#ostensibly nothing has changed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

all-purpose-dish-soap · 1 month

Text

1.8k / 24 / soap soulmate au, part 4

...

Price takes a seat opposite you. Ghost stands behind him, massive arms crossed. Price folds his hands together.

"Tea?" he asks.

You say nothing.

"Ghost, go get us some tea."

Ghost leaves. Price examines you, drumming his fingers against the table. He acts friendly. But he's not playing. You have no doubt he'll extract the information he needs by any means necessary. You need to make sure he doesn't figure out which of your buttons to press.

"You're Soap's girl," he says.

You say nothing. His stare presses in on you as heavily as the silence, pushing your back into your seat.

"Who is he to you?"

You shift, uncomfortable in your chair. "A stranger." You roll your shoulders as if trying to shrug off the implications. "An enemy, ostensibly."

Price leans closer. "You kiss your enemies often?"

Not until Johnny walked into your patrol path.

"Left quite the impression on Soap. You made a bit of a mark on Ghost, too. Not that it’s hard." Price leans back, giving you a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "He’s got a soft spot for Soap, hm? So he doesn't want you hurt. Doesn't want Soap put out."

You remain silent, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He studies you, utterly calm. He's trying to read you. It's obvious he has some kind of game plan, and now he thinks you have one, too.

"Weren't quite planning to walk into someone like him, were you? Things happened, didn't they? Things you had to work through."

"No."

"Really. 'Cause with the way you're acting, I'd wager you had different plans for yourself. Now you're all twisted up in this. Plans got ruined because he came along. Maybe you've got your own plans, hm? Got a whole life back home. A career, clearly. Nice little house. Maybe you've got a boyfriend already."

"What do you want?" you grit out.

"Access, love," he says, like this whole interrogation is just a pleasant chat. That new base of yours, the one Graves commandeered. How do you like it?"

"Barely seen it."

"I imagine you're rather busy lately, then. Lot on your mind. Shepherd must have you working hard." You notice a muscle twitching in his jaw. He has an iron grip on his temper. "But you saw enough of it to get a good look around, hm? The layout, the security, the systems. Tell me about it."

"I don't know anything."

"Nothing?" He leans forward again. He doesn't seem to like that answer. "The security cameras. The guards. The patrols. The sensors." His voice is low. "You don't know anything about those?"

"Didn't ask."

"Hm." His shoulders lift in a slight shrug as the expression on his face hardens further. "You didn't ask." He repeats. "Didn't ask. Didn't ask..." Then he pauses, staring through you. He leans back again. "No, of course not. You follow orders. You do your job. Can't fault you for that." He speaks with a cool tone, but there's a tightness in the lines of his jaw as he says it. "And now you're here and your buddies are gone. Just you. The only target left." He lets the silence stretch out. "Do you think Graves'll come for you?"

"No."

"Hm. Why not?"

"I'm a nobody."

"Hmmmmm." His smile doesn't change, but the lines around his eyes shift as if he finds that amusing. "And you're perfectly content with that? With knowing that when you walk into that base every day, you'll just be another body for Graves to throw onto the heap?”

You hold his gaze. "Yes."

"You don't think you're worth more than that?"

You say nothing.

The smile is still there, but his eyes narrow. He's judging you. Judging your worth. You hold his gaze. He seems to recognize something in you--that you're telling the truth. You know what you are. You're a mercenary. You're expendable.

"You must have a low opinion of yourself." He sighs, crossing his arms and settling a little further into his chair. "You've accepted you're not walking out of this base, then."

You nod.

Price examines you, eyes narrow and intense. Peeling you apart. You're certainly not an idiot. Smart enough to know you're expendable; loyal enough to take orders, keep your mouth shut, and follow through without asking questions. Not the type of soldier he prefers, but in the right hands, you'd be lethal.

Tough to crack, too. He rubs his chin. Hard to threaten someone who doesn't have anything to lose.

Two sharp knocks on the door herald Ghost, who slips back inside and closes the door. He's not carrying tea.

"Might want to pick up the pace," Ghost says. "Soap's back."

You stiffen, as much as you try not to show it.

Price's gaze flicks over to you, noting the tensing of your shoulders. "He knows?"

"Affirmative, sir. Someone outside must've seen her mark and tipped him off."

At that moment, there's a banging on the door. Johnny's voice echoes from the other side. "LT!"

Hearing it is a punch to the gut.

Soap keeps knocking. "Ghost, get yer lyin' arse out here!"

Price looks at Ghost and nods toward the door. "Go on, then, handle it."

Ghost curses under his breath and slips outside.

"Hell's fuckin' bells, LT, what's goin' on?"

Ghost's reply is too low and muffled to catch.

"Busy with what?" Soap snaps. "I know she's here. I need to see her."

Ghost's reply this time sounds harsher.

"Like hell I'm not. That's my goddamned soulmate, aye? My girl. I've got a right to see her. You'll not keep me from the one person in the whole bloody world that's mine."

"Captain's interrogating her." Ghost's tone is low and loud now, a warning. "You don't get special privileges with her."

Soap lets loose a string of colorful curses. You can make out roughly half of them through his accent. "What does Price think she's got that's so bloody important I don't get to know about it?"

"She's a Shadow, Johnny. Chrissake."

"Aye, an' she's in that room goin' it alone. She needs me."

Your heart twists in your chest, and it forces out a breath you didn't know you were holding. It's eating at your resolve. Just hearing him speak about you is making you want things you shouldn't. He sounds like he wants to protect you. Like you're worth something to him. You try to shake it out of your head. You're a prisoner here. This isn't a love story. He doesn’t love you. He doesn't know you.

Then you look up, and your blood goes cold. Price is staring at you, and he's smirking.

His eyes move over you, dissecting you piece by piece, and you feel your expression revealing too much. He saw your mask slip. He saw what you're concealing.

"I'll be damned." His smirk grows. "I thought Shadows were all cold-blooded bastards."

Your mouth twitches like it wants to bare teeth. "Go to hell."

"Ghost," he calls mildly at the closed door, "get in here. And bring Soap, would you?"

No no no no. Panic washes over you. You pull at your cuffs, feeling yourself lapse into a freeze response. Not Johnny. You can't face him. You try desperately to get a grip on your body's reaction, to remember your training.

You turn your head away from the door and fix your eyes on the opposite corner of the room. Among the many rifles and launchers racked on the walls, you find a pistol and you concentrate on it as hard as you can. You study the polish smudged near the mouth of the barrel. The scarred grip.

Behind you, the door opens.

Soap is across the room in moments. He kneels next to you, his hands falling to your arm, to your shoulder, your neck. His thumb brushes across one of the many cuts on your cheek.

You feel outside of yourself. Soap seems too fixated on your state of being to notice.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ. What did you rat bastards do to my girl?" he growls.

"She did this to herself," Ghost says. He puts his hand on Soap's shoulder. "And we need her restrained while we question her--"

"Back off," Soap warns, brushing his hand away. "Am not dealin' with you right now."

Price cuts in, voice firm. "Soap, cool off. Now."

Soap's temper flashes hot. His jaw clenches. His muscles tense. But he takes a deep, steadying breath. "Aye, Captain," Soap says. He straightens up, his hands falling away from your face. But it's clear his blood is still simmering. "Permission to remove her cuffs."

"Negative," Price says. Soap starts to say something, but Price cuts him off. "No. She's unpredictable. You know that as well as we do. We can't afford to trust her until we understand what Graves' orders are."

Soap curls and uncurls his fists, evidence of the sheer will he's exerting to keep his feet planted where they are. "And what do you expect me to do? Just leave her here? Not say a word to her?"

That smirk curls Price's lips again. "Quite the opposite. I'd like you to do the talking for us."

Price stands and gestures to Ghost again, and Ghost guides Soap by the shoulder over to him. Soap resists on principle for a moment before his mind catches up and he walks stiffly to the other side of the table.

“She has information we need," Price says. "Alejandro, remember? Once that's squared away, we'll need no hostage. You understand me?"

There's a beat of silence.

"You want me to interrogate her," Soap says.

"I want access," Price replies.

"And once I have the information?"

"Then she’s all yours. You can do whatever you like. Let her go. Hell, drive her to the airport if you want. But until then" --Price's hand lands on Soap's shoulder and pushes him down into the interrogator's seat across from you-- "she doesn't leave this room. You understand?"

You feel Soap's eyes on you.

"Fine. I'll do it. But it's gotta be me and her. No one else. You let me do my job the way I know it needs to be done."

"Hm." Price glances at you. You're still concentrating on the pistol on the far wall. "That's just fine. Ghost, let's give 'em some time alone."

Ghost follows Price out of the room, closing and locking the door behind them.

"Sir?" Ghost's voice is low and uncertain.

"Trust me, Soap is the leverage we needed. He'll do just fine.”

Ghost is quiet for a moment. "If he keeps his head on straight."

Price hums in agreement, his smile genuine now. "If he keeps his head on straight."

...

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / [part 4] / part 5 / part 6 / part 7 / part 8 / part 9 / part 10

more Soap / masterlist tag

1K notes · View notes

loverhymeswith · 9 months

Note

How do we feel about a one shot with “Dress” with a little smut here and there😏

Only Bought This Dress So You Could Take It Off

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x F!Reader

Summary: Written for The Taylor Swift Tapes: Tommy Shelby - based on ”Dress”

Word Count: 2.2K

Warnings: 18+ only, minors dni. Smut. Not beta-read.

A/N: Thank you so much, Anon. I love this song and I was hoping someone might request it!

“Your hands are shaking, love.”

The sound of Tommy’s deep voice tears you away from the paperwork in your lap, a handful of important documents that require your signature - ostensibly, the only reason for your presence here tonight.

“I didn’t think they were ever going to leave.” You glance across the dimly lit office, towards the doorway through which Polly, Michael and Arthur have finally disappeared.

Like your hands, there’s an audible tremor to the words as they leave your painted lips. Business with the Shelby family often seems to be a drawn-out affair, with evenings like this proving to be a lesson in patience. What could have been a fifteen-minute meeting has stretched out into the early hours of the morning.

But finally, the two of you are alone.

Tommy offers you a cigarette across the desk, but you decline, choosing to watch instead as he lights his own. The brief glow of the flame illuminates the sharp angles of his face, his expression remaining calm. Neutral. It never fails to amaze you - the apparent ease with which he maintains the illusion of control.

“It’s killing you that much, eh? The anticipation?” The twitch of his jaw confirms your growing suspicion. He’s finding this amusing.

“It’s been hours, Tom.” You scowl, shifting in your seat and pressing your thighs together. A woman’s patience has its limits.

Tommy takes a long drag of his cigarette. When the smoke clears, his blue eyes are fixed on you. “And it will be worth the wait.”

“Is that a promise?”

The ghost of a grin flickers across his face, alarming in its rarity. He really should smile more often. Thomas Shelby has always been an undeniably handsome man, but when he smiles he is devastating.

“Are you going to sign them anytime soon?” He nods to the documents clutched in your hands. Right. Now he’s waiting on you.

Without hesitation, you reach over for his pen and hastily scrawl your name along the first dotted line.

It had been a curious twist of fate that had seen the Shelby family thrust back into your life almost twelve months ago. When your ailing uncle with no children of his own had granted you joint power of attorney over his growing liquor empire, you hadn’t expected to find yourself returning to your hometown of Birmingham, let alone landing directly in the path of your childhood best friend.

Six years had passed since the last time you had seen Tommy Shelby on the streets of Small Heath - six long years since the outbreak of The Great War. The conflict had irrevocably changed a lot of things; Tommy and his brothers were no exception, the horrors they had witnessed and wrought turning them into shadows - demons - of their former selves.

But when you first found yourself standing before Tommy in his shiny new office on Watery Lane, it quickly became apparent that no amount of time or turmoil could quell the stirring of desire that had begun to blossom between the two of you in the months prior to him leaving for France.

No distance could erase the mark his friendship had left on you, an invisible tattoo.

By all accounts, it was nothing short of a miracle that had brought the two of you back together, and if this was simply borrowed time, neither of you planned on letting it go to waste.

