#honestly my theory is that people are so terrified of ‘assuming someone’s sexuality’

[hyunjining]

maybe i’m fucking stupid but what happened to just thinking someone might be gay if they’re doing things that seem gay

[sevenmikento]

A/N: hello!! this request sounds super lit but i am Scared of not writing their dialogue witty enough so imma just try my best! :D i hope you have a nice day as well hehe

genres: fluff, BIG angst, sort of happy ending?, tw death, tw blood and gore; 2k words

divine omniscience [Sukuna X Reader]

“Do you guys think it’s true? What Gojou-sensei said?” Nobara asks out of the blue as she casually munches on a fry that certainly was not from her tray.

“You gotta be more specific, dude,” Yuuji replies, speaking with his mouth half-full of burger. She scrunches her nose at him as she reaches for another one of Megumi’s french fries.

“Y’know when he said all that stuff about Sukuna having only one known trusted companion or whatever. I mean, everything in the texts seems pretty vague, no?”

“Yeah, ‘companion’ is not the kind of word I’d associate with someone like him.” Megumi chips in, pushing his tray closer to the girl sitting opposite him.

“Kinda wanted to ask if they meant it sexually but I swear he’ll just start giggling and wasting our time.”

The three friends continue to chatter on about their theories and interpretations of their earlier class’s contents, all the while completely unaware of the fourth party listening in–the one who is actually most knowledgeable on the topic they’re so oddly curious about.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you are the one who knows the most, that is if you’re still alive. Though Sukuna doubts you died within the time he was away. You’re too smart for that.

The village chanted, faces obscured behind masks carved from wood and dyed red from the colour of the witch’s blood. Watching from within the shadows, Sukuna felt compelled to observe the ritual, having never felt such a strong surge in cursed energy in his entire existence.

He was proven to have wrongly assumed it was coming from the outraged villagers when they finally set your crucified body alight and a blanket of black cursed energy covered the area, engulfing every single one of the citizens beneath it. Bone-chilling screams and begs for mercy filled his ears, the sound muffled but satisfying to listen to nonetheless.

When the strange turn of events finally came to an end and the energy receded into your bloodied and broken body, the King of Curses himself decided that he’d finally found someone worth his time.

At the end of your torturous life as a human and the start of your existence as a newly born cursed spirit, you were honestly a little too much for Sukuna to handle. Despite having never heard of cursed energy or jujutsu sorcery, you were quick to pick up everything you needed to know and then some.

Not only were you dangerously intelligent, but you were also completely unphased by him and his raw power, no matter how much he made sure to display it–whether it be in the form of exterminating a town of people or setting a forest ablaze with just a snap of his fingers.

“Scared yet?” he would ask, a smug grin on his face. You would smile back without a hint of sarcasm or dishonesty.

“No,” you’d reply without a second thought, “because I know you will never hurt me.”

What Sukuna initially assumed was well-hidden arrogance turned out to be a mere fact you were stating. A piece of truth you’d gained due to the nature of your ever-growing curse technique. Outwardly, the King could deny it all he wanted to, he could threaten you day and night, grab your throat and tighten his grip just to prove you wrong but he would never–has never–done any harm unto you.

When he had come to accept that as the truth, he tried deluding himself into believing he kept you around merely for your wealth of knowledge and powerful supply of cursed energy. Those were, in fact, his reasons at the start of it all–they were why he even walked into the village that fateful day and used his reverse cursed technique on you.

“You can say that all you want,” you once said, reaching up to wipe the blood off his face with your sleeve while the same red substance stained your own skin, “but we both know the main reason you keep me by your side.”

He did not respond.

Instead, he scoffed and grabbed your chin with one hand before raising the other and mimicking your gesture. With an uncharacteristic tenderness, Sukuna wiped the blood off your face with his thumb as the cries of the dying soldiers around you slowly faded to nothing.

“Their name was (Y/N).” His voice echoes shortly within the confines of Yuuji’s dark bedroom.

“What?” the sorcerer blearily murmured, having been on the verge of falling asleep when the King of Curses himself decided to speak.

“My companion… though, they would have preferred the word ‘partner’... was named (Y/N).”

“Why’re you telling me this?” Yuuji groaned, rubbing his eyes.

“The inaccuracies your teachers spread to your friends are painful to listen to,” Sukuna scoffs. “Frankly, it’s insulting and disrespectful.” The cursed spirit’s choice of vocabulary throws his vessel off guard.

“... You must’ve liked them a lot, huh?” Yuuji responds, voice softer than before as he feels his initial frustration of being denied his sleep fading away. “It’s weird to imagine someone like you feeling indignant on someone else’s behalf.”

“Well,” Sukuna smirks to himself, “let’s just say they’re the only one I have any respect for in this godforsaken world.”

“He plans on betraying you,” you stated matter-of-factly, opening your eyes for the first time throughout the entire meeting.

Sukuna had called forth a few powerful cursed spirits under the pretence of forming an alliance, with his true intentions being to simply size them up and subtly intimidate them into leaving his newfound territory alone–if they valued their lives, that is. He didn’t need to tell you of his plans and he knew he didn’t have to for you to understand it completely.

The cursed spirit you’d singled out widened his eyes before his expression turned hostile. “Don’t spout bullshit! I’ve done nothing but agree with everything Sukuna-sama has said!”

Sukuna watched the events unfold silently, unable to help but feel something in his chest swell with warmth as he observed you.

“I know everything.” Your simple reply was enough to enrage the spirit who shot out of his chair and seemingly began to lunge in your direction.

“You fucking wh–!” he cried.

Where his head used to sit was a neck sliced cleanly through the middle as everyone in the room felt a gust of wind brush past their terrified faces. The only outliers were you and the perpetrator of the murder himself, both smiling as one would out on a walk on a pleasant afternoon. His skull bounces twice on the tatami flooring before it disappears alongside his body.

“That was a bit much, don’t you think, Sukuna?” The other cursed spirits practically break out in a cold sweat upon hearing you so daringly speak to the King of Curses after such a display of his power.

“That was merciful, my dear,” he responded casually, reaching out a clean hand to wipe away the droplets of blood that had reached your face. Still touching you, he turned to the others. “Does anyone else have anything to say?”

“No, they’re terrified,” you laugh when they fail to respond, all still shaking where they sat.

“Good–”

“Of me.”

He scrunches his nose and softly pushes your face away but a smile still creeps onto his face as he thinks to himself, ‘as they should be.’

Nobara and Megumi would find it hard to believe had the information not come directly from Yuuji’s mouth, as well as the additional mouth that had unceremoniously popped up on his cheek mid-conversation.

“You’re saying everything wrong!” Sukuna had exclaimed after making his appearance and refusing to leave until Yuuji had gotten all the facts right.

When he was finally satisfied, he still didn’t leave right away, sensing the two sorcerers wanted to know more. “Well?” He prompts. “Just ask your fucking questions already, we don’t have all day.”

“If you put it like that… then I’ll just ask it as it is and you’re not allowed to get all pissy, ‘kay?” Nobara responds. Megumi and Yuuji share a nervous glance.

“How’re you so sure they’re not dead?”

He wished he hadn’t left you on such a bad note; that he didn’t spit at your feet and push you away when you tried to stop him from leaving the temple in which you both sought refuge. He wished he’d at least bade you a proper farewell and that his last words to you didn’t consist of him questioning your abilities just so he could keep his ego intact.

As Sukuna laid dying, surrounded by Japan’s most powerful sorcerers, he realised, finally, that he would never see you again; or feel your hand wipe at his face after another victorious battle.

For the first time in his life, the King of Curses shed a tear.

The braver sorcerers scoffed, some even taunted him, assuming he was merely afraid of death, whereas the warier ones hesitated in approaching him to deliver the final blow, taken aback by the uncharacteristic gesture. Still, with his immense cursed energy forming a protective barrier around him as a last resort, the sorcerers hadn’t won the battle quite yet.

A few minutes later, in fact, they lost it.

Sukuna remains silent, pondering over Nobara’s question. As promised, he didn’t show his anger and hid his grief even better. Truth be told, he doesn’t know if you’re alive.

“I told you not to go,” you spoke, voice trembling as you rested his head in your lap, your hands wiping the blood off his face. “I told you you’d die, didn’t I? Why didn’t you listen? Why?”

The sound of your soft sobs mingled with the noise from outside the pitch-black barrier you’d placed around the both of you. The sorcerers who survived your ambush were chipping away at your cursed energy shield and it was only a matter of time before they would break through.

“Even after all I said to you before I left,” Sukuna murmurs, relishing in the feeling of your skin against his, “this is what you choose to scold me over?” He let out a weak chuckle.

“I know of your grief and regret, I know you’re sorry and I’ve long forgiven you.”

“Thank you, my (Y/N).” He turned his head to press his lips against your palm for the final time. “Now go. You have to escape before the damned sorcerers force their way in.”

“No.” Your defiant tone juxtaposed with your tear stricken face amused him. “I’ll be here to see you off and then I’ll kill them all.” You leaned forward to kiss his forehead. “I’ll wait for your return, my love.”

When Sukuna refused to answer Nobara’s question and promptly disappeared, the trio assumed that was the end of it all. As much as they wanted to leave the information behind them, they still find themselves talking about it as they wait in line at a new sushi place that opened near the school.

“Kinda weird he was so insistent on telling us everything, huh?” Yuuji remarks.

“I highly doubt that was close to everything, though.” Megumi scratches the back of his head. “It felt like he was withholding a lot, like when he didn’t answer Nobara’s question.”

“Yeah, that was pretty lame,” she says with a pout. “I really wanna know if they’re alive or not. I mean, their whole story was pretty interesting but imagine how scary it’ll be if (Y/N) was still alive and in Japan after all this time.”

“Table for three, please,” Yuuji says to the staff at the counter once it’s their turn. They stare at him for a brief moment before a happy yet somehow sinister smile stretches across their face. The jujutsu sorcerer feels his blood run cold as he feels Sukuna suddenly begin to vie for control over his body.

“Finally,” you whisper, body and soul flooded with sheer relief as tears run down your face. You reach your hand out to touch Yuuji’s face and though he tries his very hardest to turn away and run, he finds his body frozen in place. “I’ve been waiting for you, my love.”

[dontbipanicjonsa]

The Unkiss

TW: discussion of sexual assault

The purpose of this post is to explore how and why the Unkiss came to be, and speculate (poorly) on what purpose it may serve in the future. Read under the cut  (thanks @esther-dot )

So, I’m going to tell everyone right away that I’m not a very big fan of the pre-existing theories surrounding the Unkiss. Specifically, I tend to disagree with the “how”. This is partly because I think all the explanations offered are too Freudian (*shudder*) and partly because I’ve had a similar instance myself so I tend to project (sue me). 

THE HOW

First, let’s look at the pre-existing theories: 

The Unkiss is actually a sexual fantasy that Sansa has confused with the real events that happened (exactly what Freud would say. Creepy fuck.)

Sansa invented the Unkiss to romanticize an otherwise traumatic event so she could cope with it better. 

Is there any other theory I’m missing? These are the ones I know. 

I’m going to jump straight to the second theory. The issue (for me) in this theory is that it sort of assumes that Sansa herself would consider that kiss “romantic” or that it would somehow help her cope the BoB night.

He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. - Sansa VII ACOK

This is the moment. She is expecting a kiss, but wanting it to be over. It’s very clear that the kiss would have been non-con. More importantly, it looks like Sansa herself would consider the kiss non-con. 

Why on earth would Sansa invent a kiss she didn’t want in the first place to make coping with an already traumatic event easier? 

He kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a song. - Sansa II ASOS

This is the first time we are introduced to the Unkiss, and it shows that Sansa’s memory of that night is perfectly intact. The Unkiss is an addition. It isn’t replacing any other, more traumatic memory (like the threat to her life). 

Now this is what I think happened:

Her emotions were running high that night, and her mind muddled up real events with the memory of that mounting (practically tangible) terror. 

Yeah, it’s that simple. You know how you get really angry in a fight and then later you can’t recall the exact the words? Memory is unreliable. There are plenty of studies to show the varied effects trauma has on memory. There are plenty of studies to show how easily memory can distort. There doesn’t need to be a great, complex reason for Sansa to misremember a traumatic event. Also remember that Sansa may not be entirely sober for this encounter, since Cersei did make her chug that wine before. 

Being stuck in a situation where you’re terrified and anticipating some sort of assault any second? Having a single moment where the emotions peak, where you’re sure the assault is going to happen right that moment? Misremembering if the assault did or didn’t happen later? Yup. Been there, done that. I still don’t remember what happened, and it’s been years. I sure as fuck wasn’t romanticizing shit, so it never occurred to me to think that Sansa might be. So when I heard the theories I went back to her chapters and honestly, I don’t think she is either. Not yet.  

Then this happened:

She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak. - Alayne II AFFC

Now this is Sansa romanticizing the Unkiss. She romanticizes the kiss she remembers. That does not mean she invented the kiss to romanticize the BoB, it only means she remembers a non-con kiss from a traumatic night and chose to romanticize it to cope. See the difference? 

The kiss isn’t a way for her to romanticize her trauma to cope, she romanticizes the kiss that was a result of her trauma- to cope. 

I won’t be so sure of this theory though, because (no offense) but GRRM does seem like the kind of guy who would read Freud and incorporate his ideas in his story. There’s already a shit load of incest and let’s admit it, Sansa canonically has daddy issues. How far or in-depth did GRRM think about the “how” of the Unkiss? We don’t know. 

THE WHY

Well, this one has been explained by GRRM himself:

You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom... but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it's a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on. - GRRM 

He also said:

File this one under "unreliable narrator" and feel free to ponder its meaning...- GRRM 

So, it’s safe to say that the Unkiss is basically being used to establish that Sansa has an unreliable memory. Of course, other characters probably have unreliable memory too (for example: Arya misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword) but this is still most likely about Sansa. 

