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elfwoodfae · 3 years

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“Nightcall” Harrison Eo Wells x reader

chapter-2

Summary: After getting a visit from the man in yellow you turn to Dr.Wells for help.

Gif credits to the owner, I found this one on google.

It was late in the afternoon when you made your way over to your apartment, it had been a pretty uneventful day. Only one meta attack and no sign of the man in yellow. It had been almost a full week without him making an appearance.

After getting home and taking very well deserve bath, you changed into an oversized comfortable shirt and decided to order some takeout food and get yourself a glass of wine while you waited for the food to arrive.

That’s when it happened. Suddenly as you sat down on your couch you noticed how the wine in your glass started to float up into the air, and a second later you were whisked away before you could so much as to draw a breath by a fury of red lightning.

The moment your feet touched the floor and the cold air hit your bare legs, you realized you were standing on the roof of a building, in the exact edge of the roof. One step back and you would fall most certainly to your death.

In front of you stood the yellow speedster in all his glory, his face distorted and his eyes bright red. You looked back over your shoulder to see how high up you were and the vertigo that came over you made you focus on him again.

He was only a few steps in front of you, but you knew better than to try and move , he could throw you in the blink of an eye over the edge.

“You work with team Flash,” his distorted voice reached you.

“And I see you have been doing some digging into the wrong path” he added, how did he know that you had been helping Joe and Cisco with their investigation of Nora’s murder was beyond you. But if he felt the need to threaten you, that meant you were on the right path, right?

As you opened your mouth to say something, suddenly he was in front of you, so close you couldn’t focus on all of his face, or what you could see of it. He moved closer to you knowing you weren’t going to be able to move any further away without falling. He moved one more step forward, pushing you back and as a scream started to come out of your mouth, you felt his hand in your back, holding you in place, suspended almost mid air. He was letting you live, you would only fall if he allowed you to, if he removed his hand. In desperate fear you clung to his forearm for dear life, looking back over your shoulder one more time to the streets down below. He moved his face impossibly close to you, so much that you could almost feel his breath on your lips.

“Stop meddling into the past” he warned.

“And you better keep this little secret between us if you don’t want more visits like this one” he added.

In the blink of an eye you were back in your apartment, as if nothing had happened, even in the same spot you were before, and for a second you wondered if it had happened at all, but the sweat running down your back and damping your forehead were enough proof that indeed he had taken you.

The doorbell rang and you jumped in fear, hands trembling as you covered your mouth to conceal a gasp, running one hand through your hair and taking deep breath you tried to calm your nerves and open the door to receive your food, which went by uneaten as you had lost all your appetite.

That night you barely slept, and the few moments you managed to conceal sleep were quickly interrupted by your body still in a constant state of adrenaline.

As the next morning came by and you got to the lab you were extremely doubtful as if you should tell the team what had happened the previous night. It’s not that you didn’t take his thread to heart, but after thinking about it, there were some things that you just couldn’t let go and were maybe the key to beating him.

Maybe you could just confide this information to the one person you trusted more than anyone. With this thought in mind you decided that you would tell what happened to Dr.Wells only, maybe he would be able to help you figure your theory out.

As you entered the cortex and said your good mornings to everyone, you moved closer to Wells and asked him if he could give you a moment of his time.

“Dr. Wells, could I please speak a moment with you?” You tentatively asked.

“Of course” he nodded and wheeled himself over to his office, you following close behind.

As you entered his office and closed the door you moved in front of a white empty board.

“I need to confide you something,” you started. “I would like to keep this private between us as it is a sensitive matter and I wouldn’t want to put the rest of the team in danger” he nodded in understanding.

Taking a deep breath you proceeded.

“Last night,” you stopped trying to find the best way to voice what you were about to tell him.

“Last night the man in yellow visited me”, you spared the details, not thinking them necessary. “He threatened me, demanding that I stop looking into ways to stop him and to stop digging into the past, as you may know Joe was investigating the case of Barry’s mother.” Dr.Wells nodded, rubbing two fingers over his mouth.

“He warned me against telling anyone about our encounter but I needed to tell someone what I had uncover from his visit.” You told him.

“May I?” You signaled to the board, he nodded. You took a sharpie and started writing on the board as you spoke. Missing the look Wells was giving you, realizing that with you his threatening had been in vain but being thankful that you had come to him first.

“ I noticed that he blurs his face to the point where nothing is recognizable which I understand” you said as you started to write something on the board.

“But I noticed that he distorts his voice also, which I find unnecessary I doubt we would be able to find him like that, but that got me thinking,” you continued. Wells hands fisted against the armchairs.

“What if he is doing it because we could find him by his voice! What if he is going to such a great lengths because we would be able to know who he is without the whole distortion thing. Which would mean he is someone we know or someone we have encountered before. Someone who has had contact with one of us. Which is how he is always one step ahead. Knowing what we are up to!” You concluded.

You were facing away from Dr.Wells which is exactly how you failed to notice when he silently stood up from his chair, having realized how much he had underestimated you and your ideas and theories. You may as well be what ruined his plan, his work. He couldn’t afford to let you get any closer. He couldn’t afford to kill you without looking suspicious and knowing Joe had had his suspicions about him he couldn’t let anything happen that could lead back to him. He did the next best thing.

As you turned around dread washed all over you. There he was, Dr.Wells standing in front of you and in less than a blink of an eye, a vibrating hand shot straight down to your heart. Your eyes widened and you took in a desperate breath as your eyes started to fill with tears. It took you a second to realize you were still alive, he hadn’t stop phasing his hand yet.

“Clever girl” he whispered close to your face, his glasses now gone as you could see a shadow of red lighting wash over his eyes.

Your mouth opened and closed, before opening again as you murmured. “It’s you, isn’t it? That’s how he, you knew where to find me.” You took in a deep breath, trying to control the tears about to fall of your eyes at the betrayal you felt.

“Why?” You asked him, voice trembling.

“Why, why you ask.” He repeated, “is a story too long to tell” he said, voice low as his eyes bore into yours with such an intensity that made you shudder in fear, his hand still vibrating inside your chest.

You had forgotten how tall he was next to you, making him seem so intimidating.

“Then why pretend to be my friend? To care for us?” You continued.

“That was not part of my plan, but you were so persistent in being friendly, in getting to know the team, and sticking around after everyone left, you became impossible to avoid.” He said, smirking.

“I would suggest, if you want your pretty little heart to keep beating, to drop all this theories you have made. Don’t tell anyone about what had happened. I will know if you as to so much try to give anyone a hint. Don’t think I won’t be watching you.” He said as he removed his hand off your chest and with a flick of his wrist it stopped vibrating.

“I believe that is all we had to discuss.” He added as he moved to his chair and rolled himself out of his office, leaving you standing there, alone and still in shock at finding out the man you had harbored more than friendly feelings for was the same man you were trying to catch, and worst of all he had threatened you and literally shoved a hand in your heart, just to show you how easily he could get rid of you if he wanted to.

@mintchipcupcake

@nellethiel-aranel

@saltykidcreation

@twilightlover2007

#eowells x reader fanfic #eobard thawne x reader #the flash fanfiction #the flash imagines #harrison wells x reader fanfic #harrison wells x y/n #harrison wells imagine #harrison eo wells fanfic #harrison wells fanfic #eobard thawne fanfic #eowells x reader #eowells #eowells fanfic

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teamfreewill2pointo · 3 years

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Sam’s Emotional Arc 1/3

I hated the finale immediately, but I’ve spent some time with it and talked to friends who loved it. I can see now what it was about, and I’ve come to appreciate the story they were trying to tell, even if I think it didn’t land right.

I’ve been told that my meta on this has helped other people come to terms with the finale, so I thought I’d compile it in one place from across various discord channels and twitter posts. If you are struggling with the finale, I hope it helps you.

Part of this actually started with a shit post. I was making a joke about Sam being psychic since he was scared of clowns when Dean died by one. I realized that may have been deliberate. I dug into the story more and now I’m convinced it was. Then I came across some excellent meta that fit with the themes I was finding and opened up the series even more for me.

Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.

Cas said it. Dean accepted it. Sam lived it. First, Sam’s journey.

Clowns pop up in s15 before the barn scene. In 15.01, which was written by Dabb, Sam is injured by a clown. Castiel is able to save Sam and heal his injury. The clown keeps coming after Sam, with Sam having fight scenes with the clown, while others attack the other ghosts. The clown is kicking the shit out of Sam again, and Castiel saves him once more. Sam is unable to fight off the clown on his own both times.

They run until they are able to escape outside a magical barrier. Sam turns to the clown and says, “shut up”.

This is literally Sam running from his fears. On top of that, this isn’t just any clown, but the ghost of John Wayne Gacy, from an episode also written by Dabb.

Dean: A serial killer clown. I mean, this is, like, the best/worst thing that’s ever happened to you, you know, ‘cause you love serial killers, but – but you hate clowns.

Sam gets nervous and struggles with the lighter before he’s able to get rid of the clown, for now.

I believe this is a metaphor for hunting in general: it’s both the best of Sam’s life and also the worst. The clowns symbolize his relationship with Dean.

Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie was co-written by Dabb (see the pattern?). Sam’s fear of clowns was known since season 2. In season 7, Dabb explored where this fear came from.

On the surface, Sam’s fear is just because he found them creepy, but the episode explains that they actually come from Sam’s fear of being left behind by Dean.

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This episode comes directly after an episode where Sam worried that Dean would get himself killed

Sam: Look... Dean, the thing is, tonight... It almost got you killed. Now, I don't care how you deal. I really, really don't. But just don't – don't get killed. Dean: I'll do what I can. Sam: Well, what's that supposed to mean? Dean: It means I'll do what I can. All right? You can shut up about it.

Sam is dealing with Hallucifer at this moment, but Hallucifer doesn’t really scare him. Losing Dean does.

Sam has a conversation with an employee about greatest fears.

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Recognize the actress? She came back for s15 in 15.06. I don’t believe this was a coincidence. 15.06 featured Castiel helping a parent find their lost child in a season that features Castiel worried about losing Jack. Through his experience with her, Castiel confronts his fears and doubts and then returns to join in the fight against God. [I’ll touch on Castiel’s journey more in his chapter]

Sam’s greatest fear is losing Dean. There’s a lot in the series about how Sam felt lonely and abandoned for much of his childhood. A whole episode, Just My Imagination, centers around this. Sam hated when Dean went off on hunts without him.

source In The Chitters, Sam tells Dean how his fear of losing his family paralyzed him as child. It’s a story where an older brother dies and the younger brother never recovers from it until he’s able to lay him to rest (sound familiar???)

Sam: You know, whenever you and Dad used to leave me to go hunting, and I-and I wouldn’t hear from y’all for a while, I, um, I was always sure that some vamp or rugaru, or take your pick, I always figured one of them finally got ya. I tried to think what to do, you know, the next step to take. I was just lost. Dean: We came back, though, every time.

You might naturally think, “Wait a minute! Sam left Dean multiple times!” Honestly, this was something I had a huge issue with when watching through the show the first time. I didn’t understand Sam and hated him leaving Dean in s8. I was completely on Dean’s side at first. But, on multiple rewatches and talking to others, I’ve realized that when Sam left Dean, he was running from his fear. In this TV Guide interview, Jared perfectly sums up why Sam left in season 1; he couldn’t stand to see his family die. Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon along with a comic that explains why Sam left in detail. While the comic isn’t official canon, it shows Dabb’s thought process. In it, Sam sees his family as running towards a horrible end and can’t handle dealing with that.

Dean: So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it? Sam: No. Not normal. Safe.

There are many more points in the series where we learn about Sam’s fear of Dean dying. This would be 3948573945 pages long if I wrote them all out, so I’m going to focus on the key moments that loop back to this ending, but there’s so much more there.

If you are struggling with this and need more, please let me know and I can do a deeper dive into that subject. We first see Sam’s inability to let Dean go in season 1 when Sam refuses to let Dean die in Faith.

Dean: You're not gonna let me die in peace, are you? Sam: I'm not gonna let you die, period. We're going.

Sam’s whole arc in s3 is him being unable to handle Dean dying. He wants to save Dean, but Dean won’t let himself be saved. This was what Gabriel was trying to teach him in Mystery Spot.

Trickster: This obsession to save Dean? The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood and pain. Dean's your weakness. And the bad guys know it, too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam. Sometimes you just gotta let people go.

This is how Ruby gets under Sam’s skin and what gets him to start working with her. Everything Sam did was to save Dean. In s4, Sam’s arc is about him sacrificing himself in order to save Dean. He’s gutted from being unable to save Dean. In 4.12, Sam decides to drink demon blood in order to save Dean

Dean: [says that they will die early] Sam: Maybe we'll be different, Dean. Dean: What kind of Kool-Aid you drinking, man? Sammy, it ends bloody or sad. That's just the life. Sam: What if we could win?Dean: "Win"?Sam: If there was a way we could just...put an end to all of it.

When Sam breaks out of the panic room, he’s suicidal. He’s determined to save Dean with his life as the cost he’s willing to pay. He didn’t think he would survive killing Lilith. He was committing suicide in that moment. The reason why Sam is so willing to sacrifice himself in s5 is because he has low self esteem. He blames himself for everything that goes wrong. In Sam, Interrupted 5.11, also by Dabb, Sam has a breakdown under the weight of his guilt. He hates himself and he feels his rage is out of control. In season 6, we see soulless Sam and, unlike souled Sam, he has no rage. Yes, he’ll kill when necessary, but he’s not angry. It was Sam’s fear driving his rage. He felt out of control of his life and let it lead him down a dark path. In season 7, he sees Dean heading down a dark path and he feels helpless to stop it. He worries about dragging Dean down and tells Dean to let him go. But, at the same time, he’s developing coping techniques. He’s starting to face his fears.

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And then Dean disappears and Sam completely falls apart. Sam didn’t have a healthy relationship with Amelia. They were two broken people clinging to each other. Sam and Dean struggle to reconnect after their time apart. There’s a lot of text addressing the horror of a partner dying and people trying to escape from it.

Mrs Holmes: He could see the end of my days were at hand, and... He had lived centuries all alone, but I don't think he could bear the thought of life without me. That's why he drove off that bridge. You must think I'm a monster.

In Hunteri Heroica written by GUESS WHO!?!? Sam finally acknowledges that he was living in a dream world with Amelia. He was running from his past. We see a flash back with Sam pressing on his scar, which he did to help himself distinguish fantasy from reality.

The episode is about a man refusing to engage in reality and harming those around him. Sam has a big confrontation with him

Sam: Look, it can be nice living in a dream world. It can be great. I know that. And you can hide, and you can pretend... all the crap out there doesn't exist, but you can't do it forever because... eventually, whatever it is you're running from – it'll find you. [CASTIEL appears to be taking Sam’s words to heart.] It'll come along, and it'll punch you in the gut. And then... then you got to wake up, because if you don't, then trying to keep that dream alive will destroy you! It'll destroy everything!

Likewise, when Sam was with Jessica, he wasn’t honest about himself. He was hiding from his family and his past. Running to avoid pain. Sam is avoidant in general. Not just in his relationship with Dean. When he talks with Rowena in 13.12 Various & Sundry Villains about his fears of Lucifer, he admits that he could talk about it with Dean, but he can’t bring himself to.

Sam: I’ve seen it too. What he really looks like behind – behind whatever vessel. It… Yeah, still keeps me up at night. Rowena: How do you deal with it? Sam: I guess I don’t deal with it. Not really. I mean, I pushed it down and, um, the world kept almost ending, so I keep pushing it down, and I don’t know. [stammering] I really don’t talk about it, not even with Dean. I mean, I could. You know, he’d listen, but… That’s not something I really know how to share.

In 15.20, Sam’s past is front and center. Literally. I know a lot of people found the Winchester family portrait odd and upsetting, but it symbolizes something I’ll get to in a bit. Instead of trying to avoid his grief, Sam has moments where he lets it wash over him. He goes and sits in the car. He’s no longer avoidant. He’s no longer running away. He’s letting his grief move through him. He’s literally sitting with it.

Soulless Puppy pointed out that the characters emotional arcs is similar to DBT. Please look through their awesome meta here.

Personally, I see them as similar to the therapy I do called ACT. Both are forms of therapy where instead of fighting against them, you accept painful emotions and allow yourself to feel them. If you don’t do that work, then you can’t stop feeling them and your fears/ghosts will always haunt you. In Swan Song, Chuck tells us that “Dean didn't want Cas to save him. Every part of him, every fiber he's got, wants to die, or find a way to bring Sam back. But he isn't gonna do either. Because he made a promise.” In 15.20, Sam initially didn’t want to let Dean go. He’s been refusing to do this since season 1. When he’s separated from Dean he lives a fake life or destroys himself/the world trying to get Dean back. There’s a moment in 15.20 where Sam looks at Dean’s guns. He wants to commit suicide, but he makes the choice to live. For the time in Sam’s life, he let Dean go and lived with his pain. He no longer ran from it. After Swan Song, Dean was unable to let Sam go. He wanted him back. After Carry On, Sam is able to do what Dean couldn’t do. He lives a life outside of Dean. What’s more, Sam has reconciled himself with his past and his family. It’s clumsy and I wish it were better shown, but having the family portrait and their parents in heaven isn’t meant to excuse the way Sam and Dean were raised. In order to move past the trauma of his relationship with his parents, Sam fully integrates them into his life. In Lebanon, Sam was able to confront and forgive his father. In doing so, he can also forgive himself. Mary asks for forgiveness too, and he grants it to her. He doesn’t forget what happened, but he’s able to move forward and leave the intergenerational cycle of violence. He’s able to raise his son, Dean, the way his brother should have been raised.

Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.

Cas said it. Dean accepted it. Sam lived it.

I can see why people see Sam’s life after Dean as unhappy. I hated it so much because I saw it as horrible and sad the first time through. I had to sit with myself and my emotions first. I think it’s because we’ve been told by society that we have to get rid of our grief in order to be happy. The finale was showing us that it’s possible to do the opposite. [Personally I think it would’ve been better had they showed more overtly happy memories, but many of my friends saw this straight away] When I began therapy, one of the first things I learned was that there aren’t “negative” emotions. When working with our kids, we call them Big emotions. In DBT/ACT, all emotions are treated as normal and natural. Grief, anger, sadness, etc, these are all normal parts of the human existence. We don’t need to run from them in order to have happiness. We can live with them. As interstitial said in our chats, “you can't change the past, you can only change your relationship to it. To accept that your past contained both love and heartache, to miss it, but also know you can do better; that's actual recovery, as good as it gets.” As Soulless-Puppy explained to me, Sam lived in duality. Dean was dead, but Sam lived. Sam was happy, but he grieved. Dean was with him in the watch and the car and his son, but Dean also waited for him in heaven. I hated the finale the first time I saw it, then next watched it with my boyfriend who loved it. As we were watching together and discussing it, I realized that Dean’s death scene wasn’t just about him, but about the show itself.

Dean promising Sam that he will be with Sam in Sam’s heart is also the show promising us that they will never leave it. That’s why Alex kept posting “The end has no end.” Just as Sam carried Dean with him in his heart, we will carry the show with us. I hope this helps. It’s a terrible thing to feel upset about an ending and thinking of the show this way, recognizing these patterns, is bringing me peace. I still have issues with how it was written, but now that I see what they were doing, I wish all the more that they had the chance to do it right. Please share your thoughts and experiences. I love hearing different opinions. Next up, Dean. Then Castiel.

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violet-t-9 · 3 years

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Different perspectives (episode 131)

I’ve seen a lot of people saying how choosing Trent to ally with would be a horrible idea, and I 100% believe it too. However, I think we need to see how that is a valid option to consider from the cast’s perspective (and Matt clearly prepared for it to be at least a possibility, especially given the bit at the end where he showed the two minis).

Suggesting letting Trent in on their plan is not as unwise as many make it out to be. Sure it has very, very high risk, but M9 is just looking at all their options based on the information they are given and it’s worth considering.

1. The city will consume literally everything if they fail to stop the TT.

- Obviously, Trent is bad, but is Trent as bad as the end of the world though? (Well, that is still a bit debatable...) Sometimes, you got to work with your worst enemies to save the world, it’s just how it goes.

- M9 sought help from A LOT of people who they were not supposed to trust, and so far it has been working out. Not saying it would have worked out with Trent, but it is a valid option to consider. They worked with: Lucien and TT, Vess DeRogna, and to a lesser extent, Astrid/Eadwulf, Essek, etc. This is not their first rodeo guys. Obviously imo Trent is more horrible than any of the above mentioned, but like I understand why it would be an option.

- I have a hard time believing that Trent, who probably has some intelligence of some kind, would want the world to end, so even if he obviously will try to undermine M9 at some point I think it would be after the city is no longer the immediate threat (if they convince him of the gravity of the situation).

2. There is a high chance that they can persuade Trent to help, and Trent may come with extra people and more power.

- Sure Trent may be chaotic evil but even that kind of person would want self-preservation and also knowledge/power. If the M9 played it well I have no doubt Trent would join them. He wants to get close/monitor/get rid of M9 especially Caleb, he wants to know what they are doing and is certainly going to be interested in the city. So the chances of Trent going is... well, honestly, high. I don’t think he would just give up control over the situation. If he doesn’t go and sends others instead then working with Trent wouldn’t even be a concern now would it? Working with Astrid and Eadwulf doesn’t seem too bad.

- From a meta perspective Matt probably doesn’t want to play a lot of NPCs, but from a game perspective it makes sense that Trent would have more people to send. This is really a world-ending all-hands-on-deck situation. Yes this may not be the correct kind of help, but it is an option to consider - especially since they are trying to get Trent killed/kill Trent as a bonus anyways.

3. Trent will 100% double-cross them, or try to kill Caleb, or get tempted by the city, or all of the above; but consider, they can also use it against Trent.

- If Trent double-crosses them, M9 would at least expect it to happen and would see it coming. Especially if Trent already follows them and plans to pursue them anyways - then forming an “alliance” would give them an advantage. They would have to deal with Trent anyways. Sure Trent will probably choose a time when the city is no longer a threat and when they are vulnerable, but it would not come as a surprise. Trent could very well try to get Caleb/other members killed, but they would also be trying to get Trent killed. If Trent got tempted by the city, well all the better if he ends up like Vess DeRogna or if his mind got consumed by a hundred screaming voices.

- Now, since they are definitely not working with Trent, Trent could still be lying in wait to ambush them when they return, vulnerable and exhausted from the city business, and they may still have to fight him at their weakest anyways. So really, the confrontation is bound to happen.

- As for Caleb, he IS the one person who knows how absolutely horrible Trent is. The fact that he is even entertaining this idea means it must have some merit. He has shown that he is willing to face his trauma if it will benefit the party/others/himself in some way (things that he considers “bigger than himself”), and of course “allying” with Trent would be an opportunity for a lot of things (namely, killing Trent, catching him off guard and slipping the collar on, learning more information, finding some things against Trent) that Caleb is interested in.

- Also a bit unrelated, but they also had kind of a similar conversation regarding working with the Assembly before the Sanatorium, and decided to try reaching out to Astrid anyways. They also decided to work with the TT, which some would argue was a horrible, horrible idea, but they lost things as well as gained things in those interactions. High risk, high reward. Even though in this case, the risk might be too high, it is still worth M9′s discussion.

4. They didn’t just immediately get all the relevant information - the options changed throughout the episode.

- They didn’t always have to choose between Trent and Essek, there WAS a slim chance that they could have some semblance of both - which would actually be beneficial in its own ways, if played correctly. Obviously it carries a lot of risk, but everything they do have risks. It failed because of the failed persuasion check, and I’m glad it failed, but the potential benefits still exist.

- They asked Astrid precisely to confirm Trent’s level of interest, and dropped the idea soon after because Trent turned out to be REAL invested in terminating them as a threat and less in the “curiosity”/“wanting conversation” stage now. After the messaging, they quickly decided that associating with Trent wouldn’t be worth it.

Now for the list of cons against working with Trent: I don’t even think I need to list them, just typing his name so many times already made me feel revolted. He is dangerous, unpredictable, and he is as untrustworthy as it gets. Also he is just a horrible presence to be around (Lucien/TT are such nice companions in comparison, just in my humble opinion) everybody especially Caleb, and Essek is 100% valid in not wanting to work with Trent. Please don’t send me anything to argue about why working with Trent would be a horrible idea - I agree, I’m not arguing against that at all.

I know that it can seem like the choice between two potential allies should be obvious, but it is a nuanced situation (see above), and Essek is one person, who is at similar levels as M9, whom they still are not sure they trust completely - and have good reason not to (but they obviously do trust him, because they tell him everything and choose him as soon as they have confirmation about Trent’s intentions). All I’m saying is it is good for M9 to weigh their options, even if the choice may seem “obvious” to some of us. Personally I’m really glad that we don’t need to see Trent being even in proximity of them, but there were merits to either option and I think it was nice to see the options explored.

TL;DR: Trent is horrible and I’m so thankful they didn’t “ally” with him but M9 did have many valid reasons to consider, talk about and explore that option. It is NOT M9 being unwise or idiotic (at least not any more than normal). In fact, I think it was great and careful planning on their part that they took time to consider all the options - even though this option is pretty terrible in many people’s opinions (including some of their own and my own).

This is the cast’s game and they can decide how they want to play. If they want to take the time to discuss all the options available to them and the potential pros/cons, I consider that thorough exploration of the story on their part. The fact that they can have such discussions shows how detailed and complicated Matt’s world and characters are. I, for one, love those moments when they lay out their options and weigh the risks and benefits and would never consider M9 any lesser for addressing these options.

#cr discourse #critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #the mighty nein #c2e131 #campaign 2

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seducing-a-vampire · 4 years

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ON BEING HONEST AND WHY I THINK SIMON WILL BE THE FIRST TO SAY “I LOVE YOU”

Two things sparked this meta:

Baz yelling “you’re so beautiful” to Simon, but Simon not hearing it— the moment that lives rent-free in my head 24/7

Rainbow’s recent Fall for the Book interview, when she said that she thinks that Baz is “settling for Simon” in Wayward Son

Here’s something we all know: our guys really suck at saying nice things out loud to each other. For two people are constantly thinking nauseatingly sweet and loving things about each other, they almost never actually verbalize them.

I ended up going through a lot of quotes and tracking some of the nice things that they actually do say to each other, and I’ll offer some very r a m b l i n g thoughts on what I think Simon and Baz’s respective paths indicate for AWTWB.

I was interested in the intersection of when Simon and Baz are being honest to each other (aka saying some of the nice things that they’re always thinking) with when Simon and Baz are being honest about themselves (aka self-acceptance).

TL;DR, my prediction for their path through honesty is:

Simon’s self-acceptance (which starts at the end of WS)

Simon’s honesty to Baz re: love

Baz’s honesty to Simon re: love

Baz’s self acceptance

**Below the cut because it got super long, yikes**

Phase 1: Simon being nice/honest in CO

The first nice-ish interaction between Simon and Baz in Carry On is when Simon follows Baz up to the Mage’s office, and they find Baz’s baby photo:

“Here,” [Simon] says softly, holding it out to me. “I’m… sorry.” (204)

Simon tones down his initial hostility in this scene after he sees the photo. This moment, along with Natasha’s visitation, catalyzes a real change in how Simon views Baz, and it’s indicative of the larger shift (vulnerability → Simon seeing Baz as more than his enemy → Baz wearing jeans → oops I love him). This trajectory continues during their truce-- there are still a few moments of hostility, but honestly on the whole, Simon is pretty nice to Baz:

“You don’t want to hurt me,” I say, trying to push him back. “Isn’t that right? I’m sorry. Look at me, I’m sorry.” (210)

“I’ll help you,” he says (217)

“Baz,” I yell. “No! You’re flammable!” (238)

All of this culminates in the kisses in the forest, and Simon says a few more nice and affirming things around that point:

“They say your soul dies.” “That’s tosh,” he says. (300)

“You’re not a monster,” I say. His face is cold as a corpse in my hand. “I was wrong. All those years. You’re a bully. And a snob. And a complete arsehold. But you’re not one of them.” (339)

“I won’t,” I say. I’ve never turned my back on you. And I’m not starting now.” (340)

Something that stood out to me after reviewing these moments is that Simon’s shift from enemies to lovers is actually pretty linear. As he learns more about Baz during their truce and they grow closer, Simon hates Baz less and consequently says nicer things to him, until he ultimately realizes he doesn’t hate Baz at all, so he kisses him and asks him to be his boyfriend. Weirdly logical behavior for someone so thick. Simon is being pretty open and honest, and this makes sense because Simon understands himself pretty well at this point. His big crisis of character comes in the next book.

The thing is, at this point in Carry On, Baz has not said a single nice thing to Simon. The closest you could get is when he asks Simon to come to his house for Christmas, which is a great moment but is quickly muddled by their ensuing fight.

(awesome thoughts about that moment here)

Baz has acted nicely, but he has remained sarcastic and aloof even after Simon kisses him.

We get a few compliments of Simon’s power:

“You have to stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Godlike displays of magic.” (348)

“You’re the most powerful magician alive-- who’s ever lived, probably.” (355)

I won’t repeat @super-duper-twelve��s brilliant meta on this, but this category of compliment is not ultimately that useful for their general communication.

Simon keeps pushing, despite the cold walls Baz tries to put up, and he asks Baz to be his “terrible boyfriend.” Honestly, it astounds me how much confidence Simon must’ve had to just shoot his shot there, because Baz was not giving him a ton of reason to think he’d go for it. Me as simon would’ve definitely been like: ok cool, nice kiss, he definitely still hates me though.

Phase 2: Baz being nice/honest

I want to be clear: it’s perfectly understandable why Baz, a flawed fictional character, is not nice to Simon. His trajectory from enemies to lovers is completely different, because he’s spent years loving Simon while acting like his enemy. He’s had great practice at that, and it’s the most relatable thing ever that he is afraid of getting hurt when he’s believed Simon to be an impossible dream for so long. This is also understandable when viewed through the lens of self-acceptance because huge facets of Baz’s identity are constantly being covered up and ignored by himself or by the people close to him (vampire, gay). He knows himself, sure, but he’s a very long way from self-acceptance.

Anyway, Baz does actually agree to be Simon’s boyfriend, and we get a couple of honest Nice Things that they say to each other during that brief period.

Unfortunately, this mutual honesty/niceness is incredibly short lived, because everything changes quickly after this: Humdrum, Mage, Ebb, etc. Simon’s world falls apart, and Baz is there to comfort him, affirm him, and (finally) be honest and nice. Their whole dynamic turns on its head.

“You did it, didn’t you?” Baz whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum. You saved the day, you courageous fuck. You absolute nightmare.” (491)

“It’s going to be okay… it’s all right, love.” (492)

“You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.” (506)

“Looking at you was like looking directly into the sun.” (507)

“You’re still Simon Snow. You’re still the hero of this story--” (507)

“It was brave. It was brave and selfless and clever. That’s who you are, Simon. And I’m not going to get bored with you.” (507)

“I choose you,” I say. “Simon Snow, I choose you.” (508)

To summarize and possibly oversimplify:

Up until the night of the Mage and Ebb’s death, Simon was the one pushing forward, being honest, and looking to break down the boundaries and walls between them.

After that point, Baz finally feels ready to be all in with Simon, and Simon retreats inward.

Phase 3: Wayward Son

We see this dynamic play out in Wayward Son, with almost no change throughout the whole book. Right from the very first chapter, Simon is thinking:

“Everything that happened with the Mage and the Hum-drum just made Baz more of who he was meant to be… He proved himself as a man and a magician. He proved himself right: The Mage really was evil! And I really was a fraud—’the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen,’ just like Baz used to say. He was right about me all along. “ (8)

I think it’s really notable that Simon can use his boyfriend’s words to justify his own worst self-doubts and self-loathings, because it indicates the consequences of them spending way more time insulting each other than ever being honest and affirming.

In Wayward Son, tender and honest moments between Simon and Baz are few and far between and mostly in the form of post-battle kisses. The only real communication that we see between them comes in flashbacks, wherein we see how much Simon has pulled back from Baz (the descriptions of his reaction to physical intimacy being one example of this).

Even when Baz says nice things to Simon and affirms him, Simon’s presumed depression largely keeps him from believing and internalizing those things (through no real fault of either person. Again, very understandable ways for both of these flawed characters with traumatic pasts to behave!!!!!). Baz yells, “you’re so beautiful” to Simon, and he doesn’t even hear him (a gutting moment that I consider indicative of the general dynamic between them throughout the book).

Now, we get to Rainbow’s comments about Baz “settling for Simon.” I feel this. Simon is pushing Baz away and giving Baz basically nothing, and that is not a healthy dynamic. Baz is going through his own crap and self-doubt and self-acceptance, and Simon is not there for him apart from fits of jealous rage. As we learned in Carry On, it takes a lot for Baz to even feel remotely comfortable expressing his feelings for Simon, and with many months lacking that, it starts to wilt.

What’s next: Prologue and AWTWB

Of course, the moment of truest communication in the second book comes at the very end:

“Why can’t you just admit that you’d be happier here?” “Why can’t you see that I wouldn't be happier anywhere without you?” (353)

I think the key to understanding what might come after this agonizing moment lies with Simon’s thoughts as he sits alone on the beach.

Before Baz arrives, Simon’s not thinking about his boyfriend. He’s thinking about himself. He’s contemplating his role in the World of Mage’s (hello, synopsis for AWTWB), and he’s taking a good, long look in the mirror. He’s starting to be honest about himself and accept himself (not perfectly, and I think this imperfect acceptance is reflected in his expressed desire to get rid of his wings, but he’s getting there).

