#anyway this is like. party meta partly me thinking about how | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mittensmorgul · 3 years

Text

For anyone interested in long-term residence in the supernatural fandom, please have some observations I’ve made over the decade I’ve been here. Take it or leave it as you will, but I’ve found all of this info useful over the years I’ve been here.

I wrote this yesterday, and it achieved its mission of identifying the sort of folks who would react negatively to it (i.e. a lot of block lists have been updated), so now that it’s been edited for content, it’s going under a cut (because that is how we do things on tumblr in general, unless we have a deliberate purpose for annoying readers with excessively long text posts) for the sake of people who actually do care about the fandom and its history. If that’s not you or your reason for being here, then keep on keeping on with your own thing, I guess. For those who are interested, there’s a lot of fandom resources some of us have been building for years that you might enjoy knowing about.

First off, I’ve been informed by a few friends who’ve read through this for coherency’s sake that it sort of reads like a *shakes cane from porch* fandom grandma complaint, but honestly... I earned this rocking chair and goshdangit imma rock now. So apologies for any “back in my day” vibes or faint aroma of tiger balm this post might give off. Then again, it’s loosely based on a similar post from 2012 so like... time is a flat circle anyway I guess.

1. There is no such thing as “tumblr famous,” unless you’re referring to the hilarious and delightful fic of the same name (please go read it, you will cackle). Posting Hot Takes for imaginary Clout™ on this site is kind of pointless in the long run. Sure you can post solely for the sake of stirring shit and getting notes, but the majority of the folks who do aren’t long term residents of the fandom. They’re just tourists moving through our little beach town for spring break. If you’re actually intent on moving to this corner of the fandom for an extended stay, please bother to really feel out the permanent residents and understand the culture and general mood of the neighborhood. It bears no resemblance to whatever’s going on across town where all the bars and beach parities are happening, and those loud, drunken revelers are, again, gonna disappear back to their regular lives or on to the next party eventually. That doesn’t mean the fandom is dying, it’s just evolving.

(funny how I had several comments implying that I’m just trying to keep the fandom from evolving with this post, because I sincerely do want the fandom to continue on for years to come, and that is impossible without evolution. We can evolve without self-immolating, though. mostly i included point 1 for an excuse to push ancient but hilarious fanfic on you.)

2. Once you post something here, it’s been unleashed to the fandom winds. You never know where it will end up, or who will comment on it or add to it. Remember that time Misha tweeted the link to the Epic Cockles Love Story post? No? It was wild. That was 2012. They all know we’re here, and how to find us if they want to. Please don’t take it to their doorsteps.

Obviously if someone is being a dick on your posts, please feel free to block them, but the whole entire point of this site is to engage people with your posts. Being big mad that someone reblogged your post with comments or supporting evidence, or happy headcanons or “HECK THIS IS GREAT BECAUSE (insert personal story about their experience or whatever else made them Feel Things about your post)” is frankly ridiculous. If your goal is to avoid any sort of engagement with your posts, then maybe try instagram instead. From what I understand, there is a SPN fandom presence there, and nobody can tarnish your original posts with unwanted commentary. But the ability to reblog with additional commentary is a FEATURE of tumblr that builds community through conversation. Otherwise we’re all just talking to ourselves in a vacuum, and that’s what actually kills fandoms.

(and for the folks who just want to blog how they want to blog and don’t want people to engage on their posts at all, please feel free to block anyone you want, as well... nobody wants to step on your toes, but most of us also don’t want to walk on eggshells wondering if this post is one of the “do not add comments for any reason” sorts of posts, either. This is a huge fandom and most people can’t even begin to keep track of every creator and their url du jour, and what their personal rules might be regarding interaction with their content. Including a “please don’t add comments” note at the bottom of your posts-- and not in your tags that won’t even show up on reblogs, but in the actual body of the post-- would sincerely help avoid any awkward or unwanted interactions, too. At the end of the day, you are in control of your own fandom experience and the block button exists.

For the record, I block zero fandom blogs (which is why I posted this, I wanted it to reach a wide scope... refer to the opening paragraphs as to why).

3. Since this post was partly inspired by a tag I left on that post going around about how “previous tags” mean fuckall on this site (which you can read here), just a reminder that if you like someone’s tags or feel they add value to the post, part of the Peer Review structure of tumblr encourages you to PASTE THEM INTO A REBLOG. If you do this, then at least credit the person who actually wrote the tags! Don’t just copy someone else’s tags into your tags on your reblog of the post without credit either. They were not YOUR tags. (I have had this happen to tag rambles I wrote and someone else got credited with them on a subsequent reblog and it is FRUSTRATING). Just... don’t even bother to write “previous tags” because WHAT PREVIOUS TAGS?! Nobody is gonna bother to chase back the chain of reblogs trying to find where the mystery tags came from, friendos. That way lies madness.

(for the record, since some folks seemed to focus on this point solely, writing “previous tags” on a post isn’t inherently a BAD thing, but for anyone who actually is here for more than one-off shitposting, then it’s sort of a pointless thing in the long run. This wasn’t intended to suggest people who ARE here for one-off shitposting are bad or “doing it wrong,” but for people who might actually want to preserve that hilarious joke or insightful comment. People delete posts and entire blogs all the time around here. Links break. I get that the upcoming generation just shrugs at that and moves on with their lives, but heck... you don’t have to accept that all entertainment is disposable if you don’t want to. There’s a bizarre sort of nihilism plaguing us all about the impermanence of pretty much everything that feels like something we should be fighting against rather than buying into wholesale, even in our escapist entertainment. I’m just exhausted by the complete loss of joy in community.

*shouts from the peanut gallery* IT AIN’T THAT DEEP, JUST GET SOME FRESH AIR AND LOOK AT A PUPPY OR SOMETHING

Yes... yes it isn’t really that deep, but bigger picture in the state of reality we’re all entirely disillusioned with, are we supposed to just give up on everything, including the things we cling to because they bring us a tiny spark of hope that we’re not all just trapped in this dystopian nightmare and things might actually be worth living for?

*peanut gallery clinging to burnt husks of peanuts in a barren peanut field* but this is how we have chosen to cope

Okay... you do you... I feel bad for you but if that’s the case then this post is NOT FOR YOU. AND THAT’S FINE. I honestly do not care if you don’t care! I mean, I’m sorry anyone has to live in a world that drives them to that mindset, but I understand. This post is for anyone who might look at their lives and their choices and think “no wait, I unironically enjoy this and want more from the experience of that enjoyment than I’m currently feeling.” Everyone else can continue with their lives as usual.)

4. CONTENT THEFT IS NEVER OKAY. PERIOD. Things like “credit to the artist” or tagging gifs or images you found on pinterest as “not mine” isn’t actually credit. If you can’t source an image or gif set, DO NOT POST IT! We don’t REPOST (i.e. save an image and then create a new post with it as if it was our own creation). We REBLOG (click the little square arrows and reblog from the actual creator). That goes for gif sets, fanvids, screencaps, meta, fic... everything.

(hopefully everyone here already understands this one, but I felt compelled to include some “these are stupidly obvious” reminders anyway, since this is ostensibly some sort of advice column. This is the equivalent of the warning label on your toaster reminding you not to use it in the bath. Like... duh...)

5. Close kin of item 4 is SOURCE YOUR SHIT.

(for 100% disclosure purposes, I specifically discussed this one in this specific way because of an influx of anon ask messages I received in the wake of the finale. Literally the inciting incident for creating this entire post was what I can only assume was a joking ask about a comment Misha made at a con years ago. Someone actually bothered to take the time to type out those sentences to me. I have no idea what they were expecting in reply, or what could possibly motivate them to send this comment about something so entirely random from, again, several years ago. Just a joke? No idea, but whatever... it got me thinking that there might actually be people who are new to the fandom who MIGHT actually care about the fandom history, and maybe they just don’t know where to go for that info, or how to even begin searching through 16 years of history for things they might actually find enjoyment in, rather than just hauling random out of context garbage out on main and pointing and laughing about it now. People are actually allowed to care about things. It’s not cringeworthy to actually care about things, and you are not alone in actually caring, and there’s this whole big room over here full of people who are thrilled to share in that with you. This post is intended FOR THOSE PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY, so if that is not you, please just continue walking by.)

Yes, I know lots of y’all are new around here right now, but dredging up stuff from years ago that fandom has completely debunked and presenting it as TRU FAX again is just exhausting. We’re not trying to be party poopers, but seriously, we have seen it all and are mostly done with extinguishing bags of flaming dog poop on our front porches for the umpteenth year in a row. I’ve seen a lot of posts that have the same tone as “I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil” or “I heard kylo ren has an eight pack” and just... the information is there for anyone who cares enough to find it.

This goes double for “why is nobody talking about this thing I just discovered while watching the show for the first time?!” And, oh hon, we have talked it all into the ground over the last fifteen years. We’re happy you’re discovering it again, but I promise we talked about it plenty when the episodes originally aired. We have such a rich meta history that lots of us have worked really hard to preserve. I encourage you to seek it out, if nothing else than as historical artifacts. The way we have discussed the show has been a 16-year evolution. People have written literal doctoral dissertations on this show. Your shitposts are fun! We love reliving our own experience through fresh eyes, and seeing your wonder at experiencing it all again for the first time! But y’all didn’t invent this fandom in the last six months, either.

Meta Sources and Minerals provided by our friendly neighborhood fandom archivist, @lets-steal-an-archive

Academic books and articles about SPN

A collection of Meta Essays going back to s1 and organized by topic (all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again)

SPN Heavy Meta Archive (s1-3)

Mel’s Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-12)

Oranges8hands Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-15, with many similar entries to Mel’s... though ymmv on viewpoint in a lot of these too)

Anyone remember Fandom Wank? Not the concept but the actual LJ... No? Okay have a link to SPN topics that ended up there. Through 2013. We have seen so much... including several fandom containment breaches.

for all your art sourcing needs, please see @theroadsofararchive, the repository for so much fandom art.

need to find a gif of something? canonspngifs is a vast repository of gifsets of the entire series. If the gif you want to use in your post happens to be the first gif in the gifset, in the tumblr gif finder thingy just paste the permalink to that post from canonspngifs (which is easily searchable by episode, character, location, situation, quotes, and sometimes even color and clothing items the actors are wearing... it’s really well organized, especially for tumblr >.>) and the first gif will be automatically linked with credit to the gif creator attached. It makes life easy that way. It’s also convenient when trying to remember something specific but can’t remember what episode it’s from. I’ve used the site to jog my memory before going to the superwiki armed with more specific search results to find episode quotes and references. Or sometimes I just scroll through all the nice gifs for fun, too.

Need a screencap of something and know exactly which episode it’s from? Try Home of the Nutty. You might not find the exact screencap you’re looking for, but they have a complete set of caps of every episode, and it’s an incredibly useful resource for quick reference checks and the like. Just give pages a chance to fully load before clicking on the next one. The site is easily overloaded, but it’s still free to use (and again, with credit... Pretty much every screencap on my entire blog is from HotN unless otherwise credited).

As you can see, this is a fandom built on preserving our history. You absolutely are not required to engage with any of this if that’s not of interest to you, but I can only assume that there are people who would be interested in it if only they knew it existed and how to find it. Well, now they do.

6. A few more notes on tags, and how they work on tumblr. The first 20 tags on your ORIGINAL posts are searchable sitewide, so if you want to be able to find something again, tag that thing first before going on general tag rambles. The only place tags on reblogs are searchable is on your own blog. So you don’t have to put 50 tags trying to get a post seen if it’s a reblog. You’re just spitting into the wind at that point. If you have a filing system for finding things again, then by all means add those tags (again, in the first 20, so they’re searchable), but you don’t need to tag a reblog “destiel” and “deancas” and “dean” and “cas” and “dean x cas” or whatever. Pick one for your personal blog’s filing system, that’s all you need.

(this was only added because tagging and searching on this site is so very broken... I get that a lot of folks don’t care about ever searching their own blogs again for anything, so this one only really applies if you do often find yourself trying to find old posts. If not, then it’s not really relevant. It took me years to work out a decent tagging system, and at the beginning of my time here I never thought I’d end up camping out here for a decade and falling this deep into the fandom, and I regretted my lack of consistent tags only years later when I realized I actually wanted to be able to go back and find specific old posts again. So... for anyone who wants to err on the side of caution, working out a sensible tagging system really helps if you’re here for the long term. I personally tag content by episode, because some of my other general tags are so large as to be practically useless as a search term. But whatever system you choose to file stuff on your own blog, it really only has to make sense to you. And again, if this is pointless advice for someone who has no intention of settling here for the long term. Please feel free to ignore it. I just wish someone had explained it this way to me ten years ago and saved me the hassle of retroactively tagging something like 30k posts... especially now that using the mass tag replacer is the fastest way to get your entire blog deleted... oops? so yeah, don’t use the mass tag replacer either >.>)

7. Tags on Tumblr DO NOT WORK LIKE TAGS ON TWITTER. If you @ someone in the body of the post, it will show up in their notifications (if they’re the sort of person who even checks their notifications... not all of us do. For the record, I generally don’t...), but putting actor or ship names in the tags on a tumblr post does absolutely nothing. It’s not the same as tagging the actor’s twitter account in a tweet. Nobody’s getting notifications about you tagging a post about Jensen here as “Jensen Ackles.” There is a difference. Please learn it. (and don’t take headcanons and ESPECIALLY RPF or otherwise explicit art or fic from tumblr to twitter and tag the actors in it. That’s just... not okay.)

(I have seen the pearl clutchers getting all in a huff about the mere existence of RPF or even explicit content of fictional characters if it doesn’t meet their purity standards, but tagging those things allows people who don’t want to see it to actively avoid that content here. Nobody has a right to tell people their fictional content shouldn’t exist at all, or that creators of that fictional content somehow deserve harassment or threats for having dared to create such “immoral” content, won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children... and no... you do not do that here. Don’t be the problematic behavior you wish to ban from the world. Learn to use tags to protect yourself from, as i have attempted to emphasize here, fictional content you are personally upset by. That’s a you problem, not a problem for the creators of potentially upsetting content that they tag appropriately for.)

8. General formatting stuff: If you’re writing long text posts, visually break them up so people aren’t faced with one long wall of text. The enter key is your friend. Also, if you put long text posts under a Read More break and send people to your blog to finish reading, please ensure that your blog is actually visually accessible (tiny text, or light grey text on a dark grey background, or a visually busy background might be aesthetically pleasing to you but nobody can actually read it. Loads of folks won’t even try. Which is great if you don’t actually care whether people are able to appreciate your content or not, but something to at least consider if you *do* actively want to encourage engagement with your work. Confirm how your blog looks on both mobile and desktop and make sure it’s actually functional in both, too).

And since I mentioned that most of my experience on fandom tumblr has been in the SPN fandom, here’s a bit of a reminder for folks who are new around here. With the reminder that I have been here more than a decade and still feel like a newbie myself sometimes...

This is an OLD FANDOM. There are many, many people who have been at this longer than some of you have been alive. The average age for creators in this fandom is older than you think (I think of my friends in their 30′s as young’ins okay? okay). With that understood, you are responsible for the content you consume and are exposed to. Curate your experience. Ship and let ship. YKINMKATOK. Don’t deliberately expose yourself to content you find upsetting for whatever reason. Tags and warnings are your friends, not targets for you to attack in some sort of purity war. People will ship things you do not like (or in specific ways you do not like), will say things you do not agree with, and will find their happiness in things you abhor. That is not your concern. Find what you do like, and support and engage with it, and ignore (or block, or unfollow) the rest. Tumblr has a feature that lets you blacklist tags so the content you’re trying to avoid won’t appear on your dash.

Remember the paradox of tolerance.

It is not your job in fandom to police how other people enjoy the fandom. It’s not *my* job to police how *you* enjoy the fandom, UNLESS your enjoyment is in actively harming other real human beings in the fandom. If you don’t like their take on the character or the show or the plotlines or their ships or anything else, you don’t need to engage with their posts at all! The necessary corollary to this is that clarifying misunderstandings or correcting factual misinformation is not “policing.”

(this is where the peanut gallery reminds me it ain’t that deep, and I plead with them to put down the social media and find just one (1) thing to actually believe in in this godforsaken life, find something other than disdain and cynicism and spite to live for. If those things motivate you to find a larger cause for yourself, then great, use them to your advantage, but use them to find something that makes you a better person or brings you a modicum of joy and connection to your fellow human beings despite living in a dystopian hellscape of a world)

I have seen a lot of posts lately that are founded on the sort of authority that comes with “I watched through tumblr for a few months and then watched the last three episodes of the series” and as such are just... missing the larger context of the entire show, and are unfounded entirely in canon. I 100% appreciate the new enthusiasm for the fandom that we’ve been living in here for years, and it’s wonderful to see new people enjoying the thing we love. Your headcanons are valid, you are valid, but recognize that your headcanons aren’t canon. All of us finale denialists have accepted this in some measure, so we feel you. We truly, truly feel you. But regarding actual canon, we have a resource for that: the Superwiki. Learn it, live it, love it, as Metatron would say.

(which you could discover he said in 10.17 Inside Man, thanks to the superwiki! accept no substitutes!)

(and again, there have been people who have been involved in fandom for years who haven’t engaged with canon in years, either! You can play in this universe however you choose, BUT FOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT CANON AT ALL, WHICH I AM AGAIN POINTEDLY SAYING MIGHT NOT BE YOU, READER, AND I’M NOT SUGGESTING YOU ARE WRONG FOR NOT WANTING TO ACTUALLY ENGAGE WITH CANON, but if you DO want to engage with canon, please have some useful resources. Why do people feel personally attacked by being presented a list of helpful resources? Absolutely baffling.)

(also: words have definitions. “Canon” is a specific thing, meaning in this case “the finished media product that aired on television.” Anything beyond those limits is secondary canon (think: john’s journal, which is not canon but canon adjacent at best...), word of god (i.e stuff said by the writers and showrunners), or headcanon (which includes actor commentary-- they may have helped create the show with their acting choices and whatever, but they are not in control of the story overall). If there’s something you dislike about actual canon, you can reject it and supplement it with your own theories or preferred outcomes-- that’s basically what fanfic is-- but that doesn’t make your theories canon (much to all our dismay, that’s just not how any of this works. This is not to invalidate how anyone engages with the show or the fandom, just trying to clarify what seems to have been a source of unintentional misunderstandings. Your theories do not have to be “canon” to be legitimate interpretations.)

***I am setting this section apart, and did make a separate post of just this following information, because this is where we go from being relatively chill about different parts of fandom choosing to interact in different ways and you do you and blog however you want, to “hey can everybody please understand that the way you are interacting with this specific material might be harmful for specific legal reasons, and stating that you do not care about the consequences of your actions does actively make you the asshole here...” Okay, now that we have that understood:

The spnscripthunt collective has been steadily acquiring new scripts (which are posted in full on the superwiki for everyone to enjoy, for free). The language around how some folks are talking about these scripts is... concerning. For very real legal reasons, actually, and not because we’re feeling precious about the collection and don’t wike it when meanies use them in shitposts.

-First off, these scripts are not “leaks.” They are all verified and legally purchased (or gifted, in some cases, but still acquired entirely above board. we didn’t whack anyone over the head in a back alley for these scripts, or swipe them out of someone’s trailer on set).

(in case anyone was unaware, these scripts are the copywritten protected property of Warner Brothers. So yes, how we use them and share them with the fandom could have legal repercussions. We present them as a collected resource of fandom history which SHOULD fall under Fair Use doctrine, but this is untested legal water. Insinuating that the scripts are somehow not entirely legally obtained, or that posting them for public access involved less than 100% transparent and entirely legal transactions is incredibly concerning.

