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rubychan228 · 2 months

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ETA: I posted this before the show came out. It has now and I've added a few edits. ETA2: Added better pics

So, I've been sitting on this for a while, because I don't particularity like saying negative things about stuff I don't like (like Marvel's Exiles comics, which I'm not at all a fan of #foreshadowing) but I've seen a few things that make me want to talk about this. (Also, I started writing this a while back but wasn't sure if I wanted to post it. But saw stuff more recently that I definitely had to speak about. There's a bit of a shift in tone towards the end as a result).

I decided to post this mostly because certain statements about X-Men '97 (a sequel the 90's X-Men the Animated Series) have gotten bigots up in arms, which can understandably lead to people side-eyeing anyone shitting on the show, but I think their may be legitimate problems that justify some complaints.

Essentially, I think it may an issue similar to that of the Captain Marvel movie. There was huge, fully unjustifiable misogynistic backlash to the movie. But, there were also some quite legitimate critiques of the militaristic messaging in the film. While shutting down the sexist nonsense being hurled at the film was good, there still needed to be space to discuss the actual, real problems the movie had.

And, from what I've seen, there are some real criticisms to be made of X-Men '97. Both about plot stuff and about some ways a bit of intended representation may not be as good as could be hoped.

So, here's the thing. I was obsessed with X-Men the Animated Series as a kid and especially with a (sort-of) show original character named Morph. He was very much my first Blorbo. I know way too much about the character.

And now said character is at the center of some drama, due to the upcoming sequel, and I want to address it.

So, a note on Morph's pronouns. All non-97 versions of Morph go by he/him pronouns. In an older interview, the term "non-binary" was originally used for the X-Men '97 version without further clarification. But there's a more recent interview with the show's creators (which I will discuss more at the end of this post) that implies the character is more specifically gender-fluid (rather than agender or having a non-binary gender identity) and said creator used he/him pronouns to talk about the character, not they/them or any neo-pronouns. So that's what I'm going to go with for now. ETA: Except the show does seem to be using exclusively they/them so IDK what the fuck that article was.

A bit of backstory on the character.

Back in the 60's X-Men comics they fought a villainous mutant shapeshifter named Changeling. Changeling later reformed after discovering that he was terminally ill. He replaced Xavier, who needed to go into hiding for plot reasons and ultimately died in Xavier's place.

A few months before the Animated Series began in 1992 an issue of She-Hulk saw the villain Black Talon resurrect several deceased characters as zombies (called the X-Humed). Changeling was one of them.

Originally, the X-Men TAS writers wanted to kill off a character in the second episode and were thinking of using the character of John Proudstar aka Thunderbird. Thunderbird had been a member of the second X-Men team appearing for the first time in Giant Sized X-Men #1. He would later die in #95, the first time an X-man died.

They eventually realized that giving the show Native rep only to kill him off in ep. 2 was a terrible idea and started looking for a disposable white guy. They eventually found the Changeling character, though at the time the character now known as Beast Boy was going by "Changeling", meaning DC had the rights to the name. And so, "Morph" was born.

Despite being a throw-away character he was surprisingly popular with fans and the network was also not real happy with the whole killing-of-an-x-man-thing. So a decision was made to reveal he survived the events of the pilot. When he returned in season two he initially had a slightly zombie-like appearance (probably a reference to the She-hulk thing).

So, the show starts with him as part of the team. He is "killed" by giant robots called Sentinels. He is later revealed to have been saved by a villain known as Mister Sinister. Sinister attempts to brainwash him into being a loyal slave that hates the X-Men. This only partially works. His mind shifts between his true self and the artificial evil slave personality Sinister implanted (because this was the 90's and mental health education was bad, this psudo-DID was sometime referred to as him being "schizophrenic"). He is eventually rescued and sent for treatment at on Muir Island (which is in Scotland). A side from a few half-assed cameos and weird omissions his main appearance after that is in an episode where he tries to return to the X-Men but the Sentinels are back and his PTSD is too severe. He comes through in the end but acknowledges he's not ready yet. He does properly return in the finale referencing his comic origins by briefly imitating Xavier. The show ends with the implication he's on the team for good.

TAS may have inspired the Age of Apocalypse comics run. The AoA comics introduced a (very different looking) shapeshifter named Morph (who claimed that he had previously called himself "Changeling"). The relevant TAS episodes include both OG Morph and an unnamed character that looks like what the Age of Apocalypse comics Morph would look like.

Finally, Marvel would start a comic line called Exiles in which a bunch of characters from the Marvel multiverse would get pulled from their timelines to fight inter-dimensional threats. A Morph would be a main character. That Morph would look identical to the Age of Apocalypse one but have a different backstory (obviously).

X-Men '97 is retconing the show to replace their OG Morph with a take on Exiles Morph. And it has to be a retcon. It's generally held that shapeshifters can't hold alternate forms while unconscious or dead. And we see both! He is knocked out multiple times and flat-lines while Sinister is working on him.

So this can't have just been a form he always had but was hiding. Also, I don't know if the new show will use it, but Exiles Morph has no scent and thus cannot be tracked, something that is explicitly untrue of 90's Morph. Anyway...

I fucking hate Exiles Morph and always have!

Exiles Morph is an annoying horndog who creeps on women and arguably crosses the line to sex pest at times. Morph in the original show never once, in any episode that he appears, flirts with, leers at, or shows any romantic or sexual interest of any kind in any female character present. You could arguably HC the original character as Ace. Though he did have a lot of...tension with Wolverine, so gay is also a possibility. The aggressively heterosexual reimagining of Exiles has always been boring and annoying to me. I don't know that any of this is going to make it into the new show (I hope none of it) but I hate the idea that it could.

Additionally, while the original Morph was playful and lighthearted, he was hardy incapable of being serious when need be. Exiles Morph is often described as hardly ever serious. And creator comments say that is part of why they're using this Morph in the new show. (Apparently his PTSD was too much of a downer.)

Also, I know it's an extremely toxic fan thing to complain that an adaptation doesn't conform to your personal headcanons, but I always liked imagining the character as more of a light skinned POC, rather than just the white guy they intended. (My usual go-to was that he was Japanese American, possibly with a white parent. This was because he's super close with Wolverine, who lived in Japan for decades. So, like, I would imagine that Morph grew up bilingual and Wolverine was, of course, fluent so they'd chat in Japanese and whatnot. Maybe Morph would go to Japan sometimes to visit family and Wolverine would sometimes come too.)

This could have been done in even a more faithful sequel. Yes, the character was very specifically white in his original conception, but that's only because he was going to die right away. Since he doesn't anymore that no longer applies. And, to be frank, Morph spends 90% of the original show off-model anyway. A new version could effortless have massaged his base-form appearance to have more non-white features.

ETA:

Oh you could abso-fucking-lutely pass this character design off as a half-white POC.

Couldn't they still do this in '97? Technically yes. But now he's a snow-white blob with no hair or facial features. You can still say he's POC, but I can see that generating even more discourse.

As for the enby thing.

First off, there's been a lot of (justifiable) discourse about a tendency to hold "diverse" media to excessively high standards and I don't disagree. Even when criticisms aren't unwarranted, I think there's a definite tendency among some to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But also, genuinely harmful representation does exist (things like the "trans serial killer" thing that is so damaging that no trans rep would arguably have been better).

Ultimately, I think there's a difference between *harmful* representation and representation that's just bad. And there's a also difference between bad representation and representation that's merely flawed. And flawed representation is still representation. It's still a step in the right direction and it's extremely possible for people to still feel seen by less-than-perfect depictions of their thing.

That said good representation is better than flawed representation. And I don't think we get from flawed to good without giving constructive feedback (not vitriol) on the more flawed attempts. We don't have to trash flawed attempts or flame people that like them. Just point out, what worked and what could be improved upon.

So what might be a problem here? Well, because of the (really, really unnecessary!) Exiles thing:

Yeah.

I just...feel like that could have been thought out better. Especially because, while it's not the same (as mutants are explicitly human), it approaches the "Non-binary Alien" trope. Which is not great.

Basically, everyone else in the main cast except for Beast looks like a normal human and all of them retain their "normal" binary genders from the OG show/comics. Morph and Morph only is simultaneously being changed from being a normal looking dude to a freaky alien-looking thing and is also changed from being a "normal" binary man to having an "unusual" gender. And I don't like it.

I don't think it was intentional, but it would be so much better to have normal-ass humans as NB rep. Since, you know, actual IRL enbies are, in fact, normal fucking human people. (Granted, they could be doing that too, but for now it seems like it's only the character they changed to be all weird looking that is going to serve as the only enby rep.)

Now, it's entirely possible that there are people this won't bother and that's certainly OK. And I don't think doing it like this bad rep, just flawed, which is still better than nothing! But it's quite valid, I think, for enbies/allies to have good faith qualms with how this comes off due to the combination of the two changes.

That said, there is also the problematic™ Non-binary Shapeshifter trope to consider.

So, while some trans/non-binary people may like the idea of shapeshifting powers (for obvious reasons) and thus may strongly identify with/project onto shapeshifter characters there has also been some discourse about it.

In brief, a shapeshifter is essentially genital-fluid, which can make people side-eye the idea of playing with gender when a shapeshifter is involved, as it can imply the idea of a connection between genitals and gender identity. Which isn't a thing that exists. Basically, to use X-Men as an example:

Gambit was born with a penis and, baring surgery or magical transformation, will only ever have a penis. This character is a man and this is never questioned.

Morph was also, presumably, born with a penis (it's possible Exiles!Morph had no genitals at birth). But he/they can change this at will; at any time he/they wants, he/they can have a penis, or a vagina, or both, or neither. But that should have fuck-all to do with gender identity.

But a lot of people have the very cis-normative view that the ability to change physical sex equates to changing gender. And will jump to making shapeshifting characters non-binary, gender-fluid especially. And this is a source of understandable discourse among trans/NB/GNC people. (As a result, you may see bigots reacting to this change with "Ugh they made the shapeshifter non-binary!", but you may also see enbies/allies going "Ugh they made the shapeshifter non-binary!". And that's very different.)

Now, because non-binary gender identities are real, it's certainly possible for a character to just happen to be both NB and a shapeshifter. But it can still rub people the wrong way......especially if there are creator comments that do indicate a mental genital/gender connection is informing the choice.

Which brings us to the trainwreck of an interview I mentioned earlier.

"For me, the word 'nonbinary' is the same as the word 'shapeshifter,'" director Larry Houston told Variety. "Every character that can change from one gender to another, or from human to animal, that’s just another word for 'shapeshifter' for me."

What. And I cannot stress this enough. The fuck?????????

Ok, so. In 2x3 of the original show Wolverine is trying to capture brainwashed, evil Morph and bring him home. Wolverine finds and successfully restrains him, so Morph uses his powers to mess with his head in order to escape. (By which I mean he turns into Wolverine's one-sided love interest and mocks him over how much she loves only Cyclops.)

In the interview this is described like this:

"He attacks Wolverine, his closest friend, in the most dramatic way by turning into Jean Grey and putting his hand on Wolverine’s neck and leaning in for a kiss," Lewald explained. "That’s as nonbinary as you can get. It’s Morph turning into a woman and coming onto Wolverine to freak him out."

How the fuck is it non-binary?! Is it the genitals? I'm really concerned it's the genitals.

At best it's maybe queer, but "non-binary"? I just...

Problematic tropes aside, I'm now worried like hell that the these people don't know what the fuck non-binary people actually are and the rep is going to be garbage as a result.

Like, he really seems to think that when Morph shapeshifts into Jean Grey in that scene, he isn't just disguising himself as a woman, but that he's literally becoming a woman gender-wise. And presumably becoming a man when he changes back. And that is what he means when he uses the word "non-binary" to refer to the character.

So yeah, opinions may be mixed on "non-binary" Morph, for reasons that are not bigotry related. And maybe don't get your hopes up for good enby rep in the show, because I'm now very skeptical that this is something we're going to get.

#marvel #xmen #xmen tas #xmen 97 #nonbinary #xmen morph

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punkscowardschampions · 1 year

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Mafi Pt.1

Mattie: [Okay ladies, it is a good six months since you would have last seen each other for Leavers which is the end of June/start of July typically; safe to say we did not in the SLIGHTEST expect to be seeing you today, at Jay’s engagement party of all places, so the double-take we do will actually be comical like HELLO ?!! Of course, we’re coming over, hopefully, you had enough time whilst we were in shock to say hi to Dolly who actually invited you here, excuse us everyone ‘cos none of y’all know who this girl is so you will all be peeping on the low like who dis as we’re giving you a hug literally like ‘I can’t believe it!’]

Fi: [Like, there is a slim chance you maybe saw each other if she was loitering around in September because uni doesn’t start until October if we want that, but yeah, regardless the shock and awe will be dramatic, I’d like to point out before I have her hug this gal back and say something that because she is super gay she absolutely has one of the last sweet pea flowers of her last season at school pressed and in her phone case, whether Mattie clocked that at the time or isn’t going to until tonight when this bitch is taking pics, but ANYWAY, hug her back and say ‘hello, miss’ being unnecessarily flirty about calling her that again, just because, but CLEARLY buzzing to see her and smiling so big like hey]

Mattie: [when you get to be gay so you can go full force with the romantic drama, shine my boo, shine, I’ll say whether that has been clocked or not we’re not mentioning it in front of the rest of the crowd rn; shaking your head and giving her the friendliest of pushes like oh, you ‘Please, even if we were in term time, you only ever called me that to get a reaction’ me like a reaction, lol ok girls, doing our big grin ‘so, how was first semester?’ ‘cos why do we go American when uni, to feel fancy? Idk but go off and also of course we want to know how it has been]

Fi: [this is my moment, sang like the martine mcclutcheon song obvs hehe, doing a cheeky eyebrow raise at the word reaction, gotta ‘and without fail, it worked every time’ like yep, we both know exactly what I’m doing and why, emphasising this unnecessarily by touching her in some way related to her ootn but super flirtily, whether that’s like touching her waist or back because of outfit deets or her hair for a hair accessory or purely straight coming at her jewellery, either way like nice because we approve, having already drawn attention to her own outfit choices by acting like she’s gonna stumble to her death in whatever shoes she’s rocking cos of Mattie’s gentle af push lol, of course being a massive nerd about everything to do with uni, lowkey giving her too many deets not just about her course but who she’s met and what she’s been up to other than class cos has always been your vibe to talk and talk and talk to this gal about everything, excuse us everyone, eventually, when she’s exhausted the uni topic, asking ‘how’s things with you, at your end?’ which means how’s you and how’s work going/how’s my gals at school etc but also means how’s the old form teacher who bullied me because I vibe that before she left she told Mattie the full story about that, having the energy of in a kind of spark, minus the autism, but her being a handful and said teacher handling it ALL wrong, so she’s hoping that lady isn’t a form tutor any more as of this year]

Mattie: [doing the sort of you-got-me shrug with a lil smirk because we know we fell for it in all the ways ‘easy target, I believe you said’ not us harkening back to the first day like an insane person, miming a little shooting a bow and arrow moment before you’re putting out a hand and holding her arm to steady her lest she actually hit the deck, so now we’re just holding each other in a very casual way, nbd, after LINGERING, pull your hand away and fold your arms as you get into this convo, giving her that lowdown on all the things that might have changed and the things that haven’t ‘you’ve not felt too homesick then?’ IMMEDIATELY putting our hand on your arm again, in that comforting way because everyone does the first year and the way we clearly mean for the school more than we mean your literal family there]

Fi: [‘did I?’ said with the tone and smile of knowing you did because she remembers but downplaying it like lol lol what am I like and how rude of me, love how immediately gay y’all are being at this function and the fact you’ve barely said hi to Dolly, amuses me greatly ‘it’s been bearable, thanks to keeping busy, you know’ genuinely and in a subtle I’m soz I haven’t been in touch kind of way ‘the place hasn’t fallen apart without my leadership then?’ obvs glad actually but doing a lil pout about it like the audacity]

Mattie: [she’s clearly used to it and this was your vibe before but it is rude when she’s specifically invited you for backup tonight, which we are aware of because not a crap sister despite how we’ll feel like one when this all goes down ‘it isn’t the same without you’ as genuinely, even if we’re doing a little lol at your pout, using Dolly to move her closer to you and push ourselves away like must mingle ‘cos really, you must ‘be back in a sec, it’s so good to see you’ not the brush off it invariably sounds ‘cos we truly are and are all too aware we could stand here and ignore everyone else all night if we let ourselves]

Fi: [SUCH a genuine smile at her admitting it’s not the same without us, shamelessly, not soz ‘I can’t get used to not seeing you every morning either, it’s too strange’ despite the fact we’re waving her off to go and mingle because this bitch is the queen of mingling so she knows what’s up, like yeah yeah go it’s fine, catch up with Dolly for a minute because keeping her sane is the actual reason why you’re here, but I am also gonna have to say you talk to the happy couple to say congrats because she would on her way to get y’all drinks or something, so when she’s talking to Jay/Noah/both and they mention Mattie, cos you clearly know her lol, saying like it’s bants cos of how great she is or to confirm the lewk she’s serving ‘I had the biggest crush on her in school’ which I’m gonna need Mattie to overhear without the rest of the convo because Winnie insists, even though she isn’t shouting it across this party or anything haha]

Mattie: [a meaningful look back as if to say hold that thought because the strangeness cannot be overstated because y’all were her first year of leavers, so she’s yet to get used to the machine of getting to know kids at 11 or whenever they join and then waving them off at 18, not at all mentioning the possibility or the specificness of not being used to not seeing YOU every day, nope lol; Winnie says we owe him so much sapphic tension now, thanks, when you don’t have an ego at all so you’re thinking she must mean Dolly which is awkward because we know Dolly is very straight from the confiding she would have done about some of the Swiss school nonsense]

Fi: [soz that will seem true because when she gets back from her congrats for the happy couple she’s gonna be doing everything a good friend would to make sure Dolly has a good time at this party, including so much chatting and so much dancing, it’ll seem very gay and very like you do have a crush on her now lol]

Mattie: [I can’t help that she isn’t a bitch to assume that’s about her, Winola, there’s nothing I can do hun, when you’re now like oh no, do I need to stealthily save Dolly from this situation or nah, what a comedy of errors; at least the grandparents are also there and they could need to talk to Dolly so we can butt in at some point like grandma needs you girl go ‘can I get you a drink? that only being a novelty on my part, though it is’ at Fi]

Fi: [look around comedically and dramatically like you do when you’re checking someone has really gone before you answer because in solidarity with Dolly she hasn’t been drinking alcohol while they’ve been vibing cos just the kind of bitch she is, again it looks gay though, doing a face and lol of relief like oh thank god as if you are that desperate for a real drink cos that party girl persona you put on from her literal first day with the practice telling off of it all, and nod as you say ‘sure’ too eagerly but don’t elaborate on what you actually want, because again this bitch]

Mattie: [looking after Dolly with a smile like yes, I know because you’re not teetotal yourself but you know where her disdain comes from and you can’t blame her for it, nor do you not think it’s a legit response because duh, James is your dad, you know the score; looking back at this girl and going to do another oh, you shove but stopping yourself like oh no, must not, lest you topple over again ‘you’re still fond of a guessing game’ like that hasn’t changed either, I see]

Fi: [smiling too big about the bants of her calling you a pisshead because we just love that the rapport is still here and hasn’t changed ‘with you’ no notes, just remembering the Emily Spinach moment and I’m sure countless other guesses Mattie has slayed that we’re yet to write but just know exists]

Mattie: [doing your own smile back and silently reminiscing with you because the only way you could’ve got that Emily Spinach one is by being that gay and we all know it lol, you love to see it; ‘just know I’m playing it safe, lest you be unable to keep up with your noble escort duties’ like I KNOW your fave drink would be something more hardcore but I won’t get you smashed when you need to be good company for Dolly, ‘cos not having you think we’re lame here]

