#you don’t care about the plot of the show or the true main characters of the show you seem to only care about a flat character because you
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major hornets nest moment here but i must speak my truth. its so fascinating to me how will byers was clearly written with the driving motivation and intention of making him a beloved fan favorite character and instead he falls so flat that, if you asked the average casual viewer of the show who doesn't engage in the fandom like, say, your coworker, the odds of him even being in their top five of favorite characters is pretty low.
will's disappearance kicks off the plot, singlehandedly. the first episode is literally called the vanishing of will byers. his name is shouted so much in the first season that most people would recognize the reference if you used the right cadence and desperation that winona ryder does. after not being featured much in season one, you'd think season two would've just like launched will/noah schnapp into stardom with how much more screentime he's given and how dramatic his plot is that season. but instead the fan favorites of season 2 were by and large el, hopper, dustin, steve, max, even bob who's barely there. that's not to say that there AREN'T will fans out there (and online i understand there are like entire armies dedicated to him/byler, but i'm talking about the average opinion of viewers as a whole, not just in fandom spaces) but think about all the stranger things merch you see in stores, the halloween costumes, the characters that appear in promotional materials when the show has partnerships with brands....will is so rarely featured. idk if any of yall ever got the chance to visit the stranger things pop up shop in any of its various locations, but there was such little mention of will in the stores theming or merchandise that it was almost funny. actually it WAS funny, to me, someone who does not care for him
i think the flop can be attributed to many things. one, noah schnapp is just not a very good actor and he doesn't have the same appeal in his performances that millie, sadie, caleb, gaten, priah, or finn do (although finn i've noticed is also kinda falling out of favor from majority audiences). one could argue that noah schnapp intentionally isn't given much to do, which is true and i'll circle back to that, but the decline in his acting between seasons 2 and 3 is truly a sight to behold. when he's not like tied up and screaming, he reallllllly struggles on the smaller scale performances compared to the other cast members his age. he doesn't really have the charm that gaten does or the humor that priah does or the depth that caleb does. (i don’t feel bad about saying this, btw, given noah schnapp’s behavior)
back to the vanishing of will byer's screen time. my beloved prettymuchit's eric striffler commented on how diminished will and mike's roles in the story have become in s4. "noah schnapp is below the grips on the call sheet" is my fav line, but he also makes an observation on finn's role that i think is soooo accurate. when mike and will are kneeling down next to the pizza dough freezer and watching el just kinda twitch while she fights vecna in her mind, eric and his co-host miles say "this is so embarrassing! finn's like, 'oh so gaten's fighting the monster? and i'm kneeling next to a tub at a pizza place? i used to be this show" and i think the same exact sentiment can be superimposed onto will
but i think this happened naturally, as the nature of the show is to shift its focus from character to character. not to mention the duffer brothers' obsession with tweaking their story to give audiences what they want. i've always held the belief that there isn't one main character of stranger things, rather a rotating circle of characters depending on the season you're watching. season one is mike, season two is hopper, season three is el, season four is max imo. again that's a little subjective and arguments could be made to swap those a little, but overall i think those characters stories and point of views take center stage during each of their respective seasons. by season 3, the duffers wanted to kick things up to a larger scale. the UD is no longer targeting just will, it's targeting the entire town. this works because a THIRD season in a row where this one kid specifically gets possessed would just be bonkers, so they kinda had to let him take a backseat. i'm not sure why they didn't let will be more involved in the mystery-solving portion of season 3....to this day that decision baffles me, but what's done is done and the will that everyone watched in season 3 literally just kinda follows everyone around and gets a small little slice of a plotline about wanting things to go back to normal, but alas
it like totally worked, though. though there are MANY complaints commonly made about season 3, i've never heard anyone offline complain that there wasn't enough will byers. i think the group in s3 that had the most success like, commercially, would be scoops troop and then a bit farther back i think most audiences enjoyed hopper/joyce/murray's dynamic. i think if there had been a huge outcry in the minimizing of will's role, the duffers would've backpedaled immediately. they aim to please. they can't even commit to killing of a main character out of fear that audiences will lose interest if we permanently lose hopper or max, so they just do some creative writing that allows them to milk the emotional consequence of those characters deaths without actually writing them off. if audiences on a large scale demanded that will be center stage, he would be. but they dont!
final point: i think will gets fucked over by the duffers obsession with romance. in season one, two of will's strongest dynamics are with his mom and brother. which like, yeah. theyre his immediately family and he is 12. but in seasons 2 and 3, jonathan spent all his screen time with nancy and from 2-4, joyce has spent all her screen time either with hopper or in the pursuit of finding hopper. these characters are written together as a package deal, typically. it was refreshing and unexpected to see jonathan get a whole season with a friend of his very own and his siblings, but they barely took advantage of that. jonathan and will get ummmm one (1) scene to talk about their emotions in a fucking 20 hour season. it's hard for will to be a main character when he rarely gets to interact with the people that make up the other half of his main dynamics.
as for byler, im of the belief that it will not be endgame because i just don't think they're going to break up mike and el at this point. i could be completely wrong and stand corrected, but im like 90% sure lol. i do think that will's s4 storyline resonated with a lot of people. even eric striffler! i think the issue is that the vastttt majority of people who watch this show above the age of like 15 do not feel invested about the romantic relationships between any of the kids. because why would they!!! theyre literally in middle school for 3/4 of the show. you would be hard pressed to find a vocal will stan online who doesn't also dedicate 90% of their engagement with the show to byler. which makes sense, because most if not all of will's scenes revolve around mike to some degree. but according to neilsen, the majority of stranger things audience is consistently in the 18-49 age range season by season. its more likely for adult audiences to identify with adults (or characters who are narratively treated like adults, like steve and nancy) than with any of the kids. esp when the kid in question, despite being written as the focal point of the show, has less relevant plotlines, less interaction with other characters, and an actor who just doesn't deliver on charm the way his fellow younger costars do
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this is my personal opinion on eddie’s character and you have been warned… it’s not a flattering one so if you love eddie don’t keep reading bc well you are probably not gonna like what i have to say under the cut
okay then…
gotta get something out of my chest: eddie is a boring, flat, and edging on obnoxious character that mostly has the pretty privilege going on for him which is just another standard white guy. yes, i teared up when his death scene came… because how it affected dustin. otherwise, couldn’t care less about him and his on the nose “i always run away/didnt run away this time” conflict
“oh, but eddie is a freak and treated as such, even hunted down and bullied. people can resonate with that” i mean… fine if you do, really, but also what about the Party? they are considered freaks, they are bullied, will even expresses even his closed ones make him feel like a freak. why about el? she was a freak too, the weirdo, the lab experiment that was hunted down and tortured. what about jonathan? he was the freak that probably killed his little brother in season one. we have seasons of these characters, characters who actually have depth to them with interesting conflicts and dynamics. and most importantly, characters who are freaks but that see each others as equals.
eddie? sure he’s a freak. a freak who likes to bee in power, sitting on his throne during DND sessions whit his group of sheep wearing all the same tees as if it was an uniform, going out of his way to jump on tables and yell in people’s faces bc he is not like other girls he is proud to be a freak and oppose to the status quo.
i mean, give me a break.
#adding to the tags how people went against jonathan for smoking weed as a coping mechanism but it’s all cool and cute when eddie sells weed#lmao#tell me again how all eddie has going on for him isn’t just pretty privilege?#i was just talking about this with someone but i didn’t use to dislike eddie i was indifferent about him bc there’s just not a lot of him#but his stans and the way he is portraiyed in the fandom just irks me at this point#can’t bag all of his stans in a same place but you know most i’ve seen are just…#if you like eddie fine. if he is your fav character… fine though i will forever believe you are part of the GA#if you are part of the group that will get mad and attack the duffers when eddie stays dead in s5 then i just wanna say#you don’t care about the plot of the show or the true main characters of the show you seem to only care about a flat character because you#probably either think he is hot or because you ship him with that other rather flat character on st#anyhow#this is a personal rant and if you don’t like it you can keep scrolling i guess#nic rants to the internet
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The reason why the toh fandom can have such wildly diverging interpretations of the Wittebane story is because the show did not do its job. How old was Philip when Caleb left? Did Caleb truly believe in witch hunting or was he just playing along to what the town expected? Did Caleb ever tell Philip anything? Did he ever talk to his brother and try to change his mind? How long was Philip searching for Caleb? How did he get cursed? How exactly did the knife fight start? Did Philip kill Caleb accidentally or on purpose? Did he kill him only because he married a witch or because he left him? Or both?
The fact is, we don't have definitive answers to any of these. We only have educated guesses based on portraits barely glimpsed in the show that lack any context, Masha's barebones version of events, and Belos' self-justifications. Casual fans shouldn't have to be knee-deep in fandom just to get the main villain's backstory, especially when said story is the literal basis of the whole plot.
Plus, if you're going to spend the final half of your last season barely exploring the villain's origins, only to completely ignore it in the series finale, then you've written a bad ending.
Update: This is getting some notes so I'm including additional thoughts to the original post. The rest will be under the read more:
Just to add onto this because some folks argue that we don’t need his backstory because we already have the essentials or it’s not really important to the plot. The thing is though is that Belos’ story launches the entire plot of the show, his character and motivation are the direct result of actions that happened centuries before the main characters were born. It needs to be depicted and not largely inferred.
His story is important to creating a more fleshed out character and can strengthen the themes of the show (the rivalry between Eda and Lilith and Luz struggling to fit in at home are parallels to Belos). Instead the show gives little kernels of his story and character that make him more interesting than just Evil Emperor (the fact that the brothers became witch hunters to fit in, the fact that Belos worst memories are of killing Caleb and making grimwalkers are never touched on again). The first (and last) time we see Caleb in a full scene is in For the Future and it has huge implications for the dynamic between the two brothers. But again, nothing is done with it. It seemed like the show was building up that Belos’ lies and self-justifications would lead to his undoing but it doesn’t. So him dying with his ideology and self-delusions intact feels empty.
The worst part of how the Wittebane story is handled is that since it’s largely inferred and you have to be pretty involved in fandom to have a more nuanced take of it, a casual fan can easily just accept other characters’ views on the matter. Masha says “looks like little bro was jealous of big bro” and it undercuts the story of the Wittebanes (to say nothing of the tonal whiplash). The Titan dismisses Belos as only caring for himself and to be the hero, which while technically true, misses a lot of context and makes it easy to dismiss Belos as a whole as simply being evil and crazy instead of a more layered villain. And it can’t be argued that these are just the characters’ perspectives and we shouldn’t take it at face value because there’s nothing really in the show to pushback against that.
Now, yes, it is fun to imagine how the Wittebane story played out and in hindsight, it’s probably better that the show didn’t depict the entire story because they probably would have botched it. But the point remains that the handling of this storyline was a mess (and don’t give me the cancellation excuse, the show learned early on about this and wrote all of 2B with it in mind). The Wittebane story and Belos as a whole showcase why setup and payoff matter. You show the villain feels guilt about their worst deeds? What’s the payoff to that? The villain was originally an outsider who tried to fit in and conformed to a town’s toxic ideologies? What’s the payoff? The villain continually lies to himself and commits atrocities to justify his actions? What’s the payoff?
If you’re going to raise interesting and thought-provoking questions then don’t give the audience a simplistic answer.
#toh critical#toh criticism#the owl house#emperor belos#philip wittebane#caleb wittebane#I don't want to hear any nonsense about belos not “deserving” a proper ending#if you spend two episodes adding new information and context#then that needs to pay off for the audience somehow#long post#post update
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Thanks for your answer for the last ask.
What is wrong with the writers of the new MCU material? Do they just hate Bucky, especially the writer of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier (he's NOT the Winter Soldier anymore!)?
Did Bucky kick their cat or something? This hatred and victim blaming is not justified! "Oh Bucky's just a cray-cray psycho killing machine with cool metal arm but probably belongs in a padded cell. Lol he says he had no choice such a lame excuse..."
Soo…I don’t know if people still remember the rumours from back in 2021 and I don’t know how much of it is true, but my guess at it is this: there were supposed to be two main writers on the series. Spellman was supposed to take Sam’s story, while the other guy wrote Bucky’s story. For whatever reason, the other guy quit before he finished, and didn’t give the writing team enough time to put things together.
From a story craft point of view, Bucky’s story in TFATWS reeks of first-draft-ism. It’s a scattered plot of events that don’t quite string together, and a self-contradictory characterisation that hasn’t yet been smoothed over (but was made a little more believable by Sebastian’s efforts). You can tell some central character themes had been planted in the first draft — the PTSD, the guilt, the messy way he’s trying to relearn how to interact with people (Yori, Sam and later the Wakandans), the struggle with breaking free of his past. These were all strong, interesting character beats for Bucky to work through, and it honestly could have been a good story. And I think that’s when the original writer bailed.
When Spellman picked up this draft, he was pressed for time, he hadn’t watched CATWS and he never thought he’d needed to know about Bucky’s story, so he reads TheMovieSpoiler summary of the movie and tries to piece the rest of the story together. But Bucky’s not his priority nor his interest. There’s already beats of the story that were planned and have to be there for IP reasons. So beyond what was already in the first draft as mentioned above, Bucky is made to be the fall guy to make the rest of the plot happen. Zemo’s release — well we can’t make Sam help break out the criminal that killed an African king so we’ll make Bucky do it, who cares if it makes no sense for his character. The counselling session — the show’s few moments of levity, doesn’t matter that it makes no sense but hey, forced homoeroticism is hilarious, isn’t it? The Wakandan three-way fight — I may be remembering this wrong but I think Skogland said it was one of the first scenes that she had planned for. That fight had to happen, and again Bucky was made to provoke the Wakandans to the point Seb had to step in and say, almost literally, “he would not fucking say that” to make them wind back the animosity between Bucky and Ayo. Sam’s suit — oh no we can’t have Sam asking for it himself that would be too egocentric, we also can’t have Wakandans offering because well, not like the plot actually made Sam a strong ally for Wakanda, so we get Bucky asking for Sam’s suit to be made minutes after he fixes his mistake of releasing Zemo. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense if it’s Bucky doing it, cos I really think by this stage Spellman didn’t give a shit about a character that wasn’t supposed to be his responsibility in the first place. It’s like when you’re doing group project and your teammate bails on you, you’re gonna do just enough to get that pass but you ain’t putting in the effort for a distinction cos just looking at the unfinished work is pissing you off. So then Bucky also becomes the token white male who pushes all the wrong buttons during the few token racism scenes cos we gotta make Walker have some redeemable qualities and he’s already a dick so we can’t make him racist too.
So instead of having a thoughtful story about a veteran trying to grapple with his guilt and PTSD and lack of agency and making some mistakes along the way, you get a weird disjointed plot of some guy…with some bad dreams…who randomly does things for no good personal reason…who gets made the butt of the joke for the stuff he’s experienced cos he’s got a metal arm and super soldier serum how hard could it have been he just needs to go and apologise for killing people while simultaneously having multiple poignant scenes portraying his lack of agency.