“All done,” you declare, dropping the paperwork onto the desk with a small smile.

Tommy gathers the documents towards him before leaning over to pluck the pen from your grasp, his fingers lingering for a beat too long against your own. As he swiftly countersigns the agreements, cigarette poised between his plump lips, your pulse quickens.

Hopefully, this is the last distraction of the evening.

With excruciating care and clearly testing the bounds of your patience, Tommy shuffles the paperwork, straightening the pages before sliding them into a leather bound folder and locking it away in his drawer.

“Now that business has been taken care of…” He rises slowly, extinguishing his cigarette in the expensive bronze ashtray. “...we can attend to more important matters.”

“What did you have in mind?” You fight to hide the excitement in your voice, equally resisting the urge to stare at his muscular thighs as he rounds the desk to stand before you, hands resting casually in his pockets.

You’d hate to give him any more satisfaction when you’re already confident he knows just what effect he’s having on you; the master of planning and strategy, indeed.

“That’s a pretty dress,” Tommy observes roughly, blue eyes dipping leisurely to the swell of your chest.

Before you can respond, he offers a hand to pull you to your feet and proceeds to twirl you around, gaining an even better view of the dress in question. It had been a calculated purchase on your part and so far, the expensive silk number seems to be well worth the investment.

Apparently pleased by every angle, Tommy stops you abruptly when your back is turned to him, silently stepping closer until you find yourself pressed up against his chest. A large hand lands on your waist, keeping you anchored against him - inescapable, not that you would ever want to try.

As he inclines his head to whisper into your ear, his warm breath tickles your cheek. “But I thought that I might take it off.”

Your own breath hitches, your blood turning to molten desire as the reality of his words sinks in. “I was hoping you would say that,” you admit as his other hand begins to trail a warm path from your wrist, up to your shoulder, eventually reaching the edge of your satin sleeve. Ever so gently, he tugs it down.

“Here?” You struggle to hide your surprise, biting your lip as his mouth brushes over your exposed skin. With privacy so important to the two of you, Tommy usually takes great care to ensure you won’t be disturbed - a suite at The Midland Hotel, or at least a locked bedroom. “What if they come back?”

“They won’t,” he mutters into the crook of your neck.

“But Polly-”

The sound of your name, murmured softly into the shell of your ear cuts you off, and it’s as if everything else simply stops.

Time stands still.

The fear of reproval should either family find out about the two of you fades away as Tommy’s capable fingers slide to the fastenings of your dress.

“We’ve waited long enough,” he reminds you.

Despite this, Tommy still takes his time undressing you; a small part of you is grateful. After all, you really like this outfit, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’d destroyed articles of clothing in his haste to get the two of you naked. Buttons torn from blouses and shredded stockings, his passion in the bedroom more than matching the power of his machinations in the boardroom.

After helping you step out of the dress, he turns you around, lips parting as his eyes dance over every inch of your bare body. His pupils are blown wide with lust. Along with his quiet confidence, his reaction is more than enough to chase away any lingering doubt about being so exposed here in his office.

With his attention still focused firmly in your direction, his hands rise to the dark straps of his shoulder holster but you step forwards and take his hand, effectively stopping him in his tracks.

“I’ll do it,” you tell him, a soft smile tugging at your lips. Because two can most assuredly play at this game.

Tommy stands perfectly still as your fingers brush along the corded muscle of his biceps, sliding the leather straps of the holster over the sleeves of his crisp white cotton shirt before discarding the item on his desk.

One down…

A muscle in Tommy’s jaw ticks as you meet his eye again, before giving his waistcoat equally attentive treatment. You can feel the beat of his heart, pounding furiously within his chest. A thrill runs through you to know that your touch has this kind of effect on such a man.

Two down…

Once his waistcoat has fallen to the floor, you make a start on the buttons of his shirt, but Tommy growls, grabbing your wrists.

“Enough.”

It seems his patience has finally run out.

Without warning, he lurches forwards, sweeping the contents of his desk to the floor.

Before you can even begin to anticipate what comes next, he lifts you by the waist, depositing you unceremoniously onto the edge of the now-empty desk. You gasp as he swiftly parts your thighs, placing himself between them and pressing the hard length of his body into that sweet spot at your centre.

“Tommy,” you moan, shifting your hips in the pursuit of much needed friction.

Countering the rough and sudden behaviour of just moments earlier, Tommy releases your waist and his hands rise to cup your jaw, thumbs stroking your cheeks as he gently tilts your head towards him.

“No more waiting.”

He punctuates the command with a claiming kiss, the kind of kiss that ignites the smouldering desire beneath your bare skin until every cell in your body is keenly attuned to his presence, his own desire evident as you continue to rock against him.

“No more waiting,” you agree, muttering the words against his mouth without breaking the kiss, sharp teeth grazing his lips. At the same time, you reach for his belt buckle, fingers fumbling to free him from the confines of his slacks.

Once he’s stripped from the waist down with only his half-buttoned shirt still remaining, Tommy splays a hand across your lower back, the heat of him a burning brand against your sensitive skin. Meanwhile, you clutch his broad shoulders for support, readying yourself for what comes next.

With his other hand, he lines himself up against your core.

Tommy doesn’t waste another second - not another word - before he’s breaching your slick entrance, burying himself to the hilt in a single thrust. His name is torn from your lips, this time in the form of a strangled cry, but he dips his head, quietening you with another kiss.

It’s a brief reprieve, though. Just long enough for you to relax around him, to catch your breath. Because he knows better than to be patient and gentle now - knows that, just like him, you enjoy the pressure. That you crave the burn as he stretches you to your limit and beyond, over and over again until you lose yourself to pleasure, until you find yourself hurtling towards your release.

In the amber light of the office - darker now since the lamp clattered to the floor - Tommy’s skin is flushed, his ocean blue eyes almost black. But not once does his intense gaze waver as he fucks you over the desk. Like he’s afraid that if he looks away you might vanish - that this might all have been a dream.

Overwhelmed by both his attention and the way he angles his hips to hit that sweet spot deep inside, you rapidly find yourself shattering around him.

As always, he doesn’t let you fall too hard, holding you close as you ride out the wave of your climax.

“I’ve been thinking,” Tommy grunts suddenly, his pace finally faltering as he smooths a strand of hair from your sweat-slick brow.

“Should I be worried?” you pant, struggling to focus on his words. The room is still spinning. You're drunk on him.

Ignoring your teasing question, he presses his lips against your breast, driving his hips deeper one final time as he spills inside you.

“I’ve finally woken up,” he rasps.

It’s so unlike Tommy to speak in riddles that you find yourself tensing beneath him. Roughly, you grab his face, forcing him to look at you. “What are you talking about, Tom?”

He stills, lowering his head until your brows are touching. There isn’t an inch of space between you and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “You're the only person who knows me - who believes in me. In my worst times, you see the best in me. And even with my worst lies…you always see the truth in me.”

Concerned, you pull back from him. Clearly, his sex-addled brain is not functioning correctly. “Tommy, what are you-”

“I love you.”

Silence fills the room. It’s so unexpected, his admission, that you freeze. Imaginary walls fracture like glass around you.

When this thing between you and Tommy started up months ago, there had been an unspoken agreement that it could be nothing more than lust. An added benefit of your business transactions. Your family history, not to mention the relationship between your two companies, is far too complicated for anything more.

Love was never part of the deal.

But as much as you might want to believe that he’s simply not thinking straight - that he’s as intoxicated by your body as you are by his, you realise he is right. You see the hope - the truth - reflected back at you in those beautiful blue eyes.

Tommy Shelby has fallen in love with you.

Even if you wanted to, there's nothing you can do about it.

Tommy Taglist: @a-reader-and-a-writer @crysxtal @simpforbuckyb @shynovelist @amberpanda99 @globetrotter28 @iammrsrogers @dragonsondragons @butterfly-lover @sunshineyourethebesttime @that-sarcastic-writer @iwantmyredvelvetcupcake @breezy2and2freezy @fia-thefirst @dreamy-caramel @trixie23

#tommy shelby #cillian murphy #peaky blinders #peaky blinder fanfic #tommy shelby x reader #taylor swift #thomas shelby #thomas shelby imagine #song fic

416 notes · View notes

comradekatara · 6 months

Note

if someone in the main cast besides aang were to be born the avatar, who would you want it to be? i think toph with access to all elements would be an unstoppable menace, but i’m curious to hear your thoughts

okay so obviously AUs that entertain an avatar during atla besides aang himself clearly have no interest in upholding the fundamental themes of the show, since aang is the only possible avatar/central figure of this show. it is explicitly structured in such a way that aang’s protagonism is no sheer coincidence or accident (ie, it’s good writing). so when entertaining who would make for a compelling avatar in an AU, we also must entertain how such a figure would necessarily shift the themes of the narrative, and whether such a transformation would be interesting.

1) katara wouldn’t be interesting, because her narrative role is too proximate to aang’s to change the themes of the show in any significant way, and even though seeing katara as the avatar would undoubtedly be cool as fuck, we already have korra, who is basically like if katara was the avatar (personality and skill-wise at least) and she is, indeed, cool as fuck. so not katara.

2) zuko is also proximate to aang, and his role as the avatar would be relatively similar to his role in the show already—unlearning the dogmas of his nation to align himself with justice and balance through learning the techniques of multiple elements. it is literally not different in any way.

3) toph would be extremely powerful of course, but she is already extremely powerful, so nothing much would change. her parents would attempt to restrict her, she would escape, travel the world, hone her craft, and defeat ozai. not very interesting.

4) suki would similarly not be interesting. she is an extremely diligent and talented warrior, so she would simply train and defeat ozai with no real obstacles in her way.

5) iroh as avatar also wouldn’t change much imo. azulon would see it as a blessing and wield him as a weapon in much the same way he does in the show. iroh’s failure and betrayal would maybe put a slightly bitter target on his back, but his emotional journey would be much the same.

that leaves 6) azula, 7) sokka, 8) mai and ty lee (yue and jet would also make for pretty interesting avatars, but you did say “main cast,” and we don’t have all day besides). they would make for interesting avatar AUs specifically because this role reversal necessitates a reversal of the show’s core themes.

6) avatar azula. she finds out as a child (perhaps ursa is there with her, perhaps she dies with azula’s secret), and is urged (by her desperate, terrified mother) to secrecy. no one, especially not her father, can know of her burden. she hones her firebending in broad daylight, and trains her other elements under the cover of darkness. her waterbending is more powerful under a full moon. her earthbending is so precise she can use it to pick a single flower from the garden without disturbing the feng shui. but despite ostensibly being her secondary element, her airbending still needs work (here is where she and korra happen to converge). then, one day, her precarious existence experiences a seismic shift—her older brother has been banished, and his task is singular and seemingly impossible: capture the avatar and return them to the palace in chains.

for all of zuko’s flaws, he is relentlessly stubborn, and azula knows that he will not rest until his task is completed. of course if she remains in the palace, zuko will never be able to find her or return home, but she cannot take that chance because she knows that iroh can sense what—who—she is. so she runs away. elegantly, of course. she puts it in ozai’s head that he needs to send her away for a special mission only she can complete, that will take an indefinite amount of time to accomplish. and she leaves the palace under ozai’s authority, disguises her identity, seeks out as many masters as she can find to train her, and plans her coup. she is able to recognize how palpable her fear of ozai truly is, because she has been hiding from him her whole life. and she knows that the only way to stop hiding is to defeat him. as you can see, this version proves a very different story, with different themes, different characters, and a vastly different ending. and so it compels me.

