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therenlover · 3 years

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It’s Always Been You (Part Three of Till Forever Falls Apart, A Peter Maximoff/Reader Series)

Synopsis: After a month of adapting to his new universe, Peter Maximoff can confidently say that he likes his new life more than his old one. Sure, he misses home sometimes, but he’s been far too busy flirting with his new roommate to spend time crying over the things he’s lost. Everything is smooth sailing until a strange journal in his roommate’s study leaves him with more questions than he knows what to do with. Now he’s on a mission to discover who he’s really living with before she has the chance to turn against him.

Tags: Angst, Secrets, Exposition, Pre-Relationship, Predestination/Soulmates, Post-Wandavision

Rating: T

Warnings: Mild Language, Brief Mentions of Torture/Past Trauma, Minor Character Death

Word Count: 8600~

This has been crossposted as a two-chapter fic on my AO3 under the same name

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A/N: For this fic series, the events of Endgame take place in Late September/Early October, so Wandavision takes place in late October. Also, Thor is about 3500 and Loki is about 3000. This has no bearing on their appearance or stories, it’s just older than they are in MCU cannon.

Peter couldn’t tell when exactly the mirage started falling apart.

It hadn’t come down all at once but instead dissolved in slow waves that culminated into a disastrous reveal when the pieces stopped fitting together. Part of him wished he could go back to living the lie when every day was filled with the sweet rose-tint of ignorance. Unfortunately, there was no way back to the way things were before, only a long road forward.

Not everything had been bad. In fact, most of the first month was quite the contrary.

After his disastrous run-in with the Sorcerer Supreme, a man he now knew as Stephen Strange, Y/N had taken him on a tour of the city, pointing out all of the places he should avoid at all costs. The list wasn’t particularly long, but once he knew where to stay away from he felt fully comfortable to roam the city at his own leisure. That opened up a whole new window of opportunities for Peter to have fun.

The city itself wasn’t as scummy as it had been when Peter was living there at X-Mansion. He still vividly remembered the last time he and Jubilee had taken a trip into the city, watching the prostitutes roaming around Times Square as they passed through on the way to some deli Kurt had recommended to her. Now, everything felt slightly safer and much more staged for tourists. Besides that, though, much to Peter’s surprise, there were very few changes. Of course, there were the massive new skyscrapers run by what he had gathered to be either the rich good guys or the rich bad guys (he hadn’t quite been able to figure out which when Y/N had explained it to him) but if he just pretended they weren’t there, this new New York could pass for his old New York pretty easily.

Strangely, Peter found he enjoyed living in this universe’s New York more than he’d enjoyed living back at the X-Mansion. He had freedom now. Freedom to roam the city with no curfew, freedom to get food from the kitchen at all hours of the day, freedom to spend as much time as he wanted lazing around the house playing Space Invaders in his room… life in the brownstone was paradise. Every moment was crafted to meet his exact needs. Flawless. Picture perfect in every way... Too perfect.

If Peter was forced to pinpoint where things started to go wrong, it would be the first time he noticed how Y/N’s whole universe seemed to bend at his whims.

He hated to say that Y/N was the epicenter of the problem. In fact, she was what, in all honesty, gave Peter the most happiness in his day-to-day life. Sure it was nice to spend time alone in his room binging twinkies to keep his blood sugar up, but that seemed pathetic when he compared it to Y/N knocking softly on his door and offering a plate of whatever delicious meal she had come up with at the time. Some days she would lure him out of whatever project he had taken on to show him new movies he had missed in the time jump between universes. On other days, when Peter was feeling cooped up in the house, she would take him to Central Park for cheap hotdogs so they could spend the afternoon watching the seals (which had been Peter’s guilty pleasure as a local ever since he moved into X-Mansion). No matter what, Y/N offered Peter exactly what he didn’t know he needed at every turn looking damn good as she did it.

Now that was a whole different bag of worms that Peter didn’t like to look into too deeply. Y/N was just… stunning. Everything about her seemed to call to him, a perfect siren’s song luring him closer every time he saw her. She never failed to make Peter laugh. She also took time out of her day to help him learn new things, like how DVDs worked, with all the empathy in the world. Even though she was beautiful to look at and wonderful in every way, Peter found himself attracted to the smallest things about her more than anything else. Her smile, her cooking, the way she danced to her record player when she thought he wasn’t around.

Peter had trouble putting the feeling into words. He could only imagine it was the first stages of love.

The real kicker was that she liked him! Liked him in a way he had never been liked before. It was as if, in her eyes, he could do no wrong. She laughed at his jokes and pulled him closer when he gravitated to her side and came home with little gifts she found during the day that he always found he loved. Peter’s flaws weren’t chided but instead embraced. He always felt cared for at her side.

There were some imperfect things about Y/N, though.

They weren’t large, not at first, but as time passed the small fissures in her facade grew into gaping cracks. They served as the stems from which all of his current problems grew. The biggest original fissure was just how jumpy she was.

99% of the time Y/N was cool and confident. Peter thought she wouldn’t be out of place working as a lawyer or politician. That should have been the first flag in and of itself, but that didn’t matter. What did matter is that the other 1% of the time, which seemed to be triggered randomly by things Peter said or did, she was like a deer in headlights. She would freeze, panic, and only return to normalcy several minutes after Peter either dropped the subject or clarified whatever he said. Once Peter caught on to how strange that was, other odd things about Y/N began to show through in day-to-day life.

Things like knowing facts about Peter that she shouldn’t know.

The first time she brought him home his favorite candy he assumed she had just guessed correctly, but then she brought him a VHS of his favorite movie. And bought his favorite foods when she went out shopping that Peter was sure she hadn’t bought before. And took him to a fancy Manhattan leather store to buy a very obviously custom-made silver leather jacket that she just so happened to see in the window.

He would always thank her profusely, just glad to get things he enjoyed, and remark on how odd it was for her to know him so well after such a small about of time. Y/N would just smile and chalk it up to intuition. Intuition could only count for so much.

Y/N did other, smaller strange things as well, but Peter couldn’t say he noticed them much until after he confronted her. He simply assumed she only ate at certain restaurants because she was a picky eater, and avoided cars because she wanted to save the environment. She could have just been an average person who just so happened to use gilded silverware and have a spectacular, museum-quality collection of odd, assorted antiques sitting around her perfectly-furnished, historical brownstone that she was able to comfortably live in while working a relatively low paying job…

Peter had never been known for his smarts, but looking back, even he was disappointed that he hadn’t seen the signs sooner. Love is blind and it also blinds. His eyes only opened when he found the journal.

The illusion fell apart on a Wednesday afternoon.

It was cool, with the crisp late-autumn breeze leaving a slight chill present throughout the day. The sky had turned grey, not from rain yet, just from the general gloom of the season. Peter didn’t mind. He was looking forward to the first big thunderstorm in his new home.

Y/N had left for work in the morning with a spring in her step and a smile on her lips. On her way out the door, they had flirted a little more than usual, and as a result, Peter had been thinking about her for the rest of the day. He was too busy thinking about the way she had ruffled his hair while she passed him on the couch to do anything of value with his time but much too bored to stand still. His compromise? Snooping.

There was a little study on the first floor that served as a workspace and library for the household. It wasn’t off limit’s by any means, but it was the last place left that Peter hadn’t explored since moving in (besides Y/N’s room, of course). Something, whether it was boredom or suspicion pushed Peter to go inside and explore. He promised himself it would only be for a minute.

Once he stepped inside, his plans changed.

The moment he walked past the door’s threshold it was like a wave of warmth had washed over him. Every bit of the autumn chill that had made its way into the old bones of the rest of the house was seemingly absent from the library. Peter quirked up an eyebrow. Slowly, he stepped back out of the room.

Instantly the chill was present again.

He stepped forward. Warm.

Backward. Cold.

Warm.

Cold.

Warm.

Cold.

To an onlooker he would have seemed crazed, speeding in and out of the doorway with his powers trying to find a logical explanation for the phenomenon. To Peter, though, it was like he had finally cracked the code. This was proof… okay, so a room being warm didn’t prove anything, Peter didn’t even know what it would be proof of, but something about it satisfied the constant anxiety that had been pooling in his stomach in the weeks since he had moved in. From that moment on he was fixated on finding out what was so special about the library and what it had to do with him.

Once he had steeled his emotions, he finally re-entered the room for the final time, letting himself acclimate to the comforting heat that seemed to radiate from everywhere inside while taking a look around.

At first glance, it was just a nicely decorated office. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined 3 of the 4 walls, with the remaining wall opposite the door left free to make room for a small, mahogany roll top desk that sat proudly in the center of the room on the matching wood flooring. There was some decoration on the far wall, though. Above the desk, spanning the entire length of the wall were 5 large portraits of men. They seemed to loom over the room, their eyes boring holes into whoever entered, but something about them seemed more melancholy than threatening.

“Creepy,” Peter whispered to himself as he took another step into the room, gazing up at the paintings, "really fucking creepy,"

The first portrait seemed to be the oldest of the group by far, with the paint piled on thick as if the artist had to correct themselves multiple times over while they worked. It featured a Greek or Roman soldier, dressed in shining gold armor while they bared a wolflike girn and held up a jug of wine towards the painter. It wasn’t period accurate- Peter was pretty sure a typical canvas wouldn't have held up since the greek days, and that realism didn’t really exist in paintings back then -but there was a life in the soldier’s eye that made him wonder what circumstances had inspired the subject to pose as he did.

The next three portraits, in comparison, were a bit bland. They were all pretty formal and seemed to have been done around the same time. All three frames held their own well-dressed dandy with small differences separating them. The first man had a little Gomez Addams pencil mustache, the next wore a military uniform and a sly smile, and the last was dressed in an ill-fitting suit while looking about 5 minutes from death. There could have been more differences, but Peter brushed over them quickly in favor of the final painting.

Portrait number five was, very obviously, the newest of the collection, featuring a modern man, probably 18 or 19, posing goofily on a chair Peter recognized as Y/N’s preferred sitting chair in the living room. Surprisingly, that wasn’t what caught his eye. Peter found himself gaping at the man’s face.

It was almost like looking through a funhouse mirror. Peter saw echoes of himself in the subject; the silver-blonde hair, the cheeky smirk on his face, the skid marks on the bottom of his worn sneakers. Hell, if it weren’t for the light five o’clock shadow dusting the man’s jaw Peter probably would have mistaken it for himself.

Something about the painting was both hypnotizing and sickening. Its pull was so strong that Peter only noticed he was getting closer when he knocked into the desk, sending a pile of papers falling to his feet. As he gathered them he could feel the eyes of the men above him on his back, urging him to look closer, dragging him into their strange gravitational field. Peter probably would have been more worried about the paintings before he saw the papers, though.

There, written in Y/N’s handwriting with brilliant red ink on the first page of a small, leather-bound journal, was one word: Magneto.

Peter’s heart stopped.

Nobody, especially in a whole other universe, should know about his father except him. It was a secret he was sure he hadn’t mentioned even when the FBI had interrogated him. Hell, Raven had taken the secret to her grave even despite her complicated relationship with Erik.

A deep pit of rage began to burn in Peter’s stomach. Who was Y/N? How the hell did she find out who Magneto even was? Worst of all, why didn’t she mention it to him?

Without even thinking about what he was doing Peter opened the journal to the next page and began reading. He was going to find out what Y/N was hiding if it was the last thing he ever did.

October 4th, 2023,

I returned from purgatory today. “The Snap” has been reversed and Thanos has been defeated, thankfully with little cost. If that was death, I hope I never have to face it again. Tony is still weak, as am I, but both of us will live to see another day thanks to my gifts. I hope Howard knows I fulfilled my promise and protected his son.

While I was in the in-between, the grey place between worlds, I saw Magneto again. He seemed strangely at peace with himself. Hopefully, this means there will be no trouble with him in the future.

Once we hold a proper funeral for the lost the real work begins. Tonight, though, I am glad to be alive.

His father’s name appeared, but the rest of the entry was confusing. Peter kept reading.

October 7th, 2023,

We held the funeral today. I still despise Thor with everything within myself, but he and I held a small memorial for his brother once Clint had been properly buried and eulogized. He offered a poor apology for the hostile takeover of my home, but I accepted nonetheless. It’s what Loki would have wanted. Besides, his bastard father is already dead and his home has been destroyed, so Asgard’s power over Alfheim is nonexistent. Perhaps now that things here have calmed down I’ll visit my mother and father again...

I tried talking to Wanda but she refuses to speak to me. She doesn’t understand that even though I foresaw Vision’s passing, I couldn’t stop it. The same goes for her brother. If I were her, I would hate me too. I’ll try calling her again later this week once she can properly mourn. Until then, all I can do is wait.

Peter’s stomach dropped.

He had to reach out and steady himself on the desk to keep from wobbling when he was reminded of his time in the Hex. His memories of the time were misty, clouded around the edges as he was puppeteered through a charade, but the pain, both mental and physical, was still sharp even a month later. If he pretended it had never happened life was easy but when he accepted the week or so he spent in Westview it took his mind to a dark place. Unfortunately, there was now no way to both ignore his time in Westview and pull the wool out from in front of his eyes.

He trudged forward, stomach in knots, praying that Y/N hadn’t been involved.

October 9th, 2023,

Steve almost destroyed our timeline this morning.

He had originally been assigned to return the stones to their respective places in the past, but thankfully I saw his bullshit plan before he was able to put it into action. It took both Sam and James to restrain him, but Natasha returned the stones and was able to come back to the present before he could escape. He’s still mourning Peggy and has decided to hang up the shield for the moment while he figures himself out, but James is there for him as he has always been. I am jealous in the best of ways.

Wanda still hasn’t taken any of my calls, but Stark insisted I shouldn’t worry.

I will return home today for the first time since I was revived. It scares me. My visions always get clearer when I’m there. I’m afraid that somewhere in the past five years something terrible could have happened that I never even knew about. I suppose the only way of knowing is to wait and see. Hopefully, I will be able to shelf my powers for a couple of decades soon. Seeing and preventing the future is tiring.

October 22nd, 2023,

Pietro visited me in a dream today.

He was dead, bleeding through his clothes as I held him and wept, and yet he was there sitting next to me too. I apologized like I always do. This time, though, he forgave me.

I don’t fully understand what the dream was supposed to signify but he rested his head on my shoulder just like old times and told me he knew. I asked what he was talking about and he said he knew he was going to die when he did, and that it wasn’t my fault.

I turned to ask him why he was telling me that and he was gone. I held his body until I woke up.

Nothing is clear to me yet, but something has changed. There’s been a shift in the energy of the world. Maybe Pietro was trying to warn me… or maybe things are finally falling into place. I can only wait.

October 25th, 2023,

Wanda has a whole town hostage.

She’s wielding chaos magic.

Pietro was an omen

This is all my fault.

Peter clutched his chest as he fought for air. His head was spinning

Y/N could see the future. When taking that and whatever light-based magic she used at the museum into consideration, Peter had no clue what she was capable of. Hell, she might have even more power hiding up her sleeve.

Worse than that, she knew his real name. She had never called him Pietro, not once, and yet she wrote about him like she knew him. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps she was writing about this universe’s Pietro, but he shut it down quickly. She would have told him if she knew something about his counterpart. Right? Right? He pocketed the idea. Y/N could be capable of anything.

Underestimating her could prove deadly.

There was one last journal entry, boldly written in the same red as the others but scrawled much messier as if it had been done in a hurry. Peter had to force himself to focus on the words as he shook from a healthy mix of fear and rage.

November 1st, 2023,

Jimmy called me today. Peter is here.

Well, not here yet, but he’s here. He called to ask if I could take in a superpowered individual who he had in witness protection. The moment the words reached me I could see them walking in, Jimmy and Peter. My Peter. I accepted, of course. Only 5 hours left to go until they arrive. Surprisingly, journaling is doing little to calm my nerves.

I shouldn’t be this afraid. I know the outcome. I’ve been preparing to meet him for almost 3000 years now. Still, I can’t help but think the next 5 hours will be the longest of my whole existence.

His room is already set up, as it has been for a long time, but I should dust before he gets here so it doesn’t look like I was waiting for him. If I know anything, I know that Peter cannot know about what I am or what he means to me. This burden shall be mine to bear alone.

Is it selfish to hope that he never goes home? Even if it is, I deserve to be a little bit selfish.

Four and a half hours left. Just a little more time until he’s home and safe. I’ll be counting every second.

The journal fell from Peter’s hands with a dull thud.

At that moment, the front door opened.

“Hey, Peter! I’m home, and I brought dinner,” Y/N’s voice was bright as she stepped past the threshold, “where are you?”

