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dragonmuse · 6 months

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Keep It In The Box : An Essay on OFMD Season 2 and the Failure to Heal

(here in is my season two reaction. It contains many many spoilers. It's also about 3k words long so you know what you're getting into.)

“See, I have a system for dealing with all the terrible things I've seen. There's a box in my mind, and I put the things in the box..” -Frenchie, Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death

…..and then he never opens it. Chekov’s locked box has no key in season two.

On first watch, it seemed clear to me that Frenchie’s declaration was a narrative plant. Clearly the whole season would be about that box of pain and trauma being opened, sorted through and at least the beginning of healing. The show had developed a reputation after season one of being kind and focused on queer narratives of healing from childhood. Ed and Stede’s parallels in their childhood traumas were frequently on display through season one and were repeated in flashback throughout season two. Jim’s season one arc about becoming someone who doesn’t think just of revenge and can now forge meaningful connections was profound, beautiful and often funny. Izzy is an antagonist because he doesn’t want Ed to move on or stop acting like the trauma-response version of himself. The antagonist wants to stop healing. The point is to grow, to change, to learn how to love. It’s one of the things that made season one work for me at the time, despite reservations about pacing and tone.

So naturally season two should follow suit. It’s a kind show! About healing and falling in love!

For the first several episodes, the remaining crew on the Revenge go through a gauntlet of trauma, forced to do and receive violence at Ed’s whims as he careens from self-destructive behavior to self-destructive behavior. This is the wounding setup. It was dark, but it seemed like it would have a payoff and at first it did.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful moments of the season comes in one of the small respites in those early episodes as Jim recounts Pinnochio to Fang to soothe him through his grief. That was the show that I expected. The kindness of that moment struck me very deeply. It gave me some understanding of Archie too, who seems to fall for Jim right at that moment.

That scene is the show season one promised. Season two led with packing Frenchie’s box full to bursting. Here is the fight to the death between lovers, there is a first mate who is mutilated and rotting in the very walls (the rot of the Revenge itself), and there is the storm of Ed’s rage and pain that threatens to consume all of them.

So surely these remaining episodes would concentrate on finding the humor in healing from those moments. That is the setup. Frenchie has a box. The box must eventually open.

Except time and again, all the characters who suffered are told that the only way to deal with what they’ve been through is to stick it in the box and never open it again.

Pete tells Lucius that he’s unable to move on and needs to let it go. Izzy has a story about a shark. Ed’s apology to the crew which doesn’t even contain the words ‘I’m sorry’ is just…accepted. I kept waiting and waiting for a meaningful apology to the people Ed had hurt the worst with his actions, but it seems all we get is Fang saying ‘eh, no problem, I got to hit you back so I feel better’.

The playful theme of ‘pirates are just violent sometimes’ from season one becomes a grinding horror machine in season two when every atrocity visited on someone is forgiven because the narrative needs it to be. Ed and Stede spend more time making amends with each other over the bloodless night on the beach than either of them spend trying to repent for their actions towards anyone else.

And let’s talk about Ed. Arguably this season pivots on his narrative, on his path to healing and growth. A path that starts at a very low point. His moment in the gravy basket, deciding he wants to live because there are still things to live for is so great! So one might assume that what would follow would be him pursuing those things, making amends, making connections. He and Stede have a wonderful moment, talking about being whim prone and how they’ll work to avoid that, build a relationship by going slower.

Yet, at no point do either of them stop following whims. They never heal or learn from what’s happened to them. They both keep running from thing to thing, particularly Ed. It’s a whim to sleep with Stede, it’s a whim to run off to fish, and the finale gives us just more of their whims. Ed drops fishing as fast as he picked it up. He finds those leathers in the ocean, murdering the symbolism of leaving them behind. Even the inn is a whim, one of those things Ed decided he’d be good at without evidence. And Stede joins him in that without a single on screen conversation about it ahead of the moment.

Ed needs to heal himself and to do that he needs to confront what he’s done and do the work to heal the wound. Instead, he doesn’t meaningfully apologize to anyone, besides Stede and Fang. Despite Izzy’s dying words (we’ll get to that), not only do we never see the crew caring about Ed, working to make him family in the same way they do with Fang and even Izzy, he also doesn’t choose to stay with them. So what is the point? Where is the healing? Or does even Ed, beloved main character, have to live with it all stuffed in a box?

He ends the season in the leathers he threw away, in a relationship that’s barely stabilized, going to live in a house which we are told by the narrative (in that they are very very clearly paralleling Anne and Mary with Ed and Stede or why do we even get that whole Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? episode) will only end in them setting fire to each other to stay warm.

But Vee, I hear you cry, it’s a ROM-COM. This is all meant to be ha-ha funny and you are taking it so seriously!

Cool beans. Then why the hell isn’t it funny? Healing is often filled with comedy because people deal with pain with humor. You can heal and laugh at the same time. The finale especially is almost entirely devoid of laughs, almost entirely devoid of joy until the last minute for that matter. The episode that should show off with a flourish how far everyone’s come, mostly serves to show that no one has grown.

Okay that’s Ed. I want to talk about Lucius next. Our former audience surrogate (that’s taken away in season two when he doesn’t get enough screen time to perform that role and no one takes his place) really goes through the wringer. He experiences many many terrible things, including sexual assault (which is made into a grimace-laugh line that doesn’t take away from it’s seriousness because oh hey, that can be done as it turns out). He’s nervous, he’s smoking, it’s clear he’s suffering.

There’s a beautiful moment where Pete tells him ‘hey, I was also in pain. I grieved’ and that’s great. It’s good that Pete sets a boundary about Lucius not obsessing over the past to the point of occluding their future.

We even get our comedic moment where Lucius pushes Ed off the boat (still not apology, but I’d lost hope for that by then) and that doesn’t help enough. So Izzy comes in with a shark and the advice that you just have to move on.

Just…you know. Play pretend. Forget.

Shove it in a box. Ed didn’t take my leg, a shark did. Ed didn’t kill you, a shark did. Live with the person that tried to murder you because it’s your fault you dangled your leg over the side of a boat. That is the show’s message. I thought on first watch, that surely this would also come back up and be explained that you can’t live that way, that that is no way to heal. That it would become clear that this was no way through. You cannot make everything into sharks.

Lucius can move forward and still carry pain. He can still want a meaningful apology and still want to talk to his lover about what he’s dealing with while moving forward toward a brighter future.

And what of the flirtatious promise of relationships and connections being the way to heal? Look to Oluwande and Jim, whose heartfelt romance from season one was relegated to the bins of history in favor of a narrative that made him a brother Jim once had sex with. They could have had Archie AND Oluwande, who in turn could also have Zheng, but that never seems to be an option. With a single short conversation, they are broken up with, despite a brief tease at the birthday that they still ‘dance’ together, it never actually manifests. Jim and Archie never talk about what they went through. It’s swept under the rug as fast as knives are lowered.

Lucius also no longer flirts with other people, the solution to his pain is to propose and get married (but not too married, lest we forget that they’re two men, they don’t even get to be husbands or even the more respectful mates, no. They’re mateys.) This season proposes that the only happy endings are monogamous ones, where no one talks about anything painful that went before.

To ensure that message, beyond assuring the success of Oluwande and Zheng’s relationship, Jim and Archie almost entirely disappear from the narrative. Sorry you guys were given layers of trauma and no growth and not even much to do this season, we need to make sure that everyone remembers Oluwande is the break in Zheng’s day so when he says that to her five minutes later we know exactly what he’s referencing. No time for Archie to learn what an apology is or for Jim to get one line in with Oluwande that isn’t affirming their newfound broship. Must do more flashbacks to things we just did two episodes ago!

The show even dangles the conversation of the Revenge being a safe space. Why would any of them ever feel safe when the man who tortured them is allowed to walk among them and they are expected to forgive and forget? What’s safe about that? The ship is never made safe for any of them, but that’s never addressed.

And Zheng! Amazing, hysterically funny Zheng! She loses her ships, her entire way of life, the kingdom she built for herself and then…she doesn’t even get to captain the Revenge. We don’t know what becomes of her fleet, of her plans, her ambitions. Don’t worry about it, she has a romantic partner and isn’t that what every lady wants in the end?

(But Vee, I hear you cry again, there will be a season three! Maybe it will be All About Zheng! To which I say: then why did they present us with the most series finale feeling episode ever? If there’s more, I have no idea where it’s going. BUT VEE: BUTTONS AS SEAGULL ON THE GR- Fine. It’s time.)

Let’s talk about Izzy Hands.

Izzy manages more healing than anyone else this season. He reaches his lowest point, suicidal in the bowels of a ship that’s become a prison (very much in contrast to Ed’s suicidal low). The person he loves most in the world has shredded him physically and emotionally (and if you’re in the camp that thinks Izzy deserves the abuse that Ed gave to him, I would really like you to sit quietly with yourself and ask why you think there is ever anything anyone can do to deserve that treatment). He’s low, he shoots Ed to protect everyone, and then seems to plan to drink himself to death, mourning his losses.

And then another beautiful moment! The crew move past their own pain to help him. They work together for the first time and it’s to give Izzy mobility back. He treasures it. He cries over it. He uses that kindness extended to him to reach a new understanding of Stede and help him succeed, doing the work to make real amends. He sings in drag, he’s vulnerable and beautiful, celebrating the side of himself that he must’ve loathed in the first season. He’s an elder queer man, coming into himself.

He never gets an apology though. (‘Sorry about your leg’ without eye contact is not an apology. There is no responsibility taking, no acknowledgement of the weeks of torture that came with it.) Izzy also never really has an honest conversation with anyone about what it means that the man he loves punished him so severely for the crime of trying to protect the crew (yes, lest we forget, Izzy lost his leg because he was trying to keep Ed from re-traumatizing the crew and himself).

Izzy does all this work, but even he’s not allowed to take it out of the box. It’s a shark, not Ed. Ed is just ‘complicated’ (the language of abuse here is so upsetting and I think not even intentional).

And then he dies. His last act? To apologize to the man who tortured him and shot at him. To have done all this work, to take on all the blame. And then die.

In a rom com.

This show ends in a profoundly unfunny moment of telling the audience: this is the one character that did the work, that made amends, that tried his hardest to accept the parts of himself that he had a hard time embracing and formerly embittered him. He’s fully accepted his queerness and turned it into beautiful music. He’s disabled, and he worked hard to accept that. The man he loves will never love him back, so he worked hard to make Stede able to meet Ed on an even playing field. The Giving Tree gave up its limbs and its trunk, and it’s not even allowed to be a stump to sit on.

Kill the queer elder, who has managed to figure out how to live and in his own way how to heal. Kill him before he manages to teach anyone else how to meaningfully move forward (he almost gets it with Lucius, almost, but it’s meant to be rule of three, you know. Cigarette..shark…and then…and then fuck it, Lucius doesn’t even get to say a word at his funeral).

The message of this season again and again is that there is no healing, just moving forward. Like a shark. Like a bird that never lands.

That is not a kind show.

Season two is not a kind season.

It splinters people up and jams them back together without purpose or reason. It tells everyone who experiences pain that they should shove it in a box and not deal with it. No one who really needs one gets an apology of any sincerity. No one puts in the work to gain forgiveness. (Ed wearing a onesie is not The Work. Ed fixing a door is not The Work. Ed broke people that the show wants us to care about. Ed never does the work of making those amends. He fires off a Notes app apology at best. After all, it’s what he told himself via Hornigold in the gravy basket: you move on or you blow your brains out! Good thing he took his own advice and therefore had to change nothing to get his just rewards.

I would’ve taken just fifteen minutes of Ed trying to actually make amends. It could’ve been hilarious! Imagine awkward Ed trying to dance around what he’s doing with Jim and the two of them having a knife throwing competition about it. Or him and Frenchie attempting to make music together, writing a song about the raids they went on! It’s not just the crew robbed of their healing because of this, it’s Ed himself. He never meaningfully changes or makes amends. How is he any different at the end of the finale then he is standing on the edge of that cliff with Hornigold? He hasn’t moved on, he hasn’t healed. He tried one thing (fishing) that doesn’t fucking work and then he runs right back.

No one leaves this season better than they went into it. They’ve lost an elder queer, they’ve lost their joyous and queer polyamory, they’ve lost a chance for meaningful reconciliation with Ed and Ed lost any chance of looking like he gave shit if they did. Stede grows enough to accept the crew’s beliefs as important and then leaves them behind without a care.

Izzy gets a beautiful speech about piracy being larger than yourself. Ed and Stede, within twenty minutes of that speech, leave piracy. They are incapable of giving themselves to something bigger, apparently. They haven’t learned to be a part of a community. They haven’t healed from their childhood trauma or their fresher wounds. They are still just following their own whims.

Zheng’s life work is in tatters, but it’s fine, she has love. Oluwande and Jim aren’t together, but it's fine because they both have dedicated monogamous partners. Lucius was deeply scarred by what happened, never recovers much of his first season personality, but hey he got-well it’s not married exactly- but you know good enough!

Frenchie, who has a box forever locked in his head, is captain. Because the key to success is to lock it all in a box and never open it. What a message. What a show. Conceal, don’t feel. Smile because it’s a happy ending. Don’t mourn the dead, don’t try to tell people what happened to you (they will literally run away or cry too hard to listen and really you’re just bumming them out), and any meaningful change you make is only rewarded with death.

Frenchie is now a pirate captain with a box in his head full of trauma that’s never been opened, leading a crew with more wounds than scars. Wonder how that could turn out? Wonder how many years before he might want to retire and then happen to run across a gentleman pirate. As if no one learned anything at all.

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd spoilers #the strangest message sent #and no idea if it was on purpose #I kind of think it wasn't somehow #but boy howedy did it come across

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knightotoc · 4 months

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I always liked the riddle scene in the Hobbit, but I never knew what it really meant until I read the original just now. The main idea is lost in adaptations because you need to get into their heads. I knew it was a high-stakes version of a kids' game and a mythology/fairytale reference, but it still seemed pretty random and hard to believe, since these two are the last characters you'd put in a battle of wits.

But the scene is actually about how people's environments shape the way they think. Bilbo and Gollum are both so flustered that they can only think of what are, to them, very easy riddles. They keep feeling ashamed that they can't think of something harder, and confident that the other guy will get this immediately. But the other guy is stumped, because his mind works differently, because he lives in the opposite environment.

Solving the riddles isn't actually about being smart, but being empathetic in Bilbo's case and nostalgic in Gollum's. Bilbo is only able to comprehend Gollum's nasty way of thinking because they are in his lair, amongst the dark and fish. Bilbo is repulsed and even unable to guess Gollum's final riddle, only winning by luck (he stutters "I need more time" so badly it sounds like the correct answer, "time").

Gollum is only able to imagine Bilbo's pleasant answers by thinking back to his past, when he was a normal guy who lived with his grandmother near flowers, eggs, and cats. In this book, he isn't confirmed to be a former hobbit, but the parallel becomes more tragic with this retroactive backstory. Gollum indirectly tells Bilbo that time is the only thing that separates them, and Bilbo does not understand this. If Bilbo had the "more time" he requests, hundreds of years here in the dark, he would become like Gollum, wisdom at a terrible price.

The main theme of The Silmarillion is how immortality affects people. Elves are fated to live forever in the undying lands of Valinor. Humans instead have the "Gift of Ilúvatar," the great mystery of an unknown afterlife. Elves are counterintuitively jealous of this gift, since death allows humans to escape the music of Arda, the fate which defines all creation.

Bilbo and Gollum, who were so different in life that they could barely follow each other's thoughts, also end up with the opposite deaths. The elves take Bilbo to Valinor, while Gollum goes to the mysterious afterlife of the other unchosen mortals. (At least two elves, Lúthien and Arwen, chose this fate for themselves out of love for a guy. But generally this is the unchosen/fate defying route for souls to go.)

So during their first meeting, Gollum is the one who understands the destructive power of time. But in the long term, Bilbo will come to understand time as an endless font of wisdom and peace, since nothing can be destroyed in Valinor. We don't know how or even if the mortal afterlife experiences time; if Gollum's pessimistic definition would hold true, or if that, too, would eventually change.

#the hobbit #gollum #bilbo #lord of the rings #the silmarillion #tolkien

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wen-kexing-apologist · 17 days

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Parallels in Unknown Episode 9

God I love the physicality in this show.

I will preface by saying once more that Kurt is doing a great job in his role as Yuan, especially lately with all the pushing and prodding Yuan has been doing to Qian, but I once again find myself having to highlight the masterful performance of Chris Chiu.

Wei Qian is a very tense and quiet character in a show that uses voice overs sparingly. This means that Chris has a very difficult job in conveying Qian’s inner monologue through body language alone. Without uttering a word we know what Qian is thinking; what he’s feeling; we understand the depth, the weight of his care for the people he loves.

For Episode 9, I want to talk about parallels. Parallels and how effectively Unknown is able to use them to bring maximum emotional devastation:

gif by @ueasking

We open with a flashback to Lili and Yuan as kids, to Lili trying to get out of going to school because she is worried the world is going to end. We open with a line from Qian:

“Even if the world comes down, I’ll hold it up.”

Y’all. That line hit me like a 16 wheeler, holy fuck. This is the summary of Qian’s life, of his goals, of his struggle. Qian’s never had the luxury to live in a world that wasn’t falling apart. But he’s spared Yuan and Lili (especially Lili) from the trauma and the abuse and the pain he has suffered. He is already holding everyone’s worlds together, and that line struck me as the deepest and most beautiful profession of love. And of course, because he is acting as a parent to these kids he has to follow it with an empty threat.

The kids head off to school, but before the door closes behind Yuan he turns around, he looks Qian right in the eye and he says

“Ge, if the world comes down, we’ll hold it up together.”

gif by @ueasking

Double homicide. A perfect expression of Yuan’s devotion to Qian, Qian who very rarely experiences reciprocity. Qian spent a large portion of his life being uplifted and supported by the people around him: Le-ge, San Pang and his family, Xiong this is true, but for Qian most of those feel like or literally are debts to be repaid. He said it to Le-ge in this episode “I will pay you back everything I owe”, in Episode 1, Qian tells San Pang he’ll pay him back when San Pang covers his bills, Xiong helped kick start Qian’s career, but he’s in business with Xiong now so Qian’s success is Xiong’s success. Yuan is the only person to whom Qian owes nothing, and Yuan is the only person who is trying to care for him back without being owed.

Because this show has been looping in my head, I’ve been thinking a lot about trauma. The first scene we see of Qian and Yuan together, Yuan holds out a metal pipe in defense and Qian has an immediate flashback to his own childhood and the abuse he had suffered. Qian immediately establishes a connection to Yuan that he never will with Lili because Qian was incredibly successful in shielding Lili from the harshness of the world. We don’t see the trauma Yuan must have experienced as a kid, but we get the snippets, the ties in to Qian’s experiences, the illness, the hunger. Yuan has suffered, and Qian has saved him, and Yuan understands the burden that comes with care. Yuan is devoted to Qian, Yuan does not want Qian to hold everything he’s carrying all by himself.

Yuan has always been like this, and will always be like this for Qian.

Despite the overarching structural problems I had with this episode, I do think there was a strong thematic thread in paralleling space and physical touch all the way through.

The Letter

Qian discovers this letter in a box under Yuan’s bed.

“In my life, I’ve been driven by a deviant and sharp obsession”

Qian tenses up, taking in a deep breath, his eyes wandering away from the page. He literally has to mentally prepare himself to continue reading Yuan’s words

“Looking back, there’s nothing else. But if my life were to cease all of a sudden-” Qian barely moves his head to finish reading, instead just casts his eyes downward.

“-not seeing you one last time would be my greatest regret”

Qian moves the paper downward, and he looks away. Legitimately, Qian looks at that letter for as short a time as he physically possibly can.

I’m mentioning the letter because the face that Qian makes when he is reading it is a recurring character throughout this entire episode. Because we see that face again almost immediately when Qian is at H.O.T.. That man is fully dissociating in his meeting, his mind is not at work at all. He is a statue sitting there with exactly the same face he was making when he read the first few words of Yuan’s letter. And it is not until everyone else but San Pang has walked away that he breaks from that thought paralysis and turns to get San Pang’s opinion. Dissatisfied with San Pang’s response and knowing that Yuan was hiding something from him and has not responded to his phone calls, Qian seeks additional answers.

Rescuing Yuan

In Episode 1, Qian figures out Yuan is in trouble because he gets a phone call from Yuan’s teacher saying that Yuan applied for a leave of absence, he freaks out and goes straight to the pool hall where he barges in yelling and fighting his way to Le’s door. The second he gets in the room, he barrels straight towards Hu and grabs him by the collar. Qian has to be held back by multiple people in order to stop him from laying waste to everyone there, and the second Le-ge tells his people to let Qian go, Qian starts running straight to Le to fight him and has to be held back once more.

While Qian is being detained, he is looking around wildly, face a perfect picture of rage and desperation. When Yuan is brought out and Qian is released, he runs straight to Yuan and pulls him in to a hug and they start to walk away, arms linked to each other’s backs in support and connection.