7) avatar sokka. sokka finds out he is a bender after katara finds out that she can waterbend, and after she is nearly killed for it, their mother in her place, and so he keeps quiet. especially because he first finds out he is a bender by lighting a fire in his palm. once all the men leave for war, sokka goes to the farthest outskirts of their land, under the guise of hunting, and trains with his firebending every day (of course he does also hunt. his village needs food after all). one day, while attempting a new firebending move, he launches himself ten feet in the air. and that’s how he discovers that he is also an airbender. as if being a firebender wasn’t enough of a hideous curse, he’s also the avatar. what a cruel joke life is.

one day, a fire nation ship docks in their village, and a scarred young soldier demands to know the whereabouts of the avatar. sokka clumsily fights him with his spear, his club, his boomerang. but when zuko attempts to burn him to a crisp, nothing happens. the flames merely dissipate inches away from his skin. then, in a moment of sheer desperation, sokka airbends him and his retinue back, all the way into the freezing waters of the south pole. of course, freezing waters are not enough to kill a firebender, but he’s also somewhat concussed by sokka’s boomerang, so iroh insists that zuko recover in his chambers until morning. zuko insists that he just found the avatar and has no time for recovery, but iroh claims that without his health he will never capture the avatar, and promptly locks him in his room.

sokka says a hasty goodbye to katara and kanna and makes his escape on a boat with enough supplies to last him until kyoshi island. of course katara somehow manages to stow aboard, which doesn’t surprise sokka in the slightest. after her initial shock wears down, she’s just like “so were you ever going to tell me you were the avatar???” and sokka’s like “uhhhhhh eventually…” they make it to kyoshi island, seconds away from being fed to the unagi until sokka reveals his true identity. zuko tracks them down to kyoshi island and sokka and katara are given a stronger boat and more provisions with which to escape.

since katara wants to go to the north pole, and katara always gets her way, that’s where they head, except sokka insists that he should at least find an earthbender while they traverse the massive continent before reaching the north pole. katara’s like “noo it has to be in order of the cycle!!” but sokka’s like “fuck that i’ll take what i can get.” he finds jeong jeong, and even though jeong jeong calls him an oaf, he turns out to be a pretty good student. he fears fire and values discipline, which is all jeong jeong really asks for. by some pure happenstance (because sokka and toph will always find each other) they find the perfect teacher in gaoling. she escapes with them as they head to the north pole, but once they arrive her feet are freezing and she’s forced to wear boots, at which point sokka agrees to carry her everywhere. then he meets yue and accidentally drops her.

pakku agrees to train sokka but refuses to train katara. at first sokka’s like “well it’s fine because you can learn from master yagoda how to heal and i’ll learn how to fight and then we can swap notes,” but he quickly realizes that this is a bad plan because they refuse to listen to each other, so instead he just demands that pakku teach katara. pakku is obstinate, so katara fights him, at which point he realizes that she’s kanna’s granddaughter so problem solved i guess. sokka also learns healing from yagoda, because having the ability to heal and not exercising it is silly. during the siege of the north, sokka goes to the spirit oasis to attempt to ask the spirits for aid, but the only times he’s ever been to the spirit world have been when the spirits allowed it, and as it turns out, he’s really bad at meditating. which is for the best, because it means he’s prepared for zuko’s attack, and he and katara work together to stop him. they don’t kill him, but only because yue is looking at him with fear and it makes him hesitate. then before they can stop him, zhao kills tui and yue sacrifices herself, and sokka turns into a giant spirit koi and goes apeshit in his grief.

sokka, katara, and toph decide to trust a general who will help sokka harness the power of the avatar state to defeat the firelord. sokka is all for it. he’s like “yeah i’ll be used as a weapon and kill as many people as it takes to end the war.” he’s fine with this. it’s his duty as avatar after all. so the war ends quicker than in the show. he finds a map of the fire nation, toph helps him enter the palace through a secret tunnel (cue the song), and alone he enters ozai’s throne room and fights him. he doesn’t even need to enter the avatar state to kill him. he just uses the waterbending techniques he picked up from yagoda to reach into his chest and explode his heart. sokka uses his influence as avatar and firelord-killer to end the war and navigate all the complicated postwar politics.

the end.

see? it’s not as good.

but there are still some elements that make this version compelling. for one thing, sokka would have to interact with the spirit world. a lot. and he wouldn’t be happy about it. he doesn’t like that they pose questions that don’t have answers. and so he decides to wield his power as a tool for war, rather than against it. he wields his cultural influence to exert control over the world. a story where sokka is avatar (and with no aang to temper him and make him laugh) is necessarily a story as cynical as sokka is. but if that’s what you want, then there’s no better candidate. (also, he'd come up with some really creative bending techniques, and that would be pretty interesting.)

(however, if that is really what you want, just read the kyoshi and/or yangchen novels. they’re basically just worlds populated with sokkas.)

8) finally, mai and ty lee’s stories as the avatar would be much the same, so it doesn’t matter which. they are both enlisted to join azula’s small, elite team to return zuko home in dishonor, and to capture the avatar. so they must hide in the lion’s den, obscuring their identity from those they keep closest. their world is already one of dual loyalties and secrets; what’s one more? mai and/or ty lee only reveal their true powers at the boiling rock, to keep the other safe. together, they defeat all the guards holding them back, go into the avatar state to reach the cliffside before azula’s airship departs to the western air temple. azula is outraged, shocked, and hurt. ty lee somehow talks sokka into letting them hitch a ride back, and that’s how mai and ty lee join team avatar. of course, one of them is actually the avatar, so that’s not what their team is named in this scenario. although it gets named that after they join. and mai and/or ty lee defeats ozai. the end.

this version is a version that, like azula’s, specifically explores the costs of lying and keeping your identity hidden. it is similar of course to their actual narrative, while also exacerbating the impact of aang’s initial introduction, but the stakes necessarily become even higher, and the story becomes focalized on their internal struggles in a way the show never truly did. so to any mai and/or ty lee fans, it’s compelling on those grounds alone.

in conclusion, even the more compelling alternate characters—exploring deception, secret identities, ruthless violence, and spiritual conundrums—do not actually make for more interesting protagonists than aang. i would say that azula definitely comes closest to being the most compelling alternate avatar, with sokka, mai, and ty lee being compelling insofar as it presents opportunities for their internality and cynicism to be explored. jet would also be pretty interesting thematically, but you know i hate his vibes. and yue’s narrative would completely reshape the story, so that could be compelling as well. but ultimately, aang needs to be the avatar for the story to work, and even in azula’s case, as a fascinating replacement figure, her original role in aang’s story is fascinating enough. without aang in the central role, the show just isn’t as good.

#ecothroat #asks #the gaang and #AUs #azula #sokka #(mostly)#had to put most of it under the cut because i started rambling for way too long #even though the short answer here is simply: no. aang must be the avatar #that was a lot of words to dismiss the question entirely huh?

167 notes · View notes

nottobehornyonthemain · 1 year

Text

I’m just going to throw my hat into the ring about Steve’s parents because I’m bored. But like, Let’s spice up the level of shitty parenting.

Give me a Mrs. Harrington who’s actually a professional. Steve has said that she’s “super well respected” and, for as much as the fandom likes to play him as a dumbass, you don’t put people whoes only achievement is being a jealous housewife on your résumé, especially when you have another parent with a notable (ostensibly white collar) career.

Give me a Mrs. Harrington who’s a news anchor, or a lawyer. Give me a Mrs. Harrington who worked her ass off to be taken seriously by men for the entire late 50’s and early 60’s. Give me a young, ambitious woman with hazel eyes at a mixer for the company she’s working for in Chicago one night, who caught the eye of the charismatic man with ridiculous fluffy brown hair.

Give me a Mr. Harrington who grew up with a veteran father who never really seemed to care. Give me a little boy waiting, every day, for his dad’s letters, waiting for his father Otis to get back from this horrible war. And then he does, and he’s a hero, and suddenly it’s like nothing his son does is worth his notice. When he’s 15 and gets into his first fight? Otis doesn’t even comment on his bruised face before he walks out the door in the morning. When he gets into college? His mother is the one to hand him the watch his parents allegedly both got him as a graduation present. When he gets a job! A good job, where he has his own office and his name on a plate on his desk, not so much as a card.

Give me a Mr. Harrington who promised himself that, if he ever had a son, he would notice. He would pay attention to his kid’s grades, and what they were doing in school. That he would be proud of whatever college his son got into. That if his kid was ever doing something stupid, drinking, fighting, smoking, he would care. And he would say something.

Give me a Mr. Harrington meeting a beautiful woman in Chicago one night, and somehow, convincing her to come back to Hawkins with him. Give me the big news engagement and the blowout wedding fit for two people with nowhere to go but up.

Give me the Harrington couple buying their house, and planning to wait a few years before they start having children. Give me them having their first child, a son.

Give me a Mrs. Harrington being offered the promotion she’s been working towards for years almost immediately after, and taking it.

Give me a Mr. Harrington who never really thought his wife would keep working when they had children, but being smart enough not to say anything about it. Give me them realizing that, between both of their jobs, plans change, and their son will be their only child.

Give me a Mrs. Harrington who “doesn’t trust” her husband not because he might be cheating on her, but because, for as much as he can charm and schmooze with just about anyone, he has never had anyone tell him that he lacks actual understanding of his business. Give me a Mrs. Harrington seeing a stack of papers her husband brought home last night where the math doesn’t quite add up. Give me the blowout fight over his shady new business partner and the costs they could save if they just… cut a few corners. Give me her struggling to be taken seriously and explain to him that the consequences could be actual jail time and a complete destruction of their lives. Give me him hating that she thinks she knows better than him about his own business.

Give me a Mr. Harrington who keeps his promise to care about what his son is doing. Give me his unnecessary lectures, and comments and micromanagement whenever his son walks in the door.

Give me a Mrs. Harrington who couldn’t care less what her son is doing as long as he’s alive. Give me her bitchy comments that have been her best defense in the professional world for so long rubbing off on her son.

Give me a Steve who’s let it shape him. Who got his brown eyes, and desire to be at the top of the social sphere as soon as possible from his mom. Who got his begrudging tendencies to care while still finding something to complain about from his dad.

Give me a Harrington couple who isn’t absent, exactly. Who have the occasional business trip, but are actually in town when most of this stuff goes down. Give me a house that’s almost always empty, not because no one lives there, but because Mrs. Harrington is out late again tonight because the boss needs to be sure everything is in perfect order for Monday. Because Mr. Harrington absolutely has to close this deal. Because Steve has practice for both swimming and basketball today.

Give me a Steve who craves the domestic because of this. Who doesn’t have big plans or ambitions. Who, at his center, just wants to be able to flop on the couch and watch movies with the people he cares about. Who wants family vacations, and kids, and a big house filled with noise. Give me a Steve who understands that that’s where his love of parties came from.

Give me a Mr. Harrington who watches as his son seems to completely throw away everything he worked so hard to give him. Give me the fights over the beer, and the weed, and the grades. Give me the bombshell that his son didn’t even manage to get into college, and the realization that he needs to learn to be responsible.

Give me a Mr. Harrington who comes home one night to Robin and Dustin eating cereal in his kitchen at midnight. Who doesn’t really know what to say, so he sets down his briefcase and eats a bowl of cereal while asking these children who they are and why they’re in his house. Give me a Mr. Harrington patting his son on the back the next morning and telling he how much he likes the nice girl who can speak every language, and the little boy who can recite the periodic table from memory. Give me a Mr. Harrington who knows he made the right decision when he made his son get a job of his own instead of just working for him.

Give me a Mrs. Harrington who, when Steve informs her in the middle of a conversation that he has a boyfriend, doesn’t look up from the mirror where she’s applying her eyeliner.

Give me a Steve who’s had enough of her not caring and asks her, “really? You don’t have anything to say?”

Give me a Mrs. Harrington icily meeting his eyes in the mirror and saying, “Steven. You’ve been putting egg in your hair once a week since you were twelve and a girl in your class told you it makes it shiny, and you’ve been stealing my hairspray even longer.” Then goes back to lining her eyes.

#stranger things #steve harrington #robin buckley #steve and dustin #platonic stobin #steddie #implied at least #gay steve harrington #Harrington parents #in my head Mrs Harrington is a Lucile Bluth personality in an elle woods career #and Mr Harrington is just standard multi generational baggage man #honestly I’ve thought too much about backstory for everyone. ask me about Nancy’s one day #the sheep ramble analysis

761 notes · View notes

pluckyredhead · 2 months

Note

Can you please say more about the Lanterns' politics?

I am so glad you asked me about this because I've been thinking about it since I reblogged that post but also I'm definitely about to get yelled at lol. ANYWAY THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG.

