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denkineptune · 3 years

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lucifer, mammon, levi + secret pining

♡ yes yes im working on requests hehe

♡ just a kinda quick thing i wrote on a whim, idk man jdfkdjf i might do another with the next half of the brothers but this is all my creativity could pump out today, idk if i like it too much, but hey, writing is the only way to get better so have these crumbs

♡ characters: lucifer, mammon, leviathan

fic details: headcanons, 1.4k words, slight angst, fluff, sfw v pure, possibly ooc lucifer?? idk man i don’t know his character that well but for some reason i wanted to write him, gender-neutral reader

lucifer

↠most of the time, i don’t think that he’d keep his pining a secret. he’s a proud demon (avatar of pride, no shit) and he wouldn’t try to hide his feelings too much

↠of course, there’d occasionally be some form of denial, but he is quite the sadist so he’d probably enjoy knowing that you know of his feelings

↠with that being said, if he was secretly pining, something would have had to make him feel like that was the only option. maybe someone would try to harm you to get something from him (don’t forget he’s a ruler of hell), or diavolo forbade it somehow (unlikely, because diavolo is a lil shit and he’d enjoy seeing that unfold)

↠he’s not great at keeping it a secret, just because of his nature, but if he knew that he was forced to do so, he would take that shit to the grave.

↠and by “because of his nature”, i mean that he’s not really secretive; he makes his intentions completely clear with his actions imo. he can keep a secret if it’s necessary, but otherwise, he’s not making much of an effort to hide things. if a secret comes out, it’s out

↠since you’re living in his house, there’s really no way to avoid you, so he interacts with you like a normal person would. maybe some “accidental” slips-of-the-tongue, praising you more than most would consider platonic, but not much else

↠but when you’re not looking, lucifer will look up from his paper work and admire you

↠he tends to defend you when one of his brothers says something even a little teasing, even though you constantly say you don’t need it

↠you likely have a sneaking suspicion that he feels something for you, but honestly he never does anything to confirm it, so nothing ever comes of your hunch

↠sometimes, luci will imagine a life where he was allowed to love you without having to worry about what others would do or say. he never really has his head in the clouds, but when his mind is otherwise unoccupied, he finds himself in a fictional world where you come to comfort him when he’s down, where you hold his hand and smile up at him, where you kiss him on the cheek and hug him just because you love him too

↠but of course, this is all fake

↠and lucifer will have to live a life silently watching you fall for another, just outside his grasp

mammon

↠he,,,,, he’s a dumbass. straight up- he’s an idiot. which, don’t get me wrong, is adorable and charming sometimes, but also can be kinda annoying.

↠mammon thinks he’s being super sneaky about his feelings, but god, he’s obvious. i mean he blushes as soon as he sees you, doesn’t matter if you’re talking to him or not. he stumbles over his words and makes excuses to follow you around, claiming it’s because you can’t handle yourself, but everyone knows that he loves you- including, probably, you

↠i’m sorry but you’d have to be so oblivious to not notice his obvious pining-

↠his brothers are so annoyed at his behavior,, like every time mammon makes an excuse to be near you, they just groan and roll their eyes because come on

↠nothing prompts mammon to keep his feelings a secret, he’s just scared that he’ll lose you as a friend if he says anything. though, you do know, so it’s only a matter of time before you confront him about it, at which point, he will vehemently deny everything.

↠mammon’s a walking cliche, the living embodiment of the word uwu, who middle school boys would call a simp just because he’s nice. he melts any time you’re talking, even if what you’re saying isn’t something sweet. you bet he’s stayed up at night, thinking about you, wondering what being in a relationship with you would be like

↠would you be lovingly teasing? how affectionate are you with a boyfriend? would you play with his hair, let him fall asleep with his head in your lap, and hold him? what would your dates be like? do you like staying in, or would you rather go out? whatever you prefer, he’s alright with it, as long as he’s with you.

↠he doesn’t get much sleep on those nights....

↠it gets really bad, to the point where the people around mammon are practically begging him to confess. not for his sake or yours, but because he’s so,, obnoxious,,, he can’t talk about anything but you when you’re not around, he somehow manages to relate everything back to you in a beautiful way.

↠i think that he would refuse to say anything, though. he’s just really nervous, so you’d have to make the first move. he probably wouldn’t believe, at first, that you’re serious, thinking that it’s a prank rather than an actual confession.

↠once you assure him that everything is fine and that you do feel the same way, he gloats like a mf and does not stop for ages dlfkdl he’s precious, just let him be happy-

leviathan

↠he will ONLY keep his love a secret and i mean only

↠ this mf will never reveal his crush on you because he is so,, anxious,, about everything. he’s very similar to mammon in that regard- he loves you so much, but if he confessed, what was he risking? you could be disgusted by him and stop talking to him altogether? you’re the only person who understands him, he can’t lose you

↠he has himself convinced that confessing to you is not worth the risk of you hating him, which is so sad c’mon man :((

↠with that being said, he won’t confess to you, there’s no chance of it. he manages to function semi-normally around you once he realizes his feelings, though if you get within a few inches of him, he’ll absolutely freak and run off, because he’s worried that he’ll get too flustered and you’ll catch on

↠he’s sure that you’d never like him back, but this doesn’t stop him from indulging in silly things that make his heart swell with love when he thinks of you, ex: playing games and using your name as the main love interest’s, sending you platonic love memes (you send some back, his heart stops), or writing letters to you spilling all of his feelings that he’ll never have the guts to send

↠he’s the kind to stare at you in class, get flustered when anyone teases him about his crush, and writes your name in cursive on all his school papers. his teachers are,,, confused,, to say the least

↠whenever you look at him and make accidental eye contact, his eyes dart away; he compares you to his favorite anime characters, and he’s even said that you’re more important to him than Ruri-chan on multiple occasions without being tsundere about it.

↠levi might not want to confess to you, but that won’t stop him from trying to get you to fall for him. he gets pointers from asmo (an embarrassing experience, for sure) about things you like, he makes attempts to help you out without having to be asked, and tries to change his introverted behavior by offering to take you places for the day

↠being around you so much makes him anxious, he’s worried that he’ll slip up and reveal something you might not like, but he loves you too much to let you be around his idiotic brothers for longer than you have to be. if you spent too much time around mammon, well, levi’s not sure if he’d like you if you adopted his brother’s personality

↠you, once again, would need to make the first move. when you do, he deflects hard, almost trying to convince you that you could do better.

↠he’s so insecure that he thinks that everyone else is a better option for you. everyone else is cooler, smarter, more confident. he’s just a geeky otaku with no social skills, why would you like him? you might need to do something drastic in order to convince him that, yes, you do like him, and yes, you are 100% sure that you’re not just ‘confused’

↠after that conversation, levi’s mildly panicked, too flustered to do anything right away, so you’ll have to wait til he calms down to talk to him any more.

(although, bonus, while he’s cooling down, he buries his nose in your side, hiding his face, and it’s quite adorable.)

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾𝒹𝑒𝓃𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓅𝓉𝓊𝓃𝑒☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

#obey me #obey me x reader #obey me! shall we date?#lucifer x reader #lucifer obey me #obey me lucifer #mammon x reader #mammon obey me #obey me mammon #leviathan x reader #levi x reader #obey me leviathan #leviathan obey me #levi obey me #obey me levi #denkineptune #denkineptune fic

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because-of-a-friend · 4 years

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Boyfriend!Seungcheol Fluff

Thanks for the requests and compliments anons and @seungcheoluwu !!! Y’all are all too sweet! I really hope you guys like this one! Remember everyone, this is a series I only do by request, so if I’m missing someone you want, just request it! I already have Seungkwan and DK requested so those will be out soon!

MASTERLIST

Honestly

Between being a trainee

Debuting in a kpop group

Having the responsibilities of a leader

And always being mostly concerned with keeping the other boys safe and happy

Coups doesn’t really ever think about dating

His life is just a whirlwind of responsibilities that never really seems to end

Anytime the thought crosses his mind, he just reminds himself that he doesn’t really have the time

As the leader, everything falls back on him so keeps any other distractions outside of Seventeen minimal so the other boys can always depend on him no matter when or where it is

But lately

He feels like he’s been able to breathe easier

Seventeen is successful

All the boys have grown and are so responsible and able to handle most things on their own

So Coups is slowly having some responsibilities lifted from his shoulders

And one day he realizes that the idea of dating doesn’t seem so impossible anymore

But who would he even date?

He’s pushed that idea so far out of his head that he hasn’t even considered whether he would date anyone around him

He’s embarrassed to admit it, but there’s a part of him that’s really shy about things like that so he doesn’t even know if he has it in him to go out and date

And there’s another part of him that he’s even more embarrassed of that really wants a magical love story, a spark

He just doesn’t feel like he has that with anyone near him

And then one day, he runs into you

“Oh my god, Seungcheol?”

He sighs, expecting a fan, readying himself to be bright and sociable

But he knows you

The two of you went to school together years ago

“[Y/N]?”

“Seungcheol, it is you! This is so great!”

You exclaim and then pull him into a hug

He happily returns it, feeling a familiar warmth from seeing someone from his past

“This is insane, I honestly didn’t think I was ever going to see you again!”

“Oh yeah” he looks down awkwardly. “I’ve been busy...”

“Well yeah, you’re only the leader of one of the biggest kpop groups out there!”

He knows that, of course he does

He’s worked long and hard to be S.Coups of Seventeen

But when you say it, he feels shy for some reason

“Oh yeah... I guess”

You laugh happily

“Hey, we have to catch up sometime! When are you free?”

Seungcheol rattles off his schedule for the next week

You find a free spot that you share, grab his number, and make the plans

It’s lunch at a restaurant you had never been to before

You sit awkwardly at the table you grabbed and wait anxiously for Cheol to show up

When he does run in, he stops at the entrance to look for you

When he spots you, he pauses, taking time to straighten out his clothes and brush out his hair

He clears his throat and then calls to you

You feel relief fill your veins when your eyes land on Cheol

You wave at him, a grin spread across your face

He rushes over to plop down in the seat across from you

Once you two catch up on what’s been going on, there’s a bit of a silence

He’s worried that that’s it

You two just had those few good moments and now you won’t have anything to talk about anymore

But then you bring up a story from your school days

“Remember that time, Minhyuk was rushing to get to class, but he wanted something to drink first...”

“And his hand got stuck in the vending machine???”

“Yes!”

You both laugh and bring up more memories and laugh more

It eventually opens up more conversation

And soon speech just flows easily between you two

Then Seungcheol looks down at his phone and realizes you two have been sitting there for hours

And to him that’s the sign

There’s a spark

“Hey, [Y/N], do you maybe want to get dinner sometime?”

“Are you asking me on a date Choi Seungcheol?”

“Yes, how about it?”

“I think I’d like that very much”

Dating Seungcheol is easy

He makes it easy

He’s attentive and caring and selfless and mature

He’s a cookie-cutter perfect boyfriend

You’re spoiled as hell

Cheol loves deeply and fully and that love spills out in every way imaginable

He spends even more time on his schedule so he knows he can always make time for you

He’s always affectionate and it’s always in the ways that make you feel the most safe and loved and comforted

I mean, it’s hard not to when sitting in his strong arms

And he treats you so tenderly

Hand holding always includes soft strokes of his thumb up and down your skin

Hugs are tight and long and include sweet whispers

Cuddling is always comfy

He loves random unconventional affection, like tapping his head against yours, brushing your noses together, plucking your chin

Kisses are always either sweet pecks on your nose, forehead, cheeks and lips

Or slow, deep, sensual kisses

He takes affection pretty seriously since it’s one of the ways he shows he loves you

Sometimes you wonder why he’s so good to you

Or why your relationship feels so... big

Like seriously it feels like something so incredible and beautiful

One night, Cheol is walking you home and you voice your thoughts out loud

He laughs

“Are you seriously having thoughts like that because you have a good boyfriend?”

You pout

“Seriously, Cheol, I’m just asking, why are you so good to me?”

He shrugs “Cuz I’m dating you?”

