#ever after arc. ❖﹙shame that it took so long to rescue me ⋄ from the guilt you used to tie me to your family tree.﹚

[hartofhearts]

Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis

Alternate title: “What really happened in the Lifestream”

Of course the Lifestream scene has been discussed to death within the fandom. While some consider it one of the greatest triumphs of the Cloud/Tifa relationship and the game in general, others are quick to diminish its events and Tifa’s role. “Oh, any other childhood friend character who knew Cloud could do the job.” “Oh, Cloud only needed Tifa as moral support, he could have figured everything out himself.” “Oh, Aerith (maybe +Zack) could have done it by accessing her Cetra/time machine/empath/Planet powers.”

The Lifestream sequence is extraordinarily dense with many subtle visual cues, so there’s a lot to untangle and interpret. But no matter how you slice it, any take which downplays or eliminates Tifa is fundamentally missing the point of this scene, both for the plot and for Cloud’s character arc.

A lot of the confusion stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually needs to happen in the Lifestream and why. Thus, using specific details from the sequence, I’d like to present my take on the following:

Part 1: What Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream to advance the plot

Part 2: Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis, where we will discuss fun things such as:

Why Tifa is the the focus of his greatest flaw

What Tifa’s presence in the Lifestream accomplishes

Part 3: Why those “Tifa-less” fan theories just can’t work

This is a very long ride so let’s get to it!

Part 1: What Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream to advance the plot

Many fans think that all Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream is prove to himself that he existed before the Nibelheim incident. This seems to make sense, as Cloud’s mental break at Northern Crater was due him losing faith that he was truly Cloud Strife of Nibelheim, right?

But that isn’t the only thing that needs to happen. Consider this: Ex-SOLDIER Cloud does believe that he is Cloud Strife of Nibelheim for almost the entirety of the game’s first half. However, Ex-SOLDIER Cloud couldn’t correctly remember the Nibelheim incident back at Kalm, and he occasionally exhibits alarming behavior (his headaches, his attempts on Aerith’s life). So the goal of the Lifestream sequence is not to restore Cloud to this previous flawed state, but... to accomplish something more. Accomplish something that will resolve the aforementioned issues by strengthening him against Jenova’s influence.

There are two ways to strengthen Cloud against the influence of the Jenova hivemind:

Rebuild Cloud’s sense of self by identifying and accepting his personal weakness -- without writing a whole other post, individuals injected with Jenova cells are susceptible to influence by the Jenova hivemind if they have a weak sense of self and weak will; thus, Cloud needs to fully understand and accept who he truly is, weaknesses and all, in order to withstand further Jenova tampering

Establish the truth of the Nibelheim incident -- until then, silver-tongued Sephiroth/Jenova will always be able to cast doubt on Cloud’s existence using the discrepancies between Cloud’s and Tifa’s memories

And wouldn’t you know it, but the Lifestream sequence does end up accomplishing all three of these things. It:

Proves that Cloud Strife of Nibelheim existed before the Nibelheim incident

Rebuilds Cloud’s sense of self by identifying and accepting his personal weakness

Establishes the truth of the Nibelheim incident

Something to note re: #3 - Establishes the truth of the Nibelheim incident: this is actually extremely challenging to do, as the truth lies solely within Cloud, but is blocked due to his own mental weakness. This is why the Lifestream sequence begins with Cloud trying and failing to correctly remember the Nibelheim incident: while he superficially does want to understand the truth of the incident, deep down he does not want to acknowledge his personal failings that are on full display in the true memory. It is only after Cloud accepts his personal weakness that he is able to face the full truth, failings and all.

So really, #2 - Rebuild Cloud’s sense of self by accepting his personal weakness is the most pivotal portion of the Lifestream sequence, as this empowers Cloud on a personal level and also allows him to remember the Nibelheim incident correctly. And as it happens, this is the portion that only Tifa can help with.

Part 2: Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis

We’ve just discussed how rebuilding Cloud’s sense of self by helping him accept his personal weakness is one of the most important goals of the Lifestream sequence--and now I’d like to explain how this can only be accomplished with Tifa’s help and no one else’s.

>> Tifa is the focus of Cloud’s greatest weakness

I think that every fan, including non-shippers and anti-Tifa fans, will agree that Cloud is insecure and has a desperate need for acceptance. But because he needs to resolve and accept this greatest weakness, his shame, the real question is... when did it become pathological? What is it focused on, and what makes it his tragic flaw? The answers will give us a hint as to what Cloud needs to come to terms with his true self.

This is shown to us in the Mt. Nibel memory--the day Tifa’s mother died. And it is actually explicitly told to us by a very important entity...

...A blacked out, silhouetted version of Cloud that casually climbs out of his slack adult form. This silhouetted version of Cloud represents the deep dark secrets about himself that Cloud has hidden away for so long, and it tells us what exactly is on its mind. 

Let’s review everything Deep Dark (DD) Cloud says:

Young Cloud: I began to think I was different... That I was different from those immature kids. That then... maybe... DD: Just maybe, they would invite me in. I thought that might happen, so I hung around...

...

DD: That night I called Tifa out to the well... I thought to myself Tifa would never come... that she hated me.

...

YC: This was the day... DD: Tifa's mother... T: The day Mom died...

...

DD: I don't remember the path I walked. Tifa missed her step. I ran to her... but didn't make it in time. Both of us fell off the cliff. Back then, I only scarred my knees but...

...

DD: Tifa was in a coma for seven days. We all thought she wouldn't make it. If only I could've saved her... I was so angry... Angry at myself for my weakness. Ever since then, I felt Tifa blamed me... I got out of control... I'd get into fights not even caring who it was.

(fade to black)

DD: That was the first time I heard about Sephiroth. If I got strong like Sephiroth, then everyone might...

(return to the nexus/Cloud’s mind)

DD: If I could just get stronger... Then even Tifa would have to notice me...

Many fans fixate on DD Cloud’s very first line (”just maybe, they would invite me in”), and I understand why--not only is the first satisfying eureka moment in the Lifestream, but it’s also deeply relatable. Who hasn’t felt like an outsider and wanted acceptance and approval? These same players then attribute all of Cloud’s motivations to this relatable feeling. “Cloud had a deep inferiority complex and wanted to prove himself to the world and that’s why he pretends to be the super coolest SOLDIER ever.”

But that interpretation completely ignores the other 90% of what DD Cloud says. The other 90% of Cloud’s shame is wrapped up in Tifa. “Tifa’s mom died... I tried to save Tifa, but I got off relatively unscathed while she suffered terrible injuries... Tifa must have hated me... I thought Tifa wouldn’t come to the well because she hated me... I wanted to be like Sephiroth so Tifa would notice me...” Even if a little bit of Cloud’s motivations are attributable to the contempt of the townspeople, the vast majority of it is focused on Tifa--would she always hate him? Would she ever notice him? Could he ever be worthy of her? DD Cloud’s dialogue reveals that Cloud’s shame and tragic flaw is completely centered on his need for Tifa’s approval. Perhaps only his pedestaled perception of Tifa, but Tifa all the same.

The "Cloud wants to impress all the kids” interpretation also ignores what the cinematography of this scene is telling us. The “big takeaway” of the Nibelheim memory and DD Cloud’s reveal is the single sentence that DD Cloud speaks after the memory is over and lights turn back on and they’re back at the nexus--the sentence that he “took away” from the previous scene. And look! It’s this one!

DD: If I could just get stronger... Then even Tifa would have to notice me...

THIS. THIS IS IT. This is the root of Cloud’s shame and explains his pathological need to misremember himself as a SOLDIER and thus misremember the Nibelheim incident at all costs: he was ashamed at his inability to rescue Tifa and Mt. Nibel, so he swore to himself that he would get stronger to earn her notice. Cloud needs to be strong so Tifa will notice him; thus, Cloud creates an illusionary world where he misremembers his own identity and the Nibelheim incident in a way that makes him a strong man that is finally worthy of her. 

This is the personal weakness that Cloud needs to resolve in the Lifestream with Tifa’s help: he needs to learn that it is okay to not be the strong man, because Tifa will accept him regardless.

(And, sidebar, Cloud’s need for Tifa’s approval is not just some fleeting childhood dream in the distant past--even in present day, Ex-SOLDIER Cloud can’t bear to remember how he failed to be a stronger man for Tifa, because even in the present day, Tifa’s opinion of him is all that counts.)

>> What Tifa’s presence in the Lifestream accomplishes

While the above proves how Cloud’s personal weakness (his tragic flaw) revolves around Tifa and his feelings for her... we now need to answer, why does Cloud need Tifa to be in the Lifestream with him to work through these feelings? And this, I believe, comes down to two, very subtle, shown-not-told points:

Cloud’s honesty depends on Tifa’s presence, as Cloud’s need for Tifa to understand his feelings is greater than his need to hide his painful weaknesses from himself

Cloud draws strength from “his important person” (no matter how you want to define her: his main motivation, the person he’s been in love with forever...) accepting him and providing moral support

Let’s work through these in order.

REASON #1 -  Cloud’s honesty depends on Tifa’s presence, as Cloud’s need for Tifa to understand his feelings is greater than his need to hide his painful weaknesses from himself

This one is very easy to miss, but is illustrated in two key ways. First, did you know that DD Cloud speaks early on in the Lifestream, even before the Mt. Nibel memory? His two lines are:

T: Now that you mention it, why did you want to join SOLDIER in the first place? I always thought it was a sudden decision you made... DD: ...I was devastated. ...I wanted to be noticed. Adult Cloud: ...I was devastated. ...I wanted to be noticed. I thought if I got stronger I could get someone to notice... T: Someone to notice you...? ...who? DD: Who...? ...You know who! ...You, that's who. AC: You... T: ...Me? Why!? YC: Tifa... did you forget... about those days?

Those two lines are definitely DD Cloud’s; in the earlier photos, we see that DD Cloud’s speech bubbles don’t have a background box. These new two lines are similarly background box-less. Moreover, these lines cannot be attributed to Adult Cloud or Young Cloud. See the below comparison photos:

DD vs. Adult Cloud’s vs. Young Cloud’s speech bubbles:

What’s very interesting is the tone of the second line (”Who...? ...You know who! ...You, that's who”); this is the only exclamation that Cloud uses in the entire sequence until all the revelations of the Nibelheim Incident re-memory. DD Cloud is startled into indignance that Tifa has no idea that he’s been trying to impress her all along. (DD Cloud is like, “Tifa, the past 12 years of my life were entirely motivated by you, are you telling me that literally none of this has gotten through to you!!?”) Even if DD Cloud were dormant and hidden this entire time, the ignominy of Tifa not understanding the effort he made for her for 12 years is just too much for him to suffer through silently. 

The significance of this moment is actually incredible: the Deep Dark Secret that Cloud has been hiding from this entire time, the Deep Dark Secret that Cloud would rather die/go comatose than acknowledge... this Deep Dark Secret indignantly reveals itself just because Tifa apparently doesn’t know about it! Cloud’s need for Tifa to understand his Deep Dark Secret is even greater than Cloud’s need to be honest with himself to prevent his clone coma. 

And this becomes a trend that continues up to the Mt. Nibel memory--Cloud is reluctant to revisit these memories, and only does so because he wants Tifa to understand his feelings. Almost every other line we see Cloud’s reluctance, his disbelief at Tifa’s cluelessness, and him forcing himself to open up so Tifa can know what he’s been obsessing over for 12 years. See the dialogue yourself (my notes in square brackets):

YC: Tifa...... did you forget...... about those days? [Cloud’s disbelief that Tifa doesn’t know]

...

YC:  It's important to me... I hate to say it but... It's a very important memory... [Cloud’s reluctance to revisit the memory]  Do you want to see it? Come on, hurry. [Cloud’s need for Tifa to see]

...

AC: ...a sealed up secret... wish... Tender memories... no one can ever know... [Cloud’s reluctance to revisit the memory]

YC: Do you know where this window goes to, Tifa? [Cloud’s disbelief that Tifa doesn’t know]  Fine... I'll go. [Cloud’s need for Tifa to see]

Again, this is a tremendous moment. Cloud is only motivated to honesty for Tifa’s benefit, and takes each reluctant step towards the truth because Tifa is right next to him with all her cluelessness. In his desire to be honest for Tifa, Cloud ends up being honest for himself as well... Tifa’s presence is the only reason why Cloud can be honest to himself in the Lifestream. If not for her, Cloud never would have broached those painful memories and never would have resolved his crisis.

One last thing I want to highlight is that Cloud wouldn’t open up like this for anyone. Reread this line: “Tender memories... no one can ever know.”  If anyone else was in the Lifestream with Cloud--or if it was just Cloud by himself--DD Cloud would never have felt the need to express himself. He would have stayed hidden, preferring for Cloud and the others to forever perceive him as the super cool SOLDIER instead of a “weak man” who couldn’t even save the girl he loved back on Mt. Nibel or fulfill his promise to her.

REASON #2 - Cloud draws strength from Tifa (the object of his shame/his fellow Nibelheim survivor/the person he’s been trying to win the attention of forever/the person he’s loved for 12 years) accepting him and providing moral support

This one is the most subtle as it’s mostly shown and the dialogue is not explicit, but the scene simply does not work without it. It is thanks to Tifa’s support that Cloud is brave enough to correctly remember the Nibelheim incident. 

After DD Cloud says his final line in the nexus, he looks away from Tifa. 

Can’t even make eye contact with her, even though he was able to back in the Mt. Nibel memory. He must think that now that all the cards are on the table, Tifa will reject him in some way. Maybe she will heap on the blame for failing to save her at Mt. Nibel, or be disgusted that he dared try to win her notice, but whatever it is, he expects some kind of rejection. But... that’s not what happens. Instead, Tifa implicitly absolves him of any guilt or shame by apologizing to him instead.

DD: If I could just get stronger... Then even Tifa would have to notice me...

T: So that was it... Sorry, Cloud. If I had only remembered more clearly what happened, I could have done something sooner...

...

So not only does Tifa fail to reject Cloud, but she also implies that Cloud is completely faultless, as she would have corrected the townspeople’s misconceptions about Cloud if she’d only known. Tifa plainly supports Cloud and does not blame him for Mt. Nibel.

Moreover, she continues to encourage Cloud after this moment. Soon after, Tifa exclaims:

T: Hang in there Cloud! Just a little longer! You've almost found the real you!

It’s only after Tifa’s words of encouragement that both Adult Cloud and DD Cloud merge into one another. This is a powerful moment; it shows that Adult Cloud hasn’t lost those deep, sealed away feelings, but has finally made peace with them. Cloud’s deep dark feelings are still a part of him but no longer hold him back; he no longer needs to misremember himself as a strong man for Tifa because Tifa accepts him as he is.

The game then explicitly shows Tifa and Cloud behaving with a togetherness that we haven’t seen the entire game--these two have finally overcome the distance between them and are able to tackle the world as a team. Cloud can finally be brave because he knows Tifa won’t leave his side.

And the game shows us this. First, Tifa, Adult Cloud, and DD Cloud all resolutely hold their fists up in unison (so ‘90s shounen anime, I love it):

Then they run into the Nibelheim memory together, side by side, literally in lockstep--look how every foot step is in sync:

This is different from previous memories, where one is always following the other or doing different things. What it shows us is that after Cloud comes clean about his shame and Tifa accepts him as he is, the two are closer together than ever before. Cloud feels brave enough to properly remember the Nibelheim incident when he has Tifa with him. 

And it’s telling that the very first moment Cloud tries to remember is...

...the memory of Tifa being injured. Not the memories of him stabbing Sephiroth (or being stabbed by him), not the memories of Zack being injured, not the memory of Cloud putting on his helmet to hide his shame. If he were still afraid of Tifa’s disappointment, Cloud would not choose to relive this as his very first memory. Yet Cloud picks a painful moment that includes Tifa, trusting that they can work through it as a team. I know I keep on saying it, but it’s the truth: Cloud is empowered to fully face his deepest shame and weakness because he knows that the real Tifa accepts him as he is and will stay by his side.

Part 3: So what does this mean for those “alternate fan theories?”

Phew! That was a lot. Let’s recheck our notes on what the Lifestream scene needs to accomplish:

Prove that Cloud Strife of Nibelheim existed before the Nibelheim incident

Rebuild Cloud’s sense of self by identifying and accepting his personal weakness

Establish the truth of the Nibelheim incident

Given what we just discussed, any substitute for Tifa would accomplish some, but not all of the above three points.

So for those fans who say...

>> “Cloud could have done it all by himself” - did... did you miss the giant floating confused Cloud?? He was trying and failing to figure it out by himself because he couldn’t bear to be honest, even for his own sake. What ultimately turns the tide is Cloud’s need to express his true feelings to Tifa, and how it outweighs his need to hide his weakness from himself; thus, without Tifa’s presence, Cloud cannot be honest with himself and cannot resolve his identity crisis. 

And PS, when Tifa says, “Cloud found himself on his own,” she’s referring to Cloud’s choice to reveal his weakness to her, and Cloud’s bravery at confronting the Nibelheim incident afterwards. She’s not saying “oh I didn’t need to be there at all and Cloud really just needed a couple extra minutes and I was basically scenery lol.” She’s complimenting Cloud for the radical honesty/personal strength that allowed him to finally express his true thoughts to her and thus to himself. 

Verdict: Cloud gets half points for #2 (accept personal weakness) and #3 (remember Nibelheim) because ultimately he’s the one who decides to reveal the truth of those moments. Cloud gets 0 points for #1 (prove his existence) because he still needed to double-check with someone who knew him as a child.

>> “any childhood friend could have helped Cloud” - sure, that childhood friend could help accomplish #1 (prove his existence), but as we previously discussed, Cloud is only motivated to be honest with himself when he realizes that Tifa doesn’t know the extent of his feelings for her. If he never that Tifa was clueless, then Cloud would have kept the Mt. Nibel memory locked away from himself and everyone else. 

Verdict: A Nibelheim rando would be able to accomplish #1 (prove his existence) but would fail to accomplish #2 (accept personal weakness) or #3 (remember Nibelheim)--Tifa is needed for DD Cloud to come clean, and Tifa’s unique role allows her to support Cloud while he works to remember the truth of the Nibelheim incident.

>> “Aerith (+Zack) could have taken care of it” - sure, Aerith (+Zack) could have shown Cloud the truth of #1 (prove his existence) and #3 (remember Nibelheim), because they both could observe the truth of those events.

But how could they help Cloud with #2 (accept personal weakness), when Cloud has been trying to hide his weakness all along and would probably feel even worse in comparison to these two shining beacons of excellence? And there’s some proof to this line of thinking; in CC, Cloud explicitly does not want to share his feelings for Tifa with Zack; and in OG, Cloud arguably tries to preserve the hero fantasy of being the Coolest SOLDIER Ever for Aerith. I can’t imagine Cloud wanting to share these “tender feelings that no one can ever know”/his love-induced weakness with anyone except for the object of those tender feelings. So #2 is still allllll Tifa, baby.

Verdict: Aerith (+Zack) could take care of #1 and #3, but they could never get Cloud to open up about #2--and even if they did, they were not the “victims” of “Cloud’s failure,” so their forgiveness/acceptance would mean nothing to Cloud and would not help him accept his own weakness.

Final thoughts:

>> Fun theory, but Cloti isn’t essential for it... the sequence still works even if Cloud’s tragic flaw is a raging inferiority complex.

There’s a difference between something technically working vs. what the game actually shows us. Yes, it could work if Cloud has a generic inferiority complex that has nothing to do with Tifa... but the game’s explanation of Cloud’s psyche (DD Cloud’s dialogue) spends >90% of its wordcount on Tifa. This argument essentially works if you throw out >90% of what the game was trying to tell you. Cloud’s entire inner world revolves around Tifa and stuffing your fingers in your ears and loudly saying lalalala does not change that.

>> But didn’t Cloud choose to hide his face because he wanted to hide his failure from everyone in town, not just Tifa, which would prove it was just a generic inferiority complex?

Sure, Cloud says:

C: I... never made it as a member of SOLDIER. I even left my hometown telling everyone I was going to join, but... I was so embarrassed. I didn't want to see anyone.

Off that line alone, one would think that he is ashamed to show his face to anyone in his hometown.

But the game shows us that Cloud specifically decided to hide when he saw Tifa.

Look how this baby is prepared to stroll into town with his Chocobo head free in that Nibelheim breeze. Not what you’d expect someone to do if they’re trying to hide from everyone, right?

But as soon as Cloud notices Tifa, he runs offscreen and puts his helmet back on while Zack can only shrug a “you do you” in reply.

It’s Tifa that Cloud couldn’t bear to disappoint. Not the rest of the town.

>> That final “resolution” moment after the Mt. Nibel incident is a little weak, isn’t it? There’s nothing explicitly saying that Tifa accepted Cloud and that’s why he’s able to shake off his shame and remember the Nibelheim incident properly.

It’s true that so much of this is implicit (the absence of Tifa berating Cloud, Tifa wishing she could have helped Cloud more back then), or shown-not-told (Tifa and Cloud raising their fists in unison, Tifa and Cloud running in unison). The OG script also jumps right to Tifa’s exclamation that the Mt. Nibel memory proves Cloud is a real person, not really lingering on Tifa accepting Cloud or anything. To be honest, the biggest reason why I even put together this theory is because 1 + 1 ≠ 4, but somehow that’s what happens in the Lifestream if we remove this shame/acceptance aspect. Also... how unsatisfying and uncharacteristic is it for Cloud to just feel ashamed that he failed to save Tifa, then for that shame to be resolved during the Nibelheim incident re-memory with a “oh it’s not that bad, at least you saved her during the Nibelheim incident so that mitigates it”? Or for it to not be resolved at all?

If Cloud was so deeply ashamed that he’d prefer to become a potato instead of face these memories, then I can’t imagine that facing the memories with zero support from Tifa would help him feel confident enough to tackle the Nibelheim re-memory. I highly suspect that this scene will be expanded upon in the Remake to explicitly highlight Tifa’s acceptance, resulting in Cloud’s readiness to expose his true memories to Tifa and himself.

#final fantasy vii #ffvii #ff7 #tifa lockhart #cloud strife #cloud x tifa #cloti #im sorry this is so long #i saw so many bad takes on the lifestream this month #i needed to get this out of my system #thank you to everyone who managed to make it to the end i appreciate you and love you

[lovely-v]

LOTR (films) Review

So I finally watched the LOTR films (20 years later). I’m super excited to review these because I read the books very recently so I feel at least a little prepared to voice some opinions. Overall I loved the films, here’s a very long (but by no means exhaustive) compilation of my thoughts, which are of course, totally subjective:

(Warning: a lot of me saying “well, actually, in the book...”)

THINGS I LIKED

- Casting! not much to say here, I thought the casting was great. One of my favorite actors that I didn’t think i’d have a huge opinion on was David Wenham as Faramir. I was kinda ambivalent on him when I saw pictures but i thought he did a great job. he showed his quality.

- Music. so much has been said about the films on the music front. I can’t offer too much original insight but when a bit of the Shire theme started to play as Frodo tries to make his way up Mount Doom I cried a little.

- Boromir and Aragorn. I liked the scene where they interact a little in Rivendell. I also like how Aragorn saves Boromir in the Moria battle and gives him this little nod of friendship. I think the films did a great job portraying the dynamic they have where Aragorn is clearly suspicious of Boromir’s motivations but grows to respect him to the point where he doesn’t even blame Boromir for being corrupted by the ring because he understands that, at heart, Boromir is a good person. 

- Sam and Frodo in Osgiliath. I expected to be kind of annoyed with the way this plot point played out (I knew ahead of time that it strayed from the book), but I actually liked it a lot. As I’ll say later, there’s some gripes I have with the way the films extremely play up the disagreements between Frodo and Sam, but I loved the scene where Frodo pulls the sword on Sam and then seems so defeated when he realizes what he’s done. I was pleasantly surprised by how emotional this scene made me. It’s admittedly A Lot, but it was done nicely, especially in conjunction with Sam’s “there’s good in this world” speech.

- Treatment of the ending. I almost think I should dislike the ending as it is in the movies, but my heart is soft and I like that they sugarcoated it a bit. I know the whole point of the Scouring of the Shire and Frodo’s depression conveys a lot about war and trauma and I think that is important, but after watching these things for twelve hours I just wanted Frodo & co. to be happy and I was kinda relieved that they cut the Scouring. Does that make me weak and perhaps bad at film analysis? yes. do I care? no. I was also very glad that the movies didn’t portray how depressed Sam was about losing Frodo in the end. Yes, he cries, but when he walks home to his family he seems happy and in the books that scene came off so much bleaker. I definitely liked the lighter tone.