Tl;dr: John is the only one with a coherent political position or an up-to-date voter registration.

Hal:

So something interesting about Hal is that his stories are often very political but his character is not. With one extremely obvious exception, he rarely talks about politics; rather, he serves as a means through which to tell political stories, usually unintentionally.

What do I mean by that? Well, for example, in the Silver Age, his love interest would occasionally be possessed by a misandrist space jewel that would force her to attack him, but always lose because women are inherently inferior to men and prefer to be subjugated by them anyway. That's the original Star Sapphire concept. It's wildly misogynistic, but it doesn't mean Hal the character is misogynistic. But it's also a very political story, even if I don't think the writer was deliberately trying to make a point so much as...being an average, thoughtlessly sexist guy living in the 60s. (Carol continues to be the subject of mindbogglingly sexist writing and art well into the 2000s. Fucking comics.)

And so you have Hal Jordan, whose love life was ruined by his girlfriend getting promoted above him and who called his best friend by a racist nickname for decades; Hal Jordan, poster boy for chest-thumping post-9/11 kneejerk patriotism; Hal Jordan, lightning rod for a certain kind of regressive bigoted fanboyism. Choosing Hal as the Lantern for a particular story over John or Kyle has come to signify something very specific, but none of that is necessarily reflective of what Hal himself believes.

So what about Hal himself? Well, when we first meet him, he's the epitome of privilege: a white, straight, cis, Christian (I know he's canonically half-Jewish now but that's only as of the past decade or so), ablebodied, upper middle class (Geoff Johns retconned him to have a working class background, but in the Silver Age, he had one uncle who was a millionaire, another who was a judge, and a successful politician brother) man with a flashy job. Privilege tends to lean Republican; even if he is from California, I suspect Hal voted for Eisenhower in 1956.

In GL/GA, the word "Republican" isn't used to my recollection, but Hal is definitely presented as...I'm going to say conservative by I mean lower-case C. He doesn't have deeply held political beliefs, but he's traditional. He doesn't question the system, because he's never had to. He resists things that challenge the way he's always understood the world works, and that's very relatable - most people do! And he will absolutely argue with Ollie, who certainly isn't always right about everything. But he's also willing to listen, and have his mind changed, and certainly reachable via appeals to compassion and fairness.

Once the "relevance" trend of the late 60s-early 70s was over, Hal's stories default back to ostensibly politically neutral, although obviously nothing is actually politically neutral. In the late 80s and early 90s he's the most unpleasant version of himself, and that has political manifestations, like when he allows John to be imprisoned in apartheid South Africa for a ridiculous and unnecessary crime Hal himself committed. It's extremely fucked up, but again, it's less because of Hal's actual opinions and more because Christopher Priest wanted to write about apartheid, even if it does make Hal look incredibly, horrifically racist.

Then jump to the mid-2000s and Green Lantern: Rebirth, and you might imagine that losing his hometown, getting possessed by a giant space bug, becoming a supervillain, dying, and becoming the embodiment of God's vengeance might have some effect on Hal's politics, but that is not what Geoff Johns is here to write. Johns is writing a Hal who teleported in from, like, 1967 - no nuance allowed. He's a summer blockbuster that walks like a man. He's a Baja Blast. He's never had a coherent political thought in his life. In his defense, he has had more and goofier concussions than any superhero I can think of and his brain is smooth like an egg. Still.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I think Hal tends to default to center right positions but can be easily coaxed over to center left. That said, he has never not once in his life had his shit together enough to vote in a single election, not even for his own brother.

Guy:

So Guy's deal is a little bit complicated because his most vocally political era was also in part due to severe and personality-altering brain damage.

When Guy was originally introduced in the 1960s, he had the pleasantly bland personality of all superheroes. Many years later, he suffered a series of major injuries, torture, and a lengthy coma, and he emerged from the coma in 1985 with the aggressive, abrasive personality he's best known for today. Justice League International took that even further, using him to parody the jingoistic, red-blooded American action hero of the 80s.

This version of Guy is a vocal fan of Ronald Reagan and despises the USSR. He's pro-war, proudly xenophobic, and treats women badly enough that it crosses the line into repeated sexual harassment, both physical and verbal. (To be fair...ish, this last also applies to Wally West and arguably a number of other men, and was always played for laughs. It was gross all around.)

Again, this is partially a manifestation of his brain damage. There's also a running gag in JLI where if he gets hit on the head, his personality changes to this cloying, timid, gentle one, sort of halfway between a child and a flamboyant gay stereotype. Hit him again and he goes back to Asshole Guy. I'm not going to pretend I don't find some of the gags funny, but it's obviously all highly problematic, and not just from a medical standpoint.

That said, I don't think we can dismiss Guy's politics or his usual personality as simply a manifestation of brain damage. We see in later flashbacks that he developed the abrasiveness as a defense mechanism from growing up in an abusive home, and as he matures through the 90s, he doesn't actually become a significantly different person, even after his Vuldarian healing factor kicks in and heals his brain. (It's a thing.) I think it's more accurate to say that the brain damage probably affected his impulse control, his filter, and arguably even his paranoia levels.

All of which is to say that as much as I would love to go "Guy's better now, so he's not a Republican!"...that dog won't hunt. I think a really good canon writer could make the case that Guy is pro-union-style working class and also a former teacher so he's at least center left, but as of now canon evidence is pretty firmly on the red side. It doesn't help that the GLC has been written as fetishistically pro-cop and pro-military since Johns got his grubby hands all over it. I will happily ignore the New 52 retcon that Guy was a cop, and you could even try to argue that he dislikes cops because his brother was a corrupt cop who became a supervillain, but I think it's much more likely that he identifies with cops as a Corps member. Although I don't think he would have any patience for killer cops. ("You were afraid for your life even though you were the only one with a weapon? Then fucking quit, coward.")

All of that said, I think Guy is similar to Hal: defaults to center right, can be talked into center left on certain issues but he's more stubborn about it. (They would also both be enraged by Jan 6 and disgusted by the current Republican party - I can't quite argue that Guy Gardner is a Democrat but Green Lanterns don't have any patience for traitors or cowards.) It's also kind of a moot point because he never knows what is happening on Earth and hasn't voted since his pre-coma days.

John:

Oh John Stewart, thank god for you.

John was introduced as an explicitly political character in an explicitly political story. The first time we see him, he's stepping in to defend Black men from a white cop, citing his own knowledge of the law to do so. He shows a much more perceptive and informed perspective on the issue's main plot (a racist senator running for president) than Hal does. Even in the little moment above, we see that he's sensitive to exactly what it means for him, a Black man, to be taking on this role.

None of this is a surprise, since we'll later learn that John's parents were civil rights activists. Not only would he not have had the privilege Hal and Guy did to assume his existence was politically neutral, he was explicitly educated about political realities and progressive advocacy from childhood. He's well-informed, he's passionate, and he's going to tell you when you are being fucking stupid.

John isn't immune from the GL cop/military...thing, although I can't blame Johns for that - it was the cartoon that made him a Marine, and the comics followed suit. But that's never outweighed his origin or his upbringing. Like, he's friends with the DCU's fictional version of Nelson Mandela.

This one is straightforward: John is a staunch progressive. He is, however, in outer space 90% of the time, so he's always at least a little bit out of date. I imagine every time he comes back to Earth he spends the first 24 hours watching the news in abject horror.

Kyle:

Kyle doesn't talk about politics a lot, but when he does, he lands pretty much where you'd expect a young California-born artist living in New York City to land: to the left. My read on Kyle is that he hasn't really thought any of his politics through, which makes sense - he's a character who is led by emotion over reason every time. He doesn't have John's carefully thought-through arguments or knowledge of the law behind him. I feel like when something political upsets him, he's more likely to splutter angrily than make a coherent argument (which: same). When he's given the time to think things through and speak from the heart, though, he can be very eloquent, like in his speech to Terry after Terry accidentally comes out to him.

It's also worth pointing out that his solo appearances were mostly in the 90s, which were prone to avoiding politics or only addressing them in a halfhearted both sides-y way like the story above.

That said, I don't think he ever actually does anything about his political opinions. He never votes in midterm or primary elections, and probably only voted in a presidential one because Alex dragged him along one time. I feel like Donna tried to do the same when they were dating and that was when Kyle realized he'd forgotten to change his voter registration from California to New York. Jennie wasn't responsible enough to Mom him into doing his civic duty, and he's been in space pretty much nonstop ever since, so...

Simon:

In that other post, I said Simon's experiences should have radicalized him, but instead he was created by Geoff Johns. Simon is a Muslim, Lebanese-American man who came of age in the post-9/11 era, and was wrongfully convicted of terrorism and waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. His reaction to this was...to put on a ski mask and wave a gun around. Like, it's been a while since I've read these issues, but aside from the "ripped from the headlines!!!" of it all, I feel like Simon's experiences largely don't inform his actions or perspective except that he's super angry (fair enough).

The thing about Simon (and Jessica) is that he hasn't been around very long, and most comics don't have characters directly expressing political opinions. It's not a coincidence that these characters are in chronological order and each write-up is shorter than the last. I can think of about three times where Kyle has ever said anything I can interpret as political, and he's been around for 30 years. Simon only has a third of that history. So while one could certainly extrapolate what Simon's opinions are likely to be, I can't think of any canon where he actually says them.

Jessica:

Jessica has even less to go on in terms of explicitly political comics. You'd think she wouldn't like guns because of what happened to her friends, but she has one of her own and doesn't seem bothered by Simon's. I'd imagine she has opinions on immigration as someone whose family is from Mexico and Honduras, but it never comes up. If I were writing for DC, I'd make both Simon and Jess leftists, but as for actual canon proof? I got nothing.

I will say that she probably avoids political discussions because anxiety, and I bet she got really good at voting by mail during her years not leaving the house. She probably votes by mail from space. Maybe John's not the only one with an up-to-date voter registration.

Kilowog:

#green lantern #hal jordan #guy gardner #john stewart #kyle rayner #simon baz #jessica cruz #meta

106 notes · View notes

symbioticsimplicity · 2 years

Text

Baby punk El this and baby punk El that. I love her to death but she's blossoming into someone else. So what about baby punk Steve?

Imagine Steve who's grown so much he feels like he's outgrown most of his previous interests and likes. Its hard to really fixate on cars and sports when every time you look at a car you remember hitting Max's brother with one, and baseball bats will forever remind you of fighting with one. Steve isn't remotely the same person he used to be, so who is he now?

Imagine Steve trying on all manners different ideals and outfits, flitting from one friend's style to another as he tries to find where he fits.

Nothing really clicks though. Nancy is too similar to what he already was, Robin's style only really suits her, Jonathan's is kinda... basic, Argyle just isn't the vibe really, and the kids are still coming into their own too.

That leaves Eddie.

Eddie who Steve could not be more different from, ostensibly.

But when Steve tells Eddie about what he's going through and what his goal is, Eddie takes him under his wing immediately.

He starts taking Steve into more metalhead spaces, lets him get to know what the community is actually like (They're mostly old friends of Wayne's, a biker group he used to ride with that pretty much adopted Eddie when he was younger too. They're also largely responsible for how Eddie is today). Steve is surprised by how welcoming they are, and how easily he gets along with them all. Since he's still relatively young and new to the scene, he's the group baby for once.

They become another pseudo family to him, though one that he doesn't have to constantly worry about protecting, rather one that protects him (Finally the baby instead of the baby sitter.) Especially after the night they got him drunk and he shared a "funny" anecdote about his parents forgetting him at home when they went on a two week vacation (They all silently agreed that if they ever meet the Harringtons, its on sight). They're the ones that help him really come to terms with how shitty his home life actually is, the ones that help him channel the anger that comes with that revelation.

Its still not quite what he was aiming for but he loves his new found family. And hey he does actually like this. Even some of the music, to Eddie's utter delight.

Steve slowly begins collecting bits of clothing that suit this new change in his life some of them he's stolen from Eddie and it makes him feel more settled in his skin.

But the first moment he finds what he's been looking for comes from what was supposed to be a joke.

