#personally i think we should just let lesbians do whatever we want BECAUSE ITS NOT A BINARY IDENTITY
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So I've been seeing A Viewpoint within the bg3 fandom occuring. And I gotta be honest. I disagree that the characters being bisexual in Baldur's Gate 3 means you cannot headcanon them as other sexualities for your own fandom content purposes. I think that's not reflective of how queer people and their sexual identities actually work, and its just antithetical to how fandom has always functioned, which is an exercise of imagination.
I wanna clarify up front: I agree that someone saying that a character Can't or Shouldn't or Was Not Meant To Be bisexual because of whatever reason IS biphobic sentiment. The characters in Baldur's Gate 3 are canonically bi/pan, thats made pretty damn clear when you look through all their content. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about headcanons, au's; the kind of imaginitve play that is very much what fandom creativity is about.
If you set a standard in fandom that depicting a character as a certain sexuality is Not Allowed, 1. you're kinda flattening sexuality in a weird way, like personally my sexuality is complicated as fuck and has changed over time, and 2. you're limiting creativity. And I think creativity in fandom is extremely important. It's the whole fun of fandom. Creativity is worth protecting and its worth establishing the nuance between Depicting A Version of Character who is X and Insisting That Character Should Be X in canon. Because like... we meddle with character's identities in fandom all the time. That's what headcanons ARE, they change appearance, social position, career, faith, species, traumatic experience, moral and political alignment, and SO much more.
I think limiting what people can headcanon within fandom... is less fun! It's just less fun. Imaginative scope lets you do more, weird fun stuff. It lets you depict more complex interesting characters. Example: my Bad Nun AU. In that, Shadowheart identifies as a lesbian. Why is that? Because I wanted Shadowheart's experience within Bad Nun to specifically explore the history and context of lesbians within nunneries, especially how that manifested post Vatican II. These were also eras when 'lesbian' was more ubiquitos, had a different context and more flexibility; a lot of women that would probably consider themselves 'bisexual' now were identifying as lesbians, were in lesbian communities and events and spaces.
On that note: Flattening sexuality. You're gonna say people CANNOT depict these characters as ANYTHING but bisexual? That is not how most queer people's sexualities work. It simply isn't. I've identified as tons of different shit in my sexuality. I'm still not sure about it. For me half the time my "sexual identity" is just the words I use to communicate what I'm looking for, and that changes depends on What I Want at that time, what I'm looking to explore, my social context, ect. ect. like what. This isn't how sexuality works for real people. How are artists meant to be Creative and imaginatively depict real, complex, queer sexuality if they are restricted to depicting only what is within canon?? This is not how any other part of fandom works.
Fandom art should work how all art works. If someone makes shit art, it gets dunked on and ignored for being bad or lazy or lame. If someone did Heterosexual Karlach fanfic, I would be like "what the fuck why" because they made Karlach less fucking cool. Het Karlach would be boring and thats More Egregious because they DECIDED to make her heterosexual DESPITE canon. But even then, EVEN THEN, I don't think that should be looked at as off limits shit, because I don't believe art should have many things off limits. Any limits must be very nuanced, because art and creativity is nuanced. Obviously my brain would go "het karlach? you deserve jail time and thats queerphobic", but I honestly believe creative license is more important than those feelings. I WOULD happily comment on their thing, "heterosexual karlach is boring, thats a shit idea" because I'm right
If you want good art and good writing, you need to protext creative license.
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So if gender is a social construct and female beauty standards are oppressive, what does presenting female even mean? Sorry if this sounds in bad faith but I’m genuinely confused.
nah I getcha. this is going to sound a bit circular but my take on the subject basically consists of the following:
a social construct is defined primarily by the society that constructed it
that said, how one engages with a social construct as an individual is going to vary based on one's own philosophy and preferences, how they want others to see them, etc.
even if you think a social construct is dumb, that doesn't mean it holds no sway over your brain
so from that we can gather that there's sort of... different ways one can think of "presenting as female."
this is a bit reductive, but to provide an example, lets use "the wearing of skirts and pants" as a lens.
depending on the time and place, society might say "men wear pants and women wear skirts"; it might say "men wear pants exclusively (unless they're gay or something), women can wear skirts or pants (but if they only ever wear pants they're probably gay or something)"; it might say "only laborers wear pants, everyone else wears skirts"; or people in that society might not wear pants at all.
let's say you were assigned male at birth in a society where skirts are designated Exclusively For Women. there's several different ways you can engage with that.
wear skirts specifically so that people will understand you are presenting as a woman. (whether they're cool about this or decide to abuse you for it depends on the person, of course.)
avoid wearing skirts, at least in public, so that strangers won't think you're presenting as a woman.
reject the "skirts are for women" attitude altogether and wear skirts while still thinking of yourself as a man.
reject the "skirts are for women" attitude altogether; don't wear skirts, but still think of yourself as a woman.
reject the "skirts are for women" attitude, but present as a woman through other means. e.g., if your society associates long hair or makeup with womanhood, you might grow your hair out and wear makeup, but still avoid wearing skirts just because you don't like them.
deliberately cultivate an appearance deemed "androgynous" via opposed signifiers of gender - for example, wearing skirts but cutting your hair very short.
deliberately cultivate an appearance deemed "androgynous" by minimizing signifiers of gender - for example, if your culture is fine with anyone wearing pants, and it's fine with anyone having their hair in a ponytail, then that's what you'll go with.
cultivate an aesthetic that will be recognized as feminine (or even specifically as transgender!) within certain subcultures, but not others - basically a visual shibboleth.
ignore the whole thing and wear skirts Because They Feel Nice, or wear pants Because You Like How Your Ass Looks In Them, or whatever.
now, in reality, this is all a lot more complicated because there's even more social constructs to keep in mind - race and nationality, religion, flagging as gay, subcultural signifiers, professional signifiers, and so on. all of these inform each other in a way that will also be mediated by your personal feelings on all of it! (for example: I consider myself a lesbian, and more specifically, I want people to read me as butch. how do I navigate that without making people go "oh that's just A Dude"?)
the upshot is - and I realize this might sound a bit glib - "presenting as female is whatever people decide counts as 'presenting as female.'" society as a whole sets the base terms, and then individual people interpret them.
in a hypothetical world where gendered beauty standards didn't exist at all, it would probably be more difficult to "obviously" present as male or female. on the other hand, people are less likely to be shitty about people who present "wrong," because that concept loses some of its meaning.
none of that should be taken to mean that being transgender is "fake" or "meaningless," obviously. a lot of the time, society is basically arbitrary... but we still have to live in it. or, you know, actively reject it, but as mentioned above, that too is a specific choice which is related to our relationship with society.
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enstars headcanons
ok im going in order but i dont have headcanons for a few characters for sure. so. whatever on we go . just saying in advance these are mostly gender and Autism
fine:
eichi tenshouin: look i cant say anythinf about this guy hes already canonically terminally ill and gay. like what do you want me to do
wataru hibiki: genderfluid. whatever gender fits the performance. shes the moment hes the star theyre the epitome of an actor
tori: boy you are so gnc. princess but not a girl you know
yuzuru: has definitely had impulse thoughts about dying his hair and having a scene phase at 3 am
trickstar
hokuto: bigender. sooooo queer . also autistic
mao: um ritsu braided his hair sometimes when they were younger
ryuseitai:
chiaki: trans guy i have many feelings about this but he leans into the hero thing because its gender affirming. also autism
kanata: no gender only blublublub. likes wearing long skirts. filipino. has like 1 million fish earrings. also autism
tetora: TRANSMASC ‼️💥💪
midori: transfem... also autistic.. she is so important
shinobu: Autism Autism Autism. bonus the detachment from gender that sometimes comes with the autism but he hasnt really thought about it. hes just some guy
alkaloid:
hiiro: transmasc autistic i will die on this hill
aira: my lovely mutuals have convinced me with blasian aira its canon to me now. white french? no. cowards happyele are cowards i tell you. theres such a vast portion of the francophone world that is not white . also transmasc
mayoi: scaredgirl weirdboy core. whatever gender is easier at the moment. she likes being pretty
tatsumi: ok yknow what. fuck it. aroace tatsumi
eden:
nagisa: so much autism. nonbinary guy. religious trauma
ibara: lesbian. not going to elaborate bc thats not my problem ibara is just a lesbian
hiyori: hes just gay idk what to tell you. cisboy gay who is so annoying. when people complain about "gay isn't a personality trait" theyre complaining about him. also chubby
jun: also gay but fans love him for being normal about it. one of his main motivations for working out is being able to princess carry hiyori. hes so polite usually its insane but with eden he doesnt care because he loves them so hes a bit of a bitch
valkyrie:
shu: god is a woman and her name is shu itsuki. transfem and autistic i will Also die on this hill.
mika: transmasc and autistic
2wink:
hinata: men liker but dont ask me about her gender idk
yuuta: i see those slipups in twin peaks girl u are transfem nonbinary i think
crazy:b:
rinne: bigender [wild cheering] also demi aka down bad for niki specifically
niki: tboy swag but hes not really bothered too much about medically transitioning. arospec i think
himeru: Sooooo nonbinary. so so so nonbinary. i like to hc afab nonbinary himeru and mainly got top surgery to more easily pass as kaname but like gahdamn of course you have blue hair and pronouns (they/it/no pronouns)
kohaku: tboy swag . the gender in crazy:b is off the charts
Undead:
rei: 1 million genderqueer and SO gay. has all the problems of an older sister but also the hotness that comes with issues u know.
kaoru: ok. bear with me. aussie. also transfem... like what do you mean you hate men and only hang out with girls. definitely arospec
koga: AUTISM!! weirdgirl to autism boy wonder transmasc swag pipeline
adonis: also autism. he can be gnc. as a treat
akatsuki:
keito: come on man we all know youre gay and insufferable about it
kuro: he should get to have piercings i think
souma: autism boy wonder. while you were busy learning social cues he was studying the blade. also applies to gender norms
ra*bits:
nazuna: boy there is something gender going on with you. weirdboy or maybe a gender cis people have never heard of.
tomoya: That Is The Normalest Girl I've Ever Seen
mitsuru: autism
hajime: girl what is your gender. hes like the narrator of the arch nemesis cynthia post. so poor they cant afford a gender
knights:
tsukasa: autistic and please please please let him be chubby. staring at happyele with my biggest saddest eyes Please let tsukasa be chubby. while you're at it can he wear a skirt. please
leo: ok i give a lot of characters autism because i have autism and i get it but i think leo has adhd
izumi: agender. any pronouns. idk what to tell you he said in next door that he doesnt care about gender only beauty
arashi: only normal one in knights. i love aranee she should get 1 million hours to stress bake if she wants to
ritsu: ah i understand why vampires are gay. occasionally a girl if its funny
switch:
natsume: Diversity win!! the angry witch is transmasc!!! neurodivergent but i think its funnier if i dont specify.
tsumugi: new gender unlocked its pathetic wifeguy. hes every spirit in the fields of punishment and he does it willingly for natsume
sora: wahoo autism ^_^ yippee!!
madara: is cowboy a gender?
feel free to reblog and throw in ur own headcanons i love hearing other fans hcs it is so awesome!!
#puddle talks#oh god#tagging time...#enstars#ensemble stars#enstars headcanons#eichi tenshouin#wataru hibiki#tori himemiya#yuzuru fushimi#chiaki morisawa#hokuto hidaka#mao isara#sorry i have no thoughts on th e rest of trickstar. oops. no hcs anyway#kanata shinkai#tetora nagumo#midori takamine#shinobu sengoku#hiiro amagi#aira shiratori#mayoi ayase#tatsumi kazehaya#nagisa ran#ibara saegusa#hiyori tomoe#jun sazanami#hinata aoi#yuuta aoi#shu itsuki#mika kagehira
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Okay don't shoot me for these y'all! so I'm a go by character let's start with kie, I hate how the writers passed around like a fucking hot potato like give that lesbian a GOOD love story.
And I hate the rafe x kie ship, like when he apologized to her for trying to drown Sarah and not the fact that he CHOKED kie as well, like why as a community do we over look that.
