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dustedmagazine · 6 months

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Dust Volume Nine, Number 10

Older, but not a bit wiser, the Hives return

Fall comes with its smell of maple in the leaves, its intimations of mortality and, this year, its share of unsettling events—war in the middle east, AI in everything and the murder of our beloved Bandcamp by capitalist privateers. (We are not equating these things by any means.) Like always, we turn to music, the annihilating blare of metal, the agile interplay of improvisation, the well-shaped contours of pop, depending on our individual tastes. We hope you’ll find something to ease your own personal burden in all this as well. Contributors include Bryon Hayes, Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Mathers, Alex Johnson, Jennifer Kelly and Ray Garraty.

Due to technical issues we're posting this in two parts, so don't miss the second one.

Ad Hoc — Corpse (Shame File Music / Albert’s Basement)

Ad Hoc was a Melbourne-based improvising unit, an experimental outfit that should have higher prominence. It only took 40-plus years, but Shame File Music and Albert’s Basement are finally spearheading a reissue initiative. Last year saw the arrival of the trio’s sole release, the hypnotic Distance cassette. It disappeared the moment it became available. Corpse documents an unconventional live performance from the group. They prepared their instruments (guitars, an EMS Synthi AKS synth and tape loops) for performance prior to the arrival of the audience and then shut off their amps. When all were seated, the trio turned on the amplifiers and unfurled an aleatoric blast of sound. The resulting music is far removed from the ambient tone clusters of Distance. The first piece shimmers in a way that calls to mind Matthew Bower’s Sunroof project, while the latter piece bathes in guitar noise so thick that it may have influenced The Dead C’s The Operation of the Sonne EP. Ad Hoc have today’s noisemakers beat: Corpse presents itself with a freshness that belies its 1980 provenance.

Bryon Hayes

Axolotl — Abrasive (Souffle Continu)

The French trio Axolotl existed for a few years in the early 1980s, and it reflects the aesthetic concerns of its time. Guitarist Marc Dufourd’s playing betrays some acquaintance with the work of Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser, and the fibrous tones and agile exchanges between reeds players Jacques Oger and Etienne Brunet recall Evan Parker. All three double on electronics, hand percussion and utterances. These accessories, in combination with the concentration of the album’s 12 tracks, give the music a truculent attitude and just-the-facts brevity that brings to mind punk and post-punk. This may be free improvisation, but it is improvised from a point of view, and it’s that informed attitude that makes the album worth visiting nearly 40 years after its original release.

Bill Meyer

Will Butler + Sister Squares — Self-Titled (Merge)

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Will Butler joins with Sister Squares — multi-instrumentalists Jenny (Butler’s wife) and Julie Shore, Sara Dobbs and drummer/producer Miles Francis — for their debut album. Bouncy, heartland rock garlanded with that 1980s Fairlight and Linn drum sound mixes with touches of art rock as Butler emotes wholehearted. The influence of the 20 years Butler spent with Arcade Fire is inescapable, but it feels like the quintet have also been listening to Billy MacKenzie (“Long Grass”) and Russell Mael (“Arrow of Time”) as well as Springsteen, Mellencamp and company. “Hee Loop” sounds like a mash of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. The themes and emotions can be big in that Arcade Fire way that’s equal parts exhilarating and exhausting, but the album works best when the band dial down the melodramatic flourishes as on “Car Crash” and “The Window,” where Butler is right in your ear, tired, disillusioned, real. This is a record I wanted to like both more and less. For every heartfelt moment and interesting musical choice, there’s a cringe-inducing gestural overreach that makes you wince. A bit like his former band but with enough promise to persevere with.

Andrew Forell

Claire Deak — Sotto Voce (Lost Tribe Sound)

Melbourne-based composer Claire Deak’s last release on Lost Tribe Sound was 2020’s The Old Capital, a fantastic collaboration with Tony Dupé. In my Dusted review I said, “There’s so much wonderful stuff going on across these seven songs that it’s a delight to revisit.” As its title suggests, Deak’s solo debut, Sotto Voce, very much sits at the opposite end of the musical spectrum. This is subtle, minimal music that softly arises out of silence and speaks an elusive language. The background to the album’s creation is Deak’s exploration of the work of two women composers from the early baroque era, Francesca Caccini (1587–c.1645) and Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677). The dominant musical elements are strings, harp and voice, with other instruments coloring the edges of these understated, starkly beautiful compositions. Across the album’s 42 minutes the music feels, at times, to be battling the entropy of erasure, struggling to be heard amid the cacophony of these overstimulated times. For that reason alone, it’s necessary to invest your attention and listen closely. The experience is eerie and transportive.

Tim Clarke

Mike Donovan — Meets the Mighty Flashlight (Drag City)

On a musical Venn diagram showing the intersecting circles of garage rock, lo-fi, and psych, Mike Donovan has set up his sandbox. With Sic Alps he veered more noisy and lo-fi; with Peacers he favored a straight-ahead garage-rock sound. On this new record with Mike Fellows, AKA The Mighty Flashlight, Donovan steers in the direction of shambolic psychedelic-pop in the vein of the Olivia Tremor Control. (To anyone who knows and loves OTC, this is obviously a very good thing.) The splashy drums and percussion tracks feel like a gestural afterthought rather than a rhythmic backbone the songs are built around, and Donovan and Fellows steer these songs into some choppy, unexpected waters. Opener “Planet Metley” is the clearest and most successful distillation of their aesthetic, offering up a staggering range of ideas in under four minutes, stopping and starting erratically, the bass roving all over the fretboard. At the other end of the spectrum, “Laurel Lotus Dub” is the kind of experiment that sounds like it was more fun to create that it is to listen back to. Between these two extremes there’s the junkshop boogie of “A Capital Pitch,” which features the hilarious line, “Hanging out on the ramparts with some dickheads in black,” the concise drum-machine and organ instrumental “Amalgam Wagon,” and the plaintive, country-flavored “Whistledown.” Wherever Donovan roams it’s usually worth following, and Meets the Mighty Flashlight is a winning collaboration that fizzes with fun.

Tim Clarke

Everything Falls Apart — Everything Falls Apart (Totalism)

“Somn” means sleep, or more poetically death. It’s the title of six of the seven tracks from Everything Falls Apart, the self-titled album from the duo of Belgian bassist Otto Lindholm (born Cyrille de Haes) and English producer Ross Tones. Those titles (numbered six to 11) and the coda “Wonderfully Desolate” tell you only part of the story of the music the pair produce. Their conversation focuses on the nuance of the Lindholm’s double bass which Tones swathes in electronic effects, stretching notes and motifs into near drones in timbres that rise from the murk like lugubrious sentinels. This is seriously heavy music but the dynamism of the duo’s understanding and interplay distinguishes Everything Falls Apart. Whilst many of the pieces focus on stasis and decay, “Somn 9” is a desert storm with clicking percussion, almost didgeridoo like growls from the bass and screeching electronic noise. On “Somn 11”, deep bowed notes support Lindholm’s move through the registers as if shaking from fitful dreams into the morning light. “Wonderfully Desolate” is comparatively unadorned, a string quartet playing against the end times, shimmers of light through the cracks.

Andrew Forell

False Fed — Let Them Eat Fake (Neurot Recordings)

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Is it accurate to call a band including members of legendary underground acts Amebix (Stig Miller), Nausea (Roy Mayorga) and Broken Bones (Jeff Janiak) a “supergroup”? It might help to note that Janiak has sung for Discharge since 2014, and Mayorga has done a couple stints as drummer for Ministry. All names to conjure with (though a few of us first encountered Mayorga as a teenager back in the 1980s Lehigh Valley hardcore scene, when he drummed for Youthquake; West Catty Playground Building forever, man). In any case, the players have pooled their talents to create this death-rocking, sorta goth, sorta post-punk record, and it’s a lot of grim, grimy fun. Most of the music is mid-tempo, grand and romantic in its gestures, but shot through with a crusty growl in the guitars and production tone. The best songs speed things up a bit; both “The Tyrant Dies” and “The Big Sleep” have compelling momentum, complementing the stakes of songs’ ideas. It's Armagideon Time, people. Here’s your soundtrack, from dudes that know.

Jonathan Shaw

Hauschka— Philanthropy (City Slang)

German composer Volker Bertelmann’s 15th album of prepared piano pieces under the name Hauschka is noticeably warmer than some of his previous works. Joined by Samuli Kosminen on percussion and electronics and cellist Laura Wiek, Hauschka continues his exploration of the rhythmic and timbral possibilities of his instrument. At times almost jaunty, there are echoes of Bertelmann’s previous experiments with melancholic atmospherics but the general tone here is welcoming and optimistic. Kosminen adds subtle effects which frame rather than obscure the piano. There’s a touch of Satie in Hauschka’s playful iconoclastic approach to the piano and his deceptively simple melodies, especially on “Loved Ones” where Wiek’s plangent cello lines sustain and decay over an allusive harmony that speaks both of innocence and experience. At the other end of the spectrum, the closing piece “Noise” builds abstract ambience from repeated piano notes, smears of cello and a quiet wash of effects as if the players are enveloped in a thick damp fog. A lovely album for both fans and newcomers.

Andrew Forell

The Hives — The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons (Disques Hives)

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There are usually going to be some questions when a band comes back with a new record after over a decade, maybe especially so with an act like Swedish garage/punk flamboyants the Hives; can they match the energy of their youth? Are they still willing and able to give us the old thrills? Or have they (and this is usually asked with a small, tasteful shudder of disgust) matured? It doesn’t take very long into first single/first track “Bogus Operandi” for the concerned listener to have reason for a sigh of relief. Anyone who used to (or still does?) blast “Main Offender” or “Hate to Say I Told You So” or “Walk Idiot Walk” should feel the galvanizing charge of a true, Frankensteinian resurrection once the riff hits. And across these not-quite-32 minutes (the brevity is also a promising sign) Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and the boys kick up exactly the kind of racket you’d want from them, with tracks like “Trapdoor Solution” and “The Bomb” savoring the kind of gleefully dumb fun they’ve always provided (with a nice sideline in some of Almqvist’s deliberately, over-the-top awful narrators on “Two Kinds of Trouble” and “What Did I Ever Do to You?”). They even continue to throw out small, satisfying variations on the classic Hives sound like the brassy swagger of “Stick Up” and the surprisingly heartfelt thrash of “Smoke & Mirrors”. They may have killed off their “sixth member,” but the Hives are otherwise in rude health.

Ian Mathers

Islet — Soft Fascination (Fire)

The Welsh psych-electronic oddballs in Islet are on their fourth full-length now but show no signs of settling down. Soft Fascination is a bonkers mash up of dance pop, art song, hip hop, noise and folk. “Euphoria” floats a feather-light daze, a la Avey Tare, then punctures it the rat-at-tat of snare, the rifle shot rap repartee of Emma Daman Thomas. Gossamer textures of synth weave in and around the main action, snapping tight at intervals, like sails catching a hard wind. The whole thing is butterfly ephemeral with strong wires holding it up, a combination of daydream and architecture. “River Body,” if anything, tips even crazier, with its infectious sing-song, skip-rope vocals, its tootling toy keyboards, its blasts of noise and friction. And what can you make of “Sherry” which bucks and heaves and shouts out “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” like a lost Matias Aguayar cut? “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Jute Gyte — Unus Mundus Patet (Self-released)

Unus Mundus Patet is not the most dissonant or challenging record Adam Kalmbach has released during his 20-plus-year run under the Jute Gyte moniker. But neither is this black metal for the kvlt trve believers or for the hipster-adjacent sets, be they transcendental or ecstatic or blackgazy. The songs twist and turn in on themselves, always clear in their expressions of complex musical ideas, and also — somehow, someway — listenable and enjoyable. Avant-garde? Sure thing, and likely a much more authentic iteration of that phrase’s meaning than the music many other metal bands churn out under cover of high-minded beard stroking. See the by-turns undulating and fragmenting “Killing a Sword” or the trudging, vertiginous and then utterly thrilling “Philoctetes.” Jute Gyte doesn’t make music for the background, but if you can give these songs your full attention, you’ll be rewarded. Turn it up and open the portal into somewhere much weirder and more marvelous.

Jonathan Shaw

Danny Kamins / Chris Alford / Charles Pagano — The Secret Stop (Musical Eschatology)

Free improvisation may be a little sparser on the ground in the southern USA than it is in Chicago or New York, but The Secret Stop affirms the vigor of those who participate. Guitarist Chris Alford and drummer Charles Pagano play in New Orleans, and Danny Kamins is a saxophonist from Texas; this encounter took place in the Crescent City. As even players in places like the aforementioned northern cities or London will affirm, travel comes with this territory. Their interactions display a capacity to sustain balance when the energy is high and to back off when doing so will transform the music’s tension. Kamins intersperses long, coarse tones with emphatic pops, and Alford evidences a fluent stutter that suggests he’s spent a lot of time studying James “Blood” Ulmer’s sound grammar. Pagano’s cymbal sizzle and mutating not-quite-patterns provide both forward momentum and a framework within which the action occurs.

Bill Meyer

MIKE \ Wiki \ The Alchemist — Faith Is a Rock (ALC)

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The long awaited collaboration between The Alchemist and MIKE took a sudden turn when they took on board another New York rapper Wiki who steals the show here. Both Wiki and MIKE were outcasts recording music in the vein of Earl Sweatshirt, even though MIKE was always a better version of Earl with only possibly a tenth of his fame. Knowing no rest, The Alchemist (that is his fourth collab this year) takes both MCs way out of their comfort zone, refusing to pander to the needs. MIKE and Wiki have to deal with The Alchemist’s fast and thick layered production, and it works for all of them. “Mayors A Cop” is a standout here, and Faith Is a Rock is one strong contender for the tape of the year.

Ray Garraty

Camila Nebbia — Una Ofrenda A La Ausencía (Relative Pitch)

The title translates as An Offering To Absence, which of course raises the question, what’s missing? Camila Nebbia is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but has seems to have spent a fair chunk of time moving around Europe in recent years, and is currently based in Berlin. She has a sizable discography, but this correspondent has not heard most of it, so let’s just focus on the album at hand. Its 16 tracks present three facets of her work — acoustic tenor saxophone, electronically adjusted saxophone and poetry — with the first method best represented. The unaccompanied saxophone performances reveal her mastery of both weight-bearing muscularity and adroit tap-dancing on the far side of the fences that confine conventional tonality. But when she layers long tones and feedback, Nebbia becomes a one-woman orchestra transmitting heavy Penderecki vibes. The one poem included, “Dejo que me lieve” (“I let it lie”), is recited in Spanish, and no translation is offered; perhaps home is what’s not there, so she needs to manifest it creatively?

Bill Meyer

[Continued in Part 2, because Tumblr decided we only get 10 audio links.]

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billfarrah · 2 years

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in ep 4 when August and felice were having sex was such a weird scene they were both treating it like a job to be done, like they don't want to but have what surprised me was that even August behaving as such when whole 3 ep prior he was Chasing after her they didn't even bother removing her shirt just her pants for access and why was such a big deal that she closed her eyes

It was a weird scene. Sara Arrhusius (intimacy coordinator) referred to it as a “bad sex scene” and they said some really interesting things about it, but I’ll give my perspective first.

I always think back to what Stella says about him while she, Frederika and Felice are walking to class in episode 2, that August is the type of guy who feels like he owns you. From the beginning, August’s desire for Felice is clearly much more about her status than about her as a person. When he’s talking about her to Erik and Wilhelm in the church in episode 1, he doesn’t talk about how beautiful she is or how much he likes her; he just says she is “modern nobility.” When he asks her out in episode 2, all he does is brag about this three Michelin star restaurant he’s going to take her to. August is an empty person and everything he does is to further his status or image. He has no real passion or love for Felice. She’s like a prize for him - the most beautiful and popular girl in school and thus, she is what August, the big man on campus, deserves. This is why August is so insecure and jealous toward Wilhelm; Wilhelm is obviously of much higher status than him, and he has Felice’s interest without even showing any interest in her himself, and you can imagine that drives August nuts just as much as every other little thing about Wilhelm drives him nuts.