One day when they're hanging out, Eddie sings David Bowie's Rebel Rebel to Steve, jokingly, but Steve immediately resonates with the lyrics. He begs Eddie to play him the whole song (he has a Bowie vinyl stashes under his bed, what kind of gay would he be if he didn't??) and when he does he wants to listen to it over and over again.

He starts picking up bits of Bowie's style too. Starts using Robin's eyeliner to doodle a couple little stars by his eyes when she's around, sometimes he'll borrow Nancy's a lip gloss and dab a little bit on his lips. Eddie starts calling him "Pretty Boy" instead of "Big Boy", and Stevie instead of Steve and he loves it.

The second huge revelation comes when he sees an actual punk in real life.

The spikes, the color, the attitude, the makeup, all of it calls to Steve like a siren song. It takes everything he has to calmly walk up to the punk in question and ask them about their style, about their scene. They happily explain (punks and metalheads are practically cousins, and Steve is dressed almost exclusively out of Eddie's closet that day) and Steve falls in love with it immediately.

Its such a good mixture of the bright, energetic style that’s Steve's underlying personality, along with the sharpness hes taken on since the Upside-Down invaded his life. Something about having spikes on his clothes is comforting to him, like having his nailbat close at hand without the implicit threat it carries.

The first thing he does is transform his letterman jacket into a punk jacket. Eddie helps him design it, and its an elaborate testiment to the things Steve has done and has been through. The kids help make buttons and pins and patches for it too, each new one like a medal bestowed on him for his bravery and his service to them over the years.

He then swaps out his running shoes for combat boots which take a little getting used to since they're heavy but it feels right. They sit tighter on him and he finds it reassuring. He could also knock out a fucking window with them, which he finds out by accident so that's a definite plus.

He keeps his blue jeans but stops replacing them when they rip and tear. Its part of the style and Eddie loves to play with the little bits of skin that peak through the holes.

He starts wearing actual makeup here and there and finds that he really likes it. The eyeliner makes his eyes pop in a way that everyone finds distracting and its fun. Plus Robin and Eddie both sit in his lap when they apply it for him which is a bonus.

The only thing that stays the same is the hair (give or take a couple streaks of color here and there). It suits him and the change in aesthetic doesn't really affect his hair. If anything it actually kinda makes more sense. He looks like a greaser but more aggressive and he loves it. (Steve might not have chosen to become a warrior, but its definitely a part of him by now, and a part that has kept his loved ones safe over the years. He can grieve what it cost him and still love it for what it gave him too.)

His parents however do not love it. Not that he sees them often enough to really care what they think anymore, but the one time they catch him home his mother nearly faints and his father gets so angry it takes Steve back to being a helpless child again for a moment.

He accuses him of all kinds of things, (ruining their reputation, embarrassing them, disappointing God, you name it) but its not until he starts blaming Eddie for the changes to Steve's persona and attitude that he snaps.

Steve lectures his father like he would one of his kids, because he's acting like one of them. He doesn't even realized he's gone into full Babysitter mode until he sees his Mother's face. He's just so used to being the mature adult in any given situation it came naturally.

His mother to his endless surprise takes his side, tells his father he's clearly a grown man now and he can make his own choices. His father somehow looks even more shocked than Steve feels.

Steve doesn't rekindle his relationship with them, but they have an understanding. Which is better than he'd dared hope they'd ever have.

Steve Harrington is a punk, and he absolutely loves it. He has a family of metalheads that adore him and herd of children are somewhere in the middle and forming their own identities. He has a best friend who makes up her own damn rules, and a handful of friends who probably wouldn't mind the rules even if they knew what they were. And he's got a boyfriend who's helped him grow into his favorite version of himself yet.

#steddie #steve harington #punk!steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things au #listen i just realized how much I actually know about these subcultures #and now im letting the hyperfixations touch #plus I just think it would be neat if they let some of Steve's development leak into his appearance #i think he should be allowed to be sharper #while still being as sweet and protective as he is

1K notes · View notes

thewertsearch · 2 months

Text

Second part of the giga-ask compilation!

@publicuniversalworstie asked: Why assume the Horrorterrors would know that changing events would create a doomed timeline? That assumes both A) that the horrorterrors know the future and B) that they don't think it can really be changed. Maybe they genuinely thought they could change things, such as by perhaps fulfilling all the requisite loops a different way? Imagine a scenario where a time traveler learns of their death, therefore being destined to die, and instead fake their death to create the conditions under which they learned of the death originally.

It's possible. But if the Horrorterrors do have a way to trick the Alpha Timeline like that, then they've really been holding out on us by not mentioning it to the Players. Such a revelation would completely change the game - we might even be able to fake the Earth's death.

Anonymous asked: i want to learn more about coding to analyze homestuck better - do you have a place i could start? resources? idk love the liveblog hope you're doin well :]

Absolutely! I've got two separate answers for you, depending on what your goal is here.

If your main goal is just to analyse Homestuck, then you’re probably best off picking a language whose syntax is easy to understand, such as Python. You'll pick up on the basic logic pretty quickly, and the ~ATH snippets will start to make a lot more sense.

If you’re actually interested in programming for its own sake, then I recommend you start with my own first language, C. It’s a lot harder for a newbie to get to grips with, but doing so will give you a much more solid theoretical foundation then ostensibly ‘easier’ languages.

W3schools is a decent starting resource for both languages - but if you need more specific guidance, let me know, and I'd be happy to help!

@skelekingfeddy asked: actually grubmom having the same color wires as in that pic of sahlee wasnt intentional! i based it on how sollux’s game grubs have red and blue wires attached to them

Serendipity!

Anonymous asked: Did you run any mysterious ~ath programs on that computer of yours?

Honestly, running ATH on that thing would probably have improved it.

Anonymous asked: One voice headcanon I have for Terezi is the English dub of Power from Chainsaw man

Honestly, she sounds pretty much exactly how I imagine Terezi does. She even has the horns!

@martinkhall asked: I'm surprised none of the suggested instruments for a time player were an ocarina.

Some fruit is just too low-hanging.

@delicate-ruins asked: what's an animal you like that you think doesn't show up very much in media, be it fiction or news or just generally? example: i like secretary birds. but except for videos about them, i have never heard them references.

They're not obscure, per se, but there will never be enough sloths in media. The only fictional sloth of note is Sid from Ice Age – and he does not do them justice.

Capybaras are also underrated as hell – so much so that LibreOffice, which I'm using to edit this compilation, doesn’t even recognize the word as real!

Anonymous asked: “I’m trying to figure out if it’s fully a Breath outfit, or if there’s some Heir stuff too.” the general rule for god tier outfits is that the colors and symbol represent the aspect, the clothes represent the class. so, for example, if two princes of different aspects ascended, their clothing style would be the same but they would a have different color scheme. @skaiandestiny asked: If you haven't already figured it out, class informs the godtier outfit and aspect informs the colors and icon!

In that case, there is something about John’s outfit that says ‘heir’ – but nothing really stands out to me.

@driventopoison asked: Hey, I don't know if it's just me but it seems like you've skipped ahead. I have been following your liveblog daily, but I haven't seen you come across the windy thing yet. Is this because you were using the app or something? Also just want to let you know that I love your liveblog. Keep up the good work!

Thank you! Anyway, John’s Windy Thing is indeed documented on the liveblog, and it’s visible to me. I was using the app for some of that segment, though – are app-made posts particularly buggy?

@classpecting-guide-official asked: story about a modded game of sburb where the characters notice that something isn't right and slowly realize that their world is a lie

Back in Act 1, this is pretty much what I thought was happening. It was a simpler time.

@ignis-cain asked: Note the colors the capslock flashes for WV.

When WV locks his capsule, the button’s light flashes red and green – but I’m not sure what the significance of these colors is, in this situation.

Anonymous asked: i know i'm SUPER late to answer this, but i think the instantiation thing is the same as any video game, newly made with a prebaked history. when you name your character, that has been their name for their whole life, even though you thought it up a few seconds ago. when you enter the medium, the planet has a history and the denizens have memories, even though they just showed up when you entered.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is indeed what’s going on. The implications are just a lot more wild when the game is physically real, rather than virtual!

@kintatsu asked: So, I know I'm a little late to the party, but I have to point out: Alternian sunlight doesn't need to be THAT much stronger than Earth's to blind Terezi as quickly as it did. Trolls are nocturnal, which means they almost definitely have a tapetum lucidum (eyeshine membrane), which means that however much light entered Terezi's eyeballs? Her retinas were blasted by every photon twice.

Damn, Vriska. For a second, I thought this ask was explaining why Terezi wasn't in as much pain as I'd thought - but this alternate explanation might actually be worse than what I was picturing!

@delicate-ruins asked: It's delightful to see somebody read Homestuck and be as charmed by it as I and a lot of my friends were way back when we first read it, and the calm, digesting pace at which you're enjoying it is honestly so nice. I rushed way too much to catch up since my friends recommended it in about 2016, which means I went from knowing nothing about the comic to being caught up on it in like a week. I never sat down with the ideas and thought "hey, does this mean XYZ?" because quite often I got the answer five seconds later as I rushed to catch up. But seeing you asking those questions is so so fun. Yeah, DOES it mean that?? Guess we'll find out! In the meantime, we get to guess, which means we basically get to have fun twice. It's reigniting my enjoyment of homestuck quite significantly, I think!

Thank you! It’s really nice to be able to engage in a dialogue about the comic through these asks, which is something that wouldn't be possible if I was speeding through it. As I always say, I'm here for a good time and a long time.

@manorinthewoods asked: Alright, here's another transtimeline fun fact. Each of the kids was supposed to have a Quest related to their associated material - John had a land covered in oil, Rose's ocean was polluted with chalk, the gears of LOHAC were gummed by amber, and LOFAF was in a nuclear winter. Ultimately, while the ocean of LOLAR is still chalky, nothing but John's oil made the cut. ~LOSS (16/5/23)

I think it was a good change, then. Not everything has to be a pattern, and Dave's two weird maybe-quests are a lot more unique and interesting than a generic 'materials quest'.

@captorations asked: oh hey, this walkaround! so funny story, i used to run a blog where i posted one of terezi’s canon appearances each day, in order. yes, i completed my task, and more besides. however! when i was wandering through this as terezi, a glitch rendered me trapped. i decided that this counted as a noteworthy appearance, and took a screenshot. then, by sheer coincidence, it ended up being posted on… halloween. it was pretty great (also don’t forget to check out ctrl + t)

You accessed the double-secret version of Past Karkat: Wake Up, which plays the Earthbound Halloween Hack version of Megalovania rather than the Homestuck one.

Anonymous asked: Personally, I think John gaining so many levels so quickly is tied to his role as the heir - he gains so many levels without really trying, not because he's better than the trolls or his friends, but because he just kind of falls into it. The game rewards him for taking the path of least resistance.

That certainly makes sense if we just look at John - but I have trouble reconciling this interpretation with our other Heir. Equius certainly has some advantages, but they aren't exactly unique to him, as you'd expect them to be if his Heir class was responsible for them.

Yes, he's a highblood, but he's outranked by three non-Heirs - and his strength doesn't seem to be unique either, as Feferi seems capable of similar feats. Perhaps Equius will trip and fall into more unique privilege, but it hasn't happened yet.

Anonymous asked: my personal headcanons for midnight crew claspects: Slick - Prince of Blood, Droog - Mage of Space, Boxcars - Knight of Heart, Deuce - Bard of Doom. knowing you youre probably gonna attempt to analyse these LOL

Slick has had ties to Blood since he first met Karkat, so that tracks - and Boxcars is a shipper, so Nepeta's aspect is probably the best fit for now. I'm not sure about the other two, but I'll revisit them later!