Sansa has always been considered an unreliable narrator by the GA anyway, since so much of her narration in the first book was at odds with the narration of Ned and Arya, who were both fan favourites at the time. This should probably indicate to the readers that the other characters are unreliable narrators as well, but it doesn’t. People carry on reading simply assuming that only Sansa’s POV is unreliable, or at least the most unreliable. So using Sansa’s POV to lay the groundwork for memory issues in someone else’s POV is...not gonna work. 

This doesn’t necessarily prove that the pay-off of the Unkiss is going to come from Sansa’s POV only, but it makes it seem likely. So I’m going to restrict myself to looking at the possibilities of misremembering stuff from Sansa’s POV. 

One more thing we need to look at before we start looking at future possibilities:

"It's not the same," Sansa said. "The Hound is Joffrey's sworn shield. Your butcher's boy attacked the prince." - Sansa III AGOT

On the surface, this looks like another memory edit. The situation is remarkably similar; it was a traumatic event for Sansa, she was not entirely sober when it happened, and now she is misremembering what happened. We know that Mycah did not attack Joffrey, Joffrey attacked Mycah. However, it’s not quite the same. For one, we don’t actually know if Sansa believes that, or if she’s just trying to be contrary to Arya. 

Also- 

"Sansa, come here." Ned had heard her version of the story the night Arya had vanished. He knew the truth. "Tell us what happened." - Eddard III AGOT

Sansa had told Ned what happened. But then she said-

She blinked at her sister, then at the young prince. "I don't know," she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. "I don't remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn't see …"- Eddard III AGOT 

So.......is she lying or did her memory actually get fuzzy afterwards? What exactly did she tell Ned? Considering that he’s the one who asks her to “testify”, I’d assume she told things as they really happened (as in Joffrey attacked Mycah). Did her memory of the events slowly fade...and then reverse (as in Mycah attacked Joffrey)? Or is she just taking the neutral stance here, and later the opposing stance (Joffrey’s side) in her fight with Arya? We don’t know. 

PURPOSE IT MAY SERVE GOING FORWARD

First, let’s assume that the Trident accident really does count as a memory edit. This would mean that Sansa has edited her memory twice now, which makes it very likely that a third memory edit is coming. There are two directions this can go-

The third memory edit has already happened pre-canon (so technically it would be the first edit)

The third memory edit is going to happen sometime in the next two books.

Warning: this is where I get back on my Jonsa bullshit. Turn back now if you don’t wanna watch me make everything about Jonsa.

Pre-canon Jonsa crush 

If the first option is true, and Sansa has already edited her memory once that we don’t yet know about, then a pre-canon crush/moment between her and Jon is...a pretty strong possibility. 

I’ll admit, I’m very very skeptical of the pre-canon crush, simply because I think there isn’t enough evidence or foreshadowing for it. On the other hand, the groundwork has already been laid, if GRRM were to go in this direction..it would be believable. Shocking, but believable. 

We have numerous mentions of kissing games in the godswoods. We have a pre-canon conversation between Sansa and Jon about How To Hit On Ladies. And much more. The possibility is there. 

Sansa having a crush on Jon and being so traumatized she replaced Jon with Waymar Royce?? Sansa getting tipsy on watered down wine and giving Jon a blue rose-

There are other possibilities though, for example, a fight between Sansa and her father and/or Arya that she’s not remembering correctly. It would explain her daddy issues (even more) and work to create conflict between her and Arya (why though). But I don’t THINK there’s any evidence for that..? I don’t know I’m just throwing out ideas.

Moving on to the second option- a third memory edit to come

These memory edits are not likely to be nearly as innocent. 

One possibility I’ve heard about is Sansa forgetting her identity and sinking into Alayne. No. Very Unlikely. Sansa’s Stark identity appears to be going strong even in the TWOW preview chapter.

Second possibility- Sansa memory edits Lysa’s death. 

She was mad and dangerous. She murdered her own lord husband, and would have murdered me if Petyr had not come along to save me.- Alayne I AFFC 

It’s...possible? But it looks like she does remember what Lysa said and how she died. She’s just suppressing/dismissing the parts that implicate Littlefinger, which is not the same as a memory edit, where the memory is changed somehow. 

More possibilities- Littlefinger will do something and that will lead to a memory edit. She’ll flee from the Vale and run into Ramsay (I dearly hope not) and bam trauma -> memory edit. The possibilities are pretty much endless. 

Now let’s assume that the incident on the Trident was not a memory edit. This means she’s only had one memory edit yet....in which case the pay-off is probably something kiss-related, or it is something she remembers, but which didn’t really happen. A pre-canon kiss, or some serious Freudian shit that I’ve been trying desperately to avoid, a Sansa-Sandor faceoff....yea I’m not actually good at speculation.

[sproutsgcrden]

sentinel of naruhata | chapter two

mr. nice guy

warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, one short scene implying sexual harassment (non-graphic), manga spoilers for my hero academia: vigilantes

word count: 3383

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If someone had told Koichi that he would get jumped, well, he may have believed them. That’s not too uncommon, especially around Naruhata. And it really wouldn’t be odd if it happened to him specifically. He just had that kind of luck. However, if they had also mentioned that a nine-year old would jump in and save him, he’d be a bit skeptical.

He honestly didn’t know if he quite believed what he had witnessed. One moment he was about to get hit by a guy he had managed to piss off earlier in the day, and the next some kid had shown up seemingly out of nowhere, threatening to steal his attacker’s quirk. Koichi didn’t think that was possible. Sure, there had been copying quirks, and erasure quirks were rare, but a quirk that allowed a person to take another quirk? That didn’t seem right, at least, it didn’t seem too entirely possible. A quirk is an integral, unique part of each individual- there’s no way somebody can take that, right? He could be wrong, it wasn’t like he was studying quirk theory.

As soon as the kid hightailed it out of the store with his strange assortment of items, Koichi knew he’d been in for it. He had already been late to work today because of the whole fiasco from earlier. He didn’t mean to run into Spiky Dude- it had just happened! Yeah, maybe he shouldn’t have been using his quirk in public, but he was running late! And then, of course, Spiky Dude just had to show up at the same convenience store Koichi worked at, and had to rough him up on the same day he was late. His manager was already absolutely pissed, and Koichi really didn’t want to stick around any longer than he had to in fear of a lecture, or something worse.

Luckily for him, he was nearing the end of his shift by the time Spiky Dude had entered the store, and the kid had helped him waste a lot of time due to the insane amount of items he was purchasing. All he had to do was clock out and sneak out of the door, which should be fairly easy. After punching out on the system and closing the register, Koichi grabbed his bag and began to get ready to leave.

“Haimiwari.” Koichi closed his eyes in disappointment, sighing before turning around with a fake grin.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

The angry tapping of the shoe really should have been enough warning, in hindsight.

------

The streets of Naruhata were busy for the late hour, not too unusual but it was something that Koichi didn’t want to bother with after the night he had. Of course that stunt had gotten him fired. Perfect. It wasn’t like it was his fault! He was the victim in all of this! What, did his boss really think that he wanted to get dragged into an alleyway and get beat up? Koichi grunted as he walked around a slow-placed couple. He would have to find another job and fast. Rent was coming up, and he still had payments due on his tuition. His left hand adjusted the strap of his backpack while his right passed over his face. This was too stressful to think about right now.

There was something he knew he could to help take his mind off of things for a while. Koichi’s eyes narrowed in determined concentration. Yeah, tonight was a good night for that.

------

The wind rushed through Izuku’s loose hair, tousling it beyond fixing. It felt wonderful, racing across the rooftops of an unknown city in the dead of the night. He was barely let out of his room and the training hall on good days- he could never hope to leave the confines of Kurogiri’s watchful eye. Which, unfortunately, meant that it was a rare opportunity to go outside… ever.

Izuku let out a harsh giggle, letting it echo in the air with a wide smile. He had never felt so free.

Slowing to catch his breath, Izuku pulled a wrinkled, old notebook out of his bag. Skimming through the pages, he stopped on the last entry he made. When researching Eraserhead, it wasn’t that hard to find out that the underground hero mainly patrolled in the Narahata Ward. However, it was a bit more difficult to find out specific times and locations of his daily patrols. He assumed that it changed quite frequently due to Eraserhead’s cryptid-like nature, but it was still frustrating to not know exactly where to find the hero. Especially since he wasn’t aware how much time he had before Tomura caught on to where he was.

However, Izuku did have a few locations that seemed to be promising. Most of them were hidden back alley’s, which made perfect sense. A majority of petty crimes took place during the day- they were a beacon to spotlight heroes, those who lived off the praise and popularity from civilians. But the nasty, evil villains? Oh, Izuku knew from experience that the worst of the worst were always found in the dead of night. Underground heroes always had to be on their toes, and it spoke volumes to Eraserhead’s vigilance that he’s remained pretty much untouchable and unnoticeable to those who wished ill intent.

Pulling up the map on his outdated phone, he inputted the first location he had written in his notebook. The specific alley was only about three blocks away. With a manic grin, Izuku pulled up the hood of his jacket and let Enhance swim through his veins once more.

------

The discs of air underneath Koichi’s palms lit up with a familiar burst of light, making the nineteen gleefully chuckle. The feeling of his signature All Might hoodie snugged tight over his torso provided him with an unexplainable comfort, as did the plain black mask covering the lower half of his face.

Koichi was inexplicably known for his plain nature at college (save for the rumors that said he was some creep that tried to lure girls into abandoned buildings. He really was just trying to make friends!), so it wasn’t like anyone would expect him to be the vigilante that ran around Naruhata at night.

Well, he supposed the word “vigilante” was a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn’t like he sought out and fought criminals, he just used his quirk to get around a bit faster and help out the common man. Koichi lost out on his chance of being a hero a long time ago, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t help people when he had a bit of free time. As Mr. Nice Guy, he was able to get a glimpse of what he had dreamed about being his entire life.

Koichi zoomed through the lit up streets of Naruhata, providing directions to the lost, helping find missing items, and picking up bits of random trash. Everytime he received a “thank you” his eyes lit up- it was nice to be appreciated sometimes. The chorus of grateful civilians echoed within his mind as he continued to do good deeds throughout the night. After a few hours, he found himself moseying down a side road in hopes of heading home.

“All that do-gooding sure does make a guy thirsty.” He slipped down his mask, mumbling mostly to himself as he readjusted the straps of his bag.

A water bottle was thrust in front of him, followed by a peppy voice. “Here ya go!”

Koichi took the water bottle without thanking, shouting a quick “thank you” to whoever handed him the drink. And then, once he realized what had just happened, immediately did a double-take. Wide eyes looked over to the side of the road, only to see a young girl with pink, puffy pigtails staring at him with a bemused smirk.

“Pop Step?!” Koichi straightened his posture. “What are you doing here?!”

Ignoring his question, she began to walk out in front of him, hands stuffed in the pockets of her jacket. “So… you’re the guy picking up trash around town?” Her hand went to frame her cheek in wonder. “What’s your name again? Cockroach Guy?”

Wide, admiring eyes became downtrodden in an instant, an annoyed glare taking their place. “It’s Nice Guy!”

“Whatever! You’re the one who alerted me to the fuzz during my show, right? I wanted to say thanks, somehow!”

Koichi was the one who let her know the police were coming when she was performing her illegal street show earlier in the day. He didn’t care much for her music, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see her get arrested. Either way, he wasn’t sure why that provided an excuse to essentially stalk him. “So, you’ve been tailing me all day, huh?”

“Yup! I saw you almost get pummeled by those customers while you were working at that convenience store! I probably wouldn’t have stepped in either way, but wow! You were lucky when that little kid showed up, huh? Gotta admit, Cockroach Guy, that was pretty lame!”

“I don’t do well with violence, okay!” Koichi felt his eye twitch in annoyance; it was probably time to get out of this conversation before he lost his temper.

Pop Step’s face twisted with confusion. “Isn’t that dweeby hoodie supposed to be an All Might cosplay? And yet, you suck at fighting? That totally makes sense…”

“Sure, I look up to the guy. I wanna be useful to society however I can, just like he is! It’s got nothing to do with fighting! And the hoodie isn’t dweeby! It’s cool!”

“However you can?” Pop Step giggled, using her quirk to jump ust high enough to appear a little taller than Koichi. “So you know your place, at least!”

Koichi clenched his teeth in frustration, stepping around Pop Step to try and speed around her. “Stop getting hung up on the details! Knowing your place is important! If you keep playing at being some sort of pop idol, the cops will catch you sooner than later.”

Pop’s face scrunched up with a flash of anger, and if Koichi hadn’t had the night he had, he may have even been terrified. “Hey! I’m not ‘playing’ at anything! I’m the real deal!” She sped up, stopping in front of him as she pointed a perfectly manicured finger in his face. “You’ll just have to keep an eye out for the police! Also, I’ll need you to usher in my fans, set up the venues, and sell some merchandise!”

“Are you pissed off or hiring me for a job?!”

“Don’t you need one? Wouldn’t be surprised if you got fired after what happened!” Pop didn’t even take a moment to notice Koichi’s crestfallen glance towards the wall. “Anyways! If anyone can help me, it’s you- Know Your Place Guy!”

“Ugh. It’s Nice Guy!”

“Oh whatever!” Pop Step turned away from Koichi in order to run further down the alley, sparing him a glance backwards as she made her getaway. “I went through all of this trouble to express some gratitude… I didn’t think it’d be such a big deal, asking a ‘Nice Guy’ like you to do a little work to help a girl out!”

