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kaypeace21 · 3 years

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Analyzing the 5 plays in this drama club poster .From the bts pics of stranger things 4.

So... some of ya’ll know I'm going through the st s4 films given to us by the official st twitter + the films reffed in the show itself or mentioned by the Duffers in interviews .

So I decided to look at the plays mentioned here. Because even if we don't see the monologues in the show directly - the Duffers wouldn't name drop anything unless it inspired them in some way. Similar to films name dropped in the show. Tw : for some dark themes .

This is just a quick little analysis I decided to do since we probably won't get any new st content today (3/22). Nothing too deep. Just mentioning things that caught my interest especially cause these plays have a lot of narrative connections to the st s4 movies I've been watching.

Invitation to a march (Authur laurents)

Reminds me of the stancy/jancy love triangle. "A young woman is having second thoughts about doing the right thing and marrying a respectable , rich, kind, young man with good prospects.By way of a prewedding diversion, this woman becomes interested in the passionate but poor and entirely unsuitable son of a local landlord.Basically, the plot concerns the efforts of Norma Brown to choose between a conventional fiance who "puts her to sleep" but is wealthy (like what her own mother did) or go for this new-poor guy. The play is principally interested in how this youthful love triangle affects the three mothers involved (whether the kids like it or not)

12th night (Shakespeare)

- viola (el) wrongly assumes a family member (hopper) is dead. She dresses up as a man named 'cesario'. A girl named Olivia falls for 'cesario' (violet dressed as a man). "Finally, when 'Cesario' and Sebastian (violet's twin brother: assumed to have drowned - Will) appear in the presence of Olivia there is more wonder and confusion at their physical similarity. Taking Sebastian for 'Cesario', Olivia asks him to marry her, and they are secretly married in a church. Cough if Olivia is 'straight' cause she fell for Viola (as a doppleganger dressed like her twin brother).Mike being into el who multiple characters in s1 said looked like a boy and specifically like Will is...suspish and a hint he's not straight lol. just like Olivia they're both into guys . plus, this play just has a butt load of love triangles (ugh i hated that aspect). There was also romantically coded letters (which was in the s4 films) . One character is also thrown into an insane asylum and framed as 'insane'.'Pretending that Malvolio is insane, they lock him up in a dark chamber. Feste visits him to mock his insanity'. We all know the psych hospital will be narratively important- talked about it more here.

The seagull (Anton Chekhov-russian)

similar to how I believed s4 will show m*#even already broken up since the months between s3-4 : act 3 (s3) ends with Nina begging for one last chance to be with Trigorin before he leaves/moves away. They kiss and make plans to meet again in Moscow.And in act 4 there's a timeskip where it shows they've been broken up for a long time between acts- and its established they never actually loved eachother. Do i even have to spell out why this parallels the m*#even ending in s3? There is also a play within the play (this is common in a lot of the st films- they have plays- or a story within a story- which illustrate certain themes or emotions of the characters within said film : blackswan, children of paradise, highschool musical, Rushmore, book of Henry, welcome to marwen, never ending story, romancing the stone, wet hot American summer, etc).The play is Konstantin's latest attempt at creating a dense symbolist work. There is also alot of love triangles in the seagull. TW!: for se#ual ab*se/su*cidal thoughts/ inc*st (here and in other play segments). The seagull motif reminds me a lot of Jonathan's rabbit story.Konstantin romantically into Nina shows up to give her a gull that he has shot. Nina is confused and horrified . Trigorin sees the gull that Konstantin has shot and muses to Nina on how he could use it as a subject for a short story: "The plot for the short story: a young girl lives all her life on the shore of a lake. She loves the lake, like a gull, and she's happy and free, like a gull. But a man arrives by chance, and when he sees her, he destroys her, out of sheer boredom. Like this gull." This immediately reminded me of jon's rabbit story and some of the movies on the s4 list . Like in forrest gump- Jenny (who is poor) was se*ually ab*sed as a very young girl by her father. As a child she runs away into a field-away from her alcoholic father yelling at her -there she prays that she can "be a bird so I can fly far far away" .

Jenny as an adult struggles with this unresolved trauma- being with ab*sive partners, doing dr*gs, and having su*cidal thoughts . She as an adult when contemplating su*icide, jokes 'you think i can fly like a bird ?' while looking down at a bridge.God-i'm worried about jonathan (Jenny was also a musician sort of like jon). In another s4 movie example ' mystic river ' :(in the 80s) a preteen baseball playing boy is r*ped by men in the woods. He later says he wishes he could become an undead monster to not feel the pain of that experience - cause quote " if I'm not human anymore maybe the pain will stop" (Will) . slightly off topic but he also has another personality, imagines a alternate word that dissappears when he turns his head. And as a less direct animal parallel to the play - the boy from the film also imagined his perpetrators as monsters and wolves to cope.In 'getout' the photographer character sees a dead deer in the woods and it represents a parent/his own childhood tra*ma relating to his past. similarly in 'prince of tides' the 2 siblings as kids were ra*ed by men. The older brother remembered it and the younger sibling developed DID (so didn't remember but she would draw wolves- as the perpetrators/villains in her picture stories she created . In the film they also had an ab*sive dad and were very poor. She also tried k*ling herself multiple times-but started to get better after remembering the source of her pain and trauma. There is also the theme of multiple attempted su*cides in the play- and the play ends with yet another attempt- and the audience is left unaware of the artist's fate at the end of the play.

The tempest (Shakespeare)

Prospereo - (the perceived antagonist) is a wizard with monstrous looks, storm powers , and ability to create monster-dogs

He wants revenge on a man who tried ra*ing his family member & revenge on his other family member who wronged him years ago. I mean... pretty much my did theory.But in the end.Prospero decides to show his enemies the mercy that they did not show him twelve years earlier. He tells Ariel to bring the men to him, he will restore their sanity and then renounce magic forever.Prospero breaks the spell that the men are under .

Diary of a scoundrel (Alexander Ostrovsky-Russian)

- I suppose this could loosely relate to Jonathan? Glumov, is a young man from an impoverished family lacking status seeking entrance into society's pampered class. A 19th-century Russian scoundrel must scheme his way out of his meager life in a small apartment -whatever it takes.He has a quick mind and some talent for seeing through the hypocrisies of people around him ( Jonathan does make a lot of social critiques about society). That gives him some advantages. A tale of one man's mission to finagle his way into upper-class society and find a cushy job. Set in 1874, this social comedy follows Glumov, a Russian youth who begins his ambitious ascent to social esteem. He progresses by wit, guile and rhetoric. Pitting one stupid person against another, he soon gains his ends. To reach these goals, Glumov will lie, flatter, and cater to the vanities of the wealthy. Unable to contain his disgust with his victims, Glumov decides to relieve his unvoiced satirical comments by recording his schemes in a diary. But he is tripped up by his uncle's wife, to whom he has made passionate love on his way to success. At the end of the play, his diary is stolen and his duplicity exposed, but he can nevertheless suceeds. The author is much more critical about the high society itself than about the main character, so the play keeps attracting generations of directors by opening possibilities for political criticism while also avoiding naming names of the current rulers.The play's aim was to overthrow bourgeois tradition and establish a class-conscious art called eccentricism giving a deliberately comic portrayal of reality.

I suppose I notice some possible commonalities- besides s3 critiquing the wealthy/capitalism in comedic ways . jonathan since s1 has worried about his family's finances / had some resentment toward the rich . In some of the s4 movies ‘orphan’ & ‘ girl interrupted’ someone reads their diary out loud to get at them (in girl interrupted the winona character’s diary even had critiques of her new friends). Alot of movies also have someone (usually a teen/young adult) making a documentary about their life -which could narratively replace said diary? A few movies have a poor guy adjusting to snobby rich social circles (or being poor and then getting money)- titanic, kingsmen, karate kid, the craft , godfather, wardogs,into the spiderverse,flashdance, and many others . And movies like wardogs has a poor-young-character do shady things to finacially support his family . There’s also that whole uncle’s wife thing- which makes me uncomfortable for obvious reasons (but I’m just thinking of Lonnie’s creepy gf who was into him). A few movies had the guy’s step mom innappropriately hit on him- orange county & you got mail. And him trying to avoid her advances. Or...not to mention ... it may be a problematic coincidence /trope. But in enter the void -the guy who needs to finacially support his sibling/ does dr*gs -hooks up with his dr*g dealing friend’s married mom (who would give him money). Or in gilbert grape- the poor teen-who has to finacially support his siblings/single mom-has his endgame relationship be a girl his own age. But before that he h*oked up with a married woman -who would give him money. Don’s plum -young film guy-propositioned by older female film director (for dream job). Not even mentioning the other films that have the guy hooking up with toxic older women (like ‘the graduate’). Or analyze this-where the therapist accuses him of having an Oedipus complex (not touching that one... but the guy in ‘enter the void’ a 100% had one). It’s possible those movies were just- inspo for s3? A coincidence? Or s3 was foreshadowing for this in s4- but unlike s3 it will accurately be played as wrong and a sign of Jonathan recreating past tra*ma caused by Lonnie (cough like the photos) /being desperate for money. And not played ‘comedically’ like how it mostly was in s3. But shown as self destructive (for Jon) and immoral on the Woman’s end. Like... Billy and Jon are character foils. Both are older siblings into rock music, with ab*sive dads who shoved them into walls. Both lose it (and beat steve to a pulp when Steve accidentally triggers their daddy issues). In s3 it’s established womanizer Billy has mommy issues, than he tries ho*king up with someone his mom’s age, and the characters ref ‘back to the future ‘ and Steve incorrectly says it’s about “alex p keaton trying to bang his mom.” This could illustrate his subconscious issues with parental figures/adults cause of Lonnie’s possible past se*ual ab*se . One film the friend even says to the guy “you don’t have friends!” guy b: i have friends! him: no you have acquaintances! ADMIT IT! YOU’RE AFRAID OF MEN!I mean-Jonathan liked Nancy- but he initially hooked up with her cause he wanted to prove he didn’t have ‘trust issues’ from his dad. Also it’s prob a bit of a reach (and maybe a coincidence)- but the fact Murray in the same breath compares Steve (Nancy’s then bf) and Lonnie ... uh... if you think too long about it ... it’s very sinister . Especially because in s3: muray tells Joyce that despite her wanting to be with a nice guy, she’s curious about “the brute” Hopper despite him reminding her of a past “bad relationship”(aka Lonnie). Like- yeah connect some dots. Quite a few films (other than forrest gump) also have the character who (as a kid) was r*ped by their dad/parent- begin to do dr*gs/be pr*miscuous as adults since they never learned to properly cope with their trauma (’girl with the dragon tattoo’, ‘black swan’, and ‘magnolia’). Unfortunately the whole relative doing such things to kid-relatives is in at least 30+ movies.

Personally, i would be MUCH happier if Jon had a age appropriate romance- and had not a single creepy adult near him. A few movies actually imply Lonnie gets yet another ‘new model’ replacing his gf in her 20s with a new gf- who is ‘barely l*gal” and just turned 18. so there’s that possibility as well- that she’s jonathan’s age.I just want Jonathan-happy &safe. GOD. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

#byler #byeler #will byers #mike wheeler #Jonathan byers #nancy wheeler #joyce byers #jim hopper #murray bauman #stranger things #el hopper #s4 theory #stranger things theory

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unwelcome-ozian · 3 years

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You told one of your followers months ago that it is impossible to work to heal while still going through trauma and then blocked them. You are still wrong. Don’t ever limit people when first of all many people are still actively going through trauma and working on healing/recovery so you’re basically telling everyone that that’s impossible which it’s completely possible and second you don’t get to decide other people limitations just because of your own. It is never impossible to heal under any circumstances.

Over the years I’ve encouraged people to block and unfollow this tumblr for whatever reason they deem. Their safety and well being is a priority, and no explanation is necessary. This also applies to myself and Ozzie as well. Our safety and well being is our priority, and establishing and maintaining our boundaries is a part of that.

I won't discuss the reason I choose to block someone with someone who isn't involved.

I will address some things in this ask as I feel this is a good opportunity to share some information regarding healing, healthy relationships and boundaries.

Triangulation is a tactic used to manipulate an interaction between two people who are not communicating directly with one another. It is problematic because a third person becomes involved in a situation that should be between the two individuals involved in the conflict. For more information on Triangulation. Source

As for safety and recovery from trauma

The Three Stages of Trauma Recovery According to Herman

Stage One: Safety and Stabilization

There are several main objectives for the patient during stage one of trauma recovery. These include: Source

Stage 1: Establishment of Safety

A traumatic event can destroy your assumptions about safety. Herman talks about this as the negative impact you place on how much you value yourself. Shame and guilt often fuel this negative experience of yourself. Source

Phase 1

Safety and Stabilization

People affected by trauma tend to feel unsafe in their bodies and in their relationships with others. Regaining a sense of safety may take days to weeks with acutely traumatized individuals or months to years with individuals who have experienced ongoing/chronic abuse. Figuring out what areas of life need to be stabilized and how that will be accomplished will be helpful in moving toward recovery. Source

TRC psychotherapy interventions fall within an established three-stage model of trauma treatment that addresses survivors’ differing needs and environments (Herman, 1997) (see Clinical Model Overview in this chapter’s Appendix 1). The TRC Clinician selects from evidence-based, trauma-informed and trauma-specific therapy models appropriate for this population—a diverse group of survivors, many of whom have experienced multiple incidents and types of violent crime. Source

You can’t heal around the same people who broke you, the people who caused you pain because every single day will be a different reminder of the past, the bruises, and the wounds. Source

When the Trauma Doesn't End

By necessity, recovery forces you to face, wrangle and deal with disturbing thoughts, emotions, reactions, and memories. Doing so is incredibly tough, even when conditions are optimal and your environment feels completely safe and secure. When trauma continues to occur, it causes several problems that interfere with healing: Source

Here's a link to a site with some worksheets Safety-Seeking Behaviors / Safety Behaviors

We're not here to tell people how to heal, what they need to do to heal or to feel safe. We're here to support people, and provide information.

