#I’m just baffled by her reaction in this particular instance

[parasite-core]

Shadowheart was so mad at Addy over finding out he was the one who started the cult of the Absolute, and for him not telling them. Even though Addy didn’t know before just then either. And they all know he has amnesia and he made no secret of this being a surprise to him while talking to Gortash.

Shadowheart, my girl, *you* have amnesia, have a little empathy.

[just-a-tired-fangirl]

Alright ya’ll buckle up, because I think me and my sister just solved Sanders Sides.

The idea stemmed from a comment that one of my sister’s friends made regarding her deceit christmas sweater. This friend had never seen the show before and after my sister explained the concept of the show to her, she asked if the side on her sweater was envy. My sister obviously corrected her and said that the side was Deceit, but she thought it was super strange how that was the first thing the friend came up with. Apparently it was the two headed snake that led her to pick envy.

So this made us think that if Deceit could also represent envy, then maybe the other sides could also encompass one of the seven deadly sins. The sin is not their main function, but each side has a sin that they are in control of. This theory also solidifies the orange side theory as there are seven deadly sins, and with six sides, that would mean we only have one sin left. It’s also fair to mention that the show itself goes out of its way to talk about the seven deadly sins in DWIT, and the show rarely does things without a purpose. So here’s our big, seven deadly sins theory on the show.

💛Deceit and envy:

Envy is defined as a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of someone else. Basically jealously towards what someone has that you do not. Interestingly enough, we’ve already seen Deceit display envy on multiple occasions. Throughout SvsS Deceit is baffled that Thomas is allowing his friends to be happy and have their special day, while letting himself suffer. Deceit feels envious of Thomas’ friends and the joy that they’ll be having on their wedding day. Not only this but, Deceit has also been established as containing a lot of Thomas’ selfish desires, and it goes without saying that envy is a faily selfish sin.

There are also many places where it can be assumed that Deceit feels envy. He is envious towards the light sides and how easily thomas accepts them. He is envious of Patton, not only because of how much Thomas loves him, but how much more Virgil loves him that he loved Deceit. He could also be envious of Virgil for leaving the dark sides and getting what Deceit wants most, acceptance from Thomas. I believe that Deceits arc is where his envy will truly shine.

❤️Roman and greed:

Roman’s connection to his sin is fairly interesting as he, out of all the sides, does the best job ignoring it. Roman is clearly greedy and wants what he desires, but he seems to push away the greed in order to appease not only Thomas, but also Patton. Roman could have easily been greedy and pushed Thomas to go to the callback in SvsS, but he didnt, instead hiding his deepest desires. While doing this obviously made patton feel a lot happier, it also leaves open a door for Roman’s much anticipated arc.

Unfortunatly for Roman, a lot of his desires are impossible to accheive. He is creativity and imagination after all, so he could really want something that is simply too unrealistic to have. For example, in Dealing with a Breakup, Roman clearly wants to get back together with Thomas’ ex, but everyone knows that something like that is unrealistic. In almost every case that Roman shows greed, he pushes it down and ignores it. All of this build up is leading to an arc where he deals with his greedy thoughts and possibly learns that sometimes, its okay to be greedy.

💚Remus and lust:

Honestly, I don’t really feel like I have to explain this one. So far Remus has been the only side to show any sexual character traits, so he would clearly also carry the sin of lust with him.

💜Virgil and sloth:

This one I’m super excited about because it makes a ton of sense. Anyone with anxiety would know that it keeps you from doing a lot of things that you really want to do. Have a social event to go to? Nope. How about we stay home instead and watch youtube. I’m sure a lot of you can relate. This same interaction is literally the entire basis of the newest Asides episode. Virgil is anxious about going to the party with the friend they fought with, so Thomas stays home and sits on the couch watching movies the whole night. Logan even goes as far as mentioning something along the lines of “Do you know how many times we worry about a decision over and over again until its too late for Thomas to change his mind?” Practically calling virgil out.

Apart from this, its also fair to mention that Virgil talks constantly about how he’s lazy and doesn’t like to work hard.

💙Patton and gluttony:

All right Patton time! So, out of all the sins, Patton clearly represents gluttony. One of the only sides to mention food (except for obviously logan and Crofters) is Patton. Whether is pizza or cookies, Patton clearly loves food. He encourages Thomas to eat whatever he wants because he believes that Thomas deserves it. That’s ones obvious with the whole “second cookie” line and also the “when your an adult, you can eat whatever you want!” line.

Even Patton’s gift for Roman in the christmas episode is food! A container of spaghetti. Not to mention that pattons christmas scarf also has milk and cookies and it. Basically patton is just surrounded by food imagery and its hard to see him having any other sin.

🖤Logan and Pride:

Logan is another side where his sin is leading him up to his arc. While a lot of people assume that Roman is pride, I think it makes much more sense as Logan and here’s why. Having pride in your work and the things that you create is almost never a bad thing. You should be proud of those things. But being too proud of yourself and your capabilities can get a bit dangerous. Logan has shown time and time again that he believes he’s the smartest and most important of Thomas’ sides. Saying things like “I’m the most important side here” or “I know I’m smarter than everyone else” or “I can usually solve problems on my own”. All of these show that Logan had a huge ego and a whole lot of pride.

Not only this, but Thomas recently built up this pride by complimenting Logan at the end of DWIT. Something that logan immediately let get to his head in the Asides episode. We all remember “Just your cool teacher being his cool self”. Logan’s whole character is built apon maintaining his pride and his image. He refuses to admit that he has feeling or show any weakness and he is too prideful in himself. This is where Logan’s arc is eventually going to take him.

🧡Orange and Wrath:

So that of course leaves us with one sin, wrath. I think that a lot of fans have speculated that wrath would be the next side, but with this theory, wrath would simply be one part of the sides personality. In each of the other sides, their sin is a small part of a whole. So with this logic, the next side would not be entirely wrathful, but would sometimes exhibit wrathful behavior or desires. Me and my sister, unfortunately couldn’t come up with one set-in-stone name for this character, but we were able to determine a lot of his charcteristics based on the context of the show.

Each dark side has been hinted at or forshadowed before he was revealed. For Deceit, thomas says something along the lines of “Lying is wrong, and thats a side of myself I would rather not feed into”. Remus has quite a few forshadowings. At one point, Roman says “and hopefully not thoughts of your naked aunt patty!” Which him and thomas then proceeds to be disturbed by. Remus is also forshadowed when Logan brings up being beheaded on A roller coaster. He’s even forshadowed right before he’s revealed in DWIT when Roman says “fishier than the crackens crack” and Patton reacts a little disgusted.

So we looked for instances where orange could have possibly been forshadowed and we found two moments in particular. The one obvious example is when Logan throws the balled up paper at Romans eye in LNTAO. The way in which the scene is filmed and logans remark “I don’t know where that came from” make this scene out to be very important. Not only this, but logans remark is the exact same one that Roman makes after the aunt patty naked quote. So this would then go to show that the next side contains a lot of frustration and build up anger and rage.

Another example of forshadowing is in the aSides episode. Virgil explains the encounter that Thomas had with his friend. Clearly Thomas was very angry and upset with this friend for his past homophobic views. He lashed out in a way that couldnt be encompassed by any of the sides other than orange. We’ve never seen one of the other sides angry like this before (except for the forshadowing with logan) so it has to be the last side. Thomas even responds to his friends “your behavior is unacceptable” with the snarky remark “oh yeah, like me being with a man is unacceptable?” Which is so out of character for any of the current sides to say. It’s also very curious to note that virgil is extremely anxious about the encounter. Virgil has shown in the past that his reactions to the dark sides are very intense, and I would feel comfortable saying that this is the most intense anxious reaction we’ve seen from virgil as of yet. With all that said, this encounter shows orange’s ability to hold a grudge and resentment or hatred for another person. While this doesnt show him being wrathful, or seeking vengence, it’s fairly easy to see how such hatred and grudginess could lead to him seeking revenge in the future.

Okay, wow! That took a really long time to write out... Please let me know your thoughts in the comments, or if you have anything else to add to the theory! I really appreciate if you made it through that whole thing, because I know I probably rambled quite a bit.

[diazpoems]

Me watching Riverdale S2:

THE WAY KEVIN IS RAISING HIS HAND TO THE MOTHERFUCKING SKY WHEN HIRAM ASKS FOR A VOLUNTEER FOR A WRESTLING DEMONSTRATION. THIS THIRSTY MOTHERFUCKER. HIS FACE IS PRICELESS.

I wish I could just jump into Riverdale and shake the characters and be like

Cheryl: Your parents fucking suck

Josie: Your parents fucking suck

Veronica: Your parents fucking suck

Betty: Your parents fucking suck

Archie: Your dads okay so far, I don’t know about your mom

Jughead: Your dad used to fucking suck but as a person, at his core, I don’t think he’s evil, and he’s getting better, but he’s got a ways to learn. I don’t know about your mom

Kevin: Your dad’s decent so far? Don’t know about your mom

Like especially Josie because I know it’s hard and that a lot of the trauma her mom felt probably manifested itself badly and Josie probably feels attached to her mom and like she owes her being a good daughter because her mom’s had it bad but like I also DON’T CARE. FUCKING TREAT YOUR CHILD RIGHT. I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT HAPPENED. THATS YOUR CHILD. WOMAN UP AND BE A FUCKING DECENT PERSON. I DON’T CARE THAT YOU PUT A ROOF OVER HER HEAD, FOOD IN HER MOUTH, GAVE HER A SINGING CAREER (But continue to control it and not give her leeway to think and act on her own). SHE DON’T OWE YOU SHIT. FUCK OFF WITH YOUR WEIRD LIFE-FUCKING-SUCKED-FOR-ME-BUT-IM-ALSO-A-CLASSIST-BITCH PARADOX. MY DAD’S GOT IT MADE RIGHT NOW BUT HE HASN’T FORGOTTEN HIS ROOTS, HASN’T FORGOTTEN THE DISCRIMINATION HE FACED AND THE FACT THAT HE GREW UP SHIT POOR EARLY ON AND HE HASN’T DECIDED “Hey, let’s ridicule people for being in a similar position that I was in!”

Basically, this is me begging for for Josie’s mom to ✨fucking do better✨

Anyways yeah normalize Riverdale characters disowning their own parents ✌🏽🥰

Hmmm. If I wasn’t completely and utterly for the Serpents before, the white serpents learning to shut the fuck up and stand with Toni and her grandfather in opposition of the genocide and colonialism that was perpetrated by Cheryl’s great great grandfather? Hell fucking yeah

Dude I’m sorta crying at the scene with Hiram seeing Veronica in her confirmation dress because he’s a piece of shit but this is how it goes down, like it’s a whole thing

I love that I immediately knew the meaning of “Catholic chic”. Apparently that’s all going to church every Sunday for the formative years of my life accomplished

I hope Penelope Blossom dies in a fire :)

OH MY GOD, LOVE SIMON CAME OUT RIGHT AROUND HERE, KEVIN IS ASKING MOOSE TO IT, MY COMFORT MOVIE OH MY GOD-

Ugh, I don’t trust Midge. Something about the tropey-ness of her being The Girlfriend™️ and her face, as well as the fact that she played Gen in tatbilb, something doesn’t sit right. The haircut feels too manic pixie, like she’s hiding something. Bad vibes

NOOO CHERYL ILL GO ON A VACATION WITH YOU 😭 GOD IM SO GONE FOR HER

Aaaaand she did some fuck shit. Aaaand Toni is pretty. Aaaand there’s the internalized homophobia.

Jughead saying that growing up Betty’s and Archie’s windows being parallel always bothered him sounds more like a jarchie admission than a bughead one, I’m just sayin’

BETTY AND JUGHEAD’S REACTIONS WHEN THEY HEAR THE BED SQUEAKING IS ME. Like the little amused but lowkey confused and baffled expression on his face as he’s like “is that their solution to everything? Can’t they ever just talk?” Like no apparently not. Me too Jug, me too-

Idk Vee, maybe he’s asking questions about your father’s line of work and the business of his associates because your dad and mom are fucking evil

What the fuck Veronica. I mean yay because that just gets us closer to Jarchie kiss but like what the fuck Vee. Also Jughead is super cute, like why does the blue eyes black hair thing absolutely melt my weak heart, like I didn’t choose to fall for this pasty ass white boy but here we are. Also Veronica’s eyes are really big and dark and pretty like girl help im falling for these two-

BETTY LITERALLY POINTED IT OUT, C’MON NOW CW, I KNOW WE’VE MADE THE MISTAKE OF GROVELING WITH SPN BUT PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU WE NEED A JARCHIE KISS-

CAN HETEROSEXUALS PLEASE STOP FUCKING ALL THE TIME ON TV. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO SHOVE YOUR STRAIGHTNESS IN MY FACE. NOT EVERYONE IS STRAIGHT YOU KNOW.

“Entertain Jughead” 😏

DUDE. They were sitting ALONE. TOGETHER. In the WOODS. With them being the ONLY ones who haven’t kissed. DUDE.

C’MON MAN, THEY’RE STARING FUCKING LONGINGLY AT EACH OTHER

If there are weird gay ships for straights then Jeronica is the weird straight ship for gays

Ok so is there a legitimate reason why Veronica is faithful to her parents and defends them to a tee and partakes in their mob shit or is she just daddy’s little fucking girl. Like it isn’t her fault that she’s been manipulated but it pisses me the fuck off. And people who want her to stay with her parents because supposedly they’re the only ones who love her even though it’s toxic and warped? Like do you have a brain?

Archie and Veronica really love supporting gentrification, classism, and Vee’s rich daddy and mommy’s innocence huh

Look i actually agree with Reggie for once, get Hiram’s ass, deal with it Veronica

Wow, nice, shaming Jug for eating. That’s cool, Arch. That’s awesome. And no Betty, she doesn’t have everybody’s vote. Because Veronica’s parents are motherfuckers and when it comes to choosing between a murderer/abuser/rich/classist/gentrifying fuck and supporting your bestie uwu guess which one im fucking picking. Also, THANK YOU JUG for explaining to your friend that even though he lives in a fantasy land where northside Riverdale is the only one worth referring to when talking about Riverdale at all and thus the only one that matters and is worth protecting, the southside exists and people live and have grown up in the southside and building a prison there where it will be even more easy to profile and incarcerate southside residents under false or exaggerated pretenses ISN’T A GOOD THING. That his own friend isn’t quite apart of his and Veronica’s and Betty’s socioeconomic caste and that he’s not going to pretend like he is, he isn’t going to be quiet about it just because you’re friends again. That he’s not going to lay down and let Archie explain what a good move for Riverdale is when he clearly means northside riverdale, let him explain how the southside needs to be dealt with to someone who grew up on the southside and knows it more (not the most, I’m not saying Jug isn’t out of his depth with certain aspects of being a full southsider) intricately than him. LIKE FUCK. ARCHIE. WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TALKING TO. Like he just doesn’t get why building prisons and stereotyping and condemning all southsiders and gentrifying entire neighborhoods is really fucking bad and a big deal and it annoys me so much. Like yeah Arch, obviously you don’t see the big deal because it doesn’t affect you and you delude yourself that it doesn’t affect your friend either, but it actually is that bad.

In conclusion, Archie and Veronica and sometimes Betty are giving me headaches rn. Like I’m not saying Jughead is perfect at all but in this particular instance he’s the only one I agree with for the most part right now.

Yeah Arch, you see things differently because you’re not the one who’s on the receiving end of the problem

YES MOMMA ANDREWS. SNAP! GO FERAL! SHOW THAT SOB SOME CONSEQUENCES!

Ah, so this is the jarchie “break-up” scene. You know what. I feel no heartbreak. Get his ass Jug.

Get. His. Ass.

They sent Cheryl to a conversion institution. I’m literally crying. This isn’t an exaggeration. I feel like I want to cry. Just. God fucking damn it.

SHE DOESN’T WANT TO GET BETTER. SHE’S NOT SICK. YOU ARE. DIE. FUCKING DIE. BURN IN HELL. AND PENELOPE BLOSSOM TOO.

“That’s not how things go in Riverdale” is a veiled way of saying “don’t challenge the upper class and don’t try to stifle gentrification,” I hope you all know

[nestofstraightlines]

The Dæmon-Cages

I went to a preview screening of episode six of His Dark Materials,’ The Daemon Cages’, followed by a Q&A with the senior creative last night.

I’m not even going to give broad expectation spoilers for the episode above the cut (I’ll include a bit right at the end under the cut just giving a broad overview of whether I liked it or not).

As for the Q&A, it was very interesting.

The team were asked several questions (by a very positive audience) about themes and research; things like ‘how did you decide which of the many themes to focus on? Did you go back to the inspirational material of the books such as Milton and Blake?’ and I would characterise the answers as a slightly defensive ‘we just went back to the book’.

Call it confirmation bias, but for me that tallies with what I’ve perceived of the writing/creating flaws of the series.

Because what does that mean?

I’ve been going back to the book for 22 years now and unpacking more depths and more angles. It really did feel like there was a rejection from Thorne and series Exec Producer Jane Trantor that adaptation would involve unpacking something and repacking it into your own storytelling form.

Their tone was much more enthusiastic when it came to discussing detail: they talked about wanting to know exactly what every moment of Lyra’s day at Jordan would be, what she would do for breakfast etc. And that’s got merits; it can suggest nice images (I’m guessing this is where the idea of Roger bringing Lyra breakfast every morning comes from).

But for me, in general, it’s an approach that fits badly with Pullman as a source material. Pullman writes intuitively, discovering the story as he writes is.

At one point in Northern Lights he uses the metaphor for reading the Alethiometer that it is like climbing down a ladder in the dark, and trusting that, though you can’t see the next step, it is there. I believe that he was describing his writing process there too.

He writes indirectly, using negative space to let the reader infer a fact or an idea. For example, with daemons. We are told a little and shown a lot. Pullman is showing himself the story too.

I don’t believe Pullman knew when he was writing Northern Lights what Lyra would do for her breakfast every morning. But if the story had wanted to contain a scene set during her breakfast, he would have known.

And okay, different writing processes, whatever. But actually it is fundamental to the text and I think where the problems have crept in.

Genre storytelling can be broken up into two rough camps: character-led and ideas-led. The senior creatives of this programme, almost inevitably coming from a British TV background, fall into the wrong one - character-led.

Now both camps contain both things: if I call a story idea/s-led it’s not saying its characters aren’t important and good or vice versa. It’s about which is the ultimate point o fthe story.

For instance, Harry Potter is, for me, character-led. Its fantasy trappings are rather unpacked or picturesque dressing used to heighten basically mundane human interpersonal drama. Yeah, it’s good versus evil, acceptance versus discrimination, but those topics aren’t explored, they’re not a priority, they’re a situation to throw the characters into.

Where Thorne has worked in genre shows before, the same can be said. There is a specific situation, even a mission statement, but these are not shows constructed around telling an idea as story, but rather focusing on interpersonal drama. The premises are settings, real or imagined, which are already neatly packaged for the audience. They’re not about inventing fantasy, they are about using it to tell small-scale human dramas. Events serve nothing larger than character and relationship drama.

In Pullman’s His Dark Materials, character and relationship drama are a but not the greatest priority of the series, they are in service to broader ideas and themes.

That’s the other camp of genre fiction, where the fantasy is not a static setting used to heighten charater stuff, but an active agent used to tell a particular story.

Calling this camp ideas-led sounds like its an inherently grand sort of a category, and His Dark Materials is of course an example that is grand and important and epic and so on. But for a show to be ideas-focused, it doesn’t have to be a Big Important Theme with Big Important Execution.

Some ideas are ‘what is it to be human?’, some ideas are simply ‘whodunnit?’ or ‘what if a monster got into your house?’

Anyway.

Pullman’s HDM is ideas-led. He creates a world (and later worlds) of things we need to pay attention to. This is not Harry Potter – school, castle, wizards, you pretty much got it – this is unconstructed fantasy. And it’s not constructed for picturesque ends either. Pullman isn’t inventing this stuff because it’s independently cool or pleasing or whatever, or at least not only that. He is creating it to express a set of ideas through the medium of a story.

So story and world are perfectly bound together. And he understands the difference between convincing a reader and making your world CinemaSins-proof. It’s a story, not a world.

The series is over-invested in the details; over-invested in the tools, and misses what they are used to build in the book/s. Sometimes it even breaks what they are meant to build.

I think the failure of daemons is the biggest casualty of this.

At the screening the creatives talked about the challenge there, the unprecedented challenge of making a show in which every human character is accompanied by a unique CGI creation. They mentioned the impossible budget challenge this presented as well as the challenges in visual storytelling and presentation. I.e. even if one can afford to put a whole crowds of daemons in every wide shot it looks impossibly cluttered and like Doctor Doolittle.

And yes, of course, but it baffles – and frankly annoys – me that the imagination seemed to stop there. Or rather, the understanding of storytelling stopped there.