The sex basically is a job; to put it bluntly, August just wants to cum. He doesn’t care about giving Felice pleasure, and when she starts actively participating instead of just taking it so that it can feel nice for her, he tells her to stop or he’ll come too fast. The position of doing it from behind further creates a sense of distance and lack of connection between them. August doesn’t understand intimacy at all because he doesn’t have any passion or desire for his partners; that’s why he gets so angry when Felice closes her eyes. It’s completely normal to close your eyes during sex, but for August, she MUST be thinking about Wilhelm, because August is so weirdly jealous of his cousin that he even thinks about him during times like this. Felice, on the other hand, is just using him because she knows he’s into her and she was initially sad that Wilhelm rejected her, but you can tell as episode 4-5 progress that she is not into it in the slightest, but the least she can do is get a little pleasure from it. August won’t let that happen tho.

The scene says more about what an insecure, passionless, careless person August is, how he only cares about his own needs and not about Felice, and it creates further contrast between himself and Wilhelm, who is a caring, gentle lover to Simon. Their sex scene is romantic, tender, and full of love and care; they’re facing each other the whole time, they laugh together, they’re clearly both feeling immense pleasure, as sex should be between two partners. Their eyes are closed the whole time. Wilhelm notably spends the entire time pleasuring Simon rather than simply taking from him; his passion for Simon is crystal clear. Although August fancies himself to be superior to Wilhelm, these scenes further emphasize Wilhelm’s wholehearted nature vs August’s empty shallowness; a passionate, caring lover vs a cold, selfish lover who makes it all about himself.

Sara said something very true in the interview where they discussed this scene in that there are actually probably more people who have experienced the “bad sex” that August and Felice have than the romantic “good sex” Wille and Simon have, which I agree with; I feel like in TV sex is always so glossy and perfect and in reality, sometimes sex fucking sucks if it’s with the wrong person, and it was interesting to see that explored. I think it added a lot to the story and characters actually; sex can reveal a lot about a person, and more shows should be using them for that purpose rather than to just titillate the audience. In my opinion, the sex scenes in Young Royals reveal a lot about who Wilhelm, Simon, August and Felice are as people, how they feel about themselves, and how they feel about each other, and I think it’s brilliant.

Thanks for the ask! I love hearing your guys’ thoughts about this show and then proceeding to go on rants about them 😊

#young royals #wow rant alert

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tearyeye-private-i · 1 year

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Big Bad John! Backstage, the Moon Shadow Saloon, Atlanta, Georgia. Oct 19, 1982.

📷 Rick Diamond.

12 Days of Christmas (8/12)

WARNING! GRAPHIC STORY!! (tw gore, violence, drug use).

Somethin’ about this reminds of the times he went ballistic and hit hospital staff. But before getting to that, the backstory:

John relapsed after taking pill killers for his eye surgery, in 1981. He wrote, “then I kept taking them after I didn’t need to.” His wounds from the ostrich attack gave justification to use, but after recovering, he wrote, “I knew I was taking them because I liked the way they made me feel.” Thus, he was back on amphetamines and drinking wine to take the edge off.

He’d carry on this way until his European tour. At his lodging, in Nottingham, England, Nov 10, 1983. In which the “spider bite” incident took place. John was convinced a wood panel could turn into a Murphy bed. He tore at the wall, likely, Victorian-era splinters embedded into his right hand. His blood-soaked paw roused him from his delusion, then in bed that night, he hallucinated a big spider biting his injured hand.

After the tour, John wrote, “my hand was just a giant ball of infection.” He’d checked into the Baptist Hospital, in Memphis, Tennessee. Where internal bleeding was found in his mid-section. They removed his duodenum, parts of his stomach, spleen, and several feet of intestine. John felt he’d be in the hospital for a while, before his first surgery, so he hid a stash of drugs with him. Percodan, amphetamines, and a fifty-dose card of Valium.

Thinking he was so clever with his new hiding spot, the Valium card underneath his bandages. As he wrote, “over the freshly sutured incision on my belly.” His condition turned for the worse, medical staff didn’t know why, until he awoke to show them the dressing. Half the pills had dissolved into the wound. As John wrote, “I don’t know if it was the Valium’s fault but that was a horrible wound; it took months to heal properly.”

Following recovery, he wrote, “I was about as high as I could be anyway, lost in intensely vivid hallucinations. I half wrecked the ICU, upsetting IV poles and doing all kinds of damage, because I just had to make somebody understand about the commandos; they’d gotten into the hospital and were setting their charges all around the room.” He was in danger of his guts falling out and onto the floor, but he didn’t care. He was in a nightmare, only to be given more morphine, which John wrote. “They didn’t know who they were dealing with, or what: more dope just made me more crazy.”

While visiting Waylon Jennings after undergoing a triple bypass, on December 14, 1988. John had a check-up that day, and 24 hours later, he learned he’d also be having open heart surgery. The procedure went on Dec 19, two-and-a-half hours, and a 90% blockage to the main coronary artery. It was also during this surgery John had a close call and claimed to speak with his friend Roy Orbison, who had passed on Dec 6, of that same year. He also smoked cigarettes half an hour prior to the surgery, and you’re not supposed to do that.

Days after the surgery, he endured a bad bout of pneumonia. On a particularly restless night, he thought he’d gone to Heaven, but when awaking he was mad to not be in Heaven. So, he went crazy. He trashed around the room, pulling the tubes connected to his arm, even wrestling hospital staff. As quoted in Ron Handelman’s book of John, “An article in the Nashville Banner suggested that the doctors might have been to blame for over-medicating him.” Which could be true, but it’s not like they knew he’d rage out.

Basically, he turned into that Yeti in the clip above! From Robot Chicken (From S1/EP 3: Nightmare Generator). Nothin’ like starting the New Year with a story, even if messed up and gross.

Stories/Quotes/Paraphrased from:

“Cash: The Autobiography,” pg, 174 – 179.

“Johnny Cash: The Life,” pg, 520 – 521.

#Johnny Cash #Sun//Cash #//MyPosts

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zee-has-commitment-issues · 2 years

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August is insecure and horny. He doesn’t give a shit that he’s with Felice. It’s about sex. It’s always been about sex. It’s never been about her. So I think the reason it’s so awkward is because he is just looking at it as a way to get off.

Also, in the world of Hillerska students, it seems like there is no separation of business and pleasure. Everything they do has an angle. They all want to associate with the right people for their future business ventures. We see it in the Society specifically. They don’t know where the line between business and pleasure is. They partake in “fun” activities with people who may or may not be a business partner later on.

So yeah, August and Felice’s activities very much feel like business. It feels awkward. Because neither one of them really want to be there. They just see it as a way to get off.

#young royals #young royals netflix #August #felice #riyakarkera

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ct-hardcase · 3 years

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idk why the inquisitors recruiting crosshair to be a purge trooper commander and him getting a fucked up found family out of the deal is so funny to me but this gag is starting to turn into an actual concept help

#star dorks #inquisitorius tag #to be clear the gag started when people pointed out how tbb seemed to entirely forget abt rescuing him #in tandem with me joking about sixth brother and ninth sister getting assigned to personally activate the rest of the bad batch’s chips #(this was prior to the ep where they were removed)#but eventually the joke became that the inquisitors and crosshair were both very familiar with betrayal #and then the joke became that as tbb spent longer not looking for crosshair he actually finds purpose in his potion as a purge commander #obviously there are fucked up parts but that is just crosshair’s story #and then when his face got messed up the inquisitor joke just came easier #so #purge commander crosshair

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rax-writes · 3 years

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Fandom: MCU Pairing: Baron Helmut Zemo x Reader Warnings: Sexual intercourse with a female-identifying person with a vagina + a bit of sugar daddy Zemo vibes at the end Notes: Y’all... don’t judge me. I have a power kink, and Marvel did me dirty by randomly deciding that Zemo is fifthly rich royalty. And my girl @henrysmorgan did me even dirtier by actively encouraging my attraction to this fucker. So, blame Marvel, and blame her. // This is kind of really fucking long, and I didn’t edit it much, because I wanted to get it posted before episode 4, in case that episode flips the script. So, potentially some editing issues, and slightly rushed writing. Hopefully it’s alright, but please let me know if I screwed up anywhere. // Lots and lots of TFAWS ep. 3 spoilers

When Bucky texted you to ask that you meet him in some dusty, old, abandoned-looking car garage, you certainly didn’t know what to expect. All you knew was that an old friend needed your help, so you intended to be there.

It had been a few months since you’d last seen him, and even longer since you’d participated in any sort of mission, but you suspected that was what you were walking into. Being exposed to the Mind Stone had granted you the power of telepathy, which meant that SHIELD was quite keen on persuading you to work for them. They trained you in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, and you went on miscellaneous missions a handful of times. They put in a lot of effort to convince you that it was your moral obligation as an “enhanced individual” to help them with these missions, but you ultimately decided that that simply wasn’t the kind of life you wanted. Instead, after the Blip, you began working a desk job for SHIELD, which is when you crossed paths with Bucky, helping him with paperwork associated with his pardon, and the two of you formed a friendship. But SHIELD kept trying to coerce you to get back into the field, constantly badgering you about it and making it clear that you weren’t wanted if all you were doing was paperwork.

The truth is, you weren’t cut out to be a superhero, and you had no desire to be. It didn’t help that your entire country had been reduced to rubble several years prior, leaving you with a bottomless pit of homelessness in your heart. So, you left SHIELD, and started a life in Berlin, where you were content to live out your days as the owner of a small bakery, residing in the small apartment above your shop.

That is, until Bucky Barnes dragged you into a particularly sticky situation, with a certain Baron Helmut Zemo.

You knew that helping Bucky and Sam would throw a colossal wrench in the life you’d created for yourself in Berlin, but after they explained the situation with the super soldiers, coupled with Bucky’s puppy dog eyes, you found yourself refraining from storming out of the building the second you saw Helmut fucking Zemo.

“We need you to keep an eye on him. You don’t have to tap into his mind 24/7, we just want a heads up if he’s going to screw us over,” Bucky explained.

"Look, we really need him. We’re obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel here, otherwise he'd still be in that cell. And neither of us want to be packing a criminal around like a rich bitch's chihuahua, so we need you here to make sure we're not gonna get bit," Sam explained.

"Fine. But you both owe me," you relented, and they both took sighs of relief. You glanced at Zemo, locking eyes with him for several tense moments. He gave you a polite smile, giving off the impression that he had nothing to hide – which he didn't, as his thoughts showed his intentions were pure at the moment. "We're good for now. He just genuinely wants the opportunity to take down these new super soldiers."

Sam and Bucky nodded, visibly releasing tension from their shoulders as they moved to head out, now reassured that Zemo was truly on their side. Meanwhile, Zemo eyed you with curiosity and awe, murmuring, "Fascinating."

The four of you walked on the landing strip toward a private jet, owned by Zemo.

"So all this time you've been rich?"

"I was a Baron, Sam. My family was royalty before your friends destroyed my country," Zemo explained, before glancing at you with a small smile. "But you knew that already."

"Wait, how did she know that?" Sam asked, then turned to you. "How did you know that?"

"I am Sokovian myself. I was certainly not royalty, but I lived there for my entire life, until it was destroyed," you explained, stopping outside the jet as Zemo greeted the elderly butler, Oeznik, in your native language. It made you smile to yourself; it had been years since you'd heard it spoken. Zemo shot you a grin when he noticed, and when you took a peek into his mind, you saw that he understood exactly how you felt.

As the butler handed Zemo a flute of champagne after you all boarded the jet, the Baron smiled politely as Oeznik stated, “Apologies if that's a little warm. The fridge is out, but I will see if there is some good food in the galley.”

Zemo glanced as you sat across from him, then in Sokovian, Zemo told Oeznik, "Another flute for the lady, please. And if the food does not pass the smell test, give it to the gentlemen."

"It's good to have you back, sir!"

As the man retreated to the cockpit, also in Sokovian, you noted, "You are a mischievous man, even more so than in your infamously criminal ways."

"You will find that there is more to me than meets the eye, angel," he responded coolly, the Sokovian language rolling off his tongue like honey. Before you could respond, admittedly enjoying speaking Sokovian, Sam grew tired of everyone speaking a language he couldn't understand.

"Why don't you tell us about where we're going?"

After a tense exchange between Bucky and Zemo, followed by a discussion about Marvin Gaye, Zemo finally got to the point: Madripoor. You exhaled slowly, resting your forehead in your palm in exasperation.

“You couldn’t have invited me on a mission to Cancun? Or Paris? Why must it be Madripoor?” you asked Bucky, who shot you a tight-lipped, pitying smile, silently apologizing for what he was dragging you into.

“What’s up with Madripoor? You guys talk about it like it’s Skull Island.”

“It’s an island nation in the Indonesian archipelago. It was a pirate sanctuary back in the 1800s,” Bucky explained.

“And upon seeing it, you would see that times there haven’t changed one bit since then,” you added.

“It’s kept its lawless ways. But we cannot exactly walk in as ourselves. James, you will have to become someone you claim is gone,” Zemo said.

You frowned as you caught a glimpse of Bucky’s thoughts as he went silent. Fear. Anxiety. Disdain. Apprehension. You reached across to rest your hand on his shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. He shot you a small smile, then looked out the window.

Upon landing in Madripoor, one of Zemo’s contacts met you on the landing strip with a new wardrobe for you, Bucky, and Sam, and Zemo explained that each outfit was per his instruction, carefully chosen to fit the role each of you would be playing in Madripoor. One by one, you took the covered clothes hanger to the bathroom of the jet and changed. Bucky was first, stepping out in some sort of leather number, looking eerily similar to the Winter Soldier you’d seen in photos. Sam was next, donning a three-piece suit of burgundy and gold. He looked sharp, although he was immediately complaining about how ostentatious it was. And finally, you stepped into the room and closed the door behind you, unzipping the covering on the hanger and revealing your “carefully chosen” outfit.

“Ich werde dir im Schlaf die Eier abreißen, Zemo!”

Bucky choked on his water and Zemo chuckled under his breath, while Sam looked between the two in confusion.

“I don’t know what she said, but she sounded pissed,” he observed, eyeing Zemo suspiciously.

“She informed me that she intends to remove my testicles in my sleep.”

“And why is that?”

“Perhaps because he’s chosen to parade me around Madripoor like a cheap whore,” you said angrily, stepping out of the bathroom with your hands on your hips, glaring at Zemo.

“That dress is by Armani Prive, and your shoes are Louboutins – far from ‘cheap.’ And you do not look like a whore, the dress is merely more revealing than what you are used to,” Zemo argued, standing and walking over to survey your outfit. He seemed to be enjoying what he saw, judging from the way his eyes raked up and down your body, but you didn’t dare check his thoughts to confirm or deny it.

If you were honest with yourself, he was right. It was a very nice dress; plum purple, matching the color of Zemo’s turtleneck, with long, fitted sleeves, all of it made of the softest silk you had ever touched. It was fitted at the top but flowy from the hips down, with a low balconette-style neckline, showing more of your chest than you were accustomed to, although you pulled it off quite nicely. It ended just above your knees, which was fine, as you sometimes wore skirts of that length. Overall, the luxury of it and the low-cut neckline ensured that you were out of your comfort zone, but you looked stunning – and expensive, despite your spite-fueled initial claim.

“I thought the color would look nice on you, and I was right. And I knew that the flow of the fabric at the bottom would allow for this,” Zemo said, his hand gingerly trailing from your waist to your thigh, where he pulled up the hem of your dress slightly to reveal the edge of the Glock strapped into your thigh holster. He smirked as his suspicion was confirmed. He knew you’d find a way to arm yourself, regardless of what you wore.

In hindsight, the way Zemo touched your side and lifted your skirt was all far more intimate than you should have allowed, and yet… you couldn’t deny the way your breath caught in your throat when he touched you, or how his close proximity made your body temperature rise, as he gazed down at you with those intense brown eyes.

