#I don’t think the produces would’ve pushed them to be TOGETHER per se but it would be the most common roles they’d play regardless | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland · 4 years

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💭- ɟ

Heellooo babies and dear Anons 👋🏼🤗 I’m so sorry for the delay, but I’ve been pretty busy. I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m alive, and as I said I would, even if late I will always answer you. And trust me, I feel so bad for the delay, but I’ve prepared a bonus at the end of the post that I hope will make it up to you 🙏🏼

Now. Without making you wait any longer, let’s move on to the questions Mari sent to me.

I can sure try, dear Anon 🙃 1) Yes, I firmly believe in the theory that Lauren went to Camila right after the concert. 2) Camila ended up in the hospital for the same reasons she’s been there other times too: stress, lack of sleep, dehydration, weariness, and, you know, general weakness because they were overworked. 3) No, she was already gone at that time. That episode was released on November 1, 2014, but was filmed on August 21st in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the ‘Austin Mahone: Live on Tour’. Camren were already official in April 🥳

I really don’t think she was watching porn, dear Anon. I have two theories on this, but neither of them includes porn. Theory number 1, Camila and Lauren arranged to pull a prank on the girls, not giving a damn about the cameraman. They faked those moans to prank DNA. Theory number 2, it was all true (at that age especially, are more the times when hormones control you and not the other way around 🤣) and they didn’t give a damn about the cameraman and anyone else also for an act of rebellion.

The takeover begins with Ally. While Ally talks to ‘us’, Lauren is shown for literally two seconds while she’s on a video call with someone. At 0:04, you can hear her say something like “Hey, it’s okay, baby”, followed by “I wanna do it” at 0:08. Lauren is no longer seen for the rest of the takeover.

The first “Ahh” said by (in my opinion) Camila, happens at 0:50. The way DNA crack up, and Ally’s cheeks that get so red with embarrassment, I find hilariously funny in itself. As well as the teasing made by DNA towards Camila. But Normani… NORMANI KORDEI HAMILTON, guuurl! And do we want to talk about Ally? The “You too with your water” said in THAT way after Camila’s “Have fun with the movie”? Whatcha mean, girl, whatcha mean? 😝🤣

At 2:05, while Camila is eating, Lauren says something like “Gimmie” to her before Mila reaches out her arm to really give her whatever she’s eating. At 3:00, people hear “Keep going”, while I hear “Don’t stop” with a moan, immediately followed then by the other “Ahh”. Lauren, in my opinion. “Ahh” that Mani then repeats at 3:08 to make fun of them. And no, don’t tell me things like ‘but she hit her head’ because if you see the scene in slow motion, at 0.5 speed, you’ll notice that she doesn’t hit it at all and that she said it to imitate them and make Ally laugh. And then, there’s the difference in the “oww” she says at 3:14 when she hurts herself for real, and you can see how different the two verses are.

Whether it was true, or whether it was a prank, for me this is still a big proof. And this big proof, Camila and Lauren didn’t give it to me per se. Ally, Mani, and Dinah did. Why? Well, because all of this does nothing but show how used to hear that kind of thing they were. So used to it, that not only were they comfortable enough (except for having a camera pointed at their face during this time) but that they even teased them.

I don’t know if they didn’t really notice or if they did it on purpose to get more views and likes. I just know that AwesomenessTV no longer has it in their videos, but the Fifth Harmony page does. Same page that was/is managed by whom? By the same people who still want Camren dead but who exploit them when it suits them best. As in this case because views and likes produce money that ends up in their pockets.

Yes, dear anon, I truly believe that.

The funny thing for me is that Lauren called Paul Martinez her first love when she was much younger. But that only after their breakup. At the time, she even believed that they would’ve gotten married. She explained that they’d been best friends before they got together and that he then broke up with her and that she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and that she was able to move on only when she wrote her first song about how she felt about it on September 17, 2011.

The reality of the situation, however, is different. Lauren really fell in love for the first time with Camila. She realized the real difference later. Lauren and Paul were together for not even two months. They were together for literally only 50 days. That one, I mostly define it as a strong infatuation. First experience of a relationship, even if brief, with someone. First time she has experienced the real pain of a breakup and having a broken heart. And at that age, everything seems more and more intensified and even worse than it is. For Lauren who’s an empath, even more so.