Koichi, good mood effectively ruined once again, went to bite back with a response. That was, until a familiar group popped into his view. He flinched as he saw Pop Step run straight into the leader, none other than the Spiky Dude who threatened to pummel Koichi into the ground just hours before. He could do nothing but stare as the group cornered Pop Step up against the wall, no doubt making her uncomfortable. Probably much more so than he was when he was in her position.

Now, if Koichi were a hero, this is when he would pull out all of the stops. He would crouch low to the ground, speeding to the men terrorizing the young girl and knocking them all on their asses. He would make sure he sped Pop Step to a safe location before coming back to make sure those bozos got arrested like they deserved. But, Koichi wasn’t a hero. And he would never be one. What could he do? His quirk was essentially useless in a fight. The only thing he was good at was running away.

But didn’t he have a duty to try and help? After all, if he couldn’t find the strength to help a young girl in this kind of situation, how could he try to help anyone else? With shaky legs and a determined glint in his eyes, Koichi bent low to the ground. The familiar pulse of his quirk activating below him provided little comfort, but he knew he had to push through this fear and go.

Mask pulled up, Koichi flew against the dirty pavement, locking eyes onto one of Spiky Dude’s lackeys. Now, if he could just get by unnoticed this time, he could knock this guy off his game and get Pop out of there. But of course, things never go Koichi’s way. That’s his luck.

The man caught him, large physique towering over him. The small tuft of flame acting as his hair cast an eerie shadow against the ground. “Well, well, well… look who we have here! Hey, boss! It’s the cockroach from earlier!” Still holding onto the back of Koichi’s hoodie, the large criminal threw him against the wall.

The pain of his head hitting against the rough edges of brick didn’t compare to the spikes slashing against his cheek.

“That annoying brat ain’t here to save you this time.” Spiky Dude’s eyes seem to glow in the dark night, and Koichi couldn’t ignore the sinister feeling pooling in his gut. “You ain’t getting away with just a small beating this time. I’m going to crush you. And I’m gonna enjoy it.”

The spiky criminal stalked closer to him; Koichi’s eyes immediately latched onto the blood dripping from the thick barbs protruding from the knuckles of his enemy. Shit. Shit. What could he do?! He really was going to die. Koichi shut his eyes in gruesome anticipation, hoping that at least Pop Step was using this opportunity to get away. A rush of air flew past his nose, and he blinked slowly. Looking up, Koichi locked eyes with Spiky Dude. The skewers had vanished from his knuckles, and the same, pale look of absolute petrification the criminal wore earlier in the night was on his face once more.

“Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to warn you next time?” The familiar voice of the kid that had stepped in during Koichi’s earlier encounter with this group echoed through the street, venom and animosity clear as day in his tone. Even Koichi shrunk into himself in fear. His wandering eyes latched onto a figure leaning down from the rooftop above, All Might hoodie bright against the black of night.

“I was looking for Eraserhead, but maybe I can do his job for him tonight and knock you fucker’s out.” Holy shit, what was up with this kid?

Koichi had noticed earlier that the kid had bright green eyes, but they seemed almost electrified, bright green sparks lighting off in his pupils as his glare deepened. He jumped off the roof, floating just above the ground before he hit it at full speed. His hand was held out, and Koichi glanced at the numerous scars stretching against the palored skin.

While Spiky Dude was distracted, Koichi took the opportunity to get back on his hands and feet, and forced himself to crash into the lizard looking man that was still holding onto Pop Step. She used the momentum from Koichi along with her quirk to jump out of the way and out of the alley. In his happiness of the fact that Pop was able to make a getaway, he wasn’t able to stop his momentum. Koichi ended up crashing straight into the other wall, the force of it knocking out the criminal he held tight in his grip.

“There’s no need for that!” A deep, grudd voice echoed from the other side of the street, and before anyone could react, a large fist connected straight into Spiky Dude’s nose. “The name’s Knuckleduster. And it’s my job to take out the trash like you.” Koichi barely even blinked, and the next moment the other tone was conked out right beside the leader.

What the fuck was happening?!

------

Izuku sighed in relief as he felt the rubber band snap against the quirk he held in his grasp, sending it back to its original owner as some random old man knocked him out. He didn’t want to steal a quirk, but that dude really wasn’t going to give him any choice. Luckily some geezer showed up before he could make good on his threat. He watched the man with a careful stare, seeing as he checked each of the criminal’s tongues before standing back up. His red sneakers crunched against the pavement as he lowered himself back to the ground; he walked towards the cashier he met earlier and held his hand out for him to take.

The man sitting across from him scratched the back of his head in a sheepish manner, choosing to take Izuku’s hand in order to get back up. “Uh, suppose that’s twice you’ve saved me, huh kid? We really have to stop meeting like this.”

Izuku chuckled, nodding his head in agreement. A cough sounded behind the two of them, and they both turned around to find the old man staring straight into their souls. Knuckleduster’s bandana covered his entire head, including the top half of his face, only leaving holes to see out of. His black trench coat was grimy, not to mention ripped on the hemlines. Everything about this screamed “homeless old man”, even down to the gritty way the man seemed to fight.

Izuku couldn’t help but think the man seemed familiar.

“You take quirks or something, kid?” The man’s eyes narrowed, his already gruff voice deepened.

“No! I don’t take quirks! I was just playing a bluff, really!” Technically, Izuku wasn’t lying. He hadn’t ever willingly taken a quirk before. “I have an erasure quirk! That’s why I’ve been looking for Eraserhead. I’m hoping he’s willing to train me.” Now, there’s the lie.

“Hmph.” Knuckleduster’s eyes stayed on Izuku a little while longer, tense silence following before he shrugged it off. “You both show promise. Gotta admit, when I heard about Naruhata’s newest vigilante, I wasn’t expecting him to have a sidekick.”

Both Izuku and Koichi stared at him in shock, making the old man laugh. It was a hearty laugh, scratchy and sarcastic. “People are gonna make that sort of assumption when you’ve got two kids helping fight crime in the exact same hoodie.” The two boys flushed, causing Koichi to shake his head.

“We just met today.”

“So? Doesn’t mean the two of ya don’t work well together. I almost didn’t need to come down here. If it weren’t for the threat of Trigger I probably wouldn’t have. Don’t know if it’s luck or not, but these thugs didn’t have a trace of the drug on ‘em.”

“Trigger?” Izuku knew what he was talking about. His father was one of the main benefactors of the production and distribution of the drug. Or well, he was before he got forced into a coma. He had originally thought the distribution would slow after the underworld had found out about All for One’s current medical status, but it seems that wasn’t the case.

Knuckleduster waved it away. “I can explain that later. After you two accept my offer.”

Koichi paled, backing away from the crazy old man. “What offer?”

A sinister grin formed its way onto Knuckleduster’s face, making the duo in front of him back away even further. “Let me teach you kids what it takes to do hero work, and how great it feels to pound some villains!”

Koichi thought this man was absolutely insane and would only lead him to more trouble.

Izuku thought that he had enough training from the villains themselves.

They met each other’s gaze before turning back to Knuckleduster.

“We refuse your offer.”

[whistlesanbells]

Community Headcanons

Just a random list of headcanons I have, organized by character (feat. A lot of Britta x Annie)

Jeff

I saw someone mention that Jeff might have an ED, and given what we see with his relationship with food, and how he is willing to go as far as to hurt himself to be the best at something (in this case be the best looking) it makes a lot of sense.

A lot of people headcanon Jeff as bi but honestly I just take him as cishet. He has many many issues but I don’t think sexuality is one of them, because half his personality is his attraction to every woman that breathes lmao

Exudes top energy but really the minute someone else tops him, he gets insecure for a bit but ends up really liking it.

Britta

Raging bisexual. I feel like she’s known for a long time, but never told the group because it would just be another thing for them to poke fun of about her.

In the same vein, I believe Britta’s parents were very homophobic, and that’s why she cut ties. I think she came out to them at a younger age and it was messy. It would make sense that she would refuse to tell the group why she didn’t get along with her parents: because she wasn’t ready to come out to the group yet. Instead it gets framed as her just rebelling for no reason.

We hear almost nothing about Britta’s past, except for a few offhand comments about a dinosaur-related trauma. Britta is incredibly quick to deny talking about her past, which led me to believe that she has some kind of trauma. Personally, I believe she was r*ped in her childhood, which would explain her extra effort to comfort troy when he lied about it. It would also explain why she is so fervently for women’s rights, especially when it has to do with bodily autonomy.

Dyslexic!Britta makes so much sense to me, because her parents were likely unsupportive, so she didn’t get much help or accommodations in school at a young age. This probably led to her habit of going out of her way to do poorly in a class so it looks like she’s just not trying, so she doesn’t have to face the reality that she never developed good study habits and she would have a lot of trouble in school even if she tried. Even though she doesn’t do well in school, she’s really smart, she’s just not great at articulating her points :))

She was a tomboy in elementary school before it was considered socially acceptable, and she was bullied ruthlessly for it. In her true, “stick it to the man” fashion, she never grew out of it.

Britta is terrified of Annie finding out that she won’t do well in school even if she DOES try, because she’s afraid Annie will lose respect for her.

Annie was the only one in the group she came out to, because she trusted her to keep a secret and not to judge. Annie asks her a LOT of questions, but Britta puts up with it.

Acts like a top, is really a bottom.

She has a crush on Annie from 21st century romanticism on, but never expresses it because she doesn’t want to make Annie uncomfortable.

Troy

Gay lmao

I definitely feel like he had a crush on abed around end of season 3/ beginning of season 4, but it was unreciprocated.

Troy has an inherent sensitivity that makes him the heart of the show, but it took a while for him to feel comfortable with that. I feel like he had a lot of parental pressure to be perfectly straight and masculine, since he was raised under a strict religion.

Troy never wanted to be an athlete. I believe he wasn’t allowed to explore his interests because he demonstrated talent for sports at a young age, and that’s what he was pressured to do for the rest of his life.

Troy doesn’t always understand how Abed functions, but he is always accepting, supportive and understanding. Instead of trying to understand how his brain works, he memorized the patterns of what bothers him and what doesn’t, and uses that to help his friend in the best way he can. It’s super sweet :))

Abed

Aro/ace Abed rights!! I haven’t seen this one as much, but I really like it. I genuinely don’t think abed has much interest in relationships, which has absolutely nothing to do with being neurodivergent. I think he feels pressure from the group to date, because that’s what they think is “normal.”

I LOVE Annie and Abed’s friendship but I definitely don’t ship them. Sure, they kissed once, but she was attracted to Han Solo, not abed. Annie was attracted to dean when he was actually like Jeff too, but she DEFINITELY wasn’t attracted to dean lmao. Instead, I think they’re both really close because they’re both neurodivergent, and Annie understands him more than anyone else in the group, albeit not entirely. They also have a special handshake you can see at the end of season one :)

This isn’t a headcanon but it’s *technically* never stated in the show but Abed definitely has autism. l DO headcanon that Annie has his safe foods written down in a list because she’s the only one who knows how to cook in the apartment, and she knows it’s important to him.

Abed has all of his friends’ likes and dislikes memorized and written down, as well as their birthdays, as a result of psychoanalyzing them. He gives the best birthday gifts and never forgets.

Definitely was the ACB (creds to film theory on that one)

Shirley

I don’t have a lot of theories for Shirley, because we see a lot of her personal story in canon. However, I do believe that she wasn’t always such a devout Christian. I think she was raised with Christian ideals, but it wasn’t central to her personality until Andre cheated on her. After she went though a dark period of (likely) alcoholism, I like to think that’s when she turned to Christianity, and it gave her hope. She loves it so much because it genuinely did save her from a bad time in her life.

I think she is a big part of the reason why Troy, Abed, Britta, and Annie are afraid to come out to the group. They assume she would never see them in the same light, when truth be told, she would love them all the same. I think she would be uncomfortable at first, but either she would come to the realization or britta would convince her that it is inherently Christian to love everyone, no matter what. Her motherly instincts take precedence over her Christian ideals.

Shirley views Annie as the daughter she never had, but is very careful not to tell her for fear of hurting her feelings. She very much enjoys helping her navigate college and seeing her mature. She also loves all their girl talk since this is the aspect of parenting that she doesn’t get with three boys. In the same vein, she loved teaching Britta how to have friends who are girls, and she likes to think she played a part in raising her.

Pierce

I don’t like pierce enough to psychoanalyze him lmao

Annie (saddle up, this is gonna be long)

Lesbiannie, obviously. Annie’s romantic tendancies SCREAM compulsive heterosexuality. Annie’s relationships with men are always schoolgirl crushes, and she even admits to abed that she never really liked Jeff, she just liked the idea that he was available and willing to love her. It also makes sense that she can’t stand the idea of not being perfect in every way, including heterosexual (because she confirms that her parents are bigoted and that’s likely what she was taught). I think she would have a lot of internalized homophobia, and she would be very insecure about her sexuality, seeing how she acted during the STD fair.

I would love to think Annie also had her first ever real, I like this person for themselves and not just because they’re attainable crush on Britta. She always looked up to her because she was so cool and far less uptight than she was, but as they grew closer, she saw her in a different light. I ship them hardcore lmao.

Annie has ADHD!! I could talk for hours about this, mostly because I have very similar struggles to Annie’s canon character arc (minus the drugs lmao) and it’s mostly due to my adhd. Long story short, she was likely raised undiagnosed until she discovered it herself, which led to trying adderall and overdoing it because she was unsupervised. She was likely very insecure about her ADHD, which led her to overcompensating academically. Because she masked so much in academic settings, it’s likely she didn’t have much of a social life because that’s where her symptoms presented themselves more.

In addition being friends with abed has made her far more comfortable unmasking. If you watch her in studies in modern movement you can see her stimming (flapping her hands, rocking back and forth and swinging her arms) way more than usual. She normally fidgets by fiddling with her fingers by her waist and pulling her elbows tight to her sides in a position suspiciously similar to raptor arms. Not only is this a common and discreet way to fidget, it is easily passed off as good posture. This makes sense, as it is Annie’s trademark resting position.

