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thelightsandtheroses · 1 year

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Two: there goes the fear again

Your Hand In Mine | Joel Miller x female reader

Summary: When Joel finds you on your self-assigned insomnia bench one night, it sparks an unexpected friendship that quickly develops into more. Finding peace in the middle of an apocalypse always seemed impossible, but being with Joel feels natural, like a missing piece has fallen into place at last. When a ghost from your past threatens to destroy the peace you’ve found in Jackson, everything will change.

Word Count – 4.3k Chapter Warnings - 18+ blog minors DNI, description of a nightmare, insomnia, mentions of Salt Lake City, reader had a backstory and her age is not specified but an age range is lightly implied in this chapter, secondary characters and ocs, reader is a parent. Notes: Thank you so much for the kind feedback and comments so far - I’ve been honestly quite blown away by it all. As it's Joel's birthday today, I wanted to push myself to get this chapter out. So happy birthday Joel, sorry about the outbreak? 😂 Chapter title is from There Goes the Fear Again by Doves.

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The memories come back to you in flashes, framed with distorted static like an old VHS. They usually start in the years Before, nostalgia tinged memories that lull you into a false sense of security that tonight may not be so bad.

Sometimes you welcome it, the reminder of your family and life before. It was normal, it was filled with love and normality and peace. You had problems, like anyone else, but schoolyard bullies, your roommate and class assignments seem so trivial compared to what the world is now.

You’re by the beach, listening to the soothing rhythm of the waves, watching Sean surf as you pretend to study, scrunch your toes in the sand. You can feel the heat of the sun of your skin, the way you scrunch your toes in the sand and want to soak in every moment of this summer. You daydream of what’s going to happen once you start college. Will Sean still be your best friend as your paths start to digress? Will anyone even like you there?

You were still agonising about those trivialities on the night that the world ended right in front of you. In hindsight, you’ll notice the signs in front of you that day that something was coming, something was wrong. It was just a normal day though. The last one. You remember it all. So much loss, so many mistakes, so much fear. The memory of your family; of the last conversations you had with them, of how unsatisfactory that was.

Then it’s you and Sean and his little sister, Isabella, and you’ve got to find a new path. College feels like lifetime ago now.

It’s here the replay of your past becomes distorted; all black and white static and poorly compiled edits after that, time jumps and skips and sequences completely out of order.

You’re in the woods and there’s blood stains on your clothes and you’re running and it’s never going to be far enough, it’s never going to leave you. It doesn’t matter how far you run; it’s buried under your skin now.

And then your mind goes to that place. To every nightmarish thought and the memories you avoid. It’s too much.

The blood. The flames. The shame.

It’s the fact you’ve bought a child into a world where monsters are real and you don’t know if you can keep them safe.

More memories.

Then it’s the fear; the unspoken terror that one day soon you’ll lose everyone, that you’ll just watch it unfold in from you. That you’ll be the only one left, doomed to loneliness and emptiness. That you’ll watch as everyone you love is taken from you; by illness, or violence, or such an innocuous looking fungus.

You’ll be left all alone and then they’ll find you.

Tendrils of anxiety twist around your body, constricting with each thought, each memory, each possible future, until you feel like you’re suffocating and your heart is racing and surely you can’t wake up from this.

It’s not real.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Joel asks placidly as you walk over to the bench, your rucksack casually slung over one shoulder. It’s clear that he’s been here for a while already but he’s left one side clear and ready for you.

“Just here for the view,” you say calmly, stuffing your hands into your pockets as you try and push away the lingering unease from your sleep.

“Aren’t we all?”

You sit next to him, playing your bag by the edge of your feet.

It’s been more than a week since he first came to your bench and since then you’ve had more run-ins with Tommy’s brother. The two of you have seen several sunrises together in a wordless peace. Neither of you have truly acknowledged each other outside of the bench, nothing beyond polite nods in the community hall at mealtimes and the pleasantries you both would surely afford to any other member of this community.

You’ve spent each night on the bench observing Joel. You’ve quietly noticed his features; the freckles and sun marks, the way his eyes warm when he smiles or and the depths in them when he’s avoiding a subject.

There’s a lot you still don’t know about him.

Neither of you have talked much about the substance of your lives before Jackson. It’s to be expected though. These days, it’s safe to assume that if you’re still alive, it came at a cost and perhaps you don’t need to dwell on that.

You know Joel a little more now - each of you have given small hints about the person you are. Not a lot, not everything, but it’s just enough that Joel feels more real to you.

“I heard it was a rough patrol yesterday,” you say after a moment. Beau had told you all about the horde of infected they’d bumped into. He told you that him, Bonnie, Tommy, and Joel had almost been surrounded at one point.

Sometimes you almost forget about the infected. For a little while anyway.

For the past twenty years, most of the true terror you’d felt was at the hands of humans, not cordyceps. Were you frightened of losing people to it? Of course. Had your few encounters with clickers or runners been terrifying? Yes. Were you terrified of the world you’d leave your son one day? Naturally.

It was just in the QZs, in the worlds you’d moved in between then, you always encountered more humans than infected. The outbreak had changed everything and it had amplified so much; there was no court of law now, no shallow allusions of propriety no order outside of dictatorial QZs, so in some places, the anticipated lawlessness and loss of humanity was your true fear.

Jackson is an exception.

Joel looks down for a moment after you speak and you wonder if you shouldn’t have bought up the patrol at all.

“It was fine,” Joel says gruffly.

“Okay.”

“Do you go on a lot of patrols?” he asks.

“Sometimes,” you say. “Only when it’s my rotation. I’m mostly based in the library and sometimes I help Sean in the greenhouses too.” You pause and wonder if you should add more that you’re good with a bow and arrow now, but you still freeze in close contact.

After a while, as the breeze reaches your fingers and you regret not packing gloves, you reach down and pull a thermos out of your rucksack. You take a long sip, savouring the hot liquid and warming your fingers on the container.

You look over at Joel and then down at the flask in your hands.

“It’s just chicory coffee,” you say, offering the thermos to him politely. “A little dandelion root too I think.”

He looks at you curiously.

“Why?”

“I’m getting chilly, and it seems rude to sit here and drink coffee and not offer any to you.” Jackson has burrowed its way under your skin now; there’s no way you would have done this a year ago. Or perhaps it’s the bench, the magic of this place in the middle of the night. It’s like the rules you’ve built over the years can ease slightly here. The air feels just minutely lighter.

“Thanks.” Joel accepts the battered thermos, takes a long look at it, and then takes a tentative sip of the drink.

“Still nowhere near as good as the real thing,” you say wistfully. “And it’s caffeine free, but sometimes I can pretend it isn’t.”

“Better than nothing, I guess.”

“Exactly.”

“Where do you get it from? I know FEDRA had regular supplies and they grew it out in one of the QZs.”

“It grows wild around Wyoming and Sean’s cultivated a patch of it in the gardens too. Esther, in town, she makes it all. Esther’s definitely a good person to befriend if you want to keep a supply of it. She’s nice too.”

“Yeah, Tommy mentioned her.”

You smirk, imagining exactly the nature of the conversation between the two brothers.

“What’s that for?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure it is. Just you really seem to be settling into Jackson now.”

Joel shakes his head with a smile. “Don’t you start.”

“Okay, I won’t. So, how’s Ellie? I saw her in the library today, well, yesterday now,” you say lightly.

“Oh yeah?”

“Uh huh, she’s going through our space section pretty quickly. We’ll have to see what we can find on patrols.”

“Yeah, she’s really into space.” You can hear the affection in his voice; the deep love he has for her and that sense of pride that he knows this about her, knows about her interests.

“If any new books come in, I can put them aside for her.”

He looks at you with an unreadable expression. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing.” You pause. “I think I get it. I never had a space phase, but I spent several months really fascinated with deep sea exploration when I was a kid. We moved to the coast and suddenly it was right there and I’d never thought about it before. I mean that I get where she’s coming from.” You have no idea where this sudden burst of honesty came from and you feel your face heat at what you’ve said.

“We’re a long way from the coast now,” he says softly. “Don’t think I’ve seen a beach in years.”

“No?” You smile sadly. “Me either. We’ve mostly only travelled inland since - well, since everything and sometimes I really miss it. Sean and I, we’ve been friends since we were kids and we used to just spend every weekend by the water.” You remember the start of your dream and fold your arms around yourself.

“What about you?” you ask, eager to change the subject and curious about the man beside you. “What was your thing?”

“I um,” Joel pauses as though he’s genuinely bewildered by being asked this question “I was into, uh -” He looks away from you. “The usual stuff, football and uh, all that.”

“Really? Just football?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joel asks, folding his arms.

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

He exhales and stretches his long legs out on the bench more. You follow the line from his feet up to his body and eventually his face. He looks uncertain, as though there’s something he wants to add, but he’s not sure.

“I wanted to be a writer, or to work with books, or words in some way. Had all these ideas about being an investigate journalist, or an editor, or just ... I think I just wanted to make art of some type. It’s probably why I’m so focused on the library now.”

“Music,” he whispers. “I was really into that.”

“So, you played … something? Guitar?” You look at him and decide he was most definitely a guitarist. He has the look, might even have the hands for it.

“Maybe,” Joel says,

“Please tell me you were in a terrible garage rock band at one point?” You smile at the image this conjures of the broad and elusive man next to you.

“In high school, for a brief moment. Then uh, things changed for us all and I - I had other priorities in my life than music.”

“That’s a shame.”

“It was the right call.”

“Still, if you loved it … it’s never too late? Did you know, they sometimes do open mic nights at the Tipsy Bison, but it’s … ropey, some of it.” You grimace at the memory of the last one that Sean and Beau had dragged you to a few months ago.

“You’re really selling this to me, sweetheart.”

“Hey, until you’ve heard Seth sing karaoke, you truly haven’t hit rock bottom.”

Joel scoffs, a small smile on his face that crinkles his eyes and warms every feature.

You thought you would hate sharing your bench, or having an intrusion on your solitude, but you don’t.

Over time, you’ve perfected sneaking back into this house. There’s a way to shut the back door just so to prevent anyone hearing you wander in. You avoid the bottom stair which creaks, and the other creaky floorboards on the landing.

Every time you do this, you feel like a teenager again. You grew up reading books and watching movies where teenagers snuck out to and from parties, but that had never been your life. You were studious, deferent to the rules. Your focus was singular; college, success, making a name for yourself. Sean used to try and persuade you to join him at parties or even just when he and his friends would hang out at the beach in the evening after surfing. You had thought you had time.

