#it's a totally extreme way to view the world but it makes sense for her and it's how she operates and it's how she protects herself

[pocketgalaxies]

beau getting so damn pissed about caleb withholding the bowl is so so so SO juicy

[ghostinthegallery]

So a thing I’ve noticed about necron books…

I do not think it is controversial to say that Robert Rath and Nate Crowley really defined how a lot of us (especially me) view necrons in modern 40k lore. They did so much heavy lifting to take the faction that was literally just Terminator ripoff (aka Tyranids but worse) and make them into characters.

But they did it in such different and almost contradictory ways. And I think it boils down to this:

Rath's necrons are gods who were once mortal. Crowley's necrons are mortals forced to become gods.

(disclaimer: I don't think one author is "more correct" or whatever. Different characters experience the universe in different ways, embrace a little subjectivity does objective truth even exist?)

Let's start with Crowley. In both Severed and Twice Dead King, memories and bodies are defining features of their narratives. Oltyx can and does revisit his memories at will (not without consequence get your pins out and put em in). He is haunted by disphorakh, this feeling that he should have an organic body but does not and that this disconnect is actually killing him. The flayed ones' whole existence is steeped (literally) in flesh and blood and disphoria.

On the slightly less extreme end, in Severed Obyron remembers the flesh times vividly: the battles, the people, who and what he's lost. They are fighting the manifestation of what Obyron fears becoming: a mindless machine, “severed” from his past experiences. And the ultimate stakes in a Crowley book? Loss of memory. Loss of self. Obyron and Oltyx pay this price throughout their stories, and it eats away at them. Necrodermis makes their physical selves immortal, but their minds? Just as mortal as ever. If not even more so. The people they are were formed in flesh times, and all immortality does is wear away at them as they desperately try to cope.

Robert Rath's necrons? Not so much. Sure, Trazyn and Orikan angst about their loss of memory, but the memories of flesh for them are so distant and unreliable that they could not build their personalities around them even if they wanted to. Trazyn's link to the past is external: objects he has collected. Orikan... what memories he has of his past are fuzzy and in some cases straight up manipulated. That's distressing, but not enough to totally rock his sense of self. That’s a stark contrast to how Crowley’s necrons operate.

We all know the iconic Old Man Fight from Infinite and the Divine. Where Rath describes Trazyn and Orikan fighting and points out how stupid it would be back in the flesh times? Just two nerds hitting each other with canes. Well the flip side of that is that what is actually happening is NOT two nerds slapping each other but two immortals with incomprehensible power battling on a scale mortals cannot process.

Rath’s necrons operate on scales mortals barely understand. Oh, the Greek gods destroyed one city? Troy took em ten years? Trazyn and Orikan wiped out a planet's population by accident. And they are both so divorced from mortality that they don't care. Sheesh, Trazyn is so alienated from the idea of a body that in War in the Museum he informs a woman that he’s filled her up with her own dead sisters organs and I legit believe he thought this would make her feel better.

I adore both approaches! The differences in character and perspective, how they relate to the world and themselves. Yes, it creates contradictions in the lore (like why doesn’t Trazyn lose his shit knowing people like Zahndrekh or Oltyx just…remember necrontyr society perfectly clearly) but I aggressively do not care. I love the varying explorations or power, the nature of the self, the truth that none of these people have survived immortality “in tact.” Those are exactly the things that make necrons my favorite 40k faction. Hell, one of my favorite sci if aliens ever. Because both approaches are haunting and hilarious and poignant and so damn cool.

So…uh…thanks guys. Yeah.

[shatcey]

Haunted House Report (Alfons 1-2ch)

Alfons 1-2ch Alfons endings Epilogue (briefly) Roger (premium)

The event is a combination of a scary ghost story, a detective and a very sad romance with psychological trauma (who would be surprised, considering everything else). Sometimes I felt a bit sleepy (it was so damn long), but mostly it was very exciting.

I love Alfons very much. He is my foremost love in the whole Ikemen world (sorry Silvio, Yoichi and many others), so I evaluate all his actions and words from a positive point of view. This is usually quite questionable, but this time I didn't have to made up. He's very sweet.

The story starts with Kate getting a little worried going to this creepy mansion alone at night. So she asks Alfons to come with her. He begins to tease her a little about this, but agreed, and even gave her a very good reason for this… It's just more convenient to complete the task.

He asks if she wants him to magically erase her from fear. I thought he was going to show her an illusion. But no…

It was pretty extreme, but it worked. That's the only thing that matters.

They went into the mansion, and on the way they talked about ghosts...

Alfons' answer seemed weird to Kate, but she didn't have time to figure out what he meant because… a strange sound came from the nearest room.

They went in there to investigate and saw…

Totally reasonable skepticism… Mirrors… well… This is a very tricky object. But the old man said that he had died a long time ago, and they believed him. I wouldn't believe, so Alfie probably either…

Our kind Kate asked how they could help him… It must be so hard to get stuck in the mirror. And the old man asked them to clean up the place… Okay, I wouldn't deny that it was unexpected. A ghost obsessed with cleanliness… This is something new.

My boy immediately noticed that this is a huge mansion, and the ghost agrees with the three places he indicated. I'd like to know how. Does he have a map or something? Or did they draw a map? Again… It's a huge place, and it's their first time here. And this is not Jude's Kate, who prepared in advance.

So they started cleaning up. Again, I wondered with what exactly. Kate, as if she had heard me, explained that she was taking cleaning supplies from the closet. Very convenient...

Of course! How I didn't realised this before? This is Clavis' castle, which means there must be traps in it.

No, I'm fine. All thanks to you.

The situation is actually repeated in the second room

They went to the third place to check (brave of them), and things turned out pretty badly…

You still don't get it? I WILL NEVER LET YOU GO!!! Where is this damn power that should wake up in critical situations? Or does it only work with mothers who save their children?

And Kate, of course, agrees with me and didn't let him fall. She's thinking rationally (continue holding him… she's my hero now!) and has decided that she needs help. Perhaps someone from the Crown is nearby… She calls for help, and to her surprise, it comes…

The lady in red… This song is already stuck in my head. I have to listen to it to get rid of it!

...

...

Oh, it's a lovely song...

So... Back to the topic.

Alfons thinks how strange it seems.

(discovery music playing)

Somewhere along the way through these three rooms, a sudden thought occurred to me. If this ghost wanna kill people and knows where his traps are, then it makes sense that he can send them there. But… The traps are limited, so… Who's recharge them? Like… there are still working traps. Suspicious…

They returned to the room with the mirror (I didn't mean to make a pun, I swear). They call out the old man, who is "most likely not a ghost at all", but he didn't show up. The Alfons noticed the new layer of footprints on the floor, and they follow them…

And they found a hidden room. It was actually Jean's workshop from IkeVamp.

So Alfons congratulates Kate on finding a room, I thought it was sarcasm, but she didn't think so, maybe I'm wrong. Obviously, he figured it out a long time ago, but let her lead. Oh, sweety…

Kate pointed out she didn't know how this person (and we're already sure it's a person, not a ghost) used the mirror. Alfons explains it. It was something with the mirror tilted at right angle (it was very difficult to translate, so you have no choice but to believe me). I thought it was just glass… but I'll trust an expert.

So they found the culprit and the method. And the only thing left to find out…

And Kate remembers that they discussed their mission. And then she said they needed to find "evidence of a crime".

They look for evidence and find nothing. So… Alfons suggests looking for clues elsewhere…

I couldn't have put it better. He's an idiot! But brilliant.

Oh, no, I just realized… She's not the lady in red anymore… (sad)

As soon as Alfons agreed that they would like to hear her story, all the signs of a poltergeist appeared. The temperature has dropped, everything is vibrating…

Look at that face and you won't doubt his determination… My overprotective monster...

That's how the lady in red (I'll call her that) expressed her excitement, because no one ever wanted to listen to her.

Well… it happened 50 years ago. She was one of those people with unusual abilities who took part in the experiment. I must add, it was very ethically questionable experiment. Yes, she was one of the cursed. And this old "non-ghost" was appointed her partner. She fell for him very hard, but it wasn't mutual. And at some point, that bastard killed her by pushing her off a cliff. The woman looked pretty happy telling them about it, and Kate decided to ask...

So they're both stuck. She is in her weird adoration, which has no reasonable limits. He's stuck with an obsession with guilt that makes him search for something that doesn't exist.

This concludes chapter 2. Unfortunately, I use too many screenshots and have reached the limit, so I will post the endings separately. I've finished everything, but I need time to clean up the text a bit. If I don't fall asleep in the process… then a bit later. If I fall asleep… tomorrow. Long story, long summary…

@judesmoonbeauty as promised

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[oblivionbladetd]

There's an episode of Star Trek that's a perfect rebuttal to Lily's "villain with a point" argument.

