#coping wildly well over the new episode as you can tell

[thornedarrow]

3.26 // 5.60 destiny's kiss, destiny's blow.

#bsdedit #hyeahbsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd dazai #bsd chuuya #soukoku #gifs: eri #post: eri #dazai #chuuya #coping wildly well over the new episode as you can tell

[bluecoloreddreams]

(Disclaimer: this contains spoilers for the Fruits Basket and Fruits Basket: Another manga, as well as taking into consideration tidbits from Takaya’s twitter.) 

So, okay, first of all we have to address the YMMV aspect: Some people don’t like this ship. As long as they’re respectful, I have no beef with that. I’m well aware that some people cannot/choose not to make the distinction between “real life” and “fiction”— I have the luxury of this choice, so some of the “problematic” ships/character aspects within Furuba don’t bother me (for the most part). It’s fiction, and I’m aware of this.  

Again, some people cannot/do not make this distinction, and that’s none of my business because that’s their personal life. I’m aware that people dislike aspects of Akigure, and that’s fine. 

Personally? I’ve been reading Furuba since like, basically the dawn of time. I was reading scans on, like,  MSN groups. I remember a friend at church (of all places) telling me about the Akito reveal because I was behind on updates. It’s literally engrained upon my shipping heart at this point. 

(Headcanons ahoy! Like literally, this is all headcanon/my perspective on the series as a whole. YMMV/YKINMK/Dead Dove, the whole works, if you know you know

YES I wrote it like it’s an actual research paper because I have No Chill At All, please forgive me. It’s long and pretty rambling.) 

Addressing the first elephant in the room: Given my limited interactions with the fandom, my impression of Akigure from a generalized fan POV is that it’s pretty divisive. Every episode she comes up there are “I hate this kid” comments and I cry

Akito is a favorite of mine, and it’s impossible for anime-only’s to make a deep, informed call on her character. On the other hand, a lot of manga-readers dislike her too. 

So, why am I talking about whether or not people like Akito as a character? 

I’m of the opinion that it impacts people’s ability to view her character arc as one that deserves a happy ending. That she doesn’t deserve to have love, happiness, or forgiveness, all of which are given to her when she and Shigure finally end up together on equal footing. (Do I think the way it’s rushed in the original Furuba ending? Yeah, but hey. Sensei had like a huge ensemble cast to wrap ends on. Now there’s Furubana to look to and it’s just chef’s kiss.)

There’s a mental aspect in this, involving the dichotomy between “reality” and “fiction”. 

There is absolutely zero argument that are a lot of things that Akito does that uh, listen, if it was IRL she’d be in jail! Jail for terror baby! Jail for life! 

Fortunately, Fruits Basket is a work of fiction. These characters aren’t real, they’re idealized brushstrokes of human nature created to move a plot and a message along. 

That’s why Akito and Shigure work as a couple and as characters: 

They’re both incredibly deep characters that get passed off as one-dimensional by a lot of people (and the original anime, woof). Some of it is again, because anime-only fans just don’t have the whole story, since Akito’s arc is one that builds gradually until it hits a point where all hell breaks loose, which we are a ways away from. 

So what’s the message that their relationship and characters are supposed to pass on? 

Well, it breaks down into two categories: world building and thematic arcs. The latter is more important and what I’ll be focusing on, while the former is just a little spice that I, personally enjoy, and won’t really talk about in depth. (It’s that the magical realism in Furuba sets up the idea of soulmates, it’s just…. Something I enjoy and it’s really heacanony, so I can’t really justify spending more words on it!) 

When discussing Fruits Baskets in any capacity, I feel like we must first keep in mind the thematic “lessons” of the series: 

There is an inherent loneliness in living as a human being, since loss, grief, and hurt are indelible parts of the human experience, and learning to cope with these feelings in a compassionate manner is a life-long lesson 

People react differently to the loneliness of existence, and their reactions are based upon their personalities, their upbringings, and their own choices 

Everyone is capable of change and learning, if they choose to do so, however: 

Personal agency is taught, but in the vacuum of positive reinforcement, the ability of a person to choose to be compassionate is stifled or outright inaccessible

Therefore, if you are not taught to deal with your grief and existence outside of others, your ability to connect may become warped, manipulative, or abusive, and this is not the fault of the child but instead the parental figure 

Eventually, you will be aware of your actions, and then it is your burden to choose—some people do not take this choice (the head maid, Ren, Kyo’s bio dad, Rin’s parents, Sawa’s mother in Furubana)  

Abuse has long lasting effects on the psyche and can be physical, emotional, and/or mental in nature and must be dealt with in order to grow as a person

“Dealt with” does not mean that it goes away, but that it is acknowledged and given a positive outlet (Yuki’s garden, Aaya’s shop, Rin’s art, Momiji’s violin playing)

Forgiveness is not linear

Forgiving yourself is a long and arduous process, and happens independent of other people’s forgiveness

This is really brought to the forefront in Fruits Basket: Another, when Shiki talks about how his mother interacts with the rest of the Sohma family. It’s shown she’s done what she can to make amends, but recognizes that while she can individually hold relationships with certain family members, as a whole, it's best if she allows them to be away from her. 

This is a whole tangent on its own, but there’s a certain blanket of casual forgiveness given to Akito by the entirety of the shown Zodiac in Furubana, in that they trust that she’s raised a kind and thoughtful son and allow him the grace of his own family. 

Again, in Takaya’s tweets post-series that acknowledges that Akito’s friends with Uo-chan, despite her relationship with Kureno (and it shows a depth of awareness on Kureno’s part that he stays away

People flourish in environments where love and positive reinforcement is given freely, even when people are in the wrong

This doesn’t mean that no one is ever scolded: see Komaki and Kakeru, Kisa and Hiro, Hatori chews out Shigure all the time, but never ceases being his confidant 

So okay, that’s A Lot. But every single character in Furuba follows these themes in their own manner, because the series is about healing and learning how to heal from abuse, neglect, and isolation. Someone’s gonna have to be doing it. Point blank, the end, to tell a story there must be conflict, and boy howdy, there’s a lot of conflict in Furuba. Every personal thematic arc in the series ends up tying into a romantic one, because Furuba is a romcom drama. 

There’s a loop that goes “personal betterment”->”crush”/”friendship”->”conflict”->”personal growth”/”relationship growth” in the series for every character. That’s the bread and butter of Furuba. 

But anyway. To the question: 

I love them because they work, they’re both their own people with their own narrative focuses, motivations, conflicts, and flaws. Both Shigure and Akito are believable in their own right in the context of Furuba, and I think Takaya did wonderfully in crafting a story where their personalities mesh well and give each other reasons to better themselves.

To talk about them together, you have to talk about them separately. 

I’m gonna start with Shigure because, truthfully? 

I just want to lament about how often he’s simply passed off as either comic relief or absolute trash. He’s so underestimated! 

“He’s a joke of a grown man… He is reliable and I trust him.” (Another, v. 3)

He’s incredibly intelligent when it comes to interpersonal relationships, which is why he’s able to do what he does. He’s also incredibly kind—no one made him take in Yuki or Kyo or Tohru. He could have just went “ah, I’d prefer not to” and moved on. But he didn’t, made up some bullshit so Haru would feel like taking in Yuki was a transaction, and let me just tell you, I am the same age as Shigure and if you gave ME three teenagers to be the guardian of?! It would be a full on disaster.

He’s actually incredibly trustworthy (if he wants to be), insightful, and a genuinely good guardian despite his jokes and wisecracking. 

He forced Kyo to go back to school, knowing full well it would be good for him. He lets a whole host of children run rampant through his home. Kids who actually enjoy his presence. He’s shown as having a good familial relationship with Rin (who tries to warp that for her own means), Kisa, Haru, and Momiji. His advice to Tohru is genuine, insightful, and ridiculously helpful. 

Shigure is good with people. He gets up at the crack of dawn to drive Shiki to see Sawa in Furubana. He’s who Mutsuki and Hajime immediately go “holy shit you need to do something about this” to when they find out Shiki’s getting nasty notes about Akito. He’s who Shiki goes to when Sawa fell down the stairs as a child. As much as Shiki and the others make fun of Shigure, he’s obviously someone who’s trustworthy. And that’s not some new development, he’s always been trustworthy in regards to those he loves. No one asked him to show up to Tohru’s teacher conference, he volunteered. Like this dude loves people, he’s the dog spirit after all, and rightly so. 

Does he have his own motivations? Of course! But so does everyone else in Furuba. He’s a complex character, man! 

He laughs and jokes a lot because he’s projecting this image of a laid back, doofus. When you think about who he’s friends with, the whole middling goofball act makes a lot of sense. Just like some of Ayame’s over the top behavior is a defense mechanism, I believe that Shigure casts himself as a generally unappealing man to keep himself safe from advances when he was in school, but also to temper the wildly unequal personalities of his other two friends. He’s the sort of person who would just go “eh, whatever makes it easy”, and that’s just how he is. 

He doesn’t mean the creepy school girl thing, it’s a bit and I think the only people who don’t realize he’s running a bit are Yuki, Kyo, and Tohru who are absolutely too stupid to realize he’s playing them for reactions. He thinks it’s funny. 

Anyway:

When the older Zodiac had the dream of Shigure, Shigure is the only one who made the active choice to seek out that feeling. His soul was touched, and he decided that he wanted that and only that. This doesn’t necessarily mean he went full Jacob from Breaking Dawn, but it does mean he acknowledged there was a bond, and he wanted it. 

When you get into the technicalities of the curse, it’s mentioned that their Zodiac spirits influence how they interact with Akito, and that going against her can cause physical and emotional pain. Yuki cries when meeting her, and it’s mentioned that that’s just the normal reaction for the Zodiacs. 

It’s hard to say how much of their early interactions are influenced by the curse, but it’s obvious that Shigure has genuine fondness for her. She wasn’t always absolutely broken, as shown in Yuki’s backstory, and was a precocious child, one who sought affection openly. 

Shigure has an indulgent personality, and is shown to love being adored. Guess who loves him! Akito! Guess who wants lots and lots of affection! Akito! 

Their personalities are very well matched as they get older: They’re both intelligent and coy. They both have fairly sharp tongues when needed, and have no qualms about doing whatever it takes to get what they want. 

Shigure wants Akito to be independent from the curse. He’s made it clear to her he doesn’t want to be her father, he doesn’t want to be her friend, he wants to be her lover. Those are boundaries that Akito’s never been given before, and his frankness with her and his jealousy with Kureno is something she agonizes over, simply because she’s never been given any sort of serious interpersonal boundaries, or repercussions for her actions. He’s always kept himself separate from her, because of those boundaries, even when they were children. 

That’s important. It opens the door to the idea that her actions have consequences, and is a persistent nagging in the back of her mind. 

“Even though you hadn’t realized it, I was waiting for that day.” (ch 101)

For the bulk of the series, the only person who sees Akito as a person separate from the curse, and sees a future where she can grow is Akito. He has an extraordinary amount of patience for her, and forgives her for a lot. 

There are only two incidents that Shigure cannot forgive: Her sleeping with Kureno, and at the very end of the series, I’m of the full opinion that if Akito had pushed Tohru off the cliff, Shigure would have been done with her. Look at that expression, that is the look of someone who is toeing the line of throwing away all his hopes and dreams. If she really had pushed Tohru, I just...... The series would have taken a much darker tone. 

OKAY that’s enough about our favorite terrible author! (Okay, an aside, Shigure, please share your work ethic, you goof off so much but you’ve published so many things…how…)  

ONTO AKITO! 

“I’ve  finally realized… she hated her own shallowness all this time, from the very start.” // “It’s frightening because you have no choices.” (ch 121) 

A lot of people dislike Akito because she, for the bulk of the manga, is violent, manipulative and just downright unpleasant. And that’s fine, but it’s not the point of her arc or the themes of the manga.  (It is, however, the point of Rin’s: you don’t have to forgive everyone.) 

She’s not the only violent person in the series. If we as readers can forgive Uo-chan and Kyoko, or even Hana-chan for her moment of violence, why can we not extend the same grace to Akito? 

Violence is often shown as a knee-jerk reaction to fear and sadness: Kyoko, Uo, Hana, Kyo, Rin, and Akito all react violently to negative situations and feelings. Even Kisa reacts violently when she’s at her worst, biting both Haru and Tohru when she’s in her tiger form, which is shown to actually cause pain like a real tiger would. (It’s played for laughs, but has anyone been bitten for realsies by a house cat? That hurts! How much more would a house-cat sized tiger hurt!!!) 

Out of all of them, Hanajima and Kisa are the only characters to show immediate remorse, because they have what the others don’t: A positive support system. Once positive role models and support systems are in place, all of the others begin to learn how to react differently and ease out of the knee-jerk reactions that were ingrained in them. 

It’s made explicit in the manga that you have to be taught how to react positively, you have to learn and choose to be good, to be friendly, to love yourself outside of others’ perceptions of yourself. Look at Yuki’s arc. Look at Uo-chan’s. Kyoko’s. 

Yuki sums it up nicely in the last chapter of the manga, where he tells Tohru that she taught the Zodiac how to become human. She allows them to grow into people who can make the choice to be loving, compassionate individuals. 

Just because Akito doesn’t interact positively with Tohru for the bulk of the manga, it doesn’t make it any less true: 

Akito is kept in a juvenile state of being: No one teaches her to suck it up, that the world exists outside of herself, that other people are people and not things. In fact, she’s actively encouraged to act the way she does. She’s incredibly broken, between the maids of the Sohma estate just… allowing her to do whatever the fuck she wants and her absolutely jacked up relationship with Ren and Akira. She has no moral compass at all. No one bothers to teach her that her actions have serious consequences. 

She knows, in a roundabout way that hey, these people don’t like me. There’s a serious mental dissonance between what she latently knows—these are all people with no connection to her other than the bond of the curse. This is why Tohru is able to break through to her at the climax of the manga: 

She knows she’s wrong, but no one has ever told her she’s wrong but understood why she’s doing it. Akito just didn’t have the words to explain herself. What do children do when they cannot communicate? They lash out. Kids will bite, scratch, yell, kick, fall to the floor and have screaming tantrums out of frustration. Eventually, most kids learn that there are other ways to express frustration, and move along. (Not all, though, but most.)

Akito was taught that this is acceptable, allowable, and is her right as god. She is actively broken and kept that way through the neglect of the Sohma family maids, Ren’s abuse, and how Akira framed her role in the Zodiac. 

I can go on and on and on and on why the way Akito was treated for her role in the Zodiac by her parents and the rest of the Sohma estate was just awful. I hate it, it’s terrible, she never had a chance to learn and grow and be the genuinely thoughtful woman we know she grows into. 

She doesn’t force her path of forgiveness onto others and is fully cognizant of what she did, the repercussions of her actions, and lives her entire life after the curse breaks trying to right what she did wrong. 

“Even if she gets hurt, she says she deserves it. She tells me not to let it bother me, but… I’ve always, always loved her so much.” (Another, ch. 13) 

Tohru opens the door for Akito. She extends her hand, offers her friendship despite having seen the absolute worst of Akito. She tells Akito that everyone is lonely, everyone wants bonds, and acknowledges Akito’s worst fears, that Akito herself is selfish and dirty for wanting something assured and unending because she, Tohru, herself is dirty and selfish. Tohru knows what Akito has done, knows she’s injured some of her beloved friends, had plans to lock up Kyo, hurt Hatori. 

Tohru still forgives her. One of Tohru’s striking traits in the manga is that she is suffering, every day, she struggles with the grief of losing her mother and the fear of being alone in the world. Through nothing but her own empathy and realization that loneliness is universal, she’s able to forgive people. She forgives Akito and cares for her, and through Tohru, Akito is introduced to the realization that she’s been wrong and that maybe, she shouldn’t be forgiven. 

Shigure also forgives her, and this is the crux of their ship. 

To me, that itself is wildly important. 

They’ve always circled around each other, and Shigure has always been waiting for Akito to be able to come to him again, in full control of her life and choices. He wants Akito the woman, not Akito the god. 

He’s been waiting for the day Akito can meet him as an equal. Akito wants it too, and has wanted him to turn and see her for a very very long time. But she’s been terrified, the entire time, that when he does see her as herself, Shigure won’t like what he sees, and will leave. She’s aware of what she’s done post-curse, she’s aware of the impacts it will have on the former Zodiac members, and she’s aware that once the “bonds” of god and the animals is gone, there may not be anyone left for her.

Neither of them are under any illusions at the end of the series: Akito knows she has to atone for what she did, Shigure knows she has to learn to grow into a person who can function alone. They both know that there are people who are against them changing the oppressive structure of the Sohma family. 

Neither of them care. There are things that they want, together, and it’s enough. There’s a whole new world for them to explore and learn about. And in Furubana, this is shown to be a lifelong effort on their parts: 

“She said after meeting me, she learned so many things for the first time. She smiled happily as she said it.” (Another, #13) 

To close, I’d like to take a moment to talk about the curse and Shigure, and how he set things in motion. 

Without Shigure, the curse would have devolved on its own, yes, but the circumstances would not have allowed for the freedom the Zodiac had at the end of the manga. It would not have ended with Akito being able to learn and live freely. Allowing Tohru into the Sohma family cracked open a door to compassion and kindness none of them had ever experienced before, because the Sohma family seems to exist in a vacuum of stability and love. 

It wasn’t that Shigure knew instantly that Tohru was kind and loving and thoughtful, if anything, his read on her was “completely normal, albeit strange, teenage girl who obviously has a rough life”. But she was normal, she was from outside the Sohmas, and he knew that was enough. No one in the family was stepping up to change the status quo and how stifling and abusive it was, so he did it himself. 

He did it because he loved Akito. 

Not because he felt bad for himself, or Hatori, or any of the others, but merely because he loved her to the point of manipulation. It backfired in his face, because he got a big ol’ dose of “loving and respecting” juice from Tohru, but he still got the end he wanted. 

What I mean to say is best summarized in  chapter 123: 

“It would be nice to live in a kind world, without any troubles, without any fear, without hurting anybody, without ever being hurt, only doing the right thing. I wish I could reach this kind world by the shortest path possible. … “That’s wrong”, or “that’s stupid”: If it’s someone else’s life it’s so easy to make such irresponsible comments. ...It would be great, but it doesn’t exist. … Little by little, walking one step at a time, is all you can do.” 

We get to experience the roughest part of the path with Akito and Shigure, we got to watch them be terrible people who were lonely and in want of love struggle and learn how to get up and move on. 

They tease each other, Shigure is thoughtful of the distinction between “the person Akito was raised to be” and “the person who Akito is”. He’s seen her at her messiest, and she’s seen him at his most jealous. They still chose each other, despite the hurt they caused each other, and others. They make up for it, reflect, and live a life that demonstrates that they have learned. They have friends who are thoughtful and loving and would not hesitate to drop everything and help them, lend an ear when they’re frustrated, help them not to make the same mistakes. 

And then we get to see them be wonderful, kind, thoughtful, loving parents in Furubana. 

We got to see their adorable, kind, compassionate child be friends with the children of the people Akito hurt, because everyone in the former Zodiac’s family collectively decided “never again, no”. 

Their child adores them. Shiki in Furubana #13 radiates love for Akito and Shigure the same way Mutsuki and Hajime do. 

They are genuinely good parents, even when they tease Shiki, and I think that is testament for how good they are for each other and how much they’ve changed as adults. 

I think that’s enough of a reason to ship them, don’t you?

#Mitkun writes stuff #fruits basket manga spoilers #fruits basket another #fruits basket spoilers #akigure #fruits basket akito #fruits basket shigure

[all-hail-the-witcher]

jaskier’s breakup album

alright full disclosure i probably went into way more detail than i needed to. but jaskiers a dramatic little shit and therefore so am i. but this album slowly became my baby and I've been listening to it for the last 2 weeks while I've been doing homework and its a good sad bop. these are just my opinions, but i think it would be cool to see what other people think (esp because im fairly new to this fandom). also this post is really long. sorry about that. 

so. we all know jaskier is a bard. he traipses around writing songs about whatever fling he's having or about his witcher. netflix canon makes it pretty clear that geralt is one of jaskiers muses (and probably one of his more reliable ones given what we know about jaskiers dating history). jaskier is also very, very dramatic (as I'm sure everyone knows cause he's the damn comic relief that show desperately needs). in particular though the scene at the beginning of 1x05 where geralt is djinn hunting and jaskier stumbles upon him, drunk, singing off key, and rambles about how "the countess de stael, my muse and beauty of this world, has left me. again. rather coldly and unexpectedly, i might add. i fear i shall die a broken hearted man” and jaskier is clearly half muttering some sad attempt at a breakup song he's trying to write at the beginning of the episode so the question is, wouldn't he do the same thing post mountain scream down with geralt?

the answer is of course, yes he would because jaskier is nothing if not a dramatic little shit. and i am proposing that he writes not only one but an entire album (or set if this is canon era, but if this is canon i think he would keep a great many of these songs to himself, only playing a few select ones with the hopes that someday geralt will hear one and realize how badly he fucked up) of break songs and lamentations about geralt, because say all you want about what their relationship is, but one does not simply go traipsing around the entire continent with someone for 20 years and not grow close to them in some way shape or form (and the show makes it clear that geralt is at least one of jaskiers close friends so). now what is on this breakup album? well I'm glad you asked.

i peg jaskiers music (modern or canon honestly) for this album as being a combination of taylor swift’s folklore/evermore albums and james arthur and ill explain why. 

taylor swifts folklore/evermore albums have this almost ethereal, floaty, reminiscent, indie vibes. there are many metaphors, recurring themes and its overall kinda dramatic at points which i feel is exactly what jaskier would be doing right now (it also just kinda gives me canon era vibes, idk). but james arthurs music is much more emotionally intense which i think is definitely in character for jaskier at this point because he strikes me as someone who copes with things through his music. both artists do the sings through story telling in an almost monologue manner which goes along with that kinda bardic music and all that. i also think that jaskier would want geralt to know that these songs are about him because hes dramatic like that (kinda like how taylor swift writes her stuff). anyway here's what i think would be on his breakup album: 

heres a link to the playlist

1. the lakes - taylor swift 2. from me to you i hate everybody - james arthur 3. maybe - james arthur 4. sad eyes - james arthur 5. hoax - taylor swift 6. naked - james arthur 7. right where you left me - taylor swift 8. all too well - taylor swift 9. impossible - james arthur 10. exile - taylor swift 11. illicit affairs -taylor swift 12. safe inside - james arthur 13. quite miss home -james arthur 14. my tears ricochet  -taylor swift 15. phoenix - james arthur 16. this is me trying - taylor swift  17. happiness - taylor swift 18. death by a thousand cuts - taylor swift 19. empty space - james arthur 20. coney island - taylor swift 21. new years day - taylor swift 22. the 1 -taylow swift

so theres 22 songs which im sure jaskier would do on purpose cause hes a dramatic little shit ( “one song for every year i wasted on you” or something of that sort). jaskier being a dramatic little shit is going to be a recurring theme. some of them work better for modern era than canon era but as a whole this can be interpreted as either romantic or platonic. anyway lets unpack. 