They talked about having spitballed pragmatic adjustments to daemons, such as making them be semi-invisible, flicking in and out of visibility. But in the end they ‘wanted to stay true to the book/s’. Again, I think we’re looking at a profound lack of understanding of what ‘true to the book’ even means.

Creatives more suited to the material would have found creativity borne of limitation. They would have had a deep and confident enough understanding of the idea they were dealing with to find the solutions from within their own storytelling field, to create daemons for screen in a way which worked.

It feels like this teams’ reaction to the challenge has been ‘to do our best and tell people they don’t understaaand it’s haaard when they complain we haven’t got it right’.

I’m sorry if that sounds harsh. But they took on this challenge and there’s a little hubris in that. I’m not sure what made them feel they were the people for the job here, but they’ve failed to convince me of that fact.

People have been telling fantastical and profound stories on screen for a long time before CGI became so photorealistic. And I think CGI has both a limiting effect on the imagination, and it encourages directors and writers with a limited sense of visual storytelling to imagine that they are equipped to deal with stories that they perhaps aren’t, because they can unthinkingly assign fantasy ideas to the ‘literalist CGI’ box.

I just get the feeling that none of the head creatives, as a mix of character-focused storytellers and details-people, really get what daemons are in a storytelling sense.

They mentioned that when they had conversations with Pullman, he advised them not to focus on daemons, that he novel included them only when they were important. And that’s true, and I can’t put words in Pullman’s mouth, but it’s my belief the TV series team misunderstood what he was getting at, and I’m basing that on stuff Pullman has said elsewhere (such as in his essays and speeches collected in Daemon voices) as well as my own reading of the book/s.

Daemons don’t appear important but the story is carefully constructed, without ever seeming to be on the surface, to explore the idea of the daemon.

It’s a practical issue too. You employ people to write and direct this stuff who are used to stories made up of human characters interacting in rooms, and they’re going to lack experience in showing stuff which is vital to this story, which includes the relationship between the human heroine and her shape-shifting animal-shaped companion, a giant talking polar bear, a city in the Aurora Boreales, fights with demons during a hot-air balloon fight and so on.

A lot of the stuff that matter in HDM isn’t just mundane drama in fantastical settings. The most vital emotional scenes include a girl interaction with a giant talking solar bear; the threat tot he bond between a person and their shape-shifting soul-manifestation etc

 The human/daemon relationship is like a lot of things at different times and in different ways: human/animal, siblings, friends, parent/child etc. But it’s not a mundane human relationship clothed in light fantasy disguise. It's an idea and thus needs careful building for screen just as it did on the page.

Russell Dodgson, the head of VFX on behalf of Framestore for the series, talked about how fans always focus on daemons while there are so many more ideas in the book. ‘People love talking animals, I guess.’ He joked.

And OK, he was being off-the-cuff and deliberately glib, and in any case he’s not the writer and thereby not responsible for getting the overall imagining of daemons for this series right. But he’s so off the mark here in a way which helpfully sums up the misses of this team.

Daemons are not talking animals in the book and that is what the series has rendered them as through this lack of understanding that they amount to more than an emptily whimsical note.

EXPECTATION SPOILERS FOR THE DAEMON-CAGES:

... Having said all that; a really great episode! Best episode of the series yet.

It benefits from coming from a part of the book which is perfect for an episode of TV: it is very dramatic and climactic, while also being something of a great self-contained story in form. Lyra goes into a situation with very clear parameters of tension, fears, goals and a ticking clock. The production plays on all of those very strongly.

The weakest element of the episode is predictable given what the weakness element of the adaptation has been all along: daemons of course. As with last week my feeling is that while the show is so far from doing justice to certain ideas and moments it might as well be on a different continent, it finds enough strengths in other areas to stop the bottom dropping out of the episode.

The production design is absolutely incredible. It’s the boldest imaginative leap from the book so far. The staging of some of the events plays out differently due to a differently imagined Bolvangar and I adore the new approach. Again, I’ll have more to say when the episode has aired. I can’t wait to get into the detail of this!

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 74

Merry Early Christmas, ya’ll! Here’s an early present for you, UF’s first musical chapter! As fun as this was to work on, its honestly just... ok. Some things about it could be better but eh I was already taking way too long to get it done in the first place so I figured might as well get it out of the way. Either way, I hope you enjoy it all the same! 

Previous: https://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/189362205964/universe-falls-chapter-73

***

Chapter 74: Mr. Greg

PUJV'S ERQ AAMVF XF DHHNT HL XTI GADW DCM NEUR CIVH VPBQ AUPC AWZCGL JEEX ZT'D GQVX, GX'E SMEC, LV'A YGRUWYEO, LV'A ZMRQ, MK'S ZYGZ BQR'F MK, WSB EIG'R XTIP MZYG WG?

"From the moment the meat hits the flame, my stomach is growling without any shame!"

"And I know in my gut, it's been worth the $5.95!"

"Would you like a burger? From Pepe's Burgers?"

As the catchy, all too familiar jingle brought the commercial to an end, the TV buzzed to static once again, though that static was soon filled in by the flood of reactions to the ad itself.

"Whoa! Your song is on TV!" Steven exclaimed, looking to his father absolutely starstruck as he sat alongside the twins.

"Yeah, but is it just me or was there something sorta… different about it this time around?" Mabel wondered, curious.

"The words, Mabel, it was the words," Dipper pointed out, rather deadpan.

"Nah, that wasn't it."

"Well, I'll hand it to ya, Greg," Stan remarked, arms crossed as he leaned against the side of the van. "Looks like one of your songs finally accomplished something after all these years: it made me want a burger!"

The conman let out a joking laugh at this, one that Greg joined in on, just a bit more good-naturedly. "Ah, well, that wasn't the only thing it accomplished. You guys remember my old manager, Marty, right? Well, turns out he sold my song as a burger jingle. He sent me a letter explaining the whole thing, and included in that letter was this." The former rock star pulled a small slip of paper out his pocket, presenting it to the others. At first, none of them were really sure what it was until Stan happened to be the first to notice the one, followed by a very lengthy string of zeros, written on it. Topped off by a dollar sign, of all things.

"No," the conman gasped, eyes wide as he took the check to look over it himself. "No way… G-Greg, i-is… is this real?"

"Sure is," Greg nodded, grinning. "I honestly didn't believe it myself at first but it's true. Guess I'm filthy stinkin' rich now! Ten million big ones for something I wrote years ago! Crazy how things work out, huh? And-uh, Mr. Pines? Are you ok?"

Everyone turned to look at Stan, who was obviously beside himself with glee based on the massive grin on his face as he held onto Greg's check as if it were the most precious thing in the world. And, based on how much money it actually was worth, it might as well have been. "Greg," he began, his tone uncharacteristically pleasant and saccharine. "Have I ever told you that you were the best employee I've ever had?"

"Uh… no?" Greg raised a confused eyebrow. "But… thanks?"

"But Grunkle Stan, what about Soos and Wendy?" Mabel asked.

"This isn't about them, pumpkin, it's about Greg and his millions-o-of great qualities, that is!" Stan quickly saved himself with a tight laugh as he waved the check around. "L-like his generosity for instance! Always so giving and selfless. In fact, I'm sure that if you found a worthwhile charity or, oh, I dunno, former boss of yours to donate a few hundred or thousand or hundred thousand to, then you wouldn't hesitate, right?"

"Gee, Mr. Pines," Greg smirked knowingly as he finally took his check back from the conman. "You wouldn't happen to have anyone in mind, would you?"

"Well…" Stan began quite leadingly.

"Oh please, Stan, can't you think about anything other than money for five minutes?" Pearl finally spoke up, sending the conman a critical glance.

"Uh, I would, Pearl, if there was anything else worth thinkin' about," Stan shot back with a smug grin.

Pearl simply ignored him, rolling her eyes as she took another look at the burger commercial playing out on the TV. "I still don't understand…" she said, confused. "What exactly is this?"

"You know when Rose came to my concert?" Greg began with a wide grin. "The night we met? I was playing this song!"

"...This is what did it?" Pearl asked, baffled. "Burgers?"

"It wasn't about burgers back then," Greg clarified. "But she probably would have liked this too, right?"

"...She would have loved it…" the white Gem sighed, defeated as she turned to walk to the far side of the van.

Likewise, Greg also let out something of a dejected sigh as he turned the TV off, though none of the others really seemed to notice. "So what are you going to do with all that money, Mr. Universe?" Dipper asked, curious.

"Oh! I know!" Mabel enthusiastically raised her hand. "You could buy a swimming pool and then buy another swimming pool to put inside it and fill that swimming pool with jelly beans! Or you could buy a pet monkey and a fancy tuxedo for him to wear! Or-or… a rocket ship piloted by your pet monkey, with a jelly bean filled swimming pool inside another swimming pool to take you to your own personal planet!"

"Geez, Mabel, reign it back a bit, will ya?" Stan remarked, crossing his arms. "Besides, I thought we already established that Greg was gonna donate most of that money to me-I mean, a charitable cause. Yeah, there we go."

"Heh, well, you guys have some pretty… interesting ideas there," Greg said with a small smile. "But to be honest… I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do with the money."

Despite the bewildered looks the others gave him at this admission, nonetheless the former rock star took a seat in the back of his van, pulling out his guitar to strum a simple, relaxing tune. One that he was more than happy to sing along with.

"Bright sunny day, don't cost nothin'. Light summer breeze, don't cost nothin'. What do I do with all this money? When the only thing I want is you?" he smiled to his son in particular, who instantly perked up to hear one of his father's classic, off the cuff songs.

"Palling around, don't cost nothin'. Singing a song, don't cost nothin'. How do I spend all this money? I'd rather just spend time with you."

"You could buy a house," Steven piped up, offering suggestions through song himself. "And a car."

"I guess that I can, but I've already got a van," Greg noted, nodding back to said van, a loyal, longtime vehicle he had no interest in replacing any time soon. "I could put you through college."

"But I'm with the Gems all the time," the young Gem pointed out with a shrug.

"...Or I could buy you all the finest courses online."

"What if we took a trip?" Steven ventured after a moment or two of thought.

"Do you think?" the former rock star inquired, intrigued by this suggestion.

The young Gem nodded. "We could go somewhere new! We could take a vacation, and you guys could come too!" he finished, smiling brightly to Stan and the twins as they listened in.

"Woo! Yeah! Vacation!" Mabel cheered, immediately excited by the prospect. "I've been dying to get away and see somewhere new!"

"Mabel, we've just spent the past several weeks on end away at the barn," Dipper pointed out, reigning his sister's zeal in with a small laugh.

"Yeah, but we were there to work," Mabel countered. "This trip is gonna be for fun! Right, Grunkle Stan?"

"Hey, if Greg's payin', I'm all for it," Stan remarked. "What do ya say, Greg? Tropical cruise to the Bahamas? Or are you more of a luxury beach house in the Keys sorta guy?"

"Hm…" Greg took a moment to think over these vacation ideas, before he came up with a suggestion all his own. "I know a place that's always exciting! The shows and the sights and the lights that are blinding!" the former rock star's tempo picked up from his previous song as he rummaged through the back of his van for a postcard featuring his chosen destination. "Emerald City! I'm talkin' Emerald City!"

The kids exchanged an excited glance at this, immediately taken by the idea of venturing out to the famously beautiful northern city. Still, Greg sold the prospect of the trip to them even more as he jumped out of the back of the van, his upbeat tune continuing all the while. "The streets and the sounds and the buildings heightening! A place that's so bright it's like clear, white lightning! Emerald City! Let's go to Emerald City!"

This momentum continued as Greg and Steven began leading the way up to the temple so the young Gem could start packing for the trip. The twins joined in on this energy as they followed, with Mabel dragging a much more begrudging Stan along with them.

"I know a place that's always exciting," Greg began a refrain of his first verse as the group burst into the house, startling Pearl in the process as she stood near the kitchen. "The shows and the sights and the lights that are blinding!"

"We don't need money, but it could be funny," Steven harmonized under his father's melody, quickly throwing his things into his hot dog duffel bag.

"The streets and the sounds and the buildings heightening!"

"So let's go today-"

"A place that's so bright it's like clear, white lightning!"

"Just point me the way to-"

"Emerald City!" Steven and Greg finished together, with the young Gem bringing both Dipper and Mabel into this bold final lyric. Though perhaps not the final lyric as Steven tacked one more onto it at the last second. "And let's bring Pearl!"

"W-what?" Greg balked, caught off guard by the idea.

"Ugh, kid, what's wrong with you?" Stan scowled. "I thought the whole point of this trip was to skip town and have fun. And everybody knows Pearl doesn't know the meaning of the word fun."

"Hey! I do too know what 'fun' is!" Pearl protested, offended. "Why, just yesterday, I had an exceptional un time sorting and organizing every single pot, plate, and utensil in this kitchen. And if that's not fun, then I don't know what is."

"...Well then, I stand corrected," Stan said, absolutely deadpan.

"Aw, you should come with us to Emerald City, Pearl!" Mabel said, offering a bright smile to the white Gem. "I heard there's this magical wizard there, and to get there, you have to drive on this really pretty yellow brick road. Not sure how great that is for your tires, but still, it sounds really cool."

"That's a different Emerald City, Mabel," Dipper pointed out dryly.

"Wait… you mean there's more than one?!"

"Um… still, you gotta come with us, Pearl!" Steven made another attempt at convincing the white Gem. "You always work so hard, keeping the Earth safe, keeping the house clean; you deserve a vacation!"

"Er… I don't know, Steven…" Pearl frowned, clearly uncomfortably as she turned away slightly. "Past experiences have taught me that three is a crowd…"

The young Gem was rather confused by this, at least until his father interjected in an equally uncertain whisper. "Steven, me and Pearl haven't gotten along that well, since… uh, well, since I started dating your mother." Greg frowned, casting a brief, bittersweet glance back at the portrait of the aforementioned pink Gem hanging over the door. Almost as if she was still watching, even now that she was gone.

"Oh, come on," Steven pouted earnestly. "We're all one big family! So this will be a great family vacation! Featuring the Universes," he grinned as he wrapped an arm around his dad's shoulder before nodding over to the twins and Stan. "The Pines, uh… Pearl. And don't forget Mom!"

Greg and Pearl in particular flinched as Steven pulled his shirt up a bit to reveal his Gem. Or rather, what had once been Rose's Gem.

Pearl was still clearly hesitant, taking in a sharp hiss through her teeth as she exchanged a rather uneasy glance with the former rock star, neither of them really sure how to feel about this situation. Ultimately though, the white Gem folded upon taking another look at Steven's pleading expression, one that was accompanied by similar looks from both Mabel and Dipper alike. And under that sort of pressure, how could she even hope to resist? "Oh, alright…" she sighed begrudgingly. "I… I'll come…"

"Yes!" Steven and Mabel cheered in delighted unison, though as they did, Dipper happened to consider something neither of them had.

"Wait, so if this is a 'family' vacation," he began thoughtfully. "Then shouldn't Great Uncle Ford come with us too?"

"Oh yeah!" Mabel exclaimed. "It can't be a Universe/Pines family vacation without Grunkle Ford coming along! It just wouldn't be complete!"

"Uh, yeah, it would!" Stan interjected somewhat harshly. "Who says we need Ford to come with us? Heck, he'd be an even bigger killjoy than Pearl's gonna end up being on this trip."

"Stan!" Pearl huffed, annoyed, though the conman ignored her as he continued.

"Anyway, he's not coming," Stan concluded staunchly, stubbornly. "And that's final."

"But Grunkle Stan, this is a family trip," Mabel argued.

"And Great Uncle Ford is just as much a part of the family as any of us are," Dipper added much more firmly.

"Oh yeah," the conman scowled bitterly. "Well if he's really a 'part of this family' then why doesn't he ever act like it?"

Stan didn't give either of the younger twins a chance to respond as he gruffly turned on his heel and walked out of the house without another word. A somewhat awkward air filled the room at this, at least until Greg filled it with an apologetic frown. "Aw, sorry, kids. I guess it's just gonna be the six of us heading to Emerald City, huh?"

"Wrong," Steven spoke up, placing a reassuring hand on both of the rather dejected twins' shoulders. He offered them both a kind smile, one that was more than enough to tell them that he was going to help them bring their entire family together on this trip, no matter what it took. "It's gonna be seven."

"No. Absolutely not."

Steven, Dipper, and Mabel barely managed to hold back a shared sigh of disappointment upon hearing Ford's outright rejection of their proposal, one that came the moment they so much as mentioned Stan would be coming along on the trip.

"But Grunkle Ford, Emerald City is gonna be great!" Mabel urged, stopping the author in his tracks as he moved about his study by grabbing onto the edge of his coat. "We'll have an adventure in self-discovery and melt a witch with a bucket of water and sing a whole bunch of songs! It's gonna be so much fun!"

"Again, Mabel, that's the wrong Emerald City you're talking about," Dipper corrected, though he interjected once more after a beat of thought. "Well, aside from the songs part, I guess. This is a musical after all."

"Well then, you children are more than welcome to go and have a marvelous time," Ford remarked dismissively as he reclaimed the edge of his coat. "But I won't be joining you. I'm afraid I have far too much to catch up on here and besides, I have no interest whatsoever in going anywhere with-" The author stopped short, sparing a glance down at the trio of kids before he decided to cap his statement off on a seemingly different statement altogether. "I-I… I'd simply rather not go. I'm sorry."

While the twins exchanged a dejected glance at this, Steven wasn't about to give up so easily. "But Mr. Ford…" the young Gem began leadingly, grinning to the twins beside him to tip them off to his plan. His musical plan. "Wouldn't you like-a chance to escape and just break from that boring old routine?" Steven began, taking on a bright, optimistic melody, one that Mabel and Dipper were both quick to catch onto with their own additions.

"Wouldn't you like-a chance to go where you know there are things you've never seen?" Mabel sang brightly, offering the author a convincing grin.

"Wouldn't you like-to explore so much more than you ever have before?" Dipper added trying his best to match Steven and Mabel's enthusiasm.

"Cause wouldn't you like a chance to get away?!" all three kids harmonized, capping their first verse off well and aptly confusing Ford in the process.

"Why are you three singing?" the author asked, bewildered.

"Cause like Dipper said, it's a musical!" Steven grinned, though even so, Ford was still absolutely lost.

"...What? "

"Wouldn't you like-to try something new with a few of your favorite friends?" Mabel kicked off the next verse, slipping to the still-confounded author's side as Dipper did the same.

"Wouldn't you like-to be free, to go out and about to find out what's waiting 'round the bend?" he turned in with a hopeful shrug as Steven came in to finish off another verse.

"Wouldn't you like-to go searching and find everything you're looking for?"

"Cause wouldn't you like a chance to get away?!" the trio finished off in unison once more, briefly giving Ford another short-lived attempt at cutting through the song once again.

"Now, children, I-"

"Wouldn't you like-" Mabel interrupted, as vibrantly as ever. "An adventure with friends where excitement never ends?"

"Wouldn't you like-" Steven sang with a warm, brimming grin. "To go see what the world's all about, see what's flashy and brand new?"

"Wouldn't you like-" Dipper chimed in, joining Steven and Mabel as they came together for the song's grand finale. "To check out what you've missed while you gone for so long?"

"Cause wouldn't you like-" all three of the kids sang before splitting off to build up towards the end.

"Wouldn't you like-"

"Wouldn't you like-"

"Wouldn't you like…."

"A chance to get away!?" they all finished, presenting their case to the author with matching, earnest, almost pleading smiles. Smiles that even Ford was powerless to say no to.

So instead, he let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose before he finally gave in. "Fine. I… suppose I can spare a night away from my research." The author cracked a small, somewhat wry smile as Steven, Dipper, and Mabel all let out a shared, excited gasp. "But only because you kids asked in such a… unique way."

"Well, I've learned from experience that when in doubt, nothing works better than a song," Steven shrugged with a small laugh, one that Dipper and Mabel readily joined in on before they sang one final, triumphant refrain of their successful song.

"Now it's time to take that chance and get away!"

It was quite a lengthy drive in Greg's relatively packed van to get all the way up to Emerald City, though as the kids spotted the sparkling metropolis on the horizon, it soon became apparent that it was worth the trip. Emerald City certainly lived up to its glamorous reputation, with towering skyscrapers glittering against the deep night sky, casting an almost ethereal reflection upon the vast lakes and rivers and bays that surrounded it. These clean-cut, futuristic buildings became even more impressive up close as the van winded through its narrow, maze-like streets, allowing everyone a grand tour of the town, at least until they pulled up to their destination.

