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sisterdivinium · 1 year

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what do you think suzanne was like in her youth? she says she doesn't see herself as modern, but what do you think that means to her?

Those are interesting questions! As they require a little more imagination than I usually apply to my posts here, I'll ponder them one by one, even if they're interconnected. This will be long, of course, because it's about 💕❤️ Suzanne ❤️💕 my beloved.

1) On Suzanne's character in youth

The first solid clue we're given about what Suzanne used to be like comes from the conversation she holds with Duretti on Crimson, of course:

As much as Mother Superion ends by radically dissociating herself from Crimson in the similarity established by the cardinal, adding that the younger nun is "possibly sociopathic", she makes no effort to refute the adjectives of "aggressive" and "undisciplined" as applied to herself. She must, then, in some level recognise these traits as her own.

When we are treated to the flashback she has with Shannon in season two, confirmation on both characteristics is clear: a determined halo-bearing Suzanne eschews "Christian compassion" in slaughtering a gang of men without pity and without any real backup plan should her charging head-first into battle yield less than desirable results. She is aggressive and undisciplined, quite evidently.

Here is a little problem, though, because discipline is indispensable to obedience — and obedience is, of course, amongst the vows taken by those who enter monastic life.

This could nudge us towards seeing a certain rebelliousness in young Suzanne. Fitting in and taking orders from someone else might have been a challenge for her, as it always is for prideful people, even when those "superiors" have their respect.

Her tempestuousness seems, to me, to have manifested in another physical manner as well. Regardless of my own tiny sin of "headcanoning" her as a lesbian, there's the other side to this competent swordswoman — not the one in the heat of battle, getting up close to her enemies in order to slash them down, but in the proximity shared with her sisters, her body language and closeness to them.

Season one shows us a detached, distant Mother Superion who almost never directly touches the other women. In season two's flashback, however, our Warrior Nun Suzanne strokes Shannon's cheek before whatever halo trick she pulls in pressing down on Shannon's chest. There's an easy familiarity there, a confidence in breaching Shannon's personal space — an intimacy as well as the conviction to assert it. Whether this type of gesture was exclusive to Shannon or dispensed on the other nuns as well matters not so much as the fact that it happened and how it contrasts with the Mother Superion we know of the first season. I'd guess that young Suzanne wasn't all that keen on repressing the ways by which her body, then still wholly able, interacted with those of her sisters. Opening up to touch as she does throughout season two, slowly as it might be, might not be a novelty as much as a "coming home" for her, regaining some of her lost confidence in her very ability to love other women — or express it, rather. It wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that the guilt she felt for being a sinner encompassed more than just the grief of killing a mother...

Liberal closeness to other nuns alongside a lack of discipline mustn't have garnered her a great many favours in her time with the Church... So I suppose her combat skills, her sharp focus, and her devotion to the cause must have spoken louder than her blatant (cardinal sin of) pride when she rose to the position of halo-bearer.

And maybe, just maybe, the fact that there was someone to vouch for her played a part in it as well.

Mary had a mentor and a protector in father Vincent and I suspect something of their relationship might be mirrored in how young Suzanne might have sought guidance in an ambitious, younger father Francesco. They "go back many years", Vincent tries to sway a reticent Mother Superion by claiming Duretti used "her history" against her... It's possible that a young Suzanne, like Mary, would have depended on a man of the cloth to secure her place within the OCS even as her very personality at times clashed with the demands of the institution. Men who, for one reason or another, could help direct these young and ferocious women's energies towards a specific goal, give them a purpose. Needless to say both Suzanne and Mary seem to stay on board for the same reason, even if as Mother Superion Suzanne might have later repressed it: their sisters.

For all of Suzanne's cockiness, she does quite obviously do it all for them.

So to sum up my vision of young Suzanne and move on: I see her as a brash, somewhat rebellious girl in need of a cause through which to channel her passions and a speciality to prove herself to others (given how she is already so sure of her own value). As far as faith goes, she appears to have deposited it mostly in herself, which would account for a greater degree of godly devotion after losing the halo in order to expiate her sins. She's in this (always has been, even despite later shame and fear and concealment) for the women, most of all.

2) On what "modernity" might mean to Suzanne

In order to assess what modernity is, it's necessary to define the term it's contrasted with as well — we need to think of what tradition could mean for her.

And this is... Difficult. "The Church" isn't an easy way out; Duretti is part of the Church, a constant in her life, a guide... Yet Suzanne's words about needing "a more modern approach to the job" are very reminiscent of something Duretti himself had said back in that same season one scene:

There's a bit of a paradox here if we try to see things through her eyes.

Her need for "modernity" arises from another exchange with this same man. But can we say Duretti truly embodies tradition when here is a religious person who has no qualms about setting sister warriors to kill a girl who accidentally has the halo? (Well, perhaps so, given how the Catholic church is stained with terrible actions...) Suzanne might not know about the torture chamber in the Vatican, but she did help save Ava in the catacombs from the OCS rejects under his orders. She is perfectly aware of how violent he can be.

Perhaps that is in itself a part of her wanting to break out; we can't ignore the fact that the above screen captures show us his line of dialogue ending while we see a take of Beatrice offering a hand to Crimson — showing her the opposite of the ruthlessness Duretti and Crimson carry.

It's also peculiar how she mentions modernity while inside a library or archive, the very home of history and tradition. Are these the "old teachings"? This unending amount of precepts all around, gathered with the passing ages?

We wouldn't do well to argue that the blood-soaked books recounting the past or the violent strategies of Duretti are necessarily what trouble her seeing as she is still a warrior currently at war; Suzanne isn't exactly a pacifist.

However, the phone call that originates the "modern" comment is a failed attempt on her part to get Duretti to act, to take a first and definite step against Adriel — to enter the fray, as young Suzanne probably would have already.

He beckons her to "have faith in God" — and perhaps that is the issue, the "old teaching" she feels insufficient and which, examining her (possible) past as in the first part of this very long answer, was never enough for her to begin with. Heeding the words of men, believing in God... And what does that amount to shortly after they hang up? She couldn't predict the future, but she saw something wrong with the method — and the intuition proved right.

I can't tell precisely what her "modernity" entails since I cannot pinpoint "tradition" either; they seem a bit intertwined. It's tempting to say Jillian fills the role of providing the "newness" through her technology, but it isn't as if Mother Superion were a luddite: she's using a smartphone and a computer just fine, if perhaps not as modernly as Camila and her TikTok. She is not an "outdated" person. We could assume that this "modern approach" has less to do with the instruments and more with perspective, with priorities, guiding principles... On a superficial level, it's about coming out from under Duretti's wing — from Church structure's shadow, from the patriarch's rule, from following someone else's lead.

And that, funnily enough, assuming this post is in any way correct in its hypothesising, would lead us right back to our rebel from youth, if hopefully with more wisdom to guide her steps this time around.

Season three would have allowed us to see Suzanne be without the anchor of Duretti (as season two could have let us see Mary away from Vincent) and maybe elucidate the matter... But, as it is, I think this is as much as I can surmise with what we've been given!

#warrior nun #mother superion #halobearerhavoc #i am sorry for taking this long but you indulge me in my suzanne obsession so i must Write A Lot lol #analysis and similar #exercises in observation #not even gonna talk much in these tags because i've said enough!!!#correspondence

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no-side-us · 1 year

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Letters From Watson Liveblog - May 17

The Engineer's Thumb, Part 1 of 3

The Naval Treaty would also count here, but although we read it before this story it was actually published a year later. I guess if I wanted to create a Watsonian reason for the discrepancy, maybe because Phelps asked for Holmes' help, Watson considered himself less the introducer and more a facilitator of the case.

Now this is a nice change from the last mention of Watson's life after leaving Baker Street in The Stockbroker's Clerk:

I imagine The Stockbroker's Clerk case was the impetus for Holmes and Watson seeing each other more often as is seemingly the norm in this story and the cases right before this one.

With Dracula Daily going on right now, seeing this young man with the pale complexion and bloodstained handkerchief, I can't help but see a possible vampire victim in the same vein (heh) as Jonathan Harker, especially with how polite and apologetic he is despite having been through such a severe situation.

Mary cameo! Once more she is not named, but it's enough for me to at least put her in the tags.

Mr. Hatherley was just a young man, an orphan no less, starting out in his new career after having recently lost his father. There are more Jonathan parallels here than I expected.

He then meets an older, foreign man who, despite having such emaciated features, is still quite youthful in manner! He's called Colonel Lysander Stark! That even sounds like a pastiche on Count Vlad Dracula, with the honorific and everything.

So someone recommended young Hatherley to the Colonel, with the information that Hatherley was talented, an orphan, a bachelor, living alone, and also capable of keeping a secret. It'd have to be someone quite familiar with Hatherley, perhaps someone who's worked with him, or maybe even over him, like a former boss!

The parallel I'm talking about is to Mr. Hawkins and his letter to the Count, in case I made it too vague:

He is a young man, full of energy and talent in his own way, and of a very faithful disposition. He is discreet and silent, and has grown into manhood in my service. He shall be ready to attend on you when you will during his stay, and shall take your instructions in all matters.

The Count never did this, but I can also very much see the Count doing this. As we know, he does like to dart around quickly when he thinks nobody is looking.

I feel like this line speaks for itself in how easily applicable it could be to the Count, or any number of vampiric scenarios.

The Colonel wants Hatherley to work in the middle of the night, which would result in Hatherley having to stay the night.

And Hatherley can't refuse because he needs the money and has his career to think about.

The Engineer's Thumb was published in 1892 by the way, five years before Dracula, so this is all likely a coincidence or just some common motifs of the era. Won't stop me from seeing the parallels though.

A passage from when Jonathan Harker first meets the Count:

The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man.

Just one chestnut horse? No quartet of coal-black splendid beasts? I guess not every vampire has the resources to complete the aesthetic.

And I am going to assume the Colonel is a vampire, even if the next two letters contradict it. But based on this letter so far, I think I'll just get more evidence if anything.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

#letters from watson #the engineer's thumb #sherlock holmes #john h watson #mary watson #mary morstan #victor hatherley #lysander stark #arthur conan doyle #liveblogging sherlock holmes

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jensensitive · 1 year

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John in buckleming episodes

(just compiled via ctrl-f-ing transcripts, so probably missing something or other)

1x13 Route 666

DEAN

Am I speaking a language you're not getting here? Dad and I were working a job in Ohio, she was finishing up college. We went out for a coupla weeks.

–

DEAN

(Hesitantly) You know, I'm still really involved. With my dad's work.

7x05 Shut Up Dr Phil

7x13 The Slice Girls

7x19 Of Grave Importance

8x03 Heartache

8x15 man’s Best Friend With Benefits

8x19 Taxi Driver

9x03 I’m No Angel

9x09 Holy Terror

9x16 Blade Runners

9x21 King of the Damned

(gavin and crowley)

CROWLEY (answering phone) Squirrel. I hope you were nice to your father.

DEAN (driving, on phone) What? Shut up. Look, we got the Blade.

10x03 Soul Survivor

DEAN: You notice I tried to get as far away from you as possible? Away from your whining, your complaining. I chose the King of Hell over you! Maybe I was just … tired of babysitting you. Or always having to yank your lame ass out of the fire since …

[Dean laughs.]

DEAN: Forever. Or maybe … Maybe it was the fact that my mother would still be alive if it wasn’t for you. That your very existence sucked the life out of my life!

SAM: This isn’t my brother talking.

DEAN: You never had a brother! Just an excuse for not manning up. But guess what: I quit.

SAM: No. No, you don’t. You don’t get to quit. We don’t get to quit in this family! This family is all we have ever had!

DEAN: Well, then, we got nothin’.

SAM: Would you say that to Dad?

DEAN: Dad? Oh, there’s a prize. There’s a man who brainwashed us into wasting our lives fighting his losing battle!

10x10 The Hunter Games

10x16 Paint It Black

10x21 Dark Dynasty

(eldon and his father)

11x03 The Bad Seed

11x09 O Brother Where Art Thou?

Sam: You’re sitting there with the Book of the Damned and the means to read every word, and you think I’m going to set you free? Do I look crazy?

Rowena: Well, you do have unresolved issues with your domineering older brother and the abandonment by your father.

Sam: You know what? Just get back to work! All right.

11x18 Hell’s Angel

11x21 All In the Family

Dean: Here's the thing, um...Chuck... And I mean no disrespect. Um... I'm guessing you came back to help with the Darkness, and that's great. That's, you know – It's fantastic. Um, but you've been gone a – a... long, long time. And there's so much crap that has gone down on the Earth for thousands of years. I mean, plagues and wars, slaughters. And you were, I don't know, writing books, going to fan conventions. Were you even aware, o-or did you just tune it out?

Chuck: I was aware, Dean.

Dean: But you did nothing. And, again, I-I'm not trying to piss you off. You know, I don't want to turn into a pillar of salt.

Chuck: I actually… didn't do that.

Dean: Okay. People – People pray to you. People build churches for you. They fight wars in your name, and you did nothing.

Chuck: You're frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on – Real hands-on for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created... would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. [Sighs] It's enabling.

Dean: But it didn't get better.

Chuck: Well, I've been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.

Dean: Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you're trying to justify it.

Chuck: I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don't confuse me with your dad.

12x02 Mamma Mia

(with action lines from production draft)

Dean: Sleep okay?

Mary: I had dreams all night. I haven’t had dreams for… thirty years.

Dean: Good dreams?

Mary: Stuff I’d forgotten about. Funny things your dad did. He was a great father.

Dean considers this. Almost takes up the topic. Thinks better of it. Smiles a vague smile.

–

(transcript)

MARY: Very. The thing is, Hunters... no matter how good they are, they all end up the same way.

DEAN: You know when you died, it changed Dad. I mean, he was Hell-bent on finding out what happened. The Hunter life, it just took him over. I guess I was the same. But Sammy – Sammy, he was different. He wanted out. He went to school. He went to Stanford.

MARY: Sam had a chance to get out? And he came back?

DEAN: When Dad disappeared, Sam and I looked around, and something became very clear. That the only thing we had in this world – the only thing, aside from this car – was each other.

(production draft version)

MARY: Very.

He smiles. But Mary doesn’t– she knows the truth–

Mary: The thing is… Hunters... No matter how good they are? They all end up the same way.

Dean (teasing): Rich and happy?

But Mary’s not in a joking mood–

Mary: I mean, the life… Sometimes it’s exciting… The adrenaline rush. Just wish you and Sam hadn’t signed up.

DEAN (with difficulty): When you… Died… Dad changed. He was Hell-bent on finding out what happened. The Hunter life took him over. I guess I’m a lot like him, if I’m bein’ honest, and I took to it. But Sammy. Different guy. He wanted out. Went to Stanford.