Once again for the peanut gallery, if you don’t care about any of that and are just having a good time with it, at least be mindful of the work and expense a large group of people have gone through to acquire and present the content you’re all too eager to exploit for cheap thrills. Some of us do actually care and are not exactly comfortable with the fact that others don’t seem to care about burning it all to the ground. We can’t force you to listen or behave as we’d hope you might, but at least be aware of the potential consequences of your actions. All we’re asking is for you to not be the douchebag who sets the whole neighborhood on fire with your illegal fireworks display. Is that too much to ask for? more on that in a second, first... a psa)

-If you see a script for sale and are unsure if it’s legit (or believe it might already be freely available in our collection), please feel free to ask us for advice. Our goal is to make as much of our fandom history available to the entire fandom, and we absolutely do not want anyone shelling out money for stuff you can already find for free.

(seriously, we’ve seen a bunch of resellers cropping up selling printed versions of the scripts we bought and uploaded for everyone to enjoy free of charge, or scripts that are otherwise of dubious origin. We’ve been at this for years now and know what’s actually out there. We don’t want anyone to fall for a scam if we can help it)

-Also, the usual reminder that the scripts we acquire ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE FINAL SHOOTING DRAFTS. In fact, the majority of scripts in our collection are NOT. Changes are made daily to scripts, even during filming. Comparing a Production Draft (white pages, effectively the first “final draft” of what usually becomes a series of drafts before filming wraps) to a much later revision (say... green or goldenrod revisions, several of which we DO have in our collection for comparison) and how those earlier drafts often differ wildly from the aired version versus how similar a much later green draft is to the aired version, for example, can teach you a lot about the television writing process. The link above to the superwiki scripts page has a nice little explainer about how this process works.

Differences between our posted scripts (many of which are white drafts, aka FIRST complete drafts, which will likely go through multiple rounds of revisions before filming even begins) and the aired version of the show are not all “acting choices” or a director or editor just cutting whole scenes on a whim. It’s insulting to everyone involved in production to suggest that’s the case.

(and yeah, fine... whatever, make any sort of posts you like regarding how those changes came about, but at the very least understand that it’s not actually the truth about how any of this works. Don’t care that that’s not the truth and want to make the posts anyway because shitposting is fun and that’s the extent of your sense of humor? FINE! You’re entitled to do that! But at least you DO know the truth now, and hopefully so do the people who engage with your posts. Deliberate ignorance isn’t cute, smooth lions notwithstanding)

There’s probably a whole other post to be made on fandom tagging etiquette, but again I don’t really use the tags enough to know what’s going on with that whole situation. I’ve also probably left a lot of stuff out, so please feel free to add things I’ve overlooked.

Thanks also to @trisscar368 and @thayerkerbasy for help compiling this, too. They were kind enough to escort me through the park to feed these pigeons. Now I need to take them out for ice cream. :’D

So I guess welcome to the neighborhood. Make yourself at home, but like... try not to trash the place while you’re here. Some of us live here by choice, lol.

#this blue hellsite (affectionate)#fandom problems #kinda wish i'd made this post six months ago but here we are i guess lol #long post #now edited for the people who are actually personally invested in the fandom #thanks for participating in this little experiment and I hope this version is actually informative to those who are interested #meaning there's a lot more links to stuff and explainers and whatnot...#and one last reminder that for folks just swinging through for laughs absolutely none of this applies to you #if you are legit interested in fandom history and preservation as we move to the post-canon world then hopefully this is useful to you

381 notes · View notes

canary3d-obsessed · 3 years

Text

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 26, part two

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Content note: This episode has a lot of lightning, but this post does not have lightning flashes--I’m using mostly stills for those parts, or I’ve snipped out the unfriendly frames before giffing.

Qing-Jie

Having successfully ruined Jin Guangshan’s party plan to get the Yin Tiger seal, Wei Wuxian dashes off to tell Wen Qing where her brother is. She hops up to hit the road with him, but then sorta-faints because she’s starving. In a rare moment of tenderness between these two, he catches her and gently sits her down again.

Normally they’re busy out-toughing each other, both before and after this moment, but right now Wen Qing is openly vulnerable. Wei Wuxian responds to that, predictably, with all of his kindness and with his usual slew of unwise, impossible-to-keep promises.

As she eats the bread he’s brought her--a parallel to an important piece of bread in his early life--he says they have to believe in Wen Ning’s survival. Cut to: Wen Ning, not surviving.

I mean, yes, yes, he’s only mostly dead, but he’s never going to be fully alive again, so.

24 Hour Party People

Back at the party, Jin Guangyao, deliberately, I think, goes to offer his pops a drink while his pops is still super furious and looking for someone to take it out on. The servant lady is like, better you than me, pal, and helps JGY get his drink ready. Pops, predictably, knocks the drink onto Jin Guangyao.

(more behind the cut)

Lan Xichen is standing by with a hanky and a face full of worry. Lan Xichen is so Lanny that he thinks JGY needs to go change clothes after getting clear alcohol spilled on him, rather than just letting it evaporate and smelling pleasantly of booze for the rest of the evening like a normal party guest.

JGY launches into a criticism of Wei Wuxian, which Lan Wangji listens to very carefully, frowning. Lan Xichen, Nie Huasang and Jiang Cheng listen as well, and don’t speak up.

A Clear Conscience

Then Lan Wangji *literally* steps out of his brother’s shadow, and speaks in defense of Wei Wuxian. This right here is Lan Wangji’s turning point, as far as I’m concerned. Xichen is gazing at JGY, totally on board with JGY’s spin of the situation, and his shadow falls away from Lan Wangji’s face as LWJ steps forward.

Lan Wangji says, isn’t what WWX said true? JGY puts on his customer service smile and says that the truth isn’t something you’re supposed to go around saying out loud.

I’d like to say this is what’s wrong with cultivator society but this is really a universal human thing; every society has rules about upsetting the social order, and they are very frequently at odds with basic compassion and morality.

Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng stay silent but Lan Xichen goes and throws Wei Wuxian under the bus carriage, saying his character has changed.

Lan Wangji nods decisively at this, and bows to Lan Xichen, silently asking permission to follow Wei Wuxian. Lan Xichen grants permission, telling Lan Wangji to do his best. Lan Xichen probably thinks he and Lan Wangji are in agreement, in this moment, but that nod of Lan Wangji’s was nothing of the kind.

That nod was Lan Wangji agreeing with himself; he is going to try to bring Wei Wuxian back but he is also going to listen to him. Meanwhile Lan Xichen is tying himself in knots to appease Jin Guangyao. The divergence between the brothers will just grow, from this point onwards.

Lan Wangji leaves to go follow his boyfriend conscience, while Jiang Cheng continues to silently listen to the commentary of others, and gets so mad he crushes a wine cup.

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night.

Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian arrive at the prison camp, and the first person they encounter is Granny, with a defaced Wen Banner in her hand and Wen Yuan on her back.

Whenever I read a meta or a fic that talks about how the juniors are so sweet partly because they are “untouched by the war” I want to point to this moment. A-Yuan endures an absolute truckload of war trauma by the time he’s four years old, and while Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji both deserve a lot of credit for saving him at great risk to themselves, Granny and Uncle Four are the first heroes of A-Yuan’s story. His kind, mellow personality has a lot in common with theirs.

This is followed by an eternity of Wen Qing running around asking if anyone’s seen her brother. Eventually Wei Wuxian gets tired of this and gathers the guards together, threatening them with Chenqing.

He doesn’t need to play it; just holding it up has every Jin dude instantly kneeling and scared.

The guards send him and Wen Qing go to a giant field of corpses, where Wen Qing runs around checking to see if any of them is her brother. Wei Wuxian starts off kind of detached and angry, but eventually snaps out of it, tucks away his flute and starts helping her to search.

Wen Qing finds Wen Ning, mostly-dead with a lure flag speared into his belly. Wei Wuxian grimly takes in the situation from across the field of corpses.

When he arrives at Wen Qing’s side he sees this talisman in Wen Ning’s hand.

This is the talisman that Wei Wuxian made for Wen Ning back in Gusu summer school, before the war. It’s the one that Wen Ning was wearing at his waist when they met up after the massacre of Lotus Pier. It’s supposed to literally protect Wen Ning from having his spiritual consciousness snatched, as well as being a symbol of Wei Wuxian’s sense of responsibility for, and affection for, Wen Ning.

Wei Wuxian, understandably, loses his shit at this point. Less understandably, he is about to decide that the best way to express his sorrow and rage is to re-animate the corpse of his friend, right in front of the corpse’s sister. Like, seriously, dude. Dude.

Ghost General

This super-questionable decision leads to one of the most badass sequences in the show, which is unfortunately chock full of lightning flashes, so not everyone can watch it. Wei Wuxian and his flute and swirls of resentful energy come marching out of the darkness of the corpse field, back to the guards.

The guards have decided to slaughter all of the prisoners and then run away, which would be a good plan except they should really have skipped right to the running away part of things. When Wei Wuxian accuses them of killing the prisoner in the corpse field, they claim that the Wens have a habit of falling off of a hill and dying. Wei Wuxian can relate.

At this point Wei Wuxian summons up Wen Ning 2.0, ultra badass edition, who comes flying through the air with his odd, straight-armed fighting stance and cool solid-black eyes and rock-and-roll hair.

Soundtrack: *Four Sticks*

Wen Ning proceeds to whale on the guards and scare the shit out of his relatives.

Then Wen Qing shows up and begs Wei Wuxian to stop. She explains that Wen Ning is only mostly dead. Like, if he was fully dead would she be okay with this?

Wei Wuxian tries to reel Wen Ning in and realizes that he is not actually in control of Wen Ning. Ok, see, right from the first day of Wen Ning 2.0, WWX is aware that his control is iffy. Why does he think he’s going to be able to control him later?

Anyway, this is where we learn Wen Ning’s grown-up name is Wen Qionglin. Wei Wuxian yells this name, and Wen Ning looks up like a cat hearing the “food noise,” and then proceeds to get control of himself.

This is such a nice symbolic moment, that will be replayed later in the temple, when Wen Ning saves Jin Ling from Baxia.

Wen Ning has a remote-code-execution OS vulnerability throughout the story; his soul is at risk of being stolen, and he is magically controlled by Wei Wuxian, Xue Yang, Su She, and Baxia. Meanwhile Wen Qing, Wei Wuxian, and random kids on the street mostly treat him as a child, despite his clear adult capabilities. Wen Ning’s journey in The Untamed is at least partly about asserting his full adulthood, and his ability to overcome magical control is directly connected to that journey.

After getting Wen Ning to chill, Wei Wuxian calls the floating resentful energy back into his own body, which looks about as comfortable as swallowing a burp.

On the plus side, apparently resentful energy keeps your hair dry even when it’s raining.

Wei Wuxian should take a page from the guards’ book and slaughter all the Jin witnesses to this situation, but he decides to be the better person and let them live. They go running off down the road, where they encounter Lan Wangji and give him the 411, saying that Wei Wuxian resurrected dead people.

Meanwhile Wei Wuxian collects Wen Qing--half-fainted, again, in an echo of the start of their journey--and collects the Dafan Mountain Wen group, who are hiding, wisely. When they see Wen Ning, Uncle Four and some others start to freak out, but Wei Wuxian tells them that fierce corpses are cool, and they all grab horses and mount up.

Where Are You Going?

Lan Wangji is waiting for them, nonconfrontationally indulging in some visual poetry while he waits.

In a show where every prop is exquisitely, carefully designed to enhance our understanding character, his Gusu-toned umbrella reveals surprising red and yellow threads woven in, right above his eye line as he looks at Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian speaks first, saying “you came to stop me?” Lan Wangji doesn’t answer, but asks him where he’s going. Then Lan Wangji warns him that he’s about to abandon orthodoxy forever, if he follows through.

Wei Wuxian challenges this idea of orthodoxy, asking if Lan Wangji remembers the promise they made together, back in Gusu. It’s worth noting that they both appear to think of it as a co-promise, even though Lan Wangji didn’t speak aloud at the time.

The conversation will continue in the next episode, because what’s better than a rainy romantic cliffhanger?

Soundtrack: Four Sticks by Led Zeppelin

#the untamed #the untamed gifs #wangxian #wen ning #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #episode 26

196 notes · View notes

vrishchikawrites · 3 years

Text

About YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids Post-WWX Arrival

Dear Dee, feel free to delete or ignore this or post it, whatever floats your boat. This just stuck in my head after those posts and I had to blurt it all to someone. Thanks for taking the time to read my word vomit.

So I had to do this instead of an ask because it got long and I wasn't sure how many asks it'd need or how short I could cut it down without losing parts of the argument. And then other things came up as I was writing and, well. Well..... >_>;;;;

But you know, after that post/ask you had about YZY fics saying 'Fuck U' to YMJ/JFM & leaving both with her kids, I had a sarcastic 'yeah right' attitude about it. Mainly due to a lot of negation emotions to such an abusive (and delusional) bitch, partly due to how she wouldn't do that since it doesn't seem to be something her sort of character would consider either because she'd think of it as 'losing' (losing what, IDK, it's why I consider her type of person crazy) or she legit wouldn't think about such a viable action.

But then later, in the shower, I seriously went 'Wait, she can't fucking do that' and it wouldn't be about how MXTX uses her as a part of the narrative but entirely about the/their culture in the novel; the actions that have and would be taken in response; and her entire toxic personality as well.

1) We already know that the sects and the cultivation world in general is sexist, elitist and so Capital T 'Traditional' to the point that it's starting to petrify and any deviancy from this is an exception rather than the norm. YZY might be a madame of a great sect (for what that's worth considering how shit of a madame she's been and the titles she's chosen for herself) but she's still a woman even with her high rank and the things she's personally accomplished.

Even if she was in her rights to leave a 'bad' marriage, she'd be the one who'd get scolded more instead of JFM by her natal family, her former husband's family and by their entire society at large even if she had a few singular supporters. Because That's Not How Things Are Done in their society and I do believe that such a thing was rare even when it was accepted method by the upper echelons. Especially since it would have to be done by more than YZY simply deciding that She Wants Out and just- goes and Gets Out. With no serious allegations that would allow her to divorce or separate from YMJ/JFM without the input from her family, JFM's family and, I think, possibly some measure of compensation as well. And no, having or bringing in a 'bastard child' is not a serious enough offence for such a humongous decision. I think something more along the lines of treason or crimes against multiple, high-ranking parties would be more along the lines. Maybe.

And even if she does this, she'd be considered 'Used Goods' (such a terrible comment) and there'd be no other good/proper marriage prospects for a divorced woman with children let alone a woman like YZY with her entire abrasive personality and attitude put off even easy-going JFM.

(If she'd been widowed then it'd be more forgiven but I consider that a Real Bad End since, IMO, it would lead to the sudden and inevitable decline of YMJ either via mass exodus of disciples and/or residents of LP; being merged with another sect due to it's unstable leadership; or create an internal political war 'cause I bet you anything that the YMJ Elders/relatives (if they have any) Would Not Want YZY in charge of YMJ when she's already proven herself such a shit betrothed let alone madame.)

2) Speaking of families, while YMJ/JFM/LP as a whole might be glad to see YZY's back, I don't think her natal sect, MSY, will be glad to see her come storming back after all the effort they put into getting that particular marriage alliance with YMJ. And if she brings her children with her? Oh man, oh boy- mother or not, that could be considered as kidnapping or line theft (is that a thing?) especially if YZY is also seriously considering divorce proceedings and raising them as Yu and not Jiang. That could give leave to, for anyone more unforgiving and maybe JFM if he's pushed enough, disown both JYL and JWY from the Jiangs through no fault of their own (though I'm sure YZY would make it so as well as blame JFM for her own decisions and mistakes).

Therefore, any inheritance or benefits they might gain for being legitimised children of a great sect are forfeited. JYL will likely lose that betrothal with JZX because JGS will drop it like a hot potato and JWY won't be a sect heir because YZY literally decided to remove that by deciding to raise JWY as a Yu, no matter their blood relation to JFM. They leave him, they leave YMJ and everything attached with it. Which is if YMJ/JFM doesn't demand MSY to give back their heir/ess and to punish YZY for her actions. Or send all three of them back for the appropriate reactions/decisions.

Their society would demand no less in reaction because, to them, it would seem like YZY had gone mad and JFM would look weak (or weaker) and imply that YMJ is vulnerable and exploitable if JFM doesn't do something in response to her actions. That's not even getting into what the other smaller sects may try to do in an attempt to curry favour with YMJ or what LLJ or QSW would try in order to destroy or diminish YMJ. And whether JFM chooses to demand his children back or not, it may not change the fact that this may give him reason enough to choose a nephew or niece to be the new sect heir especially if, even after getting rid of YZY's poisonous influence, JWY grows up to be his mother's child more than his father's or even his own person.

Either way, such a thing would bring great backlash on YZY, and MSY as well as the collateral. No one would want to give face to her or her children because it would bring up some very uncomfortable questions and scenarios to the other sects- specifically, what would happen if the female members of their clans/sets decided to follow the footsteps of YZY and leave with their children and heirs. Especially if they use it as an excuse to leave for their own comfort and whims and not some legitimate wrongs and dangers. That would create some more restrictions on women thanks to YZY

3) And lastly, if any one of those idiot YZY stans think that she'd ever give up the status of being a madame of a great sect they'd be as crazy or crazier than her. YZY is all about status and power and face. Specifically, her status, power and face and how people in her reach reflect her or 'insult' her. She is a selfish, terrible, abusive and toxic person and can only see people in regards to how they would benefit her and the elevation of her and in no other way. Especially her family. They cannot be their own person, they can only be an extension of her and gods forbid they go against her.

We can see this in how she treats the people she supposedly loves. JFM? Arguments day in, day out along with accusations and slander of cheating, having one(1) supposed 'bastard' and being 'in love' with CSSR. Which all seems sus as hell. And that's when she's actually there and not out 'night hunting'. Even her 'training' seems to border on unhelpful rather then helpful if my vague recollections of juniors fainting from exhaustion can be relied upon (please call me out if they're not or find proof).

JYL? Berated by not being 'strong' but not helped at all to be 'strong'. It doesn't help that YZY seems to believe in the same standards strength in their society- that is, of martial masculine strength which does not and should not apply to JYL who has been said to be sickly. Which means h should have been learning a different way of cultivation/fighting anyway. If that was something she wanted and had been offered in the first place- which I doubt. That isn't even getting into her repeated generational trauma mess of a betrothal which was decided only by those 'sworn sisters', accepted by her as a way out of her terrible home life and puts her squarely within reach of JGS who we know to be a womaniser, rapist, predator and a possible ephebophile considering we don't know the exact age of his youngest 'conquest' or the age of MZY's mother when they met which could be anywhere from 14 to 21.

JWY? Gods, so much meta on him and his(non-) relationships with his parents that I don't think I can contribute more to it. It's been all said and done. Unless people want me to stir the pot by saying that, maybe, just maybe, YZY resents JWY as much as she 'loves' him.Either because he's her son and yet never manages to 'accomplish as much' as WWX or because he's a boy and therefore, more benefits and allowances than a girl/woman- more than anything that YZY ever got without either a fight or screaming at someone about. *shrug*

So, in conclusion to this sudden an unexpected essay that I wrote(I'm so sorry about that, I thought it would be shorter -.-;;;;), YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids? Impossible. Not without some sort of personality transplant or a complete AU. She's too prideful, too bitter, too angry, too everything negative and little positive. She's a resentful product of the values and restraints of her society taken to the extreme negative with a willingness to inflict her pain on others to an abusive degree. But she's also too obsessed and reliant on those same values and restraints to keep up the image of her status. So her? Giving those up? You'd be more likely to see WRH as a doting grandfather than that.

---

Dee - All of this is true and yes YZY leaving YMJ is highly unlikely. While there will be consequences if she decides to leave, she does canonically lives separately from her husband. They seem to be in a situation where they are married but living separately, which was a common way to end a marriage (at least in spirit) back then. She essentially had all the perks of being Madam Jiang but fulfilled none of the responsibilities.

Afaik, her training the Jiang disciples is a donghua thing? I may be wrong but I recall she spent most of her time nighthunting.