The jj x kie ship feels kinda forced but it's not the worse.
JJ should be ina poly relationship with Cleo and pope, I personally don't like jj nothing personal he just is spontaneous and it overwhelms me.
FUCK THAT NIGGA RAFE, like I GENUINELY hate his character like he practically HATE CRIMED pope and went back to his colonizers roots and stole technically popes gold and popes cross.
I don't truly blame topper for burning down the chateau like he crashed out, but he was also dumb ASF for thinking Sarah was gone keep her word. She used you as a place holder whenever john bad her irritated lik why are we shocked.
Kelce is such a useless character, like I genuinely need them to do more with his character like he is so boring.
The heyward's and kie's mom are the best parents, kie's mom is just trying to look out for her only daughter but her dad can eat dot shit.
John b is underrated in his own show because of them blonde folk and it makes me sad.
Cleo came into the show and made and impact like she truly is the best character
I used to hate Sarah but she's ight.
I think that's all but I am a #proudrafehater -🍓
okay lets break it down lets break it down
AGREE i feel like kies character is wasted trying to be a love interest like shes truly at her best when she's just vibing...give her a girlfriend...they also make her annoyingly self righteous and that shit where she screamed murderer at ward during the stakeout....whatever.
riara im ambivalent towards but i think its says a lot that that little handful of interactions between them got ppl more revved up than the jiara moment
i hate tht ship so bad....fan service at its worst u can tell those two don't fw each other no more
i think like the jj pope cleo relationship thing is sooo interesting bc like...u can tell the actors like jjpope, they're the closest of all the pogues (jj and john bs relationship exists outside that realm tbh they're just brothers) and we constantly see them together without everyone else like they shoulda let it happen. also think its interesting that cleo was supposed to be with jj and u can see the remnants of that but then jiara happened so we got popecleo and i love them sm everyones so weird about them. i want the best of both worlds put all 3 together
i do really hate rafe yall like...i love writing him honestly and hes sooo good for fics but like show rafe....hell burn burn burn put him in the saw trap
topper really makes me wanna take his head off but it sucks because hes sooooooo funny like i actually like him from a writing standpoint shit just be happening to him and burning the chateau was the only time he uno reversed on the universe gotta respect him for that one
kelce is there
we loveeeee bobby heyward in this house im not playin hes my fav parent and i love how we can see that even though he talks shit about the pogues he truly does care for them like those are his sons friends and they'll always have a place with the haywards like....the banter between them is truly indicative of how much he cares he may say he doesnt like them and call em bastards but he does!!! also i have a lot of empathy for anna tbh like u can tell her behavior is born of worry and the fear of kie making the same mistakes she did but shes going through that mother feeling of realizing your daughter has to go through it to come out
john b deserves more like hes such a fucking joy to watch and he's literally so 70s/80s leading man coded and im glad the girls are coming around more john b what the fuck.
cleos the real star..people again so weird abt her and always leaving her out and use the excuse that shes "barely been there" shes been around since season 2 what do you mean. she's been helping out john b and sarah from the jump.
im a sarah cameron apologist yall could never make me hate her. she's just constantly in pain...save her
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dndads couple songs
okay. i wrote out all of this, and then deleted it all by accident as soon as i finished, so now i’m rewriting it. originally oakworthy was on here too as a bonus ship, but it ended up being the only thing i didn’t delete and so it’s getting cut out of spite. fuck them kids. no one gets to know what small musician’s song i assigned to the freaks.
anyways! i like to collect songs that remind me of the relationships between the parents of both seasons, and i thought it would be fun to share my top picks for them all here with some of my reasoning :D i’m smart. come closer. look at my music, boy/girl/enby/etc.
Season 1: Odyssey
Darryl/Carol - I’d Have to Think About It by Leith Ross
I had a few different options for them but this is the best choice
Yes, I know this is a lesbian song. Hear me out: I am a lesbian and I like them.
They need to be divorced so badly but I truly think Darryl will be in love with Carol forever
“I’ve been a liar and you’ve been a pill” LITERALLY THEM?? Darryl lies about his life/feelings and Carol is hard to talk to, that’s literally them, oh my GOD. Please see my vision
Henry/Mercedes - Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
Literally the easiest song on this entire list
They’re hippies. They’re so fucking in love. I rest my case
I picture it from Mercedes’ perspective (just because Henry is a druid, so things literally grow wherever he goes), but it works both ways
Ron/Samantha - Lay All Your Love On Me by Dominic Cooper and Amanda Seyfried
Yes, it’s important that it’s the Mamma Mia version and not the ABBA original, because Cooper’s verses fit Ron and Seyfried’s verses fit Samantha
“I wasn’t jealous before we met”, “And I’m possessive, it isn’t nice”, etc. are so so Ron about Terry Sr.
“I still don’t know what you’ve done with me, A grown-up woman should never fall so easily” Samantha is so so in love with Ron despite the bizarre way they met
In conclusion: this song is so them, thank you
Glenn/Morgan - I’ll Never Love Again by Hamilton Leithauser
I have a few different Glenn/Morgan songs but we’ll go with the sad one because I love it
I don’t need to explain this one. You get it from the title. He never loved again (until he met another timeline version of her, I guess).
Jodie/Morgan - Wedding Singer by Modern Baseball
I do need to explain this one because I have a very specific interpretation of the song that may not be entirely accurate, but it’s real to me
This song is about a dying relationship that you feel like you should be able to fix, but you just can’t
This song is about to clinging to your past even though everyone just wants to move on
This song is about being unsure if your lover is your lover anymore. This song is about love not being what romantic movies have shown it to be. This song is about being stuck in a relationship that is on its last legs and you can’t tell if you want to let it go or fight for it kicking and screaming.
Most importantly, it is about Jodie’s endless pining over his ex-wife!
“The selfish side likes to think that my execution’s more of an honest one, these artists all cut cloth with underscore” is definitely aimed at Glenn, by the way. ‘My pathetic pining over you is more honest than whatever he’s doing with you and his dead no longer real wife.’ etc etc
Season 2: Quest
Grant/Marco - God in Jeans by Ryan Beatty
If you know this song, you know I don’t even have to explain this. But I will, because I love this song.
God in Jeans is about worshipping your homosexual lover like he’s your God, and how rewarding it can be to place your love in trust in him
Grant placing his love and trust in Marco despite everything that has happened to him is so deeply personal to me, and this song is essentially all about that
Also Grant just needs more Catholic guilt. He also needs to kiss his husband more. Please. Please I miss Marco so much
Sparrow/Rebecca - Strawberry Mentos by Leanna Firestone
This was another one that was hard because I had too many options. This time, I went for the happy one, because I know I can make it sad but also it’s a happy song and I really want Sparrow to be happy
This song is all about comparing your love to something sweet! Rebecca runs an ice cream parlor! It all adds up!
“So I pick up black licorice from every candy aisle even though I hate the taste of it, because I know when I kiss you, it’ll make you smile” Sparrow is shown to sacrifice parts of himself to accommodate the people around him, and molds himself to fits others whims. This is the sad part.
“You’re not afraid of your feelings and you’re not afraid of mine” Rebecca is shown to be confident in herself. She’s a girlboss. I think Sparrow depends on that sort of sturdiness a lot, since he’s… y’know, Sparrow. Having someone who is so confident in themself helps him be more confident in their relationship
“Taking weekly trips to my dentist, but I know it’s worth it” Sparrow looks over the faults in their relationship (cough cough THE AFFAIR cough) because he wants this marriage to work. He loves his wife!
That’s the end of my case, thank you
Lark/Rebecca - Rebecca by Against Me!
Literally no fucking contest
We are not in love but we ARE fucking. I’m obsessed with you. There’s vague implications that I might have feelings for you but we will never address it because neither of us want more. The song is literally about a woman named Rebecca
It’s their song. Moving on
Terry Jr./Veronica - Be Your Man by Ivan & Alyosha
This feels like a bit of a weak pick but it’s just so them, okay?
The entire song is about wanting to be a dedicated husband to your wife. Terry Jr. does everything in his power to fit himself into Veronica’s life and be a part of her family
Plus, considering what we know about Veronica’s ex-husband, I think Terry would do his best to be almost overly giving and caring in contrast to him
It’s a sweet song, Terry is a sweet man, and this song is so so so them
Nicky/Cassandra - Breathless on DVD by Antarctigo Vespucci
Not to brag, but my Nicky playlist on Spotify has two whole likes. This does not mean that I am confident in this pick. It’s really hard for me to narrow down a song that fits their vibe considering they don’t interact
The closest we get to them interacting is Cassandra saying Nicky was a good man, and also that they’re divorced. I also feel like maybe it was said that they argued, but I may have imagined that based on the divorce line? I dunno
Breathless on DVD is a song about an ex-relationship that ended in a place you’re not fully happy with, and looking back on it now, you’re not sure how you feel about the relationship as a whole
“I wanted to see you to see if I still wanted to see you, but that’s not fair” Being unsure what you even want anymore, etc etc
It’s a reach, I’m sorry, but their vibes are so hard for me to pin down personally LOL
BONUS: Jodie/Scam - She Hates Me by Puddle of Mudd
The girls are fightiiiing lmao
#mine#dndads#music#collapses. i rewrote it. wahoo#not at all relevant to anything happening in canon rn btw#just something ive been thinking about for ages now#as always. sorry this is so long. the hyperfixation wants me dead.
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So, I finished Killing Eve S4 and I'm...
...just gonna pretend I do not see it. S3 wasn't amazing but its ending still works way better as the ending of the show than the actual ending, so I think I'll just be having that, thank you.
No, but seriously, how did they manage to have this much lesbian activity for four seasons and still end up with bury your gays lite?? Did literally no one in that writer's room have even a cursory look at tvtropes.com or talk to like one gay person??? Make no mistake, I was fully expecting one or both of them to die, especially since I was aware – without knowing any details – of the finale's negative reception. There are always going to be people who hate an ending and by extension the whole show simply because it killed off their favorite character, irrespective of context or execution. I am not one of those people, so I want to be crystal clear here when I say there were ways to make a tragic ending work for Killing Eve, a few fairly obvious ones even, and so I thought surely there was no way they would fall into that specific trap again.
The most generous interpretation of this (non-)ending I can come up with is to apply Hanlon's razor, in which case it might be be seen as a symptom of the general loss of focus the series suffered beginning with S3 and exponentially more so in S4. By which I mean they let the emotional core (the V/E dynamic) diverge wildly from the plot (finding the 12).
Never lose sight of the emotional core. I find you can get away with almost anything; technical faults, dodgy performances, plot holes (especially plot holes), even a meh ending, as long as the emotional core stays exactly where its name says it should stay.
Helene is an easy means of illustration for this point. Helene in S4 is basically less chaotic Villanelle, both in her function to the plot (murderous fancy bitch whomst is important as the key to a bigger bad) and in her relationship with Eve (gay, aggressive, lethally hot), which makes me wonder why they didn't just let Villanelle play that part??? It's driving me mad bc it's the most obvious thing and would have fixed so many problems in an instant.
By which I don't mean get rid of Helene btw, just make better use of her, as an actual member and face of the 12 or a double agent or sth. Give V the quest to hunt down the 12, it's already perfectly aligned with her motivations and capabilities at the end of S3! I mean she wants to impress Eve by showing her she's trying to be better and to start a new life, right? Cool, ok, therefore, in Villanelle's moderately disturbed mind it makes perfect sense to do this by violently hunting down a bunch of bad ppl ~ for Eve ~ . (The fact that she's also high key horny for murder is just a bonus, don't worry about it, baby.) If not that, then do sth else entirely with her, do the church thing (properly this time, not squeezed into two episodes and then entirely forgotten) but don't give hunting down the 12 to Helene, a character that already feels vaguely like a replacement for Villanelle while she's off doing character growth or whatever.
If they had done the thing that makes sense, it would have also meant that for once V and E's goals would have aligned, (though they might not have realized it immediately, you know, for spice,) which would have given us an opportunity to delve into a new dynamic: Partners in crime. Not S2 V tenuously working for E bc horny but actual challenging "we want the same thing except oh no, all this history and unresolved tension" cooperation. Obviously it would have gone horribly wrong in some fashion (I'm thinking Carolyn shenanigans), but at least it would have gone wrong for a reason that actually involved them bc the plot would have actually been their plot again. Incidentally, if you're going to have them hook up, this would be a great time for that, so it doesn't feel quite so backhanded if/when one/both die at the end.
