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twilightofthe · 4 years

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So...about that Obitine Anidala rant. Also, you said something about how Sidious and Obi-Wan are foils. I would love it if you elaborate. (Also, I love your blog.)

Awwwww thank you anon! I just be yelling on here!

*wheezes* okie doke! Tho I stress that this won’t exactly be a rant because I adore Obitine and Anidala and rant kinda implies aggression towards them, this is more of just a long-ass ramble because while I love them, I don’t always love the way canon portrays them in the narrative, particularly in relationship to each other, because I often do not feel that what the show is trying to push us to think about them is accurate to how they actually act and come across. Notably, the show attempts to draw comparisons to the two relationships that really don’t exist below surface level similarities. Again, these are my own personal opinions, and in fact, I welcome discussion! I truly do! Please politely debate me on this if you disagree!

(god dammit it got long again, so long I’ll actually put ur Sidious and Obi Wan as foils part in a separate post)

I’ll get to why exactly the show compares the relationships very strangely in a moment, but first we gotta explore the reason why it does this in the first place, which is that the Clone Wars show has decided to make Obi Wan and Anakin narrative foils to one another. Narrative foils, by the literary definition, are two characters that contrast one another. They don’t have to be the protagonist and the antagonist, these characters can be on the same side, basically the thing is that they have “opposite” personalities where if one character is hot, the other is cold, if one character chooses to go right, the other will go left. It’s usually used to show one character’s qualities as more favorable for the situation as opposed to anyone else’s.

TCW does this whenever they possibly can with Anakin and Obi Wan. I get its reasoning behind it. I do. The reasoning is that while Anakin is supposed to be a main character, he makes questionable decisions quite often and for the kiddies watching, those decisions must be seen as Bad even if the hero does it, so they have Obi Wan, the unquestionable good guy, encounter the exact same scenarios Anakin makes his questionable decisions in, and then has Obi Wan make the Right(TM) decision to teach the kids a valuable lesson. They turn Obi Wan into the voice of reason for the entire show, which turns basically almost everything Obi Wan and Anakin do into a constant competition in the narrative in a way the movies do not do (and I’ll get to the movies later). I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, making them foils, but it’s definitely more of a show-only thing and it does it quite, quite often.

So yeah, TCW likes to compare Obi Wan and Anakin to the point that sometimes they try and use Obi Wan to diminish Anakin’s genuine trauma and struggles by going “well why didn’t you do it like THIS?” and I think that writing parallel plotlines for the purpose of shaming/criticism is kinda ://////, but that’s another rant for another day that again, if y’all wanna hear about, lmk

Anyway, the need to compare them absolutely made its way into their romantic relationships as well, as they acknowledge the similarities in the show, and Filoni and the crew explicitly compare the two relationships in interviews.

Basically my problem with how they try and draw said parallels can be boiled down to one quote by Filoni that a cursory Google search could not find but I know exists so y’all can take my word or not, that went along the lines of “Obi Wan and Satine are like Anakin and Padmé but better because they know how to stay unattached and let each other go. They’re a success story.” I disagreed with this quote so much it inspired me to write a whole-ass fic about it (Mutuals update: yes, it is coming soon, Darth Maul is just himself and therefore an utter pain in the ass to do a POV on and is fighting me like the bitchass he is)

My thesis that I will be arguing today is that while TCW tried to create Obitine as an Anidala parallel, they’re really not similar in the way the writers think they are. Obitine is not a success story to Anidala, they’re a goddamn tragedy too; the real parallel to Anidala is that Obitine also ended in death and tears despite making all the “right” decisions instead of all the “wrong” ones, and that is what is sad about them.

Like, on the surface level? Yeah, the crew-intended parallels are there. A fancy politician and a Jedi get together after the Jedi is assigned as the politician’s bodyguard. The first time they see each other in over a decade the guy’s first words are basically “damn girl you’re still hot”, there is Conflict(TM) and the choice to try and be together or stay yearningly apart because they are Forbidden(TM) to be together, and ultimately a Sith Lord fucks them both over because he’s obsessed with the Jedi and uses Politician Lady to his advantage, finds and exploits a vulnerability of hers, destroys her life’s work, and then lets her die to make Jedi Man sad. The difference is all that one pair said “yeah we aren’t gonna break the rules to be together” and the other said “fuck it yeah we are, let’s do this”

But beneath all of that, they real similarities are different and not at all focused on by the narrative. Obi Wan and Anakin are extremely different people, as are Padmé and Satine, so their relationship dynamics together will not be the same. You want to try and compare Obi Wan and Anakin and then compare Satine and Padmé like the crew attempts to, and you can’t, they have the same job but not nearly the same life. Namely, the funny coincidence is that Obi Wan and Padmé are much more similar in personality, while Anakin and Satine are also much more similar in personality, so the first time they meet again, it’s both Anakin and Satine as the one who’s been pining for over a decade and the one more actively pursuing the relationship, while Obi Wan and Padmé who are more like “uh, hi, wow, you’re hot and this is a Problem because I have a job to do pls don’t look at me like that but also I will Cause Problems On Purpose and flirt with you anyway because I can’t help it”. I get the Corruption TCW ep with Sati and Pads was mostly intended just to help Satine pass the Bechdel test and also show how similar the two leading lady love interests are, but it was a genuinely creative episode that actually ended up showing how much Satine and Padmé compliment each other instead of mirroring each other, much like Obi Wan and Anakin do.

And, onto my next point, despite the character parallels being wrong, the parallels in the relationship are different too. Like I said, the parallel isn’t that Obi Wan and Satine aren’t attached like Anakin and Padmé are. The parallel is that Obitine is actively running from what that attachment means instead of embracing it like Anidala is. The show would argue that since they try to avoid it, that they are able to live without one another, means they aren’t attached like the Jedi define it, but I argue that they definitely still are attached to a degree because they cannot give each other up. They held torches for each other from a timerange of 15 YEARS. Yes I know they spent an entire year together at a young and emotionally volatile point in their lives, but I stand that NO ONE is that hung up on their ex for that long unless there is some serious emotions involved. Anakin was hung up on Padmé for ten years, and that was because Palpatine was constantly bolstering those affections and reminding him of Padmé. Obes and Sati both-- or at least Satine, the show always makes Obi Wan’s feelings for Satine in return much more vague --held on to their feelings for five years longer without the influence of a Sith Lord.

And the thing is, they know it. Obi Wan and Satine are both fully aware that they haven’t been able to shake each other off like they should and that that is a Problem, that’s why they’re both a mite venomous with each other beneath the flirting at first, they’re both extremely frustrated with themselves for not being able to get over this thing they have, and frustrated with the other for being there as an active temptation.

And yet, they still are attached to each other. They try to avoid it, they definitely try, and that’s what makes them different from Anidala, but they are definitely still attached. You can see it in Obi Wan’s actions in Voyage of Temptation when Merrik is threatening to blow the ship, the way he hesitates in attacking him because that would be “striking an unarmed man”. Obi Wan Kenobi does not prefer violence, no, but he has never hesitated to cut a bitch before if it’s for the good of the many. This is the man who stabbed someone with a fork and threatened to eat him just to maintain his cover as a dangerous criminal. This is the guy who had no problem killing Zam Wessel for information to protect Padmé. This is a pragmatist who prefers peaceful solutions, but he does not hesitate if he feels it is a justified offense. But this time, when an entire shipful of people is at risk, Obi Wan hesitates. Because he doesn’t want to upset Satine. Because he’s probably thinking on how she told him that if he had killed the last terrorist they encountered, she wouldn’t speak to him, how she had criticized every time he used violence to escape Death Watch before. He hesitates because he’s putting her happiness, just for a second, over the sake of duty. Do I think that if Anakin hadn’t shown up to save their moral compasses, Obi Wan would have eventually taken out Merrik? Absolutely; hell, I honestly think Satine might have done it.

But the matter was, Merrik could have pressed the kill switch any second of Obi Wan’s hesitation, and Obi Wan knew that, and was hesitating anyway.

I am calling this attachment solely because if the situation was reversed, if this was Anakin and Padmé in this situation, with Anakin not taking out a dangerous criminal because he doesn’t want to upset Padmé (lol ignoring the fact that Pads 1000% would have shot that bitch, and even if she didn’t, Anakin would because he is perfectly fine with hurting his loved ones’ feelings if he feels it’ll keep them safe), god, the narrative would have eaten Anakin alive.

No, I won’t take criticism. I know how the show handles the Anidala dynamic. It would have shown Obi Wan popping up to take out the baddie as him doing the right thing and saving the day, and then Anakin would have been shamed for letting his feelings for his wife get in the way of protecting a shipful of people. THAT would be the Vader foreshadowing, none of this “only a cold-blooded killer” shit, no way would they ever stick that label on Obi Wan.

So yeah, I’m going off of the fact that if that would have been classified as attachment for Anidala-- which, it would, then. it counts for Obitine.

And then Obi Wan and Satine continue to be hung up on each other for the rest of the eps they’re in, Satine saying in words multiple times how much she loves and cares about him and wishes things could be different, and Obi Wan performing it in actions, risking his own neck and political standing to help her even when she’s a fugitive, probably personally putting in to send his own grandpadawan to help her later. Right up to the time when Satine decides that she is going to call Obi Wan when she is deposed. Not the Senate. Not any powerful politician friends. Not even the Jedi Order or the Council as a whole. She calls and addresses her distress call to Obi Wan alone. And Obi Wan, as now revealed to us by TCW S7, defies Council orders and breaks a century old neutrality treaty to try and bust her, a convicted murderer in the eyes of the Republic and Mandalore, out. He didn’t even know Maul had her. Just knew she was in danger and came running to her aid. He risks starting a potential war to come save her. They acted so in love that Vizsla was able to guess from being around them for like five seconds, and was able to tell Maul exactly who he would need to bait Obi Wan.

That is where the attachment comes from. It’s the fact that Obi Wan and Satine tried so, so hard to give each other up and do the right thing, but when it came down to it, they couldn’t lose the other one so they put them first when logically they shouldn’t. And thus, Satine ended up dead.

Now I know most people will argue with me that actually Filoni means that since they didn’t stay together after the year on the run, THAT is what makes them able to give each other up, and also the fact that Obi Wan didn’t go dark side and murder everyone when Satine died.

But I still think that at least the murder front is a fairly low bar to cross, and anyway, that just because they could live without each other didn’t mean they weren’t still attached. Anakin and Padmé were apart for 10 years and then even after that, they were apart almost constantly during the war. Just because they could live apart or even past the other’s death didn’t mean they weren’t attached, as they both still had not let the other go mentally and also broke rules to try and ensure the other would not die, even if the rules said they should let it happen.

So yeah, that’s my big theory. We can’t compare Obitine with Anidala by saying Obitine was a success story, we compare them by acknowledging that both struggled with attachments and letting the other go, but Obitine at least tried to the bitter end to do the right thing while Anidala didn’t really bother, and both ended up with dead women and broken men regardless, and that is the true sad parallel to me.