The idea is that the Enterprise crew visits a planet where a centuries long war is being fought with computers. Because every battle is simulated, the planet is in pristine condition, but the catch is that for every causality noted in the simulations, that person has to kill themself.

This simple exchange is a view Lily has never considered in her videos.

Spock believes in handling things logically, so he's able to understand why these aliens do this, but he doesn't automatically agree with them because they "have a point". From a moral stance, the point these people are trying to make doesn't justify forcing people to kill themselves.

Lily doesn't see things this way. If an antagonist has a stance she happens to agree with, she thinks they can do whatever they want, no matter who gets hurt.

That's an amazing example! No even moderately complex character should ever have their reasoning boiled down to, "Well, because evil, duh..." Hell, belos from Owl House has a point that makes tons of sense, your average schoolchildren have enough power to to low diff a squad of trained soldiers of the modern day, the people of Philips day would have been steamrolled over. A witch invasion would have unironically ended the world if it had ever occurred to them.

Amphibia, its sister show, gave the core a hell of a point. Without invading other worlds, their golden age of technology was unsustainable! Once the calamity box was stolen, the society regressed back to preindustrial fairly quickly.

These are shows punching far lower than Star Trek, and their villains have points, not incredible points, but they do! It's just good character writing.

Growing up a little bit, Fallout 1 and the master. He was not exaggerating when he said humans are only scraping by out in the wastes, total human extinction still looms heavy. Super Mutants were supposed to be the answer until various design flaws couldn't be fixed. He flat out kills himself and his operation once you prove to him he didn't have a point and his extremes rendered to nothing more than setting back a world already far behind.

I'd keep listing examples, but we'd be here all century.

[eretzyisrael]

By COOKIE SCHWAEBER-ISSAN

WHEN YOU listen to an interview, where the wife of a Hamas operative unashamedly says that she and her husband, as well as their children, all pray that Allah would grant them martyrdom, it makes you wonder: What are they living for? It’s certainly not for any hopeful future that will bring these families pride, joy and a sense of accomplishment. On the contrary – they are essentially giving up on a future with grandchildren and a fulfilling end.

These mothers have literally been programmed to accept death as a blessing, another shocking anomaly from the way normal people respond to the loss of a beloved family member. It is this total, extreme departure of human values that must be completely rejected by any individual who claims to be part of a race of people who strive to possess higher ethics than those of savage animals.

There is no question that once parents begin to value the lives of the children who came from their own loins, terrorists such as Hamas will no longer be able to exploit the people for whom they say they are championing.

But not only is it incumbent upon these Gazan families to reject the call for their children to become casualties in an unwinnable war, but it is also the responsibility of people throughout the world to view these events as the human tragedy of our day, rivaling the biblical account of parents who offered up their children to the Canaanite god Molech, a truly homicidal act.

For how can humanity, which claims to grieve over senseless death, close its eyes to the heartless acts of parents, without whose approval the death of their children would not occur? To ignore their complicity is to excuse parents and terrorists for the wholesale murder of their children, making society a willing participant in the deplorable crimes that are being committed against an entire generation of kids, who will never have the chances they could have. It is the height of hypocrisy and must be emphasized to the fullest.

Until world outcry can be heard for these sacrificial lambs, there is nothing the world can offer by way of honest judgment or placing the guilt on whom it rightly belongs.

[purpletyrant]

the twins

referenced after john everett millais' "the two princes edward and richard in the tower." i stumbled across this painting again a while back and felt totally compelled to redraw it with these two. while looking for a high quality version, i came across paul delaroche's take on this scene… and its gorgeous, but im not doing all that

silvia and cesare are so interesting to me. nestled smack between two extreme ends of the mommy issues spectrum, they both manage to grow extraordinarily well-adjusted - cesares grooming by his grandmother notwithstanding. from early childhood, the twins realize that something about their family is not quite right, and latch onto each other to navigate shaky parental relationships, an increasingly unstable older sister, and a volatile court environment. this relationship begins to ebb when cesare is taken on as their grandmothers protege, and silvia adopts the notion that its up to her to maintain peace among her family. both twins fulfill a sort of littlefinger role, but silvia does so out of what she believes is the goodness of her heart. it doesnt really work on valencia, who knows that silvia is not as benevolently detached as she seems (in fact, her silent, smiling serenity drives valencia insane), and it also doesnt work on sancha, who is playing 4D chess in a way silvia cant compete with

cesare has the most realistic and healthy view of their birth mother among all four. that is to say, he honestly could not give less of a fuck about orchidee. in his mind, if she doesnt care about him, why should he bother thinking about her? the others WISH they were in his headspace. silvia lags behind him in this regard. she keeps a respectful distance and would never deign to intrude on orchidee or make herself a nuisance, yet feels a deep sense of curiosity and compassion toward her. in another reality, silvia and a deerwood-era orchidee would get along grand, and if orchidee and seelie ever manage to leave lafossa, i think silvia will be the one to facilitate their means of escape. thanklessly, from the shadows, telling herself repeatedly that shes doing the right thing

her being a goody two hooves is kinda built into her DNA. after all, her horn and hooves are based off of angelite :P

so, anyway, heres silvia and cesare, two normies against the world. there will be a day when cesare wont allow his sister to hold so tightly to him, so i hope she isnt taking it for granted

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #1 – How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

I read the overwhelming majority of this book in 2023 but I finished it after new years so review #1 of the new year it is! Despite it by all accounts being very critically acclaimed and well-reviewed, I had absolutely never heard of it before opening up the packaging on a ‘blind date with a book’ thing a bookstore was doing (incredible gimmick, for the record). Overall a great book, if rambling at points and with a somewhat weak and confused ending.

The story takes place in Kosawa, a village on the western periphery of a fictional west African country, with the incredible bad luck to have been built atop a fortune in oil. The story is told through several POVs, and follows the villagers struggle against the Pexton corporation and their country’s de facto neocolonial government to try and have their home restored to what it was before the river and soil were poisoned and children started dying. It’s told on a generational scale – stretching from the ‘80s to the mid 2000’s – and follows the main cast of characters from childhood into their forties, As might be expected from that, it’s not exactly fast-paced or full of heroics – lots of promises and reassurances being given and never lived up to, and dramatic actions being taken and leading to awful tragedies or only compromised half-successes. The book really beats in the theme that if you’re really powerless and the ones fucking you over have all the cards, a lot of time there really isn’t a winning move. Well, and maybe that the heroic, principled attempts at violent resistance repeatedly got everyone involved killed but did win real concessions and aid for the other villagers who were willing to play along (or just to sell out or give up Kosawa for dead), though I’m not entirely sure that’s how the story’s intended to be read.

The prose isn’t usually eye-catching, but it’s extremely well-constructed, and beautiful at points. The story does a lot with shifting points of view, jumping from a corporate one of a particular age-group of children whose lives parallel the story, and closely individual ones from different members of a particular family whose daughter Thula ends up becoming the moral/intellectual heart of the resistance. Each voice feels incredibly distinct and focused on very different things, in a way that really worked for me. The massive timeframe covered also lets the book really indulge in showing what the day to day life of the villagers looks like – how they sustain themselves, the social rhythms of life, the rituals of adulthood, marriage, and childbirth, how widows and children are treated, and how the poisoning of the environment around them weighs down but doesn’t destroy any of it. It even does a great job of really selling the perspective and world-views of people for whom the world is enchanted and spiritual rites have real direct physical effects, which in my experience the vast majority of books about religious/spiritual characters totally fail to.

The tone of things is pretty overwhelmingly melancholic – this is a story with a deep sense of history, which also means a very tragic imagination. Characters who really dedicate themselves to trying to change the world are portrayed as deeply admirable but almost certainly doomed and even likely to cause more harm than good. You see this most prominently with Thula, whose basically a genius and devotes her entire life from childhood to activism and social change with saintly (if not near-inhuman) purity and focus, and dies in her forties having not won much at all. The ones who take what they can, get government jobs and use the opportunity to become exactly as corrupt as the men who came before them and loot the country for the benefit of their friends and families meanwhile – well, they definitely aren’t making the world any better, but they’re shown as very human and sympathetic and they mostly end up with exactly the lives they were hoping for.

[lover-of-mine]

Hi Anna 🥰

First, can you believe we got a HUG???? After what? 66 episodes?

Second, I REALLY want to know your thoughts on the expression Eddie made when he realized Tommy was gay. It's the same expression he wore when Shannon asked for a divorce, I think. The "I've been reading this entire thing wrong" face. But why do you think he was so stunned by the fact *Tommy* wasn't straight? I think he was realizing that the way he and Tommy interact differs So Much from the way he and Buck do, but I don't know (running on no sleep again this week, forgive me if none of this makes any sense 😅)

I feel like he wasn't as surprised to learn about Buck because he's doing that "first to understand thing" or at the very least had a hunch about it.

hi baby 🩷🩷 we got a hug, was is over 🙏 and we know Eddie is gonna be all over Buck next episode too, so like wins all around.