Fi: [‘as long as you’re aware I’m only allowing it because I take them extremely seriously’ gesturing at herself and her outfit cos her and Dolly are lowkey matching here like yep gotta be the best plus one this town has ever seen lol, cos she do, despite also knowing Mattie would be at this and wanting to see her, not saying at all that’s the only reason she came ‘and you’ll owe me a dance, we haven’t had one together since leaver’s ball’ oh lord imagine how gay that night would’ve been please, not this girl being like I KNOW that’s unsafe and you gotta to even the score]

Mattie: [doing a little bow like but of course as you gesture at her as well like I see what you’re doing here and we approve, then reaching to whisper in your ear, if in a stage fashion to make it less serious so you can deal ‘you look more dapper than the soon-to-be-groom’ ‘cos Nay did not get the memo and all their guests have outdressed them really, soz; walk to the bar situation girl before you can acknowledge you’ve made your own cheeks pink here ‘and I’ll have your drink for you’ as you’re walking away because you can have a strong one, I’m sure it’s your first drink that isn’t the champagne you politely sip at these sort of functions]

Fi: [it’s her laugh making that so much flirtier and gay, because it seems like Mattie said something way more flirtier and gay than she did, for me, plus giving her the gentle push that Mattie didn’t go through with but a moment ago like oh you, get out of here ‘dorm inspections all over again’ called after her, like ty for the reminder cos was homesick, we can all imagine what was getting confiscated and again what you are saying about yourself]

Mattie: [shaking your head as you’re walking but not turning around so you can’t see the 😏 we’re also doing, order her some sort of wine vibe whilst you get yourself a cocktail because we all know cocktails go the hardest, whatever the male ego says about them being pretty and fruity, like there’s usually at least 2 types of liquor in them if not more]

Fi: [when you are gonna lowkey down that drink ASAP because it would be your first one with booze in it if you arrived late and didn’t get the welcome champagne, and like, you’re nervous to be reunited with this gal in this setting, but distract from the fact you just did that by playing a guessing game about what her cocktail is]

Mattie: [‘I can sneak you another under the table’ again in your stage whisper, like I know the party isn’t jumping that much you gotta be in her ear, just talk normally hun; but we legit sympathise with being at a party with only 3 people you know, Lulu barely at all and she’s busy doing whatever she’s doing, and not being able to loosen up with a drink if that’s your normal, which it is most people’s, doesn’t actually make you a party animal by default ‘or, let you have a sip, you can guess the ingredients then’ like we could do that, making a face like ooh, it strong ‘cos clearly lol]

Fi: [the absolute mischief in her eyes at both of these suggestions and absolute delight at who they are coming out of the mouth of, cos clearly love to be a bad influence upon this gal, but there was no encouragement needed, lowkey heart eyes though at her ADORABLE face when she takes a sip because simply must, taking the glass from her and taking her own like she’s doing her a favour sharing here if it is that strong, without making a face, but barely, like she really had to give it her ALL to stop herself from doing one, so then that making her lol, but correctly guessing through said lols, duh, excuse me while I die at her lipstick print on this glass as she hands it back cos we’ve all seen the outfit, we know she’s wearing it]

Mattie: [maintaining unnecessary eye contact as she does her sip, narrowing your eyes and pursing your lips like you’re keeping the closest of eyes on her, trying to guess her guess before it’s out of her mouth; of course the lol is making us do our own heart eyes ‘how do you know what [an obscure ingredient they put in just to be fancy, you know the kind] tastes like ?!!’ with our own laugh like I don’t know, feels like cheating, not us here running our thumb over the lipstick print, your glass by your hip so it’s not like obvious you’re doing it, but we are]

Fi: [‘how would I have a fave bartender for years and not know?’ like what do you take me for, I’m SO knowledgeable thank you, with an unnecessary wink like keep that in the vault with all my other secrets you have I’ve overshared, as she’s pulling her towards the dance floor to have the dance she insists on and won’t take no for an answer about]

Mattie: [rolling our eyes affectionately ‘I assumed you tipped well and she kept quiet about the fakeness of your ID’ the way we’ve assumed it was a woman, got your number lmao but also outing yourself there, get dragged to this dance floor which I hope at least has some of Nay’s friends on because we know the party is not hip happening and the way it’d be a scene for all the nosy hoes if it was just y’all up there now, not that we’re concerned personally, here spinning each other around like kids]

Fi: [‘I did and he did’ my deliberate he to keep her on her toes here as if that’s fooling anybody haha, with a cheeky grin like she’s the devil emoji irl, in contrast to a moment later when she’s doing whatever ballet moves she can remember from her youth because Mattie is literally that ballerina rn and always]

Mattie: [doing a grumpy lil face as if it is somehow worse that it was a man, soz some things seem that way, especially if you’re not checking yourself and your opinions, which we’re not right now because we are spinning and sipping, I like to think your drink has a straw she would have purposely had to avoid to leave her lipstick mark on the glass because I can; doing such a happy clap like YAY when you realise what she’s doing and attempt to direct her with all the french words that I ain’t gonna sit here and look up, get yourself en pointe though hun, literally wearing ballet shoes, v Titanic of you]

Fi: [‘don’t be upset, I’ve learnt my lesson’ because it does read as sketchy af and we’re all aware of the fact, which she’s saying, but it’s also giving the double meaning that you don’t mess around with men/boys anymore so I love that, as do I how hardcore this girl is getting into this ballet lesson, taking her shoes off and everything to see if she can copy this, which you absolutely cannot because that’s so difficult and you clearly did it as a kid for like a couple of years max ‘okay, no, I’m way too sober for that’ as we try and fail, loling, clearly all the more impressed by her skills because of]

Mattie: [‘was it a you thing or a schoolgirl thing?’ like do I need to go to some pub local to this school and scare off some letchy barman, but also acknowledging that it was and is entirely possible that this dude just fancied her and wasn’t fussed she was like 17 or whatever; just having the best time showing off our ballet moves here and teaching you like there’s not people just milling about making small talk over picky food ‘later I’ll have you on your toes then’ leaning down to pick up her shoes to hand her]

Fi: [‘did I look like a schoolgirl out of uniform?’ when you’re genuinely asking like did I look my age/underage for him to be that level of creepy but everything has this double meaning and flirty edge to it that you just cannot help/are not even aware how blatant it is, because clearly she thought he just fancied her at the time, all teenagers think they look and act older and cooler than they do, hence asking for Mattie’s opinion as she’s not one, put your shoes back on and finish your drink like you’re doing your best to be less sober and therefore an iconic ballerina]

Mattie: [genuinely think about it and shake your head after a minute ‘no, I don’t think so’ because some people look super younger than they are and we don’t think you were or are giving that, honestly, we also like to think we wouldn’t have thought you were so quite so pretty otherwise but that’s a guilty thought we’re not sharing out loud, have the rest of your drink, even though there was no need for you to try and keep pace]

Fi: [‘he’ll live another day to serve another overpriced [whatever the cool rich girl drink of the moment was when you were like 15-17 and he was your fave], in blissful ignorance of his narrow escape’ with a shrug like lucky you sir like Mattie was gonna go fuck him up for being a nonce, cos she clearly has form for helping you sort that form teacher who was a bully out, though less dramatically, noticing her lipstick mark on this glass when Mattie drinks out of it again to finish and making a face like oh I’m gonna have to go waste time in the bathroom touching that up again and cba, but dragging her with you cos that’ll make it bearable]

Mattie: [putting up your fists like yeah, I know, I’m very fearsome lol but we truly would have gone down there and shook that man to his core accusing him of things and we all know it, we don’t play about this school and these kids ‘won’t get either of the girls’ quieter but Fi will still be able to hear, ‘cos we know neither twin is off down the pub or going anywhere and we are WORRIED about their lack of socializing honey, happily go and have a bathroom moment, touching our hair like I’m sure some of that has flown out with that wild dance break, having a quick check neither twin or anyone else is in the loos when you get in there, nothing worse than getting caught talking about someone, even if it is with concern]

Fi: [touching Mattie’s arm the way she touched hers when she was genuinely concerned about her being homesick because we see her twin concern and we get it ‘I barely had to talk her into bringing me’ because Fi is that won’t take no for an answer bitch but we’re saying this was actually Dolly’s idea and she clearly has kept in touch too it’s not just Fi being one sided and extra, doing an exaggerated mouth close like it was all her, I promise, but you can style it out into re-applying your lipstick as well so]

Mattie: [making a noise like oh, I know ‘I’m really glad you’re here’ because it is clear progress for Dolly and shows she has it in her, tapping our forehead with the palm of our hand like oh ‘I already said that, didn’t I?’ like how GLAD can I be? Be in this mirror sorting out your hair so you have something to do that isn’t just watching her ‘It’s just typical you weren’t in her year’ like she could do with some company day to day now but shrugging because you can’t force it for either of them at their age]

Fi: [‘for Doll’s sake is different than how you said it before’ like it’s FINE don’t worry you aren’t repeating yourself I know you were glad to see me for your own sake at first ‘I, meanwhile, could go on and on about how I’d kill for more time’ because you miss school however much you’re enjoying uni and some of that is definitely missing Mattie which she has already said]

Mattie: [just smiling at her through this mirror because we’re not going to deny it, we know what we said and why we said it ‘I wonder if anyone actually feels ready or they’re just good liars’ because we felt the same when we went to Uni hence we went very close by so we could stay home like that ‘have you found enough new friends to fill a plague pit?’ nudging into her back with your shoulder, gently and after she’s finished with the lippy so that doesn’t go awry]

Fi: [‘when you’ve had more leavers you’ll be able to conduct thorough research’ as if she’s gonna do a poll, but really just acknowledging what my boo said before about how new Mattie is at this and also how there really isn’t a big age gap between them ‘enough that when we hold hands for ring a ring o roses and all fall down it blocks everyone’s route to lectures for a solid minute, at a guess’ because defs feel like you’ve made lots of friends quick, you are that bitch and you’d throw yourself into it, but putting her head on Mattie’s shoulder because nevertheless it isn’t the same and is an adjustment]

Mattie: [‘it’s horrible’ ‘cos we are that bitch to get emotional every time a year leaves, even though you know you gotta let them fly the nest and move on, god bless lol; just putting your arm around her and then stroking her hair ‘you’ll miss this time one day before you know it’ because true, it’ll fly and then you’ll have that nostalgia to live with as well ‘you’re doing amazingly’ because we don’t doubt it, with the social side of Uni which is arguably more important and the actual course]

Fi: [‘if that’s a heads up not to put myself through it, you’re right on time’ because thinking about becoming a teacher herself fr already, we know, but smiling because we also know that hasn’t changed her mind really ‘I’ll miss this moment specifically, I know it’ literally outing herself like that like right here right now is where I wanna stay forever yes true]

Mattie: [tilting your head like hm? So yours is now resting atop hers, then snapping it up like OMG when you realise and doing your excited clapping again ‘oh, do come back to us!’ half as a joke as you put your hands on her shoulders but also not, pulling her in for a hug ‘you’ll be an incredible teacher, Fi’]

Fi: [when she’s adorable and you CANNOT cope, thank god there is nobody else in here because the hearteyes are back in FULL force at her response to the teacher career reveal ‘I’d love to, if you’ll have me’ which is what she said about uni, if they’ll have me, sounds casual but isn’t at all which is her entire vibe always, making this hug more extra than it needs to be just because she has missed her so much she can’t not ‘you told me such a similar thing on your first day as one’ cos she did and the way she’s always and instantly believed in us has this girl emosh]

Mattie: [we’re just here jumping up and down in this hug, swaying you from side to side, don’t mind us ‘who could be better?’ like you would be perfect, girl ‘you practically served as my TA that whole year, it should count towards your hours’ not us like couldn’t have done it without you, brushing your hair away from your freshly made-up lips]

Fi: [‘I’d do it all again even without your glowing recommendation at the end’ because we know she would, over and over if they could ‘like groundhog day’ never happier than in the last year, soz but it’s true]

Mattie: [‘you’re glowing’ just blurting that out then doing a little lol like back up, what I meant to say was ‘you deserve all the good things that are going to come to you, you’re just- lovely’]

Fi: [‘it isn’t the lighting in here’ shading nay’s engagement venue haha but we all remember from Dolly’s posts the bathrooms were a choice so I can ‘must be seeing you again, hearing you hype me up in the way only you do’ because who else is, not her flop fam and not her school friends who are currently scattered to the four winds fighting for their lives in that weird time after school and uni starting, or uni friends she’s had for a few months]

Mattie: [‘or the booze’ touching both her cheeks with the backs of her hands like no, you don’t have that alcohol glow yet, just lingering and stroking her cheeks, standard ‘well, you know me’ doing a shrug like it’s nbd]

Fi: [‘I know I wanted to talk to you, I’ve never started so many conversations in my life, just to not let them get started’ with her own shrug like that’s such a nbd thing to say]

Mattie: [‘you were busy’ like I know how it is, I wouldn’t be mad at you ‘and it would’ve been wrong for me to, maybe later, give you chance to settle in’ when you’re admitting you wanted to too but as a teacher, that would be weird]

Fi: [‘wrong’ when you gotta let that word sit there because you know it should feel like that but it doesn’t]

Mattie: [moving your hands down to your side and taking a step back, steadying yourself against the sink ‘you wouldn’t want your old teacher hassling you whilst you’re out there moving on’ clutching the cold porcelain of this sink to contrast how warm her skin was]

Fi: [‘you weren’t my teacher’ because true in that literal sense but also because we were friends is how we see it, then and now ‘and moving on is cold’ literally while she’s there with that cold sink ‘like you’ve done your job and now it’s over’]

Mattie: [‘you know that’s not how I see it, how I see you’ as we’re turning back to look at you]

Fi: [‘I kept busy because you’ve had a new year to settle in, and the more I did, the more there’d be to talk about, in theory, but I still couldn’t’ just blurting this out like, it’s so weird I didn’t know how to start a convo cos of how much we used to talk]

Mattie: [‘it’s okay, it’s… everything is different’ because y’all had reason and free reign to talk to each other before, now it’s a real choice, we know it]

Fi: [‘I thought I was the biggest fan of change’ because she was about it before but now this is like !!? and we’re not here for it thank you]

Mattie: [doing a sheepish smile because what can we say, we’re both feeling that !!? honey]

Fi: [just playing with a strand of hair that poor Mattie fixed not long ago, teasing it back out and letting it fall over her face again so she’s looking messy but in a cute way because here for that always]

Mattie: [blushing ‘is that better?’ like you’re purely talking about your hair and not the way you’re moving closer to her again]

Fi: [‘different’ like we’ve gotta reclaim that word from the negative it was used in a sec ago and remind ourselves change can be good it doesn’t have to suck]

Mattie: [nodding like we agree and are on board ‘different’ as if we need to repeat to remind ourself ‘you make me feel different’]

Fi: [‘I was scared I would ruin my streak’ like her being her as Dolly’s plus one wasn’t a good surprise the way they used to surprise each other she’d have to go die, cos imagine, Mattie like, you again]

Mattie: [shake your head like you definitely have not ‘I didn’t know if I’d see you again, or, not ‘til some reunion or…’ shrugging like that wasn’t a very real possibility and we weren’t okay with it]

Fi: [‘if I left it that long you wouldn’t recognise me, which would be completely and utterly bad different, for both of us’ like ew no, cannot]

Mattie: [‘what about me? I’d be an actual old lady, horrific’ like no thank you, not at all casually reaching out for her hand]

Fi: [‘no, but you’d be married, which is worse’ taking her hand and doing a pose like she’s showing a wedding ring off like that would actually be horrific and I’d die]

Mattie: [lol like to who, ma’am ‘I don’t think so’ giving her hand a playful slap with ours like nay nay]

Fi: [looking around ‘how could you not want this?’ shading nay again, soz not soz, but underneath that playful bants it’s like actually though]

Mattie: [cover your mouth like you’ll really cackle if not like oops ‘don’t diss the decor, I did this on very short notice’ like tah, sis]

Fi: [‘I wouldn’t dream of it, the decor’s fantastic, I’m this close to booking in Allegra in preparation for marriage number 3, it’s the charm, so they say, maybe it’ll be a husband we can both stand’ because her mum can’t stand her dad but she can’t stand her stepdad lol]

Mattie: [crossing our fingers on both hands like I hope so because we just want you to be happy, obviously ‘what do you think?’ and nodding your head towards the door ‘of that happy couple?’]

Fi: [lowering her voice to a whisper even though there’s no need ‘your sister is exactly how I pictured her according to your painting’ because you would’ve heard so much about Jay by this point you lowkey feel like you know her ‘he’s less what I would’ve imagined, but I try not to give grown men the amount of headspace I once did, lesson learnt, as I’ve admitted, could be why’]

Mattie: [someone could walk in but it’s not like you’re being cunty or these convos aren’t happening all over this party but I get it, we’re also talking in more hushed tones ‘they’ve been together for a long time’ which she surely knows but as if we’re justifying it here and now ‘you might have the right idea’ ‘cos none of us are sold on this or Noah but it is what it is]

Fi: [‘I know, but I assumed she’d be with someone who, superficially, could bench press both of us at the same time’ soz to drag you to filth like that Noah but Jay is sporty gym gal and that’s one of the biggest things we’ve always known about her so, and she hasn’t talked to nay long enough to be like oh it’s your personality she loves, can’t go on anything but shallow stuff rn]

Mattie: [doing a cute lol because you would assume that was her type ‘is that what your favourite bartender looked like?’ ‘cos you too are a sporty gal]

Fi: [‘it’s what my fave bouncer looked like’ because I always befriended them on nights out, in my case for if I needed help, but you just would, I feel like]

Mattie: [nod like oh yep, that tracks ‘at least he’s suited for his job’ ‘cos what is the point when they’re just fat or not remotely tough like soz it’s v much the point]

Fi: [‘whatever my opinion of them, Doll can count me as her wedding date unless she gets a better offer’ just back to the point here which is how buzzing we are to have got an invite to this, flop event though it may be]

Mattie: [making a face when you realise you’ll have a plus one place to either fill or ignore like oh GOD ‘thank god I can keep super busy’ which sounds like you don’t wanna see her and Dolly together but obviously that isn’t what we meant, swatting our hands like oh, you know what I mean]

Fi: [SUCH an amused face ‘and thank god I won’t keep you waiting until the reception to have another catch up’ cos imagine, that wedding could be forever away, some peeps wait years]

Mattie: [tapping her arm like no, you won’t ‘now the conversation has been started’ like it’ll be easier from here on out]

Fi: [‘when we next stall I can take you out for [whatever the cocktail she just drank was]’ not you admitting it’s still kinda awks and y’all might need to get drunk about it to deal with this sapphic tension]

Mattie: [‘we won’t’ shaking our head so more of our hair comes loose, refusing to acknowledge it could be awkward like nope ‘but I do owe you a proper drink’]

Fi: [playing with said loose hair for no reason whatsoever ‘I owe you your own escort, and my full attention’ because technically here for your sister even though it’s too easy for you both to forget that rn in here]

Mattie: [‘you take it very seriously’ like I remember and you’re very gentlemanly 😌 face before you’re looking at the door like we should probably get back in there]

Fi: [when you see her look towards that door and you go to say something but you only get ‘Mattie-’ out, note the first time she’s used her name this convo though, before someone comes into this bathroom and you don’t wanna finish whatever gay thing you were about to say, so yeah, go out and find Dolly again hun]

Mattie: [the ? on our face before this person rudely interrupts to go to the toilet, it is probably someone you vaguely know so you might have to stay and have a little chat before so let this girl go, however begrudgingly it is]

Fi: [soz Win but it’s a realistic cockblock and you have gotta go back to Dolly anyways, girl, so do that and do your best not to be gutted af]