The only reason I can imagine for not going down this route is that it would be too obvious, to which I can only say: [Insert tired comparison to Game of Thrones here.]
Seriously, hunting down the 12 is a natural conclusion to the story. It makes sense, was built to from the beginning and should have been a slam dunk in terms of plotting. Thus I am flummoxed as to how the writers managed to drop the ball so spectacularly that it hit every single one of their teammates square in the tits.
Well, I say that, the show does maintain a few of its strengths, first and foremost the cast of course, consequently some of the dialogue (Carolyn and V's interactions are delightful) and I do like the idea of both Gunn and Pam and also V getting shot by an arrow. Just wish the cupid/angel motif hadn't been so muddled and included Gunn more (who shouldn't have been called Gunn. It's a bad joke.)
Speaking of, many have rightly decried the lackluster supporting cast but as I see it, that is largely a holdover from S3, which killed off/wrote out basically everyone but the core four and failed to introduce any new characters that stayed past the season finale (besides Helene) bc it was too busy not moving the plot forward. You gotta have side characters in your show, so they made some new ones for S4 and gathered together whatever scraps they could (Hugo prettyboy and Martin the therapist). Idk if there was a good way to solve this problem exactly, but they could have certainly woven the new lot into the story better. Especially Pam. Pam could have been so much more. Oh and fuck the way they wrapped up Irina's story too. Complete waste.
With bad plotting comes shitty pacing. Again, that already started in S3. However, I will say in defense of S3 that it being a bit slower and introspective is very much the sort of thing that could have felt kinda ok, even needed in retrospect, if S4 had Risky Businessed into the room champagne in one hand, gun in the other, ready to party. Instead it made S3 look worse by turning it into a prelude to an even more plodding experience, now with bad editing!
For real, there's some really poorly constructed scenes; shots that feel disjointed, unfocused, repetitive. No idea what that's about, could it be the lingering effects of Covid-restrictions? Or maybe they just needed a better editor. Regardless, while not super dire it is absolutely noticeable and contributes to the general lack of cohesion, not to mention the tonal dissonance.
What am I saying, that's an excellent thing to mention. An ideal candidate to put the show and this too long note on my phone out of its misery in fact.
Killing Eve is supposed to be fun, you guys, remember that? S1 was at all times like two smash cuts away from becoming a full on comedy and it was amazing for that. It was the show's most unique feature, what took it from very good to transcendent as far as I'm concerned. Walking that line is hard, no doubt about it, and I get that different show runners have different visions and of course you can take on a more serious tone between seasons but then you actually need to make everything else match that shift. Integrate the absurdity into your writing or discard it, the way I've discarded the idea of ever writing a proper conclusion for anything. If you really want a dramatic, played entirely straight spy thriller conclusion with conspiracies upon conspiracies and doomed passions, that's fine. I mean, it’s not really bc you're losing what made Killing Eve great et cetera and so forth but my point is that you can't have your imaginary drag king Jesus and eat him too.
tl;dr: S4 is bad. There are several reasons for this.
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you really don’t think before posting things on the interwebs huh? You’re really fucked in the head, it’s sad really. No one ever came at your partner for her looks or diagnoses, you just want to make up shit. Awww I’m such a victim, let me be incredibly immature and whine while being antisemitic and racist. It’s completely unacceptable. Get over this you sad fuck. Go touch grass. Write a book. Play in traffic.
cw this dumbass shit again sorry followers i will cleanse the dash with some lesbianism after this. if u dont know what this is about, god i wish that were me
btw this person is @femme/liarity or one of her asshole followers harassing me and stalking my blog bc i critiqued femmes for acting like babies separate from them and also because me and my femme (not a call out post) talked about the experiences we had w them exiling her from a community with no contact and not even a single shred of decency to say anything to her face... just leaving her to think she's unlikeable and then later finding out you called her a predator. also we have literal screenshots of the convos with ppl who were in direct contact w u saying stuff about supposed predation but okay that’s just fabricated!
god you cowards rlly can’t say shit to anyone's face huh? i literally never called you or your friend a tradwife. you’re extrapolating to play victim again. also "you’re really fucked in the head" but its not about anyone's actual real life conditions huh (not diagnoses! we actually have this shit!).
"neither of them seemed willing to listen" MOTHERFUCKER WE TRIED TO CONTACT YOU? YOU BLOCKED US ON EVERYTHING? YOU NO-CONTACTED US AND THEN WE WERE TOLD FROM A N O T H E R PERSON THAT YOU INFORMED THEM ABOUT US BEING PREDATORY. you know who could have fixed the fabrication of your dumbass lie? YOU, IF YOU HADN'T LITERALLY SAID NOTHING TO MY FEMME AND HAD HER REMOVED FROM A SERVER AND THEN TOLD OTHER PPL SHE WAS A PREDATOR.
"not interested in taking accountability" mf for what?? you still won’t make anything clear to anyone and no situation has been solved you've just isolated ppl and made them feel like shit??
"it's racist for a white person to critique the femininity of a femme of color" literally i was critiquing as a whole, your femininity just was part of a larger concept with other ties, your section mostly being oh i’m just a baby and i can’t be found guilty of doing anything wrong bc i’m feminine and just a little kitten and i wear lace dresses. if that shoe fits, wear it, but i was literally talking on my OWN blog about my own thoughts on femininity being used as an infantilization tactic separate from your stuff once someone asked me abt my supposed "policing" of gender conforming femmes-- nice to know youre stalking every single ask i answer though, so i know you'll see this one! not to mention my main concept that i made clear was that it was not my critique to make but an observation i made based on a post i repeatedly linked by a femme of color. you’re grasping at literal straws.
i’m sorry if you felt like i was applying the term tradwife to you or your friend or whatever, but i make it pretty obvious that my blog doesn't explain everything for ppl who lack reading comprehension. not only that, but i didn't even know about those origins, so it wouldn't have been conscious. and not only that, but it wasn't integral to my argument, so if you want, i'd be happy to remove the word and the rest of it would still make sense.
0/10 please come back with a better fabrication of what i did wrong next time you send an anon (and i know you will bc you’re the one obsessed w me bestie. i havent sent you a damn anon)
adding more bc i dont wanna clog my feed w the posts.
literally the amount of lies in that stupid ass post should be proof enough that none of it is true. how are you going to say someone was "harassing" people after being removed. literally she didn't know a damn thing about why she was removed of course she's going to reach out to server members to try and find out lmao???
#literally tired of these dumbasses. since we passed the play in traffic threshold i won’t feel bad saying this:#please walk in front of a semi rn#ask#'anon' lmao#anon#mine
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Im beating the dead horse with the stick i used to poke the hornets nest but theres an argument bouncing around against the censorship of morally objectionable material on fandom spaces like ao3. And it goes "these spaces were created for morally objectionable material in the first place. Where else are we supposed to put it."
And i agree! I think as long as whatever site ppl are using has a robust tagging system any kind of content should be allowed if it's legal to post. I think individual works should be appropriately criticized for bad or insensitive portrayals of morally objectionable content, and that a saturation of said bad portrayals in media can lead to wider romanticization and acceptance of said topics. Most individual creators however have very little control over how a wider audience would receive their work, even if the inclusion of objectionable content would require more scrutiny by both the creators and audience. Fandom spaces like ao3 specifically refuse to limit individuals from distributing their stuff as long as it's legal. All moderators of these spaces should do is offer people who dont want to see that stuff an easy way to opt out. Criticism towards the subject matter should be given on a case by case basis by its audience. If they changed that rule, ppl will just create another space run on this principle.
(In fact, I personally think its better if the "sickos" explore what they want to explore in fandom compared to making actual published works with certain morally objectionable topics. I can block someones omegaverse incest fic. I can't block an ad for a thinly veiled fetish film disguized as a hollywood blockbuster if it's printed on the side of a bus.)
But anyway yes sites like ao3 was made for ppl who wanted to post gross stuff without being harassed for it. yes its stupid that ppl are trying to harass "sickos" off the "sicko" websites instead of using the extensive block features most of these sites have. no i dont think posting morally objectionable content is harmful on its own but yes these topics should be portrayed more carefully and be subject to a lot of scrutiny when present in any artistic content. But like. I hope the ppl making this argument understand that a lot of people arguing for censorship in fandom spaces dont actually. Care. Where the "sickos" post their gross stuff. Bc they dont want ppl to post stuff they dont like period.
This argument assumes there will always be people who want to explore "bad" topics in fandom. So the solution is to let ppl who dont want to see that stuff to back out. But the people who oppose this wants the "sickos" to disappear altogether. They think if they yell about it hard enough and get enough sites to ban stuff ppl will eventually naturally choose to never think about morally objectionable stuff. Or at least never portray it in a way they dont like. This is why ppl who whine about ao3 "allowing 'problematic stuff' rarely talk about the tag blocking feature. Because it's not just that they dont want to see that stuff themselves. They dont want YOU to see it either. Or for the person to post it. Or even think about it.
And it's like. Wow youre complaining about seeing too many "problematic ships?" Babygirl the first thing i DO when i look up a new fandom on ao3 is to block all the lesbian x men, sibling x sibling, and child x adult ships i can think of. And as i scroll every time i see a bad ship i add it to the block list. What were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament?
#shut up pandora#im taking the bat that i swung at this hornets nest and using it to beat this dead horse#ao3#hopping onto this discourse several months too late#perhaps this would shield me from the worst takes#yes fiction affects reality but its not a one to one correlation between seeing one (1) incest fic and kissing your sister yall buffoons#the actual way fiction affects reality is much more nuanced#and i am taking away the words normalization and romanticization until yall retake grade 11 english class#anyway my opinion towards ppl slamming ao3 for 'including problematic content' is#define problematic to me#and define all the nuances in fancontent that would make something problematic#do either of those definitions correlate one to one with the definitions that everyone else making this argument has come up with?#no?#we'll talk once yall come to an agreement on what exactly youre trying to make illegal to post#meanwhile dont fucking tell me what i can or cannot look at i am a fucking adult with critical thinking skills thank you very much#aame cant be said for some of yall lmao#not a pro shipper not an anti shipper but a secret third thing#an adult with critical thinking who likes practical applications over semantics#to be clear the tag blocking feature has its own drawbacks in that its annoying to have to block so many tags#but also that literally costs me like a few seconds at most im already looking at 50k slowburns#if youre going to throw a tantrum over having to control what you see on your own then idk what to tell ya#get someone to put a parental control on your youtube kids account or smth
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crush stuff !! very slight rant and then me gushing
we havent talked im a week and im going rabid and i dont want to text him Again for a reply but :((( AND and i dont even know if he likes women, or whatever gender i am (transmasc bigender ?) but lets be real everyone percieves me as a woman so . i know he likes men but otherwise idk and how do i Tell without just straight up asking ??
but anyways onto the sap shit :
my crush (he/they) made me come to the embarassing realization that my type is Nice People. like just give me someone warm and sunshiney with a sweet smile and i will be done for, doesnt matter if its more exciteable golden retriever energy or more soft and quiet, if they are extra nice then im down horrendous
with Them i was done for the moment they spoke bc holy shit that Voice it was the softest kindest fucking voice i have ever god damn heard and in our first 2 min convo they somehow managed to be The most considerate person ive ever spoken to and . ugh
also he offered to shave my hair for me once and if that isnt any punks dream idk what is 😔😔😔
“My type is nice people” well damn there goes me /s
Man not hearing from someone for a week would drive me crazy if I had a crush on them in an FP way. I would have to send a meme or something.
