#they are queer as fuck they told me themselves it’s canon now baby

[bludhavensbirdboy]

You see two cishet characters I see a trans masc gay Eddie and a genderfluid bi steve we aren’t the same

#i watch stranger things in a more gay and intellectual way than most #they are queer as fuck they told me themselves it’s canon now baby #genderfluid steve harrington #bisexual steve harrington #gay eddie munson #trans eddie munson #don’t even get me started on my other hcs for these characters we will be here for days #like dude imo Steve is deaf and has ocd #also steve is a cat person I don’t make the rules #Steve got a cat when his hearing started to get worse cause he liked the feeling over the vibrations of the cat purring #and Eddie had autism and Tourette’s and I won’t take no for an answer #pls give me your hcs for stranger things characters like any of them I love to hear them #irrelevant tags > #steveddie #steve harrington/eddie munson #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things 4 #stranger things

[im-the-punk-who]

Could you post some more malex thoughts? What about that song? Or thoughts on them being endgame? Or season 3 malex thoughts?

Baby’s first RNM meta request 😭

ABSOLUTELY I can.

So I am gonna start with my S3 thoughts and endgame thoughts because everything else will tie into that.

From what I’ve seen, Roswell had 5 seasons originally planned, which is still what it feels like it needs to me. Which is cool! It also means we’re probably(hopefully, actually) not gonna get canon malex in s3.

The show has set them up as the ‘will-they-won’t they’ couple - most of their tension together focuses on *whether or not they get together* instead of if they’ll stay together. To me at least, it’s pretty clear the show’s assumption is that if they end up actually getting together in a healthy way(which they both seem to want in their relationships now), they will stay together.

If the show actually does it’s job right and takes the time to let both of them heal, grow, and experience other things that likely won’t happen until at least mid s4. It would make a nice dramatic midpoint for the season, they could play out a bit of that relief of finally being together in the late s4, and then whether or not they renew s5 they’ve told the story they wanted to. But if they do get a fifth season they can play with some hurt/comfort with Michael and Alex actually building/cementing their relationship. 

As we’re seeing with Liz and Max, tension has to come from somewhere and where RNM(as most shows do) fails is thinking it needs to come from the relationship, which is what I’m afraid would happen if malex get together so soon after making the(at least private) commitment to get better for each other. There won’t be enough time for growth and dramatic build to sustain the afterglow and they’ll have to find something else to torment the poor boys with. 

I don’t hold out a *super* large amount of hope for it, because like...this is the CW. But I do think either way malex will likely be endgame. Just from everything the show has told us and set up, I would be extremely surprised and honestly really fucking angry if they don’t. Not necessarily because they’re My Ship, or because it would be any sort of queer baiting - they’d both still be undeniably queer and I assume Alex would end up with Forrest or someone else in that scenario.

Honestly it would just be bad storytelling to set up your characters as having this deep cosmic connection, setting them up directly in parallel with our other pairs of starcrossed lovers Max/Liz and Nora/Tripp, dropping all the hints in the music choices(Holy Moly being the big one when linked with the Would You Come Home scene, but there are other small parallels in song choices - ‘Through Your Eyes’ as Alex walks away in 2x06 for example.) Especially with the literal confirmation that they both still *want* to be with each other (Alex’s song saying ‘if I got better and worked through my issues can we be together’ and Michael recognizing he’s got to give Alex the space to do that work so that maybe someday they can be together. ‘It’s not our time right now.“ “But it will be.” “I hope so.”)

Anyway! So, I would count a Not-Malex-Endgame as a bad ending, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if we get zero canon Malex content in S3. In fact given where the characters are, I think it would be an AMAZING choice to have these characters who are fan favorites and who everyone *wants* to be endgame - stay apart and work on themselves, and build all that TENSION( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) for an entire season in order to cash in for an s4 payoff.

Also, I really want to see Alex grow as a person. 

Michael really started to change in Season 2 - we’ve seen him start trying to be better, dealing with his emotions more, recognizing how bad his relationship with Alex is and trying to improve with Maria as well as building his other relationships, too. To me, Michael is already very different than he was in S1 and honestly, Alex has some catch up to do in terms of working on his fears and how they relate to how he cannot stand to be around Michael in stressful situations.

To that end, I really want to see how Alex and Forrest interact, and how a relationship with Forrest might change Alex. We heard before that Alex doesn’t really consider himself to have had a real relationship, and Forrest does *not* seem the type to be up for a fast and easy thing, so I think he could really push Alex to face his issues around commitment and his tendency to cut and run. 

Which would actually be really cool! I am not a Forrest-endgame person at all, mostly because he seems both way too put together and way too needy for Alex long term, but I do think they would be really fun to see played against each other and also just .... nice things for Alex Manes please. 

Also then we get lots of Michael making sad eyes at Alex which is just *chefs kiss*.

For Alex, his personal conflict has always centered around his trauma, his father, being ashamed and afraid of being openly gay, and having enough faith in people to believe he personally is worth fighting for and my main wish for Alex is to finally fucking learn how to love and be loved in return.

So in that vein and especially if we see Malex as endgame, it only makes sense that Michael’s journey needs to be a parallel one of him finding something worth staying on earth for. He’s started to build a family for himself fucking finally - Maria, Isobel, Sanders, hell I think there is even the potential for Liz, Max, and Kyle to be family. And of course, Alex has always been his family. But previously no one has ever had his back in the way he’s had theirs. 

From what we’ve seen, Michael has always been the one who gives with his whole self - both Maria and Alex comment on it - “I don’t doubt your capacity for love” & “He keeps secrets because of how much he loves Max and Isobel, not because of how much he loves you.” He is a character who has spent his life throwing affection and emotion at the wall and seeing what(if anything) sticks. 

He took the crayon from Max at the orphanage, told Isobel he killed the girls, dropped his plans to leave Roswell for her, he both defended Alex from his father and didn’t stop him from leaving a place he was in danger, he let Liz experiment with his blood for Isobel’s antidote. He tells Alex once that he was glad that Max and Isobel had an easier time, even if it meant he didn’t. Michael’s biggest character flaw is that he believes he has to be useful to be wanted. That he, as he is, is unloveable. Or, maybe better put, that he is not worthy of the kind of love others have.

In S3 I want this challenged, CW I will fight you. I *REALLY* want to see him have to face head on his assumption that he’s going to leave Earth at some point and everyone is going to be fine with that. I want him to realize he’s become core in someone’s life again. I want to see someone grab hold and refuse to let go. I want it to get messy, and I want them to stay, damnnit! 

I want to see Michael start making plans to stay again.

I said in a previous meta that I thought the growth Michael has gone through already would lead to him being approached by Jones with an offer to leave (so that Jones can separate the pod squad, so that he can use Michael to get to Max, something like that) and I really want to see what decision a more grounded Michael might make in a situation like that.

And what my tiny shriveled shipper heart REALLY wants is a scene where Michael is put to this choice of being able to leave and - despite being offered everything he has been working towards for his entire life - the relationships he’s built are strong enough to make him stay(again.)

(Hint, I REALLY want this to be Alex, for the plot resolution for them in S3 not to be ‘we get together’ but to be ‘we are able to recognize that we can BE there for each other even if we aren’t together’, which would lead spectacularly into an early/mid s4 get together after some light angst :) 

I have a lot more thoughts re: what I want from everyone else and what I’d love to see from the non pod-squad squad (MARIA ALEX LIZ ROSA PICNIC DATE WHEN) (CENTERING YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS OF COLOR WHEN) (TRY MAKING YOUR VILLAIN NOT A FUCKING PERSON OF COLOR!) Also like, Generyx, Deep Sky, Mr. Jones, possible connections between them and characters who aren’t pod squad oh my god can we for one episode focus on someone else, etc, but like.....this is already so long so maybe that’s for another time xD

Also as stated like....this is a CW show so this isn’t what’s going to happen, but it’s what a I *DESPERATELY WANT* to happen. My interaction with RNM is VERY much dead-plot-do-not-eat until proven otherwise and I’m just here to no-thoughts-head-empty enjoy the parts of Malex I like and ignore everything else :)

I’m gonna use this image that Diana made me because honestly this should be a disclaimer to any RNM post I make.

#LMAOOOOOOOO SORRY FOR THE GIANT POST #this should probably be readmore'd but uhhhh your assasins failed to kill me during the night #and you must now suffer another day of my insanely long meta #long post #malex #roswell new mexico #rnm meta #roswell new mexico meta #michael guerin #alex manes #Anonymous #milo answers

[buirbaby]

The Wardens: A New Wind Blows

Notes:  Please note that this fanfic is entirely self-indulgent and warps a bit of the plotting/history. I thought it'd be fun to do a reincarnation insert, but also add rules to it to make it more difficult for the protagonist to be successful in saving canon characters. I've also added lore about the Wardens and griffins, because why not. Might not make sense (though I am trying to be as canonical as I can), but it's fun to write!

Rating: M + Mature themes, language, and violence

Masterlist | First | Next

Cold. Everything was so blasted cold.