So, yeah. I truly believe that both were the first true and intense love of the other. And no, dear. No one has topped that yet. Neither for one, nor for the other 😉

If you don’t mind, dear Anon, I would prefer to answer your questions in reverse and start from the second question first because it connects to the first one. That way, it’s simply easier for me to explain to you what I mean 😄

I don’t think so?! I mean, I’ve never experienced love at first sight. I’m a rational person and who follows logic a lot, therefore, if I were to think to want to shout a serious ‘I LOVE YOU!’ on the face of a person I’ve just met and of whom I know absolutely nothing, I’d feel crazy. How could I think I’m already in love with them? It’s something I would think to be absurd because honestly, what the fuck? I’d think of being definitely delirious.

I know what it’s like to look into a person’s eyes and think ‘wow’. I know what it’s like to look into those same eyes and lose myself in them, and feel myself melt, and getting soft, and feel light, and literally feel a passage of energy through my body that turns into goosebumps.

I know that kind of instinct. An instinct that pushes you towards this person, that pushes you not to let them go. You can’t let them go and you don’t want to. You want to know this person. Right from the start. You want to know their interests, what they like, what music they listen to, and everything in between. It’s something you can’t control. You can try, but it’s impossible and it gets you out of your mind. It’s difficult, weird, and exciting at the same time. And it’s different from the normal attraction. The normal attraction is only physical. This is mental. It comes from your mind but is also guided by something else. Something that after, only after, you understand to be your heart. And what does THAT mean? That you’re starting to fall. And after having really got to know the person better, also feeling esteem for them, after that complicity was created, that passion, that intimate and mental connection, that’s where true love is born.

When you see someone for the first time, and you like that someone, you obviously feel attraction. Love, true love, happens over time. And that’s what I think happened to Camila. I think she felt an immediate attraction as soon as she saw her (2012), which turned into a huge crush (2013), and it started with the fall which in turn blossomed into love (2014). Maybe she didn’t understand this metamorphosis right away. Maybe she has understood this over time and maturing. And the moment that she understood it (ex: Terrified, Must Be Love), was also the moment in which she was able to explain it to us and deliver it to us in different songs. Another striking example that comes to mind now is “Seventeen when I started to fall” 🎵.

It was different for Lauren, but the process was similar. She herself said she found her cute initially. I think that the attraction was born when she started to know her better (2012), and that this was already an alarm bell for her because she didn’t want to. And not because she didn’t want to be attracted to Camila, but because she didn’t want to be attracted to a girl again. One with whom she should’ve spent a lot of time together, by the way. So she tried to keep this attraction at bay. But the more she tried, the more it grew. The more she denied herself the desire, the more she got to knew Camila, and the more attracted she was to her. Then she succumbed to the attraction and simultaneously started to develop a crush, and this threw her for a panic loop even more because she COULD NOT have feelings for a girl. She simply couldn’t. And that’s how the 2013’s back and forth started, the ‘Like Friends Do’ situation that led her to start falling hard and the eventual definite falling in love in 2014.

Good question, dear Anon, a really good question. You see, EL has always puzzled me. In the sense that for quite some time, I didn’t know whether to believe if they were really a friend of theirs, or if it was just a person in the industry who had only worked with them for a certain period of time, or if they were just a fan with a huge luck in guessing certain things.

I think this because many times they’ve contradicted themselves and said very general things that anyone with a good knowledge of the girls and how the industry works could have predicted. I’ll give you some examples. I remember that at first, they said they had a relative in the industry, then they changed and said something like Lauren was one of the most important people in their life. Then they changed again and said they knew a lot about the Camren’s relationship because they were close to them, but that they wouldn’t delve into their private lives out of respect, yet, at the same time, they said about their first kiss and their first time. Um.. like, what?? How does this make any sense? Stick to one version, can’t ya? That alone, already made me doubt their credibility very much.

Another example I can give you is that they said the purpose for the Bad Things music video was to show how straight Camila was and to kill the rumors about her sexuality. But then, they said the video would have hints of her true sexuality and Camren’s too. Um… Again. What?? Not only did they contradict themselves, but they also said something rather generic and predictable. Think about it. If the video was to kill those rumors and straighten her image in the first place, why then would they have agreed to put hints on her sexuality and on something related to Camren? What would have been the point of trying to straighten her image then?? Not to mention that it’s pretty easy to say that we’d find things related to Camren when there are CS who would be able to find something even when there isn’t. Because we know that there were and still are those who find things that are actually completely absurd and non-existent just for the sake of having proofs. So, do you see my point here?