Annie reads YA books and a LOT of fanfiction for fun. The group expects her to be more well versed in classic literature, but the girl just loves her some vampires. It’s where she learned a LOT of her....dnd tricks ;).

Top energy that Jeff never let her use DEFINITELY comes out with Britta.

She helps Britta study and teaches her all the study habits she had to learn, and Britta’s grades improve a little bit!!

Switched to pantsuits because of britta, I like to think she had some influence on that.

Lost interest in Jeff after Basic Sandwich

Knew that Abed was the ACB the whole time, she definitely had it figured out in that binder lmao

Anyways enjoy, just figured I’d write this down somewhere haha

[fictional-worlds-are-exquisite]

thank you! i think you're genuinely the only person that has ever said they actually like the fact that my bathrobe is obnoxiously pink. and you're absolutely right, one of the things i like most about it is that it hurts people's eyes. i love it actually. if you ever celebrate halloween you should absolutely add your bathrobe to your costume. an amazing idea. since it has a mouse face on the hood it could be two costumes rolled into one - both a vampire and a mouse (if in the middle of the evening you get bored of one), which i think would be awesome. and you probably wouldn't get cold (is it cold in nz during halloween? because here it almost always is). we don't celebrate halloween in lithuania either though. which i'm a bit bummed about, because halloween sounds super fun. mostly because of the dressing up! but i did celebrate it once, when i was 11 or 12 maybe? me and a couple of friends decided it would be fun even if it's not really celebrated here. so we dressed up, even went trick ir treating (half the houses had no idea what was happening and also i pretty much froze to death because i was dressed as a dead bride and refused to put a coat on because then you couldn't see my dress) and also watched horror movies. 12 (or 11) year old me thought it was amazing.

oh yeah! i've broken a knife on 2 separate occasions i think. once i tried to get something out of between the blender's blades, used a knife and then accidentally turned the blender on (i'm so fucking glad it was a knife and not my fingers). so the tip of the knife broke off (the blender was ok tho). and the second time i have no idea how it happened. i was cutting up broccoli and the knife just fell apart??? i was so confused, because one second i'm holding a knife and the next it's just two pieces of a handle and the metal part, all separate. had fun explaining that to my dad. you sound pretty unlucky too! i mean, a cut every time you use a knife, but you don't even notice it at the time? i think it's just that knives are out to get us (it's my newest conspiracy theory). i actually get double vision too sometimes! mostly when i'm tired, but i just figured that it was because i have really bad eyesight

they definitely SHOULD teach about gender and sexuality in school. it's a really big problem that in a lot of places it's either not compulsory or not even in the curriculum. honestly, everything i know about sex ed or lgbtq+ i had to learn myself on the internet, because we only had one class when we were like 13 years old with a guest speaker and it was mostly biology and then a little bit about menstruation and pads for girls (i have no idea what they told boys because we were also separated). so sex ed definitely sucks a lot in my country and i bet it's the same in a lot of others, which makes me really mad

exactly!! it's so hard to tell whether i'm feeling romantic or platonic love sometimes! it's confusing. also i remember one time me and a couple of friends had a sleepover and the friend's, who was hosting, parents weren't home so we watched romance movies (scandalous i know). again we were maybe 12. and they kept going "oh he's so hot" and intensely watching the sex scenes. while i was looking away from the tv whenever sexy times were going on and commenting on how much i loved the house design and the garden. gee i wonder what that means. (still can't believe it took me this long to figure out i was ace)

the breakfast went very well though! it's so interesting how different traditions are everywhere. i hope your lunch and the rest of christmas day went well too! (also i forgot to ask last time, but what is boxing day? google says it's mostly a shopping holiday, is it that? we just call it the second day of christmas and it's pretty much the same as christmas day but there's no presents!) but yeah i hope you had fun with your extended family on boxing day!

having acid reflux sounds like it sucks. i love breakfast, it's my favourite meal of the day (when i don't have to rush that is) and i skip lunch a lot because i usually have no time for it (my schedule kinda sucks), so i usually try to have a bigger breakfast. but hey, peanut butter is good! so at least you can have something that tastes good for breakfast!

aaand i feel like this ask got away from me. sorry it's so long!

it’s because i have t a s t e. it may not be GOOD taste but it sure is...taste...and i am proud of it. and yes, i love the idea of adding my dressing gown to my costume specifically because it means i’m basically in my PJ’s. minimal effort. comfort to the max. living the dream. halfway through the night i’m tired of being the vampire no one invites in so i drop to my knees and start the mouse act. mice are good at getting in houses and getting to chocolate and such. the dream. also i absolutely would get bored of one costume within the space of a few hours knowing me, so that’s a plus. uhhhh halloween is october which is. mid-late spring so it really depends on the day. it might be a little cold, might be shorts weather. I rarely leave my house at night so I’m not an expert on nighttime temperatures sdflsdfjsd. 

I used to wish we did Halloween here but that was mostly because I wanted lollies. Although I also liked playing dress up as a young kid so maybe very young me would’ve vibed with the costume aspect. I know there’s a photo of me when I was like, 5 and my best friend of the time dressed up as witches at some point, maybe we had our own little halloween. I also possibly had a halloween themed birthday party once as a kid? I remember the little gift bags having spooky things in them and also possibly a bat cake but my memory is too bad to remember for sure. aha that’s the problem here too, no one locally would ever think to buy lollies to give out so it’d just be like um. you can have an apple I guess? at least you had fun though! i respect the commitment to the costume despite the cold. 

that is such a stressful story to read, i fear for your life. although i understand the knife breaking in that first scenario. that would be terrifying though. what if the blender launched it,,, nOPE. i’m very glad it wasn’t your fingers, that’s some horror movie shit. the second time is just,, it be like that sometimes. it was probably just waiting to happen. my parents have a cheese grater with a loose handle and it. falls off. every time. i dry it. with the dishes. and every time i fear for my life as the grating bit drops off towards my feet as i’m left holding the handle. i should expect it by now but i never do. I get scared every time it happens. knives are definitely out to get us, i fully support this conspiracy theory. oh yeah, tiredness doesn’t help with double vision. i kind of need bifocal glasses by now but I also don’t want bifocal glasses so i just suffer but I suspect having them would reduce the double vision. maybe. maybe not.

yup! i remember someone handing out tampons and pads at primary school, i assume after giving a talk about periods, idk. i do also remember a teacher pulling the girls aside and being like yo, this is what a period is, here’s a horror story about my daughter and a tampon, enjoy the trauma, go back to class. good times. we did actually get really comprehensive sex ed concerning most things at my high school but that is faaaarrr from the norm around here, clearly. although teenage boys are good at filling in gaps, in my experience. they’re like little sex encyclopedias that offer up information without you asking. i didn’t ACTUALLY want to know that but i do now, i guess, thanks michael. 

dude. the ‘oh he’s so hot’ comments are so confusing. ‘hot’ is like a category of attractiveness that I’ve never understood. ‘isn’t he hot?’ what does that MEAN rebecca. i think i asked once if it meant like, attractive or good looking. and the person i asked was like, you know, hot. you just look at them and, you know- no i don’t know. what is this. i don’t think i’ve ever watched a sex scene with people my age though, generally i just zone out for them sdkfhskdfh. i feel like there’s definitely all these indicators when you look back like oh yeah, should’ve realised i was ace then, but it’s just. such a hard sexuality to figure out. not that other sexualities aren’t but you’ve got to figure out an absence of something when you don’t even know what the something feels like- it’s a challenge.

I’m glad it did! It is interesting, for sure. I’ve always been interested in how winter Christmas’s work. As a young kid I didn’t understand hemispheres...obviously...i was like 5...and i’d go out on Christmas morning to see if there was snow. and sometimes it’d be a bit chilly in the morning and I’d be like damn. we almost had some this year. it’s a shame our climate tends to be too hot for snow on christmas :// like no you tiny dumbass it’s summer you little idiot there will be no snow no matter what. everything ended up going super well here :). boxing day is basically just a shopping holiday, i don’t know if it has any significance in any other way, i’m sure it did at one point, but i know there’s always boxing day sales everywhere. I think it’s also a public holiday (?) to give people another day off work and that, but I could be wrong there. I know I also used to regularly go to the races (horse races) nearby that were always held on boxing day, it was like a 150 year old tradition or something until people in attendance started dropping and I think they finally shut it down a couple years back. I didn’t care all that much about the horses but they also had food and carnival-type rides and such for the kids which is why I loved it. also we tended to meet extended family there for a picnic lunch.

acid reflux is like the least of my problems sdfkjshdkf. it’s annoying but it’s pretty managed with medication, I have to watch certain foods and drinks but I’m used to it by now. I think it’s also what causes me to not be able to eat large amounts normally so I survive a lot on snacks and a reasonable sized dinner. works for me. but peanut butter is good! i’m glad i can have that! I used to also have vegemite but that’s a bit more of a push, it’s easier to stick with peanut butter.

also it’s fine!! my responses are always very long too sdfjhskdf.

[bananonbinary]

hey, can you reccomend tips for getting more friends? you said how it's easy on that one post mentioning when friends are mean, but I've been trying for a while now but it's hard to find places that won't set my anxiety off or would be respectful of they/them pronouns for me. If you don't have any that's okay ! have a good day !

okay this turned into a pretty long ramble that isnt very well organized, sorry.

honestly idk that was probably a poor choice of words on my part. i’m not super fantastic at friendship myself, partially because my autism makes it so i can only really handle having like 3 friends at a time without getting overwhelmed. i dont want to belittle people’s struggles with this, just offer hope that once you manage to exit the place you’re in now where people DON’T respect you, however long that takes, you’ll find there are places where people DO respect you.

all of that said tho, i HAVE found it to be fairly easy to cultivate good and positive online relationships. you just find someone who has similar interests and share some fan theories or send a post you think they’d like or something. it’s important when starting an online relationship to give the other person something to talk about. fandom is a good starting place. don’t just be like “hey you seem nice, wanna talk? :)” because while that’s a perfectly polite greeting, it doesn’t really give the other person anything to work with. discord groups are pretty good too for being able to talk with people with similar interests without feeling like you have to manage the entire conversation.

as for IRL, i’m not as experienced with that because like i said its just not terribly feasible for me, but gender/sexuality shiz can be a really good starting point if it’s like a major part of your life. ALL of my IRL friends are other queers i met while in an extremely toxic conservative christian environment. nothing like a lil shared anxiety to grow closer as people lmao. things like lgbt+ groups or cons are good for finding people who meet that baseline, and then you can move from there. (LGBT+ stuff is meant as like, an example here. the point is, what’s important to you? find someone else who shares that and talk to them about it!)

my biggest Friendship thing i guess is just like, be super transparent and honest with people (as long as it’s safe). generally in my experience, people want to be friends, and want to be understood. so once you find a person you want to be friends with, just plow through those awkward conversations. tell them if something they said bothers you. affirm them when they do something that makes you happy. encourage them to do the same. always assume good faith if you’re investing in a relationship with them. message them when you want to talk. submit to the terrifying ordeal of being known.

it doesn’t have to be clean or dramatic, my friends all know what a fucking mess i am with these conversations and my pathalogical need to make it sound like a joke, but the important thing is being honest with each other. that’s the only way i know to go from acquaintance to someone you trust. you gotta build it from the ground up.

and yeah, depending on where you are in life right now, you might not be able to find a Perfect Best Friend right off the bat. especially if you’re still young, a lot of people might have a few ideas kicking around you don’t agree with, or who can’t necessarily engage with you on topics that you think are important. you get to decide whether those ideas are a deal breaker or not. i’m not saying you have to be friends with people you don’t like/trust, but if you find someone who encourages you and improves a part of your life, it’s okay if they can’t be in ALL of your life. for example, religion is quite important to me, but many of my friends are triggered by it. so they can support me in some things, and i go to other people for faith-related stuff.

relatedly, its important to know not every relationship is going to be a Super Special Best Friend, and that’s okay! its important to cherish the people who you just talk about shoes or whatever the fuck with, if they brighten your day a lil that’s a worthwhile friendship.

[canardroublard]

TMFU, Gaby’s fashion, and some feminist film analysis

Back when I slapped together a reblog post about the men’s fashion in The Man From UNCLE in between physio appointments, which somehow got like way more notes than I ever really expected or even wanted, I didn’t address the fashion of the lead female character, Gaby. It was outside the scope of the OP, and I didn’t feel like I had anything new or interesting to say about Gaby’s fashion, or lack thereof.

(My beta says those earrings are the ugliest thing ever. I disagree. It’s a wonder we’re still friends)

Anyways, we see only one brief scene of Gaby in her own street clothes, and a slightly longer sequence of her in her work clothes. The rest of the film, she is wearing clothes chosen for her by Illya. Saying “we just don’t have enough info” is a perfectly reasonable approach to this. So this was the other reason I had no intention of making this post.

But then people started getting interested. Someone reblogged commenting about Gaby’s fashion, and I discovered that I have very strong opinions about something I’d previously claimed was unknowable, and it made me wonder what was going on in my brain.

Then I talked to some other TMFU friends who all seemed interested in what I assumed was common knowledge/nothing unique. So, they may have been feigning interest out of politeness, but it activated the art history side of my brain, and here we are now!

The boring stuff but please read this

I am not attempting to tell anyone how to interpret this film. I am not even trying to change people’s minds or persuade them to my thinking. All I am doing is sharing my thought process. I wasn’t even going to do this for Gaby until people asked. To this end, please don’t attempt to argue with me about this. I don’t want to argue. I won’t respond to it. If you disagree, then please, just move along.

