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sparkles-and-trash · 3 years

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The Gaang are Roommates AU ~

note: this is a rewrite and repost of my old roommates au, there was some stuff I wanted to change, and I wanted to make the parts a little longer, so yeah, ta-dah!

- think modern setting in the canon universe, bending is still a thing

- the Gaang are all in going to Ba Sing Se University

- I’m gonna change the ages a bit to make it easier for myself, sorry

- Zuko, Sokka, Suki and Mai are 20, Katara, Ty Lee and Azula are 19, Aang, Toph and Yue are 18

- so, Zuko, Sokka, Katara, Aang and Toph end up living together in a big loft type apartment

- Sokka and Aang are old best friends, they met Toph in Middle School, and Katara is a natural part of the group

- until now Sokka and Katara have both been living in the dorms, and they both hate it intensely

- but now that Aang and Toph are also in uni, they all decide to move in together!

- …but the only problem is that the only place they find that they like is just out of their price rage (Toph’s parents aren’t supportive of her major so they’re not helping out much)

- enter: ~ Zuko ~

- so, Zuko has been living with his uncle Iroh since his Father, who’s a high up in some big and important company the Fire Nation, disowned him for speaking up against the company’s shifty treatment of workers and ruining a lot of sacred land etc

- they’re still firebenders and the scar still happened, not in an Agni Kai, but it happened

- but after Zuko started uni, Iroh really tried to push him to meet some people his own age and make some friends

- the only people Zuko talks to on the regular besides Iroh is Azula, Ty Lee and Mai, and Mai is the only one who is like, his friend yanno?

- the last year the deal was that if Zuko didn’t branch out, Iroh would have him live one year with other students

- it’s his idea of tough love

- Zuko tried to do some random kid’s homework to have them pretend to be his new friend in front of Iroh so he wouldn’t have to, but Iroh can tell he’s lying so easily

- so, Zuko ends up hearing about the Gaang through Mai, who heard from Ty Lee, who plays field hockey, Suki, who’s best friends with Sokka

- so, he goes to meet them, and it’s so awkward mY GOD

- Katara is a B I G environmental activist and HATES Ozai and his company, with good reason

- she eases up a tad when Zuko admits to being turned away from as a teen, but she is still suspicious

- Aang loves him right away, ofc, and that makes Katara even more suspicious because she’s pretty protective of Aang

- she claims it’s because he’s so kind and believes everyone but she totally liikeees hiiiim

- Toph is just like, sure, as long as he pays his rent idgaf

- Sokka is weirdly quiet, because he’s had a huge crush on Zuko forever, and the only one who knows is Aang (and Toph but she ain’t no snitch)

- so, ya boy makes the cut, and before they know it, it’s move-in day!

- but, the idiots didn’t think through the facts that it’s only three bedrooms oops

- and Toph is NOT afraid to pull the “I’m blind and I need my space” card

- and nobody’s up to fight her on it, so

- let’s just say there is A LOT of back and forth, but with Katara refusing to room with her brother again, and Zuko being rightfully scared of Katara, it ends up with Zuko and Sokka sharing a bedroom, and Katara and Aang

- they have separate beds ofc

- but still, tension, man, so much tension

- it takes a while, but the dynamics starts working out really well

- Zuko is good at grocery shopping and likes to clean, and Aang is always happy to help him out

- Sokka loves cooking, so he does that a lot

- Katara is always on top of the others with schoolwork and making sure everyone is okay, and she usually does it in genius, sneaky ways so people doesn’t even notice that she does it

- Toph is clearing the air off bullshit

- like, she will call a bitch out

- but because she cares about said bitch

- so, Aang knows that Sokka has a crush on Zuko because Sokka told him in a weak moment, and Toph knows because she just knows

- Aang is a good friend tho, and he tries to like, ease them together

- but he is so awkward about it, the poor thing, and Zuko doesn’t understand AT ALL

- Toph is just sitting back and sighing a lot

- Katara doesn’t understand either but she just stays out of it (smart girl)

- but okay, we know how oblivious Zuko can be right?

- Sokka can give him googly eyes and blush and stutter around him so much and he still has no clue at all

- Zuko starts thinking Sokka just doesn’t like him at all

- but then one night Zuko has this really intense nightmare

- okay and quick addition, his scar is… handshaped? Like, you can clearly tell what happened to him

- but nobody talks about it, yet

- but then he’s having a terrible nightmare and is talking and begging and pleading in his sleep

- so much that Sokka wakes up

- and he catches on pretty fast, but had no idea what to do

- so he just shuffles over to Zuko’s side of the room and starts tapping his shoulder rapidly

- but nothing happens

- so he just… gently and awkwardly pats his head until Zuko wakes up

- and Zuko is like… wat u doin there bro

- and Sokka is like… just patting ur head to wake you from a nightmare bro

- and they awkwardly just mumble and go back to their beds

- but Zuko is smiling a lot because someone who’s not his family or a family friend really cares about him

- after that, Zuko slowly starts opening up to all of them, but Sokka especially

- he never really tells them about being cast out and burned tho

- until one day he kinda casually slings it into a convo all fast and awkwardly

- it’s just Toph, Aang and Sokka there

- Toph yells so WHAATTT so loudly and just metalbends the whole fridge into a clump in rage

- Aang cries lmao but he tries to hide to and be supportive and not awkward

- Sokka is kinda quiet, but he carefully asks about it that night when they’re in their beds, and they talk a little about it

- Aang tells Katara (with permission) and she awkwardly, but wholeheartedly tells him that he can always talk to her

- they do that «awkward sibling hug» from Gravity Falls after

- *hugs stiffly* «pat, pat»

- but okay, Toph and metalbending when angry, it happens quite a lot

- this was the first time it was the fridge, but the toaster, the microwave, and several other appliances have met the same fate

- everyone is kinda used to it now, and she always replaces it

- except Zuko, who’s still kinda new to them all

- but what are you supposed to say when your new friends is so outraged by the abuse you went through that they crush a whole ass fridge?

- it actually reminds him that he’s cared for here, by these people who owe him nothing, and is not related to him, and it makes him a little dizzy to have people care this way

- he casually mentions it to his Uncle Iroh the time he’s in at work, that his new friend is a metalbender and squashed their whole fridge when she was pissed on his behalf

- Iroh is thrilled

- to the point of offering Toph a job lmao

- Toph, desperate to cut of as much ties with her family and be as self-sufficient as possible, agrees

- and now Iroh have two formerly rich kids with no clue about any sort of customer service and basic stuff like that working for him

- Toph is a hard worker tho, and she and Zuko work surprisingly well together

- Katara is a little relived, because the more those two work, the less are the chances of either of them trying to cook or do too many chores around their apartment

- they mean well, or, Zuko does, but he does so much dumb shit when trying to help lmao

- Sokka starts spending a lot of time over at The Jasmine Drago too

- Aang is still trying to keep the fact that Sokka likes Zuko a secret, but he is having trouble

- Katara is his biggest weakness, and now they’re suddenly alone with her a lot

- someone else who could always read Sokka really well is Suki

. whom he used date in high school, but they parted as friends and everything s cool

- but Sokka is a little taken aback when she comes into The Jasmine Dragon one day, hand in hand with Sokka’s childhood crush obsession, Yue

- for the first time in man’s memory, Sokka is a little speechless

- and Suki’s like “lmao dude I haven’t seen you like this since the first time you saw Zu-”

- cue Zuko popping out behind them like “WELCOME TO THE JASMINE DRAGON FRIENDS OF SOKKA :D”

- Sokka is so fucking red, poor boy is just about having an aneurism at this point

- but luckily something happens and Zuko gets distracted

- Suki is having the time of her life tho, Sokka always used to tease her for her crushes before and after they dated, and suddenly, here they are

- at the apartment, Aang decides they need some apartment traditions

- they’ve been living there for almost three months, after all

- so he decides that weekly movie nights are mandatory

- so are pillowforts

- Katara is actually really excited for it, she loves all things cozy and fall-like

- also… she is weak for Aang, y’all, and she loves seeing him all excited

- Zuko barely knows what a pillowfort is, he didn’t think real people actually made it

- but imagine these dorks in a pillowfort with hot chocolate and lot’s of pillows

- Toph claims that she thinks it’s soo dumb, but she will always make sit in the middle of the group all wrapped in her blanket and laughing when the others jump and get spooked from the horror movies Sokka always wants to watch

- and she will make sure the fort is right and perfect lmao

- Zuko is a little awkward about it at first, but he likes it too

- Sokka always manages to plop in next to Zuko lmao

- they haven’t talked about the head patting incident yet, but Zuko is def starting to feel the butterflies

- one time after a movie night Sokka falls asleep on Zuko’s shoulder, after the others have left for the night

- Zuko can’t resist waking him up with awkward head pats similar to the one Sokka used on him

- Sokka thinks he died and went to heaven lmao

- but then he fully wakes and sees Zuko’s shit eating grin and can’t help but laugh at the whole thing

- and Zuko has his “oh no he’s hot beautiful and I really adore him” moment

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ickle-ronniekins · 4 years

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just friends

request from anon: I desperately need a fake dating trope with our fav Georgie boy with a cutie Gryffindor girl <333 pls?!

word count: 6.7k holy hell mates

A/N: WAIT OMG i’m obsessed with fake dating trope stories—they’re so cute! and i’ve never written any before! i don’t think, at least lmao. thank you for blessing me with this request, am so excited, also sorry i got a tad carried away

tag list: @mintlibri @georgeweasleyx @seppys-return-to-madness @fopdoodledane @fredd-weasley @iprobablyshipit91 @darling-details @laneygthememequeen @lupinsx @keoghans @helloallthethingsilove @bobduncanlover | message me if you’d like to be added!

“Quick! Hide me!”

George Weasley normally doesn’t mind the fame, if you will, that comes with being part of the most well-known duo Hogwarts has ever seen.

In fact, he welcomes the attention. Maybe not as much as Fred, but he welcomes it, nonetheless.

That is, until a boisterous Ravenclaw is doing everything in her power to grab his attention. How many times can he possibly tell her, in the nicest way possible, that he doesn’t fancy her?

Maybe being nice, Fred explains to him, isn’t the way to go. He doesn’t need to be rude, but he needs to be aggressive—or, blatantly obvious in a way that she won’t be able to ignore. Why can he not seem to shake this girl? She’s undeniably obsessed, Ron laughs one day, as George does his best to push his headache away, his eyes tired from constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure that feisty Ravenclaw is nowhere to be found. He was finding it harder than usual to concentrate in classes—and not in a good way.

George is used to the teasing by now—from his brothers, from Ginny, from Harry, from you—the friendly, fellow Gryffindor prankster—giving Fred and George a run for their money.

He ducks closer to you when he spots her peering, and you nearly choke on your soup during the feast, as the Ravenclaw twirls her hair, watching George with what can only be described as googly eyes.

“Oh dear,” you begin sarcastically, elbowing George next to you, “someone’s in rare form tonight.”

“Ha-ha,” he replies sarcastically as he shifts in his seat uncomfortably, doing his best to block her out by adjusting himself so that Ron’s head covers her face. She notices this, and schooches over in her seat, until George is in her line of view again.

“Merlin’s beard,” he says through gritted teeth, looking down at his food, “I laugh at one of her jokes one time and she can’t seem to let it go.”

“These girls are crazy,” Ron says as he sips on his pumpkin juice, only to receive death glares from you, Hermione, and Ginny. “I—I mean, just that girl—not all women—” he uncomfortably clears his throat and smiles, the tips of his ears turning a bright shade of scarlet.

“Have you tried landing yourself in detention more often than not?” Seamus Finnegan pipes up, “in me own experiences, girls don’t fancy a lad who’s always getting scolded,”

George shakes his head. “The more outrageous the prank, the more brutal the scolding, the more obsessed she becomes,” he tells you all begrudgingly, “I can’t bloody take it anymore.”

As the feast ends, George’s admirer stands up, eyeing him curiously, ready to make her move, yet again—but he finds himself scurrying out of the Great Hall as fast as possible—he’s flying up the staircase and it doesn’t even register with him that he’s not breathing until he enters the common room and lets out a huge sigh of relief. Only narrowly escaped that Ravenclaw, he did. He’s resting in an armchair as the rest of you wander inside a few minutes later, laughing at the flustered sight of him.

George doesn’t know what he’s going to do to get this girl off of his back. It seems as though he’s tried everything.

Unless?

A solution pops into his head very late at night whilst laying in bed, staring up at the curtains of his four poster in the darkness. He jumps up, checks his watch, and groans when he sees the time. In the bed next to his, Fred is sprawled out over his bedsheets, snoring quite loudly as if to say, I’m having a lovely sleep, thank you! George sucks in a breath and lays back down—his mind now swimming with ideas, his smile cheeky, his eyes widened. If this doesn’t give her the hint that he’s not interested, he doesn’t know what will.

It’ll just have to wait until morning, he supposes.

— -

“Y/N!”

You jump a little, not expecting to hear your name yelled across the Great Hall so very early in the morning. George spots you from the entrance, and after making sure there are no other unwanted guests around, he calls out to you and rushes toward the table.

“Hi, George,” you begin, smirking a bit, “you’re up early for someone who has a free period.”

“Needed to catch you before your Herbology lesson,” he places himself across from you and pours himself a bit of coffee—it’s aware to you now that he still needs a little bit of a pick me up. “I need your help.”

“Ah,” you reply and clap your hands together. “The time was quickly approaching—I’m in need of a good prank, you know! It’s been a bit since I’ve gotten involved in a bit of mischief, classes have been so bloody draining lately—so what were you thinking?”

George laughs at this. He does admire your sense of adventure and your equal love of pranking, but no. That isn’t what this is about. He sucks in a breath as he shakes his head, eyeing your curious look before opening his mouth again.

“I think I’ve figured out a way to get… you know who,” he eyes the Ravenclaw table suspiciously, “off of my back.”

You gasp audibly, bringing a hand to cover your mouth as your eyes widen. “Blimey, Georgie—you know who? Why didn’t you tell me that Volde—”

George nearly spits out his coffee due to a snort. Thank goodness he doesn’t. “Ha-ha, anyone ever tell you you’re absolutely hilarious?” He sinks into his seat and rubs his hands over his eyes, as if to brush away tears from laughing too hard. He then continues, after a bit of a laughing fit, “She just needs a push in a different direction, is all.”

You furrow your brow in confusion and bite into a piece of bacon. “And you need my help for that?”

“Precisely,” George tells you, scooping some eggs onto his plate. “Just hear me out.”

“That’s not a great way to start things out, you know.”

He scoffs and then grins cheekily at you. Then, he says, “You need to pretend to go out with me.”

You nearly choke on your piece of toast. “I beg your pardon?” you ask, completely stunned by his request. As you begin to laugh, George feels his insides tighten, and he wants to say, What the bloody hell is the big deal? but instead, he waits, and ends up laughing too.

“Oh, George,” you say after regaining your composure, spreading some more butter onto your toast, “you’re a riot, you are.”

When he doesn’t answer, but instead licks his lips impatiently and takes another sip of coffee and peers at you, as if waiting for your answer, you freeze.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“You’re bloody right I am.”

