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fakeosirian · 1 year

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☕️ sinner arc?

O H B O Y

full disclosure i still have not done my note-taking s3 rewatch so i'm liable to misremember (or just not remember) things but i thiiiink i'm confident enough in this opinion to post. it's not supposed to be "discoursey" tho i'm focusing on my crits of this arc more than the compliments because that's what i've done more thinking about. thank you for enabling this and also i'm sorry because you've unleashed the beast <3

thesis statement: the sinner arc, as it is, is both totally natural and consistent with the narrative up to that point and also a HUGE break from the rest of the show tone-wise, craft-wise, and tbh emotionally to the point that i think that it was kiiiiiiiind of a mistake. or at least it's hindered by being the final arc of the show (not counting TOR). some of my sour grapes are just personal bias against certain kinds of "whittling down the cast" plots, but after thinking it over for a While, tbh it bothers me moreso because the things i would change are very simple and would make a world of difference craft-wise without really changing any of the major plot beats or undermining the good parts. (and thus it's disappointing to me that that's not what we got when i feel like the creative team already avoided those exact issues in earlier parts of the show...)

so ok. getting this out of the way: i may come off harsh on this arc because i find it very stressful to watch for personal reasons LMAO so i'll hand this to it: it's very good at getting the desired emotions out of me (extreme discomfort/despair), so if that's the only metric you're using to judge quality, there you go: it's good.

unfortunately it also makes me sad about the state of the characters in a way that...you could interpret as success? but this is the bit that, even accounting for my bias, i think is Not Good. let me explain:

s1 and s2 do an excellent job of manipulating implied perspective of scenes to put characters you're primed to dislike in slow-burn situations that at first exacerbate their flaws and then give them a shot at, not necessarily "redemption," but...imperfect mutual understanding. examples: victor perceived as literally murderous is revealed to be a victim (and later perpetrator) of a generational cycle of abuse; joy, as a victim of that cycle of abuse, lashes out and victimizes others; patricia, eddie, and jerome have more moments from their povs, so it's not quite as dramatic, but they experience a similar character arc as well.

on the flip side, you also get characters whose povs you get as your "main lens" (that can trick you into thinking youre viewing an objective pov) that have biases that become apparent as they interact with those "villainized" characters and react in ways inconsistent with the tone of the scene (thinking of nina and mara here primarily, but fabian also is a good example of this). that's how you get nina flipping out at the friends that SHE CURSED to the point that finally, FINALLY, she acknowledges that she's gone too far. (i should do a writeup on the curse arc and her behavior leading up to it because i think it's a fascinating commentary on the nature of being an "audience insert" that sort of gained sentience over time lol.) mara is self-explanatory here because she cannot help herself from cooking up the WORST possible response to a mundane relationship problem, and yet the tone of the scenes from her pov ends up being extremely sympathetic to her feelings (the way it's shot, edited, the music cues, etc.) in a way that fosters a really neat type of dissonance between text and subtext that doesn't signpost/announce itself until it's already Very There.

when these two different methods for handling character clash, as an audience, you're simultaneously told how to feel (those tonal cues i was talking about) but also left enough clues to change your mind (which i think the generally pro-joy tone of the discourse on this website is proof that people will do and is an intended potential experience of the show tbh). the moral/emotional result of that is a really neat commentary on subjectivity, how complicated reconciliation is, and how the only people too far gone to improve themselves are those who simply don't want to. the scene at the end of s2 with nina giving victor the tear makes me so emotional because it's an olive branch, an acknowledgment of the complicated nature of the situation and that victor has been a horrible person and made horrible choices in the past, but he does not have to keep doing that, and he does make the right choice when push comes to shove. same thing with joy in the senet arc (and i love that fabian is simultaneously the pov character and honestly the antagonist because of his inability to manage his emotions until the end), and honestly, same thing with patricia in early s1 re: her paranoia surrounding nina.

so what does this have to do with the sinners? well, they pretty much fly in the face of that entire writing philosophy on a fundamental, functional level, by design. considering "that philosophy" is just...earnest emotionally satisfying character writing in a story primarily driven by its characters and how they interact with one another over time...that's not great!

the leadup to a sinner capture is great. the afterwards is my issue. you take these characters who are in a narrative about not letting your flaws define you forever and you erase and overwrite their personality to be their singular greatest flaw, and then you reverse that and snatch away their memories to add insult to injury. that's not character regression (which is a completely legit avenue and is why the sinner captures are great in theory) -- it's anti-development, anti-human. it's certainly made worse by the fact that it's the show's final arc and thus the ex-sinners don't get a chance to process their experience on screen (needing that closure for myself is why i'm writing flat on your face lol), but even if it was addressed in the show in the best manner possible, it'd still feel cheap to me because it's agency-stripping and deeply cynical by design.

the thing is, this is deeply fixable. there's no singular way, but one i'm particularly interested in experimenting with is having the "sinner" be a sort of alter-ego that takes over in certain circumstances, subverting the conscious mind and leaving behind memory gaps and inconsistencies that lead the sinners to doubt themselves just as much as the other characters. it'd heighten the themes of misplaced trust that s3 is doing a lot of work with, and it would give the sinners a chance to still be their characters, have agency, continue to develop, and idk imagining a scenario where patricia or fabian is desperately begging someone to NOT trust them sounds fucking delicious to me. also other thing: it'd also fix something that's not really a "mistake" but just makes me sad, which is the fact that once a sinner is taken...that's pretty much it for their character as you know them for the rest of the show. like yeah, they're still there, but man, when the show was airing and fabian got taken, i straight up felt like he died, lol.

there's another issue that that proposed solution would sort of solve? but tbh is just another consequence of this type of plotline, which is: zero-sum game character development, or characters getting their quality/development sacrificed for the development of other characters. i do not like that patricia, easily one of the most complex and interesting characters on the show who goes back and forth between evolving and devolving as a person regularly in a way that feels sympathetic and consistent with her previous behavior and environment, has that progress torched and flattened for the sake of eddie's development. it's not necessarily poorly conceived or structured or illegitimate, but it's hella depressing for me to watch, personally. if it felt like she had more agency as a sinner (ie. the way sinners function being changed fundamentally), i wouldn't mind as much/it wouldn't feel like as much of a zero-sum sacrifice, but as it stands, her sinner capture and subsequent existence is completely centered on making eddie maximum miserable enough to move the plot forward. that's where i feel like i need to rewatch because that's certainly an uncharitable read, so that take is accompanied with a metric ton of salt!

that brings me to my other semi-gripe (less significant than the above but worth talking about): who specifically gets taken.

victor getting taken at all, but especially first, kinda rubs me the wrong way because following s2 where he was getting taken for a ride just as much as the kids were (if not more), its sad to see him flattened back into the caricature he was through the kids' pov in early-mid s1, except this time he's actually just like that. i do feel like taking victor is natural, though, so i'm not totally against him being a sinner/he's a character that i think can survive being made this sort of pseudo-"irredeemable" without being retroactively ruined because he's always been a tragic character. sweet, though should not have been taken, full stop, and i legit hate that as a writing choice.

when it comes to the kids, i understand the thinking behind taking old guard sibuna and it does appeal to me to have old vs new happening within the greater landscape of s3 and the show as a whole, but i think it's missing the trees for the forest a bit. it's too focused on the subtextual positioning rather than the material reality of what patricia, fabian, and alfie are feeling and doing as individuals -- not so much re: patricia and fabian (they were cruising for a bruising), but alfie. like idk alfie isn't always a saint but mara was right there. (jerome was right there. joy was right there. i dont necessarily think either of them would have made good sinners -- frankly they might have made me angrier actually and mara is PERFECT PERFECT IDEAL -- but they make more sense than alfie to me.)

re: fabian, his capture is easily the best scene of all the captures, despite the fact that it makes me physically ill (honestly because it makes me physically ill lol), and that's because it's founded in previous behavior (senet arc is basically the blueprint for the sinner arc in many, many ways) and exceptionally tragic to see as a result because you like him, but he's been off the rails lately. the thing is, i love him being messy, but i hate the permanence of the consequences, like all you need to do is have one (frankly deeply semantic) slipup of character, and boom, you're evil forever unless your bestie can clean up your mess. it's good writing, but the message it sends is nasty, which like i feel like i've probably said a million times in this post, is sort of the whole deal with the sinners.

tl;dr: the sinner arc is powerful emotionally, and i enjoy picking apart the effects it would have on the characters in fanfic (so i'm not full on pro-revisionism lol), but it's just too cynical for me to vibe with and enjoy watching. i love the rest of the show for how earnest and unwavering it is in its belief in people, so seeing it take that turn for the intensely cynical gut punch right at the end -- even if everything works out in the end -- will always be somewhat off-putting to me. i feel like there's more i want to say to further explain that, but i've already spun my wheels enough here, so i'll save it for a follow-up once i've finally cracked and done that deep-dive rewatch, lol.

tysm for asking!! <3

#house of anubis #hoa #is this discourse? idk i don't mean for it to be because again just in case it got lost in translation: i think there's a lot of merit to i #it was a huge gamble as a plotline and i respect it for the bravery but woof. WOOF #my writing #ill put it in that tag bc its like. basically a meta lol #answered

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im-the-punk-who · 3 years

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Could you post some more malex thoughts? What about that song? Or thoughts on them being endgame? Or season 3 malex thoughts?

Baby’s first RNM meta request 😭

ABSOLUTELY I can.

So I am gonna start with my S3 thoughts and endgame thoughts because everything else will tie into that.

From what I’ve seen, Roswell had 5 seasons originally planned, which is still what it feels like it needs to me. Which is cool! It also means we’re probably(hopefully, actually) not gonna get canon malex in s3.

The show has set them up as the ‘will-they-won’t they’ couple - most of their tension together focuses on *whether or not they get together* instead of if they’ll stay together. To me at least, it’s pretty clear the show’s assumption is that if they end up actually getting together in a healthy way(which they both seem to want in their relationships now), they will stay together.

If the show actually does it’s job right and takes the time to let both of them heal, grow, and experience other things that likely won’t happen until at least mid s4. It would make a nice dramatic midpoint for the season, they could play out a bit of that relief of finally being together in the late s4, and then whether or not they renew s5 they’ve told the story they wanted to. But if they do get a fifth season they can play with some hurt/comfort with Michael and Alex actually building/cementing their relationship.

As we’re seeing with Liz and Max, tension has to come from somewhere and where RNM(as most shows do) fails is thinking it needs to come from the relationship, which is what I’m afraid would happen if malex get together so soon after making the(at least private) commitment to get better for each other. There won’t be enough time for growth and dramatic build to sustain the afterglow and they’ll have to find something else to torment the poor boys with.

I don’t hold out a *super* large amount of hope for it, because like...this is the CW. But I do think either way malex will likely be endgame. Just from everything the show has told us and set up, I would be extremely surprised and honestly really fucking angry if they don’t. Not necessarily because they’re My Ship, or because it would be any sort of queer baiting - they’d both still be undeniably queer and I assume Alex would end up with Forrest or someone else in that scenario.

Honestly it would just be bad storytelling to set up your characters as having this deep cosmic connection, setting them up directly in parallel with our other pairs of starcrossed lovers Max/Liz and Nora/Tripp, dropping all the hints in the music choices(Holy Moly being the big one when linked with the Would You Come Home scene, but there are other small parallels in song choices - ‘Through Your Eyes’ as Alex walks away in 2x06 for example.) Especially with the literal confirmation that they both still *want* to be with each other (Alex’s song saying ‘if I got better and worked through my issues can we be together’ and Michael recognizing he’s got to give Alex the space to do that work so that maybe someday they can be together. ‘It’s not our time right now.“ “But it will be.” “I hope so.”)

Anyway! So, I would count a Not-Malex-Endgame as a bad ending, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if we get zero canon Malex content in S3. In fact given where the characters are, I think it would be an AMAZING choice to have these characters who are fan favorites and who everyone *wants* to be endgame - stay apart and work on themselves, and build all that TENSION( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) for an entire season in order to cash in for an s4 payoff.

Also, I really want to see Alex grow as a person.

Michael really started to change in Season 2 - we’ve seen him start trying to be better, dealing with his emotions more, recognizing how bad his relationship with Alex is and trying to improve with Maria as well as building his other relationships, too. To me, Michael is already very different than he was in S1 and honestly, Alex has some catch up to do in terms of working on his fears and how they relate to how he cannot stand to be around Michael in stressful situations.

To that end, I really want to see how Alex and Forrest interact, and how a relationship with Forrest might change Alex. We heard before that Alex doesn’t really consider himself to have had a real relationship, and Forrest does *not* seem the type to be up for a fast and easy thing, so I think he could really push Alex to face his issues around commitment and his tendency to cut and run.

Which would actually be really cool! I am not a Forrest-endgame person at all, mostly because he seems both way too put together and way too needy for Alex long term, but I do think they would be really fun to see played against each other and also just .... nice things for Alex Manes please.

Also then we get lots of Michael making sad eyes at Alex which is just *chefs kiss*.

For Alex, his personal conflict has always centered around his trauma, his father, being ashamed and afraid of being openly gay, and having enough faith in people to believe he personally is worth fighting for and my main wish for Alex is to finally fucking learn how to love and be loved in return.

So in that vein and especially if we see Malex as endgame, it only makes sense that Michael’s journey needs to be a parallel one of him finding something worth staying on earth for. He’s started to build a family for himself fucking finally - Maria, Isobel, Sanders, hell I think there is even the potential for Liz, Max, and Kyle to be family. And of course, Alex has always been his family. But previously no one has ever had his back in the way he’s had theirs.

From what we’ve seen, Michael has always been the one who gives with his whole self - both Maria and Alex comment on it - “I don’t doubt your capacity for love” & “He keeps secrets because of how much he loves Max and Isobel, not because of how much he loves you.” He is a character who has spent his life throwing affection and emotion at the wall and seeing what(if anything) sticks.

He took the crayon from Max at the orphanage, told Isobel he killed the girls, dropped his plans to leave Roswell for her, he both defended Alex from his father and didn’t stop him from leaving a place he was in danger, he let Liz experiment with his blood for Isobel’s antidote. He tells Alex once that he was glad that Max and Isobel had an easier time, even if it meant he didn’t. Michael’s biggest character flaw is that he believes he has to be useful to be wanted. That he, as he is, is unloveable. Or, maybe better put, that he is not worthy of the kind of love others have.

In S3 I want this challenged, CW I will fight you. I *REALLY* want to see him have to face head on his assumption that he’s going to leave Earth at some point and everyone is going to be fine with that. I want him to realize he’s become core in someone’s life again. I want to see someone grab hold and refuse to let go. I want it to get messy, and I want them to stay, damnnit!

I want to see Michael start making plans to stay again.

I said in a previous meta that I thought the growth Michael has gone through already would lead to him being approached by Jones with an offer to leave (so that Jones can separate the pod squad, so that he can use Michael to get to Max, something like that) and I really want to see what decision a more grounded Michael might make in a situation like that.

And what my tiny shriveled shipper heart REALLY wants is a scene where Michael is put to this choice of being able to leave and - despite being offered everything he has been working towards for his entire life - the relationships he’s built are strong enough to make him stay(again.)

(Hint, I REALLY want this to be Alex, for the plot resolution for them in S3 not to be ‘we get together’ but to be ‘we are able to recognize that we can BE there for each other even if we aren’t together’, which would lead spectacularly into an early/mid s4 get together after some light angst :)

I have a lot more thoughts re: what I want from everyone else and what I’d love to see from the non pod-squad squad (MARIA ALEX LIZ ROSA PICNIC DATE WHEN) (CENTERING YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS OF COLOR WHEN) (TRY MAKING YOUR VILLAIN NOT A FUCKING PERSON OF COLOR!) Also like, Generyx, Deep Sky, Mr. Jones, possible connections between them and characters who aren’t pod squad oh my god can we for one episode focus on someone else, etc, but like.....this is already so long so maybe that’s for another time xD

Also as stated like....this is a CW show so this isn’t what’s going to happen, but it’s what a I *DESPERATELY WANT* to happen. My interaction with RNM is VERY much dead-plot-do-not-eat until proven otherwise and I’m just here to no-thoughts-head-empty enjoy the parts of Malex I like and ignore everything else :)

I’m gonna use this image that Diana made me because honestly this should be a disclaimer to any RNM post I make.