(off her startled look)

I know, right? Dad could never get his head around it.

MARY (incredulous): Sam had a chance to get out? And he… came back?

DEAN: When… Dad disappeared… Sam and I looked around, and things got real clear. The only thing Sam and I had in the world… The only thing. Except for this car… Was… Each other.

She stares, realizing the truth in this, as tears appear.

–

SAM: Dad's journal. His writing, his words. Helped me fill in some blanks, answer some questions I didn't know I had. And, you know, it – it – it keeps him with us, sort of.

MARY: Thank you.

12x08 LOTUS

12x13 Family Feud

ROWENA Uh, to be honest, I'm not sure. I was forced to leave, you see.

GAVIN Oh. That's too bad. L-Left him with his father, did you?

ROWENA Well...

GAVIN You left him alone?!

ROWENA He was eight, he seemed very enterprising.

12x17 The British Invasion

12x21 There’s Something about Mary

(transcript)

TONI: You're being realigned. Soon, you won't differentiate between your thinking and ours.

All of your thoughts and actions will come from us.

MARY: What are you talking about?

TONI: Well, not about this illusion of you that you hold on to. The perfect life. Loving husband and kids. But it never really was perfect, was it? All those secrets you kept from your beloved John – that you were a Hunter. That you invited Azazel to visit when he spared John's life.

MARY: How do you –

TONI: I have sources, Mary. Everywhere. After you died, your beloved John was a man slowly going mad, searching for revenge. What? Your boys didn't tell you? The drunken rages? The weeks of abandonment? Child abuse, really. It's no wonder they're damaged. So enough with the fairy tale. We are returning you to a more pure version of yourself – Mary Campbell, natural born killer.

(production draft version)

Toni: You're being… realigned. Soon, you won't differentiate between your thinking and ours.

All of your thoughts and actions will come from us.

Mary can only stare, stunned.

Toni: In a way, we’re doing you a favor. Putting you back in touch with who you really are.

Mary: What are you talking about?

Toni: Well, not about this illusion of you that you hold on to….the “perfect life,” the “loving husband and kids…”

(then)

But it never really was perfect, was it? The secrets you kept from your beloved John – that you were a Hunter. That you invited Azazel to visit.

Mary: How do you…

Toni: You left your sons without a mother. Without a father, for that matter. You “beloved John” was a man slowly going mad, searching for revenge.

(off Mary’s stare)

Oh, your boys didn't tell you? The drunken rages? The weeks of abandonment? Child abuse, really. No wonder they're… damaged.

Mary stares, stunned, trying to process.

Toni: So enough with the fairy tale. We’re returning you to a more pure version of yourself – Mary Campbell, natural born killer.

13x02 The Rising Son

BARTENDER I hated my old man. I ran away myself. See, my mom would never stick up for me. But… (sighs) you know kids. No matter what, they still want the old man’s approval. Well, that’s how it was with me, just…

DEAN You know, that’s, uh, that’s how it was with me, too.

13x07 War of the Worlds

13x13 Devil’s Bargain

13x18 Bring Em Back Alive

SAM: Gabriel, you have to dig yourself out of this hole. Look, I know you think it's safer inside. No more torture. No more pain. No more expectations. I've been there. You were nothing like your family. You sure as hell weren't like your dad. Me either. And just like you, I got out. Or I-I thought I got out. But then... then my family needed me. And this is my life. No matter how many times I tried to fight it, this is what I was put here to do. This is where I make the world a better place. And sure, yeah, hookers in Monte Carlo sounds great, but your family needs you.

13x22 Exodus

14x02 Gods and Monsters

14x07 Unhuman Nature

Dean: Well, bait and beer. You are a cheap date. This certainly isn't Tahiti.

Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.

Dean: I didn't say that.

Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell.

14x12 Prophet and Loss

(transcript)

DEAN I know I wasn’t always the greatest brother to you.

SAM Dean, you were the one who was always there for me. The only one. I mean, you practically raised me.

DEAN I know things got dicey… you know, with dad… the way he was. And I just… I didn’t always look out for you the way that I should’ve. I mean, I had my own stuff, you know. In order to keep the peace, it probably looked like I took his side quite a bit. Sometimes when I was… when I was away, you know it wasn’t ‘cause I just ran out, right? Dad would… he would send me away when I really pissed him off. I think you knew that.

(blue pages)

DEAN It’s just that… I know I wasn’t always the greatest big brother.

Sam stares over at him.

SAM Dean, you were the one who was always there for me. You raised me.

DEAN Yeah, well, things could still get dicey…with dad. The way he was. And I didn’t always look out for you like I should’ve. I mean, I had my own stuff goin’ on with him, so to keep the peace I’d– it must’ve looked like I took his side…

SAM I was just a kid…

DEAN And sometimes I wasn’t around at all. You know I didn’t just run out, right? Well, sometimes I did. But Dad would send me away when I really pissed him off; I think you knew that.

14x19 Jack in the Box

(transcript)

Dean: She could handle a machete. She could handle a vampire. She could handle our old man. She couldn't cook worth a damn. Mom, you weren't here long enough. But we're so glad for the time that we had. Goodbye, Mom.

–

(transcript)

Sam: We know that Mom's not sitting on a cloud playing a harp. She's in a good place. Or she's in a great place. She's with Dad.

Dean: Hmm.

(writer’s draft)

Sam: And we know Mom’s not sitting on a cloud with a harp. But she’s in a good place. In her personal heaven with her best memories.

Dean: Fair enough.

15x02 Raising Hell

BELPHEGOR: Yeah, yeah, not gonna happen. Souls cast down to Hell? That's the end of it. Heaven can't take 'em.

SAM: That's not true. Our dad made it to Heaven after he was in Hell.

DEAN: And Bobby Singer.

15x08 Our Father, Who Aren’t in Heaven

SAM: But if Michael helped Chuck overpower Amara, then maybe he also knows how to lock him up.

CASTIEL: Perhaps, but even if we could get to him, he wouldn't tell us.

DEAN: I don't know. But I mean, if my dad kept me locked up in a cage for 10 years, I might be looking to get some payback. It's worth a shot.

–

ADAM: The point is parents keep secrets, right? Does it hurt to ask the question?

MICHAEL: Yes! It would. It would mean that I doubt him. The good son, the favorite, doubts his father.

ADAM: You still care about that? After he left you in the Cage?

15x13 Destiny’s Child

ALT!DEAN: We actually don't drink much of this stuff.

ALT!SAM: Dad won't keep it in the house. He only likes his "private-label Scotch." He spoils us.

SAM: Wait, your dad is... still around?

DEAN: And he "spoils" you?

(script: Sam and Dean stare.)

ALT!SAM: Well, he did. We don't know where he is now. Uh, we all went through the rift together, but, uh, guess we got separated.

ALT!DEAN: Mm. To Dad.

(Not in script:) ALT!SAM: Best guy ever.

(script: They clink bottles. Sam and Dean are staring, dumbfounded.)

SAM: HunterCorp?

ALT!DEAN: Yeah. Well, got to hand it to the old man, huh? Pretty much built up an entire empire from scratch.

ALT!SAM: To Dad.

(Not in script:) ALT!DEAN: Smartest guy ever.

(script: They clink bottles again. Sam and Dean look at each other.)

(Alt Dean finding Dean’s porn)

ALT!SAM: Can you imagine if Dad caught us with that kind of stuff? Goodbye, trust funds.

15x19 Inherit the Earth

(script and deleted lines)

Sam: To Jack

They touch bottles and drink.

Dean: And Cas. And Mom.

Sam: And Adam.

Dean: And Kelly. And Bobby. And John.

Sam: Dad?

Dean: Yeah.

Sam shrugs; they take long pulls from the beers. Dean sighs wistfully.

Dean: And everyone… we’ve lost along the way.

Drink and silence.

sources:

scripts

transcripts

#brl #dean and john #john and mary #sam and john #i have maybe found what they're best at #masterpost #transcript #john winchester #child abuse #child abandonment #long post

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mmescarlette · 1 year

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Favorite Books Read in January 2023

Since I thought it might be fun to turn this blog into a space to talk about books I've read, here's a roundup of books I particularly liked this month! There may be spoilers for each so feel free to skip between the titles if you like.

The Heir and the Spare - Kate Stradling (personal rating: 4/5)

This was, in fact, the very first book I read this year, a straggler that I started on NYE but put aside so I could read it more at my leisure after my previous challenge was fulfilled, and I'm so glad I did! I SNAPPED this book up. I can't tell you a great deal of what it's about because I kind of liked going into it essentially blind, actually, but it is not a retelling (I somehow thought it was a Prince and the Pauper retelling which it clearly is not but I think that was purely based on the title and not, you know, facts) and it's at my perfect intersection of fantasy, which is the kind of low-stakes sword-and-sorcery tales that I generally tend to write myself.

I believe what I enjoyed and got out of this book most was that it forced me to confront my own relationship with suffering, much like Thorn did two years ago; tw for the main character going through some fairly intense emotional abuse, but for me as a reader, I found it more cathartic and able to make me understand myself more closely, and thus well worth the read for me in particular. I also LOVED the choice to have a second lead who is essentially antagonistic from the start, much in the vein of QoA which I am always weak for. I would say this is low on themes, but high on character work, so if you're looking for an introspective read this is a lovely choice!

The Stolen Heir - Holly Black (personal rating: 4.5/5)

Holly basically OWNS me at this point. There's a high likelihood just based on this book alone that this duology will capture me in its clutches even MORE than Folk of the Air could, simply based on the fact that I love the two leads (and Wren in particular) like there's no tomorrow. For one thing, I think it's such an interesting and quite frankly beautiful and touching change to have both the leads be so downright kind people to their core, as opposed to the chaos gremlins (affectionate) of the previous trilogy. But for another thing, the particular theme that my dash is sucking me into loving this year is that of shared history of love of all along between people, and I looove that is very present here! FotA was very much about learning to love but I'm pretty badly invested in how much this story leans on how to trust even when the love was already there.

The reality also of Wren being this bleeding heart being who will undo bonds and chains and ties simply because it's the right thing to do is something that makes me feel insane! Everything about Oak coming from a family he can never abandon or leave behind because he cherishes them so deeply makes me sob! The entire theme that lingers from it all being "I have never had the true luxury of being free in any way that matters to me so I have the compulsion to save every person I possibly can even if it is at great personal cost" is something that can be so personal and dear to me and I LOVE it so much.

(Also I had a great time wailing at Wren every time she talks about Jude to be like "JUDE WAS SORRY FOR YOU WREEEN SHE FREED YOU ON PURPOSE BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T LIKE PEOPLE BEING BOUND EITHER" and whilst I have no doubt there will be angry Jude in the next book I love that there's this tie of fae-nurtured human and raised-by-humans fae between the protagonist of both the series! There's so much richness of kindness in that dichotomy and I'm so intrigued about where she'll take it.)

Thirst - Mary Oliver (personal rating: 5/5)

I'm always on the hunt for more Mary books to read, and this one is a stirringly beautiful example of her work. Very few things have made me cry like the titular poem does.

Part of the reason why I glommed onto this book so much is because, at its heart, it is a book about grief; from what I can tell, this was Mary's first book she wrote after the death of her partner, and because of that it is so deeply infused through and through with love and light and sorrow and tenderness that it seems almost impossible that I, at least, could not love it. But perhaps more than anything, the reason why it struck me so much is because it filled me with that which I am most on the search for in my life right now, wonder.

Mary's work makes me see the stars, the sun and the moon and the sky, all whilst I'm tucked away in my house, in my reading chair at one in the morning without moving a muscle. It makes me glad to live, but more than that it gives me reason to live, that most tricky part of staying alive and being glad for it. She always finds a way to lead me back to the emotion I am best at and struggle most with, that of gratitude of being here and being well with what I am given, that even when the tossing and turning of life tears at my soul I can always say a prayer in thanks for it and find my way back to something simple and still and true, and that-- is always worth the effort for me.

And while that is me talking about her work at large, I will simply say, this book made me see the stars at night and the rosebuds in late spring and the shadows of the geese making their way across the fragile sky, and for that alone I love it dearly. Also The Messenger is only the poem I have in full pasted on my wall which to me is the biggest peer-review test of all.

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel (personal rating: 4/5)

A read that I embarked on because a dearly loved friend (hi Lu!!) adores this book, so I wanted to take a peek because the themes appealed to me. I'm a big lover of post-apocalyptic media that focuses in on what relationships look like between people in the aftermath and how often it is love, in the end. While this is not my favorite example of that particular genre, it is an extremely competent entry, and a good introduction if you're never dipped into the genre before.

Beautiful, dark, and luminous, Station Eleven is what I would call a slow amble through the book's contents. It neither tumbles you along with the impetus of its own story and pace (as a YA book does), nor does it urge you forward with the hastening steps of its plot that grow louder and louder over time (as speculative fiction often wants to do) but it is quiet, self-contained and self-possessed. From what I can gather, this is the kind of book that either resonates with you deeply, or doesn't whatsoever, but for me in particular I found it scattered with such moments of gentle beauty that made me have to close my eyes and hold them close to myself that I found it worth the read, despite the fact that it is also littered with enough violence and sorrow that it's not truly as comforting as I had expected it to be.

In its heart, this book is very simply about a girl who is part of a wandering troupe of actors in the world after an apocalyptic event whose life is shown in tandem and parallel to an actor who she worked with as a child; but it is also deeply about kindness, friendship, love and loss and the search for beauty when the surface of the earth has been so ravaged that it seems almost impossible that it could still be there. More than anything, Station Eleven is a book about care-- it's about Kirsten's care for her work, for her friends and the rare moments of beauty she carries about, it's about what goodness we can save and spare when all else is lost, it's about me weeping over the joy of electricity casting its light on the sky when that seems impossible. The longer I sit with it, the more I can find to love in it, because what lingers from this story is the love that stays within it through and through.

#reading tag #i also reread 84 charing cross which is a joy as always #read brine and bone which is probably my second favorite of kate's #i LOVED the choices made in the structure of that story so much; being a long-time lover of the original little mermaid #made it all that more precious to me #and i finally read beau brown which sadly i /liked/ but didn't /love/#because it kind of stressed me out more than i was expecting to!#it lacked the whimsy that makes heyer so precious to me; so lots of the hijinks were just painful rather than humorous & that weighed on me #(whimsy being in the sense of being able to bear heavy things lightly; i'm not very good at defining what it means to me #but i don't mean it in a silly goofy way only; i think it has to have a component of making me laugh but also able to bear it you know?)#however i love the main couple! i think they're just so sweet and they clearly love each other in such a true friends way #and that's kind of the savior of the novel #anyway. i've trapped you all in here with me and i am now subjecting you to my reading life. ha HA!!!!