Every writer who tells you “a hero is only as interesting as the villain” just secretly wants to write a simpable villain. And when that writer isn’t very skilled, you get the disaster of TFATWS where a lot of effort is spent on making Zemo funny and personable, and Walker nuanced and sympathetic, instead of making either of the titular heroes funny or personable or nuanced or sympathetic. And yeah, I really don’t think Spellman ever cared enough about Bucky to want to make him sympathetic…or a hero. Remember when he said Bucky pulling open the van door was the first time Bucky has ever been a hero? Fuck right off with that.
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Meta: Timerra and Tellius
Timerra’s (belated) birthday gives me an excuse to talk about one of my favorite Engage topics: the parallels between her and various Tellius characters.
(Spoilers for FE9/10 and FE17.)
The obvious place to start is Ike. As Timerra’s personal Emblem, his build and paralogue in Engage focus on turning defense into offense to endure and protect others. This synergizes with Timerra’s Sandstorm ability as well as her priorities as Solm’s future queen.
Compared to other Emblem summonings in the game, the scene where Ike is summoned is quick and to-the-point. The Solm royals are highly competent, with a wide spy network, and already had a plan in place for when Alear shows up. They have a healthy wariness they don’t immediately display, as they welcome Alear with open arms while secretly testing if they are the true Divine Dragon. By the time Timerra meets Alear, their identity has been confirmed and bandits are already attacking, so she jumps straight into action to get Ike’s help and protect the village.
I’m sure Ike would approve of her no-nonsense approach and her focus on keeping people safe, especially after all of his own bandit fights. He has no patience for bureaucracy or noble trappings, but he understands the need for discretion when danger and politics are involved (see: his own ‘sometimes you have to fool your allies’ maneuver in RD part 2), so I think he would appreciate how the Solm royals handle this.
But you don’t have to take my word for that. Between Timerra and Seforia saying they always wanted to meet him, Timerra calling him family, Ike telling Fogado that Solm castle reminded him of being with the mercenaries, and his first Somniel dialogue saying that he already misses Solm, I think it’s safe to say there’s a lot of natural fondness between Ike and the Solm royals. Is there any wonder, when one of Solm’s main norms is accepting people regardless of their origins, possibly Ike’s defining ideal?
My favorite example of this is when Alear’s origins are revealed, and Timerra and Fogado have some of the most affirming reactions:
[ID: Four screencaps with the following dialogue toward Alear:
Timerra: What matters to me isn’t how you were born. It’s what you do with the life you’re given.
Timerra: If you choose to live as a Divine Dragon, then that’s what you are!
Timerra: Nothing’s changed as far as I’m concerned. The you that’s in front of me—that’s all I need.
Fogado: The people of Solm don’t care about origins. We care about the you NOW. And you are amazing.]
This aspect of Timerra shines throughout her supports, most notably in her relationships with Merrin and Panette. Their love and loyalty toward her stems from a time before they even knew she was a princess. They both see her as a beacon in their lives, as they wished to escape the confines of their pasts and find new futures for themselves. Timerra saw them for their ideal versions of themselves—Merrin as a chivalrous knight, Panette as someone who isn’t caught in a destructive cycle—rather than the situations they came from. Her acceptance helped them create those realities for themselves.
Anyway, unrelated to the above, just a completely random pair of images that don’t make me cry at all:
[ID: In a screencap from Engage, Timerra is saying, “No matter what’s happened, you’re still you. Let’s go save the world, Ike!” In a screencap from Path of Radiance, Ike is telling Soren, “No. It doesn’t change anything. You’re still you, Soren!”]
Another example is Timerra’s attitude toward Veyle. In the main plot, she’s one of the few main characters to express distrust toward Veyle even after the truth is revealed. However, once Veyle has proven herself as an ally, Timerra is extremely friendly toward her in their supports, with Veyle appreciating how Timerra treats her like any other friend rather than a Fell Dragon’s daughter. Again, this is reminiscent of Ike’s blend of skepticism and treating everyone the same.
I think it’s also interesting that Timerra struggles with conflicting desires for freedom vs. connection, as shown in her S support. Despite Ike’s love for people, he doesn’t always deal well with the responsibilities and expectations that get placed on him, and his ending shows he shares some of her wanderlust.
Timerra: When we connect with people─you know, really bond with them─those bonds make us stronger.
Timerra: I mean, our closest allies help us do things we could never do all by ourselves.
Timerra: That’s powerful stuff. But those bonds─those friendships─can feel like obligations too.
Finally, one of my favorite parallels between Ike and Timerra is a shared charm point: the fact that they live as they please, regardless of what others think, while also acting like everything they do is super obvious. An extremely ‘have your cake and eat it too’ mentality that I can only respect.
Alear: Still, you never cease to amaze. You take it upon yourself to help root out bandits…
Timerra: What, is that not normal?
Timerra: I’m just protecting my people. I thought that’s what royalty was supposed to do.
Alear: You say something completely radical like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Timerra: Hahaha! That’s my charm!
Ranulf: Well…a little crazy, yeah! I’ve never worked for a leader who’s as blunt and straightforward as you. It’s pretty shocking to have a commander who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, no matter how powerful they are.
Ike: Well, that’s just my style. I don’t have to be like someone else, do I?
Ranulf: Why are you so confident? I don’t get it. Normal beorc just do what people tell them and try not to make a fuss. But not you. I heard you even yelled at the apostle!
Ike: Yeah, that wasn’t my brightest moment.
Ranulf: Then again, worrying about a beorc like this is definitely not normal laguz behavior. I guess I’m a fish out of water myself… Wait, did I just call myself a fish?
Ike: Wha–? Ha ha! You’re a cat, remember!? I thought you ate fish. Ha ha ha!
Okay, that last bit isn’t relevant, but I just want to highlight that while Timerra and Fogado talk about how serious Ike is compared to them, they would definitely enjoy his secret love of bad puns. Here’s a bit of Timerra’s own sardonic humor that brings Ike to mind:
Alear: What?! How do you eat that much?!
Timerra: Oh, you know. Open my mouth, bite, chew. I won’t bore you with all the details.
Of course I have to mention their love of meat, even if I don’t find that to be an important part of Ike’s character. What I will say is that Ike is shown in his supports with Oscar to have a genuine appreciation for artful cooking, so I think it’s neat that Timerra is one of the best cooks in the army. It’s also endearing that she feels bad for cooking around Ike when he can’t eat, though he tells Fogado the smell is enough.
Next, I want to talk about a couple of characters who aren’t in Engage: Mist and Elincia. I adore that the focus on Timerra protecting Ike flips his dynamic with both of these ladies on its head. Speaking of protection…I believe that Mist and Ike’s relationship mirrors Timerra and Fogado’s, with their fond, casual banter. It makes sense, since both duos are close in age.
Interestingly, despite Timerra being Fogado’s older sister, he is as protective of her as Ike is toward Mist. In Fogado’s case, he seems to almost see himself as Timerra’s retainer, given that he will one day be her advisor. He travels around to prepare himself for this role. Timerra, however, doesn’t always like this, as she wishes they could hang out more and that he would be more candid with her. While they’re clearly close, the distance still leaves her lonely.
Though it’s a different situation, Greil’s death puts Ike in the role of Mist’s protector at the same time that he gains dangerous responsibilities. He also takes it upon himself to get revenge on their father’s killer. She stresses that she does not want him to do these things if it means she’ll lose him, too, and as the game goes on, they lose some of the lighthearted dynamic they had at the game’s start. Having already lost her parents, it’s easy to assume Mist feels lonely in this circumstance. She even has her own protective streak toward Ike, such as in her battle conversations with the Black Knight and Ashnard. Like Timerra, Mist wants to stay close to her loved ones and protect them, and she joins the fighting to that end, even learning swordplay despite being a healer.
Despite their troubles, Mist and Timerra share a bubbly personality. They tend toward optimism and try to hide their cares them. Their sunniness gets them and others through tough situations. However, those around them still want to be able to support them even when struggle with being vulnerable.
In my opinion, some of Mist’s designs evoke Timerra’s, such as in the colors and flowing accessories. While the clothes aren’t super similar, I think the two of them would definitely enjoy going clothes shopping together. I also think they’d like to sing together. Timerra’s silly songs may be a far cry from the galdr that Mist and Elena safeguard, but that would suit Mist just fine.
Possibly my favorite character to compare Timerra to, though, is Elincia. Timerra’s bangs and the fact that her hair is tied up even follow in the character design traditions of Elincia and other characters in her archetype, such as Nyna and Guinevere. Granted, Timerra’s ponytail is a lot looser than those other characters, which is an excellent design choice as she has a much more free-spirited personality.
Still, Elincia once upon a time was not so different. She grew up in secret, frolicking in the countryside with no expectation of becoming queen. As a result, she did many things most princesses didn’t do, such as chores, horseback riding, and sword fighting. It’s commented many times that due to cultural differences as well as Timerra’s own personality, her lifestyle and activities are often at odds with what others expect from a princess. While their allies might find both princesses strange at times, they end up trusting and supporting them due to their approachable natures.
Elincia is shown to have a playful streak in PoR when she is reunited with her retainers, around whom she feels comfortable enough to drop her more stately personality. On the flip side, while Timerra is more frequently playful, she never forgets her role. Even her more casual supports show this, such as when she susses out Ivy’s weakness during a camping trip, or interrupts a training session with Diamant to ask if he believes peace is possible. Many of her exploration quotes show this as well, with her referencing the other nations’ politics and even in her response if her allies die.
“My brother, my stewards…gone. It’s so cruel. But as the future queen, I will not crumble!”
Elincia and Timerra’s upbringings contrast with each other, since Timerra has always known she would be queen. Her free-spirited nature stems from Solm’s ideals and the role of its government. After Daein invades, Elincia has to travel incognito, giving her a chance to learn about the world. She develops a strong desire to protect her people. The endpoint of her character development in PoR is where Timerra is already at when we are introduced to her—Timerra has been training and traveling incognito and is ready to defend her country. Regardless of where they start, Elincia’s compassion and resolve are reflected in Timerra, who only wants to make her people happy and believes the best way to do that is to get to know them, so she can better understand and protect them.
The games’ plots present challenges that test both characters’ resolve. While Elincia has to make a variety of decisions, the one I want to highlight comes at the end of RD part 2, when Lucia is taken hostage. Elincia is told that Lucia will die unless she gives up the throne to a usurper. However, she refuses. Despite the sacrifice of someone dear to her, she will never give up on protecting Crimea. In the end, both Lucia and Crimea are safe, but it has nonetheless been demonstrated what Elincia would do under that pressure.
I thought of this when I got to one of my favorite moments in Engage, when Timerra and co. have to take back the palace from the Elusians. Hortensia holds her mother hostage, assuming Timerra will bend and hand over the Emblem rings. However, doing so would doom Solm along with the rest of the world. Timerra refuses to back down, and she saves her family along with her country.
[ID: Five screencaps alternating between RD and Engage. Elincia and Timerra look resolved, while Lucia and Seforia as hostages look on proudly.
Elincia: But I will see Crimea through this trial. I will give my people the future they deserve, no matter the cost.
Timerra: So threaten us all you want. Take my whole family hostage, if it makes you happy.
Timerra: But I stand for Solm, and I always will.
Lucia: People of Crimea... Behold a true queen! YOUR queen! Long live Queen Elincia!
Seforia: There she is, the future queen of Solm. And her ally, the Divine Dragon.]
Back to characters who are in Engage: the other Tellius Emblems. As with Elincia, Micaiah is presented with a series of trolley problems throughout RD. There’s a big focus in the Tellius games on making decisions for personal vs. political reasons, and whether to prioritize a loved one/a situation that is right in front of you over the bigger picture, and I think this is most complex with Micaiah’s story. This is highlighted when Sothe is held hostage and she is told to stand down to save him. This recalls the situation I already discussed with Timerra.
Like Timerra, Micaiah is a tactical thinker who has to foresee long-term plans as well as use strategic approaches in situations where she’s outnumbered. Micaiah ends RD as Daein’s queen, despite not being brought up for that role and having traveled in disguise, getting to know and love Daein’s people. Again, this fits with Timerra traveling around incognito and being passionate about protecting Solm.
Timerra expresses that Solm didn’t reach out for help when Sombron returned because they’d have to return other nations’ support when it was taking all of their efforts just to keep Solm safe. This brings to mind Micaiah’s conflicts, as she has to make difficult decisions to protect Daein from Begnion’s occupation and the blood pact, which sometimes involves rejecting outside help when a situation is too complicated, such as in her 3-13 battle talk with Ike.
Unfortunately, Emblem bond supports don’t have the scope for these sorts of complexities. However, I was tickled by the fact that Timerra invites Micaiah to sing with her, as a reference again to the Galdrs.
Speaking of bond supports…I don’t have anything deep to say about Timerra and Soren, but just look at how precious they are:
[ID: Two Emblem Bond screencaps. Soren is bowing with his hand over his heart, and he and Timerra are smiling at each other.
Soren: You’re the princess of Solm, is that right? I thank you for protecting Ike.
Timerra: He’s told me so much about you. I expect big things from you, talented advisor!]
Her careful approach to protecting Ike’s ring won the trust of someone with deep trust issues and a protective streak toward Ike, aww. They’re friends in my files every time. It’s also sweet that she wants to understand him and Ike better by learning about the mercenaries. I know she loves her moodier Emblem pals, but I’m sure she’d feel right at home with the whole rambunctious crew, like how Ike felt at home in Solm.
While this post is long enough without going into depth on Yunaka, as Micaiah’s guardian she also has a combination of Tellius influences, between her obvious parallels to Yune and Sothe as well as some of the themes of Micaiah’s character. Micaiah’s introduction, with her calling out to Yunaka, even mirrors Micaiah hearing Yune’s voice. For these reasons, I really wish she and Timerra had talked. I think Timerra’s simultaneous hidden wariness and acceptance of people regardless of their backgrounds would definitely play well with Yunaka’s arc. Fogado, as someone who shares Timerra’s ideals, certainly had a positive influence on Yunaka in their supports with his compassion. Plus, can you imagine the silly phrases Timerra and Yunaka would invent together?
I’ll end this before it strays too far from the main point, but I hope someone else enjoys these observations! Timerra is my favorite Engage character, and since Tellius is so dear to me, noticing these connections definitely made her character even more special.
#fire emblem#fe17#fe: engage#tellius#path of radiance#radiant dawn#timerra#timerra fire emblem#ike fire emblem#elincia ridell crimea#mist fire emblem#micaiah#soren fire emblem#yunaka#fogado#fe9#fe10#fire emblem engage
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Predictions for Soukoku’s fate (BSD CH 109 spoilers!!)