Mattie: [and you gotta do some more mingling girl, keep this party ticking over for your sins]

Fi: [nobody’s living for the nay engagement but the party doesn’t have to be a total bust just because they are flops]

Mattie: [at least you can get these gals mocktails to enjoy and Gabe whatever he’s been drinking with Lulu because can’t do one and not the other]

Fi: [just know that you are not welcome though Gabe, ever, but it means you can raise your glass at this girl across the room like ty so that’s nice, we like that, even if you blatantly wish it was a cocktail, Fi, you’re being a good friend]

Mattie: [we could have cheated but I think Dolly would know and you are being a good friend, we don’t want to derail you that hard, and we definitely do not like Gabe but at least Lulu is socialising when he’s around so we kind of just put up with him for that sake at this point but there’s no love lost; do your little toast back with the drink you got yourself, not at all romantic just silently communicating across a crowded room, alright taylor]

Fi: [god just take a second to actually think what a dry party this would be because of the age of the peeps mostly being fam like the literal grandparents and Java, and no offence how boring nay are, you really are being a good friend here Fi, I would simply not attend if someone asked me and that was the situation, soz, I fully imagine you and Dolly exploring this venue trying to find anything vaguely interesting or fun to do, we’re all praying for like a giant lawn connect 4 at this point lol]

Mattie: [thank god there is catching up to be done because truly, there’s nothing here for y’all, idek who this party is for lmao, everyone entertain yourselves lowkey, we’ll just be here trying to get Jay to come talk to the twins so they feel included and like there was a reason to bring them here tonight]

Fi: [at least if we say she do, they’ll all be dying, but it’ll bring you 2 back together because Fi literally doesn’t know anyone so she’d be alone else while that awks twin and Jay convo is occurring]

Mattie: [like we’d probably have to do it one by one ‘cos lord knows none of you gals are helping us here but when Jay is making awkward small-talk with Dolly, deffo]

Fi: [soz to throw you under the boring Jay sized bus there Dolly but, I suppose it’s good that she’s vaguely trying to have a catch up with you, agonising as it will be, Fi return the favour and hand Mattie a v alcoholic drink you can tell she needs to deal with how awkward and hard work trying to organise that was]

Mattie: [should Mattie have to encourage you to? No but it’s something, as you are an adult hun; shooting her a look as you take this drink and then your first sip because yeah, we truly need it because Jay is the exact same amount related to these gals as you are and hasn’t put in half the effort, which is like, yeah, your decision but being in the middle of that is a lot ‘aren’t you glad you only have the one little brother?’ raising our brows like these sisters, my god]

Fi: [when you’re just automatically leading her somewhere that you found while you were exploring with Dolly before so Mattie can literally get away from this and have a break because she never gets one and these twins are a lot to be dealing with basically by yourself and all of this Fi has known from basically the beginning cos no secret the gals are weird, Dolly less so obvs hence y’all are legit friends now, but still ‘for all Allegra’s many faults, I can be glad he’s just my little brother, and yeah, I am’ because your mum for all she put on you in terms of pressure at least isn’t making you do more for your little bro than any standard big sister would and you shamelessly are thankful for that]

Mattie: [rich girl perks, you’re not ever going to be needing to look after your siblings like second parents, there’s staff and good schools for that, nodding and sitting yourself down on the floor, wherever y’all are so you can take this moment properly ‘brothers are easier, whatever age’]

Fi: [nod because you feel like you’ve had a lot of sisters with the way your school was set up to make you really look after the younger ones ‘I won’t miss feeling like I’ve got [however many] sisters’ but with a smile because you loved it really, unlike this situation poor Mattie is in]

Mattie: [smile back ‘yeah, right’ ‘cos we know you loved it, before the bathroom heart to heart even we knew that much ‘some sisters are easier than others’ like namely the ones I’m not actually related to lol]

Fi: [‘you’ve had some rotten luck, hence the nobody could call it playing safe drink in your hand’ because where’s the lie, Chlo is also your mum, soz Mattie we’ve really put you through it, girl, and this girl here isn’t gonna sugarcoat it]

Mattie: [do a little lol about how blunt that is but you’re not at all offended because not that type, again taking another sip but purposely taking a bigger gulp like you’re confirming it, like to point out that she would also have 2 younger siblings assuming we’ve got the Java kids we faced so like, wild times lol ‘if I turn this into a pity party though the night is well and truly over’ like we cannot]

Fi: [‘well then, I’ll have to think of how I’m going to turn it back into a party, party’ with that mischievous look back in her eye again, because who is she if not this bitch, hence Dolly invited her to help her have an actually good time]

Mattie: [‘what did you have in mind?’ looking around as if something wild is just going to pop out of nowhere]

Fi: [‘you like to follow clues, I’ll leave some for you’ not this girl just about to set up some kind of spontaneous little treasure hunt moment at the drop of a literal hat like it’s nbd]

Mattie: [shaking your head like oh, okay because who even ‘do I stay here or?’]

Fi: [‘it doesn’t matter, as long as you stay out of my way while I set up the first’ a smile as she messes up Mattie’s hair playfully, which we all know is a clue in itself for her to go back to the bathroom and start there for this first clue, which we likewise all know will be a lipstick message on the mirror because DUH, obvs we’re gonna hark back across their entire relationship with these clues, tonight included]

Mattie: [checking the watch we don’t have on like okay, ready set go energy, waving her off and covering her eyes like we’re not even checking which direction she’s going in even though we picked up on that clue to go to the bathroom in a suitable time]

Fi: [just getting to be the most gay and feelsy of all time with every single clue, god bless, enjoy your trip down memory lane gals, I can only speculate wildly because we don’t know y’all like that after one convo, but the point is clearly to cheer her up and the final clue is blatantly inviting her somewhere after this engagement party is dead and buried because we know it won’t be a late one, Jay doesn’t drink any more and is a gym bitch, I’m sure she has to get up early in the AM even after her engagement party]

Mattie: [we love to see it and are obviously having the greatest time, no need to know y’all to know that much and are definitely going to accept this offer because duh]

Fi: [Dolly will be invited too, of course, so we’ll have to decide if we want her there or not because two very different moods depending if she is or it’s just you two, but either way, I’m just happy the slay outfits won’t be wasted on this boring function]

Mattie: [my boo says I will save the day and the looks, but yes those would be two entirely different vibes at this point so we’d need to pick, ‘cos we’re probably already a little too tipsy to feel comfortable subjecting Dolly to it]

Fi: [we can always do the copout but quite legit vibe that she’s invited but declines because she’s not feeling wherever Fi has decided they’re going, let y’all be gay alone]

Mattie: [I think so, it’s obviously not your scene Dolly and you aren’t in the mood to be in a club with more drunk people or whatever so pop off gays]

Fi: [I don’t blame her, being the sober one on a night out sucks, even if you’re the most sober of the group never mind completely so, but again, cute and nice that you invited her Fi, despite how blatantly you’re hoping she wouldn’t want to actually which is reflected, subconsciously or otherwise, in your choice of venue, you can say it’s cos Mattie’s got her dancing shoes on, which true, but it’s also cos y’all do wanna be alone]

Mattie: [it is very in character of you to dip, not just us or this gal subconsciously being cheeky, it’s cool, soz it does serve us more for them to be alone and it is shamelessly what both these girls would prefer]

Fi: [do you wanna skip to there or should we do some messages when Mattie gets the last clue and accepts her invite?]

Mattie: [let’s do some messages, why not, you’re invariably back with Dolly chilling and we’re lowkey tipsy and overexcited by these shenanigans so]

Mattie: 💌📌💃☁️

Fi: I should’ve made them harder, I can’t believe you’re done

Mattie: Just call me Marple 🔎

Mattie: your own skills are also severely limited by location

Fi: wow, not Jane? I thought we were friends

Fi: my own skills are rusty, you can say it

Mattie: I see my own future as an Aunt Mattie and I am not prepared for that 🧶🌱👩‍🦳

Mattie: I would never say that

Fi: you would never have an affair with a married man, book Marple is closer to your predicted future

Fi: but knitting and gardening are both fun, you could fare much worse

Mattie: the only married men I know are [and list off the male teachers that are and are clearly not the ones, soz huns]

Mattie: 🤭

Fi: there’s hope for you yet, miss

Fi: and with such a long career ahead before trowels and knitting needles, who knows who you’ll meet

Mattie: I understand why teachers were always unmarried women

Mattie: who am I going to meet when my free time is Sunday 😅

Mattie: sounds positively Victorian

Fi: Agatha Christie wouldn’t write you in a new chaplain love interest, but if I’m in charge of the narrative and location, we needn’t be limited at all

Mattie: University is the time for those sorts of adventures, we should be talking about your love interests, potential or already realised

Fi: no we shouldn’t, I’d have to curl up and die, now that’s positively Victorian

Mattie: now I thought we were friends

Fi: we are, thus I’m sparing you the tale of quite how vigorously I attempted to throw myself into that aspect of uni life

Mattie: it’s okay it’s a cliche for a reason

Fi: it’s embarrassing for a multitude of reasons 😬

Mattie: I was a little bit your teacher, then

Fi: no, I don’t care what they think of me, success story or horror show, that part of my life is over

Fi: you don’t belong in there though, and I do care

Mattie: okay, I understand

Mattie: I wouldn’t judge you though, as long as you know that

Fi: I feel stupid, for the kid in a sweet shop approach

Mattie: it’s your first taste of proper freedom, being adult about it is basically impossible

Fi: I had freedom, a lot more than most

Mattie: Lack of an audience, then

Mattie: everyone here knew you, your mother

Fi: every summer spent with my dad afforded me the luxury of the most cliche holiday romance going, had I wanted

Mattie: of course

Fi: but it’s uni that’s the culture shock, and it does feel like a culture, of throwing yourself at everyone

Mattie: if you don’t want to, you don’t have to continue like that, it calms down, most people do

Fi: thank god, a non-stop three year long speed dating event would be exhausting

Mattie: just

Mattie: don’t necessarily go the other way and think that’s automatically a better idea, you know what I mean

Fi: I won’t let you down, I’d hate to

Mattie: why would you let me down?

Fi: I know why I’m here, I’m not allowed to suddenly become boring 🧶🌱👩‍🦳

Mattie: that’s not what I meant

Mattie: I had a very serious boyfriend throughout Uni and I really shouldn’t have, for a myriad of reasons, that’s all I was thinking of

Fi: promising not to get a serious boyfriend’s an easy one

Mattie: you’re allowed to do whatever makes you happy

Mattie: make your own mistakes, even, don’t let me harp on about mine to scare you

Fi: I’m not scared of anything you want to tell me, you’re allowed too

Mattie: I’ve never really talked about him, I try not to

Fi: if you want to, I’ll only track him down and kill him as a very last resort, don’t let it put you off

Mattie: whilst I’m sure your methods would be entirely and gruesomely historically accurate

Mattie: you’re meant to use all that free time between lectures to study, you know 😉

Fi: no one can begrudge me a field trip to a medieval torture museum, it’s the hols 📌🌎🛫

Mattie: quite right too

Mattie: he was, in hindsight, someone I wouldn’t want any of my friends to go out with

Mattie: but I didn’t realise it wasn’t a me problem at the time, that’s all

Fi: oh Mattie

Mattie: but he’s long gone, we don’t need to worry about this

Mattie: the final straw was when I took the placement at the school

Fi: just when I thought I couldn’t be any more glad that happened

Mattie: it’s why I had to work there, not that I put that on my application, or talked about how the placement saved me in my interview

Mattie: all a bit much… but he could no longer monopolise my time, control me and where I went, it was like the spell was broken after that

Fi: I can also easily promise not to relay it to your bosses, ancient history doesn’t automatically mean I’ll become obsessed

Mattie: No one knows, only [the teacher you did your training with aka your bestie], unavoidably so as she was there through the whole mess

Fi: What about your family?

Mattie: it would be too upsetting, to think I didn’t know better, and he was always very nice in front of everyone else, doting, even

Fi: deserving of [just namedropping the most horrific medieval torture device possible]

Fi: I’m sorry you had to go through everything he put you through and come out of the other side alone

Mattie: thank you, it’s all okay now

Mattie: and I suppose it was my choice to be alone, I don’t know

Fi: choice is too hard on yourself, he must’ve made you feel like you didn’t have another

Mattie: it was shame, really

Mattie: how we were was my fault because I’d never had a proper partner before so I didn’t know how to be

Mattie: then after, well, it was shaming in another way entirely

Fi: it wasn’t your fault he took advantage of your inexperience and used it to his

Mattie: I know that now, therapists work wonders

Mattie: I promise I didn’t come into teaching entirely unhinged, whatever the kitsch coffee mugs suggest about needing a certain level of insanity to do the job

Fi: you’re the most level-headed person I know

Mattie: you wouldn’t have thought that if you met me at your age, or even the year before you did…

Mattie: people can get a little off track, at Uni, in those in-between years

Fi: had I met you then, if we were the same age, he wouldn’t have lasted long enough to do any lasting damage

Fi: I wouldn’t have allowed it

Mattie: I believe that

Mattie: you’re very strong

Mattie: not physically, though you are, obviously

Fi: stubborn, perhaps

Mattie: that too

Mattie: but strong

Fi: I’m feeling strong waves of regret about any jokes I may have made which aren’t funny in light of what you’ve shared

Mattie: don’t, you weren’t to know

Mattie: no one does, as I said, and I preferred it that way whilst I worked it all out in my head… maybe I’ll change my mind now I feel better but I still don’t think I want to make it some grand proclamation

Mattie: change how people see me, what they think they can say

Fi: all understandable, but I’ll be here kicking myself for a while anyway

Mattie: grr

Fi: no matchmaking, tonight or ever, I refuse to put my 👠 back in it

Mattie: but you have put them back on

Fi: [not you sending her free feet pics of them back off like no no]

Mattie: 🥳 will you be drunk enough to learn more ballet later

Fi: letting you drink alone is as unforgivable as making Doll be sober alone, I wouldn’t dream of either

Mattie: I am a little drunk, it must be said

Fi: I’ll catch up at [wherever they’re going] while you’re 🩰

Mattie: will I get in in what I’m wearing?

Fi: unlike bartenders, I’ve kept fave bouncers everywhere, you’ll Chaseé ? in

Mattie: 👏

Mattie: very good

Fi: you’re a good teacher

Fi: who knew?

Mattie: please pass the message on to all relevant bosses

Fi: sadly the deadline has passed for my Christmas round-robin but I’ll see what I can do if I see any of them in the new year

Mattie: I can only imagine the details you would have included

Fi: I’ll put you on the list again now I know you want to hear from me

Mattie: as if I wouldn’t

Fi: I wasn’t certain, or I’d have reached out

Mattie: now you know 🔮

Fi: Dolly says Lulu’s been keeping you busy in my absence

Mattie: ah yes, that is true

Fi: your protectiveness makes even more sense given what happened to you

Mattie: I’m sure Lulu would think me an absolute fool for it

Fi: she thinks everyone a fool, it’s barely personal at this point

Fi: I’ve never seen someone look at their invited guest, who they chose to bring, and date, with such open disdain

Mattie: 🤭

Mattie: at least it means I don’t have to worry about her being under his spell or anything of the sort

Fi: the reversal, maybe, but I’m not worried for him, he’s visibly old enough to look after himself 🧔🏼

Mattie: he’s [however old he is in comparison, I forget]

Fi: of course, she loves to push a boundary as far as is still considered socially acceptable

Mattie: now now

Mattie: you know he was the only age appropriate boy around

Fi: age appropriate is debatable, just because he can grow a beard doesn’t equate to his emotional maturity being high enough to deal with your sister’s, let’s call it emotional instability

Mattie: let’s not call it anything

Fi: okay, sorry, not cool of me, she’s your sister

Mattie: I know she isn’t the easiest person to relate to

Fi: and we both know I’ve made multiple attempts, but there’s no excuse to be calling her out, she doesn’t have to like me, I’m not Head Girl these days

Mattie: as you said, it isn’t personal

Fi: as I said, I’m sorry 😶

Mattie: you’re fine, I promise

Fi: you don’t want to tell me off is all, you’re too good at it

Mattie: I’m sure you could think up better ways to earn it

Fi: true, if I thought hard, something would absolutely come to me

Mattie: think think think 🤔

Fi: 🍯🐝🎈

Mattie: I love him 🥰

Fi: he’s that sort of bear, how could you not

Mattie: You’re very tigger

Fi: eventually you’re gonna have to admit defeat on me not having adhd

Mattie: omg stop it! 😆

Mattie: it sounds like I make a commission on Adderall

Fi: you’ve shared one secret, go ahead, unburden yourself of your others

Mattie: how dare you accuse me of being a pill pusher

Mattie: I don’t even take aspirin unless the headache is very, very bad, I’ll have you know

Fi: you stop it, you’re adorable

Mattie: you’re bouncy, there should be a bouncy ball emoji, is there

Mattie: there are too many to look through these days 👩‍🦳

Fi: you’re tipsy, that’s why there’s too many to look through

Mattie: no, I’m old, maybe I need glasses, you can help me find a chic pair

Fi: you’re 22

Mattie: and you’re 19

Fi: you look the same age as me

Mattie: how was your birthday?

Fi: I don’t know, different, good and bad

Mattie: did you get a cake?

Fi: [show her the pics because really not long ago so not hard to scroll to and find, clearly not a patch on anything this gal has ever baked for you though]

Fi: I missed it not being from you 👩‍🍳

Mattie: I made so many mince pies before hols 😮‍💨

Mattie: I didn’t do stars on top though

Fi: I see what you’re doing, making me cry because you’re not my form tutor, it’s unacceptable nevertheless

Mattie: no don’t cry it’s because I’d cry if I did

Fi: I know that, it’s why I have to

Mattie: your makeup will be ruined

Fi: but I’ll be in the right place to re-do it, when I can stop 😭

Mattie: are you alone?

Fi: hopefully, or whoever’s in here with me will assume I’m very drunk and a wreck

Mattie: that can be me, if you want

Fi: I always want you around

Mattie: it would’ve been rude to not check, what with the 😭

Fi: you’ve seen it before, my last day I was an actual wreck, and in floods

Mattie: not because of me

Mattie: [the bad teacher] should be every bit ashamed as I think she is now

Fi: it isn’t really your fault

Mattie: [come in because how long does it really need to take you to get here, not long, bathroom doors are always loud so our ‘a little bit, maybe’ shouldn’t frighten you to death lol]

Fi: [‘I’m only crying a little bit’ as this girl wipes her eyes like oh hello to you, don’t mind me here actually crying because of all my feelings]

Mattie: [when she has wiped her eyes, come forward and grab her hand and give it a squeeze ‘it’s okay’ doing a little lol ‘what’s a party if no one cries, eh?’]

