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pair-annoyed · 3 years

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Anime I Watched This Fall

My first semester of college is officially over and the December holidays are upon us! I hoped to make one of these posts sooner, but I have been incredibly busy with schoolwork. Now that things have slowed down, let’s take sometime to reflect on things I’ve watched.

These anime are listed in chronological order and encompass everything I’ve watched from 9/1/2020 - 12/15/2020

Like always, they will be rated on a 1-10 scale; 1 meaning complete garbage, 10 meaning masterpiece. I will offer my thoughts on what I did/didn’t like about each show!

1. The God of High School - 6/10

Despite the stellar animation from MAPPA and my high expectations, I was really disappointed by how this series was treated. Most of the story’s crucial elements were handled poorly. I finished this series feeling more confused about the plot than when I first began. The power system is really cool, but poorly explained. More time should have been spent on exposition and world building for this series, instead the fights were given the most screen time.

2. Doukyuusei - 7/10

I really liked the style of Doukyuusei. Granted, this was another movie I chose to watch primarily because of the hype surrounding it. The dynamic between Kusakabe and Sajou is an interesting one, and I also enjoy how the movies different acts were separated by the seasons. However, there's nothing that really sets Doukyuusei apart from other romance movies, its a little generic. Still, I enjoyed it nonetheless.

3. Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season - 8/10

My opinions on Re:Zero’s second season are biased. This was, by far, the sequel I was most hyped for during the summer/fall anime season. I was so happy to see the story’s continuation and I’m looking forward to the season’s second part coming sometime in January. Re:Zero is one of my all time favorite series because of the way it handles it characters and power dynamics. I also really enjoy the show’s psychological aspects. If you haven’t already, give Re:Zero a try!

4. Saint☆Oniisan (Movie + OVA) - 8/10

This was a wonderful comedy. I wasn’t sure how the subject of Jesus and Buddha living together would be tackled, but it was handled wonderfully. I was laughing for pretty much the entire movie. I love the art style and little references to both Buddhism and Christianity, plus the incorporation of Japanese culture. Saint Oniisan is a bright comedy, with two eccentric main characters. If you like a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and need a good laugh, I can’t recommend this more.

5. Clannad: After Story - 10/10

Never, while watching anime, did I cry as much as I did while watching Clannad: After Story. I didn’t realize how much I related to Okazaki until I saw him grow up in After Story. I was left sobbing, especially after episode 18. I still, to this day, cannot listen to the Dango song without tearing up. The original Clannad is nothing special, but the continuation of its story its something heartfelt, emotional, and down-to-earth. I love Kyoto Animation with all my heart, and Clannad made me appreciate everything the studio has done just a little bit more. Thank you Clannad, for reminding me about the kind of person I strive to be.

6. Nakitai Watashi wa Neko wo Kaburu - 5.5/10

The art in A Whisker Away was beautiful. The story itself, however, is nothing too enjoyable. I found it difficult to like our protagonist or her love interest. Nothing about this movie is inherently memorable. The emotional climax came far too early which made the second half of the film seem long and drawn out. All in all, the movie has a wonderful concept, I just believe it could have been so much more emotional than it was. When I watch a move, I like to empathize with the characters. It’s difficult to do when the characters aren’t given the proper exposition to be empathized with.

7. Shikioriori - 6/10

This is less of a movie and more of a collection of short stories. Flavors of Youth is something you shouldn’t watch on an empty stomach, all of the food looks incredible. The same cannot beside for the rest of this feature. The stories themselves seems heavily clichéd. Much like A Whisker Away, the initial premise is intriguing, but the execution results in something that comes across as trying too hard and carries no emotional weight with the viewer. If you plan on watching, pay more attention to the artwork and animation than the actual plot. You won’t be missing anything.

8. Vinland Saga - 7/10

Vinland Saga helped me get out of the rut that Clannad: After Story. Not only does this show have a great story, its action packed with lots of interesting fights. I especially enjoyed all the Nordic history embedded within the show. Its really unlike any of the other historical anime I’ve watched. I will say, it’s gory. But, compared to all the other things I watched this time around, I finished this series the quickest. Its good, its graphic, its fast paced!

9. Mononoke Hime - 7/10

It’s ironic considering how much anime I’ve watched that I have yet to watch all of the most classic Studio Ghibli films. Princess Mononoke is grittier than most other Ghibli films I’ve seen, but it’s message is positive and its characters are wonderful. I can’t really speak ill towards classics like these. I guess maybe my one complaint is that this movie could’ve been a faster pace. Other than that... I really enjoyed everything Princess Mononoke offered! I understand why it’s so popular.

10. Howl no Ugoku Shiro - 8.5/10

Can you believe it took me this long to finally watch Howl’s Moving Castle? Me neither!! This movie is so endearingly beautiful. I loved every second of it, from the characters to the soundtrack. So many iconic things come from just this one movie. I would like to take this time to thank my best friend for reminding me that Studio Ghibli films are wonderful! Thank you for watching this with me, I loved it! All in all, I regret not watching this sooner!

11. Toradora! - 6.5/10

Toradora took me a while to finish, just because I lost interest about halfway through. But, I powered through it, and ended up really enjoying the show! I’m not the biggest fan of the ending, but that’s just a personal preference. Somehow, this show also made me cry? I’m not entirely sure why because Toradora! is probably the thing farthest from sad. Apart from the show’s dull slice of life moments, it was super cute! A much needed light-hearted romance.

12. New Initial D Movie: Legend 1 - 5/10

Full disclosure, this is the only thing related to Initial D that I’ve ever watched. My band and I watched this expecting to hear some of that iconic Initial D music, itself all we got was a mildly confusing story about different types of cars. It was cliché and frankly a little boring. Although, I am still considering watching the original Initial D just so I can hear the music in the way it was original intended. I’ve got no other opinions on this movie. It’s best not to watch these movies without the context from the rest of the franchise.

13. Uchuu Patrol Luluco - 7.5/10

I didn’t really understand why people enjoy studio Trigger so much until I watched Space Patrol Luluco. I loved all the fun references to other studio Trigger works. I loved the humor, and I loved all the bright colors. The animation was extremely high energy, and the art style fits the show’s premise. Each episode was only 12 minutes long so it was a super quick binge. If you’re looking for something quick, light-hearted and comical, this is the perfect show to watch.

14. Orange - 7/10

I owe a big thanks to a tumblr mutual for recommending this show to me! This holds the honor of making me cry by episode 3! I honestly did not expect the subject matter of this show to be as dark as it was. Usually when I see the genre ‘shoujo’ I do not associate it with a love story like that of Orange. The heavy subject matter made it a little too close to home for me, but I still really enjoyed this series. It reminds me off all the good times I had with my friends in high school, and of all the regrets I carry with myself to this day.

15. 3-gatsu no Lion - 7.5/10

March Comes in Like a Lion is another show that was a bit of a slow burn for me. Each episode left me feeling emotionally drained, so I had to take a lot of breaks while I was working on watching this series. Shaft, the studio behind this anime, holds a special place in my heart because I loved their work on the Monogatari Series. March Comes in Like a Lion is a little different. It’s driving force it is characters, and it was cathartic to watch our main character transform through the entire duration of the first season. I know the show’s second season is much better, so I’ll be starting that soon!

16. Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei - 8/10

I loved how artsy and smart The Tatami Galaxy is, but honestly I couldn’t watch too much at once cause it would hurt my head. I also couldn’t watch this show while I was tired because the speaking rate is much faster than typical anime. The Tatami Galaxy is so unique for its medium. I loved the different time loops and the crazy animation. The characters were fascinating. The dialogue, although very fast, it also fantastic. There’s an element of humor to this unique story telling, and I enjoyed ever minute of it!

Currently Watching:

Hunter x Hunter - 6.5/10 (As of Episode 30)

I pride myself in having watched a lot of shounen anime, but I was reluctant to start Hunter x Hunter for years because I thought I would find it boring. I was oh so very wrong. Considering great shows like Naruto and Fairy Tail that fall under the same category, I expected Hunter x Hunter to be subpar in comparison. It gets a low score for two reasons. One, the power system was introduced a little too late and now I’m wondering if all the fights post episode 30 will involved nen in some way, shape, or form. Two, its still on hiatus.

Two Cursed Additions For This List

Please to do not let these be representative of my anime taste.

1. Yarichin☆B*tch-bu - 4/10

I am a CLOWN for not knowing this was 18+. The only reason I watched this was to see why everyone was talking about the pink-haired boy with the glasses and tongue piecing. I know why now, and I regret it. This was a massive mistake on my part. But hey, at the least the art and ending song kinda slap?

2. Euphoria (Dropped After 1 Episode) - 2/10

If you know what I’m talking about when I say Euphoria, I am so sorry. And no, I am not talking about the HBO series. Seriously, don’t google this. Don’t watch this. Don’t interact with anything related to this. You’re probably wondering, “Then why did you watch it?” I did not watch this willingly. You see, I have a very bad habit of starting anime and then taking months to finish them. I made an ultimatum with a friend, lost, and then was forced to watch this a punishment. Not a fun experience. I’m very glad there are no GIFs of this on tumblr...

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chocolateslatte · 4 years

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🚨The Rise of Skywalker Detailed Review and Spoilers Ahead🚨

George Lucas: “If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office”

The “fairytale” we got: A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was a curse of pain and death in a family that just went on and on. They were never able to break it and they all die, the end.

Well, you did it JJ, you little punk...you ruined 40 years of cinema. Kids are coming out of theatres crying, they can’t understand. I guess this was the “fun and hopeful ending” you were speaking of during the press tours. Are you on crack or something, or just sadistic....why would you promote it like that!? Did you forget Star Wars at its core is a story of hope, light, a fairytale in space for children? They did it...they united Reylo’s and Fanboys through hate.

JJ you do realize tragical romances are only tragically romantic if there was romantic buildup? Romeo and Juliet married in secret, Anidala did as well and flirted in the fields. How was this supposed to be satisfying? A five-second beginning, middle, and end. How this went through multiple execs is beyond me.... I would have understood if Reylo was Rian’s creation. BUT JJ LITERALLY was the one who told Rian to go forth with it...he created Reylo so you can’t say the last Jedi derailed things on that front. JJ wasn’t brave enough for his own vision. This movie was like “the crimes of Grindlewald”, a lot of stuff happening that made me feel nothing.

Okay, first things first. The OG trilogy was necessary, the prequels were necessary to set up that Vader did not start off bad. What was necessary about the sequels? They just dismantled everything the Skywalker family worked for. Why did we have to see ALL of our favorite characters die? Was the aim that a villain can only be redeemed through death? How original. I’m convinced what they were planning for since force awakens was a journey from villain to hero...but instead we got this a 10min redemption resulting in death a la Vader. Why call Adam Driver’s character a “Disney Prince”?When did Happy endings become so controversial? We go to the movies to feel hope, to escape reality...George Lucas understood that. JJ’s trilogy is uninspired, bland and contributes nothing to the saga. JJ went as far as to recon his own “The Force Awakens”.It had the chance to define generations but no. Literal and utter garbage. Rian made some odd choices but he was bold, unafraid and had the vision. HE knew emotion was at the heart of Star Wars.

WHERE DID THE SKYWALKERS RISE? MORE LIKE RISE OF PALPATINE, HE BLOODY WON

BUT my problem is not with the ending, it’s the bloody entire movie. This movie made me realize that it's not Reylo that I am a fan of, it was Ben, Leia, Han, Ani, Padme, and all those other characters. I’m upset because this movie is not my Star Wars: of family, love and above all else hope. This is just a 2.5-hour video game with no emotions. This trilogy was all angst with NO payoff.

Okay, you will never ever convince me Palpatine was planned the whole time. This whole movie was retcon for the Last Jedi that pissed off the fanboys. Lucas films did not have an outline for the three films and Rian derailed whatever they wanted to do....except they didn’t even tell him what they wanted! This should be a cautionary tale of why you need to plan. Kylo ain’t bad, Snoke is gone....well pull out Palpatine I guess. This whole film is JJ’s mad scrambling. Alright, I will humor you, tell me how Palpatine came back when he fell down a shaft and exploded....not *boom boom because of force*. The force in this movie is not canon George Lucas force, it’s just an easy out whenever JJ wants one.

1. Opening Crawl: As soon as I saw this I knew all the leaks were true, I wanted to bolt from the theatre. When I saw them in August I laughed cause it was so ridiculous it couldn’t be true. How could Disney let a whole movie leak? The plot seemed like a bad fan-fiction. Actually, fanfics are way more true to lore. Anyway, so Palpatine “announces” that he’s back. Is this the shrewd Chancellor Palpatine we know? Certainly, not...why in the world would he announce it rather than keep on the DL and just attack. Yo Palps ain’t this dumb why would you let them (the resistance) prepare?? Because of plot...well okay.

2. Did Last Jedi even happen: this film is the sequel to the force awakens, like TLJ never happened...except it’s acting like there was some movie in between that JJ made. Okay, so why is Kylo trying to run Rey over with his tie fighter...he doesn’t really want to kill her. It’s just meaningless action shots. And don’t get me started on exposition, the dialogue: “hey look its the Knights of Ren”. Except they do nothing. Cool cool. Kylo’s character goes back to Force awakens era like no development had occurred...except he’s not even there he’s just messing around not even being a real villain. JJ’s specialty is set-up and he does this beautifully....but he can not wrap up and follow through.

3. Rose Tico: yup last Jedi never happened, she has nothing to do. She and Finn are irrelevant. Finn has reverted to being obsessed with Rey. Cool Cool. I honestly feel so bad for the lovely Kelly Marie Tran. How did you relegate a relatively big character into the sidelines?? Why introduce two new characters this late. Rose could have filmed in for them...but alas we must snub Rian at every turn because that’s just how petty JJ Abrams is. ( don’t get me wrong Jannah was cool)

4. The Rise Of Poe Dameron: Finn has been relegated to a side character who does nothing and just yells “REY!”. It was a great setup, a stormtrooper who was force sensitive but doesn’t want his life to be fighting for nothing. You could have explored trauma, the discovery of the light but nope nada. Tell me the point of his character journey. So flat and static. And with Jannah and the ex stormtroopers they could have gone with the arc of these lost, sad kids coming together to find family.

5. Leia: Okay you’re telling me our Princess would give up on her son before he was born, just throw away her lightsaber and accept Ben’s fate? Cool alright. And she knew about Rey Palpatine and didn’t say anything...my princess would never.

6. Mary Sue Rey: Ahh Rey this girl feels no emotion in this movie...just like the audience. Sure she’s trained but she can just do stuff with the “force” that even Jedi masters can’t. Stopping a whole starship, something even Yoda could barely do...yup she can do it. Beat Kylo all the time except one, yup she can. Manipulate the force in mind-boggling ways, heal people...sure Luke couldn’t but Rey certainly can. Cause she is the chosen one...hell even Ani wasn’t this talented and he had years of training. Poe and Finn have a genuine connection, Rey just seems disjointed (totally understandable why)...but if so the ending is even worse. She doesn’t even find peace with her friends. She’s not realistic and human like Luke and Leia were.

Force sensitivity in the galaxy: What a perfect setup, the boy with the broom at the end of TLJ that was force sensitive. The message is that the power to use the force was spreading through the galaxy. No longer confined to the elite. People were hearing of Luke’s battle of Crate and rising.

7. Kylo/Ben: I still maintain that he, other than Ani was the most nuanced character in the whole saga. His arc from Force Awakens to Last Jedi had progressed. How great that even someone from the legendary line of skywalker and solo could fall to the dark again. He wasn’t flat, he was a tortured boy that was conflicted since the first movie. How great would it have been to see him as a conflicted supreme leader, which was set up in TLJ. But *gasps* a plot of his very own, no can do, this is the nature of JJ’s crush on Rey and Daisy.

Disney released comics that made us sympathize with him, to see that all along he was manipulated by Snoke, and Palpatine the voices in his head. Neglected by those who were supposed to love him. Adam Driver was cast perfectly, he had almost no lines that weren’t related to Rey’s charcater arc. If he were a woman I’m sure everyone would be offended. That single line’s delivery “Dad-”

Come on Poe had more lines than him, and Driver according to JJ was half of the protagonist. He was pitched an arc opposite that of Darth Vader that’s why he signed. Man JJ really did do everyone dirty.