“I know that but... I don’t know”

He smiles and pulls something out of his pocket before handing it to you

“Because you’re special and you deserve it”

You look down at what he handed you and your heart stops

It’s a little paper flower

Your mind gets taken back to high school

It was an overnight school trip

Seungcheol had actually been able to come on that one, which was rare due to his schedule when he was a trainee

So everyone was excited to have him come along, the whole class celebrated for him to actually be able to come on the trip

You wanted to be excited too in order to be a good classmate

But

You’d been having a rough week

Things went wrong with friends, family, grades

So you were kind of off the whole trip

You can’t even sleep

So you get up in the middle of the night and sneak out and walk around outside

It’s really pretty

There’s a forest and a river

The stars are clear

You sit on the bank of the river and watch the stars sparkle in the reflection of the water

You jump when you hear someone walking behind you

“Hello? Is someone there?”

You can hear your voice shaking, and you feel dumb

“Relax, [Y/N], it’s just me!” Cheol’s bright voice sounds out from the darkness behind you

“Oh, hi Seungcheol, what are you doing out here?”

“I just went to use the bathroom. What about you? Why are you out here?”

“Couldn’t sleep”

You shrug and turn back to the river, embarrassed at the feeling of tears filling your eyes

Cheol’s shoulder brushes against yours as he sits next to you

“Wow, the view of this river is something else, can’t get this back home”

You shake your head to try and disguise your gesture of wiping tears off your face with your sweatshirt sleeves

There’s a moment of silence

“You don’t have to be embarrassed of crying, [Y/N]”

You freeze at his words

“Sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable, it’s just that... you’re not very good at hiding it”

You laugh a little despite the fact that tears are now pouring out of your eyes

“You wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t wanna burden you Seungcheol”

“It won’t be a burden, [Y/N], I promise”

So you let it all out

You tell him everything that was bothering you

And he listens silently as he folds a piece of paper

Once you’re done talking, he lets you cry it out

“I’m not really good at the whole advice thing sometimes, I’m not sure what to say to help you best”

He grabs your hands and and places the paper in them

“But I will tell you this: I know you’re a strong person and even if you feel like you can’t take it, you can lean on me for help!”

“When did you learn to do this Seungcheol?”

You stare at the paper he’s folded into a flower

“Oh I can’t remember, I just do it sometimes”

You look up at him

He laughs a little at your expression and leans forward to wipe the rest of your tears off your face

“Why are you doing this, Seungcheol?”

“Doing what?”

“Being so... nice to me. We’re not really friends... I mean, it’s just... we’ve never been super close”

Cheol grins at you

“Because you’re special and you deserve it”

When your mind comes back to the present

You look up to see that Cheol has walked a few paces ahead of you

“You kept this from all the way back in high school? I thought I had lost it”

“You did,” Cheol laughs. “You dropped it on the trail back to the cabins, I snatched it up afterwards”

You stare at the flower, admiring how it’s held its shape all these years

You feel tears start to well up in your eyes

You quickly deflect by making a joke

“So Choi Seungcheol has been harboring a huge crush on an old classmate this whole time”

He shakes his head and grins at you, grabbing your hand to continue your walk

After that, Cheol is your whole world

You feel childish but you believe y’all were fated to be together

You put in the effort to spoil him as much as he does for you

You know he has a lot of pressure with being a leader

So you become a safe haven for him to rant out his problems

And you always do little stress relievers for him: back rubs, spa nights, tv binges with tons of junk food

You buy him little accessories and in-ears for him to use on stage

Sometimes you cook dinner for the boys so they don’t have to worry about it

The other members fawn over you constantly

You and Cheol develop this ridiculous sense of humor that only the two of you get

You’re just a couple of nerds together

Whenever you’re at events together, he always has his arm around you

When you attend their concerts, he always greets you by running up, wrapping his arms around your waist, spinning you around and pecking your lips

Like I said, your relationship is easy

The two of you just click well

It’s a long time in the making but it’s a beautiful romance that is so worth it

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johannas-motivational-insults · 4 years

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Catra’s refusal to admit mistakes

Something that seems to baffle much of the SPOP fandom is why Catra can’t just admit her mistakes and try to do better instead of continuing to dig herself a deeper and deeper hole. To be fair, the situation is very baffling. It’s complex. There are a ton of psychological issues in play, and when they interact things can get very messy. I’m going to do my best to explain Catra’s thought processes and hang ups and hopefully not write a fucking novel in the process. (But if you do want a novel that analyzes these concepts in a lot of depth, go check out my fanfic Demons. Shameless self-promotion, whaaaaat?)

I have already gone into how Catra’s external locus of control comes into play, so I’m not going to break it down in as much detail here. To sum it up, though, Catra has an internalized belief that she can’t really control anything and isn’t responsible for her behavior since it’s not her fault she was put in a shitty situation in the first place. She doesn’t believe she had any choice but to be the villain. This is deeply rooted in her fearful and abusive upbringing where she had little to no control over what happened to her. A large part of that is how consequences didn’t match behavior, i.e. she wasn’t rewarded for being good and her punishments were overly harsh as well as inconsistent, affected by external factors.

There’s also the sunk cost fallacy to consider. That’s the idea that you have to get something out of your investments (of time, money, effort, etc.), even if the costs keep piling up. (In terms of money, think of people who gamble larger and larger sums of money out of determination to win back their initial bet.) For Catra, this fallacy has convinced her that if she changes course and gives up on her goals, then everything she suffered in the Horde and all the effort she put into moving up in the ranks would be for nothing. She thinks getting to the top and proving her worth/winning respect would be the ulitmate triumph. Of course, we see her struggle with disillusionment over this in season 4, which helps set the table for what we hope will be a redemption arc.

These are only two examples of the ways Catra’s abusive upbringing affected her ability to admit her mistakes. The effects of abuse (especially in one’s childhood) are pervasive, affecting your thought processes and perception of the world in a million little ways that are hard to undo. I’m going to dig deeper now into some of the other reasons Catra struggles with this. They include an authoritarian environment, scapegoating, toxic leadership, poor behavioral modelling, an exaggerated fear of punishment, and the resentment of injustice.

(Please note: in this meta I’m not trying to make excuses for Catra and say she should not have to accept responsibility for her mistakes because she was abused. My aim here is to explain why it’s so difficult for her to shoulder blame in hopes that people will better understand her.)

Also under the cut, I’m going to finish this meta by examining how Angella and Glimmer are foils to Shadow Weaver and Catra, how Glimmer had a better example set for her and has now set an example for Catra.

Authoritarianism, injustice, and fear

It’s important to understand that Catra was raised to believe that apologizing or changing course makes someone a weak person or, worse, a bad leader. As Adora says, displays of weakness are strongly discouraged in the Horde. And in an authoritarian, militarized environment like the Horde, admitting mistakes is seen as a sign of weakness. You will very rarely, if ever, see authority figures admit they were wrong, let alone try to make amends for it. And since rank/pecking order is so important in these environments, that behavior filters down because no one wants to be at the bottom.

Fact is, no one who was raised in the Horde is good at admitting they were wrong (except maybe Scorpia, but she’s Scorpia). Even Adora is bad at this. She takes on responsibility for everything and blames herself when things go wrong, but that self-flaggellating catastrophizing is not the same as critically evaluating one’s actions and their effects on other people. That in particular is something she struggles with.

This may be a problem in the Horde at large, but it’s even harder for Catra to admit her mistakes because she has been blamed for a lot of things unjustly, as well as bullied by her peers and abused by her superiors. Accepting blame for anything feels unfair because she has already suffered the consequences of many things she did not do. In her mind, hasn’t the world punished her enough already without humiliating her over the mistakes she has made? Her defensiveness makes sense, in this regard.

Not only do abuse survivors tend to be defensive and angry at the world for the unfair lot it gave us, we have a very hard time being vulnerable with anyone. Because what if they hurt us too? Admitting mistakes and accepting their consequences puts you in a very vulnerable position, and when you are used to being punished unnecessarily harshly and/or undeservingly, submitting yourself to someone else’s judgment is terrifying. These experiences (especially when they occur at a young age) wire people a certain way, make you constantly afraid even when there is no need.

Toxic leadership and poor behavioral modelling

Returning to the environment factor, where do you think Catra learned this behavior of shirking responsibility for her actions? Fact is, Catra never had anyone model to her how to say, “I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I will try to fix it.” Militarized environment or not, Shadow Weaver and Hordak aren’t the type of people who are willing to admit their own mistakes and failures. They come up with excuses or pass the blame off to other people, usually Catra. Whenever something goes wrong, Hordak blames it on Catra and all her “failings.” Whenever Adora disappointed, Shadow Weaver assumed it was because Catra was holding her back. Catra is their scapegoat. They do not apologize to her, acknowledge any harm they’ve done to her, or make any attempt to fix it.

This is especially true of Shadow Weaver, who raised Catra and was the main adult in her life throughout her childhood. Even when confronted with the damage she has done to Catra, she refuses to accept responsibility or acknowledge any wrongdoing. We have seen this in literally every season in which they interact. Catra is rightfully salty about her unjust treatment but Shadow Weaver brushes off her anger, making excuses or sidestepping the accusations.

In 1x10, Catra throws Shadow Weaver a bit of shade while comforting her after Hordak gives her a scathing lecture. Shadow Weaver immediately deflects with an insult before acknowledging her own behavior but not its detrimental effects or her responsibility for it.

Catra: Don’t worry about that thing with Hordak. I've got loads of experience being yelled at. Mostly by you, actually. You get used to it.

SW: I will not get used to mediocrity like you, and I certainly don’t need your pity! ...I was hard on you, I won't deny it, and I won't apologize. I just wanted to prepare you for the world. I wanted you to be strong.

In 2x06, Catra flat out confronts her about it, and she offers a justification for her behavior, still refusing to show any remorse. When Catra persists, she sidesteps it by responding to another part of her outburst.

Catra: Why did you treat me the way you did? Why was I never good enough for you? Really, I wanna know.

SW: Because you remind me of myself. You always have. Nothing was ever easy for me, either. I wasn’t born to power like Adora and... others. I had to earn my power, fight for it. Why should it be any different for you?

Catra: I was a child when you took me in! What could I have possibly done to deserve the way you treated me? I am nothing like you! You are old, and bitter, and weak!

SW: Ah, but you are like me. And just like me, you’re losing your position with Hordak, I can see that even from my cell.

In 3x04, Catra has all but lost hope, throwing shade and heavy accusations at Shadow Weaver. But she does make one last desperate plea for acknowledgment of the harm done to her, right before she’s hit by the crushing realization that she has once again been pushed aside for Adora. Here, Shadow Weaver doesn’t even react to the emotional content of Catra’s statement.

SW: Catra, there’s no need for us to be enemies. I can help you. I can offer you a way out.

Catra: So, what? You’re on the side of good now? You made me this way, and you get to be the good guy? Do you know what happened to me after you escaped? Do you even care? You couldn’t wait to get away from here, from me! ...But you came back for Adora.

SW: I came back to stop Hordak. I will make sure he’s destroyed. Don’t make me destroy you too.

Saying she came back to stop Hordak is sort of an excuse, but Shadow Weaver doesn’t say it like she’s trying to appeal to Catra, unlike the two earlier conversations. Once Catra rejects her offer (which we know is disengenuous, to boot) she doesn’t even bother pretending to care. Catra’s resisting her manipulation and is no longer someone she can use, so why bother?

Notably, this is right before Catra learns about the dangers of the portal (i.e. that she made a mistake when she resolved to open it) and tasers Entrapta for trying to stop her, then immediately doubles down on that mistake by sending her to Beast Island. She got one more example of refusing to acknowledge her mistakes or accept accountability right before she does it herself. The statement “Adora was right” definitely gets to her too, but she was already in an unhinged state after being tortured by Shadow Weaver, once again with no apologies. Just something to consider.