#LMAOOOOOOOO SORRY FOR THE GIANT POST #this should probably be readmore'd but uhhhh your assasins failed to kill me during the night #and you must now suffer another day of my insanely long meta #long post #malex #roswell new mexico #rnm meta #roswell new mexico meta #michael guerin #alex manes #Anonymous #milo answers

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prince-toffee · 3 years

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I don’t care if the character is good. I care if the character is interesting. I don’t know where the morality police came from, I don’t know why people try to justify actions of villains, I don’t know why all characters need to be good. I don’t care if they’re justified, or right. ‘Do I care when they’re on screen?’ is the right question. The character can be a pure saint, but what does it matter if they’re pure good if they’re boring to watch? I love villains, love, love, love villains, but if a villain is just... boring, then what the hell is the point of even showing them on screen?!

For me spop is a prime example of this. I’m sorry, I really am, but I don’t care about... anything in that show, except for Hordak, Entrapta, and maybe Shadow Weaver. The Princesses do nothing for me. This one’s the sassy one, this one’s the hippie one, this one’s the blue one, again. I don’t care. I’m sorry. We learn nothing about them! We have no flashbacks, no lore, nothing! Show me Mermista’s father. The Whispering Woods are apparently sentient, can Perfuma talk to it? Show me how Frosta’s parents died, and give her a consistent personality. In her bio it says Netossa doesn’t have a kingdom, why? Show us Spinerella’s kingdom. Show me Entrapta’s backstory, her parents, her childhood, explore her kingdom! I’m interested, show me more! Show me The First Ones, they’re evil or something right? That was the plot twist, right? I think? Why weren’t we shown a satisfying and fulfilling climax where Adora kicks their asses? Show me George’s past battling against the Horde. Angella is immortal according to her bio, maybe. Show me that!

This show is bone dry! No meat! This show somehow manages to be empty and slow and drag while also going at break neck speeds. The only character I can’t complain about, who is my favourite Princess is Glimmer. Glimmer is great, I love Glimmer. Not s1-3 Glimmer, s4 Glimmer. Compromised Glimmer. For three seasons Glimmer was just another Princess, Adora’s best friend. But after Angella dies, then it gets fascinating. Glimmer has the responsibilities of Queen thrust apon her, and all those lines spoken in season 3 are paid off, Glimmer slowly becomes her mother even though she doesn’t want to be, she doesn’t want to be a coward, she wants to be at the frontlines helping her friends. And that pressure forces her to consult Shadow Weaver and go down a darker path. Her rise to power paralleling Catra that season, and then her descent catalysed by desire for power paralleling Shadow Weaver who forges the same relationship with her as with Micah, it’s all great. Glimmer wants to, is responsible for, protecting her kingdom, the whole world and as the Horde grows in power she feels the need to use increasingly more drastic measures to protect everyone.

Glimmer isn’t at her best in this season, but she is the most interesting at this point. And then in s5 she likes Bow I guess. The Mara Razz stuff is also pretty interesting, but that was in s4 and by that point I was just turning off my brain. I kinda feel like s4 was a filler season.

And then, when I’m given so little, we get to Hordak. And he, I cannot stress this enough how much this means to me even though it is the bare minimum, he has a flashback, an artistic, stylised flashback! With a thematic colour palette. With a tease that will be paid off, of our endgame bad guy. A flashback that tells us about the character’s backstory, about the lore of the universe, about themes that are relevant to the whole meaning behind the character and to the conversation he and Entrapta are having in that moment. We see the world from his perspective, we don’t agree with him, but we understand him. And guess what? That scene wasn’t even originally meant to be apart of the episode! Because of course it wasn’t! Because spop is the definition of white bread!

Fuck! Shadow Weaver does it even better! She has an entire episode dedicated to her, and it’s all a flashback, it’s amazing, we see her younger, we see what makes her go down a darker path, we see a meaningful relationship between her and Micah, we see LORE, LORE, LORE, I LOVE LORE, it’s lore that makes no sense timeline-wise, and complicates everything even more without expanding or explaining anything, and not paying it off later, but at least it’s something. I love Shadow Weaver, from her design, which is perfection to her voice which is gorgeous to her actions and writing which is marvellous. I love this irredeemable pure evil disney stepmother because she’s interesting, she’s fascinating! She steals every scene she’s in! Shadow Weaver is the best character in this entire show. I can’t stress how amazing Weaver is, and we all slept on her. I swear she’s like the only competent character in this entire show. She’s refreshing.

And to show you that I’m not just an edgy loser that hates heroes because they’re dumb and villains rock, I’ll say this. Not even Horde Prime is as interesting as those two. He’s this universe conquering monster that is pure evil and that is right up my alley, I should love him.... but I don’t. He sucks. He’s nothing. I feel nothing. I’m not intrigued, not interested, not captured. You know why? Because he’s a reskinned Princess. He’s not important, he doesn’t matter, he’s a cardboard cut out. He alludes to somethings that may or may not have happened in the past, we never see any of it. He’s like a weird Catradora shipper for some reason? He’s this super powerful monster that destroyed planets, he conquered half the universe, he brainwashes half our main cast, and the planet, and yet... I feel nothing... because deep down you know... that this is the last season and the hero will win and there will be no lasting ramifications, and if there will be we won’t see it. Oh no he couldn’t trace them because the ship blah blah blah. Fuck you. Sucks. The heroes are untouchable, he’s not scary, he’s incompetent, oh so you can just mind control people? and you didn’t do that right away, why? He’s stupid. And yeah Hordak is stupid too, but Hordak has a backstory and a love interest and thematic meaning, unexplored, but it’s there. Prime has nothing. I don’t know who or what he is. He’s an after thought. And what contributes to me not giving a fuck is the fact that s5 as a whole is terrible and it rots my brain, and I turned off my brain as I skimmed that season, I blacked out.

Anyway back to Hordak and Weaver. It’s strange when we get to them, because Hordak, in particular, is so unimportant and is so separated from the rest of the show, it feels like he’s in a completely different show from the rest of the cast. Even Weaver is important, she’s directly connected to Adora and more importantly Catra. Hordak? Sure his actions matter to the plot, his backstory and his lore matter to the plot, but he himself doesn’t matter. Sure the portal is the catalyst for the s3 finale and it calls Prime, the clone trauma is important to Catra’s arc in s5, but Hordak the person, is unimportant, Hordak the individual doesn’t matter. He’s less then a side character. He’s so disconnected from the entire show. He feels like he’s in a completely different show. Which strangely enough was welcoming for me. It felt like I could just like Hordak and Entrapta in that small corner of the fanon over there, away from all the drama. Hordak, from his design to his personality to his existing backstory, was so different and stood out from amongst the crowd.

At first it was wow this guy looks cool I’ll proceed to theorise what he’s about, and then when we actually got a story behind him at first I was disappointed, but I quickly began digging into the potential of it and you couldn’t stop me. An exiled and shunned clone with a genetic disease who wishes to prove himself to an uncaring god, his mental state is so fascinating to pick apart, don’t tell this isn’t the most interesting thing in this show... I don’t know what the conclusion of this cluster fuck is.

i hate wrong hordak

#salted toffee #this went off the rails quick

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dastardlydandelion · 3 years

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i’ve seen quite a bit of meta floating around abt sam’s situation vs tory’s and how that enhances their rivalry but i’ve seen v little abt how how fighting itself means different things to them and how i personally think that rly shows itself in the school brawl so i’m going to babble on abt that for a min.

so to recap what most ppl already pinned down: tory and sam’s beef isn’t just about miguel. far from. tbvh i’d ever argue it’s mostly *not* about miguel but he factors into the situation so strongly bc miguel is the *one* thing tory had that (at the time) sam didn’t. it isn’t just abt him, it’s abt what he represents. it’s abt sam seemingly (re)staking her claim to one of the only good things in tory’s life. from tory’s perspective she has very little in contrast to sam. sam lives in wealthy encino, has her own car, a membership at a country club, and participates in karate bc she’s a legacy child and to do so is at her leisure. her dad has his own personal dojo she can practice in whenever she wants and oh yeah, her lessons are free bc her dad is her sensei. sam who could easily afford karate lessons doesn’t even have to, her dad actually jumps at the chance to give them to her.

tory has to work for everything that’s hers and then some, supporting a mother with frail health and taking care of her bby brother. tory’s life is more precarious and vulnerable than sam’s bc of her financial and living situation, and frankly, she needs self-defense skills more than sam does. remember when she’s at the store with aisha and describes to her how some perv tried to grab her, a move she then blocked? how she stabbed him in the face with her duster/bracelet??

i feel like the gravity of that is lost on most ppl bc in context, tory’s almost bragging abt it and showing off a lil bit. and why wouldn’t she?? she thinks aisha is a badass, she saw her breaking boards blindfolded!!! she thinks aisha is cool and she wants aisha to think she’s cool too, so she’s telling her smth abt herself that she correctly feels aisha would admire. but context aside, it’s v scary and sad that tory was in a situation where she had to do that.

tory had kickboxing training even before she joined cobra kai. going off some of her dialogue to miguel, abt how some ppl in this world have to fight for everything they have, i’m going to assume her safety applies here. given that her financial situation is so precarious, i don’t think tory would’ve taken kickboxing classes unless she felt like she had to. like— don’t get me wrong, tory clearly enjoys fighting. it’s prolly a good way to relieve all the stress she’s under, having head of household responsibilities at 16/17. but we see in s3 when her mom can’t rly work anymore and therefore she has to work even more herself, tory leaves the dojo specifically bc she can’t afford lessons. so that leads me to believe that even if tory enjoys fighting, she wouldn’t spend money on it unless doing so was of necessity to her.

tory does not live in a world of stability. her mother’s health is precarious and unstable. her financial situation is precarious and unstable. even working two jobs she didn’t have enough to cover rent. it was so, so heartbreaking but u could see it in her eyes that she was considering the landlord’s offer. she was considering sleeping with some gross ass adult man who berated and belittled her just to have the stability of a home. imho she would’ve done it if kreese didn’t handle the situation (and he definitely didn’t do so for selfless reasons, but that’s another matter entirely so i’m not gonna go into that).

sam, on the other hand, doesn’t just have stability, she has luxury. again, the big house, her own car, wealthy, supportive, healthy parents who have the time and the means to be there for her and provide her with whatever she wants, let alone needs. fighting is v different for sam. from sam’s perspective, karate is meditation. karate is a way to find balance, to center yourself and spiritually connect with your body. karate is recreation and sport, tournaments where rules ensure everyone’s safety at the end of the day and fighting with honor scores u points while fighting with dishonor gets u disqualified. where fighting with honor is “fair” and fighting without honor is “dirty.”

now, i know sam *theoretically* understands karate from the self-defense perspective too. bc she’s heard daniel’s stories. bc she used it against kyler when he made her uncomfortable. bc she and robby got into it at the mall to come to demetri’s defense, thereby actively protecting another person. but sam does not have daniel’s lived experiences of struggling with poverty or being put into harm’s way as gravely as daniel was in his youth (at least not until the school brawl, i’m getting there). sam never had to stab a pervert in the face bc he predated upon her and grabbed her. sam did face bullying, yes, but as hurtful as being slut-shamed on the internet is, her safety was not threatened in that situation the way tory’s safety has been threatened, nor the way her father’s safety was threatened in his youth.

i definitely think the context of their situations influences how each thinks of fighting. tory intimately understands fighting for survival in a way sam does not, in a way sam simply cannot relate to. tory doesn’t adhere to the rules the way sam does bc rules have never done shit for her. actually, the rules themselves keep her down, her mother got fired from her job at the restaurant precisely bc she was bringing home leftovers to feed her hungry children. tory has no reason to distinguish between dishonorable fighting and honorable fighting bc at the end of the day, fighting is a necessity for tory in a way that it is not a necessity for sam. tory doesn’t fight to win points or to meditate, or to spiritually connect with her body. tory fights for self-preservation.

from sam’s perspective, tory fights “dirty.” from tory’s perspective, sam lives in a fantasy world where there’s some kind of manufactured distinction between fighting “fair” and “dirty” only for those who have the security and luxury to made that very distinction. to tory, fighting is fighting and that’s that. to sam, fighting is a discipline, an art, a tradition, and is meant to be practiced with a level of etiquette shown to your opponent. bc that’s what tory is to sam, an opponent. but sam isn’t an opponent to tory— she’s an enemy. these are not the same things.

i think the way tory and sam understand fighting really rears its head in the school brawl. tory’s had it with sam, she’s had beef with her since the moment sam accused her of stealing and it reaches its tipping point during the party bc first, sam beats her in the drinking competition, embarrassing her in front of everyone, and then she goes and kisses miguel. who isn’t just tory’s bf, but one of the only good things in her life at that moment.

on top of that, like, okay, tory is v aware miguel used to date sam. so when she’s dating miguel herself, i think she does take a kind of satisfaction in that, in knowing she’s “taken” miguel from the pretty, privileged princess who has everything else, pretty privileged princess who once accused her of stealing and would then go on to mock and ridicule her. i think it increases the sting for tory when sam follows up beating her in the contest with kissing miguel not just bc she’s hurt, but bc it’s an added slap in the face that sam “reclaimed” this one good thing tory thought she’d managed to “take” from her.

come the school brawl and sam is aware tory’s angry. tory announces on the damn loud speaker she’s coming for her, prolly to embarrass her in front of everyone the way sam embarrassed her the night before. fight ensues and they’re matching each other p well, i’d say tory mostly retains the upper hand bc she had the element of offense on her side while sam’s blows were primarily defensive…it’s slightly in tory’s favor but rly could go either way until the point where tory breaks out the spiked knuckle duster/bracelet.

if u look at sam’s face after tory puts it on, like…she’s shocked. she’s frightened. she was not anticipating that at all. tory on the other hand, has a mocking expression and from her tone, i kind of think she’s reveling in sam’s reaction. bc tory knows full well sam has never had to fight the way she has. sam’s never actually had her safety compromised so it’s like. utterly incomprehensible to her the moment it happens.

tory is the first person who has ever actually threatened sam’s safety and tory knows that, and she relishes it. from tory’s perspective, sam is just as foolish as she is pampered, and she gets to be the one to snatch sam’s sense of security away from her the moment she introduces a weapon to the situation and shows sam; ‘no, this isn’t just a karate match. i actually want to hurt you, and i am going to use whatever i have to do that.’

and…i think she was just trying to hurt sam, personally. ik a lot of the ck fandom thinks tory wanted to kill sam. and i actually think sam herself thinks tory wanted to kill her bc of the visceral reaction she has to tory afterwards. sam has ptsd after the school brawl and it’s not just bc of tory, it’s clearly also bc of what happened to miguel. what robby did to miguel out of anger, anger not created by— but definitely inflamed by —the fact miguel and sam shared a smooch. but sam also has nightmares of tory trying to kill her and it’s tory’s voice that makes her freeze up during the fight at the laser tag place.

i think sam also inevitably associates tory with what happened to miguel, bc while robby, not tory kicked him over the railing, it was tory who started the brawl. and miguel went upstairs specifically bc he was trying to get tory off of sam. he followed them up there bc he was tryna calm tory down. so i think that’s also why sam is so shook by tory after, that inevitable association with miguel’s fall/coma. but i defo think bc tory was the first person who ever actually threatened sam’s safety for real, sam felt like tory was going to kill her. and to be fair, when tory gets sam on the floor and yanks her hair back, it appears that she’s doing so specifically to expose her face/throat area as she pulls her opposite arm back to stab.

sooo with that i 100% understand why so much of the ck fandom and sam herself would think tory was tryna kill her, but i personally don’t think that. i think she was trying to scar her face. i think tory might have specifically been aiming for the mouth bc she wanted to punish sam for the kiss. stabbing/slicing her mouth would be targeting a place on sam specifically associated with the incident that pushed tory’s anger over the edge.

i also think it’s entirely probable tory was just unleashing all of her built up stress on sam during that fight. tory was more aggressive not just bc she’s the one more pissed off but bc her nerves are fucking fried. she throws all of her negative emotions in the brawl and she has infinitely more of those than sam, created by her precarious and fraught living situation wherein she’s had to endure much more hardship than sam and she’s constantly on her guard, fully aware of how fragile any semblance of stability she manages to carve out for herself/her family is. while sam, on the other hand, gets to live in what must appear to tory as this soft, fuzzy fantasy world where mom and dad take care of all the important stuff and sam doesn’t have to worry abt a thing.

i maintain that i don’t believe tory was tryna kill sam, but i do believe she rly wanted to hurt her. and she did…sam is hospitalized after the fight. tory goes back to cobra kai to train for the next one. bc that’s what tory’s life is, one fight after the next. she doesn’t have the luxury of treating karate as a means for meditation or recreation like sam does. and i truly think that impacts that dynamic more than often given credit for.