How I be looking after dedicating two posts on the possibility of Chuuya not being a vampire due to the fact he was faceless for absolutley no reason during some chapters, thinking it was important:
alright people, i wish i could express my embarassment further but instead of kicking my feet, screaming and crying over my miscalculations, i will proceed to (hopefully) redeem myself with my following predictions.
Guys, first of all I need to tell you something that I think is absolutely obvious: Dazai is not going to die.
thematically, it makes absolutley no sense for Dazai to die considering how many characters still depend on him, EVEN HIMSELF.
We still haven’t learned his backstory, we still haven’t had a cathartic moment between Akutagwa and Dazai, Atsushi is yet to learn more from his mentor, and he’s overall a very key character to foil others and develop them while he’s at it.
Even Dazai himself dying right now feels extremely weightless, we haven’t even learned anything about Dazai’s past and he’s already killed? without growing as a person? without fullfilling Oda’s promise? I don’t know, personally to me, direction wise, development wise and plot wise killing him off is absolutley nonsensical.
Asagiri does tend to take a very unique and unpredictable route with his writing and characters, but for plots sake, I highly doubt Dazai is gone forever.
Also, Fydoor and Dazai continue throwing uno reverse cards at each other, always catching one another unexpectedly. I am still going strong on the idea that Double Black will catch Fyodor off-guard.
Fyodor during these whole prision sections has been constantly belittling and teasing Dazai over how shallow his bond with Chuuya is.
When that’s beyond the truth. Dazai and Chuuya’s trust is literally undying. Stormbringer, the double black chapter and dead apple show us this in the most obvious way possible.
Asagiri himself has quoted that Soukoku knows each others motives, which has also been proven plenty of times when they are working together.
Dazai himself admited there really was moments where their hearts reached out to one another.
and I think that’s enough to understand, Fyodor is wrong. THEY ARE DOUBLE BLACK FOR A REASON!!!
So far in this chapter, I got various things confirmed. Let’s walk through them together.
1. Dazai’s nullifcation ability works on vampires, confirmed by Fyodor himself.
So what does this tell us? That Dazai had been planning all along to get in contact with Chuuya. He knew his partner’s abilities will break him out of the water trap, he’s not dumb.
So Dazaj totally meant to get in physical contact with Chuuya in order to nullify his vamparism. And no, it’s not only because Dazai cares for Chuuya (which is a true statement, but not the main reason.) It’s because out of everyone in this room, Chuuya is the only one able to physically overpower Fyodor.
And even if Chuuya somehow can’t overpower Fyodor, atleast Chuuya can be Dazai’s bodyguard considering well...Dazai’s countless of injuries. Chuuya is Dazai’s ticket to get out of the prision.
Dazai needs Chuuya in his corner. He needs double black in action. He needs Chuuya.
2. Dazai is genuienly frustrated that his plan to bring back Chuuya didn’t work.
I can’t be the only one who ADORED seeing Dazai panicking. (I sound so masochistic but seriously, it’s rare to see Dazai unmask this way).
Anyways, Dazai’s panic and frustrating during these pannels are unfortunately proof that things did not go at all how he planned.
3. Aya is attempting to take out the sword that stops Bram from having full atonomy on his vampire abilty.
If by any luck, Aya is able to detach the swoard from Bram, Chuuya and literally every other vamp will return to normal. (which honestly, let’s do hope Aya removes the sword bc this is getting too agonizingly dragged out.)
4. Chuuya and Dazai are destined to....
kiss?? marry?? make out under the moonlight??
Nono my friends, Chuuya and Dazai are destined to die together.
Chuuya and Dazai dying together has been hinted since Fifthteen, but my theory of these two dying together strenghtened during Stormbringer when Mori teased Dazai about a double suicide with Chuuya.
I’m not saying they will die right now but in order to solidify the need for Shin Soukoku in Yokahama.....
This old married couple gotta go and make room for the highschool sweethearts/hj
5. Dazai took the L
Honestly, I won’t lie to you and say that Dazai’s way out of this situation is going to be hard. But Dazai has attempted to kill himself plenty of times, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has shot a bullet through his head in his early 20s. (Im not joking when I say this i swear).
Anyways, Dazai seems somewhat imune to death and honestly, his character is too important to die, especially in such a meh, anticlimatic way.
Dazai said it himself best, him and Chuuya are destined to die together.
6. Vampire Chuuya’s expression
I mean,,,, what is the need for the random three little pensive speach bubble ?? we have been proven by Akutagawa that vampires are capable of some sort of sentinence, especially when it’s tied to their deepest desieres/mental strenghts.
I don’t have anywhere grand to go with this but, I just wanted to point it out lol.
ALL IN ALL
I can’t say for sure what is going to happen, but with Aya’s attempts of removing the swoard the possibility for Chuuya to become concious and do something to get out of there and save Dazai still remain pausible in my books.
I am not too confident on where this section of the story will go exactly but I am certain that Soukoku won’t die yet. MARK MY WORDS!!!
#bungou stray dogs#bsd#bsd spoilers#bsd 109#bsd manga#bsd chapter 109 spoilers#analysis#soukoku#chuuya nakahara#dazai osamu#fyodor dostoevsky#Ryūnosuke Akutagawa#atsushi nakajima#aya bsd#bram stoker#bsd analysis#soukoku analysis#manga
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3arAh1DNiPM
Kat even mentions in this video how close her and Claire was. So it's just down right cruel to utilize that on-screen. Also about her and Paul, them being a trio in season 4 would have been iconic and make that season way less garbage.
Exactly, why try to focus pointless friendships between Rebekah and Caroline or Rebekah and Elena when you already establish that Caroline and Elena didn’t like Rebekah instead of giving us bonbekah moments.
This reminds me of the same thing that happened with Klonnie. Before Joseph was given a love interest on the show him and Kat made it know that they got along well behind the scenes. Kat even talked about how she caught Joseph watching a Klonnie shipping video (making it know that they both were aware that people were shipping their characters together). They both even supported the idea of Klonnie having more scenes together. Then all of a sudden Joseph is being paired with Candice for klaroline when their characters had no interactions. It’s funny bc even tho klaroline became a pair Joseph still publicly vouched for Klonnie. 
It’s like the writers purposely pushed Kat away from any well loved characters to sideline Bonnie/Kat even more than they already did in and outside the show. Like a big slap in the face; I don’t respect or like you so I’ll make your character suffer as well.
The same thing happened with Paul bc in season one Bonnie and Stefan had so many good scenes together and people would ship Bonnie and Stefan given Paul and Kat’s Chemistry. Then suddenly Caroline and Stefan are getting more screen time together and are now besties even tho Stefan barely acknowledged Caroline in season 1 nor cared for her. Bonnie was the one he would go out of his way to be friends with and care for. Stans always use that time Kat said she couldn’t focus around Paul bc they would laugh and joke around as a way to explain why Bonnie and Stefan began to have less screen time together but I think it’s simply bc the writers didn’t want Bonnie having any shine. Especially with the main character who are the viewers loved.
When it comes to Bonnie, Stefan and Rebekah being a trio I can see it. To go deeper since season 4 Bonnie was “dark” and was obviously struggling dealing with Shane’s/Silas’s mind manipulation, understanding expression and balancing family issues with her mother and father being around Stefan and Rebekah being friends to her would of been fresh and nice to see. Especially when Bonnie already seen the dark side of Stefan (ripper side) and in season 3 Bonnie work with a dark side of Stefan (no humanity) it would of been cool if the writers make Bonnie a source of light, hope or peace for Stefan at that time he was going through things then turn around in do the same with Stefan for Bonnie. Then adding in Rebekah as a fresh face bringing in her good vibes would have been fun as well. Imagine Rebekah taking 2 of the most serious and reserved characters in the show loosing them up and having a good time. That would of been good to see. And since both Stefan and Rebekah both knew Bonnie’s ancestors (Ayana and Grams) them sitting around, chillin and telling Bonnie stories about their time with her ancestors would have been such sweet moments for Bonnie. Especially since she was going through her dark time and rarely got any Intel on her ancestors.
The amazing storylines that could of came from Bonnie were endless. It annoyed me so make hearing that the writers excuse for not writing Bonnie better was them just not knowing what to do with her when it was obvious that they could but didn’t want to. You claim you don’t know what to do with Bonnie or how to write her but when you need a quick fix Bonnie’s there for you. They would even add onto Bonnie’s family dynamics to push forward other storylines while making it have no true connection back to Bonnie nor caring how it affected her negatively. So when you need to push the plot all of a sudden you know how to write for Bonnie but when it comes to caring for Bonnie’s character in general then it’s “oh we don’t know what to do”.
Seems fishy to me. 🤔
#bonnie bennett#stefan salvatore#rebekah mikaelson#bonbekah#stefonnie#anti klaroline#klonnie#kat graham#paul wesley#claire holt#vampire diaries#tvdu#anti tvd writers
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Rottmnt Rant #2
(Leonardo centered)
One thing I adore about rise is that if you pay attention there are no character traits that ever come out of the blue. They have always been present within the show, they just don’t have any spotlights on them.
One example of this is Leo’s martyr complex, as well as his habit of making jokes out of serious situations. These traits are very present in the movie, and are even main plot points that push the narrative forward. These traits have always been present in the show, however one episode that I think contains multiple examples of these is the episode “Flushed but Never Forgotten.”
⚠️SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE EPISODE AND THE MOVIE⚠️
In the episode Flushed but Never Forgotten, the boys accidentally flush their dad’s pet fish, Piebald. They decide to cover it up, lying to their dad and replacing piebald with a ‘perfect’ replica (a rock with googly eyes glued on). After about a year, Mikey starts to feel guilt over the loss of piebald, and tells the rest of his brothers about writing on the walls and voices he’s heard that he thinks are coming from her.
We find out that Piebald has returned, and is now a mutant capable of talking and possessing abilities such as turning invisible/camouflaging with her surroundings. Upon initial discovery, the boys are terrified. All of them except Leo.
Leo responds to seeing piebald with “Okay so she’s a mutant.” While the others are obviously scared shitless. This only lasts for a moment, but it demonstrates his true nature, as in this moment he hasn’t had enough time to lie and come up with some sort of fake or funny reaction. He uses one of his coping mechanisms, humor, to deal with the situation. Now of course, after this he goes right back to being scared with all of his brothers, as one would do, but I find it interesting that his initial reaction was to tone down the situation and after that he showed fear, rather than the other way round. Moments like this are sprinkled through the whole show, but I decided to focus on this one simply because of how small and fast it is. It would have been so easy to have Leo just scream along with all the others, but the writers decided to add this bit in. You might think of this as just a joke the writers added in for shits and giggles, but he does this multiple times in the series. A rather popular example of this being his line “Soo.. you guys from Jersey?” in the very first episode.
Now his Martyr complex, I know is a very popular topic for Leo. It provides juicy angst, and it’s a wonderful topic to use for drawings, fan fictions, and rants such as I’m doing now. But usually, those are all centered around the movie. The movie’s climax features Leo locking himself in the prison dimension with Krang prime, sacrificing himself for those he cares about. What I don’t think people talk about enough is that this isn’t the only time Leo does this. This is another reason why I decided to focus on this episode specifically.
Later in the episode, Piebald ends up taking Leo’s entire family. His brothers, his dad, even the paper foot ninja they took in. Initially, he has a plan to gain the upper hand against Piebald. He uses her own trick against her, camouflaging with his surroundings to use the element of surprise against her. Once this fails, however, he finds himself backed into a corner. His family is tied together, hanging behind him as they dangle over a large whirlpool of sewer water, about to be flushed as they had done to Piebald so long ago. In one last desperate attempt to save his family, he pleads with Piebald to let his family go, and take him instead.
He says, “flush me and let my family go.” Clearly stating the he wishes to sacrifice himself for those he cares about. He’s been running this whole episode. Running from the monster, running from the responsibility of Piebald’s “death”, and running from telling the truth to his dad. Now, as the only one left, he knows it’s him who has to save his family, and when given no other choice, he chooses himself as the sacrifice. It’s not even suggested to him that he sacrifice himself, he came up with that on his own. He doesn’t know what will happen to him, he just wants his family to be safe.
Sadly, this moment is short lived as immediately after he says this Piebald cuts the rope to drop the others into the whirlpool, which is where the whole thing is revealed to be a ruse made up by Splinter and Piebald to teach the boys a lesson. But I still think this moment should be talked about more. It’s so interesting to me.
It’s one thing that I think people get wrong a lot. A popular trope I see with Leo is that in any danger whatsoever he will deliberately go out of his way to sacrifice himself first. It’s his first and only plan, and he truly believes it will 100% work out. Watching the show though, this just isn’t true. Leo is a good leader, and he knows what his brothers are capable of. He’s able to use their skills to come up with a clever plan that almost always works when he really puts thought into it. It’s when he’s backed into a corner, stuck between a rock and a hard place that he resorts to his final plan. His last chance to keep everyone he loves safe and more importantly alive. If it comes down to it, he will use himself as the scapegoat willingly, even if the others don’t want it. I love Leo angst so much, and I love it even better when it’s done right. Leo is a smart guy, he knows when he can find an easy way out of things. That’s what makes it even more devastating when he resorts to his martyr complex, because it’s always either a last resort, or a split second decision. I think what people try to do is make it his first instinct, which I can agree with if written to be believable.
Moments that represent these traits come and go quickly, but I think that’s part of why Rise is so well written. The creators trust their viewers, and are aware that things don’t need to be spelled out in order for us to understand them. This show is honest to god just so amazing, and a wonderful example of when artists put out a work that they really care about for others to enjoy.
#rottmnt rants#save rottmnt#unpause rottmnt#rottmnt#rottmnt leo#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#save rise of the tmnt#rise of the tmnt#rottmnt leonardo
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My Spoiler Free Review of the Fallout Show:
Biggest, sloppiest, awesomest recommend of my life, solid 9/10.
The show’s tone was absolutely perfect, nailing the feel, tone, attitude and comedy of the fallout games, as well as understanding the atmosphere needed to give the impression of a post-apocalyptic world. One complaint I have with a lot of post-apocalyptic shows is that it doesn’t feel like the world has been fucked over, but in Fallout it really gives the impression that 200 years have passed of not a single bit of true human development on the surface of the planet.
The show’s writing can be a bit iffy in some places such as certain plot points earlier on and some lines, but in all honesty it’s all around a completely solid: plot, story and script, while also not being afraid to add to the Fallout universe and lore. The characters are interesting, intriguing and genuinely enjoyable save for one, but even then he’s still written well and an enjoyable character, despite being weaker than the other main characters.