It's your journey, and we wish you well.

Oz/Ozzie

#answers to questions #Triangulation #trauma recovery #safety in relationships #healthy boundaries #safety in recovery #abuse recovery #healing from abuse

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thepapergirlandthespiegelman · 3 years

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Castlevania Season 4: I’m not mad, just disappointed

Season 4 is poorly written fanfiction, which is...better than a lot of things could be, I guess.

Spoilers below the cut.

Content warning: trauma, sexual assault, psychological manipulation

The Gods Have Had a Change of Heart

Or, “Season 3 Blocked and Ignored”

Season 3 felt like the fabric of the universe had been twisted just to inflict additional pain. Season 4 overcompensates in the other direction; trauma evaporates, and good things happen for no other reason than to make our favorite characters happy.

The Season 3 finale left two characters in particular totally devastated: Alucard and Hector. Alucard is violently betrayed in a horrifying sexual assault by the first two people he’s spoken to since Trevor and Sypha left. He ends up killing them in self-defense and puts their bodies on stakes outside the castle, alluding to his father’s habit of doing so and potentially hinting at a turn toward evil. Hector is seduced by Lenore and then enslaved using a magic ring.

Yet at the start of Season 4, it’s as if these things never happened. Alucard is troubled, but not totally devastated, certainly not evil. Taka and Sumi are referenced in exactly one conversation with new character, Greta, in which she says the rather tactless throwaway line, “I had a boyfriend and girlfriend at the same time once. But they never tried to kill me.” Hector is nominally imprisoned, but immediately seems highly agentic, perhaps even more so than before. He studies, lays traps, and makes secret plans with other people. Furthermore, his relationship with Lenore is completely transformed. From falling to his knees in abject horror and despair at being enslaved, he suddenly switches to light banter, in what is apparently a basically okay, mutually enjoyed romantic/sexual relationship. Manipulative, selfish Lenore is now a sympathetic character struggling to reconcile her own role and feelings with Carmilla’s plans.

The events of season 3 happened, remaining canon in the most basic, literal sense. But the emotional weight attached to them has disappeared into thin air.

Not gonna lie, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Alucard and Hector were okay. I’m soft-hearted! I don’t like seeing characters I like suffer! I mean, conflict is important, and I can deal with (or even enjoy in a certain sense) seeing characters suffer if it makes sense and serves a narrative purpose. But as far as I can tell, the season 3 finale was nothing more than lurid, meaningless violence. I probably wouldn’t have continued watching the show if it devolved into nothing more than finding novel ways to torture the characters.

Still, it doesn’t feel quite right to pretend like nothing happened either. Or, really, not that nothing happened, but that those things didn’t matter, didn’t hurt, didn’t leave lasting scars. That’s...almost kind of worse.

But, I thought, I can sort of forgive this sudden shift in the stars, given that there may have been some sort of change in creative direction relating to Ellis’ decreased involvement with the show.* Plus, season 3 was insanity. It’s not like it was full of great writing choices, so if we quietly ignore some of them, maybe that’s for the best.

*I only later learned that Netflix actually chose to continue with Ellis’ season 4 scripts. It is not lost on me that maybe Ellis doesn’t know how to write about the lasting effects of traumatic sexual experiences or how power dynamics can make a sexual relationship problematic because he doesn’t understand that those things exist.

Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening

Pretty Pictures, Not Much Else

Unfortunately, the disconnect between seasons 3 and 4 isn’t the only problem with this season. Although I felt that season 4 was a bit less boring than season 3 (I particularly enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of season 4), it suffers from the same basic problems of Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening.

None of the characters experience any significant development, let alone any sort of coherent arc. Sypha has changed slightly, becoming more rough and jaded. I did really like the scene where she talks about becoming the kind of person who says “shit.” I think it really speaks to how entering into a relationship with someone means taking on aspects of their lifestyle, and how that can change you in ways that you can’t predict and therefore can’t exactly “agree” to. Sometimes those changes are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re neutral, and sometimes it’s difficult to know. But you have to accept that you’re sacrificing some aspects of the person that you could have been if you chose to live completely independently, or with someone else.

Trevor really hasn’t changed since season 1 when he first decided to take up the mantle of hero again. Likewise with Alucard. Hector and Lenore change, as previously noted, but that change is sudden, jarring, and occurs completely off screen in between seasons 3 and 4. Carmilla dies as exactly as she lived: bitter, angry, and violent. Saint Germain just kind of...gets fucked over in a nonsensical subplot, which is its own whole can of worms.

We also get several new characters in season 4, none of whom have developed personalities or motives, nor do they develop any of those things over the course of the season: Greta, Zamfir, Varney, Ratko.

And nobody. Does. Anything.

Trevor and Sypha spend the entire season trying to explore and aid Targoviste, which comes to absolutely nothing. They’re unable to help anyone, Zamfir dies, and they end up just jumping through a magic portal to the actually relevant subplot in the finale. Carmilla literally does little more than draw maps until she’s ultimately killed. Hector plays a minor role in Saint Germain’s extraction of Dracula from Hell; otherwise, he and Lenore basically just exchange banter. Saint Germain does sort of do some stuff? But it’s often unclear how he’s made his connections, who the people who are helping him are, or what exactly he’s doing in terms of his magic beyond “whatever it takes to get back to his lover.”

Sure, there are fight scenes, but they feel meaningless. There’s no context, no stakes. There’s also a LOT of dialogue, and it is. Not well written. Exposition is embarrassingly clumsy at times, and the philosophical musings are cliche at best, muddled and confusing at worst. There’s just not all that much going on.

That is, except for Isaac. But more on him in a second.

What Kind of Show Is This?

When the plot line adapted from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse ended with season 2, the show struggled to establish a new identity.

Despite nominally dealing with themes like whether humanity is inherently good or evil and how to cope with wrongdoing and loss, seasons 1 and 2 ultimately boiled down to a pretty generic action-adventure/fantasy plot with found family/power of friendship elements. Main characters Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard don’t really wrestle with big philosophical questions or suffer any major defeats. They know that they have to take down Dracula for the good of the world, and they work together as a team to do it, with a little character development relating to their various backstories sprinkled in.

Then season 3 happened, and things got weird. The trio is broken up for what feels like a pretty trivial reason—Alucard has to protect the castle and Belmont hold, I guess? And the result of that decision is that the dynamics for the three main characters are completely unbalanced.

Ellis openly admits that he basically went feral with the writing of season 3, and it shows. The messaging in seasons 1 and 2 was cliche, but consistent. The message of season 3? Anyone’s guess.

Season 4 reversed the darkening of tone from season 3, but shares its inability to pick a story and tell it.

Isaac is the Main Character

Always has been.

While I can’t say that his character or arc are perfect, I can say that he actually has a character and an arc. He starts off motivated by his fierce loyalty to Dracula, then has to struggle to find his purpose once Dracula is gone. He goes from subservient to agentic. He goes from fully endorsing the genocide of humanity and not caring about his own life to seeing some worth in humans and genuinely wanting to live. He has an interesting moment that deepens our understanding of what night creatures are, while also serving as an exploration of the meaning of one’s fundamental nature. Most importantly, these changes happen naturally over the course of the show. They never feel forced or out of the blue, and while I feel like even more could have been done with Isaac’s character, there’s a lot to appreciate about what is there.

If there’s any thread holding Castlevania as a single, coherent work together, it’s Isaac. Not only is his character the best executed and the most coherent over the course of the show, his character explores themes that are larger than himself and relevant to the show as a whole, like those mentioned earlier: misanthropy versus a belief in the value of humanity; the ability to go beyond one’s “nature” or initial circumstances; and how to respond to being wronged or losing something important to you. Exploring the individual lives of characters is great, but really good writing usually requires going beyond that to reflect on broader questions and ideas. Isaac is the only character here that serves that larger purpose.

Sorry...I Just Don’t Buy It

The season 4 finale is crazy, although in a different way from season 3′s.

Varney being Death makes no sense on several different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time picking that particular plot twist apart, but I will talk about why I think it doesn’t work at the largest scale, and how I think season 4 might have been done better.

Last minute twists with zero foreshadowing are rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. Why introduce this “Death” entity at the last minute to be the most important battle of the season? The finale of the entire show, even? Besides the lack of logic or emotional buildup, this robs the show of the opportunity to make use of the antagonists that it already has. Since Dracula died, Carmilla has been the obvious choice for a new big bad. Why hasn’t she done more?

Season 4 feels crowded with characters and plot lines that amount to nothing. Why not bring some of these characters together? If Carmilla is the main antagonist, how come she never meets any of the protagonists (except Hector, who is a pretty minor player in this ecosystem) or even affects them in any way?

Season 4 feels like maybe it was trying to make something out of season 3 and the model that it presented, but it ultimately fails to do so. The writers throw the trio back together at the end anyway, so why not have them rejoin sooner and work together? Maybe Sypha and Trevor’s past experience with Saint Germain could have helped Alucard and Greta piece together what he was plotting sooner, rather than all four of them being completely blindsided by it in the penultimate episode. (Sypha and Trevor know that someone is trying to resurrect Dracula, but they fail to find out any actual detail about the plans, despite their supposed attempts.) Have characters actually do stuff, figure stuff out, advance the plot!

Likewise, maybe Carmilla becomes aware of Saint Germain’s scheming, sees it as a threat, and tries to take him down. Maybe she tries to get involved and somehow use alchemy or the Infinite Corridor to her own benefit. What does it look like when power-hungry Carmilla, who wants to rule the world, finds out there’s an entire multiverse out there? That could easily set her up to be a foil to Saint Germain, causing him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.

What actually ended up happening in the show feels disjointed and often empty. In particular, most of the events that happen in the last two episodes just don’t really work for me. I didn’t like Trevor suddenly sacrificing himself to this random, new, super powerful enemy, or how the gems and dagger that he found just happened to be the perfect weapon to kill this new enemy, or how he inexplicably returns from the dead.

This kind of thing is what I mean when I say that this season feels like fanfiction. Trevor comes back from the dead for no discernible reason other than that it would really suck if he died. Greta as a character seems to literally only exist to be Alucard’s girlfriend and support him so that he doesn’t have to continue to be alone and potentially turn evil. Alucard’s trauma from Taka and Sumi and Hector’s trauma from Lenore are both conveniently erased. Even Dracula and Lisa are resurrected somehow and get their happy ending. And it’s like, I guess I prefer deus ex machina to the opposite (Does that have a name? When everything is going well but then something terrible happens for no reason other than to make things worse for the characters?), but they’re both bad writing.

God. This isn’t even getting into what happened with the Council of Sisters. And I don’t even really like those characters, but that doesn’t mean I want to see their characters handled poorly.

I’m not sorry that I watched until the end, but I can’t in good faith recommend the show as a whole. If you’ve yet to watch Castlevania, just stop at the end of season 2. While there are some shining moments in seasons 3 and 4 (4 more than 3), it’s just really not worth it.

#review #thoughts #television #animation #adult animation #video game adaptation #fantasy #Netflix #Netflix Original #Castlevania #storytelling #writing #characters #plot #character development #vampires #Isaac (Castlevania)

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agent-troi · 2 years

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TNG

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): Deanna Troi, without a doubt. I love her and think she was egregiously underused in the show. In one of the novels (Gemworld) she literally saves a planet single-handedly. Absolute badass.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): Data is by far the most precious baby.

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): Barclay, he doesn't get enough love and he desperately needs it from people instead of nonsentient holoprograms. Also Tam Elbrun, ditto on needing all the love.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): Boothby! Love the lovably grumpy old man vibes. I couldn't decide whether to put Tam Elbrun here or under scrimblo bimblo so I'm gonna mention him here too.

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): Pulaski? I mean I like her but I get the feeling sometimes that most people don't so I guess she would fit here.

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): Devononi Ral, Deanna's asshole love interest from The Price. I have a sort of mini headcanon involving Riker running into him years later on a starbase while he's waiting for Deanna and Tasha (his and Deanna's daughter from the novels) to come back from a psych conference or something, and Ral asks about Deanna and Riker pretends to try to remember the last time he saw her and then he's interrupted by Tasha running up to him and tackling him with unbridled childlike excitement and Ral is stunned off his ass.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): Jev the Ullian mind rapist, whom I hold personally responsible for setting back Will and Deanna's romantic relationship for years. There's this long fic I'm reading right now involving someone from our universe traveling to an alternate future where Trek is real so she has foreknowledge of events/episodes, and I am really looking forward to the part where that whole thing is prevented from happening.

#ask game

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 4 years

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Five years ago, the women on this site who treated me like trash over loving Labyrinth and shipping Jareth/Sarah were almost always obliviously consuming Radfem propaganda, or were out and out Radfems/Terfs themselves.

They were the types of people who casually threw the word “pedophile” around against grown women who shipped an adult Sarah with Jareth, aka literally one of the most popular ships for women in fandom for 30 years.

Pretty much invariably, these women had serious sex-negative anxieties, which included a severe paranoia about any and all kink and fetish, and porn in general. I saw a lot of shocking, fear-mongering propaganda surrounding sexual expression. Pretty much invariably, their method of approach involved immediate personal shock-value attacks on anyone they perceived to be “bad.”

Today, you can look at the way some people react to other popular so-called “problematic” ships and recognize the same toxic, fear-mongering rhetoric coming from women who consider themselves regular, trans-inclusive feminists. Sometimes it even manifests in the words of very well-meaning people (including myself here), who feel the need to talk about specific issues that pertain to their own experiences of trauma and oppression.

The people who shit on Labyrinth often seem to not really be able to comprehend that the Goblin King, like the film itself, is canonically a representation of a teen girl’s psyche, a soup of fears and anxieties and desires and dreams. He’s not a literal human adult preying on a literal child, and to read the film that way seriously undermines the entire point of the film.

When I (and people of many fandoms) say “This is fiction, calm down,” I’m not just saying it’s not real so it cant hurt you and you can’t criticize me. I’m trying to call attention to what fiction actually is - artistic representations of feelings and experiences. The Goblin King is Sarah’s fiction. Therefore, he can be anything she or any woman who identifies with her wants him to be, including her lover when she’s grown and ready for such a thing.

