#and expected nobody to love him or support him or sympathize with him but guess WHAT I DO

[americanprometheuss]

uhhh is aegon ii literally a piece of shit in hotd (the show)??? yeah but can i relate to him on a spiritual and metaphysical level??? also yes. can i also make him the most mitski coded fictional man known to team green? also yes. in this essay i will…

i literally can do the same with aemond and daemon and literally any other AWFUL AND HORRIBLE AND TERRIBLE character in hotd. it’s my world and i get to decide how to yassify it

[imagines-dreams]

Hiya could you do a dating zuko and being really shy headcanon please X?

Ok, I wrote so mannnnyyy headcanons, starting from Book 2 to frickin marriage, so feel free to read part of it of a lot, wouldn’t blame you if you stopped reading cuz holy shit this was long and i just didn’t edit it well, so... Hopefully, some people enjoy it though! So, happy reading!

Ok, look, any relationship with Zuko will need a lot of build up. He’s only been in one relationship, and that was with a girl he’s known since he was a kid. Other than her, the only person he truly trusted was his uncle.

And who could blame him? His father abused him, so becoming his friend, let alone someone he’d love, would be a long process.

So, any relationship will be a major slowburn. With someone very shy? It would be that slowburn that everyone would dream of in fiction.

First meet in Ba Sing Se when he was still going by Lee. He was very closed off, but his uncle wasn’t. Uncle would be thinking something along the lines of “A nice, quiet girl?! Who just wants to lay low and would probably make a great niece-in-law?! Perfect for my nephew who keeps getting into trouble!”

Still, neither you nor “Lee” could really deny him. 

Uncle “Mushi” had learned from trying to set Lee up with Jin. No real date. Just friends first. 

There were a lot of dinners with Lee and his uncle among other friends the two had made in Ba Sing Se. Uncle Mushi usually told funny stories, and he commanded the room. Lee was just quiet. He smiled sometimes, you could count how many times you saw him smile during dinner on your hands.

Still, you two talked sometimes, mostly laughing and sharing confused looks at his uncle’s outrageous stories. 

You also would be able to see him every so often when you were shopping or just going about your day. 

You also knew they were firebenders. Or at least Fire Nation. Fire Nation refugees weren’t too common, but they weren’t rare either. After seeing Zuko write firelily once, it confirmed your suspicions. 

You didn’t say anything though. If they wanted to tell you, they’d tell you.

One night, you saw a crowd of people. They were gathered around Lee, and Lee had a sword?! “Lee!”

The boy fighting your friend glanced at you and scoffed. “Is that even your name? Or do you lie to your girlfriend, too?”

Too distracted by your fear for Lee to even process what the other boy said, you bended the earth around his opponent. One wall to block him from Lee. Another three to keep him boxed in. 

Your legs ached. Bending took way too much energy, especially since you hadn’t used it in years. You heaved and fell to your knees. 

Someone said your name.

Lee bent down and held out his hand.

You gladly took it and let him help you up. “Sorry,” you managed to say as you fell into him. You were so weak.

Lee pulled your arm over his shoulder so he could properly support you. He was talking to someone, and from your peripheral vision, you could see the uniform of the Dai Lee. 

Scared, you leaned more into Lee. 

One of the Dai Lee came to you. “Why were you earthbending?” he asked.

“Uncle.” Lee shoved you behind him and right into his uncle’s arms. “She was defending me.”

“She shouldn’t have been earthbending regardless, especially in such a violent matter.”

“Violent?” Lee’s grip on the sword tightened. “The only one who was violent was him.” He pointed at the other boy. “Accusing my uncle and me for being firebenders.”

You reached out, regaining your energy as each second passed, and placed it on his shoulder. “Lee.”

He looked back at you and sighed. Thankfully, he let go of his sword.

“We are refugees,” Lee’s uncle explained. 

A few other people from the crowd rallied for them. They knew Lee and his uncle in for the delicious tea they served. 

All while the boy Lee was fighting was screaming at everyone, how stupid they all were when Lee and his uncle were obviously firebenders. He was taken away with the Dai Lee.

You admitted that you knew they were firebenders that night. And it didn’t go badly! Their jaws dropped, and it was comical to see Lee’s face contort into more expressions you had never seen before. 

After that, the friendship only grew stronger. You picked up a few other things about Lee as well. A father he wanted to impress. An absent mother. A weird knowledge about ships and the war. There were more glances and subtle touches, him adjusting your collar, handing him tea so your fingers brushed ever so slightly, bumping elbows at the table. You even got into the schoolgirl habit of writing Lee’s name and yours and staring at him from across the room.

Then… they disappeared. 

It wasn’t uncommon for refugees to disappear, but usually they’d tell someone where they were going, if they were in trouble. 

You expected them to reappear, but nothing happened. Of course you were sad they were gone, but that’s how life went in Ba Sing Se, and you didn’t know enough about them to go searching, nor the time. 

Especially since shortly after Lee and his uncle disappeared, Ba Sing Se was conquered. Everything changed. Benders were being rounded up. More people were disappearing. The walls were all coming down. Money was scarce. Soldiers patrolled the entire area. 

During this time, you wanted to lay low, but people were getting hurt. You could only stand by for so long. 

You started to train, every night, hoping your earthbending would get better. 

So, when Ba Sing Se went up in flames, you joined in to fight for the city you felt safe in. You found Uncle Mushi there, fighting with some organization called the White Lotus. You also found out that his name was Iroh, not Mushi.

After fighting off Fire Nation supremacists, you were invited to the Jade Dragon. 

“Hey. Zuko, or, um, I guess Lee, here.” 

You had laughed and hugged him tight. “I was so scared for you,” you admitted. “I’m glad you’re ok.”

It wasn’t until one of his friends cleared their throat that you realized this hug was the first hug you’ve given him. On top of that, you were holding onto each other for quite some time. 

So, the two of you split up. 

However, throughout the get together, you stayed close with L- Zuko. You didn’t really talk much to his friends. Just the introductions and listening to their stories. They seemed really happy to tell you about how they defeated the Fire Nation and ended the war. 

Who wouldn’t be?

“You’re the Fire Lord?” you asked Zuko, away from the others.

“Oh, yeah, I am now.”

You gazed up at him. “That’s incredible.” You laughed. “Should I have bowed? I feel like I should’ve done something.”

“No. No, it’s fine.”

“Oh, then, I can still call you Zuko?”

He laughed a little. “Just not Lee.”

Just like that, you had new friends. As the year went on, you developed relationships with everyone. Sokka loved to creatively use your earthbending. (He said Toph would never let them make toys with earthbending.) Aang loved making you laugh, so he loved to tell you jokes and play games with you. Toph loved, well, trying to train you. She wasn’t the best teacher for you, too demanding and very rude, but you did learn the basics of metalbending after a few months. 

Katara was the kindest out of all of them, and you both loved telling each other stories about your lives before the end of the war. Suki insisted on training you. Even though there was no more war to fight, you had to admit, she was the perfect teacher for you. Kind but stern. 

You started to travel with everyone, giving every long-winded plan and daring choice a logical backing. Making sure the risks they were taking weren’t too great.

You visited the Zuko the most. It even got to the point that Zuko had a room made for you, with your own closet and Earth Kingdom decor. 

There were still the longing gazes and fleeting touches. You always took the opportunity to help him with his formal attire. After all, you didn’t want him to stress himself too much with that scar on his chest. 

But nothing ever happened. Even though Zuko trusted you and you trusted him, neither of you were brave enough to make the first move. 

The gaang was very fed up with it, honestly. Sokka and Toph came up with the most obvious ways to literally shove you two towards each other. Once at a diplomatic gathering in the Northern Water Tribe, Sokka pulled you towards the middle of the dance floor while Toph shoved Zuko in your direction until the two of you bumped into each other. 

Aang was in on it, too. He requested music.

Zuko and you danced, blushing and awkwardly trying to sway without being awkward. 

“I hate my friends,” he mumbled.

You laughed, the awkwardness immediately gone. “They are kinda horrible, aren’t they?” 

Still no confession, but you still had a great time dancing with your best friend.

(The gaang wanted to pull their hair out. Seriously, you two were so obvious!)

As the years passed, Zuko and you acted more and more like a couple. Where there were brushes of skin against skin slowly became holding each other’s hand during boring meetings. Where there were short-lived gazes unseen by the other became smiles and knowing looks after an easy fight. Where there were hugs before leaving became long embraces followed by kisses on the cheek. 

There were some more intense moments, like when Ozai’s supporters attacked the palace and you ran out of safety and to Zuko. While you weren’t as great as a fighter, you could still do a solid defense, and when it came to Zuko, you defended him with your life. 

“What are you doing here?!”

You grunted as you put up a wall between the two of you and the Ozai sympathizers. “Stopping you from burning the palace down apparently!”

Even after all those years, he had a tendency to be reckless.

Or the time some Water Tribe assassins tried attacking you and him and he shoved you behind him to defend you.  “Stay back!”

“Let me help!”

Everyone just assumed you were a couple, and really, nobody could blame them. 

The confession came quietly. 

You and Zuko had just finished a shift at the Jasmine Dragon. It was a day of serving the people of the Ba Sing Se, of smiles and laughter, and of shared inside jokes between you, Zuko, and Uncle Iroh.

And when it came time to go to sleep, Uncle Iroh was distraught. “I can’t believe this happened!” He dug through the cabinets, throwing various things around the small apartment. “I knew you were coming, my dear, and I forgot to get a new bed for you!”

You laughed. “Uncle, it’s ok. You’ve been busy.”

Zuko just crossed his arms. “We’ve been preparing for her visit for weeks.”

“Which is why I can’t believe I forgot to make a bed!” Uncle iroh lamented. He stroked his beard. “Hm, I would share my bed, but I tend to snore and move quite a bit. Zuko! Why don’t you share your bed?”

While your cheeks burned in embarrassment, Zuko only glared at his uncle. “Fine.”

To be fair, Zuko and you have slept in the same bed before. Sometimes work went on for too long and you two happened to fall asleep in the same bed. But all those times before were by accident on a bed meant for two. Not on a bed meant for one and not on purpose.

After the awkward tiptoeing around and offerings to sleep on the floor, finally, the two of you agreed to sleep on the bed. Zuko held you close, your back to his chest. Both of you purposely chose that position so that no one could see the other blush. 

As the years, actually minutes, passed by, the both of you relaxed into it, and it was almost natural. 

“You know,” you said softly, “that I love you, right?”

Zuko was quiet, and you hoped to the spirits he was sleeping. After a while with no answer, you took a deep breath and tried to go to sleep. 

That is, until Zuko admitted,  “I’m not good at these things.”

“Neither am I.”

The arm around your waist tightened, and you couldn’t help but snuggle closer into his embrace. 

“I love you, too,” he said. 

That was enough for the two of you, at least for one night. You two loved each other and that was enough.

The next morning was busy. The schedule was just to serve at the Jasmine Dragon and you had an appointment with some historians who wanted to know more about Zuko’s first time in Ba Sing Se. Zuko and Iroh, however, had a meeting at the palace.

Zuko was rushing around, trying to find all the pieces of his popper attire before leaving, while Uncle Iroh was trying to get him to eat breakfast. You were just smiling at all of it, pouring some cups of tea.

Zuko glanced at the window. “Uncle, we’re going to be late! Do you even have your clothes?”

“Of course, I have. But did you have food yet? At least some tea.”

“Yes, tea!” You lifted up a fresh cup of jasmine. “Zuko, you should have something before you leave.”

“I don’t need-” 

His eyes meant yours, and you only handed him the cup of jasmine tea. “You’re welcome. Also, you have some dim sum in your bag.”

He shook his head, downed the entire hot cup, and called again, “Uncle!” He smiled at you. “Thanks, bye.” He kissed you and was out the door. 

It took a few seconds, and he had left you speechless. And judging by the way he didn’t say anything before he ran out the door with Uncle Iroh behind him, he didn’t notice.

It took you a while to realize what exactly happened. 

Zuko downed some tea you gave him.

He turned around, called his uncle, then just kissed you.

He just leaned over, pressed his lips against yours for a second, maybe less. 

Then, he left.

You loved him, and he loved you. The two of you admitted that you loved each other, but the topic was too heavy and scary to clarify it further. Was that kiss a sign? Were you two together? Was that kiss some sort of rite of passage?

The rest of your day went by in a fog. 

You served tea. You smiled and had polite conversations. You listened to historians and corrected a fact here or there. 

And when Zuko finally came home, you were preparing the food you had bought, and you were frozen for a second.

“Uncle’s gone out for dinner.” He let his hair down and ran his fingers through it. 

(He had been growing it out. You had learned that hair was really important in Fire Nation culture, and apparently, before he and Uncle left for Ba Sing Se, they cut their hair, some sort of symbol that they weren’t working for the Fire Nation anymore)

You just hummed and started to prepare a serving for Uncle’s late night snack. But then! Zuko was behind you and looking at the food you had gotten.

And you were silently screaming on the inside! Because if you just turned around, and if he just leaned down, you two would be kissing. And he already kissed you! But he didn’t seem to remember that! He was just! Casually talking to you!

“What did you get?” he asked. Such an innocent question from a man who wasn’t innocent because he had kissed you

You barely managed to stutter, “O-oh, some, uh, pho.” You smiled and handed him his share. “Here!” Immediately, you turned back around to avoid him

And Zuko, baffled, just stood there, unsure as to why you were acting so strangely. You weren’t mad. Whenever you had some sort of problem with him, you would retreat into yourself, unintentionally give him the silent treatment, almost as if he was a stranger to you.

But this, the awkward glances and the too-quick movements, that was new territory. 

At first, Zuko thought it was about what had happened the night before, but just as he was about to ask again, he remembered what had happened in the morning.

The kiss

He groaned. “I’m sorry. I told you I was bad at this!” He didn’t throw the bowl of pho on the floor, but the bowl did make a loud sound and soup did spill when he let it fall onto the table. 

You turned to see him covering his face with his hands and shaking his head. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” When he uncovered his face, he didn’t meet your eyes. 

Zuko looked so sad.

And you couldn’t have that. You loved him too much to let him be sad. 

Before you could even comprehend what you were doing, you were cradling his cheeks and looking up into his amber eyes. Under his intense gaze, you were a little nervous, but the want to comfort him was stronger. “I’m bad at this, too.”

And then, you were kissing him

And it was everything. Kissing the man you loved, it was the best feeling, because you were trying to take care of him, he was trying to take care of you. Holding you close and rubbing circles into the small of your back, all to comfort you.

And when he pulled away, Zuko told you, “You’re not bad at that.”

You laughed and nuzzled your nose against his. “Neither are you.”

Safe to say that when Iroh came home to find you and his nephew snuggled up together in the bed he forced the two of you to share, he smiled and wrote letters to the rest of the gang immediately.

There were pros and cons to Uncle finding out before you told him. Pro, you didn’t have to tell him. Con, you two woke up to Uncle Iroh cooking a large meal fit for an army and a hug for you while he shouted, “Good morning, my new niece-in-law!”

You were embarrassed, to say the least, but you felt better when Zuko tugged you closer to him and told his uncle, “You can’t possibly believe that we could eat all of this.”

“No, you can’t.” Iroh beamed. “But I can! I’m celebrating! A niece! I have a niece!” 

In two weeks, Uncle, Zuko, and you were back in the Fire Nation. 

There was a party when you arrived. Not for the Fire Lord’s return. No, it was your friends celebrating that you and Zuko were finally together.

“Double date!” Sokka was hanging off of you and pointed at his girlfriend, “We need couple friends.”

“Hey!” Aang said, “Don’t Katara and I count?”

“No, my sister and her boyfriend can’t be mine and Suki’s couple friends.” He grimaced. “I already see you guys kiss enough.”

Katara rolled her eyes and kissed her boyfriend’s cheek.

“Eugh!” Sokka hid behind you. “Save me! I’m being tortured.”

Zuko shook his head and asked Suki, “We’re leaving him home on our double dates, right?”

“Oh yeah.” She laughed and dragged her boyfriend from behind you. “Come on.”

Zuko and you were apprehensive to be seen in public, but you two have known each other for years, loved each other for almost as much time. 

“My mother was forced into marriage,” Zuko said one night, almost a year after the two of you had kissed. “My father was told by a sage that he must marry my mother to ensure the family bloodline. They were right, but in the wrong way, i guess.”

You looked up from your scroll and asked out of curiosity, “Are all Fire Nation marriages arranged?”

“No, mostly for those of an upper class. I was arranged to have a marriage with Mai.”

“How is Mai?”

“Good. I received a letter from her and Ty Lee a few days ago.”

You smiled. “Do you think they’ll get engaged soon?”

“Definitely before we do.”

Before the two of you? Even though marriage was stressful and a huge step forward, you couldn’t help the little bubble of happiness that formed in your gut and transformed into a dreamy sigh of “We?”

Just like that, the Fire Lord went red in the cheeks. “I mean, because they’ve been together longer, so I would assume if we were to get married, well-” He cut himself off by groaning, which only got you to giggle. He stared at the ceiling. “Almost a year, and I’m still bad at this.”

You smiled and took his hand in yours. “You’re not bad at this.” 

He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” You shrugged, and your voice softened when you said, “I can see us getting married, too.”

He smiled at you. “How do they do it in the Earth Kingdom?”

You hummed. “In Ba Sing Se, if two people were getting married, they just decided they would and move in together.” You bit your lip as you tried to think back on the times before Ba Sing Se. “I’ve heard of a tradition where people hold a party to announce their love and the ceremony ends when the couple leave for their house.”

