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seijorhi · 4 years

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Outrunning Fate

As promised (though I am more than a little late for Shiratorizawa Week), the soulmate AU

Tendou x female reader x Ushijima

TW stalking, possessive behaviour, implied non-con

Soulmates were supposed to be a blessing.

It was a fairytale that you’d grown up hearing about. One person who was supposed to be wholly yours.

Your parents were soulmates, even if you hadn’t always understood the concept, the proof of that remarkable, unshakable bond was always right in front of you. It wasn’t in the big grand gestures, it was little things - the soft, adoring look in your father’s eye as your mother passed him his coffee every morning, the way she always sought out his touch when they were together, even if it was just to twine her fingers with his, or the way that they always seemed to be able to sense when the other was upset, and wordlessly found the perfect way to comfort them.

Your father never had to tell you that he loved your mother, but he did, every single day. He told her too, just to see her smile.

It seemed effortless, easy, as if their love for one another was as natural as breathing. How could you be blamed for looking at your bare wrist, waiting for the day that name would appear in scrawling black ink, feeling that excited fluttering in your chest because you knew one day you’d meet your soulmate and have that perfect, fairytale love all for yourself.

Except it wasn’t like that.

Something went wrong.

***

You’re fifteen and barely paying attention in class when your skin prickles uncomfortably. Your heart leaps into your chest as you tug up the sleeve off your blazer, watching wide eyed with bated breath as a name appears on your wrist.

Tendou Satori.

The beginnings of a smile start to curl at your lips, but it freezes in place as more inky black writing appears below the first.

Ushijima Wakatoshi.

A second name.

And suddenly, it feels like your perfectly crafted world begins to fall apart. Two soulmates aren’t unheard of, but they’re incredibly rare and you can’t deny that there’s a certain… stigma attached to it.

What kind of a person isn’t satisfied with just one?

This is supposed to be some magical, thrilling moment for you, but instead all you can focus on is the pounding of your heart and the growing wave of nausea that rises in the back of your throat. Quickly you yank your sleeve back down and before you can even think to stutter an apology to your bewildered teacher, you’re out of your seat and sprinting down the hallway to the bathroom. You barely make it before hurling up your guts.

After that, you start wearing long sleeves wherever you go.

It’s not that you’re ashamed, you tell yourself as you bite your lip and try your utmost to fade into the background whenever the topic comes up in conversation, it’s just that… other people aren’t always so accepting.

You’ve tried to get used to the disgusted looks, the invasive questions and the insults that follow you wherever you go, but it’s easier said than done. You hate that your cheeks still burn scarlet whenever you catch someone staring at your marks, almost as much as you hate the way you quickly duck your head in shame and race to fix your sleeve.

‘It’s okay, honey. I know it’s not what you expected but… it just means there’s one more person out there waiting to love you with everything they have. You’re twice as lucky as the rest of us,’ your father had told you on that horrible day. You just wished it hadn’t sounded like he was trying to convince himself at the same time.

***

You’re seventeen and the first boy who kisses you tries to shove your hand down his pants because he knows you’ve got two names on your wrist, and that means you’re up for anything, right?

You run home with tears streaming down your face and when you shower that night you scrub at the marks like you’re trying to erase them entirely.

What did having two names mean really? That one wasn’t enough? Would they be content sharing you? Would they even know of the other’s existence?

You could only imagine how horrifying it would be for them, spending months, years waiting for you only to realise that they didn’t really have all of you…

Would they hate you? Could you even blame them if they did?

Sometimes… sometimes you think it might be better if you didn’t have a soulmate at all, instead of this. It’s easier just to ignore it, pretend they don’t exist, pretend that you’re not gonna ruin their lives. Who knows, maybe you’ll be one of those few who never actually meet their soulmates. You can live with that, you think. You have a family who love you, a bunch of close friends who’d die for you - who needs stupid soulmates?

***

It’s the morning after your 18th birthday, your head is still pounding from the alcohol and bad decisions from the night before when your curiosity finally gets the better of you. It’s the modern age, most people live their lives online, you figure you’ll find a facebook page, a twitter account maybe.

Instead, the first item that comes up in your search is a video. It’s a news segment about a volleyball game - some high school team that you’ve never heard of, but you listen to the commentator talk and your heart leaps into your throat because they mention the Ace by name and suddenly there he is. Tall, dark haired and imposing - Ushijima Wakatoshi.

But you don’t even have a moment to breathe, to focus on the absolute beast that is your second soulmate and his terrifying spike because the camera shifts and suddenly there’s another player in focus. Tall, gangly with bright, spiky red hair and a too-wide grin, “-not the only player in the spotlight after today’s match; Shiratorizawa’s middle blocker, the so called ‘Guess Monster’ Tendou Satori-”

You close the browser window and slam your laptop shut.

They’re… friends, or teammates at the very least.

It feels like a bad dream you can’t wake up from. This whole thing is already messy enough, but you can’t get in the middle of that, you refuse to make everything worse for them just because the fates have decided to play a cruel joke on you.

If there were any lingering doubt left in your mind that you’re better off burying your soulmates, they’re well and truly put to bed.

That night, you dream of a cheering crowd, the thwack of a volleyball ricocheting off a vinyl floor and two menacing figures looming over you.

With your final exams around the corner, it’s almost too easy to put the video and your soulmates out of your mind as you throw yourself into studying. Months pass in the blink of an eye and suddenly you’re dressed in black robes and holding your high school diploma. You celebrate with your friends, dancing wildly with a care-free grin long into the night because you know you’re finally getting out of there for good. Tokyo’s a big city, you’ll lose yourself there and nobody, not a single damned soul, will know about the two names that grace your wrist. It’s as close to freedom as you’re ever gonna get - and god that makes you so fucking happy.

Your bags are packed and you’re holding your parents as they sob and then, like that, you’re gone.

Tokyo awaits.

***

It’s not that easy to outrun fate.

Living in Tokyo ain’t cheap, even for the shitty little shoebox apartment you rent while you’re studying. You manage to find a job at one of the Americanised diner style cafes just down the road from where you live two weeks after moving in. It’s popular with students because it’s open till late, the coffee’s good and the waffles are exactly what the doctor ordered after a long night of drinking with your friends. You’re just happy because the pay’s pretty decent and your boss lets you bring in your laptop and textbooks so you can study when it’s not too busy. You’re not nearly as thrilled about the short, revealing blue dress that serves as your uniform, but you know when to pick your battles.

It’s a little after one o’clock on a slow Tuesday night, the cafe’s almost empty and you’re propped up on your elbows along the countertop, absentmindedly thumbing through one of your assigned readings for class tomorrow when you hear the tell-tale chime of the door opening.

You hastily shove your books aside, plastering a wide if not a little artificial smile across your face, you glance up to greet the customers, only to freeze in place.

Your heart skips a beat.

Of all the cafes in the sprawling city, of course your soulmate has to walk into this one.

With his wild, spiked red hair and easy, sloping grin, Tendou’s unmistakable as he strides through the cafe with two other guys you can only assume are his friends. You suppose you should be a little relieved that he barely spares you a glance as the threesome make a beeline for one of the corner booths, but it’s hard to feel anything other than blind panic at the sight of your soulmate only a few feet away. It’s purely out of habit that you reach for your wrist and the skin coloured bandage hiding your traitorous marks, and you allow yourself to breathe the tiniest sigh of relief when you feel it still in place.

A loud cackle bursts through the quiet atmosphere of the cafe and you dart a glance over to see Tendou with his head thrown back laughing at something one of the others has said. There’s an uncomfortable fluttering in your stomach and your cheeks redden just a touch. It’s not an awful sound (not at all), but your pulse is racing and you think you just might be sick because this is all… too much.

You’d left them in the past along with whatever fairytale fantasies you thought having a soulmate would bring. You… you’re happy being alone and coping just fine without either one of them! They were a dream - a distant possibility you’d long since locked away, you weren’t supposed to ever actually see them!

At least it’s only Tendou, you think you might actually combust if they were both here. Still, there’s a faint tremor in your hand as you brush a lock of hair out of your face and try to regain control of your breathing.

As much as you’d like to run, or preferably, have the earth suddenly open up and swallow you whole, you know you can’t. For one, you’re the only server left until close and your boss might be easy going but somehow you doubt he’d let you keep your job after a stunt like that. More importantly, you have a sinking suspicion that causing a fuss will only draw his attention and that’s the last thing you want. He doesn’t know who you are, your mark is safely tucked away under your bandages, this will be fine.

It’s an hour and a half until close, he and his friends will get some food, eat, drink and chat amongst themselves and then you can kick them out and it’ll all be over. You barely have to interact with him. For all he knows you’re just a server in a random cafe - this will be fine.

Robotically you force your legs to move, carrying you towards your oblivious soulmate. You’re pretty sure that your smile’s a little off and you haven’t quite managed to quell the shaking in your hands as you reach for your notepad, flipping it open.

It’s the best you can do, especially when there’s a voice inside your head that’s all but begging for you to turn around and pretend this whole thing never happened.

Tendou appears to be thoroughly engrossed in whatever story he’s telling his friends, waving his arms around wildly when you reach their table. Normally you’d clear your throat politely and wait for them to settle down before introducing yourself and asking for their order, but when you open your mouth - nothing comes out. It’s like your whole throat has suddenly dried up and you’re just standing there gaping like an idiot, but Tendou hasn’t even noticed.

The ashy blonde to his left, however, does. His eyes flicker to you and you swear that you can see the faintest trace of amusement as he takes you in. He smirks, quickly shoving an elbow into the redhead’s side and jerking his chin in your direction.

“Hey loudmouth, pipe down would you?”

Your breath catches as he turns around to look up at you and grins, “Ah, sorry. Didn’t see ya there!”

The other two have picked up their menus again, but for whatever reason just as Tendou’s gaze starts to slide off of you, something catches his attention and stops him in his tracks. Like a magpie spotting something shiny in the distance, those big, droopy red eyes suddenly widen and zero back in with unnerving interest. Frozen with that fake, half hearted smile painted across your lips you feel strangely like a bug caught under a microscope as Tendou studies you - there’s really no other way to describe it. His head tilts to the side and he makes a low noise from the back of his throat that almost sounds pleased.

He can’t know, there’s no possible way, but if he doesn’t then why the hell is he staring at you like that?

It’s all you can do to remain rooted in place, your heart hammering so loudly against your ribs that you’re sure they have to be able to hear it too. Whatever he’s searching for he apparently finds because his grin widens and he leans back in his seat and chuckles. “Why’d you look so nervous, we’re not gonna bite - promise!”

The other guy at the table rolls his eyes, “Tendou, don’t scare the pretty waitress, she’s just trying to do her job,” he chastises, offering you an apologetic smile that does little to ease your nerves. “Don’t mind him, he’s an idiot, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

You swallow and hum in faint acknowledgment, and he takes that as a sign to begin his order.

You were hoping that they were just going to get some drinks and be out of your hair, but as he starts listing off various snacks and appetizers to share and the ashy blonde throws out a few more, it looks like your nightmare is only just beginning.

You nod dutifully, writing it all down. The cook is just going to love you for this, but there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. “Anything else?” you ask in a voice that just barely passes for what your boss deems ‘customer service appropriate’, decidedly not looking towards the redhead who is still staring at you.

He hasn’t looked at the menu once since you walked over, actually you doubt he’s looked at the menu at all, but it doesn’t seem to matter because he pipes up regardless, “Yep, one of those thickshakes, you know - the really good strawberry one, annnd-”

“Y/N, order up!!”

Your soul leaves your body at the exact same moment that Tendou’s pupils dilate and snap to your wrist.

The pen in your hand is shaking, your grip so tight that it’s a wonder the flimsy plastic doesn’t shatter as you turn to glance over your shoulder. The cook is leaning out across the overpass, staring at you with a scowl and vaguely you register the hot plate of food in front of him which can’t have been sitting there for more than a minute at the most. You give a weak nod, earning you a dismissive grunt in response, before turning back to the table.

All three of them are staring wide eyed and open mouthed at you.

Fuck.

They know. They have to know.

You should have legged it when you had the chance.

Breathe. Smile. Play dumb. This is fine.

“A-anything el-”

“Somethin’ wrong with your wrist?” Tendou asks slowly, eyeing the bandage like he wants nothing more than to snatch it up and rip it away from you. His fingers flex and you don’t even have time to brace before they’re shooting out towards you-

A hand catches his forearm before he can touch you - it’s his friend, the dark haired one with the crew cut, who’s currently staring down the erratic redhead with a distinct frown.

It’s the blonde who speaks up, “Sorry, he’s had a few drinks tonight. The idiot sometimes forgets his manners in public.”

The music is still playing in the background, somebody laughs at the table a few down from theirs, but in this little pocket, trapped between the three of them with the tension thick enough to slice with a knife, the silence is oppressive.

And then Tendou’s attention shifts back to you and your stomach flips - it’s like the floor has disappeared beneath your feet and you’re suddenly careening through the empty air with no hope in hell of slowing down.

He looks… well, mad is the wrong word. Tendou is technically smiling, but his grin stretched slightly too wide, his eyes a little too intense. There’s an emotion you can’t name etched across his pale features, and it’s unsettling… it scares you a little, if you’re being honest.

You swallow and take a tiny, shaking breath. “I-it’s fine. I tripped last week and sprained it.”

“Clumsy, are you?” he asks, prying himself free of his friend’s grip.

A laugh forces its way out, grating and too sharp to be believable. “Yeah, I guess. Your food won’t be too long, if you need anything else, just- just let me know.”

You don’t give them a chance to respond as you all but flee the table. You’re shaking and almost in tears by the time you reach the kitchen, the cook takes one look at you, a grumpy admonishment on the tip of his tongue, and falters.

They stay until close, and you avoid them like the plague.

Hours later, lying tucked up in your bed your skin still prickles from the thought of Tendou’s piercing stare. Maybe if you’d kept some kind of a level head through it all instead of acting like a flustered school girl, he might have just passed it all off as a coincidence.

But you hadn’t, had you?

It wasn’t just that he knew who you were to him (and to Ushijima) but that after all your blushing and stammering, the pitiful attempts at hiding your soulmate marks and the way you all but ran from him the very first moment you could, he had to know that you knew as well. That despite coming face to face with your soulmate, you lied - you rejected him.

You mom once told you that the first time she laid eyes on her soulmate the world stopped spinning and all she felt was joy. Maybe there’s something wrong with you after all, because despite the insistent tug in your heart, you just feel sick. Despite being exhausted after your long shift, sleep that night doesn’t come easy.

It’s two days later that you find yourself back in the cafe, working a rare day shift on your only week-days off from classes. You keep glancing up at the door every few minutes, half dreading the possibility that any moment, Tendou and his friends are going to walk in, but they don’t.

Ushijima does, a little after the lunch rush dies down.

He looks so out of place against the vibrant backdrop of the 50’s style diner, all serious and stoic, that if he were anybody else you might think he was lost.

But he isn’t lost, because he’s staring right at you.

You don’t notice one of your co-workers sliding up to you until they laugh and playfully nudge your side. “Ah, I see the eye candy is back. Try and pick up your jaw, Y/N,” they tease.

Back?

Instead of finding an empty table to sit himself down at (and give you a minute to mentally prepare) Ushijima is making his way straight over to the counter, unsmiling and huge. How was he even bigger in person?! He could crush you with his thighs alone!

“He’s been here before?” you ask quietly, unable to draw your gaze away from him.

Your co-worker snorts. “Yeah, he came in last night, he even asked for you by name. Seemed kinda disappointed when I told him you weren’t on until today. You holding out on me, Y/N? I thought we were closer than that. You know you’re supposed to tell me when you start dating a hot ass dude!”

They slip away with a wink before you even have a chance to respond and you’re left floundering as Ushijima approaches. Your mouth is dry, your pulse racing. Just like with Tendou, you have no escape, nowhere you can run or hide.

He asked for you by name.

Fuck. You should have quit when you had the chance.

Ushijima isn’t smiling. Where Tendou had been beaming with chaotic energy from the moment he walked in, your second soulmate seems almost stony as he stares at you with serious olive eyes. You honestly can’t tell if he’s frowning or if that’s just the way his face is, but it makes your gut twist regardless.

It might also be the fact that he’s towering over you without even trying to. He has to be at least 6’3” but it’s not just his height that’s imposing - he’s brawny and muscular and, yeah, huge. Briefly you remember the news clip you’d seen of him, the terrifying brute force behind his spike.

He seems to be waiting for you to speak, so you swallow down the lump in your throat and try to remember how to breathe like a normal person. “Hi, can I get you anything?”

Something briefly flickers across his face, but otherwise his expression remains distressingly neutral. “… I would like some tea.”

You nod - it’s like pulling teeth. “Yeah, sure. We uh, we actually have a few different kinds…”

He makes a rough noise of acknowledgement and then… pauses. Instead of the menu, Ushijima studies you. His lips twitch into the faintest hint of a… smile? You can’t quite tell, but it looks out of place regardless. “I will have whichever you recommend.”

You can’t seem to be able to form words, so you settle with nodding, gesturing for him to take a seat while he waits.

His eyes don’t shift from you, nor does he make any attempt to mask the fact that he’s staring right at you. When his tea is ready, you all but beg your co-worker to take it to him.

“Trouble in paradise?” they ask, waggling their eyebrows.

“It’s not like that,” you mutter, but they take the tea regardless, and you busy yourself in wiping down tables and pretending that you can’t see the scowl from the volleyball player burning across the diner.

It really isn’t.

Even after tucking any thought of meeting your soulmates away there was always some tiny part of you - a part you were always so desperate to ignore - that wondered how it would feel to meet them, to be loved by them…

But while your heart squeezes with every glance, it’s not warm, dizzying bliss that floods your system and sends blood rushing to your cheeks. You don’t know what the feeling is that curls in your stomach and claws its way up your spine, but it’s nothing good.

Something went wrong with you, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

Ushijima stays for an hour, finishes his tea and makes his way back to the counter to pay.

He's wearing a grey hoodie, running gear underneath, and when he hands you the money, passing it directly into hands, his sleeve rides up. There, plain as day, is his soulmate mark.

Your name, written in black ink on Ushijima's wrist, forever marking you as his.

You jerk, flinching away from him, but he doesn’t make a move to cover it.

“You cannot run from us, Y/N. We are your soulmates, we’re bound together.” His voice is little more than a murmur, but there’s an edge to it, sharp and pointed. Not so much a statement as a fact, as undeniable as your name on his skin, on Tendou’s.

He says it like it’s a promise, staring into your eyes with that impenetrable gaze and for a moment you forget how to breathe.

“Why are you so determined to fight it?”

You swallow, taking the cash from his hand and punching it into the till. “I’m sorry, whoever you think I am…” you trail off, finally raising your eyes to meet his penetrating stare. You’re quietly proud of the way your voice doesn’t shake, even as your heart races like a hummingbird in your chest and your palms sweat. “I’m not.”

The only sign that Ushijima hears you at all is the subtle furrowing of his brow and a distinctly displeased hum from the back of his throat.

“I hope you enjoyed your tea.” The cutting barb slips from your lips before you can stop them, but there’s a certain vindictive satisfaction you get in watching his eyes widen, the brief hurt that flickers across his face.

Of course, it only lasts a fraction of a second before his features school into a blank mask and he nods.

“Perhaps I will try another the next time I see you.”

And with a short bow, he walks away.

You leave your apron behind when you finish your shift at the diner, and you don’t come back.

There will be other jobs.

***

It’s not enough.

They start showing around campus.

The first time you catch sight of Tendou, you’re running between classing, cursing the ridiculous schedule that has you attending two back to back lectures on opposite sides of the campus. It’s just a glance - a flicker of red in the corner of your eye. The only reason you stop at all is because you're so focused on not being late that you fail to see the crack in the path until you’re tripping over it. The books in your hand go flying as you sprawl across the pavement.

