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#because if any audiences seem to at least tolerate it if not appreciate it they are that tree and my cats

cavernfullofexistentialdread · 2 months

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My thoughts on FIVE

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LONG POST AHEAD

I found it promising, I’ll tell you that much. I do have to acknowledge my bias towards to this piece of art. It’s WONDERFUL that a musical like SIX has sparked so much creativity and is even getting a parody!! WE’VE MADE IT INTO THE HALL OF FAME QUEENDOM!!

ALSO FUCKING JAIME??? STARKID FANS RISE UP!!

I’m was giving this thing the benefit of the doubt. I was sort of confused when I first learned about it, and I had this gut feeling that I’d hate it. I honestly thought it was kind of weird that we’re using this to make a parody of… TRUMP of all people??? Like these women are still ALIVE to my knowledge.

My only wish is that they acknowledge and give their opinion on this musical in some way because say it with me now; THEIR STILL ALIVE AND HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN OPINION ON HOW THEIR VIEWED!

However I have not seen it yet and I am excited to see what my favorite musical has inspired! …Is what I’d be saying if I hadn’t read some reviews. It seems the general consensus is that while it is funny it’s not as innovative in its humor as it could be. And it may not have done what it wanted

As this TheaterMania review states

“A musical send-up of the women in Trump’s orbit, Five: The Parody Musical, would seem to be just what the doctor ordered as we face the prospect of yet another Trump administration. So why wasn’t I laughing?“

I thought this article was being a little harsh on this musical, until I read THIS.

“The few genuinely funny moments in Five spring entirely from Jen Wineman’s adequate production — her choreography is both simplistic and sloppily executed, which is funny in its own way — and the ingenuity of the actors.”

I was surprised by this, the advertising leaned heavily into the humor of it all. The fact that it was a parody—“LOOK OUT SIX!” And “MAKE AMERICA LAUGH AGAIN!” made me excited to see how they’d creatively dunk on Trump. Like how SIX had done with Henry VIII

Then I remembered what else this article had said in regards to the humor

“The jokes generally hit three points: Donald Trump is orange, he has a small penis, and he likes getting peed on. This is territory that our overpopulated heard of late-night hosts have already stomped to death — without asking audiences to fork over the price of an off-Broadway ticket.””

And I was getting suspicious, so I looked at some more reviews. This article spends a lot of time dogging on FIVE and I was still trying to hold out hope.

This review from StageandCinema is a lot more kind! I was excited to find out what went RIGHT! About this musical!

“Five is much more sexual and crude in its descriptions of being fucked by Donald Trump. Hearing about his small prick and his sexual escapades (especially from pornstar Stormy), I struggled to immediately delete such images from my mind’s eye. The thought of Donald in any sexual act turned my stomach, which may have kept me from laughing. Perhaps nausea and comedy cancel each other out?”

OH… UHM…

Of course in the end they do have the same acknowledgment at the end of SIX, “Just because we were fucked by Donald Trump doesn’t mean we need to fuck each other over.” (A direct quote from the end of the paragraph containing the previous quote)

Through this article I also found out that this is actually a jukebox parody! (Which is when you parody existing songs in order to use it in the plot of a musical story telling medium). Which honestly was a welcome surprise. They’re not ashamed that is a BLATANT parody.

Okay! Let’s see what else we can find!

“It did seem like a clever idea, for at least five seconds”

WOW okay…

This article then goes on to discuss some political and legal matters that has come up surrounding the Sex worker that Trump is going against in court. He IS the first president with a criminal record (he went to court for sexual abuse, and also was impeached)

The article puts it perfectly

“Given such news of late, it’s increasingly difficult for me to appreciate, or even tolerate, a trivial show like “Five.” The creative team hasn’t read the room.”

This isn’t a fuck you to Trump supporters, this isn’t seriously discussing Trump’s effect on these women in ANY sort of fashion, this isn’t even ABOUT discussing Trump’s political status. It’s about parodying SIX and making fun of these women. The main selling point is “WHAT IF SIX BUT TRUMP!?”

“But even those who still view political humor as political armor will be disappointed, because “Five” seems little interested in Trump’s treatment of women, much less his threat to American democracy; instead, its main target is “Six.” As political commentary, “Five” is near witless, tasteless, and toothless. But even just as a parody of “Six,” it’s too on the nose. If some theatergoers will find “Five” entertaining, I suspect it’ll largely be because its talented six-member cast makes the most of the moments in the show that add up to a stealth, second-rate “Forbidden Broadway.”

This review is BRUTAL it points out the flaws it see’s in FIVE with wit full words. This article was my turning point. It made me genuinely start to be dissatisfied with a show I HAVEN’T EVEN SEEN YET.

““Five” is not an exercise in female empowerment; the women in Trump’s lives are most often mocked. Nor is it a takedown of a would-be tyrant; zingers against Trump rarely get more sophisticated than commenting on the size of his penis or calling him the orange bitch or orange troll.”

This is an insult to the very FABRIC of my opinions. THIS WAS A PARODY OF SIX. OF SIX. INCLUDE STUFF FROM SIX. JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE MORAL DOES NOT MEAN YOU TAUGHT IT. TRUMP IS NOT A GOOD PERSON.

THIS IS A PARODY OF SIX. BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR INSULTS! IF YOU’RE MAKING A PARODY ABOUT TRUMP THAT HAS TO DO WITH THE SUFFARAGE OF WOMEN AND WHAT WE DO WITH TRAGEDY; FUCKING SHOW IT!

This is so obviously anti-Trump. But it does’t FEEL that way. It feels against these women as well. Which is strange, considering it’s supposed to be like SIX.

Don’t get me wrong I fucking HATE TRUMP CAN’T WAIT FOR HIS ACTIONS TO CATCH UP TO HIM. But HOLY SHIT this is NOT where I thought this musical was going!

I plan on looking more into this musical, but these are my thoughts for now. I was initially a hater, turned skeptic, turned confused and insulted.

Look—I don’t WANT to be so hateful about something I haven’t seen. But if THIS is what reviews are saying (and there’s barely any of them) then WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH IT???

I WANT THESE ACTRESSES TO HAVE AMAZING CAREERS! But if THIS is the show their put on, a show that is INSULTING women… then what???

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myhiraeth · 10 months

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@noblehcart sent: kisses styxxliese any au (and i’ll generate a number for how / where my muse kisses yours) 17. an awkward kiss after a date gone wrong [arranged marriage au]

It was their first time being allowed somewhat alone since their first meeting; the first time they were allowed to speak away from the distrustful eyes of her brother and the assessing gaze of her sister in law, away from the excited expectation in his father’s blue eyes and the derision in his mother and sister’s. Hopefully Liesel and her family had been too busy judging him to notice exactly how many pitchers of wine his mother had made her way through during dinner last night. Hopefully they would forgive him his sister’s incessant chatter about being a wife of Apollo, as though being one of the god’s haram was really something to be bragging over.

How could his sister think she was special when Stefan walked with the confidence and purpose of the god Ra, when his wife watched the world around her with the careful, knowing consideration of Isis- when his betrothed carried herself with the intelligence, poise and dignity of Athena herself? That his sister managed to be pretty enough and titled enough to be offered up as a incubator to a god seemed a pittance compared to the gifts bestowed on the Ivanovs own genes.

All the more reason to worry that his family may scare off Liesel, or at the very least lead to her family disapproving, which may be worse if she were as close to them as she seemed to be. So he had been willing to bide his time when they’d been permitted to walk the market, their only chaperones the two guards her brother had insisted on. No watchful family members, and he’d gotten a chance to get to know her better, to hear that soft intelligence in her eyes slip off her lips, talking about everything from reading to music to philosophy. She was easy to talk to, smiled often, covered for his nervousness- she was someone he could love, a feat he hadn’t thought possible with his father at the helm of his marriage choices.

But nothing gold could stay, of course. The first problem had come in the form of drunken, off duty palace soldiers- not that Liesel would recognize them as such-, too intoxicated to realize their cat calls to him weren’t being directed at his brother, and he’d hurried to set them straight and demand apologies to Liesel for using such crude language in front of a lady. Possibly it was only because of the actual soldiers at his back they realized their mistake, and though their apologies were less-then-genuine, they came quickly.

They’d been approached by no less than a dozen people, asking for audiences, pleading with Styxx over this thing or that thing, and he’d struggled to listen and help while never taking his focus off Liesel, struggled to appease his people without openly admitting in front of his hopefully bride-to-be that his father rarely met with the citizens of his own kingdom and left them desperate for answers and help.

The height of the day may be perhaps the runaway horse and cart that had almost run them over. Liesel managed to remain unscathed, but Styxx in his efforts to keep her out of the line of destruction, had been clipped by the cart and went sprawling into the ocean they’d been walking the dock of on their way back.

So now, tired, embarrassed, and drenched like he was trying to become a fish, he sheepishly led her back up the steps of the palace and to the wing that had been set up specifically for the Ivanovs. “I really must apologize again,”

You don’t need to keep apologizing. You didn’t push yourself into the canal.

“Still, you’re the one that suffered having to walk back with me like,” he holds his hands out as though to display his no-longer-dripping but still wet clothes. “This. I appreciate your tolerance.” He offered a small bow to her.

I think you’re too hard on yourself.

She leaned in toward him, and he instinctively turned his head, assuming he had something- gods spare him if it were a spare strand of seaweed or something equally humiliating- on his robes, but was surprised when her lips, having aimed for his cheek, caught the corners of his own, and his face flushed a deep red as he bowed lower, tripping back a step so he could straighten once more. “My apologies, I thought you were looking at something and I-“ he takes a breath, forcing his voice calmer. “I didn’t mean to overstep, please forgive me.”

#dear GODS its so long I'm so sorry #i'm rambly lately apparently lol #noblehcart #styxx anaxkolasi. / int. / liesel ivanov. / noblehcart #styxx anaxkolasi. / verse. / pv. / arranged marriage. / noblehcart

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edactually · 2 years

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Stede POV - 4.2

Ed - or rather, Blackbeard - was immediately commandeered by the guests in attendance before Stede could get anywhere near him. He watched carefully for any signs of distress, but Blackbeard was in his element surrounded by people who found him fascinating. Stede caught snippets of stories he told of exploits on tour that his audience found thrilling, but something about it didn’t sit right with him.

This wasn’t a crowd of QAR fans who at least appreciated Blackbeard’s talent, they were wealthy snobs that he knew Mary had only invited because they had deep pockets and were willing to compete over who could spend the most on a piece of art, but Stede hated the way they looked at Ed.

He was a source of entertainment to them, a window into a world that they would never experience themselves. They knew he was famous and that was all that mattered. Mary had been sidelined at her own show, and he could see on her face that she wasn’t best pleased about it as she came over to join him. “This wasn’t a good idea, was it?”

And normally Stede would be polite, would pat her shoulder and insist that it was a perfectly good idea and the evening would soon turn in her favour. But he was too irritated to lie. “No, it wasn’t.”

“I didn’t think they’d be all over him like this. I thought he’d come out, say a few words about supporting the arts and then people would mill around to look at my work.” She’d found herself another glass of champagne to replace the one Blackbeard had taken from her. She took a large gulp rather than a casual sip, as if she feared losing it again. “People are in bidding wars for pieces they haven’t even looked at, just because he told them to do it.”

“You wanted to use him to get every piece sold, that’s what he’s doing.”

She must have finally recognised the bitterness in Stede’s tone as she looked at him properly, her eyes apologetic. “I’m sorry, Stede, I never should have asked you for this.”

Before he could think of a response, a hand clapped onto his shoulder and he turned to see the fiery hair and pissed off expression of one Anne Bonny. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Hey!” Mary was immediately squaring up to her. “Don’t you fucking talk to him like that!”

“Mary, no, it’s fine.” He angled himself to block her slightly, just in case Mary had had enough to drink that she was prepared to brawl right in the middle of the gallery. For all the ribbing she gave him, Mary never tolerated anyone speaking to Stede with anything but politeness and respect. He usually loved her for it, but not right now.

“This is Anne Bonny, she’s the medic who took care of me at the concert. I invited her.” He looked back to Anne, whose anger had seemed to ebb away a little to be replaced with an impressed look at Mary’s readiness to jump to his defence. “Anne, this is my ex-wife, Mary Allamby. She’s the artist whose work is being shown.”

“Pleasure.” She directed towards Mary, then she was gripping Stede by the arm and pulling him away. “Need to talk to you.”

Stede let himself be dragged to a quiet corner, casting a quick look over his shoulder to nod to Mary and let her know everything was fine. Once they were parted from the bulk of the attendees, Anne looked furious again. “The fuck are you thinking, leaving him to fend for himself with this crowd?”

It was obvious who she was talking about. “He’s capable of looking after himself, Anne.” He hissed. “Besides, I tried to get him to leave but he insisted on staying and putting on this whole Blackbeard show.”

Anne groaned. “God, you’re so fucking stupid.”

She jabbed a finger in Ed’s direction. “I’ve been here five minutes and I can tell you that those aren’t good people. I bet they’ve read all about Blackbeard in the press and they’re itching for him to do something impulsive that they can all talk about, and he’ll fucking do it, Stede.”

“What?” Stede cast his gaze back over to Ed, currently laughing uproariously with the crowd gathered around him. Anne was right, they weren’t good people and they saw him as a means of entertainment and nothing more, but Ed didn’t look distressed. “He wouldn’t.”

She threw her hands in the air. “He’sBlackbeard . It’s always expected for him to do the unexpected and he’s trying to impress a crowd who’ll get bored if he doesn’t do something that excites them. So we had better come up with some kind of plan to get him away from those people, and come up with it fast. I’ve seen him do wild shit to show off and trust me, you don’t want to let that happen.”

Ed wouldn’t care about impressing a bunch of snobs, would he? He’d called them all rich pricks, that wasn’t what a person said to a room of people they wanted to impress. And then Stede recalled the laugh Ed had gotten from that statement.

Oh no.

Ed knew exactly what he was doing.

Stede had thought he’d slipped into the Blackbeard persona just because it was what he was publicly known for, he hadn’t even considered that he had done it because he’d thought Blackbeard would be far more impressive than Ed.

Ed knew that this crowd didn’t want to meet the sweet man who liked to drown his pancakes in maple syrup and wrote songs about sea captains falling in love. They wanted the wild rockstar who smashed up hotel rooms and started fights, a man who lived in chaos that seemed exciting and untouchable.

Stede looked back over to where Blackbeard was laughing with his hangers on, but now hereally looked.

He was so clearly Blackbeard in the moment, relaying some crazy tale that made his newfound groupies gasp and giggle, but if there was one thing he couldn’t hide behind the Blackbeard mask, it was his eyes. Those were all Ed.

And Ed was tired. Ed was frustrated. Ed was unhappy.

Stede took his phone out of his pocket, ignoring Anne’s complaints that he was ignoring the problem in front of him.

First Post

#edactuallysmau

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jimkirkachu · 2 years

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Hello, Captain Kirkachu! I've only had a chance to read a few of your fics so far, but I absolutely loved the heck out of them and can't see why on earth anyone would take offense to them. I'm not saying this just because we're tumblr buds, but rather because I think you portray all the Star Trek characters so lovingly and tenderly, and I'd hate to see all of that talent and skill be deleted because of some random jerk(s). It's up to you, but I think ohgodimrunningoutofcharacters

[cont'd] Okay, as I was saying before Tumblr rudely cut me off, it's up to you, but I just wanted to let you know there's manymanymany of us who appreciate your work and greatly enjoy reading it. That's all!

First thing first, I legitimately laughed aloud at "ohgodimrunningoutofcharacters" so thank you for the unexpected levity 🤗💚

Second, and more importantly, thank you so much for reading my crap stuff, for saying such kind things about it, and for just being tumblr buds with me in the first place. I have always/only ever wanted to portray these beautiful characters (who mean so much to so many of us) in precisely that way, lovingly and tenderly. For as often as I've heard people (in general, but especially writing professors and majors) complain about how oversaturated the world's collected written works are with sappy, idealistic, romanticized, grossly sentimental tripe, I have personally encountered shockingly little of it in my life... and I'm not all that young. I myself have absolutely Had It™ with the grimdark, apocalyptic, dystopian horror stories that seem to be literally everywhere in media now, even in Star Trek (I only got through one season of Discovery before I couldn't handle the PTSD triggers anymore, and I've since sworn off all the new series simply out of self preservation). Is the world we live in not grimdark and dystopian enough already??? Where are the escapist fantasies anymore? Where are the happy endings? The fluffy, wholesome, optimistic flights of fancy that may not be "realistic" but at least leave the audience feeling something other than/better than complete and utter despair?

(I know. They're on AO3... and only AO3, it would seem!!)

So it truly means the world to me that you felt at any point that any part of my silly fics accomplished that loving-ness/tenderness goal. I'm just so all-caps exhausted... Maybe it's because I've been clinically depressed for at least 3/4 of my life so my grimdark tolerance threshold is way below average. Or maybe it's that I'm jaded, disillusioned, "too old for this shit." Either way, soft goofy sappy fluffy k/s stories are pretty much the only things keeping me together most days. (Well, that and my medication. 🙄) And hearing that my works have brought even the tiniest bit of soft goofy sappy fluff into someone else's life is really validating and reassuring. 💙💛

I hate that domestic tranquility vignettes are actually nothing more than escapist fantasies for most of us, but if I die tomorrow and my only legacy is a few silly fics on AO3, well... at least I won't have ruined the lives of every person who's ever interacted with me or my work.

Buuuuuut I digress. Sorry for the tangent(s). 🙊

Thank you again, friend, for your generous words and all your encouragement. I hope you're prospering the way Mr. Spock would wish for all of us 🖖🫂💛💙

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

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Hi, I hope you're doing well! I recently read what you shared RE: the risk of being outed for GG/DD & I appreciate your insight. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on the popularity of The Untamed in China, and the production of other BL dramas given the issues of censorship and cultural perceptions of queerness? If dramas with queer subtext are profitable, are those in power willing to "overlook" the queerness as long as it's done in a way that can be plausibly denied? Thanks for your time!

Happy 2021 Anon! I may not be the most qualified to answer the question about popularity, because I feel these answers can only be discerned at the ground level-- ie, I have to live in China, or have to have followed the the developments on China’s social media since the airing of the series. Because of time limitations, I’ve been satisfying my curiosity about the cultural aspects surrounding The Untamed and BJYX mainly by scouring the internet for news, social commentaries and opinion pieces. This weekend is the first time I do more than observe and interact directly with fans of the series and the pairings. :)

Re: censorship, and the government’s response to the onslaught of “adapted” BL dramas (“dangai”). Here’s my admittedly still very limited knowledge so far. First of all, I think it’s important to emphasise that there are three censorship issues surrounding these dramas:

1) the original works from which the dramas are adapted, which are often called IP (Intellectual property). These stories are published online, and therefore bypass the censorship board

2) the queer / BL elements of these works, in word form

3) how the queer / BL elements are handled when they are adapted for TV, which has its own set of censorship rules.

International fans often focus on 2) and 3). 1), however, is the one that I believe has got the most attention from the government — it’s a flaw in the country’s tightly-controlled speech environment. Millennials are avid IP readers; IPs are also very popular among overseas Chinese readers (ie, they can be effective propaganda tools).

I’m not sure if this is common knowledge among its international fandom, but this is something I think all Untamed fans should know:

In 2020 November, the author of MDZS, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX) (real name: Yuan Yimei 袁依楣, was sentenced for “illegal business operation (非法經營) ”. The details of the sentence — including if she’s found guilty or not — was not disclosed (Reminder that China isn’t a transparent country). According to insiders, MXTX was sentenced to three years imprisonment, + 400,000 RMB (~61,227 USD) in fines. (Sorry, can’t find a good English link)

(This is yet another example of China’s lack of transparency.) (For reference: the conviction rate in China’s judicial system is 99.93% in China in 2013, and 99.97% in 2018 and 2019.)