#ohhhhh my god i really gotta learn how to shut up lol #thanks anon! told ya it was long!#ask #asks #when we were young #star-crossed lovers #our only ho #peace out #one (1) hot mess #queen of my heart #anon

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panharmonium · 4 years

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@merlinobsessionist you understand me on a spiritual level

[putting the rest of this under a cut because it just ended up being me grumping at length about fandom trends - which, yes, i am well-aware is a silly endeavour in all cases, but sometimes you just gotta have your little grump regardless, you know, for health reasons. X) and in this particular case the grumping is probably relevant/entertaining only to myself, and you, and one or two other people here, so, tucking it away to spare everyone’s dash :) ]

the other day i was exploring the mostly abandoned wasteland that is the merlin fandom on livejournal (since that’s my original fandom home and obviously i missed out on being involved in that particular niche of lj when merlin was active, so i was feeling nostalgic and kinda curious as to it had looked like) - i stumbled over a merlin fic-finders comm and looked up my boy william just for kicks, and surprisingly, a couple of the old requests sounded like maybe i WAS involved in the merlin fandom on livejournal back then and i just don’t remember it

i think i wrote this in a past life

this is an eleven year-old comment in a mostly defunct fandom community but i felt it in my BONES

oh, my dear commenter from 8 years ago, i WISH XD

it made me laugh, and then it made me grumpy, because obviously there were very few suggestions offered in response to these asks - the fics just don’t exist, not in any numbers.

and like, the thing is, i don’t particularly care about the shipping side of things for the most part; i always lean towards gen and that’s mostly been it, for me; that’s always been my MO in every fandom i’ve ever participated in, but - look. if i have to witness (*checks ao3*) 23,830 (twenty four thousand. twenty four THOUSAND!!!!) instances of merlin getting together with arthur hecking pendragon, over and over and over again, in every AU configuration under the sun, then you had better believe i am ready and willing to plead the case of the only person in the merlin-verse who did not think arthur pendragon deserved merlin’s entire life.

and of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with arthur and merlin as an item, obviously (i mean, i can name a few things about it that don’t appeal to me personally, but that is not the same thing as a value judgment) and everybody should have fun with their own ships, always - but for me, personally, there is just...enough of that out there. i have seen Enough. it’s hard for me to even determine where the rest of the fandom is, under the ever-present spread of merlin/arthur content; a picture of merlin/arthur should literally be next to the dictionary entry for steamroller.

and of course, i knew it would be like this from the beginning, and i know complaining about the ubiquitousness of a particular ship in fandom is utterly silly, in the end, because it’s not like there’s anything wrong with something being ubiquitous - the whole point of fandom is to make what you love, and if that’s what everybody loves, well, hey, that’s just how it is! that’s what people should be making - the stuff they love! that’s what fandom is here for! i only mutter to myself in the bubble of my own blog because the ubiquitousness makes it almost impossible for me to find what *i* love, because i don’t want to read about arthur/merlin in the first place, no matter who else appears in the fic, and also because my fave minor character, while he gets a pretty good amount of fannish screentime for someone who showed up in one episode, also suffers from the curse known as “virtually everything he features in is actually about merlin and arthur getting it on”

like - by the numbers, when you exclude merlin/arthur from will’s character tag, will retains less than 20% of his fics, some of which are already like...you know, he’s dead, or just mentioned, et cetera.

and his poor ship tag...he and merlin have 136 fics in their tag, and at first you wanna look at that and be like - ‘hey, not bad, pal, that’s p. good for a rarepair!’ but in actuality, less than 20 of those fics are actually about him and merlin. like...12% of his own ship tag actually belongs to him, and the rest is him being used as a plot device to get arthur and merlin together.

and i am sure that a lot of other side characters probably suffer from this, too, given the general fic distribution in this fandom, though the only person i’ve looked at for comparison purposes is freya, who is a (mostly) one-ep character like will. she, despite that, doesn’t appear to get hit quite as hard - she seems to keep more of her fic for herself, which is nice (when i exclude merlin/arthur from the freya/merlin search, freya still retains about 65% of her fics, as opposed to will’s sad little 12%). i’m glad for her, though - she of all people does not need to be losing fic to arthur; she has suffered enough.

to put things in perspective, though - merlin and uther have more fics in their ship tag that earnestly focus on the tagged....hnhhmgnhn i can’t say it...relationship than merlin and will do - even filtering out every instance of dubcon/noncon.

(and yes, i did in fact want to die when i had to actually click the merlin/uther tag on ao3 in order to check that factoid, thanks for asking.)

so, that said - i don’t generally read canon-era fic anyway, when i’m actively writing for a fandom, but since the merlin fandom sometimes feels like it consists solely of modern AU’s anyway, all i am trying to say is that it would be nice if i could pick up an AU including a character i enjoy without seeing him constantly reduced to:

merlin’s loser ex

merlin’s abusive ex (w h at)

merlin’s ex who’s kinda sorta tolerable-ish, maybe, if you squint, but just ultimately Not Right for merlin - holding merlin back, or being too overbearing, or too pushy, or Just Not Enough - or being someone who merlin stays with only bc he’s familiar and merlin’s settling for something safe and unrisky and stagnantly unfulfilling

the dude who merlin cheats on to be with arthur

the dude who cheats on merlin, bc the fic needed a reason to break up merlin and will so that white-knight!arthur could swoop in (cue me shouting ‘IN WHAT UNIVERSE DO YOU THINK WILL WOULD EVER - ’)

the dude merlin “makes mistakes with” when things with arthur aren’t going well

the friend-with-benefits who’s apparently chill with a casual arrangement, thus keeping himself conveniently out of the way of the oncoming merlin/arthur train

the friend-with-benefits who’s secretly NOT chill with a casual arrangement and who’s pining for merlin, except we all know that ain’t ever going anywhere because arthur exists, and in the meantime merlin only ever gets together with will to try and forget his problems

the friend-with-no-benefits who’s still pining for merlin (which situation, i might add, would be read completely differently if it were arthur in will’s shoes, because if that were the case then the audience would 100% be rooting for him)

the “best friend” whose only purpose in fic is to provide space for conversations/debriefs about merlin’s relationship/pre-relationship with arthur (like - i’m sorry, but there desperately needs to be some type of bechdel-esque test for will; e.g. do will and merlin have a conversation about something other than arthur pendragon? if yes, u win, u may pass go, collect 20 dollars, congratulations)

the friend whose dislike of arthur always, ALWAYS ends up being framed as a mistake. as will’s stubborn unwillingness to give arthur a chance, until at last will sees the light and succumbs to the irresistible beauty of merlin and arthur’s eternal love. -_- there is vanishingly rare acknowledgement in fic of the fact that in the canon universe, all of the criticisms will makes about merlin and arthur’s relationship are not only accurate, but made in merlin’s best interests (and also, ultimately, proven right, by the end of the show - merlin tanks his whole damn life for a series of empty promises prophesying arthur pendragon’s future potential, and he gets NOTHING for his devotion. merlin is more alone at the end of the show than he was at the beginning, when his only dream was to be loved and accepted by more than the two people who’d comprised his entire life up until that point. and he spends at least half a decade in between the show’s hopeful beginning and its miserable end being told that he’s evil by the very person for whom he is expected to sacrifice his future.

so what, exactly, makes will so wrong to be wary? who among us wouldn’t be angry if we saw somebody we loved being forced to sacrifice themselves on an unforgiving altar like this?

i don’t know the answer. i’m not sure what it is that earns will his spot on the “destined to be shafted for arthur pendragon” list. i don’t know if it’s an unconscious backlash to will’s refusal to hop on the arthur/merlin train, or if it’s just a superficial understanding/lack of genuine interest in his character, which, in that case, sure, i’ll give people that one, in all fairness; not everyone has spent a year picking his character apart (though i still don’t think it justifies tossing him in there just because the fic needs a random insert who can be positioned as inferior to arthur’s gloriousness). either way, the end result is that we usually end up seeing a will who has very little in common with his source material, or who needs to ultimately step aside to make way for arthur - arthur, who never displays the same level of care toward merlin in canon that merlin shows toward him, and who actively oppresses merlin’s people for the entire duration of their relationship.

like...it’s all just fic, obviously, and we can make characters as OOC as we want; have fun; go wild. but at the same time, it’s impossible for me not to balk at how arthur in some of this fic is just - utterly unrecognizable. in comparison with fic!will, arthur is the most Solicitous, Gentle, Understanding, Deeply Concerned, Invested-In-Merlin’s-Welfare-and-Inner-Thoughts creature you ever did see, and I’m just over here like - it is not like that! it is NOT LIKE THAT! IT HAS LITERALLY NEVER BEEN LIKE THAT. arthur pendragon in fic sometimes interacts with merlin like - he tilts his head and listens like a therapist and affirms absolutely everything merlin says and tells him ‘gosh, i understand. tell me more. how can i help you’ - he goes about his day thinking about merlin and putting merlin first and i just - i literally have never seen this person before in my life. who is this man? who is this unbelievably attentive paragon of caring? i’ve never met him before.

the entire running problem with merlin and arthur’s friendship in canon is that arthur, while he absolutely does care about merlin, tends to take merlin for granted. merlin is just another feature of arthur’s landscape, until something dramatic happens and arthur has a little scare and saves merlin’s life, and then things go back to the way they were. arthur doesn’t See merlin the way he should, not in the ordinary moments. merlin goes home and spends his evenings thinking about arthur’s life; he ties himself in knots trying to help arthur develop as a person and to keep arthur safe and happy, but arthur just goes home and eats supper with his wife. arthur does not go home and spend his nights agonizing over how he can improve merlin’s life. he never once thinks, ‘my purpose on this earth is to serve and support my friend merlin.’ he never feels like he’s supposed to be half of some two-sided coin. i know people like to give arthur this quality in their fic - and that’s totally fine, of course, it’s fic, have as much fun as you want - but in canon, that is just not something arthur pendragon does. it’s not who he is shown to be.

and yet almost every time when i go to explore fandom, i find that the person who does put merlin first in canon is perpetually elbowed aside for this extremely generous interpretation of everyone’s favorite prince.

and i just...i always try to find the good bits in everything, and i am sometimes willing to overlook a ship i don’t personally enjoy if there’s something else about the piece that i think is great, but there’s only so many times i can read the sentence “merlin had never felt like this with anyone, not even will” in fics where merlin and will are supposed to have been dating or even married/engaged, or “will was merlin’s best friend, but he just didn’t understand” (not like arthur, of course, who merlin literally just met a week ago), or “will was great, but there was only so much of him merlin could stand in one sitting/will was great, but he was best enjoyed in small doses.” there’s only so many times i can read a hundred different variations of that before i start to get real grumpy. and that’s not even touching the fics where will’s portrayed less favorably than that, even.

so, you know. i feel grumbly about it sometimes, how this particular character is trapped in a perpetual net of always being less-than, when one of the nicest parts of fandom for me is that every character/ship can have an infinitude of possibilities, even the ones i personally think are unbelievably bizarre (which category merlin and will do not even fall into, like - it’s not an incredible leap. merlin/mordred is a leap, okay; mordred is like seventeen years old! leon/morgana is a leap - how on earth did that become so popular??? - but will and merlin? that’s not a leap.)