So, that expression, that did look like his "you're altering my world view" expression and we have a few options there. There's the funny one, the "was Tommy trying to woo me?" possibility, Tommy did fly him to Vegas for ringside seats, yk? And just having a minute about it lol. But the thing is the episode proved Eddie is deeper in denial than anticipated (rip Eddie fell first essay you will always be true in my heart), but like I said with the whole Eddie is last to see, first to understand, where Buck needs more time, Eddie needs a heavier hit, I don't think just the idea of Buck dating someone would trigger something, he needs to see something or Buck needs to do something, I don't know what rn, I just reblogged a post about the possibility of Buck saying he's in love with him before Eddie is ready to deal with it, and I can totally see that, you can have things ending abruptly with Tommy, Eddie wondering why, Buck being unable to lie to him about it and Eddie being slammed into the realization by something going ridiculously wrong (I will never stop pushing for my Buck drowning in the season finale, so you could do a situation where Buck confesses in some level like saying "Tommy thinks I'm in love with you", something goes wrong, Buck almost dies on him again and he's like oh fuck, and then you have that conflict transfer to season 8 while we wait for them get their shit together) because we all know that "it doesn't change a thing between us" is gonna come back around, same with the Maddie talk, but I also think they need to give the audience some indication that Eddie likes men and/or Buck before Buck can say that. But I just went on a tangent. Tommy. I think Tommy being as similar to Eddie as he was set up to be isn't just about Buck working out the kinks before Eddie, also I can't believe Lou actually said that completely unprompted, but I don't think it ever occurred to Eddie that someone like him could be into men too. Because Eddie spent his whole life doing the right thing in a very twisted way. He got his girlfriend pregnant, so he married her, he joined the army to provide for her and Chris, the show keeps implying he's looking for a mother to Chris, not an actual partner, with these "proper latina women". He loved Shannon, and he thinks he can recreate that. BUT he has a partner, who's not only helping him with life, he's also helping him with Chris, so he checks both boxes. But he's also a man. So he never had a reason to look at it. Until that partner started dating another man, who's extremely similar to him. The pieces for him to be like "oh, that's an option?" are literally all there. He literally said "you and Tommy have it right". Like literally. The seed is planted. The thought is there. At any moment, this man can look at Tommy being that sure of his sexuality and his masculinity and liking a lot of the things he does and also liking Buck, and being like "maybe men are an option" that would lead to an "is Buck an option?" that could give us some nice movement.

I think the question here is who the show wants to reach the "oh am I in love with him" conclusion first. They both have most of the pieces of the puzzle, Buck has more because he has the attraction to men piece, but I maintain that Eddie would be less freaked out about the liking men aspect of loving Buck then Buck would the other way around. It's kinda like we kept writing feeling realization fics where Eddie was totally fine with the idea of wanting to fuck Buck through the mattress but panicked at the idea that he wanted to hold his hand but Buck was the other way around. There's also the problem of what label they are going to give Eddie. Even if most likely it will be just indirectly. I feel like the episode actually even kinda gave us enough to argue that man as demiromantic, but I digress, they doubled down on him loving Shannon, so you kinda can't go the strictly gay route, and he's not stereotypically bi, but obviously who needs stereotypes and it would kinda be nice to see some bi4bi thing that's not stereotypical, and they can go the who cares, he loved Shannon, now he loves Buck route which I think would be the most plausible? Considering they are probably not gonna go there with the demisexuality of it all. And also depends on how attached they want Buck to be to his queer awakening. I think the realization that he's into men and in love with Buck are tied together, but that's a personal opinion, I think his brain would accept the attraction to men and instantly attach that to Buck. But they could very much give Eddie a man to explore things with too. Circling back to the look, I kinda think that was a "I didn't know a guy like Tommy could like men" that's just slightly to the left of the realization of "I didn't know a guy like me could like men" and that could come back to help him get there.

[tgammsideblog]

June Chen redemption arc prediction

Some time ago i answered an ask about June's arc in this season. Having in mind that plenty of episodes have aired since then and we have gotten more information about the Chens' role in the upcoming episodes, i think it would be a good idea to write a follow up to that June post i posted all those weeks ago.

First of all, one thing that can be highlighted about June as ghosthunter is that she is more aggressive when it comes to dealing with ghosts. A good example of this is how in ¨Frightmares On Main Street¨ she changes the type of shot from the ghost gun to ¨extreme dealy¨. She hesitates a lot less than Ollie when it comes to hunting ghosts. In contrast Ollie only was seen tracking ghosts and trapping Scratch in the same episode. He never appeared to have intentions of hurting Scratch, only interrogate him, probably because he was confused by how Molly was hanging out with him.

This more direct approach to dealing with ghosts could make June a bit harder to persuade and show her that ghosts aren't evil. She seems to be more ¨shoot first, ask questions later¨, so she could turn out to be a lot more stubborn that Ollie was in ¨Frightmares On Main Street¨. She may even impose a bigger threat for Molly and Scratch if they try talking her down.

However, June isn't totally unreasonable as she did listen to Ollie when he asked her to not shoot Scratch when he was trapped in the goo. She was suspicious for a few seconds but later let Scratch be and went to help Esther and Ruben who were trying to capture other ghosts outside.

In the same episode June noticed how the frightmares ghosts got trapped inside the ghost canister (thanks to Scratch's chairman powers), something that shouldn't have worked as she told Ruben that the gadget was only a prototype. Based on her expressions of wondering how the ghost canister worked, it is clear that this is a plot point that is going to become important for her character. It could make her trying to learn more about the true nature of ghosts and thus start changing her mind about them.

Having in mind that it has been confirmed that we are going to see scenes exploring June and Ollie's relationship, it is very likely that Ollie is going to play an important role in trying to change June's view on ghosts. It makes sense, since June isn't seen hanging out with Molly that much and June could be more willing to listen to someone who was raised with the same ideas as her. Not to mention that Ollie may know a way to her sister to understand the situation better than Molly and Scratch would.

Another character that has been hinted that is going to play a role in her arc is Darryl. The episode ¨The New (Para) Normal¨ established their dynamic as something important, they instantly clicked by finding things they had in common while having different personalities. It has been confirmed that that they are going to have a ¨big episode¨ titled ¨The Grand Gesture¨, which was confirmed by Bob Roth on his twitter account. Again, Darryl has been hinted to have a closer bond than Molly shares with June. They both are troublemakers in different ways and have an unique way of viewing the world that their family does. Darryl could bring up that ghosts are misunderstood by humans the same way him and June are sometimes misunderstood by their peers and adults to persuade June into changing her mind. That itself could also be a good opportunity to explore a different side of her character too.

As how her arc could go, i think it could happen in two ways or a mix of them: One, she is more stubborn and agressive when it comes to trying to understand ghosts and it could be harder for her to get what the other characters are trying to explain to her. Two, she doesn't take that long to change her views in contrast to Ollie since she could be able to relate to way ghosts feel misunderstood by humans, thus taking less time for her to join the ¨Ghost Friends¨ team.

The last ¨step¨ of her arc would involve her and Ollie trying to change Ruben and Esther's minds in the final conflict. Both of them standing up against her parents and calling them out for these harmful ideas that were taught to them, showing them that they were wrong about it.

Whatever direction her arc takes, i'm looking forward to see how it differs from Ollie's and how June's growth is going to be. From what it has been hinted so far by both the series and the crew, she is going to have an important involvement in the story during the upcoming episodes and a crucial role in the conclusion to the Chens family arc in this season.

[beckettj]

1 Year Repost: There's No Harm in Repeating (A CS oneshot)

It's been a year since I posted the oneshot I probably had the most fun writing so here it is again!

Summary: Killian Jones has lived in apartment 204 for a year and has never exchanged more than ‘hellos’ with Emma Swan in apartment 205. That is until a run-in with her son, Henry, results in the boy doing some unintentional matchmaking. For how else do you find out what a woman thinks of you, if not through her four-year-old son?

A Captain Swan as neighbors au featuring Captain Cobra moments.

Words: 4432

Read on AO3

A flask of coffee in hand, Killian Jones stepped out of his crappy apartment, into the just as crappy hallway, to the oh-so-familiar sweet sound of arguing travelling up the stairwell from the entrance hall below.

“Who the hell do you think you are, Emma? You have no right to stop me from seeing my own son!”

“Look at yourself, Neal! You can barely stand! You’re hardly in any fit state to look after yourself, let alone a four-year-old boy!”

Emma Swan. The irritation was clear in her voice, as it travelled up the pungent staircase that Killian started to take down, yet it was her voice which reminded him of the single reason why he hadn’t moved the hell out of the crappy apartment building at any point in the last year. Even when shouting, screaming at her dickhead of an ex with all her might, her voice was as captivating as a siren’s song, drawing him in as the rest of the world fell away around him.