And it sticks as such a vivid memory in my head that I had a visceral reaction to seeing how Qian has changed over time. Because in Episode 9 he knows something is wrong, you can see the worry behind his eyes when he tells San Pang that Yuan hasn’t answered his phone. And San Pang leaves him sitting there, still mulling over everything. When Qian enters the restaurant to talk to Le he appears calm (though there is very clearly a storm brewing inside him), he enters slowly. He is tense, and frustrated, and trying to contain it all. He is trying to keep himself calm. This is a very political conversation. He pours beer for Le-ge, he drinks with him, but you can feel it in the way that Qian sits that his every thought is like a clock just ticking away until something bad happens to Yuan.

“Le-ge can I ask a favor of you?”

“What favor?”

“Help me find Yuan,”

“Are you asking me to help you find him or hand him back?” Le asks bemused and we get a jaw twitch from Wei Qian. Qian is seething, but he knows how Le operates and he’s older and wiser now so he can’t just enter the scene beelining towards Le with his fist ready for a face. As a child he was willing to fight Le, as an adult he has recognized Le more as an unfortunate ally who has all the power. Le and Qian roll up to the scene and we get a far more familiar Qian the second he exits the car and starts sprinting towards Yuan and immediately decks Hu right in the face to get him away from Yuan.

Again he tries to fight everyone that comes between them, again he is detained, being held back by multiple people, again Le and Hu fight while Qian is waiting to be released so he can run to Yuan. Again Le puts an ultimatum on their freedom, before it was a boxing match, now it is Russian Roulette.

When they are set free, Qian immediately runs to Yuan and grabs him like he did when they were running away. The way he looks at everyone when he has Yuan in his arms is exactly the same way he looked at everyone when he was reunited with Yuan the first time Yuan was taken from him by the gang.

It’s all the same, the way they walk out together, the way they are made to pause, the way Qian’s face is snarling when he’s trapped. It’s all there.

Russian Roulette

Now, we are all about reciprocity here so we get another really tragic parallel between the boxing scene in Episode 1 and the Russian Roulette scene in Episode 9.

In Episode 1, it is Qian that is made to play Le’s game alone: win three boxing matches, he and Yuan get to leave the gang. But Le doesn’t let Yuan off scot-free here either, forcing him to stand there and watch Qian get beat to shit over and over and over again for Yuan’s sake. And we get Yuan being the one to call out to Qian.

“Ge, stop fighting, let’s go home!” Yuan yells, and when Qian wins we see Yuan wiping tears away, and then screaming after Qian when his opponent sneaks up behind him. When Qian and Yuan are alone together after the fight, Yuan is crying and when Qian tells him not to cry he says:

“Sorry. You wouldn’t have been in this fight if it hadn’t been for me,” which in this case is true for reasons outside of Yuan’s control. The things Qian has done for Le are informed by the care he has for Lili and Yuan, but Yuan is not himself the cause of the problem.

In Episode 9 however….he walks right into the gang as if that is going to do anything, and has to be rescued by Qian. This time, though Yuan does not (or at least has yet to) say it, Qian would not have been in this fight with Hu and the rest of the gangsters if it wasn’t for Yuan.

Similarly to Episode 1, Le-ge gives an ultimatum to their release, Russian Roulette. Where before we had three boxing matches, now we have three bullet chambers. And Yuan is old enough to protect Qian now, so Yuan volunteers to go first, and we get a role reversal. Before, Yuan had to watch, crying, as Qian fought and bled. Now, Qian is the one sobbing, having to watch Yuan get a gun to the head. Yuan looks at him and mouths “wo ai ni” and Qian immediately closes his eyes because cannot look at Yuan when the trigger is pulled, just as Yuan tried to look away when Qian was getting his skull bashed in in the boxing ring.

Yuan gets tortured right back though when it is Qian’s turn to have the trigger pulled, all we hear over the background music is this desperate and broken pleading scream from Yuan to let Qian go. When the game is over and Qian is released he runs straight to Yuan and pulls him up stating “Let’s go home, we’re going home,” another direct parallel to Episode 1.

THE HUG

Alright, my favorite devastating blow of the evening, the hug in Episode 9 and how it parallels the hug in Episode 1. Because there are two levels to this:

photo of the photobook that @thisonelikesaliens was kind enough to send me. gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

The hug that Episode 9 more explicitly parallels, in my mind, is the hug that Qian gives Yuan right when they are reunited. He has that boy tucked in his arms, and is holding the back of Yuan’s head with his hand. It’s a very quick moment, but the intensity of Qian’s motion, the strength of his hug, the emotional core of that hug is evident in just the briefest of seconds and matches the intensity, the strength, and the emotional core of the hug in Episode 9.

gif by @ueasking

Then you get a secondary parallel with the hug between Qian and Yuan after the boxing match, though it’s not as much of a 1:1 visual as the brief hug above. This is mostly in the changing heights, Yuan and Qian are on relatively the same level here. And you get the hand to the back of the head as a comforting thing which Qian is also doing to Yuan in today’s hug.

In Episode 9, they are walking back home, it is dark, it is quiet. Qian stops dead in his tracks, the same look on his face as when he read the letter. He turns to face Yuan and clenches his fist because he needs that extra strength, it is taking everything in him to follow through on what comes next and then he just grabs Yuan and pulls him into a hug that parallels the hug they shared when Yuan was younger. Qian hugs Yuan like he is that small, scared boy even though Qian is now so much shorter than Yuan and Yuan is so much braver than he used to be.

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

But unlike the hugs in Episode 1, I don’t think this one is intended to comfort Yuan. I think this time, it is Qian reaching out to Yuan for his own comfort. Because in Episode 1 it is Yuan who cries in to the forehead touch, in Episode 9 it is Qian who burrows his face into Yuan’s neck as hard as he can while his face contorts in sobs. This is not necessarily a parallel, but it is the moment of the episode that ruined my life so I needed to make sure that I took you all down with me with a reminder of this scene and a gif. Oh also, they hug in front of a giant pile of wood like they do with the forehead touch in Episode 1 because they HATE US.

Fishing Conversation v. Letter Conversation

The two big conversations that Qian and Yuan have this episode are really interesting to me because of how they play with space. When Yuan and Qian are out fishing together, Yuan places himself directly in front of, directly next to Qian for the whole length of the conversation where he asks Qian his feelings. Here they are with allllll this space around them, the water, the earth, the air they can sit wherever, they can stand wherever, they can exist wherever they want and they sit half a breadth apart.

“Four years ago you turned and left, four years later we’re back here. This is enough.” Yuan states

“Can you stop staring at me then?” Qian asks.

gifs by @ueasking

And that in itself is a parallel to Episode 6 and Yuan begging, pleading, clutching at Qian’s knee for him to look at him. Qian could not look Yuan in the eye from the second Yuan told him he was suffering until the moment he returned home, and now Yuan refuses to break eye contact. (And as an aside, it is a very good indication that Qian is warming up to Yuan’s feelings because he says this in a very light, almost joking way. And he follows it with an empty threat, like the empty threat he gave to Lili when she said she didn’t want to go to school, one that Yuan calls him on immediately.) Yuan moves back to his seat, but even then he does not keep any physical distance from Qian, immediately reaching over to grab Qian’s rod ;-)

At the end of the episode, we get a very differently blocked conversation. It starts with the camera focused on Qian as he ices the back of his head, a place we know has caused him continual problems since the boxing match. Yuan knocks before he enters (which he did for the first time last episode), gives Qian a glass of milk (which they’ve definitely done in this show before), and in response Qian (rightfully imo) yells at Wei Zhiyuan for being dumb, then confronts him with the letter.

“What is the meaning of this?” Qian asks, and it’s the first time he looks at Yuan in the exchange and Yuan takes it, turns around, and walks away without a word. Yuan puts the letter away and goes to sit on a chair in his room, looking across the hallway at Qian. And this is one of my favorite parallels in the episode, because of what it is doing with distance.

gif by @ueasking

Earlier in the episode Yuan and Qian were fishing together and engaging in very intense conversation about their feelings and their relationship to one another (or rather, Qian was undergoing an interrogation about his feelings and hearing once more Yuan’s feelings for him). With all that wide open space at the river they were essentially joined at the hip the entire time. But here, when there is another very intense conversation about to happen- one where Yuan is breaking some news to Qian that is almost guaranteed to make him feel all the more guilty for sending Yuan away and going no-contact -there is as much space between them as possible.

So despite the fact that they are in their house, in a much smaller space than the river, despite the fact that they started the conversation in Wei Qian’s room, one of the few places Qian has been vulnerable in front of his family (especially when intoxicated, triggered, or experiencing symptoms of his chronic health condition), one of the few places that Qian has allowed Yuan to be completely carefree, cuddly, and affectionate with him (even sharing a bed), this space Qian has fought tooth and nail to make safe for his family, Yuan does not tarnish it by being in the room with him for the conversation.

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

No, instead Qian will get this information with as much physical and emotional distance between them as Yuan can muster.

“...some people started writing their last words” causes Qian to break eye contact with Yuan, but his posture, his breathing, all the rest of his physicality remains the same. Until…

“Everything I own is yours, whether you want it or not,”

That is what breaks Qian. Throughout the conversation as he is hearing about Yuan getting trapped, as he is hearing about Yuan thinking he was going to die, he is stoic, he is stone faced, the most movement you see from him is his eyes looking Yuan up and down in concern and his breath getting slightly quicker with each word, the turn of his head. But here he closes his eyes, he looks down at the ground, he releases his breath. It hits him so hard, the knowledge that he could have sent Yuan away and never seen him again, he sent Yuan away and Yuan could have died, where Qian was not around to protect him.

It is just such a good mirror to the fishing scene, I love it so much.

#unknown the series #unknown #taiwanese bl #qian x yuan #unknown bl #unknown episode 9 #unknown meta #unknown analysis #unknown the series meta #unknown the series analysis #wka long post

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 7 months

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One thing I do like about TOTJ's take on Dooku's fall is that it really highlights that the Dark Side makes you absolutely masochistic. (Mega long post ahead).

One thing TOTJ establishes is that Qui-Gon's death is absolutely on Dooku (no matter if the show itself doesn't seem to be aware of it).

His tone is concerned and his attitude sympathetic and supportive, but he knows. He knows it's a Sith Lord (he even knows Maul's name). He knows Qui-Gon almost died and is marching right into another trap, but he asks questions anyway and affects ignorance.

"I've been warning them about the coming darkness for years," he says, "never to be taken seriously." Using the Council's skepticism as an occasion to complain about how they didn't believe him while lying by omission is a great case of that hypocrisy Dooku loves denouncing in others. Dooku would rather Qui-Gon share his disillusionment with the Jedi than actually do anything to help Qui-Gon. The Council don't believe him? Okay, Dooku, but YOU DO. You can just tell him what's going on.

But he doesn't.

On some level, Dooku has to be aware of what's about to happen. Qui-Gon is walking into grave danger, and Dooku's response to that - before it happens, when there is still time to stop it - is to put the blame on the people who don't know shit while not doing shit himself. (Why can't Dooku be there to protect Qui-Gon, other than because he's already slavishly loyal to Sidious' plans?)

And this moment puts every subsequent action of Dooku's throughout the Prequels in perspective - particularly his relationships with Obi-Wan, Ventress and Yoda.

Dooku is a glutton for punishment.

I've written here about why I think the 'Box' from TCW 4x17 is meant to parallel Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's mission on Naboo. The dioxis, ventilation shafts, the catwalks and lightsabers, the ray shields, the fire pit... Dooku's idea of a test to find the best mercenaries around is to have them survive what killed Qui-Gon (what he allowed to happen).

During the challenge, it's pretty obvious he starts to suspect Hardeen is Obi-Wan.

Or at the very least, he's taking an interest in the man who supposedly killed Qui-Gon's own apprentice - Dooku's spiritual grandson (see RotS novelization), whom he's been trying very hard to either recruit or kill himself. And what does he do with that interest? Tries to push "Hardeen" to kill Eval in anger.

Dooku, who still mourns the Padawan he knowingly let walk away to his death, watches a pantomime of his Padawan's death, while putting in mortal danger all he has left of said apprentice. If he knows Hardeen is Obi-Wan (and it's pretty obvious that he does), he tries to get Obi-Wan to Fall (or potentially die) in a scenario reenacting Qui-Gon's death. If he doesn't know for sure, then he's encouraging his all but grandson's killer to win the tournament because he admires him (for killing someone Dooku wanted by his side).

Whatever the outcome, Dooku chooses to relive his guilt and chooses to make the same choice to kill his loved one all over again, even though we know he hates that he made this choice:

He misses Qui-Gon and needs him but tries to kill or destroy Obi-Wan, whom he needs and wants by his side. (I haven't counted just how many time he does try killing Obi-Wan in TCW while still expressing his indefectible admiration for him - it's frequent, the Box just stands out to me as one of the most noteworthy occasions.)

And he keeps doing stuff like that!! He keeps choosing the path that causes him the most pain. He does it with Sifo-Dyas, he does it with Yaddle, he does it with Yoda and he does it with Ventress.

Just look at him confronting Sidious about Qui-Gon's death:

He KNOWS following Sidious got Qui-Gon murdered and he KNOWS Sidious will continue to kill or order him to kill people close to him. And yet he's quick to reassure Sidious that this doesn't change anything. Securing his position with Sidious matters more than his rage and grief. The ONLY WAY this behavior makes sense is if Dooku is fully aware that he had a choice about Qui-Gon's fate, and decides that this is the path he's on now: Sidious might make him kill everyone he cares about, but he's going to do it. Every time, things will play out the same.

Sidious tells him to kill Ventress, his new apprentice? Sure, why not!

(And it's not even out of true loyalty for Sidious, because he constantly tries to double-cross him later on. It's pure self-destruction:)

He hates it, Sidious promises him more of it, and he goes along with it!

This is why Yaddle's attempts at bringing him back don't work, in my opinion:

"Whatever lies he's told you, whatever you have done, you can make up for it now by bringing him to justice." This might convince a man who is looking for atonement, except Dooku isn't. He is looking for punishment.

Killing or harming those close to him leaves him broken, furious or in pain? He'll just keep doing it.

Sidious offers him nothing more than agonizing slavery? He'll keep on kneeling.

That's when Yaddle literally offers him the Light - the light that is so much more powerful than the Dark that it has Sidious cowering, the light that can save him if he wants - Dooku just strikes her down, even though he was heartbroken over thinking he had killed her just a moment ago.

He chooses to kill her, regrets it and hates himself for it, and chooses to kill her again. HE KEEPS MAKING THE CHOICE THAT HE KNOWS WILL HURT.

His remedy to guilt is to pick a shovel, because by God if he hasn't hit rock bottom yet he's going to dig!

#long post #meta #dooku #darth sidious #obi-wan kenobi #qui-gon jinn #yoda #yaddle #tales of the jedi #count dooku

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fuckyeahisawthat · 9 months

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If you see Good Omens s2 as a bridge between the end of s1 and a s3 plot that, it seems, will revolve around [spoilers below]

Aziraphale and the second coming (in a parallel to s1 being about Crowley and the Antichrist) then a lot of things make sense, and actually I think this is one of the only routes they could have taken that would seem remotely plausible.

Because how the fuck do you get Aziraphale back in Heaven after the events of s1? Both you (a writer who wrote s1 as a self-contained adaptation of an existing work, having no idea if there would be future seasons) and you (Heaven within the world of the story).

In the book verse, I could see this playing out as a sort of “you thought you were happily retired and then they pulled you back in for one last job” situation, and I think that could have worked. Because book Heaven and Hell seem to end the story basically agreeing to forget Aziraphale and Crowley’s numbers out of sheer embarrassment, and that works in the world of the book because Heaven, in particular, seems to forget Aziraphale exists at least 80% of the time anyway. Book Heaven is mostly notable for its absence. We recognize their hypocrisy in claiming to be the good guys while mostly doing the exact same shit as Hell with better PR, but in the book Hell seems like the side that’s more dangerous and actively intrusive in Crowley’s life.

But TV Heaven and Hell are terrifyingly, oppressively present in Aziraphale and Crowley’s lives, and both of them very recently (in immortal being terms) tried to execute their respective agents for treason, and still don’t understand why they failed. This raises the stakes and the threat to their relationship enormously, which works great in a television drama where their relationship is much more of a focus than it is in the book. But it also makes it much more difficult to imagine either of them going back to their respective sides after the events of s1. They made that choice already.

So what do you (writer now trying to solve this problem for s2 and potentially s3) and you (Heaven, trying to come up with a way that Aziraphale would walk back into his former prison willingly) do?

You offer Aziraphale the one thing he can’t refuse, the thing he still doesn’t have, even now after Armageddidn’t and surviving the trials and 4 (?) years of living more or less openly with Crowley around. You offer him safety. Safety for himself and Crowley, together.

We know it’s a trap. We know what Heaven is offering is not safety, but control. But Aziraphale hasn’t gotten there yet. We understand why Crowley sees it as a rejection and an insult. But to Aziraphale it’s an offer better than he ever thought was possible to receive.

He thought, all of s1, that he would have to choose between following Heaven’s orders and saving the world and his relationship with Crowley. And he made his choice. Now someone is telling him he can have both? Love and acceptance from Heaven for him and Crowley, and the power to make things better? And when he realizes Crowley won’t come with him…well, maybe at least from Heaven he will still be able to protect him, even if he’s not by his side.

And you know what? I bet, in the short term, this is going to only make him double down on his “it was just a few bad angels” justification for the way Heaven behaved. Because this offer is coming from the literal voice of God. Maybe it even reinforces the idea that God didn’t want Armageddon to happen at all, that Aziraphale and Crowley and Adam and the Them actually were doing her will by stopping it. Because now Aziraphale is being invited back in, with more authority than he ever had before. And they invited Crowley (who he always believed was Good) back in too.

He doesn’t get it yet, that Crowley is right. That you can’t reform Heaven from the inside, because it is not and never was the good side. Because there is no good side.

Aziraphale hasn’t figured that out yet. But he will.

#good omens #good omens s2 #good omens s2 spoilers #aziraphale #heaven

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seriousbrat · 3 months

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this says a lot about Snape's character development for me. There are many parallels drawn throughout the series between Harry and Snape; obviously, they're very different characters but there are similarities too.

I think here Snape is talking about himself. The teenaged Snape we see in the Pensieve is very much like this- emotional, heart on his sleeve, easily provoked, a definite wallower in sad memories... weak. Adult Snape, though he retains some of these characteristics that do emerge in stressful moments (in PoA we see how angrily he reacts to Sirius's escape, for instance) on the whole is a great deal more thoughtful, reserved, calculating, measured.

I think that Snape at some point had to force himself to become this. I think he actually relates to Harry here, and is giving him advice based on personal experience. In my fic he begins to learn to control his emotions partially out of a desire to protect Lily; he's fully aware that she's his weakness (or really, his strength, viewed a different way) and that openly displaying any sort of emotion towards her at all makes her vulnerable to the likes of Avery and Mulciber, who will have the perfect weapon to get to him if they want to.

Severus doesn't have the advantages of his peers, he's not pureblood, he wasn't born into money. If he wants to join the Death Eaters and rise in their ranks, he needs to be subtle, cunning, careful. he can't afford to be careless and entitled like mulciber or bellatrix or even sirius. what he's got to offer isn't his name or his money, it's his sheer talent and cleverness. moving on:

When Voldemort decides to go after Lily this becomes even more important. Imo the reason why Voldemort believes that Snape only "desired" Lily is because that's what Snape told him. He lied to Voldemort's face and told him something probably disgusting tbh because that's the only way Voldemort would accept it and agree, if it was a selfish, callous request that Voldemort could understand. We can see evidence of this here:

Asking Voldemort to spare a mudblood because he was in love with her would likely not have gone over well- and as we know, Voldemort actually bore his request in mind, though obv didn't give enough of a fuck about Snape to follow through. Because although asking voldemort to spare her must have taken serious balls, Snape's mistake here was trusting someone inherently selfish to do something selfless for him.

Clearly he immediately realises this and goes to Dumbledore, which is when controlling his emotions becomes of paramount importance, because now he's working against perhaps the most highly accomplished legilimens of all time.

It's also interesting to me that Snape in this conversation is probably the character who is most forthright and informative with Harry in the whole of OotP until Dumbledore at the end; Harry actually learns a lot in this conversation. And Snape also kind of gives him credit which is interesting too:

like for Snape that's high praise lmao. A shame because if he wasn't so bitter (i.e. didn't wear his heart on his sleeve so much around harry) then he might have actually been pretty helpful to Harry and a decent teacher. Again, during the Occlumency lessons his unrestrained emotion brought up by memories of James is a hindrance. He defies Dumbledore's orders to teach Harry Occlumency because of his emotional response to SWM, as well as honestly doing kind of a shit job before that (by not being empathetic and teaching Harry in a way that would've been actually productive.)

At this point Dumbledore believes that Harry learning Occlumency and controlling his emotions is of vital importance; he turns out to be wrong about this. In Harry's case, it turns out to be his emotional nature that saves him- unlike Snape, who is the opposite. Snape's journey is about learning that some things are more important than his selfish need to give into his own emotions.

By DH Snape's learned this lesson fully; his old hatred for James doesn't stop him from doing what has to be done, from giving Harry the tools he needs. Even in the final moments of his life, he can look past James and see Lily in Harry- and, by giving Harry the information that leads to his self-sacrifice, he can let her go.