Fi: [doing your own little lol ‘it’s not my party’ like how ridiculous and hilarious that I’m the one crying ‘though, lord knows I would were I getting married off’ because no thank you, sounds like Noah shade again and it is lowkey but also just in general because 19]

Mattie: [‘I doubt we’ll catch the bride to be’ and pulling a face because that is clearly not who Jay is at all ‘so take your fill’ like it’s going free honey, pulling an equally GOD NO face and then loling some more because same on both counts tbh]

Fi: [catching a look at herself in the mirror and pulling her own face like ugh why me though because didn’t wanna be here doing this but we are, crying a lil bit more about the fact like great I’m this bitch now love that for me, but also loling at her GOD NO face]

Mattie: [giving her a hug because you want to but also so she doesn’t feel like you’re gawping at her whilst she cries ‘I cry all the time’ like tis true, not saying this like I’m a depressed bitch vibe we’re just an emotional sort of bean]

Fi: [‘I usually don’t but I-’ again stopping yourself saying whatever gay thing you were going to say, despite the fact this hug couldn’t be more gay how you’re returning it]

Mattie: [‘you’re stuck at a terrible party because you’re a good person?’ not us admitting how hard it sucks lol]

Fi: [shaking her head ‘I’ve honestly been to parties which ranked higher on the scale towards complete bust, you don’t need to feel like a bad sister’ because true, you definitely have, for many reasons, and also that isn’t why you’re crying and we all know it]

Mattie: [sighing like thanks but ‘I almost always do anyway’ the work you put in for the lack of pay-off, soz girly]

Fi: [‘oh Mattie’ hugging her tighter because what can you say, we all know it isn’t her fault but you don’t wanna shade her sisters again like you did earlier ‘you’re an amazing sister’ because you’ve seen it with your own eyes how hard she tries always]

Mattie: [just hug it out gals like this isn’t risky business or anything ‘you smell nice’ and sniffing the top of her head and then her neck to see if it’s more shampoo or perfume]

Fi: [gonna say it’s perfume because what else are you bringing in that big red bag, plus then you can get it out and spray it on her, how intimate and how gay, plus sniff her back because perfume smells different on different people, so you can also comment on that somehow, like oh it smells more like such and such on you vibes]

Mattie: [just doing the little twirl you do through a perfume cloud and then hugging said scent to yourself so you can fully breathe it in casually before turning back to her like now, come here, gently cleaning up any makeup that had been smudged]

Fi: [when you’d be so used to other girls doing your makeup because boarding school but it’s her so you’re just here DYING inside casually, opening your mouth to say something, but either you don’t know what to say or you’re scared of ruining this moment, so you just breathe, lowkey a sigh]

Mattie: [meanwhile we’re here not daring to breathe because so into being this intimate with you we’re afraid what we might do if we make any sort of sudden move, yet we’re still touching your lips like your lipstick needs patting into place when I doubt it’s gone that awry]

Fi: [feeling for said lipstick and handing it to her without looking down because likewise barely dare or want to move but do want to linger in this moment by letting her reapply it for us unnecessarily]

Mattie: [putting it on our lips first, without looking away from her to look in the mirror, slowly circling the entirety of both lips, slowly, pouting them out for the full effect, before gently tilting her head up towards the light to apply hers ‘so pretty’ just under our breath, casually as if it remotely is]

Fi: [thank god there is nobody in here because she’s STARING at this scene like Mattie is doing something pornographic, could not be more into it, catch this girl with her lips parted way before she even needs to do it for her own lipstick application purposes, it’s just the affect this is having on her nbd, likewise catch her blushing when she has no choice but to hear that because proximity]

Mattie: [when her reaction has you wanting to push this desperately, to do more and show her more, gently using your bodyweight to push her up onto the counter of this sink moment, as if you need her sat to do this properly ‘prettiest girl’ at the same volume but your voice is shamelessly hoarser, really doing the most you can with said lipstick to push her lips apart how you want to]

Fi: [it’s the sigh hitting completely different now for me, because DUH, not okay about any of this in the best way, literally having to bite her lip so it doesn’t turn into an even more blatant sound all together and also to give her more work to do, because again simply must prolong this]

Mattie: [without thinking, smearing this lipstick across her mouth with your fingers when she bites her lip ‘bad girl’ like she ruined it that hard but really you just wanted to and now you have even more work to do when you can concentrate]

Fi: [pressing her back so hard against the wall in a way that would have to be obvious but if she doesn’t she’ll move forward and do something even more BLATANT at what this gal just said because !! this feels like a fantasy you’ve had but you know it’s really happening because you’re not even tipsy yet, at least you can pretend you’re doing some etiquette style good girl posture to try and make this easier for her and your amends, including crossing her ankles like a lady sits, again not at all because you’re dying, nope]

Mattie: [putting the cap on this lipstick with a satisfying click because not in the mood to fix this or anything currently, folding our arms and taking a step back like we’re appraising you but obviously we’ve had similar fantasies and are taking this moment in for all its worth, taking hold of your knees and yanking your legs apart unceremoniously, which is FINE because you’re wearing trousers, standing closer to you again in the gap we’ve just created]

Fi: [getting her name out of our mouth like she did earlier before they were rudely interrupted by someone but x 100000 with how her voice obvs sounds about this, but having to close her eyes when this gal is in this close proximity to us again because CANNOT cope actually]

Mattie: [doing a little gasp at hearing your name said like that, by her, playing with the necklaces she has on, pulling them tighter and looser ‘round the back of her neck, whilst in her ear but closer than we ever were out in the party ‘tell me, Fi’]

Fi: [when you literally have goosebumps from her gasp before she’s even touched you, nbd, and are literally trying to disappear into this wall when she does so as not to make any dramatic moves ‘I can’t’ her voice catching before and as she says this, like excuse me I literally cannot, doing the most dramatic swallow as if that’ll fix how impossible speaking is]

Mattie: [tracing your finger across the goosebumps on display which is really just her neck and slightly down her chest ‘okay’ really quietly and after quite a while of doing this, creating goosebumps on goosebumps, I’m sure, before gently pulling her down via your hands around her waist and then letting her go, opening the lipstick again to rub away the mess you made and reapply, yet again]

Fi: [looking at her the most 🥺 anyone ever has while all this is occurring, lowkey trembling with the !! of not reacting any other way, until she accidentally licks her lips during this lipstick reapplication, soz and the ‘fuck’ escapes like oh no, in such a !! manner ‘excuse my language, miss’ in trying to be a bants way but this moment is too charged for that to land anything other than flirty af]

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guessimabasicnerdgirlnow · 4 months

Text

Death of Venomverse continuation:

Oh no they venomized Spider-Man!! This was so funny. The funniest “we are Venom” ever

Also dreamstone my new beloved <3

Why did it have to Rhino, of all of them, to say this line

This was temporary (rip dreamstone) but still I think we should not have shown the power of Venom to poor Spider Eddie, this will mess up his character development

First of all, look at how small Alternate Dylan is!! My boy has been looking more like a child in the recent comics, but it was still weird to see this Dylan that I have always imagined being an adult looking younger than regular Dylan, who is an actual child, usually does

Despite this, Dylan insisting on going was another small moment in which I could believe that this is the guy who had conquered the world as a super villain before

Points to Spider Eddie for thinking of the children anyway

Also Anne being all “you’re not my Eddie”. I don’t think her Eddie would get to have a say in this anyway

Also cool that the next panel had the- not children, but second gen people. By the way, Chaos Engine? Do we know who he is? Am I right to assume from his symbiote and sonic powers that he is Carnage’s and Shriek’s son that turned against them??

“Not ‘we’. Me. Me alone.” This sort of thinking is such a bad sign around here. It hits differently when it’s a symbiote saying it instead of a host but still. I do support Red’s choices seeking independence, I love to see a free, strong, independent slime

This Anne definitely has faced Knull herself. Nice. I hc ed that he eventually showed up there too. She doesn’t seem to be King in Black (Queen in Black?) though. Unless she is hiding something (or her Dylan is, sorry, I will remain deluded)

She’s an hybrid she’s an hybrid aaaah

(If I am right about Chaos Engine, then he is too??)

Dreamstone my beloved 🥺 again, it is so funny that they are the only symbiote with solo lines besides Red

Tbc. Only one pic left

#shut up brock

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savage-kult-of-gorthaur · 11 months

Text

"BY THE MIDDLE SEVENTIES CONAN HAD BECOME ONE OF MARVEL'S MOST POPULAR CHARACTERS."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on a mega photo-dump of cover art (textless & published) to "Savage Sword of Conan" Vol. 2 #2. Marvel Comics. Artwork by Alex Ross. Also included cover art to "Conan the Barbarian: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus Vol. 5" (2021) hardcover.

ICV2: "What was happening with the property? The first movie was 1982. Was the property getting more popular or was it confined just to Marvel?"

ROY THOMAS: "By the middle seventies Conan had become one of Marvel’s most popular characters. Since the "Savage Sword of Conan" Vol. 1 book sold for like a buck at a time when other comics were like a quarter or thirty cents or so (and didn’t have that much color in it, just the cover, it was not that expensive to produce), I suspect there was probably a little while in the late seventies at least, when Conan between the two or three titles he was in was probably making as much money in terms of comic book sales for the company as Spider-Man was.

The Franklin Mint did some medallions at that time, three or four of them and one of the four they picked was Conan out of all the characters they could have picked. We had the rights to merchandising at that time. So it was really quite popular.

But in the meantime, by the mid-seventies, unfortunately Lancer (I don’t know exactly how they mismanaged it) somehow despite the popularity of the Conan and Robert E. Howard properties they had, and the other things they did, managed to go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which meant that for a number of years in the late seventies and early eighties there were a number of years when there was no authorized printing of the Conan text stories at all. He wasn’t exactly a growth industry in terms of paperbacks or hardbound books or anything like that. He was surviving in the public’s mind for those years primarily on the strength of the comics.

I always remember that at an early stage, sometime in the late seventies or early eighties, but sometime before the movie, that Sammy Davis Jr. was hosting a show, I don’t know if it was his or he was guest-hosting "The Tonight Show," and he had Arnold Schwarzenegger on. This was sometime before the movie was released or even filmed yet, but he’d been signed long since to play the character and he said he was willing to play Conan the Barbarian. And Sammy Davis Jr., a favorite singer of mine, said, “Oh, the comic book character!” That’s sort of the way the public thought of Conan if they thought of him at all at that time--as a comic book character.

It made that movie viable at a time when otherwise probably it would have been dead. Eventually it would have come back and maybe somebody would have done it, but that particular movie at that particular time owed as much to comics as it did to the stories in terms of viability."

Resolution from largest to smallest: 1400x2048, 1329x2040, 1200x1760, 1184x1800, 720x1107.

Sources: https://twitter.com/thealexrossart/status/1488879434744668167/photo/1, In This Issue Comics, Marvel (official site), & https://icv2.com/articles/comics/view/18591/roy-thomas-history-conan.

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thevioletjones · 3 years

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31, because I can’t see it fitting Ian/Mickey easily and know you’re a good enough writer to prove me wrong ☺️

Thanks! I tried. 🙂

Prompt 6: “I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that they’re you.”

Ian’s Box of Crap

Being currently unemployed, Mickey didn’t have much of a leg to stand on when attempting to deflect Ian’s demands that he get chores and household tasks done while his husband was out earning an honest paycheck. He wasn’t even allowed to shake people down anymore, let alone pull robberies, or get back into the drug trade. Ian had made it clear that divorce wasn't off the table if Mickey deliberately did something stupid that got him thrown back in prison for a long stretch.

He didn’t much like being told what to do, but what he liked even less was not having Ian in his life. He’d had to go too many years without him in the past, and nothing good ever came during those times. Unfortunately, Ian Gallagher was it for Mickey Milkovich. That meant that he actually had to stay in line and put in the work if he didn’t want to lose him again. Ian wasn’t as soft as he used to be. Never really had been at his core, but the maturity of age had cemented his backbone rather rigidly, and Mickey was actually loathe to piss him off too badly these days.

So he did the bullshit grunt work requested of him, just to keep the peace. He was tired of fighting every day of his life, and what was the point of marrying Ian if they weren’t going to try and make each other happy?

In the past couple weeks, Mickey had done everything from laundry and dishes, to vacuuming and mopping. He’d patched up a couple of big holes in the wall that Frank had made, and fixed the loose parts of the wooden outdoor steps and banisters, both front and back. He’d even gone so far as to babysit the tiny, helpless Gallagher spawn a few times, which had been interesting and somewhat terrifying. Then Ian had given him this look when he caught the scene one afternoon, eyes shining, smile beaming. It reminded him of that brief time they’d helped take care of Yevgeny, which made Mickey’s head spin. He didn’t need Gallagher getting the whole ‘having kids’ thing back in his head right now. Mickey was in no way ready for all that. Hadn’t been the first time, and they’d all seen how that turned out.

Today, he was supposed to clean out the attic. He told Ian that asking someone outside the family to do it sounded like a bad idea. How was he supposed to know what shit the Gallaghers wanted to keep, and what they wanted to get rid of? What if he made a mistake? If anyone had asked him what to keep from the hoarded piles of shit in the Milkovich house, he would’ve laughed in their face, then set everything on fire. Mickey wasn’t the sentimental type. So did Ian want him to just toss everything?

Ian had rolled his eyes, clarified that Mickey was a Gallagher now, and given him a run-down. Anything that had obviously been made or cherished by a Gallagher kid, any family photos and albums, or small boxes of keepsakes, those stayed. Anything that wasn’t being used by anyone, but could be of use and handed down to the youngest or recently shacked up of them, set them aside to be put in rotation. Anything that worked, but they already had one of or didn’t need, donation box (because apparently they actually sometimes donated shit to the local shelter). And anything that looked completely unnecessary for anyone, throw it in a Best Choice trash bag, but don't take them to the curb yet. Ian would go over everything when he got home to make sure it was sorted correctly.

“So you’re gettin' me to do all this boring-ass grunt work, then you’re gonna have to go through it anyway? What the fuck, man?” he’d asked.

“It'll make the whole thing way easier on me, so can you just shut the fuck up and do me the favor? I’ll blow you later for your trouble.”

“Like you wouldn’t be doin’ that anyway.”

Ian had shrugged. “If you don’t, I won’t.”

“Threatening to withhold sex? That’s a bitch move if I ever heard one.”

“Whatever, deadbeat. You want me to support you, gotta help out when I ask. A blowjob would just be a bonus, because I’m generous of spirit.”

“I’m not gonna forget this hardcore manipulation, Firecrotch. I’ll get my revenge eventually.”

Ian merely kissed him on the nose. “Sounds like a plan. See ya.”

And he was out the door.

“Asshole,” Mickey’d muttered under his breath.

And now, a few hours later, here he was; sitting on the dusty, hard planks of the weird-smelling Gallagher attic, sorting through the memories and forgotten things of the family he’d married into less than six months ago. He’d dawdled as long as he could on the couch, eating junk food and watching his favorite daytime game shows, judge shows, and salacious ‘who’s the baby daddy?’ shows. The only hint of fun left in the remainder of his day was in the bong and the beer he’d brought with him up the rickety ladder. After every box sorted, he’d take a rip or two and chase the smoke with a long swig of cheap alcohol.

The most interesting things he’d found so far were some old pictures of Ian when he was little, his hair a curly mess, and his pale skin covered in dark freckles. His smile was too big for his face, and he looked goofy as all hell. Nothing like the hot hunk of man he was today. It was the Ian Mickey remembered from Little League a million years ago. And maybe he’d set one of the photos aside to keep for himself and taken some pics of others with his phone, so what?

Mostly he’d had to sift through little Debbie’s ridiculous girly shit, and Frank’s completely random assortment of insignificant trinkets with a side of what looked like bondage gear. He’d since moved on to a group of boxes obviously labeled by Carl when he was younger. He recognized the scrawl, occasional backwards lettering, and lack of possessive apostrophes. The words were short enough not to be atrociously misspelled, and consisted of a Gallagher first name in plural, followed by: ‘box of crap.’

Everybody had one, including Fiona, who hadn’t taken it with her when she’d left Chicago, and the kids she’d raised as her own, behind. The most scandalous item in there was a dildo of decent size that Mickey definitely would’ve packed in his suitcase if he’d been the one moving away as a single chick. The thought crossed his mind to pilfer it for his own collection, but he figured that Ian would be weirded out by the association. Sex toys were probably the only thing Gallaghers never shared between them.

Carl had a box of his own, semi-well-hidden compared to the others, and Mickey discovered why when he’d managed to get the copious amount of packing tape off. It was full of straight porn mags with big-tittied women and shaved pussies, underneath an array of dangerous weapons the family had forbidden him to have when he was underaged. He found everything from nunchucks, to throwing stars, to switchblades, to brass knuckles. No guns or attempted homemade bombs, thank fuck. He chucked the porn in the trash pile, cuz nobody needed to see that shit, and set the switchblade aside for himself, deciding to give the rest to Ian to sort out.

He saved Ian’s box for last, opening it up to find a grab bag of old army decorations, tattered paperbacks, comics, a bunch of loose paper covered in scribbles, and a stack of notebooks.

Mickey didn’t realize Ian was such a huge nerd that he’d kept his high school notebooks, but giving a quick flip through the first two revealed they weren’t school-related at all. He remembered Ian going through a phase when he was always writing shit down, ranting about having great ideas he needed to save for posterity. Before he went to the hospital. A manic phase. Probably one of many he’d cycled through, yet Mickey had missed some of those extremes.

Everything had been so chaotic then. He’d pushed Ian away, then gotten the same treatment in return. Their typical messiness pervaded everything back then. And now, he had in his hands Ian’s unfiltered thoughts about what happened back then.

“Fuck,” he said to himself, setting the notebooks down and going for the beer/weed combo again.

There were exactly two ways to go about this: he could put the notebooks back into the Ian box and not invade his privacy, or he could skim through them and hone in on the interesting relevant bits and maybe get a few long-pondered answers. On the one hand, Ian would probably get pissed if Mickey read them. On the other hand, Ian never had to know about it, did he?

It really wasn’t much of a choice… he’d always been curious as to what the hell was going through Ian’s head back in the day. They’d never exactly been great at talking things out, and he didn’t have it in him to try and make Ian relive some of the lowest moments of his life just to give Mickey some peace of mind. Plus, they were always facing some new bullshit obstacle head-on, so the past always just kind of got lost in the shuffle of their present difficulties.

Mickey took a deep breath and opened one of the notebooks again. The pages weren’t dated, and a lot of it didn’t make much sense. There were many lists with lines crossed out, but they didn’t describe things ‘to do,’ more like an endless inventory of concepts and feelings. The thought patterns were totally abstract, and Mickey couldn’t really make heads or tails of them. It hit him sharply in the chest when he realized that when Ian had been out of it, he’d really and truly been fucking out of it. These seemed like the crazed rantings of an unmedicated schizophrenic babbling on public transportation. It pained Mickey to the core, and it scared the shit out of him too.

He flipped through it fairly quickly, then opened the next one. It seemed to be calmer, more legible, and less unintelligible. It was more like a diary with bad poetry sprinkled in, and it only took a few pages for Mickey’s own name to jump out at him among the wall of words. It must have been written during Ian’s lost months, after going AWOL from the Army when he was 17.

He described running away from Chicago, scamming his early enlistment, crashing and burning his way out of bootcamp, shaking and selling his ass as a club boy, snorting, smoking, and swallowing all manner of substances, and crashing anywhere from penthouses to flophouses with sexual favors sprinkled in liberally. It was like the chronicle of a person going mad and coping in all the wrong ways. It surprised Mickey how emotional it made him to read these things in vivid detail. He’d completely forgotten how worried he used to be about Ian. When he was gone, when he went missing again, and when he started doing irrational things that could’ve ended so much worse than they did.

Ian was the one that had to live out all the drama and trauma of his disorder, but Mickey was the one caught on the sidelines, not having a single clue what to do or how to fix it. He’d never felt so useless or helpless in his entire life, even through all the bullshit he’d suffered growing up with Terry as a father. Maybe it was because of his age, or how Ian made him feel a certain way he’d never felt before. He just remembered hating it, and being so fucking sad.

These pages reminded him that through the mania, Ian was a bottomless well of sadness himself.

It was tough text to get through, and more than once, he felt like maybe he shouldn’t be reading it at all. Ian had never intended for other people to see his innermost thoughts, even Mickey. But it was impossible to stop now that he’d opened that floodgate. It was like reliving a part of their shared history through the eyes of his partner in crime. It was too fascinating.

After countless pages of dark tales from the void, Mickey came upon a page that was actually addressed to him. Surely, Ian had never intended to hand it over, but it was his nonetheless.