It isn’t perfect though! And I really don’t expect it to. The CGI can be a bit, euhhh in some places, but it isn’t immersion breaking in my opinion. I am slightly disappointed certain things from the Fallout universe didn’t see representation within the show, but to be honest I think it’s really forgivable as every other aspect brought in from Fallout is done perfectly. The world itself is done perfectly, with all environments again given a feel that actually looks like and feels like the environments of the game in person. The Vault, Wasteland and other Settlements are done absolutely perfectly, and genuinely look like how I’d picture them in my head. Genuinely one of the best adapted universes to digital screens.
As for the people saying the show is only there to just decanonise the non-Bethesda Fallout games - a sentiment that has been shot down by the creative leads of the Fallout Franchise themselves - the show definitely does not do this. And it’s clear that the next season of the show will definitely focus on non-Bethesda projects, and people do need to remember this is a Bethesda show, as well as the Bethesda games - unfortunately - being more well known than non-Bethesda Fallout projects, save for New Vegas. But even then, things are pulled from non-Bethesda projects, and considering the ending, there isn’t anything to worry about in terms of decanonisation. I personally, as a long time fan of most Fallout games (I’m still iffy on 76), see this show as a beautiful love letter to the game series that I’ve enjoyed since I was 7. I grew up on the original Fallout and Fallout 2, as well as played the hell out of New Vegas, and think that these games didn’t get as much love as they should have in Fallout 3 and 4, but this tv show really makes me think that Bethesda is showing that they care about these games too, and I have faith that they will be shown in future seasons as perfectly as they have in this season.
Honestly, if you love Fallout, please watch it! If you know nothing about Fallout? Watch it anyway! Some references and such may not be as impactful to you, but I feel it has a story and plot that can be enjoyed by anyone.
Oh yeah and all the characters are hot.
#fallout tv series#fallout prime#fallout 2024#fallout 3#fallout new vegas#fallout nv#fallout 4#fallout tv show#fallout 76#fallout#ramblings#show review#show recommendations#fallout 2#fallout tactics#fallout brotherhood
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Hm so as I’ve seen many people lump Sakura in with Naruto and Kakashi as ‘bootlickers who ignore all the state’s atrocities in favor of keeping that status quo’, so as both a radical and a Sakura fan I’d like to share why and how I think Sakura could be turned into a radical character.
This isn’t gonna go very deeply into her fighting abilities or any of that, it’s more an analysis of her personality and narrative role than anything.
So I think one of the main points that attracts me to Sakura taking a radical direction is, unlike Naruto and Kakashi, she’s so rarely allowed any agency outside of male character’s desires. Like there’s multiple points where Sakura is about to do something or go fight, especially during Pt 1, where she’s stopped by someone while Naruto, for example, isn’t given any of the same opposition. While her willingness to drop her plan as soon as an authority figure demands it are something I’m going to further address, the fact remains that more often than not Sakura is only allowed agency so much as it benefits the male characters (ex, yelling at Sasuke to spur him out of his fear to fight Orochimaru).
This lack of agency is continued on throughout Shippuden. While Sakura’s delegation to the sidelines isn’t as noticable (as it’s often just that she’s barely there at all or is visible but doesn’t contribute to the plot), Shippuden Sakura is again not allowed her own voice in the narrative. She’s never given vital pieces of information (ex, the truth about the Uchiha massacre) that would allow her to actually position herself within the story the way Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi are able to do so. We don’t really know what Sakura’s reaction to the truth of the world around her would be, unlike Sasuke (fight again the oppressive forces) or Naruto & Kakashi (favor the status quo), because she is never able to find said truth out.
What damns this even more for me is that there are instances of Sakura breaking out of the Shinobi conditioned mindset sometimes!! The clearest is during the Wave arc, where her sobbed uttering of the Shinobi code as she thinks Sasuke is dead is used outright to question the morality of the shinobi system (side note there’s a reason Wave is imo the best arc). Sure, you could chalk it up to her being a wimpy and emotional 12 year old, but her emotions are directly used here to point out the cruelty of the shinobi system. There’s a moment like this again at the end of her fight with Sasori as well, where Sakura demanding the value of life is met by Sasori asking her if “that’s what a shinobi should be saying”. Again, this is proven by Sakura’s hesitance to stab out Obito’s eye - Sakura’s value for life and compassion have, multiple times, been used to question her position in the shinobi system. But we never really get to see this come to fruition because Sakura is not given the agency nor the information to do so.
In fact, I think if given the information like the true cause of the Uchiha Massacre, Sakura would become radical fairly quickly. She’s very good at memorizing and researching huge amounts of information, she’s noted to be observant and good at noticing details, and she’s incredibly stubborn and wouldn’t be put off if the information was hard to find - the qualities that made her an excellent academic student and medic would make her very good and finding out what she needs to. Additionally, Sakura is shown to have very little loyalty to the state at all. She offers to choose her friend/romantic interest/cared person Sasuke over Konoha twice and seems to genuinely mean it, which shows me that the only real reasons she remains loyal to Konoha are a) many of her precious people (ie, Ino, Tsunade, Naruto, Kakashi) are in Konoha, b) she’s grown up there and it’s easiest, and c) she’s been given no real reason to question it. The violence she seems at least a bit uncomfortable with could be a reason, sure, but as far as Sakura’s seen almost everyone partakes in that, even the revolutionaries.
However, I think if given something that forces her to seriously reconsider her worldview of Konoha as, if not the good guys then a lesser evil to be loyal to, something that forces her to choose between her value for life and her care for her precious people and the state, I think she could very well be turned into a revolutionary. Sakura’s not against enacting violence, but she is shown to have a value for life that the shinobi system ordinarily discourages (one that I do believe she had even prior to her apprenticeship under Tsunade). Playing on this as the catalyst and using her academic skill could turn her into a radical character easily.
However, in order for that to happen, her arc would have to confront what I said I’d address earlier: Sakura’s adherence to authority regardless of her personal wishes and lack of faith in herself.
These, I think, play into each other. While there’s speculation about Sakura’s family and abuse, what we do know from canon is that Sakura was both a teacher’s pet and a bullying victim from a young age. Both of these reinforce this part of her personality; the bullying hurt her self esteem and her faith in herself (and if we go by the anime movies, her emotionally abusive parents sure weren’t helping in that regard either), and being a teacher’s pet allowed her to get the validation her broken self esteem craved so long as she did exactly as the authority figure told. I think for a lot of ‘gifted kids’, we either grow up strictly abiding by authority as it’s what got us positive reinforcement growing up, or we go in the complete opposite direction and trust no authority at all when it inevitably fails us.
Is it as exciting a backstory or reasoning for her personality as some of the other characters? No, but it’s what we have. Sakura is one of those kids, with an academic performance that got her validation as long as she was obedient, and her peers (and parents) hurting her self esteem so she couldn’t trust her own opinion anymore. I think this is why she’s so quick to back down whenever someone she sees as more qualified or in a higher position than her demands it. I don’t think this was ever actually addressed in the show or manga, tbh. I think this would be Sakura’s main barrier to radicalization; her arc would need to be her gaining confidence not just in her abilities, but in her own opinions and personality, and learning that authority figures are not to be trusted.
Anyway, I think Sakura is a very interesting character to take a radical route. You just need to understand her character and motivations.
#sakura naruto#sakura haruno#naruto meta#character analysis#meta#sakura meta#sakura haruno meta#naruto#naruto shippuden#naruto uzumaki#kakashi hatake#tsunade senju#Sasuke Uchiha
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The Mystery of Melinda Desmond (and others)
Anyways I’ve been thinking about how the cast of Spy x Family upholds a very meticulously crafted status quo. ESPECIALLY the adults. And now with Damian’s mom (a highly anticipated character) introduced, the plot thickens.
So one of the main gimmicks of SxF is that everyone has a side they hide, but for most of the main cast, the “two sides” they have is clearly visible to the reader. Loid is a psychiatrist and a spy. Yor has a “normal” job but is also an assassin. Yuri is straight up introduced as a member of the SSS. Fiona has a job at the hospital but is also straight up introduced as a member of WISE. In each of these 4 characters’ introductions, we see their individual gimmicks. We, as readers, know their secret identities. Like, imagine if we didn’t know Yuri’s a member of WISE’s top enemy. There would be so much speculation and analysis, but the Yuri’s relevance to plot isn’t him being mysterious. It’s literally established that him and his brother in law belong to enemy organisations. Endo tells us so we can anticipate what might happen next. Endo uses the trope of double identities not to make us guess who is who. He immediately shows us who they are and tells us to enjoy the ride. Readers (and Anya) know the truth, the characters don’t.
For the more side-ish characters, we have an idea of who they are. We know Sylvia is like Twilight’s boss, but while she’s serious and cool, she also shows a warm, motherly side to Anya. Franky is stuck in the “comedic sidekick role who cannot get a date” but he is pretty useful and loyal to Loid. One might expect Henderson to be all serious and elegant, but he’s also used for comic relief. These characters are established as “good” characters who are on the side of our protags. Again, these traits are all laid out for us.
Important note: the above characters have all met Anya. Anya is a mind reader and she can read their true intentions. And since she knows their intentions, the reader does as well, and for the most part, we can trust them. And when an adult character hasn’t met Anya yet (and doesn’t get their own POVs), they’re shrouded in mystery.
We have our perceived antagonist, Donovan Desmond. From Twilight (and WISE)’s POV, he’s a cruel man who can start a war. But Donovan’s involvement in a potential war isn’t directly confirmed yet. Most info from him comes from WISE, so the readers understand Donovan from the lens of his enemy rather from a omniscient narrator or Donovan’s POV. It’s important to note that while Anya wanted to meet Donovan, she actually didn’t. If Anya didn’t fall asleep back then, she could easily read Donovan’s mind and boom, his mystery is gone, story ends, blah blah blah.
If anything, Melinda is portrayed as an even bigger threat than Donovan, because we know less about her. Loid admits that. Damian doesn’t even think about his mother. And when you pair Yor with Melinda, who’s oblivious to the politics (unlike Loid and Anya), as readers we know even less.
I think Anya is deliberately kept away from Donovan and Melinda because those two are supposed to be mysterious characters (that’s their gimmick vs the gimmick of Loid/Yor/Yuri/Fiona’s double identities). If the mysterious characters meet a mindreader, they’re not so mysterious now, are they?
Let’s analyse the field. Our mindreader Anya has only met Damian before, and Damian provides little information other than his parents don’t really care about him. The provider of our omniscient POV is only in touch with the least powerful Desmond. Loid, the spy who is suspicious of Donovan, has met him once under very very meticulous conditions. Yor, who isn’t actively aware of politics and sees Melinda as “the mom of the child my daughter punched”, is just happy to have a friend (even though she appears to be put off by Melinda’s weird smiles). Anya and Damian meet regularly, and Anya gains nothing about politics from him because Damian is a child who is unaware. Melinda and Yor have the potential to meet regularly, but Yor can’t read minds, nor does she have Twilight’s intel, so we don’t know how much she can get (and how much us readers will see). While Twilight is an excellent spy who tries to get info from Donovan, it’s extremely difficult for Twilight and Donovan to meet. Because of the limitations of each Forger-Desmond pair, the status quo can be maintained.
I guess this is why Damian’s isolation from his parents is relevant? If Damian doesn’t see his parents regularly, how can our deus ex machina Anya meet them? And if Anya is kept away from them, the mystery and the plot can continue.
The reason I suspect Donovan AND Melinda to be true antagonists (that go against the protags) is because while they’re not established as merciless greedy warlords, they ARE established as neglectful parents. And a huge theme of SxF is family. Characters who love their families are established as “good” characters (Forgers, Yuri, Sylvia). Loid and Yor have both defended Damian and apologised for Anya’s punch, but Donovan and Melinda threaten them with a smile while claiming “it’s fine”. Loid and Yor are quickly proven to care more about Damian than the Desmonds. The Forgers are the good parents, while the Desmonds are the neglectful ones. Even without politics at play, it’s easy to see which side we’re supposed to dislike or at least be wary of.
I would say someone in between “character on the side of protags” and “mystery character” would be the Shopkeeper. It’s, umm, morally dubious if Garden trained a literal child to be a murderer, but Shopkeeper is generally kind to Yor, and vice versa. But he seems to be pretty on guard when Yor mentions her husband being a “conservative”. Shopkeeper is still a mysterious character, but right now we’re more inclined to like Garden because so far, they’ve been nice to Yor and they gave her a job. It’s not like Yor is forced to be an assassin (she mentions she likes her job). But afaik Anya hasn’t met Shopkeeper yet. They are characters whose thoughts are deliberately hidden.
Demetrius is another mysterious character but he seems to be a child/teen (Eden student) who appears to care more about Damian than his parents do. Readers have met Donovan and Melinda, but we haven’t seen Demetrius. I don’t think he’s going to be as bad as his parents, but it’s telling how we haven’t seen him yet despite multiple past references. What’s up with Demetirus, hm?
TLDR: Since Anya can read minds, characters that she has met (and trusts) are established as characters on the Forgers’ side. Which is why she is kept away from Donovan and Melinda, who are both established as mysterious people who neglect Damian.
Sorry if this is a bit repetitive / not concise or has mistakes, I’ve had a bit too much morning coffee lol.
#spy x family#spy x family analysis#spy x family spoilers#melinda desmond#donovan desmond#anya forger#meta#ig#sxf analysis
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darklina thoughts: I wanted to get into the shadow and bone Fandom(books and show) because of the amazing gif set of the darklina kiss I saw
Like who are these two that are sharing such a beautiful kiss. And look so aesthically pleasing together with the darkness and light vibes. I was so excited to find out who these two were because these kind of ships are my everything. Than I find out and 😨😱😤😠🤬!!!!! It was like running full steam a head with tons of excitement and crashing face first into a wall when I find out everything about this Fandom. Both about the books and show. The author and this beautiful ship. And I'm like God why do authors do this ship. Tease us with everything we want and the full potential. But than do a completely one 80 and waste are time on things we don't care about, or find insulting or toxic, and tells us are tastes are dumb and toxic. So now I just read fics and look at beautiful art of Darklina and the potential they could have been. It's just so annoying because this stuff happens all the time!!! And don't get me started on what I heard about the author. I don't know if their true. And wish I could find out real stuff about her. But if it is. God she is so messed up for doing this to us.
I only got in the fandom bcs I randomly saw a teaser for the first season and Ben Barnes was there in all his dark glory. I knew nothing about the books, but the way that show was promoted I was expecting the epic dark romance, villain who’s not really a villain gets the girl all the vibe. Plus cool world build and complicated detailed story overall.
I got none of that.
That show was interesting and hopeful for the first 5 episodes (we will always have 1x05🖤). It wasn’t as detailed and complex as I expected, but it had potential and the main pair - the one they based THE ENTIRE promotion on by the way - was having one of the most fiery and spark inducing chemistry I’ve ever seen on the screen, so I kept my hopes up for the overall plot and focused on them. And then… then they backpedaled SO HARD on everything that made that show interesting for the broad audience, I wonder how they didn’t give themselves a whiplash… though considering the horrible quality of s2 they probably did
Though I didn’t like the way s1 ended, I still thought there is hope, and “we need a conflict for our main pair, I guess”. I truly, wholeheartedly believed that creators and writers of the show are not complete idiots and know how to read the room and what the most of their audience is there for, so that’s what they’ll deliver. But oh my, how wrong I was.