When Simon talks about Baz staying in America and being happy, Simon is not closing himself up and pushing Baz away, which he had done for so long and which caused so much miscommunication up to this point. Rather, this is a moment of true honesty on Simon’s part.

Baz does need to learn more about himself and his vampirism. Simon recognizes this about Baz, just as Simon is trying to understand himself, too. In this moment, Simon is being true and vulnerable and speaking from a place of love. Baz refuses to self-reflect honestly and understand the truth in what Simon is saying, instead clinging to his love for Simon (without actually verbalizing that love). Throughout WS, Baz makes very stunted progress (see: his floral clothing as symbolism, being able to retract his fangs, meeting other vampires and learning about immortality and all that fun stuff), but in the end he doesn’t let himself actually think about that in any real way. Despite what Simon says, Baz has not yet “become more of who he was meant to be.”

Importantly, this is in the “Prologue,” the beginning of the next phase in their healing and their relationship. As the balance shifts, this could be the beginning of real communication, but Simon needs to take the next step. At the end of WS, Baz is the one holding back. Baz isn’t able to accept himself honestly, so he won’t be able to fully let Simon in, either.

Until Simon says “I love you,” they won’t get anywhere in their relationship. Simon needs to say it first, he needs to be vulnerable and honest in a way that he hasn’t been since before the Mage’s death, and Baz needs to understand those feelings in order to fully express his own. Then, I see Simon’s fully expressed love and support as a catalyst for Baz’s final self-acceptance.

I think Simon will be unable to fully express his love for Baz until he has understood and accepted himself. However, Baz will continue to prioritize Simon/love over his own self-acceptance until either (A) Simon and Baz break up, or (B) Baz finally has confidence and security in their relationship because Simon has broken down the barriers of honesty and said “I love you.” Simon needing to say “I love you” first also gets at the idea of Simon needing to become someone that Baz deserves (per Rainbow’s words).

So, I predict this as their path through honesty:

Simon’s self-acceptance (which starts at the end of WS)

Simon’s honesty to Baz re: love

Baz’s honesty to Simon re: love

Baz’s self acceptance

And then they will live happily ever after. The end.

*** Please let me know what you think and if this makes any sense!! ***

#carry on meta #wayward son #simon snow meta #carry on #awtwb #awtwb predictions #snowbaz #my nonsense

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blackjack-15 · 3 years

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Adoration to Ashes, Dust to Just — Thoughts on: Alibi in Ashes (ASH)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraphs above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: ASH; mention of a whole host of previous games with the Hardy Boys in them; mention of SCK; mention of STFD; mention of FIN; mention of DED; small spoilers for SPY; unflattering mention of the Nancy Drew: Girl Detective series; brief mention of erotic-shifter-romance book Bearllionaire.

The Intro:

Welcome to the Nancy Games, lads!

Before we begin, since we’re at the beginning of a new “section” of games, let’s go over exact what the “Nancy Games” entail. Unlike the other games, this section (which runs from ASH through SPY) of games is most concerned with Nancy’s personality, growth, and showing her through a different character foil each game.

These games not only give us a better picture of who Nancy is, but also how she fits (or doesn’t fit) into the world around her and with the people that she meets. Rather than solving the case, these games are made to make Nancy react to things; rather than ‘where is Nancy Drew’ or ‘what case is Nancy Drew tackling’, the preeminent question for ASH and the four games after it is simple: ‘Who Is Nancy Drew?’.

Though only possible because of the nature of the miscellaneous games (WAC, TOT) and the Faerietale Games (SAW, CAP), the Nancy Games have been sorely needed since the series graduated past the first few cases. For a lot of the series, the games weren’t really concerned with the main character of the series, preferring her to be a blank slate that players could superimpose themselves onto…which, as recent media (such as Twilight, and Twilight But With Bondage This Time), isn’t a good basis for a character outside of a dime-store bodice ripper.

But these games aren’t Bearllionaire, they’re detective stories, and detective stories need a strong main detective to carry the story — not to mention the stakes.

That’s where these games come in. Building obviously to the story in SPY, each game explores another facet of Nancy’s personality, and shows what she could become — or could have become, in a few instances — should she let the more negative sides of her personality take over, or if she trusts the wrong kind of people and makes the wrong friends.

How better to illustrate than by showing exactly the kinds of people that Nancy’s friends are? That’s what ASH is primarily concerned about — showing who Nancy is by showing the reactions of people who have known her all her life to a crisis. The only difference between Nancy and her Foil in this game is the fact that Nancy has good people — good friends — fighting for her. It’s how she gets herself out of jail, and how she manages to solve the crime.

And it’s a fun (if a bit clunky) game mechanic as well.

This is why this story can only happen in Nancy’s hometown. Not only is it delightful for fans to see (modern-day, as we saw the old version in CLK) River Heights for the first time and get to explore a bit around the town, but hometowns in media are quite significant when looking at who a character is.

Almost always, a hometown is used as sort of a microcosm for the character, giving us a bit of a cheat sheet into who they are as a person just by showing their environment. Think about it — how many times in cop shows (which are the most blatant offenders by far) are we told that a character is from a small town, and thus they’re intent on proving themselves, probably a ridiculously hard worker (to get out of “that place”), and a bit more innocent than their inner-city colleagues? Or that a character grew up overseas to justify their interest in international crime, establish them as a bit of a wildcard, and handwave them knowing about 16 languages? Or that they grew up “on the streets”, justifying a hidden juvenile record, skills in hand-to-hand combat, and a soft spot for Youths Just Like Them?

(But enough about Criminal Minds. I’d rather focus on something that actually has thought put into it.)

The same thing is happening here in ASH; from River Heights, we can extrapolate that Nancy is well-off, straight-forward, comfortable largely around adults (think about it — ignoring the usual phone characters, we only meet one person around Nancy’s age in RH, and she hates her), and has a drive to be Somewhere Other than her small town.

Another interesting point is that River Heights is chosen as the backdrop for something that has only happened twice in the series, and only once been done well: a personal revenge story against Nancy herself. Sure, RAN attempted it, but RAN’s story is — if you haven’t read that meta, spoilers — hot, flaming garbage, and the personal revenge plotline is bungled to the extreme, resulting in it not putting across that theme very effectively.

ASH is different; from the very beginning, it’s obvious that whoever is doing this is working off of a person grudge against Nancy specifically — and burned down the town hall in order to implicate her, so they’re not playing around. It’s the reason that the culprit search is so focused, which really benefits the games as well. The question isn’t really “who would want to get rid of Town Hall”, it’s “who hates Nancy enough to burn down a building to get her in trouble”. It makes questioning so much more interesting — and very full of mines, which is Great — when it’s the person, rather than the specific crime, that matters.

The last thing I’ll touch on in this introduction is a question that the fandom has posed both seriously and jokingly many times over the last….almost exactly 10 years (10 years!!! I need to lie down my land!!!) since the game first came out: where are the Hardy Boys? Surely, if there was ever a game where they made sense to appear, it would be this one; their friend is in prison and needs the help of practiced investigators — you’d think that even if Carson wouldn’t think of hiring them (which, as desperate as he was, he totally would have), that Nancy would have given them a call, if only to see if ATAC had anything on the suspects.

There are two reasons why the Hardy Boys don’t appear, from a storytelling perspective (ignoring the issue of how much money it would cost to include them or any other technical considerations), no matter how much I would have liked them here, or how much sense it would have been to at least name drop them, if not make them phone friends.

The first is to keep the game centered on River Heights. Everyone in the game — both suspects and allies — is from River Heights and is a part of the town’s makeup. Our suspects reporter, a politician-slash-ice-cream-store-owner, an ex-detective-turned-antiques-dealer, and a college student born and raised in RH. They represent different facets of the town — the media, the political, the business, and the rising generation — and so each represent a part of the town. Nancy’s allies all fall under the “rising generation” — the “Future of the Town”, if you will — or under the justice system category, with Carson. Even the Chief represents another facet — the law — that can both hurt and help Nancy in turn. By keeping all suspects and allies tied to the town, the mystery and the story can focus on exactly what’s going down in River Heights, without any distractions.

The second reason that the Hardy Boys don’t appear is a little less obvious and a little less cut-and-dried plain fact, but I find it compelling enough to mention here: Ned is present. Other than as a foil in CAP (and an oddity in CRE/VEN), the Hardy Boys don’t appear in the games where Ned is present — it tends to be an either/or thing as far as phone characters are concerned. The why of this is, admittedly, conjecture, but I do find it fascinating that the two (three, technically) don’t intersect — and when they do, it’s to compare them.

Also there are not enough fics of the time Nancy sent Ned to hang out with the Hardy Boys like their house was a vacation kennel and Joe broke Ned’s car. Just saying.

Ned represents River Heights, safety, security, constancy, and comfort — the same things that the other River Heights phone friends (Carson, George, Bess, Hannah) do, albeit to a slightly lesser extent. The Hardy Boys, on the other hand, represent excitement, danger, the unknown, new discoveries, and growth — as do, in different extents, the non-River Heights returning phone friends (Hotchkiss, Savannah, Prudence).

Nancy sits squarely in the middle of these two extremes; she’s from River Heights, but she’s not exactly of River Heights, if you get my meaning. As the games have progressed, they’ve shown Nancy moving further and further away from safe, small, friend-related cases to professional jobs with more than a few people actively trying to kill her. For me, that’s the reason we don’t see the Hardy Boys and Ned mostly in the same games; they represent different spheres of Nancy’s life.

And, had competent writer(s) stayed and the games not, well, imploded due to Penny being one of the worst business people I’ve ever encountered, it would have been interesting to see that push-and-pull dynamic being expressed in Nancy’s relationships. As it is…thank Heaven for AO3, am I right?

Now, let’s refocus on ASH in specific, and talk about its composite parts, shall we?

The Title:

Other than being catchy and evocative (and telling us exactly what crime was committed here — that of arson), Alibi in Ashes is also a notable title for its flexibility in meaning. Like CAP, there are so many different connotations for “fire”, and all of them apply neatly to this game.

First, we’re dealing with the literal fire that sends Town Hall up in smoke, and the inciting incident for our mystery (and Nancy’s jail time). Next, we have the word “fire” standing in for “emergency” — as in “where’s the fire” — and there seems to be a new emergency every five minutes in this game — the fire, Nancy’s arrest, Bess breaking the vase, Carson’s absence, etc.

After that, we venture even further down the abstract hole, and dive into the political — whistleblowing, which is often referred to as “setting a/the fire”. This is partially what Nancy does, and is also what Brenda likes to do, no matter the accuracy of the report. Finally, we stay with Brenda for the term “media wildfire” – which is exactly what Nancy’s arrest (due to Brenda’s machinations) causes.

The title in total — “Alibi in Ashes” — also works in a few different senses. Literally speaking, Nancy’s alibi — and the evidence to prove it — is in the ashes of Town Hall, waiting to be discovered. More metaphorically, due to the work of the culprit, Nancy’s alibi (aka her innocence) is in pieces, in ashes — it’s been destroyed. Finally, in a literary sense, Nancy’s situation can be shown in the “ashes” of a past life — in the “wildfire” that destroyed Alexei’s life and career as a detective.

Its acronym being “ASH” is also pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

It’s the multifaceted nature of the title that really gives it its staying power, catchiness aside. Many titles are just as good as ASH’s, but almost none work harder at having so many possible meanings that are all represented in the text of the game itself.

The Mystery:

Sufficiently chastened into spending more time at home (at least for a few days), Nancy comes home in order to spearhead her team (consisting of Ned, Bess, and George) to victory in the River Heights Clues Challenge. This friendly little competition that included No Cheating Whatsoever on the part of Other Teams heats up, however, when a clue leads Nancy to the historic Town Hall — only to have it erupt in flames minutes later. Coughing but still moving, Nancy escapes the inferno…only to be greeted by the suspicious press, declaring her guilty of setting a beloved building on fire.

Things only get worse when Chief McGinnis shows up the next day, taking Nancy into custody due to political pressure in the town. An arsonist is afoot in River Heights, and unless her friends can dig up some dirt on someone — or everyone — else, it looks like Nancy Drew won’t just be convicted by the press, but by the town that raised her…

As a mystery, ASH has some great personal stakes — for Nancy and for our suspects — and pretty layered motivations. The cast comes alive through their relations to Nancy, especially as she’s unprotected with Carson being in Australia. The shift in the mystery that occurs when Nancy can finally get out and speak to the suspects — and seeing how differently they treat her than how they treated the other members of the cast — really helps to add something new to a mystery that’s tying itself up a bit, and give it the last push of gas it needs to get us to the conclusion.

While it’s not the most involved, complex, or thematic Nancy Drew mystery ever, it does what it needs to do, and does it well – and that’s honestly all I want in a game more devoted (as it should be) to character than it is to a twisty plot.

The Suspects:

ASH has a rather full cast (not because of the size of the suspect pool, but because there are so many people involved that should be mentioned), so let’s get started with our suspects, then move on to our other cast members.

Brenda Carlton, resident Reporter of River Heights News and perpetual thorn in Nancy’s side, is both our first suspect and our culprit, proving once again that the media cannot be trusted. We haven’t had a reporter be our culprit in 21 games (TRT’s Lisa being the previous example), so I guess we were due, but Brenda is a delightfully hateful example of just how bad the media can be, so kudos for that.

And this game didn’t even come out in an election year. How refreshing.

As a suspect, Brenda is awesome. Catty, arrogant, and with a penchant for dressing up as Nancy – titian wig and all! – to perform her dastardly, dastardly acts, the game doesn’t try to be subtle for one second that she’s up to no good. While Nancy and Brenda are equally as interested — and equally as talented, by all appearances – in ferreting out a good story, Brenda takes it a step further and makes one if she can’t find one – and nurses a grudge against Nancy for exposing her for it.

Up next is ice cream shop owner and scaly politician Antonia “Toni” Scallari, a woman with a bright-eyed, smiling public face — and if you don’t like that face, don’t worry…she has others. Toni is your typical politician — pretends to be nice and pleasant, is actually a scheming villain, hates people who do honest work, and thinks that fairness in government is a luxury – but the game does stop shy of making her The Villain, preferring instead to show the crimes she’s committed in her search for money and power and letting her quietly bow out of the election.

So definitely better than she deserved, but at least the game shows her corrupt nature rather than sweeping it under the rug.

As a suspect, Toni would have made a decent villain, but it would have turned the game into a tale of cold political expediency and machinations, rather than hot-blooded revenge, and that would have been a shame. I’m a fan of how the games from about TOT on always have multiple characters who Do Crimes and Bad Things, and Toni is a prime example of a bad guy who just happens not to be The Bad Guy.

Third on the docket of suspects is our resident grumpy old man (and Nancy’s foil in this game) Alexei Markovic, who provides not only some of the best voice work in the game, but whose age is also proof that Nancy’s dad really is the silver-haired DILF we’ve been waiting for.

C’mon, he prosecuted Alexei when Alexei was 20. The youngest Carson could have been was 25 if he booked it through college, took no breaks to study for the LSAT, and blazed through law school — and immediately got a job the day after graduation. And seeing as Alexei has the “old coot” personality and grey hair…well, Carson is probably straddling the line between DILF and GILF.

(I’m so sorry for that aside, guys, it got away from me. I’m equally sorry for the first recorded use of the term “GILF” in the Nancy Drew fandom. It’s not the legacy I wanted, but perhaps the legacy I deserve.)

Back to Alexei!

Alexei is a great character, full-stop, and his VA just improves the experience more. Bitter and jaded, but by no means uncaring or evil or myopic about his troubles, Alexei is, where Nancy is concerned, a bleeding heart whose blood happens to run cold. While he could be bitter about Carson playing a part in taking away everything he had, and thus treat Nancy poorly, he instead empathizes deeply, wants to help, and, in effect, treats her the way that somebody — anybody — should have treated him.

As a suspect, Alexei, as Nancy’s foil in the game, would have been a poor choice; he’s not really there to be suspicious, he’s there to show the stakes of the mystery. No matter if Carson could find a world-class defender to get Nancy off the charges, no matter if they couldn’t even indict her, the stakes aren’t “Nancy will go to jail for Realsies” — the stakes are the town turning its back, she loses those she loves, and is unable to do the job that is the essence of who she is. In other words, if things go poorly, Nancy becomes Alexei.

One of the reasons that Alexei is such a good character is that he recognizes this immediately, and is determined to do all he can to prevent that. Sure, he knows the odds are stacked against him, and the whole town is his enemy, and he won’t get anything for helping out — but at his heart, he’s still the Magnificent Markovic; “no case too big, no fee too small,” remember?

Last of the actual suspects is noted red-light runner and girl in envious, envious green, Deirdre Shannon. Deirdre’s a rather divisive character in the fandom — especially of late — but is a character I stand firmly on the side of great, for a few reasons.

The first is that the games took a 1-dimensional, wouldn’t-cast-a-shadow-if-you-turned-her-sideways character from the Girl Detective books, there purely to make Nancy look good, and instead gave her a fully realized character, sympathetic motivations, and a whip-sharp tongue.