“So you want me to pretend to be your girlfriend so she’ll end up stalking me too?”

The two of you erupt into a fit of laughter. Then he peers solemnly at you with wide eyes, as if to beg. “Pleaaaase, Y/N?”

You eye him suspiciously. “What’s in it for me?”

He scoffs again. “Extra time spent with me,” a loud crunch comes from his mouth when he bites into his piece of toast, and he winks. “I know you can’t get enough.”

You snort. “Don’t flatter yourself, Weasley.”

He picks up his cup of coffee, holds it up across the table to you and asks before you have time to think things through, “We have a deal?”

You roll your eyes at this gesture, but he’s patiently waiting for you to agree. What will this mean, exactly—pretending to date one another? You’re about to ask him, but it’s almost as if you know—it won’t last long. Soon she’ll get the hint, and the shenanigans can end. You go against your better judgement, acting on the very fearlessness that landed you in Gryffindor house to begin with, pick up your cup of tea and clink it with his. Feeling very pleased with himself, he leans back in his chair and grins cheekily, wiggling his eyebrows at you. You narrow your eyes and say, “Fine—but only because you’ve asked so nicely.”

Just then, you both notice a giggling gaggle of Ravenclaws enter the Great Hall, and George is already feeling his insides begin to swirl nervously. He’s doing things before he can even fully register what’s going on—

He leans across the table and takes a chunk out of the piece of bacon you’re currently also biting into, his face just inches from yours. You nearly choke on it due to surprise of how close he is to you, and he can’t help but begin to laugh, yet again. Always laughing with you, he is. “Erm—excuse me! Eat your own breakfast, you git!”

Just then, you notice her eyes flicker back and forth very quickly between the two of you, before she slowly passes you both by on her way to the Ravenclaw table, careful to listen to whatever the two of you are speaking about.

George can hardly contain his nerves, but figures he might as well get started on this fake dating thing. The sooner she leaves him alone, the better off he’ll be, “Love it when you talk sweetly to me, darling.”

— -

“You two’re out of your bloody mind.”

Fred does not hold back his laughter later that evening when George divulges your plans. The unmistakable sound of Ron snorting bounces off of the walls in the common room, and he turns red in the face.

“You two? You two?”

“What?” you and George chorus together. George continues explaining to the younger redhead across from him, “It’s perfect—we’re best mates already, and we’re all in a bunch of the same classes together—maybe this will finally give her the hint,”

“It’s not going to work.” Ron replies, looking rather amused. He shoots you a look.

“Well, can’t make any promises, of course,” you tell the lot, “but I reckon we put in the work, it’s bound to fix the problem eventually.”

Ron, Harry and Fred continue to roar with laughter in the common room. “She will never fall for that!”

“Why not?” George asks a bit angrily. He’s nervous now—if this plan doesn’t work, he doesn’t know what the bloody hell he’s going to do. Transfer to a school on the moon, at this point.

“Because,” Ron starts, holding back a snort, “Y/N’s Y/N and you’re—you.”

You and George glance at one another, and then back at Ron. The common room is now buzzing with chatter and gossip and it’s becoming hard for everyone to focus on the conversation. “Meaning?”

“I dunno,” Harry pipes up. “You guys just don’t really look like you’d be a couple.”

“Exactly,” Fred agrees, “you’re too—close. Friendly. You’re just.. friends,” he leans back casually in his chair with his hands behind his head, “it wouldn’t work. But, by all means—” he puts his hands up in surrender, chuckling before he continues, “—go for it and embarrass yourselves. I’m in a good need of a laugh.”

— -

Charms is, by far, George’s favorite class at Hogwarts. If he could take that and only that, he reckons he would. But with Little Miss Obsessed on the other end of the corridor, watching him as if her life depends on it, he can’t help but count down the seconds until the lesson is over—or, at least, the seconds until you get here.

You walk up next to him, finally, with Fred on his other side. “Morning, you two,” you tell them through a yawn. Your few cups of tea haven’t seemed to help your exhaustion from the night before—multiple games of exploding snap and copious amounts of butterbeer until the late hours of the evening did not do you good. You lean against the wall and close your eyes. “Are we awake yet?”

“Morning, Y/N!” Fred says brightly, patting you on the shoulder, waiting for Professor Flitwick to arrive and open the door to the classroom.

“Merlin, Fred, it is far too early to be this bloody excited about anything.”

Next to you, George laughs sleepily and nudges you with his elbow.

“Oh,” Fred replies. You can hear the smirk and mischief in his voice, even with your eyes half closed, “I just thought you’d be more excited to see your boyfriend this morning.”

This certainly wakes you up. You jump slightly and peer at George, who’s rather alert now, as well. You’d almost forgotten. Nearing closer to the classroom entrance, you eye the Ravenclaw, who’s watching you both very suspiciously and whispering to her cronies around her. Before any of you can register what’s happening, you lean over and place a kiss onto George’s cheek.

Fred stifles a laugh, Flitwick is opening the classroom door, the Ravenclaw is fuming, but all George can focus on is what just happened. Through gritted teeth and a very cheeky smile he’s trying his hardest to suppress, he asks you, “What the bloody hell was that?”

“Just abiding by the rules of your request,” you whisper back, grinning at him. “If she’s going to think we’re a couple, we better act like it, haven’t we?”

George hadn’t really thought about this—embracing you, kissing you, holding your hand. If he was being honest, he didn’t think about it because everyone had already mistakenly taken you two for a couple just a few months prior, when all you two had been doing is exactly what you’d done all along—be friends. He kind of just assumed the same thing would happen.

“Right,” he says, the heat of the fleeting moment dying down. “Yeah, of course.”

The three of you waltz into the classroom and take your seats near the middle, with the Ravenclaw sitting a few rows ahead, trying her hardest to peer stealthily over her shoulder at the two of you. It seems as though she’s definitely noticed something.

Flitwick begins the lesson and you lazily lean your head against George’s shoulder, sticking the back end of your quill in your mouth and listening as Flitwick tells you the desired page to turn to in your textbooks. Teasingly, George asks, “What am I—your pillow now?”

You turn to peer up at him. In a low voice you tell him, “If I’m going to be your fake girlfriend, you’re going to let me lean on you when I’m sleepy. Deal?”

You turn your focus back toward the front of the class and George can’t help but smile at you, shaking his head in admiration. He slings an arm around you and props himself into a more comfortable position.

“Okay, then. Deal.”

— -

George is now finding it incredibly easy to pretend to be your “boyfriend”. The hand holding, constant embracing, and laughing into oblivion seems to come naturally—it doesn’t even feel strange to him, and he’s amused to see that you’re taking it the same way. Probably because you got on so well with one another before all of these shenanigans started. Right?

While his admirer’s persistence has seemed to die down a bit, she still winds up watching and cornering him in corridors from time to time—but it’s easier with you arm in arm with him. She doesn’t linger too long, or continue to flirt obnoxiously with him. It seems as though your plan is working. Now, if only she can find a significant other of her own to pay attention too—

You’re sitting in Transfiguration, working on the bird conjuring charm you’d been dying to perfect in your free time whilst McGonagall steps outside for a moment to meet with Professor Sprout, and you’re doing your best to ignore the glares from the other end of the classroom.

“How d’you reckon the plan is working out?” Fred asks you both.

“Well, she’s certainly not as persistent,” George tells his twin in a low voice, eyeing the Ravenclaw stealthily across the classroom, “but I’m not sure she’s entirely convinced.”

You break your focus on the charm and turn toward the twins. “Reckon she will soon.”

“Yeah?” they chorus together.

“Yeah,” you reply, picking up your wand, not giving them any further information.

Fred crosses his arms and looks at you quizzically. When you neglect to continue, he asks with a twinge of sarcasm to his voice, “And how, may I ask, do you know this?”

You stifle a laugh and practice your flourishing movements without conjuring the charm. “—‘cause.. she’s just got to, hasn’t she? I’m telling you—we keep this up for a bit longer, and she’ll forget all about you. Mark my words.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Avis,”

A puff of smoke emits from your wand, along with a loud blasting sound, and then a flock of birds twitters in front of you and you stand up straighter in front of your desk, feeling extremely pleased with yourself.

“Bloody hell,” Fred and George say together, peering admiringly at the flock of birds you’d managed to conjure. George continues, “That is N.E.W.T Level stuff you’re doing, Y/N!” He picks you up and spins you around, your hair flying into your eyes. You’re weightless to him. When he places you back down gingerly on your feet, he brushes the hair gently out of your face and says, “You’re brilliant, you are.”

Breathlessly, you answer him, “Thanks,”

His hand is still in your hair, his fingers delicately brushing your cheek. George can suddenly feel his insides tighten and his face go rosy—but why?

The entire world seems to stop around you both. It’s as if nobody else exists.

Thankfully, though, when both of you snap back to reality at the sound of McGonagall re-entering the classroom, you both see that nobody else has seemed to notice your small intimate moment.

You pull nervously at the edges of your sleeves and take your seat again next to George, who is running a hand through his hair. When he turns to look at Fred, who must’ve noticed this small exchange, George is relieved to see that there’s no cocky or amused expression on his face—he’s merely pouting due to the continuation of the Transfiguration lesson.

— -

The weather is surprisingly warm for a winter day. George is seated up against a tree near the water’s edge, fiddling with something in his hands—an invention, no doubt—when you plop down next to him with a slight groan.

“Long day?”

“Why in the hell did I decide to take Double Herbology?” you whine, letting your bag sink into the ground next to you. You place your head into your hands, grinding your knuckles into your temples to rid yourself of your headache. You elbow him slightly, “How come you didn’t stop me?”

George laughs, looking back down at this knick knack in his hands yet again. “You were pretty adamant about taking doubles,” he recalls, thinking back to when you’d originally picked these few classes, “don’t you remember?”

“Yeah, well,” you begin, breathing in the smell of the sweet air, picking at the grass in between your fingers, “I suppose it was sort of a silly decision, wasn’t it? I’m bloody exhausted.”

Up near the castle, Ron spots you two and is about to run down to join you both, when Fred tugs on his robes and holds him back, nearly choking him. “Oi!” he exclaims, turning back toward his older brother. “What the bloody hell was that for?”

“Before we all head down there to join the lovebirds,” Fred begins, grinning cheekily at Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny, “I’d like to pick your brains.”

“About what?” Ginny and Hermione ask together.

“Well, precisely what I’ve just said,” Fred tells them, leaning against the entrance of the castle, his bag slung over his shoulder. “The lovebirds.”

Ron and Harry glance at Fred quizzically. “What about them?”

“I’m starting to believe this whole fake dating nonsense isn’t really fake at all.”

Harry laughs at the site of Ron’s agape mouth, when Ginny just shakes her head at her older brother. “You’re off your rocker, Fred. No way they’re really together. They would’ve told us, no?”

Fred crosses his arms. “I’m not so sure of that.”

Harry asks him, “How d’you reckon?”

“I was watching them in Transfiguration the other day,” Fred begins to tell them, watching to make sure the two of you are still out of earshot. “We were all chatting whilst McGonagall needed to step out, Y/N was doing some really advanced type of magic—N.E.W.T Level,”

Still, Ron’s jaw is dropped. He’s seemingly impressed. “Blimey—really?”

“Not the point of the story, Ronniekins.”

Ron turns a bright shade of pink and goes very silent at everyone’s slight snickers. Fred continues, “Anyway—we were all talking about how this plan of theirs was unfolding—to be honest with you, I haven’t seen much of that Ravenclaw around, but George swears she’s still pining over him. So, Y/N does this really advanced charm and George nearly topples over, picks her up and spins her around—you know,” he turns toward his brother and sister, “like those scenes in those silly Muggle movies mum watches. Then, everything went really quiet between the two of them, and they were just—looking at one another, for a really long time.”

Hermione asks, “Like how, exactly?”

Fred thinks on this for a moment. Then he replies, running a hand through his hair, “Like they’re in love.”

Ginny narrows her eyes. “So? Doesn’t mean they’re actually in love. I mean.. they are supposed to be acting like a couple—that’s the point of all of this.”

“So,” Fred says, ignoring everything else Ginny has just mentioned, “I’ve got a plan.”

Ginny turns toward Hermione, “Never a good sign.”

Fred nudges his sister playfully through bits of hearty laughter from the group. “I think we should slip them both a love potion—see if anything changes—if it does, we know they truly are faking. I’ve got the antidote all ready to go.”

“A love potion?” Harry asks.

“Those pink bottles you’ve got all over your room at home?” Ron adds.

“Yes,” Fred says brightly. “Admittedly—it’ll probably be one of our most popular inventions in due time. But Merlin, they are dangerous—you know, when it comes to love, and all that.”

After nearly everyone agrees, Fred begins to put his plan into action—when it will happen, the time of day, just exactly how they’re going to pull it off—when Hermione decides to interject her opinion.

“Nothing’s going to change, you know.”

Ron nearly drops his bag onto the ground. “D’you know something we don’t?”

Hermione laughs. “No, of course not, but—well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” But clearly, it isn’t quite as obvious as it should be. “They’re already in love!”

Before Ron, Ginny, and Harry can interject their thoughts and objections, Fred turns toward her and says, “Cheers, Hermione.”

“You agree, do you?”

“I do,” Fred replies, now focusing his attention on the two of you down by the lake. It seems to him, he realizes, that while your love may be obvious to some, it’s the two of you that are completely oblivious. He watches as you sink back into George’s chest, his arm slung around your shoulder as you both continue to laugh animatedly about something. Fred points and says, ”Just look at them, would you! D’you see the Ravenclaw anywhere near here? No.”

“Fred,” Harry begins, “if you think they’re faking, then why in the bloody hell d’you want to waste a love potion on them?”

Fred just smiles evilly. “So it’ll be easier to get them to just admit it already.”

— -

“Okay then—enough homework for one evening, I’m absolutely knackered,” you tell the twins, folding up the parchment of your Potions essay and slipping it carefully into your bag, “you two coming back to the common room?”

“Yeah, in a bit,” Fred says, a look of absolute disgust on his face as he flips through his spell book, “this assignment is a right pain in the—”

He stops himself when he notices Madam Pince in the corner, eyeing him suspiciously. You ask them both, “You sure you don’t need any help?”

“Nah, that’s alright, I know you’re exhausted,” George tells you, appreciative of all the help you’ve given them already. “You go on.. we’ll meet you before you head off to bed.”

“Alright,” you reply sweetly, leaning in to place a featherlight kiss to his cheek. His hair at the nape of his neck feels so soft beneath your fingertips, “See you later.”

The Ravenclaw at the next table, Fred notices, isn’t quite as angry at this exchange as she would have been a few weeks ago. Has everything truly been working in their favor?

But George hardly notices—he just looks back down at his bit of parchment and continues to work on his conclusion, trying very, very hard, in Fred’s opinion, to suppress a grin. It’s rather noticeable alongside the cherry red color of his cheeks.

Only a few minutes pass by of silence between the twins before Madam Pince is hurrying everyone out of the library. The group of Ravenclaws make their way, albeit slightly reluctantly, to the opposite end of the castle toward their common room. George has never been so happy to be heading up to bed.