THINGS I WAS NEUTRAL ON/DIDN’T LIKE

- Arwen. (Neutral) I don’t hate her, I don’t love her. I think the story she and Aragorn have is compelling and I 100% get why the filmmakers decided to add it to give her character more depth, but it felt misplaced at times. maybe it’s just because it was the only storyline I didn’t know in depth, but the scenes with the Arwen/Aragorn flashbacks felt a bit confusing and disorienting. Don’t have anything against Arwen as a character though, I think she’s pretty alright.

- Gimli. (Complicated thoughts) I want to start off by saying I don’t dislike Gimli. I like him a lot! I just think the movies did him a bit dirty. He had some good movie-exclusive moments, but I think his character really fell into this place of being the butt of too many jokes. Would have liked to see some more serious Gimli development, especially with his relationship to Legolas. Their friendship felt too much like subtext here, whereas it’s explored far more in the books.

- Two Towers Pacing. (Didn’t really like). The pacing of TTT was...weird. maybe I’m going into this with a closed mind because of the books, but it was odd to have the movie begin with Frodo and Sam and then have them only appear for a few rapid scenes after that. I think the fact that a WHOLE LOT of what happens to Frodo and Sam in TTT is moved to RotK is what makes it feel that way? In the books, Two Towers ends with Sam discovering that Frodo isn’t dead from Shelob’s sting, and I was surprised by how long it took the movies to get to that part. However, I will give the films a little leeway because I think they needed Frodo & Sam content for RotK, since most of what happens in that book is them walking through Mordor basically starving and dying. Doesn’t make for great cinema I guess, so they had to put the whole Shelob/Cirith Ungol saga into the final film. Still, I think there’s a weird lack of Frodo and Sam’s presence in TTT.

- The go home/missing bread arc. (Full of rage abt this one) yeah. so. my criticism of this is gonna sound pretty tired because people complain and complain about this part of RotK. but I’m gonna complain some more!! I don’t think the split between Frodo and Sam does anything for the plot. I really don’t. I guess it emphasizes the fact that Sam doesn’t understand how much Frodo is projecting onto Gollum, but it’s just. unnecessary angst? They had enough angst in the Osgiliath scene! Which I actually liked! And it simply doesn’t make a lot of sense for Frodo to suspect Sam of eating the bread when Sam had already offered Frodo his own food and made it clear that he would very much starve if it meant making sure Frodo could eat. But what I hate most about this scene is not that Frodo gets mad and tells Sam to go home. No. It’s that Sam actually... thinks about doing that? he actually? goes down the staircase? emotionally this is bad because Sam clearly cared enough about Frodo to follow him this far, to nearly drown for him, so why would he leave now. Practically this is bad because 1. how would Sam get out of Mordor alone and 2. where would he go. He turns around almost immediately, yes, but what was his plan. where was he going. why.

THINGS I LOVED

- For Frodo! This line, and every other shoutout to Frodo. In the books, they didn’t really actively talk about/worry about Frodo (and Sam) as much as they do in the movies. I like that they talk about Frodo more in the movies! I like that they’re thinking about him! I know it was implied that they were in the books, but I really like how it’s shown here. I think it gave a more complete picture of how much they all care about him on a personal level in addition to just needing him to succeed from a pragmatic standpoint. 

- Merry and Pippin! I feel like Merry and Pippin were so well rounded in the films. I’ve heard criticism about them being turned into comic relief characters (which they always were a little bit) but it honestly didn’t feel that way to me. They had a bit of a rough start because the films didn’t make their motives for going with Frodo as deep as the books did, but I think that by TTT they were absolutely amazing characters in every scene. In RotK their respective arcs hit really well and the scene where Pippin is singing to Denethor? *chef’s kiss* poetic. beautiful. sad. idk man I just feel like I have such a newfound appreciation for Merry and Pippin.

- Parallels! people have pointed out the parallel of Frodo and Sam’s hands before (drowning scene/mount doom scene) and I love how the movie did that. Just stunning. Also! The moving of the Smeagol & Deagol scene to RotK surprised me because in the books it was like,,,at the beginning of Fellowship, but I think the placement of it in the movies really helped emphasize the similarities between Smeagol & Deagol and Frodo & Sam (and how much Frodo fears this similarity.) There were a lot of other well done parallels between storylines and a few bits of dialogue that were repeated with great timing, but I can’t remember all of them at the moment.  

Edit: here’s one I remembered! when Frodo wakes up after being rescued and sees Gandalf, he says Gandalf’s name in a very similar tone to the one he used at the very beginning of Fellowship. It was a nice little subtle connection.

- I can’t carry it for you...alright this is self-indulgent. everyone knows I love this line. I’m just so glad it made it into the movie intact. Sean Astin’s delivery was amazing. I cheered. My mom cheered. It’s a raw line and it makes me feel secret emotions...like if shrimp colors were feelings. that line makes me feel shrimp feelings. idk i’m so tired i just watched twelve hours of movies this review is decreasing in quality by the minute but i’m about done for now anyway

Various silly afterthoughts

- I would have liked to see Sam kiss Frodo’s hands at least once. This happens 50 thousand times in the books, they could have given me one scene. one little extended edition scene. Please Peter Jackson I’m dyin’ out here

- They literally made Gollum so hateable. kinda the point yes, but I was so on board with Sam’s murderous rage. I know why Gollum’s a profoundly complex character, I know why Frodo pities him, I know why murder is bad, but I too would throw hands with that creature. also he literally body shamed Sam so much what was that skdjksdjksd. Sam is lovely. let him commit a small homicide. 

- the scene where merry and pippin drink the tall boy juice (as someone once referred to it in the tags of one of my posts)... not accurate to the books (since they don’t ever drink it with the end goal of getting tall) but so accurate to life. if I found some water that made me taller than my friends? let me at it

- Frodo panicking when he falls into the spider webs. so real bestie. i felt just as panicked watching that. i am terrified of spiders and Elijah Wood did an amazing job doing exactly what i’d do in the situation. yelping a lot and falling down.

- I feel like it’s never stated that Sam’s a gardener (or at least that he’s specifically Frodo’s gardener) until he tells Faramir he is. Did I miss this. Or do they really never say.  are you just meant to know. are you just meant to pick up gardener vibes from him.

*

This has been a very chaotic lotr movie review. Thanks for reading.

#lotr #lord of the rings #lotr movies #vee watches (!) lotr #fellowship of the ring #the two towers #return of the king #Frodo baggins #samwise gamgee #gimli #arwen #boromir #aragorn #gollum #merry brandybuck #pippin took #veesaysthings #long post #seriously SUCH a long post im so sorry #had to get these thoughts out though #im SO tired

[turtletotem]

Darkest Before Dawn

Canon divergence fic set in alternate 03x04, “Moment of Truth” -- i.e. the mission to rescue Adora and stop the portal ended rather differently. (2.6k) (also on AO3)

.

"Let me make this clear," Glimmer said coldly. "You're dying. You are not going to be here when the sun rises."

Catra, curled on her side with her face to the wall, didn't so much as twitch an ear. Glimmer hadn't said anything she didn't already know. Though hearing the words aloud was more of a blow than she'd expected, she still wasn't going to give the Bright Moon princess the satisfaction of seeing her react.

Besides, moving hurt.

"There is one single person on Etheria who gives a damn about that," Glimmer continued, "and you're refusing to talk to her."

Not that her refusal to talk to Adora had kept the idiot from dragging her huge sword in here and trying to heal Catra with it, after the Bright Moon doctors couldn't even figure out what was wrong with her. If Catra had to die, at least she got to see Adora fail at something first.

She really hated the idea of dying here, in princess custody. From what she could tell, it had been the stupid arrow boy who insisted on dragging Catra's unconscious body back to Bright Moon after Shadow Weaver—with help from Glimmer's borrowed magic—fried her half to death in that corridor. While Catra was passed out, the princesses had rescued Adora and destroyed the almost-finished portal. Since she disappeared in the attack, the entire Horde probably thought she'd been in on it. So really, she had nothing to live for anyway.

Catra closed her eyes, admitting to herself that was a lie. She did not want to die. But it wasn't like she ever got what she wanted anyway.

"I know you're awake," Glimmer said dryly. "Your tail is twitching."

Catra stilled it—too late.

"Adora wants to say goodbye to you," Glimmer said. "She's been crying for days. She even went to Shadow Weaver and begged her to save you." She waited, as if knowing this would finally prompt Catra to speak.

Hating herself for it, Catra did, her voice coming out raspy and faint. "What did Shadow Weaver say?"

"That she doesn't know what's wrong with you, either. She claims nothing she did to you should have resulted in… this." This being the endless burning pain, and the slow, unstoppable draining away of Catra's life energy, her vital signs dropping bit by bit by bit for no apparent reason. "It might be some effect of the combined magics that were used on you."

She almost, almost kept the guilt out of her voice in that last sentence. Catra smiled bitterly. You're going to need a thicker skin to get through this war, Sparkles. Can't let a little thing like watching someone be tortured to death by her foster mother get to you.

It took a minute for Glimmer to speak again. "Anyway, maybe it's unethical to force a dying girl to talk to someone she doesn't want to talk to. But I don't care about you. I care about Adora. So I've already sent a messenger to tell her you're asking for her."

Catra tensed. Which hurt.

"If you want to send her away again when she gets here, I can't stop you. But you'll be the one looking her in the face when you do it. In fact, let me make sure of that." Glimmer stepped forward and put a hand on Catra's shoulder. Before she could react, the world dissolved into sparkles and wind-chimes—and when it came back, Catra was turned the other way in the bed, facing the doorway. She was also violently nauseous.

By the time she could see straight again, Glimmer was gone.

*

Adora stepped into the room, looking shy and… grief-stricken, Catra thought.

Dry your tears, Adora, Catra snarled silently. I'm not dead yet.

"Catra? You… you asked for me?" The tentative hope in Adora's voice was unbearable.

She could say No. She could say Your manipulative little friend lied to you. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. I wish I had died without ever seeing you again.

Instead, she looked at the dark windows she would probably never see sunlight through again, and whispered, "Yes."

Adora hurried to her side, taking the chair a doctor had left and moving it closer. "Are you… are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?" She started to stand up again. "Let me get you—"

Catra grabbed her wrist; it felt like moving through honey, and she couldn't grip very hard, but she managed it. "No. I'm fine." She was hardly fine, of course—moving had sent a renewed ripple of pain through her body—but there wasn't anything Adora could do about that. Nothing they'd given her had helped the pain at all.

Adora sat down again, and shifted Catra's grip until they were holding hands, fingers interlaced. Catra waited for the touch to make the pain worse, but… it didn't. It might even have felt a little better.

The silence stretched, grew awkward. Catra couldn't stop looking at their hands. At least it was easier than looking at Adora's face.

"Did you want to talk about something?" Adora asked finally.

"Like what?" Catra rasped. "The war? Betrayal and broken promises? Your sparkly tiara and how it makes you so much more special than me?" The brief rush of speech left her gasping, which hurt.

Adora closed her eyes, as if to let the words wash over her and away. "I'll talk about anything you want," she said quietly.

Anything she wanted? That was a dangerous offer. Catra used the time while she caught her breath to decide on her most important question. She might only get one, before Adora got sick of her and left, or—or she ran out of time.

"Why did you leave me?" she said, her voice flat and measured. "Not the noble reason about saving the world. The truth. If you had to leave the Horde—fine. Why didn't you come back for me?"

Adora's eyes grew suspiciously shiny as she looked down at their joined hands, tracing slow circles with her thumb.

"Because I knew you would talk me into staying," she whispered at last. "You were the one person who could. And I couldn't do that, Catra, I couldn't live with myself if I stayed. But I also wouldn't be able to leave you, not on purpose. So I couldn't… I couldn't put myself in that position, I couldn't risk it."

Catra heard her own labored breathing halt in shock. "You… You would have stayed? For me? If I'd had the chance to ask?"

Tears were trickling down Adora's face. "Yes," she said, the word barely a breath, looking away in shame.

Of course Adora was ashamed of this confession that had given Catra the first spark of happiness and hope she'd felt in… longer than she wanted to think about. Catra's laugh took her by surprise, and spiraled instantly into a desperate choking cough that sent lightning arcs of pain through her body. Alarmed, Adora caught her convulsing body and held her, stroking her back and murmuring stupid nonsensical reassurances. Catra couldn't keep her claws from digging into Adora's skin, but if it hurt Adora gave no sign.

On a wall behind Adora, the doctors had left some kind of array of crystals that monitored Catra's condition. Most of them had turned from green to amber in the last few hours, and none were very bright. Several of them went out while Catra was coughing. A few lit again once she had her breath back. Most didn't.

You are not going to be here when the sun rises. Magic couldn't fix this one, not runestone magic, not She-Ra, not sorcery. Nothing could fix it.

And she was too tired and scared to fight the fact that Adora holding her felt better than anything ever had.

"Okay," Adora murmured, "you're okay, you're okay now. Do you want some water?"

Catra shook her head. "Could you…" She almost couldn't say the words, certainly couldn't look Adora in the face while she did it. "Could you just… lay down with me and—and hold me like when we were kids?"

"I can do that," Adora said without hesitation. Maybe even eagerly.

She moved Catra over in the bed with gentle, casual strength, and slid in next to her. This close, all Catra's senses were flooded with her—Adora's warmth, her scent, her heartbeat, their legs tangled together, Adora's arms around her and her forehead pressed against Catra's. It was almost enough to drown out the pain.

"I should have taken you with me from the beginning," Adora said softly. "I would have, if I'd known. It all happened so fast… and then when I tried, you wouldn't come. I did it wrong somehow, I did everything wrong."

"You did everything wrong? I'm second in command of the Evil Horde." Catra didn't quite have the breath to laugh. "I should have gone with you. I wish I had. I wish I'd done it all differently." She hadn't intended to say all of that, hadn't expected to mean it. She was too tired to lie, even to herself. "I'm sorry, Adora."

Adora's mouth opened in shock. She knew better than anyone that Catra didn't apologize. She'd been forced to do it all too often, as a baring of the throat, a submission to those with power over her; she didn't submit like that by choice, never. But this one didn't feel like defeat or humiliation. It felt like giving back something she'd stolen.

She and Adora looked at each other for a long wordless moment, almost too close for their eyes to focus. And then Catra shifted forward and kissed her.

And maybe this was why Catra hadn't sent Adora away when she saw her in the doorway. Maybe it was why she had refused to talk to her until Glimmer forced the issue. Maybe everything came down to this—Catra wanting this, wanting her, knowing she wouldn't and couldn't and shouldn't have her, and knowing that now there was no more time to wait and nothing left to lose.

Adora gasped, and Catra was so sure she would pull away that it took her a second to realize she hadn't. Instead, slow and unsure, she was kissing Catra back.

Everything Catra thought she knew about the world seemed to tilt sideways, or maybe she was just lightheaded from kissing Adora harder, deeper, again, again, shifting to press their bodies together, touching and being touched in a tangle of warm limbs…

She couldn't keep up. Far too soon, she had to break away, gasping, vision clouding over.

"Are you okay?" Adora said, breathless and shaky. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—it's all right, just breathe." Her touch now was an attempt to be comforting, steadying, instead of… what it had been a moment ago, and the frustration of that was sharp but useless. Catra tried to make herself relax and breathe.

"You should rest," Adora murmured, when Catra had managed to calm down a little. "It's awfully late, you should sleep. Build up your strength. Maybe you'll feel better tomorrow."

Glimmer hadn't told her, then. Good. Catra flicked a glance at the monitoring crystals, hoping Adora wouldn't notice them. There weren't any green ones left.

"Stay with me?"

"Of course," Adora said. "I'll stay as long as you want."

The room fell silent, only the sound of their breathing, and Adora's heartbeat in her ear. Adora ran her fingers through Catra's hair, slow and absent-minded, like she always used to do.

Neither of them said anything about the kiss, or the apology, or anything else. Adora no doubt thought they would have time when Catra was stronger. That worked for Catra. She didn't want to talk about it, ever, and now she wouldn't have to.

Eventually, Adora drifted off to sleep. Catra tried to do the same. Dying in her sleep wasn't the fate she'd ever expected for herself, but it was a victory of sorts, wasn't it? To fall asleep in Adora's arms and just not wake up—there were much worse ways to go than that.

She couldn't manage it, though. The pain was just a little too much to let her doze off. She closest she could come was a sort of blank trance, timeless, drifting.

Sometime in the night, she became distantly aware that she wasn't breathing. She felt too fuzzy and tired to be afraid, just… sad. She didn't want to go yet. She wanted to stay with Adora. But since when did Catra get what she wanted?

She squeezed Adora's hand with the last of her strength, just as everything faded to black.

 *

Light blazed in her eyes, air filling her lungs with a harsh gasp, her nerves sizzling with an entirely different pain than the one that had sapped away at her for days—sharp, pure, clean. She floundered upright, coughing and dazzled and dizzy.

On the other side of the room—it was actually only a little brighter than before—Adora and Glimmer stared at her in utter shock.

Adora was sitting on the floor, looking like she'd collapsed there, her face puffy and damp. Glimmer hovered with an arm around Adora's shoulders. Apparently Catra's death had not gone unnoticed for long, which was… sort of touching, actually.

Catra cleared her throat awkwardly, and managed a version of her usual cockiness. "Hey, Adora."

"Catra?" Adora breathed, staggering to her feet and approaching her with a hand cautiously extended, as if afraid Catra would vanish.

"How…?" Glimmer glanced over her shoulder at the monitor crystals, all of which were bright green again.

Catra used Adora's hand to pull herself out of the bed. Her legs felt a little shaky from days of disuse, but they held her up. And nothing hurt. Nothing hurt.

"You were dead, Catra," Glimmer said. "Explain!"

Catra grinned. "You know the old saying that cats have nine lives? I guess I'm down to…" She did a quick count on her fingers. "Five. I should still have five left."

"Wait, you knew?" Adora's eyes narrowed, her hand pulling away from Catra's. "You knew you weren't really going to die, and you let me think…"

"I didn't know." Catra swallowed hard, her smile falling away. "The resurrections are magic—my people's magic. And every other kind of magic had already failed against whatever Shadow Weaver did to me. I swear I didn't think it was going to work this time!"

Adora turned to look at Glimmer, who sighed deeply, crossing her arms. "Well, I believe her. She would never have let herself look so weak if she didn't honestly think she was dying."

Catra gave the princess a rude hand gesture, which she returned.

"So you meant it," Adora said softly, stepping closer again. "What you said. What—what you did. You meant it?"

Catra felt her cheeks burning.

She could say no. Say it had been fear and old sentiment talking. That if she wasn't actually going to die than she'd be heading back to the Fright Zone now, thanks, and any objections could address themselves to her claws.

But she didn't want to go back.

"I'm not in the habit of saying things I don't mean, Adora," she snapped instead. "Breaking promises is your—ack!" She yelped as Adora flung her arms around her, squeezing painfully hard.

"This is not because I like you," Catra wheezed. "I just, you know, I think my career's gone as far with the Horde as it's going to and I'm looking for new opportunities—"

Adora grabbed Catra's face in both hands and kissed her hard. Catra felt herself melt into it instantly, ears and tail relaxing, no part of her able to resist.

Glimmer smacked a hand against her face, muttering exasperated profanities.

Outside the window, the first pink trace of sunrise appeared.

#she ra #spop #catradora #my fic #she-ra and the princesses of power

[ladytano-ofthehouseofskywalker]

The Blood of the Covenant (Ahsoka and Maul Teamup)

Oneshot

Warnings: Canon-typical violence stuff, extremely small spoilers for CW season 7. 

Word count: 1000

Author’s note: I can’t get these two out of my head. Their stories are such interesting parallels and opposites, I borrowed some from a theory I’ve seen floating around. Their partnership in this story is not romantic or sexual in any way.

Ahsoka wondered if she would be the first person to be seduced to the dark side with the casual thought “why don’t I just hear the guy out.” 

They had prepared her at the temple to be tempted, by fear, anger, hate. And she had been. When she was young she was quick to act on those emotions. She was still healing from the wounds left by her exit from the order, though it was growing less frequent that she had to close her eyes, take deep breaths and release all of the swear words she wanted to scream at the council into the force.

But this wasn’t your every day temptation, this was a proposition, which, if she was honest with herself, was a pretty high honor. It wasn’t like she’d always imagined, though she supposed now that in her head, it had always looked more like one of the anti-drug PSA holos the temple showed the younglings and not this... plea for a chance to explain. Not that she’d even ever really imagined anyone would one day extend a hand to her that way, it’s not everyone who gets personally asked to join the dark side.

But here she was. And the phrase that tempted her the most was Why don’t you just let him explain? It echoed in her head as the words Maul had spoken about her master echoed in her ears. 

Not Anakin, never Anakin. But hadn’t he just killed someone? Of course it was Dooku… She hadn’t checked on him enough after she’d gone. She hadn’t been able to bear it, she wasn’t even sure he’d want her to. She’d better check on this. Now. Just to be able to safely rule it out. She had better hear…

He sensed the shift in her resolve.

“Have a seat, my lady.” 

Ahsoka looked around. There weren’t any chairs. She sank to the ground. To her surprise, Maul also sat, about 2 meters in front of her. He took a deep breath.

“You think… I’m the right person for this?” 

“The force brought you here. To me. It is your destiny.”

She held up a hand for a moment, silently asking Maul to give her time to search her feelings.

He really was a maniac. Had the force spoken to him, as he said? Had it come to him in his dreams, whispering that the person the arc of the war, of the entire galaxy hinged on was her master? Something rushed within her. She sensed the truth. Her eyes flew open.

She tried to steady her breathing. All of a sudden her heartbeat quickened at the prospect of overthrowing Sidious, rescuing Anakin, ending the war. This was the temptation she’d been warned about. It felt easy now, but it was too good to be true. A romanticization of their prospects at success and their places in the force.

“So you now see the truth, my lady,” Maul bowed his head slightly to her, which… okay. “And you know what is the path forward. The only path.”

Ahsoka had been lost. She had been lost for so. long. All of the darkness she had feltt had brought her strength. All of the teachings she had questioned had brought her new enlightenment. All the chances she took brought her somewhere she was needed. He was right. Every choice she had made had brought her here. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

They meditated to form a bond. There could be no secrets between these two who sought to defeat Sidious, they would need to share their thoughts as well as their power. Ahsoka had been surprised he was so ready to show her his mind. She supposed he had almost nothing to lose. And what of her? What did she know couldn’t be shown to this crazy old man?

“This could be extremely painful for you, I am sorry,” Maul said, his popping, gleaming yellow eyes boring into hers, but almost sideways, like he’d forgotten how looking someone in the eyes was supposed to go. “A great deal of terrible things have happened, and you will have to see and feel them nearly all at once. Do you think you’re up for it, Lady Tano?”

She steeled herself and they joined hands, still kneeling on the cold, marble floors of Duchess Satine’s throne room as Mandalore, and for a moment, the whole galaxy, pivoted slowly around them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Still Mandalore. Still the cold marble floors of Duchess Satine’s throne room. 

Her face was soaked with tears. She had seen dark rooms and hurt, and yes, the chancellor. She had seen the eyes of Master Obi-wan, as he had slashed Maul in half on Naboo. Felt a pain so strong, so searing that it was hardly pain at all as he’d fallen. She had seen the red eyed man who had come to him in the dark. She knew of his brother, of his mother and planet and clan. She knew of Gar Saxon and his crush, and the way that, after interrogating Jesse the previous night, Maul had read every piece of intel that had been obtained about her over and over, until he had fallen asleep with her name burning alight behind his closed eyes.

She was practically a child, Maul thought. But forged of invisible steel. He had seen Plo Koon, how she had narrowly escaped slavery herself. He knew of her love for her masters, it burned him to feel such a way about Kenobi but he bore witness anyway. He knew of her teenaged crushes and her green sabers, and he knew the face of the woman who had sacrificed herself so that Ahsoka might live. He knew of her fear and shame, running through the sewers of Coruscant. The way she’d dealt with the Pikes tickled him. The force had chosen well.

Their bond was forged. Lord and Lady. Not quite brother and sister, but maybe. Daughter and son. Born of the dark and light, now each with a piece of the other inside their souls. Before the galaxy had pivoted around them. Now everything ground to a standstill.

#maul #darth maul #ahsoka #Ahsoka Tano #maul and ahsoka #maul and ahsoka team up #mandalore #clone wars season 7 #invasion of mandalore #the daughter #the son #force destiny stuff #why wont anyone let these two team up #fic #star wars #clone wars

[drunklander]

Submission:

Why Roger MacKenzie is the Worst an Analysis:

It all begins way back when in episode three of season four. I am going to give Roger the benefit of the doubt and ignore the fact he flew across the ocean to see a girl that maintained about 0.3 seconds of conversation with him in which she rolled her eyes like five consecutive times. Let us not forget he popped up for Christmas without actually being invited which is creepy in of itself. At this point, Roger was saved by the grace of his Scottish charm and lost puppy façade. An illusion which will dissipate the moment he is allowed to open his mouth for more than two consecutive seconds because everything that comes out of it is complete garbage. Oh, Roger. I had faith in you, I really did.