“I see.” Zuko played with your fingers as he explained, “Here, one partner gives the other a ring, to symbolize- Wait.” He tilted his head. “In Ba Sing Se, would we be considered engaged already?”

You laughed, as heat settled in your cheeks. You and Zuko were a well-known couple in the Earth Kingdom, and since you did move into the palace, to some, you would be. “I guess we would!”

He nodded. “You ok with that?”

There was more to that question that meets the eye. The Fire Nation loved you, sure, but some parts didn’t. There was a group trying to rebel against the peace and prosperity Zuko and all of your friends have fought so hard to gain, a group that wanted Ozai or Azula back on the throne. They have made a few attempts on Zuko, none near successful. But, if you were to get engaged, they’d come after you, too. 

Being engaged to Zuko put a bigger target on your back.

“I’m ok with that.”

But, how could you be afraid of them when you had Zuko by your side?

“Good.”

You nodded. “Good.”

Zuko and you had two weddings. One in private on Ember Island with the gaang and a few close friends. It ended with you exchanging an Earth Kingdom bracelet for a Fire Nation crown. 

There was an afterparty, with dancing and a large feast. There were also speeches.

“You know, if anyone was going to marry the Firlord, I thought it was gonna be me-”

“Sokka!” Suki laughed.

“-or maybe my sister-”

Katara only rolled her eyes with a smile.

“-but if it couldn’t be either of us, I’m glad it’s you!”

“I couldn’t think of a better couple than you two,” Suki started. 

“Hey!” Sokka did not like that statement.

“Honestly, you two are already attractive by yourselves, but together?” Suki was smiling so innocently the entire time. “Hey, (Y/n), you sure you don’t wanna reconsider. I can show around Kyoshi Island sometime.”

“Ok that’s enough!” Sokka couldn’t drag his girlfriend out of the spotlight or stop her from saying how great Zuko and you were, but he did glare at both of you throughout the speech. “I’m watching you.”

“I’m sure you are, Sokka,” you told him. 

Your husband laughed. “I mean, if anyone was to take her away, I wouldn’t mind it being Suki.”

“Don’t test me, Sparky!”

It was funny how even though all of you were well into your 20’s, Sokka’s voice could still crack. 

Toph wasn’t one for speeches. She showed her love by keeping Sokka away from you two and pushing Suki towards you. She really loved the laugh. 

(You apologized to Sokka later with the gift of leftovers.)

Mai actually had a memorable speech. 

“Ty Lee wouldn’t let me put my name on her gift, which sucks.” She glared at her wife, who only smiled. “So, this is my gift for you. Not you, Zuko, but for your wife.” She smirked. “When Zuko was five he thought he could eat all the spicy food in the kitchen-”

“Mai!”

“-it didn’t end well.”

Toph also occupied Zuko while Mai rambled on about Zuko in his childhood. It was very fun.

Uncle Iroh also spoke. “I didn’t know this was supposed to be about embarrassing my nephew.”

“It wasn’t!”

“And that’s ok, because I have something on our dear bride.”

You paled. “Oh no.”

“If you aren’t aware, I knew (Y/n) during our time as fugitives, and she loved to stare at my nephew during his shifts.”

Your husband looked at you. “Did you?”

“Not that much!”

Uncle continued, “I also caught her doodling Lee’s name-”

“Uncle-”

“Please, Uncle, continue!”

Aang shave advice to the two of you. “Please talk to each other,” he said with a laugh. He recounted the times Katara and he didn’t communicate early in their relationship resulting in an unhealthy on and off relationship for a year before the two of them sat down and just talked. 

Katara gushed over how happy she was for the two of you. “Zuko was always grumpy, and I’m glad there’s someone he can be less grumpy with!”

Azula dropped in. She had escaped rehabilitation, and Zuko had let her go. It was near the end of the ceremony, and Zuko and you had snuck out to take a breather. 

He held you close as the two of you swayed to muted music. 

“I do hate to intrude.”

You yelped and the earth beneath Azula’s feet nearly threw her into the air. While her mind was still recovering, it seemed like her agility wasn’t affected. “To be fair, I did expect that reaction.”

“Azula?” Your husband kept his hand in your as he moved closer to his sister. “I-”

“Save it. I’m here to drop something off.” She held out a pouch for him to take. 

“Azula-”

“Zuko, I am not here to talk to you.”

You gulped. “Then what about me?” You smiled. “You can come home, Azula.”

If Azula was affected by your words, she didn’t let it show. 

Zuko took the pouch and by the time the two of you looked up, she was gone. 

Inside were two rings. 

Zuko laughed. “She probably stole these.”

“She could be living an honest life, too, you know?”

“Possibly. We don’t have to use these.”

You took the rings in your hands. They were beautifully crafted, and while gold was the main color, hints of red and green were there too. “If I can’t have Azula as a bridesmaid, then we might use her gifts.”

The public ceremony took place a few months later, and it was grand and very, very public. You were not comfortable. 

You could only change so much of it, though. 

Zuko and you would pull each other to the sidelines when it all got too much. Your friends gladly made excuses when you were absent. 

By the end, you were stuffed full with food and exhausted. 

“Please tell me marriage won’t be like this all the time.”

You laughed and sluggish cuddled up into his arms. “I can’t tell you. Never been married before.”

“The first few months were nice.”

“When no one knew.”

He laughed. “No big ceremonies or dumb speeches.”

“Or embassadors or loud music.” You sighed. “Kinda terrified, to be honest.”

You could feel Zuko stiffen under you, and immediately, you added, “I’m glad you and I get to go through it together, though.”

He nodded. “I do hate life less.”

As Fire Lady, you were kind and gentle, and while you did need breathers in meetings and galas and public events, you enjoyed helping people with policy changes and additions. 

Zuko encouraged you to take risks, and when you were too tired to voice your opinions, Zuko voiced them for you. 

You also were the only one who could calm down Zuko. While his temper wasn’t too much of a problem, sometimes he was so stressed that even the training room couldn’t hold in his anger. 

You’d lead him to your bedroom and just hold him, and if he wanted to talk, you listened. 

The two of you were the definition of quiet strength, and even though assassins and Ozai sympathizers tried to take you two down, you and your family never faltered, especially you and Zuko

[thecatsaesthetics]

Anne Boleyn 2021 Review

Okay, so I want to start this off by saying I am a day late and a dollar short. I know that. Who wants my, over thousand-word, essay on this... but I've gonna give it to you. So please keep reading and leave me comments with your thoughts about this show.

So I will start this off with the positives:

I think Jodie Turner-Smith was excellently cast as Anne Boleyn. Jodie has a remarkable range as an actress. Especially since this version of Anne Boleyn, she is both victim and villain Jodie was able to pull it off flawlessly. She jumped from being a heartbroken wife to manipulating Henry VIII very well. Two scenes that really highlight this are:

The one after her miscarriage and Henry riding off; showed Anne’s desperation and sorrow very well. “Won’t you say goodbye to your wife?” was a heartbreaking line and I very nearly lost it when she collapsed.

The second was in the next episode where she manipulated herself back into his “good graces” by proposing Cromwell had been double-crossing him. This didn’t come across as villainous to me, it came across as a woman in a struggle for survival. Playing the game to keep her station after miscarriage.

I will say this about the show Jodie carried it on her back. She made Anne very sympathetic but highlight that she had this temper that harmed her. However, unlike Claire Foy’s Anne Boleyn I never felt this Anne was unlikable. She came across as someone struggling to survive. The scene with Mary after she learns of potentially Mary being reinstated in the line of succession also highlighted this. The whole "The King never likes to be without me for long" was a lie given he had left her but it was to puff up her station. Reminding Norfolk that she helped his daughter marry the King's son. Forcing Chapuys to kiss her hand. These weren't just power moves, they were survival moves.

This Anne was similar to Natalie Dormer’s Anne in season 2 of the Tudor and Geneviève Bujold in Anne of a Thousand Days. I enjoyed how Jodie both made the performance utterly her own but also obviously drew inspiration from the others.

Moving on,

Another positive was George and Anne’s relationship. I did like how touching their scenes were. The final meeting between George and Anne was heartbreaking.

The horse symbolism, while oddly ripped off from The Tudor’s swan symbolism what I liked. Also, the clock from King Francis implying the “Her time is up” I truly enjoyed. I am just a sucker for symbolism

The Norris Comment

I LOVED THIS. I loved how not only it was said, Anne being flirtatious and joking but the immediate drop. This was the moment Anne truly screwed up. I loved how Norris reacted and the reactions of everyone in the room. This comment is oddly overlooked by most productions of Anne Boleyn or Henry VIII. From what I have read it was an incredibly important comment that was made by Anne. This in combination with her final miscarriage left her in a dangerous position.

Now to a more mixed feeling:

Henry and Anne’s relationship:

On the one hand, I liked it, it showed they were still into each other a lot. This is unlike The Tudors where Henry VIII weirdly loses all sexual interest in Anne (but somehow still expects her to have a baby). Most productions show Anne and Henry’s marriage crumbling the second she has Elizabeth which just isn’t true. I also liked how the miscarriage alone didn’t cause Anne’s downfall, which is usually how it’s done.

That being said the physical violence… Henry VIII was a lot of things but he really wasn’t a physically violent guy himself. He’d execute you but he was a coward about it. I think the one notable time Henry got physically violent with a wife is when he ordered a sword after discovering Katherine Howard’s prior “relationships” and people thought he was angry enough to execute her himself. Even with Jane Seymour, he seems more degrading of her at times than physically violent. Emotional violence was more Henry’s style.

I do understand that they were trying to show the relationship as chaotic, volatile, and unhealthy. However, I just didn’t think it was necessary to add physical violence to do this.

Now with the petty:

The costumes… were so god damn ugly. Just as a side note before we pass from the positives to the true negatives. I just don’t understand what goes through the minds of costume designers. Jodie is a beautiful actress and they put her in the ugliest of clothing.

I mean I have seen worse costumes. They weren't as bad as The White Princess or Wolf Hall. But I would put them alongside The White Queen honestly.

I don't think costumes must be accurate, but I want them to be pretty at least. If you aren't going to make them accurate can we at least have something interesting to look at?

The Negatives:

Jane Boleyn: Ummm I don’t know what to say other than this is fucking dumb. I mean I guess we should be glad there was no physical violence between George and Jane this time around. Other than that I don’t get it. We literally are three mins into episode one and they have Anne call Jane a “spiteful little bitch” why? Because she’s upset her husband is cheating on her? Like Anne is upset her husband is cheating on her? Why wouldn’t Anne sympathize with Jane if that were the case? Even if they wanted to make Jane Boleyn evil they did a bad job. Am I not supposed to have sympathy with the wife getting cheated on?

Also, Dan Jones should have his degree ripped from him. Dan Jones is an actual historian who is an executive producer on this show and he allowed them to have Jane be brought as a witness to Anne’s trial.

On that note let’s move to the Jousting Head Injury thing. Again Dan Jones should have his degree ripped from him. This event did not happen, at least not like this. You can watch Claire Ridgeway’s video on this but the historical records do not support Henry VIII being unconscious at all after this fall. And it was funny they had Chapuys heavily involved in these scenes since he never even wrote about this event. You’d think if it was that important he would have.

That gross miscarriage scene… for all that is holy I do not understand why we are getting these intense miscarriage scenes. The camera was literally between Jodie’s legs at one point. It was so nasty. The sounds… I just can’t. I won’t go into it further but I’d rather have Natalie’s Dormer’s implied miscarriages with just some bleeding then this shit any day.

Now before I tactical the racism I want to say the final episode was probably the weakest one. Anne’s trial… I hated it. I hated Anne speech it was way too much Feminism™. I would have rather had her execution speech or her confession with Crammer. I do get why they only chose to have one of these in the episode, it would totally over crowd the episode. That being said… not only was the directing weird in this scene the speech they wrote just was subpar at best.

The Racism:

Okay, I am going to try my best to tactical the racism in the show. Now I am white and I don’t want to say I should be speaking over ANYONE. Plenty of black Tudor fans have written this better than me.

However, two plot points on this show really struck me as racist.

Jane Seymour: the odd predator behavior Anne has around Jane Seymour. It must be noted that the age gap looks apparent on the screen. Jane’s actress is 25 and Jodie is 34. Jane looked like an innocent schoolgirl and the aggressive scenes with Anne made these seem incredibly predatory. In ALL other productions, I’ve seen this is never how Anne and Jane come across.

The weird kiss between them was both racist and homophobic. I think they said it was about Anne wanting to see the “appeal”. Again it just made her look predator. The worst scene was when she was circling Jane as she spoke a hymn. Honestly, they made Jodie look like a fucking shark in that scene. It was so nasty.

The second and less talked about was Anne and Kingston. I don’t get why nobody is talking about that disturbing scene where Kingston physically pushes Anne onto the bed and holds her there. It was utterly disturbing, and quite frankly I am shocked anyone found that appropriate. You cannot separate Anne being portrayed by Jodie, a black woman, and having a white man grip her head down on a bed saying “She’s only a woman” as an insult. It was incredibly disturbing.

Also in general having Kingston treats Anne so awful… when all other productions of Anne Boleyn have Kingston treat her remarkably well. Racism is implied here. Why in every other production Anne's ladies are kind and gentle to her, and Kingston is moved by her, but when it's Jodie he's physically brutalizing her?

I think there were obviously other incidents, including all the shit with George and Jane but I don’t feel that equipped to handle them. I just wanted to bring these two to light.

Overall:

Jodie was amazing, carried the show on her back. That’s kind of it. It was very subpar. For a show that claims in the beginning inspired by “The Truth… and lies,” it seems more inspired by lies than by any sort of truth.

I mean did we need another Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn TV show. Probably not. Which makes me feel sad. Jodie was so good. She truly pulls off regal. I want to see her in more period dramas. But other than that… 5.5 stars maybe?

[aomineavenue]

You felt awful, to say the least, you wanted so much to celebrate with your team and show how supportive you were, but all you could plaster on was a small fake little smile as you flicker your gaze over to the other side of the court. The sight was almost heartbreaking.

You never really liked attending such events, if you were going, to be honest. You owned such a soft little heart, always sympathizing the fallen team, whether they were the rival or not. It happens to any sports event, actually. Not just volleyball. You were surrounded by hardworking athletes your whole life, always striving their best to achieve the top, and it crushed your heart to see someone’s hard work crashing down. It’s was your top reason to avoid attending sports events.

You couldn’t blame Ennoshita for persuading you. Actually, you would have said yes to anyone, except for Aiko, because let’s be honest, you, in a cheerleader outfit? The thought seemed ridiculous, you barely had an ounce of rhythm in your body.

Your gaze lands on a familiar tall freshman, and your eyes filled nothing but worry. You wanted to reach out, you knew how he had worked hard for the past couple of weeks since you barely saw him and how he had trouble cooperating with anyone else but was it really okay for you to do so, so soon?

“You should go talk to him,” Ennoshita’s voice cuts your trance, and you couldn’t help but feel startled. Spinning around, your eyes widen slightly at the sight of the team before you, offering you an encouraging smile. Of course, as soon as he appeared, you didn’t keep it to yourself about knowing his identity. Plus, it wasn’t as if you knew how he trained or how much he had improved since you last saw him play, so it wasn’t really much help. All you could offer to them was that he was easily rattled and commented that if Tanaka wanted to do so, he could easily get on the player’s nerves.

Of course, though. Tanaka did just that earlier in the game.

“I’m not sure…” you trail off, a frown etching on your lips but before you could protest any further, you were being dragged by the wrists across the court by none other than Tanaka and Nishinoya.

“Just talk to him, silly.” Noya teases with a playful smile, “Your cousin actually looks like he wants to talk to you, too.”

“I—what?” you splutter, your eyes meeting Kentarō’s who looks like his usual terrifying-self. Before you could berate the two who had dragged you, they had fled in fear of the freshmen that stood before you. A sigh escapes your lips, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, nodding his head solemnly, “As okay as I’ll ever be.”

“Tch,” you start, extending your index finger towards his direction as if you were lecturing your tall cousin, “If you would have dropped your stubborn little attitude, you may have actually did a better job, you know.”

He rolls his eyes at you, “Ah, so you were rooting for me despite being the rival, aye? Which reminds me, what are you doing being a manager? I thought you hated attending events like these, and now you’re more than just the audience, you’re a manager?”

“None of your business,” you retort, crossing your arms across your chest. “Of course I would be rooting for you, I know how hard you’ve been working but that doesn’t mean I would want your team to win over ours.”

His lips curl up to a grin as he brings a hand up to lightly tap your nose, “It’s probably because of a boy, isn’t it? Who’s the unlucky fellow? No, more like, who has bewitched my cousin that got her to do this job? Let me guess, it’s that Ennoshita guy you’ve been going on and on and—”

You cut him off with a punch to the shoulder, scowling playfully at him before a laugh escapes both of your lips. You hadn’t exactly brought up the fact that you became a manager for a volleyball team, but he did know of your former relationship with Ennoshita, so it wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. This was just how the two of you interacted, and of course, your mere presence had made him slightly better. He knew he could always count on you. The sight of you earlier was a shock for him and vice versa. He didn’t expect you to attend, much less as a manager, and he hadn’t really mentioned joining the team, so of course, you were just as surprised.

Stepping forward, you wrap an arm around his hip for a side hug and leaned your head on his shoulder (or rather arm, because let’s be honest, he’s rather tall) “Hey, I’m proud of you.”

“Yeah, I know—”

“What’s the meaning of this?”