what is it about will that makes him so tempting to trample over? will’s only sin in canon was to look at arthur pendragon and pronounce himself utterly unimpressed. his only crime was to tell merlin ‘this dude isn’t good for you,’ about which fact he was CORRECT, by the way - he is the first person who ever chooses to care about merlin, the first person merlin ever chooses to trust, the first friend who loves real!merlin without needing to be coaxed and convinced and taught that it’s okay. he is the only one who ever tells merlin ‘you deserve better than this mess,’ the only one for whom merlin has always been priority number one and in whose eyes arthur isn’t even on the map. merlin’s friendship with will (and lancelot, afterwards) is the healthiest one merlin ever gets to experience, and i wish more fannish material acknowledged it as such, as opposed to using will to set up merlin and arthur’s epic romance.

all of this, i suppose, is just a very long way of saying that now that i am no longer avoiding spoilers and have actually started testing the waters of the wider fandom, i have come to the obstinate, utterly inflexible conclusion that will deserves his own collection of happy endings, and i don’t care if i have to write them myself. i’ve already got the gen angle covered. and even though i’ve never written ship!fic in my life, the fact of the matter is that spite can be a hell of a motivator, and i will bite the bullet and learn how to do it if i have to. if people can really be out here tagging their merlin/uther fics as “schmoop” (YES. REALLY.) then by GOD, i swear, there are no excuses - this fandom can accommodate literally anything; there’s no reason it can’t accommodate stories where will wins. let this kid have his good ending. arthur pendragon can fall in love with merlin 23,830 times despite his and merlin’s ship flying in the face of canon, and that means will deserves his own tiny handful of stories to be actually about him, without his and merlin’s relationship being used solely as a stepping stone on the way to merlin and arthur’s 23,831st triumph.

i am just saying - if uther pendragon can fall in love with merlin and have it tagged as ‘fluff,’ then for the love of all that is good, we can give will his moment. let will enjoy the respect he should have earned from us when he died saving both merlin and arthur’s lives. let will be a person in his own right, instead of a plot device sacrificed to the (in)glorious altar of merthur. let will have an inner life of his own. let will have a best friend who doesn’t treat him like an accessory to The Greatest Love Story Ever Told. let will himself live out The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, for once. let will get his guy. i may tend to focus on friendship in my own work, but there are a lot of universes out there, and when it comes to someone who has always been so alone, and so singularly focused on merlin’s wellbeing, i’m not entirely sure if friendship even feels anything different to “in love” for will at all, in at least some of these places.

let will have his happy tags. he’s been on his own for so much of his life - let him have his simple ‘friendship’, his ‘platonic love,’ his ‘found family.’ let him have his lovestruck ‘pining,’ ‘friends-to-lovers,’ ‘angst with a happy ending,’ too, and let him keep those tags for himself. let characters who aren’t arthur pendragon have their love stories.

i may not care much for shipping, and i would rather read gen any day of the week, but let me tell you right now, i would rather write will and merlin settling down in a haze of domestic bliss 23,830 times before i would ever want to watch merlin ditch him yet again for a dude who never matched merlin’s level of caring and investment in the canon ‘verse.

#the once and future slowburn #no kings no masters #fandom #thank you for coming to the extended version of my ted talk #ultimately i know it's silly to be so invested #in something this small #and i constantly struggle with feeling...bizarrely self-conscious about like - even writing things like this because #it's so inconsequential and then i feel silly for being so interested #and using so many words for such a little thing #you know like when you're young and you get embarrassed about being so passionate about some niche interest #i feel like someone is looking at me and being like 'BOY THAT GIRL IS STUPID'#(why you ask???)#(i don't know; it's ridiculous!)#but then there's like another voice in my head yelling 'THAT IS LITERALLY WHAT FANDOM IS FOR'#'fanatic domain'#you're SUPPOSED to be fanatically obsessed about something; that is literally the point #people devote whole blogs to their tiny niche interests and their favorite pairings and they post incessantly about one thing #and i never think that's weird #that's just fandom #so i just have to like - chill out about myself lol #i am allowed to make innumerable posts about something only i care about #and i am allowed to be as passionate about tiny niche things as i want #that is literally the purpose of fandom and i just have to keep reminding myself of that #i have no trouble remembering it when it comes to other people's interests #but i always get self-conscious about my own #ANYWAY I'M WORKING ON IT #but in the meantime i'm having fun #which is the entire point of being a fan so #all is well #:D

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theaceace · 5 years

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because I can’t seem to make my words do the writey thing, here’s a bulletpoint fic of IT chapter 2 fix-it that I will never ever finish

the losers start to thin out of Derry as teenagers - Bev leaves first to live with her aunt, then Ben when his dad’s job relocates them, then Bill when it becomes clear that his parents are trying to escape Georgie’s memory, then Eddie when his mother decides that Derry just isn’t a safe enough place to be raising a teenager anymore, leaving just Stan, Richie, and Mike in town

at first they could write off the others losing touch - Bev wrote a couple of times, but none of them blamed her for throwing herself into her new life. Ben moved around a lot with his dad’s job, they were bound to lose touch at some point right? But then Bill and Eddie, who have been Losers as long as they can remember don’t write, or call. Mike and Stan figure out pretty quickly that there’s something Going On, and Richie gets on board once he’s through being dramatic (and genuinely hurt) about it

so Stan and Richie know that something happens when people leave Derry. Mike is already planning to stay behind, ostensibly to look after the farm when his grandfather eventually passes away, but they all know it’s really to keep an eye out for It. Naturally Richie, who had been taunted with missing posters of himself, is terrified of being forgotten, but also

he remembers the way Stan had screamed when they saved him from the woman, screamed that they had left him, that they weren’t his friends, and like fuck is he going to let Stan feel like that again

Richie follows Stan to college, and although they quickly forget any actual details of their childhood/how they met/any other friends, they’ve managed to cling to each other tight enough to know that they’re best friends

(should best friends have funny stories and inside jokes, and actually know how long they’ve been friends? yes probably. does this matter to either of them? absolutely fuckin’ not)

so they relearn their friendship from the ground up, including Richie giving a different and increasingly ridiculous version of how they met everytime someone asks, finding nicknames that they don’t remember but are so familiar they must be old, just generally supporting and loving each other

and yes, Richie absolutely comes out to Stan, both as a teenager and again as an adult because he doesn’t remember doing it the first time (I lean towards gay Richie as opposed to bi, just because I’ve only watched the films and not read the book, and that was more the way I interpreted it)

Richie drops out of college fairly early on - he’s intelligent, but he struggles with the way college is structured, and can’t focus well enough on the taught subjects or complete assignments to save his live (me, projecting? I don’t know what you mean) and works part time at a radio station, part time at a bar, as well as doing open-mic stand up

Patty 100% comes to one of Richie’s shows and heckles the ever loving fuck out of him, and he immediately is like ‘I must introduce her to Stan’. They (Richie and Patty) get on like a house on fire, and he is very insistent that Stan has to marry her, because she’s perfect but Richie is tragically Too Gay, and you’re bi so take one for the team Stan the Man!

Stan is infuriated when he realises Richie’s best man speech will effectively be him patting himself on the back

all this love and support results in Richie coming out earlier than in canon, because whatever else happens he knows Stan and Patty are there for him. It goes better than expected, and Richie is free to write at least some of his own jokes, even if he still has weird bursts of panic over it from time to time

(on a related note - for added angst, Richie has occasional flashes of things that might be memories or dreams, but are traumatising either way. the main one being a boy with unclear features but wild, terrified eyes screaming at Richie not to fucking touch him. no context, so yeah that didn’t help with the internalised homophobia)

what this is all building to is that Stan and Patty are at Richie’s show when Mike calls. Stan remembers the most, but Richie catches up a lot faster than in canon when Stan is there panicking

Patty, who is a certified bamf in this verse, flat-out lies to Richie’s manager as she hustles them both outta there because something is very clearly wrong. They’re clinging to each other and won’t even let go long enough to get in on opposite sides of the car. She eventually manages to drag the truth (or some of it anyway) out of them, and although not a single one of them actually wants to go to Derry, they all pack up and leave together because like fuck would Richie let Stan out of his sight after his panicked mutterings of ‘taking himself off the board’

Patty doesn’t go along to the restaurant to meet up, because it seems like a bit of an exclusive thing, and they don’t bump into anyone at the townhouse before going,

(at least one of the Losers, preferably Eddie, assumes that Richie and Stan are married, which Richie thinks is the funniest thing ever and immediately texts Patty because she will agree it’s hilarious. Stan makes a face like he’s just bitten a lemon, but it absolutely becomes A Thing)

most of the events occur as in the film, but with 300% more common sense because Stan is there as well as Patty, who - though not a Loser - is an absolute blessing

yes this fic would definitely pass the bechdel test Patty and Bev would click

Pennywise would have to find some new material to taunt Richie with, because that ‘dirty little secret’ thing? Not gonna work so well this time pal

beyond that, my notes for this fic are effectively ‘nobody is cishet, Patty is a Loser now, everyone lives (except Georgie RIP) no gays are buried and Eddie and Richie actually get together like they fuckin’ deserve’

Thank u for coming to my TED talk

#it chapter 2 #fix-it au #reddie #richie tozier #stan uris #eddie kaspbrak #mike hanlon #bill denbrough #bev marsh #ben hanscom #not exactly a writing tag #long post

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boymeetsweevil · 5 years

Text

Slippery slopes ahead

Grouping: Thirsty!Reader x Confused!Jimin

Word Count: ~6.6k (NSFW)

Warnings/Themes: sad amounts of desperate thirst, BRUISE PLAY? is that real? either way its a big one. Sex. First time sex but neither of them is a virgin. Jimin thinks he knows was BDSM is and he’s wrong. for some reason every time i write jimin he has a slight panty fetish lmao

Summary: “Look at you,” he coos. “All this time I thought you were shy.”

A/N: I made a banner look :’) isn’t it beautiful, legible, and not at all ugly?? Also this shares a universe with my other fic Sleeping Bags as well as my contribution to the BSC Secret Santa project!!!!

“If I don’t sleep with Jimin on this trip, I think I’m going to die.”

Lisa is accustomed enough to your lust filled rants that she doesn’t stop packing her bags. She does, however, give you side-eye that is so full of vague disappointment that you actually feel ashamed for a fraction of a second.

“What? I can feel you judging me.” You wag your finger at her. “ But there’s nothing wrong with wanting sex. ” Your voice is slightly whiny. And it’s been whiny since you started dating Park Jimin.

Lisa merely huffs at you and folds yet another sweater before putting it in her suitcase. You stand with your hands on your hips, a pair of lacy panties dangles from your clenched fist. You look so serious that Lisa can’t take you seriously and her annoyance breaks with a snort.

“Nothing,” Lisa sighs. “It’s just the way you’re always gagging for it makes me embarrassed. For you.”

“So?”

“So this is technically a trip for the community service club and not for your 4 month-iversary or whatever.”

You sniff, opting to ignore her logic. “Well, I’ll stop gagging when he finally gags me.” You punctuate the statement with a petulant toss of the panties.

“Do you hear yourself right now?”

“Sorry, sorry. I just...” you stare into the distance. “He’s just so hot. And for what?”

If she couldn’t hear the actual words you were using, Lisa might think you were contemplating some grand theme of life. The bittersweet expression on your face is all too grave to be the result of a little horniness. Although, given how well Lisa knows you, perhaps she should give you a pass.

“You know, if this were a movie, we’d be failing the Bechdel test right now.”

“Oh, whatever. hat’s not even the most accurate measure of a film’s womanist content.”

