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nicnacsnonsense · 4 years

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Okay so this is going to be part Good Omens meta, part head canon, all ramble, but I promise I have a point. Well, technically it’s a question, but I am going somewhere with this; there’s just going to be a lot of pit stops and detours along the way.

We’re starting with Crowley. I know Aziraphale’s the soft one, but Crowley’s pretty soft for a demon. He’s not a total cuddly marshmallow like I see him portrayed as sometimes – he does seem to genuinely enjoy the “annoying people” parts of his job. Though even then he doesn’t seem to enjoy the annoyance for its own sake as much as the fact that it represents he has been successful; what he really seems to enjoy is the cleverness and artistry of it – the way he describes knocking out the telephone systems in the book is like a beautiful symphony of irritation. (Actually it’s weird to me that Hastur and Ligur’s method of chipping away at one soul at a time for years is called craftmanship while Crowley’s method is presented as a matter of efficiency. Like H&L are over here making artisanal meals with only the finest ingredients while Crowley is slinging out fast food burgers. Because to me Crowley’s method seems the one that takes more consideration and skill and is, taken for what it is, a thing of beauty, whereas H&L thing just seems like blunt-force trauma. I’m sorry you sat on this guy’s shoulder whispering in his ear for ten years in order to win his soul over? Unless he’s literally Job or Jesus Christ, I’m not impressed.) Crowley isn’t a total marshmallow, but he is soft. He’s not cruel or sadistic and he doesn’t like seeing people get genuinely hurt or killed. Now when other demons are sadistic, he doesn’t like it, but he seems to largely accept it as the way things are. When Heaven does terrible things, he seems kind of disgusted but not terribly surprised. But when it’s the humans or God doing terrible things, that’s what hits him hard. For slightly different reasons in each case, but ultimately it boils down to “I thought you were better than this,” and he cannot emotionally handle it when they prove they aren’t.

Moving on to Aziraphale (I promise we’ll come back to our soft demon boi in a minute). There’s a lot of different takes out there about how book Aziraphale differs from show Aziraphale, but the most compelling one I’ve ever seen argues that it’s not so much that Aziraphale is inherently different as it is Heaven is different in the two versions, which in turn impacts how Aziraphale behaves. In the book Heaven shows up on three occasions: when Aziraphale calls Heaven and speaks with the Metatron, when Aziraphale accidentally gets himself beamed up to Heaven (which could be considered a continuation of the same event), and at the airbase to try to restart the Apocalypse. In all of these cases either Aziraphale reached out to Heaven first or his presence was incidental to Heaven showing up. The general implication is that no one is checking in on him really; he has his own personal loyalty and sense of duty to Heaven urging him to do what they expect of him, but unless he’s really blatant about it, no one’s going to know if he breaks the rules here and there. Book Aziraphale’s life is basically one long “who you are in the dark” test, with the plot twist at the end where he flicks on the lights switch and flips everyone off while he does the thing he wasn’t supposed to because it turns out that was the right thing to do all along.

By contrast in the show Heaven is showing up all the time. Aziraphale is dragged up there multiple times for reports, archangels are constantly popping down to Earth to talk with him, and they actually proactively uncover Aziraphale’s involvement with Crowley. Granted, we can assume this is a higher than normal rate of involvement because of the fast-approaching Apocalypse, but the point remains that show Aziraphale is dealing with a lot more oversight. If he breaks the rules, there is a good chance he will be caught, and even if he just does something perfectly allowed but considered to be unbefitting an angel, he will be met with scorn and disapproval. That’s why show Aziraphale is more anxious, less likely to break any rules, and more cautious if he does so.

An extension of this difference in how Heaven behaves that I haven’t seen mentioned before, is it impacts how Aziraphale perceives Hell to be. Aziraphale doesn’t have any real firsthand experience of Hell, so he has to make inferences as far as what they’re like to work for. His main two sources of information are going to be what Heaven tells him – likely to be sparse and often inaccurate – and what Crowley tells him – honestly also likely to be sparse and often inaccurate. Obviously, Crowley knows what working for Hell is like, and there are probably some areas that he’s willing to be fairly open and straight-forward about. But when it comes to things like punishments for failure or disobedience, Crowley’s going to spend most of the time evading and downplaying with occasional bits of shocking honesty to make a point and blatant overexaggerations for dramatic effect. With limited information to go on, Aziraphale is forced to use what Heaven’s like and extrapolate from there. And since the book and show versions have two such different starting points, even if book Aziraphale concludes Hell is more overbearing than book Heaven and show Aziraphale concludes Hell is less thorough on following up than show Heaven, they are still going to come to very different conclusions as to how present and aware of what Crowley is up to Hell is. Which is relevant because not only is show Aziraphale dealing with a Heaven that is more like to catch misbehavior, he also perceives Hell as being more aware and therefore Crowley more likely to be caught and punished than book Aziraphale does.

Circling back to Crowley and his emotional upset at the cruelties of the world. The reason we had to talk about Aziraphale is because how he behaves has an impact on how Crowley copes. Now with the book we don’t have our “a love 6000 years in the making” backstory, and Crowley and Aziraphale are just generally less prominent than they are in the show, which means we have less to go on. The only real reference we get is Crowley’s reaction to the Spanish Inquisition. He gets a commendation for it without having done anything, goes to take a look, and then gets drunk for a week. This would imply that drinking is how he handles these sorts of things, but I don’t think we’re getting the full story here. I say think because this is the most head canon-y part of all this; I don’t have any real evidence other than if you assume this is true then it does explain some things I’ll get to in a minute. The book tells us that after looking in on the Inquisition Crowley “had come back and got drunk for a week.” But back to where? The implication is back to the cantinas in the nicer parts of Spain where he had been before going for his look, but I think he went back to Aziraphale (who may very well have already been in the cantinas with him anyway). Because honestly, an actual literal demon with actual literal snake eyes getting shitfaced drunk in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition, knowing full well he’ll melt into a puddle of goo and die if anyone even sprinkles any holy water on him, is pretty fucking stupid. But if that demon had an actual literal angel watching over him… Aziraphale is by nature a guardian/protector, and in the book he isn’t constantly concerned about their relationship being discovered. I think over time Crowley has learned that if he needs to fall apart or be vulnerable for a while, he can go to Aziraphale and rely on Aziraphale watching over him and supporting him until he’s ready to pull himself back together again.

Show Aziraphale does not have the same freedom as his book counterpart, and so cannot always reliably be there for Crowley in the same way. Which is not a dig on Aziraphale at all; he’s in a different situation where he has to be focused on keeping them safe from their superiors, so he simply does not have the additional emotional capacity sometimes, and that’s not his fault. Despite that, Crowley does still get the emotional support he needs from Aziraphale, it just has to function in a different way.

Our episode 3 cold open lets us watch this develop quite well. Our first two scenes (aside from the one with God asking about the sword, obviously) are Noah’s Ark and the crucifixion, where we see Crowley approach Aziraphale to essentially needle him about what’s going on. At this point Aziraphale isn’t so much support as someone he can redirect his anger toward – I assume this is how Book Omens started too, and we’ll get to the divergence in a second. Crowley is willing to drop the anger with Aziraphale much faster in the crucifixion scene, suggesting they have grown closer over the intervening 3000 years, and Crowley no longer finds as much emotional catharsis in being angry at Aziraphale, but he continues to approach Aziraphale that way out of habit.

Then we get to Rome, where Crowley has, according to the script book, come to town to tempt Caligula only to be shocked and upset when he learns how very much Caligula doesn’t need tempting. Crowley goes to a bar where Aziraphale happens to be – whether he knew Aziraphale was there or not before he arrived is irrelevant, but I am assuming he was aware of Aziraphale’s presence by the time he walked in the door. And here is where book and show diverge. Because Crowley has approached Aziraphale about things he’s been upset about in the past, but it’s one thing to needle an angel about things Heaven is responsible for; it’s quite another to walk up to your crush and just start complaining about some jerk who’s put you in a bad mood. Book Crowley, who has been dealing with a slightly more relaxed Aziraphale, says fuck it, goes and sits down across from him and says, “You would not believe the day I’ve had.” And from there we develop into the dynamic mentioned previously for Book Omens.

As mentioned, show Aziraphale is more anxious about their relationship, resulting in show Crowley falling on the other side of this choice and not approaching Aziraphale. This leaves it to Aziraphale to approach Crowley this time. Now as much as we may tease, Aziraphale’s not actually an idiot. He can tell Crowley is upset about something, and he’s picked up on the pattern where when Crowley is upset, he likes to be able rant a bit about Heaven. Obviously Aziraphale can sometimes find those conversations uncomfortable, but he’s feeling good today, so he’s happy to engage in some banter, especially if it’ll cheer his friend up. But Crowley’s the one who usually starts the conversation, so Aziraphale wracks his brain for something he can say about the nature of good and evil and ineffability and comes up with “Still a demon, then?” Shockingly, this doesn’t work. Still he keeps the conversation going and tries again with “Oh well, let me tempt you to... Oh, no, that's, that's your job, isn't it?” This still doesn’t work the way he’s expecting it to, but they do have a very nice meal and a good conversation that’s not really about Heaven and Hell at all, after which Crowley seems to be in much better spirits. Which leads him to the conclusion that it’s not the specifics that are important, just the fact of having the conversation and giving something Crowley to distract himself with.

Skipping ahead to the Globe, two quick things to point out. This is the first time we see Crowley do his little circle of Aziraphale, proving that by this point they established the dynamic where Crowley protects Aziraphale. The second is this is also the first time Aziraphale really intentionally uses his puppy dog eyes on Crowley, meaning their acts of service dynamic is established as well. Knowing these have been established helps inform the decisions Aziraphale makes in the Bastille scene.

Bastille scene. We can assume everything about this incident is something Aziraphale has staged, from actually getting arrested to his claims that he can’t rescue himself because he was reprimanded for too many frivolous miracles. I will say I don’t think that last one is a complete fabrication; I think either that it is something that has happened, but a good while ago such that he’s not worried about it anymore, or it did just happen, but Aziraphale actually had been using an unusually large amount of miracles recently – possibly as part of getting his bookshop set up – and has since dialed it back enough that he can use one or two at the Bastille, be it to free himself or just to change his clothing, without getting in trouble. However, while I do think it was staged, I don’t think the primary propose was to indulge in Aziraphale’s damsel in distress fantasies; that was just an unexpected bonus. Aziraphale’s main objective was helping Crowley.

Aziraphale knew about the French Revolution, knew Crowley was in the area, and knew Crowley was liable to find the whole situation upsetting. His response was to put on his prettiest outfit, and get himself locked up. He’s broadcasting to Crowley, don’t worry about the humans, just focus on me, don’t think about what they’re doing, just look at the silly angel all chained over here in need of rescue. Of course this isn’t completely divorced from the current situation, but in a way that’s actually better, because it takes that situation and lowers the stakes – Aziraphale isn’t going to die, worse case scenario he’ll just get discorporated – and puts Crowley back in control of the situation – he can’t stop the Revolution, even if he’s capable he’d be risking too much trouble with Hell if he tried, but he can save Aziraphale and fly under Hell’s radar while doing it. Basically, we’ve taken the “Crowley needs a distraction” conclusion Aziraphale came to back in Rome and refined it in the intervening 1750 years.

Even Aziraphale’s suspicions that Crowley is behind the whole revolution can be seen as an extension of the indirect comfort he’s offering. He knows that Crowley is going to have to tell Hell that he is behind all this stuff that’s upsetting him, so when Aziraphale accuses him of the very same, it gives Crowley an opportunity and a safe place to assert that, no, he is not responsible. And not just to say it, but to say it and have someone believe him, that it isn’t his fault and he would never do anything really terrible like this.

This gives us the final form of how Show Omens dynamic works. Instead of offering Crowley a safe haven, Aziraphale emotionally supports Crowley by offering him opportunities to be the savior.