Do not get me wrong, I wanted to like him. I wanted to like him so badly I almost ended up making excuses for him because… Are you not supposed to like a male romantic lead? Disliking him as much as I do feels so counterintuitive, but he makes it so damn easy.

Back to episode three of season four. I will never forget the image of Brianna sitting on the floor half naked, hugging herself, and telling Roger that the situation “is perfect.” Oof, I try to put myself in her shoes and how embarrassing and awkward it might have felt. How off putting it is and how it almost borders a rejection. Regardless, let us say that Roger’s intentions were not to hurt her; he still took absolutely no regard of her feelings. This is something he systematically does, putting himself at the center of every situation with no afterthought of how the person by his side might interpret things. Roger’s character demands empathy but extends none. In fact, he is so narcissistically woven in his own delusions, that I do not think he is capable of seeing Brianna as a living, breathing human with thought and emotions of her own. Roger’s character does everything in its power to erase Brianna’s narrative. Sounds familiar? Aye, to me too. History repeats itself.

What is supposed to be a romantic moment, in my eyes, turns into a cringe-fest. Really, Roger, you could not have thought of better timing to present your stupid bracelet? I will not even begin to wonder how long Roger has fantasized about Brianna during their separation. It seems to me that he simply projects an idea of Brianna onto her, expecting her to uphold this impossible standard, and when she indeed fails, he gaslights her into feeling bad about it. This, my friends, is the epitome of a toxic relationship. So, Roger created this fantasy (or delusion) of a proposal to a twenty-year-old girl that would pass well. Once Brianna shattered this fantasy, as is expected given that she is A TWENTY-YEAR-OLD INEXPERIENCED GIRL, Roger, as a defense mechanism, begins to shame her. Brianna did not even state that she was not interested in marrying him ever, just not now. But for Roger, it is all about: “I want you to say yes.” The ‘I want…’ narrative is the driving force behind his character. As I said, everything is always about him. I am sure all of you have watched the episode and there is no need to repeat the atrocious UNWARRANTED slut shaming that occurs there. Honestly, it reminded me of those guys on Tinder that are like “wow you are so beautiful” and once they feel rejected it turns into “fuck you bitch I never wanted you anyways.” All Roger had to do was tip his fedora and be done with it. BUT IT DOESN’T END HERE. Wow, you know? I thought he would learn a thing or two from this. But no, apparently growth is an impossibility for Roger MacKenzie. So, we proceed to episode eight of season four AKA the episode that had no silver lining except for Claire’s badass surgical abilities. Roger zooms in out of nowhere (a-la Steve Rogers style in Endgame, another atrocious storyline that involves men appearing where they are not welcome and robbing women of their voice) to scorn Brianna once again. “What do you mean you didn’t know where we stood?” Uh… Because there was nothing abnormal or worthy apologizing for after your last conversation? Wow, Roger, you really are that fucking stupid, huh? Blah, blah, blah, stupid conversation, then Roger decides to manhandle her unnecessarily because… Why the fuck not? That really gets Brianna hot and heavy, and let me pause here to say something I think is absolutely important. I love Brianna Fraser. I think that everything dislikeable in her character stems from the way she behaves when it pertains to Roger. I think she turns a blind eye, constantly lets things slide, and that her grand romance with Roger is written poorly. It is so unpersuasive that it makes Brianna feel so out of character when she accepts him back time and time again. I sincerely do not see how, why, or when she fell in love with his sorry ass. Brianna Fraser is one of those character that have the potential of being outstanding but are done very dirty for the sake of providing a narrative to a half-assed male character that nobody likes anyways. Anywhoo, let us return to Brianna and Roger getting down to business (EW). So, Brianna needs to remind Roger of his own convoluted, archaic ideals. The same ideals which made them fight THE FIRST TIME AROUND. I mean, those ideals were SO important that he felt the need to shame her the way he did. Are they not important now or is Roger just doing the convenient thing of thinking with his genitals? But of course, now that he had a lightbulb moment he has to backtrack; God forbid they sleep together unmarried as if he were not ready to do it ten seconds ago. Oof, the hypocrisy runs deep in this one huh folks? Brianna ends up finding out that Roger kept the truth from her about her parents’ death in order to keep her happy for the sake of marrying her. So once again, Brianna is reduced to a trophy that he needs to win – actually, I never thought he saw her as anything else. I wholeheartedly believe that Roger does not love Brianna, he loves the idea of himself with Brianna. They fight, he leaves her like a pussy bitch because she told him so and Brianna gets raped by Stephen Bonnet. So far so good? Now, I wish Brianna was at the epicenter of her own damned rape arc. I wish that the voice of female survivors was not erased once more for the sake of elevating the pathetic self-scorn of an unworthy male character. Do you want to know the moment I hate the most about season four? It is Roger’s stupid “I am an idiot” sermon. He had such a good shot at redeeming himself there, at admitting that he messed up, at accepting that he is at fault for everything that has happened to him thus far. That was too much to expect, now, wasn’t it? Instead he goes on raving and moping about love, and how he is an idiot that always returns though nobody ever asked him to, yada, yada. Again, all Roger can possible conceive are his own feelings. See, Roger is not wrong, he is an idiot, but for completely different reasons. Needless to say, he gets rescued and discovers the truth. And what is the truth? That his handfast wife was viciously attacked and is hurting? No, God forbid we focus on Brianna’s feelings for a moment. No, it is all about the fact that the rapist was Bonnet and that he might be the father of the child. That is what matters, right? The fact that another man put his dick in my woman, and not the fact that a woman has been forced to engage in coitus against her will. It is all about ownership. So, of course, Roger hesitates to come back. Of course, he is the one having the hardest time to deal with it, because he always has the hardest time to deal with everything. Oh, poor Roger. This is not about Brianna’s decision to keep the child because of the possibility that he might be Roger’s. This is not about Brianna’s ambivalence towards her attack because it took something from her, but also gave her something so beautiful. This is not about Brianna’s trauma, its aftereffects, and how it re-shaped her world. This is all about Roger. It has always ever been about Roger. Brianna is not a character in her own right, she is simply a plot device (you guessed it right) for Roger. The best thing this show can do is have him fall off a cliff and never come back. The only reason I will watch season 5 is to see Marsali and Fergus because they are the real MVP’s of this show. 

OOF.

_________________________

Fucking. Preach.

(#FuckYeahTeamFersali)

#stuff people sent me #submission #roger mackenzie #outlander fandom #*

[visionsofus]

Wanda and Vision's Mixtape

track #1: Last Dance by Camera Can't Lie

| read on AO3 here | mixtape playlist | send me an ask with your request |

synopsis: In which Civil War never happened and they all lived happily ever after. Wanda and Vision dance at one of Tony’s fancy galas and are forced to address the feelings that have become apparent to themselves, and the rest of the team. Yearning included with a happy resolution after a lil bit of angsty longing.

if this was our last chance (i'd ask you to stay)

A fundraising gala wasn’t how Wanda had intended to spend her first free Friday night in over a month yet here she was, decked out in a red cocktail dress with her hair piled up in wavy curls atop her head.

Tony Stark had started by leading the team up to an actual stagewhich had Wanda feeling a hot wave of embarrassment that had little to do with the glaring heat of the spotlights overhead. She tried to stamp down the frustration that built in her with every joke cracked by the billionaire before the podium. Wanda had to give it to him this time, Tony had warned them exactly what tonight would be: a gaggle of busybody networkers and the odd philanthropist come to see the celebrities that were the Avengers. It just so happened that there was plenty of wealth to be given in exchange for a snatch of conversation with a superhero. So, Wanda knew she could grumble all she liked about how much she hated how they glorified her ‘job’ and made her famous in a way she knew she had no right to be, but that wouldn’t change the fac that she had agreed to this event. For the charities they were supporting it would be worth it. In a rare moment of understanding, Tony had even invited her to assist Pepper Potts in the distribution of funds to the various Stark sponsored charities, to see the work firsthand. It was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. Not with her history.

Tony appeared to have reached the end of his speech and the rest of the team was thankfully let go to disperse around the large gala hall. Wanda took her time following Natasha off the stage, knowing that the moment she was enveloped into the waiting crowd the real trouble would begin. Already Steve was being mobbed making Wanda grateful that the public was still relatively fearful of her.

Natasha gave her a somewhat forced smile as she walked headfirst into the crowd, heading straight for Steve. A somewhat frantic scan of the crowd and Wanda had spotted Sam who had escape to the bar, talking with a child who looked far too young to be in such a place. She directed her feet there and did her best to weave throughout the glittering crowd.

A shoulder hit hers and Wanda spun, planting her feet the same way that she had been taught in training, barely stopping herself from falling over.

“I’m so sorry,” a woman’s voice said as Wanda’s assailant turned towards her.

“That’s alright,” Wanda replied trying to smile kindly despite the pain in her shoulder, “I should have been more careful about where I was walking.”

The middle-aged woman’s eyes widened when she saw who she had bumped into and she leant away slightly in way that indicated she clearly wanted to step back but didn’t want to be rude. “No trouble at all.”

Wanda decided it was best to leave.

By the time she made it to the bar the kid had been guided off by Pepper in her usual whirlwind of reddish hair. Sam was leaning against the bar and appeared to be pointedly ignoring the group of people who were ogling him from a few seats down.

“You have a fanclub,” Wanda said in a mock whisper as she sidled up to him.

“They aren’t all for me,” Sam grinned back and sure enough a few of the group had broken off and were heading her way.

Wanda resisted the urge to say oh no and instead braced herself with a welcoming smile. Undeterred by being in the presence of two of the Avengers a youngish woman with choppy black hair extended a hand confidently.

“I’m Alisia,” she said, and Wanda returned the hand shake as warmly as she could. She hadn’t spent a whole lot of time out in public in a long time, was this how things were done?

“I’m Wanda.”

“We know!” The person standing beside Alisia was all gangly limbs but the voice that emerged was pitched with such child-like excitement it almost made Wanda smile for real.

Alisia gave her companion a sharp look. “We really admire your work.”

“Thank you…” Wanda said slowly looking at Sam for guidance. He smirked and tipped his glass to her. At least Sam had had a regular life before joining the Avengers. Wanda tried not to think about a lot of what had happened before she had joined the team, though she had attended school for a period of time, she was still seriously out of practice in making introductions.

“I’m Aron,” the tall person said extending their hand, somewhat shakily, as Alisia had done.

“Lovely to meet you,” Wanda replied, not liking how tightly her hand was held.

When neither made to make further conversation and were instead content to look at her in awe. Wanda quickly turned to the bottle of wine that Sam had before him pouring a glass for herself.

“We have a proposal for you,” said Aron abruptly breaking the awkward silence that appeared to have their friends not far off in a bit of a tizzy, judging from the groans of shame.

“A plan you could say,” Alisia added.

“To take down scientology.”

It was said with such absolute certainty that even Sam choked on his drink.

“We’ve seen what you can do, what happened in Sokovia, Lagos. You could annihilate their headquarters with a wave of your hand–”

Wanda didn’t bother to correct them on the scope of her powers at present, rather she was consumed by the heartbeat that was growing louder in her ears, the fact that her hand had begun to shake a little around the glass she held. Holding the glass tighter helped marginally in blocking the onslaught of images that threatened to overwhelm her. Pietro, Ultron, Novi Grad’s destruction, Lagos and every mistake she had made since.

Sam wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Hey guys it was really nice meeting you, but I don’t know if this is an appropriate conversation to have at a charity function,” Sam said gesturing to the room around them. Distantly Wanda registered that an orchestra had started playing somewhere.

Alisia wasn’t swayed. “It’s just a simple question, we’ve even written up a report for you with all the headquarters listed if you’d like to take it. The destruction you can cause could be of real use to our group in dismantling–”

This was not going in the direction Wanda needed it to. She tried to work through the breathing exercises that Sam had taught her or go over the mentally quietening techniques he’d said helped PTSD patients. She was usually quite good at it but hadn’t ever had to use such coping mechanisms in a public scenario. Wanda set the glass down quickly because any second she was sure it was going to shatter under her grip.

“That’s enough,” Sam said at the exact time a familiar figure stepped up to them, shielding Wanda from the warm lights overhead.

“Wanda, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

The relief that spread through her bones was tangible. Wanda felt herself straighten, take a deep breath in through her mouth and out through her nose.

“I was waiting her for you,” she replied breathlessly with her first real smile of the night.

Vision’s arm came to a comforting rest around her back, his hand cupping her elbow as he nodded to the Sam and lead her away. They left in time for her to hear Sam questioning the kids about the rest of their friends who appeared to be taking advantage of the free flow bar despite being clearly underage.

“Thank you, you saved me,” Wanda murmured as they arced around the outside of the crowd which had begun to section off into little groups, many focused around one or two members of the team.

“I thought you might need rescuing,” Vision said back and tapped his forehead with his free hand, indicating the mind stone that was usually atop his forehead. Tony had made it perfectly clear that Vision could appear as himself tonight if he so wished, but as Vision had confided in her beforehand, he hadn’t wanted to make any of the donors uncomfortable. His sensitivity to others warmed her heart usually, but the way he hid himself didn’t feel right. If anyone ought to be hidden away out of sight of the wealthy donors it was her.

As though knowing what she was thinking, Vision pulled her closer and over to an empty table where a handful of belongings had been abandoned in favour of the networking happening out on the floor. He poured her a fresh glass of water and placed it in her hand.

“Thank you, if you hadn’t saved me, I don’t know what I would have done,” Wanda said and reached out to touch his hand.

“It’s alright.”

“Still, you shouldn’t need to,” Wanda said sheepishly, not quite knowing why she was still talking. Thank you had been simple enough, where were these excuses coming from?

“You know why I do it,” Vision said making out to hold her hand in his, but Wanda was quick to draw it back to the water glass before her.

She did know why he did it. Vision had made that veryclear two weeks ago when they had returned from a particularly difficult mission. Things hadn’t gone the way they were supposed to, and Wanda had dislocated her shoulder mid fight. She’d used her magic to push herself away from the battle, leaving Steve and Sam to take the brunt of the thugs they had discovered were attempting to reproduce old Stark military technology. All it had taken was that spark of blinding pain as her shoulder slipped free of its socket for Wanda’s powers to momentarily get out of control. She wasn’t sure why she’d done it, if it was even a conscious decision really. But she must have reached out to Vision. He arrived just in time to knock the crap out of one of the thugs who’d stepped towards her to finish the work.

Vision had fallen to his knees next to her and assessed her injury immediately, even as she struggled to speak past the pain and explain that she was fine, that Sam and Steve needed help. He had lifted her with endless care and taken her straight to the SUV that Natasha was waiting in. He’d even gotten terse with Nat about Wanda’s condition and the need to get back to the compound but waiting for the others naturally won out (Wanda had had to deal with his disapproving muttering as he tried to make her comfortable in the back of the car). When they were eventually joined by Sam and Steve the pain had gone down significantly but Vision was on edge. He insisted on holding her steady in the back of the car, and when they arrived back at the compound and called for a doctor, he had carried her from room to room until they reached the infirmary. Vision had been a constant presence as the doctor arrived and set about administering pain medication and setting her shoulder back into its joint.

After a brief argument, Wanda had been allowed back to her regular rooms where Vision had pestered her all evening with fresh ice packs, more pillows and a steaming bowl of chicken soup (Wanda had to remind him this was usually just for the flu but when he began to list its benefits post-exercion she gave in and ate it all).

It wasn’t until late that night as she drifted in and out of a hazy sleep, waking every now and then to the throbbing in her shoulder as the pain medication slowly wore off, did Wanda realise Vision was still beside her.

His head was slumped against his chest in the chair that usually sat in the corner of her room. His hand was holding hers and it tightened as she shifted into a sitting position. Registering that she was awake Vision had snapped upright and pulled his hand away.

“Sorry,” he’d said and seemed to be about to stand up, “I–”

“It’s fine,” Wanda said assuring enough that he sat down once more, “I want you to stay.”

His face softened in the near darkness and he pulled his chair closer. They whispered quietly to each other for three quarters of an hour, despite no chance of waking up the rest of the team (Wanda’s room being sound proofed when she’d moved in thanks to violent sleep terrors in her first few weeks). When her eyes finally started to droop again Vision helped her lie down and again, he hesitated. Their eyes locked and for a moment Wanda thought for sure that he’d kiss her. Instead, he had leant closer and pressed his forehead to hers for the shortest of moments. It wound up being infinitely more intimate than a peck on the cheek might have been. The breath that he sighed as he rose again was of relief and Wanda felt it then – the absolute fear he’d felt that morning when her distressed cry for help had reached him along some line of connection between them (owing to the stone, she assumed). She wondered if Vision had ever expected himself to be presented with the idea of loss.

Worse yet, Vision had unknowingly (or perhaps consciously) left their link open as he resumed his seat and took her hand again. Wanda had done her best to pretend to sleep as Vision had closed his eyes, no doubt his brain was moving as quick as ever behind fluttering eyelids. But it was difficult to fully relax as he fed the feelings along this line of connection Wanda hadn’t even realised, they’d had. She supposed it made sense, they hadn’t always needed to use words and got along in a way that surprised most of the team. Wanda was about to ask Vision to feelmore quietly so she could get some sleep when his eyes opened again and whatever he’d been researching was left to the back of his mind. Instead, she felt his gaze on her ‘sleeping’ face and the following wave of affection that flowed to her, warming her from top to bottom. Adoration, coloured by fear yes, but overwhelmingly loving.

They’d remained that way most of the night, Vision retreating into his mind for most of the time no doubt aware that Wanda spent two hours focusing on regulating her breaths so that when she eventually dropped off into oblivion, she was exhausted.

They hadn’t discussed that day since. Vision had been gone by morning and Wanda wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t dreamt the whole thing up. Except for the fact that she felt the same way every time she saw him and recalled the warmth of that night. Then Vision had been sent south and she’d been on house arrest for a week to heal her shoulder properly. They hadn’t really had the opportunity to sit down like this.

So yes, Wanda knew why he did what he did. Why he was drawn to her like this. But she also couldn’t ignore the stone that hung between them and the connection it held to both their lives. How could she call the feelings that flowed through her real – what if it was all owing to the stupid stone in his head? That was the fear that had stuck with her in the two years since they’d started living together at the compound, she wasn’t about to start listening to her heart now.

So, she snatched her hand back, immediately regretting her action at the flash of emotion across Vision’s face and went back to her water. She convinced herself that his statement, you know why I do it, didn’t require any further discussion for the moment.

To Wanda’s surprise the silence between them was broken by the small orchestra in one corner of the hall which had started up a mighty waltz. Dancing? She mused to herself. Sure enough couples had begun to pair off across what was revealed to be a dance floor in the centre..

While Wanda’s eyes had been stuck on the floor, Vision’s had been fixed to her and she could see he was about to ask to dance. She knew she should say no, but also knew she wouldn’t be able to if it came down to it.

Her second saviour of the night was Steve Rogers who happened to walk past at exactly that moment. Wanda launched herself up and in a few short strides was at his side asking for a dance with a mocking curtsey, a dismayed Vision left behind her. It has to be like thisshe told herself.

“Would you care to dance, Captain?” Steve looked taken aback at first but quickly joined in on the charade.

“Of course, milady,” and extended an elbow in a way that reminded Wanda that going dancing like this had probably been fairly common for Steve when he was a teenager.

They took up a position on the outer rim of the dance floor as Wanda tried to find her feet and recall what little she knew about waltzing from television and the one dance lesson Nat had teased out of her. Thankfully Steve was an excellent partner. She knew there were a whole host of jealous eyes on her as they spun around but Wanda paid them little attention. Her thoughts were so clearly occupied, and so obviously on Vision that Steve had to save her from stumbling a few times.

“It doesn’t have to be like this between you two, y’know?” Steve said giving her a comforting smile.

Wanda sighed hopelessly. “It does though.”

“I don’t know everything that is happening or if this helps, but you know that no one in the team would have an issue with it right?”

“I know, thank you.” It was comforting coming from him, but Wanda knew it was the least of her concerns.

“So why do you avoid his advances?” Steve asked bluntly in a way she knew only Steve would. “Are his feelings not reciprocated?”

Wanda flushed. “No, they are reciprocated…”

“So, what’s the problem.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“It isn’t,” Steve said shrugging and Wanda thought she noticed a little edge to his voice. “If you both feel something strong, I can’t begin to imagine what could be keeping you from each other. At least nothing worth listening too.”

“Maybe,” Wanda said thoughtfully. She wanted to tell Steve about the connection they seemed to have, her fear that their connection was down to the stone and the stone alone. That she had imagined all the instances over the last year when her heart had fluttered or warmed at the sight of him. But she knew, deep down, that this wasn’t the heart of the fear. She was more afraid than she’d been in a long time. It wasn’t the fear that came with regular life-threatening missions or the fear she had felt crouched below her childhood bed, waiting for a bomb to finally detonate. It was the fear that she’d get attached and when she eventually lost Vision… that this time she wouldn’t climb out of the pit of grief.

“Don’t let fear be your compass,” Steve said squeezing her hand and pulling her to a stop by the outskirts of the dancers. He was so intuitive when it came to what she was worrying about that it was unnerving. He also knew precisely what to say. “Take it as someone who didn’t take the leap when he had the chance.”

Even if Wanda had wanted to protest this, she didn’t have the chance as Vision appeared yet again. His brow was furrowed, it furrowed deeper when he caught sight of Steve’s hand which she hadn’t realised she’d still been holding.

“May I take over?” Vision asked looking rather than at Steve, but directly at Wanda.

She nodded to Steve and he gave her hand one last squeeze. “Take the leap.” With that last reminder he disappeared off into the crowd. Without hesitation, Vision offered up his hand.

In moments Vision had her spinning around the floor, no longer hidden around the outside but edging closer to the centre of the dance floor. His movements were fluid, his hand a soft assurance cupping her back, his left hand guiding her through the dance. Without warning the orchestra picked up a livelier tune and the dance changed, some couples left the floor in surprise, but more were quick to replace them. The contemporary music filled the hall around them, but Wanda paid it little attention, her gaze was focused on Vision only.

After a particularly wonderful spin that had Wanda twirling back into Vision’s embrace, she felt she was finally able to form words.

“I didn’t know you could dance?”

“Until a few minutes ago I couldn’t,” Vision said honestly, a somewhat sheepish smile grace his face. “The only reason it took me so long to go after you was that I didn’t want to fumble on the dance floor. I was watching videos…” He trailed off in something like embarrassment.

“Well, I’m glad one of us knows what to do.”

“I–” She began.

“Wanda–” Vision started and they both looked at each other before laughing.

“Would you like to go first?” He offered.

“I just wanted to apologise for leaving you at the table, it was rude.”

“Not at all,” Vision said shaking his head fervently, “I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. I’d hate to think that I’ve pressured you into anything, I’d never want to do that. If anything that I’ve said, or done, has made you uncomfortable, tonight or in the past–”

“No,” Wanda said, cutting him off more forcefully than she intended. She cleared her throat, her cheeks warming again. “You haven’t pressure me into anything, this is entirely me. I’ve been acting without thinking about what we both feel and what I want.”

Before she could elaborate on what she had just revealed they were whipped up in the music once more and she was spent spinning around again and again. She barely felt her feet moving across the shining marble of the floor and had to check that she wasn’t legitimately levitating. Pairs moved to make space for them as Vision led her through a simple but elegant routine of spinning, stepping and swaying. Wanda relished the feeling of his hand at her back and the closeness between them. The intimacy as clear despite the hundred eyes piercing into their back as they flew around the space in perfect synchronicity. With a final crescendo that left Vision to dip her gracefully, Wanda couldn’t help but laugh, her arms holding onto him tightly. When he pulled her up, her arms settled around his neck and they swayed for the final bars of the song before the audience began too applaud the orchestra. They were left staring at each other, almost nose to nose. Wanda noted that she was breathing hard, and it wasn’t entirely from the exertion of dancing. She was so focused on his eyes and the way they were looking at each other, the knowing and understanding passing between them. With a slight hesitation she reached up and pressed a hand to his cheek and felt the warmth there as he leaned into her caress.

There moment was interrupted by a loud wolf whistle and Wanda started to realise that they were somewhat the centre of attention and that the dancing had stopped for the night. The source of the wolf whistle was, unsurprisingly, Tony himself.

“We should get out the way,” Wanda said backing away. She saw the momentary fear on Vision’s face, or rather felt it crackle in the air around them and took the opportunity to extend her hand. It was a simple gesture, but she knew as he gently took her hand that it meant everything they hadn’t yet said. It was what Vision had been waiting for, the confirmation of his feelings and the return of hers and that was all they needed for the moment. Wanda squeezed his hand tighter as they stepped around the groups of people blocking their way out of the hall. Vision seemed somewhat confused about where they were going but realisation kicked in when Wanda pulled him behind the curtains that lead to the backstage area of the events hall. The heavy black material swung shut behind them, thoroughly insulating their voices from the outside world.