“The study,” he called back, “we need to talk,”

Peter could almost hear Y/N’s breath hitching in the other room. Then, silence. All of the warmth that had flowed so abundantly from every nook and cranny of the study moments before seemed to drain away, leaving the room lifeless and cold. All the while the eyes of the painted men watched on like sentinels above the world of man.

A minute passed, maybe two, but soon enough Y/N had appeared in the doorway, eyes cast down to the floor where the journal had fallen from Peter’s grasp. She smiled sadly. “I’m guessing you found my journal,”

He didn’t give her the indulgence of a verbal reply.

“How much did you read?” She whispered, walking past Peter and sitting down on the small, rolling office chair that rested in front of the desk.

“All of it,” he muttered back.

Peter had never been one for confrontation. It was in the nature of his power to want to run from things, and run from them fast. He ran from his bullies, he ran from his father, he ran from his universe… this time, though, there was nowhere to run to.

Strangely, he found that even if there were, he wouldn’t want to run from this.

Y/N slowly wrapped her arms around herself, gripping the soft knit of her sweater sleeves. “I assume you have questions… I’ll answer whatever you want me to. Once you know the truth, we can decide where to go from there,”

Peter couldn’t help himself from blurting out his first thought.

“What the hell are you?”

A small laugh escaped from her lips. It was an awkward thing, loud and crass against the quiet words that had been exchanged moments before.

“What am I,” Y/N chuckled. Slowly, she lowered her head into her hands. “Peter, I’ve been asking myself the same question for a long, long time,” She scrubbed at her eyes with her fingers. It was like she was trying to forget something terrible that she’d seen, her hands desperately finding purchase against her eyelids as she laughed at nothing.

Peter gulped. “Are you…. are you not human?”

Y/N gave him a scathing look that told him his question was a stupid one.

“Well, if you’re not human, where did you come from? Are you an alien?”

Humorless laughter continued to ring out against the cold walls.

“Are you going to let me answer your original question first, or are you going to keep speculating?” She sighed, lifting her gaze to meet him. Exhaustion danced across her face, like all of the life had been drained from her in the short time she had spent speaking to him after she got home.

He stopped himself from questioning her further for the moment in favor of deciphering the sad look in her eyes. It wasn’t hard to believe that he had been mesmerized enough by her beauty to ignore all of the suspicious things she did. In all honesty, he still was.

“I wasn’t born,” Y/N started, hugging herself tighter, “but I didn’t spontaneously appear one day either. I was created. My mother and father are… well, to put it plainly, fae royalty. They were the first fairies, high elves who had evolved to become conduits for life energy, but they were lonely. They wanted a child of their own, an heir who would be powerful enough to protect the realm from invaders, so they found the largest source of energy available: the embodiment of the sun, Lugh.”

Her leg began to bounce, her foot tapping ceaselessly against the wooden floorboards. Peter didn’t quite notice, though, too enraptured in her story to notice much of anything else.

“They combined their life forces with Lugh’s light and created a child with capabilities beyond anything the nine realms had seen up until that point. It stored massive amounts of magical energy within its soul and accomplished all of the typical fae magical feats with no problem, but it was also connected to all the life around it. Elves who met the heiress said that they felt calm in its presence, and felt compelled to give her whatever she desired when they looked into her eyes. They named the child Puck. That child was me,”

“So you’re a fairy?” Peter asked.

“Fairy, fae, elf, freak of nature…” Her voice trailed off into nothingness as she closed her eyes, “I’ve never quite fit into any of the labels I was supposed to,”

“But why do you look so…”

“Human?” Y/N’s voice quivered, “Yeah, after living here so long keeping my human face on is second nature,”

Peter couldn’t tell if he should be terrified, enraged, or intrigued.

As gently as he could manage, he padded over to Y/N on her chair and cupped her small, soft cheek in his hand. She leaned into the touch without a second thought, squeezing her eyes shut and letting a few tears fall from her eyes. His voice was soft as he perched down at her level.

“Show me?”

Y/N gave him a short nod before pulling her face away. Both of them winced minutely at the loss of contact. Slowly, though, the glamour around Y/N’s face melted away. Once it was gone, she was finally herself.

Her ears were pointed, sloping in a soft horizontal line through the strands of her hair. Her eyes were different, too. The pupil was larger, more doll-like, but not by very much. The largest difference was, admittedly, the scars.

Y/N was mostly covered, bundled up in her sweater to fight against the cold, but her hands were littered with scars of all shapes and sizes. Most were old, pale divots in her flesh, but there were a few new ones too, trailing pink and red in angry lines across the meat of her calloused palms. The scars didn’t seem to stop at her hands. Specifically, the largest and most wicked of all the scars was a thick gash that ran all the way down from the top of her cheekbone to the base of her neck. The skin looked as if it had been eviscerated, torn completely through, but somehow it had healed up relatively well.

When Peter met Y/N’s gaze, her face was full of shame.

“Isn’t it atrocious?” she muttered, revealing little, sharp incisors hidden beneath her full upper lip, “You can’t blame me for wanting to hide this from you, Peter, not after seeing me like this. This isn’t the kind of face someone wants to wake up next to in the morning,”

Peter had a hard time finding the right thing to say in response.

He was still angry, and rightfully so. Y/N had been keeping the truth about what she was away from him and still had many more secrets up her sleeve about how they were connected. If he wanted to get the truth out of her he couldn’t get away with going soft so early in the game.

That being said, he still felt for her. His heart ached as she hid the scar on her cheek with her hand. She had been so kind, so outgoing, but now she was a shrinking violet doing her best to disappear from his view.

Peter’s gut said to push forward, but his heart urged him to take her face in his hands and kiss her until the pain went away. In the end, he followed his gut.

“I don’t care about what you look like,” he said, standing up and moving to lean on the doorframe, “I care about answers,”

“Of course you do,” With a heaving breath, Y/N’s face morphed back into its human form, “everybody always does,”

Suddenly, a book flew off the shelf to Peter’s right and landed directly in Y/N’s outstretched hand. “How-” he gaped.

“A retrieval spell,” she muttered, “Now where was I…”

She searched through the pages for a moment before landing on an illustration and turning it out towards Peter. It looked ancient, hand done with some sort of brown ink and captioned in a language he couldn’t begin to understand. The illustration itself was easier to decipher. It featured a child in a crown holding up a sword in front of what looked to be an army.

“Because I was created instead of born I was able to skip all the messy parts of childhood, but that meant I had to skip all the fun ones. From the day I was born my parents had me trained to take the throne. I learned combat, diplomacy, etiquette… my parents weren’t equipped for fighting against the Asgardians who always seemed to be eyeing our land, but they were determined to make sure I was. I was a machine of rote motions until I saw you for the first time,”

Peter froze. “Me?”

Y/N cracked a smile. “Who else? I was less than 100 years old then, still a child at heart, and one night when I fell asleep I dreamed of a silver-haired man who looked nothing like any of the elves I knew in a strange room filled with mysterious artifacts. It was like seeing the world through brand new eyes. My gift was so magical back then, so new, a source of joy. I kept seeing you wherever I went, flashes of your life behind my eyes during the day and full prophetic dreams at night… things didn’t stay that pleasant for long, though,”

Her eyes began to well up with tears.

Peter considered reaching out to comfort her, but his confusion held him back. She blinked the tears away before she continued.

“I started seeing terrible things happening to you. I saw experiments, broken limbs… even death. They wouldn’t stop. No matter how much I tried to turn them off they just wouldn’t stop,” her voice trembled and her shoulders shook as she spoke. “That’s when my parents sent me away. They claimed I couldn’t let the citizens see their future leader as someone weak, so I was taken into isolation until I learned how to control what I saw. It took me almost 350 years of silent study and meditation but I was able to master my foresight. I didn’t just see you anymore, I could see anyone’s future if I put my mind to it, and I could control when I had my visions. They only let me out to fight in the war against the Asgardians, who had taken the chance to attack,”

“So you’re telling me that thousands of years before I was even born you just… saw me in the future?” Peter’s voice wavered. Y/N shrugged and turned the book back towards herself, searching through the pages once again.

“Yes and no. It’s hard to explain,”

“Well try!” his voice came out in a sudden shout. Y/N flinched. “I just want to know what the hell is going on here! Because, the way I’m seeing it right now, I got kidnapped out of my home because someone decided I was predestined to play house with an elf instead of staying with my friends and family,”

He regretted his tone the second he stopped shouting.

Y/N, despite her reaction, seemed almost unphased. In fact, she seemed to be shaking less than she had been before.

“Y/N… I’m sorry-”

“Don’t,” she said sharply, “don’t apologize. Not to me. This whole mess is my fault,”

Peter went to open his mouth again, to find something to say, but found himself speechless. He was speechless a lot around Y/N. She turned the book around again.

This time the illustration seemed to be of a woman on a throne. There was red ink on the page too, not just brownish-black like the last one. It was splattered across the woman and at her feet.

“I fought Asgardians for 50 years on the front lines, killing a great many of them in the process. Even Thor, their golden boy with his stupid magical hammer, was no match for me. I saw every move they made before they ever made it, so once I diminished enough of their troops they pulled out of Alfheim and returned home with their tails between their legs. When I returned home I was revered as a great hero and it was like I had never failed my parents in the first place. Their precious progeny was home victorious and prepared to reap the rewards. My teenage rebellion kicked in, though, so instead of taking back my place in the palace I demanded my parents let me go to earth as my reward for winning them their war.”

“Is that how you got your scars?” Peter asked.

Y/N sighed, closing the book and returning it to the shelf with a wave of her hand. “Yes.” Slowly, she raised her hand and touched her cheek where her scar would have been. “Some came later, but the worst of them are from the final battle. I only let my concentration slip for a second, but that was enough time for Thor to summon lightning with that damned hammer of his and get a good hit in,”

“I’m gonna be honest, your whole backstory sounds pretty shitty,”

She barked out another laugh as Peter allowed himself to smile. “If you think that was shitty, the next 2,500 years of history won’t be pleasant to listen to,”

“Don’t think I’m not still mad at you,” Peter said, but it was an empty threat. Sure, the rage he had initially felt was still there, but what had been at a boil when Y/N came home was now just a low simmer.

She offered him a soft smile back. “I wouldn’t dare. Now, that’s enough about my past. If there’s anything else you want to ask, now's the time,”

Peter busied himself with cracking his knuckles. “I still don’t really get what’s so special about me to you. Like, yeah you saw some bad stuff happen to me when you were a kid, but it’s been a really long time since then. What makes me so special?”

The smile fell from Y/N’s face.

“That’s… well that’s a good question, Peter,” She wrung her hands, standing to take a step towards him, “I don’t think I’ll be able to say it… can I show you instead?”

He quirked his head to the side. “What?”

“Can I show you?” Y/N gently tapped her forehead, “with my power?”

A soft ‘ah’ escaped Peter’s lips before he stepped forward, bridging the gap between them. “Do what you need to do,” He didn’t say he trusted her, but he didn’t need to. It went without saying.

She reached out a hand and touched Peter’s forehead without another word. Then, the wave hit him.

Seeing Y/N’s mind was like the first time he had ever run at full speed, an endless barrage of emotions and images blurring as he rushed towards a focal point. It felt like an eternity before the motion stopped, but once it did he found himself looking out at a rolling sea with the weight of an arm around his shoulders. In a trance, he turned his head to look at whoever was there.

“I suppose this is it for us, my dearest Lady Puck?” The man asked, running his free hand through his long black hair. His tone was light yet thoughtful. Peter easily recognized him from the first portrait on the wall.

Without any effort, a response poured from Peter’s… no, Y/N’s lips. “Y/N, Loki. My new name is Y/N,”

“Ah, yes. Remind me again why you’re renouncing your godliness and going to live among the common rabble?” The man’s words were suddenly mocking, “Oh right, you have to assimilate to prepare for your darling Peter,”

“Don’t say it like that,” The Y/N of the past pulled her knees to her chest.

Loki nodded. “Forgive me. I’m just taking this a little harder than I should be. Who would have thought that I would fall in love with my mortal enemy?” He paused, “Will our paths cross again,”

Y/N shook her head no. “You will return to Asgard and remain there for as long as I can see. I think this is where we diverge,”

Peter watched from his position of backseat driver as Loki leaned close to Y/N. “Well, all good things must come to a close at some point,” He stroked her scar, smiling softly, “but don’t think that I’ll let you go to just anyone. I know this Peter is just a puny mortal, so expect me to come back and find you once he appears. Consider me your own personal Mjolnir! I will determine if he’s worthy of your heart,”

Giggles escaped from Y/N’s lips. “Loki! Don’t you dare,”

“You couldn’t stop me if you tried, darling,” He growled back, before capturing Y/N’s lips in a kiss. When he pulled away, he smiled his sharp-toothed grin. “Fly free, Lady Puck. I’ll see you again,”

A deep, foreign ache in Peter’s heart told him that he never did. Then, Loki was gone, blurred into the flood of memories and feelings in Y/N’s mind. The second time was easier than the first, but he still felt an acute nausea as he was thrown into another memory. This time he seemed to be much closer to the present.

Y/N was sketching something on a canvas, penciling in soft, rounded lines as the man with the pencil mustache lounged on a nearby chair, tie crooked.

“So tell me about this Peter,” he asked, taking a long puff from a cigar.

“Well, everyone, where I’m from, says he must be my soulmate. He’s witty, and fast, and has this phenomenal shock of silver hair,”

Peter, despite what he’d just seen in Y/N’s memories, was still shocked at her words. Soulmates?

“But you’ve never met him, so how do you know?” He asked, “Look, sweet cheeks, I’m not one to judge, but how do you know he’s even real?”

Y/N scowled, letting her pencil slip and adding an unwanted line to her sketch. “Howard, have I ever been wrong before?”

“Well no, but-”

“Exactly,” Y/N abandoned the sketch in favor of walking over and sitting at the foot of Howard’s chair. “Besides, even if he isn’t real, I know enough about him that he might as well be,”

“Whatever you say, sweet thing,” He chuckled, offering her his cigar. She accepted it thankfully.

“Anyways, it’s like I can feel him getting closer and closer,” Peter could just feel Y/N’s grin as she spoke, cheeks flushed, “I just can’t wait to finally meet him.”

“I’m guessing that means you’ll have to give up helping me with my little projects,”

Y/N took a long puff, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. “Not exactly. We still have time left, Howard. Besides, I don’t do much to help, I can’t even touch any of your materials,”

Howard snorted. “I still can’t believe you’re allergic to silver and iron of all things. I didn’t even know that was possible,”

“You’re just mad it means you have to buy me expensive jewelry instead of the cheap shit you’ve bought for other women,”

“You know me too well,”

They both laughed and Y/N handed Howard back his cigar.

In the blink of an eye, Peter was transported again. It was almost like riding a bike after a long time, where the deeper he delved the more comfortable he felt. This time, instead of nausea, there was a strange warmth in his chest.

Y/N stood at the edge of a crowded dance hall as the men from the 3rd and 4th portrait approached, drinks in hand. Peter was beginning to see a pattern.

“A sidecar for the pretty lady,” the bigger of the men joked while leading the group to a small table.

Y/N accepted the glass gladly, taking a long drink. “Thank you, James”

The small one sat across from her and took a long drink of his beer.

“You too, Steve,” she amended, earning a smile.

“Now doll,” James leaned in close, his forearms braced against the table, “Steve and I wanted to thank you for the little favor you did us last week. Didn’t we, Steve?”

Steve nodded quickly. “You really are a knockout gal’ Y/N. You didn’t have to, but you did, and we couldn’t be more grateful,”

Y/N shrugged. “It was nothing. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,”

“We never doubted that-”

James jumped in. “We just wanted you to know we were thinking about you, and Steve brought up that it would be nice to return the favor. I was thinking maybe we could help find you a beau, anybody you want, and by anybody, we mean anybody, not limited to conventional partners”

Y/N’s face began to flush as she started laughing, offering each of the men one of her hands. “James, Steve, I love you both to death and I would never want to make you feel like I felt anything else, but no. No way,”

The two men joined her in her laughter, but Steve stopped a little quicker than the other two did, looking down at his hands. “We just noticed that you don’t get out much. You’re beautiful Y/N, really beautiful, and it’s not fair that you have to be alone,”

“Oh, Steve” She gave his hand a squeeze, “you’re incredibly sweet, but my heart already belongs to someone. He…” Y/N’s voice trailed off, the ambient noise in the bar suddenly deafening. Peter could hear his own name, whispered gently from the depths of her mind.

James gave her a look of pity. “Oh, doll… did you lose him overseas? Is that why?”

Y/N was shocked but quickly covered for herself. “Yes, how did you know?”

“You’ve just got that faraway widow’s look in your eye,” James responded.

“Sorry for your loss,” Steve added quickly.