I feel that with the “everyone perceives me as Woman™️ anyway”. I mean I AM wearing a wlw shirt today so I can’t be like “why don’t people perceive me as a guy? I’m wearing a lesbian shirt :(” BUT yeah what is gender? What is plurality? What is singularity? Where do “I” end and “someone else” begins? I don’t know, so I just Don’t Talk About It With People Irl! If you like women cool we can date. You can perceive me as woman it’s fine. Because I would feel insincere being like “lol nooo gay guy I’m totally a guy like once in a while not really lol”. How do you ask without outright asking? Ask about a character or actress or something? Be like “omg isn’t uuuh Taylor Swift (?) sooo pretty man girls am I right haha-” ? Maybe ? I feel comfortable when guys I’m dating are at least a little bisexual so I can feel okay about being gender funky.
You should let him shave your hair for you, people doing your hair for you is so intimate. I mean like in a professional setting less so but I grew up with someone who was like my sister dying my hair for me and it was just two teenage girls (kinda) sitting in a bathroom listening to pop punk and talking about boys with piercings and life shit and like it was great. And then having anyone I love touch my hair makes me melt for real.
Don’t be embarrassed for having a “type”/it being “nice people”. I think that sounds really heal to y and good compared to me getting the bad boy of my dreams I always wanted as a kid and obviously carrying that drama that comes with having a “bad boy”. Good to try, get a little taste of, just not good to keep. Do it while your young and get it out of your system and all that in my opinion. Not saying I won’t go back to someone like that while I’m still young but when I’m older I hope I have people who are dependable.
Best of luck to you, it sounds amazing (minus not hearing from him/them).
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Let me tell you a little story. Back in the day, we used to have threads on the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network forums (A.V.E.N.) where we asked each other the question, “Do you consider yourself queer?”
About half of the answers were No. And this wasn’t just because we were at times shunned from queer spaces. We just didn’t consider ourselves queer, full stop. Even if you had given us a golden ticket pass directly into acceptance by the LGBT community.
Some felt no desire to even enter said spaces, or shrugged when they got there.
Some felt specifically uncomfortable because there was such a focus on sex/sexuality.
Now, people who were gnc or homoromantic obviously often said Yes. But that was usually separate from their identity as an ace spec or aro spec.
I’m similar. I have dithered for long periods of time over whether to identify as queer. I don’t view my ace identity as queer. I can construct an argument for it to be considered queer, based on the history of “queering,” which means deviation from norm. This of course, is how the term QueerPlatonic Relationship, qpr, is derived. And in that context, yes aro is explicitly queer. I will vehemently defend those who want to use aro or ace that way. But I will equally as vehemently defend those who want to self-determine, (as in, not allo people enforcing it) view ace and/or aro as a separate issue altogether, who don’t feel totally fitting with allo people, queer or not.
I’m non-binary like that.
Language is a construct.
Language can be ambiguous, have different associations in different subcultures, mean one thing to one person and another to another person.
Language itself is inherently non-binary, non-black-and-white.
I identified as totally agender for a long time (enby identities are common among aces). Now I understand myself as “most of the time agender/enby but leaning transmasc” kind of genderfluidity. I find that even though transmasc is the word that the culture has settled on that got nearest to describing me, so I am sort of obligated to have it because of usefulness, I do not quite vibe with “trans,” neither as this- nor as an umbrella term, but prefer “gnc” as the collective name for non-sexuality queerness.
LGBG, as it were.
Now, GSRM or MOGAI are obviously better, let’s note. Less awkward, less hierarchical/seniority-centered, more bases covered.
But this still causes problems for me in particular. I believe that most people would be agender or bigender or non-binary, absent heavily gendered social conditioning. So that “M” in GSRM suddenly isn’t numerically accurate for norms in a post-gender society of the future. I think binary homo (mono-sexuality) as in gay, lesbian, will always the sexuality minority, but have strong suspicions that bi (or multi- or whatever else you prefer) would be the majority (or mathematical norm, if you will) if heteronormativity were absent as well.
Especially if you included other types of attraction other than romo- or amato- attraction, as well you should.
Been thinking about “oriented aro/ace” and its implications to allocishets as of late:
In a post allohet society, I think most people would recognize and more deeply venerate the fact they had strong platonic (and possibly, even more subtle demi) attraction to the same-sex or same-gender alongside their more flashy het attractions.
(Ironically, similar sentiments lead to things like people objecting that demi “is normal” and shouldn’t be considered an identity in itself, for those who don’t experience primary attraction. Said people sometimes fit the description of demi themselves, just won’t accept the label. Demi could be quite common, and it’s not lesser, it doesn’t lose uniqueness points or something, for being a larger presence)
In this post society, relationships, including QPRs and PLPs and/or marriages on that basis- more than already happen- would form. People like those who have realized, oh yeah, I’m still falling in love with xyz people, but this friend is the one or ‘also-someone’ I want to commit to.
But even for romo, humans are extremely good at deflecting and repressing.
(Romance is in itself a construct. You especially tend to see this come into focus in aro discussion groups, trying to figure out what it even is and what parts comprise it.)
The way I think, as it’s typically used, “queer” is not a minority at all, but a label that emerged to designate itself as a reality beyond cis-het normative societal structures.
Had we never developed the allo-cis-het-patriarchal conditioning nexus, queer would not exist.
In other words, “queer” is born out of this presence, in reactionary fashion.
Now, for the present? That isn’t a problem. It’s useful, it’s linguistically sound, probably necessary, depending on how you define “necessity.”
But I look forward to a day when the word “queer” loses all its current cultural meaning and power, because it’s just ... entirely ordinary. No different from saying you have brown eyes. Even if minorities stayed at levels they are.
Once that has eroded, the “queering” of norms is complete, and with the norms gone, ironically “queer” ceases to be.
Now if we defined “queer” as what appear to be true minorities? That’s an entirely different question. One that I’m not gonna do any more of a deep dive on atm.
I don’t personally believe those parts make me an outlier. Aro? Aplatonic? Most definitely. The aspects of me, as in my gender, that are “queer” as it’s used in ace-exclusionary meaning? Nah. If I were binary trans? Yeah, probably. But all the rest, masc and femme and everything in between, I think those are the normal human experience. To quote someone somewhere on the topic, “Most human beings aren’t Barbie or G.I. Joe.”
Those gender spectrums are just ...... not queer, to my mind.
Regardless of chosen definition, I don’t and have never centralized “queer” in my identity even though it’s a nice shorthand, especially in- ahem- queer spaces.
Some textbook-definition lgbtq choose not to use the word for non-slur-related reasons. Just because they don’t vibe with it.
To be perfectly honest, I have passions and hyperfixations that are worlds more important to my identity than my gender or my sexuality. Is that because agender inherently means (to me personally!) that I’m not hung up on gender, and being gray ace (to me) means I’m not hung up on sexuality? Maybe! Idk. Either way, it’s how I think.
It is not very important to me that people of any walk of life see me as queer.
I’m just me, doing my thing, any word you apply to me is incidental.
So am I queer? Depending on context, yes or no. I’m non-binary like that.
#asexual#lgbt#asexuality#aromantic#aromanticism#asexual spectrum#transgender#lgbtqia#pride month#queer#discourse#queer platonic relationship#platonic life partners#PLP
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Imagine thinking that wanting straight people to be accepting of gay people is a "trap" and not like, literally THE entire goal of the modern LGBT rights movement since its inception
okay. this is in response to me saying “respectability politics is a trap.” which it absolutely is.
but i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here. let’s define respectability politics, shall we?
several people who are more well-spoken than me have talked about this. to quote this article on the subject:
Respectability politics is a school of thought that utilizes respectability narratives as the basis for enacting social, political, and legal change.
Respectability narratives are representations of marginalized individuals meant to construct an image of the marginalized group as people sharing similar traits, values, morals with the dominant group.
essentially, respectability politics is when people in a marginalized group (queer people, disabled people, people of color) wish to be accepted by the majority, and thus present themselves in a way and behave in a way that the majority deems acceptable - and pressure others in their marginalized group to do the same. for example:
“Not all bisexual people are sluts, I’m bi and I’ve been in a committed relationship for 20 years!”
“I’m gay, but I’m not one of THOSE gay guys, I hate shopping and I don’t like to flaunt my sexuality at all!”
“Lesbians aren’t really all masculine, I love makeup and having long hair.”
(I’m using examples I’ve seen in the queer community because I’m queer; I know this happens a lot in communities of color, but I am not qualified to speak on that at all.)
this stems from a desire to be accepted by the majority; for the purposes of this discussion, straight people. we hear straight people say things like “i could never date a bi person, they’re all cheaters” or “i don’t mind gay guys, don’t just shove it in my face” and “why don’t lesbians act like women if they love them?” and, in response, some people go, “i don’t act like that!! you can accept me! i fit in! i’m respectable, i’m not like those guys, they embarrass us!”
there’s also a lot of people saying, “don’t reinforce the stereotype.” as if it’s OUR fault straight people stereotype us.
so this leads to shaming within our own community:
“You’re bi and polyamorous? Wow, way to make people think we’re all two-timing whores.”
“Makeup? Jesus, we get it, you’re gay, you don’t have to make it a pride parade every time you go out.”
“You look like a teenage boy, this is why everyone lesbians aren’t real women.”
and that all boils down to:
“THIS is the example you’re setting? This is the face you show to the world? Don’t you know you’re representing us? No wonder they don’t respect us.”
and that’s the real problem: telling other queer people, “it is YOUR fault you’re not accepted, YOU aren’t acceptable, YOU reinforce these stereotypes, YOU should try and be more respectable, more normal.” and the thing is, “normal” is defined by the majority. THEY decide what is acceptable behavior for us. and guess what?
most of the time, that boils down to, “It’s fine if you’re different... as long as you’re as close to what I deem normal as possible. As long as I can’t tell you’re different.”
in the queer community, this sort of thinking has led to the exclusion of butch lesbians, femme gay men, nonbinary people, non-passing trans people, trans people in general, people who use any pronouns besides she/her and he/him, bisexual people, ace people, aro people, pan people, polyamorous bisexual people, people who have an active sex life, sex workers, people who have changed how they identify, and countless others. these people get shoved aside by the Good Respectable Gays, who are eager to say, “We’re not like them, we’re just like you!” in order to be accepted by the mainstream. and it still doesn’t work. even the most macho, would-never-guess-it gay guy is bound to face some level of oppression or otherness at some point in his life. it doesn’t matter how much he fits in, how much he distances himself from the Unacceptable Queers; it won’t work 100% of the time. how’s that for a punchline?
there is no point in trying to file off the “unacceptable” parts of our community just to please straight people.
if a person hates all queer people, no matter how they act or present, they’re a homophobe.
if a person doesn’t hate queer people, just the ones who shove it in your face and sleep around and won’t shut up about it and buck gender norms and use weird pronouns and expect people to learn their new name and change their identity every week... they’re still a fucking homophobe.
and why the fuck are we trying to please homophobes, again?
so when people say lil nas x is bad, actually, because he “reinforces the stereotype” of gay people going to hell and thinking a lot about sex or whatever, they’re playing right into respectability politics. why can’t he just talk about his sexuality in a normal way? why can’t he express himself in a nicer way? why does he have to use that imagery? why does he have to make straight people uncomfortable?
lis nas x is a gay black man who grew up being told he’d burn in hell for being gay. and he made an awesome song with a legendary music video saying, “fine. i’ll go to hell, just like you want, and it’ll be great. i’ll take the damn place over and make satan fall in love with me. and i’ll have a great time doing it, because i’m proud of who i am, and i won’t apologize for it or be ashamed of it anymore.”
to see that and wring your hands, worrying that a straight person will see it and decide to be homophobic about it, and pinning the blame for that on nas is missing the point.
every time we as a community make ourselves lesser or change the way we present just to be accepted by the majority, they move the goalposts, and someone else gets left behind. and the beautiful thing about the queer community is that there is a place for everyone who is left out in the cold by the straight, cis majority.
“We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” was the rallying cry for a reason. we’re different, you think we’re weird, you think we’re deviant, you don’t get us, and that’s fine, you don’t have to get us. we’re not going anywhere. get used to it.
respectability politics is a game you cannot win. so stop playing.
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Lets talk about the Bare Minimum
Okay guys, obviously there is a huge divide here among those of us that are super positive and excited and those of you that are really doubtful the finale will give us anything remotely worthwhile. So lets break this down okay? Perhaps it can get us all on a fairly level playing field?