Shuddering, Tabitha rolled over and opened her eyes, enough light in front of her for her breath to stream through the air. It had been early summer, why was it cold as balls here? Groaning, she sat up and rubbed the back of her head. Wherever she'd been laid down, it was lumpy, hard, and uncomfortable. Her bare palm scrabbled against stone and confusion ripped through her. Fire. There had been a fire in her home and Balerion had woken her up.

"Balerion?" she called, her hoarse voice echoing through the cave. None of this made sense. One moment she had been passing out from suffocating on smoke and now she was in some icy cave? Maybe this was hell. That's what she got for her years of service, somehow avowing that killing for her country was somehow not murder. God seemed to think not and thus this was his version of purgatory or hell. Who would've thought that hell was frosty? Grumbling, she clambered to her feet and glanced around, uncertain which direction was deeper into the cave and which was out. Either way, she needed to get moving because she was going to freeze her tits off at this rate.

Trailing into the abyss, she continued along the only path set before her, curious if some demon or spectre would greet her in the afterlife. Would they tell her she was an idiot for not taking the offer of money? Or that somehow that condo company had a hand in her death?

There was a light up ahead, brightening the shadows that she was having difficulty glaring through. Did all cats go to heaven and she was damned? At least death hadn't been that painful, just like going to sleep before the tidal waves of fire consumed them. Out of all the things that Tabitha could be thinking, she thought about how crappy it was that this fire had to happen right before the trip of a lifetime she'd been waiting for. Iceland had been the most anticipated trip, even bigger than Denali. So much for celebrating her big 3-0 in the fjords and ice. Now she'd rot in the ground at eternally 29.

The mouth widened in front of her and a chill breeze swept right through her, making her shudder, as she drew her arms closer. Shafts of grey light filtered in through slats in the stone, the cavern dome-shaped and wide open. Dried grass and leaf litter was scattered against the ground, almost in the shape of nests, but they were long abandoned. In front of her, she thought she saw a fleeting bit of moment, a dark shadow slinking along the perimeter of the room, but doubted herself. It wasn't until the pool of darkness flew across, pouncing on her, that her heart leapt up into her throat and her body collided back with the hard stone flooring. Gasping, trying to flounder for air that had been driven from her lungs, she was eye to eye was a behemoth creature.

Brilliant fiery orange eyes blinked at her, set into a raptor's face, only the head of the bird was larger than her own. Obsidian feathers encircled its face, a wickedly sharp beak preening close to her face, a set of long tufted ears twitching. Undoubtedly a demon of hell, Tabitha was convinced, wondering if she'd screwed up her descent into the layers or if she should have tried running. She need only wait for it to disembowl her to begin her eternal torture in this frigid wasteland, but it was acting strangely. Tilting its head to the side before a soft murmur, almost like a huffing trill-similar to that of a cat caught between a purr and meow-blew her hair back. No, she knew those eyes. She hadn't thought of them like fire before, but more like pumpkins.

"Balerion?" she whispered, afraid that speaking any louder would enrage the creature.

The raptor pushed its face into hers, nuzzling the shiny ink black beak into her cheek, before clambering off to allow her to sit up. Tabitha was startled by what she saw, her cat's feline form condensed to only the frame of which he now possessed, his bottle brush tail sweeping behind him, a thick mane of feathers and fur clustered around his neck and throat, akin to a lion. But his front paws were talons, sharper than knives, fashioned for killing. Yet, the griffin's mannerisms bespoke of her soul mate.

"What the fuck is going on?" she managed, pushing herself to her feet to trot toward him, burying her fingers in the warmth of his feathers. Damn, it was cold here and Balerion was radiating heat. "Man, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore, are we bud? You're... huge." Trying to fathom how it was possible her house cat had turned into a griffin, Tabitha continued to puzzle as she kept close to him.

Another trill of agreement before the feline pulled away, ear tufts twitching, before he let out a low growl, beak parting in fury. Suddenly, she was thrust behind him, barely able to glance over the broad set of wings he was unfurling to challenge the person approaching them. However, the initial reaction simmered down, the heat dialed back as a voice spoke in a soothing language that she did not comprehend.

"Please. Warden. Come out," the voice was youthful, childish, but within the timbre of the tone there was a great weight, almost as if there was a deep ancient wisdom contained within. A shiver lanced down her spine as she stepped out, pressing her palm against Balerion's muzz-er-beak to quell him. Despite the young voice, the small being in front of her was not inherently child-looking aside from the short stature. Just as she'd been startled with the griffin, the nut-brown skin dappled with spots like a baby deer caught her off guard. Its ears were also reminiscent of a doe, large and prominent as their slitted eyes.

He wore a cloak of leaves, his dark hair intertwined with vines and lichen.

"What... are you?" Part of her recalled the descriptors deep down, but it seemed too farfetched just along with the rest of this queer world.

"The humans call us the Children of the Forest. We call ourselves those who sing the song of the earth in our True Tongue," he answered cryptically, confirming what her heart had suspected. The revelation stole her breath away, the shock of falling into the depths of a book she'd had on her nightstand the evening of her death bone chilling. "I am called Fang."

"How are we here? This should be impossible," Tabitha muttered, convinced this was a coma dream. Still, it felt so real. Maybe they had survived the fire and her dying brain had concocted this dream state to float in while she healed. Whatever it was, being dropped into the realm of A Song of Ice and Fire without any blood ties to nobility was real shitty.

"I didn't think that another of your kind would awaken. I've stayed here a long time, protecting the Roost . The last of its kind after men hunted the griffins to extinction," Fang explained, gesturing to the nests, in which Tabitha could see were more figures. However, upon scrutiny she realized that they were stone, trapped eternally in their slumber. "But it was told that for every griffin here, there is one Warden, another half to their soul, waiting to rejoin them in this life."

"Excuse me for not being aware of what my sacred, foretold destiny is, but can you enlighten me? What exactly is a warden?"

Fang was more than keen to oblige, the years of solitude in this cold cavern grating on him. "Wardens are keepers of knowledge. Wargs in their own right. Warriors and guides during times of extreme strife."

"Never heard of them," Tabitha remarked, racking her brain for any lore on Wardens, but had never recalled seeing them in the books. Maybe they hadn't been recorded for a reason, a loophole that could change the tide of what had been written, never quite taking on a form themselves since they weren't nobles or remarkable characters aside from trying to subvert plotlines they knew were going to happen. Griffin-wielding-wargs. That's what she was now. "Then... Are we north of the Wall?" Where else would a Child of the Forest be? Unless this was well before when the books she'd known were set, this was the last frontier the Children had left.

"Yes, we are... You are familiar with Westeros' geography?"

"I am," Tabitha admitted grudgingly. "So, Fang, what's the plan? I mount up on Balerion and we fly off to try and change the world?" That was a fanciful way to put it and putting way too much hope in the fact that they wouldn't get shot right out of the sky while flying over the Wall.

"No," Fang shook his head. "You are not ready. You are not equipped for the journey. And unless you'd like to perish before your quest has even begun, you'd be wise not to just show up at any doorstep and hope for safe harbor, especially as a woman."

So Fang wasn't stupid. Tabitha's lips quirked up. "Then what do we do?"

This question would soon be answered, as Fang led them out of the cumbersome room that had wind ripping through it with icy, gnashing teeth. The cave went deeper, illuminated by strange blue lights contained within gnarled tree branches, more for her than it was for Fang, so that she might see where she placed her foot as they descended. Still, she wondered how any of this was real. How such a thing existed. Quietly, she amassed a collection of questions to ask Fang once they arrived at their destination.

The caverns grew warmer, the heat of a primordial hearth burning deep within the heart of the mountain. It took Tabitha a moment, staring at the grooves of the stone, the purposeful counter set in front of it, to realize that this was a forge. Fang paused, cocking his head and tilting his feline eyes back up toward her.

"This forge only lights when a Warden has awoken," he told her.

"When's the last time you saw it lit?" she asked.

"I have never, but before me, the time of dragons and conquerers came with the forge was bright and hot," Fang replied, skirting the room to place small hands on slate slabs that had been hewn into the wall, similar to a tomb.

"Lot a good a griffin must have been against dragons," Tabitha spoke her thought aloud, wondering how that would have sufficed. Balerion was large, perhaps even big enough to ride, but in comparison to the real Balerion? He was a pup, a mite without scales to protect him. Depending on when they were, dragons might fly again and be creatures that she'd have to be wary of. The thought of the flying reptilians made her shudder, Balerion pushing his head into her side as he noticed that she was disturbed.

"Griffins are fast," Fang countered, pushing the stone slab with a shocking amount of strength. "Faster than dragons perhaps. But they're not here to serve the same purpose. Balerion is here as a partner and an escort, not to raze cities or conquer empires."

"Good, I don't think that was on my bucket list," Tabitha quipped. "What year is it? Do you know?"

"If I've been keeping good enough record, 294 AC," the stone had been removed entirely and in its place was the hollowed out tomb filled with items.