According to a brief internet search, Le Hotel was the fanciest, ritziest hotel Emerald City had to offer. And indeed, it fit the bill as it towered high as one of the city's tallest buildings, elegant and refined from the outside in as its grand lobby carried the same radiant theme. The group entered with various levels of amazement towards this sophisticated atmosphere, even if they did look quite a bit out of place in that atmosphere given their relatively normal attire and attitude. Even as Greg stepped up to the check-in counter, the clerk simply looked over him with a brief, haughty scoff. His manner hardly changed as the former rock star confidently presented him with his new business card, which colorfully read "Greg Universe: Bazillionaire". However, it was only as Steven peered over the edge of the counter and plopped down one of the many large stacks of cash his father had brought along that the mood of the entire hotel seemed to change. Staff passing by stopped dead in their tracks, the clerk eyed the money being presented to him with obvious shock, and all the while Greg stood by, grinning to the others about the upscale experience they were about to receive.

An experience that of course, kicked off with a song.

"Hey, shake a leg!" the clerk called the rest of the staff, who chimed in just as enthusiastically.

"Hey, shake a leg!"

"It's Mr. Greg!"

"It's Mr. Greg!"

"And he's here to spend his dough all over town!"

At this, the staff mobilized efficiently, quite literally sweeping the Universe, Pines, and Pearl up to carry them off to the hotel's fine, five star restaurant. Without any hesitation, they sat them all down at the finest table in the center of the banquet hall, serving up the finest (most expensive) meal they had to offer.

"He's got the bucks!" the staff sang once again as Greg blithely answered them.

"I've got the bucks!"

"It's all deluxe."

"It's all deluxe!" Greg agreed, much to the excitement of not just the kids, but Stan in particular as he greedily began to tear into the massive, steaming steak placed in front of him. "When you're dining out with me, it's the finest steak and brie." The former rock star was clearly caught up in the somewhat manic, celebratory mood as he hopped up onto the table, catching the others off guard while he began to dance. "And if I break a table, it ain't no-whoa!" Inevitably, Greg did break the table, splitting it clean in half as he fell and knocked nearly all of the food off of it, save for Stan's steak, which the conman had wisely managed to save just in the nick of time. An awkward beat of silence passed at this as the surrounding staff looked to Greg expectantly, but all the same, the former rock star simply laughed his faux pas off as he pulled yet another large bill out of his pocket and handed it to the clerk. "Just bill it to my bank."

"A hundred bucks?!" the clerk exclaimed, amazed. "Gee, thanks!"

Before anyone had a chance to finish up their meals, the staff members led them off again, this time out of the restaurant and towards the elevator, which carried them all the way up to the building's hundredth floor. Its penthouse suite.

Said suite certainly rivaled the decadence and splendor of anything any of them had seen thus far. It was a massive complex, with several rooms, enough for everyone, all connected to the grand main room, which was completed by its very own full-sized swimming pool and slide. However, the lavish accommodations weren't the only surprise the hotel staff had in store. For after a quick round of measurements, they had managed to outfit everyone, kids and adults alike, in matching fine tuxedos and top hats, garbing them all in a look befitting the wealth they were all enjoying.

As elegantly clad as they now were, Greg and the kids alike didn't waste any time in indulging in all the penthouse had to offer, namely, its massive pool. Even despite the expensive, top line suits and ties, they all jumped right in, Greg taking the slide as Steven and Mabel canonballed into the deep end without any second thoughts. Dipper did hesitate for just a moment, that is, until the pair ultimately hopped up out of the water and pulled him right in along with them.

Yet, despite the fun the kids and the former rock star were all clearly having as they quite literally dived right into their vacation, not everyone was joining in. While Stan clearly appreciated his new upscale suit, Ford wasn't as taken with his, particularly the top hat and bow tie and the memories he couldn't help but associate with them.

"Well, these won't be missed," the author frowned, handing both off to the nearest staff member. His brother, on the other hand, gladly touched up his own with a wide, cocky grin, clearly enjoying what was perhaps his first real taste of a life of luxury.

"I could get used to this!" the conman proclaimed, barely even noticing Ford's annoyed scowl at all.

"Of course, you'd find this exciting," he remarked, arms crossed as he glared away.

"Better than your boring old writing," Stan jabbed back, reclaiming the author's top hat and pulling it down over his eyes.

"Would you grow up!?" Ford huffed, frustrated as he tossed the hat aside again.

"You first!" Stan taunted, helping himself to the penthouse's wetbar.

"Is it just me or are they getting worse?" Dipper asked, noticing this exchange from the pool as he exchanged an apprehensive glance with Mabel. Likewise, Steven spotted the obvious tension between the brothers, though that wasn't all he saw as he happened to spot Pearl, lingering quietly near the far side of the pool. Even compared to Stan and Ford, she hadn't engaged in the festivities whatsoever, instead opting to observe alone from the sidelines, seemingly unamused. That is, until Greg and Steven decided to get involved.

While Pearl didn't often change her attire, she was quite surprised to see how nicely her own suit looked on her as the kids came together to convince her to try it on at least. And from the moment she did, she couldn't help but finally join in on the lighthearted spirit of the evening. "I must admit-" she began with a growing smile.

"You must admit," Greg and Steven echoed happily as they posed alongside her.

"It's a perfect fit!" the white Gem grinned, adjusting her top hat gracefully.

"You look great in it!"

"And those fountains I found wasteful," she nodded over to one of the several elegant fountains lining the penthouse. "Are actually quite tasteful! This city's got its charm, unlike that termite-ridden barn. And any time with Steven makes for a delightful evenin'!" She laughed, falling in step alongside the young Gem for a spirited round of tap-dancing.

"You're having fun!" Greg exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.

"More or less," Pearl shrugged, grinning. However, that grin quickly fell the moment the former rock star grabbed her hand to pull her into another dance.

"So dance with me, just say-"

"NO!"

Pearl's stark shout echoed through the lofty halls of the penthouse suite, bringing both the song and the cheery mood to an abrupt end. An air of startled, awkward silence filled in for both instead, one that seemed to grow even more awkward and heavy as all eyes turned to the crestfallen white Gem herself. Pearl flinched, unsure of what to say at first, especially as she met Greg's sad, yet earnest expression. "I-I… I mean…" Ultimately, however, she let out a bitter sigh, turning away from the entire group as she sulked off to some other part of the penthouse just to get away from it all. "Maybe later…"

"Boo!" one of the hotel employees called after her, disappointed. "You ruined the song!"

"Er, uh… sorry, guys," Greg frowned, dispensing a handful of cash out to the staff to compensate them as they took their leave. "Thanks for singing with us."

"W-well, I guess our super fun city vacation could be getting off to a bit of a better start than this, huh?" Mabel asked with a fretful frown.

"Yeah…" Steven sighed, looking off in the direction Pearl had retreated to. "It really could…"

"Aw, don't worry about it, kiddo," Greg reassured his son, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, all while hiding his own lingering regret well. "It's always been this way…"

"Hm… perhaps I should go talk to talk to her, Greg," Ford volunteered thoughtfully. "After all, I think it's safe to say I have just as much experience as you do when it comes to Pearl and this… particular problem…"

The former rock star offered the author a grateful smile at this, catching his drift all too well. "Thanks, Mr. Ford."

"Yeah, go on, Ford, while the rest of us have fun, you and Pearl can have your sad little nerd party of two," Stan remarked with an obviously teasing smirk. "See, kids? I told ya both of them would end up being nothing but a bunch of killjoys on this trip."

"Grunkle Stan-" Dipper began, shaking his head disapprovingly over such a tactless remark.

However, Ford was more than ready to intervene on his own behalf instead. "Oh, so now I'm a killjoy?" the author countered, turning back to face his brother. "Well, forgive me that I have no interest in losing my mind over a bunch of big-city frivolity."

"Tch, obviously," Stan remarked, rolling his eyes. "So if you aren't here for any of that, why'd you even come in the first place? 'Cause as far as I can tell, if ya ain't here to have a good time, then you might as well not even be here in the first place."

For a moment, Ford simply sent the conman a bitter scowl at this, much to the worry of the younger pair of twins as they watched this icy exchange unfold. However, what none of them, not even Stan himself, could have expected was what the author did next. He reached out, his expression completely unreadable as he placed a hand on his brother's shoulder… and abruptly shoved him right into the swimming pool behind him.

Ford was the first, and for a long time, only one of the group to break out into a heavy burst of laughter as Stan splashed into the deep end before floundering back up to the surface, completely flustered. "Well, I don't know about the rest of you," the author chuckled, beside himself with amusement, especially as he caught sight of the conman's dumbfounded face. "But I'm certainly having a great time now!"

At this, Dipper and Mabel finally let out a small, shared laugh themselves, one that Greg and Steven slowly joined in on themselves. With the tension in the air finally cleared, Stan couldn't help but crack a small, subtle smirk himself as he pulled himself out of the pull and wrung his hat out in the process. "Alright, fine," he scoffed playfully. "Consider this payback for that time when we were in 6th grade and I pushed ya off the diving board at the public pool."

"Please, Stanley, I'd hardly consider this payback," Ford remarked with a flippant wave of his hand, even though he was still chuckling somewhat. "Especially since you did that right in front of Cathy Crenshaw."

"Aw, c'mon, sixer, you always knew a square like you would have never been able to land a catch like 'Cold-Stone Crenshaw'," Stan jabbed, elbowing his brother wryly.

"True, though at the very least I never struck out with her like you did with Carla McCorkle," Ford retorted just as confidently.

"Hey! I never 'struck out' with Carla!" the conman protested. "It was that stupid hippie and his stupid bellbottom jeans that stole her away from me! I can still remember the day they rocketed out of the Juke Joint without me and she left me behind…"

"Believe me, so can I, seeing as how you wouldn't stop crying about it for at least a week after," Ford said with a knowing smirk. "Who was the 'sad nerd' back then, Stanley?"

"Pfft, you, sixer, 'specially after your dumb 'ol bust of-what was that guy's name again? Tulip? Toyla?"

"Tesla," Ford corrected pointedly.

"Sure, whatever, 'Tesla', fell off the shelf and broke that one night."

"Well, of course I was upset about that, Stanley, it was a collectible!"

"Oh yeah? Well so was Carla McCorkle!"

A beat of silence passed between the brothers at such a bizarre remark, but ultimately, the humor of just how strange it was wasn't lost on either one of them. At the exact same moment, they both burst until yet another round of bombastic laughter, one that was completely warm and genuine, much to the delight of the younger twins observing. As they shared a delighted grin with Steven, the young Gem offered them a supportive thumbs up before gently shoving his father away to offer the family some much-needed privacy.

"Wow! Aren't we all having such a fun time!?" Mabel chimed in with a bright, leading smile. "It's nights like tonight that just make you wanna forget all of the bad stuff back in the past and look ahead to a bright and happy future, don't you guys agree?"

"Try not to be too on the nose there, Mabel…" Dipper warned in a worried whisper. And yet, neither Stan and Ford's bright mood was dampened by this as they instead offered each other a relenting, yet lighthearted grin instead.

"You know… perhaps it does…" Ford said with a humbling sigh, noting his brother's growing relief and excitement. "After all, what else are vacations like this for than for… getting away from it all?"

Needless to say a line like this was more than enough to prompt another song, one that, much to Dipper and Mabel's continually elated surprise at this situation as a whole, Stan ended up starting off. "We came all this way to give us a fresh start," he began on a tune that was fittingly airy and easy. "And now I'm wondering how we even fell apart?"

"You know it's so strange, I can't help but agree," Ford shrugged incredulously. "Maybe its this city air, or maybe it's just me."

"We've been fallin' out for way too long," Stan sang, picking up a hint of an upbeat swing. "So let's forget who's right."

"And forget who's wrong."

"Ok!" Dipper and Mabel chimed in brightly, so, so happy to see their uncles finally begin to repair all that had been broken between them so long ago.

"And here I thought making amends would be our last resort," Ford added, this time gladly accepting the reclaimed tophat his brother was holding out to him.

"But life's too short!" they sang together, back to back as they shared a cordial grin.

"To always feel shut out, forgotten by the brother I used to know," Stan's smile dimmed only somewhat at this, remembering those nearly 40 years of bitter separation, as well as his own countless mistakes along the way that had brought that separation about to begin with.

"Life's too short!"

"To never let the pain and regrets that defined both our pasts just go," Ford did his best to hold back a sigh here, knowing that those regrets were far too many to name. And as heavy of a weight as they were, maybe it was indeed finally time to just let them go altogether.

"Whoaohoh!"

"I never understood," the brothers sang in harmony, both in tune and in spirit as they both came to meet each other halfway for the first time in a very long time. "But now I do! Life's too short-to miss out on a brother like you!"

The duet came to its apparent close with another strong laugh between the brothers, one that more or less solidified the newly-revived warm feelings between them. And as far as both Dipper and Mabel were concerned, considering the tense bitterness that they had always seen between their uncles before, this was more than a welcome change.

"So are things finally, you know, cool between you guys now?" Dipper asked, aptly hopeful.

"Well…"

"You bet they are, kid," Stan interrupted, catching Ford off guard by tossing an arm over his shoulder. "Well, at least they will be once this guy gives me the 'thank you' he's owed me ever since he got back."

"Thank you?" Ford asked, genuinely confused. "For what?"

"Uh, for busting my butt for the past 30 years so I could bring you back from wherever you were, duh," Stan remarked as though it was obvious. "Geez, and I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, sixer."

However, instead of providing the thanks the conman was expecting, the author instead looked to him incredulously, almost as if he was baffled that he'd even bothered to ask for it in the first place. Which, by most accounts, he very much was. "Thank you?" he asked, scoffing right off the bat. "Thank you? Why would I thank you when you were the one who got me sucked into the portal in the first place?!"

"Ugh, that was 30 years ago, Ford!" Stan groaned, annoyed. "You just said so yourself, it's time to finally let that go."

"How can I when you essentially ruined my life?!"

"You ruined your own life!"

This dig clearly struck an all-too painful chord with both of the older twins, calling back far to many agonizing memories from 30 years past to keep any of them straight. At the same time, their niblings exchanged a distraught, desperate glance, realizing that just as quickly as things had started to come together between their uncles, in much of the very same way, they were rapidly starting to fall apart.

"So we make up and hug? That's how your story ends?" Ford began again, his tune much more sharp and harsh than it had been before.

"Uh, yeah, it'll be just like it was," Stan countered, still somewhat hopeful that things could turn themselves around. Even though he knew the line clearly had already been crossed. "Ya know, when we were best friends?"

"So that's your big plan? To force me back in a cage?" the author accused, glaring his brother down coldly.

"Whoa, let's not freak out!" Stan countered, trying his best to ease the growing tension. "Let's get back on the same page-"

"Gee, thanks for telling me that to my face!" Ford's glare turned to a false, sardonic grin as he made an attempt at shoving Stan away. "And showing off your mastery of tact and grace!"

"No way…" the younger twins sighed, realizing just how south things really were going.

"Nevermind how you spilled my secrets, gave a full report!"

"Wait-" Stan attempted to interject, but Ford clearly was having none of it.

"Cause life's too short!"

"There it is! The door you love to slam in my face!" Stan immediately shot back, his tone every bit as fierce as the author's as he spun back around to face him. "You did well there for a spell but now we're back in the same place. Tell me off if you want, but I'm the only one who wasted 30 long years on trying to save you!"

"You can waste whatever you want 'cause I don't care!" Ford huffed crossly, throwing his hands up at his equally disgruntled brother. "You're a fool who opened the portal!"

"That is SO unfair!"

"I swear!" both brothers sang in a harsh, hardened lack of harmony. "I'm through with taking your unshaking brotherly support!"

"Support!"

"Support!"

"Ha! 'Cause life's too short!"

"To let you get off it all so scott free," Stan scowled, his hands in tight, practically shaking fists at his sides. "Without thinking about thanking me!"

"Life's too short!"

"To listen to a reckless fool!" Ford argued hotly, borderline hatefully even. "Who only ever sees what he wants to see!"

"You don't know-"

"You have no idea-"

"What I've been through! Because of you!" they both sang together, hostile and explosive and completely unaware of their niblings' immense dread as they helplessly watched all this unfold.

"Life's too short to waste another minute!"

"Life's too short to even have you in it!"

"Life's too short!" They finished fiercely, abruptly turning on their heels before they both walked away in opposite directions, their stance on each other very clear. And as they parted ways, they left the younger pair of twins behind, awash in the echo of their angry, bitter refrain.

"W-well that… didn't go great…" Mabel frowned, disappointed. "Heck, so far almost none of this vacation has… 'specially not with those two... What are we supposed to do, Dipper?"

Dipper didn't answer right away, instead catching the briefest of glances between Stan and Ford right before they both slipped into their own respective rooms on the opposite side of the penthouse for the night. In the end though, he sighed dejectedly, not even sharing any of the same sparse shreds of hope Mabel was still clinging onto. "I don't know, Mabel…" he admitted quietly before he turned to walk away himself. "I don't know…"

And with that, the younger twins parted ways, if not in words than in sentiment, repeating the very same empty, hopeless verse their uncles had before them.

Despite the upbeat excitement that had been going around as the group pulled into Emerald City earlier that evening, those celebratory feelings were in short supply by the time they all ended up turning in for bed. With the former levity drained from the penthouse in its entirety, its guests soon slipped into slumber instead, with just about everyone taking a separate room in the sizable suite, save for Greg and Steven who ended up bunking together. And it was as they lay on the luxurious king-sized bed, quietly snoozing away, that Pearl quietly entered.

After that initial song, the white Gem had made herself rather scarce, not really wanting to face anyone, the former rock star in particular. However, as she softly stepped into the room to stand alongside the bed, she couldn't help but crack a small, somewhat bittersweet smile, especially as she spotted the bouquet of roses resting on the nightstand beside it. Pearl let out an almost inaudible sigh as she plucked one of the flowers, holding onto it gently as she let her many mingled thoughts and feelings out in a soft, solemn tune.

"I was fine with the men, who would come into her life now and again." Men such as Ford and so many others even before him, all of whom had captivated Rose in some sort of way, be it romantic or otherwise. But all of them had come, in and out of her life in a constant flux all the same, always dwarfed by just how broad and brightly the pink Gem had always shined. "I was fine, 'cause I knew that they didn't really matter… until you…"

The white Gem's smile finally fell as she looked back to Greg, unknowingly slumbering before her. Still clinging onto her rose, she slipped her top hat back on and stepped out onto the nearby balcony, all the while unaware that she had awakened a certain young Gem in the process.

"I was fine when you came and we fought like it was all some silly game." It really had seemed so silly back then, so innocent, just like so many of the others had been. Just another human who would happen to catch Rose's fancy for a while before ultimately being left behind. Another human who would never be able to stay by her side for as long as Pearl herself had. "Over her, who she'd choose. After all those years, I never thought I'd lose…"

"It's over, isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it over?" she sang sadly, mournfully almost as the dull lights of the sparkling city seemed to float and drift around her. "It's over, isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it over?"

"You won, and she chose you," she admitted, knowing it was the truth. But even if it was the truth and it had been the truth for several years now, that never made facing it any easier. "And she loved you and she's gone… It's over, isn't it, why can't I move on?"

At this, Pearl performed an elegant leap onto the balcony's narrow edge, balancing skillfully between it and the city streets far, far below her. All the same, she danced deftly on that fine line, all the while reveling in both her memories and the grief that came along with them. "War, and glory, reinvention." She smiled discreetly down to the rose still in her hand, knowing just how much 'reinventing' both of them had done in their hidden, yet shared past. "Fusion, freedom, her attention." All things that she adored, that she only ever got a glimpse of, that they only ever had won because of each other. "Out in daylight, my potential, bold, precise, experimental." As she swung her rose out like a blade, once again she was reminded of just how different she had become, just how much she had broken away from everything she had ever been made to do. Then again, she supposed Rose had broken away from all she had once been before too. They both had changed, and the best part of it all? They had changed together.

But that was then. And this was now. And now… Rose was gone.

"Who am I now in this world without her?" Pearl lamented as she lay against the railing, her gaze cast up to the sky as she felt that all too familiar pain ring through her once more. A pain that she never seemed to be able to shake away, no matter how hard she tried. "Petty and dull with the nerve to doubt her." To doubt her decisions, her choices, be they good or bad. To fail to understand what she had done, what she had sacrificed even now, even still, years after the fact when she should have known, she should have understood. But… she didn't. And sometimes, she wondered if she ever really would.

"What does it matter? It's already done!" And it was. Done, finished, over. And yet… in so many ways… it wasn't. At least not to her. "Now I've got to be there for her son!"

Speaking of said son, Pearl didn't even notice as Steven quietly slipped out of bed in the room behind her, listening in on her mournful melody with apt sympathy. All the same, the white Gem slipped back onto the balcony with resignation, looking back to the city as she tried, so hard, to make it past this. To finally move on and just let it go. The only problem was, how could she let go of something as precious as the love she felt for Rose? The love she still felt for her, even now that she wasn't there?