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evermorehqs · 1 year

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CATCHING MY BREATH, STARING OUT AN OPEN WINDOW

Carter Pille is based on the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. He is a 52 year old gifted human, drug kingpin, and uses he/him pronouns. He has the power of astral projection. Carter is portrayed by Billy Porter and he is open.

CATCHING MY DEATH, AND I COULDN’T BE SURE

Carter Pille is not the first kind of person you would think of when it comes to illicit activities in the shadows of a city. Was it the brightly colored outfits? The musical theater records that filled the air of his office and apartment? Perhaps a mix of both? It would be hard to deny that those things didn’t have an effect on people’s perception of him but it was his attitude that really cause the cognitive dissonance between who he was and what he did. All of his life, Carter approached things with a quizzical look in an eye that never seemed to hold your gaze, a constant tilt to his lip that questioned what was expected versus all the other possibilities of what could be. Things with him were never quite what they seemed and he much preferred to go through his days without the doldrum of sobriety and reality. Even people with rose colored glasses were dull to him when compared to the technicolor haze he saw the world through. Substances were there to be worshipped and used and Carter made it his goal in life to spread their power, giving people exactly what they were looking for, even if they didn’t know what that was.

Though a reliable man when it came to getting what you needed, Carter was far from reliable when it came to anything else. At any given moment, it was hard to know what the man would do or if you’d get a straight answer from him and that was all a part of his allure. That and the fact he claimed his supply could give you powers - it turned out that it wasn’t the drugs, it was Carter. Without knowing how, or even bothering to question it, the man discovered at an early age that he could leave his body and go somewhere else. He thought it was his high but apparently not. It took a long time but eventually, after working hard to build his empire, Carter was able to take a break, letting his guys do the dirty work as he enjoyed the spoils. And enjoy them he did. There were hours were he would leave his body to explore, high as a kite both literally and figuratively and it was during a particularly unexceptional day when he managed to cross a line he was never supposed to. Evermore. Once he crossed into the property, Carter was pulled into the town and couldn’t leave. No matter, he quickly found a way to do what he did best without much bother about the whole thing. People needed things wherever they lived, especially if they were trapped there.

I HAD A FEELING SO PECULIAR

❀ Jenson Samuels: A for hire muscle that Carter has grown to favor in his line of work. Sometimes a message has to be sent and Jenson is very good at sending it

❀ Woodrow Pride: Carter can’t help but like running into Woody around Evermore. He knows the man would love nothing more than to catch him in the middle of something but it’s never going to happen and that is more entertaining than anything else

❀ Mary Sanderson: Out of all the sisters, Carter likes Mary the most and she seems to need him more than she might even be able to admit to herself. They have many quick chats and he looks forward to imparting his wisdom even if it make little sense

THAT THIS PAIN WOULD BE FOR EVERMORE

#alice in wonderland #disney rp #billy porter fc #aiw #has powers #open bio #open male #male bio

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bernkastel11 · 2 years

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𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥'𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲𝐬: 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥

༒ 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 ༒

Fandom: Dinoverse

OC: MC

TW: pretty dark

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

"Hey Mari,you have your Father's last name right?"

MC looked up from her phone and at the girl sitting at the desk in front of her,the question is something quite out of the blue but MC supposed that the girl just wanted to chat

Currently it's break time and everyone in her class is doing their own stuff, MC was simply scrolling her phone nonchalantly till the classmate on the seat in front of her asked her the question. The classmate is just another of her many acqua It's no harm in answering the girl's question so......

"Well yes, you're correct. My last name, Carolois is my Father's last name"

After the girl got her confirmation,she asked MC another question,out of pure curiousity

"Then what about your Mother's maiden name then? You have your Father's last name meaning that it can't be your Mother's original last name"

MC began to remember about her Mother's last name and what she mentioned about it before,her life before she married MC's Father. Which is what MC narrowly remember. If MC remembers correct then it was.....

"Elitelle"

"My Mother's maiden name is Elitelle"

Everyone in the classroom suddenly went silent

Then MC heard whispers coming from them

"Elitelle?!! She couldn't possibly mean that"

"No way,Marinetta's Mother is an Elitelle?!!!"

"Just when you thought Marinetta couldn't be more perfect,she is. First, she's the daughter of a Armalith's scientist and now this. What an unexpected thing"

MC was quite confused, what's so shocking about her Mother's maiden name anyway?

"What's the matter with you guys?"

The girl in front of her who was in shock previously, immediately talked to MC again

"You seriously don't know, Mari?!!! Elitelle is a very famously known wealthy family,the CEO of the prominent corporation,Neolite, is an Elitelle as well"

Oh my,how surprising. But MC's Mother once said that her older brother is a famous CEO though,put the pieces together and the Neolite Corporation's CEO is possibly MC's uncle even

Now everyone is looking at MC in admiration and well MC's pretty bothered by their overly focused eyes on her so she stood up and found an excuse to leave

"I'm gonna go find Vanora now,see you when break's over"

"Oh! Sure then!"

Then MC exited the classroom,quite buzzed by the event just happened.

Today, MC discovered her Mother is a daughter of a extremely wealthy family

Her Mother never really revealed much about herself or her past despite her cheerful and talkative attitude

MC didn't want to pry much but she'll have to ask her Mother about this matter later in the evening

Everyone in her class more or less will make sure that the shocking fact about MC's Mother known to the whole school,this may be bad or good,the fact that her Mother came from a rich family might just be a big deal to this school

MC know nothing about the Elitelle Family at all but surely she can know more from her Mother after this

"Everyone is probably gonna say the School's Queen Bee has a rich mom starting from tomorrow now"

Just thinking about the potential annoyance brought a frown to the girl's face

She hates it when those 𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗡 𝗙𝗟𝗜𝗘𝗦

who believes whatever everyone is talking about

who don't care if it's the truth or not

flock to 𝗛𝗘𝗥

Then MC noticed Vanora from the other direction

"Hey Vanora!!!"

"MC? Why are you here?"

"I needed to get out of the classroom for a while, look like I accidentally stirred up a few things"

"Mind telling me about it?"

"Sure, I'll tell you on the way to the backyard"

"Okay then"

#gacha club #gacha ocs #vtsom #vtsom oc #mc carolois #therapy with dr albert krueger #twdak #dinoverse #Marinetta Carolina Carolois

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ask-butterscotch-and-friends · 2 months

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The Rest of Our Lives, Part 7

TW: Verbal Abuse, TW: Child Abuse

In the early hours of the morning on March 31st, Finn remained restless. As Butterscotch sleeps, Finn sits up and gets out of bed. He throws his robe on, and grabs his phone before making his way from their shared bedroom to his backyard.

He had found his mother’s phone number online, and had it saved in his phone for if he decided to make that dreaded phone call. This was the only way he was going to find out the truth. All he needed to do was make the call, and ask his mother if the rumor was true. If it wasn’t, he could put it to rest and focus on his wedding, which was coming soon. If it was, he could ask who his real father is, and potentially contact him.

Finn takes a deep breath…before pushing the “call” button. His heart begins to race as he hears the ringing tone. Then it drops slightly when he hears the familiar voice for the first time in 97 years.

“You have reached Margaret Reed. I am unable to come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I might call you back. Thank you.” The voice says.

Once that message tone went off, Finn gulps before speaking.

“Hello…mother. This is Fi-...Phineas…your son. I know it’s been a long time since we’ve talked, and…you’d probably prefer it that way. But I got a really disturbing phone call from Mary recently, and there’s something I really want to ask you. But I…I understand if you’d rather not speak. Um…bye…” Finn hangs up, before looking out at the night sky. It was unsurprising that Margaret didn’t answer the phone. Not only was it rather late at night, but not many people these days answered the phone for numbers they didn’t recognize. Plus, Margaret was always a busy woman…she probably got dozens of voice mails a day.

At this point, all Finn could really do was wait and see if Margaret would call back. It was possible she never would, in which case, Finn could at least say that he tried. He sighs softly, before turning back to the back entrance of his cottage-

His phone starts ringing. He blinks, before looking at it…his heart skips several beats in fear when he sees her name. She was calling him back already!?

He answered the phone swiftly. “H-Hello?”

“Phineas, darling! It has been so long since we’ve spoken! 97 years after you abandon your family, and you finally think to give your dear mother a call?” Her French accent is thicker than Finn’s, but unlike Finn whose voice was as sweet as honey, her voice was shrill, and struck fear in his heart.

“I…apologize for losing touch.” Finn says softly.

“No matter…we actually all forgot you even existed for quite some time! Honestly, we’d love to get back to that…so let’s get this call over with, yes? What is it you wanted to ask me? It’d better be important if you’re calling me this late at night for it…”

Finn hugs himself, before taking a deep breath.

“Mother…Mary gave me a call recently and told me about this rumor that’s been going around since I was born. I simply wanted to ask if the rumor was true…and then I’ll get out of your hair, and you can go back to pretending I don’t exist…”

“Well? Out with it, then.” Margaret demands.

“Mother? Did you…have sex with another man while you were with dad? And follow up…is that man my biological father?” Finn asks.

It’s quiet for a moment…then Margaret laughs.

“God, it took her calling you for you to finally figure that one out, huh? You really are stupid. Please…anyone with two eyes could tell William is not your father! Why do you think he was so dismissive of you? Well, other than the fact that you’ve always been the biggest failure in our family.” Margaret laughs, her voice is careless and cruel.

Finn isn’t even focussed on the insult. His heart stops completely, and he feels like he’s in a dark void. It was true!? This entire time, he was a product of an affair, and no one told him until NOW!? And why now!? Why after all these years is anyone from his family finally telling him this!? Was it simply because they saw that he was getting married, and they wanted to ruin this happy occasion by pushing him down? He couldn’t put that past any of his relatives…

“Now. Was that all? Or did you have more stupid questions?” Margaret asks.

“Uh! Yes…uh…is there any way you can tell me his name? Y’know, the…affair partner. I’d like to see if I can contact him in any way. If you can give me his name, that’d be nice…and we’ll never have to talk again.” Finn says softly.

“Now just a minute, son. If you honestly think I’m going to give you information like that so easily over the phone, you’re quite mistaken.” Margaret huffs. “It’s quite a long story, and I think you should know the full thing. Here’s the deal…you come back to the mansion in Mississippi. We’ll have dinner, catch up a little bit. Then, I’ll tell you everything you want to know…”

“Mother, I don’t want the story. I just want the man’s name…please.”

“Then I’m afraid I cannot help you…you either come here, or you’ll live the rest of your life never knowing who your real father is. Whatever you decide, I won’t lose sleep over it. But I know you will, unless you do as I say. Honestly, if you’re so afraid of facing me in person, then maybe you don’t deserve to know the truth. It’s your decision…but I’m not going to give you his name over the phone. Simple as that.”

Finn is trembling. His choices were to either live the rest of his life knowing that his real father is out there and he doesn’t know who or where he is…or face the woman who put him through so much Hell, that he couldn’t even breathe when he thought of her.

Butterscotch joins Finn outside, having woken up and noticed his absence in bed. When he sees Finn on his phone once again while shaking, he immediately knows that he is talking to his mother. The demon makes his presence known by placing a gentle and warm hand on Finn’s shoulder. Finn looks up at Butterscotch…before speaking again.

“Mother? Is it alright if I talk about this with my fiance? It’ll only take a moment…”

“Very well.” Margaret sighs.

Finn mutes the mic on the phone before lowering it, looking at Butterscotch with fear in his eyes. “Elliott…”

“Finn, honey, what’s wrong?” Butterscotch asks softly.

“The rumor is true…William is not my father…my real father is out there somewhere. But mother will not tell me his name over the phone…she says that if I want his name, I have to go to Mississippi and talk to her in person.”

Butterscotch blinks for a moment…before taking a deep breath and giving Finn a stern look.

“No.”

“Elliott, it’s either that, or I live the rest of my life never knowing who he is!”

“I can’t let you put yourself in close proximity with the woman who abused you. Put you through hell since birth, called you names, beat you, tried to force you to marry someone you hated. I can’t stand by and let that woman hurt you again!” Butterscotch huffs. “I’m sorry, but I’m putting my hoof down. That heartless wench can either tell you his name over the phone, or die in a blazing hellfire! We can find your real pa without a name if we have to!”

“Elliott…you know that’s not as easy as it sounds.” Finn says softly.

“I’m literally a demon that can track people through scent! I will sniff all over the world if I have to just to find a match! Don’t think I won’t.”

“Elliott.” Finn gives Butterscotch a serious look.

“...You’re right, that’d be stupid and time consuming.” Butterscotch sighs. “But is there really no way to convince her to give you his name over the phone?”

“Once my mother has her mind made up, it’s hard to get her to change it. It’s not comfortable…but going to Mississippi is the only way she’ll tell me anything.” Finn says, defeat in his soft voice.

Butterscotch thinks about it for a second, before sighing softly.

“Okay. We can go to Mississippi.” “...We?” Finn looks up at Butterscotch, his emerald eyes twinkling.

“You didn’t think I was gonna let you deal with that bitch alone, did you? No…we’re getting through this together. I’ll always be by your side, baby…plus, I need to be there to protect you if she tries to put hands on you or something crazy. So I’ll come to Mississippi with you. I’ll buy plane tickets and we’ll be on the quickest flight there. We’ll get answers, and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you get closure. You’re not doing this alone…”

Finn smiles softly. “Thank you, Elliott…that means a lot…”

The couple embraces. Once separated, Finn sighs before unmuting the phone’s mic and getting back on the phone.

“Alright…I’ll come to Mississippi. But you better keep your promise.” Finn says.

“You have my word! I’ll tell you everything you need to know, Phineas…how soon will you be here?” “As soon as possible…” Finn responds.

“Wonderful! See you then…”

Finn hangs up. Butterscotch places a hand on Finn’s shoulder.

“Now…we should get back to bed. It seems like we’ve got a big day ahead of us…”

#Butterscotch and Friends #Finn Reed #Butterscotch Sweeney #BAF Lore #The Rest of Our Lives #TW Verbal Abuse #TW Child Abuse

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benefits1986 · 1 year

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Keep Walking & My OG Archetype

Faith is when you choose to keep walking no matter how long, tough, and seemingly endless the road less taken is.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/17tw7L3cHFF9FcsFuiTcJA Spotify does it again with recommended PL after searching just one song. That’s 13 hours of non-stop Holy Week reflection songs sa lahat ng kasalanan mo sa mundo at lalo sa sarili mo. LOL. My recent life song: Seasons which I also stumbled upon in this PL.