1. the lakes by taylor swift (more canon era interpretation)

this song is the bonus and final track off of folklore. the song is actually about how she wants to go live in seclusion with her boyfriend out of the public eye but that is not what it means in this interpretation. i think that this song is about how jaskier feels as though his career as a bard is tainted now because he spent so many years singing geralts praises and there is no way he will be able to escape that part of his life because undoubtedly hes going to get requests for toss a coin and others he wrote about geralt and people will probably know him as “the witchers bard”. so this song is him talking about how he wants to run away and live out his life in seclusion because geralt took from him one of the only happinesses in his life. 

Take me to the lakes, where all the poets went to die I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry I'm settin' off, but not without my muse 

the line “i dont belong and my beloved neither do you” references the fact that jaskier feels like an outcast now that he’s spent years traveling around with a witcher, notoriously outcasts from society, so he feels that he doesnt belong anymore either.

I want auroras and sad prose I want to watch wisteria grow Right over my bare feet 'Cause I haven't moved in years And I want you right here

the second stanza references his idealization of living out his life in solitude, with nature, where no one can judge him (and geralt cant yell at him). 

jasper would have started this album with that song because it states his intentions: he feels as though he’s done with singing. it could also refer to him leaving the public eye (in modern era) to write this album.

2. from me to you i hate everybody by james arthur (more canon era interpretation) 

songs 2-4 on jaskiers album are ones that he wrote at various points while he and geralt were still together/best friends/etc. these three songs establish what the relationship was like before everything went downhill, but they are kind of melancholy, like looking back on a past love (which is what jaskier is doing). this one jaskier wrote about when they met. geralt would have heard him play it before and he would have known that this song was about him (he probably also secretly liked it and jaskier putting it on his album would have been like a slap in the face because it wasn't one that he had shared with other people, thinking it to be too personal). if this album had been released in modern era, jaskier would have released this song as a single to get geralts attention. he would have definitely wanted geralt to know that this album was about him. 

I used to come here on my own and drink So I didn't have to think or hear the whispering I stand with people telling lies again In suits and ties again and I just need a friend

they meet in the tavern and its clear that jaskier is Not having a good time and really just needs a friend, hence why he decides to go talk to geralt.

You walked into the room and cut the atmosphere like a knife, alright Sobering mind 'cause up to now, I've just been wasting my time, ooh yeah

the “wasting my time” part is of particular interest because it clearly articulates that jaskier feels as though adventuring around with geralt was the best part of his life and before that he'd just been a bard with debatable songs. the song as a whole makes it sound like geralt was jaskiers lifeline.

3. maybe by james arthur (modern or canon era works)

this song, while geralt would know immediately it was about him, was not one jaskier ever shared with geralt. it would have been written a few years after he and geralt had met initially. the reason that jaskier never shared it was because it talks about destiny and geralt made it Very Clear that he does not want to fuck with destiny.

I don't know what's going on Where you came from and why you took so long All I know is that I feel it Like it's the realest thing, I mean it Something changed when I saw you Oh, my eyes can't lie You said, "They're so damn blue And I love how you're so forward Is it too soon to say I'm falling?"

this would have been what young jaskier felt over the course of a few years after traveling around (or befriending if this is modern). There was probably a slip up somewhere, or jaskier just thought that he got really good at interpreting geralts grunts and the line about the eyes is what he hoped/imagined/thought geralt was saying to him in return. 

So maybe Maybe we were always meant to meet Like this was somehow destiny Like you already know Your heart will never be broken by me So is it crazy For you to tell your friends to go on home? So we can be here all alone Fall in love tonight And spend the rest of our lives as one

jaskier probably thinks that destiny is some wildly romantic thing hence why he compares them meeting to destiny. the line about heart break would have also hit especially hard after the mountain scene. also i think its pretty clear that jaskier wants to spend as much of his life traipsing around with geralt in the show (modern era wouldn't have been any different), hence wanting to spend the rest of his life with geralt. 

Oh, is it too crazy For you to tell your brothers about me? They told me they'll protect you But I'll look them in the eye Tell them you and I will be as one

this is the part that sells it for me. i think that geralt lambert and eskel would all be very close (admittedly i havent read the books but i kinda get that vibe from the fandom so). this part about geralt telling his bothers about jaskier and then jaskier probably meeting them would have been an Important Moment. 

4. sad eyes by james arthur (modern or canon works) 

aright so im not sure if geralt has heard this one before. i can see it going both ways. its a possibility that jaskier wrote it at some point and then would kinda sing it softly when hes patching geralt up after a particularly rough hunt so its one of those where like geralts not quite sure what the song is but then he hears it on this album (cause say this was modern era and jaskier actually did release this album geralt would totally buy it after a few weeks and then realize how badly he'd actually fucked up) and is like shit thats what he was singing all along?? but anyway this one is essentially about how jaskier thinks geralt puts too much pressure on himself and all that stuff

You wear the burden World on your shoulders, babe So let me hold the weight I know you're hurting Deep as the coldest pain But this is the order sayin'

essentially jaskier can see through geralts bs and hes calling him out on it and wants him to just take care of himself for once (see: the scene in 1x05 when geralt says he cant sleep) 

5. hoax by taylor swift (canon or modern works)

so this song begins the plethora of break up songs that jaskier wrote about geralt. this one would have been written some time after the incident, after jaskier has some time to reflect on the whole thing. i know that taylor wrote this  song about enduring a toxic relationship, which kind of works if you think about the way that geralts treated jaskier and how jaskier interpreted it (but im not implying that their relationship was toxic or abusive or anything) 

My best laid plan Your sleight of hand My barren land I am ash from your fire

jaskiers plan was to reinvent geralts image and geralt did not think that it was worth it. jaskier is just sorta his side kick (who gets him into trouble, as geralt points out) and geralt kicks him aside like he doesnt mean anything to him (like ash from a fire

Stood on the cliffside Screaming "Give me a reason" Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in Don't want no other shade of blue But you No other sadness in the world would do

this is a little more literal with the screaming on the cliffside. jaskier wanted a reason to stay and geralt didnt want him to. jaskier knows that witchers dont feel emotions (or at least not like humans do) so hes been tricking himself into believing that geralt actually liked having him around, knowing that it was probably going to blow up in his face at some point. but he doesnt quite regret it, and doesnt want to be sad over anyone else.

6. naked by james arthur (modern or canon works)

this kind of goes along with hoax, jaskier probably wrote them around the same time. he’s admitting in this song that he would be willing to try to work it out with geralt, but geralt needs to change first (needs to actually communicate and let him in and all that stuff). 

'Cause here I am, I'm givin' all I can But all you ever do is mess it up Yeah, I'm right here, I'm tryin' to make it clear That getting half of you just ain't enough

hes quoting geralts words back at him here ( “all you ever do is mess it up” is pretty similar to the line about shoveling shit), saying that all hes ever tried to do is be good and kind to geralt, but geralt hasn't really done the same in return and while jaskier may have dragged him into some things, geralt also needs to take responsibility for what hes done as well. 

7. right where you left me (modern or canon works)

this starts the Real Sad Boy Hours songs. this would refer to how he felt pretty much right after, not knowing what to do because geralt had been so much a part of his life for so long: 

Help, I'm still at the restaurant Still sitting in a corner I haunt Cross-legged in the dim light They say, "What a sad sight" I, I swear you could hear a hair pin drop Right when I felt the moment stop Glass shattered on the white cloth Everybody moved on, I, I stayed there Dust collected on my pinned-up hair They expected me to find somewhere Some perspective, but I sat and stared

this is kind of the processing of the event. and also the moment on the album where the audience would realize that this relationship that he's been telling about until now definitely ended. this song isn't super super emotional, its more a jumble of thoughts cause he didnt know what to feel after the breakup happened. although he didnt write it right after the break up, it was written much after as a looking back.

8. all too well by taylor swift (modern or canon era works)

(the link to this one is from a live performance because i like the emotion in this one better) so this song is not off of folklore (its off of red) but its such a powerful, painful breakup song that i had to include it in the lineup because it seems like something that jaskier would have written very very soon after the incident. the memories especially that she touches on in the song (driving upstate, dancing in the fridge light, looking at the photo album, etc) are all very powerful and real and i can see jaskier doing the same thing. again, if this were modern era i think that he might release this one as a single. theres so much to unpack in this song, this ones gonna be a little longer oops.

Maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much But maybe this thing was a masterpiece 'til you tore it all up Running scared, I was there, I remember it all too well

this clearly references the mountain scene. they were a pretty good duo until geralt blamed him for all his problems. and jaskier was effectively stuck on the top of a very dangerous mountain that he would have had to navigate down by himself. 

Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone

jaskier spent half of his life following geralt around, its likely that he doesnt know what to do with himself or his life now that he doesnt have geralt to follow around on adventures. he doesnt know what to do anymore (see the first song).

But you keep my old scarf from that very first week 'Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me You can't get rid of it, 'cause you remember it all too well, yeah

this is more of a hope that jaskier has. he hopes that geralts held onto something of his that he left behind. maybe he left a shirt in one of roaches saddle bags (canon) or a notebook in their apartment (modern) that geralt just cant seem to get rid of. he would like to think that he had an impact on geralts life and that it wasn't just all for nothing. in the beginning, he wants geralt to be just as hurt as he is.

'Cause there we are again, when I loved you so Back before you lost the one real thing you've ever known It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well

this is a dig at geralt. he'd never had someone to follow him around on adventures before, much less a human. as far as we know it seems like jaskiers the first human that has even given him the time of day. this is jaskiers way of throwing it back in geralts face

9. impossible by james arthur (canon or modern works) 

this would have also been written very soon after the incident. it is more jaskier being mad at himself for not seeing the signs than him being mad at geralt. it is almost like his admittance of the event and like hes finally accepting what happened.

I remember years ago Someone told me I should take Caution when it comes to love, I did And you were strong and I was not My illusion, my mistake I was careless, I forgot, I did

jaskier is someone who clearly falls in love (or at least screws around with people) easily so its likely that someone would have given him some advice along these lines once. but when he met geralt its likely that this caution went to the wind. 

When all is done, there is nothing to say And if you're done with embarrassing me On your own you can go ahead, tell them

Tell them all I know now Shout it from the rooftops Write it on the skyline All we had is gone now Tell them I was happy And my heart is broken All my scars are open Tell them what I hoped would be impossible

this hints at the first song on the album. jaskier has no stomach for singing for audiences asking to hear about the adventures of geralt of rivia. this is his way of telling geralt that, almost as his punishment, he should have to deal with the people who ask why hes not traveling with his bard anymore, because jaskier has no intention of doing so. this is pretty brutal because (as we know) geralt doesnt really enjoy talking about feelings, or talking at all in general.

10. exile by taylor swift (modern or canon era works)

this is a fictitious conversation that jaskier wrote as occurring between him and geralt. it can be looked at either way but i think it makes more sense if bon iver is jaskier and taylor is geralt. 

I think I've seen this film before And I didn't like the ending You're not my homeland anymore So what am I defendin' now? You were my town Now I'm in exile seein' you out I think I've seen this film before

this first chorus is from jaskiers perspective. note the use of “homeland,” as home becomes a theme on jaskiers album. in geralts version of the chorus the line instead is “youre not my problem anymore” which is probably what jaskier took the whole mountain thing to mean. 

All this time We always walked a very thin line You didn't even hear me out (you didn't even hear me out) You never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs) All this time I never learned to read your mind (never learned to read my mind) I couldn't turn things around (you never turned things around) 'Cause you never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs)

(the () in this are geralt) this is jaskiers lamentations about how he didnt notice geralts abject discomfort in their relationship and also his regrets in not being able to remedy the situation. 

11. illicit affairs by taylor swift (modern or canon works) 

so this song is clearly and obviously about an affair. however, i have seen interpretations of the song where people view it as being in a relationship that is  so intense and well hidden that in a sense it is almost like an affair, like in the aftermath you’re not even sure if it was real or you deemed it because there isnt really a trace of this other person anymore, and that is the way i think jaskier would have written this song. 

And you wanna scream Don't call me kid Don't call me baby Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me You showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else

the dont call me kid, dont call me baby part would reference jaskiers humanity, he has a normal human lifespan at least in canon (very much unlike geralt) so geralt might brush him off as being young and stupid. jaskier would have made this album to show geralt that hes not being young and stupid, that this did screw him up, and hes suffering cause of it. kind of like a reality check or a slap in the face.

Don't call me kid Don't call me baby Look at this idiotic fool that you made me You taught me a secret language I can't speak with anyone else And you know damn well For you I would ruin myself A million little times

the secret language would of course refer to geralt himself. hes a hard man to understand (especially cause half his vocabulary is grunts) and hes also a witcher. so jasper had to learn to understand him and now he has no use for that anymore. and the ending line about ruining myself. that would be jaskiers admittance that he would do it again, he'd do it all again, which comes back up in later songs.

12. safe inside by james arthur (canon era interpretation)

this is one that jaskier would have written maybe a week or so after the incident. the song itself deals with distance and coping with not being in someones life anymore, and i think that that is something that jaskier would struggle to cope with because hes not sure he wants geralt to be alone. this song is more for jaskier than for geralt. 

Everyone has to find their own way And I'm sure things will work out okay I wish that was the truth All we know is the sun will rise Thank your lucky stars that you're alive It's a beautiful life

obviously geralt can take care of himself, but its kinda clear that he doesnt much like his life as a witcher (the part where he talks about them getting slow and killed). so this is kind of jaskiers way of almost reminding geralt that his life on the path is still beautiful and important now that he back by himself. 

Oh, will you call me to tell me you're alright? 'Cause I worry about you the whole night Don't repeat my mistakes, I won't sleep 'til you're safe inside If you're home I just hope that you're sober Is it time to let go now you're older? Don't leave me this way, I won't sleep 'til you're safe inside

this is more jaskier worrying about geralt being by himself. he hopes that hes okay in the aftermath of this this and that hes taking care of himself still. because of course jaskier would write a whole breakup album but still write one song about how he hopes the person is doing well.

13. quite miss home by james arthur (modern era interpretation)

this song. oh my god. its so amazing. if you dont listen to any of these, at least listen to this one (actually im pretty sure no ones read to this point so if you have thanks). this song is kind of more along the same vein as the previous one, how jaskier misses geralt but its more for him than geralt. he would have probably written it at like 3am in a fit of tears and weakness, and debated long and hard about whether or not to put it on the album, but done it anyway because what does he have to lose? theres a lot to unpack here tho so this is going to be a longer one. (sorry)

I'm in the kitchen while you smoke outside You're careful not to let the smoke inside I always tell you it's poison But I know it helps you take the edge off the day We get a drink before it's closing time The one on high street with the blinking sign All these memories feel poignant I won't be there to see the snow melt away

this is a very very clear picture of an event that seems to have happened a great many times, so much so that it seems like second nature. its like a little glimpse into what their life was before this incident. its intimate, but it still is melancholy.

Whoa I'm in another city I got nobody with me And it just really hit me

this is where jaskier is now, it provides some opposition. its like a culture shock almost, like hes so used to this intimate lifestyle with another person that its jarring to be by himself.

That I quite miss home And I miss you telling me To leave my shoes at the door 'Cause you just swept the floor And the dirt drives you crazy Yeah, I quite miss home 'Cause it feels like poetry When the rain falls down on the window While you're in my arms And we're watching the TV Yeah, I quite miss home

the key here is what jaskier is referring to as “home.” it's not the place, its geralt himself. all these memories center around him, not an establishment. (calling geralt “home” comes back in later songs.) again, this mosh of memories is like theres so many of them that its almost overwhelming but its stemming from jaskiers need to feel something other than lonely and hes craving this reality that hes lost.

14. my tears ricochet by taylor swift (modern or canon era works)

this is a song that really emphasizes jaskiers dramatic little shit tendencies. this is something that he wrote, trying to predict what geralts reaction would be if he found out that jaskier died. this is really just jaskier fantasizing that geralt didnt actually mean any of what he said and does still care about him. theres many lines in here that are jabs at geralt (if I'm dead to you why are you at the wake? and Even on my worst day Did I deserve, babe All the hell you gave me?), but i think this is the most important one:

And I can go anywhere I want Anywhere I want Just not home And you can aim for my heart, go for blood But you would still miss me in your bones And I still talk to you When I'm screaming at the sky And when you can't sleep at night You hear my stolen lullabies

this is again, jaskier referring to geralt as home. as seen in the last song, he clearly wants to go there, but he cant. this could also refer to where he grew up, which he cant go to either because his parents still view him as a disappointment (as seen in finally). jaskier saying he still talks to geralt is completely in character, he probably still curses him and the whole thing. but the part about geralt not being able to sleep at night and hearing his stolen lullabies is really hard hitting. jaskier likes to think that geralt wouldn't be able to sleep without his banter or his lute playing or something of that nature. over all its a very powerful song.

15. phoenix by james arthur (modern or canon works) 

this is a fictitious apology that jaskier wrote from geralts pov, kind of what he wished that geralt would say, but knows that he won't. 

Let me, let me begin Let me begin, with an I.O.U Who I owe everything to Lately, lately my friend Lately, you think I'm ignoring you But I've been trying to pull through All of the pain, I know you're looking down, down on me I could have been someone I hurt everyone Pushed away everyone who got near

in this “geralt” outlines what he did wrong, and that he didnt mea what he said at all. again, this is more for jaskiers benefit because he knows that even if geralt were to apologize to him, it wouldn't be to this extent.

16. this is me trying by taylor swift (modern or canon works)

this is jaskier trying to articulate the fact that hes trying to pick himself back up after everything, his way of showing his “healing process” and that he can do it, he doesnt need geralt (as the song shows, its not going very well)

And it's hard to be at a party When I feel like an open wound It's hard to be anywhere these days When all I want is you You're a flashback in a film reel On the one screen in my town And I just wanted you to know That this is me trying (maybe I don't quite know what to say) I just wanted you to know That this is me trying

its showing that jaskier is having trouble enjoying things that he once did (like parties) because hes still so distraught over what happened with geralt, but at the same time he also wants to show geralt that he doesnt need him. it has a very i dont care kind of attitude, but jaskier at the same time is having a hard time showing geralt that hes doing okay, hence the “maybe i dont quite know what to say” which is out of character for the very talkative bard

17. happiness by taylor swift (modern or canon works)

this is more him convincing himself that things will be okay. he's clearly trying at this point to move on, but its proving difficult because geralt was his happiness for so long:

There'll be happiness after you But there was happiness because of you Both of these things can be true There is happiness

he also repeats the line “havent me the new me yet” a few times, which i think is again him trying to convince himself that its going to get better and he will move on from it. but this line is the one that i think hurts the most:

No one teaches you what to do When a good man hurts you And you know you hurt him too

this implies that 1. he still thinks geralts a good man (not a monster) and 2. that he knows he hurt him to and doesn't know how to fix either of them. this is also kind of him giving up on how to fix it, but him recognizing they were both at fault is important for the arc of the story.

18. death by a thousand cuts by taylor swift (modern or canon works)

this is another song that is not off of folklore (its from lover), but i wanted to include it because it think it has a little bit of anger to it (especially in this live acoustic version that i linked) which i think that jaskier would feel a few weeks post incident in a fit of rage, like why am i still feeling this way? why did you think that this was okay?? and its right after happiness, which shows that his healing really isn't linear. there's many lines in this song that pertain to geralt and jaskier and i could talk about the whole thing but im not going to

But if the story's over, why am I still writing pages?

this i think is very jaskier. its so raw and like, i know this is over, why am i still writing about it? why am i making an album about this? why should this still matter to me? its very angry and again, like many of the songs, like a slap.

My heart, my hips, my body, my love Tryna find a part of me that you didn't touch Gave up on me like I was a bad drug Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club Our songs, our films, united, we stand Our country, guess it was a lawless land Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand Paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust Tryna find a part of me you didn't take up Gave you so much, but it wasn't enough But I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts

this part, especially if you listen to her sing it, (which i would HIGHLY RECOMMEND BTW) is very passive aggressive and the the last line is like quite sarcastic and downplays it, like, yes you put me through all of this, but i guess its *just* a thousand cuts. this really shows that in many ways geralt was a part of jaskiers life, and his sudden removal from it would have stung in many ways, and thats not something that you can get over quickly. 

19. empty space by james arthur (modern or canon era works)

this song starts the beginning of jaskier getting over geralt. these last 4 songs would have been written much after the incident, after hes had time to think, but there's still this nagging in the back of his head thats like, well what if im being stupid and he is the one and im supposed to go back?

I don't see you You're not in every window I look through And I don't miss you You're not in every single thing I do I don't think we're meant to be And you are not the missing piece I won't hear it Whenever anybody says your name And I won't feel it Even when I'm burstin' into flames I don't regret the day I left I don't believe that I was blessed I'm probably lyin' to myself again

this is more what jaskier wants to be, not what he actually is. he thinks that hes over geralt, but hes not (the chorus gets into it more but im not going to talk about it here, but it essentially says “only you can fill this empty space”) clearly jaskier is further along in his healing process, but hes still having second thoughts. he wants to be over him, but he knows hes lying to himself, very deep down. 

20. coney island by taylor swift (more modern era interpretation)

this is the true moving on song. it’s still laced with memories and speculation, but it puts clear distance between the two of them, much more so than empty space does because it lacks the longing. it just shows things for what they are. 

And I'm sitting on a bench in Coney Island Wondering where did my baby go? The fast times, the bright lights, the merry go Sorry for not making you my centerfold

its apologetic, but nothing more than that. it dwells more on what could have been rather than what he wants it to still be. 

The question pounds my head What's a lifetime of achievement If I pushed you to the edge? But you were too polite to leave me And do you miss the rogue Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there? Will you forgive my soul When you're too wise to trust me and too old to care?

this is interesting because it addresses their immortality and how they've been together for years and also the way in which they left things (paradise). but it also implies that things were on the downfall. and the last two lines about forgiveness is interesting because it then calls geralt “too wise to trust me and too old to care” meaning its more a wish of jaskiers rather than something he knows geralt will do.

Were you waiting at our old spot In the tree line By the gold clock Did I leave you hanging every single day? Were you standing in the hallway With a big cake, happy birthday Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest grey? A universe away And when I got into the accident The sight that flashed before me was your face But when I walked up to the podium, I think that I forgot to say your name

these are all very specific, very intimate moments that would clearly mean something to geralt. and it further implies that jaskier is uncertain if he actually made geralt feel appreciated when they were together. but again, its more what could have been rather than what jaskier wanted it to be, which is a nice segway into the last two songs. 