“Huh, you really weren’t kidding about being clumsy, were ya?”

A pale hand stretches out before you, and just like with Ushijima, Tendou doesn’t bother hiding the soulmate mark as he grins down at you with those wide, creepy eyes.

You ignore it entirely, waving it away as you pick yourself up with a grunt. The skin on one of your palms is grazed, and you’re pretty sure that your knees are too, but all in all it could be worse. It’s more your pride that smarts, that and the fact that of all people to see you trip, it has to be him.

“Aw, don’t be like that, baby. I’m only try’na help you!”

You scowl, snatching your textbooks out of his offered hands. “I’m not your baby, Tendou,” you mutter.

You regret the words immediately. His grin slowly widens and he makes a sound, somewhere between a shudder and a moan - it’s almost pornogaphic and wholly inappropriate and it sends blood rushing to your cheeks, but you don’t have time to think about it.

“I’m already late, just-” you break off with a sigh, readjusting the strap of your backpack, staring resolutely at the ground. “I’m not what you want, what… what either of you want. Just leave me alone, okay?!”

Tendou doesn’t say a word as you walk away, but just like always you feel the burning stare following you until you’re out of sight.

Somewhat stupidly, you think that’ll be the end of it. The gloves are off - you might not have said it in as many words, but there’s no point denying it any longer. They are your soulmates and it doesn’t change a thing.

There is something wrong with your bond.

But they don’t see it like that.

They figure out your schedule, take it in turns to wait outside your classes, ambushing you whenever you’re alone.

“I have a game tomorrow,” Ushijima tells you on a rainy Thursday afternoon as he follows you home. “I would like for you to come.”

It doesn’t seem to bother him that you walk a few steps ahead (or try to at least - his legs are ridiculously long) with your head bent down, ignoring the steady rainfall that threatens to saturate you. Tendou usually fights for your attention, grabs at your hands, your waist, any part he can reach just to touch you, but Ushiwaka seems content to merely be near - so long as you stray too far.

“I have exams to study for.”

He hums noncommittally, “Tendou will be there.”

All the more reason not to go.

The silence between you two is heavy.

“It would make me… happy, if you came,” he tries again.

Your eyes squeeze shut for just a moment. You hate it when he does this, when he acts like you’re the one being stubborn. Like you haven’t told him, told them both to stop a thousand times before. Like they haven’t ignored it at every turn, blatantly refused to acknowledge that you don’t want them like they want you.

Shouldn’t ‘no’ have been enough?

You’ve considered reporting it to campus security, or even the police, maybe trying to get a restraining order or something like that, but what would you even say - ‘Please Officer, sir, my soulmates are stalking me’? Yeah, that’ll go down a real fucking treat.

“Why…” you trail off with a sigh, forcing yourself to stop walking.

This time he does reach for you, taking your hand in his. It’s warm and rough from years of volleyball and hard work, and you hate that it’s already so familiar. His expression is as stoic as ever, but there’s a quiet reverence in his eyes as he looks at you, as if he can’t quite believe you’re really there with him. You suppose in another light, it might almost look romantic, the two of you holding hands under his umbrella, lost in your own little world as the rain pours down around you.

He seems to be waiting for you to finish your thought, so you buck up whatever dregs of courage you still have and try again, “Why can’t you just… move on? I don’t want this- this thing, whatever it is between us.” You sigh, tugging your hand back, “I just want to be alone, why can’t you respect that?!”

He doesn’t answer for a long moment, staring at you, his thumb rubbing back and forth along the back of your palm.

But then he shrugs, easily, as if you’re merely discussing the weather and not their continued overbearing and unwanted presence in your life. “We love you. More than anything, and despite your… reservations, we belong together, what other reason does there need to be?” He pauses, his gaze softening just a fraction, “You’ll come around eventually,” he adds.

A tiny part of you crumples at that. What’s the use in arguing with a brick wall?

***

It’s a minor relief when you walk out of your last lecture for the day the following afternoon. It might be because it’s a Friday and you, for once, have absolutely no plans for the weekend, but realistically it’s more to do with the fact that you know no one is waiting for you outside. Ushijima has his volleyball game, and Tendou will be there with him, cheering from the sidelines.

You should be happier, really, but there’s a pit in your stomach that’s been there since Ushijima left you at your door last night.

They’re not going to stop.

Instead of listening to the professor talk, you’ve spent the last three hours searching university transfers. You love Tokyo University, you love Tokyo - the big, bustling city you’d gladly lose yourself in again and again, but it can’t be your home, not when they’re here too.

There’s a University in Kyoto, it has a similar program to the one you’re already in. It’s a surprisingly easy process to change - your grades are decent enough, all you have to is apply. One simple click of a button. It’ll take a few weeks for it all to go through, which’ll give you enough time to figure out how you’re gonna upend your entire life without them realising - assuming of course that Kyoto university accepts the request.

If you soulmates won’t let you go, you’ll run, and you’ll keep running. Maybe you’re wrong, maybe one day you’ll look back at them and feel that same love for them that you’d seen in your parents instead of that black, cloying unease that twists at your guts, but so long as they don’t give the choice, what options do you have?

You’re not stupid, this… thing that they’re doing, the stalking, monopolising your time, trying to drive your friends away, it’s not the end game. What happens when they get tired of you ignoring them?

“Hey, Y/N wait up!”

For a moment your heart seizes, but it calms almost immediately when you realise the voice isn’t the one you’re afraid of.

You turn to find one of the guys from your last lecture walking over. He’s kinda cute, in a lost puppy kind of way, and he’s nice, for the three conversations you’ve actually had with him. Honestly you’re a little surprised he actually knows your name (considering you’ve definitely forgotten his) but you smile back regardless. “Hey, what’s up?”

“You doing anything tonight?”

Netflix and crashing early, but you’re hardly about to tell him that, “Not much, why?”

He smiles, and for a moment you’re taken aback by just how utterly endearing it is. He really is cute. “Me and a few friends are having a party tonight, you’re uh, you’re welcome to come. Y’know, if you’re not doing anything,” he says with a laugh, throwing in a wink for good measure.

But his smile fades a little as he catches a glimpse of something behind you. You frown at the odd reaction, turning instinctively to see what drew his attention when a weight drapes across your shoulders and you find yourself being pulled into a sideways embrace.

“There you are, baby! I was starting to think you’d gotten lost,” a familiar voice drawls. “Who’s your friend?”

You can’t see Tendou’s expression as he rests his chin on your shoulder, but from the way your classmate blanches you can imagine that it’s not pleasant. Still you have to give him credit, he only falters for a second before he’s rubbing the back of his neck and offering a sheepish smile, “Oh, hey, uh… yeah, I’m-”

“Punching a little above your weight, dont’cha think?” Tendou cuts him off with a snort, nuzzling in just a little closer. You can feel the warmth of his breath against your neck as he tilts his head to whisper in your ear, “I thought Ushiwaka told you about the game tonight.”

You shiver, although whether it’s from his softly edged words or the kiss he presses against your cheek, you’re not entirely sure. “He did, I-I told him that I had to study…”

Tendou laughs, squeezing you tighter, “Psh, is that all? Baby, we can help you study later. C’mon, or we’re gonna miss the start of the game.”

And like that he’s tugging you away. With Tendou’s arm wrapped snugly around you, you don’t even have a chance to turn around and apologise to the guy. He’s done it purposefully, a reminder you suppose of who you belong to - though for your classmate’s benefit or yours you honestly don’t know.

Ushijima’s already on the court by the time Tendou and you arrive at your seats (front row of course) but he glances over as you both settle down and his lips quirk into the faintest hint of a smile.

It would make me… happy, if you came, he’d said.

You don’t miss the razor sharp, anticipatory gleam in his eyes, though.

He destroys the competition. You still remember that brief clip you’d seen years ago of his brutal spike - it seems like time has only served to make it more lethal. The rest of his team is undeniably good, you doubt Ushijima would join a club made up of anything less than the best, but still, he’s in his element and without a single doubt the strongest on the court.

For every point he scores, Tendou cheers wildly. Halfway through the second set you can see that every player on the other side hates Ushijima - if the scowls and muttered snarls they’re shooting his way are anything to go by. You can’t exactly say you blame them for it either. They’re demoralised and angry, frustrated by the huge Ace and his indomitable force and even though he’s not a part of the team, Tendou revels in it. There’s a song he starts to sing, some inane jig that flows too naturally to have been made up on the spot. You can almost imagine him on the court beside Ushiwaka, singing it after stealing point after point from the other team. The two of them must have made a formidable team on the court.

They still do, you suppose.

You’ve never been one for volleyball, or sports in general, but even you can’t deny the sense of feral anticipation in the air as Ushijima steps up to serve on match point. Tendou has his hand wrapped tightly around yours, leaning forward in his seat to watch the spectacle. You can’t say you blame him.

You might hate him, but you can’t deny that his serves are a sight to behold. Your heart thumps as he throws the balls up, runs and launches himself into the air. His legs are arched, his form perfect and you still can’t quite believe how high he manages to get considering his size -

And then he hits the ball, palm slamming into the leather with a resounding smack - it flies over the net, damn near knocks the poor Libero off his feet as he tries to save it, but even that isn’t enough to stop it. The ball ricochets off his receive, spinning into the crowd and just like that - it’s all over.

Ushijima roars in victory, and Tendou turns to you, red eyes wild and delighted. You don’t have a moment to breathe, much less prepare yourself before his lips are crashing against your own.

The deafening cheers of the stadium fade out.

You can feel his racing pulse as he clutches you close, the unrepentant enthusiasm that pours through him as his tongue dances across your bottom lip, begging for entry. You’re stuck still, frozen in place as your soulmate steals his first kiss.

Somehow when you pictured this moment as a little girl, you didn’t imagine that it would be fear that floods your veins, that the soft, breathless laugh that Tendou gives as he pulls away and rests his forehead against yours would scare you instead of making you feel safe and loved.

They walk you home together. It’s unnerving enough with just one of them, but with both your soulmates flanking you you’re more on edge than usual.

Or maybe it’s the slightly weird energy you can sense between the two of them. Tendou hasn’t stopped grinning since he kissed you and Ushijima still seems a little wired from his win. He hasn’t said much since the three of you left the stadium, but he’s holding you closer than normal, an arm slung low across your back, his fingers brushing possessively along your hip.

God, Kyoto can’t happen fast enough.

There’s a lump in your throat as you reach your apartment. They’d offered to take you out for dinner after the game finished - to celebrate Ushiwaka’s crushing victory over ‘those poor assholes’ as Tendou had put it - but despite the pit of hunger in your stomach, you’d politely refused. The less time spent with them the better.

Surprisingly, both Tendou and Ushijima had taken it in stride without so much as a peep.

But now you’re at the front door, keys in hand and Ushijima still has his arm draped around you. It’s not like they haven’t been in this position before, but despite all their gentle cajoling (well, gentle is relative - Tendou whines petulantly and Ushijhima just seems to hover silently like an overgrown bat) they’ve never actually been inside your apartment.

It’s your one sanctuary, and you very much want to keep it that way.

“Y’know, ‘Toshi and I’ve been thinking,” Tendou begins, snatching the keys out of your hand before you can stop him, chuckling and swatting at you when you try and grab them back. “Me ‘n the big guy, we really do love you, baby - head over heels, heart racing, butterflies in your stomach kinda love. It’s kinda sappy, actually. You have no idea how happy you’ve made us.”

The key slides into the lock and he twists it, pushing your door wide open. His eyes flash to yours and he grins, bowing as he gestures towards the open apartment. Your open apartment.

An invitation.

You blanch. “Um, I-I don’t think-”

Stupid of you to think you ever had a choice in the matter - Ushijima’s arm is an iron wall against your back, pushing you forward as he crosses the threshold.

Tendou follows behind the two of you, and the click of the door shutting behind you echoes far too loudly in your small apartment. He tosses the keys into the little dish on the kitchen counter - where they always go when you’re at home - and winks at you.

“I mean we are your soulmates so I ‘spose it’s kind of a given.” He shrugs, leaning back against the countertop, folding his arms over his chest. “But we can’t help but notice that you seem a little… uneasy around us. And I get it, baby, really I do. You’re just a little shy - it’s cool.”

Your heart leaps into your throat as Ushijima’s fingers curl around your jaw and he tilts your face to the side to meet his intense stare, “You’re being unnecessarily stubborn,” he elaborates.

A flicker of amusement dances in Tendou’s eyes at his bluntness. “We tried it your way - taking it slow and steady, trying to ease you in but, well… I think we can all agree your way isn’t working all that great.”

Your eyes snap back to him, “What?”

His grin widens, “So we figured it’s time we try it our way. We’ve been so good, baby! D’ya have any idea how hard it’s been to hold ourselves back?”

Ushijima’s grip is unrelenting, but that doesn’t stop you from frantically trying to fight your way out of it as Tendou pushes off the counter and stalks over to the two of you.

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he murmurs, “Been waiting so long for this. Wanted to fuck you on the tables back in the diner in that cute lil’ uniform of yours.” He smirks down at you, his pupils blown wide and dripping with lust.

No. No, no, no! You shake your head frantically as he closes in, “Stop, wait! Let me go, LET ME GO! I-I don’t want-”

Your panicked words are cut off as Ushijima suddenly spins you around to face him. His hand cups your cheek, enveloping it entirely, and his broad thumb strokes the soft skin gently. “We’re not going to hurt you, little one. You just need to see - to feel what we feel for you.”

Whatever retort you have is swallowed up as he closes the gap between you and kisses you. He’s demanding - unrelenting - forcing your mouth open so that his tongue can taste yours. Distantly you register Tendou slotting in behind you, the unmistakable bulge that presses against your ass as he attaches himself to your neck. “Shh, baby,” he murmurs between kisses, fingers sliding to the hem of your top. “Let your soulmates take care of you, hm?”

It’s not like you’ve ever had a choice in the matter.

#yandere haikyuu #yandere ushijima x reader #yandere tendou x reader #yandere ushijima wakatoshi #yandere tendou satori #yandere ushijima wakatoshi x reader #yandere tendou satori x reader #my fic #my writing #yandere imagines #yandere fic #tendou x reader #ushijima x reader #yandere hq #soulmate au #yandere soulmates #tw stalking #tw implied noncon #its 4 am im going to sleep

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jadoue1999 · 3 years

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The X-Men and the member they lost (sequel to Wanda and the life she deserved)

Summary: *Important to have read "Wanda and the life she deserved (She'll make sure of it)" at least until chapter 4 or 7 (Though until the end is the best) Sister fic, it goes before, during and after "Wanda and the life she deserved (She'll make sure of it)"* Peter is missing and all they can find is a transmission of a Wanda Maximoff. The team will do what they can to bring their missing member back from whatever this place is. Though someone needs to do the difficult thing and tell Erik that he once again lost his family.

Next parts: chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8,

Chapter 1: Missing

Peter was fiddling with his Walkman, switching between songs, he wasn’t sure what he was in the mood for. He finally settled on a random one, not really caring about his choice. He was thinking way too quickly to concentrate on a song anyway. Erik was back at the mansion, he had showed up, unannounced and walked in like he owned the place. Maybe he did, who knew what was going on between him and Charles. He didn’t stay with the students, preferring the company of the professor. The speedster had no idea where he could have gone, it’s not like he could rent a room or a house without immediately being recognized, but the last year seemed to prove the contrary. Though, Peter now faced a dilemma, he could pull off a reverse Darth Vader and tell him he was his son (hopefully without the hand chopping and the rejection) or he could just let it be and not bring it up? Raven would certainly give him death glares if he did nothing. But for now, he was alone and unsure of what to do.

I had a brother

Peter removed his headphones in confusion, what was that voice? It almost felt... familiar?

His name was Pietro

The speedster froze as he heard his name, his birth name. One he hadn’t used since he was a child and his mom decided that having an Americanised name would be easier. The only person that knew it was his mom and-

No, it couldn’t be her, she had died years ago, Wendy couldn’t possibly be calling him. Just as he pushed away his hope, his room was suddenly bathed in a red glow. The very same color of his twin’s magic, or wiggly woos as he liked to call them, had been. He slowly saw a flicker of red light materializing in the middle of his floor. The flicker grew bigger and bigger, and he watched it, entranced by the magic he hadn’t seen in nearly 15 years. He couldn’t look away and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

‘Be with me...’ The voice called out to him again, sounding more desperate. He put his Walkman at his side and stepped out of his bed. On the contrary to the two other times, it hadn’t felt like someone had spoken. It was more of an involuntarily projected thought. Like his sister had sometimes done when she made a nightmare and accidentally projected it to the whole neighborhood. The portal grew bigger, and Peter felt drawn to it. He took a breath, should he follow the voice? No, definitely not. Could it kill him or harm him in any way? Most definitely. Would he let that stop him if it gave him a chance to see Wendy again? No, he had to try.

He took a step forward and was greeted by red lights wrapping over him and dragging him in the portal. He was vaguely aware of the feeling of free falling into an endless void and then Peter knew no more.

...

“Has anyone seen Peter?” Kurt asked as he walked into the cafeteria. He had expected the speedster to be eating his weight in food like he usually did in the morning, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Not sure,” answered Scott, between two bites, “but knowing the guy, he probably took a casual stroll to Europe because he wanted real crepes.”

Jean nodded in agreement and Kurt felt his worries subdue as the teen spoke. It was logical, Peter had done it quite a few times before. He would probably be back in the afternoon with stuff he had liberated and stories about whatever shenanigans he had gotten himself into. He let it go as he sat down next to Ororo and ate his own food, they talked about training and different strategies they could use for the next time they were in the danger room. Once their meal was done, Kurt went to the library, he had some reading to do. He spent the next few hours glossing through various books and accidentally scaring students when he teleported unexpectedly next to them to get a new novel. Diner time was approaching, and the mutant realized that Peter still wasn’t back. Fearing for the safety of his friend, he teleported himself in the main hall, where the professor usually was around that time. As expected, he was talking to Raven. He walked up to him as the professor turned around.

“Are you alright? I can hear your worry without any effort on my part.”

“It’s Peter, I think he’s missing,” declared Kurt with a grave look. The professor shared a glance with Raven before turning his wheelchair around and motioning forward.

“Come with me.”

...

Charles, like any sane human, was very concerned when Kurt shared his worries. He telepathically called the rest of the team to the briefing room, perhaps together they’d be able to solve this mystery. Once everyone had arrived, he filled them in and asked each of them when was the last time they had seen the speedster. Both Ororo and Kurt had seen him at diner the day before and Scott had seen his silver blur when he found himself suddenly covered in silly string and Jean laughing at him. No one had seen or sensed anything anormal about his behavior. Charles had then concluded that Cerebro should be used to try and locate him. Concentrating on the different mutants, he found no trace of him, no one had seen or heard him. No report of unexplainable disappearance of twinkies or records either. He removed the helmet with a sigh and exited the room. His disappointment must have been obvious because everyone suddenly started worrying, their thoughts all meddling in and all about their missing teammate.

“What if we went to check his room? Suggested Raven. “If that’s the last place he was, there might be clues there that might help.”

They all agreed, all hopeful that a logical and harmless reason was behind his sudden disappearance. The walk was a short one and the tension in the air was almost palpable, as if they were all expecting Peter to be sitting on his bed, laughing at them for worrying so much. When Scott opened the door, no such pleasure took place, it was unbearably empty. After combing his room for clues, the only positive thing they could think of was that there were no runaway notes, and the Walkman wasn’t there. That meant that Peter probably left willingly. Charles brought a hand to his face, deep in thoughts, he didn’t notice Jean stepping forward.