Mickey— I never had the balls to tell you this, But you’re the only boy I’ve ever loved. I thought you loved me too, But now I’m not so sure. I’m so confused and I go back and forth, Never really knowing what to actually think, Or what the truth is. All I really realize now is that I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that they’re you. It took you forever to let me, And now I just do it with anyone, Cuz I don’t fucking care. I just miss you, And I wish you were here. But also, I don’t, Cuz I don’t want you to see me like this. I’m having a great time on my own adventure, But also not. You shouldn’t be a part of it right now. You’re on your own strange journey, I guess. Maybe one day we’ll be on the same road together again, And also for the first time, since we never really were.

Mickey barely had enough time to sniff and wipe away the stray tear that had fallen, when his husband’s voice startled him out of his reverie.

“You’re still up here?”

“Jesus Christ!” he cried out with a visible jolt of his body.

His head snapped toward the attic hatch, where Ian’s dumb red head was surveying the musty space. Mickey let the notebook fall from his grasp, but Ian was already climbing the rest of the way in before it occurred to him that he was about to be caught red-handed with journals that were supposed to be deeply private. He could only flip it closed and grab his beer to polish it off, before Ian was crouching in front of him and taking a seat.

“Can’t believe you actually did this for me, to be honest,” Ian said with a chuckle, glancing at the bong. “Anything left?”

“Baggie’s right there,” Mickey replied nodding his head to the left.

“Nice.”

Ian got distracted with loading a bowl, so Mickey very subtly tried to nudge Ian's notebooks aside with his foot, like maybe if they were slightly farther away, he could claim complete innocence as to knowing what they were.

He watched Ian take a couple hits before passing it to him, and Mickey welcomed the opportunity to temper his suddenly sullen mood.

“How was work?” he asked between hits, before passing back to Ian.

Ian snickered and furrowed his brow. “You never ask me about work.”

Mickey shrugged. “Don’t mean I don’t care.”

“Uh huh.” Ian looked even more skeptical, and finally glanced around at what Mickey had in his vicinity. That sent his brow up high, in a decent imitation of Mickey’s usual expressiveness. “Oh. That my box?”

Mickey gulped and nodded. “Yeah. Just sorting it out. Should’ve just left the whole thing for ya. Sorry.”

Ian’s gaze snapped to his face. “You read stuff.”

It was a statement rather than a question.

“Just a little,” Mickey admitted. “I shouldn’t have. Fuck, I’m an asshole.”

But Ian only shook his head. “Nah, it’s okay.”

“You don’t have to say that. I’d be pissed.”

“I’m not. I promise.”

“Really? You’re not mad?”

Ian shook his head again. “No. Actually, I’m kinda relieved.”

“How the fuck so?”

“It's all stuff I wanted you to know. I mean, part of me used to be really ashamed, maybe still is, but… another part of me always just wanted to be totally honest with you. In a way I haven’t ever been with anyone. Even Lip. But I didn’t have the words to say it, you know? And I know a lot of it is just scary rambling. I don’t even understand what some of it means, but the stuff that’s real… the lucid stuff… it’s depressing as fuck, but it’s the truth. We didn’t always tell each other the truth, but we showed each other. And this was something I couldn’t really show you. So maybe you were meant to find these. Do my dirty work for me.”

“Damn, Gallagher, that’s kinda heavy. These were… kinda heavy. Made me feel shit I’d forgotten about, you know?”

Ian nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t read ‘em in years, but I remember. It’s why I wanted to put ‘em away, I guess. Plus, I didn’t want someone else snooping around and finding out too much. I mean, you never know in this house. It’s possible every fucking Gallagher already read them, but I hope not.”

“Ian…” Mickey started, but didn’t know exactly what he wanted to say. Words of reassurance? It was all in the past, and Ian was doing so well now. He was diligent about his medication, and he hadn’t spun out of control since before prison. Anything Mickey said now would just be cold comfort, since that notebook version of Ian barely existed anymore. Ian was always afraid that it would recur, but Mickey wasn’t. They were truly in it together now, and he’d never let Ian cross the threshold into the uncontrollable. “I wish I coulda been what you needed me to be back then. However impossible it was. Some of it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even my fault, really. It was some shitty shit that happened to me. I reacted the only way I thought I could. There’s no use in either of us wishing we’d done things differently now. At least we got the right outcome, right? We’re together.” He clasped their left hands so that their wedding rings touched. “Forever.”

Mickey couldn’t help but snort. “Okay, you didn’t have to get that gay about it. I already had to suffer through a buncha your faggy teen poetry. I deserve a break from the high drama of it all.”

Ian laughed, kissed his hand, dropped it, then smacked him on the cheek. “Fuck you.”

“Just say when,” Mickey responded with a smile.

“After we go through all this shit, Romeo. Explain the piles.”

“Well,” said Mickey, pointing to the nearby corner, “Carl has a shitload of contraband in there. Weapons, not drugs. Frank has some shit that might be S&M gear, not sure, then aside from your lunatic journal ramblings, everything else is boring as shit. Oh, and Fiona left a big blue dildo.”

#ian x mickey #fanfic #gallavich #fanfiction #asks #answers

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vinayrajoriaofficial · 3 years

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Element of Feminism & Pathos in the novel Bridget Jones's Diary.

by Vinay Rajoria

Cover page of a recently published edition of Bridget Jones's Diary.

First published in the United Kingdom in 1996, Bridget Jones's Diary had its origins in a weekly column that appeared in the London newspaper, The Independent. In this column, Helen Fielding, a freelance journalist who had previously worked for the BBC as a television producer, chronicled the comic adventures of an attractive, thirty-something woman, aka Bridget Jones, working in the publishing world and living in the fashionable neighborhood of Notting Hill. Throughout the novel, Bridget is depicted as a chain-smoking, wine-drinking, calorie-counter who obsesses over her fluctuating physical appearance, her stalled career, and, most importantly, her tumultuous love life. The novel is structured around a year's worth of diary entries, each of which is prefaced by a listing of calories consumed, cigarettes smoked, alcohol units imbibed, phone calls logged to friends and lovers, and moments spent having negative thought.

A scene from the 2001 film of the same name, based on the novel Bridget Jones's Diary.

The novel on the surface has a very lighthearted tone which makes us laugh with Bridget as she goes on to describe a year of her life in first person but as we dig deeper in the plotline, we begin to understand the underlying tone of sentimentality and pathos. We observe that beneath its humorous façade, Bridget's chatty account delivers a stinging attack, in a tone of subtle sadness, on the various ways in which movies, books, and fashion magazines have negatively permeated the daily lives of all women and have made them increasingly self-conscious and self-depreciating in the modern world.

This is reflected, most acutely, in the episode of the novel where Bridget is getting all anxious before her date with her charming boss, Daniel Cleaver, where she, after completing the arduous ritual of preparing herself for a date, muses: "My back hurts; my head aches and my legs are bright red and covered in lumps of wax. Wise people will say Daniel should like me just as I am, but I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own devices”.

Such a passage is characteristic of Fielding's satirical method in that, though filled with pop culture references and delivered in Bridget's blithe, self-deprecating voice, it nonetheless highlights the physical and emotional difficulties inherent in meeting the demands of an image-conscious society that privileges youth and beauty.

Other element of pathos in Bridget’s life is her constant insecurity in believing that she will never find the true love of her life and in her own words, “she would die without someone and going to be eaten by dogs when her singleness causes her death only to be not discovered promptly.” This fear of being left alone to die in misery, mirrors the sadness which characterize thousands of people who inhabit the modern cities, surrounded by crowds and people but are still so empty and alone inside. And it is this sadness which actually defines the whole year and the personality of Bridget throughout the novel. It is catalyzed by Bridget’s own mother who thinks certainly less of her daughter and hence is constantly on the lookout for a decent husband for her. This in turn leads to Bridget meeting Mark Darcy, for the first time, in the beginning of the novel and which apparently ends on a bitter note between the two characters, where Bridget overhears Mark grumbling about her to his mother to have set him up with “a verbally incontinent spinster who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, and dresses like her mother".

This bitter episode is important when we focus on the subtle sadness which undertones the entire novel as it brings out that no matter what Bridget does to look and appear friendly, things turn out disappointing for her. Also, we understand that even though she shoves these disappointments off by laughing at them but inside she is deeply hurt by them. They make her question her own self and lets her down in her own eyes. They make her gulp the bitter truth that she is a failure who cannot remake herself and control her life.

Bridget's diary reveals the external pressure she feels to be better than she is, pressure that exists with reference to her own qualities and qualifications. One such pressure is her mother, whose expectations for her play a fairly complex role in Bridget's thinking. Bridget is made to feel guilty by these expectations of her mother, and even Una Alconbury; her mother’s best friend, in whom Bridget sees "the mummy I'd never really had"

Another major pang of sorrow springs up for Bridget when at the Darcy’s' Ruby Wedding anniversary party at the end of the novel where, Bridget confesses her feelings for Mark, only to learn that he and Natasha have accepted jobs in New York and are on the verge of an engagement, according to Mark's father. Bridget interrupts the toast with an emotionally moving speech which peters out as she realizes the hopelessness of her position; her words clearly have an effect on Mark, but he still flies to New York.

Also, immensely heart-breaking for not just Bridget but for the readers as well, is the central episode of the novel where the charming and humorous, Daniel Cleaver is found to be cheating on Bridget with an American secretary of his. Bridget finds her naked in Cleaver’s apartment while Cleaver tries to woo Bridget in believing otherwise. This makes her realize that the one man whom she trusted and found in life after so long is actually unfaithful to her; this sort of breaks something inside her and makes us feel piety for her. Thus, it makes her reassure on the stereotypes she had been holding all her life, and which was beginning to cast off, that she isn’t attractive enough or will eventually die bitter alone in her flat in London.

Amongst the remaining elements of pathos, which we can point out, are the Bridget's foolish appearance at a tarts and vicars party, and her disastrous dinner party near the close of the novel, where she feels the misery of being the only single person present there and the utter blankness she will have to face if someone asks her ‘So how’s your love life?’. All these tell us Bridget’s obsessive behavior to expose the undue influence that today's mass media, families, relationships and career contacts and rivalries has had in shaping women's attitudes toward physical beauty, self-fulfillment, and romantic love. Ultimately, we see the way in which Bridget Jones is, in the words of Daphne Merkin, "both Everywoman and an implicitly ironic observer of Everywoman."

Pic Credits:- Pinterest

Text References:- Bridget Jones's Diary (Macmillan Reader).

Research based on JASTOR Essays.

Read my essay on the theme of love and friendship in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone at

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ivedescoveredheathsjoker · 4 years

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Adrenaline

L!Joker/Patrick/Eric Draven/reader

Warnings: mentions of death

Note: this wasn't edited i just wrote it and bam posted. This was an idea given to me by @whoslaughingnow-comic while talking about Eric and my two other boys.

(Not my gif)

You had been dating Eric for about 2 years when he was brutality murdered in his apartment on Devil's night.

His death hit you like nothing else had. You felt terribly lonely and missed his loveing embrace. You had a few of his belongings which he had left in your appartment the night before; his guitar, a pic and one of his shirts.

In the weeks of his absence you had turned the pic into a necklace and wore it everywhere. Eventually it became apart of you, never taking it off.

As you tried to move on, you couldn't. Everywhere you went you were reminded of him. The old club you went to to see his band play, the coffee shop where you had your first date, the record shop where you met and eneded up going to every week.

Then there was your apartment. You had everything in boxes, seeing as you were to move in together that week. Too lazy were you to take everything out, yet it hurt to see the boxes piled high.

2 months went by when you decided to move to the other side of Gotham. A nicer area, a bit farther from the dangers of the mob. You eventually settled into the area falling into a routine, enjoying the local pub, going to cafe, and working at the record shop.

One night while you were at the pub you meet a young man named Patrick Verona. He wasn't hitting on you or trying to get your attention, no. He had asked you about the band on your shirt. The two of you talked for a while about music, movies and city life. Eventually he asked you to dance while Plainsong played in the background.

You couldn't help but smile as you danced with him. How could you not? He had the biggest smile you had ever seen!

As the night drew to a close Patrick insisted on walking you home, "It's the right thing to do." All along the way you didn't stop smiling, though in the back of your mind you worried if it was a trap. Ignoring that thought you enjoyed his company until you got to your apartment. That night you gave him your number and agreed to a first date.

As you entered your apartment smiling you frowned when you saw the gutar next to the sofa. "What would Eric think?" You wondered, "would he want me to move on?" That night for the first time in 5 months you desided not to sleep with his shirt. That night you desided to move on.

After sleeping over one night Patrick asked you about the necklace.

"Is it a lucky charm?"

"Yes...and no... It was given to me by somone I loved."

"I see," he smiled and kissed you. "Did they give you the guitar too?" You nodded.

As time went by you and Patrick were a happy couple. Though the guilt of Eric hit you at times; somtimes it was the guilt of hiding him from Patrick, other times it was the guilt you felt for loving Patrick. Those were the times you would take out his shirt and hold it tight. How it still meant so much to you with almost a year having gone by.

By the aniverseray of Eric's death, you still hadn't told Patrick about Eric. You decided that you would have them meet.

You were nervous about it. "What if Pat dosent understand...what if he gets upset." It was the day before your trip when you tell him. At first he's shocked and asks you why you hadn't told him. You explain that you were afraid he would leave you,that it would scare him away. As you told Patrick more, you can't help but cry. He held you close to him, as he rubbed your back. He had lost a few people close to him as well, but he couldn't imagine losing a partner. He could hear the love as you talked about Eric. Patric could also tell that you loved him the same way.

As you went to bed Patrick held you close to him and kissed your head.

The next day you both headed to the subway, making your way towards the east side of Gotham. Once you both arrived you showed Patrick around the area where you used to live. It was so strange being there with Patrick. You were over come with emotions as you passed the boarded up apartment building Eric used to live in. You held Patrick's hand as tightly as you could, holding back tears. Once you arrive at the graveyard, Patrick tells you to go in first and have a moment alone. Greatfully, you head towards his grave only to find an empty pit and a headstone with a crow sitting upon it.

Fearfully you call out to Patrick who comes running over to you. Both staring at the grave you both stand there dumb founded. All you can hear is the quiet echo of the city and the soft piter pater of rain.

A voice in a whisper breaks the silence. "Y/n?" You heard it and turned to see Eric. Seeing you move Patrick turns to see him. The three of you stand there staring at one another for what feels like an hour.

"E-eric? Your-your dead....ho-how...?" You say as you approach him, ever so slowly. "Y/n..." He said as he quickly aproached you huging you for the first time in a year. As he sees the tears in your eyes he wipes them away.

"I don't know what I am. All I know is that I'm back here." Is the response you receive from your previous question.

You slowly break away from the hug, sadly, as you look over to Patrick. "Th-This is Patrick. He's-he's my uh, boyfriend." Patrick nods shakily walking over to you. "Nice to uh, meet you mate." He says shaking his hand.

Eric lead you both to his apartment explaining what he knows. He wants revenge on those who killed him and tore him from his love. You gave a sad smile as you walked into the scorched apartment, seeing a few salvageable items.

You were quick to pick up a polaroid of the two of you cuddleing close. Patrick couldn't help but smile at it when he looked over your shoulder. Eric smiled as well, knowing which picture you were looking at.

You lead Patrick towards a singed black sofa and sat down listening to more of what Eric had to say. He had yet to meet a man by the name of Joker. A man who played by his own rules and was stealing money from the mob. A rumor was going around that he had offered to kill Batman for the mob.

Patrick frowned, he didn't like the idea of revenge, no matter how horrible those people were. Patrick didn't like how violent vigilantes could be, and by the sounds of it, Eric was rather violent. Especially as he heard the tale of how the gangster T-Bird died.

You on the other hand agreed. You felt that justice was finnaly being served. You were glad that your Eric was being a hero and helping to remove the scum of Gotham.

Slowly the conversation went from dark to light as Eric began to ask both of you questions. Eric had originally been taken aback when he saw Patrick with you, but was starting to warm up to him seeing that he truly did love you. As Eric asked more questions Patrick did too. Both men were curious of the other, and were quickly trusting one another.

It made you smile so brightly to see them getting to know one another without any sort of malice.

As night began to approach Patrick was the one who had to tell you that you needed to head home before it got too dark. When you began to protest Eric was quick to agree with Patrick telling you that it wouldn't be the last time you saw him. Despite how badly you wanted to stay, you began to follow Patrick out and started making your way home.

Halfway you began to notice a single black crow following the two of you. When you told Patrick he smiled telling you it must be a sign from Eric, to keep the two of you safe.

Later that night when you your arrived home you found a record from his band on the counter. Neither of you knew how it got there, but you were happy to have it.

After that day the two of you often found small presents from Eric. You also would receive random visits from Eric which slowly began to fall into a routine. Though his visits slowly became became longer and longer.

Eventually he started staying with the two of you. When he wasn't hunting out the evils of Gotham, he was sleeping on the sofa, often without either of you knowing.

When Patrick finds out he suggests that he alternates nights. At first Eric opposes this idea, not wanting to leave either of you unprotected. Though he ended up agreeing to alternate with Pat to sleep in bed. On the nights Pat slept on the sofa, Eric's crow would watch over him; allowing Eric to feel at ease with his decision.

One night you and Pat awoke to a loud thud. Thinking it was Eric coming home from his work, you told Patrick to go back to sleep, and you headed towards the kitchen.

Upon entering the kitchen you can't help but laugh at the color of his hair and coat. Unlike his ussual black attire he was wearing a purple trench coat and had his hair died green. At the sound of your laughter Eric stood up from the fridge abd as he turned you stoped laughing.

The man before you was not Eric, but rather a stranger. White, black, and red grease paint covered his face making him look even more menicing. Not to mention the feirce scars that created a permanent smile, did little to keep you calm.

"Boo." Was all he said to have you running and screaming for Patrick and Eric.

Eric arrived just in time to see you running into the bedroom and to hear the laughing in the kitchen. Eric steadily headed towards the kitchen. He frowned as he saw the clown before him.

"J..."

"Now I know why you said Boo!" J said in between bursts of laughter.

"I told you not to scare them."

Patrick of course hearing all the commotion, walked in with you trembling in his arms.

"Whose this? Howd-"

"This is the one I told you about. This is Joker. He's helping me with the mob."

Patrick looked up at him. "How? I heard he was robbing banks."

"Not just any banks, koala, but the mob's banks." Joker said as his laughing finnially died down. "It's a pleasure to meet you both." He said smiling like a toddler.

Eric gave you a hug. "He's all bark and no bite around us. He won't hurt you."

He had you and Patrick return to bed while he and J stayed up and talked about the mob.

By morning the Joker was gone and you hadn't seen him until the next week, when he jumped out from behind the door and scared you.

Though as time went by you slowly began to get used to his jump scares. His vists to your apartment slowly became more frequent. Patrick, who still felt rather uneasy around him, was beginning to become used to his presence. For Patrick the clown reminded him of a crazier version of Eric.

Eric and Patrick had become rather close in the last few months. Both of whom began to get used to the idea of napping together.

Soon J followed suit, squishing Eric in the middle of the sofa.

For you, those moments were sweet, when your boys were together peacefully. No worries. No fighting. No plans. Just peace amongst them. Somthing that neither of them tended to bring to the table.

Over this time, you too, began to have a closer bond with the crazed clown. He had even began to call you Bunny, thanks to your first encounter.

With his help though, you began to learn how to throw knives, shoot guns, and build a bomb (not that it was needed). On the other hand Patrick didn't quiet agree with J on these leasons, why should anyone know how to build a bomb. Often you and Eric would break up the bickering between the two.

As more time went by the four of you began to fall into a strange relationship. One that was rather unconventional. But then again none of you were conventional.