So, Catra came from this environment where she got blamed unfairly all the time yet never got any sign of remorse from the people who hurt her. As I alluded to above, in this kind of situation it’s really easy to slip into the mindset of “why should I apologize when no one ever apologized to me?” (Especially if you’ve been through a lot of forced apologies, which are always humiliating, but particularly so when you are being unfairly blamed.) This is not an easy cycle to break. When you have this constant sense of injustice weighing on you, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the world owes you something as payback and therefore you shouldn’t have to try to better yourself or move past it.

This also ties into Catra’s obsession with getting a win when she is someone who seems fated to always lose, no matter what she does. It’s not just about getting back at Adora, it’s about settling her score with an unjust universe that has always given her the short end of the stick. It’s pride and indignation and pain all mixed up in one toxic soup that pollutes the minds of the abused, and it is not easy to get over. Watching Catra hopefully start to do that in the final 13 episodes is going to be incredibly cathartic.

Glimmer and Angella as foils and examples

Full disclosure, I am writing this meta partly in response to people shitting on Catra and acting like Glimmer is so much better than her after I made a gifset contrasting their reactions to realizing their mistakes. So, I want to finish by comparing all of these observations about Catra’s upbringing with Glimmer’s upbringing. Angella is by no means a perfect parent, but she loves her daughter and tries to do what’s best for her. Most relevant to this discussion, she’s willing to admit her mistakes or change her mind when presented with new information.

For instance, Angella flips at Glimmer over the invasion by the Horde soldier in 1x03, but once she learns said soldier is She-Ra she listens and puts faith in Glimmer’s judgment, despite her misgivings. In 1x10 (in a great parallel scene to the Catra/SW one mentioned above), Angella surprises Glimmer by caring more about her well-being than her mistakes, and she admits some of her own: she ordered the battle that got Micah ‘killed’, and she gave up on the first alliance. She literally says, “I am the one who failed.” And in 3x06, she sacrifices herself in an attempt to make up for all the times she failed to act and protect people she loves.

Angella has enough humility to admit her own flaws and consider other viewpoints, and she’s not afraid to change her mind or say she’s sorry. That set a much better example for Glimmer growing up than Shadow Weaver did for Catra and Adora. And now, Glimmer has set an example for Catra. When Catra is at her lowest in 4x13, drowning in her mistakes and self-hatred and wanting to die, Glimmer shows her that she too can change course and try to correct her mistakes.

Like, did you all see the look on Catra’s face when Glimmer says she can’t use the weapon and needs to try and stop it? When Glimmer gets up Catra follows her, because this is such a compelling sight to her, something she’s never seen before. It was almost like she was thinking, “Wait, you can do that? You don’t have to double down on your mistakes?”

This is something Catra has to see, not only for its novelty but because it could give her guidance, and hope. If Glimmer can change course and atone, maybe she can too.

#spop #she ra #catra #child abuse #meta #she-ra #catra and shadow weaver #catra and hordak #locus of control #sunk cost fallacy

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mbti-notes · 4 years

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(1/8) Yayy, I love Fleabag and I love your blog and everything you write, so I hope you're up for a discussion of your typings (and I hope all the asks come through). Agree about Fleabag, the Godmother and Harry's (his frequent breakups with Fleabag seemed INFJ door slams, but his endgame points to Si) typings. Boo and Fleabag seemed to have been the sort of BFFs who matched because their personalities were quite similar... What made you conclude ESFP rather than ENFP? Same goes for Martin...

Boo’s interests are all concrete, her thinking is always immediate and short-term, Ni grip was apparent in her hasty death.

Same goes for Martin. While I see signs of tertiary Fe in his deliberate manipulation of Claire and pleasure at bringing Fleabag down, and also the overall recklessness of unhealthy EPs, I couldn’t be sure whether he was Se or Ne dom.

I see no evidence of dominant Ne nor inferior Si but many vulgarities and desires that are indicative of unhealthy Se.

What about the Bank Manager? My memory of series one is fuzzy, but he makes an effort to work things out with Fleabag (and women in general) even if he judges too quickly, which could point at aux/tert Te-Fi, I guess.

He is honest and straightforward, no pretension, but severely limited in his perspective. His moral reasoning ability is rather rudimentary, which makes F unlikely. His life is in a deep rut and he is drawn to Fleabag because she is his opposite and helps spark his lower function development. She comes to symbolize the key to understanding his failures and frustrations (both in terms of how he treats women and his lack of function development), therefore, helping her succeed is also helping himself find his own way. He’s reconciling who he is by reckoning with his past mistakes through Fleabag.

The Father clearly struggles with expressing his feelings. He wants to communicate better with Fleabag, but he understands and prefers Claire (a T), so probably IxTx, perhaps Ti-Fe if we consider the main issues presented in the story plus the fact that he quickly fell for Godmother, a Fe dom? I’d like to know your reasoning for him. Anyway, I’d typed Claire and the Priest as ISTJ and ENFJ respectively, and these ones I was sure to have gotten right. xSTJ was clear for Claire, and episode 203 was the one that cemented her as ISTJ for me. She is constantly anxious and full of routines and rituals and micromanages everything, from actions to looks to even jokes, implying a lot of overthinking (I); she clashes with Fleabag because she’s insecure about the possibility of not being as interesting and funny as Fleabag (tertiary Fi). Also, she tries to pretend that she enjoyed the night, that her marriage is going well and that she thinks Fleabag kissed Martin rather than the opposite because of Si’s need to maintain security and stability and not lose what she’s conquered. By accepting her individuality, her feelings and the possibility of something better for herself, she takes action to improve her life, which implied much needed extraverted development. Also, most ESTJs I’ve met, despite being control freaks privately, are more adaptable and relaxed as well, especially in public (higher Te-Ne).

The show centers around Fleabag’s dysfunction. In Si grip, Fleabag tries to pinpoint Boo’s death (and her own hand in causing it) as the “point of origin” but her problems go far deeper than that, all the way back to her family relationships. Everyone in the family is equally messed up despite appearances. The show doesn’t go very far into the historical causes of their collective dysfunction, but it does a good job of illustrating the dysfunctional patterns as they exist in the present. The characters are largely products of old family patterns, therefore, it’s hard to understand each member individually without the context of their collective family dynamic.

A very common family dynamic involves projecting all of the family’s history of dysfunction onto the “weakest link”, aka, the black sheep. The black sheep is usually “chosen” according to their so-called inferiority for failing to live up to the family’s unspoken values, then they are routinely criticized and shamed for being something that is perceived as contrary to the family’s survival and well-being. Over time, this dynamic places an unspoken duty/expectation onto the black sheep, namely that they should always be “the one that ruins everything” whenever the family requires a scapegoat to deflect responsibility for dysfunctional behavior. Fleabag is obviously the black sheep, so everyone uses her as the punchline (for easing tension), the punching bag (for displacing their frustration), and the punch down (for a cheap win during power struggles).

As a defense mechanism, Fleabag believes that she is actually the superior member of the family because she’s “clever” enough to see through people’s fakery or hypocrisy. Despite the concrete proof of her own life being a total mess, she likes to think of herself as being more self-aware than others, i.e., she implicitly blames her life failures on the fact that she can’t fake it or lie to herself like everyone else. However, she doesn’t realize that playing the black sheep role is her form of self-deception. She is deeply caught up in a logical contradiction of knowing she is less than but also believing herself better than, and we see this over and over again in her asides to the audience. By exercising crude power in exposing other people’s fakery, she doesn’t have to look at her own and expose herself, and this plays perfectly into the family pattern that always ends up ricocheting back onto her. Whenever she exposes anything resembling the truth of the family’s dysfunction, regardless of whether she does it kindly or maliciously, she is roundly blamed for “acting out”, being “cruel”, “screwing up”, “ruining everything”, etc etc. The family immediately comes together to activate the scapegoating pattern and, in the end, nothing changes and the pattern repeats the next time they get together. Her twisted way of “caring” for her family is to play the black sheep, and their twisted way of “bonding” is to collectively reinforce their status as not the black sheep.

When people treat you like a black sheep long enough, you believe it and it becomes your identity, and playing this role so well leads her to blow up all of her relationships outside of the family. In accumulating many failed relationships, it’s very easy to slide into settling for less or settling for what you think you deserve, and she has been trained over a lifetime to feel less than deserving. As a defense mechanism, she’s romantically attracted to people who aren’t capable of knowing who she really is, which in turn gives her justification for blowing up each relationship as they are always shallow and meaningless anyway. But this automatic and destructive pattern hits rock bottom when she destroys the only person who’s managed to really know her. She then gradually becomes more aware that she’s repeating unconscious conditioning and could perhaps choose otherwise, but ingrained patterns are hard to change without help and guidance, which eventually invites the influence of the priest.

You might think that their father bears the brunt of the blame for the family being so dysfunctional, but he has plenty of his own unresolved issues that make him more like a child than a parent. The show does not offer any explanation for him but everyone has a history. It seems that he has always been emotionally absent and socially inept in that he allowed their mother to do all of the parenting and caregiving. He is not aggressive, obsessive, or controlling as you would expect for unhealthy TJs, rather, he is detached, distant, avoidant, and indifferent. When you talk to him face-to-face, there is some natural warmth there, but once you are out of his sight, you are out of his mind. You know that he loves you in his way, you know that he tries to empathize, but you also know that he utterly fails to understand anything about you no matter how hard either side tries to bridge the gap. It’s hard to fault him for what is clearly a “disability”? Because of his ineptitude, he traps himself in a codependent relationship with his shadow opposite type, a narcissistic person who calls all the shots in the relationship so that he never has to lift a finger, i.e., he never ever has to bear moral responsibility for anything, and taken to an absurd conclusion, he lives in a pitiful state of learned helplessness. You never have to feel bad if you never do anything, right? Wrong, he is still guilty of sins of omission, and for that he’s never able to truly be at ease no matter what he does to shed away every difficulty. Ideally, a good stepmom takes care of the step-kids, but he was not lucky enough to snag one, so he must accede to the bad stepmom’s judgment or else, heaven forbid, he loses his easy life by having to take responsibility for the girls on his own.

Unhealthy TPs need uptight Js to help them keep life in order, but they often prefer Ps for their amusing company. The father does not “prefer” Claire for what/who she is, rather, he merely appreciates that she doesn’t make any trouble for him, which he wants to believe absolves him of blame. He can say, “See, I have one good daughter, so it’s not my fault that the other one is bad”. There are many parallels between Claire and her father in how they approach relationships very passively and helplessly. Deep down, his heart actually prefers Fleabag for the fact that she more closely resembles her mother and the fact that she is braver than him and challenges him (to be better). He wishes to have a better relationship with her, similar to what he must’ve had with her mother, but he’s unfortunately incapable of containing the dysfunction that bad parenting and unresolved grief has wrought upon her.

You say that Claire should be more flexible if tertiary Ne, but why would you expect her to have any healthy functions? She clearly suffers inferior grip quite often and thus cannot use any of her functions optimally. Every SJ with unhealthy Si-Ne uses micromanagement of routines/rituals as a crutch, so this is true for both dominant and auxiliary Si - your claim here only proves SJ. She’s just as fucked up as Fleabag is, only she is better at repressing her feelings, and for this alone, ISTJ is very unlikely. ISTJs are introverts and they prefer to give up and be at peace rather than double and triple down on stupid behavior in the manner that Claire often does. Her main problem in life is that everything she does to “manage” situations results in her betraying herself in some way, which is strongly indicative of infantile Fi. I disagree that stubbornness is her fatal flaw ala Si-Fi loop; if that were the case, she’d be more than happy to give up everything to Fi loop and disappear into the background. She would also never ever go near Fleabag nor trust her with anything due to the fact that she has already encountered countless past experiences of Fleabag blowing up situations in awful and unpredictable ways. ISTJs are at their least forgiving and never forget whenever it comes to delegating important tasks.