The second season is downright unwatchable with how horrifyingly terrible it is. I only suffered through the entire thing for Ben, who, bless his heart, tried his hardest to deliver the complexity and depth of his character, who he only agreed to play if they “won’t make him a cardboard villain”. And they did exactly that in s2, or tried to, bcs Ben Barnes and his talent didn’t let them, despite all their efforts. The rest of the cast I guess didn’t have enough experience to fix the worst writing imaginable with their acting, so most of the characters became absolutely bland and uninteresting and SO IDIOTICALLY STUPUD, I yelled at them constantly, scaring my cat the entire time.
Also, as much as I understand it from exploring the fandom, the creators and writers of the show are die hard fans of the Crows, and they don’t actually like Alina’s trilogy at all. So… why didn’t they just do the books they wanted I’ll never know. Instead, they forced the Crows in the plot they were never a part of (making all of them okay with selling a girl to slavery in the process. Despite one of them being the former slave and the other one being the one who got her out of it… make it make sense, I beg of you), in the second season they wasted SO MUCH time on their plot lines that 1)didn’t matter one bit for the overall story, 2)were absolutely uninteresting to everyone who isn’t the Crows fan beforehand. In the end we got half-assed Alina and Aleksander’s story with half-assed Crows’ story. They should’ve just made the Crows show, without touching Alina and Aleksander
I haven’t read the books, but from what I gathered in the fandom, though still committing the same sin of putting all the promotion and marketing into the Dark romance trope without actually delivering on it, and force feeding the fans one of the worst and most toxic pairings ever with Malina, at least Alina and Aleksander’s characters weren’t made so cardboard and stupid, and there was tragedy in their story, not the shit that they gave us in s2. Though I absolutely DESPISE the fact that Alina looses her powers in the end and goes on to live Mal’s dream life… Like WHAT THE FUCK?? What levels of internalized misogyny do you need to have as a woman, to write this plot line for your female protagonist???? I can’t.
On Mal’s toxicity: at least that made him a fleshed out character in the books. Absolutely horrible one, how could the author make him “get the girl” is beyond me. But at least he had a personality, however terrible one. In the show, I guess understanding, that no one would root for that asshole, they removed his toxicity almost completely, but that made him as bland as stale porridge. There wasn’t ANYTHING left on his character. At all. How anyone could’ve rooted for him I absolutely refuse to understand. Any woman deserved better than Blade😈
I don’t know anything about Leigh Bardugo, except for the fact that she butcher my native language and makes me furious. If you don’t know the language at least on a medium level, perhaps don’t use it in your books. Or at least hire someone who does. The way she butchered it, I’m not sure she even used Google translate…
So yeah, I’m with you on only reading Darklina fanfics and admiring fan art. I’m not at all sad that they cancelled the show, and I’m even giddy that those creators and writers didn’t get their wet dream of the Crows spin off. They didn’t deserve it after the shit they pulled in the second season. I do hope that they won’t ruin any other shows in the future. I am sad for the actors, who deserved much better and who were actually good at their parts, while the writing was okay. Poor Archie Renaux suffered the most, his character didn’t have good writing at all, not for a single scene. I hope we’ll see more of all of them.
And we need Ben and Jessie to do a film together. Preferably a rom com, but I’m not picky. Just that their characters are together. Such chemistry can’t be wasted
#shadow and bone critical#anti shadow and bone#anti shadow and bone writers#anti s&b#anti s&b writers#anti leigh bardugo#darklina#the darkling#pro the darkling#pro aleksander morozova#pro darklina#anti malina#alina starkov#aleksander morozova#ben barnes#jessie mei li
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Recent Austen adaptations yelling
Ok I DID make this blog to review historical-set Pride & Prejudice adaptations (with an exception made for iconic B&P). But for everyone who was DEFINITELY WONDERING, yes I have also been storing away a lot of opinions about other recent Austen adaptations that I Must Tell Someone.
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Fire island (2022)
A modern gay party cheesy rom-com P&P that genuinely made me laugh. Having seen some other (whiter) cheesy gay romcoms that were extreeeemely PG & playing it safe, I was pleasantly surprised.
Also Bowen Yang and his story just came across really earnest in a way I was into - would watch this man cry again, 10/10.
Personally as an extremely disabled british nerd (now tragically unable to travel and/or go to the club...) this gay scene is a long way from my queer scene. But I still had emotions, you know?
Kinda wanted more of the Mary analogue and generally just normal looking people (almost everyone is so ripped) but I appreciate that's how beautiful smooth people often look in mainstream american films, we can't have everything.
DARCY WATCH: I do not want to dress like this adaptation's chinos Mr Darcy. But Conrad Ricamora was generally great and very hot and awkward and understood the assignment. Good ice cream throw.
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Emma (2020)
I know I know, it's pretty... but I don't think that's enough!!!!!
Lovely production, beautiful costumes, a candy wes-anderson cinematography that really suits the story, and it's fun to notice references to actual outfits and prints from the time but lads. LADS. UNPOPULAR OPINION TIME: Where is the chemistry???
You can’t make Mr Knightley a nice sweet boy (so funny to have cast a posh folksy singing man) and leave the plot the same and expect it to work!! Also I was personally pissed off that a lot of the promo/ ads for this made it look like ~forbidden love~ when it's the 2 richest white people in town getting together?? ? There's actually not even a class difference in this one, guys.
Basically this romance was nothing to me!!! I felt nothing!!!!!!!! WHERE'S THE DEPTH
I did like the bit where he lies down though. Relatable.
Also why are you drawing so much attention to the servants when you don’t seem to have anything to say about class...? 'Wow look how many servants they had! Anyway, they don't get any speaking lines'... it's 2020 guys!!! like what are we saying here. 'isn't it cool to think about how people were rich'??
kind of the point of Emma (character) is she's pretty superficial, but the story does not, in fact, have to be
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Persuasion (2022)
Weeping softly into a pillow........ did you know this version meant a version with Sarah Snook and Joel Fry got cancelled?? we could have had it all
(standing on a table yelling) THE MODERNISATION WAS NOT THE PROBLEM WITH THIS FILM!!!
Honestly I actively liked all the entire secondary cast in this. Louisa and Mary were extremely charming fun takes to watch. ('I'm an empath' IS right for the character if you're doing modern jokes!!!) And nobody can deny this was a correct and powerful use of Richard E Grant.
Henry Golding was naturally great. Apparently he got offered the lead and took the villain instead, which DOES mean the villain is super charming and fun to watch which is... hard to match and.... kind of shows up.... the main man.
It's been said before but the main two were WOEFUL imo. I have no beef with the actors I just question the DIRECTION and whether anyone making this knew (or cared) why people... enjoy things.
Book Anne is the quietest gentlest loser and I LOVE HER and so does basically every Austen nerd. Making her a quirky wine-bath girl who's honestly just cruel sometimes fully stops the main romance chemistry and plot from working.
And it means the main boy is still like 'god I'm so horny for how KIND AND CAPABLE YOU ARE' which is just 100% no longer true. You can't transplant a personality in a romance but leave the plot the exact same and expect it to work. The chemistry IS the plot in a romance..........
you can't act morally superior to your siblings and still rate people out of ten.... also so funny to me that everyone else gets period outfits and hair whereas this protagonist looks like she just glanced at a picture of any time in the past and grabbed a couple shirts from primark. it doen't even look good or build character!!!!!
Anyway, not to be an elderly man like 'ohhh why does nobody care about character these days' but the reason something like Clueless works is because it has the heart of the story right, instead of just copying the surface level stuff.
#making all of these a single post which probably means nobody will reblog it ever. OH WELL#emma 2020#persuasion 2022#fire island#austen adaptations#full disclosure yes I was midway through making a queer regency romance GN whose plot is partly based on emma and p&p when i saw 2020 emma#so YES.......... i have strong opinions... possibly UNPOPULAR ONES..........#anyway if you enjoy the things i'm complaining about more power to you. I'M TOO BORING tO ENJOY THEM UNFORTUNATELY
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OS2xBBS: My Overall Thoughts
This is severely overdue, but I wanted to distance myself from these episodes to make sure that 1) regency bias didn’t seep through and 2) my thoughts don’t get clouded by the cute, swoony moments (all the kissing!) in an attempt to mask deeper plot and characterization issues, and 3) with some difficulty, I try to set aside how desperately I wanted OhmNanon’s reunion with PatPran to live up to the OG series.
So, to address the last item, for the most part OhmNanon’s chemistry was still alive and well, save for a few hiccups. This is a testament to two very experienced professionals. That said, my biggest gripe with these special episodes was the treatment of the Pat and Pran characters that has nothing to do with the actors.
It didn’t feel like a true crossover of two beloved series but instead felt like Pat and Pran’s presence were more like afterthoughts thrown into an ATOTS script. Pat and Pran were merely there to serve Phupha and Tian’s story and that is were I take great issue. In this case, Ohm and Nanon should not have been billed as main leads but rather supporting characters that have extended guest arcs in an ATOTS sequel.
Maybe setting plays a larger role here. I’ve asked myself if I would feel this way if Phupha and Tian got thrown into Pat and Pran’s university life instead. But I can’t imagine a storyline where the inverse of what we got makes sense since PatPran are the more established couple and PhuTian have no reason to leave PPD.
My wish was that instead of a crossover, P’Aof would have let BBS stand on its own even if it meant we got two fewer episodes out of it. While we did get glimpses of Pat and Pran’s life three-years into their relationship, it felt watered down because they weren’t in their own environment but a borrowed one. So, really, more like seeing them while on vacation than anything truly concrete. A lot of ‘what have Pat and Pran been up to and where are they in their relationship’ was left to viewer interpretation, which is all fine and well if what P’Aof had to say about the state of their relationship made any sense.
Fake fighting and cute hijinks aside (Ohm and Nanon can sell these type of scenes in their sleep); what I’m after is the meatier stuff like the end of EP4, the entirety of EP5, EP10, EP11 and EP12. Where is the Pran that got choked up when Pat revealed he ran after him with his guitar; who gripped his hand when Pat volunteered to fake break up to win back Pran’s friends and wordlessly said I’m here to stay. Where is the “but I care about you more” Pran?
And where is the Pat who communicated so openly with his man? Who served as a walking advertisement of what it means to be a soaring green flag to all those who came before and after him? Why was he reduced to an amalgamation of Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber? Make it make sense, P’Aof. Pat never, ever, not once, came off as a dumb himbo in the OG series, so why was he reduced to that here?
The script could have been so much better, tighter, just more substantial. And we can't even say that P'Aof didn't have the space to include a meaningful story for them; I call bullshit on this notion. There's so much story that you can tell in a single hour. We've seen him do it with the BBS pilot.
It felt like so very little thought went into the BBS side of the story. Does P’Aof not know how to write established relationships in a compelling way? I know this can't be true because he gave us EP12, but why did it feel like he phoned it in with these bonus episodes? It’s like P’Aof knew he had both boys for a limited time and just threw the entire kitchen sink at them and anything that stuck made it into the final cut. Like, he relied heavily on the actors to bring it home for him. And that really wasn't fair to Ohm or Nanon who really did the best they could with what they were given.
I mean, even if he wanted to show the (realistic) cracks in their relationship, there were so many better ways to show this than have Pran essentially running away, avoiding Pat (basically regressing to who he was pre-relationship) and then treating Pat like a bumbling Barney Fife for following him? There was no fire in either of them to fight for or with one another. They were shown to have grown complacent (and dare I say taking each other for granted?) which is so at odds with what we got in the OG series that I was confused at what I was watching onscreen. It did not feel like a continuation of EP11 leading to EP12, in fact it felt very disconnected from their origin story.
Pat Jindapat. What they did to my guy was a travesty. They took away all his depth and cast him in the role of a bumbling idiot. Don't get me wrong, OG Pat had his comedic moments but I felt like OS2 veered so far into the extreme of 'lets bring the funny' that it fell completely flat. It was NOT funny. It was disappointing and sad to see one of my favorite characters reduced to this cartoon version.
More than senselessly reducing Pat to cannon fodder to merely serve as comic relief, I'm upset that Pran's growth from the series was essentially negated to where he became, in some ways, unrecognizable. More than once, it felt like Pran was just tolerating Pat's presence rather than basking or gravitating towards it. Again, so inconsistent for a guy who longed for his man for literal YEARS.
Gone are the days of "I'm done adapting" or adoringly staring at the space Pat used to occupy with heart eyes. I just don't get how we went from that Pran to this Pran to the Pran who readily committed his life to Pat in EP12. This in-between Pran is a stranger to me.
Final words: I'm both grateful that we got extra scenes with our boys but at the same time wish P'Aof had left them untainted.
#bad buddy#patpran#bad buddy series#i miss my boys#ohmnanon#pat x pran#bbs#late to the party as always#can't even claim to be fashionably late as this is 10 months after the fact#but I'm here and ready for discourse
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Okay, I finished Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened yesterday and I have so many (unstructured) thoughts and feelings, and I just want to get them out of my system.
It all happens at once for me because I also finished Chapter One a few days ago, and it already affected me a lot, so I didn’t even have the time to digest CO before jumping into TA and now I have to somehow digest BOTH games at once. So this post is about both games, basically me venting and getting it all out.
!!! SPOILERS AHEAD !!!
First and foremost, I just want to say, Jon! Oh, Jon! I was kinda sceptical at the beginning of Chapter One, I hadn’t read spoilers and didn’t know Jon was supposed to be imaginary, and having someone this close to Sherlock really surprised me, because the Holmes I knew was basically a machine. Sure, he cared about Watson, but weakness? I don’t know her. Also, I was absolutely certain Jon and Sherlock had more than just friendship going, cuz sharing a room? 👀
It took me some time to warm up to Jon, but once I did there was no going back. And I can’t believe we had to say goodbye to this sweetheart 😭 all these scenes of Sherry breaking down, Jon being scared as Sherry regained more and more memories, Jon telling Sherry he loves him. The main story was painful. I can’t describe it any other way. And yes, Jon wasn’t real, but that made it hurt even more. Because Jon was still the person Sherry desperately needed in his life, but this person simply did not exist. How lonely must have Sherlock been to create a whole, fleshed out imaginary person to love him and be there for him? How neglected must he have been? I absolutely do not blame Violet, the poor woman suffered so much, but it’s still a fact that after his father’s death, Sherlock became a neglected child. This Sherlock isn’t the Sherlock I know from the ACD canon, he isn’t the Sherlock from the older games. But he is a Sherlock I grew to love so much, with all his issues and his pride and his struggles. He is so flawed and human, and he is hurting so much. Oh, I was so unwell after Chapter One, and tbh I still haven’t decided which ending to accept as my personal true ending, because 3 out of 4 are absolutely devastating in their own way.