I once took an alarming dive into Beetlejuice fandom to see what content was there (the cartoon was a favorite when I was little). Chillingly, what you’ll find is an extremely wounded fanbase, with a sharp divide between the older women who had long been shipping BJ/Lydia because of their love for the cartoon series (and whom were previously the vast majority of the Beetlejuice fandom), and a massive amount of young people riding the wave of the musical fad who had decided that the entire old school Beetlejuice fandom was populated by literal pedophiles.

I saw death threats. Suicide baiting. Constant, constant toxic discourse. It did not matter how the BJ/Lydia fandom dealt with any particular issues that would exist in their ship, in fact I’m certain that the people abusing them cared very little to even consider if they were trying to handle it at all. The only thing that mattered was that they were disgusting subhuman scum asking for abuse. If you have at any time reblogged recent Beetlejuice fan art or content from fans of the musical, you have more than likely been engaging positively with the content of someone participating in toxic fandom behavior.

Nobody is really sticking up for them, either, as far as I saw. It’s really hard to imagine how painful it must be to have such a large group of people explode into into your relatively private fandom space to tell you that you are evil, vile, and deserve constant abuse, and also you are no longer allowed into the fandom space to engage in it’s content. But I think there’s something very alarming indeed about this happening specifically to the BJ fandom, and I’ll explain why.

The pop-culture characterization of Beetlejuice, which is heavily influenced by the cartoon series to be clear, has always in my mind been a vaguely ageless being who matches with the psychological maturity of whatever age Lydia is supposed to be. He’s more or less like an imaginary friend, a manifestation of Lydia’s psyche. In fact, I would argue that i think most of us who grew up with the cartoon or it’s subsequent merchandizing before the musical ever existed probably internalized the idea as BJ and Lydia as this ageless, salt-and-pepper-shaker couple beloved by the goth community, similar to Gomez and Morticia. In each version of canon he may be a creepy ghost in the literal sense, but any adult who is capable of identifying literary tropes (even just subconciously) would read cartoon!BJ as an artistic representation of a socially awkward outcast girl’s inner world. Lydia’s darker dispositions and interests, which alienate her from most others, are freely accepted and embraced by her spooky magical friend. BJ/Lydia in the cartoon were depicted as best friends, but to my memory there was always an underlying sense that they had secret feelings for each other, which I identified easily even as a small child. In fact, their dynamic and behavior perfectly reflected the psychological development of the show’s target demographic. They are best friends who get into adventures and learning experiences together, who have delicate feelings for each other but lack any true adult romantic/sexual understanding to acknowledge those feelings, let alone pursue them.

Though I haven’t seen the Musical yet, I’ve read the wiki and I would argue that it embodies this exact same concept even more so for it’s own version of the characters, in that Beetlejuice specifically exists to help Lydia process her mother’s death.

This is not a complicated thing to recognize and comprehend whatsoever. In fact, it looks downright blatant. It’s also a clear indicator of what BJ/Lydia means to the women who have long loved it. It was a story about a spooky wierd girl being loved and accepted and understood for who she was, and it gave them a sense of solidarity. It makes perfect sense why those women would stick with those characters, and create a safe little space for themselves to and imagine their beloved characters growing and having adult lives and experiencing adult drama, in just the same ways that the women of the Labyrinth fandom do. That’s all these women were doing. And now, they can’t do it without facing intense verbal violence. That safe space is poisoned now.

Having grown up with the cartoon as one of my favorites and been around goth subculture stuff for decades, I was actually shocked and squicked at the original Beetlejuice film’s narrative once I actually saw it, because it was extremely divorced from what these two characters had evolved into for goth subculture and what they meant to me. It’s not telling the same story, and is in fact about the Maitland's specifically. In pretty much exactly the same way two different versions of Little Red Riding Hood can be extremely different from each other, the film is a different animal. While I imagine that the film version has been at the heart of a lot of this confused fear-mongering around all other versions of the characters, I would no more judge different adaptations of these characters any more than I would condemn a version of Little Red in which Red and the Wolf are best friends or lovers just because the very first iteration of LRRH was about protecting yourself from predators.

I would even argue that the people who have engaged in Anti-shipper behavior over BJ/Lydia are in intense denial over the fact that BJ being interested in Lydia, either as blatant predatory behavior a la the film or on a peer level as in the cartoon (and musical?) is an inextricable part of canon. Beetlejuice was always attracted to Lydia, and it was not always cute or amusing. Beetlejuice was not always a beloved buddy character, an in fact was originally written as a gross scumbag. That’s just what he was. Even people engaging with him now by writing OC girlfriends for him (as stand-ins for the salt-and-pepper-shaker space Lydia used to take up, because obviously that was part of the core fun of the characters), or just loving him as a character, are erasing parts of his character’s history in order to do so. They are actively refusing to be held responsible for being fans of new version of him despite the fact that he engaged in overt predatory behavior in the original film. In fact, I would venture to say that they are actively erasing the fact that Musical Beetliejuice tried to marry a teenager and as far as I’m aware, seemed to like the idea (because he’s probably a fucking figment of her imagination but go off I guess). The only reason they can have a version of this character who could be perceived as “buddy” material is because...the cartoon had an impact on our pop cultural perception of what the character and his dynamic with Lydia is.

We can have a version of the Big Bad Wolf who’s a creepy monster. We can have a version who’s sweet and lovable. We can have a version that lives in the middle. We can have a version who’s a hybrid between Red and the Wolf (a la Ruby in OUAT). All of these things can exist in the same world, and can even be loved for different reasons by the same people.

I’ve been using Beetlejuice as an example here because it’s kind of perfect for my overall point regarding the toxic ideologies in fandom right now across many different spaces, including ones for progressive and queer media, and how much so many people don’t recognize how deeply they’ve been radicalized into literalist and sex-negative radfem rhetoric, to the point where we aren’t allowed to have difficult, messy explorations of imperfect, flawed humans, and that art is never going to be 100% pure and without flaw in it’s ability to convey what it wants to convey.

This includes the rhetoric I’ve seen across the board, from She-Ra to A:TLA to Star Wars to Lovecraft Country. We don’t talk about the inherent malleable, subjective, or charmingly imperfect nature of fiction any more. Transformation and reclamation are myths in this space. Everything is in rigid categories. It is seemingly very difficult for some of these people to engage with anything that is not able to be clearly labeled as one thing or another (see the inherent transphobic and biphobic elements of the most intense rhetoric). They destroy anything they cannot filter through their ideology. When women act in a way that breaks from their narrative of womanhood (like...not having a vagina), then those women must be condemned instead of understood. Anything that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable is a mortal sin. There is an extraordinary level of both hypocrisy and repressive denial that is underlying the behavior I’m seeing now. Much like toxic Christian conservatism, these people often are discovered engaging in the same behaviors and interests that they condemn behind closed doors (or just out of sheer cognitive dissonance). As an example, one of the people who talked shit to me about Labyrinth was a huge fan of Kill La Kill, which to my knowledge was an anime about a teenage girl in like, superpowered lingere (hence why I stayed the fuck away from that shit myself). Indeed, they even allow themselves plenty of leeway for behavior far worse than they condemn others for, and create support systems for the worst of their own abusers.

Quite frankly, I’m tired. Instead of talking about theoretical problematic shit, we need to start talking about quantifiable harm. Because as far as I can tell, the most real, immediate, and quantifiable harm done because of anybody’s favorite ships or pieces of media seems to consistently be the kind that’s done to the people who experience verbal violence and abuse and manipulation and suicide baiting and death threats from the people who have a problem.

#Beetlejuice #Labyrinth #toxic fandom

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fishylife · 3 years

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Guess who caved and read all 66 chapters of Painter of the Night? I don’t normally like to read comics that are still ongoing because I don’t like losing momentum while waiting for updates but here I am 🤡🤡

Spoilers.

I typed this while distracted so sorry for any muddled thoughts.

Story

I am glad that I read up to Chapter 66 because a huge misunderstanding was cleared up (the fact that Nakyum legitimately did not run away this time). I would’ve been pulling my hair out if the misunderstanding went on further (I HATE misunderstanding/miscommunication as a plot device).

A lot of people on the subreddit theorized that this was a huge turning point in the story. For the first time, we’re seeing Seungho show legitimate remorse and sadness over Nakyum’s suffering. Hopefully we’re going to see change his behaviour and act more reasonably towards Nakyum, and be more communicative about why he’s doing what he’s doing.

Though I think Nakyum is still a bit confused about his feelings for Seungho, he’s past the point of hating Seungho and wanting to leave. He said that he’d tried to run away before but he had nowhere to run to. He acknowledges that Seungho is a constant in his life, a protector and an indirect caregiver. But he’s still struggling with his feelings for Seungho.

In that way, Seungho and Nakyum are sort of opposite. Seungho recognized his romantic love for Nakyum first, but he couldn’t see how he was hurting him. As for Nakyum, he figured out how he could make Seungho happy early on, but he’s still struggling a bit with regards to how he feels about Seungho, likely because a part of his heart is still with Inhun. Again, he definitely recognizes Seungho as his protector (he’d instinctively called out to Seungho for help when he was kidnapped), but he’s still struggling over whether he’s in love with him.

This week we’re getting a continuation to the spinoff story so we won’t see the story pick up again until next week.

I do think the spinoff story is interesting. Currently, Seungho holds a lot of power over Nakyum, both in terms of political/administrative power, and physical power. But with Seungho as a peasant and Nakyum as a son of a noble family, Nakyum holds the social power over Seungho and it evens up their power dynamics a bit, which I do like. It feels safer for Nakyum lmao.

In terms of the style of story telling, it’s mostly angst, I’ll be honest. And it is rather melodramatic because miscommunication tends to be something the author uses quite a bit as a storytelling technique. Luckily, they’re not dragged out for too long.

Art

The art is pretty nice. It’s all in full colour, which surprised me. The art is extremely detailed. I wonder how the artist can do so much in a week lol. I hope they’re not overworked.

Seungho

Both Seungho and Nakyum have had their share of past trauma, but my thinking is that they’ve manifested in different ways.

It’s implied that Seungho’s father knew about his sexuality from a young age and tried to treat it through medical means and then by locking him up, which effectively stopped his education, despite him having been a bright student. Seungho then lived out his young adult days in debauchery. Early on, he implied that he was just living by his father’s principles, or something along those lines. My guess is that his dad left him behind so he could debauch in isolation without affecting the rest of the family.

So Seungho grew up without many close friends. He was surrounded by servants and yes men (like Jihwa) who would not call him out on his bullshit. So I think that’s how he developed his extremely bossy and abusive behaviour.

Why Nakyum was different for Seungho was that initially, he didn’t have power over Nakyum. He would tell him to do things, but Nakyum would not necessarily heed his commands, not painting, or trying to run away. His heart was still fully loyal to Inhun. So I think that was why Nakyum elicited extra violent behaviour from Seungho. Seungho had never been defied like this.

But I think Seungho was also intrigued by Nakyum. Nakyum was a contradiction because he drew smut but was always super embarrassed when faced with sexual situations irl. Seungho should've felt better when Inhun was sent away and Nakyum became submissive during sex and yet that’s when Seungho felt like something was wrong. Nakyum just kept eliciting unexpected emotions from Seungho. I definitely think Seungho saw him as a plaything at first, but came to care for him after he got to know more about him and his personal life.

Nakyum

Nakyum also came from a tough background. He was an orphan, and was raised along kisaeng ladies. Inhun was the first authority figure whom he’d had a positive impression of, and he latched on to him. He admired Inhun so much that he tried his best to listen to him when he told him not to draw erotic art anymore.

Inhun unfortunately didn’t see their relationship the same way. He showed a kind face to most of his students but he looked down on their lowly statuses. Only when he saw Nakyum as a pawn, did he give him attention. But he never hid his emotions, visibly expressing his anger when Nakyum wasn’t being a good spy, brushing off Nakyum’s confession of love.

Nakyum’s love for Inhun was so extremely pure and all-consuming. I cried when he was so swiftly rejected and condescended upon by Inhun T_T Because I knew how much courage it took for Nakyum to confess, how he wanted nothing but for Inhun to have good things, and Inhun cared not for any of that because it wasn’t want he wanted. Nakyum wasn’t helping him in the way he needed, and he cared far more for ambition than romantic love (not to mention romantic love from a lowly peasant).

After the rejection, Nakyum internalized Inhun’s words when he called him a prostitute. A part of him still loved Inhun and if he said that, Nakyum figured he must’ve been right. The other part of him decided that acting submissively to Seungho was the only way to survive.

Basically, Nakyum’s going through a huge emotional journey because his hero Inhun has kind of abandoned him (though he hasn’t forgotten him completely), but Nakyum hasn’t found a worthy person to give his heart to.

Seungho & Nakyum

I’m still thinking about their relationship and why we ship them despite the shit they’ve done (mostly the shit that Seungho’s done to Nakyum).

For Seungho, I think Nakyum was the first person he met who had a different way of expressing love. He’d never met someone like Nakyum who would stuff he despised just to help out Inhun. Even when Inhun didn’t show an inkling of appreciation. Perhaps Seungho felt that he didn’t know what love was until he met Nakyum.

As for Nakyum, he theorized that he was only desperate for affection and that was why he felt himself drawn to Seungho. I think that is technically true. But more than that, I think Seungho has arguably shown more levels of care to Nakyum than Inhun has. Yeah, Seungho has done horrendous stuff to Nakyum, but he’s also shown more affection to Nakyum. That includes physical affection, but Seungho also bought him warm clothes, called on a doctor to care for his health, etc. Again, all of the care absolutely does NOT cancel out the abusive behaviour on Seungho’s side, but that’s how I think Nakyum found himself feeling more and more comfortable with Seungho. Loving someone is about showing your bad sides as well as your good sides.

I think both Seungho and Nakyum are finding affection/care in forms that they’d never experienced before, and that’s why they are drawn to each other.