“Should we talk about this?” Vision said as Wanda dropped his hand and turned back to face him. He gestured between them at this which summed up exactly how uncertain he still was.

“Why talk?” Wanda asked, tilting her head and stepping forward.

One hand caught the lapel of his blue suit, the other rested against his chest as Vision took her face in his hands with all the care in the world. His breath was a whisper against her face as he delicately kissed her cheek on one side, then the other. He pressed his warm lips to her forehead. Starting at her jaw next he pressed tender kisses all the way until he reached her mouth. Wanda tilted her head up and her eyes fluttered open. Vision had dropped his phased glamour and was his usual self, eyes glowing somewhat in the dark. The stone sat quietly at his forehead, but Wanda didn’t spare it a glance. Perhaps this connection was partly due to the stone, but that couldn’t be all it was. This feeling had grown over time, it had been slow and then suddenly quick until she was hurtling towards the cliff and falling before she knew it.

When Vision pressed his lips against hers, she couldn’t help the smile that broke across her face as she flung her arms around him. Finally, her soul seemed to sigh. She was still afraid, but it was a different kind of fear, the fear that she might pass this up, this feeling that was threatening to make her heart beat out of her chest. That she might miss the opportunity to have a life with Vision was more frightening that dangerous missions or the shadow of death always at her back.

Vision drew back slightly, his forehead was still pressed to hers, but his hands had slid down to her waist. Without hesitation Wanda threw her arms around him and pulled him close. It was a moment before he returned the motion. The air crackled around the pair with something only they could sense, affection and longing hung about them that made Wanda press into his embrace further. There were no more words to say for the moment, Wanda had taken her leap and now she had him she was never going to let go.

#wandavision #wanda x vision #scarlet vision fanfic #ao3 fanfiction #Wanda Maximoff #vision #scarlet witch #visionsofusfics

[magic5ball]

Nature Trail to Hell Arc IV: Megamart of Darkness (9)

Chapter 9: Dropping the A-Bomb

           I just stood there, having no idea what to say or do. It was like looking in a mirror at the grim, jaded hump of crap you know you’re going to be in ten years if the scholarship doesn’t work out. It was a sight that would bring most grown men to their knees, so considering I was a little kid at the time, it was a wonder I was even standing at all.

Yet somehow, I managed to spit words.

“T-the water.” I trembled, “g-give it back.”

He looked at the glowing plastic bottle in his hand. “Sorry kid, no can do. This here’s company property now. But if you want, I’m more than willing to sit down for an adult conversation.”

The way he said those last two words made my blood freeze, no small task when the ‘sun’ was shining so bright overhead. 

He gestured over to an area at the foot of the inflatable volcano, where two plastic chairs and a table rested. On top of the table were several Red Solo cups and a bottle of Crystal Springs Bottled Water.

“Like I said, its’ been awhile since I’ve had company. Besides the Wegmart Company, that is! Ha!”

My feeble ten year old mind struggled to grapple with the fact that someday I would find jokes like that funny. One of the most horrible experiences of my life.

But what could I do? Thanks to stories from my gangster days, I knew darn well what this A-Bomb was capable of, and I wasn’t really in a position to take chances. So I followed him to the tables, trying not to think about how Bokrug should have been here by now, despite his lumbering movements.

Naturally, I didn’t make a peep. If there’s one thing I learned from comic books, its’ best not to set these friendly-lookin’ types off.

When we did get to that table, first thing the guy did was offer me some of that crisp, refreshing, bottled water. Though the heat from the lava made it really tempting, I knew I’d never be able to live with myself if I did.

“Suit yourself, kiddo.” He said, pouring a cup of his own. “We aren’t that different, you know. In fact, you’re a lot like me when I was little…”

On the outside, I stared like the teacher was about to bring the whipping stick. On the inside, I wanted to scream, because long talks with my Dad had taught me where this was going.

                                                      .   .   .

“When I was your age, I also went to a Summer Camp, it was called Camp Salmon or something like that. Anyway, the counselors running the camp were mean. Like, really, really mean, so the second I could I dashed right on out of there and into the woods. Sound familiar?”

Naturally, I didn’t say a word. Throat was too parched, anyway. A-Bomb laughed.

“Oh who am I kidding?! Of course it does! I know because Wegmart has surveillance cameras everywhere!”

He pressed something under the table, and from the ground emerged a device made from a bunch of big screen T.V.s hastily duct taped together, several flashing images of my adventures over the summer. The rest showed the frozen foods aisle, where my feathered allies were getting ‘ahem’, ‘cleaned up’ in the most gruesome way possible.

“Like you, Watterson Tostig, I went into the underworld and escaped. I too, was inducted into a gang of dinosaurs. I, too, became God of Roadside America. But at the end of the day, guys like us have to settle down and face reality. Wegmart saved me, kid, and if you’re willing, it’ll save you too.”

All that time, I didn’t turn away from the screen. I couldn’t.

“I thought I could spend the rest of my life hiding in the produce aisle. But I was foolish back then, a rogue vagrant eating grapefruit peels. Until THEY rescued we. The founders of Wegmart took my withered ghost and showed me the way to love, happiness, and most importantly, low, low prices!”

Yeah, yeah. The low, low price of a human soul!

“I was weak at first, but the kind folks at Wegmart saw my talents as a brown bagger and before I knew it, I had my own private toothpick in the faculty room! After that, they put me into production.”

Here’s the thing about young me being stoic: even at the best of times, he was kinda bad at it. Sometimes I even wonder if he had some kind of attention deficit. Not saying little me cocked an eyebrow at the mention of ‘production’, but he looked at me like I did before he went on yammering again. 

“Oh yeah! You’re not in the know of company business. Right!  See, our store used to have a 3D printer they would use to take the employee of the month and just clone him until they had an entire staff of the perfect worker! And yours truly has held the position for ten years!”

Ever since I was young enough to confuse Wegmart with Disneyland, I’d always noticed how all the brown baggers looked the same. Suddenly, everything made terrible, terrible sense. But worse was the realization that, just like those cereal box sweepstakes, the empty, dotted line cutout of a man could have easily been me!

“Shame they recalled the printer. Something about lead based ink. Or the clones having higher than normal rates of cancer. Really, I just signed the paperwork. But enough of the sad stuff, Watters! Let’s talk future! Because I’ve seen you in action and man, you’re just the kind of spunk to breathe life into this company!”

Least, I think that’s what he said. Bokrug’s running tardy was really nerving me up.

“So join me, Watterson! And let us rule the Wegmart like manager and employee!”

“No.” I whispered.

“Eh?” A-Bomb cocked an eyebrow, like he’d never heard the word in years.

And with that, I could stay silent no longer. The anger, the one that’d been boiling so steadily I me like the giant volcano we sat at the foot of, went full Krakatoa!

“Are you deaf, poophead?! I said NO!. And you know why? Because all you did was make a giant self-pity sob story for yourself, because you think that if you can drag me down with you into this Megamart of Darkness, you’ll feel better about stealing water from a bunch of geese! I’m pretty sure you could have gotten some from Rite Aid if you were willing to play fair!”

“Rite Aid doesn’t sell-“

“My point is, you’re just jealous of me because I’m not a cog in the machine like you! And that ‘we’re so alike’ bullcrap wouldn’t work on a five year old! So no, I won’t join you, because I might have sold my soul to a Tako Shak, but even I have stinking standards, you self-pitying TURD!”

A-Bomb stared at me, mouth agape for a few seconds. “T-the T-word?...”

“You heard me right, TURD!, so you better let me go unless you want more of the same! I’ll even tell my Mom, and you really don’t want to see her when she’s angry!”

“No, no, I get it…” he pushed a button under the table.

Another hole opened in the ground, and from it emerged what I can only describe as a nuclear missile made entirely of fuzzy orange Shampows.

“Your friends and family are holding you back, little bro! So how about I sweeten the deal: you join me, and I don’t rain Shampow down on your entire neighborhood!”

I tried to move, only to find myself stuck to my seat. Literally. The son of a snitch must have superglued the thing beforehand!

“So, do we have a deal?”

I didn’t say a word.

“Do. We. Have. A. Deal?”

Now I might have been a bit of a turd back in the day, but darn it, I couldn’t let an entire neighborhood get wiped from existence! Especially when the neighbor hadn’t even returned out lawnmower yet!

“Okay! Okay! I’ll join you! I’ll be your whipping boy. I’ll even stock Barbie dolls if I have to! Just don’t press hat button!”

And you know what the prick did? He kept putting his finger closer and closer to the launch button!

“But I thought you said you wouldn’t do it if I joined!”

“Foolish Watt! Your petty loyalties to the neighborhood make you weak! We must purge this from your mind so you can know true Wegmart! Just like my manager did to my neighborhood!”

But you know what the worst part was? He said this using the most condescending, prickish voice I could imagine.

Still, one thing needed clearing up.

“Hey A-Bomb? What was your neighborhood?”

Guy didn’t say a word, but the way he shut up after that spoke plenty.

“… They called it New Jersey.” He whispered.

I rolled my eyes, knowing full well it might be the last time I ever express sarcasm. Of course!

Time slowed to a crawl as I waited on the imminent destruction of everything I ever gave a crap about. Oh, I tried to see things from the half full perspective, but not even the knowledge my douchebag brother was probably going to get caught dab smack in the middle of the detonation zone passed out on the couch watching teen drama reruns could compensate for everything. At least A-Bomb was taking his sweet time pressing, probably so he could rub it in more.

In fact, he was taking a lot of sweet time. (Granted five minutes is pretty long for a ten year old, but still!) Then I noticed he was pressing the detonation button multiple times, each time faster and more flustered. I looked up, wondering if the Lord himself had intervened on behalf of little old me, even after everything. 

In fact, my salvation had come in the form of a certain goose, who grinned triumphantly, a plug and wire in his beak, machine gun cradled in his wings.

“Bokrug!”

The noble bird spit out the plug, beaming with triumph despite being so plucked of feathers he was practically naked. A-Bomb was, on the other hand, for the first time since I saw him feeling something other than calm, collected, or several other words you find in yoga advertisements. His face turned so red I figured he’d explode any minute, just like his namesake.

“YOU!” he leapt up from his seat, facing down the glorious gander. ”I had ONE chance to find happiness! ONE chance to have somebody to share this miserable job! Years of planning, plotting, scheming, and with one bite you ruined it!” He unsheathed those golf clubs from his back. “Do you know what its’ like to run a store with only clones of yourself?! With everyone knowing exactly what you do?! Its’ so, so BOORIIINNGGG!”

“Then perhaps you should have found a happiness that did not require the suffering of another.” He bared his beak, bits of Wegmart technology still stuck in them. “Or technology easily damaged by the humblest of beaks.” like he was emphasizing the point, he cocked the machine gun, maing probably the world’s most satisfying click. 

“Who do you think you are, my Mom?!” He spun his golf clubs around, making a combination of kung-fu poses and noises that could only be described as either really stupid or really racist. Possibly both.

“Bokrug-kun! You have brought great dishonor upon my house. Prepare to die!” he cried in the phoniest Japanese accent I ever heard.

“I’m Egyptian, you a$$hole!”

With a guttural roar, the waterfowl from hell charged in kind, raining bullets like hellfire.

It was the awesomest f*cking thing I ever saw.

#My writing #Nature Trail To Hell #supermarket #geese

[thecorteztwins]

I love how you care so much about obscure characters. Who is your favorite underrated female X-men character

Awww thank you! I love bringing them love, so it makes me really happy for you to say that! My absolute fave is Haven, but I read “faves” as plural so I wrote down a bunch...my faves can bounce around a bit but here’s a list of some of them! It’s under a cut because it’s long, I really like to explain who these gals are and why I like them so much! Warning, there is some description of pretty horrendous sexism and racism for some of these, since nothing makes me latch on to a woman harder than wanting to defend her from the SHITTY THINGS WRITERS DID TO HER! I kinda wrote novels for Haven and Madelyne, then I did links to previous things I’ve written about others. This is a LOT, I’m so sorry, I just love sharing!! Thank you for asking!!

THE BIG ONES Basically my consistent mega-faves I’m always ready to talk about! RADHA “HAVEN” DASTOOR - This lady has been at the top of my list for over five years and counting! She just really resonated with me on a deep level. She’s this mysterious woman who turns up in X-Factor for seven issues, and though she’s very benevolent towards them (even when they attack her) she is technically a villain, as she’s trying to destroy 3/4 of the world to bring about the Mahapralaya, a sort of Hindu apocalypse that will bring about an age of peace and end to suffering. So, her motives are very compassionate, and as it turns out, the horrible things she’s trying to do aren’t actually her fault. She’s being posessed by the Adversary, a demon of the highest order and an entity of cosmic evil. Or more specifically, her unborn child is. See, Haven was a really, really good woman. She was not a mutant, but she was sensitive to the pain and suffering of others from an early age, and she devoted her life to helping the poor and needy. She’s incredibly rich, so she could have helped just from afar, but instead she not only used her wealth to help others, she herself went out in the streets to attend to the poor and sick with her own hands. She bathed lepers, cradled dying babies, everything. She actually GOT the name “Haven” from a children’s hospital that she renovated, the kids started calling HER that instead. What a villain, huh? It all goes super wrong when she fell in love with a guy. After he took her virginity, he took off, leaving her pregnant. This was in 1970s India, and she was a very a religious woman, she felt INTENSE shame and horrible guilt and sunk into a deep depression, now living on the streets herself she was so broken. And then...then her fetus started talking to her. Yeah, see, technically she wasn’t posessed by the Adversary, her unborn child was. It incubated in her for twenty years, corrupting her mind, making her its pawn, all basically for its own amusement til it could be reborn into the world, killing her. And the guy who knocked her up? Got off scott-free. Basically she had sex ONE time and she had to be punished for it by being stripped of her agency, forced to betray everything she loved and believed, and then finally killed in the mud while a Marvel deity stood over and told her how she brought this on herself. It’s a slut-shaming Victorian morality tale of how no matter how good a person you are, you’re tainted forever if you violate purity culture just once, and we’re expected to AGREE with this narrative as readers. It’s sick. It gets even worse in how X-Factor treats her. She first appears RESCUING Polaris from government agents who are trying to kill her, because despite WORKING for the government at this time (X-Factor was a government team during this period) Polaris’s energy signature matched Magneto’s. Haven is the one who saved Polaris by teleporting her away. Polaris was distrustful and threatened Haven. Haven tried to talk her down, but also opened her arms and said that if Polaris truly did not believe her, then she would not resist. Polaris decided to “give trust a try” but I also truly believe that if Lorna had attacked her, Haven indeed would have let her. Haven is a human but the Adversary gave her INCREDIBLE power, she could WIPE PEOPLE FROM EXISTENCE by THINKING ABOUT IT, but she was a pacifist every step of the way, even as a villain. X-Factor would REPEATEDLY attack her later...she NEVER retaliated. The worst thing she did was, once they kept on attacking her, she just kinda put them in her pocket dimension as a time-out, but didn’t hurt them any. I really don’t think she COULD, possessed or not. Anyway, after meeting Lorna, she ‘ports Lorna back to safety and leaves her be. She is interested in recruiting Lorna and the rest of X-Factor to her cause, but she’s very moral about it, and never uses situations like these as leverage; for instance, when she heals Rahne of the Genoshan bonding process and gives her back her free will and her ability to resume her fully human form, Rahne is ECSTATIC and ready to do ANYTHING for her. And rather than exploit this, Haven just hugs her and tells her that her joy is thanks enough. Again, what a villain! Anyway, it turns out this Haven lady is also an activist! She’s big on promoting peace between warring groups (which I think makes it very significant that she’s an Indian character from Mumbai, then Bombay, who was created in 1992, the same year when Hindu/Muslim tensions in India resulted in the Bombay Bombings and subsequent riots, and she indeed mentions Hindu/Muslim tensions in her pro-peace speeches) and she emphasizes accepting MUTANTS in particular. It is very rare we see humans who are pro-mutant, though they had happened before, but this is the first time we see a human who is pro-mutant WITHOUT any affiliation or friendship with the X-men, and who is a public figure who seems to have some real social power---she’s a best-selling author, lecturer, and apparently her being a very wealthy woman has made some very wealthy people listen to her. She is basically the perfect ally for mutants if you take out the demon-possessed part, and I always found this super interesting and wish more had been done with it. So, she’s speaking at Brahma Hall (Brahma, notably, is the Hindu creator god) and...THIS happens. It’s...it’s really distressing. I’m sure it’s bad enough in its own time, but reading it NOW, in a post-9/11 world, a world where POC are routinely slaughtered by law enforcement (they always were but social media has made us more aware) it’s chilling. And we, the reader, are supposed to see X-Factor as JUSTIFIED in how they treat this unarmed, non-threatening, apparently-human-for-all-they-know woman who is promoting peace. Because no matter how nice she is, the US government says she’s an evil terrorist, and the US government turns out to be right! Yay, America! This might be a good time to mention Haven was the first Hindu character in X-Men comics, and the philosophy that the Adversary is manipulating her with comes directly from Hindu cosmology, and that is WAY IFFY to say THE LEAST. Holy xenophobia, Batman! And in an X-MEN comic of ALL PLACES! Oh yeah, and our good guys also describe her beliefs as “New Age psychobabble” and make fun of her temple decor as "very 60s" when BOTH ARE FROM HINDUISM, WHITE USA HIPPIES DID NOT INVENT IT, YOU IGNORANT SHITS So anyway, Haven’s very interesting to me as someone who is so deeply pacifistic and compassionate, that even when she’s being steered by a literal demon that has been talking in her womb for 20 years, she’s still someone who is perpetually polite, who won’t hurt the HEROES even when they want to hurt her, who SURRENDERS during a FIGHT in order to HEAL ONE OF THEM, and...who ends up with an abruptly aborted arc where she’s killed by her own “child” and victim-blamed in her last moments by Roma, the Omniversal Guardian Goddess and foe/counterpart of the Adversary. It’s made all the more tragic by the fact that Haven’s last pleas to Roma weren’t for herself, but for Roma to stop the Adversary, as she had realized now what her “child” really was. Even in her final moments, Haven was thinking of others, of the world. It’s just....awful to me that a character as interesting and unique as she was was thrown away like that, and that she was treated in such a sexist, racist, xenophobic way by both the HEROES and the story itself. I stan Haven 4 life. MADELYNE PRYOR- She’s maybe not “obscure” per se, I think most X-Men readers have a basic understanding of who she is, but the problem is that “basic” is not enough. What most people know is ”she’s Jean Grey’s evil clone” and some might know that “she was married to Scott Summers and went evil when he ditched her for Jean”. But that’s so far from the whole story, and it really does Madelyne a disservice, and canon has done her ENOUGH disservice already. Madelyne was originally created by Chris Claremont to truly be just a human woman who looked just like the dead Jean, with whom Scott would settle down and have a kid, and leave the X-Men. It’s a pretty nonsensical notion, the idea that this woman just happens to look exactly like Jean and meet Scott and fall in love, but this was his plan, he has confirmed it. And like...that’s pretty sexist from the start, in that she’s very literally created as a replacement for Jean on a narrative level, there’s NO REASON that she should have to look exactly like Scott’s dead ex besides as a way for Scott to still “get” Jean in a way. But Maddie rises above that swiftly by being a super strong, super cool character in her own right. She’s a pilot, she’s fearless, she’s adventurous, she’s got a mean right hook, and she’s got a tragic backstory when she crashed her plane and cost the lives of over three hundred passengers. She gets involved with Scott and by extension the X-Men, and she holds her own despite having no powers. Weird fact, this means that some of the X-Men, like Rogue, met Madelyne before they ever met Jean. She also gets a cool story where she gained healing powers, and the reason her powers specifically took the form of healing is because they were what she wanted them to be. She’s a good person, and also a total badass. Then, Jean came back, and the Powers That Be wanted her back together with Scott. But Scott was married to Madelyne. Rather than have them get a divorce or something, it was decided Madelyne had to be very literally demonized and then murdered, because we can’t just have two women co-exist, no, they must be divided into a “good” woman and a “bad” woman and fight over a man. Actual quote from Chris Claremont: “ Then, unfortunately, Jean was resurrected, Scott dumps his wife and kid and goes back to the old girlfriend. So it not only destroys Scott's character as a hero and as a decent human being it creates an untenable structural situation: what do we do with Madelyne and the kid? ... So ultimately the resolution was: turn her into the Goblin Queen and kill her off.” So, after something like EIGHT YEARS of being a character unto herself, Madelyne gets retconned as actually having been Jean’s clone all along! Which, okay, does make sense, certainly more sense than ‘this woman just happens to look EXACTLY like Jean and hook up with Jean’s ex” but then the REASON that Sinister cloned her...is nothing to do with Maddie or Jean themselves. Madelyne’s creation isn’t ABOUT her the way so many other clone/created-in-a-lab type stories are, like Laura Kinney. She wasn’t important. She was made literally just to have a baby with Scott, the BABY is what’s important. She is REPEATEDLY called a “brood mare” in fact (a female horse used specifically for breeding) So basically, her only value, her only REASON for existing, is her reproductive capacity. A lot of people think that Madelyne either found out she was a clone and went crazy-evil, or she went crazy-evil when Scott went back to Jean. That’s not what happened. Madelyne goes through a long, long series of arduous tragedies that piece by piece dehumanize and violate and traumatize her, and even then she doesn’t become evil until she’s TRICKED into being infected with demonic energy. Being “evil” was NEVER her choice, and everyone forgets that. See, first Scott walked out on her and the baby. Then, the Marauders attacked her, nearly killed her, and stole her baby and left her for dead in a coma for months. When she woke up, her baby was still missing, and she rejoined the X-Men to help them while they also helped search for her son. She sacrificed her LIFE alongside them to defeat the Adversary (yes, the same one Haven was pregnant with!) and then was resurrected with them too by Roma (yes, same Roma). She continued to work with the X-Men, despite the fact Scott had left her, and used her tech expertise to be the X-Men’s computer gal in Australia. When she saw X-Factor on one of the news monitors, including Scott with Jean, she realized why he’d abandoned her. She punched the screen and the explosion knocked her unconscious. While she was knocked out and dreaming, the demon Sym invaded her mind showed her a few different reflections of things she could be, one of which was a demonic reflection of herself. She chose that one, saying “What the heck, it’s only a dream.” And then Sym infected her with demonic energy. So she literally JUST found out her husband left her and their now-missing son for another woman, and she thinks she’s dreaming so yeah she picks the idea of being a demon IN THE CONTEXT OF A DREAM, A FUCKING FANTASY, WHEN SHE’S GOT EVERY RIGHT TO BE PISSED and oh well now you’re gonna be evil for real honey you don’t get a choice. Serves you right for being angry even for a moment, woman! But even then, she didn’t instantly turn evil. Horrible shit had already happened to her, but she still held out…so of course, more shit happened to her. While she and the X-Men were trying to help an escapee from Genosha (which was still enslaving mutants at that point) she ended up captured herself, and since their readings indicated she was not quite human (though what exactly she was, they didn’t know) they tried to put her through the “mutate bonding process” that would enslave her too. As a result, her latent psychic powers finally manifest, and she telekinetically explodes the place. From there, we start seeing big hints that something is going really wrong with Maddie, she seduces Havok and she’s entered into a secret bargain with the demon N’astrih, who promised to help her find her still-missing son (whom she still wanted to find and save at that point because she was still mostly herself) and of course, that bargain transformed her into the Goblyn Queen. After this transformation, though, she STILL had not gone past the point of no return. That didn’t happen until she met Sinister and she found out the truth of her origins—-not only was she a clone of Jean Grey physically, the few memories that she had also came from Jean, and her emotions from Scott had been PROGRAMMED into her (meaning she never had a choice at all in the man she loved) and it was all to be a brood mare, to produce a child with him. Only then did she go off the deep end completely, and agreed to N’astrih’s plan to sacrifice her own son (who he now found and gave to her, as this was his plan all along) because it was the absolute BIGGEST fuck you she could give to Sinister and to Cyclops. And like, yes, that’s evil, but given at that point she was not only magically infected/corrupted with demon energy AND insane with trauma that had been building up for months if not YEARS of development…she basically had a better excuse than ANYONE in all this who was also corrupted by Inferno. Yet she’s the one who doesn’t get a break. The unfairness is just…staggering, really. Even her death isn’t without indignity, violation, and depersonalization---she tries to commit a murder suicide, linking her mind with Jean’s and killing herself so that Jean will be dragged down into death with her. Jean, who really is the kindest to Maddie, urges Maddie to live instead, but Maddie’s last words are “not in the same world as you”. Jean survives. Maddie does not. And then...Jean takes Maddie’s memories and psyche into herself. It’s meant as beautiful, but to me it’s a heinous violation. Maddie wanted nothing more than be APART from Jean, so much so she KILLED HERSELF, and now Jean has made her a part of her forever, and we’re meant to applaud this? It’s DISGUSTING. Madelyne gets resurrected in the 1990s by Nate Grey, but it turns out that was an accident on his part, his mind was subconsciously seeking...Jean Grey, of course. And we he finds out he’s the one who brought her back to life, HE TRIES TO KILL HER. Jean stops him, but it’s no wonder to me that poor Maddie runs to the arms of Sebastian Shaw...who, of all people, actually treats her as an individual from the get-go and ends up being a pretty good boyfriend to her. Never even tries to use her in any evil schemes, it’s crazy. Madelyne has come back and died again and come back a few times since then, but she’s never really been “Maddie” again, whether it was brave adventurous Badass Normal pilot Maddie who just wanted to help people, or the bitter, conflicted, morally grey Maddie of the 90s. No, she’s just....she’s not even Goblyn Queen anymore, she lacks the pathos, she’s just this sexy evil misogynist caricature of herself and I hate it. I really love Madelyne Pryor. She came into this crazy world as a normal human, and when she got pulled into superhero shenanigans she held her own. She was a badass, she was a spitfire, she had a huge heart. She deserves a lot better than just being a gross Sexy Evil Lady with no personality, especially since she no longer has the whole “demonically possessed” issue going on. It’s just stupid and sexist at this point. I personally love original 80s Maddie, and also 90s Maddie where like...this shit has happened to her and she’s darker for it now, and understandably so, but she’s also still HER. Like, she leaves Sebastian Shaw not because he ever treated her badly, which he did not, but because he was doing things that could hurt OTHER PEOPLE, and that was where she drew the line. She was an enemy to the X-Men now or at least really hated them, she killed Threnody for bringing up her past as being “bred to breed”, but she also wasn’t about to be with a man who would risk the lives of millions of innocent people with his schemes, no matter how well he treated her, no matter if he was the one man who ever saw her for HER. Real Maddie is INTERESTING and Real Maddie is GOOD and I want Real Maddie back so she can call everyone on their shit and then go off and live her best life instead of being eternally dragged back into pointless villainy by authors who can’t think of anything better! MEGGAN PUCEANU - As with Madelyne, she’s maybe not UNKNOWN per se, I mean she’s one of the lead characters of Excalibur, but I also don’t think she’s an A-lister at all either. I’ve written about her HERE and HERE and her relationship dynamics with Brian Braddock/Captain Britain HERE so I feel like those links will probably be better than another novel like I did for Haven and Maddie! CATSEYE AKA SHARON SMITH - The deaths of all the Hellions were a tragedy, but Catseye is the one I found most interesting and with the most potential! I’ve written about her HERE and the Hellions in general HERE with a segment on her. She’s just so cute and innocent and INTERESTING, I want to know so much more about how she behaves, how she perceives the world and interact with others, how she gets on with her teammates, how she reacts this and that, I just love her! MINDMELD - Appears for only one issue, is arguably the first transgender mutant in Marvel, and also a total badass who I think is really sexy. I write more about her HERE and HERE. HONORABLE MENTIONS I’m not freaking out over these girls AS MUCH or AS CONSISTENTLY but they all have a place in my heart!! Really all it takes is someone MENTIONING them to get me revved up all over again!