The world had different plans for you all though.

By the time you’ve crept back to your room, changed, and got ready for the day ahead, you can hear the familiar sounds of cupboards being opened and closed in the kitchen below.

“Mornin’ sweetie,” you say, squeezing Gabe’s shoulder as you walk into the kitchen.

Your son squirms but smiles lightly when he meets your eyes. The last twenty years have been an unending endurance test, painful and exhausting, but now you have Gabriel. You weren’t ready for him; you felt too young, too scared, too everything. He means everything to you now though.

He wears so many of your features and mannerisms, or features you remember seeing in your family. You find it uncanny; that mix of uniqueness and familiarity all at once.

“Is anyone else up yet?” you ask, stifling a yawn as you scan the kitchen for additional cups or plates, any sign the others are awake.

“Beau’s still asleep but Sean said he’d be down in five -”

“Which means he’ll be down in ten,” you both say together.

You were offered separate houses when the four of you first arrived in Jackson. There was an entire house that Maria told you could just be for you and Gabriel. After almost a decade of living in a small, crapped apartment in Kansas with too thin walls and continual threats it had seemed unbelievable. Sean and Beau had been offered the house opposite you too. Maria had recognised how close you all were.

There’d been too much death along the way though; too much loss. You and Sean had been together so much of it all too. You were close friends before the outbreak and now hopelessly and hideously co-dependent on each other. Even back in Kansas, your apartment had been next to his and Beau’s. For more than a decade, you haven’t had more than a single wall separating you.

The idea of being so separate, of being more than a wall away, in a new community prettified you. You were frightened about what Jackson really could be; what it could be hiding, how quickly you may need to run. You felt like a deer in the headlights, a wild animal being stalked by prey. For the first weeks in Jackson, the town itched your skin and filled you with anxiety. There had to be a dark side, it couldn’t be that simple. You all needed to be ready to run.

The four of you had decided to stay together, to stay close, just in case. It was meant to be temporary.

It’s been two years now.

It also means you never have to worry about Gabe when you sneak out at night, it means your son has his uncles in his life every day. It means you’re not alone throughout everything.

They’re only people you have left now - the family you both found and made. They are the ones who have shaped the last twenty years of your life.

You take a sip of your tea and smile at your son.

“So, small bit of news I asked if Uncle Beau could take me on patrol next week,” he says quietly after a moment. “He said yes.”

“No. Gabriel, you’re -”

“I’m sixteen.”

“I know.” You swallow and look at him carefully. You remember him being so small you could hold him in one hand but now he’s sitting opposite you and he looks both so young and like a man all at once. Patrols? That’s normal for him now, that’s the way of life in Jackson. He’s still so young though.

You hear a creak on the staircase and listen carefully as your son continues making his case.

“It’s time I started learning about this and Beau will watch out for me if you’re worried. He said the route next week is the best to get started with,” he says, brow furrowing with concern at your reaction. “I’m ready though.”

“I’m sure you are. I know Uncle Beau will be there with you, I’m glad of that.” It’s better if he goes with Beau. You know him, you trust him and he will ensure that your son is safe.

“So how do you feel about that, patrol? Is this your idea or have you been volunteered?” Your son starting on this path is one thing if it’s his choice, but if he’s only going along with this because he thinks he’s supposed to, or because of teenage peer pressure? Well, the consequences are a lot worse in your son’s world, than chunky highlights or double denim could ever have been.

“It’s my idea. I’m fine with it,” he says quickly, avoiding your gaze.

You put your cup down and raise an eyebrow at him.

“Ergh, look, okay Jesse did his first patrol last week. Please - I can do it, I know I can. I want to.”

You’re tempted to reply, ‘and if Jesse walked off a cliff, would you?’ If you say it out loud though, there is no way you can deny you are turning into your mother, so instead you take a long sip of your drink.

It feels like a losing battle. Patrols are part of normal life in Jackson. However, if he’s with Beau then maybe that’s okay. If you know anything about Beau it’s that he is fiercely protective of the people he cares about. These days, that’s pretty much only Sean, you, and Gabriel.

“If you feel you’re ready and if Uncle Beau agrees and it’s a sensible patrol route … It needs to be in daylight, and just a short one.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.”

He beams in response.

“I’ve got classes, I better go.” He stretches and stands up, downing the rest of his drink.

“Okay, I’ll see you later. Love you. ”

“Yeah, you too, mum.” he says quickly, looking around as if one if his friends could secretly be listening by the window. He looks back at you and his face turns softer before he quickly moves away. “Hey Uncle Sean,” he says as they cross in the doorway.

“Morning Gabe.” Sean looks over at you and says good morning to you, says your name with a cheerful smile as he pours himself a tea and then sits down opposite you at the kitchen table.

“How much of that did you hear?”

“I started eavesdropping when Gabe mentioned Beau and patrols. I thought you handled it beautifully, by the way.”

“You’re only trying to make me less mad at Beau.”

Sean raises his hands in mock surrender and then leans back against his chair.

“Anyway, are you going to tell me about where you went last night?”

“Where I went?”

“Heard you leave, sweetie.”

“I … shit. Sorry, I thought I was quiet.”

“You are.” He sighs heavily. “So, where’d you go? Got a late-night Jackson booty call I don’t know about?”

For some unknown reason an image of Joel fills your mind, his unruly hair particularly. He often comes to the bench with mussed up hair from where you imagine he was in his own bed, trying to sleep. You imagine other ways his hair could get messy like that; your hands in his hair as he ...

No.

Absolutely not.

“You do have a hook up?” Sean asks incredulously.

“No. No. I don’t. I just go for a walk is all.”

“Alone?” Sean waggles his eyebrows mischievously.

“Yes.” Technically you walk to the bench alone and then you and Joel only walk back together so that doesn’t count … and his house is before yours anyway It really doesn’t count, right?

“Okay,” Sean says, frowning. “Are you having nightmares again? Do you need to talk about it?”

You shake your head, biting your lip. “Do you?”

“I’m okay.”

You and Sean have been friends since you first moved to the beach town you spent your teenage years in. The bond between you is irrevocable. He’s your brother, your best friend, one of the people you love most in the world.

You share scars.

The same turmoil and trauma and ghosts have buried under both of your skins in different ways. He’s been there through it all for you. You’ve been there through it all for him.

He’s the only person in the world who will ever understand the parts of you that you keep locked in boxes you can never open. And for him? For him, you know the secrets that he hasn’t even told Beau.

“Gabe … he’s been asking me and Beau about … before. He’s asking questions again,” Sean says after a moment, looking around the kitchen carefully and speaking in a low voice. “I wondered if this patrol thing was about that at first, about what we all said and … it’s getting harder to not give him any specifics.”

“Me too, but I think it’s because Jesse went on his first patrol recently.” That’s what you’re hoping anyway.

“Huh, how about that? Look, it doesn’t matter because this isn’t going away. He’s going to keep asking.”

“This all seemed so much easier when he was a baby.”

Sean raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I remember sixteen years ago, I wouldn’t say any of it was easier back then. It’s just the kid believed whatever we said with no questions.”

“Sean, tell me he still thinks …”

“Yeah. He just needs some details, honey. I know it hurts to talk about, but you have to give him something. He’s almost a man now and he’s got valid questions. I can - I would have been the same, so would you.“

You swallow and look out of the window. “I’ll handle it, Sean.”

You don’t flinch when you hear the crunch of Joel’s boots. You’ve come to expect it, anticipate the sound.

It makes you smile.

The bench doesn’t quite feel the same without him anymore.

“Howdy,” he says, the slight twang of his southern drawl more pronounced than usual.

You wave for him to come and join you on the bench.

“I didn’t see you here yesterday,” Joel says softly.

“Oh, I uh - was wiped out and I - I guess I just slept?” You notice how surprised your voice is there; you’re surprised you had a good night’s sleep for once, and you’re surprised that Joel noticed you weren’t there. In fairness, you had been due a night’s sleep as the exhaustion from your insomnia finally won out over your overthinking and anxiety. Gabriel had been on patrol with Beau that day and you’d worried yourself to the point of complete exhaustion.

Joel noticed though. He noticed you weren’t here.

“Were - were you here?”

Joel nods.

“Guess I’ve got sorta used to you being here too now.”

“I mean, it’s more the other way around. This was technically my bench first.”

“Really?” he says your name in a low, teasing voice. “You really wanna go there, huh?”

“I’m just saying. I’ve been here longer, technically and I’m saying this as a mere technicality, I have dibs on this bench.”

“An’ here I thought no-one truly owned anything in Jackson.”

“Benches are exceptions, everyone knows that.”

The two of you laugh, it’s light and somehow more soothing to you than the cup of herbal tea you’d drank before bed in the hope of repeating the night before and sleeping for once.

“I’m willing to consider joint custody or a small timeshare though,” you say.

“Oh wow, I’m real lucky.”

“I know. I wouldn’t bestow that right on just anyone.”

“I hope not.” Joel smiles and oh, you love it when he smiles. It’s so captivating.

“It got me thinkin’ though-“

“Sounds dangerous.”

“You know it. Anyway, I was thinking,” Joel looks away from you, towards the horizon and he wrings his hands together. “I guess it reminded me we have this whole world outside this bench.”

You’d thought the same thing, but you can’t say it. The words fall heavy on your tongue, your mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton.

“I wondered if maybe, you wanted to get a drink one day?” He’s not looking at you. “It’s a stupid idea.”

“No, no, it’s not. Why? Why would you want that with me?”

“Maybe I just want a drink with you,” he says.

You pause. Deflection is your standard response to something like this. The idea that Joel could want to spend time with you outside of your insomnia ridden nights surprises you. Why would he want that?

You can’t lie to yourself though; there’s something about Joel that draws you in. He’s easy to talk to and despite appearances and town mumbling, you can tell he’s not a bad person. He’s kind to you, thoughtful and you’ve thought about him.

You’ve thought about him a lot.

“Technically we’ve shared my thermos of coffee multiple times now,” you say weakly.

“That doesn’t count, sweetheart.”

“Wow, now you’re spurning my chicory coffee now, huh? That’s not good enough for you?”

“A real drink.” You can hear the meaning behind his words and it doesn’t fill you with the caution you would normally anticipate.

“And does this drink happen to be served somewhere this isn’t this bench?”

“As long as it ain’t karaoke night.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Joel Miller.” You pause for a moment, tilt your head in mock contemplation. “Okay, a drink.”

You meet Joel’s smile this time.