#patrick verona x reader #joker x you #eric draven #eric draven x you #ledger joker #joker #joker film #heath ledger joker #joker x reader #10tihay #10 things i hate about you #10tihay patrick verona #the dark knight joker #the crow 1994 #the crow

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theonlinemuse · 3 years

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In the comics, Rick had more relatives (like his cousin Rebecca) and he probably would've been a big brother had his parents lived. Since we like to joke that he’s the ultimate big brother to the JSA, me and @freckledpianoman decided to make him a big brother in an AU where Wendi and Rex live:

His little sister’s named Rebecca, but Rick calls her Bex for short. He only calls her Rebecca if she’s annoying him and full names her (“Rebecca Gwendoline Tyler!”) when she’s in trouble. She’s seven and Rick often wonders if he has a little sister or a little monkey with how she’s forever getting into places she shouldn’t be in

“How did you even get in my room, I locked it from the inside.” “What, like it’s hard?”

She also likes perching on his shoulders because she likes seeing everything and feeling as tall as her brother

Rick didn’t know it at first, but Bex knew Beth first. Beth works in the children’s library on Saturdays where she does read alouds for kids and Bex is always talking about the smart girl who reads all sorts of fun stories to her. Bex often requests for Beth to do certain voices and accents and thinks that the voice that Beth does for grumpy characters makes her sound like her brother

He’s wondering who his sister befriended because this Beth person seems too good to be true. One day he’s running late to pick Bex up because he had engine problems and when he gets there, he sees his little sister being read to while she's sitting in the lap of a pretty girl

Bex sees him turning red and she tugs at his sleeve and goes, “Rick, don't embarrass me, she’s really nice”

Rick and Bex have a very petty rivalry over getting Beth’s attention

“Stop trying to steal my friend, Rick! I had her first!” “Kids, behave.” Wendi has to give them a look so that Beth doesn’t think they're heathens

Bex notices the look that her brother has every time he talks with Beth and she’s this close to giving him a shovel talk

“Stop trying to steal Beth!” “We go to the same school, I’d see her anyway!” “What, no fair! Do you have lunch with her? Does she share her brownies with you?” “Hmm, maybe she does, I guess you'll never know.”

And Bex chases after him while he laughs

Wendi ends up with a surprise pregnancy in her mid-forties a few months before Rick's sixteenth birthday. He’s torn between “you’re already old, stop having children” and being anxious over her pregnancy. He glares at Rex and goes, “this is what happens when you don’t keep your hands to yourself”. Rex is sitting there like “shouldn’t I be the one lecturing you on keeping your hands to yourself?” “Don’t distract me, old man, you’re supposed to be the responsible one.”

Everyone argues over baby names, but they eventually settle on Rowan. Her middle name is Elizabeth and yes, she was named for Beth. It was Rick and Bex’s idea since they were allowed to pick a middle name

Beth thought that she heard wrong at first, but she sees Rick smile softly and nod and it’s all happy tears for her. Later Beth buries her face in his chest and scolds him for making her cry

“You named a baby after me, how else am I supposed to react?”

It doesn’t help that Rowan’s first word is “Beff”

Rex taught his kids how to use the hourglass in case of emergencies. Rick has used the hourglass before for training. Bex got banned from using the hourglass because she somehow lifted up a corner of the house because she was trying to get her baseball back

“How?!” “Artemis taught me how to lift with my knees.”

Rick’s usually very responsible with the hourglass save for a couple of times when he impulsively stole it for “missions”, aka helping Beth or Bex. The third time was when he set the hourglass down while Rowan was using the coffee table to pull herself up and she ended up using it to lift the couch to get her pacifier from under it

“Dad, I think I broke Rowan!”

Beth often finds Rick asleep on the couch with Rowan napping on his chest. It’s as adorable as it sounds and she takes pics for the group chat. And sometimes she catches him singing softly to Rowan. Bex says that he did the same when she was little and they joke about Rick being the ultimate big brother to the JSA and to Bex and Rowan

There have been times where Rick and Bex will come out of their rooms to find Beth helping Rex with chemistry stuff, having completely forgotten they were supposed to be hanging out. While Rick’s glad that Beth gets a chance to discuss things with another chemistry nerd (even if it is his dad), the Tyler siblings are still put out by it. It was bad enough that Wendi asked her to pose for her newest painting, but now they have to worry about their dad stealing Beth

They have to sneak Beth into the house so Rex can’t grab her on her way in, Bex clinging to Beth while Rick guides her in with his hand on her back

But Rick sees how much fun Beth has posing for Wendi’s paintings and he’s just happy that Beth’s happy

Beth and Rick share custody of Hootie and after Rowan was born, Rick does not want that ‘damn feral bird’ anywhere near his baby sister, but Hootie acts like a guard owl for Rowan. He tried shooing Hootie away from her crib, but he ends up getting his head pecked while Hootie lands in the crib, nuzzling Rowan's hair much to Rick's horror. He thinks she'll get rabies

Beth scolds Rick when she hears about it from Bex. “Your mom already had Rowan get her shots and Hootie’s up to date on all of his. They’ll be fine.” And Rick comes home one day to find Hootie perched on Wendi’s shoulder while she holds Rowan

“Mom. There is an owl on your shoulder, why aren't you freaking out?” “He never does anything, he’s just curious about her.” “He’s a wild bird, not a dog.” “He’s basically a dog, Bex plays fetch with him.”

“Of course she does. Trust Beth to rescue a bird just as weird as her.” “Please, you love her weirdness.”

There’s a babysitting episode where Rick has to babysit his sisters because Wendi and Rex have date night and Rex goes, "do not call us, Rick, I just want a night out with your mother and if you even think about sending a text, I’ll call Beth and tell her how you feel about her. Do not test me, son.” Rick thinks his dad is seriously pent up but as the car pulls out of the driveway, Rick gets a text from Rex that says “you should invite Beth over for some company while you watch your sisters”

Rick is more than a little disturbed that his dad of all people is playing matchmaker

Bex perks up when she hears that Beth might be coming over and she climbs over Rick to try and get to his phone so that she can call Beth. “Bex, stop that, I’ll call her.” “But you take too long, Riri.” It’s a wonder that Beth is able to hear him over Bex constantly interjecting and saying that she wants to talk with her

Beth offers to help out with dinner, but Rick keeps shooing her out of the kitchen, saying that she should relax and hang out with the girls. “But cooking is relaxing for me.” “Go watch a stupid sitcom or something, I’ll be done in a minute.”

They take turns feeding Rowan while she's in her high chair, she’s a very messy eater and Rick always gets food on him whenever he feeds her. But it doesn't stop Rowan from trying to put her hands all over her brother's face. She thinks the faces he makes are funny and Bex just eggs her on

It's times like this where Rick is glad that Beth is here because as much as he loves his sisters, they can be a handful. “Bex, stop encouraging this.” “Aim for his eyes next time, Rowan.” “No!” He sees Rowan pouting and he has to go into stern big brother mode. “We do not poke people's eyes, young lady.”

Beth thinks it's funny when Rick gets all stern with the girls and she starts calling him “old man”. He's so affronted by it and you know he's gonna get back at her for it once the girls are put to bed. Beth knows it too and she tries to escape, but it ends up with Rick chasing her all over the house before he finally tackles her onto the couch

“Get off me, you might break your hip.” “Sorry, I think my hip is acting up. You’re stuck here now.” “You’re a jerk." “It’s fair game, sweetheart.” “Well, you really sound like an old man now.” Rick just pins her down with his hips and goes, “does this feel old to you?” “I dunno Rick, how are you feeling? Any joints out of place?” Rick smirks and the next thing Beth knows, she’s being princess carried. “You tell me.”

Rick just twirls her around just to hear her laugh more and that’s what Wendi and Rex walk in on. Rick almost drops Beth, but she clings onto him before he can. Wendi has a mischievous grin as she asks if Beth and Rick had fun. She wishes she had her phone out to take a pic of how red Rick’s face went. Beth is embarrassed, but Wendi and Rex invite her to stay the night since her parents are away and it’s too late for her to go home

“Listen, I love Beth and I want you to make a move, don't get me wrong, but I am not ready for grandkids.” “Dad, gross, mom already gave me the talk. I haven't even thought about having kids yet.” “Lies, I’ve seen the way you look at Beth whenever she holds Rowan.” “That doesn’t mean I’m imagining having kids with her!” “I’m not stupid, I’ve given that look before.”

Rick is horrified because he did not want to hear that, but it does explain Bex and Rowan. “Bottom line, you and Beth need to be responsible.” “You’re saying all this like there’s even a chance something’ll happen.” “Do I need to point out the way you look at her?” “Dad, please, can you just—stop embarrassing me in front of my friends? I’ve worked too hard to trick Beth into thinking that having me as a friend may actually not be such a bad idea for you to scare her away now.”

“You don't give Beth enough credit. She’s here to stay.”

Once there was a problem with the daycare that Rowan was supposed to be at and Rick had picked her up before lunch and now she’s hanging at the loser table with the JSA. Rick is treated like an exhibit at the zoo because of his baby sister because she’s just babbling happily in his arms and she gets away with pulling his hair

The teachers are just watching Rick come and go to classes with a baby like it’s no big deal and the students just look at him in shock because the delinquent they’ve all been told to avoid is being ordered around by an infant

And now they have a front row seat for Beth and Rick coparenting Rowan. A couple people straight up ask if they're dating because it’s such a domestic sight. Beth is startled and blurts out, “oh no, no, we’re best friends”

Rick is off to the side, quiet but heartbroken. Rowan pats his face to comfort him

One time when Rick was out of the house and Beth was hanging out with the girls, Bex randomly asks Beth if she likes Rick. “He’s my best friend, of course I like him.” “I meant do you like like him, like how mom and dad do.” “Oh, um—” "Because it’s okay if you do. Rowan and me like you and so do mom and dad.” Beth looks unsure so Bex and Rowan cuddle with her

Rick comes back to find all of them cuddling and he catches Bex giving Beth a look. He knows something is up because he knows Bex, that's her ‘I did something and I don't want Rick to know’ look. “What did you do?” “Not even a hi, Riri?” “That’s the same look you had when you let a lava cake explode in the oven and tried to hide it from mom.”

“I didn’t do anything! Maybe you’re trying to hide something so you’re deflecting onto me!” “Did Beth teach you what deflecting means?” “She’s been helping me get ready for the spelling bee, duh. And I’m not deflecting.” “Rebecca Gwendoline, what did you do?” “On second thought, I’m going to bed early tonight, byyeee!”

He just looks at Rowan, who’s gnawing on the plush owl that Beth gave her. “You’re not telling me either, are you?” She blows a raspberry at him. “Of course not. Hanging around Beth has made you and Bex too smart for your own good.”

Beth and Rick once looked after the girls for the weekend while Wendi and Rex go on vacation. The guest room is practically already Beth's room so the Tylers tell her she can just stay over, though Rex did expect them to share a bed. He and Wendi have a little bet going on about it. They end up video calling Beth on the first night

Meanwhile Beth and Rick are snuggled up against each other when Beth glances at her phone and goes “oh crap” and pushes Rick away from her as she answers, but the Tylers can still hear Rick grumbling. Beth keeps glancing towards Rick, who’s just sitting there pouting because precious time is being wasted and he knows the girls will be awake soon. “Beth, honey, are you okay? You’re looking a little distracted.” “Uh—I’m fine! Just making sure the girls aren't already awake.”

“Rick isn’t giving you trouble, is he?” Beth sneaks a look at a glowering, pouty Rick. “No?” Right after she says that, he starts sneaking his hand up her waist and she lets out a choked gasp. “Beth?” “Okay, he is a little,” she admits before swatting Rick’s hand away

“Is he awake yet? We can tell him to stop being such a demon if you need us to.” “Uh—no! He's asleep. In his room. You know how he gets, low blood pressure demon and all that.” “Oh, you have no idea. Rex says he still has phantom pains where Rick clawed him the last time he tried to wake him up.”

“You sure we had a kid and not a feral cat?” Rick forgets himself and goes, “I was seven, get over it old man.” Beth drops her phone onto her lap to panic while Rex and Wendi quietly crack up on the other end of the call

They can still hear her admonishing Rick. “Why would you say that, now your parents are gonna be wondering what I’m doing in your room and this is so embarrassing!”

Beth’s hiding her face in her hands and Rick grabs her phone off her lap and says “uh—we're gonna go, I think I just heard Rowan.” “Rowan won’t be waking up for another hour—” “Bye mom, love you.”

Rick spends the next little while coaxing Beth to stop hiding. “It’s not that bad, you know my parents love you.” He rests his head on her shoulder and goes, “c’mon, Beth”, but she jerks away and says “no, I’m never living this down”

“This isn't the first time they’ve caught us in bed together.” “Not helping, Rick!”

He hugs himself against her and feels her relax, but she’s still hiding her face. Then his phone buzzes and he holds his screen up to her to show a text from Wendi saying, “tell Beth we trust her (not you)”. Beth collapses into giggles over the text

“My own parents think I’m some kind of deviant!” “Okay, but is that such a wild assumption to make? I didn’t even say anything that bad!” “Oh? Then did I just imagine you calling me trouble, sweetheart?”

#Stargirl #The Tyler Rules #Beth Chapel #Rick Tyler #Hournite #ship it

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dolphin-enthusiast · 4 years

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bucci gang with a model s/o hc??

Bruno:

- Absolutely (and secretely) infatuated with s/o’s photoshoots to the point where he buys all the magazines, products etc. that include them. He won’t outright admit that he has basically all of their stuff and will be HELLA embarassed if s/o ever came across his secret little collection one day by mistake.

- Most likely that will happen someday and that’s when Bruno’s usual calm and collected persona would shatter a little, the man erratically stumbling over his own words and blushing madly whilst trying to explain himself. Last thing he’d want is to come across as creepy or stalker-ish for buying all of the magazines and pictures that s/o was featured in.

- Of course that s/o would just chuckle and call him adorable, something that would make poor Bruno lose it e v e n more. S/o would be flattered that their own partner thinks of their work so highly and greatly admires it, hence why from that day on they’d make sure to give him all sorts of limited edition stuff, some of which would even be signed! Needless to say, Bruno would feel like the luckiest man in the entire warudo.

Giorno:

- Just like Bruno, he’d be very invested in s/o’s work, every so often the man complimenting s/o on their photogenic nature and their overall lovely features. He’s just a little bit more open with his passion for s/o’s modelling career as opposed to Bruno, even though Gio would still be lowkey embarassed and would get hella blushy on many occasions.

- Giorno has an eye for art, and models are no exception. He thinks of modelling as its own kind of art because in his opinion it’s not easy at all for one to be able to fully convey all sorts of emotions and overall be photogenic in all of their photos at all times. He thinks of this career very highly and has a great appreciation for s/o’s work.

- One quick way to fluster him is for s/o to offer him signed pictures or even gift him a very rare limited edition magazine that features them on the cover! Of course that Giorno would modestly say that they really didn’t need to do that, but s/o knows him all too well and can see the sheer joy in his eyes once they give him such presents. If s/o was ok with it, Gio would even take some pics of them and keep them as memories.

Abbacchio:

- At first he wouldn’t even be able to believe that s/o is a goddamn model. How did he even end up with someone like this?? Hell, they could have ANYONE in the world and yet they chose to be with him. Every so often such questions would be plaguing Abba’s mind to the point where he’d end up asking s/o about it, to which his partner would just call him silly and explain that their career literally has nothing to do with their personal life and the choices they make of course.

- Abba would be lowkey embarassed of his behavior sometimes, but it’s just that he thinks they’re extremely beautiful and successful and that they could find someone way better than him. But honestly he’d be lying if he’d say that he ain’t fond of skimming through various magazines that include his hella photogenic partner. Just watch the man lose it after s/o secretely signs one of his magazines one day, Abbacchio letting out a comically loud gasp upon making the discovery once he turns to the first page.

- Seeing that their partner has a tendency of putting himself down sometimes, at some point s/o would come up with the wonderful idea of them taking pictures of Abba just to show him how goddamn beautiful he is as well. Of course that Abba would be extremely flushed and would make up excuses as to not do it at first, but s/o would eventually convince him and it would turn out to be quite effective. S/o would keep instructing him on how to pose (and the man would be a damn mess) and what expressions to make and holy shit he actually is very photogenic if he wants to??? S/o would ask him if he ain’t considering a modelling career, to which Abbacchio would just roll his eyes with a flustered smile.

Mista:

- If you thought Bruno and Giorno were chaotic fanboys then you ain’t seen jack shit because Mista stands out the most. He’d immediately recognize them as “that one super popular and hella hot model” and would jump up and down whilst asking for an autograph with the biggest most excited smile ever. How did these two end up actually dating??? No one knows for sure.

- Mista is extremely open about his passion for s/o’s modelling career and is constantly complimenting and praising their work. You bet your ass that he has literally all the magazines and posters featuring s/o and he ain’t afraid of asking for some extra rare limited edition numbers either. He’s absolutely thrilled whenever s/o has a new photoshoot and is basically cheering them on all the time.

- He’d be the happiest in the world if s/o would sign stuff for him too. On top of that. Mista also has a habit of bragging to people about his partner and how great they are in general, so the fact that they’re a popular model will be thrown into discussion more than once. He would tone it down if s/o wanted him to though, but he just can’t himself sometimes since he’s really proud of them yknow??? Also 11/10 asks if he can paint them like one of his french girls even though he’s fucking Italian.

Fugo:

- We all know he’s a man of culture, so there’s no way he wouldn’t recognize them. Ok maybe he wouldn’t OUTRIGHT recognize them like the chaotic fanboy that Mista is, but the second he’d see them on the street he’d just k n o w that they look familiar...till he glances to the side and sees an ad and realizes that holy shit they really are THE model!

- Fugo is hella shy and will be extremely reluctant to ask them for an autograph or shit like that, not to mention that he doesn’t wanna come off as overwhelming or creepy either. So once again, how did these two end up dating? Not sure at all. If anything, s/o was probably the one who made most of the moves all because Fugo would be too fucking shy especially because holy hell they are so popular and amazing and he doesn’t wanna embarass himself. S/o would find him to be hella cute of course. And don’t even get me started on that time when they cheekily offered him a little picture that had a small message written by them, autograph included. Fugo still keeps that shit in his wallet and calls it his lucky charm.

- Once the two make their relationship official though, Fugo will realize that he was being extremely silly for being so self conscious. After all, even if s/o is a very popular and well respected model it’s not as if they’re a deity (even though they sure look like one) or something. He’d gather more courage as time would pass to the point where he’d be buying countless of their magazines and posters, not to mention that he’s also very supportive and would be admiring them for just...having the balls to pose for a camera on a daily basis.

Narancia:

- Doesn’t even recognize them at first and starts dating them without having a single fucking clue until he sees an ad and the person featured in it gives him a little sense of deja vu. Only when s/o outright tells him about their career does the poor boi connect all the dots and he quite literally jumps up in the air full of excitement. He’d want to slap himself for being so blind all of this time but hey nothing else matters because his s/o is a f u c k i n g m o d e l.

- Considers himself the luckiest man on the planet and, just like Mista, brags to everyone about his dear partner and their succesful career. Sometimes he can get just a little bit too excited to the point where he’s staring off into the sky with dreamy eyes as he goes on and on about s/o’s lovely smile, but overall he’s just a very wholesome and supportive boyfriend. S/o happens to be nervous before a photoshoot? No problem, walking dose of serotonin Narancia is there to encourage and comfort them!

- Gets each and every product/magazine that features them to the point where he sometimes almost goes broke and it’s honestly the funniest shit ever. He just loves his s/o so much and wants to support them so damn bad by buying all the merch and products, even though s/o probably makes like twice the amount of money that he does. They’d find his behavior and enthusiasm to be extremely adorable, although s/o would still be a bit concerned about his spending habits sometimes.

Bonus - Trish:

- Honestly it’s my personal headcanon that Trish has an aspiration for modelling and lowkey wants to become a popular model someday. If not a model then an actress for sure. It goes without saying that she’d instantly recognize them on the street and would be h e l l a excited, the girl rushing towards said model and politely asking for an autograph.