What’s especially interesting about this is if we take these two different dynamics, where in Book Omens Aziraphale serves as Crowley’s safe haven and in Show Omens Crowley is Aziraphale’s savior, that actually explains four of the big differences between the book and show: Crowley’s reaction to being called nice, Crowley crossing the M25 with optimism vs imagination, the whole run away with me subplot, and Crowley’s post bookshop fire reaction.

A demon being called nice is a pretty risky thing for the demon in question. As Crowley points out during his and Aziraphale’s conversation in Eden, a demon can get in a lot of trouble for doing the right thing, and I can’t imagine being accused of being nice would work out much better for him. But book Crowley is used to being vulnerable like that around Aziraphale. He still snaps at Aziraphale when he says it, because Crowley is stressed out and right now is not the time for that, but it is ultimately an established part of their relationship dynamic so it really only annoys him. By contrast, in the show a lot of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship is built around avoiding saying those things for their own safety. Given that, it’s no wonder his negative reaction would be more extreme.

There’s a whole long meta out there about how both Crowley’s are optimists, but in different ways (and if someone knows where to find it, please let me know so I can link it). Book Crowley is a more passive sort of optimism; he just generally believes that eventually things will work out for him. This is consistent with the way he handles it when he’s upset about things; he just goes to hang out with Aziraphale, lets himself be upset for a while, eventually it passes, and he’s good to go again. Whereas show Crowley has a more active sort of optimism, believing things can and will work out fine, as long as he steps up to make it happen. Again, this ties into how he deals with being upset; he goes out and does something about it. Granted, he’s not usually fixing the actual problem itself, but he’s being active related to what’s upsetting him, e.g. he can’t stop WWII, but he can go save Aziraphale from some Nazi spies. So when book Crowley drives through the M25 he has his optimism that things are going to work out as sort of a default mental state in his head, and it turns out The Secret really does work for demons so he gets through. Meanwhile show Crowley is actively applying himself to believing the car is fine, and that’s what pulls him through.

This passive/active difference also explains the addition of the “we could go off together” subplot in the show. Despite being more passive, book Crowley is not complacent; when they realize Warlock is not the antichrist, he and Aziraphale make efforts to find the real one. But when their initial search runs dry and they both agree the best thing to do is to have each of their “networks of human agents” look for the boy, Crowley is willing to step back and wait. Either one of their agents will find the kid or something else will turn up; somehow it’ll all work out. Show Crowley can’t do that. He can be optimistic that things will somehow work out, but not if he’s not doing something to fix it. Except there’s nothing else he can do to solve this problem, and when he can’t solve a problem his default is to instead save Aziraphale. The world is going to go up in flames, so Alpha Centauri it is then.

And now the one everyone loves to talk about: the bookshop fire. “Aha!” you said twenty minutes ago and then patiently waited for my rambling to get back to this point. “Aha! There is a flaw in your logic; after the bookshop fire it is book Crowley that copes by getting up and saving things, whereas show Crowley gets drunk and has an emotional breakdown.” But what you didn’t realize, gentle reader, is I already solved that problem weeks ago (this meta took a lot longer to write up than I was expecting). In fact, it’s not a problem at all, but further proof of these dynamics. Because after the bookshop fire, Aziraphale is gone. Aziraphale is gone, which means Crowley’s normal coping strategies don’t work. Book Crowley can’t have a breakdown about Aziraphale being gone precisely because Aziraphale is gone; he’s lost his safe space. So instead he just has to keep pushing forward and he’ll figure out how to deal with the rest of it later. Meanwhile show Crowley can’t save Aziraphale if Aziraphale is dead, and lacking that distraction, he has a breakdown.

Now that I’ve gone on for an obscenely long time about the different dynamics of book Crowley the protected vs. show Crowley the protector, I’m going to say that the specifics of how they are different aren’t ultimately that important. At least not in comparison to the way in which they’re the same. Despite how very different Heavens (and in theory a very different Hells could have a similar sort of impact) changed the details of their relationship dynamics, in both the book and the show, Crowley leans on Aziraphale for emotional support to deal with trauma. (As a side note, I don’t want to imply that this is a one-way relationship. Aziraphale also receives emotional support from Crowley; I’m just not touching on that now because I have to draw the line somewhere.) And that emotional support is a key factor in what makes Crowley different from other demons.

Obviously, we can see how being stuck in Hell would have made Crowley a worse person – though I use the word worse lightly here, as I think it’s very likely that rather than getting meaner for being stuck in Hell, Crowley would develop a learned helplessness. But even if Crowley was on Earth, being on Earth without that emotional support would have eventually had a huge negative impact on him and his attitudes and behavior. Because seeing humans being cruel to each other hurts him, and with no way to process that hurt, it would keep building up until eventually he would have to retreat into apathy to protect himself. But where the apathy of a Hell-residing Crowley would be underpinned by a sense of hopelessness because cruelty from demons is just what he expects, the apathy of an Earth-residing Crowley would have underneath it a lot of anger and betrayal. He did expect better of them, and they let him down time and time again until he stopped seeing the good in them. This betrayal-fueled apathy is the recipe for getting a Crowley that presents as a stereotypical demon, selfish and cruel.

And now finally we reach the point. All of this, all 3767 words of it (well, most of it) was all just context building up to this question: what the fuck did Heaven and Hell do to Crowley and Aziraphale in the 1992 script version?

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #show omens #book omens #ineffable husbands #meta

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pikapeppa · 4 years

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Professor Solas/Lavellan: Tea

Chapter 9 of Inadvisable (modern professor Solas AU) is up on AO3!

In which Nare tries real hard to behave herself at her second supervisor meeting with Solas, and isn’t entiiiiirely successful. But then, neither is he.

(Reminder: Nare is Solas’s Master’s student. If the mildly dubcon dynamic is problematic for you, please feel free to skip.)

~6900 words; read on AO3 instead.

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- NARE -

A week later, one whole entire week after Nare’s first meeting with Solas, she finally found herself in his office once more for their weekly supervisor meeting.

Nare had been looking forward to this meeting since the second she’d stepped out of his small seminar classroom last week. All week long, she’d kept on coming up with possible reasons to text Solas, then discarding the reasons as being too frivolous or too obviously flirtatious. Then, inevitably, she would think about his confession that she had captivated his attention. She would pick her phone up and swipe open her messages, then toss the phone onto her bed once more with a stern self-reminder that she was only supposed to text him for ‘supervisory reasons’.

All in all, when it came to her feelings about Solas, Nare was stuck in a strange sort of limbo. On the one hand, she was thrilled by how brilliant he was, and she wanted to live up to his expectations of her artistic potential, so she really wanted to maintain the excellent supervisor-student rapport that they’d been building.

On the other hand, when she remembered the lush curl of his lips when he smiled or the sleek way he paced around his desk or the smooth cadence of his voice, all she really wanted was to fuck him.

No, not to fuck him — for him to fuck her. Her most heated fantasies all revolved around things she wanted Solas to do to her. She wanted him to trail his fingers along her bare spine and push her down on that lovely mahogany desk in his office. She wanted him to slide his palm up the back of her thigh to cradle the curve of her ass. She wanted him to wrap his fingers in her hair and to use that velvet-smooth voice to explain, in detail, what he was going to do next…

Gods save her, she wanted him. She wanted him in a frenzied, heartstopping sort of way that she’d never wanted anyone else in her life — a frenzied way that she’d not even thought was possible for her to want anyone. As the week went on, her fantasies of Solas grew more insistent and more firmly entrenched in her mind, and by the time today’s meeting had rolled around, Nare was worried that she wouldn’t be able to hide how much she was lusting after him once they were alone in his office.

Luckily, Solas had taken charge of their meeting as soon as she stepped into his office; he’d launched right into asking her what she thought of the book he’d lent her about the Tal-Vashoth artist named Tallis. To Nare’s own relief, she was actually able to form a coherent response, even though Solas looked more delicious than ever in his slim tweed blazer and his fitted slacks.

In fact, Nare had been talking almost nonstop for the past few minutes. She paused to take a sip of tea, then continued her point. “I did a little more reading about the Qun, both in the past and how it is now, and it makes Tallis’s art even more interesting. If you think about how pragmatic the qunari are supposed to be, it’s amazing how much emotion she conveys in her figures. Not just emotion, actually,” she amended. “It’s not just the emotion that’s impressive. It’s the…” She trailed off and wracked her brain for the word she was looking for.

She sighed and shot Solas an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. The word I want is just… I can’t, um…” She awkwardly rubbed her forehead.

“It’s all right,” Solas said softly. “Take your time. There is no rush to finish your thoughts.”

She smiled gratefully, then took another few seconds to try and muster the right words. “It’s the… um, the contrast, I guess, between the… the wildness of the feelings in the figures she paints, but also the abstract shapes that kind of look like they’re containing the emotion.” She gave Solas a pleading look. “Does that even make sense?”

Solas nodded. “I believe you are referring to the juxtaposition of reckless emotion and severe restraint in Tallis’s work.”

“Yes!” Nare exclaimed. “Yes, that’s — juxtaposition, that’s the word I was searching for!” She let out a little laugh. “Thank you. That’s exactly the word I wanted. The juxtaposition in her work. It’s such a hard balance, but I think her work does it really well.”

Solas smiled. “I agree wholeheartedly. I had hoped you would feel this way about Tallis’s work when I lent you that text. In fact, I have another volume by a different artist that I think you will equally appreciate.” He rose from his chair and approached the wall of bookshelves to search for a book. “Better yet, an exhibit for this artist will be opening in two weeks at the fine art museum.” He lifted a book from the shelf and offered it to her.

Nare took the book. “Thank you,” she said, then gave him an apologetic look. “But, um… I have to admit, I actually haven’t finished the book about Tallis yet.”

Solas blinked, then smiled and rubbed his chin. “Ah. Forgive me. I have a tendency to become overenthusiastic.”

“That’s okay,” Nare assured him. “I like your overenthusiasm.”

His smile widened slightly, making Nare’s heart thump. Then he changed the subject. “How far into Tallis’s book did you get?”

“I just finished the chapter that focuses on her self-portraits exploring her, um… her own sexuality.” Feeling a little nervous now, Nare tucked a strand of hair over her ear. “I actually want to go back and read it a second time.”

“Was the prose particularly dense?” Solas asked. “Qunari writing can be heavily metaphorical at times.”

“No no,” she said quickly. “Actually, I… it was my favourite chapter so far.”

Solas sat in the chair beside her. “Interesting. Why was that one your favourite?”

She swallowed hard. Did it mean anything that Solas had sat in the guest chair beside her instead of returning to his own chair behind his desk? Or was Nare just reading into it because his heightened nearness was making her pulse pick up?

She nervously licked her lips. “I think Tallis is brave,” she said. “It’s hard enough sometimes to express your sexuality to your partner. Doing it through your art for everyone to see?” She shrugged self-consciously and tapped on the lid of her tea. “That would take so much courage, I think. And for Tallis, leaving the Qun? How they treat sex like it’s a non-emotional form of healing? It must have been so weird for her, coming into non-qunari norms about sex.”

“It was likely quite a culture shock, yes,” Solas agreed. “You can see it in her earlier self-portraits; there is something particularly raw and jarring about them.”

“Yeah, there really is,” Nare said. “Raw is the right word. Raw and just... honest, I guess.” She trailed off and looked down at her cup of tea for a moment before looking at Solas once more. “The qunari are lucky in some ways, don’t you think?”

“In what ways do you mean?” he asked.

“When it comes to sex,” Nare said. “Qunari women aren’t frowned on for wanting it. Or for wanting what they want.”

His eyebrows rose slightly, and Nare’s heart thumped. This conversation would have been nerve-wracking enough with any professor, but having this conversation with Solas — with the man that she wanted so desperately?

She swallowed hard and looked down at the lid of her cup. Was she getting too personal? What she was saying about sex, the sensitive territory she was edging into now: was she really still talking about Tallis, or was she talking about herself? Was this really an appropriate conversation for her to be having with her supervisor, whether she was desperately attracted to him or not? She honestly couldn’t tell.

“There is more you wish to say about this, isn’t there?” he asked.