Problematic?

I had a feeling that this would be a story that a lot of people would consider problematic. It’s probably because I’m older now, but it doesn’t really bother me. I obviously know that there is toxic behaviour shown by the characters and I would never want that in real life, but it’s really not difficult for me to separate what works in fiction vs. what works in reality.

This was a different time period, when rich and powerful people could just do whatever they wanted. Not excusing problematic behaviour, just explaining the entitled behaviour of some of the elites.

Seungho for sure shows extremely toxic behaviour. I think the point is that he is a problematic man who has trouble expressing emotions the normal way, and it ends up hurting those around him and those he cares about. He’s definitely an imperfect person who’s unpleasant to be around, but I think one thing the author wanted to show is that bad people are still capable of having emotions. By no means do I excuse his toxic behaviour. But I am all for showing that flawed people are still worthy of attention. We are still interested in what Seungho does in spite of his poor behaviour because we recognize that he is still a person.

I also recognize that Nakyum is woobified a lot. He’s constantly put in situations where he is the victim and he doesn’t/can’t fight back. In the latest event with Jihwa ordering Nakyum’s kidnapping/murder, the Nameless one had threatened Nakyum’s life so that he wouldn’t reveal the fact that he’d kidnapped him, and that caused all of Seungho’s meanness in the past few chapters. I recognize that whump is a popular trope, but usually because it ends in comfort. (I specifically can’t enjoy whump if it doesn’t end in comfort) It sets up a situation in which it feels reasonable for the victim to receive comfort. Again, this is stuff that I only enjoy in fiction. I recognize that in real life, people shouldn’t have to get hurt to be worthy of love and care. But I can see why people may say that Nakyum being the victim might be a problem.

Other

I thought Jihwa & the Nameless one were going to be a side pairing from the moment I saw the Nameless one’s jaw lmao. It was angular and I was like, that’s a handsome man’s jaw. I’m glad that Jihwa realized before hurting Nakyum that he couldn’t possibly fix his relationship with Seungho anymore. He recognized that even with Nakyum out of the picture, Seungho wouldn’t want to come to him. Seungho’s mind would always be filled with Nakyum, and if Seungho had found out that he was behind the murder, he’d hate Jihwa even more. Like Nameless one, despite the despicable things that Jihwa had done, I did pity him. He was in love with Seungho for a long time, and thought that giving him everything he wanted (including letting him have sexual relations with others) would endear himself to Seungho. But they were just not meant to be.

But Min implied that Jihwa had crossed the line already this time by kidnapping Nakyum. After the happenings of Chapter 66, Seungho’s going to have a field day with Jihwa and I’m not sure how he’s going to get out of that one. Not sure if Nameless one can do anything to help.

I don’t know how long this manhwa is supposed to be, but there are several story lines other than Seungho x Nakyum that haven’t been addressed yet. Like I said, I think we’re going to see Jihwa x Nameless one expanded upon a bit. There’s some stuff going on with the Yoon family, since Seungho’s brother keeps coming over. I wonder if Seungho’s going to try starting a career (this isn’t based on anything, I’m just wondering). And I also have a feeling that Inhun might return, which will likely force Nakyum to choose between Inhun or Seungho once and for all.

To be completely honest, I don’t want this manhwa to drag out for too long. For selfish reasons because again I don’t like waiting for ongoing comic chapters. I don’t know how long the manhwa is intended to be, but based on my paragraph above, it’d still take a lot of time for all of those loose ends to be wrapped up. But considering the fact that Seungho and Nakyum’s relationship is probably finally going to get better, hopefully we’re over half way through? Just me being hopeful.

Final

I didn’t write a full review for this on my Dreamwidth because, like, this comic isn’t even done yet. But as you can see, I enjoyed reading it. I feel like I’m missing a hundred things that crossed my mind while reading this. And there are a lot of interesting analysis posts on Tumblr and Reddit that are opening my mind to other interpretations too.

I had a BL manga phase when I was a teenager and now I’m like “...is it time to get back into it?” Lol. In any case, it’s interesting reading BL as an adult now because like I said, it’s so much easier to separate the fiction from the reality now. I can read BL purely as fiction while recognizing what tropes are not healthy, and they don’t diminish the story. It’s melodramatic because it’s exactly that: melodrama.

#thinking out loud #manhwa #painter of the night

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recurring-polynya · 3 years

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I have to say I knew that at one point renji, ikkaku, yumichika and iba were in the same squad with kenpachi but good god you managed to paint a beautiful picture for me. I simply assumed that for them it was simply party time all the time along with a few bald jokes but this is much better. Emotionally healthy squad 11 which still love fighting more than anything. I always cringed when someone would just describe them as hooligans that do nothing but fighting. I mean they do that too but I love the idea that they are all emotionally healthy and mature, a loving and supportive family to their own - in their own wakka doodoo kind of way thats endearing - and of course they are in my opinion they single capable force against sexisim. Because they don't care about anything else - gendere, sexuality, gender performances, race, mentality or anything - other than if you fight good you respectable and if you fight good in squad 11 you family. ( like when kenpachi just became captain he made yachiru his lieutenant and no one was against it no one thought it was beneath them, sure thru nag at her sometimes but that's mostly in a banter like way because she call them stupid nicknames but no one hates her for being unrightfully their superior. One day they got a new captain and a new lieutenant that's a child and they just went with it.) I admit their disdain and disrespect to squad 4 is still frowned upon but I do believe some squad 4s can handle their own, it's just that we saw the really peaceful ones. Anyways sorry for ranting. Just wanted to say that yeah, I really like how the past squad 11 with iba and renji in it was a great place in general. I think if they found out some one was being sexist - for whatever reason - they would be there right next to nanao - or iba's mom protesting. Kenpachi and yachiru as well. And that makes me want to be squad 11 ,despite not being much for fighting, so bad.

So, for starters, thanks! I try to have fun whenever I write Squad 11, and I’m glad you enjoy my take on them.

My Squad 11 is just... really not very canon, though. Canon Squad 11 is actually pretty gross and sexist. Yumichika is transphobic, Kenpachi makes homophobic remarks about Yumichika, they bully Squad 4, there’s a filler episode devoted to a guy that Ikkaku bullied for, like 100 years because the guy lost his reiatsu saving Ikkaku’s dumb ass.

When you write fanfic, you occasionally run into these more problematic aspects of the source media, and you can choose to dig in and analyze them, or just... remake them in your own way. Take for example, Gin. If you read fanfic about Gin, there are some people who will peel away the layers of him and his fears and insecurities and still make him be a horrible gremlin, and it’s really stellar writing. Other people prefer to write him in an AU where maybe less bad stuff happened to him, and he’s more mischievous than sociopathic, and this is a less meaty interpretation, but it’s also more fun. Sometimes fanfic is a meal and sometimes it’s candy. It fulfills different needs and different fantasies and all of it is welcome.

Yumichika, who for me is the fulcrum of Squad 11, presents this problem. I really don’t like the way his “appreciation for beauty” plays out in canon. He doesn’t actually appreciate beauty, he just likes telling other people they’re ugly. I don’t think he’s ever pointed out beauty in anyone else aside from himself or his zanpakutou. I remember the first time I watched his fight with Charlotte and it struck me as so off -- why wouldn’t he find her beautiful? I mean, I know it’s a transmysogynistic joke, that’s why, men dressed as women is funny, hurr hurr, but Yumichika is gender nonconforming himself. This was an opportunity to make a cool character point, and Kubo took the cheap laughs road instead. Going back to what I said last paragraph, a skilled writer could, in theory, write about his insecurities and his brittleness and meanness and write a pretty compelling story, but a) Kubo certainly doesn’t, and I have never actually found a Yumichika-centric fanfic of this nature, and b) this doesn’t fit the role I need him to play in my stories. I am rarely really interested in writing about Squad 11 for its own sake. I like to write them as a backdrop for the period of Renji’s afterlife where he hit absolute rock bottom and bounced back up again. We already know the role Ikkaku played in this, except that Ikkaku is a complete moron in terms of mental health, and I really, really felt like this is where Yumichika needed to come in.

I like to massage Yumichika’s character a bit, but I do want to keep the flavor of some of his character flaws-- he’s still shallow and mean and judgy, and I love that for him, but I like to add in a positive side to his appreciation for beauty. Having Yumichika make fun of Izuru’s pores is funny but it’s even funnier if he’s just given Renji a compliment on his hair first. The idea that a Yumichika compliment is attainable makes all his drags the more vicious. Yumichika also judged people by their beauty instead of their moral character, which is humorous to me. He dislikes Byakuya as a person, but is obsessed with his haircare regime. I like to have him treat Rangiku as an equal, beauty-wise, and a person whose opinion he respects based on her aesthetic. Rangiku is actually a pretty savvy and very emotionally intelligent person whom many people write off because she likes to present herself as a lazy airhead, so in an extremely convoluted way, this all works out. I like to think that Yumichika’s ideas of beauty are also caught up in boldness and risk-taking and having one’s outward presentation ring true to their inner self. To me, this is the core of why he loves Ikkaku. To him, Ikkaku’s devotion to doing the most Ikkaku thing at all times, no matter how stupid, is irresistibly sexy.

Aside: At some point, I decided that the fact that a lot of people in Bleach have colorful marks on their faces and elaborate hairstyle and accessory games implied that make-up in Soul Society is gender neutral. I like to think there is actually more of a divide between the nobility, who like their make-up to follow rules and be classy, and, well, Squad 11, who like to get make-up ideas from Jem and the Holograms. I don’t even wear makeup (I don’t know how and it’s expensive and I am ashamed of myself, we can talk about my own gender presentation later) but I like to write about both my male and female characters wearing make-up. I don’t actually know how my readers feel about it, but it just falls under the “Is that what people want?”/“It’s what we do” philosophy of all my writing.

I think one of the theses of my writing is that middle management is more important to the character of a squad than the person at the top. Captains sort of act as ideals to strive for, but they are generally unapproachable for one reason or another. Yachiru is more like her captain in this respect (which makes sense, since she is, in fact part of her captain). Ikkaku and Yumichika present this dual idea that 1) strength is awesome, fighting and being the best is awesome, and 2) part of strength is presenting yourself to the world in a bold and confrontational way. (The fact that both of them are hiding huge parts of themselves is laughably ironic). Kenpachi and Yachiru are shining examples of Do Whatever You Want and Be So Strong That No One Can Stop You.

What really makes this work is that you need someone one layer down-- does anyone actually subscribe to this nonsense, and that’s why Iba - Abarai Squad 11 is Best Squad 11. I really, really enjoy the genre of Reddit posts where a total bro will find out that his girlfriend is trans and react by becoming a vehement advocate for trans rights. I love the bodybuilders typing encouragement to each other meme. Our world is flooded with disingenuous messages from concern trolls trying to tell us why being kind and inclusive to one another is bad or that you should reject help because struggle makes you stronger and the idea of a Himbo looking at something like that and saying “that seems dumb" is delightful to me.

I actually feel like there are a lot of awful people with bad ideas in Squad 11, it’s just that Renji and Iba don’t put up with their shit, and over time, that becomes the culture of Squad 11. I think that Squad 11 has incredibly turnover, but the ones who stay are the ones who subscribe to the ideas you mentioned-- fighting is what matters, if you wanna go argue about shit, go join Squad 5. In the IkkaYumi story I wrote, which happens shortly after Zaraki takes over, a ton of people leave. The Bount Arc (which I know a lot of people skipped) features a dude who was extremely pissed off because he had liked the old Kenpachi and thought Zaraki sucked and was so mad about it that he betrayed Soul Society. You might think that this arc would feature Zaraki caring about this in some way shape or form, but he really didn’t. So, I think there are a lot of Soul Reapers that took issue with serving under a little girl as a vice captain, they just aren’t in Squad 11 anymore.

Oh, one last note on Iba’s mom. I am of an age where a number of my friends have mothers who were Second Wave Feminists. The moms in question are a real mixed bag, because they Came From a Different Time, and on one hand, you have to respect what they went through, and on the other hand, they are very difficult to get along with. I liked the idea that Iba has always chafed against his mom and her big personality, and then Renji comes in, and is like, “hey, your mom is strong as hell and she has a lot of ideas that I never thought of but they make sense” and Iba realizes that, even though she’s still a huge pain in his ass, his mom is the person who made him who he is. Moms are complex.

Uhhhh, I have definitely lost the thread of wherever I was going with this post. Thank you for enjoying my Squad 11, which is nothing like canon Squad 11. Hopefully maybe this year, I will actually finish my Squad 11 Self Care story, where Renji stops being a drunk disaster person after Yumichika teaches him how to fill his brows; I got stuck on a part where Rangiku gives Renji a talk on ethical sluttery.

#squad 11 #sometimes i look at Things I Have Wrought and pull a full Talking Heads style 'how did i get here?'#my squad 11 stuff is my absolutely weirdest most bonkers writing #i am glad people seem to like it #just trying to find some meaning in this hot mess #i think i blame The Toast

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steve0discusses · 4 years

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Yugioh Ep 35 S4: Raphael Joins the Pile of Dead Bodies

Ah 2020, thankfully we have one trashfire somewhat behind us, but I’m still avoiding social media for so many obvious reasons because of all the other trashfires that just never seem to stop burning, so lets talk about Yugioh with all of this newfound time.

Ah, card games. Card games that go on for 6-7 episodes. Lets see how they pad it out:

In a lot of ways, Roland really is just padding for the show, and that’s OK. He’s doing his best, by doing literally nothing but stand outside and check the time.

Inside the dusty soul chamber, Tristan has decided to do us the favor of recapping what happened last episode, which included the return of our four dead friends, so that they could die...again.

Seto’s reaction to seeing these dead people suddenly alive again was very “guys...I went nuts like years ago, I’m just going with it at this point.” and he’s still 100% positive that this is all a hologram and that no one will ever die.

Whatever it takes for Seto to get out of bed in the morning, I guess.