“Look who was paying attention in class. Wow.” She adds another folded shirt to her suitcase. “If you’re dying of thirst why don’t you, I don’t know, talk to him?”

“I can’t. It’d give him a heart attack. He thinks I have, like, dick-phobia and that I probably couldn’t ever make it past third base.”

“Why the hell would he think that? Does he know know you?”

“Remember that time we went to Namjoon’s party and he asked to use my laptop to play the movie?”

Lisa’s mouth drops open with the memory. “Oh my god yeah. The thing with the porn.”

You both grow quiet as you recall the time that Kim Namjoon, a mutual friend of yours and Jimin’s, accidentally projected a porno from your laptop onto the giant screen instead of the dark comedy you and 20 other people had gathered to watch.

It had been a few weeks before the official start of your relationship with Jimin, and you suppose he had misinterpreted your mortification. He probably thought your clammy hands and face were because you were worried people would judge you for being a fan of the video. Technically, that was what you were scared of. But only because you were worried people would judge the porno by its actors because they both weren’t 25 year old hotties instead of its quality. The video in question was of a woman with heinous lip fillers getting rawed by a man with a severely receding hairline. In truth, though, you’d learned to give the best head of your life from DSL Diana™️ and Matt Boner™️ always had great woman-friendly videos. They were a true power couple in the adult film world and only real aficionados would know that.

“Yeah,” you cringe to yourself and resume packing your own bag. “And that was before we even started going out. Since then, I can’t make any headway with him. If I try to put my hand down his pants, he stops and asks me if his fly is down.”

“Oh. My god.” Lisa balks at how easily you overshare. “W-well, maybe he’s waiting until what he thinks is the right moment to have sex.”

“I mean…I guess.” You shove more socks into your duffle. “But if that’s the case, this trip to the ski lodge should be more than good enough. For him, I mean. I’m not that picky after the other person is already locked down.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. How is this trip going to work when you can’t ski?”

“How do you know I can’t ski?”

Lisa snorts.

Right as the sun begins to set, the resort comes into view from the coach bus window. It's probably a beautiful sight, but you’re more fixated on the back of Jimin’s head. The look that you’re giving him itself isn’t one that’s warm or passionate. Instead you’re wondering what’s going on in his head as he presses himself to the window to get a better look.

“I still can’t believe we actually managed to get a suite at Crystal Snow.” He points to the glimmering slopes and turns to you with an excited smile. “They import their own snow when the winters are too warm for it to happen naturally. Last year they imported 6 million tons last year.”

“Global warming. Nice.”

His smile is so bright that you can’t hold on to your annoyance. You lean forward so you can rest your chin on his shoulder and listen to him spout off more facts about the different courses and the state of the art grounds. As soon as you move into his space, one of his hands gravitates to your knee and squeezes lightly. The urge to push his hand higher up your thigh appears, but you ignore it and try to focus on the things he’s saying.

“So, are you gonna spend all vacation on the hardest one? The—what’s it called? The black diamond?”

He turns to peer down at you with amusement creasing the corners of his eyes. “How can I do that and teach you to ski at the same time?”

“Why does everyone think I can’t ski?”

“Can you?”

“I…don’t know.”

“I’ll be a good teacher, I promise.” He plants a chaste kiss on your temple.

The resort looks as lavish as it appeared on the website, and you find yourself pleasantly surprised. As a prize for beating the other community service clubs on campus for the most funds raised for that semester’s cause, you and the other club members were all awarded a trip to Crystal Snow resorts. It seemed antithetical to the clubs’ mission statements, but you all decided to go anyway because the money to pay for the trip couldn’t be donated and the tickets were non-transferrable.

The suite itself cost a pretty penny, but the package it came with seems worth it. Attendants even come to pick up all the club members’ bags and take them ahead to the suite while you browse through the resort convenience store at the base of the mountain. Jimin and the other people in the club are scattered across the resort. Some of them already unpacking in their rooms while others came with you to the store.

Wishful thinking brings you to the aisle for ‘intimate health’. If anyone asks, you’re there to buy tampons, but you’re really hoping to sneakily buy some condoms. You still haven’t choked down your pride long enough to have an honest conversation with Jimin, so you’re hoping the moment will just pop up on its own.

Another girl stands at the very end of the aisle, ambling towards the little display of makeup that stands nearby. You pay her no mind and pick up the first package to catch your eye. A tap on your shoulder startles you and causes the box to slip from your grasp.

“Oh! Sorry,” she bends down to grab the dropped box. “I just wanted to ask you if you use concealer.”

From what you can tell, she seems to be around your age, maybe a little older. You peer down at the display she’s standing by and you try to search your brain for a brand name that sounds familiar. A small tube in the corner with memorable packaging helps you out.

“I think I’ve used this one, actually. It works pretty well, but if you use the wrong product under it, it gets a little flaky.”

“But the coverage is alright?” You nod. “I see.”

“You don’t look like you need it, though. Your skin is so clear.”

She chuckles nervously and begins to play with your condoms before she gestures daintily to her eyes. “It’s for the dark circles.”

At that moment, a boy with fiery hair comes barreling around the corner, calling the girl’s name. She turns and immediately a bright smile emerges on his face. You watch as he wraps himself around her before noticing the condom box she’s holding discreetly. He plucks it up before either of you can let him know they’re yours and brings them to the light to read the print on them. She locks eyes with you, embarrassment evident, but you offer what you hope is a comforting smile. You figure it’s easier to just get another box.

“Hope the concealer works out.” You back away to give her some privacy when the guy leans to stage-whisper into her ear.

“I appreciate the thought, but I’m sadly not a Magnum guy. Trojans work just fine for me.”

“Oh my god, why are you so loud?”

“I don’t think a 3-pack would be enough either.”

“Hoseok, lower your voice. And put those back, they’re not for us. They were hers.”

The guy with the red hair has dragged the girl away to look at something else. You watch until they disappear, letting out a chuckle. A few wispy tendrils of jealousy manifest in your stomach, but you try to stamp them out with optimism. If you buy condoms of your own, maybe it’ll have the same effect as those mantras Lisa always says before a test when she’s trying to will a good grade into existence. You figure Jimin is worth the effort.

But, as you fall on your butt for the sixth time the next afternoon, you’re not certain any amount of sex, no matter how good, is worth the pain you’re feeling currently.

You hobble back upright as best you can without disturbing your skis too much. Someone skiing behind you zooms by and you can hear their sympathetic laughter fly by with them. Fuck skiing. You don’t remember why you thought going on this trip would ever be fun.

“That fall looked hard. Are you okay?”

Jimin glides up next to you with an elegance you’ll never be able to replicate. Even the snow billows out softly in a sparkling cloud when he stops. He gives you a clinical pat-down, asking you where it hurts. You can hardly feel anything through the multiple layers and puffy coat that your wearing, so you bask in the physical contact instead.

“I’m fine, Minie.”

“You sure? We could take a break. Get some tea or something.”

“No, that’s okay. You go ahead and ski with the other professionals and I’ll stay here and practice the bunny slope.”

There’s something hilarious about watching Jimin squirm so much over such a trivial thing. He stands there, decked out in his professional gear, gnawing at the inside of his cheek as he contemplates. Does he finally go off to the exciting courses where he can get as close as possible to fulfilling his dream of flying? Does he help you stay upright, an impossible and menial task?

“Okay, I got it. Maybe you practice the pizza french fry thing the instructor taught you while I go do one pass through the other course. Then I swear I’ll come back and help you.”

“Jimin, you really don’t have to spend all this time helping me. How about you go do all the run throughs you like and you make it up to me later?”

His responding smile is shy but full of joy at the prospect of actually getting to ski. He shuffles forward, careful not to interlock your skis, and kisses you softly. He tries to pull away after only a few seconds of a chaste press of lips, but you deepen the kiss. Although it was really only a sly swipe of tongue, it has Jimin looking dazed and confused when he finally pulls back.

“Did you hit your head?”

There’s a joking lilt to his voice, but his eyes narrow as he takes you in. You still look like a marshmallow in your puffer coat and you still seem just as sweet. But the kiss was suspicious.

“Go have fun,” you wave him off before he can interrogate you further.

You wait until he disappears into a ski lift before turning around and hobbling back to the top of the gradual hill. Some of the younger club members are chatting up there and you use your seniority to make them practice with you until you can’t take it anymore.

Right before your limbs lose the ability to support your weight, you trudge back to the nearest entrance. You’re grateful for the warm air blowing in the elevator and for the fact that there is an elevator in the first place. Once inside, you strip layer by layer until you reach the room you and Jimin share in the suite.

All of the rooms in the suite are separated by small hallways that lead to a chic communal space with a picturesque view of the grounds. No one seems to be present when you finally make it through the door. You’re partly grateful because you can go shower in peace without having to worry about making small talk with other club members.

True to your agenda, you gather all the things needed to aid you in seducing Jimin. It’s mainly just soap and barely there underwear. It’s not until you begin stripping that you realize there might be a few issue. The first being that your muscles are all sore and exhausted as you struggle out of your snow-soaked clothes. But the main issue is the large bruises that show up as soon as all of your clothes are gone.

It’s true, you bruise easily. But these bruises look bad even to you. You count half a dozen muted reddened blooms sprawling across your torso. In the mirror of the bathroom, you turn to look at them. It’s almost impressive.

“We’ll just do it with the lights off,” you mumble to yourself.

The shower is longer than would be perfunctory, but the return of feeling to your toes seem rather important and the heat of the water helps in undoing some of the tension buried in the muscles that you didn’t realize you don’t regularly use until today. Right as you’re pulling on some loose pants and a shirt, you hear footsteps.

“Jimin?”

“Yeah,” he calls from somewhere outside the bathroom.

“How was it?”

You emerge from the bathroom in a sweet-smelling cloud and his first instinct is to open his arms to beckon you into them. Gladly you jump into them, causing him to fall backwards with a thud. With most of his layers still on, the fall is broken and there’s no harm done.

“The hills were great.” His eyes cloud over briefly with the memories of skiing.

He pats your hip lightly and you roll over so he can start shedding his own soggy layers. You watch him shrug off his vest, revealing a thermal athletic shirt. The fabric is opaque and covers his entire torso, but it's also tight enough to mold to his physique like a second skin. Under his snow pants, the matching thermal tights he’s wearing also reveal the architecture of his sculpted thighs, though his thick socks give his feet a teddy bear quality. The planes of his slender frame and compact muscles are a sight to behold and you feel a prickling in the palms of your tightly clasped hands. You’re itching to touch him.

“You checking me out?” He smiles cheekily and stands so he can shuck off the rest of his wet clothes.

“Of course,” you breathe. Your candid answer startles a full-bodied laugh out of him.

“What’s gotten into you this today?”

“Not you” you whisper.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just said I’m still a little cold, even after the shower. Why don’t we watch a movie in the bed and I can leech some of your body heat.”

“Yeah, as soon I get cleaned up. I really worked up a sweat while I was out there. I was racing Jungkook. He’s fast but his form is just okay. Plus, he’s a dick.”