#sorry if this is kind of incoherent lmao its late #but this occlumency scene is so good tbh. the conversation between them is rly interesting #severus snape #meta #honestly the way snape views harry must be so complex and contradictory like no wonder he cant get a grip when harrys around lol #SORRY this got so long rip #severus

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freuleinanna · 7 months

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I'm still confused about Verna.. I thought she was a demon?? Because why would Death be going around making a bunch of deals with people? After Verna told Pym she decided to go "topside" I thought she was some kind of crossroads demon since it implies she came from below (hell)

Oh! I feel you, and I struggled with that a lot too. She does seem a lot like a demon. I'm not saying I'm 100% correct in my thinking either, but here's why I personally think she's Death. Kind of a long post, sorry. I hope I make myself clear, but feel free to follow up!

So, Verna. An anagram for Raven, that much is established. Ravens are wonderful - symmetrical even - creatures. Bringers of death in a wide understanding. Bringers of good luck in many cultures. The duality is amazing. To me, that also leans majorly into the theme of death being a concept of duality: an enemy for some, a friend for others. Each greets her differently. I'm not talking about the characters here, but people in general.

There's a proverb I came across a while ago that reads 'Death is a great leveller'. Meaning, everyone's equal before her. You have no leverage or buffer against death, and it doesn't matter if you're poor or blindly, feverishly, grotesquely rich (like our folks here). Everyone pays the last bill. For everyone, there's a day of reckoning. It's a major theme with the show, at least. Verna also says 'Buy now, pay the bill later' - although it can still read very demonic, I agree.

She's obviously ancient, and I was leaning toward the demon theory based on all of her talking. Yet - she also keeps ranting about Egypt and pyramids and Cleopatras and such. What's the one thing with Egyptians everyone knows of? They honored death. Death may have been a bigger part of their lives than life itself. The Usher Twins' obssession with all things Egyptian, antiquities, jewelry, swords and such, plays a nice parallel here too, because they're just collectors. They have no grain of honor for the real thing, for what these things are tied to. Kind of a nice thought, I guess.

Anyway, back to Verna. She says on multiple occasions how intrigued she is with us, 'adorable little things'. She saw the pyramids, the expeditions, and she wanted to see what else we do, she wanted to see what Roderick and Madeline will do (in her own words). It's all an experiment to her. She makes an offer just to see what we, people, do.

Here's where my beef with a demon theory comes in. No demonic creature I could think of, be it an actual demon, a trickster, or something else, is that sincerely intrigued. Something something death loving life something something.

Demons, in my understanding, are most interested in winning the deal. They come up with incredible challenges, they enjoy torture, emotional or physical, they never let anyone win. Verna has never once expressed this. Quite the opposite. She gives everyone a chance to step back. Even when the ink has dried and everything's decided, each Usher sibling is conditioned to make a choice: push forward, or step back. Neither of them steps back. Neither of them takes a long hard look at themselves (except Tamerlane, both literally haha and figuratively, as she's the only one to have realized how lost she was in her way - just at the end, when it didn't really matter anymore, but still). Verna is kind to those she takes (sincere pet names, regrets of having to do it this way, making sure they know it's not personal, etc). She grieves with them, just before. Grieving - 'The Raven' being about an expression of grief and trauma - ravens as synonyms for death... you get the gist. Oh! Except Freddie - cause Freddie struck a cord. Infuriated her. So he doesn't get an expressed choice. And he would've blown it like coke anyway, so meh.

And then Arthur Pym. Oh, Arthur Pym. I honestly couldn't imagine a demon kneeling and thanking someone who's refused them.

About Arthur Pym, by the way. It's the one story I hadn't reread, and I should have, it turns out! haha Anyway, a few notes about his travels:

In the story, Arthur Pym is expressedly afraid of white color (North Pole, yada yada, white being the absense of colors/life, and the absense of life is death).

Verna enumerates the moments she witnessed of his travels. Someone getting left in Sahara. Someone getting shot in the Arctic. Something bad that was done to an Inuit woman. Why would she follow Arthur so closely? She didn't know him, he wasn't her favorite. I think it's because she came to collect those deaths. If she is death, she would've been exactly there, where people died. She would have also seen Arthur not partaking.

Aaaaaaaand it makes her 'You saw me' line sound better, because he had sure seen death along his travels.

I think the part about a place of out-of-time, out-of-space creatures and hollow Earth was a bit unnecessary, BUT I can try and tie it in this way:

It showed us how Arthur might have coped with what he saw, and he 'saw a lot', even in his 70s it's difficult for him to recall, and it made him think of humanity as a virus, literally;

He might have thought up that ethereal realm simply because he was in an expedition? Exhaustive conditions for both body and spirit? Traumatic experiences? If he saw Death, he might have cloaked it in his mind to cope with it, thus came his stories;

Verna going 'topside' may just mean that she had to go take a look herself, actually be willingly present for the events - to see the brave little humans conquer the earth. 'Topside', as in, 'visible, present, participating'. If Death exists, I doubt it bothers with our boring human realm but lives downunder, among all threads that weave the world.

So that's that on Arthur Pym.

A few other references my mind is too exhausted to tie in nicely:

Death takes Lenore. THE Lenore from 'The Raven' (mostly) and 'Lenore' (secondary). That happened. Also, death talking to a child of life? Regretting having to take her? Not very demonic of dear ol' Verna, in my opinion.

Her mourning veil, her last toasts to the Ushers at the cemetery? Demons don't tend to grieve their players. Demons don't respect and love them enough, and 'what is grief, if not love persevering'?

Death is the last threshold. Before death, we look upon our legacy (major theme with the show), we remember our losses and loves (Annabel Lee!!!!! love the poem, brilliantly done), we get heavy with regrets. We face death as an enemy & fight, like Madeline did. As a friend, like Arthur did. We confess, like Roderick did. All that is too significant to me overall.

And the last thing. It's Edgar Allan Poe. The whole Death tribute is a giant, incredible, thought-through-to-the-bits hommage to his literature where Death, figuratively and literally, takes the throne.

I hope I managed to express myself alright there. Thanks if you read it through, and as I said before, feel free to follow up or elaborate on some ideas. There are oceans to discuss. <3

#tore a few veins typing it out ughhhhh the poetry #asks #long post #the fall of the house of usher #tfothou #tfothou spoilers #tfothou tv #netflix #carla gugino #verna #meta post #the fall of the house of usher spoilers #edgar poe #edgar allan poe

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willescrisis · 23 days

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Wille's Crisis : an essay about Kris (1934) and Young Royals (2021)

While watching Young Royals’ third season, I couldn’t get Karin Boye’s novel Kris out of my head. As a fan of Young Royals that feels very chill and very normal about it, I have hence written a five page brain-dump on how Malin Forst and Wilhelm’s characters and worlds are intertwined. (Small disclamers : I’m quoting Amanda Doxtater’s 2020 english translation of the novel and I’m french-canadian, so english is my second language.)

Who is Karin Boye ?

Karin Boye (1900-1940) was a leading figure in Swedish modernist literature and poetry. In 1920, at the age of 20, she studied one year in Stockholm to become a primary school teacher and after graduation, continued teaching, writing, militant engagement and several years of study in related fields. Among all of her works, the most explicitly autobiographical is her autofictive novel Kris (1934). This powerful novel explores the homosexuality and crisis of religious faith of a young woman named Malin Forst.

Malin Forst & Wilhelm

During her studies in teaching, Karin’s 20-years-old alter-ego Malin goes through an existential crisis. She feels completely paralyzed by her guilt due to her selfish inaction in the face of universal suffering, her lack of trust in institutions (educational, medical, etc.) and, worst of all, her doubts about her relationship with God. Kris also deals with Malin’s relationship to her own sexuality with the meeting of a classmate, Siv, to whom she will become passionately obsessed without ever talking to her.

We meet 16-years-old Wilhelm as a first year student at Hillerska. His failures as a royal figure and his complicated relationships to his loved ones make him feel powerless and guilty. He is thrown off balance by his doubts of the monarchic system, but most importantly, by his doubts of his life’s role model, Erik. Young Royals also deals with Wilhelm’s relationship to his own sexuality with the meeting of a classmate, Simon… Are we seeing the parallels here ?

While Malin’s torments lead her to shut down, Wilhelm screams. But both feel paralysed and don’t know how to exist out of the system they grew up in. And it’s the meeting of a same-sex student that leads them to a freer path.

« I want to see Siv. I want to be where Siv is. »

Previously, Malin considered the fusion of the will of the human with the will of God to be the most important of aspirations. Without this reference point, she has no will nor desire… until she meets another student, Siv. Her simple presence rekindles for the first time in the novel a desire, burning and forbidden: “I want to see Siv. I want to be where Siv is.” … And here is how this whole essay has come to exist. While watching season three, I joked endearingly with my friends about the way that Wille’s only hobby is to be with Simon, but I felt sad for him. Until I understood he’s on the first part of his self-discovery journey. His first true desire that stems from inside of him and wasn’t imposed by the system is “I want to see Simon. I want to be where Simon is.”

Interestingly enough, Siv and Simon both become a new manifestation of something that Malin and Wilhelm have lost. We, the reader, meet Malin when she is ‘grieving’ her old relationship to God and deconstructing her understanding of God as a single entity. Amazed by Siv’s ‘perfection’, Malin raises her to a kind of divine position with great powers. Wilhelm, for his part, feels at home with Simon because of the way he makes Wilhelm’s entire being comes alive, weightless and playful… A feeling of joy, innocence and safety he’s only ever felt with Erik before.

Anxious and desperate, Malin and Wilhelm are latching to their comfort person, making them their whole word in a way that has to change for them to grow up. After realizing Siv’s feeling for a fellow male classmate, Malin is shaken : “Only now could she see that she had embarken upon the false path of mistaking a person for what is highest and most beautiful.” Not only does this quote mirror Wilhelm letting go of his idealised conception of Erik, it is also mirrorring his realisation that Simon is not a perfectly stable and unbreakable anchor on which he can blindly rely on : “I have to take responsibilities for my own problem. I can’t drag him down with me.”

Don’t give it a name

An important part of Malin’s journey is relinquishing the power she gives to words, especially regarding God and her sexuality. Throughout the novel, she refuses to name the emotion she feels for Siv. On the day of her meeting with Siv, Malin thinks: “You, lips, I implore you to clamp so hard upon the unsayable, that not a word slips out to assert its malicious pettiness and obfuscation ! Be still, thoughts, don’t interrupt, for you have no idea what this is ! (...) Don’t give it a name, let it be just as it is, here in my blood and my eyes, life and sap ! The wonder of new creation need not be named.”

Wilhelm’s complicated relationship to words is shown in the way that he shouts his love for Simon from every rooftop, but does not wish to label his sexual orientation. In season three, he says the word queer for the first time and his voice is seeped with discomfort. He is not claiming this word as part of his identity and rather feels constricted by it, probably in the same way that every other label put on him has made him suffocate.

Furthermore, both Malin and Wilhelm wish to express themselves and experience the world, not through the restrictive lens of language, but through the sensory world. In Kris, after seeing Siv for the first time, Malin’s five senses awaken. A dialogue takes place between the sense of sight and hearing, reminding me of the way that Wilhelm and Simon’s intimacy is developped through the gentle touch of noses, the sounds of breathing, the glow of golden light and fingers lingering slightly above the other’s body… ‘Sight’ says “I’m confused. I no longer know whether I am sight or not. I envelop things and follow them as if I were touch, I hold my breath in quiet anticipation as if I were hearing, I breathe in, like one intoxicated, as if I were smell, and I drink in long, deep, draughts as if I were taste. (...) Could I be standing at threshold of some new creation ?” To which ‘hearing’ responds “ (...) Admit it - isn’t revelation through the senses at the same time the revelation of what lies beyond the senses, of what creates the senses, of the limitless feelings of eternal love ? (...)”

Checkmate

Kris’s narration drastically changes points of view in unexpected moments, moving from the pov of human characters to the pov of abstract entities. The two most important are BLACK and WHITE, two sources of cosmic powers playing a chess game whose game board is humanity.

On the one hand, WHITE represents the norm, also illustrated by threats from nature such as stormy and dangerous waters, cold, humidity and darkness, but also under the traits of the dominant society, whose rules and norms protect human beings while maintaining them in a position of submission and obedience. WHITE uses the anxious desire of his pawns (humans) as a weapon to subject them to the norm. And at first, Wille is WHITE’s perfect pawn : an anxious mess who becomes more and more obediant as season three progresses and whose ‘protectors’ are also the ones leading to his demise. Little (most likely accidental) nods to that parralel : Wille looses to Alexander while playing the white pieces in season two and interrupts his conversation with Simon to scream “The water is cold today !” at his guards on their first date.

One the other hand, BLACK is a chaotic power of life associated with desire, burning fire and passion destabilizing the established order. In the context of Kris, the norm is heterosexuality, while fire is the forbidden desire: homosexuality. This parallel is evident when Malin describes in this way the physical sensations caused by Siv’s sight: “There was no holy, burning voice within her. All that burned within her was a thirst for the forbidden after a single look cast in that direction” And based on that, I absolutely refuse to believe that Lisa put the hallway scene after a BONFIRE by accident.

I also don’t think the placement of the chess game during August’s confession to his friends is a coincidence. First, the board is oriented in a way where August sits at the junction between the black and white pieces, showcasing how the character is in a crucial moment in his journey : will he stay in WHITE’s cruches for ever or will he find the strenght to save himself ? And second, August puts a black king on the edge of the table. Not only does it foreshadow that Kronprins Wille is on his way out, it also indicates that it was a rebel and homosexual ‘power’ that guided him in his quest for self-determination, just as it was for Malin Forst.

I natt gick Gud under or how to make the lake scene destroy me even more

The poem in prose I natt gick Gud under (Last night God succumbed) stands out from the other chapters of the novel Kris, as it recounts the most decisive transformation of the main character Malin Forst. BLACK places Malin naked and at peace on the shore of a sea where she throws the words she denies. Finally at a safe distance from WHITE’s icy waters, she liberates herself from her paralysis to embrace her true feelings.

Last night God succumbed.

Perhaps it was just the hollow shell of name that went under.

But that shell of a name drew with it the power of death. I cast it off.

I see objects as they are, unwitting of the name attributed to them. I cast off their names.

I stand utterly new, on the shore of a sea. Conscience is no longer mine. I cast it off.

The will to life has made me naked. The will to life has made me see. I shall meet whatever comes with naked, open eyes.

Lisa describes the lake scene as almost religious. As he’s swimming naked in the lake, Wilhelm is shedding his crown prince shell. Leaving the waters, he is reborn. When he is standing on the shore of the lake in his white clothes, Lisa says “that is when Wilhelm grows up.” And for me, he’s ready to meet whatever comes with naked, open eyes.

Thank you ! Thank you to whoever read this far. Kris is a very complex book that, despite having read twice, I still don’t fully understand, so if you have anything new to add to this reflection, you are welcome to do so !

#lisa i hope you're still lurking #wilmon #young royals #wilhelm x simon #young royals analysis #karin boye #young royals s3 #literary analysis #lake scene #lisa ambjörn

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stagefoureddiediaz · 1 month

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Ok so Buck is getting a meta before I write my 7x03 meta and it’s all because of this still we just got!

We haven’t seen Buck in blue jeans (he’s worn jeans they’ve just always been super black) since season 2x01 - you know when Eddie rocked up at the station and put his shirt on - yeah you’re all thinking what I’m thinking aren’t you!!! The parallels of that jealous Buck and upcoming jealous Buck keep on paralleling. Putting him back in this style of jeans now is so very deliberate and interesting - if you ask me it’s playing not only into jealous Buck, but also into Buck and his hamster wheel - it’s playing on the whole buck 1.0 upgrade to 2.0 etc - there’s something about the fact that Buck essentially stops wearing jeans when he bonds with Eddie - something in the idea that that was the moment he was being both more true to himself, but also hiding a part of himself as well - it’s almost as if the intention is to parallel and revisit some of earlier Buck and explore him opening up the part he hid. Now with the context of Buck in s2 being in a (intense for him) relationship that’s shifted and ended without him knowing/ accepting it and a new guy coming on the scene sparking jealousy before creating a strong bond, and the parallel/juxtaposition of what we’re about to see - new guy sparking jealousy and presenting a threat to his status quo whilst he shares an intense bond with Eddie is a pretty interesting concept - the idea that they may be playing into the beginning of Buck recognising that his relationship with Eddie is changing and different in the same way he slowly figured out Abby had left him - only this time it’s changing in the opposite direction - stronger more unbreakable and allows him to be his true self - well that would be an amazing piece of storytelling in my opinion.

Now obviously alayna and the wardrobe team wouldn’t have known way back in the beginning of s2 that the story was going to head in this direction, but a great designer can make choices that they made in previous seasons work for them in future ones. So to me it feels like this sudden switch back to jeans is deliberate and about tying into the past to move and change things in the present/future. Alayna knows the full arc Buck is on and the fact she’s chosen now to do this when she could’ve done it at any point or not done it at all tells me all I need to know!

Would you like some other things we’ve got going on with this outfit?? I thought you would and I’m here to serve!

We’ve seen Buck in a spotty shirt like this one exactly twice before - 2x14 when he’s at a diner with Maddie talking about Buck finding his own apartment and Maddie going back to hers and going on her second first date with Chim.

Side bar - This is the episode we ‘hear’ of Tommy in the present tense - funnily enough to save Eddie - which in light of Eddie Tommy bestism were about to get is making me chuckle (it’s clever writing and retcon) in technical terms it’s the only reference we have of him as still working for LAFD - all his other appearances are in begins episodes so ‘historical’ rather than in the present!

And then we see a different spotty shirt when he goes to see Chase Mackey in 3x04

There’s also the other dark short sleeved button ups we see him in - not spotty, but striped - the one in 4x14 when Taylor comes back,

The most awkward I love you in the history of television in 5x09 has Buck in dark navy blue with vertical stripes (I don’t have the ref picture handy as I’m on my phone but I’ll come back and add it later 😎🤓)

Then we have 6x10 and the buckley-Han family get together where everyone finds out buck has donated his sperm to Connor and Kameron

All of these scenes are pretty key moments in Bucks arcs and what I find interesting (with the exception of the first one - 2x14 which kind of fits but also doesn’t) is that they are all moments that lead to developmental regression by Buck - under the guise of growth - moments when he thinks he’s moving forward but is in fact either side stepping or going backwards. Suing Bobby and the fire department is obviously the loudest of these moments, but they all fall into this category.

2x14 is perhaps the most interesting and relevant (what with the pattern being almost the same) in reality it’s a scene about Maddie moving forward and getting on with her life - that happens to also include buck getting his own apartment rather than camping out in her dining room. Thing is Maddie talks about going to therapy and putting in the work to feel and find normal in the aftermath of a major traumatic event. In some ways the chase Mackey spotted shirt kind of also falls into this same category - the aftermath of a major (or two) traumatic event for Buck and him trying to get back to his normal (he’s just going about it all wrong)

And here in season 7 we have Buck back in a dark short sleeved spotty shirt in the aftermath of a major traumatic event (Bobby and Athenas Cruise disaster - he couldve lost his dad) trying to get back to normal (something we’ve seen him trying to do for the back half of s6 obviously) and I can’t help but wonder - with Oliver talking about Buck getting off the hamster wheel he’s been stuck on - whatever happens whilst Buck is in this shirt is going to be a major catalyst for him. its going to set him off on his arc for this season and we'll to put in the work his sister did post killing Doug and actually move forward and learn about himself in the process. What that looks like I don’t know but the scene this is from is going to be key to his escape from repeating his past mistakes and actually growing towards his happiness.

The costume department haven’t let me down yet so I’m feeling pretty excited for that scene!

#I’m telling you this scene is the catalyst!!!#mini meta #buck costume meta #kym costume meta #911 stills #911 spoilers #911 abc #evan 'buck' buckley #7x04

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thoughtspresso · 10 months

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Oshi No Ko was about Arima Kana all along.

And I think there’s a real possibility she may die at the end.

Or be placed in the way of grave danger.

I was reading some AquKane shippers say something about how they don’t understand AquaKana, and why the writers and directors keep clearly pushing Kana towards Aqua when they barely share any chemistry. Whereas, in their belief, his relationship with Akane is more honest, deeper, whatever. I’m not here to argue about that. But I get where they’re coming from. And the simple explanation is this:

It’s because this whole story was written for Arima Kana.

I’ve seen some Youtubers talk about how this whole story was meant to be fulfillment for Ruby/Sarina’s dream to become the next great Idol, something about Amaterasu favoring her.

And that’s near what I thought of it. But I really think if the God of Entertainment wanted to bless a child with cancer a second life as the world’s great idol, they’d also give her a great singing voice, y’know?

Spoilers for the manga, of course as we go along on this explanation. So anime onlies, get caught up before you start reading me ramble.

Here we go:

1. Arima Kana is the embodiment of Amaterasu, not Ruby.

Or at least, Amaterasu’s appointed representative, or her favorite daughter.

To give you a run-down of some of the core Shinto/Japanese Mythology that is important for the story, the Creator God Izanaki had three children:

Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun.