"It's over, isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it over?" She gripped the railing tightly, shaking her head at her own stubborn foolishness. While she didn't technically have a heart, she knew that if she did, it would be aching beyond measure. And it likely would have for quite some time now. "It's over isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it over?!"

"You won, and she chose you, and she loved you and she's GONE!" On this, she tossed the rose, hoping to release it and everything it represented. And yet, try as she might, those feelings, bitter, painful, and agonizing as they were, still remained, just as they always had. Just as they very well always would.

"It's over, isn't it? Why can't I move on?" She wondered softly, a stray tear finally streaming down her cheek.

"It's over, isn't it? Why can't I move on?"

Slowly, Pearl turned away from the balcony and back toward the bedroom, only to find that her song had an audience. Steven sat on the near edge of the bed, looking to the white Gem with a sad, sympathetic frown. However, the one Pearl was immediately more concerned and alarmed by was Greg, sitting on the far side of the bed, his back turned away from her and his expression unknown.

"G-Greg!" the white Gem exclaimed, gripping the edges of her top hat tightly. "You were… a-awake?"

"Nothing's gonna fix this…" Greg sighed tiredly, standing as he threw a bathrobe on over his suit. "Is it?"

Pearl faltered, unsure of how to answer this question, especially as the former rock star began to sulk out of the room. "Greg!"

"I'm sorry you had to be around me…" Greg muttered dismally as he walked out, despite both Pearl and Steven's protests.

"Dad!" the young Gem called after him worriedly, though his attention was soon turned back over to Pearl as she let out a small, guilty sigh behind him.

"I shouldn't have come along…" she said, now more forlorn than ever before, this time entirely thanks to her own doing.

"No," Steven said, his devout, serious tone catching the white Gem off guard. "This is exactly why we brought you."

Startled and confused, Pearl looked to the young Gem, bewildered, but all the same, she followed his lead as he began heading off in the same direction his father had gone. Though as they passed through the penthouse's den, they soon discovered that they weren't the only ones awake at such a late hour of the night.

"Dipper? Mabel?" Pearl frowned, noticing the pair first as they listlessly sat together on the couch. "Why are you kids up so late?"

"Why do you think?" Dipper asked, clearly exhausted as he broadly nodded over to the other side of the penthouse. Even from the den, the sound of Stan and Ford's noisy bickering could be heard, something that had been a constant for at least the past hour or so now. A constant that had, in the process, was robbing the younger pair of twins of sleep all the while.

"Admit it, Stanley! All you've ever done is hold me back!" Ford shouted furiously from somewhere down the hall.

"Oh yeah?" Stan's challenge echoed just as loudly through the penthouse. "Well at least I've done way more for you than your old pal Rose ever did!"

"Don't you dare bring Rose into this!"

"Oh my…" Pearl muttered to herself, shaking her head. "It seems I'm not the only one having a hard time moving on…"

"They're still fighting," Mabel groaned into one of the couch's plush pillows. "Which is crazy cause it actually seemed like things were finally going to be ok between those two!"

"But who are we kidding?" Dipper shook his head in resigned defeat. "They've hated each other for this long, why did we ever think there's anything that could make them stop now?"

"You guys can!" Steven interjected earnestly, offering the hopeless twins a hopeful glance. "They love both of you more than they hate each other, I know it! Which is why if there's anyone who could get them to make up, its you two."

For a moment, neither Dipper nor Mabel said anything to this, instead simply meeting Steven's encouraging smile halfheartedly. Until they both decided to go out on a limb in the hopes that such an idea could possibly have some merit. "Well, at this point, I guess it's worth a shot?" Dipper ventured with a small shrug.

Mabel nodded in support of this plan with a reassured smile, though before she could speak to it, the sudden simultaneous slamming of two different doors thundered through the entire penthouse. Something that signaled the fight was over, but the "war" was far from done. "Uh… how about you go talk to Ford while I smooth things over with Stan?" Mabel suggested, figuring that splitting up might be able to help.

"Sounds like a plan," Dipper agreed, both him and Mabel exchanging a hopeful, solidifying nod with Steven before they parted ways. At the same time, the young Gem continued on his own mission, taking Pearl by the hand as he led her out of the suite on an equally important mission all his own.

Meanwhile, Dipper and Mabel wished each other a silent bout of luck as they turned to their respective doors and respective tasks. While initially hesitant, sure enough, Dipper did work up the nerve to finally knock on Ford's door, only to receive a very harsh reception from the other side of it.

"For the last time, Stanley, I'm through wasting my valuable time on your childish games!"

"Uh… actually, it's Dipper…"

Unsurprisingly, Ford didn't hesitate to open the previously locked door for his nephew, greeting him much more fondly than he certainly would have had it really been Stan instead. "Sorry about that, my boy," the author straightened the edges of his suit, calming himself considerably. "What can I do for you, Dipper? It's awfully late, you know."

"Yeah, I do…" Dipper frowned as Ford let him come into the room. "But do you and Grunkle Stan know that?"

"A-ah… so, you heard?" Ford said, somewhat flustered.

"Pretty sure the whole hotel heard…" Dipper said as he sat alongside the author on the edge of the bed. "Great Uncle Ford, I'm sorry, but… I just don't understand."

"Understand what?" Ford asked, confused.

"Why you and Stan won't just… let this huge grudge you guys have for each other go. I mean, I guess I get where that grudge came from in the first place but, who knows? Maybe it's time for the two of you to just bury the hatchet and... start over?"

For the longest time, Ford said nothing to this, instead letting out a long, tired sigh as he stood to face the room's large window overlooking the sleeping city outside it. When he did speak, however, his tone was surprisingly melancholy, perhaps even tinged with hits of both regret and worry alike. "We can't do that, Dipper," he said softly, simply. "And to be perfectly honest, I'm quite surprised that you don't understand why we can't."

"W-what do you mean?" Dipper asked, quite confused himself now.

"Well-and I mean absolutely no offense to Mabel in saying this, but-haven't you ever felt as though she's… weighing you down?"

"I… uh…" Dipper frowned, unsure of what to say to such an odd question.

"Uh… huh?" Mabel asked on the other side of the hall, sitting on a different bed as she watched Stan angrily pace around the room.

"Ford thinks that I need the two of us to make up and be best friends, but I don't, not anymore!" the conman huffed hotly. "I don't need him, I don't need anyone! From here on out, there's only one person I'm lookin' out for and its good ol' numero uno: me! And if you were smart, kid, you'd do the same."

"B-but Grunkle Stan," Mabel protested. "That's no way to be! Why would I only look out for myself when I have so many other people to care about, like you, and Grunkle Ford, and Dipper-"

"Ha! Good luck with that," Stan scoffed bitterly. "I really hate to break it to you, pumpkin, but just you wait. I bet good money that in 10, maybe 15 years time, Dipper will end up leaving you behind for some dumb nerd thing, just like Ford did to me. I love the kid, but let's face it, he's way too much like sixer for his own good."

"But… n-no… Dipper wouldn't…" Mabel muttered, suddenly distraught as her own mind echoed with a question she didn't dare ask aloud: would he?

"N-no, Mabel's never…" Dipper trailed off, unable to honestly finish the thought. For indeed, there had been more than a few times where Mabel's own wants and pursuits had come before his own. The all-too bitter, far too familiar memory of a certain puppet show that led to an ill-fated deal came to mind above all else. And try as he might to shake that memory so many times before, the thought of all it had nearly cost him, of what she had nearly cost him, it was a shadow he'd yet to step out of, even still.

"Dipper, you're a brilliant kid with so much potential," Ford said, turning to his nephew with absolute earnesty. "You shouldn't let anyone, not even your own family, hold you back from all you could achieve. Believe me, that's a mistake I let myself make far too many times in the past, and while it might be a bit too late for me to change that, it's not too late for you."

"Look, Mabel, I just don't want to see you get hurt," Stan sighed, placing a hand on his niece's shoulder. "Better to see it coming and be ready for it than to let it take you by surprise and knock you off your feet. 'Cause take it from me, that's a road you don't wanna go down."

"But… me 'n Dipper aren't like…" "You guys" was what Mabel wanted to say, though she didn't quite have it in her to speak it aloud. So instead, she went off on a different tangent entirely, all the while desperately trying to convince herself, perhaps even more than Stan, that it wasn't true, that it wouldn't be true, that it couldn't be true. Because if it was… she couldn't even begin to imagine just how painful that would really be.

"But… Mabel and I don't… w-we aren't…" Dipper took in a deep breath, trying to steady both himself and the newfound rush of doubts starting to fill him.

"I-I mean… sure, Dipper isn't always on board with my ideas."

"I mean, I know sometimes Mabel can come on a little too strong…"

"And yeah, sometimes he has a bit of a problem of trying to do everything by himself instead of asking for help when he really needs it…"

"And she does sometimes go way overboard and she can be kind of selfish every now and then…"

"And… And… I guess he is just a little, tiny bit-"

"A-and… and she's just so… so-"

"Stubborn." All four Pines said at practically the same exact time, acknowledging the dark thread that seemed to taint their family in more ways than one.

Ford turned back toward the window, shaking his head sadly as another song began, jazzy, yet melancholy in tune and tempo. "He listens, but doesn't hear, he looks, but doesn't see," the author closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of his own faint reflection in the window. A reflection that always seemed to remind him of his twin in some way or another. "I talk, but it's so clear. I'm talking to only me."

Stan scowled, crossing his arms after he finally removed his top hat, glaring briefly toward the door as he began an icy verse all his own. "He acts so smart, all of the time. I'm always wrong, he's always right!" He scoffed, knowing that's always how it had been, ever since they were kids, and even now. A common refrain that had been a constant all his life, one that he had always tried to break out of, but could never quite rise to the occasion, no matter what he did or how hard he tried. "Not worth the effort, and that's why I'm-Done, it's over. Hang up the fight."

Dipper couldn't help but let out a small, sad sigh, recognizing just how many unfortunate, almost painful parallels really did exist between him and Mabel and their uncles. And in light of seeing those parallels clearly for the first time, he was unable to avoid the practically crushing worry that their own usually close bond was just as similarly doomed as their uncles' had been before them. But if it was, then who's fault would that really be, all things considered? The answer to that, seemed so simple. After all, he knew very well whose fault it usually was whenever they ended up falling out with each other. "She acts out, for a response," he began, just a hint of knowing bitterness in his tone. "She acts out, and I don't mind. She always does just what she wants. I'm forced to act, like its just fine." But it wasn't, it never was, because whenever she ended up getting what she wanted, he was always, always the one to lose out in the end.

By this point, Mabel was practically holding back fretful tears, overwhelmed by fear and dread. All coming from the long, singular though that, perhaps even sooner than later, her and Dipper would fall away from each other. That the close bond they both had always known between them would be broken. That they wouldn't need or even want to be around each other anymore when they always had been. Or rather, that he wouldn't want to be around her. "Right by his side, I try to stay," she sang almost mournfully, pulling her knees to her chest as those tears finally began to well up in her eyes. "And it's ok, but it's a lie… He goes alone, on his own way, and when he does, I always cry…"

"And nothing changes," all four of them sang, sharing the same sentiment, the same sharp, yet dull ache ringing through their song and through their hearts all the while. "It's all the same. Despite the ages, it's like a game."

"It's in the family-"

"In the blood."

"It's never over."

"It's like a flood-"

"Of bitter feelings-"

"Of old regrets-"

All things running so deep in their family, so far that it was practically the foundation they were all built upon. A foundation that was crumbling, breaking until the day it would inevitably fall apart completely, taking all of them with it in the process. A day they all knew was coming, but couldn't bear to face.

"It's in the family…"

"Don't forget…"

"It's in the family…"

"We can't forget…"

While Le Hotel's grand restaurant never really closed, it was rather empty at such a late hour of the night. In fact, it's only current patron was Greg, who sat at the bar, dully, dejectedly snacking on a glass full of cherries in the hopes of easing his sorrows. That is, until his sulking was interrupted by an arrival he admittedly hadn't been expecting.

Upon hearing his son clear his throat from behind, Greg turned to find both Steven and surprisingly, Pearl standing alongside him. The white Gem offered him a pensive, awkward smile, though ultimately said nothing. Greg did the same as he stood, even as Steven offered both of them a silent nod, urging them to do what they both knew needed to be done. The only problem was, neither of them had the faintest idea as to where to start.

Which was why Steven decided to take the initiative instead. He marched dutifully over to the restaurant's grand piano, handing off a large stack of cash to the pianist to curtail his inappropriately upbeat ragtime tune. Delighted by the sizable tip, the musician hurried off, leaving the piano open for him to take over with a gentle, earnest melody of his own. One that he hoped would finally accomplish something that should have been done quite some time ago.

"Why don't you talk to each other?" Steven sang up front, catching both Greg and Pearl off guard by just how forward the question really was. "Why don't you talk to each other? Just give it a try."

Despite this soft urging, Greg and Pearl still averted each other's gaze, neither of them knowing what to say to finally break the ice that made up the frozen wall that had been built between them years ago. "Why don't you talk about what happened?" the young Gem continued with a small, yet sad smile. "I know you're trying to avoid it, but I don't know why."

"You might not believe it." The pair slowly, hesitantly turned back toward each other, sparing a brief glance over at Steven along the way as they listened to his lyrics and the warmth and care behind them. "You might not believe it. But you've got a lot in common-you really do…"

"You both love me and I love both of you."

It was true. A fact that neither of them could deny even if they wanted to: that they loved Steven, deeply and fully, just as they both had-albeit in a different way-loved his mother before him. And it was the realization of that fact that, at long last started to bring both of them together.

With tired sighs, Pearl and Greg largely ignored the rest of the restaurant, lying down on the floor as a conversation finally started to brim between the two of them. "Look, if I were you, I'd hate me too," Greg began, looking down fretfully.

"I don't hate you…" Pearl assured softly, earnestly.

"But… I knew how you felt about Rose and I stayed anyway."

"That wasn't the problem…"

"Then… what was?"

"She fell in love with you…"

"Well, you know Rose," Greg sat up, finally cracking a smile. Pearl couldn't help but do the same, sharing that same sort of fondness that they both had-and still did have-towards the pink Gem. Fondness that they always had always had in common, they just hadn't been able to see it until now.

"She always did what she wanted!"

"I know you both need it." On a bout of tearful laughter, the pair stood, and as Greg extended the offer to dance once more, this time, Pearl had no qualms about taking his hand and joining in. "I know you both need it. Someone who knows what you're going through…"

"And you might not believe it." The pair took to the floor, dancing slowly yet cordially along to Steven's song and enjoying it, and the newfound, much-needed solidarity between them all the while. "You might not believe it-but you've got a lot in common, you really do."

"You both love me and I love both of you."

"You both love me and I love both… of you…"

As both the song and the dance came to a close, Pearl and Greg still exchanged a warm smile, one that only grew as the hotel employees came out to applaud their performance. Still, both of them knew there was much more worth celebrating than that. Because for perhaps the first time ever, they could finally see things eye to eye. And the flood of good feels from that alone made both Pearl and Greg never want to return to the bitterness and shame of the past again in favor of embracing a newer, kinder future instead.

This newfound camaraderie was inevitably interrupted however as one hotel staff member came up to Greg with a silver platter, offering it out to him. "Le bill, sir."

As soon as Greg took the bill, he jolted, shocked by just how much of a hefty charge their one night stay had racked up. Of course, he now had more than enough to cover it, but that didn't make the high cost of the life of a nouveau riche any less startling. "Tailor made suits, those cost somethin'," he sang, frowning as he unfolded the lengthy bill to get a glimpse at its full scope. "Room with a view, those cost somethin'."

"Dancing with you…" Pearl interjected with a knowing, playful grin.

"Don't cost nothin'," Greg chimed in gladly, especially as the white Gem let out a small chuckle.

"Why'd we even come? We could have done this at home," she pointed out, eliciting a delighted laugh from Steven as he came over to join them. In fact, that delight continued as they returned up to the penthouse to pack their things, their expensive vacation having come to an end before anymore money could be poured into it. And yet, for relieved as Steven was by the newly cleared air between Pearl and Greg, he quickly realized upon meeting up with Dipper and Mabel again that they hadn't shared the same sort of success when it came to Stan and Ford.

In fact, if anything, all four of the Pines seemed quite forlorn as they prepared to head home, expressions equally downcast and words sparse as they all made the trip back down to the lobby. And as he took stock of this, Steven's own smile couldn't help but fade as well, even if things between Pearl and Greg were still every bit as bright as he had wanted them to be.

"Singing a song, don't cost nothin'," Pearl sang as she helped the former rock star pack up the van. "O-or was it, palling around, don't cost nothin'? Getting it wrong…"

"Don't cost nothing!" Greg cut in with an amused chuckle.

"I tried," the white Gem shrugged.

"I'm surprised you remembered any of it," the former rock star pointed out, still laughing.

"What can I say? Its catchy."

With their time in Emerald City coming to a close, everyone climbed into the van, Pearl and Greg taking the front as they kept each other entertained with reminiscent conversation-most of it focusing on fond memories of Rose-as they began the long trek home. Stan and Ford sat as far apart as they possibly could behind them, arms crossed and moods sour as they both tried to go to sleep to avoid any sort of further interaction. And then, in the back, sat Steven, wedged worriedly between Dipper and Mabel, who, much like their uncles, seemed uneasy at the very thought of so much as even looking at each other, much to the young Gem's confusion.

Steven hadn't the faintest idea as to what had transpired between the twins while he was gone, and at this point, he wasn't sure if he even wanted to ask. And yet, his unspoken question soon got something of an answer in the form of a morose, quiet, yet unwitting duet between the two, one that Steven listened in on with growing concern all the while.

"Tried so hard to fix it all, to let it grow…" Mabel started, her usual cheery tune currently anything but.

"From the ground up, but it wound up that now we know…" Dipper continued with a sigh, staring out the window as the cityscape passed them by.

"Life's too short…" the twins sang together softly, almost mournfully over an agonizing truth they'd never once considered before. And in the process of discovering it, indeed they were a bit wiser, though certainly much more sadder for it.

"To see there's much more out there," Dipper kept his sights on the window as Mabel slowly, fretfully spared a discreet glance past Steven over at him.

"To see that you don't care…" she lamented, fighting back tears.

"Was it them who were wrong?" they both sang, looking toward their uncles sitting in front of them. "Or was it us all along?"

"I wish I saw things clearly," Dipper closed his eyes, shaking his head in gentle frustration.

"I guess I'm not the sort…" Mabel faltered, barely letting a small sob choke out.

"Now all we know as life's too short…"

Silence filled in between the twins at this, striking Steven the hardest as he sat in the middle of it all. While he still didn't know what had really happened, he could tell that whatever had managed to harm them both. That it had broken something between them, even if there was no real telling what.

Which was why the most the young Gem could hope to do was to repair that break before it inevitably ended up tearing two of his closest friends apart.

"But… it's… not over, isn't it?" he sang to himself, echoing Pearl's own song with the same sort of woe and regret the white Gem herself had sang it with.

"It's not over, isn't it?" he sang, even as they left Emerald City and everything that had happened there behind. Or at least, that's all he could do to hope, even as he realized it wasn't true. For as one problem had indeed been solved on this trip, it was all too clear that an entirely new one was only just beginning in its place.

"It's over… isn't it?"

Next:

[sportsnightnut]

scully/stella prompt: they meet in London doing something entirely ordinary and boring (as so many fics begin in a bar). they're grocery shopping, taking the tube, at the market, the bank - you choose!

Oh, this was such a fun prompt. Thank you, my friend! This is my first Scully/Stella fic, and I gotta tell you, all it makes me want to do is write more.

Enjoy! 💛

i’ll buy you dinner first

5:37. Not much of an on-time departure from the office, but when has that ever been the case, really?

It’s Friday night and it’s been raining the whole damn week, as it’s apt to do this time of year in London. Stella wants to get home, kick off these stilettos in the middle of the floor without giving a fuck exactly where they land, have a glass or three of wine. But then she remembers she used the last of her coffee this morning, so she needs to stop on the way home to replenish it, lest Saturday morning turn into something mildly miserable. Ten more minutes in these shoes, she tells herself. You can do that. Just ten more minutes.

She shrugs on her trench coat and slings her bag over her shoulder. She’d been invited to go out with colleagues, but had politely declined. Social activities, particularly on a Friday evening, have never really been of interest to her. Friday night means home, silk pajamas, wine, a movie. And besides, she knew it was more of a pity invite than anything. Her colleagues like and respect her, sure, but the boss isn’t usually anyone’s first choice for a happy hour companion (unless it’s a party and the boss is buying, which was not the case in this instance).

Stella flips the lights off, starts making the trek home. There’s a Sainsbury’s between the office and her flat, so she decides to pop in there. They have a fine enough coffee selection, and maybe she can grab something to go with the leftover chicken in her fridge while she’s at it.

No basket, no trolley, because then she’ll buy more than she needs. Just straight for the coffee and tea aisle, stopping only to pick up a box of pasta on the way.