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#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x female reader #joel miller #the last of us fanfiction #pedro pascal character #joel miller fanfiction #the last of us #your hand in mine fic

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genericpuff · 11 months

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saw this pop up on /r/UnpopularLoreOlympus and I-

Full analysis post that inspired this post can be read here, it's a good read, go check it out!

Now my natural reaction to not assume the worst (shocking, I know) is that what Rachel's actual intention behind making Leto a sun god was due to her being Apollo's mother and her clearly having a stronger relationship with him rather than Artemis. I'm abiding by Occam's Razor here, it's the simplest answer and it keeps my brain from getting too riled up right off the bat LMAO

There's a lot of emphasis put on Apollo being the god of the sun in LO, despite the fact that Apollo is one of the MOST prolific gods in the Greek pantheon, Rachel only ever really focuses on him being god of the sun with some loose references to him also being the god of music (as we see with him playing his lyre). There's really no real referencing to him being the god of medicine though (aside from that scene of him condom-bandaging Persephone's hand in Episode 22 ?? which is silly now in hindsight because she's a fertility goddess who can heal herself but ok lmao and the fact that Rachel established him as a LITERAL DAD with his doctor son Asclepius which ... just feels weird to have in LO tbh) and there's absolutely no referencing (from what I can find or recall) of him being a protector of the young, god of prophecy (for some reason he just magically gives Kassandra the ability to read prophecies... just so she can read his prophecy ??) or archery. Like, he's shown doing a lot of these things but they come across more as just side hobbies or extensions of him being Artemis' brother (like his archery) rather than aspects of his godliness or domains that he presides over. It's just like yeah, Apollo can shoot arrows and bandage people's hands I guess LMAO

All that said, I can see Rachel deciding to make him primarily the god of the sun and then going "oh! let's make his mom a sun god! then she could be a common enemy for both Persephone and Hades!" because Hades doesn't like sun gods yadda yadda.

But... we know Rachel has used front page Google sourcing in her comic before.

(literally the 'source' was copy pasted from a 2004 study guide for Princeton.edu. And we KNOW this was taken right from the first result because it just says 'www.princeton.edu' with no slug attached, which is what showed up back when we first looked into this, the princeton version was deadass the first result with this definition word for word. She didn't even remove the typo where there's no space between Xenios:"Zeus !!!).

And while a bit more into sus territory rather than outright confirmed like the xenia thing above, there's the whole Metis / Métis theory, that has us wondering if Rachel seriously googled "Metis" on its own and accidentally used Indigenous Métis cultural depictions in her version of Metis, the Greek God.

The fringe in her outfit, finger wings, and dark orange/red color really got my attention the first time I saw her design years ago, because she set off so many, "Wait a minute, is that an Indigenous woman???" bells in my Mi'kmaq/Cree brain LMAO And not even in a bad way, but now it feels a little :/ because of how much her character has been assassinated and how clearly accidental it was for her to look like that.

Of course, there's still a more likely explanation that her design was based on this vase:

But IDK y'all. That vase is very distinctly orange while the character itself is depicted in dark garbs and with light skin, so Metis being distinctly red-toned with finger wings and fringe?

While the Xenia thing is definitively copy pasted from the first search result on Google (literally there's no denying that at this point, Rachel's REALLY bad at doing research and then pretending like she was being smart by sourcing it from a university website... completely ignoring the fact that that website literally hasn't been updated since Rachel was working on The Doctor Pepper Show) the Metis and Leto depictions are definitely a lot more up for debate as to what 'research' Rachel did and whether or not they got confused with something else during her searching.

And really, the whole thing with Leto being a "sun god" doesn't make sense really when you think about it. Why is Leto a sun god? It's not even like you could argue there are "some versions" of the myths where she's a god of the sun, or other translations out there, or whatever vague source that could be used like what has been used for other gods like Hades and Persephone. Leto is not affiliated with the sun in any shape or form. Remove Apollo, her eventual son, who didn't exist when she was born and given the title of 'sun god', and it quickly falls apart as to why she would be a sun god in the first place.

She is a goddess of motherhood though, and that's NEVER mentioned in LO. If anything, Rachel makes her a terrible mom on purpose. Because god knows we can't have anyone in this comic be a good mom except for Persephone and Rhea (who are literally just carbon copies of one another). Basically the only thing Rachel gets right with Leto is the fact that she's a Titan and that she had Apollo and Artemis after sleeping with Zeus. That's it.

Unfortunately, unlike the xenia thing, there's no outright proof of what Rachel's reasoning was behind these designs or sources. So I'm not gonna accuse or outright state it as fact that Rachel confused Metis for Métis or ripped the idea for Leto being a sun god from an anime, because the odds of that being true in any way are fairly low.

But they're never zero.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lore olympus #antiloreolympus

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1427 · 3 months

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dirge

Boyd Crowder X OFC (Beatle)

Setting: in the WoOoOods (Justified Season 1, with Boyd’s militia)

Summary: Boyd is sick of being full of shit. When one of the recruits for his new flock seems to see him for who he really is, he decides it might not be so bad to let her.

Word count: 5.5k

Warnings: CHARACTER DEATH, Boyd Crowder is Boyd Crowder, mentions of white nationalism, mentions of methamphetamine, religious imagery and references, mentions of militias, cults, and Boyd comparing himself to Christ (see above). NSFW WARNINGS; poooooooorly written smut, somno, rough fucking, unprotected piv, references to oral, jerking off, mentions of religion being used in sexual roleplay. mentions of other truly questionable roleplay scenarios, free-use dynamics

A/n: I started watching Justified a few days ago and Boyd Crowder really is one of the characters of all time, isn't he? Beatle is my OC who likes speed and sometimes sells it and sometimes strips but I obviously couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if Beatle had been in one of those trailers he’d held looking for people to follow his cause. Especially since she's just absolutely fucking dazzled by charm and confidence and she'd love him in a way he'd probably never been loved before. Couldn't not write it & I broke my own heart.

Inb4 I disappear for 3 months again

18+ mdni

✞

Boyd didn't think his daddy would hang her up there with the rest of them.

She was special, didn't he know that? Couldn't he tell?

Her hair’s never smelled like gunpowder before. It's more a feeling than a smell, and it stings but he's grateful that it hurts. He deserves it.

Boyd didn't think his daddy would do any of this. But he wasn't thinking, was he? He should have seen it coming, should have known. Not ‘should have’ in the way that hindsight is 20/20 and you can make wanton wishes about the past; no Boyd should have because he does know better. He's smarter than to let something like this happen.

✞

When he got out of prison he knew he was full of shit. Same shit he'd always been full of. He figures it ain't really like lyin’ so much if everyone knows you're never showing your real face. Talking is more like a game. Trying to spit the words out around the secret biting between his teeth. Secrets? He figures he's allowed to have those. Like what his intentions might have really been when he'd started recruiting junkies to be saved. Be his flock.

Different vocabulary, same game, same moves, same outcome.

Boyd did think that there would be a different outcome this time. Everyone always ends up dead, but how could that happen this time? He knows that putting a gun to someone's head and mocking them into sobriety ain't exactly safe and its definitely not legal but it's what works. Who could rightly question his methodologies if he was getting such socially acceptable results?

The point (as the point of things usually is for Boyd) is that there are enough qualifiers for him to feign confusion and innocence at any question of his motivations. Like he was so damn good at. Boyd had a reply for anything. A defense for everything he'd ever done. Everything he'd ever do. Else he wouldn't be caught doing it.

This time was easier. This time actually felt like it could be something more. That even though he was using his knowledge of the human condition, and its drive to follow a strong and confident leader, that this time he was doing it for something good at least.

How could getting rid of meth in Harlan county be bad? Boyd asks himself that a lot these days. Whenever he starts wondering how full of shit he is again. And he tells himself it doesn't matter if he's lying about every damn thing, even to himself, if he's getting people clean and following the Lord.

He doesn't feel that guilty, though. Not enough to really do anything different. His flock is his flock, and when he talks about God he makes sure to word it just right. So they hear it and they think of him. Boyd’s teachings are their gospels, and sometimes Boyd quotes scripture so he can call on God like he's name-dropping a celebrity. It's what works. It's what always worked.

If you’re good at saying the right thing to the right person you can get just about anything you want. If you're good at finding the perfect time to say it, you can keep it. Gettin’ stuff is no good if you can't keep it. That's what all these Dixie boys always got wrong about business. Hell, what everyone got wrong about everything - getting people to just give you what you want always feels so much better than taking it. Usually ends better to.

Before prison, for most of his life, it was skin-heads. He'd already known the slurs and the on-the-surface racial epithets from growing up but it only took a few weekends at the library and a couple eavesdropped Klan meetings to understand what these men were searching for. Only took a few well timed bible verses and an encouraging nod or two to get them to listen. The hardest thing of the whole operation was keeping them from being stupid when he wasn't around.

“Can't plan for everything.” “Sometimes shit just happens.” and “It is what it is.” Are just some bullshit excuses people tell themselves. Because Boyd knows that anything can be planned for. It's just a matter of looking. It's just a matter of knowing. He knows that you don't enter a room without knowing there's an exit and that you don't open your mouth unless you know exactly what could be said back to you.

Boyd knows how to get what he wants.

But since he's been out of prison he doesn't know what the fuck he wants. So he does what he always does but this time it's with words like shepherd, divine calling, and manifesting righteous love. It feels nice to be leading through positive affirmations instead of bigotry. If only because Boyd really resented how objectively moronic white supremacy was - anything ‘supremacy’ was a fucking joke. And those boys in the brotherhood thinking they were God's gift to the genepool? Hard not to see it when you're lookin’, how ridiculous the whole damn thing is.

That's why it didn't feel all that bad talking down to them. Manipulating them into whatever the fuck he felt like. Boyd wonders about it when he feels this tugging in his gut sometimes when he talks to his flock. It doesn't bother him enough to stop, but just enough to wonder why he hadn’t felt it before.

Maybe it's because she's watching and she knows he's full of shit.

That doesn't usually make any difference to Boyd and his ability to believably speak lies but every time he meets her eyes he feels like she can see his soul, the things behind what he's saying, and it makes him want to stop. Like he's embarrassed. Just a little. Just barely. It's so foreign to Boyd that if he didn't know just about every physical tell a person's body could have, he wouldn't have been able to place it.

If Boyd had to find the words to explain it he might have said it felt like he wanted her to see him. That his body and his mind have, as most humans have, the desire to be vulnerable with another human being. That he was meeting something in her that his inner self craved. These were words he'd use. But actually feeling them was harder. His list of wants in life is small and it's been the same things for as long as he's been playing snake in the grass. She's not on it. She never was before.