Christ, you needed to get laid. Soon. Before you further entertained the idea of jumping the bones of a highly wanted criminal.

“Touch me like that again, and I will kill you where you stand,” you informed him sternly, and Zemo immediately took a step backwards, looking apologetic. From the corner of your eye, you saw both Sam and Bucky visibly relax, tension leaving their shoulders. You had read their thoughts briefly, and they were both wondering why the hell you were so calm about getting cozy with Zemo. The absolute last thing you wanted was for them to know that you were, in fact, inexplicably drawn to being that close to the Baron.

As the four of you walked along a bridge in Madripoor, Sam was quick to resume his complaining.

“We have to do something about this. I’m the only one who looks like a pimp.”

“Only an American would assume a fashion-forward Black man looks like a pimp. You look exactly like the man you’re supposed to be playing. The sophisticated, charming African rake named Conrad Mack, aka the Smiling Tiger.”

“He even has a bad nickname,” Sam grumbled, then looked at the phone Zemo handed him. “Hell, he does look like me, though.”

“And who am I supposed to be?” you inquired, glancing down at your clothing to see if you could guess who you were meant to be portraying. An heiress or socialite, perhaps.

“My fiancée,” Zemo answered simply, the faintest smile on his lips.

You barked out a crude laugh, “Oh, I think not.”

“There is no one involved with Madripoor who looks like you. And it is rare that there are newcomers to the island, especially not in the place we’re going. Pretending you are someone random would raise concerns about the intentions of your presence; you would be perceived as a potential threat, which would jeopardize our mission. It is far easier to simply pretend we are engaged, I assure you.”

You hesitated a moment, before arguing, “No one will believe that we are engaged.”

Zemo pulled something from the inside pocket of his jacket, took your left hand, and slipped it onto your ring finger. It was a solitaire diamond ring; not large enough to be gaudy, but enough to catch anyone’s eye.

“They will if you play your part well,” he told you, then addressed the rest of your party when he added, “No matter what happens, we have to stay in character. Our lives depend on it. There is no margin for error.”

The four of you reached a sleek black car, and climbed in, you in the back between Sam and Bucky. The ride to Low Town was tense and silent, as each of you mentally prepared for what lay ahead. When you arrived, Zemo offered you his hand as you exited the car, and the pointed look in his eyes told you that it was time to begin playing your part. You took his hand, and as you began walking into the heart of Low Town, he laced his fingers with yours. As the crowd drew near, Zemo wrapped his arm around your shoulders, gloved fingers brushing against the exposed skin of your shoulder. After reading his mind, you realized that it was both for the sake of protecting you, and showing possessiveness to make it believable that you were his girl – and because he simply enjoyed having your body close, although you suspected that he’d rather you have not known that.

Despite the fact that you had been on a few missions for SHIELD, you were not exactly incapable of fear; you did not possess nerves of steel. All of the missions you’d been on were low-profile, and you were mostly just there for the sake of gathering information from those reluctant to share it. Sure, you’d been in danger before, you’d had to fight your way out of several sticky situations, but this… this was different. You were in the crime capital of the world, a lawless place filled to the brim with crooks, thieves, and murderers. More than likely, any given person around could slit your throat and never bat an eye or give you a second thought. Swallowing your own pride in the face of fear prompted you to return Zemo’s gesture, wrapping your arm around his waist and sticking close to him, which earned a smile from the man.

When you arrived at your destination, Zemo approached the bar and leaned against it confidently on one arm, the other still wrapped firmly around your shoulders.

“Hello, gentleman,” the bartender greeted, before his eyes fell on you. “Who’s your new lady friend, Baron?”

“My fiancée,” Zemo answered, then turned to you and ran his finger along your jawline, as you looked at him in adoration. “Isn’t she lovely?”

“Very,” the bartender acknowledged, then turned to Sam. “Wasn’t expecting you, Smiling Tiger.”

“His plans changed. We have business to do with Selby,” Zemo responded.

The bartender made ‘Smiling Tiger’ his usual drink, which apparently consisted of… something he cut out of a snake, and dropped in a shot glass with a bit of liquor. You shared a look with Bucky before he turned away to survey the room, and when you read his thoughts, you found that you both desperately wanted to laugh out loud at Sam’s ‘short end of the stick’ situation, but didn’t want to risk everyone’s lives for the sake of a chuckle. You returned your attention to Zemo, opting to sell the whole “fiancée” thing a bit more by turning into him and tracing patterns on his chest as you gazed at him affectionately, while the bartender handed you and Zemo each a shot glass of your own – sans snake organs, thankfully. You both downed yours, while Sam understandably struggled a bit more with his, but still managed it.

A random man approached Zemo then, and as Zemo turned to face him, he protectively moved you behind him a bit.

“I got word from on high. You ain’t welcome here.”

“I have no business with the Power Broker, but if he insists, he can either come and talk to me…” Zemo countered, gesturing toward Bucky, who looked menacing as he pretended to be the Winter Soldier. “Or bring Selby for a chat.”

After a weary look in Bucky’s direction, the man walked away, and Zemo turned back around to face the bar, this time keeping you in between him in the bar, in case someone were to come up behind him – which they did a few moments later.

“Winter Soldier… attack,” Zemo commanded in Russian, as a different man came up and laid a hand on Zemo’s shoulder. With a pained look in his eye that quickly shifted to cold determination, Bucky grabbed the man’s hand with his vibranium arm, twisting it as he removed it from Zemo’s shoulder. Zemo took a step away from the bar to allow you room to turn and observe as Bucky beat the absolute shit out of various challengers. Zemo wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you close to him as he noted, “Didn’t take much for him to fall back into form.”

The unmistakable sound of numerous guns cocking drew your attention away from the altercation, and Zemo gently pushed you behind him as he surveyed the room to note all the weapons drawn. Sam grabbed Bucky’s bionic arm to stop him, but Zemo whispered, “Stay in character or the whole bar turns on us.”

“Well done, soldier,” Zemo then said to Bucky in Russian, signaling for the ‘Winter Soldier’ to stop.

“Selby will see you now,” the bartender interjected, and Bucky released his grip on the random man’s throat.

“Thank you,” Zemo responded, walking off to find Selby, grabbing your hand to guide you, but not before you spared a sorrowful glance at Bucky as your friends followed closely behind.

As Zemo took a seat on a couch across from Selby, you sat close to him, crossing your legs gracefully as you leaned into him, your arm wrapped around his as he clasped his hands in his lap authoritatively. You watched his exchange with Selby in silence, as did Sam – and Bucky, of course, considering he was pretending to be the Winter Soldier.

“By the way, I thought you were rotting away in a German prison,” Selby told Zemo, then smiled as she looked you up and down, before her eyes found the diamond ring. “And not engaged – to a woman far out of your league, I might add.”

“People like us always find a way, don’t we?” Zemo answered calmly, then looked over at you, staring into your eyes with warmth and adoration, and you smiled lovingly at him. “My beautiful fiancée was a guard at the prison. We fell in love over the years, and she helped me escape. Anyway, I’m sure you have already figured out what I’m here for.”

The conversation went relatively smoothly after that, until Sam’s goddamn phone rang and screwed the entire operation. In the blink of an eye, Selby was shot dead, you had shot two of the guards with the gun strapped to your thigh, and Sam and Bucky had each knocked out one, before Zemo suggested sneaking out of the bar as best you could, without any weapons. You secured your gun back in its holster, not missing the way Zemo watched as you hiked your dress up to do so, before making a break for it with the three of them.

Once you were on the streets of Madripoor, bounty hunters began to come out of the woodwork, and when they began shooting at you, Zemo abruptly grabbed your hand and ran down a nearby alleyway. As you were running, the heel of your stiletto caught on a grate, and you’d have fallen flat on your face if Zemo hadn’t caught you.

“Are you alright?” he asked hurriedly, his arms wrapped tightly around your waist as he supported you, before standing you back onto your feet. You nodded, and he glanced over your shoulder as he noticed a few men looking down the alley. “Forgive me.”

You were about to ask what he was talking about, but then Zemo abruptly grabbed you by the backs of your thighs and lifted you up, pinned you against the wall behind you, and kissed you.

The men at the end of the alleyway muttered something about “freaks who do it in public,” then their footsteps faded as they walked off, clearly thinking the two of you were some overly horny couple, not two of the people with an insane bounty on their heads. But you were barely paying them any attention, a bit preoccupied with the fact that Zemo was fucking kissing you, and much to your chagrin, you really fucking liked it.

Once there were no more voices and no more footsteps, Zemo broke the kiss and sat you down. The two of you stared at each other for a moment, before you heard more gunshots, and you broke into a run in the direction Bucky and Sam had gone, desperate to find your friends, and no time to process what the hell just happened.

As soon as you caught up with them, the two bounty hunters nearby were shot dead, and the four of you turned to see Sharon Carter emerging from the shadows.

An hour later, you found yourself in her swanky home in High Town, in a change of clothes, since the brick wall Zemo had held you up against ripped the back of your silk dress. You lied to Sam and Bucky, saying that it happened because you fell while running in your heels, and thankfully, they believed you. Sharon commanded the four of you to lay low and enjoy the party, which Sam and Bucky left her living room to go do, entrusting you with ‘Zemo watch.’

It seemed as though he was merely nursing his brandy in lieu of abandoning it for the party prior to finishing it off, but his eyes were on you most of the time. You didn't necessarily believe he could be plotting to overpower you and run off, but there is always that possibility, so you delved into his mind to check.

Expecting to find thoughts of strategy about how to defeat the super soldiers or travel plans, or even plots to escape you, Bucky, and Sam, you were astounded to find nothing but thoughts of you.

The way it felt to kiss you in that alleyway, and how he had monetarily debated just staying there, having his way with you against the brick wall before Sam and Bucky could locate you. The dress from the bar, and how it rested on your thighs, revealing just enough to have his mouth watering without being revealing to the point of immodesty. The way your necklace currently rested against your bare collarbone, and how desperately he craved to litter the area with love bites. The delicate skin of your throat, thinking of how it would look with his hand wrapped around it, just enough to cut off a bit of air but not enough harm you. How alluring your voice is, and how much he'd like to know what it would sound like to hear you scream his name. The softness and warmness of your skin when he had his arm around you in the bar, and when he held your hand as you fled the scene, and he wondered how soft and warm you were elsewhere.

"Your thoughts are filthy."

He bristled immediately, sitting straighter in his seat and eyes going slightly wide, either forgetting you can read minds or not realizing you'd be doing it right then. It only took a moment for him to regain his composure, before he took one long, last drink of his brandy and set the glass on the table in front of him. He turned his whole body to the side to face you, as you sat on the opposite end of the couch, wearing a small, somewhat mischievous smile.

"I suppose there is no sense in denying it, is there?"

"What game are you playing, Zemo?" you snapped. He was rattling you. As much as you hated to admit it, he was. For the entirety of the time you'd been around him, this wanted criminal had been flustering you, and goddammit it, you wanted to know if it was accidental, or for nefarious purposes. He could be using it as a tactic to throw you off your game, so that he could get away when it was just the two of you – like right now.

"There is no game, Liebling," he stated softly and sincerely, sensing your discomfort. Slowly, he scooted closer to you on the couch, so that the arm he had laid across the back of it was now behind you, as he stared intently into your eyes. "Merely the natural response of a man who has been widowed and then locked in a prison cell, and therefore has not known the touch of a woman in many years, sitting next to a woman of absolute ethereal beauty."

You said nothing, merely stared at him, sizing him up to see if he was toying with you or telling the truth. Zemo sensed your lack of belief in his words.

"If you doubt my true intentions, you are welcome to delve as deep into my mind as you'd like to find the truth."

In all honesty, you'd have done that already if you weren't trying to avoid being even more flustered by his thoughts about you – but you couldn't tell him that. So, you did as he bade you, and searched his mind to find any shred of malevolence towards you, but you came out empty-handed. Zemo genuinely just wanted you, craved you, like a starved man sitting in front of an endless buffet. He watched you carefully as you came to this conclusion, and although you said nothing further, he knew that you had found what you needed to know.

"Just say the word, and I will never approach the topic again, as well as attempt to quiet my thoughts about you. But if there is any part of you... deep inside you," Zemo paused, eyes grazing you up and down purposefully, before continuing, "that has any interest in being with me... I will do anything to bring that to fruition."

The ball was in your court now. You could tell him to get bent and never speak to you like this again… or you could get your rocks off, and maybe even get something more in return.

"Such as?"

"Name it, Schätzchen. Anything you want. A car, a mansion, jewels – say it and it's yours, if you will be mine," Zemo proposed earnestly, licking his lips quickly as he looked at you, visibly thrilled that he was getting somewhere with you.

You weren't the type to accept gifts from men you barely know, but… this was Zemo. A man who had done a great many terrible things, which soothed your guilty conscience. So, you said the first thing that came to mind.

"A car," you blurted out, then explained, "Mine broke down a week ago, and it's beyond repair, so… a car."

"Tell me the make and model of your preference and I'll have it delivered to your home within a week's time," Zemo said calmly, then brushed a lock of hair away from your face, before allowing his fingers to trail delicately along your cheek and jawline. "Is that all, Kätzchen?"

"No. One more thing," you replied, then looked at him sternly. "You must agree to never speak of this to Bucky or Sam."

"You have my word," he assured you, smiling in amusement.

"Then I'm yours."

Zemo's smile faded slowly, and he merely stared at you for a split second, before cupping your face in his hands and pulled you into a searing kiss, full of ferocity and sheer desperation. It shouldn't have been this easy, to kiss a man who's done such terrible things – yet here you were, melting into his embrace, allowing him to pull you into his lap and straddle him, your hands resting on his shoulders and gripping the black fabric of his turtleneck. His hands laid flat against your back as he kissed you in this new position, slowly gliding down, down your sides and to your hips. He kissed you in a way that was feverish and fast and hungry, as his fingers dug into your skin, holding you firmly against him as if he were fearful that this was all a dream and you'd disappear at any moment. Upon taking a peek into his mind, you realized that was actually exactly what he was thinking. Additionally, he mentally spoke to you directly, somehow knowing you were reading his thoughts at that moment.

"Tell me if I do anything that you do not like, and know that you have absolute freedom to end this at any given moment."

You pulled away slightly to nod in confirmation that you received his message, before resuming the kiss. Mind hazy and instincts taking over, you found yourself tugging his bottom lip between your teeth, earning a low groan from Zemo. One of his hands darted upwards to grab a fistful of your hair, right against your scalp at the base of your neck, and he pulled on it harshly, causing you to let out a wonton moan. He then laid that hand flat against the back of your neck, holding your lips firmly against his as he kissed you with even more fervor, and the other vacated its position on your hip to slide slowly up your torso, until he began palming your beast through your shirt. You moaned softly against his lips, but not as loudly as a moment ago.

Zemo wanted more, needed more; he longed to hear you loud and desperate. So he delved that hand at your neck back into your hair, gripping it tightly once more, and used it to pull your head backwards a bit, so that he could have better access to your neck. The action itself, and the tightness of his grip, earned an embarrassingly loud moan to escape your lips, and you felt him smile against your skin. He moved his hand to the middle of your back, supporting you as you leaned back a bit to grant him better access. As he littered your neck and décolletage with kisses, you felt him pull the neckline of your blouse down a little, then felt the sharp pain of a bite on your chest, above your breast. When you looked at him with narrowed eyes, he wore a cocky little grin.

"You should not be surprised, Liebling. I know you saw that I've been wanting to do that all day when you read my mind," he noted. "Wear a high neckline tomorrow, it will be fine."

Before you could respond, Zemo pulled you flush against his chest with that hand behind your back, and into another heated kiss. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, and without thinking, you ground your hips down on the bulge resting against your core beneath your skirt. He groaned, both hands flying to your hips to push them down again, guiding them as you repeated the action. It only took a minute or two of this before Zemo had enough, abruptly grabbing you by the throat and throwing you down onto the couch beside him. He then loomed over you, one hand propping himself up and the other applying slight pressure to your throat, gazing at you with admiration in those searing eyes, pupils blown wide from lust. You looked right back at him, pupils undoubtedly dilated as well, eyes half-lidded, panting a little, and hair a bit of a mess.