Y/N looked down and noticed her glass was empty. She stood suddenly. “It’s alright boys, it’s alright. Now, which of you is gonna do me the honor of joining me for the next song?”

Peter was pulled from the memory gently the moment James shot her a wolflike grin, drifting through the collage of colors and feelings for a moment before he heard his name, whispered from within the darkness.

There was a strong pull towards the light, dragging him out of Y/N’s mind, but something was calling for him to go deeper, delve further to find… well, he didn’t know yet. In a split-second decision, he threw himself towards the voice only to find himself strapped to some kind of chair, screaming.

No, Y/N was screaming. It was an atrocious, wet sound, and Peter could taste the metallic tang of blood on her tongue. He felt no pain physically, but he could feel the memory of pain, the phantom sensation of torturous, searing agony burning through her veins. Her screaming cut off suddenly, and Peter was once again pulled from the memory and into another.

“Prinţesă?” A man asked, and Peter looked up to find his doppelganger from the final portrait looking down at Y/N. He looked worse for wear, with dirt and dust coating his face and hair. Around them, the sounds of shooting and crumbling buildings rang out in the streets. Y/N was gripping his sleeve like a lifeline. “What are you doing?”

“Please, Pietro, don’t go,” fat tears ran down Y/N’s cheeks and Peter felt a pit of dread drop into his stomach. “You can’t go,”

“I will be right back for you,” Pietro reassured her, “and then once Ultron is defeated we will return to Stark’s compound with Wanda. Things will be good from now on. No more Hydra, no more sneaking around, just you and me and the whole world waiting to be explored,”

Y/N gripped his sleeve tighter. “You don’t understand! You can’t go. I can’t lose you like this. Not now. Not after I've only just found you after all this time!"

Pietro laughed softly. With a grimey hand, he wiped the wetness from Y/N’s face. “Draga mea, you do not have to worry about me. I am faster than those stupid machines.” Suddenly, a child’s wails filled the air. Pietro looked around, searching for the source, but Y/N didn’t budge, almost as if she expected it. “You need to let me go, I need to go help that child,”

Y/N shook her head no. “We need to go, Pietro, we need to get out of here. I can fly us off before it hits and then we can run and never look back. Please, come with me Pietro, before it’s too late,”

He yanked his arm away from Y/N’s grip, puzzled. “And leave these innocents to die?”

She nodded furiously, sobbing silently as she held herself. “Are their lives really so important that you’d throw yours away?”

Pietro backed away from Y/N slowly, disgust spreading on his face. “Yes,” he spat, “and I thought you agreed,” Then, he paused, “We will talk about this later. I am disappointed in you Y/N,” ...and then he was gone before she even had the chance to say goodbye.

The gunshots that followed were the loudest of all.

Then, Y/N was running through the streets, searching frantically for any sign of Pietro. When she found him, he was already getting cold.

"PIETRO!"

Her wail was deafening as she fell to the ground, scooping his body into her arms and hugging it to her chest.

“I can fix you, don’t worry Pietro,” she babbled, spit running from her mouth as she tried to push life energy from herself into him, “Don’t leave me alone now, not after all this time. I can’t lose you like this. Just hold on a little bit longer,”

No matter how much energy she poured into Pietro’s body, it just drained right back out. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. Somewhere in the distance, Peter could hear someone wailing his name, but he held onto the memory, gazing down at his dead doppelganger’s empty eyes.

Y/N’s babbling didn’t stop, even as the ground beneath her began falling down. She ran her fingers through Pietro’s messy hair and held him closer to her chest.

“It’s okay Pietro, you’re safe now. Nothing can hurt you anymore. Le ni meleth, Pietro. Everything will be okay now. I’ll be with you soon, nin melda. Wait for me. I am so sorry,” As an impact destroyed the street around them, Y/N pressed a soft kiss to Pietro’s forehead, and Peter was thrown forcibly from her mind.

“Peter!” Y/N wailed, hands shaking as she pressed a scarred palm to his forehead and pushed his sweat-soaked hair away. “Peter you have to wake up now, you have to wake up!”

He shot up, heaving in a breath that soothed his burning lungs. It was a shock to be back in his own body. Slowly, Peter realized he wasn’t standing anymore. Instead, his head had been resting on Y/N’s lap while he splayed out on the cold wood floor.

As he reacclimated to his body, Y/N wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed.

Once he had enough air in his lungs, Peter only had one question; “What the hell just happened?”

Y/N cried louder, rocking back and forth. “You died! I messed up and you died! It’s all my fault, all of this is all my fault,”

Peter pulled himself up into a sitting position. “Y/N,” he said firmly, “You need to calm down and tell me what just happened,”

She shook her head no, clawing at her hair as she dribbled onto the floor.

In a moment of weakness, which was probably warranted, Peter broke. “Y/N!�� he shouted, “Get it together! What. Happened.”

Y/N stilled, eyes dead. “I was trying to pull you out of my memories,” she mumbled, still trembling, “but for some reason, I couldn’t get you to let go. I kept trying and trying but it wouldn’t work. Then you just… collapsed and your heart stopped. I was trying to heal you, but I had to keep the connection between us going while I did so you wouldn’t get lost in my memories and- and-” her words devolved into quiet sobs as Peter slouched against the wall, lifting his hand and finding that his cheeks were wet too.

He wanted to comfort her. To tell her it was okay, that he was okay. To make sure she knew he wasn’t angry anymore, that he understood… that he loved her too. Somehow, though, he couldn’t find the words. All he could do was stare forward and cry as the vision of Pietro’s dead body danced behind his eyelids.

When Y/N finally quieted, she stood silently. “What did you see,” she whispered.

“Pietro,” Peter wheezed back.

Y/N nodded, wiping her face.

“I’m so sorry, Peter. You were never supposed to see that.” She walked towards the door, opening it up and pausing in the doorway. “Jimmy’s number is next to the rotary phone in the den and my bank card will be on the side table in the mudroom. I… goodbye, Peter. I’ll let myself out,"

Peter turned, reaching a hand out to try to stop her from leaving, but she was already gone, so he just let himself go limp, crying for a man he never met but knew better than he ever wanted to.

-----

Elvish/Sindarin Translation:

Le Ni Meleth: I love you

Nin Melda: My dearest

a/n: Thank you so much for reading!!! The word count really got away from me, but at least now all of the exposition is out of the way! Expect the next part to be out either today or tomorrow.

Please don’t post my work to other sites, thanks! <3

#peter maximoff #peter maximoff x reader #evan peters #evan peters x reader #quicksilver #fanfic #x-men fanfiction #ralph bohner

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berrysweetboutique · 3 years

Photo

𝓢𝓸𝓯𝓽 𝓞𝓒 𝓐𝓼𝓴𝓼 ♥ 𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓛𝓪𝓬𝓮 𝓒𝓱𝓲𝓯𝓯𝓸𝓷

@dragonplumbobs @alicesimblr @magical-happenings @rebelangelsims

How would your OC decorate a notebook or journal? What kind of things are written in there? Could you give an example of a nice entry?

Lacey is a doodler! The book itself is white, it’s covered in little rainbows and hearts of every imaginable color and even a few colors she tried to create herself xD she documented her entire childhood all the way up to 18, but did less after moving out.

Here’s a fun one!

“Dearest friend,

Tonight my seemingly uninteresting existence was disrupted by a handsome stranger in a letterman's jacket. I think he was more terrified than I was to discover someone living here. The way he stumbled over his words filled my heart with an unexplainable happiness. How is it possible to love someone you’ve only just met? Mother would call it reckless, but something tells me it was no mistake. Somehow he and I were meant to find each other. He says he will come back again tomorrow. Sweetness above I hope he does... I have more to say but I should probably end here if I plan to get any sleep before my lessons.

Until then,

Lacey ♥”

🌳 What is your OC’s favorite way to relax after a stressful day? Do they have a favorite book to curl up with? A hobby? Or do they have a nice bubble bath and have an early night to bed?

Lacey is an artist through and through and feels most at home behind an easel. Long day? Time to paint. Feeling good? Time to paint. Having a hard time? I think you get the idea! She enjoys reading, but has a difficult time pinpointing a favorite. Her favorite is usually her current read.

🍂 Does your OC enjoy hugs? What do they do as a show of affection for: their friends, their family, their significant other(s) or for strangers? Over all what are they like with receiving affection from others?

Oh yes! The girl is a hugger! And most people are too infected by her bubbly personality to realize they’ve just had their space invaded by a complete stranger XD She gives good hugs too. The kind you can melt into ♥

🍄 What are your OCs favorite snacks? Their favorite comfort food which always cheers them up when they’re down? Favorite meal to make? Do they enjoy baking and cooking and are they any good in the kitchen?

The girl loves potato chips! Doesn’t really matter the brand she’ll snag up whatever's available and start munchin. Lacey loves pancakes. It’s one of those distant memories she has of her father, so when she eats them, it’s a way for her to feel close to him. She’s fairly skilled in the kitchen when it comes to your basic family style meals, but not much of a baker.

🌺 What does your OC do to calm down when they’re scared or after a nightmare? Do they have any special comfort items or need to be reassured by a specific person? How do they handle this if they’re alone?

She learned from an early age to handle things of that nature by herself. When she was really young, she would go to her mother, but as she got older, her mother seemed to believe she was too old to be having such experiences, so Lacey learned to comfort herself through painting. Thankfully it wasn’t a common occurrence though.

🌸 What are some of their favorite things and why? List as many as you can think of!

Her teddy bear Roz. Her easel. Her garden. Things that evoke a sense of calm energy really mean a lot to her. Roz was a gift from her father and probably the first item she ever owned that wasn’t white. So he was symbolic in a lot of ways.

💫 What is your favorite fact about this character and why?

I guess I love the fact she is super flawed and impulsive hahah! She makes dumb decisions and her narrow view life really set her up to fail... a lot. I love her for that. Out of everyone she seems the most real to me. She tries so hard, but sometimes it’s not enough and I know for a fact we’ve all felt that way at least once in our life.

🌠 On a scale of 1 - 10 how Baby is your OC? BONUS when asking this question rate the OC yourself as see if the reply matches up!!

10000/10 She is beyond baby lmao and without a doubt loves every second of the attention.

#the sims 4 #sims 4 #ts4 #berry sweet sims

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bring-it-all-down · 3 years

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I’d like to talk a little bit about why I think Black Sails, while definitely tragic, is NOT a tragedy. Rather, I think that Black Sails ultimately is more hopeful than tragic.

The literary conception of tragedy is divided into two types, Greek and Shakespearean. I’m in no way an expert on tragedy, but broadly speaking, in Greek tragedy, the plot must have unity (it must have a clear beginning, middle, and end) in order for the audience to reach some sort of emotional catharsis. Most importantly, though, the plot must be driven by a character’s pointless struggle to avoid their fate brought on by their hubris (an attempt to become like a god), which has been predetermined (largely from prophesies) and from which they cannot escape. For instance, everything Oedipus attempts to do to escape his fate of killing his father and marrying his mother only draws him closer to that fate.

Shakespearean tragedy, on the other hand, has a less clear beginning and plot, including many subplots that take place over a much longer period of time: it lacks the Greek elements of unity of plot, time, and place. Furthermore, the struggle is driven not by divine prophecy but by a character’s struggle between good and evil; the character is doomed not by an external power but by an internal failing. Thus, while the tragic hero in Greek plays gains full knowledge of the situation by the end, the Shakespearean tragic hero rarely gains self-knowledge. In essence, Greek tragedy is more plot-focused and Shakespearean tragedy is more character-focused.

Although Black Sails has a predetermined end thanks to both Treasure Island and the historical context of piracy, if it was to be a tragedy, it would be a Shakespearean tragedy, not a Greek tragedy. The plot is complex, focusing on a number of characters, and is driven largely by the characters’ internal struggles. However, the show differs in several key ways that ultimately prevent it from being a full tragedy.

Most importantly, Black Sails lacks a real tragic hero, who in Shakespearean tragedy is somebody well-regarded––often a member of the nobility––who is fundamentally a good person, but whose fatal flaw leads to his downfall and the downfall of society at large. As Tom McAlindon puts it in his article, “What is Shakespearean Tragedy?”:

The hero’s fall involves a self-betrayal or loss of identity which constitutes the breakdown in the balance of a richly-endowed nature, one in which feeling is so powerful that it is never far from the point of destructive excess...loosely speaking, then, anger and ambition (including pride, a sense of honor, and the desire for glory), and, on the other hand, love and grief, are the passions whose overflow brings disaster; and it should be stressed that the first pair are to be seen in as positive a light as the second (9-10).

This tragic hero frequently wants to do good, but is blind to the truth of reality, and his initial errors in judgment due to this blindness compound over time, leading to his destruction. Throughout this decline, the ‘hero’ status is maintained through a constant reminder of the environment in which the tragic hero exists; Othello’s paranoia, for instance, is in part a product of the racism in Venetian society. Furthermore, the tragic hero is always juxtaposed by a manipulative figure who knowingly attempts to rouse the hero’s passions for his own gain.

In Black Sails, the person who most closely matches this description is Flint, a high-ranking pirate who commands the respect of his inferiors. Flint certainly is driven by some continuously shifting combination of ambition, love, and grief. His entire project is one dedicated to honoring Thomas’s memory, but it’s also very true that Flint enjoys being in power. He relishes the opportunity to take back command of the Walrus from Dufresne, and as much as he sees his crew as men rather than animals, he absolutely believes himself superior to them. His penchant for murdering those who stand in his way is constantly justified to us through reminders that civilization is even more violent and less discriminating in its use of violence. Furthermore, he is manipulated at times by Silver (though the extent of each other’s knowledge of this is questionable).

This brings us to the question of Flint’s fatal flaw. Unlike with Shakespearean tragic heroes (Romeo’s impulsiveness, Hamlet’s indecision, Macbeth’s ambition), it’s hard to pinpoint a singular flaw for Flint. To be sure, the guy has many flaws: his arrogance, his reticence to trust people, his anger, etc. But it’s difficult to pick out a singular flaw that leads to his demise. In fact, it’s perhaps his abandonment of these flaws that results in his death (“Flint” died, regardless of how you interpret the ending). He trusts Silver, he humbles himself enough to believe himself unworthy of overseeing a post-revolutionary world alongside Madi and Silver, and it’s his love in place of anger that makes it impossible for him to kill Silver. So, ultimately, his fatal flaw is trusting Silver too much, but this is not a flaw that is inherent to him, that he had even from their first meeting.

A second way in which Black Sails differs from Shakespearean tragedy also concerns the ending. In Shakespearean tragedies, the reciprocal relationship between the disordered tragic hero and the disordered society in which he exists comes to and end with the hero’s demise, and a new orderly society springs up in its place. In Macbeth, Malcolm becomes king, ushering in an era of benevolence; in Othello, Iago receives a fitting punishment, thereby restoring some sense of justice; etc. In essence, the tragic hero’s death results in the end of conflict and the beginning of peace.

In one sense, Black Sails follows this plot. The end of Flint brings about the end of war and the beginning of peace in Nassau under Max’s rule. However, we know that this peace is deeply unsatisfactory because we have come to learn that compromising with civilization is actually impossible. We learn that while the Maroons have a peace treaty, it does not extend to any other freed Black person, and it includes the Maroons re-enslaving people who come to them for freedom. We know through historical context that Jack and Anne only have a few more years of freedom before they’re captured and Jack is hanged. We know that Silver spends the rest of his life haunted by what he did to Flint. And so Flint’s death brings about no actual peace.

The key element that prevents Black Sails from being a Shakespearean tragedy, despite it fitting most of the typical components of a Shakespearean tragedy, is the idea that the central conflict––freedom vs. civilization––extends beyond the show. And so we are aware that no character’s actions will actually affect the conflict in a monumental way. Even though there is the idea that it could have ended differently, we know from the beginning, with our historical knowledge, that the revolution is doomed. The central conflict of the show is an ongoing conflict; there is no possibility of reconciliation as with the Montagues and the Capulets. While all Shakespearean tragedies begin in medias res, they have a definite conclusion, but Black Sails does not.

So, Black Sails is not a Shakespearean tragedy, but on its surface, it looks like it’s incredibly tragic. However, I think that, for all of the reasons I just talked about, Black Sails is actually a show about hope. Flint’s arc demonstrates to us that people can change, that hope can be found in a mutual recognition of suffering and a desire to end that suffering not just for yourself but for others. We learn from Max that nothing is worth doing unless it begins and ends with love. We find a deep sense of familiarity in these characters through the recognition that their battles are our battles, that their flaws are our flaws, but their failure does not have to be our failure.

Unlike with Macbeth or Othello or Romeo and Juliet, the Black Sails story is still being written and so long as that is the case, there is room for hope.