✞

She isn't anymore.

For a few weeks, Boyd let himself have something he didn't think he was allowed. Something he'd told himself he didn't deserve.

He wonders now if he was full of shit that whole time too. If letting her hold him and kiss him and fall in love with who he really was - if he wasn't just doing it to see if he could.

Her hair never burned his nostrils before.

It's not meant to do that.

Kissing her forehead never tasted like blood either. Maybe it should have. Maybe if he'd tasted blood the first time he'd kissed her none of this would have happened.

Boyd doesn't understand how his daddy couldn't tell she was special. Not when he’d seen it the second she opened her mouth down the barrel of his own gun. Boyd knows she didn't go quiet and he knows if she could open her mouth and talk right now her throat would be sore and raw and ruined.

He tries not think about how he couldn't hear her. He’s not sure if he wishes he had.

✞

Beatle didn't get it at first but it didn't take her long. Faster than he'd expected. And maybe if he'd met her on a college campus he wouldn't have been so impressed with her. But what was Boyd ever gonna be doing on a college campus? No, as far as he was concerned it was like lookin’ at himself.

Almost.

She didn't want the same things, and that didn't lead her to be the same type of person Boyd was. But it didn't stop him from seeing himself in her. All her big words and sweet banter. Even with a damn gun to her head she knew how to be cool. He thought he might be in love with her.

She'd told him later that it was because she'd seen the way he'd looked at her and knew he wasn't going to shoot her. He told her he still would have shot her if she didn't agree to quit using. She tells him she loves him for the first time.

It had only been a few days since that had happened, them meeting, and after she’d said it she tried to explain it away. It's the first time he sees her not being so cool. It’s the first time he sees the potential for something more.

Not because she'd slipped up and been vulnerable or given him something to use against her. No, it was the feeling in his chest when she'd professed such genuine admiration for what would generally be considered something he should have kept to himself.

The quiet part he's gotten so good at not saying out loud. The secret between his teeth. She can see it.

✞

Days go by and he's certain she can see it. The way Raylan can see some of it. She starts calling him ‘the prince' around camp and she thinks he doesn't understand why. No one else does, and he supposes that's probably why he's letting her get away with it. He's amused by it. By her. Always saying something that ends up surprising him.

Just some gaunt addict he found in a shitty trailer in children's pajamas, but she's making observations about him in comparison to Italian philosophy. She can't keep herself from pointing out when he ‘mistakenly’ attributes some quote from a book or movie to himself instead. She uses words he doesn't know.

Those aren't the things that impress Boyd. What catches his attention is that she never uses the words like manipulate or Machiavelli or cult. If she ever does call him out on some misattributed quote she won't call him a liar, and she won't do it in earshot of anyone else. And when she uses her big girl words she looks at him like she's teasing him instead of trying to impress him. She knows when he's wrong about the obscure ass Bible stories too and he has no idea how she knows this shit.

Going out of her way to call him on being full of shit - without ever actually saying it at all.

She's good. She keeps being better at it than he'd thought someone could be. Someone like her. Someone who wasn't really anyone.

Maybe that's why Boyd felt like he could let her in on it. Just a little bit. Because she could see it and he knew she could and she never called him a liar or a bastard or a psycho or anything like that. She didn't even try to leave. If anything, she seemed charmed by it.

He didn't think too much about how it might feel to let someone in like that. What it could be like to show your real face and still be wanted.

✞

Their first kiss doesn't taste anything like blood.

It tasted like tobacco and dirt and her.

She'd been trying to figure a way to sleep closer to him during the nights. Boyd figures this out after she finally ‘confesses’ that she hasn't been sleeping well, she's ‘scared of the dark’.

He asks her how long it took her to come up with that bullshit.

She says two days.

He asks why she didn't come up with something better and can't argue when she says there really wasn't anything that didn't sound obvious.

It takes about an hour for her to be pressed up against him. They'd started with their sleeping bags a few feet away from each other, but as they talk the distance gets smaller. Boyd isn't sure if it's her or him that's moving in. Isn't he supposed to pay attention to stuff like that? Shouldn't he be at least a little aware of what she says and what she doesn't say and how she's moving and speaking and staring?

He's in the middle of a story about one of the banks, talking at her about some really ‘cool’ shit he'd said and never gotten to tell anyone (he never thought he'd wanted to) - and without a word she unzips her sleeping bag, unzips his sleeping bag, and rearranges. Making enough room for her to fit right up against him.

And she does.

Boyd keeps talking the whole time. Finishing his story. She listens, and replies, and neither one of them comment on what she's doing. Neither one of them say anything when she's nestled up against him.

He thinks it through… what to do in this situation. What outcome did he want? His dick is hard but it's not aching. He could sleep. He figures making her wait won't hurt his chances if he decides he wants them.

So he tells her politely goodnight and he's surprised when she doesn't protest.

Beatle rolls over and he pulls her close. No harm in being close. Really there was no harm in fucking her either, but it didn't feel like the right moment. Everything has its right moment.

He keeps thinking about fucking her and once again he isn't sure who started moving first but he's pulling her over his cock like her body was his to move how he wanted. It was definitely her who started it, he reasons, arching her back into him and wiggling around - but he could've dealt with it. Could've told her to stop, told her no, told her anything that he knew would shut her down. But just as he was about to say something she turned her head to look back at him.

She didn't twist her neck and meet his gaze romantically - pressing her hips delicately into his. No, she folded her body at her hips, completely arching herself against him, looking back and up at him like he was already fucking inside of her.

Boyd knows that when he grabs her hips hard enough to bruise her that she likes it that way. Even if she didn't say all the obvious shit that made him know.

He's not gonna fuck her. Not tonight. But he uses her body to cum and he doesn't feel bad because he's never felt bad about something human like that. And anyway, she liked it. He knows because he can smell how wet her cunt is. He knows because she was a shaking mess, moaning at just the feeling of dull pressure. He knows because she begged him to cum.

She begged him to cum instead of begging him to fuck her and Boyd thinks he might be in love again.

She turns around and kisses him and her face has dirt on it from where he'd pressed her head into the ground but he likes the way it tastes on her.

She kisses like an apology. A real one. One that comes from your whole fucking soul because you never felt anything more. Trying to connect. Fully. Deeply.

Tuggin’ on heart strings is a saying he's always heard and it always made sense until now when he actually feels it for the first time. Boyd, who's so keen on behavior and mannerisms and what was gonna happen next, feels everything she has.

He's been here before with women. Some of them were different but if he was honest most of them were the same. A sigh here, a disgusted look there. Knowing how a woman feels about you might be the easiest observation a man could make.

So Boyd was expecting what he'd gotten from her when he was grinding into her. All shaking and whimpering and he'd probably either have to take the lead or stop it - either was okay by him depending on what he felt like.

But she's someone else. Again. With one leg hooked around him and her hands around the back of his neck and in his hair - she takes his mouth with hers like she's evangelizing. Pushing everything she has into him and he can feel it. More than a physical something. More than her fingers pressing into the pulse at his neck. More than his cock getting hard again and this time it settles right between them.

He finally breaks the kiss only to ask her if she knows he can feel her clit every time it quivers against him. He only asks because he wants to feel it again.

Boyd’s good at talking. Beatle loves it.

He asks her so many filthy things. Things he'd never got away with asking someone else. Boyd knows there's not much you can't get away with saying with a whisper and a southern accent, but this… this was new even for him.

He wasn't sure what came over him. Why he needed her to know that he's been pretty sure he can tell when she's thinking about giving him head. About the glazed over look in her eye and how her mouth hangs open a little wider than she probably thinks it does when she's staring.

Or why he has to tell her that his cock was hard the whole time he had his gun on her the first night they met.

And he's not going to fuck her but he sucks on her tits like they've been eucharized. He can't stop talking because he can't get enough of every little fucking reaction.

Boyd figures out what it is when he's in the middle of telling her about how he knows her pussy is pretty and pink and the same color as her lips and how, he knows it's bad, but sometimes when she's talking to him all he can think about is what his cock would look like pressed up against her teeth - Beatle's body seizes on him a little bit different than it had been seizing before; and it all just clicks.

Getting a reaction from her was like breathing. Nothing in his life had ever come so easy. Or so fun.

She was letting him play with her.

All his silly little mind games everyone else hated so much. She liked it. Not in the way he’d meant for her to like it.

She liked him. Actually.

He's really not sure why he told her about cumming on her pajama pants before he threw them out. He was sure he'd take that one to the grave. But he tells her about it while jerking off onto her stomach because he wasn't going to fuck her but he needed to cum again.

And she eats the mess from her fingers from her belly and Boyd is certain he's allowed to be in love.

✞

Boyd had reasoned himself through a lot of things. Justifying almost anything. This? This he was having a hard time with. All he had going for him is that she'd liked it.

That she asked for it again afterwards.

Because when Boyd wakes up and the sun is peaking through the trees he can finally really see what her tits look like. Half falling out of her top. And when he reaches down to touch her there, her lips part. He thinks about how her pussy is the same color as her mouth and he thinks about how he told her that and how she reacted and he can't stop his hands even if he wanted to.

That's what he tells himself. He's reading her blind like a set of runes, it's not his fault her body is calling him this way. And she's reacting. So how could he stop? He can't.

He's not sure if she's sleeping or pretending to sleep and he'd be lying if he said he thought that hard about it. Hard enough to care. His fingers dip between her legs and even through her underwear he can feel it. Sticky and warm and hers.

Boyds hands seem to know what to do the same way his mouth does. Working the fabric of her panties down just slowly enough to not move her. He didn't want to fuck her he just wanted to feel it.

She spreads her legs for him a little, laying on her belly; another miracle. Another sign he shouldn't stop himself. The Lord was working through him.

This time he knows he's full of shit but he's rubbing his cock along her soaked lips and he can feel her clit tremble again and he doesn't feel bad when he pushes into her.

Her eyes jolt open like he'd been waiting for and the look on her face is an expression he doesn't think he's ever seen before. Something like fear and trust. Something someone like Boyd could get addicted to.

He fucks her into the ground. He wants to look at her face again so he pulls her head back by her chin. She meets his gaze like she'd been waiting for it. This. To look at him like this while he fucked her.

She bows her head and takes his fingers into her mouth. She tries to move her head and Boyd knows exactly what the fuck she wants so he gives it to her. Fishhooking his fingers into her cheek while he backs up and off her a little. Sitting her up on her knees before pushing her shoulders back down again.