8. Ben had no lines while redeemed other than “ow”...I am so sorry ADAM that this nasty ass JJ did this to you...this part was 100% improv by Adam, I am willing to bet my life on it. You know why “ow” was brilliant? Cause it meant he felt pain and emotion, he was no longer hiding behind the hardness of Kylo REN. Adam’s performance as Ben left me speechless, he was convincing as Kylo, intimidating...but as BEN he shines in the way only Solo’s can. The way his eyes become determined once he accepts he must give his life, and he does so happily for the love of his life. His soulmate. Star Wars and JJ never deserved the talent that is Adam Driver.

9. They are supposed to be equals in the force yet they missed the opportunity to fight Snoke together. Tell me how they are equals. He existed only to further Rey’s plotline.

Oh and the other Jedi including Anakin whisper and help Rey...when his own grandson has been asking for help in distress for like 30years. Nice real nice.

10. Finally Reylo: it felt unearned cause there was no buildup, JJ just threw it in for kicks forgetting all the P&P parallels he was shooting for. An afterthought. Driver and Ridley’s acting saved the day, they had no lines. Adam Driver is truly one of the finest actors. You could see the difference between Ben and Kylo in his subtle gestures...the sass was pure Han Solo.

11. And then the death: I wouldn’t even say we won, but at what cost. We won in no way. Had he died fighting I would have understood, but this death was so unnecessary and put in just for the fanboys. Let me say again I would have been okay with death had it been justified. How is this any different than Vader x Luke. JJ can only copy not create. How crazy that you can just bring people back from the dead...Anakin is here like, am I joke to you? I could have brought Padme back say what???? What was the point of his whole fall to the dark. The force is infinite, that’s the whole point...once you know how to use it you can’t run out of it like juice. Oh, and Ben did not become one with Rey but rather the Force according to the Disney website. So why pray tell did he not appear as a force ghost? I’m convinced JJ was on crack.

12. No Mourning BEN no acknowledgment: 5 seconds! And then she moves on from losing her soulmate, half of her soul. She loses it over Chewie but nothing, no emotion not even a second over her other half. Seriously? No one ever knows Ben came back...nada. JJ set up Reylo, time and time again he has said that he crafted the story around the romance. He was left scrambling after Last Jedi and this was a last-ditch shock ending. No Reylo theme song, no across the stars

13. Last Jedi told us you don’t have to come from a powerful family to be important. THE WHOLE thing was that you could be force-sensitive and be a nobody. Nobodies can become somebody. A Hero is not born but made. The force lives in all beings, not just powerful families. It inspired me, what a great message to young guys and gals. Kylo’s line, “you come from nothing, you are nothing...you have no place in this story” finally turns out true. You have to come from something to have a part in the Star Wars story. And Rey had darkness inside her cause she was human. Because none of us are pure, we are shades of grey. But no, it’s cause darkness only runs in families. In the Last Jedi when she wants to see her family all she sees is herself and a shadow (Ben) who joins with her. Please do explain this JJ. And if this granddaughter thing was set up I would have had no problem...but they pulled it from their asses. You can have nothing but mean something. But no pander to the fanboys. In the end, a Palpatine lived and all the skywalkers ended....and we are supposed to have hope. Palpatine really did win.

14. Rey’s biggest fear was ending up in the desert alone, we were told “the belonging she seeks is ahead not behind” and “there’s someone who could still come back”. They mentioned she felt just as alone with the resistance. Only the other half of her soul understood her. This is truly tragic and sad...I am so heartbroken for her. And don’t tell me she isn’t there to stay...the soundtrack is called “a new home”. Enjoy the rest of your days being exactly where you started Rey....but hey at least you got a droid boo. I’m convinced this is not the balance JJ envisioned in the first movie. At one point in TFA Rey looks up sees an old woman alone, scavenging in the desert. This rattles her to the core and it starts her journey of wanting a better, different life. I am so sorry Rey. Okay so you may say she has the resistance and her friends...but let’s consult the last Jedi. In the end when everyone is on the ship...Rey is surrounded by friends yet looks more alone than ever. No one but Ben, maybe Luke, Leia, and Han understood her pull to the dark.

How sad that these two hopeless souls who had never known a moment of belonging and true love, found it for all but a few seconds.

I will quote: “preventing female characters with strong, compelling narratives from experiencing love, intimacy, and affection is just as regressive as reducing them down to sexual accessories. Assumes that women must choose between a romantic interest and depth of character”

Men really can not write good female characters, can they? A woman really can’t be a badass and end up with the love of her life

15. The Skywalker’s and Redemption: How truly truly sad that Han and Leia gave their life for their son who also died at a young age. ALL the Skywalkers and Solo’s have a tragic end. This is not what George Lucas wanted. What a tragic way to end this saga...they weren't able to break the curse. AND to all those troubled kids out there that lashed out and made terrible mistakes in their youth....doesn’t matter what you do dying is the only way out. You could have exiled him, made him pay in other ways. Nothing can be done to make up for your sins but death, no amount of good means that you can come home. To the young boys that get wrapped up in terror organizations, sorry the only way you can be redeemed is death...don’t bother changing and coming back. They could have exiled him, had him start an academy with Rey for Jedi kids. He could have spent the rest of his days redeeming himself. Why tell us he was literally preyed upon, haunted, and manipulated as a child. Even in a fantasy world, a victim of mental illness and abuse can not catch a break. Ben as a child could not fall asleep due to the demon-like voices in his mind. Everyone abandoned him in his time of need. Ben never desired power like Anakin, he went over to the dark because “the voice” of his grandfather promised belonging. I am shocked that this is the message Disney sends us. Oh and yeah you can totally take on the Skywalker name for kicks...the disrespect I swear

16. The worst bit is that I am 90% sure there was another ending that was scrapped. There was a promo shot of Jannah in a field, soft lighting, lush planet. It was exactly like P&P. Daisy Ridley said the lasts scene was known to only Her, Jannah on that panel (Driver was away). Convinced Jannah was looking at Rey and Ben starting a new life away from the desert which she and Luke hate so much. Hence the production of “A New Home” soundtrack. Hence why the “Farewell” song played behind Reylo kiss was hopeful. Why Luke’s soundtrack when he became part of the force was not triumphant. Why the death scene was sudden and cut weird and no sorrow from Rey. CAUSE THEY SCRAPPED THE ORIGINAL ENDING LAST MINUTE. Everyone knows JJ was still editing one month before. The concept art which was supposed to be released this month has been pushed to March. Why you ask? They need to remove the pages with a happy ending. He just didn’t have the guts, pandered to everyone and yet no one. He was successful in creating a beautifully filmed action-filled movie with none of the heart of Star Wars.

And then she goes and buries Anakin’s saber on freaking TATOOINE. He HATES Sand and Luke wanted to get away from there as soon as possible. Of course, a Palpatine would torture them that way. But nostalgia is the cash cow so. JJ can only generate nostalgia, not create original stories. IF he had any creativity she would have buried it at Padme’s grave.

The fanboys say “leave the romance for the romance movies”....have you seen the original trilogy or the prequels? Star Wars has always had hope and romance entwined with it.

SO AFTER 40 YEARS...PALPATINE WINS...HIS BLOODLINE LIVES ON

...and people thought the prequels were bad

JJ you also said that your goal was for people to come out of the movie feeling more hopeful and happy then they went in...yet here I am. My roommate literally had to console me and buy me ice cream. I am just so numb. I am sure the casual fan will enjoy this, as seen from the rotten tomatoes ratings. I think the critics were too generous with this one,

Star Wars is very simple at its core, Good vs Bad and Dark vs Light. The kids are expected to understand that a Palpatine being the only one who lives is hopeful? That is the conclusion of three generations of Skywalker sacrifice...

This is how the Skywalkers are remembered...In Tragedy and Curse??

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vaguely-concerned · 3 years

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The Mandalorian Chapter 14 rewatch thoughts, in which there is much ado about Looking

let’s get the most Look heavy out of the way first lol

- the scene of din holding the silver ball is shot from below, like we often get when we’re in baby’s POV because grogu’s almost always gazing up at him. so the camera/audience is looking at him through the child’s eyes still, in a way, just to emphasize the connection even more. h e l p m e

that firmly established ‘din looks down, baby looks up’ rhythm paying for itself yet again 😭😭😭 also I love the effect that because of the smoke it looks like he’s standing in a serious thunderstorm, while the sky is actually really bright and lit up with only light cloud cover from other angles. it plays into this thing that... this is basically the end of the world for him, and barely anyone else knows or cares. he or the baby never appear in the sequels, din doesn’t have a huge ~*destiny*~ within the Force, his world is so much smaller than what we’re used to in star wars -- his grief at having it come crashing down around him is only a black cloud around him, it doesn’t block out the sun on a galactic scale ala anakin skywalker. he’s not Important. except actually he’s the MOST IMPORTANT, perhaps exactly because of that. (he certainly is to me) y’know? well I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t, I’m not sure I know. but my heart is so full.

- for a good portion of the scene where din is picking through the ashes of the razor crest (;_____________; still not over it) boba is actually looking at fennec looking at din

more precisely he seems to be looking at her while din is looking at the silver ball, and is looking at din and having some kind of Emotion while din finds the beskar spear

hm. I am now exTREMELY curious to know what boba and fennec’s relationship is actually like in more detail. strictly canonically I’m pretty sure there shouldn’t be enough of an age difference that he could sort of be a father figure, but... there’s something here, some parallells being drawn

the shots of them right before din finds the ball is interesting too -- you have fennec looking at din with a pained flinching sort of sympathy

and then she looks down and glances half towards boba like she’s checking in with him out of the corner of her eyes, but she’s not seeking gaze contact at all, she’s not asking him about anything or even initiating contact (it comes across better in motion but this was the best I could do to show it)

presumably they’ve already decided they’re going to help din, from the matter of fact way they inform him about it right afterwards, but there’s something complicated going on here within fennec at least, I think, it makes me want to know more about her backstory. (boba does look at her when he says they’ll help, and he’s trying to meet her eyes even if she doesn’t reciprocate)

and then at the very end of that scene boba is looking at fennec again, and she’s finally meeting his eyes and they both seem pretty satisfied and pleased (I guess doing the right thing has not necessarily figured hugely in either of their careers lol)

sideline but boba has so many excellent Stances in this episode, it’s wonderful. he looks so steady and grounded

- also boba and fennec are close enough that the smoke actually affects their point of view for now and darkens their world too. how’s that for a metaphor for empathy hahaha

- it’s actually quite sweet of boba to take the time to explain his own state of mandalorian-ness to din, like he’s at least eliminating the one source of uncertainty and tension that it’s in his power to remove haha

(I wonder if he’s also gauging din’s reaction to the concept of foundlings? I’ve seen some people theorize that it might not be a recognized tradition across all of mandalorian space (then again... what even is, the only true mandalorian trait is accusing someone else of not being mandalorian right) and that it was one of the apples of cultural discord in the civil wars)

- the whole journey boba’s face goes on as he watches din with the spear... I do not understand what it is exactly but I am OBSESSED with it, his eyes are doing some things and it makes my heart feel funny

he pretty quickly glances away with a sharp inhale of breath that’s some shade of ‘well. fuck.’, but I can’t quite tell you exactly what’s going on there haha

- okay so honestly -- maybe we find a force user to train the baby and maybe we don’t, but not having din be an active part of that training either way would be a fucking CRIME. din clearly just has so much fun being able to engage with him like that, as does the baby, and it gets results. if someone shows up to help with this I hope they have the insight and flexibility to understand that. (listen to baby’s excited squeal and din’s breath of laughter before he encourages ‘come on, you can do it’! it’s consistently the most engaged and happy we see din and baby obviously feels safe doing this with him when he doesn’t with anyone else, come ON)

- the soft soft mando and baby music kicking in when din gives grogu the silver ball back and tells him he’s special T_______T oh my actual god

- I love the way boba’s just... studying din all the way through their first meeting, it’s such a look of cold, dispassionate but not necessarily unkind evaluation. that’s the gaze of a bird of prey or something, it’s perfect (his eyes have softened significantly when looking at din towards the end of the episode, I guess that whole father son situation hit a tender spot huh lol)

- din’s shoulders rise up immediately when fennec starts talking about the bounty on grogu :’)

it also seems he’s a little 😬 about being in such a hurry back in chapter 5 that he missed that she wasn’t actually, y’know, dead haha, he slumps a bit uncomfortably and there’s also the “I owe you one” later on

- oh to have the utter yet unwarranted confidence of this storm trooper behind a minigun, still blasting away as the boulder crushes me

- I want to say something to gideon about what sorts of things a man must be compensating for to take the time to gleefully gloat at AN ACTUAL BABY, but thankfully I’m way too classy for that

- fennec shand using her entire strong but slender sniper’s frame to push that boulder off the cliff... poetry

I love that one pose she does jumping backwards off the stones at one point too, it’s so graceful, she looks like a dancer

- this entire scene of boba fett fucking eliminating storm trooper after storm trooper is doing some stuff to me, I can’t lie

it’s so AWESOME to see a mando interact with their armour in the same natural and expert way as din -- bo katan & co didn’t really have that many surprises and tricks to theirs, it’s more sleekly functional, boba and din’s have a different feeling to them, more personal to them and lived in, in a way (probably because they work alone much more often and need some tricks up their sleeves)

bo katan’s armour is for War and has been for generations, theirs is more just to Live as themselves? does that make any sense?

- I wonder what it feels like for din to try to push through the force barrier - he’s making sounds not just of exertion but with a little bit of pain to it?

- I really like that when boba says “I was aiming for the other one” fennec clearly knows he’s not joking, she doesn’t smile or anything. it makes it feel like they actually know each other quite well at this point

- grogu makes small sleeping baby noises when he’s passed out on top of the stone Y____________Y

- genuinely touched by how much better boba’s armour looks in the next episode, after him having it back for like a week max. LOVE what this show does with the relationship between a mandalorian and their armour and how it’s almost a living thing when it’s with them, and dead when it’s taken away

- the way boba leans forward a little in his seat when he spots the big ship *chef kiss* it so instinctively reads as him watching something dangerous, and after seeing the way he went through all those troopers like a hot knife through butter you fucking KNOW that if he’s unsettled you’re damn well unsettled too haha

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta #this is one of those where I'm trying to explain things to myself more than anything haha #anyway boba fett Hot

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eleanorfenyxwrites · 3 years

Text

After Each Midnight Begins A New Day

Extra #10 - pre-fic

[Masterpost]

Anelmemi over on Ao3 commented on chapter 4: “If you’re taking requests or prompts, the line about baby!Lan Zhan with all the intensity of first timeline 30 year old Lan Zhan is an image that stuck with me. The conversation where he tells his mom about everything would make for an interesting extra.”

So here it is! Disclaimer: I’ve gone in a sliiiightly different direction (in that this is 7k words long and they don’t even get to the part where Lan Zhan tells her everything) BUT - that being said - I think I’m going to use this prompt as the first chapter/installment of a selection of scenes from the Wangxian side of the fix-it. Like you know how I said I wrote AEM as a ‘sequel’ to a fix-it fic that doesn’t exist? I’m gonna make the fix-it fic exist, at least in bits and pieces. I guess I already have kind of been doing that with the amount of pre-fic extras I’ve written for this universe, but none of them have been from the Wangxian side of things where the actual fix-it mechanics are happening. Might be time to change that. We’ll see! Either way, here’s some baby-not-actually-baby!Lan Zhan scaring the living hell out of his mom for you <3

----

Lan Zhan opens his eyes with a gasp, the blindingly blue flash of his and Wei Ying’s array gone as suddenly as it had flared. He’s in the dark now, kneeling in the middle of the floor of a room that is definitely not the addition to the Jingshi he had built to be Wei Ying’s workroom. It takes a long moment for his eyes to adjust but when they do he blinks and forces himself to take slow, deep breaths in and out.

He has to stay calm.

They hadn’t been sure if the array would work, or, if it did, exactly what they would be in for.

Getting separated was, unfortunately, a distinct possibility.

It is now his reality.

He has to focus on what he can control or risk sinking into a despair too deep for him to accomplish the task he and Wei Ying have set for themselves, and he will not break a promise to Wei Ying. They have agreed to try again - he will have to try, and trust that he and Wei Ying will not truly have to be separated again in any life.