“Oi, Georgie,” Fred begins as they trudge through the corridors, “how long d’you reckon this thing between you and Y/N is going to last?”

“Dunno,” George tells his twin truthfully through a yawn. His four poster is so close, just a few more corridors to get through… “Until that Ravenclaw stops showing up everywhere I go, I suppose.”

Fred snorts at this comment. “Well, you can’t help class, mate.”

“Yeah, but, I mean everywhere else.”

Fred tugs on his brother’s robes and gets him to stop right before the entrance to the common room.

“C’mon, just be straight with me,”

George just glances at him with a confused look.

“About Y/N,” Fred prods.

“What about her?”

“You may be fooling everyone else, but you’re not fooling me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Fred’s feeling slightly annoyed at his brother’s obvious denial now. “I know how you feel about her, Georgie. I see the way you look at her. Why don’t you both just come out and say it so you can be together for real?”

George actually has to place his bag on the ground. He rolls his eyes—somehow, he knew this was coming. “What the bloody hell are you on about? We’re just friends, like you said—this is purely strategic.” George turns around, picks up his bag, and is about to say the password to enter the common room, but—

“Strategic,” Fred echoes his twin. “Right. So I guess I can go along with my plan, then, slip you both love potions, make sure there’s definitely a change in your feelings toward one another so we know you are truly faking—”

This certainly grabs George’s attention. He can feel his heart thundering in his chest. He turns back toward his twin with narrowed eyes and asks, “What plan?”

“Oh, sorry—forgot to mention,” Fred jokes, careful not to wake any sleeping portraits, “I told the rest of the lot that I’ll be conducting a.. bit of an experiment, if you will—for research, you know. Don’t worry—got the antidote ready to go for when you both, of course, fall madly in love—”

“Fred,” George says through gritted teeth, but lets out a laugh, as well, “I’m not taking a love potion. First of all, those are prototypes for the store, remember? Reckon I’d need to be barking mad in order to take one of those anyway—we know full well how powerful they are.”

Fred’s been ready for George to argue about this. “But I told you, I’ve got the antidote—” Fred’s grinning cheekily at his twin now, he doesn’t even mind getting cut off completely.

“The answer’s no, Fred. You’re out of your bloody mind.”

“What are you so afraid of mate?” Fred laughs and punches George in the arm. “Are you scared that your feelings are going to change?”

George doesn’t want to answer this. He quickly runs a hand through his hair and suddenly seems a bit on edge. He absolutely hates getting cornered like this—he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something sharp lodged in his throat. He opens his mouth to argue, but once again, Fred takes him by surprise.

“Or, I wonder—are you afraid of them not changing at all?”

— -

George hasn’t slept in days. Weeks, maybe. No, that’s being too dramatic—maybe three days, tops. But to him, it certainly feels like a much longer time.

He drags himself, quite reluctantly, toward the dungeons. He’s looking forward even less to the Potions lesson in front of him. He can barely pay attention on a normal day—now, when he’s sleep deprived and running on not much other than caffeine and his own musings, he’s almost certain he’s going to fall asleep just walking there.

Until he spots you, of course, strolling down the other end of the corridor. You see him, too, wave frantically, and bounce your way over to him. Perhaps, he thinks, Potions won’t be so bad after all.

“Hey,” he says brightly, nearly over the moon to see you.. even if it is early in the morning.

“Georgie! I’ve got news,” you say excitedly, poking him in the ribs and wiggling your eyebrows at him. “Guess what I’ve found out?”

George is peering at you, as if in a dreamlike trance. His voice floats through the air between the two of you. “Tell me.”

“It’s about you know who,” you tease, “got herself a boyfriend, she has.”

George suddenly feels very warm. Blimey, it’s hot. He loosens his tie a bit, a hitch in his voice, “Wait, r-really? Where’ve you heard that?”

“Saw them together in the Great Hall—some Slytherin bloke,” you tell him, clutching your spell books tightly in your arms, “she was nearly drooling all over him��reckon her obsession will move to him now, no?” When George doesn’t share the same enthusiasm you do, you prod him with your wand and joke, “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me you’ve actually fallen for this girl.”

“Merlin, no,” George answers quite quickly. You watch as his expression changes from sullen to chipper within a matter of milliseconds. “That’s great news! Gets her off my back, doesn’t it?”

“Exactly,” you reply, “and now you don’t have to hang around little old me all the time. Not that I don’t enjoy your company—” you add quickly when George furrows his brows, “I just mean, now you’re able to go after any girl you fancy, not worry about her anymore—”

“Yeah,” a laugh escapes his lips, “yeah.. reckon you’re right! Blimey, have got to tell Fred.. he was starting to get freaked every time she so much as glanced over at us.”

Students begin to walk a bit more speedily, and you both realize the sound of the bell is drawing nearer. You push playfully on his chest and say, “Anyway—wanted to tell you before class! Meet me in the common room before dinner, yeah?” And before he can answer, you flash a toothy smile and turn in the opposite direction, making your way as quickly as you can toward the library.

You want to tell him. You want to tell him that you’d heard him and Fred that night when they’d been discussing love potions and whatever Fred has up his sleeve—you’d gotten caught up in the corridor around the bend, chatting with another student about an assignment, and had heard the entire exchange. You reckoned it was best to just end it now, before things get really messy.

Things seemed to be working in your favor, though. You hadn’t lied. That Ravenclaw did find herself a boyfriend, so, it seems as though the plan you two had formulated had worked, and that’s a good thing—right?

It’s the first time in—weeks, months?—that you and George part ways without a kiss on the cheek, a tight, romantic embrace, and it makes him feel weird. Off balance. He doesn’t like it. Is he really.. missing those times? Doing those things with you? He shakes his head in defiance, begrudgingly making his way toward Potions. Fred’s words ring in his ears. Just friends. Even if he does feel those things, it’s obvious that you don’t, he realizes. You’re nearly bouncing off the walls knowing that this fake relationship is over. So, why doesn’t he feel the same way? Why does he feel so sad?

He swallows thickly before bumping into Fred. They make their way into the classroom, George’s head and heart feeling heavier than they have in weeks.

Little does he know, you’re sitting in the library, staring into space, a piece of blank parchment in front of you, feeling, if not more so, the exact same way.

— -

A few days later, George can finally sit in the Great Hall in peace without ducking behind anyone, crouching down in his seat, or skipping feasts altogether. His prior admirer seems so wrapped up with her new love, that George Weasley might as well not even exist. He feels relief wash over him.

He’s sitting with Fred, Ron, Ginny, Harry, and Hermione, but you—you’re nowhere to be found. In fact, he hasn’t seen all that much of you in a few days time. Guess he sort of got used to always having you around. Loads of Herbology assignments, you told him the day before with a cheeky grin, reckon Doubles is catching up with me.

“So Georgie,” Fred says brightly through mouthfuls of potatoes, “reckon we should get back to our regularly scheduled mischief now that our unscheduled hiatus has been lifted, yeah?”

“Oi, Fred, can’t you see that he’s not listening to you?” Ron asks before lifting a hand to slap George right across the face.

“Easy, you two,” Ginny scolds them and grabs Ron before he can do anything. Then she taps her older brother on the shoulder, “Hey, earth to George.”

“What?” George says, finally joining the group, the haze above his head lifting slightly, “oh, erm, sorry.. was—distracted.”

Fred eyes his twin curiously. There’s a tiny bit of sarcasm in his voice, “What’s going on, mate? You’ve been awfully quiet since your little plan wrapped up.” But even in his delirious state, George knows what Fred is trying to do. And he’s so bloody exhausted and tired of fighting everything that he doesn’t even argue. Instead, he takes the group by surprise, and stands up without touching his meal. “What’re you doing?”

“Something I should’ve done months ago!” he calls as he flies toward the entrance, maneuvering himself between students and professors alike. He’s doing things without fully registering what’s going on, he’s taking steps three at a time, he’s jumping through the portrait hole in a huff, he’s panting heavily with a very confused you in front of him, baffled at his state.

“Hey there,” you say brightly, “you alright?”

When George catches his breath, he takes you by surprise. “‘m doing just fine, love.”

“Love?” you ask teasingly, “you missing what we had, Georgie? Our fake little relationship?”

“It wasn’t fake.”

You shoot him a glance and freeze completely. George is almost certain he can hear the pounding of your heart reverberating off of the common room walls. He’s thankful, now that he’s recognized, the two of you are completely alone. “It—it wasn’t?”

“Of course not.”

You offer a nervous grin, and George knows he’s said the right thing. The tension between the two of you is rising and you ask him jokingly, “This isn’t a love potion talking, is it?” Realization hits him like a ton of bricks and he lets an exasperated laugh escape his lips. Damnit, Fred. He shakes his head no and waits with bated breath for your next words.

“So this,” you say, pointing back and forth very rapidly between the two of you, “it’s..it’s been real this entire time?”

“Of course it’s real, it’s always been real,” George is finding it difficult to breathe correctly now, “hasn’t it been real for you?”

But you realize, as you’re choking back tears, that by saying yes, you’ll only be delaying the inevitable—which is, of course, to kiss him into oblivion. And you’d both waited bloody long enough already, hadn’t you?

So instead of saying anything, you bite back a very large grin before stepping forward and pulling on his tie and pressing your lips to his. He’s not even surprised—if anything, he’s relieved, to finally know what it feels like to have your lips on his after many moments having dreamt about it. Immediately, you want to ask him why you two haven’t been doing this the entire time, but you can’t bring yourself to break from him now that you’re intertwined together. It’s slow and warm, his lips molding perfectly with yours, his thumb brushing gently against your cheek, soft moans escaping his lips, the rest of his fingers making their way through your soft hair. It sort of feels as if you’re floating, actually, bouncing delicately from cloud to cloud, high above the trees and the castle. Breaking slightly and pressing his forehead to yours, he says, “So, erm, silly question—but are we—?”

“If you even have to ask if I’m your girlfriend for real now, you’re out of your mind, Weasley.”

George’s head is spinning. He leaves trails of kisses along your cheeks, your neck, and your collarbone, all before finding your lips again, and as they form a smile against his own, he can’t seem to shake the feeling like he’s coming home.

A very amused voice startles you both, making you part at the mere sound of the clearing of a throat. “Alright then, Ron, Ginny, Harry—you all owe me two sickles each. Hermione—cheers again, reckon you did well to agree with me on this one.” And then, when he notices you two watching, Fred says, “Oi—well it’s about bloody time.”

“I’m sorry,” you begin, doing your best to not think about the scarlet color of your face, or the fact that they’d all seen quite possibly the most intimate moment you and George have shared together, “you lot placed bets on us?”

“Sure did,” Fred replies, looking rather pleased with himself as he’s handed his earnings from a very grumpy looking Ron and Harry. He slides the sickles into his pockets and crosses his arms in delight.

As Ginny and Hermione squeal excitedly and wink at you before heading up to the girls dormitory for the evening, George pulls you back into his arms, confidence engulfing him, and says to the others, “If you don’t mind, we were kind of in the middle of something here.”

The tips of Ron’s ears turn extremely pink and he smiles warily. “Guess you didn’t have to use those love Potions after all, Fred,” Harry says.

With a wink at you both before making his way toward the stairs, Fred replies, “Was never going to, actually. Just had to make them think I was. Knew these two would break eventually.”

“Hate to admit it, but you’re kind of brilliant,” Ron says admiringly, but continues to pout when Fred slings an arm around his shoulders and tells him,

“Next time, Ron, just side with your wiser, older brother, yeah?”

You turn back toward George, your arms around his neck. When you make sure the others are finally out of earshot, you say to him, tugging gently on his tie again, “He’s outrageous, he is.”

“Got us together, though, didn’t he?”

“I suppose I’ll give him that one.”

“Oh,” Fred calls from the top of the stairs, “and Y/N? No snogging my brother until the wee hours of the evening, alright? He needs his beauty sleep.”

“Shove off, Freddie,” you call. A cackle of laughter floats down from the boys dormitory, but you find it easy to ignore. What do they know? The two of you have tons of lost time to make up for. You stand on your tippy toes, press your forehead to George’s before he kisses you again. He lets out a soft laugh when you say against his lips, to a Fred who can’t hear you, “Can’t make any promises.”

reblogs & feedback are greatly appreciated, thank you for reading & requesting x

#george weasley #fred weasley #fred and george weasley #weasley twins #weasley twins fanction #george weasley reader insert #george weasley x reader #george weasley fanfiction #george weasley fanfic #george weasley imagine #hp imagine #hp fanfiction #hp fanfic #ron weasley #harry potter #ginny weasley #hermione granger #fake dating tropes

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aceofshitposts · 3 years

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I saw that you like CATS the musical. What are your thoughts on the movie?

AAAAH AHHAHA oh man oh boy y'all should BUCKLE IN cuz it's a ride

my simple thoughts? it's entertaining if only because it butchered the stage show so badly in an attempt to idk modernize it? Well, modernization is one part of it I think. The other part I'll go into below lol. I don't necessarily hate some of the more modern renditions of the songs (mostly the ensemble sets like Jellicle Song for Jellicle Cats) but then others are just... so poorly done it's insulting.

I've said this at the end of this whole rant too but I'm gonna put it up here in case people don't (justifiably) wanna see me go on and on about it:

The movie wasn't made for fans of the musical. It was made to make money and I believe they choose, at least partially, to do that through making it the weirdest and worst possible adaptation they could so that people would want to go see the train wreck. Which, really, worked! It was all people could talk about for a good while so like... Goal achieved, I guess.

A MUCH MORE COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT cuz i don't wanna. flood your dash with... this

ALRIGHT SO. Most of my friends know I'm actually a huge fan of new adaptations of things. I love remakes (provided the people making it are coming at it with some form of heart and not just... cash grabbing which is more often the case) I love seeing other peoples interpretations of characters, or changing settings. It's one of the reasons I like American comics so much, getting to see different writers takes is fascinating.

I think musical movies can be wonderful ways to introduce people to a stage show that might have been unavailable to them otherwise! Chicago, for example, is one of the BEST musical to movie adaptations in my opinion. It kept the heart of the show, it's funny and the song numbers are done really well.

There are of course other famous examples, such as Grease or Bye Bye Birdie. Hairspray was also a wonderful take. These are simply off the top of my head, there are of course more.

CATS in particular has a history. If you go through my CATS tag you may see a few posts from @catsnonreplica which posts photos from non broadway productions of CATS! It's a fascinating read and I love, love, love looking at the other interpretations of the characters! CATS is a musical full of fun and wonderful characters if you take the time to see past the ridiculousness haha and the Korean and Japanese runs of CATS especially have some of my favourites.

How does this relate to the movie, I hear you say well. As you might has noticed the movie's interpretations of the characters is........ lackluster at best and downright uncanny valley at best.

CATS is, at its core, a ridiculous thing. I will fully admit that! But it's fun, it's entertaining and if you pay a little attention you can actually get the plot. (Honestly I don't understand when people complain it has no plot but that's a whole other rant for another day)

The movie was... obsessed with this idea of like... semi realism? Like obviously, as a fan, I think they should have leaned into the over the top character designs but instead we got...w ell:

Bombalurina:

Demeter left and Bomba right. Demeter was actually cut! From the movie which is. upsetting lmao.