“Professor,” she said absently, “there’s this... strange energy.” She walked to the very middle of the room with her eyes closed and her palm stretched open. “Here. Something happened right here.”

The professor wheeled himself to his student and closed his eyes in concentration, trying to feel what Jean was perceiving. He frowned when he sensed nothing, “Are you sure?”

The redhead nodded, “yes, I can almost make out... voices? It’s hard to see.”

The room was quiet, no one seemed to know what to do. That is, until the white-haired teen spoke up. “Cerebro,” Ororo declared. She sighed when everyone looked at her confusedly, “she could show us what she sees with the machine. As far as I know, it amplifies powers.”

The professor looked at Raven, feeling ridiculous for not thinking about it before. He ordered Jean to make sure to keep the connection as everyone walked back to the room that kept Cerebro. They held their breath in anticipation as she put on the helmet and concentrated even harder. For a few seconds, nothing happened. They were about to admit defeat when piano was suddenly heard throughout the room, followed by, what seemed to be a 1950s sitcom. They all watched in silence as the footage unfolded in front of them.

‘Oh, a newlywed couple just moved to town

A regular husband and wife’

Scott snorted at that remark, “sure, a normal couple where the husband needs to hide his face from the neighbors.” Ororo smiled at his joke before focusing on the screen once again.

‘Who left the big city to find a quiet life’

The team froze as the woman made a ‘sold’ sticker appear on the sign at the front of their house. They continued watching as the husband walked through the door, without his bride. He opened it and took her in his arms again, passing through the sofa as the lyrics chanted.

‘WandaVision!

She’s a magical gal in a small-town locale

He’s a hubby who’s part machine

How will this duo fit in and pull through?

By sharing a love like you’ve never seen

WandaVision!’

The song ended with them sharing a kiss and then the episode started. But the group didn’t focus on it, instead, they all looked at Charles for answers as the woman was identified as Wanda Maximoff. Jean paused the transmission, seemingly in control of the broadcast.

“What does this mean? Is she a mutant?”

If he was honest with himself, the professor had no clue, it did look like a normal sitcom, complete with practical effect, but it didn’t make sense. How could the energy responsible for Peter’s disappearance lead to this? The woman couldn’t simply be a normal actress, the very concept of the show was too strange for it to be a coincidence. And then there was her name: Wanda Maximoff. It had to mean something.

“Does...” started Raven, looking as confused as everyone else. “Does Peter have a sister named Wanda?”

Jean got up from the chair as she removed the helmet. “He did mention a sister, but she’s about ten years younger, her name was Lorna, I think?”

Ororo and Kurt nodded in agreement. Still, that didn’t answer the question. Who was this Wanda and what role had she played in Peter’s disappearance? Or did she have nothing to do with it and she was a victim as well? They decided to continue the broadcast, perhaps playing it would reveal some answers.

They quickly learned that it truly was a stereotypical 1950s sitcom, minus all the magic. The classic misinterpreted conversation gag was the main plot point, which lead to a strange encounter with the husband’s boss. It also turned out that the android, Vision as he called himself, could change his appearance to look human. They all felt uneasy as the couple was questioned about their past, the boss getting angrier and angrier. Suddenly, he began to choke on something, and the camera plans became all wrong and the wife kept telling her husband to stop being silly, but he continued choking. Nobody seemed to be able to do anything. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the robot saved his boss, which apparently marked the end of scene for these two characters. They left quickly which both Wanda and Vision were relived about. Interestingly, they constructed their past and the episode ended.

As the credit rolled, the team was meet with a thousand questions and not many answers. Everyone was silent, but Charles could feel their thoughts racing through their heads, they were all confused.

“So... they’re all trapped?” Intervened Ororo. “Because it was obvious that neither Wanda or Vision had any idea what they were doing there and what their past was.”

The professor let his eyes examine the credits, it truly made no sense. They were only credited as their character names, did that meant that they were playing themselves? They didn’t seem forced to love one another, but they did seem on the run from something. Perhaps the creepy commercial had something to do with whatever danger they were escaping.

Kurt’s voice was what broke him from his thoughts. “Are there any other episodes?”

Jean sat down again and put the helmet back on, clearly exhausted from the previous episode. She concentrated for a few seconds before shaking her head.

“I can’t see anything, but I might just be tired.”

She removed the helmet and Scott held out a hand to help her up. Everyone walked back to their own room, promising to start searching for solutions in the morning.

...

It had been a few days since the first episode had been discovered. Hank had made adjustments to the machine so it could be broadcasted at any time and without the need for Jean to be there. He also made sure that they would be alerted if another episode were shown. The scientist had also been the one to suggest that they should be tracking the signal to its source. Perhaps this Wanda woman could lead them to their missing teammate. The only downside was that he needed Jean to work with him since she could feel the energy and determine if it was the right frequency.

That’s what the pair were doing, under Charles supervision, when the screen surrounding Cerebro suddenly light up. He mentally called the others, and they were in the room just as the episode started. Nothing much happened other than the magic show, and a bad cut when the radio glitched. There were also the creepy cultish way people kept repeating “for the children” but it might have been 60s idea of humor. Other than that, everything seemed fine. They were now back at their house when the woman got up and was suddenly pregnant.

“I might be behind on the human body,” interrupted Kurt, clearly lost, “but doesn’t it take longer than a few minutes for a baby to grow that size?”

Charles kept looking at the screen, he was now convinced that this woman wasn’t just a normal human. A banging outside the couple’s house frightened them and they ran outside. The X-Men watched in astonishment as a beekeeper slowly emerged out of the sewers under the scared eyes of the pair. When the unknown man suddenly turned his head, the professor watched in stunned silence as the camera was once again in the woman’s face, who seemed more determined than ever.

“No,” Wanda said.

There was a rewind effect, and the couple was back in their living room, acting as if nothing happened. Then the screen changed from black and white to full color. The team was surprised to see the man was bright red and the woman had hair a similar shade to Jean. The episode ended with them watching tv. Nobody talked for awhile, they weren’t sure what they just witnessed. Was the woman aware of what was happening? If she was trapped, it was obvious she had a certain control over her environment. Could it be a prison that she was kept in for everyone’s safety? How was Peter involved with this woman?

“What are your theories?” Asked the professor to his surrounding students.

“I think she’s the one controlling it,” intervened Scott. “The rewind showed us that much.”

“Yeah, but she was just as lost last episode, what if she got trapped there by accident and acts on instinct to protect herself?” Raven argued.

“I don’t think it’s just a show,” interrupted Hank, walking forward to the commands. He was looking over the part where the radio had glitched, playing the part just before the bad cut. “There’s someone calling to her. I think we might be viewing a parallel universe.”

Scott stepped in closer to Jean and took her hand, making sure she was alright before turning to Hank. “A parallel universe? Is that even possible?”

Charles sighed, “we don’t know the extent of this woman’s power, perhaps she is able to broadcast her life without knowing it.”

A sudden gasp from Jean made everyone turn to her. She was grasping her head in pain, using Scott as a way to stabilize herself. “There’s another transmission!” She screamed as the screens lit up once again.

They were now in the 70s, both of the couple’s hair had changed to fit the era. They watched as the pregnancy took all but one day to get to full term. The inconveniences of being pregnant were covered up by silly jokes and puns, such as showing that her water broke by the sprinklers activating. As Vision was off to get the doctor, Wanda was distracted by the doorbell and the woman she had met last episode came in. She was, of course, oblivious to the pregnancy. It went by quickly, Wanda tried to hide her belly as she could but then she went into labor. Geraldine helped her deliver the first child as Vision came back. The X-Men all frowned as it was revealed that she still had another child on the way.

‘Twins, a clever way to fix the name discourse,’ thought Charles to himself.

Wanda was now watching over the twins, her friend walked over, congratulating her on the sudden birth of not one but two babies.

“I’m a twin”

A quiet “what” was heard from Scott, Charles saw him look around, probably wondering if he had heard right.

“I had a brother. His name was... Pietro,” the redhead seemed lost in thoughts as she began to sing to her boys in a language they couldn’t understand. The group was stunned as they watched her rock her babies. The professor was feeling all kinds of weird; did she mean Peter? Had she killed him for the sake of a plot point?

“He was killed by Ultron, wasn’t he?”

Charles felt slight relief, perhaps it didn’t have anything to do with the speedster, because he was alive and well as far as he knew. Perhaps the brother’s name was a simple coincidence.

They watched in muted horror as Wanda turned to her friend, asking her to explain herself. Geraldine played dumb, but it was obvious that it was just a cover up. The woman was aware of the sitcom world. The confrontation escalated to a point where both were hostile to each other. Both trying to get answers. The tension was immense and when it seemed like something horrible would actually happen- Nothing did. There was another cut and then Wanda was once again watching the twins, alone this time.

After the strange talk Vision had with their neighbor, he ran back in, asking his wife about Geraldine’s whereabouts.

“Oh, she left, honey,” Wanda said in a sing song voice, “she had to rush home.”

The camera focused on her face, showing her eyes that had a slight glint of determination. It was no doubt she had gotten rid of her neighbor. They briefly talked about leaving, something Wanda didn’t seem keen on and the episode ended with them watching television with their children in their arms.

“What... the... hell?” Came Raven’s voice. The others had to agree, it was by far the most unsettling episode they had seen. Charles was asking himself the same question as everyone else in the room. Was Wanda the true villain?

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destielshippingnews · 3 years

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Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x04 Phantom Traveler

In this week’s analysis, I’ll be discussing the unfortunate introduction of Abrahamic mythology, the lamentable gender politics of Dean in his nightwear, and magic languages.

Supernatural’s fourth offering, 1x04 Phantom Traveler, (not a misspelling, 'traveller' is spelt like that in America) is a solid episode. It’s not fantastic, and Supernatural certainly has better to offer, but it’s still an entertaining watch which introduces demons into the Supernatural universe and continues developing Dean and Sam’s characters, making them more distinct.

It is also the first episode Robert Singer directed for Supernatural. I didn’t see much to particularly comment on in the direction for this episode (my two years of Media Studies were not wasted on me at all), but one interesting choice, however, is the tracking shot of Dean’s sleeping form straight after the title card. EscapingPurgatory podcast had a shrewd postulation: the intended audience was heterosexual educated men between the ages of roughly 15 and 39, but a lot of them would be watching with their girlfriends and wives etc, and Dean is the brother who’s available at the moment.

Returning to the plot of the show, the script does itself a major disservice as early as the cold open. This episode was broadcast in America four years after 9/11 (almost four and a half in Britain) and was right in the middle of the decades-long and still ongoing war on drugs. The atmosphere surrounding airfare has changed fundamentally. The air hostess clearly saw the man’s black eyes and was affected by it, and should have alerted somebody on the plane to her worries, because she would have thought he was on drugs of some variety at the very least, and possibly smuggling drugs on the plane. However, for the purposes of the plot she does not act on her misgivings, but simply gasps and goes about her day.

This raises the question of why the demon revealed its presence like that. Demons are usually incredibly stupid on Supernatural, but this level of dumb is difficult for me to believe. The air hostess could have very easily had the man thrown off the aeroplane, and then its plan would be scuppered. The most likely reason was to show the audience that the man was possessed, but the audience was going to find that out in about a minute’s time anyway, so why reveal it there? It breaks the fourth wall in a bad way.

Whilst on the aeroplane and the demon’s plan, the episode never makes the demon’s motivations explicit. Sure, Sam claims that demons like death and destruction for their own sake, but this doesn’t fit well with how demons behave later in the show. They are, forsooth, as thick as poo, but they usually have higher ups telling them what to do. Was the demon’s repeated downing of aeroplanes part of a higher up’s plan?

Before I go on, it’s worthwhile mentioning that this episode is the first one to introduce the idea of an actual Abrahamic Hell in the Supernatural universe. It’s not the only genre show of its kind to have included something like this, with Charmed having the Underworld where the Source of All Evil resided, and Buffy having various Hell dimensions, but those two examples weren’t Hell as depicted in the Bible.

Joss Whedon specifically avoided the idea of a Hell and employed dimensions ruled by demons and demon gods rather than Archangel Lucifer. Charmed used the Underworld as an equivalent of Hell, but it was not a place of punishment for human souls. While Charmed is definitely my least favourite fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre show (Prue notwithstanding), I appreciated that it took a step away from Abrahamic mythology. Buffy/Angel were even better, having their own mythology that had precious little to do with Middle Eastern religions and more to do with Dunsany, Lovecraft or sometimes even Tolkien.

Kripke, however, took the lazy route with Abrahamic, specifically Christian, mythology, a choice which I believe was to the show’s detriment. It’s supposed to be a show about American folklore and urban legends, but that stuff eventually gets thrown under the bus. Forget Native Americans, screw the Americanised versions of Scandiwegian lore, screw the Old West and the Gold Rush and all the tales revolving around America’s history. And Canada? Pfft. What even is Canada? And don’t even think about Mexico. Let’s just have yet more desert myths from 2-3000 years ago.

My distaste aside, this universe has a Hell (and a Heaven), and demons are made by torturing humans until all humanity is gone from them, or by letting the humans off the torture rack if they agree to become the torturers.

Knowing this, two possibilities come to mind. One is that this demon is repeating its own human death for some reason, and another is that it kills people and drags their souls to Hell to make more demons.

Repeating its own death is entirely speculative, but this episode mixes up demons with traits later associated with ghosts and death echoes. Never again is an EMF reader used to detect demonic activity, and unless I’ve forgotten a certain example, demons aren’t shown to act as specifically as this again.

The second option, that of dragging souls to Hell, doesn’t seem likely as it’s made clear that demon deals or trades are required in order for Hell to get its claws on human souls, at least in usual circumstances. There’s nothing saying that demons can’t just decide to drag certain souls to Hell, and there is an implication at the end of this episode that this might actually be the case, but it’s a stretch. If this were the case, however, it would give the demon a real motive and make the episode less of a stand-alone bit of fun with overt X-Files vibes.

Sticking with Hell events on the aeroplane for now, let’s skip to the end and the exorcism. Whilst trying to exorcise the demon, it tells Sam that Jessica is burning in Hell. Dean tries to reassure Sam by saying that demons read minds and that it was trying to get to him, but demons can only know the minds of people they possess. This then leaves three options: the demon was lying and Jess is in Heaven, it was telling the truth and Jess is in Hell, or the demon was just trying to get to Sam, but unbeknownst to him Jess actually was in Hell.

Technically speaking, Jess shouldn’t be in Hell. She didn’t make a deal (that we know of) and it’s established later in the show that most people go to Heaven anyway. But Kevin didn’t, neither did Eileen or Bobby. Mary did, even though she made a deal with Azazel, and she died under the same circumstances as Jess. As Jess is never mentioned as being in Hell by another demon in the show, and as Dean, Sam and Cas eventually visit Hell and find nothing of her there, we can assume Jessica went to Heaven.

The exorcism in this episode is strange compared to exorcisms in the rest of the show. The Doyle (external to the text) explanation is clearly that the writers didn’t know exactly how they wanted things to work yet, but the Watson (within the text) explanation could be that they used a different exorcism ritual. Later in the show, there is no intermediate stage between being expelled from the host body and being banished to Hell: they just go directly down. This version, though, forces the demon to manifest and thereby makes it much stronger and more dangerous. I personally think the version in this episode makes the demons more of a threat because it’s harder to exorcise them, but I can see why it became streamlined later in the show.

The fact the demon possessed the aeroplane, however, raises the question of why it didn’t do so in the first place. Maybe it’s more fun to possess a human first.

Speaking of the ritual, Jared tells us on the commentary that he had to have a Latin teacher from a local university instruct him in Ecclesiastical Latin because he learnt Classical Latin at school. As a language person, I’m left wondering why. It’s the same language, just pronounced differently. Does the spell need to be pronounced in a certain way in order to work? If so, would the Ancient Romans have been completely incapable of expelling demons with their own language? Would they have had to rely on Greek, Etruscan, Gaulish or Sumerian for the rituals? It’s just completely unnecessary, especially as we later see Rowena casting spells in Scottish Gaelic, Irish witches casting spells in Irish, Celtic ‛demons’ performing rituals in Gaulish…

At least the university teacher got a little bit of extra money, I suppose.

Sticking with the aeroplane a little bit longer, Dean’s fear of flying is a welcome expansion to his character, though it was clearly included with the intent of making fun of him. It could easily have been played as such, but Jensen’s comments on the commentary indicate he saw it as an opportunity to provide more depth to Dean, as his connection with Lucas through their shared childhood trauma did in 1x03 Dead in the Water. In these two episodes, Jensen begins taking Dean away from the writers and making him his own: he was supposed to be the sidekick, but Jensen said nope.

In making Dean afraid of flying, but having him so insistent upon flying in spite of it, The Show perhaps did itself a bit of a disservice in its mission of making Sam The Hero and Dean The Sidekick. Dean was terrified, but flew anyway. That is bravery, and it’s what the audience wants to see in a hero.

Sam, however, does not miss an opportunity to make me dislike him (you knew this was coming at some point, don’t look surprised). Not only is he incredibly unappreciative and derisive of Dean’s talents, such as making his own EMF from an old Walkman, but he was also derisive of Dean’s fear of flying.

Sorry, let me reword that. Derisive of Dean for being scared of flying. It’s perfectly rational to be afraid of being in a giant metal bird suspended miles above the ground, but Dean agreed to it anyway in order to save people. And Sam treats him like a child because he’s scared of take-off and turbulence. Dean’s fear is a rational one, something that a person who hasn’t been sheltered from reality would have. Sam’s greatest fear, however, is…

Clowns.

I get it, they’re brothers, and siblings are supposed to rib on each other like this (the siblings I still talk to aren’t like this with me or each other, so I find it difficult to relate to Dean and Sam’s relationship) but it makes Sam come across as an utter cunny-hole. If somebody is clearly terrified of something and on the edge of a panic attack, you don’t sneer and mock, and then demand he calm down. Sure, Dean needed to calm down and Sam was the only one who could do it, but talking to him like a child just reveals how little Sam knows of taking care of other people. He’s the pampered younger brother, and it really shows.

He also shows a lack of judgement when roughly putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder while he was distracted. Dean’s essentially a war child (and suffers C-PTSD) and you just shouldn’t do things like this to somebody like that. That’s how you trigger panic attacks or flashbacks. Ask a veteran, I’m sure s/he’ll agree.

Aside from that, the middle-aged man on the aeroplane winked at Dean – winked – when Dean was walking down the aisle with his EMF reader. A man winking at a man has sexual overtones nowadays, and has done for a long time. How many men wink at a built guy standing over them like that unless they’re sure they won’t be punched in the face? Dean had his EMF reader out at that moment, but he was simultaneously on somebody else’s radar. Something about Dean set sexual bells ringing in cameo middle-aged man’s head. Regarding Sam, there’s two important moments for him in this episode (Jess aside): when he discovers John talked about and praised him in his absence, and when he exorcises the demon. It’s made clear in a few episodes’ time that Sam never felt like he fit in with his family, and that he believed John was disappointed in him. Exactly how he came to this conclusion is uncertain, since John doted on Sam and afforded him liberties he never would have allowed Dean, but it’s clear their relationship is difficult. Going away to university was Sam’s attempt to run away from the dysfunctional family he felt an outsider in and to escape John (and Dean): that he apparently didn’t speak to either John or Dean during his time there says a lot.

He finds out, however, that John praised him, undermining somewhat Sam’s belief that John regarded him as a disappointment. Episode 1x05 Bloody Mary provides another moment of character growth for Sam that subtly changes the way he perceives himself, but all in due course.

Praise from parents is important for children, and it really shouldn’t be hard for parents to tell their children they’re proud of them, even if they don’t say it in as many words. In spite of his difficult relationship with John, Sam gets that by proxy in this episode (whilst Dean’s happily checking out all the men in the hangar) and it changes the way he sees himself and John, even if only slightly.