As for taking her children along with her- that's completely impossible. At that point, children were the property of the father. She could leave but she would've never been allowed to take JC.

#submission

36 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 4 years

Note

The photo set you reblogged of Yusuf and Niccolo helping throughout time just filled me with so many happy feels and it made me realize that it seems so common in media with immortal couples that they take breaks from each other and reconnect after a few decades. Which is a great trope but seeing these two that seems to have been attached at the hip since the day they met just fills me with all the heart eyes.

(I haven't read your fanfics for them yet. I know I'm a bad fan but if it helps I havent been able to read anything since all this started but while writing this ask I got the feeling that all this rambling I spewed out is a big theme)

Hush. Bad fan nothing. We all are coping with this stupid, awful year in different ways, some of us by escaping into fandom and some of us being unable to engage with it and some of us doing both or anything else. You certainly don’t owe me or anyone any obligation to interact with our content, fic or otherwise. So just to have that there on the top. You’re good, hun. :)

ANYWAY, thank you for giving me a chance to meta a bit on the boys and their relationship and to have a window into what my brain looks like pretty much 24/7 these days. (I blame them.) I keep thinking about all the ways this couple is depicted in the TOG film and how lovely it was and how unusual it is for me to have an OTP where I actually love them in canon and don’t need to violently disavow it in order to create AU fan content with just the characters. (See: Timeless, Game of Thrones, pretty much any show I’ve hyperfixated on at some point.) I love AUs anyway, because that’s the way my brain works, but the fact that I can also enjoy canon just as much is rare for me and for a lot of us. I saw a post somewhere remarking on how the fanfic for Joe/Nicky isn’t fixing anything, which is usually the point of transformative fanworks: we take something that canon atrociously fucked up and fix it. But in this case, all our interpretations are based on actually appreciating the way they’re presented in canon and wanting to enjoy that and uphold it, and that -- especially with a couple like this one -- is shocking??

Like. Despite my historian gripes about the occasionally incongruous details for their graphic-novel backstories (which are the only things I HAVE fixed in my fics), I’m just... deeply appreciative of the care which everyone, writers and actors and all else, put into depicting Joe and Nicky and their relationship. And god YES, one of the things I love the absolute MOST is that they’re a loving, faithful, committed, happy married queer couple over centuries, and that seems to be the case for as long as they’ve known each other/ever since they got together. (See Booker’s “you and Nicky always had each other.”) These fools can’t sleep apart from each other even when they’re stuck on a freight train in the middle of nowhere, they flirt like teenagers at dinnertime and even when they’re strapped to gurneys in a mad-scientist laboratory, they make out to enrage bad guys and also because they’re just still that goddamn into each other after all this time.

I think it was Marwan Kenzari who pointed out that there’s simply no way to truly state the depth of their knowledge and devotion and commitment to each other. They’re 950 years old. They have known each other since they were in their thirties; they’ve been husbands for literal centuries. There is no way anyone else in the world could possibly come close to replicating the kind of bond they have with each other, and neither of them have ever had any inclination to look, because why would they? Especially with the fact that queer couples in media, even otherwise sympathetically portrayed ones, often have Drama and Third Parties and Promiscuity and whatever else (because of the tiresome old canard that Gays Equal Hypersexualized!), and Joe and Nicky don’t need or want ANY of that. There’s no urge to make their relationship a cheap source of soap-opera conflict. It’s the rock and the center and the core of both of their lives, and everything they do stems from that.

There have been some great metas/comments on how neither Joe and Nicky are sexualized, they dress like stay-at-home dads during quarantine (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli are both objectively gorgeous men, and they’re out there looking like that, god bless), and the viewer is never invited to goggle at or fetishize their relationship. There are no leering or exploitative camera angles on anyone, and their expressions of love aren’t posed or intended to titillate the audience, they’re just solidly embodied and natural and lived in. It’s never bothered to be stated clunkily in dialogue that they’re a couple; we just see them exchanging looks and smiles in the early part of the film, and then we see them spooning on the train after the mission in Sudan, which confirms it.

At every turn, the narrative celebrates the kindness and love shared by the Immortal Family, the individual characters, and Joe and Nicky, especially and explicitly in queer form. The villains of the film are also defined by how they react negatively to that love. @viridianpanther had a great meta on how Keane as a villain is especially set up to menace Joe and Nicky as the narrative representation of toxic masculinity, aggressive heterosexuality, and the usual “Kill Your Gays” trope that we’ve all come to wearily expect. But instead, after that scene where Joe and Nicky fight Keane, Nicky is shot and comes back to life in Joe’s arms rather than dying permanently like we probably all momentarily expected, and then Joe gets to FUCKIN’ BREAK THE NECK of the guy who enacted that violence.... good GOD. The first time I watched it, I almost couldn’t believe it was happening. (This goes for the whole film, but especially that scene.) Like... when do we get that?? When do we EVER get that???

Obviously, there are so many stereotypes, whether visually or in behavior or character traits, that could have been assigned to a gay Italian character (excessively dramatic, effeminate, fashionable, etc) or a gay Arabic/Muslim character (explicitly announcing He’s Not Like Those Muslims, having to actively reject his heritage to make him more palatable to westerners, being tormented over being gay, etc) and Joe and Nicky subscribe to none of those. I get very emotional about Joe referring to Nicky as the moon when he is lost during the truck scene partly because it’s SUCH a common motif in Arabic love poetry. To call someone your “moon” is a beautiful way to say they’re the light of your life, and since the Islamic calendar is obviously lunar and the holidays, months, and observances, are set by the phases of the moon, this also has a deeper religious significance.

I don’t know for sure if they did that on purpose, but it it’s a lovely and subtle way of showing us how Joe clearly doesn’t have an issue with being both queer AND Muslim, and is able to draw on both facets of that identity in a way that a lesser narrative would have denied him. And that is just really wonderful. Yes, we’re seeing these characters when they’ve had centuries to settle into themselves, but there are plenty of writers who would have forced those conflicts artificially to the surface, rather than letting them be long in the past. It’s the same way when you watch a film set in the medieval era, it wants you to know that it Is Set In The Medieval Era. Cue the filth, misogyny, racism, violence, etc! Rather than it being a lived-in reality, it has to be jarringly drawn attention to, and I’m just so glad they didn’t do that with Joe and Nicky. And for them to have met in the crusades and fallen in love??! Come on. That’s just rude. Rude to me, personally.

Anyway, this was a rather long-winded and feelsy way of saying that these characters are constructed, acted, and written organically in such a way that you hate to even THINK of them being separated, and it’s not because they can’t function without each other, but because they are two halves of a whole. We also see that the characters themselves can’t stand being forced apart: Joe’s freakout in the truck scene when Nicky briefly won’t wake up, Nicky making sure to tell Joe that he’s glad he’s awake in the lab, the whole post-Keane fight scene that I talked about above, the way Nicky fights ferociously to get to Joe when Merrick’s stabbing him, etc. For that to be given to the queer couple, where the strength of their love and devotion is reinforced as one of the emotional goals of the story, and for that queer couple to be written in the way that Joe and Nicky are, both individually and as a unit, is just so very rare.

Because yes, there’s plenty of drama and angst and pain in their lives, but there’s none at all in their relationship, and that’s what fans keep telling TV writers the whole time: they WANT to see the couple confront things as a unit, rather than being kept on tenterhooks the whole time and forced to go through manufactured or artificial drama. It would feel especially wrong for Joe and Nicky, who have known and loved each other for 900 years. The fact that their respective actors also put so much care and love into them is very obvious, and makes me feel even luckier that they’re played by people who clearly get them and honor them and know what they’re doing.

Basically: of course Joe and Nicky have been with each other the whole time, and of course we’re all drowning in feelings over it, and I feel very blessed that this ship exists, and I very much need the sequel ASAP. Thanks.

#the old guard meta #joe x nicky #immortal husbands #long post #roseoswiins #ask

178 notes · View notes

star-ocean-peahen · 3 years

Text

p2 of old ML meta I wrote that I don’t necessarily agree 100% with any more. I know I’m really late to the party on these, but I thought I’d release them into the wild anyway.

Awright, here we go. (under a cut because holy shit this is long)

I think Chloe is a complex character whose failed redemption arc was actually in character, whether the writers intended it or not. I acknowledge that she's done some really awful things, bullied people, been hurtful and mean because she wants to, and has no illusions about hurting people. But she actually has a reason for doing this that goes beyond just enjoying bullying. Again, this does not excuse her actions, and a redemption arc would require her to accept that she has done bad things and apologize for them, which is not something she does in the show.

As we can see in the show, Chloe's mother does not care for her. At all. Even to the extent that she doesn't even remember Chloe's name. I don't know about you, but if my mom constantly chose not to remember my name, I would be devastated. She constantly tells Chloe ("The only thing exceptional about you is your mother") that she is worthless and has no skill, talent, or anything special about her at all. Chloe responds by mimicking the things she sees her mother does approve of, e.g. bullying, spitefulness, selfishness, etc. It's made painfully obvious that all of Chloe's iconic, unique snobbishness actually belongs to her mother, whom she is imitating in a desperate attempt to get her mother's approval. All Audrey cares about is herself, and Chloe knows that and tries to make herself a copy of her mother so her mother will want her. Audrey only accepts and begins to value her when Marinette tells Audrey straight up how mean and awful Chloe is, and Audrey reevaluates her daughter. She sees how much of herself Chloe has become, and decides that she wants a mini-her hanging around. I don't know why she does this, but it's clear that she only began valuing Chloe once she saw the appropriate traits in her. This means that Chloe has based her entire self-worth around her mother's opinion of her. It's actually compared to Adrien's opinion of her in Despair Bear, when he tells her that if she isn't nice, he won't be her friend anymore. She changes for a few hours because SHE ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT HIM AND HIS FRIENDSHIP MEANS A LOT TO HER, but reverts to her old ways because her mother's opinion matters to her more. This is probably how she acted for her whole childhood, but changed when Hawk Moth attacks. Why? Because of Ladybug. Chloe idolizes Ladybug, who gradually (unknowingly) gets more and more of an influence of her during the show. (Ladybug asking Chloe to stop causing akumatizations vs. Chloe giving up her miraculous) to the point where Ladybug is now a bigger idol than her mom. Example: Style Queen, where Chloe FAKES working with her mother-WHO APPROVES OF HER FOR THE FIRST TIME-to HELP LADYBUG. Ladybug is THAT important to her that she will give up the person she's been idolizing for her ENTIRE LIFE for her. (Side note: Chloe is not a wimp. She faked helping Style Queen-FOR ADRIEN-convincingly. Persuaded her to change her plans without getting punished. If that's not superhero material, then I don't know what is) So now Ladybug is the most important person in Chloe's life. What does this mean? Well, Queen Bee happened. When Chloe found her miraculous, she thought that she could be a superhero like Ladybug. Remember, Chloe imitates the people she idolizes. So she saw her miraculous as a way to get closer to the person she idolized-closer in character and closer relationship-wise. Chloe values Ladybug partly because she is a superhero, so she thinks, "if I can be a superhero too, then I will have value in the same way as Ladybug!", hence her stunt with the train. But this backfires on her when she only gets reprimanded and BOTH of her idols tear her self-esteem apart-Audrey purposefully, Ladybug unknowingly. She's been rejected by the two people whose opinions matter most to her. (Note: Chloe has a tendency to forget about Adrien, but if your heart wasn't destroyed enough, he technically rejected her too as Chat Noir.) She has no one to look up to now, so she clings to her miraculous-which is a symbol of worth-and guess what? Gets akumatized. Hawk Moth says that she'll be his queen. He'll value her when her world has come crashing down around her shoulders. Can you blame her for becoming Queen Wasp? She was akumatized after she displayed one of her first moments of vulnerability in the show, even showing it physically (nearly crying). That episode ends, and she begs for a second chance. Audrey again dismisses her as worthless (Note: both times she did this, she did it on LIVE TELEVISION.) Ladybug and Chat Noir tell her that she can be a hero (equated with value in her head) and gives it back. This is especially interesting. Bee Miraculous = Hero. But Ladybug says No Bee Miraculous = Hero. She amends her previous belief (GROWTH!) and trusts Ladybug, giving the Bee back. In Malediktator, Chloe has her mother on her side and thinks all is well. She continues to imitate her mother to keep her favor, taking it to the extreme with Audrey's encouragement and demanding the school shut down with an ultimatum: Do it or we leave. They leave. Marinette shows her humanity by celebrating Chloe's departure (which is FINE, she shouldn't be required to reconcile with everyone who's ever hurt her) and Adrien says this (BECAUSE HE CARES ABOUT CHLOE AND KNOWS WHAT A TOXIC ENVIRONMENT SHE'LL BE LIVING IN because he lives in a similar one): "Nobody's useless. Not even Chloe." We'll come back to the uselessness issue later. Chloe sneaks away from her akuma'd parents (again, quick and rational thinking in the face of danger, superheroine!!! Actually, it was probably learned from all the akumas she's been attacked by) and: "You're a hero! You....can....do....this!" When Ladybug grabs the Bee, she realizes that she needs someone tough who defies authority, and gives Chloe a second chance. (It wasn't just because she knew the powers, people!) Even Fu has misgivings, but Ladybug looks past her personal grievances and chooses Chloe. Meanwhile, Chloe is SUCCESSFULLY ESCAPING AND HIDING FROM AN AKUMA (must be all that practice, say what you want, but being attacked by so many akumas was some rigorous crisis training) and runs into Ladybug. When she meets LB, she isn't expecting to get her miraculous, unlike later. She knows Ladybug probably won't give it to her, and SHE'S FINE WITH THAT. SHE RESPECTS LADYBUG'S DECISION. ACCEPTS THAT SHE CAN'T BE A SUPERHERO, BECAUSE WHEN SHE GAVE UP THE BEE MIRACULOUS, SHE BECAME A HERO. Then, she opens up to Ladybug. She tells her what everyone else thinks she doesn't know, that she's a bully. And she's not targeting Marinette on purpose, Marinette just happens to be the most convenient target. She grows and understands that her documentary was ridiculous. She tells Ladybug how she knows that her bullying ways have just pushed her farther from her goal of being valued. She thinks that because she has no friends (girl, you have Adrien) she has no use, and notice she says "useless". Not "worthless", or "a horrible person". Useless. Because those things equal each other in Chloe's mind. Use = Value. She tells Ladybug how useless she feels because compared to Ladybug who is, notice, not "useful", but "serves a purpose". Chloe's purpose has been to satisfy her mom, but now she knows how empty that is and feels purposeless, useless, and worthless. Then Ladybug gives her the Bee Miraculous. Now, I don't think LB understands how much the Bee means to her. (Pollen calls Chloe her queen. Just thought I'd throw that in there) I'd be surprised if she did, because if she knew that the Bee was so intricately tied to Chloe's self-worth, then it was a cruel move she pulled keeping the Bee away from Chloe without any follow-up involvement, even with a good reason. Away from the tangent, Chloe gets the miraculous, transforms, and works one-on-one with Ladybug. And kills it. Like, Chloe makes an amazing superhero. She even says she's been practicing, which is played for comic relief, but shows just how much she idolizes Ladybug. She says, "I've always dreamed of doing this-with you!". She's achieved her dream. Ladybug thinks she's useful, and this is really important. She is now useful as Queen Bee. This is her use. This. Is. Her. Purpose. She's not empty anymore, she's full. She's doing good for people, being a superhero, Ladybug values her as a teammate, and friend. Ladybug (barring Adrien possibly) is now thought of as a close friend from Chloe, who looked past her personal annoyances and cares for Chloe regardless, a new experience for her. Let me reiterate: Queen Bee has become her purpose in life. (which is why she fails, incidentally, because she can't balance it with a civilian life, but more on that later.) After she and Ladybug defeat Malediktator (GIRL POWER!) she says this, which reveals how much more she's grown since the beginning of the episode: "Being a superhero isn't only about fixing messes." She became Queen Bee in this episode to fix her mess. Now she realizes that superheroing is not only a way to make up for the wrong she has done, it's also a way to make things better than they were. Being Queen Bee makes Chloe better. Marinette even says so, revealing why SHE is a better guardian than Fu, because she can see the potential in people. Chloe tries to be Queen Bee without her superhero costume immediately afterward, helping Jean with bags because she knows this is part of becoming a better person and a better superhero. Marinette then throws her a party to show her how useful and wanted she is, understanding how much Chloe needs that from their conversation. sniff....beautiful. This is Chloe's peak. The best she's ever been. She's reveling in her new-found identity of a superhero, doing good and resolving confict in her civilian life. In multiple episodes (Startrain, Heroes' Day) she is an everyday superhero by not getting akumatized (controlling her emotions and not letting fear take her over), and keeping others calm. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Chloe is incredible at crisis response. She doesn't panic, while the adults who have already experienced akuma attacks freak out. She takes charge when she sees akumas (Startrain) and does her best to fix the situation. She stopped an akumatization in that episode. (Seriously, if she hadn't done that, someone would have been akumatized.) She prioritized her response: First, eliminate the immediate threat. She did that when she evacuated the compartment. Second, eliminate the future threat. Find Ladybug and Chat Noir. (They need a hotline. Like, really badly.) It doesn't bother her that she doesn't have the Bee Miraculous, because she can be a hero in her normal life too. However, everyday heroics is still second to Miraculous heroics, and she expects Ladybug to still give her her Miraculous, because she still considers herself Queen Bee. She trusts Ladybug so much that she FRIGGIN' SUCCESSFULLY FIGHTS OFF AN AKUMA, THE ONLY PERSON TO HAVE DONE THAT TO DATE (yes, not even Marinette did, she took off her her earrings because she expected to be overtaken), deflecting her negative worry about the current lack of miraculous with her deep trust in Ladybug. When Miraculeur happened, she got the Bee because it was a last resort. It appears that LB and CN use Queen Bee only when there is no other option, revealing two things. One, they apparently didn't bother to tell Chloe that (or she didn't listen, although I'm inclined to believe that this new Chloe would have) and that they pick her despite having other, safer holders with miraculous experience, revealing that they know how well Chloe and the Bee fit together. She got the Bee (after defying Hawk Moth and Mayura without powers, this girl is INSANELY AWESOME) and went after Mayura, failing to capture her miraculous. She apologizes to Ladybug without making excuses for something that wasn't even her fault, showing how much Ladybug's approval matters to her. LB responds by telling her that there can be no more Queen Bee, not even as a reserve, because Hawk Moth knows her identity. Chloe accepts that without a fuss, showing how much she's grown so far. But if she's grown so much, you ask, why did she rip that picture of Ladybug? Well, this ties in to the position of use. Chloe was useful to Ladybug as Queen Bee and (so she thought) as a friend. But LB took the miraculous away. Chloe is probably getting the sneaky suspicion that Ladybug only wanted her because she was useful, which Chloe has now realized was not all she wanted out of her relationship with Ladybug. Chloe valued being useful to LB, but she also valued LB's friendship. Chloe continues in her superhero activities, but muted. So how did this go wrong? How did we go from this awesome superhero Chloe to Miracle Queen? The answer is in Battle Of The Miraculous. Marinette's narration reveals that Chloe lost hope, showing her turning off her Bee signal. I think Chloe still unconsiously thought she could still be Queen Bee. Ladybug went back on her withholding before, she could again, right? But then she finally gets it through her head that she's not going to be Queen Bee again, and abandons that hope in despair. Is that it? Is that why she turns to the dark side? Well, her fall was caused by a lot of things. One was the aforementioned despair. Another that contributed to her fragile emotional state is the fight between her parents. It feels awful to have your parents fight, and while Chloe is probably not a stranger to it, it's always painful. Then her parents get akumatized. That was what made her fall in Heroes' Day. She says to Heart Hunter: "I don't love anyone." Heart Hunter responds that Chloe loves herself (which, wow, you guys are the worst parents ever. You really don't pay attention.) Ladybug takes the dragon and goes to Kagami for help. She goes to Kagami, who also had her identity revealed, and gives her a miraculous, saying it's because of Kagami's "exceptional talent". Ryoko defeats Heart Hunter. Queen Bee does not. Dragon-Chloe does not. And Chloe feels this. First, Chloe wanted to save her parents herself, which is a completely normal thing to want. She loves her parents (despite their failings) and wants to help them. If if was me, I'd want the same thing. Second, she sees Ryoko active, whom she knows (somehow) was decomissioned for the same reason as her. This is where theseed of doubt planted in Miraculeur blooms. To Chloe, this confirms that Ladybug was only using her for her availablility and wasn't actually her friend. She thinks Ladybug was pretending that she was significant and still resented Chloe for getting in her way so many times. She thought her idol was her best friend, but now it seems like her idol was lying to her the whole time. With Ladybug's perceived rejection and broken promise, Chloe now feels useless and purposeless again. And Hawk Moth shows up at just the right time to sway her to his side with his impressive emotional manipulation by making essentially the same argument he made in Queen Wasp: Ladybug rejected you, but I still want you. You are useful and valued with me. Chloe, thinking Ladybug cares nothing for her, ("She couldn't care less about me!") accepts his offer and becomes Miracle Queen. (But not without asking for her parents' release first, because that is so important to her.) Miracle Queen's dialogue and actions line up with this. She exposes everyone's identities (so they can't be chosen over her again) and says to LB: "How many times have I asked to fight alongside you? [how many times have I asked to belong?] And how many times have you refused to give me my miraculous? [how many times have you denied me your friendship?]" She tries to take all the Miraculous and use their power to lash out at Ladybug, declaring that she'll be the most powerful miraculous wearer there ever was. This foolish action is a result of Chloe's fragile emotional state that has been controlled and manipulated by Hawk Moth to work as his pawn, and her raw pain and anger at Ladybug. She then takes only the Bee after Master Fu whiz-bang-pops the Miracle Box and says that she's going to New York to be a superhero, grasping at straws to regain her worth by clinging to the Bee, the miraculous that started it all. After Ladybug takes it, Chloe declares that she doesn't love Ladybug anymore, which could be taken as "I'm no longer your fan" but seems more like she did once love Ladybug as a friend, making her previous statement in Heart Hunter a lie. She finds her parents and demands to leave with her mother, who has reconciled with her father and refuses Chloe her demand, likely the first time they've done that (because they're too wrapped up in each other to even ask her why she's so upset). To sum it up, at the end of the current season, Chloe has hit rock bottom.