The second is her hilarious banter with the River Heights crew and wry sense of humor, which would be enough to make her a favorite character of mine alone.

Annoyed by constant, unflattering comparisons to Nancy from her parents (her father also being a lawyer in River Heights), she’s amused when Nancy’s arrested — though, if you read in between the lines, never suspects Nancy actually set the fire nor thinks Nancy will ultimately get the blame — though not as amused at Bess’ spying on her. She harbors a not-secret crush on Ned and enjoys spending time with him, girlfriend or no girlfriend — though it should be noted that even Ned isn’t spared her sharp tongue.

As a culprit, Deirdre would have been the obvious choice for writers who were the caliber of…well, of the Girl Detective series writers, but thankfully we’re on a higher playing field with Nik, Cathy, and the rest of the crew behind ASH. Deirdre is a snarky observer, but that’s as far as her ‘evil’ goes — and looking at her methodology for solving the Clues Challenge clues (and her commentary on her compatriots) is a joy — real detective work, indeed!

After our suspects, let’s talk about our players on the side of Right — or at least, on the side of Nancy — starting with the girl detective herself (as we will for all of the Nancy Games). ASH provides a better look at Nancy than we’ve had before (as befitting the first of the Nancy Games)

Nancy Drew is our main character, sometimes-protagonist, and at times villain protagonist — especially in the eyes of our culprits — when it comes to unearthing long-buried hurts and wrongs. Stuck in jail for a crime she didn’t commit due to political and community pressure, for the first time, the girl detective can’t really do anything by herself, and is relegated to “phone friend” while her boyfriend and childhood friends are running around frantically trying to introduce reasonable doubt in a frame-up par excellence.

Our source in SPY refers to Nancy as an autodidact — one who teaches themselves — and that’s a perfect summation of Nancy’s character. She’s no museum expert, nor cowgirl, nor entomologist, nor any other hat she’s put on — but she can fake it if someone hums a few bars. Her other big pluses as a detective are (once again according to the source in SPY) in interrogation and code/puzzle breaking — and the differences in the questions that Ned et al pose and the questions Nancy poses to our suspects does bear out the first point, at the very least. Her code and puzzle skills are the usual fallback for the games’ mysteries, more so in the modern games than in older ones (which is both a good and bad thing, depending on what types of puzzles you like).

In ASH, we learn about a key trait of Nancy’s — self-sufficiency, and, more importantly, the limits of that self-sufficiency. Able to fake most things until she makes it, Nancy is finally put in a situation where she can’t do anything by herself, and it’s a source of frustration and impatience to her that overrides other feelings (“Also, I’m in jail, and I would really like to get out,” anyone?). It’s rather stunning that Nancy goes from a triumphant Girl in the Dress to stuck in a police station, relying on the phone and her own intuition, and it does some good for her character exposure and development.

Next up is Edward “Ned” Nickerson, erstwhile boyfriend and long-suffering Emerson College student, Ned is part of an honors fraternity and is in River Heights for the Clues Challenge — and to see his girlfriend, of course. While his attempts to be Detective Ned have really only resulting in finding the keys that were in his pocket, Ned is nevertheless quite useful in getting information out of Deirdre (and is responsible for one of the funniest bits of dialogue in the game that’s not spoken directly by Deirdre).

According to the files from SPY, Ned’s defining characteristics are his honestly and his loyalty, both of which mean that he’s the ideal ‘phone friend’ when Nancy’s in a pickle — and means of course he’d be front and center, ready to do anything he needs to in order to help clear Nancy’s name. His main role in the game, however (and very interesting, as one of 6 or so Neirdre shippers in the fandom!) is to be the object of Deirdre’s window-shopping affections and to be made fun of (good-naturedly, of course) by his friends.

Because of his relationship (such as it is) with an overtly antagonistic character, Ned’s a lot of fun in ASH. I feel like he gets a lot of characterization that he often lacks in most other games (excepting CAP and SPY, of course), and it just makes me like him more.

George Fayne is also here to help — though, irritatingly, not required the same way Bess and Ned are — with her knowledge of technology and impeccable Togo-watching skills. George is a great character in the OG Nancy Drew books – the ultra-modern, straightforward, clumsy flapper, to contrast Bess’ more genteel sensibilities and Nancy’s down to earth, practical, yet fashionable nature — and one of the greatest disservices that the 60s rewrites, post-60s ND books, and, yes, the game series has done to the ND universe is to turn her into a “hurr-durr tomboy because name George like boy name” sort of mockery of her original character.

And no, I’m not crediting her as “Georgia”, because that was not her name in the books. Her name was George, full stop — once again, quite fashionable of her to have a “boy’s” name in the 20s/30s — named after her grandfather. You may fight me on this, but you will not win.

George is noted to have above-average skills in mechanical engineering, and indeed creates a jammer to stop Brenda’s broadcast in the game, but is otherwise…well, kind of pushed to the side in favor of Bess and Ned, her enmity with Deirdre notwithstanding. I’ll address this issue more in The Un-Favorite and The Fix, but a few tweaks while developing the game would have gone a long way towards defining George as a character — we’re ignoring MED wholesale, don’t worry — and helping the gameplay be a bit more varied.

George’s maternal cousin, Elizabeth “Bess” Marvin, on the other hand, is basically required to get what you need to know from Toni, but is very much not the favorite person of Alexei, due to her breaking an antique vase upon coming into his shop.

When a vase can survive the Nazis but not Bess Marvin, it seems a shame that Bess didn’t go to France with Nancy during DAN. They would have found that secret room with the artwork in like a minute and a half.

Bess is mentioned to lack judgment (her reveal of George’s crush on the snack shop boy illustrates that pretty well) but to have above-average intuition and, while manipulated easily enough, is too honest for that manipulation to really cause any lasting harm. Because of her sweet, open nature — and her open pocketbook when it comes to ice cream — she’s a favorite of Toni’s, and uses that in order to try to clear Nancy’s name and discover just what illegal, corrupt pies Toni has her grubby little politician hands in.

Going a little less friendly and a little less college-aged for our next helper, we turn to Chief McGinnis, a grumpy pushover of a cop who’s really only important for letting Nancy walk around a Police Station and solve a crime while under arrest because he didn’t wanna do his job, and for a hilarious diatribe about Pancake City.

Seriously, I go and watch that scene every so often when I need a good laugh. ASH has some fabulous comic writing, and McGinnis’ rant is a prime example.

McGinnis is pretty ineffectual as a helper, but he does allow for the first 2/3 of the game to happen by locking Nancy up (“You cannot leave jail! This is a very basic concept!), and for that, we salute him.

Rounding out our cast of Nancy-supporters is Carson Drew, who is (frustratingly, to him) stuck in Australia when all this goes down, and thus cannot use his legal prowess to free her.

Of course, as a prosecutor, I’m not sure how much help he’d be anyway, but hey, a lawyer is a lawyer is a lawyer, at least in the ever-wise eyes of HER Interactive.

Carson’s really just there (or not there, as the case may be) to explain how Nancy can be locked up with such a powerful lawyer father, honestly, but he gets some good lines in, so we’ll forgive it. He’s also there to round out the “River Heights Cast”, but I can’t help feeling that, if we were gonna have another Drew in this game, I would have taken the puppy over the golf ball. #Togo4Ever

The Favorite:

There’s a lot to love in ASH, so I’m going to focus on the biggest things. Suffice to say if a part of the game isn’t in this section but isn’t in the Un-Favorite, I love it.

I’m going to start off just by saying that the dialogue in ASH is wonderful. We’ve got distinct individual voices, sarcasm galore, enough cattiness to fuel the Halle Berry movie, and great interpersonal work, especially with Alexei.

One of the places Nik truly shines is dialogue, and a small-town environment like River Heights really shows off his skill. I sometimes hear the charge that “no one talks like this!!” leveled against the Nik games but, honestly, I talk to people every day who speak similarly to Nik’s characters, allowing for the differences in written and spoken speech, and so do most people I know. Allusions, analogies, metaphors, and aphorisms aren’t just for English class — they’re part of speaking well.

If you really wanna see dialogue where “no one talks like this,” look at the early ND games. FIN is a particularly bad offender, but SCK and STFD aren’t much better.

My favorite puzzle in the game is the letter swap puzzle inside of Scoop, by far. Sure, I enjoy other puzzles — Alexei’s number box, fingerprinting, the suspect board — immensely, and have a blast doing them, but I can spend hours figuring out old quotes on that aqua background and not notice the time passing one jot. It’s fun, references old games, and is exactly the kind of puzzle that gets me excited anyway, and I love it to pieces.

My favorite moment in the game is probably the moment Nancy takes control and goes and talks to Toni, oddly enough. The stark difference in what Toni says about Nancy while she’s in the station to what she says to her face is like a brick wall to the chest, and is, every time, the moment when you see exactly how River Heights turned on Alexei so completely as to push him out of his job and into the antique business. It’s a moment of almost stomach-sinking disgust, and I absolutely adore the game for not pulling its punches and instead keeping true to one of its major themes — that you need to see who people are in the dark, not when they’re facing you.

In the light of day, Alexei is just a cantankerous old man; Toni is a smiling, motherly ice cream store owner, Brenda is a hard-hitting reporter, and Deirdre is a vapid Queen Bee type. Under the cover of darkness, however, we see Alexei’s charity and heart, Toni’s corruption and two-faced nature, Brenda’s unethical and illegal means to her ends, and Deirdre’s soft center. And I love the game for pointing out the world of difference it makes to see what someone truly is.

For my last point, there are two characters are of note in this game that I love for very different reasons.

The first is Alexei, who is the inspiration behind the title of the meta. There’s something incredibly compelling about Alexei’s down-to-earth nature and the way he deals with being dealt the poorest hand in the world without ever dipping into “woe is me” or any other self-indulgent crap. Insatiably curious, bright, and caustic, Alexei feels like the perfect person to sit down, drink a cup of something warm, and talk about puzzles, antiques, and harsh truths with.

He’s a character who watched his entire life fall apart with one bad person’s actions — “one time, just once, I tried to speak truth to power, and man if I didn’t pay the price” — but still had it in him to keep going, even if it wasn’t what he was doing before. He went from being the town’s golden boy to a pariah, and yet still looks after River Heights and its history, even becoming the curator of the River Heights Museum (when it opens). The difference between his reaction to being falsely accused to, say, Noisette Tornade’s (DAN) reaction to being “falsely” accused is huge and, I think, rather inspiring.

The second is Deirdre Shannon, if you couldn’t tell by my gushing about her above, and, can I just say, I love everything about her. There’s a temptation to assume at first blush that she’s your average boy-stealing popular rich girl a la WAC, but actually looking at her tells a different story.

Sure, the rich part is true — but so is Nancy, and from the looks of their houses and all the trips/vacations they do, the Marvins and Faynes seem pretty well off as well. She shares the tendency for a sharp tongue with Nancy as well (as befitting her status as Nancy’s foil in DED, stay tuned!). Deirdre also doesn’t qualify as popular — her two “friends” that she hangs out with in ASH for the Clues Challenge are still in their “free trial”, and aren’t really her friends.

And her feelings for Ned? While she openly flirts with him (even if Ned doesn’t get it until the girls tell him), Deirdre isn’t looking to actually cause damage (if only because she sees Ned as completely unobtainable), and is up-front about everything she does to Nancy’s face. Putting yourself in her shoes, she’s a bright girl, in love with a boy who is the definition of out-of-reach, is constantly (and negatively) compared to the boy’s girlfriend, and feels stuck in her small town, desperate to move beyond the boredom. In other words, in any other story, she’s the protagonist. It just so happens — as she’s acutely aware — not to be her story. And that’s the kind of character that it’s impossible for me not to love.

And speaking of things impossible to love…

The Un-Favorite:

My biggest problem with ASH, as was mentioned above, is the fact that George is relegated mechanically and interpersonally to the “unimportant” bin. Nancy, Bess, and Ned all have suspects that like and don’t like them, while all George gets is a note that her and Deirdre particularly don’t get along — no extrapolation, no explanation. It makes the decision to include her as a playable character feel a bit like a last-minute decision, like Bess and Ned were planned and George was supposed to be watching Togo until the very end when she makes the jammer or something.

My least favorite puzzle in the game has got to be the stacking of the boxes and crawling towards the exit at the start to escape the fire; it’s a time-sensitive puzzle, which are usually my least favorite, and takes the mechanics of Renate’s bag puzzle and small visual distinctions, which we’ve already noted in the last meta are not particularly my jam either. I wouldn’t replace or get rid of it, it’s just my least favorite. I tend to start my game from a save I have after the puzzle — while I have to refresh on the opening occasionally, it’s better than the frustration from the combined puzzle.

I don’t have a least favorite moment from the game, to be quite honest, so let’s move on to the last section of this meta.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Alibi in Ashes?

The big thing I would change would to be to ensure that each member of Team Danger should have one culprit that likes them and one culprit that hates especially them. Nancy already has Alexei for her plus and Brenda for her minus, and Bess should keep Toni and Alexei, respectively, but both Ned and George need one more. Luckily, with four friends and four suspects, they’ll divide up evenly very easily.

My fix would be to have Ned keep Deirdre as his plus and give him Toni as his minus (local business owners usually don’t like football players for being rowdy and taking up a lot of seats, plus he’s Nancy’s boyfriend and staunchest defender).

George, meanwhile, keeps Deirdre as her minus (though flesh it out a bit more — what exactly went wrong there?) and gains Brenda as her plus. Not only would this make the endgame where she creates the jammer a little more interesting, I’d note that George and Brenda have a bit in common, due to Brenda’s technical and mechanical prowess that we see throughout the game. Throw in something with George having done a technical internship with the River Heights broadcasting network or something during high school, and we’d get a slightly different side of Brenda, even though George still dislikes her privately.

Just fixing this issue would be enough to where nothing in ASH would stand out as a real negative, but for my second, smaller fix, I’d make the friends able to call each other to change off, instead of having to call Nancy, then have her call the other person. That slows the game down and is needlessly clunky, and I’m still not quite sure why they did it.

Once those two things are fixed, there’s nothing in the way of ASH being a truly excellent game. Sure, it’s not as thematic as the few games preceding it, but it’s not supposed to be — it’s supposed to have an entertaining mystery while showing us a little more of who Nancy really is and why she does what she does, and on those (and most other) fronts, ASH is an incredibly solid, enjoyable game that I replay whenever I get the chance.

#nancy drew #clue crew #nancy drew games #alibi in ashes #nancy drew meta #long post #my meta #ASH #video games

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spaceorphan18 · 4 years

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What are your headcanons/thoughts about Blaine (by episode) during season 6 after Kurt comes back to Lima? I've read your Finding KH meta and I think you nailed your interpretation of Kurt, but I've never been able to tell what was happening in Blaine's head. Obviously, there's some complex emotions going on- anger at Kurt, a bit of longing because Kurt wanted him back, sadness when Kurt tells Blaine about his date, etc. Season 6 Klaine was very much Kurt-centric. I want to know about Blaine.

Hi! So -- this is just, wow, a thesis of a question, lol! Which is fine! But it’s not a quick answer. So, yeah, let’s have a nice long conversation about Blaine and season 6. I’ll see if I can keep it concise for everyone, lol

Pre-Season 6

So, here’s what we know -- Kurt and Blaine broke up. And, there’s an interesting parallel to the previous break up. Before -- Kurt had too much faith in the relationship, and Blaine didn’t -- hence Blaine ultimately breaking the relationship. This time, Blaine has too much faith in the relationship, and Kurt doesn’t, hence Kurt breaking the relationship.

As we see in ep. 2, this sends Blaine into a tailspin downward into a deep depression. And while that sucks, I don’t think the break up is the worst thing that could have happened to him. Because, here’s the thing. Remember back in season 4, Burt said Blaine shouldn’t be marrying an idea -- but a person? Well - part of the reason for the break up is that Blaine was holding on, maybe too tightly, to this idea that if he and Kurt got married, that would solve all his problems and they’d live in a nice little fairy tale world of perfectness.

Well, real life doesn’t work like that -- and the break up kind of pushes Blaine to see that despite his best efforts, Kurt is a person (who really really hurt him) and marriage isn’t just an idea. It also forces Blaine to deal with some inner demons that he hadn’t before. When they broke up the first time, Blaine held on to his pursuit that he could get Kurt back. This time -- Blaine is under the impression that it’s done and over. That’s it. And for the first time (ever in his adult life) Blaine is forced to face a reality that he has to function as his own person (that’s a good thing).

As we see in the flashback, Blaine’s downward spiraled into depression (something that he’s struggled with off and on throughout the series, and unlike Kurt who has bouts of situation depression, my headcanon for Blaine is that he’s dealt with a longstanding, low key depression most of the time we see him). He isn’t really able to /do/ anything for a while -- until he works his way up from it, starts to go to therapy, and starts to work on himself.