(read more under the cut)

One of the big mechanics the game is that you need to stay level headed, or the Orichalcos just kind of slurps you up. This explains a little why Dartz is so freakin chill basically all of the time, just the Bob Ross of evil over there. It also is sort of funny because Pharaoh and Seto are the least chill people to have ever lived so he’s just kind of waiting it out to see whom between Seto and Kaiba gets the most angry first and completely botches it.

Yugi has to do literally nothing and for the first time in his life this is the right choice.

I’m so glad he gets to use his big brain move of “If I don’t play, no one dies!” from S1. Glad it came back to serve him for once instead of just make everyone else really annoyed.

Yugi just...not moving means it’s now Seto’s turn to put down some cards, and he kinda looks over at Pegasus and goes...well you know what’s gonna happen next.

I have no idea why he didn’t attack Pegasus. Like this episode is kind of weird because we got these flashbacks of Pegasus being like “you’re my only hope, Yugi!” and it’s like wtf, Pegasus trapped you on a murder island and tried to kill you multiple times. He abducted Mokuba and turned both the Kaiba brothers into cards.

yo did Seto and Pegasus get back together in between seasons or something? Was there a whole character development where these two have fun brunches in San Fransisco now? Because I would watch that anime. I would watch the anime where Seto and Pegasus are co-hosting Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, and just destroying every unsuspecting local restaurant they brunch in.

But are we just assuming that the eyeball did all that evil stuff from S1 and that otherwise Pegasus is a good person? Because like...he was a mess before he got possessed. He’s kind of a Yugi, he’s kind of a Bakura, he’s kind of a Marik...in that there’s a mess in that bean, and getting possesed just only amplified what was already there.

So, with his smug as hell grin, Seto surprises Dartz by only barely getting affected by this inescapable moral dilemma and Seto just very quickly deciding to do a murder. And then we get a little blimp throwback to S2 (S3? I don’t even remember at this point, since we’ve been stuck in S4 for an entire year. Thanks 2020.)

If blocking the shot when Marik did it in S3 or S2 or whenever that was, didn’t get Mai to like Joey, then it shouldn’t work if you do it a second time.

But hey, I guess it’s better than letting her perma-die. Although this show desperately needs to figure out how to use Mai if they’re gonna keep her around, youknow?

Like all ships are fine and valid here, ship whatever you want to your hearts content: I don’t ship at all, as you know, but I hope one day they give Mai a personality that is consistently likeable. I do want to like her because she’s like...good at what she does when she plays cards and can be that can be a fun “hey I’m a girl but I’m not a freakin ‘gamer girl’ you male chauvinist assholes” type of character. But, the show just...the show doesn’t know what they want outside of a little romantic tension that they legally can’t follow through because of a 5-6 year age gap with a teenager.

This show actively tries to destroy this ship, and then turns around and is like “oh shoot this ship is all we have.” This show tries to lift up Mai as a feminist icon one season, and then tears her down for being “too” feminist the next season when she decides to--youknow--kill Joey Wheeler because he made her feel weak or something when he saved her life.

Like the show does a lot to explore weakness and strength, and how what we see as weakness is actually strength, and how what we tend to attribute as strengths is actually weakness, and how our modern career/school/success expectations set us up for failure, but I think they explored that way better with Seto than they ever did with Mai.

Could’ve been cool Mai, you could’ve been cool.

Anyhoo, that was my spicy commentary on a 10+ year old anime, good to get it off my chest.

Seto and Yami have the typical problem they have whenever they play cards together, where one goes completely rogue. Except this time, the one going rogue isn’t Seto, it’s Yami. He’s just like...I’ll make life for Seto very difficult and I will lose this game and I don’t even mind because I’m already dead, deal with it.

So honestly this is an episode where it’s just Seto demanding we kill a bastard, and Yami being like “but not THAT bastard” and Seto just shrugging and saying “I have to kill A bastard, Yugi! Just CHOOSE one!”

That actual line in the show (I forget what it was exactly) does infer that Seto thinks Joey holds him back, and that implication speaks miles about Seto’s insecurities.

HOW THOUGH..........what are you jealous of, Seto?

You’re better at cards than he is, he’s never beat you at anything. It’s not about who’s best friends with Yugi because...Yugi’s possessed so Yami is always going to take first place...

......so what could it possibly BE?

Seto doesn’t attend school anymore, is it about that? Is it because Joey is likeable? Is it because Joey pretends he has a much older girlfriend? I mean hypothetically, Blue Eyes White Dragon is WAY older than Mai so...that can’t be it.

.....what IS it???

Does the “friendship” he have with Joey make Seto too soft? Is that what’s holding him back? Because Seto doesn’t actually think he’s friends with these people and says that Yugi and co are “Mokuba’s friends” so like....

.....what are you talking about, Seto???

Is it because you’re addicted to cards again? Because that’s...sort of Joey’s fault because he was the one who told you he needed a ride to Jacksonville, and then let slip that the “King of Games” title was up for grabs, is that it?

Are you just tired of Joey asking you for a ride?

Not like it matters, because Joey survives, and Seto gets to feel like a complete asshole about it.

As Raphael (who is this purple blur here) motorcycles into the dome of souls, Rolands last words were

“You can’t go in there!”

which was the weirdest thing to say to a guy you just saw fall down a 50 story building a few hours ago. Raphael not being dead should be the thing Roland fixates on, but instead he’s seen so many people die and come back to life, that he’s only concerned that Raphael will get in trouble for trespassing.

Again, Roland is the only Kaiba that hasn’t died yet, and it’s because he’s the only Kaiba that hasn’t broken the law.

Dude. What if the reason Roland is standing outside is because he’s been politely looking for the doorbell to be let in?

...the players asking for death...like clockwork...and me asking for the end of this freakin game...we played...1 turn this episode...

This episode was 1 turn!

And you may ask...well what else could possibly happen to stretch this out and well...

Raphael dives in on a motorcycle to save the day. Which is an aesthetic, by the way, this huge man covered in like a dozen belts, doing a wheelie jump into a chasm of 1 million souls. that’s an aesthetic.

So he shows up, gets off his bike and I was like “Oh good, someone to maybe save Yugi saving Joey saving Mai?” And instead, I was...not given that.

Mostly Raphael is here because he ALSO wants to kill Dartz, and is like “can I join? I know you’ve only played like 1 round, just deal me a new hand, it’ll be fine.” and it’s like...we already played the Orichalcos Raphael, this is not a game of Uno, you cannot just jump in.

Dartz is sort of obsessed with how everyone around him has potential for evil except for him, the chillest human to ever be born, and I gotta say...when he’s in this room...Dartz has a point.

+++++++++++++RANT ABOUT BEING PERFECT FEEL FREE TO SKIP++++++++++++++

It is sort of nice to have the concept of an older generation (in this case 10,000 years older) fighting with a younger generation. To have the older, more typically wiser generation say “Listen, I kinda screwed the planet and the war economy and the prison system...and I’m gonna keep doing that...and you can’t stop me because you’re a bunch of hypocritical dumbasses.” and then the younger generation say. “We don’t care if we’re a mess, dude. We aren’t the problem here.”

I may be putting some recent topical STUFF into this mold here, but it is a nice little analogy that they made even someone who is such a human disaster as Yami and Seto “morally good” enough to fight Dartz. You don’t have to be a perfect Harvard Grad to fight the system, you don’t have to be an entirely problematic-free savior, you can be even as problematic as Seto Kaiba--just get rid of the dumb assholes trying to destroy the world. That’s all.

Like this concept is strangely prescient because in 2020 we’re in a weird time period where if you aren’t perfect, you’re not allowed to have opinions. You’re not allowed to make content. You’re not allowed to make change. This is mostly an online problem in places like twitter, but it’s a real problem--because in the end what you’re left with is no one that wants to step up to the plate because they know that they, too, are flawed.

And like not even just as a political thing, even as a creator, as an artist, I see this problem more and more with kids. Kids who are like “I am afraid to draw because what if I do it wrong and I get dragged on twitter years later?” or “I want to make a story, but I’m afraid to get cancelled because my fantasy story has problematic stuff in it? Am a bad person for wanting to write it?” And it’s like...what are we doing to young creators right now? Did we all fail humanities? How have we failed art and literature SO badly that we’ve come to this point that people are too afraid to even learn how to do it right?

Anyway that was a tangent, but like...you see the similarities, right? That if you really were as perfect as Dartz either politically or creatively, you’d be a freakin monster and would probably just tear down everyone else around you on twitter rather than lift other people up. It’s a stretch but eh, it’s been a while since I went on a good Yugioh tangent and like

---it’s not like I can say this on twitter---

+++++++++++++++END OF THAT RANT+++++++++++++++++++

So it’s at this point that Dartz turns to Raphael is like “I mean...we weren’t really doing anything else, and Yugi and Yami are playing so slowly...I guess I have time to bust your nuts” and decides to bust his nuts.

Oh hey, I was right.

And yeah, that’s still effed up. Dartz killed his Raphael’s family, left him on an island, and then adopted him later after forcing him to dig up their graves. Like...Raphael, that’s effed up.

He also did the same thing to everyone else (and for Valon he just kinda glazed over that really fast because we had to edit his backstory out of the English version)

PS at this part Mokuba started sweating bullets and Tea leaned over and was like “Is this true, Mokuba?”

And Mokuba was like “...yes.”

Because, I don’t think Mokuba can keep any secret from Tea. Like for reals, Tea may be the most dangerous thing to all of KaibaCorp if she wasn’t so distracted by Yami’s endless string of problems. Mokuba is constantly telling them all of Seto’s deepest darkest secrets and there is like nothing Seto can do about it.

The animation of Gozaburo turning into a beautiful Dartz was just a simple fade to white, but man--imagine if they had dome some crazy effed up animation where Gozaburo just whips back his head and he has ass length blue hair and long, luscious lashes?

Imagine.

Anyway, this was enough for Raphael, who was already our most gullible and unstable person on this show, to just flip that switch and go lime green like all those other minibosses before him.

Really glad we built up Raphael for him to just die at the door hahaha.

That was so freakin random.

OK then. Thanks for nothing, Raphael.

I guess we go to the next episode to see if we finally play another turn? We can hope for good things. But if we don’t play a full turn I will NOT be surprised.

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welllpthisishappening · 3 years

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But Once a Year (3/5)

This is a trick.

It has to be. Something Pan planned, or some nonsense only possible in Neverland, because one second Emma’s sitting outside the Echo Caves and wondering how exactly things could possibly get worse, and then the world decides to take her up on the challenge. She’s not where she was. Or when she was, either.

And the future isn’t entirely what Emma expects it to be, but that might not be entirely horrible and Christmas with a husband and a family that quite clearly loves her is only kind of messing with her head. God bless us, every one.

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Rating: T Word Count: 9K and change, but also stuff happens AN: I cannot tell you guys how much I appreciate you continuing to appreciate this story. It’s exceptionally nice, and I think you’re wonderful. Here’s a whole slew of feelings and tradition and magic. Like, lots of magic.

Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll || Or start from the start

————

This is a problem.

Multiple problems, honestly. Like, at least seven different problems that Emma can think of off the top of her head, and obviously the most pressing is getting back to the right part of her timeline, but only marginally less distressing is the overall domesticity of her life at this point of her timeline.

It’s more than the pillows. Of which there are just an absolutely ridiculous amount, actually. They hover in couch corners and fall to the floor with alarming regularity because, between the two of them, Hope and Lucy are something akin to forces of nature, hopped up on Christmas-type sugar and the cookies that people apparently just hand out on the street in Storybrooke. Someone’s always got some sort of baked good, freshly out of the oven — and while Emma’s discovered she’s particularly partial to Granny’s snickerdoodles, she can’t imagine any of this is very efficient.

For Storybrooke’s economy, or whatever.

There’s no bank. Emma looked. And asked. Several dwarfs, actually. All of whom immediately bowed and narrowed their eyes at her like she’d totally lost her mind, which seems pretty accurate at this point. Five days after waking up on that couch, with all of its pillows and questionable comfort, and only a handful of people actually know what’s going on.

Not Hope.

And no one actually told her to do that, but Emma figures it’s kind of like deciding to take her boots off in the house. Polite. Plus, a growing determination not to traumatize a ridiculously cute four-year-old, even when that four-year-old appears to be far more adept at stealing cookies than anything else.

Crumbs line the counter in the morning, and there’s usually a bit of evidence directly outside Hope’s bedroom door, signs of a late-night theft that shouldn’t make Emma smile. She does anyway. Can’t seem to stop it, which might be problem number four. Three is definitely Killian’s consistent lack of jacket, which admittedly is a very surface problem, but the button-up shirts are all ridiculously patterned, and trying not to ask who initially took him shopping is like, problem, three sub-a.

So, no one tells Hope that her mom isn’t her mom. Technically speaking, at least. They go through the motions, and Emma smiles when she’s supposed to, and she eats what is undoubtedly the world record for snickerdoodle consumption by a wayward princess, but trying to be herself, while also not being herself continues to be a rather daunting prospect.

Particularly because whomever Regina believed would know more about Neverland vegetation and its ability to ruin everything is taking their sweet time responding or showing up in Storybrooke, and they’ve tried what feels like several thousand things to get Emma back, but magic beans were a no-go, and some very fancy wand didn’t do anything except infuriate Regina with it uselessness, and it’s still Christmas, so there are apparently a metric shit ton of traditions and expectations, and—

“Wait, what?” Emma asks, perched on the edge of her desk in the station because that’s at least something she’s used to. Less so to Killian’s presence at the only other desk, and she doesn’t remember the only other desk being quite so close to her’s, but it’s entirely possible that’s a trick of her not-quite coherent mind.

Might be problem six. Maybe seven. Making it six gives it power, and acknowledges how much the state of his tongue continues to affect her cognitive abilities. Of which there were already very few, especially while she was exhausted in Neverland, and Emma’s not willing to risk anymore.

“It’s something of a requirement,” Killian says, not for the first time. Princesses have a ridiculous number of requirements, Emma’s rather quickly learned. And he can’t seem to sit straight in any chair. Also ridiculous.