THRENODY AKA MELODY JACOBS- Another Marvel gal who can’t catch a break, when she’s remembered by anyone at all. I wrote about her HERE prior to her most recent return in Deadpool, then HERE about said return. I just really, really want Threnody to be happy. She’s suffered enough. Admittedly, that could be said for most women on this list, maybe all of them. GOSAMYR- Wrote about her HERE! Most people who know of her at all typically hate her but I find her extremely interesting. She’s like everything people HATE about women, every stereotype of “toxic femininity”, but then this is explained as part of her culture and biology, and this is, to her, what is normal, and how is she to KNOW that everyone acts nuts around her when she has no basis for knowing how they act when she’s NOT around? She interests me in the questions and dilemmas she raises, and I just kinda have a thing for women we’re supposed to hate because of their feminine traits. KWANNON- The Japanese woman whose body Betsy Braddock had for years. I was very excited when she was brought back to life and given her own series, I wanted for her at last to be a CHARACTER with her own PERSONALITY and LIFE that wasn’t just an excuse to give a white woman a ninja makeover, and then I got...Fallen Angels. And she’s just...she’s literally just 90s Psylocke. I was very disappointed. But I still like Kwannon HERSELF in terms of potential, and now that she’s back maybe she’ll become a real person sooner or later. SATURNYNE AND SAT-YR-9: Wrote about them HERE! I really like Sat-Yr-9 as a villain (I especially enjoyed her short stint in the Hellfire Club as White Queen with Viper as her lieutenant and not-so-subtle girlfriend) and I like Saturnyne as a sort of celestial bureaucrat, someone who isn’t a force of good or evil but a force of ORDER, like the opposite of “embodiment of chaos” type characters. MURMUR AKA ARLETTE TRUFFEAU: I have not written about her before but HERE IS HER WIKI ARTICLE. As with Gossamyr, she seems like the “sexy shallow slut we’re supposed to dislike” type, so of course I like her. BIANCA LANEIGE- A Generation X villain who bore a grudge against Emma Frost from her days in the Hellfire Club, I wrote about her HERE. She’s pretty comedic as a bad guy, but that’s not a bad thing! I’d like to see her around again one day, either as silly as ever or made more serious. LIFEGUARD: Wrote about here HERE. She was in the first X-Men graphic novel that I bought and I’ve always had a soft spot for her since. I really liked that she didn’t give a shit when she found out who her bio-father was, it’s such a refreshing reaction compared to the usual “what if I’m just like my father/I can’t believe I’m adopted/etc” angst. Comparatively, she’s super upset about her Shi’ar lineage, because that actually altered her INTERNAL self when it manifested, she started seeing everyone around her as PREY and I reckon that’s pretty distressing for someone like her. Always wanted to see her come back; she’s in the background at a Krakoa party! SILHOUETTE CHORD: Wrote about her HERE and HERE. I just like her I guess! She’s maybe not obscure per se since she’s a main cast member of The New Warriors, but I’ve never really seen her get any attention. BLACK MAMBA AKA TANYA SEALY: Wrote about her HERE! THE ASP AKA CLEOPATRA NEFERTITI: Wrote about her HERE! SKEIN AKA SYBIL DVORAK: Wrote about her HERE and HERE! She was on the “Woman Warriors” team with Black Mamba and Asp, and I like the idea they just hang out as friends a lot!! ANACONDA AKA BLANCHE “BLONDIE” SITZINSKI: Wrote about her HERE! I just want her to hug me...really, really hard :) SHARADA DARTHRI: A minor villain that shows up during the “all female X-Men” team era in...2013, I think? Wrote about her HERE. DRAGONFLY AKA VERONICA DULTRY: Wrote about her HERE MANTIS : Despite the fact that she’s very well-known for her film version in Guardians of the Galaxy, most people don’t seem to know much at all about her comics version even though she’s been an Avengers member since the 70s. Wrote about her HERE and HERE and HERE, someone else writes about her HERE PENDING These are characters that I have not had the chance to personally read up on myself yet, but I want to! Their names link to their Marvel wiki articles! TOPAZ FIREBIRD SNOWBIRD SILVERCLAW There are honestly countless others I’m probably not remembering but this is a good handful I think! Oh, yeah, and also...COOTER. Because her name is COOTER oh my god.

#xmen #marvel #marvel women #x men women #women of marvel #x women #out of cortez

[stilwaterskeeter]

Rewriting Saints Row the Third

So I was messing around writing about my Boss earlier for @occorner and wound up kind of just rewriting entire pieces of SRTT rather than just making small alterations for the character.....So I went ahead and followed through on that accident and wrote out how I personally think a lot of the hollow writing and poor executions of certain parts of the game could have been better and improved. It ended up being a lot more than I was expecting so I’m putting it under a read more. I split it up into 2 parts: Story Changes and Character Changes. And then both of those are broken into smaller parts for each mission arc (the gangs/STAG/dlc) and each character individually.

Also this is just for fun, if you don’t like it then you don’t like it. There’s no point in reblogging this or replying just because you don’t like it yknow? Don’t waste both your time and mine just because you don’t agree with something I just did for the fun of it.

And if you guys like this uuuhhh shoot me a message/ask, I’d totally be down to chat about this stuff and maybe even make more posts like this for the other games in the future!!!

EDIT: Hi....somebody made me regret my decision to keep Kiki’s death canon...so I changed it...thankfully it didn’t have any huge affect on the core of the rewrite, and in fact only very little affect at all

Plot/Story Specific Changes:

Johnny Gat’s “Death”:

Johnny’s “death” wasn’t real obvs, it was like part of Gangstas in Space, like at the beginning that leads up to them going to space and stuff. But in reality Johnny was just kidnapped, cloned, and saved by the Saints after Act 1, but his kidnapping and everything gave the Boss the idea for Johnny’s “death” in the movie

You find Johnny about halfway through the Morningstar mission arc, but he would be seen in a few Syndicate cutscenes beforehand and a lot of implications that he wasn’t actually dead before that

Morningstar:

Loren actually gets like a better mission line following up to and including his death that isn’t just recycled activities disguised as missions

This also includes like a mini-boss fight with the DeWynter twins, that ultimately leads up to them joining the Saints as double agents

Loren gets a boss battle with The Boss, Shaundi, and Johnny fighting him while Pierce and Oleg keep other enemies out of the way and it ends with Johnny getting to personally deal the killing blow and give Loren a beat down like he gave Shogo in SR2 (although definitely not as intense or dark)

Deckers:

I think the biggest things I’d leave the same is the Deckers mission line, I actually don’t think those need to be changed hardly at all, outside of maybe having one or two more story missions without the compulsory activities

STAG:

I would downplay STAG a lot because they were just a weak Ultor carbon copy and took up way too much of SRTT than it should have

I wouldn’t change too much of the STAG missions but I would wait until later in the game to bring them in. Give STAG one or two missions before Murderbrawl XXXI and do the rest afterward

Miscellaneous:

This goes for like literally all 4 arcs, but replace a lot of the compulsory activities with actual unique missions. I think doing One iteration of each activity first is alright because it goes to be like something as a tutorial for them, but past Once, they shouldn’t be reoccuring

Add in one or two missions about The Saints trying to find where Killbane was hiding by interrogating Luchadores and stuff during the STAG arc and then Threeway happens and you find out Killbane is leaving while you’re fighting STAG

Also take out that last choice as a whole no question about it, The Boss lets Killbane get away and saves Shaundi, Viola, and Burt no matter what

While taking the decision out of Threeway, Johnny would go with Angel to try and stop and kill Killbane while The Boss goes to save Shaundi

Ultimately they don’t get there in time but Gat does get a few shots in, injuring Killbane pretty badly in the leg and probably having temporarily crippled him

DLC:

I think instead of the Trouble with the Clones DLC, instead you would get a DLC involving Killbane after he fled the city where you get to fight him and ultimately kill him yourself

It’d be called something like Winner Takes All or like Hell in a Cell which are two types of wrestling matches for those who don’t know. (Winner Takes All is exactly what it sounds like and Hell in a Cell is a cage match with no Escape Clause which is why I think either would fit for names)

Speaking of, make that DLC a double whammy and include Dex, as a business partner with Killbane that you get to fight as well

Angel is a required homie through most of these missions, he helps keep random enemies off your back so you can personally fight and kill Dex, and in turn, you get another mission similar to Murderbrawl XXXI where Angel gets to personally fight Killbane while you take out random enemies, however you also get to help Angel more directly by tossing him weapons to use against Killbane or to use something like a mounted gun to weaken Killbane when he’s cheating and getting the upperhand against Angel

Character Specific Changes:

Zimos:

His character as a whole is,,,,bad imo, so while I didn’t just totall omit him, he’s more or less just a character that The Boss works with to hurt the Syndicate, he’s not really a Saint, just like an accomplice. He would still become a homie at some point though

As a homie he has idle lines to ask how the twins are and The Boss will ask about the secret past and Zimos just says something like “Don’t ask, don’t tell, my man” or keeps the “That’s on a need to know basis, and you don’t need to know” line from the actual game

Angel:

Because I would take out the decision in Threeway and The Boss would let Killbane go, he holds a bit of a grudge and cannot be called as a homie until you have another quick cutscene and short mission where you talk and spar with Angel to help him get out some of his frustration at letting Killbane go

The Boss promises they’re still going to get Killbane because they’re not going to give up that easily

Maybe have The Boss tell Angel about Dex and relate to him while talking about how Dex was one of their best friends and then betrayed them, they never got their revenge but they haven’t given up just yet

Angel and Johnny friendship too!! You can’t tell me they wouldn’t be pals, they spar and talk shit about Killbane a lot

They also trade stories of past fights they’ve been in

Johnny also gives Angel a hardtime because he’s fuckin filthy and lives in such disarray

When Angel tries to snap back with the “so you hate discomfort” Gat shoots back with how the main Saints safehouse was ruins of an old hotel under an abandoned church in the really poor red light district and how before that it was an abandoned church also in one of the poorest areas of Stilwater. He’d definitely say something like “It’s not that I hate discomfort, it’s that I’ve lived that shit for way too long and got out, and I’m not planning on going back to that crap just because some bitch “shamed” me.” The banter becomes somewhat a weird and very Gat-esque peptalk

Viola & Kiki DeWynter:

They both join the Saints and work with them in secret against the Syndicate when Killbane takes over and Loren is killed

Viola and Kiki obviously both get more character development

Viola actually ends up being good friends with Shaundi

Kiki on the other hand ends up better friends with Johnny and they trade snarky remarks whenever everyone is planning out missions and when the Boss makes dumb decisions and shit

Johnny and Kiki end up bonding over small things like their concerns with their looks and just both being the more outspoken and witty counterparts in duos (Johnny’s other half being The Boss and Kiki’s being Viola)

Kiki and Johnny never fail to annoy the shit out of Shaundi because there’s just no end to the snark

Kiki also ends up liking Kinzie, meaning Kinzie gets TWO sisters, Viola AND Kiki, Kinzie couldn’t be happier

As homies, the twins have idle lines about how weird it is The Boss works for Zimos sometimes and ask to make sure The Boss never drags them along when they go to do jobs with Zimos, but they’ll never say why

Killbane threatens to kill Kiki after learning that the twins have double crossed him and are working with The Saints. He takes her as like a “hostage” and sends Viola to go tell The Saints to come “rescue” her while in reality it’s a trap and he’s using Kiki as the bait.

This adds depth to his character and makes him more than just some idiot meatsack who’s powerhungry. He’s a gangleader, he knows how to lead and how to manipulate and how to fucking plan things out further than “HUR DUR ME PUNCH THINGS AND MAKE THEM BLEED”

Viola, ever the realist, knows the likelihood that Killbane has Matt wired into her phone or The Saints’ crib or something so that he would know if she tried betraying him and told The Saints that it’s a trap. So she of course doesn’t tell them, she goes along with his plan all the while thinking of her own plan on how to get out of this problem.

Kiki on the other hand absolutely lets The Saints know it’s a trap as soon as she feasibly can, it’s not much but it does give them a slight upperhand for a minute in the ensuing fight

It’s like a miniboss battle with Killbane, towards the end when it’s obvious The Boss is gonna win, he picks Kiki up in preparation to snap her neck. But Viola shoots at his hand a few times and causes him to drop her sister, he then runs off and Johnny, Angel, and Shaundi chase after him but Viola and The Boss stick around to check on Viola

Kiki got struck by one of the stray bullets on her face, it definitely leaves a nasty scar and fucks up her left eye pretty badly in the long run

Kiki is for the most part out of commission as a homie after the whole kidnapping nonsense, but Viola is as ready as ever to fuckin’ go to town and kill some fuckers now

It’s her way of handling the guilt of almost losing her sister because they didn’t cover their tracks good enough and then by her own attempt to save Kiki, caused her sister to lose an eye

Johnny had taken Loren’s eyepatch kind of as a trophy after killing him, he very awkwardly gives it to Kiki after the mission claiming she probably needs it more than he does right now and seeing as it was Loren’s, she should probably have it regardless

Oleg:

Oleg actually has some of the most depth out of the new characters so I wouldn’t change much if anything?

He definitely would have a love/hate relationship with Johnny

They just don’t get along and butt heads but also they bond over their hatred of Loren/The Syndicate and having been used for the cloning experiments

Johnny also would think Oleg is like badass and cool as fuck and he’d make bets about what outrageous things he thinks Oleg can or cannot lift/destroy with his bare hands

Oleg would also have a lot of respect for Johnny for being such an seemingly average human but still having so much strength and being such a force to be reckoned with

Kinzie:

Kinzie is definitely the company’s favorite because she easily has the most content and depth of any of the other new characters and even more than pre-SRTT characters in SR4 so there’s little to no changes to be done

That being said, I really would want Kinzie and Johnny to also have a love/hate type relationship in SRTT that eventually drops the hate

Like Johnny does Not understand half the shit Kinzie says and she’s really pushy and he just hates it at first and Kinzie hates how he doesn’t listen a lot like the whole situation in SR4 where Kinzie’s always talking about how The Boss doesn’t listen to her and stuff? But with Gat,,,who is worse about it let’s be honest

But throughout the game they both start garnering more respect for the other

Like sometimes Gat’s headstrong guns-blazing outlook pays off a lot better than Kinzie was expecting and Gat’s also totally down to do whatever dangerous and reckless and heavy-lifting work she offers which is useful as hell for Kinzie

And sometimes Gat’s “wing it” planning bites him in the ass and Kinzie saves his ass because she planned how to finish the missions when he didn’t listen because he never listens and she wanted to be prepared for anything

Ultimately they have a very Older Brother-Younger Sister type relationship with Gat becoming really protective of Kinzie and totally laughing his ass off and siding with her when she and The Boss have disagreements/get into fights

Shaundi:

Give her back all that character development and exploration of her depression and survivor’s guilt!! why was that cut!! put it back!!

Additional cutscenes and stuff with Johnny and also The Boss sometimes talking about how Johnny going missing and being believed to be dead scared her and how it affected her

This also means we get to see some of Johnny’s soft side and his pisspoor attempts to comfort her

but also Johnny probably also gets on her case about it like Once because “Well I’m not dead so you can stop worryin’ about it, Shaundi” and it starts a whole little fight that The Boss eventually steps in and settles it

Also Shaundi & Viola friendship: I already mentioned it but just...think about it again ok...

It starts as a rivalry and then they start bonding when Kiki and Johnny are getting closer 

They both cannot stand Johnny and Kiki’s snark

And then both of their respective best friends are preoccupied hanging out which leaves them awkwardly hanging out at times

Turns out Viola was actually a fan of Shaundi’s show and at one point considered signing up herself just for the hell of it

Shaundi is completely shocked and they end up doing like impromptu joke-y rounds to get to know each other to pass the time

This includes idle lines when they’re both a homie where they’re laughing while Shaundi asks Viola random questions about herself and stuff and Viola answers

Also completely trash Shaundi’s weird jealousy/hate against Kinzie

Maybe have her as wary and holding a bit of a grudge because Kinzie’s an ex-fed at first, but ultimately they get past it pretty quickly 

Most of their conversations seen and stuff are them talking tech or talking about their relationships with other characters, there’s a few where Kinzie tries digging into Shaundi’s past and Shaundi tries to dig back though

Also definitely maybe talk/show her development between SR2 and SRTT more rather than just suddenly dropping such a dramatic collection of changes and “development” immediately and not really elaborating a lot yknow?

Pierce:

There’s not much I would change because I actually liked his character development a lot, it wasn’t as abrupt and dramatic feeling as Shaundi’s and he had a decent amount of depth so I don’t think there’s much to add aside from what you would expect from his dialogues with Johnny and Kiki

Johnny:

This is just here to be respectful, pretty much 99% of everything I have to say for Johnny has been said in all the other sections

#saints row #saints row the third #johnny gat #kinzie kensington #viola dewynter #kiki dewynter #shaundi #angel de lameurte #oleg kirrlov #srtt #stop talkin playa #rewriting saints row #also peep the lowkey shaundi/viola and johnny/kiki

[nadziejastar]

Lea: I want everybody I meet to remember me. Inside people's memories, I can live forever.

Isa: I know I won't forget you. Believe me, I try all the time.

Lea: See, I'm immortal!

After making the post about Terra, I wanted to compare how much better his final fight was handled compared to Lea’s. Now, Lea’s main themes as a Guardian of Light were “death and rebirth” and “immortality”. His Keyblade is based on the Phoenix, a solar bird represented by the color red. Gee, I wonder if Lea saying he wanted to live forever to Isa had aaaanything to do with his future as a Guardian of Light? Isa was in a very similar situation to Terra. He was not in control of himself, and he was attacking his best friend. In KH2, Axel originally tried to bring Roxas back, but failed. But Axel didn’t give up. He went on the run and kept fighting ‘til the very end. He may have felt miserable, but he still had fighting spirit. He went out in a literal blaze of glory, protecting Sora and Kairi.

“I’ve decided! No matter how many times you guys run away I’ll bring you back, no matter how many times it takes!” he wished—he shouted, he wailed, he vowed.

I’ll bring them back no matter how many times it takes. No matter how many times. For my own sake, for your sakes.

The Phoenix dies over and over again, but it always comes back. Every time. That was the concept behind Lea as a Guardian of Light. In my opinion, his fight at the Keyblade Graveyard was supposed to focus on trying to keep his promise to bring Isa back, no matter what. Isa wasn’t recompleted. That’s why he was retrieved by Braig and Young Xehanort as the “poor soul” while he was unconscious. He was a vessel.

Oh, he actually woke up off-screen and joined totally of his own free will. What the hell was the point of the “Destiny” secret ending, then? Wasn’t it supposed to show that Isa has been taken away from Lea over and over and over again? But no matter how many times it takes, Lea will bring him back? Neither Roxas or Xion’s circumstances really warranted a line as impassioned as that. It’s because Axel was “chasing the illusion of friendship” looooong before he met them. 

Lea trained to use a Keyblade to bring Isa back. But as the battle went on, that seemed impossible. I thought it was very sad that Lea was trying so hard to protect Kairi during the fight, but he still couldn’t bring himself to seriously fight Isa, knowing he was not in control of himself. He just couldn’t destroy him. Even to protect Kairi. I hated how the clock tower scene made it seem like neither Lea or Isa took the upcoming battle seriously. I mean, either of them could have died, but they talked like it was a boxing match or something. It was so ridiculous and made me so angry. There should have been a serious talk before the final battle that there is a chance someone will die. And I hated that Lea seemed weak during his fight when it was really that he didn’t want to fight his best friend.

The hostility disappeared from Roxas’ eyes. There was no more fighting spirit, left in that Roxas. Here - there was nothing he could do but disappear.

“Let’s meet again in the next life,” he said, smiling just a little as he said those words, and Roxas nodded silently.

“Yeah. I’ll be waiting.”

There was something funny about Roxas’s serious answer, and Axel laughed.

“Silly… you’d have a next life, but…” Axel said to Roxas–and his figure disappeared in the darkness of a portal he’d opened behind him.

The line was about meeting again in the next life is also about death and rebirth. And in my opinion, it was also about Isa. That’s why Axel initially thought Roxas responding seriously to him was funny. The scene where he almost let himself get killed was probably the saddest Axel/Lea moment for me in the whole series. Which is saying a lot. His final scenes in KH2 were incredibly heartbreaking. If you look at his facial expression, you can tell how resigned he was to his own death. He wasn’t smirking or sarcastic like he was at the end of KH2. He wasn’t planning on going out with a bang. He wasn’t fighting back at all, even though he wasn’t seriously injured. He was just emotionally spent and waiting for the finishing blow.

And that had quite an impact on me, because it’s the total opposite of Lea’s personality. He's a natural optimist. He was smiling as soon as he was recompleted, because he was filled with new hope. He was ready to go after his friend even though he killed him. He was an amazingly strong and resilient person. He tried so hard for so long, and was so hopeful that he’d finally get his best friend back. But in the end...he wasn’t able to save him. And this was the moment he finally lost his fighting spirit. He got his hopes up only to have them crushed. Axel never wanted to disappear, no matter how miserable he was. He always found something to keep him going. But here? He was ready for it. He looked so defeated. But...Isa didn’t finish him off. That moment should have been so amazing. But it got almost no attention. The scene shifted as quickly as possible.

“As long as we remember one another, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

“But, I mean…it just didn’t sound like you, Axel.” Xion could barely hold in laughter long enough to get the words out.

A wish that they could always be together—was longing for the impossible. But at least they could always remember one another.