“Every fucking time, Emma! There’s always something with you, isn’t there? You can never just hand him over without causing a scene.”

“Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that you are never able to turn up sober. You need help, Neal.”

“Leave off! I’m perfectly fine.”

“I’d almost believe you, if it weren’t for the slurring.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I can’t believe this! No, in fact, I can! I can totally believe this! This is textbook you, Neal! You get his hopes up and then you let him down.”

“Let him down? I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, and utterly shit-faced, you damn asshole.”

Killian chuckled to himself, having heard enough of their arguments through the building's thin walls to be invested enough to back Emma over her alcoholic ex. He’d also overheard enough to know that when Emma resorted to cursing, she was well and truly pissed. 

Commotions were a frequent occurrence in the apartment complex. Day or night, the residents just did not care. Killian had quickly learned that the best way to cope with it all, was to just treat the whole thing like a soap drama; it was almost more compelling than the ones on television. It wasn’t just Emma and Neal; there was enough drama in the building for him to develop his own soap drama television show if he wanted. If it wasn’t Emma, his lovely neighbor in apartment 205, arguing with her ex, it was the guy in apartment 101 making direct complaints over noise levels, someone accusing the pickpocket in 219 of theft, the guy in 117 finding a megaphone through which to broadcast his crazed ramblings that no one could make any sense of, or the young man in 301 hosting his midnight raves which attracted all the youth in the city like the bloody Pied Piper.

Yes, life in Enchanted View apartments was just charming. And extremely entertaining, in a guilty pleasure kind of way.

The arguing continued as Killian made his way down the stairs, obscenities and insults getting thrown back and forth as Emma went for it in giving Neal a piece of her mind. Killian had to hold back a cheer of satisfaction that she was finally doing such a thing; making himself realize just how invested he had gotten. 

He stayed quiet, not wanting to draw any attention to himself. He hoped to get by unnoticed, to slip out onto the street, and go about his day, leaving them to their dispute. It was only when he reached the bottom step that he determined such a feat to be impossible for Emma Swan stood in the building doorway, blocking his way. Or rather, preventing her tool of an ex-boyfriend from gaining entry to the building. Neal was bladdered; completely and utterly bladdered. Killian had known, from his slurred words, that he was drunk, but the man stood before Emma was well and truly hammered, incapable of standing still, staggering around the doorstep. His movements were slow and shaky, resulting in any attempt he made to get past Emma looking weak and pathetic. The only danger there was of Neal getting over the threshold were if he were to fall flat on his face. Killian chuckled lightly to himself, amused by such a scenario playing out in his head.

“I promised I’d take him bowling so I’m damn well going to take him bowling.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you chose to go heavy on the booze for breakfast. It’s not happening, Neal.”

“I’m not leaving ‘til I see him. Where the hell is he? Henry! Henry!”

“Cut it out, Neal. You really don’t want him to see you like this.”

“Oh, lighten up, Emma.”

Killian moved off the bottom step, with the plan to slip out through the back door which led into the side alley. Yet, as he began said plan, his eyes fell on the very boy at the core of the adults’ argument. Henry. The four-year-old sat patiently on the bench, positioned opposite the out-of-order elevator, a book open in his hands. Peter Pan, Killian read from the cover. Henry’s head was buried in the book, avidly inspecting the colourful pictures within it but, every now and then, whenever his parents’ voices rose or his name came up, the boy’s head would shoot out of the book, sending an apprehensive glance towards the doorway in which his equally unrelenting parents stood.

Killian thought back to his own childhood, to all the times his mother argued with his drunk father. He recalled how much he hated it, how he always found a way to blame himself for their arguing, and how useless he had felt every time; the urge to help his mother conflicting with the fear of how his father may react if he did. Killian couldn’t help but see himself in Henry but with one key difference; Liam had been there for Killian, right by his side, throughout every argument. Henry had no one, an only child, sat alone on the bench, just a book for company.

Killian wondered over to the young boy, taking up the empty space on the bench beside him.

“What have you got there, lad?” Killian asked, nodding to the book in Henry’s hands.

“A book,” the four-year-old responded with the obvious.

Killian chuckled to himself; ask a stupid question.

“That a good book?” Killian tried again, determined to strike up conversation to distract the lad from the scene behind him.

The boy shrugged, lacking enthusiasm, “It’s okay.”

Henry’s head turned to the entrance again, just in time to see his father attempt to force Emma’s arm out of the way, only to stumble backwards and fall into a pillar.

“Do you want me to help you read it?” Killian offered, successfully drawing the boy’s attention back onto him.

“That’s okay, thank you,” Henry politely declined his offer. “I look at the pictures and make up my own story.”

“Do you now?” Killian replied. “Care to tell me one?”

Henry smiled at him and nodded enthusiastically. He pointed to the picture in his book, a crocodile circling the waters around the Jolly Roger.

“Once upon a time, Peter Pan took a girl called Wendy to a place called Neverland and they flied there but actually, properly flied, not on an aeroplane, with, like, magic and stuff, and it was an island but there were no animals on the island and Wendy was sad because she loves animals,” Henry began to tell his story.

“Oh, why were there no animals?” Killian asked.

“They went in the water with the crocodile,” Henry answered.

Killian wasn’t quite sure what the four-year-old was implying with that statement.

“So, they all went to live in the water with the croc?” Killian checked.

“No!” Henry protested, looking at him like he was stupid. “The crocodile ate them all up!”

“Well, that’s not very kind,” Killian responded.

“Duh, he’s the bad guy,” Henry said.

Killian laughed; that told him.

“Good point,” he conceded.

“Are you going to let me tell the rest of the story?” Henry asked pointedly.

“Sorry, lad, sure, go ahead,” Killian encouraged.

“There was also a very, very, very bad guy on the island and his name was Captain Hook! He was a pirate who got everyone’s treasure and didn’t like Peter Pan or Wendy,” Henry continued, putting a great level of emphasis on certain words. “Peter Pan and Wendy didn’t like Captain Hook because he was naughty and didn’t have kind hands or kind words so they went to fight him. With swords! And a tyrannosaurus rex! And a dragon! But Captain Hook was really stronger and a gooder fighter and he pushed the tyrannosaurus rex and the dragon and Peter Pan and Wendy into the water and the crocodile ate them all up!”

Henry grinned, looking really proud of himself for coming up with such an exciting story. Killian raised an eyebrow.

“Aren’t the good guys supposed to win?” Killian asked.

“But that’s boring!” Henry defended his story.

“True,” Killian conceded with a chuckle. “And I must admit, it was a twist I didn’t see coming. You’re quite the storyteller, lad.”

Henry beamed at him, completely distracted from the argument raging on behind him.

“That’s what I want to do when I’m bigger!” Henry spoke enthusiastically, bouncing up and down on the bench. “I want to be a story maker!”

“I’m sure you’ll make a fine story maker,” Killian encouraged, smiling at the boy.

“I’m going to make stories about castles and princes and princesses and space and pirates and dragons and dinosaurs!” Henry told him eagerly, speaking at a hundred miles per hour.

“Wow, that’s a lot of stories,” Killian remarked.

“My favorite dinosaur is the tyrannosaurus rex,” Henry segued slightly, once again impressing Killian with his pronunciation.

“Good choice, lad. Those are the big ones,” Killian replied.

“But they’re all extinct now,” Henry spoke matter-of-factly.

“That’s a big word you’ve used there,” Killian commented as the four-year-old continued to impress him with his vocabulary. “Do you know what it means?”

“It means they’re all gone,” Henry answered confidently. “They died and turned into fossils which is good because if they weren’t died they would eat us all up!”

“You’re just full of knowledge, aren’t you?” Killian mused.

Henry grinned at him, seemingly appreciating the compliment. Killian was just happy to have lifted his spirits slightly, even if it was only temporary. The commotion in the doorway was bound to end eventually and he couldn’t pretend to know how things would proceed from there. In the meantime, Killian was more than happy to keep the lad company; it was far better than the boy sitting on his own, listening to every word his parents exchanged.

“My name’s Killian, by the way,” he introduced himself.

He had seen the boy around the apartment building on multiple occasions. They had even nearly bumped into each other several times; the energetic boy didn’t have the best spatial awareness. They had smiled at each other, waved on occasion, and Killian had exchanged the odd ‘hello’ with his mother, but no official introductions had ever been made. Killian suddenly realized that his conversation with the boy meant that he had had more interaction with young Henry than with the boy’s mother. As good company as the boy provided, something had gone seriously wrong with that one.

“I’m Henry,” the boy introduced himself in return.

Little did the four-year-old know that Killian already knew his name. The apartment walls weren’t exactly thick, and Henry wasn’t quite as well behaved behind closed doors as he was when out in public. There were a few times each week where Emma got forced into resorting to shouting her son’s name to get him to listen to her.