#black sails #I suppose there's an argument to be made that Flint's relationship with Silver is akin to his relationship with Admiral Hennessy #in terms of misplaced trust #But it's difficult to extract this into some statement of his penchant for trusting the wrong people because he often trusts the right peopl #like Thomas and Madi #So it's a tricky one

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longinglook · 4 years

Text

I may or may not have spent my entire Sunday binge watching all of I told sunset about you and Gaya sa pelikula and now I have so many thoughts and feelings that I need to write about them so here we go! Under a read more (if tumblr allows me to) because it’s 2k words hehe

First of all, I knew next to nothing about both shows before starting them. I had seen a couple of gifs here and there, but really had no idea what I was in for.

I started with I told sunset about you, which has 3 episodes out of 5 out. All I knew is that it was going to be beautiful and possibly sad, and it was. Everything about this show is so high quality, from the audio to the dialogue to the locations to the acting, just wow. The production is better than a lot of movies I’ve seen, and every technical aspect is perfect. I am really loving the plot so far as well, I find the childhood friendship to stubborn rivalry to grown up friendship again very relatable. I think it’s a very common experience for a lot of non straight folks to develop an extremely close bond with a same sex friend when you’re too young to realize what you’re actually feeling for them until you’re a lot older and suddely the jealousy and possessivenes all make sense.

I love the recurring themes sprinkled throughout the episodes, starting from the chinese vocabulary that expresses the core thoughts of the two main characters: rival, intimacy, secret, male protagonist, as promised. They could easily be the episode titles, or the names of imaginary sections the show could be divided into. It’s a great way to integrate metaphors and deeper meaning into the plot.

That’s how most of the communication goes in this show, deep emotions are never conveyed through words because words are scary and loud and they can’t be taken back once they’re out there. The plot advances though stares and gestures and touch and gorgeous shots of the landscape. The pace is slow with hour-long episodes that could each be a movie of their own. This worried me a bit before starting, and I have to admit that at times I struggled to stay focused, especially during scenes that set the mood but don’t do much plot-wise. This is just a personal preference, though, and in no way I see it as a flaw.

The dancing around each other the main characters do, sometimes literal, is frustrating but it determines an emotional build up that’s just starting to reach its peak. This is one of those shows that has me screaming if only they talked to each other, but the silences and unspoken words are so well directed and acted that it works. I struggle a lot with keeping in mind that they’re still in high school, they’re very young and I can’t expect them to act rationally just yet.

I was really worried about Teh possibly going the insufferable Theory-of-love-khai way, and I am still not 100% sold on him. When he started helping Oh-aew again it felt like he was just doing it to make himself feel better about the whole thing. It was frustrating to see him so possessive and jealous while also so deeply in denial about his own feelings, to the point where he had me rooting for Bas instead. He was getting better, but then he fled at the end of episode 3 and now I have no clue what’s going to happen next. About this, I really have no idea if they’re going for a happy ending or a sad one. I’m really hoping it will be good, because so far there has been barely any emotional payoff for all the repressed longing and misunderstanding the show has put us through.

I do like their dynamic a lot though, I have a weak spot for childhood friends reconnecting and an ever weaker spot for informal mentor/mentee relationships. Oh-aew asking Teh to tutor him until he passes the admission exam was an almost exact mirror of Yuri on ice Yuri begging Victor to be his coach until he retires and I loved that a lot.

Now on to the one issue I have with this show: it feels too much like an art film. It reminds me of Moonlight and Call me by your name, in the way that I wasn’t able to connect with those movies because they are too perfect. They are so beautiful and carefully crafted that I can’t fully immerse myself in them. There’s a filter that stops me from relating to the characters and constantly reminds me that this is not reality. It’s pretty, it’s extremely well done, but it feels like art. It has some quirks, some scenes that feel too artificial. One scene in particular, the one where Teh buries his head in the paper Oh-aew wrote with his coconut scented pen to sniff it, which is a direct parallel to Call me by your name, bothered me in particular. Just as it felt over-the-top and purposefully weird in the movie, so it feels in the show. It’s a way of showcasing how a confused teen deals with attraction he barely understands, it’s raw and animalistic in a way, but it’s so quirky that all it accomplishes is to remind me that I’m watching an lgbt show. It makes me wonder if a scene like this would make sense in a straight relationship because here it seems to highlight how different and primal his attraction is. If I had to pinpoint it, I’d say that I have a problem with media showcasing queerness though peculiar, purposefully awkward scenes like these instead of normal kissing and cuddling.

Overall, I can’t wait to see how this show ends and I still think it’s one of the best bls to air in 2020, if not ever. It’s refreshing to see something with a big budget used well! So far my rating is 8/10, which I know is a lot lower than what everyone else seems to think but it’s still very much subject to change! Just hoping they won’t pull a Make our days count, but I doubt they’ll go there.

And now Gaya sa pelikula. Wow. Again, I knew next to nothing about this show before watching, and I was coming from a 3 hour I told sunset about you binge watch, so the bar was pretty high.

And boy, did this show deliver. I was blown away by the depth and the humor of it. It feels like the writers had fun taking all sorts of common tropes and stereotypes just to show everyone how well they can be evolved and made complex. Two strangers who somehow find themselves sharing an apartment sounds like the start of so many fanfictions out there, but it’s so well executed and interesting that you don’t even stop to think about how weak the premises for their meeting are. It doesn’t matter and it’s not even that far-fetched, either. The sister and the neighbor are also two characters that start off as extra stereotyped, but in just a few scenes they unveil an incredible depth and backstory. It blew me away.

Each character is so realistic. Everything they do and say makes sense, they all have their reasons and their past and they react accordingly, it’s so coherent. It’s impressive how everything takes place inside the house and you barely realize it because things happen and the plot moves anyways, and the way information about external events and people is conveyed is so seamless that you don’t even notice it. In only 7 episodes (so far) they have managed to give everyone a complex background and personality through the use of objects and small details and wow don’t get me started on the music.

The soundtrack is SO GOOD. I never really pay attention to music in shows but it plays a very important role here in my opinion and, well, it’s exactly the kind of music I like listening to and ahhh I just spent 4 hours playing the first kiss song on loop so I might be biased. Right from the start in episode 1, when Karl gives in to Vlad’s music and starts dancing to it, it’s established that it’s an important element to the mood of each scene. I love how the dancing I talked about for I told sunset about you comes back here, but while I saw it as a hesitant dancing around each other there, here it’s the opposite, it’s freeing and it’s about accepting yourself. And the end of episode 6 highlights this, with the beautiful quote “You are entitled to a love that lets you dance without fear and shame.” It made me cry a looooot.

I think the development of their relationship is masterfully done. It doesn’t happen too quickly nor too slowly. Karl goes through some needed shocks that act as his wake up call. When I’m watching bl shows I care the most about them feeling real and relatable. I don’t want to feel like they were written by a straight person trying to guess what it’s like to be gay. Now I didn’t look anything up about the Gaya sa pelikula writers, but I’d be very surprised if they were straight. I can relate to both Karl and Vlad for different aspects of their stories and their worries and thoughts. There was one part in particular that hit so close that I had to take a few breaks because it hurt too much. I am a lesbian, I’ve had relationship with a girl that lasted over a year, I am out to some friends but not all. I never came out to my parents, who are both very open minded and friends with a lot of gay people and would love me just as much if I told them, and yet I can’t. It’s not just that, I am terrified by the idea of them already knowing or being able to guess. When Karl freaked out over his uncle guessing, it hit me so hard because I’ve felt the same way so many times.

Episode 7 was amazing. I hate badly written drama the most, and 99% of shows can’t come up with any good reason for drama but they have to put it in there anyways and it sucks. This was the complete opposite, I adored it and I say this as a lover of fluff. It feels right, I think it’s an issue that would come up between two people like them. They are both right and the only thing that could happen there is what actually went down. I definitely think things will be fixed by the end and I am looking forward to it, but I am very glad this issue was included because it’s so important and so true to many lgbt people’s lives.

Another aspect I absolutely adored are the multiple references to lgbt theory and language, and Vlad has some of the best lines I’ve ever heard coming from a bl. When he tells Karl not to be afraid of the word, when he explains that “you don’t look gay” isn’t a compliment, when he scolds his sister for not acknowledging the things she used to say to him by covering them up with her ally act, those are all such important and educative moments that I hope everyone listens to. I love that Vlad is not correcting some ignorant bad guy, but it’s his accepting and loving friends and family that make the mistakes, because sometimes being supportive your own way isn’t enough if you’re not actively learning from the ones you want to support.

This is a 10/10 for me right now. I can’t find anything I don’t like about it. It never feels boring, it never feels overdone, it never feels cheap or unoriginal. It went straight to the top of my favorite bls.

And now I can’t help but compare the two a bit, because yes they are two different shows but right now the relationships they portray have reached the same point: there has been a climax and now the one who is more confused about his sexuality is panicking and taking a step back. It’s a coincidence that I watched both shows on the same day when their last aired episodes end in such a similar way, but it really leads me to compare the two. I don’t want to put them one against each other or say which one did it better because that’s not the point of this, they are both two amazing and important shows who are excelling in what they’re doing.

Gaya sa pelikula is down to earth, it’s explicit and it’s straight to the point in explaining what’s going on inside each character’s head. It feels like watching real people deal with real struggles. I told sunset about you is a lot more subtle and quiet, and since we don’t really have a clear insight in the characters’ heads sometimes it’s hard to completely understand what’s going on with them. It’s a completely different way of narrating, and while Gaya sa pelikula makes me feel like I’m a part of the events, I told sunset about you feels like I’m just spectating from an outside perspective. They are different choices, but one of them ends up feeling a lot more emotional to me than the other.

To wrap it up, I highly recommend both shows and I can’t wait to see how they’ll end! They are both among the best shows of the year, both free of all those annoyingly stereotyped characters and plot points that most bls tend to overuse.

#meta #gaya sa pelikula #like in the movies #i told sunset about you #text

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daresplaining · 4 years

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A Few Thoughts About the Current Run

I feel like I ought to say a few things about my feelings on Zdarsky’s run, as of right now (August 2020, pre-Annual-- that may be important). I haven’t said much about this run, and I should admit that I actually stopped reading it for a while. At a certain point, I realized I was dreading the release of each preview, and took that as a sign that maybe I should take a break and just re-read some back issues instead. This is, above all, supposed to be fun; I never, ever want reading DD to feel like a chore.

That said, I am now caught up and feel ready to begin untangling exactly why this run is so distasteful to me. I’ve been fortunate to have other DD fans to chat with about this, which has helped me to pinpoint what my problems are... because on paper, this run seems like something I’d enjoy. Matt accidentally kills a guy; that’s always fun. Marco Checchetto is great. The story explores Daredevil’s relationship with the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen, which I love. Foggy helps Matt with an action-y Daredevil thing; that’s awesome. There are some very cool fights. Elektra is in it. Stilt-Man is (briefly) in it. It has all the trappings of an interesting narrative. But there is a giant hole in the middle of this run, and that hole is Matt Murdock-shaped and impossible to ignore.

I read Daredevil comics for a lot of things (anyone who’s been following me for the past few years might think I read Daredevil comics for Mike Murdock, and you may have a point there) but first and foremost, I read them for Matt. There is a lot that makes a good DD story great-- historically, the comic has featured great supporting casts, and that’s another problem with this run that I’ll get back to in a minute-- but Matt is always the anchor. One of the greatest strengths in Daredevil comes from the fact that the protagonist is such a compelling character. You are interested in what he’s doing. You want to follow his story. You enjoy being inside his head. I’m not saying that you can’t write a good Matt-free Daredevil story-- you definitely can. But if Matt is present and written poorly, the whole story will collapse around him, and that’s been my experience with Zdarsky’s run. Part of the reason I’ve taken so long to write this post is because I’ve been trying to figure out if my complaint comes from my own personal taste-- which is not a basis on which I can critique this comic-- or whether the problem is inherent in the work itself. Having discussed it with other people, I feel comfortable saying that I think the problem is in the writing.

Zdarsky’s Matt feels profoundly unfamiliar to me, and that in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but I don’t find this new version of my favorite superhero interesting. I actually find him a little repellant. If this run had been my introduction to Daredevil, I would’ve said “Nope” and read something else. Matt is a character with depth. He is intensely multifaceted. His relationship to superheroing is complicated, his views on justice and morality are rich and often contradictory. Zdarsky somehow missed all of that and has crafted a one-dimensional character with a blatantly black-and-white sense of morality. Matt’s reaction to accidentally killing someone seems to be to decide that all superheroes are bad-- something I complained about at the beginning of the run and which, unfortunately, only grew more annoying as the story progressed. Zdarsky’s Matt is painfully self-righteous, to a degree that makes him extremely unlikeable (at least to me). And yes, Matt has been written as unlikeable before. I actually love when Matt behaves badly; I find that fascinating from a narrative perspective. But I’ve realized that the key reason that has been effective in the past is because the story has never condoned that behavior. When Matt was emotionally abusive toward Heather Glenn, Frank Miller went out of his way to show us-- via the side characters, via blatant expressions of Heather’s pain-- that Matt was in the wrong. When Matt was a jerk in Bendis’ and Brubaker’s runs, when he drove his friends away, when he acted irrationally and harmfully, the narrative commented on that jerkiness and irrationality.

But Zdarsky does not do that in his run. He presents Matt’s irrational and jerkish behavior without comment or nuance, as if it’s a perfectly normal, reasonable way for Matt to act under the circumstances, and I have been surprised to realize how distasteful I find that, and how bad it makes Matt look. There’s a difference between having a character who is comfortably flawed-- whose behavior you’re supposed to occasionally question-- and a character who is just unpleasant and unlikeable, seemingly by accident. In the most recent issue (#21), Matt has an extremely upsetting interaction with Spider-Man, one of his oldest friends, and Matt is positioned as heroic for behaving this way, and it made me feel a little ill, because there’s no textual examination or questioning of this behavior. It’s just Matt, pushing people away, being Angsty(TM) and Gritty(TM) and lone wolf-y just because, in a way that is grating and unpleasant and completely lacks nuance.

The other major element of Zdarsky’s characterization of Matt is religion. I’ve mentioned before (as have other DD fans before me) that Matt is not generally written as religious, and it’s a strange phenomenon that this characterization has appeared in multiple adaptations (the movie and the Netflix show) while having very little actual presence in the source material. But it was a key theme in the Netflix show, and while hopefully that influence will disappear from the comics as more time passes, we are still in a honeymoon phase wherein MCU elements are still popping up in the 616 universe. It’s clear that Zdarsky really liked the show, and Soule as well; I’m certainly not letting Soule off the hook here, because the idea of Matt being devoutly Christian showed up his run first. But there, you could get away from it if it wasn’t your thing (which, for me, it’s not). Soule had whole story arcs that didn’t mention it. But Zdarsky has made it 75% of Matt’s personality. When he isn’t fighting or sleeping with someone in this run, Matt is angsting about God.

I hesitate to complain about this because it’s Zdarsky’s right as a DD writer to change the protagonist however he likes. It’s frustrating, yes, but not actually a sign of bad writing per se. Plus, not everyone is me. Many people-- probably including many people who were fans of the Netflix show and are entering the comics via that connection (which seems to be the target audience for this run)-- may be religious and may connect to MCU/Zdarsky Matt in that way. And that’s wonderful. I want to be very clear: it’s not the religiousness itself that I’m complaining about. My complaint is this: if you’re going to drastically alter a character, you need to back it up. You need to dig into it, make that new personality element feel powerful and real, and integrate it into the character’s pre-existing personality. And if you’re going to base the entirety of that character’s emotional journey on that new trait, you need to work to make sure it’s accessible to your readership. I, as a non-religious person, have no sense of why Matt is so upset about God. I have no frame of reference for his pain, either from my own experiences or from previous Daredevil continuity, and Zdarsky does nothing to develop or explore the basis of Matt’s faith, and so it all just falls flat. I feel alienated by this run. I see an angsty, self-righteous, prickly jerk ranting about needing to do God’s will, and then I put the issue down and read some She-Hulk instead. If Zdarsky (or Soule-- again, he could have done this too) had made an effort to actually explore and explain Matt’s feelings about his religion, rather than lazily shoving that characterization in there and assuming readers will just accept it, it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much as it has.

Also, I feel I have to mention; this is a fantasy universe. Matt went to Hell and yelled at Mephisto in Nocenti’s run, and it was awesome. Maybe this is just me, but if you’re going to bring in religion, at least have some fun with it! Bookend Nocenti’s run: Matt goes to Heaven, runs into God, and she gives him some free therapy and a souvenir t-shirt (or, I don’t know, something). To give Zdarsky credit, he did at least hint at that sort of thing in Matt’s conversation with Reed Richards in #9.

