something happening on a mission, something personal that has soap spiralling; panic and rage making him reckless, thoughtless, and ghost has to draw the line
“you’re compromised johnny; you know what that means?”
“you’re not pulling me out,” soap immediately snarls. he turns on him and ghost barely recognises him; venomous fear turning his eyes to unyielding ice. "you're not sidelining me; i need to be in this-!"
but ghost has never been afraid of venom; spat or dripped straight from bared fangs.
he snakes out a hand grip the back of his neck, jerking him in a rough shake. "if you can't think, you can't be a soldier," he growls and he flinches like he's been struck.
his lips quiver as they twist in a sneer and he wrenches, trying to free himself of his hold.
ghost doesn't let him.
"it means you give your body to me because your head ain't fucking attached to it anymore."
soap stills, body trembling beneath his hand as he sucks in shaking breaths.
he tightens his grip, pulling him closer and digs his forehead hard into his. “it means you give yourself to me so i can have the weapon that you are and use you the way you're meant to be used."
the ice in soap's eyes fractures.
ghost’s voice drops to a whisper, spoken only to johnny, not this facade of vengeance and pain, and wills it to reach him through the glaciers.
“so i can keep you safe ‘til it’s done and i can bring you back.”
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ok sure i'll talk about farleigh start. i'll talk about his tragedy of never being enough as it were and then having to deal with fucking oliver. sure. disclaimer: it's about class (and race) and the horrible reality of the rich. the horrible reality of living as farleigh.
another disclaimer: i'm white! and poc definitely pick up on everything i'm talking about here as it is, and better. i was and am specifically interested in farleigh vs. oliver but it's impossible to examine without considering race. definitely let me know if anything abt this sucks!
farleigh and oliver are similar. it's annoying because every intruder that is not himself is annoying, partly because felix's attention swaying from farleigh is dangerous; there is always a threat of being discarded, even if no precedent existed. the potential is terrifying.
but you'd think he's seen this before, every summer (if venetia is telling the truth) or at least often enough to learn to recognize it fast, so he should know this will pass. part of it is i think still the deep anxiety, and i think he hated every boy that was there before, and it is sort of routine.
but definitely a huge factor in farleigh's annoyance is the fact that he's a biracial (black for cattons, that's all they see) man in a white rich household. he's alert and exhausted all the time. of course he's angry at oliver, regardless of whether he's the first to crash at saltburn for the summer or the fifty-first.
but the important thing is this.
farleigh is very jealous of and angry and pissed at oliver because farleigh sees all the similarities between them. outsider, in financial trouble, whatever it is, in need of cattons; and yet oliver is preferred. and farleigh seems to be the only one to really consider it. felix does not pick up on the hint when farleigh brings up the birthday party vs. his mother. felix's clumsy "different or... anything like that" is as much about race as it is about class, of course. the "we've done all that we can" bit is felix absolving himself of guilt because surely they had, surely the mysterious collective cattons that he's not really part of had tried all they could do. to him, farleigh is different from oliver, because farleigh has been helped. felix is rich and white and twofold uncomfortable with farleigh, even if he's nice about it, even if he genuinely enjoys his company; he doesn't look too close at farleigh because he feels too guilty to come too close. and farleigh can't do anything about it. he can't nice himself into it. the fucking tragedy of him is that he's never enough in the world of the ultra-rich white, even if (especially because!) he's born into it.
farleigh is very pissed at oliver because farleigh also sees all the differences between them. you know who can be nice poor white enough to fit in? fucking oliver. felix says "just be yourself, they'll love you" when oliver first moves in. farleigh was also probably told the same thing, and felix also probably believed that farleigh could just be himself, but even if the cattons were magically not racist at all (impossible), it wouldn't make a difference to farleigh. he would still self-censor, keep in check, be in dangerous waters (because racism is not just about the individual, but about the system). we see that he'd won himself leeway by years of trial and error by the way he speaks to the family, but it's still within the boundaries of acceptable, built by the cattons. he's part of them because they allow it, and farleigh is very, very aware.
the annoying thing is oliver can be himself. like, truly, genuinely, he can just be. and farleigh can't help but envy that.
as a side note, oliver is obviously jealous of farleigh in the beginning as well, because regardless of the reality of farleigh's situation, he was born into it, and hence, at least in oliver's mind, has his position solidified. oliver's whole thing is unquenchable thirst and hunger for whatever and everything the cattons have (including themselves!). he wishes to have been a catton from birth. to oliver, at first, there's nothing farleigh can really do to lose it. and until he figures out the cattons completely, he can't help but envy that.