2011. The First Summer Music Festival, Baler. Goes all the way back to Travel Factor days to be exact. I got my first ink and had my soul sister who’s now in Cali do a freehand design for it. ORA ET LABORA in deep, dark, blue. Elements are the cross and fleur-de-lis. Nothing fancy but a reminder that I was no longer an agnostic which went on for quite some time. There’s nothing wrong with being an agnostic, honestly. In fact, this era was a chance to deepen my faith which is not based on traditions and so-called formulations that would earn you a ticket to eternal salvation. Agnosticism is pretty much like being in between yes and no when it comes to believing in God. It’s much like a waiting room where you can choose to stay for as long as you like, too. My favorite quote during this era was that of Victor Hugo. “Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.” Again, we separate the content from the creator. I still remember my first graphic encounter with the faith in the light of agnosticism. At 18, I decided that I’d no longer hope for salvation because life had been tough. however, every time my transpo of choice passes Baclaran church, my typical mutter was something like: I’m not sure if you’re true or but a fallacy, but, just in case, please be with my mom. Skip me, though. I got this. Mom was in a community ever since she was a kid. Even if she does not quote the Bible, I can say that beyond her RBF which is worse than mine, she lives by both the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The rosary is her meditation, her prescription. She not a fan of too many saints, but she aimed to live a life like Mary, but the sungit and intimidating version. LOL. When she got sick, I questioned why she had to go through it all even when I don’t have a steady relationship with God. Many times, I challenged the heavens to direct the shit to me and spare my faithful mom. This was the start of being unsure about the faith. During a series of theology classes, the prof called me and asked me about what I think of the passion of Christ. I had my chance, my precious chance to air out a close to uncalled for opinion. Never mind that I need to get decent grades to keep my grant because at that moment, mom had another hospital visit. I took a deep breath, stood up and adjusted my collar. I said something like: Jesus should not be put on a pedestal. Jesus is really flawed and broken at most times. He is a counter-current who shook the status quo even when he knew he’s bound to be attacked and crucified. Jesus is an archetype. He lived a short life but something worth looking well into. Jesus makes us see how we can possibly live and make a difference to the oppressed, the weak, especially the women...” Akala mo naman may pinaglalaban e recits lang naman ‘yun. Mhie, lagot ka kay Papa Jesus. Lagot grades mo kasi saktuhan lang pake mo at skill set. May itatawid ka pang Accounting saka Law na hassle sa attendance and exams. Ginusto mo yan. Pati ba naman Theo prof, ‘di mo pinalampas? Nagtanong lang naman siya ng basic question e. The prof looked at me intently. I tried not to blink as I looked him straight in the eye. Fuck it. Bahala na. Blasphemy in the modern age na yata talaga ito. He took a deep breath and said something like: An archetype? Interesting. And I like how you said that Jesus must not be put on a pedestal because that makes Him more accessible to all. Faith, as he said, is very personal and that his class is a space where we can ask questions openly. During the later part of the sem, I was asked about the resurrection and ascension. Again, it’s my chance to break free from the cloisters of A-line skirts, pointed high heels and pearl fuckin’ earrings, even for a nanosecond. Also, I hate uniforms!!! I said something like: The true test of faith is even when resurrection and ascension are shaken and possibly, debunked, you still choose to believe. It’s not about the traditions, the formula, the scriptures, the verses. All those are man-made, subject to errors which makes them highly debatable. Faith is what is left of you when the whole world is shaken or worse, in shambles. Could you stay unshaken even when the ground you’re standing on is sinking right before your eye? E ano naman if totoo na ‘yung bones ni Jesus nasa ark of the covenant? Syempre, tao siya e. No one has ever proven that there is an afterlife. Wala pang nakabalik sa earth after sakabilang-buhay. But, again, Jesus is an archetype. His life is a testament that you, I and the rest of the world can go big before going home. Cling to Jesus for life inspiration but not too much naman na literal na crucifixion and scourging at the pillar. Sacrilege in an all girls’ school, grantee pa ‘yan a. LOL. The prof smiled at me as I caught my breath. Me to my myself: Mhie, ‘di po ito philo or logic class. Dami mo rin ad hominem. Char. Dun ka magpakawala ng angst mo sa law class mo. Hahahahaha. Prof: Seems like you’re going deeper in as far as your faith is concerned, Ms. De Ramos. Keep it up. Also, fan ka ng conspiracy theories. Hmm.

These micro moments were the start of agnostic life pivot. I was not lambasted. I was not mocked. My unpopular opinion was given its chance. Plus, I got an A in this class, too. Prof wished me luck and told me that it was a good run with me. Damn. Hala. Bakit ganun? Syempre, bilang ANSWER QUESTIONS. QUESTION ANSWERS ang theme natin, I didn’t let it go and asked the prof why I got such a grade. (Need ko rin ‘to panghila ng GWA ko because I needed to be a decent student and student leader din ako noon.) Prof said that while I was rough and tough, it’s evident that I was hungry to know more. And that, in a “quiet” alta all girls’ school (noon), cutting comments like mine don’t come by often. OPAK. Thanks pohwzzz. (’Di ko na lang sinabi na kasi ‘di talaga ako pang-all girls’ school na may uniform. Pang-rally sa Ikot po talaga ako since birth. Rarasisbumba po tayo. ‘Di shala. ‘Di laking-aircon gen.) That is the totem. The root of inception. That theo class played a huge part in my life with my current community which started in a yet another weird tone. 2011. I was invited to a retreat in Tags. Of course, I didn’t readily say yes but mom knew that I was going to shift to the community outside the gates of Catholicism. Umiyak nanay ko ng bongga which she rarely does talaga as a sungit shit. She told me that I can shift when she dies. Gago talaga. Laging may pasavogue ang ina ko. Kinang ina talaga ang theme niya, always. She told me to give Tags weekend one more try. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I still remember that ‘di ako basta papatalo and said that almost in the same vicinity lang ‘yung gusto niya at ‘yung gusto ko. Then, sabi ko pa, hassle commute papasok ng village versus ‘yung choice ko na super walkable lang then makikita ko pa si Jericho Rosales. LOLOLLOLLOLL. Mom said, tumigil daw ako kasi napipikon na siya. Landi ko raw.

Sabi ko, tumigil din siya kasi faith life ko naman ‘to. Umiyak na naman so, ako na lang ulit nag-adjust. Sayang si Jericho Rosales pero nakita ko na siya up close and nakausap sa Baler with matching him holding my wrist to check out my fresh ink. HOHOHOHOHOHOHOH. Then I saw his fish (aka Jesus) ink and said that Christian pala siya. Wala akong pake kung siya si Jerico at crush ko siya. :D LOL. So, ayun na nga. Dapat dibdibang English ito pero naubos ‘yung effort ko sa post ko kahapon. Nanghina ako, mhie. Ang tindi ng bwelo natin doon. LOL. I went to Tags and damn, another monthly cramps because my uterus is not vibin’ with my decision in life yata. First night pa lang, gusto ko na umuwi because I am not feeling well and it’s not giving. HAHAHAHAHA. Oks naman sila but found them too nice, too chill. First time to see praise and worship sa Catholic as well. TBT, if it weren’t for the band and the dance team, umuwi na talaga ako. Tapos, again, sobrang shala ng mga tao. Nasanay naman na akong maging damong ligaw sa all girls’ school tbh, so sabi ko sana iba naman. ‘Yung mga vibe ko naman. Hassle mag-English pero nakakaintindi naman pala ng Tagalog kausap ko basta ‘wag lang masyadong malalim like parang, bro, pare... HAHAHAHAHAHA. Allergic talaga ako. Pero ‘di naman nila kasalanan ‘yun at ako din. But, when I witnessed some sharings along with powerful praise and worship on steroids sesh, aba naman. Girl... ‘di ko kinaya e. I’ve been welcomed with both hands and feet in this community.

Not perfect, always may pasavogue but one that accepts me along with my shit, all my flaking because tinatamad talaga ang spiral moments tayo noon hanggang ngayon, and most importantly, kahit ‘di ako sumama sa lahat ng Boracay and Fuego invites nila kasi nga sabi ko ‘di ko sila kayang sabayan, I found God’s love in this “hopeless-looking” place. EMS. ‘Di nila ako binatawan from then until now. I am also out as a bi turned pan which is another thing that I love a lot. Again, not all ha, but my people, my tribe, accept me and tell me kung saan ako masaya. This is also weird and not really proud of it, pero wine nights and whiskey nights na medyo marami na rin are usually focused on God’s love and light. Yes, mhie. Sa true. But, syempre mga half the time, about life and work shit and how to come through. A side kwento. The latest catch up with the bigger group na all female this time after the lockdown was umaatikabo. Freezing eggs, having kids, how to get pregnant, being pawrents, being single pawrents, being DINKs, alpha male, catfishing, online dating, dating IRL, ghosting, migrating because why not, being single, how not to be single anymore, skin care, socmed scene local and foreign, worth it ba ang procedures. etc. Syempre, shoookt sila sa goal kong mag-menopause. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sarap makinig sa group na ‘to and being one of the youngest in this group of pak na pak single and non-single ladies, super one for the books every usap. So, how’s my faith life so far? I am not preachy especially I don’t look like I have a spiritual life which is totally how I like it. Jesus is still my OG archetype. I rarely go to church but I try my best to live by ORA ET LABORA pero ‘wag naman sagad na sagad ang LABORA lalo sa deadlines because for a time, sineryoso talaga natin ‘yung work as an extension of the self which ended in my first accident na total car wreck, but wait, pumasok pa ako sa office and ended my day at 4:30 am the next day. Ending? Spiral si accla. HAHAHAHAHA. Might share this some other time, too in time for Labor Day perhaps? Ems. My faith is a forever WIP one but these days, my prayers are not about making life easy but inspired by Angelina Jolie’s QUOD ME NUTRIT, ME DESTRUIT -what nourishes me, destroys me. I also pray that whatever comes my way, may I allow both its darkest shadows and its lights come through. May I choose to be in the moment instead of pretending to be in the moment, too. Most importantly, may health be my top prio and my best gift from the heavens in this place on earth. Ems. ‘Yun lang talaga. Simple na siya. All that come after those, bonus na lang talaga. PS: Some of my life songs are: Mighty To Save, One Way Jesus, Lord, I’m Ready Now, Lead Me To The Cross, Through It All, At The Cross/Might To Save and Broken Vessels, to name a few. Exposing our gen pero seryoso, maganda mga songs na ‘to lalo ‘pag talagang shit na shit na feeling and pake mo sa kung ano mang pinagdadaanan at tinatawid mo. Speaking of Hillsong. I remember nahatak ako sa Hillsong concert tapos ‘yung nakuha kong ticket is malapit sa stage as in puwede ka mag-stand. Salamat sa effort ng isang umaaligid noon nakapag-request ako pasabuy 10 tickets for me and my friends. HAHAHAHAHHA. Bait niya noh? Tapos ako, no. Hahahahaha. Na-anxiety ako kasi puro talaga triangle ‘yung mga focal points ng stage. Illuminati ba talaga sila? Tapos gusto ko na umalis pero sabi nung friend ko, overactive na naman imagination ko. Then, nagka-issue ang Hillsong so ‘yung mga PL ko mostly from the then days nila nung wala pa akong memory ng Illuminati concert and issues nilang malala. LOLOLOLOL. Fair enough naman right? Unholy week is here. May yours be filled with realizations that go beyond your why. Try mo naman asking, why not, para maiba. Malay mo ‘di ba?

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

#the green knight #the green knight meta #sir gawain and the green knight #medieval literature #medieval history #this meta is goddamn 5.2k words #and has its own reading list #i uh #said i had a lot of thoughts?

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neoculturetravesty · 3 years

Text

Rough but soft

Image taken from here.

Pairing: Johnny x Reader Genre: smut, pwp, romance, angst Warnings: 18+, soft dom Johnny, oral (female receiving), protected sex, rough sex, fingering, anus rubbing (female receiving), mild choking, hickeys, lots and lots of angst. Reader wants Johnny to have at her but she also wants so much more. Readers comes with lots of self-doubt, baggage and insecurities. Word Count: 8.2k+ words of straight up filth and angst aka my fav combo

Summary: You’re so tired of trying to find a man who would understand the deep complexities of what you need, sleeping with him, being utterly unsatisfied and then spending the next few weeks avoiding him because you were too ashamed. You were tired of baring your soul, your body, the inner workings of your mind to yet another man who couldn’t satisfy you. So when you meet Johnny Suh, you know right away that he would be the man that makes all your wet dreams come true. But you shouldn’t want him. He’s an idol, and you work for him. You have no right to want him, to lust after him... and you definitely have no right to catch feelings for him.

A/N: This one is for all my Johnny stans! I didn’t plan for this one-shot to get so long but ugh, once I started writing, all my demons were unleashed. Hope you like it!

You could’ve sworn your apartment was the hottest it had ever been. You didn’t remember messing with the thermostat or closing any windows. You weren’t exactly dressed warmly, either. You were just in your underwear with a pretty spaghetti sleeved top on. Perhaps the heat had more to do with the fact that you were sat on the lap of a man you really liked or the fact that the two of you had been furiously making out for the past ten minutes.

Johnny’s hands were all over you. They were in your hair, pulling you towards him, angling your head every which way to get more purchase with his tongue. Then his hands were on the small of your back pushing up into your top to feel your bare skin. And when his hands had enough of the skin there, they were up and down the curve of your legs that were curled up into him as you sat side saddle. While your pants laid discarded on the floor, his clothes were still fully on but you supposed there was some use for that by how strongly you were clutching onto the lapel of his jacket.

Your brain was so fuzzy with the scent of him that you couldn’t even remember what had brought this on. The last thing you remembered was Johnny showing up at your door unannounced, a couple of bottles of soju in hand. Your past few meets had been similarly unplanned, so for convenience’s sake and definitely not anything else, you just went ahead and gave him the code of your apartment. Yes, it was way too early on in the relationship--if you could even call it that, whatever the two of you were doing. You could sense that he was taken aback by it. Whether he was moved by it, or whether to be polite, he had pulled you into him and kissed you.

Now the soju laid abandoned on the table as you drank one another in. He kissed you deeply now, as you sat on him on the couch, like he had been thirsty for days and your tongue quenched him. He was taking the lead in this unrestrained makeout session. But you knew that. He knew that. It’s what you had wanted. It’s what you had asked of him.