She looked at him. His expression was kind, and his voice was as calm as ever and not at all suggestive. But there was something about his poise, about his ever-present air of authority, that made her feel a shiver of heat nevertheless.

She took a deep breath. Be brave, she thought. Be brave like Tallis. “There’s a lot I could say about this,” she said.

Solas gestured politely. “Please, go on. I’m interested to hear your thoughts.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I wish sexuality was more normalized in fine art,” she said. “Women’s sexuality, I mean. As in, depicted by women themselves. When women artists try to show sexual matter, people just cheapen it or treat her like a… you know.” She grimaced. “They say things that aren’t so nice. They act like it’s crass or not deserving of a place in a museum. But it’s… sexuality is important,” she insisted. “It’s not crass. Women artists shouldn’t feel like they have to hide it or only show the parts that are… that men can accept. And not just artists,” she amended hastily. “Women in general. The more you hide things, the more you’ll start believing that you are just the parts that men can see. Or that the hidden parts are – that something is wrong with you for having to hide. It’s not… it’s not fair to the hidden part.” She trailed off awkwardly, then shot him a timid glance.

He was eyeing her in a soft way that made her heart flutter nervously. She offered him a tentative smile. “Am I making any sense at all?” she asked. “I… I’m not very good with words. This is why I paint.” She laughed weakly.

“There is nothing wrong with your words, Nare,” he said quietly. “In fact, I…” He rubbed his chin for a moment, then leaned back in his seat. “I have a question for you, but you are in no way obligated to answer. And… I would like it to be clear that I am asking as your supervisor, not in… another capacity.”

Her belly flipped at his reference to that ‘other capacity’. Did that mean she wasn’t alone in her heated thoughts about him?

Bolstered by his implication, she nodded. “All right,” she said.

He crossed his ankle over his knee. “I fully agree with your points about womanhood and sexuality. Other women artists have said similar things. But the way you speak of this is… unique. More personal than academic, perhaps.”

Her belly jolted with nerves. Be brave, she told herself.

She lifted her chin as confidently as she could. “That’s a comment. Did you have a question?”

A flash of a smile crossed his face — gods save her from that breathtaking smile – then his expression grew serious once more. “Have you had to hide some part of your sexual nature for fear of being judged?”

For a split second, her heart stopped. Then it burst into a galloping beat. She inhaled slowly before replying. “I think most women have done that at some point in their lives.”

“I am not asking about most women,” he said gently. “I am asking about you.”

She stared into his pale grey-blue eyes with a painfully pounding heart. This was the most personal question that any man had ever asked her. And… Creators, she wanted to answer him honestly. But the truth was more complex and more painful than Solas was probably imagining – literally painful, to Nare’s distress.

She finally dropped his gaze. “Yes, I have,” she said. “I’ve had to hide the things I want and… and other things too. Nothing traumatic or anything like that,” she said quickly, “but just, um… other difficult… things.” She trailed off, feeling stupid for being so vague, but she couldn’t bear to be more specific than this.

She couldn’t tell Solas about the pain she had during sex – the inexplicable pain that had started in her early twenties, and which she’d had with every partner ever since.

She couldn’t explain how she wanted so badly for sex to feel good, but that she’d settle for it to just be not painful. How could she explain the terrible irony of longing for something so badly and dreading it at the same time? How could she explain the overwhelming frustration of having this much need and being physically incapable of satisfying it, no matter how much she wanted to?

Besides, it wasn’t something she should be explaining to Solas. He was her supervisor, after all. There was no reason for him to know about this.

She stared down at her lap. When Solas finally spoke, his voice was very soft. “Ir abelas, Nare. I am so sorry.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled at him. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t. Not truly,” he said. “It is an unfair world that makes you feel as though you are unable to express a vital part of who you are.”

Fuck, the lump in her throat was swelling. She nodded and looked away.

They were quiet for a minute longer. Then Solas stood up. “I believe I have an idea for an assignment for you,” he said. “I will need some time to flesh out the parameters of the assignment, but it will be a longer-term project, so there is no set deadline.” He leaned against his desk and folded his arms. “In essence, I would like to encourage you to find a way to express your feelings about your own sexuality through your art.”

She made a little face. For all her big talk about women openly showing their sexuality in their art, she wasn’t sure she had the guts to do it herself.

Solas smiled faintly. “The fact that this idea makes you nervous speaks to its importance,” he said. He tilted his head. “I have no doubt that you can achieve this in time, Nare. You may feel that your words are insufficient, but artists of your caliber do not require words to get their points across.”

She let out a little laugh. “Sweet talker.”

He blinked. “Pardon?”

Oh shit, she thought. That had slipped out without her thinking. She self-consciously tucked a lock of hair over her ear. “Er, I just — I mean that you’re flattering me.”

“I assure you that my praise is entirely deserved,” he said. He lifted one eyebrow gracefully. “You may have heard that I am not known to give it easily.”

She smiled, relieved that he wasn’t holding her flirt against her. “I heard that the undergrad students call you the Dread Wolf.”

“You have heard, then,” he said wryly.

She laughed. “Don’t worry, Solas. I don’t find you dreadful.”

He huffed. “I am glad to hear it.” He stepped away from his desk and clasped his hands behind his back. “In any case, I had also hoped to discuss the article I sent you about the dry brush technique for oil painting. You mentioned that you had read it?”

“I did,” she said. “It was really helpful! I actually looked up a YouTube video on the technique after I read that article so I could try it out myself.”

His eyebrows rose. “Did you? That’s excellent. How did it come out?”

She let out a little laugh. “Oh, um… not very well. I’ll need to try again.”

“I should like to see your first attempt,” he said. “It will give me a baseline to track your progress.”

Nare ducked her head shyly. She knew he was right, but she’d always felt uncomfortable about having people see her studies when she knew they weren’t very good.

“All right,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll send you a photo of it. But I wanted to ask you – the artist who wrote that article said that the dry brush technique is inherently better than using thick impasto for conveying texture. What are your thoughts on that?”

He straightened. “Ah. I’m glad that point stood out to you. Personally, I feel that thick impasto and the dry brush technique are used for such different purposes that they shouldn’t be compared. That remark also leads me to believe the writer of that article is unskilled in the use of thick impasto. It is the sort of comment that smacks of inexperience.”

He was pacing slowly in front of his bookshelf as he spoke, and Nare shamelessly admired his slow and confident gait. “So do you think that there are no techniques in oil painting that are just better than others for certain purposes?”

“The choice of a technique is more a matter of the artist’s intention than a matter of one technique being better than another,” Solas said. “The writer’s insistence on the use of dry brush technique is a rather pigheaded attempt to hide his own deficiencies in the use of thick impasto. If the writer’s intent was to hide his own inadequacy, he fell woefully short.”

Nare beamed at him. He was so opinionated, and it made her feel oddly energized.

She placed her cup of tea on his desk and crossed her legs. “If you disagree with the writer so much, then why did you recommend that article to me?”

“Because his description of the dry brush technique is impeccable,” Solas said. He folded his arms and lifted one eyebrow. “I am more than capable of finding gems of valuable information among the midden heap of an insecure man’s rambling.”

Nare laughed, and Solas smiled faintly. “Does something amuse you?”

“Professor Dread Wolf,” she said playfully. “I can see it now.”

His eyebrows rose. Then he scoffed and resumed his pacing. “I’m not sure whether to be pleased or dismayed by that.”

“I hope you aren’t mad,” she said. “I mean it in a good way. I like hearing your opinions.”

“You don’t find my opinions to be contrary and arrogant?” he said dryly.

She shrugged. “You’re just speaking with authority. You’re coming from a place of greater knowledge. I think it’s…” It’s sexy, Nare thought, but she couldn’t say that.

“I can forgive the arrogance if it comes with greater knowledge,” she said finally.

He paused and looked at her. “Is that truly how you feel? That pride can be forgiven if it is premised on wisdom?”

Nare tilted her head thoughtfully. “Well, don’t get me wrong, being the smartest person in the room doesn’t mean that that person can act like a jerk all the time. But it does mean I’m more likely to give that person’s opinion some serious thought before writing them off as a dumb jerk. I’ll take a smart and arrogant man over a stupid and arrogant one any day.”

“One could argue that an intelligent and arrogant man is more dangerous than one who is arrogant and stupid,” Solas said.

“That’s true, for sure,” Nare said. “But I’d still rather have the intelligent man than the stupid one.”

He slowly leaned back against his desk again. “You would be toeing a dangerous line, getting involved with a man like that.”

Nare’s heart fluttered with excitement. “It would be dangerous, yes,” she said. She tilted her head coquettishly. “Good thing I have the Dread Wolf as my supervisor to scare that man away.”

Solas gazed at her intently, and Nare stared back at him, thrilled by her own boldness. Her earlier distress was all but forgotten now, entirely drowned out once more by her crazy attraction to him.

Solas finally stepped away from the desk and began slowly pacing once more. “I assure you, I would be poor protection against such danger. My bark is far worse than my bite.”

His manner was mild and innocuous, but his words instantly conjured an image in her mind: Solas gathering her hair in his fist and pulling her hair aside to bite her neck.

A rush of heat surged between her legs. She pressed her knees together to try and quell it, then offered him a small smile. “I didn’t think that wolves barked,” she said.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “It is more of a howl, really.”

Nare stared at him. His response was so silly — not just his response, actually, but the things she was saying, too. This whole conversation was so… gods, the whole thing was so silly and so obviously flirtatious. Nare genuinely hadn’t meant for their conversation to go this way, but now that it had, she was feeling positively giddy.

She grinned at him. When his face broke into a smile as well, Nare couldn’t help it: she started to laugh. A moment later, when Solas began to laugh as well, she nearly melted into a puddle on the spot.

His laugh: spirits fucking save her, he had the best laugh. Soft and velvety and gentle, with a perfect curl of warmth that made something hot and needy unfurl deep within her abdomen.

Another slightly hysterical little laugh burst from her lips. She covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed, and when Solas’s smile widened even further, she covered her heated cheeks with her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a giggle. “I’m sorry, Solas, I — I’m being silly. Honestly, I got a lot out of that article. And I’ll try the dry brush technique again later this week.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” Solas said warmly. He sidled behind his desk. “Will you continue reading Tallis’s book, then? After you finish rereading your favourite chapter, at least?”

His tiny smile was like a secret, and Nare could feel her cheeks getting hotter still. She nodded shyly. “I will, for sure. I’ll try to finish it by next week so we can discuss the rest of it.”

“That sounds like an excellent plan,” he said. “Let’s end our meeting for now, then.” He sat in his chair behind his desk.

She really didn’t want to end their meeting, but she nodded anyway. If she stayed in his office any longer, she would probably end up doing something really stupid, like asking him if she could join him in that chair and sit in his lap.

She stood up and approached the door, then paused and turned back to face him. “Solas?”

He looked up. “Yes?”

“Have you ever… um.” She broke off, worried now that the question she was going to ask would be too personal. But he had asked her a very personal question earlier in their meeting, so it was okay if she asked him something back, wasn’t it?

He asked you as a supervisor, the rational voice at the back of her mind said. But Nare’s mouth was already moving. “Do you ever feel like you have to hide a part of who you are?” she asked.

He went oddly still for a moment, then leaned back in his chair. “Why do you ask?”

“Sometimes I feel like you are,” she said. “Like there’s more to you than… than most people see.”

“What do you think most people see?” he asked.

“Someone smart,” Nare said. “Someone who’s polite, even if he’s in the middle of a heated debate. Maybe a little arrogant,” she said with a smile, “but only a little bit.”

He nodded slowly. “And what do you see?”

The most brain-meltingly attractive man I’ve ever met, she thought, but she carefully kept that thought to herself. “You have a lot of passion,” she said. “You don’t always act like it, since you are really polite most of the time. You were even polite when we… um.” She stopped herself before she could mention their flirting at the mixer last week.

She tried again. “I just… I know the Dread Wolf is just a silly nickname that the undergrads call you. But… I don’t know. I wonder.”