21. new years day by taylor swift (modern era interpretation)

this is another one not from folklore, this song is the closing track on reputation, but i like the nostalgia of it so i decided to include it (and it also has good parallels to the last song). initially jaskier intended for this to be the last song on the album, but decided to add another one last minute (and we will get into why). this song is more jaskiers muted longing to still be with geralt, albeit in the far future. 

There's glitter on the floor after the party Girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor You and me from the night before but Don't read the last page But I stay when you're lost and I'm scared and you're turning away I want your midnights But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day

this interpretation is very much like the actual songs interpretation: the desire to stay with someone through the unexciting parts of life, like cleaning up after a party on new years day. additionally, wanting to start something new with someone (being there with them past the midnight kiss and actually starting the first day of the year with them). additionally though, there is the line of “dont read the last page” which refers to the last song on the album, which we will get to. 

Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you And I will hold on to you Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere

this is more jaskiers reality. hes torn between holding onto these memories and hopes and actually facing reality. he wants to hold on to geralt, but he also kinda wants to move on. and the last line about the laugh, thats more jaskiers own hope, he hopes that he will come across geralt again and things will work themselves out.

22. the 1 by taylor swift (modern era interpretation)

the decision to make this song the last one on the album was a very last minute decision, and it was written significantly after the rest of the songs. the reason for this was without this last song, the album ends on a note of hope “Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere” but this last song is more of a reality check and acknowledgment that what's done is done and that it will never be again. 

I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit Been saying "Yes" instead of "No" I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though

this refers to the fact that its been some time since the whole thing and jaskiers kind of changed a little bit. he claims hes doing good, and maybe is going to try out a new career (since the first song references wanting to put music down for awhile). seeing geralt at the bus stop is a reference to cardigan where he says “chasing shadows in the grocery line” where hes not actively looking for geralt anymore and it doesnt upset him that he didnt see him.

I guess you never know, never know And if you wanted me, you really should've showed And if you never bleed, you're never gonna grow And it's alright now

this is jaskier saying that hes almost glad that it happened because it gave him a new perspective and it was a learning experience. he also says that its alright, which is the second time that hes said hes okay, which probably means he isnt completely, but hes much closer than he was on the rest of the album because hes not still looking for geralt at every turn

I have this dream you're doing cool shit Having adventures on your own You meet some woman on the Internet and take her home We never painted by the numbers, baby But we were making it count You know the greatest loves of all time are over now I guess you never know, never know And it's another day, waking up alone

this is jaskier acknowledging the fact that geralt has probably long since moved on with his life, either with other romantic people or with his life entirely (the first time he does this on the album). he says that while their love or friendship was unconventional it still was definitely something (implying that it may have been one of the greatest loves of his life). and the waking up alone part references quite miss home and being by himself, but it isnt sad, its just a fact at this point.

But we were something, don't you think so? Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool And if my wishes came true It would've been you In my defense, I have none For never leaving well enough alone But it would've been fun If you would've been the one

this is the part where we see that jaskier has grown. hes recognized that his wanting to be with geralt was never anything more than a fleeting wish or a moment that couldn't last. but he knows that it had potential and it could have worked but it didnt and thats okay. in the last chorus the pennies line is “rosé flowing with your chosen family” which implies that he and geralt were close enough to know each others family (chosen or real), meaning that it meant something. and he wouldn't have minded a long term relationship with geralt, but its not what happened.

in new years day jaskier says “dont read the last page” this song is that last page. part of him still doesnt want geralt to know that hes put aside the hope of it working because he wants to still keep himself open for geralt, but knows that  its not healthy and ultimately he needs to move on. hes essentially giving geralt the choice: remember jaskier as wanting to get back with him (since the last line of the album would have been “please dont ever become a stranger who's laugh i could recognize anywhere” or let him have the knowledge that jaskier is done with him (since the official last line of the album is “but it would have been fun if you would've been the one”)

anyway thats jaskiers breakup album. i put way too much effort into this. and if you actually read through the whole thing, thank you and please let me know what you think!! if you use this for fics or have your own interpretations please please tag me, id love to see!!

#the witcher #geralt of rivia #geralt #jaskier #julian alfred pankratz #geraskier #wow this took so long #literally so long #id recommend listening to the songs tho theyre all kinda vibey #there's like a million songs i could have used but i liked these ones cause i think they have a very nostalgic vibe #also dont get me wrong jaskier would also eventually release some sones like uhh #truth hurts by lizzo #like very fuck you breakup songs #but this is him being sad first #anyway im literally only posting this cause witcher anon said they wanted to read it #i hope you like it my dude

[bubonickitten]

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: tumblr // AO3

Chapter 10 full text & content warnings below the cut.

CWs for Chapter 10: brief panic attack; some vague JonMartin apocalypse angst. SPOILERS through S5.

Chapter 10: Pending Arrival

It’s okay, Jon tells himself, forcing himself to breathe the way Martin taught him: Four seconds in; hold seven seconds; eight seconds out.

Well… okay, it’s not okay. It’s very, very not okay.

…but – four – it – five – will – six – be – seven… okay, exhale.

Some time later – eight minutes, thirty-six-point-eight seconds, he Knows, though he didn’t ask – his breathing evens out and his thoughts clear with it.

That interaction with Martin wasn’t unexpected. There’s little reason to expect things to be different this time around, especially this soon after Jon woke up. He knows this.

There is a wall between him and Martin right now, constructed from a lifetime of rejection and loneliness that Jon himself contributed to for far too long. It’s been recently expanded by a mountain of grief, loss, and mourning – what should have been years’ worth condensed into the last six months – and it’s been further reinforced by Peter Lukas’ manipulations.

It will take some time to coax Martin away from the Lonely. Hopefully it won’t take as long as it did the last time, especially now that Jon knows that the hypothetical threat of the Extinction is not as imminent as Peter claims, but still: Martin needs time and space. Besides, Jon simply can’t force the Lonely out of him with a few words and a prayer. Martin has to choose to reject it of his own volition, or it will always cling to him.

And most importantly: Martin deserves to make his own choice. Jon has no right to take that from him, any more than he did when they passed through the Lonely’s domain.

It would have been nice to be able to physically see Martin, though. Or even just hear his voice outside of his own head. Memories can only provide so much reassurance, and for so long.

Jon had every intention of continuing yesterday’s strategy meeting this afternoon, but already his brief conversation with Georgie and painfully brief interaction with Martin have left him fatigued. The migraine he had expected yesterday failed to reach fruition, but the threat of it still lingers, accompanied by a painless but still unpleasant sensation of pressure in his head, making him feel off-kilter. As of right now, he can still pull on the Archive to speak. Sitting down and strategizing, though, is another matter entirely. Planning ahead has never been part of his skill set. Anxiety, sleep deprivation, and a supernaturally-imparted speech impediment aren’t doing him any favors.

“Let me guess: you’re out of commission.”

Basira looks him up and down, taking in his hunched gargoyle posture in his desk chair, his half-lidded eyes, his restless hands: one resting uneasily on top of his desk, fingers twitching and tapping with no discernible rhythm; the other wound up in the scarf Georgie gave him, still draped over his shoulders.

Jon can’t tell what characterizes her more in this moment: frustration with him, or simple exhaustion. Despite his own hypersensitivity to how others perceive him, he has a feeling that in this moment, it’s the latter.

“I think it can wait until tomorrow,” says Georgie, perched on the edge of Jon’s desk.

“Fine,” Basira concedes. “Tomorrow, then.” She knocks twice on the doorframe. When Jon looks up on reflex, she catches his eye. “Get some actual sleep tonight, Jon. It’s not just your personal mental health on the line here.”

“She is right about you needing to sleep,” Georgie says as Basira leaves. He avoids eye contact. “I’m serious. You look exhausted. I can get you a sleep aid –” Jon shakes his head slowly. “Why?”

With a sudden burst of energy, Jon stands, grabs her hand, and leads her to the entrance to the tunnels. He waits until they’ve both descended the ladder and the trapdoor is closed behind them before he turns to her and blurts out:

“…too afraid to go to sleep.”

“I can sit next to you while you fall asleep if you –”

“…would serve no purpose except to start me having the nightmares again,” he mumbles, sinking into the nearest chair.

“You’ve been having those for a long time now,” Georgie says, following his lead and sitting across from him. “And you’ve figured out how to cope with them. What’s actually scaring you?”

Jon bites his lower lip and bows his head.

“Then I would watch – once again –”

“– paralyzed with fear –”

“– tried to scream but I couldn’t find my breath, I couldn’t move –”

“– I couldn’t talk to anyone –”

“– unable to move its body, though – its eyes darting around wildly –”

“– unable to move – to cry for help –”

“– unable to look away –”

“– could only stare at him as he slowly, achingly crawled towards his doom –”

“– being unable to reach him –”

“– stare at it, knowing how your – friend suffers, knowing how powerless you are to help –”

“Slow down. You’re worried you’ll go back to how you were before?”

“…could only watch from the sidelines, getting a… a –”

He stops, leaning forward with his head in his hands.

“What is it, Jon?”

“And the worst part was that, somewhere in me, I – I liked it –”

“– it drew me in almost as much as it disgusted me –”

“– getting a… a sad vicarious thrill from –”

“– when people look at me… that fear“ – Jon’s breath hitches – “it feels amazing.”

He looks up at Georgie.

“Underneath all that awful fear, it felt like… home,” he whispers in a haunted tone. The shame crashes over him and he breaks eye contact, ducking his head again.

Georgie is quiet for a long moment. Then, she leans forward, reaches out, and takes his hand. He flinches and freezes.

“It sounds to me like you don’t want to like it,” she says. “People sometimes have feelings and urges that they aren’t proud of. Things that would hurt other people, if acted on.” She takes a breath. “But… I think it says more about a person’s character when they fight back against it.”

“…a presence within myself, inside my being –”

“– will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien and cold.”

“I know your circumstances are… different –”

“…it was the product of an otherworldly evil and called to me,” he says miserably.

“I know,” she says again. “There’s something in you, something that came from outside of yourself, and it’s trying to change you. Consume you.”

“…should have fought harder against the temptation –”

“But you’re fighting it now, aren’t you? You want things to be different.”

“I suppose I had to believe that the darkened natures of our terror could be kept in check – a rather feeble hope, for my own salvation –”

“– as if it might ward whatever awful thing waited inside that door.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s a feeble hope. This is the most sure I’ve ever seen you be about anything.” She jostles his hand until he looks up at her. “You’re not a bad person, Jon. You’re taking extreme steps to make sure you don’t hurt anyone. It might not change the things you’ve done in the past, but neither will beating yourself up over it.”

Jon laughs, wincing when it comes out sounding a bit tear-choked.

“I try to think that I’ve left my past behind, but that sort of denial doesn’t help me sleep.”

“Maybe not. But you don’t have to deny the past in order to move beyond it. You can remember your mistakes and learn from them without letting them define you. And I think… I think you’re going to have to do that, if you want to move forward.” After a moment, Jon nods. Apparently unconvinced, Georgie adds: “Also, I don’t know if you need to be told this, but getting better means actually taking care of yourself.”

Jon chuckles at that, some of his tension bleeding away. “Thank you for indulging me, you’ve been very patient.”

“Stop that. You’d do the same for me. You have done the same for me.” He opens his mouth to argue. “Yeah, you’re not great at comforting people, I know. But I’ve seen you try.”

He must still look dubious, because Georgie sighs heavily.

“Do you remember when I was going through that medication change in uni?”

Jon nods warily.

It had been before they started dating. Jon has never made friends easily, but somehow Georgie had managed to tolerate his company long enough for him to start letting his guard down. At that point in his life, she really was the only one who he could confidently call a friend.

So when the antidepressant she had been on for over a year lost effectiveness and she had to start the arduous process of finding a new one, Jon had a front row seat to a depressive episode – and he felt irretrievably lost. He had no script to follow; he worried incessantly that he was making things worse, that he wasn’t making himself useful enough, that he was intruding on her personal space and she just didn’t have the energy to tell him the truth. He would pace restlessly and trip over his words and lapse into uncomfortable silences, wringing his hands and brooding – being more of a nuisance than a help, he was certain.

“You didn’t know how to help,” Georgie says, as if reading his mind. “You couldn’t make me better. I could tell it was driving you mad, not having an answer, because there was no simple answer. It was just… something that had to be lived through, coped with – and you’ve never been able to tolerate that concept, I know. You’re not good at waiting.” Jon huffs – only because she’s right. “But,” Georgie says emphatically, “you spent time with me, even though I was no fun. Brought me takeaway, set alarms to remind yourself to ask me if I’d taken my meds, did all this – this reading and research on how to support a loved one in crisis, which was” – she chuckles – “very you.”

Jon focuses intently on the weave of his scarf, petting it absently with his free hand, tracing the knit with his fingertips.

“You stayed anyway, even though you were uncomfortable. You didn’t say as much, but you’re fairly obvious when you’re anxious. At one point I told you I didn’t want you to fix it, I just didn’t want to be alone, and… you respected that. Which surprised me, to be honest. I was certain you’d be stubborn about it, act like you knew better than me.” Jon smiles at that. It was a fair assumption for her to make, especially back then. “Probably never would’ve considered dating you if you hadn’t proven me wrong then.”

“Until he became me –“

“– moody, short-tempered, constantly on edge.”

He gives Georgie a wry look as he says it, though, and she laughs.

“You’ve always been moody and on edge, including then. That wasn’t a new development that grew up overnight. What I’m saying is you’ve never been just that – which is why I have expectations of you, because I know what you’re capable of.” She gives him a serious look. “Like I told you years ago, you need to stop seeing things in black-and-white – including when it’s about you. Not everything has a clear-cut answer. You’d be happier if you could make peace with that.”

“And he was aware of it always – could not disagree,” Jon says with an exaggerated eye roll.

“Of course I’m right,” she quips back. “But you’re trying, and that’s all I ask.”

The ensuing silence is a comfortable one. Jon uses the lapse as an opportunity to search for a way to ask after Melanie.

“Statement of Georgina Barker regarding –”

Jon pauses. There’s really no way of saying the next part without accidentally drawing on more than one statement, but… Georgie is safe, and the phrase only appears a couple of times in the Archive, so it shouldn’t be too powerful.

“Statement of Melanie King.”

There is a reverb to the words, but the lightheadedness that comes with it is mild and passes quickly. Georgie appears to notice the odd tenor of his voice, tilting her head slightly to track the sound, but she doesn’t pursue it.

“You’re asking how Melanie is?”

“I wanted to check in with them, find out what happened.”

“She’s… having a rough day. I don’t think it’s my place to say more than that.”

Jon nods again: I understand. Then, he repeats again: “Statement of Georgina Barker.”

Georgie leans forward, elbow on knee, chin propped up by her fist. Her other hand continues to hold Jon’s, but she loosens her grip somewhat. The crease between her eyebrows is familiar to him – Georgie is taking her time to inventory her thoughts before speaking. He waits.

“I’m… hm. It’s been a lot to process,” she says carefully. “I think I’m doing okay for the moment? I’m mostly worried about Melanie. I’ve been worried about Melanie, but… after what you said about quitting – it’s complicated things a bit. It’s – it’s something we needed to know,” she adds, seeing Jon’s guilty expression. “I’m glad you were honest with us. Actually, I think Melanie was surprised that you told us about the, ah, second way to quit. It… hmm. It doesn't fit with the image she has of you.” Jon snorts at the delicate phrasing, and Georgie gives him a sheepish smile. “Sorry, but she still thinks you’re a self-serving prick.”

Jon shrugs, unperturbed. He already knew that, and it’s not like he’s done much to dissuade Melanie of that assessment. Not yet, anyway.

“Oh, but she told me to reassure you that she isn’t going to kill you in your sleep, so that’s something? I told her that’s not why you pulled an all-nighter, but she said to let you know anyway.”

Jon laughs, and Georgie’s eyes crinkle when she returns a smile. After a moment, though, it fades.

“I did want to ask, though… did Melanie find out how to quit in your future as well?” Jon nods. “In that case – I’m not sure if you were planning on it, but in case you were… don’t tell me just yet what her decision was where you came from. I’ve been tempted to ask, but I haven’t talked it over with Melanie yet, and I think that’s her call to make. Okay?” Jon nods again. “And… she’s still angry with you – with a lot of things, really, but especially this place, and she sees you as inseparable from it.”

“They’re not entirely wrong,” Jon accedes.

“I did talk to her about it. She asked me to let you know that she does want to talk to you – I know she has some questions to ask – but that she doesn’t want you near her right now. She’s trying to sort through her feelings towards you – figure out how much of it is a you problem versus a her problem versus a both-of-you problem. She needs some space to do that. And it’s not the only thing she’s working through right now.”

Jon can appreciate that. Honestly, it’s better than he could have hoped for. Last time around, Melanie had eventually softened on him, had even tentatively called him a friend – but at that point, everything in his life felt like too little too late, and she deserved better than to have him poison her life again. He really had only been looking for someone to help him parse Martin’s intentions – Jon has always struggled with anything less than direct, explicit communication – but Georgie was right to be angry with him. Regardless of his intentions, he was inseparable from the Institute; there was no way for him to ask for advice that didn’t involve dragging Melanie back into exactly the kind of toxicity she was trying to escape.

When he left that day, it was with the intention of staying out of both of their lives from then on. They both set a firm boundary, and they deserved to have it respected. But he had plenty of time to brood during the apocalypse, and there were so many things left unsaid between him and Melanie and Georgie. Even if the world hadn’t ended, he probably wouldn’t have approached them again – they seemed happy, and showing up on their doorstep to talk, even if it was just to apologize, would have only been for his own benefit. It wouldn’t have felt right to intrude on them again and open up old wounds just for the sake of securing closure for himself.

Now, though? Truth be told, he could use some space, himself. He’s rehearsed it many times before – all the things he might say to the people in his life, both living and dead, if he had a chance to see them again – but now that he actually has that chance, everything he’s drafted in his head feels inadequate. It may take some time to get his thoughts in order before sitting down and openly discussing his and Melanie’s fraught relationship.

“So… Martin?” Georgie says, snapping Jon out of his thoughts. “Have you seen him yet?”

Jon makes an uncertain tilting motion with his hand, finding no succinct way to explain that yes, he did have a brief encounter with Martin, but it was a one-sided conversation, and Jon expected as much, but it still hurt; and moreover, Martin was invisible when he visited, no doubt intending to just see for himself that Jon was awake, check in on how he was doing without being noticed; and Jon wishes he had been able to do the same, to have some irrefutable physical reassurance that Martin is alive and real and here and now, because it’s been so long, and…

“…he seemed determined to avoid – me,” Jon settles on instead.

“You care about him a lot, don’t you?”

“I need him to be okay –”

“– the easy, charming man I’d fall in love with.”

“Oh,” Georgie says, sounding stunned. Jon meets her eyes and gives her a quizzical look. “I just – knowing you, I figured you’d still be in denial about how infatuated you are? Or, at best, you’d grudgingly admit you maybe, possibly had a little crush? I was not expecting a declaration of love.”

“Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me, it only came as a surprise to realize that we hadn’t said it already –”

“– and together it seemed like we would get past our pain.”

“Holy shit,” Georgie murmurs. “You’re absolutely besotted. I mean, I knew you were, you talked about him all the time and you’re not as subtle as you think you are – but actually acknowledging it?”

“…honestly it’s one of the few decisions I’ve ever made that I completely understand,” Jon replies, not bothering to hide his small smile.

“Wow. You’ve… changed more than I thought.” Georgie mirrors his expression, but then she falters, chewing the inside of her cheek for a moment. “Can I ask how it – if it…” Jon’s smile fades too, but he makes a beckoning gesture: It’s okay; go on. “Regardless of whether things worked out between you, I… well, I have a hard time thinking you’d come back to this time if it meant leaving him behind in your future?”

Jon looks down at their linked hands, expressionless as he begins to construct a response.

“I’ll skip over the bit where –”

“– taking me in his arms and giving me the last and longest hug I would ever get from him –”

“– he was gone. Just gone. And I was alone again. There was no one I could talk to about it –”

“– I had plenty of time to mourn him –”

“– it took all my self-control to keep a grip on that anchor, as I slowly dragged myself away from the edge of my lonely grave.”

Georgie gives his hand a reassuring squeeze, which he returns gratefully.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “For what it’s worth, I… I’m glad you have this second chance. You… are going to tell him how you feel this time as well, right?”

Obviously, he wants to say, but it’s not as simple as he wishes it was. He frowns thoughtfully as he searches for a way to explain the situation.

“…he’s been so lonely –”

“– embraced the loneliness like an old friend –”

“– for a creature of the Lonely, the urge is to isolate, never to communicate or connect –”

“– I wanted to say something reassuring, to reach out and let him know I was still there –”

“But it was like this last time you woke up, too.” She waits for his affirmative before continuing: “So you can do it again.”

“…I managed it eventually, but my inability to speak –”

“– I found him difficult to talk to at length.”

“But,” she persists, “you aren’t going to give up, right?”

“…I knew he would return eventually,” Jon says.

“Good,” Georgie says with a relieved, somewhat exasperated sigh. “I swear to god, if you’d gotten fatalistic right there, I’d have had some words for you.” Jon chuckles. “Seriously, though – you’ll figure this out. You’ve always been stubborn. Every now and then, it’s even an asset.”

“I’m grateful to her, of course.”

“Again, don’t mention it. As long as you keep trying, I’ll support you. I might set limits on how much I’m willing to get involved with the actual supernatural bits – I haven’t decided just yet – but when I need to step back, I’ll tell you. I’m not going to ghost you just because you don’t grovel.”

Jon groans at the pun, which gets a self-satisfied grin out of Georgie.

“Oh, shut up. It was a good one.”

Right, I forgot: comatose people don’t need pens, Jon thinks irritably to himself the next day, turning his office upside down looking for a writing utensil.

He’s so thoroughly preoccupied with rummaging through his desk that he doesn’t notice Basira standing in the doorway until she clears her throat, startling him so badly that he jumps and slams one of his fingers in the drawer. He yelps in pain and pulls his hand back, shaking it out to distract from the throbbing. A moment later, the realization crosses his mind that it’s the same finger he’d tried to cut off the last time he was here.

It’s a coincidence, he tells himself before his mind can wander too far down the rabbit hole. He has enough to worry about without getting caught up in the hypotheticals of time travel and sci-fi tropes about the changeability of the past. Besides, the Coffin hasn't even arrived yet; there are still a few weeks before the original date of his failed self-amputation attempts.