Both attentions flicker to the intruder of the conversation you were both having, your brow arching in curiosity at the sight of Aobajohsai’s Captain, the one you’ve come to know as Oikawa earlier today before the game started, “Sorry?”

Despite your voice, he completely ignores you, which, of course, baffles you as he always seemed to want to capture your attention, but you shrug it off, thinking that maybe the lost had obviously made his rather annoying, yet charming, personality disappear.

“Hey…” you trail off, a small frown evident on your lips as you extract yourself from Kentarō’s side, “That was a great—”

“Mad dog,” he interrupts you, avoiding your gaze at all times, “Let’s go, we’re heading back.” He flickers his gaze over your shoulders and you could visibly see his shoulders tense before spinning around to face the exit, “We don’t associate ourselves with the enemy.”

You blink a couple of times, trying to process what had just happened. As Kentarō bids farewell after mumbling an apology for his Captain’s rude behaviour, you turn around to face your group of friends. Tilting your head slightly, your brows furrow in confusion. Did Oikawa see them approaching? Probably.

Needless to say, for the remainder of the day, you were confused as hell.

Break My Heart | smau!; love and lose.

Pairing: Oikawa Tooru x Reader

Summary: Everyone, well almost everyone, here knows how much of a flirt Aobajohsai High’s Volleyball Captain is, right? He’s got the skills, and most definitely, his looks, and he knows it. Never settling down, so what happens when he meets his match?

Status: ongoing | series masterlist

↩ first goodbye | love and lose | i’m indecisive ↪

funfacts!:

↳ Y/N and Kentarou Kyoutani, they are cousins always joint to the hip despite Y/N being a year older. Their fathers are brothers and they always were present in each other’s lives. They live in the same neighbourhood and went to the same schools until they reached High School. Kentarou actually considered attending Karasuno as well but decided against it because he took the Volleyball teams into consideration.

↳ Y/N always supported Kentarou in anything he did. That’s why he’s pretty much protective of his older cousin, not that people thought of that. His relatives and close family friends always mentioned that he looked older than Y/N, and it wasn’t just because of the height difference.

↳ When the team asked how Y/N knew him, she simply said, “He’s my cousin.” and they almost had a heart attack. Of course, they tried to get more information from their manager in hopes to find a weakness.

↳ When Aobajohsai got into the bus for their ride back home, needless to say, all Oikawa did was hide from Kentarou because apparently, “Nobody talks about my cousin that way.”

↳ For the rest of the bus ride, Kentarou glared at Oikawa and all the Captain could do was cower while his friends teased him to lighten everyone’s mood.

[wrathfulmercy]

Truthful tuesday #1, #6, #8, #22 (other than TWD) #25, #33

Truthful Tuesday from here

1. what’s the biggest pet peeve you have in regards to tumblr?

The drama, the callouts, the jealousy. All in all hate on social media is just horrible.

6. what’s one thing the rpc has to realize?

That you don’t own anyone and nobody owes you anything. So anyone who pressures you into replies (or unfollows you if you don’t reply within a week) or talks shit about you to keep partners for themselves cause they are afraid you play the same character “better” is just… lost. We are all sharing the same hobby and sometimes the love for the same characters, shouldn’t we cherish that? Shouldn’t we support that? And communication is still a thing guys! Yes social media and chatting with emojis made it easy to communicate things in a shorter way and say things we usually never dare, but being honest and speaking about things instead of just blocking you and disappearing seems to be more accepted than working something out. Which is kinda sad. Where are the manners? How do you handle relationship in rl???

8. what’s one thing you think you’re good at?

Empathy. I worked my whole life for other people, taking care of them and not thinking about my own needs. It can be tricky cause you easily burn yourself out if you don’t take care of yourself and make breaks, but still the people who deserve it, all appreciate that a lot I guess.

22. what’s one fandom that appeals to you and why?

Tbh none. 😂 I was in so many fandoms and they all were horrible. One worse than the next. So I stay out of fandoms cause it’s the safest for my mental health 😂

25. what’s the worst rule you’ve seen on tumblr?

That random blocking is okay (I’m not talking about blocking that results from a fight or argument or something that goes against your rules Etc but random blocking when nothing ever happened and you just communicated recently and thought everything was fine) and that they ask you to not reach out for them to ask what happened cause it “goes over their boundaries”. I appreciate communication. So if someone tells me “I didn’t like this or this or you hurt me with this or this and that’s why I block you now” I absolutely respect that. But finding out someone you recently wrote with and always loved suddenly blocked you (or even worse talks shit about you) and you then you get attacked for asking them why? I don’t get it.

33. what’s the hardest part about being in the rpc on tumblr?

The jealousy and playing a canon character. Let’s be honest the “heroes” of a story are pretty popular and so many people wanna play them. Support each other for choosing the same character and playing different sides of them! We are all a community, we all love rp, we all are different that’s why our characters will be different too even if they have the same face or name! Look at it in an inspiring way not like “they take my partners away”. Nobody wants that! And then you have the other side when you play a canon villain that people randomly hate you cause you “sympathize with a villain”. We are roleplayers! Only cause an actor plays a villain doesn’t make him a bad person! But yeah, I know even these fans exist who send hate to certain actors cause they are too lunatic to differ between reality and fiction so… what do I expect 🙄

@negans-savior-complex

[soopersara]

Thoughts on post-series (especially TLOK) Katara? Do you agree that she became a shell of the woman she once were? Do you consider it to be misogynistic when people say that on the basis that she "just became a housewife + a sad old woman alone in her hut"?

I'm not sure if you're asking if I think the writers were misogynistic for reducing Katara to a sad widowed housewife or if I think that it's misogynistic to say that Katara's character was reduced when she became a sad widowed housewife. Either way, I'm not in the business of accusing people of bigotry over works of fiction that I find questionable or opinions about fictional works that I find questionable. In the case of creators, I'm not a mind reader—I don't know 100% what the intention behind thing X in story Y was, and I trust that if the creators are shitty, malicious people, it'll shine through in other areas of their lives. Are there certain tropes that make me squint real hard and whisper, "I don't trust where you're going with this" before noping out? Absolutely. But some people, even professional creators, are just... not good at their jobs. And frankly, just the idea of going through my life assuming the worst of everyone who makes me scratch my head and squint is exhausting.

And in the case of Katara's post-canon characterization (because IMO, canon ended when the credits rolled on ATLA), assuming incompetence over malice seems entirely fair. Yes, Bryke are professional creators, but they are visual artists first and foremost. Writing simply isn't where their strengths lie, and the writing is what suffered when the franchise was left entirely in their control post-ATLA.

Full disclosure, I haven't read all of the comics or watched all of LOK because the former infuriated me and the latter bored me to tears, but the biggest problem I saw with both was the fact that the characters' individual wants, needs, and motives vanished after the end of ATLA. Except for Aang's. His inner life stayed intact because he was The Protagonist™️, and everyone else flattened out because it's difficult to hit the plot beats you want if you give multiple characters autonomy. I can sympathize. Writing is a pain in the ass, and writing character-driven stories well is a bigger pain in the ass.

But...

The original series was led by a writing team who knew how to wrangle multiple characters with autonomous personalities and motivations and storylines. The writing team knew how to do the delicate finagling to steer things back on track without compromising the integrity of the characters when they veered a little sideways, and they were aware that sometimes it's not possible to get back on track if the characters are leading an entirely different direction. And that's the brilliance of the show—for the most part, you can get into the head of each character and track him/her through the whole series and see exactly why they were motivated to make each and every choice (there are a few big puzzlers in Book 3, but let's not get into that right now or we'll be here for a year).

So when you go from the original show, which had a whole team of people who specialized in writing, to the comics or LOK, helmed by Bryke, who specialized in visuals, the difference is jarring to say the least. Suddenly we go from a cast of complex characters with their own inner lives that strongly influence how they act/interact, down to... well, Aang, and flattened versions of the rest of the cast who exist to either agree with and support Aang or to disagree with Aang and later be proved wrong because The Protagonist Is Always Right™️. Never mind the fact that a lot of that directly contradicts the characterization established in ATLA. Never mind the fact that the base premises of some of the post-canon stories are ludicrous by the show's own standards. None of that matters. Zuko is going to take advice from his genocidal maniac of a father after he firmly rejected him and his beliefs because none of the people who love Zuko care enough to check in on him from time to time. Aang is going to agree to kill one of his closest friends when he wouldn't even consider offing the aforementioned genocidal maniac because... he promised to, I guess. And nobody else is going to see a problem with ANY of this because they no longer care about... um... anything that mattered to them previously. Because they're all been lobotomized, apparently. We as the audience are supposed to like and accept all of that solely because it's Dramatic and Unexpected. We're not supposed to care that the characters we got to know over the course of 61 episodes would fucking never do that. Because the plot is more important than the characters, and Aang is the only character whose motives matter now anyway.

And all of that is a very long way of getting around to the point that, as far as I can tell, Katara's reduction from a fiery, impassioned, irrepressible warrior to a sad, ineffectual, lonely widow is more a result of Bryke not knowing how to write a character-driven story and therefore butchering all of their characters aside from Aang in the post-canon material than it is a result of misogyny. Misogynistic undertones? Since Katara was more visibly affected by this inability to write a natural character progression than anyone else, it sure feels that way. But I hesitate to call Bryke misogynistic for the way her character turned out when I know for a fact that writing is not their area of expertise. If I'm looking at some of the attitudes they've expressed outside of the show, I'm less forgiving. Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence, I guess.

And if you weren't looking for a long ramble about the writing of the show vs the writing of the post-canon material and you actually wanted my opinion on the idea that Katara's character was reduced by becoming a sad widowed housewife... then no. I don't think it's misogynistic to say that. Listen, there is nothing wrong with being a housewife. Living according to gender expectations isn't wrong if that's the life you want. There is, however, something very wrong with a girl who was actively angry about being shoved into those gender roles being forced to accept them later in life without any explanation. Someone who fought (quite literally) for the right to not be "just" a housewife or "just" a healer can't turn up a few decades later as a housewife and a healer with next to no other accomplishments to her name if she didn't have a compelling reason to go back and choose the path she previously rejected. This is fiction. Things don't happen by accident. And when things happen without reason, that's just bad writing.

[mrgladstonegander]

Thoughts on Phantom and the Sorceress

(Transferred from my Twitter) note- most of my disappointment is probably from the fact that i'm a gladstone fan, and expected something different to come from the ep. so i'll talk abt the potential of gladstone at the end

Gladstone Was Not Needed     he was only there for comic relief, and barely interacted with any of the characters. instead of gladstone losing his luck, we could have just seen Blot do something to Duckworth, the portal, and we were already going to see him do something to lena anyway.      when lena was practicing her magic, if they really wanted crazy shenanigans to happen, i dont see why they couldnt have done that to the characters there (especially magica.)    the shrimp shromp story was nice though. but it does not count as a monologue. 

Unneeded for Lena     lena was never shown to struggle with her magic, except for the times where her emotions are extreme. (and it kinda felt like it was implied that that wasnt a problem anymore at the end of Killmotor Hill?) there wasnt an explanation of why her magic wasnt working, and it really felt like she was nerfed for the sake of the plot, and bringing magica back in.     and it really sucks that she "had" to go back to magica, since in the Killmotor Hill episode, she had cut her off and said that she didn't need magica. this episode kinda undermines that ep.      if she was having trouble with her blue magic, like it was doing it's own thing or stopping her purple magic, i guess that would have made more sense? since then she wouldn't have been getting nerfed, and those ep could still work with each other?     and i still dont understand the sorceress outfit. if her magic is friendship, why would it be stronger at some points then others? if it's real friendship, wouldn't it always constant? or is it based on how lena feels? why would her looks change when she's the most powerful?     like. killmotor hill was lena realizing people love her for her, and that she's her own person. why would her looks change because of that? it doesnt make any sense also. if lena has a magical girl outfit. that would imply that magica and gladstone have one too. right? 

Blot     for an episode that introduced him, i dont think we got to see a lot of him. and with lena being "magic is a curse!" and not wanting her magic, im surprised that they, yknow, never got a chance to sympathize with each other? blot WAS trying to kill her, yeah, but still?      with the mindset lena was in, at least in the beginning, she would AGREE that magic can hurt people, even if she's made out of magic.      and i really do think that if they told blot that she was hurt by magica too, he might've toned down on the kill factor     ALSO. HIS ENTIRE FAMILY WAS KILLED! BY MAGICA! nobody addressed that! magica told them that she killed an entire village! and nobody said ANYTHING about that?? like WHAT??     it would have been SO satisfying if blot got at least ONE hit on her. nobody would have a problem with that  

Magica      really do think they could have written this without her. Blot could have explained the context while he was fighting lena (personally how i would have done it, i think that'd be more interesting)      and with blot being able to ABSORB magic, i think it would have made more sense if violet and webby taught lena how to fight without her magic. we could have had a sister and best friend bonding moments!      and in later scenes/eps, lena being able to mix fighting and magic would have been SO cool!!! it would have been a cool way to buff her, while not going back to magica.

Potential of Lena and Gladstone's Dynamic

a core part of both of their characters is magic

 Lena has been told that magic is a part of her, her entire life. but with everyone supporting her, she got to be more than just a shadow 

People only see gladstone for his luck, hating him or using him because of it. 

Gladstone relies on his luck, and only talks about it. it affects how he sees and experiences good and bad things.  Gladstone is only his luck  that is what everyone, including him, thinks    Gladstone needs to learn that he can be more than his luck (more than his magic)

    there's one similarity that could let them have parallel arcs (and i just wanna say. in most continuities [so not don rosa/carl barks /hj] he IS more than his luck. he DOES have other traits) 

Shared Experience of Bein Used     in comics and dt87, everytime (unless there's a story im not aware of) magica uses gladstone examples include hypnosis/mind control, trapping him to be a good luck charm, finding magic ingredients, and acting like someone else to trick him, all to get to the dime     hey now,,,,, i wonder which two characters could relate to being used by magica,,, /s     and. being super lucky. he's just been used by everyone in general.    like. even ANY sense of gladstone being scared of magica, fear of being used again, would be so interesting,,,     gladstone is without his luck. he's vulnerable. why would you not develop him now when you have the chance? his entire personality is being supported by his luck. of course he's gonna fall apart when you get rid of that, unless someone helps him.      lena got a proper support system, and that's what gladstone needs. not saying all his friends should be kids, but him being able to trust someone instead of just his luck is. really something that's needed.

BONUS:

WAIT HOLD ON I FORGOT SOMETHING SO LIKE?? blot was taking magic from the amulet right? and that was like PHYSICALLY HURTING lena  AND WE'RE JUST LEAVING THE AMULET WITH MAGICA?? like. she NEEDS her magic yeah. but if she breaks the staff/amulet, wouldnt that kill lena? [Isn’t that giving her leverage over lena again???? WHAT,,,,]

[365days365movies]

January 13, 2021: House of Flying Daggers (2004)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was HUGE. I don’t just mean on this blog, I mean in the United States in 2000 and 2001. If you were alive and aware of movies that year, then you remember people talking about this movie. It was, and is to this day, the highest grossing foreign-language film in the United States. So what does that mean?

It means that Ang Lee wouldn’t be the only wuxia film director to cross the pond. Two years later, a little movie called Hero would be released internationally. That wuxia would eventually become the #3 highest-grossing foreign language movie in the USA. It’]s director was an old hat wuxia director in China, Zhang Yimou.

Yimou’s success on China never translated in the USA, until Hero in 2002. After that, he would release more films in the USA, one of the most recent being...oh. OH. OH NO, The Great Wall starring Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, and Willem Dafoe?!? THAT’S A ZHANG YIMOU MOVIE?

...I mean, Ang Lee made the 2003 Hulk, so I guess nobody’s perfect. Anyway, House of Flying Daggers.

Zhang Ziyi’s back! This is another critically acclaimed movie, but wasn’t nearly as popular in the USA. It was nominated for one Academy Award, for Best Cinematography, but it lost to The Aviator. I’ll talk about that one in the future the way of the future the way of the future the way of the future.

But OK, enough introduction, IT’S WUXIA TIME WOOO SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

The House of Flying Daggers is a Robin Hood organization, stealing from the wealthy and giving to the disenfranchised in a particularly poor area and time period in China. Their biggest enemies, as you’d expect from a Robin Hood group, are the police, who are conspiring to take down their leader within ten days, whomever they may be.

One of these policeman is Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who goes to the Peony Pavilion, an “entertainment house” full of beautiful women. See, the leader’s daughter is rumored to be working there as a new showgirl.

This is the blind dancer Mei (Zhang Ziyi), who’s questioned awkwardly by the VERY drunk Jin. She dances and sings for him, as requested. Good time to mention something that I didn’t mention yesterday: Zhang Ziyi has no martial arts background prior to her film career. Instead, her background is in dance! She learned fight choreography in that film the same way she learned dance choreography. So, it’s neat to see her return to her roots.

It’s less neat to see Jin straight-up sexually assault her and get arrested by the cops. So, y’know, ups and downs there. To prevent from getting arrested herself, Mei accepts the offer to play a game called “Echo.” This is prompted by another police officer, Leo (Andy Lau). He, uh...throws beans at a circle of drums, and she responds by hitting the drums with her sleeves. Yeah. Sounds dumb, right? Well, check out how it looks.

This is a very different movie, as compared to CTHD. And yeah, I’m only 15 minutes in, but the choreography is far more artistically flourished. Yeah. I said that as compared to CTHD. Only time will tell, but this full dance sequence is definitely interesting to watch.