“What do you wonder?” he said quietly.

She thought about Solas’s slow and confident pacing around his office, like he was unconsciously surveying his territory as he spoke to her about art and philosophy. She thought about the way he was sitting in his chair right now, like he was completely comfortable and in charge of his domain.

“I feel like I can see something wolflike about you,” she said finally.

As soon as the words left her lips, Solas’s expression changed. It was a subtle change, like a sharpening of his attention, or like there was a heated sort of gravitas entering his face, and Nare could feel her pulse ratcheting higher.

For a long moment, she and Solas just gazed at each other without speaking. His eyes seemed more intense than usual, a stormier shade of grey than their usual luminous grey-blue, and something subtle about the tilt of his head was stoking the barely-restrained lust in her body from a simmer into a full-blown boil.

Her heart was drumming out an excited tattoo on the inside of her ribs. Her desire for Solas was thickening, swelling in her chest and pulsing between her legs in a way that made her feel bold and reckless and good. As she stared into his stormy grey eyes and cursed the sheer frenzied madness of her own desire, she was struck by a sudden and breathtaking notion: maybe Solas would understand.

Maybe Solas would understand the parts of herself that Nare kept hidden: her hidden desires and her hidden pain. If he was so good at grasping the seemingly-contrary juxtaposition of a Tal-Vashoth artist’s many sides, then maybe he would understand the juxtaposition of Nare’s bone-deep longing for sex, and her bone-deep fear that pain would forever deny her the kind of sex that she wanted so badly.

Maybe Solas would understand, because he was used to hiding something too. For all that they’d joked about him keeping her safe as the Dread Wolf, Nare was seriously starting to think that maybe her most sensitive secrets really would be safe with him.

And maybe… maybe he would be able to teach her how to find that deeply-desired satisfaction.

A breathtaking wash of hope and sheer mindless lust tore through her body and pulsed between her legs. Goaded by her own uncontrollable body, her mouth opened again.

“Well?” she said. “Am I right?”

He slowly wet his lips, which only served to draw her attention to his beautiful mouth. “It is possible that you have seen more than most,” he said.

She stared at him. Fuck me, she thought desperately. Please, Solas, I want you to fuck me.

He abruptly sat forward in his chair and clicked on his mouse. “Well. I think we should say goodbye for now, Nare. I will see you this afternoon.”

She blinked, totally distracted by how much she wanted him. “This aft…? Oh, seminar. Right. Um, of course.”

He smiled at her. “Are we fated to constantly forget that we will be seeing each other at the seminar?”

She let out a little laugh. “Seems like it. Maybe we should have our meetings on a different day of the week.” She tilted her head coyly. “That way we could see each other more often.”

He raised his eyebrows, and Nare waited breathlessly for him to respond. He slowly rubbed his mouth, then nodded. “That… could work. I will email you later with another suggested day to meet.”

She bit back a smile. He was acting so professional, treating her flirt like a reasonable suggestion, and this only made her feel even more excited and reckless. “Sounds good,” she said, and she reached for the doorknob. “I’ll see you later, professor.”

He shot her a chiding look. “There’s no need to call me that.”

“I know,” she said.

She watched with a growing thrill as his expression became intense again. Finally he huffed and shook his head slightly. “Until later, Nare,” he said.

His tone was wry, and Nare chuckled softly. “Bye,” she said, and she left his office.

She made a beeline for the exit of the history building, intending to go home and release some of her own tension before she had to see Solas again at his seminar. Creators, she was horny. She could actually feel the strength of her lust pulsing in the palms of her hands and at the back of her throat. As unsatisfying as it was to have this lust be unfulfilled, it was also a relief to know that she could feel this way.

She had genuinely never felt this way about anyone before. She had hoped to want someone this badly, to feel the kind of mind-numbing lust that she read about in books and saw in movies and TV, but before Solas, it had never happened.

Now, in the space of a week, she was practically obsessed. She was hopelessly infatuated with Solas, infatuated beyond logic or reason with the most forbidden man at the entire University of Orlais, and it felt so fucking good to want him this badly that she didn’t even care that it was wrong.

Nare stepped out of the history building and took a deep breath of crisp fall air. I need him, she thought. As she made her way down the steps, she mulled over her new personal goal: she needed to convince Solas to sleep with her, and soon.

She needed to convince him that they could sleep together while he was still her supervisor.

This was going to be tricky.

- SOLAS -

Solas waited until his office door closed behind Nare’s departing back, then buried his head in his hands. What was he thinking? How could he have allowed himself to sink so rapidly into such a dangerously fraught conversation with Nare?

He’d started their meeting with the best of intentions. He had purposely launched right into asking her what she thought about Tallis’s art, hoping that the ensuing discussion would keep his mind on an academic train of thought. Unfortunately for Solas, Nare’s mind was just as alluring as her beauty, and his ploy to remain impartial had ultimately failed, and in a spectacular fashion.

He’d flirted with her. Fenedhis, he… he had actively flirted with his Master’s student. It didn’t matter whether Nare had started it or if he had; he was her supervisor, so it was entirely his fault that their meeting had become derailed by such suggestive talk.

But how could he have anticipated that the topic of sexuality – of Nare’s sexuality – would arise during their meeting?

How could he have anticipated that such a discussion would make him feel so protective of her?

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Nare might have meant when it came to hiding her sexuality. She said it was nothing traumatic, which he was vastly relieved to hear, but it still left a whole range of possibilities as to what she meant.

Perhaps she was interested in both women and men. Bisexuality was nothing to bat an eye at back in Arlathan, but Solas had noticed that it was still somehow a matter of controversy here in Orlais and in other parts of Thedas, so it was possible that she was struggling with that.

Or perhaps Nare was a virgin. He could see that being awkward for her given that she was somewhere in her mid-to-late twenties, by Solas’s estimation. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed. The way she talked about hiding parts of herself had been too… wistful. Or too wise, perhaps, but in a resigned way. It seemed more likely that she had sexual experience, but that the experiences had not been good.

All the more reason to help her bloom into her sexual nature, a persuasive voice said at the back of his mind. You know you would treat her better than any younger man. You could bring her greater pleasure than any impatient and selfish lover ever could.

He scrubbed a hand over his scalp, then abruptly stood from his chair to pace around his office. He couldn’t be thinking this way. He shouldn’t be thinking about Nare’s sexuality at all. The only thing he should be thinking about when it came to Nare was her artistic growth and her intellect.

But even her artistic potential and her sharp mind turned him on. She was witty, a fast learner, thoughtful and careful in the expression of her thoughts…

He sighed and sank down onto the couch. He was already growing too fond of Nare, and not just for her potential as his student. The last thing he needed was a tantalizing hint of information about her sexual nature that made him want to shield her from any further negative experiences.

The last thing he needed was to imagine himself replacing her bad experiences with better ones. To imagine himself stripping away her coyness and her clothes, baring her to his eyes and his hands and his hungry tongue, making her arch and bend beneath him until any bad experiences she’d had were washed away by the pleasure that he could give her instead…

He shifted uncomfortably on the couch. His cock was a hard rod in his trousers, and he had only himself to blame for his own discomfort. The last time he’d masturbated was the night that he and Nare had met at the campus bar. After discovering that she was his student, he had refused to masturbate again, knowing that his lustful thoughts would go straight to her — and somehow, in some strange and twisted corner of his mind, he had the odd notion that if he didn’t pleasure himself while thinking about Nare, then his terrible infatuation with her was really not so bad.

Unfortunately, this meant that every time he did think about her — which was far more often than he cared to admit — his contrary cock became a distracting beacon in the space of seconds.

He sighed and stretched out on the couch, then glanced at his watch. He had a few hours still before his seminar class: a pocket of time during which he really should be reading through the second draft of Merrill’s article about the unique composition of ancient Elvhen glass. But if his current state of mind was anything to go by, he’d be lucky if he even managed to calm his libido enough to think clearly by the time his seminar rolled around.

He lay on the couch idly for another long moment. Then, against his better judgment, he stood up and locked his office door.

Just in case Felassan comes by, he thought. He had long given up trying to make his former protégé stop barging in whenever he felt like it.

Solas lay back down on the couch and folded one arm behind his head. Then, guiltily, he placed his other palm over the bulge in his trousers.

Just for some temporary relief, he thought. Just enough that I can think clearly and get some work done. He closed his eyes and ran his hand along the length of his cock.

A streak of pleasure pulsed through his core, and he closed his eyes. He stroked himself slowly, long soothing strokes of his palm along the length of his cock through the barrier of his trousers, and his mind inevitably drifted to thoughts of Nare.

Ah, Nare: his torturously alluring student, with that fiery red hair and her deep cerulean eyes that he could drown himself in. She was such an enigmatic play of contrasts: earnest and almost innocent when she was asking him academic questions, then sharp and incisive when she was debating with him. She was endearingly coy and shy at times, then stunningly bold as brass the next.

He released a slow exhale as he stroked himself. He truly couldn’t decide whether he was more enthralled by her boldness or by her bashfulness. When she flirted boldly with him, lifting her chin and cheekily calling him ‘professor’, he had to use every ounce of will to stop himself from responding in kind. But when she was bashful, smiling shyly and tucking her hair over her blushing ears…

Fenedhis, when she was bashful like that, she gave him a different sort of urge altogether. She made him want to pull her down onto his lap. She made him want to spread her legs and bend her body to his will, to rile her up with softly whispered words and softly teasing touches until her bashfulness was gone and she was begging him instead.

When Nare was bashful and shy, she brought him to life in a completely different way. She made him want to be the wolf that she had seen in his eyes: a hungry, dark, dominant wolf that would protect her from harm and devour her in the same breath.

He inhaled shakily and squeezed his shaft. Fenedhis, he wanted her desperately. Maybe he was just being fanciful and overeager, but he truly felt like he could sense something kindred in Nare — a distinct kind of push-and-pull inside of her that he resonated with. To show yourself one way and to know that there was more deep down, more that other people couldn’t see…

But Nare could see him. And in her confession of hiding parts of herself, Solas could see parts of himself in her. The longer he laid here thinking about her and wanting her in ways that he definitely shouldn’t, the more he wished that he could show his hidden side to her.

He’d meant it when he said she could see more than most, even though they’d technically only known each other for a week. And he knew it was wrong, but he wanted her to see him. He wanted to see her — to see those hidden things that she reluctantly kept tucked away. He wanted to be someone that Nare could show herself to, in more ways than one.

And oh, the thought of Nare showing herself to him… Nare laying arched and bare on his bed at home, parting her knees and showing him exactly how much she wanted him…

His cock pulsed in his fist, and he released himself with a soft gasp. Not here, he thought feverishly. He couldn't do this here. He couldn’t — no, not just here, but anywhere.

He rose from the couch and paced around his office. He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn't be thinking this way. She was his Master’s student, and he was responsible for anything that happened between them, and… and nothing should be happening between them. Nothing was happening. He was her supervisor, and she was his student, and aside from a night of ill-advised flirtation and a few accidental comments during their meeting today, nothing untoward had happened.

And Solas had to keep it that way.

I should ask Abelas for tips on how to stay disciplined, he thought wryly. He paced around his office for a minute longer, then finally sat at his desk and pulled up the draft of Merrill’s paper on his computer screen.

Pleased with himself for getting his mind back on track, he reached for his reading glasses — then he froze.

There was a cup of tea on the edge of his desk. Nare’s tea, which she’d clearly forgotten to take with her.

He stared at her cup for a moment. Then he slowly reached out and picked it up.

It was half-full and still slightly warm. The barista had incorrectly written her name as ‘Naray’ on the side of the cup, and on the lid where she’d been sipping, there was a faint lip-balm print of her lips, like a whisper of a kiss on the top of the cup.

He wrapped his fingers around the still-warm cup of tea. He really should throw it away; it was unnecessary clutter on his already-cluttered desk, and it wasn’t like Nare would come all the way back to his office just to fetch her tea. Besides, he detested the stuff.