“Sorry,” Basira says, eyebrows raised. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Honestly, I figured you’d just know I was here.” Jon has nothing to say to that. Trying to explain the fine details of Knowing has never been a pleasant experience, and he couldn’t tackle that subject now even if he’d wanted to. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“…think of me as an idiot who turned up to give a statement without a pen,” Jon says distractedly, opening another drawer and sifting through it. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Pens?” Jon nods without looking up. “Yeah, I threw them all out – don’t give me that look, Jon. Half of them didn’t even work, and the others looked like a puppy’s chew toy. Anyway, most of what I threw out in here got touched by the Flesh. You didn’t want any of it back, trust me.” Jon grimaces. “Yeah. Anyway, there are boxes in the supply closet – but I think I can do you one better.”

She tosses something at him. He notices the movement belatedly and just barely manages to catch the thing, nearly dropping it.

“Guess knowing things also doesn’t extend to being able to catch without fumbling,” Basira deadpans.

Jon looks down at the phone in his hands, then back up at Basira.

“Got the Institute to cover it as a work expense. I have no idea where the one you had before the Unknowing ended up; I’m assuming it blew up along with everything else.” Basira leans back against the doorframe. “I’m sure texting will go about as well for you as typing has, but Georgie downloaded a few AAC apps for you to try.”

He gives Basira a tentative smile.

“You’re welcome,” she says with a curt nod. The look she gives him then is curious – almost like she’s still trying to get a read on him, debating how much closeness she can risk. Then her guard goes back up and her tone turns authoritative again. “You can practice with them later. Meeting’s in a half-hour.”

Before Jon can respond, Basira turns and leaves.

It’s uncertain how the Archive will take to this newest workaround, but there’s only one way to find out.

“Here, let me take –”

Jon unceremoniously drops the box of statements down through the trapdoor, where it hits the ground below with a dull thud and a puff of dust.

“…or not,” Georgie finishes.

“Was that really necessary?” Basira calls from the bottom of the ladder.

Completely pointless, Jon thinks to himself a bit giddily, ignoring the stabbing pain in his temples with relish. The Beholding can complain all it wants about him mishandling statements; right now, he’s too tired and too delirious to care.

He’d had plenty of time during the apocalypse to develop methods of coping with the Eye’s intrusiveness. The most emotionally satisfying one he’d happened upon basically amounted to random acts of spite. It had no material effect on anything – aside from triggering varying degrees of headaches, but he already got those anyway. It was no different than a petulant child slamming a bedroom door, but it gave him that fleeting feeling of being in control of something, and it felt good.

“Let me go first,” Georgie says. He gives her a questioning look. “You’re using a cane, Jon. There’s a fifty percent chance you’re going to fall on your ass going down that ladder, and I’d rather keep you out of the hospital for the rest of the year.” Jon averts his eyes and frowns. She must interpret it as reluctance, because she clarifies: “You need a spotter.”

Jon signals agreement and she starts down the ladder ahead of him.

The thing is, he wasn’t trying to contradict her. It’s just… well, he’s still getting used to the idea of being cared for again, especially when it comes to insignificant things. Yes, his leg is acting up today, but it’s not that bad – the cane is just to keep it from getting any worse. And if he did fall, it’s not like it would kill him. It would be inconvenient, unpleasant, and probably embarrassing, but too temporary to really register on his distress scale.

Anyway, he’s grown desensitized to physical pain. Or… no, that’s not quite right. What he’s desensitized to isn’t the pain itself, but the experience of being harmed. He’s come to expect it, and these days only the only permanent injuries he receives are those inflicted by one of the Powers. Everything else heals too quickly and completely to feel consequential. Most things don’t even scar anymore, and those that do – well, what’s one more scar?

He knows it’s not a healthy mindset. Even before the world ended, he’d come to regard his body with a sense of detachment. In retrospect, he should’ve known that his rib wouldn’t work as an anchor. Most days, his body didn’t even feel like it belonged to him. Then, as if to confirm that inkling, Jonah possessed him; the Watcher’s eyes started manifesting on and around him; his presence became synonymous with the Eye to anyone who beheld him. He confirmed on several occasions that he wasn’t able to die. Even the Hunt couldn’t kill him. Jon would end one day, like everything else, but a mundane physical death was beyond him.

He doesn’t Know if that’s still the case now, and he’s too afraid to ask.

So, yes: he’s developed a cavalier attitude towards personal safety. Avoiding minor injuries feels almost on the same level as what temperature the water is before he steps into the shower: relevant in terms of his own comfort, but otherwise unimportant. He’s always spared little thought as to his own comfort, and it’s only gotten worse since becoming the Archivist. And the apocalypse didn’t exactly have much to offer in the way of comfort anyway, especially after…

Jon cringes as he stops to reflect on that train of thought. It took him fewer than thirty seconds to rationalize… well, Martin would have called it self-harm. Or self-sabotage, at the least. Georgie probably would, too, if she could see inside his mind right now. His judgment of what counts as worthy of concern is decidedly skewed, especially to an outside observer. It was easy to justify it to himself when it was just him alone at the end of the world, but employing a mindset forged in hopelessness and tailored to a doomed future is only going to be maladaptive here and now.

He should probably take some time later to unpack all of that. It would be easier if he could write it all out; it’s always difficult to keep track of his own thoughts without a visual aid, but –

“Jon?” Georgie calls up to him. “You can come down now.”

Deal with it later, he tells himself, tossing his cane down for Georgie to catch. As he makes his way down the ladder, his leg does twinge a bit, but it holds his weight well enough, and he reaches the bottom without incident.

“Where’s Melanie?” Basira asks.

“Resting,” Georgie says, handing Jon his cane. “She had a bad morning. I’ll fill her in on everything later.”

“Fine.” Basira nudges the box with her foot. “What’s this then?”

“Statements,” Georgie says. She’d watched Jon throw them haphazardly into the box before coming down here. “Not sure why, though.”

Jon moves the box to one of the chairs that they left in the tunnel last night. It isn’t too heavy – just some pertinent statements and tapes that he thought might make this discussion flow more smoothly. Taking a seat in the next chair over, he removes the lid from the box and begins rummaging.

“Statement of Joshua Gillespie, regarding his time in possession of an apparently empty wooden casket,” Jon says after a moment, holding up a folder labeled CASE #9982211 and containing the respective written statement. One page sticks out crookedly, and Jon’s heart skips a beat when he recognizes Tim’s handwriting. This had been one of his cases to follow up on.

He shakes his head and sets the folder aside, reaching into the box for the corresponding tape. Instead, his fingertips brush against a different loose cassette, and his breath catches in his throat.

“Statement of Detective Alice ‘Daisy’ Tonner,” he says quietly, removing the cassette. “Traffic stop of a delivery van.”

“This is the statement Daisy gave you?” Basira says. “She said you compelled her.”

“I didn’t realize that was what had happened until afterwards,” Jon says softly. He pulls a tape recorder from his pocket and gives Basira a questioning look.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Jon inserts the cassette and fast-forwards, stopping when he Knows he’s reached the right timestamp. His own recorded voice begins to play.

“If you don’t mind me asking, h-h-how long have you been sectioned now –”

“I do mind,” comes Daisy’s clipped voice. Then, immediately: “Fourteen years.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to make a statement?”

“About what?”

“Whatever you like. Fourteen years – you must have seen a number of paranormal things.”

“And you want me to tell you about them.”

“Uh – I-I-I-I-I –”

“Okay,” says Daisy.

“What?”

“Okay. I’ll give you a statement about – how I got my first Section 31.” A beat. “You look surprised.”

“I mean, I was largely asking as a formality. Basira didn’t give me the impression you were the sharing sort.”

“Maybe you caught me in a good mood.”

“Right, well… good. Do you need me to go over our non-disclosure policy –”

“Not as long as you understand my policy: if it gets out, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

“There are worse things that could happen to them,” the Jon on the tape mutters.

Jon hits stop and looks up at Basira. There’s a sheen to her eyes; he does her the courtesy of looking away and not drawing attention to it. After a long few seconds, she clears her throat. When she speaks, her voice is even and impassive.

“So you really didn’t know you were compelling people back then.”

“…he had no idea what was about to happen to him.”

He probably should have noticed sooner, but he was always so fixated on listening to the answer to a question that he paid comparatively little attention to the asking of it. Insensitive of him, really – far too like the detached fascination of the Ceaseless Watcher, in retrospect. The reality that he had the power to compel others didn’t really sink in until after his conversation with Jude.

Jon notices belatedly that the other two are watching him expectantly. He hadn’t planned on playing Daisy’s tape first, but since he already has it prepared to go, he fast-forwards to the beginning of her statement and lets it play through to the end. No one makes any comment in the few seconds it takes for him to swap the cassette out for Joshua Gillespie’s statement.

“So the Coffin makes people want to enter it,” Basira says as the second statement ends. “Is that why you went in, the first time? You were compelled?”

Jon shakes his head no. Daisy had asked him the same question last time. It’s true that the Coffin called to him, but its compulsion never got beneath his skin – not like that of the Beholding or the Web. In the end, going into the Buried was his decision.

“Why, then?”

“…survivor’s guilt,” Jon says. “I should be dead, really – it’s hard to reconcile yourself with avoiding a death that you feel should have been yours.”

There was more to it, though. He takes a minute to rifle through statements, to piece together his state of mind the first time he entered the Buried.

“I felt a great deal of guilt over my involvement with –”

“– the path of the Eye –”

“– when they looked at me, their eyes were full of – anger – blame –”

“– looked at me with a mixture of hate and helpless terror, as though I could do something to fix it –”

“– cut off effectively all human contact –”

“– I decided I had to do something – anything to get out of the fog –”

“– to lose myself in something that is not the absence of humanity –”

“– desperate to remind myself that I could still feel something –”

“– desperate for any human connection.”

He pauses for a breath. Looking back, if Jon hadn’t been so thoroughly claimed by the Beholding already, he may have been a candidate for the Lonely himself back then. Peter Lukas didn’t have to lift a finger.

“I was starting to fear that if I didn’t manage to do something –”

“– I would lose myself – forever –”

“– I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try –”

“– it was – the most human part of it remaining –”

“– to act, to help, to do something –”

“– I need to not lose any more bits of me –”

“– and worst comes to worst –”

“– at least I felt useful.”

Georgie’s eyes are on him now, reading between the lines.

“Did you even have a plan? Or did you just… rush in by yourself, not even tell anyone?” He nods. “Which?” He gives Georgie a pointed look, nodding a second time. “Both? Figures. Don’t know why I bothered asking, really.”

“…but this time was different,” he assures her.

“How did you get out?” Basira asks.

“It took all my self-control to keep a grip on that anchor.”

“Meaning?”

“…her anchor. The thing weighing her down, tying her to this world,” he tries again.

“Something to ground you,” Georgie says questioningly.

“…to make finding my way back – that much easier.”

“And you can do the same thing this time?” Basira waits for his confirmation before moving on. “What about the delivery itself?”

Jon pulls out another folder and cassette, both labeled CASE #9961505.

“Statement of Alfred Breekon, regarding a new pair of workers at his delivery company.”

“Breekon and Hope?” Basira asks.

Jon nods, inserts the tape, and depresses the play button.

“They’ve been in a few statements, haven’t they?” Basira says afterwards, forehead creased in thought.

As an answer, Jon removes one last cassette from the box before tilting it forward to reveal a handful of case files sliding around at the bottom. All of them contain minor references either to Breekon and Hope or the Coffin, but none of them struck him as significant enough to bother bringing the accompanying tapes.

The remaining cassette in his hand, label reading CASE #0020406, is only relevant for the last minute or so of the recording: Martin’s encounter with Breekon and Hope on the day they delivered the NotThem’s table and the Web’s lighter. Jon pops it into the recorder, fast-forwards to the relevant timestamp, and hits play. Breekon and Hope’s voices echo in the tunnel, finishing each other’s sentences in an uncanny back-and-forth volley.

“Hm.” Basira frowns. “And they just… got into the Archives without anyone seeing them?” Jon nods. “I’m assuming we can expect the same this time?" Another nod, but Jon holds up two fingers, gives Basira a meaningful look, and then puts one down. “Only one of them.”

“Statement of the surviving half of the being calling itself ‘Breekon and Hope,’” Jon says. Then: “When that Hunter killed him – took him from me, made us a me – the casket – was waiting – I fed her to it.”

“Do we have to worry about a fight?”

Jon shakes his head no. “We did not kill them, did not lift a finger. We were bringers of their awful fate, not its executors – and we both tasted it together.” He fast-forwards the statement in his head. “I am without him now – can feel myself fading, weak, no reason to move, nothing to deliver. But I am no longer tied to the casket, so you can have it – climb in, and join her.”

“So we just, what, let it deliver the thing and leave?”

“I told her that any real danger had passed –”

“– fading, weak, no reason to move, nothing to deliver.”

“And then you go in.”

Jon nods. There are more details, of course, but the basics of his plan are the same as they were last time: equip himself with Daisy’s tape, follow the pull of her voice, rely on his anchor to find the way back – albeit hopefully with fewer hiccups this time.

Or fewer lost ribs, at least, now that he has a better grasp on anchors.

Several days later, a visitor arrives in the Archives, albeit not the one they’ve been expecting.

Head pillowed in his arms on his desk, dozing and half-conscious, Jon is roused from a shallow sleep by voices in the hallway, filtering through the open crack in the door.

“This area is off-limits,” Basira is saying.

“I’m just looking for the Head Archivist. Jonathan Sims? He still works here, doesn’t he?”

Is that…

“What do you want with Jon?” Georgie’s voice, sounding genuinely curious, but anyone familiar with her would recognize the protective edge to it.

“Look, is he here or isn’t he?”

It is.

Rubbing bleary eyes and shaking off the remaining wisps of brain fog, Jon stands, his joints cracking in protest. He grabs his cane, heads for the door, and peeks out into the hallway.

Naomi Herne is here, standing in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs between the Archives and the rest of the Institute. She looked his way when she heard the creak of the door opening, and their eyes meet for a brief moment before he reflexively averts his gaze.

“Jon?” She sidesteps Basira and Georgie and starts walking towards him.

He digs in his pockets and brings out his phone. So far, the AAC app has turned out to be a decent workaround. Prolonged use will still give him a headache in much the same way that communicating through illustration does, but it’s helpful for making specific requests, asking direct questions, and conveying simple or general concepts. He’ll accept a headache if it means not being forced to use some convoluted metaphor just to say I don’t know or I’m short-circuiting, please give me some space or I’m going to make tea; would you like some?

“YOU ARE – HERE,” comes the computerized voice as he prods at the screen. “WHY.”

For a long moment, Naomi says nothing, staring at the phone in his hand.

“It’s been over a week since I last saw you,” she says slowly. “At first I thought it must be because you woke up – which was a good guess, it seems – but then days went by and no dreams, and… I was worried.” Jon tilts his head, confused. “What’s with that look?”

Jon opens and closes his mouth a few times, debating on whether to reach for a statement. It feels wrong to be dishonest with her, and a hopeful part of him suggests that Naomi wouldn’t react too badly. She’s seen worse from him, and none of that seems to have scared her away, so…

“…I wasn’t worth worrying about.”

Naomi rolls her eyes. “Why are you so stubborn?”

Georgie laughs at that. When Naomi glances in her direction, she starts approaching the two of them, apparently satisfied that Naomi isn’t a threat. Likewise, Basira drifts off down the hall and into the break room. She leaves the door open, though – Jon Knows she still wants to listen in, just in case.

“He’s always been like this,” Georgie says.

“Figures,” Naomi says, then looks back at Jon. “So, why haven’t you been around? Did you find a way to sever the dreams, or…?” Jon shakes his head no. “Then what?”

“It’s not like I sleep enough to worry about dreams,” he says evasively.

Naomi opens her mouth to reply and at that moment Jon’s phone goes off. He nearly drops the thing as he fumbles to dismiss the alarm. Once the noise is silenced, Jon sighs and looks at Georgie.

“You want me to…?” Jon nods, giving her permission to speak on his behalf. “Okay then.”

Georgie looks at Naomi.

“Jonathan” – Jon huffs at the use of his full name – “has been depriving himself of sleep. But no matter how stubborn he is, he’s still human.” Georgie gives him a stern look, daring him to contradict her. He doesn’t; it isn’t worth getting into this discussion, especially in front of Naomi. “Now he’s started nodding off in spite of himself, he’s been forced to admit that he can’t go without sleep forever – but instead of actually sleeping, he’s decided that the best course of action is to just set alarms at forty-five minute intervals, to wake him up before he enters REM sleep. Which means he’s not getting any restful sleep.” She looks at Jon and smiles disarmingly. “Does that about cover it?”

Jon rolls his eyes – she really didn’t need to offer the detail about his new alarm routine – but he nods all the same.

“And why don’t you want to sleep?” Naomi asks.

“The only thing that worried me was sleeping. I think it gave me bad dreams,” he says.

“Not to be rude, but…” Naomi hesitates before blurting out: “Why are you talking like that?”

“He’s been having… some speech difficulties,” Georgie says, glancing at Jon. He makes a circular motion with one hand: It’s fine; go ahead. “Ever since he woke up, he’s only able to speak in quotes from the statements? It’s… challenging, to say the least.”

“Ah,” Naomi says, chipper, “just some new spooky developments, then.”

Out of habit, Jon glares at her for her word choice, but there’s no real ire in it. If anything, it’s a relief to find that Naomi’s attitude toward him seems unchanged despite said new spooky developments.

“But…” Naomi frowns. “You’ve been having these dreams for two years now, and you said you’ve mostly gotten them sorted. So how is sleeping now any different from the last few months?”

“He’s afraid that things will go back to the way they were before.”

“O…kay,” Naomi says slowly, “but you told me that most of the others have already learned to stop the nightmare sequence without you. And everyone knows now that you aren’t as scary as you look – which, by the way, is it weird that by now it's almost more unsettling to see you with only two eyes? Sorry, not the point. The point is, it won’t be the same as it was before.”

Jon stares fixedly at a scratch on the floor. Left over from the Flesh attack, maybe? He could Know, but –

Focus, he tells himself before his thoughts can wander too far afield.

He isn’t sure how to explain that the other dreamers may not be as forgiving or fearless as Naomi is. Even if they were to find it in themselves to overlook a relapse, even if they don’t start viewing him the way they did before… the prospect of having his bodily autonomy stripped from him again is more than enough to fill him with dread.

It feels too much like the way the hunger pulls him inexorably toward a victim. It will probably feel like how it does when the Archive takes control. And it will definitely feel like it did when he was made a conduit for the Watcher’s Crown. Jonah wearing him like a glove. Locking him in place, forcing his eyes open, hijacking his voice. Making him into a possession, only to cast him aside like a broken toy once he had served his purpose.

“– Jon?”

With some effort, he drags himself back to the present.

“Something not moving but that wants to move. Wants to be free –”

“– stopped being able to move under his own power – walk him like a puppet – directed and controlled –”

“– unable to move – to cry for help.”

Hands shaking, he inputs a response on his phone.

“I AM – SCARED.”

“That’s… okay, that sounds properly horrifying,” Naomi admits. “But you don’t know for sure that’s what’ll happen, right?” Grudgingly, Jon shakes his head no. “So you could be fretting over nothing.”

“So far, so normal, right?”

“Smartass,” Naomi says, but with good humor. “Still, you can’t go without sleep forever – you’re going to have to face it eventually. You may as well get it over with sooner rather than later, and then you’ll know for sure. If nothing else, you’ll get some sleep out of it. But,” she says with a longsuffering sigh, “I have a feeling you’re going to keep pushing it, so…” She holds out her hand and crooks her fingers. “Phone. I’m adding my number to your contacts.”

It isn’t until Jon hands it over that he even consciously processes her words.

“Just so you know,” Georgie says, “he can’t really text, either. Unless it’s in statements.”

“That’s fine,” Naomi says, typing rapidly with her thumbs. “You can just reply with emojis or whatever, Jon. Just something to let me know you’re still alive.” She hands the phone back to him. “And this way I can send you pictures of the Duchess.”

Jon perks up at that.

“The Duchess?” Georgie asks.

“Yep. Adopted a cat last week.” Naomi’s smile is wider than Jon has ever seen it. “She’s settling in nicely,” she says to him before looking back to Georgie. “I almost changed her name, but Jon insisted I leave it as is. Said I shouldn’t deprive her of a title she’d rightfully earned.”

Georgie snorts. “He said the same about the Admiral.”

“Oh, you must be Georgie, then? I’ve heard a lot about… uh –”

“Don’t worry; I’m well aware you’ve heard more about the Admiral than me. Pretty sure Jon prefers his company to mine half the time.” She ignores the indignant look Jon shoots her and holds out her phone to Naomi. “Jon was notoriously terrible at answering texts even before all of… this. Feel free to direct any, ‘Is Jonathan Sims still alive?’ queries to me.”

Jon watches in bewilderment as the two of them exchange numbers. Not for the first time, he wonders how this kind of socializing seems to come so naturally to other people.

“I also wouldn’t mind seeing a photo of the Duchess.”

“What about a group text?” Naomi says. “Spooky-free zone, cat-related updates only. Everyone gets their daily dose of cat antics, I get to honestly tell my therapist that I’m not self-isolating, and Jon can just like things to let me know he’s still breathing. Three birds, one stone.”

“Good idea.” Georgie gives Jon an exacting look. “It’ll give you something nice to obsess over. I’ll have to ask Melanie if she wants to be added, too. She could use the distraction.”

Jon can feel a smile tug at his lips as he hurriedly taps out a response.

“YES – PLEASE – THANK YOU.”

Jon and the others try to retreat to the tunnels as often as possible – every other day, if they can manage it – even if there isn’t a pressing matter to discuss. More than anything, it’s a ploy to throw off Jonah. There’s every possibility that he would grow suspicious if the group only held their secretive meetings just prior to major events. Meeting frequently likely won’t alarm him too much, though. Jonah is likely to write off Jon’s furtiveness as paranoia, or simply his near-compulsive tendency to retread the same ground in aimless circles, obsessing over a single question ad infinitum.

Jon isn’t sure whether he Knows this, or if he’s just become uncomfortably familiar with Jonah’s thought processes. Either way, Jon is well aware of what Jonah thinks of him, of how the man can effortlessly dissect and predict Jon’s every outward action and inner experience. If he's honest with himself, Jonah’s scrutiny may terrify him even more than the Ceaseless Watcher’s.

At least the Eye is alien, operating entirely outside the bounds of human morality and emotion. It and all of the other Fears just… are what they are. Predictable, instinctual, amoral – or operating on a sort of blue and orange morality, at least. It brings to mind something Michael said to him, all those years ago: “Am I evil, Archivist? Is a thing evil when it simply obeys its own nature? When it embodies its nature? When that nature is created by those which revile it?”