"You are an absolute vision," Zemo praised softly, to which you smiled, then he released his grip on your neck to lean down and kiss you again. That only lasted a moment, before he broke the kiss to pull your blouse up and over your head, tossing it carelessly to the side. Your bra joined it shortly after, then he moved to your skirt, fussing with the zipper for a moment, but it seemed to be caught on something, as it wouldn't budge. Before you could interject and state that you'd get the zipper yourself, Zemo ripped the seam apart with his hands, before tearing the article from your body and tossing it like he had with the blouse. A gasp escaped you, but you had no time to think much about his actions, before he was pulling off your panties and bra as well, dropping them somewhere beside the couch.

He was then looming over you again, kissing you breathless as he rested on one elbow while the other hand toyed with your nipple, his knee coming up to rest between your legs as he laid between your body and the back of the couch. You tangled your fingers in Zemo's hair, moaning against his lips as you sought friction against his leg. He smiled softly against your lips, before your hands wandered, finding the hem of his shirt and tugging it off of him. You had just managed to get his belt off before his hand left your breast, trailing downwards across your torso as he moved his knee further away from you, before delving between your hips and expertly locating your clit.

No longer capable of focusing on ridding Zemo of his clothes, your hands gripped his shoulders, and he hissed deliciously as your nails dug into his skin when he began rubbing small, methodical circles on your clit. Small moans fell from your lips as he watched the way your mouth hung open slightly, face relaxed and eyes closed as you enjoyed his work. But again, he wanted more, needed more. Still observing you, he delved his middle and ring fingers into your core, causing you to let out a loud gasp that faded into a long, low moan. Zemo smiled to himself. That was the reaction he was dying for.

He kissed you senseless, drinking in your moans and gasps of pleasure like wine, his free hand cradling the back of your head as your arms wrapped around his neck. It didn't take Zemo long to find that sweet spot, deep inside you – as he'd subtly alluded to earlier – that longed for his attention the most.

You couldn't help but moan loudly and cry out, "Fuck! Baron!" Zemo growled low in your ear, clearly a fan of your usage of his title as he picked up the pace, fucking you with his fingers with expert precision and speed, sending you hurtling over the edge with a string of curses in both Sokovian and English. By the time he removed his fingers from you and stood, you were seeing stars, breathing heavily as you laid flat against the couch. When your dazed gaze found him, he was naked from the waist down, and was just finishing rolling a condom over his length. You had no idea where he got it from, but you were way beyond giving a shit at this point. Zemo then rejoined you on the couch, roughly spreading your legs apart as he kneeled between them, looking at you with a primal, deep hunger in his eyes.

"You are certain that you want this?"

"Yes, please – fuck," you cut yourself off as he began rubbing your clit again.

"Yes please, what?" His voice was low, teasing, as he continued his work below. "I want to hear you say it again, Kätzchen."

"Yes, please, Baron."

"Good girl."

Zemo took your leg and rested your calf on his shoulder, before easing himself into you, agonizingly slow. You watched through half-lidded eyes as his brows furrowed together, his jaw went slack, and his eyes squeezed shut as he bottomed out. He was silent, but you very much preferred it when he was a bit vocal. So, you flexed your muscles down there, and he groaned, letting his forehead fall against your shoulder.

"Do not do that if you want this to last long," Zemo suggested through clenched teeth. You smiled to yourself, then said the magic word that you knew would get him going.

"Yes, Baron."

He growled again, right in your ear, then sat more upright to begin a harsh, quick pace of thrusting. His hips collided with your body each time, causing a delicious sort of pain, and he leaned down to lock you in a messy, deep kiss.

A few minutes later, Zemo moved your other calf to his shoulder as well, and the new position enabled him to get delectably deep inside you. You raked your nails down his chest, watching as a shudder ran down his spine, all the while releasing small, breathless moans and whimpers. When he opened his eyes again to gaze down at you, he licked his lips before delving both hands under your head and into your hair, and forcefully gripped two fitfuls of it at the base of your skull. The moan that tore its way from your throat was animalistic, as your nails dug into his forearms as you desperately gripped them from their positions on either side of your head. Just then, he hit a spot deep inside of you, and that familiar, tight coil in your lower belly began to form.

"Fuck! Right there, Baron, please, right there!"

"As you wish, Schätzchen."

Zemo began to thrust even faster, careful to maintain the same angle as he released his grip on your hair and leaned up a bit, so that he could resume rubbing your clit. Moans began to fall from your lips practically endlessly, and somehow, you still needed more. More, more, more. You took his free hand and laid it on your neck, and he instinctively wrapped his fingers around your throat, careful to apply pressure on the sides but not the front, as to avoid harming you. When he opened his eyes once again and looked down at you, he couldn't stop the moan that escaped him.

"You will be the death of me, mein Engel," Zemo whispered, seemingly more to himself. All you could do was moan in response.

"Baron, I'm going to – fuck – I'm —"

"Yes, come for me, Kätzchen. I want to feel you."

That was all the encouragement it took. Well, that plus how perfectly he was rubbing your bundle of nerves, and how his pace nor angle had faltered once since you had requested exactly that. You came undone again, legs shaking as your nails clawed at his shoulder blades, earning a series of groans from him. As you came down from your high, Zemo's hips began to falter, enthralled by the waterfall you had become, soaking the base of his cock as your walls squeezed around him. His hand at your wet heat abruptly moved to grip your hip, at the same moment his hand around your throat clutched at your hair again, and he met his end with a loud, gruff moan as he spoke a mantra of nonsensical praises and your name.

Zemo rested on his arms on either side of your head, and he let your legs fall to the sides of him, breathing hard against your neck as he occasionally peppered kisses there. He remained inside you for a few moments, savoring the feeling, before you chose to have a bit of extra fun by flexing your lower muscles and squeezing yourself around him again. With a sharp intake of breath, he pulled out of you, shooting you a glare.

In Sokovian, he murmured, "You are a naughty little thing."

"You adore it."

"That I do," Zemo conceded, then stood and walked off to the restroom. You heard the tap run, and a few moments later, he returned with a glass of water for you, sitting beside your feet on the couch and resting his heels on the coffee table. He was exceptionally handsome like this; still catching his breath, sweat glistening on his forehead and chest, a content look upon his face. You spent a minute or two admiring him, before he looked over to you, and a smile blossomed on his lips.

"I cannot thank you enough for that. I must admit, I spent countless nights alone in my cell, dreaming about getting to touch a woman like that again. Especially considering the fall of our country, I never could have imagined I would be lucky enough to lay with a stunning, intelligent Sokovian woman."

"In the spirit of confessions, it's been a while for me, too. My last boyfriend was about two years ago. And I'm not the one-night-stand type. So, do with that what you will," you stated, earning a small chuckle from Zemo. You sat up so that you were sitting beside him, instead of laying down, as you continued. "I fantasized about it a lot myself, but I never even dared to think my next time would be as good as this was."

Zemo smiled, a mix of pride and joy, then his smile softened as he leaned toward you, brushing a lock of hair away from your face. "This doesn't have to be our last time, you know. I would be honored to have you as often as you'd allow me to. And I assure you, I would make it worth your while. I will give you whichever vehicles your heart desires, more jewelry than you know what to do with, take you to the most beautiful places in the world, dine at only the finest restaurants – and above all, treat you like my queen. Take care of me, and I will take care of you, Liebling."

You allowed your curiosity to get the better of you, as usual when you feared that someone was lying to you. You searched his mind for any fraction of false pretenses, but there were none. The man simply found you intoxicating, and would do whatever it takes to keep drinking you in.

The arrangement wouldn't exactly be an easy one, nor would it be all that wise – nor morally correct, in all honesty. But he was undeniably sexy, and the danger and reprehensibility of it all made it that much more alluring. And besides all that – the way his power and wealth turned you on, how good he was capable of making you feel – most Sokovians were dead, and you missed home. Getting to speak your native tongue with him, chat about your country – it made you feel at home with him.

But you wouldn't give Zemo the satisfaction of agreeing to him that quickly.

“We'll see.”

—————

Part Two

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canonicallysoulmates · 2 years

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J2 Main Panel Vegascon 2022

Things start off with Jared leaving Jensen speechless, don’t believe me watch for yourself; you see the very same fan who awesomely shares these panels with us had gifted Jared a purple dog shirt just like the one Sam wears in s1! And Jared changed from the shirt he had on during the Gold to that one during this panel, only Jensen didn’t know about it so when Jared took off the flannel he had on to reveal the shirt Jensen was left surprised and liking what he saw 😏

First question is, what are Jensen's feelings on Voltron? For those that don’t know Voltron was a show in the 80’s, the question comes about because Jensen has said he was a fan of Thundercats which is contemporary with Voltron- I think they came out like a year apart. Jensen doesn’t really have an opinion, he doesn’t remember it that well, and Jared doesn’t even know what Voltron is. When the fan recommends checking it out and mentions there was even a reboot on Netflix Jared jokes that he didn’t know about the reboot, this man *snort*

Before they move on to the second question, Jensen remembers a dad joke now if you didn’t watch the Gold panel or read my post about it during the Gold panel a fan asked if they had any new dad jokes but they couldn’t remember any at the time. But he remembered one…and it’s so bad but it’s a dad joke so I guess that makes it good anyways “what is it called when you slap Dwayne Johnson in the ass? Hitting rock bottom” x

Moving on, what is something that makes them smile, laugh, or brightens their day outside of their spouses and kids? Jared says the gag reels which he watches all the time, and Jensen concurs that they make him laugh. Jared also mentions that he likes pranking videos and when he told Molly Hagan, who plays his mom on Walker, she told him she hates them, and to never prank her and he said yes, ma’am.

And then since they were on the topic of pranks Jensen shares a prank he pulled on Jared while on the Walker set! There’s a crew member who’s about the same size as a giant stuffed bear prop they were using for a carnival scene and the bear was hanging by where Jared had to pass and Jensen made sure Jared saw him kick the bear so he could see it was fake but on take 2 they switched it out for the crew member in a bear suit who jumped Jared as he walked by and Jared froze 😂

Jensen also mentioned that he’s a sucker for soldiers coming home videos. x

What has it been like working together again? Like they never stopped. Aww; Jared says that on Jensen’s birthday it occurred to them that the first birthday they were sharing a set together on was in 2005 🥺

He said he couldn’t be on set the first couple of days Jensen was there because he had a prior engagement he had agreed to a while ago but that meant that the Walker crew got to meet Jensen as Jensen Ackles the super talented, efficient director. And when he got to set he got to brag about him, and got to tell his crew that there’s no chance Walker would have happened if it hadn’t been for spn and there’s no chance there’d be an spn if it wasn’t for Jensen. That it was fun to show him off, and think of 30 different chair backs. This is so sickeningly sweet, I love it 💕

I know I’m not the only who loves it when the boys groom each other so here’s a timestamp to Jared removing something from Jensen’s face x

Jensen was asked about the third Radio Company album. He says it has been written for a while. They just haven’t had a chance to record it but hope to have something in the next few months. x

Asked who the clumsiest cast member is, the answer is Jared. Jensen describes him as being like a great dane who thinks he’s a chihuahua which is funny, cute, and accurate all at once. x

A fan wanted to know which ep was more fun to make between Mystery Spot, Bad Day at Black Rock and Yellow Fever except they didn’t remember Yellow Fever at first; so Jared originally says Mystery Spot because he knew when Jensen was running the humor on spn that he would always end up laughing because Jensen always kills it at the comedy. But when the fan remembers Yellow Fever, they both say Yellow Fever was probably the most fun one to make even though for Jensen one bad part about it was that he was hoarse for three days after the scream. x

Fan wanted to know since Chaos Machine’s head of development has expressed a passion around LGBTQ characters, and they’ve both supported LGBTQ organizations if Jensen could talk about his thoughts on inclusive storytelling and using his platform to make a difference. He says their head of development is a member of that community and has helped instrumental in helping them find material that includes stories like that, and they have a few projects in development with that type of story and those types of characters who they really wanna represent properly. x

Can Jensen give any hints about possible DC projects he may be working on in the future? Nope! All Jensen can say is that they’re currently working with other producers who fall under the WB umbrella and are working on an IP that was brought to them from DC. x

What are their fav superheroes, and what are Sam and Dean’s fav superheroes? Jensen says Batman for both him and Dean. Jared says probably Superman although he also loves Batman and thinks he’s pretty badass. Then Jensen asks Jared what superpower he would have if he could and Jared says Aquaman which listen he didn’t explain his reasons that well…but I get it. Aquaman’s powers aren’t limited to just “talking to fish '' or being able to breathe underwater, he also has super strength, being able to see in the dark, enhanced hearing, I think there’s even an iteration where he can fly. Point is if you’re going to pick a superhero to gain the powers of Aquaman isn’t a bad option.

Jensen says he’d like to be able to see just like 5 mins into the future. He asks if there’s any superheroes that have that ability and a fan shouts out foresight but I don’t know if they were yelling out what the power is called or the name of a comic book character cause DC does have some characters named that but I couldn't find anything about them being superheroes or having the power to only see minutes forward into the future 🤷‍♀️

Continuing on, do they remember the exorcism incantation? Jensen doesn’t, Jared remembers some; Jared says that one time when Jensen had to do the incantation he told him he was gonna try and do a bad job so he wouldn’t have to do it again 😂

Fan wants to know if they could recommend some shows for their friend to binge watch while they’re recovering from surgery. Jared says he’s bad at the question, I couldn’t understand very well his reason but it seems he’s just not into binge watching. Jensen gives a couple of recommendations: Peaky Blinders, Yellowstone,The Boys, etc. x

Outside of spn who have they worked with that gave them good advice, and who would they like to work with in the future? They both say that when it comes to people they’d like to work with in the future that’s difficult to answer because there’s big names that’d be amazing to work with and learn from but there’s also great actors who are more unknown or are just beginning. As for people who gave them advice, Jared says Milo Ventimiglia took him under his wing when he worked on Gilmore Girls. He would give him recommendations on places to go to and things to do around LA, and Jared was brand new to this world he didn’t even know you could leave the set in the long breaks between scenes so he would just sit in his trailer until one day Milo asked him if he wanted to grab lunch and that’s when he learned he could leave. Jensen says Tom Welling gave him a lot of good advice that he and Jared used when they worked on spn. Like things they should watch out for and fight for as leads of a show, and they have passed that advice along to other actors like Stephen Amell. x

Do they have any traditions with their kids like watching a specific show together every week? Jared says not with Odette, most of that is Netflix but he watches football with his sons and Shep is a big fan of sports and stuff about dinosaurs so he’ll watch that with him. Jensen says they got a Nintendo Switch for Christmas and he’ll play with JJ and Zeppelin, Arrow likes to sit and cheer her siblings on. He also says he drives the kids to school everyday and JJ thinks he knows every song on the radio because she’ll randomly pick a station and he’ll know what song is playing but what she doesn’t know yet is that the radio is set to the stations he listens to. x

Last question! What did they hide when they did their AD shoots? ….I’m gonna tell y’all what they said and then I’ll tell y’all what I think.

Jared after laughing and stumbling a bit said a lot but most of the stuff they hid was probably kids toys at which point Jensen says kids toys, parents toys. For some quick context as to why the awkward laughing and joking about sex toys it’s because a couple of years ago Jared accidentally (or “accidentally” whoever you wanna look at it) tweeted a picture of the house where you could clearly see a sex toy. Jensen says he doesn’t think they hid anything because D just throws things out, he’ll ask her about something and she’ll say if he doesn’t know he doesn’t need it that she threw it out 6 months prior. But there were things brought in like the sex plant.