294? That was a few years before the events of the first book. While she might not have been ready to embark on any crusade to change the ill fate of many characters, she realized now that she had time to figure out what the hell she was doing. "Well that's a relief. Would've sucked to show up after-" but the words didn't form, her tongue twisting in her mouth and becoming slow and dumb. She tried again, trying to explain the situation that would play out in a few years time, only to find that she could not speak it aloud at all.

Fang turned, his lips curving up in a smile. "Ah, so it is true," he commented, looking more his age than childish as he crossed his arms. "Legend says that for all the knowledge the Wardens might have, they cannot speak it to another."

Tabitha wanted to dash her brains against the stone. She knew all of this shit and she couldn't tell anyone? Couldn't write it down? Now this threw a bigger wrench in her plans. For if she came to a situation where she could save someone by simply saying 'hey look out for the Freys', she could not. "How am I supposed to do anything?" she hissed irritably.

"You'll know. Just as the forge beats with the life in your heart, you will know when it is time to make yourself known and to help change the tides of fate. Actions speak louder than words," Fang retorted, pulling out a thick, padded doublet that was within the stone storage. "Here, these should fit you. It is cold outside the forge and eventually, you will have to brave it."

Accepting the attire that had been stolen away for centuries, Tabitha was more than eager to put it on in place of her own thin clothing. Things could not be simple. She could not have the power over death in words, she would have to be clever, strong, resilient and work her way into politics without the cushion of a title or lands. Christ, that was going to be hard and even having Balerion beside her seemed more like a burden than a saving grace. No, she was thankful he was there, her dark star amidst the turmoil and confusion that was the world she'd suddenly been thrust into, but she felt daunted.

While Fang continued to rummage through the ancient artifacts of Wardens passed, she sat on a bench made of rock, hewn into the wall, and stared into the dancing flames of the hearth. Fire had taken her from her past life and now a new fire was ignited. Her fingertips swirled along her open palm, feeling the strange new mark that had found its way there, that hadn't been there. A swirl shaped like a griffin's head, rough around the edges, and akin to a burn--as if it had been branded into her skin. It did not hurt, but she wondered if this was her boon as a Warden.

To save Westeros. Obviously, the Night King would be the largest priority. Given that she was north of the Wall, she had to assume that her 'in' would be with the wildlings or the Night's Watch. Again, her head throbbed in worry, wondering how she'd manage to convince others that she was worthy of their time and not just a good lay, rape, or twat. She could not speak of what she knew, so she had to count on her actions and the cleverness of her tongue to aid those that she knew Westeros would be better with. Could she make it to Winterfell before Ned Stark left for King's Landing? Could she stop Bran from falling from the broken tower? Did she want to stop him? So many questions that had no answers and yet the fire danced madly in front of her, beckoning with flaming fingers, whispering into her ears.

"We shall guide you."

Through fire there had been rebirth. Not in the same manner as Dondarrian when he had a priest bless and revive him, but in another ancient method. Between worlds and veils. The fire had claimed the Warden and then spat her out into the arctic mountain that would suffice to become her home for the next few years as she gained her feet. A modern woman in a dark, twisted medieval fantasy. Not once had Tabitha yearned to be tossed amongst the pages she read with delight, because she knew that life was fickle, dangerous, and uncertain. No one was favored, even the main characters could die.

"Here," Fang interrupted her train of thoughts, breaking her line of sight with the fire that she had fallen into a trans with. He held up a scabbard before her, the sheathe a dark midnight blue, enameled with white gold detailing. Not too much, simple and clean, just enough that it wasn't utterly nondescript. The weight felt heavy on her lap, her fingers turning around the straps of the belt before she gripped the handle and pulled part of the blade out.

For a sword that had been collecting dust for more than a hundred years, it was honed and sharp. No, that was not right. There was a reason for that. Tabitha pulled it out entirely, the rippling waves in the folded steel catching the light of the fire and throwing refractions around the space like a mirror held to the sun. This was Valyrian steel, with no need to be taken to a whetstone.

"Fuck, I don't know how to use a sword."

#game of thrones fanfiction #game of thrones fanfic #asoiaf fanfiction #asoiaf fanfic #a song of ice and fire fanfic #reincarnation insert #freeform #added lore #the ability to change the future but with a twist #romance is not the main theme #BAMF female OC #buirbaby writes #The Wardens

[rexylafemme]

time together with time to spare; time to learn, time to care

i feel seasick with grief. my stomach feels like a rubber hot water bottle being tossed about between two hands, sad water sloshing around, springing up through my throat to my eyes which keep welling up. my heart is beating and radiating from it is a dull burning feeling that contracts and expands through my chest as i breathe. my fingers are trembling and i can’t keep them steady, my whole body is slightly tingly, vibratory. tears keep surfacing, a wall of water over my eyes, cascading from behind my eyebrows, but then i breathe and they don’t fall. it’s 12:10pm and i must be hungry because i haven’t eaten since early afternoon yesterday, having been at hospice all day in new jersey until close to midnight. my mind feels hazy, my stomach is sour and i feel empty all over.  it feels like a hangover, but i am just living through death.

i’ll stop writing to eat soon because i know i need to care for myself well through this, but right now i need to write through what i feel first. i’m telling myself i will neglect everything i need to get done today, but i’m not sure that’s true. i’ll decide if maybe being productive toward tour tasks, making my video collage for my performance, making some important phone calls, going outside, anything other than just being in this, will be helpful to me today. if it won’t, i won’t allow myself to be stressed by obligation. i don’t want to use anything—workaholism, frenzied cleaning, substances, tv, sleeping—to distract myself or to numb myself or to get lost in something else.

i put two slices of bread in the oven, i’m going to eat toast. i think about orange juice, but my whole torso already feels like it’s coursing with watery acid. i sigh and i think “it’s unfair.” i wonder about spiritual justice, i wonder about consequences, i ask myself, or my thoughts vocalize themselves in my head, asking the void, asking the matrix, asking the ether—why?

i was supposed to spend the day yesterday at my aunt linda’s with her and my mother. my mother texted me on saturday night at around 10 that we couldn’t hang out because instead, she, linda, and my uncle, tommy, were going to go see our cousin, maureen, in hospice. cousin is kind of misleading, given maureen  is my grandmother’s niece. she’s 77 and more like an aunt to them, a great aunt to me. funnily, i was sitting on the rocks of the east river in red hook, off the street maureen grew up on when i get the text. i call my mother immediately, to ask if i could come with them. i call my uncle and leave a message, asking what the best way for me to link up with them tomorrow is if they are going.

i didn’t know how badly my mother was really doing until i saw her yesterday, or i did know, but haven’t been able to deal with it. and none of us knew how badly maureen was doing until we saw her yesterday, her dying. my mother didn’t come. she’s in a really fragile mental state, she’s not eating or taking care of herself, she’s foggy and quiet, and my uncle picked a fight with her before i was heading to queens and then she felt too sick and upset to come. my uncle was a huge, mean asshole lacking compassion as usual, and it’s his fault she didn’t come because the miscommunication about scheduling was his fault, but instead he just did what he and a lot of them tend to do in my family, blamed my mother, yelled at her, shut her down. she’s an easy target and she’s very sensitive.

i burnt my toast, but i’m going to eat it anyway, with half an avocado and some salt. i bite it, i chew, move the food around in my mouth until it is mush, swallow. it doesn’t taste like anything, it just feels like changing textures on my tongue, between my teeth, against the soft inner walls of my cheeks.

i saw my mother briefly around the corner from the house, felt hopeless and heartbroken. she kept saying she was okay and i kept saying she wasn’t. sometimes loving my mother, a lot of times, loving my mother, has meant begging her to care about herself enough to stay alive. she is slowly killing herself it seems sometimes, the house—how tommy hoarded it, how tommy and dorothy began hoarding her apartment after my mom took dorothy in—is killing her, their cruelty, their verbal abuse, the meanness, is killing her, me, us. i know i’m going to have to decide to restructure things in my life to take the reins to help her because she can’t do it herself at this juncture, in this way. but i do have faith that once she’s back on her feet a bit, once she’s shown some care, she can push forward again. nobody in our immediate family has a lot of faith in her but me. no one takes any responsibility for her well-being but me. because she’s the crazy one. because she’s the punching bag. i try to think clearly, i try to think of ways i can step in here without it overwhelming my life, without having to sacrifice what i need to do with myself. i try to be reasonable about what i’m dealing with here, i try to not catastrophize—i can deal with this after i return from tour. is there time for that?  will she be okay by the time i get back? will she be alive? reasonably, yes, she will be alive. she may not be any better than she is right now, though, but what i could accomplish toward that in a month in a fucked up personal state is unclear either way.