Someone like Jonah Magnus, though – born human, raised human, spending several lifetimes embedded in human society – can understand his fellow humans much more intimately than any nonhuman Entity ever could, and he uses that understanding to torture his victims, knowing full well how it feels. On the one hand, Jon and all his other pawns throughout the centuries are nothing but means to an end; he cares little for them outside of their usefulness to him. On the other hand, he isn’t fully detached: there’s no denying the sadistic glee he took in gloating as he forced Jon to open the door.

Even in a world devoid of the Dread Powers, monsters would still exist, and a mundane human monstrosity is almost as dreadful as a supernatural one. Daisy derived joy from the Hunt with more complexity than a wolf would. Jon’s own hunts may have felt instinctual, but they also felt morally wrong in a way that tearing the legs off a spider would never feel to a cat – and he did it anyway. Even Gertrude embodied a certain flavor of monstrosity, despite never fully giving in to the temptation of the Beholding. She did not need to embrace any supernatural power; her ruthlessness damned innocent people all the same, as thoroughly as the Desolation and with as much precision as the Web.

Georgie and Martin – and Helen, even – may have a point about humanity and monstrosity not following a strict either/or dichotomy. Whether the Fears were birthed by humanity or preceded it, in the world as-is they would be toothless without human imagination to fuel and interpret and inspire them. The apocalypse demonstrated that fact rather starkly the more and more the human population dwindled.

Jon shakes his head, interrupting that line of thought. There are more important things to worry about right now. Namely: it’s the third of March, and the Institute is expecting a visitor.

Basira is with him in his office; Georgie is off keeping Melanie company, away from Breekon and any possibility of a confrontation. They’d all agreed to this arrangement last night in the tunnels, and since they’ve been having those clandestine meetings so regularly, it should look like a coincidence to Jonah, rather than a prearranged setup.

And Breekon arrives right on schedule, though this time he cannot catch Basira alone. He comes directly to Jon’s office, dragging the Coffin behind him.

“Jon,” Basira says urgently, not taking her eyes off the hulking figure darkening the doorway.

They must tread carefully – not seeming so unconcerned as to let on that they were expecting the delivery, but not overselling the act so much that Jonah would sense something was amiss.

“I wish I could say that was the last I saw of them – but they did return – started to make deliveries – Breekon and Hope.”

“Where’s the other one?” Basira asks.

“That copper took him from me,” Breekon says balefully. He drags the Coffin over the threshold, lets it fall to the ground with a thump, and jerks his head at it. “So I fed her to the pit.”

“Daisy’s in there,” Basira says, bristling.

“That’s its name? Then sure, ‘t’s in there, whatever’s left. Find out if you like.”

“…get out of my office –”

Jon’s voice crackles with static, and Breekon takes one step backward.

“What are you doing? Stop that.”

“Jon,” Basira says warningly.

“– as soon as they’d placed the box on the floor, they turned around and walked out –”

The static continues to rise in volume.

“I said stop it!” Breekon grunts through gritted teeth, even as he turns and steps back over the threshold.

“– the door slammed behind them” – Breekon does indeed reach for the handle and pulls the door shut after him – “and I was left – with this package.”

The static cuts out abruptly, and Jon exhales heavily, winded.

“What the hell was that?” Basira demands, rounding on Jon. “Did you just – compel him to leave?”

“…apparently this was how it was done now,” Jon says quietly. That at least answers the question of whether he can still effectively use that power. He isn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Knew you could compel people to answer questions. Didn’t know you could compel actions, too.”

Jon shuts his eyes, still catching his breath. There were limits on his compulsion abilities even during the apocalypse; there are bound to be just as many now, if not more. He doesn’t have the mindset for muddling through a complicated explanation right now, though, so he opts for the AAC app instead.

“LITTLE,” he selects from the screen. It should be enough to get the general point across, at least for now.

“Great. I’ll just put that in the ominous column, shall I?” Basira sighs. “Is it really okay to just… let him leave?”

“I told her that any real danger had passed,” he says simply.

“If you say so.” She stares intently at the Coffin, arms crossed. “So, what now?”

Without another word, Jon stands and beckons for Basira to follow. As he locks the office door behind them, Basira tells him to go wait for her at the tunnel entrance while she fetches Melanie and Georgie. He nods absentmindedly, but she’s already left without waiting for a response.

The last time, two weeks spanned between the delivery of the Coffin and the day Jon actually opened it. This time, there’s no need to wait. He still has some preparations to make – there’s no need to visit the Boneturner, but Jon does still want to leave some tapes running to serve as physical anchors. He also has to plan for the possibility of something going wrong, even if he is fairly confident in his ability to find his way back again. Mainly, he’d like to leave a letter behind for Martin, though the Archive might make that difficult.

Other than that, it’s just a matter of mentally preparing himself for another trip into the Buried.

Knowing what to expect doesn’t make it any less terrifying, though. If anything, it might make it worse.

End Notes:

Soooo I thought I'd be able to cover more plot in this chapter, but I was too attached to the scene with Naomi to scrap it, and I wanted that conversation between Jon and Georgie to happen pre-Buried. The result is that this chapter feels a bit scattershot. But that means next chapter I can just focus on the Coffin. Thanks for bearing with me! (Hoping to have next chapter ready by this weekend or early next week. Depends on how busy work is.)

For anyone unfamiliar with AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) devices/apps and wondering why it's different from typing/texting for Jon - the app he's using has preloaded phrases and images he can select from, so he doesn't have to type/text character-by-character. It still has drawbacks for him - difficult to use for long periods of time, less likely to work the more specific he tries to be, like with drawing - but at least there's another communication option for him to reach for now.

Citations for Jon's verbal dialogue are as follows, broken down by section. Section 1: None. Section 2: 009; 036; 050/027/008/153/010/015/009/124/056/128; 112; 045/005/112/131; 045; 020/134; 157; 017; 138/130; 059; 029; 101/024; 135; 094; both 028 & 076; 148; 094; 042; 054; 117/013; 013/009; 150; 013/009/013/007/013; 146/092/151/063; 002/050; 009; 062. Section 3: 038. Section 4: 002; 061; 050; 056; 051; 019/138/013/105/113/013/092/122/102; 019/048/011/123/124/014/145/139; 051; 013, 145; 023; 096; 128; 128 (again); 008/128. Section 5: 014; 113; 002; 032/136/015; 025. Section 6: 096; 006; 002; 002 (again); 005; 008.

The taped banter between Daisy and Jon is from MAG 061. The Michael quote is from MAG 101. A few bits of Breekon's dialogue were borrowed from MAG 128.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #tma spoilers #long post

[splendidshinobi]

FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST 2003 LIVE REACT: EPISODES 6-10

back at it again with the white vans

episode 6: the alchemy exam

alrighty then

um mustang calling edward “ed” is EXTREMELY offputting

ohhhhhhh noooooo not shou tucker

FUCK

im wholly unprepared

them all being in central instead of east is low key jarring like my brain isnt computing it

alexander’s intro is basically the same 

nina bbyyyyy girl u deserved so much better

ed is such a fucking nerd...chemistry club modern au confirmed

god the more tucker talks the more i wanna beat his face in

al pretending to eat by tossing a potato in his armor i-

aww theyre playing in the snow theyre so pure

wonder how long thatll last

“bigger brother” and “little big brother” and ed doesnt even get mad

ed’s birthday party????????

A MELON? ED YOURE SO RUDE

so 03 had ed’s bday instead of elicia’s...CAUSE THEY GOT ELICIA IN THE WOMB

“it’s here!” “the tea?” “the baby!” hughes is a fuck head

ok so now they’re having elicia replace rush valley baby arc

this was winry’s time to shine in fmab i miss her 

if winry isnt here who is gonna birth this baby

oh my god they just realized ed can use alchemy without a circle

no wonder he’s been using circles this whole time

SO ELICIA JUST POPPED OUT????? WHAT

STUFF ALEXANDER IN THE ARMOR AND PRETEND YOURE A TALKING DOG???

“i dont think thats very funny” NO ALPHONSE IT IS NOT

THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING WITH THAT ONE I SWEAR TO GOD IN THIS ESSAY I WILL

damn bradley what up homie

im so thrown off by the way theyre doing the exam omg

seriously what the hell is fuhrer bradley’s purpose right now is he even the fuhrer in this i feel like they wouldve mentioned it

oh lord ed is about to impress everyone with his clappy hands

ok so next episode is nina FUCK

episode 7: night of the chimera’s cry

havoc babeeee

im gonna marry him my himbo king

also can RIZA DO SOMETHING PLZ

“huhhhhhhhh nina” ew tucker that was weirdly gross

wonder why

cant do it cant do it

do we think jean kirstein was modeled after jean havoc slightly looks wise

was that purposeful 

ill have to google 

serial killer who only targets women?  it cant be scar...scar drinks respect women juice

barry or slicer bros maybe? um ok

why did we start with liore if they were just gonna hop right back into the past for a huge chunk of episodes idk

assessment day??? oh noodles

AL WHY DID YOU TELL TUCKER TO MAKE ANOTHER TALKING CHIMERA ALPHONSE NO

THE NOISE I EMITTED IM GONNA TAKE A LAP

im gonna FUCKING SCREAM

ed r u writing to winry??? that’s a bit out of character for u good sir

no tucker put that baby down

im gonna fucking SCREAM

aww he burned nina’s picture thats not sus at all

SHESKA!!!!!

wait does the ironblood alchemist know what tucker did to his wife? thats kinda the vibe im getting

SCARRRRRRRR

looking like a pirate too damn

his voice sounds different is that j michael tatum 

apparently not it was dameon clarke in 03 ya learn something new everyday 

ew elicia has a lot of hair for a FUCKING NEWBORN

ed really is such a cynic very suspicious of everyone as he should be really

basque grand knowS SOMETHING

oh jesus oh fuck oh god please do not TOUCH THAT BABY

ed and al snuck back in to the house well u know what its for the best

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

im gonna cry again please god no

FUCKING DIE SHIT HOLE

she’s hurting? oh my god

my sweet angel

ew his eyes!!!!!!! 

tucker is such a fucking failure...like look at the chimera squad and greed’s theatre troupe being the way they are. ugh it really hits how fucking unfair it is 

ed was really about to split them? boy you know better

where is nina going...im hurting

ed really tried to save her in this one

SCAR KILLS NINA IN THE STREETS???????? SIR

thats different

oh snap 

oh FUCK

SCAR WHY DID YOU LEAVE HER BODY LIKE THAT

THE WAY SHE WAS ARRANGED ON THE WALL THAT WAS FUCKED UP

AND THEY FOUND HER LIKE THAT???? AT LEAST IN BROTHERHOOD THEY DIDNT HVE TO SEE HER CORPSE ARE YOU SHITTING ME?

that was fucked.

episode 8: the philosopher’s stone

can yall get ed and al away from nina’s fucking MURAL 

get out of the car mustang

finally jesus christ

roy mustang talking about healthy coping mechanisms dont make me laugh but alright baby boy go off i guess?

im curious about who this goddamn serial killer is though lets turn to that plot thread

r u kidding me

mustang is making ed and al take over tucker’s research?? thats actually wildly messed up

oh tucker was straight executed that’s a choice i guess

tucker and the philosopher’s stone sounds inaccurate but ok

ed please stop being mean to your brother

03 mustang has got me reaching for a fucking baseball bat on GOD

scar and edward having this conversation right now i literally cannot

WINRY yes bitch

BRADLEY WHAT IN TARNATION

JESUS LORRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDD

alphonse shut your mouthhhhhhhhhhh

im so confused what is bradley up to

“alchemists are not cold blooded murderers?”

i mean

kimblee would beg to differ for one

whos this creepy lady 

her voice sounds familiar

barry’s food shop?

the killer is barry ok got it

IS BARRY DISGUISED AS A WOMAN

I KNEW THAT WAS JERRY JEWELL’S VOICE

WELL I KNEW IT SOUNDED FAMILIAR AT LEAST

WINRY GET OUT OF THE FUCKING TRUCk

has PINAKO TAUGHT YOU NOTHING

ok so i VASTLY prefer suit of armor original manga canon barry

this is such an odd plot what in fuck

um OW the meat cleaver

im so confused this fucking plotline

oh hey alphonse nice of you to show up!

is barry still gonna become a suit of armor later on

it makes NO SENSE to introduce him otherwise 

everytime i see 03 mustang i wanna beat his ass HONESTLY

literally i will shove my foot up his ass

fullmetal here we go

ed thinks he’s so punk rock 

oh great scar’s seen the watch

episode 9: be thou for the people

ed you simp buying winry all this stuff my edwin heart is ascending

SIMP SIMP SIMP

“mr. elric”?? you mean MAJOR ELRIC

to be fair though fuck the military

YOUSWELL??? oh LORD

im gonna need to read a full chronology of this show

 alphonse continues to be a precious angel 

where’s my boy yoki!!!!!

edward you idiot don’t go flaunting your money

woof woof ed

al looks so offended by ed saying they just met

whereas in brotherhood didnt he totally throw ed under the bus??? 

a choice to be sure

ah there he is hello yoki

who’s the chick

shes a lesbian

yoki makes me miss my baby girl mei chang

mei where r u

WAS THIS MILITARY DUDE REALLY ABOUT TO CUT DOWN A CHILD??? oh my god

hawkeye getting a promotion yes bby girl

jesus theyre transferring them to east now OKKKKKAY thats not how it happened it the book but ill take it....just doing it the opposite way i guess

who is lyra who is she

cute some military bribery 

umm lyra what the fuck did you do

lyra is a homunculus im callin it now

they definitely invented/changed up some homunculi in fact im certain they did and shes one of em. gotta be

i feel like 03 wrote ed as much more insensitive towards others than he really is...just a vibe im getting

i know he was faking for the townspeople’s sake but i still get this vibe from other instances 

i mean i cant say its not “canon” because its 03 canon

anyways what a show off

i cant believe theyre going to east...fuery and breda better be there

ok finally some answers on their ages....ed got his license at 12 like normal and nina and youswell were when he was 12...liore was 15, 

if they didnt flash the ages on the screen id be lost honestly

at least we’re back up to “present day”

episode 10: the phantom thief

ed saying he doesnt wanna see mustang

same

03 mustang is activating my fight or flight and im choosing fight

ed cheating at cards totally checks out

um who the fuck is this woman

what is she wearing

SERIOUSLY WHAT IS THAT CUTOUT MAAM HOW DO YOUR C**CHY LIPS NOT POKE OUT

idk but this is fem!hisoka

“hey shouldnt we talk first” after getting handcuffed??? christ almighty these innuendos

siren??????? siren is probably also a “fake” homunculus

ugh

ok so the nurse is siren

ya aint slick girly

alphonse control your crush

I REFUSE!!!! ALMEI RIGHTS

why is al’s hair so brown in this flashback anywayssss

oh its spelled psiren ope

like she’s literally a batman villain...

oh my god...............the tiddy grab. my son would never

my son is respectful

is this her homunculus tat or just a random alchemy tat

the added plotlines and original content continue to confuse and astound me every single time....

ok but if psiren really was doing this for the hospital she wouldnt be so flashy about it. like thats how you get caught sweet cheeks

girly stop flirting with this child on god im gonna fucking kick you

now shes a nun????????????????

Shes a fucking troll i hate her

im going to kick alphonse into the sun 

oh great now shes a teacher

wow shes a savior. the savior of amestrian venice. greatttttt

ed looking exactly like this emoji on this gondola rn 🧍‍♀️

STOP FLIRTING WITH THE CHILD 

GOD THIS IS SO BATMAN VILLAIN ESQUE

alphonse plzzzzzzzzzz she aint your girl

ok so probably not the last we see of this ding dong con artist

ok so its starting to get muddy. im scared the 03 stans are gonna come after me like i do like it and im having fun watching it but some of the plot and characterization choices are just....odd??? idk i gotta keep going though!! im sorry i just stan arakawa and her work in all her glory!!!

#carol watches fma03 #fullmetal alchemist #carol's remaining brain cells #this is fun for me and no one else #whatever i dont care about anyone else on this website anyway #this is my stupid hole

[maldito-arbol]

An analysis of the V AE

I feel like I should make a post of my own about this topic, seeing as there’re a lot of disagreeing opinions on the matter, though the majority seems to be slanted in the negative direction.

I did not hate the V After Ending or Rika’s backstory; in fact, I really enjoyed them and felt they settled a lot of questions I had pent up. So I’m going to give a fair warning before I begin this post: if you love V and hate Rika, we have disagreeing opinions, so read at your own discretion.

First of all, V’s presence, or lack thereof. Let me explain why I was okay with this, or even a little relieved at that. I personally don’t like V at all. His character is very well built and developed, sure, and he plays a significant role in the RFA’s story, but that doesn’t mean I like him as a person. To me, he’s far too obsessive, creepy, and hypocritical for my taste.

To elaborate, his relationship with Rika never sat well with me ever since I went through the entirety of the Secret Ending. He had this tendency to put himself on a pedestal, an infallible beacon of light Rika was supposed to put all of her faith in. He may have acted in a way that could be considered selfless, but it went a step too far into the narcissistic direction, where he believed he could fix everything on his own. Rika didn’t need someone to just accept her the way she was, she needed someone to help her help herself. Because the way she was wasn’t okay. V essentially let her believe that there was nothing wrong with her darkness as long as he was there with her.

It’s not okay on any level that V pushed his love so hard onto Rika, telling her that he’d still love her even if she blinded him or destroyed him. It’s a huge red flag that she’d ask a question like that in the first place, but he ended up encouraging her rather than shutting her down. And in the end, he admits that his love wasn’t even love at all, but an obsession. That’s all well and good for him to realize it, but he just rubbed major salt in Rika’s wounds, and there are a plethora of better ways he could’ve gone about fixing his mistake.

Even the way that they got together bothers me. According to Rika’s backstory, when Rika stops showing up to modeling sessions with V, he straight up shows up at her house. The way his words are phrased indicates clearly to me that she hadn’t shared her address or personal information with him at all, but rather, he found her house by following her home god knows how many times and pseudo-stalking her daily activities wherever he could.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not in any way trying to put V down to raise Rika up. I will never excuse the horrible things she’s done nor blame V for them. This is simply my analysis on V’s character, and why I personally dislike him.

The V route destroyed my soul as I struggled to get the good ending. I hated being a jerk to Ray who was so clearly in so much pain, and I hated not being able to scream at V for all the bullshit he’d been pulling. When we found out he just straight up left for two years, I was done. I was fully prepared to completely ignore the After Ending if it meant I didn’t have to just shrug off his grievances and be all lovey dovey with the guy. But seeing as I essentially worship any and all Mystic Messenger content, I decided to give it a go. And boy I was not disappointed. V almost didn’t exist until the last episode, and I was elated I could focus on the other characters.

The other characters were so much more interesting anyways. We got to see new sides of them that we always knew existed, but never actually experienced. We saw Yoosung’s heart-wrenching confrontation with Rika, Saeyoung’s agony over losing his brother, Jumin’s oddly calm distress in the absence of his closest friends, Jaehee’s coldness towards Rika, hell, even Vanderwood’s hidden affection for Saeyoung and the value he places in the life of another human being. Everything felt so unreal, and yet it was all perfectly in character for each and every one of them.

And now, on to Rika. Rika was oddly tame for this, and it makes sense to me in the context of the AE. She’d been detained, and told time and time again just how wrong she was. There was no more room for her to believe her methods were correct, so she just...deflated. I see people all over arguing about her attitude and complaining that Cheritz is trying too hard to redeem an irredeemable character, and I can’t bring myself to agree with that. Just like I can’t bring myself to love Rika, I can’t bring myself to hate her either.

Rika is an immensely complicated character. There are parts of her that I find interesting and cool, and there are others that disgust me. Her backstory brought a lot of herself into perspective, and now her character makes more sense. The fact that she preaches on and on about having a devil inside her is perfectly plausible with how her mother and the pastor used to talk to her, and how she stood up for herself by accepting their religious talk and turning it into a weapon. If they truly believed she had a devil within her, she could manipulate them into believing she herself had power over them. And unfortunately, this carried on into her adult life where she could justify her own actions as the devil inside her acting of its own accord.

The other major factor that plays into her heinous actions at the Mint Eye is the fact that she was physically uncomfortable around people who didn’t need her help, because she believed bright people would see the darkness inside her and be repulsed by it. Her interactions with Yoosung are proof enough. She was drawn to the Choi twins because they needed help, and she was more than happy to help if it meant they’d see her as a savior rather than a devil. But as time passed, she grew to believe that Saeran would leave her the second he didn’t need her help anymore, and she knew that Saeyoung would be the one to help him do it. I believe that’s why she manipulated Saeran to believe that Saeyoung had abandoned him. Then she beat him down mentally until he became completely reliant on her, and she felt safe knowing that he couldn’t possibly leave her that way.

Understanding Rika’s actions doesn’t absolve her of blame, but it does bring me to the realization that there was a method to the madness, that this wildly absurd ideal of hers was something that was instilled into her brain from the day she was adopted, and reinforced by the people around her. So, as a person, I would never be able to stand in her presence, but as a character, I enjoy how thoroughly she has been developed and explained. It’s not bad story writing to me, nor is it some kind of excuse to justify her actions. It’s an explanation for us all to understand why she is the way she is, and how by forgiving her, we not only rectify the hatred within ourselves, but we can also change her perspective and grant her the opportunity to make things right. Which, she does. She turns herself in, though not before unleashing the prime minister’s secret and publishing a video that addresses her crimes. It’s a good ending, whether you hate her or not.

The Judge Ending begins a little harshly, and I was initially shocked at the portrayal of the characters in the MC’s dream. However, it continues peacefully, with an arguably good ending of everyone moving on and learning to cope. I have seen people say Cheritz guilt-tripped us into forgiving Rika, but after playing both endings, I can tell you that is not the case. By choosing the Judge answers, the other members do not admonish you by any means. They continue to act in character, with Yoosung whole-heartedly agreeing with you, Zen respecting your responses even though he disagrees, etc etc. And the Judge Ending is most certainly not a Bad Ending. It’s probably more of a Normal Ending, which I would argue counts as a Good Ending, just a little different. Cheritz knows there are some people who would forgive Rika in a heartbeat, and others who would rather die. The V after ending respects both sides, and I didn’t have much to complain about.

The only one thing I have to complain about, is the way the MC treats Saeran. In the V route, once you’d chosen his route, you’re basically locked into choosing answers that are harsh or uncalled for towards Saeran. And in the after ending, you can choose answers that show concern over his well-being, but you never get the chance to interact with him again. I wish at least that after Saeran’s tearful reunion with Saeyoung, he could’ve had one with the MC too. I was worried sick over whether or not he’d survived, and I would’ve given anything to just chuck V out the window and choose Saeran in the end. The poor boy needs all the love he can get.