#reference #not gonna put this in the main tag #bc ck fandom hates tory and i don't need anymore crawling up my ass abt being the weirdo who posted the nunchaku noncon #or the weirdo who keeps clogging the ao3 tag with bizarre crack planet prison au #i am too annoyed to deal with the stupid tory is a sociopath arguments #no she's not u asshat she's a v stressed out teenage girl with too much on her plate and she overreacted #ofc i think she went overboard actually tryna stab sam #actually slicing into sam's arm so deep she needed stitches #but like miguel says tory needs help and their rivalry is deepened by sam's utter inability to understand her #sam is errything she wants and can't have and sam unknowingly throws this in her face all the time #and sam's obliviousness makes her resent her privilege even more #bc living the way she does tory cannot afford the same obliviousness nor can she afford to treat fighting like a game reserved for the ring #the same rules that make sam's life cushy are the ones that restrict tory and keep her down #my meta

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bethanyactually · 4 years

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Hey Bethany, I wanted to ask what tv shows do you love? The ones you've genuinely enjoyed or are currently enjoying, the more the merrier PS you're awesome and everytime you're my dashboard it's something I enjoy or an important political subject, keep it up

Oh, gosh, well, first of all, thank you for the kind words! :) And I’m actually not currently watching much of anything, and haven’t been for the past few weeks, since we’ve been in the middle of what feels like the slowest, longest moving-house process ever. :P (Details about the move under the cut for those of you who are interested.) But here’s an incomplete list of TV shows I love, all of which have their flaws but I enjoyed anyway, in no particular order:

Leverage - It is the show of my heart and I recommend it to literally everyone who asks for a good show to watch. My mom and dad love it. My kids love it. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who watched Leverage and didn’t love it. WATCH LEVERAGE.

Elementary - I’ve been a Sherlock Holmes fan my whole life thanks to my mom, and this adaptation set in modern-day New York starring Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu is...also the show of my heart. I’ve rewatched the entire series at least six times now and I’m certain I’ll rewatch it again in future.

Stargate SG-1

Community - IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS YOU HAVE FAMILY.

Parks and Rec

Brooklyn Nine Nine - Yes, it’s cop propaganda. But it’s also a show I’ve enjoyed a lot, truthfully.

The Good Place

Superstore - I’m not caught up on this show, but it’s excellent.

Never Have I Ever - DELIGHTFUL.

Derry Girls - The dumbass teenagers on this show look and act like actual dumbass teenagers, and it’s set in the mid-90s which is when I was a teenager so to me it’s extra entertaining.

The Expanse - SUCH GOOD SCI-FI.

Farscape - ALSO VERY GOOD SCI-FI. (See my WATCH FARSCAPE tag.)

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

Sense8

The Umbrella Academy

Good Omens

Selfie - I cannot stress enough how very well worth your time and heartbreak it will be for you to watch the one season of this show that exists. (The heartbreak is because there’s only one season, the show itself is hilarious and smart and hopeful).

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries - This modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is technically a YouTube series, not a TV show, but it’s one I very much enjoy.

Dead to Me - I haven’t finished S2 yet but am enjoying it a lot.

The Great - is weird and wonderful. Elle Fanning deserves awards and Nicholas Hoult somehow makes me loathe him and love him at the same time.

Upload - An interesting premise, pretty smartly executed. We watched and enjoyed it! If there’s a S2, we’ll watch and probably enjoy that too.

Lucifer - I love the characters on this show a lot. The plots are...uneven? But I do love the characters and the relationships, and it’s generally enough to make up for how I feel about the plots. (This show is based on the Neil Gaiman comics.)

One Day at a Time (I’ve only watched the first three seasons, the ones on Netflix, because I wasn’t able to access PopTV overseas. I’ve heard that S4 has been underwhelming so far, which is a bummer, because the first three were AMAZING.)

Jessica Jones - S1 was riveting and fantastic. (S2 was...weird. I don’t think we even watched S3; S2 left kind of a bad taste in our mouths.)

Chuck - especially the first two seasons, I loved. I haven’t rewatched this one in years, so I don’t know how it’s held up.

Veronica Mars - the first season is amazing. The second and third seasons are pretty damn good. The movie felt like a gift to the fandom. The books are entertaining. I’ve never watched season four so I’m pretending it doesn’t exist. The fanfic is truly excellent.

Castle - The first three seasons are really great. It sort of went downhill from there. I don’t think I even watched the last season.

Okay, that’s all I can think of at the moment and this list is long enough so I’m gonna end it there. I’ve definitely forgotten some shows but eh, that’s okay. I hope you found this list helpful, anonymous friend!

If you wanted to know more about our move, keep reading

In early June, movers came to our house on base in Germany and packed up 98% of our stuff and hauled it away, and then we basically camped in our mostly empty house on not-very-comfortable base-owned loaner furniture and lived out of suitcases for four weeks. Then movers came to take the rest of our stuff---a few clothes, bedding, towels, dishes and cooking implements we’d kept behind---and hauled it away too.

That night we stayed at a hotel, and the next morning we got on a plane and few to Frankfurt and then to DC. Then we rented a minivan and drove the rest of the way, arriving, 19 1/2 hours after we left the hotel in Stuttgart, at a hotel near where we’ll be living for the next couple of years. Almost three weeks, some paperwork snafus, and two room changes later, we are STILL living in that hotel even though we actually had signed a lease on a house before we left Germany. So we’re going on seven weeks of being in a kind of moving limbo, and that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that we’re moving internationally during a pandemic, from a country that basically had things under control to a country where our national leaders are telling us that we’re all imagining the dumpster fire, and wouldn’t we like to send our kids back to school in the fall, where teachers are equipped with watering cans?

BUT anyway, we’re back in the States, for better or worse, and there are some good things and some frustrating things and we’ll deal with it all as best we can. And then we’ll watch some TV and cope through fiction. :)

#anonymous #a list of tv shows I've enjoyed #and some stuff about our recent move #Anonymous

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makeyourownmyth · 3 years

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best seen in 2020.

My usual caveats from previous years are still applicable here: I don’t watch most of the major nominations the years they come out, and I’m usually not much for theaters and/or current TV. However, due to the pandemic, we watched a loooooooot of content. Here’s just a list of movies that I watched or rewatched this year, that were neither terrible, nor great, but I want to make note of:

Toy Story 4, The Brothers Bloom, Happiest Season, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Moana, Mr. Right, Moulin Rouge, Ocean’s Eleven, Spring Breakers, X-Men: Dark Phoenix (this might have been the worst movie I watched this year?), Widows, Gattaca, Black Klansman, Primer, It 2, Shazam (this maybe should have gone on the Honorable Mentions - it was fun), Training Day, Parasite (OK, now I have to update my Honorable Mentions), The Green Book, Strange Days, Elf, Love & Basketball, Above the Rim, Coach Carter.

That being said, there was some bad stuff, and I try not to shit on any artist’s creations too much, because I know no one sets out to make something bad, but these didn’t work for me.

Anti

Uncut Gems - It’s not that it was BAD, it was just too stressful for me to enjoy.

Brick - It wasn’t even close to enjoyable on a rewatch that I encouraged my partner to take on for the first time. I felt bad.

Hereditary - Neither a scary movie, nor a good movie.

The Witch - Same, but maybe better made?

Under The Skin - Jesus, this was terrible. Maybe I’m not artsy enough to get it?

Now, however, let’s get to the good stuff.

Honorable Mention TV

Avatar - I can’t legitimately put it on the Best Of list, because I’m not done yet, but I’m on Book 3, after finally actually getting started. I think I tried to start this in 2016, and i know all my nerd friends have been yelling at me for a long time because I haven’t gotten to it yet, and as someone who’s almost done, I can say: they were right! It’s great.

Ozark - S1 was great. It fell off a fucking CLIFF after that. Ignore people who tell you that you HAVE to watch this. They’re wrong. It’s fine.

The Last Dance - I know the world is obsessed with Michael Jordan, and I’m glad it came out when it did, but really, all it did for me was confirm that he’s an asshole who was very fortunate to play when he did. And also that the Bulls were fucking phenomenal.

His Dark Materials - Neither as bad as some of my friends think, nor nearly as good as the books (obviously) but also not good enough that I’ve even started S2 yet, so....I guess it’s fine?

The Mandalorian S2 - I think they know what they’re doing, and it’s super enjoyable, and I loved the ending, but I’m also curious as to where they’re going now.

Fargo S3 - Given how good the rest of the series is (other than my distaste for S2, dealt with below, and out of step with pop culture) I thought this one was a misstep,

Orphan Black - I cannot believe how late I was to this, and how good it still was. It really fell apart toward the end, but the acting was incredible, and the fact that they got to tell the story they wanted to was amazing.

Best TV

7. All the Smoke with Kobe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3KIyEgCgc) - Maybe it was just his death, but it hits hard, and I miss him. Does this even count as TV?

6. Looking for Alaska - It felt like gratuitous masochism to watch this and enjoy it, being 20 years older than when I fell for it, and feeling ashamed of the young person I was, but even knowing what was coming, I was weeping when it happened. Even knowing that they were ultimately going on a fruitless search and yelling at the TV while the Colonel and Pudge were searching for “signs” and hating them for it, I remember feeling like everything HAD to happen for a reason when I was this young... So yeah. It’s pure nostalgia for me. I’d be super interesting in hearing how kids responded to it.

5. Locke and Key - I get that some people feel like they don’t need old shit in a new medium, but for me, I’m always up to try it out. If it’s fun, I’ll stick with it. And this is. It’s fun, it’s got some of the old shit, it’s got some new shit, and it’s a treat to see my favorite comic of the last decade in a new medium. Haters need a new bit.

Fargo s1 and s4 (I didn’t love S3) - I know that I’m in the minority here, but I think 1 and 4 are the best and 2 was good, and 3 was fine. I literally watched all of this show this year, though, so I didn’t have the same time to digest as others. But I think that’s a benefit in some regards?

4. Magicians s5 - One of the saddest conversations of the last year to two was when a nerd friend of mine said he didn’t like The Magicians because all of the characters were whiny and self-indulgent. For me, that was almost literally the point: they shoved Q into the corner and told the story of the others (at least one episode quite self-referentially so) and it was so much better for that. I wish it hadn’t ended, but I’m glad they left it where they did, because it was so good.

3. Devs esp. The beginning of e5 - Jesus. The show of the year? Except for the fact that Watchmen came out at the tail end of last year, and I didn’t have it on my 2019 list? I mean, honestly, is there a show more tailored to me? I’m not gonna get into any spoilers, but it’s a quick watch, and it’s fucking fantastic. Watch it, have your mind blown by the concept, especially in the beginning sequence of E5, and then stick around for the subpar ending where basically all of the threads are resolved in the least good way.

2. Watchmen - This deserves multiple re-watches and all the praise that people heaped upon it.

1. The Good Place - I know, objectively, that Watchmen was a better show than The Good Place. But this is my list, and I’ll be damned if anything overtakes my favorite sitcom (maybe of all time?) for best of the year. I know it barely just ended this year, and there’s plenty of acclaim to go around for this show, but honestly, every time I talk to anyone about it, it feels like they kind of laugh it off. This show is not only worth your time, but should almost be considered must-watch material. If more people watched this show, we wouldn’t need the insult “sophomoric” to describe people who’ve just had their minds blown by Philosophy 101, and we’d be better off as a species.

Honorable Mention Movies

In this order, and you can take the comedies and make them the only honorable mentions, if you’d like to make a nice, even top 10. (Until I saw Tenet the night before I posted this.( (And then I looked back at the playing cards that we use to randomly choose movies and I found that I needed to modify the Honorable Mentions and the Best Of lists.)

21 and 22 Jump Street - In general, I’m not a fan of comedies. So I’m happy I watched these, thanks to Nathan Zed, and they’re funny. Good work guys.

Palm Springs - Apparently there’s now backlash against Groundhog Day? I dunno, man, it was fun, and all the actors seemed like they were having a good time, and I was down for it.

Parasite - I can’t add anything to this that hasn’t already been shouted from the rooftops, so let me just briefly say that I thought it was great, but it didn’t quite make the list of best. The combo of genres was great, the cast was fantastic, but what I loved the most about it was how quiet it was.

Best Movies

10. Blinded by the Light - Way more resonant than I thought it’d be from the previews, and I already thought it was gonna be stellar. I didn’t take into account TIME along with place, and that made a hell of a difference for this movie.

9. Shoplifters - Yeesh. What a tough watch, but so good, and so necessary. For me, I think we watched it back to back to back with Parasite and I, Tonya, and this one just stood out so much more. The storyline was softer all the way through, but really had gravitas simultaneously.

8. Tenet - It was fucking fun! I don’t get the hate! I liked it, I’ll like it more next time I see it, and I wish I’d seen it on the big screen, but I’m super glad I could see it on my TV!

7. I, Tonya - Geez, what a powerhouse of acting. Not only did they get me to feel good about the villain of my childhood, they got me to feel good about Margot Robbie, who I’d only thought of as a hot lady before. Superb acting from everyone else, too, and what a great pick up to be like, yeah, this is the story we’re gonna tell.

6. I Am Not Your Negro - I avoided watching it for so long because I was already depressed this year, and I didn’t think I needed any more of that, but it turns out I did, and I always do, from Baldwin. He’s a master for a reason.

5. Hamilton - I know there was some backlash with the time difference, and I’m sure it was better to see it pre-2016 in the theater, where it’s meant to be seen, but I’m not a billionaire New Yorker, and I was plenty happy to see it when and where I could.

4. Won’t You Be My Neighbor - I mean...what do you think? It’s so much exactly what you’re thinking it is, but then it’s even better, because it’s the real deal, and he was so good, and it’s so pure. Watch it.

3. Her Smell - Elizabeth Moss has already gotten all the acclaim, but to play this different of a role, in a movie that felt as stressful as Uncut Gems, but pulled off an actual plot so much more successfully? I can’t believe this one didn’t get more pub, but then again, yes I can: it’s a movie about a girl band that rages against the machine, and she’s got severe issues. Small surprise that the people didn’t react well. Seek this one out!