It takes you all of the time that Jimin is in the shower to pick the perfect pose on the bed. Something that isn’t too obviously thought out while also highlighting all of your assets as best you can while wearing such loose clothing. It’s times like these where you curse yourself for not having any loungewear that’s figure-friendly, but you have enough trouble as it is sleeping in pants, let alone constricting ones. You finally settle for lying on your side with your back facing the entrance of the bedroom. It puts your ass on display—especially given that you tugged you pants down a little to let the lace of your underwear peep out. With your phone in your hands, you’re certain you look like the picture of nonchalance.

At the sound of his footsteps entering the bedroom again, you deliver your lines

“Oh, how long have you been out of the shower? I got so wrapped up in my feed, I didn’t notice you were out.” You quickly refresh your email despite the fact that your inbox is very much empty.

“Just got out. Did you pick a movie?”

“No, I figured you could pick it and if I don’t like it I’ll just take a nap.”

You turn and instantly regret it. Jimin stands with the shirt he plans to put on in one hand, leaving him bare from the waist up. His face is covered by the towel he’s using to scrub at his wet hair. When he finally throws on the shirt, a small sigh leaves you.

He hops into the bed and hands you the remote before dragging you into his hold. The way his arms wrap around you means he’s pressing slightly into one of the bruises that spreads across the side of your rib cage. There’s a low twinge of pain, but since cuddling with Jimin is part of the plan, you don’t say anything. You click through the movie listing because he’s too busy with you to hold the remote.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to watch this one?”

“Yeah,” he nuzzles his nose into your cheek, “but I heard it got shitty ratings at the box office.”

“Oh. What about this one? The trailer looked really good.”

“I thought it was my turn to pick.”

He squeezes you to complement his faux-whines, pressing the bruise harder. Underneath the mild pain is a surprising layer of something else. It’s hard to decipher and registers as vaguely smoky in your senses. All you know is that it’s not actually that bad of a sensation.

“I-it is your turn. I just want to make sure that you see all the options.”

A few more minutes pass until you finally choose a movie. Jimin picke a movie about anthropomorphic vegetables because he has a surprisingly awful sense of humor. If your goal was to actually sit down and watch a movie, you’d be debating his choice. But you don’t care and instead work on subtly pulling down the collar of his t-shirt so you can get to his neck.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. You just smell nice.” In the juncture of where his shoulder meets neck, you inhale deeply. “Right here.”

“Feels good.” He hums, eyes still glued to the gyrating broccoli stalk on the screen.

“Good.”

Starting slowly, you place tiny kisses on as much of his neck as you can reach. Your hands wander under his t-shirt and your fingers dig into a cord of muscle in his back. He lets out a small groan. You spend some time working on the spot until he melts a little further into your embrace. While he’s pliant you hitch your leg over his hip. It’s not enough to be able to grind on him, but the suggestion is there. You know he’s aware of it too because he casts a narrowed glance in your direction before giving you another warning squeeze in the same spot again. A breathy gasp leaves you like it’s been punched out and a smile spreads on your face soon after. You’re having fun riling him up.

“Be careful,” his tone is full of warning.

“Why?”

He looks at you again with sly warning in his eyes. A heavy hand pats your back before petting down the attractive curve of your spine. The warm weight of his palm only a few inches from your ass is wonderfully suspenseful.

“You’ll be in over your head, otherwise.”

“I don’t think so,” you smile up at him while smoothing the fabric of his shirt. The pitter-patter of his heartbeat feels like butterfly kisses on your palm.

“Is that so?”

You nod, tongue poking out from between your teeth teasingly.

He rolls over so you’re caged underneath him. Instantly his lips meet yours in a slow intermingling that would be considered chaste if not for the obscene amount of tongue and the cyclical pressure of his groin against your lower abdomen. You manage to wrestle your legs out from under him so you can part them. His hips easily fall into the slot you make for him. He hums lowly against your mouth as he makes contact with the warmth of your center, perceptible even through the layers of bottoms you’re both still wearing. A hand worms it’s way underneath your shirt, fingers splaying past the elastic waistband of your pants and meeting the rough texture of lace.

“No way,” he breathes to himself before sitting up on an elbow.

He lifts the waistband further to peer into crotch of your pants. There he sees the tiny pair of underwear you put on for the occasion. It’s a pretty cornflower blue color that he’s pretty sure he’s told you is his favorite. He drags his gaze from your lace-clad hips to the smug expression on your face.

“Look at you,” he coos. “All this time I thought you were shy.”

“I think that was something you made up. I’m really not shy. At least, not when it comes to you.”

You try to wrap your arms around him to bring him back to your mouth, but he resists.

“Hold on, I wanna see again.”

He slides your pants down a few inches, slowly as if to tease himself. By the time the whole garment is exposed, you’re shivering a little bit from the cool air. He leans down to press a few kisses on the skin of your stomach and pulls your pants down further. He groans and reaches down to palm himself through his pants.

“Turn over, please?”

You get onto your stomach as quickly as you can with your pants tangled around your legs. As soon as you get settled, you hear a large gasp.

“Shit!”

“How’s it look,” you ask coyly.

“Holy—Are you okay?”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

You crook your head back so you can see what he sees and suddenly you understand his strange reaction to your ass. There’s another large bruise spanning the top of one of your thighs reaching past the boundary of your panties. Since it was on the back of your leg, you must have missed it during your cursory inspection in the shower.

“We should go to the infirmary. Or maybe we should just see if we can get a car to take you home.”

“No, Jimin, I’m fine.” If you go home now, you’re certain you’ll be back to square one.

“I don’t know. It looks...angry.”

“That’s just because I bruise easily. I’m not actually injured—”

“Hold on. Where did this come from? Did someone do this to you?”

“No, no. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s probably from all the falls I had today. I guess I really can’t ski after all.” You chuckle awkwardly. He ignores your joke and glares down at the bruise instead.

“So, you probably have a lot of them, then.”

He tugs your pants the rest of the way down. The one on the back of your thigh seems to wrap around to the intercrural area. And there are, in fact, more bruises. Another one lies on your opposite calf. When he reaches for your shirt, you brush his hand away and slowly lift it yourself. The one on your rib cage is large, and he stares on in horror. Then he shifts and peers at the smaller ones on your back.

“You really want to tell me that you’re fine?”

“Yes. Because I’m actually fine.” He raises an incredulous eyebrow. “I mean it, I really am.”

“Fine. But at least let me put something on them.”

“As long as it’s not ice.”

He glares weakly at you when you rule out his first instinct. Looking through his bag for remedies ends up being disappointing. He comes back empty handed.

“Couldn’t find anything?” He shakes his head. “Sad. Maybe we should just go back to what we were doing before.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you what. Let me massage the areas and if they don’t hurt, I’ll take it as a sign that you’re okay. And we can go back to doing whatever you want. But if I find out that you’re in pain, we’re taking a rain check.”

“Deal.”

A moment later, in hindsight, you realize you may have just dug your own grave. The bruises are fairly tender though you’re not in agony. But you’re sure that even the slightest flinch will send Jimin running for the figurative hills. Although he also might just go back to the actual hills and leave you in the suite to let your blue balls stew.

Jimin sits on his heels in front of you with an unreadable expression. Despite the cold in the air, you kicked off your pants entirely so that he would have easy access to your sore muscles. He’d asked you before whether you wanted to start from the top, but thinking that your rib cage bruise was the most sensitive made you tell him to work his way up. You figured that if you could make it through the first few bruises, he might believe that they were all fine and drop the issue.

He starts with the lowest bruise which is the one on your calf. First he plays around with your ankle, rotating it and swiveling your foot to flex your calf. You bite the inside of your cheek to make sure no pained noise slip out. Surprisingly enough, even when he lightly presses on the bruise itself, it’s not bad. He works over the muscle without you making a single peep. Hope bubbles in your stomach and you wonder if tonight will be the night that you finally bed Park Jimin.

“One down, a few more to go. Although I really don’t know if you need to go through all of them.”

“It’s the least I can do for you. After all,” he says with challenge in his gaze, “you tried so hard to become familiar with one of my hobbies.”

“I’m a great girlfriend.”

“That is true.” His tone turns genuine as he switches legs and moves up your unblemished calf the same way.

With you on your back and the next bruise on your thigh mainly towards the back, he has to lift your leg to get access. Your hamstrings are always tight and the stretch in itself makes you grimace slightly. But you tamp down on it quickly and school your features into a neutral arrangement so as not to lose the unspoken competition at play.

“How does this feel?”

He presses his fingers lightly into the bruised skin and you have to twist your fingers into the duvet beneath you. It hurts much more than your calf, about the same as your rib cage. But you can also feel familiar stirrings of arousal in the pit of your belly. You take a deep breath and compose yourself.

“It feels fine. I just don’t usually stretch this part, so this position is a little tough.” The smile he gives you is mean, almost predatory. He calls your bluff.

“I see. I’ll try not to linger here too much then.”

A few inches higher up your thigh, the pain along with the arousal gets more acute. And as Jimin’s fingers move higher up and closer to your inner thigh, you’re not sure if you can take it.

“Mmfh, fuck.” You whine when he’s about an inch away from the apex of your thighs.

“Aha! I knew it.”

“Wait, no—”

“Nope, that’s it. I’ll finish breaking up any lactic acid, but after that I’m putting up a pillow wall and you’re keeping your hands to yourself until you’ve healed.”

“But I’m fine, though.”

“It’s okay. There’ll be other times. Let me finish up. I’d rather do boring stuff than hurt you.”

At that moment you want to scream out of frustration. A little pain may actually be what you’re seeking and convincing him that it’s actually what you want could take forever. You search for a solution desperately as he continues his gentle ministrations. But you’re getting tired, and at this point there’s no point in masking anything.

You sink down into the pillows propping you up, letting the mix of pain and pleasure wash over you as he tries to jumpstart the healing process in your skin. Little whines and grunts sneak past your lips as he works over you. The higher he goes, the louder and more unabashed your sounds become until he becomes confused. He stops.

“Am I hurting you? I know I’m not a professional, so we can stop—”

“No,” you clench and unclench your thighs. “Keep going.”

He’s about to continue when he notices the large wet spot on the seat of your underwear. Somehow he missed it as he was focusing on ridding the tension from you. He clears the small distance to your underwear and strokes his thumb across the growing stain. The underwear is wet enough that it’s actually started to cling to your folds and leaves a shining residue on his finger.

“Is this...because of the bruises?”

“Yeah.”

“But they hurt, don’t they?”

“Yeah. But it’s good, too.”

“I see,” he cedes after a beat.

Hooking his fingers, he pulls on the waistband of your underwear until you can kick it off your ankles. He surges forward and you take his weight with a low grunt, eagerly wrapping your arms and a leg around him so he can’t run away again. With one hand snaking down to return to your thigh, the other cups your cheek tenderly. He kisses you tentatively at first, like he’s not sure if your newfound desire is fully tangible.

“So, are you into BDSM or something?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But this is kinda nice.”

“I guess I just don’t want to hurt you. I’m not really sure where the line would be, y’know?”

“I’m not asking you to hang me from the ceiling and flog me. We can save that for some other time.”

You meet halfway and continue making out. Jimin seems slightly emboldened and hedges his tongue across the seam of your lips. You open for him and he continues his exploration of your mouth. The way he kisses you today is different from all the other times. While he often left you with a low burning desire before, you had no idea just how much he was holding back. And though he’s not pulling away at the start of heavy petting, he’s still treating you like you might break.