News of her arrest first spread in August 2019 (when The Untamed aired). At the time, Jinjiang, the site where her works were hosted, denied being under any investigations related to her. Still, fans continued to be suspicious as MXTX was known to be very good at advertising her works, creating merchandise etc. She hadn’t updated her site since February 2019 and remained quiet through the airing of the Untamed, when most authors would ‘ve said something, especially considering the series’ popularity.

What does it mean by “Illegal business”? Some says it means publishing their works without going through publishing houses. This has been a common practice among IP writers; all publishing houses in China are licensed through the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) and have the rights to screen / censor / ban and so, to bypass publishing houses is to bypass the censorship apparatus. Some says it is a cover for her selling pornographic material. MXTX isn’t the first BL author to get jail time. Since 2017, there have been, for example, Tian Yi 天一 and Shen Hai Xian Cheng 深海先生. Some are charged for selling pornography, some also for “illegal business operations”. 深海先生 was considered to be the first BL author imprisoned for her work (she got a 4 year sentence). In 天一’s case, the author and the owner of the printing shop both got a 10-year sentence. The cover artists got a 4-year sentence. The internet shop owner who sold the books got ten month sentence. They sold 7000 books total.

Was it the pornography that hits a nerve of the Chinese government? The queerness in the pornography? The bypassing publishing houses? No one really knows for sure. The co-sentencing of the printer and seller seems to suggest the issue is with the illegal publishing, but that, again, is a common practice. So is writing BL. If no one knows what hits a nerve, it means…no one knows how to avoid it for sure.

What people do know is this: The rights to adapt MXTX’s Tian Guan Ci Fu (天官賜福) into Donghua was sold for 40 million RMB (6.1 million USD) in 2018 July. Her arrest and sentencing have not deterred the airing and popularity of the donghua, or the preparation of the live-action drama. Not only has The Untamed been highly profitable, THE China’s state newspaper, People’s Daily 人民日報 (Overseas version), dedicated an article in praise of the series, which is considered a very high honour. The article focused on the series’ artistic direction and brushed over the dangai element, described LWJ as WWX’s best friend.

The messages from the state have therefore been mixed and inconsistent. It seems to approve of the TV series but isn’t happy with the source material, which seems to support the hypothesis that as long as the romance in the original work is modified into “socialist brotherhood” (what fans of these dramas calls the modified relationship), the government is okay with these adapted BL series. However, plausible denial from the production team isn’t the same as perception from the audience, and the temporary ban on The Guardian 鎮魂 (2018), which many would call the predecessor of The Untamed as the first popular adapted BL series, seems to suggest that the censorship board would still move to remove the drama from the shelves if the audience decides that the central relationship is queer. As far as I can tell, The Untamed didn’t generate a lot of noise before its airing, and the production team never tried to sell the drama as a thinly veiled BL — in fact, it did the opposite, intentionally or not; the rumour that Wen Qing would be paired with WWX (which, according to the unofficial BTS, seemed to be a backup plan) enraged the book fans, but also provided an impression that the BL element could be completely eliminated from the product. So, when the article from People’s Daily came out within the first few days of the series’s broadcast, it could describe the relationship between LWJ and WWX a simple friendship without irony.

This isn’t true anymore with the adapted BL dramas currently in the works. They are hotly anticipated, and internet is already filled with articles describing their BL element, and the beautiful men who will/may play the leads and what these leads have done in the original IP (that has mostly bypassed the state’s censorship board). The most likely series to challenge The Untamed in terms of popularity, Immortality 皓衣行, is already building its cp (“couple”), and is doing so for both the characters and the actors. Leaked photos not only show the leads touching each other, arranging each other’s costumes etc etc on set, but them wearing couple necklaces and matching brands of clothes off work.

(The title of an article says: even BJYX didn’t do that.)

This strategy works in that it generates buzz, successfully captures the attention (and ire, in some cases) of The Untamed fans who the marketing teams see as the target audience. I’m not sure how well or long the state can tolerate this kind of “advertisements”, however, because the underlying message is this: the “socialist brotherhood” is a joke to fool the censorship board, which isn’t a message a regime so intent on demonstrating its might wants to hear. Assuming that the economic health of c-ent isn’t in such shambles that these dramas are its only hope of avoiding financial ruin, and if I must put in a guess — there have honestly been too many logic-defying policies by the Xi regime to make educated guesses — I’d imagine, after a series or two, one of the well-respected state media will call out on these publicity stunts. Depending on how harsh the critique is (and how well the already aired dramas fare), it may put an at least temporary hold on those that haven’t been aired.

#pie answers #Anonymous #The Untamed #BJYX #Yizhan #pie metas #okay I promise I wont babble on anymore :)

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lesbianlotties · 3 years

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Comfort Food - Dani/Grace - Terminator: Dark Fate

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Terminator (Movies) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Grace Harper/Dani Ramos Characters: Dani Ramos, Grace Harper, Sarah Connor, Carl (Terminator) Additional Tags: Not Canon Compliant, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Post-Canon, Missing Scene, McDonald's, Fast Food, Comfort Food, Fluff, basically grace survives and they stop by mcdonalds after they escape Words: 2870

The Rev-9 is destroyed. The four of them are barely alive after the fight. The first thing they need is to find a safe place to go.

That's when they step into McDonald's.

Sarah didn’t have time to say it, and she couldn’t exactly remember where she heard it first, but there was something oddly comforting about McDonald’s. That’s not to say she loved the place. A most likely despicable company, sure. But it was just so goddamned… big. It was available in most of the globe, and in every stupid country Sarah found herself in she could turn a corner and there it was, like a fucking mirage. The ridiculous “M”, the lights, the colors, the food, and the bathroom too. They were all mostly the same everywhere. The most childish spot for feeling like stepping into a sort of time loop. Somehow the most appropriate place to stop by after destroying the Rev-9.

The four of them were in various degrees of falling apart, some of them quite literally. “Wait here,” Sarah instructed Carl, not any more gently even after everything. He diligently hung back at the door, missing arm and all, while the three women entered the fast-food restaurant. “You two, sit,” Sarah pointed at one of the tables and confidently walked to the register. Dani and Grace hesitated at the door, but eventually gave in and followed the instructions.

Their little group probably looked beyond suspicious and out of place. They walked a long way until they found this place, and they were still covered in blood, dirt, and ashes. At least Dani’s long hair was the only thing still dripping water. Surprisingly, the employees of McDonald’s barely bat an eyelash at the new clients. It fascinated and worried Grace to think they weren’t the strangest thing these people had seen walk into the establishment in the middle of the night. Thankfully, there weren’t any other patrons.

“Are you alright?” Dani asked, as soon as the two were comfortably seated in one of the booths.

“Hm. Yeah, I think so,” Grace mumbled. She lowered her head, realizing Dani had noticed the way she had ungracefully fallen onto her seat, wincing and bleeding. “What about you?”

“Well, I’m alive.”

Dani’s answer came in a whisper. Her voice was trembling just slightly. This still wasn’t the time and place to think about the events that lead her here. However, this place, the bright lights above her, the clean floors, the smell of food, it was enough of a taste at normalcy to make her feel like she could take a break, like chaos was solved and she had made it out alive, for now. Which was enough, surprisingly. The best part? Seeing the moment that the words she just spoke fully registered in Grace’s mind as well.

Dani had survived. The Rev-9 didn’t make it through the second explosion they had pushed it into. It was definitely gone. More and possibly worse problems could be waiting for them. But, for now, all that mattered was this, Dani’s little smile from the other side of the table. Dani was alive and Grace had completed her mission, “You know,” Grace started to speak, “I didn’t think…”

“Dig in,” Sarah interrupted them, dropping two trays of food on the table and sitting down beside Dani.

The following seconds were a quick flash of very different approaches to their meals from the three women. Sarah didn’t waste a second to get started on her burger. They needed food to stay alive, they had a chance to eat a warm meal, no time to waste. Dani, on the other hand, took a deep breath then turned her head away from the food. How could they eat after everything that just happened? Her stomach churned just thinking of all the violence she’d had to stomach since the previous days. Then there was Grace. For a second, she frowned at the food. Offended about the interruption, about the way it seemed to upset Dani, and… and then there was the smell of the fries. She took a handful of them, slowly chewed them, and then there was no turning back. She got started on her meal as if her life- as if Dani’s life depended on her eating that burger.

“Let’s get to the point,” Sarah announced after a few bites and a long sip of her drink. “Grace. The terminator was a hundred percent dead, correct?” Her question was met with silence and thumbs up, considering the augment soldier was halfway done with her burger. “And you? Will you live?” She ignored the look Dani her sent her way. Sarah was used to being blunt in worse scenarios, she wasn’t about to change things now. If anything, change within her was barely noticeable. But there was just something uncharacteristically earnest in her tone as she made her question. She cared about the answer, more than she was ready to admit.

They had to wait until Grace was done chewing, but finally, she got her appetite to slow down for a moment enough to give an answer. “There was a lot of damage,” she said, quickly scanning through the systems in her body, a series of unsatisfactory percentages showing up in her vision, but nothing too alarming. “Nothing I can’t fix,” Grace stated with finally, diving right back into her food. This would hold her up for a short while, but she would need to raid a pharmacy soon.

“Good,” Sarah nodded. After a few more moments of eating in silence, she turned toward Dani. “What about you? How, uh, how’re you holding up?”

Dani, almost without noticing, had started to slowly go through her set of fries. Eating them slowly, enjoying the warmth and the distraction. However, instead of answering, she ended up blurting out the first thing on her mind. “How are you so calm right now?”

“It isn’t my first rodeo. Hell, it isn’t even the second time I go through this shit,” Sarah replied, finishing her meal. “No time to dwell on it. We have to move to safety. Plus, we got that monster as a bodyguard waiting outside.” She nodded her head to the window, where they could glance at Carl, calmly waiting outside for them. Dani almost made a comment about Sarah forgetting her promise to destroy him if they managed to survive, but she decided against it. “I’m going to the bathroom,” Sarah continued, “you two finish up, get cleaned up. I’ll get us a phone and a vehicle. Then we need a pharmacy and a safe house. Don’t take too long.”

A moment later, she was done. Up and moving again. Dani was thinking about how much she would have to learn from Sarah, how much she would like to learn from her. Grace was thinking… “Dani,” she whispered, “Do you think I could get another one of these?”

“You can have mine,” Dani chuckled. She pushed the burger toward Grace. After taking notice of Grace’s frown and already knowing that was a sign for an upcoming speech about her protection and importance, she added, “Please, Grace. I can’t stomach it right now.”

Grace was reassured by the fact that Dani at least was steadily eating her fries. Encouraged by her deep hunger, she accepted the burger. “Thank you,” she smiled. After taking the first bite she made a sound of appreciation. If her attention wasn’t all taken by Dani and her meal, she would have attempted to think about how profundly human she felt. It was a comfort to eat this incredibly ordinary food and pretend everything was perfectly normal about her, her life, and the world around her.

“What were you going to say,” Dani asked her without preamble, “before the food arrived?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Grace shook her head softly.

It wasn’t convincing in the slightest. Even less so to Dani, whose stubbornness could easily match Sarah’s and Grace’s. But then again, there was something mesmerizing, comforting, but also so simple and easy about watching Grace have the time of her life eating ridiculous McDonald’s food. It rendered Dani speechless. It got her thinking a little. About the way Grace had gone through so many years without these simple pleasures. About the way Grace’s body worked differently, but the bigger part of her was always so endearingly human. About Grace in general, fascinating even under the worst conditions. Done with what little food she could tolerate and soothed by the space and the company around her, Dani allowed herself to close her eyes for just one moment…

“Dani… Dani?”

Grace’s voice eased her out of that unlikely sleep she had fallen into. The soldier sounded concerned enough to still sound like Grace. But it was undeniable the hint of amusement and fondness in her tone. Was she used to waking up her Commander from accidental naps like that? Was that a spark of jealousy that Dani was feeling for her own self of the future?

“Sorry,” she attempted an awkward laugh. “Let’s stop by the bathroom. We don’t want Sarah causing a scene because we’re taking too long.”

“Take your time,” Grace said. Her words were soft, her frown was unforgiving. The fondness between her and Sarah was reciprocated, but still complicated. Grace wouldn’t hesitate to stand her ground against anyone that tried to disturb Dani’s brief moments of peace.

The bathroom was another unlikely little piece of heaven. It was clean, empty, functional, quiet. Most importantly, it looked like Sarah had acquired a first aid kit from the employees and left it behind for the two of them. What followed was a slow and steady process of dealing with the most pressing issues both of them had. First, a visit to the toilet, sure. Then, washing faces, hands, and arms. Grace wet her hair, and was almost completely unaware of Dani's appreciative stares at the whole process. They didn’t have a lot to work with, and there were a lot of bandages and healing in their near future. But, at the very least, they had a small bottle of alcohol, and they did what they could with it.

Cut clean and bodies slightly refreshed, Dani had time to openly stare at Grace. “You’re incredible,” she sighed. She hadn’t meant to just blurt it out, but at the same time she couldn’t figure out a reason not to. Grace turned to look at her with genuine wonder in her eyes. “It already looks better,” Dani added, pointing at the wound on Grace’s neck. Back at the dam, it had looked beyond deadly. It would have been, to anyone who wasn’t an augmented soldier, apparently. Now the wound appeared to be closed, at least. Though there was still a long road of healing ahead.

“See? I still got it,” Grace replied. Technically, the smile she wore at that moment was small. But it was so… new, to Dani, that she found it to be the brightest most beautiful thing in the world. For a moment she felt like the luckiest person on Earth knowing that now she would have time to really get to know Grace, her sense of humor, her personality beyond being a soldier, all of her. She didn’t even have time to think about all the upcoming smiles from Grace that would soon come to lovingly blind her. For an instant, Dani opened her mouth to reply, but then she closed it and turned away to stare at the mirror again. “What?” Grace gently prompted her.

Dani took a deep breath, and started washing her hands again, quite unnecessarily too, but it was better than staring at the other woman as she said, “It’s just that… not running for our lives? Looks good on you.”

Grace stayed silent. She took her time processing the information. The look on her face was complicated. A small arch in her eyebrows showed she was at least a little impressed by the compliment. Then there was that absolutely gorgeous pair of expressive blue eyes. They were delighted, caught off guard, for sure, and very appreciative for Dani’s matching ease, the first time she saw her relaxed and awake since they met. But there was an unmistakable hint of grief, nostalgia for something impossible to recover, even if what was in front of her was just as good.

Dani took the opportunity to ask something that she hasn’t been able to shake off her mind. “What were you going to say,” she slowly asked Grace a second time, “before the food arrived?”

The expression on Grace’s face instantly dimmed, but she didn’t look too bothered about it either. “I just didn’t think I would survive this far,” she gave a small shrug, “that’s all.”

That’s all, she said. As if that wasn’t a pretty significant thing, Dani thought. “I can’t imagine,” Dani frowned and spoke in whispers, while Grace tilted her head and listened intently. “I can’t imagine… ever, you know, being the person that gives the order to send you, Grace, in a suicide mission.”

“It’s not like that,” Grace shook her head softly. She was leaning against the sink, staring at Dani with all the devotion she couldn’t seem to shake off her eyes whenever they locked eyes. “I volunteered,” Grace said, “I, you and I, we both knew I’d be the best one to protect you.”

“Why is that?” Dani asked, considerably more breathless than she meant to. Then she took a hesitant step forward, and nearly started shaking when Grace mimicked her move.

“Can’t you tell?”

In the back of her mind, Dani was thinking about how she could probably spend the rest of her life analyzing that question, and the way Grace said those three words. She was genuinely asking, she was hopeful, she was afraid, she was sad, she was… She was placing a hand on Dani’s cheek. Grace was cradling Dani’s jaw with a delicacy and gentleness that most likely shouldn’t be possible in a soldier like her, wounded, traumatized, transformed, and scarred. But Dani felt like the two of them were standing on top of a cloud, leaning forward, looking up into crystal clear blue eyes…

“A car is here,” Grace announced, sharply turning her head to the right and schooling her expression back into deadly professionalism.

“Righ,” Dani exhaled a heavy sigh, took an extra moment to recover herself, and added, “Let’s go.” Then, without allowing herself to think too hard about it, grabbed Grace’s hand and led her outside. She didn’t look back to see Grace’s reaction to her taking the lead like that, but she could have made a pretty good guess.

Outside McDonald’s, they met Carl. The retired Terminator looked at them with his familiar but stoic stare and said, “I hope your meals were satisfactory.”

“Yeah,” Dani nodded, “Thanks.”

“Is that safe?” Grace asked, nodding toward the car parking a few feet away from them.

“Stay put,” Sarah ordered as an answer.

Carl couldn’t help but take a couple of steps forward, to be closer to the stranger, to protect Sarah if necessary and possibly even against her will.

Hearing Sarah’s curt response, mutual fondness or not, Grace nearly groaned out loud in annoyance. She did tighten her hold on Dani’s hand. Which brought to Dani’s attention the fact that their fingers were still comfortably interlocked and how natural it felt to just continue to hold on.

“Hey, Grace,” she said softly, tugging a little on the hand she was holding.

With her attention back on Dani, Grace instantly relaxed. Irritation vanished from her face, and the pressure of her hand loosened a little too. “Yes?” she asked. Looking at her with that same exact spark of adoration from before.

“Can I kiss you now?”

First, Grace just smiled at her. It was an honest grin. She genuinely looked elated. Not at all like she had expected this outcome based on experiences from a future that hadn’t happened. She looked overjoyed and relieved as if she was experiencing the completion of a dream she’d had her entire life.

“Of course,” Grace replied, in the middle of taking a deep breath and exhaling a soft sigh.

Grace stepped closer, Dani placed a hand on the back of her neck, they met in the middle. At first, it felt like a spark, an explosion of all the action, the adrenaline, the terror, and the thrills they had experienced during nearly every second since they met. Then, the feeling melted into a slow and steady flame, it was comfort, relief, triumph, safety. It was an action of complete love, and hope, and the promise of a future together.

A moment of such levels of perfection, of course, could only be interrupted by the loud and tremendously inopportune sound of a car horn.

“Let’s go, lovebirds!” Sarah yelled from the window of the driver’s seat. She sounded like her usual self, even if she couldn’t hold back her smirk.

“Please,” Carl added, “excuse her for the interruption. Would you like to have an additional moment of privacy?”

“No, Carl, uh, thanks,” Dani replied, a giggle stuck in her throat. “We’re, um, we’re good. Yeah. Let’s… let’s go.” She could hardly keep her composure, not with Grace standing behind her, arm wrapped around her middle and holding her close, her lips smiling and pressing a kiss on the top of her head.

#me juggling 5 fandoms at the same time: i'm okay :)#please validate me it's my first fic for this fandom #terminator: dark fate #dani x grace #tdf #dani ramos #grace harper #sarah connor #carl #terminator dark fate #tdf fanfic #my fic

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delyth88 · 3 years

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Loki episode 5 rewatch

It’s been a busy week so it wasn’t until yesterday that I had a chance to watch Episode 5 again. And I was a little worried I might not like it as much as I did on first watch, but thankfully I did still find a lot to like about this episode.

Spoilers below...

Firstly, I think it’s taken this long, but I’ve finally gotten used to this new variant of our Loki. To this overly emotive, sweetly stupid at times, often bewildered version of the character. Let me be clear, he is absolutely not being presented in the same was at the first three films, Infinity War, or even Ragnarok. But I’m finding him easier to watch now that I have no hopes or expectations that he will be the Loki I was hoping we’d get to see again. Sure, I’m sad they didn’t give us a continuation of the Loki we’re grown to love, but this guy seems to be starting to find his feet, and I’m curious to see what his potential is now.