The other moment – discussed above – is his exorcism of the demon. I don’t mince my words about disliking Sam, but even I can see he had potential. He’s the weird kid who wanted a normal life, but because of cursed blood had that hope denied him. Series 4 shows us the beginning of what Sam could have turned into when his blood magic arc truly kicks off, and it could have been a riveting plotline if written and handled well. Think for example of Willow in Buffy and the journey she went on with her magic powers: there was real darkness in there, and a gargantuan struggle to overcome it and become stronger.

This exorcism reminds me of Willow’s first steps at witchcraft in 2x22 when she casts the spell to restore a certain character’s soul and we see the potential for true strength as she performs the spell with ease. This exorcism of Sam’s should have been something similar, and his demonic powers should not have been completely removed and forgotten about in 8x23. He could have been Supernatural’s answer to Willow, and the Dark!Sam arc in series 3-7 could have been the first in his descent into darkness and his fight back out to take control of his own powers and become the opposite of what Azazel wanted him to be.

But – and not for the last time – three words come to mind. Such potential, Supernatural.

You might remember I mentioned the tracking shot of Dean (and neglected to mention the revealing shot of his thighs and underwear). Paula R. Stiles’ suggestion that the fact the writers and director for this episode were men doesn’t cheapen it is one I don’t understand. Jensen is in my 100% objective and unbiased opinion one of the finest men alive, but exploiting that in order to draw in an audience does cheapen the show.

To be fair, Supernatural is hardly high culture and commercial television is about revenue, but things like that break the illusion of artistic integrity, just like not making Dean explicitly bisexual does because that’d scare away too much of the audience. If having scantily-clad women in a show or film is there for the male gaze and drawing in money, then so too are Dean’s thighs and buttocks, similarly cheapening the show. If the male gaze objectifies women, stripping them of their power and subjecting them to male desires, then the female gaze objectifies and strips men of any power they might have and subjects them to female desires.

If it’s bad for the gander, it should also be bad for the goose.

Neither do I think it matters one bit that the writer and director are men, or am I supposed to believe a woman has never encouraged or coerced another woman to flash a bit of boob in order to get men to empty their pockets? Claiming that presenting a person as an object of possible sexual attraction turns him into an ‛object’ is strange, and that claim’s only ever made when women are being presented for men’s enjoyment.

But let’s stick to Supernatural because I have work in the morning. To be honest, I never notice if a woman on screen is being subjected to a ‛male’ gaze because I have no sexual or romantic interest in women whatsoever: if a woman is supposed to be portrayed as appealing to men’s eyes, it’ll usually go straight over my head because it just doesn’t register as having anything to do with sex. Interesting, however, is that this begins the trend of treating Dean in certain ways that women are usually treated, or associating him with ‛feminine’ traits.

Some people go overboard with for example Dean’s association with and likeness to Mary, his taking on the parental (maternal?) role in Sam’s upbringing, his knack with children etc, and use it as evidence to suggest that any traditionally masculine behaviour – or masculine behaviour at all – from Dean is a performance to keep up an act so that he can hide how feminine he really is.

My take on this is quite different than the condescending viewpoint that a man behaving like a man is performing and pretending. Dean’s ‛feminine’ traits are not his ‛true’ self in opposition to his feigned masculine behaviour. There is absolutely no contradiction between Dean exhibiting ‛feminine’ traits such as being good with children, cooking, or trying his hardest to fill the role Mary would have filled, and being a masculine man who identifies very strongly with being male.

I do think it’s fascinating, though, and the complexity and depth of Dean as a male character is one of the reasons he is one of my favourite characters. We rarely get to see men who are very manly and also incredibly loving, loyal and paternal and who exhibit a normal range of human behaviours and interests, including ‛masculine’ and ‛feminine’. That’s what normal men are like, something television and film seem to have forgotten.

Regarding Dean in bed, note that he is a stomach sleeper (sleeping on your stomach keeps your tummy safe), and this is consistent throughout all fifteen years of the show. However, this early in the show he takes his trousers, outer shirts and shoes off, in contrast to sleeping fully dressed as he begins doing sometime rather soon. He’s alert and cautious this early in the show, but not yet quite so worn down that he can’t be bothered to get ready for bed.

Note also that both brothers have sleeping problems here. Dean knew Sam was still up at 3am, meaning Dean likely slept for less than three hours, having been woken up by Sam at 5:45.

The end of the episode presents the brothers with something to be hopeful about. John has a new mobile phone number, the first evidence they’ve had so far that he is very probably still alive. It’s not much to go on, and John does not answer Dean and Sam’s call, but it’s something the boys can latch on to and keep them searching for John. Whether or not they should be searching for John is another question altogether, though, but at least it got the plot going in 1x01.,

Phantom Traveler is a strong but flawed episode which builds on last week’s expansion of Dean’s character and role, as well as introducing demons and Hell into the lore. The cut scene where Dean has to remove all his concealed weapons before going into the airport really should have been kept in because it says a lot about his character, as does his sleeping with a blade under his pillow, but other than that, I’m happy to leave this episode now on a positive note.

#Michael's Supernatural Rewatch #SPN Rewatch #spn 1x04 #phantom traveler #sam winchester #john winchester #dean winchester #demons #hell #male gaze #female gaze #christian mythology

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hedgefairy · 4 years

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Okay, I know, I know, it's already old news, everybody and their uncle in the costuming community has already talked it over, but anyhoo, I made notes when I crawled my way through effing Bridgerton and I will be damned if I don't vomit them onto this site. I have 32 pages of this shit, I'm not gonna throw that away.

I'm also typing this on my phone because I'm stuck on a trainride that's just doubled in length because this is the 2021 Northern German snow storm. What, there's snowflakes on the rails? We cannot possibly keep up our schedule, say goodbye to 90% of the connections.

Okay, on to Bridgerton, Episode 1

We're in Britain (oh, London, okay), allegedly 1813. I see people who are clearly meant to be asympatico, but is this size incusivity I spot there? Daring! Gasp! Me li...

Oh wait, no. The character is promptly shamed for her figure (which is mostly caused by the horrible cut of her dress. Every size can look great in Regency garb, but never mind, we need to make the "fat one" look bad!).

Also, no shifts under the stays. Why. There was obviously enough budget, don't tell me you couldn't afford a few strappy tops - it's not like the rest is historically accurate, so it would have sufficed to send some poor underpaid intern to H&M and get some. Nvm, that wouldn't be sexay.

Wait, is the garishly dressed (always a sign of a character of bad character in a costume drama) woman Delphine from Selfridge? Does she always have to play bitches? That's not nice, and just because she has a recognisable face, which by modern (read: americanised) standards is not favourable enough. Ugh. But I like the actress, so I'll let it slide (for now).

Lol, buttocks.

Not sure about the girls' dresses. Also, the Queen is a WOC, cool!

Oh no, one of the Featherington sisters faints! But that's okay because the Featheringtons are just comic relief and foil anyway.

I get weird incest vibes from the Bridgertons.

So the court is clearly 18th century and the show is set in the 1810s. I've by now seen several explanations for this decision, I still think it robs the Queen of reproductions of her actual historical gowns which were heavily inspired by the 18th century but so. Magnificently. Weird. It would have been so neat, and more of a "hey, I'm kinda out of touch with things" vibe, but hey, I'm not the one getting paid for making those taffeta gowns here (her hair is glorious, tho).

I'm very into the intro.

That Regency gossip girl is a real b, not unlike the Dowager Countess of Downton (unpopular opinion, I think she's pretty overrated, yes, I like Maggie Smith).

Again, no shifts.

Where do I know the "pragmatic" Bridgerton sister from? Ah, it's The Paradise. And Jonathan Strange. (Wait, she's my age. And she's supposed to be a teenager. Man, do I love a good Dawson casting. I like the actress, though, she has a face ™!).

Aaaah. We get it. She's the spirited one. She also doesn't care about dresses because she's not like other girls™. I really like her voice (but she still doesn't sound like a teenager).

The heck is up with Lady F's dress and that of her friend? Oh, yeah. Antagonist fashion.

Of course the Featheringtons are Horrid Hags™ aside from Penny who's nice, but the pudgy one (at least we don't get a case of "she's not conventionally attractive so she's bad").

Oooh, the cousin! Supposed to suck, but ofc she's a stunner, and only Penny (who's the nice one, remember!) is delighted to have her around. She's also a POC, which is nice but apparently that means she does not follow fashion, hair-wise. I would have loved to see some Regency hair on her, it would have been so pretty *cries in Greek updo*

Ugh, we're still in Ep. 1, typing this on my phone was a bad idea.

Lady Danbury and the Duke guy are delightful with each other (more POC! So neat!).

The girl the oldest Bridgerbro screws is apparently a singer, which isn't up to status for his doucheship, and she doesn't wear a shift.

The music at the ball sounds like something from the Top 40s, but I'm woefully ignorant of contemporary music charts so I can't tell what it is. I like it when they do that in historical-ish works, making well-known pop or rock stuff work for the ambience (ugh, that dance scene to Golden Years in Knight's Tale. My heart. In a good way.)

I dig the Ducktail hair of Penny's crush. Oh, wait, that's a Bridgerbro. I don't quite get why the hair trends of the time don't apply to the POC characters or extras, but seeing how most white characters also show a shameful disregard for the weirdnes and gloriosity (that's not a word) that is early 1800s hair (the 1830s take the cake, tho) despite those hairdos being basically designed for white people hair, I don't think I care much (well, I do, but about all of them). Overall the hair is horrid and not very 1810s. Let's just leave it at that.

Like a good old romance novel (I've since been told that Bridgerton is supposed to be a pastiche of such novels, but I really couldn't tell from the series, not at all, and I'm not inclined to read the books) we have

a pretty, kind, superpure daughter of the main family

the mean matriarch (could have been an aunt, too, but here she's the mum) of the rivalling or antagonist family

a spirited daughter of the main family (in most romance novels this would be our heroine but so far she refreshingly lacks a love interest and pretty daughter seems to get the most screen time)

a Horrid Suitor™

a Hot Suitor™ who doesn't want attention

a really good and doting good parent

Lol, misheard Greece for Grease with Ducktail Bridgerbro, whose name is Colin, apparently. This is funny because of his Danny Zuko memorial hair.

Overall a bit too much bling for my taste, and too few pearls. It looks like an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen with a Regency theme.

Of course the romance is going to be the Pretty One aka. Daphne and the Duke and he's even bros with her eldest bro. Wait, are they exes? I can haz bi? No? Aww, shucks. Maybe in another episode (spoiler: no).

Okay, WHAT is it with Lady F's dresses and hair. Like, she reminds me of Mars Attacks. Which, as you might remember, was not set in the Regency period.

Lord B (Bridgerbro the Eldest) sucks, he's screwing Opera Girl without any intention of marrying her but he's bitchy about his sister being ogled by his Eton (or wherever) bestie?

Oh, I'm in Hamburg now. And my train back home got canceled, so back to Berlin it is because there's not a single option to get to Hanover tonight, at least that's what the lady from the train station is saying, "oh well, you'll have to go back and try again tomorrow", so that's awesome...

Honestly, if it weren't so late and I didn't have things to do at home I'd find this terribly exciting.

Back to Bridgerton!

Where were we? Ah.

I can't even read my own annotation. Something about George III. I think I was upset about how they totally ignored that it's called Regency because George IV acted as the regent king, and he doesn't even feature in the series, I guess because they wanted to play up the Queen? Not a fan, because thanks to Horrible Histories I'm quite fond of that guy.

Again, no shifts.

Oh, look, it's Horrid Suitor™, destined for leftovers.

The Featherington cousin gets all the attention but no fleshed-out character.

Penny Featherington's dog is named Lord Byron, which ❤️

I like the Duke! He's there, drinking in his club (even though they're a patriarchal remnant of the past I have a weird appreciation for stuffy Gentlemen's Clubs, I blame Bertie Wooster and the Drones), calling Lord B out for his general fuckery.

Oh no, Ducktail Colin is more into the Cousin than Penny, who obviously pines for him!

Thank you, Lord B, for enabling Horrid Suitor™. Nobody asked you to be such a fucktwit.

The Queen is, of course, a bit of a bitch, but patronage from cool Lady *scrolls up for name* Danbury ensues for Protagonist Girl™ Daphne.

"I wish they had found a better trend language", what the heck did I even mean by that? That's what you get for just scribbling down notes while watching and simultaneously sewing. 18th century pants, in case you wanted to know.

Cousin is angry, probably because Lady F behaves like Cinderella's evil stepmother, because Cousin is prettier than her daughters and gets, like, all the suitors because Lord B bitched away everyone who wanted to get into Daphne's dowry ifyouknowwhatImeanwinkwinknudgenudge, right across the street into Cousins parlour.

The Bridgertons are annoyingly perfect. Ugh.

Oh look, it's "banter" between Daphne and Dukey! It's so Pride & Prejudice! It's almost a tiny bit Shakespeare! I put banter in parentheses because wow, nope, I'm not getting any chemistry here.

Uh, Lady B calls out Lord B (aka. her son aka. Bridgerbro the Eldest) for his screwery with Opera Girl and his outpimpery of his sister to Horrid Suitor™, buuuurrrrrnnn. He promptly calls of his affair with Opera Girl.

No shifts!

Penny gets to dance with Ducktail Colin at the thing! Good for her, but it's a country dance with jumping and fun, because she's a) the pudgy character and b) a Featherington, so it can't be something romantic and pretty (I personally like country dances, but they aren't protagonist dances).

Oooh, Cousin had her period, oh no, oh snap, oh she didn't, because she's PREGNANT! Shit, that's problematic, and not because she's an unmarried woman in the 1810s, but because she gets close to no lines at all so far, and suddenly she's pregnant and telling Lady F that she sucks for being privileged, violence ensues, this is ugly. Man, I get what some critics mean by "the POC actors*actresses get all the problems" and that not exactly being great.

Horrid Suitor™ makes property claims about Daphne, eeewwwww, thanks to Lord B's general suckiness, ewww, r@pe attempt ensues, was that really necessary? It doesn't really fit in with the rest of the series and generally nope, yay, broken nose! (which was indeed totally necessary). Nice one, and probably the only scene so far (spoiler: overall) in which I actually like Daphne. Dukey thinks a mean left hook is attractive, and, generally speaking, he's not wrong.

Daphne and Dukey come up with a pseudo-shakespearean plot to pretend to be totally into each other so she can attract suitors by being not available and he gets not to have fangirls by being not available, and as someone who has read a few too many historical-ish bodice rippers I know exactly where this is going. I mean, come on.

I can't see enough of the following choreography to complain about it. Man, I miss historical dance classes.

And that concludes Ep. 1! Finally! Thank you for getting this far, sorry for all of it (especially typos, it's the bane of unwanted autocorrect), I guess?

Update on the train situation: I've been told by the ticket control person that I shouldn't get my hopes up until noon tomorrow.

To be continued,

because I didn't take these 32 pages of notes for nothing.

#Bridgerton #Hedgewatch #historical costuming #Well not really because wow these costumes #Thank you for travelling with Deutsche Bahn #2021 norther Germany snow storm #Trainwriting #Snarky commentary #I wish I was better at captions but it's late and I've been wearing a mask for four hours straight now and I'm hungry #Bridgerbore

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visualssometimesetc · 4 years

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Ready Player One: A Review

(channeling my inner geek once again after a really long hiatus; will comment mainly on the book)

After almost a year, I picked up this dusty, slightly yellow paperback from my drawer of untouched reads to ease myself into the habit of perusing pages again.

Considering this to be Cline’s debut novel, and one aimed at teenagers/young adults, I must say I was skeptical. Especially due to the latter fact. Growing up, I devoured many worlds conjured and targeted at the T/YA base that when I grew older and tried getting back into them again, many storylines couldn’t sustain my interest. But this was different.

It is America, 2045. The world at its peak of crumbling shambles, virtual reality pivots the new normal. Young and old alike can be any avatar they choose in the OASIS, a world created by the highly-worshipped game genius James Donovan Halliday. A literal “escape from reality,” OASIS provides so many possibilities one can only dream of when they log out and peel off their visors and haptic suits, devices required to access the simulation.

Reality and online simulation becomes so intertwined, many don’t leave it. Students are schooled online. Credits earned in the OASIS pays for your mortgage in real life. People dress up their avatars instead, leaving their actual selves in deep abandon. After the death of Halliday, a worldwide Easter Egg hunt commences. Starting all users out with a slew of clues to unlock the First Gate, Gunters (egg hunter = gunter) would have to get past a total of three gates and find the Egg to eventually be awarded James’ entire multibillion fortune and infinite reign over the OASIS. Only one would stand to inherit it all.

We follow Wade Watts, your average teenager who studies Halliday’s facts, interests and life to a T in a bid to clear Gates, win the prize money and get out of The Stacks (think Slumdog Millionaire, but Americanised).

Maybe it was the many references to 80s pop culture, where James grew up in and with which the clues centred around, that drew me in. Though unrelatable, its vibes was always something I dig, especially the music. The book covered almost every aspect you could think of that encapsulated the 80s: movies, music, games. I’m no gamer, but it did spur an impulse to hunt down old-school arcades I would occasionally sneak into during secondary school (or high school) days. I remember wearing a sweater/shirt over my school gear to avoid those shopkeepers from snooping about as my friends and I play and got hammered by the games. Oh, fun times.

Each chapter was short with no more than ten pages long, something I appreciated greatly because I usually read on public transport and I absolutely hated starting a chapter and not finish it by the time I reached my destination. I would rather not start on it and instead, phub. Cline’s understanding of his target audience (short attention span people like myself) was on point. It won me over within the first few chapters.

Ready Player One is also highly realistic, what with VR assimilating itself in our current day and age, contrasting with real issues like world hunger and excessive energy consumption, it sure is a dog-eat-dog life on paper and in real time. There’s no escaping it, really. But this also made it relatable, subtly (maybe not Cline’s intention) pushing the message of doing more than just mindless consuming to his readers. Art3mis, Wade’s love interest, is one such character, doing her best to outbid Parzival (Wade’s avatar in the OASIS) and find the Egg to end the world’s problems.

All novels typically have this in common - character development. While not very significant, I felt that it was not needed, because Cline had already established their personas well enough when he introduced them to us. Clans who worked together to crack clues and advance on quests together were aplenty but the rare few mentioned by Cline. These gunters in particular, all had distinct personalities, their own agendas for wanting the Egg, which was something I dug as well. Different people, varying characters, vying for the same prize in healthy competition.

And what’s a good story without the antagonist? A popular clan, the Sixers, controlled by infamous tech company Innovative Online Industries (IOI), which vows to gain full access to the OASIS and ‘revolutionise’ the world tries getting its hands on recruiting Parzival after he clears the First Gate on his own. Do you think he accedes to their request? What happens after that? Read it on your own...

After finishing the novel, I was hyped up, though just as much as I dreaded watching the film. I ignored my urge to Netflix as I was still thumbing through the book. You know how many film adaptations would let you go “Oh no no no... (shakes head),” and I would be lying if I said I didn't feel the same after watching this film adaptation. I would say though, The Stacks, the casting of Aech and the OASIS, were ON POINT. EXACTLY how I pictured it. But of course, it’s Steven Spielberg. The soundtrack too, 💯. All things considered however, I am a sucker for following things to a T, or almost to it. You can most definitely hear my inner monologue as I viewed the movie. About 40% of the screenplay was re-adapted.

But as I researched deeper into the whys’ of the re-adaptation, I understood and put most of my case to rest. Apart from copyrights issues, some parts would be too draggy if re-enacted. My only two complaints would be: 1. I wished they wrote Art3mis, Daito and Shoto to be more like what was conveyed in the book. I felt that their personas did get diluted. 2. The Gates aren’t actually that easy to open. Yet, I understand that as this is a movie, there was only so much that can be done within the stipulated time frame and budget. I did appreciate however, that the storyline was logical (not gonna point fingers here) and the actors’ performances were pretty solid in the movie.