“What’s bothering you, Minie?”

“What do you mean?”

“It feels like you still haven’t let go yet. I’m not that fragile.”

“But I don’t want to weird you out.”

“I really doubt that will happen.”

“Okay.”

He kisses you again, this time slightly sloppier before pulling away and thumbing at the moisture on your lips. You sit still and let him keep fondling your lips until you part them on instinct. As soon as you do, his thumb enters your mouth. You hollow your cheeks and suck.

“Fuck,” he shudders over you. “That’s it.”

You have to ignore the impulse to laugh. He just found out that you get turned on with the right type of pain—how could he ever think a finger in your mouth would weird you out? He removes his finger, gently, and fumbles with his own bottoms. You push yourself up on your elbows to get a look at his junk. You’re not sure what you’re expecting, but a first time dick reveal is always exciting. He’s only half hard once the pants are off, but that won’t be the case for long if the way he grips himself is any indication. At least, you hope he’ll be ready soon, because you’ve been dripping for what feels like forever.

This is something he also takes note of. Shifting his hips forward, you feel the blunt edge of him nudge your sticky lips. Both of you release sighs of relief at the contact and Jimin starts rutting against you, repeatedly parting your folds as he slides his length through the arousal pooling there. When his head bumps your clit, you gasp.

“Yeah?” He bumps against it again, and once you nod frantically, he starts to grind against the spot.

The way you look writhing underneath him sets something ablaze in him. Jimin lays his hand over one of your breasts, rolling the nipple. Your back arches forward and you mirror his movements on the other one. With your free hand you nudge him closer to the bruise on your rib cage.

“A-again?”

“Yeah. Just go slow.”

While grinding into your wet heat, he starts dragging his hand down your side. With each stroke of his hand, his fingers catch on the slightly sweaty bruised area. A moan builds in your chest and rips out of you when you take over tweaking your own piqued nipples. It’s not until his rhythm slips and he nearly enters you that you remember what other things you could be doing.

“Jimin, I—oh god—want you inside me. Are you ready?”

He tests his hardness briefly. “Yeah.”

You alert him of the condoms you bought earlier that day. He looks where you direct him (under the mattress) and laughs at your readiness. He laughs again at the sleepy, hungry look in your eyes as you watch him roll the condom down his length. When he crawls back to you on the bed, he’s trying to be campy, but somehow he still looks incredibly attractive.

Everything turns sweet and slow again as he leans down to kiss you. Your tongues glide against each other and he positions himself so his arms bear his weight on either side of your head. He pushes in slowly and the stretch has you biting into the meat of his nearby bicep. Once you adjust, he begins pumping into you with the same fervor he had before entering. He’s close and his thrusts are too shallow for your liking. You reach down and press on his lower back to urge him deeper. You would have released after he got the message, but the globes of his ass are so perky and firm in your hands that you can’t help but swat at them.

“What the hell!” He jumps inside of you but doesn’t stop the swiveling of his hips, cheeks coloring with embarrassment.

“Sorry,” you place an open mouthed kiss on the column of his neck as further apology. “You just have a cute butt.”

He laughs, the sound breathy from exertion. “Cute? Not sexy?”

“It feels cute.”

“Don’t call me cute while I’m inside you.”

With that he brings a hand down to search for your clit. Your breath hitches and he quickens the pace of his hips to match the speed of his fingers. The tight figure eights around the little nub have your core tightening as your orgasm approaches. You feel like a vice around him and he gasps, hips stuttering as he pours into the latex barrier.

You look ethereal beneath him with dewy skin that seems to glow, but you haven’t come yet. So despite the sensitivity from just having come himself, he pulls you forward by the hips and continues to piston into you with grit teeth. He raises your leg to hit deeper with one hand while his free hand edges under the other leg. With his fingers spread wide, he manages to press his fingers into the bruise that spreads across the the underside of your thigh and flick his thumb across your clit in a flurry.

Your orgasm hits you with an unexpected amount of force. It feels as though your lungs have stopped working and you can’t take any more breaths, but you don’t care. Your vision whites out at the same moment that a final wave of wetness trickles over where your bodies are joined.

Jimin pulls out carefully now that you’re both over sensitive. Your leg flops down with a low thump on the mattress. Right into the small puddle your organsm must have caused.

“Wait a second, did I—”

“Looks like it,” he peers down at the stain with admiration.

“Well, that’s a first. How was that for you?”

“It was good,” he trails off with a smile. “You know...you’re pretty kinky.”

“No, I’m not. You’re just vanilla.”

“I’m not vanilla,” he balks.

“Yeah, right. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I, uh. Hmm.” It takes him a long while to think. “Oh, one time I watched this porn with two girls.”

“Is that all?”

“No! They were wearing, like, really tricky leather outfits.” You start snickering but he continues. “They were pulling each other’s hair on purpose. And one of them was spanking the other with this...cutting board.”

“Do you mean a paddle? Oh my god, you’re so cute. To think you thought I would be in over my head.”

He stomps off to get a wet towel from the bathroom. When he returns, he’s still pouting but helps you with clean up. It takes pressing yourself against his bare back while he strips the bed and several well placed kisses to get him to stop the sulking.

“Really, though. Why did you think I would be so skittish for our first time? Is it because of movie night at Namjoon’s?”

“Honestly? It’s because of the first day we met.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I thought you were a children’s librarian.” Your head tilts in confusion. “It was probably because you were wearing a cardigan.”

“I only ever wear cardigans when I go in to the daycare to read, though.”

“First impressions can be lasting,” he nods sagely to his own words.

“So what do you think about me now?”

You sit back down in front of him so he can evaluate you. You’ve thrown on a different loose t-shirt but your legs are bare.

“The same. You’re still my ‘nice little girlfriend’, as my mom says.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm,” he hums pensively before crouching into your space, eyes playful. “Maybe not so nice.”

#btssmutclub #bangtan bookclub #networkbangtan #bttnetwork #95line.net #bscproject #bts smut #bts fanfction #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bangtan fanfic #bangtan scenarios #bangtan imagines #jimin fanfic #jimin scenarios #jimin imagine

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unseeliecourtjester · 4 years

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I'm watching the Witcher! I have thoughts but I don't want to liveblog by spamming my blog with single posts so I'm just updating this one as i go. We good? Good.

Don't read this if you haven't watched it obviously because A spoilers duh and B it is pretty much incomprehensible if you haven't (and probably also if you have lol)

I've watched 8/8 episodes

Ep 1:

And right into action we jump! Nice

Ok. Killing a monster and a helpless injured animal in the first scene, it's that kind of show.

Fun bantz with daughter and dad i presume, love that

Bombarded with exposition. What's happening?

Lots of grey morality. Like it.

Very mirrory, that eclipse girl and the wizard. Who's right who's wrong? Who knows, Im sure we'll lose either way.

Really good clothing and set design!

The soundtrack is banger after another just very very good

I knew I find manbuns and half up half down hair very sexy but man if Geralt and that wizard guy from the royal storyline don't remind me of it, thank you for your service!

The fight choreography where geralt takes those men is superb and camerawork supports it in a way that's its actually possible to follow and enjoyable to watch, great job!

Hmm okay so seems like timelines are a bit fucky, princess scenes after geralt scenes

"I love you" "find Geralt of Rivia" OUCH

Good scenes but oh man i wouldn't want my rulers to just kill themselves during an attack yikes

Not to say that those suicides make me excited and confused but well i am definitely confused and excited for the princess storyline and what the heck those nilfgard (sp?) folks want.

Ep 2.:

Poor girl. (i wonder if thats makeup or if they actually cast an actress that looks like that, which would be v good)

So weird eye colours mean stuff?

Rat boy?

YES WE MET BARD BOY! Predictably I'm in love already. What a good first interaction

*Chanting* shrek dynamic shrek dynAMIC SHREK DYNAMIC!!!

I'm wheezing they really brought onions into this 👀

Thank the makers for not showing graphic self harm scenes 🙏

Powerful magic woman giving a monologue about chaos and magic? Hnnnggg

"Here i go again delivering exposition" *snort*

Hmm. What's the issue with the races? Elves etc i mean. And what's up with the guy wjo had to give "Fiona" shoes? He's one of the "clean ones"? Oof

Poor Yennefer.

Another good speech from powerful magic woman

Count on the bard to bring the laughs. And oof those elves, theres obviously some tension there.

Being Not human not another race but a Witcher does have its perks in talks with elves.

Things like "the great cleansing" worry me

There are three plots going on rn (i think theyre at the same time by now) and my priorities are 1. Geralt 2. Yennefer and 3. Fiona though 2. And 3. Is very close.

Hands down the most unrealistic thing is how everyone can repeat that language perfectly from having heard it once.

Yennefer is a half elven?

Huh. A game of marionettes and masters. The wizard controls the boy, the magician controld the girl.

Sidenote, the magic system of channeling chaos into magic and newtons 3rd law is metal and i love it

Eels, huh? Interesting.

So taking stock we have Bard (Human) & Geralt (Witcher), Yennefer (Half elf) and Humans, and Ciri (Human) & Dara (Elf).

First two episodes are over and I'm hooked. Excuse me while I go listen to "Toss a coin to your Witcher" on repeat a few hundred times now.

Ep 3

Here we gooooo

I watched half of it on a train and was too engrossed to write about

Fuck it up Yennefer!

Boob window!

Ok wait so wait wait wait is Yennefer still a Timeline before geralt?

Oh man beauty is a difficult concept

I miss the bard

Ep 4

What's that warrior women tribe and why did the forest call ciri?

I've had the bard for a day but if anything hapoens to him I'll kille everyone in this room and then myself

I love how his song has taken off!

Fuck yeah sidequest!

If i were to describe everything i loved about that scene id have to transcribe it whole

Timelines are fuckin... Fucky

Oh now we'll find out why grandmother wanted ciri to get geralt. Guess he made an impression

Damn she's so metal

Oh btw we love when media passes the bechdel test

Aww Yennefer.

Hmm.

That has to be a gambit

Ok i just read up on the law of surprise, and like to almosr everything in this ep my reaction is "metal af"

WHAT THE FUUUUUCK

Ep 5

Are you making a humunculus?

Doppler!???!?

Oh no poor wizard man

Oh Fremdscham alter Freund

These German accents oof

Oh Yennefer

Ragamuffin LOL

Jaskier huh? Nice name

Well fuck

Right. Good.

Make him drink the water! The doppler doesn't have good intentions

Also i really hope ciri isn't promised to geralt by the law of surprise in a yucky way

I love how lust and sex is handled here

"Flora and (yikes) Fauna" oh jaskier every word out of your mouth is peak comedy

Oof that guy Yennefer is traveling with

I bet they're gonna end up being a team anyways, i mean our main characters. Some how the others will perish.

Oh doppler you're so dumb

Witcher good ending: Geralt & Yennefer make a life with Ciri (I'm sure 1. fics are being written as we speak & 2. It wont happen)

Oh man that route

There's so much suicide and suicidal ideation in this it's crazy

And: called it!

There are so many insanely good quotes

"it's hard to regret something you didn't chose" yeah

Yennefer! Don't sleep with makeup

You forgot jaskier!

Yeah the hints were there. Blorchs fancy jacket...