And I’m going to remind people that I love TMFU. I love this movie so much it hurts. Why am I putting this reminder here? Because I am about to apply some critical analysis to it, and in places this will be cynical, and it will not always look kindly on the film. If you just want to exist in a happy “I love TMFU!” bubble and not hear anything less than 100% positive about the film (which is a totally valid choice, I don’t fault anyone for that), then don’t read. But don’t yell at me for being mean or criticizing the film, because I warned you.

Tldr; or, if I were still being graded for this stuff here’s my thesis statement

When analysing Gaby’s fashion, there exist considerations which don’t apply to the male characters. Namely, she is a woman and the male gaze is a thing. So I am very, very wary about taking at  face value any expressions of traditional femininity in the choices made  for her outfits, hair, makeup, etc. Therefore, when considering her character, I find it much more useful and informative to give more weight to the aspects of her appearance which do not connote traditional femininity, rather than those that do.

For readers who have studied enough  media analysis to follow my thought based on that alone, there’s the thesis statement, y’all can go home (or at least skip to the end where I come to a conclusion). If you’re lost, then read on.

(mobile readers, the cut here might not work, and if so I apologize for what is going to be a very long post. Tumblr’s “keep reading” functionality is inconsistent at best, but I tried)

Context is for kings essential for analysing media in a meaningful way

(Or, some brief background. Stick with me here, we’ll get to the good stuff soon)

So, art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Attempting to analyze any artwork (in this case a film) while disregarding the culture it was created in and the intentions of the creator is...not going to get you very far. Asking “what is art” is a question that quite frankly exhausts me at this point (looking at you, Duchamp) but the closest I’ve ever come to an answer is that the only thing that separates art from everything else is intent. And intention only exists within cultural context. So yes, intent and context don’t just matter peripherally, they are one of the biggest considerations one needs to make when analyzing works of art. The creator in this case being Guy Ritchie et al, the culture being British/American Popular Cinema in The Year of Somebody’s Lord Two-Thousand-And-Fifteen. 

Everyone views and creates (if applicable) art through their own distorted, murky, imperfect lens of personal experience. And one of the most persistent Things in western art is that cishet men create art based on their experience of Being A Dude. This is crucial, because this lens of cishet male perspective literally underpins almost all of western culture including popular culture. And thanks to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, we have a name for this.

The male gaze and you

I’m going to quote Wikipedia here, because honestly this intro sentence sums things up rather neatly (with one exception which I will address momentarily).

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.

What does that all mean? That the Viewer and the Artist are both cishet men by default, and any women are Subjects of art. Women are viewed, never viewers. Men take action, women are subjected to actions. Furthermore, women are supposed to be pleasurable to view. By men. Since the Viewer is male by default.

But I would disagree that the pleasure is inherently based on women being sexual objects. That’s honestly a really damn limited read on the whole theory, and it’s one that Wikipedia itself contradicts later in the article. More broadly, cis men also derive other forms of pleasure from the presentation and viewing of female bodies, including aesthetic pleasure (the enjoyment of looking at beautiful things).

The theory of the male gaze is not without limits. As originally theorized, afaik it’s not particularly intersectional. It doesn’t really address queer perspectives or perspectives of POC. However, these issues are something I just can’t address here, unfortunately. And when looking at popular media, I still find the concept of the male gaze, imperfect as it may be, is a helpful means of analysis, so it’s worth having in your toolbox.

Circling back, the easiest way to sum up the male gaze, if you’re still not super clear on what it is, is with a demonstration.

Ever seen a shot like this in a movie?

And did you immediately roll your eyes? Feel gross? Congrats, you have just perceived and reacted to the male gaze.

Now we actually get back to TMFU

But the male gaze also shows up in many more subtle, insidious ways than fanservice-y boob shots. For this post, let’s focus on the following considerations, which might help everyone follow my thought process more clearly.

Gaby is a woman

She functions as the love interest of Illya in the script (I am not talking from a shipping perspective. What you ship does not matter for this discussion. I am talking about the narrative function of Gaby in the script as written. Put on your “cishet man” goggles for a moment)

Illya is a man who is attracted to women, specifically Gaby (again, I don’t care if your shipping conflicts with this. I am analyzing the film based on a literal reading of it as if I were a cishet man. Why? Because that’s who made the film. That’s who it’s “for”. I am all for queer readings of film--hell, I ship OT3, I myself have chosen a queer reading for how I interact with it, but I’m not critiquing people’s readings, I’m critiquing the film itself and to do that I have to critique its intentions and cultural context.)

Cishet men are traditionally only allowed to be attracted to women who are conventionally attractive. If they were to be attracted to anyone else it would destroy their fragile senses of self and their heads would explode or something. At least I assume that’s what must happen, based on how terrified they are of it.

Therefore, Gaby must be conventionally attractive, because it is literally required of her or otherwise the whole underpinning of western straight malehood crumbles and then where would we get such a pure, vast source of unadulterated toxic masculinity?

(Yes, this is a very cynical read on things. I’ve studied, like, three centuries worth of this bullshit. I’m tired. Let me be cynical.)

Or, to force myself to be less cynical, Gaby has to be pretty because...nope, this is still going to turn out just as cynical.

But what I will say in favour of this movie is that it gives Gaby and Victoria both a lot of agency and general awesomeness, which is quite unusual in this sort of big-budget action film, and it’s one of the big reasons I love it. I’m not saying that the entire film is sexist. On the contrary, there’s a ton of stuff to celebrate about how it portrays its female characters. But these aspects don’t change the cultural context, and we still have to consider the impacts of the male gaze.

Anyways, point being is that as filtered through the male gaze, Gaby is never given the option to, say, wear no makeup (or the appearance of such, as the guys are afforded, this being cinema where “no makeup” still means makeup) because that would look “ugly”.  Instead she needs to have a “baseline of pretty” which is way higher than reality because she is not a real human being with her own agency, she is a character created by a cis male writer/director team in a film directed by a cis man in a genre that caters to cishet men.

Gaby doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She exists battling centuries and centuries worth of sexist convention.

Now then, remembering all of that, let’s actually look at her. There are woefully few good pictures so I’m going to have to piece things together a little. Starting with the coveralls.

This is a great look, I love it. And I’m going to give Ritchie a lot of credit here because it would’ve been easy to go for a “Michelle Rodriguez in F&F sexy mechanic lady” look. In case I need to provide a visual:

(Repeat above gif about rolling my eyes)

Now, to be clear, I am not making any judgement about the way any real-life women dress. I’m sure there’s plenty of female mechanics who have their hair down and wear tank tops while working. That doesn’t bother me. I don’t care if real life mechanics choose to do their jobs in a string bikini. Or in cosplay of the bee from Bee Movie. I don’t care (and quite frankly it’s none of my business) because they are real people who can make their own decisions. But what I am talking about here is a fictional character who does not have her own agency. I am critiquing how male creators choose to dress their female characters.

So I personally choose to read much more into the unpretty  aspects of Gaby’s outfit, because these are not the “obvious” or “easy”   things. Obvious and easy are “of course she wears makeup” and “of course her hair looks good” and  “of course she doesn’t look like a swamp witch  who bathes in mud and spends her days cursing passing men”. Those things don’t challenge or disrupt the assumption that women must look attractive for male consumption.

Gaby’s introduction to us is with her in a pair of grease-stained, baggy coveralls, not wearing any obvious makeup (again, this is cinema, so she is wearing makeup. For cinema the goal posts around “wearing makeup” always need to be moved from where they’d be irl). There’s very little here that screams ‘pretty’. And that is fascinating to me.

I don’t know how deeply Ritchie thought this through when giving final approval to the costume, hair and makeup. But unpretty is not the default here. It’s a choice

And look at this. This is the stance and dress sense (and socks!) of a woman who does not give a damn about looking good for the male gaze, whether the in-movie gaze of Napoleon, or the implied gaze of the viewer and creator. It’s not ‘pretty’. And this is the only time in the film we see Gaby in her own everyday clothes, as she only escapes East Berlin with the literal clothes on her back.

So how do I think Gaby dresses? I think that for the most part she dresses....like this. Practical. Comfortable. With a few simple touches of things she likes/finds pretty, perhaps, but not with a specific interest in being pretty. She dresses for herself, not for others. And if that isn’t something to aspire to, I don’t know what is.

[basic-banshee]

Mind Games (part 6)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | [completed]

tagging: @cactus---daddy  @ughthatsprettygay  @its-the-ultimate-fangirl-101 @alive-alive-alive @their-lego-hearts @cant-stop-shipping-people @katterpillar @thatbitchnora @emo-turkey @rachelaredhead @thestrawberrymusicnerd @mirkwoodelven @violetsummers23254 @nyx5683​ @fucking-echo @its-okay-that-ur-not ** sorry if ive forgotten someone**

BAZ

In the fourth year I had this recurring dream — or fantasy, more accurately — that Simon and I would find some common ground to unite us, and we’d become friends. Allies. We’d work together for some greater goal and through that process we would, inevitably, become best friends. By the fifth year, I imagined we’d fall in love. By sixth year, I dreamt that we would tolerate each other.

I never thought my sixth year fantasy would come true.

I always assumed that the common cause would be fighting the Humdrum, or saving Watford, or solving a mystery. I never thought the thing that would bring us together would be being gay.

Or rather, “not straight,” as he repeatedly insists. Apparently thirty minutes of reflection is enough to make Simon realise he likes men, but not enough to make him comfortable with a queer label. I will never understand him.

But, despite telling him I’m gay, he’s still sticking by his theory that the hat’s selection was based entirely on sexual preference, and not because I’d jump him in a heartbeat.

“We can just say it was me that caused us to get paired,” he said on the way back to the room. “I don’t know if your family knows or if you want them to know, or if they’d be disappointed or something shitty.”

“They would have to acknowledge it in order to be disappointed,” I answered, but I didn’t argue with his offer. If he wants to be the openly bisexual Chosen One, I’m sure as shit not going to stop him.

“Sorry your family is weird about...you know,” he said when I got out of the shower the next morning. I stared. Apparently we were still discussing this.

“Is the Mage going to be bothered?” I asked him instead of answering. He paused in the middle of picking out a shirt. (He has four identical shirts. Why does he do this every day?)

“Why the fuck would the Mage care who I like?” he asked, surprised. I shrug (I’ve picked it up from him.) (I hate it.) (But it’s a gesture that says so much, while saying nothing.)

I didn’t have an answer.

Apparently Watford isn’t as fascinated by Simon’s sexuality as I am, because there wasn’t really any backlash. No one cared. No one said anything. And so I assumed it had blown over. This unfortunate occurrence had passed, we had both survived, and things could go back to the way they were.

Except they didn’t.

“How long have you known?” he asked as we walked down to breakfast one morning.

“Longer than you,” I responded.

“Right but like, how long?” he pushed as he got in line behind me for coffee.

“I’m going to rip your tongue out,” I responded.

I keep waiting for him to figure out I’m in love with him. I had thought this would become blindingly clear: the hat put us together, he knows I like men, and I called him fucking exceptional. I practically put a sign on my forehead screaming “I’m in love with Simon Snow, set me on fire and laugh” and yet somehow he’s completely missed it, and is still trying to take responsibility for it.

I don’t understand the mental leaps he had to do to convince himself that somehow my intense hatred for him fucked up the spell. But then again, I don’t understand anything about the way Simon thinks.

He’s so stupid, and yet, I love him.

SIMON

“Have you ever fancied anyone?” I ask Baz. I’m lying on my bed with my feet up on the wall, trying to study, but I can’t. It’s warm out, and we’ve got the window open, and it’s an afternoon that should not be spent trying to teach myself Greek. Honestly, if I don’t have it by now, I’m never going to.

“We’re not talking about this,” Baz snaps back from the other side of the room. He was working, but I saw him give up a few minutes ago, and he’s just been staring out the window ever since.

“So that’s a yes,” I say, throwing my book to the floor. “And considering how prickly you’re being, that means he goes to Watford.” It’s a shot in the dark, but I like to throw out wild theories sometimes to see how he reacts.

“This is not even remotely a subject that’s up for discussion,” he responds, putting in his headphones and turning back to his book. I hate when he does that.

Somehow he managed to bring in an illegal mobile. I was surprised last week when he used it in front of me — normally I would have jumped at the idea of finding something that could get him in trouble. But lately I’ve been focusing a lot less on trying to catch Baz doing something shifty — maybe because he’s now doing the shifty things in front of me — but maybe because I don’t think I care.

And I think… I think I know he’s not a monster. He’s just a boy. A shitty boy, who can be an extreme prick. But still, just a boy, who got outed in front of his classmates. Who listens to Radiohead and eats crisps at night. Who has siblings, and gets bored while doing his homework.

Lately it’s been hard to be in the room with him, because I’m hyper aware of his presence. I always am, always have been. I always have this list in my head about him. Usually it reads something like 1. What is he plotting? 2. Is he going to hurt someone? 3. Where is he going? 4. Does he know I’m following?

But right now the list is reading more like 1. Does he fancy anyone 2. Has he ever kissed a bloke before? 3. What does kissing a boy taste like? 4. I wonder what colour his eyes are right now.

Staring at the back of his head, as he bobs slightly in time to his music, I wonder what he’s listening to and what his hair feels like.

“My money is on Niall,” I say, even though he can’t hear me. “He’s kind of fit, isn’t he? Or maybe it’s Gareth. I’ve seen the way you stare at his belt buckle.”

“There’s literally no way to not stare at it when he’s shoving it in your face,” Baz snaps. I guess he can hear me. “Now shut up or I’m throwing you out the window.”

“Have you ever kissed a bloke?” I ask. Because I guess this is what I think about now. I don’t know when this started, or why. Part of me wonders if I’m only thinking about Baz like this because we both like blokes, and some part of me is reacting to that.