I argue that what gets Claire truly upset is not being unprepared for “all negative possibilities in the abstract” but rather the possibility of LOSING FACE, i.e., being publicly humiliated and exposed as the uncool simpering hypocrite that she is, which is indicative of deep-seated fear of Fi (she envies Fleabag for her “cool” factor for this reason). Unhealthy Te doms, falling apart internally, are still capable of maintaining functionality in external life far longer than other types. She suffers from serious grip problems but still manages to perform her duties at home and at work, which simply wouldn’t be possible for Ne grip. With Fi grip, she instantly switches to very ugly self-pity and irrationally self-protective behavior when threatened by anything. Her instinct upon feeling the vulnerability of exposure is to go on and on and on about how “successful” she is, which usually includes a few rounds of punching down at everyone in an attempt to disown her bad decision making. ISTJs are rarely capable of bullshitting themselves to that extreme; they are more likely to react with humility and even resignation when presented with incontrovertible proof of their failures (see: Bank Manager).

Claire was probably expected to be “the responsible one” (aka elder/caregiver sibling archetype) because there was no one else to take responsibility. However, at this point in her life, she has achieved enough career success to be independent from the family. The fact that she can’t help herself from enacting her old role speaks to the lack of self-insight that is characteristic of inferior Fi, i.e., as much as she complains about hating the pressures and headaches of being “the responsible one”, she unconsciously LOVES it because it grants her a superior position in the family. She’s not willing to give up the pain because she’s not willing to give up the payoff, and this internal love-hate contradiction is what makes her relationship with Fleabag dysfunctional despite the love and affection they have for each other. I don’t think ISTJs are able to bear such obvious internal contradiction and still manage to claim integrity. ISTJs find it much more painful, if not impossible, to pretend and posture for the sake of appearances, because they are supremely stubborn people when it comes to preserving their subjective sense of integrity. By contrast, inferior Fi makes it very easy to ignore subjective integrity and choose destructive methods of obtaining feelings of power and superiority, hence she ends up betraying her own well-being all the time.

As for the Priest, we both agree on him being a Fe dom. What made me choose Ni rather than Si is that he admitted to have been quite a different person in the past by alluding to his many sexual experiences, probably a hint of Se as well. But then he met God and everything took a 180 for him (N, not S), implying that he was uncomfortably adrift for a while and needed a sense of meaning and a clear vision of his path ahead to feel whole (Ni). Also, PWB has said that Fleabag was drawn to the Priest because he has an established sense of purpose, which she’s been looking for, which highlights their P vs J and Ne vs Ni differences. You could argue that he was drawn to her because of tertiary Ne, but I don’t see signs of Si’s typical grounded outlook (he uses a lot of abstractions to explain his ideas) or typical adherence to traditions (the path to his faith wasn’t primarily through this motivation as it happens to many) or typical narrow-mindedness (quite the opposite, he used to be quite open to experiences due to Fe+Se). Oh, and I forgot to mention, the Priest can read and understand Fleabag so well that he even gets to enter her internal world and listen to her personal thoughts. To be able to understand people with this level of depth is, of course, more natural for xNFJs rather than xSFJs, who help people on a more practical level (Fe+Ni v Fe+Si).

I think your understanding of Si is still quite stereotypical. ESFJs have a common pattern of using Ne to “find themselves” only to end up lost because what they’re really doing is Ne loop. ESFJs tend to grow up feeling very pressured to be rule abiders and it is common for them to go through a rebellious stage a bit later in life compared to other types, once the pressure finally reaches a breaking point. After swinging from the painful oppression of “rule observant” behavior in youth to the painful failures of “rule breaking” behavior in young adulthood, they eventually boomerang back to old touchstones, i.e., they ground themselves by rediscovering comfort in the known. IIRC, the priest felt lost and eventually revisited religion for guidance, he made the beliefs his own rather than blindly following dogma, and he chose to commit his life to doing good because HE genuinely wanted to, not because family/society told him to. A healthy ESFJ establishes a stronger sense of self once they reconcile with the past and make “rule following” more palatable by turning it into a personal choice (rather than feeling obligated to constantly self-sacrifice). I disagree that he “transformed” from one person into a completely different one, I think it’s more accurate to say that he had no idea who he was and got increasingly lost until he discovered himself by looking backward and making sense of his past experience.

Religion is an abstract concept, there’s no avoiding abstract discussions about religious beliefs when you’re debating a non-believer, especially when that non-believer is Ne dom. Ne is tertiary and people often use tertiary functions for relief, therefore, ESFJs tend to enjoy abstract discussions, especially of the Ne variety that is full of humor and playfulness, exactly like the kind that he gets with Fleabag. I dare you to try joking around with a “true believer” ENFJ. Their beliefs are deadly serious to them, so they show far less patience for sacrilegious play (unless, for some reason, they have developed an irrational fear of being criticized as dogmatic and pretend to be open-minded). Also, why would an *N*FJ be shocked and alarmed or seem resistant to using intuition to “read” people? Why would their intuition seem so painfully accidental? NFJs generally LIKE using intuition and do it naturally as part of who they are, they embrace it and feel more confident the more they are in touch with it.

Ns tend to speak in abstractions but not everyone who speaks in abstractions is N, similarly, every NJ needs a sense of purpose but not everyone who seeks a purpose is NJ -> beware this logical fallacy: “every cat has four legs but not every four-legged creature is a cat”. NJs need a purpose for materializing their personal potential, SJs seek a purpose for the sake of grounding themselves in something unshakable within - you point out the behavior without grasping the true motivation. When ESFJs develop Si well, they recognize that what makes them happy is to be of service, to be a positive contributor to their community, to be a reliable source of help and comfort to those in need. He is not a charismatic and boastful preacher of the ENFJ sort, rather, he sees himself as a humble servant who uses reliable traditional beliefs to help ground people who feel lost in hectic modern life, using his own past experience as the starting point. The fact that he has the strength to end the relationship with Fleabag before it becomes negative and destructive is a testament to Si steadfastness and how strongly the rules matter to him (Ns are very masterful at rationalizing that the rules don’t apply to them, and that’s often how they end up in bad places). Why would you expect him to display all sorts of negative signs of Si if he is meant to be the positive moral guidance for the show? And wouldn’t it make sense for him to use his well-developed Si to reveal to Fleabag the true extent of her dysfunctional Si? Would an ENFJ instinctively know better than an ESFJ how to remedy Si specific identity dysfunction?

Can you please allow us to submit things to you? In the case of long asks like mine, it helps to avoid any part not getting sent.

I have considered this before but I’m not sure I want to do that.

#fleabag #fiction #fictional depictions #enfp #estj #esfj #ask

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xxonceuponafuckxx · 4 years

Text

Come Back Home

”~~~~

Belle was, understandably, upset when she found out what Rumple had been doing behind her back in order to make money. She hadn’t thought anything when money started just appearing in her purse since it was pretty normal that she would lose track of her cash and she’d just assumed that was what was happening.

But, she’d never expected Rumple selling himself to be the reason for the money. When she’d found him with another woman, Belle had just assumed that he was just actually cheating on her rather than doing what he had considered a job. So, once everything was explained, Belle was quick to throw the woman out and lock her doors.

“Rumple, we need to talk about this…” She didn’t know the first thing about talking to him anymore, trying her best to work with everyone in order to make her husband come back and be his normal self. But, every time they had a setback like this one, she wondered if things would ever go back to what they had been before. Obviously, Rumple was starting to see more and more of her strain. That was the only explanation she had for this particular stunt.

Rumple stared at his wife after she had kicked out the other woman. A small part of him was relieved. He hated doing what he did, but he did do it for a reason. And he was upset that Belle had just kicked her out, that she seemed to be upset with him again. He didn’t know what to do. When he did nothing it clearly wasn’t enough, not with how stressed Belle was. But now she was upset that he’d done the only thing he could do to help her, and it was driving him mad.

“Why do we only ‘need’ to talk about things when you say we do?” he asked her crossly, refusing to answer her statement directly. “I ask you how you’re doing all you do is deflect, but when something is wrong with me we have to talk about it. That’s not what marriage is supposed to be. Even I know that.”

All he wanted to do was to help her. He knew he was just a burden, but the past few months he’d managed to be more than that, getting her money by doing the only thing he could. He may hate it, but at least it made him feel useful again, instead of just someone who had to be taken care of. “Besides, you said before that I can do what I want with my free time. I don’t see why I can’t use that time to make money.”

Belle was completely dumbfounded when he actually snapped at her, left more or less just staring at him before she managed to shake it off. “We… We need to talk about this because it’s not…” She sighed, roughly smoothing her pants in frustration. She knew they’d told her not to tell him that he was doing things wrong or that he wasn’t right. Or, at least, to be gentle when she did try to explain and to tell him how things are usually done without making it seem like she was ordering him around. It was such a tightrope to walk, constantly trying to think about everything she did or said in an attempt to not hurt him. But, she tried. She didn’t want to hurt him and she did only want him to get better.

But, surely, this was too much. Surely, they would understand that Belle had lost her cool. They never did and she knew that. Whatever happened, this was going to come out as her fault. If the therapist or the police found out, this would be her fault. She sighed again, trying to think of some way to explain this while still following her rules. “I-I… Rumple, just not like this. Okay? Please? I don’t know how else to say this. Just, please, not like this.”

She was so lost, not sure how to explain any of this. Especially with him actually arguing with her. She couldn’t get angry with him and argue back like a normal wife, she had to remember that this was her fault. She was supposed to be taking care of him and this was certainly failing. “I can’t really… We can talk whenever you want. I told you that. I’m always here for you to talk to me. If you need anything. I just… You can’t do this. I’m sorry. It’s just… This isn’t… It’s like when Zelena had you. It’s not legal. It’s… This… This is not good. Okay? It’s… It’s not your fault. I should have been more clear with you. I’ll try to… I’ll fix it. Don’t worry.” She smiled, that usual thin and timid smile. It wasn’t exactly forced, but it wasn’t true either. Belle knew she needed to smile at him, she needed to be kind and make sure he didn’t think he was in trouble. That was all that mattered, just making sure he was comfortable and alright.

His frustration only mounted as Belle talked, his frustration and sadness. Belle was so upset, he could tell. She was practically begging him not to keep doing what he’d been doing, but she wasn’t addressing the real issue he had. She refused to talk about herself at all. It was always about him, about what he needed, and he was sick of it. What he needed was to feel useful, and not just because he’d done something trivial like load the dishwasher. He needed to be able to be there for Belle, to help her like he’d helped her before all this mess. But she wasn’t letting him. No one was letting him. It was like he was too broken to be treated like a normal person. And that made him angry.

“No, it’s not your fault!” he shouted, sick and tired of everyone telling him it wasn’t his. It wasn’t his fault he was gone, they said. He couldn’t help that he’d been kidnapped and left Belle to fend for himself. It wasn’t his fault that he’d failed to escape and get back to his little girl who grew up for years without it. It wasn’t his fault that Zelena had trained him so well that he’d forgotten almost everything about his former life. Except it felt like it was, but he wasn’t supposed to say that. He was supposed to understand, to get better. But the more he learned the more he didn’t understand anything. Nothing made sense and he was sick to death of it.

“I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew it was like what Zelena did. How do you think I found people willing to pay me? They were her friends she’d invited over to fuck me. I knew exactly what I was doing. You didn’t fail to tell me anything.” He’s being defiant now, something Zelena had beat out of him. Something he wasn’t supposed to be, not with the therapists or Belle because they knew better than him. But he didn’t care, not right now. “I’m not some ignorant child. I’m not Rose. I may not know what you do, but that doesn’t mean I know nothing. And I can make my own decisions, damn it. That’s the one thing you and the therapist have taught me that makes the most sense now. I made this choice, this is mine. And if it’s wrong then it’s my fault, but I don’t think it is. It helped you, at least a bit. And helping you isn’t wrong, I know that too. I’ve never forgotten that. So why can’t you just let me help you?”

Again, Belle was left speechless. She hadn’t seen this side of her husband since he’d come back and she’d genuinely thought she never would. But, he was angry and he was shouting at her. Belle blinked slowly, trying to wrap her head around everything that was happening. The word ‘fuck’ felt even more vial than it ever had before, almost twisting in his mouth. It felt like that word could suffocate her like it was somehow wrapping around her throat and slamming her stomach at the same time. That word felt like an assault, one she hadn’t expected.