He ends up moving forwards and backwards at the same time. On the one hand, he begins changing things up, playing with his hair and wardrobe, going outside his usual norms such as dating someone like Karofsky. Meanwhile, he goes backwards in that he retreats back to Dalton -- it’s a reset (as well as narratively for the show, which is resetting back to season 2 rules). It’s a safe place for him -- the place where he last felt the happiest, and yet, it is also a place that holds him back. That’s fine, for now, as he’s using it as a place of healing. The ironic part is that this is the place where he can’t quite get rid of the ghosts of Kurt -- this is where they met, fell in love, and where Blaine proposed. No matter how hard Blaine tries - he won’t truly be over Kurt until he leaves Blaine behind. (Lucky for us, he doesn’t choose to.)

Loser Like Me

By the time we meet up with Blaine in Loser Like Me, we see that he’s doing relatively well -- more so than Kurt because he’s had a lot of time to process the break-up and work on himself. One of the things that comes out of all the therapy, and coming to terms with living without Kurt (or, really, any guy) is that he knows he can make it on his own - and that’s a good thing! And while he’s sad about how things ended with Kurt (and still very angry in the manner in which Kurt did it), he’s in a decent place.

He’s happy coaching the Warblers (even if it’s a distraction) and he’s relatively happy dating Karofsky. I made a whole post about why Blaine dates Karofsky and you can FIND IT HERE. Like everyone in this episode (notice the episode only focuses on the ‘losers’ of this show) Blaine is not at his final stop in life. The whole point of this first episode is to show everyone coming to a cross roads where they need to pick themselves up and start again so they can eventually reach the destiny they were went to be - at the end of the season.

One thing Blaine mentions in the first episode is that he was kicked out of NYADA. This is also a thing heavy on his mind, but it’s not a bad thing! NYADA was Kurt’s dream (and really a scam school) -- and in order for the two of them to be individuals in their relationship again, Blaine finding a new place to go to school -- in turn finding his own path in life -- is healthy for their relationship. It just happens to be sucky at the moment.

So, I go into the final Klaine scene a lot during the Kurt meta, but to touch upon it a little from Blaine’s side....

So, keep in mind that Rachel sets this up -- and probably doesn’t tell Blaine much as to why Kurt wants to see him. This is probably the first time Kurt and Blaine have seen each other since the break up -- and probably the first time they’ve been in contact whenever Blaine left the loft. Remember -- Blaine wasn’t just upset about the break up, he was angry that Kurt so ruthlessly and seemingly uncaringly broke his heart. There’s a lot of anger still festering there -- as much as he’s dealt with the fact that he’s on his own now, he hasn’t dealt with his leftover feelings for and about Kurt.

He’s probably of mind that Kurt’s coming to tell him how wonderful his life is now that they’re apart, and how great New York is, and how it’s better that they called off the wedding. So, Blaine’s prepped to engage in this --- bringing Karofsky is one part shield for Blaine and one part shoving him in Kurt’s face to say that he has also moved on and is “fine”. What he doesn’t expect is what actually happens.

When they meet up Kurt lays it out on the line -- he is not only seeking out Blaine’s forgiveness, but he came back to win Blaine’s heart. And Blaine is a little... whoa, what??? Cause that is not what he intended to happen. Blaine plays it cool -- because as much as his heart is probably -- yup, let’s do it -- he’s gotten hurt, too, and he’s not going to forgive Kurt so easily.

And then there’s also Karofsky to consider. He does like Karofsky, and everything is easier with Karofsky, and he can take the easy road that isn’t as satisfying, or risk his heart getting broken again with Kurt. He’s definitely not ready to take that risk. So they all go through the little charade of Karofsky being cutesy. But it doesn’t go unnoticed by Blaine how much the idea of Blaine with someone else -- especially Blaine with Karofsky -- hurts Kurt. Blaine had probably liked the idea that Kurt would not be thrilled with the idea, but actually hurting him -- Blaine doesn’t like the taste of it as much as he thought he might.

I also want to mention, probably as the night grows to a close, and Kurt and Blaine maybe have a moment alone -- this is when Kurt might retract a little and use his typical defense of -- maybe we’re better off being friends. WHICH IS TOTALLY FALSE THEY SUCK AT BEING FRIENDS -- but Blaine probably half-heartedly agrees, and they all try to move forward from it.

Homecoming

So - we play a lot of catch up with Blaine in this episode -- which I detailed more so above. A lot of this episode is Blaine with the Warbers, and helping the new student - Jane - becoming one of the Warblers. A couple of things to point out with this...

First of all... we get to see Blaine as a teacher, and how he’s a good guy, willing to put all of himself into a thing, even if it’s not going to work out (more on that in a second). We see that -- despite his thoughts that Dalton never changes, we see that it indeed does! Not only is he out of touch with this wacky group of Warblers, but he’ll be able to get them to change a tradition and let a girl into the group. Despite Blaine claiming he’s happy with his life staying the same as it is -- he’s still at a crossroads at his life, and things are going to change. Kurt coming back into town set things in motion, and whether he likes it or not, his life can’t stay the same as it was when he was back in high school.

Blaine is a bit distant to Kurt in this episode. In the beginning, he mostly ignores Kurt -- as a way to just not deal with him at all. Later on, he’s mad and frustrated that Jane has defected -- like I said earlier, he’s once again poured himself into a thing only to have it not work out. His anger that Kurt would be in on at this at all, let alone enjoying it, is him lashing out his anger over the break up that he’s still not over. (And it’s especially annoying that Kurt’s being kind and mature about the whole thing.)

We also see the emergence of sassy Blaine at the end -- Blaine isn’t going to back down and he isn’t going to play nice. And while it’s a tad on the dramatic side -- the point is, unlike whatever the hell Will has going on with Rachel, Blaine has learned to stand his ground and stand up to Kurt. And, while this thought might seem a little weird -- his pushing back against Kurt is actually a good thing! And even Kurt seems to be amused during the scene. It means that Blaine will allow himself to stand on his own two feet instead of just following whatever Kurt’s lead is. They’re getting to a place where they’re on equal footing instead of one of them seeing the other as an idyllic partner. It’s a better foundation for their later, more mature, relationship.

Meanwhile - we have Homecoming itself, where Blaine is seen cuddle up with Karofsky. It is his homecoming, too -- he did graduate from McKinley, but he does seem out of place there. Ironically, the song is about being ‘home’ -- but while everyone is literally home, they’re still on their journeys to where their real homes will be. With Rachel it’ll be New York. With Mercedes, it’ll be touring. With Kurt and Blaine, it’ll be each other. Kurt looks sadly on, but Blaine is, again, purposely ignoring Kurt and using Karofsky as his shield (and excuse) not to deal with the Kurt of it all.

I also want to take a quick second and talk about Blam! Because we don’t get a lot of it in this season. A lot of that is due to the fact that we’re playing by season 2 rules again, before Blaine and Sam were friends, and part of it is the nature that these plot lines don’t allow us to see much of it. But I do think Sam played a nice part in helping Blaine get out of his funk. Sam’s a good friend, and probably did everything he could to help Blaine on his feet again. And despite the fact that at the end of the season (reminding me a lot of how Kurt and Mercedes started to go their own way in season 2) Blaine and Sam are just on different paths. And that’s okay! I think their friendship means the world to both of them -- but they don’t need each other the way they did back in season 4. And that’s fine.

Jagged Little Tapestry

We don’t get to see Blaine much in this episode - but there’s still a little bit here for us to look into. First of all, Blaine and Kurt accidentally meet up at the sheet music store, and for a moment it’s like old times. Though - fascinatingly, they’re more adult in their interaction with each other. (I do think this entire story would make more sense set five years into the future, but I digress...) It’s funny, Blaine tried hard to play the grown up when he (and more so Kurt) weren’t ready. But there’s an easiness between them that really wasn’t there before -- they are adults now -- in these adult roles, and I think these two without the baggage of their past, would easily fall in line and in love with each other if they were meeting for the first time.

Unfortunately, the baggage named Karofsky is still around. But what is different is that Blaine doesn’t need the shield (roadblock) that is Karofsky as much as he did. Blaine feels... a little embarrassed by Karofsky now, and the more he and Kurt begin to reconcile, the less Karofsky feels like an actual option for romantic partner.

But here’s the thing -- as we see in this shared fantasy of a song, Blaine begins to look back through all his old memories of Kurt, as they haunt him as much as they haunt Kurt. There were good times, and Blaine’s beginning to remember that. There’s still a lot of pain, too, though, which is why Blaine doesn’t just ditch Karofsky right there.

So -- Blaine does the dumbest thing ever, and moves in with Karofsky. Here’s my headcanon around that... I’m guessing it’s not entirely out of the blue -- Blaine probably still lives at home, as probably so does Karofsky, and I’m sure Karofsky floated the idea out there. It’s an enticing offer to Blaine even without Kurt in the picture. He likes being in a solid relationship like that. He likes the domesticity of it. And while it’s totally playhousing again (oh Blaine), by the time Kurt comes around -- Blaine decides to move full forward with the idea.

In a way -- it’s his (bad) attempt of fully moving on from Kurt -- see Kurt, I can totally be fine without you. And Karofsky’s an easy enough partner that he’ll just go with the flow. Blaine gets his mock domestic life, and a shield against the pain of Kurt. Is it real? Not really -- if Brittany’s decorations say anything -- other than gay-diddy-gay-gay-gay, they say -- not a real home, but a mock up of one. (Did she do this on purpose? I’ll let you decide.)

The Hurt Locker pt. 1

And we get more Sassy Blaine - telling Rachel like it is. And, again, I reiterate that this is a good thing. Blaine’s still that charming, debonair guy we all know and love. But he’s not afraid to speak his mind anymore, that’s a good thing.

So -- now we get to start seeing all the cracks in the Blaine/Karofsky facade. Yes, Sue is a meddling, pain in the ass, but even without her, the fact that this is still a rebound for Blaine is still there. I truly believe that everything that happens between Kurt and Blaine would have still happened -- only at a much slower rate.

So, yeah, before we get Sue showing up at the date, we get Blaine and Karofsky chatting -- and Blaine talking about how much Karofsky has grown. Part of this is exposition to fill us viewers in as to why the fuck this even happened in the first place, but, it’s also there for Blaine to continue to convince himself that Karofsky is a decent guy whom he’s actively choosing over Kurt.

Then Sue shows up and starts making things awkward -- look, there’s all of Karofsky’s old baggage -- clearly, that’s not something they’ve talked about before. What is Karofsky getting out of this relationship? And why has he slept with half the guys in Lima? Is Karofsky even the guy Blaine’s wanting (needing) him to be? And then Sue sews the seeds that they’re related. Which... ew.

Speaking of ew, let’s take a second and talk about Blaine and Karofsky having sex! Okay, now that I’ve lost a majority of you, lol, yes, they’re definitely having it. Yes, it’s probably like a Uhaul mounting a Moped. Look - they’re both adults who enjoy sex, and Blaine definitely is going to jump head first into that kind of thing. As much as we don’t want to think about it, they have that aspect to their relationship. That said -- is it any good? Meh. It serves its purpose - but I don’t think that’s any kind of defining point in their relationship. And in fact, I’m guessing Blaine ends up liking to cuddle way more than he enjoys the sex.

Anyway.... after this disaster of a date, who does Blaine end up talking to? Kurt. Why? Because at this point -- they’ve slowly started to let each other into their lives again. I do think they’ve slowly begun to chat with each other again - though it’s about mundane things. Not the deeper aspects of their lives. No matter how hard they try, though, they can never really get that far out of each other’s orbit. At the end of the day -- Blaine and Kurt were best friends before they ever dated, and that was one of the foundations of their relationship. It’s interesting -- but something the creators (and Darren and Chris) said at the time that no matter what happens between them, they have a unbreakable bond of friendship that goes deeper than fractured romantic relationship. They are fundamentally apart of each other’s lives, and /like/ each other -- which at the end of the day -- is what truly makes their later, fully committing relationship work.

So, Blaine goes on about Sue, and unintentionally reveals the cracks in his and Karofsky’s relationship. Kurt doesn’t say it, and Blaine doesn’t fully grasp it yet, but Blaine’s complaining is more than Sue’s meddling. It’s more so the fact that Blaine and Karofsky aren’t right for each other -- and Blaine’s finally beginning to see that. Sure, maybe possibly being related a zillion generations back and the fact that Karofsky has made his rounds are pretty superficial reasons to not be with Karofsky -- but the underlying theme is that Blaine’s not ultimately happy with him. His heart, as he’s about to get a reminder, is already taken.

Kurt then - in an honest attempt at maturity, tells Blaine he’s going on a date. And Blaine is uncomfortable -- why? Because for the first time, it’s no longer about their past, or Blaine’s anger, but the reality that if they don’t try again -- maybe this really is the end of the line for them. That thought is echoed when Blaine regurgitates Kurt’s line about being friends, and being each other’s first love is special, but not everything lasts.

The sad thing is -- the subtext of the scene is how much they really want each other here, but are both trying to save face. They are trying to move past each other -- but neither is really wanting to do that, even if Blaine isn’t ready to ditch Karofsky and be back with Kurt. Blaine then gets out of there before they’re really forced to deal with feelings

An interesting thought about their physical intimacy -- back in Loser Like Me, they shared an awkward hug, one where they had muscle memory of being each other’s lovers, but remembering they were, in fact, not together. Here, it’s not as awkward, but it’s still weird. It’s a sign, though, that they are getting more comfortable with each other again.

The Hurt Locker Part 2

Where I wax poetic about an elevator....

So, the important thing... before the Sue of it all, Kurt and Blaine meet up and chat -- the thing is, as they chat, they’re warm and comfortable with each other. There’s an ease going on that wasn’t seen in earlier episodes. What changed? Well - they’re fully getting back into each other’s lives at this point. Maybe they’ve talked a lot about how insane it is to be teachers, or Rachel as a crazy person, or Will being insane with VA. Maybe Kurt told Blaine all about his date with a dude who is older than his dad, and/or Kurt helped Blaine figure out if Karofsky really was related to him. Whatever happened in that week -- these two were already clearly on their way back to each other before Sue, as seen in the friendliness before we get to the elevator.

So -- I talk a lot about the elevator in my meta for Kurt: KURT META. A lot of it transfers to Blaine, so I’m not going to go into it as much here (read the meta!) -- but mostly, the elevator is a metaphor. It’s a place where they can recreate what their issues were with each other, and a place where they can take the other path and talk things out with each other. It’s a place where they can fall back in love with each other (not that they ever fell out of it) and a place where they can discover that they can deal with each other long term. It’s something that I do believe they would have discovered on their own -- but Sue just gave them the extra push.

In addition, the kiss is formative. It reawakens that sexual desire in Blaine -- that never really left (though Kurt feared it had) but plays upon the fact that it’s not just a friendship they have (or had) but a passionate and a lust for each other as well. They’re compatible not just as friends - but as lovers as well. And having physical contact in this way reignites something that never really went away -- but creates more cracks in their attempts to move on from each other.

(There’s a lot more going on here, clothes coming off like layers being unraveled, it’s all good -- I cover it in the Kurt meta - go read it!)

So in this bizarre set up, it’s kind of like a fantasy land where they can rediscover each other outside of the baggage of reality. Once the doors open - it’s back to reality, and the clothes go back on, and they have to go back to their regular lives. But something has shifted again -- as they share a smile during the Inventational.

And as they berate Sue on her kidnapping schemes, it’s clear that they’re friends again, and comfortable with each other. (Notice Blaine touching Kurt during their last scene together? This is purposeful as that layer of intimacy they’ve gotten back. It’s so delicious.) But even more so -- Kurt mentions being over the anger and resentment of the break up. While Blaine doesn’t say it, that speaks volumes. Blaine’s no longer angry with Kurt, because he’s finally put that particular pain behind him - whoo!

What the World Needs Now

There’s really not a whole lot going on here, and that’s fine -- they’ve had a lot of the season 6 story lines so far, I’m so used to them being so in the background that this seems par for the course. (Do you see why I find Season 6 so delicious when it comes to Klaine - we get so much!) Anyway, we get a sassy comment from Mercedes about Kurt and Blaine having to deal with each other, but the thing is -- they’re already pretty cool with each other.

And then we get the end -- where Blaine shows up... without Karofsky! Cause here’s the thing. Blaine dealt with his anger towards Kurt during the whole elevator thing -- he’s no longer angry at Kurt. He’s no longer harboring the baggage he was carrying around with him. And -- because of that, he no longer needs Karofsky as a shield. He and Kurt can hang and be cool with each other, and it’s okay, Blaine finds. He can let Kurt into his heart again, because he doesn’t fear being hurt.

Transitioning

This episode is for all those people worried that Sue meddling was what got Kurt and Blaine back together. It wasn’t -- this episode is what really did it. Had Sue not meddled, what goes down here probably would have still happened in its own time. Sue just helped speed up the process.