You were really putting yourself out there, sharing your deepest secrets and unholy desires with a man you weren’t supposed to be with. But the moment you had met Johnny, you could tell that he felt your energy and you certainly felt his. You knew right away what the both of you had wanted from one another, even if you didn’t say it. You knew it in the way he would entrap you with his gaze when you talked to him. You knew it in the way his arm would pull you in when someone passed by you. You knew it in the way he would let his touch linger any time his hands accidentally brushed against you. It had taken a few dates for you to get to this point, but now this… this was the point of no return. You had to be brave and finally get what you had always craved; or chicken out and go back to being unsatisfied as ever from yet another relationship.

Other men did not give you what you wanted, what you truly wanted; which was to feel a controlled loss of control, not just of the body but also of the mind. You wanted someone who could, quite crassly, hold you down and have at you, but also whisper sweet nothings in your ear while he did so. You wanted a cerebral connection of the souls and you wanted an animalistic gratification of the bodies at the same time. You wanted to have your cake and eat it too. You were so tired of the cycle--of trying to find a man you thought would understand the deep complexities of what you needed, sleeping with him, being utterly unsatisfied and then spending the next few weeks avoiding him because you were too ashamed. You were tired of baring your soul, your body, the inner workings of your mind to yet another man who couldn’t satisfy you.

When you first met Johnny, you knew right away that this man had what it takes to make all your wet dreams come true. Like his presence validated all that you felt without having to use the words. You felt it in your gut, even when you hadn’t been with him. Your gut could very well have been wrong, because God knows you’ve been wrong so many times before. But your feeling was strong this time... and you just had to find out. So you had approached him.

You knew you were being reckless by being with Johnny in this way. He was, obviously, a famous person, but also--you worked for him. You were a young professional who had finally landed a job in a big company. If someone were to find out, that would mean the end of your career. Johnny could possibly get away with an apology letter that his team would help him curate. But you would be done for. You knew it was risky the first time you slept with him. You knew it the second time. But now as you met for the third time, hungrily kissing one another, you knew things were different. Because, finally, the two of you had been honest about how you wanted one another.

Over the past couple of weeks, you had finally started to communicate in words what the two of you had already felt in one another’s energy. He admitted that he craved you in a much coarser way than he had let on the first couple of times. And you had told him about all your indecent fantasies and how wilfully you wanted to be used, to be claimed, to be made to feel something.

“It’s always the quiet ones.” Johnny had chuckled back then and you supposed he was right. That’s how people saw you. The quiet one, the determined one, the one that gets her work done on time, the one that never breaks the rules. Onlooking men thought you were some sort of a righteous Virgin Mary because of the innocence on your face. Part of you wondered if being with Johnny was a rebellion against all those men who had ever put you on that unwarranted pedestal. But you also knew that it wasn’t. Because you didn’t just want a body to unleash your lecherous demons on. You wanted it with him, with Johnny, with the man who was slowly lighting your fire, no matter how much you told yourself that it was a bad idea.

That man in question was now softly panting in your face, because his lips had finally unlatched themselves from yours for the first time in 10 minutes. He smiles at you and then buries himself in the junction between your shoulder and neck, kissing and sucking and talking.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day. I couldn’t get any work done because I kept thinking about you.” He says into your neck, sucking down on the skin and you knew he was marking you because it makes you moan out. There is a smile on his face as he pulls back to look at you. He takes your hand in his and leads it to the inside of his thigh, making you feel his hardness through the rough fabric of his pants.

“You feel that? I’ve been like this all day thinking about you.” he says while you look at him with your lips parted. He kisses you again, making you lean back, feeling his heat build under you.

“I want you to feel the same. I want to make you feel exactly what you do to me.” He says and now his warm hand is slipping into the front of your underwear and you feel the quickening of your heartbeat. You begin softly moaning before he’s even done anything, simply from the anticipation. But then his fingers are flush against your warmth, rubbing up and down, no purpose yet, just feeling.

He’s close to you, too close, you can feel the heat coming off his face on your own skin, you can feel his breath fanning against you. His lips are close enough that they brush against yours as he coos at you “My pretty girl is so wet for me.” The heel of his palm is steady on your clit, pressing down but not giving you as much friction as you need, while his fingers move over and between your folds, feeling your warmth, your wetness, spreading it around as if to see how slick he can make it. His lips have found their way to the base of your throat now and he’s kissing, he’s nipping and he’s sucking and fuck your life because it is turning you on so much you feel like you would spontaneously combust. You’re melting against him at the same time you’re tensing and Johnny can feel your want grow on his fingers. He pulls back to see his work on your skin.

“Mmm, are you going to spend the next week hiding this away, baby?” He asks while his palm keeps cupping your sex, fingers feeling you up, overheating your flesh. It’s rude, the way his hand is down your underwear, the way he is marking you, the way he is talking to you. But your skin is on fire and you’re putty in his arms and fuck, you wouldn’t mind if he were ruder.

“Let me mark you where it would be easier to hide.” He says sweetly and suddenly, his hand that was cradling the small of your back is at the delicate strap of your top and his fingers are looping at your neckline, gently pulling down till he’s made your breast bare and he’s bowing into it, sucking on the first spot of skin his lips could find. Your own lips part and your fingers find his hair as he makes quick work of you, pulling away with a wet, vulgar sound, smiling down at the growing redness on your smooth skin. He blows on it, making you shiver.

“There. Fuck, baby, you look so pretty wearing my marks.” he sighs and then fixes your top over your shoulder so you’re covered again, and somehow, that chivalrous act makes you more bashful than being exposed did. His lips are back on yours and his arm is behind your neck, supporting you. His fingers in your underwear are becoming bolder, circling your needy hole, loving how the more he rubs it, the more you leak out your need onto him. He enjoys having that control over you for a moment, breaking the kiss just so he can watch the contorts of your face as he continues his slow torture. But seeing you like this stirs something more feral in him and suddenly his hand goes lower and starts to rub you where it feels forbidden. You freeze.

For a moment, your breath hitches in your throat and your eyes shoot open. Fuck, you can’t think. This man has actually put you on your wit’s end. He’s rubbing you there like he knew how you’d react and he just wanted to have this power over you. A display of his claim over your body. You suddenly feel impossibly shy, though the emotion is too mild to truly describe the storm that’s building in you. Your mind is racing, wondering fuck, fuck fuck, do you want this? Do you really want this? Was this something you had talked about with him? Fuck, you can’t remember. But if you’re not sure, why the fuck is it making you so fucking wet?

His lips pressing into your forehead bring you out of your commotion. “Don’t worry, pretty girl, I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.” he says gently, like he read your mind and Jesus Christ, you almost come from the striking contrast between his soft words, his nurturing kiss and the absolutely filthy action of his fingers on your pucker, rubbing not to pleasure but to feel, to claim, almost as if to say ‘Look, I can touch you here.’

“Johnny, please, do something.” you plead at him because frankly, you’ve had enough. Now you just want him to rip away at your remaining clothes and have at it, to have you, to fuck you like he was too polite to do the first couple of times.

But one thing you’ve learnt in the time you’ve been working together (and also the time you’ve spent under him between the sheets) is that Johnny is a patient man. He’s smiling when he looks at you and his voice is so caring in contrast to his presence when he says “Does my baby want more?”

“Yes, please, Johnny, please.” you’re pulling onto his jacket because your hands can’t find purchase anywhere else and you’re whining because you’re needy and the anticipation has been building up for a couple of weeks and you’ve had enough. You want him and you want him now.

Thankfully, he doesn’t tease you any longer because he withdraws his hand from your underwear, hooks his arm under your knees whilst the other cradles your shoulders and he’s lifting you off bridal style and making his way to your room. It blows your mind how Johnny can be filthy and romantic at the same time. He sets you down politely and you prop yourself up on your elbows to look at him as he takes off his jacket. You’d be lying if you said that Johnny simply taking his jacket off wasn’t the hottest thing you’d ever seen. You had yourself a fine man in front of you and he had made it tonight’s mission to please you. Your eyes were hooded as you looked at him lustfully. He notices and sinks to his knees, pulling your legs till you were on the edge of the bed.

“My girl’s been waiting for this, hasn’t she?” he says and peppers kisses on the inside of your thigh before he loops his fingers around the band of your underwear and slowly slides it down your legs. He looks at you lying bare for him, basically nude and he inhales. “What a pretty sight.” he mutters and then his lips finally go straight for your clit, his tongue rolling over it and over it, his hands holding your legs apart and you let out a deep exhale because yes, yes, yes, this is what you wanted. He’s wasted no time because you told him you needed more and he was all too happy to oblige. So you lay back into the sheets, taking deep breaths, being fascinated by the rise and fall of your own chest. Johnny had learnt early on that you were the quiet type in bed, but tonight, he was determined to make you moan more than you had before.

You let your head fall back and your eyes close as you feel his warm tongue roll generously over your nub, his mouth servicing you till your hips are grinding against him. The need builds and now you want an erotic visual to help you along so you lift up and tug on his shirt and he understands because he straightens up and pulls it off of him. You see the beautiful caramel planes of his toned chest; your mouth waters. He’s hovering over you now, kissing you with lips that are still covered in your scent till you’re crawling back into the bed. He adjusts your head onto the pillows, making sure you’re comfortable which tells you that he’s not nearly done.

He puts another pillow under your hips and settles between your legs once more. He holds your gaze as he lowers himself and slowly spits down onto your clit. He looks at you, as if challenging you to stop him and uses the pad of his thumb to rub the slobber around. The sight is as vulgar as it is titillating and suddenly you find yourself thanking the heavens above that you found Johnny Suh.

“Does that feel good, baby?” he asks with a voice like honey and you look down at him.

“Yes. More, Johnny, please, I want more.” you tell him because fuck, you need it bad, and he nods. He brings his hand to your opening then and gently rubs till he is covered in your slick, then carefully eases his middle finger into you. You’re impossibly wet and he likes it. He wants you to be this turned on.

He starts to move his finger, slowly fucking you with it then brings his mouth hot on your clit, licking deep, luxuriously strokes onto it. “Is this better, baby?” he asks but you reply with a pent out moan, your hands instinctively going to clutch your breasts, squeezing them through your top that isn’t doing a very good job at covering you.

Johnny watches and he is pleased with himself. Pleased that he is making you this way, that you’re getting what you want from him. You both shared in your greed of a very similar sexual palette. Lately, you had been open to him about it and Johnny was so grateful to have met you. It turned him on to be with a woman who was so in tune with her needs. It turned him on more to know that he was the one fulfilling them.

“More, Johnny, please… faster…” you guide him and he hurries to add another finger inside you and suddenly you’re smiling wide because it feels so fucking good. Your hands go to his hair, tugging on it, pressing his head into you even more and you’re grinding up into his face like a harlot, because frankly speaking, you don’t remember being this fucking horny in a good while. You can’t bring yourself to be self-conscious in this moment because it feels so good, so decadent, so freeing, and you can’t tell if you’re being louder than usual.

Johnny can. Because he’s not stopping and now he’s moaning into your slick warmth and his entire mouth is sweet with your taste and he knows you’re close so he only lifts up briefly to say “Come for me, baby.” and you’re pulling his hair, biting your lip, digging one heel so far into the mattress your leg is numb and you’re coming apart on his fingers. Johnny doesn’t stop through it, prolonging your orgasm while your entire body tenses, then comes to life before you let out a deep, happy exhale and Johnny finally lets go, rubbing the insides of your thighs to calm you.

You grin at him and sit up to kiss him, your fingers splayed behind his neck, kissing him in gratitude for making you feel good, tasting your nectar on his lips, then rubbing your palms on his firm chest. You look down towards what could only be his growing need and your fingers fumble to undo his fly. You begin to get on your hands and knees but he stops you.

“Johnny, let me--” you begin wanting to reciprocate the favor, looking up at him but his expression makes your voice get caught in your throat. His eyes are hooded, dark, lustful.

“No. I want to be inside you. I want to fuck you, right here in your pussy.” he said shortly, and you think you might die. How could those curt, pornographic words turn you on so much? It’s not like you hadn’t heard them before from several other men. Perhaps it was the fact that this particular man had only ever spoken to you with polite respect before. To hear such filthy words from his handsome mouth was an experience you were never going to forget. You wanted him with all the heat that was building up between your legs. But, also... there was something else that you wouldn’t allow yourself to think. That you wanted him because perhaps, you were falling for him, no matter how much you tried to stop yourself.

Johnny reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He finds a condom and holds the foil between his teeth while he gets off the bed to rid himself of his pants. Suddenly, and without any sort of a warning, your heart begins to sink.

You don’t know what it is, but while you sit there watching Johnny strip himself, you feel something deep in the pit of your stomach. You don’t recognize this emotion… this sinking feeling. Is it despair? It can’t be, but it comes close. Is it fright? No, that definitely wasn’t it. You try to think back to all the times you’ve had this feeling in your belly and finally, you identify it. This feeling felt a lot like heartbreak.

You couldn’t understand what was going on inside your head. It was as if behind your crazed sexual want for Johnny in your conscious, your subconscious was fighting you with another, more pressing craving. Like watching him pull out that condom had confirmed some sort of a fear, but you simply couldn’t put your finger on which one it was.

You’re confused. All this man did was extract a condom from his wallet. Why did that break your heart? Shouldn’t you be happy that for once in your sexual escapades, a man had been the one to be prepared? Shouldn’t you be relieved that the man you were sleeping with was putting your safety first? Then what was this strange feeling in the pit of your stomach? You’re still pondering it over whilst Johnny rolls the culpable rubber onto himself and makes his way to you. And when his lips are on yours again, you finally work it out. Your traitor mind had had a thought that broke through the giddiness of your happy orgasm and put a stinging doubt in your heart: ‘He brought a condom because he only came here for sex.’

Johnny notices a change in your demeanor by the way your kiss is less present. He pulls back and strokes the top of your head. “Are you sure you still want it that way, baby? We can go easy if you’ve changed your mind.” He kisses you again as if to tell you that he means it.

“I don’t want you to go easy. I want you to show me how far you can take it.” you say resoundingly. You’re not sure why you’ve said this despite the tempest in your mind. Maybe your fucking libido is betraying you again.

He looks at you for a moment as if trying to read your face, then kisses your lips once more. “Okay, baby. But remember, you can tell me to stop any time, okay?” he assures you and you’re reminded that he really has the patience of a saint. Because his cock is thick and angry with want yet he’s still taking the time to communicate the logistics of what you’re about to do.

“I will.” you nod. “Johnny, please… just… just fuck me, please.” You beg because you’ve decided… this is what you want. You want it this way at least once, because you won’t be able to stand not knowing. If your heart breaks at the end of this, so be it. You were used to it. And if this would be the last you would see of Johnny, you wanted to make it count.