Anyway, before this gets way too long and annoying, I’ll end it here. This post was mostly supposed to focus on V and Rika, so I hope my perspective can be understood. Thanks for reading this far, and let me know if you agree or disagree with my opinions! I enjoy having respectful debates.

tl;dr: V is a creepy narcissistic stalker and that’s why I hate him. Rika is a terrible person but a good character, so I don’t hate her and I don’t love her. V AE cockblocked MC and Saeran interactions and it sUcked.

#mystic messenger #analysis #saeran choi #jihyun kim #rika #saeyoung choi #v after ending #rika backstory

[randombtsprincessa]

Asylum || 4

Author: Randombtsprincessa

Characters: Kim Namjoon x Reader

Chapter:  01  02  03

Warning in-Chapter: Mentions of Abuse and Violence

I was so late…

It was one of those days when nothing seemed to go right. My alarm buzzed but I slept right through it, my roommate, Jennie banging on the door to wake me up so I could at least do something decent about myself before exiting the house. The hot water just wouldn’t settle at the right temperature so I had to take a nearly ice cold shower and to top it all off, Jennie had run off with the last amount of coffee that was present in the apartment. I had to buy some today.

My hair was up in a messy ponytail and I’d been too much in a rush to stop to grab a coffee from a cafe. So, clutching my binder to my chest, my backpack flying about behind me I raced through the campus.

Of course, as fate would have it, just one corner away from my class, where I could quietly bury myself in the back in the solitude of many students, I had to crash into somebody.

Papers flew everywhere, a large paper coffee cup, now empty rose up high in the air, as it emptied its contents right on top of me. Hot delicious coffee went everywhere; on my head, on my white hoodie, jeans and boots and binder of notes. I groaned, backing up immediately. I suppose I had to be grateful for the small mercies, the coffee hadn’t scalded me at least.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry!”

I ran the bunched up end of my hoodie sleeve over my eyes to glare at the blind idiot.

He was already on the floor, quickly swiping up the scattered pages, his dark head bowed as he shook out some of the soaked pages, even blowing on one desperately.

I got on my knees too, stacking up the rest of the pages, keeping quiet, not trusting myself to open my mouth in case I started hurling insults at the boy.

He stood up first, his blue shirt and black jeans completely clean of any coffee. Why the hell did the universe hate me so much today?

“Here, they’re a little…um…” he was holding out the bundled notes out to me before he frowned at them. They were brown with the coffee, some of the scribbles illegible.

“Destroyed,” I snapped bitterly, making his eyes turn downwards in guilt again.

“I swear, I didn’t mean to run into you like that. I was just walking and I didn’t see you turn the corner…I’m really sorry.” He said again, still holding out the pages.

“Yeah well,” I grabbed the papers, slipping them into the binder. “My day’s done here, might as well go home to avoid any more catastrophes.” I sighed, turning away from him.

My shirt was completely done for. It was uncomfortably wet, sticking to my bra and stomach. I had to get rid of these clothes and I’d take a day long nap. Thankfully, I had my notes backed up on my laptop.

“Hey,” I turned to see the coffee guy catch up with me. “You can’t walk home like that. I live nearby. Borrow one of my shirts and I’ll give you a ride home.”

I blinked before examining him closely. He was cute, admittedly, dark hair parted neatly for the school day, small studs glittering in both earlobes.

“You’re not trying to hit on me, are you?” I asked finally.

His eyes widened before wildly shaking his head. “No, no! I just…I feel guilty for wrecking your day.”

“You didn’t wreck it. It was horrible since sun up.”

“Oh…so um…do you want that shirt and ride?”

I stared at him, watching as his eyes trailed pointedly to where I was cringing away from the wet fabric. His doe eyes were sincere, I decided finally.

“Fine, lead the way,” I said.

His face lit up immediately and I felt a pang. Damn was he cute, I thought. His lips parted to reveal and neat line of big teeth, turning up into a bunny smile. I couldn’t help but smile back.

“I’m Jungkook.”

“I’m Y/N.”

 The sunlight was warm on my skin, slipping into my pores, soaking into the cool uniform.

My legs were out of the hard plaster casts now, and even though they still felt sore and unused and I had to carry around the clutch, it felt nice to be able to feel the flannel of my trousers or the cool of the water on my skin now.

The nurses had agreed that I needed to start being able to walk now, and that the ability of moving about by myself might be able to help me heal somehow. I didn’t understand the thought process but I wasn’t complaining.

The only new thing was that for the first time I was alone outside. Usually Yoongi and the other boys would be with me but this time around I had been let out by myself. It felt nice, peaceful even, the grass feeling soft under my palms.

Not for the first time, I wondered how it would’ve felt if Jungkook was here with me, his bunny smile and eyes which glimmered in child like excitement sometimes beside me as he chattered on about a new dance he’d learned or a new song he’d covered.

I smiled softly in remembrance, feeling a soft tug grow in my tummy; a sign of an impending attack of memory which was quelled by the new environment and medicines that fought with my body to make me cope.

I leant back, letting my weight lean on my open palms and closed my eyes as I methodically curled and uncurled my fists in the cool grass, a way of maintaining control over my body. According to Dr. Sihyuk, the slow motion of my hands made my mind focus on the stretch and lax of muscles, distracting it from impending episodes. I had taken it on reluctantly at first but soon found that it helped keep the painful memories at bay, making me concentrate on the now and present.

 As I basked in the mild winter heat, I felt a shadow loom over me, blocking out the sunlight. I opened my eyes to see Namjoon standing over me, smiling softly. The sunlight behind him made it look like he was glowing and I smiled back.

“May I join you?” he asked lightly and I nodded, patting the ground beside me to indicate he could take a seat. As usual, he had a book in his hand as he folded his tall frame neatly beside me.

“You finally freed your legs?” he asked, laughing.

“Oh yeah, they feel much freed, but I will be properly freed when these go away.” I sighed, nodding my head towards the crutches lying next to me.

“Ah,” he smiled again before opening the book and immersing himself in it.

I kept mum for a few minutes before turning to study my companion. His blond hair was parted now, bangs falling into the tell tale dark eyes. His lips were pursed, eyebrows scrunched as he concentrated on the book when I noticed it.

“Where are your glasses?” I asked.

He looked up surprised at my sudden question, or maybe he was just shocked I’d noticed. He just looked at me for a few seconds before looking down. I was surprised to see his cheeks turn red slightly.

“I left them up in my room. I’m wearing contacts.” He said in a low voice.

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“I don’t like the lenses so much, they make my eyes burn a little but the glasses…” he trailed off and I looked at him, waiting. “I guess they make me look kind of like a nerd.” He said.

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“What’s wrong with being a nerd?” he asked in turn.

“Yeah, you like reading and you’re smart. I’m not saying only that makes you a nerd but wearing glasses is a matter of necessity not a sign of how smart you are.” I shrugged, looking back to the front as he stared at me for a few minutes before chuckling lightly.

“Thank you, I needed that I guess.” He said.

“Mhm,” I relented.

He closed the book and crossed his legs, turning more towards me. “So, what do you want to talk about?” he asked. I blinked at him. “Talk…about what?” I asked.

“Anything; the nurses aren’t going to take you back any time soon. We have a lot of time to spare. We can talk about anything. Music, Books, Shows, Hobbies, you name it, we can talk about it. We might as well get to know each other if we’re going to be here, right?” He said. I sat up straight, staring blankly at the boy in front of me.

Namjoon’s eyes were wide, his thick lips parted slightly in a small grin as he waited for me to answer him. With the white clothes and blond hair, he looked like small child.

It reminded me of Jungkook, even if the two men looked nothing alike.

 Talk we did.

Namjoon was vociferous. He wanted to know everything that had happened in my life from the time I was able to walk to how I ended up here.

He listed his favorite books and music, most of them hip hop and while I wasn’t completely versed in the genre, I found I recognized some of the names from the TV and radio and most of his books were in line with mine too so we eased into discussing literature until he asked about the accident.

My jaw snapped shut, my eyes flew down and my cheeks paled.

Namjoon stared at the drastic change in my body and lowered his own head. “That bad…? I’m sorry, I’m too curious. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to trigger you.” He said.

“No, no,” I said immediately, catching the bashful pout on his face, his plush lips jutting forwards as he blinked.

“Don’t worry about it. The accident isn’t the trigger…it’s…it’s…my best friend.” I said softly.

He looked up at that. “Is she ok?” he asked.

“He…he’s gone, actually.” I said in a quiet voice.

There was a drawn out silence after that as he kept staring at the grass.

“You blame yourself.” He said. It wasn’t a question. He knew it. He was just telling me he knew.

I didn’t answer as the nurse finally came to take me away inside. I didn’t look at Namjoon again, too ashamed to meet his eyes. He knew now what I was. He knew about the blood on my hands.

 It was on the way to my room when I heard it.

The rooms for girls were along one side of the wall while the other side belonged to the boys. Besides me, there were only two more girls in the facility, none of whom talked to me.

As I’d been crossing over to my hall, the sounds of low, childish sniffles caught my ear. I stopped immediately, recognizing the deep sobs.

I shifted my weight to my other crutch as I moved closer to Taehyung’s door, knocking on it. “Tae, are you ok?” I asked. The door opened with a light creak and I peeked inside.

Taehyung was curled up on his bed, blankets wrapped tightly around him as he cried into his pillow. His hair was sticking to his face, the green bangs soaked in tears. He looked up blearily as I entered the room. I knew there were rules about these kinds of things but I didn’t care.

He whimpered as I hobbled over to sit on the bed, as he sat up, scooting over to wrap his arms around my neck, burying his face into the crook of my neck, his sobs intensifying.

I wrapped my own arms around him, shushing him.

“What’s wrong, Tae?” I asked.

“The…The courts…they’re not letting me out.” He said.

“Wait…what?” I asked, unaware of his problems.

He wiped his nose on his sleeve as he pulled back, face still streaked. “You don’t know why I’m here, do you?” he asked. I shook my head.

He bunched his sleeves in his lap, looking down. “I stabbed my step father…with a bottle.” He said.

My breath caught in my throat. That’s when I realized; his posture was akin to mine. Eyes downcast, face bloodless, body slumped in shame…shame of our actions.

“Tae…”

“He beat my mother. I wasn’t…a very good son, I guess. I couldn’t take care of her so she had to marry him. I didn’t like staying around him, I knew there was something wrong but I never thought he was abusive. When I found out…I was bitter. I beat him back but he never backed down. The day they caught me…he just wouldn’t stop. He was going after her and I…I had to do something. There was so much blood. When they took me away, my mother plead self defense and the neighbors helped so they shifted me here. He’s alive…I don’t know what he’d doing. My mom doesn’t talk about him…”

He paused to sniff.

“They’ve been trying to get me out of here for months now. The lawyers are sucking up all my father’s money and they just aren’t getting anywhere. The last visit they told me, we lost. I’m going to have to finish my term here. I have to stay here for a whole year.”

He broke down again, hands reaching up to cup his face.

“I – I want to – go home.” He choked as I sat there, staring into space.

I felt an indescribable emotion rising somewhere in the pit of my stomach, stronger that sympathy and milder than pity. I moved closer to the crying boy and brought him down to rest his head on my lap where he cried harder for a few more minutes before passing out, soft whimpers escaping his lips instead of snore.

I stroked his hair, wondering how blinded I had been to anything other than my own problems…

#bts angst #namjoon angst #bts fanfic #namjoon fanfic #namjoon #bts #bts smut #namjoon smut #bts rm #asylum

[imagineclaireandjamie]

I was rewatching the First Wife episode and thought what if Claire returned to Jamie on that Hogmanay just before he met Joan and Marsali?

Hogmanay:

Cuddling Brianna to her chest, Claire hunkered down under the arch of the inclining rock that shielded them from the baltic breeze. It was fast approaching the turning of the year and she was eager to get to Lallybroch - mostly to get Bree out of the freezing cold Scottish winter.

“It’s alright, darling,” Claire whispered, pulling her cloak closer around her teenage daughter’s shoulders, “we’re not far away now.”

“You’re such a fuss.” Bree muttered, her teeth chattering as the wind whipped through the small valley. “I told you I wanted to come, I can cope with a British breeze. Just promise me we can eat something more appetising than rock hard bread once we get there - I don’t think my teeth can cope with much more.”

“Hopefully we will, if Jenny isn’t feeling too apprehensive about letting us in, that is.” Claire muttered her memories of Janet Fraser Murray coming in fits and starts as the sound of hooting owls echoed overhead.

As the night wore on, Bree fell asleep, her chest rising and falling gently against Claire’s side as she snuggled against her mother. Claire, however, found it utterly impossible to doze off with her impending task hovering over her. The year previously Frank had left her for his mistress taking Brianna with him. Only months later, Bree had returned to Boston with a small bag of belongings and a fistful of documents pertaining to one James Fraser.

Claire had been floored, she hadn’t expected to hear Jamie’s name come from Bree at all never mind hear that he’d lived through Culloden.

Not wanting to stir the pot and with a new incentive to reconnect with her daughter, Claire hadn’t asked Brianna what had caused her to leave Frank and Sandy in Oxford. Instead the pair flew to Scotland threw themselves into searching the archives. She had then, over time, explained the whole story to Bree - mostly whilst knee deep in dusty museum cellars - and, as her heart beat with renewed purpose, had invested much more than time in finding even the slightest mention of Jamie in the ancient documents housed in some of Scotland’s most sacred places.

As dawn broke the wind subsided a little and the fresh sunrise reminded Claire of the morning they’d found Jamie’s pardon, Buried deep in a book of indentured servants dating from the wrong century nonetheless, it had been Brianna who had pulled the wilting paper from underneath the torn back page of a thick book that had once belonged to the Dunsany family of Helwater somewhere in Cumbria. What it was doing in a *Scottish* archive, Claire didn’t know, but she was incredibly grateful that it had ended up there. Just as the sun flitted through the trees, the bright red flickering through the bows, she recalled -vividly- the scent of mulch as the daylight penetrated the old backroom and a smile grew over Bree’s face until they were clinging to one another, fresh tears running down their faces as relief coursed through her.

But now as well as relief she felt apprehension.

“Don’t fret, mama,” Bree whispered, sitting up, cracking her back and yawning wildly as she woke slowly, “he’s going to be so pleased to see you. I just know it.”“Are you certain?” She asked, her voice low as she brushed a stray leaf from Bree’s hair.”It’s been eighteen years, Bree. He survived a war that wiped out all of his kinsmen, became an outlaw, got sent to prison and then sent to live as an indentured servant. He’s lived the life of three men in that time, what if I don’t fit into his world anymore?”

“You said he was the love of your life, mama.” She said confidently. “I have to believe that he felt the same way as you do, and you’ve never stopped loving him, have you?”

“Well…” Claire muttered, “...no.”

“Then he will still love you. I guarantee it. And we’re going to go to Lallybroch, the both of us, and make his hogmanay. Yes?”

“Yes, yes we are.” Claire sighed, smiling more easily now as she shimmied out of their temporary bed finally ready to walk the final few miles to Lallybroch.

--

Plumes of smoke rose on the horizon as the sun finally set leaving Claire and Bree in darkness once more. It had been a challenging day and one wrong turn had lost them a couple of hours as they tried to find their way back onto the right track. It hadn’t helped that all of the scenery looked the same. It had been too long since Claire was here last and she couldn’t really recall the way. Bree, however, had smuggled a tiny home-made map in her pockets and she’d managed to get them back on track but not in time to make it to Lallybroch before night fell.

“Is that it?” Bree said as the house appeared in front of them. It was well into the night by the time the two story brick building could be seen but the lights that danced in the windows was enough to guide the women forwards.

“Yes, it bloody well is!” Claire exclaimed happily, her strides getting quicker now as they forged their way forwards.

It was only as Claire and Brianna skipped along the drive that they began to hear the joyful sounds of the party within the big house and Claire stopped mid-step.

“Come on, mama, we’re so close. We can’t stop now!” Bree said, panting as the fast pace of their walk towards Lallybroch finally caught up to her.

“We can’t burst in during the middle of their celebrations. He might not even be in there, what will we do then?”

“You’re stalling. If he isn’t there, then Aunt Jenny will tell us where he is. If we can’t go to him, I’m sure she’ll send a message.”

“I never got a chance to even say goodbye to her, Bree. When I left - when Jamie sent me back - it was only hours before Culloden. Either way, surely she thinks I’m dead. If I just burst in now - in the middle of their hogmanay celebrations - not only will I give her and Ian a heart attack each, but I’m sure she’ll be angry that I’ve lived this whole time and haven’t been in touch.”

“Fuck it, mama,” Bree cursed quietly, nudging Claire gently in the side, “I get it, I do, but I doubt she’ll kick you out. Of course she’ll be shocked. But there’s loads of people in there, too many for her to make a massive scene.”

“Then you can get between us if you’re wrong.” Claire quipped sounding stronger than she felt.

Taking Claire by the hand in a role-reversal which left Brianna feeling more like the adult in the situation, she led Claire up towards the front door. Turning the handle carefully, she pushed the old front door inwards and pulled her mama into the small hallway. Lallybroch smelt glorious, the heat merging with the scent of fresh food as Bree snuck further into the house with Claire in tow.

Claire’s corset suddenly felt stifling, the stiff ribbing digging into her ribs as she tried to remain upright.

The room blurred as a sudden influx of people surrounding her as a train of giggling children separated her from Brianna and she wrapped her arms around her waist. Claire had yet to spot anyone she knew, but she kept her head up as she shook the fear from her shoulders and wiped the moisture from her eyes. Brianna was now nowhere to be seen, her bright red hair swallowed up in the mass of auburn that filled the room.

Her heart almost stopped in her chest as she turned to catch sight of her daughter, her hands animatedly flying around her face as she laughed and chatted happily to none other than Ian Murray. Just as she was about to take a step towards them, her reticence all but gone, Claire glanced to her left her gaze drawn to the solitary figure that lingered just beside the staircase.

“Jamie.” She whispered, her palms sweating as she swallowed back the bile that rose along her throat as the sight of him.

As if the weight of her saying his name (although there was no way he could have heard her from where he was stood) caught his attention, Jamie looked up and across at Claire, hie hand rising, unconsciously, to rest over his chest as he swivelled, his knees almost buckling as he did so.

“Claire…?” He mouthed, his lips trembling as tears glistened across the bottom of his eyes.

“Jamie!” Claire said, louder this time as she stepped to the right, moving aside to let a few more guests by.

Mumbling incoherently -possibly in Gaelic- Jamie launched himself forwards, sashaying from left to right as he dodged the groups loitering in the main gangway. “Claire, is that you? Is it truly you?” He rasped, his hands shakily rising as they finally met, coming face to face for the first time in eighteen years.

“You’re alive.” Claire stated, taking his fingers against hers as she rested his palm over her glowing cheek.

“Aye,” he said, biting his lip to keep himself from falling at her feet, “I am. And yer here.”

“I am.” She replied calmly. “D-did you miss me?” She said, feeling more like a teenager than the mother of one.

Eschewing the traditional response, Jamie nodded, licking his lips as he bent to kiss her, the immediate brush of his mouth against hers causing his heart to stutter in his chest as he pulled her gently to the side. “Oh God, yes,” he sighed, sweeping Claire artfully back towards the dark comfort of the small gap between the stairs at the doorway to the dining room, “so much I could barely breathe, sassenach.”

#;Mod MBD #Hogmanay AU #Jamie X Claire

[allthisloveforyou]

little whispers, sudden shivers

A/N: What do you do when you’re not happy with the way things are going in canon? You go and write your own AUs, obviously. This one-shot has been my way of coping with the recent episodes, because the show has been nothing but a painful mess these last few weeks.

The three lines at the beginning are from “Find Me” by Boyce Avenue.

Summary: Fluff. Sappy moments. Established relationship/happy future AU. (Y’know, the kind of things you can expect from me.)

Word count: 2.7k

and blindly, you came to me,

finding peace and belief

in this smile.

/

The morning sun sneaks its way into the dim room between the spaces in the blinds, illuminating dust particles that are spinning in the beams of light, some wildly, some slowly, while Luna’s heartbeat falls into a steady rhythm.

She blinks up at the ceiling. Her mind is misty from slumber, the remains of her dream slipping away into the dark labyrinths of lost memories, salt ocean air being the only thing she can remember. With the next flutter of her eyelids, it’s gone as well – and she’s fully awake, ready to meet the new day. She can already sense all the restless energy building up inside, eagerly waiting to be released.

She turns to the side. Next to her, lying on his stomach, is Matteo. He’s facing away from her, the blanket rolled down to his waist, exposing his bare back.

Even though she doesn’t want to disturb him, the urge to feel him, to hear him speak, gets the best of her, and she reaches out to place a hand on his back. She starts writing a phrase with her index finger, keeping her touch as light as possible. The silliness of it elicits a giggle from her, yet the seriousness behind the words keeps it low enough so that it won’t wake him up. When she’s halfway through the last letter for the sixth time or so, she retracts her hand. Matteo has gone suspiciously silent.

Then, he lets out a breath, louder than someone who’d still be asleep, and rolls over. His dark eyes meet hers, and they both smile.

“Good morning,” she says, stroking his cheek.

He takes hold of her hand and presses a small, swift kiss to the inside of her wrist, mumbling something that could be a reply, making her smile wider. “What time is it?” he asks slowly, his voice raspy.

She sits up to check her phone on the bedside table. After she’s read the digital clock, her eyes linger on the lock screen. It’s a photo of the two of them, from that time they visited Paris. They had spent the whole day walking around and when her feet started to hurt, he gave her a piggyback ride back to the hotel. Feeling spontaneous, she insisted on taking a picture, hence the crooked angle and the blurriness, but the large grins on both of their faces speak volumes. Her heart melts; the photo was taken nearly a year ago, but it could’ve been yesterday – or any other day, really. Happiness is still present in her life, tinting it gold and silver.

She turns off the screen and puts the phone down. “Almost eight,” she tells him.

He groans. “Too early.”

“Nonsense.” She lies down again, and he wraps an arm around her, pulling her close to him, leaving their faces only a few centimeters apart. “By the way,” she continues, “you promised me yesterday that you’d make breakfast, remember?”

“I did?” His hand slips underneath her T-shirt and settles on her lower back.

“Mhm.”

“Why did I do that?”

“Because you love me and …” She snuggles closer to him, enjoying all the warmth that is surrounding them. “… you love treating me like royalty.”

“So it has nothing to with the fact that you can’t cook for shit?”