Tsukuyomi, the Moon.

Susanoo, the Storm.

The story goes that Amaterasu and Susanoo had a competition about who could create better gods. So Amaterasu took Susanoo’s Totsuka-no-Tsurugi* (longsword) and split it into three, from which she birthed the three Munakata goddesses.

And woncha knowit, there are three great actresses born in that year?

*A reminder that Kana plays the character Tsurugi, which literally just means Sword. And Akane’s character Saya-hime just literally means Sheath or Scabbard Princess.

In this bet, Amaterasu got clever with the rules and won on a technicality. Susanoo went on a rampage, destroyed Amaterasu’s ricefield, and flayed Amaterasu’s favorite divine horse*, and then threw its body at her loom.

*The name Arima is spelled with the Kanji of Horse & Exist/Live.

Amaterasu, in her grief, flees into a cave, believed to be Amano Iwato cave, right in the town of Takachiho, Amamiya Gorou’s hometown, and the death place of Tendouji Sarina.

The being that draws Amaterasu out of there was the Goddess of the Dawn, known also as the Goddess of the Revelry & Arts, a being that Aqua says he knows well, and believes there’s a grain of truth to:

And how does Ame-no-Uzume draw Amaterasu out of her grief?

By throwing an absolute rager, and dancing really wildly that it catches her attention and makes all the gods around them laugh so hard. Just like:

Ame-no-Uzume will later on marry a diety who tried to block her passage before, Sarutohiko, who in Ise is worshipped as the god who illuminates the world.

That’s some divinity-level AquaKana shipping right there.

Just like how Aka Akasaka wrote the story of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War about two lovers who couldn’t be together just like in the myth of Kaguya, but having his characters overcome all odds to defy divine fate, I do believe that apart from the parallels to the mythology like he did in Kaguya-sama, there is very literal divine intervention this time in Oshi No Ko.

I think what’s happening is that the gods, particularly Amaterasu and Susanoo are quarelling again about who could create better gods, just like before, but now more of whose favored child will shine the brightest and be worshipped by the most humans. But just like last time, Susanoo may have been enraged, especially at the sexual assault of his chosen Hikaru Kamiki, that he possessed him with a corrupting force that urges him to destroy shining stars before they reach their peak, hence the murders of Himekawa Airi, Hoshino Ai**, and Katayose Yura.

Which by the way, the name Hikaru means Radiant Light!

And Hoshino means Field of Stars!

Whether it’s because Amaterasu is angry that every daughter she sends to earth is slaughtered by Susanoo’s chosen, or just because she wants to win their competition, she appoints Ame-no-Uzume to assist in safeguarding her new favored one from Kamiki’s clutches. Her new favored one being Arima Kana.

And therefore, Ame-no-Uzume takes the souls of two motherless humans who had passed before they could shine and sent them to become Hoshino Ai’s twin children. It was all anyway happening in her territory of Takachiho at the most opportune time.

Ame-no-Uzume is also known as The Goddess of Dance, as well as The Great Pursuader. And wouldn’t you know, that’s exactly the gifts that the Hoshino Twins received.

An energetic performer who takes the stage with dance:

And a deceptive, persuasive, extremely believable actor, who:

fooled his own sister into believing she had been rejected from an audition

pretended to scout an idol from a competing agency to research them

get Director Gotanda to raise him and train him

make Akane not just date him, but follow him down a destructive path

convince Kana and Mem to join IchigoPro

impersonate Pieyon for several days straight

Anyway, I truly, truly believe that unbeknownst to Aqua, his true mission is just to keep drawing Kana out of her darkness until she shines the brightest. Which is what he keeps doing anyway:

2. The Timing of the whole Oshi No Ko plot is aligned with Arima Kana’s rise to unprecedented stardom.

The story of Ai Hoshino’s pregnancy and meeting of Gorou Amamiya in a quaint hospital occurs at the beginning of Arima Kana’s life, just after she is born.

She meets Aqua Hoshino around age 4, already talented, and already extremely arrogant which could have easily been the demise of her career. But meeting Aqua and seeing his acting was a necessary wake-up call for her, that it brings her to tears. She never forgets this experience that she brought that lesson with her to her adulthood: that she can’t be satisfied and keep working harder, and to be a better communicator with her colleagues. At their first point of contact, Aqua already becomes the reason why Arima Kana’s acting career survives the slump.

They meet again in high school, when Arima Kana has one acting job in a lackluster production of Sweet Today. The ratings had plummeted, if not for the fact that Aqua came onto the set to draw out the best acting Arima Kana could deliver. After this, Arima receives much more respect and recognition from her colleagues in the industry beyond just being cast to bring some legitimacy to their production.

It’s because of Aqua and Ruby that Kana joins IchigoPro’s Idol Division, and her career is reborn anew. Such that, even after quitting B-Komachi, Arima states she never regretted the decision to join, because otherwise the career of Arima Kana would have been already over.

It’s because of Aqua’s presence that Arima trains to become better and better as an idol. Aqua kept drawing out the light from Kana’s eyes, to the point that it catches the attention of the crowd who previously had no interest in her.

It’s because of her experience as an idol that she regains the confidence and sense of greed necessary to grab the attention of the audience when on stage, such that even Akane recognizes this change in her when Arima takes the stage as Tsurugi for the 2.5 Adadptation of Tokyo Blade.

And it’s because of all of these that she captures the attention of award-winning Director Masanori Shima, who lines up some roles for her when her acting schedule had dried up. It’s once again because of Kana’s dedication towards Aqua that Shima D finds her so interesting that he was most willing to promise her the best role possible.

It was as if Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto appointed Aqua and Ruby to come draw Arima Kana out of her Cave, and bring the Sun out again, just like how the deity drew out Amaterasu.

If you think about the title of the show, Oshi No Ko, it literally means The Favorite Child. God’s favored child. Arima Kana had been born chosen by Amaterasu from the very beginning. And Ame-no-Uzume is sending Aqua and Ruby to aid on this quest.

Which explains why it seems like there had been a mission communicated to Aqua from the very beginning. And why Ai was never going to be reincarnated at all.

You would think that if The Crow Girl, which we assume is the divine guide Yatagarasu, was communicating with Aqua about his revenge plan or helping him find Kamiki, that Aqua would hold a more favorable relationship with The Crow whenever it appears to give advice, no?

But it’s exactly the opposite. Because The Crow is guiding him into something that is different from his personal goal that Aqua doesn’t understand.

And this is where I think Arima Kana could be put in danger.

3. Arima Kana is Hikaru Kamiki’s next target.

There were earlier theories that thought Kurokawa Akane was the one to die next, because of what people have now learned of Kamiki’s serial murderer profile targeting big celebrities before their peak, and because Akane had received a bouquet of white roses from him when she won an award.

The chapter when it was expected to happen was a fake-out from Aka Akasaka, and some people think it’s still possible that she’s the target. In fact, I keep seeing recent theory videos who discount Kana and say she’s “the safest”. Hah! If only!

The scenes with Shima D weren’t just a mere plot point to bring scandal to Arima’s name, and threaten her career and life enough that it pushes Aqua to reveal his mother’s secret in exchange. But it’s there because this is the upward path for Arima Kana. So far, the only people who have witnessed her dazzling star power have been fans of the Sweet Today manga, idol otakus, and people who attended Tokyo Blade. That’s not really masterpiece-of-the-century, performing-at-the-dome level. None of these gigs have placed her center stage in what could be Film of the Year, and a Best Actress spot. Now, the chance is here, and it’s real:

I think, The 15-Year-Lie will attempt to draw out Hikaru Kamiki, or that Aqua intends to reveal himself in the movie looking like him, and reveal the identity of his father.

But I also think what would happen is that they would be unsuccessful at taking him down completely. Instead, from the movie, he would be interested in Arima Kana, and target her through the course of her Shima D movie, and plan to kill her before an important awards night.

Alternatively, now that Kana is changing her focus to film, she may consider moving agencies, and ask Frill Shiranui about her agent. And if we’re right, she is likely represented by Kamiki Productions.

Either way, Kamiki will pay attention to her and try to kill her just before she reaches her highest.

But I don’t think Arima Kana will die. I think instead of being saved by Aqua, it’ll be Kana who takes Kamiki down. Echoing back to her getting mad at Aqua for thinking that avoiding her was protecting her, and Aqua believing that Kana doesn’t need help since she’s strong enough to take care of herself.

And then maybe, it’s Arima Kana who draws Aqua out of the darkness too.

And, just like with Kaguya and Shirogane Miyuki, Aka Akasaka is once again writing a story about two people who will defy a fate of divine tragedy, and come out of it being more truthful with each other than they’ve been with themselves all along.

#oshi no ko #oshi no ko spoilers #arima kana #aqua hoshino #japanese mythology #shinto #shintoism #aqua x kana #hoshino aquamarine #onk spoilers #aquakana

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yelena-bellova · 1 year

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Twenty Years Later: Joel Miller x F!Reader - Chapter Four

Chapter Four: Luck

Plot: Joel, Y/n, Tess and Ellie encounter Clickers, and sacrifices are made.

Warnings: tlou ep.2 spoilers, language, violence, gore, blood, guns, death, (16+)

Word Count: 4.4k (what else for chapter 4? lol)

A/N: So the only reason I was able to get this out so fast is because chapter three and this was supposed to be one big chapter. It ended up being too long, so it got split. Please don’t make this your expectation 😂

I love reading all your comments, even if I’m horrible at responding to them. I’ve never had this kind of response to my writing and it’s a lot to keep up with. I, once again, have to reiterate that this is a 16+ series and if your name is not listed on your page, I will not be tagging you. Gotta look out for younger eyes 👀 I hope you enjoy this chapter! There’s no flashback, but a lot of hints about things to come later…I’m a terrible tease 😂🤫 Enjoy!!

———————

The museum doors were covered in fungus.

“This feels like a great plan,” Y/n sarcastically stated.

Joel ignored her disapproval, going ahead and kneeling down at one of the fungal sites. He ran a hand over it before breaking through it with the butt of his rifle.

“It’s bone dry,” he reported, “It could mean they’re all finally dead in there.”

Could was the key word of the sentence. ‘Coulds’ were like ‘probablies,’ hope with barely a breath left in it. The adults all started going through their packs, puling out their flashlights.

“Oh, man…” Ellie muttered.

Joel whipped out his light and looked exepctantly to Ellie, “Marlene pack you one of these, or just sandwiches?”

“Yeah,” Ellie answered, searching through her pack.

Y/n nudged the kid’s arm, drawing her focus. “You stay behind one of us at all times,” she instructed, “Slow and steady. Do not wander. Got it?”

Ellie nodded, “Got it.” When Tess crossed her hands, a gun and a flashlight in each, Ellie took notice. “I have a spare hand.”

“Congratulations,” Joel noted sarcastically.

With her pistol drawn, Y/n watched Joel move forward. It bothered her that he had been leading them the whole way. Their talk on the highway proved he thought he was capable of more than her. He assumed that just because he’d known her when she could afford to be delicate, she couldn’t have possibly grown into a fighter. Setting caution aside, she marched forward to walk parallel to him.

“Get back,” he ordered.

“Get bent,” she grunted.

The four of them moved as silently as they could through the museum’s lobby, posters and signs proving it had once been a landmark. Y/n moved alongside Joel, at one point taking a step ahead of him and finding a corner full of dry Cordyceps.

“We’re good,” she announced.

“Oh, finally,” Tess remarked, “Some fuckin’ luck.”

“I guess we should’ve gone this way in the first place,” Joel acknowledged.

“Oh, shit!” Ellie exclaimed, the three of them ran to join her. She’d broken Y/n’s third instruction like it was nothing.

There lay a body, covered in fresh blood and claw marks through its clothing.

“What the fuck did that?” Ellie inquired.

Y/n, Tess and Joel shared a knowing look.

“Maybe,” Tess’ voice shook as it lowered, “Maybe he was attacked outside and crawled through the doors. The door was open. Could’ve been him. I don’t hear anything.”

“Who would you hear?” Ellie asked.

The adults shushed her, Joel held up a hand.

Ellie lowered her voice, “Who would you hear? Are you saying an Infected did that?”

“Shh,” Tess crooned.

“Because I’ve been attacked by one and it wasn’t like that,” Ellie added.

Joel took a breath, it was all he could allow himself. “Okay, from this point forward, we are silent,” he whispered, “Not quiet…silent.”

“What-“ Ellie began.

“No, no questions,” Joel stopped her, “Just do it.”

Having very little trust in the man who had openly admitted to wanting to kill her, Ellie peered at Y/n, who nodded in solemn agreement. Things had suddenly become very, very real.

The four of them made their way to the museum’s staircase, taking slow steps up the creaking steps. Joel and Y/n made it to the top first, only having to stop when a piece of debris fell in a cloud of dust. They shined their flashlights across the way, a massive piling of death and fungus-covered bodies laying tragically still.

Crunch.

The exes spun around to see Ellie baring her teeth nervously, a skeletal hand below her sneaker. Everyone held their breath. There was creaking coming from above them, every step they took was a step closer to being buried alive.

Joel and Y/n made it into the Independance Hall exhibit, taking stock of their surroundings and coming up clean. Ellie followed with Tess close behind her.

Suddenly, there was a crashing sound; the building was finally giving out. Lightining fast, Y/n surged forward and grabbed Ellie’s arm, pulling her forward as Tess nose dove to the floor. Y/n let go of Ellie to extend a hand to Tess, who braced herself with it and got to her feet. They barely had a second to gather their thoughts before a loud, animal noise echoed through the room.

Then came the clicking.

Y/n and Joel drew their guns together, aiming in the direction the sound had come from. They slowly backed up, Tess and Ellie moving behind them, as the noises drew closer.

Fear can stop a clock, and none of them could tell how long they waited until the snarling, shriveled monster stepped into the room.

Y/n and Joel’s grudge ceased to exist as they moved in sync, silent as the grave they prayed they weren’t about to meet. As their group passed a doorway, more clicking sounded through it. They startled, backing up as the erratic footsteps came closer.

Two. There were two Clickers.

The foursome sought shelter behind a glass display case as the Infected began to roam the room. Each of them were processing the situation spearately, but they needed to move together as one.

Joel saw the fear in Ellie’s eyes, he couldn’t take it from her, but he could prepare her. “They can’t see,” he mouthed, leaning over Y/n, “But they can hear.”

On the other side of the display case, one of the Clickers walked past, shrieking as it jerked around. It had been over a year since Y/n had been this close to one of them, she’d forgotten what it was like. The way experience melted away and fear overtook all your senses.

Joel held up a finger to the three of them. If the Clickers could pass through without noticing them, they could make a straight shot up to the passageway and be gone. Everything rested on how the next thirty seconds went.

Y/n was too afriad to shut her eyes and too scared to face the creature head on. She simply stared ahead, trembling with each sound the monster made.

They listened as it turned the corner of the display case, until it was mere inches from them.

Ellie gasped.

Y/n grimaced.

The creature spun around to them and screamed.

Joel unloaded his rifle on the creature, who reached out and dragged him forward.

“Run,” Joel screamed.

Tess took off with Ellie, shooting at the other Infected before escaping the room. Y/n stayed, firing shots at the creature as it fought Joel. It knocked the rifle out of his hands, leaving him with only his pistol. Y/n was able to wound it enough to momentarily stun it, giving Joel and her time to run away.

They sprinted down the hall, Joel turned around and fired a shot before they dove into the next room. He knocked over a podium, creating an obstacle in the Clicker’s path, buying him and Y/n a few extra seconds. Joel grabbed her wrist and threw them behind a shelving unit.

Now fear, it turns out, is a powerful thing. It can cause people to turn on one another, or it can bring them together. Y/n had spent the last twenty four hours listing all the ways she wanted to kill Joel Miller, but face to face with the reality of losing him, she was doing everything she could to save him. They both were.

Joel’s hands shook as he reloaded his gun, his flashlight tucked between his shoulder and his chin. Y/n stretched her arm out over his chest, her breath trembling in time with his as they waited…

The Clicker was right next to them.

Joel shone his flashlight around the corner, the Infected was a mere ten inches from them. Mercifully, it hadn’t sensed them, and headed around the other side of the shelving unit. Y/n peered through the dusty screens, charted a clear path, and motioned for Joel to come forward. They crouched as they walked, Y/n spotted Ellie hunched against another display case.

Joel and her quickly crossed the space and got down alongside her. Joel looked to his side, signaling for Ellie to follow them around the case. They crawled in the opposite direction, the Clicker only a few feet away from them and but a second from discovering them. It just needed to take a few more steps and then it would be in the other room….

A piece of glass crunched under Joel’s boot.

The three of them stopped.

The Clicker screeched and leapt across the case, tackling them to the floor. Ellie thrashed and yelled as it pinned her down. Joel and Y/n each kept an arm against its chest, pushing it away with their combined strength. Y/n freed her arm from between her and Ellie’s bodies, pressing her gun against the Clicker’s abdomen and shooting it three times. It stunned the monster, giving Joel time to shove it off of them. Y/n shielded Ellie, who was gripping her jacket, and Joel shielded Y/n. Joel aimed his pointed at the Clicker once again, and gunned it down as it ran towards them. He fired a few final shots, just to ensure it was dead.

The second Clicker charged towards them, Joel and Y/n shoved Ellie behind them, no time to draft an attack plan. Saving the day, Tess came from the side and lodged an axe in the Clicker’s head. Thinking quick, Joel left Y/n and Ellie to retake his rifle, firing one shot before a second that did the creature in.

Joel surveyed the Clicker, examining the bloody chunks of fungus laying around its head. Fear was enough to create doubt, even in front of fact.

“You all right?” Joel asked Tess, who was getting to her feet.

“Twisted ankle, but…yeah,” Tess answered.

Y/n turned to Ellie, “Are you okay?”

“Well, I didn’t shit my pants, so…” she responded, glancing around her in case they’d missed one. She stopped and rolled up her sleeve, revealing a bloody mark, “You fucking kidding me?”

Y/n didn’t know whether or not to be scared. Joel knew exactly what to feel.

“I mean, if it was gonna happen to one of us,” Ellie muttered.

Joel didn’t let his anxiety come over him often, but he could feel it building. Tess was tuned into him enough to see it happening.

“Hey,” she coaxed, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

The four of them filed out the top window, Y/n offering Tess her hand to help her onto the roof. Joel went to work immediately, pulling out a first aid kit and a piece of cloth.

“Put this around your arm,” Joel instructed Ellie, handing her the cloth. In the chaos, he hadn’t even thought to ask Y/n if she was injured. “You-“

“I’m fine,” Y/n said coldly, eager to settle back into blind hatred.

Ellie made her way to the makeshift bridge, a few wooden planks, and took the first step. “Over there?”

“Yeah, I know,” Joel spoke as he examined Tess’ ankle, “It looks scary.”

“That was scary,” Ellie replied, “This is wood.”

Y/n followed Ellie, her legs steadying more with each step across the divide. In the world they lived in, fear had to pass as quick as a summer storm.

“Are they always like that?” Ellie asked once they were both on the rooftop.

Y/n sighed, “Not at first. I mean, they’re always scary but at the beginning, they look…” she paused, forcing the memories out like a tide in the ocean, “They look normal.”

Ellie hummed, wandering off to the edge of the building. As Joel crossed the plank, Y/n went to stand beside Ellie. The sun was shining gold down on the remnants of Boston, illuminating the good and the bad.

This. This was what still gave Y/n hope. She needed to believe that maybe, maybe, there was a way to restore the world back to its beauty. That was the key difference between her and Joel; she still wanted to find what little good was left out there.

Joel came to stand on Ellie’s other side, peering over at the girl. “Is it everything you hoped for?”

“Jury’s still out,” Ellie gave a half-shrug, “But man, you can’t deny that view.”

Tess rejoined them, walking with new purpose. “C’mon, let’s get there before it’s dark,” she grunted, climbing over the edge and scaling down some siding.

Joel and Y/n stood at the edge of the roof, each staring out into the horizon lost in their thoughts. Their severed connection lived in the space between them, sparking and straining as it tried to pull them together.

But they’d had twenty years of ignoring one another’s memory. It was going to take more than a fight and a sunset to come to any kind of truce.

Y/n silently climbed down the side of the building, leaving Joel on his own. He glanced down at his watch, taking a valued second to himself, before heading down after the rest of them.

—————————

The rest of the way to the State House was spent in quiet suspicion. Everyone watched Ellie with more interest than before, waiting for something to happen.

When they arrived, Y/n spotted the truck that was supposed to transport Ellie and her. There was supposed to be someone outside waiting to meet them and yet, the place looked as deserted as the rest of the city.

Joel glanced at Y/n, silently asking if this was right. She answered with a distant shake of her head as she looked around them. She drew her gun and got up, stepping strategically through the grass. Joel huffed in exasperation, coming out in the open to follow her.

Y/n approached the truck cautiously, her breath already trembling like she’d already seen what lay inside. She ignored Joel practically breathing down her neck as she swung open the vehicle’s door. Empty.

Joel held up a hand to Tess, who stood with her gun aimed and Ellie protected behind her. “Stay back,” he mouthed. When he turned back to Y/n, he found air.