Macavity is one of the worst offenders for me:

Macavity was... I wish I could know what the hell they were thinking there cuz it's even in his song? Ginger cat??? THAT IS NOT... A GINGER CAT...... but I digress. I would show more examples but I think you get the point.

So. We've butchered the characters appearances. Okay that's fine but what about their personalities?

ALSO BUTCHERED.

There's... there's a lot to unpack here. Just for context: the Jellicle Ball happens once a year and the Jellicle leader chooses a single cat to be reborn into a new life. In the stage play all the cats who are nominated for this honour are on the older side (Jenny-Any-Dots, Bustopher Jones, Skimbleshanks, Gus The Theatre Cat, and eventually Grizzabella) AND are always nominated by another cat. Not themself, unlike the movie where they all seem to nominate themselves.

Jenny-Any-Dots went from a doting grandmother figure who's celebrated for her selfless volunteering and tireless work into a conceited, vain younger cat who is obsessed with fame.

It's an incredibly strange dichotomy. I don't doubt some of it isn't the result of the uh people playing the characters honestly. I do think some of them did the best they could! I don't really blame Jason Derulo, for example, for Tugger. And honestly, Tugger was probably closest to his stage version (while being a trouble maker, he's shown to show Deuteronomy an immense amount of respect)

Speaking of Tugger! This will bring us to one of the biggest grievances with the movie and that is how they handled Mr Mistoffelees.

So... Ugh. So. We have Victoria as the pov character, which imo is like whatever in the grand scheme of things, and then we have Misto who they have decided will be get live interest cuz... Of course. Misto is shown throughout the musical to be awkward, unsure of himself and well. Really, kinda incompetent. Which is Wild cuz in the stage show he might be aloof but he's fairly confident in his powers.

So, Old Deuts gets kidnapped. In the stage show Tugger is the one to bring Misto forward! It's really quite sweet, imo, and I'm showing myself as a Tuggoffelees shipper here, but again Tugger is previously shown to be pretty conceited but then here he is boosting and hyping up Misto to bring Deuteronomy back. My friends and I have lovingly dubbed this the boyfriend hype song.

SOMEHOW. The movie manages to make this, easily, the MOST BORING number in the whole thing. Which, again, WILD. Misto awkwardly stumbles through his whole song, which again is... Boasting of his supreme magical powers which movie Misto clearly. Does not have or believe to have. The song, to me, feels super awkward and unnecessarily drawn out in the movie which sucks cuz it's one of my favourites in the show.

The declawing (heh) of Mr Mistoffelees actually reminds me strongly of how they changed Gaston in the live action Beauty and the Beast movie. He's gone from a beloved figure in the animated movie to someone so disliked in the town that Le Fou has to pay people off to say nice things about him. It's just. Wild character choices were made!!

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is probably my favourite in movie non ensemble number. It feels the most... Genuine? Compared to the other nomination songs.

Other problems include but are not limited to:

The inconsistent size scale of the CATS which throws me off constantly.

The weirdly overt sexual overtones added to MANY of the songs (Jenny and Bustopher being the worst)

This is just a personal gripe and opinion but I don't like that they used the UK version of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. The American version is both better known and tbh way more fun. Teazer's giggle? Adds ten years to my life every time.

Victoria's added solo song, Beautiful Ghosts, while I like the song as a song it doesn't fit the style of message of the musical. In the movie she's singing directly to Grizzabella who's being an outcast for years that she should be grateful she even has memories of being part of the tribe?? What?? But I know they had to add an original song to be able to be nominated for awards in like the Grammys n shit (which is why all musical movies will have an original song, fun fact!!) kinda funny they went to the effort though considering........... I don't think anyone could have genuinely believed CATS 2019 was gonna win anything but golden rhaspberries.

Movie Mr Mistoffelees has made repeated appearances as my sleep paralysis demon

The various cut characters, shout outs to Jemima, Demeter and Jellylorum especially

Bombalurina being a henchman to Macavity rubs me the wrong way

God I've written... So much. You probably get it by now haha. Like I said at the beginning, I try to go into any adaptation with an open mind but... Let's be honest, this movie wasn't marketed to people who are fans of the musical.

It was marketed, and made, to make money. And they choose to do that through, I think, intentionally making the worst possible version ever. Bad press is still press and the more outrageous people said the movie was the more people wanted to go see exactly what kind of train wreck it was.

Which is a disservice to the stage show, honestly, and all the people who've worked on it over the years.

But what can we do, right?

And besides all that, I do... Still own the movie version and I do still rewatch it on occasion. It is entertaining even if it's in a train wreck kind of way. I usually end up watching the 1998 version, then 2019 and then various tour runs that are on YouTube. (I highly recommend the 2016 tour, it's very good)

So in conclusion. It's fun (?) to watch. I enjoy picking things apart and doing analysis (if you couldn't tell!) so like... I don't hate it?

It did what it set out to do, I guess, and I can't fault it for that but. It's not a fair metre with which to judge the stage show imo. But I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, haha.

Jazz hands. I'm more than happy to elaborate or just chat about CATS if anyone wants! I grew up listening to the Broadway CD since I was a toddler so it's been! A very long standing obsession haha. Probably the only other thing on par with CATS is my obsession with Jurassic Park which I've also been a fan of since I was 3 (but that's a whole story in and of itself)

#astrix thoughts #cats the musical #Thanks for the opportunity to talk about one of my hyperfixations anon!#And to anyone who reads this whole mess lmao

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devilsskettle · 3 years

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(^^^ from howling (and bleeding) at the moon: menstruation, monstrosity and the double in the ginger snaps werewolf trilogy by erin m. flaherty)

tw for discussion of suicide ideation

okay. so. i agree with the “doppelgänger narrative” idea but the idea that brigitte “[comes] to stand for the symbolic order she resists so enthusiastically at the start of the film” is, in my reading of the ending, a misinterpretation of what ginger’s “monstrosity” signifies in the film. flaherty’s reading follows a common structure of creature features in which the monstrous transgresses social norms, so the overarching conflict is the “other” vs. normalcy. in that case, killing the monster at the end is a return to normal and reinforces societal expectations. however, i don’t think that ginger snaps is actually that kind of story. at the beginning, both ginger and brigitte “resist so enthusiastically” being part of society to the point of rejecting life, becoming isolated and codependent. before ginger gets her period, brigitte tells her that she better not become basic like all the other kids at their school, but she leaves her behind pretty quickly once she becomes interested in teen society sex drugs and rock n roll and is more accepted by her peers. brigitte continues not to give a fuck about what anyone thinks of her, even though ginger is part of that world now and not their own. part of ginger’s transformation actually helps her gain social acceptance - she is now part of the “symbolic order” even as she transgresses it. i’m not saying her transformation doesn’t transgress this order, or that she gains the acceptance of everyone at her school - trina in particular certainly isn’t a fan - but especially at the beginning, the changes that she undergoes is perceived as her becoming a “normal” teenage girl instead of the freaky death-obsessed kid ostracized by her classmates.

i would argue that ginger’s transformation makes her both super- and unfeminine - super-feminine in the sense that all the side effects of puberty for people with uteruses (menstruation, body hair/shaving, developing new body parts, hormones/mood swings, and awareness of sexuality/being sexually active) are exaggerated during her transformation - and a lot of these symptoms are ways in which a woman’s body is policed or found unacceptable or gross; unfeminine in the sense that, first of all, she’s becoming inhuman and gender is a very human concept, and second of all, she still doesn’t fit the mold of female expectation (i.e. shaving, dressing a certain way, being demure or nurturing, not being overconfident, not being a slut OR not being a prude, not having physical strength, etc). flaherty does make this argument via david j. hogan’s dark romance: sexuality and the horror film: “in complete confrontation with the classic view of the werewolf as ‘masculinity carried to an outrageous extreme,’ the werewolf is actually aligned with femininity carried to an extreme,” an idea that i think works really well in discussion of ginger snaps in particular. she also rejects the identity of “girl” several times - “wrists are for girls, i’m slitting my throat,” yelling at brigitte and saying she’s “just a stupid little girl” - and disparagingly points out the difference between the expectations for male and female sexuality - “he got laid, i’m just a lay.” so.... i definitely do get the interpretation of ginger’s death to have a kind of punitive logic for transgressing gendered expectations in these two different ways, but i think that’s a meta-criticism on the part of the writers, not the role that brigitte fills (for a movie that rejects the “death by morality call” of hollywood monster movies, they really did still punish her narratively for moral transgressions lmao - like flaherty says, “it appears that as subversive as the ginger snaps films are in respect to the werewolf narrative, they also reflect a deep cultural ambivalence about female identity. there is no option offered to ginger or brigitte, and due tot heir unwillingness to accept the roles predetermined for them in the society in which they live, they must be punished”). honestly i think i am nitpicking a little bit because i guess i do ultimately agree with flaherty that the story follows a normalcy > otherness > return to normalcy pattern with gendered ideas of what normalcy is, and where she loses me is her interpretation of brigitte and ginger’s social standing. to me, ginger seems really frustrated trying to navigate gender roles and her own position in society - but she is engaging with society.

you know who’s still not engaging with society? brigitte. she isn’t part of that “normalcy” at all, so to me, her rejection of the lycanthropy that ginger embraces signifies less that she sides with the social order and wants to reinforce normalcy, and more that she did a lot of growing up over the course of this movie as well, in a different direction than ginger did, and she reclaims her agency as well as her will to live. i feel like the monstrosity vs. normalcy framework ignores the fact that both ginger and brigitte are actively suicidal at the beginning of the movie - the first shot we get of ginger is her holding a knife to her wrist. at the beginning, brigitte hesitantly agrees to their suicide pact despite her obvious reservations. at the end, she strongly asserts, “i’m not dying in this room with you. i’m not dying.” so if we consider ginger’s mimetic role for brigitte, killing her isn’t reestablishing the social norm, it’s rejecting her own destructive and suicidal tendencies. i think her narrative arc teaches her: 1) how to make her own decisions separate from ginger and have agency in her own life, 2) recognition of her mother’s feelings of estrangement from her family, 3) how to connect with other people in a way that isn’t codependent, 4) rejection of suicide ideation. all of these lessons are ways of treating yourself and others with respect, compassion, and understanding - even though brigitte doesn’t change dramatically, magically becoming a saccharinely nice person or a social butterfly. she maintains her isolation and personality much more than ginger does over the course of the film. while at the beginning their fascination with their own deaths “not only demonstrates the duo’s disgust at the banality of their suburban surroundings, it also proclaims their self-stylized exclusion from the heterosexually fueled dynamics of the teen scene” (via menstrual monsters: the reception of the ginger snaps cult horror franchise), it’s ginger, not brigitte, who ends up participating in this “compulsive heterosexing high school culture,” where brigitte’s choice to not commit suicide isn’t her opting into this culture, but attempting to find a less destructive way of escaping or coping with it.

flaherty argues that because brigitte’s first period is never discussed in the films, “she remains a child and therefore is unable to understand the true restrictiveness of woman as Other, what leads ginger to eventually embrace and enjoy her monstrosity,” but in unleashed, a fair amount of time has passed and i think it’s fair to say that brigitte no longer seems child-like (that role is assumed by ghost), and also she starts experiencing the same kind of monstrous sexuality as ginger did in the first movie - i think it misrepresents her characterization in the sequel to say that she maintains “child” status. i also think it’s not relevant to try to distinguish between “girl” and “woman” in terms of the monstrous-feminine. she still experiences alienation and otherness because she’s female and transgresses gender roles. so.... i don’t know. it’s a weird argument to make, especially since, like i said before, i consider this story a kind of coming of age for both sisters. “lycanthropy and femaleness” are not “ultimately unknowable” to her because.... she does become a werewolf over the course of both movies and she’s already female (like..... getting your period doesn’t magically make you a Real Woman lol)

i also think it’s significant that as a stand-alone movie (ignoring the sequel, which is worth watching but seriously bleak as hell) the ending is tragic but tacitly hopeful as well - as far as we know at that point brigitte has the cure (which actually works!) and is not going to kill herself. in her final confrontation with ginger, she has the cure in one hand and a knife in the other hand, and i think that nicely represents the choice that is hanging over her head the entire movie: choosing to live or choosing to die. (flaherty calls this “a telling moment of double phallic-appropriation” which..... meh. okay. not every weapon/tool used in a horror movie has to be a phallic symbol but also, sure, whatever. that’s one way to read it i guess). ginger made her decision at the very beginning of the movie

this quote by karen walton expresses this interpretation really well:

The two sisters had this childhood bond with their pact. These two sisters were also best friends who created a bubble for themselves and took strength from each other, nourished and informed each other for a long time; but the film is not just the story of Ginger turning into a monster. It is also a story about Brigitte surviving her sister who is on a death spiral. Ginger's is a story of self-destruction. But where people get confused is that they think Ginger is the hero, but the film is really about a sister who survives a sister, who survives a best friend. An intimate relationship that becomes unhealthy and deadly.