Also messing with fate? Kurt... I mean, look at that boy rig that wheel -- singing duets are a sacred thing on Glee, and he’s not going to let the opportunity slip by.

This episode, however, is mostly from Blaine’s POV as we finally get some insight as to what’s going on in his brain. He knows Kurt is screwing around with the wheel, and he’s a bit awkward because of it -- because he knows that duet, in Glee’s symbolic world, is more than a duet. It’s a reaffirmation of what they had. It’s an indication that Kurt’s still interesting and waiting. It’s a chance for Blaine to slip out of the Karofsky-armor he’s been carrying around and see what his heart really wants.

So, Rachel’s party - a ‘transitioning’ moment in time if you will. They goof around and have fun and are probably a little relaxed from the alcohol Sam is slipping them. (I’m a little iffy about that around minors but whatever...) And then they sing a flirty duet together. And then Blaine realizes... he’s gotta go. But not without confirming something for himself.

You see -- outside, when they are alone, it’s a chance for Blaine to realize his feelings and act to act on them. He needs to find out for himself -- not being pressured into it by a sadistic puppet if he still feels all the things for Kurt. And guess what -- they kiss, and he does!! Which is why he jettisons out of there so fast. He’s on the verge of letting Kurt all the way in again, and that’s scary! And there’s also the issue of Karofsky - but more on that in a second.

I need to say this -- look, I get that this story isn’t perfect. While I adore this conversation, it does look a little too towards the past, and not enough about how far they’ve come or the future together. I do wish Glee had done just a little more than pull on nostalgia strings, but alas, that’s where fanfiction comes in, so I’ll just do that myself, lol.

So, let’s talk about Karofsky! Or more so, I’m gonna copy and paste what I put in my Kurt Meta because I’m too lazy to write it all out again:

Obviously, Kurt’s not in this scene, but I feel the need to go over it, because it does, in part, pertain to Kurt. And because I think it’s a nice scene. I’m going to give Karofsky a little bit of credit here, and say he isn’t entirely dumb. He knows Blaine’s been acting weird, and he’s known that since Kurt’s been back in town, their relationship wouldn’t last that much longer. (So then why did you move in with him, weirdo?)

Blaine’s been feeling guilty - because Karofsky turned out to be an okay guy, and Blaine had convinced himself that he really had moved on past Kurt. Well, no, everyone and Karofsky could see otherwise. And Karofsky is pretty nice about the whole thing (which I think is to show just how much Karofsky has grown, too, over the years). He’s got a whole bunch of guys ready and willing to date him. It’ll suck - but Blaine can’t change his heart and more than Kurt can. So Karofsky let’s him go.

I think one of the interesting things in this conversation, is that Karofsky tells Blaine to just tell Kurt, not sing it. And I feel like that goes with the whole growing up theme. A lot of the time, these boys have sung their emotions through song - and that’s fine, but it’s also been part of the fantasy – but part of the Klaine narrative has been a shift from fantasy to reality, and this is one of the last parts. And Blaine’s ready to take that step - to grow up and be a real boy, and be okay in his not-ever-changing feelings towards Kurt.

So - Blaine gets running and goes for Kurt. How does he know Kurt’s there? Is this just after school? Why is Walter meeting him there of all places? Idk - the set up of this scene is a little awkward when you thinking about it too much, but I’m really not supposed to. The point is – Blaine is ready to confess his love to Kurt – again. He even wears the bowtie he wore at the proposal (do you think Kurt didn’t notice that? He did). But — one awkward little thing. Kurt’s about to go on a double date with Walter, Rachel, and Sam. So Blaine – doesn’t say anything. And actually – this is a good thing for Blaine! Honestly, it is – it shows growth. He let his life be dictated by his relationship with Kurt once, and he’s going to do what he didn’t before – let go and let it be. It’s not an appropriate time for Blaine to tell Kurt that he and Karofsky broke up. But even more so, it’s also not his place to intervene in Kurt’s dating life and more than it was Kurt’s to intervene in his relationship with Karofsky. Blaine’s trying to give Kurt the space he hadn’t given Kurt before.

Kurt lingers just a little as they all head out. He knows Blaine’s lying about being there for Rachel. There’s a little bit of longing there, and a lot of concern. And oh the angst is hard core in this moment, as Blaine just stands their alone. Kurt knows and is aware that Blaine’s feeling something. He’s ready for Blaine to say something. Look, Walter does not matter (and by the sound of it, Kurt’s been talking to Walter a lot about Blaine - since Walter clearly knows who he is, and is slightly feigning politeness when Blaine shows up). But Kurt’s ditched both Chandler and Adam pretty quickly for Blaine, and he’ll do it again with Walter. Just this scene – isn’t the right time.

If you’d like to read more about why Kurt continues to go on his date with Walter: READ META HERE. And if you’d like the continued conversation as to why Kurt and Blaine didn’t get back together at /that/ second, here’s my A Wedding Meta.

A Wedding

So, here we are -- at the wedding episode which is... slightly insane of Glee, but typical really.

Blaine came a long way -- he had to work through is feelings of anger and frustration over the break up, as well as feel at peace in being his own person, to really come back together with Kurt. (Kurt has his own journey as documented elsewhere.) And, the final ball lands in Kurt’s court, Blaine’s okay with waiting. Maybe they will get back together -- maybe they won’t. But Blaine’s become okay in not only his feelings but understanding that life maybe just doesn’t work out the way you want it to.

Or sometimes it does.

We see boxes of Karofsky’s stuff in the apartment -- meaning that the playtime is over. And then Kurt comes running back into Blaine’s life again -- desperate and sure about his love for Blaine. And Blaine just... let’s it all in. He’s ready and willing to let Kurt back into his arms, and into his heart, and they fall into just as if nothing had ever happened -- except it did -- they both managed to grow up a bit and be okay with themselves enough to be secure in their relationship.

So, um, yeah -- I’ll be the first to admit that there are a few missing pieces here that I would have liked to see. Mostly -- they kind of wall paper over their previous issues with Kurt’s line of - ‘everything was a mess before but now it’s fine’. And while I can piece it all together from subtext from what we’ve seen -- it still would have been nice to actually see that conversation where they talk about being in a relationship again, and how they’re going to move forward. Alas.

That said -- I don’t think it’s insanity that they go from getting together to jumping into a marriage. (I mean - it is insane - and not some thing that I’d recommend in reality) But one of the things that I think the marriage does is solidify their commitment for each other. The ring around their finger is a reminder that they’re in this together -- and I think that gives them both a security in the relationship. Blaine’s feeling committed and good, and therefore he doesn’t get clingy, which means Kurt won’t pull away, which means Blaine won’t freak out, etc, etc -- the cycle is spinning in a good direction!

Okay, most of the stuff about the Wedding, I’ve said in the Kurt meta already (go read that, too! - or I can answer specifics, this is getting long enough, lol) The only other thing I want to mention is Blaine letting Kurt make the ultimate decision to get married. Because now that they’re happy and back on track -- Blaine’s back to being, well, the one who always wanted to be married. And he still does -- so he let’s Kurt be the one to call it -- because Kurt’s the one who said he didn’t want to be married before. But we’ve come full circle, and when push comes to shove - at the end of the day, Kurt does want to be married to Blaine.

(Oh, and here’s the part where I make the obligatory comment -- Brittany and Sue didn’t force them into this either -- they could have said no had they not wanted to.)

Child Star/The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester

Well, here’s the part where I joke about us not being able to see Klaine’s honeymoon, and where I lament that we really don’t get to see much of anything about Klaine’s marriage. Which is unfortunate.

But - let’s talk about Dalton burning down for a second, because I do think that’s important. Remember when Pavarotti died and Kurt was set free from Dalton? Well this is the universe (coughthewriterscough) doing a similar thing. There is no more Dalton -- no more safe place for Blaine to go -- he’s literally forced out of the cage he had built for himself. And granted, he’s on the path to leaving anyway now that he’s back with Kurt, but it’s an interesting metaphor all the same. And yeah - it’s more so about bringing Dalton and McKinley together, too -- but Blaine’s being pushed out of the nest, literally, to go off and fly away. ;)

We Built This Glee Club

There’s really not much Blaine here, either - but Kurt later confirms that Blaine has gotten accepted to NYU -- and while I really wish we could have gotten more of Blaine’s story about how he decided where and why and when he was going to go back to school, at least we get this little bit. And like I said way earlier -- this is good for Blaine. He’s got his marriage, and his life is back on track moving in a forward direction -- and NYU is a great fit for Blaine, because it’s a place where he can stand on his own, separate from Kurt.

There’s also a bit, too, a slight (literal) nod at the future - where Will talks about the future - and the idea of their future kids, and Blaine and Kurt share a knowing look.

2009/Dreams Come True

Well... here we are, at the end of the story. I’m not going to say too much (cause I’ve said too much already) but mostly -- Blaine (and Kurt) get their happily ever after. They take off New York and live their life and are successful in their own right as they expect a daughter.

The point of the entire season is to not give us fans everything we ever wanted -- but to tell a story... one about how you can be the lowest part of your life and climb your way back up, and still be happy and successful and get the ending that you’ve always wanted.

(And, unceremoniously, here’s the Kurt Meta again - which mostly gives my Blaine thoughts, too -- cause, love ya Nonny, but I’ve been writing all day, and I’m tired, lol)

And that’s... all I’ve got. I mean if you’d like to untangle something more specific, let me know! I’ll be happy to answer. Hopefully, this makes Blaine’s season 6 story just a little bit clearer. :)

#Anonymous #that's how s.o. sees it #omg this was a lot #hope you guys enjoy #i worked on this all day - someone please at least give some feedback lol

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wordsfromthesol · 4 years

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You’re a what… (1/4)

Author: @wordsfromthesol Taglist: @ghost-brocolli Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader Summary: Your life is turned upside down when you suddenly land in Gotham. Thankfully Dick is nearby and knows way more than he lets on. Warnings: Language, violence, uhm…rambling? Word Count: 1.7k A/N: I hate that Hades is ALWAYS the bad guy, because he’s not. Hypnos is the god of sleep and dreams.

Part Two Part Three Part Four

It was just another routine day for you. Your dad was berating you about marrying one of the lovely gods he had picked out for you. Going on and on about how you needed to assume your rightful place among the gods. All the responsibilities you were neglecting and the people you were letting down. You had heard it a million times and he never changed your mind. In fact, you were growing quite tired of this age-old argument.

*Speaking Ancient Greek*

“You know what Dad? I’m out.” You threw your hands in the air. “I’m done with you. I’m done with Olympus. I’m just done.”

“You can’t run away from this Y/N. This is your destiny. Your birthright.”

“I’ve heard it all before and guess what. I. Don’t. Fucking. Care. I’m out.”

“Out? You can’t leave Olympus.”

“Wanna bet?” And with that you were gone and now stood on a random pier somewhere on earth. You looked up at the sky to see the evidence of your father’s anger. Bright white lights flickered through the clouds, when suddenly one of them barreled straight for you. You felt the bolt run through your entire body.

“REAL MATURE DAD!” You screamed up at the sky as you watched another bolt come for you. You started to walk along the pier, absorbing several more lightning bolts that were thrown in your path. “GIVE UP ALREADY, I’M NOT CHANGING MY DAMN MIND!” You stopped when you saw a figure in front of you, stopped dead in their tracks. “Family drama.” You explained as you walked by him. To your surprise, he followed.

“Uhm, are you sure you’re okay?”

English, okay. I can do that. “Oh yeah, someone just can’t get it through their thick skull that I’M NOT MARRYING ONE OF THOSE IDIOTS.”

“Right…so, you some kind of lightning meta?”

“Something like that.” Just as you spoke a massive wave came from no where and crashed onto the pier behind you. “OH, SHUT UP UNCLE!” You snapped your head towards the ocean.

After several minutes had passed, Dick began to realize that you had no idea where you were going. At least, he hoped, because you were headed directly towards the narrows.

“So, got someplace in particular you are headed?”

You honestly hadn’t gotten that far, you just wanted out of Olympus. You weren’t even entirely sure how you came to be…where ever you were. Someone must have helped you, Hermes or Persephone maybe? Whatever the case was, you were just glad to be rid of your father’s constant beratement.

“You know, actually, I’m not even entirely sure where I am…or how I got here?” Though you mumbled the last part, realizing that scaring off the person helping you was probably not the best bet.

Dick let out a sigh of relief, “Good, because you are headed directly towards the worst part of town.” He came to a stop, and you followed his lead. “If we head back, towards where I met you, my squad car is nearby. I can take you to a hotel or…”

“Lead the way…” You paused upon realization that you hadn’t asked his name.

“Dick Grayson.” He extended a hand, you shook it before turning to head back the way you came. Dick turned and caught up to you, “And yours would be…?”

Oh right, what did these people call your father again? Zeus. Right. Τέφρα, that would roughly translate to… “Y/N. My name is Y/N.” You didn’t bother trying to come up with a last name.

“So what brings you to Gotham?”

“Gotham…Gotham! Right, that’s the city…that I am currently in. I knew that.”

Dick narrowed his eyes with concern, “You got hit pretty hard back there. Are you sure nothing was scrambled?” He gestured to your head.

“No, I’m just...I don’t have a particular reason for being here. Just trying to get away.”

“From the family drama?”

Did he understand Ancient Greek, or was that just a coincidental statement? “Yeah,” you laughed off the coincidence, “can’t pick your family I guess.”

He shrugged, not wanting to reveal his own family struggles. “I’m just up here.” He pointed to an empty warehouse building near the pier that you had landed on. “You know, I’d been staking out the place for a few hours before I noticed you. You just kind of appeared out of nowhere…much like that lightning storm.” He arched his eyebrow up, hoping his inquiry would yield some information. And truthfully, you might have been inclined to give it to him, if you yourself knew how you got here. Instead you raised your hands and gave him a confused half-smile. “Right, so where am I taking you, Y/N?” His tone became much less understanding as he opened the passenger door.

You smiled to thank him but weren’t exactly sure what to tell him, so you crawled into the car without saying anything at all.

“I’m not taking you back to your family, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He shut the door and climbed in the driver’s seat before continuing. “You aren’t a minor. So I –” His words were cut off by your stifled laughter. A minor. Oh lord, he has no idea. “Something I said?”

“Oh, uhm. Just…I’m not a minor…by a long shot.” The thought again made you chuckle to yourself.

Dick furrowed his brow in confusion, “Right, as I said…so where to? Just need a hotel or something?”

Realization struck. I have absolutely no money, no form of ID, no other clothes. Looking down you realized your garb. Why on earth was Dick helping you? You were dressed like you should be at a toga party, not on a pier. Dick must have realized the sudden worried expression across your face, “My apartment is about twenty minutes from here. If you ah…need a place to figure things out.” You looked at him with relief in your eyes as you nodded. You didn’t speak the rest of the way, you were too busy in your own head.

I know I’m away from all that, but what am I supposed to do? How am I going to eat? What does this body even need to eat? Where am I going to sleep? Do I still have my powers? I didn’t even check that. How did I not check that? Will I be able to survive at all if I don’t have my powers? Humans are so weak. I don’t understand how they do it in the first place, there is so much bad in the world that they have to overcome. How do they do it without powers? Who put me here?

You looked up to realize Dick was getting out of the car.

Had it already been twenty minutes? What are all these feelings? Why can’t I breathe? I can’t breathe. Oh my Zeus. I can’t speak. Why can’t I speak?

You remember feeling someone’s arms around you. You remember hearing noise, someone speaking, maybe? Who knows what the words were, even if you did comprehend them, your mind was unable to formulate any kind of response.

Dick was confused by your sudden change in demeanor. He watched the confidence drain out of you when he asked where to take you. He thought it was a simple enough question, but he soon realized that he had only reached the beginning of this mysterious girl’s story. He tried to talk to you in the car, but it seemed as if your eyes had glazed over. Eventually, he gave up and left you to work things out in your own head. When he finally reached his apartment, he noticed your breaths becoming more and more shallow and rapid.

“Y/N?”

Still nothing.

“Fuck.” Dick scrambled to get out of the car and pulled you out from the passenger seat. When he felt your knees trembling and your entire body beginning to shake, he scooped you up and carried you to his bedroom. He laid you down and kneeled beside the bed.

“Y/N, you need to calm down. Breathe. I need you to breathe with me okay. We are going to count. Now breathe in for seven…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now hold for four…one, two, three, four. Now breathe out for eight…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” Dick repeated the mantra and watched your chest rise and fall to the count. Once your breathing became regular again, he spoke, “Y/N, you’re okay. You’re safe now. You can stay here tonight. I’ll be on the couch.” He turned to walk away, but felt your hand loosely grab his wrist. You had no idea what this human body had in store for you next, but you knew that you didn’t want to deal with it alone. Dick looked into your eyes and saw them filled with fear. He nodded and crawled next to you. Content with his presence, you closed your eyes and tried to welcome Hypnos. Zeus had different plans.