This about sums my review on this great book! I’m not too sure if I’d be keen to take up Ready Player Two soon however, after having read the synopsis. Some stories are best told and finished in just a single novel, just like some series should just end on a good-enough note of just a few seasons. But who knows, Cline might just prove me wrong yet again.

Book: A surprising 10/10! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Film: 7/10 (still worth your time, perhaps watch before reading the book for an unspoiled, unbiased, higher rating)

Thanks for braving this lengthy review, I hope this review encourages you to pick up this book 😊😊

#ready player one #ready player 1 #ready player two #book review #bookblr #bookaddict #read a book #movie review #book recommendations

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jemej3m · 5 years

Note

I would frankly die for more of the Kevin taking a sabbatical in Ireland. Pretty please?

for @jjeanmorreau who also asked for more vacay kev, here ya go!

Kevin couldn’t explain how he’d found himself here again, but he was. The patron beamed at him from behind the bean grinder and blew him a kiss.

Between the first talk and the various relapses back to the cafe’s inviting warmth, Kevin discovered that the owner’s name was Nieve Meir, and that Cian, the tanned, lithe professor with startling brown eyes, was her son.

The man himself often kept his mother company: Kevin could see him at his usual haunt, surrounded by papers he was grading whilst listening to music through headphones. His desk was tucked behind the counter, in the innermost corner of the little corner shop. Kevin averted his eyes before he could notice Kevin’s presence, instead greeting Nieve with a hesitant smile.

“There’s our little foreigner. Cian missed you at Friday’s talk. It was all about Americanisation: Surely you’d have some more insights than we would, milling about ol’ Dunnie every day.”

He ordered his cappuccino and opened his copy Ulysses. It truly was a difficult read: He’d been hacking away at it almost constantly whilst hanging around in this town and had made less than a quarter of the way through.

“Here you are, Kevin, dear.” Nieve settled down his mug. “Enjoy. And stay awhile.” She winked.

The mention of his name must have cut through the music: Cian glanced up from his grading and smiled, beckoning Kevin over. He took his mug and kept it on a coaster to avoid getting coffee on the scrawled essays the man was covering in glossy red ink.

“Ulysses, hm?” He murmured, letting his fingers brush along the spine of the book. “Not for the faint-hearted. Are you enjoying it?”

Kevin hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

The man snorted. “So why bother? Shouldn’t literature be enjoyable as well as stimulating?”

“You’re a professor: Shouldn’t you be encouraging me to challenge myself?”

“Well, I’ve known you for a week and a half,” Cian tapped his pen to his grin. “And I want to take you out for dinner before I scare you off with my academic status, so I have to tread lightly.”

“I -” Kevin halted. “I’m not a brainless jock. I majored in history!”

Cian’s grin spread wider, impossibly so. Kevin thought he was going to lose his god-damned fucking mind. “More compatible than I thought. What do you say? To dinner?”

Kevin looked to his coffee. He would have to go back soon: The off-season couldn’t last forever, and the reprieve from Exy was necessary, but he was still Kevin Day: He couldn’t abandon his life-sport for the romanticised ideal of a cute history professor in a small Irish city.

Nothing would come of it, Kevin was sure. That was the only reason he said yes.

They walked down the cobbled alleyways, the pavings waterlogged by the recent rainfall. Dinner had been an extended affair at a quiet downtown pub, on the second floor with a candle between them and a window revealing a busy street, adorned with strings of white lights and iron lamp-posts below. It was almost mystical: Kevin felt like he was floating. Or maybe that was the wine.

“If we’re being candid,” Cian said, hands in his pockets as they walked down the street. His coat was suede: Beneath it was an adorable baby-blue tie that set off the crystal in his cartilage piercing, and a pair of tight trousers. Kevin appreciated the effort: He’d tried his best but his clothes were all suit-case frumpled and he’d neglected the formal-wear aspect in his packing. “I did some research on you. Just to see if you had a Facebook or something.”

Kevin stopped walking.

“I was a little shocked.” Cian admitted. “I had no idea who you were, let alone that you’re well-famous.”

“I…” Kevin searched for what he wanted to say. Conversation had come so naturally, and now he was completely jilted.

Cian held out his hand and took Kevin’s fist, slowly unwinding the clenched fingers. “I understand that you don’t want crazy fans following you around, but you could have - I don’t know, mentioned that you’re probably one of the most successful sportsmen in North America. Though,” He considered carefully, looking at the shape of Kevin’s shoulders. “I’m not complaining.”

Kevin finally found his voice. “I came here to escape the way monotony was creeping up on me over there. I - want to be known for who I am, not what I am. Here I can get that chance. With you, I can get that chance.”

Cian’s smile returned. He had a chipped canine tooth that Kevin hadn’t asked about yet, but wanted to. He took Kevin’s other hand: They were facing each other in the darkness of late-evening, shadows playing across the other man’s features and setting off the spark in his eye. Kevin swallowed.

“I’ve never been interested in sports, really.” He said. “I’ll bet you’ve never been allowed to be anything outside of the game.”

Kevin nodded.

“How long are you here?” Cian asked.

Kevin grimaced. “Maybe a week and a half.”

The man nodded, contemplative. “It’ll have to do.” He took Kevin’s hand by the wrist and set off into a quick jog. “We have no time to waste!”

“What are you doing?” Kevin huffed, being forced into a stumbling pace behind him.

“I’ll show you what it means to be real, Day.” Cian dragged them into oncoming traffic, cutting corners and through side-streets. “I’ll show you all you’ve missed. But first: you’re spending the night at mine.”

Kevin’s heart raced as his cheeks flourished: His hand fought free of the cuff Cian’s fingers formed around his wrist, instead intertwining their fingers together.

This was unmapped ground. This was a hiccup in his breath. This uncertainty of something new, something unfamiliar, warred with his arrogant self-assuredness and the obvious way Cian’s hand slipped into the back pocket of his jeans as they waited for his flat’s elevator. This was freeing.

It made him feel young again.

When he awoke he was completely naked as sun streamed through the windows, striping across the caramel expanses of Cian’s back. His hair sprawled out across the pillow and Kevin absently took a lock and wound it around his finger.

It was six-thirty. He’d woken every day for a run and today was no different. He slid out of bed and decided fuck it: He’d take something of Cian’s and come back soon enough. The man himself said that he was a heavy sleeper and was never awake before nine o’clock.

He took shorts and running shoes, taking off around the block. There was a lovely park around the corner which he looped twice before heading back.

Sure enough, the man was still dead-asleep. Kevin put the keys back where he’d found them and crept into the shower. Was this strange? It didn’t matter. Kevin was just some whack foreigner: Cian could just base his assumptions on their cultural differences. He toweled off and went back into Cian’s room in search of his clothes.

The man was blinking up at him, dazed.

“Christ,” He muttered, turning back into his pillow. “I almost forgot how stunning you were.”

Kevin grit his teeth, trying valiantly to stop his cheeks from burning.

Cian reached over to the empty side of his bed and patted the sheets. “Come back.”

“You don’t have to work?”

“You think too much, Kevin Day. Amadán. Come back.”

Kevin let himself grin and slipped back under the covers. He could sleep in for another two hours. It’d been a while since he’d slept by another body, especially one who made an effort to maintain skin-to-skin contact, and the warmth lulled him back into an easy sleep.

Before he drifted off again, he felt a small kiss press to the top of his head. It had to be the first time he could remember someone doing that. His cheeks would be permanently stained red around this man.

He was distracting. Gorgeous, smart, passionate, but really, he was just a distraction. Kevin still had Moriyama contracts to seal. He had a game to play. Cian was beautiful, an aesthetically abstract moment of time that took Kevin back to distant times in distant places, some of which had never been real.

It was enough for now.

our royal majesty’s softness is showing

#kevin day #all for the game #sabbatical au #jem writes

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missmeikakuna · 5 years

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The Girl Who Cried Gay

Rated: T-M (It's something I can see a teenager reading and enjoying but could be given a more mature rating due to the swearing and the edgy jokes the characters make.) Fandom: Original story Relationship type: F/F Description: Edgy teenager Jimena's idea of a joke is coming out to her classmates every day. The thing is, she actually is gay but is too chicken to come out for real, playing off her numerous attempts as a joke. But this time she's going to tell the truth and confess to her best friend, the equally edgy rebel Vinciane. Her plan? Write an entire song in two weeks and perform it in front of everyone. Should be easy, right?

Right? Notes:

I want to thank Tyler, the Creator for inspiring this story. Your numerous jokes about you being into dudes before coming out for real was a source of fascination for me, which is why I wrote this story. Also, Igor is a great album. Congrats on the Grammy.

For my readers, keep in mind that my opinions do not always match those of the characters. These girls say things I never would. I hope you find them entertaining.

CONTENT WARNING: There is a mention of suicide but no actual suicide, just the characters being edgelords and joking about the topic.

Jimena picked her teeth with one of the spikes on her boots, which she had shaken off as the school day drew to a close. Before that afternoon’s teacher had the chance to chastise her for her choice in outfit… again… she stood on top of the table.

‘I’ve got something to tell you all. I…’ She wobbled a little on the table. ‘Woah, this is pretty difficult.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m gay.’

Everyone, the teacher included, rolled their eyes and resumed their in-class tasks. Vinciane leaned back in her seat as she looked up at Jimena. She watched this grand reveal with a smirk on her face that would make a lawyered-up business mogul jealous.

Her short, dyed red hair in a sidecut was a constant source of frustration for the teachers. Jimena tried to copy it with her black hair but settled on a faux sidecut with braids. In fact, she tried to copy every aspect of her appearance, a feat made difficult by their differing body types, with Jimena being tall and thin and Vinciane being short and curvy. Both wore dark and heavy makeup, also causing a stir among the teachers.

Vinciane almost dropped her smirk when she saw Jimena’s hands turn into trembling fists. Almost.

There was little point in being concerned since it wasn’t long before Jimena laughed and applauded herself.

‘You should have seen the looks on your faces! Get wrecked!’ She plopped back down off the table and nudged Vinciane in the ribs. ‘Lezzies for life, Vinny?’ she said, holding out her pinky finger and rivalling her smirk with her own. ‘We’ll get our own U-Haul and argue over who makes the sandwiches.’

Vinciane tied her pinky around Jimena’s. ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way. By the way, I’m making the sandwiches.’ Her accent was lightly French.

The two laughed loud enough to cause another quick lecture on manners from the teacher. Then it was Jimena’s turn to roll her eyes. Being the rebellious girl she was, she flipped the bird at her teacher… under the table.

That night, Jimena held her pillow in between her chest and her knees, slouching against her bedframe. She lifted her pinky and stared at it before bringing it to her lips in a gentle kiss. She looked at the acoustic guitar at the other end of the room, romantic lyrics flittering in her head.

The punk text tone on her bedside table sent lightning up Jimena’s spine. It was Vinciane’s favourite song. The text was accompanied by a poorly shot photo.

I put a gold bath bomb in and now the bathwater looks like piss. FML. Gonna kill myself, brb.

Jimena responded a little later than she had hoped, taking time to craft her text.

Is that a toaster in your bathtub or are you happy to see me?

Vinciane’s next text pushed Jimena’s heart up to her throat.

¿Por qué no los dos? Btw, you almost had me fooled today. Almost convinced me your verbal coming out shitpost was real. Excellent job, my love 😉

Oh, yeah. Shitpost.

Jimena pulled her numerous blankets on top of her body and rolled around until she was caved in by warmth. It did little to bring a smile back to her face, but at least she could bury herself and perhaps never come out.

The pity party was crashed by her mother calling her to the dinner table. She had no choice but to crawl out of her blanket cocoon and enjoy a nice meal of… supermarket tacos.

Two thoughts battled for prominence in Jimena’s mind. The first was wondering how her parents could have possibly come from Mexico when they had the most Americanised tastes.

The second was the reopening of the recent wound caused by her friend.

¿Por qué no los dos?

Her mother heard her sigh and asked her how school was. Jimena shrugged, using the beef and lettuce in her mouth as an excuse not to talk. Her mother didn’t buy it. Not that she ever could, what with Jimena resting her feet on the table and scowling at no one in particular.

After lecturing her on keeping the table clean, she asked, ‘Why must you always wear those shoes? Is this because of that girl?’

As Jimena managed to prove, swallowing food in an unambiguously angry way was something humans could do. A light clink hit everyone’s ears as she kicked the salt shaker, causing it to collide with her mother’s plate.

‘Leave her out of this,’ Jimena said in the clipped voice of someone who wanted to yell but knew she would receive a yell in return.

Her father tried to speak calmly. Emphasis on ‘tried’.‘We’re just a little concerned that you’ve, well, been acting differently since befriending her. You used to be such a bright girl. And why won’t you wear the dresses I made you?’ His voice cracked a little at the question.

‘Well, maybe you should make clothes that I actually want to wear.’

‘I don’t appreciate that tone, young lady,’ her mother chastised her, raising her voice even louder. There it was: the yell.

‘Well, you’re going to hear that tone a lot longer if you don’t shut the hell up!’

Jimena shouted, getting out of her seat and storming off to her room. She then went back into the dining room to retrieve her tacos and brought them to her room.

She took her phone out and texted with one hand while holding one taco in the other.

My parents can step in dog shit while stuck in a time loop. Shit on their shoes for all eternity.

After a few minutes that felt more like fifty, Vinciane responded in an almost insultingly short text.

Mood

Rather than take the length as an insult, Jimena held her phone to her chest and giggled. She was unsure whether it was the heat from the phone or something else that made her heart feel so warm.

That sensation didn’t last long when she remembered that Vinciane lived with her aunt. She immediately texted an apology. She didn’t have to wait long before getting a message back.

Don’t sweat it. If I lived under their house, I would have to live under their rules. My aunt gets me better anyway. She’s even okay with my nose ring.

The two continued texting through the night, and not once did Jimena admit to looking forward to going to school the next day.

The day that followed involved Vinciane skipping class and, without even asking her, being followed by Jimena. Vinciane sat by the pond, a place students weren’t allowed to be within ten feet of, and took out a cigarette. Upon seeing the horrified look on Jimena’s face, she chuckled and lowered her eyelids until they were half-closed.

‘You worried these will turn me from a dyke to a fag?’ she asked in a strong Cockney accent. ‘Don’t worry, love, I would never leave you.’ She took a drag of the cigarette and opened her eyes fully, returning to her original accent. ‘Oh, speaking of which, any guys you think are cute?’

‘None as cute as you,’ Jimena murmured, then gulped when she saw that Vinciane heard her. The stone she was sitting on started feeling mighty uncomfy.

‘No, but seriously. No one? There’s a guy who’s got my eye- what’s wrong?’

Jimena was looking down, focusing her eyes on the hem of her plaid skirt as she fiddled with it. Anything to stop tears from falling.

‘I’m gay.’ A laugh came from Jimena’s mouth out of habit.

Vinciane joined in. ‘Yeah, yeah. So which guy do you like?’

Jimena shrugged. ‘No one at this stupid school.’

‘Fair point.’ Some of the smoke reached Jimena, who couldn’t help but cough. This earned a snicker from Vinciane. Jimena pouted and reached for the other girl’s cigarette packet. Vinciane guarded it with her free hand. ‘I don’t think you’re ready for that. Wait ‘til you stop sounding like you’re dying of tuberculosis.’

‘No way. If I’m going out, it’s gonna be human mad cow disease that takes me down.’

‘Or AIDs.’

Jimena smiled and gave Vinciane a finger gun. ‘Or AIDS.’ The two were silent for a moment as Vinciane finished her cigarette. She squished the butt into the ground and stood up, stretching her arms and yawning.

‘Um, why exactly do you go to school anyway if you’re going to skip class?’ Jimena eventually asked.

Vinciane brushed her fingers through her hair. The sight took Jimena’s breath from her. ‘I mean, you’re here. And where else am I going to go?’

Jimena didn’t know how to respond to that, not that her airless lungs would have allowed her to respond at all. All she could really do was look away from Vinciane’s plump lips and pray that she would soon be able to breathe properly again.

A decision managed to get air pumping through her veins again. She was going to come out for real, and she was going to make it as convincing as possible.

At home that night, she jotted down ideas for this ceremony onto her notes app. The following morning, she gave Vinciane vague details about an announcement she planned to make and a song she would use to do it.

‘Is this another one of your coming out ceremonies? This might be your most over the top one yet. Looking forward to it.’

‘No, no, it’s quite different. Okay, so for the announcement song, I will sing it to you and you’ll sit there all surprised.’

‘What will you be announcing?’

‘I have to make sure you look surprised.’

‘You saying I can’t act?’ Vinciane asked as she crossed her arms.

‘That’s not what I mean! I just want the song to be a surprise to everyone, including you. I may dance around you, by the way, so don’t be surprised by that. Focus on the content.’

‘So where are you going to say… er, sing this announcement?’

‘The cafeteria at lunch, two weeks for now. That should be long enough to write and rehearse a song, right?’

‘I guess. So are you going to play the song on your acoustic guitar?’

‘I was thinking of asking the music department to borrow one of their electric guitars. I think the song would be cool with a punk edge.’

‘Good luck getting one in two weeks. And an electric guitar kind of needs a band with it, so you’ll be spending a lot of those two weeks trying to get bandmates. Won’t the song be more, I don’t know, sincere sounding if it’s acoustic?’

‘You think so? You sure it wouldn’t be fake deep? I don’t want to sound like some hipster dude trying to pick up a girl at a coffee shop.’

‘If the lyrics are sincere, an acoustic guitar will highlight them. I doubt you’ll sound pretentious.’

Jimena took a deep breath and put her fist in her other hand as she exhaled. ‘Okay, I’ve got this.’

Vinciane stroked Jimena’s hair, not noticing the warmth radiating from the other’s cheeks. ‘I know you do.’

Instead of hanging out with Vinciane, Jimena spent lunchtime putting lyrics into her phone. Vinciane kept walking up to her and trying to sneak a glance, but Jimena’s screen-covering reflexes were way too good.

At home, Jimena continued typing on her phone, even during dinner. Cue the nagging from both her parents, whom she ignored.

As she lay in bed, she tried to continue typing away but the claws of doubt picked at her brain. She sat on her side, listening to the scarce sounds surrounding her. Her ears picked up the whir of a sewing machine, a sound that pulled her up like the strings of a marionette. After listening for a while with her eyes closed, the familiarity of the sound lulled her back down onto the bed.

She knew exactly what was going on and was tempted to tell her father not to bother, but the sound softened the pillow she lay on. She let it play in the background like an ambient album full of rain sounds.

Before she could fall asleep, and boy was she tempted to, an idea popped into her head. She sat up again and grabbed her guitar, playing riffs in time with her father’s sewing. The plucking of her guitar mirrored the sound of the needle.

She made a new note on her phone and wrote new lyrics referencing the sewing terms she could remember her father mentioning. Half an hour later, she put the phone down and got into her pajamas.

The first thing Jimena saw when she woke up was a finished dress hanging from the doorknob. A piece of paper was taped to the hanger, saying, ‘For when you perform your next song’. She smiled until she received a text from Vinciane. She pictured Vinciane scrunching her nose at her and tossed the dress next to the bin tucked in the corner of her room.

The following lunchtime, it was Take Two for Vinciane’s attempts to uncover Jimena’s lyrics. Once again, she failed.

‘Come on, can’t you show me a little bit?’

‘For the last time, no!’

A pout stayed on Vinciane’s lips for the rest of the day.