and i’ve talked a little bit about why i feel uncomfortable with attaching a ~*girl power*~ narrative to ginger so i won’t get to much into that but i have some thoughts about that here

also i’ve said a little bit about this before and i am basically copy/pasting from a post i already made but with a doppelgänger story like this, especially with a focus on women and madness, to me it immediately brings to mind jane eyre. i am thinking in terms of the mimetic function of jane/bertha and brigitte/ginger, with the repressed emotions and desires of the protagonist coming through in the actions of the “madwoman” character. especially brigitte’s assertion of “now i am you” when she voluntarily lets ginger turn her into a werewolf. the “madwoman” is portrayed as bestial, hypersexual, intemperate with substances, jealous, vengeful, as well as dealing with extreme anger toward confinement (ginger’s panic at getting locked up and her escape and weaponized sexuality brand of revenge is so similar to bertha like. trying to burn rochester alive and biting her brother badly enough that he passes out and other shit like that). but ALSO the other women in jane eyre have a mimetic function as well, where they can be read as potential paths for jane to follow (these choices generally can be summarized as dead or married). i think ginger snaps can be read the same way - ginger, trina, and her mother are the models of womanhood brigitte is presented with, and she is repeatedly told that what’s happening to ginger is normal, that all women experience that, and soon she will too. like the women in jane eyre, they’re models of femininity that she rejects but has to navigate because there are no other models for her. these three characters are either killed (directly or indirectly) or abandoned by her by the end of the movie. it’s actually ginger who defines the roles that women are cast into: “a slut, a bitch, a tease, or the virgin next door.” this is similar the female archetypes that jane has to navigate (and resist) throughout jane eyre. anyway this is a really roundabout way of saying that although brigitte does reject her worldview from the beginning of the movie, she doesn’t accept social order and normalcy. she doesn’t fall into any easily defined category. which is the point - “no one thinks girls do fucked up shit” but of course they do, no one thinks they can be more complex than these categories but of course they are, no one entertains the possibility that brigitte isn’t going to follow some made up universal experience of girlhood but she resists that through the end of the movie. she’s still a total weirdo <3

so yeah, i will also disagree with the assertion that both sisters lose their identities, because while i think there is a loss or a shift of identity in both ginger and brigitte, like flaherty argues, part of brigitte’s narrative arc is figuring out who she is without her dependence on her sister. brigitte saying “now i am you” feels less about loss of identity to me than actually identifying herself with the traits she sees (or used to see) in ginger - where ginger’s response (“i know you are, but what am i?”) indicates actual loss of identity rather than something transitory

oh and also one of the main claims of this paper is that the male werewolf’s source of pain is beyond the “lifetime of morning-afters where he must confront the previous night’s excess,” and is really his “bodily alignment with another ungraspable Other, the woman” which 1) i don’t think follows the definition of the Other she establishes earlier in the paper as something that is repressed in a self or society - this use of “otherness” seems more about alignment with something different than his own identity and less about the jekyll and hyde comparison she evokes with the expression of a repressed self (imo i don’t think she should’ve used that story to support her argument since it isn’t actually about werewolves, even though i get her point about the repressed self, it’s kind of irrelevant to her argument), 2) brigitte in the first movie doesn’t seem repressed to me - she genuinely doesn’t seem to have the same impulses as ginger does and it’s not until the sequel that she actively is attempting to repress the changes that are happening to her; however, since the paper does concern the whole trilogy, i think the point is still valid, but there’s such a heavy focus on the first movie that i feel the need to dispute that interpretation of her character arc, and 3) i don’t think this interpretation really lines up with classic werewolf movies - there’s nothing particularly feminine about your standard werewolf except arguably the cyclical alignment with the moon that ginger snaps uses as a menstruation metaphor, but like. for example. i would never watch an american werewolf in london and think, “oh, his distress isn’t actually about killing innocent people, loss of control, loss of sanity, guilt and mourning because of the death of his friend, a predetermined fate, and suicide, it’s about him being female-coded” or something. like, yes, “the tragedy of the male werewolf is believed to lie exclusively in the deep anguish he feels in violating the very societal boundaries he has come to live under” and it’s interesting to dig deeper into that in terms of gender and sexuality, but i don’t think femaleness is inherent in the distress of the male werewolf - of course this is true in ginger snaps (with jason’s transformation being particularly distressing to him because it mirrors menstruation). the assertion that the classic werewolf “bleeds uncontrollably until his transformation is complete” similarly seems unfounded to me because i’ve never seen that in werewolf movies and she doesn’t cite where she finds that symptom of the transformation - maybe i am missing something there? if anyone knows of a depiction where that’s the case let me know, because that’s definitely a stronger argument for werewolves = menstruation-coded.

and re: the quote i cited earlier about werewolves = femininity taken to the extreme: i don’t think that argument holds true in the classic depiction/cultural perception of the werewolf. i think this post makes a more supportable (and concise) argument:

There are hardly any female werewolves because they break all the classic rules of femininity. They force you to confront female violence, strength, size, grotesqueness and uncontrollability. Historically female shapeshifters always shift into something dangerous (snake) or sleek (cat) or dainty (bird) but female werewolves ignore the masculine gaze completely. They're distorted beasts that have no ulterior motive except to destroy. Nothing about them is nurturing or modest. They're the opposite of what a woman "should be." Their omission from pop culture is not an accident.

all that being said, i did enjoy this article, especially starting at the section titled “wrists are for girls; i’m slitting my throat:” ginger fitzgerald’s monstrosity and all the stuff about ginger’s transformation as a reflection of "monstrosity” as a teenage girl, and suburban landscape of repression. one description of brigitte’s conflict that i actually really like: “unlike the male werewolf’s double, brigitte yearns not for the eradication of her other half but for the reconciliation.” i think it’s a really interesting read, even if i don’t agree with a lot of it. and maybe i’m way off base? maybe i’m interpreting brigitte as a character too generously? let me know what you guys think

#ginger snaps #hell is a teenage girl #anyway..... i've got some opinions #i have no outlet for ranting about ginger snaps OR jane eyre anymore so just.... bear with me #suicide tw #long post

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cactus-bun · 3 years

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you don’t have to answer this if it’s too personal of a question- but what makes you like the two characters you draw so much? i don’t even know them unfortunately because the PMMM app got closed here in the US, so i wanted to know if there was some story that appealed to you but if this is too intrusive of a question feel free to not answer it! i am sorry if that is the case also

Oh, no, it's fine... the thing is I'm not really sure either? I have a LOT of thoughts on those two and my opinion on them tends to change every 5 hours or so, like a rotation... but anyway! I'll try my best to answer this. Please be aware of spoilers, and also general incoherent emotional vomit on my part… I’ll put my answer under a readmore because it got kinda long.

So first off the bat: Yes, there was/is a story that particularly appealed to me: the event that came with their release as playable characters (I can't say debut event because they did have earlier appearances, Ryouko even made it into ENreco lmao.)

I'll Keep Waving At You (I call it Waving for short since there are a bunch of different translations) is one of my favourite events in Magireco, which... admittedly may not be saying much, since I'm relatively neutral towards most events… but anyway. The event isn't translated into English yet but it is in Chinese, both fan-translated and official (on the TW version), so I can read it without having to rely on a Japanese dictionary. At the time of release, the event pretty much sold me on their relationship even though I couldn’t understand it fully due to the language barrier. Without going into it too much, the gist is that they meet by coincidence in a witch barrier, Ryouko solves a large problem that’s been deteriorating Sakuya’s wellbeing by being very nosy, they get along for half a day and then break off their relationship temporarily after agreeing to really become friends once the Arc 2 war is over. It’s all very fast-paced. There are a lot of great moments in the event but my favourite is probably this little internal monologue from Ryouko near the end of the event, right before they break up:

南津涼子: この時あたしは決めたんだ決めたというか…目標？

Ryouko: It was at this moment that I made up my mind. Or perhaps I should say… set a goal?

南津涼子: あたしはいつも「世の中のため」なんてめちゃくちゃ大袈裟な理由で戦ってる

Ryouko: I’d always been fighting for nonsensical and exaggerated reasons like “for the good of the world”.

南津涼子: それに比べたらめちゃくちゃ個人的で小さな目標だけど

Ryouko: Even though this is just an extremely personal and small goal compared to that

南津涼子: でも同じくらいの強い決心だ

Ryouko: my resolution is just as strong.

南津涼子: …さくやを縛るものから解放する

Ryouko: … I will release Sakuya from her binds.

南津涼子: そう、決めたんだ

Ryouko: That was what I decided.

shitty translation cause i did it but the gist is there. she cares so much i lose it every time i read this part. man. there’s just something about the way their characters mesh… oh also i should mention that one of ryouko’s overarching themes, the way i see it at least, seems to be “greater good vs personal desires”. the reason i say this is because ryouko’s a good buddhist, yeah? raised in a temple by her strict grandfather, being in the tokime clan, which fights for the good of japan, fighting for the good of the world, etc. but there are also a lot of times when her personal desires arise, like when she feels sakuya’s thighs up during their first meeting, her never actually cooking buddhist cuisine for the tokimes despite her being a buddhist and their Kamihama base being a buddhist temple with monks in it because she doesn’t like how bland buddhist cuisine is, and some of her voicelines:

hidden homescreen tap:

お前さん、意外といい体してんなぁ…！触っていいか？

“You (the player) have an unexpectedly nice body…! May I touch it?”

MSS select:

いっ…行かん！ついつい煩悩が…！

“It’s… It’s no good! Against my better judgement my worldly desires are…!”

doppel voiceline:

世界の平和か、あたしの幸せか？

“World peace, or my happiness?”

like that. yeah. so how that’s relevant… yeah i actually might’ve gotten a little sidetracked. originally their relationship was more like a romeo and juliet kind of thing, since they’re keeping each other in mind despite being in enemy factions, but since sakuya’s recently been out there doing some pretty outrageous stuff under PB, maybe it’s now more like the “falling for the wrong crowd” sorta trope. but i still want them to be able to resolve their issues. but i also have very low expectations on that cause 1) they’re minor characters and 2) i am not a fan of how the main story is written (this is an understatement) and i highly doubt anything will be resolved properly, if at all. but it’s fine. i’ve mostly made peace with it (i haven’t, it’s more of a resigned acceptance) and i also think that their relationship can be interpreted in different ways and still be interesting.

anyway not sure if anyone can tell but my feelings towards these two and their relationship are, as i said, very volatile. heck i think they may have changed at least 3 times while i was writing this. but i really want them to be able to work towards a proper resolution together…… (dead fish eye)

aaaaaaand i ended up answering nothing. but yeah. it was one specific story that drew me to them because they never got any event appearances after that except maybe the tsuruno/felicia pre-christmas event, but those technically aren’t actually them (i ended up overanalyzing that segment anyway.) out of all the magireco ships there are of course i end up obsessing over the one that breaks up so hard it becomes a 4* memoria LMAO

but anyway! thank you for the ask. pardon the incoherence but this was a pretty great opportunity to sort out my thoughts!

#ask #thanks for the ask!

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 4 years

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songs on taylor swift’s LOVER (2019), a concept album about eliot waugh and quentin coldwater from SYFY’s the magicians, rated by how much they are about eliot waugh and quentin coldwater from SYFY’s the magicians

i forgot that you existed - lmao these dummies will never be over each other. bumped a bit because it would be good on the soundtrack for the fic i still kinda want someone to write where eliot gets brainwashed by the dark king who for god’s sake is not trying to bring back to life his beloved who died because of homophobia and gets catfished by his dead brother but is just a supernatural evil despot manipulating eliot’s pain and erasing his memories of quentin only to be defeated of course by the power of true love. weak showing to start but things quickly improve. 2/10

cruel summer - this is a song about being out of your mind with horniness for someone you would rather die than admit you’ve caught feelings for, which is.... VERY queliot. love eliot watching quentin at a hotel vending machine at night and insisting to himself, “i’m not dying.” good for a non-beast AU where quentin dates alice and eliot dates some non-possessed normie boy and they both get dumped finals week and get obliteratingly drunk in the physical kids’ cottage as bros and hook up and wake up like “LOL haha rebound sex” and then it happens again and they’re like, sure, you know, why not, you’re heartbroken, i’m heartbroken, let’s help each other forget about it by fucking like rabbits, except of course by august eliot is drunk in the back of the car crying like a baby coming home from the bar because he is not fine about all the times he has told quentin it’s fine. ALTERNATELY this is actually just quentin in the mosaic timeline after they hook up and he wakes up in the morning totally ready to talk about how they’re dating now and eliot is like LET’S NOT OVERTHINK THINGS and quentin’s like, haha yeah ok! and they keep having mindblowing outdoor sex but like as bros and quentin regrets every waking moment agreeing to pretend not to overthink things with his best friend who is amazing in bed and who also he is definitely falling in love with. “breakable heaven” is a good description of the mosaic timeline, because many pieces and because it broke by never happening. bonus point because “i love you, ain’t that the worse thing you ever heard?” is SO eliot and also SO quentin in related but distinct ways. 8/10

lover - UGH!!!! SO QUELIOT!!!! “have i known you twenty seconds or twenty years” vs. “i bond fast, time is an illusion.” “can i go where you go” for two people who have been thrown together and torn apart so many times is wildly romantic. “my heart’s been borrowed and your heart’s been blue” = i dated a possessed guy and then became a possessed guy and you are chronically depressed. “you’ll save all your dirtiest jokes for me” is all about eliot’s smirks. i ALREADY have feelings about taylor swift, a human being who spent most of her adult life ruled by the lingering wounds of having been uncool in eighth grade, putting in her big sweet love song the line, “and at every table i’ll save you a seat,” but i have SO MANY MORE feelings when i apply that to quentin coldwater, who ate lunch in the bathroom on days that julia was absent because of the horror of finding somewhere to sit in the high school cafeteria. 9/10

the man - margo says she hates this song because it’s white feminism but whenever she gets drunk at karaoke she makes quentin sing it with her. he always flips his hair on “i’d be just like leo in st tropez,” because he is the only other person besides taylor swift in america uncool enough to think that’s still a reference that conjures up associations of a sexy awesome playboy. 3/10

the archer - FUCKING!!!!!!!!!!! GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is... ok. ok. i’m calm. this is the eliot song of all time. “i’m ready for combat / i say i don’t want that / but what if i do” is about eliot’s reactivity and his fear that on some level he wants to blow everything up more than he wants to be loved. we don’t know what started the fight we see in the mosaic timeline but what we glimpse is very “cruelty wins in the movies”: this impulse to win by pushing the other person away to avoid your own vulnerability. “i’ve got a hundred thrown out speeches i almost said to you” is eliot unpossessed after quentin is alive but before he and alice have broken up thinking about all the apologetic true love confessions he made charlton watch him rehearse. “i search for your dark side / but what if i’m alright right right right here” is about refusing to believe in good things because they are so threatening when your formative experiences of love and family were so unsafe. “i cut off my nose just to spite my face / and i hate my reflection for years and years” is, quite literally, just the exact plot of 4x05. “i wake in the night / i pace like a ghost / the room is on fire / invisible smoke” is more A+ abandonment issues content, and i can’t even TALK about “all of my heroes die all alone” in the context of eliot waugh who FULLY has on MANY occasions raised a toast to living fast dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse and has never himself been wholly sure exactly how much he was kidding. “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men / couldn’t put me together again / cuz all of my enemies started out friends” is first of all a very funny thing for a former high king of fillory to say, and second upsetting because MOSAIC, PIECES, MINOR MENDINGS, ELIOT SEES HIMSELF AS A BROKEN THING, and third devastating because of how much of the Trauma Chalkboard involves times eliot has betrayed other people. ok FINE we can start talking about the refrains now, even though they CAUSE ME THE MOST PAIN. “help me hold on to you” is the subtext of every post-4x13 queliot fic for the very good reason that it’s the most vulnerable and beautiful and real thing eliot could ever say. “i’ve been the archer / i’ve been the prey” is again about eliot as a person full of regret for all the ways he has lashed out in his life against people other than the ones who wounded him so deeply. “screaming who could ever leave me darling / but who could stay” is sooooo eliot, with the drama and affect of it all (“darling!”), and the performed belief in his own excellence combined with his deep insecurity. “they see right through me” is about how he’s secretly afraid everyone can smell on him that he grew up on a farm in indiana, “can you see right through me” is about both fearing and hoping that quentin will see all of him, “i see right through me” is about how hard he’s lied to himself about wanting love. the best song in the world probably. 20/10.