But then Stella rounds the corner and nearly drops the box of angel hair she’s holding. She comes dangerously close to running into, and subsequently toppling over, the cardboard display case of seasonal herbal tea.

Because in front of her is perhaps one of the most beautiful human beings Stella has ever seen.

She’s a bit shorter than Stella, although they’re probably a similar height without the stilettos. Fierce, dark red hair–one might even call it auburn–skims her shoulders. Stella’s first coherent thought is that all she wants to do is touch it, run her hands through it. God, it looks soft. I’m sure it would look similarly good spread out beneath her head on my pillow.

The woman is wearing a simple black dress and a gray cardigan with a pair of shiny black flats. She’s leaning against her trolley, standing in front of the coffee, looking absolutely baffled.

And the only thing Stella can conclude is that she absolutely must approach this woman. Because clearly she needs help. And clearly Stella should be the one to help her.

“Are you…looking for something?” Stella asks, stepping toward her. The woman raises her head and her lips turn up into a sweet smile.

Holy shit, she’s stunning. Stella swallows. Hard.

“I’m relatively new to London,” the woman starts. 

Oh, Christ, she’s American. She’s gorgeous and her accent is fucking adorable.

“This is…well, I’ve never bought coffee here before, so I don’t know what to get. None of these brands are familiar to me. I mean, there’s Starbucks, but I don’t like Starbucks that much, and…” she stops explaining, realizing she’s started to ramble. “I’m sorry. That’s probably not what you meant when you asked if I needed help.”

“Oh, no, that’s exactly what I meant,” Stella replies smoothly. “The store brand is fine, but I enjoy Taylors.” She points to one, her maroon polish shining in the light as she taps the bag with her index finger. “This blend is quite lovely.”

The woman smiles at Stella. “Thank you,” she says, and reaches for the coffee. Stella hands it to her, causing their fingers to touch, and she thinks she might die right here in the middle of Sainsbury’s because even though it was only half a second, she could tell how warm and soft the woman’s hands are and her mind immediately jumped to all the places she’d like those hands to be.

“You’re quite welcome. I’m Stella, by the way.”

“I’m Agent–” she stops herself, shakes her head. “Sorry. Still used to introducing myself that way. I’m Dana.”

Stella cocks her head, looks the woman up and down. “Agent, hm? From the States?”

Dana nods. “Yes. Dana Scully, formerly a Special Agent for the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

God, what a fucking turn-on.

“So what brings you to London, then, Dana?”

“I’m a physician. I went to medical school before I was recruited by the FBI. A former colleague of mine recommended me for a position at a clinic here. I was ready to get away from my life in D.C. Too much history, a little too much pain.” Dana pauses. “I’m sorry, I’m practically telling you my entire life story in the middle of a grocery store.”

Stella smiles and touches Dana’s arm gently, wanting her to know it’s okay. She seems lonely, maybe a little uneasy being in a new country on her own. But god, a Special Agent for the FBI? It seems to suggest that she would understand Stella’s life, at least in some ways.

“No need to apologise. I work for the Metropolitan Police. Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, to introduce myself officially. So I know a bit about what that life is like, Agent Scully.”

“Oh, wow,” Dana breathes. “Yes, you certainly do. Well–thank you for this,” she says, holding up the bag of coffee beans. “It was awfully nice of you to assist a stranger.”

“I could walk around with you a bit, if you like,” Stella proposes. “Help you get the lay of the land. Answer any other questions that may arise about British groceries.”

Dana giggles, and Stella is sure she’s going to die on the goddamn spot. It’s this sweet, sexy sound she wants to hear again. And again. And in other contexts, too.

She agrees readily. “I’d like that, Stella.”

Dana tries not to make it obvious that she’s trembling slightly as she walks alongside Stella. This woman is the definition of alluring. Long blonde hair curled at the ends, a little bit of makeup, the kind that makes it look like she really isn’t wearing any. A silky emerald blouse, a black pencil skirt, and tall stilettos that basically beg for Dana to notice her calves as she strides confidently down the aisle.

And she’s in law enforcement, which is (unsurprisingly) a major turn-on. Stella gets it. She knows the life, the job, the responsibilities, all of which require a certain commanding presence that Dana can’t help but think would come in useful in…certain situations.

And Dana is sure she looks really fucking hot wielding a weapon.

(Also, has she mentioned the British accent?)

Here’s the thing: Dana has never been with another woman. Not fully, anyway. Not in the “we’re in a relationship” kind of way. There was Lauren, an undergrad classmate who lived in her dorm senior year, but they only ever flirted, and usually only when drinking. Then in med school, there was Abby, who was in her surgery rotation. Abby was the closest she ever got, and it was mostly flirting with a few relatively innocuous makeout sessions (although it was always while sober, which made it feel very different from Lauren).

So the fact that Dana is incredibly, incredibly attracted to this woman has her more than a little unnerved.

They walk down the aisles together, Stella pointing out the locations of necessities like cereal and pasta, what the best baked goods are, what’s worth paying a little extra for and what’s just as good in the store brand. When Dana chooses a package of chocolate-filled croissants from the bakery, all Stella can think about is eating them with her. Naked, in bed, on a post-coital Sunday morning.

She clears her throat.

As they approach the dairy section, Stella observes that Dana seems a bit cold. Either that, or she’s inexplicably standing closer to Stella, which she admittedly wouldn’t mind.

She’s having trouble getting a read on Dana: she’s clearly not in a relationship now, as she moved to London alone (and mentioned something about moving away from something or someone painful). But she agreed to Stella’s company, and it seems like she’s been finding reasons to stand closer to her, accidentally brush against her. Didn’t move her hand away when Stella let hers linger for a moment longer than necessary.

But it’s still unclear if she’s that kind of interested.

The same cannot be said for Stella.

Dana is stunning, sexy. Beautiful and badass, and Stella wants her. Bad.

So as she shows Dana which cream she likes best for coffee, she reaches for the appropriate container and sets it in the trolley without ever breaking eye contact, her gaze focused on the woman next to her. They’re already close, but Stella leans in even closer, gets a hint of Dana’s perfume. She smells like raspberries and jasmine and everything good in the world. God, she wants to bury her face in her neck and perhaps stay there forever, just nibbling at that perfect ivory skin.

“Dana,” she starts. Her voice is dark, quiet, so none of their fellow shoppers nearby can hear what she’s saying. “If you don’t want this, you can tell me to kindly fuck off, and I will. But I feel compelled to tell you that you’re absolutely fucking beautiful and I would like nothing more than to take you home with me.”

Dana blushes, but not out of embarrassment, exactly. Stella knows the look, the reaction, this particular shade of flushed pink on the cheeks. It’s the reaction of someone who’s been “figured out,” so to speak. The reaction of someone who is pleasantly surprised that Stella finds her attractive in that way.

But it’s the cutest fucking thing, and it manages to warm Stella’s otherwise cold heart. 

Oh, god, this woman is going to do me in, she thinks. First I proposition her in the middle of a grocery store and the next thing I know I’ve got a fucking crush on her and I’m about to turn down a night of incredible sex so I can date her instead.

“Let me add this,” she says before Dana can respond, her voice still low and dangerously close to Dana’s ear. “I’ll buy you dinner first. At least once if not twice. Maybe three or four times. I’ll kiss you after the first time. And I’ll take you out for coffee. Oh, yes, definitely coffee. And really, whatever else you desire. Dessert, wine, whiskey, anything. Then after an appropriate amount of dates and innocent kisses, I’ll take you home with me. Pour you a glass of red wine while you stand in my kitchen. I’ll kiss you, but not as innocently as I kissed you before. And then I’ll touch you in as many places as you’ll allow me.”

It’s Dana’s turn to swallow. Hard.

“Yes,” she says almost inaudibly.

Dana says the word “yes” faster than her brain can process what’s happening.

She was relatively certain, throughout this entire encounter, that Stella found her attractive. It was mostly from the look in her eyes: caring and kind, yes, but also a little bit feral. It was clear when she put the coffee creamer in the cart that this was more than a friendly gesture. There was a want, a desire in her eyes, a look Dana hasn’t been on the receiving end of in years.

And the thought of being on the receiving end of it now terrifies her. Not because it’s a woman, not because it’s Stella. Because it’s been a long time. 

But it’s been long enough.

And she wants Stella just as badly.

“Yes?” Stella repeats, somewhat unable to believe that this beautiful creature wasn’t intimidated by the fact that she was incredibly direct about her intentions.

“Dinner sounds nice. And coffee. And…those other things you mentioned.” Dana clears her throat, and Stella thinks it’s absolutely adorable because it’s clear that Dana is flustered and nervous. But this also means she finds you attractive, Stella. Shit, the woman just agreed to go out on multiple dates with you knowing that at least part of your motivation is to get her into your bed.

Stella takes one small step back so she can look at Dana. She reaches over, caresses her cheekbone with her thumb, restrains herself from pushing her up against the cartons of milk and taking her right there. “Dinner it is, then. Anywhere you’d like. Tomorrow night.”

[laylainalaska]

Good Omens TV

So I watched the Good Omens TV adaptation, and my reaction was decidedly mixed. Parts of it worked for me, and parts really didn’t. If you loved every minute of it, there may be squee harshing under the readmore, but I really did love parts of it! So YMMV.

FWIW, I haven’t read the book in a really long time, and had actually forgotten a lot of the specifics of the book plot, which was a good way to watch the miniseries! So a lot of the plot was effectively new to me, while I also remembered it as it went along from the book, and that was really fun. I actually thought some of the scenes were new for the movie and then rediscovered that they actually were in the book, it’s just that I never paid much attention to anything going on with Newt and Anathema and most of what happened with the kids. Oops. >_> (I actually found the kids’ scenes a lot more engaging in the movie than in the book. The child actors were really fun.)

I guess I’ll just get what I didn’t like out of the way first -- the way the entire series was filmed and acted in such an OTT, stage-acting kind of way was really, really not my thing. This is entirely down to personal taste because it’s not like I can say it’s out of keeping with the book, but I think the version of the book in my head had a lot more ... gravitas? solemnity? It’s hard to say -- whatever that quality is, this adaptation didn’t have nearly enough of it, and I found parts of it so cringey that I had to look away (e.g. the possession scene with Madame Tracy). And I think this largely comes down to the book being more dramatic and less silly in my head, which I was never going to get from an adaptation, so that’s fair enough.

But even leaving aside what it did to the gravitas of the show/book, the humor, I felt, was also undermined by the extreme hamminess of the acting, as well as by the adaptation’s need to explain the jokes or hold up a big sign saying THIS IS FUNNY. It would’ve been more genuinely funny if it had been underplayed a bit. Some of the jokes still land really well, usually the ones that are delivered in deadpan or not actually explained. The book is so funny in large part because the humor is so downplayed.

But the over-explaining ... it’s things like, for example, the scene with Agnes’s skirts blowing up everyone was darkly funny all on its own; it didn’t need an immediate explanation in the narration that there was dynamite in her skirts. It worked great in the books because you couldn’t see it, but the explanation becomes redundant and just feels like we’re getting the joke explained. Or the bit with the unicorns running around in the background in the Noah’s Ark scene, which is a lot funnier when you just notice them on your own and it’s this low-key silly thing happening behind the characters, but gets a lot less funny once the characters notice them and start pointing out the unicorns running away. It wasn’t just one or two instances; a lot of the humor in the movie was like that. I was rereading bits of the book last night and noticing all over again that I really prefer the book’s style of deadpan, underplayed humor.

And since I’m being salty anyway, I gotta say, I am going to be forever salty, or at least baffled, that my very favorite scene from the book isn’t in the movie -- baffled, in large part, because it’s an important scene and a very cinematic scene, and they just ... didn’t do it? It’s the bit during the climax when Crowley and Aziraphale are just like “fuck it” and spread their wings and prepare to throw themselves at the Powers That Be of heaven and hell even though they’re certainly gonna die. I mean, it was kind of in there, but they took that doomed-last-stand image that I loved and instead had a scene with the two of them coaxing Adam into changing things. The wing-spreading scene and the sword flaming up were just so dramatic in the book, and maybe it was more dramatic in my head than it could ever have been in the movie, and I guess the entire “willing to die for their cause” aspect is already implied by everything Aziraphale and Crowley have done up to that point, but damn it, I wanted that.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering now what I actually liked about it, but the answer is, quite a lot! I appreciate that it was such a close and faithful adaptation of the book; sure, they left out a few things, and some of the ways they imagined it into life were not at all how I’ve imagined it all these years, but that’s not the fault of the adaptation. I still feel like Sheen and Tennant’s Aziraphale and Crowley are not quite my Aziraphale and Crowley, but I was way more sold on them than I expected to be, and in particular, Tennant’s Crowley, while not precisely book Crowley (rereading the book last night reminded me how much more low-key he typically is), is a really delightful Crowley. I still think I might prefer the book’s more buttoned-down Crowley, but I ended up appreciating them both a lot in different ways, and particularly loved how much emotion and conflictedness TV!Crowley has with his relationship with Hell and falling and Aziraphale and generally being a decent person doing demon things. I think a lot of what’s there subtextually in book!Crowley is right out in the open in TV!Crowley, which goes along with the TV version being a lot less subtle in general, but this is one of the places where it really worked for me.

And just in general, getting so much more with Aziraphale and Crowley, so many new scenes actually written by their (co)creator was absolutely delightful. It really felt like getting, if not a whole new novel, then at least a new novella or a series of short stories about them, focused on them and their relationship in the best possible way. I think knowing the adaptation was written by Gaiman made a lot of difference here, because things like Crowley calling Aziraphale his best friend, and his utter distress and misery when he thinks Aziraphale is dead (and it’s not even dead dead, just gone and on the opposite side), is an extra gut-punch because of knowing that this isn’t just someone running off with it in filmed fanfic; this feels like the actual characters doing it, part of the bookverse creator’s view of their relationship, and that does matter to me. “You killed my best friend” - I just never would have thought we’d ever get that much emotion between them, and it kills me in the best way.

The new stuff at the end was also extra delightful because of that same “this could potentially be book canon and not just TV canon” feeling, and because it was new, so I didn’t know where it was going, and then the trickster-ish swap was so good.

I also remember reading beforehand that Sheen had said he tried to play Aziraphale being in love with Crowley, and I, er, wasn’t expecting it to be so obvious. The fact that he absolutely loves and adores Crowley is vividly clear in every scene they’re in, even if his words are saying something entirely different.

I mean, I had my problems with the adaptation and they were significant ones, but the entire thing was basically a big ginormous love letter to Aziraphale and Crowley and the fact that, whatever form that love might take, they absolutely love the hell (and heaven) out of each other. That aspect was not only not downplayed in the adaptation, it was absolutely its core and its heart. And whatever problems I had with how it was done, at the end of the day I got my live-action Aziraphale and Crowley Show that I’ve wanted for 20 years, and it made me feel really good and rekindled my affection for them in the best way.

[bluerosesburnblue]

I’ve been going through The NyanCave’s KH streams to refresh myself for KH3 and I’d only seen the Days movie once, so a few thoughts on that:

Alyson’s voice acting is really inconsistent, way more than I remember it being. Some scenes she does a really good job (Xion and Axel’s confrontation at Castle Oblivion and Xion’s fight with Riku at Beast’s Castle, for instance), but most of the time she is way too flat and soft. There are a lot of scenes where Xion is supposed to be angry or snarky and her voice just... has no bite. No inflection. I hope it’s how she was directed to voice Xion, because she does a decent job voicing the younger Kairi, but now I’m really worried about her voicing Kairi in KH3. Kairi is all about that fierceness, and I just don’t know if Alyson’s gonna be able to hit that if her performance is anything like it was for Xion here

Jesse, on the other hand, is goddamned amazing. He may be the best voice actor in the whole franchise, like hot damn

There are a lot of scenes with Xemnas, Saix, and Xigbar. I’m trying to look at those scenes in a different light based on the fact that we know now that they are the only members of the Organization to be strongly Norted at the time, and one line in particular stands out on Day 322: “But in the end, it only proves that the puppet is the more worthy vessel.” Pre-DDD it seemed like they were talking about Xion being a Keyblade Wielder. Now it seems like really strong Xionnort foreshadowing, since “vessel” is only ever used in the context of people being Norted now. This line really sounds like they’re saying “Well, we planned for Roxas to be the 13th Darkness, but Xion’s doing a hell of a job. Wanna switch it up and use her?” So I’d say it’s likely that we’ll get Xionnort, but not Roxasnort

Only reason I bring it up is because there’s a lot of dispute over who the person in the most recent KH3 trailer is. Saw the Naminé theory, don’t really buy it since a lot of the “evidence” is actually... factually wrong. (Xion and Naminé have the same jawline and even if they didn’t we can’t really compare either of them to the hooded figure in the trailer accurately since not only is the figure’s jawline in shadow AND covered by their collar, but KH3 is using totally different models that are not gonna match up 1:1 with the KH2.5 models. Xion is not left handed; if anything, she’s ambidextrous. Day 298′s fight makes that pretty clear. She goes at Roxas with the blade in her left hand, but switches to her right hand when fighting Axel and spends the rest of the scene using her right hand. The hooded figure using their right hand doesn’t exclude them from being Xion). I think Saïx’s dialogue and Lea’s reaction, combined with the above line from the Days movie, are all pretty strong indicators that we’re looking at Xion

The Days movie is structured so poorly that it’s kind of baffling. I feel so bad for Clay and Tom because I’m watching them try their hardest to piece things together but the movie is like, 80% clock tower scenes held together by descriptor snippets that don’t explain or bridge content nearly enough. They actually had to pause because Tom had gotten the impression that nobody could see the Organization members because they’re never shown interacting with anybody in the worlds on-screen and the movie doesn’t do a good enough job at explaining the Organization’s “no being seen” policy. It also took them the longest time to realize that Xion had her own Keyblade, because the movie scenes never showed her and Roxas using them at the same time. They thought that Roxas and Xion had one Keyblade that they were passing back and forth, and didn’t realize that it wasn’t the case until well after the point where Xion regains the use of her blade at Beast’s Castle. Definitely glad that they finished up the other games fast enough that they still had time to actually play Days before KH3 comes out. I hope it clears some things up for them, since they’re playing it now

[claudiadonovan]

Please write 70 paragraphs of meta about elizabeth and olive as characters

ok so first of all: i had multiple paragraphs of this typed up a couple days ago and then my computer crashed, so clearly the universe wants me to chill. but here i am, rewriting all the words to spite the universe, for I WILL NEVER KNOW CHILL. (disclaimer: this is largely incoherent, and the organization isn’t exactly thesis ready. tyfyt.)

anyway. let’s begin with something i’ve talked about at length before, because i do think it’s at least worth setting elizabeth’s narrative against the backdrop of the movie’s full scope—that is, elizabeth’s arc is the driving force of the movie. regardless of what the film is ostensibly about (at least in terms of marketing, for obvious reasons; it’s clear that everyone working on it knows better), what angela’s crafted is a love story. bill functions as a steady presence throughout, providing the technical framework (and the shoves that elizabeth needs in the direction of what she wants); olive certainly takes her own journey, but hers is a growth told largely in flashes; it is through elizabeth’s terror and conflict and indeed love that we see much of the movie unfold. all of those things are central to the conflicts we find and necessarily the heart of the movie’s resolution. there is a reason the film must end in the place it does, with elizabeth cracking open her heart and finding the means to build a bridge between them inside.

but i’m getting ahead of myself. (and, yes, rambling already. LISTEN, i was asked for 70 paragraphs, a lannister always pays her debts, etc. etc. you’ve been warned as to what lies beneath the cut!)

if you will let me set one final scene, before i move inside the universe of the movie: i saw professor marston for the first time at an advance screening. the theater wasn’t enormous, but it was completely packed. there were a couple moments in the opening bill/josette scene that drew a few chuckles, iirc, but the moment elizabeth spoke her first line, that entire theater came to life. and let me tell you: what a relief that that was my first experience with the movie, because clutching your leg and alternating between wheezing with laughter and delighted squealing draws a lot less attention if everyone around you is also in hysterics. the reaction both to “i know” and “i know that, too” was incomparable. it felt rare and wonderful, nevermind the fact that rebecca’s delivery remains impossible to oversell.

all of which is kind of beside the point, except that i will say i appreciate the in-universe acknowledgement that elizabeth is genuinely hilarious? BECAUSE SHE’S HILARIOUS. the fact is that angela, as she designed her (and rebecca, as she played her), allowed elizabeth to be SO MANY THINGS. there are a million ways that this could have (would have, lbr) gone wrong in literally anyone else’s hands, but one of those many ways is elizabeth herself. like, i think there’s a particular character cut-out for the combination of attributes that include controlling/ferocious/brisk/kind of a stubborn asshole, especially if you’re angling for the arc to conclude with a display of vulnerability. that sets off the WEE OOOH WEEE OOOH DO NOT TRUST WEE OOH alarms in my brain. but elizabeth is a million things, among them also funny, charming, pragmatic, and so utterly full of life. (i sort of figured “totally brilliant” went without saying.) she is never limited to one or two of these at a time, as they shift along some linear arc; there are moments that showcase particular aspects, but she is always the sum of all of her parts.