He doesn’t need telling twice because now that you’re begging, his mind is clouded with the need to own you. So he pushes your legs back into your chest, laying you bare and open for him. You feel vulnerable in this position, too vulnerable, especially with what your mind is doing to you. Usually, it would take you some time to build up to this stance but he wants to start here, where he’s in control and that’s the shit you signed up for. Your breath is quickening in your chest from nervous anticipation and you cry out when Johnny makes his first, unforgiving stroke straight into your core.

Your eyes close and you’re not sure if you moaned out from pain, pleasure, frustration, emotion, or everything rolled into one. Johnny stills, bracing himself on the backs of your thighs. His own eyes are closed as well and you’re both getting used to the sensation, the fullness, the tightness. He exhales, and brings his lips to your forehead and then to your lips and then he stays there.

His left hand keeps holding onto your leg but his right hand creeps up your body till it softly closes around your throat. You feel the effect of this simple action in your core and in the way it squeezes around him, making him hiss.

“I’m going to fuck you now, okay baby?” he says to prepare you and you nod and suddenly he’s slamming into you and it’s pulled such an infernal keen out of you that you’re sure this is it. This is what you’ve always wanted, this is the feeling you’ve been chasing all your life. Your head had rolled to its side, your cheek pressing into the pillow to absorb the intensity you feel while Johnny is hovering over you, hand braced around your neck, pumping into you right from the start.

Your body is jolting up in time with his thrusts, your breasts lewdly moving under your top. Johnny is looking down at you in wonder, timing his movements to his grunts and watching your face through all the emotions. It’s too much too soon and your hands are flying meaninglessly to grip at something, something that would anchor you because fuck, Johnny has set a pace that you can’t possibly match right from the start. You try to grip at the sheets, or the pillow under your hips but you finally settle on Johnny’s arms. You’re pulling at him as if you want this to end, as if you’re telling him to stop but you don’t want him to stop. You never want him to stop.

“Is this what you wanted, babygirl? Is this how you wanted to be fucked?” Johnny asks as he keeps slamming into you. Why the fuck did it hurt so good? You usually liked there to be a build up, to have it start low and slow and build to it’s crescendo. So how come you were allowing this man to use your body like this and how come you never wanted this moment to end?

“Yes, yes, yes, Johnny, please… don’t stop, don’t stop…” the sound of your own voice shocks you, almost like you’re having an out of body experience and you’re actually dismayed by how manic you sound. Your voice is thick with lust, it is breathless, your pussy is the wettest it has ever been because you can feel your own slick running down your cleft. You can feel Johnny stirring places inside you you weren’t sure existed. His own moans have picked up and his hand around your throat has tightened, as if he were truly using it to anchor himself.

“Can I go faster, baby?” He asks with a strained voice and you take no time in answering “Yesss!” even though your eyebrows knit together from how much this is already.

His eyes close and he bares his teeth, almost like he was in pain and was trying to absorb it and then he lays over you, his head is by your shoulder while his hand never leaves your neck and suddenly, he’s moaning out, going faster, fucking you into the mattress.

The carnal sounds of your skins slapping and Johnny’s deep moans probably mask the fact that you’re crying out. Your hands are around Johnny’s wide back, your head is pressing into his shoulder, you’re clinging onto him with everything you have… you’re almost hanging onto him while he fucks you down, going so fast you feel lightheaded.

“Johnny please, I need to come.” you whimper and you’re not sure if you’re sobbing or not.

“No, no, baby, just let me go a bit longer.” he whines into your neck like he was in heaven and never wanted to leave. So you take deep breaths, you try to lay back and let Johnny have at it, give him what he needs because he was giving you what you needed. But his moans are hot in your neck, his weight is luxurious over your body, his length is so good inside you that you can’t really hold out any longer, no matter how much you’re trying to let him have his time.

“Johnny, please, I need to come or I will die.” you all but growl at him. You’ve never heard your voice sound like that but you can’t bring yourself to care.

He pulls back and then brings one hand to the top of your head, cradling it, stroking it. “Look at me, baby.”

You try, you really try but he’s giving you so much pleasure, it feels almost sinful to take it with eyes wide open but his hand on your neck has come up to grab at your jaw, holding your chin.

“No, no, no, baby, don’t hide from me. Look at me. I’m not going to let you come if you don’t look at me.” he says and now he’s using his words to own you, too, not just his body and this doesn’t help the matter. You get so fucking turned on that you want your release now and you realize that the only way you’re going to get it is if you obey. That thought alone is as profane as it is freeing.

So you look at him, and you’re worried about how wanton you look, how disheveled you look, how disoriented you look. But he’s holding your head prisoner, grabbing your chin, cradling the crown of your head, looking down at you so tenderly while he fucks into you.

He pecks your lips romantically and says “Come for me now, pretty girl.” and you finally meet your sweet, sweet relief. You’re whining, you’re panting, you’re frowning, every single muscle in your body is tensing against him, but you dare not look away. You don’t even realize how deep your fingertips are digging into both his biceps while you come on his cock and he moves in you through it all, holding your gaze.

“I’ve got you, baby, I’ve got you...” he keeps assuring you, stroking your head while you shake and quiver under him.

It’s the first time you’ve done this, looked at your partner through your orgasm, being made to keep your eyes open just to connect with him in a moment of complete and utter vulnerability. It is godless. It is liberating. It is the most erotic thing you’ve ever done.

You didn’t realize you were straining your neck till your head falls back into the pillows and you feel the tension subside. You feel spent and you thank the heavens above that Johnny has stilled in you. In your euphoria, you didn’t register whether Johnny got to finish or not. He’s kissing you in a way that is--dare you say it? So loving. You push that thought away to let your mind ponder over something else: damn, Johnny Suh is a talented man. He’s smiling when he looks at you and kisses you deep.

“You look so beautiful when you come for me like that.” He strokes the side of your face sweetly and then his hands are tugging your top off of you, making you completely exposed to him. The hickey he gave you earlier is blooming now and he hums deeply in his chest as he sees it.

“You need a matching one here.” he says and begins to mark you on the other side, but it doesn’t extract quite the same reaction from you as the first one had done because you’re too spent. Johnny doesn’t seem to mind because he’s letting you lay back as he kneads at your breasts, tongue circling over your peaks. You lazily run your fingers in his hair. He comes up and kisses the side of your face.

“Are you okay, baby?” he asks kindly and you nod, pulling his head into a slow kiss as your answer.

“Mmm, okay, good. Because I’m not done with you yet.” he says in between kisses and that’s when you realize he’s still hard. So he hadn’t, in fact, finished.

He brings his fingers to your clit and circles gently but you jump away from his touch, grabbing at his wrist. “No, I don’t think I can take that anymore.” you tell him desperately and he takes mercy on you.

“Then flip over for me.” He pulls out of you carefully and it’s then that you realize how swollen you are. You’re going to be sore tomorrow, you know it. When you take too long, he grabs at your waist, turning you on your belly and swats at your ass. You gasp, more at the sound of the impact than the impact itself and then your motivation is back. You want to please your man. You want him to come for you.

Johnny takes a pillow and places it vertically and lays you on top of it, giving you something to hold onto. It feels soft and comfortable. He’s been chivalrous so far. He’s been taking care of you and so he feels like he’s earned his keep. He can have you any way he wants. So he spreads your cheeks with both hands and licks at your hole a few times, just to make sure you’re still wet enough for what he’s about to do. He takes his hardness in his hands and lays himself on top of you carefully, not with his entire weight, though… he’s still supporting himself on his free arm that’s on your side. He rubs his tip against you a few times and you gasp with how swollen and sensitive you feel.

“Ready, baby?” he says in your ear and you can hear him so much more intimately in this position. He listens for your approval and then he pushes into you so fast, it has you yelping, it has your chest lifting off the pillow you’ve been hugging, it has you panicking, saying

“Johnny, wait, wait, wait, wait, please…” your sentence ends in more gasping sounds of discomfort. Johnny snakes an arm under you, holding onto your shoulders and his lips are on your temple, kissing over and over.

“Shh… baby… shhh, it’s me, it’s only me…” he reassures you and you know in your heart he’s never going to hurt you, but you simply couldn’t have held back your visceral reaction. He feels it, feels the anxiety in your body because he’s easing your head into the crook of his elbow and his lips are kissing at your temple and your shoulder so tenderly, you feel like you’re going to cry. “I’m going to go slow, okay?” he tells you softly. He cradles you with his arm that’s around your shoulders and snakes his other arm under you, his hand splaying out over your abdomen. He pulls you up into him, kissing your skin repeatedly to communicate care and then he starts moving into you, slow.

You whimper, but there is no pain now, only pleasure. You’re biting your lip because somehow it still feels intense, even at this pace. Rough or soft, this man was making you feel things you had only ever fantasized about. ‘Is it always going to be like this?’ you wonder, but you stop yourself. You didn’t have the luxury to have such thoughts because there wasn’t going to be another time. The thought has tears stinging in your eyes and you hide your face in Johnny’s forearm that’s encasing your chest.

Thankfully, it works because Johnny is cooing in your ear again “Does it feel good now, baby?” and it does, fuck, it does, but you don’t want him to be this nice if it’s going to make you have such treacherous thoughts. So you say,

“Faster. I want it hard.”

Johnny turns your head with his hand so he can look at you when he asks “Are you sure, baby?”

You nod and while he’s not totally convinced, it’s what you’ve asked. It’s what you’d been asking the past couple of weeks. So he has to oblige. He strengthens his cradling arms and pulls you into him tighter as if to buckle you up and then he lifts his hips and starts moving into you faster and you hear the slapping of his skin on yours once again.

His forearm moves higher from the planes of your chest to your neck and suddenly, he’s holding you in a headlock, and even if he’s not applying any pressure, it’s enough to make you moan. His breaths are more labored now and so he talks.

“Fuck, Y/N… I think about you all the time. All I ever do is think about you. Did you know that?” he groans right in your ear and your heart swells. You feel hopeful again, like you were before he had pulled the condom out. Your moan comes out in a broken laugh, like a sound of relief but you’re pleading at him again.

“Faster, please, please…” you beg and he wants to give you everything so he lays his entire weight on top of you and really pins you down. It takes a lot of effort, but he wants to please you and soon he manages to build a rhythm that’s so impossibly fast that you feel nothing but him, hear nothing but him, think nothing but him. You don’t realize that you’re chanting his name over and over, you don’t realize that you’re pulling onto his forearm around your neck as tight as you can, you don’t realize that you’re writhing so much under him that you’ve exploded on him, you don’t realize that you’re not falling for this man. You had pretty much already fallen for him.

“Ahh… Y/N…” he gasps and he’s said something else as well, but the ringing in your ears made it difficult to hear it.

You feel the absence of him when he pulls out of you abruptly and he’s sitting up, urgently stroking himself, groaning as he finally finds his own release.

A moment of stillness hangs in the air. Like the calm after a hurricane. The telling sounds of your impieties have ended, leaving only your breaths in their wake.

Johnny leans over you, combing your hair away from your face as if to check on you as you lay on your stomach unmoving. He kisses your cheek, then strokes the spot tenderly with the backs of his fingers. Your eyes close because you don’t know what’s going to happen now. Johnny moves away, sitting on the edge of the bed to discard the condom and you sneak a peek at him. You watch the muscles in his broad back protrude and you miss him already. He lifts off and walks away for a moment and your heart yearns for him. You wonder what it would be like to wake up to him next to you. You close your eyes again because his words from earlier are still ringing in your ears ‘I think about you all the time.’ They sounded so sincere, though men would say whatever you needed to hear during sex. But they came from him, and he’s never made an empty promise.

You feel the warm wetness of a washcloth being carefully dabbed on your skin, between your legs, over your sex and suddenly your heart is so full. He’s softly turning you around and easing you into a shirt he probably found in your closet. How could you not fall for such a man?

“Come here.” his voice says and you open your eyes to see that he’s laid down again, wearing only his boxers and he’s pulling you into his chest. You lay your head over his heart and listen to it thrum in his chest. This moment is surreal and you can’t help but feel like this is where you belong, and that feeling is solidified when you feel his arms wrap around you, his lips on the crown of your head. You’d never had afterglow feel this sweet, perhaps because you’d never had sex that felt this good. This is what you had wanted all your life. This feeling right here. No one had understood your needs better than this man. Johnny knew perfectly how to take you rough but soft. To make it coarse but sweet. To make you feel used but safe. To make you feel docile yet liberated. And he had told you that he thought about you all the time. You feel a smile grow on your lips as they pressed against his chest. This moment felt absolutely perfect.

“I have to get back to the dorms.”

And there it was.

You turn your head to the sound of his voice and he slowly sits up. “I’ve got an early morning schedule tomorrow and I don’t want to have to explain why I didn’t come in with the guys.” He says as he gets off the bed and starts dressing himself. You nod because, well. What did you expect? You stand up as well, picking up your discarded underwear and sliding it on, keeping your back to him because you couldn’t stand to see his face.

“I’m going to see you there, anyway, right?” He asks and you try to keep your face as devoid of emotion as possible.

“Right.” You reply because you don’t trust yourself to say anything else. You feel like your chest has been hollowed, like someone has sucker punched you in the belly. You had promised yourself you wouldn’t hope. You had told yourself that you just wanted to see if Johnny could give you what you liked in bed. That was all. He hadn’t promised you anything else. He wasn’t obligated to stay. And what he was saying made sense. You both had the same appointment tomorrow, both for different reasons, but you both had to be at the same place at the same time. You knew everything in this situation was logical. So why was your heart shattering in your chest?

He’s dressed now and he’s looking for his phone, his keys and his wallet outside in the living room. You follow him slowly, wrapping your arms protectively over the shirt he put on you. He gets everything he needs and heads for the door and you walk him out only because it feels like the right thing to do. He turns to look at you at the door and you look at him. Words remain unspoken. You’re not sure what he reads on your face because he looks like he was going to say something but he changed his mind.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He says and he’s polite enough to smile. He turns on his heel, and is out the door that closes with a finalizing shut. And just like that, he’s gone.

You’re not sure how long you stand there, looking at the broad expanse of wood he’s just disappeared behind. You’re not sure why your shoulders are shaking or why your breath keeps choking your throat. You turn around because what’s the point? You’ve done this before. This has happened to you before. Why should this time be different from any of the other times?

You don’t know how you make it back to your room because your legs are so weak and your vision is so blurred. You really thought it was going to be different this time. That he was going to be different. But once again, your heart has been broken. He had used you good, left his marks on you so you would see him, feel him for days, and just like that, he had left.

Why did no one ever stay? What was it about you that made men look at you like a pump and dump? Why did you bare your mind, your soul, your body in front of yet another man when you knew what was going to happen? Why did you never learn? Why did you keep hoping that things would be different? Why did you give yourself so easily when no one ever wanted you? Why were you so unwanted?