I was again struck by the increased sense of purpose (no pun intended) of this episode. It seems to be going places more so than previous episodes were. And again I loved the opening sequence and the music as we travel through the TVA and then out into the Void. It did make me wonder whether the destroyed city was actually a version of the timeline where Loki/Thanos win the Battle of New York, and that’s as far as the significance of that set goes. My hunch is that we won’t see that long shot of Loki from the trailers in post-apocalyptic New York. They opted for the mirror of the Avengers scene instead as the way Loki finds himself in this place.

I laughed at Loki’s little rant this time too. Particularly the line “plus an alligator, that I’m heartbroken to report I didn’t even find all that strange!”. In fact there were a few moment when I felt we were getting a little bit of Loki’s old humour. Such as, his “Delightful.” In response to kid Loki talking about cannibalistic pirates, “This is a nightmare.” and “Don’t die isn’t a plan, it’s a general demand of living”.

I do wonder though if this is just about comparison with the other Lokis? Like they’re all so very much more on the extreme end of comical that it makes our Loki seem the straight guy in comparison? *shrug*

After several days I am still taken by Old Loki and his story. And on watching it again I was able to appreciate the little moments leading up to his fighting Alioth. He gives the impression of being just so Over It and his crazy comics outfit also directs the audience away from how much he actually cares. For example he is really quite upset at Lokis in general and presumably also himself after the betrayal by Boastful Loki. He says “We cannot change. We’re broken. Every version of us. Forever.”

And he seems quite affected by Mobius’ offhand comment that “it’s never too late to change”.

And then that look back towards Loki and Sylvie as Alioth approaches.

Gah! This is the kind of thing I wanted for our Loki. I don’t have the right words to describe it, but it’s partly the back story, partly the change of heart, partly the stakes, the emotional depth. I’m really quite sad that we won’t see more of him. :(

@scintillatingshortgirl19 you asked me what I thought of Loki’s response when Sylvie asks, “How do I know that in the final moments you won’t betray me?”

“Listen Sylvie, I…” Loki pauses and takes a deep breath “I betrayed everyone who ever loved me. My father, my brother, my home. I know what I did, and I know why I did it. And that’s not who I am anymore. Okay? I won’t let you down.”

To be honest on my first watch I think I just let it slide over me as yet another one of those lines where they keep telling us what we’re supposed to think of Loki (whether it’s true or not). I think Episode 4 might have broken me – I didn’t even blink an eyelid. I think I’ve just heard so many people saying things that I think are absolutely wrong about Loki that I’m just… used to it now? I dunno. Maybe it was just my mood, or the fact that there were enough other things I enjoyed in the episode that I could ignore it.

But since you pointed it out I’ve been thinking about it and after my rewatch I kinda think Loki has been a little bit influenced by recent events and conversations. He’s just watched with embarrassment several different versions of himself strike bargains and then betray each other, in such an extreme example of this behaviour that it seemed absurdly comic. Boastful Loki even says “I betrayed you, and now I’m king.” And as they leave the Loki fight behind Old Loki says “We lie and we cheat! We cut the throats of every person who trusts us! And for what! Power!” So I can kinda see why betrayal is on his mind.

And perhaps this is something he’s been thinking about for a while now. Since he tried to strike a bargain with Sylvie before he even really knew her. Old Loki ask if Loki trusts Sylvie and he says” “She’s the only one [of the Loki variants] I do trust! “

But I guess the way I interpreted it is not just literal betrayal like he just watched with the other Loki variants, but also letting people down. Letting himself down. In this context betraying his father would be the events of Thor 1 where he betrays his father’s trust by letting the frost giants into the weapons vault (I think he’s talking about Odin here, not Laufey), and then by not being able to be a good king in the eyes of his father or even his own standards while Odin was in the Odinsleep. I don’t think he would be thinking of the moment where he lets Laufey into Odin’s chamber because he always intended to betray Laufey and save Odin. Although maybe he feels guilt for that too, in terms of lying to his father. In regards to his brother, I’d consider any of the times Loki is acting against his brother’s interests, in a serious way such as the times that he was evading and fighting against Thor in Avengers, or when he sent the Destroyer in Thor 1 as betrayals of a sort, and the frost giants at the coronation again. And in regards to his ‘home’ I assume from his perspective this is again about the coronation and the events that led to the destruction of the Bifrost and as far as he’s aware war with Jotunhiem. Perhaps he’s thinking of the moment when Odin says to Thor “... you are unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed!” Potentially he’s also thinking of Ragnarok and his actions in causing it after what he read in his file in the TVA. Personally I think he knows it was necessary but still feels a ton of guilt about being the one to actually do it. In this case it’s a betrayal in action but not in heart.

So I think he’s kinda focusing on the guilt he feels. And I think this is why he feels it could extend to Frigga, although he doesn’t mention it I think we as the audience are meant to assume it. But again, this is in terms of the guilt he feels at a future version of himself inadvertently causing Frigga’s death – as he’s heard this story second-hand from Mobius. You know how if you start feeling bad about something it’s very easy to expand that to a whole bunch of other things you’ve done? These are the times he feels guilty for his actions in hindsight.

I also think he’s kinda lumping a bunch of things together under the umbrella of the wording of the question that Sylvie has asked. I think if she’d used a different word he would have echoed that back to her too.

I also think he starts of with “Listen Sylvie, I..” because he was about to defend himself, refuse to acknowledge that he would do such a thing and minimise it, by saying some version of “I would never do that”. But he catches himself and takes the opposite approach of laying all his faults out plain. Admitting in a slightly exaggerated way that he has betrayed people in the past and he knows it, which he considers is more likely to be believed, and that he won’t betray Sylvie because he’s changed since then.

So I don’t know if I really have a conclusion to draw from this, but I think Loki is exaggerating out of guilt.

But this is also one of those lines that where the character is telling us not showing us. Which seems to have started in Ragnarok and is being continued in this series. It’s frustrating, I don’t like it, but it seems this is what they do now. :/

***

So, it’s taken me a whole ‘nother day to get to finish writing this, and I’ve realised that this is the first episode in a while that has been on my mind since I watched it. I’m actually invested again! Which I was very much not after Episode 4.

This episode had another piece of Loki’s story, in the form of Old Loki, and that was wonderful, and tragic. And we’re starting to get somewhere with the plot now.

And unlike in previous episodes where it looked like they’d left hints of things to come but that turned out not to be the case, I actually feel like we might get payoff for all those comments about Loki’s magic. Probably not in a way I’d prefer, but at this point I’ll take any sort of change that gives Loki a bit more control over his life.

I’m also feeling again like this story matters. With episodes 3 and 4 I wasn’t really feeling it. I hope I’m not too disappointed. lol

I still don’t like the romance, but having resigned myself to the fact this is what they’re doing last week I was better able to watch this. The fact that Sylvie is as utterly incompetent at personal relationships as our Loki does make it more tolerable to me, and if I take it as some weird AU (which lets be fair is exactly what this is) it is kinda cute. In a way I like that they’re both late 30s/early 40s in appearance, not teens or twenty-somethings. It adds this extra layer to their awkwardness and I think brings home how weird tit is that these thousand year old beings don’t know how to be friends if you can do the mental jumps required to believe this in the first place. I still want it to be platonic or at least not taken any further. I will gag if they kiss in the finale.

#loki #loki series #loki episode 5 #spoilers #my review #loki series negativity #loki series positivity #a bit of both

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inkstaineddove · 3 years

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Man as Mirror

Ships: PruAus if you wish; background PruHun and FraAus

Characters: Roderich, Gilbert; mentioned Erzsi + Francis

Summary: Arriving home early from Paris, Roderich encounters a shirtless Gilbert in his kitchen, leading them to have a conversation Roderich could've gone without.

Vienna, 1774.

Once his carriage safely rolled to a stop, Austria stepped out of it and stretched. While even he could not deny the beauty of Paris, nothing pleased the heart quite like home. Servants rushed about him, ushering in his extensive luggage. Sidestepping away from them, he gazed up at the early-morning sky and allowed himself the luxury of taking it all in. The fading purple of night, the sun shyly poking its face out through his hedges, and the birds singing their daily hymns. Truly, there was nowhere quite like home.

Feeling sufficiently uplifted, he entered the home and mindlessly made his way up the stairs. He froze once his hand hovered above the doorknob to his bedroom. He had been burned once before doing this and while, thankfully, all other parties had been asleep, the event had caused him enough mental anguish to power him through another three decades. Still, the desire to change out of his travel clothes was nigh impossible to dismiss. Leaning an ear against the door, his decision was made for him when he heard something like a moan come from Erzsébet. Changing could wait.

All remnants of his good mood dissipated as he silently grumbled to himself about their guest. While it certainly came as no surprise – Erzsébet did this every time he was out of town and, honestly, Roderich had grown to expect it – but hearing them was different. Sure, he was no fool and they made no effort to pretend but having indisputable proof of their trysts was another. Roderich was cursed to have found a spouse and enemy full of cunning. He noted that, if the two of them ever put their powers to good use, he’d have to compliment them for it. For now, while he was their target, any appreciation was out of the question.

He felt his body yearning for caffeine and knew what the next item on his agenda must be. Still lost in his thoughts, he was completely caught off guard at the sight of a bare-chested Gilbert standing over the kitchen counter. It was comical, really, watching such a brutish man delicately pour cream into two dainty mugs, mentally measuring out the right amounts. Roderich stood back and watched the whole performance in domesticity, studying the man before him as he never had before. The way his back and shoulder muscles shifted with each movement; how he never slouched even when it would be far more comfortable to; how the whole time, he never stopped humming marches to himself.

This scene felt too intimate and Roderich understood that he was not its intended audience. What he needed most from his rival now was hostility and not misguided fantasies of marital bliss. He cleared his throat and stepped into Gilbert’s line of sight. “For me? How sweet of you.” He snatched the mug closest to him and added in his usual five spoonsful of sugar. He held up a finger when he felt Gilbert gearing up to protest. “She’s still asleep. Besides, no one likes waking up to cold coffee. It sets such a tone for the day.”

They settled into a tense silence, neither one wanting to acknowledge the other. It was childish, Roderich understood, but failing to will the other out of his existence was better than devolving into petty insults or a physical altercation. And, if he ignored all rational thoughts, he didn’t even care. When around each other, what else were they but ancient children? There was no reason for them to speak, why invent one?

“Paris again? How many times have you been there over the last three months?” There almost appeared to be a hint of affectionate teasing in Gilbert’s words.

Roderich turned to face him and was surprised to find Gilbert already observing him with mild interest. What a strange morning, one he wished he could find some escape in by returning to bed but felt certain would provide him with no real escape. If anything, the pair would wake him up and demand he leave his own damn bed for another room, that’s how selfish they were. Against his will, he felt himself noticing the strength in Gilbert’s body, all broad shoulders and muscle, the physique of the ideal warrior. All suddenly clicked on why Roderich always found himself flat on his ass whenever they’d begin to trade blows. His arrogance had blinded him to the fact that imperial power mattered little when they weren’t trying to kill each other on the battlefield. With biceps like that, his only chance to get the upper hand would be a swift kick to the groin, which even at his worst he was too principled to resort to.

He was brought back to reality when Gilbert began snapping his fingers in his face. “Jesus, has anyone ever told you how creepy that staring thing you do is? Like you were trying to undress me with your eyes.” He straightened up and shivered. “Commission a portrait, it’ll last longer.”

“Please, don’t be so crass. This,” Roderich flippantly pointed to Gilbert’s outfit, “is already enough. If I imagined you in any less, I’d be ill for at least a month.”

Gilbert smirked as he took a sip. “Funny, most people have the opposite reaction.” He leaned his hips back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Now, how much more stalling can you do? What’s kept you in Paris so much? I don’t recall most treaties taking that much time to…hammer out.” He bit his lip, trying to suppress his snickering.

“It’s rude to talk work at breakfast.” Austria couldn’t be bothered to mask his irritation. Things such as ‘politeness’ and ‘civility’ always seemed to go to waste on Prussia. “And, if you’re fishing for what’s in our agreement, you’ll have no such luck from me. You’re wasting your time.”

“You think I give a damn about what’s on a fucking piece of paper? As if I’d be wasting my time on that. I don’t know who blabs more for the right price, your officials or France’s.” Gilbert’s demeanor was too casual. “Most of the time, we don’t have to go to those damn meetings anyways. We’re little more than decorations, the bureaucrats have everything written before they even breathe a word to us. We know that, they know that. There are always ulterior motives for our little business trips. Whenever I come here, I tell my current minder I’ll be off doing a diplomatic something-or-other in Vienna for a week, don’t wait up. They buy it even though they know the real reason I come to this shrine of gaudy antiques.”

“Your point, Gilbert?”

“My point is that you’re no different. Sure, you tell everyone that you’re renegotiating this or that little detail and maybe your officials believe it. And you tell it to Erzsi, and she believes it since it’s easier than thinking the husband she loathes so much is just as miserable as her. And maybe you believe it too because you have to lie to yourself first to lie to everyone else. But you can’t fool me.”

The whole time he spoke, Roderich was staring down into the contents of his mug. When all was quiet between them was when he finally looked up, laughing. “You must be desperate if you’re begging to get a morsel of gossip on me from me.”

Gilbert scoffed. “I’m not fishing for gossip. If I was, I would’ve gone through your letters while you were gone. And, before you ask, I’ve never done that. Not for lack of trying, I’m just not good at picking locks.”

The vein behind Roderich’s left eye began pulsating. He rubbed his temple gingerly, wincing. “I think I prefer it when you act like you can’t stand to be in the same room with me. Why the annoying younger brother schtick?”

“Maybe I’m making up for lost time.” For added emphasis, Gilbert made sure to loudly schlurp down a sip. Roderich’s wince at such a noise caused him to snort some coffee out his nose. Wiping it away, he grinned. “Or maybe I just want you to stop thinking you’re any better than me. Get you when you’re unguarded.”

“There’s a glaring hole in your plan. You’ve forgotten that I would never allow myself to be so vulnerable around you, no matter what time of day it is.” He mockingly shook his head, tutting. “I understand that, for now, we’re officially getting along just fine, but don’t mistake that for camaraderie. The first chance either of us gets, we’ll be back to stabbing each other in the back for sport. It’s who we are.”

“Well, aren’t you a pessimist.”

“Hardly. I simply know our natures too well,” Roderich sighed, growing weary at this line of conversation. “So, if this is only temporary, why should I feign tolerance towards you? Quite honestly, you’re not important enough to me for that sort of performance. Even if you were, you would see right through it. No, my energy is better spent on nobler pursuits.”

Gilbert had set his mug down, now drumming his fingers on the countertop. “I’m not asking for friendship; I’m asking for honesty.” He rolled his eyes with the temperament of a teenager. “Whatever. You got me sidetracked. It’s pointless anyways; you’re too delusional.”

“Excuse me?” That was quite the accusation from an unusual source. “At this point, you may as well come right out and say it.”

“If you insist,” Gilbert’s tone lilted up, songlike and jeering. “What you won’t admit is what I started this whole conversation with. All these trips to Paris, they’re not about work or diplomacy or any of your other shitty excuses. I know and you know that the only purpose is to blow a load in Francis’ ass and get away from your miserable life.”

Roderich set his mug down gently. There was no need for it to spill, to make a mess all over the clean marble. “For a moment, I’m going to ignore the vulgar insinuation you’ve made about my relationship with Francis.” He looked up, not breaking eye contact with Gilbert. “You know nothing about my life and my contentment with it. I understand that you are a deeply unhappy and wretched creature and why shouldn’t you be? There is nothing for you to go home and boast about, no shining accomplishments of yours not bathed in the blood of an innocent people, but do not project your misery onto me. For all your crowing to the contrary, we have never been, nor will we ever be, the same.”

Gilbert scoffed. “And everything you’ve ever done, there was only glory to be found there? All the princes you absorbed into your own lands, they were willing? The Bohemians, the Hungarians, they love your rulers? Are you pretending that only Russia and I invaded Poland because I remember seeing you at the table, carving out portions for yourself.”

“I’m not so naïve to believe I haven’t picked up the sword before. And, if necessary, I would again. You’d be wise to remember that.” Roderich straightened up, pulling his shoulders back. “But I’ve achieved just as much without force as with. The home we’re currently standing is a monument to such.”

“Please. It’s a monument to other people’s power and what it can get you. We don’t impact change, we just ride the waves of it,” Gilbert sneered. “This house is a prison for all who come in it. A golden cage is still a cage, Roderich, even for the largest bird.”

Roderich sighed with a roll of his eyes. “Mixing your metaphors doesn’t make you sound wiser, I’ve told you this before.” Needing caffeine for his growing headache, he took a sip. “I assume you’re including yourself among the captives.”

“To a degree. I can leave whenever I want – as you love to point out, I do have my own house – but where would one of us be without the other two? We are the protagonists of our own tragedy.”

“I sincerely regret that old king of yours got you into theater. Next you’ll be telling me how all the world’s a stage and we are but merely players.” When Gilbert opened his mouth to comment on that, Roderich held up his hand. “That wasn’t an invitation for your Shakespearean theories!” He rubbed the bridge between his nose, his prior weariness intensifying. “Why does it matter to you so much? Why must I parade my discontent as you and Erzsébet do? If you make your life’s purpose revenge against an unjust world – there you go! I admit it’s unjust! – you are sure to become more miserable than ever before. Perhaps you should learn that before it destroys you like one of your dear tragedies.”

“It matters because you act like you’re superior to us in every way when, really, you’re no different. And I don’t think I’ll ever understand that,” Gilbert’s voice softened with something akin to regret.

Something in his tone of voice, in his posturing, lit a fire within Roderich. His eyes hardened and he pressed his lips into a scowl. “Understanding is what you want? If it’ll get the defiling power of your pity off me, then so be it! I am better than you in every conceivable way. If I am to you but a mirror, peer close and you’ll realize it too. Where you feel trapped by the circumstances life has thrown us in, with a life that can never truly be our own, I’ve taken what you’ve failed to grasp. While you were slaughtering pagan Easterners in your little bog, I was here, accumulating wealth and power you’ve only fantasized about. I am the seat of an empire that you only have access to through Brandenburg.

“But those are meaningless things, aren’t they? Because here’s what really matters to you – the only thing, isn’t it? I’ve seen how you stare; I know that look – I’ve got what a childhood spent pining among the monks prevented you from getting. Did you ever mention it to them? How young love made that vow of celibacy torturous? How close did you come to breaking it? How many Hail Mary’s did they make you perform for every impure thought? Do you wonder what they’d think of you now, going through all this because you’re in love with your brother’s wife? Phrased just so, they would burn you at the stake again. Ah, but the hellfire is familiar, isn’t it?” Roderich glanced at the clock hanging behind Gilbert’s shoulder. “Erzsébet should be waking now. Go play domestic and bring my wife some coffee.”

Roderich forced himself away from Gilbert, who was left crestfallen with his wide eyes and gaping mouth. He had said enough, gloating would be overkill. He entered his study and locked the door. If there would be consequences for his monologue, let them come later.

The day was still new. Roderich stared out the window. Despite checking the clock, his adrenaline had made him forget the time. He approximated it was no more than nine. He began pouring himself a glass of brandy, but stopped, preferring to drink from the bottle. He gazed around the vast emptiness of the room beyond its sole occupant. He raised the bottle for a toast:

“To the prison of my own making. There is no place quite like home.”