Lan Zhan stands slowly to take stock of the situation and immediately becomes disoriented when he rises to his feet only to find that everything is in nearly the same spot in his vision it had been while on his knees. He glances down at himself and holds a hand up in the moonlight and…

Ah. Childhood.

That’s...less than ideal.

Of course while writing the array they hadn’t specified a specific time or age to return to (beyond limiting it to their own lifetimes). To be quite honest Lan Zhan hadn’t entirely been able to follow Wei Ying’s logic for most of the components of the array, but he trusted his husband to ensure it wouldn’t kill them or others. Beyond that, their only desire had been a chance to retain their memories and use the wisdom of their years to heal all the rifts they possibly could in their world, to attempt to soothe the pains that they and everyone they love (who is still alive) have all had to learn to live with.

He’s grateful that it worked.

That being said, he doesn’t particularly want to be a child again. He’s awfully short, after all - and Wei Ying isn’t here, which is perhaps the worst offense.

He reaches up to touch his cheek as he feels something drip down it and his small fingers come away wet with tears; he suppresses a sigh as he tries not to continue crying. It would seem that a toddler’s body is a bit too small and immature to hold the weight of the grief he carries with him in the depths of his soul, and he can already tell by the feeling rising in his chest that trying to contain it will be useless. He dusts his knees off as more tears start to drip down his cheeks and then he turns to walk sedately across the room to his little bed. He crawls into it, buries his face in his pillow, and promptly starts sobbing, the way he hasn’t since the first time he was this age.

When A-Yuan had still been a toddler, there had been some (many) who accused Lan Zhan of being too soft on the boy. He had been prone to crying if left to his own devices for too long, and after the third time he heard of it happening while A-Yuan was supposedly in the care of those who watched the rest of the sect children, Lan Zhan had insisted that the boy remain with him in his seclusion if Lan Xichen needed to be relieved from watching him to attend to business. It meant that A-Yuan had grown up with less socialization amongst his peers as a young boy, but his nature was such that the lack could hardly be seen by the time he had grown out of his fears of separation to join the other children in their classes.

It had also meant that when A-Yuan cried, he was never without a comforting hand in his hair or on his back, soothing him, reminding him that he was not alone, that he would never be left alone again. If his son was spoiled then so be it, but Lan Zhan would not allow his and Wei Ying’s child to grow up bowed under the cold austerity of a rule warning against excessive grief taken to its most extreme interpretation and weaponized against the grief-stricken. Lan Zhan is intimately aware of the products of that rule, and it’s one he refused to enforce - a decision he has never regretted.

Tonight, however, there’s no one to do the same for Lan Zhan. No one is here to pet his hair or talk softly to him about how the rabbits are doing, or tell him a story of the sort he used to tell A-Yuan to distract him. Lan Zhan, unlike his son, is used to it, and so he cries until his head hurts and then he bundles himself up in the tightest ball of blankets he can manage to try to sleep and wait for morning. It’s strange, trying to sleep without Wei Ying crowded into his space, breathing steadily against his neck and muttering under his breath in between soft snores. He eventually manages it when the moon slips behind the mountain again and the room is plunged into the soft almost-black blue of false dawn. In the gentle hum of the world dipping into its deepest hush outside his window he manages to let his exhaustion take over long enough to get a couple more hours of rest.

Lan Zhan wakes at five.

The gong rings through the mountain in exactly the way it always has and he opens his itchy, tired eyes to begin dressing and preparing for the day. His hands are clumsier than they ought to be, his grip weaker than he can ever remember it being and his limbs slightly less cooperative than he would prefer. He manages not to get too frustrated by the dissonance of it, though by the time Lan Xichen comes to fetch him he’s wearing a truly impressive pout (for him) and he watches, disgruntled, as his brother stifles a laugh behind his sleeve.

“Good morning didi,” Lan Xichen greets when he’s done silently laughing at him and Lan Zhan watches in fascination as his brother - still just a child himself, of course - glances both ways up and down the hallway with a mischievous little smile before dropping to one knee and holding his arms out to him. “You look like you had a bad night. Do you want a hug?”

Lan Zhan’s pouting lower lip trembles as he nods and steps forward slowly to tuck himself into Lan Xichen’s chest.

He honestly can’t remember the last time someone besides Wei Ying hugged him (he supposes it must have been A-Yuan, back before he had grown too old to ask for them anymore), but as Lan Xichen wraps him in his arms it feels so entirely natural that he practically melts, going boneless and rubbing his face into the heavy silk on Lan Xichen’s narrow shoulder like a cat seeking affection. Lan Xichen huffs a soft chuckle and squeezes him a little tighter; Lan Zhan wouldn’t be perfectly happy staying like this forever (he misses Wei Ying, and this isn’t helping them find each other again), but he would be perfectly content to stay there for a few days at least, just being held and cared for by his brother while he’s still small enough to reasonably get away with it.

Of course the list of people that Lan Zhan would tolerate such affection from - at any age - is extremely small, limited only to his immediate family - Wei Ying, A-Yuan, Lan Xichen, Lan Qiren (should he ever be the type to offer it). But as Lan Xichen releases him and reaches down to take his hand, as he leads him out of the children’s dormitories and onto the path outside, Lan Zhan realizes that there’s one person he hadn’t even considered as an option but who, especially in his current state, certainly tops the list.

“Mother,” he whispers with tears in his eyes as Madam Lan stands in the open door to the Jingshi, the familiar home still hers.

“Didi?” Lan Xichen asks, startled, as Lan Zhan pulls his hand from his but he doesn’t stop to answer - instead he runs across the courtyard as quickly as his legs can carry him and up the steps to fling himself into his mother’s arms. He likes to imagine that if he were physically the correct age he would be more composed, but he can’t say with complete certainty that that would be the case. His mother has always been special like that. She was the first to ever make him believe that he could be loved and accepted if he revealed the true depth of his feelings - no one else had been able to make him feel that way after her death until Wei Ying.

As it is, though, as young as he is - with all the tumultuous, too-large feelings of childhood despite the age of his soul - he promptly starts crying as he clings to her. Her hands are soft and gentle as she pets his hair and rubs his back precisely as he had done for A-Yuan as a boy, and Lan Zhan hiccups as he presses in closer.

“Zhan-er,” she says warmly above his head and all it does is make him cry a little harder, the tenderness of the greeting and the fact that he hasn’t heard it from a single soul in 32 years hitting him too hard for his little body to handle. “Oh dear,” she says next and he can hear her smiling, he can feel the way she’s suppressing a laugh in the slight shaking of her shoulder under his cheek and he clings.

“I think he had a nightmare last night,” Lan Xichen supplies apologetically as he approaches at the properly sedate pace.

“A good thing it’s your day to come visit, then,” she replies softly, implacably, and Lan Zhan nods his agreement as he hiccups and tries to compose himself with little success. “Come in, Huan-er, I’ve got breakfast for us. Let’s see if we can cheer your brother up together, hm?”

Lan Zhan’s stomach swoops as he’s scooped up while Madam Lan stands and he lets himself be carried into the house. He finally manages to get himself somewhat under control after a while of sitting in his mother’s lap and letting her dry his cheeks with her sleeves, but he’s still hiccuping and crying fresh tears every now and then.

He can’t help but stare. It’s been so long since he’s seen her face, and she’s just as beautiful as he remembers, maybe even more so. She’s serene and gentle in a way he really never sees in anyone but perhaps Lan Xichen. Even A-Yuan, as sweet as he is, still carries the mischievous streak planted in him by Wei Wuxian and encouraged by a lifetime of friendship with Lan Jingyi. Whatever she’s done in the past, no matter what anyone else thinks of the incident that had led to her imprisonment, the woman she is now is so kind, so tender, that Lan Zhan has never once in his life understood the continuation of her imprisonment for so many years.

He watches with wide, solemn eyes as she steadily wipes his cheeks clean when fresh tears replace those that have already fallen, a perpetual little smile on her lips as she talks to Lan Xichen over his head to make sure they both get as much of her attention as they can in their limited time with her.

He eventually manages to stop crying entirely and he’s promptly plied with a bowl of rice for breakfast, which he obediently eats, his eyes still on Madam Lan. He doesn’t want to ever stop looking at her. He had never gotten to say a proper goodbye, had never gotten the closure he needed after her death (not that closure would have helped, most likely. If he’s proven anything to himself it’s that the death of those he loves is not something he handles all that well.)

The point is - his mother was ripped away from him with no warning, and now she’s been returned to him and he will never in this new life take her presence for granted.

As the day goes on and he settles, he can’t shake a feeling of deja vu. It isn’t until they’re nearly ready to leave for the evening that it strikes him.

This is their last day with her. He knows this day, when he had been younger he had replayed the events of it over and over in his mind, searching for something in his behavior that had upset Madam Lan to the point where she didn’t want to see him again. Before he had understood that she had died he had been so sure that it was his fault the door wouldn’t open anymore, that she was inside languishing in disappointment in her youngest son.

And so when Lan Xichen makes as if to bundle him off into the evening just after supper, Lan Zhan takes a page from A-Yuan’s book and sits down to lock his arms around her leg, every ounce of his considerable determination set in stern lines in his serious little face.

“Didi, we have to leave,” Lan Xichen prods - gently - as he kneels in front of him.

“No,” he protests, his voice petulant but he doesn’t care. He’s not letting her go. He’s here to fix things on a much larger scale than anyone around him can yet understand, but he’s going to begin with their mother. They will get to grow up with a mother this time, and a father too if he has anything to say about it. He can fix things for their family first and let the effect spread outwards from Cloud Recesses. A stone dropped into the center of a pool will create ripples that reach all the way to the edges, and if he begins with Madam Lan’s survival and perhaps her return to the world from her isolation, there’s no telling just yet how far such an influence will spread.

Even if it goes no further than their little family, he doesn’t care. He can fix this, so he will.

“A-Zhan,” Lan Xichen tries next, reaching out to tug gently on his sleeve and he holds on tighter, buries his face in the skirts of Madam Lan’s robes.

“No!”

“It’s alright, Huan-er,” Madam Lan soothes as she drops a hand down to rest on top of his head. “Go on ahead, I’ll make sure Zhan-er gets returned to his rooms in time for curfew.”

Lan Zhan turns his head enough to open one eye so he can watch Lan Xichen have a bit of an internal debate before he nods and straightens up to accept one last hug before he turns to leave. The pair of them, Madam Lan and Lan Zhan, stay still and watch him until he disappears down the path and only then does Madam Lan bend down to put her hands under his arms and lift him up onto her hip. She offers him an indulgent look as she leans in to press their foreheads together and he relaxes instantly.

“Zhan-er, what’s gotten into you today, hm?” she asks softly as she shuts the door with her foot to carry him back inside, sitting down on the edge of her bed to set him down on her knees. It should feel strange, he supposes, to be treated like a child like this, picked up and carried around wherever someone else wants to take him. But he’s never known anything else in regards to his mother, he’s never gotten a chance to both be older than a toddler and to know her. In his memories, this is how he remembers her, and so it doesn’t feel strange at all to sit in her lap and study her face like he’s doing his best to memorize it.

“What’s wrong, Zhan-er?” she asks again, even more softly, as she brushes a few stray hairs back from his forehead and runs her thumb along the silk of his ribbon - it must be brand new for him at this age.

“You are going to die,” he says, deciding then and there that he doesn’t have the luxury of trying to find a way to fix things on his own while trying to hide that he’s really a fully-grown man with a husband and child of his own, that he carries a full life’s worth of pain and experiences. He and Wei Ying had agreed that no matter what happened with the array they wouldn’t tell anyone what they had done - it would defeat the purpose of fixing things, and there was also no guarantee that it wouldn’t do harm. In any other circumstance he would agree it’s better to be safe than sorry, but he’s so young - there’s not much he can do but talk to Madam Lan directly and allow her to handle the situation in his stead - or at least help him - without blowing his cover.

Madam Lan blinks down at him for a moment, a small furrow between her brows. How had he never noticed as a child that she doesn’t wear a headband?

“Who told you such a silly thing?” she asks with a hint of a smile and a little tap of her fingertip against the tip of his nose. “Is that what your nightmare was last night?”

“Mother,” he says as seriously as he can manage. (It’s very difficult to sound grave, he realizes, when he’s a literal 5-year-old [he even still has a bit of a childish lisp] but he needs her to understand.) “I have lived this before. This is the last day you will see Xiongzhang and myself. You are going to die. No one has ever told me how.”

Madam Lan blanches at that, though whether it’s because of what he said or because her 5-year-old son is speaking like an adult or a combination of both he isn’t sure.

“Zhan-er, what...what are you talking about?”

He takes a deep breath in and clambers down off her lap to straighten his robes and dust himself off before he offers her a deep bow.

“Mother, please listen to me and trust what I say. I am your son, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, Hanguang-Jun, current Chief Cultivator. I have already lived this life, and have returned to my childhood through the power of an experimental array I created with my husband, Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian of Yunmeng Jiang.”

“Zhan-er,” Madam Lan gasps and he looks up to find her definitely far too pale as he blinks owlishly up at her.

“If I leave tonight without warning you of danger, I fear this will once again be my last memory of you.”

The fear in her eyes makes him feel a bit like squirming with guilt for putting it there, but he holds himself still, watching for a sign that she believes him, that she’s taking him seriously. He knows what he must look like - if A-Yuan had ever suddenly started behaving like he is now he would have been very concerned that he had been possessed. Judging by the look on Madam Lan’s face, it’s entirely possible that that’s exactly what’s on her mind.

“Mother, please, you must believe me. Wei Ying and I wish to right the wrongs done to those around us, to live with no regrets. We have made many painful choices in our lives, as have all of those we care for. We have decided to attempt the impossible and rewrite the past.”

“You..But you....”

Lan Zhan stays still and watches as Madam Lan clearly tries to piece things together. He’s dismayed - though not entirely surprised - when she faints backwards onto the bed, but he supposes it’s better than if she had outright tried to say that he couldn’t possibly be telling the truth. He climbs up onto the bed to sit beside her and make sure she’s otherwise alright before he settles down to wait patiently for her to wake.

It doesn’t take too long, thankfully, and he can’t help but reach out to put the back of one small hand against her forehead to check her temperature when she blinks her eyes open.

“Do you feel alright?” he asks as he watches her face go through a series of interesting emotions in quick succession.

She sits up slowly to look down at him with an expression that seems to have settled on something like incredulity and bemusement. “I think you must see why that question is not easily answered at the moment.”

“Mn. It is a strange situation, I understand,” he agrees solemnly with a nod. Madam Lan raises her sleeve to cover her mouth as she bites back a laugh, the corners of her eyes crinkled with mirth.

“Oh Zhan-er,” she says - and then she’s laughing, truly laughing, one hand over her mouth and the other arm curled around her stomach as she laughs in a way that sounds just this side of manic. Years of being married to Wei Ying and he still doesn’t understand how to handle people who deal with their stress by laughing about it.

“Mother?”

“Oh dear, Zhan-er I’m sorry,” she laughs weakly as she wipes at her eyes. “This is just..Well as you said, this is very strange. And you’ve always been a serious child but this is..I’ve never seen a child behave this way!”

“I am 37.”

“Oh dear. Much too old for hugs, then,” she says with a twinkle in her eyes and Lan Zhan has to think about it for a long, dismayed moment before he realizes he’s being teased. He shakes his head ‘no’ and lets her pull him into her arms again to cradle him close, one arm wrapped around his back and the other over his bent knees to hold him in place. “37, hm?” she asks once they’re settled and Lan Zhan nods. “And married?”

“Yes, mother. I also have a son. He is 24.”

“My own baby, married and with a child, hm? And you said Chief Cultivator?”

“Mn. I do not enjoy such a public position but it is necessary.”

Madam Lan laughs at that, though it’s thankfully less frightening than her laughter at the situation as a whole had been. “I have never heard of such a thing but I can only imagine such a position involves quite a lot of talking to other Sect Leaders, which sounds very unpleasant.”

“Mn.”

They’re both quiet for a few long moments, lost in thought. Lan Zhan is only grateful that Madam Lan seems to believe him, and when she breaks the silence again it becomes clear that that is actually the case.

“You said I am going to die soon,” she murmurs and Lan Zhan can’t resist cuddling closer as the pain of losing her flares too hot, too sharp through him.