Why does nothing good ever last. Yennefer and Geralt are so good together

And poor jaskier

We really in it now, Ariana

Ep 7

Wow calanthe you should know by now that these foul tricks don't work

Man, geralt cant catch a break

He's such a nerd

Harsh teachers get a lot of mileage out of "You're my best student"

... And that's why it's so easily used against their students.

Fuck i really care for these characters. Especially geralt, Yennefer and jaskier.

Yennefer just wanted to send sad girls on the drug trip of their lives and they're just... Hmm.

Ideology is so dangerous when it makes sense to you

And to think, geralt was right there under cintra

Well that was... Hmm

Ep 8

We haven't seen elves in a long time

Uh... No?

I dont accept geralt dying like that and at that time

OH HELL YEAH THAT INTRO ANIMATION

There's nothing

Of everything thats happened so far, the magic, the hotness, etc etc, i feel like my biggest fantasy brought to the screen in the witcher is a powerful teacher appreciating and spending time with a former student.

(*Tissania waving a glass of ale at Yennefer* me: god i wish that were me)

Ok but what's happening with geralt?

Who is vesemir

All those magic scenes are so good

Oof they just keep missing each other

Are they gonna meet in the last scene?

... They did. In the last scene.

Colour me interested in season 2! Off to tvtropes i guess and the tumblr tag.

#the witcher #I talk #oc

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mentalcurls · 5 years

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2. Sei uno str***o

I’m back with my thoughts of episode 2 of the first season of Skam Italia. This was much quicker than analyzing episode 1, but there’s still a lot of stuff I hadn’t caught or thought much about the first time I watched the season, like pre-Luchino interactions between the boys, sexy times and the earliest mentions of Marti’s mom. Bechdel test results at the end. Warning for gratuitous use of italics.

I’m still not over Skam Italia doing that video of Gio and the chat between him and Eva, referencing and overturning Skam og’s “No Norwegian boy would go down on a girl”, that shit was savage, bless LudoBesse

Oh, the song that plays while Gio and Eva are getting to the cabin! “It’s gonna be you / And me / It’s gonna be everything you’ve ever dreamed” is 100% referring to Eva, to her wanting to be with Gio, in peace, for a while, to her anticipation and plans for this trip

seeing the cabin again, though. I mean, intellectually I know this is the first time it’s ever seen on screen, this was the first time I saw it as well cause I watched all of S1 that weekend after 3.5 Ammucchiate, but now the magical triad of “Sto a Bracciano”, “Due ore” and “Patatine e marmellata” colors my experience of it so much, I almost teared up when Gio and Eva got inside

I had kind of forgotten how much they actually show of Gio and Eva having sex, I get why people drew the comparison after the Nicotino sex scenes, BUT “DUE ORE” AND “TU NON SEI DI MILANO” ARE PERFECT ANYWAYS

still not over the absence of any fic in which Gio gets to properly show off his oral skills (with Eva or anyone else)

Marti moaning and complaining about how he’s scarred and traumatized after he walks in on Eva and Gio kills me; tbh his problem is mostly that he saw a bit too much of Eva (not a lot I think, because that sheet was pretty strategically placed) and not enough of Gio

I can’t focus on Eva when there are proto-Contrabbandieri interactions going on, I just cannot

ok, so, Marti. He says his mom “freaked out” because she decided to do housework and that he had to run. So, like. Given that he uses that same wording “sbroccare” that he’ll use in later episodes to talk about his mother’s mental illness, what’s happening here? Because while I see how a person would “freak out” about cleaning (like if they suddenly started obsessing over everything being dirty), I think from what we’ve seen of Mrs Rametta that’s not likely and she probably simply tried to do the spring cleaning. So is that what Marti considers a “freak out”? Does he put spring cleaning on the same level of what I’ve always assumed were, like, panic attacks? And then of course there’s the fact that we have a boy who runs like a bat out of hell as soon as household chores are mentioned. Now. We know in a few months Marti is going to pray for his mom to want to do the chores 💔

“C’mon Eva why are you being like this?” are you really asking Gio?

Marti is at peak 🐍🐍 here: he hijacks Eva’s time with Giovanni, stops them from having sex and keeps Gio busy with a thirteen-hour-long game of Risk Eva doesn’t take part in at all. And Gio lets him! He doesn’t even appear to stay mad about not being able to have sex for more than those two minutes when he hits Marti with his sleeping bag, is he even a teenage boy

that build up to Elia’s appearance, with the creepy music, gets to me every time and Gio going for the fireplace log lifter kills me

Elia Santini is a living meme from his very first line (“Ammazza che accoglienza”)

I mean that chuckle + “Che, davero?” combo is ICONIC

Eva’s unimpressed face at Gio is also iconic.

“C’mon, what could I do, he asked if he could come, should I have said no?” ahem, OBVIOUSLY YES, since you promised your girlfriend it’d be the two of you (honestly, Gio, how did you expect to have sex, with your best friends in the room next to yours, only separated by a door??)

Notice that Eva walks away (only a few paces), fully expecting him to follow her and try to placate her more, so she can properly scream at him, except he doesn’t, he goes inside with the guys

so we get to the beach scene and what I can’t help but wonder is how long the two schemers, Gio and Elia, spent coming up with a suitable excuse to feed Eva for going back to Rome, something she wouldn’t question… and she actually questions it anyways for a minute

and God, the suspicious look Eva gives them as they walk away

in this proto-Contrabbandieri dynamic, I can’t help but notice that Martino fills that Luchino-ish role, obviously he’s not treated the same because he’s much more likely to have a sharp comeback to mocking and he’s not as naive as Luca, but he’s the one that gets left behind while the trouble duo goes to get the weed; and I think that if a Bastardata-like situation was to happen in S1 Marti would be the “victim”

and of course this episode has this big gaslighting incident, where Gio tells Eva he’s going back to Rome for his brother, Martino covers for him pretending he knows nothing (and encouraging Eva to drink and forget 😑) and when Gio comes back they all act like it’s fine, like it’s normal that he was gone most of the day and the whole night and like she’s totally overreacting when she’s mad

ok, but Marti is really really invested in Gio’s sex life, this boy is gone, desperately looking for any and all scraps. I think I’ve seen fic do the “Marti never wanked over Gio, he couldn’t have faced him afterwards” thing and while that’s valid, I think that he actually fantasized a lot about him, basing himself on the sexcapades Gio has told him about, like Villa Sciarra, because this boy has shown he’s thirsty af from day one, first telling Eva “c’mon, zozzoni, let me see” on Skype and then in this episode asking Eva outright what Gio’s like in bed

I can’t even describe Marti’s face during the conversation, first he fakes nonchalance, then he goes for a nice-guy-encouraging-reassuring smile, then he smirks and wiggles his eyebrows, then he’s smug, when Eva seems to be mustering up the courage to speak again he’s kind of hopeful, then smug again, then he softens when he starts cuddling Eva, but in the last shot from that clip he’s looking in the distance, he stops smiling and has a slightly disappointed expression

that conversation with Eva, God. Aside from any and all speculation of Marti’s motives, she is obviously embarrassed and uncomfortable, yet Marti keeps pressing; she clearly states she asked Gio not to talk about their sex life (not too in depth at least), yet Martino confirms he’s ignored her request and quotes some notable examples that prove his knowledge, which embarasses her further, to the point she stops the conversation; finally, Marti justifies Gio and himself by saying “You know, we’re like this.” like that excuses anything (or means anything, really)

those shots of the lake in the early morning and of the trees *insert Poetic cinema meme here*

Gio has the gall to come in like nothing’s happened and announce he’s brought back brioches, then to shake his head and sigh when Eva storms off, like dude? You left her alone with your best friend for a whole day and a whole night, no answers to her calls and texts, she woke up hungover on the couch and in the arms of a boy who’s not you and you’re surprised and exasperated by her being mad at you?? Honestly, Gio, you might be il mago dell’amore cause you’re half decent at matchmaking but you’re shit at doing relationships, at keeping them healthy and working

at least Eva finally gets him to follow her where they can talk alone, she finally gets him to choose her over his friends for a few minutes

Eva’s paranoid and controlling behaviour is not healthy for her or for Gio or anyone else, really, but I get where she comes from. Her relationship began with cheating, her boyfriend is currently hiding something, so trust is not something that comes easy here. Still, asking to read your boyfriend’s messages to someone else is not something conducive to a better relationship.

“You-you change when you’re around them.” hello “7 things” by Miley Cyrus!

And here we go again: “Eva, do you really think I’m hiding something from you? Eva, I’m not hiding anything from you, okay?” and he kisses her, trying to placate and distract her with physical affection

poor Eva walking to a place that is as isolated as she feels

I mean, this trip must have been devastating for her, she’s been anticipating it for weeks, it should be her occasion to be with Gio, to strengthen the one relationship in her life that’s going well, to placate her fears and to forget all the stuff that’s going to shit in her life for a few days; instead Gio’s friends gatecrash the trip, Gio spends half of the time going back and forth from Rome, she gets stuck with Marti who’s a good guy, but inappropriate, she finds out her boyfriend discloses info about their intimacy without her consent, and there’s the whole Laura thing. The only pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel is that kind-of-weird, a bit too touchy-feely girl from the Easter party befriending her on Facebook, how sad is her life?

Bechdel test: this episode doesn’t pass the test. There’s a brief conversation between Eva and her mom at the beginning, but her dad intervenes, plus Eva’s mom is still unnamed so the conversation doesn’t count for the test.

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

#skam italia #skamit meta #giovanni garau #martino rametta #eva brighi #elia santini #eleonora sava #martino's mom #skamit #skamit s1 #1x02 sei uno str***o #a. writes

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variablejabberwocky · 6 years

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okay so the most recent fic i’ve been reading has been a...pleasant surprise

its just under 50 chapters, is a bit darker in nature than canon, and kills off a couple of female characters in...gruesome ways, but its not actually overtly sexist???

which is such a goddamn rarity to find, at least on ff.net and in the naruto fandom.

like the girls die but its...not for male angst. like it doesn’t feel the same as your typical “fridging”. and they get personalities? and motivations of their own. like its not gonna pass the bechdel test but its sure as fuck several steps up from most fics that are similar on the surface

anyway: fic rec for Plucking Strings by Digitize27. longfic. complete. bitty naruto gets inspired to be a puppeteer from a ‘discarded’ bingo book. problem is there are no puppeteers in konoha...until he figures out how to reverse engineer the technique. cue puppetmaster!naruto (in more ways than one). darkfic-ish. gore. no real pairings.

#shitty ninja feels #fic rec #in which naruto toes the moral event horizon as hard as he possibly can

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thelocalrebel · 6 years

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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)

Call me a Star Wars nerd: my childhood was literally me speeding to the library every week to borrow the Jedi Apprentice novels, before I graduated to the Expanded Universe (now called Legends) of the Thrawn Trilogy and the New Jedi Order, to name a few. Not just novels, but comics too! Unsurprisingly, games that have a special place in my heart include both Knights of the Old Republic games (not The Old Republic MMORPG) and years on, I still write fic about that era and get emotional over a 13 year old game.