but i think farleigh senses something different about oliver early on. at least on the level of the text, we have "you're almost passing [for] a real, human boy", which is so important because farleigh is the first to point out oliver's weirdness. the next to do so is venetia in the bath scene calling him a freak, but it's too late. farleigh is too early.
and i like to think he clocks oliver too early because he sees the jagged edges that he recognizes in himself. i think that one other thing that farleigh envies is oliver's freedom to let go. freedom to let go is very similar to freedom to be, but not quite the same.
to be is about perception: farleigh knows he cannot fall out of line, but would like to, and oliver does not have to worry about it at all (i mean, he does, because oliver also performs for felix, but farleigh doesn't know that).
to let go is about the self: farleigh is too scared to even want what oliver eventually does, to even consider the possibility. oliver can let himself want. oliver can let himself act. oliver just can do things and want things. i'm not sure farleigh can.
and so in this scene, when oliver's wants and actions have landed him nowhere with farleigh, felix, venetia, the cattons, of course farleigh gloats. he can let himself do that, because if the cattons are slowly discarding him, farleigh can allow himself this one small victory. he's relieved because despite the dangerous similarities, oliver is, thankfully, not really the same as farleigh, right?
but like. this movie is a love letter to all things gothic. oliver is a white man. he prevails. the brief performance that oliver put on did eventually end up more effective than farleigh's lifetime of constraint. my heart fucking breaks for him to be honest.
the issue that remains is the fact of farleigh's survival. i like to think that oliver came to respect him. oliver is smart, but farleigh is clever. he picks up on everything oliver does (to refer back to the karaoke scene, farleigh immediately retaliates in the cleverest way, in the moment), and he's the only one to do so consistently (venetia, again, for example, comes close, but too late; oliver doesn't like that, there's nothing to work with). hence, stay with me for a little longer, the paradox: farleigh survives because he was never enough for the cattons, but he is very worthy of oliver's attention. in his own freaky way, oliver wants him. look at that.
so. farleigh. farleigh might come back. he always comes back. and i think oliver wants to try harder next time.
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sub yuta okkotsu agenda 😔
no bc i got THOUGHTS, i got so many thoughts about my babygirl named yuuta okkotsu, you don't even UNDERSTAND how badly i want him
him in the movie-*aggressive eye twitch*, his big sweet innocent puppy eyes-fuck it just *short circuits*
AND THEN afterwards when he's his anxious, tired, emo self (me too fr), like he's still just my cutie patootie and it's a literal CRIME how little sub fics of him there are bc take one look at that baby AND TELL ME that he is a daddy dom in bed-you'd be lying to yourself and me-and we do not tolerate lying in this house
no but fr, he is not domming for his life. a service top-perhaps, he would still cry a lot though and if you were making HIM fuck YOU he would beg for you to just take over, his arms shaking on either side of your head as he tries to make you feel good. because it's not the same like this-he wants you to fuck him, he wants to ride you as your hands grope over his body, he wants to pinned against a wall and fucked hard and rough within an inch of his life.
babyboy just wants to be loved and taken care of by his so
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The thing is. Bad/gross food is rarely a DISH - when food is bad it's because it's been badly made, whether because of skills or available ingredients. but a dish p much only exists recognisably and has a name because someone likes at least one version of it.
which is to say. there isn't really a way of naming a dish, school of dishes or specific food culture and going EW ISN'T THIS DISH UNILATERALLY CONCEPTUALLY DISGUSTING without denigrating quite a lot of people.
like you don't have to like it in any form. but it's eaten and shared because it's good to a not insubstantial number of people when cooked right.
(and I don't really understand how you approach that with total incuriosity when it's a dish you haven't tried like. ARE rocky mountain oysters good? Maybe! I would very much eat some to find out!!!!)
this is actually something the British food poll did in a way the American ones I've seen haven't really - they described how the food they're imagining is, specifically, badly prepared (grey meat and veggies; unseasoned shepherd's pie). which is wildly tipping the scales by calling it British Food but. like. that is an on point definition of why that food is gross.
(this also applies to American chocolate, which like. Broad category but I think most of us understand this refers to low-cocoa high-sugar chocolate, probably with bucolic acid. so we are being invited to imagine Badly Made Chocolate not. the concept of chocolate)
personally I just think it's very rarely a good or funny idea to shittalk how gross any given food culture is. partly because food is important and culturally evocative for most people, partly because it's very...alienating? to be like WHO COULD EAT SUCH A THING? just because you wouldn't, and largely because to be frank it says more about you than about the food that you have so little imagination or curiosity that you can't imagine why a food might be enjoyable to folks who aren't you.
yes this includes jello salad, I would like to try it. ONCE. if it wasn't appealing to someone it wouldn't be so widespread.
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