He inhaled the astringent herbal scent, then smiled in a self-deprecating way. Somehow it was fitting that Nare had left her tea in his office. This forgotten cup of tea was an interruption of sorts, an item that didn’t belong in his professional space, and it was something he would usually completely avoid. And yet…

He carefully returned the cup to his desk, and for another moment, he just sat there staring at it. You are an utter fool, he told himself.

He sighed. He needed some fresh air. A brisk breath of fresh September air would help get him back into an academic frame of mind.

He stood up and lifted his coat from the rack in the corner, then pulled it on as he made his way to the door. Just before he left his office, he glanced at the cup one more time.

He really should throw it out. Leaving it here in his space would serve no good.

He tapped his fingers on the doorknob. Then he left his office and closed the door, leaving the cup of still-warm tea in the center of his desk.

#solas #professor solas #professor solas au #solavellan #inadvisable #pikapeppa writes

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stranger-who-writes-fiction · 4 years

Text

So 5x18...

...Well hot d*mn.

Man when Supergirl fires on all cylinders...HOO BOY.

Case in point: *gestures to all of 5x18*

To be clear: I liked this one.

A WHOLE LOT.

Not that I disliked 5x17, necessarily. It’s just that 5x18 was more... Entertaining? ...I dunno. I dunno how to explain it.

...Okay yes I do and that explanation is: Someone remarked on Kara’s use of language and Kara overcompensated on the ‘NOooOOooOO I’m totally 100% normal!’ AND there was a musical quote AND it was WHILE TEAMING UP WITH ALEX TO FOLLOW A LEAD.

But I’m getting ahead of myself let’s backtrack...

TO THE TOWER! WITH ALEX! NIA! KARA! AND M’GAAAAAANNNNN!!!!!!

June Foray voice: WOULD YOU LIKE TO STAY FOREVER?!?!?!

I know I’m not the first person to make that reference but it’s always fitting and, for real, recurring character status WHEN. (I mean. Obviously I would prefer series regular but that feels like a big ask considering that all future TV production is...uh. Ah. Erm....

...Up in the air. At the moment.)

And then we check in with the Luthors and Non Nocere isn’t working???

I am shocked! Shocked, I say!

And then we’ve got Obsidian doing something ill-advised which is basically the company’s MO at this point but KELLY AND WILLIAM ARE ON THE CASE REGARDLESS.

(So that’s kinda the one thing I’m sad about re: the Crisis reset; Andrea’s character development. But she’s sticking around for next season so I’m not too upset that she remains...kinda...one note for now.)

And THEN the library scene.

It was so gooooood.

Then Leviathan and okay. Alright. Okay. Huge points in this episode’s favor: Rama Khan feels like a far more significant threat. And I feel like 80% of that is the fact that they just let him wear normal clothes. Thank you, show. Thank. You.

Also the rock effects were way better in this episode because they weren’t footing the bill for a giant crossover episode this time around

I am a little confused, though, by what has and has not happened with regards to Rama Khan on Earth Prime. Did the pre-Crisis stuff...happen? The dialogue...kinda made it hard to decide one way or the other. ‘He hasn’t been seen on this Earth for 100s of years’ but then also, ‘a chilly place you know quite well.’ So...he...did go to the Fortress. And fight Kara? But...all that stuff before Crisis...???

...Not gonna bother with that right now.

POINT IS...Leviathan is finally like...invested in killing Supergirl* and menacing in a very real way which both raises the stakes and makes it personal and that’s way more interesting than ‘nebulous evil organization that must be stopped.’

*I know they kinda sorta already did the whole, ‘let’s kill the Kryptonian!’ and invaded the Fortress but I don’t know what to tell ya, it was just lackluster.

J’ONN AND M’GAAAAAANNNNN

I am firmly in camp: I don’t care if they’re never green again I love seeing them in the super suits with their human faces IT’S GREAT.

Love that Nia’s snoring interrupts the moment.

Also love the deck of Rama Khan playing cards, that must’ve been a fun project for the graphic designers.

Then we’ve got William and Kara at CatCo and it’s baked goods! A hilarious line delivery by Staz! A ridiculous fabrication involving a shy, violent cat!

...Now I want Alex to actually own a shy, violent cat!

“Cats love me, for some reason.” “Of course they do.”

Side note: Love Kara’s blazer.

And then it’s ALIEEEEEENS TO THE RESCUE!

WHAT A TEAM UP, FOLKS.

We love to see it.

The interrogation scene is good n’ tense and ramps up to a very impressive showdown in the DEO (but BEFORE the sparks really start flying we get that rad shot of Kara leaping through the window and doing the superhero landing and it’s just

Perfection.)

Also perfect? Lex playing a game of transmatter pickle with the prisoners.

Then we jump back to the DEO where things are not going well!

Like, really really bad!

But J’onn and M’gann save the day! If not the building!

RIP DEO. 2016-2020

Obituary: The DEO headquarters is survived by its elder sibling, the DEO desert base.

Look none of the favs work there anymore save for Kara and Brainy and they’re both gonna be better off working freelance for J’onn but I do expect Brainy to at least pick up some additional cash by working as a Lyft driver next season.

Me, watching the characters struggle to make it in the gig economy: I feel so seen.

The final portion of the episode is just ALL ACTING and I must say...good stuff.

Like. This cast, man. They take the plot points I��ve been ‘meh’ about all season and they turn in some stellar performances and suddenly I’m like STANDING OVATION, CAN’T WAIT TO SEE WHERE THIS GOES.

Also, reason #342 I love Jon Cryer’s Lex: that scene with Lena.

Terrifying.

Full disclosure: I went in to this episode fully prepared to be really annoyed with whatever was going to happen with Lena and I still don’t...love the trajectory of this season, being so tied up in her personal drama but.

But.

Katie McGrath’s performance...went an awful long way here. In making this...not as bad as it could have been.

Like tearfully admitting she was hurt? And that hurt was the basis of all the nonsense she pulled? Finally owning up to the fact that this was never truly about the greater good but that it was all rooted in some personal issues and OUTRIGHT STATING SHE WAS BEHAVING LIKE A VILLAIN????

I am. Extremely impressed.

EVEN MORE IMPRESSIVE THOUGH: Kara remaining distant both physically and emotionally throughout that scene! Not in like, a cold uncaring way, but in a, ‘I have emotions and I have a right to feel them and set boundaries in regards to my trusting you right now given all that has transpired’ kind of way.

GOOD. YES. GOOD.

(Lex’s outburst has that kind of same Nice Guy undertone--albeit more pronounced and rage-y--as Lena’s in the Fortress. Like, ‘I supported you and you still rejected my plot to take over the world’ and ‘I was kind to you and you still messed up my mind control’ which...I dunno I might just be digging in too deep here in order to further justify the character turn but I think Cryer’s performance regardless is a really sobering wake up call for Lena, different than Lex stuff we’ve seen before. It’s close and intense and uncomfortable in a way that really sells the motivation.)

“You’re a monster...but that doesn’t mean I have to be one too.”

Wow. Might be...the first time I’ve liked Lena all season.

...whispers: might be the first time I’ve liked her ever at all

For real: credit where it’s due, that was an excellent line read.

*insert applause here*

CUT TO ADORABLE J’ONN AND M’GANN MOMENT

D’aaaawwwwwwwwww

But, look, it’s a little undermined by the fact that they both gotta try and embrace in those bulky super suits, I’m sorry, it’s true

...Maybe it’s more endearing that way?

HEY remember how I foolishly assumed that the now-unemployed Alex would simply continue to work with J’onn in an investigative capacity and, ya know, NOT jump straight back into costumed badassery?

HA. HAHA HAHAAAA.

Those leaked set photos make sense now.

OH NO, WILLIAM!

Real glad Staz confirmed he’s returning. Otherwise I would not be able to DEAL WITH THE STRESS.

I already talked a little bit about the loft scene but some additional points! Beautiful lighting. Wonderful score. Excellent performances all around.

A truly great end to a truly great episode.

Like, it makes me retroactively sad, that we’re only getting 5x19, as opposed to 5x19 and 5x20 because I wish that the crew/writers/actors had a little more space to let all of this good work they’ve done settle and breathe.

(But also, it was good that they stopped production, from a safety standpoint, so. Can’t be too upset.)

And, regardless of how the next episode goes down (b/c I’m gonna be real, SG always does really great set-ups for their season finales and then kinda...rushes to the finish line and that can only be further exacerbated in this particular case) I’m just really impressed with this effort here.

...but also LET’S TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE SOME WILD GUESSES. Specifically, what is Alex’s vigilante name gonna be???

...

Alright I generally try to avoid addressing specific fandom complaints in these things b/c I generally try to avoid the fandom itself but of course some stuff has already leaked through all of my blocks/muting so:

‘Lena didn’t apologize!’ The words ‘I’m sorry’ were not said, sure, but 1.) season’s not over and 2.) for Lena, admitting she was wrong is huge. HUUUUUUUGE. It’s solid character growth and I really wish various subsets of fandom would recognize that it’s not fun, when fans hold on to negative stuff from characters’ past and refuse to acknowledge that the characters have changed.

‘Brainy should have seen this coming!’ This one is kind of more down to personal preference I guess but I feel like they’ve established that Brainy’s got a bit of a blindspot due to his feelings about his friends, so I don’t take this as a knock against his intelligence so much as him being stretched fairly thin because he’s playing all sides, and worried about the people he loves. YMMV, though.

All the ‘fix-it’ stuff re: the last scene, by making Kara immediately forgive Lena. Lose me with that nonsense, bleh.

#SG post #long post #supergirl spoilers #5x18 spoilers

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mom-of-today · 4 years

Text

Not My Normal

Hello friends, Welcome to this lovely Thursday afternoon, brought to you by a bad week of constantly trying to stay ahead! But also brought to you by a successful week of feeling like I did, actually, manage to be successful at both mom-ing and wife-ing. So, all-in-all, not a terrible way to be wrapping up the week. I wanted to talk to you today about something that always is on the back of my mind as a parent, but specifically as a parent to two young boys; how do we raise them to be better men? How do we talk to them about how to treat a woman, any woman, but also the rest of society? How do we encourage them not to be angry, hateful, masochistic little demons in the future who turn out to be the next Brock Turner’s of the world? There is so much information out there on how to do this, but there is also an overwhelming number of people who say that just “showing” them is enough. And here’s why I don’t think that’s all that will work: we often show our children compassion, love, and understanding, but they aren’t always capable of reciprocating that back. Not just to adults, but other children as well. They might see us making compromises, or see us making little shifts to accommodate them, but they don’t fully understand what that means without explanation. And that isn’t the child’s fault. They begin to see these things as just normal, and while that can encourage your own child to behave in these “normal” ways they have no understanding of why. Why should you be thoughtful, but not creepy, towards women? Why should we respect boundaries? Why? Isn’t that the question children are always asking? Parenting is hard work, and we don’t always have an answer to the “why’s” of the world, but there are some things we do. We do know why we should respect when a woman, or any person on the planet, says “no.” And we can explain that if someone feels uncomfortable, it might not be you specifically, but the situation. Perhaps they just don’t like strangers, and we should be respectful that people have different ideas and opinions on how to be touched/approached/spoken to without taking offense. We can explain why a woman, or man, not saying no does not mean that they want things to go further. Silence is not a yes, but a fear of saying no. We know these answers and we should be telling our young boys to respect these boundaries. But that can be a really challenging topic to just bring up. And obviously my children are young, so we have to bring these conversations down to their level. In our state they passed Erin’s Law, which if you don’t know what it is you can find more information at the link provided, but teaches about childhood sexual assault. This is a big step in understanding how to stand up for yourself and say no, and to tell someone, but also how to get children to understand the very real dangers and harm that come along with sexual abuse of any kind. It has sparked interesting dialogue in our home about what it means to say no, what it means to be touched inappropriately and how they should never do that to another person. We have always tried to engrain a sense of right and wrong in our children, while also trying to teach them that not everyone holds the same things to be right or wrong. It can get kind of complicated when you’re trying to express how just because this is our values and understanding, doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way, when we’re discussing topics like sexual abuse. And I think that’s a big part of the reason these conversations don't happen; it’s hard, people don’t always seem to agree that women, and men, shouldn’t have to say a hard no in order to avoid getting sexually assaulted in any capacity, and that if you don’t say no, then you definitely did want it to happen and you’re only claiming otherwise after the fact. Children see things as very black and white, there isn’t much grey in their understanding of situations, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have these conversations with them. We hear it in the news, we see it represented in media, and even though my children are not exposed much to these things (because we don’t want to ruin their childhood), they still hear about them from conversations between their father and I. While we try not to have these talks while they are awake, sometimes something is just eating at us and we have to get it off our chests. All I can hope is that we are raising young boys that understand the world is full of black and white situations, that they never do anything without getting permission fully to do so, that they are respectful and kind. Not all of the time, I’m not even respectful and kind all of the time, but more often than not. Raising boys is challenging, and raising boys who don’t adopt the patriarchal ideals that our country has about women and men’s places in the world is even harder. Breaking the cycle, and the system is challenging work, and teaching our children that girls can be just as strong, just as powerful as men is something that I think more of us need to be doing. Young boys do not have to grow up to be Brock Turner, but if we don’t stop more young boys from growing up with that dialogue that they can be, then it will never end. We must show all our children that there is no right or wrong way to be a boy or girl, that there is only one right way to treat another human being, and that love is love is love no matter what. I know that at the end of the day, we all want our children to be loved and happy, but we also don’t want them to end up in jail, prison, or with their name smeared all over the media as the guy who drags drunk girls behind dumpsters and “only” uses their fingers. By putting our minds to being better, we can raise more sensitive boys. And there are SO MANY good children’s books, and young adult books, geared towards showing our children just how powerful words like no can be. Showing them how strong a girl can be. Showing them how gentle a boy can be. That no one is determined by their gender to be any such way, and I am here for it. So if you have a good book recommend, please let me know because we are always on the hunt for books that show a well-rounded child, not just gender-norms. And if you’re looking for good recommendations, I can let you in on a few. Let’s do better for our children, for the future, for humanity. Our boys deserve to be more than tough guys. And our girls deserve to be more than caregivers.