i think about next year and how i’ve been considering not going to the conservatory, been weighing my options and thinking about my dreams, my goals, what i’ve made and not waiting to live my life the way i want to. how i’ve been thinking of actually just extending the tour, starting the performance/organizing collective with the emerge people, working and traveling and using the money i raise toward performance programs that aren’t THE WHITE RICH ESTABLISHMENT and that also provide more financial assistance. not going $40,000 more into loan debt on top of the rest and having to raise $4-6,000 a semester on my own, just to go, not including housing, life expenses, everything else. i think about how i can take classes with laverne cox’s acting coach, singing classes with julia, queer-oriented body and movement classes, the doors that have opened for me through emerge with connections, fellowships, residencies, how i can develop my own framework for education and pay less for it, while also maybe getting more of what i need in ways that honor me. in a way where i wouldn’t have to, on top of being at school from 9-5 or 6 each day, and working  some nights and weekends, have to do the extra work to just teach everyone about who i am, about trans-ness and identity and privilege in general, on top of the psychological struggle it will be just to be in a program like that where the point is to delve deep into emotional landscapes and embodiment, but also—the psychological struggle of having to be a woman, literally, in scenes (and like rich wife canon characters). i think about all the work and energy i’ll put into transforming an institution that will revert back to itself for the most part upon my leaving. because that’s what i do in these settings. i think about being one of the only trans poor people there and i wonder why i would do it. i wonder what i would gain.

i tell myself if i don’t go, if i just run with what i’ve made, this book, six years in the making, run with what i’ve built in performance and with emerge, see where that goes, i also could always reapply and get in again. i got in with no training whatsoever. i got in because i wanted to, because i gave it everything. but maybe i want to give myself everything, maybe i want to go for my dream in a different way, in a way i’ve been dreaming about for a long time. maybe just because i am used to running myself ragged, running on empty, on fumes, used to being an exception in an affluent establishment institution and codeswitching and fighting my way through it, doesn’t mean it’s what i should do. maybe that’s an old dream, maybe that’s just what flashdance and gypsy and some theatrical version of meritocracy told me to do.

i’m diverging, i want to focus on yesterday, but i can’t separate the future, my future, from the present. my mother gets inserted into my planning. i wonder if that’s wrong. i think, maybe choosing not to go, well, i know choosing not to go, will make it easier for me to support her. but what kinda role should that play in my decision-making? i think that our radical communities, steeped in academic theories on what’s right and wrong in terms of how to be and act and live can be as blindly and naively individualistic as any other framework, sometimes don’t speak to the lived realities of poor families and what we have to do to survive and help each other survive. but also, codependence has been a sour reality in my family life and i’m constantly evaluating what support needs to look like in my life. as my cousin denise, maureen’s daughter, said yesterday, take care of yourself first, then take care of your mother. which is, i imagine, what has sustained her through taking care of her own mother.

i think, too, that going might be a bad kind of drain on my mental health, a bad kind of obsessive attention to my craft at the expense of a lot of other necessary parts of my life: like focusing on self-care and community-care and my family, blood and not, and herbal transitioning and just nourishing myself in all the other passions and desires and needs i have. i worry that the program won’t honor a much-needed and awaited dedication to balance in my life that i have been working hard and successfully (in some ways) to cultivate. because the kind of rigorous it is is the kind that tells you to push yourself beyond what you are reasonably capable, that kinda ragged discipline where you break yourself and don’t be a wimp/baby/sissy. no crying in baseball kinda system. i don’t know that i believe in that anymore. i believe in pushing myself, i believe in breaking, i believe in rigor, but maybe not in that way. and maybe not in that setting. who will hold me there?  

yesterday, like my whole life, and maybe anyone’s, especially where family is concerned, i was a child and i was an adult. precocious in my emotional intelligence, seen and held mostly by myself and by denise, maureen’s daughter. it was like years collapsing. it was like when grandma and donna died, like when maureen and denise showed up for us, for them? my aunts and uncles, their cousins they raised or grew up with. tables were turned. denise is a year younger than my mother, denise. maureen and denise were integral to my survival through my childhood, especially through the first couple years after my grandma and donna’s death, all the chaos that ensued. which was just a continuation of other chaos.

time collapsed. it was so ordinary and normal to talk to denise. it was so ordinary and normal for us to be all over each other with sweet, familial, friendly affection. we saw each other as we always did, denise, 58, me, 28. having these beautiful and complex relationships with our mothers. being two people who were always kinda different, always set apart. two people with so much exuberant love for people, two creative and eccentric and short people. and, interestingly, tho i was an only child, i always was treated as a kinda sibling to my 6 aunts and uncles and my mother, and denise, tho she had 3 siblings, was always kinda like an only child, much closer to maureen than to her siblings.  linda said, “denise is going to be so lost.” because she has been so close with maureen, living with her since before i was born aside from her own stint in the bay area and other moments in NYC, and, recently, taking care of maureen through the last two years, two years i didn’t realize until yesterday had been so extreme. taking care of her almost exclusively, as her siblings live out their married lives with children and ordinary career paths (no judgment, it’s just how it is). denise being the eldest.

and not knowing about maureen’s condition these two years: that’s partially the working class irish-catholic stoicism, as denise and i were discussing, sitting by a wall of windows in the hospice hallway, and that’s partially my family, my elders, being disconnected because of their dysfunction. and that’s partially maureen just not wanting people to know, not wanting to burden people, not wanting help, and also what denise called “vanity.” and so i don’t begrudge anyone for the ways they chose to deal, not deal, talk, not talk about what was happening. i am mature enough in these times now to not judge, to not have hard feelings. tho i do have regrets, and i expressed them honestly to denise. i wish i had seen her before now, have an actual conversation, see her laugh again, hear her speak, ask her things. denise said i shouldn’t. she loves me, she always has had a very special place in her heart where i live, that she wanted and expected me to be off, on my own, finding myself, spreading my wings. that it was no one’s fault that we weren’t as close. that we all do what we can.

that was the thing about maureen and denise and my grandmother and donna that were different: we talked about shit honestly, we didn’t hold back the hard stuff. the emotional experiences of these tragedies we lived within. so i told denise that i felt heartbroken, to tell her how much i value how encouraging and supportive maureen always was of my creativity, my sensitivity. how both of them really saved me through those times. how even before those deaths they were a respite for me. and she explained the last two years to me, and “you know how she is! she’s stubborn. she’s strong, she’s a tough cookie, she’s set in her ways.” the attendants call her queen maureen. exalted, the name card on the window by her bed in her hospice room says.

i didn’t know i was going there to say goodbye. we didn’t know. everything’s accelerated so fast since wednesday apparently. she was in rehab, the thought was she was going to get stronger and be alright, but then, a turn for the worse. of course when we were headed to hospice we knew that meant soon, but not like, any day. denise said one night all of a sudden maureen started saying, “mom, mom! mom, no i’m not ready. i need a jacket, i need my jacket.” and denise  said, “nana, no, wait, i need a few days.” end of life care, comfort care.

 we got out of the car in front of the hospital, linda and i, linda holding her portable oxygen tank, out of breath from just getting out of the car, waiting for tommy to park and enter together. as we stood there, we saw michelle, maureen’s youngest daughter, approaching. she looked at us and didn’t recognize us at first. then said, “oh my god,” hugged us. said to linda, “i didn’t recognize you. i saw you and was like why is this lady looking at me, wait she looks familiar. how are you feeling? like shit?” linda shrugged. tommy arrived. there was no preparing us. we got up to the hospice floor, i went to the bathroom. i took a deep breath and walked down the hall to maureen’s room.

there really was no preparing. she is so small. she is all bones, loose skin in places, taut skin in places, pale. i can’t quite remember what she looked like, which makes me sad, but i guess is a protective mechanism; she wouldn’t want me to remember her that way anyway. walking in to her was shocking. i tensed up, i felt sick, i felt frightened. it makes me feel sick to say that she, at first, terrified me. but it was the kinda fear that comes with knowledge of how much suffering she was going through, how much pain, how this was the last time i would ever see her. and this was a way i knew she didn’t want to be seen and her seeing me might make her feel more sadness and pain. i sat at the end of her bed on a chair next to lauren, her granddaughter, two years older than me and recently married in spring. maureen almost didn’t make it to her wedding because of her health problems, but, fierce miracle queen that she is, she did. and i remember the pictures from it on facebook, how just three months ago she looked so different, still like herself, tho much smaller and frailer and thinner and more tired.  

so delirious through the morphine, out of it, so barely there, in body and spirit. and, yet, it was her and she was alert. glimpses: her hands, her eyes, those moran eyes as everyone always said of my grandmother’s side and their uniform eyes. she looked right into my eyes, my face—recognition and surprise and her own grief, i wanted to know how she was feeling, i didn’t know how to ask, i didn’t know what to say. i felt stupid and like a child who didn’t know what to do, my love felt confused, because i didn’t want to hurt her more, physically or spiritually. i didn’t know what was right. looking in her eyes and denise’s eyes both were like looking into my grandmother’s eyes. she could barely, barely speak. but she said “i haven’t seen you in so long,” and all i could say was i know. it broke my heart, but i know it wasn’t a judgment. i gently rubbed her back, i touched her shoulder. she was trying, straining to speak to me. i can’t even explain what it was like. what she looked like, what she sounded like, how few words were spoken, and yet it felt like a whole conversation. i can’t, i have no reference points. it was so unreal. she wanted to speak, but she couldn’t, she said some things and i understood. mostly i could understand her pain, swimming and restless inside it, the cage of her torturous body. and yet, it was her, and she was beautiful. her hands still gesturing against the bed in the ways i remembered. i sat down and i was drowning in memories of her, drowning in the sound of her laugh. catching up with the moment, that it was almost over and this wasn’t what i thought i was walking into today. loss and regret and confusion. deep deep wells of sorrow.