And then there was Watson. The single silent tear of Sherry when he heard Watson‘s voice for the first time - no words.
Again, after saying goodbye to Jon, I was yet again having a hard time warming up to a new (old) character. And yet again, I grew to looooove him!
Just how amazing is this John? And yes, I enjoy the original John Watson a lot, but I gotta say I like this one even more. He isn’t dumbed down to make Holmes seem like the only smart person in the room. This John and this Sherry are equal! And man, John has teeth! He can bite! He is so fierce yet so kind, I love him!
The Awakened left me speechless after finishing it. The second half of the game was intense and very emotional. There was no chill second, and again, as the plot progressed, Sherry broke down more and more, and I’m not gonna lie, that’s what I was there for. He may have died a few times on my watch, not on purpose of course, but I realised enjoy this fragile Holmes a lot more than I imagined I would. His struggles make you care for him on a personal level, not in the way you care for the ACD!Holmes.
The ending… again, all the love goes to John Watson! I think we can all conclude he is exactly the person Sherry needs in his life.
Also a side note: Mycroft honey, I know what went down with your whole family wasn’t easy on you either. And while your communication skills suck, I know that you care for your baby brother a lot ❤️ just take a step back maybe, because you aren’t showing your love in a positive way! I appreciate you tho!
#sherlock holmes chapter one#sherlock holmes the awakened#i think i need to check out some fics because i don’t know what to do with myself rn
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ties that bind [4/8]
SUMMARY: Quentin Beck– your old college biology professor– is still a bastard. Apparently, you’re kind of in to that.
RATING: Explicit
WORD COUNT: 8k+
CONTENT WARNINGS: extremely under-negotiated kink, character-typical behavior, more sex albeit less gratuitous, established-dynamic-typical Everything. Some plot in this one, finally!
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | [PART 4] | PART 5
The thing about lab work is–
There’s generally always going to be something that could use doing after-hours.
Dr. Banner presumably interprets your sudden apparent willingness to be the one to sacrifice your evenings once or twice a week or so as an attempt to suck up; or maybe just a deep, avowed interest in microbiology.
Neither are true.
You’re not sure how Beck even knows; who he must be talking to– interrogating, more likely– to figure out when you’ll be there, at night, with everyone else gone. You don’t care. On those days you wind yourself so tight with anticipation that you can hardly think straight, never more grateful for your deep familiarity with the lab procedures, given you’re so fucking distracted. It’s hard not to be– after that second time, Beck goes right back to showing up everywhere, like he’d only been waiting, the week before, biding his time until you inevitably came back within reach of him again, and once you were and once he knew beyond suspicion that you still– that you wanted– that you would let him –
It’s like after that, all bets are off. Before, he’d always been careful, words measured and insinuations meticulous, pre-planned, balancing so expertly on the knife’s-edge boundary of appropriate and acceptable that half the time you felt like you must have been imagining it, the way he tormented you. You don’t really even have to imagine anymore; he crosses the line with impunity, now, with an unrepentant and unapologetic enjoyment. All he ever has to do is look at you the way that he does, for too long, the sum of it too familiar, the way his eyes swallow up every inch of you, or press his palm to your lower back to move past you through a doorway, just for a dizzying fraction of a second, or call you honey in that voice– sly and deliberate and fucking patronizing, that twitching half-smile hidden behind a cup of dining hall coffee at seven in the morning, so early that you’re unable to remember to even try to hide the reflexive, immediate shiver that trembles straight through you, every nerve in your body already humming and alive.
Most times Beck’s waiting for you when you leave, lingering at the other end of the building, engaged in some plausibly-deniable excuse of an activity like grading exams or stocking lab supplies or writing up. Once, though, you run into him before you’re even finished, when you step out to grab something for the lab, and that’s both better and worse– he fucks you in the closed-off third-floor bathroom, the one that’s been disconnected from the water main and essentially abandoned for the last six months, and then you just have to go back to work like nothing happened, your muscles twitching, your body liquid and sated and sore–
He gets off on that, probably.
So do you, though, is the thing.
It’s worse this time around, too, because of that– because this time you can identify attraction and desire and wanting and name them for what they are, something you couldn’t have done before. It was so much easier when those feelings were distant and incomprehensible, when the worst thing he could ever elicit in you was anger, when you could say that you hated him and still wholeheartedly believe that it wasn’t more complicated.
Needless to say, it’s actually extremely complicated.
You do this for the entire rest of the semester– you actively make time for it, even towards the end with finals on the horizon for you and the undergrads that you TA for, glad for the fact that there’s actually no possible way for him to know that you’re, technically, prioritizing this over review for your structural biochemistry final.
It’s six-thirty in the evening and you’re in his office when you should be anywhere else, in the library or in the commuter lounge or just fucking home, the exam is tomorrow, and instead of studying or preparing or even really thinking about it at all you’re letting him stick his tongue in your mouth and his hands under your skirt, letting him bend you flat over his desk until your hands can reach all the way across to the other side of it, until your fingers can curl around the edges so tight that your knuckles go pale and bloodless when he fists a hand in your hair and pulls it until it hurts and aligns himself with an ease that is, by now, practiced and familiar, bottoms out inside of you with a groan that reverbates through your whole body like some kind of horrible electric fucking shock–
He fucks you hard, and it wipes from your brain anything about your exam or your fucked priorities or the abysmally fucking long to-do list of your responsibilities that apparently all came second to this, a terrible and grating truth that he would never let you live down– but he doesn’t know, and you don’t tell him, and the stress of the entire fucking week thus far and the tension that had built in you trying to manage all the end-of-semester bullshit stops mattering for all of a horribly gratifying fifteen minutes.
When you let go of the edge of his desk to touch yourself, turning to the crook of your arm to muffle the traitorous and immediate gasp that breaks out of you, he chuckles, the tenor of his voice ragged and rough and split in pieces by the absolutely fucking ruthless rhythm of his thrusts– like he’s trying to break you, shatter your resolve, like that’s what he wants most out of all of this. “You gonna come for me, honey?”
“Fuck you,” you bite back at him, the words dissolving into a choked-off moan, and then you do.
And then you go home and you study for your structural biochemistry exam and you still do pretty decently on it, somehow, and you resolve to take to your grave the fact that your ability to weigh the relative importance of immediate gratification versus the entirely less gratifying things that you should be doing is broken beyond all repair. That he broke it. Or maybe you both did; combined effort. Irrelevant, really. You’re not anything, you and him, you’re not friends, or acquaintances, and you don’t, strictly speaking, even actually like each other, which means that you never have to tell him any of that.
And so you don’t.
You do, though, see him on the last day before break, coat already on and stupid little expensive leather laptop bag slung over one shoulder, and you do walk a little faster to catch up to him before he reaches the door, glancing at him sidelong and saying with far less nonchalance than you’d intended, far more want– “Leaving?”
Beck turns to you and stares and his eyes are dark and amused and the sight of that alone sends some merciless heat searing right through your stomach. “Yeah,” he says, the silence after just as pointed and intentional as the fact that he hasn’t moved.
He wants you to ask for it, and you know that, and maybe the fact that you don’t care can be blamed on the abject fucking lack of adequate sleep you’ve gotten all week or the burning bright pulse of want that thunders dangerously through your nervous system or maybe just on– whatever. Who cares.
“Do you have to be somewhere right now?” you say, so blunt that it almost surprises you, “Or in the next, what, ten to fifteen minutes?”
The smile that spreads slow across his face is arrogant and vicious and deeply self-satisfied and if it inspires any sort of anger in you at all, you can’t even begin to separate it from the frenetic surge of desire and the dizzying rush of anticipation that ramps up even higher at the sight, and later you can be upset about it or pissed off or whatever, but right now you can’t even really summon the barest fucking remnants of any of that. Can’t do anything but want.
“No,” he says, grinning like a wolf, “No, I don’t.”
Whatever complete absence of ability for rational thought or logic or reasoning you’re experiencing then – it doesn’t magically abate after the door to that same stupid small supply closet is closed, certainly doesn’t when his hands are on you again, his mouth , not even when he breaks from kissing you to to whisper against your jaw you want it that bad you’re gonna have to do something for me, honey, and still not even when he says, lower, rougher, the words dripping with implication and so clearly a power play that you should, rationally, tell him to go fuck himself, but–
“On your knees,” he tells you, and–
And you let him, god, you let him tell you to kneel and you let him wind his fingers through your hair and pull, tip your head back to force you to look up at him, to witness whatever wild and vicious thing is swirling in the dark of his irises; you let him reach for you and press the pad of his thumb past your lips and against your tongue and you let him squeeze the hinge of your jaw to force it open and you let him work the head of his cock into the heat of your mouth and urge you to take it, take more, all of it, just like that, fuck, honey, there you go, his hand steady and firm and warm at the base of your skull–
Something absolutely fucking treacherous inside of you vibrates when he doesn’t even really try to cage back an immediate groan this time, lazy and dark and satisfied.
Yeah. Okay. This–
You don’t actually think about it then, not when he’s fucking your mouth and not when you’re letting him and not when he’s rucking up the hem of the little t-shirt dress you’d worn because you couldn’t be bothered with pants on the fucking last day of class. Definitely not when he’s dragging your panties to the side or when his cock is pressing hot and solid between your legs and slipping and sliding up and nudging your clit and missing the mark more than once with the way you’re fucking dripping for him, god, and not when he grits out fuck all breathless and disbelieving and still somehow fucking smug, not when he has to actually use a hand around the base of his dick to guide it into you and not when he fills you up, again, the second time in two days–
You don’t, in that moment, really think about how your reaction to any of this– all of it, really, to all of it, or maybe just to him in general, whatever’s worse– may, technically, potentially, be approaching territory that is getting dangerously close to an actual fucking problem.
In your defense, it’s really fucking easy to not think about it, with the dull plastic edge of the shelf digging into the small of your back and one of your legs hitched over the crook of his arm and your entire center of balance so dependent on him like this that you don’t even have to actually move at all, your bodies so close together that the warmth of him bleeds right through his clothes. His stupid coat and that satchel-thing- whatever are discarded and forgotten somewhere on the dusty, cobwebbed floor, and him even doing that conflicts with fucking everything you know about him, but that, too, is conveniently not something you think about. He bites at your bottom lip and plies your mouth open with his tongue and licks into it like he can take this and anything else he wants from you and you’d just– let him. You’d like it. He barely even has to touch you this time and you’re already just– gone, and maybe the immediacy of it is what drags him over the edge too, because he doesn’t last much longer after that, either.
“Wait,” you say, breathless, when he moves to pull back, your head dropping onto his shoulder and your thoughts spinning, directionless, bouncing around inside your skull like it’s fucking empty in there, like your brain is the size of a fucking ping-pong ball, god, embarrassing, terrible – “Hold on, give me a second, or I really am going to fall this time.”
Beck just laughs, only vaguely mocking, breathing ragged but steadying, and holds you until your perception of things like gravity and your own center of balance and the otherwise generally simple concept of, like, standing upright, realign themselves in the disarray that must be your motor cortex. And he laughs, too, when you make a whiny and petulant noise at the fucking mess that’s between your legs, fumbles around in the dark of the supply closet until he finds one of those rolls of scratchy recycled paper towels that the bathrooms are all stocked with, and then you laugh when he grumbles under his breath at the dust clinging stubbornly to the heavy wool outer lining of his coat when he picks it up off the floor again.
You do not think about any of that, either, at least not until you’re home, and then you do think about it– all of it, the weird parts and the concerning parts and the fact that there’s still, even now, that tiny little flicker of warmth somewhere inside of you.
Bad, you think, lying in your room in the dark, very bad.
But by then the semester is over, and it’s winter break for four weeks, and there’s the holidays to think about; Christmas, and all the logistical details that need to be worked out for that, and then New Years, which you’re pretty sure nobody even counts as a real holiday anyways, and then you realize you forgot to work out a second lab rotation and spend the rest of the break frantically sending emails– life happens, basically, and everything with Beck ends up on the back-burner, at least while he’s not within your immediate line of sight.
Maybe, you think, sometime in early January, the upcoming semester looming in the distance, maybe in the span of time between now and when you see him again, you’ll manage to get your head screwed back on straight.
---------------------
Perhaps predictably, that is not what happens at all.
Beck corners you in the east stairwell your second day back. This is despite his office being on the west side and despite the fact that there’s absolutely no fucking reason for him to even be there– he still is, of course, smiling, smirking, pressing his palm flat to the dusty brick wall near your head, his arm between you and the ascending stair. None of this is new, anymore, technically, and you’d spent the last month promising yourself that you’d fucking get over this, but for whatever reason it’s like that little base and instinctive part of your hindbrain– or maybe just your body, your entire nervous system, the way it reacts to him– hasn’t realized any of that, yet. Or just doesn’t care.
“Hey, honey,” he says, grinning wide, “Miss me?”
“No,” you reply, dry and emphatic and somehow mostly steady, rolling your eyes if only to avoid looking at him and wishing it was more than only half-true.
Later– when you’re done for the day at one-thirty, stupidly and unusually early, and when you’re walking the long way out to the parking lot through the length of the still-mostly-empty biology building for absolutely no justifiable reason at all, you pass the cracked-open door to his office, and–
You just cannot seem to fucking help yourself.
Beck is at his desk, posture relaxed and attention directed at something important, ostensibly; the door creaks even though you don’t so much as touch it, drifting further ajar behind you by a matter of what must have only been millimeters. The sound draws his attention and it’s like the second his eyes are on you or the second it registers he’s standing and across the room in an impossibly small number of strides, so fast that you don’t really have time to move or breathe or think . And maybe if you had time to do any of those things you would have thought to taunt him for it, how quick he is to just abandon everything else, the single-minded ferocity of his focus and how much it undercuts him when he says “You need it that bad, honey?” all arrogant and mocking like you’re alone in that, like the total sum of his own actions when laid out side by side doesn’t absolutely fucking betray him too—
“Fuck you,” is what you say instead, because it doesn’t register, not with him slamming the door shut with his hand above your head and forcing you right back against it, not with the immediate, precarious, dizzying lurch of adrenaline that vibrates right through you, brighter and warmer and sharper than anything you’ve felt in the month since you last saw him.
And, god, you will think, still later and still not then, not when it’s happening, because you never do– isn’t that just the fucking worst.
---------------------
You don’t actually come back from break early to get railed by your undergraduate biology professor. No, the actual reason is to help out in Dr. Banner’s lab, assisting in setup for his introduction to microbiology class both as part of the terms of your scholarship as well as in exchange for his advice on your nebulous future plans— you needed to at least tentatively have picked out a lab to do your thesis in and an actual official faculty advisor to pursue by the end of the semester, and you still hadn’t seriously started on either, yet.