What is the absolute bare minimum the Supernatural Finale can give us to satisfy us?
Everyone will have different ideas of course, but if we dismiss all our wildest dreams and high expectations and consider the fact that yes, this is still Supernatural and they do tend to run on a mix of batshit crazy, profound and poetic beauty, and things seemingly falling into place so perfectly it was clearly 100% accidental (eg: The Monster at the End of this Book) then we should probably try to find a centre point. A point that we can use to gauge how the episode will fair overall.
So what is the bare minimum?
Castiel returns
This is it. This should be the bare minimum we should expect in order to make this finale meaningful.
If we are given nothing else, Cas returning should be enough for us to nod and say “okay Supernatural. You tried. You got him back. He was there for the finale. That’s the main thing.”
If Castiel isn’t back and the finale is just Sam and Dean driving around looking for generic MOTW hunts like in Season 1 in some sort of bronly wet dream, that would be a massive anticlimax and miserable way to end the series. It will be the worst ending of a show since GoT.
BUT we know Misha filmed 20. I will hear no more to the alternative. Misha filming 20 is and always has been a fundamental FACT.
So Castiel returns. Bare minimum met? Right? Of course there are caveats to that key point.
Castiel returning in flashback form only, or as a memory or dream, whilst the actual Castiel still remains in the Empty is NOT an acceptable option. If the show takes this route, this is still below the bare minimum. This would be deemed a failure in my opinion just as if the finale is just Sam and Dean being bros on the road.
What really needs to happen for the bare minimum to be met, is for Castiel to be rescued from the Empty. Whether that is by Jack, by Dean, or by himself or some other means, Castiel must return from the Empty to fix the only actual loose end not tied up in 15x19. We should also finally get the Empty being sent back to sleep, because having just binge watched episodes 12-18 all in one week, let me tell you, the amount of times it is repeated that the Empty desperately wants to go back to sleep is a LOT. From what I have been told, the Empty isn’t even mentioned in 19, so that is the only plot point actually still hanging over the series.
Of course, had Castiel not confessed his “homosexual feelings of love” for Dean in 15x18, then at this point I would have said that the bare minimum I needed was for Cas to be saved, and for Dean to give him a heartfelt hug and a look of love and to say “lets go home” off into a future where we know the story ends with Dean and Cas together in an ambiguous relationship. (Honestly, for a long time, this is the ending I thought we would get).
But Dabb and Bobo have written themselves into a very specific corner.
Castiel’s confession was not ambiguous. Because of this, the big question hanging over the final ever episode of the longest running genre show on TV, isn’t about whether the heroes will stop the big bad, it isn’t whether or not they will live or die, nope, it’s whether the lead male character will reciprocate romantic love for his “equally male” (Note - I’m talking in terms of mainstream here don’t @ me) best friend. The big question Supernatural has gone and put to its audience is “is Dean Winchester also in love with Castiel and therefore, is he also queer?”
This is an unpresedented situation that the show has put itself in.
Because of this, the bare minimum is no longer just Castiel being saved. It’s also Dean answering that question that the show has put to us.
Castiel must be saved, and the love confession must be addressed. These things are the key points going into this final episode. If either of them are glossed over in any way, the show would have fundamentally failed it’s audience, its characters, it’s cast, and everyone involved in it. Given how optimistic and happy everyone who works on the show seems to be currently, I highly doubt that is the case.
So. Castiel must be saved, and the confession must be addressed. Do we accept Dean rejecting Cas?
There is I suppose, a very slim chance that this could happen. If the Network let their own homophobia get to them (before you come @ me, no I don’t consider the CW’s many young attractive lesbian characters to let them off the hook for years of avoiding any non stereotypical queer men. IT’S TOTALLY DIFFERENT) then they may have greenlighted Cas’s queerness whilst refusing to do the same for Dean. They may consider simply saving Castiel and therefore #resurrectingyourgays as enough to satisfy the queer viewers, even though Castiel’s love was not returned. Perhaps in the final episode we will get a flashforward to years down the line and Cas has got over Dean and is living it up with another man? It’s possible right?
It would also cause utter outrage in the fanbase. Dabb and Bobo are far more savvy than fandom gives them credit for. I personally think that had the network said no to Dean reciprocating Castiel’s love, then Dabb and Bobo would have kept it ambiguous, and simply strongly implied that they end up together in an ending like the one I always thought we would get when my hopes for Destiel were at a low point.
So Dean reciprocating Castiel’s love also falls under the bare minimum requirements for the episode to be a success.
How they go about showing Dean reciprocating Cas’s feelings I don’t know. Do I absolutely need a kiss? No. It’s not a bare minimum requirement. Anything beyond Dean simply telling Cas he loves him back and Cas smiling at him is a bonus. Perhaps they could show it the way they showed Jesse and Cesar in 11x19. Through affection and care, but no actual kisses.
Whilst I personally believe we will get a kiss, it’s not a bare minimum, and if we don’t get one I will still be satisfied so long as we get all of the following:
Castiel is saved from the Empty
Dean reciprocates his love
Dean and Cas end up together (whether that be to live lives together on Earth, or both go out fighting and reunite in heaven together. Whatever the case, they must end up together)
My 3rd point here is the only other bare minimum requirement I need to not feel like they have screwed it up. I don’t care whether Dean and Cas end the show alive or dead. What I DO care is that regardless of where they end up, be it Earth, Heaven, or even Purgaytory, they are together. They must end the series together.
There are of course many other things I want. I want Cas to give up his grace (by choice) and become a human (I really wanna see him in Winchester plaid at least once!). I want to see them slow dancing like Garth and Bess did in 15x10. I want Sam to reunite with Eileen and also get a happy ending. I hope they get to keep the damn dog too. Ideally, I want a soft epilogue, because these boys are good people, and they’ve suffered enough. Whatever else may happen though, so long as those bare minimum requirements are met, I will consider the ending a resounding success.
Personally, I don’t think I’m asking for much.
#supernatural#destiel#spn endgame#15x20#destiel is canon#give us the bare minimum#the rest is confetti#lol
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The people have spoken! How can I not give them what they want?
I'm gonna put this all under a cut, since it's a bit long, and also because it's highly interpretative/speculative and not everyone likes those kinds of posts as they can be rather subjective and, I suppose, invasive. I want to give two major caveats to my thoughts below: first is that I tend not to buy the idea that Paul was the "stable/normal" Beatle, mostly b/c I view marijuana dependency and workaholism as addictions and I take them pretty seriously. Second is that I really do love this kind of tabloid/gossip/personal account shit; I think it should be taken with a handful of salt, but I don't think it should be entirely dismissed out of hand either. I read this stuff like I'm piling up sheets of stained glass: I'm intrigued by the places where the colours blend and overlap, and ignore things that fall outside the prism. Anyway, let's dig in:
Okay, so what I found fascinating about 'Body Count' is that it's one of the only sources which observes Paul McCartney's mental health during the period between the India trip and when the band breakup really got rolling. I think it's overall a fairly self-absorbed text that definitely has some lies and exaggerations peppered in there to make things spicier and more dramatic, but its broad characterization - as I mentioned in my first post - isn't exactly libelous or out of left field. Some elements that make me think it's generally if not wholly authentic are: Paul's simultaneously forceful and dorky seduction style, his terrible Liverpool diet and poor housekeeping, the bouts of thrill-seeking recklessness, avoidant adventure crafting, dark moods when drinking non-socially, the occasional hot and cold bouts with the Apple Scuffs camped out at his gate, and the way in which he underplays his drug habit, which is SO "in truthfulness we spent most of the filming of Help! slightly stoned":
These details are so bizarrely specific and have significant overlap with both sympathetic and spurned personal accounts of Paul I've read in the past, so I believe Francie is just telling "Her Version Of The Truth" here rather than crafting a piece of pure fiction. The most important and revealing anecdote in the book is this one.
There's no reason not to believe this is a fairly accurate representation of something that actually happened, imo, since we know that anxious purse strings were an ongoing issue in the unusual turnover rate within the band Wings, and there are plenty of confirmed and rumoured cases alike of extended family members feeling entitled to a "piece of the pie"; this is just like, the kind of thing that happens to working class people who get catapulted into fame and fortune. And Paul in particular already had deep-seated financial anxiety for whatever reasons he'll never fully admit (as is his right, but I think his offhand claim that he "once heard some adults arguing about money and that's why" might actually be alluding to having heard some adults - y'know, like his parents - arguing over money fairly frequently). What esp interests me about the anecdote is the way Paul seems to connect the conflict b/t his dual "identities" with these financial expectations. Perhaps the CAPSLOCK emotional hysteria related in the book is puffed up for drama, but it does bring to mind one of the most revealing comments Linda ever made about their relationship, which is that Paul needed to be told he would still be loved when the cameras weren't rolling. And that's the thing: Francie caught Paul at the exact moment that the pillars of his Smile-For-The-Camera "Beatle" identity were collapsing; the dissolution of his relationships with John and Jane.
Whatever all this could possibly mean re: the breakup of the Lennon-McCartney partnership is a post for another time. What I wanna do instead is apply the level of speculation we usually reserve for that relationship to the endpoint of Paul and Jane's courtship.
So like, Paul and Jane: I know people are resistant to this specific POV, but I honestly just don't... think it was that deep? "Not deep", mind you, doesn't mean "not significant". Paul was obviously Jane's first love (u never forget), but the feeling I get from Paul's side (as a subconscious process I mean) is that Jane's importance was primarily as a lynchpin in his London Socialite persona. He loved her family, he loved the friend group, the artistic scene dating her gave him access to, as well as the leg up he got in the class system, etc. He liked to be the kind of guy who was dating Jane Asher. But I don't know that he was the guy who was dating Jane Asher, you get me? When people describe their "great love" they accidentally tell on them (Cynthia innocently describing Paul as being pleased to have her on his arm like a trophy; John: "it was an ordinary love scene"; Alistair Taylor noting that Paul was humiliated by the breakup). Paul's a serial monogamist who U-Hauls like a lesbian, of course, so he definitely took the relationship VERY seriously, but it's telling that all of his love songs to her were either about hitting a brick wall in arguments (certainly not dreamy, fond, yearning of "sunday morning fights about saturday night"; and occasionally expressing hints of class tension too), or completely non-descript Guy With A Guitar Trying To Get Laid shit. I could extrapolate a lot about Linda just from listening to McCartney I/RAM and the Wings discography, but 'And I Love Her' doesn't tell me a single thing about Jane besides that she's pretty. It could be about literally anyone the same way 'My Love' or 'Maybe I'm Amazed' could only be about his dynamic with Linda. Some of this is obviously the natural result of getting older and gaining emotional maturity; what I'm saying is that Paul's behaviour and self-expression in this relationship does not suggest to me that it was one in which his emotional maturity was able to develop or flourish.
I want to stress again that I don't think this belittles the significance of the relationship or makes it "bad" or "fake". Like, sometimes hot people just date for a while in their teens and twenties and love each other without necessarily unlocking their inner emotional cores, usually because they don't know how to. It's, like, fine. You need to experience relationships like that as stepping stones. I simply believe that this sort of front-facing social importance being prime in the romance is a major factor in why it ultimately didn't work (and probably in Linda's reported lingering jealousy of Jane, who wasn't just an ex, but also a symbol of the life Paul ditched to build a new identity w/ her, and sometimes still pined for). With Jane, Paul was dating the "right" kind of girl (didn't put out on the first date, erudite and middle class, as serious about her career as he was, a good "celebrity" match), but the relationship often wasn't doing what he wanted it to do. Francie's observation is that by 1968 it also wasn't doing what he needed it to do either. This is the overwhelming "mood" in her affair with Paul McCartney: that he needed something very badly from a romantic partner that he just was NOT getting, and Francie couldn't figure out what it was either:
(note that she means "queer" as in "mad", not "gay")
This was an EXTREMELY roundabout way of asking: well, what WAS it that Paul needed a relationship to do for him? And I think this is Francie's big, accidental insight. The most scandalous claim in 'Body Count' is that Paul told Francie that he hit Jane and it "turned her on".