This line is similar to Lea’s line in BBS. It’s about immortality and also written for Isa. That’s why Roxas and Xion laughed at him when said it, even though it was the closest he ever got to being emotionally candid with them. Nomura was communicating in a subtle way that Roxas and Xion didn’t understand him. They never did. Axel’s relationship with Saïx was so compelling to me because it encapsulated the themes of death and rebirth SO much better than his relationship with Roxas and/or Xion (which had a different theme). It came full circle. It started off happy when they were kids, then became worse until Axel was killed by him.

His heart was torn to shreds. He felt completely hopeless. Then he is reborn, and the relationship is brought back to life. That’s really powerful. After Isa stopped attacking him, he should have been so happy and hopeful again. Then...Xemnas shows up. All that hope would suddenly be drained from him all over again. Xemnas has known Lea for a decade. He knew exactly the right words to hurt him. He called him utterly useless and forgotten. In KH3D, Lea showed up and ruined his plan to make Sora a vessel. So, he used Isa to attack him, to emotionally hurt him. And that’s basically what he did here. The worst thing Lea could hear would be that Isa forgot about him and that he isn’t able to bring him back.

I think the serious and emotional mood of Lea’s final fight was really compromised, if not ruined. Sure, I think Axel smirking and acting sarcastic when Xemnas first arrived was totally in-character. Telling him that he was never his superior was looong overdue and completely appropriate. But I feel like him saying he had people rooting for him, and “nobody axes Axel” was lame and took away from the gravity of the situation. It all felt way too lighthearted for what should have been such a dramatic final battle. I always thought KH was good at knowing when to be funny and when to be serious.

“Bet you don’t know why the sun sets red. You see, light is made up of lots of colors. And out of all those colors, red is the one that travels the farthest.”

In KH3, Lea is mostly remembered for being comic relief and breaking the fourth wall. I find this sad, because I could see the vestiges of an incredibly emotional character arc that never came to be. There were some truly genuine moments during his fight that unfortunately got less attention than they deserved. They’re the moments that should have been remembered the most. I liked the moment where he was waiting for Xemnas to kill him. I loved the attention to detail in this scene, like the way he was hyperventilating. I knew exactly what that felt like. Lea truly thought he was going to die in that moment.

It’s such a shame that a serious scene like this was ruined by Roxas and Xion’s fanservice entrance. It was so cringeworthy. It really took away from the solemn mood this fight was supposed to have. Like, you’re not supposed to get a sense of triumph while fighting Isa. It wasn’t supposed to be “epic pwnage” or “badass”. There should have been a real sense of tragedy, like there was when Roxas fought Xion. And it was so dumb how Roxas was essentially crediting Isa for bringing him back, while he stood there completely blank and possessed. At least the music sounded appropriate for the mood. This whole fight should have been taken way more seriously than it was. The red sunset line also should have come back into play, just like Terra’s comment he made about the light of the stars. I mean, the line about the sunset was given such prominence. It’s all about the power of light.

Xigbar: The house is looking pretty empty, huh? I thought I'd get a little enjoyment watching Axel throw one last tantrum, but he went a lot quieter than I thought.

Luxord: Perhaps he was ready for it. Perhaps he put his existence on the line and won what he'd been longing for.

Saïx: That's absurd. He won nothing and is nothing. He couldn't stand the emptiness of being without a heart, and that led to his demise. He was foolish and weak.

Xemnas: But...Weakness has the power to awaken that which is dormant. It  is clear that through his actions, however foolish they may have been, Axel has touched Sora's heart. Perhaps HE will soon awaken.

Terra needed that moment where he rescued Ven and Aqua because he was the one who alienated himself from them. It was his mistakes that led Aqua to be trapped in the Realm of Darkness, for his sake. It seemed like Lea was the one who always tried his hardest to protect Isa and take care of him. He “made up the difference” a lot. And Lea went as far as he possibly could to bring him back home. 

But...he just wasn’t strong enough to take on Xemnas and he knew it. I felt so bad for him as he just accepted that he was going to die. He was still a new Keyblade user, and knew the odds were against him. He took a gamble. This was Isa’s moment to shine. He could use the strength Xemnas forced him to acquire...against him. He should have done what Terra did and clobbered Xemnas. I would have preferred we play as Isa fighting Xemnas, not Roxas and Xion who literally just came out of nowhere. I think Lea trying to keep his promise would have been the right stimulus to awaken Isa’s heart, like it was with Terra. Xemnas thought Roxas/Ventus would awaken (without a replica!) after Axel sacrificed himself in KH2. But...he didn’t. That’s because it was Isa’s role to be awakened by Lea, not Roxas’s role. Aqua was the one who needed to awaken him, because they were closer.

If I wake up…I hope I can see Roxas. I just want to see him again. No—I know I will. Roxas… Hey, wake up. Are you really in there? Didn’t we promise…we’d meet again in the next life? We were best friends. Weren’t we? And then Axel faded from existence, vanishing into nothing.

A promise… We’ll meet again…in the next life. We did say that. I remember. I remember our promise.

Even when I first played vanilla KH2, looong before Isa even existed (so there was no shipping bias), I got the sense that we weren’t supposed to take Axel and Roxas being “best friends” at face value. They didn’t even seem that close in vanilla KH2. I got the sense that Axel was mostly being tongue-in-cheek when he said they’d meet again in the next life. After all, Axel didn’t think he had one. And honestly, to me it sounded like Roxas said what he did more out of pity than anything. I mean, he didn’t sound particularly heartbroken or anything. But later, Axel treated this like some super important special promise they both made to each other, like the promise Sora made to Kairi when she gave him the lucky charm. Axel always came across like a maladjusted person with a tragic life story. It wouldn’t have surprised me AT ALL to learn that he only said that to Roxas because he was thinking about someone from his past. In fact, it makes his character far more believable and relatable.

I was so excited after playing KH3D because Lea was growing so much more as a character outside of the sea-salt trio. He even started going by his real name again. It was very satisfying character development. I thought we were finally gonna learn about his past and his REAL best friend. I bet Nomura cynically put the line “especially Roxas” in as a parody, honestly, because he never sounded more pathetic. Putting Lea back with the sea-salt trio really regressed his character. There was no point to his entire subplot with Saïx now. It felt like he reversed all the progress he made. He was able to stand on his own two feet in KH3D, without using Roxas as an emotional crutch. He was so positive and empowered. He sought out Mickey and Yen Sid on his own. He was so awesome.

I liked Roxas and Xion a lot in Days (KH3 ruined them for me). But the sea-salt trio just holds Lea back from coming into his own as a person. He couldn’t even use his REAL name due to being stuck in that trio. His entire character arc was stripped bare. There was no meat even left on the bones. That’s why he and Isa (and Kairi) were pushed aside as quickly as possible to make room for the cheesy Roxas and Xion fight. It’s bad enough Lea was reduced to being a babysitter, but then he was reduced to being a cheerleader. An amazing character like him deserved so much better.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 3 #kh3 #kh axel #kh lea #kh saix #kh isa

[tetrakys]

Trois Allumettes - Chapter 6

“Hyun, I…”

“I’ll manage with Clemence, go back to campus, there is no problem…”

I didn’t want to put him in this position but I couldn’t stay, I was feeling sick. It had been one of the worst days since I came back in town. First completely flopping the thesis presentation this morning, then those nasty rumours about Rayan and a student that I couldn’t help feeling were partially about me. And now… poor Nina, I knew very well what she had felt. He had gone after a high school girl… As far as I was concerned Nath had come to help me out, but if nobody had been there that night, if no one had come to my rescue… What would have happened? And I didn’t do anything. I let them continue as they pleased, and now… And now Nina was going to do what I should’ve done… and I was 23… Ouch!

I couldn’t stay like this, I had to come clean. But I didn’t feel comfortable talking to Hyun about it, and neither with Priya, who was outside the café comforting Nina. I thanked Hyun and left, I couldn’t stay there a minute longer.

I speed walked all the way to the campus. Everything bothering me kept turning my head and I wasn’t able to analyse the situation properly. Nina… Rayan… my unwritten thesis… Clemence… Nathaniel… I could feel my heart pounding. I almost didn’t notice when I bumped into someone until I was about to slam backwards into the gates, and strong arms grabbed me to steady me.

“Hey be caref… Candy?!”

I looked up and saw those eyes… a wave of relief suddenly flowed in me, and I felt I could just let go. I started crying right there. Lysander’s hand still on my arm. If he was annoyed or even embarrassed he didn’t show it, he just led me gently to a bench, hugged me and let me cry on his shoulder.

I wasn’t sure how long we stayed there, me crying on his chest, him with one hand on my shoulders holding me close to him, the other gently caressing my hair. He let me cry against him until I calmed down, I could hear his heart beating.

“Whatever happened, we will find a solution. I promise.”

I didn’t know what it was, maybe the warmth of his body, or the kindness of his words, but I felt like a switch was pulled in my heart and I told him everything. My fear of failing the year. The strange relationship I had now with Rosa and Alexy and the feeling that, if I didn’t spend most of my time with them whenever they needed me, to the detriment of my studies and everything else in my life, they would never forgive me for having left four year ago and not staying in touch. I told him about the rumours about Rayan and me and how even people who knew me like Melody and Yeleen, with whom I though things were getting better, had alluded to. Finally, I told him about those guys and what happened to me and now Nina. I felt him go stiff before hugging me even tighter.

He silently let me talk and pour out everything I had been bottling up for months. When I was finally done, he took my face in his hands and dried my tears gently caressing my cheeks with his thumbs. Looking at me in the eyes he said

“Everything will be all right” his tone of voice was calm and gentle “promise me you will stop crying. I don’t like to see you like this, you have such a nice smile…”

“T-thanks…”

“I am not wise enough to give you advice about school and people. You are smart, brilliant and a great friend” he smiled “everyone knows. I saw you on the beach, everyone hung off your every word.”

I didn’t know what to say and he continued, more serious then ever.

“However, I do think you should report those guys. It’s never too late.”

“I can’t help thinking that if I acted before this guy might have already been charged and Nina would never have experienced this.”

“Please, don’t feel guilty. Never feel guilty. You are the victim here. You were scared and wanted to forget, there is no shame in that. You have a chance now to do the right thing. I am not sure about the role of your friend Nathaniel in all this… but I can’t judge before knowing the whole situation. Still… He hasn’t acted in the best way.”

He was right. I knew he was right. This situation… I could make it right, at least a little. I knew I could help. Everything else though…

I got up and thanked him. I didn’t want to be a burden, he had already wasted lots of time listening to me vent. He was probably going somewhere and was too kind to leave me alone when I was so distressed. He had helped me feel a little better but I had an heavy weight in my heart and needed to stay alone for a while. I run to my dorm, my only though curling up in my bed and forget about this awful day.

 ///////////////////////////////////////

 A couple of days later I was lying in bed looking at the ceiling. I was in the infirmary, I had passed out during a personal development lecture when someone had thrown at me a spiteful message about me hooking up with Rayan to improve my grades. I had spent the following 24h resting in the infirmary and I was feeling better, particularly so after the surprise visit I just got. Seeing my parents had helped me put things a little more into perspective. Also, I hadn’t realised how much I had missed them until now.

I heard the door open softly and the sound of footsteps next to my bed.

“Lys?”

He was looking at me with a worried expression.

“I am so sorry Candy.”

“Wh-what? Why?” I asked rushing to seat.

“I should have done more, said something different…”

“No, Lys, please…”

“I should have at least chased you the other day. I knew you were still upset, I didn’t want to invade your space.”

“Lys, please, you have been amazing, letting me vent and cry on you the whole time. You are such a great listener and I probably ruined your shirt forever. Sorry about that.”

“Do you think I care…”

“And do you think I really see you as responsible of anything? I am in this bed because I have been weak… but never again.” I said with purpose. “First thing tomorrow I am going to the police, that guy deserves to be locked up. The rumours are just that, rumours. I am going to ignore them and start seriously working on my thesis. About my friends… I will sort it out somehow” I added unsure.

“Well…” he said tentative “you can start from the last part.”

“What?”

He turned towards the door and pointed towards the silhouette that was in front od the entrance.

“Someone wanted to tell you something, but didn’t really have the courage.”

My eyes widened with disbelief, I watched everyone walk in the room. Rosa, Alexy, Chani, Melody and… Yeleen?

“I was the worst friend in the world!” Rosa cried throwing her arms around me.

“W-What?”

“I-I… I didn’t realise. When I found you, I wasn’t stable. It had been so long since we had seen each other… So I was teasing you as I do with Alexy, to push your buttons all the time… but…”

She was having trouble catching her breath.

“I was thinking only about myself, talking only about myself, I didn’t take the time to listen to you. I urged you to take a break and stop studying, and now you cracked because of me. I’m studying psychology and I’m not even able to listen to my best friend. I’m so sorry…”

“I accept your apology, but stop feeling guilty I didn’t faint because of you.”

“Can you also accept my apology?” Alexy asked worried “I have been so focused on Morgan that I stopped looking at anything else. I have been very selfish.”

“Sure Alex” I replied “You have been a little distracted that’s true, but I totally understand…”

“It’s my first real relationship, I…”

“We know” I said, taking his hand. I took also Rosa’s and we all smiled at each other.

Someone coughed lightly and I turned my head to see Melody step forward.

“I have been a little harsh after Mr Zaidi’s lesson the other day. I wasn’t accusing you of anything Candy, I want you to know that. I know you’re not the type of person to hit on your professor. I really hope you get better soon.”

“I was a little worried you might think that Melo, thanks for letting me know that’s not how you feel.”

“Eat lots of fruit” she added, offering me a fruit basket “you’ll get better in no time.”

“About that…” Chani intervened “I came here to give you this.” It was pretty blue crystal “it will give you all the energy you need. Put it under your pillow when you go to sleep, you will wakeup ready to conquer the world!”

I thanked them both, Melody looking at Chani’s crystal in a doubtful way.

“Well, I am not exactly sure why I am here” Yeleen said next to the door “but it was pointed out to me that I haven’t been the easiest of the roommates while you weren’t feeling well. I am mature enough to admit that I could have acted in a more tactful way.”

This wasn’t exactly an apology, but coming from Yeleen it was huge.

“Thanks Yeleen, I am really surprised to see you here. I appreciate it.”

“Lysander came to get us” Rosa said “I didn’t know what to say, how to apologise, I am glad he had the idea.”

“We should go and let Candy rest” Lysander said “the nurse will be back any moment now.”

Everyone said goodbye then left.

“Lys?”

I called grabbing his hand, before he could walk away, and he turned around.

“Thank you” I smiled.

He smiled back at me “Get well soon Candy.”

He bowed and left a featherlike kiss on my forehead.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////

Back to Chapter 5

Go to Chapter 7

-------------------------------

Thanks to frstlvlys for suggesting Deborah’s arc, it actually fits pretty well here.

Now episode 9 and we all know what’s that about... I have big plans, I just have to find the guts to actually write them! :P

#my candy love #mcl #Lysander #Lysandre #Lysandro #mcl lysander #amour sucre #dolce flirt #corazon de melon #amor doce #sweet crush #my writing #trois allumettes

[kylandara]

A very interesting take. I would sadly agree Jon fell from grace, because whether political Jon is true or not, he enable Dany this far to cause the destruction she did. Not that Dany doesn’t get the max blame, but Jon has his share for his own soul. I can almost imagine his PTSD when this is all over. Onwards

——————-

The hysterical reactions to Dany’s dark turn were initially amusing to me because I enjoy suffering, but as this week has gone on, I have grown more disconcerted by 8x05 myself. I am not an emotional person by nature, but each day I am more agitated by the episode rather than less. I didn’t know exactly why it bothered me so much until I realized that I was running through the same stages of grief that Dany stans were.

Both of us lost our heroes.

I had been laughing about Dany stans not seeing where her arc was going when there is ample foreshadowing in books and show as pointed out in articles, metas, posts on Reddit, answers here on Quora, YouTube videos, wherever it is you go for GoT fan content, Dark Dany has been discussed. I thought the proof was so overwhelming that to not see it meant you were in denial.

I did not know I was in denial myself.

I thought Dany stans were watching a different show than the rest of us.

The truth is, I was watching a different show than some of you.

As much as this has frustrated me to no end, I think it has been the greatest success of GoT that D&D have exposed us to ourselves. Or at least, it would be if we pulled ourselves away from our feelings long enough to acknowledge what’s been staring us in the face the whole time.

Dany was not the only hero who fell from grace Sunday. I have been grieving for my own.

Dany burned thousands, tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people Sunday, a horrific and inevitable event.

My hero stood by and watched. Worse, my hero knew it was likely to happen and enabled her. Even worse, my hero marched his men South to help her. And still worse than that, when Varys looked him in the eyes and said they knew what was going to happen, Jon refused to even try to stop her.

My hero did not commit the inexcusable evil that Dany did (Yes, EVIL. Yes, INEXCUSABLE.) But my hero did not take a stand. My hero was not heroic. My hero stood by helplessly while children were burned alive. How harshly did I condemn Stannis and the Red Woman for burning Shireen because I loved her? How harshly should I then condemn Dany for the same crime tens of thousands of times over? How harshly did I judge Stannis’ enablers for not stopping him? How harshly must I then judge Jon for not doing something, anything before Dany burned King’s Landing?

Dany stans justified every life she took before 8x05. I justified every life Jon had taken. No, there is no moral equivalence between those, but on Sunday, both committed wrongs that there is no justifying. Again, there is no moral equivalence between Dany’s actions and Jon’s inaction, but I realized my emotions as a Jon fan have been paralleling to a much subtler degree, Dany fans.

They are shrieking about bad writing and OOC behavior, and I have been saying much the same of Jon. But, maybe I was just as deluded as they were, believing what I want rather than paying attention to what I was seeing.

I thought the Battle of Winterfell was bad writing. I didn't think D&D were actually trying to tell us something about Jon, but maybe they were. Yes, his strength is uniting people, but if they are being led by the wrong person, it is meaningless to do so. As seen on Sunday, the wrong leader leads to madness.

The events of 8x05 may be the narrative punishment for Jon not taking up his crown with further spiraling yet to come, or, perhaps it was the rock bottom of him refusing his destiny and what we witnessed is what motivates him to rise up. We might see him well and truly defeated in the finale by what he has participated in, or he might take a stand.

Either way, I don't think this season has been the total destruction of his character I initially thought it was. I think what we’re seeing is writers allowing a hero to suffer the emotional and psychological impact of what he's been through. I wish they would let us experience it with him, I wish they would have give us more that a rare glimpse, but just because I wanted something different doesn't mean they weren't being purposeful.

I resent what they've done because they took my hero from me and gave me a broken man. That's too realistic for me to enjoy, and I wanted to enjoy this season, not suffer through it. I did not want my vision of a victorious hero thwarted for anything. And that’s when it hits me. This is why it hurts. I can either morally compromise myself to pretend like Jon wasn’t wrong, or I have to allow my hero to fall.

Many were upset by Jaime returning to Cersei because we bought into his version of himself as a man escaped from his captor. We thought he had become good. We wanted him to be with Brienne. Yet, how can we objectively say that staying with a new lover is the morally superior choice to trying to save the life of the woman who bore his children? The woman who was pregnant with his child? In falling from grace in the eyes of Braime shippers, Jaime made the right choice.

Jaime is a better person for having died trying to save Cersei than he would have been had he chosen to fulfill his own selfish desire to let her die alone. He wasn’t good enough for Brienne before, he certainly wouldn’t have been if he had let his child die without attempting to save it. In breaking the hearts of shippers and fans around the world, D&D (damn them for making me appreciate them after I decided I didn’t!) turned Jaime into a morally superior character in 8x05 than the Breaker of Chains. A guy who pushed a child from the window attempted to save life while our Khaleesi took it.

Just because we have a version of a character in our head and a path for them to follow, just because we know what we want and are upset when we don’t get it, doesn’t make it better. Jaime chose better for himself than we would have chosen for him. Shame on us for being so morally incompetent that we didn’t recognize it immediately. By leaving her and trying to rescue Cersei, Jaime was closer to deserving Brienne than he ever had been before.

Another surprise in the episode is that The Hound had more moral clarity than Arya. The Hound who murdered for a living became the voice of sanity when he told Arya that if she followed where he led she would only find death. He told her to choose life even when he couldn’t. Arya listened, she chose to put aside vengeance and preserve life rather than take it. And here, we, the audience had been cheering her quest for vengeance, only to then cheer on the new decision, because we are led by our emotions and dumber for it. The Hound had better morals than we did. THE HOUND.

Cersei, that power crazed woman was just another victim. The bells rang and Dany burned them all anyway. And all the Dany stans who are finding ways to excuse, rationalize, or simply crying out “character assassination” are just in denial. Your hero failed the test of basic humanity because she has always wanted to. Her first instinct has consistently been to burn and destroy, she’s just always happened to have someone holding her back before.

That’s not bad writing. That’s making your audience question what we’ve been accepting and reject what characters say about themselves and think critically about what we have witnessed with our own eyes. It’s mental torture, but it’s the right kind of subversive because there are threads we can find that were always going to lead us here.

Some of us had been condemning Cersei and cheering on a woman who was essentially doing the same things. We just didn’t recognize it because we didn’t want to. Because Dany was framed as a hero, and we all know Cersei is a villain, we didn’t stop and think about what Dany has been doing for years and ask if it was right.

Jon didn’t know as much about Dany as we did. Maybe he hadn’t heard of what Dany did before coming to Westeros. Perhaps he didn’t fully comprehend what happened during the loot train attack, but he saw her talking about wanting to burn the Red Keep in s7, he saw what dragons were capable of beyond the Wall and during the Battle for Winterfell, he heard his queen threaten Sansa’s life for the horrible crime of asking what they were going to feed the armies. And yet, he refused to ever question her.

I don’t know that he had a good alternative, but Varys chose to defy the queen and die rather than take part in her plans. Jon refused to help him. Was Jon being a fool or was he being cunning? I still don’t know, but either way, he stood by while an innocent man burned. Either way, he did nothing. Nothing is never the best you can do. Except, nothing is what humans do all the time. I was prepared for Jon to lie, to be sneaky, to outsmart and use people. I was not prepared for that. I wanted clean margins around my hero, and they didn't give them to me.

People wanted Jaime to kill Cersei because we all know she’s evil, never mind the fact that Jaime has done his fair amount of evil, never mind that she was carrying his child. We don’t mind evil, we just don’t want it to upset us. In our heads, murdering Cersei was fine, but hurting Brienne wasn’t. We accept the grey, the dishonorable, the bad, but only when it’s in line with what we want.

I wanted Jon to be darker this season than the Jon we’ve had before, but I wanted it to be in line with the hero’s journey. I wanted it to be justifiable. I didn’t want it to be in the form of a mistake. I didn’t want it to be him misjudging the character of his queen. I didn’t want it to be at the cost of the lives of countless children.

I was willing for Jon to stray from the hero’s pretty, pretty path just enough to make it interesting, not enough for it to matter. This was a detour I did not expect, that I can’t just ignore, and that is a brilliant move by the writers. Oh geez, I’ve just complimented D&D again. Someone save me!

Jon, no matter what he does next, is stained in blood. He can’t be the hero I wanted him to be, there is no erasing this mistake. I didn't want him to fall prey to a cult of personality, I didn't want him to be stupid. I still don't believe he’s a total idiot, but while I watched 8x05 I took notes and when I reviewed them, I sounded like two different people. One screaming at Jon for being a moron, the other entirely sympathetic because he didn't have a choice. Both views were guided by my emotions. Whether he fell in love and was in denial or if Pol Jon is true and he believed he had no choice, Jon was complicit.

Either because he allowed love to blind him, or desperation to take over, while I still have hope for him, I can't deny what I saw. I hated seeing Jon as he is now: a man made less than what he is. He isn’t the hero I had fabricated in my head. I didn’t even know I had done that, but I had. This isn’t what I wanted. It’s not how the story is supposed to go.

But it is how this story went.

I wanted the fairytale. I wanted Jon to be untouched by what Dany did. I wanted him to remain innocent. I didn’t want him to be weak. I didn’t want him to fall. I wanted him to be above this.

But on Sunday our heroes fell.

What happens when they fall?

We can deny, excuse, insist its solely bad writing, claim it’s OOC, or we can accept that we are simply upset because it isn’t what we wanted. The second step is to acknowledge that this is what it means to have morally grey characters. This is the realism in fantasy GoT has always been touted for, we just never had to suffer so much for it all at once. We never had to face the reality that our heroes aren’t pure goodness, our villains aren’t pure evil with such high stakes before. It’s one thing for Jon to miscalculate and be murdered by his men, it’s another for him to not prevent a city of people from burning alive.

The “grey character” idea only works if you still recognize good and evil. We can’t twist right and wrong to make sure our heroes are always in the clear. Grey characters does not mean we should be morally colorblind. It means that the good and bad still exist, but that both reside in each character and in each of us. We have to choose how to act, and in certain situations, we will wander closer to one side than the other. It’s saying, let’s make heroes falter and villains sympathetic and force ourselves to see ourselves in what we hate, and what we hate within ourselves.