“I remember this day,” he replies after a few deep breaths and a chance to gather his thoughts. “It is the last day we were allowed to visit. I do not know when, precisely, you passed away, but by the next appointment we were no longer allowed to visit, and...when I came to kneel anyway every month after, your door never opened for me.”

“And you are telling me all of this now to prevent it happening again.”

“Mm. Wei Ying and I performed the spell last night, I am still becoming accustomed to being a child again. I apologize for my outbursts, it is..difficult to control my emotions while so young.”

“Zhan-er, you never have to apologize to me for your feelings,” Madam Lan chastises gently. “No matter your age. I have never wanted you and Huan-er to be raised so..rigidly.”

“Who is keeping you imprisoned?” Lan Zhan asks softly - a question that’s been on his mind since he had been this age originally, and which no one has ever sufficiently answered for him. “Xiongzhang and I always wished we could be raised by you.”

Madam Lan sighs heavily at that and holds him a little tighter. “Qiren is so strict with you two,” she murmurs thoughtfully. “I’ve tried telling your father that you two are growing up to be so serious, so unhappy, but he won’t hear of it. He’s technically the one keeping me here, though I suspect it’s the clan elders speaking through him.”

Lan Zhan can’t help but glare at the wall when the elders are mentioned. The only other person in the world he wishes to argue with as much as he does the elders is Jiang Wanyin.

“I will fix it,” he vows with grim determination.

“Zhan-er,” Madam Lan instantly chastises and he shakes his head, already intent on arguing whatever point she feels needs to be made.

“I will not lose my mother again. The elders have gone too long without challenge. There are many many good things about the Lan that do not need to change, but there are a great many traditions that have become harmful in their execution at least, if not in nature or original intent. I will fix it.”

“You deserve to have a childhood,” Madam Lan argues right back, equally adamant. “It is your father’s duty to lead the Sect, the elders only advise.”

“Uncle is the acting leader of the Sect,” Lan Zhan retorts with a deepening of his frown, this time in confusion. He leans back to look up at Madam Lan, who’s blinking down at him in something like surprise, if a bit muted. “Father is in seclusion, he never again ran the Sect before his death during my boyhood.”

Lan Zhan stays quiet as he watches Madam Lan think through that, wondering just what exactly she’s thinking. Perhaps comparing what she thought she knew to this new information?

It seems that may be the case when she quietly murmurs,“Well that..that does change a few things,” after a long while, her eyes distant. “Maybe we should compromise. You can tell me what you know, and perhaps what you plan to do in regards to the elders, and I will do my best to listen and perhaps together we can come up with something that will work. Does that sound alright?”

Compromise. Lan Zhan hates compromise, has hated it with a passion since the day he watched the Sect Leaders of his youth decide that ‘compromise’ meant ‘kill Wei Wuxian’, and he definitely hasn’t grown any fonder of it since it’s become his turn to ‘compromise’ with many of those same Sect Leaders on a near daily basis as the Chief Cultivator. But these are, he will admit, wildly different circumstances, and for a much better purpose than yet another boundary dispute or arguing over who should receive more disciples from the local families.

He nods and opens his mouth to begin the story at the beginning - and yawns so widely his jaw gives a tiny little pop.

“Oh dear,” Madam Lan chuckles as she snuggles him tighter and rocks him slightly back and forth. It’s shocking how heavy his eyelids feel all of the sudden as she does so and he huffs a sigh with an accompanying pout, irritated with his young body that apparently tires far too quickly. “I believe our plan shall have to wait until morning. You’ve had a long day.”

“Being a child is frustrating,” he confesses and Madam Lan laughs her bright, bell-like laugh - hearing it has always been one of his most treasured memories and to hear it now again in the flesh makes him so happy his irritation with his youthful limitations dissipates in an instant.

“I would imagine so. What an interesting puzzle you are, my Zhan-er,” she sighs as she continues rocking him gently, the repetitive swaying motion dragging his eyelids further and further down despite his best attempts to stay awake. “Such an old soul in the body of a child. So wise and self-assured like an adult, and yet quick to fluster, quick to cry, just like a child. I can only imagine how frustrated you must be.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan manages to hum even as he slips further down into her lap to rest his head in the crook of her elbow, getting comfortable.

“Go to sleep, Zhan-er. We’ll figure this out in the morning, alright? You’re not going to lose me again, I’m here.”

Lan Zhan drifts off to sleep in his mother’s arms for the first time in his life that he can remember, and it’s mercifully deep and dreamless.

----

When Lan Zhan wakes in the morning it’s with a gasp and the vague fear that his mother has, despite his best intentions, died inexplicably once again in the middle of the night. He sits up quickly and looks around the Jingshi just as the gong tolls and he only relaxes when he realizes that she had made him a little nest of blankets to rest in on the outer edge of the bed while she had taken the inside beneath the window.

He clambers down out of bed to go about getting ready for the day. He locates his ribbon where Madam Lan had removed it for him and carefully coiled it into a neat loop; he’s moments away from putting it on before he sets it down again to wait. Wei Ying likes to put it on for him these days - or rather, he supposes, in the future (this is going to give him a headache) - and while Wei Ying can’t do it for him right now, he feels it would be equally as special to ask his mother to help him with it instead.

He explores the Jingshi, acquainting himself with how Madam Lan organizes the familiar space. He finds basic food stored near the small hearth the house had contained before he had modified it himself to accommodate cooking for A-Yuan as a boy, and he takes a moment to set out what they’ll need for breakfast before he withdraws again to meditate. Perhaps, he supposes, if he can center himself and calm his energy he’ll be able to avoid further emotional outbursts. If he’s going to tell his mother all the details of his first life while so emotionally volatile, it’s going to be a very long day indeed. He’ll appreciate beginning it more at peace than he had begun the day before.

He settles into the familiar pattern of breathing and being, just..existing, doing his best to feel and let go, to accept that this is his reality now. He’s starting his life over. He can try again. He can not only avert the broad tragedies that had affected the world at large, he can also repair his own life.

The most obvious personal change will be that he can openly love Wei Ying from the moment they see each other again. He can live an entire lifetime with his beloved at his side, his other half, the bright sun to his distant moon.

Perhaps less obvious of a consequence but one that he suddenly realizes he wants just as badly - he can be closer to his family. Raising A-Yuan had taught him much about the sort of family he wanted to have. The closeness, the affection, the warmth present in their home even when he had been outwardly as cool and aloof as ever. He had never let A-Yuan believe for a moment that he wasn’t adored, he had taught him how to see Lan Zhan’s love for him, had taught him that it was boundless, had taught him to turn that love outwards in a way that Lan Zhan had never been allowed to. He had raised their son to be sweet and kind to everyone he met, Wei Ying had taught him to smile and laugh and to understand so he could forgive.

He can do that again, but this time he’ll start with the members of his family he had been too late to understand the first time. He can help guide Lan Xichen through the confusing mires of childhood, attempt to create an even closer relationship between them than in their first life - a relationship in which they’re free to just be brothers and Lan Xichen doesn’t have the weight of being his Sect Leader on his shoulders as well. He can ensure that they get to grow up with a mother to guide them, her gentle affection thawing the cold austerity the Lan push their children into. He can save Father, he can keep Uncle from becoming bitter and overly rigid in his ways. There’s so much time stretching out ahead of them, he’s sure he can repair their fractured little family and help nurture it into something beautiful.

“Zhan-er?” Madam Lan calls some time later and Lan Zhan opens his eyes to find her already ready for the day with his ribbon in her hands, her expression a question.

“My hands are still clumsy with childhood,” he replies solemnly, looking up at her with wide eyes. “Will you tie it for me?”

“Of course,” she agrees with a faint hint of a smile. “May I assume you’re still an adult in there?” she teases gently as she knees behind him to start threading the ribbon through his simple hairstyle and tie it securely.

“Mn. I am making plans.”

“I can’t wait to hear them.”

Lan Zhan hums his acknowledgement just as she finishes tying his ribbon and he can’t help but relax when she puts her hands on his shoulders to smooth out the fabric of his little robes and sweep his hair properly behind his neck. They’re interrupted by a sudden knock at the door and Lan Zhan frowns, though Madam Lan doesn’t seem surprised at all. Rather she stands and crosses the house with graceful steps and after a moment Lan Zhan stands to drift after her silently.

“Lan Qiren,” she greets with ice in her voice as soon as the door opens and Lan Zhan blinks in surprise. Uncle? He had always thought that Lan Qiren never approached the Jingshi while it was still Madam Lan’s residence - he and Lan Xichen had been making the journey to it from the dormitories unaccompanied since the visits began, and he supposes now that he had just..never bothered to wonder who else came to see Madam Lan besides them and the servants who tended to her. She doesn’t sound surprised, though, to have Lan Qiren on her doorstep, so it must not have been entirely outside the realm of possibility.

“Wen Yun.”

Wen Yun? Wen?

Lan Zhan feels like he just got hit with a hammer between the eyes.

He had never known his mother’s name. Perhaps most people would find that strange, but Lan Zhan had never truly questioned it (beyond wishing that he did know it). She was a criminal in the eyes of the Lan Sect after all; certainly no one had ever thought to tell him her given name when he had been a child, and by the time he was old enough to know he hadn’t known who or how to ask. She wasn’t even in the clan records - or in the ancestral shrine - as anything but Madam Lan, reduced to nothing more than her married title that she hadn’t even wanted. The disrespect of it still rankles him to this day. But..

Wen Yun. She’s a Wen. He is a Wen, certainly by blood if never knowingly by name. That’s..an interesting thing to process. Even more interesting that Lan Qiren has known, all this time, and had never breathed a word of it to anyone that Lan Zhan was aware of, even before the Wens’ destruction during the Sunshot Campaign. He hadn’t expected to be quite so caught off guard by anything he could learn by returning to his childhood, considering he had already lived it once, but clearly he’s going to need to rethink that very quickly.

“Wangji.” Lan Qiren’s voice is sharp, remonstrative, and Lan Zhan instantly focuses on the present again. He can’t, under any circumstances, let Lan Qiren know that he is who he is, but he also can’t help but feel an all-too-familiar surge of (perhaps slightly petty) rebellion in his chest at that tone of voice, at being scolded like the young child he outwardly appears to be. He looks up at Lan Qiren impassively, his face solemn, as he holds his hand up for Madam Lan to take. As he is intimately aware, there’s no time like the present to begin changing things for the better.

Madam Lan slips her hand into his instantly, giving his fingers a little squeeze, and Lan Zhan sets his jaw stubbornly. He’s got an ally in her, and he’s nearly forty years old. He can face down Lan Qiren, he’s done it plenty of times already for what he thinks is right.

“Wangji, let go. Your time to visit your mother is long over.”

Lan Zhan watches Lan Qiren’s anger with a detached sort of interest, tipping his head slightly to the side and shuffling closer to Madam Lan’s skirts as if to hide in them, though of course he isn’t in the least afraid.

“Staying,” he announces with all the gravity he can muster. He really wishes in that moment that he could sound at least somewhat closer to his actual age rather than having to do his best with the sweet, high voice of childhood, but oh well. It still clearly startles Lan Qiren, that he would talk back, and Lan Wangji meets his gaze evenly.

“Wangji!”

“I will be raising my son from now on,” Madam Lan suddenly declares. “Huan-er as well, if he wants me to.”

Lan Qiren splutters in a way that Lan Zhan finds...kind of funny, actually. He’s only ever known Lan Qiren as stoic (with a small range of other emotions couched within that stoicism) or angry, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen him so...gobsmacked.

“You - the elders -“

“Oh, I didn’t realize the elders had taken over raising them,” Madam Lan replies with ‘innocent’ curiosity. “I was under the impression that they were still your responsibility, Qiren, and that concerns about their upbringing should be brought to your feet.”

Lan Qiren huffs out a frustrated sigh and Lan Zhan tips his head to the other side as he watches, able to study Lan Qiren with all the experience of a full life spent as his ward.

He knows, of course, that Lan Qiren loves him and Lan Xichen as if they’re his own children, and that that affection started when they were handed off to him as mere infants, just old enough to leave the wet nurses. By this point in time, Lan Qiren has had five years to raise Lan Wangji and eight for Lan Xichen - that affection for them is clearly already firmly in place. After all, it’s Lan Qiren who had held them when they were too young to walk on their own yet, who had rocked them to sleep and taught them their first lessons - how to talk, how to eat, how to read, how to count.

But Lan Zhan also knows that Lan Qiren is already a much stricter hand than they really need. He’s spent a lot of time meditating on the peculiarities Lan Qiren had possessed as a parental figure, and while he still can’t conclusively point to the root of his behaviors, he already knows how it will end if allowed to continue - with Lan Zhan himself cold and rigid but for a small handful of people whom he still struggles to show outward affection towards, and with Lan Xichen pouring kindness and gentleness out onto others to soften the blows of the world until he’s left with none to offer himself.

Lan Zhan knows Lan Qiren loves them, but he also knows that that love could be shown in much healthier ways if they’re all allowed to recover.

“The elders won’t ever allow this,” Lan Qiren finally snaps, his eyes flickering briefly down to Lan Zhan and then back up to Madam Lan. “And I won’t plead your case.”

“Oh,” she says idly. “Well that’s a shame, then, I would have appreciated the support.” Lan Zhan looks up as his mother looks down at him and he can’t help but feel safe as she offers him a quick wink, out of Lan Qiren’s view. “I guess Zhan-er and I will have to make our case to the elders ourselves.”

Lan Zhan nods once at that and squeezes her hand to let her know it’s alright with him and Ford into his plans.

“Wangji?” Lan Qiren prompts and Lan Zhan looks up at him, reads the fear behind the indignation, the hurt feelings behind his censure. But with the foresight that Lan Zhan has, he trusts that if they change this, if they give his mother a reason to live again, that everyone in their family will be better for it. Happier.

A little pain is necessary for growth and change - an old tree must fall to allow the new to grow, the winter snows have to come and melt away again to refresh and awaken the world properly in the spring.

Lan Zhan lets go of Madam Lan’s hand to step forward and wrap his arms around Lan Qiren’s leg, holding onto him tightly and hugging him with all the strength and affection he can muster for the man for a long moment - a goodbye to the man who had raised him, who will soon become a different man than Lan Zhan knows - before he lets go again to take his mother’s hand and lead her back into the Jingshi.

She shuts the door gently with Lan Qiren standing shocked on the other side of it.

They have plans to make, and time is of the essence.

#the untamed fanfic #Lan Wangji #Lan Xichen #Madam Lan #Lan Qiren #if you want a giggle read Lan Zhan's 'I'm 37' line in the same tone of voice as that guy in the vine who says 'I'm 27? :D"#also - if I do end up turning this into a fic I don't think I'll be able to do a multichaptered straight narrative fic like AEM #it takes a lot of time and energy which I'm currently putting into my modern 3zun AU and my next planned full fic is actually the sequel to #my fic 'You Need Tending' - the wangxian children fix-it #BUT - it would be something like a chronological series of scenes that are more or less a cohesive timeline from the time wangxian are 5 #up to the 'present day' - as in up to the time when they're 37 and AEM begins #siiiiiiiiiiiigh adding it to my list of wiiiiiiips lol #we shall see we shall see #prompt fill

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silentauroriamthereal · 3 years

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Author interview tag

I was tagged by @therealsaintscully! Thanks, you! :)

Name: SilentAuror

Fandoms: Just Sherlock, though I also follow some Old Guard blogs. :)

Where you post: AO3. Though I was almost knocked over the other day when I got a comment on an old HP fic over on skyehawke.com! It’s been literal YEARS since I got a review on anything over there! :P

Most popular multi-chapter fic: Against the Rest of the World for sure. :)

Favourite story you’ve written so far: With 87 posted fics and 2 more currently on the go, I can’t possibly answer that. That’s cruel. Lol.