Y/n rounded the vehicle, examining the other side before her eyes and nose were drawn to the ground. There was a bloodied body laying underneath the truck. She knelt before it, whatever had happened to it hadn’t been more than an hour or two ago. The blood was still new, but the flies had already found the poor soul.

Joel was at the rear of the truck, bracing himself for whatever fight lay inside it. He threw the back door open and took a stance, finding the same nothing they had in the cab.

“Joel?” Tess called, coming to join them, “What the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Joel said, looking around the corner of the truck to Y/n, “What was the plan?”

Y/n sighed and ran a hand through her hair, “Driver was supposed to be waiting here, one or two Fireflies just to verify it was us…we were supposed to jump in the truck and go.”

“They went inside,” Ellie announced, staring at the steps leading to the State House. The three adults peered over to see the bloody footprints painted on the staircase.

“Come on,” Tess grunted, grabbing Ellie’s hand and letting the blood tracks show them the way.

“Tess,” Joel called, Y/n wasn’t waiting for him to call the shots. She jogged up the stairs with the same urgency as his partner. “Tess!”

Tess burst through the doors, holding both Ellie and her pistol in front of her. Y/n flanked Ellie, ready to attack whatever could been lurking in the building. Joel followed the women, exhausted by their recklessness.

What they found was worse than they could have imagined.

Every Firefly body was on the floor, their blood spread across the slick marble.

Y/n could feel her chest cave in on itself. Her comrades, the plan to take Ellie west, hope itself, it all dead lay around her.

Tess showed the same panic Y/n was trying so hard to contain. “Okay, I mean there’s gotta be a fuckin’ radio or something, right?”

“Start looking,” Y/n holstered her gun, running to check the crates, the equipment…anything that could offer them a morsel of chance. If she could get in contact with Marlene, they could form a new plan. She’d take Ellie herself, if necessary, doubts be damned. They couldn’t admit defeat so easily.

“Tess,” Joel called, having already deduced that one Firefly had got infected and it had spread to the others, “What’re you doin’?”

Y/n threw open crates, scouring the contents for a radio, with Tess searching beside her. They both ignored Joel.

“Where did Marlene say you two were going?” Tess asked Y/n.

“Tess-“ Joel tried again.

“Just west,” Y/n answered, her breath quickening, “We were supposed to get the exact location here.”

Tess threw her hands out in exasperation, “Just west. Fuck. Okay…well, one of ‘em’s gotta have a map on them, right?”

Y/n was already examining the bodies without touching them, “Check each one.”

“Joel, can you help us?” Tess impatiently asked, kneeling next to Y/n and searching through the victim’s pockets.

“No,” Joel bellowed, refusing to indulge the fantasy any longer, “Tess, it’s over. We are goin’ home.”

Tess spun around, shooting daggers out her eyes, “That’s not my fucking home!”

Her cry was loud enough to silence the rest of them. Tess hung over one of the bodies, fighting back her tears enough to stand up and face Joel.

“I’m stayin’.”

Y/n stayed on the ground, confusedly watching the scene play out.

“I mean…” Tess almost laughed, “Our luck had to run out sooner or later.”

Joel stood perplexed. Perhaps he’d have figured it out if he had looked in between her words. In her eyes. In her quivering lips.

“Fuck,” Ellie exclaimed, her voice lowering to a whisper, “She’s infected.”

Joel felt the very ground they stood on crack down the middle, a divide separating him and the only person he’d allowed himself to care about in twenty years. The unspeakable plague had finally come for one of them, and it had attached itself to the wrong person.

“Show me,” he muttered.

“Joel,” Tess said softly, taking a step forward. Joel flinched, jumping back an inch away from her. He regretted it immediately, it was pure instinct.

Tess pulled back her jacket and shirt to display the reddening bite mark.

Y/n got to her feet upon seeing the wound, unafraid to close the distance Joel was putting between them. Joel threw out a hand to pull her back, but Y/n smacked it away and placed her fingers around Tess’ wound. In another life, it could have been extremely well done Halloween makeup. She wanted it to be.

“Oops,” Tess tried to smile, “Right?”

Y/n rubbed her fingers against Tess’ shoulder, if these were her last minutes, she wanted her to feel human touch one more time.

“Take your bandage off,” Tess ordered Ellie.

The girl unwrapped the cloth from her arm, showing the adults her newest bite mark. It was already healing.

Tess surged forward and took Ellie’s arm, holding it up to Joel. “Look. Joel? This is real,” she pulled Ellie forward, “Joel, she’s fucking real.”

Joel and Y/n spotted it at the same time: Tess’ hands were beginning to shake.

Tess retracted her arm into her person, her breaths quickening with passion. Passion for a future she would never see.

“I need you to get her to Bill and Frank’s,” Tess stated.

“No,” Joel started to argue, a flurry of emotions hitting him at once. It was real. This was real.

“They’ll take her off your hands,” Tess continued, unstoppable in her pleas, “They’ll handle it from here.”

“No, no, no,” he shook his head, sounding like a child in denial, “I can’t. They won’t take her. They’re not gonna take her.”

“They will,” Tess insisted, “Cause you’re gonna convince them.”

“I’ll take her,” Y/n said from behind Joel, “Tell me where they are and I’ll get her there.”

Tess squeezed her eyes shut, “No, it has to be him,” she looked to Joel, “I never ask you for anything. Not to feel the way I felt, not to-“

“No,” Joel said, a kneejerk reaction. He had spent so long caring for her as much as his grief would allow him.

“Shut the fuck up,” Tess snapped, “Cause I don’t have much time. This is your chance. You get her there, you keep her alive…” she bit back her tears, “And you set everything right. All the shit we did…please say yes, Joel, please.”

Joel could feel what was left of his heart beginning to break. He couldn’t lose anyone else.

A strained gasp from one of the Infected Fireflies echoed behind Ellie, “Oh, fuck!”

With all the tranquility of a piano melody, Joel stepped forward, cocked his pistol and blew a chunk of the one-time human’s brains out.

The strands of fungus began to stretch out around the Infected’s hand. The signal had been sent. Within minutes, hordes of Infected would descend upon the State House.

Joel exhaled, realizing what he’d done and ran to the building’s door. He could hear the distant snarling and choking of the Infected. Whatever pitiful amount of time they’d possessed had just gotten slashed in half.

“How many?” Tess asked calmly.

“All of them,” he reported, “Maybe a minute.”

Y/n took a shaky breath and raised her gun to Tess’ head. Joel was quick to aim his rifle at her head.

“Don’t you fuckin-“

“Do you want me to do it?” Y/n ignored Joel, locking eyes with Tess. It wasn’t an act of anger, it was an act of mercy. She was trying to save what was left of Tess’ life.

Tess shook her head, taking stock of her surroundings and rushing around the room. She tipped over barrels of gasoline and crates of grenades, letting them spill across the floor. Twenty years of sin and her last act was to save. This was Tess Servoupolis. Not her reputation, not who she’d been forced to become to survive…her.

Joel watched, heartbreak etched in each line of his face. He wanted to scream, to cry, to punch, but time had numbed his emotions enough to be able to keep it all inside.

Tess finally came to face Joel, keeping a foot of space between them. She couldn’t handle watching the man she loved move away from her like she was…what she was.

Y/n backed up to stand with Ellie, feeling like they were intruding on an intimate moment.

“Joel…” Tess said his name one last time, knowing just how much weight the words she was about to say carried, “Save who you can save.”

He was holding so much back, so many things he wanted to say, even just to touch her one last time. His grief overwhelmed him, for both women he wasn’t able to save. But if he couldn’t heed Tess’ final wish, he’d never be able to look himself in the mirror again.

Joel took one last look at her, the two of them committing each other’s gaze to memory, and Joel turned on his heel, grabbing Ellie and dragging her away.

“No!” Ellie yelled, hitting Joel’s arm to try and break his grip, “We’re not leaving her! Get off me, you fucker!”

Y/n, let them pass, standing firmly planted in front of Tess. She wanted to say something, but nothing rivaled the weight of the moment. She wanted to thank her for her sacrifice, tell her how sorry she was that she was about to what was to come…something to let her feel some sort of compassion before she lost herself entirely.

“I-“

“Protect her,” Tess urged, staring straight past the Joel and Y/n’s resentment and into her soul, “Protect him.”

Y/n’s breath shook as she considered what Tess was asking of her. She wanted to know the man she loved would live to see the days she wouldn’t. Y/n couldn’t fault her that, it was so easy to care about Joel. If Tess was a better woman than Y/n and had earned that devotion he showered upon a select number of people, she would feel the same devotion to him till death.

Y/n wanted to run in the opposite direction, but she wasn’t so heartless that she wouldn’t obey Tess’ last request. She nodded, pouring out her condolences through her pained stare, and took off the same way that Joel and Ellie had.

Leaving Tess to die.

She found them outside, Ellie still fighting Joel tooth and nail. Y/n pressed her hands to Ellie’s back and urged her forward, running alongside them in a desparate effort to escape the tidal wave of Infected encroaching.

They’d put a safe amount of distance between them and the State House when the building exploded.

Joel wrenched Ellie forward to shield her, letting him and Y/n take the heat of the blast. They drew their guns, waiting for a stray Infected to pass through the violent flames, but none came. Tess had succeeded.

The three of them stayed perfectly still, except for their heaving chests, watching the fire consume the State House. Twenty years ago, Joel would have allowed himself to break down. He would have let his knees hit the dirt, his fists ball and his grief would have spilled out of him as if he was made of it.

Twenty years ago, he could feel whatever he wanted. But to survive, you had to bury your desires with the dead. Joel knew that better than anyone.

And so, skipping the eulogy and going straight for repression, Joel lowered his rifle and walked away.

Y/n, who wasn’t as hardened as her ex-love, could no longer keep her tears at bay. She crouched down in the dirt, pressing her hands to her lips in a praying position, and allowed a silent rain stream down her cheeks. Losing anyone was awful, but losing someone who wanted redemption, who wanted to atone for their sins and leave the world better than they’d found it…that was tragic. Tess had sacrificed herself to save them, to save Ellie, to save a future she could only hope came to pass. Perhaps Joel couldn’t mourn her, Y/n knew his grief was the match that lit his whole being ablaze, but she could. She would.

Ellie stood beside her, tears filling her once-innocent eyes. Her naivety had always been on life support, but it was fading with every minute she spent outside the Wall.

Deciding her momentary memorial would have to serve as enough for Tess, Y/n got to her feet and wiped her eyes. “Come on,” she whispered, her voice strained as she put a hand to Ellie’s back. She led them down the dirt, following Joel’s ghostly silhouette…

————————

TYL Taglist: @bachiracore @stolenxkissess @kayleezra @the-wistful-reader @allthesesonsofbitches @goth-detectives365 @trippovert @rh1nestonecowg1rl @emiliaserpe @khaleesihavilliard @frietiemeloen @gracie7209 @dorck26 @thegirlnextdoorssister @alanis-altair @mariwinns16 @whosscruffylooking @endofthexline @alexiaricciardo @eonnyx @pedrosmexicangf @scarlettequinn @ao-sleepy @toinfinityandbeyonce2 @deanlovescassie @turmoil-ash @sorrowjunky @kpopslur @xxlilyxx90 @midgetpottermills @presidential-facts @scoopsnini @tubble-wubble @jamesdeerest

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#joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x y/n #joel miller imagine #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fanfic #the last of us fanfic #the last of us imagine #the last of us fanfiction #twenty years later

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geronimosong · 4 months

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Okay, for a long time, I had a head cannon. Now that we have a great new adaptation, it is a good time to share it.

I firmly believe that the Neriad Percy meets after his fall from St. Louis Arch is Amphitrite, the Sea Goddess and Wife of Posiedon. Why do I believe this well? Firstly, she is the highest regarded Nereid, and after Amphitrite married Poseidon, the Nereids became part of their royal court.

I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I bowed. "You're the woman who spoke to me in the Mississippi River." "Yes, child. I am a Nereid, a spirit of the sea. It was not easy to appear so far upriver, but the naiads, my freshwater cousins, helped sustain my life force. They honor Lord Poseidon, though they do not serve in his court." "And … you serve in Poseidon's court?" She nodded. "It has been many years since a child of the Sea God has been born. We have watched you with great interest."

"If my father is so interested in me," I said, "why isn't he here? Why doesn't he speak to me?" A cold current rose out of the depths. "Do not judge the Lord of the Sea too harshly," the Nereid told me. "He stands at the brink of an unwanted war. He has much to occupy his time. Besides, he is forbidden to help you directly. The gods may not show such favoritism.' "Even to their own children?" "Especially to them. The gods can work by indirect influence only. That is why I give you a warning, and a gift." She held out her hand. Three white pearls flashed in her palm. - Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Theseus and Amphitrite, Athenian red-figure kylix C5th B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art

Secondly, in mythology, King Minos questions Theseus's parentage with a ring thrown into the sea. Proving his connection to Poseidon, Theseus dives, carried by dolphins, to Poseidon's palace. Amphitrite treats him as a son, gifting him a purple cloak and a crown. Theseus triumphantly returns to his ship with these divine presents, reminiscent of Percy's encounter with a Nereid in "Lightning Thief."

Though Theseus proves his parentage to Poseidon, the god is not in the underwater palace. Theseus gains the ability to breathe underwater from Amphitrite. This parallels Percy's first underwater experience. You might ask why his stepmom would decide to help him; well, it is her kingdom that is at unwanted war, and Percy is her hope, too. In Riordan's own words, Poseidon and her have an open relationship:

“Most of the gods are jerks,” Delphin agreed. “And they have a lot of girlfriends even after they get married—” “Gah!” Amphitrite said. “I wouldn’t care about that. I’m not the jealous type. I just don’t want to be mistreated. I want to be my own person, do my own thing, without some man lording over me!”

As the years went by, Amphitrite discovered that Delphin was right. She did love her children even more than seabass, and most of the time Poseidon was a very good husband. He did have a lot of affairs with nymphs and mortals and whatnot, but strangely that didn’t bother Amphitrite so much. As long as Poseidon didn’t try to own her and tell her what to do, and as long as he was good to their three children, Amphitrite was cool. She was even nice to Poseidon’s demigod children, unlike some other goddesses I could name. (Cough, Hera, cough.) One time the hero Theseus came to visit, and Amphitrite treated him like an honored guest. She even gave him a purple cloak to wear, which was a sign of kingship. She’s been pretty cool to me, too. She doesn’t freak out when I leave my dirty laundry in the guest room. She makes cookies for me. She’s never tried to kill me that I know of. Pretty much all you could ask of an immortal stepmom. - Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

The description that Percy gives of Neriad matches the way he describes Amphitrite in Percy Jackson's Greek Gods, Although it could be argued that all the Neriads are described in the same Percy imagines the Neriad to resemble his mom because of the warmth she emits.

She had flowing black hair, a dress made of green silk. Light flickered around her, and her eyes were so distractingly beautiful I hardly noticed the stallion-sized sea horse she was riding. - Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

She came in riding a hippocamps, in traditional depictions Amphitrite is represented either enthroned beside Poseidon or driving with him in a chariot drawn by sea-horses (hippocamps). It is one of her queenly attributes that separates her from the other Nereids along with her crown.

Amphitrite was gorgeous. The more she tried to avoid the gods, the more they pursued her. Her black hair was pinned back in a net of pearls and silk. Her eyes were as dark as mocha. She had a kind smile and a beautiful laugh. Usually, she dressed in a simple white gown. - Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Amphitrite sat on a coral ledge, watching the sunset filter through the deep water and make rosy streaks in the seaweed forests. A seabass lay in her open palm, all blissed out, because Amphitrite really had a way with fish. Normally I don’t think of sea bass as cuddly, but they loved her. Delphin could see why Poseidon liked her. She radiated a sort of kindness and gentleness that you don’t see in a lot of immortals. Usually with gods, the longer they lived, the more they acted like spoiled children. Delphin wasn’t sure why, but that whole thing about getting wiser as you got older? Not so much. - Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Hestia is the only other God that Percy has such an honorable description of in this entire book. This is significant. So, I can't wait to see if the show proves my theory to be right or not.

#percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #annabeth chase #disney percy jackson #grover underwood #pjo #pjo series #pjo theory #pjo thoughts #poseidon #Amphitrite #percy series #greek gods #greek mythology #lightning thief

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genericpuff · 3 months

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ok listen right

please don't take the implication of what i'm about to say the completely wrong way, there's a point i have to make here

there's this gross thing that happens in LO that's been definitely talked about numerous times (by many people) where fashion is used to label a character's like, "alignment" between "good" "bad" "pure" "tainted" etc. this is something that comes up a lot when discussing Minthe and Persephone because there are a LOAD of double standards in how Minthe was treated and viewed for dressing like a "slut" but then Persephone wears the exact same fit and suddenly she's a queen-

(image courtesy of @anoldplace on Instagram, I'll be showing a couple of their posts in this because they show off a lot of the great - and frankly disturbing - parallels in LO, whether intended by Rachel or not)

-but can we talk about how the "bad ending" version of Persephone where she ends up with Apollo slaps WAY FUCKING HARDER than anything we've seen her dressed in since she got with Hades ??

fucking hello?? where's THAT fit ??

you're telling me this girl is queen of the underworld and the best she can do in the fashion department is looking like a color-swapped version of Hera ???

and I WANNA MAKE THIS PERFECTLY CLEAR, this isn't me trying to say "Persephone would have been way cooler if she got with Apollo", that is FAR from the point, more so just pointing out the pattern of Rachel aligning "bad" with "dresses with more flavor than an extremely out-of-touch conservative boomer". Even when she tries to draw Persephone in more "out there" clothing it just comes across as ... tacky? And only at her own detriment?

Like, how the fuck is this supposed to be Persephone being drawn through a literal male gaze (Apollo):

And THIS is supposed to be Persephone being drawn from a female gaze (her own because she dressed herself):

Like literally how? How does this happen? Especially when the latter is STILL being framed from a male perspective (the green guy behind her, "Jeffrey") but we're supposed to believe it's some "boss babe" moment for Persephone to just be walking down the street while getting oggled inappropriately by a male onlooker? How could these scenes be any more different and yet more alike? She's still being objectified for the characters around her and the audience, but we're supposed to believe the second is better than the first one because... she chose to wear that?

Sure, one could argue that at least she dressed herself and that definitely gives her agency, but it's really Rachel telling on herself where her priorities are in trying to write a "feminist comic" that she had Persephone dress herself and then STILL have its only purpose be for men on the sidelines to stare at and objectify her. When you just know this same outfit would have undoubtedly been used to slut shame characters like Minthe or Thetis or Leuce.

I don't even know, man. The intentions in LO's writing are so confused, contradictory, and ultimately pointless. It's trying so hard to be "feminist" and a "deconstruction of purity culture" but then it turns around and reinforces all that same shit it's claiming to be fighting against anyways. Persephone would be an evil slut if she was with Apollo, look at her outfit! But not here, not the banana purse dress being oggled by strangers on the sidewalk, not now that she settled down with her old rich husband who she only knew for a couple weeks before being separated for 10 years but their love was just so strong and the thirst for dick so real that she and him loyally waited for one another until she was old enough to make it "not be creepy" anymore for them to hook up, but only after marriage. She's definitely not a gold digger like Minthe or a vapid slut like Thetis or a homewrecker like Leuce, nah.

I just wish she'd dress herself, for the love of god. Let her dress herself with her own input and not the influence of the people around her or the tone of the comic's own internalized misogyny that demands "woman must always be objectified for better or for worse, that is The Rule!"

Of course she can't "dress herself" though. She's an extension of Rachel and Rachel herself writes like an out-of-touch boomer who will and has gladly gone about how men are just clamoring at the bit to stare at her and get to her... but then claims she "didn't realize sexism was all that bad" until she started working on LO.

Sorry, this post got very long and very mean, I initially just wanted to make the comparison in a very silly haha "wild how bad ending Persephone has way more visual personality than good ending Persephone" way, but then I thought about it too long and pissed myself off LMAO

And no, I don't want to go back to beating the dead horse of "banana dress bad" because honestly, I think in any other context or comic, sure, it would be very cute to see her walking around in an outfit she chose herself even if it's "objectively" not a great outfit, it shows agency and not caring what other people think which is VERY freeing. But we're not reading that comic, we're reading LO, where a woman's worth and value is only determined by how the men around her react to her and only Persephone is allowed to be empowered by wearing outfits that would otherwise be treated as "slutty" if worn by anyone else.

I don't want the message to be "Persephone looks like a dumbass bimbo" or, on the flipside, "Persephone looks boring and out-of-touch", I want the message to be "Persephone is valid for dressing how she wants, just like how the women around her are valid for dressing how they want regardless of whether or not they're protagonists or antagonists."

Quit using women's fashion as an alignment chart, quit using these "not so sly for a misogynist guy" dogwhistles as a way to "other" the women around the power fantasy main character. Women deserve to dress how they want without shame or objectification - all women, not just the women you like.