#aph prussia #hws prussia #aph austria #hws austria #pruaus

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natromanxoff · 3 years

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Queen live at Civic Auditorium Arena in Omaha, NE, USA - September 13, 1980

(x)

Fan Stories

“I don't know if anyone has ever been able to appreciate a rock concert as much as I did when I saw Queen at age 7. I knew the order the songs were supposed to be in, the way the stage was supposed to look, and what the band was supposed to do. And everything happened perfectly. Except for that damn mustache. Late summer 1980, I was pestering my mom to take me into town to get candy. She said, "Do you really want to get candy, or would you rather get tickets to see Queen?" I stopped in my tracks and started being the nicest boy you could imagine. I thought maybe she was kidding, but knew she wouldn't kid me about something like that. I guess my dad had already OKd it too. Like Axl Rose once said about Queen: "They meant everything to me." We drove all the way to Omaha to get tickets: they were $9 in advance, or $11 the day of the show if still available (though now I'm not sure how they weren't sold out immediately). I'm still not quite sure why Queen was playing smaller arenas at that point, since I think they had already begun playing stadiums. Finally, September 13 arrived. I was in 2nd grade. Ads had been all over the radio for this concert. One of my baby-sitters and two of her friends rode up with us also, and they went off on their own when we got there. The show was one of those infamous "general admission" things, so our seats depended solely on how early we arrived. I think we got to the arena at about 9 am... almost a full 12 hours before the show actually started (much longer in 7-year-old hours). A single word, "QUEEN", was boldly displayed on the marquee above the many doors where small lines were beginning to form. Excited bands of people were running/gathering everywhere. Queen was one of the biggest five bands in the world at that time: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" was on the charts, The Game had just been released, and "Another One Bites the Dust" was soon-to-be released as a single. We picked one of the lines and got ready for what was indeed halfway dangerous: the growing mob of people ready to run in when the doors would open. This was a big issue of the time, as it was the year before that 11 people were crushed to death at the turnstiles of a Who concert. (An episode of the TV show W.K.R.P. in Cincinnati even focused on this.) People were starting to press onto the transparent doors trying to look inside, when suddenly there was the sound of tires screeching from the street: a white limousine honked twice and sped around the corner toward the other side of the arena, and was gone within seconds. The "big kids" screamed and ran after it; I was too small to do this, but we got better places in line! When everyone came back, they said they actually saw Freddie and John get out of it and be scuffled into the building before getting attacked by the mob of people. In the meantime, others around us were starting to talk to my mom. Two of them were a man and a lady who were apparently on date, and they ended up even staying by and sitting by us through the show. Some other people also offered to kind of stay around my mom and I to make sure I'd be safe on the way in. A couple of times, a big fat drunk guy yelled out, "Who's your favorite group?" and of course everyone yelled "Queen!"

Now people were beginning to bang on the doors of the entrance. I think the doors finally opened at around 11 am. When they did, we and other people from several sides of the arena moved in, towards those coming in from other doors on opposite sides: within seconds, everyone had funneled from outside to stopping cold in the lobby, having basically run into each other. This is exactly where everyone stayed for the next two hours. A human shield of several people were intact around my mom and I preventing my being crushed... and all I could see for two hours were a bunch of butts! Once in awhile someone would try and lift me up to see all the people. From the distance, the drunk guy again repeated the "Who's your favorite band?" line a couple of times, realizing that more people could hear him now that he was indoors and echoing, and everyone gave the appropriate response. By the fifth time, only the drunk people were responding to him, and by the tenth time people were laughing and moaning. Every so often, some loud music would come out of the arena like a band was tuning-up, but it wasn't Queen music so everyone figured it was just the opening act. At 1 pm, the turnstiles were finally opened. I was kind of keeping my guard around me as everyone pressed forward, and everything was moving faster the closer we got, but by surveying the area I thought I'd be safe. I had my ticket in my hand. The guy from the couple was going to try and enter first, then me, and then my mom. When I got to the turnstiles, my mom and the guy grabbed my arms on both sides and completely hoisted me over. A surprised old man tore my ticket while I was in mid-air. Suddenly, we were standing relatively calmly inside: the difficult part was over, and we were at least safe from here on out. People were still running everywhere and screaming, but the hallways were pretty big so it wasn't too dangerous as long as we stayed toward the edge. Most people were still outside, since we were somewhat early. An older 12-year-old tore around the corner, then his '70s-style tennis shoes screeched against the floor and he fell down for a second as he decided to which way to go. We knew we were sort of on a mission to walk fast toward a balcony and just get seats instead of wandering around indecisively like others. We went straight up toward the second level balcony, as others ran the opposite way down to the main floor. My mom and I and the people we'd befriended walked right next to the wall, and I pressed against it while just a few feet away scattered groups of people would sometimes run by full-speed. I would have wanted to be on the main floor, but my mom had previously explained to me how, unless we were in the balcony, we would have to actually stand through the whole show (there weren't any chairs on the main floor) and would hardly be able to see anything. Plus, along with the horror stories of people running in at the beginning of a rock concert, I had also heard how people supposedly got crushed to death against the stage... so sitting in the balcony was just fine with me. We got two seats in the front of the second balcony, just by the railing to the balcony below. We were on the right side of the arena, about halfway back, so we couldn't complain. Now, I knew this was the beginning of the biggest wait: sitting in the same spot from 1 in the afternoon to about 9 at night.

The main parts of the stage I liked (from viewing the pictures in my Live Killers album) were intact: the steps were lined with lights under Roger's drums, and middle of the main stage had a small plank stage that stuck out for Freddie to walk on, where the crowd could touch him but not too easily. Most of the instruments, and all of Roger's drum set, were covered in giant sheets of plastic. I'd never seen such big speakers; I had a flashback when I saw the black and white photo to the right because that's what they looked like with the house lights up. Throughout the afternoon, the lights in the arena would go out, then come back on... like we were being teased. Finally when it was about time for the opening band, the lights went off longer than usual and the band took the stage. The opening band was someone we had never heard of, and my mom and I both can't even remember who it was now (two people have e-mailed me saying it was a band called "Dakota"). I don't think they had any hits, and then apparently disappeared soon after. The crowd tolerated the first two or three songs. Then, every song ended with "Just one more song!" much to the audience's vocal dismay. I went on a trip to the bathroom, and they were still playing when I came back. Then they left. Ten minutes later, they came back and said "Just one more song!" and I think they played three. People were yelling, "We want Queen!" People were getting harsh to the point it was just uncomfortable even seeing the band on the stage. Everyone cheered when they left. The lights came back on. Another two hours. Just seeing them walk across the stage would have been enough for me, so at that age I really couldn't comprehend being in their presence for a whole two-hour concert. This wait was easier though because every second we knew the show could start. Seeing Queen still seemed like it was too good to be true, like some act of God would occur just before the show to prevent it. Then, the lights went out. There's no feeling like the wait in total darkness just before a Queen concert. It was 10 minutes of black and the loudest screaming I'd ever heard. I remember it was "scary" and so I think Brian might have also been playing the weeping guitar sound like the beginning of the We Will Rock You concert video. It was a good scary feeling though, like going up the first hill of a roller coaster. After several minutes of intense darkness and the crowd screaming, when I felt like my ears didn't have room for any more sound to enter (though I loved it), the even louder sound of thunder clapped across the arena with an incredibly blinding light. I could see everyone on the main floor have to turn completely around in unison toward the back of the arena because the lights were so bright. I kept trying to glance at the stage to see what was happening, but it was too bright to see anything... plus, in between the flashes, it was too dark to see anything. It was sort of an unnerving state, being totally blinded in that big of a place with that many people, and coming to the realizaton that it would be unthinkable to actually move around and that we were basically helpless. I was holding my mom's hand. Queen had the whole crowd paralyzed in their tracks before the show even began.

I'm not sure if the lights all rose up like in the We Will Rock You video or not (since we couldn't see), or if they were already raised because of the opening band. Eventually the thunder and noise turned to music. Finally, through my wincing, Freddie Mercury was suddenly in front of my own little eyes on the front extended stage in all the smoke. I'd never even seen a celebrity in person before, much less my idol at the time. I didn't think they would open with the fast version of "We Will Rock You" for some reason, since that's at the beginning of the Live Killers album and I thought they would want to do something different, but was surprised that they opened with a non-Queen song: "Jailhouse Rock". The stage looked similar to that in the We Will Rock You concert video, with the smaller panels of lights replacing the single giant panel from previous tours; however, I'm certain there was at least another entire, higher level of moving lights (not only from seeing them at the concert, but also looking at the pictures for years afterwards). The lights in the We Will Rock You video seem extremely cut-back. Instead of one row of panels of lights across the back of the stage, the panels were all over the place and the ones above the band moved straight up and down on poles and tilted back and forth. There were also little men somehow sitting amongst the panels who manually operated at least a dozen spotlights, and more guys doing this from a small section hanging down from the ceiling at the middle of the arena. Since the spotlights were directed from the top of the arena, there wasn't a big bulky spotlight booth in the middle of the main floor taking up space, and the audio booth was placed along the right side of the arena (down not to far from us) so it wasn't in anyone's way. In the darkness between a lot of the songs, flashlights darted around the stage... we couldn't figure out if it was the band or engineers setting things up. Thankfully, no one came out on stage before the show to announce the band (I've always thought this is really cheesy). Freddie had on those red leather pants with the blue knee-pads... and, unfortunately, that ugly mustache! "What do you think about my new mustache?" Freddie asked. (Mixed applause.) "Some people don't like it, but I just say 'fu** 'em.'" (Crowd goes wild.). Freddie drank some water, then tossed the rest out onto the crowd along with his cup. He tossed his tambourine out later, and I couldn't imagine what it would actually be like to touch it. Freddie also had that long silver microphone stand that he always danced around with in the videos. He was running all over the place; one second he was on the plank at our side of the arena, the next at the other side. The three high school girls who rode up with us were excited because when he went to the end of one of the planks he ended up level and close to them in the balcony (but upset because, had one not been on crutches, they would have stayed on the main floor where Freddie tossed his tambourine!). Once or twice I remember looking into the middle of the arena and some kind of explosion occurred in mid-air (apparently launched from the lighting duct at the top of the arena). There weren't that many lighters in the audience, but instead everyone was using those green glow-sticks that come out around Halloween (I think these were new at the time). The audience kept throwing their green glow sticks up on the stage until at times it was covered, and more than once Brian kicked off some back into the audience (and I think he might have been getting upset but I'm not sure!).

There were numerous parts of the show I knew had to be there... and they all were. The first was the "scary" sound effects and section of "Get Down, Make Love", where Queen showed off their lights. (At that age, I thought the erotic sound effects were simply supposed to represent the monster breaking-in on the cover of News of the World). Smoke shrouded the band, as the panels of lights took over and moved around to the audience's ooohs and aaahs. My mom and I were trying to figure out what was on Roger's bass drum, since it didn't look like an album cover; it turned out to be the white "face" design, also in the We Will Rock You video. Back then, concerts didn't have big video screens, so we just had to use the binoculars that we'd brought. Some spotlights were gathering on Freddie and Brian as they went to sit on two stools toward the right of the stage, and my mom got excited because we knew "Love of My Life" was coming. Freddie announced, "This is our first time in Omaha... " as the song started, and got the crowd to sing along like on the Live Killers album. Meanwhile, I had become a source of info for those around who wanted to know what the songs were; every time a new song would start, people would ask me what it was! I really don't know if anyone has ever actually been able to appreciate a concert as much as I did that night: I was only 7, but had every album except the first two, and knew every song they played except maybe two or three. But what's interesting is how fans often wish they could experience how a "classic" band was 20 years prior... and this is strangely how I felt I was experiencing the show, because at my age it seemed like Queen had been around 20 years. There were parts of the show, including the stage design, that were "legendary" to me, but were only 2-3 years old in reality. Now, 20 years later, they're legendary to everyone else. Periodically, the guy next to me changed the tape in his "hidden" tape recorder. We knew the show was close to the end when "Bohemian Rhapsody" began. Everyone clapped to the pre-recorded opera section, and as the Live Killers liner notes say: "The audience and the lights take care of the rest." The crowd went nuts when Roger hit the famous gong at the end.

I think there were two or three more songs, and then everything went black for about 10 minutes. Could it be that they were actually not going to play the standard "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions/God Save the Queen" closing? The house lights may have even come on for awhile, then went back off. A few people were starting to leave, and I kept telling my mom that they had to end the concert that way, because that's the only way a Queen concert ends... but then even I was having doubts. Finally, the yellow lights around the gong all turned on, pointing directly on Roger, who started the drums of "We Will Rock You" and everyone stomped their feet and clapped. Of course "We Are the Champions" was next, and Freddie shook some of the hands flailing in front of the stage while singing it. I remember there was one hand jumping up and down that never got shook! Freddie bent his neck way back when he sang "... of the world!" at the very end like I knew he was supposed to from videos on TV, and we hoped for another song but knew that was probably going to be it. A grand finale of Queen's famous pyrotechnics began shooting everywhere from the stage, the lights were all moving around, and everyone was jumping all over in the aisles. Soon the pre-recorded Night at the Opera version of "God Save the Queen" did begin playing...but, nobody really sang to it since this is America and no one knows the words! At this point, I tried to make sure I was truly fathoming what it was like to actually see the band members in front of me since they'd be gone soon. Freddie was still dancing around and danced out a little door behind the drums, and the rest of the band followed one-by-one, with John being last as he waved to everybody one last time. The lights flickered and moved some more to the rest of the song, slowly going dark along with the rest of the arena, with the final rise of the crowd's applause. Perfect. Except for that damn mustache. We walked down what seemed like endless spiraling stairs on the way out...extremely slowly this time. My ears had that weird "ringing" feeling like everyone said I'd have, but that I'd never experienced before. Spotlights were panning the sky outside. We said goodbye to the couple we'd been with during the show. A guy in his late 20s started talking to us on the long way out; he laughed and told me how he'd also had to argue with his mom who said Queen would never come to Omaha. My mom asked him if he thought I'd even remember the whole thing since I was so little. He looked down at me, saw my grin from ear-to-ear, and said, "He'll never forget this."” - Jim

#queen #queen band #roger taylor #freddie mercury #brian may #john deacon #queen concerts

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sanktagenyas · 3 years

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ok ok ok so i’m on ep 6 (about to start it) of shadow and bone and i’m not writing this ‘cause i’m full of restraint and don’t wanna keep watching all the way through far from it but i have some thoughts.

ok first things first: darklina. i love them and i think i have to attribute a lot of why i love them so much to ben barnes and jessie mei li’s portrayal and their chemistry which is just on fire. i already like book version (what i’ve read so far at least) a lot so there was a lot to live up to. that was pretty much top priority for me will they do these two justice and i have high expectations for the scenes between them now that alina’s made her turn, now that she knows who the darkling really is.

now there are a couple of changes been made from the book which was to expect but that kinda bugged me. in the book the darkling is very evasive, alina sees him very rarely which makes sense the man ought to be busy planning if they’re gonna go into the fold eventually. and so because the moments between them are rarefied there’s this anticipation to it all and i wish the show would have spaced out their scenes together more so that it would translate. i also personally thought reading the book that the darkling deliberately kept his distance from alina because she unsettles him. she makes him feel things he hasn’t felt in a long time. i always thought that if he wanted to keep her at his side and loyal he could have easily seduced her into bed a lot sooner than he tried to. after that if he’d played his cards right he could have spun her another tale to make her adhere to his plans with the fold. he could have convinced her it was the right thing to do if he really is that good of a manipulator but i always figured his feelings for her were getting in the way of him going that extra mile, hence him keeping his distance.

i got spoiled about his name and i didn’t quite get why she learns about it now. that’s gonna ruin whatever weight that moment has in the books. actually that moment won’t happen now i’m guessing.

also because since i’m being picky i might as well add that i wish this whole talk of the black heretic had gone the way it has in the books. she’s practically having to pry information out of him like his age but here he tells her about the black heretic and not just that but also how he feels about being blamed for his ancestor’s mistakes. i get it, it’s manipulation but i prefer the less open version of the darkling from the book. that version seemed more sincere, he didn’t spin a tearful tale of a boy marked unjustly and decried for his ancestor’s sins. he just said it matter of factly. he lied but at least he wasn’t being a manipulative ass about it in the book. withholding information and outright lies are bad enough but using alina’s own pain for being an outsider/undesirable against her by weaving this tale of him being one too was just a bit much.

but i think it plays a part in a bigger issue i have with the show but more on that later.

i did really really enjoy darklina so far regardless. the more open version of the darkling means that we get to see alina tease a lightness (pun intented) out of him that make him seem younger than he is, more of the innocent boy he once was maybe but then again he reverts back to that calculating cold gaze just in time. lest we forget who our villain is here. i absolutely LOVED the fact that they gave alina more agency and more of an active role in the relationship, i couldn’t be happier about the fact that we lost their original book first kiss post baghra training if it means we get to see alina kiss him first. she really blossomed once she let go of mal i don’t know if you noticed. that flashback of her hurting herself so she would fail the grisha’s test was heartbreaking to see. really hammered home for me why i can’t get behind malina.

which brings us to malina. i’ll keep it brief. i wish the show would stop shoving these two at us like you’d push a puppy onto an unwilling adopter. no matter how shiny and big those eyes are i’m not interested. the use of flashbacks to their common past and to that damn meadow was excessive to say the least and i kept waiting and waiting to feel what the showmakers were intending to invoke in their audience but i must not be the target for it because i just didn’t. there’s an appeal to the kind of ease and fondness that two best friends have between one another and in both their actions (especially mal’s actually, another change from book form) the love is apparent but that doesn’t change the conclusion i reach inevitably when it comes to these two: they are a codependant mess. they let themselves go when they’re not together as if being separated means a fate worse than death, as if they can’t function without the other. that’s especially true for alina. and they both make foolish reckless choices that hurt other people in the process of getting back to one another. but at least in mal’s case he had reason to fear for her safety and didn’t put mikhael and dubrov in harm’s way on purpose. alina’s short sightedness when burning those maps was the one moment i was genuinely fuming mad at our hero.

and then there’s mal. a mal pov means a chance to get to know him better and go from me tolerating the guy to liking him or heck maybe even love him. if i could love mal half as much alina does it would make his scenes so much better instead of being the most boring part of any episode and i’d say natural seeing as he’s also competing with a lot of very lively and interesting characters. i mean kaz is pretty damn stoic and yet i’m never bored by him, not for one second. the issue is that mal’s scenes revolve around alina, his scenes are yet another way to shove malina down our throats and i cannot take it. i appreciate his bravery and his loyalty but his best scene to me is the one with him crying over mikhael’s dead body. a scene devoid of any callback to alina or malina. give him a story that doesn’t revolve around her, give him more to do beside being his own one man rescue team for alina. he deserves better.

now my big fear is darklina related i’m thinking because they made the darkling much more open with alina it’s all gonna seem more deliberate to her, she’s going to not just doubt and fine comb through her interactions with him to find the lie she’s going to be flat out convinced it was just an act from start to finish which means more angst. i hope they won’t go from the heat of these two together to just dead coldness and that they’d keep alina’s pull that she feels towards him. i didn’t forget how she just melted into him against herself when he kissed her again even though she was his captive then and under threat of harm. i didn’t forget how she still feels about him by that point and i hope the showrunners and writers didn’t forget. they don’t need to diminish darklina to push their malina agenda and if they do? well maybe malina isn’t as attractive of a ship as they think it is.

#shadow and bone spoilers #sab spoilers #darklina #alina starkov #aleksander morozova

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not-wholly-unheroic · 3 years

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Viewing Disney’s Peter Pan Through the Eyes of an Adult

Recently, I’ve seen several posts floating around talking about how Disney’s Hook is difficult for people to take seriously and is much too comical for what Barrie had intended. I grew up with Disney’s Hook. He was my first introduction to the character and the reason why I became interested in reading classic literature, writing fanfic, and seriously delving into the analysis of complex villainous/antagonistic characters, so he has a very special place in my heart and I’m prone to be quick to defend him. Rather than writing a long-winded reply to these individual posts, I decided to just make my own explaining why Disney’s Hook can be viewed as just as tragic and sympathetic as any other version. (You can also read some of my earlier posts defending Disney’s Hook here and here.)

*takes a deep breath* *cracks knuckles* Buckle up kiddos! You’re in for a long ride!