2. Arrival - Yes, I am going to totally cheat and put a movie that’s appeared on my list (sooooo long ago) as the #2 entry this year. You know why? Cuz fuck 2020, and this is a great movie, and it’s the movie that made me feel second best this year. It’s incredible, and I know people appreciated it in its time, but I feel like they should appreciate it even more.

1. Moonlight - It’s not a shock, nor am I trying to appease anyone with anything. It’s just that I finally watched it, and it’s the best movie I saw this year. I don’t think I could possibly add anything to the authentic critics who have already heaped praise upon it, but I do have to say that it’s all due, and so much more. The acting obviously stands out, but the direction, from the color palettes, to the choice of when and where (and how) to break it up, are all masterful choices.

#moonlight #2020 #eoy #best of lists #movies and tv #arrival #her smell #the good place #watchmen #devs

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the-spud-player · 4 years

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WTF was that season 2 of Titans:

Long post ahead:

SO YOUR TELLING ME TRIGON IS DEALT WITH IN 15MINS OF THE FIRST EPISODE????????????????

Where was the FAMILY DYNAMIC from the first season???????????

I do not care about Dove and Hawk, they have their struggles so bland isn't the word I'd use but,,,, they were just pointless.......

Blame dick for something that wasn't his fault, then come running back to him when something goes wrong? Can't have it both ways...

We just ignoring Rachel turned into a demon creature???

I'm so so tired of Dick being angsty. And leaving Gar on his own????

Kory abandoning her family for a stretch because of a crown she doesn't want?

LEAVE GAR ALONE

Again, I don't care about Dawn and Hank

While I'm on the subject: Donna, Hank and Dawn, they can get f*cked, their hands aren't clean but they have the moral high ground here??

Dawn: "You should tell the kids Dick"... Why don't u tell them yourself? Your so "connected to Rachel" then act like it. But I guess the character is too much of a wet blanket.

Doctor light being taken out was unfortunate but I liked the subversion, put Slade up there in guys that don't mess about.

Superboy, oh boy. Love the character and how he was played. Love that he saved Jason by chance. Hate they introduced him in a whole episode to himself right after a crucial part of the story. Pacing hit the breaks so hard I got whiplash

Kinda the same as how Hank and Dawn were introduced in the first season, pacing is all over the place.

Hank and Dawn get way too much screen time for being side characters

Btw, Jason? I feel for u, but u not gonna have some sympathy for the guy that just talked you off the ledge? But all in all you deserve better.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO ANOTHER POINT.

Dick comes back and says: "Hey guys, Slade's in the house somehow" then he talks Jason down, admits his guilt, people leave, THEN ITS NEVER MENTIONED EVER AGAIN.

I REPEAT, HE LEAVES GAR AND SLEEPY SUPERBOY IN A HOUSE THAT TO HIS KNOWLEDGE SLADE HAS INFILTRATED SOMEHOW.

This was before they knew Rose was working for him, and before the "truce" he had with Slade.

I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, THEY ALL LEFT, GAR, ALONE, IN THE TOWER THEY KNEW TO BE UNSAFE.

Not that it's even Titans Tower... Just some fancy high rise

Jason and Rose were pretty cute tbf

Turned into prison break 2.0 and although I liked the new origin to Nightwing, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL TO SEE HIM ESCAPE.

Btw: NIGHTWING IS IN THE HOUSE WOOOOP!!!

But if Dick gets the new costume, you could at least give Rach her peaked hood, I mean c'mon how hard can it be...

Love the Fever Dream that is Enko

And the whole dynamic of Bruce's hallucination with Dick.

Jericho is precious and is the best new addition to the show, better than Bruce, better than Connor, than his own dad tbh.

Krypto is the bestest of boys and is the only rival of the best new addition to Jericho.

Garth, Aqualad, y'know what, was enjoyable, good character.

(Also, Amazonians have pretty hard skin, so for a u put there saying how weak it was for Garth to die to a bullet, remember it was a bullet meant for an Amazonian warrior and that Slade wouldn't have shot a bullet that wouldn't pierce a super like that)

Can we have Kaldur come and pay respects? Like, they're practically brothers, I'd say maybe S3 but im not sure I want to watch it.

Rose "The titans are my family" Wilson, shut up, that's not earned, u were closest to Jason and he skipped on them.

Maybe if we had more development between you and Rachel and less OG titans doing the big SAD™, and less of H&D in general, that would've been more believable.

Good on Dick accepting her a second time tho, guy sticks to his guns.

Kinda

Also, U EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE 1, 1!!!! SWORD THRUST KILLS DEATHSTROKE, WHOS DAUGHTER CAN RECONNECT BONE AND LIGAMENT, GROW BACK A HOLE IN HER HAND???????????????????

Get on the level, decapitating him would be more permanent, he's got Logan healing beta version. Even a throw away line about his age (problems with his hands throughout if u noticed) getting to him so his heeling won't be as effective would have been better...

Donna Troy. Sigh. Maybe if you weren't written as such a, such a, such a pancake this season I would have cared that you died..

I don't..

But I do care how they killed you off...

A F*CKING POLE. ELECTROCUTED AFTER THE CLIMAX. THE DISRESPECT. THE AUDACITY. I AM SO MAD.

I just, I can't believe the writers thought that was a good move.

Have Hank sacrifice himself for Dawn, they can get their weepy moment now and not later distracting from the MAIN CHARACTERS again.

Also, SUPERBOY WAS STANDING THERE SND HE DID NOTHING. . . BULLSH*T!

[INSERT JOHN MULANEY GIF HERE]

YOU KNOW THE ONE

Also, Bruce just doesn't care about Jason huh?? Just gonna ignore him disappearing?

As much as I like Glen I did still feel he was abit old for the role, not quite Bruce Wayne, 15/20 years too old... But he acted the heck out of this more, feelingsy type, guess supes has been doing work on him in the league

Kory should have said Dawn's last line, I mean she's one of the MAIN CHARACTERS, and not a SIDE CHARACTER.

Also, how did we barely get any DickxKory this season???

Bullcr*p

And Rach just, LEAVING? Without saying goodbye to Garth, or MUMMA STARFIRE????????!!!!

And shut up Garth you never new Donna you have plenty of trauma to be sad about instead. WHICH DOESNT REALLY GET ADRESSED.

Maybe S3? Do I care????

This whole season was a mess. Trigon gone and not being the source of Rachel's alterations in powers is wrong. Because now there's no explanation. Yet. But they swept it under the rug so much that I don't care anymore, either have the risk of her messing up when it matters. Or don't have it at all.

I just. I'm so disappointed. The first season had its flaws but it was good. Didn't appreciate the cliff hanger. Appreciate it more than it being resolved quicker than I can catch a fly in my room though.

It physically pains me how much this season was badly done.

Like, no costumes. At all for some reason. A whole 10/15 mins dealing with a pointless plot point with Hank.

Just.

Treat your characters, especially the main ones.

Better. And with consistency.

Im in the UK and have waited months for this.

I can't actually remember when I was so let down after my hopes were so high.

F*ck.

P.s.

I am so sorry, I don't know how to do a "read more" text post on mobile

#Titans #dc titans #titans #Titans TV

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asiryn · 4 years

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this post is going to be very rambly, so i apologize in advance. if you’re potentially interested in my liveblogs, and/or interested in hearing a bit about my current life and disability issues, tune in. if you aren’t, then....keep scrolling i guess XD

(if you just want the current liveblog schedule, scroll to the bottom)

[and this got predictably very long, so i’m gonna put it behind a cut for convenience]

up to recently, my main liveblogs have been about the pokemon anime, with a few other shows, books, and especially video games sprinkled in here and there. essentially, waaaay back in yonder year of 2014, netflix added the first season of pokemon, the indigo league, to their site, and i, in a fit of nostalgia, made the veeery questionable decision to watch all of the pokemon anime---rewatching the stuff i hadn’t touched since i was kid, and then continuing on into the unknown, and watching all the seasons from gen 3 onward that i had missed due to dropping out of pokemon. i only really started actually making liveblog posts once i hit gen 3, then i stayed consistent-ish from then onward. (for the curious, i’m up to sun & moon, and i have 44 episodes left until i finish it (i’m not ready ;;;; ), and then netflix actually just dropped the first 12 episodes of the newest series, pokemon journeys, so....56 until i’ve caught up with the dub XD)

so, all of y’all who climbed aboard with those liveblogs are probably already aware of Who I Am, at least a little. (....this is making it sound like i’m Some Big Name in liveblogging, but i’m not really anything of the sort, just so we’re all on the same page XD) at least, in terms of the fact that i’m physically disabled, suffer from chronic pain, etc. but recently, i’ve joined two new fandoms, and i’ve begun liveblogging spop and my next life as a villainess. and my spop posts in particular are already becoming some of the most popular posts i’ve ever done (like wow, you guys). and i think part of that popularity is due to the fact that these are two pretty recent, pretty popular fandoms (tho i do also like to think that i do make good content XP). but the point is that quite a lot of new ppl are coming across me, and idk how much, if any, of you have taken the time to look at my bio or anything. so i guess....part of this post is just some ruminations, but also my way of letting you know more of what you’re getting into.

so, for those who don’t know: hi, you can call me kiryn, i liveblog stuff sometimes, and i’m physically disabled. i suffer from intense, constant, chronic pain. it stems from a bone disease called HME, or hereditary multiple exostosis, if you’re curious (i have a severe case of it, joy of joys). the short version of what that means is that i have a lot of bone spurs everywhere on my body, and they....cause me a lot of pain. basically, i cannot do any kind of sustained activity without the already significant, never-ceasing pain that i feel cranking up to unbearable levels, and basically i’ll be rendered immobile. i do have pain meds that i take, and that very much help to take the edge off, and make it so that i can function at all (bc, believe fucking me, w/o them, i wouldn’t be able to achieve even the little i can do), but even with them, it only makes a dent in my pain levels, and again, sustained activity makes up that difference very quickly.

now, the gist of this stuff i’ll mention from time to time, but....i don’t usually go into much detail about it (and this post is probably the most detailed i’ve been about my condition in years). bc, quite frankly, it’s depressing. (and seeing as i also already have clinical depression, that’s definitely not something that i need more of XD) i participate in fandoms for escapism, and bc i don’t really want to think about that crushing mountain of reality. i’ve had this condition since birth, and i’ve literally lived my entire life in constant pain, and i honestly have no fucking idea what it even feels like to be painless. and what’s even worse is that it’s a degenerative disease---essentially, the bone spurs are wearing down my joints, so....my entire condition will just keep worsening as i get older. (and no, surgery to remove the spurs isn’t really an option.) i’ll be 29 next month, and i can already tell you, i’ve been feeling that decline sharply. when i was a kid, i could still run. by the time i was a teenager, i couldn’t even do that anymore; the best i could manage was a jog. now....i don’t think i could even do that.

i guess the main point in why i’m saying all this, is that for the last year especially, i’ve been dealing with the worst downward swing that i’ve had in years. in my late teens and early-mid 20s, i got into a pretty good rhythm, of knowing my body’s limits, how to budget spoons to accomplish things, etc. but now even that fragile equilibrium has been thrown out the window, and i’m currently struggling to learn the new limits and rhythm of this downward swing that is unfortunately now my reality. even before, i was pretty limited on what i could accomplish, but even that narrow window has shrunk even further. so basically, i’m in the testing zone still. and it’s a very slow process, bc once i exceed the limit, my body breaks down, and now it takes me even longer to recover. as an example, i used to know that i could wake up in the morning and get ready to leave the house in 20-30 mins. now? i need at least an hour, which involves me pushing through a wave of agony to be able to take my pain meds in the first place, and then wait for those meds to kick in and the pain to die down enough to move without feeling like i’m moving through a wall of spikes. (and that’s just the start of every day for me, and before even throwing in all of the other variables)

so, coming back to the liveblogs......obviously, that’s affected by all this too. if you’ve wondered why there’s been a gap between me finishing up spop s1 and starting s2....that’s why. partly, i didn’t expect how analysis-heavy i was going to get on spop; pokeani just doesn’t tend to be as consistently thematically deep, so those liveblogs took far less out of me than spop has, and pushing myself to finish 5 episodes in one day....well, it was too much. and the thing is, it’s obviously unhealthy for me to continually push myself to the point of total breakdown, so...that’s where learning my new limits comes in. so, these past few days, i’ve been thinking, and essentially trying to better figure out how to do liveblogs like this without pretty much killing myself in the process (bc i honestly do love making them....i mean, if i didn’t, then it really wouldn’t be worth the literal pain it takes to make them XD). and also there’s a component of managing my anxiety-brain, bc leaving things Unfinished stresses me out, and so when coming to terms with the fact that it’s going to take me awhile to finish one show....knowing that i’d be leaving others hanging....Doesn’t Help XD

so, here’s what i’ve got so far (and obvs, this is subject to much tweaking in the future XP)

currently, i’m watching 4 shows: pokeani, good omens, villainess, and spop. villainess rn is the least of my worries, bc 1 ep is coming out a week, so it’s not demanding a lot of my time.

for the other 3, here’s the preliminary schedule i’ve sort of hashed out:

- pokeani sm103-106

- spop s2

- pokeani sm107-110

- spop s3

- pokeani sm111-114

- spop s4

- pokeani sm115-118

- spop s5

- pokeani sm119-122

- good omens

- pokeani sm123-126

- [catch up block] (i don’t have a good track record in keeping up with ongoing shows, so if i fall behind on villainess, this is where i can catch up)

- finish pokeani sun & moon [sm127-146] (the league starts on ep 128, so i’d rather not experience any big interruptions in the battles XD)

basically, i’ve given myself a limit of 4 pokeani eps in a single session (bc as stated, they don’t take as much out of me), and with spop, the most i’ll let myself watch in a row will be 3 eps (s2 will probably be broken up into a 3/2/2 block, s3 a 3/3 block, and s4&5 will be a 3/3/3/2/2 block).

now, keep in mind that i’m very deliberately making no guarantees about specific days, bc who even knows, but at the very least, scheduling and talking it all out like this will help me to better manage my spoons, and if you’ve actually read this far, then you’ll know the method in the madness and why i’m doing things this way. XD the vague goal is to get in a least 1 liveblog session a week (plus a bonus of the new villainess ep on saturdays)---at least for the shows. i’m still having to working out what i’m going to do about video games....maybe i should just go on a ‘once a week’ model for all my hobbies across the board XDD

in the next couple of days, i’ll be posting that in-depth look into all the ships of villainess (it started as me just pecking down a few thoughts while i was taking a social media break due to the Current Events, but now i’m at the point where i’m like, i’ve put too much effort into this to not post it, damn it XP), and then depending on spoons, i’ll try to start in on that schedule this week, so stay tuned for some pokeani! (again....i’ll try to hit at least 1 liveblog a week before i start trying to get more ambitious XDD)

in any case, if you have stuck through to the end, thank you very much. your support means a lot to me 💖

#kiryn's adventures in liveblogging #kiryn watches pokemon #kiryn watches spop #kiryn watches she ra #kiryn watches my next life as a villainess #kiryn watches good omens #life updates #disability talk #scheduling

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gghoulish · 4 years

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post-s3 steve hcs/steve hcs in general:

despite his outbursts, he’s good in a crisis. he knows what he needs to do to keep people safe, and by post-s3 times, he’s not someone you’d want to fuck with--- no matter who you are. he will not hesitate to fuck someone up if he has to, and has very little self restraint when presented with someone who is hurting or will hurt someone he cares about. it can shock some people for him to be so quick to lash out, when he’s otherwise somewhat soft spoken because of how tired he is.

he will do anything that the kids ask of him, and if he is close friends with someone, he’d die for them in a heartbeat. he may have a disgruntled attitude in response to people disturbing him late at night or when he’s tired, but he’d never leave them to deal with shit by themselves. he considers the kids to be like his own, especially dustin, will, and max. in the case of max, he would 100% take responsibility for her if he had to.