Anyway, as you can see above, it ends once Mei grabs the captain’s sword with her sleeve ribbons, and challenges him to a duel. She also TOTALLY blows her cover as a sympathizer to the House of Flying Daggers, and the two fight.

This fight does NOT go well for her, and she’s arrested. Also, it would seem that the drunken display by Jin was actually just a ruse, meant to get her to play the game and reveal herself. Seems...complicated, but it got result, I guess? Anyway, they threaten her with torture (like you do), unless she gives them information of the new leader of the House of Fly...HoFD. There. If CTHD gets an acronym, so does this.

Suddenly, though, a ninja appears and sets Mei free, fighting off the guards. Said ninja reveals himself as...Jin? They refamiliarize themselves.

Very refamiliar.

Anyway, the soldiers are indeed approaching, and Mei and Jin go on the run. The policemen chase them down on horses, and Mei takes down three horses and the guys riding them...with a scabbard. By herself. Badass.

That’s followed by her taking on four armed men at once, although this round doesn’t go nearly as well.

Luckily for her, however, Jin arrives in the nick of time to save her. We get this VERY cool POV arrow shot:

And the two leave. HOWEVER, the policeman ALL get up at the end, which means...Jin’s lying about all of this, huh? It’s a ruse to find to location of the HoFD, using Mei as an unwitting guide. Oof. Liar revealed plot set-up, huh? If that’s the case...I’ll get into that more later.

Jin leaves a message for his fellows, while Mei bathes and puts on men’s clothes provided by Jin, as a disguise. 

It’s at this point that Jin decides to go FULL creep again, and GODDAMN is it not working for me. It is...UNCOMFORTABLE, knowing what we know about Jin. And yet, despite that information...

It’s working for Mei. Yeah, they make out. Mei does say that it’s too soon, and that she doesn’t quite trust him that much yet...but they definitely made out there for a hot sec. It was...yup.

We get a reminder the Jin’s kind of an emotionally manipulative asshole as he meets with Leo, who warns her not to “fall for her.” So. It IS one of these stories, huh? We’ll see how it goes, but...yeah, not digging the love story so far.

And yet, as I say that, there goes Jin, falling in love with her. Soldiers consistently follow them wherever they go. Looks like the plan is backfiring, as soldiers who aren’t one of Jim’s cohorts believe that he’s a member of the HoFD, having broke Mei out of jail and all. So they attack them in earnest, even injuring Jin somewhat.

And that’s when Mei brings out the dagger. The Flying Dagger. THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGER.

I tell ya...that’s cool. Might be a CGI house of flying dagger (LOT of CGI in this movie, by the way, and none of it is technically...good), but I love it. The two fight off the soldiers in the field using the house of flying daggers and arrows, but reinforcements arrive. The two fight them in a sequence that’s more dance than ight. And it’s pretty cool. But they’re soon outnumbered.

Until...some wooden dowels come out of NOWHERE, impaling them in the neck and taking them down. Having survived, the two rest in the field, pondering where the dowels came from. And, of course, making out.

Although, this time, Mei starts it, and Jin refuses. He leaves, at her urging, and meets with Leo. Turns out the General sent the soldiers in the field, and is sending more to kill Mei AND Jin. And, as a note, Jin just KILLED some of those guys, as did Mei. Arrow boys from earlier lived, since it was a set-up for Mei. But, no, Jin actually has to kill the soldiers coming up.

That’s when he realizes that the General doesn’t care about him, at ALL, and he’s willing to shed the blood of his men and of Jin to get his goals met. And Jin...quits. Jin STRAIGHT UP quits, and returns to Mei. They get into a spat, and Mei leaves. And she goes to...

A bamboo forest. Thank you, China, for loving bamboo so much in these movies, because this sequence is gorgeous. I tell you, these movies do real well with the bamboo green color. Gorgeous.

The soldiers ambush Mei there, but Jin’s caught up, and he helps fight them off. Some awesome bamboo tricks (and sounds, by the way, real neat sounds here), more object-throwing (including a lot of using the bamboo stalks as weapons, which is SUPER FUCKIN’ COOL), and some gorgeous cinematography though the forest. Real talk, this scene made the movie for me. So far, anyway. We even get a BADASS bamboo spike trap! And it’s here that our pair is caught.

AND THEN

IT’S THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS FUCK YEAH

Looks like the madam of the entertainer’s house actually is the head of the HoFD, once again upholding the tradition of badass women of wuxia that we’ve seen in LITERALLY ALL THREE of these movies.

The leader asks if Jin likes Mei, and would consider marrying her. It’s far too soon for Jin, and he’s formally captured by the HoFD. They knew about his and Leo’s plan, and drag a captured Leo in as well. AND, AND...MEI’S NOT BLIND, or the daughter of the leader!!! Yeah! She’s been faking the whole movie! HA! Liar revealed indeed!

Didn’t see that one coming! Mei’s just a normal anti-governmentrevolutionary, and Jin’s now just a prisoner alongside Leo. But another twist, as this isn’t the actual leader of the HoFD. Leo reveals this; and how does he know that? LEO...IS A GODDAMN MOLE IN THE GOVERNMENT!!! WHAT????? YES! Leo’s a member of the HoFD, and he was planted three years ago to spy on the cops! And...AND...HE’S MEI’S FIANCEE!! WHAT IN THE SHIT?!?

OH I AM FULLY INVESTED. What the hell else is gonna happen? How about a game of Echo?

Yeah, that scene from earlier? No wonder it was a dance! It was the reunion between two lovers, long since parted! Holy shit, THIS is a romance I can fully get behind! But...can Mei? Because she certainly isn’t feeling it as much as Leo is...

Yup. Looks like she fell in love with Jin after all. Uh oh. BIG UH OH. And there goes my support of their romance, as Leo tries to rape Mei. Nia, the leader, ain’t having it, and throws a dagger into Jin’s back. He goes back to spy on the cops, but not before shaming Mei. Oof. I take it back. 

And now, Mei’s been told to kill Jin. I’m sure that’s gonna happen.

YUP

Well, after they have Field Sex (probably better than CTHD’s Cave Sex, let’s be honest), they decide to go their separate ways, becoming fated lovers on two separate sides. But Mei has second thoughts, and goes back.

Somebody else comes back, too.

YIKES, LEO! Yeah, he kills her right there in the field, blaming her for making him kill her! YIKES, LEO!!! I take it back, you’re a DICK.

Jin ALSO comes back for Mei, and finds Leo instead. A pissed-off Leo reveals himself to Jin, and the two engage in a sword battle for Mei. And then...autumn turns to winter.

As the army encroaches on the HoFD in the bamboo forest, two former friends shed blood amongst the snow. Their fight...their fight is brutal. The choreography may not be the fanciest...but it is insanely and viciously emotional. Blood and snow, man. Blood and snow.

Also, hey, guess who’s alive after all! Mei gets up, despite the DAGGER IN HER CHEST STILL. She asks Leo to let Jin go, or she’ll USE THE DAGGER IN HER CHEST TO KILL HIM. METAL. Obviously, that’ll actually kill her, So Jin asks her not to do it. But it doesn’t matter in the end.

Mei throws her dagger to intercept Leo’s. And Leo...never throws his dagger..

Leo leaves. Mei dies. Jin cries and sings their song.

A rare beauty in the North. She’s the finest lady on earth. A glance from her, the whole city goes down. A second glance leaves the nation in ruins. There exists no city or nation that has been more cherished than a beauty like this. A rare beauty in the North. She’s the finest lady on earth. A glance from her, the whole city goes down. A second glance leaves the nation in ruins. There exists no city or nation that has been more cherished than a beauty like this.

And we never see what happens to the...House of Flying Daggers.

WHOOF. Epilogue soon.

[mcgrillzdumpinc]

Meeting with Masks

Summary: Nie Huaisang is beyond excited when he is invited to a Jin party including Carnival masks.  He doesn't expect to catch feelings at the party, but it's not so bad. Written for day 7 of SangCheng Month - First Meeting!

ao3 link

Pairing: Sangcheng, mentions of NieYao Rating: T Warnings: Mentions of queerphobia Word count: 1811

“The Jin invited us to a party.”

Nie Huaisang looks up from his phone just as Nie Mingjue tosses a letter on the dining table.  The envelope is crisp and cream, the flap decorated by gold filigree.  Nie Huaisang pulls out the invitation, which matches the envelope perfectly, and reads.  The party is actually a ball being hosted at the main Jin mansion, intended to celebrate Jin Zixuan’s twenty-first birthday.  Dress code is formal, drinks will be served, blah blah blah.  What really interests Nie Huaisang is the text at the bottom of the invitation, several font sizes larger than the main text and bolded to emphasize its importance—

Bring a Carnival Mask!

Nie Huaisang lets out a low whistle that quickly turns into giddy laughter.  “Da-ge!  Update the scoreboard!  The Jin are less crappy than the Yao now!”

“Because of the masks?” Nie Mingjue guesses very correctly because he is the best big brother ever.

“Yes!  Oh my god I’m going to have so much fun making your mask, da-ge!  Do you want to go intimidating?  Sexy?  Mysterious?”

“All white,” Nie Mingjue replies as he takes a black dry-erase marker to the scoreboard on the refrigerator.  “This party is stupid, anyway.”

“Booooo!” Nie Huaisang declares as he stands up, arms thrown into the air in protest.  “You’re boring!  The most boring da-ge!”

“I still get ass,” Nie Mingjue says with a smirk.