one of my very favorite moments, particularly in the way that it establishes both elizabeth/bill and, i think, to some degree the way that elizabeth interacts with the world, is the lie detector epiphany scene. one of the things about them is that they are able to shift very fluidly from “heated debate” to whatever the opposite of an argument looks like. which – i realize in that scene the lie detector was a Huge Deal, but there’s no sense of bill and elizabeth ever stagnating in their arguments; more often, they delight in them. they sharpen their wits and their knowledge against each other – it’s (a huge) part of what makes them work, and it’s also part of what makes them so damn extra. (olive’s utterly baffled face as she watches them that transforms slowly into an amused/fond/still-puzzled smile says all i want to say here.) the point is: they don’t require things like apologies from each other, particularly as a result of their exchanges. like, their arguments are more likely to lead to proposals than to pleas for forgiveness.

basically, i don’t think elizabeth has huge reserves of patience for other kinds of interactions; she spends much of her time with a person who always meets her halfway. anyone who can’t inevitably falls underfoot. she also thinks dropping things like “oh, and if you fuck my husband, i’ll kill you” into conversation during a first meeting with a student they’ve just brought on as an assistant is absolutely fine, especially since she doesn’t initially view them as on the same ~~~level. (not that she doesn’t mean to be hostile—and condescending—because obviously she has some self-awareness, but her casual, wry delivery of it is so very, very elizabeth. she gets a kick out of herself.) my other favorite thing is how much i do think she believes she’s offering some genuinely useful clarification as she carries on through that atrocious explanation of olive’s beauty—she gets it, it’s not olive’s fault, like any of those are reasonable things to say to another person. elizabeth’s answer to dealing with the emotions she was kind of pretending she didn’t have when she told bill it was fine to fuck olive? be a patronizing asshole! works every time!

but olive isn’t bill, and she’s not just gonna spring back from whatever that was, because literally what the fuck is wrong with this woman (i know, olive. i know). and it’s not like elizabeth doesn’t have the capacity for guilt; that’s the whole reason bill telling her she made olive cry finds them in the middle of the apology that unfolds. (let me side note here that bill gently leading elizabeth back onto the edge of some moral pathway with signs like “maybe be less of an asshole?” is one of my favorite things in the entire world.) which elizabeth begins delivering so perfectly awkwardly and vaguely sardonically that it’s hard to imagine anyone could even take it seriously? the way she ends the “i didn’t mean to insult you” with a smile that could physically not be less real—great, look, i did the apology, bye—really sums it up. and the exchange that follows—i’ve done nothing / no, i know, you’re right—is so peak elizabeth, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like she’s sitting there like, yes, i know, all i said was don’t fuck my husband, i didn’t say you already had. anyway, didn’t i say it wasn’t your fault? why do i even bother talking???? elizabeth, who manages to jump into apologies without any real willingness to make overt concessions about any wrongdoing. (an apology that leads them to a speakeasy is much more suited to her, really.)

as mentioned before, elizabeth really is a million things all at once, and she’s a mess of contradictions on top of that—see: completely fearless and deeply terrified, a woman who answers her husband’s admission of her own brilliance with “i know” but cannot accept that olive thinks she’s amazing. a lot of that, imo, stems from the fact that every time she walks into a room, she has to prove herself. so she brandishes her intelligence like a blade, for it is only with a sword to their throats that the men inside her circles (and outside, presumably) are willing to acknowledge her beyond her gender. and even then, no doubt there are many who dismiss the weapon for a toy, or suggest she cannot even hold it properly, so unprepared are they to change a lifetime of bullshit ideas that they craft their own false reality. and bill has known her his whole life; presumably, elizabeth was central to the foundation of his own ideas surrounding gender. he has had access to her brilliance at every turn.

olive is an anomaly. olive catches her off guard. all elizabeth has done is upset her, and yet olive says with conviction almost virulent that it is criminal that they will not give her a degree. but elizabeth still holds the sword in her hand, and so she swings it in defense, instead, in aggressive disbelief. because, of course, elizabeth’s never met anyone like olive.

but, of course, olive’s existence forces elizabeth to reconcile much more than just that. at least, sort of, though elizabeth’s pretty stubborn about closing her eyes and putting her fingers in her ears and waiting for them to go away. (ELIZABETH YOUR HUSBAND LITERALLY FINGERBANGED YOU WHILE YOU WERE BOTH WATCHING OLIVE SPANK A GIRL BUT SURE, YEAH, VERY MYSTERIOUS FEELINGS.) that she manages to frame the conceit of them all trying this thing out more like a research project than like, hi, i like you too? is almost too elizabeth to handle. that the second there is no denying this particular combination of sexual attraction and love—what else is the lie detector good for if not invariably forcing inarguable realities at them?—elizabeth retreats into sarcasm. “open emotional dialogue” isn’t exactly her forte of fortes, is kind of the point i’m making here. (the surprising moments of truth are always interesting, though. “i was afraid i’d always be in his shadow,” for instance, is a startlingly sincere moment of vulnerability, which i think is an important nod to the shift in her relationship to olive. i mean, obviously they started flirting way back in the speakeasy, but it’s inherently a given with that line that she sees them as existing on the same playing field. elizabeth, inviting other people onto her level? a miracle!)

here’s the thing; elizabeth is a disaster, and a revolutionary, and a realist. in an effort to achieve the goals she thinks she can (forcibly! with much effort!) achieve, she has already made concessions, things like: demand her goddamn doctorate due, but surrender her name. i think elizabeth has probably, pragmatically, already had to rearrange enough of herself and her life to fit into the crawl space that might, if she bends and scrapes and pushes hard enough, win her access to the other side—the things she wants, the vision she imagines. (a world she is as stubbornly committed to as she is her Opinions About Things.) bill has not had to make the same kinds of sacrifices, and so giving this thing up—this person up, this person they both love—is inconceivable to him. but elizabeth sees their love as something that has already bent her into the wrong shape; they have lost their jobs, an essential part of elizabeth’s future. bill demands their happiness be prioritized; elizabeth’s perspective isn’t half so black and white. since when can a woman simply have the things she wants?

one of the most interesting things elizabeth says, in the way that it sort of lays bare her character, is the whole: “they are right to shun us, and perhaps they are right to beat us. not because we fuck each other, but because we’re foolish enough to think we’re better than them.” which, a) obviously we have access to the amount of shame she keeps inside her, which is a lot, but b) this idea that elizabeth has always held herself a little aloof from the rest of the world, in terms of her own superiority complex, is v. real and v. interesting. and the idea that it’s that high ground that she feels come crashing down when they get caught is fascinating. like, only when the neighbors were suddenly able to exact judgment, to ruin the lives of their children, did she realize that she’d been pretending to see them from a tower above. that nothing she’d ever done—that no proof of her own intelligence—could change that, that it was her supposed disillusionment of their own superiority that had safeguarded their relationship in her head.

in the end, of course, she finds it is a loss she cannot bear. stubborn asshole that she is, one can only imagine how very long she would have spent miserable and steadfast about the decision were it not for bill’s prognosis. but with a little hand-holding from bill along the way, it’s elizabeth who finally chooses the thing that has brought her the most happiness, and who issues a damn apology like she means it. (and rebecca delivers a performance more than worthy of oscar buzz, dammit.)

WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO OLIVE. let’s start with the descriptors the movie provides for her, first from bill: beautiful, guileless, kind, pure of heart. and then, from elizabeth: an exceptional student, a quick study with a passion for learning, strong work ethic, keen mind, an unwavering moral compass, and a deeply instilled sense of justice. (obviously, a lot of those are re: academics, given it was from a letter of recommendation – a letter of recommendation for a student she and her husband have more or less just propositioned! iconic – and “an unwavering moral compass” is still a hilarious dig, but anyway.)

so obviously olive’s “beauty” is at the center of the film’s early conversations – this idea of asset vs. albatross plays a heavy role, and what it means as a quality that olive must manage and navigate. even though elizabeth acknowledges it as a detriment, it’s also basically the foundation of their first encounter—the way olive’s beauty has already invaded the space of elizabeth’s marriage, professionally speaking or otherwise. and it’s kind of interesting that it’s more or less the assumptions surrounding olive’s appearance and impressions that basically kickstart her interest in psychology in the first place – that she is so incredibly frustrated with her interactions with people (unlike elizabeth, she doesn’t walk a blade into every room she enters).

anyway, i’ve mentioned it before but it’s still one of my favorite things, and i do think it bears noting: olive’s investment in the marston/holloway duo begins with and is showcased in its beginning stages primarily via her admiration for elizabeth. in so many ways – both within the film’s universe and in meta terms – bill is the obvious choice here. young pretty ingénue ™ falls for charming intelligent attractive (male) professor ™ who is, as it happens, very clearly into her. all of which, of course, the movie (delightfully!) paves the way for, but by the time there’s more focus there they’ve also crystallized into people not done justice by those descriptors alone, particularly in olive’s case. the point: elizabeth being as compelling to olive as she is right from the beginning i think says a great deal about olive, who is utterly charmed by a woman so brazenly, indelicately brilliant.

i mean, honestly, here’s the thing: angela did a SHIT TON of research over the course of eight years about the marstons. that’s why it’s so easy to spot which decisions she made that were very active departures from likely history, like this one. honestly, as someone who truly could not give less of a shit about the “veracity” of the movie as it applies to the movie’s quality/worthwhileness/watchability, i definitely think it’s fascinating to consider in terms of the choices angela made—olive becoming a part of the family first as bill’s mistress in real life (note: not to suggest i’m wielding total historical fact, just at least one propagated history, and one that likely would have been developed by another director) vs. an olive whose initial attraction lands at the feet of elizabeth’s radicalism. an olive who is wooed by the ferociousness of elizabeth’s intellect! i ask again: WHO BUT ANGELA WOULD HAVE EVER WRITTEN THEIR STORY THIS WAY. (in case this needs clarifying: no, i do not in any way make this claim to make an “exclusive attraction” claim, i mean to make note of the particular choices that provided the early foundations for their relationship, narratively speaking; obviously, them all being in love with each other is quite literally the entire point of the film, wonder woman be damned.) (jk diana i love you!!!)

as a whole, olive’s relationship to feminism is super interesting and absolutely a thing i would have loved them to explore more (among, like, the other nine hours of things i want more content about). it’s also another part of the whole appearance vs. reality question as it applies to olive (i thought that you were just… / what? / i don’t know. not that.) and what a world that olive, too, is allowed to be so many things: a cult sorority pledge master, kind, just, raised in a convent; the daughter and niece of radical feminists, incredibly smart, the bravest person in the whole movie, etc. etc. (also, THE ONLY FUNCTIONING ADULT. but we’ll get there.) her “guilelessness” is complicated by her history, and even as we are presented with the possibility of naivete, the “observing olive” scene sort of dismisses that cut-out figure out of hand, by way of elizabeth. olive knows exactly what she’s doing; she has lived many years having to navigate precisely the right amount of eye contact to make with a boy, precisely the tone to select. that is practice, and experience. she both finds herself apologizing every other minute and is unwilling to be anyone’s doormat—accommodating, yes, generous, yes, but even as early as the elizabeth/bill/olive apology sequence, she by no means jumps at the chance to accept this vague gesture. she wears her emotions on her sleeve and finds herself the more powerful for it.

olive is absolutely searching at the beginning of the movie – for explanations, for answers, for the kind of life she wants to lead. (for, i think it’s safe to say, elizabeth’s respect—a much more arduous ask than her husband’s.) and the truly incredible thing about olive is that as soon as she experiences the thing that she wants, she knows herself well enough not only to know with absolute certainty that it is what she wants, but also to pursue the hell out of it. after their joint first time, olive literally has no doubt left in her; this makes her happier than anything else she has. “unwavering moral compass” or not (lmao), uh, what fiancé? because the truth is that olive’s heart is her conviction, not duty. if it’s right, she will feel it. and so she does.

olive’s connection to her emotions, to her convictions, to her awareness of what she wants—like, it’s honestly a superpower. emotional intelligence and academic intelligence? honestly, chill. she’s also kind of their guiding light, whether in the moment she steps out on that platform in the pseudo-wonder-woman outfit, thereby changing the conversation entirely, or the first time she kisses elizabeth and rearranges everybody’s headspace. she always casts light on the next step of the narrative, on a place often frightening but a place everybody else will end up by the next act, anyway. (elizabeth may expect people to meet her halfway in terms of words, but olive’s the one reaching out her hand at every turn, waiting for someone to take it. and olive is the one—in many ways—with everything to lose.)

olive takes most care of the children; olive is the one most often sending them off to school with lunches in hand; olive is the most capable at wrangling something edible out of the oven; let’s be honest, olive is definitely the only who can convince their 1930’s (etc) cars into motion when they’re feeling particularly stubborn; olive likely exchanges baked goods with the neighbors and shares small talk and offers the helpful advice only possible from someone who cares enough to be a good listener. olive makes friends. so i ask you: literally, how the fuck did elizabeth and bill ever live their lives without her?

elizabeth probably spends more time making snide comments about the neighbors than making friends with them; bill spends time working on manuscript #17 (and then, you know, the obvious), although i’m sure he can be wrangled out to offer some charm every now and again.

(clearly not enough for Prying Neighbor to call his name when she walks in their damn house, though. I WILL SAY, while i’m here and because i can, the biggest moment of discontinuity in this entire movie is Prying Neighbor shouting elizabeth’s name next after olive’s. OLIVE, yes, checks out, she’s home and available and friendliest most of the time. BUT WHY ELIZABETH??? WHEN WOULD ELIZABETH EVER BE HOME ON A WORK DAY??? BILL IS THE ONLY OTHER PERSON IN THE HOUSE WHO WOULD USUALLY BE HANGING AROUND. I CANNOT MAKE THIS MAKE SENSE. i mean, i’ve since headcanoned that they’re always making fun of the fact that she literally cannot get into her brain that it’s elizabeth with the regular job and not bill, but i’m just saying.) 

anyway, returning from that tangent: i think the exchange about happiness in the final hospital scene provides an interesting echo to elizabeth’s earlier “love – it doesn’t matter” (are you happy? / does it matter?), which is fairly heart-shattering from someone who’s been certain of and willing to pursue happiness throughout the course of the whole movie. but it’s also an incredibly valid question: it’s not as if “happiness” was in the calculus when elizabeth told her to leave, either. what does happiness actually mean to them? (the brief shots of them without OLIVE are! fucking! brilliant! angela’s ability to make that tiny bed look empty without olive in it was a stroke of genius.)

and, of course, “does it matter?” is the question the movie answers resoundingly in the affirmative. in the end, it’s olive’s choice that decides how the film will end. it’s olive who gets to say “no,” who gets to dictate the terms. it’s olive with all the leverage. it’s olive who decides if she will meet elizabeth halfway. it’s olive with elizabeth’s heart in her hands. it’s olive who deserves a new goddamn stove, you assholes.

in the end, it’s olive who has the capacity to shape their future, and shape it she does. for decades to come.

[silencefromafar]

So, as you all must know already, I love Karen Page and I will die protecting her.

That said, it baffles me to see how much undeserved hate my poor child gets and having to read people accusing her and calling her names is so, so tiring. What really gets to me in particular is how some people trash her because of her reaction to Matt being Daredevil, comparing it to her ‘acceptance’ and ‘forgiveness’ of Frank’s punishing ways. Well, first thing I have to say is the only possible parallels between Karen’s relationship with Matt and her relationship with Frank are to show how completely different they are. Bear in mind that this is about Karen, not the ships! I know I will have to verge on this minefield to develop my argument but it is only to highlight or explain some aspect of Karen’s psyche, her decisions and inner conflicts.

As I have said before, Karen’s problem with Matt’s secret identity is not due to her being averse to Daredevil per se or vigilantism in general. Although being critical in some instances, Karen has never showed she’s staunchly against vigilantes or Daredevil in particular. There’s even a point during season 1 in which Karen says that he ‘kicks ass’ (to Matt’s delight). In her conversation with Matt during the diner scene in The Defenders, Karen makes a point of telling him that Daredevil made the city a safer place. Matt lying through his theet smiles and says that it is now better off without his Devil alter ego to which Karen’s response is very telling: instead of agreeing with him and reasserting what he just said, she tells him that it is better off with Matt Murdock. This is important guys. 

Now try to be Karen Page. Really. To understand where Karen stands here we need to see things how she sees them. Karen hates being lonely and she wants to form connections, she values the few relationships she has and she wants to protect the people she cares about. Matt and Foggy were the first people with whom she could develop a relationship since coming to NY and the three of them became sort of a family at Nelson & Murdock. She cares deeply for them and seems to feel particularly protective of Matt because of his blindness (and I want to clarify I don’t mean this in an ableist way). In season 2 they decide to take their relationship a step further and start dating. At the same time Matt’s behavior becomes really, really problematic. He’s increasingly absent, constantly stressed and failing to attend his obligations to the partnership. He’s always getting badly injured. His relationship with Foggy is deteriorating and he is treating them both badly. To make matters even worse Matt rejects her attempts to get him to open up about what’s happening with him and finally she finds out that he has been lying to her and is possibly cheating on her. She is seeing someone she cares deeply about drifting away and her little family is crumbling. So how should we have expected her to react to Matt revealing that he is Daredevil? Certainly not with joy. To Karen, this is the reason why Matt’s life was going downhill and taking with it their friendship. To Karen, being Daredevil was hurting Matt emotionally and physically and it already cost him his job and his friends. I believe she could pretty much see how it would end costing him his own life. Which it ultimately did.

But she accepts and defends Frank, right? Karen’s relationship with Frank is a completely different story. With Matt all she knew was Matthew Murdock, the charming blind lawyer with great talent and a promising career, the loyal partner and friend of Foggy Nelson. This is the person she got to know and with whom she had a relationship, someone who had a whole life ahead of him. The guy who helped her and that later became her boss, friend and ‘almost-boyfriend’. With Frank, first she knew The Punisher, a man that lost everything and basically came back from the dead to exact his revenge. She later gets to know that this man who lives only for killing criminals was once a dedicated husband, a loving father and a decorated Marine. She comes to care about him and even tries to dissuade him, believing that this man still lives inside the mass murderer. It bothers me when people point that Karen ‘accepts’ Frank like it means that she fully supports what he does when that is clearly not the truth. Karen defends Frank when he gets called unjustly a monster or a terrorist, but she does not condone what he does. Most times that Karen and Frank clash is because of how she disagrees with his methods: ”I think you probably belong in jail”, “You do this and I’m done!”, “I wanna help you but not if it’s gonna get someone killed”, “Why don’t we do this the right way for once?”, “Do not do this and say that it’s for me”. The thing is: Frank never tried to hide what he does - what he is - from Karen. It gets even more complex if you add in Karen’s guilt over her past actions and the darkness that she hides from others.

With Matt it’s not about disagreeing with what he does, but how it affects him and their relationship. From what we saw in The Defenders, Karen knows that Matt lied and lied a lot about himself but she isn’t completely aware that the man she knows is, in a way, a desguise in pretty much the same way that she uses her ‘smiling pretty blonde’ persona. To Karen, Daredevil was not wrong in what he did but he would end destroying Matt Murdock. The man she knew was the cute blind lawyer, the man she protected by killing James Wesley, and she would choose him over the vigilante anytime.

[danfanciesphil]

A jealous Dan prompt? Not mean or angsty just like idk sometimes Dan gets jealous?

Jealous!Dan is literally my weakness ily

Got a prompt for me? Hit up my ask box! (Please be aware that due to an abundance of prompts, your prompt may take a few days to complete - but thank you all for submitting so far!)

Phil is an attractive person. 

Dan is acutely aware of this, and has been ever since he first saw an AmazingPhil video on YouTube. Whilst he’s not the most hair-raising, breathtaking beauty on the planet, there is no denying his good fortune in the looks department. Icy blue eyes, pale skin, jet black hair. It’s like the stuff of fairytales - and Phil pulls it off well.

More than this though, Phil’s attractiveness comes through in the way he is. In the way he acts, speaks, talks, and even thinks about things. 

Sure, you might check him out briefly on the street and note his good looks, but it’s when you actually engage him in conversation, or spend time with him doing almost any activity, that you begin to realise just how fortunate you are to be in his presence at all. 

He’s witty, and clever. He’s got a vast plethora of knowledge tucked away, but he’s modest about it, and tends to surprise people by peppering facts or proper, well-structured, carefully formed opinions into conversation. 