With a theatrical gasp, she props one elbow up to lean on so that she can properly look at his face. “How dare you? I’m a great cook. No, a culinary genius. I’m so good I should own a restaurant worthy of a Michelin star.”

“Sure you are.”

She’s got plenty of arguments left, but Matteo has started skimming his fingers up and down her skin, almost to the point of tickling, which is certainly more distracting than it should be. Judging by his smirk, he knows it, too.

“Hey, princess,” he says, “if you want me to make you breakfast you’re going to have to convince me.”

“How?” she asks, keeping her tone innocent, although she can hear the answer in her head before he has the chance to say it out loud.

“Hmm,” he hums, as if he needs to consider his response. “A kiss or two will suffice, I suppose.”

“Ew, no!” she exclaims. “What about my morning breath?”

“What do you mean, ‘ew’?” he chuckles. “Listen, we’ve been together for seven years. I’ve woken up beside you countless times and kissed you right then and there just as many. Do you really think I care about your morning breath?”

To make a point, she tries to wriggle out of his grip (though she doesn’t put much effort into it), but Matteo moves so that he’s above her, pinning her down on the bed.

“Luna.”

That’s all he says.

Luna bites her lower lip, looking up at him, at the streaks of sunlight across his face and body, his eyes awake and playful. And that smile – it does a far better job at brightening the room than the sun ever could. Years ago, the sight would’ve sent her heart into overdrive, but now it’s peacefulness that courses through her veins, the comfort of familiarity spiking her blood. There’s this sense of belonging; lying here and witnessing the most profound emotions he’s feeling because of her. Devotion as evident as the moon in the sky, as guaranteed as a Monday following a Sunday.

(She swears she’s not the mushy type – it’s simply Matteo’s romantic side that has rubbed off on her.)

“Ah, yeah, that’s right,” she says, her voice laced with affection. “I forgot you find me absolutely irresistible.”

“What a terrible partner I am if you’ve been able to forget it even for a second.”

She rolls her eyes. “God, you’re so corny.”

“Okay then. How about we go back to the kiss thing?” he suggests.

“You won’t mind if I’ve got bad breath?” It’s not insecurity anymore – she just can’t stop herself from trying to prolong the inevitable. Making him beg for it is kind of fun.

(But giving him what he wants is more fun.)

“Luna, for fu–”

She lifts her head off the pillow to bridge the small gap between their mouths, catching him off guard. She’d like to linger for longer than a mere couple of seconds, but before he can react, she retreats and sinks back into the mattress, feeling pleased with herself.

Matteo seems to be both baffled and amused. “Sneaky,” he mumbles, which makes Luna grin. He leans in, she closes her eyes, and when he kisses her, she thinks she must be the luckiest person in the world. To have this – someone to wake up to every single morning, someone to come back home to every single day – must be some kind of miracle.

It’s a morning like any other; filled with soft giggles and tangled legs, featuring the noises from cars down on the street passing the building. They take their time, knowing that they’ve got lots of it, lips moving against each other at a languid pace, breaking away every now and then to press against cheeks and jaws and necks. Luna hums with contentment while one of his hands plays with some curls that frame her face and fall over her shoulder. She runs her fingers up his back, fans them out over his shoulder blades. Matteo’s fingertips trace the collar of her T-shirt, her collarbone, her jawline. His thumb gently brushing her cheekbone as his mouth finds hers again.

When the kiss deepens, she tugs him closer to her, because the space that’s left between them is still too vast, and she wants to be as close to him as she can get. Love combined with the heat of desire clouds any thought in her brain that doesn’t revolve around Matteo.

It hasn’t always been easy. They’ve had their fair share of bumps in the road. They’ve hurt each other. Said things they didn’t mean. Said things they did mean but that shouldn’t have escaped their minds nonetheless. They both carry scars from arguments that lasted longer than necessary, from lonely nights when they thought that perhaps a pause was the healthiest solution to their problems.

Rather than perceiving these scars as fading reminders of the past, she likes to compare them to cracks in book spines; as signs not of pain, but of love. After everything she and Matteo have been through, they’re still here. Together.

It is difficult. She’s never going to romanticize her own stubbornness or his arrogance. Or how she (at times, naively) puts everyone else before herself, and he has troubles seeing things from other people’s perspectives. Being in a relationship with Matteo is hard work, but he’s given her so much – his body, mind and soul – that it’s all worth it in the end.

Later on, when they’re both sitting upright in the bed, yet still holding onto each other in a tight embrace, she breaks the silence. “So … breakfast now?”

He laughs. If Luna could bottle the sound up and live on it like it was oxygen, she would. “Okay. You win,” he says, letting go of her. “But I’m going to take a shower first.”

“Yes!” She throws up her arms into the air in joy. Matteo raises his eyebrows and she clears her throat. “To breakfast, I mean. Not you … showering. Definitely not that.”

He smiles fondly, gives her one last peck, his lips barely grazing hers, and gets off the bed. “I kind of want to tell you to get your mind out of the gutter, delivery girl.” And with that, he exits the room. Ending the sentence with the old nickname softens the blow. Sort of.

“You did it anyway, you know,” she points out, earning another laugh.

After she’s gotten dressed and tied her hair up in a high ponytail, she goes to the kitchen to prepare for the meal (that she won’t be making herself), so that when Matteo comes back from his shower, all the ingredients are laid out on the counter.

“You know that new French restaurant Gastón and Nina told us about the other day?” he mentions once he’s started making the filling for the omelettes.

“Yeah, what about it?” She inspects her hands – the pink nail polish has started to chip on almost every finger.

“I thought that we could go out and eat there tonight,” he explains and she looks up at him.

“Like a date? Didn’t they say that it was pretty expensive?”

“Your point?”

“I just …” She tilts her head a little to one side, contemplating. “Are we celebrating? Do you have anything special in mind?”

“Maybe …” There’s something wicked about his smile, like he’s keeping something from her. He’s not telling her the whole story. Her instincts seem to decide on that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Now she’s even more curious than before. She racks her brain for any potential reasons, but can’t come up with anything plausible. “I haven’t forgotten something important, have I?”

“No,” he assures her. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

Luna watches him cook while they talk about the upcoming week. Somehow, there’s a change of subject.

“So I’m well aware that I’m biased when it comes to Italy,” Matteo begins, “but I was thinking that we could go to Florence for our honeymoon, or Milan …”

Furrowing her brow in mild confusion, Luna crosses her arms over her chest while Matteo keeps talking about different locations and what they have to offer. This is new. It’s not like they haven’t discussed the future before (and marriage has been brought up a few times in the past), but to hear Matteo speak about the honeymoon destination as if it’s happening sooner rather than later is somewhat startling.

In the end, she can’t keep quiet any longer.

“Um, Matteo,” she interrupts, “aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, propose before you start planning the wedding, let alone the honeymoon?”

He blinks at her, his expression blank. Unreadable. Something – perhaps recognition – lights up in his eyes. He looks back down into the pan.

That’s when she realizes it, too. “Oh.” The fancy dinner date. An imaginary light bulb above her head flickers on. “Oh,” she repeats, because her vocabulary is failing her at the moment.

“Guess that big surprise went right out of the window, huh.” He rubs the back of his neck.

“Well, at least it wasn’t my fault.” She tenses up as soon as the words leave her lips. Fortunately, Matteo doesn’t misinterpret them.

“No, it was mine. I got ahead of myself.” He sighs. Then he curses. Twice. “I sure as hell didn’t expect it to go like this. I had it all planned out: we’d have a nice dinner and afterwards we’d go somewhere quiet and romantic where I’d deliver this mind blowing speech that would make you fall for me all over again … and then I’d ask the big question. I even bought you a ring.”

“Really?” Her throat grows tight with emotion, like she’s about to cry. If Matteo looks at her now, she’ll lose her composure, no doubt.

Instead of meeting her gaze, he touches the nearly finished omelette in the pan with the spatula. “Please forget that this conversation ever happened.”

“What? No! How could I?”

“Luna, please.”

“But–”

“No buts. I’m not going to ask you to marry me in our kitchen while making omelettes.”

“Who cares about the omelette,” she mumbles. Breakfast is the last thing on her mind. Tears have begun blurring her vision against her will.

Matteo turns to her at this, his eyes fixated on hers. He parts his lips slightly, only to press them together again. He looks away, puts the spatula down and turns off the stove while Luna just stands still, unsure of what to do.

How can he be so calm? After dropping this giant bombshell on her? She’s blinking frequently, not allowing any tears to fall. Why does she even have this sudden need to cry? There’s an overwhelming sensation in her chest, like a heavy coating of lead on her ribs that’s weighing down on her lungs. She can’t decipher its meaning, can’t decide if it’s good or bad. All she knows is that Matteo hasn’t spoken in almost a minute and a half, and that each second that goes by is a tiny eternity where she’s left wondering.

Suddenly – because she doesn’t see it coming – he’s got his arms around her and she instinctively throws her own around his neck, leaning into him. He doesn’t say anything. She counts his breaths in groups of three in hopes of finding a focal point. (One, two, three. Start over. One, two, three.)

“Luna.”

A whisper. Low and tender. Her name like honey on his tongue. Like something sacred.

She pulls back. She has to see his face. She has to see something that can anchor her back to the present, something that can give her an explanation to why she’s feeling this way. When their eyes meet, and she sees the love in his, she doesn’t have to speculate anymore. The first tear rolls down her cheek. Matteo cups her face in his hands.

“Are you upset?” he asks gently, and she shakes her head. “No? Then why are you crying?”

“I–I just … I don’t know …” She pauses to let out a small laugh. She has to prevent herself from rambling like she normally does when her feelings go haywire. “I just want to tell you, ‘yes’.”

“And you think I’m the corny one.” Matteo wipes some of her tears away with his thumbs. His smile is shy in that way that is solely reserved for her. He takes a long, deep breath. Then, he whispers: “Will you marry me?”

Luna smiles, too, but unlike his, it’s without any hesitation. She knows what she wants. Who she wants. Standing on her tiptoes, she brushes her lips against his.

“Yes,” she whispers back. “Yes, yes, yes. A million times yes. An infinite number of yes.”

His only reaction is to kiss her.

/

They don’t go out for dinner that evening.

Instead, they stay at home. After he’s given her the ring, and proposed to her a second time (because apparently the first one wasn’t serious enough for Matteo), they both find it quite impossible to let go of each other even for fraction of a minute. In between kisses, he tells her all the things he’s memorized from his speech.

And he was right – it does make her fall for him all over again.

#soy luna #lutteo #my writing

[bruinhilda]

So, I've been thinking about Gan and his limiter.  And I think there are some interesting implications the series never bothered to explore.

I'm not talking about the theory that Gan was actually a serial killer or the like.  I'm not going to diss that theory or anything, but no.  To me, his everyday behavior doesn't fit.  The limiter has one function; to keep Gan from killing. There's a whole host of bad behaviors it wouldn't prevent, and we are shown that it doesn't prevent Gan from non-lethally assaulting someone.

So how the hell does a computer chip decide intent?  It's not a complex AI device, so it's probably not reading his mind.  Did some neurosurgeon decide he found the synapse that trips when a person is about to kill and wire the implant to that?  And wouldn't this same synapse trip if a person was afraid for his life and want to remove that threat, or angry?  Does it calculate degree of emotion?  That would fit in with a number of scenes, and that's interesting in another way.

When Gan explains what he was in prison for, he doesn't tell us any real specifics.  He killed an armed trooper “because he killed my woman.”  He doesn't say her name, or use a more personal title, like “my wife” or. “my girlfriend.”  He's somewhat emotional when he relates this, stumbling over his words a little, and acting like someone who is keeping himself from talking about it.  Granted, he's talking to a hardened criminal, and that would make anyone sensible show a bit of restraint about details.  But still, “my woman” doesn't quite make sense with the level of emotion that had to be involved.

Unless emotional restraint was actually the point.  It's implied that Gan killed the trooper in a rage, probably right after the act, rather than coolly tracking him down and killing him days or weeks later. The implant is supposed to prevent a repeat of that.  And it seems to kick in when Gan's emotions would be highest.  When he's afraid enough or angry enough to kill.  Which could mean, it kicks in whenever Gan actually thinks about “his woman.”  Saying her name, going over the details of what happened to her and how he felt at her loss is replaying the exact emotions he felt when he killed her murderer.  He has probably spent weeks learning that any attempt to actually mourn her will cause that damned implant to put him down. Which doubles the Federation's crime against him.  They not only took away a good portion of his ability to fight back, they took away his ability to be furious about it, or ever come to terms with his loss. It seems like overkill, even for the Federation.

Except it's probably meant for a bigger purpose.  Throughout the series, the Federation has been shown to be deeply invested in keeping its citizens docile, usually through drugs, and conditioning when the drugs fail.  The implant is experimental, meaning it's a new idea.  And honestly, it can't really be meant for criminals like Gan.  They're dumping him in a prison colony, after all.  One so bad the transport crews won't actually set foot on the planet themselves.  And it seems like a terrible expense to go to in a society where shooting people for so little as trash talking authority is a normal response.

But it might be a grand idea if you want to control your citizens without drugging them into a stupor.  Get your lower grades all wired up, you can spare the drugs and have them fully coherent and energized while still unable to fight back when you make them work lethally-long shifts.  And look what happened when Gan's limiter malfunctioned!  It had the opposite effect, making him attack everyone he saw.  And he wasn't always out-of-control Hulk about it.  There's the little issue of him using trickery to get Cally to release him, and then trying to strangle her.  That's usually used as fodder for the “Gan was actually an extremely dangerous killer” argument, but if we take Gan at his word and at his behavior outside of that episode, it becomes even more disturbing.  Because it means the Federation might be able to wire up their disposable troops to be killing machines when they want to, say, clear a planet of those pesky, rebellious natives.

Obviously, we didn't see this in the series.  A terrible missed opportunity. (Which is Gan's entire rotten deal in a nutshell, really.)  And the Federation we're shown in the first two seasons is a society wobbling between higher ideals and the brutal reality of its vicious imperialism driven by corrupt, often psychopathic leaders.  But it seems like the sort of thing Servalan would have run full steam ahead with once the war and her coup removed all those restraining voices.

And maybe she did, considering she killed two subordinates with the push of a button in Children of Auron. Probably a very useful kill switch to have if you've been monkeying with your soldiers' minds.  And....we don't see her use it again. She usually just shoots people (or has them shot.)  Those kill switches can't be wildly distributed, or she would have resumed control of the Presidency very quickly after her ouster in season 4.

But then, there's another question.  How long would any of these implants work?

What the series doesn't mention (probably because the writers didn't have any idea of it) is the ability of the human brain to rewire itself to some extent to cope with damage.  Some people have not only survived extreme brain damage, a few have even recovered lost ability afterwards as different parts of the brain pick up the functions the lost/damaged parts originally handled.  

Gan at the start of the series is overly cheerful, and seems to be carefully controlling himself.  Later on, he's more natural, brawling without that “I could be kicked in the head at any moment” caution.  Yes, he's bound to have learned the limits of his limiter, but had he lived, he could have discovered that his own brain had started to override it.  If these synapses firing causes trouble, well, the brain can just learn to route things away from that damaged section if it really has to.  And Gan's brain really does have to, because he's not living quietly on a farm or a labor colony.  He's fighting. Those synapses are going to be continually tripping the limiter.  In fact, that may very well be what caused it to short out in the first place.  Gan was shown to have constant headaches he had to take medication for all the way up to Breakdown. Fixing the limiter seems to have ended them, but would it have if the limiter was restored to “proper function?”

The limiter malfunctioning was killing Gan.  It probably caused severe damage in his brain immediately around the implant.  Damage that might have cut off that synapse route entirely.  We never see the limiter kick in after Breakdown. Not once.  And Gan is not being less active.  He's fighting even more, in fact!

“I was actually starting to enjoy myself,” he tells Vila after his brawl on Cephalon in Deliverance. Yes, no guns involved, and he was defending himself and others, but still.  A fight, and he felt emotion during it, with no limiter feedback.  Gan's not as clever as Avon, but sooner or later, he would have thought it over and realized that the implant had stopped working entirely.  And that would have opened a lot of possibilities up to him.

It's a pity the show writers never thought of that, because they could have used it to do a lot more with Gan.  They could have at least given him another episode addressing other people the Federation tried the limiters on, and the consequences of that.

#Blake's 7 #Gan #pardon my rambling #but I'm organizing my thoughts on this #and it seemed the sort of thing others might want to comment on

[tinkdw]

Dean speculation for season 13

@postmodernmulticoloredcloak  from this post:

I think season 13 will continue the ‘season 6 reversal’ thing (...) Fatherhood. (I hope I’m not getting repetitive but hey, you’re going to hear me talk about this stuff until October and beyond, sorry - not sorry.)

Let me quote: “how do you do that and not turn into dad?” (it was about Lisa and Ben, now apply it to the situation right now - John became what he became after the love of his life was killed, sounds like something that has recently happened to someone we know?) And of course the line about not wanting to become like John - “You tell yourself you’re not gonna be something, you know? But my dad was exactly like this. All the time. It’s scaring the hell out of me”…

Anyway, I’ve made this digression to get to the fact that if season 13 continues the season 6 retelling, then I can see themes being “not becoming like your father” (I mean, obviously Jack’s entire story is going to be about that), and, well, something we’ve been talking about since the previous hiatus when we were speculating about s12 being a s6 retelling: that Sam’s “wall” is going to come down. This time, of course, not Death’s magical wall in his mind, but the mechanisms he’s put up to cope with the traumas of his childhood - basically the “non-supernatural” equivalent of that wall: when it comes down, it hurts, but it’s the only way for your self to become whole.

I was talking today about Dean being a character where contradictions coexist, but now that I’m thinking about it, Sam is a fragmented character. I mean, no wonder people write wildly different metas about Dean and fight over interpretations of him (they’re all correct, and that’s the point), and have trouble “understanding” Sam, 6x22 was the “extreme” version of how his self actually works: he needs to learn how to put the sides of himself together. Not to sound repetitive, but I can’t really see any other possible scenario for Sam but embracing magical powers in himself…

------

I love all of this :D

So, my 2 pence on this because I am very interested in this concept... 

We have all been talking about Dean grieving in season 13 and how this might play out, there’s been lots of discussing sobbing (unlikely), going full on into hunting / coping mode, being catatonic for a while, going through the 5 stages of grief... I was also just thinking today about the way he went mute as a kid after the trauma of losing Mary, a reminder from season 1, I mean there are lots of potential ways that this could go down. 

Personally so far my wishlist/personal speculation is that he will be very much John-esque in terms of potentially being mute / catatonic for a while in the first episode, needing to be snapped out of it by Sam (I’m remembering 12x19 when Sam had to shout twice to get Dean’s attention when he was pinning Cas against the wall in an emotional spin out) then yes, going pretty much MoC hunter-esque, just needing to kill SOMETHING (as a reminder of purgatory and searching for Cas, his MoC descent and more recently his conversation with Sam after Eileen died...).

Going full John is a really interesting idea... especially after in theory he has just reconciled this side of him or at least had the catalyst to doing so in 12x22, perhaps it is done and this won't happen and we will see Dean coping in a more Dean way, the full Dean with his facade down and a new, full and real version of Dean but on the other hand perhaps this 12x22 catalyst plus the catalyst as you say, of Dean losing Cas as a parallel to John losing Mary, will actually bring this totally to the forefront, making him enter full John mode in order for it to be TOTALLY destroyed in the end.

It also puts Sam into a new role as Dean’s brother but also puts Sam into Dean’s role towards John when they were kids. It would help Sam understand perhaps what Dean went through when John went the way he did due to Mary...

Anyway yeah, I love this idea as a concept and am interested in other people’s ideas :)

#season 13 speculation #dean sublimation winchester #spn 12x22 meta #spn 12x23 meta #destiel #supernatural meta #other peoples awesome meta #tinks meta

[thecinephale]

The Wachowski Sisters and the Importance of Behind-the-Scenes Representation

The second season of Sense8 came out a week after I did. Well, sort of. The first two episodes of the season had been released as a holiday special and by “came out” I mean I told my girlfriend, my best friend, and my therapist that I was genderqueer but unsure to what capacity. We both chose a gradual release strategy. 

I’ve seen portrayals of transness and gender nonconformity in film & television over the years. And, in fact, I blame many of these portrayals for why it took until now for me to begin coming out. It’s hard to watch Silence of the Lambs, as great of a movie as it may be otherwise, and go “Oh yeah! That’s me!” Instead I turned to the work of cis women filmmakers for identification. I just sort of accepted that for some reason I was a 15-year-old boy who found my closest identifiers in the work of Jane Campion.

The first time I truly felt a deep connection to a genderqueer character was watching Transparent, and I can’t help but connect that to Jill Soloway being themselves genderqueer and making a point of hiring cast and crew who are trans. That first week after coming out I turned to films because that’s how I cope. I was depressed by how little of myself I saw in The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and then surprised to tears how much I did see myself in Ed Wood’s misunderstood, I’d now call it a masterpiece, Glen or Glenda.

Before I turn back to Lana and Lilly Wachowski and Sense8, an important clarification should be made. Of course artists for centuries have told stories about people with different experiences than themselves and many have succeeded. There are no rules here. I’m sure Priscilla means a lot to some people who are trans and alternatively I know others can’t stand Transparent either due to the immense class and race privilege most of the characters have or due to the casting of Jeffrey Tambor, a cis man to play the lead. In addition, Soloway, Wood, and the Wachowskis deserve recognition purely as artists beyond their gender identity. I’m just speaking personally. When you’re rarely seen on screen, and even more rarely seen positively, there is power going into a work knowing the artist understands on a personal level. It’s a matter of trust and a matter of safety. I feel safe when I’m watching the Wachowskis’ work.

The Wachowskis began their career with the wildly entertaining and subtly subversive film noir, Bound. It’s a truly remarkable debut that takes a classic film noir story but centers on two women (and includes the Wachowskis’ burgeoning unique visual style). Due to the explicit queerness of this first film, the desire to approach all of their work from a queer perspective feels appropriate even if nothing was known about their personal lives. Suddenly the confectionary colors of Speed Racer feel less kids-only and the acting styles in Jupiter Ascending feel less accidental. And Cloud Atlas requires just about no depth of thought to see how its cast of gender-bending (and more problematically race-bending) characters represent transness. Rather their entire filmography begins to fit nicely into the ever-evolving, impossible to define, oft-limiting, oft-necessary umbrella category of Queer Cinema. Brigit McCone’s wonderful essay “Dysphoria Dystopias in The Matrix and Glen or Glenda” does an excellent job explaining these connections in the Wachowskis’ most famous work (Read that essay here! http://www.btchflcks.com/2015/09/dysphoria-dystopias-in-the-matrix-and-glen-or-glenda.html#.WWrmi9PyuL9).