“Gross!!!!!”

~~~

Thankfully, the Jin (probably only Guangyao) had the foresight to send the invitation a few weeks in advance, so there was plenty of time for Nie Huaisang to research Carnival masks and start making one of his own.  To Nie Mingjue’s great pleasure, there was even a mask that fit his boring requirements.  So on the day of the ball, the Nie brothers arrive in hand-made and impeccable masks.

“Do you think anybody will recognize us?” Nie Mingjue asks as he readjusts his cape.  Yes, cape.  Nie Huaisang made him a bauta mask and Nie Mingjue, in his full jock-nerd glory, decided to wear the full historical garb, tricorn hat and cape and all.

Nie Huaisang rolls his eyes.  In contrast to his nerd brother, Nie Huaisang has opted to dress a little slutty in tight-fitted dress pants, a crisp white shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, and black corset vest.  His neck, fingers, and wrists are decked out in green and gold jewelry, all polished to shine in the light.  He’s decorated his white mask in a similarly lavish fashion—gold lips, black eyes, gold and black filigree at the sides and top, and below the eyes is a series of gold hexagons that lead into teardrops.  “I hope not,” he responds to his brother.  “It’ll be way more fun surprising people.”

Together they walk up the many, many steps into the main Jin mansion.  After temporarily removing their masks to prove their identities, they slip inside.  The foyer is already alight with revelers, most of them likely entertainment hired to hype up the guests.  It’s only 7 p.m., after all, and only a select few people would be this drunk so early into the evening.  Unless the food or drink is spiked, in which case Nie Huaisang needs to find out for himself before he lets Nie Mingjue have a taste.

“Be careful with the food,” Nie Huaisang advises as he takes a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

Perceptive as always, Nie Mingjue replies, “A-Yao knows the diet my doctor recommended.  He wouldn’t poison me.”

Maybe in the past he would have, but Nie Huaisang is pretty sure Jin Guangyao has a more vested interested in his Nie Mingjue’s health now that they’re dating.  Hopefully.  It’s hard to tell when it comes to the Jin.

“Still, be careful.  Yao-ge could’ve missed something.”

Nie Mingjue stares at him.  Even beneath the heavy mask, Nie Huaisang knows his brother is giving him a disbelieving look.

“You never know!” he defends as the duo reach their destination.

The ballroom is massive, large enough to house the entire population of a small town during a natural disaster.  True to pompous Jin nature, Jin Zixuan is seated at the far end of the ballroom on a stage.  Nie Huaisang knows it’s him because of the way he sits—the body posture of somebody who absolutely does not want to be there.  Twenty-one years and the poor guy is still not used to the way his family does things.

Nie Huaisang can sympathize.  He’s pretty different from the rest of his own family, too.

“I’m going to go find A-Yao,” Nie Mingjue speaks up over the orchestra music.

“Okay.  Make sure he taste-tests your food!” Nie Huaisang exclaims as he raises his mask to take a sip of champagne.

“Shove off!” Nie Mingjue scolds good-naturedly.

Nie Huaisang waves off his brother before heading into the crowd.  Looking around, there’s nobody he immediately recognizes.  There’s one guy in bright red wearing a plague doctor’s mask that keeps catching Nie Huaisang’s eye, but he quickly decides that tonight is not the night to bother with the crazies.  It’s generally good advice to follow when in Jin territory.

In time, Nie Huaisang finds himself a wallflower.  He’s not the most easily sociable person.  Friendly, sure.  But he’s never been good at approaching strangers.  He would have gone up to Jin Zixuan, but Nie Huaisang has no idea if the guy would lose it the second he saw a friendly face.  Which would be an entire headache if that did happen.  So, wall.

It’s been at least thirty minutes since he finished his champagne and he’s not feeling even slightly drugged, though.  So that’s good news for his brother.

Just as he’s considering finding the buffet, a stranger joins Nie Huaisang at the wall.  The stranger is tall, at least 8 centimeters taller than Nie Huaisang, and cuts an intimidating figure with broad shoulders and large hands.  Their loose, black hair is long, falling to about their shoulder blades, contrasting starkly to the orchid purple button-up shirt they wear.  The waistcoat they wear is a darker purple with black buttons.  Slung over their right arm is a formal jacket that matches the waistcoat.  Interestingly, their choice in bottoms is a pair of orchid purple pants, with the left side covered by an ankle-length black skirt.  Nie Huaisang finds himself smiling at that detail—as a person who’s still questioning, he can appreciate a challenge to the gender binary.

He looks up to meet the stranger’s eyes.  The stranger is looking back at him with a lovely pair of brown eyes.  It’s a shame that the rest of this handsome stranger’s face is hidden by what Nie Huaisang would call the creepiest of the traditional Carnival masks—a moretta.  Pitch black and perfectly round, it’s like a void has replaced the rest of the stranger’s face.  In the bright lights of the ballroom, Nie Huaisang cannot see any ties keeping the mask up, so the stranger has opted for the traditional way of wearing the mask—a button between their lips.  Even if they can talk, they have rendered themself effectively mute.

Still, though.  Nie Huaisang likes a challenge.  He introduces himself with a bow.

The stranger bows silently in return.

Nie Huaisang laughs to himself.  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asks.

The stranger rolls their eyes.

“Yeah, Jin parties are like that for me, too.  They care way too much.”

The stranger raises their champagne glass, as if to say Cheers to that.

Nie Huaisang finds himself smiling.  “You know, I really wasn’t expecting a moretta mask, of all things.  It’s unique.”

The stranger doesn’t respond.

“Not a bad thing,” Nie Huaisang clarifies.  “But I’m curious.  Join me for a trip to the buffet?”

The stranger nods.  Nie Huaisang offers his arm and, after slipping on their jacket, they take it.  Together, they leave the crowded ballroom for the crowded hallways and manage to get themselves lost a few times before finally finding the buffet.

“Why the hell would they put it so far away from the ballroom?” Nie Huaisang grumbles as he moves to wait in line.  He hears the stranger laugh.  “I hope you remember the way back.  I’m terrible with directions.”

The stranger reaches up to remove their mask.  Underneath the void is a strikingly handsome visage, with sharp cheekbones and shapely lips.  Nie Huaisang very much wants to ravish them immediately.  “Don’t worry, I do,” they say with a rumbling, deep voice.

“Fuck you’re sexy,” Nie Huaisang utters with absolutely zero forethought.  Realizing his mistake, he slaps a hand over his mask’s mouth.  “I’m so sorry!  That just came out!”

The stranger looks equally flustered, their eyes avoiding Nie Huaisang’s as they mumble, “It’s okay.  You don’t seem like a creep.”

“I promise I’m not,” Nie Huaisang says as he removes his mask.  “Which I know sounds exactly like what a creep would say, but scout’s honor!  Not a creep!”

The stranger stares at him for a long second before saying, “You’re not so bad-looking yourself.”

Nie Huaisang manages to hide his fluster by announcing, “I better.  It took twenty tries to get this eyeliner right.”

The stranger snorts.  “Jiang Cheng, by the way,” they introduce themselves.

“Oh, shit.  You’re pretty important, huh?”  The Jiang hold a near-monopoly in all water-based trade in and out of their city.  Nie Huaisang’s parents have pretty regular contact with Jiang Fengmian and his wife Yu Ziyuan in the interest of not losing some important trade negotiations.  But, last he heard, Jiang Cheng was the Jiang’s son.  “Can I get your pronouns?”

“Any,” Jiang Cheng answers.

Ah.  “So the moretta mask is pretty symbolic, huh?”

“I’m out as genderfluid, but I’m not supposed to talk about it,” Jiang Cheng tells him with a notably flat affect.

Nie Huaisang frowns.  “That sucks.  I’m still questioning, but my family is pretty supportive.”

“My siblings are, too.  Supportive, that is.”  The duo reach the banquet table.  Nie Huaisang receives Jiang Cheng’s mask as the other starts preparing two dishes of food.  “My parents are trying, but you know how some people take queerness these days.  Anyway, should I not refer to you with he/him?”

“I’m still comfortable with those pronouns,” Nie Huaisang easily responds.  “Oh, get me some sausage.”  Jiang Cheng obliges.  “Honestly, I might just be on the gender-nonconforming side, but I’m not sure yet.”

Jiang Cheng smiles.  It brings an ethereal softness to their features that Nie Huaisang would love to kiss.  But he keeps his hands to himself as the two of them reach the end of the buffet table and hurry to find a spot to eat.  “It takes time,” Jiang Cheng says as they trade a plate of food for their mask.  “Hey, after this, want to dance?”

Nie Huaisang offers them a smile in return.  “Absolutely.”

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

24. The Waiting Room

Word Count: 6043

Previous

Hazel had several things to keep her occupied in the waiting room. Grace usually kept a lot on hand, as she herself could get pretty restless at times, but right now as Hazel did everything from color with her Tuba stuffy to listening to music on headphones, Grace was online on her phone trying to ease the minds of  Loyal Apex members and Simon sympathizers. 

They lamented as there was no word about him other than the video that showed him being brutally attacked, the APB was out on the suspects and people wondered what would happen/if he would die. 

She made an announcement, “In order to try to offer a small portion of comfort to all of the people who care about Simon Laurent, what I can say is that he is currently in surgery and that I’ve contacted his father. We don’t know anything else yet, but whenever his father is here, I’ll let him decide what things should to be communicated to Simon’s fans. Please keep rumors and negativity to a minimum during these uncertain times for him and his loved ones, and simply send whatever positive thoughts and vibes in his direction.” It ignited a lot for her to be the person who made that statement. But, there was nobody else to do it.

There were a lot of people who were SO RELIEVED that Grace was there for him and felt like that meant he was safe. 

There were some who were confused about why SHE of all people would be trusted enough to be in his private space at a time like this and they hoped she had grown and wasn’t using this to get her foot back in the door. 

There were some disappointed in her for being pulled back into Simon’s toxicity and “glorifying struggle love” by supporting him after everything he’s done, wondering what type of example this was to young girls who idolized her? 

There were a lot of encouraging messages though like, “I don’t know what you must be going through right now. Sending you good energy and hopes for Simon's situation,” and so on. She made sure to like and reblog all of the ones of that nature, and decided to at least pretend to ignore the other ones, no matter whose camp they came from. 

Many separate posts were also made to show support, some saying that nobody could possibly know what Grace is thinking at this moment, since everyone reacts differently to trauma, and because of that shouldn’t be quick to judge her for being near or with Simon in his time of need. She didn’t respond to those, simply because she didn’t want to seem like she was making it about her. It wasn’t. Right now, the only thing she could think about was Simon.

It took Simon’s dad about six hours to arrive. He looked exhausted, as scary as the last time she saw him but much older. She couldn’t believe it had only been a few years because his pale blond hair had whitened and he looked more wrinkly… and like… he couldn’t be that much older than her own dad.

He talked to someone at the counter, then they took him someplace else. Grace stayed where she was. If he came in and noticed her, fine, but she wasn’t going to press him. 

Eventually, he showed up and noticed her right away. He hadn’t expected to see a little brown, blond haired girl with her. He nervously approached and said, “They uh… got some blood from me. They did need some. He’s critical…” Hazel stopped playing and looked up at the new person. “Hello,” he said, politely. 

She stared at him, collecting her things and moved closer to Grace. Grace wrapped an arm around her and said, “This is Hazel.” She wasn’t going to make her speak to him, though. Grace's parents did that to her when she was little, but it wasn’t something that she practiced as a parent. Hazel wasn’t comfortable and making her speak wasn’t going to make her more comfortable or build on her trust in Grace as support.

He sat on the other side of Grace. “Is she…?” Grace and Hazel stared at him, awaiting his question. He leaned closer to Grace to whisper and she tensed up at his closeness. “Simon’s?” 

“WHAT?” Hazel called out. “GROSS!” 

Now Grace said, “Hazel… A little loud.”

Hazel lowered her voice and said, “Simon’s Dad, she is 22. I am 10. What do you think your son was doing 10 years ago?”

“He wouldn’t know,” Grace mumbled, then gasped and looked at him, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He looked sad. She didn't feel bad for him per se, but she didn't want to make matters worse at a time like this.

“I wouldn’t. Simon raised himself from the time he was 10, until 16, when he moved out of the house. I haven’t seen him since shortly after the last time I saw you…" he noticed Grace shiver at the mention of it, and considering the truce she requested before, he knew that it was probably a sore spot for her. He tried to think of anything that could possibly be said, but ultimately kept the subject on Simon. " I haven’t talked to him since his 18th birthday when I called to see if he wanted to have a vacation with me and his mom... He disconnected that phone line and never gave me another. Probably wouldn’t even want me here… I didn’t know that the two of you had… made up. Guess that makes sense. He was always crazy about you...”

“They didn’t make up. She’s just nice. And he wasn’t crazy about her. Just crazy.” Hazel said. Grace frowned, but only rubbed her arm in response. Hazel took a deep breath and rested her head on Grace to try to calm down. Grace tried to keep Simon talk to a minimum. It always infuriated Hazel that she couldn’t protect her against him. It didn't matter that she was too young or that they didn't know each other when Simon hurt Grace. She. Wanted. To. Protect.

“Well, your… Grace is much appreciated.” Hazel narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him, and she didn't even KNOW Grace's history with this man. “I lost one child a long time ago.” Hazel’s look softened and she sat up. “I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t look after Simon the way I should’ve. I thought that he didn’t really understand enough to be as affected as he was… Really, I lost two children, and I’m here to see if I can get one of them back, before it’s too late for him too.” Hazel’s face was soft and she dropped her things to get up and hug Mr. Laurent, who cried. 

Grace didn’t want to be rude, but she gently separated them and pulled the 10 year old onto her lap. This man pulled a gun on her the last time she saw him. She wasn’t forgetting that shit, and she didn’t want him to, either. She certainly didn’t want her child bearing any of his emotional issues that HE caused himself. He didn’t LOSE two children. He lost one child, fucking turned his back on the other, and I became the only person in that boy’s life. Parents really felt entitled to do whatever shit that they wanted then expect you to just move on and forgive their asses. She couldn’t see Simon wanting this man here, either. But… that was the only family he had. Grace had felt that he deserved at least to potentially have a goodbye and give an apology to him. 

Paying for his travel and getting a temp family bnb wasn’t that much for her, considering that Simon honestly might not make it out of this. She and Hazel were along for the ride because they both knew that she wasn’t leaving her with a sitter or something and Hazel had definitely become curious about this infamous Simon (who she mostly learned about by sneaking onto the Internet) and wasn’t going to say so, but probably lowkey wouldn’t mind him dying. 

According to the Internet, he did some terrible things to her mom. She knew some of them, only the watered down and generic stuff that Grace told her in kid language. “We drifted apart, didn’t see eye to eye, hurt each other…” Those were not the kind of stuff she read that he really did to Grace. Hazel then  wrote “We HATE Simon” on several of her possessions, and she was pretty firm in that stance. But… maybe this Simon’s dad dude wasn’t so bad, she was thinking.

Grace was thinking the opposite. Simon’s dad was just as responsible for what was up with Simon as Simon was, to her. Had Simon’s dad cared this much whenever Simon’s life wasn’t in jeopardy, maybe Simon would never BE here. Maybe Simon would have been the sweet boy that showed up for her recital after her telling him about it one night. The boy who learned the bus routes to be able to see her whenever he could. The one whose gray eyes she thought she was still looking into whenever she whimpered “I love you” in his arms… She angrily wiped away a tear and Hazel suggested, “Maybe we should go now, since he’s made it here.”

Grace realized that she was crying and strummed Hazel’s hair. “Yeah. I’m sure Mr. Laurent will call us if he needs something. We should get settled in for the night. I can bring your stuff to the bnb for you.” 

He shook his head, “It’s in the rental car.” She simply nodded as she started picking up Hazel’s things. “Grace… Thank you.” She had a lot of things she thought to say. 

Don’t thank me. This was so fucking stupid of me. Thank you? No, fuck you. You’re the reason he had no self control! I was too young to be trying to fill in YOUR space, your HOLE in his life, in his very formation! How dare you thank me! Thank me for what? For trying to look after him when we were a month apart in age? For lending him all of my resources, my family and my HEART - only to have him never be able to appreciate any of it, because why would he? Who taught him to appreciate? Who taught him to love? Not the man that ditched him with a horribly inept mother who had already dropped the ball and a kid DIED in the process! He RAISED HIMSELF, from the time he was 10!!! You. Fucking. Degenerate! 

“No problem,” she said softly. “Simon was my best friend, once. Times like these, you try to forget the ugly parts and just do your best with what’s left.” More of her peacekeeper mumbo jumbo. It never felt so fake to say things like that before,

Once at the bnb, she and Hazel got washed up and dressed for the evening. Her parents came in about an hour afterwards, both irritated that she hadn’t told them sooner, but concerned about her and about Hazel. Hazel was asleep and Mr. Laurent hadn’t come to the bnb, so Grace headed back to the hospital. She saw him, staring straight ahead, looking wan and miserable. She took a deep breath and moved forward. “You never came to the place. I purposefully found a big spot to accommodate all of us. My parents are there with Hazel. You should go get washed up and eat, at least. Nothing you can do from this waiting room. I’ll sit here in case anything happens and call you when and if it does.”

“I don’t think I’m capable of driving at the moment. I’ll just stay.” 

Grace frowned and sat beside him. “Why didn’t you stay back then?” Hazel wasn’t here now, she could be real. “Simon needed you so much. You just ignored him. You left him with a woman that you had to have known hated him. Simon went all over the world with my family, and nobody ever called in to check on him or spoke with my parents for more than two minutes to approve that he could come along… but tonight… you can’t even get up to go take a piss? Now, when he doesn’t need you, you’re here and won’t leave? What about when he was 10, being bullied and beaten up and ran into a school auditorium to escape it for a few minutes? Why weren’t you willing to be there for him, then?” 

Tears were pouring down the man’s face. Aside from that, there was no reaction there. Simon cried in a similar way. That 'suffering in silence' that broke her heart every time. It wasn’t breaking her heart to see it from the older Laurent. “That’s not a rhetorical question. Where the fuck were you when Simon needed you, instead of me? Where were you when he was latching on to me and building this tether between us that even right now when I should be thinking about anything else, everything else, I’m here, for him, to see that he’s okay? Because I don’t know how to detach myself from everything we went through together, despite every fucking thing he’s done to me! Where the fuck were you?!?”

“I was broken. My family was broken. None of us were dealing with anything very well. I thought of all of us, Simon handled it the best. He cried a lot the first few days, but after that, he’d just read and write and do school and art stuff. It was like he had gotten over it. I didn’t want to put the grief back onto him. I tried to stay away from him, and it just became a bigger space over time and then, there was nothing between us.”

“Look. None of that explains to me why you weren’t the adult and didn't look after a kid who went through the most traumatic thing that he’s ever gone through. You were supposed to see him through it. Not… presume he’s okay because he wasn’t crying. You were supposed to make sure that he felt loved and supported. You were supposed to be willing to sacrifice for him. You didn’t and now you feel guilty. I get it.”

“You feel guilty too?”

“No. I don’t. I never did anything to hurt Simon, but he did everything to hurt me. I don’t just leave people because they did something, or because I’m feeling broken or because they seem fine. I’m there for people that I care about. I said I get it. I have empathy for you. I can’t relate. Because, I would never treat anyone the way you treated Simon, especially not my child!”

“The garage… That wasn’t you, was it? It was Simon. He was jealous and angry and finally had enough…”

“I’m not going to sit here and fill in any blanks for you. What I can say about that is that I had no idea what you were talking about when you pulled a gun on a 16 year old girl because of some photos that got knocked down.” Her eyes were filled with fury, though her face was tired. "Then you hug my daughter and speak to her like you see her value, when you would have threatened her life just as casually given the right circumstances for somebody like you. I've been thinking that if you were there for Simon he'd have been better. Maybe none of you are worth shit. People who hurt and threaten kids, blame them for their problems. Scar them for life…" She sighed, “Please, just go get some rest. It’s my shift, now. Someone he at least trusted at some point.” 