But then part of me thinks I’m only thinking about Baz like this because I’m finally getting to know him. He let down some walls — not many, but a few — and now...I guess he doesn’t seem that scary.

“Get up,” he snaps, slamming his book closed and advancing on me. He’s trying to look terrifying, but the edge of his mouth keeps turning up. I think it was always doing that, all the way back to first year, and I just always mistook his smiles for snarls.

“Why?” I ask calmly. I’m still lying on the bed with my head hanging over, and from this angle he’s upside down.

“Because I’m chucking you out the window.”

Normally I’d growl, and start to get worked up, and we’d end up in a fight on the stairs. But instead I just grin at him, and I see the smallest hint of a smile on his face in return.

And I think I want to kiss him.

And I think, possibly, he might want to kiss me.

The whole “exceptional” thing aside, there’s small things. Sometimes I catch him looking at me when he doesn’t think I can see him. He’s been a hell of a lot nicer to me since the psych lab, and he even helped me with homework once.

But the big sign was the time I walked out of the bathroom after my shower, and he had a full metal breakdown. I’d done it on a whim — I didn’t think through it all, just dashed out with my towel around my waist to grab my shirt — and he tensed up so much he broke his pencil in his hand, and then his face went about as red as it can get.

So yeah. I think there’s something there.

Neither of us is going to do anything about it though. He sure as shit isn’t, at least. But I guess I’m the brave one, of the two of us. So if it is going to happen…

I guess I’m going to have to nut up.

Crowely, we’re fucked.

BAZ

“We could pretend to be dead,” he says glumly, his feet dragging as we walk across the courtyard. For once, Simon might be on to a good idea. I think I’d rather be dead than go to the next Magickal Psychology lab tomorrow.

“It’s required. For a grade,” I snap. He looks so dejected that I want to throw my arm around his shoulder and spell him happy.

“I wish the Humdrum would attack,” he mutters. I sigh and hold open the door of Mummers House.

“It will be fine. We’ll just go in, find out what the control question is, and lie,” I tell him as we trudge up the stairs. He pauses on the middle landing and stares at me.

“Lie?”

“Yes, Snow, lie,” I snap when we enter the room. He throws his bag to the ground and collapses onto his bed in a dramatic heap, and a small contented sigh escapes him when he shoves his head into the pillow. “For example, I am neither allergic to cats nor colourblind. And yet I have successfully gotten out of those experiments by lying.”

“You’re not colourblind?” he sputters, turning his head to look at me. The stricken expression on his face makes it seem like I’ve just turned his world upside down. “I thought that’s why you always wear black,” he mutters, then turns his face back into his pillow.

It’s the makings of a lazy afternoon outside. It’s warm, we’re on the verge of a weekend, and somehow Snow and I have spent the entire day together thus far. We ate breakfast together, talked on the way to class, and actually got scolded by Miss Possibelf for laughing during her lecture. It’s been perfect.

So I sit on the floor between our beds with my back to the windowsill and tip my head back just a bit so it’s resting against the ledge, and close my eyes. I like this spot because it allows me to feel warm without being in direct sunlight, and it makes me feel like a bit of a sleepy cat. I never would have sat here before Snow and my’s strange gay truce.

“Put on music,” he mumbles sleepily from his bed.

That’s another thing we do now: we listen to my music. I’ve been using my mobile with him around — I only have to listen to music and text Fiona — and I figured he would just ignore it, consider it a casualty of our strange new tolerance of each other. But then one day I was doing work and he just came over and picked it up. I almost kicked him out of reflex, but he just squinted at the screen, put it down, and shrugged. “I want to see what you were listening to,” he said. He started doing that every time he walked by, picking up my mobile and running his stumpy freckled hands all over it (Crowley, I’d kill to be my mobile) and then one day he goes, “You can play it out loud.”

And now we listen to music.

I barely glance at the screen as I hit play on whatever I had up last, and pull out my wand. “Come Mr. DJ won’t you turn the music up!” I cast, and the speaker on my mobile grows louder, unleashing some Radiohead song on our room. I throw the mobile on my bed then close my eyes. Maybe I’ll give in to the cat metaphor and take a nap.

My head’s tipped back and I’m on the verge of truly falling asleep when I feel a small puff of air on my cheek and hear Simon whisper, impossibly close, “Baz.”

My eyes fly open and he’s there, he’s right there, his unexceptional blue eyes staring into mine, and I can’t look away, even though there’s no spell holding me here. Just him. Just Simon. His face is centimetres from mine and there’s no possible explanation for why he’s this close, except for —

“Do you remember that question from the experiment about dying that night and what you would regret not doing or saying?” he asks. I can feel his breath on my lips because he’s that fucking close, and the soft rumble of his voice is reverberating through me. I nod, slowly, because this feels like some kind of hazy spell and I think that quick or sharp movements will dislodge it.

“I said I’d regret not having killed you,” I whispered. His lips — fuck, his lips — quirk up and he smiles at me. It’s ruinous.

“I said I don’t really have regrets,” he whispers back. And then he tilts his head. “But that’s not true. I regret that I haven’t done something.”

Aleister fucking Crowley he’s being so cool. When did he get so cool? He’s going to, I know that’s what he’s doing. I know that’s why his head is tilted and he’s leaning even closer. This is going to be it. He’s going to kiss me or kill me, and I’m happy for either. I’ll take whatever he offers, just—

Why isn’t he doing it? His mouth is so close, I can see it, he’s closed his eyes, and he’s just…. Here. Is he waiting? He keeps dipping closer and closer, his mouth ghosting along mine, then he pulls away, and I’m going to explode. I’m going to scream.

“Simon,” I snarl, because I’m ready to fucking kill him, and his eyes pop open just as I grab the back of his neck and kiss him.

I hear — no, I feel — him hum against my lips, and then he’s doing something with his chin, and he captures my bottom lip in his, and it’s—

It’s sweet. It’s soft. It’s kind and gentle and everything that we aren’t. Everything that I never imagined we could be. He’s kissing me like I’m something precious, like I’m something sacred. No one has ever treated me like this before.

“Simon—” I start as our lips break away a bit, but he just makes a shushing noise and leans in to kiss me again. He’s on his knees in front of me, his hands planted to the ground on either side of my hip.

“I know, I’m exceptional,” he whispers, then kisses the corner of my mouth. I laugh — I can’t help it. This is the moment I’ve waited for my entire life, and I feel drunk off of him.

I want more.

“Let’s just—not overtalk this. Let’s just do this, yeah? I want to do this, all of this, the whole thing, us, let’s just do it,” he says, then flicks his tongue over my bottom lip. He could probably have asked me to set myself on fire after that and I would say yes. I have no idea what he’s talking about — snogging? Sex? Dating? I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ll do anything if he’s involved. I try not to think about what he’s suggesting, and instead I just turn off my mind, like he would. He’s gotten pretty far in life so far, there’s got to be a benefit to it, right?

“Absolutely,” I mutter, bringing my hands up to grasp his hips, and it’s like some kind of sign or permission to him, because suddenly his hands are in my hair and he’s gathering it up in chunks and pulling on it slightly, wrapping it around his fingers as his nails lightly scratch my scalp and it’s a sensory overload. I push him away, but his hands are still in my hair, he’s really got a strong fucking hold on it, and so we both go kareening backwards and he lands on his back and smiles up at me as he laughs breathlessly.

I go for the mole on his neck like a target.

“You’re exceptional too,” he whispers. He’s wriggling beneath me, his whole body tensing and relaxing as I kiss every mole and freckle I can find. There’s two hiding under his collar, I know, and so I’m focused on pulling his knotted tie off so I can get to them.

“Of course I am,” I snap back. His tie is really, truly, astonishing tangled. Does he just hang himself every morning in the process of getting dressed? I should just set it on fire. It would serve him right.

“I think that that stupid spell must have known that I—” he’s saying, breathless, as I work at the knot. This useless piece of clothing is keeping me from his Adam’s Apple and there is absolutely no bigger injustice in this world right now.

“Simon,” I snarl. I’m angry at his tie, and I’m taking it out on him, but I don’t care. Nothing matters. “Shut the fuck up. It paired us together because I’m obsessed with you, and I’m going to set you on fire if you don’t learn how to tie your tie like an adult.”

His smile blinds me. His eyes scrunch at the corners and he reveals all his teeth — not perfect and uniform, utterly unexceptional, just like his eyes, yet endlessly adorable — and it’s a smile full of joy and surprise and more than a little mischievousness.

“Just get my clothes off,” he says, and it comes out with magic even though it’s absolutely not a spell. It’s some kind of fucked up horny compulsion, and I feel myself pulled back to the tie, ripping it from his neck, my fingers running under the buttons of his collar and popping them. I feel out of control, ruled by a force that’s not me, and it’s terrifying.

But it’s giving me the courage to do what I’ve wanted to do for years.

“Sorry, sorry,” he gasps. He’s seen the panic in my eyes. “It does that sometimes, my magic. When I feel… a lot. Do what you want! You don’t have to!” he gasps out, and I feel the compulsion lift.

My fingers keep working at his shirt though, and I can’t stop myself from giggling. It’s not funny — he just forced me to do something with magic, I should be horrified — but this is surreal and I feel like I’m drinking in the galaxy everytime my lips meet his skin.

“I guess Greg’s fucked up experiment worked,” I say between laughs. His breath gets faster as I kiss at his collarbone, and he frowns at me.

“Don’t,” he stutters, then shakes his head. “What the fuck Baz? Don’t talk about Greg,” he pouts. “Greg can get stuffed for all I care.”

“But it worked, didn’t it?” I say, nuzzling at his neck. He growls, grabs my shoulders, and turns me forcefully, so that I’m on the ground he’s above me. This is a first — I’m always above him. By at least three inches.

But then he grins.

“He can never know,” Simon says, and I nod.

“Absolutely fucking not,” I agree, and lean up to meet his mouth again. He laughs against my lips and pushes back at the kiss. I can taste the smoke of his magic in my mouth. It’s going to be there for the rest of the day, I know. Not even brushing my teeth is going to get the taste of Simon out.

Maybe psychology isn’t the worst.

[ruskapi]

Sangwoo, Sex, and Sadism

Please note: This meta heavily references the theory I put forth in this other meta I wrote about Sangwoo (x). If you have not yet read it, I strongly recommend doing so before continuing, because a lot of my thoughts on what’s going on with Sangwoo here are built on that theory.

You know, I’m gonna be honest. I always just assumed one of the main reasons Sangwoo kept his victims alive for a while was because, in addition to torturing them, he was using them sexually. This is kind of a gold standard for the horror genera as well as R-18 BL stories that deal with control dynamics, and let’s face it: Sangwoo enjoys hurting people. It’s not a far leap to make. However, when I started to really look at things…believe it or not, it got harder and harder for me to build a case.

Let’s consider the first couple of scenes that set up our expectations for Sangwoo as a killer and a character:

The first thing we’re exposed to, regarding Sangwoo as a Serial Killer, is the woman Bum finds in his basement. She’s bound and gagged and broken legged, but she’s definitely wearing underwear. We know this is not because Koogi is shy about drawing nudity, and it’s sure as hell not because Sangwoo thinks his victims deserve dignity. As far as Sangwoo is concerned, she’s never going to see the light of day again, so if he’s using her in that way, why not just leave her fully undressed?

(That’s a no on dignity.) 

Koogi’s pretty great when it comes to storytelling and showing us relevant details, like Sangwoo’s dashcam recording, or the fact that everyone who goes into the upstairs bedroom looks at that one section of the wall with concern.

In this scene she shows us the victim’s rope burns, a red-stained water pipe handle, and an open tool box containing dangerous objects and restraining tape, yet we really don’t see any evidence of Sangwoo having raped the woman. There’s no bruising or blood on her inner thighs, there’re no condoms or torn wrappers anywhere (and we know Sangwoo cares), and here’s the kicker: the opening of chapter three shows a series of images that lead the reader to believe Sangwoo is raping Bum…and then, low and behold, he isn’t.

Although Bum lives in constant fear of Sangwoo’s physical and emotional violence, I can’t remember a single time when he threatened Bum with sexual violence. In fact, the one time Bum offers him sex when he’s angry, rather than taking him up on it and incorporating sex into his punishment, he punches Bum in the face and acts insulted.

That is not the behavior of someone who’s into punishing his victims sexually. In fact, he seems almost disgusted that Bum would suggest blurring the two activities.

Initially, I thought Sangwoo got off on causing pain primarily because of two scenes: the one where he jerks off on Bum’s feet while he’s choking him, and the one when he’s thinking about killing Bum while choking the telephone poll, and gets a hard on. Add in the fact that his idea of consent is pretty dubious, and that he’s not exactly gentle when he fucks Bum—with the dildo or his dick—and it’s easy to simply apply the label of ‘sadist’ and move on. However, when I looked closer, all these cases had alternate explanations that actually made more sense given his character.

Though he doesn’t look like it on the surface due to his intense overcompensation, Sangwoo is actually very needy for praise and approval.

In the scene in which Sangwoo is punishing Bum for trying to run away, he’s angry and in full-on killer mode when he hangs Bum. Although at first he’s all, “A lot of things are gonna happen where you’re lying down,” while stripping, again Koogi is just messing with us. He immediately clarifies his intent: “In case you’re wondering, I took my clothes off because they’re wet,” a.k.a. “not because you and I are about to have sexy times.”

He doesn’t have a hard on in any of the shots of his pants until Bum is in the air. In fact, as previously mentioned, he just gets angrier when Bum offers him sex. While he’s clearly enjoying the power high of punishing him, there’s actually no evidence that he’s getting off sexually until Bum starts calling his name over and over.