My view of Disney’s Hook as a tragic character lies primarily in my sympathy for him when he switches from a proud, elegant, dangerous character to a shivering mess of a man when the crocodile comes around. Let me attempt to elaborate--but first, a bit of a necessary digression.

Every film/book/play, etc. can be viewed from several perspectives. Typically, there is one character that we are meant to like and who becomes the primary focus of the story. Anyone who opposes that character is automatically an antagonist, if not a villain. Usually, even if the point of view is omniscient, we can still tell that it is not, perhaps, entirely objective in its portrayal of certain characters. This sort of situation happens all the time on the evening news--the interviewer is, in theory, supposed to be a neutral reporter on an incident, but it is often obvious that they favor one side of an issue over another, and as a result, the public's view of the situation and those involved is skewed. The lens through which we view a certain character tends to do the same thing. For instance, in Les Miserables (another favorite story of mine), Javert is viewed as an antagonist because the book is primarily concerned with the redemption story of Valjean; however, if the story was flipped and instead focused on the inspector's character and his transition from a strict legalist to a man so broken by the idea of morality that he commits suicide, he would, perhaps, be viewed instead as a tragic HERO instead of a tragic ANTAGONIST. Javert likely does many GOOD things in the name of the law as well during his career, but we don't see most of them because he isn't the main focus of the book. Similarly, I think Disney’s Hook can be more greatly appreciated as TRAGIC instead of COMICAL when we consider the lens through which we are viewing him.

Disney has always been geared toward children, so naturally, when they tell a story, they want the material to be attractive to a younger audience. This means not only that certain more frightening or upsetting elements of a story may be left out, edited, or altogether changed, but also that WE VIEW THE CHARACTERS THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD. (For example, in The Little Mermaid, King Triton's opposition to Ariel going to the surface world is presented in such a way that he seems extremely harsh when, in reality, he is father trying to keep his daughter safe. True, he DOES overreact, but remember, Ariel is only sixteen--not even LEGALLY an adult--and wants to run off with some guy she hasn’t even had a conversation with. But kids can relate to overbearing parents who, in a moment of disagreement, seem like they are being "mean," so that is how the audience sees Triton.) Peter Pan, especially, with its protagonist(s) as a child/children, really magnifies this perspective to the point where, unfortunately, some of the characters become almost caricatures of themselves. When children are legitimately afraid of something, they react one of two ways: Either they run from it/avoid it altogether, or they make-believe that whatever is frightening them is actually a lot less terrifying than it is so that they appear brave. I remember when I was younger, I used to be TERRIFIED of Monstro, the whale from Pinocchio. I couldn't watch the film without getting nightmares. But I didn't want to be afraid of watching the movie, so with my overactive imagination, I decided that I could fix that by turning him into a less scary version of himself and making him into an imaginary friend who more closely resembled Willy the anthropomorphic opera-singing whale from Make Mine Music than the terrifying creature we see in Pinocchio. Anyway, getting back to the point--I overcame my fear of the character by choosing to imagine that he was less scary than he was. This is what a lot of children do, and I think it's why Disney's Hook comes off as being comical.

The first time we see Disney Hook on screen, he actually comes across as pretty terrifying. He literally shoots his own crew member just because he didn't like the guy's singing! Rarely do we actually see Disney villains successfully kill another character on screen, but Hook does not even five minutes into his introduction. Immediately, we get the impression (or at least, a child should get the impression), that Hook is a genuinely dangerous guy. He also seems to regard his loss of a hand as "a childish prank," which further gives us the impression that he apparently has a pretty high pain tolerance and isn't afraid to do horrible, gruesome things to his enemies. If chopping someone's hand off is "childish," then what sort of serious damage does he inflict on his victims? However, this is Disney, and rather than having Hook gut someone or do something else which might scar a kid for life, we soon see he has a weakness...the crocodile. At this point, the Darling kids have been watching Hook for several minutes from their perch up on the cloud and are, probably, starting to have some second thoughts about fighting real pirates when they seem so scary...so what do they do? They do the same thing I did and turn him into a less-scary version of himself. They find his weakness and latch onto it. And since we're viewing things primarily from their perspective, that's how WE start to see Hook too. Hook's fear of the crocodile becomes comical for the audience because the Darling kids are trying to focus on that aspect of him so that they are can forget how terrifying he really is. We see this more frightening side of Hook come out a few more times, such as when he plans to blow up Pan's hideout...and at this point, we even catch a brief glimpse of the more sinister part of Smee when he asks Hook if it wouldn't be more humane for them to slit his throat...AND THIS IS SMEE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE!!! The LEAST frightening of the pirates in ANY version. But I think Disney throws this in just to remind us that Smee is still a pirate, and if HE'S willing to do something THAT bad, Hook is a thousand times worse. However, for the most part, Hook still remains a rather softened, comical version of himself because we are viewing him through the child-lens. Remove that lens, though, and things become more complicated.

Forget, for a moment, that we are supposed to be rooting for the Darling children and Pan, and look again--not as a frightened child who is trying to laugh in the face of danger but as an adult who can feel Hook's pain. I remember one time when I was driving back from the airport in a busy city in the dark and the road was icy...I'm not used to driving in ice, and I'm a naturally nervous driver...At one point, I skidded into the next lane... I literally spent about the next hour hyperventilating, practically rocking myself back and forth, praying, and trying not to cry because I knew if I did I wouldn't be able to see the road. It was horrible... Take that sort of feeling, and I believe it's what Disney Hook is experiencing when the crocodile shows up. Through the "child-lens" it may be funny to see a frightening character in a vulnerable situation, but viewing it as an adult who understands just HOW helpless and terrified one feels in such a situation, you can't help but empathize with Hook. Every move he makes, every tremble in his voice, every look of absolute horror in his eyes tells you that he is not mentally or physically really functioning at the moment. He's on autopilot--he's in survival mode like a wild animal that freezes in hopes that it won't be seen by the approaching predator. Take away the crocodile's obviously silly "theme-music" and Hook's slightly overdone expressions, and you're left with something similar to what we see Hook experience in the novel near the end of the chapter, "The Pirate Ship." ("Very frightful was it to see the change that came over him. It was as if he had been clipped at every joint. He fell in a little heap...he crawled on his knees along the deck as far from the sound that he could go...'Hide me,' he cried hoarsely.") Now we can start appreciating him for the tragic villain that he is supposed to be.

Viewed through the eyes of the Darling children, Hook represents all that is frightening and bad about the grown-up world. If Peter is ice cream parties and summer vacations and catching fireflies in the dark, then Hook is cancer and broken dreams and being worried about being able to make enough money to put food on the table. Barrie, however, tells us that there is much more to both characters than that. Peter has a dark side--a selfish streak that forgets all pain at the cost of never learning from the past, never growing from his experiences and becoming a better person. He is stagnant not only in physically growing up but also in mentally facing reality, which is just as damaging as Hook's attitude of regretting a childhood apparently gone too soon. Hook, too, has a lighter side that loves soft music and flowers and other such things (representative of the good things about being an adult--falling in love, pursuing one's passions in a professional sense, having children of one's own). Disney, of course, doesn't quite do this to the same extent as Barrie since we're given a skewed view of the characters, but it DOES still make a few points which, when stripped of the "child-lens" effect, gives off a similar impression. Peter, for instance, brags to the mermaids at one point about cutting off Hook's hand and feeding it to the crocodile. Though we never get to hear him finish the tale, it is rather unsettling to think that Disney's Pan is capable of such horror. (Personally, no matter WHAT the circumstances of the situation were, I think any real-life child who took such great pleasure in slicing off a body part of another person and then having the presence of mind to feed said body part to a dangerous wild animal would probably be considered a psychopath in need of some SERIOUS counseling.) Disney, of course, glosses over this little inconvenience by having Hook show up before he can really get any further into the story. Again, the child-lens is going up; Wendy doesn't want to see this side of Peter, and neither does the child-based audience, so they choose to look away. However, we see a brief glimpse of this side of Pan again at Skull Rock. First, we see it resurface when he hands Smee a gun and then flies up directly in front of Hook--knowing that he can move out of the way in time. Again, through the child-lens of the audience, it seems funny to watch Smee doing his best (and failing terribly) to aim at Pan...but when you think about it from an adult's perspective, it's actually pretty disturbing. Peter legitimately wants Hook dead and doesn't care if it happens to be at the hand of one of his own crewmen (and arguably, in the Disney universe, Hook's only real friend). When Hook "dies," Peter simply takes the hat and says nonchalantly, "What a pity, Mr. Smee. I'm afraid we've lost the dear captain." It doesn't even phase him that a man might have just died and poor Smee is probably feeling absolutely HORRIBLE because it was (sort of) his fault. Even Wendy's child-lens falters a little here... While Peter is celebrating Hook's death, she at least, has enough of an adult's heart to have compassion on their fallen enemy and turn her face away with an, "Oh, how dreadful!" It happens again a few moments later when Peter is getting ready to kick Hook's hook off the ledge so that he falls into the waiting jaws of the crocodile. (The captain, at this point, is of course, squirming like--to use Peter's phrasing--"a codfish on a hook.") Again, Pan has no sympathy, but Wendy, who is starting to gradually open up her eyes to the truth that maybe staying a child forever isn't all it's cracked up to be and maybe adulthood isn't entirely bad, is losing her "child-lens." Not entirely. Not to the point where she doesn't continue to view Hook as comical to keep from being afraid. But enough to know that what Peter is about to do is wrong. She expresses this verbally when she shouts, "Oh, Peter, NO!"

It is at this point, shortly after the crocodile chase, that we start to see Hook become more of a legitimate threat (and a legitimately sympathetic character) again. Why? Because Wendy, as the protagonist and the one whose eyes we are looking through even more so than Pan, is starting to grow up and face reality for what it is--scary or not. As she sings "Your Mother and Mine" and tells her brothers that they NEED a mother--that Neverland has been fun but they NEED to go home--Hook is throwing Tinkerbelle in a lantern and planning to kidnap the kids and blow Pan to smithereens. And then we get the "slit his throat" reminder (mentioned above)... Also, as a side note, when Hook is ill after the crocodile chase, we hear him lamenting how Pan has made him look like a fool yet again. This is also something that I think we can appreciate more as adults. All Hook's crew wants is to go back to haunting the Spanish Main, but Hook refuses to leave Neverland because he feels that he has to remain there until he can regain his pride...which in and of itself is admirable, since many people who have been played the fool simply hang their head and walk away in shame. Here's this guy who has been bested by a child no more than twelve or thirteen--and possibly much younger... How must that feel? I have been in an emotionally abusive relationship where I was constantly reminded how I couldn’t do anything right, and it felt SO degrading. I literally just wanted to go hide away in my room and cry because I felt so incompetent and useless and just plain stupid. So how does Hook feel? Probably the same way. But he doesn't give up. If there's one thing we can say for sure about Disney Hook, he's a fighter. So, I guess you could say that, in part, one reason I find Disney Hook so sympathetic and tragic is because I can identify with him in his crippling reaction to fear and admire him for his bold attempts to reclaim his pride.

Anyway, getting back on track with the storyline... As we near the end of the film, Hook once again appears to lose face at the final showdown. At first, this doesn't seem to make sense if Wendy is, in fact, beginning to lose the child-lens. However, although Hook is defeated, we are never actually shown that he dies (and obviously, from the second film, in the Disney universe, he doesn't). I remember reading somewhere that when they were originally working on Peter Pan, Walt Disney chose to keep Hook alive and just have him "going like hell" rather than actually dying because, "the audience will get to liking Hook." And by this point, we have...those of us still looking through the child-lens love to hate him as a character we can laugh at, and those of us who are more grown-up love him for being just like us--an adult who is STILL growing up, in some ways, who is STILL afraid of certain things and hasn't always learned his lessons and isn't perfect but also isn't willing to give up even when everything is against him and everyone is laughing at him and nothing seems to go right.

Now, I said that at first, it doesn't seem to make sense for us to view Hook in a comical light in this scene if we are viewing the movie primarily through the eyes of the Darling children--particularly Wendy, who is starting to grow up and realize that adults are supposed to feel things like compassion for one's enemies. However, Wendy is still a child. She IS still afraid of growing up. In fact, she's terrified. And that comes out when the kids are all mocking Hook. He's still frightening to them. They still need the security blanket of pretend sometimes, of focusing on his more comical, vulnerable side...but they don't defeat Hook by killing him in this version, and I think that's significant. As representative primarily of the "scary" parts of growing up, Hook is temporarily cast aside and shoved to the back of their minds, but he IS NOT DEAD. The kids (and even Pan) know he may come back. They know he isn't gone for good. One day, they will have to face adulthood. One day, Hook--in the guise of mortgages and taxes and wars and sickly older parents--will return. But for now, they have defeated him...not just by pretending but by choosing to accept the responsibility of growing up eventually, in their own good time. Even Peter starts to reflect this theme by beating Hook, "man to man" without the use of flight. Wendy, who wants to be the good grown-up but who isn't quite ready to let go of childhood, warns Peter against it, thinking that it may be a trap. She even goes so far as to shout at him to fly when he has the chance even though he has promised not to. But Disney Pan is a bit more mature than some (maybe Wendy's better judgment is wearing off on him), and he keeps his word. He beats Hook "like a man" NOT like a boy. Pan's victory here symbolically reflects the Darling children's decision to face adulthood by going back to London. Thus, Hook is defeated because adulthood is no longer an obstacle which causes a fear is so crippling that the kids can't face it. When Wendy returns home, we get one last glimpse of this truth in Mr. Darling--the real-world representative of all things frightening and frustrating about growing up and, as I'm sure you know, also (significantly) voiced by Conried--who has done some "growing up" himself. Mr. Darling, it seems, is willing to allow Wendy a bit more time to enjoy life as a child, remembering his own childhood fondly, even as Wendy has chosen to accept the responsibility of growing up. Mr. Darling, who much like Hook, was viewed previously by the kids (and by extension, the audience) as a bit of a bully and an object of ridicule, is now the object of Wendy's affection as a mutual understanding is reached. Adulthood is frightening in many ways, but Wendy has also come to realize that it is necessary to take responsibility for one's actions and feel compassion for others just as Mr. Darling has realized that sometimes, it's okay for kids to be kids and enjoy the moment. Essentially, what I'm saying is--borrowing the idea that Hook and Mr. Darling are two sides of the same coin--Hook in Neverland, chased away by the crocodile, appears as comical in the last scene only because he effectively gets one last serious scene through his London counterpart, staring wistfully out the window with a loving wife and child by his side. Wendy isn't quite yet grown up, so she still sees through the child-lens on occasion, but she is learning, gradually, to embrace that which she once feared. She no longer needs Hook, an imaginary figure, to personify that fear. She now has her father back, and though she now RESPECTS what he stands for, she is no longer so terrified of growing up that she can't appreciate the GOOD side of the future (such as having a husband and a family of her own someday) and look forward to it.

#peter pan disney #disney peter pan #captain hook disney #disney captain hook #disney #disney villains #captain hook #james hook #captain james hook

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ohnobjyx · 4 years

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Would it be that impossible for dd and gg to come out as a couple (provided they respected censorship and didn't talk about it with the media)? I read the other day that homosexuality is not illegal in China, just talking about it and showing in the media, so could not someone as brave and crazy as dd attempt to come out outside of the media? after all they are the first 3 shipped real couples in china, they do have support. Coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed..

Hi, anon! (*this blogger cracks her neck and gets ready*) Let’s get into it!

Disclaimer: fake fake fake. Why would you think that we believe in bjyx?

Preface: this post might not be exactly a controversial opinion, since I think many will have the same one. However, it’s alright to disagree: we all have our own perception of the matter, which is coloured by our own experiences (let’s just say that an absolute objective view is difficult). I present here with the most objective post (at least in terms of data and facts) I could write.

Oh, and you all might have noticed, but being concise is not my forte. I tend to digress.

First of all, I assume that the concept of “coming out outside of the media” means that they could have told just close friends and family, without announcing it to the media.

But how would we know that they have done it? (and I don’t mean we should know for sure, ofc). For all we know, they may have already done this, and, from my pov, they probably have. Without entering in “fake” rumours:

TTXS bros know something (repeating myself for the nth time). From the way DZW jumps in whenever it remotely looks like dd is slipping up, how WH poses his questions, how QF teases him. It all seems references to a real, tangible thing, instead of baseless friendly teasing. It’s also very interesting that they have stopped their matchmaking mission and have instead started to defend why dd is “single”.

Their parents are their cover. Even if dd parents didn’t watch TTXS, wouldn’t someone else watch it and ask them about it? Wouldn’t they wonder about the supposed clothes that dd sends home, the medicine, the market stroll? Maybe I’m just projecting, but I wouldn’t use my parents as a shield if they weren’t aware of the situation behind it, because I’d be subjected to their questioning later. That’s why, unless I wanted to tell them or I had already told them, I wouldn’t use my parents as an excuse. So, once is alright, but dd has done it several times, and that, for me, means that his parents know.

That’s what I would consider “coming outside the media”. Of course, this doesn’t involve us fans, and it’s their decision, of which we probably will never hear about (or, at least, not soon, and that’s fine!).

In my opinion, it’s also the best course of action, especially with all the rumours that are always circulating about them. It wouldn’t be a “brave and crazy” course of action, but rather the most sensible and rational, since it’s the best way to avoid misunderstandings with your friends and family. It’s also considerate for his friends at work, just so they know what to expect when they are on stage and it allows them to understand dd’s reactions.

(Again, we are talking about dd because that’s who anon asked about. I think gg’s circle is less close to him, so it may not be the case with him, but I don’t know enough to say what would happen).

Just let’s suppose his TTXS bros didn’t know anything and just kept trying to act as matchmakers for dd. That’s the kind of situation that’s bound to be uncomfortable for everyone because dd isn’t the kind of person who’d lie (and he doesn’t fast enough to improptu questions).

The second thing I wanted to talk about is their fans’ support. I want to talk about numbers.

I’m going to explain why I only take the c-fans data as reference. We int fans don’t really count, because we don’t affect their careers directly, as c-fans do. Of course, our support is very useful in showing how many people are rooting for them, like what happened when Roseonly’s livestream with gg was live. And I like to think that they would feel better knowing that there are a lot of people in Chn and overseas that support them and whatever there is between them.

So int-fans do contribute to give more views and likes to their Roseonly livestream (if they can access it, which isn’t always the case), but they won’t buy the roses and impact with real money, so to say.

We don’t really participate in their endorsements, many won’t stay long enough to watch more dramas from them (and I do understand that the lack of eng subs is the main problem), and many don’t/can’t/don’t know how to push them up in the charts. We’ve talked before about how the c-ent industry doesn’t really need the int audience to make a lot of money, and to be highly profitable, and it still applies in a smaller case, like a single idol.

That’s why I think that in matters of real, tangible fan support, c-fans still make a bigger percentage (around 80-90%) of their support.

So, as of now, there are 3 supertopics in w/ibo that features gg/dd (let’s leave the difference in supertopics for another day, but I don’t support the discussion about people’s sex life, thanks for your understanding):

BJYX. The largest supertopic (top 1) with a wide margin from the others. It has 2.570.000 fans.

ZSWW. It’s the number 5 in the CP supertopics, with 910.000 fans.

LXFY. The number 23 in the CP supertopics with 590.000 fans.

All of them added make 4.070.000 fans. But we have to take into account the overlapping in these three supertopics: many people (like me) are following the three supertopics at the same time. That’s why, in a not scientific way, I’m guessing that those 4.070.000 come to around 4.000.000 once you take out the people that are following the three at the same time.

Even 4 million people is still a huge number of people: that’s more people than the population of the capital of my country, and one tenth of the total census here.

Yet, in China, it means 4 out of every 1400, which translates into 0′003%. It’s also from a very specific demographic (mainly female and young). Of course, it doesn’t mean that they won’t get support from other people if it ever got out, but they can’t know what would happen then for sure.