He got up and left. Probably couldn’t take more of her harsh words. She felt better having let them off of her chest though. Her father had wanted to hire some gangsters to beat him senseless. Whenever the man did get beaten up by a group of robbers, Grace had always wondered if her dad made good on that. She never asked, though the Laurents didn't live in the safest neighborhood, so it was feasible that it had been a coincidence. She brought him here to make sure that Simon wasn’t alone. That didn’t mean she had to hold all of these things back that she was finally brave enough to dare ask.

.

For several days, they took turns, waiting. Simon was in intensive care and non responsive. They were allowed to visit, one at a time and for short increments. Grace was at his bedside, furious with herself that she was there, but looking at him, seemingly resting peacefully, half of his head shaved for surgery, bruises, bandages… tattoos galore… She held his hand as she tried to see his tattoos, but the robe made it difficult. When her cycle was up, she wondered, “Hey… do you know what his tattoos are of?” to one of the staff.

“Are you Grace?” They asked. She figured for security/visiting purposes. 

“Yeah.”

“They’re umm… about you.”

“What do you mean? Like there’s an image of me?” 

“No. The images are weird, but the words are all about you. The front and back sides.”

She didn’t know what that meant, but her turn was up and Mr. Laurent was impatiently trying to get into the area. 

That’s who was with him whenever he woke up, in the private room that he had been moved to whenever he became more stable. Everyone was at the hospital at that time. Grace’s parents brought Hazel as soon as they found out that Simon was awake. He had to be seen by the doctor first and foremost, before anyone else was able to enter, so they were waiting. Grace was pacing outside of the door whenever the doctor came out and Simon and she locked eyes whenever this happened. He looked extremely surprised to see her again and she looked relieved? He was so confused. Why was she relieved? Why was she even here? In fact… why the fuck was his dad here? He looked over at him after the door shut and asked. “Who got you here?”

His father pointed towards the door and said, “Your friend, Grace. She’s outside waiting to hear how you are.”

Simon’s heart sped up and he had to lie back for a moment. “That doesn’t make any sense. Last time I saw Grace, she told me to fuck off and get some help. I didn’t get help and I almost got myself killed. What, is she here to make sure that I died?”

“She’s very concerned. She’s been here everyday. She was the first one here, and sometimes the last one to leave. She flew me out here and let me stay in one of those rental homes with her and her family. Her parents were here so that her daughter wouldn’t be stuck in a waiting room for hours and hours.”

“Grace and her family have been here?” Simon asked, disgusted, mostly with himself. He had betrayed all of them and their reasons for being there didn't matter. He needed someone… and Grace and her family were there.. He turned to look out of the window and sighed. “She made her kid come, just to see about me?”

“Hazel. She’s a really sweet girl. She drew me some cheer up cards…” Simon scoffed. “She reminds me of you.”

“Is that so?” Simon asked, yawning. Damn, that hurt. Doctor said he’d been stabbed 8 times, and that was after being hit with that board and kicked in the head, neck and ribs. 

“She’s artistic and likes robots... has a thing for turtles... that’s not like you, but also, whenever I saw her, I thought that maybe she was-”

“Why am I alive?” Simon groaned.

“Whenever you were attacked, some of your internet friends wanted to raise blood for you. Grace was the only one who knew your blood type, so she let them know and they’d go to blood centers to donate in your name… Plus, she got me here, knowing we have the same blood type, and well… She’s just been… She’s been a real lifesaver. Literally. I wouldn’t have even known where you were and I certainly couldn’t have got here on my own. She’s a really special young lady… and I… Simon… The doctor told me about your tattoos.” Simon looked at his father for the first time since he first woke up. “The things you did to her…” 

Simon grumbled as he pulled himself to sit up and look at his father, challengingly. “What about them, Dad?”

“Grace had some questions for me, some comments, some things to make me think and, I can’t help but feel like maybe if I had been better to you, a better father, that you wouldn’t have turned out to be…”

“To be what?” Simon asked, a slight smirk on his mouth, intense hatred in his eyes. “A monster? A criminal? An abuser? A heartless piece of shit?”

“To be in so much pain…” Mr. Laurent said. Simon’s smirk vanished. His father stood too close to his bed and looked too sad. Simon wasn’t sure what to do with that. “It was bad enough that you couldn’t work through what you did to Hope, but we didn’t even help you to work through how we were handling it. You needed us and we weren’t there for you. We let you fend for yourself and you got everything so wrong. We got everything wrong. We should have taken care of you. We should have kept loving you."

Simon flung his head back towards the window, a tear rolled onto his pillow. “Yeah, probably. But, it's done, now."

"We can always try again…" 

Simon furrowed his eyebrows and cut off whatever suggestions his father had to ask, "Is Grace planning to come talk to me? If I have to face her, I'd like to be prepared."

"I think she will. She's been asking about the tattoos…"

"Well, send her in so that I can get it over with and she can take her kid and go back to her good life."

"I'll tell her…" Whenever his father left Simon tried to fix his hair and wipe his eyes. He had no idea what he must look like, but he knew it was bad… 

Grace came into the room and smiled a small, cordial, obligatory smile. "Hey."

"He told me everything that you did. I'll pay you back for that." 

She frowned and came closer. "I'm not pressed for money, Simon. How are you feeling?"

"Like I should be dead, but SOMEBODY got in the way," he teased.

"If dying was what you wanted to do, you should've told me," she said and shrugged her shoulders. He let out a one syllable laugh. Grace leaned on the bed and touched his hand. His fingers were trembling. "I still would’ve done the same thing, though.”

“Why did you?” Simon asked, staring at her. 

She took a deep breath, “I don’t know.” They were silent for a moment. He stared out of the window, disappointed that it wasn’t a sign that she still cared… That it isn’t because she loves him… But, he knows that’s his fault. He had her love once and he destroyed that. “If I had to guess…” He turned to look at her again, hopeful. “I think it’s because no matter what you say and no matter what you did, I saw somebody that I thought I would know forever being harmed. I saw that nobody was doing anything useful to help. I didn’t know if you were going to make it and I wondered, if it were me… Would everybody just stand by and watch? Cry and complain over the Internet, while I died somewhere alone? Maybe that’s not terrifying for you, but dying alone sounds miserable to me, and I’m not the kind of person who could just want the worst for somebody I used to love, even though you hurt me.” 

“Thank you.” It wasn’t something that he said a lot. She didn’t even know what he was thanking her for. Being there? Answering truthfully? “Are you going to leave, now?” The thought of her leaving made tears well up in his eyes. She knew that they were real so she knew that he didn’t want her to leave, but also… Wasn’t her business here done? He didn’t die alone, and she had a life to get back to. This might do nothing for his fear of abandonment, though. 

“I might be able to stay a little while longer. Let me just check on Hazel.”

“The doctor said that 3 people can come in at a time, if you want to bring her in?”

“Ohhh… Well… She’s 10 and knows how to use the Internet, so… she knows things about you… and me…”

“Yikes. Sounds like there’s justice on the menu for me today. Bring her in.”

He was ill and weak, so Grace figured that this was the best time for him to see Hazel, if ever. He wasn’t going to have one of his tantrums in his condition, and Hazel actually was quite interested in knowing him after having learned more about his childhood from pestering Mr. Laurent every minute that he was around. The man said he didn’t mind, He liked talking about his children and he hadn’t been around kids in a long time.

“Hazel, I know that you and Mr. Laurent are having a lot of fun, but do you wanna meet my friend, Simon?”

“You’re friends again?” Hazel asked. Grace stammered, but Hazel cut her off, “Nevermind. Yes. I have something for him.” She reached into her Tuba tote bag as she walked past Grace into the room. Simon offered a smile to her. It was kind and warm. Grace noted that he looked almost innocent. His gray eyes even twinkled a bit. “Mr. Laurent, I’m Hazel Monroe. I’m meeting you.” She extended her hand to shake his.  Simon shook her hand, not missing the fact that she didn't say "nice to meet you" or something friendly, then she handed over what she had removed from her bag. It was a copy of the first Book of Esmoroth. “I’ve made notes everywhere that I thought you went wrong.” 

He opened the book and froze at the amount of various colored post its and notes in the margins. The book was filled with them and almost looked like a scrapbook with the bulkiness of it all. “That’s a lot of notes.”

“There was a lot wrong with it,” she quickly replied, matter of factly.

He laughed so hard that he hurt himself. Grace collected Hazel into a hug, worried, because Simon never laughed at criticism. Even her own would make him at least sulk. He was holding himself and trying to catch his breath.

Hazel added, “Overall, I enjoyed the book very much when I was 6… was your target audience 6 year olds?” He shook his head and wiped his eyes. “I didn’t think so. It’s still okay at my age, I guess. But, you’ll really have to step it up if you plan on being a good author someday.”

“I’ll keep these things in mind if they ever let me publish the other two.”

Hazel gasped and climbed onto his bed, “There’s two more?” She asked. “Does one center around the Idol Princess? Because, I know she’s supposed to be bad, but I actually really love her.” 

Simon looked nervous about that. “Uh… yeah… Book 2 is all about her… but she isn’t in Book 3.” 

Hazel gasped, “Did you kill her?” He nodded. She shook her head and climbed off of the bed. “You are a worse person than I thought.” She was ready to storm out of the room.

“I’m thinking of a rewrite!” Simon said, suddenly extremely interested in not disappointing her. She paused. “One where the Idol Princess has a power that no one could have expected inside of her. She rises from death and rebuilds herself as a True Queen…”

“Will she get to be a hero?”

Simon wiped his eye again, the tear provoked by a different emotion, this time. “She always was.”

“The Future King just didn’t know it. See…” Hazel turned around and returned to the bed, pointing at the book, “That’s in my notes. The Future King has a TERRIBLE habit of thinking things that just don’t make sense! I even wondered if the Idol Princess really WAS a bad person, or if that was just how he saw her, or just bad writing on YOUR part, because we couldn’t tell what was his mind or the narrator’s. Because she did a lot of nice things, but then again, a lot of those were for selfish reasons, so…”

“Hazel, why don’t you gather up your stuff, so we can let Simon get some rest?” Grace asked.

“She’s no bother. I’ve been unconscious long enough and I honestly never meet anybody passionate enough about my book for this type of dialogue.”

“It’s bothering me,” Grace admitted. 

Hazel said, “Sorry…”

“Not you, Hazel. Just… this story. I don’t think I like it.”

Hazel gasped and she covered her neck with both hands, her sleeves fell and Simon noticed that she was wearing his charm bracelet. He felt… a lot of pain. Not the injury kind, but... he thought that was likely in the trash and not only was it not, but the most important person in Grace’s world had it now. Hazel asked, “Are you the Idol Princess?”

“I think I am,” Grace said, glaring at Simon.

“I was different, then. When the story started, we were 12. By the time I finished it… we were 16… I edited it and probably made her a little more deviant than was fair."

Hazel smiled at Grace, "I still liked her. Maybe I could see she was like you. Some problems, but really a good person." Grace smiled back. 

"Please… I won't talk about it. Can you stay? Just a little longer? I…" Simon looked at his fingernails, which were grown out a little longer than his manicurist generally trimmed them to. "I just don't want to be alone… and you're the only person I…" he wanted to say "know," but he really didn't know this Grace, if he even had ever known Grace at all. Grace lifted his chin with her hand to make him look at her. "You're the only person that's ever known me." He finally said, his gray eyes pleading for her not to leave him.

Hazel's eyes clouded over, "You've gotta stay, now. Look at him. Look at how sad this boy is…" Grace sighed. "I'll keep Mr. Laurent company until GlamMother and Grandest get back. You make him less sad. You can do it." Grace propped the door open, just out of paranoia. Hazel said Mr. Laurent was "her friend," but Grace still didn't like or trust him and her parents seemed to have wandered off or left.

"I can stay a little while longer," she firmly declared. Simon sighed with relief… and pain. He was in a lot of pain, but he managed a smile. "Soooo… the tattoos…" The smile was plastered on his face, but he turned red at the mention of this. "I heard there's an apology for me in there somewhere." 

He groaned to shift, despite her disapproval and attempts to stop him, and he managed to get the robe off of himself. There was something like a story book page there. She was shocked, to say the least. Tiny green script, interrupted here and there by an image - her hope chest, her silhouette, a crying brown eye, a shadowy monster… the words - apologies for everything he had ever done to hurt her, etched in ink on his skin..

"Official confession on my back, but I can't move enough to show you, or I'll definitely reinjure myself."

"Please don't!" She traced her finger over the words as she read them in full. Then, she didn't know WHAT to think. She just started crying. He reflexively reached for her and soon, they were both crying and holding on to each other. It was painful. He was physically in agony, but at the moment, holding Grace mattered more. He'd missed her and he was… just so sorry…

"I know that you'll probably never forgive me. I didn't even think we'd ever speak again. I just wanted to make sure that when I died, I'd have done that one good thing for you…"

“You’ve done plenty of good things Simon. And you haven’t died yet, so you’ve got time to do plenty more.”

“I’m gonna start by clearing your name and accepting my fate. You deserve that much, and that kid deserves for her mom to have a clean slate. She seems really cool. I can see why you fell in love with her.”

Grace didn’t know how to take what Simon was saying. He had said things before and didn’t mean them. Time could only tell if he was being serious or delirious from an extreme pain and highly medicated state. "I was interacting with your fans while you were down, and they might have a literal earth shattering crisis if you say this right now. There's no way they'll believe that I didn't come in here to manipulate and gaslight you into saying it…" He let go of her and frowned. "I'm only partially joking. Say whatever you think you need to. Far be it from me to stop my name from being cleared."

"The fact that I took it so far…" he shook his head, "I have to be just as passionate, if not more for clearing your name as I was in soiling it. I have to be a zealot."

"Wanna start with a hospital selfie?" She asked, pulling out her phone. He couldn't help but smile. It felt like… old times.. not exactly, because he was ripe with injury and riddled with guilt. But next to him was the prettiest girl in the world… and she seemed fine with being there. She tried taking a few then handed it to him because even injured, he probably could take a better one. The one that he liked the best was one where they both weren’t smiling too big, just settled, comfortable, if only for one moment, and seemingly content.

Simon borrowed her phone to both reactivate his social media sites, link everything possible, and to make an announcement of official apology, confession, and gratitude for Grace. With a very minimal update about his current condition. "That's a start, I guess." He said, logging out to give her back her phone. 

As Grace figured, there were a lot of people who were suspicious that she had somehow harmed him or coerced the words out of him, but as she slipped back into her life in New York with Hazel and out of Simon's life in recovery at his dad's place, she felt new air in her lungs and a new leaf being turned over. Speaking of, she took the one out of Hazel's hair.. "Hey! What's the deal?"

She snatched one from a bush outside of the hospital and replaced it. Putting the old one into her wallet. "Simon finally told everyone the truth about me. I know that I've said it didn't matter, and honestly, to a certain extent, it didn't… but I like my name being associated with what I've chosen to associate it with."

"Do you think it means that he's changed?" 

Grace tilted her head, "I think that it means that he's at least trying to."

"He didn't seem like that bad of a person. Just sad. Really, really sad. Maybe changing can make him a happier person."

"Maybe." That wasn't Grace's concern anymore, and she felt better than she could ever remember feeling with that certainty. Simon and I have settled everything now. Nothing hangs over my head.

Next

[anais-shirley]

AWAE Spoilers - S3E6 review (mostly rants about Gilbert)

I’m not disappointed, nor sad. I’m MAD! The Shirbert clownery that was served is infuriating. I feel bad for putting so much emotion on that dance scene, and I felt Anne’s distress. 

Seeing Gilbert with Winnie at the fair was something I anticipated (the Ka’kwet theory was quite unlikely given the historical context), but the way Gilbert handled the entire situation was shameful!

Ladies and Gentlemen! The magnificent Idiotic Gilbert Blythe!

I am not mad at Gilbert’s relation with Winnie. And I’m not mad at him not reciprocating Anne’s feelings. I’m mad because he didn’t acknowledge ANY of the feelings or relation!

With Anne. HE KNOWS he has feelings for her! We ALL saw that! He even ranted about it to Bash while he was cutting carrots! He also knows (or at least guesses) that Anne had shared the same feelings with him. And he is also free to pursue her or to go for Winnie. But why does he have to behave like an idiot!? How could he think that bringing Winnie to the fair where they’ll definitely meet Anne was a good idea?!! HELLO??? Blythe, Have you already forgotten Anne or do you not care anymore? 

He didn’t feel embarrassed when he and Winnie bumped at Anne, on the contrary he looked proud and relax. He introduced Anne as a “classmate”. He didn’t even get a clue on why Anne wishes him and Winnie every happiness. Not a single good old heart eyes! He was as interesting as a dead oyster. I’m as mad as Anne, and frankly he deserves another “Anne’s Special” (this is how I call the slate breaking incident) to bring him back to his senses. But good for Anne, she could channel her anger to do justice to Josie. At least, all this frustration with Gilbert didn’t blind her to see through the little details and recognize that her friend was devastated. And the fact that she’s using the printing press for something else that it is intended to, shows that sometimes, you have to break the rules in order to bring change. I was so proud of Anne at the end of this episode!

With Winnie. We get it Blythe! Winnie is “easier to be with”. You invited her AND her parents. It’s a big deal so you want to look pretty. You score points with her dad. He even offers to help you reach your dream of studying at La Sorbonne. And yet Blythe, when you had to introduce Winnie to the Avonlea crew, you could’t even acknowledge what she was! Even though you were not expecting to marry her yet, you couldn’t acknowledge her as your girlfriend, not even “good friend”! Nothing came out of your mouth! You are pathetic, Blythe! 

Doesn’t he know that inviting your girlfriend’s parents is a big deal? Or is he using her to reach his goals? Either way, we know it’s not gonna end well. And Gilbert will be denied his dream to go to La Sorbonne when he breaks up with Winnie. I hope he’ll have the decency to initiate the break up instead of being the passive fool who gets dump. Please Gilbert, show us that you can still use your brain!

I ended up liking Winnie more than Gilbert in this episode (Yup, I said it! And I’m not ashamed!). She was considerate enough to ask Anne if she spells her name with an e or not. She is so similar to Anne in many ways, and I hope they are going to be friends, and kick Gilbert out of their cool girls club!

With everybody else. Gilbert has shown a great deal of sympathizing since the beginning of the series. He’d fight any form of injustice as much as he can, and show in action that he truly care for the others. And yet, he didn’t see Josie’s near-rape as something important to him. WTF! Have his hormones been raging so much that he forgot that girls are still human beings and not objects you can choose to ignore? He should be the first person to support Anne in her effort to defend Josie’s honor, and he failed monumentally!

Now I understand the title “the summit of my desires” in the context of this episode. That Frankenstein’s quote was taken from chapter 4, in which Victor Frankenstein finally found the solution to make his “creature” alive. Romance was the last thing that Anne had to overcome in order to become the full feminist figure she’s destined to be, and Gilbert unleashed that. Since (almost) nobody but Anne care to defend Josie, Anne will have to break the rules in order to make her point.

From a Shirbert perspective, this episode was a bummer (even worst than episode 2!), but for everything else that we love about AWAE, it was a fantastic episode. And of course, we got the Jerry and Diana kiss! Aaahh these two are breaking my heart because I can anticipate a tragedy coming for them

[tsunnychan]

chasing daybreak: the color of your hair

iii. after a while I give up trying to guess if the color of your hair means anything

ao3

now back to my (ir)regularly scheduled fluff @nicolewrites @shining-jul-of-hope @mishspelled

-

Sylvain doesn’t even wince as the blonde sitting across from him shoots up and empties her entire iced coffee onto his head and storms out the door. He blinks through his dripping hair and calmly reaches for the towel in his bag that he specifically prepares for this.

He watches the disgruntled pink-haired barista behind the bar throw up her hands in frustration and disappear into the backroom for a mop. Sylvain smiles. She’s so easy to rile up. Sure enough, she reappears three minutes later with her bucket and approaches him, eyes glaring holes into the side of his head.

Water splashes over the edge of the bucket with her mop and she growls at him, “that’s the fifth drink this week alone, and it’s only Wednesday. What on earth is your—”

Sylvain hides his amused smile. He can tell she’s bitten back her scathing words because they don’t actually know each other. It’s considerate of her to try anyway.