he sleeps with his car keys and brings his bat and other weapons wherever he goes. at the very least, he has a switchblade on him at all times. he is incredibly paranoid and because of this, he has symptoms of both insomnia and hypersomnia, thanks to exhaustion, stress, and constant nightmares. this, however, does not impair his physical capabilities, as he can rely on adrenaline to carry him through any actual crisis, and as he has little regard for his own safety in comparison to others, he will fight until he can’t anymore. steve is very active (hiking, walking/jogging/running, swimming, etc) to make up for the time in which he cannot sleep or otherwise focus.

he does not get close to people easily, romantically. he really did love nancy, and finding out that their relationship was superficial made something in him break. he did love robin, but it was not romantically, and if anything, the confession was out of desperation. part of the reason as to why his flirting failed so miserably, was because he didn’t really have his heart in it. generally, i find the only way i can write steve in a relationship is with some kind that includes billy, and he adores/cares for billy after they reconcile. in most situations, steve would like to be a major part of billy’s recovery from the mindflayer, and he is very sympathetic to him. steve is the kind of person to pour his whole heart into relationships, platonic and romantic. he is also very needy, though he tries not to show it.

post-s3, if they have moved away, he sends letters to will and el. he and joyce become very close and she thinks of him as her son; she gives him advice and he feels the most comfortable when talking to her. in all cases, she is one of the few people he confides in when it comes to his sexuality (steve is not too aware of whether he is gay or bisexual, he may identify as either or neither, he just knows/cares about who he loves and that’s that).

even if he wasn’t so great in school, he’s not stupid. he’s a quick learner when he has to be. a good example is dbd verse, he is quick to adapt to his surroundings and is eager to learn skills from other survivors, as he knows it is life or death.

however, he’s pretty dense when it comes to personal relationships. his doubts about himself make him feel guilty constantly, and he never thinks he’s good enough for anyone. it was not just nancy that caused this issue, because he’d always been eager for approval/validation, having a severe lack of it from his parents. he also is not aware of other queer folk around him and is fairly closeted, unless he’s presently with billy (and/or tommy).

steve wanted to become an actual babysitter and liked the idea of taking care of a house. but life isn’t always that kind, so outside of my larger fic, i don’t think he’d be able to pursue that path in life.

post-s3, steve wears a lot of dusty green, blue, and gray colors, usually in sweaters and turtlenecks. he primarily wears jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers, rarely enjoying wearing nicer things in the off chance he has to get going to help somebody. his hair is about the same length as it is in s3, just a little more uneven and messy. he does take pride in his appearance if he wants to impress someone, but for the most part, he’s tired and he doesn’t care. he does enjoy some more neon looks, though, and sometimes will pull out nicer/cooler attire, if he’s chaperoning the kids or has plans with robin.

steve is incredibly desensitized and though he still has issues with panic, it doesn’t present itself like it did in the past. he has less outbursts of panic and has internalized the majority of it. he is not fazed by much. some things never change, though, and he’s quick to be self-deprecating to make up for what he feels are his shortcomings.

#/////#////#///#//#/#about steve #muse info #some of this is rehashed from an earlier post but i was inspired by liam doing one for his steve!

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alexdanversfbi · 5 years

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Supergirl, Sanvers Fandom and LGBTQ - in response to Twitter Posts.

I’m making a post to try & clarify some things since I made a post, & subsequent issues that have arisen from it. Forewarning, this is going to be quite lengthy but I hope you will read it carefully and fully.

Firstly, I’m a transgender man. I’m in my early 50’s. I’m happily married.

My wife (who now ID’s as bi, but for a long time until my transition, was lesbian, as I had lived as well), quite honestly have been involved in the LGBT community & push for representation and law changes longer than many Sanvers fans have been alive.

I say this to make the point, not to say it makes us better at it, or everyone needs to listen only to us - but that to say we’ve seen no representation, to poor & patchy representation, to representation starting to improve.

Both in laws of the land & on screen.

We’ve faced homophobia & seen transphobia up front and personal since childhood. My in-laws were a staunch allies for lgbt people. My mother in law was a beard to a friend of hers, as they went to underground parties simply so he could date another man. Sadly, my own family were less supportive, & while I wasn’t kicked out of my home, I didn’t get unconditional love & support either. While my father is now dead, I’m still facing it today with a mother who is terrible at acknowledging transgender me.

It all has a long way to go - and it might seem glacial to some, but in the decades we’ve seen it going on, there is far more good than there ever was. It’s still mixed in with the bad though. But more on that later.

I got into the SG fandom late.

Really late!

As late as about 3 months ago, because as a surprise for my wife, I bought her tickets for Ultimates specifically to see Flo as an early wedding anniversary present (it’s in May). She had watched the show (although had stopped before the end of S3 after the debacle of Sanvers and the ridiculous storylines being assigned to Alex). I hadn’t even done that.

However, she still talked about it, but because of what happened with Sanvers had said it wasn’t worth me watching it (she had watched it separately from me for a number of different reasons), because of how bad it was.

So I didn’t bother. Why watch something that was going to destroy any good it gave.

My wife though did say how there were (up until the shitstorm of S3) parallels to Maggie’s (& to Alex’s) stories to another program we did watch on UK TV Bad Girls, and Nikki Wade with Helen Stewart. Nikki was kicked out of the family home for being gay at 16. Was an out lesbian. Helen had only been with men, met Nikki, questioned her relationships - and eventually, unlike SG, they gave them the happy ending.

She also remarked how Flo had left for good reasons because of the way Maggie was written beyond the arc of girlfriend to Alex.

Remember, I wasn’t around the fandom, and to be honest, although my wife is a fan of Sanvers & Flo - she wasn’t really around social media either, particularly at the time Flo left. She hadn’t followed any Sanvers fans at that point.

So neither of us had seen the Flo hate. We’ve heard about it - but since neither of us were active at that time, we simply haven’t seen it.

It does not mean for one split second we condone stuff like that, any more than we condone hate sent to any actor or actress, regardless of the circumstances.

So I’m nipping in the bud any accusations of Flo hate from me now. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

We did see some Flo hate on Instagram as S2 of The punisher started and my wife went in on occasion to defend her.

I could do it - but I have crippling anxiety. Even writing this is because of the support of my wife.

It does mean I find it hard - extremely hard - to go in unannounced to people I don’t know to say anything.

My wife does though stand up if she sees anything. It’s just her online time is often restricted.

Back to SG now - we weren’t watching, even though Nicole Maines was cast, but because I was late to watching SG, it really wasn’t something I was aware of.

I will add, my main social media presence until the last couple of months was Facebook or Instagram. So it did pass me by.

Both of us actually, as my wife - due to disability - isn’t always the most active either. She had heard of it, but we often have other stuff in real life going on (hospital & doctor appointments etc), and that was one of those times, so it was there, but not up front & centre for us.

Now this might not seem like a big deal to some or a good enough reason to watch, but to me this is my Maggie moment when I did realise what was going on fully.

As a Transgender man, to see a transgender superhero finally being cast - that was great news.

What wasn’t so great - it was via SG. A program that had shown demonstratively poor judgement & queer baiting since the loss of Flo.

Were we worried that Nicole’s character would get the same treatment?

Absolutely we were.

However, coupled with having bought my wife tickets for Ultimates to meet Flo, I decided to watch SG, since it meant I had an idea about who we’d be meeting.

Then Nicole was added as a guest and that was it. Tough as it might be, we had two reasons to watch.

My wife warned me what was to come. How Sanvers broke up. How poor the writing became (not just Sanvers, but Alex, Mon-El and far more than I can get into here). Despite being warned, I loved the start. I loved (& still love Sanvers). I get why it became so important for a lot of viewers.

I hate how it was dealt with on screen at the end.

Utterly despise it in fact.

But remember, I only came into this recently, so I have no history of how it played out in real time on social media.

I’d become a huge Chyler fan (but I enjoyed her as Lexie) as I loved Alex, the wife is still a huge Flo fan.

Sanvers even had me drawing again for the 1st time in 15 years (see my pinned Tweet as it’s a Sanvers kiss).

But Ultimates was booked.

Then Nicole came along.

So we both grit our teeth and started watching the rest of S3, and what had already been shown of S4 (to show you how late this was, it was already to episode 13 of S4 when we started it).

Season 3 and the first 10 or 11 episodes of S4 are ….. at best badly written. Poor storylines, plot holes you could drive a bus through … but despite all this, we took what we could because the Nia storyline was being handled fairly well.

Now we could argue why settle for something so poor? Why not push for better representation.

I cannot stress enough (and honestly, the whole thing I was trying to put in a 240 character Tweet that has resulted in all this), that for us the show had now put in representation & produced something we’d not seen until now.

The show has moved on, and goodness me, if you truly think I expect people to move on, then it isn’t the case. I was merely trying to explain, that even previously staunch Sanvers fans might well now watch for completely different reasons.

It doesn’t mean there are other staunch Sanvers fans who should move on. You are just as valid in what you want.

It doesn’t even mean the fight for Sanvers as endgame should stop, and people of differing views can still want that to happen.

It was definitely not to bash Maggie (or Flo), particularly as it was Flo who was the reason we are attending Ultimates.

For me the reason I now watch is because of Nia and Alex.

My wife because of Nia.

As difficult as it is to palate for a lot of you (understandably), there are also going to be those who’ll watch the new LI because it’s another area of representation in having a gay black woman on screen.

We’ve (wife & myself) been around long enough to know what poor & good representation looks like. Heck, good representation is nigh on impossible to find - I can say Helen & Nikki were one of the lucky ones. In the 20 years since that’s happened, I’m struggling to find many others. They are out there, but when it’s only a dozen or so at best, it’s tough.

As my wife remarked the other week; when Jes MacCallan wears a t-shirt at Clexacon that lists wlw and it’s barely enough to be on the front of said t-shirt - that shows how poor it’s been. And then most didn’t have a happily ever after. Sure it’s not a comprehensive list, but it does help prove how poor it’s been.

But also remember as poor as that has been, there are some (like trans or gay men or black women) who’ve had even less. They deserve more, & sometimes that starting point is horribly bad.

We’ve also been around long enough to know it isn’t black & white. It isn’t linear.

Just like coming out, you constantly have to do it. That sometimes means taking what is the worst outcome, but using it to steadily push for the better ones. It sometimes means you might have to take that step backwards to move forwards.

It can also feel unsavoury to do that.

A prime example I can think of here in the UK is we remember when people first started touting same sex marriage - and at that point, they were in process of changing the law on same sex adoption.

For those not aware of the UK law that was - it allowed single gay people to adopt, but not couples .... so stupidly a gay person could adopt if single, and then become involved with someone else, but if you were in a committed relationship no go - anyway, from that law the discussion to get marriage in place started. Gay men were openly likened to those opposing the law change to peodophiles, as sadly still happens to gay men today.

That change in adoption law was a big step forward in getting the laws on marriage here changed.

Then came civil partnership. So many people were angry it wasn’t enough and many said it was in fact a step back. Yet, for us it was a huge step forward. I kept trying to explain then, you often have to take the least favourable option to keep pushing for the best outcome. That marriage could happen, but don’t dismiss what was occurring simply because it wasn’t good enough for you.

It is an exhausting situation, to constantly push for better representation. This is a process. Occasionally that process will force steps back - but as long as the overall push is bigger than that, it will carry on.

For me, I do think that Alex is slowly getting a better deal as a character and I’ve enjoyed the latter part of her story arc in S4.

Does it mean it’s as good as it was or could be?

No, it doesn’t. But it also doesn’t mean - and this is my opinion, and believe it or not I’m okay if people watching don’t agree - pretty much all of S3 (honestly that is a clusterfuck of epic proportions) and the first half of S4 are about as bad as it can be.

Nicole has also had good representation though. There is a lot that resonates for me. A lot I wish I could’ve seen as a child growing up, not in my early 50’s.

Think about that.

I’m finally seeing good representation in my 50’s for the first time.

Albeit in a program that has far from stellar representation for a long time.

This isn’t the 2nd, or 3rd or however many times it has gone on for lesbian couples on TV.

That for me is a huge deal. Huge!

Like a black gay woman is going to be huge for some others.

However, it also means if the LI for Alex gets storylines that Flo deserved I won’t be pissed.

You can bet I will be. As will my wife.

We’ll undoubtedly rip apart the producers for it at home, as we’ve done so many times. Just because people haven’t seen it, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been said.

I guess what I’m trying to say in all this rambling is I truly have no quarrel with people wanting to stay solely as Sanvers fans. I just want to be allowed to go beyond that (and I would love nothing more than Sanvers endgame), even if that seems counterintuitive to some of you.

I’ve never posted anything with ulterior motives to attack any group of fans. It might have appeared that way for some - but truly I simply posted something on my timeline as a general observation. It was not directed at anyone per se.

I’ve realised that it’s been construed as such, but those who do know me also know I will never disparage others intentionally. If it comes across as such, it was - believe it not - unintentionally done. If you don’t want to believe that, I can’t change that, but I do ask you don’t keep saying stuff about it to me.

I’ve not seen much beyond interacting with some mutuals on Twitter.

It appears there is a far greater history going on than I could have ever imagined between some people.

So for now - I’m going to post my usual things but to try to avoid posting directly to followers except family & friends away from the fandom.

To make it absolutely clear I never intend or intended to get pulled into a war of words with anyone.

I just want to enjoy Sanvers - and for me personally, go beyond that.

It’s just I’ve seen so much progress for the LGBT community, even if it could be faster.

I saw lesbian activists disrupting the BBC news in protest to the government of the time and Clause 28.

I saw the news report of the bomb that went off in a gay Soho nightclub.

I watched friends become stigmatised for being gay men at the start of the AIDS crisis.

I saw people fighting HIV & later AIDS & some dying as a result.

I’ve seen this and far more. I’ve actively campaigned on issues ranging from animal rights to LGBT rights, when the T wasn’t even part of the acronym, to nuclear disarmament and far more.

I’ve seen more positives finally coming about in the last 18 years than anything that’s gone before it.

We’ll face steps backwards. Some will be greater than others, but make no mistake, the strides forward are bigger.

Activism for better representation isn’t just something to hinge on one TV storyline or show - it can just be about that of course - but life is messy. It takes steps in many different directions for many different people.

If people were offended, then I am saying sorry.

It has though been difficult to become embroiled in something that is far further reaching than I had any idea about.

One of the perils of being so new to the fandom I guess.

And now I’m off to cuddle one of our cats.

#supergirl #lgbtq #sanvers #maggie sawyer #alex danvers

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swishandflickwit · 5 years

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Deckerstar — come over now (and talk me down) 1/1

Summary: In which Trixie prays to Lucifer and try as he might, he just can’t ignore her—maybe he doesn’t even want to?

Ratings: General Audiences

Words: 10.1k

Warnings: Post 3x24. Spoilers for S3 finale.

AN: Title from the song TALK ME DOWN by the lovely Troye Sivan.

Also on: ff.net | AO3

It starts as a tingle.

A tickle at his nape, light as a zephyr and just as fleeting. It is hardly noticeable, surrounded as he is in a constant sea of people—bodies brushing him as they pulse and grind in time with whatever electric tune is blaring through the speakers of Lux, and exclamations of disparate ranges humming their squalid secrets into his ears or hissing their darkest desires into his mouth. He is no stranger to the chaos of noise brought on by sin, the cacophony of achieved pleasures only to be followed by the turbulent guilt at having indulged at all.

Yes, the prickle that stings the back of his head is inconsequential. Not unlike the buzz of a fly, one that—in hindsight, he might have ingenuously assumed—may be banished with a mere flick of a wrist.

Easy to ignore.