You’re pretty sure you’re sobbing because your hand is instinctively clutching onto your heart. The heart that had already been broken too many times, but this time, the injury felt much, much worse because you were in love. You were in love with Johnny. You knew that now. You know you were foolish to have fallen for a man you weren’t allowed to want. You had known it all along. You had never meant for things to go this far. No, you had hoped that things would go this far. Hoping was, in fact, the biggest sin you had committed in this strange tragedy. And you had paid the price for it. He didn’t want you, he could never want you. Why would a man like him want you? What were you to him? You were just another willing girl that threw herself at him. The man had been happy to sleep with you like normal people did, but no. You asked him, practically begged him to take you like a back alley whore. So of course, he was going to fuck you into oblivion and when the blood wasn’t rushing to his cock, he would realize how fucking deplorable you were as a woman for allowing this to happen to your body. Of course he couldn’t want you. You were unwantable. Suddenly, you can’t hold yourself up anymore… it was too much, it was all too much. It hurt so bad. You didn’t expect it to hurt so much that your legs couldn’t hold you up and you were sinking to your knees.

Strong hands grabbing at your shoulders, turning your around.

You look up, tears blurring your vision, your breath hitching faster than your heartbeat, like you’re hyperventilating. You’re still clutching onto your chest like you’re trying to hold yourself together but failing. And he’s the one holding you, the one who caught you before you could fall to your knees. It’s him. He’s here, right in front of you. He’s looking back at you, with eyes intense, nostrils flared. And you’re looking back at him, unable to hide the outpour that he had left when he walked out that door. And you remember--he had your code.

“Why didn’t you ask me to stay?!” he asks urgently, holding onto your shoulders tight.

“I didn’t know I could.” you reply truthfully, your voice shaking and it makes you cry more and you can’t fake it anymore. This is what you feel and he’s seen it now. There was no point in hiding it.

“Y/N…” he takes your face in his hands strongly and kisses your tears. “Y/N, can’t you see? Can’t you see that I’m in love with you?” he says at you with such a burning intensity that it puts a halt to your tears.

“Huh…?” you look at him with round eyes, your self-doubt making it so hard for you to take in his confession.

But he makes it clear. “I love you. I’m in love with you. I think I’ve been in love with you for a while. I didn’t tell you because… I wasn’t sure if that’s what you wanted. If that’s how you wanted to be with me. But I see it now, Y/N. I know you’re in love with me, too. Am I wrong?”

You can’t find your voice because the emotion is welling up inside you again. So you shake your head furiously. You weren’t like Johnny--you never could find the right words at the right time. You communicated everything physically. That’s why you pull him into a kiss and though your face is streaked with tears, you can’t bring yourself to care.

He pulls you in strongly, kissing you like a victory, kissing you like a promise.

You don’t believe this. After years and years of searching, trial and error, getting your heart broken and doing it all over again, you finally got the man. You finally got a man who wanted you in the same way you wanted him. You had yourself a man that cared for you and loved you. You had yourself a man that was willing to be patient with you when you couldn’t put in words what you felt in your heart.

You had yourself a man whom you could ask to stay and he would.

So tonight, you laid on his chest and he held you impossibly close. Telling you that he won’t go anywhere as long as you wanted him. Telling you that he loved you exactly how you were, broken pieces and all. Telling you that you were worth the effort he would have to make in the morning to seem unsuspicious to prying eyes. Because in exchange, he got to hold you close into the night. Tonight, you prayed for sleep to take you quickly because you were excited to wake up. Because in your heart, you knew that when you did, he would finally still be next to you.

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mishasminions · 4 years

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The Last Time I’ll Write a Long Post About Supernatural (15x18-15x20)

15 YEARS OF WATCHING THIS SHOW. 11 YEARS OF RUNNING A BLOG ABOUT IT. IT’S BEEN QUITE A RIDE.

[15x20 Speculation + evidence at the bottom]

First off, I just wanna come clean and say, after all these years, I still think they should’ve ended at Season 5.

If you’re going to come at me with “Then why’d you stick around to watch it if you didn’t like it?”, your question is immature, and the answer is simple: I just want to know what happens next (I also love the main characters and their actors too). You can watch a show and still think it’s shit.

Call me a clown, but despite all the disappointment and trust issues that this show has given me, I would still look forward to the day where it might just turn itself around and bring back the quality it once had, or realize the potential of each story it was trying to tell, or at the very least, do justice by my favorite ship.

Never happened.

They’ve had a few good episodes here and there. I can’t imagine the SPN Universe without The Man Who Would Be King, The French Mistake, and Scoobynatural. Seasons 6-10 were enjoyable at times. I blocked out most of 7 & 11-15.

If you’ve been following this blog since its heydays in 2010-2014, you’d know I’d try my best to defend Destiel and this show’s decisions regarding it no matter what.

Because you know what, as a CONCEPT, this show is good. If you take a look at all the worlds its storylines have birthed in fanfiction/fanworks, you’d see how much Supernatural has wasted its own story arcs. The writing got shittier as each season progressed, and they’ve obviously given up in production as well because the quality in the execution has noticeably gone down too, but if you take a step back and take a look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that this show still tries to make sense of itself.

[If you’re still following this post, please bear with me, I know this is long, but I just want you to understand how jaded and pessimistic I am with regards to this show, so maybe you can buy into whatever hopeful thing I’m about to say later on.]

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT DESTIEL

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that they would give us Castiel’s “I love you” speech. To the point where, if I weren’t so desperate for it, I would argue that it was completely out of character for him to word vomit the way he did (but I’m not gonna diss on that right now because I’ll take what I can get).

I’ve valued every meaningful and obscure exchange that Dean and Cas have had in the earlier seasons, and I was willing to accept their relationship as just that--undefined, without any clear boundaries as to what they really are. And I think that was beautiful on its own.

But now, they’ve chosen to define it.

After they’ve driven every possible wedge between Dean and Castiel in seasons 11-15, to try to explain away their feelings as something they offer to a collective.

Dean can’t mourn and pray for JUST Cas, he has to mourn and pray for EVERYBODY--even Crowley, even some chick he just met, because god forbid he cries about just the guy who has given up everything for him--that would be “too homo”.

They’ve even set Cas on a path to abrupt fatherhood just so he can care about something other than Dean. Make it seem as if Dean wasn’t his purpose through and through.

And after all these years of this stupid show trying to deny it, they choose to acknowledge it at the worst possible circumstance, at a time where they’ve been so far apart, that it seems so foreign for them to suddenly come together.

But here we are. And they’ve chosen to tell us.

Chosen to tell us that everything that Castiel has done leading up to his death, he has done it because he was IN LOVE WITH DEAN WINCHESTER.

Chosen to tell us that the ONE THING THAT WOULD MAKE CAS HAPPY IS DEAN WINCHESTER.

Chosen to tell us that BEING WITH DEAN WINCHESTER is something that CAS WANTS BUT KNOWS HE CAN’T HAVE.

And they’ve also chosen to tell us nothing about how Dean feels.

Sure, finding out your angel made a deal, the stipulations of said deal, his newfound happiness philosophy, his long-winded monologue of why he loves you and why you’re worthy of his love, and to top it all off he tells you that being in love with you is enough to make him happy while he subtly hints that he’s always wanted to be WITH you romantically, was a lot to process in the 5 minutes after you’ve just had an existential crisis.

It’s whatever, right? Let’s culminate 11 years worth of tension and feelings in 5 minutes. Let’s waste the entire episode with cringey expository dialogue, and irrelevant sequences. The whole season was a waste anyway.

You know what Supernatural? FUCK YOU FOR THAT. They deserved better. WE deserve better.

And I would love nothing more than to hurl every possible insult your way,

But for the last time, I’m going to HOPE that you’re finally going to try to make it better for the fans that stuck by you all these years.

No more baiting new viewers, no more placating casual viewers, no more excuses. 15 years. Bring it home for the people who have actually been around.

SO HERE’S HOW I THINK 15x20 IS GONNA GO

There’s two ways this series is gonna end. Horribly or Spectacularly.

First let’s all take into consideration what Andrew Dabb says about it:

So, let’s start with

ENDING HORRIBLY

In this scenario, Misha is telling the truth about his last day of filming being 15x18. His “camping trip” during the last few days of filming 15x20, was actually a camping trip. He doesn’t go to Vancouver to shoot.

Jensen wasn’t “being careful” during the zoom interviews that it was just him and Jared quarantining for the shoot, it really was just him and Jared (althought most of these were done pre 15x19) Supernatural isn’t smart enough to do misleading PR, and they’re once again oblivious to the potential of their own story.

Misha hasn’t posted a “Goodbye Castiel” tweet because he’s probably saving it for last episode or he forgot because it was overshadowed by the Destiel trend that night.

So what we get is:

Sam and Dean are on the road again, up against the monster of the week. Only their world no longer has actual Supernatural beings anymore, so the monsters they’re fighting are humans.

Humans end up killing the Winchesters (despite having gone up against literally every powerful being imaginable INCLUDING God himself). Dean and Sam end up in heaven and relive their greatest hits.

Meanwhile, Castiel rots in The Empty because he died after realizing that he was happy and gay. Jack doesn’t bother rescuing him—his surrogate dad, the guy who made this specific deal to spare him—even though it was so easy for him get Cas in and out of The Empty when he had a fraction of the power that he has now.

Dean never speaks of Castiel’s confession because despite all the hints of a profound bond in the earlier seasons, and the fact that Dean has never cared for anyone (who isn’t his actual brother) as immensely as he does Cas, Supernatural just can’t have its main macho character be “suddenly bisexual” because that would hurt the male ego or some shit.

His heaven would probably be living happily ever after with his family. “Family” meaning Mary and John Winchester--two of the shittiest parents ever (but they’re not going to include them in this episode like they were supposed to because of Covid) and Sam.

Sam also gets a dog. As usual.

I wouldn’t put it past Supernatural to do this. After everything they’ve pulled, this would be right up their alley. I actually expect this ending.

Anyway, onto the next possible ending

ENDING SPECTACULARLY

In this scenario, Supernatural tries to stick the landing, and Jensen’s whole “It didn’t sit well with me at first, but then I took a step back after talking to Kripke, and realized that I had to view it from an audience perspective, I am now really excited about it” (DC Con 2019) anecdote about his thoughts on the final episodes, were actually about Dean potentially ending up with Cas. (Which would totally make sense because Jensen at first didn’t see Dean as anything but hetero, but as of late, he has been throwing in Destiel jokes of his own, so he seems to have warmed up to the idea)

Backed with Misha’s tidbit (DLConline 2020) that he and Jensen had conversations about Destiel, and that they wouldn’t have gone through with it if Jensen wasn’t onboard with it, but Jensen didn’t push back at all. (Why would they need to check with Jensen if it was just Cas going all in?)

Robert Berens (writer of 15x18) also wrote the script at the beginning of Season 15, but made Misha privy to the concept a year prior (Season 14), so they went into this season knowing about Destiel going canon.

This one’s a reach, but this scenario also supposes that Misha was lying about his whereabouts during the filming of the final episode, and him saying that 15x18 was his last episode is part of the diversion to avoid taking away from the weight of Castiel’s death.

And that Supernatural is actually self-aware of its own material (similar to how they have wrapped things up in the past—lots of expository dialogue, poor execution, but fulfills the story arc)

Since Season 15 is basically a Meta Season (Chuck/God as a writer, pretentiously calling out how he created the worlds, its characters, and basically invalidating the past 14 seasons), and 15x19 is supposedly the finale for Season 15, written by two of the worst Supernatural writers, Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming (Bob Singer’s wife), then we can assume that 15x19 is where the shitty writers kill themselves--as Chuck, of course.

So we get a badly written episode that produces a bad ending, or as Becky put it, “All action, and no Cas”

So we get the bad writers season ending at 15x19.

And 15x20 is where Sam and Dean write their own stories, and where the cast had a hand in pitching ideas for it.

Dabb has mentioned that 15x20 (Act Two) is a SERIES finale, where they try to resolve the characters’ journeys.

Because as everyone has acknowledged, Supernatural isn’t about the story, it’s about the characters.

So here’s what we can get out of it:

With no more Supernatural beings left to fight, Sam and Dean are in a stalemate. They’ve resigned themselves to fighting to the bitter end, but the “end” has passed, and they’re still standing.

So they try to figure out who they are now, and what they want out of the life they still have.

Sam still wants a normal apple pie life. Before Dean dragged him out of college to go hunting with him, he had a whole life planned out for him. Become a lawyer, settle down with a nice girl, and get a dog. He gave all that up because they had work to do, but now the work is finished, he can finally go back to wanting that for himself again.

Dean finally realizes his self-worth after Cas saves him again. His prayer to Cas in purgatory may have helped him come to terms with his anger, but the whole “you’ve done everything you did for love” speech finally put him in his place, and he learns not to hate himself anymore.

But of course, he cannot fully reconcile with himself if he doesn’t get Cas back, and tell him how he feels.

Because Dean actually wants something for himself this time. Something he knows he can finally have if he can just salvage it.

So maybe this time around, with the help of Jack (off-screen), Dean saves Cas. Grips him tight and raises him from perdition.

They bypass The Empty deal by turning Cas human, and he lives the rest of his days with Dean.

Dean and Cas know they deserve to be saved, and they know that they deserve to be happy.

(Wishful thinking, maybe they kiss a little)

Anyway...

I’m just saying, there’s NO WAY that they’d have Cas go through that whole rushed speech, if they weren’t going to do anything about it later on.

But again, after 10 years of disappointment, I wouldn’t put it past Supernatural to pat themselves on the back and say, “Okay, we sort of gave them what they wanted. We’re good now”

If that’s the case, Supernatural, I’m sorry I wasted my time on you.

Here’s to hoping 🤡

#THE LAST TIME I'LL CLOWN FOR THIS SHOW #SUPERNATURAL #DESTIEL #15x20 #15x19 #15x18 #UNTAGGED #INSIGHTFUL INSIGHTS

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luxshine · 2 years

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Moon Knight Primer, Part Fifteen

Moon Knight (2016) #194 -200

Prologue, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV

Ok, so we arrived to the controversial part of the Bemis run, aka: the current official reason of the guys’ split, issue 194, titled: Moon Knight Origin.