Instead, she sighs heavily and wipes away the coffee dripping down the table. “How many more times are you going to make me clean up these messes?”

He leans back and presses another napkin to his face. “Nobody asked you to do that. Heck, I thought you enjoyed it. Besides, you’re real good at it. I’m excited to continue working with you,” his eyes dart to her name tag and he smiles, “Ingrid.” Huh. He feels like he should’ve remembered that name considering all the times he’s been here. And all the times she's cleaned up after him.

Ingrid’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline and she explodes, “do you mean to imply you have no intention of acting a bit more respectably?”

Now he winces. “Please don’t yell like that. Everybody’s staring at us.”

She’s fuming and he just knows she has another lecture on the tip of her tongue. He glances worriedly around the coffee shop, though he’s not sure why. He makes a scene of himself here almost every single day, considering he takes all of his dates here to break up with them. Sylvain couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about this place felt familiar… made him feel safe. Despite the raging barista who looks like she’s about to kill him—

To his surprise, he watches her straighten up and take a steadying breath. “Nobody asked me to do this? This is my job, Sylvain. Now, if you would kindly make my job easier,” her eyes flash to his. “Stop breaking up with girls here, hm? Or at least try to be a little more courteous to the other customers here.”

He blinks at her. “How do you know my name?”

She stares at him like he’s stupid. “You’re in here almost every day with a new girl who curses your name in some shape or form. As much as we all love reality TV, some of us come here to get some work done, not be your live audience.”

The glint of her hardened green eyes stirs something in him, and he stamps it down quickly. Instead, he gives her a sickly sweet smile. “Fine, I promise I’ll try to change. Are you happy now?”

She scowls at him and rolls her bucket away without giving him with a response. Sylvain smiles watching her back walk away from him.

Oh, he’ll change alright.

In the next week, Sylvain has doubled the amount of girls he’s brought to the café and has doubled the amount of drinks dumped onto his head.

He internally dances with glee as Ingrid becomes more and more furious at him with each passing day, muttering under her breath how she’s spending her entire allotted break-times to clean up after him. He always greets her with the most infuriating smile he can muster when she trudges over, mop in hand.

Except for today.

Today, the brunette he’s breaking up with decides to put on more of a show than the others. Funnily enough, he still doesn’t remember her name. He already grew cautious when he saw her order a scalding hot coffee in the middle of summer, so he dragged this out as long as he could.

But as soon as her hand brushed along the inside of his thigh under the table—his hand wrenched her wrist away from his leg, eyes cold. “I think we’re done here.”

Of course, the girl spluttered in anger as the other customers in the shop start to whisper. Breaking out of his grip, she predictably reached for her hot coffee and threw it in his face.

He did not expect it to still be so hot. “Ah, fuck—"

“You’re a prick, you know that? A real piece of work.”

Sylvain is still wiping the hot liquid from his eyes when he gave her a cruel smile. “Ha, that’s rich. Doesn’t really mean much coming the person who wanted to bleed my bank account dry.”

The other girl paled and clutched her empty cup harder. “You’re an asshole—”

He scoffs and fixed her with a glare. “Please. Save your breath. Texting your friends about the ‘Gautier net worth’ on the first date? Don’t make me laugh.”

The girl flushes a bright red and the whispers around them grew louder. In one last ditch effort, she threw the cup at his head and stormed out of the store.

Sylvain let the paper cup hit him and clatter to the ground. He grimaces. He left his towel at home.

A few of the other regular customers send him concerned glances, but ultimately, none of them move to help him.

To his surprise, a white towel falls over his head and he sees a familiar mop by his feet. Her wry voice sounds closer than he expected. “Are all the girls you date like that?” His heart skips a beat.

He forces his arms to move and he clears his throat, bringing the towel to his face. “More or less.”

Sylvain peeks at her from behind the towel, chest tightening oddly at the frown on her face. “You need better taste in women then.” Her eyes dart to his and he is thankful for the towel blocking the sudden blush that floods his cheeks. “And a lot more tact.”

He shrugs and keeps his burning face hidden from her. “What, you have any ideas about that? Taste in women, or otherwise?”

He just knows she’s rolled her eyes at him, despite not even facing him. He smiles at her scoff. “Have some dignity, will you?”

With her back turned, Sylvain runs the towel quickly through his hair and down his front where coffee was still dripping. He doesn’t expect her to whip around and study his face, eyes softer than usual. His throat dries. “You know, this wouldn’t keep happening if you were even the slightest bit genuine. Try it sometime.”

Sylvain watches her walk away, his heart beating strangely in his chest.

Over the next few months, Sylvain enters the coffee shop with less and less girls, but with more and more heart problems.

Now that he’s not having drinks dumped onto his head, he actually has time to sit at the bar and watch Ingrid make drinks, even chat with her when she’s not taking orders at the register or drive-through. He’s learned that she has several older brothers, that working in this coffee-shop is only one of her many jobs to support her family, and the only reason she even remotely sympathized with him about his dates was that she had her own fair share of disasters, set-up by her father.

Then, she began to sit with him during her breaks. Those are the times when his chest hurts the most.

Today, he doesn’t see her pink hair behind the counter, so he takes a seat in a booth and pulls out his laptop. He may not care for his family, but he damn well won’t let some Gloucester intern outclass him in his own division.

Just five minutes into revising his proposal, he catches pink hair in his periphery as it slides into the seat across from him. He doesn’t bother trying to hide his smile. “On break already?”

When she doesn’t answer, Sylvain looks up and is only slightly embarrassed to find, not Ingrid, but another pink-haired girl with pink eyes, smirking slyly at him. He gulps and his grimaces when he doesn’t see a nametag. “Sorry. Wrong person. Can I help you?”

The other girl’s smirk widens and ignores his question completely. “You know, I’m only saying this because you’re one of our best customers by buying an absurd amount of drinks to just get them dumped all over you—but there are better ways to get her attention than sitting at the bar staring at her like a lost puppy.”

Sylvain splutters, “I-I don’t know what you mean. Who are you anyway?”

The other girl waves her hand dismissively. “Right, and my hair is actually green. Face it loverboy, you like Ingrid.”

He feels heat climb the back of his neck and he wills the blood to stop pounding in his ears. His eyes scan the coffee shop quickly and grimaces. “You still haven’t told me who you are, and I don’t like her.”

Sylvain watches this mystery girl sigh and shake her head. “I’m Hilda, Ingrid’s roommate. I normally only work weekends, but she wasn’t feeling well today so she asked me to cover for her. As for you, Mr. I-come-to-this-café-every-day-to-see-her-smile, just admit that you like her and this’ll be easier for all of us.”

His flush spreads across his face and he resolutely continues to lie through his teeth. “I don’t like her. She’s not my type.”

Hilda raises a lazy eyebrow. “And your type is blondes and brunettes who don’t give a shit about you?”

His jaw drops and Hilda sighs heavily. “Well, if your shallow, stubborn ass needed confirmation, her hair isn’t really pink. She lost a bet to me last summer and I get to color it whatever I want for the next two years.”

He still hasn’t picked his jaw up off the table and Hilda brushes off her skirt as she stands. Glancing back at him, she winks. “She’s actually a blonde, and she does give a shit about you.”

Sylvain stares at Hilda’s back as she walks away. When she disappears into the backroom, he turns to stare blankly at his laptop, his heart fluttering violently beneath his ribs.

Next week, Ingrid gets to work two hours later than usual at Hilda’s insistence. Hesitant at first, especially because Hilda had already covered for her last week, she was adamant about going. Plus, she hadn’t seen Sylvain in a while—

Her roommate leveled her with a knowing smirk and waved off her concerns, stating that she would cover the opening shift, so Ingrid could sleep in. Still exhausted after being out sick, she was grateful for the extra rest and she didn’t think too much of it…

Until she saw Sylvain sitting at the bar with two drinks in front of him, leg bouncing restlessly on the stool. She couldn’t help the frown that formed on her face and the sudden tightness of her chest. Is he dating again?

After that one particularly nasty encounter with hot coffee, Sylvain had actually taken heed of her words. Less and less drinks got dumped on his head and slowly, they stopped altogether.

He started sitting at the bar so he could watch her work. He told her about his stifling family, briefly touched on his disinherited brother, how he had trouble making lasting connections because of his family’s reputation, and to his own surprise, he tells her how oddly detached he felt from everyone and life itself. Until he found this café and its dark blue walls. Something about it, making his heart ache, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

She was too struck by the gold in his eyes in that moment when he smiled at her, ‘isn’t that weird?’

Ingrid was far too busy willing the churning in her stomach to stop to tell him that she felt the same.

Sighing heavily, Ingrid pushes through the door and strides straight to the backroom, despite hearing Sylvain call after her. She finds Hilda lazily scrolling through her phone and idly greets her as she sets down her bag. Hilda’s eyes flash up to hers and she grins, her eyes pointedly darting out to the redhead Ingrid brushed past.

Flushing brightly, she hastily grabs her apron and walks back out front, still tying it as she steadily avoids his gaze. She briefly thanks her lucky stars that two new customers had walked in after her, so she could busy herself with their orders…

But Ingrid feels his eyes burning into her back as she pretends to ignore him.

She’s granted another twenty minutes of respite due to the morning service, but eventually, she runs out of customers and she runs out of excuses. Sighing shakily, she turns to him and finds him tapping his fingers against the wooden counter, eyes staring blankly at the two cups in front of him. Still no date in sight.

She clears her throat and his eyes jump to hers. “Hi.”

A small smile forms on his face and it is not fair how it makes her pulse spike. “Hi.”

Ingrid fidgets in place as he continues to study her face in silence, like he hasn’t seen her in a lifetime. Her eyes fall to his drinks because she does not want to think about how the open collar of his shirt affects her breathing. She clears her throat again. “Date today? I haven’t seen you with two drinks for months.”

Sylvain blushes curiously and his eyes drop from her face. “Um, not exactly? Well, it’s not not a date… b-but I also don’t want to assume anything! Oh Goddess, this is a terrible idea—”

Ingrid raises an eyebrow as his blush spreads down his neck, biting back a smile. “You’re being weird. Have you always been this weird, and I just never noticed?”

“No! I’m pretty sure. I don’t think so?” He runs a hand through his hair, his eyes looking everywhere but her. “By the by, have you, you know, fallen for anybody recently?”

She snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been out sick. What are you even bumbling on about?”

She watches him make eye contact with someone over her shoulder and groan, covering his flaming face. Ingrid whirls around, but Hilda is still on her phone, twirling one of her pigtails around her finger. Slowly, she turns back to Sylvain in confusion, only to find one of his drinks pushed toward her.

Her heart stops.

“Sylvain?”

She looks at him and he’s still covering his face, but his ears are as red as his hair. His muffled voice comes from behind his hands. “Read the label.”

Blood pounding in her ears, Ingrid reaches out and turns the cup toward her and she inhales sharply.

              Go out with me?

              Yes: drink it

              No: dump it on my head

Her eyes jump back to him and she finds Sylvain peeking at her through his fingers, taking in her expression. The longer she stares at him in silence, the more tense he gets, and he finally lets his hands fall away from his face. “Look, I’ll clean up the mess this time, so just—”

Ingrid brings the cup to her lips and takes a small sip. Chamomile. Her favorite.

Humming lightly, she sets the drink down and smiles, warmth blooming in her chest as she meets his gaze. “My lunch break is at 1.”

 She turns to greet the new customers that walked in and misses the gigantic smile that spreads across his face.

[claimingtheflame]

Lincoln Trail Mental Health Facility Part 1

Once again I want to reiterate that a lot of these posts are diaries I wrote never finished. Some of them jump around in my life. The story is about something that took place several years after D left

I remember the moment I turned in the paper. It was nothing. The last question asked my thoughts on the final death of Juliet. I sympathize. To this day I do. Many people probably do. She ended her life because she was in the grip of a mythic tragedy. Who could walk away from such a fate?

Except. Even though this is exactly how I felt, my teenage brain did not yet have the skills to articulate this. I ended up writing something like "I feel what juliet did was right. The world is ugly and filthy and who wants to live in it without someone you love." Because I was an edgy goth kid.

This would send me into the clutches of my own sort of tragedy. A brutal, destructive storm began churning that friday that would completely knock me out of my stupid unlaced combat boots on monday.

It happened like this. I walked into first period, Biology. I sat next to Adam, my closest friend. A knock came shortly after the period started and it turned out to be a senior girl who wanted me to be escorted to Mrs Mudds office. I did not know who that was. It turned out she was a counselor. She had coppery hair and a long, perky, somewhat simian face.

In this story, there is a long list of incompetant people who should not have had their jobs, and possibly should have been in prison. Mrs Mudd is not one of them. As much as I dislike her to this day. Maybe she did really mean well. Maybe she was just swept away by the drama of the whole situation. This is Elizabethtown KY after all.

We talked for a few hours. Looking back, I really don't think I said anything to her that should have been construed that I was depressed or suicidal. We talked about a secret place I visited in the woods behind my neighborhood. We talked about various religious beliefs and about music I listened to. Either way, my mom picked me up from school and I was somewhat excited for the break-in monotony.

We have drove to Lincoln Trail Behavioral Health Center , and I really didn't know what was happening. I had friends who had gone, but I didn't really believe that's why we were there until I saw the look on my mom's face as we walked in. There was a serious feeling of betrayal then. Like God woman haven't you put me through enough. This was an unfair thought. My mother is the second person blameless in the story. I would find out later that basically everybody from my school was telling her I was planning on killing myself quite literally. Mrs. Mudd had apparently told them that the place in the woods was my planned spot to die. I had self-harmed in the past. It was all pleasure related though and I thought it had nothing to do with my mental health. Either way it had been months prior to this, but it added to the Snowball Effect.

I'll admit that I didn't really understand my own mental health at this age. I had just been released from D's clutches only a few precious years earlier. I had no clue what was going on. I was going through a suspended childhood in many ways. All that said, Lincoln Trail Behavioral Health System did not help or address any my mental health issues. Let me reiterate. Aside from some experimental self harm 6 months prior(I received counseling, was evauted, etc), at age 15 I was pretty well behaved. I rarely got in trouble. I certainly never acted disturbed. Lincoln helped nobody who actually went there. In fact I barely escaped with my life and sanity. This is not a dramatic statement. This was a terrible place, as you will learn.

I was obviously scared the moment I walked into this place, all the stories I heard. We were buzzed through a security door after a few accusatory last looks at my mother when I went in quietly. I heard if you resisted or yelled that they gave you a shot in your ass of some kind of sedative. I did not want to give anybody the satisfaction roughing up the goth kid and shooting them in the ass. This was a short-lived Triumph. I would learn quickly that this place was not for me and that there was some horrible mistake pretty early on . I was led to a room and told to take off my clothes down to my underwear. I was told to turn around in front of this guy, who nodded with approval after watching and told me to put back on my clothes. I was wearing really baggy SpongeBob boxers. I guess I could have gotten away with hiding something into the facility. That's the thing. I wasn't a f****** delinquent. Not yet or not anymore depending on how you look at the chronology of things I did as a teenager. Anyway I do remember a kind moment here. The guard escorted me down a hallway and a girl smiled at me brightly. "It's really not that bad here." She said. I smiled and shrugged. This was more of a kind gesture than I realized, I would find this out later.

I was then led to the office of the first real fuckup in this story. This would be my counselor. I don't remember her name. She was somewhat nice to begin with. I'll call her mrs. Wannabe because later she would read a bunch of poems about her Native American ancestry. This extremely blond, blue-eyed woman with a square German face and freckles. Me and Wannabe would talk for about 30 minutes and she would send me on to my actual psychiatrist. I do remember this man's name. I will never forget it. His name was dr. Kodali. We can call him King fuckup. Fuckup prime.

He was a small man, with a small mustache, and skin the color between a beet and a russet potato. He spoke in broken English. He asked me why I thought I was there. I told him about the paper I wrote. He smiled and said " yes we all say things we don't mean. " he asked me if I follow the rules at home. I said yes as long as they are within reason. He laughed at me and said " my own daughter thinks several of my rules are not within reason. Children come to learn to obey. " we did not talk about depression, and this statement would turn out to be significant in many ways. It would come to outline the failure of this institution to children who actually suffered depression. Which I will admit that back then I might have been suffering from. Certainly anxiety. But who doesnt, to some degree?

Let us frame our Shit Pit King with what I didnt know about him before I explain my own experiences. He received kickbacks for pushing certain medicines. This is an important detail. He had been accused on several occasions of over-prescribing meds. He was widely hated as a doctor, and I can't believe he still has a job.

During my first visit, he was mostly dismissive. Interrupted me and laughed at me often. He was mostly interested in my behavior. If I acted up. If I respected authority. Literally nothing about suicide was discussed. So why did this guy prescribe meds at the end of our conversation? He picked up the phone, called my mother, and gave her the dosage information. I narrowly escaped this medicine, whatever it was, due to a surprising hero figure in the story who we will discuss later.

He dismissed me and I was sent to "group" for the first time. This is nothing like "support groups" you see in Lifetime movies. It was a huge room, an obnoxious amount of desk chairs crammed in a circle. Boys on one side. Girls on the other.

I immediately dislike this. It feels tense, and I feel scrutinized. I try to ask a girl near me if I can use one of her pencils. She folds her arms and rolls her eyes. " I can't talk to him." She says to the ceiling. This gets the attention of the counselor of the group, who is actually just an early 20-somethings aide of some kind, there are a few of these. This one I call Nick neckbeard. He says " we are here to work on our problems, not to date. " I am immediately embarrassed. I definitely wasn't trying to date anybody. I let it go but it does set the tone.

Since I am the new kid, a round of introductions is done. Not a lot of these people are notable other than the fact that a lot of them are in here for drugs. Some are in here as an in-between stage between Juvenile Detention and Society. I get the distinct feeling that most of the boys are here for drugs and violent crime. I reflect bitterly that I am in here for writing a stupid paper.

There are several thug wannabe types, maybe two or three other white guys that aren't like that. One obvious skinhead as well. It's split in half racially. Five white Boys & 5 black. There was a round of introductions. Most were there for, as mentioned, substance abuse and violent behavior. The skinhead boasted of being in because he stuck foreign objects in his body. He stabbed himself with pens and various utensils. Another boy was in for desecrating graves. The girls were almost exclusively substance abuse. There was one Arab girl that was in there, and though she talked much I never quite understood why except that I knew she definitely needed to be in there. She either talked incessantly of sex or repeatedly told this story about a "bad doll" that lived in her house- all in broken english.

So this was the introduction to the place. Honestly yes, I would have problems with the other patients. That's really out of the scope of the story though. They are mental patients. What do you expect?

The true problem with Lincoln trail was its staff and overall structure. Such a problem was this structure that it would break me down to that kernel of a child you see on all the other stories on this blog. Such that Lincoln trail would reduce me again to that boy child whispering a question to the darkness: "Why am I being punished?" It would make me know, through recognition and reinforcement of abusive themes I was already familiar with, that I was not in a safe place.