I'm going to cut this post short, because I really don’t enjoy writing negative reviews. I’d much rather post about things I love, and over the next few weeks I do plan to highlight aspects of this run that I’ve enjoyed. But I’ll end by saying that the weaknesses in Matt’s characterization could have been mitigated by a great supporting cast. Having prominent secondary protagonists would have provided outside perspectives on Matt’s behavior and given the reader other characters to root for when he got too out-of-hand. They would have drawn out the human elements in Matt’s character and helped give him that nuance he so desperately needs. But this run, just like Soule’s before it, is woefully underpopulated. Foggy’s presence is extremely weak and his appearances far too infrequent. Apart from brief cameos in MacKay’s Man Without Fear mini, Kirsten McDuffie and Sam Chung have both vanished, and I’m worried that Kirsten might have joined Milla Donovan in the limbo of still-living-but-permanently-benched ex-love interests. The women in this run are all either villains or people for Matt to sleep with (I was pumped about Elektra’s return and the idea of her training Matt, but her characterization was disappointing (I may write a separate post about this), and Mindy Libris could have been really compelling as a moral person trying to survive life in a crime family, but instead she was just a one-note, underdeveloped victim for Matt to lust after). To Zdarsky’s credit, he has clearly been trying to give the Kingpin a humanizing story arc, but even that I haven’t found compelling enough to want to keep reading (though that could just be me). Cole North was intriguing at first, but he ended up feeling more like a concept than an actual person. And none of these characters engage with Matt on a human, emotional level, which is what a good supporting cast needs to do. I commented early-on that this run felt like all flash and no bang (Is that a term? It is now.) and I think I still stand by that-- it’s all bombastic plot concepts and big ideas without any of the actual development or nuance necessary to make them work. There is nothing in this run that has pulled me in and held my interest; in the absence of a Matt I can connect to, I need something, and so far I haven’t found it.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. This run was nominated for an Eisner for best ongoing series, so apparently someone likes it, but it has become clear that-- so far, anyway-- it’s just not right for me.

#Daredevil vol. 6 #Daredevil #Commentary #This is very negative. I'm sorry. Feel free to ignore it.

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i-am-just-a-kiddo · 3 years

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post your top 5 OTPs and tag people

thanks for tagging me @vishcount 💖

choosing my otps for this was fun but so incredibly difficult because i have countless pairings that i love? i tried to think about the ones that gave me the most Feels this past year. there were many that didn’t make it on this list but i think i feel quite content with the ones i chose? all of them impacted me a lot.

Zhou Zishu/Wen Kexing - Word of Honor/ Faraway Wanderers

If you’ve been following me the past few months you know. Something about their gentleness wrapped in raw emotions pains me so much. Am trying to keep it short, but if I had to pinpoint what I love about these two is how they’ve fallen into each other so deeply, starting from light attraction to deep understanding and love. Idk mate, maybe it’s also the concept of two fucked up and flawed characters finding comfort and someone equal in each other. I’m currently reading the web novel and here too, I’m just aching over them.

Matteo Florenzi/ David Schreibner - DRUCK

I watched the third seaon of DRUCK a few months ago and it was one of those shows that made me cry the most recently. I adored how DRUCK managed to capture the realness that SKAM had before, the authentic and deeply personal stories of people that feel so incredibly close to me. I loved how despite everything being complicated and chaotic, in the end, they simply loved each other so much. Despite the struggles they both faced, they managed to find back to each other and not give up? Both David’s and Matteo’s stories hit very close to home. I also want to applaud DRUCK for making references and parallels to season 3 of SKAM but still making it completely different and unique in its own way.

Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji - The Untamed

The amount of times I’ve talked about Wangxian in these tag games is just growing so I don’t know what else to say? They’ve made a home in a my heart and that’s where they live now, I don’t make the rules.

Fatou Jallow/ Vu Kieu My - DRUCK

Yes, DRUCK made it on here two times and honestly, it’s what it deserves. Fatou’s season was the first season of DRUCK I watched and it accompanied me during winter so I feel incredibly fond of them. I could relate to them both so much and I especially adored how yes, their relationship was the center of the season, but it was actually not the main conflict or theme? I loved how they could explore themselves through each other, and also how they managed to return to each other once they were ready. I know this is basically every SKAM(remake) pairing ever but god, that is some good shit. I’m just so glad that shows focused on teenagers like this exist.

Mu Nihuang & Mei Changsu & Xiao Jingyan - Nirvana in Fire

Oh boy. I have talked about these three so much already, I will keep it down this time. I couldn’t choose between either of them, because they all hurt me equally. Admittedly, the show focuses a lot more on XJY’s and MCS’s relationship, so I have lived through XJY’s pain the most, thus I might be quite biased in the way that his entire storyline hurts me the most. But that doesn’t take away from the pain of MNH’s and MCS’s relationship, even if it MNH doesn’t receive as much focus on the show as the other two. I’ve discovered her on my own, and made sense (or not sense) of the relationship between these three and god. I also keep saying that I like all interpretations of their relationship, but I do feel inclined to say that XJY was absolutely in love with his best friend and advisor. Other than that, I simply adore and hurt for them, no matter in which way.

BONUS:

Nie Huaisang/Mo Xuanyu - The Untamed

this image is from @vishcount’s absolutely stunning edit that they made for me, so please go give that some love. there are absolutely no visuals for these two and I’m still absolutely in love with this edit ❤ I decided to add them because this has somehow become such an incredibly personal pairing for me. they are practically non-existant in canon, and yet I managed to find everything in them? I might blame the 30k fic I wrote on them last year which has somehow become my own personal magnum opus. Everything hurts and nothing is okay, but who doesn’t like a good tragedy? Apparently I can’t get enough of it.

anway, enough with my ramblings! i’m tagging @isabellaofparma, @cortue, @the-cloud-whisperer, @intyalote, @sassyassassy ! maybe you have fun with this

#oh boy i feel sad for the ones i left out #i am mainly mourning teh and oh from sunset #and chilu #also nottpun???#but i guess there is not time for everyone here #sad #thanks for tagging me again!!#tag game #personal #long post

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tibby · 3 years

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hello dearest tubular tibby. this is a big question but when do you think glee went wrong? like, what was the point of no return? and what would glee have been like if it was written by you? i would pay a lot of money to see glee: a tibby production and i dont have a lot of money. Sending you lots of love!

a year ago, i probably would have told you that it went downhill after season one, but revisiting season two has made me a lot of fonder of it than i was ten years ago. i still prefer s1, but i do think s2 - for the most part - does manage to keep the campy charm of season one, while balancing it out nicely with more serious topics. most of the musical numbers are good (rocky horror is one of their best, if not THE best theme episode they did), it has some of the standout episodes of the show (the substitute, furt, the sue sylvester shuffle, silly love songs, blame it on the alcohol, sexy), the cast were solid all around, and ryan murphy’s favouritism towards lea and darren had yet to impact the show too much. i think some plots weren’t handled as well as they should have (as a quinn stan, i have a lot of feelings about how all of her storylines could have been written so much better, but the lucy stuff would have been such a good way to delve more into her insecurities/body issues/obsession with perfection - instead, it was just a weird fatphobic mess), but i think stuff like santana’s sexuality and burt’s heart attack were pretty decent for glee. like, yeah, burt’s near death is intercut with finn singing losing my religion over a sandwich, but the weird mix of heart and humour is what made glee work, and you can’t expect more from a show that often covered hot topics with all the subtlety of a hand grenade.

and i’m an unapologetic riverdale stan, i love that show because it’s ridiculous and dramatic and over the top and illogical. because riverdale is self aware about that. and glee, for all its many flaws, was pretty self aware about that too in the beginning.

the problem started when the show got too caught up in its own fame.

season three continued to bring us ridiculous plots mixed in with serious ways, but it was no longer a perfect balancing act. it no longer felt as if it was fun but also touching, it just felt....messy. i’m not sure if i could pinpoint the exact moment it fell apart, because s3 was just a disaster that i erased from my memory as much as i could...but, i don’t know, maybe on my way? shoving regionals, karofsky’s suicide attempt (intercut with blaine singing cough syrup), finn and rachel’s near wedding, and quinn getting hit by a truck into 42 minutes was just...Bad. and it’s the kind of thing glee s1 might have just managed to pull off, but in s3, it just meant all the plots fell flat and lacked the emotional punch they could have otherwise delivered. no longer did glee have that spark that made us willing to overlook stupid plots and contrived relationships. it suddenly just became an overly complicated disaster that tried to shove as many social issues as it could into every episode to get people talking. also, if you didn’t care much for blaine/klaine and rachel, then every episode started to feel like a marathon. characters who had been there since the start were pushed aside, and boring/tacky/underdeveloped characters like sugar, the irish guy, and the christian guy were shoved in.

but i STILL think glee would be looked back on fondly had s3 been it. it absolutely was beginning to fall apart, and a lot of us fell out of love around this time, but their final few episodes made us love it again. paradise by the dashboard light is hands down the best new directions performance, and their overall nationals performance gave everyone a chance to shine. plots were wrapped up, the glee club won, and we were treated to an adorable montage set to tongue tied by grouplove. everyone was happy, they had their futures ahead of them, and people were teary eyed at the thought of saying goodbye to our kids. curtain call, fade to black, play them out. a ridiculous teen drama that existed in the only years were it really could have to make the kind of impact it made and get away with the stuff they did. nothing else like it, let us cherish the memories we made.

but then it continued. and nearly every new character felt like cheap replacements of the original cast, and plots were handled with less care than ever before but things were more serious, they ran out of songs to cover, there were constant and needless guest stars...it was no longer a show about a group of underdogs triumphing over adversity by singing avril lavigne songs. it was a shoddily stuck together mess of recycled storylines, unhealthy relationships, increasingly bad song choices, and matthew morrison’s greasy hair. glee, put simply, was no longer fun. and it didn’t have enough heart to redeem the lack of entertainment. we stopped tuning in, and those who kept up only did because of characters they had fallen in love with during season one. it had become exhausting, and we decided to cut our losses from one of our first big show betrayals and leave.

(sidebar: i do think that the quarterback might be the best episode of the entire show, but i think it’s an outlier and really...can’t be counted with the rest. it exists solely because of a real life tragedy, and real life emotions were going to make it entire something else entirely. it can’t really be included in the chart of ��good glee” and “bad glee,” because it wasn’t about the show. it was about cory, and i don’t think it should be included in my overall opinion of when the show jumped the shark.)

i’ve tried watching some of the “better” episodes of the later seasons to see how i felt, but that charm was long gone. no matter which characters they brought back, or what plots took place, there was just no more enjoyment in glee. the spark that made season one shine despite everything had completely gone out. it had dimmed a bit over season two and three, but could still shine through sometimes. not anymore.

all that said, i don’t think i could ever write a show like glee, let alone glee itself. glee was not a show that could have been made before 2009, and it isn’t a show that could be made now. RIB’s insanity and jackassery might have brought about the show’s eventual downfall, but it’s also what made it work at the start. too much of a good thing - or rather, just enough of a bad thing. glee influenced riverdale and riverdale influences me (SPRINGFIELD, coming soon!) but that show was one of a kind. if i were in charge, but the general tone and vibes of the show got to remain the same, i guess my biggest thing would be less of blaine and rachel and brittany and kurt, more of quinn and mercedes and tina and santana. both as characters and their various dynamics. but that’s also just my personal character/ship preferences at work, as opposed to anything constructive. glee: a tibby production, would just be a lot of quinn character study (because she will always be my number one) in which her family, body image, religious guilt, relationship to motherhood both as a mother and child, sexuality, view of sex, etc were all properly explored.

but that’s a whole other thing.

#i don't think this actually answered your question. sorry.#thanks for letting me ramble though MWAH #ask #Anonymous #suicide ment //

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lilydalexf · 4 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Elizabeth Rowandale

Elizabeth Rowandale has 16 stories at Gossamer spanning from 1995 to 2012, plus she has more at AO3 (other fandoms too). She's been giftng the fandom with stories for a long time! I've talked about some of my favorites of her stories before, including Hallways and Water's Edge. Big thanks to Elizabeth for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Yes and no. When I find myself suddenly caught up in a fandom that has already lived its glory days (which happens a lot, I'm habitually late to the party), I am always ravenous for fic written during the original run - it always has a different perspective and voice and it's like a little bit of the experience captured in time -- so I can understand how others would be interested in my past. That said, some of my early stuff is pretty awful. LOL. I have left it online for two reasons: 1. Nostalgia, 2. I know there are some fics I've read in my life that may not have been the best written in a literary sense, but just had something magical about them that fed exactly what I needed. And I would hate it if the author took down that work and I could never find it again (which has happened). So I try to respect that same sentiment should it appear in one of my readers. I'd say by about 6th or 7th season of the original run, my work became presentable. :) My largest X-Files work ("Water's Edge") was begun during the original run and completed about a year after the show ended. That one I definitely still claim as my work, even though there's certainly stuff I would fix if I were writing it now.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

So many things! Let's start with my husband. :D I met the love of my life on the X-Files newsgroup in spring of 1995. We were married a year later, and we are still married 24 years later and have a 20 year old daughter. One of the most important friendships of my life came from being part of this fandom - she began as an "Edgehead" during the original posting of "Water's Edge". The fandom brought me my family, friends, and made me believe in myself as a writer and, in some ways, as a person worth being friends with, for the first time in my life. It's kind of crazy, really, how different my life would be without it. The experience was not without its flaws. There was a lot of judgementalism, a lot of cliquishness, a lot of snobbery. I was condemned almost as much as I was welcomed. But in the end it was all worth the life experience.

As far as the fic itself, X-Files was my first real experience with fanfic, and it thoroughly spoiled me for all other fandoms forever, because the sheer VOLUME of professional quality work being put out there was mind-boggling. I expected all fandoms to be like this, and the fact is this is extremely rare and precious. I think I could read X-Files fic for the rest of my life and never run out of pieces worth reading.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I started out primarily on a.t.x.c.. Then progressed to mailing lists (especially Scullyfic/E-muse!), and later was very involved on The Haven. The Haven was quite a magical experience.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I think I answered this by over-babbling on the question above. :D But ultimately, I think I would have to say my belief in literature as a tool to connect people on an intimate level that almost nothing else can. To give people a brief moment of sharing their precious internal worlds and inviting someone else to step into it with them.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

Really, it was inevitable. It has all the classic tropes that have always spoken to me - Supernatural horror, law enforcement partners, partner UST, misfits as heroes, haunting soundtrack. But amusingly enough, my first impression of it was negative. My mother and I had been religiously watching "Sightings", a FOX reality show (before "reality shows" were a thing) on the supernatural. Then that got cancelled and they replaced it with some show that was about fictionalized encounters with and investigations of the paranormal. And we were like WTF we don't want that, we want real investigations and evidence! So I didn't watch it out of protest. :D Then one night I stumbled upon it when I had nothing to do and watched "Lazarus". I thought the show was okay, but that I could never really get invested in it because there was no real chemistry between Mulder and Scully (yes, you can laugh me out of the room now :D). But the thing is, you can't FIND the significant moments in that episode unless you're already embroiled in their world. Like when Mulder calls her "Dana" on the phone and we all know he's panicking big time -- this was my first episode, so I assumed he always called her Dana, no big. Some time passed, then I saw Conduit. And Tooms. And I started to get really sucked in. Then I saw Genderbender. Now, if you know me at all, you know since I was about 6 years old, my life has revolved around my current muse. I get obsessed with a certain actress/performer/character, and that becomes my lens for the whole world (yes, at 6 it was Lynda Carter as Diana Prince). I have always moved from one Muse to the next, and the few times I've been without a focus person I'm very untethered and unproductive. So, I'd been in one of my longest dry spells following my Madonna and Vivien Leigh obsessions, mostly focusing on reading Dean Koontz books, when X-Files came along. And this obsession was unique in that I can actually pinpoint the moment I fell. I was sitting in my bedroom watching Genderbender, and they were outside the general store and Scully had just been touched by Brother Andrew and was a little tripped out and staring after the horse and cart when Mulder stepped up to see if she was okay, and...I actually felt myself falling for Gillian Anderson. And there was this moment of both elation and bittersweetness, because I knew how all-consuming my obsessions could be and the emotional rollercoaster they could entail (especially when I was younger, I'm a little better armored now :)). But I have no control over when and where they hit. But I knew by the end of that episode that I was off on another wild ride of the muse. :)

So, the short answer is -- Gillian Anderson. :D

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

Truthfully, I can't experience anything without writing fanfic in my head. I've been doing it in one form or another my whole life, I just didn't know until the X-Files (and the internet) how many other people were like me!! I started writing X-Files fic before I was even online. In fact, The X-Files was the reason I got my first internet service - because the fandom was moving online and I didn't want to miss out. I read my first fanfic in the Unofficial X-Files Fanclub monthly zine and it fascinated me. I wrote my first X-Files fic, a first season story called "Silent Lines", before I had ever been on the internet, and I had it published in that same fanclub newsletter. (I was already writing original fiction, hoping to make writing my career). Later, after I had joined the internet XF community, I wrote a post-ep to "Irresistible" that I posted online. That was my first online fic. Some time after (and a few more fics down the road) when all the rights to "Silent Lines" had reverted to me, I posted that online as well.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I dabble now and then. :) When the reboot came about, I came back to the old stomping grounds and reconnected with some of the Old Guard. I still have a fair amount of pretty Mulder and Scully on my Twitter feed, and I continue to follow all Gillian Anderson's new projects. But it's not my primary focus at the moment. (My serial monogamist muse has another lover this year. :))

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Several (Stargate, Sanctuary, Xena, Battlestar Galactica, Once Upon a Time, etc.). As I mentioned before, almost none of them had anywhere NEAR the quality and quantity of fanfic The X-Files has to offer. The closest I experienced was the Xena fandom. There are some AMAZING Uber fics and Conqueror fics, many of which went on to be published as original novels. Some fandoms were colder and more cruel than The X-Files. Some were warmer and more generous. I was most prolific during my years in the Stargate fandom. I wrote something like 80 fics. It was crazy. I don't think I'll ever be that prolific again.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Just from anything? From television Dana Scully, Stella Gibson, Laura Roslin, Sharon Raydor, Regina Mills. I love powerful women with scars. Kind women at heart who will fight for what they believe in and whom they love. Mothers - whether in actuality or at heart. I love women who prove strength and power can be completely synonymous with femininity.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

A couple of months ago my husband and daughter and I finished a complete X-Files rewatch (original series and movies), taking our daughter through it for the first time. It was awesome to re-experience it all through her eyes. She grew up hearing about it, but had never seen more than a handful of episodes (and, sadly, the reboot LOL).