It means that, in actual 3D world, there are a lot of people who don’t know about their CP. I read the other day some tumblr blogger saying that “we bxg are in our own little bubble, not that many people know about their cp” (was that you, @jcisthebestfightme?) which I agree a lot with. I mean, my w/ibo account and tumblr is filled with bjyx/yizhan, so much that it’s easy to forget that I arranged it to be like this, but that the majority of the people don’t receive so much info about them, nor they analyze their every move like we do.

The only thing they can know for sure is what general population thinks about same sex relationships.

In a recent poll I saw, with thousands of answers about what netizens thought of the legalization of same sex marriage in Taiwan, the supporting votes didn’t get to 50%. In Taiwan, public opinion was like this around the time same sex marriage was legalized:

An opinion poll conducted in November 2016 by the Kuomintang found that 52% of the Taiwanese population supported same-sex marriage, while 43% were opposed. Another poll commissioned that same month found similar numbers: 55% in support, and 45% in opposition. Support was higher among 20–29-year-olds (80%), but decreased significantly with age. (Wikipedia)

(I just want to say, I can’t wait for the younger generations to take over).

More data: the public stance in China could be described as: “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion”, and the public opinion is becoming more and more tolerant, but there’s still a deep-set homophobia, as in only 5% of the lgbt people comes out completely (around 20% comes out to their family), and around 80% of gay men are married to women due to social and family pressure (ofc, these data is from a few years ago, and new polls and surveys are needed, but don’t expect them to carry out a wide-range survey about this nor I think the situation has changed drastically).

In my opinion, society is slowly taking more steps towards tolerance first and acceptance second. One of their best achievement was the lgbt community and many netizens’ refusal to allow w/ibo to instate a ban on content related to homosexuality, which led to w/ibo actually reversing its decision and stop banning that content in less than 3 days.

However, the fact that a lot of people express their support doesn’t take away the truth of a lot of people openly opposing it (let’s remember that there weren’t so many antis to start with in 2/27, but its effects were undeniably large and unjust).

(If any of you read more data about lgbt rights in China, please remember that Hong Kong receives a lot more Western influence, and that public opinion in HK does not represent the actual situation in mainland Chn. Ofc, because they’re more open to lgbt, there are also more data and polls carried out in HK, so a lot of info is HK based).

Leaving this kind of data aside, let’s take another matter of numbers. While they have in total 4 million fans in the supertopics, dd has as of now 35,400,000 fans following him on w/ibo and gg has 26,690,000 fans.

One thing I’m sure they are aware of is the discussion that arises from time to time between the solo fans and the bxg. Another thing they must be aware of, specially dd, is that their fanbase has a lot of females who are their fans, not just because of their talent, but also because they’re single and therefore they can fantasize about being with them.

All in all, even though a lot of people support them, there would be also quite a number of “disappointed” people, with the danger of them becoming antis.

So while I do think they appreciate it, and leave clues specifically for us, and dd goes as far as interacting with bxg, I also feel that gg and dd might not see widespread support, enough so they’d feel comfortable coming out completely with the current public stance on homosexual relationships in Chn.

(And again, from my pov, they aren’t in the closet with their family and friends).

And last, but not least, does “coming out respecting the censorship and not talking about it with the media” mean that it would be known by the general public, or, at least, their fans (in a very hypothetic case, since I don’t know how this could be achieved)? Because then, even if they didn’t talk about it with the media, it would be as good as coming out publicly.

In an idol’s life there’s no “private” and “public”. There’s only “public” and “secret” (and by secret I mean things they “hide” in public/don’t talk about, even though people next to them might know about it). The line between public and private is very very blurred in the c-ent industry.

I always remember the case of an actor who had an affair. Because of his affair (he was married and had a son), he lost endorsements, he was taken out of tv programs and literally erased from filmed episodes. The things he did in private affected very directly his job (I don’t approve of the affair, but the consequences it had surprised me a lot).

So, while I do think that gg and dd are getting bolder with time, when they were both very startled by the “you’d lose your job if you were in a relationship” phrase, the fear was real and palpable. However, I’m aware that that was their stance a year ago, and that a lot of things have changed (heck, we’ve gone through a pandemic, something I couldn’t have imagined a year ago), so I’m going to observe how they act from now.

That’s why, “coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed..” is true, but it’s also true that it would push them into a storm I’m not sure they’d come out completely unscathed. And it may be selfish, but I don’t want them to be the ones who test the public’s tolerance to gay idols.

I think I’m missing my point, so I’ll spell it out: if they want to come out, I’ll support them with everything I have, as I think many fans will do. If they ever prove us wrong dating another person, be it male or female, I’ll support them as a fan too. But I would like any action they take to be decided by them, instead of pressed by fans who just want a confirmation at any cost.

I’ve seen people saying that if they were really together, they should be “honest” with themselves and the audience and come out publicly. In my opinion, it’s easy to judge when you’re not the one who might lose something if you take a step in the wrong direction, and it’s not your income and your job in the line.

I’m sure (reminding you all that I believe that bjyxszd) that they’d come out completely if possible. I’m also sure that they have consulted with managers and public relations experts (and their team would have talked with them about it even if gg and dd didn’t bring it up). Therefore, I strongly believe they are doing what they think is better at the time being.

To sum up: I’ll support whatever they do, but I don’t want others to push them to do things they don’t want/aren’t prepared to do. They are already between a rock and a hard place, so whatever they do with their relationship is absolutely their call.

So, anon, I hope I have answered you, but I leave here a short summary for you in the case the info was too scattered for you:

They might have come out to friends and family, and, based on dd’s interactions with the people around him and the words he has said, I do believe he has. Because gg is also an honest, sensible person, I think he might have done the same.

after all they are the first 3 shipped real couples in china, they do have support

Chn is a big country. That means that in terms of public support, sometimes numbers that would be astronomically high in other countries, is not so much in Chn. Translating numbers into percentage, a 1% means 14 million people.

So it’s true that they have a lot of people supporting them, of course. 2 million people is a lot of people, especially considering that many don’t know about them. But when you have to take into account the general public (because it’d be a scandal), since their fans aren’t the only ones interacting with them, it’s still a low number.

Coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed..

That’s true in the case of family and friends. But if you’re talking about being outed in the media, that’s not possible. Known by the fans = Public.

And remember that in this case, the media wouldn’t talk about them, since talking about homosexuality in the media is prohibited. The problem would come from within the industry and the antis.

#yizhan #bjyx #ask #my post #coming out

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happylittledrabbles · 3 years

Text

Four Years

Rating: T

Fandom: Haikyuu!!

Pairing: Tsukishima/Kuroo, Tsukishima/Yamaguchi, Kuroo/Kenma

On the day of Kuroo's graduation, Tsukishima kisses him and runs away without another word, leaving both of them confused. Neither speaks to one another after that, and Tsukishima has to figure out his own emotions now that the person he loves has left, bouncing around from one person to another in order to fill the hole Kuroo created. Angst, hurt, self-discovery, and acceptance ensue, all ending in a high school reunion that ends in tears.

AO3

—

It happened so quickly, Kuroo barely knew what happened.

One second, he was congratulating Tsukishima on his good work outside the nationals tournament gym, joking around with the skinny beanpole he had grown close to for nearly a year. Pushing him playfully, ruffling his hair, patting him on the shoulder. All the standard forms of affection Tsukishima had learned to tolerate over the months. Keyword: tolerate . The last thing Kuroo expected was to have that affection returned by the same Tsukishima who slapped him the first time he placed his hand on his back.

Especially in the form of a kiss.

A chaste kiss, one that lasted barely a second, but a kiss nonetheless. On the lips.

Before Kuroo could even form a thought, nevermind actually react to it, he was faced with the back of Tsukishima’s head as he sprinted away and down the sidewalk to the hotel. If he hadn’t just been kissed, he would have found it comical that Tsukishima was finally putting effort into exercise—running no less—but all that he could summon was a shaky exhale as his trembling fingers came up to his lips, where he could have sworn he still felt Tsukishima’s chapped lips on his.

If Kuroo knew that the last thing he’d see of Tsukishima for months to follow would be the back of his head, he would have sprinted right after him and captured his wrist, spun him back, and made fun of his escape plan before kissing him squarely on the lips.

But he didn’t know that. So as he switched his gaze from the diploma in his hands up to the audience at his graduation and didn’t see the skinny blond he’d had his eye on since he first practiced with him, to blond who stole a kiss from him, he couldn’t help but feel his face fall and his heart go gray. His grip on his diploma tightened until his mother slapped the back of his head for damaging his diploma, but he couldn’t help it. He apologized to his mother and thanked his family for coming out in support of him and walked home with his family, desperately using the celebratory alcohol to escape the images of glasses paired with a shit-eating grin that assaulted his mind. What he would do to have that shit-eating grin in front of him and wipe it off the holder’s face with a deep kiss.

He couldn’t even escape it in his dreams. Tsukishima dominated them in every form: his determined face as he practiced, his bored face as he watched his teammate’s foolish antics, his sleeping face that showed off an unguarded version of him for only a short time. But that short time was more than enough to win over Kuroo’s obsession. But that obsession had to come to an end. He had to focus on his new job while Tsukishima had to focus on school. They were at two different points in their lives. At least he would always have that kiss.

The problem was, Tsukishima wasn’t focusing on school when it started up again. Or practice. He wasn’t focusing on anything other than the kiss. Summer was torture since he didn’t have homework to at least pretend to lose himself in. All he had was his thoughts, and those were lethal. At random times, he’d find himself running his fingertips over his own lips, letting his eyes flutter closed and imagine Kuroo’s face in front of his, except instead of that surprised expression Kuroo held that day, it would be something full of want, of desire. When school started again, he was a lot more excited than usual, especially for volleyball practice. Except he still couldn’t escape the kiss.

“Tsukishima!” Daichi yelled, snapping Tsukishima out of his thoughts.

He hadn’t even noticed the volleyball that had whizzed past his head and nearly knocked Hinata down behind him, all thanks to the amazing ace who was currently apologizing profusely to the both of them, but Tsukishima couldn’t have cared less.

“Sorry,” he said monotonously, trying to hold back a roll of his eyes. He got back into his blocker stance, holding his arms at chest-level in anticipation for Kageyama’s serve.

“Great, now get your head out of your ass and actually play, moron,” Kageyama demanded before doing one of his powerful serves.

Tsukishima scowled at the other, but the scowl lessened when he noticed how the light streaming in from the barred windows fell so perfectly against his black hair, casting an almost halo around him as he jumped nearly two feet in the air, seeming to float before finally landing on Earth. Kageyama at that moment reminded him so much of Kuroo, from the black hair to the offhanded remarks about his performance. Although Kageyama was a tad more offensive in his remarks, Tsukishima couldn’t tell the difference, especially when he was just reeling from the powerful effects of his first kiss.

He swallowed thickly and swiftly blocked one of Asahi’s spikes, resulting in a very red palm from the aftermath. He cleared his throat and glanced directly at Kageyama, who was staring him down through the net.

“That good enough for you?” he asked calmly, resulting in Kageyama needing to be held back by Daichi and promptly hit in the back of the head by Suga. He walked off the court and leaned down to pick up his water bottle, drinking slowly as he watched with pleased amusement as Kageyama tried to wrestle his way out of Daichi’s arms.

“You do that on purpose, don’t you?” Hinata asked, causing Tsukishima to jump from surprise.

“Geez, you pop out of nowhere, don’t you?” Tsukishima grumbled behind his straw, glancing down at Hinata before looking up at the ceiling. “But yeah, it’s fun to see him freak out.”

Hinata went quiet for a moment, which usually would have been a blessing for the blond, but it made him uneasy at the same time.

“He has feelings, too, you know,” Hinata mumbled, looking down shyly at his fingers clasped in front of him. “He just can’t control them.”

Tsukishima scoffed. “What are you, his handler? Now I know that he officially needs to go to therapy for anger issues.”

“No!” Hinata exclaimed, attracting the attention of the nearby teammates. He blushed from embarrassment before grasping Tsukishima’s wrist and pulling him over to the equipment closet, staring up at the blond as much as the dimly lit room would let him. “He’s just misunderstood! And you need to stop throwing gas on the flame. He’s a nice person when you get to know him.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I would say you have a wittle crush on him,” Tsukishima teased, making grabby hands to further cement the idea of Hinata being a lovesick puppy. However, with the combination of Hinata’s deepening blush, the turn of his face to hide it, and his lengthening silence, Tsukishima’s eyes widened in realization. So...his suspicions ever since the first day of meeting them were right? Oh, this was delightful.

“No way,” Tsukishima breathed, a grin of disbelief spreading on his face. “You actually have a crush on that volcano?”

“Don’t tell anybody!” Hinata pleaded, clinging to the front of Tsukishima’s shirt and not letting go as much as the blond tried to shake him off. “Please! I...I want to deal with it on my own time. Please…”

Tsukishima, had he truly been heartless, would have picked up Hinata by the back of the shirt like the scruff on a kitten and burst out the equipment room to proudly announce Hinata’s crush to everybody. However, he had a crush of his own, and due to his calm and collected nature, was successful in keeping it hidden. Nonetheless, if anybody had found out…

Safe to say, he had sympathy for the little orange.

“...Fine,” Tsukishima relented, pushing him away and walking over to the ajar doors. “Just don’t rub your weird couple fights in my face when you get together.”

He rolled his eyes at Hinata’s loud declarations of gratitude, shutting the doors on the redhead’s face before walking back over to his water bottle. Since then, Kageyama had calmed down (the lack of Tsukishima’s presence possibly contributing to this). He was practicing his serves in the short break Daichi afforded them, probably because he was too busy flirting with Suga to notice the rest of the team. Was everybody on the team just interbreeding? It was kind of disgusting to Tsukishima. Who the hell would fall in love with a teammate?

“Hey, Tanaka, throw me one,” Kageyama said, motioning to the sack full of volleyballs. Tanaka nodded and tossed him a ball, which Kageyama responded to by backing up behind the line and tossing the ball into the air, jumping up, and practically spiking it onto the other side as a serve.

Just that move, paired with the nearly slow-motion view Tsukishima’s brain tortured him with of the wind moving so swiftly to push back Kageyama’s hair to reveal his determined expression, was enough to get him to swallow his previous criticisms.

Oh, no, he thought. Oh no no no no. No, not a crush. It’s not a crush. Just...appreciation of beauty, is all. Not that he’s attractive! He’s an ugly bastard. Yeah, that’s it.

But as much as Tsukishima tried to convince himself that his eyes cementing on his day-one rival and sliding down his figure glowing with sweat was purely platonic, he was intelligent enough to recognize a crush when he saw one.

So he did what he usually did with crushes (the only exception being Kuroo): avoided Kageyama at all costs. It did help that Hinata eventually confessed to Kageyama, who reluctantly confessed back and ended with them as a couple. It was literally no different to their relationship from before: they constantly fought, with Kageyama continuing to throw insults that would make any regular person cry, but Hinata only laughed and took it as an encouragement to play harder. The only difference was when they would walk back home together at night after practice, they would be holding hands. Their hands must’ve been so warm together in the snowy night. As opposed to Tsukishima, who had perpetually cold hands. And nobody to warm them.

It also helped that a few weeks later—Tsukishima’s crush on Kageyama completely gone—his lifelong friend Yamaguchi confessed to him that he’d had a crush on him since he first learned about romantic feelings.

“So...all these years?” Tsukishima asked, breathless.

It was a cloudless night, the moon on full display to light up the pair of friends like a stage show. It was cold enough to have their opaque breaths overlap with each other with how close Yamaguchi was to the blond, his eyes shining with wetness from his overwhelmed tears.

“Yes,” Yamaguchi whispered, his eyes never leaving Tsukishima’s. “I...I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love you, Kei.”

A crush was one thing. But love? Yamaguchi... loved him? And not in a platonic way? As much as Tsukishima hated to admit it and never would out loud, he loved Yamaguchi as a friend. He loved their friendship and cherished it as close to his heart as his headphones. But in a romantic way...he couldn’t lie and say he never considered it. He found himself closing the gap, both physically and metaphorically, between him and Yamaguchi over the years, with the inches between them when sitting in class turning into centimeters and then millimeters. And when they had sleepovers, Tsukishima couldn’t help but turn over in his bed and watch Yamaguchi sleep. Sometimes, he’d wake up on the floor right next to Yamaguchi, who just assumed Tsukishima had sleep-walked or fallen out of bed. And he tried to convince himself of that fact so much that he thought it was true. Until now. Now he knew…

“Can you give me some time to...process all this?” he asked haltingly. His heart broke when a few tears escaped Yamaguchi’s eyes at that response. He knew very well it wasn’t the one Yamaguchi wanted. It was better to be turned down than to be kept waiting. But he physically couldn’t think at the moment from all the thoughts and flashbacks swirling in his head.

“S-sure, Kei…” Yamaguchi mumbled, wringing his hands. “Bye, then.”

He turned away and ran as fast as he could home. Tsukishima knew they both lived in the same neighborhood, so he’d give Yamaguchi a running start before he began to walk home to prevent any more awkwardness. Besides, he couldn’t imagine walking with the way his legs were shaking.

—

The next night after practice, their sweat drying down in the frigid night, they found themselves in the exact same position as yesterday: facing each other with tears in Yamaguchi’s eyes.

“Really?” Yamaguchi breathed in disbelief, clutching his hands into excited fists.

“Yeah, Tadashi,” Tsukishima replied, cracking a rare shy smile. “I really like you. I...I want to try this out.”

That was all Yamaguchi needed before he threw his arms around Tsukishima’s neck and pulled him in close, joining their lips that were so chapped, but it didn’t matter to him. All he knew was that he was kissing the best friend he’d loved since they were old enough to have abstract thought. And he wasn’t about to let go anytime soon.

All Tsukishima knew was that this kiss was...different. Different than the only kiss he’d ever had before. This kiss wasn’t bad—in fact, he found himself wrapping his arms around Yamaguchi’s waist and pulling him closer until their chests pressed together, cocking his head to the side to deepen the kiss. But a flash of Kuroo’s face made him gasp and pull away, lifting the back of his hand to his lips.

“Did...did I do something wrong?” Yamaguchi asked in such a small voice, Tsukishima immediately went to reassure him.

“No, no, it was just...overwhelming,” he replied quickly, adding in a small awkward chuckle which made Yamaguchi’s face brighten.

“I’m glad,” Yamaguchi whispered, nervously picking at his hangnails. “N-not at you being overwhelmed, but that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“You weren’t,” Tsukishima whispered back, his face reddening to match the rose bush across from them. “At all.”

In fact, it was all his fault for imagining the black-haired upperclassman who refused to leave his mind, even after all these months. He was probably succeeding heavily in his new job, had a girlfriend—or a wife, who knew? Maybe he had some mini Kuroos running around. The thought made him nauseous. But why? He had his own boyfriend now. So why was he still thinking about that stupid kiss with that stupid Kuroo?

“Let’s go home,” Tsukishima offered, to which Yamaguchi furiously nodded.

“Yeah,” he replied, slipping his hand into Tsukishima’s, their fingers lacing together. He ran his thumb over his knuckles, which gave Tsukishima the impression that Yamaguchi had been imagining every single second of how this confession would go.

“Let’s go,” Yamaguchi murmured, pressing a kiss to Tsukishima’s cheek while standing on his toes.

They dated for the rest of high school, sharing all their firsts together. Minus Tsukishima’s first kiss. That was still reserved for the devil named Kuroo who still haunted his dreams instead of his boyfriend. They are right, though: time really does heal all wounds. It didn’t take long for Kuroo to disappear from Tsukishima’s mind. From homework to tests to volleyball to Yamaguchi, he simply didn’t have enough brainpower to focus on the man who was probably already married. That logic ended with his dreams. And he’d rather die than admit he still dreamed about anybody other than his boyfriend.