#asks #full liveblog #act 5.2

67 notes · View notes

whomst-the-hell · 4 months

Text

i have so many thoughts abt colin provolone gradually turning out to be a hero despite it all because it irrevocably changed the feeling of the campaign, at least to me. imo, if all the scrumptious scoundrels had been morally bankrupt and self serving to the end, it would have just been tone. if everything is bad, then really nothing is. karna kills without remorse for her own gain, deli is ambitious above all else, raphaniel is a fucked up little freak, and even amangeux, who is ostensibly the most sympathetic and the most compassionate, cares more for the few than the many. at least to me, these traits would all have had net zero moral impact because its sort of what i expected, based on the setting and the source material. but colin broke all that by being kind, by doing what he could for the banana kid and by leaving deli and by doubling back and by dedicating the rest of his life to tracking down the sanctus putris and destroying this small piece of evil from an overwhelmingly evil world. suddenly there was this strange bright spot in the narrative and suddenly everyone else was so very dark. before ep4 some part of me kind of thought that, in a lot of ways, the characters were doomed by the nature of their story — the setting, the tone, the fact that its a prequel. so many characters were dead from the beginning. destiny has been designed. — and because of that the main characters almost didnt have a choice but to be cruel. they had to be selfish and violent. its what the story demanded. and then it was kind of like colin fucking provolone looked at the camera and said fuck that, i choose to be kind in whatever way i can, i choose to help in whatever way i can, i choose to atone in whatever way i can. and i sort of felt like yelling ‘have you all been able to do that this whole goddamn time?’

also theres something abt the fact that his secret, the thing that brought him into this narrative, the reason that he is there at all, isnt even really about him. he says it himself -‘i dont think i even really did anything’. everyone else is being blackmailed by the skeletons in their closets. their own actions. karna killed the spymaster, raphaniel poisoned the king, amangeux had a bastard child then killed the father, deli was trying to fuck his aunt. truthfully, i dont think any of these things (except maybe raphaniel’s) make them bad people (karna and deli were both literal children, and amangeux was grieving then trying to protect her baby) but they are still Main Character Moments. colin provolone was just some guy, who had the misfortune of being born a fontina. and then he killed a god.

#the ravening war #colin provolone #can you tell that he was my favourite?#dimension 20 #d20 #honestly this is mostly me taking notes for future reference bc it felt so impactful

61 notes · View notes

vodika-vibes · 6 months

Note

so in the delta squad masterlist (my autocorrect wanted to write masterpiece….not wrong…) we’re missing Fixer and this is a pity. So I would like to request something for him. Maybe the reader once saves his life and he’s like super mad because ItS aGaInSt ThE rEgUlAtIoNs or something but then some time later it’s the other way around and he does not hesitate to save the reader (and break the rules) because surprise! He’s madly in love

that would be nice…🫣

The Delta's Jedi

Summary: You've been working alone for the majority of your career, so when you're assigned Delta Squad, you're less than thrilled. But your opinion quickly changes.

Pairing: Clone Commando Fixer x Jedi!Reader

Word Count: 2548

Warnings: Mentions of torture (nothing detailed)

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni

A/N: So, my plan had been to write my normal four stories for today, but this idea had me in a stranglehold, so this is the only other thing I'm going to write today. Also, there might be a minor implication that the reader is also in a relationship with the other members of Delta, but it could also be seen as just being a close friendship.

When you were assigned to assist Delta Squad, you weren’t sure it was a good idea. Mostly because as a Jedi Shadow, you’ve always been better suited to working alone, and partly because you were pretty sure that your specific skill set wouldn’t mesh with theirs.

And, by and large, you were right.

You specialize in information gathering. A spy, for lack of a better word. And while you are handy with a saber, the truth is you rarely use yours and you actually have a preference towards blasters.

After all, lightsabers are the opposite of stealthy.

And Delta Squad already had an intelligence person. In the form of Fixer. So you argued against it, at length. But you were overruled. Of course, you’ve never been one to follow orders directly.

So, here you are. Ostensibly on the same mission as Delta Squad, just…not attached to them directly. In fact, you’re pretty sure that they aren't aware that they have a Jedi yet.

Yikes. You’re going to write a stern letter to the Council about important information slipping through the cracks.

But, that’s a problem for later.

You absently reach out through the force, pinging the four men under your care almost absently, so you’re able to keep track of where they are and if they’re in danger, and then you slip into the ventilation shaft and silently enter the facility.

You manage to secure the information you need, plus some extra, and you’re about to leave the facility to wait at the ship for Delta, when you get a ping from the force string you attached to the four men.

Three of them, Boss, Sev, and Scorch, are fine. Stressed and worried, but largely fine, but Fixer has been separated from them, and appears to be going down.

On the one hand, you could trust his brothers to save him. On the other, however-

You slip your comm extension into your ear, and effortlessly slice into Delta’s comms, “Pull back to the drop ship,” You order as your gaze tracks Fixer’s location, “

There’s silence for a moment, and then a deep voice, “Who’s this?”

“What, you weren’t told you were getting a Jedi?”

“No,” Boss said, sounding annoyed, “We weren’t.”

You hiss out a sharp breath as you jump back into the vent and start navigating your way down, “This war is a hot mess,” You bitch under your breath, “The left hand doesn’t know what the right is up to.”

“We can’t just leave,” Scorch, your mind provides, says irritably, “We haven’t gotten the intel, and they have Fixer!”

“Relax Scorch.” You hear his sputter, “I have the intel plus some bonus intel. And I’m heading to Fixer as we speak.”

“We can be your backup.” Sev offers.

“You can go back to the ship,” You silently drop down a floor, and then pause to get your bearings, “Listen. You’re all very good. But so am I. They didn’t assign just any old Jedi to Delta. Ah, there it is.” You turn and crawl down a vent, “Fixer isn’t going to be able to get out the way that I got in, which means I need you all to make some noise.”

“A diversion.” Boss says thoughtfully.

“Just so. I’m very good, but I’m not ‘take on a whole army solo’ good. Not with someone to protect, at least.” You grimace as you slide through a suddenly smaller section, “So, I’m thinking a series of explosions-”

“Based at different locations-” Scorch continues.

“And with me keeping the crowd thin-” Sev adds.

“That might just work,” Boss agrees, “You’ll get Fixer out?”

“You have my word.”

“Alright General,” You make a face at the title, “Happy hunting.” And then the comm cuts out, and you heave out a sigh as you continue your trek downward.

Eventually you find the small room that Fixer is being held in. A handful of droids, some Geonosians. Nothing too bad. Aside, of course, from the entire army standing between you, Fixer, and the dropship.

Oh well.

You carefully balance yourself on the vent opening and then you kick down.

All attention turns to you, and you casually, as though you don’t have a dozen blasters aimed at you, cross the room and pick up Fixer’s helmet. And then you turn to the room at large and you smile.

You lift your hands, Fixer’s helmet hanging from your fingers, and you push-

The droids slam into the wall with enough force that they shatter, the Geonosians, tragically, do not. So you draw your saber, and you move. 45 seconds later, the three Geonosian guards are no longer a threat, and you’re kneeling behind Fixer to free him from his manacles.

“Who the kriff are you?” He asks as you hand him your helmet.

“I’m Delta Squad’s Jedi General. Nice to meet you.”

He blinks at you, twice, and then he frowns, “Regulations dictate that any clone captured by the enemy get left behind.”

You move so you’re crouching in front of him, “I cannot emphasize this enough, but fuck regulations.”

Fixer scowls, “I think I hate you.”

“So long as you’re alive at the end of this, you can hate me as much as you like.” You stand and pull a second saber off your belt and you press your finger to your comm, “Boss? I have Fixer, just waiting for an opening.”

“Copy that, General.” Boss says steadily, “One distraction in 3…2…now!”

The building shakes as there’s a massive explosion somewhere above you, “I found a fuel tank,” Scorch sounds far too pleased with himself.

“We’ll see you both at the drop ship,” Boss says, “Good luck.”

One hour later, you’re safely sitting on the gunship, your lightsabers stowed at the small of your back once more, and you’re wrapping your hand in bacta infused bandages.

“So, why didn’t you tell us that you were on the mission to begin with?” Boss asks, his arms folded over his chest.

You flex your hand, grimace, and unwrap the bandage to try again, “I’m not used to working with other people. I figured that I would just work tangentially alongside you until I was able to convince the Council that you didn’t actually need a Jedi.”

“And then Fixer got snatched.”

“And then Fixer got snatched.” You agree, “I’m a Jedi, it’s not in my nature to leave people behind.” This time, when you flex your hand, it doesn’t feel half as bad, so you leave the bandage as is, and then you flash a small grin and introduce yourself.

*********

Contrary to your worries, you actually fit in pretty well with Delta squad. Sure, there were a few bumps to work out, but it didn’t take long before you developed a strong working relationship with the group. Which very quickly turned into a genuine friendship.

Well. With most of them.

Fixer doesn’t like you. At you, you don’t think he likes you, he’s kind of hard to read in the force, and, well, you don’t like prodding at emotions in the force. It makes you feel guilty.

So you make due with a professional relationship Fixer. He knows his stuff, after all. And your specialties tend to cross in some ways, so you actually end up working together a lot.

And sometimes you might think that he actually likes you, when you’re talking about the latest advances in tech and cybersecurity, and then it’s almost like he suddenly remembers who he’s talking to, and he goes cold again.

Honestly. Fixer’s just confusing.

It is too bad. He’s cute, and you are nursing a small crush on him. But that’s your problem to deal with, and if he’s not interested then he’s not interested.

So you put it aside and focus on building a strong work relationship.

And you think it’s working, none of the missions you go on with Delta go horribly wrong, after all.

And then the Council assigns you a solo mission.

And while Delta Squad argued against it, claiming that having back-up is important, you do manage to talk them into letting you go on the mission solo. They’re just protective. It’s adorable.

After all, it’s just a simple intel gathering mission. You’ve been doing them solo since you were a child.

Famous last words, so to speak.

********

“-eneral. General, can you hear me?”

You groan as pain shoots through your entire body, “F’xer?” You slur his name out, the mixture of pain, drugs, and suppressors making it incredibly difficult to focus.

“Oh, thank the force.” He sounds relieved, “General, are you alright?”

“Depends,” You manage to get out, your voice slightly clearer.

“Oh what?”

“Your definition of alright.”

“Are you injured?” Fixer asks.

“Yeah. P-pretty badly, by the feel of it.” You grimace as you try to keep your balance. You’re not quite hanging from the middle of the cell you’re in. Not quite in the sense that the chains holding your arms over your head are just long enough that you can balance on your toes, but they’re also too short for you to actually be able to relax.

And you’ve been hanging here for a while, based on the ache in your shoulders, and the fact that you can’t feel your hands.

“General,” Fixer’s voice cuts through the haze, “Look around you, what can you see?”

“I’m…in a cell. Underground maybe. There are no windows.” You answer, “Fixer, what are you doing here?”

“It’s not just me. We’re all here.”

“Why?”

He’s quiet for a moment, “It’s been almost a month, General. Did you think we wouldn’t come for you?”

“I thought that regulations said that I was supposed to be left behind.” You joke weakly.

There’s a long moment of silence, before he sighs softly, “I would never. Even if it is regulation.”

You release a slow breath, “Well…that's good to know.”

“We’re going to be there soon, General. Just…just hold on, okay?”

“Copy that. I’ll just…hang out.” A delirious giggle bubbles from your lips, and you can hear Fixer’s concern over the comm. It’s fine, when they get here they’ll realize it’s hilarious.

You must have blacked out again, because the next thing you’re aware of is rapid gunfire, and shouting. And then your cell door slams open. You blink blearily at the man standing in the door. You can’t see clearly, but you’re pretty sure you see white and green, which means Fixer.

He crosses over to you and reaches up to pick the manacles holding your hands over your head. And he catches you when you fall into him. “I have you General. I have you. We’re going to get you home, and you’re going to get a nice bacta bath.”

You blink up at him, hazily, and he curses, “What did they give to you?”

“Just about everything, I think.” You admit, and then, when the world spins nauseatingly, you press your forehead against his armor, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to walk.”

And you think you’re imagining it, but you swear you feel his gloved hand press against the back of your head, “That’s alright, we brought a stretcher.” He turns away from you, long enough to pull the hover stretcher into the room, and then he carefully sets you on it.

Just before you slip back into unconsciousness, you feel the prick of an IV sliding into your arm, and you hear Fixer’s voice, “Everything’s going to be fine, General. We’ll take care of you now.”