“I was thinking about immunology, actually,” you tell him, sifting through a dusty, crumpled cardboard box full of micropipettes that you’ve been tasked with sorting by size, “I took intro in undergrad, and I did really well and I thought it was interesting, so I’m taking advanced immunology this semester with Dr. Stark– I was going to ask if he has space in his lab for me to do my third rotation.”
Dr. Banner doesn’t look up from where he’s painstakingly filling rows of those annoying too-small centrifuge tubes with pre-mixed DNA primer; yet another of an endless array of menial, boring tasks that need to be done to get everything set up for the class.
“I think that’s a great idea.The only thing, though,” he says, reaching the end of the row, snapping closed all of the tiny plastic caps, and then starting on the next one, “Tony’s the Dean, and everybody’s always falling over themselves trying to get into his lab, so I would keep your options open. Just in case. I can talk to him for you, put a good word in, and if you do well in the class I don’t see why he wouldn’t be up for it, because your grades are otherwise great, but– still, y’know?”
You make a noncommittal sound, catching your bottom lip between your teeth and worrying at it; with the micropipettes now sorted, you work your way methodically around the room to set one of each size at every seat. “Yeah, I know– I just don’t know what I would want to do otherwise.”
“Who do you have for your second rotation?”
“Dr. Cho.”
“And, what– you’re not thinking about asking her?”
You shrug, emptying the box at the last bench. “I’m less interested in structural biochemistry,” you reply, and the degree to which you’re actually incredibly not interested in structural biochemistry must be evident in your expression, because Dr. Banner chuckles under his breath.
“Don’t let her hear that, it’ll break her heart,” he says, smiling.
There’s a brief, not-uncomfortable silence, filled only with the sounds of the plastic casing of the micropipettes set down on the epoxy surface of the lab benches, the quiet, rhythmic click-click of the syringe depressing as he fills and then empties it over and over.
Finally, he makes this noise, a hum, kind of, like he’s considering the merits of whatever he’s about to say. “Tony’s not the only one who does immunology research. If that’s what you really want to pursue, I mean.”
You’re halfway into the adjacent storage room when he says it, off to fill the empty box with pipette tips that you’d have to similarly deposit at each lab station– god, you don’t know how he does this, year after year, it’s so fucking boring– but something about the tone of his voice makes you pause in the doorway. “He’s the only one listed on the department research page,” you reply, nonplussed, “I’ve checked.”
“Yeah, I know.” The prickle of annoyance underlying his voice– one that you recognize– betrays who he must be talking about before he even says it. “Beck’s lab isn’t listed, because he doesn’t want to have to deal with taking on undergrads for research experience. And Tony, he just– lets him, for whatever reason.”
Your mouth goes a little dry and that stupid traitorous thing inside of you trembles, the response so embarrassingly pavlovian that you should honestly be multiple times more ashamed than you are. You ignore it, and focus instead on the fact that somewhere in the back of your mind you were at least marginally aware of what he’s told you– that Beck had a lab, he did research, he wasn’t just teaching faculty.
“It’s really not worth asking, though,” Dr. Banner continues; if he’s at all cognizant of the way you’d gone suddenly and uncharacteristically silent, he doesn’t make mention of it at all. “He’s– I mean, you know how he is.”
Yeah, you think; yeah, I do.
“What does he– um, what’s his research area?” you ask, kicking yourself internally at the way that you stumble through the question, awkward and stilted and uncomfortable, trying to focus instead on stacking the little sachets of pipette tips into the cardboard box in neat, orderly rows. You only need forty-two– one of each of three sizes, for fourteen lab benches– but somewhere along the way you realize you’ve lost count and just mindlessly filled the entire thing.
“You’re not seriously considering it, are you?” Dr. Banner’s voice, incredulous, drifts from somewhere in the lab room proper.
“I’m seriously considering needing a backup plan,” you reply, bringing the too-full box of pipette sachets back into the lab classroom and beginning to lay those out, too.
That much, at least, is true.
He makes another sound that could best be described as the wordless equivalent of the phrase your funeral, which is distressingly appropriate. “I think he mostly does biologics. Developing new immune regulators, monoclonal antibodies, stuff like that.”
Right.
It would work out that way, wouldn’t it– that Beck’s research aligns so neatly with the only ideas about your future that aren’t ill-defined. You’re sure of at least one thing; that being you wanted to go into industry after this, private research and development for some pharmaceutical company, ideally; something that pays well and that’s far outside the bureaucracy and tedium and bullshit that is academia. Dr. Stark’s research is in a similar vein, but focused more on exploratory models of immune systems than the development of novel treatment strategies for, like, humans ; the difference, while small, is meaningful in the grand scheme of considering how well your PhD experience would translate to valuable skills in industry.
“Look at it this way,” Dr. Banner says, having finished filling up the primer tubes, moving past you to the storage room ostensibly to start on whatever the next menial, repetitive task needed to be accomplished, “At least you have time to figure it out. And who knows, you might get into Tony’s lab, and then you won’t have to worry about it.”
“Yeah,” you sigh, “I guess,” staring down at the box of pipette tips, still half-full even after all the lab benches were stocked, mind racing and thoughts elsewhere and not feeling all that much better about it.
---------------------
Your rotation in Dr. Cho’s lab goes fine. That is the best descriptor because it is itself the most nondescript; nothing special, but nothing bad, either.
You become gradually acquainted beyond a vague theoretical understanding with stuff like x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and cryoelectron microscopy, familiar with the weird and kind of janky processing software that analyzes the data and renders the images of the molecules and the cell receptors and essential enzymes and whatever else, and eventually you become friendly with a new set of labmates. It’s not boring, it’s just that it’s not what you think you want to do for the five (but, really, in life sciences it’s always more like six or seven) years of your PhD, and markedly less adjacent than the work you’d done in Dr. Banner’s lab in your rotation last semester.
A not-insignificant part of your uneasy ambivalence might be attributable to just how goddamn much you hated organic chemistry.
Nonetheless, you do the work, and the semester does the same things all semesters always do– it starts off slow, and then sometime after the third week it starts to pick up, until around the fifth or sixth it’s just this never-ending stream of assignments to complete and projects to finish and responsibilities to fulfill; an endless march towards some nebulous, ill-defined end.
Somehow through all of it, for reasons that you could not explain, you still end up seeing Beck.
A lot.
---------------------
Well, no-
The reasons are not that difficult to explain. They are, actually, extremely simple.
The sex is really good.
End of story.
---------------------
Dr. Banner gets the flu towards the end of February.
This is important only because it means his intro microbiology laboratory class falls a week behind. Normally, they’d have done the first few baby steps of their extractions that week, and you and the other TAs would have handled the rest of the process the following week. With him out, the lab gets pushed back, meaning the kids do their part the first week in March, and somebody would need to do the rest of it over the week of spring break, or the entire course would fall even further behind.
Dr. Banner explains this to you in his office on Friday morning in that still-kind-of-sick voice that sounds like somebody’s forcibly holding his nose shut, growing increasingly dismayed.
“Please,” he says finally, slumping in his chair, looking far too pale and far too wan to be even out of bed, much less back to work yet, “If you could. I know you always get stuck doing it, but everyone else has plans for spring break, and I’m supposed to be giving a presentation at a conference in Toronto, and–”
“It’s fine,” you reply, “Don’t even worry about it. I haven’t done anything for spring break since, like, sophomore year.”
“Thank you,” he says, visibly relieved. “You are a lifesaver. Really.”
Later, as you’re leaving his office after stressing to him that he really should go home and rest if he’s insisting on still going to a conference he’ll have to leave for in less than six hours, you allow yourself to think about the things that usually tended to happen last semester, all the other times you stayed late.
And then you think about it for what amounts to basically the entire day. Which, you know– fine. It’s the Friday before spring break. It’s not like you’re actually doing anything.
You’re still thinking about it when you’re in lab, as you work mindlessly through the familiar task of the extractions, as you siphon pungent ethyl acetone off from the bottles you’d done last week, the smell like drug-store nail polish remover still making your nose burn despite the fume hood; as you wait, otherwise unoccupied, for the rows of neatly-labeled glass bottles to finish steeping in the steaming vat of dry ice. It’s perhaps slightly– perhaps more than slightly– embarrassing, how much time you actually spend thinking about it– him– but by now when you’re by yourself you don’t even bother warring with the thoughts anymore. Whatever you think about when you’re alone stays between you and god– it doesn’t count.
(That, the still-rational piece of you thinks– the piece that hasn’t been reduced to a hormone-addled perpetually-horny teenager, however small it might be – that’s a terrible excuse.)
You’re still thinking about it as you clean and lock up the lab, though, right up until the moment that you’re not.
In the hallway, you fumble for your car keys in the pockets of your coat, outside ones first, and then the inside pocket, anxiety starting to prickle, and then your jeans, and then your backpack— and come up empty.
Oh, fuck.
You try to peer through the little rectangular frame of glass in the door to the lab to see if you’d left them on the stainless steel tabletops or the back counter, squinting into the dark of the room. In your head you’re already retracing your steps, the pace of your thoughts rapidly bordering on frantic, trying to figure out where you had–
“Hey, honey. Long day?”
You nearly jump out of your skin, the mounting stress having already done a number on your startle response– Beck is standing there, watching you quizzically, hands in his pockets. For once, you’re too focused on something else for the immediate, instinctive pang of warmth that flares at the sight of him to be anything more than an afterthought, and you’re kind of glad for that, unfortunate circumstances aside– that you’re at all capable of prioritizing this.
“I think I just locked my car keys in the lab,” you tell him in lieu of returning his greeting, a frown worrying at the corners of your mouth.
“Oh yeah?” His bark of answering laughter grates on your nerves, and, god, isn’t that just like him, you think sourly, already pissing you off. “Amazing job. Really proud of you.”
“Fuck off,” you tell him, acerbic and sharp and so not in the mood, even as that stupid impulsive part of you remains painfully aware of the shrinking distance between you when he moves closer, your pulse stubbornly ticking up, your autonomous nervous system incapable of caring whether you want it to or not.
“Relax,” Beck says, unaffected, “I have a key.”
You’re too irritated to thank him, and he looks at you with amusement, because he knows that, presumably, and because it’s funny to him. That heat you’d felt at the sight of him you think must be mostly frustration, now; it should maybe be a little concerning how difficult it is to even tell the difference in the first place, but you’re still too anxious to care.
He unlocks the door for you and flicks on the two rows of industrial overhead lights, which buzz to flickering life, bathing the room back in artificial brightness. You know within the first few seconds of glancing around that they’re not there, a realization that triggers a panic that lurches through your stomach like a cold stone.
“God damn it,” you grit out, dragging your hand over your face, the other clenching into a fist at your side, not even wanting to say out loud what you’ve realized– wishing more than anything that he wasn’t here, his particular brand of smug, condescending bullshit the exact opposite of what you needed right now. “They’ve got to be in Dr. Banner’s office, because they’re not here.”
You wait for another bordering-on-insulting remark, but it doesn’t come, even as the silence stretches on, pointed and expectant.
“Well, I can’t get you in there,” he says, trailing behind you as you leave the lab, flicking the lights back off and pulling the door shut behind him as you rifle through your pockets again, the pockets of your coat, too, anxiety driving the search to be disorganized and frenetic as your desperation ramps higher. “The master keys only work on the rooms with hazardous materials, for emergencies. Labs and storage, mostly.”
He watches you, impassive, as you tear your backpack apart, find nothing, and then dejectedly put everything back together again. “You should call Bruce, you know he’d come back.”
You slump forward, defeated, burying your face in your bag where it’s still hanging on the wall hook. “He’s in fucking Toronto,” you mutter into the fabric, muffled, “For three days.”
At a loss for what else to do, you eventually right yourself and take your backpack up off the hook, slinging it over your shoulder with a long-suffering sigh. When you turn in the direction of the door, Beck follows after you; you’re not really thinking about what he’s probably thinking about, not right now, too concerned with how you’re going to get home, but– and this triggers a wince and a flicker of shame, a feeling that has become a lot harder to elicit in you as of late– you could probably be convinced to stop thinking about that for some indeterminate length of time, if he were to try.
“I can give you a ride to your apartment,” he offers.
Somehow, the realization hadn’t struck you until then, but– “Oh my god, my house keys. I can’t even get in.”
“Wow,” he says dryly, “You’ve really fucked up, huh?”
“Shut up.”
There’s a pause, as you near the doors; your mood somehow sinks even lower at the state of the sky outside, already an absolute pitch black. It’s only six, but it’s still somewhere between spring and winter; the time hasn’t changed yet and a late cold front had swept in earlier in the week, so not only is it dark, it’s freezing. And you still had no fucking idea what you were going to do.
The lights are still on in the biology building, and because of the contrast you can see both yourself and Beck clearly reflected in the glass of the door; he’s looking at you, expression unreadable.
“You have a friend you can call? Roommate?”
“No roommates. I don’t even have a spare key.”
You chew on your bottom lip for a moment, and then turn to look at him– really look at him, not just his reflection, pointedly ignoring the way you have to squash down the rise of something warm up through your abdomen just to do it. “Look– I appreciate it, but I’ll be all right. It’s my fault I got into this stupid mess anyways, I’ll figure it out. You don’t have to stay any later.”
He looks at you a moment longer, eyes steady, and then his mouth twitches up at one corner, more of an acknowledgement than a proper smile. “No, I guess not, huh?”
Part of you is more than a little irritated at that, at the implication, because, seriously, did he think you would just, what, decide to put off figuring out how you’re going to get home– where you’re even going to sleep– because he wanted to get laid?
(A smaller part of you is angrier still at the fact that, yeah, you probably would, if only he were capable of being more empathetic and less of an asshole for all of a meager five fucking minutes –)
“You could come with me.”
Your brain stalls, grinds to a halt and then stutters and rights itself enough for the words to process and the meaning to crystallize– and, yeah, okay, there’s a spark of electricity that strikes up in your belly at the idea, the precarity of it, even just the notion triggering that spiraling, panicky, adrenaline-infused sensation of being wildly out of your depth-- but that same small idiotic impulsive part of you, though, likes that feeling. Wants to chase it, past the point of reason or excuse.
“No,” you blurt out, before you can think about it for any longer, resolutely ignoring the part of you that’s kind of disappointed in your response. You’re not going to his fucking house, that sounds like a horrible, horrible idea.
Beck looks at you a moment more, and then his expression seals off– you wonder absently if you’d upset him. Hurt his feelings, maybe? Did he even have those?-- and he moves towards the door. When he pushes it open there’s a blast of dry and frigid air that still tastes like winter, a mixture of wood smoke and car exhaust, and he looks at you one last time, his eyes tracking back and forth across your face like he’s searching for something. “Suit yourself,” he says finally, and then he’s gone.