Okay, after this analysis of Chloe, let's take a look at the person mostly responsible for her fall: Hawk Moth. More than anywhere else in the show Hawk Moth is shown to be a master manipulator in Chloe's arc. He planned to weaken Chloe's trust in Ladybug, and succeeded. A lot of her actions in Miracle Queen can be attributed to Hawk Moth playing her like a queen on the chessboard, which is exactly what he compares her to and an excellent metaphor. He wasn't reactively trying to get the Bee in Miraculeur, he was proactively using it as a way to manipulate Chloe into losing trust in Ladybug through the Bee Miraculous. He understood Chloe's identity crisis (he was RIGHT THERE in Style Queen) and used it to his advantage. She surprised him with throwing off his akuma, but that just meant her love for Ladybug was more powerful than he thought. He akumatized Heart Hunter on purpose to affect her (an interesting change from the let's-throw-everything-and-see-what-works Hawk Moth of the earlier seasons) and carefully orchestrated the whole thing to sway Chloe to his side. He caused and took advantage of a child's distress coming from a bad home life and parental issues, giving us yet another example of how little he cares about what he has to do as long as he gets what he wants. (He beats his son in Chat Blanc. Fully knowing it's Adrien. Physically beats him up.) A lot of Chloe's mistakes can be put on Hawk Moth for manipulating her (seriously, this guy is a fucking asshole).

Yet another extra onto the end of this: Adrien. Both Chloe and Adrien are very iffy about their friendship, both saying that the other is their only friend and that they had/have no friends. And yet Adrien is probably the person who understands Chloe's conflict the most. Parent who thinks you're worthless unless you're doing what they approve of? He understands. He's probably seen how her mom treats her and understands why Chloe acts the way she does (gives a whole new perspective to all that standing up for her he was doing, hUh), but until his mother disappeared and his father went silent he wasn't able to personally understand just how painful it was for her and how hard it was to fill those expectations. And when that calamity happened he was grieving with no support system (I have no doubt Chloe tried to help in her own way, she does care about him even if she doesn't know how to express it) and was certainly not in a place to help her. Then he found new friends at school and increasingly chose them over her, adding more to her "everyone always chooses someone else over me" complex. To be clear, I'm not blaming Adrien for Chloe's problems. Her issues are her fault, her mother's fault, her father's fault and (later) Hawk Moth's fault. Adrien did the best he could as a child with no social skills. But if he ever catches up and realizes how much Chloe needs him, he would definitely feature in a prime spot in her redemption arc.

So a lot of this was my high hopes for Chloe and the show’s consistency, both of which have been disappointed. I was also caught up in a lot of Chloe love while writing this, which is why I didn’t focus on how nasty she is and has been or how she needed to make amends for it, because she very much does need to. This is just my analysis of her ‘arc’ in season 3. also sorry for the big block of text.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug meta #chloe bourgeois #chloe sugar #technically?#just tagging that so people can block it if they want to #long post

12 notes · View notes

ghost-in-the-stalls · 3 years

Text

more lengthy aftg meta up ahead

So andreil. Marriage. Complex concept imo

I know this is a bit of a polarizing topic. I gotta say this is one area I agree with Nora on in that I dont see Andrew and Neil being the marrying type. They wouldn't have any desire or urge to get married imo other than potentially for tax or hospital visitation purposes. I just can't see it being something either of them care to bother with unless given a reason.

Personally I like to interpret the whole "there is no this" stuff as eventually evolving from Andrew's desperate denial that he cares for Neil into just being a sort of security blanket? Like I prefer to think he stops saying it or denying it. But I like to believe the general approach to their relationship of not needing to overtly express what they are to each other is more than just a privacy thing or a vulnerability thing. I think for both of them, expression and admition can be a bit restrictive.

Neils been running for a long time, and he doesnt feel the urge to. But the knowledge that he still has the ABILITY to is, I believe, a crucial piece of his coping and recovery. He doesnt feel the need to run partly because he doesnt feel like he's being restrained or threatened with restraint.

And Andrew is letting Neil cross a lot of lines hes never allowed anyone else to cross willingly, sure. But we know he's okay with it specifically because he trusts Neil to back off if given a "no". Its the same concept. No matter how much he trusts Neil, the option to leave is what keeps him feeling safe staying.

Does that mean either of them WANT to leave or will ever consider it? No. Does that mean marriage is something absolutely permanent that you can never back out of? No. But its another restriction. Another layer of complexity. And an unnecessary one at that. At least thats how they'd see it I think.

Marriage is pushed very heavily as something that is just. The Norm. But it doesnt need to be and it absolutely won't be for everyone? These are two deeply traumatized individuals who, even after years of healing, will still be traumatized people. They dont need it and tbh I dont see them particularly wanting it. Unless, like I said, they're comfortable enough after enough years and they decide its better for tax or hospital reasons. So I dont turn my nose up at it completely, but I'm picky.

HAVING SAID THAT I have absolutely thought about it many times and here's how I think it would go:

It would be something they've discussed occasionally. Not really as a possibility. More just a moment after someone they know gets married where they check in with one another to make sure its not something the other is secretly craving. But I think that conversation leads to an understanding that if it WERE to happen, it would just be a quick courthouse situation with minimal witnesses. Neither of them would ever want an actual wedding. Absolutely not. They'd both hate that with a huge passion.

But then maybe one of them gets a pretty serious injury and the other isn't allowed to see them in the hospital right away. Or maybe the Moriyamas decide to up Neils payment and it makes them nervous.

For some reason, they decide it becomes more preferable than remaining unmarried.

It doesnt change anything between them. They don't want it to. But they make a call or two to whatever foxes are closest/can get there the fastest to make sure they can show up at the courthouse with the witnesses they need. They dont hide it from anyone, but they dont outright tell anyone either unless it becomes relevant. So it would travel through the foxes grapevine and theyd probably end up throwing them a small reception party in their apartment at some point, but thats it.

So imagine Wymack and Abby getting a 2am call from Andrew asking them to fly up because Neil got sent to the hospital after a nasty game injury.

"Why is he okay?? Is he gonna make it?"

"Yeah I just need you guys at the courthouse when he gets out to witness me and the dumbass get married so I dont have to sit in the waiting room for 10 hours next time."

Or Aaron and Katelyn getting the call from Neil right after one of them gets off of a long shift.

"Hey we bought you guys some plane tickets out here so you can be our witnesses."

"Witnesses to what?"

"We're getting married"

"Fucking??? Why?"

"Tax reasons"

"Youre both professional fucking athletes"

"We decided its time to save up"

"YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING PENTHOUSE"

"Anyway your plane leaves in 5 hours pack your bags"

My point is that Andreil have been public nuisances for years now and that would absolutely carry into this situation.

#andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #aftg #tfc #andreil getting married #is one of those things that i cant see actually happing ic #but that i love to think about because of the comedic potential #and also sentimentality #because if they WERE to go through with it #theyd both probably still get a little bit of feelings from it anyway #just enough for one another to recognize #thats all #have a nice day #aftg meta

54 notes · View notes

greenandhazy · 4 years

Text

ppl in the Trobed discord asked if I had more future headcanons for Rickie and Leon (Troy and Abed’s kids from my Nadir-Barnes Canon verse) when they grow up and I was THRILLED because idk if I’m going to write more in that verse (writing too far into the future makes me wary for some reason? like how can I just pretend I have ANY concept of what the 2030s will be like) but YES I HAVE THOUGHTS:

Rickie grows up to be a confident, outgoing person, the life of the party and everyone’s de facto big brother, although he does struggle a bit more with those early traumas and is more self-conscious about identity issues, so that confidence is the result of intermittent therapy and mindfulness

Such as, for example, morning prayer with Abed, which leads to him expressing more of an interest in Islam--sometime in late elementary/early middle school he transfers to a mainstream school that’s close enough for him to walk to a nearby after school program, and eventually formally converts. (Leon doesn’t feel the need for that and Abed doesn’t feel the need to push.) so yeah, another trilingual in the family heyyyyy.

Neither of the kids are fluent in Polish, although they hear it occasionally from Abed around the home.

He likes to dance as a hobby, although not so much modern--he likes jazz and hip-hop, things that are more high-energy. He and Troy have a LOT of spontaneous dance parties around the house. But starting in middle school, spoken word poetry and rap become his real big things and he eventually goes on to have a music career--think early Childish Gambino, Chance the Rapper vibes. (Leon achieves minor TikTok stardom for his ASL covers at one point.) He likes to run them by Troy first, and Troy and Abed are the ultimate hype men.

Abed is always really careful to seek out opportunities to connect with both kids, and they’re both written into Voyage of the Starship Legacy in some way... but it’s Leon’s. He thinks of it like a personal bedtime story that happens to have been made into a feature film, and it’s his comfort rewatch. In general he’s more of a fan of Abed’s stuff because he likes the meta aspects, and while Rickie enjoys them too, that’s not really his style as much, you know?

(I mentioned in one of the fics, Rickie is Abed’s ego-shrinker. If people find out Rickie and Leon are Abed’s kids they’ll be like “omg that’s so cool!” and Leon will be like “haha yeah” awkwardly and Rickie will say “cool? lol right, it’s the nerdiest thing about me.”)

Subsequently, Leon is always really excited when Troy suggests they go sailing. Rickie is enthusiastic in theory but usually gets bored once they’re out on the open sea, so this becomes Troy and Leon’s Thing, especially as he gets older and is less easily entertained by funny voices and faces. He just finds the open ocean very soothing and, yknow, parallels between sailing and space exploration or whatever. He really loves hearing Troy’s stories about his trip.

He’s more of a shy person, especially around people his own age--definitely not an entertainer the way the rest of the family is, and has a bit of a dryer sense of humor. One of his hobbies growing up is drawing, and there’s a running joke in the extended (found) family that someday Abed is going to produce an animated film illustrated by Leon modeled on Troy’s dance troupe with a soundtrack by Rickie. Cut to Leon’s sophomore year of college, when he announces that....... his major is astrophysics and he has a summer internship at NASA

(you can’t prove I was rewatching The Martian when I came up with this) (I just love the idea of Abed’s kids being just as phenomenally successful but one in in a Very different way, also I think the study group’s reaction would be very funny for some reason) (come on guys, he’s been very into space for a long time, this shouldn’t be a surprise, right?

Sometime around middle school, Leon starts not only not putting his hearing aids in, but leaving them at home when he goes out. Troy and Abed always prefer he have them as a backup, and a very common dad joke in their household is “You’d lose your ears if they weren’t attached to your head--oh, wait.” Eventually he admits that yeah, he’s “forgetting” them on purpose, partly because he’s getting tired of Questions and Looks, partly as an act of defiance because he dislikes the expectation that he wants to hear all the time, partly because it makes him feel Some Kind of Way that he doesn’t actually need them--that between his family, his school, his community, and even the cashier at the bodega across the street who taught himself a few signs, he really can get plenty of social interaction and communication just using ASL and he likes that feeling. (Troy is especially touched by that, given that he does not have Abed’s gift for languages and learning ASL took more effort for him.)

They both really enjoy traveling. The family makes semi-regular trips to Arizona and wherever Annie ends up with the FBI, but spend the most time in Colorado--especially in the summers. Gobi is still grumpy but spoils the kids rotten, and they like being the cool older cousins of Jeff and Britta’s kid. the Bennett boys are a little older but Rick and Leon are always trying to convince them to get into Shenanigans, and when they do, they reach a whole new level of shenanigans. Shirley is Tired.

They come back from Colorado with more complimentary Greendale merch than you could ever imagine. the Dean knows they’re not going to go there but..... he can try. Rickie gets his first taste of alcohol from Britta. Leon goes to Annie for girl advice when he gets his first crush because he figures his dads are way too gay to be helpful. Jeff takes them out to play paintball all the time (in like... actual, legit paintball--fields? idek what they’re called) and regales them with tales of Greendale paintball, which they had been 100% sure their dads were exaggerating until Jeff stepped in. They think Chang is putting on a hilarious act for like their entire childhoods and are solely responsible for portions of Chang’s “I Never Die” song becoming a meme among LA schoolchildren.

oh and I don’t have, like, faceclaims for them or anything but I picture Rickie wearing lots of bright colors and being ultimately like an inch or two shorter than his little brother, which offends him deeply, and Leon tends to wear his hair a little longer, like..... Power Rangers-era Eka Darville.

ANYWAY those are the things that have been milling around in my head the last couple of weeks. I have very strong feelings about this children I made up <3 <3 <3

#trobed

53 notes · View notes

silvysartfulness · 4 years

Note

Writer meta asks: 3, 19, 20

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

I already answered this one in another post - there’s no special such scene; if I want to write just a standalone scene I’ll do it as a one-shot and imply context and set-up in-writing. But there are scenes I look forward to writing; for the Roadtrip, a lot will go down and shift perspectives all around in the arc I mentally call the Mountains of Mist arc. That’s definitely a bit I have high hopes for!

... Technically the scene I’m supposed to be writing right now has also long been one of the “oh yeah, I’m really looking forward to this one!” bits, except now that I’m actually about to write it, I’m finding myself a bit frozen. Hopefully I’ll be able to push through this block and make it as good as I previously envisioned it...

Oh, no wait! To be honest - there are a few scenes I haven’t managed to find a good place for in the Roadtrip timeline yet, but have been very entertained by in headcanons, and that’s a fair number of WWX and XY interaction scenes!

I don’t know if I’ll manage to work things out enough in the story to make any of that fit, but I have a vivid image of WWX and XY literally bumping into each other at the market street of a random town while departing a liquor stall and candy stall respectively. XY is delighted by the chance meeting and toothily compliments WWX’s reflexes in catching the falling bottles, WWX is mostly “wtf how are you still not dead??” about things. If I can get the timeline to allow for it, it’s a scene I’d still love to write, but we’ll see.

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

Ahaha. I suspect if you do a word count in my writing, you’ll see the word “pain” repeated at somewhat alarming frequency?

I like to describe body language, especially what people are doing with their hands. And eyes, I pay a lot of attention to eyes.

As for tropes, just stamp me with the “redemption arc” stamp and move on. I love, more than anything, characters who have to face their mistakes and go through a painstaking journey of sorting messes out, setting things right. Sometimes willfully, out of a genuine desire to make things better. Sometimes reluctantly or even trying not to, only sullenly agreeing in the end for one well-founded reason or another.

I love to write messy characters, greyscales, heart wrenching situations where both sides are equally wrong and right. Am also absolute sucker for “hard, cold-hearted character, absolutely coming apart at gestures of care and kindness”. That gets me every single time.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Uh-oh. You've done it now. I'll place the rest under a cut, because I can and will talk about this at length.

I already wrote in a previous post about the layers of meaning in my chapter titles, so I'll leave that aside for now.

I love using symbolism and allegories in my writing. There are some obvious ones at first glance – I often refer to Xiao Xingchen as the moon himself, especially from Xue Yang’s point of view (the moon has been one of the few proxies for Xiao Xingchen he’s had for a long time) His inner light, something with beauty and integrity but also phases of both light and dark and the ability to shift inbetweeen, unreadable. The same way I will often use ice and frost to describe Song Lan - ”he realized with frostbite clarity” is a sentence I remember that I liked writing for him.

Xue Yang isn't as clear cut; his themes shifts depending on the pov character – Song Lan thinks of him as serpent-like, and there's a wolf-theme coming up as well. But my main subtle motif for Xue Yang in this story is the tiger. Drawn partly from the obvious angle of him being able to create a Yin Tiger Amulet of his own, as well as wearing clothing with a leopard-spot like pattern in Yi City, and finally Wei Wuxian's comment of ”releasing the tiger back to the mountain” when learning Xue Yang escaped punishment for the Chang massacre. In Chinese animal symbolism, the tiger is the king of beasts, something very powerful and clever, but also unreliable, prone to lash out.

In one of the first chapters, Xue Yang is described as being ”bound with enough ropes and knots to subdue a tiger” and there are many references to the Yin Tiger Amulet throughout. I drew him and Song Lan as shishi statues in the illustration for chapter 7, feline guardians of the dead that can be interpreted as lions but also tigers. So that's a semi-secret theme. :)

Another layer of symbolism is the Daoist philosophy sprinkled throughout. Sometimes directly, through outright quotes, but often more subtly in how Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan relate to the world and other people.

”Take action by letting things take their course, he reminded himself. The more he hurried, the longer it would take to get where he was going. He could be patient. Would be.”

”He smiled again, grateful for the understanding, for the simplicity, patience, compassion.”

“An empty patch on the ground,” he signed. “We'll make the future a spot where nothing is yet growing.” “An empty spot, where the Universe may plant a seed,” he finished. Song Lan nodded, made the softest hum of agreement.

“Now, now - haven't you heard, Song-daozhang?” he giggled, unsteadily, hauled along in unceremonious jerks. “Treat those who are kind with kindness, but also treat those who are not kind with kindness, only thus is kindness obtaine-... ow.” ← Xue Yang is not above throwing their teachings in their faces for his own benefit, either.

Another thing I enjoy writing is how Xiao Xingchen will very easily fall into familiarity with both Song Lan and Xue Yang when he interacts with them, but they're two very different kinds of familiarity, and he's often not at all aware himself that he's doing it. (They are. Especially the party not currently being interacted with, glaring daggers at the other.) He often just... assumes they'll do a certain thing, and they'll automatically find themselves doing it.