Until, that is, the fly comes back and it’s not so easy anymore—in fact, it’s the exact opposite.

It shouldn’t have been possible.

Not since his literal Fall from grace. But the pressure behind his eyelids and the weight that blossoms throughout his muscles and cartilage—somewhat familiar, vaguely irritating and entirely unexpected, if not a tad alarming—is one that can no longer be denied. Never mind the eras that have risen and long since passed without so much as a glimmer or a hint of it.

Impossible, he tries again. Even as the proof lays before him in all its her lanky limbs and sprawled out, drooling glory. Even as the hum becomes an insistent beacon of urgency, redolent to a boom of thunder as it drowns every other sound. Still, he is hard-pressed to believe the reality of the situation—because it has been eons upon eons since the manifestation of this ability, because no one should have remembered or known, much more needed to do so.

Because who the hell would pray to the Devil?

Beatrice sighs, her svelte frame twisting in her sheets to face him, seated as he is on the chair by her bed. The roaring in his head surges till the vein on his forehead pounds with it.

“Hello?”

He contemplates keeping his stealth and ignoring her.

“Lucifer?”

But children always do have a way of seeing.

He exhales a sharp breath through his nose, and with it, drops his cloaking glamor.

“I’m here.”

She sits up then, bleary orbs blinking dust from its corners. A stillness blankets his mind when their dark gazes clash.

“Took you long enough,” she whispers through a yawn. He barely represses one himself. Instead, he pinches either sides of his forehead at the impatience in her tone and endeavors to call on a little of the virtue for his own.

“You were quite…” he rummages for a relatively PG term before finally settling on, “tenacious.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It—”

“I don’t care.”

He glares at her. But her glower is just as caustic, if not more so. He cannot help but shrink from her—the darkness burrowing into the chinks of his crumbling walls and liberating the despair that he has, till now, refrained from capitulating to since…

(“It’s all true.”

The waver in her tone… the scent of her sweat... the strain in her eyes—how they all betrayed her fear.

“It’s all true.”)

Well, best not to think about that.

“You look tired,” Beatrice softens, reading far too much and too well, the shadows haunting the cutting lines of his face and painting his figure in gaunt relief.

“I am,” he accedes, head tilting back as he sinks lower into the surprisingly plush armchair—or is he so exhausted that even a concrete floor would have felt like a thousand-dollar orthopedic mattress to him there and then? Did he care?

His lids are heavy.

(No. No, he did not)

“Okay,” she replies, something knowing and all-too grown up in her articulation. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

That rouses him enough to prop his head back up towards her.

“Tomorrow?”

“This was good,” she decides, settling back beneath her covers.

“Beatrice?” he addresses the lump she has made of herself.

“Yeah?”

“Why did you,” the term is a plumbeous tumor in his throat, the taste of it foreign on his tongue. But the Devil is no coward and so will not be felled by word or ten-year olds, no matter how charming or sly. “Why did you pray to me?”

He pokes it. The lump groans.

“Tomorrow.”

“Beatrice,” he barks. “I will not be toyed with—”

“I was worried about you. And now I’m even more worried because I don’t think you slept in forever.”

I haven’t, he answers privately but she seems to hear him all the same.

“Go home. Rest. We can talk tomorrow. Try not to come too late,” she pauses, deliberating. “But not too early too. Okay?”

“And if I don’t?”

But the little hellion succumbs to slumber, or at least makes a valiant attempt at it. He goes to shake her awake but retracts his hand when it is a hairsbreadth from her shoulder. Oh, but the blissful silence that engulfs him is almost a—dare he say it—heavenly reprieve from the monstrous anchor of her prayers, not realizing how they encumbered him till he is stood in his penthouse with nothing but the thud of his heart, the wisp of his breath and the briny, L.A. current as his soundtrack.

As he settles onto his bed, he decides to abstain from visiting the detective’s daughter the following night, convinced nothing good could come of it.

But her voice, a baffling juxtaposition of lethargic and jaunty—Good night, Lucifer!—rattles in his brain.

He thumps his head against his pillow.

Though… presumably, nothing bad could come of a quick visit either.

He is asleep before he finishes the thought.

“You really ought not to pray to me, you know.”

She is draped over her bed with an immobility he would classify as preternatural, if he didn’t know any better.

It is unnerving, and so is her observation. He sits straighter, then aborts the movement—for what could he have to prove to this miniature human? Nothing, that’s what. She is but a nuisance to him, after all. One whose antics he has humored thus far, if only to put an end to them.

Enough of this, he promises himself as he squares his shoulders—for the good of his posture, of course. How horrendously unattractive would it be, to have a hunchback for a Devil now? Perish the thought!

“I won’t come back even if you do,” he insists, haughtily. “Do you understand?”

Her eyes narrow into disbelieving slits.

“Right,” she drawls.

“No, really,” he stresses. “Your mother will put me to the grave if she finds out.”

“She won’t find out!”

“Be that as it may,” he says dubiously, “this ends tonight.”

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

In fact it goes on for quite some time.

Though he adamantly refuses to admit how he anticipates each twilight.

The quiet is jarring without her voice in his head.

The previous night had her bemoaning about a performance of some sort that would require her full attention and so he has the day to himself.

It is odd.

He was looking forward to the private time, prepared to relish in the lack of invocatory disturbance after so long without. After all, there was never a dull moment in Hell and the periods that weren’t wrought with the agonized screams of the damned were far and few in between. Then there were the innocuous annotations she peppered him with throughout his daytime routines, they were utterly distracting. He didn’t need to hear about the complexities of her Math assignment while extracting favors nor did he want to know about the, quite frankly, grotesque offerings of an elementary school cafeteria while he was at a distributor’s meeting.

So he relishes the peace, wherever he may find it.

Or so he thinks.

Prayers are no small matter. They are, more often than not, afflicted with the Herculean effort of sustaining humanity’s last dregs of hope. They are massive, suffocating burdens—the kind God’s legions of angels were not apt (or mandated, more like) to aid.

But not Beatrice’s prayers.

It is all too easy to forget that amidst the torment of adulthood, therein too, lay all the insouciance of youth. Perhaps in the beginning, they had felt like chains. But now, without her supplication, he feels depthless and unimportant. Like if he were to float away in a cloud of dust, no one would so much as blink. She is his final tie to Chloe, a tie he is growing more accustomed to (not that he would tell her this on pain of death) with every passing chance they are isolated from the rest of the world. A tie that no longer just links her to Chloe—but links her to him despite Chloe.

It scares him, this reliance.

When she calls for him the next night, he does not come.

He hates himself for it.

Lucifer?

“Stop,” he scolds the glass in his hand.

Why won’t you visit?

He downs the drink then leaves it on top of his piano. He paces to his bar. He spreads his hands on the glassy surface and puts all his heft there so that the marble countertop wails its dissent.

Did I do something wrong?

He shakes his head, and he isn’t sure whether it’s to clear it or it’s in answer to her question.

Please.

That’s it. That’s what does it—the insecurity threaded into her pronunciation, the heartbreak woven into every letter of the bargain. It strikes keenly within him, the tinge of her sadness all too familiar as it monochromes into one that matches his soul. With a roar, he throws out his wings and in the lull between two heartbeats, he is by her side.

“It isn’t you,” is his version of a greeting. She doesn’t even startle.

“Where have you been?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, alright?”

There’s a mist in her eyes that he inhibits acknowledging with painstaking exertion.

“Then why’d you stay away?”

“Why do you keep praying to me?” he demands through gritted teeth.

He braces for something profound, something that will bring him to his knees, begging for her absolution.

“I don’t know,” she looks downtrodden at her inability to provide him a thoughtful answer. “I just do.”

He is bereft of it, anyway.

“But I’m not a good person. Surely you know that?” He dumps himself unceremoniously onto the single armchair in the room. “I’m not even a person.”

There isn’t much to say following that, for what is there to say that wouldn’t be a falsity?

He should leave. But Beatrice doesn’t ask him to, and the regret at not showing up the previous night is a hot iron that brands him to his seat. So he lingers—till enough time passes that he thinks she’s fallen asleep. It is a rare evening that she doesn’t deafen him with talk. He doesn’t mind. But when she does speak, her utterance small even in the tranquility of the eventide, he mentally kicks himself at not having bolted when he had the chance.

“Where were you?”

“What do you mean?” He delays, something brittle in his rebuke despite clearing his throat. He is not drunk enough for the depth of this conversation. “Does it matter? I’m here now, aren’t I?”

She shakes her head.

“You were gone,” she whispers. “You are gone. And so is daddy, and Maze and even mommy.”

He chokes on a breath, panic clawing at his lungs when he spits, “The detective? Has something—” the dread escalates, “happened to her?”

The springs in the foam whinge at the tightening of his hold.

She shakes her head. “She’s not in any danger, if that’s what you think.”

The vise around his heart lessens and for a fraction, he loosens his grip on the seat.

“I sense a ‘but’,” he wheedles.

“The week you stopped showing up, the same day Maze left,” she sniffs and there’s a stagger to her narration that attests to a pent-up sob, most likely for his benefit. He reaches out and rubs her back in a couple of awkward circles like it might erase his guilt.

It doesn’t, but she calms enough to resume talking. He, thankfully, withdraws.

“Mommy’s been different—sadder. The couple times I snuck on her door, I don’t hear her cry, but she wakes up in the morning and her eyes are red. When I eat breakfast and she doesn’t think I’m paying attention, she stares at the door with a frown, like she’s waiting for someone but at the same time, she doesn’t want that someone to show.”

The foreboding mass of guilt in his gut intensifies. She doesn’t speculate as to this person’s identity and he won’t insult her intelligence nor malign his own by asking who.

They both know the answer.

“Where did everyone go?” she laments.

“Your mother will never leave you,” he admonishes. “You know better than that.”

“Maybe,” she concedes with a weary exhale, “but everyone leaves, eventually. Whether they want to or not.”

There is a wisdom to her speech that no child her age should possess, and yet the bluntness of her delivery—infused with such jaded finality—arrests him of his ability to succor her with his special brand of omissions and half-truths.

The Devil does not lie.

“You can protect her, right? You’ll always be there—”

He shakes his head.

“I can’t,” he implores sibilantly, shame coloring his truth. “I can’t save anyone.”

I couldn’t even save myself.

He wills her to understand, but how could she? For as much as she has matured, she has so much living yet to do.

“You don’t need to save anyone,” she urges gently as she slumps over and grows heavy on her pillows. “You just need to stay.”

He startles at that.

“You ask too much of me.”

There’s an itch at the base of his throat and a strain in his lids that seems suspect of tears, but the Devil burns too hot for such displays—at least this is what he tells himself through the rasp of his declaration.

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “I don’t know how to.”

All he’s ever known and seen is what it is to walk away. Lucifer’s path is littered with the devastation of all those he leaves behind—from Heaven and Hell, then his parents and his siblings and even Mazikeen, as well.

The detective is just another name on his ledger, written more than once in bold, block letters and angry, bloodied ink.

Is Beatrice to be a part of this, too?

So he keeps confessing, even as she skims the boundary between waking and slumber, if only to warn her of the inevitable, if only to provide a shield—however flimsy it may be—from the pain of him.

Lucifer is nothing, if not a ticking time bomb and the detective and her daughter deserve far better than to be left in shrapnels at his imminent destruction.

Still, it doesn’t stop his fingers from poising over the detonator.

“Though I suppose... I wouldn't mind,” he professes to the gloom with all the austerity of a remorseful sinner in church learning to redeem himself.

(He always did fly too close to the sun)

“Why do you still pray to me?”

She is plastered to his side tonight, and burrows even deeper so that he’s convinced she’s done it purely to vex him, legs draped across his lap as if he was her personal footrest. He grimaces but doesn’t deny her her petty grievances, not when she is still a tad sore over his curtailed abdication.

“Why do you keep saying you’re the Devil?” she counters, rearranging herself to sit crisscross on top of his thighs so that they are facing each other. He feigns a grunt to tease her then rolls his eyes, unwilling to divulge the cunningness of her subterfuge.

He does so adore talking about himself.

“Because I am.”

The duh, though unspoken, rings loud between them.

“But your brother’s an angel.”

He splutters at the mention of Amenadiel. Weren’t they talking abouthis deviant self? How did his oaf of a brother enter their conversation?

“So?”

“Doesn’t that make you one, too?”

Before he can deign to refute with all the drama and indignance of an affronted sovereign, she barrels on in that careless, excitable way children (and Ms. Lopez) often do.

“I mean, I know you fought your Dad. And that you have these super cool light powers!”

“Well, look who’s been brushing up on their theology!” Despite himself, he is impressed. “Been going to Sunday school just for this Old Scratch, have you?” He preens with a charismatic quirk of his brow and his signature, entrancing smile.

She huffs her frustration before rolling her own eyes, impartial to his charms. The rebuff is so achingly distinct it sends a twinge through his heart, even as he whines a protest.

“Did my Father send you too,” he starts, with shades of genuine bafflement in his inquiry, “or is this immunity a by-product of being the offspring of a Miracle?”

“You talk funny, but I guess that makes sense. Like in the old days,” she pauses, her forehead puckered in reflection as she continues, “or those people in Game of Thrones!”

He tilts his head in amusement at her intimate knowledge of the show, no doubt in thanks to a certain demon. His smile is nostalgic, before he remembers the shambles of his relationship with Mazikeen.

(Best shove that in a box to be studied at never)

“Anyway,” Beatrice redirects when he doesn’t retort. “I don’t go to church, but daddy’s parents have a Bible.”

He snorts, rather inelegantly. “You—you read the Bible?”

“I’m ten, you know. I can read.”

He raises a brow.

She yields, but not without a pout.

“Okay, so the writing is really small and like, have you seen the thing? It’s—” She lifts a hand to approximate the thickness, her thumb and pointer stretched as far apart as they can,“ this thick. And there are so many big words!”

He snickers. Her scowl is a scorching thing, and he is certain he would blaze from it if he wasn’t all ready a gnarly mosaic of burn wounds.

“So I just Googled you.”

“And what else have you discovered?” he smirks. “All bad things, I hope.”

“I didn’t really understand much,” she readily admits with a shrug. “But I got that God sent you to Hell as punishment, kinda like a time-out for not following Him—” Lucifer grouses at the comparison to a petulant child, though he couldn’t exactly deny it.

They would work on her phrasing another time.

(Not that there is another time, he defends unconvincingly. He really mustn't do this again)

“—You had to watch over all the bad souls that went there forever, which I guess is how you became the Devil. But even if you’re the king of Hell and the,” she air quotes, “‘Prince of Darkness and Lies’ and all these other nicknames, which are so mean, by the way!”

He smiles at that.

“—You’re still an angel. You just fell.”

“Oh, is that all?” he snarks, the grin wiped from his lips and a bad taste in his mouth. The simplicity with which she conveys the sentiment—as if it weren’t a cosmic, body and mind and soul altering experience—smarts, though he’d never tell anyone, least of all this child.

She bites her lip, a prominent conflict brewing storms upon her expression.

“Out with it.”

She purses her lips.

“Can I see?”

He sighs. Though he expects it, he cannot control the sliver of dejection that conquers him at Beatrice’s… mundaneness.

“If you must.”

He sets her to her feet then rolls his shoulders, slowly. An exercise in control and restraint as he is cognizant to the limitations of her space.

(And definitely unwilling to wake the lady of the house whom he is not quite ready to face just yet)

He expands his wings as far as he is able to in her little box of a room, one at a time, before folding them closely to his back. It’s a tight fit and he must lean forward to accommodate the blasted things, but he manages to find a modicum of comfort. Father they were gaudy, he notes upon a prompt review of the pair. Lucifer is as ostentatious as they come, but he has class, thank you very much—an inherent taste for opulence that skirts the border between sophistication and grandeur. He coils one wing in front of him to better examine it.