Fic you were nervous to post: This, on the other hand, is easy, haha! Three stories, all for very different reasons:

1. The A.G.R.A Complex. This was my first Freebatch fic and I thought I might well be burnt at the stake for even writing any RPF. The notion for this story caught my muses’ attention, though, and they eventually forced me to write it against my will. I can’t be held responsible. Lol. It still amazes me that people continue to read it to this day. The notion: Martin and Benedict are friends. There’s a car accident and Martin suffers a fairly mild brain injury. While in his coma, dreams the entire first three seasons of Sherlock, which in this universe, haven’t happened. The nature of the brain injury is such that he keeps shifting mentally between the reality of who he and Benedict (and Amanda) are, and seeing himself and everyone else as their characters in the Sherlock universe. When I posted it, I intended it to be left up to the reader whether to see it as kind of an AU to actual reality, or else a prequel to the filming of Sherlock. When I finally decided to write a sequel, it meant that I had to be the one to make that clear, which made it a prequel. It became a three-part series, with the second part set during and just after the filming of series 3 (the dodgiest in the moral sense, since it dances around and into real life events), and then the third story takes place ten years later.

2. The Final Proof. Why? Easy. Major character death, and it’s Sherlock. That’s clear from about the first sentence, I think. I had written At the Heart of it All, which features Sherlock running an experiment using the hearts of people who lived lives where they had loved and been loved, and people who hadn’t in an effort to prove his own ability to love to John. He says something at the end of that story about wishing he could see his own heart at the end of their life to see which of the hearts his own resembled by then. And then my muses, my terrible, terrible muses said, “hey... you could write that: you know: Sherlock at the very end of his life, making John promise to look at his heart after he’s died, and complete his experiment.” I, like, teared up just at the thought, and honestly, I cried for most of the writing of that story. I’m assured that about 99% of the people who have read it have also cried throughout, so... sorry. Yeah.

3. Scars. Why? Easy, again: the entire story is riddled with gaslighting and other types of emotional abuse and mind-fuckery, and an actual rape scene. It was painful to the point of being interally corrosive to write, but I still felt it was a story I needed to tell. I did my homework on this one, consulted multiple therapists who work specifically in the field of men who have been absued (emotionally, physically, sexually) by female partners. I thought no one would read it. I thought I might lose half my followers on tumblr. But I still wrote it. It still amazes me that people read it, even more when they actually like it, and still like me after. Lol.

How you choose your titles: Hmm... each title genesis is different, I would say! Sometimes it’s a general theme of the story, sometimes it’s a specific concept or single word, occasionally (but not often) it’s a song title. Sometimes it’s another language, particularly Latin. In The A.G.R.A Complex, the title of the story is also the name that the neurologists given to the brain injury Martin experiences. Vena Cava is titled for the name of the vein that Mary’s bullet punctured in Sherlock’s heart, based on a medical analysis I had read. Scars takes its theme from both Sherlock’s external scars from what he went through during his time away, and John’s internal scars from Mary’s emotional abuse. I also have a whole series of (unrelated) flower-themed stories: The Green Carnations comes from ACD era coding for homosexuality. The Yellow Poppies is the story I wrote after the deleted scene about Magnussen’s hospital visit came out, which features both he and Mary as dual villains, and yellow poppies placed in Sherlock’s room as a threat from one or the other of them. The White Lotuses has a leitmotif of Hinduism and slow-blooming self-awareness and romance. The Red Roses is a Molly POV where she helps Sherlock and John get together in spite of her own feelings, and The Wisteria Tree is an amnesia story that has Sherlock forget the past six years of his life, including the five years that he’s been married to John, and how they find their way back together in spite of that. Rosa Felicia - bonus, both a flower name AND Latin, lol! - is a coming-of-age story about Rosie at the age of 19. Where My Demons Hide is a mid-series 4 story that I wrote after The Lying Detective aired, but before The Final Problem did, and is the title of an Imagine Dragons song. Pater Noster is Latin for the title of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, but also quite literally just means “our father”, and is a story that centres around the events surrounding the death (murder) of John and Harry’s father. You get the gist.

Do you outline: I always say that one should know how a story begins, how it ends, and at least a few of the major points between those two events. So yes, but loosely. I think that over-plotting kills creativity. It’s not an essay. But even essays need space to grow.

Complete: 105 stories back in my skyehawke days, the vast majority of which are HP, totalling in about 1.5 million words. 87 stories in the Sherlock fandom (though those include my 4 Freebatch fics), totalling in over 2.3 million words now.

In progress: I have two stories currently pending: a Christmas story called The Secret of Hazel Grange, and a trauma-based, co-sleeping fic called Nocturne.

Coming soon/not yet started: I never comment about fics I haven’t yet started. Might curse the entire process, lol.

Do you accept prompts: No, alas. Neither prompts nor commissions. While I’m constantly desperately poor, it takes something out of the writing process for me once it becomes a job. I just feel like that’s not what fanfic is about for me. No judgement to anyone else who does write for commissions, whatsoever - we all have our own process! For me, I’m happy (make that incredibly grateful!) to have donations or supporters through my Patreon (eep: x), but writing to order just doesn’t quite jive for me. I also don’t take prompts, not because I don’t want them, but because I have such a huge backlog of my own ideas that I’ll never get to as it is. There will never be enough time to write all the fics I want to write! That said, don’t think that you can’t still suggest your ideas. My “official policy” (lol) is that I don’t take prompts (for the aforementioned backlog reason), but that doesn’t mean that if you do send me one, my muses won’t seize upon it and force me to write it. You never know. I certainly don’t, at least. :P

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: I’m super excited by the notion of actually getting my Christmas fic finished by Christmas. Lol. Here’s hoping!!

Tagging: Anyone who reads this and is a writer, or thinking about becoming one. You’ve been tagged!

#writer stuff #memes and things #sherlock #johnlock #silentauror

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monkey-network · 4 years

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Why EVE is The Best

Heads up. I’m basically gonna sperg about this whole film, so spoilers for this twelve year old film. Enjoy!

Wall-E is one of my favorite films; I would gladly kill and extort to bring the sequel I had in mind to life in any way; animatics would pleased me if nothing else but anyways. I love this film and one of the biggest reasons for that is the character EVE, a character that stuck in my mind longer than most if you can believe. So, better time than any, Imma just ramble about why I love this character. And, before we begin, I’m gonna say EVE is a girl, Wall-E is a boy due to my brain believing they were respectively female- and male-coded for most of my life but do NOT let this stop you from envisioning them however you please. If they’re both girls or boys to you, all power to you. With that said, here we go...

The Design

Now I’m not saying she has the greatest robot design ever; I don’t look at eggs and remember better days when I got to watch that film for the first time in my old house. But Pixar certainly knew how to make simplicity work to perfection. Simple shape, simple mechanics, simple movements. All feeling right at home with her coming from the more advanced future, especially compared to Wall-E where he’s literally a more grounded looking robot. Thematically, this design is fucking genius. A scouter robot with the ability to fly with ease and yet carries a literal arm cannon with incredible fire power. Both expressing how she can have her head in the clouds, observational when necessary, and yet trigger happy amidst the slightest inconvenience or surprise. *MWAH* What the fuck? It’s a great duality where the hard, more logical exterior possesses a sweet and approachable core just waiting to be shown and it’s wonderful seeing Wall-E, this literal block head, fumble his way into having a simple conversation with her. Now I can’t really disassemble how the programming in Wall-E works where they can behave like humans but follow objectives like a machine... but, I can try. With this scene.

Now take this with a grain of salt, the inferencing is more to the imagination otherwise the fun of this movie is tarnished. But from this scene, it’s clear that in this universe robots can show feelings for one another but can’t be romantic with humans because they can recognize human emotions and reactions but do so in an automated sense. The film expresses their curiousity just enough to where their reactions to human things and functions are within reason and yet doesn’t toy with the viewer’s believability. EVE is capable of responding to Wall-E’s advances but doesn’t 100% reciprocate his feelings because Wall-E isn’t her directive (least not yet, that’s for later). Not to mention, she isn’t that adept at romance unlike Wall-E who, by being alone with Earth’s technology, was able to learn and process human romance through the Hello Dolly VHS and potentially other things over the years. So this conversation works with the two having their limited knowledge, we don’t know how much they know, and the film keeps focus on having a balance between somewhat logical reactions and minor impulsive humane reactions that makes them alive but only just enough so it doesn’t feel like them being robots is pointless... Phew. Speaking of which, you know what isn’t pointless? Her motherfucking buster cannon.

Her whole ass arm houses a gun capable of nuking an entire cargo ship in a matter of seconds and it makes sense that she’d have it cuz how can a scouter robot defend themselves but beyond that, it’s just so goddamn cool. Like yeah, I can express how this symbolizes about America and... how they want to fuck their guns or something but who cares. She has a FUCKING ARM CANNON and it’s badass, end of discussion.

The Hanger Moment

Much as I love the moment where the two are in space flying, I honestly say that this moment where the two are in Wall-E’s house during the darude sandstorm is incredibly important. EVE is reasonably taken to his home and naturally, when the lights come on, she looks through the stuff he gives to her. She gets to take it easy for once, things can be quiet after she blew up a whole ship, have a giggle or two at the trinkets he’s collected, with the cigarette lighter being a good tool that’ll be used for later.

She’s curious, bouncy, still a bit quick on the draw, but is nonetheless taking in a lot this robot on Earth has to offer. It’s this and the small 1v1 they had before that is a lovely seedling to not only their connection but EVE’s development on her own, where we hardly need dialogue to show how she’s feeling about it all. And yeah, I’m with plenty of people to say that if this movie was just about the two of them being on Earth it probably would’ve been the greatest Pixar film of all time for many. Fortunately the plot kicks in when Wall-E shows EVE the plant, forcing her to go dormant, thus pulling Wall-E into an adventure on the Axiom ship. And I say fortunately cuz this is where EVE goes from good to great as a character.

The Axiom

While it’s something where we all wish that this film wasn’t the densly plotted, society driven second half, I say the second half on the Axiom carries the film’s themes and character building for EVE to good heights. We enter EVE’s territory, the slick, iPhoney synthetic world where humans have become literal potatoes and everything’s more or less automated. For EVE, the first half of the film lets us see the more playful side of her and doesn’t mind being around Wall-E, but isn’t immediately won over with the concept of love. She’s still goal-oriented and trying to keep the two stuck on Earth would’ve made her arc as open-ended and ambiguous as The Good Dinosaur. Time on the axiom puts her original sense of thinking to the test when Wall-E tags along.

To share the bigger picture real quick, the human element of Wall-E is complimentary to Wall-E and EVE’s humane behavior. To quote RealJims’ honestly flawless analysis, “What better way to show the humanity in a robot than to be among humans that act like robots?” For Wall-E the robot, this works perfectly as a fish out of water story. His time on Earth affects not only a few humans, but other robots like MO and the secretary machine, as minor as it seems.

So when Wall-E seemingly fucks things up, EVE is rightfully peeved. His slip ups especially with the Diagnostics scene tests her goal-oriented nature and patience, to a tasteful comedic strength. Doesn’t mean they now turned Wall-E stupid, the film makes sure the monkey wrenches are only accidents from someone severely out of the loop of things. This leads them and us well into

The Depths of Space

The scene where Wall-E gets launched in the escape pod thrills me with joyfully painful suspense every time. EVE making a mad dash to him as Wall-E madly tries to get out of the soon exploding pod, leading to it exploding and we get this from EVE. The wide eyes of terror followed by the whispering “No”s gives me shivers every time I see it in full.

Now one could argue her concern was more for the plant getting destroyed, but I say she was more frightened at the idea of both Wall-E and the plant getting nuked. While Wall-E did make her mad, she nonetheless cared about him and wasn’t expecting the tiny bot asshole to send him to death. So it’s like, “Oh no, both my purpose and the one that helped me are both gone.”

Luckily, thanks to some foreshadowing, Wall-E made it out alive with the plant in safe keeping and EVE seeing Wall-E actually care about her goal makes her beam with joy, being that reasonable spark that brings the two closer together. I mean if your love interest cheated death to help you out, why wouldn’t it? Everything about this moment is what made EVE stick with me long after I watched the film; the emotional journey the director was able to convey with her is so well-built to this point, it’s still amazing how they were able to do it with little dialogue or facial expressions. I especially love the emptiness we get of the two of them in space, where it adds focus to the two of them especially. But my god, that’s only half of it...

The space dance sequence between the two is still one of Pixar’s most gorgeous scenes. The way Wall-E is able to keep up with the fire extinguisher after having trouble in the film’s beginning, the wide shots of space, the lovely glow of the engines, the music. I especially like to think of this scene as a parallel to EVE’s initial flight on Earth. For her, it was that rite of passage after the touchdown and now she gets to share that same moment with someone she’s grown to like or appreciate. Then again, this isn’t the moment where EVE loves Wall-E. We’re close, but we need that one inch to finally show her the truth. That’s when she sees

The Recordings

The moment where EVE gets to see the memories of her time on Earth, including her dormant stasis, is where shit finally clicks. She essentially gets to know how Wall-E felt not only about her, but about love. Even when she couldn’t be there, she sees now that Wall-E cared about her and is able to process what Wall-E processed when he looked at Hello Dolly at one point. Scene also works because getting her directive, or the plant, was generally done and done with, she finally gets time to focus on something else, on her feelings for someone else. This leads well into... the well that leads to...

The Dumpster Moment

The scene with the recordings is where things finally click, but the moment with EVE and Wall-E in the ship’s dump is where it comes together. After getting betrayed yet again by AUTO, EVE’s concerns are now less with the plant and more for Wall-E and thanks to the moment previous, I can totally buy this. It’s teeth gritting seeing her try to rescue a now broken Wall-E from getting ejected into space and losing his energy thanks to a destroyed chip. So when we see her finally toss the plant aside and says Wall-E is her directive now, I tear up. It feels like a genuine, built up declaration on her part; the moment where EVE can rationally return his feelings ten-fold and truly be there for him. But that isn’t all to it, because Wall-E reasonably struggles his way to the plant to show that to save him, they need to get to Earth which means getting the plant back to the core of the ship.

This gives EVE newfound resolve and puts that to the test, where she has to basically defect against AUTO who’s become the physical antagonist of the film. The escape sequence is a bit of a step down since putting humans in danger doesn’t really affect the film’s themes all that well, but I can’t argue that pitting the captain against AUTO is a bad climax.

The Death to Wall-E

Thinking about this film after so long, it is still pretty fucking shocking to realize how punishing they treat Wall-E in the final act. It’s even more shocking when you realize how the roles have reversed, where Wall-E focuses more on EVE’s goal with the plant instead of EVE herself and vice versa. Then again, I say it’s fair that they did this, to show how much Wall-E was willing to sacrifice for the one he loves which makes the painful wails we hear from EVE feel all the more impactful. Like you’re serious with her as she struggles to accept his death before they reach Earth. And speaking of Earth...

The Finale

Now, I can’t help but argue it’s an unfortunate plothole that EVE is somehow able to fully repair Wall-E in spite of never fixing anything else in the film. Then again, it’s fucking pumping seeing her move quick to put him back together and it’s that final stomp on the heart when, even when he’s fully restored, Wall-E bares no memories of her or anything. You see her desperately try to get him to remember anything only to be met with an emotionless, reset shell. In finally understanding Wall-E’s feelings of love, she can’t really be with him. Until...

True Love’s Kiss Saves the day

I can get scientific with how getting his memories back was possible, but I won’t because the scene just works. It’s quiet, takes it time, and that last eureka moment with the two truly get to hold hands makes up for any scattered logistics. I’d say this is where Wall-E finally gets the love, but the same can be said for EVE, after everything she went through. I’ve admittedly seen a few talk about how the female lead is only valid through the love of another, typically male, but I believe what works 120% here is that the two characters basically have themselves figured out, Wall-E more than EVE, and EVE’s journey is never hindered for a sudden realization to love. She still succeeds in her mission, but the stakes for her have risen once she comes to terms with her newfound feelings and these feelings aren’t out of pocket. Wall-E has his feelings for EVE from the getgo, but dedicates to helping EVE with the goal, even if it means death. The connection they get to have is earned and is what drives the plot. EVE earns what she realizes she wants and that makes her a great female protagonist in my eye.

The Conclusion

Wall-E is a pretty warm movie; a film how the love of two brings humanity to salvation and vice versa. How EVE and Wall-E’s love is synonymous to the intertwining of modern and older technology to shape the world. But honestly, that probably wouldn’t have worked as well without how great they made EVE as a character. Wall-E is great too, but it’s astonishing to see EVE’s journey with Wall-E and show her natural growth of understanding something as warm as romance. Her journey is pretty synonymous to how I feel with the movie overall. The time we get of them on Earth is symbiotic to the time we get in space; we get an intimate journey that expands to a film about society but remains personal and intimate nonetheless. And with EVE, we get this superbly fleshed out character that’s emotive, understanding, and above all gets a resolves that’s awesome to see every time I catch or just think about this film. What else is there to say?