i think he knows - my favorite thing about adult taylor swift referencing anything about adolescence is that taylor swift had a totally deranged abnormal adolescence because she spent the whole thing first trying to be famous and then actually being outrageously famous. so i love it when she says “it’s like i’m 17 nobody understands,” because when she was actually 17 she was dating a jonas brother for like 3 months and then writing break-up songs that made it sound like she was never that into it, so it’s like this idea of being 17 and hormonal in some kind of normal context where you actually are thinking about sex all day instead of meeting with your branding team. this is a fun idea to extrapolate to eliot & quentin, who were both miserable at 17 and never got the experience of devoting your brain full-time to all-consuming horniness for the first person to ever give you an orgasm, but who can now experience that with each other. also “his hands around a cold glass make me wanna know that body like it’s mine” is a queliot line because of my very strong personal headcanon that eliot is obsessed with quentin’s hands. 6/10

miss americana and the heartbreak prince - see above re: tswift & teenhood. "when i was 16 / lost in a film scene” is even better because actual teen taylor swift spent many hours of her life literally acting out on film these like pathologically normative high school scenarios that she never lived because she dropped out after ninth grade, and because this song is all about like, image vs reality but is also itself a fantasy? fucked up and weird, i love it. taylor swift spent so many years portraying her specific teen shame as being about her deep dweebery and i think it’s really funny that in this song she is still an outcast but now it is because she is like, too sexy and misbehaving, both through the line “they whisper in the hallways she’s a bad bad girl” and by setting it to basically a lana del rey track. i feel like this is a very eliot move, to rewrite your own history of exclusion as more glamorous and flattering than it was, to portray yourself as like this debauched rebel instead of a sad gay kid in a homophobic environment. eliot obviously was never enamored with this kind of stock teen americana imagery the way taylor was, but i think he has that same tension of deeply resenting one image while being very drawn to another one. extra point because “heartbreak prince” is such a hilarious and amazing way to describe quentin. 7/10

paper rings - good song for a very chill no-beast AU. “i like fancy things but i’d marry you with paper rings” is very eliot. it’s cute to imagine eliot reading all of the books besides quentin’s bed not because he likes them but because he wants to get to know quentin better. “i want your dreary mondays” is a nice thing for either of these dudes to hear. 5/10

cornelia street - all songs about being overwhelmed and terrified by love are about eliot waugh!!!!! especially songs where someone does something casually that is clearly not casual at all. it rules that both of the key metaphors in the verses are extremely quentin images: fresh page on the desk / card sharks playing games. stories and magic! thinking about eliot and quentin barefoot in a kitchen together makes me want to cry, for normal reasons. 8/10

death by a thousand cuts - i have to be honest, for a long time i thought it sucked that the best song on this album was actually not about queliot, but then i saw the light and realized that this is a song about how totally incomprehensible it is that you’re supposed to just move on with your life when someone you loved absolutely is no longer yours, so ACTUALLY, this song is totally about quentin after the mosaic! “i ask the traffic lights if it’ll be alright / they say i don’t know.” trying to be normal while secretly dying inside. “i look through the windows of this love, even though we boarded them up / chandelier’s still flickering here” = i said it was chill when you compartmentalized our 50 years as soulmates as something that happened to other people but actually the me i am right now wants you real bad! “what once was ours is no one’s now” because it happened in an alternate timeline that never existed. “you said it was a great love / one for the ages / but if the story’s over / why am i still writing pages” = you said it was kind of beautiful but also that wasn’t really me but if so then why do i want to bone you so bad. gets even more fucked up if you extend it properly into season 4. MY HEART MY HIPS MY BODY MY LOVE / TRYING TO FIND A PART OF ME THAT YOU DIDN’T TOUCH: a line i can only ever type in all-caps and about which i can say nothing because it is perfect. “gave up on me like i was a bad drug” is also very quentin reflecting bitterly on eliot. saying goodbye to your possessed ex is death by a thousand cuts because that’s how many times the monster sockpuppeting his body is going to randomly show up in your apartment covered in blood. the morning comes and you’re not my baby, because you have been possessed. flashbacks waking me up because i have PTSD now from watching your body murder like 80 people. 8/10

london boy - lmao. no 0/10

soon you’ll get better - I Feel Weird Jokingly Assigning A Rating To Taylor Swift’s Very Sad Song About How Taylor Swift’s Actual Mom Has Actual Cancer Based On How Much It Relates To A Fictional Couple In Which One Person Has A Parent Who Dies Of Cancer So I’m Going To Rate This Not Applicable. N/A. great song tho

false god - jesus, does she really go london boy / soon you’ll get better / false god? her sequencing is so deranged. anyway i know i was JUST talking about my interest in fic where quentin and eliot get together but don’t necessarily talk out every single one of their 800 issues in the timespan covered by the story, but this song about make-up sex is still not very queliot to me, possibly because i cannot get past the dorkiness of taylor swift calling herself new york city. “you can't talk to me when I'm like this / daring you to leave me just so I can try and scare you” is pretty good though. “if you want to live your life live it here...” damn eliot waugh and taylor swift really are like the same person on the level of psychological architecture. i know i keep saying it but it keeps freaking me out. 4/10

you should calm down - eliot unfollowed jonathan van ness on twitter after the video for this came out. he unfollowed antoni too but then refollowed him because he’s hot. -1000000/10.

afterglow - so THIS song about fighting actually DOES have very queliot vibes. and it’s funny, because i keep talking about eliot’s fear of lashing out and hurtfully pushing away people he loves, and i think he does have that impulse (”if you want to live your life live it here...” what did you MEAN eliot), and i also think he’s SUPER afraid of that within himself, partly because of how the dynamics of his childhood make anger and conflict really fraught for him... but actually the character we more often see being a huge dick because of his own issues is, in fact, quentin, and that is who this song about. we all know i am obsessed with the scene where quentin comes sheepishly back to alice apologizing for being an asshole because it’s so vulnerable and honest and such a powerful moment of growth for him... as robbed as i feel of like tearfully joyful queliot reunions i also feel robbed that we never got to see quentin and eliot have a moment like that together! 7/10

me! - absolutely not. -30/10

it’s nice to have a friend - i like this song but the way taylor talks about it always makes me kind of sad, because she draws this equivalence between being excited about a friend as a kid and being excited about romance as an adult that really does make it sound like she thinks in adulthood romance takes over a place that friendship used to occupy, instead of co-existing with it... but she’s also talked a lot about the importance of finding who her real friends are so idk maybe i’m being too hard on her and also oversensitive because of certain plot developments. “call my bluff / call you babe” is cute. card sharks! pet names! 5/10

daylight - R U KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE QUELIOT ANTHEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! two people who have been hurt and hurt others, who have spent a long time running away from their own hearts, who have been confused about what they want... “i wounded the good and i trusted the wicked / clearing the air i breathed in the smoke” about every mistake and regret and fuck-up... “maybe you ran with the wolves and refused to settle down / maybe i’ve stormed out of every single room in this town”... the trauma chalkboard, the fight outside the hedge bar... the people you become to try to erase the person you’re afraid you are... and then! “throw out our cloaks and our daggers because it’s morning now / it’s brighter now”... to find peace in the person you never need to hide yourself from... the transformative power of letting yourself be seen... “i can still see it all in my mind / all of you all of me intertwined”... i can still remember this other life that never happened which matters not because it’s where i fell in love with you but because it’s where i revealed my whole self and learned that whole self could be loved.... and of course above all most crucially, “i once believed love would be burning red / but it’s golden / like daylight”... the very beautiful story the magicians accidentally almost told was a story about letting go of the narratives you’ve been taught to want and realizing that as much as real life and hard and scary it is also lovelier than any of those wan old stories... “i wanna be defined by the things that i love, not the things that i hate, or the things that i’m afraid of”... please!!!!!!! 100000000000000/10

#the magicians #queliot #we're doing. great. just. just having fun normal times qreating quarantine qontent #no readmores we alienate our followers like men #if u can't handle me at my Completely Fucking Losing My Entire Mind About Something Fully Unhinged #this is not the blog for u my friend

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 4 years

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Avatar: The Last Airbender episode 3x17 ☆ﾟ*･｡*

Me: are they really preparing to take down the Fire Lord in the Fire Lord’s beach house *one second later* Katara: are we really preparing to take down the Fire Lord in the Fire Lord’s beach house

Asdfghjkl a playwright has written a play about them collecting information from people all around the world such as singers, pirates, prisoners “and a surprisingly knowledgeable merchant of cabbage” :’)

Ladies gentlemen and gentlepersons it is Let’s Shatter The Fourth Wall Time! Our favorite time. *rubs hands excitedly together*

Apparently Zuko’s mother loved the theater company but Zuko hated to go see them XD

“This is the kind of wacky time-wasting nonsense I’ve been missing!” you were the one obsessed with schedule Sokka :p

Oh boi this is going to be a trip XD

Each of them is outraged about how they portrayed them... but also having fun about how the others are portrayed :3 They’re making so many excellent faces

Lmao nobody involved in the script knew that the Blue Spirit and Zuko are the same person XD

Oops this is how Suki finds out about Sokka and Yue ^^;

“So far, this intermission is the best part of the play.”

“Apparently, the playwright thinks I’m an idiot who tells bad jokes about meat all the time!” “Yeah, you tell bad jokes about plenty of other topics” “I know!”

Aang complains about the woman playing him not resembling him at all - “I don’t know, you are more in touch with your feminine side than most guys” lol

“Relax Aang, they’re not accurate portrayals. It’s not like I’m a preach crybaby who can’t resist giving overemotional speeches about hope all the time”

Toph is having the time of her life...

And then the character Toph appears, and it’s a large buff guy. Katara jabs at her... “Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t have cast it any other way!” It’s absolutely inaccurate, but Toph is loving it XD

This is it, this is the show:

“Zuko, it’s time we had a talk about your hair. It’s gone too far!” “Maybe it’s best if we *dramatic plause* split. up.”

“You caught me... Wait, what’s that? I think it’s your honor!” “Where?!”

“Did Jet just... die?” “You know, it was really unclear” lmao

Oh no the play makes Katara/Zuko canon XD

Whoops, it really hits right at Aang’s fears... okay, alright, the dumb play is actually making me okay with the concept of Aang/Katara lmao

And the Ba Sing Se betrayal scene hits right at Zuko’s guilt regarding his uncle.

And the act ends with the Avatar’s defeat...

Poor Aang...

“Suki, what are the chances you can get me backstage [...]?” “I’m an elite warrior who’s trained for many years in the art of stealth... I think I can get you backstage.”

AWWWWW Toph hearthens Zuko about his uncle this is so super wholesome I am an emotion <3 <3 <3

“Ow! What was that for!” “That’s how I show affection ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

I love how Toph didn’t even need Zuko to prove his worth to her in any way for her to accept him as a friend. She heard the earnestness in his voice and bam she was in for the friendship ride or die. She does know what it means to desperately need to prove your worth in the face of messed-up parental expectations. Her parents’ expectations for her and Zuko’s father’s expectations for him were completely opposites but you know what they say about extremes...

“Your Zuko costume is pretty good, but the scar is on the wrong side” “The scar is not on the wrong side!”

Awww Sokka giving joke ideas to his actor XD

Aang confronts Katara about her feelings, but she says she is confused and he messes up by kissing her without her consent. Aang, I was rooting for you a minute ago! Neither of them is in the right place for a relationship at all right now, but I’m sure the show will not actually address the issue properly. In a few years a relationship between them could work, but now, eeh.

Awww the actor uses Sokka’s tips XD Suki is contemplating her life choices...

The play catches up with the present, and the rest is the playwright’s imagination. Well, we are in the Fire Nation, so I can imagine how it will go...

Admittedly, Play!Azula and Play!Zuko are not even as dramatic as the real deal.

Whoops. Azula kills Zuko and everyone cheers.

And Ozai kills Aang, celebrates his victory and everybody cheers even louder.

“That wasn’t a good play” “I’ll say” “No kidding” “Horrible” “You said it” “But the effects were decent!” that’s what I thought too XD

Oh man this was so much fun ^-^

#marghe watches atla #atla

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threeletterslife · 3 years

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CHjakldfjskANA I am lowkey embarrassed to say that I am confused by pt 2 of Ignis Fatuus ;-; I get what happens literally, but I'm pretty sure I'm missing out on all of the more underlying messages and what the ending is supposed to represent and what you were intending to convey ;-; I guess I'll just talk about parts that I thiNk I understood and hopefully won't make me sound like an idiot :D I really liked how the endings to both the dream and reality were paralleled,

but houf I was kind of exasperated in the beginning when everyone was dying on the hypothetical trip to the hospital. I always kind of felt like they would just let Y/N die, because logically speaking, even if they ended up at the hospital, none of them are really qualified to treat TSS so they would just be going on a suicide mission because as shown, zombies are e v e r y wh e r e :D So when it was revealed that was only a dream, I was like yAY thank goodness :,,) The part at the end before

Y/N dies when Jungkook corrects her saying “it’s did well and not did good” was a reaLLY nice way to end things though :,) jklsfjkls I don’t know, Chana pls send help+explanations because I’m definitely only understanding the very surface level ideas of Ignis Fatuus D: I think the very vEry ending though is a big part of the whole Ignis Fatuus thing though because back in pt 1 in Target Jungkook was like omg yes don’t worry Y/N things will be over and we’ll definitely be able to play baseball

again without any zombies around, but aaa Chana why are there thRee “endings”,, that’s making me think there’s something very elaborate about how all of the endings could be tied together/are related :,D 🌻 anyways I think? the first part to my ask might've not gone through because it didn't have the "thank you, your ask has been received" message when I clicked ask but o well :,) it was just me lowkey embarrassing myself because I am confused on the ending of Ignis Fatuus :,)

[SPOILER WARNING!]