*********

The next time you wake, it’s to the annoying beep of a heart monitor, and the sharp smell of antiseptic.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” You turn your head slightly and see Fixer sitting next to the bed you’re in, “Good morning, General.”

“Morning,” You mumble, “We’re back at base?”

“We are. You’ve been in a bacta tank for two weeks. And you’ve been under 24 hour watch since you were pulled out a day ago.” Fixer explains, “It…it was pretty close there, for a bit.”

You press an arm over your eyes, “Sorry.”

“Not your fault. You shouldn’t have been sent alone.” He hesitantly takes your hand, the one closest to him, “It’s not going to happen again.”

“Yeah?”

“Boss called the Jedi Council after we got you back and there was no small amount of threatening done.” Fixer sounds amused, “And when the council asked about the intel rather than you, Sev and Scorch exploded on them too.”

“And that worked?”

“It was accepted that Delta Squad is far too valuable to risk us going AWOL due to losing you.” Fixer says dryly.

You laugh weakly, “You would never.”

“If we lost you, we just might.”

You shook your head, and smiled at him, “You’re loyal soldiers.”

“We are. Loyal to the person who expected us to be more than soldiers. To the person who expected us to use our best judgment rather than mindlessly following orders.”

You drop your arm and blink at him in surprise.

“You seem surprised.”

“I would expect this kind of talk from Scorch or Sev…not so much you.” You admit.

He chuckles, “The 212 is fiercely loyal to their Jedi, as is the 104. Is it so surprising that we’re just as loyal to our Jedi?”

You sigh and sink back against your pillow, “No. I suppose not.”

“Good.” He pauses and his grip around your hand tightens, “I need to tell you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t hate you. I know I’m not as…overtly affectionate with you as, say, Scorch is, but I don’t hate you.” Fixer explains quietly, “It just took me some time to figure out what it is I do feel for you.”

“And what’s that?”

He smiles wryly, “I’m afraid I’m in love with you. And I know you’re a Jedi, and I know it’s not allowed, but-”

You laugh softly, “I’m a Shadow, Fixer. The rules don’t necessarily apply to me like they do with most other Jedi.” Slowly, painfully, you roll onto you side and you reach out to lightly touch his cheek, “For what it’s worth, the only reason everyone knows that Jedi don’t do relationships is to protect us from people trying to use sex or romance to influence us.”

He blinks, twice, and then huffs out a sharp breath, “That makes so much sense. The Jedi are seen as incorruptible because they can’t be bribed.”

“The ancient Jedi were clever assholes. There are those who have decided to adhere to that rumor as the truth, but you won’t find a single Shadow who views it as anything more than rumor.” You smile softly.

“Oh…so-”

“So,” You continue, “I’m willing to take a relationship a day at a time with you, if that’s agreeable to you?”

“Very agreeable.” He pauses, “Does that mean I can kiss you?”

“I taste like bacta.”

“Don’t care, and also not an answer.”

You smile at him gently, “Yes, you can kiss me.”

Fixer leans in and gently, very gently, brushes his lips against yours. And then he pulls away, “I’ll kiss you properly when you’re not still laying in a hospital bed.”

You laugh softly, and settle back on your pillow, “Alright, give me an update. What’s been going on the last…month and a half?”

#star wars #tcw #clone commando fixer x reader #fixer x reader #star wars fanfiction #x reader fanfiction #answered asks

69 notes · View notes

anghraine · 6 months

Text

petty ranting about the LOTR movies

I've been in various fandoms where an ostensibly "faithful" adaptation was frequently held up as the One True Version of the text, the author's vision brought to life, the one nothing could ever compare to and the reason no others should ever be made, how is it possible to envision the characters or interpretations of them differently blah blah blah. (1995 P&P fandom is very frequently like this, sometimes Faith and Fear fans are, esp wrt The Borgias, etc.)

But I'm not sure I've ever seen an adaptation so uncritically adored by so many as the Jackson LOTR movies. I don't think any fandom is so insistent on an adaptation as people are insistent on the movies as the one true version of Middle-earth, even where they're radically different. Even when people agree with criticisms, it's been really noticeable that people often also add disclaimers about how they love the movies, they're perfect in almost every way, they're super faithful apart from this thing, of course the reason for [choice that was made] was understandable it's just that... etc.

And the thing is, I may hate some of the interpretations in other allegedly faithful adaptations. Like, speaking of the 1995 P&P, I dislike a lot about it and its influence on popular perception of what P&P is, of what adaptation should look like, of the brooding version of my fave hero Darcy, and so on. But I do understand why it's often held up as a faithful adaptation.

It uses a lot of the original text (though it can be subtly or glaringly different in execution), it's able to blur the lines between its own inventions and material from the text in a way that's often convinced audiences that things from the adaptation are actually in the novel, and it's more successful at doing this than any other Davies version of Austen IMO, it has a very convincing cast, blahblah. Like, I disagree that it is as faithful as it's reputed to be (by a long ways), but I get why it has that reputation, at least.

But I genuinely find Jackson's LOTR so different from the book! The movies certainly draw from it in significant ways, but dialogue is heavily altered or manufactured, motivations and characterization are simplified, altered, or just outright transformed into something entirely different, themes are shifted around, the structure is seriously changed (something Tolkien specifically did not want to happen), the relatively compact battles in the book are turned into big action set pieces taking up major swaths of screen time, a lot of the lore is heavily contracted, changed, or simply absent where it casts heavy shadows over the dynamics in the book, and oh yeah, they manage to be even more racist.

Some of this (not the racism) is defensible even if I don't personally agree w/ those defenses in a lot of cases. But there are a ton of differences between them! And you can talk about the films as their own thing cinematically and that's its own discussion. But the conflation of the movies with the actual things Tolkien actually wrote is even more widespread and absolute and annoying than with things like the 1995 P&P, with not half as much reason for it.

#never thought i'd somewhat defend the 1995 pride and prejudice and how irritating fandom is about it but...#whew #youtuber challenge: talk about modern fantasy adaptations without referencing the lotr movies. like. at all.#bc i'm pretty sure most of the youtubers recommended to me are constitutionally incapable of it #anghraine rants #pj critical #legendarium blogging #legendarium fanwank #austen blogging #austen fanwank #andrew davies critical #long post

63 notes · View notes

fictionyoubelieve · 11 days

Text

This is a VERY long text post.

thanks @squareallworthy for giving me the excuse to make a House of Leaves post!! I'm going to try to make this accessible to everyone, so:

If you haven't read HoL, feel free to bail if this goes too deep or stops making sense. Personally, I don't think you need to worry about spoilers because it's not that kind of book (it usually spoils itself anyway), but if you'd rather go in knowing nothing, slam that J key now.

If you have read HoL, feel free to skip ahead to the theories. You're presumably good at tuning out extraneous information by now. :)

What is House of Leaves?

House of Leaves is a novel by Mark Z. Danielewski (MZD), published in 2000. It's an example of postmodern literature, which according to Wikipedia is:

a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues.

...all of which is House of Leaves to a T. Rather than capturing a single narrative, the book's text layers multiple stories, which refer to both each other and to external (e.g. mythical) stories, and which often reference the fact that they are stories in a book.

You can find it archived here, though unfortunately that scan/OCR seems to mangle the text in ways that will be hard to distinguish from everything else it's got going on.

Overall, I think the book is really cool and interesting, but maybe not worth sinking a ton of time and effort into. It's not a fun or easy read. Definitely worth checking out, but don't be afraid to skim or abandon it if it's not your thing.

The layers of HoL

The innermost layer is The Navidson Record (TNR), which is ostensibly a documentary but effectively a found-footage horror film. It's a series of films about the Navidson family--an unmarried couple with two young children--moving into a house in Virginia, and discovering that something is very strange about it. First subtly and then dramatically, the interior of the house grows and changes, in defiance of physical laws. One closet in particular becomes an eerie and seemingly infinite labyrinth, which they explore at their peril. (Don't worry--the overall novel is creepy and sometimes upsetting, but not outright scary. I'm a weenie about horror and had no trouble.)

The next layer is a pseudo-academic text about TNR by a blind man named Zampanò. He recounts the events of TNR, but also meanders on long tangents about other stories or academic works.

The third layer is the primary one we experience as the book House of Leaves. A character calling himself Johnny Truant discovered the disorganized and incomplete manuscript in Zampanò's apartment after that man's death, and he has assembled and edited it into this book, as well as added an introduction and lengthy footnotes relating stories from his own life. Johnny often contradicts himself, freely admits to making things up or changing the previous layers to suit his whims, and appears to mentally deteriorate over the course of the novel. He also says he can't find any evidence that TNR actually exists.

There's a thin layer added by "the Editors," who supposedly received the text from Johnny, and published it while in contact with him. They add some appendices and minor notes throughout, mainly to provide English translations for certain excerpts or to state that something the text refers to is missing. They include a purported still frame from TNR in the appendices, with no comment from Johnny.

All of the above, of course, was actually written by MZD, the real-life author of HoL. He self-published the earliest version of HoL to the internet, before publishing the full version as a physical book. He also produced some teleplays related to the work, and a collection of letters from Johnny's mother. The letters were originally published separately, but now most of them are included as an appendix to HoL. MZD's sister, the singer-songwriter Poe, also released the album Haunted around the same time as HoL, and it serves as a companion or counterpart to the novel.

The final layer is us, the readers. We interact with the text and also with each other, like I'm doing with this post. MZD's website still hosts forum threads from the time the book came out, where readers deciphered and theorized about it together. This is an important and intentional aspect of the work, as I'll explain in more detail later (see "The Meta").

Sub-stories

There are a few smaller anecdotes within the text which almost serve as their own layers, but don't fit neatly into the hierarchy above:

The Chiclitz play The Minotaur, on p110-111

The story of The Atrocity, on p297-300

The story of the changeling/cyanotic child, on p518-521 and referenced obliquely on p48-49

Themes and motifs

A non-exhaustive and highly subjective list, ordered very roughly from the most to least prominent:

The Greek myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth

House

Madness, memory, and meaning

The sea and the sky

Darkness, absence, emptiness

Yggdrasil, the world tree; trees, leaves, and paper; the Cumaean Sibyl

Fidelity (in multiple senses of the word)

Colors, especially red/blue or red/blue/green/yellow

Death and rebirth, procreation, the womb

The biblical myth of Abraham and his sons

The biblical myth of Jonah and the Whale

The eye, cameras

Head injuries, holes in the head

Families, especially parents and twins/pairs of siblings

Note that there are connections and overlap between these themes. I'm going to argue that the first few in particular are strongly intertwined.

The Meta

Most of the fan theories I've seen are focused on the usual concerns: "what do you think really happened in the story? what does this mean for the characters?" That's reasonable, but since HoL is extremely aware of itself and its readers, I think it's also worth asking what the text expects from us or what it's trying to communicate directly, if anything. IMO those questions are easier to answer than nailing down the events of the story, and that's on purpose.

While rightfully regarded as a challenging and puzzling book, HoL actually is pretty blatant about helping us "solve" most of it. Heck, it color-codes its major motifs. There were many instances where I was like "oh, this reminds me of that other part from a ways back" and then the footnote would tell me to refer back to that part I was remembering. When there's an encoded message, like the Morse code or first-letter sections, Johnny typically makes a comment providing the key to decoding it--and in some cases also tells us the "hidden message," like in his conversation with the band near the end of the book.

The book straight-up tells you how to read it. On p115, just before it starts getting really wild with the typesetting in a section structured like a maze, Zampanò's text gives this advice for navigating mazes:

In order to escape then, we have to remember we cannot ponder all paths but must decode only those necessary to get out. We must be quick and anything but exhaustive.

The next footnote (139) also warns: "[in a maze,] the faster you go, the worse you are entangled" and "If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing."

And of course, the book provides an extensive (albeit somewhat playful) index, so that if you have a theory about a certain word or concept, you can easily go back and look up examples. I believe the page numbers also match up across editions, so that different readers can more easily confer with one another.

All of this strongly suggests that MZD very much wants us to view the text as a puzzle to decode with other readers. He makes sure we know there are patterns and hidden messages to be found.