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical

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ahundredtimesover · 1 year

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Belong (01) | MYG

Pairing: Yoongi x (f.) Reader

Genre/Tags: exes-to-lovers-to-exes-to-lovers; actress!OC x basketball coach!Yoongi; summer romance; “long” distance relationship; parallel timelines; angst, fluff, smut

Chapter (Series) Warnings: foul/explicit language; alcohol consumption & passing out, family drama, sport injury; dreams & moving away; implied depression; basketball and acting talk; 2014 and 2022 Yoongi; shy and nonchalant cocky whipped Yoongi; explicit sexual content (specific warnings stated per chapter (18+)

Chapter Word count: 14.2k

Series Masterlist

Status: Complete

Series summary: Being an actor has always been your dream. Pursuing it meant many things - leaving the town where you grew up, distancing yourself from your family that had fallen apart, and saying goodbye to the man who made you feel what home was like. When you decide to finally return after being away for so long, you meet Min Yoongi again, and you’re reminded of the summer romance from 8 years ago with the college basketball superstar whose broken dream pushed you away. As you find yourself spending time with him, you’re left to wonder if love changes, if it gives second chances, or if it’s just another illusion that will hurt the both of you the second time around.

Listen to: Boston by Augustana; Shelter by Luca Fogale || Playlist 🎶

A/N: Posting this today to celebrate People pt.2 and D-Day! Here’s a little piece I’ve had for a while. It felt fitting to write something about dreams and finding your purpose through Yoongi and at a time when I’m going through something similar. There’s nothing like his wisdom and his warmth so I hope this could mean something to you somehow. 💕 Please enjoy! And 🫡 to NBA Ambassador Suga! Now that’s his 🏀 dream in another form.

Present Day

There’s always something magical whenever you watch yourself on screen.

It’s not due to some narcissistic reason or an insatiable desire for the spotlight; it’s not even because you think you’re really talented. Sure, you like the attention and just like anyone who’s spent years of their lives perfecting their craft, you want to be pretty great at it, but all those thoughts become suspended whenever it’s your scene.

During these instances, it’s only about your character and her emotions, and that’s what you think is remarkable about it - watching yourself is just like being there, in that moment, on that set, feeling it all.

Most actors would say they love acting because it gives them a variety of roles and personalities to play. You like that bit, too, but it’s the character’s emotions that you commit yourself to the most; it’s being able to immerse yourself in the feelings of joy and anger, of contempt and fear, of envy and admiration, of guilt and love. You like the finiteness of it, that with acting comes the feeling, and you know at some point, it’s going to end.

Once the scene is over, so is the emotion; you’re able to let go of it right away with one breath. You’re good at that, you think - holding onto something for as long as it’s yours, and then letting it go when it no longer is.

The collective gasp of the people around you breaks your bubble only a little; you release a breath yourself as the last scene unfolds. And with the final shot and the succeeding transition to the end credits, you let go of the sadness.

“I can’t believe that only took one shot,” your best friend, Taehyung, says in awe. “I would’ve been crying already knowing how it ends.”

“Jin and I challenged each other,” you proudly say. “We said we’d do our absolute best for that first try and the director thought it was that good. Seriously, not crying until that last second was so hard; I didn’t think I could do it.”

The Kim Seokjin, your co-actor and good friend, looks at you from the other side of the couch with that soft and proud look that you only ever get from him once a project is over. You return the sentiment, knowing that you wouldn’t have survived your first lead role in a drama series if he wasn’t acting alongside you.

He’d been your senior at university where you both took your major in acting. He was already modeling then and snagged a major role in a movie right after graduation; he became a household name after that.

You watched from the sidelines as he achieved his dreams while you took the occasional 30-second roles given to the students, but he didn’t forget you. He called regularly to know how you were doing, gave tips when you asked, and informed you of upcoming auditions.

It was the type of friendship that challenged you, given that you both wanted to one day star in a series or movie together, a culmination of all the long hours of rehearsals and line-reading and classes that you both did. He had already made a name for himself; you wanted to be good enough to have yours be opposite his.

It would take a few years, but after a supporting role in a romcom movie that saw people wanting more of you, you and Jin finally got cast in a series about a mortal woman falling in love with a celestial being, which, at the beginning, reflected your respective statuses in the industry. You expected the show to do well - everything that Kim Seokjin touches turns to gold, as the saying goes - but you didn’t expect for the public to love you both as a pair as much as they do, given that they want you to star in another show right away.

“I cried as I turned around,” Jin says of the scene where he had to go back to his world and leave you behind. “That was heavy and even I’m impressed we did it in one shot.”

“Well, the sadness and grief would have dwindled by the third or fourth time,” you chuckle. “I’m not good enough yet to maintain all the emotions after so many takes.”

“Not that you aren’t good enough,” Jin counters. “You just haven’t been in the industry that long yet. That kind of experience makes a difference. I’d say I wouldn’t have been able to sustain the same emotion for long, too. It was a difficult one. I mean, what goodbye scene isn’t?”

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, but much of why it was difficult for you to keep the emotions in was because it was your first goodbye scene. You have a feeling that the succeeding ones wouldn’t be any easier, though. You’d like to think you’re okay with goodbyes and that says a lot, but then again, you don’t know anyone who’s actually good at it.

Or maybe you do. But you’d rather not think about it.

It’s silent for a few more seconds. You suppose that the rest of your co-actors who are here with you are still processing the end of a series that’s been their source of comfort for the past few months, too. It had been your weekly routine to watch the episode together in Jin’s house, not wanting to let go of each other just yet after filming wrapped up a few weeks ago.

“Well, that was amazing, wasn’t it?” He finally speaks up. “It was a good run and thank god that ___ insisted on these watch parties. Or else I’d be crying by myself in my room after the finale,” he laughs. “This better not be the last time we see each other.”

“Because it isn’t,” you reply. “We still have that cast and crew dinner and a couple more filming stuff for promo. That’s easily another 3 more weeks of being together. Which is really 3 weeks too short.”

“So… does anyone want to go on a trip after that?” Hyun-seung, one of the actors, excitedly suggests. “It’d be a good way to unwind and use up what we’ll earn.”

You laugh along with everyone but you’re the only one who passes up on it.

“I can’t,” you sigh. “I have a trip to Daegu at the end of the month and I can’t move it.”

Disappointed sighs echo throughout the living room, and you insist that they should continue with the trip without you. Most of them don’t want to, but you eye Jin so that he would make the call to push through with it even if you won’t be around, so he does. It’s rare to find such good company with other actors, and you truly want them to maintain the friendships they built here way beyond the series.

Your friends make general plans as you listen in, wishing you could be there instead of home, which is where you’ll be for the next 2 months as you promised your family. Or more like, as they guiltripped you into doing.

You haven’t been home in years and for good reason. After your parents separated and you were the lone child who didn’t harbor anger towards your mother who wanted to pursue her dreams elsewhere, you promised yourself you’d leave that place, too.

Visits during summer had been fine. But after the most painful goodbye you ever made, you’d stopped going back altogether, reasoning that your up and coming career required all your time. You doubt that your family knew the truth, and despite their remarks of you following in the footsteps of your mother, those weren’t enough for you to open up about something so heartbreaking, knowing it hit too close to home. Their bitterness wasn’t a reason for you to keep going back either.

“Daegu, really?” Jin asks after everyone else has left, save for Taehyung and Jimin, your personal assistant whose glassy eyes say he’s not yet over the season finale. “You haven’t been home in 6 years.”

“Four, actually,” you correct him. “I had a filming there sometime ago.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t actually go home,” he clarifies. “You went to the shoot then back to your hotel. I remember that; I kept asking Tae how you were doing.”

“I was fine,” you shrug. “How was I supposed to be? I was good, just couldn’t wait to get back here. I had a boyfriend, remember?”

“Andrew was a fling, not a boyfriend,” Jin rolls his eyes, and you confirm that the model is his least favorite of your exes. “And if I remember correctly, you broke it off days later.”

“Well, it stops being good when it stops being fun,” Taehyung says, mocking your usual statement whenever your friends ask why you broke things off with your partners. “She shut down when she came back. I guess going home does that to her.”

“You know how places just naturally comfort you? Daegu isn’t that place,” you try to explain. “I had to get it off my system for the one week I was there and Andrew acted out. I just didn’t want the drama.”

Everyone nods, knowing it’s how you usually are. You always viewed relationships as a complement to your job. Being an actor is tough work with its own complications and you definitely don’t want it from your partner. It was always easy for you to fall into that honeymoon hole with someone, but you always walked away from it just as quick once the rainbows and butterflies had subsided. Whether it’s jealousy over your leading men or not having enough time, or just wanting to be by yourself to regroup, your exes always found a reason to argue. And you were always good at walking away when you needed to.

It was like that with every person. Except one. Your friends don’t know if he’s the reason why, or if he’s the exception.

“So what made you decide to go home? And for how long?” Jin queries, feeling a little worried because of what he knows is out there for you. He’s always been a little protective like that.

“About 2 months?” You respond, to the surprise of the older man. “My dad wants me to celebrate his wedding anniversary with them. And spend time with my sisters’ kids and my grandparents and shit.”

“And spend time with my parents,” Taehyung adds, knowing it’s probably the only thing you’re excited about, given how much they adore you and vice versa. “They can’t wait to see you.”

“Same here,” you finally smile. “We’re definitely seeing them first.”

“Anyone else you’re going to see there?” Jin asks some more.

“You can say his name, you know?” You nudge your friend’s knee. “I know he’s who you mean.”

“Well then. Are you going to see Yoongi?”

“I don’t plan on seeing him but I probably will. It’s a big city but it’s a small town. Plus, I’m with Daegu’s Prince right here,” you say, pointing to your best friend who’s made a name for himself as a ballad singer. “Tae will be dragging me around so I won’t be surprised if I encounter Yoongi somehow, somewhere.”

“And what happens when you see him?” Jimin now asks, wanting to know if he’d need to drive to you in case you decide to come home early.

“Then I see him. We’re… fine,” you state, earning you an eye roll from each man, so you clarify. “I mean, I’m perfectly fine living my dream in Seoul. And he’s a college basketball coach in Daegu, which is the closest to his dream he could get, and I heard his team’s doing really well. It’s been 6 years. He let me go. And I’ve moved on. Who knows how it’s gonna be like? But I’m civil with each one of my exes and it won’t be any different with him.”

“He’s different, though,” Jimin points out. “You actually loved him; you can’t say the same for all your exes. And you can’t argue that,” he adds, seeing your shaking head and disagreeing face. “Drunk and hungover you told me all that more than once and I trust that version of you over the sober one when it comes to your love life.”

“Okay, Mr. Know-It-All,” you frown at him. “I wasn’t going to deny that but it was the naive, impulsive, hopeless romantic version of me who loved him. That’s not me anymore. I’ve grown up. I know what I want from my partner, and Yoongi is just the small town boy who’ll always think that his broken dreams will keep him from loving me the way I deserve. And maybe he’s right.”

It’s quiet for a while, as your friends take in your words since you rarely ever talk about the man unless you’re in an inebriated state or recovering from it. But it’s the first time that the possibility of seeing him looms over you, knowing that within those 2 months, you’re bound to run into him somehow.

Now it’s too quiet, and you realize that none of you know what to say since you’re all sober. Truth be told, you don’t remember anything that Jimin’s ever told you during those times that you opened up, and Jin never really said much, knowing how hard that breakup hit you. And Taehyung, well… the man was there before, during, and after it all, yet he never really said much, always choosing to let the silence engulf both of you.

“Look, I’m touched you all seem to be worried,” you finally speak up. “But I’m going to be fine. I found a house I’m renting that’s nice and private. I’m actually excited to eat at my favorite restaurants and visit places I’ve missed. I can’t do anything about my family but at least Tae will be with me the whole time and save me from their madness if he needs to. And Yoongi, well… he’s a closed chapter in my book. There’s no reason to revisit that. Hi, goodbye - that’ll be it, just like before.”

You sigh to yourself, hoping that your friends would take your word for it, though you don’t really blame them if they don’t. They’ve seen you barely bat an eye after calling it quits with your exes but they’ve heard of how broken you were because of that breakup; seeing Yoongi again might just bring up old memories that you might not be ready for. And they won’t all be there to lift you up like they’d want to.

“Okay then, if you say so,” Jin finally smiles. “But if something comes up… you know I can always drive there and bring you back here.”

“And add to the already existing rumors about us being a thing?” You laugh, referring to all the social media fodder about your chemistry that’s too good, it might be real.

“So? Then we let it,” he shrugs.

“Does the Kim Seokjin not care about dating rumors?” You gasp. “You always complained about it. Don’t tell me you like me.”

Jin sits next to you and cups your face in his hands. “I… love you. The way a dear friend who dreamed with you and who gets to live that out with you does. We all love you. We’d do anything for you. You know that, right?”

“I do,” you say, humming once he plants a soft kiss on your forehead, just like all the times he’d done before - when you graduated university, when you didn’t get callbacks, and when you landed your first major role. “Thank you.”

You decide to head out after a long evening. Jimin lists your activities for the next day before he’s dropped off at his apartment. Taehyung lets you listen to his new single for his upcoming album, and you get emotional over his soulful sound and the fact that he gets to live out his dream with you, too.

He walks you to your front door and hugs you tightly, just like all the times he’d done before - when you cried about your family, when Yoongi broke up with you, and when you found out he was dating someone new.

“I love you, okay?” Your best friend whispers.

He says it in that soft, comforting voice of his. The one that always told you that things were gonna be fine, as if love solves all things, and at one point, you believed it did.

Your hometown of Daegu looks very different from the last time you were really here. It changes a lot. And it changes pretty quickly.

But some things about it stay the same - family-run restaurants, streets lined with little shops passed down from generations, the parks and the temples, the playground in your old neighborhood with the basketball court that you know all too well.

They make the place home, Mrs. Kim says. That doesn’t change no matter how far or how long you’ve been away.

You want to disagree. This place was never home. It felt like bits of it during the times you used to watch ballet performances at the Opera House with your mom or when your dad used to grill makchang on Friday nights.

But when she decided to leave and then he remarried, you had just memories of home left. Your sisters’ resentment over your happiness for your mother as she achieved her dreams took all that was remaining, and coming here reminds you more than what you lost; it reminds you of what you can never have - that space to dream, the place of safety, the love that would endure time and distance.

You enjoy the best short ribs dish over Mr. Kim’s recordings of his saxophone performances. Mrs. Kim dotes on you like her own daughter, and Taehyung announces all the things you’ll be doing now that you’re both back home, taking your respective breaks that you deserve, and spending the money that you worked hard for.

You eventually leave for some rest. The house you’re staying at is far from the buzz of the city. It’s private and secure, a little too spacious for one, and boasts of the views of the mountains. Jimin had found it, knowing you’d need the peace and quiet amidst all that would be taking place during your short time here.

Taehyung will be staying over at his parents’ place, but they insist that it’s open for you to visit anytime you want. You think you need the time for yourself, though. Your job often requires you to be around people, and you’re thankful for the choice you have now to be away from them. For some time, at least.

[From: Manager Jung] Are you settled? I’ve got a script for you to go through. Sending it now

Your agent-slash-manager’s message disrupts your moment of tranquility as you sit out at the garden, watching the sun set. You’d arrived from Seoul in time for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon at Taehyung’s parents’ house before heading to yours.

[To: Manager Jung] Yeah, all good. But give me a week until I read the script. Don’t want to think much about work yet

[From: Manager Jung] Fine. Just don’t take too long

You sigh, knowing that though you promised Jin and Jimin that you won’t be thinking about work while you’re here - you need a break from it all, they told you - your manager won’t really let you. And much as you want to complain about him pushing you real hard, you’re thankful that Jung Hoseok always does.

He was the one who saw your talent and insisted you’ve got a bright future after one casting call that you were almost late for. He was strategic in which roles to pitch you for as a rookie actor, and which ones would get you ahead of the game, no matter how challenging it was. During the times you wondered if you were meant for this industry, he always assured you that you were. There was always going to be a bigger break after the last, he believed, and he promised you he’d go searching for that role until you got the biggest break of your career.

And every time you think he’ll cross the line of pressuring you too much, he says something sweet, brotherly, friendly.

[From: Manager Jung] But take care of yourself there, ok? Don’t let them talk down on you. Don’t let them crush your dreams

You’d cry if his words came with a hug.

[From: Manager Jung] And guard your heart. Don’t let him hurt you again

You pretend he means your father; he let your sisters’ resentment of you go on after all, and his inaction made you feel unloved in your own home.

You don’t want to think that Hoseok means someone else because it would mean that for all the times you questioned if everything you gave up to chase your dream was worth it, then he knew it was because of the man who broke your heart 6 years ago. You don’t want to think that all these years, Hoseok knew that your buzz-worthy dating life, whose aftermath he always had to manage, was just your futile attempt at getting over the first and only man you ever loved.

Being in any sports facility unsettles you. You always claim that the buzz of sporting events just isn’t your cup of tea - you prefer the noise of a film or television set, or of a theater right before the movie starts. It wasn’t always like that, of course. You used to enjoy the screams and heckles of sports fans; you used to be one of them.

But you found out the hard way that losing someone means you lose the parts of you that you’d adopted because of them, that you fall out of love with the things you used to love because of them.

Basketball is one of those things. It’s why Taehyung used to not invite you whenever there were Thunders games at Jamsil despite the free tickets always available for you; he knew you’d say no and he hates rejection.

But Mr. Song is a man you can’t say no to. Not only is he the city’s mayor, he’s also a good friend of your father’s, which is how the chief official got wind of your return.

Your trip isn’t meant to be publicized. Actors take breaks and visit their hometowns regularly without attracting the media, and oftentimes, that’s thanks to the local government, who employs their political will and own security to ensure that celebrities aren’t disturbed while they’re on vacation or just visiting family. It’s good for them, of course, but it also sometimes comes with small favors, like a private dinner with some of their close friends and some photos or autographs. You don’t really mind, especially since the same is extended to Taehyung, hence why the lunch earlier at the mayor’s residence wasn’t all that bad. It was only slightly awkward with your father because you chose to meet up with Taehyung’s family first before yours, but your dad didn’t dwell on it.

Other than privacy, one other thing you get are free courtside Korean Basketball League tickets. The Pegasus just recently moved to Daegu from Incheon and there’d been a lot of promotion to get the city to give their full support to their new hometown team. Mr. Song thinks that photos of you and Taehyung attending the game will be the publicity that the team needs, and while your best friend genuinely agrees to the arrangement, you only do so half-heartedly. You’ll at least see your friends who are playing for the other team, but even the thought of Jungkook and Namjoon being back home and the party they’ll throw after is making you even more unsettled.

“Hmm, number 16 was pretty cute,” you whisper to Taehyung as you head out of the locker room after some photos with the home team. “I wonder if he’ll be at the party tonight.”

“No, he won’t,” your best friend responds.

“Why not? Because he’s from the other team? I’m sure that Jungkook won’t mind, right? I mean, yeah it’s his house but—”

“Tonight is for college friends only.”

“We didn’t even go to their university,” you point out, given that you and Taehyung studied in Seoul and had met there, instantly clicking after finding out you both hailed from the same city. “Why are we going?”

“We are honorary members,” he replies. “I went to high school with them and you…” he trails, trying to figure out how to phrase how you became an honorary member of their group of friends without bringing him up.

“Are the ex of one of their friends,” you finish for him. “You can say it, you know?”

“I don’t know, can I?” He arches a brow.

“Yes. I don’t deny the fact that Yoongi and I dated.”

“You just deny how much it affected you.”

“You mistake my amazing ability of moving on for denial,” you groan. “But oh shit. Wait. Does this mean that he’ll be there at the party?”

Taehyung huffs as he settles in his seat and looks at your worried eyes. “For someone who doesn’t seem to be in denial, you sure look a bit anxious that he might be there tonight. Didn’t you say you can be civil with your exes?”

“Yeah, I can,” you reply defensively. “I don’t know about him. But then again, he moved on first, so I doubt seeing me would affect him much.”

Your best friend lets out a breath, not wanting to argue. He’s learned long ago that when it comes to Yoongi, you’re dead set on many things - like the narrative that he moved on first, that he was so much happier without you, that dreams were always more important for him, whether it was yours or his. Taehyung tried to help you process that whole experience, especially the aftermath, as you went on dating one man after another after you found out about Yoongi dating some local musician.

But you always had a default answer, that you’ve always been that way - quick to fall in love and quick to fall out of it, and Yoongi was no exception. You met, fell in love, and while you technically didn’t fall out of love, the breakup left you no choice but to do just that; he was the one who insisted that you leave, after all, and you’d been the one too heartbroken that he didn’t love you enough to make you stay.

“Well then let’s just see what happens,” Taehyung shrugs. “We’ve got a game to watch, a party to go to, and friends to catch up with.”

“And a nice, peaceful home to retire to after tonight. I’ll need all the good energy before I see the rest of my family tomorrow,” you sigh.

Right, there’s that, Taehyung frowns. Your family’s too complicated that you insist you don’t want him to get sucked into the drama, hence why you don’t want him to go with you. But between that and the possibility of seeing your ex, he could only hope that during this trip, you won’t get your heart broken too early, too quickly, or too hard.

“How is it that the Pegasus have been playing here for months but it’s the first time we’re watching their game live?” Geumjae asks incredulously as he sips his beer.