They went to the movies, had picnics, ice skated, laughed, and kissed. When they weren’t on formal dates, they hung out just like they did as before when they were just friends: at school or in each other’s bedrooms, playing on their phones absentmindedly or helping each other with their DS games. The only exception being their bedroom doors had to be left open, per their parents’ instructions. But that didn’t stop them from doing exactly what their parents were trying to prevent in their third and last year in school.

“Are you sure about this?” Yamaguchi asked breathlessly, his breath having been sucked out by the near ten-minute makeout session they were having before he pushed Tsukishima onto the bed and wavered over him.

Tsukishima only nodded, not having any courage to confirm out loud. His face was beet-red, and it only got redder when he felt Yamaguchi’s lips on his neck, chest, stomach, and beyond. The entire time, he hid his face with his arms and silenced himself, only letting out occasional whimpers and pants. It ended with both of them satisfied and with Tsukishima wordlessly clinging to Yamaguchi’s side. That was something new he learned about himself: he could be very clingy. And Yamaguchi was more than pleased to learn this.

However, he wasn’t afforded the same luxury of hiding away evidence of his pleasure the next time, with Yamaguchi physically ripping away Tsukishima’s arms from his face in order to look at his boyfriend in all his glory. After that time, Tsukishima boycotted cuddling with Yamaguchi...for the first ten minutes. Then his need for physical closeness overruled any grudge he had.

He was happy.

—

They wasted no time making up for all the sex they could’ve had the last two years where they only had clandestine makeout sessions and subtle clothed grinding. But it wasn’t just because they were horny, but because it was their last year. Their last year until they eventually split because they had drastically different life plans.

Kageyama and Hinata had already split up a month ago. Asahi and Noya had a very saccharine one year of dating until they split because of the long-distance after Asahi graduated. Suga and Daichi dated only for a month before splitting and graduating, if you could call going on one date and making out and grinding against a wall dating. It was only a matter of time before he and Yamaguchi did the same. All eyes were on them. Well, that was an exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like for Tsukishima.

Which made it all even worse when he found out his feelings weren’t mutual.

“What? You want to...break up?” Yamaguchi asked in such a broken voice that Tsukishima wanted to act like it was a prank. But he couldn’t.

“I’m just thinking about the future, Tadashi,” he replied, trying to keep his voice level, but just that felt cruel juxtaposed against Yamaguchi’s crumbling exterior.

“The future?” Yamaguchi asked, his voice breaking yet again. His confused face fell into despair, his under eyes seeming to sink inches into his face. His eyes fell down to his wringing hands in front of him. “Right...the future.”

“Yeah, I mean, it just—”

“Have you thought—” Yamaguchi interrupted, his eyes still fixated on his hands. “—that maybe I thought you were my future? That we are the future? You’re the love of my life, Kei. I could never just leave you.”

That hit Tsukishima like a train. No, a bullet. No, a bullet train. He physically recoiled, his hand gripping his sweatshirt.

“I-I—” How the hell was he supposed to respond to that? “We’re going to be across the country. You’ll be in Sapporo, and I’ll be in Fukuoka. It’s just too far.”

“Oh, well,” Yamaguchi said, trying to sound casual, but the big gobs of tears running down his cheeks were a dead giveaway that he was, in fact, not casual. “We h-had a good run.”

Tsukishima raised his hand slowly to see if Yamaguchi would object, and when he didn’t, he brushed his hot tears away with his thumb. They were so salty, they burned the cuts volleyball gave him on his fingers and palm.

“The best,” he murmured before leaning down and kissing away Yamaguchi’s tears, ignoring the burning as they slipped into the cracks in his lips. He moved them away from his cheeks to his boyfriend—now ex’s—lips, giving him one last tender kiss before standing back up and beginning his long, tearful trek home. He never cried. Keyword: never . And yet he was bawling like a baby the entire way home, only stopped when he had to walk past his parents before collapsing on the floor of his bedroom and crying until his voice was raw and he ran out of tears.

Graduation didn’t occur too long after that. He and Yamaguchi had stayed tentative friends, especially since Tsukishima wouldn’t have literally anybody to talk to if they hadn’t. He was going to a university close to Fukuoka, focusing on archaeology. He signed up for the intramural volleyball team, the sport being the only love in his life other than Yamaguchi. Despite them being broken up, he still deeply loved and would always love Yamaguchi. Perhaps in another life, or even a few years...who knew? His motto was always “you never know what will happen.” So after saying goodbye to Yamaguchi and Hinata and tipping his chin up in a mutual agreement to never talk to each other again to Kageyama, he thought those were all the friends he had left at the school. The rest had already graduated, and he didn’t really think of them as friends. Not that he thought Hinata and Kageyama were friends.

Bokuto still tried to get in touch with him, but all his face reminded him of was Kuroo. And he seriously thought he was over that pain in the ass after four years. Plus, Bokuto had his own career and tax-evasion to deal with. Almost every time he tried to call Tsukishima, the call was interrupted by the tax service calling him. So when Bokuto called him up a week after graduation, he just counted the minutes until he had to hang up. However, it seemed as if Bokuto knew about his limited phone time, so he got the information out as quickly as possible.

“Hey, so we’re thinking of rounding up all the members of the dream team—Karasuno, Nekoma, Fukurodani, the works—up for a reunion!” he spat out, barely giving Tsukishima enough time to react before launching into the details of the meetup.

“Anyway, see you there!” Click.

Tsukishima blinked. He blinked again. The third time he blinked, it all registered in his mind.

Kuroo might be there.

He shamelessly RSVP’d to Bokuto’s email immediately afterward.

—

He wasn’t exactly given the dress code for the event, so he played it safe with a simple deep violet button-down and black slacks. He wore his father’s expensive Rolex watch and a thick black belt as if trying to convey to the others that he was already so successful after just graduating. “To the others,” i.e. Kuroo. He stared at himself in the mirror, fixing his glasses for the umpteenth time, only looking away once he thought his ear was melting off his face from staring too long at himself. Finally, once his brother yelled at him to get out of the bathroom, he grabbed his car keys and drove to the homey bar downtown where they sometimes visited after practice games to stock up on carbs and protein. It gave him both PTSD and déjà vu.

He took off his shoes at the entrance and slipped into the slippers they provided, but he nearly fell from tripping at the loud, familiar laughter that echoed throughout the bar. That could only be—

“Beanpole!” Tanaka yelled for the entire bar to turn and witness the drunkard ambling like a toddler up to the blond, slinging his arm around his shoulders as he nursed a bottle of beer. “What’s up, man? I didn’t think you’d have the cojones to show up here!”

“I will never miss you saying that word,” Tsukishima muttered, only earning him another loud bark of laughter. He groaned and pushed Tanaka off him, being caught by Kiyoko.

Hm, they seem to be going strong.

Perhaps not every high school relationship fell apart after high school or long-distance. He ignored the thought for now since he knew it would cause him to fall into a deep depression over his need to break up with Yamaguchi for that very reason. He didn’t need that in the middle of a bar, especially since he was sober.

All his former teammates and rivals were sat around three tables joined together, all laughing and clinking drinks and screaming ‘Banzai!’ until their voices went hoarse. Tsukishima’s eyes scanned the rowdy bar-goers: no sign of who he was waiting for. Yamaguchi noticed him immediately. That wasn’t a huge change from their high school years; he had grown a sort of sixth sense to sense when Tsukishima was around and then to provide him company, even though he looked as if he despised it. He never did.

“Hi, Kei,” Yamaguchi greeted timidly, as if he was scared of his lifelong best friend. They were best friends above all, from when they were boyfriends to now that they’re exes. So that hurt Tsukishima even more than he was already in pain. He was lucky if he didn’t walk away with a shriveled heart by the end of this.

He sat down next to Yamaguchi and crossed his legs, smiling at him politely. He had learned to smile more with Yamaguchi—not because Yamaguchi told him to, but because it had happened so gradually and naturally he had barely noticed it until his mother pointed it out.

“What’ve you been doing this week after graduation?” he asked, trying to make polite conversation, but it was obvious that he was a little tipsy.

“Ooh, nothing,” he slurred.

Okay, more than a little tipsy.

“Just, hehe—” He made a jerking up-and-down motion with his hand, which caused a red blush to overtake Tsukishima’s face at the connotations and the fact that Yamaguchi was being so brazen with his insinuations. “—and looking at internships. Trade school, maybe. I never figured it out in school. I was too busy with...you know.”

His eyes dropped to Tsukishima’s butt before flicking back up to those horrified brown eyes.

“I love baking,” he continued as if he didn’t just say something to get the teammates around them snickering. “Maybe I’ll work at a bakery.”

“It...fits you,” Tsukishima replied, still reeling from the neverending suggestive comments his friend just made.

“Hey, Yams, if those scones you brought us that one practice are any indication, I’m gonna spend all my money on your bakery,” Nishinoya butted in before taking a long swig of beer, being goaded on by Tanaka and Bokuto.

“Heh, thanks,” Yamaguchi mumbled, a blush spreading on his cheeks.

Oh, so that’s what gets you blushing?

Tsukishima got lost in the conversation, especially when more and more alcohol was placed in front of him. He got so lost, in fact, he would have completely missed the doors to the pub opening to reveal the main reason he came to the reunion in the first place. The only thing that pulled him out of his mental fog was Bokuto’s dramatic gasp and sprint to the door to envelop the dark-haired figure in a bear hug.

“Enough, enough—get off me, Bokuto!” Kuroo yelled, bonking Bokuto on the head as a last resort.

“Is that any way to say hello to the love of your life?” Bokuto asked tearfully, batting his eyelashes as Kuroo rolled his eyes.

“Sorry, lovey,” Kuroo grumbled, hooking Bokuto by the back of the neck and pulling him in to kiss him on the cheek. “Better now?”

Bokuto giggled and nodded. “Yeeahh.”

Kuroo turned to his side, and oh, Tsukishima barely recognized him without the awful dye job.

“Get jealous there, Kenma?” Kuroo asked with a wink, to which Kenma rolled his eyes and went back to typing on his phone. Kuroo immediately reached forward and yanked the phone out of Kenma’s hands, pocketing it quickly. “I said no phone tonight.”

“You say that every night,” Kenma mumbled as they walked over to the table.

Tsukishima physically could not tear his eyes away from Tetsurou Kuroo. He looked so...handsome. So beautiful. Genuinely. He looked almost the same, and yet there was a certain aura around him that screamed ‘successful’ and ‘confident’ and ‘good-natured soul.’ He thought Kuroo was attractive in high school…

Oh, he was drooling.

As he wiped his mouth with a napkin, he secretly prayed that Kuroo wouldn’t go anywhere close to him. But that was too much to ask for, apparently, since Kuroo sat right across from him. It was as if he made a beeline just for Tsukishima. Could he maybe still…? No, it was just a coincidence.

“Hey, Kei,” Kuroo said before dissolving into laughter. “Ha, the rhyme never gets old.”

Tsukishima forced on a pained smile, but it wasn’t because the joke wasn’t funny. Well, it wasn’t, but he’d gotten used to the cringiness of it long ago. No, just having Kuroo in the same vicinity was enough to get him sweating profusely, nevermind right across from him, talking to him.

“How are you doing?” Kuroo continued, pouring two glasses of sake.

Get ahold of yourself.

“I should be asking you that,” Tsukishima replied with a nervous laugh, about to reach forward for one of the glasses until Kenma reached for it first. He only processed how awkward it was that his hand was just wavering above the table, so he quickly wrapped it around an empty beer bottle and acted as if it was full.

“Ah, I’m boring,” Kuroo said with a dismissive wave. “Same old, same old.”

“And what is that ‘same old, same old’?” Tsukishima asked, swirling the last drops of beer around the bottle. His entire body was warm. He set down the beer bottle to take off his coat, and he could’ve sworn he saw Kuroo’s eyes give him a once-over before returning to his face. Just the thought caused him to heat up even more. At this rate, he’d be stripped naked by the end of the night. Well, if it meant Kuroo’s eyes would be on him—

Wow, he was drunk.

“Well, office work, mostly,” Kuroo explained with a shrug. “Being a software developer is a lot more boring than it sounds.”

“Are you still playing volleyball?” Tsukishima asked hesitantly, his eyes focused on the table because otherwise, he’d be staring very creepily at the man in front of him.

“Every once in a while when I can get out of the office,” Kuroo replied. “At the local gym. I’ve found a couple of guys.”

“Oh, cool,” Tsukishima said with a bob of his head.

What a lame response.

“Any cuties at work?” he blurted out, and woah, he would take a lame response over the abomination that just left his mouth. He looked down at the beer bottle he was just drinking from to see if it was accidentally pure vodka.

Kuroo seemed more taken aback than Tsukishima himself, which made him want to wallow in self-pity even more.

“Oh, uh—” Kuroo laughed, although it didn’t seem nervous. “No, I’ve actually had my eye on somebody for a while.”

“For a while?” Tsukishima repeated, his eyes brimming with hope. His chest felt as if it would burst. He didn’t imagine their mutual love confession being in the middle of a bar with everybody nearly blackout drunk and falling over themselves, but as long as it happened, he’d be over the moon. He very conspicuously leaned forward and over the table, his eyes dropping to Kuroo’s lips.

“Yeah,” Kuroo replied slowly, his eyes also dropping to Tsukishima’s lips.

This is it, this is it, this is—

“Your eye on somebody? Really? You’re so romantic,” Kenma interrupted sarcastically, so rudely interrupting the moment Tsukishima and Kuroo were having. “It almost makes me forget our anniversary is next week.”

Anniversary…?

“What, you can’t catch my eye?” Oh, God, Kuroo was resorting to baby talk. He lifted a hand and cupped the side of Kenma’s face, and only then was it glaringly obvious that Tsukishima was horribly, horribly wrong. To add insult to injury, the golden band that suddenly appeared on Kuroo’s ring finger glinted atrociously in the light, as if bragging to Tsukishima that it wasn’t his.

“Mmmm,” Kenma hummed absentmindedly, burying his face back in his phone, which he magically got back from Kuroo’s pocket.

“This is why I married you,” Kuroo replied, earning a bout of whooping and happy shouting from amongst the other guests in celebration of the announcement. But Tsukishima was silent. And stone cold.

Without a word, he stood up and tossed his jacket over his shoulder before promptly walking out of the bar into the cool air, but it did nothing to calm the rage and shame mixing pitifully in his chest. He had seriously thought that...with Kuroo...and he would…

I’m such a fucking idiot.

He kicked a rock into the street, which instantly got run over by a car. That’s exactly what Tsukishima’s heart felt like. Crushed ruthlessly.

The opening of the bar door caused him to turn, revealing Yamaguchi stumbling out with near sobriety. His body hadn’t quite caught up, though.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Yamaguchi asked, walking straight up to Tsukishima until he could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“I just needed some air,” he explained, looking up at the sky and how his condensed breath clouded it temporarily until it dissipated.

“You know I know when you lie, Kei,” Yamaguchi replied, raising a brow before his face dawned with realization. “Was it Kuroo? Did he say something?”

“I—no, it’s nothing. It was just really hot,” Tsukishima said, waving Yamaguchi away. “Now go back, you’re missing the fun.”

“What, missing Tanaka throw up on Bokuto and try to clean it up himself and make it worse?” Yamaguchi joked. “Yeah, no thanks.��

They stayed silent for a moment more before Yamaguchi’s soft voice broke the silence.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Yamaguchi asked, which immediately caught Tsukishima’s attention. Yamaguchi shoved his hands deep into his pockets and sighed. “It was always him.”

“I...don’t know what—”

“Don’t lie to me, Kei!” Yamaguchi shouted, not caring about the passerby giving them strange looks. “I’ve always seen the way you look at him. Ever since that damn training camp...I thought that maybe, maybe I was just making it up because I was insecure, especially when you said you liked me back. But…”

Why did it always end up this way? With Yamaguchi crying his eyes out and spilling out his heart and Tsukishima dying of guilt?

“But you never looked at me the way you looked at Kuroo just now. N-never.” Yamaguchi sniffled and wiped his eyes, but more tears just replaced the others. “Was I just...a replacement? Somebody to have fun with before moving on to somebody else? Was that it?”

“Tadashi, no—”

“Nevermind,” Yamaguchi interrupted, shaking his head emphatically. “I don’t want to know. I’ve already beat myself up enough after you broke up with me. I just...I hope you are happy, Kei. Or at least, I hope you get happy. I hope you find somebody who makes you as happy as Kuroo made you.”

He smiled, but it was so pained that it felt like thousands of little needles were sticking straight in Tsukishima’s chest.

“It’s okay, Kei. It’s okay.” Yamaguchi got on his toes one last time and pressed a long, tender, and tragic kiss onto Tsukishima’s cheek, wet with tears. Only then did he realize he was crying.

“I’ll see you at the next reunion, okay?” Yamaguchi said softly, smoothing out Tsukishima’s shirt. “We’ll both be happy, Tsukishima.”

“I was always happy with you, Tadashi,” Tsukishima croaked, basically pleading for Yamaguchi to listen to him.

Yamaguchi said nothing. Instead, he nodded curtly, pat Tsukishima’s chest, and walked back into the bar. Not long after, he walked back out with his coat, sparing Tsukishima another glance before getting in a taxi and leaving far away from the site of so many happy moments and one horrible, awful, disastrous moment.

Tsukishima was getting ready to leave before the creaking of the bar door caused him to pause, but he didn’t turn his head. It was probably just a stranger, so he continued to search his pockets for his car keys, coming up empty.

“Searching for these?”

A metallic jingle accompanied the voice, belonging to none other than his car keys and Kuroo himself.

Tsukishima made sure the last of his tears were wiped away, but he still felt that his cheeks were burning and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” Tsukishima held out his hand and looked down at the sidewalk, awaiting the weight of the car keys in his hand, but it never came, forcing him to look back up and be met with Kuroo’s incredibly close figure who was currently smirking.

“Why are you leaving so early? You just got here,” he asked, raising a brow in suspicion.

“I just got tired,” he explained quickly, motioning to the car keys. “Please.”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Kuroo sang, shaking his head. “Aren’t you drunk?”

“Please.” Before long, Kuroo’s teasing got very old, and Tsukishima couldn’t hold himself back from blowing up. “Please give me my keys!”

Kuroo, for the second time that night, was taken aback. It reminded him of the good old days when he would be taken aback with every word Tsukishima said because he expected him to never talk, and when he did, it was always a jab at somebody. He found it amusing, but in this moment, he found it terrifying.

“Tsukki, no way,” Kuroo objected sternly, stuffing the keys in his pocket. “You’re drunk. I’ll drive you home after this; just come back inside.”

“No!” Without thinking, Tsukishima grabbed Kuroo and drove him deeper into an alleyway, throwing him against the wall and shooting his arm out to try and dig his keys out, but Kuroo blocked him in every way possible. “Just let me get my keys!”

“If you want to leave so bad, let me call a—”

“Don’t you understand? Are you that fucking stupid, or are you just blind?” Tsukishima was crying again by now, his face glistening with new tears thanks to the moon shining straight above them. “Let me leave, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“What’s your issue, man?” Kuroo asked, but it was less of a question and more of demand. He continued to hold Tsukishima’s keys hostage, which made him even more desperate to get them. He clawed at Kuroo’s chest, practically falling on top of him with how his legs were failing him.

“Do you seriously not remember? Or notice anything? I don’t remember you being this idiotic,” Tsukishima yelled, and he watched as Kuroo’s face morphed from confusion to calm realization.

“...That was nearly four years ago, Kei,” Kuroo said. This time his voice was low, rumbling deep in his chest, and Tsukishima could feel it through his hands.