He despises how they glint in the darkness.

He abhors the reminder of them, of everything he has lost. What has once signified power and his connection to the universe and Creation has mutated into shimmering, feathered shackles. He hates and hates and hates, because a sick part of him still yearns for the grace with which accompanies them, longs for the music in the sunset and the serenity in the sunrise and the scraps of His effulgence with every poor soul he used to bequeath with care.

He hates Him for it—for invoking this secret, ugly whim he long thought had been extinguished. For once again taking his agency by slapping it onto his back despite how he bends and breaks and bleeds to cleave them from his flesh.

But most of all, he hates himself. For how he stands in the eye of his carnage—plumage torn and carelessly strewn, and gore puddling the obsidian floor till his sanguine fluid is indiscernible from the Italian marble—and is flooded with a deep-seated relief at their every winking return.

And if he is just as taken by its divinity, whose to stop the young one from spiraling into that insane, obsessive trance?

So he braces for the frenzied groveling. For the disgusting simpering or overwhelming exultation. Maybe even an overenthusiastic hug, as she is so avid in dispensing him.

However, a perusal of her mien has his mouth hanging open in shock. After all his speculation he certainly does not expect what he finds there.

Disappointment.

The cloud of struggle looms forcibly upon her still rounded and childish visage. He tucks the bothersome appendages away with a shrug, feeling woefully inadequate for some inexplicable reason.

“Is… is something the matter? Are they not—”

He withers and he wants, as he struggles to dispel the disenchantment from her eyes.

“Do you not like them?”

“No, I do,” she nods her approval. “They’re pretty. But…”

He cocks his head in encouragement.

“Maze has another face,” she expels in one swift yet hesitant breath, as though it is she who is loath to fail him. “I thought it was just make-up because we were out trick or treating, but I understand now,” she nods, voice growing steadier as she builds her surety. “It was her real face.”

And when she lays the final brick of her armor, she looks at him, fearless.

“Her demon face.”

He gasps, permitting that perhaps this time, it is he who dithers at her implication.

Or maybe she has lost her mind, after all.

“You truly don’t know what you’re asking this time,” he disguises his unease behind a growl.

Her own shoulders curl inwards, but the resolve in her gaze remains steadfast.

Another sound rips from his throat, a cross between another growl and a sob. He never thought to miss the mindless reverence, and yet here he is. He would take the inconsolable horror and repugnant pleas and even that wretched fear over the uncontrollable surge of hope that threatens to devour him.

“What an obstinate creature you are! You’re just like—like…” his snarl falters.

“Like your mother.”

He intends for it to be an insult.

“Yeah—no, I don’t know what that means.”

But the proud, if not slight, smile that crimps the corner of her mouth tells him she takes it otherwise.

“And I still don’t care.”

“Of course you don’t,” he relents before returning her grin with one of his own—albeit sad and just as paltry. “It means stubborn.”

She shakes her head in exasperation while he drops his in his hands, elbows bolstered on his knees.

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Beatrice,” he repeats into the skin of his palms, and so he does not sense her nearing presence until she is upon him with a delicate touch to his shoulder.

“Be not afraid.”

In that moment, he is stunned by the turn of phrase. Then the next, he’s smothering chortles, that are a touch too hysterical to be perpended humorous, into the crease of his arm.

“Isn’t that—” he wheezes as he struggles to catch his breath. “Isn’t that myline?”

Her grin spans the breadth of her cheeks, even in its sheepishness.

“Where did you even get that?”

“I told you,” she smirks. “I Googled. Alot.”

It takes more than a couple of heartbeats for their pseudo-mirth to subside, hushing gestures articulated only for wandering giggles to erupt just when they have themselves under control. But all too soon, the high of the instance comes bursting down, and the silence that follows is a sobering one.

“Are you sure my Father didn’t send you?” he recurs, feebly.

She shrugs. “How should I know?”

He shakes his head, his entire countenance adopting a grimness more suited to a prisoner on Death Row. His penumbra companions pool at his feet in a mimicry of worship so that his shape consumes the gloaming and the moonshine is blinding in its contrast.

“My… my Devil face is not for the faint of heart.”

A final warning.

But she is unfazed, merely stares at him with such openness and trust… he would applaud her for her fortitude, if it didn’t break his heart that he will be the one to wipe the innocence from her world.

“Stand back now.”

For once, she does not protest. But before she can move further, he grasps her hand.

“I will not hurt you,” he squeezes lightly. “Remember that.”

He lets her go and takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes. When he opens them, he knows the fires of Hell dance in his orbs—are reflected in hers too, as they meet each other’s gaze and she gasps.

“Remember,” he beseeches.

In short bursts of flame, he chars the remains of his human glamor till all that remains is his ruined flesh.

For once, it is he who awaits judgement.

“Lucifer,” she sniffs, voice trembling.

“I won’t hurt you,” he repeats.

She steps into the lone circle of moonlight. He searches her eyes and it confirms what he all ready knows—she is crying. Not the sniveling, bawl of a spoiled brat deprived of its playtime but a subdued sob, a torrent of tears noiselessly streaming the valley of her cheeks and the slant of her chin.

He doesn’t know which is worse.

He is ill-equipped to comfort her, not when he is paralyzed by her reaction or more appropriately, her lack of. But before he has to choose to have a go at it, with abominable results he is certain, she replies with, “I know.”

“But aren’t you afraid?” he goads, floundering for a semblance of a typical response, if only to disrupt the disequilibrium that flares within him at her unsettling ease.

“Did it hurt?”

He jerks at the question.

“Did what hurt?”

“When you Fell,” she blubbers. “I mean, you’re Lucifer. You’re my mom’s partner and you pretend you don’t like hugs even though I know you do!”

“What are you trying to say?”

“You don’t deserve this,” she whispers harshly, with a vehement shake of her head.

“I’m the Devil,” he sighs and for once, there is no hubris in the pronouncement. Only a debilitating resignation for his true nature. “This is the least of what I deserve.”

Her fingertips graze his cheek in a tender caress. Confounded by her boldness and deprived as he is from such guileless ministrations, he forgets to shirk her—leans to it instead, as if the roles are reversed and he is the child, pitiful and fragile and desperate for connection. Can this be true? How he wants it to be so—how he wants the vacancy of her terror and the solidity of her marvel. When was the last time he had been bestowed such candid affection in this form? Had he ever been comforted at all in the aftermath of his disgrace?

(No. Not once. Not ever)

How he wants and wants and wants.

“Maybe the Devil is what you are.”

This entire night is a dream, he concludes. It must be—for as blessed as he is at fulfilling others’ desires, he has always been a pariah to his own. How could she offer him salvation in the form of her acceptance, given her knowledge of the atrocities tattooed at the very heart of him?

“But like Maze is a demon, it doesn’t mean that’s who she is.”

Yet as established over and over.

“And I only know how you treat me and my mom, Lucifer. The Devil doesn’t have to be who you are. I knowit isn’t.”

Children always do have a way of seeing.

“And maybe you don’t believe me, but it’s okay.” She touches his opposite cheek so that both hands cradle his mauled face.

“Cause I believe in you. I can believe for both of us.”

So he holds her to him, his hands dwarfing hers—those artless, untainted hands filled with the scored reminder of his greatest failure, his greatest sin, and for the first time.

The Devil weeps.

“Will you show me your light powers now?”

“Absolutely not.” He shifts beside her in a sorry bid to be more comfortable, fingering the coverlet of her bed. He sniffs in disdain at the scratchy linen. “I must buy you new sheets.”

(He gives up all self-respect methods of avoidance when it comes to her, because she’s a leech which you can’t get rid of without incendiary assistance and he hardly thinks the detective would appreciate him burning her child. It’s not at all because he legitimately looks forward to their time together, nope—no—no sirree)

“Why not?” she gripes.

He inspects her chambers, then with an accompanying flourish of his arm, proclaims, “This room cannot hold me.”

“Then let’s go outside.”

“No.”

“Oh, I see.”

His hackles rise at the arrogant shift of her smirk. “See what?”

“Nothing,” she demurs.

His eyes narrow at her. “Speak, spawn,” he towers over her with affect menace. “Now.”

“Well,” she begins airily, unintimidated. “I’ve never seen you use your powers.”

“Not many mortals have the privilege,” he boasts.

“Then how do I know you have them?”

He gapes. “You have seen my wings, right?”

“Big deal,” she grumps. “You and a bunch of all your other siblings.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Mary Beth told us she had a boyfriend earlier this year,” Beatrice dismisses his ire. “She said his name is Ryan and that he’s older and goes to another school. We didn’t believe her. Then when we told her that, she showed us all these ‘texts’ he sent and during recess she would ditch us cause she says she had to ‘talk to him’ on the phone.”

“What the hell does Mary Beth’s abysmal love life have to do with my powers?”

“She never showed us any pictures of him.”

He raises a skeptical brow.

“She’s always on Snapchat and Instagram.”

“Your point? And in this century, please.”

She rolls her eyes.

“We found out we were right, and he wasn’t real. Mary Beth? Have a boyfriend and not post about it every five seconds on her accounts? As if. But it was the fake call that gave it away in the end. She ‘answered’ it only for a text to light up the screen. Anyway, everyone knows it’s pictures or it didn’t happen.”

He sneers.

“I don’t have to prove myself to you! I’m the De—”

“Yeah yeah, you’re the Devil, you don’t lie, blah blah blah. But how do I know you really made all the suns and the stars in the universe?” She turns to her side, away from him, and clamps her blankets snugly to her person. An apparent dismissal. “Guess I’ll just have to keep thinking you didn’t or you’re too chicken to show me.”

“I so do too have powers,” he fumes. “And excuse you! Like any other being besides myself could produce something as beauteous as the heavenly bodies you lot know of, with your paltry telescopes and your inadequate rocket ships. You humans have seen nothing compared to all that I’ve created.”

He wheels her to him.

“When God said, ‘Let there be light’ you're damn right I was the one who made it possible. You think Amenadiel could orchestrate the hypnotizing symphony of a million shooting stars? That Gabriel could choreograph the precision of an equinox? Or Cassiel or Raphael or Father forbid Michael, conjure the complexities of an Apollo, down to the infinitesimal shades that differentiate a sunrise from a sunset? Please. They’re about as creative as a rock, and mind you—that’s an insult to the rocks!”

He stands with a scoff before smoothing his jacket and fiddling with his cufflinks.

“And I am not chicken anything.”

He holds a hand out to her. She stares.

“Well?” he shakes the limb in a fit of pique. She places her hand in his, the one he always thought to be sticky but turns out to be quite clean with all the smoothness that comes with childhood.

“I’ll show you power.”

And before either of them can blink, his wings are out and they are whisked to the beach of his initial advent to Earth.

“Whoa,” she breathes. “We just totally apparated!”

“I believe the more appropriate term is, ‘flew’.”

He puffs his wings theatrically, basking in her giggles as he raises them as high as they can go while she jumps to catch the peaks, only for her to trip over her feet when he propels them enough to send her stumbling to the ground. She shrieks in delight.

“Still think I’m chicken?” he lashes, but without malice.

“You have the wings for it, that’s for sure.”

“You little rascal!” he places a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “I’m appalled at the lengths you’d go to manipulate me.”

Lies, his brain hisses. He couldn’t be more ebullient.

“I’m still not seeing any light powers, Lucifer.”

He chuckles. “Alright. Bossy thing, aren’t you?”

“Learned from the best.”

He loves how that could mean any person between the detective, Maze or him.

(Him. It’s got to be him)

Something overtakes him at her expectant scrutiny, and it hits him anew—he does not want to disappoint her, especially if it is his doing. He is so good at letting anyone close to him down, after all. And much as he claims to be repelled by her companionship, in truth he doesn’t want to be responsible for her disillusionment—not when it is so easy for everybody else to deem him insufficient.

So he tells her, “Joking aside, it’s been some time since I last… exercised my skills. It might not be—” he clears his throat. “Well, there was no sky in Hell, you know. And I have found little use for them here. My powers are not what they once were.”

I’m not what I once was, but this he doesn’t reveal.

“You just gotta do your best,” she shoots him a close-lipped smile that somehow manages to infuse him with confidence. “That’s good enough for me.”

Although, it might not be the smile so much as her words, her plenary belief rearing its reiteratively pertinacious head, that buoys him.

He laughs a tad nervously, his wings shuddering with skittish energy. It has been so long, indeed, since he called upon the reserves of his power, though he reassures himself it is as simple as riding a bike—you never forget it. What once was there can never be erased.

However, to his bountiful irritation (and embarrassment), he has more than a couple of false starts. He balls his fists to banish the jitters. He just gave a whole spiel about his Greatness, for fuck’s sake, keep it together.

“It’s okay, Lucifer,” Beatrice’s look is loaded with understanding, a bit of chagrin, too. He frowns, and recalls the who of it all—for this is just as much for him as it is for her.

For the light is his birthright, whether it is the coalescing heat of a nebula or the sweltering pyres of Hell, the brilliance of an aurora has always been his to wield.

The stars are not as visible as he would like them to be, but better here now than in the city. Still. It’s not enough, he tells himself, disapproving. He should do something about it.

He extends his forearms to either side of him and tilts his head to the sky.

Then with renewed vigor, he begins again.

It emanates from him, in gradual bursts of luminance. It manifests first in the tips of his fingers, no larger than a spark, that grows to an ember, that ribbons up and down the length of his arms. In enthralling susurrations, he flirts with the light, calling out to his oldest companions in a sultry, velvet croon.

Come, he beckons almost pruriently. How I’ve missed you.

And though they are helpless to his summons, it is he who surrenders. With eyes tightly shut, he submits to the flash of hundreds, thousands, millions of unsullied lights slamming onto him with all the elegance of a cresting wave. It stitches itself onto the fabric of his skin, rushes through his bloodstream and intermingles with his bones and sinew so all that he knows, all that he is, is refulgence.

Somewhere in front of him, Beatrice gasps then breaks into a sprint around him, laughing—that carefree, unforgiving chortle present only in the tongues of youth. That is, until it bubbles out of his own throat and mingles with hers in a harmony of astonishment. He forgets everything and himself then, till he is flushed and windswept and refreshed on what it is to be high on resplendence.

When he is positively brimming with it, he throws out his arms, his wings widespread in imitation, and commands, show her.

He opens his eyes to a deluge of stars, except in lieu of descending from their paradise of space, they are coalescing onto his hands and shooting from his flesh till their immediate atmosphere is fashioned into an atramentous dome dotted with glittering meteors.

A night sky of his own making.

“It’s not the sun,” he utters in the causatum of her reticence, her profile fixed upon one of his creations so that it is difficult for him to read her.

“Mommy and daddy used to take me camping, before they got divorced.”

“Yes, I heard.”

He ventures a step towards her.

“There were so many stars where we went, so much more than what I see at home. I wished so bad I could just reach out and touch it. Maybe wrap it around me like a blanket—it was so pretty.” She sighs, a hundred different gusts of contentment in that one miniscule breath. “The best thing I ever saw.”

He bends on one knee beside her.

“And now?”

She shakes her head, lips breaking out into a beatific smile as she cups both hands beneath one of his celestial lanterns.

“This is better.”

He joins his hand beneath hers. Together, they prod it to a gentle incline, pushing it upwards as high as her arms can go, pulsing lucently as it ascends and joins its brothers and sisters in the Earth’s sky.

“Way, waybetter!”

She squeals, chasing the stardust in its wake. He follows.

The stars twinkle that much more at their Master’s joy, the ghost of their own laughter trailing close behind.

The hours lose meaning as they weave new and mesmerizing constellations in the air, the sand, their skin.

And when she tires, she resumes her vigil on his lap—her back to his front and his wings gathered in a cocoon to ward off the vigorous chill of the sea breeze, having failed to grab her coat in his haste.