Observe his scowl in the last panel. Sangwoo actually looks irritated that he has to switch gears. If he enjoyed pairing sex with violence, he’d expect to get hard—not seem surprised and inconvenienced by it. He’d also probably attempt to amp up Bum’s pain level the closer he got to climax, where he actually seems compelled to dissipate it. He hurriedly lifts Bum to kneel on his chest, so as to take the pressure off his throat until he’s finished.

Honestly, I think what we’re seeing here is that…though he clearly enjoys having power over Bum, that’s not what he’s getting off on. What turns him on is actually Bum’s appeal to him as a human being. 

Compare it against the scene before it, where Bum treated him like the psycho he is, and Sangwoo got increasingly agitated:

Remember, there’s a reason why Stockholm Syndrome is a thing—it occurs when victims are forced to empathize with their captors in order to survive. And the reason it happens is because it does, in fact, up a victim’s chances of survival. This is because bad people don’t usually see themselves as bad—they see themselves as victims, forced to do “bad” things in order to survive, or to obtain justice for perceived mistreatment, or whatever their rationales are.

Like Sangwoo says:

While Sangwoo might have been angry at Bum for trying to run, he couldn’t change the fact that what he wants, more than anything else, is to be seen for who he is rather than the violent things he does. He’s desperate to be seen as a better person than he is (as someone who isn’t “like his father”), so when Bum begs Sangwoo for mercy by name, Sangwoo’s need for validation temporarily overrides his desire for vengeance.

I can only speculate, but I think Sangwoo’s response might have been something like, ‘He doesn’t view me as a psycho --> he likes me even more than my mom did --> holy shit that’s hot.’ Because it looks like even he’s caught off guard by the intensity of it.

Despite having almost zero self control, and always being at the mercy of his uncontrollable rage, I think a small part of him is aware enough to understand assault and love aren’t supposed to go together. And eeevery once in a while, he manages to keep his head above water long enough to make a rational decision.

Although he follows up by drowning and cutting Bum, he doesn’t kill him—which is a step forward from all his previous victims.

This statement reinforces that: he knows he’s dangerously close to killing Bum, but that he’ll regret it if he does--unlike with any of his previous victims (aside from his mother), whom he exhibits absolutely no remorse for. 

I think that, rather than evidence of Sangwoo being a sadist, this scene tells us just how desperate he is for someone to emotionally validate him.

If you consider that Sangwoo might be looking for someone who won’t “betray him” like his mother did, each victim was probably an attempt to find someone who would love all of him, including the insane parts. Except they all resulted in failure until Bum, which is why he looked so astonished when he kept calling to him.

Moreover, I think this exchange is actually the one that ultimately differentiates Bum from all his previous victims, as the one capable of “loving” him despite knowing he’s a killer. And this is important because, I’m pretty sure, this is why Sangwoo started killing people in the first place.��

Note that even after he started keeping Bum, Sangwoo continued sharking for victims prior to this event. In chapter 5, as soon as Bum was out of the basement someone else took his place:

And in chapter 8, Sangwoo was seeing yet another woman:

However, Koogi never showed him killing her. 

After this event with Bum, with the exception of the victims Sangwoo brings in as part of his plan to entrap Bum, there’s no evidence that he continued killing. I think this is probably because the need that was driving his psychosis was finally met.

I think the same dynamic is also in play when he gets hard while punching the telephone poll:

If we look at the sequence of pictures in chapter 13, though he’s yelling about killing Bum, he’s thinking of the times Bum’s been sexually sweet and vulnerable with him—the times Sangwoo considers as “proof” that Bum loves him.

This scene is hard to pull apart because it throws a lot of information about Sangwoo’s state of mind at us, all at once. But ultimately, it shows us that he’s terrified Bum escaping--not because he could go to the police (because that’s never mentioned or even referenced), but because it would mean that Bum had lied about loving him. 

And if Bum had lied about that, it would confirm that Bum viewed him as a violent monster (someone like his father), rather than someone genuinely lovable—which is exactly what his mother thought, hence that flash of her.

In his mind, she’s laughing at him from beyond the grave because she’s been proven right.

I don’t think he’s getting hard because he’s thinking of his mother here. If anything, he’s getting increasingly frightened and enraged at the prospect of her being right. That’s why he impulsively punches the pole—because he’s trying to stop her from laughing at him.

I’m pretty sure the thing that made him hard was, once again, Bum’s having been vulnerable with him.

How can we tell? Because of the choice of images: rather than Bum sliced open or nearly choking to death, Sangwoo’s remembering Bum saying he wants to be with him, and cooing his name while blowing him.

Rather than fantasizing about what Bum’s gonna look like when he strangles him, he’s angrily reviewing the evidence he thought proved Bum loved him. And the reason he starts laughing and makes such a weird expression is probably because even though he’s absolutely furious, he’s still turned on just thinking of the little fucker.

(Love is such an inconvenience.)

I think this is why, when he finds Bum sitting on the kitchen floor, he’s so relieved that he can’t even be angry at him for having scared him in the first place (which is what I expected honestly, since dealing with emotional discomfort is not Sangwoo’s strong suit). It’s why the beast of a man wraps his arms and legs around Bum and tells him, “Let’s stay together forever,” while shaking like a leaf.

Rather than him getting off on the idea of hurting Bum, or choking his mom or something weird, I think what we’re actually seeing here is the extent to which Sangwoo has fallen for Bum—hard enough that what little sanity he’s got now hinges on Bum staying with him.

This is a dangerously double-edged sword for Bum because on one hand it greatly reduces his chances of being killed, but on the other, Sangwoo will never let him leave.

Anyway.

Returning to the subject, as for his rough treatment of Bum when he’s using the dildo and fucking him on the porch I think, weak as it sounds, rather than any particular desire to hurt Bum, it comes down to Sangwoo not having any idea that anal sex needs to be handled differently from vaginal sex.

Judging from his passiveness, and the surprise on his face after coming in his initial encounter with Bum, as well as his confusion about Bum’s having to get dressed laying down, Sangwoo probably doesn’t have any prior experience of having sex with men.

Additionally, if we look at the hallmark symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder (x), it makes sense that Sangwoo wouldn’t have considered that he was hurting Bum while fucking him. 

Though it’s never explicitly stated that he has APD, it’s pretty clear that Koogi writes him with these traits in mind because he exhibits every one of them at some point in the series. Accordingly, Sangwoo would not excel at predicting the painful consequences of his poor sexual treatment of Bum, nor would he excel at learning from them.

If you look at the scene leading up to it, it seems like the thing with the dildo was a weird, misguided way of trying to cheer Bum up. It’s the exact same thing he does later in the bath, after Bum slices his wrist open. “I can tell you’re upset and I want to make you feel better --> sex feels good --> sex will fix it.”

I think he really wants to make Bum happy, he just has no idea how to do so. It’s not like his parents gave him many emotional tools to work with in this area.

As a general overview, if we do a quick run-down of situations where Sangwoo’s behaving violently, there are very few instances where he seems to be enjoying it sexually:

He frequently beats the crap out of Bum at the start of the story, but there’s no evidence that he’s getting off on it. He snuggles with Bum after he uses him to stab the old guy, but he doesn’t have sex with him to our knowledge. Though he assaults Bum with the dildo after he kills Jieun, there’s no evidence that Sangwoo was turned on during the killing—in fact, he loses his erection as soon as she kicks him in the stomach. He definitely doesn’t get off after drowning Bum in the bath. And though he slaps Bum when they get back from the police station, he straight up tells Bum that he’s fucking him as a token of appreciation for his loyalty.

Again, in that situation, you see his arousal linked with Bum’s prioritizing his relationship with Person!Sangwoo over Killer!Sangwoo (this idea of there being two Sangwoos is highlighted by Bum’s line about him living with twins with completely different personalities). And although he’s definitely too rough, the fact is…the dudes a beast. He can one-handedly bench press the combined weight of Seungbae and himself. If he wanted to damage Bum, he could do much more than he does. Always.

Likewise, if you come at it from the other side and look for evidence of Sangwoo craving violence when already aroused, most of the time he’s actually downright uncharacteristic in his avoidance of it. When Bum first jerks him off, he’s passive and quiet throughout the whole experience, then ends making this expression:

The first time Bum sucks him off and isn’t very good at it, Sangwoo teaches him not by mocking or forcing him to do something uncomfortable, but by fuckin’ fellating Bum’s fingers. Then, the thing that pushes him over the edge is Bum saying his fucking name in an informal register. Seriously, if Sangwoo is a sexual sadist, this was a very embarrassing night for him.

When Bum’s blowing him in the bathroom after the concert, it would’ve been super easy for him to face fuck Bum until he finished. That would’ve have been awful for Bum, and a ton of fun for a sadist—but it’s like it didn’t even occur to him. He used a tissue, like some kind of fuckin’ gentleman. And I already mentioned above that he lost his erection when Jieun started fighting to leave.

In fact, the only time he ever seems to get off while Bum is in pain is at the end of chapter 35 where, I’m pretty sure, he was getting off anyway and Bum’s pain was just coincidental to his piss poor handling.

Now, you could definitely make a case for him enjoying the sexual degradation of his partners/victims, particularly emotionally. But he seems to draw the line at physically hurting them, for whatever reason.

So, this just leaves us with the inherent sadism involved in rape...

...except Sangwoo doesn’t think of himself as a rapist.

To us as readers, it’s never really up for debate. He makes this statement while continuing to assault Bum, despite being repeatedly asked to stop, which is the literal definition of rape. But this is by design. Koogi is using the dissonance between Sangwoo’s words and actions to make it clear just how un-self-aware Sangwoo really is, and how little we can trust his ability to make sound moral judgments or take care of his loved ones.

Going by his rape qualifier, “listening to a guy scream,” my guess is that his idea of rape is the exact thing he’s always avoiding—mixing sex with violence. Of course, he’s still a rapist even if you go by that standard, because he never stops to consider how his rough handling hurts his partners. But I think he figures so long as he’s not raging on them, it’s not the same. It’s a kind of, “I know how to hurt people and I’m not doing that to you, therefore I’m not hurting you and you’re overracting,” kind of logic. Idk, he’s not exactly a rational dude.

He also seems to rationalize not being a rapist with the mindset that, once he’s got consent up front, he’s got a permanent all-access pass to the person’s body.

This is not a view held by Koogi (we know because she uses imagery and subtext to highlight how much he hurts his partners by doing this), but by Sangwoo himself.

Bum showed interest in the past and therefore Sangwoo feels entitled to do whatever he wants forever, and my assumption is he would treat his female victims this same way. 

In the two instances we see of him seducing women, they seem pretty into it. It’s likely that things were indeed consensual, at least initially.

Whether or not he continues to fuck them after he’s kidnapped them is not known to us, but based on the evidence we’ve seen to date, it seems unlikely.

If he were to do so, he’d likely mock them with something along the lines of, “You said you wanted me, why are you resisting now?” just as he did with Bum, then he would use their change of heart as more evidence that women are liars who deserve to be punished (see the other meta for more detail). However, as I said, we can only speculate on that.

But, all this said…can we really call Sangwoo a sexual sadist? The kind of person who would torture or kill his victims while fucking them?

My feeling is, not really.

Going on what we know from the series to date, there’s no clear evidence that he gets off sexually on the pain he inflicts, or that he’s ever attempted to hurt his victims while having sex with them. Because Sangwoo is not known for his ability to control himself, if he had any desire to mix the two, I’m sure we’d have seen him do so by now. 

My conclusion is that while he clearly feels emotionally fulfilled, exhilarated, even intoxicated by punishing others...he doesn’t actually get sexually aroused by it. 

Lucky you, right Bum?

[dingoes8myrp]

That Pesky L-Word: A Willow and Oz Theory

I love Willow and Oz as a ship. I love them so much, you’d think they were my OTP. But, as much as I’d love them to be an OTP, in the context of the show, I don’t think they are. But, I believe they could have been if one key thing was different.

The Willow/Oz theory in one sentence:

These two crazy kids would’ve worked out if Oz took charge of his lycanthropy sooner.

The nitty gritty of it:

Willow and Oz were a fairly healthy and functional couple, for the most part. However, their relationship had some fundamental problems.

One: Lack of communication.

This was mostly on Oz’s end. He very rarely told Willow how he was feeling or what he was thinking. The first and most obvious example of this is, of course, when he asks Willow out, then proceeds to blow her off for confusing reasons unknown to her. Of course, he’s just discovered he’s a werewolf and (understandably) doesn’t want to come out and say that… But, he could’ve told her something. Anything. “I have the flu.” “I have band practice.” “I’ve got something heavy going on I’m not ready to talk about yet.” Instead he just leaves her in the dark. This is a habit of his that’s an undercurrent of their entire relationship. We see it again at the end of season three when everyone’s freaking out about graduation day and Willow is baffled by his calm exterior. One of my favorite scenes is when she calls him out on this and they end up making love… but he still didn’t really tell her what was going on inside his head, did he? She never really learned how to read him and he never gave her any kind of Oz decoder ring to help her decipher him. This often led to Willow feeling anxious, neglected, or confused, and then made Oz feel attacked or betrayed when she acted out to express that.

Two: Infidelity.

This is on both of them. First, Willow explores her unresolved feelings toward Xander (who inconveniently didn’t get interested in Willow until she was happily in a relationship with someone else). Then, Oz had a weird werewolf attraction thing with Veruca that led to whatever that locked-in-a-cage-as-werewolves thing is called. One-night-stand doesn’t quite cover it, does it? I think poor communication directly fed into this one. It’s why it’s number two.

Three: Fear.