When she dropped her backpack by her bed, Jimena saw the dress her father had made neatly folded on the bed. She sighed and threw it back towards the bin, narrowly missing it. The next few days were a pattern of the dress appearing folded on the bed and her throwing it in the bin. Each day, her father’s shoulders drooped further and further until he looked like a caveman with depression.

During those days Vinciane didn’t pry any longer and instead spent the time sitting next to Jimena and offering words of encouragement as the girl silently edited her own lyrics. She reached for Jimena’s free hand but Jimena wriggled out of her grasp to start typing with two hands.

Once again, Vinciane pouted for the remainder of the day.

Jimena practised over and over again at home, at least until her mother yelled at her to knock it off. The ‘knock it off’ point was at 10 o’clock at night. She gave her mother the middle finger but did indeed knock it off.

However, she continued adjusting the sheet music and playing the song in her head well into the night. Naturally, this led to her coming to school with bags under her eyes and little patience for Vinciane’s gestures of friendliness. Apparently a quick, non-invasive question about how the song was going was enough to set off an atomic bomb.

‘Shut it, Vinny!’

Vinciane blinked and stepped back. ‘Sorry.’

Jimena almost apologised too but couldn’t bring the words out. Vinciane made sure not to bother her until the two weeks were up.

Having her muse not by her side made it both easier and more difficult to practice the song. On the one hand, more time to herself without worrying about the secret getting out. On the other, no words of support and no one to look at when she needed a boost of inspiration. Doubt’s claws scratched at her psyche again.

That night, she sat in the dark, Vinciane’s verging-on-tears face playing over and over in her head like a scratched CD.

The morning of the performance day was the same as usual, complete with the neatly folded dress on the bed. Jimena groaned as she shoved the dress into her backpack.

Vinciane didn’t show up at class. Alarms rang in Jimena’s ears. What if the most important audience member wasn’t there for the performance?

After changing at the beginning of lunch, she wasted valuable rehearsal time searching the school for Vinciane. She wasn’t at the pond nor behind the gardener’s shed where the druggies usually hung out.

It was five minutes before the end of lunch by the time she found Vinciane in a classroom. The same classroom Vinciane would have been in that morning had she not skipped class.

Vinciane’s eyes popped out of their sockets upon seeing Jimena in the dress. Its colour was not unfamiliar- black, as always. However, it was frilly and lacy and buoyant, paired with knee-high socks and a little bonnet. It was utterly adorable.

As soon as the shock wore off, she glared at her. ‘Come to tell me to shut it?’ Jimena tightened her grip on her acoustic guitar. ‘Or maybe you want to take me to the cafeteria so everyone can hear the song you refused to show me.’

Jimena stepped closer and began playing the guitar. She breathed in, then out, then in again.

‘You pull me in... like a thread caught in a sewing machine.’ She pronounced the last syllable of ‘machine’ pretty weakly to get it to rhyme with ‘in’.

She continued. ‘I don’t know where this is going. This sin.... gives me pins and needles, you’re giving me the feels. Now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.’

She strummed the guitar rapidly, sending a warm sound to a smiling Vinciane. ‘I’m really sorry if I’m bursting at the seams. It’s so hard standing next to the girl of my dreams. When you’re edgy, I keep folding like a hem. It’s so hard to admit that you’re my favourite femme.’

Vinciane’s cheeks went red while Jimena’s playing slowed down. ‘Your jokes leave me in stitches but my foot’s in my mouth. I want to tell you how I feel but I don’t know how.’

Jimena circled around Vinciane’s chair, speeding up her strumming. Her heart was beating faster than the song but, for the first time, she wasn’t going to back out now.

She returned to the tune she started with. ‘Well, I’m as straight... as the hem of a big swing skirt. Don’t hate, I’m not looking to get hurt. A date... would be wonderful, don’t judge. My feelings simply won’t budge and I feel like this might as well be fate.’

It was time for the outro. ‘No, this is no joke. No this is no prank. I’m gay as fuck and with some luck, I got you in my ranks. This is the real me and yes, my heart is true. I’m not that tough, it’s all a bluff. Just know that I like you.’

Vinciane looked into Jimena’s eyes and saw the sincerity in them. She stood up and whispered in her ear, sending tingles down her spine.

‘You didn’t need to act tough, you know. I’d have liked you either way.’

‘Um, so about that guy you have your eye on-’ Jimena asked.

‘Oh, that?’ Vinciane’s smirk returned as she put her index finger against her own lips. ‘That was a lie. Just wanted to test the waters, plus I didn’t know how to tell you. You won’t get mad at me for that, right?’

Jimena shook her head and then rubbed the back of her neck. ‘So, uh, how does a date sound?’

‘Make it two. Then we can get a U-Haul. I’m still making the sandwiches, by the way. I’ve seen you in Home Ec and you kind of suck in the kitchen.’

Jimena giggled and grabbed her hand as the two walked out of the classroom. ‘Sounds like a plan. But for now, we should just focus on how to convince everyone else that we’re a couple for real this time.’

Vinciane shrugged. ‘Does it matter? I know and you know. Who cares what the others think?’

The bell rang and Vinciane followed Jimena into another classroom. During class, they spent less time listening to the teacher and more times sneaking glances at each other. Vinciane played with the ribbon attached to Jimena’s bonnet, twirling the pretty fabric around her finger. Jimena ran her kitten-heeled shoe over the spikes on Vinciane’s boot, smiling at the rough sound.

#lesbian #yuri #fiction #romance #writing #LGBT #lgbt romance #original fiction #drama #comedy #The Girl Who Cried Gay

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nodensreviews · 5 years

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The Witcher (Netflix)

The Witcher is one of those shows that I have been postponing for a while to watch. There was something about it that didn't appeal to me at all, I think mostly is related to the fact that gritty dark fantasy worlds are all the rage now, to the point they get repetitive.

A note here to point out that I'm reviewing the show as what it is, the show. I haven't read the books or played the games, that going by what my thoughts are about the show, are surely better than the TV adaptation. There is obviously time for improvement, since this is only the first season, but the feeling it left me after watching it is enough to wonder if I'll feel compelled to watch any future seasons of the show.

I think the main problem I encountered with The Witcher were the time jumps, unless you already know the story it was painful to follow, there were zero markers anywhere that would indicate if it was the present or the past, and even now after finishing the whole season there are parts of the story that I can't place in the timeline. It's especially more difficult to tell the time apart when your characters are not aging or changing in any way that would make it obvious. There is only one change in the show that makes it obvious that anything that happened to that character was before, and that's Yennefer's physical change. The pacing was also slow in general, and combined with the timeline problem made the first episodes hard to watch, to the point I almost gave up.

As far as I know, the books are supposed to have Slavic roots, in its folklore and culture and other details. I saw nothing of that here, what made Netflix's The Witcher a generic dark fantasy show. How interesting would it have been if the cultures, the costumes and the stories told had that element, it would have been new and fresher than what we got. Since it's an American production I didn't expect much more. I guess the show had to be americanised in some way or another, and I guess when americans think of fantasy setting they think of England. Because this is another issue that gets old and boring to me whenever I see new fantasy shows appearing, they always take English actors, and British accents to play most of the characters (or maybe with an American lead or leads). Breaking news, the Middle Ages took place in all Europe, not only Great Britain. But it has become this kind of staple of the fantasy genre across all platforms that I think, personally, gets boring. Look at a show like Norsemen, they speak in English with norwegian accent and it's beautiful. And it's a more historically inspired series, so why can't you be original in a completely fantasy setting? I don't see any reason not to be. But again, it is made by the US, so it was meant to happen because it usually does.

Another of the big issues The Witcher has is a lack of character developement, except maybe Geralt that gets more. I have to admit I wasn't keen at the idea of Henry Cavill as The Witcher, not because I had any idea of how Geralt should be, but because it looked to me like the typical blown-up macho guy with zero feelings that, well, kind of is. But surprisingly as the episodes went by I warmed up to him as the character and although it is not the type of character I gravitate towards, I do have certain appreciation for him. Yennefer, on the other hand, had potential and started as a very interesting character but got lost in the process. In fact, she lost all her soul when she changed physically because after that we are not shown much about her life during those years, and she didn't have any changes and the little ones that seem to happen are off screen, we're not even told, and obviously not shown. We're supposed to believe she's very powerful and intelligent, but we're not shown the moments were she acts that way and at times it feels like she's only there to be the romantic interest of Geralt, but also stretching it out so it can cover so many seasons. And talking about this, their interest for one another was very rushed, and I'm supposed to believe, because the cheesy music played on, that they're romantically invested in one another, and somehow that I'm presented with a great love story, only that I am not. Ciri is a bit of a mistery. Generic girl with some superpowers for killing. Not much is really known of her and despite the fact we see a lot of her on screen, we really don't see much of her as a character. With Ciri I have to specifically mention the contact lenses, those were horrible and I don't even understand why. I saw the actress has natural blue eyes, so why? And I saw the character in the books is supposed to have green eyes, so again, why? I hope this improves or is completely removed for the second season as it adds nothing positive nor it's accurate to the book character and makes her look so lifeless. For some reason this problem is not as concerning with Geralt, maybe because we know he's essentially not human. Still, I have read he's supposed to have cat eyes, and that would have been ten times cooler.

Secondary characters were mostly background noise, Jaskier specifically was as annoying to me as he was to Geralt. I guess they tried some sort of dumb-funny companion thing there, but I think it fails miserably. He has nothing to say, he's just there to get into trouble, use modern colloquialisms and play a bit the comic-relief. Ultimately I can't connect with him nor I want to.

Costumes were on and off for me. Some were ok, others looked too much like a modern take of a fantasy costume, like some of the dresses Yennefer wears. I know she has magic and can do anything, but it makes me wonder where is her inspiration for such clothes, they don't seem the fashion around her nor I think anyone around her would find her more attractive because of them, because they're weird dresses no one around could identify as fashionable. I could go here also about how inappropiate I find when in shows women sleep with full make up on, or they seem to wear it 24/7, and you see this woman with mascara on waking up in perfect white sheets. I know it's probably a silly detail to point out in the big scale of things, but it totally breaks the atmosphere for me every single time it happens, and The Witcher in this respect is no exception.

Overall I think the show has entertaining value, but not without drawbacks. I would say the time jumps are the worst part of it and it would have been more enjoyable without these. I think it was generally rushed at places where it shouldn't and then slowed down in scenes that were not needed. Some of the side plots are interesting and I found them more entertaining than the main plot line. I think the show needs improvement and a more focused, linear plot (or showing clearly the time jumps), with more character developement and more details to understand the direction and the reasoning. Maybe we'll see those changes in the second season.

~A~

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phantom-le6 · 4 years

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Film Review - The New Mutants

I’d originally been planning to go right into my backlog of TV series after my last film review, but instead I’ve opted to delay that slightly in favour of reviewing two further additions to my film collection. First up is the final film of Fox’s era of Marvel cinematic production, and to date the only cinematic adaptation of a spin-off group from my favourite Marvel heroes in terms of comics lore. This is my take on The New Mutants…

Plot (adapted from Wikipedia):

Danielle "Dani" Moonstar, a young Cheyenne Native American, escapes the destruction of her reservation during an apparent tornado. During the chaos, Dani's father, William, hides her before an unseen entity kills him, leaving her the only survivor. After being knocked unconscious, Dani awakens in a hospital run by Dr. Cecilia Reyes. Reyes comforts Dani, telling her she is a mutant, and advises her to remain in the hospital until she learns what her abilities are and controls them.

Dani is introduced to four other teenagers; Samuel "Sam" Guthrie, Illyana Rasputin, Roberto "Bobby" da Costa and Rahne Sinclair. Reyes has brought each of them to the hospital after they have all suffered tragedy; Sam brought down a whole mine on his father and coworkers, Roberto burned his girlfriend to death, Rahne escaped her religiously strict village after being branded as a witch, and Illyana was haunted by her past of child slavery and abuse, which manifests itself as otherworldly beings called the "Smiling Men". All of them possess mutant abilities; Roberto can manipulate solar energy, Sam can fly at jet speed, Illyana has inter-dimensional teleportation powers (as well as being a sorceress), and Rahne's lycanthropy allows her to turn into a wolf. Reyes herself is a powerful mutant who keeps her patients from leaving the facility by surrounding it with unbreakable force fields.

Collectively, the five of them believe that they are being trained to join the X-Men, hence the strict supervision, as well as Reyes reminding them that they are considered dangerous and should not leave until they have mastered their abilities. Dani immediately befriends Rahne, with the two eventually forming a romantic relationship, while Illyana continues to antagonize Dani. When Dani fights back, she discovers that Illyana's only friend is a hand puppet of a purple dragon who she calls Lockheed. Soon, the group all begin to have horrifying visions of their past tragedies, one of which results in Rahne getting branded in the neck. Illyana deduces that the visions are the result of Dani's powers manifesting; she has the ability to physically manifest illusions based on a person's psyche. Reyes consults her employers, the Essex Corporation, who instruct her to collect Dani's DNA and have her euthanized.

As Reyes takes her away, Dani's panic causes her power to spiral out of control. Illyana and Sam are attacked by manifestations of the Smiling Men while Roberto tries to break through the barrier, which has shrunken down. Dani uses her powers to learn of Reyes's true intentions before Rahne arrives in half-wolf form and mauls Reyes, forcing her to flee. The five regroup and realize that, in order to escape, they have to kill Reyes to deprive the force fields of their power source. They find her and Reyes traps them, revealing that she was training them to be killers for Essex. Before she can kill Dani, the Demon Bear, which is Dani's own fear manifested and the true cause of her reservation's destruction, arrives and kills Reyes.

Illyana summons her powers to jump between "limbo" and recruits a real-life version of Lockheed to take on the Demon Bear. Eventually, Sam and Roberto join the fight, overcoming their insecurities in the process. Rahne tries to reach through to an unconscious Dani until she is forced to fight the Demon Bear alone. Dani is visited by her father's spirit, who encourages her to face her fear. Dani awakens and confronts Demon Bear, calming and thus dissipating it. As day breaks, the group learns that the force fields are down and they leave the facility to find the nearest town.

Review:

As people who have read my reviews and other articles back when Facebook notes were still around, last year in the run-up to this film’s intended release of April 2020, I posted a fun little run-down of how all the X-Men’s various spin-off groups were created in back in the 1980’s. First and foremost among these groups were the New Mutants, who I have read a lot about not only through the X-Men comics of this era, but also through the earliest issues of the New Mutants’ own series in the anthologies of the Marvel Epic collection. As such, I was really excited to finally get to see this film when it came out early this month on Blu-ray.

That being said, I was also a little wary; Fox’s treatment of the X-Men and their various associates has been frequently hit-and-miss, with Deadpool being the only film to date that I’ve given top marks to. In addition, the much-raved about Logan showed us that Fox had little respect for the characters, basing the plot-premise of mutants being eradicated via GM crops on the idea that a then-active Xavier or Magneto would do nothing, when X-Men: The Last Stand had shown they would be far less ignorant or inactive in the face of any anti-mutant bio-chemical shenanigans. Combine that with years of anglocised Xavier and Magneto alongside Americanised versions of non-US characters, and you have to admit, Fox just has a really, really lousy track record for adaptational quality or film-to-film consistency with their main Marvel earners as was.

How, then, does this film directed and co-written by Josh Boone, stack up? Well at first watch pretty well. The film is a revised origin film for the group that draws heavily on the Demon Bear Saga, a three-issue story arc that spanned issues 18-20 (August-October 1984) of the New Mutants comic in its original form. The original was written by Chris Claremont in the midst of his definitive writing run on the X-Men, and was drawn by artist Bill Sienkiewicz. The latter gives this film his blessing in behind-the-scenes materials on the Blu-ray, including an interview with Boone that forms the director’s commentary.

It’s not hard to see why Sienkiewicz is ok with the film, because having read the comics I can see this film as being a very faithful adaptation of the source material while still being its own story. The film is very much a horror film, though initially it has more of a thriller aspect that keeps it distinct from other superhero horror films like the Blade trilogy or Sony’s horror-comedy Venom. It’s also very much a coming-of-age story, which taps into what the New Mutants comics were about. Despite the team having X-Men trainee uniforms at times back in the comics, the team was meant to be just students learning to use their powers, leaving the world-saving and evil mutants-battling to the X-Men, a dynamic that has been reflected in most of Fox’s X-Men films to date.

In terms of characters, casting and performance, I’d say the film lands very well in most areas. As there are so relatively few characters to go at, I’ll tackle them here as bullet points;

Danielle “Dani” Moonstar (played by Blu Hunt). Dani is the focal character for this story, and actress Blu Hunt does very well to bring the character to life. The manifestation of her powers is handled quite differently from the comics, but it works well within the story and gives us a very unique take on the classic idea of a mutant discovering their power for the first time. Normally it’s either a very rapid progression or we just see the character with full awareness of what their power is, whereas here Dani isn’t aware and the film essentially shows her trying to work out what her power is, then how to control it.

Rahne Sinclair (played by Maisie Williams). After Moira MacTaggert was Americanised in the X-Men prequel films, becoming a CIA agent rather than a Scottish scientist, I was afraid that her ward Rahne (pronounced Rain) would follow a similar course. Instead, Maisie Williams pulls off a great modernised version of this young Scottish werewolf-like mutant, including the strict and abusive conservative Christian upbringing and subsequent abuse that is an integral part of her comic-verse incarnation. The film also translates the telepathic bond between Dani and Rahne from the comics, and its subsequent deep friendship, into a same-sex romance that is very much a natural extension of source material.

Samuel “Sam” Guthrie (played by Charlie Heaton). Much like Williams, Heaton is shifting his accent to play the role of Sam Guthrie, who in the comics hails from Kentucky coal country. The performance is brilliant, and while some fans may struggle to understand why Sam has one arm in a cast when his power of ‘blasting’ is supposed to render him invulnerable, the film works in an idea of guilt-based self-abuse which, much like the Dani-Rahne relationship, is an extension of a comic-based element. In the comics, Sam is very hard on himself and holds himself to an almost impossibly high standard in all areas, but often falls short in the area of his mutant powers. For someone like that, the kind of incident Sam is struggling to deal with in the film could have a very negative effect on his mental health.

Illyana Rasputin (played by Anna Taylor-Joy). The kid sister of Colossus, Anna Taylor-Joy sadly doesn’t get to make any hints about her character knowing one of the X-Men by blood. Her backstory gets somewhat revised in order for it to work within a relatively self-contained film; in the comics, Illyana was drawn into the realm of Limbo at about six or seven years old, but due to a time-difference between there and Earth and a slip-up in the X-Men saving her, she ended up coming back to Earth at age 13, possessing powers of sorcery as well as a mutant teleporting power tied into the Limbo dimension. The film retains Illyana’s power set, however, and even borrows the dragon Lockheed who was originally the ‘pet’/friend of Kitty Pryde, Illyana’s best friend and room-mate in the comics. Thankfully, Taylor-Joy also uses a Russian accent in keeping with her character, so we’re not getting any repeats on the Daniel Cudmore Americanised performance here.

Roberto “Bobby” DaCosta (Played by Henry Zaga). Character-wise, Zaga does well as the New Mutant who was code-named Sunspot in the comics, and while the more pyrokinetic version of his powers seen in the Days of Future Past film incarnation of the character show up, so does his true comic power of solar-powered strength. The film also claims Bobby is from Brazil in keeping with the comics, but Zaga’s accent never sounds even remotely Latin American to me, despite him being a Brazilian actor, and even worse Zaga is a white-wash on the character. Readers of the comics will know Roberto is of mixed race, having a white mother and a black father, so Zaga is a very poor casting choice, especially given the diversity-driven nature of Marvel’s mutant character base.