They’re the Best.

#wall-e #Pixar #disney #EVE #movies #awesome #analysis #Good Stuff #long post

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ducktastic · 3 years

Text

2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

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Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

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Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

#video games #holovista #paradise killer #animal crossing #animal crossing new horizons #spellbreak #good sudoku #fuser #dropmix #in other waters #marvel's avengers #avengers #clubhouse games #coffee talk #2020

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moghedien · 4 years

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Could you recommend some adult sff? Love your blog btw!

Thank you!

And ok, I could give you better personalized recs if you give me some idea of what you’re looking for or what you like, but I’m gonna give you some general recommendations. Also I only really feel comfortable recommending books that I have personally read, and there are tons more out there than what I have read. If you want to find more, looking at recent Hugo nominations over the past few years might be helpful. Also one of the reasons why I know anything at all about the SFF world is that I’ve been listening to the Sword and Laser podcast for like, a decade. I never really mention that podcast, but its literally why I started reading at all and also they have a pretty active goodreads group as well.

So recommendations:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie:

This is one of my favorite books period. This is a far future space opera about an artificial intelligence who used to be a spaceship and now is only one human body, and she is ANGRY ABOUT that. I don’t really want to say more than that, but if you like AI shenanigans and being sorta confused as to what is going on the entire time, then this is the book for you! It’s the first book in a completed trilogy.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan:

Obviously I’m gonna recommend the Wheel of Time. This is the first book in a 14 (actually 15) book series and if you need something to do with the next 1-5 years of your life *motions toward EoTW*.

So the Eye of the World, I think is uniquely good as a book if you kinda want to get into adult fantasy for a few reasons. For one thing, its kinda considered to be one of those “classics” of the genre but its not too old to be offputting to some readers. It’s a 30 year old book, so its not reflective of the genre now, but you can definitely see its influence all the place, even outside of just books. The Eye of the World specifically, also goes out of its way to make readers comfortable. It leans heavy on Tolkien references and tropes at first without being a straight up copy of Lord of the Rings like some classic fantasy books are. Its done very purposefully, in my opinion, to make the reader feel like they have some idea of what’s going on, and the series quickly drops the Tolkien references as soon as its established itself enough.

Also the Gandalf parallel for the series is a smol bi lady and there is 24 year old rage healer who wants to fight everyone with her own two fists.So many women to stan.

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

This is the first book of the Expanse, which is a nearish future space opera that takes place in our solar system. Mars has long ago been colonized and is a completely separate government entity than Earth, and conflict between the two planets has been stirring. The Asteroid Belt has also been colonized and have long been little more than tools of corporations that run their colonies. A group of ice haulers working in the outer planets get in the middle of one of the biggest secrets in the solar system and find themselves in all kinds of trouble.

I don’t really want to say more than this, but this is probably the only SF series that I actively keep up on when a new book comes out. There are 8 books our currently, and the 9th and final book will be out sometime in the near future. There are also several short stories and novellas set in the world, and there’s a TV show that I really like though I need to catch up on it.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Hello, this book comes with content warnings for literally everything, but it is such a good book/trilogy. This is book about a woman trying to find her daughter again in the middle of the apocalypse. Definitely a heavy read but absolutely brilliant. The world has a magic system based on geology and the people that can use that magic....saying they’re discriminated against is an understatement. I don’t want to say much more about it, but if you have any kind of content you can’t read for whatever reason, I’d check before picking this up. This is the first book in a completed trilogy

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

So this isn’t really super SF heavy and is actually sold as a literary book, but it takes place after a flu pandemic has wiped out a large portion of the population...so maybe this is a bad time to read this book, OR its the best time to read it. Depends on how you’re dealing with *motions at the world*

The book flashes back to before and during the pandemic a lot, but is largely about art’s importance and is actually quite optimistic in its messaging, and this is another of my favorite books ever. But yeah, might be a bad time for you to read it of you can’t deal with the content now.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I just remembered that this book also has a plague, but its a subplot and not the major thing. So this is a big ol’ chonky standalone book that is high fantasy, deals with multiple cultures having to interact and work together, and has dragons. Also there’s a genunine slow burn f/f romance and *chef’s kiss*. I can’t really say much else, mostly because I struggle to explain this book, but its very good and probably my favorite book from last year.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

In this house we stan Mary Robinette Kowal, ok?

So this is a science fiction that is more an alternate history that poses the question, hey, what would have happened if an asteroid slammed into the east coast in 1952 and the world had to scramble to colonize Mars so that everyone didn’t die on earth when the climate got catastrophic, because that’s the inciting action of the book. The main character is a Jewish woman who was a WASP pilot in WW2 and is a computer for the space program when all this happens. The book deals with sexism, and racism, and xenophobia, and all the social issues that are gonna come up with it being set in 1952, but Mary Robinette doesn’t flinch away from addressing social issues in any of her books, even when it makes her main characters look bad. (Also if you like Pride and Prejudice, she has a series that is just Pride and Prejudice with magic and like, yeah, its good).

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

This is a book which poses a question, what if dragons were like weird animals that were real and an eccentric woman spent her entire life traveling the world to study them and then told the stories of that in her memoirs when she was too old to care about the consequences of publishing all her scandals. That’s what the book is about. This one is probably actually the weakest in the series, just because it deals with so much set up. It’s a great series to get on audio because Kate Reading is a fantastic narrator, and the prose works so well as audio, because it’s just someone telling you her life story. There are five books in the series.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

So this is a novella and is the first in the murderbot series. Basically a killer robot gets addicted to television shows and accidentally became sentient. I haven’t read the others in the series, but I really need to reread this one and get to the others.

Jade City by Fonda Lee

This is a fantasy set in world sorta inspired by the early 1900s but is in a fantasy world. It’s like a mafia movie and kung fu movie had a baby and it was this book. The sequel is out currently, but the third book is set to release next year.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

This is another heavy read. This is a SF story set on a generation ship that has a society very heavily inspired by the antebellum south. There’s class issues, race issues, gender issues, mental health issues. All kinds of things intersecting here. Its fantastic, but a heavy read.

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

This is another fantasy classic, and is the first of the Farseer Trilogy. The title is sort of also a description of the book, so like. I’m not sure what else I can say. I haven’t read further into the series, but people I trust love it, and honestly I need to reread this and read more of the books.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

So if you think that Station Eleven might be a bad book to read at the time, then this is THE WORST POSSIBLE BOOK TO READ RIGHT NOW. Or, maybe the best. Depends on how you cope. This is a book about time travelers based in Oxford and the main character accidentally gets stranded in the past right as the Black Plague is about to hit. And it hits. The book is horrific. The second book in the series is much funnier. This one ain’t funny, but is good. Just, oof.

Mistborn or Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

So if you want to get into the Cosmere, which is a series of series that interconnect and will ruin your life, then then my personal opinion is to either start with Mistborn or Warbreaker. People might not agree with me, but that’s my personal opinion.

Warbreaker is currently a standalone (a sequel will come out eventually but its not set up for a sequel so you can 100% read it as a standalone). The magic in this world is based on colors, and the story revolves around two sisters. One of them is betrothed to the horrific God King of their neighboring kingdom. The other sister ends up being sent in her place because their dad hates her. I adore Warbreaker so much. It has it all. Two women discovering their true places on the prep/goth spectrum. Talking swords. Vivenna. Everything you can need right there.

Mistborn is a trilogy that is very emo and will ruin you. Its about people who swallow metal to get magic powers and live in world where the dark lord won already, so they’re all emo. And that was the worst description of Mistborn I ever could have written, but I find it too funny to change.

So if you’re interested in the Cosmere, but are afraid to commit long term, pick up Warbreaker. If you want to get into a series right away, pick up Mistborn.

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theangriestpea · 4 years

Text

The Killing Type | Five

Summary: Just when Lavender thought things were going great with Sweet Pea, a new girl comes back to turn to turn their entire relationship upside down. Now they have to navigate a world of drug dealers, rival gangs, and co-parenting. Sequel to Mercy Killing. (links now at the end of chapter)

Rating: Mature // Explicit

Pairings: Sweet Pea x OC // eventual Jughead Jones x OC

Warnings: Smut, restraints, cunnilingus, minor dirty talk, drug mentions, blackmail??

Word Count: 4.8k+

A/N: This shouldn't have taken me two weeks to write but it did. Between work and a bad bought of depression I just don't have much energy to do anything that's not mindless. But regardless I'm super happy with how this chapter came out. It was brought to my attention that links sometimes cause posts to not show up in the tags! Links will be at the bottom of chapters from now on to see if that solves the issue.

Chapter Five : The L Word

Lavender was rubbing her cheeks furiously in an attempt to dry them. She could hear Sweet Pea following her, but simply pretended that he didn’t exist for the moment. She didn’t want to be near him right now, not after everything that had happened since last night.

As soon as she got inside her trailer, she planned on calling Toni and asking if she could spend the night at Thistlehouse. Maybe some girl time would help her clear her head and mend her heart. Also being sandwiched between Toni and Cheryl meant that the likelihood of her having any nightmares was slim. She didn’t want to sleep with Sweet Pea or Fangs this time around, not since they both had spurned her.

She trudged up her front steps and quickly unlocked the door. Once inside, she attempted to slam the door shut but a large hand stopped it from closing. More anger and hurt welled inside of her. Why couldn’t he just give her some fucking space ?

“Sweet Pea, just leave me alo-” She began before he abruptly cut her off.

“I love you.” He said plainly, as if it were nothing. As if it were something he had said a million times before. Her heart twisted painfully in her chest, wrenching itself against her ribcage as it pounded with anxiety. Did he really just…?

She didn’t want to face him, not now. Not after what he had just said. He waited for her to verbally respond, however Lavender’s mouth and throat felt like they were so stuffed with cotton that she couldn’t say anything. Even her tongue felt like sandpaper, pressed against the hard palate of her mouth to keep herself from audibly sobbing again. Why after all this time did he say it? Why did he always pick the absolute worst moment to talk about his feelings? She wanted to scream.

If she had turned to look at him, she would have seen the scared and pained look on his face. The feeling of rejection creeping up his spine as he yearned for her to say something, anything to confirm that she felt the same way. That they meant more to one another than they had ever let on. That this went beyond acquaintanceship, beyond friendship, and beyond sex. There was more to it than that or so he thought…

“Shanna?” His voice cracked, making him flinch at how whiny it sounded. He dreaded for anyone to see or hear him like this. Already he was feeling tortured by showing so much soft emotion, even if it was to his girlfriend. If she had said something back then it wouldn’t be so bad, but her silence was more telling than not.

Lav finally turned to look up at him, her eyes watery again with more tears. She nodded her head and he finally realized she was unable to speak, whether it was due to the vitriol of emotion she was feeling or something else, he wasn’t entirely sure.

Finally after a few tense minutes, she found the ability to speak. “Do you mean that?” She probed, not quite trusting his utterance. Though Sweet Pea was honestly not one to lie about feelings, it was just so new to her to hear this from him. He had mentioned before how he had loved Lily, but he had never used such a word with her in regards to their relationship. It was a dream come true and for that she couldn’t trust the reality of it.

He stared at her, wondering if he could pull up the nerve to say it again. When he found that he couldn’t, he nodded his head numbly with his eyes never leaving hers to let her know that he was being sincere. Lav rubbed her eyes once more, smearing salty tears across her face for the dozenth time.

Should she say it back? She wondered, still finding it hard to even speak. Such a strange cacophony of emotions bundled up inside of her chest. “I…” She muttered, tripping over her own words, “I l-love…” She inhaled sharply, trying to power through it. “I love you too.”

They looked at one another wordlessly, Sweet Pea’s jaw set firmly as he clenched his teeth. All he wanted to do was sweep her up and kiss her, but he wasn’t sure if she would be up for that or not. He didn’t know how triggered she may have been by the Ghoulie from before. But Christ, he just needed to touch her.

Sweet Pea took two broad steps forward and grabbed her by the upper arm to pull her into his chest. Lavender didn’t even bother trying to resist him. She melted into his torso, taking a deep breath to inhale his intoxicating scent. Despite being upset with him, all she wanted to do now was just stay wrapped within his arms, enveloped in the illusion of safety.

She felt his nose nuzzle into the hair on the top of her head, the slow intake of air through his nostrils to take in the smell of her shampoo. He never felt more at home then he did when she was in his arms.

Lavender hadn’t realized how touch starved she was until this very moment. And she knew straight away that it would be difficult for her to let go of him any time soon. Not only that but she wanted more and while she knew he couldn’t resist her, she also wasn’t sure if she should give in to her own desires. He had been a raging asshole after all.

She heard him mumble something into her hair, but was unable to decipher it. “I can’t understand you,” She said, turning her head from out of his jacket so he could hear her.

He let out a small groan before lifting his face off of her scalp. “I said, I’m sorry for what I said at the Wyrm.” She didn’t have to see him to know that his face and neck were flushed red with embarrassment. He always seemed to have an allergic reaction to apologizing. Still, it was amazing that he even said he was sorry as usually he just acted like nothing had ever happened. Maybe he was starting to grow up, even if it was just the tiniest bit.

Her grip around his waist tightened a fraction, pressing her cheek into his sternum in an attempt to keep herself from crying again. The hurt was still so fresh in her mind that despite what she felt was a sincere apology, she still couldn’t help but think of his stinging words. Sweet Pea began to rub her back, sensing that she was on the verge of spilling more tears.

“You’re such an asshole to me.” She huffed out, managing to stop herself from crying. “I don’t understand how you can say you love me after acting like a total jerk.” She attempted to pull away, however Sweet Pea did not allow her to. His grip around her remained vice.

She felt him stiffen uncomfortably against her. “I don’t know how to do this.” He said quietly, almost so low that she didn’t even hear him. “I’ve never felt like this before, okay? I don’t know how to handle it.”

Lav looked up at him, wearing her confusion plainly on her face. “But didn’t you love Lily?” She didn’t understand how he could say he never felt this way when he had mentioned loving her before.

“That was different.” He admitted softly. “You drive me fucking crazy, you know that? I can’t ever stop thinking about you. When I was with Lily, I still thought about fucking other girls. I cared about her and I loved her as a friend, I guess but. The thought to cheat doesn’t even cross my mind with you. I get so freaked out by the way I feel around you that I just fuck it up. Because that’s what I do, Shanna, I fuck everything up. Just look at what I did to Lily.”

Lavender clung to him, afraid that if she loosened her grip then he’d fall apart right before her eyes. It wasn’t fair that he always had to pick up her pieces when he had his own issues to take care of. Maybe that was one of the points Lily was trying to make during that first week. Lav had never really given him a chance to be vulnerable and at the moment she hated herself for that.

“It’s okay,” She muttered to him. He wouldn’t look directly at her, choosing to stare off at a wall instead. When he didn’t respond or move, she reached up and put a hand on his cheek to force him to look at her. “I mean it, Pea. It’s okay to not understand what you’re feeling. It’s new to me too. I don’t think I’ve ever cared so much about someone before. Not like this.”

His eyes bore into hers for a tense moment as they stared in silence once again. He dared to lean down and press his lips against hers, which Lavender took in eagerly. She opened her mouth slightly, tongue prodding at his lips in desperation.

Sweet Pea opened his mouth for her, his own tongue reaching out to greet her. They collided, rolling and wrestling. Lav couldn’t help but let out a needy whine as she pressed herself flush against him, wanting more each second that passed.

He backed her up against the nearby wall, hoisting her upwards by grabbing the backs of her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his waist, securing herself against him as they continued their bruising kiss. His hands that were perched on her hips, pushed up her thin tank top. Their lips finally broke apart as he pulled it over her head.

Her bra was quickly discarded next as he wasted no time at all. They had both been wanting this for far too long now and it was all too easy to get caught up in the moment. Daisy wasn’t around,and if Lily dared to come by then Sweet Pea was going to give her a solid piece of his mind.

Sweet Pea was groping both her breasts, making her keen against the wall. His thumbs ran over her nipples, hardening them. Lav grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him in for yet another deep kiss, needing something to occupy her mouth to keep her from becoming a moaning broken record.