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

Every now and then I indulge in X-Files fic, yes. Sometimes new stuff, most often revisiting old favorites.

I definitely read in my current fandoms. For a few years I didn't, but lately I've been at it again. Right now my primary muse is Mary McDonnell, so I'm obsessing over her various roles through the years. Been reading fic for "Major Crimes", "Dances with Wolves", "Battlstar Galactica", "Passion Fish", and "ER" (specifically pertaining to Eleanor Carter).

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Of course. :) Mish's "No Quarter Given" will always own my soul. [Lilydale note: It’s a 3-part story: 1, 2, 3.] "Black Hole Season" by Penumbra, "Above Rubies" by Rachel Howard, "Blinded by White Light" by DashaK, "Sounds of Silence" by GirlGone, "Blood Oranges" by Syntax6, "Absolute Zero" and "Never Enough" by August. So many more.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

From X-Files, I can't really choose between "Water's Edge" which took the most out of me) and "Bridges" (which I wrote just a couple of year ago). I wrote them from very different places and I am proud of what I accomplished in each case. YMMV.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

Never say never? :D I still feel badly that I left the sequel to "Water's Edge", "High Tide", hanging after posting just a few chapters. I never should have started it. My muse jumped ship to another fandom, and there was really nothing I could do. And I'm such a different person now, I don't know if what I would write now is what people who loved the first book would actually want to hear. I came back with the reboot and wrote "Bridges" and that largely said everything I needed to say about what happened to Mulder and Scully after "I Want to Believe". So, realistically, that was probably my XF writing swan song. But I would never say I won't ever post another fic. As the saying goes, "It all comes back to the X-Files". (And, yes, there's PLENTY of half-finished fic on my hard drive. LOL)

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I do. Now that my kid is grown, I'm trying to seriously pursue a professional writing career from here forward. And I do still dabble writing fic in my current fandoms. Right now there is a Major Crimes fic sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to work up the nerve to post it.;)

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Once I'm inside my POV character's head, the narrative in my brain won't shut up. I flesh out and what-if everything. I fill in every moment that doesn't appear on screen. I talk to myself a lot and live in my head and sometimes scare family members. I get some sort of orgasmic high from things like seeing Laura Roslin grasp and tuck into her own hair when she's crying while my inner voice screams "OMG IT'S CANON SHE SELF-SOOTHES WITH HER HAIR!!!!!" I maintain a surprisingly sane outer presentation for the crazy obsessed artist I am within.

What's the story behind your pen name?

When I began removing my real name from the internet (for you young folks, we all started out using our Real Names and building our virtual houses on Geocities, then got warned from everywhere of the scary scary place that is cyberspace and started NEVER EVER using our real names, then Facebook came along and now everyone and their dog is out there with their real names, and Gen X is still going WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!??), I simply chose what I found to be a pretty last name (Rowandale). Elizabeth is my real name. Along the way, when I had started to feel confined by expectations for my writing based on my reputation, I challenged myself to be more honest in what I wanted to write by using the mental trick of a pen name no one knew was actually me, and invented "Rowan Darkstar" (the darker "edgier" side of Elizabeth Rowandale). "Rowan" was taken from Rowan Mayfair in Anne Rice's "The Witching Hour", my favorite novel at the time. Later, I went public with the fact I was Rowan Darkstar, and when I moved into my next fandom, I did so with that as my primary name. I have written in most of my fandoms as either Rowan Darkstar or LadyRowan with the exception of anything else Gillian Anderson related wherein I carried over the Elizabeth Rowandale since there were many crossover readers from X-Files.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

Many of them do, yes. For many years my mother was my primary beta reader!! Sadly, she now suffers from dementia and can no longer fill that role. My best friend came into my life through my Stargate and Sanctuary fic, so there's no hiding from her, and she is now my beta.:) My husband met me in the fandom. So...yeah, most of my close friends know.:) In my 'other life' as an Army wife (now retired) and suburban Mom not so much.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

The most reliable place is probably AO3. It doesn't have much of my older stuff, but I generally post anything new there. I'm Rowan_D on Twitter.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files?

No, you can't be red/green colorblind and be a field agent for the FBI. No, soul groups don't work that way, Scully would have been his lover in some lifetimes, too. Yes, someone with Scully's education and deliberate precision of language WOULD say "for whom?" and not "for who?", you are quite right to cringe. No, you can't drive to Quantico and back to downtown DC and have it still be morning. And lastly -- The Kansas town after which they modeled "The Rain King" is NOT brown, it is NOT flat, it HAS a regional airport, and the residents are educated and intelligent. I lived there at the time -- There was a whole layout in the local paper about the crew visiting for "authenticity." I still marvel at how that is even possible.

(Posted by Lilydale on August 25, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #elizabeth rowandale #xf fanfic author interviews

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sp33d-racer · 4 years

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Phoenix loved his job, really. He made money enough to keep him well fed, clothed and satisfied for at least 7 years if he stopped working at that moment. But he didn’t want to, because Phoenix loved the thrill of the chase. Phoenix was a car racer and a good one at that. He loved cars and the power that he had under his feet and hands whenever he sat in the car; whenever he pressed his boot to the accelerator. When he was behind the wheel Phoenix felt like he could fly. Maybe it was the near death experience at such a young age that had him craving to get close to the void. But with the good there was also bad. Now, to be fair, the bad wasn’t terrible but it certainly wasn’t fantastic either. Phoenix didn’t mind being social as long as he wasn’t the centre of attention, he despised having all eyes on him: he preferred very much to simply blend in. To watch, To choose who he wanted to talk too. Choose he wanted to fuck. Drugs and alcohol made party’s more bearable, the promise of getting laid was also a upside as well. And maybe if he knew that the races were being rigged so what? He didn’t particularly care. He got paid, money was made and that’s all that mattered. Phoenix didn’t care who got hurt because he never let himself get attached.

But then there was Jupiter. Jupiter was on two of Phoenix’s metaphorical lists being; ‘want to fuck’ and ‘want to figure out’. Jupiter was tall, dark and incredibly handsome and absolutely Phoenix’s type. He was always at the races, never as a competitor (Phoenix noted) always on the sidelines. The business he worked under was quiet extensive and employed people of all nationalities, ages snd genders so it was hard to pinpoint who was on the crew and who was the crew. Lucas Mikaelson was smart in he didn’t let everyone in on the secrets; the drugs, the sex, the tampering. Phoenix had met Lucas’ son - Thomas - at high school and he became one of Phoenix’s only real friends. Thomas knew of Phoenix’s car jacking tendency’s and eventually introduced him to his father, the rest was history.

It was a night that was an all too familiar scene - another win, another loss. Another after party. This time, Vegas. It wasn’t the first time in Vegas, nor would it be the last, but it was the first time Phoenix was actually planning on furthering his conversations with Jupiter. Phoenix had recently dyed his hair a shocking shade of bright red and for the party had matched a large Chanel Ruby earring with it. Phoenix was dressed in his usual leather pants, branded Louis Vuitton boots and low cut (tasteful) leaped print top. It didn’t take long for him to spot Jupiter having conversation out on the balcony with one of the other races on the team. Phoenix pulled his vape pen from his back pocket and slunk out onto the balcony. “You always look like you’re thoroughly enjoying yourself at these parties” Phoenix inserted himself rather rudely, eyes on Jupiter “Think you’ll get bored of them?” The other racer, Monica - Phoenix recognised her as - scowled and left.

Jupiter had a girlfriend back home but he wasn’t going to stop Monica from flirting with him. He would never cheat on Lily with another woman, she was much too nice for that-- much too nice for him really. But Lily was back home while Monica was right in front of him and the microdose of ecstasy made it hard for him to deny her advances. She let him touch his arm, even squeeze his muscles, but he wouldn’t let it go farther that than. Not that any of that was going to happen as soon as Phoenix showed. Jupiter looked at the racer and scoffed, then looked back at Monica who was already leaving. “You’re ruining my game, pretty boy.”

Phoenix wasn’t a bad guy. In a relative sense. The guys Jupiter couldn’t stand were the ones that talked shit about their girlfriends to other guys for a laugh or thought their dicks were so great that they gave hookers mind-blowing orgasms. Thieves were fine, he’d been raised by dealers, and met a couple nice hit-men in his time. But it was guys like that he couldn’t stand. So Pretty-Boy-Phoenix was alright. If a little eccentric. Jupiter looked him up and down. “Really embracing the Vegas vibe huh?” He unbuttoned the top button of Phoenix’s leopard print shirt. “Are you going to the slots later tonight?”

He looked Phoenix in the eye. Jupiter made it no secret that he found the racer attractive even if he passed it off as a joke. He had dark eyes you could get lost in and lips that were full but masculine. Jupiter was pretty sure the guy’s face was perfectly symmetrically which someone told him was a sign of attractiveness. Come to think of it, it might have been Lily. She was smart like that. The only flaw Jupiter could really pin-point on the other man was that his ears stuck out, a bit like Dumbo. But if Phoenix was self conscious about this he did show it, especially with his choice of jewelry. Alright there was one other thing that wasn’t super attractive-- “you look like a stop light” He messed up Phoenix’s hair. “Trying to confuse the other racers?”

Jupiter himself was dressed pretty standard. Dark jeans and a large, loose shirt printed with a graphic MF Doom’s mask, a few gold bangles-- since this was one of the few times their jangling wouldn’t get in the way of his work. Still, the most expensive thing on him was his sneakers. Jupiter pointed to Phoenix’s vape, “let me hit that. Unless you’re squeamish about indirect kissing.”

#thread 01

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helbramstrauma-main · 4 years

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Stranded

Masterlist

Racetrack Higgins X Reader

What happens when you are forced to face your biggest fear.

Word Count: 1196

One of my biggest character flaws is my fear of heights, it holds me back from so many things. For instance, rollercoasters, Ferris wheels, and amusement parks in general. However, today I am not at an amusement park, I am not even out of the house. I am currently studying with Racetrack but, we are avoiding studying like it is the plague. At the moment Race and I are in an extremely competitive staring contest where the winner gets nothing. It is just an excuse to not get any work done, and who could blame us? History is boring that anything sounds better.

Productivity has been thrown out the window and it is not going to make a guest appearance either, today is strictly a no workday. Even though it has been in my calendar for weeks as a study day. It is going to be a miracle if I finish this oh so important project. I mean how long does it take to reword a Quizlet? Hopefully not long as I can tell I am going to be waiting until the last minute.

Eventually, Race and I make our way outside into the calm, spring, air. The breeze is welcomed and it makes me feel at ease. After we reach our spot on the swing in my backyard it is a full-on conversation. It is one of those conversations where you cannot pinpoint where you are going or figure out where you started. All I know is that it ended with Race getting the ladder out of the shed. I cannot tell if I am completely out of my mind or I really do not want to be doing my History project, but either way, I can tell I am going to hate every second of it.

I am going on my roof, not for long, just long enough to realize that it is not as bad as it seems. However, I know it is going to be ten times worse than it seems. It is like when you think you are not scared of spiders but then you see one and you are reminded of the terror they bring you. On the outside, I am not calm and collected but I am only showing a fraction of what is happening inside my head. My brain is like the one time I dropped my math binder and all of the loose pages fell out completely messing up the order. I am terrified, I can hardly move.

Race makes his way over to a concrete patch and leans the tall ladder against the house. The ladder hits the roof with a few inches to spare. This is it, I am facing my fear, I am going to climb that ladder and I will no longer be afraid of heights. Deep down I know I am lying to myself but, it is the only way I will be able to get myself on the roof. That being said this whole situation is stupid. Race holds the bottom of the ladder signaling for me to make the first step. My sneaker touches the steel step lightly at first but I eventually bring my whole body weight down on it as I add my other foot. I already hate it, however, I still prevail. One step at a time I can feel myself start to lose it, even more, I can feel my sense of reality slip with each step. Each step as a new scenario: what if the ladder breaks? What if it falls over? What if I slip? I try to push these thoughts down but they keep coming up, but I prevail.

Each step creates a more vivid scenario but, I am determined to make it to the top. It is only a step away, one more step I have nowhere else to go but down. How I miss the ground and how it is stable and the fall from the ground is less intimidating. Unfortunately, Race had another idea, he wants me to step on the roof and lookout. He is crazy and wants me to suffer but I still agree. Another character flaw is that I cannot say no to Race, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much better it would be if I said no. Once I am on the roof I see the ladder leave its spot, I am stranded. I cannot even muster up the courage to yell at Race I just break down in tears not wanting to open my eyes. I am a three-year-old who lost their mom in a grocery store and does not know what to do, so I cry. I hear Race say something but I am too tangled in my own thoughts to understand it.

All noise ceases to exist as I am brought to a dark place, a place where I am alone and on a pedestal just waiting to tip over. This leads me to sit down as I bring my legs to my chest making myself smaller. I want to go down yet I cannot even talk, let alone move. Tears keep falling down my cheek and all I can think about is a small girl sitting on an unsteady pole, so far up you cannot tell which way is down. As I become more stranded in my thoughts I feel another person's presence as they wrap their arm around me. The feeling eventually brings me out of my thoughts, bringing me back to the real world. Reminding me I am not alone. After what feels like an eternity I am finally fully aware of the world around me I can hear Race. I can feel him cradle me rocking me back and forth. He keeps saying, "I'm sorry" and "You will be okay, I'll get you down". His words are almost as calming as his fingers untangling the knots in my hair. Even though I am semi back to reality I still cry. Not about the heights anymore, rather to just cry.

Sometimes I just hold everything in that I forget to let some things out.

At some point, I open my eyes to stare into Race's. The same eyes I looked at in the staring contest have become bloodshot as if he had been crying too. Like earlier I stare at him as he does to me, except this time it is not a contest. More of a signal to show the other that we are here. It feels as if we are the only people in the world and our situation slips. I forget about the rooftop, it is just Race and me alone together. However this time I feel calm, like the Spring breeze from earlier.

It is just me in Race's arm, cradling me and twirling his fingers through my slightly combed hair. It is perfect, I could not imagine anywhere else I would rather be, even though the ground would be preferred. I cannot help but feel safe in his arms like nothing can hurt, like I am on the ground. If I have to be stranded I would not want to be stranded with anybody else.

#newsies #newsies broadway #new york #newsies x reader #race newsies #racetrack x reader #racetrack higgins #racetrack newsies #racetrack imagine #fanfiction #fanfic #newsies fanfiction #romanticfanfic #newsie

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robert-c · 4 years

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The Abortion “Debate”

What has always amazed me about this was the completely untenable position of those opposed to the right to choose; as well as their moral hypocrisy.