“Because it’s the first home game of the season against the Thunders when I’m home and when Jungkook and Namjoon don’t have girlfriends to give their tickets to,” Yoongi explains to his older brother. “And well, I never asked before.”

“Well, good on us that you’re here and your friends currently don’t have girlfriends,” Geumjae laughs. “Also, you could totally ask. They’re your friends; I don’t think it would be that hard for them to get extra seats for us.”

“I’m not their only friend here. I’m sure a bunch of the guys from college would ask,” Yoongi shrugs.

“You’re not just their friend, Yoon,” his brother groans. “You played with them, you captained them, and led them to college championships.”

“Yeah, yet I’m the one hustling it out as a college coach while they’re playing pro,” the younger man huffs.

He doesn’t mean to be bitter. He loves those guys, hustled it out with them until the late evenings just to get the proper training and workout in almost a decade ago. He couldn't be any prouder when Jungkook and Namjoon got drafted to professional teams and then reunited as teammates with the Seoul Samsung Thunders just 2 years ago. Yoongi had been the encouraging senior who messaged them right away, happy for his peers for being together again just like old times. He won’t lie and say it didn’t sting a bit to be left out from the life they all dreamed of having, with him being the only one who didn’t get to achieve it alongside them.

“Well, if it matters at all, you’re doing amazing,” Geumjae tries to cheer his brother up. “I read online that many are calling your team to win it all this year. Imagine being the only person in your school’s history to be a champion player and coach? Not just anyone can say that.”

Yoongi hums, trying to let the thought comfort him. It doesn’t do much; coaching a college basketball team is leagues away from playing professionally. The energy is different, so is the hustle. Shooting hoops with the kids during training isn’t the same. The lights and the cheers as he sits on the bench calling plays isn’t the same either. He can at least say that with coaching, he’s able to shape and mentor the young ones, direct them to better paths, encourage them to reach their dreams, and to not settle for a life they’re not happy with or proud of. He’s got a bunch of players who got drafted last year and dedicated their first professional game to him, and that’s an indescribable feeling he’ll always hold onto. It reminds him that even if it wasn’t him, it was at least someone he cared about.

He watches as the players do their warmups on court before the start of the game. This isn’t the first time he’s watched live, but it’s the first time with Jungkook and Namjoon as teammates, so seeing them goof around and do the handshake that they used to do warms his heart a little. Maybe it’s this bit of joy that he needs to remind him that it’s okay, that even if life turned out differently for him, at least basketball is still part of his life. There’s more he wants, of course, but this is way better than nothing. He reminds himself at one point, he didn’t think he could ever set foot on a basketball court again.

The game finally starts and though he’s usually quiet whenever he watches games, he can’t help the small small cheer he makes whenever Jungkook or Namjoon scores or makes crucial plays. He still knows their moves, can still read Jungkook’s pump-fake, and can still tell by Namjoon’s stance if he’s gonna make that rare three. Though he was a shooting guard during his glory days, Yoongi still prides himself in his playmaking skills and knowing his teammates well, something that scouts used to rave about.

Yoongi sips his beer, no doubt enjoying the exciting match. He obviously wants the Thunders to win, but the Pegasus aren’t backing down, not letting themselves trail by more than 8 points. He’s in a bit of a trance, as he lets himself drown in the cheers of the crowd, imagining that it’s him leaving it all out on the court.

But as he looks up on the big screen during timeout, he feels like the air is being sucked out of him. His ears don’t betray them either, as the announcer calls on your name and Taehyung’s - “celebrity sightings,” he says, while you and your best friend wave to the camera and smile like the superstars that you both are. The cheers get louder and Geumjae joins them until he realizes.

“Shit, that’s your ex-girlfriend,” he whisper-shouts. He laughs at the scene of his brother practically choking on his drink. “Wow, she still has that effect on you, huh?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Yoongi says nonchalantly, desperately forcing his heart to slow its beating.

“Did you know she’s gonna be here?”

“I don’t keep tabs on her whereabouts, Geumjae,” he replies, suddenly sounding hard, defensive.

“Do you think she’s gonna be at the party?”

Fuck, the party, Yoongi slightly panics. Jungkook talked about the sort of reunion he’s throwing at his house after the game. Their old teammates will be there, as well as some other friends from college who are still in the city. You and Taehyung were honorary members of that group and Yoongi knows that you’re both invited, too.

“I guess,” he merely shrugs, looking like it doesn’t bother him much.

It shouldn’t. It’s been 6 years, and while he’d been the one to break it off, you’re the one who’s dated a lot since then, something he can’t fault you for. You’d obviously catch a lot of attention - you did catch his - not just for your charm and unbelievable beauty but for your talent as well. He’s not surprised that you’re rumored to be dating Kim Seokjin, said to be this decade’s most desired leading man and who also happens to be your good friend, the one who’d helped you out a lot during your years in university. Yoongi used to be a little jealous then, something he never told you, and well, he guesses it’s meant to be with you and Seokjin now, a man he could probably never live up to.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Geumjae breaks through his thoughts.

“Yeah. Why won’t I be?” Yoongi huffs, sinking back to his seat to watch the game that suddenly isn’t so interesting anymore.

His question is left unanswered and his brother resumes his cheers, no doubt invested in this match that’s now tied. But Yoongi drifts in and out, his eyes following the players up and down the court then mindlessly landing on you. You’re seated in a relaxed manner, the opposite to how you used to watch his games. He sees you silently cheer for the Thunders, too, and you giggle at Taehyung when you scream louder than you intended, your hand covering your mouth as you lean on your friend and he laughs along.

He could hear the sound of your laughter from across the gymnasium, as if the way the dulcet tone of your voice used to send shivers down his spine whenever you giggled in his ears was just yesterday. He shakes off the goosebumps he feels and tries to sit comfortably on the chair.

“Are you nervous?” Geumjae asks. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Since when was I ever loud during a basketball game?” He shoots his brother an incredulous look.

“You may not make a sound but your body does,” the older man points out. “I could feel you buzzing earlier and cheering in that Yoongi way of yours but now,” he eyes him up and down, “your legs are just bouncing. And you're biting your nails again.”

Yoongi catches himself. He forces his leg to be still and tucks his hand under it. It’s a tell he has, and he has no doubt that his brother has caught on. Still, he lies. “The game’s close. I want the Thunders to win.”

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

“Yes, now can we just focus on the game?” Yoongi chides, not wanting to confirm whatever his brother’s suspicions are.

“Fine, but for the record, I know exactly why you’re nervous.”

“I don’t really care.”

Geumjae sighs as he watches his brother’s gaze go to you once more, unknowingly, perhaps, as Yoongi seems to shake himself off after every time he realizes that his eyes were locked on your direction. But he can’t blame the younger man. You entered his life and he fell, extremely hard, and letting you go was the most difficult thing he ever had to do. Yoongi doesn’t need to tell him though, but there’s enough of his younger brother’s broken pieces lying around for Geumjae to know that it was also something he regretted doing, and he wishes his brother was at least brave enough to admit all that.

The Thunders win by 5 points. It was nail-biting until the very end. It was Namjoon’s crucial offensive rebound and Jungkook’s 3-point shot that sealed the game for them, and Yoongi was present enough to witness those last few plays. He decides to enjoy this moment with his friends, knowing they’d be asking him about it later. If he’ll still go to the party. Somehow, seeing you again made him a little dizzy. It was still on the screen, but now he’s not sure he’ll know what to do when he sees you in person.

He and his brother let the crowds go before heading out separately. Geumjae’s car is parked elsewhere, and Yoongi decides to head to the washroom and pace his walk to the parking lot. Hands on his pockets and eyes glued to the floor, he hears a gasp, and he releases one himself when he sees you, hiding behind one of the vending machines as a group of fans at the end of the hallways starts walking towards your direction, wondering aloud where you went.

He sees the panicked look in your eyes and decides to stop the crowd before they come any closer.

“She headed that way,” he announces, pointing to the right. “There’s an exit there. She probably left already.”

You hear the disappointed sighs, and much as you don’t want to let your fans down - you’re not one to deny them autographs - there have been too many of them this afternoon and you weren’t mentally prepared to accommodate each one of them. The footsteps disappear not long after and you let out a sigh of relief. That was close, but you didn’t expect Yoongi, of all people, to be the one to stir them away.

You turn to him, about to say your thanks, but somehow the words get stuck in your throat. You recall being a giddy mess the very first time you saw him, with nibbled lips and palpitating heart as you watched him shoot baskets and dribble the ball like no one’s business, and you’d been a goner since then. But he was a lot thinner during that time. His hair was cut short and his eyes had this sharp, confident gaze that usually intimidated people. You eventually saw how they softened only for you, though, but you’ll always remember that summer and how he had you wanting him at first glance.

This man before you isn’t all that different. He still has the same sharp eyes, with his look penetrating right through your soul like he knows you and well, he does, which is also why he was quick to misdirect the crowd after he perhaps saw the look of worry on your face. His tiny nose is the same, so is his pale skin. But his hair is now long, pushed back in the middle as it softly reaches close to his shoulders. He’s a lot leaner; you can easily tell from what’s hiding behind his thin white shirt underneath his blue jacket. You recall him dressing mostly in monotone colors, so seeing him in something a little more striking is new. He’s gorgeous just like before, and you don’t really know why you expected that he wouldn’t render you speechless this time around.

“___,” he calls out. “Were they bothering you?”

“No, uh…” you stutter, hating yourself for suddenly being nervous. “There were just too many of them and they were getting quite close, I kind of panicked. Stupid, really. I should be used to it by now. More of them came and I just…”

“If they were invading your personal space then that’s not right,” he says, his tone so serious you mistake it for worry. “Did they touch you or anything?”

“Oh no! Nothing like that. I just got a bit overwhelmed.”

“Where’s Taehyung?” He asks, as you watch him walk to the vending machine where you’re hiding, tap his card, and then get the bottled water that falls out. He opens it and hands it to you as if he’d done this so many times before, and well, he actually has.

“He met up with a couple of friends,” you explain. “The crowd got to me right after and I kinda lost him, but I told him I’ll meet him outside, somewhere near where the players come out.”

“Hmm, okay,” Yoongi hums, looking away.

He should’ve expected you to look way more beautiful up close but he tends to overestimate his ability to be entranced by you. He’s surprised he even got any word out, but the worry crept in the moment he saw you look a little winded and he just wanted to make sure you were alright. You’re a celebrity, after all, and the city’s “Princess,” as they claim.

You look a little nervous though, and a part of him just wants to scold Taehyung for leaving you behind, seeing as neither of you looked like you had security with you earlier. But that shouldn’t be his responsibility anymore, he reminds himself.

“Thanks for the water, by the way,” you speak up. “How much was it?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks again,” you smile shyly. “So, uhm, do you know where the other exit is? I’m kind of lost.”

“Oh, uh… the one close to where the players go out is there,” he cocks his head to the left, towards a hallway behind swinging doors. “I can uh, I can show you where.”

“Ah, that would be great. Did you park close there, too?”

No.

“Yeah,” he lies. “Let’s go before more people see you.”

He opens the door and walks after you. It doesn’t help that the hallway suddenly feels much smaller and closed off because now, Yoongi has to listen to your footsteps and nothing else, since neither one of you chooses to talk.

What does he say to the woman he broke up with 6 years ago? Maybe he can say something about your recently concluded series. He thought it was really good. Is it weird to ask what your next project is? Perhaps. You probably can’t even tell him. How was it like being the leading lady this time? Fuck, he’s not a talk show host or anything like that.

He sees the end of the hallway before his mind can come up with another stupid question, and he rushes to the door before you do, catching you by surprise.

“Just wanted to make sure there’s no one to bother you,” he explains, as you exit the building with questioning eyes.

“Oh, thanks,” you smile shyly again.

He’s not used to it. He remembers the way your eyes used to gaze at him constantly, how your smile and laughter were all cheeky and flirty, how the tone of your voice was always so confident, so charming. He thinks that maybe like him, you’re just as surprised and unsure about seeing each other after so long. He doesn’t know what to make of things beyond that.

“Do you have someone to pick you up?” he asks, needing to prepare himself if, as a last resort, he’d need to drive you somewhere.

“Yeah, Tae and I were supposed to ride together but,” you pause, checking your phone for your best friend’s text message, “he rode off with his friends and said he’d meet me at Jungkook’s instead so I’m just waiting for the guys. There’s the—”

Party, Yoongi says in his head.

“___!” Jungkook’s loud voice cuts you off. He jogs up to you and puts an arm around your shoulders, unaware of the man in front of you who’s being blocked by a wall. “You ready to go? Tae said he went ahead.”

Yoongi makes his presence known with a low grunt, his eyes pacing from his friend to you. You both look a lot closer than he remembers, and Yoongi’s mind goes to that first time you all met, how Jungkook had announced during their team celebration that the “girl with the yellow scarf on her hair is so pretty” and that he’d wanted to ask you out. Of course, things turned out differently - you weren’t interested in the younger man. But that was years ago. Jungkook has had an impressive professional career and he lives in Seoul. Maybe things have changed for you.

You follow Yoongi’s eyes. Despite many people claiming that he’s difficult to read because of the default unconcerned, almost detached look he has for every situation, you think he’s actually pretty transparent.

Or maybe that’s just you. You’ve spent enough time with him to know his sound of annoyance and the meaning of his body language. You’ve memorized that pretty face of his at one point that you can tell the slightest parting of his lips and the tiniest drop of his eyes, which could mean that he’s confused, sad, or disappointed. Maybe all.

“Oh, we’re not…” you exclaim, surprising yourself, to the amusement of Namjoon, who suddenly appears next to you. “I mean, Jungkook and I aren’t… a thing.”

You promptly remove the man’s arm from your shoulder and try to decipher Yoongi’s look now. Is it relief? Does he believe you? Does he think it’s silly that you had to clarify that, which you’re wondering why you did?

“Okay,” Yoongi says.

Perhaps you’re wrong. You can’t tell right now what he’s feeling.

“We just… got to hanging out when I got drafted by the Thunders,” Jungkook now clarifies, which he quickly realizes is maybe making this awkward situation a lot worse.

You’re Yoongi’s ex-girlfriend after all, and Jungkook had been the one to reach out to you when he moved to Seoul, but not once did he try to pursue you all these years. He respects his captain too much and cares for what you both had, which is why he maintained his friendship with you even after the breakup.

“That’s nice to know,” Yoongi replies, his tone nonchalant like always.

He’s glad he can keep his cool that well, even if his heart was just about to explode at the thought of you possibly dating his friend. He doesn’t know why he cares, though, as he never really thought much about the so-called code that stated that exes were off-limits to friends.

He’s just about to turn around when Namjoon calls out. “Min, you’re still going to the party, right?”

Yoongi looks at you, who promptly looks away. Up until 10 minutes ago, he was about 80% sure he would. He didn’t think that being in close proximity to you would make him remember all sorts of things, and that itself is enough for him to run for the hills and avoid you. He won’t claim he did his best to forget about you - he at least tried, and that still counts - but he didn’t expect he’d ever get a chance to be near you, much less talk to you and be in the same place as you. Again.

But he looks at his friends’ eyes, both pairs unsure yet practically begging him to still go. He remembers these looks, and he swears it’s because he doesn’t want to let both of them down that he battles with the inner part of himself and decides to still go. It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with somehow finding out for how long you’re staying, and why you’re here in the first place.

“Yeah. I’ll see you guys there,” he replies, turning around now and heading towards his car on the opposite side of the parking lot.

You watch Yoongi walk away, unsure of why your heart is beating as fast as it is. It had been like that since you saw him after hiding from the fans, and even more so when you walked silently in the hallway to head outside.

You knew you were gonna see him, maybe even at the party, but not in the way you did. And all your confidence at not being bothered or affected with seeing him again melts away.

You weren’t prepared for how good he’d look, for how concerned he’d be over your safety, and for that hint of disappointment on his face at the thought of you being with Jungkook. Neither were you prepared for that incredibly tiny part of you that wants to know how he’s doing and if he’d managed to piece together the broken parts of himself and his dream that he so adamantly chose over you.

You survive the car ride by glaring at Namjoon every time he starts teasing you about panicking over Yoongi thinking that you were dating Jungkook, while the latter curses as he drives, claiming he survived one of the scariest moments of his life.

You arrive in Jungkook’s house in half an hour, a nice place he bought for himself because he said that Daegu will always be home for him. The sliding doors to the patio give it a spacious feel, and you see that a couple of his friends had already prepped the space, complete with beer kegs and beer pong tables, the way you remember they always used to party.

The 3 of you spot Taehyung who greets you, and the 2 men next to you proceed to narrate what happened, to your best friend’s shock and amusement. You also fill all of them in with the first part of the story about Yoongi finding you as you hid away from the crowd.

“How… symbolic,” Namjoon hums. “You meet at a basketball court in Daegu after a game while you were hiding from fans because you’re such a bigtime actress now. I mean, it’s quite ironic. The universe is out to tease you or something.”

You agree, it is. It’s times like this when you wish you didn’t believe in fate and destiny because doing so would just give you false hope that you and Yoongi may be meant for more than just those 2 years together. And you absolutely hate it because you can’t fall into that trap of thinking that you’re meant for a happy ending that includes him. That ship sailed a long time ago - 6 years and about 5 partners later.

But as Yoongi enters the house, his bowed head turning up to search the area before daintily tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, you start to think that maybe that ship decided to turn back around and sail towards you once again. He briefly meets your eyes before someone calls out to him, and you’re left to admire him from afar, cute button nose and impeccable side profile and all.

Taehyung pulls you by the arm and whispers in your ear. “Okay, so what’s our plan?”

“What do you mean, our plan?” You ask, realizing you’ve lost Yoongi as you glance in the direction of where he was, no longer finding him there. “Plan for what?”

“Yoongi, obviously,” Taehyung rolls his eyes. “Do we avoid him, be civil, pretend you don’t think about him anymore, or act like the past 8 years didn’t happen and we don’t actually know him?”

“None of the above,” you groan. “What kinds of options are those?”

“Decent ones?”

“Nope. You’ve already had a lot to drink and I don’t trust you when you’re drunk.”

“Except you should. This is when I don’t hold back when it comes to you,” Taehyung answers.

“And you hold back otherwise?” You frown.

“Just when it’s about him. It was tough for a long time. I know sometimes it still is.”

You don’t have the heart to disagree. This man has been your best friend for a decade and he knows how you are, knows which pains of yours you’re willing to talk about and which ones you’d rather hide away. Your acting skills may be good but you know that Taehyung can see behind all the smiles and the detachment and the effort to look okay, and whatever it is he’s thinking, there’s a good chance he might be right. You’ve just never been brave enough to admit them.

The look of understanding you both share gets disrupted when cheers erupt in the middle of the living room, seeing that Seungkwan had just beaten Jungkook in beer pong. The pro player demands a rematch and the entire house cheers in agreement. Jungkook takes the next game but Seungkwan won’t back down.

“Let’s do it in pairs,” he challenges. “I take Joon.”

“Fine,” Jungkook says, his game face on, knowing there’s one other person he knows could win this with him. “I take the Captain.”

Cheers erupt once more as people push Yoongi to the center where the rest of the guys are. He shakes his head, seemingly uninterested in partaking in tonight’s festivities but goes anyway after much coaxing from everyone. He then does his handshake with Jungkook to the younger man’s insistence, and you watch Yoongi’s soft, shy smile appear.

And just like the very first time you saw that, you feel your heart thrum in excitement. There was always something special about it, and back then it was because he rarely did it, but he did it a lot when he was with you. It’s nice to see it during a moment like this - surrounded by his old friends while having fun with them. You’re glad he shows more of it now, and you wonder how many people fell harder for him because of it.

You watch from the sideline as the Jungkook-Yoongi pair score 4 straight. Seungkwan complains that Namjoon isn’t making any shots, prompting the older man to claim that he’s way better at dunking than shooting tiny balls like they’re jumpers. They eventually lose after all the theatrics but it’s enough to get the guests going, as you find yourself teasing both men as well.

You remember their house parties being this rowdy and this loud, given all the energy and testosterone that these athletes had so much of. That obviously hasn’t changed, and despite all of them having grown up, looking all mature and much more respectable, the naughtiness remains, especially once they’ve had too much to drink.

It’s why you find yourself surrounded by a bunch of the guys, asking for a photo with you to show off to their friends and families.

“I’m showing this to the guys at the office,” Seungkwan announces as he gets your approval over the selfie picture he took of you both. “They’re not gonna believe I went to college with an actress.”

“Uh, I didn’t go to college with you,” you laugh along with the others. “I studied in Seoul.”

“Then how the fuck do we know you?” He exclaims, no doubt drunk out of his mind at this point. You remember him having a short-term memory every time.

“He’s the Captain’s ex, dumbo!” Soon-young reminds him, another one of the younger guys who hasn’t drank as much but was never good at knowing what not to say. “Remember the summer before his final year? She was with us all the time.”

“Oh right. They were inseparable and looked so in love,” Seungkwan giggles, and at this point, the rest of the people just go with what he’s saying.

Not you though, neither does Yoongi, and neither does Namjoon, who slaps the back of Seungkwan’s head to loud-whisper that the ex-couple in question is right there.

“Shit, did they hear me?” Seungkwan wonders out loud and looks around before sipping his beer. “I meant it though.”