As for who they were, you can rule out most of the industry people who worked with them, and DNA and all people related to them (DNA) for one simple reason: ExposingLaucy was fluent in both English and Spanish. You can rule out Camren because they would never, ever risk being hacked and discovered. And that leaves us to the friends of the Camren’s clique and the fans. Wanna know what makes me think this person was actually a fan? The fact that EL also knew a lot about 1D and that Camila and Lauren’s true friends never got involved in Camren’s world publicly. You’ve never seen Marielle and Sandra or Brittany, Keana, Alexa, and Erica say anything about Camren publicly. They certainly wouldn’t have created an account to expose Laucy when exposing Laucy would’ve meant not helping their friends. And then, come on, they had their own lives to think about.

Now I want you to think about something else too, and I’m gonna take precisely me as an example. In my very first post, ‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel’, I created a little skit during which Shaky misgendered Sam Smith. As we all know, it actually happened in real life just over a month after my post. In my ‘PR stunt relationships’ post, I said I was convinced that Shabby had grown his hair out to look like his obsession for years: Matthew McConaughey. Five days after my post, Chauffeur admitted exactly that and of copying his style in general in the Late Late Show interview.

What does this mean? That I knew all this was going to happen? Hell, no. That I’m a white version of Raven Baxter? Maybe 😎🤣 No, but kidding aside, I just said what I thought of him both times. I only expressed my opinions, and the first time I did it through that skit because my gut had always told me that he’d be the kind of guy to be an insensitive asshole like that. And by the way, I was shocked, surprised, and even a little proud both times because I was actually right. But what’s the point? My point is that I could’ve taken advantage of this from the start. I could’ve pretended to be an insider from my first post and prove to you that I was one for real with these two things that I would’ve told you were ‘proofs’. It would’ve been pretty easy. But I didn’t. I would never have been stupid enough to start something so risky with the risk of being discovered as has happened with many other fans. And I never would have done it especially because that’s not who I am. I don’t need to pretend to be something that I’m not, thank you very much �� I’m more genuine than that.

Unfortunately, though, there are a lot of people who don’t think like me who have and continue to create accounts pretending to be insiders. All of those accounts are nothing more than fans who crave attention. Fans who pretend to be insiders who have information, without ever proving them though, and who say generic things and who sometimes are lucky enough to guess. That’s all. But EL, had something these other fans didn’t have. My best guess? EL was just a Harmonizer lucky enough to have someone from the industry in their (5H) circle, maybe really a relative as they initially said, who sometimes passed information to them.

Because Camila was constantly out there working, dear Anon. You know, interviews, performances, tours, you name it 🙃

I’ve already answered this question, dear Anon. Go check out my ‘🗯️ - ɟ’ post 😄

Yes, dear Anon, they’ve both hurt each other many times, and you can imagine how a parent might feel about seeing their child suffer. I’m not a mom, so I can’t speak from experience in that department, but I can give you another type of example to make you understand and maybe even make you better relate to what I want to tell you.

Imagine having two friends, okay? These two friends, are both your best friends. You care about them in the same equal way. These two friends of yours are together, and every time they fight, they come to you to vent. You unintentionally find yourself in the center of this situation, but not because you get in the way or because you take the side of one of them, but simply because you’re literally the person they go to for venting and to ask for advice. Every time you hear that one of the two has fucked up, you automatically ‘hate them’, in many quotes, for making the other one suffer. Maybe you also try to justify their actions because you know them and love them and you want the two of them to make up, but it’s still automatic for you to feel momentary anger towards them for making your other friend suffer.

Now that you know what I mean, double, triple, even quadruple, that momentary anger because that’s what I think a parent feels. It must not be easy to see your child suffer in general, but to see them suffer for someone you know, who is the cause, must be even harder. Especially in their case that they saw Lauren grow up with their daughter.

Camila’s number one best friend is Sinu. Camila has always told her everything. And Sinu has also always been very present, especially since the beginning of September 2016 when she’s become a permanent presence. Sinu must have seen the developments over the years with her own eyes. And I also think that Sinu and Ale have that kind of relationship where they talk about everything. I don’t know, but I think the Cabellos would have preferred to see her single rather than in that kind of pain in those times of severe toxicity between them. Because those are the periods that Camila refers to in both songs if you notice (I don’t consider First Man in this case).

Don’t get me wrong. I still to this day think Camila and Lauren are considered as daughters by both families. The problem at the time, wasn’t Lauren specifically because I think they would’ve thought it no matter who their daughter was with. And same thing in reverse for Camila for the Jaureguis. Besides, I don’t think the Cabellos consider Lauren a bad person at all, in fact, quite the opposite. The Cabellos love Lauren and the Jaureguis love Camila. It’s always been like this, despite they’ve tried to make us believe otherwise. I think that in those two songs Camila has only blown it out of proportion for the sake of the songs themselves and that’s why it looks more serious than it really is.