“Does that not hurt your spine?”

Shrugging, he smirks at her and that’s been happening more often. Not that she’s keeping track, or anything. She’s just—aware, that’s totally the right word. Of him, and what he does with his face and his patterned shirts, and there’s been no bare arm again, but Emma’s still not really his wife, and she knows the hours he’s spent holed up in one of the copious rooms in their quasi-mansion have been dedicated to research.

And getting his wife back.

That’s fine. It’s fine. Definitely not a problem. Hasn’t even crossed her mind.

Emma doesn’t want him to want her. Like, ever.

And they’re waiting for her dad, anyway. To report back on some magical failing in Wonderland. Seriously, everything is so fine that it's almost a problem as well. It’s too fine. Everything is—

Great.

“Are you concerned about the state of my spine, darling?”

Melting is not an option — so far as Emma is aware of, but it’s certainly very appealing in the moment. When that moment includes tilted lips and an angled neck seemingly designed to ensure Killian’s hair falls artfully across his forehead, as if the strands are there to frame his eyes and the hint of light in them.

She takes a deep breath.

The light brightens. Or she imagines.

“A tree lighting, though,” Emma says, not-so-subtly changing the subject. Killian’s brows jump. Up his forehead and past those strands of hair she’s only passably obsessed with. “Isn’t that kind of...I don’t know, it’s not very fairy tale.” “Regina lights the candles with magic, if that helps.” “So why do I have to be there?” “The monarchy usually stands on a platform, waves lovingly to their subjects and—” “—God, how is there more?” Emma balks, but that only gets her a more powerful smirk and eyes that are far too blue to be fair, and they still haven’t painted the dining room. She’s not going to ask about that.

She’s not.

“This is something of the central hub for the rest of the United Realms,” Killian explains, “and with Regina and the Charmings here, it makes sense that people...flock.” “Like birds.” “Not the ones your mother can commune with, but I suppose the metaphor is appropriate.”

“Who decided to hold Regina’s queen election?” Eyeing her speculatively, Emma does her very best not to wither under Killian’s expression. She’s not altogether confident it works, but they’ve almost come to something like an understanding, and it’s very easy. This, them. No, not them. There’s no them and while Emma’s done her fair share of staring, there can’t be a them now because that will undoubtedly fuck with the timeline and probably everything else, just to keep inspiring problematic lists, and her increasing desire to kiss him until he also has to deal with wobbly knees is just something she’s going to have to deal with.

“Maybe I won’t remember when I get back,” Emma reasons, but that one word comes out as wobbly as her knees have been and Killian purses his lips. “Ok, fine—tell me something totally random, then. A fun-fact, as it were.” “Random.” “Do you not know what that means?” He rolls his eyes. “I know at least three more languages than you do, so—” “—No you do not!”

Nodding, Killian smiles over the edge of his coffee mug, and neither one of them mention that his proclivity to drinking a gallon of coffee every morning could probably be this so-called fun fact. “English, obviously, and—” “—Ok, I can clearly speak English,” Emma argues. She nearly bites her tongue in half at the force of Killian’s answering look, part amusement and even more heat and that only circles her back around to the melting thing.

“Aye, but I definitely know more curses than you do, so that’s got to count for something. Also that’s simply my base language, as it were.” She sneers. He chuckles. Into the mug, but it feels like the emotion behind it sinks under Emma’s skin and times up with her pulse, less erratic than it had been those first few nights, and she’s actually started sleeping consistently. “Then of course, I’m rather familiar with Latin.” “Dead, it doesn’t count.” “Impressive, though.” “Sounds like you’re fishing for compliments, Captain.” “Unnecessary, when I know you’ll be all wide-eyed and amazed in a moment,” Killian promises, swinging his legs to prop his feet on the edge of her desk. “There’s also Greek, and—” Waving her hands, Emma doesn’t explicitly try to swat at his legs, but he’s just so goddamn close, and still exuding heat, and she’s starting to have some assumptions about that as well. Of the possibly magic and decidedly—no she’s not doing that. They’re not that. Not like this, anyway. And Killian doesn’t immediately move, but that only lulls her into a false sense of security, the metal of his hook is cold enough that she yelps when it circles both her wrists.

“Fairy,” he finishes, and Emma refuses to believe he leans forward on purpose.

“No.” “You keep objecting to my facts and you’ll give a man a complex, Swan.” “Why would you know Greek, you’re a—” “—Fairy tale character?”

Emma presses her lips together. So as not to make an undignified noise. She’s already whimpered enough, and cried more than she thought possible and the hitch in his voice threatens to shatter several things. Moving her hands is impossible, which is probably for the best, but all of her would very much like to cup his cheek, if only to see if he’ll kiss the inside of her wrist, and she’s like ninety-two percent positive he would. “Pirate prince,” she corrects lightly, and does get her a smile. “Do you have an official title here?” “Captain.” “That’s it?” “Not impressive enough, huh?”

There’s no music on in the station, but they’re clearly dancing all the same — around each other, and the maelstrom of feelings Emma is doing a God awful job of ignoring, and at some point one of them is going to have to pull away from the other. In more ways than one.

“I didn’t say that,” she shakes, “and don’t bother telling me it’s another argument, I don’t care. I’m just—curious, I guess.” “About me?”

Nodding is the least dangerous response when she’s so worried about tripping over her own feet in this metaphorical waltz, but it’s one of the more accurate things she’s said since she got here, and now she’s got an excuse. No repercussions, nothing exactly permanent about these conversations, or this information, and no one’s told her whether or not she’ll retain her memories once she gets back, but they also don’t know she’ll get back so—

Fuck it, honestly.

“Yeah,” Emma replies, not bothering to gloat when Killian’s the one whose eyes go wide first.

“Oh.” “Is that unexpected?” “Maybe at this point.”

Humming, she files that away, preening slightly under the not-quite-compliment. “Not an answer though. Habit of yours.” “Not really, you’re just very demanding in this incarnation.” “Product of my situation, I guess.” He laughs. It’s something that happens more often here than it did when Emma knew him — knows him, whatever tenses get confusing in time travel. Still, the sound consistently manages to catch her off guard. Free and easy, and the magic that rustles in the back of her brain might deserve its own list.

Or another conversation with Regina. “The Royal Navy,” Killian says, an answer Emma nearly forgot she wanted. Her eyes widen. He looks triumphant. “See, told you.” “Like an Enchanted Forest GI bill, huh? See new lands, learn new languages.” “Something like that, aye.” “How’d you get to fairy?” “Did you meet the Lady Bell before—” “—I got yanked out of Neverland?” Emma quips, and it might be a defense mechanism. Making jokes, but she also hasn’t gone into detail about the plant-thing yet, and that might be because she doesn’t want to freak him out.

Anymore than he already is. He spends at least an hour in that room every night.

“Yeah, I did,” she adds,” after she kidnapped Regina and told us Greg and Tamara were dead, which...y’know—” “—Wasn’t the worst thing in the world?” “Does that make me a horrible person?” Killian shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” “Are you going to tell me you learned fairy language from an actual fairy?” “Not much else to do on a hellish island for several hundred years, and it’s a rather complicated tongue. Takes some practice.” “Oh, you’re doing that on purpose now.” The speed of his grin is like molasses. Emma assumes. She’s not sure she’s ever encountered molasses in real life. Even so, the whole thing is bordering on obscene and the opposite of the Christmas spirit and—“Alright,” she concedes, “learning fairy is actually pretty impressive.” “You flatter me, love.”

“What’s your favorite fairy curse word and do you think anyone would be totally scandalized if I used it during this super fancy, exceptionally royal tree lighting?”

Absolutely, goddamn obscene. The tip of his tongue finds the corner of his mouth, and his eyes get noticeably darker, Emma’s pulse picking up until she’s sure they can hear it on the other side of town, and there’s already barely any space between them, but that appears to be decreasing with every passing second. She’s got no idea who’s moving. She might be moving.

God, she hopes she’s moving.

Losing control of her limbs may send her off some ledge.

And she’s just about to throw caution to the seemingly ever-present wind that comes off the harbor, because the front of this patterned shirt looks particularly yankable, but the station door creaks, and a muscle in Killian’s jaw jumps and David clicks his teeth exactly once when he walks in.

“Interrupting something, am I?” “No, no,” Emma stammers at the same time Killian mumbles “absolutely not,” and neither of those things sound all that honest.

She’s never gone into cardiac arrest, but if this is what it feels like, it’s kind of disorienting.

“You hear about the tree lighting, Emma?” David asks, and that’s obviously where her inability to tactfully alter the course of a conversation comes from. Killian rolls his eyes towards the ceiling, slumping back into his chair.

Exhaling feels like an admission of guilt, but Emma can’t have anything to feel guilty about here, and she hopes Killian’s getting sleep. On the couch. He keeps sleeping on the couch.

Of course he does.

“Do I have to wear a gown or anything?” “It’s outside,” David says, “there are trees involved.”

Killian’s hook pokes at his chair arm. “Only one tree, as far as I knew.” “Why are you like this?” “You’re charmed by it, I know,” he chuckles, eyes flashing towards Emma. Coincidence, she’s sure. Her cheeks are very warm.

She’s very warm. Passably magical, maybe.

David sighs. “No, there are no gowns. It is in fact only one tree, and Em—you don’t have to say anything. Regina will thank people for coming, Snow will open up the meal and that’ll be that.” “Should I know what the meal is?” Emma asks, and her gaze doesn’t automatically drift towards Killian either. It just, sort of—meanders there, naturally. His tongue is still doing that thing.

“I was going to get to that part eventually.” “There’s kind of a reception,” David explains, “with cookies.” “Shit, how many cookies can one United Realm eat?” “An exceptional amount,” Killian mutters, and Emma might guffaw. While realizing why her other version had been baking so much before.

“You don’t have to do anything,” David adds, “just show up and smile, and you’ll get some cookies out of it.” “Will I not get cookies if I don’t smile?” Not able to stop whatever noise rumbles out of him, the force of Killian’s grin makes Emma glad she’s sitting down again. “I’ll swipe you some if you don’t.” “Very gallant.” “Happens from time to time.” Flirting in front of her father is wrong. That’s if this counts as flirting. As far as Emma knows, most of their banter has been a product of their mutually ridiculous lives, and whatever situation they’ve found themselves in at the moment, but this moment doesn’t hold any danger and it is so goddamn easy.

She smiles.

Killian beams.

David sighs again. “Anyone want to hear about Wonderland now? Or how the White Rabbit can’t draw any portals? Or—” “—This is a really extensive list,” Emma grumbles, and Killian’s smile is going to get stuck on his face. Permanently. She’s very charmed by the crinkles around his eyes.

“Tinker Bell is here.” Slamming his feet back onto the floor, Killian practically snaps to attention, and Emma’s body goes through another reaction she does not expect. What feels suspiciously like jealousy rattles down her spine, rooting her to the spot and drying out her mouth and David’s far too observant.

He clicks his teeth again. “When?” Killian asks, already standing and offering Emma his hand. She takes it, not thinking about what that means — or how it affects the half-green tint clouding her vision, and her heart misses a beat. As soon as his fingers lace through hers.

“Just now. Went to Regina’s, but I had to come here, so one of Snow’s birds told me.” “You can talk to the birds too?” Emma balks, stumbling while Killian all but yanks her towards the door.

“No, no, they carry messages now.” “Ah of course.” “Did Tink say anything yet?” Killian demands, David already shaking his head and they’re picking up speed. All but jogging down Main Street and towards Regina’s office, and the nickname probably isn’t important. It’s fine. Everything is fine. It’s all going to be good.

Even when the fairy in question snaps towards the office door as it swings open, practically lighting up when she notices Killian and Regina’s eyes go noticeably thin. Staring at Emma like she’s trying to read her mind.

Her fingers are still tied up with Killian’s. “Hook,” Tinker Bell exclaims, and she doesn’t have any visible wings so she can’t fly out of her chair. She tries all the same, arms that bump Emma as they hug her not-quite husband and he mutters a greeting. It takes a moment for Tinker Bell’s gaze to find Emma, trying and failing to keep her expression even, and Killian might chuckle.

She kicks his ankle.

“Emma,” Tink breathes, “it’s good to see you again, you have to get the hell out of this timeline.”

“So, that’s it,” Tinker Bell finishes, shrugging like Emma’s not dangerously close to fully breaking down and Killian’s thumb keeps tapping the side of her palm. Because he’s still holding her hand. Cool, it’s cool. She’s not totally preoccupied with that.

Regina’s totally staring, anyway.

“Will-o-wisps,” Killian says, “I thought that was a rumor.” More shrugging. There’s too much shrugging for Emma. “I’ve never heard of it in practice,” Tinker Bell reasons, “but can you think of another plant in Neverland that could do such a thing? That rumor you’re talking about always mentioned how it would draw a traveler in, bewitch them with lights and—were there lights, Emma?”

She nods. Swallows, or tries at least. But her tongue is expanding again, and her heart might be shrinking, and the whole thing feels like a very cruel trick.

“Pan would have known about all of that,” Tinker Bell continues, “and used it to his advantage. If he could get Emma to follow the light, then she wouldn’t be a problem anymore.” “But I didn’t actually move anywhere,” Emma argues. “There was no following the light.” Regina exhales. “Probably more metaphorical, giving into what the light offered.” “Which was?” “This, obviously. What we talked about, and what you thought you couldn’t ever have while you were stuck in Neverland, convinced of a whole slew of wholly negative things. So, there was no walking, but—” “—I wouldn’t have just run away!”

Voice cracking is a sign of impending mental breakdown, Emma’s sure. As are Killian’s tightening fingers, although she’s starting to depend on those fingers just a bit because sitting hadn’t even crossed her mind before and now that might be the only reason she’s still standing.

That keeps happening.