Let’s skip over the theological debate over when life begins etc. unless we are going to live in a society where there is an official state religion, that should have no bearing on the issue. Only independent living beings can be supported, protected etc. by a government. Something living only while it is inside of a person, should give that person the primary say about what happens.

But let’s skip past that for a moment too.

Those who support these restrictions on abortion (all of which are intended to be a piece by piece removal of the right to a safe and legal abortion) believe some pretty strange things. For example, I read that a lot of women opposed to abortions believe that today it is being used as a means of birth control. There is not one shred of evidence to suggest that this is widespread let alone a majority of the reasons for abortions – BUT even if it were true…what would preventing such a woman from having an abortion do? Can anyone really be so naïve as to think that a woman who would casually have an abortion as a means of birth control would suddenly become a responsible mother? Or even use birth control? Can you even imagine her being responsible during the pregnancy? More to the point, would any of these people so sure that banning abortions for women like that actually adopt a baby from such a woman? People believe some pretty unrealistic things when it is easy for them to do so, especially when it allows them to have a simple answer to complex issues.

But let’s return to the often cited argument about when “personhood” should be defined to start. It sounds like a legitimate question but it is nothing more than a ploy to enforce a particular religious view point under the guise of a legitimate question. So let’s examine what happens when we try to go down that path. Pick any point you want before birth to claim that the fetus has become a person entitled to equal protection under the law, same as any other citizen. That would mean that every miscarriage, every still birth would have to be investigated as a possible homicide. Since the people who propose these sorts of restrictions don’t actually care about people as much as their simplistic “principles” we can skip over the anguish and emotional turmoil the women involved would be feeling. How does an investigation like that go? Do we examine every detail of the woman’s life? Did she not exercise enough? Or too much? Was she eating properly? (and what does that mean, exactly and who decides?) Did she perhaps have a drink of wine before she knew she was pregnant? And since we can’t always pinpoint the reason for the miscarriage how will we pin this on any one cause? The proposals at the heart of this “movement” are incapable of being enforced with any objectivity, fairness or accuracy. And any attempt to do so is just intrusive, in a way more personal than any of the other aspects right wingers love to complain about.

And what about those situations where health conditions force a choice between the life of the mother or the baby? Who gets the priority? If the “fetus” is accorded all the rights of a fully independent human, how does the law work in a case like that?

Let’s look at a big picture here. The one thing the world isn’t short of is people. We are not on the verge of extinction through lack of procreation. We have plenty of societal problems from people who were raised in dysfunctional families, why would we want to encourage more unfit parents to have children that they don’t want and can’t afford (financially or emotionally) to raise? I think this goes back to the idea of not wanting to be wrong and to have simple answers for all of life’s complicated issues.

I suppose we should give some examination of the religious issue, even though a truly free society cannot have an official religion. Most, if not all, of the anti-choice forces I’ve read about or met, seem to focus on a Christian version of religion for an excuse to ban it. But consider this, abortion has been around for thousands of years. It was certainly known and practiced in the time of Jesus. And yet he doesn’t mention it at all in his teachings about moral behavior.

While Catholics don’t believe in artificial birth control or abortion, it is less them and more the evangelical protestants that want to ban others choices in these matters. I suspect that the strenuous objection to others choice of an abortion is the product of various preachers, and their flock. The same flock who thump a Bible they’ve never fully read or understood, and take their beliefs from a preacher instead of from the book they claim it comes from. In other matters they will point to a passage in Leviticus claiming to condemn homosexuality (which technically only condemns voluntarily taking the role of “bottom” in such an act) but omit mentioning the passages where they would be condemned for their polyester cotton mix clothing; for eating bacon, lobster, shrimp; or for their lack of animal sacrifices at the temple.

In short, the religious objection to abortion is irrelevant in a society without a State religion and inaccurate on its own terms. It is little more than a few influential people swaying a larger group of folks who don’t want to have to think for themselves. The unfounded fear that there are people, “out there somewhere”, not living in the same confining box, seems to be the real issue. It’s a lot easier to be an advocate for living in a 50+ year ago past if you don’t have to live side by side with people who aren’t restricting themselves that way.

Morality and ethics, spiritually or legally, are much more complex than simple absolutes. Admittedly, “thou shalt not kill” has a nice simplicity, a punchy “ad man sound bite” quality, but the better translation is “murder” not “kill”. And even there are we to make no distinction between a premeditated murder, and that conducted in a fit of passion or rage? And what of those who leave someone in a situation which reasonably could be expected to lead to their death? Try as we might to reduce the world and all of its potential behavior into a few simplistic rules, true justice and compassion demand that we look at more.

As a man, it is impossible for me to fully imagine what it would be like to be a woman facing the choice of an abortion. The best I can do is come up with the “rational” side of the argument pro and con, if it were my choice to make for me. But that ignores the emotional and even chemical changes that such an event would have on me. It humbles me to attempt to put myself in that place. At the same time, I can fully appreciate the fact that it is a decision I would have to live with and I wouldn’t want someone else dictating it to me based on such flawed logic and morality as the “pro-lifers”. I know women who support abortion rights and choice, who personally could never choose to have an abortion. And I know Pro Choice women who have had an abortion, who believe it was the right decision at the time, and are still bothered by the fact that they had to make that choice. This is the essence of understanding freedom and personal liberty. It is, in fact, the core issue of what real freedom of belief is all about; making our own choices and living with the outcomes – THAT is real responsibility.

Anti-choice forces have tried to make this about responsibility, about “when life begins” and a host of other quasi-moral and quasi-scientific issues. But the real issue is and has always been about who controls your own life and your own body. It has always been a huge contradiction that the same people who fear government “over reach” and intrusion into the personal lives of people support such personal and intrusive action when it comes to personal ethical beliefs. The only truly uniting principle of their agenda is to dictate their set of personal beliefs on everyone. They often try to portray this as what is happening to them. But look at the facts. No one is forcing them to have an abortion if they don’t want one. They are only being prevented from dictating the choices of others.

Then there is the return of the “Domino Theory”. As a quick refresher; staunch anti-communists of the Cold War era believed we needed to be militarily involved in stopping the spread of Communism, notably in Viet Nam, because if we didn’t stop it in that country, then there would be another and another until it was this country. As unrealistic and idiotic as this idea was its reincarnation in the abortion debate is even … well, crazier. According to this logic, the ability to choose an abortion is the first domino in a chain that leads to “mercy killings” of people with birth defects, mental disabilities and … well, fill in the blank for whatever will get you riled up. That would certainly be awful, but I’m truly at a loss to see how the connection works, they are two very different situations. And just for the record, throughout all of history, those who seek to impose their religious views on others don’t seem to shrink back from killing those who don’t share their beliefs, and that has got to be at least as horrible and much more likely.

Do we need any more evidence that the anti-abortion, anti-choice forces are more about control than morality? Ask how much money have they donated to anti-abortion candidates compared to how much they have donated to providing health care and adoption to women with unwanted pregnancies. If, indeed, you are more interested in preventing abortions and providing for the consequences of unwanted pregnancies, where is the financial support for women to carry a baby to term and put it up for adoption? Can anyone provide data that shows that at least as much money is donated by anti-abortion supporters to this, than to candidates who simply want to make it illegal?

As a final note, you may not be aware of this salient fact. Many years ago when abortion was illegal, pregnant women needing to find doctors who would safely terminate a pregnancy were often helped by ministers and others of faith. They knew the dangers of unsafe abortions and they knew of the heartbreaking challenges of the women. Some trying to provide for another child when they couldn’t completely provide for the ones they had, some fearing violence merely for being pregnant, etc. These were men and women of faith who actually were aware of the pain in all aspects of the choices these people faced and who were there to provide comfort and help where they could.

If this is still a religious and ethical issue to you, then please try to answer honestly for yourself: if Jesus were here today, do you see him as someone providing comfort to a woman in such a situation, or one leading the crowd to throw stones? And if, in fact, this is some sort of sin that God will punish, well He will have His shot at all of us eventually, He doesn’t need a political hack interfering with our free will.

#abortion #pro-choice

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27percentonrottentomatoes · 5 years

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I was listening to this song and I got an idea for a Drabble and I couldn’t stop myself from writing it. I’m not a great writer and the characters might be kinda ooc, but I hope y’all like it!!

Again

“I’m sorry, Marinette. I’m in love with someone else.”

His words seemed to rip through her. An uneven smile seemed to replace her nervous one, bringing with it a slight fog over her eyes.

Adrien reached out to her, hoping to give her some sort of consolation, some sort of confirmation that he hadn’t ruined one of his only friendships. Before he could say anything to fix this, she turned to leave.

“I-I think I should go. My uh-my mom doesn’t want me staying out too late...”

Adrien wanted to object. He needed to object, but he couldn’t come up with a valid reason why. He reached for her arm again, but she had already turned away. Every step she took further from him, he felt a step closer to running after her. Just as he began to move his feet in an effort to stop her, Nino grabbed his shoulder. He wanted to push Nino off, wanted to yell at him for holding him back, but when he looked back at Marinette, he realized doing so would only make it worse. Turning away, Adriens head dropped, remorse dragging down every part of his body.

=====

That night, Chat Noir sat on Marinette’s balcony, agonizing on whether he should knock or return to his own lonely bedroom. However, before he got the chance, Marinette opened her skylight.

“Chat, if you’re going to sit on my balcony, you could at least tell me you’re here. I’ve been waiting for you to knock for ten minutes.”

Chat’s face burned a bright pink, the heat consuming the space not hidden by his mask. He stuttered for a moment, trying to come up with an excuse. Now that he was actually in front of Mari, he had no idea what to say.

The light giggle that escaped her surprised Chat. He could clearly see her swollen eyes. It was obvious she’s been crying.

“You’re such a silly kitty.”

The words seemed to reanimate Chat. Sure, he had seemingly just broken Marinette’s heart and Adrien May very well never be friends with her again, but he could always enjoy her company as Chat. While the thought process was flawed, he let it go and decided he was just Chat, talking to his friend Marinette.

“A Knight must always watch over his Purrincess!” He said it so matter of factly that Marinette couldn’t help the next giggle that escaped.

“Since when do they let strays become Knights?”

Chat’s dramatic gasp was indication enough that he disagreed with her assessment of him, and it was enough to cause him to get up, as though he were going to leave.

“A strong knight such as myself refuses to take this!”

He had taken one step towards the railing when he felt a small bit firm grasp on his bicep.

“Chat...”

The desperation in her voice stopped Chat in his tracks. He was reminded of earlier in the day all over again and couldn’t stop his ears from laying flat against his head in disdain. He never wanted Mari to sound like that again.

“Please stay.”

The simple words, laced with heartbreak, completely broke Chat Noir. Without a second thought, he turned around and wrapped his arms around Mari’s slender frame.

The tight grip had a relaxing effect on Marinette. She could always count on her partner, in or out of the mask. Her arms were tight around his back. In a way, he was almost shielding her from the pain she was feeling, just as he always did in battle. With that thought, she let out a sigh. Even if Adrien didn’t love her, Chat Noir would always be there for her and she was okay with that.

=====

Over the next couple months, Chat Noir would often appear on Marinette Dupin Cheng’s balcony. Sometimes it’d be just as the sun sinks below the horizon while other times it was late at night, not long after Ladybug and Chat Noir’s patrol.

This particular night was late in the evening, right after his patrol with Ladybug. He dropped down onto Mari’s balcony, seeing her resting on her lawn chair. Her eyes were closed, as though asleep, but Chat Noir could tell she was awake. He had recently learned she slept with her mouth open, so the fact her mouth was shut now indicated she was just resting her eyes. It was one of the many things he’d learned about her in the past months.

Chat didn’t much think about it, but Ladybug has started to notice that nearing the end of their patrols, Chat would be ansty for it to end, and she quickly found out why. He had been cutting their patrols short, shooting off some sort of excuse, only to show up at Marinette’s balcony minutes later. Ladybug had to rush to get home before Chat got there, and tonight she had just barely dropped her transformation when the feline hero dropped onto her balcony. She couldn’t exactly say she was upset with the whole thing, but she was certainly surprised. When Tikki suggested he might like Marinette as herself, Marinette scoffed and waved the Ladybug themed god off.

Chat’s feline stealth played a unique advantage in this situation, as Marinette knew he was there, she felt the slight breeze of him landing, she couldn’t quite pinpoint his location, even when she opened her eyes. She had furnished her balcony a bit more when Chat’s nightly visits started up, but due to her rushing, she hadn’t had time to turn on the fairy lights she had strewn around. The only light was the light of the city and a faint glow coming from her room. Although the city was bright, Chat still hid in the dark, waiting to pounce.

When Marinette got up, the real game began. Chat loved to show off for his Princess, and Marinette secretly enjoyed it. Even being Ladybug, she had to admit Chat was impressive, with his night vision and his ability to be even stealthier than she. With this thought, she decided to play coy. She wasn’t positive, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to tell Chat was there if it weren’t for her being Ladybug.

“Hello? Chat, is that you?” She forced a bit of timidness into her voice, making a show of looking around. She couldn’t let him know she was Ladybug, after all.

She couldn’t see him anywhere, but she figured he was probably on the roof. It’d allow him ease of access to watch over her, as well as stay hidden. She moved towards the roof, making a show of looking around. She didn’t see him up there, but she decided to see if she could climb up there anyway. It was dangerous, she knew, but Chat would catch her if she fell. She had complete trust in him.

With that, Marinette put a foot on the railing, testing it to see if it’d hold her weight. After a moment, she realized Chat perched on it all the time. Hoisting herself up with her arms, she used her legs to propel her forwards up onto the roof. She nearly lost her footing, but a quick redistribution of weight allowed her to balance again. Finally, she was up on the roof, crawling forward a few feet before carefully standing up. As Ladybug, she jumped from rooftop to rooftop all the time, but she had the strength of her suit and her yo-yo then. It was a very different experience without Tikki’s power, and although Marinette knew Chat Noir was nearby, the fact she couldn’t see him added a bit of fear to the already reckless endeavor.

Marinette looked around, but still couldn’t see Chat. She decided he was probably hiding behind one of the chimneys or boxes situated on the roof of the connected buildings, and began carefully making her way across the rooftop, peering behind each obstruction to her view. She was probably halfway across the rooftop when she realized Chat wasn’t up there. He wouldn’t let the game go on this long, he’s too excitable. Plus, he’d never let Mari put herself in danger. With this in mind, she came to two conclusions.

One, Chat definitely wasn’t watching her right now. Wherever he was hiding, if he was there at all, he couldn’t keep a strict eye on her.

Two, if Chat was in fact hiding somewhere, he was probably relying on his hearing to guide him, which meant he might not know she was up on the roof.

The only other option was Chat wasn’t there at all, and if this was true, then who was watching her? Not only that, but she was now up on the roof, a very dangerous place for someone as clumsy as her.

The sudden rush of fear did absolutely nothing to help Marinette. She started moving back towards her balcony, trying not to rush, but Tikki had flitted inside to eat cookies and rest. It was where she usually stayed during Marinette’s meetings with Chat. Without Tikki, there was no Ladybug, and if she couldn’t transform and Chat wasn’t there, she was in a very dangerous situation.

The whole situation weighed on Marinette, causing her to lose her footing. She wasn’t right next to the edge, but she was close enough that if she fell backwards, she would more than likely fall off. Marinette realized this as she started to skid backwards, the gravel rooftop only helping her to fall further.

She let out a small yelp before her hips hit something sharp on the side of the roof and she tipped over the side. They building was three stories, and she fell head first, so her death was all but guaranteed.

The small cry from Marinette is what alerted Chat that the game was over. He was up from his hiding place, just below her balcony, and rushing into action before he even fully comprehended what was happening. All he knew was that Marinette was falling and he needed to catch her.

Thankfully, he got to her before she even reached the first story. He grabbed her around the waist and used his staff to bring them back up to the roof. He took a quick leap onto her balcony where he set her down gently, albeit sideways.

“Princess, what were you doing on the roof? Are you okay?”

Marinette couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She’d fought as Ladybug several times, fallen further than that several more, and yet she had never come so close to death. She felt pain on her hip, right above the top of her thigh, and she pressed a hand to it. She realized a second later that there was a piece of metal stuck inside.

When Chat saw Mari’s hand go to her hip, he swore at the sight. A thin piece of metal was sticking out, and Chat realized it must have been from a repairmen fixing one of the A/C units.

“Do you want me to take you to a hospital? O-or do you want an ambulance? I have a private doctor I can wake up! I’ll get him here right now!”

Chat was a little panicky. Sure, civilians have gotten hurt during Akuma attacks before, but Ladybugs Miracle Cure always healed them. Ladybug and Chat have gotten a little banged up before as well, but they were superhero’s! He didn’t know what to do when Marinette got hurt, and even though she wouldn’t talk to Adrien, he would do anything for her.