GOOD NEWS! the first part of your ask WAS received!! and omg yes i totally understand ignis fatuus pt 2 was kinda hectic so lemme just clear up the confusion ✨

i think the whole ignis fatuus stORY is a bit hard to digest. the only ‘realistic’ element in the story is really that the members self-quarantined LOL. other than that, i really took inspiration from the office (though it may not seem like that). jungkook and yn are the only “normal” ones in the group of eight just like jim and pam were the only normal ones in an office full of crackheads LMAO. i just thought it would be cool to tell the story of two normal pple stuck with six other crazies (all equally obsessed with something different. i mean namjoon studying DURING the apocalypse?? seokjin obsessed with the kitchen? hoseok obsessed with his secretary??) and i chose to go for a very subtle romance so it wouldn’t overshadow the other dynamic characters

to elaborate on the endings!

the first one (the one that yn dreams): only in her wildest dreams would the seven men yn’s learned to love and live with DIE to save her. i mean, in a sick, twisted way, isn’t that what so many romance movies depict? the knight sacrifices his life to save his princess. it’s shit that only happens in your head. it’s tragic and stupid, yes, but also honorable in it’s own way. maybe yn subconsciously wanted all seven men to help save her life (even though it wouldn’t logically make sense). but maybe she wanted a knight in shining armor. i mean, isn’t that what media brainwashes women to think? yn’s dream is her subconscious acting up. she’s a helpless woman (sick from a mf bacterial infection that women mostly get) and she must depend on men to save her. but the end of her dream concludes that it’s not a matter of who saves who. some people just can’t be saved. yn doesn’t have a knight in shining armor. even before she got sick, she is a strong, independent woman. jungkook offers her emotional support, but he never outwardly saves her from any disasters. in fact, in part 1, yn is the on who saves jk. maybe, in yn’s subconscious, she wants to be saved. who doesn’t? it’s not a female v. male thing. being saved just means doing less work (and who doesn’t want that?). the savior, on the other hand, must go through the trauma and carry the responsibility of another’s life. maybe that’s why yn had her dream! another, more obvious reason yn’s dream turned out that way may be because that’s her worst fear—watching everyone she cared about die in front of her eyes (but also being too helpless to be able to stop it). she’s also afraid of dying alone, which she did in her dream. you’re absolutely right though! the second part of ignis fatuus is supposed to make you feel exasperated—frustrated and pissed, even. it’s just supposed to be nonsense, honestly. just stupid shit happening in rapid succession. it’s literally a fever dream. and also a dream carefully crafted by yn’s subconscious

a lot of the ‘deeper’ meaning is very subjective, though! and even as the writer, my analysis is still subjective. you can honestly analyze ignis fatuus in so many other ways. no analysis is wrong. and it’s also perfectly fine to have no analysis at all!

the second ending (with yn actually dying) is easier to explain. it’s a direct contrast from yn’s dream where everyone was trying to be the hero. reality is different. even at the end of part 1, joon and jk knew that they wouldn’t be able to take yn to the hospital. yoongi even knew yn would die. they wouldn’t even think of such an outrageous idea to go to the hospital at all. they may have hinted taking yn to the hospital only to make her feel better, to make her feel safe. but they would’ve never actually done it. the plan was always to let her die in the house (as sad as it sounds). but there was really nothing left to do! as you said, none of them (even joon and tae) is qualified to treat tss (nor do they have the medical equipment to do so). the second ending is more of the closure that the first ending didn’t provide. yn wished to die in jk’s arms in the first ending and she got what she wanted in the second ending. but i still didn’t exactly think ending the story with yn’s death (tWICE) would be the best. something didn’t feel right. so i felt like i had to add the third ending for better closure

and you’re totally right! i connected the third ending to what jk and yn had talked about in target. this is essentially a glimpse of their dreams come true. something that didn’t necessarily happen, but something that the readers can imagine and feel at peace with. i thought it was good to wrap up such a traumatic part 2 with something lighter, something sillier and something happier. ignis fatuus is a mf roller coaster. and the title itself ‘ignis fatuus’ literally means something deceptive/deluding. i think part 2 encompassed that well

as for the purpose of this story? to answer the question you may be having, “if yn died after this whole ass journey,,, what was the mf POINT?” maybe there isn’t a point. maybe there is no rhyme or reason. maybe i just told a story as it is. kind of like a reference to waiting for godot but on the less indifferent side. BUT! i would honestly argue that there IS a point! i think the relationship yn made with the seven very distinct men is special. the seven of them are depictions of very stereotypical men. a nerdy med school student, a grumpy bus driver, an impatient businessman, a spoiled daddy’s money lawyer, a scaredy-cat cop, an obsessive chef and a too-perfect-to-be-true baseball player. i think part 1 is interesting to see how the eight of them have created this synergy together. it’s also interesting to see in part 2 how yn twists the men’s stereotypes to fit in the fever dream narrative

ignis fatuus is one of my more depressing stories. i had the idea since january of 2019 so i spent quite a bit of time thinking about it before i decided to write it. i didn’t think i’d end on a lighter note, but i’m happy it turned out that way.

aNYWAYS sorry this turned out so long 😭😭😭i guess i rambled too much again oOPS. but i swear you’ll get a break from all this depressing writing LOL. i’m not posting another official story until january 15th! (and GOOD NEWS that story is going to be FLUFF!)

as usual thank you sm for such a kind message 🥺🥺

#ask #anon #🌻 anon #ignis fatuus

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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January 27: 2x04 Mirror Mirror

Had some technical difficulties but finally managed to watch Mirror Mirror. (Now I’m very tired.)

I see these aliens are more intense pacifists than Spock.

When Kirk says “But we won’t [force you], consider that,” right over his shoulder and into camera, it looks like he’s posing for a commercial.

Ah ha, the Classic Transporter Accident. (Aka how that became a classic trope lol.)

I love that they zero in on Spock’s beard first thing, like that’s the weirdest part of this universe.

Oh no, the agonizer!

So my big question is: do all the ISS Captains wear that gold vest or is it a Kirk thing? I just find it very funny that the men in the mirrorverse wear about the same amount of clothing as in the regular universe, and the ladies wear a lot less...and then there’s Kirk, conspicuously showing off his arms. Vests are NOT regulation!

When does he get a chance to record his log? And wouldn’t it be... recorded in the mirrorverse?

Kirk’s salute is hilarious. Uh, yeah, salute and wave, I guess??

He’s really focused on Spock. “Another ship. Another Spock.”

Kirk’s patented reassuring upper arm grab.

Uhura on the bridge! You can’t tell she’s nervous because she’s brave and strong.

This episode, and to a lesser extent The Naked Time, are why I think Sulu has a thing for her. I know it’s a different universe, but I still think it’s true.

Kirk’s salute is getting better. More confident.

He just doesn’t know how to be evil. He’s too good, too pure.

Hmmm, Security Chief Sulu? He really does have a lot of interests.

I wonder what Vulcan is like in this universe. They are still clearly post-Reform. But more ruthless. Scarier. Probably meat eaters.

Damn little Chekov. Just waiting for his chance to mutiny.

Security Chief, like the Gestapo. Did not know that was what the reference was supposed to be.

Hmm, male computer voice. This MUST be an evil universe.

“I’m a doctor, not an engineer.”

Evil Kirk strikes again! Honestly, this scene of the ISS crew on the regular Enterprise might be my favorite in the whole ep. Yet again obsessed with Spock’s facial hair. And Spock is obviously just loving it. “I find it extremely interesting.”

I think Kirk and Spock BOTH know what would buy Spock.

“I should regret your death.” I mean that’s basically a love confession. I love how they depict the K and S relationship in the mirrorverse. The subtle ways in which they’re still a team.

Spock would absolutely have killed Chekov for trying to kill Kirk.

I find evil!Spock the most convincing of all of this universe. I think he simultaneously feels true to the original character, and is also obviously of this universe, and that’s a pretty impressive feat.

“Terror must be maintained or the Empire is doomed.” Print that on a t-shirt.

“Conquest is easy. Control is not.” A lot of the mirror verse is over the top cartoony villainy but this is a very good point, and this scene in general is super interesting and subtle.

Kirk is so tunred on by that conversation with Spock. Like even in these circumstances, he still looks at Spock like he’s in love.

Hmmm, I like Marlena.

Of course evil!Kirk has an on-ship girlfriend, which good!Kirk would never do.

Evil!Spock is still very loyal, so much for all that “I would be a formidable enemy” stuff lol. “You’ll never find another man like him.” Too true.

Of course there’s some plundered alien tech plot device. I actually think that’s an interesting twist in a way... of course the ISS wouldn’t care about stealing, and so some...interesting artifacts might find their way onto starships.

Spock is upset he wasn’t included in this landing party meeting.

Hmmm, Sulu already wants to be Captain.

WHAT? SPOCK HAS OPERATIVES? VULCAN OPERATIVES? WHO ARE THEY? I MUST KNOW MORE. (Is one of them T’Pring?)

Marlena’s Starfleet uniform was hotter than this...paisley nightgown thing.

She’s so dramatic. Kirk is busy one time and she’s like well! I guess we’re over! Transfer me to another ship!

Another Captain Kirk arm grab moment.

I love how literally no one was surprised by that Uhura and Sulu moment on the bridge. “I’ve changed my mind again whoops.”

I can’t believe getting kicked once and then knocked on the head would almost kill Spock lol--seems like probably he might just have a concussion?--but I do like the concept of McCoy risking being left behind to help him. (And Kirk signing off on it because duh.) McCoy is just so good hearted.

Captain Sulu strikes again. Everyone has their own agenda lol. So many obstacles when everyone’s just out for himself.

Haha well that solved that. Zap zap zap and they’re gone.

As suspected, Spock recovered pretty fast. And he goes straight for the mind meld, obviously. That does seem pretty evil of him.

And another obstacle lol. I like that Kirk says Marlena can’t come with them because they can only bring 4 people because of the Calculations, even though... like surely he should already be able to guess there’s another Marlena in his universe and she can’t exactly replace a person who already exists? That would be bad.

Damn Uhura, saving the day again and looking damn fine doing it.

“I must have my Captain back.” Not even subtle about it. He MUST.

The Empire is illogical because it cannot endure.

Is Kirk literally asking this Spock to overthrow his other self and become Captain?

Also...is Marlena going to attach herself to the new Captain?? What does she think of all this?

This is probably one of the best end-of-episode bridge banter scenes in the series. “If I read my Spocks correctly.” Spock is a bit of a pirate. (I think Sarek would agree.) Spock loving the evil humans. Being jealous of Marlena. Kirk probably wondering how Mirror!Kirk and his Spock got along.

I think this is a really great episode, obviously, and I liked all of the intrigue. I thought the double, triple, quadruple crossing was really well plotted. Marlena is one of the better Love Interests and I thought she was really compelling. I LOVED Mirror Spock, and the general characterization of and subtleties to both Spocks. Mirror Sulu was interesting (what does he say about real Sulu I wonder?) and of course we got great Uhura moments and a good Bones moment too. I thought Kirk was interesting in this ep also, not quite confronting his evil side like in The Enemy Within, but...well I do think that was a part of him, the inferred characterization of mirror!Kirk, ambitious, single-minded--”inflexible, disciplined once you’ve made up your mind”--isn’t so outrageous or hard to understand.

I think the weakness of the ep is in the Mirror verse itself. It’s always struck me as a bit too cartoon-villain-y, painted in too broad strokes. Everyone wants to use violence to gain power. If deaths are so common, how has anyone survived this long lol? They allude to this sometimes--Spock not wanting command because it makes him a target, Kirk telling Spock the Empire is wasteful and ultimately unsustainable and thus illogical--but that just invites scrutiny under which the premise doesn’t hold. Imo, an organization like the Empire could never have lasted as long as or become as powerful as the Federation. As Kirk says, control is harder than conquest. I’m not even sure that all of the planets of the Federation could have come together in an Empire, and any allegiance would be very unstable. In other words, I don’t think “the Federation but make it evil” is even a sustainable premise.

Also, while people surely do crave power for the sake of power, I... tend to need a little more in my villainous characterization. Like, when I see that kind of villain, I always think of Price in Mr. Robot: “Every room I’m in, I ask myself ‘am I the most powerful person here?’ and I don’t stop until the answer is always yes.” That really is the core of him--and yet he’s still a subtle villain. That’s kind of the standard for me, I think. To put it another way, maybe the core of all villainy is just lust for power (and/or money) and maybe the best way to get power is brute strength, but the manifestations of evil are usually more subtle: some people who just want power, some people who have more narrow goals and can’t see the whole, many people who have been manipulated, and then just human ills like laziness, ineptitude, selfishness, short-sightedness. Only the most blunt of those traits and instruments really made it into the Mirror verse.

I would have liked to see the mirrorverse be more like... the mob.

...But it is only a 50 minute episode lmao.

Anyway, I find it very interesting that mirror!Spock has Vulcan operatives. His personal security guard is Vulcan, and taking these facts together, I think it’s safe to say that there are more Vulcan officers and enlisted on the ISS Enterprise than USS Enterprise. I’m not sure what to do with that but I find it very interesting. Is he more powerful on Vulcan? Is he more attuned to his Vulcan side? Are Vulcans more impressed with or deferential to him?

Anyway I am exhausted rn and I still have two more days this week so... off to bed. Next week’s ep is The Classic, The Apple.

#the year 2021 #2021: fandom thoughts #2021: star trek #star trek tos

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commanderandace · 4 years

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What do you think about jong kook and so min? I read in yt comments and many people said that jong kook acts sweeter towards somin. Then I had the insecurities again. ofc I love them as an older bro and younger sis. They are so cute!

i think they make for a great sibling dynamic but for romance? hard no. i think they both are aware of that as well? like you have somin sharing how her mother would hypothetically love jongkook as a son in law but thinks he’s too old for somin, and somin herself seems to think of jongkook as too scary to be attractive (like in that episode when they were like ‘who’s the best looking RM male member?’ and somin was like i thought about it and specifically placed myself into dating scenarios and i just think that it would be way too scary to date jongkook oppa. i do not vibe with it. meanwhile haha has three kids. that guy fucks he must be hot he’s def got moves and i’m woke for this opinion. she was valid for that, but guess who picked jongkook as the hottest one with zero hesitation?)

anyway. it’s like you can just tell neither of them are bothered by dating jokes because those jokes aren’t “oh is there something there?” jokes they’re “if this happened, it would be the most outrageous thing” jokes. if/when somin teases jongkook about stuff like “oh oppa do you like me? lmaooo” she just gets scolded and shut down immediately, and you can tell jongkook just... isn’t bothered at all. and that somin isn’t flirting she’s kidding around. of course jongkook’s very fond of somin; he’s very clearly warmed up to her over the years, but romantic interest? it’s not there, on either side. i think jongkook’s got a bit careful with his interactions with jihyo (and vice versa), he’s got this... obsession? with pretending she doesn’t exist on social media, the last picture he posted featuring her face was like six years ago. but her legs were in his instagram story! because Of Course they were sitting near each other during the filming break. they’re....... the way they are

so, in conclusion, there’s really no need to feel insecure? i don’t know if jongkook and jihyo will ever marry, but i think that if they never happen, there’s no way jongkook and somin would ever happen either okay lmao

#ask #i think people who ship jongkook and somin #either hate jihyo #or have the worst case of heterosexuality i have ever seen #anyway. they’re just like kwangmong!#except with kwangmong jihyo’s the more adamant one about never dating kwangsoo

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kingbyakuya · 4 years

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I don't really know much about any of your ocs, but I saw the recent post about one of them and now I'm curious about all of them? Like, as many as you're willing to talk about

Ooohoooohooo buckle up cuz I got a lot!! I'm going to go in order of their creation and keep it brief cuz I can go on forever lol I based all of my ocs in the Victorian-ish era but I have manipulated them to fit any universe.

Soleil Saint des Étoiles:

My sun priest! In all his forms he is a very religious man and follows the book to the letter. Vain and snooty, he sees a lot of people below him and won't be afraid to demean them. He's going through a redemption arc to become a better, actually good priest, so I'm very excited to see how that plays out.

Nira Santana:

Nira is an older woman and trained to be a soldier. Even though she was born female in the Victorian times, her father taught her all the 'male' teachings while her mother taught her the 'female' teachings. She is very ice cold and stoic, rarely ever showing emotion or interest, but she does have a care for humanity.

Catherine (Cathy) Davis:

She is the sunshine and bright smile everyone needs in their life. So full of life and giggles, she sees the best in everyone and always wants to make people smile. She's a famous dancer as well and wears her heart on her sleeve and she is not afraid to let her emotions be shown.

Ryan Frost

Ryan... is a complete bastard. An absolute asshole. He is my version of Jack the Ripper. Malicious, snarky, cocky, temperamental; he's my 'suave' villain. He's also leader of the Blue Snakes gang, so he's got a lot of tricks up his sleeve and knows the underground of London very well.

Jacque Chanteur

He is the most emotional man you will meet. He's 6'4, built like a brick building (I use Hugh Jackman as a reference), but a total softie. He's also Ryan's right hand man and Ryan's blood brother. (Did I mention that Ryan and Jacque are vampires? Cuz they are lmao). Please just give Jacque a hug.