“Doesn’t sound like you had a choice,” Regina says, “if Pan wanted to tempt you, will-o-wisps seem like the perfect way to do it. See the light, get pulled into this future, he gets Henry, and everything he wants.” “But Henry is here. He’s—he’s a grown man, with a kid and—” “—None of that is set in stone,” Tinker Bell interrupts, magic roaring in Emma’s ears. Killian’s going to cut off the circulation to her hand. “With you out of the way, Pan’s got a straight shot at the heart of the truest believer, he can change what you would have eventually done. Make sure he gets the magic that’ll save Neverland. That’s why everything else is falling apart.” “I’m sorry, what?” “Magic,” David clarifies. “All of it acting strangely? Turns out that is because of you, kid.” Scoffing makes her lean forward awkwardly, but Killian doesn’t mention the strain it’s undoubtedly putting on his arm, and letting go of her hand is disappointing for about two seconds. Before it turns into his arm around waist.

Regina’s expression turns calculating.

“Again,” she says, “it’s what we talked about. Things falling apart because you got pulled off the board. Into this exceedingly tempting place.”

Widening her eyes at the unspoken judgement doesn’t do anything to alter Regina’s face, but Emma didn’t really expect it to and her eyes hurt. From not crying. She can’t possibly cry anymore. “I’ve never been to Wonderland, though. How could I fuck up its magic?” “You’ve been other places, love,” Killian murmurs, “and all of that has ripple effects. Savior saves one place, and other realms reap the benefits.” “Is Neverland in the United Realms?” “No.” “Just like that?” “Just like that,” he echoes, smile not quite reaching his eyes. “What do we do now, Your Majesty?”

Taking a deep breath, Regina lets it out almost immediately — staring at limbs and their out-of-place placement for a moment, before glancing at Tinker Bell. Who shrugs, again. Emma’s going to scream. Before she cries. Maybe then all the emotions will balance out. “We figure out a way to get Emma back to the right place, so she can save Henry and defeat Pan, then we hope that things haven’t been altered so much in the past that this version of the future crumbles entirely.” “What was that about no pressure before?” Emma huffs, David laughing under his breath and the feel of something on her hair is absolutely not Killian’s lips. “And honesty, what options do we have left? As far as time travel goes.” “Eh, we're far from exhausted on possibilities,” Regina says. “Just need to get creative.” Tinker Bell’s gasp is very loud. “Have you tried—” “—No,” Killian cuts in, sharper than anything else he’s said. “That’s not going to work.” “But you haven’t tried.” “Because it’s not an option.” “Oh, that’s very negative.” He hums, and Emma waits for the rest of the conversation. Another verbal volley, but it doesn’t come and Tinker Bell looks very disappointed. She’s got another migraine. “How long do you think we have until this future just—disintegrates?” Emma asks.

She counts to twenty-four before anyone replies. “Maybe a couple days,” Regina replies, “a week at most.” “So—Christmas, then?” “I bet he didn’t plan that on purpose, just one of those crazy happenstances.” “Yuh huh.” “Try and sound more convincing next time, that one sucked a bit.”

Hearing the so-called queen of these supposed United Realms utter the word sucked without a hint of irony is not what Emma expects to be the straw that breaks her back, but it is and her back hurts, and all of her aches, and saving people is her gig. She’s got to figure out a way to do that. No matter what.

She can’t do that while standing here. With three matching looks of concern, and one of absolute and total fear boring into the side of her head, and Emma’s also very good at running.

That would suggest she’s got control over her limbs, though. Stumbling down the stairs, she makes it about three-quarters of the way down before the whole thing is too challenging and her lungs appear to be disappearing, or possibly melting, and something in her spine cracks when she falls forward.

Hair brushes Emma’s knees, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs and the volume of her breathing and the hand that lands on hers doesn’t surprise her as much as it should. “In through your nose, out through your mouth,” Killian instructs, only for Emma to flat out fail at that too.

Becoming a very frustrating theme. “Why are you so worried about my oxygen intake?” “It concerns me that you’re not, actually.”

Letting out a breath she definitely could have used, Emma’s head lolls. Towards his shoulder and the very solid nature of him, and he doesn’t try to roll her off. Just shifts his arm so it’s back around her waist and that does make it a bit easier to keep her lungs functioning.

“Was it all of reality collapsing, or Regina using that particular word?”

Emma groans. “Mind reading’s kind of a violation of privacy.” “Invoking my pirate excuse.” “That’s not a thing.” “Eh,” he says, and she hears the smile. That’s...nice. “Having no regard for laws is something of a requirement for piracy.” “This is not working as well as you think it is.” “I respectfully disagree. We’re going to fix this, you know that, right?” “I can’t imagine how.” “Sheer stubbornness hardwired into your personality.” Laughing hurts her very tight and anxiety-riddled chest, but Emma can’t help herself and she’d been right about the smile. Magic flutters under her skin, a steady pulse that’s slightly different than her normal pulse because it’s also more consistent and Killian’s nose is close enough to brush her cheek. If he wanted.

She wonders if he does. She’d like him to.

But that’s another problem, and more danger than anything Neverland could offer, and—“Fuck Peter Pan, honestly,” Emma proclaims, Killian’s response warm on her skin because it also includes a sound drifting close to a guffaw and she supposes his mouth is as close as his nose. What with the general structure of faces, and all.

He kisses her cheek.

Quick — barely there, really. Over before it has a chance to register, but Emma’s certain she’s been catapulted into the stratosphere, and he blinks almost hyperactively at her. She’s right about the palm thing too.

He turns into her hand as soon as it finds his cheek.

“Apologies,” Killian mumbles, retreating back into formalities and behind walls Emma had been clinging to only a few days before. Now they’re just kind of annoying. “Force of habit.”

“Was it the fuck Peter Pan that got you?” “You’ve always been something of a wordsmith.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Emma smiles. “Can I—can I ask you a question?” “No need to preface it, darling.” That’s something like the eighth time that’s happened. In the last two days. Second in the last hour or so. Emma’s not counting that either. “Do you remember this?” “Currently?” “Don’t be an ass,” she snarks, but his hook is around her wrists before she can even try to lift her hands. “The will-o-wisp attack. I—well, it was my turn to watch and I was kind of wallowing because of everything that had happened, and—” Telling him she wanted to kiss him then and now and possibly for the rest of time is also very appealing. And terrifying. Emma bites her tongue. Coward.

“No,” Killian shakes his head. “I don’t.” “Is that weird?” “Decidedly.” “So, then—wait, I’ve got another question.” He lifts his eyebrows. Smirks. Has the absolute cheek to lift his thumb and brush tears away from her skin, and Emma resolutely refuses to acknowledge the shiver that goes through her at that. “What was with your huh’s, then?” “Last night, you mean.” “I said Echo Caves and you totally froze. Is that—” “Quite a lot of things happen in Neverland,” Killian finishes, “and not all of them have happened for you yet.” “Menacing.” He hums again, takes a deep breath that clearly isn’t a sign he wants to kiss her again. When he does not actually kiss her again. Fine, fine, fine, super. “Not all of it,” he says, although the words sound suspiciously like a promise and neither one of them blink when a bird flies through the open window nearby.

“Are those birds flying in sync?” “Stop talking, you’re going to get us in trouble.” “What was that about pirate code, or whatever?” Grinning up at him and his scowl, Emma can’t help but be a little proud that she’s managed to distract the great and passably royal Captain Killian Jones during the United Realm’s annual tree lighting. Which in retrospect, does seem kind of strange since Emma can’t imagine they actually have Christmas in the Enchanted Forest.

That’s a conversation for a different time, though.

For now she’s willing to keep playing distraction, and it’s very fun to flirt. With Killian, specifically. She’ll consider the repercussions of that later, too.

“As far as I’m aware,” Killian whispers, trying to keep Hope from jumping into the nearest snowbank, “your mother has instructed them to appear at certain and integral points in the ceremony. For dramatic effect.” “Kind of gaudy, isn’t it?” “A requirement of royalty, so it would seem.”

The muscles in her cheeks are starting to ache. From overuse, and that’s—another problem. Being here a tease. That one strand of hair that always manages to fall towards Killian’s right eye is the worst.

“How long have you been holding onto that particular opinion?” They haven't turned the tree on yet, so whatever light reflects in his eyes is more theoretical than anything. Regina must have practiced this speech at some point. No way this is all improvised, not with the dramatic pauses and introductions and— “Oh shit,” Emma mutters, the ends of Killian’s ears going red because Regina is introducing them and Hope is nothing more than four uncoordinated limbs and Henry snickers very loudly.

Ella elbows him in the side.

Emma likes her daughter-in-law. She hasn’t allowed herself to think about that title, or the granddaughter it comes with, but she’s getting very good at putting thoughts in boxes and only partially acknowledging what they mean and Killian's hand finds her again.

Magic rushes from the top of her head to the very bottom of her feet, standing a bit straighter in another pair of boots, and Killian’s whole body moves towards her. So as to make it easier when he openly gapes at her.

That must happen a lot too, though. No one bats an eyelash. “If you’re all done,” Regina drawls, but Henry isn’t and Ella can’t contain her laugh either. Mary Margaret looks overjoyed. Even as her birds break formation.

Emma nods. “All good.” “Gods, the whole lot of you are annoying. You know—” Waving one hand, candles burst into flame without a word, multi-colored lights appearing on every branch, and it takes Emma a moment to realize that everyone in the crowd is holding an ornament.

“What are they for?” she asks Killian, not bothering to lower her face over the cheers. People are cheering for the tree. “They’re wishes, Mama,” Hope cries. “From everyone!”

He nods when the four-year-old doesn’t explain anymore — already rushing towards Mary Margaret and her ornament. “That’s why people come from all over. Aside from the festive nature, and the talented birds, it’s an old superstition. Place an ornament where the candle was, and you’ll get your wish.” “What happens to the candle?” “Supposed to bring it home, and light that space with the feeling of the solstice.”

In any other situation, exhaling as forcefully as she does would be embarrassing. As it is, Emma figures she’s got a thousand excuses and the hand in hers gives no indication of letting go any time soon. So, seems like a wash. “Gods, that’s nice.” “Aye, it is.”

Hope puts an ornament on the tree.

So does Henry.

And Lucy. The list goes on and on, but all Emma can do is stand at the end of Granny’s counters and eat her weight in Snickerdoodles.

She's the worst, frankly.

Snow starts to fall just as Emma’s wavering between that happy medium of pleasantly buzzed and legitimately drunk, and she’s got to ask someone who doles out the liquor licenses in this realm because it appears Granny’s hand has grown a bit heavy over the years.

Lucy scampers towards the far window as soon as she notices the storm, already talking a mile a minute and detailing plans with Hope and Neal — and this happy medium makes it impossible for Emma to be too frustrated by that, but she also hasn’t actually asked what happened to Neal or why he doesn’t appear in Storybrooke, so it seems it’s more difficult to rid herself of the self-imposed asshole moniker than she’d like.

And the bell over the door rattles like it’s the goddamn town crier, another familiar face stepping through the frame. With red highlights in her hair. “Are we doing this, then?” Ruby asks, flanked by a woman Emma doesn’t recognize and another redhead who is obviously not Ariel and it’s strange to see Mulan out of armor.

“Cap?” Ruby presses, when no one responds quickly enough, “this is happening, right?” Glancing at a wary Henry and back towards a clearly confused Emma, Killian grits his teeth. While she does her best to come to terms with nicknames, and another tradition and Hope tries very hard to climb up Emma’s side.

So as to yell in her ear easier.

“It’s snowing, Mama. We’ve got to play!” Emma blinks. “In the snow.” “It’s a...thing,” Killian explains. “Gets almost—” “—Bloodthirsty,” Mary Margaret says, which is not the most shocking thing that’s happened so far, but Emma’s buzz is starting to ebb slightly and someone’s knocking on the door. Another redhead, with her hair in braids and what looks like suspiciously like a crown on her head and David lets out a joyful noise when he notices the guy behind her.

Mary Margaret tugs at the edge of Emma’s sleeve. She might be nearly drunk too, actually. If her slight wobble is any indication. “In the past,” she starts, “there’s been some notably magical snowstorms here. It was quite an event when Elsa first arrived, but then well—you helped save her, and her sister.” The redhead waves, as if she knows she’s being talked about and Emma can’t fathom how she makes that connection, but she’s getting better at puzzles. “And now,” Mary Margaret continues, “it’s become something of a ritual.”

Ruby gags. “Oh Gods, don’t say it like that. Sounds ruthless.” “Isn’t it, though?” Henry challenges. “The gist is, that Elsa shows up after the tree lighting with her snow powers and we have a snowball fight.” She’s too drunk for this. Definitely well past buzzed at this point. “A snowball fight,” Emma repeats, half a dozen nodding heads replying with equally large smiles and the almost audible sense of anticipation hovering around them.

Hope widens her eyes. It’s a very good trick. “She practices that,” Killian mutters, more mind reading that Emma doesn’t bother to point out because the redhead is shouting "come on, let’s go'' and that sounds like a command. And bloodthirsty is a very appropriate adjective.

Teams are quickly formed, alliances announced and the guy Emma realizes is named Kristoff claims “honor must be defended” enough times that it appears to be a catchphrase. Laughter rings out around them, dancing on the magically-induced snowflakes and off the lights, and there aren’t as many candles on the tree anymore, but some flames continue to flicker, casting shadows across faces and snowballs.

As they fly past Emma’s ears.

“Your aim could use some work,” Killian says, breathing heavier as he ducks behind a snow drift they’re using as a blockade. Emma sneers. “Where’d the kid go?” “Ours?” She nods. Tries not to die. Only marginally succeeds. Killian doesn’t appear to notice. Force of habit is a very strong rationalization, it seems. “She’s allied herself with her much more impressive brother, who—” Lifting out of his crouch, Killian cups a hand to his mouth, like that will help the volume of his ensuing insult. “—Has clearly been practicing snowball creation in the Wish Realm and only knows how to win by cheating!” “I learned it from you,” Henry calls back.

David’s laugh is loud enough to disrupt a whole flock of birds. Perched on the branches above his and Mary Margaret’s head.