You stand there for a while just staring at your solitary, sullen reflection in the glass, before you pull out your cell phone and try to call someone– anyone, really, family, a friend; you even consider the merits of calling the campus police until a cursory google search reveals that all available master keys for buildings lie with the corresponding department head and are then disbursed at their discretion. The department head, of course, being Dr. Banner. Who was in Toronto. For three fucking days.
No one answers their phones; you send a few text messages out to make sure they’re not just avoiding answering calls, and after that, having realized you’ve run out of Useful Things to do, you settle for just trying to not panic. It’s admittedly a task that requires most of what limited attention you still possess at six-thirty at night, and for that reason you don’t notice the car when it appears outside; not until the driver lays on the horn for several uninterrupted seconds.
The sound jolts you, violently, out of whatever dissociative trance you were in; you register beams of light from those obnoxious, blinding-bright LED headlights and the steady rumble of an engine, the car itself parked at such an angle that you can’t make out the model from inside for the glare. You hesitate for a while, squinting at the shape of it in the darkness and trying to make out the details from the nice comfy warmth of inside, until the driver punches the horn again, three times in quick succession.
“Okay, okay, Jesus Christ,” you mutter to yourself, zipping up your coat and bracing for the solid wall of cold air that rushes to meet you when you open the door.
You have your arms wrapped around yourself as you approach the passenger side of the car— newer-model BMW, sedan, black, tinted windows, expensive— trying to ward off the cold and not succeeding. The window rolls down as you get close; without a light on, it’s still too dark for you to make out anything inside, but you know the voice when it calls out to you.
“Come on; I’m not gonna just leave you here, honey.”
Beck must have reached out to pull the latch for the door, because it swings wide open. The interior light flicks on with it, illuminating his face and the inside of the car, which is spotless and leather-upholstered and warm, the glow rendering the heat visible, rising out of the cabin in wavering lines. Standing as close as you are you can feel it, radiating outwards, and you sway towards it without meaning to, drawn instinctively away from the cold.
“I said I’d be fine,” you protest, with far less conviction than the first time.
“Yeah? You didn’t prop the door open, and you don’t have your keys,” he says, lips pressed together in a way that tells you he’s trying not to laugh, “So now you can either wait there or you can wait in my car, because I’m not getting out just to let you back in again.”
“Oh my god,” you reply, equal parts indignant and alarmed, glancing back to check— god damn it, you really had just locked yourself out. “I wouldn’t even be out here if you didn’t–”
“I know,” he says, cutting you off, properly smiling now– and of course he’d only been fucking with you, and of course you’d just headlong and blindly let him get you riled up. Again . “Look– were you even able to get ahold of anyone?”
A lengthy beat of silence passes; the wind picks up, the door sways on its hinges, and you try– fail– to hide a violent shiver.
“No,” you admit, reluctant.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, tone long-suffering but that stupid fucking smile still playing at his mouth, “Quit being so stubborn and just get in the car.”
You weigh your options for a moment, again, thinking about all the ways in which this is a spectacularly bad idea– there was probably somebody still inside who’d let you in the main door if you walked around to the front of the building, and once there you could wait and maybe somebody would respond to your texts– but it’s half-hearted. You don’t actually want to do any of that. When he’d first asked, there had been this part of you– stupid, impulsive, impetuous part of you– that wanted to just say yes , without forethought or consideration, interested only in the way that the offer had brought back the same feeling as when he had first cornered you in his office, like something inside of you had melted, turned liquid and pliable and hot .
That part of you is an unabashed and committed hedonist, apparently, and a sucker for being totally out of your depth— and the second time around, that part wins.
Buzzing with adrenaline, you reach for the grab handle on the ceiling of his car and, wordlessly, you pull yourself into the passenger seat, yank the door closed behind you, and stow your backpack at your feet.
The light shuts off as soon as the door closes, the process entirely automatic, and for a second you can’t make out much more than the outline of him, pitch black. You can’t breathe, at first, and you tell yourself it’s because of the heat shock, your body adjusting from the cold, but a not-significant part of it might just be you freezing up at the immediate reality of being somewhere that’s his . The office was one thing, but the inside of his car– maybe because it’s so small, too personal — it’s different. It makes you feel like you’re drifting, unmoored, beyond the realm of plausible deniability or excuse; where you could justify being in his office, technically justify being really anywhere in the building, there’s no justification here, and that awareness thrums, electric, just under your skin.
He shifts the car out of park, and something inside of you trembles.
“I thought we were going to wait for–”
Beck chuckles, and there’s that familiar biting edge to it again. “No you didn’t,” he says blithely, eyes straight ahead as he pulls out of the lot.
The words are matter-of-fact and a little bit mean and the sound of them makes you feel like you’ve dropped ten stories–the floor pulled right out from under your feet, that weightless, shivery feeling pulsing in the pit of your stomach. Of course he knew that. You don’t bother trying to deny it.
“D’you think we’ll pass a drugstore?” You ask instead, carefully and pointedly ignoring what he’d said– there was an insinuation inherent in that, too, though, an implicit admission that he’d been right, and you can see when you glance at him that it registers, the corner of his mouth twitching up.
“Yeah,” he replies, shifting gears as he turns out of the university entrance and onto the main road– the fact that he drives a stick is unsurprising. You’d kind of figured he was the type. “Why?”
You stretch out in the passenger seat just to give yourself something to do, warm enough now to uncurl your shoulders and unwrap your arms from around yourself; you stretch your legs and reach up to stretch your arms, too, for good measure, the movement long and languid and so much more relaxed than you feel. Out of the corner of your eye you catch the glance he casts at you, sidelong, and feel an immediate rush of satisfaction.
“I need to get a toothbrush,” you say eventually, working to keep your voice casual.
He makes a noncommittal noise in response. “You can use my toothbrush.”
You don’t reply, but the face you must have made at that, unintentional and reflexive, it makes him laugh– really laugh, something that seems like it isn’t entirely on purpose, a sound that’s softer and rougher around the edges than the ones you’ve heard him make before, his eyes crinkling up at the corners in a way that so utterly disarms him that for a second it’s like you’re looking at a totally different person.
Whatever you feel at that sight, as strange as it is, is so fleeting that you don’t get the chance to examine it in any amount of detail.
“The things that you’ve let me put in your mouth and you draw the line at my toothbrush,” he says, grinning, shifting gears again with a familiar efficiency as the car picks up speed. "Really, just-- illogical."
You can feel yourself flush, the sensation running from your face right down to your toes; you’re glad, now, for how dark it is, the only light the rhythmic flashes of passing streetlamps that flicker through the cabin. “Oh my god, don’t be fucking gross.”
“I’m being scientific,” he replies, humor still suffused into his expression, “It’s basic biology; do you know how many germs a person has on their—”
“Yes, oh my god,” You cut him off before he can finish the sentence, fighting back the admittedly childish desire to cover both your ears. “ I also majored in biology, asshole, I know about microbiomes. I draw the line at societal convention, which pretty much never has anything to do with science, anyway, so--"
“Okay, well, no, that’s definitely bullshit,” his voice has gotten lower, and while he’s still smiling, it’s not the same lighthearted one from before, that smug, self-satisfied edge back in it, “You don’t give a shit about societal convention, honey, you’ve spent the last four months proving how little you care about that.”
You don’t need him to elaborate to know what he’s talking about; the implication is clear– god, four fucking months, you think, how had that even happened?-- though you get the feeling if you don’t respond he’s going to say it out loud, and that would be worse. You know that this is something that you shouldn’t be doing– he was your professor, for fuck’s sake, he’s still technically your superior, you’re still technically a student, even if you’re not his– and you don’t particularly need or even want him to say any of that, especially not the way he is now; like he’s found some hole in your reasoning, a fundamental logical misstep.
He used to do this when you were in class, too, when you’d argue then; pull these bizarre non-sequiturs that gave you whiplash, poke holes in arguments you hadn’t even made. And god, you hated it then and you still hate it now— how he twists the conversation, twists your words, often at random, pushes and prods and needles you until you’re made to be defensive, forced to justify the most pointless, insignificant bullshit that you’d never even said in the first place.
“Yeah, well,” You fold your arms over your chest, suddenly more irritated than anything that you’re in his car and not someplace where you can just tell him to fuck off and walk away. “I pick and choose which conventions I give a shit about. Like most people do. Happy?”
He’s gotten under your skin, again, so much so that you don’t realize he’s pulled into a space in the otherwise-empty parking lot of a Dollar General until he turns, pointedly, to look at you, mouth still twitching like he wants to smile but realizes that would just piss you off more. You stare right back, stubborn, irritation prickling hot at the nape of your neck— irritated both with him for always being such an unrepentant bastard but also with yourself, too, for the fact that you can’t ever seem to stop reacting to it.
When he leans over the car console and takes your face in both hands and holds you still so can kiss you, just for a moment, you’re dizzy with vertigo and burning up with frustration and playing desperate, disorganized catch-up with whatever the fuck is going on to the point where you never really get the chance to respond– but there’s still that heat that brims up inside of you, the spark of adrenaline, and it sucks, actually, how easy it is for you to forget that you were even angry in the first place. Or maybe it’s just that he’s gotten the wires in your brain crossed so completely that you can’t even tell what the difference is, anymore. When he lets go and pulls away, you have to fight the urge to sway forwards, and that sucks, too, the way that he doesn’t even really have to try to get this from you, the wanting; it’s just always there, right under the surface, and all he ever has to do is remind you of its’ existence and everything else in your head is gone.
“Am I happy with which conventions you choose to ignore?” Beck clasps his hands behind his head, and reclines back in his seat, eyes closed. He’s still smiling, an arrogant and self-satisfied thing that fills you with frustration and want and shame, all in equal measure. “Take a guess. And then go get a toothbrush, before I decide I’m just going to leave.”
A muscle in your jaw ticks as you unbuckle your seatbelt and crack the car door. “You’re so fucking annoying.”
“See, if only you were brave enough to ever say that during your undergrad,” he calls out after you as you’re rounding the front of his car, having rolled down his driver’s side window to do so, leaning forwards so he can hold eye contact through the windshield. It’s kind of funny, actually— how willing he is to abandon that illusion of calm disinterest, dismissal, that he’d constructed only moments earlier, if it meant even just one more chance to get a rise out of you.
You wonder if that’s new, or if he’s always been that way, and you were just too caught up in being angry to notice.
“I said it a lot, ” you inform him, unable to suppress the beginnings of a small, reflexive grin at the thought–that maybe it’s not just you. Maybe he can’t really help himself, either. “Just not to you.”
You don’t look back, after that, but you don’t need to; you can hear him laughing.
---------------------
A friend responds to your earlier frantic text as you’re waiting at the checkout for the solitary employee to return from where they’d been stocking product somewhere within the haphazardly-organized, labyrinthine maze of the local Dollar General.
She’s back home in Connecticut for spring break, so it would take her two hours, maybe more, just to get here, and you had already set it up with the janitor to be let back into the lab to check on the extractions over the weekend, anyways– so there are plenty of perfectly rational, perfectly objective reasons for you to respond with a “ dw lol, figured it out already. thank u tho!! ”.
Logistics, for one. Efficiency, for another. That winding, precarious sensation of anticipation creeping up inside of you– it’s not a factor, you tell yourself reasonably. If it had been any of your friends nearby, you’d have taken them up on the offer, because of course you would have.
(You don’t even know for sure if that’s true. Deep down, you might be a tiny bit relieved that it was her who answered, and not anyone else, not someone who lived within the general vicinity of campus– you don’t really want to know what you would have done, then, what you would choose, and this way you don’t have to find out.)
You return to his car with the toothbrush, still in its flimsy cardboard and plastic packaging, and a crumpled receipt; you think you might see something in his expression that brightens at the sight of you, but maybe it’s just a trick of the light. The toothbrush goes immediately into one of the pockets of your backpack– you’re not really thinking all that much right now, and you don’t trust yourself not to lose it otherwise– and by the time you sit up again and reach to pull the seatbelt on, he’s already peeling out of the lot.
Beck drives like an asshole, accelerates too fast and maneuvers around other cars and egregiously violates the speed limit– huge surprise– but it’s not distressing, which is to say, begrudgingly, that he’s good at it. It’s clear that he knows the car, what it can do, shifts through the gears to bring it humming from ten to thirty to sixty miles an hour over the span of a handful of seconds in a motion so smooth that it seems effortless. You know that it’s really not, if only because the one time you’d ever tried to drive stick– a friend’s car, an already-beat-to-shit Pontiac Firebird– you couldn’t even figure out how to time the clutch right. Never so much as made it out of the parking lot.
“You drive like a fucking maniac,” you say instead of admitting any of that, and then you ignore the way that his answering laugh makes something bright and warm and weird bloom in the general vicinity of your chest, and you ignore, too, how his immediate mocking of your proclivity towards using the word fuck and its’ derivatives as if it were the world’s most liberal and universal adjective doesn’t, actually, make you angry or irritated or anything even close. Not even when he says in that too-sweet patronizing tenor something about how it’s unbecoming behavior for a PhD student, inappropriate and far too unprofessional, evidence that, well, y’know, maybe you’re just not cut out for this after all, honey–
You tell him to shut up, kind-of-not-really meaning it, finding it probably a little too easy to ignore all those things, the same way you ignore everything else that’s ever inconvenient or uncomfortable about any of this– knowing, in some distant and far-off part of your brain, that you will probably have to deal with it eventually.
Eventually, though–
The thing about instant gratification is that it always makes that eventually seem like it’s some meaningless, incomprehensible distance from you, miles and oceans and light-years away, and while you know, logically, intellectually, that that won’t always be the case, that it isn’t, technically, even the case now–
It doesn’t click.
It doesn’t stick.
Beck turns into a concrete several-story parking garage attached to a mid-rise tower block of apartments– condos, actually, you catch the sign on the way in, large and deliberately eye-catching and illuminated brighter than anything around by a row of obnoxious spotlights– and when he pulls into a spot marked with the stenciled number 34 in white spray-paint and parks and shuts off the engine–
It doesn’t really matter, then, what clicks or sticks or even registers at all. The surge of adrenaline, of want and anticipation and warmth and whatever else– as soon as he moves to get out of the car, it thunders back in like the rush of high tide, like something inevitable, and the ferocity of it has you wondering as you shrug your backpack over one shoulder and close the passenger door if there might actually be something wrong with your nervous system, if something inside of you was misfiring that would explain, logically, why you still fucking feel like this–
You decide, abruptly, to stop thinking about it.
(You’ve gotten really fucking good at that.)
“Got your toothbrush?” he says, grinning, sly, somehow managing to make an otherwise–innocuous phrase sound like it’s meant to be an insult.
You roll your eyes and he just smiles wider. “Yes, I have it, asshole.”
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