I think the answer is in the question itself, dear Anon 😆 Their problems have always been caused by the lack of communication. So they fixed that. They’ve learned to speak for real. To communicate for real and without keeping anything inside. They’ve learned to listen and not bite each other’s heads off. They’ve learned to put pride aside. And they both have set boundaries. They healed each other the same way they broke each other: together. I don’t think they’re 100% there yet, also because no relationship is perfect, but I think they’ve improved a lot compared to before. Or at least, I hope so since mine are just assumptions.

No, dear Anon. I never believed that rumor, and unless a picture of them kissing or something like that gets leaked, I don’t think I ever will. I’m sorry, but that sounds way too ridiculous for me to even think about it 🤷🏻‍♀‍

As for your last question, I believe Ari has already answered it herself in 2019. You remember Monopoly, right? Well, that “I like women and men” made me jump from my chair so high, I don’t know how I didn’t break something when I landed on my feet. I don’t even know how I landed on my feet and not tripped or directly fell to the floor honestly 🤣 “I’ve been on a roll, where you been?” dead, Ari. I died after what you said, okay? I knew about Victoria because she’d already come out, but you hadn’t done it yet so don’t ask me where I’ve been because I’ll tell you where I’m now, and I. Am. Deeeaad! Dead.

Ahh… How I wish our Mila would come out in that same so chill way, you know? Without making too much of a big deal out of it 🤩 But anyway. Ari didn’t want to put a label on herself because she never felt the need to, and I respect that 🙏🏼

BONUS

I call it ‘The truth in the lies’.

I was re-reading some old Camila’s interviews when I came across a particular one that made me literally burst out laughing, shake my head, and say what with them has now become my phrase: “The math… The math”. I’m referring to the interview with BBS News titled: Camila Cabello: ‘An absolute force of nature’, published on December 5, 2019.

I copied and pasted the part that interests us: As soon as the Grammys wrapped up, however, Cabello stepped away from the limelight to concentrate on her second album. “She said, 'I’m not going to come out of the studio until I’ve beaten my last album,’” recalls her manager, Roger Gold. In total, it took eight months, covering a period where “other artists were putting out back-to-back albums, only a few months apart,” he says. “So it was hard for us, and for her, to ignore the noise and go into the studio and take the time she needed.”

I’d like to underline the ‘As soon as the Grammys wrapped up’ part (big ass liar 🙄), and the more important one ‘In total, it took eight months’ (to complete the album). I repeat, 8 MONTHS. And that’s the truth. Okay, are you ready to do the math and for the explanation? Good 😏

The Grammys they were referring to were the Grammy Awards which took place on January 12, 2019. Romance was released on December 6, 2019. From January 12, 2019, to December 6, 2019, it’s 10 months. We already know regardless that this would’ve turned out to be bullshit because Camila started recording the album in September 2018, and not January 2019. But just to prove to you even more how much bullshit they said for this album, I wanted to include it anyway.

Would you like to see another proof with the same date? Okay. Now let’s try from January 12, 2019, to July 12, 2019, which is the PR day in San Francisco. It’s 6 months. You can also move the dates by a few days because it’s logical that Camila wouldn’t have recorded the same night as the Grammys and, according to their stupid narrative, Used to This was recorded right after San Francisco and was the last song recorded for the album. Wanna try, I don’t know, from January 15, 2019, to July 16, 2019? It’s still SIX MONTHS and NOT EIGHT 🤣 Let’s go on.

Let’s try to calculate with the actual recording start date now and not their narrative dates.

We know First Man was the first song recorded for Romance, and we know it was recorded in Nashville. Camila was on tour for Taylor Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour at the time. Two dates that interest us on that tour are the one of September 8th in Kansas City, and the one of September 15th in Indianapolis. Why? Because for those five days in between, from the 9th to the 14th, Camila stayed in Nashville. For the first few days, she worked first with Amy Wadge on First Man, and then in the following ones, with Ed Sheeran on South of the Border, which they finished on September 14th. All you have to do to have a confirmation of this is to check out the video C posted on July 12, 2019, where she’s rehearsing her verse with Ed, and the picture she posted on September 14, 2018, and you’ll notice that she’s wearing the same shirt.

Since First Man was finished either one day or two prior, let’s take the South of the Border date as a reference for good measure. Also because as I showed you before, moving the date by just a few days to do the calculation still leads to the same result.