They are both utterly dedicated to him, though they may not realize it themselves, and he certainly doesn't. He doesn't want to take anything for granted with Song Lan, and he doesn't dare trust Xue Yang, but in the little moments of thoughtlessness, they'll just accidentally fall into old familiar roles of attachment, and then blink awake, surprised and disturbed at the ease of it. ♥

I also find it delightful how Xue Yang absolutely despises Song Lan, but is still ready and willing to rope him into herding Xiao Xingchen when necessary - and Song Lan will grudgingly follow his lead, to a point. They may not like it, but they do have a goal in common in keeping their person safe.

There is a certain point to the fact that Xue Yang mostly only mentally refers to a-Qing as ”the girl” in his mind. Nothing quite as strong as actual remorse, but it's a slightly chafing subject he does avoid thinking about. She wasn't supposed to die - hurt, yes, be punished for her perceived part in the destruction of their happy home, but not die - and now that Xiao Xingchen is back, it is odd, at times, that she isn't there as well.

Finally - have some teasers for future written chapters! The apples of the merchant in Tanzhou will make a reappearance, as will the beggar girl by the gate. Xue Yang will write Song Lan a heartfelt poem in an upcoming chapter. Song Lan is made to promise to write a couple of old ladies letters. Xiao Xingchen performs emotional manipulation so badly it offers the other two an unexpected moment of bonding. Xue Yang slips and does an unprompted Good Deed and instantly regrets it. (it does help when Xiao Xingchen smiles at him.)

There are more themes of foreshadowing in there, but I also don't want to spoil things, so I'l leave it at this for now.

As always, if anyone has any specific questions about the Roadtrip, please feel free to ask! I may evade if it's spoilery, but 99.9% of the time, I'll happily flail for hours about this story – and it helps keeping me inspired and writing, too! ♥♥♥

#asksilvy #the happy songxuexiao roadtrip story #untamed artfulness #nagisachan1

12 notes · View notes

stillthewordgirl · 5 years

Text

CaptainCanary fic: With Eyes Wide Open (ch. 1 of ?)

In a world where Rip Hunter never formed the Legends, Leonard Snart is trying to mend his ways and work with Team Flash, though sometimes it's easier than others. Meanwhile, Sara Lance is gradually dealing with the blood lust left behind by the Pit and trying to get used to being a hero again herself. When they encounter each other one day in Central City, it seems like a match that just might be meant to be.

But nothing with these two is ever easy.

This is going to be an accidental pregnancy fic, one in which both contributors to said pregnancy decide to continue their relationship and do their best with it. If you don't like such things, be warned.

I don't usually write this trope, but an idea grabbed me. Hope you enjoy. And happy birthday to Tavyn and crazygirlne! (And many thanks to Pir8grl!)

Can also be read here at AO3 or here at FF.net.

Leonard Snart doesn’t really want to be here.

Sure, he’d been kinda working with the Flash and the other heroes for a few years now. He’d done that of his own free will, even, driven by the need for something new, for a challenge, for yet another way to prove that he wasn’t (and would never be) his father. And while the CCPD (and some of the more general populace) still weren’t sure what to make of the change in Captain Cold, he was generally accepted as being more or less on the side of the angels these days.

(Of course, he kept his hand in. Wouldn’t do to let the old skills slide. But as long as Team Flash and the CCPD don't know, no harm done. Right?)

Still, even though he’d been one of those who’d helped quash this newest threat to the city—a tech-talented meta who’d gone the giant-robots-for-world-domination route—this celebration at STAR Labs is a little...squeaky clean for him. Boring, even. Heroes from a couple of different cities earnestly rehashing the fight, comparing notes and costumes and tech, exclaiming as they run across old friends. (They all seem to know each other. It’s a little creepy.)

Someone had acquired beer and pizza—they’d probably even paid for it, given this lot—and Ramon’s put on some music. Nothing to Len’s taste, of course, just modern crap with an awful lot of bass and no intelligible words. It’s become a real party, with a few people dancing (if you can call it that) and a great deal of laughter.

Ugh.

Leonard himself is slouching in a chair off to the side of the cortex, watching them all from hooded eyes, abandoned beer at his side. He kind of wishes that Mick was here, just to have someone to help him mock the whole thing—but he and Mick are on the outs again, over the fact that Leonard’s still hanging on to this “weird hero gig” (in Mick’s words) and hasn’t given up and gone back to a life of crime.

It’s not going to happen—at least, Leonard’s pretty sure it’s not. But Mick won’t accept that. (It’d hurt, if Leonard allowed himself to actually think about it. He doesn’t. Much.)

He’s not sure why he hasn’t left this stupid party. Maybe because Lisa’s still here, teasing Ramon out on the “dance floor,” and he wants to keep an eye on that. Maybe because it’s entertaining, at least, to be the one to puncture Allen’s high spirits over a fight that’d gone so well.

Maybe because he’s a little bored lately, looking for a new challenge and occupation, and at least this keeps him from backsliding. Maybe he’s...actually a little lonely.

Maybe it’s partly her.

He’s never seen her here before, the blonde in white who seems as alone as he is, just on the other side of the room. She’s just a little on the short side, lean muscle and long, golden hair and fierce blue eyes, and she’s fought like he’d never seen before. No powers short of being an utter badass, as far as he can tell, but that just makes her more interesting.

She’d been assigned with both him and that Atom nitwit to the city’s South Side, and he hadn’t caught her name. Some sort of a bird-themed hero moniker? He doesn’t recall, mostly because the incredible shrinking schmuck hadn’t shut up enough to let either of them get a word in edgewise. But once they’d been on site and the fighting started, she hadn’t needed words.

Her actions did plenty of talking.

Leonard gives his head a shake, chasing away the recollection of poetry and mayhem in motion, and stood, stretching and glancing across the room again. She also looks like she’d almost rather be anywhere else, and he’s not too sure why she hasn’t left yet.

Maybe the same reason he hasn’t.

Which is to say, maybe neither of them is really sure.

He should probably leave. Insult Allen one last time, scare Ramon, say goodbye to Lisa, and get outta Dodge.

But he doesn’t. In fact…

“I don’t recommend that stuff. Don’t know who bought it, but I’d suggest waterboarding them with the crap.”

The blonde looks up from her perusal of the beer as Leonard strolls toward her. She lifts an eyebrow, but he also sees her lips twitch just a little, and she puts the unopened bottle back down in its nest of ice.

“Suspected as much,” she says smoothly, folding her arms and considering him. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Least I could do.” Leonard parks his hip against the desk beside her, pauses, then inclines his head. “Didn’t catch your name earlier. Our ‘teammate’ was talking too much.”

“He’s prone to that.” Her lips twitch again, but she nods, considering him. “Sara Lance. White Canary.” She glances away, across the room, toward said “teammate.” “From Star City, like Ray. When Barry called for help, there was a lot going on. I...my sister asked me to come.”

Sister...he’s heard of Laurel Lance, even met her once. He hadn’t realized there was another Canary. “And was it all you’d dreamed?”

That gets a low laugh, one that sounds sincere. (He feels vaguely victorious.) Sara glances around, then shrugs, looking back at him. “Well, it was nice to get to hit things for a while. I’m not really sure I fit in with this gang though. They’re just so...so...”

“Shiny? Annoying? Heroic?”

“Hmmm. All of the above?” Sara studies him. “I know you’re Captain Cold,” she admits finally, “but I didn’t catch your name either.”

Leonard bites back a surge of dismay that she hasn’t heard of him. He’d thought his heel-face turn had made enough news, both publicly and in the circles these people moved in, that he was quite recognizable, in more ways than one. Still…

“Leonard. Leonard Snart,” he says smoothly. “Nice to meet you, Sara.”

That gets an actual smile. “I have heard of you,” she admits, “but I wanted to be sure.” A pause. “I’ve been…out of town, out of touch, a lot, of the past few years.”

It’s mentioned in a way that’s curiously both apologetic and oddly confrontational, and Leonard cocks his head at her, wondering. “OK,” he drawls. “Well. I’m me.” He holds his hands out to either side and smirks at her. “Central City’s most wanted.”

Sara gives him a wry look at the innuendo in his tone. “I thought you reformed.”

Her tone is teasing. Leonard lets his smile grow. “Well,” he returns, folding his arms. “I did. Sort of.” He pauses. “As far as any of the heroes know, anyway.”

“Well, you’re telling me.” Her tone is dry.

“Are you a hero? You said you didn’t think you quite fit in this lot.”

He regrets the flippant words nearly immediately, though, because a shadow crosses Sara’s face—although she seems to try to force it away nearly immediately. She shrugs, glancing away and toward the others, then back at him.

“Maybe not,” she says quietly. “But I’m trying.”

Sympathy is unexpected. But there it is, and Leonard finds that he doesn’t want to fight it.

“Yeah,” he admits, even more quietly. “Me too.”

And then, after another moment of quiet in which the two of them regard each other, he abruptly, uncharacteristically, takes a chance. “Wanna get out of here?”

Sara lifts her eyebrows at him. “And…what?”

It’d been so much a whim that he’s not sure, but he’ll be damned if he lets on. “Some decent bars around here. Bars that aren’t so…stuffy. Cheap beer that’s better than this shit. High chance of punching.”

He’s right. Her eyes brighten. “Yes. Please.”

Sara lurks in the corners, watching as this Leonard Snart bids a laughing young woman…well, a woman about her own age…farewell, glaring at Cisco Ramon in the process, then fades away into the crowd. She shakes her head, amused, then heads for one of the exits herself.

She can’t help smiling about it, though. This Snart—god, that name—has managed to intrigue her more than she’d ever expected. He’s hot, that helps…those eyes, that lean, muscular build--but Sara hasn’t really thought much about that sort of thing since the Pit. It’s a surprise that the knowledge keeps nagging at her, stirring her awareness and attention.

And to be honest, the sheer degree of understanding in his expression was even more of a draw. He just seemed to get how she was feeling, an assassin—former assassin--there in the midst of all those heroes. Given his own origins, Sara can understand that, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t appreciate the understanding all the more.

Briefly, she wonders if Snart knows who she is, beyond her name and maybe her connection to Laurel. Likely not. Since she’d arrived in Central City, it’s become apparent that although Barry and co. know the basics of what had happened to her with the Pit, the Laurel and the others in Star City had stayed quite close-mouthed about any details.

And Snart, while seemingly accepted and welcomed into the group here, seems to linger on the outside enough that he probably doesn’t know even that.

Sara pauses outside the building, listening carefully, then turns at the faintest of sounds, watching as Leonard strolls out of the twilight toward her. He moves quietly—though more, she thinks, by habit than any desire to surprise her—and she sees the appreciation in his eyes as he realizes just how quickly she’d marked him.

By all her instincts, it’s mingled with other appreciation too—she hadn’t missed him watching her across the room earlier or the smooth and thorough once-over as he’d introduced himself. But her instincts are telling her something else, too, and given how long it’s been since she’s felt this growing ripple of attraction for someone, it’s something she wants to be clear on.

“So,” she asks him innocently as Leonard starts sauntering away from the building and she falls into step besides him. “How’s the gay scene in Central? I haven’t been out here much.”

Those blue eyes flicker her way, and Sara sees a smile touch his mouth. But he doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t seem surprised.

“Not bad. I’m told,” he says in that sexy drawl. “It’s not really my style. I tend to keep to myself.” He pauses. “Excellent gaydar, though. I’m pan, if you’re looking for a label.”

Ah ha. Sara nods, accepting both the tacit confirmation that he could very well be attracted to her and the suggestion that he’s not usually one to just...hook up randomly. She finds she’s rather pleased at both.

“And you?” The tone is curious and cordial. They’re both testing the waters here.

“Ah.” She glances his way. “Bi.”

That doesn’t make his gaze so much as flicker. Instead, he just nods, and they walk on.

Was that question the gentle bit of fishing for information that he thinks it was, instead of an actual query about the scene? He’s pretty sure it was.

Or was she just suggesting she’d rather go somewhere like that, the queer bars down on Morse Street? But then why would she just drop it instead of asking? Although he had said it wasn’t really his style...

There are reasons he doesn’t really do the dating thing, Leonard thinks grumpily. He’s not used to second-guessing himself like this. He’s not used to caring enough to second-guess himself.

Why does he?

But Sara’s speaking again, as they walk, and he listens.

“So,” she says, "I get the impression you wanted out of there as much as I did. Why’d you even hang around? After the fighting was over, of course. You live in Central; presumably you have a place to go.”

“Mmmm.” He turns left at an intersection, crosses the street with Sara pacing him, still considering his words. “Good question. My sister was there...”

“Golden Glider.”

“Mmhmm. And that meant I was...obliged...to put the fear of me into Ramon.” He smirks at her as she rolls her eyes. “What?”

“The ‘protect the baby sister’ act? Really?” She flashes a grin at him. “Would you do it if it was a girl she was flirting with?”

“Would. And have.” He points at her. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Sara chuckles. Leonard finds he really likes the sound. Enough that he wants to get her to do it again.

What the hell is happening to him?

But there’s no more time for confessions at the moment, though, because they’ve arrived at the very dive bar he’d had in mind. It’s not Saints & Sinners—people know him there, and he finds he doesn’t really want to be known right now—and frankly he’s not even sure it has a formal name. But there’s neon in the dark windows, a whiff of cigarette smoke about the place although Central has banned smoking in restaurants for years, and a scarred, heavy door with a handle polished smooth by years of hands. So many of the harbingers of a “good” local dive.

Sara hums in appreciation, looking at it. She reaches out and pulls open that heavy door, and they move inside.

The bar looks, Leonard thinks, rather like a throwback to the ‘70s. There’s a jukebox in the corner, faded posters on the walls, and more of the scarred, heavy wood like that of the door…the tables, the bar, the support beams. There’s even a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. And, of course, there are the incurious eyes of a dozen or more biker-ish types, all denim and bandanas for the men and short-shorts and crop tops for the women.

And here’s Sara in her white leather and him in his black, sauntering in like ying and yang, and oh hell, this is going to be trouble.

He finds he welcomes it.

Beers are acquired—not so much better than that crap at STAR Labs, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore—and Sara takes a sip of hers, giving Leonard a thorough once-over of her own as someone messes with the jukebox behind them, starting up a song that seems vaguely familiar.

“You want to dance, Leonard?” she asks then, gaze challenging.

Don’t mess around…

“You go right ahead,” he tells her. “I’ll watch.”

There’s a gleam in her eyes, and she hands him her beer. “Suit yourself.”

And she walks out, into an empty space that could barely be called a dance floor, and starts to move.

Hell.

Ain’t gonna set you free now…

Leonard keeps the smirk on his lips and his eyes on her steadily, doing his best not to let on to the intensity of his reaction. It’s inexplicable, really. He barely knows her, and he tends to need to know someone before being truly attracted.

But both body and mind and…he won’t admit to heart being a part of this…are. They’re attracted. Very much so.

Then the inevitable happens. The burly man who accosts Sara clearly isn’t politely offering a drink—and her response, glancing toward the dark-haired woman he’d left at the bar, is just as clear. And—just as inevitably—he grabs her.

Crack.

The man yells. Several of his buddies converge on them. And Sara glances over her shoulder at Leonard.

“I got this,” she assures him.

Of course she does.

When those girls start hanging around

Talking me down…

Watching her fight is even better than watching her dance. Leonard tries not to be obvious about swallowing, working some moisture into his dry throat.

He almost glances over his shoulder involuntarily, to give Mick that “are you seeing this?” look. But Mick isn’t there; Mick doesn’t understand why he’s doing what he’s doing these days, doesn’t want to understand why Leonard wants to change, and that hurts—it always hurts—but maybe it hurts a tiny bit less, because—he suddenly thinks, with the shock of realization--Sara does.

She gets it.

Hear with your heart and you won't hear a sound…

She’s amazing, but either the first idiot had a lot of friends or there are simply a lot of people up for a barfight tonight. No sooner has Sara swept the floors with the first lot than more are converging.

She glances at Leonard again. “Now I could stand for a little help.”

He doesn’t need to be asked twice.

'Cause I really love you

Stop, I'll be thinking of you

Look in my heart and let

Love keep us together…

“Dad?”

Joe West looks around as he shrugs his coat on, smiling at his daughter. However, that smile quickly runs away as he digests the concern on Iris’ face. “What’s wrong?” “Oh....” Iris shrugs, but the concern is still there. “Nothing, probably. Have you seen Sara?”

“Sara Lance?” Joe glances around involuntarily, but the blond woman, of course, isn’t in sight. The celebration has started breaking up a little, but most of the assorted hero types in Central City to help Team Flash with…what had Cisco named that guy? He forgets…are still there.

“Not in a while.” He studies her. “You worried about something?”

“She was really quiet. And you know, she’d been gone for so long…” Iris bites her lip, then shakes her head. “I’m sure it’s fine. She probably just went for a walk.”

“Who’s she staying with?” One of the drawbacks to getting so much help was then trying to find couches for everyone to crash on.

“Caitlin. Who also hasn’t seen her in a while. And Sara doesn’t have a key to her place.”

“Hmm.” Joe sighs. “I’ll keep an eye out. But she probably just needed some air…or decided she wanted to go get some rest.” He winks at his daughter. “I don’t think the lack of a key would stop Sara.”

Iris smiles reluctantly. “True.” She hugs him. “ ’Night, Dad. Say hi to Cecile.”

“Of course I will.”

His daughter turns away, moving back to where Barry, Ray Palmer, Professor Stein and Jax are good-naturedly debating something, and Joe sighs, giving the rest of the room one last scan. And then another, because his mention of breaking-and-entering has called another “hero” to mind.

He’s still not completely convinced that Leonard Snart has changed his spots, though the man was certainly helpful enough today—and has been for a while now, honestly. Barry’s tendency to see the best in everyone is source both of amusement and occasional consternation, but maybe (Joe admits) he had it right this time.

Maybe.

The former criminal had probably ghosted out the door earlier with some of the better booze Joe knows perfectly well that Wells has tucked away. That’s not Joe’s hill to die on.

He’s no sooner out of the door from STAR Labs, though, when his phone—his work phone—rings. With a sign, he answers, getting into his car and leaning back against the seat.

“What now,” he says, closing his eyes. “After everything…”

Then he listens.

“Yeah, I’m near there. I’ll stop. But…OK, OK. Just a few minutes.”

It’s a dive bar not so far from STAR Labs, really. Joe’s not sure it even has a name that hasn’t been lost to time. He sees the flashing lights—a few patrol cars, an ambulance—and finds a parking spot, then leaves his car and walks toward the scene, wondering again why the lieutenant had called him.

He finds out soon enough.

“Hi, Joe!” Sara Lance says, sounding much too chipper, a smile on her face as she leans against the brick wall of the abandoned house next to the bar. She’s still in her White Canary outfit, which is presumably how the lieutenant had identified her. Joe stops in his tracks and stares at her, then allows his gaze to drift slowly sideways to the smirking visage of Leonard Snart, who inclines his head slowly toward the detective.

Joe takes a deep breath. Thanks his lucky stars that at least the lieutenant had called him rather than simply arresting two people hailed as heroes earlier in the day in the city. And then fixes his gaze on Sara and decides to ignore Snart for the time being.

“What,” he says carefully, “did you do?”

Sara’s chin goes up. “Just wanted a drink. And someone wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Joe takes his hat off and runs a hand over his face. “You sent…eight? Nine?...people to the hospital with mild to moderate injuries. And there are more who wouldn’t go.”

“Yes?” Sara’s tone is a mix of obdurate and innocent and oddly pleased with herself. It’s a strange combo. “It was all self-defense.”

“Of course it was.” Joe shakes his head, then looks at Snart. “And you,” he says with a sigh. “You get your record clean and this is what you do with it?

Snart’s smirk grows. “Didn’t do anything,” he drawls. “Just helped the lady here take out some trash.”

There’s an interesting note in his voice. Is he...

Joe glances back and forth between the two briefly. Oh, hell. If this isn’t trouble in the making, he’s not sure what is.

But he’ll be damned if he’s going to give Leonard-friggin-Snart a lecture on hooking up with a cop’s daughter—or Sara Lance a lecture about doing the same with a “reformed” crook.