“And I never stopped thinking about it! I never stopped thinking about you. You did this to me. You made me fall—” He hesitated, but he had already gone too far. Time to come clean about everything. “You made me fall in love with you! It’s all your fault, and now I have to deal with the consequences. You won’t leave my head no matter what I try. And now you’re fucking married? Did I mean nothing to you? You never...you never talked to me again after that. I…” He raised a trembling hand to his face, hiding it as best he could. “I’ve loved you for so long, it’s ruined my entire life.”

Kuroo was dead silent. The alleyway was silent other than the ambient noise filtering in from the entrance of the alley, of traffic and passerby and animals. The only sound between them was Tsukishima’s panicked panting, trying to get ahold of his own breath, and his strained weeping.

“You’ve always loved me,” Kuroo repeated, and Tsukishima let out a pitiful cry just at the sound of Kuroo saying those words. Kuroo pushed Tsukishima away but only to look him square in the face. “You never contacted me, Tsukki. I was just giving you space to figure things out.”

“I-I-I—” He didn’t have any excuses for that. All he wanted to do was blame everybody around him for his out-of-control feelings other than himself.

How’s that working out for you, Kei?

“Tsukki,” Kuroo started, and just hearing him use that nickname after so long in that low voice made Tsukishima nearly melt. “Tsukki, you were always like a little brother to me. I—”

A pathetic yelp erupted from Tsukishima’s throat at hearing that. Just that sentence alone was enough to kill him entirely.

“But—”

There weren’t any buts. He was now just a walking husk of a man, rejected by the man he’d been yearning after for years, had devoted his dreams and daydreams to just to get by in high school.

“But I’ve never stopped thinking about it,” Kuroo finished. “I never stopped thinking about you. I never forgot about you, Kei. Or what could’ve happened.”

“What could’ve happened…” Tsukishima gasped and clutched Kuroo’s hand, another burst of excitement swelling in him. “Y-you mean—”

“No, Kei, I’m happily married,” Kuroo clarified, showing off that dastardly ring that mocked him in all its beauty. “If we did get together, I know it wouldn’t have lasted very long. But I do know we would’ve been happy during that time. Until we found true happiness in somebody else.”

“Which…” Tsukishima winced, “is what you did.”

Kuroo nodded sagely. “And you will, too. You don’t have to forget me, Kei. You just have to find somebody who doesn’t make you look back on me with regret but with thankfulness that you got to a point where you found somebody you love more than me.” He reached up and caressed the side of Tsukishima’s wet cheek, stroking the red skin with his thumb. “You’ll always be my beanpole middle blocker.”

And you’ll always be my pain-in-the-ass captain.

“I’m gonna go call you a cab,” Kuroo said, motioning to the end of the alleyway they came from. “I’ll see you later, Tsukki. Take care.”

With that, he leaned forward and pressed a soft, short kiss onto Tsukishima’s forehead, leaving him in the alley to wallow in his own tears and self-pity until the cab he called showed up. The entire cab ride, he never let go of his forehead, wanting to preserve the warmth on his skin for as long as possible.

And when he got home, he realized Kuroo had kept his car keys.

Did he do this on purpose?

—

The next day, after taking pain meds for the killer headache assaulting his mind and cringing sufficiently over his actions last night, he finally mustered up the courage to call Kuroo.

The line rang two times before Kuroo picked up.

“Hey.” His voice was like molasses in the morning. “Calling for your car keys?”

“Yes,” Tsukishima replied, coolly as he always did.

“I’ll see you after work,” was all Kuroo said before hanging up.

When Kuroo showed up later that night, he brought somebody familiar with him.

“Sorry about not telling you, but I needed somebody to drive me back,” Kuroo said, motioning to the tall man beside him.

“Is that…” Tsukishima’s eyes raked over the man’s figure before settling on his eyebrows—or rather, lack of them.

“Aone,” he finished for Tsukishima, bowing in greeting. “It’s very nice to see you again, Tsukishima.”

“Enough with the formalities, Aone, geez,” Kuroo joked, punching him playfully in the shoulder. “Well, anyway, here are your keys. I gotta go drop Aone off at a single’s night at a nightclub. Because, you know, he’s single.”

Aone blushed. Tsukishima never thought he’d see the day this concrete block of a man blush. It was...endearing in a way.

“No need to advertise it,” Aone whispered under his breath, which made Tsukishima chuckle sympathetically. Kuroo’s eyes shone.

“Well, anyway, gotta go,” Kuroo said, motioning to the car and tossing Tsukishima the keys, which he barely caught in time since his eyes were stuck on a certain man.

“W-wait,” Tsukishima said, reaching out to get them to stop. “Single’s club? Um...is it any fun?”

Kuroo laughed his usual devil laugh that sounded more annoying than cute now.

“Of course it is, it’s a club,” Kuroo said matter-of-factly. “But I’m sure it’s not your speed.”

Tsukishima paused and looked down at his feet before admitting, “I, uh, can try it out.”

“Oh,” Kuroo said as if he had just been given a critical piece of evidence. “Aone, did you hear that?”

“I’m not deaf.”

“Alright, Tsukki, go get dressed because those pajamas are tacky,” Kuroo demanded, waving Tsukishima away.

He sneered and turned his nose up as he turned his back on the former captain. “Bokuto is rubbing off on you.”

“Never say that to me again.”

Tsukishima held back laughter as he ran back inside, an uncontrollable grin forming on his face. And for the first time after an interaction with Kuroo, he wasn’t the person that stayed in his mind as he left. Tsukishima himself was the man he was thinking about, about how excited he was getting at the possibility of meeting new people. That never happened before because, well...his heart had always been reserved for Kuroo.

Now it was open, open to everybody. Including himself.

#haikyuu!!#haikyū!!#fanfic #kuroo tetsurō #kuroo x tsukki #kuroo x tsukishima #tsukishima kei #kenma #tsukishima fanfiction #angst #fanfiction #one shot #oneshot #fluff #hurt comfort

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 3 years

Text

The Killing Cure (Part 6)

Sleep takes her regardless of whether or not she welcomes it and her waking comes as a very unpleasant surprise. She is only tolerant of her awakening as far as her daughters go, even then she is no more able to protect them than her rotting corpse could.

“Mother?” Cassandra murmurs sleepily.

Alcina weakly strokes her hair, “I’m still...here dear.” She isn’t sure for how long. She needs to get up but her body ails her unceasingly and without mercy. She tries to stand, her muscles are all so weak and the pain in her abdomen is still so sharp. She gets to her feet anyhow, she is going to have to endure. Endure until her last breath.

“Lay back down mother.” Cassandra mumbles.

Alcina shakes her head. “I have to do things for myself.” She makes her way across the room, somehow she has to make herself useful. She loathes to think of what Hiesenberg will say to her when he sees her again, the mockery and the endless taunting. And she would deserve it getting bested like that by a human man.

She braces herself against the wall.

“Don’t hurt yourself, mother.” Cassandra frowns.

“Where are your sisters?”

“Daniela thought that it would be nice to make you some new dresses. Bela is better at sewing though.”

“When did Bela learn…?”

“She watched the maiden do it before we turned her into fine wine!” Cassandra replies joyfully.

Alcina chuckles. It is the first prickle of genuine humor she has had in a while. At the very least it is the first moment that the pain had subsided even just a little. She attempts to heave herself away from the wall and stand on her own. It is still dizzying to look upon her furniture from this vantage point. It is one thing to get adjusted to it from the semi-comforts of her mattress and another thing entirely to walk by the towering room decor.

She inhales deeply--at least she doesn’t have to put thought into breathing anymore. And she takes her first few steps, slow and meek. Cassandra holds out her hand and Alcina takes it, privately pretending that she has done so for the girl’s comfort and not her own.

“Where are we going, mother?”

“Let’s check on your sisters and perhaps I can find myself something to eat…”

.oOo.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Ethan shouts. Lady Dimitrescu is not tucked safely into her bed when he arrives in her bedroom. He runs his hands through his hair, he can’t imagine that she could get very far.

Most likely, she is somewhere in the castle, lurking as she always had. But what if she has gotten herself further hurt than she is already? He imagines that she is the exact sort of woman who would push herself well beyond her limits just to prove something to herself, to impress an audience that isn’t even in attendance.

Or maybe she has assumed that he wasn’t coming back for her. Maybe she has left the castle in search of something to fix her up. But she wouldn’t leave those little demon flies, would she? He rubs his hands over his face and curses again.

He tells himself that he is only frustrated that he had gone all of that way and endured all of the Duke’s chatter and taunting for nothing.

“Got yourself in a really tight situation this time, didn’t you, Mr. Winters?” He’d chuckled. A fool he was to think that that would be the end of the Duke’s commentary.

“I thought up an assortment of scenarios about you and Lady Dimitrescu but this one never crossed my mind…” He had trailed off. “A small human. You might have four daughters to take care of now.”

“Absolutely not, Duke. She’s ill, not a child.”

The Duke had chuckled. “You’ve never overheard one of their family meetings, boy! The woman can cavil and grouse like the most petulant teenagers I’ve come across.” He took a swig of ale. “And that Hiesenberg, what a mouth that one has!”

“Duke…”

“Just how small is she now? I’ve heard hearsay that she was a tiny thing.”

“She’s...she’s small. Yeah.”

At that he had given his heartiest, most bellowing laugh yet. “Oh! What a treat. You’ll have to bring your new missus by when she’s all healed up!”

“She’s not...she won’t be...just sell me my goods, Duke!” He had waved the coins at him. Even a bribe--double the usual charge--hadn’t been able to deter him from his jesting. And so he’d resigned himself to several hours of jokes, gossip, and idle conversation. None of it of any particular importance. And now Dimitrescu is gone.

“Son of a fuck!” He shouts, noting that Heisenberg would probably appreciate that one. He slams his fists against her nightstand, knocking a glass to the floor. It shatters at his feet.

“Haven’t you ruined enough, Winters?” The woman, looking more thoroughly exhausted than before, stands in the doorway pinching her nose.

“I’m sure that you have a lot more glasses.”

“It’s the sentiment, Winters.” She, accompanied and assisted by her daughters, finds her way back to her bed. She falls heavily upon the mattress and just about curls in on herself. “What kept you?”

“Have you talked to the Duke?” He groans.

The look on her face and that deep sigh tells him everything that he needs to know.

“Now, you might want to start treating me better because I didn’t have to do this…”

“You didn’t have to put me in this condition either, Winters. I won’t thank you for fixing what you broke…”

Broke. He looks her over. Does she really see herself as broken? Really he thinks with the proper treatments she could probably function relatively well. “Well, look, I didn’t just get you medication, I also got some new clothes for you and some food that’s more...suitable for a human.”

She seems none to pleased about this.

“Look, I even got you a new hat, just like your other one.” He tries.

This seems to lift her mood, if only a little. She reaches for it and fixes it onto her head. It is only when he hands her the pile of clothes that he realizes she is already dressed in something new. Rather, aged but different than what she had been wearing.

“Bela and Daniela made it for me.” She notes.

He doesn’t want to be touched by it but, by God, he is. To think that those beasts have flickers of humanity. “There are two types of drugs here.” He holds them out, “one for diet and nutrition and one to suppress the immune system. Believe it or not, the Duke said that he got a supply just in case something like this happened.”

Lady Dimitrescu takes the pills and supplements.

“He was going to charge me extra too! He said that he was planning on getting extra riches from this, I told him that I put up with enough chatter to get a discount!”

She rolls her eyes. “That man is a character.” She takes a glass of water and swallows a pill. He can’t imagine that someone so small would need any more than one. She seems to stare sadly at her hands. But when she looks upon him it isn’t with as much hatred as it has been prior.

.oOo.

Alcina picks her way through the pile of clothing and, to her relief, finds a pair of gloves. She stuffs her rashed and blistered hands into the gloves, glad to be rid of the sight of them. She hates the sight of them, hates the sight of herself in general. She doesn’t just hate the sight of herself, she thinks that she hates herself entirely.

“Do you want something to eat?” Winters breaks her from her daze.

“Yes!” Daniela declares.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” He mumbles.

“A meal would be ideal.” She replies quietly.

The man seems to bite at his cheek before asking, “what would you like?”

“I don’t know, Winters. I haven’t had a taste for human dishes since making dishes of humans.”

For some reason, he chortles at this.

“Surprise me, you’re aggravatingly good at that.”

Ethan nods. “Alright, I’ll cook some potato salad, Mia used to love potato salad especially when I added cider vinegar…” He trails off in thought.

She thinks that the memory is painful for him, it must be with his wife so newly dead. She tries her best to fight off the sympathy but doesn’t quite succeed. She has enough success to not reassure him but not enough to stop herself from pulling him out of his own head. “My girls need food too.”

“They can have some of the salad.”

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “You need to go hunting. They prefer raw human, but deer or wolf will suffice.”

He sighs and says exactly what she hadn’t expected. “Alright, I’ll show you how to make a good potato salad and then I’ll go on a hunting trip. I’ve already shot dozens of lycans, how hard can one deer be?”

#Resident Evil #Alcina Dimitrescu #Lady Dimitrescu #Ethan Winters #Alcina/Ethan #Fanfiction

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doshmanziari · 3 years

Text

Architectural Criticism in 2021/2022 || Part 1.5

Before writing a fuller continuation of my previous essay on architectural criticism, I’m inserting a mini-essay that focuses on a particular piece of criticism. Let me be clear: I don’t see Kate Wagner, the person behind @mcmansionhell, as an enemy; I’m just using one of her articles as an example because I had, in my essay, already linked two articles of hers (more accurately, one article and an image from another), and I’d rather elaborate on what I mean when I write “...a vapid buildup to a politically convenient takeaway” than bring in an entirely different item. Wagner, in my view, represents a sort of destabilizing criticism that takes pleasure in tackling “dry” subject matter with breathless, Meme-heavy sarcasm. I find the tone off-putting, but I appreciate it as one attempt to invigorate and broaden the audiences of architectural appraisal. My issue is that by now the joke has overestimated its capacity for judgmental clarity. Really anything can be made fun of if you’re determined enough, and the more of an unquestioning audience you have the easier it is to believe everything you say is true or coherent.

The image was from this 2018 Vox article: “Betsy DeVos’ summer home deserves a special place in McMansion Hell” (a title likely devised by the editor; given the other residences Wagner has lambasted, I would be surprised if she truly believes this is among the worst). My observations won’t make sense unless anyone who is reading this reads her article as well, so please do that if you’d like to follow along. It should take only a couple of minutes.

What I’d first draw readers’ attention to is that Wagner spends the first four paragraphs on the United States’ beyond-vast inequality of wealth. Two of these paragraphs are the article’s largest, and the article is twelve-paragraphs-long, meaning that 1/3 of it is devoted to establishing a socio-economic context -- at least, that is the pretense. Once Wagner writes “...getting paid to make fun of DeVos’s tacky seaside decor is one of few ways to both feed myself and make myself feel better”, it is clear that her personal intent is a kind of vengeful mocking, and that her intent for readers is to prime them to associatively, knee-jerkingly despise anything which could come next with flat-affect “lmao”s. It’s hardly irrelevant to mention economic realities when examining luxury items (and what else is a mansion?), but Wagner’s subsequent analysis is not really architectural or even artistic: it is rather about looking at several photographs of a building, knowing who lives there and hating that person (and also imagining that they were responsible for all design decisions), and then mocking this-and-that in whatever ways one can devise. These grievances are understandable, but understandable grievances do not automatically lead to perceptive criticism.

Please look (perhaps again) at the first image. Note that only four, maybe, of the fourteen details Wagner chooses to focus on -- “no wry comment needed”, “these look like playdoh stamps”, “when you love consistency”, and “oh my god is this a shutter” -- approach anything vaguely resembling coherent criticism; and the other four images fare even worse (with the exception of the highlighting of an apparently absurd interior balcony). The rest are inane attempts at saying anything at all. Writing “hell portal” by an upper porch area may be funny for a moment, but what does it actually express? Well, nothing, except the author’s own irritation which will find whatever it can to announce its contemptuous sarcasm. Wagner’s captions will land only to the degree that the reader is humorously sympathetic.

The aforementioned remarks, excepting the one about the embedded chubby Tuscan columns’ Play-Doh-likeness, suggest that the worst thing a building can do is be formally heterogeneous. The implicative corollary here is that good architecture is eminently justifiable in all of its parts -- consistent, unified, rational. This is as fine a personal belief as anything else, but when it is wielded as dogma against architecture which has no interest in being a Petit Trianon it can only reveal its intellectual self-limitations. Wagner writes that “there is a difference between architectural complexity and a mess”, yet what that difference may be is hand-waved away. We just have to believe that thirteen different windows styles is too much. What’s the threshold? Does it depend on the size of the building? The types of styles used? Who knows.

Now of course bad architecture exists, and sometimes the failure indeed points to deficient editorial acumen; for architecture, like any other art, is as much about what’s included as what’s excluded. But in saying so little about the shingle style itself, Wagner seems to have given no thought to readers concluding that all shingle style houses are freakish -- more specifically, concluding that this freakishness is a damning transgression, and that no self-respecting, punching-up class-warrior would ever be caught dead sincerely enjoying their geometric, “exquisite corpse” escapades. In fact, the freakish tendencies of shingle style houses are just what make them such great fun to see, visit, or reside in. Wagner’s article, as far as I can tell, omits this possibility. When she writes, “Betsy likely went with this style because it is very popular in New England and in coastal enclaves of the rich and famous in general”, one is being pushed to presume that the only probable reason the shingle style exists or could be preferred over another style is to signal élite solidarity.

The photograph right above is of Kragsyde, a Massachusetts shingle style mansion, designed by the US-Northeast-oriented firm of Peabody & Stearns, completed in the 1880s. It was demolished almost a century ago, but the few exterior images of it which remain are, I think, fascinating -- maybe most of all for its enormous archway, possibly a porte-cochère, which has a thin, overextending keystone bizarrely driven into the top like a nail puncturing a petrified rainbow. I bring the building up because Wagner gives us no reason to consider why Kragsyde may have been a genuine architectonic accomplishment and not merely an oversized farce of contiguous pretensions. To the layperson hot off of the Vox piece, there may be no artistic difference between it and DeVos’ place, except that perhaps Kragsyde has a more consistent fenestrative application (would that make it better? if so, why?).

I appreciate that only so much can be said when you’re limited to less than a thousand words, especially when the issue is “complicated” (as the byline for Vox’s First-person series advertises). But the problem I keep coming back to is how DeVos’ mansion is treated as a stand-in for DeVos herself. This makes any architectural critique, no matter how pressed it is for size, flimsily presentist: its durability starts and ends with how alive the architecture’s resident(s) and political presence are. On some emotional level, this is pretty sensible: if we despise monarchical institution, we can find a sort of loophole to enjoying Versailles palace on the basis of it no longer being the residence of royalty. Our awe over its decadence and scope is intersectionally “admissible” on the basis of its having become a UNESCO World Heritage site. Similarly, one can imagine DeVos’ mansion being appreciated in a hundred years (should it still exist then) because the passage of time will have rendered DeVos’ person a historical fact, and perhaps more separable, and then tolerable, in that regard -- even if the building remains private.

But if architecture is, as a craft, critically whittled down to nothing more or less than inorganic expressions of social disparities, with every aesthetic decision a reflection of politically explicable taste, then we must assume that a great deal of the world’s most remarkable architecture is equally ridiculous and despicable, since so much of it was born out of great privilege and required specialized resources. I doubt Wagner actually believes this, because it would betray the entire premise of her McMansion Hell project, which is to demonstrate how so many modern day mansions are deeply unpleasant mounds of visual illiteracy, and cannot hold even a stump of a candle to the luminously learned and eclectic talents of prior great architects such as Mackintosh, Norman Shaw, Lutyens, or Ledoux. So what’s the takeaway here? As far as I can tell, it’s simply that if you hate Betsy DeVos, and if you care about class, you should hate her house too. And I do not think that that is architectural criticism.

#Architecture #architectural criticism #mcmansion #shingle style

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