Then in 2015 they released the first season of Sense8 which is just about the most Wachowski work the Wachowskis could ever dream of Wachowski-ing. And it is glorious. The show follows eight individuals from all around the world who share a metaphysical connection that ultimately allows them to inhabit each other’s bodies. The action is incredible, of course. There are sequences throughout the series that rank among the very best I’ve ever seen. The ways that the characters are able to jump in and out of each other’s bodies creates new opportunities allowing the show to completely reinvent the action sequence much the way the Wachowskis did a decade and a half earlier when they combined Hong Kong action, anime, and Hollywood SFX in The Matrix.

The craft in these sequences is impeccable but what truly makes them captivating is how much we care about the characters involved. The eight main “sensates” are complex and empathetic and the show spends at least as much time on their individual stories as it does the interconnected plot. These eight individuals share equal screen time but for me, and it seems for the Wachowskis, the two characters that matter most are both queer: Lito, the closeted gay actor from Mexico, and Nomi, the trans woman hacker from San Francisco (portrayed by a trans woman, Jamie Clayton, who is so good in the role that anything less than full blown movie stardom in her career will be proof of the industry’s prejudice). Both characters have partners so supportive that I’d suggest it was unrealistic if I wasn’t so fortunate to have a partner like that myself. Lito’s boyfriend, Hernando, is by his side as he begins the process of coming out under the public eye. And Nomi’s girlfriend, Amanita, is by her side as she runs away from the evil corporation trying to hunt all of them but especially her. 

It’s hardly a coincidence that in season one the sensate that is hunted down most vigorously is Nomi. The villains use Nomi’s transness and our society’s prejudices towards her identity as a way of holding her captive. They succeed in convincing Nomi’s mother that Nomi needs a lobotomy because her mother already believes her gender identity is a mental illness. The show is honest about the dangers trans people face while also using Amanita and the other sensates as a safety net so we feel hopeful instead of hopeless.

Towards the end of the second season Nomi expresses her gratitude to Amanita for supporting her through all of the danger that comes with being a sensate. Nomi: Is this our new normal? Amanita: I can think of a worse normal. Nomi: Are you okay with it? Amanita: What do you mean? Nomi: I mean, you didn’t sign up for all this. Amanita: It’s not like you did either. Nomi: But I didn’t have a choice. These voices are in my head whether I want them or not. Amanita: True. But when I think back I don’t remember being given a choice either. When this nerdy girl walked into City Lights and this voice in my head was telling me, “Whatever you do, do not let her go until you get her number.”

Sitting on the couch watching this scene next to my partner, it didn’t require a lot of deep thinking to read this exchange about coming out as a sensate as a metaphor for coming out as trans. The show it takes place in was co-created by two trans women and the scene stars a trans woman. The dialogue might be as corny as a scene from The Danish Girl but here it’s real corny. The kind of corny that’s been allowed in scenes between cis-het people since the beginning of cinema. I believe this scene, and this show, and this body of work, is a more accurate portrayal of transness than most Hollywood attempts. But maybe it just goes back to the trust I have in these women telling their own stories. And even if that trust is the only difference I don’t think it’s any less important.

Last year at the GLAAD Media Awards, Lilly Wachowski made the following statement: “There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I’s work through the lens of our transness. This is a cool thing because it’s an excellent reminder that art is never static. And while the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.” 

As I’ve obsessed over their work these past few months, I felt this love. And I needed this love. I’m just really grateful that two unique, visionary trans women filmmakers are out there allowing me to feel seen. 

#sense8 #the wachowskis #trans #transgender #gender queer #lgbtq #representation #queer cinema #comingout #renew sense8 #bring back sense8 #they did #nomanita #bound #the matrix #speed racer #jupiter ascending #transparent #glen or glenda

[theconservativebrief]

Every week, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for August 12 through 18 is “409,” the ninth episode of the fourth season of Showtime’s The Affair.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes one singular episode of a show changes how I feel about that show entirely.

Usually, that episode is in the first season, often late in the game, and it shows me that a series I had written off as shallow has other depths buried somewhere within it. The example I almost always point to is how the penultimate episode of Halt and Catch Fire’s first season played a marvelous trick on the characters and audience, revealing the long game the series was playing. But it can arrive in the second season occasionally — as when Buffy the Vampire Slayer went from a show I enjoyed to one I was obsessed with thanks to a memorable second season twist.

And, of course, it’s possible for affections to travel in the opposite direction as well. I remember quite clearly the second episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived, ill-fated attempt to follow up The West Wing with a series about a late-night sketch comedy show) rudely informing me how few clothes this well-reviewed emperor was wearing.

But airing an episode that completely changes how I think about a series in the fourth season? I don’t know that I can think of another example of a show that did this — at least until Showtime’s The Affair.

Ben is two very different people in this episode. But that’s the point. Showtime

The Affair is one of those shows I halfheartedly follow. I loved the pilot, found season one to feature diminishing returns, then largely abandoned the show somewhere in early season three, when I felt like it had completely run out of story to tell. I still read recaps for episodes people were wild about, but I didn’t watch myself.

Then, early in season four, the handful of people I trust who still watch this show had such wildly divergent opinions on the season — some loving it and some hating it — that I decided to keep up, as best I could. I haven’t seen every episode, and the show still does many of the things that annoy me (about which more in a second), but count me closer to the “love it” camp than the “hate it” one. And in the season’s ninth episode, the entire series finally crystallized for me, in a way it just hadn’t before.

Viewers enter the episode knowing (from the end of episode eight) that the show’s female lead, Alison (the brilliant Ruth Wilson), has died, apparently of suicide. She drowned in the ocean waves near her home, and both of her ex-husbands, Cole (Joshua Jackson) and Noah (Dominic West), identify her body at the morgue.

Yet viewers know much of the season has been told out of sequence, meaning there’s ample room to leap back in the timeline just far enough to show Alison’s final moments. And thanks to The Affair’s central storytelling device — almost all episodes are split in half and told from two different characters’ point-of-view, exposing contradictions and differences in how they see the world — such a flashback would be even easier to pull off.

That brings us to “409,” which brilliantly upends the device, using it against the audience and the show itself. Both halves of the episode are told from Alison’s point-of-view, depicting her final moments alive. The only other actor featured is Ramon Rodriguez, who plays her new boyfriend, Ben. Alison has discovered Ben is married, and not wanting to repeat her mistakes with Noah (the affair that gives the show its title), she tries to break things off with him.

The first half of the episode plays as a romantic fantasy. It’s Ben who comes clean about his marriage, though he says it’s over and he wants only to be with Alison now. When she asks him to go, he acquiesces, though a dripping faucet (which he fixes) and an offer of dinner keep him around just long enough for the two to fall into each other’s arms after they confess their darkest secrets to each other. (Ben killed a child when he was a Marine on a tour in Iraq; Alison blames herself for the death of her son, which happened before the series began.) It is a lovely dream of acceptance, but it ends with the hint that Alison is still contemplating suicide.

Then the second half of the episode arrives. Here, Ben is angry. He lies when Alison asks him if he has a wife. He says he killed the Iraqi child intentionally, even though he knew the RPG the kid held was nonfunctional, because what else do you do with “vermin”? He’s weepy and needy and desperate, falling off the wagon back into alcoholism, and when Alison finally confronts him about his wife, he shoves her against the wall, then throws her so she cracks her head on a table. He takes her outside and deposits her in the waves, her body sinking to the ocean floor.

Yet I don’t think The Affair is doing anything so simple as, “Which story is true?” Yeah, you can play that game. The first version lines up with what the police tell Noah and Cole, but the second feels more true, in some barely perceptible way. (It does, after all, end with Alison plunging beneath the waves, where the first doesn’t.) But there’s more going on here. Alison’s final voiceover, which she speaks as Ben carries her barely conscious body out into the sea, underlines the cruelest part of Alison’s death: It ends her story, allowing others to define it for her. In part, she says:

I have been in pain my entire life. And maybe that’s what makes people think that I’m weak. And maybe that makes people treat me like some sort of receptacle for all their grief and rage and disappointment. But I am fucking sick of it. I just want to live a different life. I want to live a different story.

It’s a brilliant statement of purpose that made me rethink how I watch the show.

For the most part, The Affair is not a series where we fear for the characters’ lives, but “409’s” script (by co-creator and showrunner Sarah Treem) underlines how death robs us of what agency we have in telling our own stories. Perhaps Alison will live again, getting to tell some newer, happier story. Or maybe she will be resurrected as herself, doomed to live out these events over and over. But in this life, this incarnation as Alison, she no longer can try to define how the world sees her. On a show defined by point-of-view, hers is now a void.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room.

Goodbye, Ruth Wilson. Showtime

When I initially saw “409,” I was gobsmacked by the way it felt as if it had been a planned story turn from the very earliest days of the show. When Showtime picked the series up for a fifth season, it announced that the show would be ending with that fifth season, and the death of Alison, perhaps the series’ most integral character, seemed as good a catalyst as any to bring the show’s characters back together for one last storyline.

If I have had an overriding complaint about the series, it has always been that Wilson was so good and Alison so potent a character that together they threw into relief just how weak much of the rest of the show could be, despite its blockbuster cast. Alison is coping with the heaviness of trying to live her life under the shadow of crippling depression, and the other characters are dealing with serious but mostly manageable problems. That caused the series to occasionally spin its wheels or descend into unmotivated melodrama. But the death of Alison is good melodrama, in that it feels deeply rooted in her character and should give everybody else on the show something to play.

And then I started reading more.

I had not realized that Wilson earlier this year pointed out the pay discrepancy between her and West. She said that she understood the disparity at the start of the series (when he was a much more established star), but that it no longer made sense. By that point in the series, Alison had become the most pivotal character, and it was long after Wilson had won a Golden Globe for the role. The discussion and resulting controversy was mostly relegated to The Affair fandom, so if you missed it (as I did), there’s an easy explanation for doing so.

But more news has come out about Wilson’s departure from the show. Treem said that Wilson requested to leave, and Wilson said at an event promoting her new movie, The Little Stranger, that she’s not allowed to talk about why she left The Affair, implying some sort of nondisclosure agreement was signed. That’s hardly typical for an actor leaving a TV show; usually everybody involved comes up with as good a cover story as they can muster, or tells some version of the truth. And it led many to wonder if the pay disparity was a big part of why Wilson left the series.

We likely won’t know for several years, when those involved in the show finally decide enough time has passed to come clean (though who knows how many Affair questions will be asked of them once the series is over). But for as much as I thought “409” was brilliant television, I can’t deny that the shady circumstances that led to its creation cast a pall over it, all the same.

This, I suppose, is the irony of an episode that depicts a woman trying to seize agency in her own life, trying to take control of her story, only to discover someone else may be able to snuff that story out (if you believe that’s what “really” happened in the show). The set-up seems to have come into existence because the actress playing that woman tried to grab hold of her own sense of agency. Was she rebuffed? Cast out? Made to believe she was a thorn in the show’s side? We may never know.

But I do know that “409” is terrific, and Wilson is terrific in it. And as Alison sinks beneath the waves, wondering if she might live a life with less pain, The Affair finally becomes what I hoped it could be all along: a meditation on how little control we have over our own stories when others are involved, on how frustrating it can be to realize that you will always be defined by others’ eyes. That this lesson applies both to Alison and the woman playing her is a cruel irony, but still a necessary one.

The Affair airs Sundays at 9 pm Eastern on Showtime. Catch up with all previous episodes on the network’s streaming platforms.

Original Source -> The Affair’s latest, greatest episode holds a difficult irony at its core

via The Conservative Brief

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ET Obsessions: ‘Deadpool 2,’ ‘13 Reasons Why,’ Timothee Chalamet T-Shirts and More!

Here at ET, we’re obsessed with all things pop culture -- and here’s what we’re most excited about this week:

 Why We’re Obsessed With Deadpool 2 Ryan Reynolds is back as Wade Wilson, the hilariously snide, fourth-wall breaking, masked crusader, in the second installment of the Deadpool franchise. The spinoff of the ongoing X-Men series sees Wade recruiting fellow mutants to form X-Force in order to protect a young mutant, Russell (Julian Dennison), from the time-traveling, mostly shirtless Cable (Josh Brolin). Like the first film, Deadpool 2 is at its best when the titular hero lobs snarky commentary at everyone from the audience to his fellow X-Men as well as other caped heroes from other Marvel franchises. While recent superhero films -- Black Panther, Wonder Woman -- have been shattering box office records and earning awards season buzz, Deadpool 2 is expected to kick off the summer film season with a huge opening and it will definitely be a contender thanks to Celine Dion’s opening credits ballad, “Ashes,” which is about as Oscar-bait as one can get. Of course, the sequel comes with plenty of fanfare, including partnerships with Espolòn, which released an exclusive collector's set featuring the tequila's new "creative director of culture n' stuff" Deadpool himself, and Trolli, which is selling Sour Brite Tiny Hands inspired by Deadpool's regenerative powers exclusively in 7-Eleven stores. Deadpool 2 (20th Century Fox)is in theaters May 18.

 Why We’re Obsessed With 13 Reasons Why

Adapted from Jay Asher’s YA novel and executive produced by Selena Gomez, 13 Reasons Why was -- not surprisingly -- a huge hit on Netflix, when it debuted on the streaming network last year. The story about the mysterious death of Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford), who left behind a box of cassette tapes with clues about her suicide, picks up a few months after season one with Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) seeking justice for Hannah as he, Jessica Davis (Alisha Boe) and other students continue to cope with her loss while facing their own demons and lies. “It's naturally going to progressively get to a more emotional place due to the nature of the story we're telling,” Minnette revealed to ET, adding that while there’s plenty of new stories, audiences “will learn more about familiar events” of the past. Holding fans over until the release of season two is Gomez’s new single, “Back to You”, an electropop ballad about past love, from the show’s soundtrack.

13 Reasons Why (Netflix) returns May 18.

 Why We’re Obsessed With The Favorite Sister

Jessica Knoll knows how to make a splash. Her first book, The Luckiest Girl Alive, was a wildly successful debut, selling 450,000 copies, spending months on the New York Times’ best-sellers list and even found a fan in Reese Witherspoon, who purchased the rights to bring Knoll’s thriller to the screen. Now, the author, whose work has garnered comparisons to Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) and Ruth Ware (The Girl on the Train), is back with her second novel, The Favorite Sister, another irresistible thriller. This time, Knoll tells the story of five successful and competitive New York women -- including two sisters -- who agree to appear on the reality TV series Goal Diggers, which pits the cast against each other until the season ends in murder. Opening with a tell-all interview with the show’s surviving sister and star, the book then jumps back in time to depict how the lives of these women became interwoven until a twist ending brings it all together.

The Favorite Sister (Simon & Schuster) is available May 15.

 Why We’re Obsessed With Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour

Following her musical performance on Saturday Night Live, we can’t stop jamming to Kacey Musgraves’ critically acclaimed new album, Golden Hour, which was first released in March. Taking the stage at studio 8H, Musgraves channeled Cher as she performed the disco-tinged “High Horse” and later followed up with the album opener, “Slow Burn.” After the Mother’s Day-themed episode, which was hosted by Amy Schumer, Musgraves released a video clip for “Mother,” a tear-jerking tribute to her own mom, on Sunday, ensuring we couldn’t escape the singer the entire weekend. Golden Hour, which Musgraves described to Rolling Stoneas “space country,” is a genre-defying delight and deserves repeat plays this summer.

Golden Hour (MCA Nashville) is out now.

 Why We’re Obsessed With Timothee Chalamet T-shirts

When Call Me by Your Name screenwriter James Ivory walked the red carpet at the 2018 Academy Awards and later accepted the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, fans were immediately taken with his custom T-shirt, featuring the likeness of Timothee Chalamet’s character, Elio, designed by artist Andrew Mania painted across the chest. Inspired by the character wearing a Matisse-themed shirt in the final scenes of the film, Mania designed an homage to the burgeoning screen idol, which quickly became a viral sensation and, after a couple of months of saying, “Where can I get my own shirt?,” it is now available to everyone. Dubbed the “James Ivory 2018 Oscars Commemorative Series,” the artist is selling various T-shirts as well as tote bags, iPhone cases and posters of the now-iconic Chalamet design. The collection is a must-have for any diehard fan of the film directed by Luca Guadagnino, who is working hard on a sequel, which will reunite Chalamet and co-star Armie Hammer.

The James Ivory 2018 Oscars Commemorative Series is now available from Mania T-shirts.

 RELATED CONTENT:

14 Movies to See in May 2018: 'Deadpool 2,' 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' and More

Ryan Reynolds Says 'Deadpool 3' Might Not Happen -- Here's Why

'13 Reasons Why' Season 2: Everything You Need to Know

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[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: The Garden of Words

I’d recently had the good fortune of visiting my parents over Christmas, which means I had access to the Almighty Santa Clara Library System! Which, for new readers, means I could watch Animes I don’t normally have easy access to.

There were two particular must-watches I had targeted, the first of which was The Garden of Words.

Makoto Shinkai has been lauded as “The Next Miyazaki” by fools trying to convey that Shinkai will be the next great Japanese Animation director without actually knowing enough to see that the two produce wildly different sorts of content,[1] with the only common point being beautiful backgrounds, and even then, it’s beauty derived from different techniques with different results, since Shinkai accomplishes photo realism while Miyazaki captures wonder and emotion.

Still, Shinkai has made one movie I loved (Your Name), one I thought was hilariously bad (Children who Chase Lost Voices), and one that bored me into just not watching it through (The Place Promised in our Early Days). With how lauded the man’s become, with such a wide range of personal reactions to his work, obviously I’m curious to keep digging.[2]

So, I did.

The Garden of Words is a good film.

Which, unfortunately, makes it kind of difficult to discuss. It tells a relatively simple story, and executes on it well. It’s set in the normal world, so there’s no fantastical elements for me to dig into. It’s a simple story about two people adrift in the world who meet occasionally.

That said, I would throw it towards the Your Name end of the quality scale, so you should watch it.

If there’s something I can happily laude is that, finally, I watched something that doesn’t take the creepy route with the possibility of a Teacher/Student romance. Initially, Yukari[3] and Takao don’t know they’re a teacher and student at the same school. Even before that, it never feels like Yukari has romantic intentions towards Takao, leaving the young boy with a one-sided crush that has no chance of being returned.

I mean, Yukari does invite Takao to her place for the climax, but that’s played more of her inviting a friend over than a lover, and when Takao confesses to her, she shuts it down.

So that’s nice to finally see. It’s been so long…

The film’s ultimately about how life can weigh you down at any age. Takao has just started attending High School, and wants to pursue a career in making shoes, a passion that his older brother explicitly says (behind Takao’s back) that he doesn’t see going anywhere. During this awkward time of transition, Takao’s mother has essentially moved in with her younger boyfriend, Takao’s brother is moving in with his own girlfriend, and Takao’s father is just missing, leaving Takao suddenly abandoned by his family and with no other personal connections.

As part of coping, Takao begins to skip school, justifying it by only doing so while it’s raining. Obviously, during the rainy season, this negatively impacts his grades and school relationship. He also goes to the same gazebo to just… let the world move without him.

It’s a desire I can sympathize with. Just a personal agreement to flee certain stresses from time to time. Of course, I had parents who won’t let me get away with some attempts, so it might be a situation I even envy.

Anyways, it’s while visiting the gazebo one rainy day when he meets Yukari, who is deep in depression.

As much as I recognize the motivations of Takao, it’s Yukari I sympathize with.

When we meet her, she’s in the middle of a horrendously dark period of her life. Not only is she suffering depression to such a clear degree that I’m comfortable diagnosing it from my armchair, but a student has been spreading horribly slanderous lies about her having relations with a student. These sorts of rumors could destroy Yukari’s life and career. Further, as far as I can tell, she’s got no emotional support outside of an ex-boyfriend, which is not a good place to be as far as stable relationships go, even if the two seem very cordial.

So no wonder she’s taken to sitting in a park eating chocolate and drinking beer, the only things that bring her any measure of pleasure. Sure, they say it’s also because of some sort of taste disorder, but that goes away over the course of the film, so even her lack of desire to eat most foods sounds like depression.

She’s on course to lose her job, none of her passions seem to bring her fire, and suddenly this young boy adrift in life comes to her gazebo. Well, if she can’t fix her problems, why not this boy’s? At least she’ll contribute something small.

Maybe you could interpret her actions as leading Takao on or using him as an emotional crutch, as Takao does, and in a small way that could be true, but it’s clearly not intentional. And when Takao confesses his feelings, she has the maturity and integrity to immediately shut him down and firmly set a boundary. She’s an authority figure and he’s a minor, and playing house is neither appropriate or healthy for the two of them.

By gum, after Raine Sage, Lupin, and freaking Lucoa, it’s so nice to finally see the adult do the right thing. This film deserves some sort of medal for clearing this stupidly low standard that it’s actually offensive that I even have to praise it for not having an adult fall in love with a literal teenager (or younger![4]).

The thing with The Garden of Words is that, though narrated by Takao, I really feel like it’s Yukari’s story. Takao doesn’t change much over the course of the story. He knows he wants to study shoemaking at the start and, once Yukari gifts him an expensive textbook on the craft, he just follows that ambition. Yukari, meanwhile, starts in the darkest pit of her life, meets a youth at risk at being as adrift as she is, and decides to try to give him the encouragement and support she lacks. By helping Takao, she’s finally able to see hope again, and takes inspiration from him to try again.

She finally closes the chapter of her life in the city and moves to a rural town to teach there.

Then, in one timeline, a meteor kills her, but then again, in another no one dies?

I’m game for this potential Shinkai-verse that Yukari’s cameo in Your Name implies.

The Garden of Words is a good, if short, film. I recommend it if you can get ahold of it and have the time necessary for, say, a standard hour-episode of a television show, without the commercials.

Now, to find 5 Centimeters per Second and Voices of a Distant Star.

And, if you want to help me find my feet again, may I gently wave in the direction of my Patreon? I post my reviews there as soon as they’re finished, and you get to see the strips for my new webcomic a full week early! Other than that… guess we can parallel the rainy gazebo scenes if you send me asks and comments?

I can make a lot of personal comparisons with this film. Weird that I don’t love it more…

Kataal kataal.

[1] This is why I tend to nod my head towards Mamoru Hosoda as the Next Miyazaki. The two play with similar tropes. [2] Hey, I only have two more of his films to watch! If I can find them... [3] Yukari feels like a name I’ve been seeing more recently, especially with teachers... [4] You had such potential Lucoa, you horrible creature!

#CanvasWatches #anime #the garden of words #CanvasReviews