I personally think this is p. absurd absent any real proof to back it up, but like, what is Francie actually saying HE'S saying here? If she's exaggerating or lying, she's trying to make it believable within the psychological parameters laid out, right? It's not an expression of some secret desire to dominate women she's accusing him of, but emotional disturbance and confusion at the idea that the woman he was with might like that sort of forceful, masculine violence more than his softer, feminine side, which he was - yeah, we all know it - deeply insecure about.
Regardless of whether specific details are true or false (and I think there's both in this story, all hyper-magnified to make it, y'know, a ~STORY~), I think what might be true is the emotional undertow of the retelling, that this all taken together is actually representative of the side of Paul McCartney she was exposed to, at a time when his public and private facades had both become unbearable to the point of cracking and the drug-fueled optimism of the Summer of Love was getting scrubbed off of everyone and everything. It's the Paul McCartney who eviscerated frogs because he was worried he was too "soft" for compulsory military service. The Paul who modelled his masculine teen behaviour off John Lennon's fake "Marlon Brando" swagger, but was actually more fond of the velvet "Oscar Wilde" interior.
What's SO FASCINATING about all this to me, is I deeply believe that one of the key factors in what makes The Beatles music so unique and compelling is that both the songwriters experienced psychological strain from the tension b/t their parochial socially-defensive "masculine" pride, and their sensitive "feminine" core, the latter of which they were able to express in the unburdened emotionality of their music. The reason I care about doing these totally unhinged psych analyses is because I do think it reveals something about the underpinnings of the music, as well as the reasons why the band was such a hysteria-inducing phenomenon (the rise of psychology, imo, is almost as important as the rise of industrialization as a defining factor of the modern and postmodern eras; mass psychology can be understood and wielded in precise ways, and The Beatles were one of the first empires built on that). The subconscious drives caused by this tension have been ENDLESSLY picked apart re: John's psyche, but Paul's "mirrored" issues are very under-discussed (mostly b/c he's still alive so people are a little more leery about putting him on the "couch" as a historical figure). 'Body Count', intentionally or not, painted a portrait to me of someone who was drowning in their own ill-fitting celebrity "suit", collapsing under the weight of "Being" "Paul McCartney". A guy who desperately needed some sort of space to be vulnerable without feeling emasculated for doing it. By 1968, there was no one in his life anymore - and maybe there hadn't been for a while, or ever - who was giving him this space.
In other words: the thing he needed to avoid going "stark raving queer and killing himself" was simply someone who would love him 'after the ball'.
EDIT: read the comments for further clarification and discussion! ;)
#/#//#///#////#/////#the beatles#mccharmley#analysis#long post#Talking About Paul The Way I Talk About John lmfao#Taking Tabloid Bullshit Seriously#(if not literally)#*gets out my fake spectacles and jumps into the psychiatry armchair*#idk if i laid out my thoughts v well here but i hope it satisfied all the people who asked#i also tried to warn what genre of post it was for those who hate this kinda thing lol#i feel like i have more to say re: how toxic 'The Beatle' facade got for all of them by this point#and paul and john's mirrored post-india breakdowns#but francie's perspective is specifically on how it felt to be the girl he used to divebomb his relationship with jane asher SO
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I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to say this, but I don't know if there is. And you're a smart person and critical thinker who has talked about this before. If this is totally weird, you can just delete it ofc. I've never properly watched Supergirl but I started reading fanfic around the time my mental health got real bad so it was a comfort thing I didn't bring too much thought to. I really identify with Lena and in the past, part of me has understood her actions-
and I know that they're wrong. The anti-alien rhetoric is obviously an allegory for racism or homophobia. She's violated people's basic human rights. And I'm scared that I'm a bad person because sometimes, I kind of get it. Which is insane because i'm a lesbian enby of color, i mean i get targeted by most of the -ist/ism actions. And I'm also too tired to think about things critically all the time. Supercorp was my comfort fic, content thing-
I knew it was problematic (the whole James thing makes me sick to my stomach, scared and sad) but I didn't know that Lena as a character was written that way. The metaphors never really clicked in my head because I never thought about it, but now I feel absolutely horrible about myself because I like and identify with Lena. I'm not really sure how to move on from here- I'm just tired. I wish there could be just one thing, one piece of media that wasn't prejudiced (granted sg is not the place to go if you want decent rep and the like) and all of those things I said earlier. Its just me somehow trying to justify how I felt and empathized with something I shouldn't have. So yeah, sorry that was really long. I hope you have a lovely day- sorry for the spam
FIRST of all, you’re fine, babe! Both in sending me this and in enjoying The Bad Media. That’s my thesis here: You’re fine. With this in mind, let’s unpack this big ol suitcase:
We’re living in a fandom moment where more than ever before, we’re thinking about the ideas we consume in fiction and how they may or may not affect us. This is a net positive! Fiction is not reality, but it undeniably impacts it, so for this and many other reasons, we should always think critically about what resonates with us and why. Does this mean dissecting every facet of something to find all the ways it might fall in line with oppressive power structures? Absolutely not.
You, as an individual, do not owe anyone an explanation for why you enjoy anything. Period. How you relate to a given character or why you like them is nobody's business but your own.
Supergirl, as a piece of media, is singularly awful in its lackluster lipservice to progressivism while simultaneously refusing to deliver any progressive themes. Socially and politically, it is a useless liberal wet dream. Kara is an immigrant from a dead culture working as the muscle for a secret FBI offshoot with zero accountability for all of the other aliens in diaspora she has rounded up and dumped into a cell without trial. Alex is allegedly a lesbian, but the key points of her endgame relationship are constantly deemed not important enough to get screen time, which is made even more absurd when examined from the angle that this series is marketed directly toward LGBT people. An embarrassing percentage of villains on this show are women of color, which is particularly loud when there are only 2 women in the main cast who aren't white. And "main" is extremely generous, given that Kelly is just there to Give Advice Good and everything M'gann says and does is as dry as toast.
My point here is that the whole show is rotted to its roots, and whatever quietly libertarian or even fascism-enabling bullshit they push onto Lena in a given week is par for the crusty, shitty course. Kara deciding that she's ok with the alien detection device because "there are bad aliens" is a lovely (read: awful) microcosm of why this show sucks so fucking hard. "People are entitled to their opinions" is for debates on whether pineapple goes on pizza, not for whether we should casually out, endanger, and disenfranchise our [insert minority metaphor here] because some of them are mean.
But what I would love for this fandom to wrap its head around, and what I hope you understand, anon, is that just because it happens on the show, doesn't mean we have to give a rat's ass about it. What the hell is The Canon, anyway? Especially in the case for Supergirl, which can't even get its own continuity right. Especially for an IP that has been rebooted dozens of times before and will be rebooted again in the future. We can just decide that Lena realized the horrible injustices she enabled through her position of power. We can even decide that they just didn't happen at all! This is all fake. It's not set in stone. Who came up with it, anyway? A network with a list of buzzwords they want included and a couple of D-tier showrunners cranking down caffeine to meet an absurdly tight deadline. It's not special. I can guarantee that you care about it infinitely more than they do, and you haven't even watched the damn show.
On a more personal level, people who are hurt, depressed, or traumatized have always and will always look for themselves in fiction. Myself included! And despite what lofty platitudes there may be on the matter, suffering does not make us kind. It does not make us better. Sometimes it's just suffering. Often it pulls us further from who we are meant to be. Often it just makes us "worse."
Trauma has made Lena emotionally brittle. A lifetime of manipulation and abuse has taught her to compartmentalize herself and lock her feelings behind a maze of doors. When she does let love in, she accepts it so wild and vulnerable that she can't see the red flags behind the rosy lenses. She latches so hard onto people she deems virtuous that she holds them to a standard none could fulfill. Her pain has to go somewhere, so it oozes out of her, into Non Nocere, into the post-reveal rift. She's a powder keg, and Kara spent 4 years shoveling more gunpowder onto the pile while holding the match between her teeth.
And despite these fatal flaws that make perfect sense through the eyes of Lena's trauma, she is so full of love. Like Kara, her suffering did not make her kind. She is kind in spite of her suffering. These are the characters we are drawn to when we're hurting. Lena’s trauma is an inextricable part of her, but it is not all of her, and neither are her mistakes.
There truly is not and never will be a piece of media that is absolutely innocent of the harmful structures thrust upon us by society, because we ourselves also participate in that society whether we are critical of it or not, whether we strive to change it or not. I'm flawed. You're flawed. Bettering ourselves is not a journey toward an ultimate destination of perfection. It is a garden we nurture in an endless labor of love because the joy that comes from seeing it flourish and change vastly outweighs the work we put into it and the weeds popping up around its unkempt edges. This is a lesson Lena herself could probably stand to internalize. Probably with lots and lots of therapy. Lots. And lots.
So, to circle back to the start of this? You're fine. You recognized the logic in a traumatized character's mistakes because our own gravest errors more often than not stem from the ways we have been harmed in the past. It's what makes Lena (or, at the very least, the many adaptations of Lena that exist in this fandom) a good character. She is, to her core, characterized proof that a crumbling foundation and poisonous soil do not define us. Which is why watching her heal and grow and learn a healthier kind of love is so, so wonderful.