Lavender pushed off his leather jacket and he happily aided her in shedding it. She enthusiastically unbuttoned his flannel, making quick work of it. Why did he have to wear so many fucking layers?

Finally once his flannel was off, he tore off his undershirt. With his bare chest exposed, Lavender ran her fingernails across his pectorals. The pads of her fingers brushing past his nipples and down his semi-toned stomach. She rolled her hips against him, eager and wanting. He simply wasn’t moving fast enough for her.

Sweet Pea seemed to be ignoring her pleas for more as he continued to manipulate her nipples slowly as they kissed. Lav simply huffed, pulling her mouth away from him so he could see her pout.

“Can’t you let me enjoy getting you off first?” He asked in a threatening tone. “Or do you want my dick that badly?”

Lavender groaned, “You are the worst, stop teasing me!”

“No.” He responded, attacking her neck with his mouth as his hands jerked her skirt upwards so that it was bunched at her waist. His thick fingers caressed her clit through her cotton underwear, making her let out another needy whine.

He pinched the swelling bundle of nerves, earning himself another whimper from her mouth. Sweet Pea pulled away from the wall, causing her to grab onto his shoulders as he carried her into her bedroom.

“You’re not going to fuck me against the wall?” She asked playfully as he rubbed circles around her clit. Her words devolved into a moan towards the end.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You little slut.” He hissed back. While other people absolutely could not call her that word, Sweet Pea definitely could. It was her own way of reclaiming it by telling him to use it. It sent a passionate thrill down her spine.

He dropped her onto the bed, causing her to yelp in surprise. She looked up at him, doe-eyed as he unbuckled his belt and ripped it free from his pants. In one swoop he grabbed both of her wrists, wrapping the leather around them before tying it to the headboard. Lavender was staring at him curiously, wondering where this had come from. He had never restrained her like this before, not that she minded. If she didn’t like it then she’d let him know, though he usually had a way of telling when something made her uncomfortable even more she verbalized it.

When she gave no outward sign of discomfort, he continued by ridding her of the rest of her clothing so that she was totally naked on the bed. He settled between her legs, kissing down her chest as she inhaled sharply with anticipation.

She had noticed that he only went down on her when he felt the occasion was particularly special. If it was a regular quickie then he usually didn’t bother. The action caused a warm feeling to wrap around her as she tried to squirm away from his fanning breath.

Sweet Pea shot her a look telling her to be still as he tightened his grip around her thighs. He attacked her clit with a series of licks and suckling kisses, a finger probing at the entrance to her core. Lav jerked in his grip, whimpering and whining for more as he was doing nothing but tease her with his mouth.

He latched on firmly, sucking hard as he swirled his tongue around her in a quick rhythm that had her quaking in his grip. Two fingers plunged into her wet pussy, curling inside of her before easing out. She couldn’t stop the mewls from coming out or the quiet begs for more. He worked her over, pumping his two digits at an incredibly fast pace as he continued to service her with his tongue. In minutes Lav was pushed over the edge, crying out for him as she pulled at her restraints.

Sweet Pea pulled away from her, pressing the two fingers that had been inside of her into her mouth for her to clean them off. She sucked on them, hollowing out her cheeks as she stared into his dark eyes. Once he was satisfied with her work, he pulled them out and wiped the excess saliva onto the bed sheets.

“Have I ever told you how great your pussy tastes?” He asked in a husky tone as he readied himself between her thighs. Lav shifted her hips to give him more room, spreading her legs as far as she could to get him ample space. There was a raging blush across her cheeks as she shook her head no.

Sweet Pea smirked, tip pressing into her folds but not quite entering her. “You look so pretty with your legs spread out like that, dripping for my cock.” She swallowed thickly, while enjoying the dirty talk she was unable to respond to it. It was still a new thing for her to hear as her other partners had never done it before. Being young and not nearly as experienced did have its downsides. Although if he were honest with her, he loved how flustered it made her.

“Do you want me to fuck you, princess?” He asked, still teasing her with his closeness. She moved her hips, trying to get him to enter her, however he simply pulled back a fraction just to spite her. “Tell me you want me to fuck you.” He growled.

Lavender whined at him pathetically, “Fuck me, Pea, please!” Her face grew a darker shade of red. Sweet Pea merely smirked as he slowly pushed into her, biting back a moan at how tight and slick she was.

She seemed to relax into the bed as he filled her, stretching her walls as he continued to plunge deeper inside of her. She let out a soft, breathy moan and her eyes slid shut so she could focus on the sole feeling of being completed by him.

He moved her legs so that they were flung over his shoulders haphazardly, leaning forward so that they were pressed into her chest. She pouted up at him, wanting him to move his hips to give her arousal some kind of relief. Sweet Pea was giving her a cocky look, knowing exactly what she wanted and purposefully not giving it to her.

“Pea,” She whimpered again, giving him the most desperate facial expression that she could muster. “Please? I love you-”

That seemed to be what he wanted to hear as he suddenly pulled his hips back and snapped them forward. He fell into a heavy rhythm, slamming against her as she moaned helplessly beneath him. Sweet Pea grunted as he bared his weight on his wrists, hands placed on either side of her shoulders.

He moved at a furious pace, pounding into her harder than he ever had before. Lavender couldn’t say anything coherently, simply falling apart as he reduced her into a shapeless mass of pleasure. She felt as if she was wound incredibly tight and he was yanking on the end of her string, daring her to unravel at any moment.

She let out a loud gasp as he adjusted the angle in which he drove into her, hitting deeper than before and making her toes curl with delight. Her stomach felt tense, clenching as she tried to keep herself from exploding too soon.

"Don't hold it back," he growled at her, knowing her body better than she did sometimes. "Come all over my dick, baby girl."

Lav cursed as he picked up speed again, throwing her mercilessly over the edge and into a sea of ecstasy.

Sweet Pea slacked his pace slightly, allowing his rhythm to become sloppy as he chased his own high. In minutes he was releasing inside of her, filling her to the brim with his load.

He gently lifted off of her, unfurling her legs so that she could lay normally. He crashed down beside her after undoing the belt that tied her wrists, pulling her into his chest as they both heaved for air. She nuzzled her nose against his sternum, inhaling the sensual mixture of sweat and sex as he rubbed her back soothingly.

“I love you too,” He mumbled back to her as he drifted into the twilight dimension of sleep.

There was a hard but tentative knock on the door to Sweet Pea’s trailer. Lily managed to gather herself up off the kitchen floor, having been crying there alone for the past ten minutes. Luckily Daisy had placated herself in the living room, playing with a few of the toys that Lavender had bought for her a few days prior.

Lily cleaned herself up the best she could in the time it took for her to open the door, finding the next in line for Serpent King standing there looking bashful. As if he knew something that he shouldn’t.

“Hey,” He said softly, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly, “can we talk?”

She bit into her lower lip hard to keep from crying again. She knew exactly what this was about and she really didn’t want to face up to it yet. Ever since she came back she found herself growing closer and closer to Jughead. Her heart seemed to thump loudly in her ears anytime they came into contact with one another. Even passing him in the hallway sometimes left her breathless. She absolutely hated this feeling, as she knew exactly what it meant. It had been similar to what she felt for Sweet Pea some time ago. Only this time it seemed so much worse, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just post pregnancy hormones raging.

Lily stepped to the side so he could walk in. He brushed past her, not meaning to touch her as he did so. Their arms touched for a split second, leaving a warm and tingling feeling in the joined flesh. Jughead quickly moved away, making a straight line to the couch in order to plop down on it as if he’d had a long and hard day.

He took his beanie off momentarily, running his fingers through his thick locks before roughly pulling it back over them. His hair resettled, framing his face perfectly. Lily gulped as she looked at him in an attempt to settle the uproar of nerves in the pit of her stomach.

She closed the door, locking it out of sheer habit and muscle memory before joining him. She chose to sit in the recliner adjacent to the couch, not wanting to risk visibly showing how much she needed the company right this very moment. Her teeth were clenched, hands balled up on her knees into tiny fists. She looked as if she may snap in two at any second.

“Are you dealing?” Jughead asked finally. The tension in the air seemed to throb painfully as Lily looked away from him and towards her little girl that was jangling a ring of plastic keys. She really didn’t want to answer him, however she knew that she had no choice but to. She had been caught red handed by Sweet Pea and Lavender the night before. While Lavender had tried to save her, clearly her ex had no intention of just letting this slide. He could be such an insufferable asshole when he wanted to be.

“Yes.” Lily admitted to him, knowing that she’d be unable to lie even if she wanted to. Nausea swept over her and she felt like she may start to puke her feelings out at any moment. She fidgeted with the fraying edges of a hole in the knee of her beat up jeans, hoping the tiny thoughtless movements would keep her sane for just a minute longer.

Jughead let out a stressed sigh, “you know I have to tell my dad, right?” He asked and she nodded numbly. “He wants me to take over when I turn eighteen, says he’s too old to keep doing this shit. So he’s making me handle the younger Serpents for now to learn how to deal with issues like this.

He paused, wanting to ask her for her advice on the situation before realizing that it would be really dumb to do so. Lily was the one to show him around Southside High when he first got there. She taught him all the Serpent Laws and helped him through the trials. He’d be lost right now without her, and yet here he was having to find some kind of fitting punishment for her.

“Is it the money?” He asked quietly, not wanting to offend her. Babies were expensive, he knew that. Maybe he hadn’t been giving her enough jobs to work lately, and the thought of her struggling made him feel incredibly guilty. “Because I can get you more money, Lils-”

“No, Jug.” She replied in a voice that was equally as soft as his. “I’m not getting paid to do it, at least not cash.”

A perplexed look crossed his face, “then why?” He probed, needing to know why she was doing something so risky. If she were caught, then Daisy would likely be taken from her and no one in the gang wanted that.

Lily tensed even more so than she already was. “Please, Jug, just drop it.” She said, her tone becoming more urgent. “I really can’t tell you why. I’m not doing this by choice, alright? I can’t give you any details.”

His eyes darkened. “Is someone blackmailing you?” If someone was threatening to harm her in any way then he needed to know. Not only for her safety, but for Daisy and Sweet Pea’s as well. Although he would totally deny the sheer amount of worry of her being in any kind of danger gave him.

Her mouth turned into a desert. She wasn’t sure if blackmail was truly the right word for what was going on. It wasn’t that the person she was dealing for was threatening to release any information on her, no it wasn’t quite like that. They would just stop helping her with her father’s appeal to turn over the conviction that landed him in jail. She couldn’t afford a defense attorney on her own. The person footing the bill was the one making her do such a risky thing as sell drugs on Ghoulie territory.

All she could do was shake her head at him, “That’s not-” She started before halting. The less he knew the better, or perhaps the less of the truth he knew the better. “Yes, Jug. Someone is blackmailing me and I have to do this, please.” She begged, allowing her eyes to go wide and desperate. “Please, I have to.”

“Law says I have to take your jacket, Lils...I can’t do that.” He admitted to her, unable to tear his blues away from her watery greens. “Do you know who is doing it? Or are they staying anonymous somehow?”

Did she lie again? Could she lie again? Would she just be digging herself into a deeper hole that may just collapse upon her one day and become her grave? “Jughead, I really can’t discuss this with you. Just know that it is not my choice but I have to do this. If I don’t then...then my dad may never get out.” The last part came out in a broken whisper as she choked back a cry for help.

Jughead’s gaze softened, hating seeing her so upset and wanting nothing more than to comfort her. However, he still had a job to do regardless of his feelings. “So they’re helping you get him out? I can help somehow, I’ll find a way, I promise I-”

“Jughead,” She said, shaking her head at him and letting out a small, tired laugh. “You don’t have the resources that this person does. They have money for a good lawyer, the Serpents don’t have that. If you have to take my jacket, then…” She hesitated, not liking what she was about to say, “then do it. My father never wanted this life for me anyway.”

The absolute last thing Jughead wanted to do on this Earth was to take her second skin from her. The thought alone seemed blasphemous. “If I do that, then you won’t be able to make money for Daisy. For now, we’ll keep this on the down low. The longer it takes for my dad to know, the longer I can stall. I don’t want to take away your livelihood, especially when you’re being forced into breaking the code.”

Lily heaved a heavy sigh, “When FP finds out, he’s going to murder you.”

A smile broke across his sullen face, “then who’d take over? Sweet Pea? Can you imagine?”

They both devolved into laughter, the air around them lightening. After a few moments, they stopped and fell into silence once more. At least this time it was less intense. “Promise me something, Lily.” Jughead said finally after he noticed her shoulders drop.

She looked up at him, eyes connecting once more. “What is it?” She asked, wondering what else he could possibly need from her. The seriousness on his face was causing her anxiety to ramp up again, the dial turning up all the way to eleven.

“If you’re ever in any danger, you’ll come to me and tell me?” He said gently, not wanting to further unnerve her. “I will do whatever in my power to help you. I won’t let anything happen to you. So please, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is or where I’m at, just tell me if you need my help. I’ll come running. Can you promise me that?”

A half dozen stray tears suddenly fell from her eyes, unable to hold them back at the sweet sentiment of him wanting to protect her. Even if it was just because he was her leader, even if it was just because they were such good friends, even if the reason wasn’t because he was infatuated with her as she so damn wished he was.

She wiped her cheeks with the palms of her hands, smearing the clear liquid across her soft skin. “I promise, Jug.” She mumbled, seemingly in pieces but somehow held together at the same time. “I promise.”

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knox-knocks · 4 years

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Knox pls....I hope you can write a part 2 to that fic you wrote based on the “things you said when drunk” prompt pls I’m dying I miss your writing ♥️

thank you so much!!! this is pretty late, but i’ve finally written a sequel! i hope you enjoy :)

read on ao3

Laying on his back, his arms spread wide and legs propped up against the uneven tiling that paved the roof, Andrew thought that he could swallow the stars whole. They were bright that night, thousands of tiny pinpricks of light dotting the gusty indigo expanse of sky. It all felt larger than him, solar systems and galaxies thousands of years removed from everything else.

For a moment, Andrew felt his mind clear. For a moment, he wasn’t thinking about college or Exy or his so-called future.

For a moment, Andrew wondered if he could be perfectly happy up there with them, distant but apart of something larger than himself. A constellation, a solar system. A whole goddamn galaxy of stars.

The scuff of a shoe against pavement pulled Andrew back to the ground. He was instantly aware of the roof tiles under his back and his knuckles rubbing against their scratchy surface and the countdown before he had to leave.

“You don’t have to climb on the roof to look at the stars, you know.”

Andrew lifted his head at Neil’s voice. He sat up, blood rushing to his head, and peered down at him. Neil stood in the driveway with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his threadbare jeans, head tilted back and lips curled in the slightest smile.

“Can I come up?” Neil called up.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Andrew replied.

Neil’s smile widened as he ducked out of sight. Andrew heard him knock and the door opened, throwing a blade of orange light across the darkened lawn. Nicky’s delighted voice wafted up, insisting Neil could just come in, that this was his home too. The door closed as Nicky ushered him in, and the light disappeared, turning the world once again to its blues and dark greens of nighttime.

Despite himself, Andrew felt nervous. He wondered if Neil had come to regret asking Andrew to kiss him once he sobered up, or that maybe Neil really wasn’t into Andrew at all now that his head was clear from the alcohol that they had drunk. It was still warm, despite the sun having already set, but Andrew felt chilled at the thought.

The window opened behind him and Neil climbed out. He sat next to Andrew and dangled his legs off the roof in a way Andrew never could without feeling sick from the height.

“I got grounded for stealing the wine,” Neil said, unconcerned. “But I don’t think Uncle Stuart was all that mad. Honestly, I think he just didn’t know what else to do.”

Andrew felt himself relax. He and Neil seemed to pick up exactly where they left off when they parted two days ago, and all the tension bled away. He wasn’t worried anymore. He felt as he always did sitting next to his best friend.

“Couldn’t have been that bad if he let you come over,” Andrew said tilting his head towards him.

“I don’t think he knows what a grounding actually is.” Neil shrugged. “Whatever. As long as I’m back before curfew, I’ll be fine.”

“You’re always fine.”

“Exactly.”