I say current because as you may have noticed in the past 193 issues (Well, bit more than that, counting West Coast Avengers, Secret Avengers and Heroes for Hire), is that there’s never been a moment in which any writer has said “HERE, this is why Marc, and Steven and Jake exist”. We’ve had the vague “Oh, Marc created identities for his job and they became real” from Moench, except Moench never once treated Steven and Jake as less real than Marc so there was no… show to that tell. We’ve had the “Co-existing with an alien entity caused brain damage” from Ellis, but that also didn’t explain WHY Steven, Marc and Jake, nor which roles each played in the system. And Lemire, in his almost perfect run, only told us that they had been there for a lot longer than Khonshu, but never told us why -and, to be honest, I think that is part of what it makes Moon Knight very good general Plural Representation, besides the fact that there’s no “Evil” alter (at least not when Bemis is not writing, and even his Jake is not evil in the ways of, say, Typhoid Mary who is possibly the worst example of Plural Representation that the MU has) because it never said “THIS is how you become Plural and it’s the ONLY right way”.

Of course, Bemis had to be Bemis.

And here I have to make another pause to explain some things because given the subject matter I can’t in good consciousness continue without giving you this info.

Maxim “Max” Adam Bemis is the lead singer of the bands Say Anything and Two Tongues, besides writing for Marvel. He is also jewish, and his maternal grandparents are holocaust survivors, he has called himself a Jew who is also a Christian, but the end of the day is that he is Jewish.

Which means that, no matter what I, a gentile, think about how he went about writing the System’s origin, I can’t say that he is “wrong” because he choose to do it this particular way, when he tied it completely to the Spector’s jewish roots. Because at the end of the day? It’s HIS experience, HIS culture and HIS roots too. Just as I can’t speak over the Plural community and have been careful to ask about the things I don’t quite get before launching into an analysis of the comic? I can’t speak over the Jewish community.

Who also happens NOT to be a hive mind.

I have jewish friends who really loved this origin and were angry that the tv show didn’t go this way (Even if they agreed it would’ve been also bad if they had used it since time-wise in the episode, it would’ve been a side note easily ignored. And, well, we don’t know if the writers included jewish people and including gentiles writing hate crimes against jewish people is always tricky); I have jewish friends who hated the origin and loved that the tv show went a completely different route as they also felt that this origin retreaded some nasty stereotypes. And I have jewish friends who couldn’t care less either way. Funny thing that happens when you have a community with more than one person in it, people will disagree.

So I will not make a moral judgment on this origin, because I can’t. I can assume certain things are highly auto-biographical -especially the way Marc learned about the Holocaust from his elders, how he at first didn’t quite understood how horrible it was- and a way for Bemis to explain his own feelings about his own faith (It all begins with Marc telling Jean Paul that if he could live without living in fear? He wouldn’t be jewish. Which… yeah, quite telling). I can, and will, criticize the way he choose to narrate it, but not the content on itself because, again, not my place to do so.

And, for a change, I will start with the good things:

Jean Paul Duchamp and Marc’s friendship is back. And in a loving, sweet way in which we again see how close these two are, as Marc tells Jean Paul something he NEVER discussed with anyone: Not his parents, not his rabbi, not his (granted, terrible) doctors, not even MARLENE. That show of trust is part of what made Jean Paul’s Marc’s confident and I missed it so much.

The initial introduction of Rabbi Yitz Perlman -the funniest guy Marc ever met in his life- and the subsequent explanation of what it was like to grow up jewish, why jewish people love to make jewish jokes where they are the butt of the joke, how people had differing ideas and points. The page where Rabbi Elias finally tells Marc what the Shoah was, and how his father, Marc’s grand father died… well, that is powerful, even as we see that Marc is NOT getting it at first… especially because we see Marc is not getting it.

The subtle implication that Rabbi Elias himself disassociated at some points, made even more clear with Marc narrating that he wishes he could go back in time, to tell him that he understood? Wonderful and adding a little bit more depth to the System’s family ties. That Rabbi Spector is not just Marc’s father, but their Father. Unfortunately, that page also suggests that his father knew how bad Rabbi Yitz really was, which… is not supported by the rest of the story. Again, Bemis.

The juxtaposition of Marc FINALLY understanding what the holocaust really was, as a nazi serial killer tells him about how much he enjoyed working at the camps, with images of Marc imagining a happy and peaceful life with Marlene and Diatrice? One of the most powerful pages in the whole Bemis run.

And while Diatrice looks like a teen in the page where Marc explains to her the System’s condition and not like a 5 year old? That page is adorable, bit of ableist language not-withstanding, even with the callback to Marc not understanding the holocaust when his father explained it to him.

All that? Wonderful and some of the BEST in the whole Bemis run, right there with the System actually interacting in a healthy way.

The bad? Well, I will leave someone else, preferably someone who is actually jewish, to decide if “Nazi criminal pretending to be a Rabbi to escape to the USA, becoming a respected member of the community, while at least ONE person suspects or knows about his crimes -specifically our hero’s father- , tortures and kills children in his basement and witnessing this is what caused the Moon System to split” is a good narrative choice or a bad one. And the same goes to the fact that despite being a Nazi, some artists decided to draw Ernst as the worst antisemitic caricature possible.

HOWEVER, there is one very important thing that, added to what we already have read of Bemis? Makes this not only baffling, but also contradicts what Bemis himself wrote, not 4 issues ago.

See, as Marc narrates to Jean Paul what happened, right after the Nazi who pretended to be Rabbi Yitz tells him that people like him, like Mengele, like Hitler, will always be there, waiting to get them, we see Marc go wild, bite and hit the man, hard enough to be able to run away and save his life. And the narration of the next page says “I wasn’t strong enough to take him, I knew it, but in that moment I became… something else. I became strong enough to fight.”

So of course, the implication was that right then, we saw the first split: Not, as we always have been told, of Marc and Steven… but of Marc and Jake. There was no amnesia, no black out, no typical narration cue of disassociation… but the implication is clear: Jake came out, for the first time, to SAVE Marc’s life from something horrible.

And yet, Bemis will continue to tell us that Jake is the worst of the worst. A little boy, no older than 10, who only wanted to help his other self to Survive, to escape so he wouldn’t be tortured and killed? Is maligned and demonized through the whole run.

So yeah. That is why the Bemis’s origin leaves a bad taste in my mouth, regardless on how offensive or not the rest of it may be.

Well, that and the return to the song of “Marc is sick, that’s what makes the system be the system, and it’s so tragic he can’t be cured” that is implied all over the run despite Bemis also writing the system interacting beautifuly.

In any case, issues #195 to #196 are a quite disgusting affair, not because of the story, but because of the art and the villain. A collective consciousness called, well, the Collective, that is a mass of moving flesh that absorbs everyone it touches into themselves.

Once again, the good of these issues? The Inter-system interactions. From Marc completely zooning out in a movie to go fishing with his boys (And Khonshu fishing out Marlene’s disembodied head) to later on as they are separated within the Collective, how they work together to figure out the problem even if it meant staying in that unified mindscape with at least other 50 people besides them 4? Gorgeous -Steven giving Jake permission to knock out the real bad guy? Perfect given that it was not a “violence is the solution” but a “let’s be pragmatic about this, instead of just talking about it”.

Marc, Marlene and Diatrice going to the movies? Beautiful even if it should’ve been Jake and I will forever hate that Jake can’t be the father to his little girl.

But then… the bad.

The hard on hate on Jake keeps going on, like when Marc and Jake argue about Marc not killing Sun King and Bushman (this time). Because once again, every single time Moon Knight has killed Bushman in the past? Marc was fronting. And the fact that a writer of the series can’t even get that little fact straight really angers me. Especially when it’s one of the few writers who gets that Moon Knight is a system and not a singlet who occasionally changes names.

The continuous casual ableism of other characters referring to Moon Knight as “The crazy one” and, of course, bringing up that one time he ripped Bushman’s face off is still present, despite that one being MARC, not Jake. Oh, and Moon Knight’s identities as Marc, Steven and Jake? Are either only known by the police and the villains... or by everyone depending on the PAGE. Bemis is... not good at keeping track of that.

Oh, and the utterly bizarre.

Within the mind-scape of the Collective as I pointed out, the four guys (That is to say, Marc, Steven, Jake and Khonshu) are separated and Marc is, AGAIN, identified as the one who fronts as Moon Knight. But then the Collective allows him to “Create” new and different Moon Knights, all the “versions of themselves” that they have imagined and… some are downright confusing. As there are multiple female knights, a lot of non-humanoids, and at some point, they beat “Toxic Masculinity” by confronting the sufferer with multiple copies of Steven in a speedo.

I honestly don’t have the mental strength to try and unpack all what that says of BEMIS as a writer, because for Moon knight It is really treated as a one off joke that makes absolutely NO sense.

With that, we enter the last arc of the Bemis run, 197 – 200 which brings back Sun King, the Truth and that Nazi Rabbi who, I forgot to mention, keeps himself immortal by killing Jews. Not as a sacrifice to evil gods or anything, no. It’s that he found a way to turn serotonine into immortality and what he enjoys the most is killing jews.

Seriously, if Bemis was a gentile, he’d be run out of town with pitchforks and torches.

So, “Uncle Ernst” who for SOME ungodly reason knows that Moon Knight IS Marc Spector, the child that he traumatized so badly way back then? Is now the leader of a sadist underground cult and invites Moon Knight to a ceremony of sorts. Moon Knight goes, of course, to try and detain all the inductees (That includes a tattooist serial killer, a snuff photographer, a mafia princess serial killer, and a “common” man who happens to be a serial killer and a mass murderer) and then forces Moon Knight to undergo a ritual to become the Society’s pet killer.

Yes, this is Bemis trying to be edgy for the sake to be edgy as he begins the ritual with Moon Knight (We never know who the hell is fronting, but given how Bemis writes? He probably wanted us to believe it was Jake) fighting and KILLING a “rabies infected” DOLPHIN, and then “Not killing” a man who was “the worst case of animal cruelty in the history of California”.

Oh, he also gets diagnosed by YET ANOTHER super villain psychiatrist, in this case, Foolkiller, with Bipolarity and addiction to sadism, because why not just throw words at Moon Knight to see what sticks?

Morpheus returns and if this starts sounding like me summarizing an outline? Is because at this point I got out-edged. Something that not even the 2006 run managed to do because THIS has Moon Knight crowned “A prince of Death” and decked with a purple version of his outfit.

I will come back to that in a second, when we continue my rant on how Bemis tried his best to ruin Jake completely, but I just want to point out that I can’t summarize issue 199 because I have no frigging idea of what was going on there besides a sort of metaphysical hallucination that Marc was having while fighting Ernst the Nazi that May or may not have happened in the real world because there were flying Cthulhus around, and Bemis was trying to be Lemire and failing HARD. (The only GOOD panel of that mess? Khonshu hugging and protecting Jake and Steven from the outside. It makes NO sense given that they should've helping Marc, AND that Bemis TOLD US that Khonshu doesn't like Steven or Jake but... I take the panel as something nice out of context)

The last issue, 200 is special only in the fact that they asked the previous Moon Knight artists to draw some pages each (not Greg Smallwood, thank goodness, because his art is way too good for this crappy script) including one last pinup by Bill Sienkiewicz of Marc in the rain.

Basically, Marc -because now we know it’s Marc- managed to kill Erntz in his hallucination in issue 199, then had to face Sun King again as he was freed by the Society of Sadists as an “ace in the hole” against Moon Knight, but for some reason, Sun King decided that nope, he’d rather team up with Marc against the Sadists, and they round out the crazy cult from the island who is now on Moon Knight side -Dr. Emmet included- and leave THEM to protect Diatrice while Marc, Sun Knight and Marlene for some reason, go and fight the Sadists and free the Truth, who was becoming a villain convinced that he had been created by Erntz, but they fixed that like, in one panel.

It is THAT bad.

And well, as I said? Bemis REALLY tries to demonize Jake Lockley every step of the way. During the “Prince of Death” trials? We’re SHOWN that Marc is fronting, as we see Khonshu -now for some reason identified as the spirit of the system-, Steven -identified as the mind- and Jake -The “roboust undercarriage” because he doesn’t get a fancy title- as witnesses for all of it as Marc “wanted to handle this himself”. Which means Marc Killed a Dolphin, tortured a man so badly that he made Foolkiller puke after he described his actions, and almost killed ALL of the Society's new inductees and was ready to become Erntz slave... UNTIL the last trial, where Erntz tells Marc that unless he kills the little girl they kidnapped as part of the last trial? They will kill Diatrice. And he is still "Better" than Jake.

Oh, Erntz also says that he “Seeded” the violence in Marc through “the undesirable” sources of Jake Lockley (You know, Gena and Crawley. Because Bemis is not classist at all)

ANYWAY, Marc obviously doesn’t want to kill the little girl -whom we don’t see at the moment because Bemis thinks he’s clever- and in the Inner world? Jake Lockley, whom until Bemis got his grimy hands on him had ALWAYS been Moon Knight’s moral compass? ARGUES in FAVOR of killing an innocent, and YELLS at Marc for “taking” Diatrice for himself because he’s the hero of the story, but still won’t do the “hard” thing to save her. Because Marc is a coward, and is going to leave the choice to Jake.

And while JAKE also decides NOT to kill the little girl? The narration immediately switches it to MARC in control again as the defender of said girl.

Because Bemis can’t let Jake be good.

So... here are the only TWO good pages of #200 in my opinion. Diatrice's fan art of her family, and Sienkiewicz's final pinup.

And so, Moon Knight #200 ends up a mess, where while the System is still a System? There’s nothing of real substance from the last 12 issues. Yes, we now have the “almost victim of a hate crime” origin for the boys, but that was one issue. Oh, and the meme panels of the guys inner world. But as far as story goes? This is the worst let down after the high soar that was Lemire’s run because we have nothing that will last.

Sun King and his connection with Ra? Will never get mentioned again. The Moon Knight cult will have a role in the next Arc, which will take us to the Avengers’ book rather than Moon Knight’s next title (The far better Mackay run in 2021, which, while no Lemire and with its own problems, is HEAPS better than Bemis). The Truth? Gone. And, even worse, Marlene and Diatrice? Will pack up their bags and leave Moon Knight due to the events of our next arc. So really, all that we have from Bemis is what I mentioned which will not get repeated later as yeah, say bye to the System for a while too.

But once again, I am getting ahead of myself. See you next time as we enter the Age of Khonshu, in Avengers #33 to 38, and then back to Moon Knight for the Mackay run... Oh, and probably Devil's Reign. Sorry about THAT in advance)

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight Primer #Moon Knight comics #The Bemis run #What a mess #It's the Bemis ruin #Jake Lockley deserved FAR better #Jake Lockley is not a killer #Marc Spector #Steven Grant #Khonshu #Diatrice Lockley #Marlene Aralune #TW:antisemitism discussed #TW: Violence discussed #I need a drink #and I don't drink

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