#parenting blog #mom blog #momlife #raising children #raising boys #gender norms #change the mindset #change the system #raising kind children #support #books #gender fluid books #not my normal

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theorynexus · 5 years

Text

This would seem to bring us to Post Number 60, the 62nd post of this series, if you count the decimalized ones.

LAST TIME ON MEAT EPILOGUE It would seem we are returning to John and Terezi, this time--- wooo!~ Apparently, he looks pretty bad. This is unfortunate. On the other hand: YES, MEAT EPILOGUE CHAPTER/SECTION 6!!!

Hey, don’t try to shame John for being the sub in this situation. It’s not like he has experience with that kind of thing (not that it’s something generally to be ashamed of: I’m just saying that it is something he seems to be somewhat embarrassed about, and his inexperience meant that it wasn’t exactly by choice on his part--- which is not to suggest that Terezi molested him in any way). Aaaannnd Trolls (especially highbloods) are supposed to be particularly vicious in nature, generally, right? It makes a whole lot of sense that that would extend to the bedroom, as well.

... But yeah, that doesn’t help with his health. He was already doing pretty badly, just after the surgery. He didn’t really need that sort of mess tacked on afterward. Oh, and... why “mysteriously” sticky, you derp? XD

And I am glad you were kidding. (That slapping was very interesting to hear. Hmmm.) Yeah, him being confused and uncertain about it also feels just about right~ ~~~ On a random note, I am reading this just after going through the memo where Karkat, John, and Dave were talking about romance/the propagation of the species, and KK insisted that John and Dave stay away from troll women. That makes this all wonderfully hilarious, in retrospect.

Huh. I’ve never seen “cuckold” used in that sort of context before. Indeed, this is quite the question, though. Could John Egbert handle a blackrom? A caligionous one, at that? A very hard question, that is. I’m not sure he’s emotionally capable of giving himself into the kinds of hate and playful ribbing that would be constantly involved in that kind of relationship, if healthy. I suspect it might have been just a particularly violent flushed thing, though. We’ll see.

Pffft. Slithers. That said: Huh. I was not expecting that turn. Let’s see where this goes~

Oh my gosh, Dirk, would you stop being such a downer? XD I think this is indeed very, very cute~ Soul-shattering is a weird sort of term to use there, for a normal person. Seems right for Dirk, though. He understands the nuances of how shattering can be more or less than a whole break.

That is practically the definition of a subjective judgment. I know you’re being ironic and all, but come on, man, that’s just base as heck. But yeah, I think he might have it bad, indeed.

The question here is, “Does he mean to suggest that Andrew Hussie is God to him, or does he mistakenly [in the context of Homestuck, which has given no distinct evidence for it] believe that there was a God that he actually usurped?” “replaced” is a very interesting and useful word, here, given the working interpretation that I have is indeed that he is interpreting AH as God and likely believes him to have abandoned Homestuck, thus removed himself from his directorial capacity over its narrative, until he managed to take over.

WHY ARE NEITHER OF YOU THINKING OF RETCON-PORTING IN TO RESCUE HER FROM HER DEMISE BEFORE IT HAPPENS?!?!?!? But yeah, you really should get home and recover first, if it is possible.

Whoops. Not a good sign. Noooot a good sign.

The Power of Three is a very strong thing.

Here we gooooooo!!!~ The first time (I think) that I’ve continued a post beyond one page!!!

No. Also, probably Jake English. He has strange effects on people.

Wow, someone’s a bit miffed. That said: Hooray, acknowledgement by the narrative! :’D

I do not appreciate your repeated suggestions that Jake is dumb! That said: No. No, I do not want to engage in wanton promiscuity with such a man. I am, to put it quite simply, not interested in meaningless sexual encounters with people I am not deeply connected with. Even if I had such a bond with Jake English, I would not be inclined to engage in such activities. Quite frankly, I am not exactly partial to the type of equipment he sports. As for the political side of things... well, that’s complicated. Yeah, people can indeed become far too energized by the attractiveness of candidates and those associated with them, rather than their substance. Maybe that’s the case, here. I’d like to think that the actual results of the election will in fact prove people wrong. Maybe there will be exit polls that we can see excerpts of to judge things for certain. I don’t know~

FINALLY, SOMEONE FRICKING ADMIRES THE SUFFERER!!!

Eh? I mean, I guess even Dave and Karkat were acknowledging the possibility of a misstep. We’ll see what happens.

Heee’s probably gonna try to sabotage this, isn’t he? Also, I wish I were more familiar with human muscle anatomy.

“The Kibosh” is a good phrase to use. That said: ***snerk*** It’s like Karkat has wedding day jitters. XD

Man, it is annoying how spiteful you are toward him, Dirk. Can you give him a break for just a second? I mean, you probably caused the sweating to begin with.

Wow. Such dudebroism, which I just suddenly realized/-membered Dirk was supposed to slightly embody, somewhat. (I blame Gamebro Magazine, and the sharp contrast between the diction there and Dirk’s writing style.) That is a funny description, though, the brain-tonguing. Also, gosh, Jake is nervous.

Oh, hey, I think Dave’s going to finally get a feel for the Narrative, and maybe end up confronting Dirk. That will be incredibly interesting.

Wow, this is getting to him. It’s like he’s made of sugar, and someone’s just begun to drizzle water on him. Or maybe made of witch.

***lip curls up in a snarl*** Dave better make this quick. I am somehow edging on more angry at this Unreliable Narrator than I was before Alt!Calliope took over...!

Well, that’s, umm... interesting. Particularly, the cultivated Obfuscating Stupidity bit. But moreso the fact that Dirk will acknowledge he’s smarter than he seems.

Yes... I think I most definitely am more furious than ever at this piece of garbage, now. After the sweet taste of freedom that Jake was finally able to feel, and the burst of confidence he’d found in it, you pour all of this blithering waste on him? Jane was trying to use him! I’m sure she hasn’t loved him for a long time, and even then, I Jake never toyed with her heart intentionally, I’m sure! Grrrrr...!

Honestly, though, he brings up a complicated and intriguing question. Jake has definitely been used and abused throughout his history, and at least part of his recent activity to exploit his Hope-y Assets must have been Dirk’s doing, but how much of his sexually promiscuous revelry has actually been something that he would not and did not choose, say, as a result of his drinking problem, rather than him reveling in his identity as a

WORLD RENOWNED EXPLORER-NATURALIST-TREASURE HUNTER-ARCHEOLOGIST-SCIENTIST-ADVENTURER-BIG GAME HUNTER-BILLIONAIRE EXTRAORDINAIRE

just as your pre-Scratch self was? Regardless of the level of culpability he actually has in the matters of his life, he is nowhere near deserving of this kind of shaming, and Dirk should be ashamed of himself for this kind of disgusting behavior which he is almost certainly engaging in specifically to throw Jake off.

Oh, also, victim blaming is BS, and the answer is an unequivocal, “You, you insincere, megalomaniacal, self-justifying dirtbag.”

***is so fricking ANGRY that it is taking a great deal of willpower not to release a roar of primal fury and break my hand on my computer screen*** THIS IS NOT HOW HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WORK!!! THAT IS NOT HOW SOMEONE WHO IS ACTUALLY WILLING TO SUBMIT TO YOU LIKE THAT WILL BEHAVE, YOU FFF--- ***RRRRRGH!!!***

YOU HAD BETTER NOT FRICKING LISTEN TO THIS GARBAGE, JAKE!!! RESIST HIS INFLUENCE, AND--- Huh. The thought just occurred to me that both Dave and Jake could be interpreted as stand-ins for Simon, if Dirk were Kamina (despite how different Kamina’s personality is from Dirk’s), because Simon really seems like he could be interpreted as a Page of Hope too, for some reason (but curse my ADHD! XwX) ---AND DEFEAT HIM WITH YOUR HOPE BUBBLE!!!

... At least he apologized. For what that is worth. This is going to seem so obvious to Dave, though. Obviously, he isn’t going to kill his Bro, but... well, let’s see how things turn out. Hmm. Also, this is hilarious insofar as it derailed the press conference and probably took away much of the steam that could have been generated for the Karkat/Vantas ticket by Jake’s endorsement, but it doesn’t exactly do all that much for Jane Crocker’s side, either. It was a very sickening and weird spectacle, but I am not sure how it will actually play out in their favor? Seems like it might cause Jane’s side trouble, and might cause tensions between them.

I still can never consistently remember what “smh” means. But yes, “HICCUP???” is right. STOP HIM, DAVE!!!

TACKLE HIM AWAY INTO THE FUTURE!!!

Realistically, he should have no problem with speed at all. Time power shown a la cheating with Jade in games should let him get there instantly, and even his flash step that he has shown since before entering the Game should allow him to get there on time. Man, Dirk is a prick about manipulating things. Especially since we are going to see things derailed and shift to another setting, right when Jake is supposedly going to make the biggest contribution he’ll ever make. WHICH DOESN’T EVEN FRICKING MAKE SENSE!!!

#Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Liveblog #Rage #Dirk Strider #Evil #Piece of Garbage

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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 5 years

Text

Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia wants you to “lay down on your bed, close your eyes and come on a journey with us”

For two decades now, Lacuna Coil have been one of the most consistent voices in heavy metal. Since their debut album ‘In A Reverie’ in 1999, they’ve averaged a new record every two or three years; always ambitious, always as gothic as Hallowe’en in a bat roost, always abrasive… and at the heart of it, always featuring the gargantuan lungs of singer Cristina Scabbia.

Surprisingly for a band so far into their career, new record, ‘Black Anima’, their ninth, contains the best songs the Italian band have ever committed to tape. It’s a deeply personal work, with recent events in Cristina’s life inspiring much of its content. “This isn’t just a heavy record in terms of it’s sound,” says Andrea Ferro, who shares vocals in the band with Cristina. “The words are heavy, the tone of the record is heavy, it’s a very emotional record. I think this and our last record are the most personal records Cristina has made…”

NME thought it time we asked Cristina about the making of ‘Black Anima’, a record that explores sadness and pain in unflinching detail – but also that revitalises the veteran stars.