In closing, I think it's worth mentioning that being critical of media does not mean that we stop enjoying the parts of it we like. There is a lot of gold to be pulled from the steaming pile of shit that is CW Supergirl, and that's why we're all here in the first place. So I really hope you can continue to enjoy it in whatever way makes you smile <3
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hello this is my official list of what i think every member of the bau would work with if they wouldn't work at the bau like if that wasn't a reality you get me
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Jason Gideon: look i know this is technically canon but i truly do think he would be an author and would guest lecture a bit in his later years and like sure he could still write true crime books but also just regular crime novels i think this old man would just like to write
Jennifer "JJ" Jareau: i think she would work inside of the media, not in front of the camera necessarily but as a communicator or similarly inside of the media and the news. however i think there's a possibility of a divergence of path for her, i think its possible she could end up in a hostage situation due to her job in a similar situation like in neon terror and would start working out as a coping mechanism and like genuinely would pick up a (extra?) job as a personal trainer at her gym
Derek Morgan: firefighter. that's it i don't know what to say other than that, derek would 500% be a firefighter. there's nothing else. now that i think about it derek should've been a firefighter from the beginning fuck the bau this is his true calling don't even @ me
Elle Greenaway: similarly to JJ i think elle would work inside of the media but as an investigative journalist. well i think she would start out as a regular journalist but become an investigative journalist after a while because her drive would be too big you get me. also niche but i think that when she was a teen she was like briefly a singer like you know robin from how i met your mother but she would've made angry girl music
Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner: genuinely don't think this punk could stay away from the government so i think he would still work a fancy government job just not inside of the bau, maybe not even the fbi but i so think he'd still be in government. now what i have no idea because i know nothing about the government especially the american government seeing as im not even remotely american
David "Dave" Rossi: now i don't even know if this fucking counts but you know those really fancy shops that are like made of dark smelling wood and is called something extravagant with a cursive gold font and they sell like cigar or wine or herbal products or like mustache wax or whatever the fuck you know the places im talking about. i think rossi would work there and be that old man at the counter who will come up and talk to you and you have no idea if he just works there and is really invested in this stuff or if he owns the place or just a really weird costumer but then he's the one you pay too so you assume it's his but the moment you step out of the store you've forgotten his face and you never want to go back there but you always think about it once a month or something. if you don't know what kinda place im talking about consider yourself lucky
Penelope Garcia: if the bau wasn't even a prospect here there's no question that penelope would still be a hacker illegally and make most of her money from there but i also think that she would work in a small second hand shop with lots of old trinkets and clothes and stuff just because she genuinely thinks it's fun to work there and also the old woman who owns the shop lets her be on the computer when there's no costumers in the store. i just think she would sit there in her cupcake dress next to a ceramic old cat from the 1930s talking to bernice about her grandson while hacking jeff bezos on her computer
Spencer Reid: now it's time for spencer all over the place reid who i think would work at like one of those really prestige but still public libraries where like everyone is welcome but they have like locked rooms with super valuable books and stuff and he kinda does whatever there bc sometimes he gives tours talking about thr history of the building and stuff and sometimes you find him at the counter ready to guide you to the specific book you're looking for plus twenty other recommendations you should read if you like this book and sometimes you find him in a window reading and his coworkers politely ignore he's had his "break" for three hours now bc he guided 17 tours yesterday (only ten were scheduled) and they suspect he mightve slept here. plus in his spare time i think he would do some independent work to keep him stimulated with stuff but that's not a fully developed idea yet
Stephen Walker: this might be controversial but i think stephen would be a guidance counsellor at like a school and i don't know why but he has the vibe and i think he would be quite good at it. maybe he just gives me more official jawbone vibes from dimension 20
Emily Prentiss: i firmly believe this woman cannot hold down a job for her life. i think the bau and interpol were flukes in her reality because im quite certain emily would physically not be able to keep one job for longer than a year. if you mention a job she's probably done it. she's done everything from high positions in government to bagging groceries to leading seminars to breeding puppies. listen emily prentiss is a lesbian ex goth trust fund kid (like canonically yall). i think right now she's working with the lights for a theatre production and she's liking it and seems to have a knack for it
Tara Lewis: this one's out there but i think she would work as a principal at a university (do universities have principals?). but like the one who's in charge of a school but like advanced studies with like adults study after they've already studied if you know what i mean. idk i just think that's what she would be
Luke Alvez: hate to do this to luke but he would simply just be a cop. or like a detective (that's like a promotion for a cop in america right? bro my knowledge extends to brooklyn 99 and brooklyn 99 only). i hope this is because i feel like luke is the serious crime version of jake peralta and jake is the sitcom version of luke. anyway, cop
Matt Simmons: this is my magnum opus but bro i think he would be a podcaster. i think he would do a podcast with kristy. for everyone who follows my blog think justin and sydnee mcelroy but matt is sydnee. i think they would have a little podcast together. after his unit at the fbi (?) got got by linda barnes i think he would retire home and start doing podcasting full time with kristy. this is my hot take
Kate Callahan: because such a central part of kate's personality/backstory is that her sister died in 9/11 i think that kate would've been a nurse. specifically a nurse not a doctor and i don't think it's because a lack of competence or anything like that fuck u no i genuinely think kate wanted to be a nurse and chose to study to become that. her hours would still be crazy but maybe meg isn't as worried about her now
Ashley Seaver: i don't have a lot for seaver but i think she would work in local government more centralised like those guys from parks and rec and yes i realise ive made way too many references that some people might not understand but here we are. i think seaver would do whatever leslie does in parks and rec or something like that
Alex Blake: this is just a formality to have her on here because she's literally a linguistics professor in the show
#criminal minds#jason gideon#jennifer jareau#derek morgan#elle greenaway#aaron hotchner#david rossi#penelope garcia#spencer reid#stephen walker#emily prentiss#kate callahan#ashley seaver#alex blake#tara lewis#luke alvez#matt simmons#himym#sydnee mcelroy#dimension 20#parks and rec#cm
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A Cruel Joke
Emily x Bi!Fem!Reader
Masterlist
Summary: You find solace in the arms of a hurting FBI agent after she comes to investigate the death of your best friend.
Category: Angst, implied smut.
Warnings: 15 year age gap between adults (37/22)
Word Count: 4.9k
A/N: If you don’t like the name Alexa, I’m sorry, just try to imagine that it’s a different name.
A lesbian and a bisexual walk up to a crime scene. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but this situation was very real, and very unfunny.
You’d had a bad feeling. That should have been enough to get you to stay with her, you’re best friend, but you didn’t. You had been selfish.
And now she was dead.
Alexa was dead.
And it was your fault.
Had you just pulled yourself together and been there for her as a friend, stopped worrying about how you felt, she wouldn’t have walked back to your campus apartment from that party alone, and she wouldn’t have been vulnerable to the monster that took her and he wouldn’t have…
But he did, and now you were numbly walking down the sidewalk that led behind the sorority house you’d been partying at and to the local park, not even registering anything that was happening around you.
You’d heard the news before you could even press send on a text making sure she was okay. You’d heard the news, but you had to confirm for yourself. She couldn’t be dead, she just couldn’t be. You saw her only last night, not even six hours ago.
Despite officers and other important people yelling at you to get back, you just kept walking towards the crime scene, taped off with that awful yellow color.
Just as you were about to duck under the tape, approach the group of suits standing with their backs to you in a half circle, you felt a hand on your shoulder, a presence appearing in front of you.
“Miss, I’m sorry but you can’t be here.” It was a delicate voice, belonging to a woman.
“I have to know if it’s her. I just saw her, it can’t be her, I have to know if it’s her,” you mumbled in a panic, still trying to get a glimpse of what was sprawled on the ground in front of the officers. You realized they were staring at you now, but you couldn’t look away. You had to know.
“Miss, please, you shouldn’t be here,” the woman repeated. Her hand was still on your shoulder, and you finally looked her in the eyes, took in her face. Her features were gentle yet strong, and there was something striking about the contrast between her dark hair, fair skin, and pink lips.
You were trembling, something she could feel against her fingertips, and the water brimming in your eyes was enough to let her know how much you cared, probably more than anyone around.
She quickly glanced back at the other men behind her, and the tallest one nodded. With her hand still on your shoulder, she escorted you away from the scene, and away from prying eyes to a secluded park bench.
“Would you like to take a seat?” she asked.
All you could do was nod. Nothing felt real. Her voice sounded like it was reaching your ears by an old, fuzzy radio set up 10 feet away from you. This can’t be happening.
You plopped down on the bench with much less grace than the woman before you, who introduced herself as Agent Prentiss. “But you can call me Emily,” she’d said. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Y/N Y/L/N,” you whispered. Your arms were wrapped around yourself as you asked, “Is it her? Is it Alexa?”
Emily dodged your question with another question. “Who’s Alexa?” You later realized why she didn’t ask you how you knew her. She didn’t ask because she’d have to ask ‘how did you know her’ and not ‘how do you know her,’ something that surely would have set you off.
“She… she’s my b-best friend,” you mumbled around the lump in your throat.
“You mentioned that you just saw her. When was that?”
“Last night. We decided to crash the party with some of our friends who are actually in the sorority,” you explained meekly. “Please, Emily. Would you please tell me if it’s her? I have to know.”
Emily sighed and gave you a sad look, which was really all you needed, but hearing the words made it final. “Yes. We found identification on her with the name Alexa Stephens. I’m so sorry.”
Your whole heart shattered. You cared about her more than any of her other friends, and you sometimes wondered if you cared about her more than her family. She had a rough childhood and couldn’t stand to be in the same state as them anymore, which is why she transferred halfway through her freshman year. You immediately connected with her and you’d been friends ever since.
Your mind was racing, thinking of all the questions you needed answered, all the things you could have done differently to keep her alive. If you would have just been there…
“It’s not your fault,” the angelic voice broke through the static in your head, as if she could hear your thoughts.
“It is,” you whimpered, “If I had just pulled myself together, we would have walked home together, and she wouldn’t have been alone. Oh god, she died alone.”
“You did nothing wrong. You didn’t know, you couldn’t have. I’m sure you did what you thought was best in the moment.” It didn’t make you feel a whole lot better, but you grasped onto her words in an attempt to calm yourself down. You knew there was still more information she probably needed from you. You took some deep breaths, closing your eyes. A warmth spread its way through your palms, and you realized that the agent had put her hands in yours, giving them a reassuring squeeze. You held onto them like an anchor point. “Can I ask you a few more questions, or would you like to take a break?”
In through your nose, out through your mouth. You opened your eyes and nodded. “I want to help in whatever way I can.”
Emily continued to ask you questions about your night and if you remembered anyone suspicious. She asked if there was anyone who was staring at her, to which you told her that would be half the people at the party. Alexa usually had a steady stream of boys coming and going, some she dated and some she didn’t.
You never really understood that. You barely liked one person, let alone multiple back to back or at the same time. But Alexa just had this appeal to her, and while some would disagree with you, you thought she had a big heart. A big, blind heart.
“Thank you so much for your time. Give me a call if you remember anything else, anything at all,” Emily said, handing you her business card, “and I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks. I will,” you answered dryly.
# # # # # # # # # # # # #
You woke up feeling out of sorts. You’d dreamt of her last night. Well, you’d dreamt of them. You saw Alexa laughing, and then you saw her sprawled on the ground, an image your mind had created all by itself, and then you saw Emily. Felt her soothing hand on your shoulder, her warm palms encasing yours.
Then you woke up. The whole thing made you feel weird and sad and tired.
You picked up the business card Emily had given you, twirling it in your hand. You hadn’t remembered anything new, but you felt safe around her. Noticed, important, like you mattered. You realized just how much you were lacking that from Alexa, from your other friends.
Simply calling her wouldn’t do, though. You wanted to see the woman that for once in your life made you feel like you didn’t have to pretend you were okay. She knew you had lost someone close to you, and didn’t expect you to keep it together.
What were you saying? You put the card down, remembering that you’d only spoken to her for all of 30 minutes and she was just doing her job. Nothing more, nothing less. You also had the wherewithal to know that you were probably only grasping at any minute display of affection since you’d just lost the one person you so desperately wanted it from but could never get it. It made you feel pathetic and angry.
God you were also just so tired.
Classes were not going to happen, so you just laid back down, hoping to be swept into another dream.
# # # # # # # # # # # # #
A knock at the door woke you up. You weren’t sure what time it was, but you didn’t really care as you walked to the door.
Without looking through the peephole, you eked the door open. Emily was standing there along with another agent you’d seen at the crime scene.
“Hello. Y/N, right?” the blond asked. You nodded. “My name is Jennifer Jareau, and I believe you’ve met Emily.”
Emily smiled at you and you forced a small smile back. “What can I do for you?”
You invited them in and they asked you a few more questions. However, you were only half paying attention to what they were saying, and more paying attention to the way the two women were interacting. You’d sensed a tension the minute they walked in, but it seemed to be one sided. You figured it out by about the eighth time Emily glanced over at Jennifer. You recognized the look in her eyes: a mixture of love and hurt. You’d seen it too many times in the mirror not to pick up on it. But what really caught your eye was how many times Emily’s gaze traveled down to Jennifer’s hands. Specifically her left one with a shiny diamond on it. One look at Emily’s hand, and well, it wasn’t too difficult to put the rest together.
“Thank you again for your time,” Jennifer said, shaking your hand. Emily was slower to move, making eye contact with the other agent, some message you were not privy to passing between them. Jennifer gave you a tight lipped smile and left, but Emily stayed.
“I wanted to give you this,” Emily explained, holding out her hand. There was a small necklace in it, one you recognized immediately. “She was still wearing it and I thought you might want it back.”
You took it out of her hand, admiring the small heart pendant that dangled at the end. You’d bought it for Alexa for her 21st birthday. Her last birthday. “Thank you so much,” you said as you started to tear up. Just when you thought you’d cried yourself dry.
“Of course.” You thought Emily was going to leave after that, but she lingered a moment longer. You looked up at her, and she bit her lip, probably trying to decide if she should ask her next question or not. “She wasn’t your best friend, was she?”
You gave a weak smile, dropping eye contact. “That depends. Are you asking her or me?”
“I’m asking you.”
“No, she wasn’t. She meant more to me than that. But I never meant more to her. I sometimes wondered if I even meant that much to her,” your voice wavered.
“I’m sure you did,” Emily tried to reassure, but you weren’t buying it.
“Hope so,” you muttered. Looking back up at Emily, you held her eyes this time. “What about you and Jennifer?”
Her response was immediate. “What?” She sounded shocked, but you could tell she was trying to play it off.
You offered a single laugh. “I may not be a genius FBI analyst or profiler or whatever, but I know a hurting gay when I see one.”
Her mouth was still open, like she was going to try to come up with an excuse, but instead she just sighed. “That obvious?”
“Clearly not to Jennifer.” You shrugged. “Looks like I’m not the only one to lose someone recently.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Emily shook her head.
“You don’t need to downplay your pain,” you told her. “I know how bad that hurts. Why do you think I left that party early?”