“Nice to meet you, Henry,” Killian smiled at him.

The boy smiled back in return and Killian took a pause from the conversation to take a swig of his coffee whilst thinking of the next question to ask to continue his distraction attempts.

Henry spoke up first, “My mommy says fucking hell.”

Killian spluttered and choked on his coffee as it went down the wrong hole. He promptly recovered and looked at the boy beside him who was looking up at him with such sweet, innocent hazel eyes. There was no way, Killian decided, that such a young boy had said what he thought he had just heard.

“Sorry, kid, I missed that one,” Killian told him.

Henry replied, assured and matter of fact in what he was saying, “My mommy says fucking hell.”

Bloody fucking hell. Killian was out of his depth the second he had struck up a conversation with the boy, let alone when he found himself having to deal with a four-year-old cursing.

“I don’t think you should be repea-”

“That’s what my mommy says to my daddy.”

Killian couldn’t help himself and let out a loud laugh. He glanced at Neal and took in the man’s inebriated state; the way he staggered as he tried, and failed, again, to force his way past Emma who stood strong in the doorway, continuing to refuse to relinquish her position. A series of slurred insults poured out of Neal’s mouth, all directed at Emma and none of them harbouring even a slither of truth.

Killian turned back to Henry, his own chain of choice words coming to mind when he thought of Neal.

“Honestly, lad, I don’t blame her,” Killian remarked.

Henry glanced down at his book and absent-mindedly flicked through a couple of pages, barely glancing at the pictures. Killian took the momentary pause in conversation as another chance to take a swig of his coffee.

“Killian?” Henry spoke up again.

“What’s up, lad?” Killian returned.

“Are you going to have a sleepover with mommy?” Henry shot a random question at him.

Killian frowned, wondering where the boy could have possibly gotten that question from, before answering, “Not that I know of.”

“Oh,” Henry’s shoulders slumped, radiating disappointment.

“What makes you ask?” Killian questioned curiously.

Henry sat up straighter and set his book down on the bench. He turned back to Killian, his eyes wide with excitement.

“Once upon a time, I had a scary nightmare at night-time and it was really, really, really late because it was really, really black out my window,” Henry delved into what Killian feared for a moment was going to be another story ending with everyone getting eaten up, rather than an answer to his question. “And because I was scared, I wanted my mommy and I found her in the living room and she was drinking wine!”

“Did she drink it all up?” Killian asked.

“She drank loads of it. Mommy says wine is really nice but I don’t know because she won’t let me try because I’m not big enough. She says it’s a grown-up drink,” Henry said, instantly making Killian regret asking, distracting the boy from the original point. “Mommy says too much wine make you silly like Daddy, and not in a good way like a clown, but she said she needs wine sometimes to deal with Daddy. She says Daddy drives her round the bend.”

Killian laughed and made a mental note to watch every single thing he said around the boy, picking up on his habit to repeat things he heard. He guided the lad back to the original point, “What were you saying about a sleepover?”

“Oh, yes!” Henry grinned at the reminder. “Mommy was drinking wine with her friend Mary Margaret and I heard Mommy say that she wanted the man next door in her bed. That’s you.”

Killian knew it was him before Henry had even pointed it out to him, given the resident in apartment 206 was a woman. He smiled to himself and looked knowingly across at Emma. She still had her back to him, too caught up in dealing with Neal and was probably totally oblivious to his presence there. She wasn’t, however, oblivious to his presence in the apartment next door; her kid had just made that much clear to him.

She may have been drunk at the time of Henry’s earwigging, but drunk meant free of inhibition which meant there had to be some level of truth to her words. It had been a year since he had moved in, and it was the first hint he had ever received that she was at all interested in him. With nothing but passing exchanges of ‘hellos’, Killian had assumed otherwise but, after talking to Henry, he put the pieces together, realizing that she was essentially a single mother, single-handedly bringing up a four-year-old with a pathetic excuse for a father, which undoubtedly left little room for dating. If he wanted to be more than neighbors exchanging the odd polite hello, he was going to have to make the first move and, armed with the knowledge Henry had given him, he was suddenly extremely eager to do so.

If only Neal would give up already. The man was still arguing his case to Emma.

“So?” Henry spoke up, forcing Killian to take his eyes off Emma and return them to her son. “Are you going to have a sleepover?”

“We’ll see,” Killian responded, trying to be as careful as he could with his choice of words.

‘Killian wants to have a sleepover with you’ coming out of Henry’s mouth was not the way he wanted to approach asking Emma out.

“Are you going to be my new daddy?”

Killian was so glad he wasn’t drinking his coffee in that moment for he would have choked on it again. He stared at the kid, unsure if he really wanted to find out where that question had come from and yet, he was curious.

He couldn’t help himself, “What makes you ask that?”

“When Mommy said that she wanted you in her bed, Mary Margaret said that you would make a better daddy for me than my daddy,” Henry recalled then sighed, dropping his head and inspecting his shoes. “My daddy’s rubbish. He never does anything he says he’s going to do.”

Killian made a mental note to thank Mary Margaret, if he ever met her, for dropping him in it with that one.

“Your daddy’s not rubbish, Henry,” Killian reluctantly forced the words out. “He just needs… a bit of help.”

A lot of help. And Neal needed to accept that fact too.

Henry frowned, looking slightly disappointed, “So… you’re not going to be my new daddy?”

“You’ve already got a daddy, Henry. And maybe, if he gets that little bit of help, he’ll be able to be a good daddy. And if not, maybe in the future Mummy will find you a better daddy,” Killian replied carefully, not at all sure he was saying the right thing; he was so far out of his depth. “For now, though, I can just be your friend.”

A small smile crept onto Henry’s face, “Friends?”

“Friends?” Killian returned the question.

“Yeah!” Henry nodded enthusiastically.

The boy’s smile broadened into a huge grin, one which Killian couldn’t help but return. As they fell into a comfortable silence, the heated exchange in the doorway was the only sound which filled the room.

“You want to see your son?” Emma snapped. “Sober the hell up and get some help. I’m done playing these games with you.”

“Fine!” an exasperated Neal shot back.

“Fine!”

Killian watched as Neal turned and staggered off down the steps back towards the street, amazed and slightly disappointed to see him do so without falling flat on his face. Emma slammed the door on him, the loud bang making little Henry jump. She let out a heavy sigh, and took a moment to compose herself, before turning around to find her son. Her eyes landed on Killian and she narrowed them, confused and surprised by his presence, watching him inquisitively as she walked over.

“Hey there,” she greeted.

“Hi,” he returned.

An exchange of hellos.

Henry jumped up from the bench, bouncing enthusiastically on his feet as he grabbed Emma’s hand.

“Mommy, Mommy, this is Killian, the man next door. He’s my new friend. He’s very nice. He sat with me whilst you and Daddy were arguing again,” Henry told her excitedly.

Emma glanced to the door and there was a harder look on her face when she looked back at Killian, “You heard all that?”

“I heard all the stories your boy was telling me,” Killian responded, choosing not to acknowledge the argument that she didn’t seem too thrilled about him overhearing. Something told him she hadn’t realized just how thin the walls were in the building, and just how many of her behind-closed-doors domestics he had also heard in the past. “He’s got quite the imagination.”

“Did they end with everyone getting eaten?” she asked, a hint of amusement in her tone.

“They did, indeed,” Killian confirmed with a nod. “Quite the thrilling twist.”

“Predictable if you listen to too many,” Emma warned.

“That, I look forward too,” he returned.

She smiled slightly then spoke, with some of the sincerest words he had ever heard, “Thank you, Killian.”

“It was my honor,” he returned, matching her tone. “That’s one fine boy you’ve got there. He’s a real credit to you.”

Even if he has been dropping you in it.

Emma looked down at Henry beside her, ruffling his hair. When she looked back up at Killian, their eyes locked, his blue ones meeting her green, captivating him, drawing him in just as her voice did. Henry’s words echoed in his mind; I heard Mommy say she wanted the man next door in her bed. That’s you. It was him. Emma wanted him and man, did he want her. Not necessarily in his bed (though he certainly wouldn’t protest) but even in general; he wanted her there, with him, beside him, around. He wanted to be hers and, lost in each other’s gaze, he had the chance to take a step in that direction, to ask her out.

“Where’s Daddy?” Henry spoke up first, beating him to it.

Damn it. Bloody Neal.

Emma’s eyes left his, dropping down to her kid once more and Killian followed her gaze. Henry was looking towards the closed door of the apartment building, no Neal in sight.

“He said we were going bowling,” a disappointed Henry sighed.

“I know, kid,” Emma crouched down to his level, pushing the hair away from his eyes before taking his hands in hers. “But Daddy had to be somewhere. He’s really sorry. Maybe in a few weeks-”

“Let’s do it,” Killian spoke up, cutting her off.