Cristina, you’re recently described your new album as ‘the heaviest and darkest’ album you’ve ever made. Metal bands always say this. Do you really mean it or is it just something to say?

“We really mean it. I’m even more convinced of it the more I listen to what we made. I think our last record [2016’s] ‘Delirium’ was heading in that direction and ‘Black Anima’ is a natural progression from that record…”

You’ve been doing this now since 1994. Normally bands get more mellow the longer they go on…

“Well, I certainly don’t feel like that as a person. The older I get the more curious I get. I feel like going from ‘Delirium’ to ‘Black Anima’ taught me so much about myself. I lost both my parents in a very short period of time and they literally were the world to me. We’d talk every day. Multiple times a day. It was so shocking to me to lose them…”

I’m sorry that happened to you Cristina…

“It happens. They lived a long happy life and I was lucky to have them for so long. But I have realised that I am much stronger than I thought I was. For years before I was trying to prepare myself for it happening. I was trying to visualise how I’d cope. I used to tell myself what it would be like. I thought I’d lock myself indoors, shut out my friends and be completely depressed – and then I learned that you do just go on. You have to carry the torch. I feel bulletproof now. I’ve lost the most important thing in the world to me, and I’m still here.”

In all the time you’ve been doing this, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen? Being in a band now is so different to how it would have been starting out in 1994…

“Everything is so much more complicated. Social media has made everything so fucked up. Everyone wants to look beautiful and perfect and smiley and rich and that’s just a distorted version of anyone’s reality. I think people dug deeper before these times. Now everything is so transient. A band release a new single and in another two days another band releases a new single and the previous song is forgotten. I’m sick of hearing about views and numbers and streams and… shit. I think there’s poetry behind the creation of music and songs – and there’s nothing poetic about social media.”

Lacuna Coil come from Milan, Italy – not a country famed for its export of heavy metal…

“Well it was just so different back then. We used to send cassettes with our songs on to record labels. No email, no smartphones… I still can’t believe how lucky we were to be noticed – this little band from Italy – by our label, Century Media, who we’re with even now. We were the first band they signed outside of their circle in France. We were so surprised to get a call from them. Metal is, even now, a real underground genre in Italy. There’s a few more bands now – we’re good friends with the band Fleshgod Apocalypse – but the scene is still very underdeveloped. There’s not many opportunities for bands to break out. The radios don’t play metal, the clubs are weird sizes – loads of 500/600 capacity venues in Milan just closed down, so venues that are left are either too small or arenas, so it’s hard for touring bands to find anywhere to play.”

This is a question that separates the progressives from the old farts. Were things better then?

“Ummmmmmmmm… Yes and no. I think things were more exciting back then, because there was just less of everything. Things that have largely been eradicated now, like waiting for the release of a record, have been lost – and these were great things! I miss queueing up outside record stores! I miss patience! Everyone wants everything immediately now, and I don’t think that’s always good for you. I think there was probably more respect for music as art too…”

Would you like me to warm your slippers by the fire, Cristina?

“Yes, well, the good thing about the present times is that bands can access a bigger audience easier. I would have loved Lacuna Coil to have had access to something like YouTube in the beginning. The idea you can form a band, record a song, upload it and someone in Australia can be listening to that song the same day is still mind-blowing to me. There’s just more chances. More opportunities to showcase. This is a great thing – I just wish it all wasn’t such a clusterfuck! I think the idea of bands having 25-year careers now is quite unlikely.”

What it sounds like to these ears, Cristina, is you’re looking for music to have more permanence than it does right now…

“I think there’s something in that, though I’m just frustrated with how much music has to compete with right now, really. There’s so much noise competing with people for their attention. Why is everyone trying to go viral by kicking a bottle top off a water bottle?”

Can you kick a bottle top off a water bottle Cristina?

“No I cannot. I haven’t tried. But I get it. People want to be entertained. Little fixes of entertainment. That’s what we’re competing with. To be something more.”

How do you do that, though?

“Well we’re trying to do things in a quite old-fashioned way. We’re trying to write records, not songs. On the new record there’s an intro and an outro, and you should try to enjoy the record in its entirety. We’re trying to get an hour from people to lay down on their bed, close their eyes and come on a journey with us. That’s the goal. We like to try to add a visual element to our records too. This time we’ve made tarot cards with the record, which I think suits it because it’s a very – how do you say? – esoteric record, in a spiritual way. There’s a card for each song, designed by the artist Micah Ulrich. I don’t really believe that tarot can tell the future, but I do think they’re a good visual to show where you’re at in your life.”

“There’s a book we read that we found inspiring – it was the spark that led to ‘Black Anima’ really. It’s called The Physics Of Angels [Full title: Exploring The Realm Where Science And Physics Meet, by Rupert Sheldrake] which is a conversation between a theologist and a scientist. It got us thinking about why people need to believe in a protecting presence – where does that come from? It inspired a lot of the album’s artwork and theme, and even a few of the songs.”

Which side of the fence do you fall on Cristina? Are you team science or team theology?

“Science. 100%. Actually, let’s call it 80%. I still understand the spiritual part and I do hope there is something in us that lasts. I want to believe my loved ones are still around me in the form of energy, but I don’t have any proof. That stops me from blindly believing. Obviously Italy is a very religious country. We have the Pope. But while I grew up going to church – my parents were believers – I never did believe. I used to just be confused why I had to go to church every week. I didn’t understand why people didn’t behave like they said they did in church. I always thought it was more important to be a good human being, to be a respectful human being, without any fear of God attached to it.”

Before we part ways, I just wanted to say that my assessment of ‘Black Anima’ after living with it for a while, is this is absolutely a record made by a woman who is living with an unbelievable amount of pain…

“In parts, absolutely. There is a realisation throughout this record that it is sometimes okay to not be okay. I don’t think darkness is wholly negative. We learn who we are in darkness. Sadness is a huge part of life. It’s okay not to be happy. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m always trying to look for the light in the darkness, but it’s okay to live within the darkness for a bit too. I think when you embrace all the shades of life you can live a happier life than if you deny any of it.”

On a scale of one to ten – ten being very happy, one being very sad – where do you think Cristina Scabbia ranks right now?

“I think I’m on an eight. I’ve been down, but I’m here.”

#Cristina Scabbia #Lacuna Coil #2019 interviews

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arbitrarilymine · 5 years

Text

Tuesday, 04.06.2019, 22:24

Liking something can be such a huge motivation. And such a big motivating factor to just learn and do things. Like -

Because I like dolls, I:

Figured out, at the age of 15, how to buy things online without a bank account or credit or debit card. (The answer is, buy through group orders, or someone else doing the order, and request to pay in cash.) But also, when I did get a bank account (and still no card), I figured out how to get paypal (properly, not the fake your age method), and how to buy things and get them shipped to me without my parents knowing (send it to a friend)

Figured out how to do faceups with online forum tutorials. Back then, photo and text explanations were the norm, video tutorials weren’t really a thing. But anyway, a totally new skill picked up. It’s helpful to have drawn alot before this, but still, pastel and painting were new grounds for me.

Figured out what a respirator is, why it matters, and how to use it properly

Figured out a way to manage my expenses (done on excel) even though back then it was just doll related

Figured out how to sew because I didn’t have the money to buy them clothes. Figured out how to make patterns even though I’m still not really sure how to do it. Also learnt how to use the sewing machine from my mum though I’m not that good at it.

Figured out how to sand and mod a doll. Sanding from rough to smooth grit, what to use, how to sand with water so I don’t get so much dust

Figured out how to remove faceups using isopropyl alcohol and acetone, and where to find such stuff in Singapore

Learnt how to take photos, decided to learn more using a DSLR

Figured out how to use photoshop to edit photos and the effects in it way before I did started doing Architecture

Started making videos on youtube because I wanted more doll videos

Figured out how to cut wigs, furwigs and fibre wigs alike, to make the hairstyles I wanted my OCs to have

Figured out how to make costume jewelry for dolls, with simple tools bought off the shelf

Because I like Kpop (Infinite, Monsta X, Block B, Exo...), I:

Figured out how to make gifs in one day using online tutorials (already had photoshop skills then, which helped)

Started writing fanfic and now I have 4 years of fanfic written (a total 82 works, 453491 words published online, and there’s more in my drafts)

Through fanfic, learnt how to make stories that are appealing, did alot of research on tropes, different genres of story, different ways of story telling (kishotenketsu aka plot without conflict, which is different from the usual western way of plot with a distinct conflict etc). I figured out that I like slice of life alot for it’s mundane-ness, but also vampire fics alot. And that any sort of relationship with imbalances in power dynamics is not my jam. What I like and what I like to read have similarities but don’t overlap exactly. I also learn what polyamorous relationships are and generally a lot of lgbtq+ relationship dynamics and things that I don’t really get in traditional media

Made a ficfest with two online (Singaporean) fans for Infinite to encourage people to write more fics. Sure, we weren’t very successful but we tried really hard and we did this for almost a year, got a few authors to write a few stories, and we ourselves made over 50 moodboards for inspiration

Started looking at exercise as something positive, like, if the people I like enjoy exercising so much, and talk about its benefits, maybe there’s something in it for me. The biggest inspiration was Wonho who went from scrawny kid to buff dude but like, still remained really kind-hearted and soft and just, this whole combination wasn’t something I really learned to value from the way I was brought up, but it was an attitude I really admire regardless. And I learnt that I have the capacity to be moved by things like this, and to also adjust the biases or inherent assumptions I have

Did alot of research on BDSM and kinks and a lot of non-traditional things that I think I was always interested to know about and felt okay about actually reading up and knowing and writing and reading and discussing such things in a community of writers who did similar stuff. And realised there’s so much more in the dynamics behind these kinks, why people have them, how people can engage in them safely, what are safe practices and good practices, and just, having that knowledge also brings with it a better awareness of how similar power dynamics affect normal (unkinky) relationships

In a similar train of thought, to reserve judgement when I see people write or know or whatever certain things, because you can know something, write it, but not necessarily be agreeble to it (that’s why warning tags agree. It conveys self-awareness without telling the writer, no, you can’t write about this touchy taboo topic)

Learnt how to think horizontally when writing fics

Learnt how to get a beta to read my fics, or even why test readers (and cheerleaders) are important in a project like writing a fic. It’s my name on that fic but it’s with the help of alot of people sometimes, and that’s also why community matters

Thought about fandom, private spaces in online spheres and also constructive critique and non-constructive criticism and feedback on creative work

Read up on copyright laws, both for image use for moodboards, fanart and fanfic rights and ownership and whether one can make money off of it

Because I liked piercings, I:

Did research on how to get them safely, so so much research. From videos, from articles. Trying to figure out what’s credible, what’s not

Got piercings, also realised how biased I can be when someone has piercings. It’s a positive bias and completely groundless, like I see someone with piercings, it’s like +2 impression points or something, like I don’t know why. But it’s definitely something I should be aware of because of how seemingly groundless it is

Because I like unnaturally coloured hair, I:

Learnt how to bleach my hair with youtube tutorials and articles and learnt the dangers of doing so before I did it

Learnt how to dye my hair myself, how to transition between shades of cool and warm colours

Experimented and figured out the rest by actually dyeing my hair, enlisting the help of dorm mates

Learnt that purple is a colour that never shows up on my hair, maybe unless I bleach my hair to almost white

Learnt that I am/behave like a slightly different person with a different hair colour, and that such things affect not just my mood but how I perceive myself. And unnatural hair colours make me feel fun, but more importantly, that I can have them means I have time for myself (to dye my hair and to maintain it), and that kind of mindset is something I miss right now with my natural hair colour

Learnt that I am more open to change and okay with people talking about my hair than I thought, and that it’s fun to keep changing, but also maybe necessary for my psyche, to avoid feeling stagnant and boring

Because I like Peppertones, I:

Set up a tumblr and a blog for them in a day (helped that I’ve had a blogspot and tumblr account for ages before for other things)

Figured out a way to translate Korean songs to English even though my Korean is really really really basic. Like I can read Hangul, I can understand some words, but I can’t really write properly sentences by myself. But despite this, I wanted to know what their song lyrics are so much that I figured that I can use my ability to check a dictionary, my ability to read Chinese (so many things have Chinese translations compared to English), my cross referencing skills, and my Sec 2 literature inference skills to translate their songs despite my language incompetency. And so far I’ve modified 2.5 songs (i.e. added onto existing English translations to make it more accurate) and properly translated 1.5 songs with Chinese lyrics for reference. And there’s more songs in my drafts.