Boyd knows how to get what he wants. He wants to go watch himself disappear inside of her.

He'd almost forgotten where they'd started this, but when he remembers he has to stop himself from finishing then…. Just barely pushing into her again and it reminds him of that first time. 5 minutes ago when she was asleep.

Boyd can't stop thinking about how she'd woken up wanting him. This desperate. This wet.

That he could make her want it even when she couldn't know anything.

She opens her fucking mouth one fucking time and it's to tell him to fuck her pussy like he fucking owns it. And it was kind of corny and it didn't quite hit as well as he thought something she could say during sex would and he's not mad or anything but she adds “because you do.” and Boyd buckles.

Falling on top of her body like her words hit him he holds her still as he ruts up into her. It's desperate and vulnerable and yet still completely overpowering. He tells her to say it again and she says the whole thing. He tells her no just the last part and she

Starts professing just how much he fucking owns her pussy. How it's never been for anybody else, from the second she saw him she wanted him. She felt him there, she always wanted to feel him there. Deep in her fucking cunt because it fucking belonged to him.

He asks her whenever he wants it?

She repeats him in breathless moans as he slows his pace

He asks her even if she's sleeping.

She tells him that she’s never been more turned on in her whole life.

He asks her why

Because he took it without asking.

Because he knew it was his.

Boyd cums so fucking hard he's vaguely aware that he's hurting her. Pressing her into the ground and she can't breathe but he knows she'll be okay in a second and he knows she doesn't care. He knows she prefers it this way. Even if she hadn't said it.

✞

For the next two weeks Boyd fucks her in just about every way he can think to fuck her. All the things he's ever wanted to try. Like waking her up by stretching her out. He can't believe he's never been able to wake someone up like that before.

He can't believe how much he likes it.

Responding to her body and giving it what it wants when she can't even speak. He's sure it's is favorite thing that they do.

He does things with her that he’d never actually considered before, too.

He plays pretend with her. Not in front of the others but they'll go out to the creek and he'll baptize her and they fuck in the water or on the edge or against a tree.

Or Beatle gets down on her knees like she's really praying and pretends to be confused when his cock head pokes at her mouth asking what he's doing and he gets to play along and say it's what the good Lord itends for her.

One time he laid her down and they pretended that as her pastor it was his holy duty to impregnate her with Christ.

Boyd didn't know he would get off on this shit. He's certain he wouldn't be if it wasn't with her. Who's mouth was so believable and reactions so pure - he doesn't have to wonder anything.

She likes it or she doesn't and she always fucking likes it.

✞

The sky is hazy and it looks like it might rain. Beatle asks him if he has any family and Boyd doesn't really know what to say. He doesn't want to lie but he doesn't want to talk about it.

He tells her no.

She asks if he's lying because he doesn't want them to meet her.

Boyd’s heart pangs again like it did when she'd kissed him that first time. All desperate and real and alive. He shakes his head and tells her no. She was too good for them.

He can tell she doesn't believe him. But saying nothing is better than saying more. And he knows she'll let him get away with not answering this one.

He tells her it doesn't matter anyway because he's pretty sure he loves her. And it's the first time he says it but it's not the first time he's felt it. Beatle believes him.

Boyd is pretty sure she's never believed those words in her whole life before now.

His heart pangs again.

✞

Bo Crowder was a scary sonofabitch. That's what Beatle said under her breath as he was walking up to their camp. Boyd’s glad she said it quiet because she didn't know how right she was.

She didn't know that was his daddy.

She knew about the meth shipment he was yelling about. Something he normally wouldn't have told her, even though it wasn't a secret necessarily. Something about wanting to protect a woman from the dangers of this world.

But Boyd needed Beatle. He trusted her. She was part of this with him. He didn't want her the way he wanted all of the rest and he wanted all of the rest to know it too. Something about making her feel like she was someone.

He knew he was saying and doing things at just the right times to make her feel special. But it's not like he didn't mean them. She treated each one like a fucking gift. Each public display, every private whisper. Every touch of their fingers and especially every time he buried himself inside her.

✞

It occurs to him on his walk through exile, while his people were no doubt being strung up and taken away by lawmen, that he doesn't think he can live without her. Well, at least that he doesn't want to. He reasons he shouldn't have to.

She didn't break any laws anyway and Raylan will probably hand her over personally when her record comes back clean. He'd asked her and she said she had no charges she'd known of. She'd know.

So, be patient. Wait it out. He runs through it again, in his head, all the stuff his daddy said. That they were gonna have them dig up the guns then tie em to a tree and call the feds.

He said a lot of other stuff too. About not being a son not being a leader not being nothing. Boyd was always sure he was nothing so none of that shit felt like anything. The first few blows his daddy makes his cousin give him don't feel like much of anything either.

Seeing Beatle’s face is what does it. He's sure he's rocked a few more times but he doesn't remember anything after seeing her look at him like that.

✞

Boyd tries not to remember Beatle for the way she looked at him then. He tries really hard to remember the few seconds he'd gotten to touch her hand before his daddy shot that gun one last time at him to get out of there.

He wishes he remembered it better but it's so fuzzy and barely there. He wishes his cousin would have just fucking beat him to death. He wishes that one prick ass degenerate addict piece of shit good for nothing follower who snitched out where the guns were would come back to life so he could rip apart every bit of him.

Because she'd probably still be alive. Boyd’s sure of it. If he'd died instead she'd be alive and the world wouldn't fucking feel like this.

✞

For a while he has delusions that it’s the Real Deal out and out End O’ Times. That with her went all the light and all the good because he just couldn't seem to reason why.

Couldn't his daddy see she was special?

Couldn't he see that she was divinely made for him?

That their love could have changed the world.

It could have changed him.

Boyd can't reason with his daddy because he's dead too.

✞

After even longer Boyd convinces himself he was full of shit the whole time. That Beatle was just some girl he stuffed his cock into to feel good about himself while he was reintegrating back into society.

Just some junkie, and if she was still alive she'd be back to using again. They wouldn’t have been anything because Beatle wasn't anyone.

She thought she was special, but don't they all?

Boyd doesn't think about it much anymore. When he does he only lets himself think one thing.

She couldn't have been real. Not the way he thought she was. He must have been wrong about her and he would have figured it out eventually.

He can't let himself think about her the way she really was.

The memories of her then are remembered by no one. Not a soul on this earth. Not even the ground they fucked on or the pond he made her piss in so he could watch. Not even in the stump that she'd carved their initials into because Boyd went back and he cut it all apart so sure that wasn't real either.

He keeps being so sure it wasn't real.

He convinces himself that some initials carved in a tree is just something childish and stupid and that's why he destroyed it. He convinces himself that it wouldn't have broken her heart.

He’ll convince himself of just about anything to keep from thinking about what it felt like to be loved. Because that's what it was, right? Love?

So he doesn't think about her. Or then. Or what happened and what didn't.

✞

It's the gunpowder. Every time it starts to sting up his sinuses he can feel her hair soft against his lips. And every time he closes his eyes and he remembers her. What it felt like to realize she was up there with the rest of them.

Maybe someday Boyd will let himself remember what it felt like to love her. He worries that by the time he’ll be ready he won't remember what she looked like anymore.

What she felt like.

He already forgets most of the stuff they'd talked about. He just knows she was special. He knows no one else would get it anyway. Why he wanted to let himself be stuck there forever. In those words. Dying. How three weeks could feel so much bigger.

Boyd keeps going out there despite how much he convinces himself he's not thinking about her. Everything time he smells the gunpowder.

He keeps finding reasons to use his gun.

Because even though in that memory she's dead it's the realest one he's got.

He doesn't think about her dead.

If he absolutely has to, laying down in the dirt where the camp used to be, he thinks about the way she looked when he'd told her he was pretty sure he loved her.

Sometimes he thinks about her mouth or her body or the way she always seemed to know what to do with them - but mostly he just thinks about the way she looked at him. Praying to be a better man for the next time around this life because she deserved more than God would allow him to give. The choices he had made previous to loving her had tainted his soul. Turned it rotten and poisoned her before he'd barely even gotten the chance. She'd paid for his sins. So he prays next time he meets her without any.

Boyd wishes just one time he would lay down out here and not get up.

He leaves the woods, convincing himself he was full of shit with her the same way he was full of shit with everyone, the memories of her die again, and he forgets about her until his subconscious finds some reason for him to fire a gun.

Any reason.

Boyd remembers enough about her to know she'd have liked that.

✞

A/n; it wasn't really proofread? (Well it was but I'm not very good at it) ALSO idk about this writing style either, i know it's kind of different? And in my opinion probably more juvenile but I had fun writing it this way. 🤷🏻‍♀️

(I'll make a different post about where I'm at with my wips~)

#justified #boyd crowder #boyd crowder x reader #Boyd Crowder X OFC #Smut #justified fanfic #one shot #Walton goggins #walton goggins smut #Walton goggins fanfic

43 notes · View notes

chaifootsteps · 6 months

Note

Hey I saw that you apologised for making people uncomfortable and retracted the statement that “drawn cp doesn’t exist” because it certainly can. I was hurt by the statement at first, so I really appreciate that and I think you’ve shown growth and maturity here.

Look. I don’t get the toothless thing. The Beetlejuice thing. I really think Lydia is too young so i can’t get behind it. Nor the lil guy from your pfp, I thought he was more wholesome and cuddly than he actually was 😔 I’ll admit. But its not as if you put that stuff on blast in an Amazon Prime show for millions to see then claimed it was empowering to victims or smth. So if anything I think having similar fetishes puts you in a better position to critique Viv and Raph. Because you’re advocating for safe usage of such kink, you never clutched pearls over it. Just pointed out their hypocritical statements, dishonesty, and how it hurt audiences who didn’t expect it or see it coming.

Best thing to do is remain transparent about those aspects of your past, assert that you don’t condone abuse of minors or real animals, and are always growing and changing. Honestly it’s kindve weird imagining that person scrolling your blog back to 2022 trying to find dirt anyway.

Thanks for that, Anon. And I meant what I said, that I sure as hell don't have all the answers. I'll probably never be one of those people you see on Twitter arguing that feral genitals on furries lead to thought crimes, but I'm always down to talk civilly about stuff, and maybe meet somewhere in the middle.