it is what it is. this is a motto in our lives. the lives in which we lived, for generations, of white poor poverty, surrounded by death, too-early-death, addiction, mental health problems, violence. it is what it is. and the blessing, the silver lining, as we discussed, that maureen is 77. that she outlived so many. in a life of hers peppered by early deaths and loss, people dying in their 30s, 40s, 50s. children dying. losing her dad so young when she was 9, losing her husband so young, losing her sister so young. losing michael and donna, her cousin-nephew, cousin-niece, my uncle and aunt, so young. the silver lining of, yes, all of this she’s experienced now in the last two years has been extreme—complications as a result of a radical treatment for uterine cancer 40 years ago. scar tissue from that radiation is all wrapped and twisted up around her intestines. apparently, since two years ago, it’s just been one problem, one complication, one thing worse than the other. she’s barely been able to eat in two years. she’s had tubes in her. the cancer came back, plus all the other problems. the silver lining being, tho the ill-advised-yet-of-its-time treatment caused excessive and catastrophic damage now, it allowed her to live out a life. to see her children grow up, to have grandchildren, to grow old.

but to see her in such suffering and pain, unfair. i wanted to stay with her forever, i wanted to sit with her, hold her and never let go. but i was also responsible to the people around me, her children, denise, bobby, sharon, michelle, my aunt linda and uncle tommy, and her best friend for 70 years, diane, who i had to move away from maureen so she could sit at her side, holding her hand, stroking her shoulder, whispering, crying.

i decided to leave the house. i started crying as i walked out the door, started walking to sunset park, turned around, to head to greenwood. on my way, i passed DENISE written on the ground, followed by a hopscotch board that only went to 8, the numerological path number of this year for me. like in january when i passed the hopscotch board to 8 in prospect park. i was crying with my black sunglasses covering it all, and then i laughed. denise had told me yesterday that her dad’s side, the madden’s side, had a grave in greenwood right by the entrance to the tunnel. i found it. i found a grave nearby that said GIVEN GRACE.

while i was getting dressed today, black short-shorts and black tank top, i realized i shucked the NYC-always-wear-black-thing my whole life because we were always in mourning in my childhood and i associated it with that. i was tired of death. wakes and funerals and hung heads. i am more grounded and peaceful sitting under the big curving tree that sheltered me from the summer shower a couple weeks ago. i’m sitting close to the edge of the pond. little turtle heads poke up from the surface from time to time. i wrote and i wrote and i cried. i called my best friend of 23 years, i told them everything: the school plan thoughts, how my mother is, the whole story of the day with maureen. i was crying and it was hard. but i wasn’t alone. i’ve known r. since we were five. i thought of maureen and diane, friends since 6 years old.

all day yesterday, from early afternoon to 11:30pm as we were at hospice,  i thought about coming home to write through it all. to hold it all, to keep it all, why i don’t know. how i did this in the days immediately after my grandmother’s death, and donna’s. 15 pages, i think, single-spaced, paragraphless stream in lucida handwriting (god why). how, walking the 2 and a half blocks home from school that day, oct 30 2001, with natalia and esther, i felt off, distant, dread. how when we hit the corner of 83rd and 34th, i could see maureen standing in front of grandma’s house and my stomach fell to the floor. i knew. i said, no, i felt myself swirling, sick, drowning. i didn’t wanna cross the street, cross over into whatever was next, as if i could avoid what was already happening, what already happened.

i don’t remember the rest exactly, or i remember things that may have been dramatizations or reenactments, because i have exact visions of scenes i wasn’t there for, my aunt, donna, reclined on the couch sick before they took her to the hospital, monsignor mcguirl upstairs with my grandmother, blessing her. i wasn’t there for these things, they happened in the morning while i was at school. i can’t find what i wrote about it, years later, after the fray of eviction, moving, stuff going missing, etc. i remember i kept the chronicle in a plastic green folder and i would carry it around and re-read it often before it got lost. i guess in order for it all to stay real? like yesterday was unreal. or in order to grieve with myself. that was the thing—the writing of it gave me a place to grieve alone, to not bother anyone, it gave me a place to say everything. and maureen and denise were the ones who held me through grandma’s death, through donna’s, three weeks to the day later on november 20th. my immediate family couldn’t hold me. i was lost with them, i was a ghost. i was their equal. i was alone. i wasn’t alone. everyone, no one. there was me. there was maureen and denise.

when maureen said, as i held her, as i looked at her, “i was surprised to see renée,” as she searched my face and was moving her chapped mouth around, maybe looking for her voice, for something to say, maybe just grimacing or reacting to pain, kinda lightly moaning and humming, her gums and lips kinda pink with dried blood, so chapped. i just held her and asked why she was surprised and she said, “i don’t know. because i haven’t seen you in so long,” and at the time it made me feel so sad, such regret. i could only say “i know, i know.” i held her hand. we held hands, both of them. denise said later when i told her she held my hands that it was really special because it’s hard for her to even gather the strength to do that. it was meaningful. i stroked her back so lightly, would just place my hand on her shoulder, feeling her breathing, feeling her heart. “you’re so good with her,” denise said. i just shrugged, “i love her.” she got restless and said, “i don’t like…” “i need…” and i think she wanted me to move her. so i asked her how, where. her legs. i was honored she trusted me to help her. i asked for denise, but denise said i could do it. we did it together, lifted up her leg, bones, placed pillows between them. i told her i love her so much. i told her i was in red hook the night before, on conover st, “oh you were,” she said. i started telling her about sunny’s bar, but she interrupted me to say who was it just said they were in red hook, she was getting upset that she couldn’t remember, so i asked denise. john and esther, john and esther, i kept saying, trying to assure her because she seemed upset, maybe like she was losing everything.

then i had to move to let diane in, told her i would be back and she said, it’s ok. but i didn’t want to let go of her hands. the glimpses. my name out of her mouth like she always said my name. her beautiful voice.

when i first arrived and first saw her and saw linda touching her and crying, my lips started shaking and i had to walk out, briskly down the hall to the bathroom. tears welling up, but not falling and i felt like i was drowning and i couldn’t breathe and i was pacing around the small cube of the bathroom, and i hit my head against the wall and i slumped down it with my arms over my head, sliding down the wall, helpless. i was dry sobbing and swirling and i looked in the mirror—my lips red and purple and trembling, my chin quivering and that wall of water over my red eyes that wouldn’t break, or only slightly, a few tears. and i remembered all the times in the bathroom at grandma’s as a kid, looking into the mirror and crying, thinking my eyes looked so much more beautiful when i cried, all the hazel variations coming out at once, illuminated. and thinking i looked beautiful now, my eyes and my mouth. i wondered where everyone else was when i was in the bathroom crying alone then, a child.

anyway, maureen dying brings up everyone dying. because we were all there together, she was there and she was so beautifully present and supportive through it all, for everyone, but especially for me. michael, grandma, donna. of course mae, my grandma’s sister, and grandpa, tho i was a toddler. but i remember mae dying. i was her little nurse, i would bring her her pills in the blue pill case and water and i would tuck her in. i always wanted to heal everyone. i had a dream about her the night after she died that i thought was real. i was 3, but i can’t forget it. she came to me. i thought it was a memory, but my mother said it wasn’t, it was a dream. there was an empty gurney in the bedroom, dorothy’s bedroom, that they were caring for her in. there was the sense that she had been in it. but the wind just blew the white sheet around and she wasn’t there, she was released. i saw her in the hallway or i felt her in the hallway, touched by her presence, and i knew she was okay, i could smell her. and i was happy.

and beyond all that got dredged up, all denise and i spoke of about those deaths, what came after, about the trajectory of my specific family system, my aunts and uncles and how and why they are—new illuminations and puzzle pieces on all sides. things i already knew, but just got confirmed by denise. things denise knew, but got confirmed by me. there was all this, all the pain and all the darkness, but there was also the memories of joy and simple sweetness. there was sitting in the hospice room, maureen asleep, tommy and bobby lying back on the other hospital bed, linda and denise and i sitting against the wall, diane sitting next to maureen, all sharing memories of their childhoods and laughing. and it was the weirdest thing, i could see them all as children in those moments, i saw the youngness in their faces, in their smiles, and i was this adult, younger than them, but somehow older in that moment, somehow watching them through time. and it was beautiful and it was strange and it was sad and it was lovely. and i was grateful to be a part of it, i was grateful to know something about them before it all got so ugly and twisted, or maybe even as it was, for them, as with my life. the kernels of beauty and togetherness amidst the suffering, the hardships. and i thought of who we were before, how we were, the togetherness i so valued that was so crushing when we, when they, lost it. gave up on it or destroyed it. and how through all that, maureen and denise were always so present for me. their house was a safe haven for me, nurturing and loving, a respite. how they held me and listened and how they honored me in my fullness—my talents, my deep sensitivity, my grief. the full realities of my life and our family’s life. how it meant a lot to me when denise said in the hallway, “you didn’t get a childhood, you had to grow up too soon,” and tommy was there and he was just quiet. 