Dr Cecilia Reyes (Played by Alice Braga). Of the two Brazilian cast members, Braga is the only one who sounds like she’s from a Latin American country, and that’s annoying because she shouldn’t. Dr Cecilia Reyes is American; more importantly, she was drawn in the comics as having dark skin to suggest a mixed-race background similar to Roberto’s (based on her initial appearance in Operation: Zero Tolerance, which I’ve also read), and her general attitude and depiction in source material would seem to suggest an upbringing somewhere in America. Also, Reyes’ force-field powers are centred around herself in the source material, presumably to avoid any suggestion of her being a diversity’s sake rip-off of Susan Richards of the Fantastic Four, and she is a frequent ally or member of the X-Men. This makes her position as an eventual antagonist in this film a poor misuse of her character, one akin to the infamous misuse of the Mandarin in the MCU’s Iron Man 3.

Given all of this, I’m inclined to see The New Mutants as yet another Fox-made Marvel film that falls short of greatness because key details were changed that didn’t need to be. Had I been the one to do this film, I’d have hired an actor that could look like Roberto from the comics, and would have hired an accent coach to help him if he couldn’t do a Brazilian accent. Next, I’d have kept Dr Cecilia Reyes out of the film and used Madelyn Pryor, a character from the comics who would have served that part of the story better on the basis of the source material, and would have cast a suitable actress for that role.

Finally, I’d have worked in at least a nod to the sibling relationship between Illyana and Colossus during the film, used newly shot footage for the part where stock footage from Logan was used, and I’d have done a very brief mid-credits or end credits scene where the X-Men (prequel Xavier, Storm and Nightcrawler with Deadpool-style Colossus and Jackman’s Wolverine) would have touched down in the path of the New Mutants in the Blackbird. Zero dialogue; just the touch down, the X-Men coming out and Illyana running to give her big bro a hug, done. Final score for what we did get, though, is 8 out of 10. Could well have been less, but the appearance of a comic-accurate Lockheed in the third act? That is a major plus all by itself.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Doctor Who: What Each Actor Brings to the Role of the Master

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Sometimes you’ve just got to look at the general vibe of 2020 (the furnace bit in Toy Story 3 but half the toys are drinking lighter fluid) and decide to write something positive. On my way to nursery, another dad was telling me how he found Sacha Dhawan’s performance as the Master in Doctor Who a high point of the last series, so inspired by that, let’s celebrate what was good about each actor to play the role on television. If nothing else, it’ll probably be good for my mental health and give someone a chance to type ‘Of course Roger Delgado was the original and best’ in context, so hopefully that’ll make them happy too.

Roger Delgado (or to give him his full name ‘Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto’ – which is Spanish for ‘Of course Roger Delgado was the original and best’) originated the role, playing the character regularly from 1971 until his death in 1973.

‘Terror of the Autons’, his first story, has the Master hypnotically influence people and murder them in a variety of nasty, convoluted ways. The character developed as an inversion of Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor. Pertwee insisted on a few “moments of charm” sprinkled into the scripts, but his Doctor was also curt, loud, arrogant, and antagonistic. Delgado’s Master, on the other hand, was charming, pleasant and witty.

Delgado’s performance reminds me of a Christopher Nolan film: there’s a sense of confidence, almost elegance present that makes something potentially ridiculous feel contextually sensible. Of course the Master is allying himself with someone who will inevitably betray him; he has a series of incredibly realistic face masks he can generate seemingly at will, and of course he’s decided to pose as a legal official for no obvious reason. This is his great skill: the poise to carry off the ridiculous and terrible as perfectly reasonable.

The Master’s Masks

The character returned in 1976’s ‘The Deadly Assassin’. With Delgado having passed away and writer/Script Editor Robert Holmes planning on leaving Doctor Who, he wrote a Master who could easily be written out by the next production team: a skeletal creature, born of pragmatism, with ambitious plans and nothing to hide his sadism. This Master would destroy Gallifrey and hundreds of other planets to cheat Death, whom he evokes in appearance.

The Master was planned to be the villain in Holmes’ final story, ‘The Talons of Weng-Chieng’, directly placing the character into the territory of Jack the Ripper. This version of the character was accordingly vicious, and what Peter Pratt brings out is bitterness. Working from behind a mask, Pratt’s voice and body language are at their best when the Master is operating from the shadows, the strained whispers of a dying man bent on vengeance. The Relationship is no longer playful, it’s sadistic.

Geoffrey Beevers’s Master in ‘The Keeper of Traken’is in another emaciated transitional state, playing a role taken by an original character in earlier drafts. Beevers’ performance is reminiscent of Ian McDiarmid as Grandad Palpatine: clearly untrustworthy yet simultaneously immensely persuasive.

The Master becomes a punchline

Anthony Ainley – who takes over from Beevers in ‘The Keeper of Traken’- clearly had a lot of fun playing the Master. Fans of computer game Destiny of the Doctors may recall how infectious Ainley’s enthusiasm for the role could be. Visually, his Master is reminiscent of Delgado, but he rarely has the same poise. Bluntly, there’s less dignity to the character. The chuckling, smooth façade is masking desperation, not anger. The quirks and regular mistakes Delgado’s Master made are now writ large in writing and performance. There is more than a hint of Alan Partridge as the Master scrapes through a series of ill-conceived low-stakes plans, somehow bouncing back. He becomes a punchline, an understudy, before again being reduced to mere survival. On a purely camp level, Ainley is great and memorably arch, but his incarnation unravels before us without explicit logic.

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Eric Roberts is much simpler to deal with. For most of the 1996 TV Movie, his Master is written as an Americanised Roger Delgado and then, towards the end, we have both the camp and desperation of Ainley. Roberts may not be the most invested actor to play the part but he’s still having fun with it, playing the character bigger and broader than he’d ever been (and, we thought in 1996, as big as he’d ever get).

Before we talk about John Simm, Derek Jacobi is the final of the mayfly Masters. As Russell T. Davies observes on the DVD commentary for ‘Utopia’, Jacobi’s eyes convey so much of the character in his short screen time. Now we have Delgado and Ainley’s confidence, but the anger and sadism of Pratt’s Master is to the fore. It’s a handy and concise amalgamation of a lot of the character that leaves you wanting more. Jacobi also has a tiny, thespy outburst of ham to complement what’s come directly before and what’s about to arrive.

Mirroring the Doctor

John Simm’s Master, aka Harold Saxon, is not like Delgado’s in characterisation, but is also written as a comment on the current Doctor. This Master is, rather than an inversion, The Doctor as “The Big Bad” of the series in a post-Buffy TV landscape and so, given the Tenth Doctor, he’s fast-talking, quippy, mercurial (He sells himself as a messenger from the heavens at one point) and dangerous. The difference is that the Master embraces the latter.

Because these Doctor Who episodes were event television in 2007, we have the Master delivering on huge, complex plans that destroy millions of lives: beyond Delgado-level competence with beyond Ainley-level camp. Russell T. Davies is a big fan of tonal dissonance so we get the violence against women that Holmes hinted at with the Jack the Ripper connection, but in the same episode the Master prances along to The Scissor Sisters.

It’s important to make the distinction with Simm’s performance between personal taste and realisation of the scripts the actor is given. In terms of the latter, Simm delivers a big, cartoonish performance with a nasty edge because that’s what he’s been asked to do. Having carved a reputation with serious roles in Life on Mars, The Lakes and Cracker, Simm played against reputation. The character is written and performed big enough to make Eric Roberts seem the build-up rather than peak of the crescendo, managing to out-Tennant Tennant while baiting slash fiction writers.

A warped friendship

Continuing to explore The Relationship further results in Michelle Gomez’ Missy coming in with a finale-scale plan, with the reveal that the traditionally complex scheme is actually a warped gesture of friendship.

Missy’s character development builds on aspects of her predecessor – the nods to a deeper friendship are developed, but the crucial difference is when faced with a choice between death and being shackled to the Doctor for centuries, Missy chooses the latter and Saxon chooses death. This gives Gomez more to play with than Simm and she delivers on both the mania, as you’d expect Green Wing’s Sue White to do, but also brings out more enigmatic qualities.

While the gender-flip of the character coinciding with their softening is questionable, Gomez delivers the most poised performance since Delgado’s and also has a grumpy Doctor/fun Master inversion. And as for her final scene, it’d be a brave and/or foolish showrunner to return to the character soon after that.

Thirteen episodes later and mild-mannered Agent O turned out to be the Master in ‘Spyfall’. To be fair to all involved: hardly anyone expected this. Sacha Dhawan absolutely nailed the contrasts necessary for the reveal to work. His performance continues the manic rage and glee, but he has to do a lot with dialogue like ‘It’s red because it’s drenched in the blood of our people’ – a zinger that has all the rhythm of someone dropping crockery down an escalator. Dhawan’s Master doesn’t drive the story, instead being inserted into it to fulfil and explain story beats, and so he hasn’t had as much to work with.

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Looking back, the Master has only really settled as a character in their last three incarnations, and while Roger Delgado’s incarnation is influential it’s in small ways. In fact Delgado’s incarnation is now something of an anomaly. While the basics of the character are largely intact throughout – evil and complex schemes that involve the Doctor – the character hasn’t been convincingly debonair since 1973. Instead the character has become more intense and manic. What connects the fan favourites is they’ve been asked to play interesting contradictions – unflappable despite their failures, vicious and violent despite their clear affection – so there’s more to them the peculiar tragedy of a recurring villain who never wins.

The post Doctor Who: What Each Actor Brings to the Role of the Master appeared first on Den of Geek.

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briefhistorybriefhistory · 7 years

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Charging Bull vs Fearless Girl: A Story About Public Art

The art world has had its fair share of controversy recently which has spilled out into mainstream media coverage. From Dana Schutz’s frankly exploitative painting of Emmett Till to recent protests at the opening of the Carl Andre show at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the normally somewhat insular world of contemporary art has been grabbing headline after headline as artists court controversy so hard I thought for a moment we were back in 1997. The most recent headline to grab my attention? Arturo di Modica, the artist best known for the Charging Bull statue of Wall Street, is demanding the removal of the Fearless Girl rejoinder.

Charging Bull was installed on 15th December, 1989. Arturo di Modica didn’t have a commission or permit to install the statue where he did, but he installed it there in what has been referred to as a moment of guerrilla art. Workers at the New York Stock Exchange decided to call the police - after all, it’s not every day that an Italian man in a van drives up and installs a bull made of bronze and stainless steel on your front doorstep - and the NYPD seized the statue later that day. Public outcry led to the statue being re-installed at a new location two blocks away only six days later, complete with ceremony, on 21st December 1989.

Di Modica has described the bull as being a symbol of how he views America and American ideals - he has recently described it as representing “freedom, world peace, strength, power and love.” Other articles have quoted him as describing it as a symbol of an economic boom, something he has entwined with these Americanised ideals. I don’t feel the symbol of a charging bull is necessarily the most obvious representation of the concepts of love or peace, but regardless, di Modica has made clear it is, to him, a symbol of his adopted nation. To me, an outsider looking in on American culture, the bull reads as powerful, dynamic, dangerous. Its body curves and twists as if the creature is about to charge, lines of tension carved into its face and its tail lashing violently like a whip. Some have suggested di Modica created a symbol which represented the stock market itself, with its unpredictability and intensity.

Apologies as this image is actually part of artist Liu Bolin’s series Hiding in the City, it just happened to be the best image I could find. I’d like to clarify that Liu remains uninvolved in this fiasco.

However the statue is read, it stayed in the location at Bowling Green, a few blocks away from the NYSE, and as time has passed, has become part of the local culture of the area. Fast forward to International Women’s Day 2017, and another sculpture appeared opposite the bull, in almost every way its opposite. The statue was of a little girl made of bronze, her skirt whipping around her legs and her chin tilted defiantly upwards, towards the bull. Fearless Girl was meant to stay for a month, a piece of temporary art installed to prompt debate and discussion surrounding the role of women in finance, coinciding with IWD. Much like Charging Bull, however, the public reception to the work was overwhelming. Parents prompted their children to pose with her, women came from miles around to mimic her stance, the internet lit up with discussion and debate, much of it complimentary towards Fearless Girl. Following a public petition, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Fearless Girl’s tenure would be extended until February 2018.

It eventually became clear that the statue had been commissioned by a commercial company, the State Street Global Advisors of Boston, which many, including di Modica himself, have loudly and publicly condemned. According to the papers, their intention was to spark the discussion which had emerged since the unveiling of the statue. Fearless Girl has drawn a number of interesting responses - including criticism that the symbol of women on Wall Street should most definitely not be that of a child - but perhaps the most interesting to me has been the debates surrounding the origins of Fearless Girl.

Many have argued that her provenance doesn’t matter - that now she’s here, she provides the public with a symbol of resistance, defiance - some have even suggested she represents a solitary figure of opposition to the endless, relentless march of capitalism. Others have argued that the statue performs one function above all others - she acts as a advertising campaign for State Street. In all of the debate and articles surrounding her, a good number have included the name of their company. Many feel suspicious that the company presuming to spark this debate doesn’t have the most diverse board room either, with only three of eleven board members being women. In fact - some have even pointed out that, while SSGA encourages the companies it has stakes in to diversify their boardrooms and leadership positions, even if they don’t, SSGA won’t stop investing in these companies.

Personally, I think it does matter who paid for her, in the same way that it matters that British Petroleum spent 26 years sponsoring major exhibitions at the Tate galleries. Money in art is present, it is always present and we should be critical of who pays for a commission, just like we should be critical of who sponsors an exhibition, who pays for a priceless work at auction, who uses the most exclusive and expensive materials in their work. For me, I do not think it is possible to separate either work from the economic conditions under which they have been created - capitalism - and how this influences, shapes and derails not just the art world, but the entire world. Yes, we should be critical that Fearless Girl was commissioned by a company who have something to gain from their own promotion, but we should also be critical of the economic system which di Modica is implicitly praising in his sparkling appraisal of the United States. Di Modica has created a work of art which celebrates a capitalist industry in a capitalist system in a capitalist country - for him to decry the Fearless Girl as an advertisement for SSGA is more than slightly ironic. No one here is without financial motive.

However Fearless Girl and its economic origins have been interpreted by the public, however, it has been thoroughly condemned by Arturo di Modica. Di Modica’s argument hits out at Fearless Girl for allegedly breaking di Modica’s copyright over the bronze bull. He says that, by placing the girl in direct opposition to the bull, the context of the bull has changed from a positive and charged message to one of fear, of admonition, and this has violated his copyright. He intends to sue, although no suit has been filed at the time of writing.

Now, I’m no expert in US copyright law, but as far as I understand the basic principle, it’s impossible to copyright an idea or a concept - just the manifestation of those ideas. So the sculpture itself is part of di Modica’s intellectual property, but he cannot claim that the copyright over this piece of work covers its conceptual ideas too. Such a thing is, in fact, laughable - does concept not change, mature and remanifest itself over time? Was Charging Bull not used to promote the Occupy Wall Street movement by Adbusters, and does this not add a new layer of conceptual development that di Modica could never have possibly accounted for? Concept is not a fixed or static quality, it is a constant evolution of how your work is read through the layers of history, through world events and changes in custom. One hundred years ago, as the world was modernising rapidly, di Monica’s bull would have likely been seen as antiquated, old fashioned, parochial in a time when the art world - and the public at large - were inundated with new technologies and advances in science. Today it could be read as a quaint throw back to more agrarian times.

Occupy Wall Street poster by Adbusters

Di Modica has seemingly internalised an idea that this one interpretation, this ephemeral quality of “Americanness” (an indefinable, distortable, subjective and some say say laughable idea in itself), is the only way to read Charging Bull and are intrinsic in that reading. All viewers must be struck by the undeniable “Americanness” of the animal - despite the fact that the idea of “Americanness” is mutable and ever-changing, and deeply influenced by your relationship with the United States and its inner workings. As I have mentioned above, to an outsider, the bull has no obvious qualities that one might attribute as American - indeed, the first time I saw the sculpture, before this scandal ever hit the front pages, my thoughts were - is this a representation of the aggression, of the fragile hyper masculinity of the finance industry? I didn’t think of America, I thought of the Spanish tradition of the running of the bulls, most notably practiced in Pamplona. After all, we can only understand art by drawing from our own lives, our own spheres of knowledge and experience to help us interpret how and why something has been made. A particularly patriotic viewer of Charging Bull may indeed see the positive, ephemeral qualities of Americanness in it - but an undocumented viewer who has experienced first hand violence from the police and other wings of the American state? They may see instead the racism and persecution they have experienced in the land of the free.

So where the artist’s intentions perhaps differ from the audience’s readings, where does this leave the work? In a normal gallery setting, a curator would look at the entire arrangement of work in relation to each other and look at what sort of reaction they wish to spark in an audience. A curator would choose to, or not choose to, place Fearless Girl in opposition to Charging Bull, and those decisions would be significant in how those works are understood by an audience. A good curator looks at the world as it is now and how the current political and economic debates influence how we see and interact with the world and its wider conceptual questions. For example, now, in Europe, many curators are responding to many political factors - the migrant crisis, Brexit, the rise of Donald Trump and the alt-right. All of these have implications on how viewers understand the work and how we understand and parse the work around us. A skilful curator will lead an audience member through a journey where the artist’s intentions are explored but also challenged, refined, interpreted by the setting or context the work is placed in - and sometimes this involves pairing works by multiple artists who have made statements which have relevance to each other.

Bob and Roberta Smith respond to the Brexit referendum.

Di Modica is correct in one way - the placing of the girl does change the bull, it suggests a halt of the bull’s endless aggression, a target for it to aim at. This has conceptual ramifications for both works, but ultimately di Modica has suggested that there is one correct, patriotic reading of the bull, and anything that calls this reading into question is an infringement of his “rights.”

This brings us to the crux of what public art really is. There is no curator there to negotiate between the two artists and two pieces of work, no gallery structure to provide viewers with pamphlets which explain the artist intentions. Public art is a truly unmoderated interaction between a piece and the audience, in a much more direct way than a gallery experience can provide. Public art is made to be interpreted by the public without the conceptual assistance of a curator to pick out themes to focus on, the audience must interact with the work without interference and draw their own conclusions.

At times, this has been comical. An example from my hometown of Glasgow would be the monument to Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, also known as the Wellington Statue or, to us locals, “that statue with the cone on its head.” Despite discouragement from the local authorities and police, it’s been a tradition for this statue to wear a traffic cone as its hat and has been since at least the early 1980s, if not earlier. Allegedly, the local city council spends £10,000 per year in removing cones, just to have them put back up there by helpful members of the public. In 2013, the council proposed doubling the height of the plinth the statue sits on, but withdrew the plans after a massive public outcry.

Sometimes the horse gets a hat too.

People didn’t care about the statue - in fact, I had to Google the proper name of it - but they cared about the fact that it wears a bright orange cone on its head. A whole cone subculture has sprung up - you can now buy cone shaped hats, badges and knickknacks, and local news periodically runs baffled, alarmed headlines when the cone goes missing - and this local culture is an important one when we read the statue now. Of course, we must acknowledge that the artist, who had it erected in 1844, could not have possibly yearned for his work to be adorned with a small and distressingly orange cone, but we also cannot separate it from its modern day reinvention. It has taken on a new symbolism, a new importance which, for many people, supersedes its original aim to create a monument to the Duke of Wellington.

Popular left wing blog athousandflowers.net takes a stand in #conegate2013.

Which is more important, we might be tempted to ask. Which should we seek to preserve - the artist’s original intentions, or the response of the community into which a piece of work has been placed? I personally don’t believe an art work exists without an audience, which is not to say we should always pander to populist ideas of what audiences want to see, but rather to suggest that a community response to a piece of work is valid, powerful, and completely outside of an artist’s control. Isn’t that why we invest in public art? The idea is in the title - public art - art for the people, removed from the carefully controlled gallery environment so all people can interact with it, draw a conclusion as to how they feel about it, to relate it to their lives, and their neighbourhoods, and the reality of their day to day existence. The very best public art engages with the communities into which it is placed, and the public responds to the very best public art.