As for the Beetlejuice and Toothless thing, that's completely fair! The Beetlejuice one was kind of a running trend with my fictional tastes when I was younger, and in hindsight, most likely has something to do with the fact that I was molested. The idea of meeting a supernatural being who was much older than me, finding myself on equal footing with them or outright having total control over them, and eventually marrying them...good lord, that was like ambrosia. It felt safe. It still feels safe. It's why I give people a wide benefit of the doubt when it comes to fictional stuff, even stuff I don't like, even when it's Viv.

If it's any consolation, Satellite really is a very cuddly, wholesome little character...he's an angel after all, and he takes it very seriously. Here he is without his controversial dragon dong hanging out.

#Anonymous #actual blog post #image reply #nice things people say

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ladyluscinia · 9 months

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Your post about Ed's trauma vs. the Stormtrooper fights is right on the money imo. What gets me is that it didn't have to be an impediment when there could have been a fuckery! The reunited Revenge crew, now even stronger b/c of Izzy's integration, could have pulled an amazing Theatre Kid con that highlighted Ed and Stede's creative chemistry and this underdog group's ability to Bugs Bunny their way past better fighters with no casualties. Instead, Ricky has the biggest fuckery of s2, wtf?

Re: This. I think the fandom might have made the idea of fuckeries more interesting and important than canon intended to, in hindsight.

Like the idea of doing piracy through primarily theatre gay productions that upend the risk of dying in combat in favor of special effects hijinks was a really good comedy concept. And it worked well with the two main character types we got in S1 - silly theatrical underdog who cannot win a swordfight for the life of him + dramatic hidden depths guy who became a legendary pirate but can't actually kill people himself - and the rest of the crew's vibe in general - eclectic misfits that will not be intimidating anyone. I even liked it for Izzy! I know we liked to say he was from Black Sails but tbh he really wasn't, and the guy who slashed up Stede's shirt without breaking skin was made for selling that kind of bullshit as dangerous.

But - for all the extensive meta tracking how Stede's underdog trickery comes out on top again and again (primarily from Stede blogs, obviously, though everyone seemed to agree it was pretty solid) - canon only describes 2 instances as fuckeries: the introduction of the concept in 1x06, and Stede faking his death in 1x10. Everything else - even in S2 - is just fandom extending the concept because we think it's cool and makes sense. Ricky doesn't do "a fuckery", he just betrays Zheng with a trick and makes a pun about it.

Looking back, I think fuckeries only exist as a thing in OFMD meta because we liked the thought of them, and the kind of comedic canon they would support (team crafts, hijinks, no danger, muppet logic). I think S2 makes it clear canon only viewed a "fuckery" as the symbolic first step in Stede being a pirate. He's introduced to the concept when he's not ready yet, and then he successfully crafts and executes one at the end of S1 (against people who aren't trying to fight him, crucially) to show his rebirth. Now in S2 he's free to move onto real piracy - life threatening situations and swordfights. The penchant for trickery and underdog jokes is just character flavor, not an actual pursuit of its own.

That's why raids in 2x05 are just raids, talking in 2x06 is just talking, and the Navy dress-up in 2x08 is not an alternative to getting past the British mooks, but some kind of leg up on surprise attacking them (at least that's what it kinda looks like?). It's not "a fuckery" - it's a battle plan that can be sprinkled with hints of fuckery to spook, befuddle, or surprise. You still win with skill at violence.

Piracy is an action/adventure genre about killing your enemies with swords, guns, and cannons, and apparently OFMD was never looking to challenge that - just play in the space of our cast getting good (or maybe getting out).

#and by *not* looking to challenge that or do something unique it draws firmer comparisons to other pirate media i've seen #which is certainly a choice considering ofmd is not winning in the arena of 'best war with the british empire'#but they actually had a leg to stand on in cartoonish hijinks #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd meta #ofmd 2x08 #stede bonnet ofmd #blackbeard ofmd #ofmd piracy #genre #ladyluscinia #ask #anon

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runningfrom2am · 8 months

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leave it to me to make a 18-point commentary on a 2.8k oneshot 🤭

10. "Yes, well... we have never been well liked." i really like how this comes out as if she really has spent time thinking about where they went wrong and trying to rationalise it. also i don’t if it was intentional on your part but this adds to her not getting over being retired as the head gamemaker because of people.

11. it feels like they weren’t allowed to be together, until her last night, following the days of coin’s takeover, she is looking out to her garden but at the same time, to her husband. also she is given the chance of staying in her bedroom but he is down with the roses and the raspberries.

12. her pride and the fact that what sejanus is asking of her is an act of betrayal by her definition are the greatest obstacles that stand in the way of her survival but as the one who believed in and actively tried to observe “humanity unmasked” she knew taking the offer was the only way for her to go.

13. her realising that she is alive by luck and past impressions, just like sejanus, must’ve been chilling because not only it breaks the illusion of power she had at the time, but while sejanus was spared, she was left alone and those two are very different.

14. “Were you really any better than him?” i want to believe you didn’t tell him that you had killed and buried sejanus so thanks to the power of important details, you are, in this sense.

15. i hope nothing bad happened to their kids but at the same time it doesn’t seem likely for them to not have partaken in the games at all, considering the ages. maybe they didn’t get executed thanks to the mockingjay.

16. HER FINAL SALUTE!!!

17. the fact that coin probably let her go by the condition of carrying her plan of hurting snow is very in character, he couldn’t have known about the celebration beforehand.

18. he mourned the death of his love twice and at both, she was alive even if meant to be dead. her “deaths” could be traced back to him by a very thin line, in his knowledge but her real tragedies were having to leave everything she has known behind.

NO BC AS YOU SHOULD AND I AM EATING IT UP i love talking ab this so pls do haha

10. okay yes and that was NOT intentional but i do love that it makes sense. in hindsight you’re totally right (not us just talking ab things that are canon to this that just aren’t in the fic hahah)

11. absolutely coin demanded they be separated immediately. bc SO MUCH of their power was power they shared- they did it all together, so separating them (and no doubt publicizing this somehow) is the first signal to the rebellion and the districts that it really was over, they won. even though few people know this, it is a massive accomplishment on their behalf to even be able to separate them bc of their history of what they have done just to stay together. including but not limited to: coryo risking r’s life for the chance that she would be sent away with him, killing mayfair, sending the recording of sejanus (bc if he left he would leave them to be executed “just for knowing him” and also he would be putting a SPOTLIGHT on where r had been hiding), and even allegedly killing lucy gray. (and by few people who know this, i mean sejanus and lucy gray who no doubt shared these stories to some in 13.)

12. she tried to fight it, but deep down she knew she couldn’t really say no. her “conditions” were a final act of power that she could really have, to convince herself this was a smart decision. yes she was betraying her husband, but she made sejanus promise that their granddaughter would not be harmed. maybe she even negotiated to get custody of her while she is in hiding. so it was a betrayal, BUT she had several reasons.

13. YES and same thing i mentioned on the last one about her conditions applies here.

14. oh absolutely she is nowhere near as guilty as him, but that’s hard for her to believe because of how extremely highly she regards him even then. she almost wanted to find more blame to place on herself so they were still level.

15. we can hope not, but like you said considering the ages, i think they have done some unforgivable things too. i think r and coryo know that as well.

16. i cried while writing it bc ✋ shut up it’s so sad

17. oh for sure. but ALSO can we consider the possibility that she didn’t even know? bc what we do know is that many of her higher ups knew that she wasn’t much better than the previous presidential couple. when katniss shoots her, plutarch is smiling bc that’s what needed to happen and he knew it. i think sejanus and lucy gray didn’t like her either, so it’s entirely possible that they hoped this is what katniss would do, maybe she even told lucy gray that that was her plan. it’s not too far fetched to guess that sejanus could organize this without coin’s knowledge. coin would love the idea of hurting the president by having an over the top celebration about his wife’s murder, but would that be worth letting her live? maybe not. idk just something to think about haha

18. I KNOWWW IM SO SAD FOR HIM TOO. HE DOESNT EVEN KNOW. she’ll be grappling with that decision for a long time knowing that AGAIN he is grieving her death, but this time he will never find out that she is still alive.

#i have the answers #ltpf <3 #that-veela-girl

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openworldadventurer · 1 month

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I'm really sorry if this is rude or something, it's really not intended to be, but do you have any proof of your work at Bethesda? I'm writing something for school about how casual a lot of the abuse/mismanagment in the games industry is and want to include some of the things you've talked about in the past, but I can't seem to find anything that actually validates your accounts. Even just an article from a credible source in which your mentioned or smth would be fine, genuinely.

Sorry again if this rude, thank you in advance if you decide to respons!

That's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, so no offense taken.

But first things first: there are larger and more egregious abuses out there with much more proof than some tales from the trenches on Tumblr. I recommend Jason Schreier's Press Reset (not just because I was interviewed for it about two separate studio closures, Big Huge Games and 2K Marin), but there's no shortage of good reporting on a variety of abuses. (And as for "mismanagement", I wouldn't call any of the cut stuff from Skyrim a sign of mismanagement at all -- that's just what happens in any big open-world game. Every developer plans about twice as much stuff for a game as actually sees the final version -- there are always cuts when we see what we'll have the time and devpower to achieve.)

So please, don't quote "some guy on Tumblr said his name was struck from the game" for your school article -- it'll look like gossip reporting, and it won't even be very exciting. There's real horrors out there with solid sourcing that you can draw from, instead. As for my own credentials: I'm listed in the credits for Fallout 3 as "Fred Zeleny" (you can see me listed in this video of the credits at 2:51), and the various Fallout fan wikis have archives of my "Inside the Vault" internal blog interview I did while working on it.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm not listed in the credits for Skyrim, because they stripped my name along with a few other developers for going to work at different game studios before the project was done. I'm not sure what I can do to offer proof that I was there for that time period, short of sharing my design notebooks or pictures from the company parties, all of which might well be legally-actionable breaches of my NDA. I suppose I could point out which characters are named after friends of mine, but that wouldn't prove much if you don't know them. (Although it's a sweet story: they had just married at the time, and I added them as a little surprise wedding gift. Now their two kids play Skyrim on the Switch and are delighted to see their parents immortalized in Darkwater Crossing.) Now, that sort of professional erasure might not fly nowadays (particularly with a union there!), but that was 15 years ago. And sure, that was frustrating back when I was a young dev. But in the decade and a half since, it's never been a professional impediment, because everyone else in the industry knows that sort of pettiness was/is done all the time. And it doesn't hold a candle to some of the real abuses and horrors I've seen in the industry since leaving Bethesda.