Figured out how to navigate Naver with mostly ctrl-c and ctrl-v of keywords

Compiled playlists of their live performances by individual songs, and created masterlists of their appearances and performances

Looked into Search Engine Optimisation to see how my peppertones blog can be more searchable for people like me who wanted translations of their songs, realising that blogspot is way more indexable than tumblr and finally understanding after so many years why my blogspot doll blog would show up on google image searches while my tumblr never really did

What I’m saying is, like things. Love things. Let your heart do what it wants. And then let these serve as your spark, your driver, and your direction (if for a little while). Let them inspire you, let them bring you to action, and let them remind you a little of why life is worth living. So much of this is not necessarily apparent at first glance because a lot of times, what we like may seem so trivial and trite and pointless, but the energy it offers can be so much more. I’ve learnt and picked up so many things along the way because I liked something so much that I HAD to learn something to do what I wanted to, and I cobbled my way to learning it with whatever available skills I have, and to research the heck out of whatever I didn’t know. And that is such a valuable lesson.

I got a bit caught up in the details while listing some of the things above, but I just wanted to write down what I could before I forget. Obviously if we want to assess, some of these skills are probably more valuable than others. But the point is, all these are things and skills and abilities and learning experiences that can be picked up, and built upon, and they don’t exist in isolation. And maybe the tiny pieces don’t make particularly good sense at this moment, nor do they seem particularly useful, but like leaves falling, over time they’ll make a pile, and if you like something enough, that’s going to be a big pile of leaves, and it’s up to you what you want to do with that.

Me? I’m going to make a bed to lie on with that pile of leaves with my mediocre sewing skills and listen to all the songs I like.

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comfort--cafe · 7 years

Text

Self esteem and love issues:(

Hey, I don’t know how this works but today I feel like I can’t trust or talk to anyone who surrounds me:( The thing is that there’s a boy, he’s kind of a fuckboy, but not exactly. He gets along really REALLY well with girls, if you know what I mean, he’s always surrounded by them. He’s also so extrovert and confident, and then, there’s me, I used to be really really quiet until I started talking to him, we became close, and he used to talk about how in love he was with this girl or the other… I didn’t really care, I have boyfriend, but unfortunately he is also like this boy🤦🏻‍♀️😕, plus it seems I suck as girlfriend cause our relationship is basically death. For some reason I always end up with this kind of… assholes? Idk. I know my self esteem isn’t the best, and I am starting to think that this boys know it, and they always use me. But going back to this guy, well, our class started to bother us about being in love and that stuff a month ago, and then people started asking us for real if we were a couple and it became weird. Then I started to feel something for him (I never told anyone) but it was pretty obvious for me that he didn’t, and wouldn’t settle down, but then last weekend he told me he felt something for me, that he wanted something but he knows I have boyfriend, and he believes I feel nothing for him. To put you in context, I behave like a coldhearted person, with dry humour, etc. But at the same time, I look like a little girl, naive, sweet, etc. And because of that, everyone thinks I need protection. He told me that if I give him a chance, by the end of January I will be in love with him, and then, we will move to the next thing, and you know, until we date. He told me my relationship with my boyfriend wasn’t healthy or even a relationship. I told him I will give him a chance, but now I’m scared because I doubt he wants to settle down, and I’ve been through this a few times. But the other day a friend told me that she heard that some of his girl friends (who ship us btw) started to argue with him and told him that if he wanted something with me he needed to change, and he told them that he really wanted something real with me, he wanted to settle down. But they always say that when they are in love, aren’t they? And today I saw him talking to this girl, and I don’t know what exactly they had in the past but they had something. Of course I didn’t complain or ask him for explanations bc we aren’t anything now, and I don’t have a right to ask him I guess, but his best friend did, he argued with him, and then he said that this (me and him) doesn’t mean he can’t have a social life. So now I’m confused, and I don’t know if I should give him a chance. I low-key feel he is using me.

________________________________________________________________

Due to tumblr terrible system, I’ll have to answer this question through this formation, I apologies if this was of any inconvenience to you.

Salutations!

Since this will be a relatively large post, I’ll split this answer into 3 sections. The first section will provide a brief answer to your question, the second section will go into an explanation of the reason why I provided my first opinion as well as directly reference your ask, and lastly the third section will sum up everything mentioned previously. Each section will be broken with a provided line to make things easier to read. Please consider that this opinion is based on an external perspective, however, it’s something you should consider when making your final decision. I hope that this answer will help you.

______________________________________________________________

Beginning with the first section…

Just by reading your explanation of this boy (the fuckboy), my answer is no. Please don’t give him a chance to win you over, and please don’t consider dating him. He has repetitively shown personality traits that are considerably dangerous and manipulative. What we both want is for you to be in a healthy and stable relationship, and by judging based off the information you have provided, he has shown signs of being inexperienced and unreliable. Which, in-turn will affect your relationship with him. This doesn’t mean he is a bad person, but it does mean that he isn’t ready for a committed relationship. Perhaps he isn’t looking for a committed relationship, which is fine, but you should still consider how this type of relationship with him may affect your mental-well being.

Remember, a relationship requires two people working together. You need to have as much confidence in yourself, as equal confidence in him. If you two both don’t pull equal weights, then the relationship becomes unstable and conflicting.

______________________________________________________________

Second Section...

Based by your ask, it seems that you’re extremely unsure of how you should interact with this boy. Confused, doubtful, and nervous these emotions are normally a good indication of how you should treat this situation. What I find helps me is listing all of the pros and cons of a situation, considering both the logical response and your emotive response. This helps de-clutter everything and provide a physical and visual aid when deciding your actions.

Returning back to your ask, I’ll be taking direct references from your ask and explain why these descriptions are a cause of concern.

The thing is that there’s a boy, he’s kind of a fuckboy, but not exactly…

People’s behavior can range from bad, neutral, and good. However, when considering relationships, it’s always better to have a person that leans towards the good side. In direct terms, he either acts like a fuckboy or doesn’t. He might not act like a fuckboy all the time (which is most likely the case), however if he can act like a fuckboy it does mean he has the potential to be a fuckboy and the capacity to do it again. So, I would suggest monitoring his behavior, be objective when responding to his actions. The first impression of his actions are the most important as they are what you would be dealing with if you do decide to date or get into a relationship with him.

Plus, it seems I suck as girlfriend cause our relationship is basically death...

Have you considered the idea that perhaps neither of you are prepared for a relationship, obviously death is bad. But what about these relationships that makes it like death, was it how you or your partner responded to the situation? Or was it how you resolved conflict and negotiation between each other. Don’t only consider your actions, your partner is also a key factor when looking into the problems of a relationship. Remember, for a relationship to work effectively and be healthy, both partners need to be equal to each other and work together. Being in a relationship takes a lot of time and committed effort, sometimes you have to be confidence within your own capabilities before you start looking for a relationship. Do you personally feel prepared/ready to be in a relationship?

I know my self esteem isn’t the best, and I am starting to think that this boys know it, and they always use me...

Once again, understanding your own limits, flaws, and faults are an important part in creating a healthy stable relationship. Whilst it’s okay to have flaws, such as low-self esteem. You need to acknowledge this (which you have) and understand how this might affect your perspective and decisions on issues. Whilst the majority of individuals don’t have purposeful malicious intent, people can use others for their own gain. It is common for people who are manipulative, to pick individuals with low-self esteem. Look up the term “gaslighting”, now not all guys purposefully try to do this, nor are all guys manipulative. However, this is something you should keep in mind when considering a partner and what you wish to have with them.

But then last weekend he told me he felt something for me, that he wanted something but he knows I have boyfriend...

This is a major warning sign, he knows that you’re in a committed relationship, yet he still decided to ask you. If he’s willing to do that for you, who says he isn’t willing to ask someone else while dating you. Plus, it shows that he didn’t consider your current relationship. In other words, a lack of relationship boundaries and respect are being shown through this action.

I look like a little girl, naive, sweet, etc. And because of that, everyone thinks I need protection...

Whilst it isn’t a bad thing to appear naïve/sweet, and even if you wanted to change this you could adjust your behavior to act as an independent and strong individual. But it does mean that due to your appearance, people might take advantage of you. This doesn’t mean that you should treat everyone as an enemy or as a dangerous foe, but it is something you should consider. Remember this, but don’t actively refer to it unless you need to or you feel doubtful (like in this current situation)

He told me that if I give him a chance, by the end of January I will be in love with him...

He’s placing a time limit? That again, is another major warning sign. Falling in love takes time and lots of meaningful interactions, by him saying this, he sounds overly confident that he will win your love. He can’t guarantee a time limit on your feelings, he is essentially trying to win you over by making a deal with you. This isn’t how you treat your partner or person who you have interest with, you slowly form a relationship together. Not make a bet and rush into it.

He told me my relationship with my boyfriend wasn’t healthy or even a relationship...

Regardless of whether it’s true or not, he has no right to say that her relationship with her current boyfriend isn’t healthy. It would be different if he said something like “I’m worried about your relationship with X because he does a, b, and c, which makes me think he’s using you.” When he says “your relationship with X isn’t healthy or even a relationship, he’s trying to assert that it’s a fact when he might not know all the details of her relationship with the boyfriend. If he said the second variant, then he’s putting it on himself by saying “I feel this way, though I recognize that it might not actually be the case. I just want to know that you’re okay.” But once again, another warning sign since he’s pushing his perspective onto you. Without considering your feelings or opinion, he’s being overly assertive. This isn’t a good thing; a relationship requires the judgement of both yourself and your partner. Without considering your perspective, this sets you up for a codependent relationship.

I’ve been through this a few times...

Take your past experiences as an indication of what people might try and do in these situations. Learn from the past and most importantly your mistakes. If you felt dodgy previously, then that should give you an individuation of now.

So now I’m confused, and I don’t know if I should give him a chance. I low-key feel he is using me...

If you ever feel that someone is using you, then they must have given off some signals to give you that impression. Always trust your instinct if you feel like someone’s being shady, because it’s your mind’s way of trying to tell you that someone’s words and actions don’t quite line up.

______________________________________________________________

Third Section...

Now, as always you don’t have to take our advice. This is completely your decision, and you should make the decision that feels right and comfortable. With this, if you do decide to give him a chance. There are just a few things I’ll like to add…

Know your limits: if you don’t feel comfortable or secure in saying/doing something, don’t do it. Learn your limits and come to understand what you are personally okay with.

Look at warning signs, if he starts being physically, verbally, or emotionally abusive. Leave the relationship as soon as possible. The longer you stay with him, the harder it becomes to break it off.

Know some basically manipulation techniques (foot-in-door-technique, warning signs, guilt tripping), guilt tripping is especially important as your low-self-esteem would support this manipulation.

Always ask the opinion of others when you feel confused, getting more external advice and opinion can help clear away a bias or uncertain perspective.

Stay safe, you are responsible for your own health and care. Please take the time to take care of your own well being.

Don’t be afraid to say no, no means no. No matter what the situation is.

I apologies if this ask was answered late, but hopefully I’ve covered everything that could help you with this situation. Hopefully this reaches you in time and that you can feel more secure in making your decision.

Thank you for ordering at the comfort-café!

Come visit us again anytime!

Mod Chef

#relationships #anonymous #relation advice #manipulation #comfort cafe #well being #you are loved #you are worth the fight #you are strong #submission

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