Alistair Kraus

An old herpetologist, Alistair is Jacque's and Ryan's sire. He's a jovial old man and in love with humanity. He's the one that started the Blue Snake gang but it started out as a group of Robin Hood's before Ryan killed Alistair and took over. Full of life, even in death, Alistair loves everything cold and warm blooded.

Aeron Bishop

He's a huge nerd. Tall and lanky with super round, thick glasses, he's built like the stereotypical nerd. Full of curiosity, he studies witchcraft as well, under his mother and grandmother's teachings. He plays the cello, loves to read, and always seems to find trouble.

Dominic Moore

Dominic is a successful banker, practically rolling in dough for his outrageous interest rates and such. He was abused as a child by his father after his mother died during childbirth and that caused a lot of issues with Dominic's childhood. After being turned into a vampire, he killed his father by accident and took over the banking business, eventually finding the love of his life, @flowerquince's Grace McLoughlin.

William Kingsley

Coming from a wealthier family, he studies anatomy compared to his father who is actually a doctor. Serving in World War II as a medic, he's left with PTSD from loud sounds and another mishap that caused him to be honorably discharged. He grew up very religious but turned away out of fear due to his sexuality. He's a very soft and gentle man, wanting to help those who have been injured, but is very quiet and reserved, mostly watching from the sidelines.

Simon Orestella

His parents were killed and his house burned down when he was a young boy, leaving his little sister and him as orphans. He's a thief now, obsessed with knives and always carries one with him. While his sister goes to school, he manipulates those into paying him and steals as well to help pay for her classes and such. He means well, but goes about it in the absolute backwards way.

Abraham (Abe) Crowley

Having his wife murdered by a vampire has left Abe a broken man. Now alone with his young daughter, Penelope, he lives a double life. In the morning, he's a British solicitor, making money and such to support Penelope. At night, he hunts and kills vampires, hellbent on revenge for what happened to his wife. For him and the relationship with his daughter, I was inspired by Lee and Clementine from the Walking Dead video games. Abe teaches his young girl how to kill and fight vampires, even though she is only eight years old.

I can go into so much detail about all of them, how they're all connected in some way, and how they interact with each other, but as mentioned - for the sake of everyone's sanity - I just gave the bare bones.

#my ocs #my oc stuff #thank you so much for showing interest anon

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iampikachuhearmeroar · 4 years

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y’know the next time i go to the doctor (bc i have to get new prescriptions for my meds etc), i think i might ask about adhd and get to working on getting a referral to a therapist.

i think i should sort this shit out bc i can’t seem to focus on anything anymore and plus thinking about my behaviour in high school and some things that happened in primary school, i think i could’ve possibly had it but not known it bc i was undiagnosed.

like my old memories on fb seem to reinforce it bc everyone always described me as “hyper” or “crazy” in those lame “like this status and i’ll tell you what i like about you/give you compliments!” etc posts that were a trend when i was in mid-to-late high school. and it was mostly bc i did things without really thinking about the consequences, and covered it up with something like “live in the moment dudes!!!!!! why are all of you so up yourselves??? chill the fuck out and do stupid shit!!!” and then say weird outrageous shit like a show off. and as ive said before my marks were topsy-turvy asf bc i was always more focused on my english or drama assignments (especially with finding more & more ridiculous & complicated sounding synonyms for easier words in those said assignments; spending hours on dictionary/thesaurus.com and freerice.com).... while other subject assignments (mostly maths, sport & geography, religion, and sometimes science), as well as class work went completely undone.

i also had frequent habit of dramatically walking out of class in crying fits and stuff like that. then i’d spend the rest of that particular lesson having people comfort me or have a friend walk me down to the office and wait in “the purple room” in the school office that was really a counseling room for one of the teacher’s and the actual school counsellor. i had these meltdowns so often, in fact, that i was eventually given a “purple room card” that allowed me to go to that room in the office and chill there until i calmed down, or w/e the card said when i finally found it on the floor of my room in like 2015. and obvs in year 4 (outside of high school) i got sent to anger management in year 4. but by years 11/12 i’d learned to not have the meltdowns during classes bc it was seen as a disruption to the class (and it was in a way, when one of my friends would usher me down to the office and sit in that purple room with me... like they didn’t need to skip class with me) and also my own learning, so it was much better to do it at hone in my room at like 2am lmao.

although, sometimes those meltdowns were actually caused by my period pain (bc as i’ve said before on diff posts that my period pains in high school were unbearable), but i covered that with “oh but i can’t handle my workload!!!! 😭😭😭😭😰😰😰😰” and other stuff about idk feeling lonely???? which also led my year coordinator at catholic school to making a group for girls in my year group called the sunshine group (which i was then pretty mortified that she put me in bc “I AM the leader of the black parade and a killjoy! this is offensive!!!! 👩🏻‍🎤👩🏻‍🎤” although the rest of the group was mostly girls that had had fights in their groups or whatever, it focused on self-esteem issues and spreading happiness through the year group/school, by making cupcakes and doing laughing yoga or meditation. like it was a good initiative i’m ngl in hindsight lmao).

then i remember a guy in my homeroom making fun of me in like year 9 religion or something; bc i was obsessed with moshi monsters and obvs neopets (as usual) which he deemed as being “for babies” and not proper computer games like idek call of duty??? that he played. and the moshi monsters thing happened after i found their spinoff toys in big W bc they had the website on their tags. and one of my best friends decided to point out i wasn’t just “into moshi monsters” but instead i “was “OBSESSED” with moshi monsters in high school” a few weeks back now at our other best friends wedding planning dinner. although i do admit, in hindsight, that moshi monsters was probably aimed more at kids aged like 8-12 or something like that and not 14/15 year olds lmao.

and i remember the dude i had a crush on making what now seems to be as a jibe about me being “obsessed with harry potter. i mean, like, super obsessed with harry potter. like you’re too invested man” (when, ironically, he was my level of HP obsessed but instead with old cinema & game of thrones.... knowing all the behind the scenes shit or w/e).

and finally, i’ve had sleep problems for ages.... where i can’t go to sleep until like 1am or later so i have to dance it out to for while before i go to bed. like is that normal???

but yeah. idek maybe it is adding up and i should really see about it with a therapist. again i’m not self-diagnosing it’s just a musing.

also: don’t reblog this, please

#life #about me #shut up ilona #musings

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onisiondrama · 4 years

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11/21/2019 Patreon Stream Hour 3 of 5

Notes

Greg decides to go through old footage live. He gets up to get a pile of hard-drives.

Greg asks if anyone seen the full candycorn video. He says apparently this person has a ruined career because of him. He asks imagine he if used that excuse, “it’s all everyone else’s fault.”

He tries to set up a hard drive and says there’s a video of him fucking somewhere so he has to be careful. He laughs and says he admits too much.

He says it sucks people don’t show the full context of the clip. He says he only saves videos that were hard to make. He says he deletes every Speaks video. He says these hard drives have everything he has ever done.

He says one of the hard drives were extracted when it was a raid, so he’s not sure how to get files. He asks if anyone know how to repair raids. Someone suggests to bring it to best buy. Greg says it’s 16 tb of data. He says it would be nice to have the original banana song footage. His patreons give suggestions on how to extract data. Greg explains it’s a raid hard drive so it’s multiple hard drives interconnected and it chops up pieces of data among the different hard drives. A Patreon walks him through how to plug it in.

Greg walks away for a second and a patreon says he’s reading the stream chat and they’re all giving Greg shit. Greg comes back and says the stream chat is the most messed up thing ever. Someone says it’s worse on twitter and Greg says he doesn’t read twitter.

The patreon continues to walk him through how to access the hard drive. They can’t get it to work and Greg decides he’s going to take it to a professional. He says his entire career is on these hard drives and the unedited bloopers of footage people are releasing like it’s real.

Greg asks his patreons how they would feel if they acted as a character years ago and now people are acting like you’re the character. He goes through the story again and says he did it because he likes seeing people outraged, but now people are calling him a monster. He says he wishes he didn’t fuck up the hard drives because it would be nice to smear it in people’s faces.

Greg gives up and decides they are going to play League of Legends.

He corrects a Patreon that calls him Greg, says it’s James now. Greg jokes that the FBI is going to show up and ask him if he’s Greg Jackson and he’s going to say no and they’ll leave.

He goes on again about how upset he is that people are watching the candycorn clip out of context because now he could lose people that aren’t crazy obsessed. He says it won’t be relevant for long, but he likes everyone knowing the truth.

He says we’re talking about someone that admitted they faked a seizure on camera. A patreon asks “wait that wasn't real?” He says it wasn’t real. He says at the time she had weird episodes all the time so he thought it was normal. He says her uncle asked him if he really believe the age reverse shit and the rainbows. He said thought it was a split personality or her own personal issues she was dealing with so he recorded her to show her the footage later. He compares it to someone being drunk and being unaware of what they’re doing. He said he asked her multiple times if he could release the video as an educational video on mental health because he needed to release a video that day or if she wanted him to work all night. He says she told him to upload it. He says she later on said she was fucking with him. He said he was told there was a video on tumblr where she admitted that. (I have never seen or heard of a video like this and I’ve been blogging about him here on tumblr for 8 years.)

He says his advice to everyone is to not get to know anyone and you’ll be fine. Someone jokingly says “forever alone”. Greg says forever alone people don’t know how lucky they are, his Patreons laugh but he’s serious. He explains when you’re alone you don’t have to deal with people turning your reality upside down. He compares it to a cult or a religion.

Greg says to prove he’s not a cult leader, he asks his Patreons if he makes them feel like their special and loved by him and they say no. Someone says when he says something nice to them it makes them feel weird. Greg doesn’t acknowledge what his patreons say and says that’s how he felt in that relationship. He said cult leaders make you feel like you’re valuable and they are the only way and you put up with their crazy shit because you think they have the answers.

Greg says he wishes he was worse at acting (back on the candycorn video). His patreons laugh and someone says that’s a hard flex. Greg says no he’s so good at acting it’s stupid. He says some people can’t do this on command. He starts telling a specific patreon that they are worthless without him. He goes on and on but tbh he didn’t change his tone or expression from before he started showing off his acting skill so idk. Then he starts singing Feliz Navidad, I guess to show how fast he can switch his acting, but again he has the same expression and tone lmao. Now he’s going to do another one to show off how he’s such a good actor that he can act like a bad actor. He says the same thing to that patreon, but in a valley girl accent. Now he’s going to do it, but even worse acting. He says the same thing, but by saying the lines like a question, but choppy and loud. He asks his Patreon if that’s good acting and they say it was perfect sarcastically. Now he’s doing it “for real”, he’s acing mad. I’m so over this lmao.

Greg says if he wanted to be a psychopath, he’d be the best psychopath. I think he’s talking about acting. He says he’s so typecasted that he can only make one type of video, acting like a psycho.

Someone says they want more Emo Charlie, but Greg tells them Emo Charlie is dead, he shot him. His Patreons are upset and tell him to bring him back.

He says he made a video with Shiloh where he put on a head camera and walked in on her in the shower and she’s pissed. Greg says that was acting, but his Patreons already knew. He says they would make videos to create drama for the sake of drama and it sucks people now chose which drama was real. He says he did it to himself though, he shouldn’t have made these videos look real. He says he and Shiloh were both really good acting and they created real moments. Greg says she was actually nude when they made the video, but he censored it and deleted the footage.

A Patreon asked if Greg remembers the videos he made with Joe Nation where he punched Greg. Greg says he just showed up in the video, he had nothing to do with it. Greg says that video aged well and his Patreons should tweet Joe to tell him to re-upload the video he made with Onision. Someone says it’s still up, but Greg says he should re-upload it to get views and likes.

Greg asks his Patreons if they like his reenactment of the masturbation thing from last night. (The recent video he made of himself as Shiloh crying outside the door while he masturbates inside) One of his Patreons enthusiastically say she loved it. He thanked a patreon because she is the one that told him that was said about him. He says you can’t accuse people of stuff that sounds real and accuse them of masturbating in the other room while you’re crying because it throws everything off. You have to be believable. He asks if his Patreons ever met anyone that did that, he didn’t think it was a real thing. A patreon asks what and he says the implication was someone was crying and banging on a door and in response he dropped to his knees and masturbated to the sound (Shiloh didn’t say this) and they knew he was doing it because they could hear it through the door. He says that sounds aggressive.

He asks again if that’s a real thing people do and a patreon asks didn’t social repose like it when girls cried. Greg says he’s mean to people when they cry. He says hes not into it. Greg says he likes feeling desired so any negative response is a turn off. He says liking being unwanted seems rape-y.

A Patreon says they like when there’s initial rejection, like a challenge, but not in bed. Greg disagrees and says there needs to be a prior discussion that there is going to be back and forth. The patreon clarifies they mean when someone plays hard to get. Greg says he doesn’t know anything about that. Someone jokes “of course you don’t” and he says he really doesn’t know what they mean. Someone says “the chase” and he says he doesn’t know what that is. He says he guesses he had a chase with his ex wife because she didn’t like people talking to her when he first met her. He thought it was so cool that she was anti social. He said she wasn’t interested in him at first, but months later she hit him up on AOL instant messenger and she invited him to her house. He asks if that’s a chase and someone says “um. yeah.” He pokes fun of himself and says he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

A Patreon says they like emotionally unavailable men that she has to chase. Greg says people would be running forever with him because he emotionally shut himself off from a lot of concepts. He says opening yourself up is consistent with being hurt and wearing your heart on your sleeve seems cute, but it’s actually the worst. He compares it to leaving cash out and someone stealing it.

They talk about League for a while. He brings up the candycorn video again. He says it’s weird hearing himself and being like oh shit I was way too good in that. He says and people say I’m a bad actor, but they think it’s reality.

A Patreon says they’re waiting for them to make a Netflix movie about him. Greg agrees and said he was talking to Kai and asked what are they going to do now? Everyone already said everything and he says oh Netflix special. Kai says they wouldn’t do a Netflix special because it doesn’t involve facts, only hearsay so they wouldn’t want to get sued. He says then they talked about R Kelly and Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson can’t sue because he’s dead so of course they’re going to do stuff on him and R Kelly can’t sue because he’s obviously guilty. He says there is a video and transcript of R Kelly with someone that is underage and that’s why corporations are willing to do stuff on him.

He says he doesn’t think anyone would pick up a hearsay situation, but if they did that would be interesting. A Patreon asks if he would watch it and Greg says he hasn’t watched anything so far besides the candycorn clip so he can’t say he would. He says you’re obligated to sue a major corporation that would take part in that just because it’s obviously hearsay and they can’t release statements like they’re legitimate when it’s hearsay. He says individuals aren’t worth suing because they don’t have money. He says if you wait for a Netflix to pick it up and make a massive lawsuit out of that, people will realize it’s all hearsay and you walk away a multi millionaire. He says if Netflix picks it up its good for him.

A patreon says now that everyone said something, things will probably die down. Greg says no, they’ll still make videos because he’ll continue to draw traffic. He says he causes people to be endlessly successful.

A Patreon says Greg should make a drama channel to comment on what drama channels say. Greg says it’s exhausting watching people say bad thing about you. He says if he was a sociopath that would work, but he actually has feelings.

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