i could sense something in him wanted to challenge her on it, but he couldn’t. i also know there’s something that makes it hard for him to challenge me generally. which comes from i don’t know what, respect, or what i’m not sure. but it’s one win for my femmeness over his toxic masculinity. how later, when we were speaking without anyone around she said that even though the way they treated me as an adult, as a therapist, or straight up neglected me/fucked me up, was wrong and inappropriate, i was a gift to them. and it may be hard for me to see it that way, but i have all this material to work from and i can use it to be a gift for other people, too. that i’m a healer. and i was so affirmed in that. and felt seen. and i actually loved being myself, renée, in that space. didn’t want to be anything else, was fully me. some lipstick, some facial hair, obscured breasts, hot pants. just me. i’m not the best example of a trans person out there. i really barely give a shit about anything sometimes because there’s so much else than how i’m seen. it’s so unimportant to me sometimes.

i did think about maureen taking me to see lauren’s lil teen theatre company’s production of west side story, which started up an obsession. i would watch the movie every day and listen to the soundtrack obsessively, as my family fought or negotiated over the house in the background, as everyone unraveled and fell apart. how at the show i told maureen i had a crush on the beautiful boy who played riff. but in my head,too, i wanted to be him. he was probably 16 or 17, i was 13. she was like, “umm… i don’t think he likes girls.” haha, and he came out holding some boy’s hand. which, of course. the first of many beautiful queer boys i couldn’t get anywhere near. and i wanted to be him, but i didn’t know how.  

and maureen, the beautiful young mother, as they called her in our family. she had denise at 18. just, the way she talks, the way she would move her hands. her elegance and her grace. the way she says the word “her,” in that lovely old brooklyn way. her hair and the way she smiles and laughs. the portrait of her when she was young that used to hang in her house that i was obsessed with, wanting to be her, wanting to know her then, wanting to someday be with someone as beautiful and kind as her, but not having words for that or knowing what that meant then. not really knowing what it means now either.

#grief #living #family #lineage #history #trauma #love #friendship #femmes #death #dying #mothers #time #hope #change #transitions

[entropic-introspection]

The thing that makes me really wary about anti-shippers is how much of the rhetoric is couched in terms of ‘morality’

They don’t say it like that, but. Well. Coming from a Roman Catholic background, that’s how a lot of it reads. “You can’t do this because it is bad/wrong.” “If you think about this you are bad and must fix yourself.” Which. Ok. That’s kind of a gross simplification of how a lot of stuff is explained, from racism to sexism to like, pineapple on pizza joking discourse. But there’s this specific component that I can’t put my finger on that comes up, this sort of nudging that keeps happening that it’s your fault that these things are being written, it’s your fault if you read them even if you didn’t know better.

It’s a lot of very, mm, pushy ideology that you cannot do these things, can’t interact with them in any shape or form, or you are bad and wrong. I see where the appeal is in that, because some of these things you think “Why do I even need to tell people this? Shouldn’t they know that it’s bad? They must be consciously choosing to be bad!” For me, that’s incest. It’s my squick, I can’t read it, could barely get through the third arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena even though the show never portrayed it as remotely healthy or acceptable. I don’t understand why people ship it, ever.

But it’s not my business, is it? Since I don’t read incest fics, I don’t know how the authors are handling it. I’ve read trash ships though, nasty abusive relationships. And most of the time? The authors acknowledge that it isn’t a nice ship, don’t write the narration to praise the abuse, are often up to talk to readers about abuse. The major exceptions to this rule are writers who have hundreds of wips and roleplays and other shit going on with that ship, and in those, it’s nasty and bad and sad, so they write something happy to make themselves feel better. And they post it, because it’s their writing and other people like the ship and their writing and guess what, even abusive relationships have happy moments.

The other major exception? Kids. Youngin’s. People who haven’t learned how to unpack all the shit they’ve picked up from the media and family and school, who are trying to explore these new feelings and ideas. And let me tell you, when you come at me immediately with “You cannot ship this because it’s BAD”, my 16 year old self? My baby lesbian self, dipping her toe into feminism, into agnosticism, surrounded by hardcore Christians whose already been reassured that I’m going to hell for some relatively innocent questions? She’s ready to kick back, jerk away, tell you fuck off, because that’s the shit she’s heard her entire life and she knows it’s wrong because if God made her like this then she’s got to be ok, right?

I’m 24 now, and I still have that response, moderated by the knowledge that you’re probably coming from a good place. You want to protect other people, want to make fandom safe. I’m telling you right now, the absolute best way to encourage that? Is to allow for open discussion. I was goddamn desperate for queer media, so I was reading some awful bad shit. *coughJunjouRomanticacough* And when I interacted with different internet communities? Yeah, some people romanticized those ships, loved them for being so bad, but everywhere, there were people quietly reminding you that yes, that was rape. This is not acceptable behavior. People who posted guidelines from places like Planned Parenthood on what abusive relationships are like. People who were friendly, and patient, and actually willing to put in the effort to talk to dumbass kids and adults(!) who didn’t know better. If they did know better? There were long, well-thought out essays on why they’re interested in the ship (as in relationship, not the sense of ‘I believe this pairing should be canon). There were talks on what would make it work as a healthy relationship. There were people, who had been hurt in similar ways, being able to choose to expose themselves to that hurt again, through another character, and unpack that trauma through a distance, through the lens of fiction.

Not people who judged from afar, put a blanket ban on anything to do with the “bad things”, and told us never to talk to anyone who ever did that. You’re treating this like it’s a problem of law, almost, that you have to get enough people to ‘vote’ in your favor so that no one else can do these things, but this is a social issue. You have to approach it with compassion, with the knowledge that each case will be different and probably need a one-on-one approach. You can have large scale campaigns to educate, but goddamn please, do not try blanket banning shit because all I can think of is a very scared 16 year old who never heard that gay was something that might be ok except in that awful, dirty, wrong fanfiction.

#just some discourse thoughts #idk man i am not a Serious Discourser

[silentauroriamthereal]

Every title I could think of was too long, too: Thoughts on series 4 (and 1-3). Johnlock, Mary, Queer baiting, plot holes, how human relationships work, and other things that made me use a lot of caps

All right, folks. It’s 4,500 words long, hahaha. I feel like I just gave birth. Read on, if you dare. 

I’ve started this post about five different times now. Sixth time’s the charm? 

Okay. I have to start with this: I am a Johnlock shipper. A diehard, it-comes-before-everything-else-for-me sort of shipper. That doesn’t give me that most objective of stances, but there it is. Counting my 8 pre-series 3 stories (303,923 words collectively) and my 5 post-series 4 stories (30,526 words collectively so far), I have now written a total, as of yesterday’s fic, of 1,557,772 words of fiction over exactly 70 stories. That means that 1,223,323 words of the fiction I’ve produced over the past three years has been series 3 fix-it fic. Because that’s when the show runners lost me.

It’s a super unpopular opinion. Or was then, at least! What I see, as a writer and a viewer both, is a pattern in both Moffat and Gatiss’ writing of starting off really strongly, then inevitably copping out and taking some kind of easy out that fails to fully resolve what came before it. It fails to realistically deal with the fall-out in terms of human relationships. I watched Doctor Who for awhile, though I was never a huge fan. On Doctor Who, nothing makes sense. The “science” is obviously not meant to be believable. Personally, I always prefer things set in real life with believable plots and storylines. Despite my beginnings in the Harry Potter world, universes that involve magic and similar elements are not usually my first choice. With a large exception for Tolkien’s entire universe. On Doctor Who, you’re not supposed to believe the plot, and that’s good, because it’s impossible to do so. However, when the human relationships also make no sense, I’m out. And they don’t. I was constantly seeing, particularly when Moffat took over as the main writer, things that didn’t make sense in Amy and Rory’s relationship. And the plots, nonsensical as they were, also never panned out, added up, had the impact they should have, and I generally got the feeling that they’d often not been planned through from the start.

I’ve had the same feeling about Sherlock at least since series 3. And in part, they’ve said it themselves. True, they’ve said that they had some things in mind all along, but they’ve also admitted that they didn’t have everything plotted out from the start. I don’t have an article reference for this, but I remember reading once that Gatiss said that they had not planned what to do with the baby after series 3, that they had written her in to amp up the drama for HLV. That says sloppy planning to me, because a baby is not exactly a goldfish. You can’t give it to a neighbour when it becomes inconvenient (though apparently John did little else in series 4). I maintain that it was a bad writing decision. My point, though, is that they didn’t make a plan as to what to do in the longer term. And every series resolution has had this same problem.

Series 1 ending: Sherlock and John have just silently agreed to die together rather than let Moriarty escape them. Sherlock shooting the bomb would take out the entire building, including the snipers above them.