So let’s try, from September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to December 6, 2019 (Romance album release) it’s 1 year and almost 3 months. Soooo, nope. Next.

From September 14, 2018, to July 12, 2019 (PR in San Francisco) it’s 10 months. 🤣🤣🤣 NEXT.

Come on, Faby, when are you gonna tell us the real date that corresponds to the 8 months? Now, babies, now. And I actually can offer you two.

We know that Camila finished Romance in May, and we had even more confirmation when she posted an Insta-story on June 3rd of a Dropbox folder called CC2 with the album already mastered and more than ready. Wanna try with both a May date and this June date? Okay.

From September 14, 2018, to May 21, 2019, that is, the rehearsals for the Señorita’s music video, it’s 8 months and 7 days exactly.

From September 14, 2018, to June 3, 2019, that is, the IG-story of the Dropbox folder, it’s 8 months and 20 days exactly.

We have our winners, guys 🥳🥳🥳

Let’s recap just because:

From January 12, 2019 (Grammy Awards 2019) to December 6, 2019 (Romance album release) it’s 10 months.

From January 12, 2019 (Grammy Awards 2019) to July 12, 2019 (PR in San Francisco) it’s 6 months.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to December 6, 2019 (Romance album release) it’s 1 year and almost 3 months.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to July 12, 2019 (PR in San Francisco) it’s 10 months.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to May 21, 2019 (Rehearsals for the Señorita’s music video) it’s 8 months and 7 days exactly.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to June 3, 2019 (Dropbox folder) it’s 8 months and 20 days exactly.

Now do you understand why ‘The truth in the lies’? 😏

Aaaaand I’m done 👩🏻‍💻 I hope I made it up to you with this bonus 🤞🏼 Thank you, Mari, and thanks to all of you for your questions, I swear I’m loving them more and more, so please, continue to feel free to send me as many as you want 🤗💪🏼

Remember to be kind, to others and to yourself. Remember to be a good example. Remember to be patient. Stay safe and take care of yourself. I send you lots of love and virtual hugs 🤗🤗🤗 Oh and, of course, keep shipping our submarine 🤣 I love you, babies. Always with love, F ❤️

___

Ten answers for ten anons, that’s a lot of writing to do. Great work, F

#submission #f anon #anon #answers #long ass post #10 x 10

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spiders-hth-is-an-outlier · 4 years

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Okay start us out with those Magicians Opinions!

the first character i ever fell in love with: LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT QUENTIN COLDWATER. Okay, but yeah, they really introduced him in a way that worked-worked for me – that whole opening sequence that cuts between Quentin being tense and closed-off and miserable in this hollow, almost angry way in the office of the hospital, and Quentin trying to act normal at a party, making wan jokes while the misery and the anger leaks out of him and makes him just so unpalatable to be around – I mean, Jason Ralph just takes the character by the throat instantly and Goes There. I remember thinking as I was watching it that this was the first “anxious nerd dude” character I'd ever seen who wasn't being framed as actually funny/weird/charming/vulnerable/the clear audience stand-in, but framed as if he were a real person who's really eaten up by depression and self-loathing, and just as off-putting as that is in real life. I vividly remember just having that reaction of, “Oh. This is about someone who's really hanging on by his fingernails, not just Hollywood Depressed,” and latching on so hard, because I needed to see that so much, and I needed to root for him to find his reason, not in spite of but because as a character he was resistant to being liked by other people, by the audience. It's not loveable and charming, to hate yourself, to find your life barely tolerable. It's not a position from which it's easy to see your way forward, and to me Quentin is the most honest expression of that reality that I had ever seen in genre tv. So like, I get why some people didn't like him in first season – he's intentionally tough to like – but I was ultra-invested from minute one, and literally everything he ever said or did made me love him more.

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: I think I was kind of intrigued by Fen early on – I liked the idea that she was this naive fairy-tale girl who was going to have this harsh awakening when her Destined Prince turned out to be a real person who couldn't fulfill her fantasies, who was going to have to figure out who she was beyond “going to marry the king someday.” That seemed like an interesting arc, and here and there they were kind of doing it – I love the realpolitik she occasionally comes out with, particularly that one scene on the boat when she's like, “The dipshits from my hometown are going to execute me because of you, so sticking with you is kind of my only option and that's just happening.” But then...I don't know, she's really irritating, and they got this weird thing in their heads where her problem is that Eliot sucks, instead of that being The Girl Who Will Marry the King Someday is a sucky role to be forced into making a real life out of, and I just gave up trying to like her eventually.