He’s a kind, gentle soul, but he’s ambitious and fiercely loyal of his friends, never afraid to stand up for those in the wrong, or for what he believes in. 

These aspects of Phil’s personality are things that Dan has grown to love. He discovers new parts of his boyfriend every day, and is regularly astounded by how truly magnificent he is as a person; it’s rather baffling, really, that he chooses to be with Dan, who is significantly younger, and far less well-rounded.

But putting Phil’s love-blindness aside, Dan is proud of himself for recognising the superior qualities of Phil Lester, especially as many people tend to overlook them. 

It’s when they don’t overlook them that things get a little... trickier. 

For instance, right now, they’re at a party. It’s New Year’s Eve, and some of Phil’s old friends from university (he has so many that Dan can barely keep track, let alone name the person whose flat he’s currently in) are having a party. 

Dan likes Phil’s old friends a lot, of course. But at the same time, he can’t help but envy them, for having so much time with Phil before Dan even knew he existed. 

They share memories that Dan will never be a part of. They know him so well, and Dan is trying to match their level of Phil-knowledge, but it’s a slow, painful process. It takes time to build a friendship that will rival theirs, Dan knows. 

Also, Dan has no way of knowing what their relationship to Phil was in the past. 

When Dan says that Phil has a lot of friends, he is not exaggerating, and they come in all genders. Not that Phil is particularly fussed about such things, Dan supposes, but he has noticed that girls in particular make beelines towards him when he enters these parties. 

Right now, for instance, Phil is deep in conversation with three girls, all of whom have introduced themselves to Dan and seem like perfectly friendly, fun people. 

Unfortunately, Dan has a condition that renders him unable to take their personalities into account, and it only worsens when he’s drunk.

Jealousy. 

The expression goes that it’s an ugly emotion, and Dan can’t think of a better way in which to describe it. It’s awful, and all-consuming, making him feel like a horrible monster of a person, but Dan simply cannot suppress it. 

He’s been sticking to Phil’s side since they got here, practically glued to him as he wanders around talking to everyone. He’s also being almost creepily quiet, just watching the conversations unfolding around him, eyeing everyone with suspicion, answering direct questions monosyllabically. 

“... I could swear you’ve gotten taller!” One girl says to Phil, laughing like it’s hilarious. Dan narrows his eyes at her, trying not to scowl. He takes another swig of Malibu straight from the bottle to distract himself - it doesn’t work. “How is that possible? You make me look like a child when you stand next to me.”

As if to demonstrate, the girl - Dan thinks her name is Jessica - presses herself against Phil’s side, wobbling a little on tipsy legs. Her halterneck dress leaves a lot of skin on show around her shoulders and back, and she isn’t shy about pressing it against Phil’s arm. 

“Cara, how bad is it?” Maybe-Jessica asks another girl standing in their huddle. 

Cara laughs, framing them with her hands as though trying to snap a mental photo. “Not gonna lie, he’s at least a foot taller.”

Jessica throws her head back, laughing more. She hits Phil playfully on the arm, and Dan only just manages to stop himself tackling her to the floor for it. 

“Phi-il, stop making me look bad! I’m in heels for God’s sake!”

Phil chuckles, a little pink-cheeked. “Sorry. Must be all that standing in soil I’ve been doing since I last saw you.”

Apparently, this is the funniest joke in the world, because Cara and Jessica are practically in tears with laughter. Jessica is hanging off Phil’s arm now, and Dan can actually feel the blood in his veins beginning to simmer. He wants to grab hold of Jessica’s halterneck tie and yank her backwards, possibly towards the nearest open window. 

He can’t stand feeling like this. His hand twitches by his side. He must be glaring now, but nobody seems to notice. He sips some more Malibu.

All of a sudden, Jessica ‘trips’, seemingly on the air itself, falling forwards a bit, just in time for Phil to catch her. His arms steady on her waist, and she giggles, one hand over her mouth, staring up at him through her fake lashes. 

“Whoops!” She says, a little more softly now. “One too many squadka’s, I think.” She pauses, and Phil laughs awkwardly, trying to draw his hands away. Dan catches his eye, and Phil reddens, attempting to free himself from inside Jessica’s personal bubble. Her hands grab his wrists, holding them in place, and she smiles at him, flirtatious. “Being so tall and strong has its benefits, I suppose.”

She bites her lip, and that is the moment Dan snaps. His teeth grind together, and he pushes Cara to one side, rather rudely, forcing himself between Phil and Jessica without apology. He finds Phil’s hand and grips it, hard, then turns to Jessica, eyes ablaze. 

“He’s mine.” 

It’s all he needs to say, apparently. Jessica totters backwards, her mouth open in a little ‘o’. Dan doesn’t care, he needs to do something about the viscous, burning heat racing through his whole body. He drags Phil across the room, past groups of bewildered looking twenty-somethings, and over to the wall. 

There’s a small spot between the TV and the radiator, and Dan pulls Phil down into it, their backs to the walls. He places his hand on Phil’s thigh, a little overly possessive perhaps, but necessary. Phil is saying something, apparently rather perplexed by what’s happening, but Dan is barely listening. 

He drinks another gulp of Malibu, then places the bottle to one side.

“...it’s just you haven’t really said anything all night, and now you go and basically attack Jess for just-”

Dan swings his leg over Phil’s, climbing onto his lap with practised efficiency. He pushes his lips into Phil’s shutting him up at once. He kisses hard, being rough and messy because he kind of wants it to hurt a bit. He wants Phil to realise how furious this has made him, and to respond in kind, to reassure Dan that there’s nothing to be worried about. 

Phil doesn’t respond much at first, but Dan is expecting this. They haven’t told anyone at this party they’re together. Phil has been introducing Dan as ‘his friend’. It’s not for any particular reason, they’re just being careful. They don’t want to share something so personal with just anyone, and one can never be too sure of the reaction when it’s a queer relationship. 

Then, after a while, once the shock of it has passed, Phil’s hands find Dan’s waist - his strong, sure hands, no longer gripping that bitchy girl’s sides - and he tugs Dan closer, kissing back just as hard. 

Dan bites at his lips, all teeth and tongue as he attacks Phil’s mouth, hoping everyone is watching, and everyone can see just how little Phil belongs to any of them anymore. 

“You’re mine,” Dan growls against him, pushing his hips down into Phil’s crotch, wanting to hammer the point home. “No one else gets to touch you.”

Breathless, with glazed eyes, Phil nods at him, diving back in for another kiss. 

“It’s okay,” Phil tells him, tilting his head willingly as Dan mouths along his jaw, scraping his teeth down his neck. “I’m- ah! I’m yours.” 

Dan nods in agreement, then bites, hard, sucking a bruise into Phil’s throat. He wants it to be a deep crimson, big and sprawling over Phil’s pretty pale throat. He wants it to darken over time, impossible to ignore as it purples and deepens, making people blush as they realise what it is. 

Phil just lets him do it, for some reason. 

Normally, they don’t allow love bites. Filming videos would be a nightmare, for a start, plus they take too long to disappear. 

But Phil is passive now, just breathing heavily, his hands gripping Dan’s waist as Dan sucks on the skin. Finally, he leans away, satisfied with his work. 

“Now they’ll know for sure.” Dan says, surveying his artwork with pleasure. He wants to leave another, almost immediately, to cover Phil in them all over his body. Maybe later, when they’re alone. He hums to himself in contentment, liking the idea immensely. “Mine.” 

People are staring; Dan can feel their eyes. He doesn’t give a fuck, let them. Let everyone see how he has Phil cornered here, and how he doesn’t want to leave. Let the whole damn world realise that Phil is his, and that any attempt to sway him in a different direction will not end well. 

Dan knows he’ll feel less crazy in the morning. The jealousy will have faded somewhat, though it will sit, as ever, simmering just beneath his skin, ready to leap out and turn him into a possessive monster once more. 

For now, though, Dan is not letting Phil out of his sight. Midnight is hours away, but Dan isn’t sure he can wait that long. Phil looks pretty elated too, his pupils blown, and eyes trained on Dan’s face. Perhaps they could skip the rest of this reunion. 

Home is just a taxi ride away, after all. 

(Based off these photos)

[viviandroidcardigan]

HUGE post about Drautos

My speculations about Drautos based on little number of canon facts we have but still remaining mostly in headcanon space. MANY gifs.  

However you look at it, Titus Drautos is a man of ideas, or maybe better to say mental constructs. He put himself under immense pressure, being a double agent for 10+ years leading a major force for two opposing armies. Successfully leading both, I can’t stress that enough, because that’s just crazy. And for what? What possible motivations could he have had?  

There are two major ideas he seemed to be living by. Both artificially constructed and absolutely disconnected from him by the end of the movie.  

Personal grudge against king Regis and the wellbeing of his homeland.  

First, I just want to say that it’s very clear to me that neither pure power nor any other personal gain was ever his goal. And there was no loyalty or other positive feelings towards the Empire. That much is clear from his words and his actions. 

I’m going to take the majority of what he says at face value because some offhanded phrases were revealed to be meaningful later on and I think he is trying to tell the truth as much as possible not to get tangled in a web of lies as any respectable spy would do. 

Also I regard the majority of his words about someone to be actually about himself as it is a customary way to show character’s motivations in any story.    

Like here. Drautos is feeling he has no power without the magic on loan from a person he hates. That was probably the reason he started working with Niflheim in the first place, to get an alternative which he got in a form of his armor.    

The one thing he is passionate about is ending the war. He could be acting for sure but there is no real reason for it. Other Glaives showed all the spectrum of emotions ranging from rage to uncertainty to derision and none was considered a suspicious behavior. The best choice of emotion for a captain close to the King in some respect, would seem to be a reserved contemplation. But he is emotional and in not just words but also his posture and movements. That’s the most fidgety and unsettled we see him for the whole movie. I believe it’s because he really want’s for the fucking war to end and... he doesn’t feel all that great about his next order to Crowe. Though from his perspective her death is essential for the plan and thus for stopping the war. 

In my favorite scene Drautos is obviously probing Nyx for any discontent he can use to stir him his way. He’s not really working to get Nyx to his side because as far as we know that’s the only talk of such nature between them and it’s really far too late for it to work. Drautos has already recruited his merry band of traitors long ago and has a role for Nyx to play, but he is still hopping for something. I would say, to check if Nyx can be persuaded to work with him afterwards, when everything would work out accordingly. 

Also, Drautos is not a super emotional guy but the flatness of his expression now in this particular (otherwise relatively lively) conversation indicates to me that he may be thinking how HE wasn’t happy to give up his home, back when it happened the first time. 

My personal take on his age is around 45 (his actor’s age) it’s somewhere there anyways. And seeing that the Wall was retracted to cover only Insomnia in 725 and he was said to loss his home 30 years ago that would make him 14-15. Not most pleasant teenage memories for sure.                

I love the fact that he is genuinely baffled by the idea that Nyx wants to return to Galahd. His reaction makes it clear that he wasn’t even considering it to be an option. Neither for Nyx, nor for himself. And he tells right away why he thinks so. He is sure that without magic they won’t be good for much at home but he is well aware that soon he would be permanently without it. 

So here goes the first mental construct: Cavaugh his homeland.   

He may be the one to invent or at least put emphasis on the moto: For hearth and home. And he later claims the Empire made promises regarding giving their lands back but he exhibits no particular cultural signs of that place, unlike very prominent Galahdian ancestry Nyx and Libertus bask in. I don’t think he has any family left and sure he had no chance to visit it in decades. He clearly had no plan to come back to it soon or maybe at all. For the place he is putting his life and honor in line for, he shows very little care for it. 

It’s more like it was something he cared deeply for long ago, in his formative years. Something he built his life around to protect but it’s merely a ghost of an idea by now. This is also something he never actually got to understand.            

“Yeah, always wanting to save somebody” another: I’m talking to you, but I’m actually remembering myself long ago when I wanted to save everyone and couldn’t. He used to be that, but now he IS the one who is winning wars, because he learned to align with a strongest forces and play the dirtier way. 

This argument is actually a huge proof to me that Drautos cares about Nyx to some extent. He is basically showing his hand a bit with the next phrase especially, just to warn him a little bit, not about what is coming but about the danger of being too moral in an immoral world. Something hard learned. 

Can we take a moment to appreciate Nyx’s eye roll during his captain’s speech? This little shit!        

And here, another instance of talking about his own unanswered prayers, because he knows that “The gods do not listen”.  

This one is interesting. He has no reason to tell Luna anything. He came to take her and he will, no reason for additional intimidation and he is not a man to drop vague unnecessary ego busting phrases.  

The only reason to do it in my opinion, as if that prayer did piss him off a great deal and he reminds himself how close he is to finally reaching his goals - something gods never granted him so he went and got it for himself.      

Again talking about the struggles he couldn’t overcome. It pains me to think how he faced this arguments alone, never getting a chance for a fair fight and still choosing the right thing to fight for. 

He is a Niflheim general commanding the infantry, he knows what MTs are, what daemons really are. Well he knows much more than Nyx at least. Drautos is not afraid of them but he understands how truly overpowered that enemy is.      

“Giving a future to those who want to see it is everything”

And now about the second construct: hatred towards Regis.

Regis was undoubtedly a very unlucky man, because his actions were dictated mostly by his knowledge of unimaginable fate of the world and his own son. And many of those actions looked very much like cowardice and hypocrisy from outside of what he was totally aware of. 

Alas, Drautos was not privy to that information, in his younger years at least. And in all honesty I think his hatred started before Regis even could take any of those actions. I’m reasonably supposing that Drautos had lost his family during that war 30 years ago. When Morus abandoned the lands beyond the wall and recalled Regis back to Insomnia from the front lines. 

So Drautos actually started hating the Lucis Caelum dynasty for something that wasn’t Regis’ fault, ironically I think it was said that Regis was not happy about that development himself. But that time Drautos saw him as a coward and nothing could change his mind ever since.         

Also these words mean that Drautos in fact still enlisted into Lucis army. I don’t think he talks about the recent armistice, he surely has no ground to talk about betrayal there. That’s why I think there was another incident, something after he enlisted and served loathing and before he actually snapped. I have MY version of what that was (read Chapter 11 of H&H when I get there xD) but anyways there was something. And for Drautos it looked like he was betrayed multiple times before his own retaliation.   

But the point is, for many years in charge of Kingsglaive Drautos was in position that required close work with Regis and certain active protection of his name before the Glaives, who were prone to be dissatisfied with king’s actions. Like at the start, Drautos again and again repeats that the king is a supreme power and wisdom. Whether he believed it or not at first is of no matter because he sure as hell had to at some point to admit it at least partially. Because he is not stupid and he is honorable in his own way and being in close quarters with Regis he had to recognize a good man in him. And I think that he did. Because despite his angry words in the end, he did give him a quick death and a fucking salute. TWICE. The second one so long that he, in fact, had lost Nyx and Luna because he was doing it. Also that cathartic cry for a man like Drautos? Lots of emotions I interpret as anger, relief, closure and regret.        

So yeah. Drautos wasn’t in fact hating Regis, more like he was hating the idea of Regis and all that he represented. But same a constructed idea of his homeland it was so deeply set he could have never objectively rethink it. Every trait he developed, every action he took was built onto these two things: the future for the place he never meant to return to and the hatred toward a person who never actually deserved his scorn. 

Something he probably realized on some level but couldn’t afford to doubt, because it was too late to change and would have resulted in self-destruction of the core of his personality. He was stuck in the past, molded around the ideas he fought for all his life, alone, for the right cause but missing all the crucial information about what was to come and therefore without a hope to ever truly succeed. And that is very sad if you think about it.    

[equalmeasurefiction]

You’re Oppressing Yourselves: An exploration of interpretations, bad writing, and missed opportunities

Responders and Writing Techniques

There is a method to my madness.  Part of that method is to introduce an idea and then bring it up again only a few posts later to help me explain my logic.

So let me begin this meta by explaining that I’m a #4 in terms of how I engage with a piece of media—I’m a responder.  So, my first instinct is to try and make sense of a work within the framework that has been provided by the creator, or to provide my own framework in order to achieve a better understanding of what I’ve just absorbed.

This is why I tend to write fanfiction before I start writing metas.  I can’t actually ‘see’ a work until I’ve chewed it up and reprocessed it/responded to it.

As a result of this particular quirk, I’m less likely to point out ‘bad writing’ right off the bat.  When I come across something ‘inconsistent’ or ‘out of character’ for a given character in a fictional work, my first instinct is to try and figure out what the writer is trying to tell me about the character.  Now, most of the time, my approach falls flat, because there are many inexperienced or rushed or frustrated writers in the world and when a character does something dumb or out of character it’s usually because the writer didn’t think things through, didn’t like the job, or is simply lazy.

That said, my tendency to try and read into inconsistencies isn’t entirely unfounded.  Creating character inconsistencies is a valid writing technique, and it can be very effective when properly deployed. This technique can be used a foreshadowing, a means of setting up backstory, or even a proverbial Chekhov's gun.  Character consistency and inconsistency is immensely important to character development, so any action that is ‘out of the ordinary’ for a character is a big deal.

Okay, now that I’ve put a bit of framework in place, let’s dig into Legend of Korra.  This is, after all, a show so full of character inconsistencies that it’s the only standard character trait.  We’re going to be focusing on a particularly inflammatory line from Season 1, Episode 1.

I’m going to provide a bit of critical analysis before digging into my perspective as a responder, because it’s important to point out bad writing in all its forms.

The Scene

Equalist: Are you tired of living under the tyranny of benders?  Then join the equalists!  For too long the bending elite of this city have forced non-benders to live as lower class citizens!  Join Amon, and together we will tear down the bending establishment!

Korra: What are you talking about?!  Bending is the coolest thing in the world!

Equalist: Oh yeah?  Let me guess, you’re a bender!

Korra: Yeah!  I am!

Equalist: And I bet you’d just love to knock me off this platform with some water bending, huh!

Korra: I’m seriously thinking about it!

Equalist: This is what’s wrong with the city!  Benders like this girl only use their power to oppress us!

Crowd: *General Outcry and Agreement*

Korra: What?!  I’m not oppressing anyone!  You’re-you’re oppressing yourselves!

Critical Analysis

When I look back on this scene, I can’t help but think that everyone should have realized that Legend of Korra would never really be able to measure up to Avatar: the Last Airbender and adjusted their expectations accordingly.  There are some very serious writing problems in this first episode and, for me, this scene captures them perfectly.  All of these problems stem from one incredibly important, but often ignored fact: this is the first episode.

First episodes are ‘introductory’ episodes.  They’re the ‘first chapter’ of a story and it’s important to set the status quo.  While it’s certainly possible to drop a group of characters into the midst of crisis in the first episode, it’s important that you establish character during the crisis.  Unless a writer is pulling some big, fancy flash-back sequence, it’s too soon to start including character inconsistency moments (unless you want to establish ‘inconsistency' as a core character trait, which is what LoK did).

This scene is a character inconsistency moment.  It is built up over the course of several previous scenes and comes to a head in this particular character interaction.  The sequence begins with Korra trying to buy food off a food vendor and being told off for not having money…

It continues the thread with Korra meeting the homeless man and being surprised by his poverty...

These two scenes both set a thematic tone and reveal important information about Korra’s character.

The thematic tone that’s been set by these first two interactions is ‘money and poverty in a city.’  The audience is watching as Korra stops, listens, and learns from the people she encounters.  Korra is surprised at what she encounters, revealing her ignorance of the greater world, but at the same time, she does not become combative with the people who are ‘educating’ her.  She accepts what she’s being told as truth and places her trust in the locals…

In light of the thematic setup and the characterization provided by the previous two scenes, I think it’s readily apparent that this scene makes no sense in the context of episode.  Korra was not confronting non-bender oppression in the scenes leading up to this, she was encountering economic realities.  This scene disrupts Korra’s characterization as someone who is capable of listening and growing an awareness of the problems of others.

Even Korra’s interjection in this scene, which opens her conversation with the equalist is completely out of left field.  The equalist is talking about benders oppressing non-benders.  Korra, however, ignores the discussion of oppression (which is surprising considering her temperament and approach to ‘solving problems’ in the very next scene) and argues that the act of bending is great and amazing.  This has absolutely nothing to do with the point that the equalist was making, which goes against everything that we had been shown about Korra’s character up until that point.

All the same, this scene would have been fine if the writers had actually done something with Korra’s reaction in the course of the series.  But there is no exploration or examination of Korra’s behavior in this instance.  They gave the audience Chekhov’s gun and then did nothing with it—that’s one of the biggest sin’s a writer can commit.  A good editor would have nixed this scene before it made it to production.

So, this is a scene that is thematically inconsistent and creates character inconsistencies and traits which are never resolved in the course of the series.  Why does this scene exist?

I think it all comes down to one line: ‘You’re oppressing yourselves!’