She shivered a bit, looking toward Rose’s door for a moment before allowing her eyes to focus on her husband again. “I-I…” Belle had always felt a bit lost when she spoke to him now, but it was never this bad. Normally, there was something. Belle would focus on using the words she’d been taught to say to him, trying to comfort him as best as she could. But, how could she do that when he was so harshly biting against it? Besides, it wasn’t working.

It felt like she’d been silent for hours, but also seconds. She felt like time was moving both too fast and too slow. She couldn’t grasp anything. She couldn’t find words or actions for this. Belle was trying to go through everything they’d told her, everything she was supposed to say and do. There were so many rules for keeping him here. But, what else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t send him somewhere else when this was his home. She couldn’t bring herself to take Rose’s father away from her after she’d just gotten him back. But, surely, this was too much.

Belle reached out, grabbing onto the arm of the couch for support. “Please? I don’t want you to get upset. I understand… Rumple, I do. Your emotions are important. But, you don’t want to get upset. E-everything is alright. Just try to relax. I’ll… I’ll fix it. You just… You shouldn’t do that anymore. Does that make sense? It’s… You can make your own choices, I’m not giving you orders. That’s just the law. We can do another chore list. You can still help…” Belle steadied herself again, forcing out another smile in an attempt to relax him as she reached out to touch his shoulder softly. “Just relax, Rumple. Please?”

Belle seemed lost for words, as if she didn’t know how to respond to his outburst. And soon she was grabbing onto the couch, begging him not to be upset. That confused him, hurt him. He was trying to help her, and she wouldn’t let him. Did he have a right to be frustrated? Why was she trying to comfort him when it seemed like she was panicking? Why was she still trying to act like everything was fine when it so obviously wasn’t? He wanted to yell at her, to knock sense into her. Or fall on his knees and plead with, beg her to understand and stop just being this person she thought he needed. Because he didn’t need this façade, he needed her.

It was when she touched his shoulder and begged him to relax that all the fight left him. His shoulders slumped, his gaze dropped to the floor, and any thoughts of trying to make her understand fled his mind. He didn’t know if she couldn’t understand, or if she was just refusing to. Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was wrong, yet again. He just didn’t understand why everything felt so wrong now that he was back where he supposedly belonged. Especially with Belle, things felt fake. He knew her eyes were the ones he remembered, so he knew she was important. But he felt like he wasn’t allowed to get to know her, not really. But maybe that was because he didn’t deserve to.

Why was it that no matter what he tried to do, he always messed it up? He always did something wrong? “I’m sorry,” he mumbled to Belle eyes still studying the floor. All he wanted was to help, and to get to know the person whose eyes he’d fought to remember. But then, since when had he ever deserved to get the things that he wanted? “I… I won’t let them fuck me anymore,” he promised, voice close to monotone now. He suddenly felt so very tired, but not in the needing sleep kind of way. “I’ll be good. I’m sorry I wasn’t.” After all, this felt just like being scolded by Zelena, only worse. Because Belle was hurting just as much as him only she wouldn’t let him help. All she did was tell him he had messed up. Again. And all he could think to do to appease her was calm her and tell her he’d be good again. He’d go back to just doing what they told him to. Because anytime he tried doing something for himself it was wrong, so they must want him to not try at all.

Feeling his body slump under her hand, Belle sighed. She was a little glad that the confrontation was over, but she also didn’t want him to go back to what Zelena had taught him either. “Rumple…” She moved her hand from his shoulder, thinking that was what she’d done wrong. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s my fault. I should have taken care of you better. I should have noticed what was happening before it got to this point.”

Belle sat down on the couch, patting the seat next to her for him to sit down with her. “I believe you wanted to talk… And I think that’s a good idea. You seemed more like your old self earlier, Rumple. It just caught me off-guard. I wasn’t… I wasn’t expecting that.” She smiled at him, hoping that he would look back up rather than staring at the floor. “You know you don’t have to be afraid of me. I would never hurt you. I just… This is complicated. We’ll talk about whatever you want, Rumple. I promise. Just, please, don’t shrink back into yourself. You’re doing so well.”

She was nervous, not sure what this conversation was actually going to turn into if he did come back to the conversation from before. But, she also didn’t want him to shrink back into what Zelena had taught him. “I just… Rumple, I wasn’t ready to have that conversation. I needed to wrap my head around it. But… But, this is good. Really, it is. It does mean you’re getting better. I just didn’t expect…” Belle smiled a bit more, relaxing it from the anxious and forced one she’d been offering him. She was happy that he was getting better, even if that meant that her rules were definitely going to change once again.

She told him he hadn’t done anything wrong but was quick to follow it up with saying it was her fault. And that was the problem. They kept telling him he didn’t have to do what they said, that he should learn to think for himself. But then they went and said nothing was his fault, it was always Belle’s. And that felt wrong, it wasn’t right, but he couldn’t explain it in a way that made sense to anyone else. Which was why he was ready to just give up on trying.

But Belle did say she wanted to talk now. About anything. So he tentatively came and sat next to her, feeling more lost than he had the first day back with her. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me,” he told her, looking up at her. He wondered why she’d moved her hand away. He missed the contact, but was afraid to ask for it again in case it upset her. “It’s just… I keep hurting you. I do things that make you upset but you say it’s your fault and I… it doesn’t make sense. It’s like… Rose,” he said, seizing on the only thing that made sense to him about the ‘real’ world. “The first time she drew on the wall it wasn’t her fault, but it wasn’t yours either. You just had to tell her not to do it again, right? So why is it when I do something it is your fault? It… it’s like you expect more from Rose than from me.” Like he wasn’t good enough to be expected to do anything useful.

“Everyone is so hard on you, yourself included. All I want to do is help you, but I can’t. Everything I do just makes things worse for you. All I want is the chance to get to know you again, but I feel like that’s not allowed. I feel like all I do is hurt you. And I don’t want to hurt you Belle. Not ever.”

She listened to him. Really, she did and he made good points like he used to before all of this happened. As he spoke, she did feel bad for making him feel as though he couldn’t be trusted with anything. Belle trusted Rose because she had trained Rose to live with only Belle to take care of her, they’d had to do things that way. But, things weren’t the same now and that was difficult for everyone involved.

“It’s just… Everyone is telling me what you need and how I’m supposed to act with you. And I want to do what you need because, more than anything, I just want my husband back.” Belle smiled at him a bit, reaching out to gently touch his cheek. “I know you don’t remember or understand, but you’re the love of my life. You make me happier than anyone else on this entire planet ever could. And that’s why it’s so hard to see you suffer like this.” She sighed, shaking her head as she slowly removed her hand from his cheek.

“You almost sounded like your old self… You always argued with me. You just…” Belle stared at him, a million thoughts racing through her head. “There are so many rules for me. I have to make sure you’re safe now. I have to watch over you. Because… Because I didn’t protect you from her. I should have found you sooner, I should have kept looking like Bae. I gave up on you, Rumple. I left you there and I…” She was starting to cry, not sure what to do as she just continued staring at him. He was her husband, he was. But, there were so many rules now. Belle bit at her lip for a moment, shaking her head and moving closer to him. She hesitated for a moment, finally leaning forward to kiss him. “Please, Rumple? Please understand that this is different, that I’m different. You can say no to me… You don’t have to… I just…”

He nodded a bit when she said that everyone was telling her how she was supposed to interact with him. He knew that. In fact, that was a big part of the problem. They expected her to do so much, and yet it wasn’t all things she should be doing. Especially with how hard it was for her to make money. She had so much to worry about, that she shouldn’t be expected to watch him all the time. He wasn’t a child like Rose, even if he didn’t know any more than she did. He was an adult, and he just wished they’d treat him like one.

She said she wanted her husband back, and that did make him a bit sad. He wanted to be back, to be there for her. And he was frustrated that he couldn’t be, that he didn’t remember. But then she was back to blaming herself and he shook his head at her. “No, no it’s not your fault. You couldn’t have protected me. No one could. It’s not your fault for not protecting me, just like it’s not my fault for not escaping or remembering. It’s her fault, not ours.”

And then she was leaning closer, and he realized quickly that she wanted to kiss him. He wanted to kiss her too, so he was quick to respond. “I know. It’s different. It’s different because I want it too.” And then he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in close to him so that he could kiss her. He’d kissed Zelena countless times, but none of those times had felt like this. Her kisses had always been so relentless and demanding. And even when he’d kissed her without complaint, he still hadn’t particularly enjoyed it. But with Belle he did. The kiss felt good and right in a way that almost nothing had since he’d been rescued, and he hugged her closer throughout it, cherishing the moment. He only broke this kiss to breathe, settling his forehead against hers because that felt right too.

“Can we sleep together?” he asked her, before realizing how she’d take it. “No sex. We’ll be in pajamas. It’s just… I don’t want to be apart from you. Please?”

Belle bit at her lip when the kiss broke, closing her eyes as he leaned his forehead against hers. She knew he wasn’t back, not completely, but this had to be considered progress. They would be angry if they knew she’d kissed him, that she’d let herself show such weakness. She had to be careful with him, but she was. She was being careful. She was being so careful.

But, he’d kissed her back and he’d said that he knew this was different. They couldn’t possibly consider this wrong. He wanted to kiss her just as much as she wanted to kiss him. It wasn’t wrong. It didn’t feel wrong. At least, not really. Belle still heard all her rules echoing in the back of her head, but she knew that wasn’t her ideas. They were wrong, this wasn’t going to hurt him. She wouldn’t hurt him.

Nodding a bit, Belle hesitated to answer out loud. “Yes… I don’t want to be away from you either.” She pulled back a bit, looking up at him. “But, Rumple… You can’t tell anyone about this, okay? I need you to just… I know I told you to tell them everything and to tell them the truth, but you can’t tell them this. They’ll… They’ll say it’s inappropriate. They’ll take you away from me.”

She knew that he could stop them if he was himself, but he wasn’t. When he’d been himself, he’d been a force to be reckoned with. But, Belle didn’t have his power or money. Well, she did in a way. She had his savings, but she preferred not to touch them unless things got really bad.

Standing up, Belle reached out her hand for him and pulled him up. “Let’s go to bed. It’s been a long day and Rose is going to wake us up early…”

He smiled when she agreed to sleep in the same bed as him. He’d wanted that for so long, and he understood why she couldn’t do that at first. He’d been so confused and disoriented, and in some ways he still was. But now he knew what sex was supposed to be, even if he’d been using it to make money. It was supposed to be a way two people showed they really cared about each other. And since he hadn’t be able to use sex like that for a while, he couldn’t do it with Belle yet. He wasn’t supposed to think sex with her was like sex with others. He understood, though it made him a bit sad. He wanted to show Belle he loved her in all ways, even sex.

But then she said he couldn’t tell anyone, and he couldn’t help but chuckle just a bit at the idea. “Of course not. It’s not like I do tell them everything anyway,” he admitted. He’d figured out, early on, that sometimes what he said made things harder for Belle. Or they just didn’t seem to understand. So he kept more and more to himself. And besides, it wasn’t like he’d told them about how he’d decided to get money for Belle.

It sometimes felt like he had to choose between them or Belle, and the choice was easy. “I would never let them take me away. I won’t be taken from you, not again,” he told her, hugging her tightly for a moment. Then she was getting up, and he let her help him, smiling as she said it was bed time. “Okay,” he agreed, holding her hand in his. “Let’s go to bed.” And then he let her lead him toward the bedroom, happier than he’d been in a long time.

She didn’t know how she felt about him keeping things from them, worried about what would happen if they found out she’d told him explicitly to hide things. But, she tried to relax and just let herself enjoy the fact that this seemed to be working. Whether they were happy with it or not, it seemed that he was as unhappy with all the rules as she was.

She opened the door to their room, awkwardly realizing that nobody other than her had been in there in a few years. “I-I… I’m sorry. I haven’t had anyone else in my room.” Belle had kept all the pictures of them stashed away in her room, not wanting Rose to see them and get confused. And, when she’d found him, it had become more about keeping them from him as well.