I’m gonna make this fast. I find something weird about their answer and reaction to this question, I don’t know what it is but I do; and like, am I expected to believe that AD brought in items but they didn’t consult them on what to hide or what to showcase, and that they didn’t have people prep the house cause that’s what it comes across. I don't know maybe it's just me, I found the vibe weird.

Also, I suddenly understand why it is that so many times when we see the Ackle homes it seems more like D’s place and aesthetic. Because by what Jensen says she throws things out without asking him so why he would keep his shit there if she's just gonna toss it without consulting him first. x

And then they sang Happy Birthday to Jensen at the end of the panel 🎂

#j2 tinhat #doing the timestamps for this was so stressful because my computer is running out of battery #this took longer than expected #anti danneel #mine

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kaypeace21 · 3 years

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Big brain moment for me: is realizing one of the main reasons Mike dislikes Max is because she's (subconsciously) a constant reminder that he isn't straight.

Dustin and Lucas are immediately into Max . And Mike questions this (since they don’t even know her). Mike"awesome??!you haven't even spoken a word to her! " Dustin (already crushing): " Hey! I don't have to . I mean LOOK at her."

*MIKE LOOKING HELLA CONFUSED XD

Troy (the homophobic bully, talking about el): "her head's shaved . She doesn't even LOOK like a girl."

(Not to mention all the people who also thought she looked like a boy and specifically thought she was Will- aka hopper, benny, and the diner customer).

We also know Dustin is remarking about Max’s physical appearance in that ep1 scene since this videogame-scene also occurs in s2e1 (the same ep Max is introduced) . This videogame- scene has lucas and Dustin fight over princess Daphne -and Lucas mentions how “princess daphne” is his. Foreshadowing the ending of the love triangle between the 2 boys (in relation to Max) .

What’s interesting is that historically dragon’s lair (was a nototriously difficult game)- and they used princess daphne’s attractiveness to convince straight-boys to continue playing the difficult game and waste their money .This is because, if the player finished the game- they would save and also marry princess daphne.

But what’s interesting is - Dustin plays it, and it’s implied Lucas has played the game the most (and even finished the game to get Daphne). However, we never see Will or Mike play the game or get sucked into Daphne’s ...appeal. In fact (right after this) Mike instead puts his arm around Will and suggests they get the top score in dig dug TOGETHER (and beat madmax’s top score instead). Not to mention in s1 Mike wrote a whole d&d story for Will-inspired by star wars/the events of s1 and replaced princess Leia with a king (aka Will). The king has a medal ceremony for the heroes since they k*lled the 7 headed monster for him ( Will: ”it was a 7. The demogorgan it got me″). Mike is not into princesses (he literally replaced a women crushed upon by nerdy/star wars fan boys) and replaced her with a king. connecting it even more to his lack of interest in the princess videogame/girls in general (and interest in Will) .

* These little details in ep 1 show how Mike isn’t like Dustin or Lucas. He doesn’t understand Lucas/dustin’s immediate attraction to daphne or Max in ep 1 (based on their feminine looks). Some people may claim he was attracted to El in Nancy’s dress/his grandma’s wig but i think this had more to do with the fact at that time El looked like the blonde popular girl jennifer hayes (who Lucas/Dustin were into). And so the idea of a girl who liked him (who looked like the most popular girl in school- who his friends were into )was appealing to his ego. Lucas (to Mike, referring to el while she is in her wig,dress, and makeup): “you’re just blind. Blind cause a girl isn’t grossed out by you.” Mike in s1 even later specified he preferred her without the wig/makeup. He says in the wig/dress she’s “pretty” but when El removes all of it she asks “Still pretty?” And he says YEAH! pretty. REALLY pretty.” And sorry his compliment to her at the snowball seemed pretty rehearsed/forced. Just like how he refers to her fem look in s3 as “cool” (like how Hopper says El’s new punk look is “cool”). In s3 we even have Lucas dress like the karate kid (cause max has a crush on him), nancy dresses based on 'new age' music (jonathan likes), so why does max imply El dresses in baggy male clothes for mike ? Saying about picking clothes " chose stuff that feels like you...not mike." Maybe cause mike prefers her dressing in a more masculine way?

Anyways, back on topic. s2e1 shows Mike doesn’t understand his friends immediate attraction to Max and Daphne’s feminine appearances and this ties back to Mike’s animosity to Max in the following s2 eps.

Later mike yells at max "hate you? How can I hate you? i don't even KNOW you!" (Mirroring what Mike said earlier to the smitten Dustin -when Dustin remarked on how he doesn’t really have to know her to think she’s awesome because he found her physically attractive). Mike says this comment to Max- when in canon Mike knew both el and Max for the exact same amount of time -a week . So somewhere in his subconscious he realizes crushing on el (who he ‘doesn't even know’) based on her then "boyish" look /will like appearance (after only knowing her a week) means something. Cause his straight friends (at least initially) are into Max for her more feminine appearance (after also only knowing her for a week) .And Dustin and Lucas were never into the boyish looking El (in s1- like they were with max in s2). So yeah every time Mike sees her - he's reminded that (in canon) he unlike his friends has never crushed on a single girl (except one who resembled a boy/ his male bff). Which (at least subconsciously) agitates him to think about. Max in response to him saying he doesn't hate her. Max: but you don't want me in your party! Mike: correct! Max: why not? Mike: CAUSE YOU’RE ANNOYING!To mike- max's very presence is a constant reminder he's not straight. Her presence makes him at least subconsciously start to think about things- he'd rather not. Like why he was attracted to the boyish looking el (who resembled Will) but not max, princess daphne, or any girl prior?

In s1 we know Mike knows what "gay" , 'fairy', and 'queer' is- all words he heard as insults towards Will . And eventually Mike snaps and attacks Troy for a specific hom*phobic comment making fun of Will being dead. Where Troy says, “Will’s in fairy land now. flying around with ALL THE OTHER FAIRIES. All happy and GAY!” . He attacks Troy in the school gym for subconsciously reminding him he’s gay -same place he yells at Max for doing the same thing. EL EVEN attacks both Max and Troy in the gym using her powers! (cough next time Mike saw Troy he literally flew from where Will ‘died’. (aka like ‘all the other fairies’. Troy even told Hopper Mike “flew” . That is another Mike is gay hint ) . So he probably doesn't even want to fathom the possibility he may be gay or in love with his male best friend (when taught it's something 'bad' by his peers and 80s society as a whole ). Especially when he sees how people already malign Will over such rumors.

So to Mike - Max is the personification of the thing he lacks - the ability to be attracted to girls-the innate ability to be what most deem 'normal'. The ability to be like his friends. And he sadly resents her for this.

Then in s3 max encourages el to dump him ( and says to Mike it's not just a break). And constantly points out how mileven just isn't that great- she yells at Mike about how he doesn't trust el nor respects her ability to make decisions. And tells el that he lied to her. And she also points out to Mike- how el was the one who decided to spy on him (and disrespect his privacy/boundaries). And even worse for Mike's straight facade with El (max gives El a feminine makeover in s3). Something he’s not genuinely attracted to.

To Mike(at least subconsciously)- she is a constant reminder that he’s not straight (in s2). And in s3, she points how the flaws of his comp het relationship with el .Which infuriates him .

So when Mike starts to accept his queerness- I suspect their relationship will improve.

Heck The fact MAX & Will also have a lot in common (but he’s only attracted to Will- a boy and not Max) could be another subconscious reminder he’s not straight (Which causes an additional layer of resentment).For max & Will: Both are poor, their bio dads both abandoned them leaving them with their respective mothers, both like horror films, comics and videogames, both are the youngest of 2 siblings. And both use bats in anger when emulating their ab*sers ,and both are heavily associated with rainbows (Max literally has a rainbow shirt collection/ Will's rainbow ship and the many other rainbow refs). Both also yell at Mike about how sh*tty they think the mileven relationship is in s3. Both have posters relating to beach films (Will has jaws /Max has endless summer).Costume designers said his s1's vest was supposed to be in homage to Marty mcfly (from back to the future). They gave Max Marty mcfly's skateboard in s2.And on Halloween she even dresses up as a movie-character who as a child dressed up as a clown on Halloween (Will’s fear/ what triggered him on Halloween) and whose surname is Myers (Byers?)

I also think Mike was a bit jealous and initially thought Will was into her too. But I think the prior reasons I just discussed was actually the main reason for the animosity.

UPDATE

*this annon pointed out a detail that pretty much just verified my first assumption.To mike- max's very presence is a constant reminder he's not straight-similar to troy doing the same thing (albeit for very diff reasons ). Her presence (and his inability to have a crush on her-like Lucas &Dustin do) makes him at least subconsciously start to think about things- he'd rather not. Like why was he attracted to the boyish looking el (who resembled Will)? And who he barely spoke to, and in his own words he “didn’t even know’ cause he only knew her for a week? But NOT max (who he knew for the same amount of time),and who Lucas/dustin have immediate attraction to/ think is “awesome” without talking to her (because of their feminine looks) .To Mike - Max is the personification of the thing he lacks - the ability to be attracted to girls-the innate ability to be what most deem 'normal'. The ability to be like his friends

We see this by the use of one word....

Having Max in s2 mention how Mike thought El was “awesome” . Is just icing on the cake- showing she’s a reminder to Mike he isn’t straight (and his romantic feelings for El aren’t genuine). She literally threw Mike’s words back at him-where Mike was judging his friends for thinking Max was “awesome” because of her looks-not words.When Mike did the same to El.

Lucas even says the ‘no/yes’ line next to Mike’s heart sign (which has a rainbow propelling a heart on it). In s3 (when dating el) he removed this sign. But symbolically we see it follow him everywhere -via El’s room having a drawing with a rainbow propelling a heart on it- with Mike’s name on it. Which is shown when he’s kissing El- showing no matter how hard he tries to act straight-he can’t escape his rainbow/ queerness.

In fact,in s3, when Max points out the flaws in m*leven she is wearing rainbow shirts (illustrating that she -like the rainbow-sign & drawing is a constant reminder to Mike that he’s not straight -which follows him everywhere). Similar to Troy who (in his rainbow shirt) interrupts Lucas claiming Mike has a crush on El- only to announce Will is gay/ and to only target Mike with such remarks after this .

Not to mention this whole -Max reminding him he’s not straight and can’t like girls in s2-3 just ties in to my theory Mike was projecting when telling Will “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls.”-here. And the whole theory Mike is emulating his parent’s loveless marriage with El-mentioned it here.

#max mayfield #mike wheeler #byler #byeler #will byers #lucas sinclair #dustin henderson

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startreksetplans · 2 years

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TNG Movie small labels

These were gold foil backed with smaller sized text.

Example:

Transcription of known gold foils:

014

Subsystem 62-3845 Maintenance access / GT:04:003:171A

Caution: EPS power transmission grids potentially produce hazardous radiation fields in 4.3 E 07 Htz range.

Proper containment measures must be taken into account when utilizing sensor pallet modulation. Something familiar, some-

thing peculiar, something for everyone, a comedy tonight. No matter where you go, there you are.

047

Optical Data Net Service Access

Caution: Operating protocol 49-3732 requires full redundancy for all

primary data feeds. We’ll never be caught. We’re on a mission from god.

047

Optical Data Net Service Access

Caution: Operating protocol 49-3732 requires full redundancy for all

primary data feeds. Be vewy, vewy qwiet, I’m hunting wabbits. Heh heh heh!

112

Auxiliary systems access 74-32834 / lateral module 479A

operational procedures CD 664-038A allow access to these conduits to only certified engineering staff. Alpha team members

for shifts B and C report to operations manager. A team members operating black Chevrolet vans with red stripes contact

network officials regarding of gold jewellery, old cigars and outlandishly ridiculous personalities. Tues after fall guy.

139

Optical Data network systems access/ jos 325A

isolinear data modules present in this system must be maintained on power, even during normal systems maintenance

and diagnostic protocols. There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is the middle ground between

light and shadow, between science and superstition. This is the dimension of imagination. An area we call the twilight zone.

221

Caution: subspace flux radiation hazard / protocol 479A

Unprotected exposure to this unit may result in injury due to subspace flux in excess of 30.0 MC/HR. Open the pod bay doors

Hal. I’m sorry I can’t do that. Dave, stop. Will you stop Dave? I’m afraid, Dave. My mind is going. I can

feel it. I can feel it. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.

302

Environmental subsystems access / module 585.34

Access to environmental subsystems only with authorization of duty engineer or operations officer. Just sit right back and

you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. That started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty

sailin’ man, the skipper brave and sure. Five passengers set sail that day on a three hour tour. A three hour tour.

302

Environmental systems 24-505

Contains components critical to environmental control systems. Wile E.

Coyote, supergenius. I like the sound of that. Wile E.

Coyote, supergenius!

321

EPS Power Distribution Node 844.3 / JOS 325A

Starfleet Transfer protocol sftp 11217. Corridor Acess panels open on a two-one-seven ratio, requiring a coding series of

interlock functions. There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We will control

the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour we will control all that you see and hear.

321

Access Panel 22-329

Contains active optical Data network elements. Do not remove this panel

without authorization from chief engineer. Jane, stop this crazy thing!

321

Caution: authorized personnel only / SFRA protocol 585.34

Vectored exhaust chambers utilize driver coil assembly systems similar to lateral phase inducers. Regulated particle

emissions tend to vary in the event of eventual eventualities which eventually evacuate evacuation evacuators. Ambulator

activation of actual arranged arrays assemble anti-ionic particles partially permitting passive pressure power ports

451

Calibration instructions for module GT:04:003:171A

This unit requires independent verification of calibration using tricorder reference standard 348.2 unless authorized

by duty officer or operations officer. Phase alignment must be verified prior to any mission critical operation

or scientific data gathering application. Surely you’re joking, mister Feynman.

855

Access Panel 46-102

No user-serviceable parts inside. They fight and bite, they fight and fight

and bite, fight fight fight, bite bite bite, it’s the itchy & scratchy show.

927

Engineering access only

Do not attempt to service this module without authorization from chief

engineer or operations officer. My God, the bastards have killed Kenny!

#star trek tng #star trek #tng #the next generation #transcription #labels #set dressing #reference

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somebody-909 · 3 years

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Stalkyoo - Black and White Formal Romantic Subtext Analysis

The beginning of I Love Yoo up until the Black and White Formal shows the development of Shin-Ae and Yeong-gi's relationship from strangers to reluctant acquaintances and eventually to friends.

Their relationship's development up until the present comic, in my opinion, reaches a peak during the formal arc, where we see both the completed development of their friendship (neither are reluctant) but we also see the fast emergence of new possible romantic feelings. The arc is pivotal in defining and developing their relationship and we continue to see its effects afterwards. So, in order to better understand the two characters' relationship, let's take a look at the key moments in the arc that explore their friendship and romantic tension.

Ep. 49 | Makeup - A Friendly Face and Romantic Tension

Shin-Ae is forced to attend the black and white formal to take care of her father. She is in an incredibly difficult position, with college exams the next day, her father ill, and now having to deal with this incredibly unfamiliar situation and this horrible dress.

When she sees Yeong-gi however, it’s great to see a comforting and familiar presence. We get a chance to see their friendship in this uncomfortable setting when Yeong-gi shows concern for Shin-Ae.

That is not all, however. The makeup panel (which was removed by Quimchee later on, but is included in the mid-season recap), introduces us to the first instance of genuine romantic tension between the two in the arc (and the whole comic up until here, really).

The two are very close together and look at each other softly. Shin-Ae seems to be blushing, as well. This moment is intimate and romantically tense.

This first scene does a great job at introducing the two major dynamics in their relationship that are explored in this arc: their established friendship and new romantic tension. These dynamics lead up to what occurs on the hospital balcony.

Ep. 49-51 | Hands - Distance and Desires

When Yeong-gi gets up to get Shin-Ae food, she reaches for him and grabs onto his sleeve. This panel introduces Shin-Ae's desire to stick with Yeong-gi throughout the night. We understand how comforting she finds it to be near him.