So... yeah. I am who I say I am, but I really hope I haven't given the impression that Bethesda is a uniquely bad place in the game industry. If anything, it was fine in hindsight, albeit a little frustrating how things ended. But I tell tales of what almost happened in those games because those are the games people are familiar with, and because those tales are amusing rather than just horrifying.

Trust me, "here's a funny thing I almost did with Sheogorath!" or "the Bard's College quest was almost way more complex!" are much more enjoyable stories from game development than the real horrors I've seen. You probably wouldn't enjoy reading "that season I slept in the office multiple nights a week to meet deadlines and then the parent company failed to make payroll and laid us all off with no severance and we all cried and my coworker wrote a sad note to the movers who came to take everything away", or "the guy who made us completely retool our game to be more mainstream just stepped down after being arrested for a longstanding pattern of sexual harassment and abuse of employees." Trust me, those are real bummers. So it'd probably be better for your article if you focus on the sort of actual abuse and mismanagement I've shared links for here, rather than the minor stuff from my posts.

Gotta keep a proper perspective, y'know?

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bronx-bomber87 · 1 year

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Good Morning! Super excited for these next set of eps to review.

We’ve reached the iconic and pivotal DOD eps. I’m nervously excited to review these. I want to do them justice. They are momentous for not just Chenford but the entire series. Rosalind Dyer is one of my fav recurring baddies. I loved Annie from Castle as well. Was psyched she would be joining The Rookie. This was a rare one where I got to use all the gifs I wanted to. Yay. Kid in a Chenford candy store haha Thank you to all the wonderful gif makers out there. You are the real MVP's. Let’s get this started :)

2x10 The Dark Side

We start with Lucy and the guys out for a post work drink. Armstrong is there as well. They’re talking about Jackson dating a celebrity. Asking how that is? Lucy says they’re happy if he’s happy. Nick calls her bluff and says ‘Liar.’ LMAO Lucy cracks and says men suck ha They sure can. That the single men in LA suck. That whenever they find out she’s a cop they freak out. (To touch on not dating a cop bit. It is only a mistake when it’s not Tim. Let’s be real.) Especially while she's still a rookie just not a good idea (cough Nolan cough) He was never a good decision though....not even a little bit. I'll die on that hill haha

Armstrong joins the convo and comes in with some solid advice. ‘Those aren’t men they’re boys. Real men are not afraid of a strong woman.’ Your real man just isn’t ready yet my dear. Nor are you. I really love this scene though. I enjoyed Nick a lot as a character. Poor Lucy she goes on her 'Sister Officer Lucy Chen' rant ha Classic. Oh the irony of this convo. In S5 she definitely isn't in a nunnery anymore heh. That is quite awhile away from this point though. Have to note how pretty she looks in this scene. Her outfit is simple but she looks stunning.

Lucy leaves the table to get another round. That’s when Lucy runs into Caleb….really unfortunate that’s his name. That’s my BIL's name haha He seems normal enough with his flirting with Lucy. Both of them being ignored for another drink by the bartender. He's making her laugh and appearing nice and kind. Ugh run Lucy run…Their moment gets interrupted by Lucy noticing a guy stealing tips. She walks away from the convo and apologizes. End ups arresting the thief. The way she takes him down is bad ass I have to say. (Tim would be proud) Says 'Surprise I’m a cop’ haha

Roll call comes around and they find out about Rosalind Dyer. A rare unicorn in their world. A female serial killer. She’s agreed to show them the 3 bodies that were never found. In exchange she gets life with no parole instead of the death penalty. Everyone’s day is now centered around this. Tim and Lucy discuss her past murders. Lucy telling Tim she was in college when they found the first victims.

That it was all anyone could talk about, wondering how a woman could be so barbaric? Tim shares his own story about it. How he worked a scene for the 4th victim. That he was advised not to look at the body. How he wish he hadn’t… The hindsight of watching this scene unfold right before they run into Caleb. It’s bone chilling to think about. Their convo being framed around this before he shows up.

Caleb shows up and Tim is immediately suspicious and does not like this guy. His face has me rolling the entire time. Gives Caleb a hard time about the word 'Perp'. His facial expressions I can not LOL Now part of this reaction is his cop gut. I truly believe that. Not trusting whoever this guy is for Lucy. His default is suspicion. The fierce protector coming out to play in this scene.

I think the rest of his reaction is him just not liking this guy being interested in Lucy. Jealously thy name is Timothy Bradford. Its seeping out of him and he can't stop himself. He's completely forgotten he's dating one of her closest friends in this moment. Written all over his face how territorial he’s being right now. I always love me some protective/jealous Tim. This scene and honestly this entire episode is full of that.

Lucy’s face is screaming ‘chill out’ the entire interaction. She's basically scolding him with her eyes above. They have a mini silent conversation with their eyes before the scene continues. If that isn't the most married look they've had so far. I love it so much. He definitely looks reprimanded in that second gif above. Tim is as transparent as person can be in this scene. Not even trying to hide it a little bit. Caleb has shown up and Tim's guard and protective nature are out in full force. Doesn't like this guy just showing up and sniffing around at all.

Caleb is clearly nervous around Tim (as he should be..) It's too funny he keeps trying regardless to talk to Lucy. Tim deftly snags the paper out of the air. She didn't have a chance of grabbing it. Caleb has to sense how much Tim doesn't want him here. He could not be less welcoming of this man. Tim reads the paper and he asks if Caleb has a last name LOL He says Wright. The irony of that last name...

I doubt our boy even knows why he’s reacting this way to Caleb. Only that he is and very strongly at that. All his feelings when it comes to Lucy are muddled and confusing for him. Yet he acts on them anyway. From the moment this guy showed up the green eyed monster was present. Tim continues to grill him. He asks what he does for a living? Says if it’s a screenwriter he’s going in a cell. He really hates screenwriters haha A theme through out the show for him.

Eric’s facial expressions during this entire scene truly is perfection. Look at the way he looks at Caleb as he leaves. If looks could kill he would be a dead man. Also you can see the mask on Caleb drop when he turns away from them (shudder). The immense distrust written all over Tim's rigid body language. You'd have to be blind not to see it. Both of their faces above are a summary of the entire scene. Lucy is happy to have caught the eye of a 'decent' guy. Tim doesn't trust this guy as far as he can throw him.

Tim doesn’t even think he’s done anything wrong till he turns around and sees her face. Kudos to Melissa for the great reaction. He says 'What?' All innocent like he didn't just drag that guy through the mud. Treat him like a criminal they deal with on the daily. She is so affronted and honestly confused as hell with his reaction. Her face basically saying 'What the hell was that?'

From the moment Caleb shows up to the moment he leaves Tim is NOT pleased with his presence. Lucy is truly confused as to why he is acting this way. She can’t put together why he was trying to kill that entire interaction. We all know Lucy included (deep down) this was jealously thorough and through. But she chalks it up to him being stressed about how crazy everything is right now. Sure that’s it Lucy…She demands the paper back with just her face and outreached hand. Tim is shocked she wants the number of this doofus. He relents and unwillingly hands it back to her. Almost rolling his eyes as he does so.

They’re driving in a caravan to the first burial site. Lucy is looking at Calebs online profile in the car. Tim snaps at her to focus. That this is going to be most dangerous day she’s ever going to spend on the job. Oh the weight of that comment when you know these eps….They both have no idea how true that’s going to be. Might seem like he’s mad when really he’s protecting her by getting her to focus. It’s his way of doing it. I also think it's a little frustration bleeding over from the whole Caleb thing. Not that he's going to put that together right now. Hell doesn't even realize how territorial and jealous he just was.

We rejoin Tim and Lucy once they arrive at the first spot. They're talking about Rosalind during this 'Hike' to find the remaining bodies. Tim asks if she’s less scary in the light of day? Lucy tells him no…but mentions how smart she must be. To have gotten away with this for so long undetected. Lucy smartly mentions there’s a play here they’re not seeing.

Tim tells her it’s just to jerk them around. Oh my love it is far more than that. Lucy is so sharp to observe this hike has to be more than just her deal. She is proven right when they find a fresher body in one of the grave sites with the old one. It’s obvious she has a partner on the outside they just don’t know who…

Lucy is looking at Caleb’s “profile” again. Watching a video of him with a puppy. Jealous/Protective Tim makes his next appearance. Could not be more obvious if he tried. Not a fan of her being enamored by this guy. He makes a snide remark saying I bet that’s not even his puppy. It’s scary how spot on he was with Caleb the entire time. It’s mainly from jealously and being protective of her, but it’s frightening how dead on his cop gut was. He turned out to right about everything with him.

Lucy naturally gives him push back and says she just wants to enjoy a cute puppy. That it’s been an awful day. Can't she just do that? Jealous Tim won't agree with her. So he is a little shit and says 'This your first decomp right? ' Watching her face go from happy to grossed out LOL Oh Tim. He knows how bad this smell is going to be for her and is enjoying it haha The way she follows after him is too funny. Melissa is also amazing at expressing so much as well.

The eerie part of this scene is it’s them being the ones to discover the DOD tattoo… There are so many forewarnings in this episode for her. For them. Literally smacking us in the face with them. That could’ve been her if things had gone wrong... Ugh my heart. They find out the newer victim was suffocated…What an awful way to die. I’m asthmatic and it gives me a pre-asthma attack just thinking about it.

A light hearted part of this scene is once again the lack of personal space. Ah personal space. They don't know her and never will. We're all ok with this notion. Nolan ends up getting Rosalind to lead them to the second site. They find a new body in it with a DOD Tattoo. The freshest one yet. They realize it’s every three months. That 12/09/19 is the the next DOD. John notes it’s 12/08 they have a day to find the next victim.

Tim and Lucy join Armstrong at the jail to search Rosalind cell once again. Trying to find some connection. A way her and this person have been communicating. Nick asks where her books are and they say they sent them back. He asks for every book she's read in the last 6 months.

They’re searching all the books and of course Lucy is the one to crack the code. I love it. Finds something in the binding. Its a coded piece of paper. She figures out the cypher fairly quickly. You know Tim loves how damn smart she is. He’s impressed. She figures out a name from the code. My girl. Bryan Coleman. Funny that doesn’t sound like Caleb Wright….

Harper and Nolan end up saving the next girl. They find out he’s been using the old abandoned zoo as his staging ground. What kills me is them saving her condemns Lucy. They stopped him from scratching that sick itch. Grey tells them all to go home and rest. Lucy spins around and tells Tim she’s just going to go home and crash.

Tim tells her that’s a mistake and gives her the advice that will haunt him in the next episode. Hell for quite awhile if I’m being honest. He will carry this moment with him for a long time. Says after a hardcore assignment she needs to blow off some steam. Find a way to decompress. If she doesn’t she’ll never get any sleep.