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: I liked Penny/Kady all right, until they started doing the weird thing where “in Doomed Love with Penny” was Kady's only emotional arc, like – they actually had her say that all she ever cared about was being Penny's girlfriend, and that's the kind of thing that kind of retroactively ruins the pairing for me.

my ultimate favorite character™: So after everything I said up top – it's actually Eliot. That snuck up on me! And my love for Quentin never went away, not by any means, but. God, Eliot.

prettiest character: If I try to take an objective stance, I'd say it's probably Margo? Like, she's just unearthly beautiful. But there's something about Jason Ralph's goddamn face that – I don't know, it just enthralls me; he does okay-ish at playing Normal-Looking for TV, but also if I look at him for too long it kind of hurts, he's so stupidly gorgeous.

my most hated character: Hyman. And I thought we were supposed to hate Hyman, but then season 5 allegedly happened, and everyone was like, aw, Hyman's okay! But – no he's not? He's obviously not okay? He deeply sucks? Ugh, season 5.

my OTP: Hi, I'm Milo, and welcome to my Tumblr. But yeah, it's Quentin/Eliot, canonical soulmates and The Ditch I Will Die In.

my NOTP: You know, they kind of wore me down to the point of “fine, what the fuck ever,” but I still don't support Margo/Josh. It's bad, it's a bad relationship, it was a bad idea.

favorite episode: I really love Be the Penny, but the actual answer is Escape From the Happy Place. I feel allegiance to Be the Penny, I have not a negative word to say about it, but Escape from the Happy Place is just a level beyond, it's astonishingly good.

saddest death: This question is a microaggression and I will not stand for it.

favorite season: I'm about to break your brain, but – it's 4! It's season 4! I fucking love the first ten episodes of s4! I love the Monster, I love Bad News Bear, I love Hard Glossy Armor, I love fucking Santa Claus. I think s4 has this great propulsive energy where the rest of the series has always been plagued by a tendency to kind of throw everything at the wall and see if anything sticks, the stakes are clear, the external villain and the emotional stuff work together for once, everyone's performances are so strong. The collapse at the end feels so appalling to me in part because I was totally on the ride for most of the season.

least favorite season: I mean, it's season 5, but it didn't have to be. I was never going to get over Quentin's death, per se, but I think there were ways to structure the next season that would've been workable, and honestly there are things about s5 that I do like. I watched most of 5 feeling like it was – messy, but messy in the same way that s2 was messy, the same way The Magicians has always been a little messy, and it wasn't until the end when I really just threw up my hands and was like, okay, I get it, there was never a plan, none of this was going anywhere. God, the last couple of episodes still frustrate me so much, because right up until that point, there was still time to salvage a lot of character work, but nope!

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: So I don't hate her, and in fact I came to kind of like her eventually, but I did actively hate Julia for a long, long time. Just. Like, she really – pushes my buttons in a very specific way, and if she were a real person I would absolutely love myself by having as little contact as possible with Julia, but because everyone except me loves her so much, I really kind of forced myself to delve into her and try to see what people liked about her, and I do think it was a pretty successful project. I would definitely say at this point that I appreciate Julia as a character, and I have a pretty good sense of what Stuff she activates in me that produces that ruffled reaction, which has allowed me to go beyond Julia Sucks Actually to This Character Is Not Really For Me. I love and support the 98% of fandom who like Julia! In my way, I love and support Julia! But kind of like – a sibling you're sort of forced to into a relationship with, that you love even though they drive you crazy and you're not too sure you will really ever like them.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: The Monster. I mean, it's not that I wanted a redemption arc for him or anything (although @portraitofemmy has always been onto something with the idea that if the Monster is essentially a child, allowing Quentin to save the world by parenting him would've been a pretty clever payoff for long-term arcs), he's just the kind of villain that is just endlessly fun to watch.

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: I mean, that's a pretty succinct summary of the entire Eliot Waugh Experience.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: With the caveat that I still don't believe in guilt because these are just imaginary people in imaginary stories, I definitely still think there's a great romantic tragedy right there for the taking with Eliot/Seb. I wouldn't say the show should have done it, because that would obviously have been just a very different direction than they intended to go, but as a non-canonical ship, I think it's so potentially rich, and someday I'm going to have time to go back to that story I was writing about them, whether or not anyone else ever gives a shit about it.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: I never could figure out what people's issue was with Julia/Penny23, they seemed to make each other happy. He was a sweet, supportive dude, and I like their little Wild Thornberrys Interdimensional Adventurers family at the end, although I wish they'd done it on purpose, because “guess what life-changing thing is happening to Julia's body without her consent this week!” was not a well the writers needed to go back to, in my opinion. But I like the idea that Julia ends up with a good guy and a magic kid and is off doing quests and shit, the whole shebang, I thought that was a nice ending. For whatever that's worth, and I imagine that from the perspective of a real Julia fan, my opinion at this point is not worth much!