Belle left him in the doorway, quickly collecting her discarded tissues from around the bed to throw them away before starting to grab the pictures from around the room and on the walls. Her room had almost become a shrine to what they’d been, all the happiness they’d had before he was taken from her. She wasn’t sure why she’d decided to wallow in all of that pain rather than simply packing it all up, but she couldn’t. She’d tried, more than once. But, every time, she put it back before even sealing up the boxes. Belle still wore his old button-up shirts to bed, still kept his cologne stocked up. She wallowed in his memory until it drowned her. She’d forgotten this part, why she was fine keeping him out of that room even when it wasn’t bedtime. She didn’t want him to see this, to know how bad it was. Belle was almost addicted to this sick, night-time ritual. She would sit in this room, surrounded by everything she’d lost until it hurt so badly that she was afraid she would explode. Then, she’d remind herself of her rules. She kept them right by the door, so she couldn’t leave her little sanctuary without remembering to compose herself.

His sickness was out there for everyone to see. He had to be so open about everything he felt and needed, so she was more than happy to hide hers behind this door. This was her version of sickness, her toxic sadness that threatened to overtake her. The only difference was, Rumple had been forced into this. She did this to herself willingly, constantly torturing herself with these memories. But, she’d forgotten about it for a moment. She’d let herself forget how bad it was in here and why she couldn’t let him in here. He would know she was sick, too. She wished she’d told him no, but she was weak. She wanted him to see her, to be himself again. In some sick way, maybe some part of her wanted him to know about this. There was almost too much to clean and she knew that, but it didn’t stop her from trying.

He didn’t need to see this, didn’t need to be reminded of just how much Belle missed the real him. She hadn’t wanted him to feel bad and she realized that as soon as he was in the room. Belle needed to protect him, especially from this.

He was a bit surprised when they entered the room. There were photos of him everywhere and used tissues from where Belle had no doubt cried. She apologized as she started going around and cleaning up the room, but all he could do for the moment was stand and stare. He’d known Belle was struggling. He could tell this hurt her like it hurt him, but he hadn’t thought it hurt her this much. It honestly looked like what had happened was worse for her than it was for him. And for the first time, he actually felt anger towards Zelena.

How dare she? Sure she’d taken him and hurt him, but he wasn’t exactly angry at her for that. It was just something that had happened. Something he deserved, maybe. She’d said he deserved it at least, and he’d believed it. He might doubt that now, but he still felt like he’d deserved it. But Belle? Belle hadn’t deserved this. She shouldn’t have had to deal with him suddenly just being gone. She’d had to fend for herself the whole time he was gone. And she’d been suffering, missing him. She deserved better.

His fist clenched at his side, and he glared out the window, at the place where her house had been. If she was here in front of him, he’d try to hit her. But that wouldn’t change anything. He relaxed his fist, looking at Belle as she kept cleaning the room. He moved over towards her, placing his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he told her gently. “You missed me, like I missed you. And I have you back but… well I’m not back really. Am I?” His new anger at his kidnapper allowed him, at least for the moment, to blame her instead of himself for not remembering everything. “It’s hard for you. Harder than it is for me. And that… there’s nothing wrong with that. You shouldn’t be ashamed of that.”

He wished, not for the first time, that he could just snap his fingers and get all his memories back. He wanted to be the man Belle had married, the one that she needed. But unfortunately, that wasn’t something that was likely to happen. Not anytime soon, at any rate. But he could try to be here for her as best he could, despite that. He wanted to be there for her, to help her. Just so long as she’d let him.

“Come on, let’s deal with this tomorrow,” he suggested, gently tugging at her to try and get her to go to bed. “We can just go to bed now, and tomorrow we can clean this up. Together.” He wasn’t sure she’d agree. He half expected her to tell him he shouldn’t have anything to do with this, that this wasn’t about him, because it wasn’t. It was about the him he’d been before, not the him he was now. But it had to do with her, and he still cared about her. So… so maybe that meant it had something to do with him too. He hoped it did. He wanted it to. “Please sweetheart? I think we both need to rest now.”

Belle froze when she felt his hand touching her shoulder, biting nervously at her lip. He was there, seeing all of the things that she’d tried so hard to protect him from. He said that he wasn’t really back, but she slowly shook her head. This was the most like his old self she’d seen him since getting him back. Some part of her wondered if she should have shared this weakness with him earlier, but she knew she couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have let him see it now if she hadn’t forgotten about it.

She nodded a bit, letting him move her easily. No matter how much she wanted to say something, anything, she couldn’t find the words. Not now. He was trying to take care of her like he always had and they were surrounded by everything from their old life together. It felt so normal and yet so wrong. He shouldn’t be here, she knew that. He shouldn’t be seeing all of this, knowing how much she’d been hurt with him gone. But, he was making gentle choices for her and calling her sweetheart. She’d always sworn that she hated others deciding things for her, but it was so welcomed now. It was welcomed when it came from him. “Rumple…”

It hurt so badly, being in that room and looking at everything she’d lost when Zelena took him. She’d replaced the frames and the scrapbooks a few times when it had all overwhelmed her. But, that had been before Rose and before he was home. She was smart enough to keep this hidden from them. But, he was there now. He was in the center of all of this, seeing all of it and still trying to help her. It felt selfish and what she wanted felt even more selfish. Belle moved so easily with him, always had. She was slow, nervous and afraid to be so close to him when she was so vulnerable. But, despite her hesitations, she moved so easily. Belle reached out, hands shaking as she pulled him closer to her. She was so nervous, so unsure.

It almost felt like the first time she’d tried this, though the memory only pushed her further. Belle sunk down onto the bed, pulling him down with her and pressing her lips against his. It was needier than it had been before. Because she needed him and, no matter what anyone said, he was coming back to her. Even if it was slow and he didn’t remember, he seemed so much like himself. It was wrong and that thought kept popping into her head, almost like a warning alarm in her head. She shouldn’t be sharing a bed with him and she shouldn’t be kissing him. But, Belle couldn’t think about the rules right now. Not when he was so familiar and they were hidden away in her safe haven. Belle pulled back a bit, reminding herself of only one thing. He needed to just understand one thing. “You can say no… I’ll stop. You don’t have to.” As much as she was getting carried away, she remembered him first. She had to put him first. “I just don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to make you feel… You don’t have to do anything you don’t want.” It felt so strange to need a disclaimer with him, but she felt she needed it. At least, now. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.

#Para #belle #Belle008 #thecursedspinner

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gurguliare · 5 years

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ooh ooh. can you dvd commentary "the wine we fought for" from "Are you a masochist, Schonkopf?" to "Schonkopf felt a fleeting moment of pity for that one other person, whose life and honor the firebombing must have saved"?

MY PLEASURE, THANKS. sorry this is super long because you picked a fresh ‘un.

“Are you a masochist, Schonkopf?” he said.

“Who, me?”

I obviously love Yang and Schonkopf’s stupid conversations in-show for a lot of reasons, but one is that Yang is a little less sure of his footing around Schonkopf than e.g. academy friends (and has reason to be!), so he puts more effort into actively turning the tables when he’s uncomfortable. He also spends less time playing dumb, I think because he finds Schonkopf’s incitement-to-revolt genuinely worrying and doesn’t want to give it any quarter—Schonkopf seems willing to take anything less than a flat denial as encouragement, so this makes some sense. Actually, Schonkopf might take encouragement from a flat denial, which is presumably why Yang always hears him out first, to make a point out of “it’s not that I don’t trust you enough to share my secret ambitions, it’s that I trust you and I DON’T HAVE SECRET AMBITIONS.” I also like that Yang’s efforts to wrongfoot him often work, at least a little, although he’s a recovery artist. But his recoveries involve digging himself deeper in/showing more of his hand, as far as personal investment is concerned.

“Well, take this. I can’t imagine you’d enjoy seeing me paired off. It would offend your sense of justice—and rightly so. How can a man like me go courting?” With his free hand he drew a line across his neck. For the guillotine? “As for your other demands… If I seized control of the government, your life would become very boring. Subduing the populace, night raids—for a man of your talents, it’s a snore. We’d never go to war again. And yet you go on asking me to take up the mantle of power.”

I do think Yang kind of equates “Schonkopf urging dictatorship upon me” and “Schonkopf meddling in my love life.” Which is interesting, because… in some ways the show wants to set up the desire for a happy private life and the pressure to seize power (and protect himself) as opposing drives in Yang’s life, but obviously for Yang himself they both represent an unconscionable turn toward self-interest—toward self-interest and away from his obligation to, uh, all the people he’s blown up. I don’t know that Vermilion is really about Overcoming The Guilt so much as it is discovering a little humility; in targeting Reinhard and proposing to Frederica he’s slightly overriding the control freak instinct that says “you hold the ultimate power here and will fuck everything up personally.” But it’s charming to me when people are like “??? why doesn’t Yang ignore the order for the sake of the greater good,” when it’s made pretty explicit that if Yang were following his idea of a straight consequentialist agenda, he wouldn’t fight Reinhard at all…….. Well, and there’s more to it than that, because part of Yang’s brand of consequentialism is trying to force himself out of the headspace that believes perfectly informed decisions can ever be made by fumbling individuals. Still.

That said, I feel “your job would suck under the Yang Regime” is a pretty compelling argument and one Schonkopf should lend further consideration

“You’ve confused me with yourself,” Schonkopf said, after a pause. “A man so afraid of being bored, he closes his eyes to everything that might disappoint him.”

Yang blinked. But Schonkopf had warmed to his subject. “Now, me—though it might involve some personal sacrifice, I would find matters to interest me in your dictatorship. And if you were in love… ‘Yang Wen-li, laid low by passion!’ I admit, you’re not a natural. Is there any part you’re a natural for? But as we’ve discussed—you’re not a bad student.”

The most unrealistic part of this fic is the idea that this would in any way strike Yang as an odd or unprofessional thing for Schonkopf to say. But as I discovered while editing this scene, there’s actually no line weird enough that it DOES make sense as a trigger for Yang’s realization. I made the sort of boring decision while writing that… characterization-wise I am okay with Yang moving things along here, on the basis that Yang is interested in letting off some steam and has entered into that kind of self-soothing mindset he’ll increasingly show on the road to Vermilion. And I think if Yang were going to choose any time to hit on Schonkopf, or better yet blindside Schonkopf by arbitrarily declaring Schonkopf to have hit on him, it would certainly be as part of a high-level deflection away from one (1) question he doesn’t want to answer about Frederica and/or himself as a person who experiences positive desire. In this case actually it wasn’t a question, it was just Schonkopf suggesting he reach out to a grieving friend. Yang: What? No!!

Yang is also kind of the Aslan of LOGH in that whenever a person comes to him about a third party’s possible crush on him, he’s like, “no, I’m going to tell you about your crush now. no one is told any incriminating details but their own.”

He leaned forward; and for once, Yang didn’t shrink away. Emboldened, Schonkopf wiggled his fingers in Yang’s face, invoking the spirit of a fairy godmother over a pumpkin. Yang moved his head to one side and squinted. “Are you making a pass at me?”

With the body language I did want to convey that Schonkopf has overshot his normal careful boundary-testing, partly because he’s feeling “vulnerable” about the one-sidedness of his investment—that’s part of what him ordering the autopsy under his own authority and then feeling weird about it is supposed to set up, though I don’t know if it works.

It was natural to lower his hand. It was natural to smile pedantically, as if letting himself in on the joke.

I’m happy with this line because for me it immediately evokes OVA Schonkopf’s whole face situation.