That line carries a huge amount of emotional and psychological baggage for anyone who has ever been part of a minority group and has been shouted down by someone else.  Many have been conditioned to react to that line negatively because their lives have been flooded with it and similar sentiments.  That line is loaded with ‘shock value’ and was probably included to provoke a reaction.

Its inclusion isn’t just bad writing, it’s a blatant attempt at making a ‘statement’ through a character.  And making a statement through a character without ‘follow-through’ (making sure that Chekhov’s gun goes off) is bad form.

Responder Analysis

But this scene can make sense in the context of the series.  However, making it make sense would involve Bryke actually writing a loving family and exploring the dynamics of that family.  I’m not convinced that Bryke knows how to do that.

I’m going to pull a little from personal experience here.

Now, I’ve seen ‘you’re oppressing yourselves’ tossed around online for ages, but I’ve only ever heard anyone say anything remotely close to it in real life once.  A friend made the comment after we left a lecture that discussed theories on civil liberties and the development of certain aspects of oppressive language in regards to a specific group.  We ended up talking about it and I was really surprised to learn that they had a close relative who was part of that ‘you’re oppressing yourselves’ group.

This relative was a family matriarch, had a lot of power within their community, and was a financially successful business person.  For my friend, the idea that someone who was like that might suffer any form of oppression seemed absolutely ridiculous.  How could one of the most influential and powerful people in my friend’s life possibly suffer any form of oppression when they commanded so much power and authority within their community?

Back to Korra.  Up until this particular scene, Korra blindly and blithely accepts what she’s told, because she doesn’t know much about Republic City.  The writers are showing her lack of knowledge.  If Korra accepts what she’s told when she has no knowledge on a topic, then why would she argue against the idea that non-benders were oppressed unless she felt that she knew a thing or two?

Now, I doubt that the White Lotus took the time to explain bender/non-bender relations to Korra (one of the many, many baffling holes in her education…), so that means that whatever understanding that Korra has about non-benders comes from personal experience.  That means that there must have been a strong, non-bender in Korra’s personal life who informed Korra’s understanding of the relationship between benders and non-benders.

The first and most obvious strong non-bender in Korra’s life is Pema.  The wife of Aang’s son, Tenzin, who has no fear of her husband and who, on occasion, bosses him around.

But Pema and Korra don’t really share much screen-time and they rarely share much time talking about anything (outside of ill-fated romance).  So, that means that the tough-as-nails non-bender might be a little closer to home.

Let’s talk about Senna, the Avatar’s mother who is never shown to have any bending ability in any existent season of Legend of Korra.  Tonraq is a powerful bender, and someone that Korra clearly respects and admires.  If Senna, his wife, were a non-bender and Korra spent the first five years of her life in a household where her non-bender mother actively argued with, bossed around, and was respected by a powerful and formidable water bender what conclusion would she naturally reach?

This is why I favor the theory that Senna is a non-bender.  Korra’s outburst is out of character for her, unless it’s a defensive reaction to having her understanding of a close, personal relationship with a non-bender disrupted.  It can be painful and difficult for a child, particularly a sheltered child, to be made to recognize the vulnerability of a parent or provider, especially when the child is put on ‘the side’ of the oppressor.

But Senna is not a non-bender.  This scene only serves to tell the audience that the lead character is an ignorant, unlikable brat.  And it really bothers me that this scene, which could have set up for some incredibly powerful mother/daughter moments and an exploration of family dynamics, was nothing more than a pointless dig at the audience…

Which why I’m ignoring Bryke’s canon and going with my own head canon where Senna is concerned.  So, tough non-bender Senna is my jam.

[lindyhunt]

The Dunning Kruger Effect: Why Your Coworkers Believe They're Way Smarter Than They Actually Are

If you’ve ever been a manager, you know how frustrating the Dunning Kruger effect can be.

Let’s say you work at a software company, and you need to give Karen, your newest software developer, a performance review. Karen’s exceptionally good at developing code, but she lacks a few critical programming skills. That’s okay -- you recognized this skill gap before hiring her, and set up training sessions for this reason.

But when you mention Karen’s programming skill gap to her, her reaction baffles you: “What are you talking about? I’m exceptionally skilled at programming. I don’t need training -- in fact, I’m one of the best programmers on your team.”

You’re surprised. Not only is Karen unable to recognize her weakness, but she overestimates her skill in comparison to others, believing herself to be better than some of your best developers. Her lack of knowledge on the subject makes her unable to see her own errors -- this is known as the Dunning Kruger effect.

Dunning Kruger Effect

The Dunning Kruger Effect is a pyschological phenomenon in which people of the lowest ability in a subject rate themselves as most competent, compared to others. Ironically, people who lack the most knowledge on a topic also lack the ability to recognize their own mistakes and errors, making them exceptionally confident and biased self-evaluators. They are also unable to fairly judge other people’s performance.

The Dunning Kruger effect, first coined by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, is a cognitive bias that influences everyone’s perception of their own abilities. Simply put, people are unreliable resources for evaluating their own skills and shortcomings.

However, the Dunning Kruger effect gets slightly more complex than that. People like Karen, with the lowest levels of competency in a subject, often rate themselves highest in terms of expertise. Dunning and Kruger explain this as a double-curse -- Karen makes mistakes because she’s not competent in a skill, but that same incompetency blinds her from seeing any errors in her work. In short, she’s not skilled enough in a particular area to see she’s not the best at it. She also misjudges other people’s abilities, assuming she knows more than most of her colleagues.

Meanwhile, true experts often underrate themselves -- they’re so knowledgable on the subject, they can see how much they don’t know.

Here, we’ll dive into a few key research findings to exemplify this effect in-action. We’ll also explore a few potential solutions, so you can help any Karens -- or any other colleagues on your team who suffer from the Dunning Kruger effect -- fairly judge her performance moving forward.

Dunning Kruger Effect Examples

There have been numerous research studies over the years to support the notion that people misjudge their own adequacy -- and, that the poorest performers are least accurate about their own skills. Let’s look at three examples now.

Example One: Debate Skills

Ehrlinger et al.’s 2008 study examined students in a collegiate debate tournament. As you might’ve guessed, students performing in the lowest 25% grossly overestimated their skills -- they guessed they’d won almost 60% of their matches. In fact, they’d won about 22% of them.

The lowest performers weren’t simply overcompensating for a lack of skill, or boosting their confidence to hide their insecurities. Instead, they were genuinely unaware of their incompetence -- the debaters performing in the lowest 25% had the least knowledge of debating, so they were unable to accurately judge their own performance. They weren’t biased judges. They were simply uninformed ones.

The results from this study translates to plenty of real-world examples. If you’ve extensively studied marketing, you might be shocked to hear how your colleague mis-evaluates the results from your company’s new marketing campaign. He might take a look at the staggeringly-low numbers and say, “Looks good to me,” simply because he doesn’t have the skillset to understand how to read SEO analytics -- and, without that skillset at all, he believes himself to be above-average.

Example Two: Logical Reasoning Skills

In 1999, Dunning and Kruger published their initial research on the Dunning Kruger effect, called, “Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.” To conduct their research, they looked at people’s self-perceptions in regards to humor, logical reasoning, and grammar.

In particular, we’ll look at study two, which focuses on logical reasoning. In the study, 45 Cornell University undergraduates were asked to complete a 20-item logical reasoning test. They were then asked to evaluate their ability and test performance -- first, by providing a “general logical reasoning ability” percentile ranking compared to classmates, and second, by providing an estimated test score compared to classmates. They were also asked to guess how many test scores they got correct.

As theorized, the students in the lowest 12th percentile estimated their “general logical reasoning ability” fell closer to the 68th percentile in the class, and believed their test scores fell at the 62nd percentile. They also thought they’d answered 14.2 problems correctly (on average), when in reality, their mean score was 9.6.

Ultimately, the lowest scorers believed themselves to be above-average performers. On the flip side, the top 86th percentile students drastically underestimated themselves, estimating their general ability fell almost 20 points below, around the 68th percentile.

Have you ever heard someone really good at public speaking sigh and say, “That went terribly”? They probably aren’t just acting humble -- if they’re a true expert, they likely underestimate their performance in comparison to those around them.

Example Three: Emotional Intelligence

In our prior examples, we’ve seen how the Dunning Kruger effect influences a person’s perception of their logical skills -- but what about other aspects of a person’s personality, like emotional intelligence?

Sheldon, Ames, and Dunning explored emotional intelligence in relation to the Dunning Kruger effect in their 2010 study. While they conducted three separate studies, we’ll focus on the first one, which required 157 masters students to complete a Mayer-Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. Participants were given an extensive description of EI and then asked to estimate their percentile ranking on a scale from zero to 100. They also needed to estimate their score on the MSCEIT.

As you might’ve guessed, participants who scored lowest, at the 10th percentile for emotional intelligence, overstimated their EI by 63 to 69 percentile points, and believed their MSCEIT performance to be 62 to 63 points higher than it was.

On the contrary, top performers, in the 90th percentile for EI, underestimated their EI score by five to 20 points.

This example is critical for recognizing the Dunning Kruger effect is not simply related to raw logic-based skill. Instead, it biases other aspects of our lives, including social interactions. Emotional intelligence is key to becoming a better co-worker and leader, and incorrectly assuming you’ve got high EI could be detrimental to your long-term career growth.

Consider taking an emotional intelligence test, or another personality test, to fairly judge your strengths and weaknesses.

Dunning Kruger Effect Potential Solutions

Solution One: Offer Resources to Rectify Your Colleague’s Self-Perceptions

If low performers overestimate their ability in a skill because they don’t have the knowledge to fairly evaluate their performance, a solution could be to provide those low performers with the resources and knowledge necessary to accurately judge their own performances.

During their original 1999 study, Dunning and Kruger tested this hypothesis by asking participants in study four to complete a number of Wason selection tasks (which is meant to evaluate logical reasoning skills). Afterwards, they provided roughly half the participants with a training session on how to solve Wason tasks, and then asked them to re-evaluate how well they’d done.

Overall, bottom quartile performers who received the training session became better and more accurate judges of their own abilities. Before the training, they’d ranked their ability around the 55th percentile, estimated their test performance around the 51st percentile, and reported answering 5.3 problems correctly.

After the training, these same bottom performers re-ranked their ability around the 44th percentile, estimated their test performance around the 32nd percentile, and reported answering only one problem correctly.

If you’re dealing with a colleague who can’t see how badly she’s performing, perhaps it’s because she doesn’t have the tools or training necessary to see her mistakes. Rather than explaining her mistakes and hoping she’ll get it, maybe you need to go further and offer training resources to re-calibrate how she critiques her skills.

For instance, perhaps your colleague Karen’s programming inadequacy is due to a lack of knowledge of Java Script -- her background in coding leads her to believe she intuitively understands Java Script, but she can’t see how programming differs from code. If this is the case, offering a free training on Java Script could show Karen how much she needs to learn, and how to better evaluate her performance.

Solution Two: Provide Feedback Sessions

When a new colleague joins your team, she carries with her a list of preconceived notions of her strengths and weaknesses -- but studies have proven people’s perception of their skills are only weakly correlated to their actual performance (Mabe and West, 1982). This makes it difficult for people to fairly evaluate their own abilities -- if I believe I’m an exceptionally strong writer, and I’m given a test labelled, “Writing Rules,” I’m going to speed through the test and assume all my answers are correct, and it will be harder to accept objective feedback to the contrary.

On the other hand, if I’m given a test labelled “Math Rules,” and I’m not personally invested in the subject, I’m a better self-evaluator and will more fairly judge my own performance.

However, I could be wrong about my own skills -- maybe I’m better at math than I am at writing, in which case, my evaluations are biased from the get-go.

A Ehrlinger and Dunning study from 2003 tested this same concept -- they provided participants with a 10-item test and either described it as an “abstract reasoning” test or as a “computer programming skills” test. The participants had already described themselves as exceptionally strong in abstract reasoning, but admitted no knowledge of computer programming. As expected, participants who believed they’d taken an “abstract reasoning” test scored themselves 12% more favorably than when the test was labelled “computer programming”.

While there are no easy solutions to this, it’s important to take into consideration. Arming your colleagues with the knowledge that they are biased judges of their own performance could be a strong initial step. Perhaps you want to conduct a feedback session, in which you teach colleagues how to openly accept hard-to-hear feedback by acknowledging they aren’t always fair self-evaluators.

You could also offer workplace learning courses. Ultimately, the more your coworkers learn, the less likely they are to think they’re experts in a subject -- which, ironically, makes them more likely to become one.

[webitpress-blog]

iPhone 4S: A Siri-ously smooth, rapid cell phone We investigate Apple's most recent emphasis of the iPhone to choose whether.

The new iPhone 4S is here—however you won't not know it at first look. Like the move from the iPhone 3G to 3GS in 2009, the change from iPhone 4 to 4S is not a restorative one. Apple is by all accounts making a propensity for rotating between significant corrective changes and major interior changes with regards to iPhone equipment, and this is unquestionably an "inner change" sort of year. In any case, it's what's inside that matters, isn't that so?

The iPhone 4S is presently the main gadget that accompanies what Apple portrays as a voice-enacted virtual individual collaborator called Siri. The iPhone 4S additionally brandishes a totally updated recieving wire that Apple cases will definitely enhance call quality and information speeds over the iPhone 4. Furthermore, the iPhone 4S accompanies the new A5 processor presented in the iPad 2 not long ago, giving it an execution support over its antecedent. Indeed, even the inherent camera got some pleasant spec knocks.

These are the most vital new components of the iPhone 4S, and they're what we'll concentrate on in this survey. In the event that you need to peruse more about the essential iPhone 4 outline, you can read our inside and out survey from 2010. What's more, on the off chance that you need to take in about the new components that accompanied iOS 5—which chips away at an assortment of Apple equipment—we have an audit for that, as well! Be that as it may, at this moment, it's a great opportunity to concentrate on the major new components of the iPhone 4S.

"It is safe to say that you are there, Siri? It's me, Jacqui."

Since the iPhone 4S has been out for a couple days, the central issue we've been getting is: how great is Siri, truly?

Don't know Siri? Apple presented the innovation alongside the iPhone 4S this fall and charged it as a "virtual keen partner." To quote myself after Siri's presentation:

"Siri offers iPhone 4S clients an approach to associate with their gadgets, applications, and information with common dialect voice orders. Clients can send and get writings or messages essentially by conversing with Siri, see if there will be rain today, make new Reminders and timetable things, request bearings, move arrangements, and the sky is the limit from there. That, as well as clients can request that Siri look into a plenty of data, for example, eatery surveys from Yelp or even basic actualities from Wikipedia or Wolfram Alpha. Cooking and need to change over a formula's tablespoons to teaspoons? Ask Siri and find the solution back in a split second without typing a solitary character."

Apple's cases were striking, and the press demo at Apple's grounds was significantly bolder. It was hard to trust that Siri might acknowledge common dialect input and parse setting so effortlessly. This wasn't care for different telephones, which require the client to cling to a strict rundown of pre-decided charges and bark them at the fitting circumstances—Siri guaranteed to tune in as though it were a man, ready to comprehend the significance behind your words without obliging you to be unequivocal. Furthermore, it could perform such a large number of assignments!

Perusing the first round of early audits, you may leave away imagining that Apple discovered some approach to recoil Mad Men's Joan Holloway and pop her into a PC chip. Despite the fact that Siri demonstrates genuine potential, these sorts of exclusive requirements will undoubtedly be baffled. Apple clarifies that the item is still in beta—a fitting name, in our opinion.Certainly, we had minutes amid our testing when we snickered at Siri's cunning capacity to unravel our easygoing dialect and convey an outcome, as well as a particular and precise outcome.

A question about what number of calories were in a tortilla gave the appropriate response in addition to an entire host of other nourishing data. A question about how to locate a little neighborhood advertise changed over to the Maps application and indicated me headings between the market and my present area. At the point when solicited where one from my companions was (we were getting together at a specific time and he was late), Siri looked into that companion in Find My Friends before demonstrating to me a guide of his present area.

In the kitchen, I can have Siri set numerous clocks for various components of a formula without washing and dry my hands (the length of I have a pinky finger allowed to hold down the Home catch, that is). Furthermore, one of my most loved exercises for Siri is making updates. Advising Siri to "remind me to call Apple PR tomorrow at 10am" is far quicker and simpler than physically entering that data by hand into the Reminders app.When given immediate and clear assignments, Siri performs well, and it's decent not memorizing a strict rundown of charges.

Be that as it may, for the same number of times as we left away awed, we had an equivalent number of genuine ELIZA minutes. These for the most part came when we got more easygoing with Siri. As Apple proposes, we started splitting far from our stiffer orders ("call Leah") to Siri and addressing it (her?) as though she were a genuine individual—just to be tore out of the dream by something that Siri has so seriously misjudged that it's less demanding to simply think, "I'll do it without anyone's help."

For instance, I may state to Siri, "Send a content to Jason, Clint, Sam, and Lee saying we're eating at Silver Cloud." You can hypothetically send writings to numerous individuals with Siri, which is the reason I was experimenting with this element. A run of the mill reaction from Siri would be a message to Jason just, with the content perusing something like, "Clint Sam and Lee saying we're eating at Silver Cloud."

This message doesn't bode well, and it's not setting off to the correct individuals. So I could then say to Siri, "Alter message to state: we're at Silver Cloud and you ought to come discover us." At this point, an exemplary Siri reaction is correct my content, so now it says, "Clint Sam and Lee saying we're eating at Silver Cloud to state we're at Silver Cloud and you ought to come discover us." Then, I may attempt to settle the rundown of individuals who get the content, however Siri won't have any desire to send it to Sam and Lee, she'll need to send it to "Sam Andlee," who doesn't exist in my address book. And soon thereafter I have my "screw it, I'll do it without anyone else's help" moment.After having enough of these encounters, I do have a couple of star tips for addressing Siri. (Likewise, how about we simply trust you don't have any companions named "Cesar," on the grounds that Siri appears to truly need to decipher that as "sister" around 80 percent of the time.) When Siri inquires as to whether this undertaking, content, update, or note is right while showing catches to affirm or wipe out, it doesn't appear to like answers like "no doubt" or "correct." This may basically be a direct result of how we're talking, however Siri simply didn't carry on well when we addressed that way.

Additionally, don't attempt to get adorable with Siri—beginning each announcement with "Siri, would you be able to… " not just gets old for the general population who need to hear you out continually conversing with your iPhone, it likewise appears to add pointless difficulty to your demand. Siri can parse not as much as effective wording at a respectable level, however you increment your odds of getting a precise outcome on the off chance that you treat your summons like your English educator dependably stated: wipe out superfluous words!

Also, it's a given that a calm room will improve comes about than a boisterous and occupied one, however we would do well to than-anticipated fortunes with Siri in spots like bars and office situations. (This isn't to state Siri performed well in those situations—some of my companions straightforwardly clowned about Siri's precision subsequent to getting a boisterous bar demo—however it performed superior to anything we expected it would.)

The best part about Siri is the way that you can (or ought to have the capacity to, at any rate) address it like you would address a man without conforming to an uncommon talking language structure—the main kill for "standard" individuals utilizing voice control highlights. To state that Siri is as of now there would be insincere, however. It needs some work, yet the basis has been laid to make Siri an effective and more productive approach to interface with your gadgets. Indeed, even with my offer of ELIZA minutes, despite everything I found that utilizing Siri to look into data was by and large speedier than finding the fitting application and writing in my inquiry by hand (and I'm a quick iPhone typer). We don't know when Siri will be out of beta, however we'll be there to put Siri through her paces again when she's prepared.

Correspondence with Siri

Siri's capacity to perform assignments or ventures is just a single some portion of the condition. The other part—which we addressed quickly before in our instant message illustration—includes transcription. In wherever that iOS offers a console for content passage, iPhone 4S clients now additionally have the alternative to manage their content through Siri.When you're not stressed over attempting to guide Siri and how to do it, straight content correspondence is simple. An amplifier catch will show up on your on-screen console on the left half of the space bar; tapping it will raise a receiver screen, demonstrating that you ought to start talking, with a "Done" catch underneath. Say what you like and hit "Done"— Siri's purple spots demonstrate that it's preparing your discourse.

We would say, Siri is very great with regards to content transcription. In the event that you say names of individuals, Siri will attempt to discover those individuals in your deliver book so as to locate the best possible spelling (useful for individuals like myself who have strangely spelled names, however for which there are "customary" spelling partners). Siri appears to have a less demanding time perceiving long or confused words, and different US intonations—going from upper east to midwest to southern—didn't throw off Siri much. Siri can even deal with particular correspondence points of interest, similar to when you need to write in all tops, utilize unique images, begin new sections, and that's just the beginning. (Jim Rhoades at Crush Apps has distributed a genuinely broad rundown of the correspondence summons that Siri can take, so look at that for more recommendations.)

The real proviso to Siri—both in its summon taking structure and content transcription frame—is that it requires a dynamic system association with capacity.