She extends her hand — showing how she is now also "reaching" for him and his companionship.

In Ep. 50, when Yeong-gi is scolded by his father and leaves to wait outside for Alyssa, Shin-Ae notices he seems down from across the floor. And for the first time, she tries to reach him. Up until now, she has been wary of Yeong-gi and his intentions, but now we see that their relationship has truly progressed to real friends. Shin-ae genuinely cares for Yeong-gi. But before she can reach him, she is interrupted by Sang-chul.

In the next episode, we see Yeong-gi respond to her call, reflecting what Shin-Ae did in Ep. 49, and extending his hand back towards her. Both characters' reciprocal desire to connect with each other is shown through their hands.

This scene, where they reach for each other but don't connect, introduces the arc's recurrent motif/theme of DISTANCE. Shin-ae and Yeong-gi want to connect, as they care for each other and find comfort in one another, but because of the circumstances at the party they are torn apart repeatedly.

And despite (literally and figuratively) reaching for each other, neither their hands nor their good intentions (like Shin-ae’s desire to be there for Yeong-gi) actually do reach each other. This repeats a few times in the arc, causing significant tension; due to the obstacles of the events around them, they can’t reach each other despite how much they may want to. As such, readers also feel relief whenever the two characters do manage to get together.

Ep. 55 | The Dance - A Kousuke and Yeong-gi Parallel

Kousuke, while having good intentions, struggles to understand what Shin-Ae wants, and instead goes for what makes sense to him. Yeong-gi, on the other hand, consistently shows an understanding of what would truly help Shin-Ae.

It is certainly true that Kousuke’s method was pragmatic. If the problem is that Shin-Ae feels humiliated and that he is embarrassed by her, what better way to show that he isn’t than by dancing with her in front of everyone? It’s a well-meant gesture that would show that he cares more for her than what others think and regardless of what they think. However, although his intentions were sweet, the outcomes were less so.

Shin-Ae DOES NOT want to dance. A scene that may have been beautiful, is tainted by Shin-Ae's true feelings of discomfort.

The truth is, Shin-Ae doesn’t want to go back in front of them. She doesn’t want to prove something to them. She doesn’t want to dance. But she feels like she has to. She can’t say no. The dance is actually… sad to see. She doesn’t want to be there.

But as she dances and feels terrible, Yeong-gi shows up. She is immediately excited and put at ease but is also worried about him since she hasn't seen him since he left to go outside.

But then Yeong-gi acts a goof. He understands that Shin-Ae doesn’t want to be there, but she has to. Because he understands the feeling of putting on a performance, despite being miserable… he immediately recognizes Shin-Ae's going through that too. So being the lovely friend he is, Yeong-gi goofs around. What better way to make Shin-Ae feel less tense in this too formal environment by reminding her of a friendly presence and doing something hilariously inappropriate? And of course, he knows how to help alleviate some of her discomfort, because they’re friends, after all, right? Yeong-gi shows a deep level of empathy for Shin-Ae.

The scene also develops a contrast between Kousuke and Yeong-gi — and the differences in how they affect Shin-Ae — that is paralleled many times later in the series.

Yeong-gi is the one who gets Shin-Ae to smile. He's the one who turns this scene from something uncomfortable to wholesome. And yet, he's not the one dancing with her. He stays to the side, in the shadows of the crowd, with distance between him and Shin-Ae, and with his head down. It fits his overarching character arc — staying hidden and away, and unable to chase for what he wants because of a quiet sense of shame and low self-worth.

The significance of him not interrupting and staying off to the side is purposefully emphasized in Ep. 57, when Kousuke says:

"I'm surprised you didn't interrupt my dance with Ms. Yoo."

Yeong-gi doesn't respond and simply looks away and slightly frowns. This emphasizes that there is a reason Yeong-gi stays away, and it's likely because his low self-esteem issues cause him to think, "Who am I to interfere?"

Overall, this dance panel achieves a similar effect to the earlier scene when their hands reach for each other, adding to the tension caused by distance — it feels like Shin-Ae and Yeong-gi should be together, but because of the circumstances, they can’t. They are reaching for each other, emotionally, but just can’t close the gap.

Ep. 55 | “We’re (just) friends... right?” - More Romantic Build-up

Although Yeong-gi knew exactly how to cheer up Shin-Ae, what he didn’t expect was her laugh… or rather the way he feels when she does.

Look at Yeong-gi’s expression — his eyes are widened. He has a look of awe and he seems shocked. He felt something unexpected. Maybe his heart skipped a beat... Could it be possible…?

He also has a resigned smile after, choosing to look at their dance from afar.

After the dance, Yeong-gi asks Shin-Ae to confirm their friendship.

But the panel and his tense smile seems… eerie. Faked. Like Yeong-gi might not be asking this question for obvious reasons. Even Shin-Ae notes that he seems uneasy, with a confused look and a nervous sweat drop.

We’ve already seen their completely established friendship. But as soon the two explicitly acknowledge this out-loud, we seem to have something new to deal with. Why does Yeong-gi suddenly want confirmation of their friendship, and in a manner that seems quite… sad? Why does his smile seem faked? We can look just a few panels prior to have a better understanding of what’s occurring internally for Yeong-gi.

Yeong-gi's shocked expression and widened eyes are similar to other moments of romantic tension, namely the hospital balcony scene and the earphones scene (albeit in a more muted manner). This is the second moment in this arc after the makeup scene that adds to the romantic tension leading up to the hospital balcony scene.

I believe Yeong-gi seems sad when he asks, “We’re friends right?” because when Shin-Ae laughs, he subconsciously feels the pangs of possible budding romantic feelings (it isn’t quite there yet, it is slight, but he is feeling something new) and he immediately subconsciously tries to deny those feelings by having Shin-Ae assert their friendship.

He feels dissonance between two facts:

“Shin-Ae is my friend”

“I felt something when she laughed”

This dissonance is uncomfortable, so he seeks to deny what is implied by the second part (that he may feel more for her). Additionally, we understand Yeong-gi struggles with self-worth. With the added pressure of those around him, as well as Shin-ae who has consistently accused him of being too pushy and a player, it is no struggle to understand why he immediately tries to avoid this feeling at even the first slightest hint of it.

But by looking for an affirmation of friendship to refute what he felt when she laughed, he unwittingly makes a link between what he felt to something beyond friendship.

Ep. 57-8 | The Bar - Brief Respite and a Kousuke/Yeong-gi Parallel

Due to the aforementioned tension, moments like the bar where Yeong-gi and Shin-ae are able to interact and joke around (about boobs in this case) feel incredibly refreshing — everything else is uncomfortable, but being with each other is comforting.

Once the others join them, we also get another slight Kousuke and Yeong-gi parallel. When Alyssa mentions Yeong-gi could dance with Shin-Ae, Yeong-gi refuses, likely due to pressure from Kousuke to be faithful to Alyssa. (We don’t quite know what he would’ve said otherwise). Shin-Ae responds to him refusing the dance, thinking:

“It would’ve been awkward anyways like my dance with Kousuke.”

The phrase "it would've been [negative adjective] anyways" usually implies a sense of settling for an outcome and sometimes slight displeasure.

I will admit that is hard to firmly state she’s disappointed that he said no. But the phase most certainly implies that she would’ve gone along with it if he said yes. (If this is hard to understand, Shin-Ae doesn’t think something like, “Good. I didn’t want to dance anyways.”) Her thought is relatively indifferent, especially in contrast to Kousuke whom she explicitly didn’t want to dance with.

Ep. 61 | Yeong-gi Takes a Stand - Relationship-driven Growth

When Yeong-gi learns that Shin-Ae is in trouble, but is yelled at by his father for his behaviour and not being with Alyssa, he is absolutely terrified at first (poor boy).

Randulph: "What are you doing? Fooling around again? It hasn't even been that long since I last reprimanded you!"

*Yeong-gi flinches*

Randulph: "How many times am I going to have to scold you tonight??? How hard is that head of of yours that nothing I say gets through to you! And Alyssa isn't even with you!"

Yeong-gi: *meekly* "Well — my friend was —"

Randulph: "I'm not through talking!

*Yeong-gi flinches*

Randulph continues scolding him, then says, "Forget about your friends."

To which Yeong-gi replies, "No... Castigate me, humiliate me. Do that all you want after I've ensured her safety!"

Upon thinking about the possible danger Shin-Ae is in, we see him, for the first time, advocate for himself and stand up to his father. Yeong-gi's concern for Shin-Ae allows him to stand up to the man who terrifies him. Shin-Ae takes easy precedent over the politics of his family and it shows how far their relationship has come and how it drives Yeong-gi's growth.

Ep. 62-3 | Sang-chul — Anger on behalf of Shin-Ae & a Shin-Ae and Alyssa Comparison

When Yeong-gi sees Sang-chul with Shin-Ae's jacket, he confronts him.

Sang-chul: "Back off bro. I don't want to start any trouble here."

Yeong-gi: "Too late for it now, innit? You asked for trouble as soon as you tried to take advantage of Shin-Ae."

Yeong-gi gets personally angry on behalf of Shin-Ae. It's another example that emphasizes their friendship.

We also see a contrast developed between Shin-Ae and Alyssa by Sang-chul:

"What is this Shin-Ae person to you anyway? You didn't react this way when I mentioned kissing your girlfriend... Where is she anyway? I still need my selfie and my kiss since you're fine with it."

Sang-chul assumes Yeong-gi must be romantically and sexually involved with Shin-Ae partly because he's a disgusting, sexist dirtbag, but also because, frankly, Yeong-gi seems to just generally like Shin-Ae more than his actual girlfriend.

I also want to draw attention to the fact that Sang-chul has mentioned kissing Alyssa three times: once before when they first met, and twice now. All three times, Yeong-gi didn't react.

In Ep. 63, Yeong-gi begins to move away from Sang-chul to get to Shin-Ae.

Sang-chul: "Heh. That's right. Wuss. Go run to your b*tch."

*Yeong-gi stops*

Sang-chul: "I'll go keep Alyssa company while you're at it! I still haven't gotten my kiss! Should be easy. She must be dumb as hell if she's dating you."

*Yeong-gi turns around, glares at him, kisses him, then punches him* "There's your damn kiss, you gobshite!"

Yeong-gi: "Don't you dare call Shin-Ae a b*tch ever again. And stay away from Alyssa."

Why is it, that now, he suddenly becomes agitated after already ignoring three taunts by Sang-chul to kiss Alyssa? Especially when he was in the middle of getting to Shin-Ae? I'm going to argue that Yeong-gi actually decides to punch him as soon as he first stops after Sang-chul insults Shin-Ae. Additionally, after the punch, Yeong-gi's first demand is to never insult Shin-Ae again, placing emphasis on this. It is also said more forcefully then the second: "Don't you dare... ever again" vs "And stay away". Alyssa is added almost like an afterthought.

There is a purposeful comparison here between the way Yeong-gi treats the disrespect towards the two women. Yeong-gi immediately gets angry enough to get violent when Sang-chul insults Shin-Ae, but barely responds at first when he calls Alyssa dumb and threatens to kiss her. He cares more for Shin-Ae than he does for his romantic partner, Alyssa.

Naturally, since the comparison is between his girlfriend and Shin-Ae, it also paints his feelings for Shin-Ae in a romantic light.

Ep. 63 | Yeong-gi Saves Shin-Ae

When Shin-Ae falls in the pool, it is Yeong-gi who saves her. Kousuke does not. This is another narrative parallel meant to contrast the two's relation to Shin-Ae. They both fall into the pool (parallel) but Yeong-gi, not Kousuke, saves Shin-Ae (contrast).

The episode also focuses almost solely on Yeong-gi's response to Shin-Ae's injury. He is absolutely terrified and feels terrible guilt, thinking he did this to her. But he is the one who saved her. He is the one shown to panic, yell for her, and scream for help. (We can also get into the authorial choice to focus on Yeong-gi's reaction and not Kousuke's... At the very least, it emphasizes that this moment is especially significant for Shin-Ae and Yeong-gi.)

Conclusions

The black and white formal arc serves as a climax for development between Shin-Ae and Yeong-gi — we see how in the face of adversity, the two value each other deeply as friends, and are given romantically tense moments.

There are also multiple narrative parallels, where Kousuke and Yeong-gi are put in similar situations, but the way they impact Shin-Ae are contrasted. Despite having multiple moments with Kousuke, Yeong-gi is who impacts her positively and who she wants to spend time with. This is continued in the hospital finale, when despite literally “reaching” Kousuke (he is with her and holds her hands), it is only after chasing Yeong-gi and being with him that she finds cathartic emotional support and finally cries. (Although these parallels jab at YooTip, I want to focus more on how it emphasizes that Shin-Ae and Yeong-gi's bond is beyond that she has with another person she has known for the same amount of time. It shows the difference between the more basic-level bond she has with Kousuke, vs. her bond with Yeong-gi that is surprisingly strong for people who have only known each other for a few weeks.)

Overall, this arc builds a base for when Yeong-gi first feels true romantic feelings for Shin-Ae: when she holds onto him and cries on the hospital balcony (you can see that analysis here). In this scene at the end of this arc, the two who so desperately tried to connect during the gala, finally do (although their hands still do not touch).

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no-reply95 · 3 years

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I was scrolling through the Beatles topic on Twitter the other day and came across a tweet from Mark Lewisohn referring to a talk he’d given to the Fab4cast podcast on the Get Back sessions and Spring period of 1969. I assumed that it was a recent talk so I gave it a listen but the talk is actually from 2019.

I tend to find Lewisohn’s podcast interviews to be very interesting. He’s obviously got decades worth of Beatle knowledge stored up so you’re almost guaranteed to learn something new or hear an anecdote that you’ve never heard before but more than the factoids he’s accumulated over the years I find his interpretations of the band extremely telling.

The part of the conversation that really caught my attention was when the podcast hosts brought up the fact that John and Paul’s weddings were really close together and wondered if the two events were connected in any way, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this probably got the biggest reaction out of Lewisohn, the main points of the exchange are outlined below (time stamp 47:12)

Host: “Well also in this period there are two events, the marriages of John and Paul, within 8 days of each other… I read that John wanted to marry on the 14th, two days after Paul’s wedding but couldn’t do it because of legal issues, how much was his [marriage] a response to Paul’s marriage do you think?”

Lewisohn: “I’ve read that people say that it was but never heard John say that it was so there’s no validity to those claims they’re just people assuming that John didn’t want to be outdone by Paul… that’s the kind of writing that annoys me because it becomes part of the fact and it’s some writer thinking that’s what it probably was… Unless someone out there can find a Lennon quote in which he actually says it in which case I stand corrected and I’ll be very happy to do so”

There’s a lot going on in these quotes so I’m gonna break down my thoughts on this further:

The illusion of John’s honesty

What Lewisohn displays here is something I believe is pretty common within the Beatles’ authorship. I believe in Revolution In The Head Ian McDonald referred to John as “truth” and Paul as “beauty” and I think a lot of writers do tend to assign those attributes consistently to John and Paul. Reading (or listening) to the Lennon Remembers interview now, it’s hard to believe at one stage people took what John was saying as fact and never even questioned whether there were emotions or agenda behind what he was saying, despite the contradictions (“Me and Paul stopped writing together in 1962” vs “Me and Paul worked really closely together on Sgt. Pepper”) and because John was so charismatic and would speak openly in interviews and to people he knew about both the good and bad in his life I think people, and in this case Lewisohn, assume that John told us everything of note that happened in his life, which I don’t think is a realistic expectation of anyone, let alone someone as famous as John. I think it’s problematic to take John’s or anyone else’s words, especially when they’re said in public, as the gospel truth because everyone has an agenda and John was no different. I also think it’s unrealistic to believe that John would ever announce that the reason he and Yoko got married when they did was in any way connected to Paul, that would have sullied the sanctity of “John and Yoko TM”, I mean, how can you be the greatest love story ever if the reason you decided to get married was because your musical partner who you may have unresolved romantic feelings for got married? I don’t think John would publicly embarrass Yoko like that or risk undermining the strength of the brand he was trying to create with his new relationship by admitting that Paul’s marriage spurred them on. That Lewisohn is apparently holding out for a lost interview of John stating that Paul was involved in the timing of his marriage to Yoko just sounds pretty far fetched to me.