Joe draws in a long breath again, then lets it out and jerks his thumb away from the scene. “Get outta here.”

The pair look at each other, then back at him, faces unreadable.

“Seriously. I’m not explaining this to your father,” he says to Sara. “And I’m not explaining to the press why you got locked up for…self-defense…just hours after helping save the city.” He glances at Snart. “And, oddly enough, the bar owner doesn’t want to press any charges.”

“Imagine that,” Snart drawls, inspecting his nails.

“Right. Imagine. Now, get outta here. And Sara, text Iris. She’s worried about you.”

Sara: Hi. Im fine! Don’t worry.

Sara: Joe told me to tell u.

Iris: OMG you just vanished! Where RU?

Sara: Out. Having fun. Don’t wait up

Iris: Alone?

Sara: Nope. 😊

Iris: Sara Lance…

Iris: Did U hook up????

Iris: With someone from here????

Sara turns the sound off on her phone and tucks it away again, grinning to herself. She turns to Leonard, who’s been watching her without comment, and lifts an inquiring eyebrow, a clear “What’s next?”

His lips twitch. They’d moved off into the shadows after Joe had turned away, but neither of them had, quite clearly, wanted to go back to STAR Labs. Sara had obliged the detective’s request, but now she’s watching Leonard with another gleam in her eye and a challenge in her expression.

Leonard doesn’t, quite frankly, want another bar brawl, no matter how much fun it would be. (He’d slipped the bar owner enough cash to keep his mouth shut, but he doesn’t particularly want to do that again either.)

But there’s something both a little wild and a little longing about the woman with him; Leonard doesn’t know quite what it is, but he’s not going to let her down now. So he leans a little closer and says, “Wanna see the Central City Museum?”

It’s not what Sara expects. She considers him momentarily until a smile suddenly lights up her face, the gleam in her eyes brightening. “After hours, I take it?”

“In a…manner of speaking.”

“Isn’t that across the city?”

She’s right. It’d be quite a hike, and Leonard had left his motorcycle back at STAR Labs. Still, he smirks at her. “Wasn’t that guy whose nose you broke wearing a Nickel City Swords hat? The one who went to the hospital to get a possible concussion checked out?” That hadn’t, as a matter of fact, been his or Sara’s fault. The guy’s buddy had intended to break a chair over Leonard’s head and…missed.

“Yeeesss?”

He takes a step toward the street. “What would the odds be?”

Sara looks…and grins at the sight of a Nickel City Swords bumper sticker on the small red car there. “And he’s not going to be looking for it right away, if I know the emergency rooms this time of night.”

“Indeed.” Leonard stretches his fingers. “I can…”

“No need.” Sara’s already moving toward the car. “I got this, too.”

Leonard’s impressed. Obviously impressed, although he doesn’t say a word and lets Sara go to work on the car without more than a raised eyebrow and look of appreciation. And she likes that, she finds, likes his assumption of competence without even question. Instead, he stands guard, watching her back, and only takes the driver’s seat when she asks him to, after the engine roars (well, sputters) to life a few minutes later.

It’s…alluring.

She’d had no more than a sip of weak beer, Sara thinks, looking out the window of the “borrowed” car as the city slips back around them, but she feels a bit drunk. Giddy. Part of it’s because the bloodlust hadn’t taken over in the barfight, and she thoroughly pleased and relieved by this. Part of that is because she’s with a handsome man who seems quite impressed by her skill set and doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about her past.

Of course…he doesn’t really know about all of it.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

Lovely timing. Sara turns her head at Leonard’s low murmur, studying his profile. And then she takes a leap.

“League of Assassins,” she tells him baldly, counting on the likelihood that a former career criminal will know of what she speaks. “Kind of a long story how I got there, but I was with them for years. Not anymore, though.”

The league doesn’t—generally—let its people go, and he’s likely to know that, too.

There’s a moment of considering silence. Sara, watching, sees Leonard lift his eyebrows. He doesn’t seem concerned, though, and there’s no moment of disbelief or revulsion—both of which she’s seen far too often in people who are supposed to be on her side.

A drawled “impressive” is the only comment.

Sara smiles.

Oh, Leonard’s impressed all right. Impressed, and curious, and more than a little turned on.

OK, well, he’d been that already, but he’s always found competence sexy, and danger nearly as much. Sara is very distinctly both competent and dangerous, and combined with her obvious intelligence and other attributes, it’s all one very gorgeous package.

Down, boy.

No wonder she seems to get him, the crook who’s trying to find his place amidst heroes, if she’s an assassin who’s trying to do that same. And he hadn’t missed the look on her face when he had simply accepted her words without judgment or distaste.

He gets it.

He parks about a block away, and they leave the car, Leonard leading the way toward the museum—not the front entrance, of course, but one of the little-used side entrances for employees. He hadn’t really been prepared to do a little breaking-and-entering tonight, but…

Oh, who is he kidding? He’s always prepared.

They find a place nearby to watch unseen, and Leonard waits until he sees a security guard appear in the small pool of light by the door. The woman pauses, glancing around, then radios in to report the all-clear to the main security office. Leonard knows how it works. He makes…made it his business to know how it all works.

Then she continues on her route, going around the corner, and Leonard moves, Sara right on his heels. He pauses behind a pillar as the overhead camera sweeps by, then moves again as it turns slowly in the other direction, pulling out his lockpicks.

He has a minute. He only needs…let’s see, 42 seconds. And then they’re in, the door closed securely behind them.

Sara lets out a breathless, near-silent laugh—but she gives him an inquiring look before saying anything. Leonard nods, and she laughs a little louder, shaking her head.

“That was amazing,” she tells him, glee in her voice. “We’re OK in here?”

“Yep. They don’t have cameras on most of the areas inside. And indoor security guards only during the day. Gotta love budget cuts.” He glances at her, then decides it doesn’t make sense to ignore what she’d told him not long ago. “Picking the lock, you mean? I’d think maybe that’d have been something you learned in your…previous line of work.”

Sara’s lips curve in an expression that’s not quite a smile.

“Not really,” she demurs, looking around the entryway. “We generally went…other routes.” Her eyes are serious again as she looks at him. “I like your way better.”

Ah. But Leonard leaves the implication alone. Instead, he just holds an arm out with a slight flourish, inviting her into the museum at large. “Now. What would you like to see?”

Iris is studying her phone as she walks down the corridor in STAR Labs. She really would have rather been home by now—it’s been a long day—but the puzzle of Sara’s whereabouts is still nagging at her, especially since she thinks she has all those who’d been at the lab earlier accounted for. She glances up briefly as she emerges into the Cortex, registering that Barry is standing there waiting for her, but glances back down nearly immediately, sending one more annoyed text before putting the device away.

“I don’t get it,” she sighs, looking up at her husband. “She’s still ignor…”

The look on Barry’s face makes her stop. “What? Is everything OK? Barry…”

He holds out a hand hastily, though, reassuring her although that dubious expression is still there. “It’s OK. I think. Just…” Barry lets out a long breath. “Um. Well. Snart’s motorcycle is still parked outside. And no one’s seem him in hours. He was here, with everyone else. And then…he wasn’t.”

Iris stares at him, absorbing that. “You think that…”

“Erm.” He shrugs, giving her that kind of sheepish grin she usually likes so much. “Well…I suppose if you think about it…I could see them hitting it off…”

Iris frowns at him, just digesting this. “I always…I guess I thought Snart, well, liked guys.”

Barry blinks at her. “No? I…why would you think that?”

His voice is honestly perplexed. Iris stares at him a moment longer, then closes her eyes. After a long minute, she opens them again. Her beloved, sweet, clueless husband—whom Snart flirts with madly whenever possible—is still looking baffled.

“Never mind,” she sighs. “Well…I guess Sara didn’t say she was hooking up. I just got that impression.” She thinks a moment. “Although, Sara likes girls too, so maybe he’s similar. Makes sense.” A reluctant smile crosses her face. “He’s pretty flirty with almost everyone, actually. And he is kinda hot.”

Now Barry looks vaguely appalled. “Snart? Really?”

Dear, sweet baby. “Really.” Iris pauses. “You text him. Ask if Sara’s with him. I just want to be sure she’s OK.”

Barry shakes his head again, but he pulls out his phone.

Barry: Is Sara w/U???????

Barry: C’mon, Iris is worried

Barry: Snart…

Leonard: Yes.

Barry: good

Barry: U guys ok?

Barry: Snart?

Leonard: Fine.

Barry: good

Barry: what u doing?

Barry: If u don’t mind saying.

Barry: Iris thinks your hooking up. hahaha

Barry: Snart?

Leonard shakes his head, turning his phone off entirely and putting it back in his pocket before glancing at Sara.

The blond woman is standing just a few feet away, studying a painting intently. Leonard’s no kind of fan of modern art, but the colors of this piece are appealing, and Sara certainly seems to be intrigued. After just a minute, though, she turns, grinning at him, and he smiles back.

“I think we’ve seen most of the largest exhibits now,” Leonard says quietly. “Except for the jewelry exhibit.” His smile grows a little. “They did put a camera in there.”

“And why do I think you had something to do with that?”

“No idea.”

Sara laughs at the innocence in his tone. “Yeah? Like sparkly things, do you?”

“I like beautiful things.”

They hold glances for long enough that it feels distinctly warm when they both look away. Leonard clears his throat. “Is there anything else you’d like to see?”

Sara’s lips twitch, but she doesn’t take the (mostly unintended) bait. “We can head out.”

Getting out of the museum is much like getting in, except that no lock-picking is necessary. The two stroll away as if they’ve never thought of such a thing, and Sara keeps a straight face until a block away, when she busts out in giggles.

“Ahhh,” she says, spinning in place. “That was fun. Thank you.”

“Always nice to show off the skills,” Leonard acknowledges. He glances around. “Hm. Want to get a drink now? Without a barfight.”

Sara nods, but gives him a curious look. “Where? I’m presuming we’re leaving the car where it is.”

“I know a place nearby.” It’s on the way back to his apartment, too, but he’s not going to presume.

“Lead on.”

It’s late enough that Saints & Sinners isn’t full, but there are people there. Still, Leonard—despite his…newer occupation—is known, and people don’t fuck with him. Especially since his times on the hero gig tend to be helping the Flash and co. in dealing with metas and bigger problems, not the smaller-time crooks that often congregate here.

They find a booth, and Leonard, after a quiet query, makes his way to the bar, returning with two glasses of a rather nice scotch, if he does say so himself. He pushes one over to Sara without comment, smiling a little as she takes a sip and hums in pleasure, looking back at him.

“Thanks,” she says, then takes another sip, glancing around. “Saints & Sinners, eh?”

“Truth in advertising.” Leonard takes his own drink. He honestly doesn’t drink much, but when he does, it’s the good stuff. (The scent of stale beer, the funk of cheap liquor…these still scream “Lewis” at him, make him want to vomit.) “You good?”

“I am.” Sara studies him, taking another sip. “Tell me. What led you to…to ask me if I wanted to get out of there before? STAR Labs, I mean. Just then.”

Ah. Leonard inspects the amber liquid in his glass, takes another drink. “I was curious,” he admits. “I’d enjoyed watching you fight. And you didn’t look…completely comfortable there.” He pauses. “Rather like me, I guess.”

It strikes a chord; he can tell it does. Sara very nearly takes a gulp of her scotch, coughs, then regards him.

“Thank you,” she says again after a moment.

“You’re welcome.”

The scotch is very good.

Sara gets them both a refill after a bit, raising her eyebrows at the cost but paying without a qualm. She takes the glasses back to the table, and they continue talking.

She learns that his sister, Lisa (vaguely to Leonard’s horror) is just about Sara’s age. She learns that the last mark on Leonard’s record before it’d been expunged was the killing of his own father—and why, a tale he tells without a flinch, watching her with calm eyes that nonetheless seem to be watching for any sort of revulsion.

Revulsion Sara doesn’t show. Because she gets it. In fact, she thinks, watching Leonard’s still face, if Lewis Snart was still alive, she very well might go looking for him herself.

To get that look off his face—how has that face become so important to her, in such a short period of time?—she speaks up herself. She tells him more about the League. And then, almost to her surprise, the Amazo. Lian Yu.

At some point, Leonard gets them another drink. Then Sara—a little buzzed and more than a little reckless--gets them another.

Someone follows her back to the table.

Leonard stands as the other man—a weaselly sort wholly unlike the brawny thug back at the other bar—grabs her arm as she goes to sit down. But he doesn’t butt in, waiting to see what happens.

“You don’t wanna stay with this guy,” the newcomer says, not even looking at Leonard. “He’s a cop squealer, now. If you’re one of us, babe, you’ll want to come with me.”

The look on Sara’s face is incredible.

Leonard isn’t sure whether to smirk or sigh as she darts that “are you fucking kidding me?” gaze at him. He keeps his expression mildly interested as he glances at the nitwit holding her, one Ethan Kozarovich, a not-so-bright and relatively small-time thug who’s always thought he was far more than he actually was.

The question in that gaze is unmistakable. And Leonard can’t deny Sara the chance to fulfill it.

“Got your back. But take it outside,” he says quietly, before downing the drink she’d brought him. “Got an agreement here.”

Sara nods. Then she turns that look on Kozarovich—who seems like he’s suddenly, vehemently regretting his life choices—and snaps, “Outside.” Then she downs her own drink, slamming the empty glass down on the table.

“Here is…”

“Outside.”

Kozarovich looks like he wants, quite suddenly, to wet himself.

Not so long later, Sara and Leonard are strolling away from Saints & Sinners, both trying (and somewhat failing) to keep from outright laughter.

It shouldn’t feel so good to knock down a minor-league jerk-ass like the Kovarovich, Sara thinks. But it does.

It does because the bloodlust hadn’t taken over. It does because the asshat who’d dared to grab her is still alive, just slightly damaged. It does because Leonard is looking at her with a gleam in his eyes that says just how very impressed he is, and that gleam is doing things to her, things she knows, knows she wants to explore.

It’s been a very, very long time since she’d truly wanted anything like that.

They’re cutting through a park, and Sara spins around in the night air, taking a deep breath and letting it out, then turning to Leonard, who’s watching her intently, pausing in his own stroll.

“I feel alive,” she sighs with a deep, completely pleased sigh, then continuing immediately, recklessly as he watches her. “No, you don’t understand. Leonard…I was dead for a year.”

His steps slow. “Pardon?”

“Dead,” Sara tells him recklessly, looking up at the stars to avoid seeing his face. “Cold and dead. Three arrows to the chest and abdomen. Dead before I hit the ground. I was mourned, I was buried. I…well, presumably I did what dead things do.”

She looks at him, then. “My sister...well, she found a way to bring me back. About two years ago. But I wasn’t...I wasn’t myself for a long time afterward. I’m only starting to feel that way again. But I felt more alive tonight than I have in a very long time.”

If he shows any disbelief…any sort of revulsion…

He doesn’t. He blinks, slowly, and considers her, but years of familiarity with the oddities of Central City—and maybe his own instincts--seem to lead him to believe her.

“That’s amazing,” he says after a moment, as Sara watches him. “But…you’re OK? Now?”

Concern wasn’t what Sara had expected. Of all the possible reactions to this story, she finds she likes that one best.

“I’m OK,” she agrees, then impulsively reaches out and takes his hand, pulling him toward her a little, putting it over her heart, which is beating strongly. Leonard studies her as she looks up into his face, smiling a little, her hand over his own. His own face is very serious, but not in a way that seems problematic.

“Alive,” she repeats. “And happy. And not at all cold.”

After another moment, Leonard cracks a smile.

“No, you don’t feel cold to me,” he says quietly, moving even closer. “And I know cold.”

Sara snickers. “Now, that’s a line.” She pauses, studying serious blue eyes. “You don’t feel cold to me, either.”

“Good.”

And he kisses her.

That first kiss is, perhaps, just a little tentative. Exploratory. Both of them seeing if the spark they’ve been feeling is really there.

It is.

The second kiss, after a brief pause for air, is a good deal less tentative. In fact, Leonard, much later, finds bark from the tree he’d been up against pressed into the soft, broken-in leather of his jacket. (It falls to the floor as he shakes the jacket out. In a rare display of sentimentality, he saves a few pieces. Later, they sit in a small bowl on his dresser, with the gold locket Lisa had worn as a kid, his grandfather’s lucky silver dollar, a pack of matches filched from Mick’s coat, and a few other things.)

By mutual agreement, they head for his apartment, the one in city center, acquired by a much-younger Leonard Snart before the area started toward gentrification and still owned today under an assumed name. It’s after midnight, now, and the building is mostly quiet; they don’t see anyone in the hallways or the elevator.

Which is good, because he decides it’s his turn to take the lead, boosting Sara up against the mirrored wall and continuing the kissing.

When the elevator door opens, neither of them is inclined to separate, so Leonard simply carries her down the hallway toward the door, as Sara wraps her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders and keeps kissing his neck, his jaw, his mouth, caresses passionate and just a little bit rough in a good way. Somehow, he managed to her his keys out and into the lock, then maneuvers them both into the apartment.

If not quite all the way to the bed.

Iris: Sara? Ray’s here. Says u were gonna ride back to Star w/him

Iris: Should he wait?

Iris: Sara, pls let me know your OK.

Sara: I’m good! 😊

Sara: tell him thanks, but I’m staying around here a few days

Iris: OK

Iris: Do I wanna know where?

Sara, having fished her phone from the tangle of clothing strewn across the floor, bites back a laugh at the suggested irritation in Iris’ words. She chooses not to respond, putting the phone safely on Leonard’s dresser before turning back to the bed (where they had, ultimately, wound up).

The man in question is sprawled across the surface, nothing more than a sheet tugged over his hips, watching her from hooded eyes, a smile/smirk on his face. They hadn’t fallen asleep until early morning, and although it’s now after noon, he doesn’t look at all inclined to go anywhere. Sara runs her eyes over him, smiling herself, content and relaxed in a way she hasn’t been in a very long time.

They had been very well suited.

“Everything all right?” he drawls.

“Mmhmm. My ride is planning to head back to Star City soon.”

Leonard’s face shows a flicker of…something…but he quickly conceals it. “Ah,” he says quietly. Sara, watching, sees his shoulders tense before he sits up smoothly. “You have to go?”

There’s very definitely disappointment in the words. Which makes it easier and somewhat less awkward to stroll back toward him, smiling, and admit, “No. I said I wanted to stay around here a few days.” She pauses, suddenly feeling awkward anyway. “I mean, I can stay with Caitlin, help Team Flash clean up…”

But there’s a smile in Leonard’s eyes too, and he lowers his lashes again, watching her.

“Or,” he says smoothly, reaching out, catching her wrist gently, pulling her toward him, “you could stay here.”

Sara laughs, relief coursing through her. “But whatever would we do with our time?”

“I’m sure we could think of something.”

#with eyes wide open #captain canary #sara x leonard #the flash

14 notes · View notes

thesearchforbluejello · 5 years

Text

I have a lot to say about the characterization of Frankie in 1x04 so buckle up and get ready for some meta regarding the way sexuality is handled in this show and why it's excellent.

Again, no page breaks on mobile; I'm so sorry. Also lots of spoilers, so be aware.

First of all, these writers are writing her better than basically every stock heart-of-stone badass female formulaic character I've seen on tv in a long time and it is giving me so much joy. She's naunced and complex and I could just go off about how if they're going to make this work she needs to be a developed, complicated character, but that's not my point here so we'll just suffice it to say that I think the writers are on a good track and Lauren Cohan (who I've never seen in anything else, mind you) is doing a fantastic job, seriously.

Anyway. Starting with two obvious points:

Frankie puts her foot down and argues that Mary doesn't do PDA. She's an experienced spy (and assassin, yeah, still not over that little twist, by the way) and it's screamingly obvious to basically anyone with half a brain that this ain't gonna fly in keeping their covers intact. And uh, yeah, it doesn't. So we end up with That Kiss™️ which first of all holy shit this show is going at us hard with this ship amirite is Complicated™️and could have been avoided if she'd just played it cool. Frankie almost botched this mission.