Resolution: Moriarty gets a phone call, changes his mind, shuts down the snipers, and walks out unchallenged. There MAY have been a massive police search for the snipers and Moriarty, but it was never shown. They didn’t seem to think it was important. It was all onto the sexy naked lady. And there was no conversation between Sherlock and John about the fact that they nearly died, that they agreed to do it together, that they agree that the world cannot be compromised with terrorists like Moriarty on the loose. Normal people discuss things like that, major, potentially life-ending events. But they didn’t think it was important to show us any of that.

Series 2 ending: Sherlock is blackmailed into jumping off a nine-storey building in front of John. The collateral was the lives of John, Lestrade, and Mrs Hudson. He jumps and somehow survives. John is seen grieving fiercely. Moriarty is dead.

Resolution: John is never told that he would have died had Moriarty not forced Sherlock’s hand. (You can say things about the blog here, but I consider that only semi-canon and frequently inconsistent with the onscreen canon, so let’s just leave that out of this discussion.) The writers never thought it was important for John to know that: a) Sherlock had no choice. Not if he wanted John to live. John is still, in series 4, blaming Sherlock for his absence. b) He didn’t know that he was going to die if Sherlock didn’t do it, that there was a reason that Sherlock couldn’t tell him he was still alive. Sherlock’s silence was imperative for John’s safety, and Sherlock – as he has always done – put John’s safety above everything else. Literally everything. He didn’t even know for certain that he would survive the jump, but he took the chance because John’s life, and the lives of Mrs Hudson and Lestrade, mean that much to him. John still doesn’t know that, because the writers didn’t think it was important to include that. Not only that, they refused to even confirm that that was actually the definitive method by which Sherlock survived. Sloppy resolution, and disappointing.

Series 3 ending: Sherlock has just killed someone, for the sake of someone who shot him in the heart. Moriarty appears to be alive. John sends Sherlock off un-thanked and refusing to name his child after Sherlock, which considering all that Sherlock has done for him and his killer wife, is a bit low. Also there’s a baby on the way despite nothing pointing to the Watson/Morstan having an ice cube’s hope in hell of surviving. A marriage based on lies, John not even knowing his wife’s real name and preferring to keep it that way, the most reluctant, grudging take-back scene in history, and a piece of seriously inconsistent characterisation for a man who once got himself arrested for having punched someone for insulting Sherlock. Ugh.

Resolution: None whatsoever. The Watson/Morstan union is still on, though the Watson half is obviously very unhappy and actively looking to cheat (also completely inconsistent with his former characterisation). The Morstan part of the union (and believe me, we are coming back to this character with force in a bit) is apparently nothing like her former self, sugar-coated in the worst of ways and apparently still full unrepentant for absolutely everything, starting from any of her criminal past to having shot Sherlock, to having accepted his sacrifice in killing her blackmailer for her, to having lied her ass off to John from the very start, to pushing John aside to come between him and Sherlock, to making him stay at home with the baby while she goes in his place, all while “playfully��� calling Sherlock a pig and comparing John to a dog. The baby is still there and still in the way. Moriarty is apparently still pursuing a posthumous attack scheme. What the ever-living fuck.

Why else they lost me in series 3: because, as I said, I’m a Johnlock shipper. I’ll admit without shame that I’m far more invested in this relationship than I am in the plots themselves. It’s nice when the plot is good. But if this central relationship isn’t working for me, then I don’t give three fucks what happens in the rest of the plot. For me, TST was really bad. I hated it. But TLD was vivisection, if I may. I was never expecting Johnlock to become canon – next point, hang on – but seeing John actively hating Sherlock and beating him half to death when he was already dying (that’s not exaggeration; that’s canon) – not even the hug could redeem that for me. I loved the hug. I would have loved it forty million times more if it hadn’t happened because John was crying about his dead killer wife. I would have loved it even more than that if he’d hugged back. For that reason alone, TFP was preferable for me, just because Sherlock and John were clearly a team again, friends again, happy to be in each other’s presence again. I LOVED that both Sherlock and Mycroft knew instantly, without a word of discussion, that there was no way in hell that Sherlock was ever going to even consider choosing Mycroft above John. John was less clear on that point, but the Holmes brothers both knew that this was concrete, unchanging law, which is completely consistent with literally everything Sherlock has done since TRF. I loved that this wasn’t even a question for him. We’ll get to the rest of the episode.

What I hated about series 3 was that John married someone who isn’t Sherlock. It’s that simple: people were squeeing about the stag night and the dancing behind closed curtains, but at the end of the day, JOHN MARRIED SOMEONE ELSE. This is so far beyond acceptable for me that I felt sick. I was dreading series 3 coming out for the very reason of John’s wedding to Mary Morstan. We hadn’t met Mary yet. I knew that Amanda Abbington, who I knew nothing about other than that she was Martin’s partner, had been cast. I had a friend at the time who argued that they had to cast someone that Martin had strong chemistry with to balance his chemistry with Benedict. I hated that, too. I hated having that chemistry that everyone loves so much challenged. And then HLV took a turn for the better: Mary was exposed as the terrible human being that she is. In a down side, she shot and very nearly killed Sherlock. But his love for John and concern for his safety and knowledge of Mary’s villainy pulled him through and they sat her on her ass and treated her as a client, a client and nothing more. I cheered. And then the writers wrote in a bizarre six-month gap, one in which John was clearly not living with Mary (“months of silence”), and then he made the inexplicable and completely out of character decision to take her back. My heart sank. “But the baby!” you rage-moo, and yes, precisely: the baby. If only there hadn’t been a baby. Personally, I think it’s a disservice to raise a child in a hostile atmosphere, but what do I know. So, I was massively unhappy with series 3, as my 1.2+ million words of ensuing fic might suggest.

One of the worst decisions the writers made, and this is all part, by the way, of my overarching point of how they didn’t make Johnlock canon, was the inclusion of the character of Mary Morstan. They have queer-baited and alternately straight-washed throughout these four series, but this was the ultimate straight-wash: having John ACTUALLY marry someone else. And for me personally, it was just weird seeing that person be Martin’s former actual partner. They had, in an ironic backfiring, zero chemistry onscreen. They had old boring married I-gave-up-and-let-go-ten-years-ago chemistry, and it still didn’t compete with Martin and Benedict’s amazing onscreen chemistry. So we had to watch this thing that they cooked up and shoved down our throats and were told to accept it and believe and love it and defend it. And I just didn’t do any of those things. I hated Mary from the moment she interrupted John’s super reluctant proposal. They wrote nothing that made me believe in their relationship, even had I wanted to forget everything they had already written pointing to a romantic relationship between Sherlock and John. Which I didn’t. They wrote that and sold me and thousands of other people on it, then introduced this third wheel. Amanda promised that Mary would never come between Sherlock and John, but perhaps she should consider shutting her trap and not acting like part of the official PR (not that they’re any better, and I’m still coming to that), because Mary did LITERALLY nothing but come between Sherlock and John.

She immediately inserted herself into their relationship. I blame this partly on Sherlock’s idiotic decision to see John immediately, no matter what he was doing. He assumed, and it frankly should have been a correct assumption, because he was the sun around which John revolved, that John would want to see him no matter what he was in the middle of doing. A bit of bad planning, but if Sherlock is somewhere on the autism spectrum, which people generally assume that he is, then social skills are not his strongest suit. He hadn’t seen the friend he spent two years enduring torture and living on the run to protect and he’d just gotten back. Of COURSE he wanted to see John as soon as possible. And of course John’s reaction was entirely understandable, and entirely predictable. What that scene didn’t need was Mary to further hack away at John’s feeling of insignificance by siding with Sherlock immediately, agreeing that she hated his awful moustache, and ignoring everything her semi-fiancé was going through and stating that she liked Sherlock, as if her opinion had ANY relevance at that point. She inserted herself as their mediator, when they would have gotten there soon enough once John’s temper cooled down. Her pushing at John probably only slowed him down, because John doesn’t respond to pushing. And maybe Mary meant to slow him down. I don’t know. Mary came between them in every way possible. By marrying John, by inserting herself into their duo and pushing John to the side, by fucking up absolutely everything in their lives with her undisclosed past, by shooting Sherlock in the heart rather than dealing with her blackmailer herself and accepting Sherlock’s help. By lying, lying, lying, lying, and more lying. Now there’s a child for them to look after. Now there’s the spectre of John’s failed attempt to love her between them. Her double-faced, lying presence threw off the balance of the show. Her abusive, gaslighting, manipulative behaviour was portrayed as cute and fun and somehow manages to gloss over the canonical reality that Mary was someone who killed people to earn money for herself, showed zero remorse for having done so, zero remorse for her inexplicable decision to try to kill the title character of the show while leaving her blackmailer alive, zero remorse for having attacked her own maid of honour, zero remorse for having lied to John from start to finish, zero gratitude to Sherlock for having saved her from Magnussen, zero remorse for having drugged Sherlock, zero remorse for having left John and the baby behind, zero remorse for having killed that flight attendant and whomever else, zero remorse for having fled John’s side to protect herself as soon as the shooting broke out, zero remorse for having abandoned her teammates without even checking to see if a rescue attempt was possible, leaving them to die or suffer six years of torture, zero remorse for FUCKING ANYTHING except having been caught in her lies. And then she left Sherlock a video telling him to kill himself or get himself killed as a “means to save John” (who wouldn’t have needed saving had he never met her lying ass in the first place!), with no means for John to see said video, and her method failed anyway because John was so racked with guilt over having wanted to or almost cheated on her that he had already made the fucked up choice to displace his guilt onto Sherlock, rendering him incapable of caring whether Sherlock lived or died, in the very worst of his inexplicably out of character actions.