The timing of John’s wedding in relation to his and Yoko’s divorces

As discussed in this podcast, Paul and Linda got married (pretty unexpectedly I believe) on 12 March 1969 and John and Yoko got married 8 days later (and apparently they wanted it to be sooner) on 20 March 1969. Aside from the extremely close proximity of John and Paul’s weddings it should be noted that John’s divorce from Cynthia was finalised in November 1968 and Yoko’s from Tony Cox was finalised in January 1969.

So why am I bringing up John and Yoko’s divorces? Because it meant that they were free to marry each other from January 1969, there was no longer a legal issue preventing them and if John’s bursting out in song about it, you would assume that they would have started planning their wedding ASAP… but curiously they didn’t. How do we know John and Yoko weren’t planning a wedding before Paul married Linda? Because once Paul was married John and Yoko started scrambling to get married ASAP, suddenly there was a rush and need to be married that hadn’t existed before, John suddenly wanted to marry Yoko on a ferry but they couldn’t be married there, then John wanted to marry Yoko in Paris but they needed to be resident in Paris for a period of time before they could get married there so eventually they settled on Gibraltar as they could get married there at short notice. Clearly there was a sudden need for John and Yoko to get married that didn’t materialise until around March 1969, am I and countless other people (including Paul himself) crazy for assuming that Paul’s wedding impacted John’s sudden desperate need to be married? If it wasn’t Paul’s wedding, what was it?

Authorial interpretation and assumptions

I’m really fascinated by the visceral reaction Lewisohn had to just the suggestion that the timing of John and Yoko’s wedding was connected to Paul and Linda’s. For Lewisohn to state it annoys him was pretty shocking to me because, given what is publicly known about this period and the lack of any other logical reason for John and Yoko’s wedding to be so close to Paul’s and Linda’s, I don’t think it’s bad writing to point out the proximity and suggest that the timing was more than a coincidence.

Based on his reaction, you would assume that Lewisohn would be set against any form of interpretation where the principal in question hadn’t confirmed that the interpretation was in fact correct but that would be an incorrect assumption to make. Some of you may be aware of the Hornsey Road shows Mark Lewisohn was giving in 2019 around the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road. During these shows Lewisohn played a clip from the, now infamous, 4-4-4-2 meeting tape and gave a presentation on the Abbey Road period in the Beatles’ history. One of the points Lewisohn raised during the show was that during the sessions, after the car accident in Scotland, a bed was brought into the studio for Yoko so she (and sometimes John) could rest while work on the album progressed. According to Lewisohn, one morning they turned up to the studio and someone had removed one of the legs from the bed, leaving it with 3 legs *dramatic pause* which was him heavily hinting that he thought Paul broke Yoko’s bed on purpose and then bragged about it on the Ram album by including a song called 3 legs, I’m not going to go into the validity (or lack thereof) of this claim but I find it very interesting that Lewisohn was annoyed about authors suggesting that the timing of John and Yoko’s wedding was connected to Paul and Linda’s but he seems happy to publicly speculate that Paul was sabotaging Yoko’s bed in the studio based on the title of a song that he would release on Ram two years later and nothing else.

Is there any evidence that connects John’s wedding to Paul’s?

I’ve already outlined the suspiciousness of John and Yoko choosing to get married right after Paul, when they had been free to marry for weeks prior but is there any other evidence that either proves that the weddings were connected or is Lewisohn right to deem that suggestion as lacking in validity?

Interestingly there actually is unverified eyewitness testimony that does connect John and Paul’s weddings (something not mentioned by Lewisohn in this podcast). I believe there’s an anecdote from Les Anthony (John’s chauffeur at the time) about him driving John and Yoko around when news of Paul’s wedding suddenly came across the radio, to which John apparently said to Yoko that “we have to get married now”… I couldn’t track down the exact source for that story (if anyone knows the source please let me know) so I’m not sure how credible that anecdote is but, assuming it is accurate, then that would suggest a correlation between John and Paul’s weddings that Lewisohn is adamant doesn’t exist.

Why does this matter?

I do think that this podcast interview could be indicative of a few future concerns I personally have around the way the Beatles discourse will progress in the future. Firstly, this was only a podcast interview so it’s unlikely that when Lewisohn releases the final book in his trilogy that he’ll discuss the weddings in this manner (I.e. although he’s adamant the timing of John’s wedding had nothing to with Paul he failed to offer any sort of explanation regarding why John and Yoko were rushing to get married when they’d had weeks to prepare a wedding).

It’s a slight worry that Lewisohn seems to believe that John announced every single thing that happened in his life of note, especially concerning Paul and Yoko. If John had told us everything of interest about him, surely his Dakota diaries would be the basis of a Netflix series by now and not locked away in a vault (assuming they haven’t already been destroyed). To me, like several authors before him, Lewisohn seems to be mistaking John’s emotional honesty with factual honesty. It didn’t escape my attention that several clips of the Lennon Remembers interview were inserted into this podcast and Lewisohn quotes extensively from it in Tune In as well. There’s nothing wrong with using Lennon Remembers as a source but if you do use it you should be analysing the veracity of what was said as we know that John was in a torched earth mentality at that time and even he himself has said what he said in that interview wasn’t meant as a timeless manifesto. It’s a shame that given his ability of analyse sources Lewisohn has never (to my knowledge) critically analysed Lennon Remembers, given that other sources have been analysed this makes LR a strange omission.

Finally, Lewisohn does tend to make some good insights and does have the ability to read between the lines (I.e. him noting Paul’s tendency to say “we” when in most cases he means himself) but with John I do think he has a bit of a blindspot. Why Lewisohn is happy to speculate without evidence in some cases (3 legs) but he draws the line at the suggestion that John and Paul’s weddings being connected is anyone’s guess. If Lewisohn can turn his attention to reading between the lines with John and the other Beatles too and connecting the dots then we should get a Beatles biography that finally addresses a lot of the issues we cover on this site. However, if we take the approach of only using John and Yoko’s PR to understand the events that transpired before and after the band broke up then the story hasn’t moved much further than 1970 and given all that we know now I think that would be a huge shame.

#the beatles #john lennon #paul mccartney #john and paul #mark lewisohn #paul and linda #john and yoko #double wedding #beatles podcasts #given Lewisohn’:s status it’s crucial he doesn’t just dismiss things he doesn’t like as invalid #interpretation is fine as long as it’s correct #i have other podcast thoughts on a separate show #thoughts #long post

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skellizo · 2 years

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I have never watched a single star wars film completely so now I am learning what the fuck happend through the Lego Game (below read more are notes after completing each trilogy)

Disclaimer:

I know some very basic stuff of the og trilogy (mainly Luke and Leia being siblings, C3po and R2D2 exist, Yoda in some kind of swamp environment and Luke and Leia being the children of Vader)

I know close to nothing about the prequels except we got a meme from it, Obi-Wan is in them and Anakin = Vader and Pademe is the mother to Luke and Leia (I think Palpetine also appears in those movies but idk the plot of the prequels only that it ends with Anakin becoming Vader)

I know some general plot points (I think) of the sequels as I have watched some clips of them (mainly for Oscar Isaac because of Moon Knight research prior to it being released)

I remember the robot with 4 lightsabers and some lady in red with white facepaint(?)

OG trilogy:

I always thought the whole Luke I am your father would already happen in the first movie but alright

Are….Are Ben And Obi-Wan the same person….?

I thought Palpatine was in the prequel trilogy and Vader was the main villain for the OG

Also why the fuck did no one spoil to me that Vader and Luke would fight together against Palpetine

Was Leias and Hans romance also only established at the very end of the third film?? Seems a bit weird but alright

I didn’t fully get why Luke went to Vader and Palpetine in the first place? Like I guess to prove that he is not gonna turn to the dark side

…Luke and Leia kissed in the movies didn’t they? If yes thank you Lego Star Wars for just removing that part

I don’t know why I thought it was Vader that was cast in the silvery stuff instead of Han

Boba Fett?? Appears in the OG trilogy?? As an “antagonist”??

Anyway Conclusion: Story seems interesting enough especially since I knew NOTHING it turns out about the third movie of this trilogy. I was planning to watch all the movies after the game anyway but atm I am most interested in the story and execution of this trilogy

Prequel Trilogy:

I’m sorry but am I told that Star Wars happened because of an in universe trade disagreement???

ANAKIN BUILD C3PO??

ANAKIN IS NOT AN ORPHAN

Pademe seems a bit…older than Anakin

I have never seen Queen Amidala out of Lego form

Palpatine actually looked normal once huh

AMIDALA AND PADME ARE THE SAME PERSON??

Ok but did some strange insects really get sent in for a break in into padmes room??

I can’t imagine General G as something other than in Lego form like his character design stuck so in my head that after more than 10 years I still remembered it in such detail

…So they just made a lot of clones?? I always thought Stormtrooper were a lot of clones but now I don’t think they are??

So Vader/Anakin has a bunch of temper tantrums

Why do peoples faces change when they turn to the dark side??

Conclusion: I got a bit lost during the whole clone thing with Jango Fett. Bit weird when we saw Anakin as a literal small child next to Padmé a senator in the council knowing they would get together later on, had no idea that Amidala and Padmé were the same person short moment my mind was just blown, Episode 1 and 3 I understood the story I think alright but I was a bit lost in episode 2…I literally only knew about Order 66, “Do it” and the whole last fight

Sequel trilogy:

So….I know a lot from the force awakens so not much new stuff buuuut Han Solos death was nice

POE DAMERON MY BELOVED

I thought that vault where the tentacle things were stored were IN the millennium falcon so that’s new

There weren’t multiple Leia temporary general replacements in the films right??

Was there actually a prison break in the movies???

There is a weird hole on Lukes getaway Island and you have like a mirror level in it but no idea how that is translated to the movies

WE HAVE TO FIGHT LUKE

WHO THE FUCK IS DJ??

Admiral Holdo?? Times three??

Finn should have become a Jedi

Ep 9 begins and one of teh first characters you see is the live slug reaction slug?? Perfect

Did…did Kylo Ren also just wander into a strange lab like structure and found a Palpetine who was falling apart??

KLAUD THE LIVE SLUG REACTION SLUG WAS ON A MISSION

Poe and Rey are on their own…

Finn didn’t yell to Rey about needing to tell her something

Wait who are those Kylo Ren looking dudes?? I just missed that

…Rose feels like a character that was introduced just so that they could give Finn a female love interest after people started shipping Finn and Poe

Who the fuck is this little droid called D-0 and why is it on my team suddenly - IT CAN TALK?

WHO IS GENERAL PRYDE

LEIA HAD A SABER

GREBE KORORA.?

Knowing now Palpetine once looked more like a normal dude it makes more sense as to how he ever had children (the question is still when the fuck did that happen but…)

Zero idea who the Knights of Ren are or if they ever even appeared outside of Episode 9

YOOOO KYLO RENS SUBTITLES HAVE CHANGED TO BEN SOLO :D

…where did he get that blue lightsaber from though?? Like? And why does Rey also have a blue one?? One of the two is Leias I just always thought she would have another colour other than blue but still….why both blue

So you are telling me Ben and Rey kissed in the movies?? Alright then…the hug was enough

Was there als a BB-9E that got in basically a Mech in the movies

“I don’t like sand” Thanks Anakin

There is the yellow Lightsaber

Conclusion: Rose felt like she was just there as a love interest, genuinely interesting concepts, I feel like I missed a lot because no idea when the Knight of Ren first popped up and all that. Whose lightsabers did they fight with at the end of ep 9?? Finn should have been/become a Jedi like idc. THE LINE SOMEHOW PALPETINE RETURNED WASN’T THERE. Live Slug Reaction. I think if they had maybe set up that Snoke and the first orders plan was to resurrect Palpetine from the beginning and then Ben and Rey killing Snoke would have set something free that resulted in Palpetine being alive after his death would have worked better. Why did they have to include a Romance between Ben and Rey in the movies like…alright I guess

Final Conclusion: Had a good time :) Also liked most of the main characters and parts of the story though I certainly would have changed let’s say quite a bit but ey from what I got from the games: It was alright. Definitely gonna go watch the movies now so….who knows maybe I’ll become a Star Wars fan

Fun Fact: Lego Star Wars the complete Saga was the only way I knew anything back then about Star Wars. Kids in school would either play Star Wars or Harry Potter during break, so I had barely any knowledge about either of those but just bluffed my way through that. Also when I was young two kids were talking about the (real life) Lego Set for the death Star and how expensive it is, in my imagination I just had a giant Star from Mario in my head as to how this “death Star” looked.

#star wars #star wars original trilogy #star wars prequels #star wars sequel trilogy #I mainly did these notes because my friends were like I wonder how someone would pick up the story by only playing the Lego Games #and I was like I‘ve got you

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edward-little · 3 years

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honestly honestly honestly goodsir’s characterization in the mutineers’ camp is so fucking interesting. people have talked about how he loses his zest for life, his will to live, his gentleness, his hopefulness (or naïvité, depending), his ego in its entirety. goodsir as we come to know him drops off the face of the planet; he has no reassurance to offer gibson, nothing but instruction for crozier. even names, a symbol of the individual even if everyone within a 10 mile radius is called thomas, escape him.

when gibson comes to him about his progressing illness, goodsir outlines his decline and tells him that he should expect to die. that he has no sympathy for the men who took him is understandable, as gibson points out: “i wouldn’t, either, doctor.” “what’s that?” “comfort us. any of us.” goodsir expresses his disdain for the mutineers by withholding the qualities required of a doctor, and loses the characterization we recognize. even his ep 5 “does that really work on anyone, mr. hickey?” remark was prompted by hickey remarking on a gesture of kindness offered him; goodsir has gone from “you shouldn’t carry heavy things until your wounds mend” to “it will get worse, this.” we can detect a chipping away when he resolves to test the tinned food on jacko, or when he goes to crozier to report on his findings. he shows some sort of horror at jacko’s death and carries her corpse on the walk out as reminder and incentive; he directs silna away from the tinned food and breaks down when morfin dies as a result of the pain he endured from lead poisoning. in these moments, we see him acting, resolving to act, or having a crisis over the lack of adequate, life-saving action. at the mutineers’ camp, he’s spurred into action by an imminent threat to hodgson’s life, but that action is an order from hickey. the only self-affected momentum he displays brings him to his own death.