#the magicians

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friendlyneighborhoodsecretary · 3 years

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3. Prompt: Gardening

By his third day of hiding out at the lakehouse post-Beck, Peter had run out of distractions. Going anywhere near his phone or the TV was out of the question. He couldn't concentrate well enough to do any of the suit tinkering or web fluid adjustments he would usually have fallen back on. He'd already made the rounds of the house, fixing the little leaks and squeaks and anything else he could mindlessly turn a wrench to (not that there were many in a Stark-built home). And there were only so many times a person could take a stroll around the same lake and skip the same stones and swing their legs off the same dock before they went thoroughly and irreversibly insane. He was all but vibrating with restless nerves. And being cooped up out here, where the silence of the woods pressed in on him like dungeon walls and the empty hours yawned ahead of him like a life sentence, wasn’t making it any easier.

By the time Pepper found him after lunch on the third day, he was dangling upside down from the eaves, absently shifting from foot to foot and counting the seconds to see how long it took before he fell. It was possible, Peter realized as he dropped sheepishly back down to the floorboards—just possible—that he might have already slipped over the edge.

“Trust me—I’ve seen worse.” Pepper hadn’t even batted an eye as she brushed off his sputtered explanations. She’d just gathered up the sunhats and the neat bundle of work gloves from the shelf by the door and towed him through the back door with the practiced efficiency of someone who was used to managing chaos before it tipped over into calamity. "Come with me.”

He trailed her reluctantly around the side of the house to the neat rows of raised beds that housed Pepper's garden. Carefully-staked tomato plants here, the scraggly foliage of carrot tops there, lines of squat goji bushes in one bed and the small round buds of new lettuces in another—there were a few things he could identify, but many more that were just...green. Green and vibrant and robust, leaves gently rustling in the hot July breeze and produce of varying sizes and shapes ripening in the sun. He was pulled from his inspection by Pepper pushing a pair of the gardening gloves into his hands and dropping a broad-brimmed sunhat over his eyes (“Yes, I know you’re superhuman, but I don’t think skin cancer discriminates like that”). There was a brief summary of which greens were intentional and which were intrusive, a deft demonstration of proper weed-yanking technique, and then Peter was shepherded to a row of carrots for practice. Pepper settled in amongst an adjacent patch of lettuce and left him to the job. For a moment, he just sat there, the grass prickling against his knees and the sweat beginning to bead up under the heavy gloves as he brooded. Gardening. What was he doing puttering around in the Starks’ backyard, gardening, while his actual life imploded out there in the real world? At least Pepper had earned the break—he caught snatches of her phone calls to the legal team, to the publicists, to all the people who were actually doing something about the mess he was in, and the reality that he wasn’t one of them stung every time.

Peter stared out over the sea of bobbing leaves and sighed. Still, if it wasn’t gardening, what else would it be? More waiting and wondering and wearing new tennis shoe trails in the track around the lake? One was about as productive as the other. Peter squared his shoulders and bent to the task in front of him. If he was going to lose his mind out in the wilderness, he might as well be helpful while he was doing it.

As it turned out after half of an hour’s worth of work, there was something weirdly soothing about kneeling in the dirt and burying yourself in the process of pinpointing what stayed and what went. In the careful concentration it took to yank up a stubborn weed without uprooting anything good that happened to be growing near it. In the calming repetition of pinching off a dead leaf here or a damaged stalk there. There were ladybugs crawling lazily along the stems, occasionally bumping against Peter’s fingertips a few times before they grudgingly redirected around him, and a few birds hopping cautiously along the rim of the beds, mining for unlucky creepy crawlies. It was a steady rhythm of activity—just enough of it to keep Peter’s mind from straying too far beyond the next bunch of nettles to dig out—with a refreshingly comfortable lack of pressure or tension.

Pepper didn't say much, but the silent companionship was…nice. In a way, it was soothing, too. Or, at the very least, a relief from May's fretting and Happy's hovering—not that there was anything wrong with either of those, per se, but when it was all you had day in and day out, it began to smother you alive. The summer sun beat down on his back, the breeze swept lazily across his brow, and for a while, time ceased to exist. There was nothing but the black earth under his hands and the scent of topsoil in his lungs and the steady cycle of the job.