And then the writers credited Mary for having somehow “created” the Holmes/Watson duo, as though they wouldn’t have become what they already were had Mary Fucking Morstan not told them to from one of her posthumous home videos. FUCK THAT SHIT. I have never hated a character as much as I hate Mary Morstan. Her presence on this show ruined it for me.

They could have saved it. They could have, I don’t know, kept her in character in series 4 as the completely terrible human being that she is, played it out to its natural conclusion – have her fake her death to reveal her as one of the nurses who was administering the memory altering drug, who passed Faith Smith’s note on to Eurus Holmes, as part of the whole Eurus/Moriarty/Mary axis of evil. Except that the first two of those people are clinically insane, and Mary is apparently just a quirky narcissist.

All this is to say how and why they lost me as of series 3. For the past three years, I’ve been reading meta (and writing a little, myself) about the romantic coding of the Sherlock/John relationship. It’s ALL there in the show. I never disagreed with that. Let me explain super clearly the ONLY place where I diverged from TJLC: Look, it’s diagram time, courtesy of my shitty Paint skills! 

Let me be super clear: I don’t think that anyone read anything wrong. I don’t blame anyone for having believed that they would make it canon. I’m just saying why I didn’t. We were given conflicting messages. The show said one thing, and the creators said something else – sometimes. I fully agree that they were deliberately misleading. It’s just that I’m a cynic, and I believed the times when they told us what turned out to be the truth. My gut believed it. It wasn’t just the ways in which they said they would never do it, it was how. I saw that that tweet screen cap is going around again, with the person who said they would die if Johnlock didn’t become canon in series 4 and Mark Gatiss responded with “RIP”. It was an incredibly insensitive tweet given that the attack in Orlando had just taken place the previous day. And it wasn’t the first comment of its nature that the writers have made. Mark talks in this video about how “moving” the scene of John taking Mary back is (start just before the 58-minute mark). (Side note: I mis-remembered this as Sue having made this remark, which I’ve said a few times now. Apologies!) It’s said on the Behind the Scenes video for TST that Sue cries every time she sees the Mary death scene. It’s things like this that make me wonder if they’ve been watching the show they actually made, because it really seems like they can’t see their own work accurately. What really put the nail in the coffin for me, though, was what Mark said at San Diego ComicCon last year. He said the following:

“He explicitly says he is not interested. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. I’m a gay man. This is not an issue. But we’ve explicitly said this is not going to happen – there is no game plan – no matter how much we lie about other things, that this show is going to culminate in Martin and Benedict going off into the sunset together. They are not going to do it. And if people want to write whatever they like and have a great time extrapolating that’s absolutely fine. But there is no hidden or exposed agenda. We’re not trying to fuck with people’s heads. Not trying to insult anybody or make any kind of issue out of it, there’s nothing there. It’s just our show and that’s what these characters are like.” (Here)

 He also said in the same article that they were not going to use their show as a platform for representation or other social issues. He said that doing so would ruin the show. These are his exact words:

“Don’t blame us for things that aren’t there. It is infuriating. We get pilloried for these things as if our show – we haven’t even made the thirteenth one yet – has to have the shoulders to bear every single issue and every single campaign point. You can’t do that. It’s our show, they’re our characters, they do what we want them to do, and we don’t have to represent absolutely everything in that ninety minutes. It’s impossible.  And it would kill it. It would be deadly to it.”

Yeah. He said that our seeing Johnlock in what they wrote was “infuriating”. It damned well shouldn’t have been, because they’re the ones who put it there!! I can only assume that it was a deliberate choice to then deny it and leave it out in what certainly felt like their final episode. It would have been SO EASY to put it in. With no “help” from that ridiculous, unnecessary Mary video, all they had to do was add something like Sherlock dropping a kiss on John’s forehead as he passed the baby over. That’s all it would have taken. That’s all anyone could have dreamed of, asked for, hoped for. No one was demanding explicit anal penetration in the sitting room with the married ones looking on from the front door. Just a simple little action like that would have said it all, and been enough to confirm the relationship they’ve written from the start. Or it could have been a quick exchange of dialogue in that montage at the end of TFP. John could have started doing something and Sherlock could have said, “John, you don’t have to do that.” John could have smiled into the camera/mirror and said, “Yes, I do. No flat that I live in is going to have a bison skull with no headphones!” And there we would have at least had explicit confirmation that John moved back in. I’ve always loathed parentlock, personally, but I’d have taken it. I’d have taken it and thanked them for at least just making the ship canon after all. And I’d have eaten every word of doubt about their intentions that I’d ever uttered, too.

I don’t blame anyone for believing. Because they could have done it, and they should have. They should have. And you have every right to feel angry and hurt and cheated that they didn’t. Shame on you, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. Shame on you for the queer-baiting. Shame on you for leading us on. Shame on you for the lazy writing, the sloppy resolutions, the vast array of plot holes and loose threads.

I promised I would also comment on this last episode specifically, so here it is. Don’t hate me for this, but I have to say that, plot holes and lack of Johnlock aside, I liked TFP better than either TST or TLD. You know why? Because Sherlock and John were a team again, and that’s what I live for. John didn’t actively hate Sherlock. He wasn’t an OOC asshole to him the entire time. He didn’t hurt him, physically or emotionally. They were clearly and wonderfully working together from the very start. I loved his exchange with Mycroft at the end of the scene at Mycroft’s (weird, scary) house, the whole “someone gave him the idea that you would only tell the truth if you were basically wetting yourself” and that that person was John, and his candour in telling Mycroft that. I loved that. And what I liked the most about the episode was how, when Sherlock was forced to make a decision between John and Mycroft, both the Holmes brothers knew without one shred of doubt that there was no way that Sherlock would ever, ever, ever choose Mycroft over John. It was unquestioned. In TLD, there was a hug at the end, yeah. But I also had to endure the beating scene, and Mary throughout. The best thing about this series is that Mary is dead. That’s the best thing I can say. Because the rest was a disaster.

The straight-washing with all of the unnecessary Irene inserts. Lady Smallwood and Mycroft, though at least there was a ray of hope for you Mystrade shippers out there at the end. The Molly scene was BRUTAL. And fuck them for what they did with her character, too. LET HER MOVE ON. And behave like a grown woman, too. Ugh. Poor Molly. The plot holes. THE PLOT HOLES. Better people than me have already written lengthy posts outlining them all and this one is already more than long enough, so I won’t detail them all. The Garridebs massacre. That was cruel. I found all of the references pointing to Mycroft as a closet cross-dresser amusing. Taking after Uncle Rudy, indeed, plus the whole Lady Bracknell thing. I actually laughed out loud at that, whereas I didn’t laugh at anything in TST or TLD at all, ever. I think I watched them both with clenched fists. As I said earlier, I frankly don’t really care about the plots, this one included, though I rolled my eyes massively at the thought that Eurus was behind Moriarty. Sigh. I did like Sherlock’s growth and compassion, and I really liked him taking the time to reach out to her through the violin. I like that they put a woman in Sherlock’s life who was important to him as something other than a failed love interest. The violin conversation at the end was beautiful. The Redbeard stuff was utterly horrifying. Insert more ranting about the associated nonsensical, plot-hole-y stuff here. I think I’m starting to run out of steam, lol. I just want to go and write fiction now. I’ve been writing this post for hours and I could say a lot more, but… I think that’s enough.

Bottom line: you weren’t wrong to believe. I didn’t, but I don’t blame you for it. These writers have done the show and its characters and its audience a massive disservice. For me, Mary was the worst thing they inflicted on this show and on the ship, but it wasn’t beyond hope, EVEN in spite of everything else they did to ruin this relationship in the first two episodes of the series. I can’t help but wonder if they denied it out of sheer spite in response to the fan pressure to make it canon, but that would be blaming the victim. I just wonder how spiteful they have to be. I genuinely think that they don’t see this as having been a malicious action, or that they’ve ever considered that what they’ve done qualifies as queer baiting. Obviously it is, but I genuinely wonder about their intentions. I don’t know, but at this point, all that matters is what they actually did.

I’m emotionally exhausted by all of this, but relieved that the series is over, because I was frankly dreading it, apparently for good reasons. At least I know now what I’ll be busy fixing for the next three years, or possibly forever if they never make another series. Mission: accepted. And now my watch begins. As I said the other day, this is why we here in this fandom exist: because the canon will end someday, and after that, their world belongs to us.

#my massively long thoughts #sherlock #queer baiting isn't a joke #johnlock forever #series 4