Goosebumps make a glorious return to Emma’s arm — and quite possibly her soul, which only seems like an exaggeration until she notices the spots of color on Killian’s cheeks and the bits of snow clinging to his hair. His eyes get bluer when she brushes the moisture away. Have to, if only to explain Emma’s fluttering magic and fledgling pulse and a snowball slams into her left shoulder blade. “Gotta hide better,” Anna calls, the blonde behind her, who is definitely Elsa, shaking with the force of her laughter. Everyone keeps laughing. Everyone is so happy. It’s—

A goddamn Christmas Utopia.

“You did offer yourself up a bit,” Killian reasons, Emma gasping at the betrayal. Pulling on the front of her now-damp jacket, he tugs her back against his side and they’re very close. Too close. Possibly not close enough.

“And what would you suggest o ye master strategist?” “Little wordy, don’t you think?”

“I retract my compliment, then.” “Ahaha,” he chuckles, “a compliment, was it? Well that’s totally different, then. Now, if you just stay here with—” The rest of the sentence gets caught up in his grunt and groan and Emma’s not particularly disappointed to see Hope’s return to this side of the snowball fight, but she’s also fairly certain there was a me looming on the tip of Killian’s very distracting tongue and she’d like to hear that. Selfishly. “Oh, switched allegiances again, have you, little love?” “Henry can’t enchant the snowballs,” Hope says, like that’s supposed to make sense and it almost does because Emma has magic, but she’s never tried to use it on snow. At least not yet.

“I don’t—” she starts, only to cut herself off. At the overall circumference of Hope’s eyes, and the color of Killian’s and there’s something to said for sheer force of will. “Gimme a snowball, baby.”

Excitement immediately colors her daughter’s face, smile wide enough that it’s probably a record and Killian doesn’t say anything. Watches without a single shift of his chest, which means Emma is staring at his chest, but he’s also obviously not breathing, and her lungs can’t stand up to much more of this.

An admittedly lackluster snowball gets plopped in Emma’s upturned palm, and she blinks away the cold like this is old hat. Or something less lame sounding. Snow packs together like—well, magic, she supposes, a perfect sphere that isn’t quite iced over, but won’t fall apart when one of them throws it and obviously Hope’s got to throw it.

“Ok,” she says, nodding encouragingly. “Who did you want to take down?” Killian’s lips disappear. Behind his teeth. To stop himself from grinning like a maniac, or so Emma very quickly convinces herself.

“Uncle Kris,” Hope announces, and this family’s apparently only grown in the last decade or so. Maybe Emma should be more concerned about her heart. And its ability to burst.

“We can do that. Just—toss it up, and…”

She’s got no idea, really. Just generic hope, and a surplus of feeling, but Emma’s always been told that magic is emotion and she’s not sure she’s ever been more emotional, which is a scathing commentary of her life, but this is also her life and— Killian scoops Hope up, an impressive act of balance and dodging incoming snowballs, and Emma will use that emotion as a reasonable excuse for what she does next. Reaching forward, her fingers curl around the brace at the end of his arm, not able to actually touch skin because he’s wearing a leather jacket, and that’s only sort of messing with her mind. But the motivation is the same, and she’s got all those suspicions and thoughts and—

The most powerful magic in the world.

“Throw it, love,” Killian directs, Hope’s arm pulling behind her like she’s a professional baseball player, and Emma squeezes her eyes shut. Warmth curls at the base of her spine, inching up her vertebrae until it takes root at the base of her skull, spreading out through her brain and the rest of her limbs and he definitely kisses her hair again.

She’d been counting on that, just a bit.

Muscles loosen under her skin, no sense of tension or that ever-present anxiety Emma’s always just assumed was part of her genetic makeup. Shouts echo around her, in addition to the snow, but she can’t quite hear any of it over the explosion of magic between her ears, and Hope’s cry of success will probably be branded on Emma for the rest of her life.

She hopes so, at least.

Opening her eyes to find Kristoff sputtering, and Anna as impressed as she is indignant, Emma only barely has a chance to catch her breath before there’s a kid flying into her arms. It’s harder to hold her when she doesn’t let go of Killian. And Killian doesn’t pull away.

He watches both of them. Traces over Emma’s face, the same way she had in the hallway, and something happens. Something important. Passing between them, and cementing itself in her gut and her soul and his lips twitch. At her magic, probably. “Thank you,” Killian mouths, Emma nodding against Hope’s hair. She kisses it. Out of habit, or whatever.

Strands of hair are damp against Emma's temple by the time they traipse back to the house, Hope asleep on Killian’s shoulder. Enchanted snowflakes linger on the back of her jacket, hovering on her eyelashes for maximum effect and peak cute, which didn’t need any help if Emma’s being honest and she might be willing to err on the side of that particular feeling right now. So as to keep the feeling, all year long and maybe even indefinitely.

Or whatever they said about Ebenezer Scrooge.

After he learned to love Christmas. And other humans.

Emma’s still not thinking too hard about that particular word, though. So, maybe complete honesty’s something of a stretch, but the kid is undeniably adorable and it’s admittedly difficult to think straight when Killian is—

Killian. In italicized and underlined lettering, meeting Emma snark for snark, and snowball for snowball, and she really wants to know his Monopoly cheating strategy, but that’s a problem for an entirely different list because that list has impossible words and improbable feelings and he’s staring at her.

Where she’s leaning against their front door.

Using possessive and collective pronouns isn’t helping her cause.

“Are you alright?” he asks softly. For the benefit of the sleeping kid, Emma figures. Not the state of her pulse, or the magic he could feel, and the cyclical nature of time is just toying with her at this point.

She nods. “Better than, somehow.” “Oh, that’s a little negative, Swan.” “Kind of my schtick, isn’t it.” “Not always,” Killian says, another pair of words that shouldn’t sound like a promise and clearly do not care. Emma feels her smile. Like, possibly in the very core of her being. At least between her ribs, where the growing sense of belonging has decided to linger, this feeling of home and possibility and staying here is not a possibility. Tinker Bell will figure something out.

Emma will — that’s how Savior’ing works, after all.

“You know,” Killian adds, Hope humming into his neck and there’s quite a lot of neck. Emma might be staring at his neck. “At some point we concoct this very impressive buttered rum recipe, that’s notoriously good at warding off chills.” Digging her teeth into her lips does not do anything to disperse the butterflies in Emma’s stomach, but she’s also not all that interested in them leaving. “Concerned about my breathing and my overall body temperature?” God, she’s an idiot.

Flirting isn't quite second nature, though — and Emma’s even less accustomed to flirting as a two-way street, but this feels as easy as it has and will and there’s those tense-based issues all over again. Killian grins. Slow, and measured and inching almost close to lecherous, sparking a handful of other other ideas that—

Immediately disappears when the four-year-old wakes up.

Brushed teeth take precedence, as do picking out pajamas and Hope is in possession of more pajama sets than Emma knew could exist in one set of drawers. Then there’s a bedding routine, lifting comforters and crawling under sheets and Emma doesn’t know the story requested of her.

She’s got no idea what happens after Prince Charles spun around with his sword.

It’s got to be impressive, though.

“Oh, Hope I—” she exhales, fear creeping back into the forefront of her mind. Until fingers find they’re way back into hers, and they’re just as warm as they always are and it takes Killian less than three minutes to promise a different story on another night.

No tears are shed, so that’s got to be a victory and Hope’s eyes are already fluttering closed when Killian flicks off the light. Lingering in the hallway, Emma’s not sure what she’s supposed to do or where she’s supposed to go, but there’s a hook pressed into the small of her back and buttered rum turns out to have a ridiculous amount of cinnamon in it. “Shit,” Emma mutters into her glass, and Killian looks far too satisfied. “This is really good.” “Took some trial and error, but we got there eventually. Or get there for you, I suppose.” Sipping instead of responding is another cowardly move, one Emma won’t ever admit to and it doesn’t matter because he can read her mind. At least her face. Open book, and all that.

“I’m sorry.” Killian blinks. “For what, exactly?” “God, throw a dart. Everything I—showing up in your life and making the right Emma disappear, maybe, and that’s got to be fucking with you, and—” “—You’re not the wrong Emma,” he interrupts, with enough force to pull her up short. Buttered rum drips on her chin. So, she’s a picture of romance and flirting potential. “Just a little early, that’s all.” “Not what you said when I got here.” “Aye, well that was the bastard version of me. He’s a—” “—Bastard?” “Absolutely,” Killian nods, “and maybe a little unsure of himself when it comes to you.”

It’s her turn to blink. More than once, only a little concerned the scene in front of her will change, but it doesn’t and it won’t and there’s got to be a limit on time travel. Emma’s reached her quota by now, she hopes. “Because I’m a mess now? I mean, this version of me. Not the wife one.” “You’re worried about Henry. And I understand that, did then as well. I just—you want to know why the Echo Caves gave me pause? Because if you got tugged right after that, then all you’re sure of is that I think I could move on from Milah, but nothing else has happened for you yet. No promises or—” Swallowing, he sets his glass down and there wasn’t much room between them, but there’s even less now and Emma’s got nowhere to put her hands. Except on his thigh. Where it bumps hers. “Leaving behind that bastard who wouldn’t give you the magic bean was always something of a challenge, but you made me want to. Made it easier to do just that. Because eventually you do trust me, and you believe in me, and—”

He exhales. Licks his lips. Emma can’t move. “The thought of losing that terrified me,” Killian finishes.

They’ve stopped dancing. Are standing stock-still in the middle of the floor, while other people twirl around and wait for them to get their rhythm back. And Killian doesn’t blink, which is equally frustrating and overwhelming and a much more positive adjective that Emma can’t be bothered with because she’s too busy saying, “I...like you?” “Was that a question?” “Maybe,” she admits, “it’s not really my forte, and I told Neal a bunch of shit in the Echo Caves too, so—is...did my parents name their kid after him?” “Yuh huh.” “Don’t sound particularly pleased.” “We’ll get to that,” Killian says, “Rehash the liking stuff, please.” Maybe laughing at inappropriate times is actually his greatest talent. Emma’s head drops, bumping Killian’s shoulder, but then there’s an arm back around her waist and there’s so much of him, and that’s always been the problem. Opposite of a problem, really.

“You just—” Emma mutters. “Came back, for us and me and I...that kind of terrifies me too, but you always make sure if I'm ok, and that’s—not a ton of people do that.” “Becomes something of a habit.” “I’m going to ask you a question.” “Still don’t need to preface it.” “Are you Prince Charles in the story?”

Surprise is a good look on him. All of them are, but Emma’s already crossed one emotional threshold and like wasn’t really the word she was thinking about before. “Aye,” Killian says, soft enough that it’s difficult to hear.

“Does that make me the princess?” “In almost every story I tell.”

The warmth moves to her cheeks, and the same skin Killian’s fingers graze, coming dangerously close to the edge of her mouth and barely parted lips. “So, uh,” Emma stammers, “not our first time travel adventure?” “Gets confusing when you haven’t done that other part yet.” “Time travel might be overrated, honestly. But we get back, right? That’s—I mean, you’re here.”

Nodding, his nose replaces his fingers and it’s oddly endearing. “If you remember this in the past, I refuse to be held accountable, alright?”

“Seems fair,” Emma laughs, and she thinks she hears him swallow before he responds. “You give up your magic, for me—which is something else I never entirely pay you back for, but then we get pulled into the portal, adventures ensue, including that very impressive spin move, and then your magic comes back.” “How?” “With that wand Regina used before, that’s why she thought it would work.” “You’re skipping over things,” she accuses, and flirting might not be the only two-way street. He’s getting easier to read. “Was that was it you? Helping with my magic?” Shrugging isn’t easy when they’re so tangled together, but Killian’s ears are as red as Ariel’s hair and Ruby’s highlights and—“The only reason I magic’ed that snowball was because I was holding onto you. Control’s not something I’ve got much of right now.” “You would have been able to figure it out.” “Not with a kid waiting, and all those people and—” Problems be damned. Lists be damned. Time itself, be goddamned. “Paying me back is a stupid thing to think.”

“Swan.” Shaking her head, Emma moves before she can reconsider how incredibly dumb this is and possibly even more dangerous, but he keeps staring at her and it’s so easy and normal, and if she were someone who breathed with any sort of regularity, that wold be an appropriate analogy. Killian shifts too, so that helps.

And she definitely mumbles kiss me like some harlequin romance heroine, but he doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t object and the fingers that find her hair help ground her. To this plane of reality. Nice exists for about half a second, before it rather quickly evolves into need and desire and there are hands everywhere. Emma’s and Killian’s — tracing each other like this is the first time all over again, and her back arches once she clamors into his lap.

Rocking down at the same time he rocks up draws out several sounds Emma’s never heard before, and would not mind hearing on loop. Fingers search out skin, pushing into the tuft of hair at the nape of his neck, and she can’t tilt her head enough. To get the right angle, or more of his tongue and his tongue’s already swiping at her lips.

He groans again. When she opens her mouth, lets him trace as much as he’d like, and Emma would like even more, but she’s always been kind of greedy when it comes to him and really oxygen is vastly overrated.

She can’t keep her eyes open.

Can’t imagine how anything gets better than this, or them and there’s that pronoun again.

Both of their shoulders heave when they finally have to pull apart, more black than blue in Killian’s eyes and— “We’re really good at that,” she mutters, working a laugh out of him. That he presses against her neck. And under her chin. Drags across her jaw, and up towards her temple, kissing whatever he can reach and everywhere he lands and it takes a power she did not know she possessed for Emma to keep herself from demanding he take his clothes off as well.

She opts for the next best thing. “Thoughts on sleeping in your own bed?”

The eyebrows, honestly. Flying up, and reacting quicker than he can respond and Killian kisses her. Soft and easy, and as normal as anything. “Vast,” he says, mostly into her mouth, “and it’s difficult to fall asleep without you, so it’d be nice to actually do that.” “Yeah, ok. That works.”

#cs ff #captain swan ff #cs fic #captain swan #captain swan fic #but once a year #festive fic a thon 2k20 #MAGIC SNOWBALL FIGHTS #making a united realms solely to bring back frozen characters???#more likely than you think!!

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