We had seen the good side of Dany intermingled with the bad, but the bad emerged in an unprecedented way on Sunday, and suddenly now we know that how we had masked it was always about protecting our own feelings, not about understanding who that character was at her core. Some in the audience have found strength in Dany, and to see her fall tore at parts of themselves that she had impacted.

Jon is still lighter grey than Dany, but on Sunday, I saw a streak of something repugnant to me, something that is the natural fallout of Jon’s behavior all season, but I had been ignoring it. Before this season aired, I expected victorious Jon. Now I think, even if Jon survives, I don't know how he'll live.

It is shocking to me how much it hurts to let go of my delusions and think, this is it. This is what all those words I’ve been spouting off about complex characters mean, and now I have to accept it. I have to “Look the truth in the face” as Sansa says, and as silly as it is since it is a tv show, it genuinely hurts! To a certain as yet to be quantified amount, Tyrion and Jon refused to do this. To a greater extent, Dany stans refused to.

I refused to.

So, what do we do when our heroes fall?

We must choose to be heroic ourselves. We acknowledge the truth. No more complaints or excuses. Our heroes fell last Sunday because this is that story.

I mentioned in a previous answer that I had a general feeling of defeat this season, and I think this is why. Jon has been slipping off the pedestal, and I have been trying to keep him up there anyway. Whether Jon was a “Northern Fool” or unsuccessful “Political Jon,” he isn’t the man I wanted him to be. D&D emphatically knocked him off his hero perch Sunday. Silly to be so attached to keeping him there, but I was. Emotionally, I was depending on my hero to make it all better. Maybe the point is, there is no hero who can?

Dany climbed too high and fell too far. She isn’t coming back from this. In my eyes, Jon hasn’t. D&D just made him fallible. He made a grave error and thousands upon thousands of people paid for it. I thought he would rise up a hero and prevent this, but there was nothing in this season to indicate that he could or would, and when the time came, he didn’t. I didn’t expect to see consequences for his “My Queen” routine, heroes don’t usually suffer those, but it is right that Jon see where that leads. It is good that we see it.

I think that’s what I’ve been mourning. I wanted hero Jon, not human Jon. Seeing Jon stand there with Drogon over his shoulder while Varys burned was very upsetting. I couldn’t reconcile it with who I thought Jon was, but that’s because I was thinking in the traditional sense of hero. In other books and shows, that wouldn’t happen. But, Jon made a series of choices that led to his presence and inability to do anything at Sunday night’s slaughter. Based on his decisions this season, Jon’s fate of standing there while people were murdered was just as inevitable as Dany’s fate of being the one to burn them.

It is much harder on the audience to endure this kind of story, but GoT has never tried to be easy. I didn’t want this, but it’s okay to not always get what we want. It’s okay for the writers to crack my rose-colored glasses.

Regardless of my misconceptions, in spite of his mistakes, Jon is still Jon. I still have faith in him. He’s just not impervious to failure, and somehow, I had forgotten that. And, for the first time, I genuinely do not know what the cost of this will be. That’s why I am so disturbed. I don’t want Jon to suffer, but his inaction may require narrative punishment. Maybe what we witnessed is the only catalyst that would force him to do what he needs to do, but it may be his mental and emotional undoing.

I don’t want that. I am uneasy after this episode because for the first time, I am genuinely wondering if I was wrong all along. Maybe this story isn’t building up to Jon defeating all odds, maybe the odds defeat him. So, instead of insisting that the writers are wrong, I am wondering what story it is they are telling. Is this a story about what it takes to make a man who can survive the game? Is it about a man who refused to play the game and will therefore be punished? Is it about a man who tried to play the game and learns that there is no winning without losing? Is the point that there is no winning at all?

I don’t know anymore.

So, in this, I have sympathy for the other side of the fandom that has broken hearts this week. And it isn’t entirely because D&D made bad choices, wrote this season poorly, should have had a longer season. I am upset because I am not liking the story they are telling me. I am not sure that that is anyone’s problem but my own for not recognizing what this was from the beginning. I’m still hopeful, I don’t know what we will see in the finale, but I have to accept that my hero fell on Sunday, and I don’t know if he will get back up. He could, but it is possible that he won’t

#anti daenerys #grey!Jon

[sigritandtheelves]

Drown

Rating: Teen/Mature Tags: Angst, Emily Arc, Per Manum

Stare into the void of season 5’s reproduction arc with me. Brought to you by cramps and seasonal depression in this miserable heatwave. This is for @kateyes224 who wanted me to share the pain. CW for all the reproductive traumas associated w/this arc (child death, miscarriage, infertility, etc.). Yikes.

_+_

There had only been the briefest of windows, and he had missed his chance, of that he was sure. At first there were waves of relief so strong he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet: she’ll live, she’ll live, she’ll live pulsing in his veins with each beat of his heart. It was enough; it would be enough; it should be enough, he told himself, and then he sobbed into a bloody photograph of the long-gone happiness of his childhood and realized that it wasn’t. There was always more more more he had to do, and now that she wouldn’t die, he’d have the strength to do it.

He watches her open to him. He watches her fill back up with life, with a joy he hasn’t seen since their early days, and he feels her press closer to him with that openness. Here is Life, and she is going to live it. Here is Scully’s love, and he turns away.

She brings him wine and cheese.

He runs.

She makes a sex joke and sings him to sleep, and the next day they drive home as if nothing has happened.

Later, he dreams about dancing with her at a Cher concert—in a bar, of all places. In the dream he pulls her body flush against his and he smiles at her with a depth of knowing and with the absurdity of their circumstances and most of all with love, while they hold hands to hearts in the smoky room. But when he wakes, he is sweating as if it were a nightmare. He is hard as a rock in his pajama bottoms.

She senses his rejection, after a while, and starts to pull back. Her feet touch the ground again, as his did too soon, and she remembers that although life is a gift, it is terribly, terribly hard.

They work; they smile; he flirts, but she stops flirting back. And then she goes to visit her family for Christmas and the window slams shut.

_+_

“I think I’d like to be alone,” she whispered, and he felt it happen, the snick of the door to her heart as it closed to him. She heard him step away and sighed in relief when he was gone. She would let herself have this, and nothing else. She would kiss the sweaty forehead of her dying daughter, hold the chubby hand that was the weight of everything she would never have, and send this baby, with all her others, into the darkness of unlife alone. Dana Scully felt rebuked for opening herself to even the merest possibility of motherhood, and to the possibility of love as well. She’d regained a chance at life: how dare she ask for more?

Just an hour after Emily slipped away, she got a call from her mother: Tara was in labor. Death for life, she supposed. Scully signed some papers, dialed Mulder’s number, and wandered to meet him with too-dry, salt-crusted eyes. She felt like the cold hand of the undead, brought back from the edge of the grave, but scooped empty of life, reeking of sterility and gunmetal and blood.

Mulder touched her arm, but she barely felt it.

“Will you take me back?” Her voice: flat.

“Yeah,” he said. “Scully, I—“

But he was stopped by the sharp look in her eyes: she would take no comfort now. He dropped her at her brother’s house and returned to his motel where he cried for her, the first time in this new year. Inside Bill’s living room, alone again, she stared at the Christmas tree lights until they blurred and became a white wall of fire. She wanted it to burn her, but instead she fell into cold sleep. When she woke she was an aunt, but no longer a mother.

---

He brought flowers and kind words to the funeral that Scully felt was something of a burden on her family. Perhaps they thought she was selfish for arranging it when they had so much to celebrate. Who was she, who had barely known this child and had given away her heart so quickly, to demand this ritual? They planned a christening; she planned a funeral. But Mulder, who mourned all lost little girls so fully and selflessly, understood. He may never forgive her for being so ready to leave him, but he understood her need to grieve. Scully wondered if this might be what a miscarriage felt like—to grasp so briefly, so fiercely, to a hope for the future, and then to have it ripped away. She would never have the chance to know, she thought, to confirm the comparison.

Back at her brother’s house, there were casseroles, brownies, a Jell-O mold. Scully thought, morbidly, that they should have had the christening on the same day and made it a twofer. She ate nothing, but knocked back enough of Bill’s good scotch that her stomach burned and she finally felt warm. Mulder hovered in the corner looking constipated. She sat on the couch getting drunker and accepting half-hearted declarations of sympathy until she couldn’t take it any more.

She stood too fast and the room spun, but Mulder was at her elbow in a second.

“I wanna go home, Mulder,” she said into his bicep, where her face had landed.

Into her ear, quietly, “Do you need to go up and lie down?”

She shook her head, red hair rubbing, static-clinging to the front of his suit. “No,” she said. “I want to go all the way home.”

“Can you pack your bags?”

“Already packed.”

“Okay. I’ll get them. Will you be okay here?”

She shrugged and tried to get ahold of herself. She combed fingers through her hair and watched the room dip and sway around her. Maggie’s eyes found hers across the room, and Scully looked away in half-shame.

“Dana, are you alright?” Her mother had somehow appeared at her side, looking concerned.

“I’m fine, mom. I just… I need to go.” Mulder descended the stairs with her bags and tucked them in the entryway before walking over to the two women.

“You’re not going to say goodbye to Bill and Tara?” Maggie asked.

As if remembering them suddenly, Scully looked around the room. But then the thought of their new-parent-tired faces and the soft skin of their perfect infant made her dizzy, slightly nauseated. “I can’t right now.”

She was spinning again, and Mulder reached out to hold her steady. Maggie glared at him. “You take care of her, Fox.”

He nodded. “I will.”

In the car, her head lolled and tears ran down her cheeks. He’d never seen her drunk before: not the stoic inebriation of her brother’s house, and certainly not this weepy version that spoke of her own fears and crushed his heart like glass under a boot-heel.

“It’s not me, Mulder. I’m not like them. It’s not for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t do it. I’m all wrong for it. My hands are for dead things, not for babies.”

“Scully…”

“You were right. You were right. It’s not mean to be. I can’t go to brunch and laugh at empty jokes and buy onesies and pretend I don’t know what a corpse smells like. I felt like a fucking monster in that house, Mulder. Like the goddamned angel of death,” and a sob slipped out after her last words.

His jaw clenched and unclenched as he drove. He had no idea what to say, so he let his hand rest on her black-clad knee. She was all the light he knew, but he had still tainted her with darkness like a bottle of spilled ink.

“Maybe I don’t deserve it,” she said, almost under her breath. He felt his stomach muscles clench, as if he’d been punched, and a rage flow through him at the world, at himself for the part he played, for making Dana Scully ever ever doubt herself. But he said nothing, just drove them back to the motel.

---

Scully threw up into a trashcan and then collapsed onto his motel bed. Mulder took the bin away and came back with a glass of water and a wet washcloth. He sat in the nook created by her bent knees and ran a hand over her back. She sat, dabbed her face and lips with cool terrycloth that felt rough and good. She drank all of the water, knowing how much she’d need it. After a minute, when the room had slowed its spin, she tucked herself up against the pillows again. Mulder pulled her shoes off and draped the bed’s throw blanket over her.

“Would you have quit?” he asked, not really expecting an answer, and for a moment, he thought she’d already fallen asleep.

But then she said, “If it meant I could get even one thing back that they’d taken from me? Yes. Wouldn’t you?”

He opened his mouth to agree, but then bit it back—it would have been a lie. He wasn’t sure there was much of anything that could make him quit.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway. They never would have let me have her.” Her voice was tired, too exhausted for hope and for pointless speculation. Mulder took his things to the bathroom and changed out of his suit. He eyed the empty space on the bed, but took the armchair instead to work. Her voice startled him.

“You should have told me.”

“What?”

“You knew something. You knew what they’d done and why.”

The ova. The Crawford clones with red hair. Bodies in green tanks. They’re our mothers. Shame gripped at his guts. “No, not why. Not really,” he said.

“You said you knew there were children. My children. It’s my body they violated, Mulder. My future. My life they ruined.” He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the tears in her words. And the quiet rage. “You didn’t have the right to keep that from me.”

He had that same terrible impulse he’d had after the Jerse case, to tell her that it was his life too, but he knew he’d lost any right to that claim. So he just said, “I know,” and waited for her to fall asleep. He swallowed back his further omission: the little vial in a Fairfax cold storage facility marked Scully, Dana Katherine. When her breathing slowed, he dialed the airline and booked their flight back to Washington.

_+_

Two weeks later, after they’ve rescued a pair of teenagers from the Michigan mud, he confesses everything into the basement elevator while she stares on, incredulous. She takes a vacation, and he’s sure it’s a dry-run for leaving him. He can’t help his desperate flirting, his selfish need to throw everything he can at the possibility of making her stay. But for her, each joke is like a swallowed needle, a stab wound from the inside. Two weeks after that, she invites him to lunch where he’s sure she’ll break the terrible news of her departure, but instead she does something different, but which amounts to roughly the same thing: she asks him to father her child. Her fingers tremble over a Cesar salad and she pretends there are other options, other possible donors, so she can swallow any bites at all. If she can’t have him, perhaps she can have his child. If she can’t have his child, she’ll have no child at all.

He’s so fucking selfish that he wants to say no. He wants to hold her to him like the deflating life raft of a drowning man; the harder he squeezes the more she slips away. But he remembers the tears in his rental car, her mumbled Maybe I don’t deserve it, and he hates himself into saying yes. A baby will split them apart, he thinks, but he jerks off into a plastic cup while remembering the sound of her “Oh God”s as she watched a genocidal inferno unfold in her stolen memory—and he hates himself more.

She listens to another woman call him Fox while she waits to learn if she’s carrying his child. Then she loses her last chance in a wash of blood, and the X-files burn.

They stand in dripping ruin, in the fumes of hot metal and sodium bicarbonate where her uterine walls clench violently in disgrace, and they are both of them suddenly futureless.

-end-

All I can say is… sorry? It feels like there could be more to this, though, so maybe I’ll make it better in a follow-up. Playing with tense shifts a little bit here—hope it worked out.

#a thing I wrote #angst #fanfic #x-files #season 5 #Emily arc #per manum

[bigskydreaming]

Some of the X-Men novels from the 90s were actually pretty good, now that I remember it. They were original stories, not novelizations of already existing comic book arcs, which tends to be my preference when adapting characters to other media, but the downside is sometimes they come up with stuff that you’re like ugh, dammit, why can’t that be in the comics now too.

Like Smoke and Mirrors was this one novel I read in high school where Sinister was the main bad guy, and it had some pretty great stuff in it, and also probably my favorite Betsy POV stuff, though it hopped around to a bunch of characters’ POVs.

Including these five original teenage characters who were like the most adorable little nerds ever. They called themselves the Ohio Mutant Conspiracy to sound cool, but they were basically like the Breakfast Club and were these five high schoolers who nobody knew were mutants until one of them, Slapshot, set up this message board online in the hopes of trying to figure out if there were any other mutants like him in his area. And they eventually met up and started out hanging out every week in this abandoned warehouse after school and talking about how they should totally do something cool or fight crime with their powers. But mostly they were just bored lonely teenagers who were all really bad at admitting that they just wanted to hang out with other ppl like them even though they were from totally different social circles. And the main plot of the novel was this goon squad (hired by Sinister) busting into their warehouse and capturing three of them because kidnapping innocent mutants for nefarious purposes is like, his thing, and the other two got away and then were like okay we’re gonna rescue our friends! We have no idea what we’re doing! This will absolutely end badly! Ready, let’s go!

And meanwhile of course the X-Men were like oh hey, Sinister is kidnapping innocent mutants again, we need to find them and also spank him. Okay not that last part but I’m just saying, I’ve always felt like they could stand to put a little more effort into just like....plain old murdering the dude. C’mon Logan, what are you even doing, you pat yourself on the back for being the best at that like ALL the time.

Anyway, yeah, the kids the author created just for this storyline were really fun. I remember the youngest of them and most gung ho about being a mutant and wanting to be a superhero team and always trying to convince the others they should do that, she was a black girl who was a couple years younger than the rest, I think a freshman while the others were all juniors and seniors. I can’t remember her real name, because she was always insisting the others call her by the codename she’d come up with, Charade. Her power was she could convince anyone that whatever she was saying was true. Like anything from ‘you don’t want to hurt me’ to a bad guy or ‘you didn’t see me here’ to boosting one of her friend’s powers by telling them they could totally do the thing they were trying to do even though they’d never tried anything like it before. 

And she was closest with the oldest of the group whose name I also can’t remember, but who was this tall awkward white guy who she’d basically adopted as her surrogate big brother and he just kinda shrugged and went okay, and was super protective of her, it was way cute. He had some kind of basic super strength and enhanced senses power, and could never settle on a code name and tried a bunch of different ones throughout the book until finally settling on Red Rover, which one of the others called him as a joke and he was just like yeah I know, but I kinda like it.

And they were two of the three that were kidnapped, with the other one being Slapshot, the one who found the rest of them and kinda always defaulted to being the leader even though he was this shy nerd in school and always getting down on himself and the remaining two of the five were way more popular than him. I think his name was Jason, and he was this short Asian kid who was really into hockey for some reason, and that’s why he picked Slapshot for his codename. He was convinced he had a lame power, like all he did was change the trajectory of things that were already in motion. But when the three of them were locked up and didn’t know what had happened to the other two or if anyone was coming to rescue them, he figured out how to bust them out when he realized they thought his power was too small to bother making sure he couldn’t use it. So he took a quarter he had in his pocket and threw it, and started reversing its trajectory in mid air back and forth, over and over until the constant change in direction was like, building momentum, so when he finally let it go it just punched straight through the door lock like a bullet. He was very proud to discover he was secretly a dormant badass and it gave him a total self-esteem boost. Also way adorbs.

And the other two of the group, the ones who got away initially were both white seniors and one of them, Peyton, was a cheerleader and she called herself Rewind, and the other Adam was the quarterback and called himself Pipedream. His power was to just project this dream state on people so whatever they were doing, they just stopped and stood there and were stuck in some lucid daydream for a few minutes, though he couldn’t control what they saw, just initiate it. 

And everyone was always constantly looking at him to know what to do because he was supposed to be the popular football captain and have all the answers and he’d get all frustrated like ‘how does any of that make me qualified to know what to do here’ and Rewind was on the verge of a breakdown and screamed back ‘well fine if you dont want to help I’ll just save them myself’ and he was all ‘I didnt say I dont want to help, I just dont have a clue what that looks like!’ and she was like ‘FINE, I guess I’ll just figure it out myself and you just come along and do what I say” and Adam was all “Yes, finally! That’s what I’ve been saying, that is a much better idea than me being clueless and in charge, god!” And then this was where usually they’d realize they have Feelings for each other but haha no, they were actually just awkward road trip buddies and when they eventually found the others breaking out as they were breaking in and were like oh hey, we were just coming to rescue you, Slapshot was like oh yeah, sorry, you took too long so we kinda just did it ourselves. 

And Rewind was very impressed in his newfound leader-ness which Adam was more than happy to also concede to him when Jason was worried he was gonna want to be in charge now, and so she was basically like, okay, new plan. I’m still gonna be Prom Queen, because duh, but now you will be my Prom King. Everyone on board? Excellent. Let’s blow this popsicle stand. Which they did, mostly via Peyton’s power, which was to rewind time in her area, but like, nothing longer than thirty seconds back, just enough for her to correct recent mistakes. 

But then she found out it also worked if she told everyone to stand back with a scary gleam in her eye that had Adam and Jason like ‘we feel that whatever you’re about to do, you should probably....not’ and she was like, ‘are you going to stop me?’ and because they were not dumb they were both like ‘no ma’am!’ And then she hopped in one of the golf cart kinda things the security guards in the place used to drive around, revved the engine, Adam whispered ‘hold me, I’m scared’ because she drove the whole way there and they almost died like twenty times a minute. Who knew the girl with the ‘its fine, I can fix it’ power had a tendency to be reckless, right? But she just like floored the golf cart and drove straight at the big giant locked doors blocking their exit and they were all “PEYTON NO!” and she was all “PEYTON YES!” and crashed right into the doors, denting them a little and like, totaling the golf cart. Except then she rewound time but just around the golf cart and not the doors, so they were still just as dented while the golf cart was good as new and ten feet away again as she barreled into the doors all over again with “PEYTON YES” (well, whatever she was actually screaming, I forget, it was 25 years ago) playing over and over again on a loop as she kept crashing into the doors, rewinding time to fix the cart and crashing into them over and over with them getting a little more busted each time until finally she busted all the way through them.

And Slapshot was like “How did you know that would work?” and she was like “Huh? Oh, I didn’t.” and he was like “Holy shit, marry me” and Peyton was all lol slow down, you’re cute but I have a Life Plan, that’s not happening til we’re at least 25.

Anyway, yeah, the Ohio Mutant Conspiracy were adorable and honestly some of the best X-characters ever and its a shame they never made it into the pages of an actual comic as X-Men students. Oh, also, that book had a female clone of Wolverine called Mantrap who was hunting Sinister for Reasons also, but not like a clone clone, obviously, as she was also Native American, I think? But clone-ish. There was a kinship. This was pre X-23 and might have been part of the inspiration for her, who knows.

But yeah. I lost that book years ago and could never find it anywhere, lame. It was def my fave of the X-Men novels though there were a couple other good ones too. 

[danipopplers]

Mirrored Masks Chapter 7

I took the week off for Reikuri Week over at @thequeenandthetraitor, but I return bearing chapter 7! It’s a bit of a filler chapter to set up the next arc of the story, but I still hope you enjoy it!!

You can also read it on AO3 and FF.Net. 

Breakfast was Reiner’s most important meal of the day. The fact that this also held true for everyone else made no difference to him. They didn’t all have the same fervor for breakfast that he did. Their stomachs didn’t coil with anticipation at the mere thought. Other people didn’t spring out of bed and rush to get ready simply to make it to breakfast early (although he might share that trait with Sasha). No, he felt that he alone found breakfast the most important. That’s because Krista now ate breakfast with him every morning.

It had started after the blizzard. The camp had accumulated several feet of snow overnight, and despite their public and harsh punishment, some of the other instructors had privately let them know that command had thought them dead when they didn’t return. That none of the livestock had been lost during the storm was another personal victory for the two, and had ensured Krista’s swift and immediate return to livestock duty. It was viewed as something of a miracle by the other soldiers.

Reiner was quick to give Krista credit, which had only bolstered her popularity in the ranks. This had led to a whole new problem- too many friends. She had been a quiet and kind person before her daring rescue, but now she was catapulted to 104th cadet corps fame. The girls had sought her out as their sparring partner, and asked her advice during their riding lessons. Reiner had overheard Armin admitting that he’d never noticed how pretty she was to Eren. Jean had loudly bragged to Marco that he was sure he could get Krista to take him along next time she needed extra help with the animals ‘if you know what I mean’. No one did.

Krista had so many more friends vying to sit with her during meals that Ymir had given up trying to stop them, opting to sit and sulk instead. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise then that Krista was starting to eat breakfasts with Reiner, since she was eating with so many other people, but it certainly surprised him. And it had continued to shock him for the first weeks as she continued to do so. The novelty had worn off, but the excitement hadn’t and he found himself actively looking forward to each day. He had even began to retrieve two meals before he sat down so he was already prepared for her arrival.

He was sitting at his usual bench seat- three up from the entrance and to the left- with breakfast in tow when Krista came in. It was still dark out, the sky only just beginning to bleed into purple as the weepy late winter sun rose. Only a few other soldiers milled around the room, plopping tiredly into chairs and rubbing sleepy eyes with fists as they reached for their breakfast. And she was a ray of golden sunlight streaming into the room when she breezed in. She bounced when she walked, like she was about to spread wings and take flight, and he loved that about her. Reiner loved everything about her, but that was maybe his favorite.

Ymir trailed in behind her like the storm cloud she was, and glowered at him before sulking off to her own table in the corner. She never joined them for breakfast, although she did shoot daggers their way the entire time. Neither did she attempt to stop Krista, preferring to silently suffer. Reiner wondered what Krista had done to prompt this change in behavior, but he didn’t question it for fear of ruining his good graces.

“Good morning Reiner!” Krista chirped, sliding into place across from him. She beamed up at him, and he felt his face crack into a smile in response. Her glow was contagious.

“Morning Krista. How’d you sleep?”

She shrugged in nonchalance and reached for her bowl. As winter dragged on, they more and more had leftovers from the night before reheated as their breakfast. Today is was day old leek broth with rye bread. Krista wrinkled her nose as she smelled it, and dug her fingers into the bread instead. The crust cracked audibly as she tore it apart.

“I can’t wait for spring. I miss having fresh food,” she sighed and dipped a piece of bread into the liquid.