When we see the scene with the picnic, she allows the PDA for their cover and there is, like, Something With a Capital S and a TM™️ that almost happens there. I have lots of questions. So many. I was at first wondering if she was playing him, but I have serious doubts.

My second obvious point is that we know Frankie doesn't have any qualms about using her body as a tool to do her job-- it's literally a point that's made in the pilot and we see it here too. I'm sure as hell not the first person to think, let alone point out, that this looks a WHOLE lot like a rebound.

On this topic, let me take a short digression to build some interesting discussion here. This show has not cracked one overtly sexual joke in the main team that's targeted at another of the characters. Standish makes some jokes with pretty strong innuendo, but a) he's kind of an ass and b) they're not meant to degrade or attack another character, they're meant to show how childish he is. We see Susan and Will complimenting each other in 1x03 and it's totally platonic. We see the same with Frankie and Jai in that episode as well. We see Frankie and Will literally zipped into a body bag together in 1x02 and no one makes it weird. We see Frankie and Will dancing at the party in 1x03 and no one makes that weird either. He doesn't even compliment her, probably because he knows it would make her uncomfortable.

My favorite thing here is that we get that scene where they're diffusing the bomb and Frankie literally sits on top of him. That's hands down one of my favorite scenes in any show with a built-in ship because it's inherently sexual and yet a) no one comments on how comprimising of a position it is, b) no one even jokes, c) the writers work it into the set/plot as necessary, d) it's an incredible trust-building moment for Frankie and Will, who've been fighting in a very personal way the entire episode, and e) when a joke is made, because this is a comedy, Will cracks a joke that's about himself and isn't even sexual, just a little sensual, I guess, at the risk of making it sound more dramatic, and it follows an extremely cute moment that is completely devoid of any sexual undertones (I'm referring to their little moment of relief at the timer stopping).

The reason I'm bringing this all up is because we can see that the show is avoiding a lot of opportunity for cheap jokes that a lot of other shows would have and indeed have made, and not necessarily to their detriment. I can think of plenty of shows that have some entertaining sexual humor, one of which (that shall remain unnamed even though I love it dearly, because that's a post for another time) has been frequently compared with Whiskey Cavalier since before it even premiered. This omission is a deliberate choice here and it is nothing short of masterfully underscoring the underlying tension between Frankie and Will in a very real and tangible way.

In 1x04, things change. We get That Kiss™️, which I think we can all agree was just A Lot™️. Like I mentioned, it ends up balancing out Frankie's earlier refusal to engage in any PDA with Will for the sake of their cover. We shouldn't expect this from her since, as we've seen, she is definitely okay with using sex and her body as a tool to do her job, a fact she actually points out both times Will knows she does it. (Another solid gold star for our writers, as far as I'm concerned, having her acknowledge it.) There's a deeper issue to confront here than sex, and it's emotion. Too much emotion is Will's problem, while too little is Frankie's. It's what causes a lot of the tension between them, obviously, and it really comes to play here. I think it's a safe bet to say that Will's constant pressing for emotional connection with Frankie makes her deeply uncomfortable, since we see several specific instances of this where she explicity points out that she doesn't want that connection. But Will is right though and she's got that charm virus. She's connecting with him as a friend even though she doesn't want to and that makes things uncomfortable for her.

Basically, what I'm saying is that sex in this show is never villanized nor used as a tool for humor; instead, it's treated in a more complicated way. We get the differing interpretations of sex from both Will and Frankie but neither of them is ever presented as morally superior. We also get differening interpretations of emotion from them both, as we have in previous episodes, but the waters are really muddied here, partly because of the disagreement about sex and partly because of the emotional baggage involved: Will feels betrayed because it brings the memory of being cheated on right to the forefront of his thoughts and Frankie, it seems (though it is just interpretation at this point), looks to be avoiding any kind of emotional connection by reinforcing her use of sex as a tool.

TL;DR 1) I'm seriously shocked that we're getting this much ship this early, 2) I will defend Will and Frankie both over anything so I get very conflicted watching this show, 3) it's so refreshing to see a show that doesn't use sex as humor or the sole driving thing behind a ship; UST is one thing, but the emotions at play here make for a much more interesting, compelling story and I literally love this show.

#does this even make sense I've barely slept #whiskey cavalier #whiskey cavalier spoilers #my meta

90 notes · View notes

kingforevermore · 4 years

Text

meta on Evan’s Kingmaker - Lofty, and Evan’s relationship with him

read more for length and images. While I haven’t tagged spoilers yet, this post definitely contains spoilers for Ni No Kuni 2′s main story and the DLC which adds ALOT to the story. It’s a little all over the place but please bare with me I did my best alskdfj

For those unaware of what a Kingmaker is, a Kingmaker is both a mark of authority and a guardian for a kingdom. The Kingmaker bestows power onto a Kingdom, onto the King they are bonded to, and the King in turn uses that power to serve their people.

It’s called a Kingmaker but a King or Queen can bend a Kingmaker to their will (for example, the Queen of Hydropolis has a Kingmaker).

The Kingmakers are a test to see if someone is worthy of ruling. They are a symbol of strength and power. They are guardians for the kingdoms. Evan states that one Kingmaker has the strength of an army, or can be as big as a castle.

A small note here that while Evan states that a King must ‘bend a kingmaker to his will’, this isn’t always the case. Oakenhart - the Kingmaker of Ding Dong Dell - made a bond withe Mausinger after the successful coup to take over the kingdom. Each Kingmaker seems to have their own standards of deciding who they make a bond with.

Kingmakers also have an item that they are bound to with their King. It’s considered a sacred object and it’s used for future generations to make the bond with the Kingmaker. At first Evan’s and Lofty’s item is a ‘ stick ‘ - which is actually a wand made out of special wood which was later melted down with the ‘cup of unity’ to make ‘the sword of unity’ which is Evermore’s current sacred item.

Every Kingdom has a ‘King’s Cradle’. a place where a kingmaker is enshrined. Goldpaw has the Cradle of Fire. Hydropolis the Cradle of the Depths. Ding Dong Dell, the Cradle of Creation. And Broadleaf, the Cradle of Wisdom.

The Cradle Lofty Comes from is the Cradle of Light.

It’s curious that there was still a Kingmaker left unclaimed to begin with. And not far from the Canyon where the sky pirates were no less? It is possible there could have been a kingdom there in the past, or a kingdom decided to just build it out of the way. From the Library in Goldpaw we get a passage stating that a cradle doesn’t have to be near its new kingdom (which is why Evermore not being right next to the cradle of light is fine), but it’s just easier considering the fact that kingmakers go back to their cradles to recharge.

We aren’t too sure how long Lofty has been waiting on someone to come to him -he does mention he made his trials too difficult so no one could make it to him, suggesting he’s been there a while.

Anyways, the party goes to the cradle thinking that they were going to find a grand beast, but instead come out with....Tiny yellow Lofty. Evan wasn’t even aware that Kingmakers could be so tiny. Everything he had heard up until this point were that they were supposed to be large and powerful - he grew up around the Kingmaker of Ding Dong Dell - Oakenheart. So he had no reason to think otherwise. Evan was....a little underwhelmed, if he’s being honest. But he wasn’t about to deny bonding with Lofty and making him the Kingmaker he claimed to be - because he needed this power to start the new Kingdom he wanted, to fulfill his promise to Aranella. He would do anything at this point to get a step in the right direction.

As a side note Lofty claims to be able to get big ‘whenever he wants’ - something i’ll come back to later.

The trial for Evan to get to Lofty was a Trial of Knowledge and a Trial of Courage. The Courage one I’m sort of skipping over because it was just a standard boss fight - the true test was the trial of knowledge. Evan had to reenact the story from the first game in a simplified puzzle form. I feel like this was significant considering one major fact - Lofty is not only a kingmaker, but a fairy. A former fairy considering that he gave that up to technically become a kingmaker, but a fairy nonetheless.

The first game’s protagonist, Oliver, had a companion named Mr. Drippy who was also a fairy. Pictures below are from the trial of knowledge.

I won’t post anymore of the text from the trial but there’s clearly a connection on why Lofty chose this particular story and this particular trial. It’s a story possibly really important to fairies as one of their own kind was involved in it. Now - Lofty never mentions that he’s a fairy in the main story except for a couple of lines of flavor text before the final boss - but in the DLC we get an answer straight out of his mouth. He left his village when he was a young fairy to become a kingmaker. We’ll touch on how exactly that happened in a bit but for now more photos

I find it funny that Lofty calls himself a people fairy when he had never met a human before because of this weird law that the fairies had put in place. Not to mention that it is sort of hinted that Mr. Drippy was the ‘boss’ of the village Lofty was from. Mr.Drippy was the companion to Olivier and the ‘boss’ of the village told the story of Oliver to Lofty well enough that Lofty could create a whole trial from it. Which again begs the question on why fairies weren’t allowed to interact with humans anymore but I digress, that’s probably a thought for another time.

He calls himself ‘a people fairy’. He claims to have become a Kingmaker simply because he loved people. He doesn’t even call himself a fairy directly outside of these two momentes, just a ‘spirit’. But he’s a fairy. All the fairies in Ni No Kunis have this damn accent and you can’t convince me otherwise.

I also think it’s important to note just how....cute this is. Lofty loves people. Evan loves people. They are both in a common mindset. Lofty loved watching the kingdom of Evermore grow from a couple of tents into the Kingdom that it is later on. He loves talking with the citizens, He loves being Evan’s kingmaker. Though their canon relationship isn’t dug into much at all - I think Lofty and Evan are close. Moreso than standard Kingmaker and King standards. This has partly to due with Lofty’s size. Him being a fairy is a good thing considering he can go with Evan on all his adventures - while the other Kingmakers can barely enter their own kingdoms without wrecking the place due to their size (Broadleaf adjusts itself for Bastian to enter kind of. And the only other exception is Oakenheart who besides Lofty is the smallest of the Kingmakers). Their bond is strong, though their physical manifestation of it (their ‘kingsbond’) appears small because they have not been bonded long. But that isn’t everything. They’re friends and it’s obvious.

Now for those of you unaware with the first game, all Fairies are from the Fairyground, the forest of the fay folk. All fairies are from here, no exceptions. Because all fairies are born from the same mother - the fairy godmother. It’s not clear where she exists now considering its been hundreds of years since the first game - but she is the mother of all fairies. All fairies are born from her and kept in the faycare center until they’re old enough to be ‘born’.

Yes this is a real thing and it’s canon. It’s gh/ibl/i what did u expect.

Anyways. Lofty at some point left the fairygrounds to become a kingmaker. This is no easy feat. We learn how Kingmakers are made at the end of the game through Alisandra - the former Kingsmaker of Allegoria. A Kingmaker is born when a soul is sacrificed in order that a great power may be tamed.

So the question remains, what soul was sacrificed so that Lofty could become a Kingmaker? This isn’t gone into detail in game - Alisandra doesn’t even mention what soul was sacrificed so that she was born. But we know when she tried to split herself to become human - the great power within her, her power as a kingmaker, turned into the horned one. So this ‘great power’ can’t be underestimated.

I like to think that Lofty met a creature that was moved by Lofty’s dreams of becoming a kingsmaker and willingly gave up their life. They weren’t ‘tamed’ but they instead gave over power to someone who they thought could handle it. Of course it would make sense of this creature was a dragon, considering Lofty’s other form. It’s referred to as his ‘true’ or ‘real’ form, and as mentioned wayyy above, he apparently can ‘get big if he wants to’. So I believe him becoming a kingmaker with the power of a dragon doesn’t seem too far off.

Plus in the Goldpaw library, it’s noted that Lofty can transform into a mighty dragon which resembles an ancient dragon called Draigfawlanlofft. Now it’s difficult to determine if this guide is a telling of the future or the present, as the owner of the Library is a Seer and also has text written about the future in her library. But for the sake of my brain and meta, I want to say that BOTH are correct. Lofty possibly chose to inherit not only the dragon’s power but their name as well. It has ‘loft’ in it so it’s possible either Lofty took his name from the dragon’s (and he was called something else when he was still just a fairy) or he decided they were ‘similar enough’ because of the small similarity (and that’s just how his mind works) that he decided to take the dragon’s name as his ‘full’ name just because it sounded cool. Honestly it tracks with Lofty’s character.

As a small note I also feel that it’s his connection to Evan that turned him into a dragon. It wasn’t just that he had been helped by one, he probably could have became any kind of being he wanted to- he could have become as big as the fairy god mother and just left it at that. But I feel like it was Evan’s courage and personality that really helped him use the power given to him to its fullest extent and make him into a dragon.

The only thing that seems to set this theory of mine off is that Lofty says himself that he just sort of sniffed out the Kingswind (will get to that just below) and found the cradle of light. But again, that doesn’t change the fact that he can’t just find a cradle and become a kingmaker. I feel like there was already a kingmaker at the cradle of light that gave up the power to Lofty, it’s the only thing that really makes sense but still stays within the lore.

Now we know what makes up a kingsmaker but how did these creatures come into being exactly? There weren’t any in the first game so it happened sometime between the hundreds years of time gap.

The DLC explains where most of the kingmakers started at least. Kingmakers were originally created by the ‘God of Gods’, Zayin. In the Timeless Tome DLC you’re tasked with saving the God. It turns out that a lot of the ‘taint’ and evil magic in the world of Ni No Kuni had been coming from him, and not the Horned One like everyone had thought.

Zayin apparently ruled the world at some point with other gods, but after creating Kingmakers decided to leave the world to the rulers and his creations. But even with him ‘gone’ from the world itself, the Kingmakers still got their power from Zayin himself. He supplied something called ‘the King’s Wind’ which is essentially a flow of vast energy supplied from Zayin himself to the Kingmakers, and then in turn to the Kings when needed.

Now this next bit doesn’t really have to do with Lofty himself but I just think it’s neat TM. Pretty much the Conductor explains that once the Kingswind is released into the world, Zayin has no control over it. Thus it turned wicked thanks to wicked emotions in the people of the world - and this corrupted Zayin himself.

Now I’m not too sure why a bird is the focus point of these illustrations, because later we get to see what Zayin truly looks like - and he’s a tree but i digress.

After defeating the boss born from the corruption inside of Zayin, it returns to normal and the Conductor says that the ‘taint’ and ‘blackness’ will leave from Ni No Kuni, though it might take some time.

But Lofty also mentions feeling exhausted after the fight. This is also because of the battle that just took place. The taint on Zayin was making the power he released more powerful, and thus giving more power to the kingmakers of the world. Whether they realized it or not, the kingmakers were relying on a dark power to fuel them. Now this source of power was gone. Evan is of course instantly worried about Lofty after hearing this. Lofty explains that he isn’t about to ‘drop dead’ but the other Kingmakers are definitely feeling the change in power. I think this is because Lofty is still a fairly new Kingmaker. He hadn’t really been away from his cradle all that long by this point and had yet to be at full strength (even with him in his dragon form, I believe that it was only a step towards becoming his most powerful state - as Evan has barelybeen king long aswell and their bond will surely grow, which means Lofty will become more powerful). But all the other Kingmakers have been around for a very long time at this point and probably have been at the peak of their power for a very long time. Thus the shift is more significant to the other kingmakers, but it is felt by Lofty nonetheless.

The Conductor also comments that the loss of power isn’t a big deal, because Evan has created the declaration of interdependence, which means that the kingdoms are working together now rather than against one another - meaning that they should rely on that bond and power.

Now I don’t want this to cancel out what I had said before - Kingmakers are still very powerful, and are a force to be reckoned with. ‘A little less powerful’ is still powerful. And Lofty is still a new kingmaker so he has a lot of ways to go in terms of power. But him and Evan are probably the most powerful duo in the land right now.

I think this is partly due to a few things. Mostly Evan and Lofty’s relationship. Again, they aren’t exactly ‘professional’ or ‘textbook’ Kingmaker and King. They are both young, they are both new to both of their roles, they are able to go on adventures together due to Lofty’s fairy appearance - there’s so much that sets them apart from the other pairs in the world.

Not to mention with how Lofty seems to have became a kingmaker - he isn’t like the others. He wasn’t ‘chosen’ by Zayin. He wasn’t ‘created’ by Zayin. He wasn’t chosen, he chose to be a Kingmaker. And I think that’s important to his and Evan’s relationship too. Especially because neither of them were too taken with one another upon first sight but they both chose to accept their bond and have only been growing closer ever since.

Lofty could also be considered sort of a ‘halfling’ because of this strange mixture of being a fairy yet not, which is another thing he has in common with Evan - considering he’s half human half grimlakin.

Overall, I believe Evan and Lofty have more of a sibling relationship if anything. It’s unsure which one could be considered the ‘younger’ one with how Lofty’s personality is but they clearly care for eachother.

Lofty tries to get Evan to break out of his shell more, to take risks and have more confidence in himself. There are even some fluff dialogue during skirmishes where Lofty yells at Evan to take credit for his commanding skills. He is so proud of his little king and it shows so much. He even says as such a few times towards the end of the game.

Evan might have been taken back with how Lofty looked when they first met, but he couldn’t imagine getting Evermore to where it is today without Lofty. Lofty also helped cheer Evan up when he got sad, always spoke with others in the kingdom, and really - truly - cared. Evan is happy that he can share his kingdom with Lofty, because it’s clear that he cares about the people of evermore, and the promise of making a place that everyone can live happily ever after, just as much as Evan does.

#Carved in Stone [ Headcanons ] Stories became Legend #The Kingmaker [ Lofty ] A People Fairy #[FINALLY SHOVES THIS OUT it's 1 am and i probs could have written it better but you know what?#heck it just take it]

2 notes · View notes

vastderp · 6 years

Text

Okage: Shadow King is such a great little game.

been replaying Okage: Shadow King this past week or two and it’s both better and worse than I remember. worse in that oh my lord they released this game too early and it’s buggy as fuck. better as in HOLY SHIT WHAT A GREAT STORY.

spoilers obviously.

like the part you play is fairly boilerplate RPG, but shit’s just... weird. the world is tiny, supposedly having been spared from a global catastrophe 300 years ago. roaming monsters all look like something a child would draw, except finished by a professional. There are monster paintings that are just crayon scribbles on a framed canvas. There is a floating anteater hanging from a party balloon. it has a scribbly checkered pattern that is only partly colored in, also with crayon.