Lucy is super cute asking if he's really telling her to go get a drink instead? He tells her yes. Preferably a strong one even with another human being. We all know who that human being is going to be….Side note I adore the fact that he always opens the door for her. Doesn't even realize he's doing that. Just does it out of habit. Her real man standing right in front of her but it is far too early for that hehe

Literally makes me sick to watch her scene with Caleb. My skin crawls knowing where it’s headed. He took advantage of Lucy with her guard down. Her cop eyes we're retired for the night. Just trying to decompress. We go back to the station where Grey tells John and Nick they found a body at the old zoo. Bryan Coleman. Which can only mean one thing as we go back to Lucy. That Caleb is the apprentice….

She goes from giggly and relaxed to sheer terror in a matter of moments. He drugged her and Lucy is slowly realizing the situation she is now in. He also snags her phone before she can use it. Sadly she is over powered easily due the drug he gave her. Then sticks her in the trunk of his car. The ep ends there.

It’s a crazy stressful two-parter. So damn good though. I remember when this first premiered how hard it was to wait for the next episode. I’m pre emotional just thinking about analyzing the next episode. Can’t wait to do it though.

~~~~

Side Notes-Non Chenford

Wopez good scenes not many but really good. Wes clearing not handling his post traumatic stress well. Mixing his prescription with alcohol. Angela coming home asking if he was trying to kill himself. He says I don’t know… Not a great answer bud.

The whole Rosalind SL. It’s so dark but so good. Getting a deeper look into Nick and seeing some chinks in his armor. What he sacrificed to catch her. It’s very good. I enjoyed his character a lot and getting more depth with him as well.

Thank you as always to those that like/comment/reblog these reviews. It’s means the world to me. I love doing these and they take time to assemble. But they’re so worth doing to enjoy this rewatch together. I’m also enjoying the hell out of analyzing these eps and our beloved couple. I’ll see you all in 2x11 :)

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wen-kexing-apologist · 1 year

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Bengiyo's Queer Media Syllabus

For those who are not aware, I have decided to run the gauntlet of @bengiyo’s Queer Cinema Syllabus and have officially started Unit 1: Coming of Age Post Moonlight. The films in Unit 1 are Pariah (2011), Get Real (1998), Edge of Seventeen (1998), My Own Private Idaho (1991), and Mysterious Skin (2004)

Today I will be writing about

My Own Private Idaho (1991) dir. Gus Van Sant

[Available for rent on: Amazon, YouTube. Run Time- 1:44]

Summary: In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a gay hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant. (from Just Watch)

Cast: River Phoenix as Mike a homeless queer male sex worker with narcolepsy Keanu Reeves as Scott the mayor’s son, “homeless” sex worker who is friends with Mike William Richert as Bob, I don’t have any other way to describe him besides this character is Falstaff in Henry IV.

Content Warning: mentions of sexual assault, prostitution, conversations around incest. homelessness.

So the first thing before we start, if you are planning on watching this film you have to remember this is based on Henry IV by Shakespeare. Because if you forget that (like I did until about 40 minutes in) there is going to be dialogue that makes you go “no one talks like this?????” (which honestly was not a bad thing, but remembering that it was Shakespeare did stop me from going down way too deep a rabbit hole about reality and unreality so…thank you brain! Now, unfortunately, I have not read Henry IV and also unfortunately I will not read Henry IV for the sake of being better able to analyze this film.

In hindsight, Scott is a dick and the film so perfectly sets up/foreshadows how we are going to get to where we end up with Scott, but as it is happening, it feels like a massive, unexpected punch in the gut the second you see him back from Italy, in a nice suit, in a nice car, driving blindly past his old pal Mike, who is collapsed in a sleep attack on the sidewalk.

I always love when media humanizes homeless, drug user, and sex worker communities so for me watching this film, that was a huge win. Unhoused folk, drug users, and sex workers are so fucking dehumanized in my society, and frequently blamed for their own life conditions, and considering the statistics on how many homeless people in the US are queer, and particularly how many queer youth are on the streets, it is particularly important to me that film, queer film especially, allows its audience to love, root for, and mourn for homeless queer people.

Gif by @camyfilms

I like that you don't really know exactly how Mike got to where he is. But there is enough context with the flashbacks we get and his medical condition to understand any number of ways that Mike ends up unhoused. I think it is particularly notable that there are multiple moments in the film where a house or other form of stable shelter is destroyed in his mind. Where I appreciate not really know exactly how Mike became homeless, because in a way it feels like his entire life was set up so that was the only inevitable outcome. Scott, however, I have no idea how he got to where he is, homeless and doing sex work, when he is set to inherit his father’s fortune soon.

And looking back at how the entire story plays out, knowing that Scott will eventually abandon Mike to pursue a love interest and wealth, it makes a lot more sense as to why we never truly find out how he got there. Because for Scott, it doesn’t fucking matter. Because for Scott, he is playing at being homeless. This is a funny little game for him, he can give a middle finger to his father and act out, and struggle for as long as it is entertaining and fun, knowing that at any point he can return home, shape up his behavior, and have more money then he knows what to do with.

Which is why I am truly and deeply obsessed with the fact that Scott wears a suit when he is amongst the other unhoused folk he is living with. Because of how much that visually separates him. I like that it is serving as a reminder of his status and almost like a reminder to himself that he is actually separate from everyone else here. And this theme is repeated in how Scott interacts with his father too. Because, while he wears a suit when amongst the unhoused, when he is summoned before his father, he dresses with a collar, and denim jacket without a shirt on underneath. Visually he looks a lot more like the other members of the community he has been running with, and that literally only happens so that he can get a rise out of his father.

gifs by @vintageblr

And that playing at oppression aspect of Scott’s character is marked so clear by the line he says near the end: "I think I need to take a break for awhile" or whatever the exact wording is, when he meets a girl in Italy and sends Mike home. Scott has money, and while a part of me still believes that Scott cares about Mike, he doesn't love Mike. So the second that Scott has something that he loves, something that he wants, he pumps the brakes on the struggle bus and puts an end to his life of sleeping rough and engaging in sex work.

And like I said before, while I felt hurt and betrayed and pissed the fuck off when Scott drove by Mike on the street, looking back at the entire film, the signs have been clear from the beginning. Because Scott is never going to be able to give Mike what he wants, at any level, in any capacity. Scott promises that he will share the wealth with the community when he inherits the money, he has the means, motive, and opportunity to perform such an action. He has the ability by the end to give Mike the support that he needs. To help him get on his feet, but he never does it.

Even just by way of Mike being in love with Scott and Scott being straight and not being able to give Mike what he wants.

I will be thinking for way too long about the way that Scott stares at the ruckus everyone is making at Bob's funeral. Because, I don't know, I feel like there is almost a part of him that is longing to be there. That is missing it a little bit, or maybe feeling a little guilty. At least, that is how I am reading it as someone that worked with and considered myself friends with unhoused people. When I stopped working that job, I lost all connection with them, and the last time I got to see any of my friends again…was at a funeral.

When discussing my thoughts on this film with @bengiyo and @emotionallychargedtowel I was really cycling back and forth between where I landed in believing that Scott cared at all for the people he lived among for years.

Like there are shitty people who are homeless, sure, but there are also so many really wonderful people who are homeless, and there is no way that Scott, even as a rich bitch that was playing at poverty, did not forge genuine connections with people. At one point, he was sitting in a diner, comforting a woman who was upset. Do you know how many times I've seen that?

And when I started saying that I did believe that Scott cared in part for Mike, I was slammed with a visceral memory of Scott leaving Mike out in the cold, to sleep on some random guy’s lawn while he went back in to town.

gif by @thejingshi

That said, he gave a reasoning of Mike being safer sleeping in that wealthy neighborhood with no one else around, then he would have been back in town. And similarly too, Scott holds on to Mike's half of the motorbike sales fund until it is time to send him away and also...he doesn’t give Mike all the money cause EVEN THOUGH SCOTT DOESN'T NEED IT!

I don't think he fully could have not cared. If he fully didn't care, I don't think the moments of tenderness would exist.

I don't think Scott would have gone to fucking Idaho

I don't think he would have been staring off the way that he was at the funeral

But you can't even get into the thought of like, Scott has strict rules to follow now that he has the inheritance money. But like…

No he doesn't.

His Dad is dead, and he has the money, what is anyone gonna do if he doesn't act like a refined gentleman? Nothing.

God I want to punch this man.

At the very least Scott and Mike were friends.

gif by @peeta

gif by @thejingshi

And so whether or not Scott gave a flying fuck about anyone else in that community, there is someone that he cared about, that he left to rot because it was more convenient for him. And I’d like to think Scott has to face that a bit during the funeral scene. Cause based on the way that it was shot, it looks like Mike is staring straight at Scott, but when we get the shot from Scott's POV, you can only see like the barest tops of heads and chairs flying so I don't even know that Scott and Mike

And the ending of the movie? God, heartbreaking. This whole film just made me see so many echoes of people I care about, having shit luck their entire lives, ending up on the streets, getting in to sex work of some kind, casually referencing their latest rape by a client, maybe having things be good for awhile (getting housing, getting reconnected with someone they care about, getting accepted in to school) and then just having that ripped away from them. Getting their shit stolen.

And on the other side of it too like, being connected, talking with one another, taking care of each other. All the times that someone has been having a particularly bad day, and before I could even go over and talk to them and check in, someone else from the community swoops in comfort them, and make sure they were doing okay.

I loved this movie. I think everyone should watch it.

By/For/About?

The Gay Trifecta!

We know that this is an About Queers film, because Mike is queer.

By Queers: I'm not 100% certain if the director is gay, it didn't say it explicitly anywhere, but he is behind a number of keystone queer films, and I think I saw an interview about gay activism that involved him.

For Queers: This is a story about the struggles of being a queer man, among other things. But I think the center of, loving a man you know can never love you back, and being fucked over by that in the end reads very much as for a queer audience.

Favorite Moment:

Everyone going buck fucking wild at Bob's funeral. It was such a moment of unrestrained energy, and I like it all the more for what it did to Scott.

Favorite Quote:

gif by @magnusedom

"I really want to kiss you, man."

If you know, you know. If you don't, watch the movie so you too can understand how devastating that line is.

9.5/10 Film

#my own private idaho #bengiyo queer cinema syllabus #river phoenix #keanu reeves #will never stop thinking about the way the filmed the clouds in this movie

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