Emma looked up at him, frowning, “I’m sorry?”

“Let’s do it,” Killian repeated. “Let’s go bowling.”

Henry gasped, his eyes immediately lighting up as he started excitedly bouncing around again. “Really?”

“If your mum doesn’t mind…” Killian hesitantly trailed off, realizing he probably should have spoken to Emma about it first.

He looked at her. The sharp look he received back from Emma told him he most definitely should have spoken to her first.

Bloody hell.

Had he put his foot in it the very first chance he had gotten? Had he screwed things up before they had even begun?

Emma stood up. She encouraged Henry to take a look at his book whilst she discussed some plans, and then pulled Killian away from the bench and towards the door. Her touch was light and her skin smooth against his arm. He was hit by a pang of disappointment when her touch left him, desperate for more. She folded her arms, guarding herself.

“Look, Killian, I appreciate-”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, cutting her off before realizing he was developing a bad habit of doing so. “I should have spoken to you before saying anything to the lad. He just looked so disappointed.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Killian, but all you did is delay the disappointment, probably even increased it. I can’t take him bowling,” Emma told him with an exasperated sigh. “I’m living pay check-to-pay check as it is and we’re only just scraping by. I can’t afford to take him bowling.”

“It’s on me,” Killian told her.

Emma gaped at him, “Why would you do such a thing?”

The question had multiple answers, as far as Killian was concerned. He could spend all day answering that one. After all, why wouldn’t he do such a thing? He decided to keep his response as concise as possible in an effort not to appear all gushy.

“Because your son is quite the charmer, in his own little way,” he told her. “And it’s about time I asked you out on a date and I can’t wait a week and I don’t expect you to find a babysitter on such short notice. So, Emma Swan, would you and your little prince care to join me on a bowling and pizza adventure?”

“You know my surname?” she didn’t miss a trick.

“I may have peeked at your mail,” he confessed.

“That’s crafty, Killian Jones,” she smirked at him.

He raised an eyebrow at her own crafty confession, “Is that a yes?”

“Hey, kid!” Emma avoided answering, calling over to Henry instead, whose little head shot out of his book like lightning. “Wanna go bowling?”

“Yes!” Henry exclaimed.

The four-year-old tossed his book aside on the bench and jumped to his feet, racing across to Emma and Killian before once again returning to his excited bouncing.

“Killian’s treating us to bowling,” Emma told the boy. “What do you need to say?”

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Henry exclaimed.

Without warning, the boy charged at him, running straight into his legs, and wrapping his arms around them. The action knocked Killian off balance and he would have fallen were it not for Emma grabbing a hold of his hand and steadying him, saving him from that embarrassment. With his balance restored, Killian gratefully ran his thumb along hers as he let go.

“That’s quite alright, Henry,” Killian replied as he gently patted the boy on the shoulder.

“Come on then, kid, go fetch your book and we’ll set off,” Emma prompted.

Henry released Killian from his tight grasp and ran off back to the bench, doing as he was told. Killian’s eyes met Emma’s once more as she smiled at him, a gesture he automatically returned.

“You just made his day,” Emma told him.

“You just made my year,” Killian returned.

--

Tags: @teamhook@laianely@booksteaandtoomuchtv@exhaustedpirate@anmylica@hollyethecurious@kmomof4@winterbaby89@undercaffinatednightmare@resident-of-storybrooke@tiganasummertree@stahlop@lfh1226-linda@darkshadow7@fleurdepetite@captainswan-kellie@motherkatereloyshipper@soniccat@jrob64@whimsicallyenchantedrose@jonesfandomfanatic@myfearless-love

[power-chords]

Herein lies a contradiction typical of extreme mainstream culture in film, which cannot but be ambitious (the amount of money invested in it requires it) but has to contain (in both senses of “checking” and “enclosing”) the potential it is forced to make use of. In Red Dragon this happens by means of the utterly impoverishing psychological proto-narrative involving the main evil character, a boy, we are shown, who was raised by a domineering grandmother and whose memories still haunt him. But if this subtext fails to completely mediate an abused childhood with the posthuman Red Dragon, it serves the purpose of inserting the family space as both the origin of the problem and the realm of its possible solution. Reba McClane, a blind woman who works with Dolarhyde, is not shocked by his looks and eccentric behavior; she represents an equal, someone who also has a “disability” but who manages to function well in society. She is a source of hope inasmuch as with her the Red Dragon’s evil could be tamed by the formation of a nuclear family. If only Dolarhyde had not misrepresented the relationship between Reba and Ralph Mandy, another coworker, so the film makes us wonder, then there would be a way out for him, a passage from the dark and dangerous world of writing/reading to that of the lack of ambiguity in the conflict-free home.

Mediating between the hero and villain is the third pivotal element of the film: the police and the FBI. It is Crawford himself who takes Graham away from what we are led to see as paradise, and it is the FBI and the police who provide the material support needed for him to read and reconstitute what passes through Dolarhyde’s mind. What they obviously represent is a social apparatus of repression, one which, again, evinces the most astounding development from the stone-age computers in Manhunter to the up-to-date digitalized network of identification and decoding. It would be tempting to posit an en abîme structure in this case, whereby the technological development undergone by the police would be a miniature of, and would stand for, the film itself in relation to its precursor. But whether or not one relies on this clue, the parallels between the police and mainstream film are worth paying attention to, for both are socially prominent and aspire to be ubiquitous. (The camera indeed has come to perform both roles of universal instrument of surveillance and fundamental means of representation, as the verb “to shoot” and its derivatives attest.)

Furthermore, there is something revealing in the kind of opulence at stake here, not only in the habitually exorbitant Hollywood film budget (by now an important part of any mainstream film advertisement campaign) but also in the amount of resources available to repressive apparatuses. Perhaps one has to live in a Third World country, as I do, to be able to recuperate something of the amazement coming from the disproportionality between that one individual, Dolarhyde, and the State’s inextinguishable resources. From the point of view of its employees (state policemen, FBI agents, all sorts of technicians), an interesting dialectics takes place, whereby the agents of repression renounce the division between their private lives and their work in order to guarantee that this division remain absolute. As for material resources, their total deployment of means is redolent of the purest totalitarian fantasy: in a film where realism seems only to be left aside in the murderer’s pathological, delirious transgression, one might very well ask if this apparently infinite availability—of helicopters, 24-hour personnel, computers, and so forth—is not somehow fanciful, even in the case of a famous serial killer deserving abundant news coverage. The suspicion may very well arise, that is, that in this perfect working of the repressive machine (no one on vacation here, no single computer breakdown, no one using any equipment when it is not needed, no space for a lazy “let’s-do-it-tomorrow” attitude) a social truth is manifested: that writing/reading is dangerous and that to combat it there are no limits to the State apparatuses of counter-reading.

—Fabio Akcelrud Durão, "A Short Circuit of Reading: Red Dragon as Anti-Theory," 2004. Emphasis mine.

[ruthlesslistener]

all the recent lurien/hegemol shipping is hilarious to me because i have a post somewhere on my hk blog that's like "lurien is the type of guy to resign himself to courtly pining forever (palewatcher) and get horribly embarrassed he actually likes his betrothed" and that's just. lurimol. pk (guy who arranged the marriage) giving an oblivious thumbsup in the bg as lurien realizes he'll never be able to explain the situation his ridiculous pining ass got in (at least he stops pining)

OH NO MY WEAKNESS: ARRANGED MARRIAGES

(Seriously I think they're so underappreciated in fiction. I'm not even like the 'got into arranged marriage and fell in love' thing, I just like the idea of the married couple forming some sort of partnership be it friends with benefits, actual love, tax evasion/political boosts, or 'yeah this is just easier and more secure, date who you want', though I'm especially partial to political fwbs)

Arranged marriage Lurimol is an interesting one though, because I feel like it would be less arranged and more...encouraged? If that makes sense? Given that Lurien is like the third most powerful bug in Hallownest after the King and Queen themselves, and Hegemol is one of the Great Five. I can totally see WL doing the encouraging too, as I headcanon her being an ambiguously defined 'Root' to mean that she represents the mutalistic connections between fungal mycellium and plants, so she has less of an individualistic view and more of a communal one. Lurien's wilting away in his tower? Perhaps he needs a supplement. What is a very effective supplement to the lives of her people? Long-term partnerships. These can be familial or friendly, but since Lurien has no living family and is too socially isolated to easily make friends, a mateship will work. At the very least, it would improve his health during breeding season, provided that he actually interacts enough with the outside world to come into cycle (which is part of the problem-he doesn't). And since Lurien is one of her beloved's favored, he is set to age extremely slowly, and thus has limited options to choose from. What are those options? Well, there's Monomon, who is technically immortal in her own right, but is also very strange and never showed much inclination to form partnerships in the way Lurien would desire- and, of course, she is a woman. There are the Five, but three of them are also women, and also taken themselves. That leaves Hegemol and Ogrim- but both are beetles, and beetles do not like to share. So, Hegemol it is. A talk with her hudband about the benefits vs the potential political costs (of which there are none) would ensue, and then she would bring up the idea to Lurien.