NPCs are not named, they’re “classified” by their roles in the story. every now and then a list comes from the King of all the new “classifications” for the inhabitants of the world, telling them what they are. So they’ll be called stuff like YOUNG MAN WHO BELIEVES IN JUSTICE (and who can never shut up about Justice) and SLEEPY TOWN MANAGER (who was merely drowsy until he got "classified” at which point he couldn’t stay awake anymore to do his job).

the world is small and simplistic and the people are very limited, to the point of sometimes seeming to be sleepwalking. The NPC who watches over the nonfunctional train station is completely brain-fried, because there is no train and no purpose for him to fulfill but hey somebody needed a stationmaster for the train station scene. who is that guy? who was he before he was given his incredibly vague role? did it erase everything else about him? is that why he doesn’t know if he’s met me before?

half the people you talk to seem like fully realized individuals being mind controlled into playing a role. funny thing, that!

even the villains are just doing what a little voice told them. they got “classified” as an Evil King, and boom! evil powers! now the Hero has to go fight them! your character’s family are assholes who have sold your soul to the evil Shadow King (stan for short) in exchange for Stan reversing a pig latin curse on your older sister.

this matters because if your sister is forced to speak in pig latin, she will be “classified” (quotation marks are always around that word per game styling) as a comic relief girl and it will ruin her marriage prospects. we’re told “classifications” matter a lot in this world, as you will see for yourself later. something as simple as being “classified” as a different fictional character trope can and will result in your life and your actual personality changing to match it. It’s played for laughs, but imagine if you were a STRESSED-OUT SOPHOMORE and you went on a bad weekend pub crawl and got “classified” as a STUMBLING DRUNKARD three days from final exams.

anyway, your character has no “classification”. he’s so forgettable it just never happened, i guess? which makes him a perfect vessel for a power-drained demon king that needs to parasitize a person’s shadow to live. so, there you go. your job is to beat up the demons that stole Stan’s power, get him back to his full strength, and then... i dunno, watch your swordswoman companion and newly separated Stan fight to the death, probably. that’s what they plan on doing, anyway. and that’s what you’re told is the plot of the game. but nope, that’s just how you get to the plot. see, the fucked-upness of the world gets more and more apparent as you go. at first you can write it off as the gamemakers screwing up (this is a very rough game, so that is understandable) but it’s more than that.

after a while of truly lousy dungeons, hilarious dialogue and goofy monsters, there is a “joke” that you can hear from various NPCs. This joke is actually not a joke at all, but people can’t stop laughing long enough to tell the whole thing to you. the story is actually very sad, but because it’s “classified” as a joke, people are compelled to laugh at it and think of it as funny.

the story is about a parent turtle and its baby turtle. one day the baby turtle is playing in the safe little yard its parent made for it, and gets lost. while it’s looking for the baby, the parent comes across a pebble that looks like its baby, and takes it home all happy that it’s found its child. the real baby finds its way home, only to see the parent has replaced it with a damn rock. the parent turtle refuses to admit the pebble isn’t its real baby, because if it admits to its error, it would look stupid. deep down, the turtle knows the pebble isn’t really its child, that the real baby is out there somewhere alone because the parent can’t put aside its pride admit it’s been fooling itself all this time.

that’s basically a fairy tale about a narcissistic parent, isn’t it? it’s also the story of the big bad of this game, who made your world into a toybox for his daughter to play in, until she disappeared into it. not to worry, he made a pebble doll that looks just like his missing child and enchanted it to seem alive. don’t remind him it’s not really her. just don’t.

so.

this game has been pretending up til now to be a cheeky parody of the RPG genre with weird details that makes no sense. now we find out another reason why things are this way: the shitty enemies, the dazed and “classified” NPCs, the weirdly non-threatening child’s drawing monsters, all of these things are the creations of the big bad, and they look this way because they’re meant to be safe, fun game pieces for a little kid to play with.

“classification” is not just a winking acknowledgement of the genre, it’s an actual magical force used by the big bad to create roles for living human beings who are effectively mind controlled slaves. that’s some dark stuff right there, if you look past the cutesy video game storytelling for a sec and imagine what that must be like for the people. it’s a simple story, hidden inside the decoy RPG plot, but damn if it isn’t good.

so, about the the small world you can explore in the game: it used to be a lot bigger, but it’s been cut out of the much larger real world by magic and turned into a sort of childproofed playpen full of colorful NPCs specifically “classified” (presumably from the residents of the part of the world that got isolated) for the intended player to encounter on an adventure plot.

You aren’t the intended player of the game, either. your protagonist is a random boring teenager who didn’t get “classified” at all, presumably because everyone, including the big bad, forgets he’s there. He was left off the list entirely, making him very useful to the opponent of the big bad, a former collaborator and “classification” worker who rebelled. this former collaborator is the same guy who originally spread the story of the turtle and the pebble to shame the big bad, by the way. to make the story go away, big bad tried to “classify” it as a joke. ok dude, you do you.

People who don’t get “classified” can act however they choose, it looks like. they don’t get stuck in the story like YOUNG MAN WHO BELIEVES IN JUSTICE, who can only stand on the sidewalk and talk about justice. somebody who wanted to fight the big bad, who’s always looking for gaps in the system to drive a wedge into, could really break the game if he could find someone who wasn’t “classified” to work through. he’s done it before (unsuccessfully) but this time around, your player character is that wedge.

and what a wedge he is!

imagine Link running all those endless, thankless errands in all his endless, thankless incarnations. saving babies, fetching cheese, herding goats, getting no real say in things but always doing the hard work--that’s you. now imagine Link literally fades into invisibility from being ignored so hard. that is also you. as in, your character will disappear from existence at one point when the big bad decides you’re ruining his daughter’s RPG adventure (more like because you make him remember that she’s just a doll and not actually his missing daughter) and writes you out of the story. it’s easy to do because your character’s main trait is that people don’t really pay attention to him. even in the game itself, this character is just your vehicle to play Okage: Shadow King and enact the choices you make. (this game gets super meta and i love it.)

big bad just emphasizes your overshadowed (eh? ehhhh?) nature until you stop existing at all.

while you’re invisible, you end up in the town of Triste, where ignored people gather. this whole sequence is just amazing--half the businesses are closed, or they’re open and you can hear music and smell food but no one is inside. a lot of people who are inside their homes won’t open the door and might yell at you to go away. some folks hang around outside and will talk to you. everyone is sad but happy to have this place to belong when no one else can see they exist. Triste is well-named (means “sad” in french). it’s basically the town of social anxiety, hesitation, longing and depression. and it’s amazing.

you can find a closed up house where, when you knock, a guy inside yells “I HOPE IT BREAKS! THAT TINY WORLD OF YOURS!” like. someone’s extra mad at the big bad 0_0

and oh hey by the way, while you’re exploring this beautiful village of forgotten NPCs, you run into the voice of a certain princess who got lost in the world her father made for her to play in who knows how many hundreds of years ago. turns out this poor kid used to play all sorts of fun games in the world, but she ended up in Triste. while the doll version of her has adventures, she can watch through its eyes, so she knows you despite never having actually met.

man, imagine being that poor baby turtle princess and having to wait around all alone in a town full of invisible sad people because your dad has replaced you, in his grief, with an enchanted doll. but now someone’s come to help her, someone who is also sad and alone because everyone’s forgotten them. your defining flaw as a character, your tendency to be neglected to the point of non-existence, is what allows you to connect with the lost princess. your sorrow brings you to a place where you can plan to make real change and fix your broken ass world. i fucking love that!

first you have to get people to acknowledge you so you will stop being invisible, and then you have to confront the big bad’s weird grief-crazy reign of terror, bring the real princess back from Triste, and end the “classification” system that keeps the world isolated and its people enslaved. somewhere in all of this, you will also presumably need to deal with the fully-powered Shadow King, but eh. later for that.

this is the ps4 version, so first i have to get the goddamn Q of Hearts for the platinum trophy. THEN we’ll deal with Stan.

#okage #okage: shadow king #boku to maoh #okage spoilers #spoiler #i love when the gameplay and the story fit together #like even the many many bugs and glitches are OK in the context of the story #it almost becomes part of the story when this janky ass game goes clunk #there beiloune goes again i says to myself #just as long as i can save without hitting that bug i'll be fine says i #oh no it's frozen again says i #curse you beiloune but at least i saved twice #you have to save twice to be sure not to erase your game #it's a rare bug but it's devastating if you only have one file current #and oh my god can the q of hearts just drop already

200 notes · View notes

mrsmess · 5 years

Text

Meta season 4 - part 1

This season ranks second on my list (number one just has to be season 2), partly because of Rory’s in between-ness, which highlights the reasonable flaws in the character, and Lorelai’s bold innkeeper journey, and basically every other character having really interesting and plausible arcs.

Ballrooms and Biscotti - Such a great episode, I’m laughing constantly AND finding out that Stars Hollow does celebrate Groundhog Day! (obviously)

The Lorelais’ first day at Yale - Copper boom. Need that on a t-shirt. Such an iconic episode. I remember watching it when it first broadcasted thinking, this is me and mý mother, me and my family. It could have, should have, been a defining moment for Rory; it’s going to be very difficult being Christine Amanpour broadcasting from Tehran with her mommy. You only get one life, and there are so many interesting paths for you to choose, just, you can’t possibly do them all, and sometimes, loving and needing your family is a gift, not something to overcome, but something to build your life around. To invest in the fact that you are a better, richer, person with them around. That’s what I realized at that same point in my life, anyhow. And poor Luke. His pain is so entertaining though.

The Hobbit, the sofa and Digger Stiles - An interesting episode.

Rory Gilmore subscribes to the Stars Hollow Gazette! Having her become Chief Editor in AYITL might have been one of the brightest decisions for the revival, at least if they had bothered exploring it for a bit. (They could’ve cut the inexplicable With a Little Help From My Friends-scene - copied right out of Across the Universe, if anyone has missed that - and given me more Rory Gilmore gets The Gazette up and running instead.)

And Emily and Paris being two peas in a pot! “Don’t you want people to owe you?” Until Paris decides she hates the party persona she’s trying on anyway.

Rory has to defend her staying in her room with a book; she’s not hiding, she’s actually enjoying it. I’m torn on this. Lorelai is great for reminding our girl to stay in the moment, but I also think that Rory has a point, and that she should be allowed to take on the world in her own pace and her own way, me and my mother have a similar dynamic. But sometimes I think Lorelai is a bit stuck on Rory experiencing all these big absurd things (biker parties, barn burnings) while she is real uptight about her experiencing more plausible things for her age; love, sex, more realistic and ultimately necessary adventures. And then it struck me that Lorelai herself didn’t really get to have those adventures, since she got pregnant so early.

Tana is adorable.

Jason is really interesting and actually my second favorite love interest for Lorelai, but more on that later. He’s like a combination of Logan and Christopher with some actual guts, not that it works out for him but it doesn’t for the other boys playing it passive either. And Emily recognizes the danger entering into business with him.

Rory puts off telling Emily what she really thinks about her buying stuff for the dorm room, adopting Lorelai’s way of dealing with her.

Chicken or beef - Rory has cut her hair. Like everything monumental on this show it doesn’t happen on screen.

Dean is getting married, which I do not need to mock, right? Repetitive and redundant.

I love the Zack and Brian dynamic. Also, them referring to Dave going off to California - Hilarious! And Rory schooling them on schooled rock ’n rollers - priceless!

Gosh darnit I have a weak spot for Dean, or more specifically: I’m really into the character arc. It’s so elegant and sh*tty. How he starts out a pretty decent guy and could’ve gotten to think that about himself that way his whole life if he just hadn’t fallen for our girl. He’s the perfect example of how love can wreck a person, and not even in an epic- but totally mundane and kind of icky way. I dig that (his happy ending in the revival was sort of a cop out). Jess actually has the opposite arc, which of course I dig even more.

Oh goodness! It’s Dean with crappy friends. Now, see, that’s plausible, him having stupid friends, quantity over quality, kind of like Logan (yes, I have issues with Finn and whatever the other guy’s name is, can’t believe they made it to the revival! With a little help from someone else’s friends... *smh*). One of the things that gets to me the most from Swan Song is how Jess can get away with his lie about the football with a buddy. He does not have friends outside of fictional characters and it always makes me sad that Rory buys into his bogus explanation when her obvious reaction should be: “What buddy?”

Oh, and that’s Leo, and Schmidt!

And Luke is the best. I’m getting teary thinking about how he’s a real mensch to just everyone and so rarely get credit for it. Love Luke.

“Why didn’t she love me?” I feel so bad for him, but then he marries Lindsey without dealing with anything.

And Rory just takes Luke’s word and doesn’t go to the wedding. A level of trust, or maybe she was looking for an excuse.

#meta #Gilmore Girls #season 4

11 notes · View notes

quinntessentiallyglee · 3 years

Note

Mostly for Santana (and Brittany, if she's still chilling around!) - what is the least amount of clothing one can wear whilst still technically being in a costume, for costume parties (such as halloween)?

All y'all aren't even trying to hide the randy anymore, are you? I mean, I know the Apartment verse comes across a lot more salacious and smutty than it actually is--and thats partly on me--but with asks like this, at least some of all y'all are equally to blame.

That said (and because I couldn't stop the rest of the gang from getting involved--and yes, this gets a bit meta)...

Santana: What's that one from the space thing with the giant slug? The one that's basically a loin-cloth, a bikini top, and some bondage gear?

Rachel: Star Wars. Specifically Princess Leia as Jabba the Hutt's slave in The Return of the Jedi.

Quinn: Nerd

Dani: You're one to talk.

Quinn: What's that supposed to mean?

Dani: Just that you seem to know an awful lot about the subject yourself is all.

Quinn: You went through the archives? Those posts predate the Apartment verse by years. Hell, they predate most of you.

Dani: I was bored. I have a lot of down time around here.

Gwyn: Don't we all.

everyone: *stares at Mun*

Mun: *Stands very still*

Santana: We can still see you, you know.

Mun: No you can't.

Rebecca: Anyway, all I know is that that outfit changed my life.

Jonathan: Mine too.

Hannah: Mine three. But it's not the least you can wear and still be *finger quotes* in costume.

Brittany: She's right. You could go as Eve.

Lucas: That's true. A couple of well placed leaves would be less than Leia was wearing.

Brittany: What leaves?

Lucas: ... The leaves Eve and Adam wore.

Rachel: *sighs* Only after they ate from the tree of knowledge. I believe that before then, they went 'au natural'.

Maze: You're not wrong.

Dani: And I think we have our winner.

Hannah: Oooh, oooh, ooh; you could go as a nudist.

Raven: How is that different?

Hannah: ... Name tag?

Jonathan: Where would you put the name tag?

Hannah: -

Rachel: -Moving on-

Hannah: But-

Rachel: As a name tag, regardless of location, would count as wearing something, it would technically be more dressed than wearing nothing at all, so dressing as Adam or Eve pre Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge would still come out ahead.

Quinn: And borderline sacrilegious.

Melody: At best.

Rachel: Yes, but the question didn't ask about the social acceptability of the costume, just what costume would still count as a costume with the least amount of apparel.

Jade: Not to throw a wrench into the nudity fest you all have going on here, but if you're not wearing anything, does it even count as a costume? Presumably a costume has to have some element beyond just a theme to count as one.

Rebecca: She does have a point.

Rachel: Agreed. For it to count as a costume, there really should be some aspect of it that is worn.

Hannah: Like a name tag.

Melody: *sighs* Like a name tag.

Hannah: I win! And I have my costume picked out!

Rachel/Melody/Quinn: No!

Hannah: But-

Melody: You already picked your costume, remember? You're going as a Fairy. We picked out your wings and everything.

Hannah: Oh, right... What if I made it a nudist Fairy?

Rachel: Sorry, but we decided it there was a 50% minimum coverage requirement for the costumes this year.

Santana: Since when?

Maze: Yeah, I don't remember voting on that.

Rachel: ... Quinn

Quinn: Executive veto.

Santana: *coughs* whipped *coughs*

Maze/Hannah: That's bullshit!

Santana: No, she's definitely whipped

Quinn: *to Santana* Shut it. *to everyone* My apartment, my rules.

Santana: And since when was this your apartment?

Quinn: Since I was the first--and only--one here for years before the rest of you started showing up.

Everyone: ...

Everyone: *stares at Mun*

Mun: ... Distraction *throws smoke bomb at feet and runs away*

Maze: Still bullshit.

Brittany: But that rule is only for our Halloween costumes. We can still go naked before then.

Rachel: Quinn!

Quinn: ... Distraction *throws smoke bomb at feet and runs away*

Rachel: Lucy Quinn Fabray, you get back here this instant *chases after Quinn*

Hannah: Naked Time!

Brittany: Naked Time!

Santana: *shrugs* Naked time.

Lucas: I should probably go...

Jonathan: *blushing* Me too...

Dani: We can still see you even if you're standing still

Jade: *links arms with Lucas and Jonathan* C'mon, boys. Let's leave that nudists to their fun. *leads them away*

Rebecca: Yeah, I'm out too. No offence, but I prefer my nudity one on one.

Gwyn: I don't mind a few more, but we should probably go and warn the rest. If Mal walks on on this without a heads up, she'll probably curse them all into next year.

Rebecca: She's not that bad.

Gwyn: You want to take that chance?

Rebecca: ... you take bedrooms, I'll take the library?

Melody: And I'll take the gym.

Maze: Great, you can bring back some towels.

#anon #asked and answered #ooc: muse #ooc: mun #m:Santana #m:Rachel #m:Dani #m:Quinn #m:Gwyn #m:Rebecca #m:Jonathan #m:Hannah #m:Brittany #m:Lucas #m:Mazikeen #m:Raven #m:Melody #m:Jade #verse: apartment

0 notes

sanoiro · 6 years

Text

Lucifer 3x10 - A Meta/Speculation/Spoiler Explanation post.

This is going to be a very long and very spoilery post so you have been warned!

First, allow me to say that I was a bit disappointed by Marcus being Cain. I was expecting something more from the writers but as the wardrobe revealed us that Marcus is Cain (see this post) the actual revelation was not what I wanted for Marcus...

Anyway, there are so many questions to answer by using the existing spoilers and a good dose of speculation.

@ships-sailing-in-the-night reblogged @luciferbl00dymorningstar this post yesterday, that interview had many interesting parts which the most notable parts were the following:

1) Before we get into how exactly Cain fits into the show’s mythology, my immediate question is: Who was the Sinnerman (played by Kevin Carroll) in all of this? You find out a bit more in the next episode, but basically, the Sinnerman was a protegé of Cain’s, and they hatched this plan together. You then realize that the Sinnerman went rogue and got carried away with the whole thing.

2) TVLINE | So did Cain know and believe all this time that Lucifer was the devil…? The other thing you find out in the next episode is that the person who has got all these files on the celestials and the supernaturals is Cain. He’s been keeping track of everybody coming and going on Earth. When he found out there is the devil and a detective who could make the devil bleed, he thought this might be his chance to find someone who could make him die.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now let’s answer the first question that comes in our mind. Was Sinnerman indeed Cain’s protege?

Well, we have a few spoilers from the time the episode My Brother’s Killer (3x10 - script) was being filmed and which @ships-sailing-in-the-night revealed partly yesterday. At that time the production took the picture that revealed Cain to Lucifer

At first, we didn't know the significance of that spoiler... now we know better.. As you can see a different actor was placed as Cain in the photo but still things can mean so much more...

Yet something isn’t right... You nurture a child for over 3 decades, raise to a man and then kill it? No. You see I have a speculation based on a known spoiler.

Sinnerman wanted to die by Lucifer’s hand because it was supposed to to really end his life. In the interview, it is said that Marcus/Cain will need the help of Lucifer to end his life and supposedly Lucifer will do everything he can to go around his Father and grant Cain his request. But there is always a twist...

We know that Abel is able to resurrect in different bodies. In High School Poppycock he comes back as a woman (we have enough info which points us, one particular actress, btw) So let’s just assume/speculate for a moment that Sinnerman was, in reality, Abel who we will see again soon as he has inhabited a different body.

In the comics whenever Abel is killed by Cain/Marcus he is always resurrected again. That’s an interesting though choice of word that is used in the comic and an inspiring one perhaps for the series writers.

The spoilers when Abel has ended up in a woman’s body tells us of a person who tries to get away from Cain but is always revealed and always ends up dead... so I wouldn’t hesitate to believe that there might be a plot between Cain and Abel in order to stop that cycle or Marcus simply enjoys the hunting part once Abel is at the right age.

Now if Cain has the ability to ensure people’s cooperation perhaps he makes Abel sin every time so his eventual and unavoidable murdering by him is justified. Ther eis a twist here though. Cain in the comics loved his brother and I believe Marcus/Cain does as well so perhaps by making a justified killing Marcus/Cain believes that he will be able to end this cycle of killing

In any case, Marcus in the comics wants Abel dead for good and would do anything to achieve it even in the case of the series make a deal with the Devil...

Finally, Maze said that the Sinnerman was definitely a human but one who she couldn't break. So I wonder.... What if that was because Sinnerman was Abel and as such had experienced centuries of torture at his brother’s hands at some point. Key phrases in episode 3x10:

Sinnerman: It has to be you. Lucifer: Because I was the trap. You never wanted freedom your true desire was to die and for some reason you wanted me to do it

& Marcus: It’s the only way it could end.