The world was covered in a blanket of death. The sky above was raging, as was the sea and the earth below your feet. You heard a voice bellow down from the heavens.

“This is what your future holds if you do not assume your responsibilities, young goddess.”

“Alright!” You screamed back. “The jig is up dad! I know this is you! Though how you got Hypnos to agree to your invasion is beyond me. I do not think that the world will fall into chaos if I don’t marry one of my idiotic cousins.”

“The world will be thrust out of balance!”

“Not because I don’t marry it won’t! This is ridiculous, you can’t expect me to believe this!”

“You must believe it! The world must remain balanced.”

“I can balance it from here! It’s not like I’m one of the big twelve! I’ve always been an outcast and everything I did up there, I can do down here.”

“HOW WOULD YOU?”

“Because I didn’t do anything up there. Anything except be miserable! For a thousand years, I was miserable!”

“Fine, if you will not heed my words…”

You began to feel the world around you heating up, unbearably hot. You screamed out in pain, as you watched the flesh begin to melt from your body, until everything went black.

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rabidbehemoth · 4 years

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On Kylo Ren as Incoherently Evil

@neonnothing brought up a succinct point that I had to stop and really think about my response to during our dissection of TROS. and i had a three hour text convo with two other friends the same day about ren (god help me) and it all coalesced into the following meta, which I’m still thinking about:

Regardless if people think he is redeemed or not, I think no ONE absolutely no one can argue against the fact he overcame so much internalized hate to cross over to the good side. That he still deserves love, at any given point, as long as it's consensual. NO ONE CAN TAKE THAT AWAY and almost NO ben hater actually give him this acknowledgement. Everyone's like "OH but he hasn't earned it."

I'm pretty far from a Ben hater, but that's my argument too, and my eternal disappointment. For me, the worst part of his arc wasn't when he died (I did cry a little okay), but when he turned to the light for what I felt was far too little reason. I think by saying he hasn't "earned it", maybe people mean what I do: that he didn't have a chance to struggle in TROS. All the struggling happened in TLJ (with some in TFA, actually), and Abrams just swoops in an profits without building on that whatsoever. Experiencing Leia's death doesn't count for me because it wasn't even his fault. I wanted more than anything to see Ben come to jesus, to lose something so precious he is forced to reconcile with who he's become because he's out of other paths. I think redemption, like any character heel-face-turn, to be satisfying, has to have the weight of inevitability, of reaching the last resort and finding there's no where to go but up.

This is almost entirely what my earlier 3 hour convo was about, and thanks to that I have a new theory as to why it may have been impossible to give Ben a satisfyingly inevitable turn toward good (even in the hands of a competent director!): his motivation is nonsensical. The backstory about his turn to the dark is too vague, leaves too much to the imagination (you and I may have fertile fandom-fed imaginations that can almost see what Ben Solo might have been like as a young man, or earlier in his journey toward the dark, but my friends couldn't and they had dramatically different interpretations of his character because of it). How do we go from "my master/uncle betrayed me", which is a terrible, tragic, traumatizing thing, to "let's light people on fire"? I mean, how exactly? Sketch it out for me. It's not a simple thing. That kind of development takes time, and you have to be willing to sit in that character's head and play with possibilities and see how their life may have lead them in that direction. It's work, hard work. Painful work, if you're doing it right.

I think it's telling, that my friends (quite smart people really) mistook Ben's motivation as wanting power. it doesn't take much to debunk that--he only seizes power from snoke when rey is threatened, but more importantly he's simply much more fixated on killing the past and the light than embracing the dark and being evil or for the sake of it, or for power. The fixation with darth vader's mask seems to speak more of a fixation with the past, particularly his own bloodline, than the kind of admiration that snoke suggests he has. And he gets rid of that icon so freely.

There are so many questions regarding what Ben wants and why he is the way he is (what role do his parents play in this exactly? We're always laden with implications and no answers). This incoherent motivation is further complicated by the incoherent morality of the SW verse, in which you have to pick and choose who's right based on color codes and be willfully blind to contradictions. His status as evil is extremely unstable and kind of unknowable too, which is why I think so many fans have been unsettled by the suggestion that he might toe the line into grey morality, become some kind of grey jedi with rey. Because that would be truly subversive to the SW universe--where is your god, your rules, now? I think the instability and incoherence of his evilness is precisely the defining point: either you read that to mean he's redeemable and an appropriate romantic partner with some adjustments, or you read that to mean he's worse in some way that a normal static villain and especially inappropriate as a romantic partner.

Funny thing, I think the reylos are the ones paying better attention, because his motivation finally becomes coherent when rey is what he wants. That we can understand, it's a development that happened on screen for understandable reasons, and his backstory and motive become far less important in fleshing out the character (REALLY, RIAN JOHNSON MANAGED A LOT WITH TLJ WHILE STARTING FROM VERY LITTLE, I'M JUST REMINDING U).

Kylo's character is mostly a patchwork of guesswork, relying on codes that they then go and poke holes in. All the chars rely on similar codes, but kylo's is just done in such a weird and inexplicable and self-contradicting way that it seems to allow people to read him dramatically differently. So maybe it's no wonder that he's so divisive. It's like publishing a story before you've come up with the ending, and you don't quite know where your character is going--that's all stuff you figure out later as you're writing, then come back and fix the beginning. Except they published chapters as they went and can't go back and make it all make sense.

And without a sensible, coherent foundation to what makes the character the character (from the very beginning, not just the coherency that his connection with rey brings him), it's pretty much impossible to do an effective about-face, isn't it? You have to have those motivations fleshed out in perfect clarity, so you get that ring of truth when the char finally sees the light.

That's what I wanted. Not a simple turn to the light, I wanted him to see it first, because I'm still frankly in the dark about why he's been in the dark at all.

#reylo #kylo ren #star wars meta #reylo meta #tros salt

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currentfandomkick · 4 years

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Bio! Dad Strange part 7

More Gotham Rouges being themselves, carrying for Marinette, crossover with Why Marinette Hates Tim, and yes, this au is slowly coming together. somewhat. I’ll get to the Ladybug days sometime soon, because yes, that is being covered, and heads up, Marinette is allowed to have multiple relationships and crushes in this. Yes, there is writer salt in this au, but characters are being fixed from cannon actions to more season 1 characterization or fannon... except lila. she will be split into bascially-a-new-person-altogether and fannon as Layla Rossi. Fannon and cannon felix will make eventual appearances since both are fun when the fandom’s gotten involved.

Sorry for those tagged, i posted on the wrong blog a ew minutes ago, so this is the corrected version. Marinette stares at her uncles and aunts when she gets back this time. They were acting weird. That usually meant… “So who’s being targeted this time?” she asked Rose, who flinched. “The council will kill me if i say.” The Council… who’s unofficial mission, she realized last year, was to keep her safe and–oh. Oh. OH! “Is it Hatter or Jerimah?” She was tired of poeple calling the knock-off her favorite uncle’s moniker. He didn’t even deserve his own in her opinion. “Uh, both, i think.” “Oh.” Not good. Jerimah can plan and get Hatter–Tetch–to listen. Tetch is insane and obsessed with her as Alice, whatever that means. Marinette was worried this time. She was right to be. Hero Stalker was missing, and no one would tell her what happened. It was loosing Red Hoodie all over again. She was angry and hurt and only 9 years old. Aunt Quinn, best person ever, and Aunt Pan, ‘worst person to give Rose to ever’, took her to Central City for a week to try to keep her out of their reach. It was okay, kind of. She didn’t catch Barry Allen–best forensic scientist and very much a ‘meta are just people with powers, let them be people’ person–at any crime scenes. She was glad most of then weren’t from her Aunts this time… one of them was theirs but the guy was stalking a teenager and the kid was as scared as Marinette is of Mad Hatter/Tetch and Jerimah teamed up so. So she had to help, okay? the police didn’t help in Paris with the Dupont Stalker. The Gotham ones ignored cases like this mostly. And she had no clue about Central but damn if she wasn’t going to help the kid out. Aunt Quinn–trip alias for Harley Quinn, obviously, trapped them. She didn’t know what Aunt Pam did with her plants, but there wasn’t a body left in the end. Marinette, as Jill Smith, helped them scale up to the roof and get somewhere safe. She checked up on them and they were okay. she was glad. Aunt Quinn took her to the Meta Museum–technically the Flash Museum but it was about metas and crimes against them too so she thought of it as the Meta Museum. some of the exhibits made her feel weird, sounded a bit like the news reporters in Paris calling metas a problem to be rid of. controlled… Then she ran into The Barry Allen, best Forensic Scientist, and she heard him saying they got things wrong and she knew it! She couldn’t stop herself, physically, from asking him questions about what they got wrong. Iris West, Barry’s finacee and a meta-reporter, went off on different things, emphasizing not just the Flash but different victims and how to prevent it. Marinette took a lot of notes mentally. Aunt Quinn was amused, Aunt Pam, who introduced them as such, tried to pull her away but… Marinette was happy. And the couple seemed to like listening to Marinette rant about cases, mostly Barry’s. “Oh and what about the case with the woman who melted? if you still have her remains i think if you use a stabilizer–cold base is a good start but she should reconstitute in a few days. It looked like the melt was an instability and molecular stability issue for maintaining physical form in this universe, not others if the worlds portals are anything to go by, so introducing stability is all that needs to be done and she’s likely to be herself again” Barry stared at her when she said that. was that too much? Its one of the cold cases from a few months ago. Did she overstep? “I, how did you find about other world portals?” Marinette almost froze. but she remembered that the Waynes did have the tech and a few months ago there was a big multiverse mess… “Its part of the multiverse theory, isn’t it? and since we’ve seen heros from other universes enter ours that means its less theory and more reality, and that people can enter them if they use the right molecular vibration with the correct chemical composition and ability to enter the intended environment. With those restrictions, it makes more sense for people to make windows instead, and uh, some of the Rouges tried once and a lot of Gotham ended up seeing other places a few months ago.” it wasn’t a lie. she was implying she was there when she wasn’t, not saying she was. This is still the only way she can do things like this and not look like a liar. Iris saw the slip though, and knew something was up with the girl. Before she could tell Barry there was an alert–Gorilla Grodd. Marinette was upset about the interruption, but knew that an attack meant hide. She forgot her stickers at home and were going back that day. She noticed that where Mr. Allen should be was moving more like a… Oh. He’s a speedster. and only one speedster has measurements like his. The Flash. Harley grabbed her tight and ran, Ivy behind Marinette. Grodd was taken down while they were on their way home. Then there was an explosion and it was dark… – Marinette woke up chained to a wall, in a dark place, with a lot of water under her. Jeriome and Tetch were fighting. Her head hurt. Then Tetch was killed in front of her. She didn’t cry. She screamed though. Apparently it was enough to cause some things in the room to move. She was scared. Jerimah kept debating what to do with her. How to prove that He is Better than Jerimone and Harley. Marinette’s powers kept getting worse. Everything was loud. she could hear heartbeats and footsteps. It took week for her to catch him too far in his thoughts, too caught up in his ‘revenge’ until she knew he coudln’t hear her movements. She broke out of her chains while flying, well, floating at that point. she carefully dislocated her thumbs, slipping out and moving carefully. Jerimah wasn’t looking when she hit him. He wasn’t dead. Heartbeat still. She grabbed his phone, almost breaking it when she grabbed it. she did her best to be gentle (cracking the screen) as she called Rose. It took forty minutes for her to be found. Rose turned the dead Tetch into fertilizer. Frost grabbed Jerimah and said something about giving him to Zsasz. – Marinette blinked a few times when she was back at Ivy’s. Apparently Rose wasn’t letting her out of her sight. Ivy freaked out and took over Gotham while she was missing. There was a new Robin. Who looked way too much like… “Hero Stalker?” The new robin froze when he saw Marinette, Pixie Pop, shaking by a green crystal. “Pixie pop you’re…” “Don’t. Rose will hear.” Hero Stalker nodded, watching her carefully. “What happened?” “Tetch and Jerimah–uh, Hatter and Mr. J. Mr. J killed him when he got me…” Robin paled at that. “Is that why…” “The plants are coming back in, yeah… Don’t tell Bats.” Hero Stalker stared at her. “You know what i look like.” “Yep.” “Do you know…” “uh, yeah. and two more form the League apparently… I’m blaming you for all of that figuring out for the record.” “What did i do?” “Make it easy to figure out… you don’t even–nevermind. Just go, don’t tell Bats and one of my uncles will have us meet up before i leave again, okay?” Robin listened, because he knew Pixie Pop didn’t mess around. – Robin ended up trapped in a puzzle maze. With Marinette who was just Done with everything. “how did you–” “You looked like you. Didn’t even try to change hair or clothes or anything. YOu fail at disguise 101.” “I could just look like–” “Voice, posture, gait. All the same.” “oh.” then “Why are you here?” “Got caught grabbing catwoman’s jewels on camera.” “Wait, you’re the one returning them?” “Duh.” Marinette was insulted he thought she wouldn’t. “So…” “Make a different persona, since i made you ages ago. And that let me make your whole team–Yes your not-brother and even batgirl. Honestly, NIghtwing’s is very obvious if you get he was Robin and look at old tapes, but he’s a lost cause.” “I know! That’s how i figured them out!” “And that’s why you need to make a new persona so everyone is not outted by your obviousness. I can pull off Princess, Pixie Pop and three other personas since i was little and don’t slip up. Up your secret identity game already!” “I. Okay. But can i ask Rose for help from her plants on drug rings and really bad guys?” Marinette hummed. “I think so. I’ll have Uncle Riddler give you a burner to talk to me when i get home-home.” “thanks! Bats is good but he’s missing so much and its annoying!” “Your lack of secret ID game is annoying,” Marinette grumbled, “No tracking me though. I will spill to Frost and he will be extra annoying and lecture-y.” “He can’t be worse than disappointed agent A.” “I garanutee you i think i know who you’re talking about and it pains me to say Frost is like a chemical-only angst-y version of him that forgets he’s always right.” “How–how!” “I think its the lack of sleep and over-exposure to all the gases.” – those that asked for tags (or seem like they’d like to be?) are below. list is still open. Next time is (probably) more Paris while dealing with Gotham, a touch of Batfam mentions while Marinette chews out Tim, who reveals that Red Hoddie was the former Robin and then curses her with meeting Robins pre-Robin-ning. @ilovefluffbutsmutisalsogreat @dast218 @weird-pale-blonde-person @mystery-5-5

#maribat #maribat au #bio!dad au #bio!dad strange #marinette strange dupain cheng #marinette strange dupain cheng part 7 #my au #my ideas #this is going to be a long au #i almost regret it but too much work to #no idea how to tag still

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ieatsurveys · 4 years

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Because I’m triggered AF right now, doing a survey I found on here. Figured it’ll help, haha.

[Showers] When taking a shower, does your hair become straight or is it still somewhat curly (if your hair is curly)? Straight, because....I have straight hair. What kind of shower/bath would you have if you could have any shower/bath in the world? A shower with a bathtub. I hate my shower that I have at my apartment. Do you use expensive or cheap shampoos, and does it matter either way? I have yet to find a good shampoo for my hair. What kind of shower head do you have? A detachable one. Do you ever burn your skin while taking a shower? No. [Toxic Relationships] Have you ever been in a relationship (romantic or not) that was considered toxic, and who was that person and how were/are they toxic to you? My last boyfriend was narcissistic and was quite emotionally abusive. Did all the things a narcissist would do. Gaslight, flooding, love bombing, lying, control, manipulative etc. You name it. Do you know anyone who has been in a toxic relationship, and what made that relationship toxic? I’m sure I have. How you do feel about people going back to their toxic relationships, and can you relate or do you find them dumb for ever considering to go back? I can relate, but I chose not to go back. He made contact a few weeks ago after not talking for a year and a half. He stalked me for 3 months after I ended things and I had to sleep with a knife by my bed for my protection because he kept showing up. As soon as I told him the police will be involved as well as others if he tries contacting one more time, he flipped and left me alone and did some gaslighting. He made contact a year and a half later (3 weeks ago) and I ignored. The best part of dealing with toxic relationships and after the end is having the no-contact rule. It was hard, but I stood my ground. What kind of toxic relationships do you find more damaging: Romantic, friendship, or family member? My Dad is narcissistic and was physical abusive. I didn’t realize he was narcissistic until last year. It took me 31 years to know that. I feel like both are very damaging. Toxic is toxic and it is hurtful in whatever relationship you have with the person if you choose to stay. I didn’t realize I was attracted to that until after my last relationship. Since I was always around a narcisstic guy (my dad), I didn’t know anything else. I have worked my ASS off for the past year and a half never to do that again. Even though my previous relationships were not really toxic or even with narcissistic men, I knew there was an underlying issue in me. I will never go back to the old Katie ever again. I will be strong and I will always conquer. Now, out of these options, which do you find the most damaging: Physical, emotional, or verbal? Honestly, man. This one is hard. I’ve had all three. Emotional scars are very hard. But, physical abuse creates emotional scars. They are all intertwined with each other.