He laughs drunkenly, so do many others. There’s really only a handful of you who aren’t intoxicated, but right now you wish you were.

“Wait, they’re both here?” Seungkwan recovers, eyes now glassy.

He gasps when his gaze turns to you and then Yoongi, and he puts his arm over your shoulder and slightly drags you to the right so he could put his arm over Yoongi, too.

“I found them!” Seungkwan squeals, pushing both of you to face him. “Shit, you still look good together.”

“Alright, dude, that’s enough,” Namjoon finally steps in, pulling the inebriated man away. “Sorry,” he turns to you. “Don’t mind anything he said.”

Too late, you want to say, but you release an awkward laugh instead.

“They haven’t changed since college, huh,” Yoongi says, surprising you. “They still put us on the spot then leave us to deal with the aftermath,” he continues, watching as the group disperses to go drink and chat again.

You turn towards him and sigh in relief over the small smile he has on. You swear the tension was so thick earlier that you could cut it with a knife, but Yoongi doesn’t seem bothered. He looks calm like he always does, and just like those first few times, you take your cue from him. You try to release the tension from your body and smile.

“They should be banned from drinking when there are ex-lovers in the building,” you chuckle. “But I’m pretty sure he’ll be apologizing to you like crazy once he’s sober. Wish I could see that.”

“I can’t wait for that, too,” Yoongi hums.

A wave of silence envelopes you both. The sounds of your friends seem like white noise now, and with the background music on and the man next to you just sipping his drink, it’s oddly comforting.

You learned long ago that he has this amazing ability to do that - make people around them feel calm. There’s something so reassuring about him that remarks about your past don’t faze him, and now that’s rubbing off on you, as you feel the awkwardness slowly melt away.

You and Yoongi stand by the couch while the world around you continues. You’d stay in this bubble with him if it wasn’t so familiar, only because the familiarity scares you a little. You don’t want to know if anything else feels the same.

“I’m gonna look for Tae,” you say, breaking the silence.

You only need to look to your left at the sound of someone hooting to find your best friend downing another cup of some concoction, and by the sound of his laugh, you know this is the one that will do it for him. This is his point of no return. Anything he does after is not meant for many people to see; he has an image to protect, after all.

“Alright, that’s my cue,” you say, walking towards him.

You cup Taehyung’s face in your hands and tell him that the party’s over and you’ll take him home. He argues, but you remind him that he’s a celebrity and that he can’t have drunk pictures of him circulating online. His inebriated mind sort of gets it, and you take him in your arms and start looking around, trying to see which of the guys are the most stable one to drive.

“How are you going home?”

“Uh…” you turn to face Yoongi. “One of… them? Jungkook, Wooz, Soon-young all offered.”

“And they’ve all had a lot to drink,” he replies.

“Who here hasn’t?” You chuckle, eyes still searching the room. You don’t want to ask your safest option, which is the man in front of you. You’re not quite sure how your heart can handle that.

“Me,” he says so casually. “I just had one bottle.”

You know what he means, even more when he goes to Taehyung’s side to help you assist your drunk best friend. Yoongi doesn’t say anything else though; he just stands there while waiting for your reply. This is about safety, you remind yourself, and it has nothing to do with suddenly wanting to be in his presence just a little longer.

“Okay,” you reply, knowing he knows what you mean, too.

“Okay.”

All three of you say goodbye to your friends, all of whom give you smug looks, passing up on the teasing now given Yoongi’s displeased face after someone remarks that “mom and dad are taking care of their kid again.” This isn’t a new scene for them, either. Taehyung just tends to have a lot of genuine fun when he’s with his friends; it’s something you relate with after being in the industry you’re in.

You and Yoongi help Taehyung in the backseat where you sit, with your best friend’s head securely on your lap because he’s now complaining of a migraine. Your designated driver starts the car shortly after he checks on both of you.

“Neither of you took your cars?” He asks.

“Tae did but passed up on driving tonight,” you say. “I would’ve driven, had I known he won’t be able to control himself. I’m still waiting for my requested rental car.”

Yoongi merely hums and focuses on the road while you… well, while you sort of focus on him. Your position behind the passenger seat allows you a view from the side - from how his fingers drum the steering wheel to how he nibbles his lips. His eyes are focused on the road but you can tell he’s focused on both of you, too, with the way he turns to the back whenever Taehyung makes some garbled sound or just to ask you if you’re okay.

You watched him do this so many times before with you next to him, holding his hand and kissing his cheek at every stoplight. For someone who loves music, he never put the radio on when he drove you. He said it allowed him to focus on you, and that memory isn’t one that you really want to think of right now, especially since it’s silent in the car. You don’t know which ones you’d rather remember, though - the good ones or the bad. You suppose either would hurt regardless, and this wasn’t something that you prepared for.

You make it to your best friend’s house as you and Yoongi assist him to the gate to Mrs. Kim’s shock. She scolds a barely-awake Taehyung and apologizes profusely to Yoongi, who says she’s happy to see him in their home once again. As Mr. Kim takes his son up to his room, Yoongi turns to you and asks if you need a ride home.

“I’m sleeping over,” you say in a panic. “Someone’s got to take care of his drunk ass.”

“Okay,” Yoongi says, briefly meeting your eyes before nodding towards his car. “I’ll go ahead. It was nice seeing you again, ___.”

They’re simple words that any old friend would tell another after seeing them in years, but somehow they hit you differently. This entire evening hasn’t been a dream or some made up scenario in your head where you meet the man you loved after so long.

He’s here. With you. Looking at you in a way you’re very unfamiliar with - with a calmness in his eyes and a hint of care and acceptance, as if he’s glad you’re here but that he’s well aware of the years between you, of the years that passed by, of the years that changed you both.

You don’t respond fast enough because before you know it, he’s turning around, ready to head out the door.

“It was nice seeing you, too, Yoongi,” you say softly.

But he hears it, stops walking for a while, and then opens the door and walks out.

You wonder if he’d said something the day you left, would you have stopped and turned around? Or would you have kept walking?

But thinking about that won’t do you any good, so you turn away as well and head upstairs.

Outside, Yoongi steps on the gas, turns to the next corner, and then stops the car. He clasps his hands together so they’d stop shaking, and he lets himself breathe for the first time tonight. He’s kept his cool long enough, but after everything - the party, the teasing, the car ride - he doesn’t think he can hold the emotions in any longer, and he doesn’t even know what they are.

Longing? Sadness? Regret? Is it the unspeakable feeling of fear at the thought of you dating one of his friends who might actually be good for you? Is it relief at the idea that letting you go was the best thing that he could’ve ever done for you? Is it confusion over wanting so badly to take you in his arms but not wanting to feel your touch, knowing it would remind him of everything he’s tried to forget?

Yoongi lays his head on the headrest and takes a breath. You’re so beautiful, as if some light shines on you wherever you go. It’s probably the glow you emit; he’s told you that before but you always said he was just teasing. He sees it even more now.

But it’s also the crinkle of your eyes when you smile that sweet smile of yours that makes things feel familiar, and because of that, uneasy. It’s that honey sound of your voice; he heard it as you laughed during the party and joked around with everyone. It’s that captivating look you have, the one that says you know something but you want to know more; he felt that look when he entered the house and as he drove you earlier.

He wonders if you saw past him, past his nonchalance and calm demeanor. You were always so good at that - knowing there was more behind his passiveness, knowing how to get a reaction from him, knowing which buttons to push so he’d open up and let you in.

He doesn’t know if he should be afraid that you still know how to do it, or if he should revel in it because he’s missed you, more than he could ever say and more than he’d ever care to admit.

But beyond all that, he’s sure that one of his emotions is happiness. Every time you talked about work and being able to watch yourself on screen - he swears he didn’t eavesdrop but that he just happened to be there - there was that excitement that felt like the continuation from when you used to talk about your big dreams with him.

You got what you wanted and you worked hard to get to where you are and he knows you’re proud of yourself and that’s all he’s ever wanted. Seeing that smile - he knows. Letting you go was the best thing he’s ever done for you.

“What are you doing here?”

Taehyung’s hoarse voice forces your eyes off the ceiling onto your side where he’s currently hugging his pillow, messy hair and pouty lips on display.

“Trying to get some rest after I saved your drunk ass last night,” you bitterly respond. “I got to you before any compromising photos or videos were taken. You’re welcome.”

“Hmm, thanks,” he groans. “But uh, why are you here? Didn’t you say you wanted proper rest in your house before seeing your family today?”

“Right, uh… you see. Yoongi drove us here, and then he asked if I wanted a ride home but I kinda panicked and said I’m sleeping over so… Here I am!” You laugh, unconvincingly. “My rental car’s on the way here. I’ll drive to my house and then go to my dad’s.”

“Ugh, you’re so dumb,” he says, sinking into his comforter. You gasp in response. “That was your chance to be alone with him but you didn’t take the offer. We both know you wanted to.”

“Tae, being drunk and not holding anything back doesn’t mean you can just assume things like that,” you respond, sitting up and frowning at him. “I didn’t want to be alone with him, that’s why I’m here!”

“Why didn’t you want to be alone with him?” He answers back.

“Uhm, why would I want to?” You ask incredulously. “Since when was getting in a car alone with an ex ever a good idea?”

“Why? You’re afraid you’d kiss him if you did?”

You scowl at your best friend. “I should’ve left you there drunk with possible penis drawings on your face.”

“Just being honest. It’s not like you’ve never done that with him before,” he shrugs.

“I hate you.”

“I know. But you’ll love me later on. At least I’m still half asleep.”

You push him awake, the stress heightening now as the previous night plays in your head.

“Tae! What happened to my hi, goodbye plan?!” You groan. “I was literally just supposed to say hi and then be civil, like, acknowledge his presence but not be affected by it. But then we had some small talk and he drove us home.”

“We all know it was a denial plan,” he huffs. “It was bound to fail.”

“Gee, thanks. You’re being incredibly helpful right now,” you frown again.

“Fine,” he grumbles, sitting now. “You had small talk, he drove you here. How are those affecting you and why are you making it a big deal?”

“I’m not making it a big deal,” you point out.

“You kinda are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are because that’s how things started before. And you’re afraid that one small misstep will cause you to fall for him all over again, fast and hard, because that’s how you are when it comes to him.”

“You’re hungover and tired so your judgment is impaired,” you say, crossing your arms. “You remember what happened after all that. I’ll be perpetually grateful that you never pushed me to talk about it unless I was drunk and couldn’t remember things but I was heartbroken, Tae. And then I was numb. It took a while before I started to feel again.”

“I know,” he says, taking you in his arms now as he holds you like a baby - a rare occurrence, as this often happens the other way around. “And I can never fault you for it because even if it was like that summer fling that only happened in the movies, I know you loved him, genuinely and intensely, and a love like that stays with you. But he’s got a good life here, ___, and you’ve got an amazing one in Seoul. You just have to remember why it didn’t work out in the first place and make sure you don’t fall into that trap again. Just… acknowledge that. For your sake. And then do what you need to do so you don’t make the same mistakes again.”

Enveloped in his warmth, you take in your best friend’s words. He may still be hungover and may also be confused but his comfort never seizes, and it’s one of the reasons why you love him dearly.

“So yeah, good on you I guess for not taking that ride with him. Maybe staying away and keeping your distance might be good,” he adds.

Your silence somehow alarms him, so he nudges you. “It’s a good idea, right?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly I feel like staying away and keeping my distance will let him know that it still affects me. He’ll always know me like that,” you sigh, hugging him tightly for more comfort. “And there’s this part of me that wants to show him that I’m fine, you know? That even with everything that happened between us, I walked away from it knowing what I deserve, and that’s someone who’ll fight through life with me. He didn’t and that’s on him but he had his reasons, and looking back, maybe he was right. Maybe he had to let me go, and maybe - because I loved him genuinely and intensely - I want to show him that it wasn’t all in vain. And that I’m happy. Even without him.”

“You don’t need to prove anything to him, you know?”

Maybe I want to prove it to myself, you don’t say. There’s a stubbornness in you that doesn’t go away.

“This isn’t about him, is it?” Taehyung levels his head with you.

For someone hungover, he still knows you pretty well.

You just sigh and fall back in his arms. He doesn’t push you. He just hugs you again until you both fall back in bed and he can comfortably curl his body all over you because it’s Taehyung and he likes to do this.

“Just be careful, alright?” He pleads.

“You know I also kinda don’t have a choice,” you reply. “It’s a small town and we’re bound to see each other. Jungkook and Namjoon have a game here again in a few weeks and that means another get together.”

“Yeah, but you know what I mean.”

You hum. “Promise me you’ll be by my side whatever happens?”

“Always, you stubborn woman. I’m the one person who’ll never leave you even if you push me away.”

The lunch with your family is how you expect it to go - with your older sisters making some backhanded comments about your fame and how you’ve been “too busy” to even visit, and your father trying to dissolve the tension. He’s at least genuinely curious about how you’ve been, asking if you’re eating well and getting enough rest. Your stepmom raves about your drama series and shares that she cried during the finale.

“Why did he have to go back to his planet?” Garam’s 7-year old asks after your stepmom narrates what happened.

“His time on earth was up,” you explain. “He finished his mission and he had to leave.”

“But why didn’t he stay if he was happy?”

“Because he had a responsibility in his home,” you smile. “He wasn’t made for this world.”

“He didn’t have a choice, sweetie,” Garam adds after her daughter comments that it was sad. “That’s understandable. Some people leave because they’re no longer happy with those around them. Or because their dreams are more important than those they supposedly love. Isn’t that sadder?”

“It is. Don’t leave me, Mama,” the little one pouts.

“Oh sweetie, I never will. I don’t leave people that I love,” Garam responds, glancing at you to make a statement.

You zone out after that, not wanting to engage with your sisters anymore. You play with their kids, though, who get excited when they see you on TV. You don’t want to treat them like you hold a grudge against them even if you do so with their mothers. Your sisters continue to do that with you - resent you when it’s your mom they’re really angry at for leaving your already unhappy family after she got her dream job in Paris. You were never angry though but you did sort of follow in her footsteps, and your sisters hated you even more because of that.

“Are you staying for dinner?” Your father asks, the hope in his eyes hurting you.

Things weren’t going well with your parents for a while, giving your mom more reason to leave, but you always wished that he had done more for you to feel loved in the home that started to become toxic after it fell apart, but you suppose he was just trying to heal his own broken heart after his wife left. It felt like your sisters weren’t going to forgive you when you decided to leave yourself, and he just let you walk away without making sure you knew he still loved you despite your decision.

He’s moved on now, though, and happy with someone who prioritizes him and his needs. But too much time and distance can pull people apart - you can see them without the desire of being with them. That’s the reality with you and him now and there’s not much you can do about it.

“No, I’ve got other plans,” you respond, glancing at your sisters who return your look with bitterness. “I’ll see you at grandpa’s tomorrow.”

You drive around for half an hour with no destination in mind. It’s nice to see how much this place has changed and discover which parts of it still feel the same.

You pass by an antique shop - the antique shop, a generations-old family-run store that used to be the hub of imported furniture that the townspeople once flocked to. It’s now a speciality store that still sells one-of-a-kind items but it also refurbishes old pieces. You see a poster on the window that’s promoting woodworking workshops. You won’t be surprised to find out whose idea that was.

A man briefly exits, and you stop near the front, wanting to just take it in. He’s got more gray hair now and walks a little slower but he looks just like you remembered - soft crinkled eyes, comforting smile, a look that you know all too well. You decide to enter, as you’re desperate for something - anything - that feels more like home than the one you just came from.

“May I help you?” The man asks.

“A greeting and a hug would do,” you look up at him and smile.

“___?!” He gasps, walking outside the counter to get closer to you. “Is that really you, my dear?”

“Yes it is, Mr. Min,” you smile, returning the hug that you requested. “Just passing by my favorite antique shop in town. How are you doing?”

“Great! Business is stable and I’ve still got a lot of fight in me to continue,” he chuckles. “How about you? The big city treating you good?”

“It is,” you reply. “I think I’m doing quite okay there.”

“Ah, well it should be treating you amazingly. That’s what you deserve.”

You continue the conversation, with you asking about his latest projects and him, talking about his furniture and wood like his children, pride laced in his voice every time. He asks you about your latest series and if you’ve met his favorite actors and you indulge him. His laughter is music to your ears. You remember spending time here where he worked on his pieces while you talked about your favorite movies.

“Does my son know you’re here?” He asks after a beat of silence.

“He does. I saw him last night. He looks well.”

“He does, doesn’t he? It took a while but he’s doing much better than before - smiling, joking around, helping me at the shop, talking about basketball again. It’s nice to see.”

The words hit you in ways you didn’t expect. Breaking up with Yoongi was tough to get over. Those last few months had been incredibly hard and so many times you thought that maybe if you’d been more patient, maybe things would’ve turned out differently.

But you remember how during those last days with him, he’d lost the glimmer in his eyes and the softness of his smile. Not even you could bring those back. His passion for things just dwindled; he stopped wanting more, stopped wanting you, stopped thinking that things could still work out for him after what he suffered through.

You’d kept in touch with Namjoon and Jungkook at their insistence, and they’d been the one to update you on how Yoongi was doing. Not a lot of details but just general things like the jobs he took and that he was keeping himself busy and that he was trying to get back on the court. It wasn’t with unpleasant stories, though - you learned about his new girlfriend from them, and that he didn’t play basketball for awhile, and that during the toughest days, he considered giving it up altogether.

You knew he’d done well. You learned that from the guys, too. But hearing it from his father is different; you can’t imagine how it must’ve been like for Mr. Min to see his son start to change from what he used to be. But you know that as the good father that he is, he made sure that Yoongi knew he wasn’t alone.

“And that’s good to hear,” you say. “Yoongi deserves all the happiness this world can give. I’m glad that he’s found his joy in basketball again it seems. And that he found it here.”

“He has, but I guess something will always be missing. He’s a lot better but he’s not the same. A parent would know, you know? The flame doesn’t shine as bright,” Mr. Min answers, the tinge of sadness in his eyes hurting you a little.

But you just nod. His words seem to mean more but you don’t want to know what it is.

“Dad, what did you want me to look at?”

Yoongi’s voice echoes in the shop and you can’t help but turn to him who’s just entered and looks as shocked as his father was earlier.

You have a soft smile on, and Mr. Min knows not to intervene.

“Oh, nothing,” he says, thinking that the new wood he acquired could wait. “Just watch over the counter for me while I check something inside, alright Son?”

He doesn’t let the younger man answer and just heads to the back, leaving you and Yoongi alone. He walks closer but keeps his distance. It’s enough for you to appreciate the softness of his face, though. His presence had always been reassuring; you see him twice and you’ve felt more comfort with him than you have in months. You don’t know how he does it, but that shouldn’t surprise you anymore. This isn’t the first time anyway.

“Is Taehyung alright?” He breaks the silence.

“Recovering, but more from his parents giving him shit for drinking too much,” you chuckle. “He got an earful and Mrs. Kim said she won’t let him in the house next time he gets that drunk. He’s doing chores as punishment.”

“Ah, well it’s been a while. It was nice to spend time with everyone again.”

“It was,” you smile now.

“And you? Are you okay?” He asks, sincerity laced in his low voice.

“Yeah, of course.”

It’s the hesitant nod and the way your eyes look at anything but him, and he knows that whatever happened after last night is something you want to forget or seek comfort for. So he asks.

“So what made you come here? To the shop, I mean.”

“I was driving around. It didn’t register to me right away that I was in the area,” you respond. “And this place was always so calming for me, you know? The smell of wood, your dad’s stories…”

You.

“So I thought I’d come in”, you continue. “He hasn’t changed. It’s nice to see him.”

Yoongi always wondered what parts of you remained the same and which parts didn’t.

Perhaps the playfulness tempered a bit. You seem a little more anxious than he remembers, too. There’s this sophistication about you that was always too good for this small town, and he sees that even more now. Your smile is still soft but it isn’t as bright. He won’t deny that it still makes his heart race, though.

You have a habit of going somewhere familiar to seek comfort. You always looked for it in places, he noticed - in that dingy convenience store near your school, in your town’s secondhand bookstore even if you don’t like reading, in the Opera House where you and your mom used to go to. Yoongi learns now that that hasn’t changed at all. You’re in his dad’s store, a place you always wanted to go to after spending time with your family, and he supposes that’s where you came from.

He doesn’t know if he’s still someone you find comfort in and he doesn’t know if you even want to spend time with him after all these years, but he doesn’t have the heart to just let you walk out of here not knowing if you’re truly okay.

He hated leaving you alone then when things weren’t good. You didn’t always want to talk but you said once that just hearing him breathing on the other end of the phone or just having his hand over yours made you feel better. He may not be the right person now but he’s still someone, and that’s always better than no one.

You eye the door, ready to leave, but his call of your name prompts you to look back at him.

“Do you have somewhere to be?” He asks.

“No, not really,” you reply.

“Would you like to grab some coffee?”

The words are familiar. You hate that you remember everything about it.

“Just coffee?” You ask, almost teasingly.

He chuckles softly and meets your eyes, and somehow a part of you thinks that you shouldn’t do this. But you’re glad he asked in the first place.

“Yes, ___. Just coffee.”

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