The first night I felt this first blow through humiliation and guilt. It was a simple thing really. We were sent to bed. A corridor with a small basket on the outside of each door. A female counselor was pointing each of us down the hall to our rooms. When my time came, she pointed vaguely down the hall to the right side. I tried to ask for clarification and she shouted "Right there!" And my immediate reaction to being chastised like this was to go to one of the rooms with my belongings. She did not stop me.

I noticed one of the wooden bed frames(they were double rooms with single bathrooms) had no mattress. My roommate was a boy my age. He had close-buzzed haircut. He seemed politely surprised. I shrugged and got in the shower. When I turned the water off, I heard yelling on the other side of the door.

The boy was yelling angrily that he did not know who I was and that he had nothing to do with me. He was explaining that I came into his room unbidden and to no fault of his own. I dressed quickly and came out of the bathroom as soon as possible. A middle-aged blond woman grabs me by the arm and began leading me out of the room. When I asked her where we were going she did not say anything but tightened her grip and sat me down in a chair. This woman becomes important later. Five minutes later Dr kodali came into the office with my other counselor, both looking at me sternly.

I apologize for not knowing the exact words of the conversation. Basically the boy was supposed to have his room to his self. He was gay and had been known to have had sexual contact with other patients. They grilled me hard about whether or not I was gay and deciding whether I should be disciplined. Dr kodali somehow remembers that that my girlfriend had given testimony(positively) over my mental health and he seemed to leave it at that. The blonde lady didnt seem convinced.

When she led me back to my(actual) room, she took the liberty of going through my clothes and belongings. She confiscated basically all of my clothing, saying that it would distract patients(black jeans and tees...none of my flashier stuff). She confiscated my copy of Cannery Row, all my homework, and my shampoo. She really let off on me while doing this. Talking about how sneaky I was and if I was planning anything with Chester(the gay guy) that she would know.

This was Day 1. I would kneel beside the bed that night and pray(I just prayed to 'the goddess' back then), just to feel peace inside. I was so put-upon about the stupid clothes. They were my armor, in a way.

The next day would be a lot worse. I'd learn a lot.

[khaleesirin]

Expect more hate from antis when Dany doesn’t forgive Jaime. I’m so done with this fandom.

It’s aggravating how predictable this fandom has become when it comes to Dany. She will always be the evil one because the large majority of this fandom has long ago coded most of the characters in Westeros as the complex but ultimately good people; they are just the real representation of who we are as human beings. So when Dany is against these folks, an outsider as she is, with an equally army of outsiders, she can’t be coded as good until she sides with the actual sympathetic folks. There is no expectation from the fandom for these characters to side with the Unsullied or Dothraki, since they are just mostly treated as collective nobodies. They are not as important. How can they be?  So even when we don’t even know exactly how she will react (read: she will forgive him), she is automatically wrong for believing that Jaime is simply just a Usurper’s dog, that her main character growth is to forgive him and the likes of him, because to do otherwise is to pronounce her childishness. 

It’s connected to this: the argument that we are finally seeing the true evil side of Dany now that she’s in Westeros and aiming her “wrath” against characters we sympathize with as opposed to “caricature”/“clearly barbaric” Essosi leaders is how easy subjectivity reveals more about the power of words and narration than Dany’s true evilness. People keep forgetting that these characters in Westeros we mostly got narration from, these people we get to sympathize are no different from the “barbaric” Essosi leaders in the eyes of the smallfolks who continue to suffer because of what they did. It doesn’t matter for them that Jaime is just in his “redemption arc,” that he really has a good side. For those who suffered because of his actions, he will just be that Lannister leader who enabled the death of many people in Westeros, whose army destroyed their houses, displaced them from their own lands. That’s why we have scenes in the books with Westerosi “nobodies” celebrating eventual Daenerys’ return, waiting for her to come back to Westeros to save them as well. Dany, as complicated and as contradicting this may also be (which is another topic altogether), speaks in the perspective of the smallfolks, of those who are marginalized because they were the nobodies, the outsiders, the ones who were pushed back for reasons outside their control. She is taking control now, with the whole breathe of those who suffered from this game of thrones. Why is it more important for Dany to forgive Jaime than it is for him to completely bow down to her when she and her “army of nobodies” are the actual ones who will be saving the entire populace? Why is it more important she should be humbled, than for these lords/nobilities to acknowledge that they will be saved by the outsiders? And guess what, between Dany and Jaime, I bet it’s Jaime who will be celebrated more here for actually wanting to bring Cersei’s army to support the Northern defense, even when in actuality that is just a bare minimum since he is serving the crown, who is supposedly the protector of the realm. There should be more expectation from him than from Dany to protect the populace, yet even when Dany is the one who called the truce, when she’s the one who raised the white flag, she often doesn’t get celebrated for it; in fact, there’s a high expectation that she should readily give up on being a queen and should provide Jon all her resources to save the Kingdom. 

She gets hated on because her presence refuses to privilege the “character growth” of the folks in Westeros. She is recoding them back from being ultimately the good guys to “you should really need to do better than that!” She refuses to cajole with the idea that she needs to yet again, play court with these nobles for them to listen to her; as if the legitimacy of her power rests on their acceptance, not when she already has large groups of people who legitimize her. It’s now time for those who are in the position of power to take her seriously; because she has been taken lightly for too long.

And that’s the thing, the Starks, Lannisters, Tarlys, Greyjoys, they are the wheel. It means that the characters we came to love and appreciate got their character development at the expense of the nameless smallfolk. This is how they kept the prestige of their names intact. Forgiveness can be a tricky part because we always have to be reminded about this: we are forgiving someone at the expense of who, exactly? Which suffering are we elevating and which one are we silencing when we do it? Of course, no one is inherently/purely evil, but why would someone who lost everything because of this one person have to make a room to forgive? So it really aggravates me how easily we come to privilege the likes of Jaime in the situation with Dany, how there’s a ready defense for him against her in this fandom (because of what will about to happen), so ready and so loudly to call her too self-centered for simply calling Jaime the usurper’s dog. The fact that there seems to be an ongoing expectation from Dany to forgive Jaime for whatever crimes he committed and for her to do otherwise is a mark of her madness/selfishness/evilness is the very reason why no matter how much a person wants to change the society, it takes a lot for it to actually happen. We are so caught up in the idea of forgiveness and character redemption that we over and over and over privilege those who are benefitting on the continuing rotation of the wheel, instead of finally calling the bullshit. This is not to take shit on Jaime Lannister, because god knows how I love this character and how he is more self-aware with what kind of hell they unleashed in Westeros because of war he knows his house didn’t win. It’s a take on why it’s more comfortable to take his side, than Dany’s. 

Of course, she will forgive him. That’s the kind of person she is. It’s really a moot point. We don’t get to discuss that. The problem is, why isn’t she allowed not to? Why is the burden on her, as if Jaime is the actual victim between the two. And my rhetorical question is this again: why is there little to no expectation from this fandom for the sympathetic characters in Westeros to acknowledge the importance of the Unsullied and Dothraki, these supposed outsiders/foreigners who really have no obligation to save them, more than it is for Dany to humble herself in front of them? 

[qqueenofhades]

The whole don't do what the audience expects blah blah blah is the main reason why the marvel movies done by the Russo brothers felt a little lackluster. It's also the reason why I became disappointed by the mcu. I find this way of storytelling problematic and shallow. It doesn't live up to the hype they build and doesn't withstand the test of time. A good story will drag you to it over and over again.

Ahahaha, well, having had a Long Ass Thing To Say about GOT, I guess I can say More Things about the MCU.

I had…. mixed reactions to Endgame. I also noted immediately that I had big problems with how the female characters were written, existing solely as bit-part supports to the male heroes, and how dirty they did Natasha in particular. Also, while I sympathize with not wanting the story to leak ahead of time, the spoiler paranoia for this movie was pretty beyond insane. If RDJ was the only cast member who got the full script, and the actors themselves didn’t know what was going on or who they were acting across from (aside from being told they were at a wedding with Tony’s funeral at the end, which… yeah), then just maybe the idea of having to outsmart the audience/keep them in the dark is a little out of control. I recognise that the MCU is at least as big a cultural property as GOT, but it’s still… a comic-book movie. A comic book movie that ended with a lot of aliens fighting superheroes with suits and flying horses and magic death jewels and whatever else. It’s not absolutely sacred inviolable stuff, here.

That said, while parts of Tony’s death did work for me and I didn’t think it was totally impossible, that was mostly thanks to RDJ’s acting rather than the overall writing for the movie. Why… why couldn’t he have survived? Why couldn’t he get to grow old with Pepper and officially adopt Peter and have him and Morgan be cute siblings and to actually get to rest after everything he had done? They already laid the tragedy on thick with the five years of post-apocalypse and getting to see everyone living with that and so forth. They didn’t also need to make Tony die in order to make it stick. I can see the bare-bones storytelling logic in defeating Thanos (who was a punk-ass villain to start with, but genunely terrifying in some ways, just for reflecting the sociopathic powerful white man identitype) requiring a cost/permanent death, but also… see above. Flying horses and super-suits and huge alien CGI battles. This is not remotely a “realistic” story. Nobody needs to go into a comic-book movie expecting some grimdark social commentary/homage to Realism. If anything, it has the liberty to be even more fantastic and to subvert the “People Need To Die/Suffer Horribly For Fiction To Be Realistic And Allow Sophisticated Cynical Modern People To Suspend Their Disbelief” axe that keeps getting ground.

Frankly, it seems as if all media for the past several years (thanks in no small part to the stratospheric popularity of GOT) has been competing to outdo each other in Grimdark Realism, while audiences beg, increasingly harried and Tired, to just let us have a happy ending once in a while. The thought has clearly been that happy endings are for old-fashioned sickly-sweet Disney movies and intelligent people these days want to Hurt over their fiction, and/or be battered repeatedly in the face with it. As anyone who has ever read my fics and/or yelled at me about them can attest, I am a big fan of conflict, drama, angst, and genuinely bad things happening in a story, and am often drawn to characters who are dark and flawed and have a lot of issues to work through and who mess up and make real mistakes, because all that is the messy, complex heart of a story and generates dynamic issues and compelling arcs. But the point is never to just have it happen and to leave it there and for it never to be dealt with. The point of those bad things and those messes is for it to be resolved in a way that, if not completely happy, at least makes sense and is emotionally resonant.

Basically, we are more aware than ever these days that the world is a nightmare and that horrible things happen to good people all the time. Part of the appeal of fiction is the notion that things can happen for a reason and be controlled and guided to an ultimate outcome and that a creator you trust won’t just put your favourite characters through the wringer and leave them there to make some pseudo-intellectual point about The Nihilism Of The World. That way we can experience stories and suffering and genuine high stakes and conflict and chaos, but have some undergirding rationale and to experience it as entertainment and escapism, rather than constantly be exhausted by media determined to be cleverer and Grittier than its audience. Human beings love stories and always have. But the happy ending going out of style in the last 5-10 years is… not a great development. Either it’s forced as a saccharine heteronormative nightmare that doesn’t serve the characters at all (see the Harry Potter epilogue, the Timeless Abomination) or it’s just thrown away entirely because we have to understand, as if we don’t know, that Bad Things Happen.

As a Steggy shipper, I admittedly had many feelings over Steve going back and getting to have a life with Peggy. But I could also see the point of the metas that argued the contrary and who wanted Steve to move on and face the world he had now (though I do 100% approve of Sam becoming Captain America and Steve getting to rest and passing the torch). It also did feel a little too much like See Look, No Homo with Steve/Bucky, even while they were patting themselves on the back for 5 seconds of a nameless extra talking about going on a date with a man. That is not and will never count as queer representation. So when we’re either getting exhaustingly boring and Straight ™ happy endings or none at all, that is also representative of a media that hasn’t really caught up to what audiences really want these days. Hence why, as many people have pointed out, fanfiction is so popular as entertainment right now. Fic writers love the characters and rarely write stories just to have them suffer pointlessly or not to develop the source material in any way. When you’re reading fic, you can have some confidence that the ship is going to get together and the bad things happen for a reason and the ending will not make you regret having started it or pants you over being involved at all. As long as media is trying to be Sophisticated ™ and smarter-than-thou and to pack in Plot Twists, it’s really never going to be satisfying, because honestly, there are very few creators that are both smart and empathetic enough to pull it off.

Anyway. Once again, I ramble. But yes.

[bluh-bluh-liveblogging]

Elite - First Episode!

So! Thoughts about the first episode of Elite that I just watched! I kind of… did not expect to enjoy this as much as I just did? The actors are great, I love picking up a bit of Spanish on the side (not a language I speak… like… at all xD) AND the filming is awesome!

Gorgeous imagery aside – and there sure is a lot of it – I also loved the way the narrative was structured around the murder that is about to have happened. This is an impression absolutely unique to the first episode of this series because this is where we see the story begin and end before the unravelling of story threads from the middle to the eventual conclusion takes place.

This episode was meant to suck you in and get you interested and HOO BOY HOWDY it accomplished its purpose! (For me, at least.)

Regarding the murder mystery, I really liked how the various forward-flashbacks were tied in with the overall story to manipulate the viewer‘s interpretation of singular scenes (adding emphasis on likely future developments like the enmity between Nadia and Lu comes to mind) and it did not feel overdone at all!

Regarding spoilers, mind, I‘m still at the first episode and everything here is pure speculation. Mostly. I should maybe tag spoilers for the victim reveal?

Because, let‘s face it. It was obvious who would die in the end the very second this character made an appearance. At least to me.

Now, because this is what I invariably focus on, no matter what media I consume, let‘s give the various characters in the show a not-really-in-depth-because-i-am-just-talking-into-the-void-and-not-submitting-a-report review!

First of all, Samu. He is the obvious main character, sweet, cautious and just interesting enough to distract from his nice-boy image that… burdens him tragically? His decision to completely opt out of demonstrating his abilities in English during class is interesting and… so far, the only interesting thing he has ever done, except for a few nice, witty one-liners. Don‘t get me wrong, I actually like characters that are capable of… not starting drama every few seconds and the fact that he‘s seemed to be the sole supporter of his family makes him likeable? But I just know that he‘s going to have SOME bullshit going on and make decisions that will downgrade my tentatively positive opinion of him severely. I KNOW IT. Also, I… really don‘t like Marina for some reason?

Marina, then! She also follows the stereotype of the main characters love interest – the Girl That Is Not Like The Others. Which is not necessarily a bad thing! I just dislike characters that, in turn, are more attracted by the attractiveness of rebellion than the actual people who represent it for them.

(But I really liked her chemistry with Mano (?) in the two seconds they interacted.) (But that is the problem! UGH, love triangles…) I really liked that she‘s HIV-positive though! I loved how that was represented! That was apparently the big drama with the previous scholarship student though? I also like how she doesn‘t give a damn. But all in all, hm. Meh. Not my type.

Mano (?) - Samu‘s older brother who just got out of prison! And we still don‘t know exactly how! He‘s demonstrated so far: an astounding inability to sympathize with all and any struggles his younger brother has faced AND come on. That was one obviously placed camera AND YOU DIDN‘T EVEN HAVE THE GOOD SENSE TO COVER EITHER OF YOUR FACES COME TF ON WOULD IT HAVE BEEN SO HARD??? Also, flirting with the girl his lil bro is obviously dancing around already and hogging her instead of calling Samu? Seriously? That‘s just an asshole thing to do, no matter how much better you two seemed to get along, dammit!

Anyway. Then there‘s Guzman. I don‘t like him (yet). He‘s protective of his younger sister which, nice, would he not also completely ignore her wishes at the same time. His relationship with Lu seems built on the desire of the two powerhouses of the school to present a united front and also have some sex in bathrooms, but… are they actually happy together? Wait, wait. Are they even together openly? Nooooo, wait it was such a big thing that they were seen having sex! Hm. In that case, I don‘t get the nonchalance with which Lu suggests her boyfriend seduce another girl just to blackmail her. Are you that sure of his loyalty? Probably! Is that a really awful and manipulative thing to not only force a stranger but also your own boyfriend into? Yes!

But. I also know his type. He‘s the asshole with hidden depths that appear in fleeting glances only at first and then, when gradually revealed, make him your favourite character. I know that at one point I will be supposed to love him and I, a weak victim of viewer manipulation, probably will. I know how that one goes. (I still love Bellamy from The 100 with all my heart and I have suffered for it. Also only watched to the third season!)

Aside from the fact that she is gorgeous and the archetypical bitch, except also super smart, I can‘t say too much about Lu yet. Except that I ship her with Nadia, not that THAT is ever going to happen, I guess. Idk I kind of like her. In her capacity of being a huge asshole, that is.

Nadia! HOLY SHIT I LOVE HER!!! SHE IS THE BEST! And holy shit, the hijab thing was a biiig gun to pull out in the first episode, but when else, also, good demonstration of institutionalized prejudice and discrimination! (I was so mad, good job! Well, fucking awful that this is a thing that needs to be represented, but good job! And her statement about them restricting her based on their own dumb opinions and NOTHING else and how this is her belief and nobody is forcing her to wear it? YES YES YES GOOD GIRL! Screenshots from that scene were what convinced me to give this series a shot and holy shit, it was delivered so well!) I can‘t even say anything meaningful here, I just??? love her??? She is sassy and smart and NOT interested in the drama (which will change VERY soon and hoo boy is she going to seduce the SHIT out of Guzman while also falling in love, but I don‘t even mind. That much.)

Then there‘s Christian. I… really don‘t care for the second-hand embarrassment he keeps subjecting me to? And his attitude towards drugs and alcohol? And… uh… almost everything else? BUT! He handles all of the abuse directed at him with the same charm and grace that at first seems absolutely moronic but is soon (him walking through the school naked) revealed as an iron-hard sunny attitude? And I respect that. A lot. I will probably come to respect this dude even more as the story evolves, but I still don‘t like his character-archetype. But that‘s fine!

Also, Carla and this dude! Waaaaait did she only hook up with Christian because her boyfriend who‘s name I forgot was into it? She did not seem all that comfortable afterwards, which hints at QUITE the different power dynamic in that couple than is expected of them! I am very curious!

And! Ander! OMG he is SUCH a sweetheart! Sorry, I still think that getting high and making a dating app profile is dumb, but HE IS GAY and hooking up with Omar and he! Is the cutest! And only deserves good things! Please let him be happy!

Omar, for that matter… hm. He looks very tired. Also, why is he selling drugs? He‘s… Nadia‘s brother? I‘d like to see more of their sibling relationship tbh but… hm. Don‘t know what to think about him yet, but the drug thing kind of is a turn-off for me? I really hope to get to know more about him though, especially if he IS going to have a thing with Ander!

And I have many more thoughts about this and I really look forward to watching the second episode at some point in my life (which… uh… might happen sooner or later, but since my method of choosing stuff to watch includes maths and does not include personal opinion… probably later?) but now I‘m getting hungry and am going to eat something instead of screaming some more into the void.