"I started planting things a few months after we moved out here," Pepper said quietly, a solid hour into their work. "Not much at first—just enough to give us a reason to be out in the light rather than holing up inside."

"Us? Mr. Stark helped?" It was an odd image—Peter had always had trouble imagining Tony out in the country at all, let alone elbow-deep in a tangle of zucchini plants or hauling buckets of fertilizer. But then, most of life these days was odd—Tony was recovering from saving the literal universe with a snap of his fingers, Pepper was flicking aphids off of her tomato plants, and Peter felt increasingly more like he was just along for the ride.

Pepper’s mouth twisted in a wry grimace.

"I'm not sure 'help' is the right word given how some of those first few plants fared, but yes, he did pitch in. Under duress, sometimes, but it grew on him.” Peter let out an obligatory snort at the pun, and Pepper forged on, the faint smirk on her lips the only indication that she’d meant it as one. “I saw a quote once—a very, very cheesy Pinterest sort of thing—about planting a garden being an act of belief in having a tomorrow. And back then, right after the Blip, we needed any hope for tomorrow we could find. Or cultivate, as the case may be.”

“It was a good way to refocus. To step back and take a break from trying to put the world back together.” Pepper shot him a pointed look over the carrot tops, and Peter pointedly ignored it. “It was a good distraction, too. I think Tony spent at least five or six hours a day out here during the weeks before Morgan was born, when all we could do was wait for something to happen.”

Peter paused in chucking a handful of weedy foliage at the compost-bound pile that had sprung up between them. The relentless urge to find something, anything helpful to do had eased a little, but it was far from gone. He pursed his lips as he finally turned back to uproot another fistful.

"I just—I wish there was something I could do besides waiting out here. I mean, everything that’s happening is all my fault, but you're the one who's having to fix it and I know it has to be costing you an awful lot and—"

Pepper tipped her sunhat back to level him with a long, hard look that reminded him forcefully of May when she was gently, but firmly pointing out the obvious facts of life, such as "the homework won't do itself" or "the laundry will not make its way from the dryer to your room by magic" or “that Red Bull won’t give you actual wings, so you’d better not expect gravity to give you preferential treatment.”

"Peter. There isn't a single person in this house who wouldn't spend their last dime on making sure you get through this okay. And believe me when I say that we've got a long, long way to go before we even need to start worrying about burning through Stark Industries' supply of dimes."

Peter opened his mouth, a dozen arguments about his opinion of throwing other people’s money at his problems, about sitting on the sidelines while everyone else did the work, about running from the consequences of his own blunders all welling up on the tip of his tongue. Pepper cut them off.

“You’ll have your work cut out for you in a few weeks, when things have settled a little more and there are fewer people agitating to have you arrested. When that happens, we’ll all work on fixing this together. Until then…try to take advantage of the rest.” Her voice softened. “I know it isn’t easy, Peter. But you’re wrong about it being your fault—and it certainly isn’t your sole responsibility to fix. You’ve got a lot of people on your team.” She coaxed the last tendrils of unwanted clover from her last row and rocked back on her heels. “And a whole lot of tomorrow to believe in. Even if it isn’t exactly what you were envisioning it would be a few weeks ago.”

"Thanks,” Peter murmured. It would’ve sounded trite from anyone else, but from Pepper—Pepper, whose practicality rivaled May’s and whose honesty could rival Happy’s (just in a more polished, less aggressively blunt way)—he could almost believe it. “Not just for this, but you know—for everything."

"Any time, kid.” Pepper shucked her gloves and brushed the dirt from her knees as she stood. She left him to it with a squeeze of his shoulder and an unshakably reassuring smile that Peter would hold onto for a long time to come. He stayed out in the green until the breeze blowing in off the lake had turned cool, and the twilight had started creeping in among the shadows of the pines. There was still a knot of unease in his chest when he finally meandered inside, but it was…smaller. More manageable. The driving restlessness of that morning had been driven out by the bone-deep exhaustion of a long afternoon in the heat and the distinctive tingle of a rising sunburn. It took a solid ten minutes to scrub the grit from his palms and the dirt from under his fingernails, but for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he didn't feel like he'd completely wasted his day. He stumbled through a hazy shower and an even hazier dinner before he fell into bed. And for the first time since he'd arrived, sleep came without a fight. For the first time since he’d arrived, he was too tired to dread it. And while he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe in tomorrow…he didn’t dread the idea of meeting it, either.

#my fic #mcu spiderman #peter parker #pepper potts #post-ffh #swing into summer

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