(the most dramatic change in goodsir, in my opinion, shows when crozier tells him to cut open irving’s stomach. however, the murder of an indigenous family is not About a white man on an imperialist expedition, nor is the character of goodsir capable of understanding the loss in an appreciable way. after all, he tells silna that people in england are good.)

one of the questions i’m interested in ruminating over is, is his part in the goodsir-gibson-(later hickey-)tent scene cruel? it’s not comfort, and the discussion of whether or not the mutineers deserve comfort isn’t one i find relevant in this case-- desert, as it were, isn’t on the table. the part where hickey stabs gibson pits goodsir and hickey against one another, hickey holding gibson on the knife and close to him, while goodsir tries to separate them from one another. hickey looks at goodsir with reproach over the top of gibson’s head. hickey’s prior words to gibson-- “we’ll make the best of a bad situation, as we always have”-- suggest that he considers it a killing done for a greater good (whether that greater good means feeding the camp alone or if he included putting gibson out of his misery in that assessment, i couldn’t tell you.) but while goodsir makes no effort to comfort gibson regarding his imminent death, he still makes some effort, however belated, to stop hickey’s murder of him. we can infer (or, at least, i can infer at 3:45 AM) that he prefers letting gibson’s illness play out to its conclusion, knowing in great detail the misery it brings. he had cried after morfin’s death; it was admittedly a violent one, but it was one which came as a result of one of the two illnesses the crew suffered. he offered morfin treatments for his symptoms, but has nothing for gibson but candor. if we position hickey as the merciful one, then of course goodsir becomes the cruel one. with nothing in his arsenal but broken glass, poison, and his medical knowledge, maybe the only mercy is the one he enacts upon and through himself.

the other thing i’ve been thinking about is what would goodsir have done if he, rather than bridgens, had been the one to tend to fitzjames just prior to his death. firstly, in staying with crozier’s crew, would he have undergone the same loss of substance as he had with the mutineers? my guess is that it would have been slow enough so that he would have been in a better mental place during fitzjames’ death scene than during gibson’s. then again, he would also have had more of his things at his disposal, and would likely have had more to offer than an indifferent recitation of worsening symptoms. secondly, when fitzjames asks crozier to “help [him] out of it,” would goodsir, like bridgens, have offered a drug to ease him along? if bridgens was thinking romeo and juliet or hamlet at the time, goodsir would likely have taken a less poetic approach. the goodsir of ep 9 is also a different goodsir from ep 7, though, so maybe he would have had less of a tolerance for life for life’s sake. goodsir from gibson’s death scene might have sat and watched crozier massage the mystery liquid down fitzjames’ throat, or he might not have volunteered any assistance at all. a goodsir who hadn’t been removed from the others, who had some sort of emotional attachment to the crew he was around (if not for the presence of warm feelings, than for the fact that none of them were hickey), who hadn’t yet been confronted with the prospect of aiding and participating in cannibalism, might not have changed the scene.

#harry goodsir #death ment //#murder ment //#racism ment //#ask to tag //#no fucking clue where i'm trying to go here i'm just. i'm just vibin

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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Some Loki thoughts under the cut! Not explicitly spoilery for this week’s episode except for one comment, but some of what I’ve been dwelling on for the past few weeks, especially as I go through my MCU watch. This is sort of negative, for those who are avoiding negative comments.

I think for me what I'm increasingly missing is context -- Marvel could have run most if not all of this story line with almost ANY character with very few changes; it doesn't feel deeply rooted in Loki himself. At this point (next week’s finale could obviously prove otherwise) you could run this exact same story line with Natasha or Tony or Thor or Steve or Wanda or etc and end up with pretty similar results.

Obviously some of the decontextualization is deliberate depersonalization; what happens when you remove Loki from everything familiar and put him in this beige office monstrosity? But even depending where you fall on the was-influenced-or-tortured-by-Thanos scale, that...already...happened to him...when he fell at the end of Thor, it just all happened offscreen, and then it happened again in the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok when he falls off the Bifrost and ends up on Sakaar -- it just all, again, happens offscreen, and both times results in Loki going “yeah, I could be anyone but I’m going to be Loki of Asgard, good or bad.” Which isn’t to say that there’s not value in telling that story onscreen but I don’t love how they’ve been doing it. And like, I love alternate universes and multiverses and alternate versions of the same character, I was absolutely onboard for episodes 1-3.

What’s key for me in that kind of thing is still keeping the character very firmly rooted in their own context even when everything else is stripped away from me, and that’s where the show started losing me after ep 1 and to a lesser extent ep 2 really dug into it. Like, this guy is not human, he’s a thousand years old, he may or may not be a literal god (every Thor and Avengers movie has a different answer for the “are Asgardians gods or not?” question and Ragnarok commits to it; because I love the larger-than-life scale of divine storytelling that’s where I fall on that scale, but the show sort of elides it), and he just had the Battle of New York go pear-shaped on him. And then there’s his family and...yeah, previously he’s only been presented in context of Thor (and to a lesser extent Odin and Frigga), but like, so has Thor himself -- Thor’s most stripped of context in Age of Ultron, tbh (which is a whole ‘nother issue because of like...the rest of AoU). But that’s a huge part of Loki and his identity issues and the fact that because, for whatever reason, the show can’t/won’t bring in movie characters rings hollow. (The reasons are probably torn between a very practical “budget + pandemic made it impossible” and a thematic “who’s Loki without his family?”) I like Loki a lot as a character, but for me a huge part of what makes him that character is his context and not having it is jarring. (And I like his dynamic with Thor.) Most of what I find really appealing about Loki has just not been there these past few eps and it’s not there even in its absence, which is the key part for me; with the family bit you can feel around the edges of it because it’s been highlighted a few times, but the “absolutely not human” part is just...lacking. Like, you can have the magic and all the rest of it too, you know?

And for me the fact that this is supposed to be post-Avengers 2012 Loki -- which is a Loki who’s glaring in his brittleness -- is...lacking? You can argue that one reason he’s so unsettled is because he’s smarting from what happened there, but I’m just not feeling it. And yeah, he’s a chameleon who can blend into new contexts pretty easily, even coming immediately out of trauma (the Sakaar episode in Ragnarok shows that), but that’s such a specific context that we’re so familiar with that it feels off to me. (And also, this is is a me issue, Tom Hiddleston, while very handsome, is very clearly ten years older in the face than he was as 2012 Loki, so I don’t even have the visual cues to say “this is 2012 Loki.” That is obviously a me issue, again, I want to reiterate that.)

and to switch gears off the decontextualization

I’m also feeling some resentment on behalf of Loki Prime back in the films because the whole argument that a Loki is only allowed to do bad things and won't be allowed to change falls apart in the face of TDW/Ragnarok/IW? and like, he was presumably a pretty decent dude the preceding millennium? there’s a reason his psychotic break in Thor was such a shock to everyone? (I guess to get back to context, he’s a thousand years old and the fact that none of that history feels like it’s there. Like, the DB Cooper thing is ultimately pretty harmless, and also like...only forty years prior.) I've seen people talking about Show Loki having to speedrun Film Loki's character arc but by the whole argument of the show, if we're taking it at face value, that character arc NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO HAPPEN. So it sits weirdly with me.

Obviously there’s no reason to take “you were born to cause pain and suffering and death” at face value, except there’s also Kid Loki’s comment in the last ep about “whenever one of us dares try to fix themselves, they’re sent here to die.” It’s been a while since I read the comics (I think I went through Journey into Mystery around when Thor or maybe Avengers came out, but that was the last time), but IIRC that feels like much more a comics thing than an MCU thing and because they’re so very, very different it’s jarring. This felt like a lot of “we’re going to stuff comics stuff in here despite the fact that the MCU is only very loosely connected to the comics,” which on the one hand could be fun (and obviously a lot of people found it fun!) but on the other hand threw me very badly. I love a multiverse but one reason I mentally can't cope with most comics is that I need the multiverse to be very, very logical about its divergence points and that went out the window here. This is 100% about how my brain works, not a quality issue; it’s an issue that’s shown up elsewhere and not specifically a Loki thing here. (I can kind of look past it for Into the Spider-Verse but tbh I think a lot of the reason I can is because that film’s animated. again, like, 100% about how my brain works.)

also the recurring “glorious purpose” line makes zero sense considering that Loki never utters it again after Avengers. :/ I know it was exciting back in 2012 but y’all.

okay I’m going back to dealing with all of these problems in fanfic again

#bedlam watches loki

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kncrowder88 · 3 years

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Voyager and Romance

So, the thing about Voyager and romance that sticks with me is they seem to do one couple really, or more accurately two characters, any real justice overall. And that is B’Elanna and Tom. While moments for that relationship may not be perfect that is rather realistic for relationships, as no relationship is perfect all the time so that is tolerable. This post though isn’t going to be about looking at that particular relationship though but primarily at other relationships. Largely because a discord server I am in was talking about Counterpoint and I realized why I both love the episode but also have weird feelings with it. Which, I’ll touch more on that specifically after I discuss the relationship stuff (as that plays a part).

So, I will preface this with it has been a bit since I’ve done a binge of Voyager and really a full binge of Star Trek in general. As such, I may forget a few relationships on the show and overall, throughout Trek in general. From what I can really toss together … I honestly am beginning to believe that when it comes to Voyager and the other shows (the older ones not the new ones – I am not including any NEW Trek in this) that for some reason the relationship writing with Voyager was rather different. Like, they gave 3 characters active relationships prior to being stranded. That being Harry Kim, Kathryn Janeway, and Tuvok. Out of these three we get Janeway and Tuvok holding onto those relationships in their own way while … it seemed mildly convenient for Harry to mention it when it suited him, I guess (like that time Tom wanted to set them up for a double date or you know when he ended up in that alternate timeline but still wanted back with Voyager even more like). Like, the reason I don’t list Tuvok-T’Pel above is because we don’t actually get to SEE that in full, we just get to see Tuvok’s side of it and his dedication – we don’t see the relationship, we don’t see the couple.

Harry and Tom, prior to his relationship with B’Elanna, seem to frequently do this sort of two bros dating around thing which is fine but like … same time the show used them for that. And once they settled Tom with B’Elanna they used Harry in those plot lines when it worked. Thus the alien STD episode and the “how dare you not get the standard permission from your CO and CMO” line (like they really put that into a Trek ep and I’m still unable to not picture Riker, Kirk, Picard, and everyone other Trek character constantly getting permission for their latest romance – just remember Jadzia and Worf likely had to get permission from Sisko and Bashir if the Trill and Klingon weren’t already approved of in the system just saying, that’s a thing that happened). Anyways … my point is they went out of their way on this. Like, when Kes was with Neelix they wrote Neelix to be that jealous judgmental boyfriend who literally got upset she knew where other people’s quarters where, she was nice to Tom, she was … just yeah. They wrote Tom to come off as a player pulling Harry into it, when Tom settled down Harry seems to pick that up (I mean you got his “omg Seven” phase and the alien STD stuff and lord knows what else I’m forgetting with him).

And to top this off I haven’t even touched on the “Janeway can’t have a romance” stuff yet. Which is where my real problem is. Like, its bad enough they brought in Jeri for the sex appeal (which lets be honest stems from the fact they couldn’t use Janeway for that – which I get, Kate was right in the whole concept of the audience target having to keep respect for a female lead and sex appeal couldn’t be a focal point but they could have balanced it right and regrettably because they couldn’t that meant Jeri got all of the other side of the coin). Many of Seven’s eps center on romance or social stuff and honestly that is a whole other WTF post in its own right because it all leads up to the sudden get with the one person on the ship who didn’t want you here in the first place and who also would have served better as the male adult guidance figure/father figure than as a ROMANTIC partner but hey BS happened behind scenes to cause that chaotic romantic on screen set up. But yeah … this is just another example of the poor Voyager romantic plot lines.

Chakotay’s romantic plot lines are usually – and by that, I mean pretty much always – with these strong independent women. But usually, at least from what I recall, they are also typically the “needs help” (damsel in distress/can’t do it alone/etc.) plot. Like, Riley was strong independent but also set up to need help in regard to getting her little collective put back together on the planet. You got Kellin, again another strong lady who yet again also needed help. At least in the ep she’s in and if I recall much of the info on how they fell in love during that time as well – primarily with getting away from danger at the start and then during the initial romance finding her target. Valerie is the only one who doesn’t fall into the needs help plot and that’s largely because she was being manipulated by Chakotay for information – which honestly just goes to show how well Chakotay was at the whole undercover stuff (which tells us a lot about what he could have been doing as a Maquis). Seska was the plot point of “you once dated her, now she is going to badger you to get with her again and when that fails, she’s going to assault you” …. like all of Chakotay’s romances are literally him either 1) being manipulated (as that’s what Seska and Riley did) or 2) being the kind guy or 3) not an actual relationship (either because its undercover work or because the writers were too cowardly to make him and Janeway canon).

Then you got Janeway. Then you got KATHRYN JANEWAY. You know, the one where Kate Mulgrew said no romance, no sexualizing, no doing that sort of stuff because the audience had to maintain respect for the character. I’m sure someone has the exact various quotes out there. Like … this is why we don’t have JC as canon. But what we do got instead is …. Janeway in Prime Factors being flirted with by the administrator as if that’s going to get him what he wants because “female leader means flirt with her”. We got Janeway and a period drama holodeck adventure in the early years which was clearly meant to be her romantic tête-à-tête early on that never got followed up with. We got “delete the wife” with the Fair Haven plot point (because its totally respectable to see the FEMALE LEAD, the STARFLEET CAPTAIN, just straight up DELETE THE WIFE of another individual - yeah, I get its meant to be humor factor because hologram but come on). You have her whole thing with Mark which we get tidbits off but again similar to Tuvok we literally only get to see her side of it – the only couple moment of theirs we get is the comm call in Caretaker.

But Jaffen? You are correct. We got that lovely and touching and wonderful romance with Jaffen …. Oh wait … they had to remove her from the ship, strip her of her memory, and her autonomy in order for her to have a relationship with another individual. And yes, by losing her memories, by losing what made her who she was as a person, she did lose a sense of autonomy. She entered into a relationship without a full sense of independent choice. The point in which she made a choice in that episode, the point in which she – Kathryn Janeway – made a choice with all of the person, the individual she is, was at the end when she had her memories back and could decide based on the values and beliefs and all that she is. What I’m getting at is the people on that planet deliberately took away who she was, they took her memories and her ability to make the decisions they knew she would make --- they did that deliberately (that’s even established in the episode) --- and as such her decisions while in that state are not truly her full independent decisions but the ones impacted by the state she was forced into.

And while I love Resolutions, while I love all the JC goodies, we get in that ep … Yet again the only time we get to see Janeway in any sort of romantic situation is when they remove her from the ship. When they remove her from command. When they strip her of that setting. This time, though – well the first time – she keeps awareness and has to go through lose of it all in order to even start to let it all happen. I love the episode, I do, but I just find it rather amusing they went “’Hey we gotta strand them what should their tasks be on the planet?” and they immediately went “Well Janeway is scientist how about that” “Okay and he can build, Chakotay can start building. Man builds house, right?” and then like went “oh and then she can start a garden” …. Like really? Really? That’s what you got for me. Oh, and then there is the monkey. That’s the romance this ep. Boat, science, monkey.

Then we got Kashyk. We have dealt with Kathryn throughout this series dealing with various leaders of various styles. As mentioned, Prime Factors guy attempted flirting. Other leaders pulled similar or worse or even dismissed her …. Like the list goes on. Counterpoint is a great episode because it deals with prejudice and is rather dark. The thing is, had Janeway been able to have a healthy romantic relationship on screen to counter this episode this episode probably would have come off better. Episodes like Prime Factor could have been done different (that leader didn’t need to be as flirty for example). One or two eps through the series having creepy dudes she had to deal with, fine, whatever … that be a nice impact for the audience. But when you have to many prior to Counterpoint – even if its minor, small stuff – it makes this episode so much harder for fans. Especially the female fans who deal with this constantly.

See, here’s the thing with this ep…. Some of the fans who watch … we know Kashyk well. We know that character. He is that male leader, that male power figure, who uses the power he has to manipulate those in his control to get what he wants. And Kathryn … Kathryn was in his control. Kashyk is listed as a relationship on memory-alpha. But much like how I view Seska with Chakotay … I do not view Kashyk as a proper relationship. In Devore space, Kathryn did not have proper power. She had people in her command, on her ship, that she had to protect. That she knew she had to protect. Her own best friend … lives in her hand … and Kashyk right there willing to kill them. Willing to snatch them up and destroy them. And he used that power to manipulate her and play her. Yes, she played him right back but … did she truly have a choice? Did she have any other choice but to play his game? What would have happened if she said no? And that … that is why this episode is so unsettling for some people. And why this relationship being considered on is so off putting … that the writers, that memory-alpha, that the fact I’m putting it on this list as one of the ones on here for Voyager says so much … they wrote this as one of her relationships while out there … she had to do what so many women had to do to stay safe, to keep people she loves safe, and that’s not a relationship.

Voyager could have done romance/relationships such better justice.

#star trek #star trek voyager #i had some feelings about things #primarily the Kashyk thing #but that lead to other things #and honestly i am really begining to question romance in voyager #but also like overall in Trek in general #like the more i think about Voyager the more im like oh god they really did seem to fail there #because the only valid couple i can think of is Tom and B'Elanna

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