A look of understanding flashed through her eyes. “A constant stream of guys…” Emily quoted your from earlier.
“Yeah,” you shrugged again. “Sometimes it’s just too hard to watch. Sometimes it’s just too hard to listen. When she’d come back to me crying over a break up when I was sitting right there… it’s painful. And that night I just couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t watch her waste her time on another guy who was going to hurt her. So I left. Look where that got me,” you mumbled the last part.
Emily gave a sad, bitter laugh. “She asked me to be her maid of honor.”
You sighed with her. “I’m sorry.” You had barely noticed the tear that escaped her eye before she forcefully brushed it away.
Something changed in her demeanor when she realized a tear had escaped, speaking faster as she headed towards the door. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you this. You already have a lot on your plate, and I don’t need to be unloading my personal issues on you. Again, I’m sorry, I will make sure-”
“Emily,” you cut her off, grabbing her arm and turning her towards you as she was about to reach for the doorknob. You weren’t sure what you’d been planning on doing once you stopped her, and the first thing you thought to do was hug her. You pulled her in close and wrapped your arms around her. She seemed shocked, but put her arms around you like it was the most natural thing in the world for the two of you to be doing.
You don’t know how long you stood there, but you would’ve stayed there forever if you could. The warmth and safety of her arms was something you’d never really experienced before.
When she pulled back from your embrace, you realized you’d both been silently crying. Her fingers traveled over your jaw, and her thumbs brushed away your tears. Your faces were only inches apart, but something in the back of your head told you that it wasn’t the right time.
Instead, you leaned forward and kissed away her tears, pressing your lips to her cheekbones. You felt her eyelashes on your face, a feeling you tried to commit to memory. A feeling you never got to experience with Alexa. One you never would.
“Y/N,” she whispered. You heard everything in the way she said your name, a warning that no matter how badly the two of you wanted this right now, it wasn’t a good decision.
“I know,” you whispered back, resting your forehead on hers, “Just please. Please let me live in my head for a little while longer.”
You stood there for a few more moments, her hands cupping your face and your hands on her back before she completely pulled away. “I will make sure we do everything we can to find the man who did this.”
“I know,” you repeated. “Thank you, Emily.”
She offered another small smile, but this time it felt a bit more sincere. With that, she left to continue fighting the monster that had ripped the earth out from under you.
# # # # # # # # # # # # #
Three more days and another victim later, the case was closed. Emily and her team had caught the bastard, putting him away for good.
You felt like you owed it to her, to the whole team, to go down to the local station they were set up in and thank them.
The moment you walked in, Emily spotted you. She put down whatever pictures and maps were in her hand, and rushed over to you. Without exchanging a word you embraced, similarly to how you’d done a few days ago, although much shorter this time as you were in public.
“We got him.” Her voice was assured and her lips curved in just the smallest way as she studied your face.
“I don’t know if I could ever thank you enough,” you told her. You looked over her shoulder to the conference room she’d just abandoned, catching the majority of the other members looking your way. “Is that your team?”
Emily turned around to follow your gaze, most of the others looking away as she did so. “Um, yes. That is them.” You couldn’t exactly figure out what subtle meaning was in her tone of voice, but ultimately chose to ignore it.
“Can I… um, well, can I talk to them? I want to thank them,” you quickly explained. Emily turned around to give you a shy smile.
“Sure,” she agreed, heading towards the conference room. You figured that was your cue to follow her, so you did, trialing close behind her.
She pushed open the doors and introduced you. Of course, they all knew who you were as you’d been a mess when you showed up on their crime scene, and had apparently been a ‘big help’, which the tallest man with a stern face, told you.
“Oh, I didn’t really do anything,” you waved him off. “You did all the hard work, which I wanted to thank you all for. It means a lot that you were here and able to close this case. So thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” a tall, strong-built man replied. “Happy that we could help.”
“But a lot of the credit should go to Emily,” a thin man with curly hair stated, a small smirk on his face, “She really did most of the work.”
Emily opened her mouth to protest as she gave both men a dangerous side eye, to which all they did was fail to suppress a smile. You stopped her before she could refute, “Well, thank you.” The message was broad, directed towards everyone, but your eyes lingered on Emily.
She gave you a single nod, and you quickly glanced around the room at the agents that helped get justice for Alexa before heading out the door. You looked back at Emily before you left, her eyes following you out while the two tall men behind her were passing knowing looks. You caught a glimpse of the blonde agent staring at the whole interaction, then biting her lip and looking away. You looked back towards Emily and the two male agents, the bald one shaking his head in what you could only guess was amusement, something you felt a little flattered about. Again, you weren’t a profiler, but you could read the classic signs of friends teasing friends over something like a crush. You hoped your brain wasn’t too foggy from the whirlwind that your life had become to mistake those signs for something they weren’t.
You were just getting into your car and pulling the driver’s side door shut when the passenger side swung open. Emily plopped down in the passenger seat of your car, quickly shutting the door. Surprised to see her, you just sat there like a fool looking at her.
She glanced over at you, biting her lip, a little bit of mischief in her eyes. “Are you going to drive or should I?”
In response, you finished shutting your door and started the car. “What took you so long?” you teased. “Was it Jennifer?”
“Let’s not talk about Jennifer,” Emily responded, a level of conviction in her voice you hadn’t heard yet.
“No, let’s not,” you agreed. Let’s not talk at all. You leaned across the console, bringing her face to yours with a hand on her cheek. She kissed you back, deeply. Oh what it was like to kiss someone you had feelings for, and not only kiss them, but have them kiss you back. You hadn’t realized just how starved you’d been of this feeling.
You pulled back first, needing to get some air back in your lungs. You plopped back down in your chair a little dazed.
Emily wetted her lips. “I know you wanted to do that before. Why’d you wait?”
“I waited to help you. To help get justice for Alexa,” you briefly explained, pulling out of the parking lot. “I know how important it is to have a clear head.”
“And now?”
“The investigation is over, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Emily confirmed.
“Then I am done waiting. That was the biggest mistake I ever made with her. I waited to tell her until she… until it was too late. I’m never going to do that again. Never.” It was a promise you intended on keeping.
“I did the same thing,” Emily shared, her voice getting quieter.
“I know. So let’s both just agree to be honest and forward with what we want,” you suggested.
“And what is it that you want?”
“You,” you confessed.
The drive from the precinct to your apartment was short, and you were there within the next couple minutes or so.
Taking Emily’s hand, you led her up the stairs and through the door of your apartment. The moment you shut and locked it, Emily was there, pulling you close and kissing you with much more passion than she had before. You pushed off her blazer and started frantically working on the buttons of her dress shirt. You had to part for a moment, just long enough for her to pull your shirt over your head. You were going in to kiss her again, when she stopped you.
“Woah, woah,” she whispered. “Slow down. I want to savor every last moment of this.”
Her eyes tore down your figure, fingers brushing over your collar bones, down around the swell of your breasts and over your stomach. When they reached the top of your jeans, she looked up at you. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t… I don’t want to be pushing you to do something you’re not ready for yet. I don’t want you waking up regretting this because you still haven’t taken the time you need to grieve Alexa.”
“Let’s not talk about Alexa,” you copied what Emily had said about Jennifer earlier. “I want to be here with you. Will you let me be here with you?”
She slowly nodded, and the moment she did, you put your lips back on hers. They were soft, just a bit swollen, and she swiped her tongue across your bottom lip, asking for entry. You gave it to her without question, and did you best to resume the work on her dress shirt buttons. Your tongues tangoed as you finally got her shirt off her.
As you led her to your room, you were thankful you didn’t have to pass Alexa’s, and even though no one else lived in your apartment anymore, you shut the door out of habit.
# # # # # # # # # # # # #
You woke up just before the early morning sun, drinking in the sight of the sleeping woman next to you. Your legs were tangled in the sheets, arms wrapped around each other.
Even though you’d had the entire night to admire her body, you couldn’t keep yourself from looking over her in awe. The way her face looked so at peace when she was sleeping and the way her dark hair messily fanned around her head made her look too perfect to be real. Everything that happened must’ve been a figment of your imagination, and the little solace you found in her felt like it was going to evaporate with your dreams.
And in a way, it was.
Once she woke up, she’d fly back across the country and go back to working her job like she’d never even met you. Maybe she hooked up with girls all over the country. She didn’t really strike you as that type, but you didn’t really know her.
The universe was playing a cruel joke on you. When you had the chance to spend years with the girl you were in love with, you didn’t have the guts to tell her how you felt, and now that you did, you only had a day or so with her. But in the end, both would leave. Both would be out of your life forever.
You’d been so caught up in these thoughts that you hadn’t noticed Emily peek her eyes open. The sun had just started shining through the blinds, and she squinted against the light. She was also able to see the wet streaks glinting against your skin.
That jolted her awake, sitting up on her elbow. “Hey,” she soothed, cupping your face, “What’s going on?”
You placed your hand on top of hers and wiped at your tears with the other. “You’re perfect,” you told her, voice barely above a whisper, “And you’re leaving. Everyone leaves.”
Instead of responding, Emily tucked you under her arm and held you while your wept. She whispered sweet nothings into your hair and cradled the back of your head. You held onto her like she was the only thing keeping you together, keeping the withering pieces you called yourself from crumbling completely.
But, as you’d said, at some point she’d have to go. She’d have to pick up her things and head back to her life. You were going to have to figure out how to manage on your own.
Once you’d calmed down enough, you apologized to her. She told you that she was there for you, and that you’d always have her number, which helped you feel a little better. Just as she was finishing putting on her clothes and heading toward the door, you said, “You know it’s not too late to tell Jennifer your feelings, right?” Emily gave you a sad look, one that told you it was too late, but you persisted. “She’s only engaged, and engagements can be broken. I saw the way she looked at you yesterday.”
“What do you mean? I thought you said she was oblivious?” Emily countered.
“True, but I was paying a lot more attention to you that day,” you informed her, which made her lips turn up. “But I’m talking about back at the precinct. As I was leaving and you were looking at me, and those two male agents were making eyes about the whole thing, I saw how she looked at you. She was jealous, and I think a little sad too. I’m just telling you that the worst thing that could happen if you tell her is she says no. The worst that could happen if you don’t tell her is you miss out on a life with her. Or before you know it, she’s getting hurt in the field and you end up right back here, just like me. Please, Emily. You have a chance to go for it, to tell her how you feel, something I was too stupid not to take advantage of when I could. Do it before it eats away at you any longer.” It was a plea by the time you finished.
Emily had never looked at you with pity before that moment, but there was a hint of the feeling in her eyes when you finished, like she thought you were desperate or naive. And, maybe you were, but you also thought that some of the pity might have been for herself.
You stood up out of bed, and approached her. She was standing frozen in the doorway, and the look of pity disappeared when you whispered, “It’s not too late.”
Emily pressed her lips to yours, in a slow, delicate way, one that felt like a goodbye. When she pulled back, her eyes were still closed and she barely spoke against your lips. “I hope you’re right.”
You looked deep into her eyes once she finally opened them, trying to remember the shape and the color, and how it felt to get lost in them. But then they were gone again, replaced by the hair on the back of her head as she walked away. She gave you one last small, sad smile before walking out the door of your apartment. That, you knew, would be it.
# # # # # # # # # # # # #
~11 months later~
Voicemail from: Emily Prentiss
“Hey Y/N. It’s me, Emily. I know we haven’t talked since the last time I saw you, and I know this phone call is kind of out of the blue… but, uh, I just felt like I should call you and tell you this myself. You were right. It wasn’t too late, and I told her. I told Jennifer how I really felt, and she broke off the engagement to be with me. We’ve been together now for about ten months, and um… well, this time around we both have rings on our fingers. So I guess what I’m really trying to say is thank you. Had it not been for you, or what you said to me that last night, I would have had to be the maid of honor at her wedding and watched while she married someone else, and the guilt would have eaten me alive. So thank you. You’ve changed my life. I hope that things are going well for you because you deserve everything that’s right in the world. Really, you do. And you always have my number if you ever need anything. Okay, um, I guess that’s all. Goodbye Y/N.”
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