The madness of analysis

Like I mentioned above, Johnny's mental state deteriorates over the course of the book. A lot of his story also has to do with his late mother, who was committed to a psychiatric institution when he was young, and who shows similar quirks and inconsistencies in her letters to Johnny. The reader is quickly clued in that Johnny is an unreliable narrator, and by the end of the book it's nearly impossible to untangle what "really happened" in Johnny's narrative because there are so many revisions and contradictions.

Zampanò's writing may seem like a sharp contrast to Johnny's, since it is stuffy and academic rather than casual and coarse. But the two strongly parallel each other, as do the two characters. They both ramble and are prone to lengthy tangents based on tenuous connections; Zampanò seems to make things up and messily add and redact just as Johnny does with his stories. Both seem haunted by and obsessed with the manuscript in similar ways.

Other HoL readers have called it a satire of academic texts, but I'd go a step farther and say it's drawing a parallel between (perhaps overzealous) academic analysis and psychosis: seeing patterns or connections where there are none, jumping to wildly different and sometimes bizarre conclusions from the same experience, getting lost in theories with little connection to reality, communicating in ways that are hard for others to understand.

It even encourages its readers to engage in the same behavior, by hinting at many different patterns and connections yet making them inconsistent, uncertain, and contradictory. It goads you into trying to analyze it, but you'll just end up like Charlie in the Pepe Silvia meme:

Derrida's Deconstruction

Wait, so does that mean it's futile to try to analyze House of Leaves? Well, sort of, and the book tells us this! Remember that part (see "The Meta") that was giving us advice on how to navigate a maze, i.e. the book? On that same page, p115, it also says:

Unfortunately, the anfractuosity of some labyrinths may actually prohibit a permanent solution. More confounding still, its complexity may exceed the imagination of even the designer. Therefore anyone lost within must recognize that no one, not even a god or an Other, comprehends the entire maze and so therefore can never offer a definitive answer. [In the Navidson house,] any way out remains singular and applicable only to those on that path at that particular time. All solutions then are necessarily personal.

This sounds a lot like Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism, which isn't a coincidence given that Derrida was just quoted on p112. From the Wikipedia page on Deconstruction:

Derrida's deconstruction strategy is also used by postmodernists to locate meaning in a text rather than discover meaning due to the position that it has multiple readings.

It's probably also relevant that most of the book is about Johnny interpreting a text after the literal death of the author.

Footnote 140, which comes after "even the designer" in the above excerpt, includes this, in red and crossed out:

Or in other words: shy from the sky. No answer lies there. It cannot care, especially for what it no longer knows. Treat that place as a thing unto itself, independent of all else, and confront it on those terms. You alone must find the way. No one else can help you. Every way is different. And if you do lose yourself at least take solace in the absolute certainty that you will perish.

This ties the more general advice on interpreting texts back to the specific narratives in HoL. Before we dig into that more in the next section, note that Derrida was also a fan of putting things "under erasure" by crossing them out. Hmm...

Madness and the Minotaur

In multiple ways, the Minotaur is associated with absence. Most obviously, text mentioning it by name usually only appears in red and crossed out--Johnny says these are sections he recovered after Zampanò tried to erase them. The Minotaur also seems to be absent within TNR; the labyrinth of the House suggests its presence through growls and slash marks, but a beast never actually appears, and instead, things within the labyrinth seem to gradually fade out of existence. In myth, of course, the Minotaur was removed from society by hiding it in the labyrinth, and was eventually slain by Theseus, obliterating it forever.

On p335 we get footnote 295, again in red and crossed out:

At the heart of the labyrinth waits the Mi[ ]taur and like the Minotaur of myth its name is [ ] Chiclitz treated the maze as trope for psychic concealment, its excavation resulting in (tragic[ ] reconciliation. But if in Chiclitz's eye the Minotaur was a son imprisoned by a father's shame, is there then to Navidson's eye an equivalent misprision of the [ ] in the depths of that place? And for that matter does there exist a chance to reconcile the not known with the desire for its antithesis?

(The footnote continues, making the shape of a sword with large gaps in the blade.) Empty brackets in this section supposedly denote burnt holes in the manuscript, but since they are consistently used to make puns, it's clear that at least one of the authors is being intentional. We could read the gaps here as literal: the name of the Minotaur is [nothing], the labyrinth conceals the treacherous [nothing] in its depths.

The chapter that footnote appears in (Chapter 13), which is titled The Minotaur, begins with a quote that is translated as so (p313):

a slow shadow spreads across the prairie, but still, the act of naming it, of guessing what is its nature and its circumstances creates a fiction, not a living creature, not one of those who wander on the earth.

In this poem, El otro tigre, Borges compares a tiger in a poem, made of words and symbols, to "the other tiger" of flesh and blood, out in the wild. No matter how he tries to capture it with writing, the real tiger will always elude him.

So the Minotaur is connected to absence, nothingness, emptiness, and so on. This chapter draws additional associations with death and madness, which of course are also forms of loss or absence--both of self, and of meaning.

Is Johnny the Minotaur?

Johnny is strongly associated with the Minotaur, but his exact relationship with it is more complex than simply "Johnny is the Minotaur" or "the Minotaur represents Johnny". He is stalked by the creature in various forms, and he has nightmares or delusions in which he is the Minotaur. Raymond, the abusive foster dad, calls Johnny "beast". I think it's most accurate to say he is scared of the Minotaur and scared of being or becoming it, especially if we're interpreting it as nothingness or madness. And we know how his story ends.

There's another association I make with Johnny which isn't as explicit and doesn't seem to have been discussed as much, and that is to Icarus. There are hints of this early on--his father is a pilot, he's strongly associated with the sea and drowning, his fantasy when he meets Thumper sounds like flying--but it's brought home in the story about getting the scars on his arms, on page 505, and all the allusions and imagery. He burns and then drowns.

Zampanò, likewise, is like Daedalus. He built the labyrinth that is the manuscript, and which traps both Johnny and himself. There are some suggestions in the text that he and Johnny are like figurative (or in some theories, literal) father and son. But Daedalus, unlike Perilaus, was able to free himself from his own invention, and it seems like this wasn't true for Zampanò.

(This may be too much of a pet theory; I'm not sure it's as well-supported as the other parts of this post. But there's something there, I'm pretty sure.)

House

A house is a structure that defines empty space and imbues it with meaning by separating it from the greater nothingness. The novel is likewise a structure that gives form to a particular nothingness (fiction) by defining it and separating it from the greater nothingness (everything else that has not happened).

As readers, we follow a narrative "thread" through the text, but encounter only the Minotaur (nothingness) within. Just as the Minotaur in Chiclitz's play was portrayed sympathetically, the absence does not need to be bad or monstrous--it's just nothing. As we see in the key shape of footnote 123 (p110-111), the Minotaur is the key, but there is no Minotaur. There is no key. The key is crossed out (both the text comprising it, and the key itself, by being split across two pages). Perhaps we "slay" this Minotaur by imposing our own meaning? Would that be noble or tragic?

The house itself is what matters, but the house is blue, and blue means open to interpretation--what a blue screen meant in the 90s, before digital film became the norm. Everyone projects their own thoughts and fears onto the house, and it reflects those back at them. It's meaning and memory; you get out of it exactly what you bring. Blue is shifting and unfathomable like the sea. You could lose yourself in its depths.

Though "out of the blue" specifically seems more like a deus ex machina, because I'm pretty sure the blue of the sky is associated with God, eyes/cameras/observers, and us (MZD and the readers), though I don't have examples prepared to back that up. "Shy from the sky" (see "Derrida's Deconstruction") could then be taken as "don't look to the author for answers".

But if there is any meaning to be found, it also can't be found looking only within the text and the world it defines, without considering those final layers. The stories all intertwine and even loop back on themselves, as when Navidson and Johnny both encounter their own book. Using the HoL to light your way through HoL will lead nowhere. You'll need help from the outside.

So?

Okay, okay, okay. So what?

"SO?" asks the text (p103), and maybe you do, too. Sew buttons, says the Morse code of footnote 119 on the same page. Dismissing the question? Or suggesting you work hard to secure your buttons with a whole spool of thread, as Johnny does near the end (p514) to avoid losing them to the labyrinth?

Shortly after, on p516, Johnny writes this:

Wasn’t darkness nothingness? Wasn’t that Navidson's discovery? Wasn’t it Zampanò's? Or have I misconstrued it all? Missed the obvious, something still undiscovered waiting there deep within me, outside of me, powerful and extremely patient, unafraid to remain, even though it is and always has been free.

This (and some of his other writing late in the story) reads to me like possibly an acknowledgement or dim awareness of reality outside the book, but I'm not sure. I'm just going to point to it, and also the part a little further down the page, where he describes a sunset as "Reds finally marrying blues."

How do we reconcile red and blue? Is it about reconciling ourselves to the lack of true meaning, as in Nihilism? Or choosing to focus only on the "real", refusing to lose ourselves in the endless cycle of interpretation?

I don't know. There's probably more that can be built on this foundation, but this is as far as I've gotten. If you actually got through all that, wow, thanks for reading, and by all means let me know your own thoughts.

#hol #house of leaves #theorycrafting #literary analysis

22 notes · View notes

dog-park-dissidents · 10 months

Note

I’m a queer anarchist, and your music has really helped me accept myself, so here goes…what advice do you have on loving my radical self? I find myself trying to look respectable and chill to avoid being a stereotype, opting out of actions to please my family, and just internalizing a lot of BS about what it means to be an anarchist in the world. Thank you so much!!

David Graeber, RIP, guy at Occupy Wall Street who coined the slogan "we are the 99%," often said he was a "small-a anarchist" and that anarchism was a thing he did, not an identity. That is probably the healthiest way to engage with anarchism in a modern world where political identities and political language have been turned into sports teams and brands, completely divorced from anything that the words behind them actually mean. US politics at least have turned into "are you a LIBERAL or a CONSERVATIVE" which sort of means something but also means nothing, and its meanings contradict each other to the point of uselessness. They're not real ideological frameworks, after all. Nobody can give you a coherent manifesto of US American "Liberalism" but it's the thing you're supposed to agree with if you don't think gay people should die?? Maybe??? It doesn't even have any connection with the philosophy of classical liberalism, which is closer to stereotypically Republican fiscal politics, EXCEPT for when the ostensible "left wing" liberals actually agree with that shit? Anyway yeah it's a mess and it's no wonder why the younger generation is desperately trying to find an alternative way of labeling themselves so as to signal that we're outside of all that bullshit.

So don't do that. Actually be outside of all that bullshit instead of coming up with an edgier sports team to root for. Not that you're necessarily doing that, but just, remember not to do that.

Focus on the material circumstances you live in: the state and money and laws and all that shit are just things somebody made up one day before you were born. You exist in a world you had no say in constructing. Your goal is to figure out how to survive, and then to thrive, and then to be happy, under these circumstances. And ideally make them better for everyone else.

Now as for opting out of actions to please your family. Sounds like you're stuck in a family situation where you're not free to go where you want and be yourself without scrutiny, and that sucks. From the perspective of an effective anarchist, remember that it's from each according to their ability, and you don't have to feel any guilt about not doing your part to change the world.

But from a queer perspective? That queerness sounds a lot more like what's causing your tension about making yourself look more respectable. And that plays into this feeling you have of being trapped by family, or by capitalism, or whatever forces are making you feel the need to put yourself in a box. Obviously you've woven your queer identity pretty deep with your anarchism, which is good, but that definitely makes the desire to express your anarchist identity a whole lot stronger. It can feel like the same thing as your sexual orientation or gender when it's such a deep part of your worldview.

And that makes for a big contradiction in a world where political labels have turned into deep personal identities at the expense of any coherent intellectualism. Whoops. Everybody else has been forced to pick a vapid red or blue choice and here you are with an extremely deep sense of pink and black. Uh oh.

But that's the great thing about queerness, is to be comfortable existing as a contradiction, as category-defying, as someone that doesn't need to be intellectually consistent because you simply ARE. So be you. Don't feel like you have to debate the chuds in your head to explain your existence.

88 notes · View notes