- Basically, being with s/o would be the most thrilling experience of her life. Of course that she wouldn’t date them JUST because they are a model, but that aspect would also play a small part in all of this since she has a great admiration for models and she loves reading all sorts of stuff about the industry. That being said, she’d be absolutely smitten with both s/o as a whole and their modelling persona/image and would occasionally ask them for info about how it feels to be a model, how exhausting it is, how the industry works etc.

- Honestly deep down she’d wish that someday she’s going to be able to model along with s/o, and her partner would actually encourage her and support her dreams too. They would find her to be very cute and her entire admiration and love for their career would matter alot to them. S/o wouldn’t even be surprised once they stumble across the huge pile of modelling magazines (some of which would be featuring them) sitting in Trish’s room, even though the poor girl would be lowkey embarassed.

#JoJo's Bizarre Adventure #Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken #Vento Aureo #bucci gang #jojo headcanons #headcanons #anon

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

Text

Darkwing Duck Reviews Halloween Special: Fungus Amongus and Ghoul of My Dream

Happy Halloween! Halloween Havoc races to the finish with another Darkwing Double Feature! Love is kinda crazy with a spooky girl like Morgana, and in this case “kinda crazy” means a board of ghouls stealing pizza, sentient mushrooms, grumpy spiders, student lone debt, and a gremlin who somehow sees himself as a valid romantic option. It’s a Darkwing Duck Halloween under the cut.+

We’ve made it! While I got less Halloween reviews done than I would’ve liked, I’m still happy with the ones done and there’s still two more to get in the pocket before the day’s up. So with Halloween today it seemed fitting to talk about the Justice Ducks resident sorcerer and Darkwing’s Girlfriend, Morgana Macawber. Morgana was the only one of the four to stick around as a recurring character out of the four Justice Ducks: Gizmoduck would show up once more after the four parter, and sadly Neptunia and Stegamutt just seemed to vanish but the crew clearly liked Morg a lot and her relationship with Darkwing, so she stuck around for the rest of the series, and is even the focus of the final episode “Malice’s Restaurant”, as well as a sizeable part of the comics. And it’s easy to see why as Kathie Sourcie had great chemistry with Jim Cummings and Morgana’s very presence, being a sorceress raised by the munsters and living in a creepy mansion, allowed for diffrent stories than what Darkwing usually dealt with. While magic didn’t feel like it contrasted with the world, as Darkwing’s world feels like your standard superhero fantasy kitchen sink where anything is possible, most of his foes were either super villains or the kinds of super spies you’d find in a comic book. So fighting ghoouls, goblins, and Satan himself, yes that’s an episode that actually happened, no it’s sadly not on Disney plus, and yes I will be covering it eventually, was a nice out of genre experience and a nice way to put our daring duck of mystery out of his element.

She brought something diffrent to the table, both forcing Darkwing to grapple with letting someone into his life, and with having something to focus on other than Gosalyn or crime. So I wanted to see how this plays out, so expect me to cover all her episodes and not just the Satan one or the Valentine’s Day one, though like my Tom Lucitor retrospective, expect this one to also take some time. So with that all set up, Halloween is the perfect time to begin our journey with her first two episodes.. and Morgana’s Villian Career. Yeah while she only had about 9 episodes to her name, 2 of them are as a Catwoman or Black Cat style antagonist, someone whose likeable and who are hero is attracted to, but is on the wrong side of the law.

She eventually came around, but it’s still an intresting way to start things and an intresting dilema for our hero I wish stuck around for just a smidge longer. These aren’t bad episodes with Ghoul of My Dreams being a pretty good one. If I had to guess though the reason the dynamic fizzled out.. is they simply didn’t have a lot of ideas of how to use her as a bad guy. Part of the reason i’m covering these two episodes together is that they follow basically the same plot beat, the only differences being Darkwing meets Morgana in the first one and they know each other in the second, and that the evil entity who ends up turning against her she works with is different for both. The third act is also entirely unique to each episode, so it feels less like them lazily repeating themselves on an episode and more like they genuinely realized they didn’t have a ton of ideas for Morgana as a villain and thus had her reform with the Justice Ducks two parter. And I can’t blame them: fan would get annoyed if basically every Morgana plot played out the same, and this way she could know Drake’s secret identity, and thus allow the stories to use Gosalyn, though I do wish she’d shown up in one of the villian ones just to see how that played out. But still her time as a Villian is there, and is even a plot point in the valentine’s episode, so let’s see how it played out and see what I think.

Fungus Amongus

The plot here is fairly simple: there’s been a rash of mysterious thefts in St. Canard, and Darkwing is stumped.. until Launchpad asks if they can go for pizza, because he’s hungry and Darkwing is the terrible kind of boss that doesn’t’t care about meal breaks. It makes our hungry hero realize that each of the thefts are connected to PIzza Toppings, and after thwarting the bats and spiders stealing some anchovies, figures there’s only two left: Green Peppers and Mushrooms, and so he decides it’s time to split up gang and while Launchpad guards the peppers, Darkwing goes to visit the head of the mushrom company, who naturally turns out to be Morgana. The two end up taken with one another, to the board’s annoyance as Darkwing is onto them and could stop their whole evil plan and they want to just murder his ass and be done with it. But Morgana proves seduction’s a bit more useful as she sweetalks our hero into leaving, and points out given he’s also a creature of the night in a sense, she plans to turn him.. or kill him if she has to. More on that in our next episode. The facade dosen’t last long as Darkwing goes to help launchpad at the pepper place, and ends up finding out oh no the hot lady he met five minutes ago is bad! While the board plans to feed Launchpad to mutant mushrooms, while Morgana seemingly turns Darkwing into her mindless slave.. but really just played the board and switched sides, not wanting to hurt the guy she just met because he’s cute, they defeat the mushrooms and the board who turn into mushrooms in the light because....

The day is saved though we do get the one standout bit of the episode. Darkwing despite his attraction to her, wants to turn her in, while Morgana simply teleports her house away. And thus the dance begins. As for the episode... as you can tell by how brief I was... for one i’m not doing my usual died in wool recapping for these two to get them out on time. And i’m also not because this one.. is pretty thin. The mutant mushroom and boards’d esigns are cool and Morgana is intresting.. but having seen Ghoul of my Dreams first.. it’s just not as fun, funny or good on the Morgana Darkwing dynamic. Morgana just decides because she wants to ride that dick she’ll be good for a moment, and throw away her hard worked scheme, and the board is turned into mushrooms because.. well see the lex luger pic above. It’s not a TERRIBLE episode, just not a terribly intresting one. It has good elements, but they just don’t come together well and the pizza scheme isn’t as funny as the episode thinks it is. I can kinda see why this one was buried deeper into the series and Ghoul of My Dreams is where they put focus. I just don’t have a lot to say about this one, it’s just bland and uninteresting. It’s kind of why I just sorta plopped it next to Ghoul, I needed to review it for completion’s sake, but lord if I can think of a lot to say about it that isn’t tied into the next one. So since I can’t...

Ghoul of my Dreams:

Now this is better. The basic plot is still simple but allows for a lot more intresting set pieces: It’s a slow night in St. Canard, to Darkwing’s natural annoyance, until a bunch of fire fighters start sleepwalking and throwing gold to some spiders and bats. Something is afoot and since the bats belong to Morgana, Darkwing goes to investigate her. Granted we just MET eek and squeak, but it’s easy enough to assume Morgana struck again off screen and some time has passed. And i’ts honestly what makes this episode more interesting: now it’s more of a cat and mouse game, with Morgana using their chemistry against him, but still being genuinely drawn to him and not wanting to hurt him. It’s better than “I met you five minutes ago might as well throw away my money for you”. Instead Morg truly likes Drake, but wants to keep doing crimes to, in easily the best joke of the entire series “Finally pay off my student loans”.. which makes her already not really a bad guy. I may not haves em but I know people who do. Those loan people do not play around. It’s investing and Sourcie and Cumming’s chemstiry really makes it pop. Sourcie really is what makes the character, giving her energy, sedcutivness when called for and a really sympathetic quality that makes her face turn, sudden as it is, believable. It’s why I really like the character. And I get why some don’t: Her romance with darkwing is sudden, her face turn is even more sudden, and she gets in the way of Drakepad shippers. The first two are valid criticisms, while the last one is understandable.. depending on motive. If your just bummed this relationship you don’t like is forced into the show and gets in the way of the one you actually enjoy.. trust me...

BEEN THERE. And far far worse.. I didn’t start up an entire retrospective on the guy who DIDN’T get the girl here for nothing. But if you say “oh well it’s homophobic or you hate gays” if you don’t ship drakepad, which I have actually heard for both this ship and delpad.. kindly go fuck yourself and stay away from my posts. It’s NOT homophobic to ship a character who is CANOCIALLY into women, with a woman. Launchpad had a girl of the week or two in ducktales, Drake’s attraction to morgana is canon and he also had some ship tease with Neptunia. They both like women.. but there’s nothing saying they DON’T like men, don’t want to date men, or aren’t attracted to them.

Been waiting to reference Schitt’s Creek at some point here now i’ve started watching it. It’s biphobic to say this sort of harmful shit, and it doesn’t’t help there are plenty of gay people who genuinely believe bi and pan aren’t sexualities and harm their own community by doing so. Saying this kind of shit just fuels their fire and bi people like me and pan people like my firend have a hard enough time with straight people being dicks about this. You should know and be better. Don’t bring that shit into this fandom. We’ve already ridden incest out on a rail we don’t need this. I already put up with enough bullshit being a loud house fan and having to deal with ACTUAL homophobic ships like Sam/Lincoln, aka setting up a character you don’t know to be anything but gay, versus her girlfriend whose canocially been shown to be bi if preferring women, whose the proment and well like love interest of a woman, and pair her with her younger brother to clearly troll people. Now that’s a homophobic ship and that you shoudl be angry about, not “oh no the person who likes women in canon.. LIKES A WOMAN IN FANON”. It’s part of what made shiping delpad hard at times because people got really dumb about it to the point someone drew some very horrible fanart just to clog up the tag. Knock. it off.

And if your curious for my actual thoughts on Drakepad: in the classic series.. i’m not a fan, but I get it, and I do think they could work... it’s just. that Drake treats Launchpad really bad, including throwing him out of the house for a year without telling him why over something that really wasn’t his fault, not feeding him, not treating him as an equal after a while. This would have to change for them to work but I could see it happening, as the comics and one of the peisodes make a point that Drake can be a pretty shitty partner to Morgana too.

And just to show i’m equal opprtunity, despite shipping Delpad in the past, i’ve moved on to Penpad and Drakepad , ironcially enough, i’m not as big a fan anymore. LIke the above, Della just dosen’t respect launchpad as a human being. She was willing to keep the Halloween thing up JUST to scare children, looks down on him, and whie is his friend, is not all that close. I could see them happening, and do still think it’d be cute, it’d just take a ton of work and there are better ships for both. And yes I do ship Drakepad in the reboot, but there the two aren’t employer and employee, but equals who genuinely love and respect one another, listen to one another, and value each other. In the Reboot they have genuine chemistry and I could see them together, while in the original Launchpad and Morgana both really deserve better.

Now that’s settled, we get a fun scene of the two primping for each other. then flirting a bit, though Morgana, in AWFUL looking black lipstick wins with the move above and has her spider web launchpad, who hates morgana.. which is one part common sense given how darkwing gets around her and one part ho yay. But yeah this is pretty much Launchpad for both these episodes.

And darkwing dick is calling the shots so fair enough. But Morgana is once again nto wokring alone and is working with a creepy, well designed gremlin, named Nodoff... eh i’ve heard worse, whose giving her sleeping dust to knock out her targets and hits on her constnatly. Naturally he plans to betray her as soon as he can, and is likely only tolerating her because he wants to hit that. There dynamic boils down to this.

There’s also tons of fun dream sequences including one at the top with darkwing being confronted by his enitre Rogue’s gallery before seeing morgana, NOdoff using baseball on Morg’s next target and some great ones at the climax. It’s part of hwy I like this episode better: While someone using dreams for stuff has been done a lot, it’s given a creative spin here as instead of killing them, Morgana’s simply using them to steal. Good stuff.

Darkwing foils their first attempt, though gets blamed for it because St. Canard is about as grateful as New York when it comes to superheroes. Morgana knocks darkwing out with some dust via Eeka and Squeak and admits Nodoff is working for her, though fobids him to harm Darkwing. This.. dosen’t last and we get another great setpiece, of sarkwing on a high dive. Thankfully, Launchpad finds him, and they find Morgana, who gives off the student loans comment. But in the struggle to stop her, Darkwing accidently puts her and the city to sleep.. and Nodoff is now super powerful and imprisons morgana. Darkwing i s back at her house, wondering what to do, but the bats give him a clue.. by flying him thorugh the door to fight Nodoff. It goes about as well as you’d expect with him freeing Morgana.. then trying to murder them both. Darkwing however pulls an Elm Streett 3 and says to think happy thoughts and take control of the dream.. which ends up at Darkwing’s Wedding to Morgana to his horror..... remind me whose the hero again. The woman who, while doing crimes is trying to pay off unfair debts, or the guy who finds the idea of commitment horrifying.

Anyways we get some more great bits, I brush over them so I don’t ahve to talk about them conantly, including darkwing getting a cake on him, before Darkwing turns the tables by finding the hourglass full of the dust.. and in a clever finale, loading it into his gun and firing it on nodoff. This puts him to sleep.. which puts him in the real world, while Launchpad uses a giant alarm clock to wake everyone. They throw NOdoff back into the dream world.. for some reason.. and the episode ends iwth morgana kissing darkwing and the episode possibly having been all a dream.

This one, while I was again breif, is a classic, with a much more interesting dynamic. Instead of a morgana who goes from willing to kill we get one whose conflicted over things, who clearly wants to be a crook but may like darkwing more than that, as evidenced when he talks her out of taking Nodoff’s offer of riches. It’s good stuff and the gags are back to the show’s usual top notch level. It’s a creative, fun episode that really helps Morgana come into her own and I look forward to more of her. Overall i’d recommend skipping fungus amongus, but DEFINTELY check out ghoul of my dreams, as it’s throughly fantastic. I’ll be back in a bit for one last Halloween review and as always you can find my backlog on my blog. i recently covered Tiff of the Titans and there’s regular ducktales coverage every monday. Until then make sure to vote, wear a mask and check your house for gary busey till we meet again! Play us out Gerard Way!

youtube

#darkwing duck #drake mallard #disney afternoon #morgana macawber #launchpad mcquack #halloween #drakepad #drakegana

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maareyas · 4 years

Text

Au silver backstory time :] Repost bc tumblr drafts erased the last version. also this is part 1. NOW WITH ADDED BACKGROUND LORE AND ANGST!

edit: i forgot to link to the original pic

First! Some background on the state of the future! unlike 06, this silver's future isn't covered in flames and ash. rather, its empty and lifeless. endless, barren wastelands with only little plant life and the scattered ruins of cities/other structures left of a previously vibrant world. this future is the direct result of the metal virus, abt 300 years later (instead of 200 like in canon). everything that was infected during sonic's present had already disintegrated. things that were infected much later still remain, though. this is why, while most of the world has been cleared of the virus, there are still some areas that DO have it. and why most plantlife on the planet went poof.

There were survivors of the original outbreak who were able to avoid the virus. So there’s still people in the future world. Borrowing from evan stanley’s concepts for the Silver Age saga of the archie comics, moving settlements like Onyx City exist. These cities are indifferent/hostile to outsiders who want in though. As a result, everyone outside these settlements are nomadic, travelling alone or in small groups at most. Resources are scarce, after all.

Now onto silver’s actual backstory. Silv has been alone his whole life. I do not vibe with the idea of giving canon charas blood relatives for some reason, so the circumstance of his birth are a mystery lol. Silver drifts from place to place, trying to survive and trying to uncover what happened in the past. He’s a sort of archeologist! He explores ruins of the past world and pieces together history from the things he can find in faded books and partially corrupted computers. He doesn’t know much, only that the world was lively 300 years ago. He wonders what happened that made everything so desolate.

Silver has met and befriended other nomads before. Given the situation though, becoming an actual companion is a no-no. At most, he runs into them one or two times and never sees them again. Groups tend to be more hostile to outsiders like him since he might try to join them. More people = more mouths to feed, and possibly, the collapse of the existing internal structure.

So yeah, silver is a VERY lonely boy. But not to worry, its time for…….Found Family Trope.

On one of his Ruins ExplorationsTM Silver runs into prof. Von schlemmer and the Bits, who were doing the same. They decide to team up on their search. They talk about their shared interest in uncovering the past, as well as their life (well. Schlemmer does anyway. Silver didn’t have much of his life to take about). Schlemmer talks about how he was kicked out of Onyx City for reasons I haven’t decided yet. Probably something to do with being too curious about the past? Idk. He now lives in a makeshift mobile lab he made himself. So ye basically the whole ruins exploring thing become a bonding moment

Schlemmer then asks if silver would like to become his assistant or smth. Silver, of course, having been alone for so long, is beyond overjoyed at the idea of having a home and a friend. Ecstatic, he accepts schlemmer’s offer. So Found Family stuff happens. Schlemmer just sorta. Becomes Silver’s dad. His weird science dad. They go around exploring ruins, uncovering stuff about the past, and doing general father-son Mad Science. Schlemmer also makes a personal Bit for silver! Since I’m bad with names its name is Sil-bit until I can think of something else

Eventually, they gather enough information to pinpoint a general timeframe for when things went to hell and led to the future being ruined. They have a plan to change past events, and Schlemmer has already built the time machine, but is reluctant to use it. Now that the chance is here, he’s begun to second-guess the idea for several reasons: 1.) the time machine isn’t exactly fully tested. 2.) Changing history is a risky idea even by his standards. Silver convinces him to go through with the plan, however, and even volunteers to be the one to travel back in time.

So they do that. Silver and Sil-bit timetravel to Sonic’s present. But since they aren’t sure exactly what event was the catalyst for the Bad Future, silver goes back and forth between time periods during every major event (maybe changing this event worked?). Schlemmer is intact in all instances, if not a bit disoriented memory-wise due to the timeline changes.

Once the metal virus hits, silver puts two and two together and realizes this is the catalyst event for the ruined future. So! They deal with it, Silver is relieved. He travels to the future again, more hopeful this time.

When he gets there, EVERYTHING is different. There are cities! There’s plants! There’s people! There’s LIFE! He tries to look for Von Schlemmer in this new future…

But he doesn’t find him. The timeline changed was so drastic this time, the old Schlemmer he knew isn’t there anymore. Instead, he finds New Future! Von Schlemmer who has no knowledge of silver or the previous timeline. Silver is devastated by this, but they knew that this was a possibility. So, he tries to make a new life for himself in this new future, despite his grief.

But then he starts glitching out. As if his atoms are trying to tear themselves apart. This part is kinda vague but, probably with New! Schlemmer’s help, Silver realizes that he erased himself from the timeline.

Silver doesn’t know what to do, so he timetravels back to Sonic’s present, still glitching out. Compared to when he was in the future however, he’s glitching out less.

lucky for him, sonic just happened to be passing by when he gets spat out the time portal or whatever. Sonic carries him to help, so silver can focus on using his psychokinesis to calm down his atoms. not a ship thing, i just want to see friends being Soft

#ideas #rey rambles #thats gonna be the new tag for these #its Sad Silver hours!!!

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paralleljulieverse · 4 years

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LILI IN LONDON: Darling Lili Makes Her European Bow

Fifty years ago this week, Darling Lili had its official European Premiere at the Plaza Cinema in London on 1 October, 1970. It wasn’t the film’s first international release -- that honour fell to Japan, where Darling Lili opened at the Cinerama Theatre Tokyo on 4 July, barely two weeks after the film’s US opening. However, the London premiere was a significant occasion in the film’s wider global rollout. It was, after all, Julie Andrews’ hometown and there was considerable hope local audiences would give the film a warmer reception than had been the case in North America.