“Chat, calm down. It’s just a little metal. I have a first aid kit inside, but it hurts to move my leg and I won’t be able to take the metal out by myself. Will you help me?”

The answer was a given. He immediately swept her into his arms, careful not to move her injured leg too much. If he was right, it was probably lodged in a bit of muscle. It didn’t appear to be too deep, or too big, but it definitely tore the muscle a bit.

Careful to not hurt her, Chat maneuvered Marinette and himself through her trapdoor. It was definitely a bit of a feat, as Chat had to go first and carefully lift her down into her room. When he had her situated on her chaise, he was instructed to get the first aid kit out of the bathroom.

When he returned, a deep red blush burned his face and he had to look away.

Mari had taken off her jeans, the discarded, bloodied fabric lying on the floor next to the chaise. He knew that she would have to, to treat the wound, but he wasn’t ready when she had done it.

Marinette had a light pink flushing her face, but she didn’t have much time to dwell on her current state of undress with the injury. There hadn’t been an Akuma attack at all in the past two days, which meant one would happen any moment. It wasn’t often Hawkmoth went more than a day without one. This meant fighting with an injury, so she needed to get it fixed ASAP.

“Chat, I need you to pull it out. I can’t see it properly and I don’t think I’ll be able to.”

Chat took a deep breath and nodded, making his way over to Mari and carefully keeping his eyes on her injury. It was just so easy to let his eyes stray to her thigh, where he could see a freckle here and there. His eyes sought out each freckle until he saw her underwear. Light pink, with a small bow. They were plain, but he could tell by the thinness of the strap that they didn’t cover everything behind her hips. When the thought crossed his mind, he forced his eyes back to the injury and tried to force the thoughts from his mind. However, just like the fire consuming his face, the thoughts wouldn’t go away.

With a shaking hand, Chat managed to pull the piece of metal out. It was only maybe three inches long, but over half of that had been in her leg. Mari’s teeth were clenched, and she let out a breath before pulling a needle out of the first aid kit.

“Do you know how to stitch?”

The question allowed Chat to drag his mind out of the gutter for a moment, and Chat had to think hard on what she asked.

“I know how, but I’m not very good. I’ve only done it a couple times.”

Marinette nodded and handed him the needle. She couldn’t see the wound, but she knew it was small. Chat’s work would have to do.

“Princess... I think you should go to a doctor. I-I can’t...” Chat couldn’t take the needle from her hand. What if he messed up? He couldn’t stand the idea of ruining her perfect skin.

“Chat, it’s not a big deal. It’s a small wound. I trust you, okay? Please, just stitch it up.”

Chat hesitated for a moment. She trusted him? Before he could let that sink in, he grabbed the needle and carefully started stitching. He wasn’t very good, but he would make this his best stitch yet. He knew that a medical stitch was different from sewing. He had read on a few different kinds for a first aid class, but he had never done one. He did his best to remember the one most commonly used and put his limited knowledge to practice. When he was done, he could tell it was a little crooked, but it was stitched.

“Thank you, Kitty.”

“Mari, what were you doing in the roof? You scared me.”

His quiet confession surprised Marinette, though it shouldn’t of. She debated on her answer, but decided the truth, as silly as it was, was the best answer.

“You thought I was on the roof? But I was on the roof last time, why would I be there this time?”

His logic could only make Marinette laugh. Of course, how could she forget?

“I’m sorry, Kitty. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

With that, Marinette shifted, wrapping her arms around him. He really was her Knight in Shining Armour, though she would never admit that.

Chat returned the hug, holding her close to his chest. It wasn’t until that moment that he realized, but holding her in his arms, Chat realized that she meant everything to him. He was in love with her, and it had happened without him realizing it.

Being so close to Chat, Marinette thought back to the roof. When she had been falling, she only had one thought on her mind. She was in love with Chat Noir, and she wouldn’t have been able to tell him if she had died.

Marinette pulled away slightly. Her arms were still linked around Chat’s neck as he leaned over her. She looked up into his beautiful green eyes. A moment later, their lips were pressed together in a moment of fervent passion.

“I love you.”

In the moment they had pulled apart to breath, they both said the words that the other had realized moments before. The synchronization in which they held, their breathes, their heartbeats, their words, they all came together in a beautiful moment of intensity.

#ml #miraculous ladybug #chat noir #marichat #romance #love #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #sad #rip #again #my work

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youtiaoshutiao · 5 years

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go go squid! eps 1-30 - thoughts

i’ve actually read the novel for this a few years ago as a teen and it was just alright in my estimation, it was cute overall and a fun read but i largely forgot about it in the past few years. checked out the drama out of curiosity as to how they’d adapt it. have watched up to ep 30 at this point and i’d say i’m rather ambivalent (though i’m still pretty engaged) so here’s some rambling about my thoughts about my watch so far.

Ngl, the first 7 eps were unbearable to watch imo. I have a super low tolerance for secondhand embarrassment when watching movies and dramas (which is why i can’t get behind some high school movies/dramas) and it was uttermost torture watching tongnian stalk her way (very incompetently too, i must add) to k&k’s resting quarters, even getting his identity wrong (despite being fully capable of baidu searching him given that she knew his full name + found out he was part of a famous team), intending to go to watch him the next day but not even thinking about buying tickets till she was actually at the event venue and then being all righteous about not buying tickets from scalpers... Worrying about causing a misunderstanding among gun’s trainees yet continually getting near him and hence causing a misunderstanding anyway... Though i knew that it was part of her character setup (high iq genius but nil experience in love?) but i couldn’t bear to watch all this unfold haha. Coupled with the very draggy endless flashback scenes and all the testosterone-pumped angst about solo (and now 30 eps in i’m very into Li Xian’s turn as han shangyan but my eyebrows were hurting watching him furrow his brow 24/7) i was almost prepared to quit but was told that everything would get better around ep 8.

And lo and behold... it did. As predicted, around ep 8/9 a switch flipped and i began to be more engaged and enjoy the drama more. I was trying to pinpoint what exactly changed my opinion and i think above all, it was the character of han shangyan that really captivated/held my interest. I started seeing gun not just as the typical 霸道总裁 trope that’s just meant to be confident and commanding and therefore hot but more as a very complex and well fleshed out human (more so than the novel i think, but i can’t really remember at this point as it’s been years, and anyway the novel is a pretty short book while this drama is considered quite long for a modern fluffy cdrama thus allowing more room for exploration).

I really appreciated seeing all the dualities to his character, e.g. his god-like status in his industry and being the idol of thousands and thousands of youth yet seeing how this celebrity status does not translate to being estimated highly by the people around him, and how it does feed into his ideas and perception of himself to a certain extent, though he is also adamant on doing what he deems right, not caring what people think. How he as a leader of k&k appears unflappable, in control, and is determined, eyes fixed on the prize; yet his softness and care for his boys and the elderly he employs and his past teammates shine through in quiet moments and little actions. He has lofty dreams and big goals and aspirations for the future of his team, yet he is also a man bogged down by tons of emotional baggage, stuck in ruts of nostalgia and guilt and unprocessed anger about the past and unable to let go of past enmities or relations. Even his small little quirks amuse/intrigue me, like his sucking on sweets whenever he’s bothered, like his weird obsession with that one Beyond song and playing it whenever he’s Brooding about his past (though it’s probably just the drama’s way of shilling Netease Music lol)

Reading Han Shangyan’s personality/character arc as such, I found myself very invested in what was happening to him/what he was doing/his interactions with the other characters in the story. Even the flashback scenes and SP team scenes that I found very droll initially and still do to a certain extent now held more of my interest as a gateway to understand HSY more. He’s definitely not a perfect character and is deeply flawed, but I appreciated that they portrayed him in such a manner as he definitely felt more real. (though when it came to how this comes into play with regards to his r/ship with Tong Nian, I had rather mixed feelings about it, which I’ll elaborate on further below)

Similarly, I also enjoyed the fleshing out of side characters like Mi Shaofei, Solo, Su Cheng, Xiao Ai etc. Mi Shaofei’s arc especially was very moving and wistful to me, seeing him have his dream of being a champion rekindled at the start of the drama and going back to be a competitive CTF athlete, yet having his age and his lack of practice cause him to not be in top form and doing badly, and eventually making the decision to retire. Seeing him express regret having quit together with Han Shangyan back in the day in a pique of anger and not having this arc resolve in a neat, fulfilling way - I really appreciated it and thought it illuminated quite a sobering reality that timing and circumstances may not always yield the best outcome, that actions from the past that you thought were the right thing to do may come back to haunt you, that you may regret your past actions, that you may have to close the door on certain things even if you really want it. And I really like Mi Shaofei’s personality as well, seeing how he has a good read on his friends’ temperaments and personalities and knows how to diffuse tense situations (especially when Han Shangyan is being prickly and abrasive), how he values the collective above himself, like being happy that SP team scores improved greatly even when the improvement came about due to his retirement. I’m glad that he now has a new path which he can work towards his original dream of being a champion, albeit in a different way that he had initially envisioned.

The main thing niggling at me/making me feel conflicted as I watch the drama is actually Tong Nian’s character/Tong Nian and HSY’s relationship. I don’t really know how to explain what exactly bothers me so much about this, but here’s a shoddy attempt:

In comparison to how well fleshed out Han Shang Yan’s character arc is, Tong Nian’s arc sadly feels very underwhelming in comparison, and I wish similar character development was afforded to her character. 30 episodes in, I literally know nothing about her inner thoughts, motivations, character etc that is not Gun-related gushing. And this is all the more a pity given that her character’s setup was so cool - being so smart and intelligent, being so advanced in a STEM field, also having such a successful online career out of her singing hobby - all these hint at such an interesting female lead, but ultimately feels like an empty shell of a person. There really is no scene where she exists independently, separate from Gun or Gun-related thoughts pervading her mind - e.g. even when she is pitching some cool project idea showcasing her computing skills to the police department, she’s hung up on Gun after breaking up with him; when she’s invigilating a class she’s still thinking about him; she’s coding some new game for him; she’s doing some debugging... but that’s because she’s devastated after he behaved in a shit way towards her; she’s at some tryouts to be the singer for the ctf theme song! she’s showcasing her singing! but somehow... the show still managed to make it all about how she’s heartbroken over him; she uploaded a new song! ... but it’s about how she’s in love with him...

The show tells me she has a life outside of her crush on Gun, but it doesn’t show it as such. Though I also understand that this is due to the drama being centered on esports and hence involving HSY more, and Tong Nian is an outsider to the esports scene and thus her own activities would not be featured as much. It is possible that should they have chosen to feature more about Tong Nian, it might have affected the cohesiveness and pacing and how tight the plot is. But but but... she is the female lead, after all?? I literally know more about Mi Shaofei than about Tong Nian, and he is a supporting character! And precisely because the show did such a good job of fleshing out HSY, whose job and aspiration and passion and friendship-related angst etc lend a lot of fodder to shape his character and that is totally unrelated to his romance with Tong Nian, Tong Nian’s character development seems really lacking in gravitas in comparison.

This sense of imbalance spills over to my perception of them as a couple. I definitely am not opposed to or feel squicked out by huge age gaps in principle, as long as there isn’t some power imbalance and no teenagers are involved. But something about the combination of Tong Nian being all about Han Shangyan (at least that’s how the drama portrayed it, even if it was unintentional) while Tong Nian is only one part of Han Shangyan’s life + Tong Nian’s almost worshipful sentiments towards Han Shangyan + the show’s tendency to highlight how much sleep or time she sacrifices to do stuff for him, on top of the huge age gap made me slightly uncomfortable...?

I think I felt it especially during the plot arc of the second break up. The events of this arc were standard asian drama angst fare - interference from well meaning but biased parent leading to melodramatic wallowing in angst and mean behaviour attempting to drive the other party away... If purely viewing this arc from the lens of character exploration, I think the (rather ridiculous) events in that arc like HSY promising Tong Nian’s mother to not bother Tong Nian anymore and all his subsequent shitty behaviour towards Tong Nian shed some light on HSY’s inner self abasement and 自卑感 and was fascinating in that regard. But then seeing how Tong Nian who definitely puts him on a pedestal just internalised all of that horrible behaviour and accepted it and even kept on excusing his actions or asking him if she had done something wrong or if he was mad at her about the cat (though i also was mad that she just got a pet as a gift without asking beforehand lolol) or if he wanted her to do anything... that was SO painful to watch. (Until he implied that he cheated on her, thankfully she drew a line at that!!) I felt like it was bordering on cold violence to some extent? Not that any part of the second break up was Tong Nian’s fault, but just the way the show portrayed Gun’s way of pushing Tong Nian away and Tong Nian’s subsequent response made it harder to just dismiss the entire saga as just pure asian drama typical noble idiocy angst and left a really bad taste in my mouth. And above all what made me quite exasperated was how in the end, HSY didn’t even apologise to Tong Nian about it, and even attempted (and was successful) to get back into her good graces by listing all the reasons why he should be pitied and hence activating Tong Nian’s ‘Han Shangyan is so pitiful and I love him and want to give him everything’ mode, and being so smug about it??

(I feel like I come off as being rather inconsistent here lolol, earlier gushing about how much I love HSY’s character and now ranting about him. I think I just feel very confused about what to feel when watching the drama, and partially I think it’s because the entire romantic plot and all the events of the drama... require some suspension of belief and are not really very cohesive or well plotted, in the sense that it doesn’t seem to flow organically together with the characters’ emotions and responses? i.e. the character’s emotions/motivations/thoughts don’t correspond to their subsequent actions and the other characters’ subsequent responses to said action doesn’t seem proportional at times. So at certain plot points like how HSY got back together with Tong Nian so easily I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel outraged or just take it in my stride?? I’m not sure if I’m making sense)

Oh, another thing that bothered me was this weird machoism (?? not sure how to explain it) that I sensed at some parts. An example off the top of my mind would be the entire sequence of HSY and Mi Shaofei going out together after Mi Shaofei announced his retirement, with Tong Nian and Yaya trailing at their heels. Once again, from a character development angle, I enjoyed the dialogues between MSF and HSY, between MSF and Yaya. But seeing MSF and HSY pass their coats to Yaya and Tong Nian then embarking on some bromantic tension-filled run together, while Yaya and Tong Nian are left hovering around waiting for them to return and holding their coats; or seeing MSF and HSY give each other Meaningful Looks and then downing a whole bowl of alcohol in some testosterone-fuelled display of Manly Sorrow and Solidarity as Tong Nian and Yaya watch from the sides, worried... Then having Tong Nian and Yaya each attempting to comfort their respective men... idk, i think coupled with the fact that the show is centred around esports, and most of the esports characters are male, and a larger proportion the main female characters we see are not directly involved and are more on the sidelines, it just gives off the sense of like, the men in this drama having their struggles, their aspirations, their sorrows be forefront and central in the plot, while the women are just there to fawn over them and support from the sidelines and tend to the guys’ emotional needs and baby them when they are being grown children. I’m definitely not explaining this well enough and I’m not sure if my impression is valid or I’m just being a hater or being subconsciously misogynistic and projecting or something lol. I’d love to hear what anyone thinks heh.

Thankfully, that part of the plot is over and now the romance part of the drama seems to be settled and the drama I’m assuming is gearing up towards winning the championships. This is promising haha because personally feel like the esports plotline is more captivating than the romance. I sense that now that Tong Nian/Gun are a properly established relationship and both are fully on board the dynamic might change a bit so I shall see how I feel about their relationship in the last quarter of the drama!

With regards to the cast, there was all round quite solid acting imo. I thought Li Xian seemed to be overdoing it with the frowning and grouchiness initially but I think it was alright after a few eps. His microexpressions and meaning-loaded gazes and quirked-lip-smiles are pretty affecting. I watched some interviews of him and he seems really different from Gun in real life so that’s quite impressive. Plus I love his slight slouchiness when portraying Gun in the more personal scenes where the facade of gruff boss!han shangyan disappears lolol. For all my problems with the way Tong Nian’s character was portrayed, Yang Zi does a great job in her role too. I think her crying scenes have always been on point and it was no different here. Special shoutout to the actors for Mi Shaofei, Solo and Xiao Ai, who portrayed their roles really well I think!

Lastly on a random note, I’m quite amused by how the soundtrack copiously borrows from the Suddenly This Summer soundtrack, but I’m not complaining because the OST is pretty evocative and whimsical and makes me hugely nostalgic for STS :)

#go go squid!#亲爱的热爱的 #cdramanet #li xian #yang zi #李现 #杨紫 #drama watching #this is so badly written i cannot english #but i hope it makes some sense and isn't gibberish

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