“I can’t say I’d thought of it. But for you, Admiral, I would make an exception…”

One question that it might be reasonable to address, now that I’ve gotten into it about all these… characterization considerations, for a very short and unimpassioned relationship upgrade scene… is why I didn’t just have Schonkopf initiate. And the answer is, because Schonkopf is a cowardly opportunist! Of sorts. I mean, he’s not Yang-level, but we see with Katerose how unwilling he is to go out of his way to do anything that might involve inconvenience for him, and I don’t think he’s so attracted to Yang he’d consider it worth the risk. Maybe. I mean, in general he’s not the sort of person who “risks” things for sex. It depends how you picture both FPA culture and the culture within the military, but I think especially in the first half of the show Schonkopf doesn’t seem confident enough about where to place Yang in any of that, even just as an “unsoldierly” person with all these performative civilian aspirations, that he’d put himself out there without some sign of interest from Yang. I think also with both Yang and Frederica he has this pre-emptive sour grapes thing of like, I don’t have a chance so I’m going to sublimate all my energy into weird interrogations of their joint ward, which Julian calls him out on in the one target practice scene, lol.

“No, really.” Schonkopf eased his weight off the desk and raised an eyebrow, a half a beat too late. Yang was practically glowing. His eyes had popped open. Disgusted, Schonkopf understood that he was ignoring any implications: he had the silly, brazen look he got when alone with an ideal puzzle. “I thought you were sour Frederica turned you down,” Yang stage-whispered, putting his hand flat on the desk in a covert slap of triumph. “I was too narrowminded. General, if you have a complaint—”

Yang is so dumb lol. None of the above commentary is meant to imply that this isn’t a genuine lightbulb moment for him, at least on a conscious level. Yang: “huh, this hot guy is constantly up in my business, I guess I can leverage his curiosity as loyalty” —> “ohhhhh he cares about me as a PERSON i can use him for SEX”

He paused. I should have timed it, Schonkopf thought, and folded his arms.

“How curious,” said Yang, leaning back. “I seem to have lost my head. I apologize if I said something in bad taste. It was a joke. Uh, a test?”

I wrote a less halfassed version of this and then had to ask myself whether Yang would put any effort whatsoever into offering someone ELSE a graceful exit.

Schonkopf shook his head. His arms stayed crossed. Yang stared up at him, and stifled a yawn. When the silence had gone on another moment, he appeared to sag. “This is difficult. Usually, the other person makes a move, and we’re interrupted by a firebombing,” he offered. “Well, I say usually. It’s only happened the once…”

“How would you know?” Schonkopf said, kissing him.

He felt Yang tense. The change was harsh. But, equally quickly, he relaxed, and even moved with the kiss. His hands settled on Schonkopf’s shoulders. Schonkopf felt a fleeting moment of pity for that one other person, whose life and honor the firebombing must have saved.

Anyway, my favorite thing about writing this scene was just that Schonkopf doesn’t know who Jessica Edwards is. Could Yang pull this line on Frederica? He could not! But Schonkopf, while a stalker, isn’t one of those weird stalkers who knows your dead friends’ names. Here, that puts him at a disadvantage.

“life and honor” — I like this bit because, although it’s just a joke, I enjoyed making Schonkopf be wrong in this fic, in general, as a dramatic irony thing but also because I like when characters are wryly, ruefully, or resignedly wrong. Like, they put some thought into this! Still wrong. And often the way in which they are wrong shows a real lack of imagination about how many different things can fail terribly—sure, getting emotionally involved with Yang is a bad idea and about to become a much worse one, but disengaging didn’t save Jessica. Yang is not the be-all and end-all of horrors awaiting anyone in LOGH universe, and it’s important that Schonkopf can’t see beyond that for even a second.

#akitania #no one expects the fannish inquisition #my analysis of my analysis.#logh tag

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theliterateape · 5 years

Text

The High-Maintenance Problem with The Atlantic’s Revisiting "When Harry Met Sally"

By David Himmel

If I had to choose my top five favorite romantic comedies without spending too much time thinking about them, they would be: 1. Annie Hall 2. Grosse Point Blank 3. When Harry Met Sally 4. High Fidelity 5. Better Off Dead

Now, having done that, I realize that I might have a thing for John Cusack. But this isn’t about that. This is about When Harry Met Sally, which was released on July 21, 1989. Being that it’s thirty years old, retrospectives of this adored movie were bound to come out. On July 19, The Atlantic published “The Quiet Cruelty of When Harry Met Sally” by Megan Garber. The subhead reads: “The classic rom-com invented the ‘high-maintenance’ woman. Thirty years later, its reductive diagnosis lives on.”

When Harry Met Sally struck a chord with us then and its affects linger with us now, which Garber did a wonderful job of pointing out in her piece. It is a well-written piece, structurally. But her thematic positioning is off the mark.

Her issue, made clear in the subhead, takes issue with the scene where Harry (Billy Crystal) tells Sally (Meg Ryan) that she is a high-maintenance women. The worst kind, at that. “You’re high-maintenance, but you think you’re low-maintenance,” he tells her.

Garber writes, “[T]he term today does precisely what it did 30 years ago, as backlash brewed against the women’s movement: It serves as an indictment of women who want. It neatly captures the absurdity of a culture that in one breath demands women do everything they can to ‘maintain’ themselves and, in the next, mocks them for making the effort. She wears makeup? High-maintenance. She shops? High-maintenance. She’d prefer the turkey burger? High-maintenance.”

But Harry doesn’t list Sally’s fashion sense or desire to shop or what item on the menu she wants as examples of her high-maintenance behavior. He uses one example of how she is particular with how she wants the item on the menu she’s chosen. Garber quickly over generalizes and assumes intention. She’s not alone. It’s what many have done with the phrase over the last thirty years.

Garber points the blame at Harry when she writes, “It’s so casual. It’s so bluntly efficient. The man, inventing the categories, and the woman, slotted into them. The man exempt; the woman, implicated.”

There’s a difference between being high-maintenance and being difficult. Sally is quite likable. Which is exactly why Harry befriends and falls in love with her.

To give credit to Harry’s glib assessment of Sally as “the worst kind” of high-maintenance creating yet another negative box with which to put women as feminist backlash at the hands of a male director and character is to give it too much credit. If we’re going to talk about Hollywood productions creating tiny boxes for women to exist, we must look directly at Sex and the City. The TV show, the films, as well as the source material and the author of the book and so many of the others penned by Candace Bushnell.

The four women weren’t shallow characters, but we the viewers did everything we could to drain the little depth they did have by posing and answering the question of Which Sex and the City Character Are You? (I’m such a Miranda, by the way.) It’s a terrible thing we do to women, but it’s not just female characters who are boxed in. The men of Sex and the City were stereotyped and shoved into shoddy bivouacs of categorization. Mr. Big, the rich dreamboat; Aidan Shaw, the nice guy who finished last; Jack Berger, the tortured, self-loathing writer; Aleksandr Petrovsky, the aloof foreigner who rejects American customs; Harry Goldenblatt, the safe Jewish lawyer who was too bald for Charlotte to even consider dating at first; Smith Jerrod, the young hunk who was perfect until he no longer needed Samantha to reaffirm his value. As a man living a single life hunting for companionship during the height of Sex and the City’s influence, I had to wade through these male stereotypes constantly. It sucked.

And I’m sure the same kind of wading sucks for women.

Simple, stupid character categories and stereotypes exist all over the place in popular media. How we invite them into our real lives and use them to govern our opinions and decisions is not the responsibility of the writer, actor, or director. It’s ours.

Garber writes, “But high-maintenance is one of a particular subgroup of pop-cultured insults that are applied, most commonly, to women — a category that whiffs of feminist backlash. There’s MILF, popularized by American Pie; and cougar, popularized by the 2001 book Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men; and cool girl, introduced by Gone Girl; and gold digger, an insult of long standing recently revived by Kanye West. There’s butterface, derived over time from movies and music. There’s Monet (Cher in Clueless: ‘From far away it’s okay, but up close it’s a big ol’ mess’). There’s cankle — whose coinage added one more entry to the ever-expanding list of body parts women might feel insecure about — popularized by the allegedly romantic comedy Shallow Hal. (‘She’s got no ankles,’ Jason Alexander’s character, Mauricio, says. ‘It’s like the calf merged with the foot — cut out the middleman.’)”

Some of these are insults. Cankle is mean. Butterface isn’t all that nice. But calling someone a Monet is less an insult and more a dig at the unfortunate reality that some of us look better from far away thanks, in some part, to makeup. And yes, women and makeup is an issue steeped in sexism. But I could be a Monet, too. Maybe I am. Beauty and taste are in the eyes of the beholder.

My wife and I had a conversation early on in our dating days about women shaving their legs. She was all for letting her hair grow. I said that I had no problem with women who don’t shave their legs or their arm pits or whatever else. But I’m not sexually attracted to hairy legs. That’s just my preference. There are plenty out there who may find someone I consider a Monet to be the most gorgeous face on this planet. And that’s great. That’s how it should be. Different strokes and all that.

High-maintenance doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Owning a boat requires high-maintenance and I love owning a boat. Being a parent to a toddler requires high-maintenance and I love being a parent to a toddler. Flying a plane, driving a race car, being a professional athlete at the top of your game… all things that are high-maintenance. There are those who don’t want to deal with that sort of stuff, and that’s perfectly okay. Driving a Honda Civic while wearing a baseball hat because you didn’t style your hair is pretty low-maintenance. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

As it relates to Sally being high-maintenance, Garber misses the fact that there’s a difference between being high-maintenance and being difficult. Harry, while he does pin the term on Sally as a mark in the negative column, does not say she’s difficult. Because she’s not. She just wants it the way she wants it. She’s never rude to anyone when ordering a meal or whenever she’s being high-maintenance. And because of that, she’s not difficult or mean or snooty. Sally, for the most part, is quite likable. Which is exactly why Harry befriends and falls in love with her.

In the climax of the film, after Harry has stormed into the New Year’s Eve party and confronts Sally, he lists all of the high-maintenance things about her as top reasons he loves her so deeply. If that’s so, how can it be a negative thing? For all that I love about my wife and friends and family, I would never list the things I dislike about them as reasons I love them. Or would I? Perhaps that’s what makes human relationships so complicated. We love or hate the whole package. For good or ill.

Harry is a jerk. Well, it’s his veneer. Harry is a typical male who flairs his feathers and pounds his chest to present himself as an alpha male. When we meet him, his a smug college graduate — a kid. He’s sure of himself and his view of the world and no one can shake his confidence. Because he’s a twenty-something in his sexual prime, he’s going to over simplify the complexity of relationships because that’s what twenty-somethings do when they’re trying to get laid, which is what Harry is trying to do.

Later, after he’s been married and divorced, he’s a broken man. Even after he comes out of his mopey funk, he maintains his guard because he’s been hurt, hurt bad, and doesn’t ever want to feel that pain again. This is the Harry we have when he makes the high-maintenance accusation. Who among us hasn’t been cold and closed off and dumbed down human personality traits to the most simple state when trying to protect our wounded heart and ego? If you answered, “Me! I’ve never done that!” then you’re a liar or have never been hurt bad enough or are too careless with your feelings. But there I go… over-simplifying things and putting in a box.

When Harry Met Sally removed the honesty, the reality to make room for laughs.

Harry is only likeable because of his wit. He grows on us and we forgive his stupid comments because that’s what we do with people. When the good we see in people outweighs the dumb shit that comes out of their mouths, we forgive that dumb shit. We laugh at it. We find it charming. And thank Christ we do otherwise I wouldn’t have a single friend to my name.

But do not mistake that last statement as a defense of Harry. That conversation he and Sally have in their respective beds via split-screen is Harry at his most obnoxious in effort to deflect Sally from noticing his vulnerability. At that point in the film, he may well already be in love with her. Even so, I’m not defending Harry because there’s nothing to defend. It’s a pithy conversation between two friends. Yeah, it occurred in one of cinema’s most beloved films but so what? To take anything anyone says late at night during drowsy conversation over the phone as Rule is silly. Not every line of dialogue should carry equal amounts of weight.

Garber writes at the end of her article, “Movies’ magic can take many forms. Their words can become part of you, as can their flaws. Thirty years after When Harry Met Sally premiered, in this moment that is reassessing what it means for women to desire, it’s hard not to see a little bit of tragedy woven into comedy’s easy comforts.”