“I wish mom was here to see this.”

The tide is low enough that they don’t have to worry about getting wet, despite their proximity to the edge of the furthest swell. He buries his hands in the sand, reveling in the sensation of fine granules aloft his skin and for once, heedless of the dirt clinging to his clothes. The lambent debris sliding into the curves and crevices of his digits is one he finds, to his shock, a dulcifying motion after the electrifying exhibition of his powers.

“I don’t think she wants anything to do with me, much less my powers.”

Her head falls onto his chest.

“I don’t know how anyone can be mad at this.”

Lucifer traces a circle into the sand and the stars dance about them in a lazy carousel.

“It’s not this she’s upset about. It’s me.”

She tips her chin to face him.

“Why?”

“I… I did something.” He stiffens. “Something bad—an act forbidden to all angels, hence the reappearance of my Devil face and my, however inadvertent, unveiling to your mother.”

“Oh,” she considers him. “Are you sorry?”

“Not really.”

She makes a chastening noise.

“Mommy says that if you do something bad, you have to own it. Like that time I lied about eating a slice of my birthday cake because you told me I should do what I want. And I really wanted that chocolate cake.” He hums. “But I wasn’t supposed to do that, so I said sorry and tried not to do it again. You won’t do it again, right, Lucifer?”

He wishes, just this once, that he didn’t have such a convicted disposition against dishonesty. But what is a wish, if not the most foolish fantasy of all?

“The truth is if I had to, I would do it again. And if that means the detective wants nothing more to do with me, then it’s a small price to pay. Especially if it means you’ll still have your mum by your side in the morning, and for many more mornings to come.”

The thought of the detective is one he has tactfully avoided revisiting since the occurrence of their falling out. It is easy in the day, when he can immerse himself in drugs and booze and an app or three. The nights are even easier, when Lux is in full swing and he only has to worry about emptying his glass as fast as he can or if the conversation is interesting enough to carry on before he flits to the next warm body.

Then Beatrice’s voice fills his head, a bouncing reverberation to trounce the din of the rest of his life and he caves. These liminal pockets of time, in the hours between dawn and dusk that is spent with her, never ceases to impress upon him the extent of his transgressions when it comes to the detective. It barges into him like a riptide, pulling him closer to a nebulous reality in which he might have to endure the rest of his existence without ever seeing her, not even for a minute more, beyond what is quite conceivably their last memory together—of the evidence of her repulsion of him in her frightened expression.

So though he should disregard the child’s litanies, cut himself off from all things Decker with the precision of a seasoned surgeon, and stay away—he cannot, unfitted with the self-control or the valiance to deny himself that which he covets, no matter how incomplete.

“Do you… do you think your mother could ever forgive me?”

He would cringe at the vulnerability coating his inflection if he didn’t feel as if his survival hinges on her advice.

She curls onto her side and angles her head to better peer at him.

“Yeah,” she mutters. “I think if you told her what you just told me, she just might.”

“Maybe,” he sighs, scarcely stifling the impulse to knead his temples. “Though I imagine it will take more than an apology. This is no case of the missing slice of chocolate cake, after all. The situation is much more dire.”

He nudges her.

“Any suggestions?” he glibs, only half jokingly.

“Just try,” she shrugs. “If she doesn’t then you and I will always be friends,” her fingers tighten at his lapel in a way that is sure to leave wrinkles though he cares not. “Won’t we, Lucifer?”

“If… if that is what you desire, then yes.”

There is no toothy grin, only a solemn entreaty as she presents her pinky to him.

“You promise?”

A quivering breath escapes him at the poignancy of the ceremony—juvenile vowing methods notwithstanding—though he musters a smile for her benefit, one she returns with a dazzling rendition of her own. He is temporarily speechless at the sight, for he has never been more evinced of her likeness to Chloe till this very moment.

“My word is my bond, Beatrice.”

He interlopes his pinky over her proffered one.

“You may doubt any and all persons and things in this world and the other worlds beyond it but in this,” he brings their tangled digits to his chest, just above his heart, “you most certainly can trust.”

All the stars above them glow that much stronger but none hold a candle to her eyes, a gleaming pair of supernovas to rival even that of the shiniest astral formations in all of Creation.

The ebony oblivion of nightfall dwindles to the blossoming flush of an impending sunrise and only then do they head back.

His wings disappear to their alternate plane just as he deposits the sleeping ten-year old onto her bed. With a tenderness he didn’t perceive himself capable of, he folds her within the warmth of her sheets. He fusses for another minute—arranging stuffed toys, fluffing pillows, leveling her covers and brushing her wayward tendrils from her face.

“You’re the only one who answers.”

Curious, he sleeks the crinkle between her brows.

“What’s that, child?”

“You… ask…” (she yawns) “me… pray…”

She smacks her lips only to emit a near imperceptible snore. He snickers, retreating to the doorway.

You’re my answered prayer, Lucifer, she mumbles in soundless supplication. He glances back only to realize she is lost to the clutches of repose once more. He drops to a knee at her bedside.

“If I were a religious one,” he tells her dozing form, “I’d say you and your mum are mine, too.”

“Your what?”

He swirls towards the source of the disembodied voice, only to be met by the lurking silhouette of the detective leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed.

After the days-long exodus, the sight of her is a feast for his senses—all long lines of bared skin, outfitted as she is in sleep shorts and a tank top, and golden locks cascading in a waterfall over her shoulders and down the slope of her back.

He swallows, mouth going dry.

“Detective,” he greets uselessly, only now half mindful of Beatrice resting behind him. Then, aware of the hour, he raises his hands in submission. “You know me,” he reassures. He hopes.“I mean you no harm—you or your offspring.”

“I do know you,” she sighs. “And I know my daughter. If you’re here, she probably asked you to be.”

Stunned, he can only gawk.

“Am I wrong?”

There’s a gaiety to her demeanor that drains the tension from him. He hazards a tenuous smile.

“I’ve never known you to be, no.”

The reprieve is short-lived as a chilling quiet follows, both grappling for a foothold in this recondite dynamic. Though it is neither comfortable nor disagreeable, it is ill-fitting all the same—like a pair of jeans too long about the ankles or a suit two sizes too big, functional sure, but certainly not worth wearing more than once.

“So what were you talking about?”

He is grateful for the cloak of darkness as it conceals the terrible blush creeping beneath the surface of his cheeks. He flails a hand with the all the blitheness of a tornado, the noncommittal refute just as discordant.

“Okay,” she drawls. “You don’t wanna tell me. That’s fine. What’s new, right?”

There’s an undercurrent of frost to the criticism, and he can’t blame her. He deserves it.

She lists further onto the woodwork.

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair.” She runs a hand over her face. “Listen, it’s late—early, or whatever…”

“Right,” he stands from his crouched position.

“Well, I should get going,” he announces, an inviting lilt at the end so it sounds more question than statement. He has no qualms departing with the use of his wings but brief as their exchange has been and conflicted as is he is about his decision to withdraw from her, he is greedy for her company. So he makes a show of leaving—combing his fingers through his hair so that the riotous curls dangle in an artful coif instead of a disheveled one (the product having long faded), dusting at his trousers (however futile, for sand is notoriously adhesive to fabric) and aligning his suit and cufflinks (more out of habit than necessity). When he loiters at a period just shy of overstaying, only then does he approach the door, prowling haltingly enough that his chest coddles her exposed shoulder as he crosses the threshold to her hallway.

In the confines of his strung-out mind, he rails at the futility of his machinations. His fingertips are a hair strand from the main entryway’s door knob, when she calls his name.

He stops, chin titled a notch at her direction to indicate his attention. He ignores how his heart celebrates to the tempo of a salsa at his name falling from her lips.

“We…” she releases a weary breath. “We have a lot to talk about.”

He nods. “I imagine you have questions.” He pivots on his heel to glimpse out the window, at the hint of red dawn oozing from the horizon. She closes the door to her daughter’s chambers.

“But did you want to do it now or…?”

“Honestly? I’m beat.” She follows his gaze, intent on her rendering on the glass. Even through the facsimile of her image, he recognizes her fatigue like it is an anvil strapped to her back. At her calculating gander, he frowns.

“I should let you rest.”

“Yeah,” she licks her lips then crosses her arms across her chest once more, her combined penchant for anxiety. “But you—you could sleep here, too.”

He scrambles for an innuendo or three, then falters. Surely he heard wrong?

“Pardon?” he croaks.

“Like, on my bed.”

He chokes on air.

“Pardon?”

She slaps a hand to her face so that her reply is muffled. “Just sleep, okay? You shouldn’t travel now, you’re just as drained as I am—no, don’t deny it.” She lifts her head so she can administer a reproach with a wag of her finger. The repudiation dies on his lips. The use of his powers was quite taxing on him, out of practice as he had been.

“You’re too tall for the couch and for obvious reasons, Trixie’s room is out of the question. Maze forbids anyone from entering hers, so that leaves mine.” She meets his perplexed stare. “It’s fine. It’s big enough that we won’t bump—”

“Uglies?”

“I was going to say heads, but yeah—that too.”

He pouts. “You take the fun out of everything.”

The glare she projects unto him is a withering yet welcoming one. His abashment ebbs with every flirtatious bon mot that deserts his mouth, paired with her corresponding eye rolls or derisive comebacks. Yes… this he can handle—he can provide the droll commentary or the salacious suggestions and the overall levity. If he can focus on that, he can almost forget the monumental significance of her actions and his subsequent participation, weak as he is at denying her anything despite what he may or may not deserve.

She is offering him, offering the Devil, to share her bed.

Not to engage in carnal deeds as most of his invitations with a bed as the destination end. Yet there’s something more intimate about just… beinghere with her, witticisms curdling in his throat as his heartbeat quickens restlessly with every step that brings them closer to her room. Not for the first time, he must ask himself if he is in a particularly vivid dream—but if so, he hopes never to wake up.

He hovers at the outset when they arrive, his hands in his pockets as he watches her fold the blankets then lower herself to the left side of the bed. She hugs her knees to her chest and rests her cheek on top of them, her arms loosely circling her ankles. The sun’s rays are yet to touch them here, but Chloe has never needed it to shine—not when all that’s essential to light up a room is for her to appear. And he cannot comprehend how someone as lovely as her can stand to be in the same bed as him, much less the same space, yet here she is—this creature of kindness, compassion and benevolence, a radiance in her eyes coaxing him to, come closer.

The door shuts with a resounding click.

He fidgets with the top button of his waistcoat. His clothes are grimy with sea salt and quartz and he reckons in for a penny, in for a pound. Still, he gives her a searching look, and when not so much as an objection or another incensed eye roll passes from her—just the constancy of her benign regard—he begins to undress.

In the absence of banter, the rustle of cashmere and the racket of his labored breathing is magnified. He feels both wound and untethered with every strip of clothing that piles itself onto one of her chairs, and he is vulnerable in more ways than the expanse of skin he leaves exposed implies.

For the sake of propriety, he keeps his boxers on then advances to the right side of the bed with all the caution of an explorer in the wild avoiding death in the claws of a beast. It certainly doesn’t help that Chloe’s stare is zeroed in on him like that of a predator homing in on its prey.

(He grants that he might like to embellish. Not much, just… somewhat)

He doesn’t realize he’s stopped breathing till he’s situated on the bedspread and dragging one out.

Her expression dissolves into one he is too acquainted with—that of her exasperation.

“You good?” she questions with no small amount of sarcasm that he deliberately ignores.

“Quite.”

“Okay then.”

She mimics his position, lying prone on her back except she seems cozy upon the sheets while he maintains a ramrod physique. She twists onto the side facing him, a hand under her pillow and the other on the scant distance between them.

“You can relax, you know. I won’t bite.”

“Not even if I ask?”

“Lucifer,” she warns. “Behave.”

“Apologies,” he tells her sincerely. “I’m just confused as to why I’m here. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t hear me complaining. I mean, if I had known that all it took to get into your bed was—”

“Lucifer.”

“Alright, alright,” he ripostes. “I’ll be the perfect gentleman, Devil’s honor.”

He digs his nails into his palms hard enough to nearly draw blood. Why oh why did he ever have to open his mouth? And they were doing so well, too, avoiding the subject of their estrangement.

He turns away from her.

“Well,” he rasps. “Goodnight, detective. Or morning. Whichever you prefer.”

Though, he muses bitterly, how can anything be good where he’s concerned?

To his surprise, however, Chloe seems unperturbed and goes on to remark archly, “You’re like a space heater.”

He shelves his verbal self-flagellation and responds over his shoulder with only an intimation of admonition, “Occupational hazard I’m afraid, being the Lord of Hell and all.”

She doesn’t continue after that. But it is evident neither of them is going to catch a wink of sleep, so he gathers the courage to ask.

“Why did you really ask me to sleep here?”

She lets out a shaky breath.

“I know how you are, Lucifer,” she echoes brokenly. “No more avoiding me. We are going to talk about…” he imagines she gestures towards him. “And what that means for us, yeah? And this way I can keep an eye on you. I don’t want you running away again.”

A pang of guilt courses through him at that. He deflates. But then—

“And—”

His breath hitches.

“I guess… I missed you.”

He can feel the weight of her stare till it becomes the heat of her open palm hovering over his shoulder. The last time they were in this position, he almost broke her wrist with the effort to avoid her touch. Now though, with the scent of her consuming his senses and her warmness slinking beneath their shared quilt and mingling into the core of him, he craves it—so strongly he struggles to restrain himself and not take and take and take.

“No,” she murmurs. “I knowI did.”

But when has he ever been in the business of denying pleasures?

“I missed you, Lucifer.”

With deliberate measure, he leans back—till flesh meets flesh and warmth merges with warmth. She makes a pathway of his back, her fingers tracing lightly over the dip of his spine, then up again aloft the peak of his shoulder blade, her thumb making a hasty detour as it cossets the edge of where his scar had once resided. Every glide of her fingertips is an ethereal caress, as brief and as teasing as a rain shower in the middle of summer. Yet he feels it all deeply, each graze imprinting itself till his soul is carved to the shape of her. How he trembles because of it, amazed at how he doesn’t implode given the seismic proportion of his metamorphosis.

Her hand encompasses the hill of his bicep. At her behest, he moves onto his back and in thanks, her journey ends emphatically across his heart.

“I missed you.”

There is no mistaking the ocean of sincerity simmering in her eyes, even with all she now knows about him. It only serves to agitate his bewilderment, and with it, his fear that this has all been a wild concoction of his inebriated state.

“Detective… ChloeI don’t understand—why—”

She hushes him.

“Be at peace.”

Without his permission, he spews a strident yelp of incredulity.

“What?” she shrugs. “I’ve seen Trixie’s Google history.”

“Is that really why you weren’t surprised at my presence earlier?” he grumbles good-naturedly. “What is it with you Decker women and stealing my lines?”

She chuckles. He joins her a second later and forgets, however evanescent, his suspicion of the realness of the moment.

“Sleep,” she soothes. “We have time later.”

“Do we?” he mutters diffidently, his mind racing even as his lashes flutter with the amplitude of his fatigue. Her hand travels languidly from his chest and molds itself onto edge of his jaw. Tempted by her gravity, he falls, and their foreheads collide softly like satellites catching up to each other within the same orbit. He focuses on her halcyon embrace.

Everything inside him quiets.

“No more running,” she strokes his cheek, and he wonders if she means it for the both of them. “Deal?”

He could form galaxies when she looks at him and all he sees are the stars in her eyes—brighter than anything he had and can ever hope again to create, and magnificent with all the promise of a genesis—and this is how he learns.

The sun rises.

He stays.

AN: Cross posting to Tumblr after a week haha. This is my first Lucifer fic. There was no plot whatsoever lmao but I hope you guys enjoyed it anyway!

Come say hi to me!

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