that. From the experience with Ovi.”

“I do. I DO know that. And I told Millie as much. That we had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to bring him with us to Colorado.”

“And I don’t mind putting in the work and calling the lawyer and putting this out there to him. But it’s only going to work if her parents are on board. And honestly, I don’t know how the fuck we’d go about that. Talking to them.”

“You talked to Mahajan. About Ovi. You went to the prison in Mumbai and spoke to him.”

“That was an entirely different situation. He knew he couldn’t provide a proper home for his kid. He knew he couldn’t keep him safe. He didn’t really have a choice, and he knew that. But I can’t just go walking into Alannah’s house and tell her parents I want to take her to Australia. I can’t just say ‘you’re shit parents, give me your kid’. They’ll tell me to fuck off and most likely call the cops.”

“I guess that wouldn’t be the perfect way to approach the subject. But we could. Talk to them. Rationally. And calmly.”

“And they could turn around and tell us both fuck off and then forbid their kid from coming over here. Which means we break Alannah’s heart AND our daughter’s.”

Sighing heavily, Esme places her forehead against his chest and groans dramatically. “Why does this have to be so hard?”

“We need to figure out how to approach this. Without stirring up the hornet’s nest. And we can’t just make a decision like this overnight. We need time to talk about this. REALLY talk about it. Because this is a huge deal. This isn’t just bringing the kid for a vacation.”

“But we will? Talk more about it?”

“Can we get past Christmas first? Because I would really like to get through this holiday with what’s left of my sanity somewhat intact.”

“Maybe after New Years Eve. Then we can sit down and really talk it out. Pros and cons. The whole nine yards. We don’t need to rush into this. There’s a lot of time before we head back home. And if we DO decide to take her and her parents agree, we’ll need to give the lawyer some time to work on getting past the red tape.”

“I’m not promising anything, Me. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I want to do this and I think we should. I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. But I WILL think about it. And talk about.”

“That’s all I want,” she says, and presses a kiss to his cheek and then the corner of his mouth before placing her head upon his chest.

“You know…” he runs a palm down the length of her hair, then rests it on the small of her back. “...I don’t know what kind of hoodoo voodoo black magic you got going on, but I seem to get talked into the most fucked up shit.”

Laughing, she places her chin on his chest and looks up at him. “It’s the eyes. They get you every time.”

“And the ass. And the things you let me do to it.”

“We are NOT having that particular conversation. That’s just a no from me. We can go there, but we don’t need to discuss it. And speaking of going places, today’s the day.”

“Your little shopping trip with Desi. You ARE going to spoil yourself, yeah? No buying anything for me or the kids. We don’t need shit. This is all about you. So go crazy. Buy a whole fucking store if you want. I do NOT care.”

“Any requests? Something you’d like me to buy? Something you’d like to see me in?”

“Not really. I prefer you out of clothes, not actually IN them. But maybe something sexy?”

“Sexy as in a dress to wear for a night on the town or…?”

“Sexy as in only for my eyes to see.”

She grins. “You mean bedroom sexy.”

“Exactly.”

“I thought you didn’t care about the packaging? I thought you only cared about what’s underneath?”

“I don’t usually care. But, I do have plans. For New Years Eve. After Ovi’s wedding.”

“Really?” Her eyes sparkle mischievously. “What kind of plans?”

“It’s a surprise. But I think something sexy would fit right in.”

“Is it mommy and daddy ONLY plans?”

“Yes. Just us. No kids anywhere near us. No interruptions.”

“You want to have wild and crazy sex all night. The kind of wild and crazy sex that we can’t have with kids in the noise. The noisy kind of wild and crazy sex.”

“That would be nice, yeah. I would love to have some wild and crazy noisy sexy with my wife.”

“In that case…” she slides further up the couch and pushes a hand through his hair, speaking between soft pecks that she places on his hips. “...I will buy something very, very, VERY sexy. Just for you.”

“You spoil me.”

“You deserve it. You’re a good man, Tyler Rake. You’re a keeper.”

“And speaking of spoiling…” Curling an arm around her waist, he unceremoniously dumps her onto the mounds of bunched up pillows and comforters and then sits back on his heels. A grin playing at the corners of his mouth as his palms travel along the backs of her calves; fingertips grazing against the skin of her inner thighs before applying gentle pressure in silent encouragement for her to open them. “...it’s my turn.”

#Tyler Rake #Tyler Rake fan fiction #Extraction fan fiction

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