Accordingly, the UK branch of Paramount Pictures afforded Darling Lili a high profile release. They exhibited the film as a full roadshow attraction, complete with widescreen 70mm print, overture and exit music, and a 24-page souvenir programme (Klar 1970). In keeping with the era’s norms of variegated international film marketing, completely new promotional artwork was commissioned for the UK release. Featuring a central image of Julie/Lili bursting into song with her arms outstretched -- a clear nod to The Sound of Music -- with a cloudburst of narrative scenes from the film fanning across the bottom of her billowing skirt, it was an arresting design that served as a ready-made marketing logo for the campaign that could be emblazoned across the full range of advertising and merchandising (Paramount 1970).

The gala premiere took place on Thursday, 1 October -- Julie’s 35th birthday, incidentally — at the Plaza Cinema in Lower Regent Street, just off Piccadilly Circus. Popularly dubbed the “Home of Paramount Pictures”, the Plaza had long been the London venue of choice for the studio’s biggest film premieres (Eyles, 26-28). Though not an official Royal Performance, the European Premiere of Darling Lili was a major society charity event with proceeds going to the Printer’s Pension Corporation, one of the oldest royally-sponsored occupational charities in the UK. Tickets were available from £1 to £5 in the stalls and £10 to £20 in the Circle with the event raising over £6000 for the charity (”Darling Lili Aids”, 12).

Official patrons of the Printer’s Pension Corporation, Lord and Lady Hartwell presided over the evening, welcoming a line of society notables and assorted local celebrities including Sue Lloyd, Judy Geeson, Clodagh Rogers and Julie Ege (“Darling Lili Has”, 32). Neither Julie nor Blake was able to make the premiere, though Julie’s parents were in attendance as honorary guests. Representing the cast, Lance Percival, who plays the comic support role of T.C. Carstairs in the film, “arrived at the Plaza in a vintage white Rolls Royce driven by a female chauffeur” (ibid.). Press reports noted that the “premiere drew large numbers of films fans to the theatre” and “the capacity audience...repeatedly applauded during the presentation of the film” (ibid.)

Following the premiere, Darling Lili opened the next day on 2 October to the general public. In a way that paralleled the experience at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the decision to stage the film as a special event prestige picture worked well. Lili ran in roadshow release at the Plaza for over three months till 6 January 1971. It then continued to play in general release at various venues throughout London such as the ABC Cinema-Edgeware Rd well into late-1971.

Critical responses to Darling Lili in the London press ran the gamut. The film garnered several positive notices. Patrick Gibbs of the Daily Telegraph rated it “a very amiable and romantic comedy-thriller” (P14). The film “offers many pleasures,” declared the Daily Mail, with “Miss Andrews singing, dancing, delighting...with some very pretty songs...and amusing performances” (Cable, 9). The critic for the Evening Post opined:

“It is fashionable to sneer at Julie Andrews’ films as being sickly-sweet and 20 years out of date--but I can only say I enjoyed this one...Darling Lili is an enjoyable, emotional, light-hearted love story with a strong comedy element” (Watson, 7).

Other reviewers were less enthusiastic. The critic for the Daily Mirror was unsure “what kind of film Darling Lili was supposed to be”:

“Taken as a spy send-up, it’s harmless enough and drags only occasionally, but the comedy doesn’t always blend with the drama. The ending...is a cloyingly sentimental cop-out and a shade nauseating” (Richards, 19).

More than a few UK commentators baulked at the film’s irreverent treatment of World War 1--perhaps unsurprisingly given the enormous significance of the “Great War” to British history and national mythology. The critic for The Tablet, for example, called the film “a monstrous betrayal of the period.” Its “trivialisation of the issues is outrageous...I have no doubt it will be popular, but it shouldn’t be.” Still, he conceded, the film’s “photography...is very pretty and Miss Andrews’s voice is as pure as ever” (Burke, 959).

Critical concessions to “our Julie” were a notable feature of many London reviews. The all-important Times review declared:

“I wish I could like Darling Lili more. I love musicals and remain unrepentantly devoted to Julie Andrews, but this lavish new vehicle for her talents is the most upsetting sort of misfire--the sort which could so easily have been put right, with a little more thought (or a little less worry), a little more confidence in hitting the right tone and sticking to it...a disappointing waste of all the talent and money so evidently lavished on it” (Taylor, 13)

It was a sentiment echoed in The Illustrated London News:

“Miss Andrews sings well, acts decently, and even does a strip number that reveals a new side to her talent as well as a gorgeous, long-concealed, pair of legs. But, alas, not even she can save this ponderous film with its strange blend of old-and-new songs, its heavyweight prankishness, and its inordinate length” (Billington, 31).

Or again the review in The People:

“Julie has charm, grace, plus a good singing voice and Henry Mancini’s music is haunting. But the character she portrays...is hardly endearing. The story...is improbable too, even for a musical. But there are some smashing flying sequences and I like Julie’s style--so I wish it well” (Nunn, 7).

While Darling Lili opened with a splash and did decent enough business in London, it faced very different prospects elsewhere in the UK where the film became something of an inadvertent hostage in an ongoing industrial dispute. At issue was an attempt by US distributors to loosen the stranglehold and perceived old-fashioned exhibition practices of the two big regional UK chains: ABC and Odeon (“Elvin Raps”, 196; “Compromise Ends”, 24). Unable to agree on new terms, the distributors withheld several big features, including Lili, from release to these chains. As a result, Lili’s broader UK rollout was held up for months and, in some cases, years. The film didn’t get a Midlands release, for example, till April 1971 when it opened for a fixed season at the Regal Cinema in Leamington, “an independent theatre whose booking agents were able to come to terms with the distributors” (“Regal Breaks,” 2). The film then popped up intermittently at other independent theatres across the UK: Margate in September, Liverpool in October, and Belfast in January 1972.

Many major provincial markets missed out on the film completely. In a disgruntled letter to the local newspaper in early-1972, one Birmingham fan wondered if “there is a particular antipathy to musicals in our city. We have yet to see Darling Lili (Julie Andrews) and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (Barbra Streisand), both of which have been shown in London” (Krober, 6). In a similar vein, a Reading filmgoer complained that his local ABC cinema was screening endless reissues while many new films “have yet to play in Reading..that are certainly worth a showing” such as “Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson in Darling Lili” (Suter, 10).

The UK distribution dispute was eventually resolved and Darling Lili managed to make its way out to a broader range of provincial centres including Birmingham, where it opened at the Odeon in April 1973. But by this stage the film was hardly new and whatever marketing impetus was there from the London campaign had well and truly evaporated. It was an unfortunate fizzling out for what could have otherwise been an effective national release for the film. Still, UK filmgoers who missed Darling Lili in theatres didn’t have to wait too long to catch it on the small screen. It made its British television debut as the ‘Film of the Week’ on BBC-1 on 2 April 1976 (“Film of the Week”, 22).

Sources:

Billington, Michael. “Cinema: An Ode to Lost Innocence.” The Illustrated London News. 3 October 1970: 31.

Burke, J.A.V. “Darling Lili.” The Tablet. 3 October 1970: 959.

Cable, Michael. “The Sweet English Rose is Among the Guns.” Daily Mail. 30 September 1970: 9.

“Compromise Ends US Majors’ Fight Vs. UK Circuits Over Sunday Rentals.” Variety, 13 October 1971: 24.

“‘Darling Lili’ Aids Printers’ Charity.” The Daily Telegraph. 2 October 1970: 12.

“‘Darling Lili’ Has Glittering London Bow.” The Calgary-Herald. 10 October 1970: 32.

“Elvin Raps ‘Oldfashioned Methods’ of UK Pic Biz, Hits Chains’ Bookings.” Variety. 29 April 1970: 196.

Eyles, Allen. London's West End Cinemas. Swindon : English Heritage, 2014.

“Film of the Week: ‘Darling Lili’.” Radio Times, 1 April 1976: 22.

Gibbs, Patrick. “Films: Spying With a Song.” Daily Telegraph. 2 October 1970: P14.

Harmsworth, Madeleine. “New Film.” Sunday Mirror. 4 October 1970: 29.

Klar, Arthur. Darling Lili [Souvenir Book], London: National Publishers, Inc, 1970.

Krober, Kenneth S. “Letters to the Editor: Antipathy To Musicals.” Birmingham Daily Post, 7 February 1972: 6.

Mallett, Richard. “Cinema.” Punch. No. 6787, 7 October 1970: 510.

Nunn, Ray. “But Will Lili Keep ‘Em Singing?” The People. 4 October 1970: 7.

Paramount Pictures (UK). Your Promotion Guide: Darling Lili [Advertising Campaign Manual], Chiswick, 1970.

“Picture.” Daily Telegraph. 2 October 1970: P17.

“Regal Breaks Stranglehold.” Birmingham Daily Post. 27 April 1971: 2.

Richards, Dick. “I Spy a Send-Up.” Daily Mirror. 1 October 1970: 19.

Suter, Les. “Letters to the Editor: Old Films.” Reading Evening Post. 15 June 1972: 10.

Taylor, John Russell. “Purple Passages in Paris.” The Times. 2 October 1970: 13.

Watson, Albert. “At the Cinema: Yes, I Enjoyed Julie Andrews!” Evening Post. 10 October 1970: 7.

#Darling Lili #julie andrews #european premiere #film premiere #london #plaza theatre #paramount #blake edwards #rock hudson #film history #classic film #old hollywood

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nobodyfamousposts · 5 years

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I loved the post you did about Alya's parents getting involved in the Lila affair! Could you do something else about it? Whatever is! A continuation, headcanons, a similar story with the parents of another classmate, etc.

Think of it like a toxic friendship. Sure, we’ve seen Chloe and Sabrine with their toxic friendship, but that’s not the only variation out there and others warrant being explored.

Imagine this whole thing with Lila being a hurdle in Alya’s character arc rather than simply a rival in Marinette’s.

Consider if Lila is the sort of person who focuses in more on select individuals rather than big groups, as it means less people who can potentially catch her. After all, you can fool some people all of the time or all people some of the time—she goes for the former. And she picks and chooses her specific targets, which tend to be those who can offer the most use to her.

Adrien? Yeah, he’s on the list. He’s a famous model. He’s pretty. He’s rich. And he’s no doubt got connections. He’s definitely a keeper.

Chloe? She’s the daughter of the mayor who also happens to run the best hotel in Paris. She’s also rich and has connections. Plus, there’s the benefit of her having a massive ego. As long as Lila plays to it, she can be the one using Chloe while letting Chloe think she’s the one in control.

Alya? She runs the Ladyblog and is up front and center in a multitude of akuma fights. She has connections to Ladybug, has a budding career as a journalist, and was notably the closest to discovering Ladybug’s true identity. As someone who rather hates Ladybug, THIS would definitely be something Lila would want to use.

Marinette would be one as well if she wasn’t already on to Lila from the start. A pity, since Marinette is the Class Rep, has connections to Jagged Stone and other celebrities, is noted for her winning a design competition and her hat being worn by Adrien. She has skill and talent—and unfortunately, a good eye for people just as much as her designs. Lila is put out by the loss, but she has others she can use.

Adrien and Chloe are both high profile figures in the public eye who are generally used to people trying to use them. Lila’s attempts with them aren’t quite so easy since they have more knowledge and protection. Alya, however, does not. She’s still rash and prone to jumping to conclusions. She also makes very easy mistakes that could be avoided if she double checked her facts (the “Chloe is Ladybug” claim in particular stands out). Lila could just portray herself as a hero/Ladybug fan to get in with Alya and she would believe Lila is an asset to her cause rather than a traitor riding on her back.

So we have Lila cozying up to Alya and using her in ways that Marinette is going to hate—not simply because Lila is a lying liar who lies, but because she is an active THREAT to people Marinette cares about. This relationship would start to have a negative impact on Alya, her ability to do things, and her relationships with others in turn.

The thing is, it wouldn’t be just Marinette that Lila’s toxicity would affect. Sure, the show did it that way and we as the fans responded similarly, but it would hardly be that neat. A toxic relationship like this thrives on drama and conflict. Has anyone ever seen or heard about the Karpman Drama Triangle? The three sides are Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor. Generally, it’s supposed to be the sides of a conflict, but in this case, Lila plays all three roles in SPADES.

So she regularly instigates conflict and then passes herself off as the “real victim”. It’s something we commonly see in salt pics where she makes some false claim about Marinette bullying her. She plays herself off as helpless and takes the Victim role to make others sympathize with her. But there are the other aspects, where she accuses Marinette of talking badly behind other people’s backs and plotting things, how she tried to “stand up to her” to solidify herself as the “good guy”. And if anyone attempts to mediate or rationalize, she jumps on them and makes accusations to immediately get them on the defensive so they’ll back down to try to console her.

Lila knows how to play this game. She’s done it plenty of times before.

But here’s the scary thing: Marinette wouldn’t be the sole target. She’d just be the FIRST one.

It’s easy to single out Marinette first to everyone. She’s the only one vocal in her disapproval of Lila and her claims. The class would have to be blind not to notice the animosity between them (or rather more blind than they already are to believe Lila’s lies in the first place). So even if they aren’t sure which of the two is the real source of the problem, they know that having Lila and Marinette together is grounds for trouble.

Some of the class would believe Lila. She’s awesome and promises them things. Why would she lie?

Some would believe Marinette. She’s been nothing but kind and helpful to everyone before any of this started. Why the sudden issue only when Lila comes along?

Lila would hone in on her specific targets during this time. She’d want to rope in everyone she can, but she has those key people she focuses on. Adrien, Chloe, and especially Alya. Secondary to Alya, she needs to have Nino on her side as well since he’s her boyfriend and could end up convincing Alya against Lila.

Adrien knows she’s a liar but is at least quiet and open to her manipulations. Chloe doesn’t trust her, but will at least let her be a hanger-on. It’s Alya that Lila is putting the most effort into ensuring at this point, and everyone else is secondary.

Marinette is Alya’s best friend and a major obstacle in this plan. So Lila slowly poisons Alya’s perception of her. Pointing out Marinette’s flaws. How flakey she is. How clumsy she is. How unreliable she’s been. Slowly but surely pointing out more and more negative traits about the girl. Until eventually, Alya is defending her less and agreeing with Lila more. That’s when Lila starts in on the “mean Marinette bullying me” angle. And Alya is at a point where she would believe it.

So their friendship is tarnished. As a result, the relationships between the other girls are more strained as well since some of them would still want to be friends with Marinette. Lila would either try to ensnare them as well or turn those she already has on her side against them. Dissent is not permissible, after all. And Lila either lies more about Marinette or acts wounded and victimized that they’re not supporting her. She attempts to force them to pick a “side”.

The results would vary.

Given her attitude in canon, Mylene would side firmly with Lila. Alix would be more trusting of Marinette and get tired of the antics and drama soon enough. Rose would try to stay friends with everyone while Juleka would stay silent and stick with Rose, which would put both girls in a difficult position as they would be frequent targets of accusations until eventually they have enough as well.

And as soon as anyone else breaks ranks, Lila turns on them just as easily. Sometimes even if they don’t. They would end up being turned on each other as much as against Marinette or anyone Lila deems an “enemy” at the time to keep herself the center of attention. Sob stories and accusations galore. In that case, some of them would be aware of what she’s doing but too fearful to actually try to leave out of fear of what she may do.

In the meantime, while having the majority of the group backing her, Lila would continue to take advantage of their bleeding hearts and push to have them do as much for her as she can get away with much like she did in Chameleon. Whether having them do menial tasks or acting as “go-fers” for her. Among other things. Like trying to get Nathaniel and Marc to make a comic about her. Free music from Nino. Increased interactions with Adrien. And in particular, free access to the Ladyblog and any inside info from Alya.

In the midst of all this, what Alya thinks is happening is that she’s protecting a new friend from an old one that went bad and giving support to someone who needs it. To an outside observer, Lila is a negative influence who is using Alya for whatever she can get from her and poisoning Alya’s relationships with other people. This wouldn’t just be Marinette, but also her other classmates, her family, and even Ladybug. Because she’s Ladybug’s number 1 fan. She’s devoted so much time to her. Doesn’t she deserve more? Doesn’t Ladybug owe her the truth? It’s that building up of Alya’s ego while at the same time increasing her dependency on Lila.

After a while, she may try to interfere with Alya’s relationship with Nino. What if she was the one nudging them to focus on their dates more than their babysitting responsibilities and other chores in the home? And when their families start to take issue, Lila can play it off two ways—both that the family doesn’t understand and that Alya’s time with Nino is a distraction.

Thus a slow but eventual breakup occurs. Nino is left unaware as to what caused it.

And since Alya has all this free time now, she can spend a bit more time supporting Lila. Taking on more burdens and work to help her. But Alya wouldn’t realize that she’s also taking on more stress as well. Because most people don’t realize that there is a level of constant stress of being around someone like that so much. It’s like boiling lobsters—because the stress and tension is such a slow buildup, most people don’t realize just how much of it there is until it either blows up or they get away from it. And even if they do realize it’s there, that’s not to say they’d know where it came from or why.

With Lila pulling her strings, Alya would attribute it to Marinette. Or to her sisters. Or to Nino. Or to anything and anyone else other than the one person actually responsible.

This would be what her parents are seeing. Stress has a physical affect on a person just as much as it has an emotional one. They’re seeing that Alya is snapping at her sisters, becoming more withdrawn and isolative, and not attending to her chores or homework. But they’re also seeing she’s not getting as much sleep, has no energy, is “never hungry, and can’t seem to focus.

To be fair, the secret identity of Rena Rouge wouldn’t help matters, but with Alya’s issues and worsening temperament, it stands to reason that Ladybug would avoid bringing her out if at all possible, which would just add to Alya’s frustration and stress.

When a manipulator of that level is whispering in your ear, the actions of everyone can look like a betrayal. Either they’re turning their backs on you when they’re trying to stay away from what they’re seeing as a negative relationship, or they’re doubting you when they’re confronting you on how unhealthy the situation has been and telling you that you need help. Anything done out of genuine concern looks warped through that lens.

Fortunately, her parents have enough and draw the line before it gets that far. They never liked Lila. They didn’t like her lies. They didn’t like her false sweetness. And they certainly didn’t like the effect she has having on their daughter.

That’s why they have that sit down talk with Alya and confront her. Because yes, they’re being nosy and interfering with their child’s friendships, but when it’s having a negative impact on their child, of course they have to respond.

And Alya would see it from the perspective of a wronged teenager. The way that Lila has shaped the lens for her to see it through—that everyone is against her. That her parents are trying to control her. That nobody trusts her—not like LILA does.

The fact that Alya doesn’t become an akuma with this mindset is a surprise, even to herself later on. But in an attempt to prove their point, her parents make a deal with her that they will lessen the grounding if she can show them proof—clear undeniable proof of Lila’s claims. They fully agree to admit they were wrong if she can, with the bargain being that she will not have any contact with Lila whatsoever if she can’t—which to be fair, she probably wouldn’t want to anyway. She agrees. So they let her use her computer to attempt to look up any information backing Lila’s stories and give her an hour or two to search.

Alya finds nothing.

It…kind of ends up hitting her pretty hard. She refuses to believe it at first, and attempts to make excuses. But her parents are patient and part of the point of this period of being grounded is to give her the chance to process.

And while she may be grounded, that’s not to say her parents don’t help. They support her. They let her take as long as she needs to accept the realization and come to terms. They give her space to cry and rage once the truth sinks in and she finally understands just how much she was manipulated.

Once the worst of the emotional upheaval is over and Alya refigures her priorities, they let her have use of her phone back to call Marinette and Nino to apologize.

#ml salt #good parenting #lila sucks #alya cesaire #toxic relationship

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