“We can’t have too much longer right? We’re in the back half of winter now anyways,” Reiner replied and gestured out the window. The snow that had blown in during the blizzard had stayed and grown, but the winter solstice had long since come and gone. Soon, the snow would begin to slough off in melting ice sheets. At least he hoped it was soon. The weak sunlight peeking through the windows spider webbed with ice illustrated his point quite nicely.

“Maybe...I don’t know how long the snows last down here,” she mused, watching the window change from pale yellow to bright orange, like the stained glass of the wallist churches. She appeared lost in thought, and Reiner seized his chance. She didn’t speak about her past often, and he was hungry for every detail of her. As far as he could tell, she’d answer him honestly, if vaguely. Even if he couldn’t say the same. As a soldier, Reiner had no secrets from her at least. Small mercies. He was beginning to prefer himself as a soldier.

“Down here?”

Her eyes snapped from the window to his, flashing with panic before falling down to her meal.

“I was raised...farther north,” she hedged, and hurriedly stuffed a piece of broth soaked bread into her mouth. His eyebrows raised, both at her reaction and the thought. Krista, the snow angel. No wonder the snow storm hadn’t scared her. He felt a swell of appreciation for her bravery and tucked into his own meal to hide it.

“You came from a resettlement camp, right?” he pressed on gently. He knew he should stop, but he found himself hungrier for information about her than his poor excuse for a breakfast. She perked slightly at this line of questioning. Slowly, he was learning how to speak with her, and how to get her to speak to him.

“Yeah, that’s right. It was right north of Stohess.”

“Wow that is north! So that’s why you’re fearless in the face of the snow,” he teased and her smile returned in full force. Blinding. She opened her rosebud lips to respond.

The door banging open and swinging back into the wall loudly prevented her from answering. A steady stream of cadets began to filter through, bundled from the cold, ignorant to the rapid temperature drop they were facilitating with the open door. Bertolt and Annie wandered through a few feet away from each other, both eyes darting to his place across from Krista. This was no longer a surprise to them, but he felt his face darken just the same -in shame or anger, he could no longer tell. Bertolt cut him a look, pleading and sharp, while Annie let her eyes drift up and over him in disdain as though he wasn’t worthy of her attention. Reiner knew better.

They were both concerned and wary at this change in his habits. Angry, even. He had so far avoided the worst of their scolding, but that was about to change. Annie had been on an excursion the night before, judging by the deep bruise-like purple circles staining her skin beneath her eyes. The snow had been cleared off enough roads to allow her to enter the cities again. They would have to meet behind the woodshed tonight for a debriefing. He would no longer be able to ignore them.

Oblivious to the traitorous machinations swirling around her, Krista continued on with her answer. Reiner missed it, too distracted by his entering comrades to hear her, and when his eyes drifted back to her, she was blinking expectantly at him.

“...I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that,” he spluttered, embarrassed by his slip. Distracted from his distraction. The light in her eyes cooled, but she waved him off just the same.

“It wasn’t important. What’s your duty today?”

“Why? Need some help?” Reiner raised his eyebrow at her in what he hoped was a flirtatious fashion. While she was allowed back on livestock duty, they had not been paired together. A small punishment in comparison, but one that still smarted. His response elicited a giggle from her though.

“I’m on the barracks cleaning duty today. But we have our ODM equipment maintenance training after, remember? Are you going to help me again?”

“Oh, come on. You don’t need my help. You can disassemble and reassemble the gear better than me now,” he teased, enjoying watching her blush prettily. Krista blushed easy with her pale skin, and he had yet to tire of watching it. Soldier Reiner was bolder than Warrior Reiner.

“But I have a hard time loosening the pistons. I don’t have enough arm strength to twist the wrench hard enough,” she complained, but seemed mollified by his compliment.

“Somehow, I think you’ll manage.” He winked at her then and stood, sweeping back from the bench with his bowl in hand. He had his own work to get to, and the taste of breakfast- and her company- had been soured by the appearance of the warriors. “I’ll see you later then.”

---

Krista ran through the motions of her chores, the sweeping and the dusting, and the wiping. She was an excellent cleaner, and small enough to crawl into the corners that no one ever got to. The officers had very little reason to complain about her work. But she was distracted. Her mind was filled with thoughts of a certain blonde giant. Reiner was occupying more and more of her thoughts each day.

Since that night in the barn, she had come to depend on his presence. He was sturdy and strong, and had proven himself trustworthy. Perhaps most importantly, he made her feel safe in a way that she couldn’t remember previously in her life. Maybe moments from when she was a child, but those memories were surrounded by haze and mist, unable to form into something solid.

And Reiner was solid.

A shiver trilled through her extremities, pooling in her belly as the last thought crossed her mind. She shook her head to clear it of the increasingly heated ideas and went back to cleaning. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could make it to training.

In the corner of the room, the door creaked open. Krista’s was sprawled in the corner, reaching with splayed fingers for a sock someone had miraculously balled into the corner under a bunk. It was Mikasa’s bunk, but decidedly not Mikasa’s sock. Mikasa was too clean for that. A soft flump onto the bed she was squeezed beneath jolted her, momentarily knocking some wind out of her before she wriggled free, absent that infernal sock.

Ymir was sprawled on the Mikasa’s bed above her, arms folded behind her head, mussing the perfectly made covers. She smirked as Krista stood with a huff.

“I could’ve been trapped under there you know!” she scolded, and puffed herself up to seem larger, placing her hands on her hips. It didn’t work. Ymir snickered.

“Oh please! You’re so tiny, you can wiggle out of anything,” she replied, and Krista felt Ymir’s eyes trail up and down her form, as though checking that her statement was still true. Irritation bit down on Krista’s cheerful disposition. She didn’t appreciate being crushed, or reminded of her stature.

“What are you doing in here? Don’t you have your own chores?”

Ymir smiled with mocking, syrupy sweetness up at her. “I finished them early just so I could come and see you.” Even her voice was cloying and dripping with honey. Krista would’ve normally written it off as Ymir being herself, but it was bothering her more than usual.

“Did you come to help, or to watch?” Krista snapped with more force than necessary. She spun on her heel to wipe down the already spotless bed posts behind her, resolutely ignoring her. Ymir scoffed at the implication that she would do any more work than necessary, and kept her place on Mikasa’s bunk.

“That’s what I thought,” Krista sighed.

“Hey, the military only requires one chore of me a day sweetheart. If they think that’s enough, then who am I to argue?” Ymir said airily.

“You could help because I’m your friend?” Krista reminded her, throttling her tone into civility.

“Nah, it’s much more fun to just watch you do all the work,” Ymir remarked and shifted onto her side, propping her head in her hand. “You’re like a mouse in a fairy tale. Or that one with the dirty princess. Poor, long suffering Krista.”

“If you keep comparing me to little field animals, I’m going to chew a hole in your blanket,” Krista growled, but Ymir just laughed. Krista saw red, and whipped around to glare at her.

“I don’t see what’s so funny, Ymir! You aren’t being helpful- you’re just being lazy.”

Ymir sat up at that, rustling the neatly made bed and scowled at her.

“Are you mad at me or something?”

Krista wasn’t entirely sure what she was feeling, but her annoyance simmered at the top, waiting to spill over.

“No, why would I be mad at someone who crushes me, insults me, and then won’t even bother to help?” she muttered, but her eyes darted away from Ymir's, unable to hold their piercing gaze. It wasn’t a particularly fair assessment- Ymir regularly came to keep her company after she finished her chores, but her mannerisms- her caustic attitude was eating at Krista today. It had been for the last few weeks, she supposed.

“Whatever. Clean by yourself then,” Ymir sneered, and hopped up off the bed. She was out the door before Krista could apologize or take back her words, although she found she didn’t particularly want to. It’s not like she had been actually helping her anyways. She’d just been ruining a perfectly made bed, and squishing her. And teasing her about her height, which Ymir knew bothered her. A small part of her resented the hurt feelings she had just surely caused, but the larger, indignant side insisted that Ymir hurt her feelings all the time. She could handle a little taste of her own medicine.

Krista tossed the rag onto the floor with a frustrated sigh and began to pack up the cleaning supplies. She was mostly finished anyways and equipment maintenance with Reiner would help take her mind off her tiff with Ymir.

It was a short walk to the equipment building from the barracks. Other than the stables, most of the buildings were only a short walk. She wrapped her arms around herself to stay warm and hurried, desperate to be out of the cold quickly. Some of the other cadets were already in the room, standing behind their assigned places at their tables. Reiner’s spot was diagonal and to the right of her spot. He pivoted slightly when she took her place next to Mikasa, quirking his lips up at her, but that’s all he could give before the instructors entered the room and began their lesson.

Lesson was maybe a loose term. They could’ve been called lessons when the cadets first arrived at camp, but now they were more like drills. Speed drills and accuracy drills. Precision drills. Who can disassemble and reassemble quickest? Who can clean their equipment the most thoroughly? Who can manage to oil every gear so that they run the smoothest? It was mind-numbing- and finger-numbing- work, but practice made permanent. Krista knew every inch of her equipment, and since Reiner had helped her early on, she could handle it well herself. She had small, nimble fingers that could make work of the more intricate details and a brain filled to burst with names of each piece in her load out. What she lacked in the arm strength, she made up for in knowledge.

“Today we will disassemble our equipment and do a routine maintenance check on the item. You will, of course, be timed,” the officer at the front eyed them as he projected. It wasn’t Instructor Shadis today, though this one liked to think he was. That usually meant that the lessons were more difficult than necessary. “I will be walking around the room to monitor your progress. I expect you to complete your maintenance in the specific order required of a cadet. I will be randomly calling on cadets in the process of their work to explain what they’re doing to the room. Anyone who answers incorrectly will start again from the beginning.”

A collective groan emanated from the group and Krista felt herself no exception. This was a new twist on an already old threat. But, as Reiner had asserted earlier himself, she didn’t need anyone’s help anymore. She was capable, and intelligent- she could make this work. The room simmered into silence as the instructor strode to the front of the room and surveyed them.

“Begin.”

Krista flexed her fingers and got to work. The equipment was familiar by now, and she was confident in her ability to finish quickly and efficiently. The rest of the cadets didn’t seem to hold her confidence, but they set about their task anyways. Mechanical scraping and gear clicking filled the room as two dozen soldiers began to disassemble their equipment. The cool metal felt pleasant under her fingers and she could feel herself being drawn into her work.

“Bott!” The sound made Krista- and half the other recruits in the room- flinch. After working steadily in silence for at least ten minutes, the instructor had picked his first victim: sweet Marco Bott. He was seated next to Jean, who looked terrified, but pleased that he wasn’t the one who was called upon.

“Y-yes, sir?”

“Explain what you are doing to the room.”

Marco spluttered for a moment, his face quickly reddening under the scrutiny. Pity swelled in Krista’s chest for him, but no one could save him but himself.

“I’m removing the pistons to begin recalibration of the tanks?” His statement came out like a question, his voice pitching upward at the end in anxiety.

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Telling you? Uh...telling you. Sir,” Marco said, fidgeting in his seat. The instructor let him linger for a moment, silence stretching taut like a rubber band.

“Incorrect. Begin again.” And the instructor turned on his heel to begin stalking the room once more. Krista shot a sympathetic look Marco’s way, but quickly turned back to her work like all the rest of the cadets. The pattern continued two more times. The instructor would stop some poor, unsuspecting soldier- first Connie and then Eren- and would inevitably force them to begin again. Krista was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t hear the clicking of military boots stop short beside her table.

“Ahem.”

Krista blinked at her work, and her fingers froze where they were. With a sinking stomach, she let her eyes trail up the imposing figure of the Instructor. He stared down at her, one eyebrow raised.

“Cadet Lenz. Explain what you are doing to the room, if you please.”

She gulped audibly in the silence and looked back down at her equipment, her brain short circuiting in her panic.

“Umm…”

“‘Um’, Ms. Lenz? I don’t believe that’s a component of our equipment.”

Krista’s eyes darted up to the instructors and then away again, sweeping the room as her throat closed in embarrassment. Most cadets still had their eyes on their own work, as though afraid her misfortune was contagious. Finally, her gaze landed on Reiner. He was staring intently back at her. When her eyes met his, he offered a small, encouraging smile. Warmth swelled in her chest and she squared her narrow shoulders and stood at full attention, staring down the intimidating instructor.

“I am currently rotating the pistons of the firing mechanisms. Before that, I removed and oiled the gear well.” She hoped her voice sounded confident. Reiner’s face had cracked into a wide grin. Buoyed on her success, she continued on brazenly. “Next, I will close up the casing and begin checking the wiring.”

Quiet stretched in the room as the Instructor inspected her equipment. Nervous glances around the room calmed her a bit. Her table mate Mikasa was impassive, but not coldly so. Armin wore a small smile. Ymir was trying her best to look impassive and apathetic, but Krista could tell she was following the exchange with rapt attention. Maybe she’d respect her a bit more after this. Presuming she was right, of course.

“That’s correct,” the Instructor nodded. “Resume.”

Krista fought the urge to jump and squeal, opting instead for a stoic salute. When he turned to begin walking away, she bounced a bit, her cheeks aching from how hard she was smiling. Reiner shot her a thumbs up, mirroring her expression, and several other covertly nodded and grinned her way in acknowledgment. Carefully she turned back to her work, flushed with praise.

The Instructor only called on one more person during the course of their routine- Armin- who also succeeded in answering correctly. Finally dismissed, the cadets filed out of the stuffy building into the crisp air, and towards the combat grounds to begin their next dredge.

As she exited, Krista sight of Reiner, his forearm caught in the iron grip of Annie, hunched over, face reddening as she whispered in his ear. Krista’s stomach clenched uncomfortably in what could only be described as jealousy. When Annie released him, their eyes caught for just a moment too long, before he nodded and turned, catching Krista’s gaze before his eyes darted away. With forced nonchalance, he breezed past her in the doorway. No look, no words, no acknowledgment. The dismissal stung. Krista could feel the foundation that they’d carved out together in the stables lurch uncomfortably under her feet as he walked away.

Annie just stared back at her, impassive and unknowable.

#reikuri #attack on titan #reiner braun #krista lenz #Historia Reiss #reihisu #ao3 #fanfiction.net #fanfiction #krista x reiner #reiner x historia #reiner x krista

[orpelia]

Air: “Endgame”

Eleven episodes and a two-week hiatus later (oops!)~~

My praise, my wishes, and my feelings of the season finale of Book I. 

[Heart eyes.]

Oh, Bo. What would we do without you.

As always, he gifted us with his silly and endearing humor,

but he also starred in some fantastic collabs.

Bolin x Naga

Bolin x General Iroh

Honestly, Bolin x Any Character <--- now that’s my kind of ship.

General Iroh is just as stupidly fearsome and heroic as his grandfather.

This is fact. 

His stunt with the planes?

Cray.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in the future, preferably in the same scene(s) as Zuko because that’s something I desperately need in my life.

My favorite Mako: protective and powerful.

Let’s not forget, he can break free of Noatak’s bloodbending!!!

Korra---the freakin’ Avatar---couldn’t even do that! At least, not at first.

Amon admits it himself: “I'm impressed. No one has ever gotten the better of me like that. It is almost a shame to take the bending of someone so talented.”

I hope Mako’s talents become focal points in the next books. Please, oh please don’t revert him back to a frustrating, lovesick puppy who can’t make up his damn mind. It really doesn’t do his character justice.

Speaking of lovesick puppies...

Without a doubt, Mako and Korra had the most compelling scenes of the entire episode (and not because they were fighting Noatak).

Canon couple or not, these two make a great team. They obviously care about each other, but they’re fiercely protective of one another as well, and that’s what makes their chemistry so palpable.

Although I wasn’t over the moon about dropping the love bombs, even I recognize how heartwarming their moments were.

Take, for example, the penultimate scene of the finale:

Recap: Mako tells Korra he loves her, Korra dramatically runs away with Naga, and Tenzin tells Mako they have to be patient with her, which is old people code for “give her some space.”

If you ask me, that’s shitty advice.

In real life, I want someone to go after me, even if I say I want to be alone or I tell people to go away. 

Yes, I am that person.

So you best believe my heart SOARED when the boy chased after the girl:

At first, Mako’s shocked.

No surprise there. 

He just witnessed Korra in the Avatar State, which means 1) her bending is back and 2) the Avatar State is no joke!! The glowing eyes!! The command of the four elements at your fingertips!! That’s hardcore, bro!!

But then he fondly smiles at her, which I wholeheartedly interpret as “Ah, yes. That’s my girl.”

And look at her face!!

These two aren’t endgame, so I’m allowing myself to savor in the swoon.

FYI: If there’s anything you should know about me, it’s that I’m a sucker for cheek caresses.

Twirling hugs also make me a lil weak in the knees.

Running to someone and barreling into their arms is just stupid cute.

[Heavy sigh.]

I was really rooting for Asami. 

After Chapter 7, I thought we were going to see how Asami was coping with the reveal of her father’s conspiring nature. Instead, her character seemed to revolve more around the love triangle (or whatever shape you want to call the ridiculous Asami x Mako x Korra situation). When Asami does mention her father, it’s only a sparse comment every other episode or so.

Thus, the showdown between father and daughter lacks an emotional weight, and it’s partly because we haven’t explored enough of their relationship to truly feel for these characters.

That isn’t to say their sequence doesn’t have powerful moments. 

I just want to take a moment to holla at ma boy @Jeremy Zuckerman, sole music composer. 

Your music is always stunning, but the accompanying track in Asami and Hiroshi’s showdown (plus the music in the boat scene and everything in the third act) is what carries the entire segment. 

Your melodies tugged at my heartstrings in ways the story couldn’t.

Their final fight, for instance:

Asami is so caught up in the battle---defending herself against her father, no less---that you think she might actually do it, she might actually hurt him. 

But then he’s looking at her like this, 

and she starts to hesitate (this is her father after all),

which is the exact moment Hiroshi strikes.

In the end, Asami captures her father, but not without remorse: “You really are a horrible father.”

Dear Creators, 

Please give your characters the emotional depth they deserve and explore the nuances of their relationships. 

Trust me: they can lift the weight of their stories just fine.

I am unbelievably disappointed in Noatak’s arc. 

I just---

I mean---

How?

How are you going to build the foundation of a character on a lie?

How are you going to develop that character’s arc for ten episodes, then discredit almost everything with deceit?? 

How are you going to completely undermine your character like that???

And to add insult to injury, Noatak keeps lying, going so far as to reveal a fake, painted scar: 

Here’s the thing: Zuko is my world. 

Of all the characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender, I found pieces of myself in his story the most. Scars, then, are sore subjects for me; sometimes, I feel like I’m as sensitive about his scar as he was.

Yes, I jumped in my seat upon first seeing Noatak’s “scar,” but make no mistake---I’d rip that lie off his face in a heartbeat.

Undermining your character with lies is bad enough, but this shit felt like mockery, and while I’m certain that wasn’t the creators’ intents, I’m taking it personally anyway.

However, attention should be paid to Noatak’s last scene:

Again, the music is so beautifully somber, but the dialogue here is probably some of the episode’s best.

From Noatak’s “I had almost forgotten the sound of my own name,” to Tarrlok’s "It will be just like the good old days.”

From the tear that rolls down Noatak’s cheek,

to Tarrlok's decision to sacrifice them both.  

It doesn’t make up for butchering Noatak’s arc, but this was, quite simply, a beautiful ending to a sad story.

Dear Creators, 

Please don’t make the same mistake twice.

You compromised the integrity of your character the moment you sacrificed a fleshed out plot for woaw!shock factor.

Villain or not, he deserved better.

Also, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU.

It was at this moment that I wanted to jump into the screen and rescue Tenzin and his beautiful children myself.

LOOK AT THEIR FACES.

I WAS SO MAD. 

LIKE:

HOW COULD YOU.

It should be said: I loved Korra in this episode.

I mean, she was pretty daft to think that hiding under a table would keep her safe from a bloodbender. A bloodbender (a psychic one at that) can feel your blood, Korra, of course he knows you’re under there.

So just for that:

Yeah, don’t you look all silly and fuzzy.

Aside from this idiotic little slip, she was pretty badass, unlocking her airbending and fighting against Noatak’s bloodbending:

What a crappy screenshot of her airbending, haha. Would you believe me if I said this was genuinely the best I could do?

And unlike Asami and her father, I actually felt for Korra. I was devastated when Katara couldn’t repair her severed connection to the other three elements.

Though I wonder if I felt more for Korra because she acted just as I would. That is, she’s clearly distraught over losing her bending, but she wants to spare her friends and family the trouble of making a scene:

So she waits until she’s alone to let it all go:

:’-(

As I said, I loved and felt for Korra in the finale, and I don’t have a problem with her...

I have a problem with the writing.

Korra’s airbending was very badass, but I completely forgot about her airbending struggles. 

The first four episodes show Korra’s conflict with the element (i.e., it’s literally the plot line of Chapter 2). If anything, these episodes have small moments that remind us of Korra’s airbending training---practicing in the temple’s courtyard or doing exercises with the kids, to name a few examples.

Then, in Chapter 8, Tarrlok insults her with the “half-baked Avatar” comment, snidely remarking on her less than satisfactory airbending. It’s in this same episode that Korra reminds Tenzin---and the audience---that she’s never been able to connect with her spiritual side. (More on this later!)

And... that’s it. 

After the eighth episode, she’s kidnapped by Tarrlok, who reveals himself as a bloodbender; she’s rescued but then Amon and Hiroshi attack Republic City, separating Korra and the teens from Tenzin, his family, and Lin; Korra decides to take Amon on her own (but not really because Mako decides to tag along) and the two of them bump into Tarrlok, who reveals that Amon is actually his long-lost, waterbending, psychic bloodbending brother, Noatak. 

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. If the creators were prioritizing awe! and shock! and woaw!, then unlocking Korra’s airbending this way definitely did the job. But it felt a little too... convenient? Plus, there was no explanation for why her airbending worked when it did. 

I mean, saving Mako obviously had something to do with it, and they didn’t have time to get into the details because, duh, they were trying to restore Korra’s bending. 

Still, the audience shouldn’t have to interpret everything.

(Or perhaps I’m just being petty, lol.)

For a book titled after the element, I guess I just expected more. 

Ultimately, I wish we saw Korra practicing more airbending; I wish we got an explanation for how and why she airbended when she did; I wish her success in unlocking her final element had not been overshadowed by the loss of her water-, earth-, and firebending.

Which brings me here, to this special moment:

I cried.

100%. 

And the gentle, yet all too familiar Avatar theme playing in the background? Yeah, I was a puddle of tears.

However, as nostalgic as this was, I wasn’t too pleased at how quickly Korra’s bending was restored because it felt like the creators were taking shortcuts again.

For the record, I like that Noatak took Korra’s bending away (though I would have liked a more epic battle?), as it debunked the whole “the Avatar is invincible” concept. But, really? A quick touch of Aang’s fingers and her bending is restored, just like that?

Maybe it’s just me, but I would’ve loved to see Korra struggling to get her bending back. Perhaps we could’ve seen her retraining and relearning the other elements, which is something I still feel we were robbed of. 

Furthermore, as much as I enjoyed seeing Aang and all the former Avatar reincarnations, I didn’t like that this was also the moment Korra connected with her spiritual side. Similar to her airbending moment, I forgot about her spiritual struggles; the issue is last mentioned in Chapter 8 and, before that, all the way back in Chapter 1. But, honestly, I think the ease and convenience of this moment lends to the problematic pacing of Book I as a whole.

Dear Creators, 

While I thank you for restoring Korra and Lin’s bending, please don’t resort to convenient endings. I recognize that you only had twelve episodes, but please, no more shortcuts.

Your story will suffer.

Your characters will suffer, too.

p.s., I’m sorry for being so mean to you. I have a lot of feelings, is all. 

Cheers to Book II, though!

Parting Thoughts

Before sitting down to write the finale’s review, I took a two-week break.

In that time, I rewatched (and re-rewatched) the entire first book.

I even had time to indulge in the fifth season of The Great British Baking Show.

Shameless Plug: 

I absolutely recommend this charming baking competition. 

You learn quite a lot about the science and precision of baking, endure (but also adore) countless baking puns, and witness what true competition looks like. That is, genuine camaraderie, rooting for your fellow bakers to succeed, and sometimes, lending them a hand if they’re pressed for time.

Warning: do not watch late at night. You will reach for a baguette. 

And yet, I still feel meh about Book I.

The season has its share of success: the music is as impeccable as ever and the technological and industrial components of the Avatar-Korra universe are developing and expanding nicely. 

However, it will always come down to the story, and the writing just wasn’t up to par. 

Truthfully, the real triumphs are the characters, who---after only twelve episodes---have built a home for themselves in my heart:

Although, our bright, blue-eyed Avatar still has much to learn.

(i.e., how to stop being an impatient little dumdum)

But take heart...

Her story’s only just begun.

From Beginning to End:

“Thanks for looking out for me, Aang.”

credits

#legend of korra #book 1 #1x12