Many have pointed out the irony in di Modica’s demands that the space around his illegally installed work be preserved in accordance with his wishes. I’d suggest this goes even beyond irony, into a place of entitlement. When street artists make work on a wall, they don’t expect it will stay there forever, in the same form. Di Modica has implicitly placed himself above other guerrilla artists by demanding special concessions towards how he thinks his work should be viewed and interpreted. Di Modica does not wish the meaning of his work to change or mature or be understood in ways that differ from his intention - so why make it a piece of public art at all? Why not display it in a temperature controlled, properly humidified gallery, where a curator can have a pamphlet produced that covers the themes of his work? To use the world as your pedestal means being more flexible than di Modica has shown he can be, it means being able to accept that your work will be unmoderated, that the audience will respond to it in a broader and, perhaps at times, deeper way than work shown in a controlled environment.

In the end, to me, it doesn’t matter hugely if Fearless Girl stays or not. Personally, I do find her a mixed message, a beacon of wishy-washy liberal hope that by merely talking about the gender disparity, it will all go away. I find art which makes less of a sensationalistic headline more appreciable, on multiple levels. Fearless Girl has the subtlety of being whacked around the head with a baseball bat, and I don’t find myself rushing to defend what I see as a dressed up advertising campaign, but I appreciate the way she has been given new meaning by the dozens of people, adults and children, who pose with her every day and who do see her as a symbol they wish to rally behind.

However, what has baffled and alarmed me is the way di Modica has responded - through threats of lawsuit. Neither of these works has any more intrinsic right to the space, and neither has truly engaged with the community surrounding them, rather than simply creating populist messages to respond to a global phenomena, unspecific to the women of the finance industry.

Instead of focusing any further on those two works, I’d rather draw your attention to a piece of public art created in England by Jessie Brennan, entitled If This Were To Be Lost, created in 2016.

The phrase came from an earlier project Brennan ran in collaboration with the people of the local community in Peterborough, where the artist worked with the local community volunteers who run the Green Backyard, a community growing project, to create a vast archive of cyanotypes and audio recordings. The words were made in plywood and installed along the garden, where it is visible to passengers on the East Coast London-Edinburgh train. The photos Brennan puts on her website are, to me, a phenomenal and real exploration of what public art is. Why? Because she has openly shown children playing on the installation, making the space and the work their own. If that is not what public art is about, I have no idea what it is.

See If This Were To Be Lost on Brennan’s website here.

#arturo di modica #charging bull #fearless girl #cone heid #jessie brennan #if this were to be lost #public art #i'm not really a critic i just have a lot of feelings

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theclaravoyant · 8 years

Text

Apples & Dandelions

AN ~ A potential-future-fic based on the 'Fitz' dad as the Big Bad' concept. Contains some references to canon compatible past (verbal) abuse, and themes of manipulation (via blackmail, not brainwashing etc). Rated T.

After Fitz' father sends a number of threatening messages and an ultimatum to Shield, Fitz decides it's time to confront his father. As it turns out, the apple can fall as far from the tree as it likes, especially when there's someone there to catch it.

Read below or on AO3 (~3500wd)

Apples & Dandelions

It’s the fourth time Jemma’s checked that his tac vest is sitting properly. He’d be annoyed by now if his attention weren’t swamped in his own anxieties. As it is, she works around his twisting, flapping fingers without a word. She knows the vest is fixed, she just needs something to fret over that isn’t quite directly related to the fact that Fitz is about to enter a dangerous, unpredictable confrontation with a man he barely knows, but who has his emotions on a knife’s edge.

“You shouldn’t be going.” Daisy’s standing on the other side of them, by the table, biting a nail but otherwise keeping her body as still as possible, as if unlocking her feet from this position will result in her forcibly stopping Fitz from leaving. “It shouldn’t be you.”

Fitz shakes his head, and though he wishes his tone could sound a bit more solid when he says it aloud, he stands by his words.

“I have to go. This the man that thinks I’m an idiot, and he wants to take us down. I won’t let him play mind games with you – he’ll have us all at each other’s throats or our own before we know what hit us. No. It’s too dangerous. It has to be me.”

“It has to be us,” Jemma corrects him. Mack comes in to stand by Daisy, and May hovers by the door, a visual reminder that he’s not alone. Fitz smiles a little. It hurts his heart to let them follow him, to let them endanger themselves on his behalf, but he knows they’d never have it any other way.

“Right. Us.” He squeezes Jemma’s hand and she smiles up at him, a proud if slightly sorrowful smile. She’s worried too.

“Fitz,” May beckons. “It’s time.”

He sighs and clips his pistol into its holster. He looks around at the team solemnly and it feels a little like they’re seeing him off to war.

“We’re right here,” Daisy reminds him. They’ll be on comms the whole time. Right beside him. He finally manages to force the air out of his lungs and draw in more, and follows May with his head held high.

Standing at the door, Fitz feels a metallic tang in his mouth. He wonders if his arms might suddenly become so weak he can’t push the door open. He wonders if his tongue is going to stick to the roof of his mouth, or if the sight of his father will manage to chase the words away to behind that white sheet of aphasia. He can only imagine what would happen then.

Clenching a fist, he listens to Daisy’s steady breathing on the other end of the comm link. At this very moment she’s sitting in a room full of everyone who loves him. Everyone he is about to stop his father taking away.

Fitz pushes the door open and finds it easy. Surprisingly easy. Almost suspiciously so. But then it clangs shut behind him, a dry sound that seems to cut through the air in this place, and suck it out. It feels like he’s been swallowed by something; a giant whale made of concrete and steel.

“Fitz,” Jemma breathes, and he nods – reassuring her, reassuring himself.

He steps forward slowly, an ant…not quite an ant, a cat perhaps, in this giant space. The warehouse towers above his head and stretches out all around. He wonders if anyone would be able to hear him scream standing at the other end of it, and he wonders by what miracle they couldn’t already hear his heart. Slowly, frustratingly slowly, he makes his way to a table in the middle of the room. There’s a setup of servers and crates around it – a makeshift computer lab – and two men in black stand guard with machine guns almost as long as Fitz is tall.

“Leopold.”

He doesn’t recognise the voice, of course he wouldn’t, but it grates on him. It’s the voice that cuts through him like a knife every time someone uses his first name, and though he’s forgotten what it sounds like he remembers how it feels. Like it’s turned his heart black, rotting and hollow. Like whoever speaks it has the power to carve his insides out and make him nothing.

“Arthur,” he greets in return. It doesn’t carry the same weight – a power play is not nearly as strong when it’s that obvious – but it makes him feel a little better. It makes him feel at least like he can try, even when his father waves the guards away and snorts with laughter.

Fitz’ father shakes his head, drawing himself slowly out of the chair in the midst of the lab setup as if he’s about to coach an overzealous child out of their dreams. Fitz would hardly consider being summoned under the threat of, essentially, the blackmail-and-or-torture of his closest friends to be a dream, but as long as his father doesn’t try to touch him or charm him or Leopold him again, he might just be able to stomach it.

“Why did you come here?” Fitz’ father asks. Fitz is confused for a second, and feels a flare of anger in his chest, and something akin to hurt.

“You…told me to. You told me to come.”

The warehouse swallows his words and he regrets having opened his mouth. His father leans in rather than stepping closer, cupping his ear.

“What’s that?” he teased. “Cat’s got your tongue?”

“You told me to come!” Fitz shouts – more of a yelp, really, but it’s too late to do anything about that now. His father laughs again and it sends a shiver down his spine.

“No, no, my dear boy. I told you to prove yourself.”

“How?”

He hears it almost immediately, as if another set of doors has clanged shut behind him. He’s walked right into his father’s trap, fallen into a pit he may not be able to climb back from. His father’s mocking smirk spreads into a hungry grin, watching, waiting for Fitz to trip over himself, just like this. To prove him right.

His father gestures to a set of folders on the table and Fitz can’t help but follow the gesture to study them. Basic manila folders, some thicker than others, laid out overlapping each other. In small, surprisingly neat, hauntingly familiar handwriting he sees at the top of each, names are written. Lance Hunter. Bobbi Morse. Antoine Triplett.

Fitz lifts his eyes back up and his father must be able to see the fear in them.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he commands.

Jemma takes another deep, calculated breath.

1…2…3. Out, 2…3…

1…2- 3. No, it’s okay, breathe, 2…3…

The seconds stretch on. Long, painful seconds. She wonders if anyone else is as worried as she is, and tries not to rock from one foot to the other. As it is, her fingers are already buried in the top of Daisy’s chair. Is it distracting, the way she bristles? It’s not like she could do much more than she’s doing about it anyway.

“D’you think-“ she requests haltingly. “Could we get- by any chance – a visual?”

Daisy almost lunges at the keyboard. She’s been sinking herself into a meditative state, not very successfully, for the last few minutes and her heartbeat is at a reasonable if high level and she hasn’t broken anything yet, but she’s been dying for someone to ask. Dying to do something even if it’s not race out there and give Fitz backup, or beat his father into the dust.

The CCTV at the warehouse has been deactivated, and most of the cameras have been smashed for good measure, but eventually, Daisy finds something. Her fingers hover.

“What?” Jemma wonders, and Daisy can hear the tightness of her chest in her voice. “Why aren’t you doing things?” Some computer nonsense would be really comforting right now.

“I think…he knows,” Daisy explains. “All the other cameras are destroyed except this one. Is it like a supergenius evil villain to forget to dismantle the surveillance of his lair? One specific item of surveillance?”

Jemma presses her lips together.

“Could you do it, though?” Coulson wonders, passing a foam ball from one hand to the other. He only squeezes it with the flesh-and-blood one; in the other, it would burst.

“Of course.”

“Then do it,” Mack suggests. “If Fitz knows we’re here and he knows we’re here, we might as well actually be there.”

Daisy takes a deep breath. She checks the other faces in the room and decides she has the go-ahead, so she taps in and brings the last surviving camera under control. And of course, it’s the one with the best view of both Fitz and his father, standing on either side of a table that’s surrounded by boxes and cords. They’re glaring at each other like they’re about to have some sort of duel.

Fitz has one pistol strapped to his leg and another at the small of his back. He hasn't drawn either, and there’s no weapons Daisy can see on his father. Daisy wishes she could comfort herself with the thought that it’s because Fitz’ father doesn’t want to hurt him, but already she can feel the cold creep into her veins. She remembers the way it had clawed at her lungs on the deck of the aircraft carrier; how her heart had struggled to pump and the bridge of her nose had felt like it was going to snap in half; how her knees had given way beneath her as her mother had drawn the life from her with her own two hands.

Daisy swallows hard and slowly clenches a fist. It’s going to be a long day.

Then -

“Elena Rodriguez,” Fitz’ father says, as if it means something. His voice is syrupy. And more Americanised than she’d been expecting.

It takes a moment, but Daisy jumps. They shouldn’t have been able to hear him. Beside her head, Jemma’s nails clench the chair so tightly Daisy can almost feel the leather and stuffing begin to rip. She wonders what Jemma would do if she got within punching distance of Mr Fitz’ face. Probably the same thing she herself would. Daisy grinds her teeth together. He definitely knows they’re here, and he’s probably going to use that. Should she tell Fitz, not tell Fitz? Her fretting is distracted by his reply:

“Colombian,” Fitz says. “Nice voice, nice hair. Probably thinks my Spanish is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.”

Elena snorts. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean she approves of this bastardo using it against her friend.

“You speak Spanish?” his father challenges.

Fitz says nothing. He can’t. His Spanish is infamously terrible and his father would only laugh. And the only words he can remember at this very moment are, funnily enough, ay carumba! He could bring up how he learnt Hebrew, Arabic and Latin too, but he has nothing to prove it. How, how could he look mobsters and terrorists in the face and speak and be faced with his father and –

“Nothing?” His father tuts and shakes his head. “Can’t say I didn’t see that one coming.”

Fitz clenches his fist. He knows, they know, he’s better than this. They’re all in his head, standing right beside him. He has to remember. He is better in every way than his father believes him to be. He is worthwhile and he is standing here and he is going to get out of this game.

“But you didn’t know it,” he points out. That was the challenge, after all, wasn’t it? He raises an eyebrow at his father and maybe – just maybe – catches a flicker of respect. Then his father puts Elena’s file down and picks up another, and Fitz feels like he’s just stepped up a level in difficulty.

“Lincoln Campbell.”

“Made great popcorn.” Fitz smiles, a little bitterly, and hopes Daisy gets a smile out of it to, even though his father shoots him a glare. Technically, though, Fitz has beaten the game, so he slaps the file down with irritation and picks up another. He points at Fitz with it, jabbing the air, irritated at the table between them. He grinds his teeth together. He put it between them, he can take it away.

Fitz’ father rounds the table, and watches a shiver of fear run through his son. It’s taking all Fitz has not to take a step back, but he resists. His father jabs the file at his chest one more time. The manila card bends and flexes, harmless against his tac vest, but he starts to itch, claustrophobic all of a sudden in this giant space.

“No more tricks,” his father growls. “Facts. Proof.”

Fitz nods before he even knows what he’s doing. Not that it matters; he doesn’t have any choice. Still, he clenches his fist and stops himself. The stakes are getting higher. He must keep control. He must. He can.

“Jemma Simmons.”

“Scoliosis adjustment surgery when she was twelve.”

Medical records were the first thing he thought of and he knows so much about Jemma that it leaps from his tongue. His father’s clearly not expecting that, but doesn’t give him the satisfaction of showing it for long before folding Jemma’s file carefully, pointedly closed. He puts it on the table in a separate file of things to follow up on.

“She also has a scar on her leg from where she stitched herself up on an alien planet,” Fitz adds, his blood burning. He relishes the burst of confidence. “But they don’t have much in the way of medical records in space.”

“Then it can’t be proven,” his father points out, feigning indifference. “So we move on. Alphonso Mackenzie. Mack, isn’t it?”

Fitz is frozen, not the video, that much Daisy can tell. She looks around at the others uncertainly. They can feel the tension in this room almost as if they’re down in the warehouse. They’re all looking at each other. Jemma is looking at Mack. Mack is staring at the screen, waiting, listening. Fitz seems stuck on what to say. He can’t play games anymore, for fear of whatever his father has in waiting, but he can’t say anything he can’t prove, either – like about the shotgun-axe. Mack wonders if Fitz remembers he has a brother. That, he could prove. But that might mean putting more people in danger, and maybe Fitz is avoiding it on purpose. There must be something else.

“Give me that,” Mack says gruffly, reaching a hand out to Daisy. She unclips the comm unit from the console and passes it over to him, curious. Elena is watching him with a solemn expression, and as Mack leans over the counter with a tight sigh, she rests a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” Mack greets Fitz, who does a very good job of not reacting too much to the new voice in his ear. “Tell him – Tell him I had a daughter, born April 16, 2006. Hope, her name was.”

“Her name was Hope,” they hear Fitz echo. His eyes drop to the floor for a moment, feeling the weight of it settle over him. Mack has never mentioned her before and tears fill his eyes as he thinks about the implications of it all. Especially had.

Mack puts the comm unit back in its setting and everyone in the room lowers their eyes, one by one, giving him as much space as they can, and feeling bad for staring. Daisy’s eyes drift meaninglessly over the console, her heart aching with the knowledge that now two of her friends are suffering instead of one, and she almost doesn’t notice Fitz raise his clenched fist on the video. She sees, but doesn’t register it, until Fitz shouts over something his father says –

“Well he would’ve been a better dad than you were!”

Fitz’ dad raises his eyebrows.

“Excuse me?”

No turning back now. Fitz can see his heartbeat in his eyes and it feels like he’s facing down anyone who’s ever betrayed him.

“He would have been a better dad than you were,” he repeats, in a low, dangerous voice. He maps out, in his head, what he’s going to do if his father tries to attack him. He’s got two pistols, he could get at least one up. He could duck under the table. He could knee him in the groin.

“Hope,” his father growls back, “is dead. How much fathering’d your friend get to do in four days, hm?”

A vision flashes into Fitz’ head, of Mack holding a tiny baby girl, so softly, like a bird. He opens his mouth and no words come out, it’s so violently horrible to think that he’s handed over that image, that vulnerability to his father.

“Huh?” His father challenges the ceiling and the walls. “How much? Did you read her stories? Did you wipe her arse? Did you throw a little baseball around or listen to her natter on about bloody monkeys all day?”

Fitz looks around, his heart pounding, his eyes awash with fury and tears.

“It’s alright,” Daisy assures him, just before his father booms:

“Did you think I wouldn’t have my own team checking up everything you say? Did you think I’d sit here, in perfect view of the camera – “ he points to the only working one, the one Daisy’s hacked – “and let you watch me like some sadistic voyeurs? No, no, Leopold. You have your friends, I have mine. And there’s only one friend of yours I can think of that could have given my friends this much trouble.”

He pauses at the table, and taps his fingers on the cover of the last remaining file. There’s only one friend, Fitz knows, who is glaringly left. And it’s the thickest file on the table. Fitz laughs – a cold, hollow, pained laugh like a man who knows the circumstances of his death are going to be particularly ironic.

“This was never about me at all, was it?” he checks. “You always wanted Daisy. This whole time. Of course you did.”

The tension in the room is no longer suffocating him. It crackles through him, like electricity. Like fury in his veins, and sickening terror, working together to keep him alive because if he doesn’t get out now, it’s too late.

“Okay, okay, something you don’t know –“ the words are springing from his lips now, everything he’d wanted to say since he’d walked in here. “- I am never going to give her to you. No matter what you do or say, or try to goad me into doing or saying. No matter how stupid or worthless you’re going to try to make me think I am…no matter how you blackmail me, or my friends, none of us are ever going to give her to you because we love her. And she sure as hell loves me more than you ever did.

“And you know what? I thought she was a pain in the ass, too, when I first met her. High school dropout, unqualified hacker-slash-troublemaker. I thought she was going to get us all killed, I really did, but she ended up saving my life. A lot of times. In more ways than one. Okay?

“And she reminded me that– that just because people don’t treat you with love, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it and it doesn’t mean you can’t be loving anyway. And she taught me that you can be brilliant - Absolutely. Brilliant. - without abusing yourself over it and without jumping all those hoops you held out for me.”

Blood singing with freedom, Fitz pulls the pistol from the small of his back and points it dead at his father’s chest with a surprisingly steady hand. He peers down the barrel for a moment to check his aim, and then stares into his father’s eyes. He seems to be finding this amusing. Well. Fitz’ eyes glint with steel, and he tightens his grip. The hurt and fury and liberation are eating him up like a storm, it’s exhausting, but he just has to cling to it for a few more seconds…

“And do you know what else she taught me, Da?” Fitz breaths, his voice low and dangerous. He steps up – one, two, three strides, until the nose of his pistol is pressing firmly into his father’s chest. His father looks down at him with a sardonic expression, as if the barrel pressed to his chest would do no more damage than a water pistol. Go on then, he’s saying. Go on then, if you’re so Good.

Fitz smiles, and finds it surprisingly easy to do so. He’s been expecting this exact reaction. Perhaps he does have more of his father’s manipulation skills in him than he’d thought.

“She taught me, I don’t need you to tell me who I am.”

And then he pulls the trigger.

(It’s an Icer, of course, and the team come down as quickly as possible to help him clean up and clear out the operation. Then Daisy hugs him so tight and for so long, he forgets what it feels like to stand alone.)

#fitz #fitz backstory #thefitzsimmonsnetwork #brot3: bus kids #aosteam #fitzdaisy #brotp: a tonne of weird crap #fitzsimmons #aos s4 #aos spoilers

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