They’re both terrified to be in this relationship. Oz is constantly afraid he’s going to lose control as the wolf and hurt Willow. Willow is less afraid of Oz and more afraid because this is her first real relationship, and she’s often unsure or insecure about where it’s heading. Again, neither of them talks enough about their fears with each other, which often leads them to act out in odd ways. Oz sometimes pushes Willow away for no apparent reason while Willow sometimes makes over-the-top romantic gestures she’s not entirely ready for to attempt to get closer to him or move their relationship forward. It doesn’t help that Oz pushing Willow away triggers her to overcompensate with a heavy-handed attempt at intimacy, which freaks him out and causes him to push her away. It’s a vicious cycle.

Four: Cut and run.

Oz has a habit of bailing when things get too emotionally stressful. This usually isn’t permanent, but Willow doesn’t know that. He just takes space and cuts her off, leaving her to flounder and wonder if she still has a boyfriend. At the same time, he tends to assume he can just disappear on her and still have a girlfriend if he should decide to come back around.

These are the major issues that, to me, are a pretty big deal. Whenever I find myself debating between Willow/Oz and Willow/Tara as the OTP, I remind myself of all these issues and determine they were bound to catch up with Willow and Oz eventually. That’s not to say Willow and Tara don’t have their own issues, but I feel these four for Willow and Oz pretty much doom the relationship.

HOWEVER…

Thinking about these issues from Oz’s perspective, all of these things are a result of him refusing to deal with his lycanthropy (or being forced to deal with it and doing it horribly).

Let’s look at our introduction to Oz before the lycanthropy comes in. He’s pretty confident, but humble about it. He knows who he is, seems comfortable with himself, and being confronted with strange or unusual things doesn’t faze him much. When he asks Willow out, he comes right out and says he’s nervous about it, which is a small thing, but an indicator that he has no problem communicating his feelings (even if they’re embarrassing). He’s not afraid to jump in front of a bullet to protect Willow (he’s even a bit exhilarated by it). He’s not surprised to learn Sunnydale is crawling with demons. Generally speaking, it’s fair to say Oz is comfortably confident, not super fearful, and not one to walk away when people need him.

Enter the lycanthropy. When Oz discovers he’s a werewolf, his entire identity changes. He has this whole aspect of himself he disassociates with that he has no control of. And this Other Him is dangerous. Suddenly he’s not this cool, confident guy. He’s the guy quietly harboring a murderous beast under his skin with no idea what to do with it. His way of coping is... well, not coping. He locks the wolf away and tries his hardest to pretend it doesn’t exist while at the same time being terrified he’s going to lose himself to it if he’s not careful. Instead of being open and honest he becomes terrified of his own emotions, of losing control. This is more prominent toward the end of his run on the show, but it’s definitely present prior to that. He doesn’t talk about his feelings. He barely allows himself to feel them at all. He’s afraid all the time, under the surface - not of monsters or vampires, but of himself and what he could do. The lycanthropy is the key factor in his affair with Veruca, as it wouldn’t have happened at all if she hadn’t been so far ahead of him in dealing with her lycanthropy. He had no idea what to do with her, and she was able to manipulate him into doing what she wanted (which was lock himself in the cage with her). To be fair to him, as soon as he turned he had no control over his actions (although he knew what would happen when he got into the cage with her, let’s be real). Finally, the whole reason Oz leaves Sunnydale at all is he’s afraid he’ll lose control and kill someone he cares about in his current state.

For me, thinking through this has flipped their relationship issues entirely upside-down. If Oz had been able to face and deal with his lycanthropy early on, would these issues still have presented themselves? In short, I don’t think so.

If these issues hadn’t been there, would Willow and Oz ever have broken up? I’m not sure, honestly. I think it would’ve depended on what was right for each of them at the time.

Willow’s sexuality is a factor, of course (and a significant one at that), but that is a topic for another post I haven’t thought through yet, not a “yada, yada” paragraph at the end of this Willow/Oz examination.

All this is coming around to an opinion I’ve now formed that in some alternate universe, Oz and Willow never broke up and had a long, happy relationship.

That’s not to say it never ends to give way to another path for Willow, but I haven’t gotten that far in my “What if…” scenario yet.

Now I have an urge to write an AU fanfic series.

Anyway, there’s my rambling on Willow and Oz.

[becauseimsensational]

Killing Eve rewatch: "I'll Deal With Him Later"

Of course, Eve remains as tangentially relatable as ever during her meeting with Carolyn: from the five seconds of awkward stuttering that seem to last five minutes because secondhand embarrassment is a REAL problem, to the point at which she explodes in her learned polite, British manner, Eve's frustration leaps off the screen and demands attention. I have to wonder how many times she's tried explaining this theory of hers to Niko, or to Bill and Elena, and how many times they'd tell her she was insane and grasping at straws. For once, someone is listening to her, believes her, and isn't calling her crazy. The line, "It's like I've stepped into my brain!" is massively important for both Eve and the audience. It shows Eve's intelligence and tenacity with these cases, but it also gives her a sense of agency and validates the extra secret work she'd put in at MI-5 that's now paying off. (Side note: God bless Phoebe Waller-Bridge for casting Fiona Shaw as Carolyn, because that line about the rat drinking from the can of Coke is so absurdly funny due to her deadpan delivery of it, and I'm not sure any other actress would've been able to do that line justice.) That whole scene is also a massive turning point, because Eve is finally allowed to investigate what she wants to, and she's got no boundaries or dickswab superiors telling her she can't.

I think one of the most endearing things about Villanelle is her sense of humor and the deadpan delivery of some of her answers. The exchange with Konstantin about the bruise on her eye is undeniably funny, but it's interesting that a hardened assassin uses humor to deflect any possible kernel of truth, even with someone she's so familiar with. The assessment scene is wickedly funny, too, in true Villanelle fashion. The line about the photo of the hanged man having "good legs" should not be funny, but somehow it is. Villanelle subverts all expectations, laughing at and making light of things that "ordinary" people should not—but don't we all know someone like that, who laughs at awfully morbid things? Who uses humor as a mask for their true feelings? (I personally use dark humor constantly to cover the trauma I experienced in the past, which may be informing my feelings toward the assessment scene, but I digress.) The appeal of using dark humor in stressful situations is a sense of control that I think most of us crave. It's a control that Villanelle certainly has—until Konstantin makes Jerome ask her about Anna and shows her the sketch of the woman. For me, there are two possibilities here: either she's lying and the woman is Anna, or she's lying and it is actually her mother.

Either would make sense, honestly. It's very easy to lie and bite out the first denial that comes to mind, even if it's just a direct reversal of what the other person said. At this point, the audience doesn't know who Anna is, but we can assume she was someone important to Villanelle, or she wouldn't have had such a hard time getting back to using humor to control the situation. I personally think Villanelle was, for once, being genuine when she said the woman was supposed to be her mother. It could make sense, given the fact that she keeps staring at older women with dark hair. It could be an unfulfilled maternal fantasy, or I could just be talking out of my ass and she was actually joking about it being her mom. Also, we don't know how long Konstantin had that sketch in his possession for, so it's unlikely the woman in the sketch is Eve. On the off-chance it is actually Eve (or Random London Hospital Woman, from Villanelle's pov), maybe Villanelle sketched it because her hair reminded her of Anna's. But who knows? That scene is still kind of ambiguous to me.

After the assessment when she hugs Konstantin, I sensed a bit of a disconnect. The hug looked inorganic, forced, and like it was a spur-of-the-moment thing she remembered that people do sometimes. This is definitely coming from beyond the constraints of just this episode, but I'd be willing to bet she's never hugged anyone without an ulterior motive. Ever. Call me crazy but Villanelle just doesn't seem like a hugger. Someone pointed out to me that Villanelle is very similar to an AI, a comparison I hate (because robots terrify me lol) but one that makes sense. She has no moral compass or ethical code, she's an efficient killing machine and, most interestingly, she mimics other people's behavior to fit in. I truly think she has no idea how to be a "normal" human, which explains the smiling battle with the little girl on the ice cream shop from episode one, the awkward way she hugs Konstantin, and then mimicking the laughter she hears on the radio when she's out with Sebastian.

Oh, Sebastian. Adorable, sweet, sensitive Sebastian. I actually was rooting for him to stay alive, but…well, we see how long that lasted. While the sex scene didn't come as a shock to me at all, the logistics of it were weirdly refreshing. For once, the woman was on top, in total control, and the man was begging for mercy. For once, the man was being used as a sexual object for the woman's gratification. I found myself audibly "aww-ing" for the fifth fucking time because I'm a sap when Sebastian assured Villanelle he'd never hurt her, while her hand was around his throat. Never one for sentimentality, Villanelle's cold, vacant eyes and flat affect tacitly told us all we needed to know: "This was fun, but I don't believe you. And I'm not going to let you get close enough to find out if you're lying."

The subtle recognition in Eve's eyes in the bathroom speaks to the nuance of Sandra Oh's acting. It's clearly just a passing remembrance, because I'm fairly certain the traumatic memory of walking into witness the carnage in that hospital room would outweigh a nurse in a bathroom, but for some reason the encounter stood out to Eve. She's almost constantly fiddling with her luxurious mane, and probably spends most of her time trying to keep it out of her face. And then a random beautiful young woman stares at her for a little too long, then tells her to "Wear it down," which may have been the first time anyone's ever told her that.

THE KILL: It might sound demented, but I think this one is my favorite. Villanelle is a master manipulator and knows exactly what to say to get Carla to smell her perfume. Not to mention all the preparation that went into that kill? Mixing that toxic perfume, having the correct outfit and wig, the "three weeks of catering training" she supposedly did, and the tampon in her pocket as an excuse to get to her target? She really thinks of everything when it comes to her job, and that's a determination I can support! (Well, mostly, I mean she is killing people…) But then there's the utter fascination in her eyes as she watches Madame De Mann die, slowly and excruciatingly. And then, of course, Villanelle makes it laugh-out-loud funny by grabbing the woman's hand and waving goodbye with it, once again using dark humor even though she's had control of the situation the whole time.

Yet again, Sebastian's the sweetest guy who didn't deserve what happened to him. He's not an idiot, of course he didn't believe that Konstantin was her brother. Not to mention he literally walked in on him choking her against the wall? His willingness to protect Villanelle (AKA "Julie") is adorable and noble, but it was his curiosity and desire to support her in her perfume business that got him in the end, poor guy. Also, Konstantin's lazy, half-assed "I'm her brother" never fails to crack me up, along with Villanelle's "Dealt with" when they find Sebastian's body. PWB's writing and Jodie Comer's delivery are the perfect match, I swear.

The final scene of both leading ladies trying to research the other has to be one of my favorites of the series. In a way, it's a little like the moment in You've Got Mail when Tom Hanks realizes the perpetual thorn in his side is the woman he's in love with—but Meg Ryan's still in the dark for the rest of the movie. The instant oh shit look on Villanelle's face is priceless. She's relaxing in bed after a glass of champagne, googling Eve's name to see what comes up, and then…it's her. She probably never thought she'd see Hospital Bathroom Woman again, but there she is! On her screen, and leading a department just for her; the cocky grin she had when Konstantin first told her is nowhere to be found. On Eve's end, she's poring over every photo of every nurse at that hospital; it's late, she should be home in bed, but she can't sleep until she finds a photo of the woman. When she doesn't, it finally connects: "I think I've met her."

Random observations:

-During the assessment, Villanelle speaks of her mother in the present tense: "I'm joking. My mother has really thin, shitty hair." To me, that line indicated that her mother's alive. (Because I've seen this show in its entirety four times already, this will definitely come up again later but for now it's just something to keep in mind)

-Frank's still a dickswab. God I can't wait until I get to watch him get murdered again

-Why national anthems? Of all the genres of music she could have thrown out, why that one? She was born in a post-Soviet Russia, so the anthem's been toned down a bit; also, Konstantin told Jerome that she doesn't speak Russian anymore, indicating a disconnect from her homeland. But the French national anthem? That makes a little more sense for Villanelle to like. It's defiant, it's triumphant, and damn it's violent. But just because you like one country's national anthem doesn't mean you like them all, and most of the rest of them are boring "I love my country" rhetoric that are sorely lacking the mentions of bloodshed that the French have. She's just a constant surprise, I guess lol

-Sebastian's got a dressform in his apartment, which I think is cool because hey, he did actually make his trousers like he said.

-Villanelle eats on screen, which is so refreshing for a female character. And they're not like important meals, it's snacking and eating junk food like real people do. (Yeah, the bar for women acting like humans on screen is that low)

-Who would I be if I didn't mention that infamous champagne cork pop?! The placement of the bottle right between Jodie's legs, and the fact that it explodes right after Villanelle says Eve's name? Iconic. There had to have been some deity that blessed that take because…wow, it was perfect. And totally unexpected and unscripted, as Jodie confirmed on twitter.

-Even in the photo Villanelle finds of her, Eve's got her hand in her hair, messing with it as usual. Maybe it's a manifestation of Eve's insecurities, either about her appearance (for which there is no reason, have you seen Sandra Oh?) or about herself generally.

-If you pause the screen while Villanelle's googling, some of the search results are hilarious!

The first one (from the not at all made up website 'powbangsmash.tv') advertises "Horrific Wrestling Accidents" featuring Polastri Pulverizer, which is just so random, even for a fake google search.

The second is about Niko who, apparently, tutors people in the world's most boring card game AND was the national champion in 1998, because of course Niko's really really good at really really mundane things.

The third mentions the origins of the Polastri family line which: "BEGAN IN THE 1880S WITH ERIC POLASTRI, WHO HAD THREE WIVES EACH NAMED JANE" which is just bizarre

The fourth one, my favorite, is a One Direction Fan Fiction called "A Hallow's Eve in the wrong direction" from the site 'fanfictionsandhomemadetales.org' which, sadly, doesn't actually exist. (Yes I did look that one up)

The last one is about a house fire and how the dad saved the family's puppy, named Eve. Pets with human names will never not be funny to me, and Eve is just so odd-sounding for an animal.