She’s spot on there. Tragedy and comedy go hand-in-hand in theatre, be it on the stage or the screen. According to the short documentary How Harry Met Sally, director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron both planned on ending the film with Harry and Sally not pursuing a lasting romantic relationship, choosing to remain friends instead. But they caved to the Hollywood ending because, well, Hollywood. Though they both agreed that ending was far from realistic.

The impetus of the When Harry Met Sally story was based in reality. Reiner wanted to make a film where two people became friends but didn’t screw because it would ruin the friendship. Ephron liked it and signed on. She based the Harry character on Reiner’s experience as a man reentering the dating life following his divorce from Penny Marshall. Crystal, Reiner’s best friend at the time, punched up the screenplay to make Harry funnier. Because before Crystal got hold of him, Harry was an even greater misanthrope. Ephron based Sally’s character on her friends.

Reality, as representative as it is in art today and thirty (forty, fifty, sixty…) years ago, is not what movies are. And certainly not romantic comedies. Annie Hall may be the truest of all romantic comedies. But Annie Hall wasn’t meant to be a romantic comedy. It was originally intended to be a look at the man in a mid-life crisis. The end result is essentially one chapter of that larger idea. Allen even sacrificed some laughs in order to tell a story about human beings, according to a PBS documentary about the writer-director.

When Harry Met Sally is the opposite. It removed the honesty, the reality to make room for laughs. So to take anything from a movie that was positioned to pull laughs from a culture using characters that had been twisted out of real people and real feelings is both oversimplifying and over aggrandizing the point of a romantic comedy. It’s lazy thinking, really. And lazy thinking is the kind of thinking done by low-maintenance kind of people.

#When Harry Met Sally #The Atlantic #Megan Garber #Billy Crystal #Meg Ryan #Nora Ephron #Rob Reiner #Romantic comedies #Hollywood vs Real Life #Hollywood #Annie Hall #Penny Marshall #Sex and the City

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skylarvalse-blog · 7 years

Text

This “Equality” Bullshit

I might lose followers and get a lot of backlash for this, but we need to clear something up. Right. Now. The other day I was on facebook and came across this link from BuzzFeed about “32 Everyday Things Women Do That Men Don’t Have To Worry About”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/everyday-things-women-do-that-men-dont-have-to-worry-about?utm_term=.elqq6bKWKV#.irmGoXwxwj

Here are the 32 things, just in case the link doesn’t work:

“1. Carrying your keys in your hand as a “weapon” when walking alone at night. 2. And turning your headphones off to make sure you’re not being followed. 3. Nailing the “I’m-walking-quickly-but-not-so-quick-that-you’ll-sense-my-fear” pace when someone is behind you. 4. Calling friends when alone in a taxi/Uber in order to feel safe. 5. Or texting them your driver’s details “just in case”. 6. Messaging them when you get home to let them know you’re OK. 7. Sitting near other women on public transport to minimise the risk of being harassed/attacked. 8. Avoiding being out altogether if it’s too early in the morning or too late at night because it doesn’t seem safe. 9. Pretending to be on the phone in any number of situations to avoid harassment.

10. Wearing a wedding ring to reduce the chances of men hitting on/harassing you, because they respect another man’s “property” more than a woman’s right to say no. 11. Giving men fake names and phone numbers rather than risking their anger at being rejected. 12. Staying silent when being verbally harassed out of fear if you fight back it’ll turn violent. 13. Keeping your drink covered with your hand and getting your friend to watch it if you need to go to the bathroom at a bar so that it doesn’t get spiked. 14. Making sure a friend always knows where you are if you’re going on a first date with a stranger. 15. Working hard despite the knowledge you’re being paid, on average, less than men in the same position. 16. Qualifying statements with words like “just” and “sorry” to avoid being perceived as pushy or aggressive. 17. Faking being happy and perky even when you don’t feel like it to avoid being seen as a bitch. 18. But not being TOO perky, so that people don’t think you’re stupid.

19. Pretending to be patient when you’re interrupted/talked over repeatedly by men. 20. Repeating yourself over and over again to get your point across. 21. Removing hair from your armpits, legs, and bikini line because on women it’s “gross” but on men it’s totally acceptable. 22. Spending a lot of money each month on period products, which are still considered a “luxury” by many governments. 23. Hiding said products up sleeves or in pockets when going to the bathroom in public places, because there’s still a lot of stigma around periods. 24. Making sure the right amount of skin is covered up or risking being seen as slutty/indecent. 25. Wearing makeup because you’re conditioned to believe your bare face isn’t good enough – or heck, just because you like it – and being told you’re fake. 26. Or not wearing makeup because you don’t want to/cbf and being told you look tired or sick.

27. Questioning whether the tweet or Facebook status you’re about to post will result in being viciously trolled/harassed, and having to make the decision about whether it’s worth it. 28. Constantly empathising with male TV/movie leads, and then having to deal with men protesting on the few occasions women are given starring roles. 29. Answering and/or deflecting deeply personal questions about your relationship status/fertility/home life from family, potential bosses, current bosses, and random strangers. 30. Taking the Pill if you have sex with men and want to avoid getting pregnant, because there’s still no male equivalent available. 31. Living with the knowledge that the government (dominated by men) has the power to legislate against your bodily autonomy. 32. And dealing with people telling you your concerns aren’t valid and you should stop complaining because “women are equal”.”(BuzzFeed webpage).

I’ll admit that, as a woman whom is small, pretty weak, and has no martial arts experience, that I do have to do and worry about many of these things. But, if you read through it, it says all of this as if men don’t do some of the same things. This whole battle to “make women equal” is wonderful (although it should be for everyone, not just women) but many people are trying to achieve this goal by putting the spotlight on women and how we struggle.

That’s great and all, but while they’re doing that they’re completely ignoring the fact that men and all other genders (because I can’t keep track any more and don’t mean any offense) have a lot of the same issues.

If you want everyone to be equal don’t cut men out of the picture, we’re trying for equality here. You need to show that women have these problems, yes, but men do too.

#1-9 - Not every guy out there is big and burly with black belts in every form of martial art out there. Not every guy has the muscle mass to fend off an attacker at night. Women aren’t the only ones stalked at night. There are small guys and weak guys(physically), just as there are strong and big ones. Just like there are small and weak women (physically) and strong women with self defense training. ANYONE can be attacked at ANY late/super early hour because people are ASSHOLES. Men get mugged. Women get mugged. The only beings that don’t get mugged are dogs because everyone loves dogs.

#10 -

#11 - Women don’t give men fake names and numbers to avoid anger, they do it to avoid the awkwardness and uncomfortableness that they feel at having to reject someone, so they take the easy way out. Men do the exact same thing, too for the same reasons. Again, not a gender thing, just an “i’m uncomfortable with rejecting someone/I don’t want to hurt this kind stranger” thing.

#12 - Guys are drugged just like girls are. It’s not often that we hear about the cases of males being drugged because everyone focuses on how a girl was taken advantage of because she’s small and weak and needs to be protected; while, if a guy is drugged “he’ll be fine because he’s a guy and he’ll get over it”.

#13 - Girls do this out of excitement, not fear. Even if they do it out of fear, guys do the same thing because IT’S SMART TO MAKE SURE SOMEONE KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE WHEN YOU’RE GOING ANY PLACE ANY TIME WITH ANY STRANGER, REGARDLESS OF YOUR OR THEIR GENDER. HELLO.

#15 - People want to talk about how women get paid less than men and things should be equal, but they never fight for the men in predominantly female fields of work that have the same issue. Who is fighting for them?

#16 - Women aren’t stereotyped to be aggressive, men are. All the time. No one has any issues with a woman being aggressive and saying “just” or “sorry” doesn’t make you seem less aggressive anyways. Even if people think it does, men do the same thing all the time. I think words like “just” and “sorry” are part of the English language and they don’t mean different things for different genders. If you’re saying something like “I just don’t feel the same way, I’m sorry” it’s gender neutral because you’re trying to keep from hurting the other person too badly. You’re trying to be honest without being a dick. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AGGRESSION AT ALL.

#17 - I’m sorry, what women have to deal with this? What pressure has society put on women to do this? You aren’t being forced to be perky and happy when you feel like shit and people who automatically assume you’re a bitch because you aren’t perky and happy are just dicks and it’s probably not great to associate with them anyways. If someone has an issue with you not being perky and happy because you don’t feel like it, then that’s their problem, not yours. And furthermore, if they call you a bitch for that then you don’t need them in your life, they’re obviously a dick and delusional about how society and people actually works. Drop them.

#18 - Since when is being seen as perky a sign of stupidity? It’s a sign of happiness, god damn. Stop reading into this shit.

#19 - Women talk over people just as men. Assholes talk over people, not genders. Sorry.

#20 - Okay, since when is this just something women have to deal with? Men have to deal with this from their mothers. Teens have to deal with this from their parents and superiors (most of the time). QUIET PEOPLE ALWAYS HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS BECAUSE EVERYONE IS TALKING OVER THEM (a little bitter *quiet person*)

#21 - I’m sorry, hairy armpits are gross regardless. The people who say that hairy legs on a women are gross are assholes. These people don’t make up the entirety of the planet. When I don’t shave for a few days and my significant other rubs his hands on my legs and feels some hair, he doesn’t pull away in disgust. Whenever I ask him if he dislikes it, he says he doesn’t really give a shit and shows me his own hairy ass legs with a “can-I-really-say-shit-here?” look.

#22 - Okay, I will admit to this one because tampons and pads are considered a “luxury” and I’m honestly not knowledgeable enough on men’s products to know if they have any of the same issues in this subject.

#23 - If you hide your stuff then it’s because YOU’RE embarrassed and I guarantee that if you hold it in your hand normally as you walk down the hallway that any asshole who decides to be like “ewww, period stuff” will be looked at like the dumbass they are and no one will think you’re the one in the wrong. If you’re embarrassed about it, hide it, but you aren’t forced to.

#24 - This is only applicable in different settings. It’s not appropriate to wear booty shorts to school, work, or any formal setting. It’s not appropriate to wear something that clearly shows off your breasts, midriff, or rear end at a formal function.

#25 - Again, if people have an issue with what you do or don’t wear, face or otherwise, it’s their issue, not yours.

#26 - Yet again ^ I get that it’s shitty to be asked if you’re sick or tired when you don’t wear makeup, but when you cover up natural darkness under your eyes with makeup on a daily basis, people aren’t going to be used to seeing your normal face.

#27 - Anyone could be viciously attacked on facebook for what they say, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman.

#28 - Okay, this one is shitty. But, I don’t think that all men complain about all female roles, it’s really just that tons of movies have been coming out with women being the shit and it’s getting kind of old. But, you know what you do when you get bored with a type of movie? Move on to a different genre, don’t bitch.

#29 - Okay, when does this happen, why is this uncomfortable, and why can’t you just say that you’re not really comfortable talking about your personal life? Why is this a woman issue? Men don’t face this? Why is this an issue? It’s not that hard to say that you’re not comfortable with the topic at hand.

#30 - Okay, this one is shitty. They should definitely look more into male versions of this, but I don’t think that you should settle for being pushed into taking the pill. Tell the guy that if they don’t want to wear a condom then you don’t need to have sex, just keep in mind that it goes both ways. I’ve come across guys who refuse to wear a condom, even if you don’t have the means of getting birth control. If that’s the case then you tell them you don’t feel comfortable having sex.

#31 - Okay, this one is shitty too. You’re the only one that should have control of your body.

#32 - This one is shitty, too. But again, if they have an issue with you saying your opinion then it’s their issue. They aren’t controlling what you say, think, or believe in.

Most of these are either things that men have to worry about too, or not your problem, it’s an issue that other people have. Be happy with who you are, what you wear, what you look like, or the body type you have. Fight for equality for all genders and races, but don’t put others down in the process and don’t neglect to acknowledge the fact that they often go through the same struggles or at the very least that not all of them are the same. There are shitty people out there, but that doesn’t mean that the entire race, gender, sexuality, or any other type of label are the same. Please keep that in mind.

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