But I couldn't love The Last Jedi (TLJ) no matter how hard I tried. Sure, there's space battles and blowing-things-up that's iconically Star Wars, but one thing (amongst others) ruined it for me. Despite the franchise crowing “diversity” and being “progressive”, TLJ falls back on tropes that should belong in the Stone Age. If I listed everything skeevy about TLJ like the lore and plot inconsistencies, I’d be writing a thesis, so here’s four points to consider. Spoilers abound.

1) For Some Reason, The Narrative Now Centers On Kylo.

This was my absolute biggest issue with TLJ. Here, we see Kylo being woobified and treated like a boy in the narrative despite him being a grown-ass 29 year old adult. In numerous instances, Kylo’s Tragic Backstory™ is emphasised: being neglected by his parents, his Uncle Luke wanting to murder him, Snoke grooming him to join the Dark Side, him struggling with his insecurities ft. his explosive tantrums - all of which subtly nudging us to empathise with him. Aka, highlight that despite him being involved in the Star Wars equivalent of a militaristic fascist organisation carrying out genocide and literal slavery AND being the one responsible for murdering Jedi students at Luke’s Jedi Academy, we must feel sorry for him. That he just needs to be understood. So he can be redeemed.

Seriously. If Luke “There Is Still Good In [Vader]” Skywalker thinks Kylo is irredeemable, I’m tempted to believe him.

But back to my point. Kylo’s story is suddenly the crux in TLJ moreso because other characters have been mangled - character-wise - simply to prop him up. Most damning is how Rey, of all people, suddenly decides that Kylo is worth saving despite him murdering the first father figure she had and ever wanted (Han), mortally wounding the first person who saw her worth coming back for (Finn), and mind-raping her in their first interaction in a torture room - in the span of, what, two weeks? Fine, perhaps this is Rey being flawed - tying in to how we shouldn’t hold representations to perfect standards, especially for marginalised identities. But really? Even with all such instances imply? Because to me, this simply reinforces that stereotype where a “Virtuous But Naive (White) Woman Saves Angsty (White) Boi From Himself”; a norm that reflects real-world instances of women doing tons of unpaid emotional labour while absolving men of the responsibility to improve themselves or even take responsibility for their own actions. So yes, it’s misogynistic. In TLJ, Rey exists solely to redeem Kylo. And that doesn’t sound like the Rey from The Force Awakens (TFA): you know, the Rey with an arc not revolving around a man? (I don’t want to discuss the implications of the Reylo pairing and what it normalises - there’s too much, and this isn’t the place). In that, Rey stops being angry; an essential character trait she displays when faced with danger and the unknown, because women can’t be angry, right? Otherwise, “they’re dangerous”. Hence, Rey’s character is watered-down for Kylo’s benefit.

As if mischaracterising Rey wasn’t enough, they had to brutalise Luke’s character too. Luke Skywalker, the compassionate pacifist who believed that even the vilest of individuals could be redeemed, suddenly decides that the best way to deal at all with Kylo is to kill him? Seriously????? (It’s not just canon that disputes this characterisation of Luke - even the Legends books dispute this. And Luke changing his mind last minute doesn’t count). Sure, the bitter, jaded, and depressed Luke we see in TLJ is believable, given recent events and him self-flagellating over such events - but his decisions prior? Inconsistent. Or, just to fuel Kylo’s Tragic Backstory™ (which wasn’t even elaborated much. How did he fall? How was Snoke responsible? Where did Snoke come from? Just marvel at the wealth of lore that could’ve been explored). In the process, the Luke who used love and forgiveness instead of violence (i.e. toxic masculinity) to be a compelling hero, was sacrificed.

But hey, all’s fair in propping up white male characters and their manpain, right?

2) Fake (White) Feminism

What riles me up more is hypocrisy. Because once you peel off TLJ’s supposed “progressivism”, you realise that diversity is actually horrible representation built on racism galore. So feminism here is just performative.

Generally, Vice-Admiral Holdo’s scene with Poe is seen as a case of a Strong Woman™ shutting down Mansplaining directed at her, where Poe is supposed to learn how to trust his superiors and become more “level-headed”. (Star Wars advocating for “blindly trusting authority”? Gosh. Wonder what the Rebellion was doing in the Original Trilogy then). Plot hole aside, it works, if you can ignore how Poe is mischaracterised using racist tropes of the irrational, hotheaded, misogynistic Latino; which, incidentally, is not the Poe depicted in the comics and TFA. (Same thing with the Leia scene at TLJ’s beginning - TFA Poe wouldn’t blatantly ignore orders and kill off most of his squadron just to destroy a capital ship; TFA Poe would be deathly afraid of sending his squadron to their deaths.) On the other hand, if we consider how Poe wasn’t mischaracterised, then this scene is a case of how people of colour tend not to believe white women in positions of authority due to a history of racism, or how Poe wouldn’t easily trust someone he was unfamiliar with. So, what’s going on here? Simple - A male character of colour is demonised just to prop up a white woman. “Feminism”, y’all.

Okay, you might think: as his commanding officer, Holdo’s not obligated to tell Poe anything. But if Poe manages to mutiny with a number of Resistance personnel, then perhaps this is a case of Holdo not leading effectively? Hm? Anyway, miscommunication without sufficient buildup as a plot device is contrived and does a disservice to the characters involved. It’s not representation when it’s done at the expense of someone else, especially another marginalised identity. (Holdo deserved so much better).

Also, you’ll notice how most - if not all - of the leading ladies in TLJ are white. Pretty intersectional film, don’t you think? This is compounded by how TLJ barely passes the most basic of feminist tests - like Bechdel and Mako Mori - despite the quantity of non-white male characters and calefare abound. Ladies only ever talk about male characters, save that brief conversation between Leia and Holdo when they weren’t being condescending about Poe, and unfortunately exist just to further another male character’s arc (Rose, Rey, Holdo, Phasma…).

Plus, notice how Luke’s Caretaker aliens on Ahch-To are femme-coded...a la cis-heteronormative gender roles, thus assuming that aliens conform to a gender binary, or even have genders. I’m not lying - it was intended. How...colonial.

3) Just. Racist. Bullshit.

As mentioned, TLJ’s progressivism masks a deluge of racism. Though I’m neither Latinx nor Black, watching certain TLJ scenes left me thoroughly uncomfortable.

Did Hux and Leia really need to slap Finn and Poe respectively? Did TLJ really need to make their male characters of colour (MoC) comic relief and recipients of violence - with Leia stunning and slapping Poe, Rose tazing Finn, Phasma/Hux wanting to behead Rose and Finn (with Phasma and Hux being literal space nazis)? All of that despite Poe and Finn having recently recovered from either torture or mortal injuries? And Finn himself dealing with the trauma of being a First Order stormtrooper, emotional abuse being one such after-effect? Clearly, the pain of non-white characters is acceptable fodder for jokes, but not that of white characters - Kylo’s scenes certainly weren’t. Some of them actually had plot. Interesting contrast.

Furthermore, did TLJ have to sideline their PoC characters, least of all their MoC leads? As mentioned, Poe was mischaracterised to prop up a white woman and Finn used as comedic relief and generally denied narrative attention despite being a lead...because Kylo apparently deserved more screen time. Yeah, Finn went with Rose to Canto Bight to find Maz’s master codebreaker, which, if I’m not wrong, are called slicers. Personally, I liked the subplot - it’s a nice allegory to reality, where the military industrial complex, capitalism, and the rich go hand in hand in slowly destroying the world, aside the message of how rebelling isn’t just about fighting baddies, but fighting for people. Like inspiring the “little people”; civilians and those uninvolved in the fighting. And in the process, exploring how war affects them. (One thing though: freeing/focusing on the Fathiers instead of the child slaves on Canto Bight?)

Then you realise that apparently, Rose Tico was created not because they needed a Rose Tico in TLJ - rather, having Finn and Poe pull a buddy-cop act on Canto Bight didn’t have the conflict that introducing a female character would. Sigh. Rose Tico, plot device. Just like Paige Tico - her death, albeit heroic, used to drive Rose into Finn’s path. Therein lies the anti-Blackness and anti-Asian aspects of the Canto Bight arc. Arguably, through their detour, Finn learns who exactly the Resistance fights for and moves past his “selfishness” of looking out only for himself and Rey - thanks to Rose’s guidance throughout their trip, which, as TLJ panned out, was eventually unnecessary and contributed little to the overall plot of “Will Kylo Finally Forsake The Dark Side?”. It’s Rose’s educating of Finn that simultaneously makes her a racist portrayal and a plot device as a Wise Asian Walking Encyclopedia to help teach a Naive Black Character about the Grim Realities of Life that Finn survived and escaped from - was he not a former stormtrooper captured by the First Order when he was a child? Perhaps Finn wasn’t adequately socialised to civilian life, thus his wide-eyed reaction to Canto’s glitz, but why wouldn’t Finn, who grew up in a traumatic and manipulative environment and recognised it for what it is, not see through Canto’s facade? Plus, Finn’s supposed development isn’t about himself; it’s about making him prioritise the needs of others over himself as if he hasn’t been doing that an entire movie ago.

Don’t know ‘bout you, but that sounds like bad writing. Bad, racist writing.

4) Centrist Reasoning

Finally! One last section to discuss. Hope everyone’s still here.

In keeping with the times, one of TLJ’s messages that stuck out was cynicism, moral ambiguity and that absolutes don’t exist. I agree, because life is never so clear-cut - but TLJ somehow simplistically portrays that. On Canto Bight, Rose tells us to “save what you love, not fight what you hate” (...despite saying she wanted to “put a fist through [the town]” just a while ago). When DJ mentions how weapons merchants sold to both the First Order and the Resistance, it’s said in a manner to somehow excuse them, or even give them a pat on the back; as if playing both sides somehow cancels the obvious self-interest driving their business decisions - but that’s assuming it’s a valid comparison in the first place. How is the Resistance, in any way, comparable to the First Order? Personally, this is just shoddy reasoning that conjures up nonexistent ambiguity. A reasoning that, when extrapolated to today’s socio-political climate, fails to clarify the power disparities between various groups in society by assuming a false equivalence. In other words, an erroneous comparison. Because however appealing it sounds, we can’t equate a fascist military organisation responsible for genocide and other inhumane practices with an organisation dedicated to thwarting it, for the sake of everyone.

You know what’s a better idea? Using Canto Bight or the First Order, through Finn’s past, to contrast between righteous anger versus mindlessly lashing out, often via violence (which, incidentally, adds nuance to the Light vs Dark Side of the Force debate). Because righteous anger, given its origins in a history of marginalisation and trauma, would be a way of ‘righting’ such wrongs despite the ‘wrongness’ associated with violence as a method. It’ll introduce moral complexity and gray-area dilemmas that TLJ craves without disregarding the sociopolitical implications of social movements and resistance. (Like, they could’ve explored the fact that the Resistance was essentially killing brainwashed First Order soldiers forced into fighting, but oh well).

So, four points to consider. But honestly? I'm only just scratching the surface. There's more nitpicking/meta online if you wish to delve. But honestly, TLJ could’ve been so much more. They had rich source material and endless ways to spin off the buildup that TFA created. And yet.

That’s why I’ll remain bitter about TLJ, and what it could’ve been.

tl;dr if you’re looking for a film that isn’t fake-deep on diversity, doesn’t contain senseless cynicism, or fulfills its narrative potential by avoiding copious plot holes and general bad writing, TLJ is not it. (psst, Rogue One did it better).