(Let's also assume here that WL is unaware of the fact that the source of Lurien's pining was PK, for if she'd known she would have urged her husband to do something about it. She is actually quite fond of Lurien, after all.)

As for Lurien's side of things, I'm not sure if he'd be too keen on it at first- his loyalty is to Hallownest first and foremost, and he doesn't know Hegemol very well at all, which is an intimidating thought. But I can also see him caving into his queen's request that he at least comes to watch one of the sparring competitions that the Great Knights show in as a means of boosting morale to the public and having a bit of fun, during which he notices that hmm, Hegemol *is* quite a magnificent fighter, and he *does* have a humble charm outside of battle that appeals to him quite well, as well as a handsome and kindly air. Fierce on the battlefield, focused and strong-willed, but gentle at hand- that *is* what he tends to find quite attractive in men. And since Hegemol *is* a knight, there likely won't be political banter that he has to deal with, no secrets or ulterior motives that he has to navigate, so talking to him shouldn't be too hard. Knights tend to be straightforward folk. And he's beloved by and close to the King, so Lurien's...eccentricities likely wouldn't phase him. Not a dangerous gamble. Just an uncertain one, for a person who spent all his life pining and shelving away his desires to focus his attention on other things

As for Hegemol himself...WL wouldn't have told him, as she would have liked to see how him and Lurien got along naturally, but PK would have been very blunt about it, so he'd give it a shot. The Watcher is an engmatic figure, after all, but he knows that he is dedicated to the City and the King and is kind at heart, for he and Ogrim trained the Watcher Knights, and he knows Lurien treats them quite well. What's the risk, especially since he's gone so long since his last true partnership (perhaps even before his knighting)? He could flirt with the spectre of the spire for a bit. And that sort of thinking is how he ends up learning that despite Lurien being a pragmatic political mastermind, he's really quite unsure about how people work behind closed doors, and hasn't had an actual romantic relationship like...ever. Which seems a bit confusing, given that he is a classy bug with an eye for fine art, but then again, Lurien was beloved by the King, and the King was a bit of an odd one. I think he would find Lurien's artificially calm, soft-natured means of speaking contrasted with his hard, unyielding resolve to do best by Hallownest quite appealing, especially given that it comes from a deep love for the City and its people, just like Hegemol. They're both warriors- Lurien just fights with words in unseen corridors behind lush velvet curtains, while Hegemol slogs through the earth with his armour heavy on his carapace and his mace firm in his hands. Different methods, same results. Same heart. They'd be a good match.

(As for PK's thoughts on this...they'd basically boil down to 'is Lurien content? Good. Then I have done my duty.' Dude's love language is acts of service, though he'd never admit to it nor try to linger on what Lurien, Monomon, or the Five meant to him. Too many feelings. Too much uncertainty, and a king should never be uncertain.)

[oleworm]

on that post you've made - it almost like the burger place scenes are from the lens of Benson's eyes. Everything is taken to the extreme. The young couple aren't just inoffensive lovers who can't get their hands of each other, they are these inappropriate and sinister sex-crazed bullies, Kris isn't just some random jerk - there is a heavy innuendo (if not an explicit theme) to his abuse, the thirst for power and control. The girl is wearing those stereotypical "sexy" clothes (which would be inoffensive and totally fine in any other setting, but contribute to the overexposure of the moment), is all over her man and acts like his cheerleader in violence - a caricature of sorts, too. The manager is all about sex, hiding it behind propriety of a light suit. All while sex is heavily implied to be something negative in B's view - he borderline says so himself. But it's everywhere in that place, unavoidable. You can't even ignore it, stick to your routine and shut down the outside world - because it would be forced upon you by one of them through violence. The boundaries and consent are not very well respected there, to say the least.

All of this stuff happens in like, 5 min - to the point of being unrealistic and hyperbolic. The whole place has those heavy oppressing color of emergency yellow, they have burgers on their hats like targets, like they themselves are food, the secondary characters are so caricaturistic they feel like an explicit parody. It's all really surreal and bizarre, like inferno for someone with a trauma, lol. And then it all stops when the camera floats out of that place and into the wild - suddenly, people are friendly and nice, the lights are bright, the colours are normal and pretty with limited yellow highlights (thinking about the candies in the glass jar at the school's office - the colour of the sweater B wears as he is standing right next to them). It's like, when you have trauma, if something triggers your memory, normal things grow extreme, become overwhelming, a drop of red paint feels like dying, etc - then the panic ends and the world is normal again. But it's a movie so everything is taken to the extreme for drama.

You’re completely on point when you talk about these characters as caricatures, or caricaturistic. It felt that way to me too. They did not look like they were intended to look like real people to me. Jess’s loud and exaggerated screams, the gallons sprayed of blood a nod to slasher horror, which makes sense when you think that the studio that funded this film mostly makes horror movies. Then the film takes a different turn, focusing on the more mundane and real-life horrors.

It's not difficult to become disturbed when you’re faced with constant reminders of the traumatic events that shaped your life for the worse. And maybe I didn’t express myself very clearly, but that is exactly what I felt too—that Benson was focusing on these things because they are the ones that stand out to him, and that the filmmakers were intentionally bringing these elements to the fore. If you met someone like Chris in real life, you’d probably think he was an asshole. Keep to yourself, report him if he went too far. But that’s another thing that adds to the comparison of Benson’s past with his current setting. Hardy is aware of the hostile dynamics at play and doesn’t care, so if anyone actually thought to say something about it, they wouldn’t have anyone to turn to. If the boss is in on it, what do you do? Who do you tell? Does that remind you of anything?

I don’t know if I am reading too much into it. But yes, the way it was filmed, also, made me think of when a stimulus brings back a memory. It takes you out of yourself and at the same time turns you inward. When Benson walks out to his car, he is not only walking toward the gun and towards death but also walking away from the scene that so disturbed him. I think that though he might have decided that now he was really going to do it he also needed to physically remove himself from the situation because it overwhelmed him.

There’s this short clip that I liked, right after Benson and Randy take the bodies to the freezer. They’re mopping and sponging the blood off the floor, off the walls, and if it were not for the red you would think that it’s a normal workday. They’ve closed for the day but they’re heading home soon. They’re working side by side, wordlessly, in a way that I imagine them doing in better moments. But at the same time, I imagine that they’re thinking “I can’t believe I did that,” or “I can’t believe that happened.” And trying to ground themselves and keep it together.

I love what you say about the colour yellow. It makes me sick! I love it. I feel like this film took out my appendix. I need to rewatch some scenes, but now I am getting sleepy. Will answer that part (and your other messages) tomorrow.

[ghostlyauroras]

I have a lot to get off my chest. I see a lot of criticism for the way Taylor sings about mental health and that is valid, but comparing Taylor's experience with depression to D*mi Lov*to's with bpd only to illustrate how much more valid her experience was because she suffered publicly while invalidating Taylor's because she's good at putting up this peppy upbeat front to hide her pain so she couldn't possibly have a real mental illness is exactly WHY taylor has this negative mindset about it in the first place.

Mental illness is not a competition. It is experienced differently by different people.

Some celebrities are celebrated and lauded as brave for overcoming it, usually they already had an image of being tortured in some way (drugs, EDs, anger issues, etc) so when they come out and admit they're mentally ill it's almost like 'oh that explains everything, it all makes total sense now' and is met with sympathy.

Taylor knows, whether conscious or unconsciously, that she does not fit that description. She is either cold and calculated or too perfectly rich, blonde and skinny to have experienced real suffering.

So the album opens with this line: "i was supposed to be sent away but they forgot to come and get me" she was begging for help but nobody gave it the urgency it required because they thought she'd power through it. "I was a functioning alcoholic till nobody noticed my new aesthetic" she is admitting she has a problem with substance abuse but everyone thinks it's just her glamorous lifestyle. Later when she says "i took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary" lacking real treatment and therapy, she treated her depression getting a rebound relationship to run away from her pain.

Then in who's afraid of little old me right before the infamous asylum line she says "i wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me" she is begging the world to take her pain seriously..

But how could she be taken seriously? She smiles even when she wants to die, she cries a lot but she is so productive, she is a real tough kid and she can handle her shit... except she can't, she just wants to be seen and understood! But she's been trained all her life (in the asylum where she was raised) to put down her pain and put on a show for the world, so who would believe her now when she says, actually i struggle with the same demons other famous people do?

So now she feels she has to exaggerate and catastrophize and even demonize her struggle to get across just how bad her depression was, because even when she says outright that she wanted to die everyone is rolling their eyes that she could feel that way about a shitty dude. So how else is she going to capture your attention? How can she make you really SEE her and her pain?