*i’ll finish this later. that last section was way too triggering hahahah* [Cartoons] Would you rather watch little kid’s cartoons, older kid’s cartoons, or adult cartoons? Adult cartoons. How about watching regular cartoons or anime? Anime, if we’re comparing it to kid’s cartoons. Would you rather watch cartoons on Disney, Nick (Nick Toons/Boomerang doesn’t count), or Cartoon Network? Cartoon Network. Their cartoons are barely for kids anymore. They’re just really meta with adult humour disguised as kids’ shows. What cartoons/anime do you actually like, if you like any at all? Bojack Horseman…Family Guy…etc If you could bring back one cartoon/anime from your childhood, which cartoon/anime would it be? American Dragon: Jake Long!! I don’t know why, because I wasn’t even a huge fan of it. I’d just…like to see it return for some reason. [Jobs] Do you have a job right now, are you content with your job, and, if you don’t have a job, are you looking, underage, or just don’t care enough to have a job right now? I have a job. I love it because I can pick my own hours and I work from home. Since I’m a college student I don’t need a salary or a career, so this is a really good option for me. What is your dream job that you could have at your age right now? Most jobs I would want would have me travel, and for a lot of travelling jobs you need a bachelor’s degree. Have you ever read notalwaysright, and what is the worst story you have read on there; if you haven’t read any story on there, have you seen or heard any stories about awful customers? Is that a subReddit or something? Never read from it. What are a few “dream” jobs you have in general? Designer for Eurovision stagings..lyricist..and anything that allows me to travel a lot. What are a few places you would refuse to work at? Food service jobs, factories, farming. [Cultures] Out of all the cultures in the world, what culture do you find the most interesting? Caucasian (Georgian, Armenian, Turkish, Azerbaijani.) If you get rid of one culture in the world, what culture would you rid of? Saudi or North Korean. What is your culture like, do you like your culture, and do you even follow your culture at all? It’s American. And I pretty much don’t associate here at all. My European friends always tell me that in my case, my roots speak way louder than my location. People online are always shocked to find out I’m American. Do you have friends of different cultures? 100% of my friends. Are there any cultures that are very similar to yours, and how about the most different? Does Canada come closest as similar?? Honestly, theirs is not even similar though…the most different would be many Asian countries.

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flying-elliska · 5 years

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The transformation of Lucas Lallemant pt 1 : Hell Week.

Skam OG S3 can be more or less divided in three acts, and this is even more obvious in Skam France, which has a more...dramatic style of storytelling, let’s say. Act I : Lucas meets Eliott, struggles with his internalized homophobia, develops feelings, ends with Eliott’s apparent betrayal. Act II : Lucas is isolated, struggles, finally comes out to his friends and to the world, Eliott and Lucas reunite. Act III is what’s yet to come, the revelation of Eliott’s MI, possibly elements related to Lucas’ parents and religion, and the resolution.

I want to take a look at Act II as a unit and the essential character developpment that takes place within it, starting from the disastrous party scene at the end of Vendredi 19h21 and ending with the paint scene in Vendredi 18h34, because this is really where we can see Lucas’s arc pivot, as he is left alone to confront himself, and the nuance with which it was done is incredible in terms of storytelling.

Fair warning, it’s going to be a long one.

Vendredi 19h21 : Fête de trop

It has been pointed out by many that, whereas Isak and Martino punched into bushes and garbage cans during this scene, Lucas hurts himself until his knuckles are bloody. He’s angry at the world for sure, getting in a fight with his friends, but it’s ultimately himself he blames - for having feelings, for caring, for thinking he had a chance with Eliott, for being attracted to a boy, for wanting a family that supports him, for wanting to be loved. Chloe possibly outing him by yelling Lucas is gay in a crowd, Arthur joking about his family, Eliott kissing a girl - it brings all his worst pains and fears to a head, and things he’s been repressing for the longest time just boil over, in the shape of rage and inarticulate despair. He punches his hand into the wall because he cannot speak, cannot think, cannot do anything else. It’s violence and self-harm as a symptom of powerlessness. The look on his face at the end I read as him being totally overwhelmed.

In the background the song talks about partying to pretend to be alright - but emptiness and chaos catch on eventually. It’s ironic in a sense because the singer is talking about glitter and kissing boys in public, things Lucas very much shies away from, but in the end the result is the same, loneliness and alienation. The association of the two brings up very old themes in queer culture, specifically things gay men have had to deal with - feeling adrift, disconnected from family and people and feelings, internalized hatred, self-harm, feeling like you have nowhere to go, putting on a happy face even when you’re spiralling out, partying as a substitute for connection, and what happens when the facade breaks. At the same time, the drop after excess can have a revelatory effect.

Even if it’s painful, this scene is necessary and kickstarts the part of his journey where he is facing his fears on his own. The hurt is a recognition of what is happening to him and how important it is.

Lundi 08h52 : Scared but doing it anyway

That's the definition of courage. With his bandaged hand and the slow opening, as he puts his hoodie up, he looks like a boxer stepping into the ring. Lighting is at its most overcast, blue-tinted, dark and depressing. This clip is heartbreaking, bringing Lucas's worst fears to the light. Being mocked and ostracized, turned into a vulgar joke, having been played for a fool.

Fear number one. He sees his friends laughing at him. Lucas is a character with huge abandonment issues, understandably. As his familial situation went sideways and his sense of self was put in turmoil, he’s relied on the normalcy of his friendgroup to keep him afloat, going to great lengths to preserve their view of him - even declaring love to a girl he feels nothing for. Them laughing would feel like the ground disappearing under his feet.

Fear number two. We can see Alex mimicking a blowjob. Through his rant to Mika about dick shaped confetti or his reaction to “Krindr” dick picks, we can see that he seems to be uneasy when it comes to the overly sexual way the gay community is often presented. And homophobic jokes and behavior tends to be overly sexual too, reducing gayness to a series of sexual acts presented as disgusting, instead of the whole love, identity and culture aspects (not that there is anything wrong with gay sexuality in itself, but when it’s reduced to only that, it would be understandable he has issues with it, especially for a teenager who’s just discovering things, belying the cliché that all men are naturally horndogs.) He's afraid of his intimate feelings and process of discovery becoming a vulgar joke, that’s very understandable.

Fear number three. Eliott looking at him smugly. Basically confirming that he’s a player, that this very special connection they had, something that allowed Lucas to open up and be vulnerable and artistic and bold, and muse about alternate universes and play the piano and feel comfortable enough to be happy kissing another boy - was a lie. Eliott doesn’t care and now he’s able to be on the side of the bullies because to him - like the cliché “bisexuality” Lucas had in mind talking to the girls - his attraction to boys is just a fun side piece, he can just go back to his girlfriend afterwards, whereas Lucas can’t. He’s “stuck being gay” and he’s failed at maintaing a straight façade.

To close it off, there’s Chloé, fulfilling the narrative purpose of a ticking clock and a reminder of Lucas’ failure at straightness and imminent outing. This of course, is not really happening, but this paranoia is very typical of being a closeted queer person, of constantly having to wonder who is going to love you anyway and who is going to reject you because even when your people are mostly liberal and tolerant, there is no way to really know because of how deep homophobia is rooted in our society (see my meta about French humor). It really is Schodinger’s unconditional love.

And then there’s Daphné. This is the first of several ‘tonal breaks’ in this arc, in which the angst is cut with moments of levity, randomness and wacky jokes that seem a little out of place but do serve a purpose narratively and in terms of themes. In this one, she goes out of her way to praise Lucas’ masculinity. It wouldn’t surprise me she already heard rumors, going from the alarmed look on her face, and wants to reassure Lucas he is still a man in her eyes. Daphné is an interesting character to do this. Because she has little brain to mouth filter, she tends to say stupid things and offend people, but at the same time, she can break through people’s walls and isolation - the foyer, meant to bring different people together, is a symbol of this. She’s a key representative of Skam’s central theme of people being flawed, able to learn, and of -trying and reaching out, even with mixed results, being a super important thing. Therefore, it’s interesting she’s the first to reach Lucas in this difficult phase, and this will happen again later. At the same time her words about defenseless women needing a strong man is a reminder of the overwhelming clichés about gender roles that make Lucas’ life so difficult.

Lundi 14h03 : Ennemies and Allies

Chloe's threat of outing Lucas whenever she wants gives the whole episode a feeling of urgency. She is extremely hurt and he can’t catch her, either physically or symbolically. She’s a loose cannon, and her holding Lucas’ outing hostage as revenge feels very violent. It's not clear that anybody knows yet, but she could take Lucas's choice from him any time now. His harsh and terrified words (”I’m not a f*g”) illustrate the level of denial he is trying to stay in as it’s slipping away from him, the powerlessness he feels. The scene taking place in PE class with people throwing balls at one person standing in a goal reinforces the overal symbolism of being put on the spot.

On the opposite side, Yann's reminder of support sets up what happens later. He wants to be there for Lucas, but he’s also been hurt by his silence. He doesn’t want the squad to be Lucas’ punching ball if he can’t verbalize.

Mardi 13h08 : Miscommunication.

Eliott is trying to make a joke about the time they met and he couldn’t chose what to get from the vending machine ; Lucas interprets it as him saying he wants both Lucas and his gf, and he responds harshly. Lucas is pretty much standing up for himself here, as painful as it is. He signals to Eliott he's not game to just forgive and forget, to do as if what happens didn't matter. Him alluding to a choice that Eliott needs to make - there's still a sliver of hope there though, as agonizing as it seems.

Lucas not finding a place to sit and leaving the canteen represents his worst fears about coming out - being left alone. It’s a classic high school story trope, not knowing at which table to sit, eg. not fitting in anywhere, so he chooses not to feed himself. (Again, hurting himself).

Mercredi 13h37 : Sorting through your old shit

This moment of levity after the heavy angst serves as a reminder that life, whether you are ready for it or not, goes on. It’s also the second time that the show subverts horror tropes - first in the first kiss scene for romantic purposes, here for comedic purposes with the creepy dolls everywhere and the guy with an axe. The theme is that things that look scary at first often aren’t, and can even bring unexpected gifts. The overall scene doesn’t have much impact on the plot, but it can symbolize several things - the need to do away with the messy things of the past (like all the shit in the shop and internalized homophobia), giving things that are still useful a new place where they can be better appreciated (the couch is a metaphor for Lucas being gay lmao), the difficulty of dealing with grief and your baggage alone and the need for outside help (like the shopkeeper who can’t get rid of his brother’s things), the importance of playfulness and unexpected gifts (table football).

The girls opening up about their dating woes puts Lucas’ struggles in the larger context of teenage boys being trash, normalizing what he goes through. On the other hand, again, Daphne’s comments and Imane’s joke show that the girl squad have their own problems with gender clichés. Manon denouncing them marks her as a safe place for Lucas, as well as her going through the deeper kind of turmoil of love troubles.

Lundi 01h48 : In the abyss

The scene is dark and drenched in blue light, giving it an oceanic, almost submarine vibe. This is Skam taking full advantage of its real time format, showing the story at a time where viewers are very likely to be in the same state of exhaustion and half-consciousness as the characters.

Even though he doesn't show it much, Lucas is a deeply caring character. He's just been extremely burned out, possibly by his family situation, and what happened with Eliott. And yet, it's still there. We can see it here in how he comforts Manon, trying to be stoic, but it's getting to him in the end. Compassion is often much easier to extend to others than to yourself. He might punish himself for feeling too much, but he would never do that to Manon.

This scene is, to me, the most pivotal moment of the season yet along with the piano scene : they're moments where we see Lucas's soul come to the surface. And as vulnerability is key to the plot, those moments of openness really move things along. The piano scene was Lucas letting out his more passionate, artistic, sensitive side ; this moment is more raw and ugly, about what lies beneath the anger, the despair of caring too much. And yet there is beauty and relief in owning it. In this particular context the shell of anger Lucas protects himself with is meaningless - it’s just the utter loneliness of the night and two people who are broken and lost. Manon is also from a broken home of sorts, she’s also been given a lot of reasons to give up on love. The fact that they’re able to share this intimacy of letting themselves feel like that, at a moment where words are beyond them, is however a sign that they’re not giving up. They’re feeling the feelings, as painful as it is, and they have a witness. It’s beautiful.

Vendredi 09h14 : Exhaustion

Lucas's body is basically close to giving up on him. He can front all he wants, but he's still only human. So he goes to see the school nurse for insomnia. He thinks maybe if he can solve the physical problem, maybe get pills, he can go back to being tough and pretending nothing is wrong. The nurse’s answer - not exposing himself to any screens or blue light before sleeping - is laughably unadapted to his problems, which in turn makes the idea that Lucas can solve his problems this way ridiculous as well.

The nurse is a mess - is she cheating on her actual husband there ? Why is she talking about her (murder)fantasies to a student ? Teacher’s back acne ? She illustrates that adults still have problems (again, normalizing what Lucas goes through) and that life in general is messy and you need people on your side who can be there even though you are going through ugly, difficult things. Lucas cannot talk to her, they’re not on the same wavelength at all, but there’s still someone he can talk to. The medecine is not pills, it’s human support and trust.

Vendredi 17h05 : Trust issues

This clip is very painful to watch.

First Eliott’s drawing. At this point in the story it feels like a cruel joke. This guy played him, and now he’s talking about destiny ? Lucas really bought into the whole Polaris thing, we could see he was starving for a real connection, and maybe he thinks Eliott is using that against him, tugging on the heartstrings like a true artsy fuckboi. At the same time, the loneliness that emanates from the drawing is heartbreaking for us, who know what’s up with Eliott.

Lucas decides to go talk to Yann. That’s his destiny. I thought he was going to walk up to Eliott for a moment, the filming is deliberately ambiguous, but no. In a way, he’s choosing himself, deciding to bring stability to his life by opening up to the guy who’s been his main support system for years : Yann. And he lays it all on the table - his problems with his family, his insomnia, the mess with Chloe, the difficulty talking, having a crush of sorts for Yann, falling in love with Eliott. He’s so brave. He banks on his ability to trust Yann, he wants to believe he’ll be there for him. He’s finally coming out to someone on his own terms, with clear words.

It doesn’t work. Now, I never believed Yann was homophobic - his face only shuts down when Lucas starts talking about all the people who already know. But after Lucas’ slow, painful journey towards opening up, it feels like a bucket of ice water in the face. However, it is thematically appropriate.

This story arc tries to balance two concepts very delicately : on one side, as a teenager it’s important to realize that you’re not as alone as you think, not alone struggling. On the other hand, both internalized homophobia and French culture’s latent homophobia (that makes people do shitty things even though they’re not homophobic at heart, without realizing it) make this process of teenage alienation vs self discovery and acceptance, a thousand times more painful than it needs to be. Ending the episode on this note signifies that the struggle is real, that however brave you might be, sometimes the world is going to try and slap you down anyway. Thankfully, the story doesn’t end there, but for Lucas, this is the bottom of the pit. As his instagram post says ‘god needs your lifeboat as an ashtray’. Sometimes your best efforts mean nothing. This seems like a very pessimistic and cruel conclusion but I believe it’s an important beat in the story, recognizing that sometimes things go wrong through no fault of your own. It’s the system that is to blame, that has not given the tools to Yann to react properly and for the both of them to communicate better and for Lucas to accept who he is and not hurt people around him in order to hide. They’ve gone the road of validation over comfort and I think it’s a very interesting choice. (Even though I can also understand people who needed a more positive message and were hurt by this). But like a lot of queer people, I’ve had my share of half-botched coming outs and it’s important to show how you come back from that.

...

So in a nutshell : this week, we bear witness to the slow death of Lucas’ tough, uncaring, player straight guy facade. His feelings have reached a boiling point, and he can’t ignore them any longer, it’s taking a toll on his body and isolating him from his friends. The moments of levity serve to dedramatize and normalize what Lucas goes through, encouraging him to reach out, while at the same time, the show takes his pain and fear seriously, by showing the minute toll it takes on his health and the less than ideal reaction of the people around him. However, through it all, he finds the courage to keep facing his feelings and opening up. He is staring his worst fears in the face - abandonment, ostracization, having his feelings used against him - and he still manages to choose trust. Eliott might have been a catalyst, but in the end he chooses to do what’s right for himself. He talks, even though it’s almost a moment of symbolic death, but the transformation can take root from there. Honesty is grueling sometimes, but it’s still necessary. It’s better than letting the lie ruin your health and your relationship, better than hurting yourself in an attempt to push down the truth, better than violent powerlessness or night time devastation. Lucas is so good at wearing a mask, but how he reacts in this crisis is revelatory of his own deepest need for change and love.

In short, I love this character with the intensity of a thousand suns and even though it's super painful I love that we got to go on this journey with him.

Thank you for reading this monster of a post, and see you next time for pt 2 : Acceptance !

#skam france #skam meta #skamfr meta #lucas lallemant #elu #lucas x eliott #my meta #analysis

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