Also, as someone who also has struggled with depression since I was a teenager... it's fucking scary to realize you are actually mentally ill. All the stigma is there for a reason, historically some of the treatments have been the stuff of nightmares and conflated with the fatalistic world-view that is inherent to depression, you do feel like a monster, abnormal, broken, etc. and you are scared of how people will treat you for it and you are scared you cannot be fixed and it feels like the end of the world.

Mental illness warps your perception of the world. It's extremely hard to be objective, much less kind, to yourself and your struggle when you are in the thick of it.

So, imho, i don't feel like Taylor's choice of metaphors/language is perpetuating stigmatization of mental illness - it is a representation of the internalized stigma, of the self-hatred and helplessness and guilt and self-flagelation that come with mental illness but at the same time it's also a cry for help! She wants to make depression sound as terryfing as it feels for her so that you will SEE her and HELP her.

To put it simply: I just feel like you can't ask a depressed and even suicidal person to have a compassionate take on mental health - they need others to show them compassion so they can heal and be nice to themselves.

She is not a mental health professional, she is not here to teach us how to handle mental health, she is NOT a role model. She is just another depressed and suicidal person expressing her pain in hopes someone understands her. Be gentle with her.

Again, mental health is not a competition, different people experience it differently.

[hitsuzenhusbands]

hey! i hope you're having a good day! i just read your (amazing!) asoue fic "ashes to ashes," and i was fascinated by the way you portrayed kit and olaf. i thought i'd send this ask because i'd really love to hear more of your thoughts on their dynamic if you feel like sharing? but if you don't feel like expanding on it, i totally understand! thank you so much for sharing your beautiful work on ao3!

OHH anon you are so kind...i apologize for being so extremely late but i just finished writing a little analysis so i figured now's about the right time to write a semi-legible response. might have been scary and incomprehensible otherwise. but i am finally here to scream and cry and thank you so desperately because im SO happy you enjoyed them AND decided to ask for more info! <3

to begin, i'd be absolutely inconsolable if i didn't point you towards @virginian-wolfsnake's fic the eye of the storm, probably one of my fave k&o fics of all time that delves into the meat of their relationship through the years from the perspective of kit. they're young and still excited by missions and flirty and tender and genuine, and, in time, when the rest of their world collapses, so do they--messy and tense and so wonderfully realistic you have to read it and then read it again. honestly, if you don't want to read the rest of this but still want an answer, just read that. but also read it anyway

and now i have to ask you to forgive me...i have not read the books in a very long time and while i know the netflix series (in comparison) is bad and awful and terrible, i have watched it a million times. so if i'm wrong on anything. that's why.

to begin, the version of olaf i depicted in my fic is at the height of his...how do you say...pathetic misery. not including the spiral he has during the series. to me, the death of his parents are the beginning of his downfall into something-like-insanity, but he's still (and will continue to be) recognizably himself, if that makes sense. he's always been messy and emotional and dramatic (see the line: "...Kit has seen him in worse states and with a much better view..."), but only now does he reveal not a different side of himself per se, but a different angle of one that already existed.

im a fervent believer that olaf's always been a little self destructive and a lot crazy. hes spent the greater half of his life coming to terms with the fact that he is intrinsically not as noble as the rest of vfd--hes impulsive and obnoxious and self-obsessed, barely even literate at times--and it takes a special kind of guy to carve the insignia of the organization full of people he despises into his own front door. still, his parents' death was a catalyst, meaning he wasn't entirely opposed to vfd beforehand. he probably liked the missions and the secrecy and the dramatics, obviously the disguises and everything, but i think before the night at the opera it was really just a source of fun for him. he never truly grasped the reality of it, the nature of his actions and the weight of his involvement. whether that was out of naivety or pure neglect of the facts is up for debate. (there's a little bit of this in the shattering of thalia and melpomene if that interests you at all, beloved anon. see the line: "...[Esme] could never compare to the extent to which [Olaf] removes himself from everyone else entirely. How he spends so much time worrying about himself he almost forgets to worry about himself...Esme could never truly get lost in her own greatness. Could never turn a blind eye to the inner workings of V.F.D.")

kit, on the other hand, definitely did. serving as a volunteer was her purpose, the sole thing she had to cling to. she dedicated her life to it, making conscious decisions to go against her moral code in the hope that it all truly was for a greater good. i think, at times, she could fall into her own little fits of self-destruction, putting vfd above herself entirely (see the line: "This wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something she would never truly volunteer for...he’d still spent year after year watching her run off...to do something she could never speak of." "...she still returned with clenched teeth and knit eyebrows, as though she had no choice in the matter at all.")

to avoid any more convolution, in my mind it goes something like this: both are volunteers--olaf born and raised (along with beatrice), kit torn from her family and thrust into the thick of it so early on its all she knows. they grow up, probably-definitely know each other but dont know each other until, say, late teens-early twenties?

up until then, they've been everything previously described, but intermingling with one another changes this. olaf's easygoing approach rubs off on kit, partly because she finds more joy in his company than in missions, partly because he makes every attempt to keep her from leaving. i like to think she tries to keep his relatively flimsy moral code in check, or at the very least restrain his temper to the best of her abilities.

to me, they're a simultaneously great and terrible couple. at their best, they counteract each other in a positive way as described above and serve as a welcome distraction from the realities of a crumbling vfd, a little island of tenderness and domesticity in the ocean of turmoil that surrounds them.

and at their worst, their personalities combat so violently it's hard to see how they ever could have been together. olaf deals out the worst of it, prone to neglect and self-isolation, a deeply inset refusal to discuss anything with her, an inclination towards firestarting and an increasingly poor reputation with everyone kit knows. then again, kit isn't free of blame (if you can call it that), she's just as opposed to talking anything out as he is, and her isolation takes on the shape of running off to do as many missions as as she can before she's dead on her feet. she's pulled in different directions--a well-instilled hatred towards firestarers, only further influenced by whatever rumours olaf's growing list of enemies supplies her, versus her love for him, her knowledge of who he really is, a concept that is often tested. (see the line: "He’s reminded of a fight they once had, about something or other, that ended in her angry admission that it was easier to be upset with him when he wasn’t nearby.") 

anyway, the idea is they grow further and further apart both ideologically and physically/relationship-wise until the opera night and the crash following that (see: the whole fic!) and from then on i think they fall into something like an evil situationship. they barely see each other, complete opposite sides of the schism. i say situationship because i think when they do see each other (on missions, at events/in public, in private, etc.) it is just a terrible experience no matter what. they're both torn between hating the other for what they know about them/what they did (i like to think olaf finds out about kit supplying the darts) and reminiscing/yearning for what they once had.

for the sake of this i wont give my thoughts on whose baby kit has because that's a whole other thing (not really. its just more of a fun hc i think about on occasion as opposed to something concrete in canon or even my version of canon) but their scene in the end does make me insane. its a culmination of all the time spent wishing what happened didnt happen, almost as though theyre seeing each other for the first time once again, perhaps not blind to the past but looking away for (on olafs part) one final moment of normalcy.

i hope thats what you were looking for to any degree, anon. im a little rusty on my lore but they matter to me soo much. if i have to leave this on anything, its go read eye of the storm. kitlaf fic of all time.

[botanicallyinclinednerd]

The Umbrella Academy episode 7

Is Leonard Harold

Oh I'm totally right aren't I. That's why Leonard stole the Hargreeves figurine

Thats certainly a villain origin story

Harold should kill his dad

Yup

They reveal this with a musical florish like I'm supposed to be surprised

Poor freaking Vanya. All a pawn in this assholes revenge fantasy against a guy that is already fucking dead

Look at this sappy sentimental old man. He knows her name! He wants to meet her! He wants to be in his family's lives! He wants his family!

Luther is a mean drunk and imma be really mad if he doesn't let go of Klaus

LUTHER

Ah, so that's why she didn't kill him and why she got so mad when she realized that he wasn't talking about her

Go in the attic, discover the body

I thought he had been shot!

So does he view himself and Vanya as the same? Both scorned, mistreated, but capable of great power? Does he think that since he hates the others that she should too? (He's also putting in work and getting good coincidence to line up his Dominos)

So here's my fear: history is gonna repeat itself cause what if this all happened the way it did the first time because Five *was* there? Im just really worried about all this

If Agnes ends up dead I'm going to be upset

Im a fan of Ben

Oh Klaus :(

No! No Klaus!

Oh baby

This is how the bad thing happens between the sisters isn't it. Allison goes alone to look for Vanya and something awful happens. I don't know who gets their throat cut but it would make sense for it to be Allison considering her powers and Vanya's unknown powers

No you aren't, you're a selfish little fuck trying to use her to destroy her family and the world

:(

Extreme emotion is what gets it going

Well it seems that Luther got him in the first go around at least.