Neil grinned, and Andrew’s stomach twisted and flopped over itself. He was intently aware of how alone they were; Aaron and Nicky were inside and no one else was out on the street. They’d been crammed up on this ledge more times than Andrew could count, but only this moment did Andrew realize how little space was left between them. Andrew distantly thought that he should feel claustrophobic, but all he wanted to do was move closer to Neil, not away.

“Remember when you said you more than liked me?” Neil began. He wasn’t looking at Andrew anymore. Instead, his chin dipped to his chest while he stared at his hands grasped tightly in his lap. Andrew wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, but Neil’s cheeks had taken on a rosy glow of pink. “Well, I more than like you, too.”

Taking a quick, steadying breath, Andrew lightly touched Neil’s cheek so he was facing him again. Neil’s eyes widened a tiniest bit, his gaze dipping to Andrew’s lips. Affecting his best Neil-imitation, Andrew said, “Then you should do something about it.”

That startled a surprised laugh out of Neil. “I guess I deserved that.”

“You really did.”

“You know,” Neil said, “you never actually answered my question.”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “I distinctly remember telling you to ask again later.”

Neil’s expression softened. The usual iciness in his eyes melted to a pretty summer blue and his lips parted on the smallest inhale. “Can I kiss you? Yes or – ”

“Yes,” Andrew interrupted and kissed him quiet.

Andrew had imagined kissing Neil, of his lips against Neil’s and his hand curled around Neil’s jaw and Neil’s hands in his hair for so long now that a part of him never thought it would actually happen.

But this kiss changed everything. Andrew felt everything. His hand rested on the side of Neil’s neck, Neil’s pulse drumming an erratic beat against his thumb, and Andrew kissed him. Neil’s hand clenched in Andrew’s t-shirt, not to hold him still but just to cling on to, and Andrew kissed him. Andrew’s heart was going to leap out of his chest, Neil’s hands moved to cup his face, and Andrew kissed him.

Andrew was the first to move back but he didn’t go far. He kept his hands where they were, one on Neil’s cheek and the other around the back of his neck, and tried to get his breathing under control.

“Wow,” Neil whispered. Andrew snorted and pushed his face away.

“Wow,” he mocked. Neil rolled his eyes but his lips twitched until he lost the battle completely and laughed. Andrew felt a small smile of his own but he hid it with the back of his fist before he was able to rein it in.

Watching Neil, his hair mussed and lips red, it suddenly didn’t matter that he was moving two hours away in a couple weeks. He still had a home here, and he still had Neil. Andrew thought he could manage with that.

“You’ll visit, right?” Neil asked.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Andrew replied again. Neil’s eyes crinkled with that quiet happiness and Andrew knew everything would be okay.

–

Andrew’s bedroom door was propped open when Nicky went to check on him and Neil. He knocked on it before poking his head in, but found the room was empty and both boys were sitting on the ledge outside the window.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Nicky noticed that Neil’s shoulder was pressed to Andrew’s when he threw his head back and laughed. He had heard Neil’s laugh before, quiet huffs of air or sarcastic snorts, but never like this, never a full-body roar. In turn, Andrew looked completely at ease, his head knocking against Neil’s as he said something else.

It was then that Nicky noticed Andrew and Neil’s hands clasped together. His cousin looked happy and calm, more than Nicky had ever seen him before in the entire two years he’s known him. It was everything he’s wanted for Andrew, and Nicky was glad Andrew had found his own happiness at last.

Smiling softly, Nicky quietly closed the bedroom door behind him and let them be.

#aftg #tfc #all for the game #the foxhole court #andreil #last fic of the year (and the decade!)

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trashyeggroll · 4 years

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Please explain appeal of Danolsen to me cuz I honestly don't get it! My blocks for shipping it currently - it feels like a make up for Kara/Jimmy being broken up so fast not an organic pairing. There's no filler to their relationship it's all just cute looks this season. Kelly in S5 feels like she could be replaced with extra of the week & nothing would change sadly. So why should I ship Danolsen 2.0 when I could just rewatch Sanvers stuff or another show?

Ok ok ok wait, parameters here. What are the terms of the discussion?

filler vs cute looks: usually I would use the word filler to describe vapid or irrelevant content (“empty calories”); in the context of your message, I think you mean substantive storylines vs the cutesy moments?

Danolsen vs Dansen: just so I don’t confuse myself, if I say Danolsen it’s Kara/James and Dansen is Alex/Kelly

Some overhead disclaimers from me:

1. While Dansen and ThunderGrace are often used as examples of white wlw rejecting wlwoc, we’re talking about an entire media landscape and the experience of being in wlw fandom spaces online, whether this hellsite or AO3 or whatever.

There are a lot more ships of varying degrees of development/duration involving women of color out there, across networks. All American has Coop/Patience. I hear Annalise Keating’s storyline is all unfolding around her wlw identity in How to Get Away with Murder. Proven Innocent made me cry with the romance between Madeline and Wren. Charmed has had like four or five romantic interests for Mel Vera. Freya and Keelin got fckn married in The Originals, and they’re still married in the sequel spinoff.

And if you spend enough time looking for wlw content around this site, you’ll see that white wlw are watching whole series and movies even the single gifset of wlw content… but it’s never these couples. “This fandom” and “that fandom”, whatever—but it’s almost never interracial couples or wlwoc. Why? Why do people spend the time writing whole apologisms for Gentleman Jack and the predatory behavior of Anne Lister, but they “just don’t see it” for healthy relationships? Why is it more appealing to watch fascist propaganda ruining the lore of witches, cheering on the love of someone who isn’t even aware that the person she loves is part of a massive campaign to force people to die by suicide en masse?

And we see when media rises and passes from blog to blog, too. Word of mouth is absolutely a thing, even here on the ol’ tumblr, so we see how a single kiss from a series circulates like wildfire and a whole gifset of ThunderGrace gets no notes—over and over and over and ov

2. Whenever this topic pops off in the Discourse, almost without fail, and a white wlw reacts to the above questions, it’s about “chemistry” or an adjacent concept. Again, this isn’t about one single ship—it’s about black women and nonblack poc being told their ships just have “no spark” over and over and over and ov

3. While there is logic to comparing ships in terms of quality, duration, and volume of content in order to assess who reasonably or “rightfully” gets more attention or dedication, that’s all just subjective and honestly sounds like bull to me. See #1.

4. Unless you’re a Trump voter, you’re most likely reading these posts and going, but I’m not racist, and I’m only one person. It’s easy to say. But we are all a product of a racist, xenophobic system, and at the end of the day, you can do what you want, watch what you want, but if you get defensive about these indirect callouts… It’s up to you to put words to why that is.

Ok, parameters set, now I’ll get to SG—

Making up for Danolsen: Honestly I highly doubt that that’s what the writers were trying to do—it’s an entirely different couple? Unless the implication is that they’re trying to treat an interracial couple better, which… is a good thing? I’m of the mind that SG added Azie because the cast would be almost entirely white once Mehcad left. Remember, Kelly Olsen was not introduced as a love interest for Alex, but the actresses thought their chemistry was too good, and they asked for it, which I thought… is exactly what we want from shows. I think the fact that she’s James’ sister is arbitrary, just a means to plug her into the story, and they’ve been winging it since then.

Dansen content in season five: I guess there are multiple elements to this, but for the “no filler” bit—the question is what kind of filler you want. They had lots of romantic moments early in the season, and then continued to be happy and in love. So is the content you want relationship drama or storylines that cut closer to the core of each episode? Because when I go back and look at Sanvers, there was a lot of pain and struggle in that relationship, which is sometimes how they go until people get their bearings, but ya’ll… It doesn’t have to be that way. There was Kelly’s PTSD moment and subsequent breakup with Alex, but they resolved that in one episode and… that’s a good thing, too. They talk about things, openly and truthfully, without shame or strife, and that’s what a good relationship should look like, whether it’s wlw or any other variation.

Like I get that the meat and potatoes of TV romance has always been friction. No story without conflict, right? But I worry that the insistence that Sanvers had so much more chemistry is largely based on the sharp rises and falls, which yeah produce lots of emotions and stirring words and speeches with clauses that you can print on a shirt, but that type of relationship will always burn out, or burn you out, if you don’t figure out how to prevent it from getting to that point.

So what I’m saying is, see #2. Nobody has to do anything or support anyone, but there’s no absolute truth to interpretation of a relationship. I’m sure I am preferential to Dansen over non-canon ships like SuperCorp because I’m old and married and I move through the world as a team with my badass wife, and that’s what I see for them. Kelly brought Alex her lunch and Alex practically squealed with delight even though they definitely woke up in the same bed a little while earlier.

And what’s confusing to me too is, you don’t have to stop shipping Sanvers? That relationship existed, the content is there, the storyline was ended with a padlock? (Folks: Please do not ever stay with someone hoping they will change their mind about having kids) But you can also look at how happy your fave is with her new girl and see it for them? Maybe kudos some fics, reblog a couple gifsets, not tweet about them lacking chemistry?

At the end of the day, a tension here is that the big picture makes fandom spaces feel hostile and dismissive towards fans of color, especially black women. How is someone supposed to feel when they finally have a complex, long lasting wlwoc relationship in front of them, and it’s constantly degraded for “chemistry” reasons while all the white ships, even ones with zero canon content, float to the top and get all the art and content that we are all here to enjoy? The whole issue is that fandom and culture are, and have always been, lenses into society and people’s worlds. It’s a question of empathy and openness and accountability, and it’s not just about one ship versus another.

#asks #dansen #fandom hates black people #long post #fandom stuff #DISCOURSE

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precuredaily · 5 years

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Precure Bonus Day: “Futari wa" Era Overview

Across the last year and 4 months, I rewatched all of the Futari wa Precure branded shows that ran from 2004-2007. These three shows form the foundation of the Pretty Cure franchise that currently spans 16 television series, 27 movies, and multiple stage shows. The end of the FW era marks the beginning of a shift away from the franchise’s roots, so before I dive into Yes! Precure 5 and beyond, I want to take the time to reflect and analyze the past three seasons as a whole. What did they have in common? What aspects did they change? Where did each show succeed and fail, and what common threads are there between these successes and failures?

Hopefully it goes without saying that there will be spoilers, but just in case, I will be discussing each of these series in their entireity, including plot twists and details about their finales.

Futari wa Precure (2004)

Obviously, this is the show that kicked it all off. Toei made this two years after their highly popular Ojamajo Doremi series ended, with the gap year 2003 being filled with a non-magical girl shoujo anime called Ashita no Nadja. I don’t think they meant to start a franchise, and honestly I don’t think they even meant to make it a year-long show. The plot wraps up pretty nicely in episode 26: Nagisa and Honoka have defeated all the henchmen and the main villain and they can return to their normal lives, having become great friends along the way. However, it was popular and the merchandise sold well, so they continued it. At least that’s my theory, maybe it really was meant to be an annual show, but the back half feels extremely stagnant and not particularly connected to the first half. They changed the objective, changed the villains, and the animation quality went down the toilet.

Nonetheless, it established important concepts for this era: most obviously, the two-girl team. It’s in the title: “We Two are Pretty Cure” (there’s a reason you don’t see it translated much, lol) The two girls also come from different walks of life, and would probably not have much reason to interact if it weren’t for being Precure. This first season in particular establishes something of a yin-yang theme with the two. Short hair and long hair, sporty and scientific, middle class and upper class, black and white. While less prominent, this idea of girls from diverse backgrounds coming together will remain a theme well beyond the FW era, to the point where the current (as of this writing) team consists of two space aliens. A key element of the two-girl teams is that they have to transform together. They cannot operate as individuals; they are a pair and they are strongest when they work together. From a writing standpoint, this is an excellent idea that allows for a lot of scenarios that can test and strengthen their partnership.

Another big aspect of FWPC is the supporting cast that flesh out the world. Nagisa and Honoka have friends other than each other, who sometimes have their own story arcs despite not being the main characters. Shiho stands out from this series, as we saw her develop and explore an interest in theater, but possibly the unexpected breakout character was Odajima Yuka. I’m getting ahead of myself, because she didn’t really click with me until her single appearance in Max Heart, but that wouldn’t have been meaningful without her sporadic presence in this show. There are also a half dozen other characters who get a focus episode and then recur in the background throughout the show, and I love the consistency. The girls have love interests and we get to see them wrestle with their feelings. It all makes the girls feel more ordinary, despite their secret lives as superheroes. They have normal lives with normal problems. The girls aren’t the center of the universe, they just happen to be the focus of the show, and there are lots of other people that also inhabit it, going about their lives, whose paths sometimes cross with the main characters’.

FWPC established a bit of a trend for the villain faction: they were fronted by a big, giant monster of literal darkness and each of the subordinate generals has a portion of the macguffin. Each general had a gimmick in how they plotted and attacked, be it brute force, overwrought scheming, subterfuge, or infiltration. The inevitable result of this was that some villains felt more interesting than each other, of course. Pisard and Gekidrago were nothing but archetypes. Poisony had a personality, because she played off of her brother Kiriya, and he had his own arc where he learned to appreciate the good side of humanity. Ilkubo combines aspects of several of them, being extremely powerful and basically the Dark King’s right hand, but for all his gesturing he doesn’t amount to much. The Three Seeds of Darkness from the second half of the show have less going for them. They have personality quirks but they’re not particularly memorable as characters. A lot of their time was spent sitting around saying “We need to find the macguffin.” Their most interesting moment was when they realized that they would be consumed by the Dark King, and tried to betray him (unsuccessfully), otherwise they were just kind of there to pad out the series.

Aside from the down-to-earth nature of the characters and the world, the other biggest element that FW gives us, which the series became famous for, is the fighting. The show’s director, Nishio Daisuke, had recently come off of work on the Dragon Ball series, and he went into Precure with the mindset that “girls like action too.” The combat is physical, the girls kick and punch the monsters rather than fighting with magic wands or special attacks, except for the finisher. This set Precure apart from the crowd and I honestly think it was a big contributor to its early success. It offered little girls something they didn’t often get without branching out into the other Sunday morning offerings, which were targeted at boys. Nishio was good at directing action and he made the fights entertaining to watch.

The major failures of FWPC are some truncated character arcs. Kiriya deserved better than to be forgotten halfway through the series, only to come back as something of a guiding spirit at the end and then die an unsatisfying death. Yumiko (the lacrosse captain) was completely forgettable despite the show trying to make her a notable recurring character. Some of the early guest characters of the week had really lame reasons to exist, like Mayu (the girl who looked like Nagisa). The Seeds of Darkness were utterly lame villains so the second half of the show feels less compelling than the first half. Also, the ending is just kind of strange. Mipple, Mepple, and Porun go to sleep seemingly forever, and Nagisa and Honoka’s graduation feels bittersweet when they think about that and see a boy that looks like Kiriya. I’m still not sure if the ending was so sad because they knew the sequel was coming or despite it, so if it’s the former, it’s a strange choice that only kinda works if they knew that the audience knew that Max Heart would be starting the next week and all the sad stuff would be undone. If it’s the latter, then it’s a bold choice to have a downer ending that was undercut by the show’s own popularity. Either way, I don’t think it was effective given the direction Max Heart took. Without Max Heart I’d consider it strong, but I can’t ignore the effect of the sequel. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Futari wa Precure Max Heart (2005)

Max Heart is an interesting animal. As the sequel to a fairly closed-ended series, it has to invent a reason to exist and uh.... it doesn’t do that very well. The Dark King apparently attacked the Queen of Light before his defeat, and now a few months later she dies and splits into her life, heart, and 12 wills, each of which are marketable in their own way. It essentially turns into another Macguffin quest, but the girls aren’t even actively seeking out the Heartiels, they just come to them. And unlike FWPC’s quest which wrapped up in the first half of that show, they stretch this one out for the entire season, so it gets tiring. That’s my big criticism of MH, but it’s not all bad.

Nagisa and Honoka were enjoyable characters in the first season and I am beyond delighted to get to spend another year with them. This season sees them deepening their friendship as they deal with their new leadership positions in their clubs, offering advice to underclassmen who are struggling with issues they dealt with in the first season, and further exploring Nagisa’s romantic feelings. She finally confesses to Fuji-P at the end of the show, even if he doesn’t actually hear her and consequently nothing comes from it. Season 1 Nagisa would never have gotten that far. Honoka’s development is rather subdued. She learns how to be a good club leader, and in episode 17 she helps push the club out of safe territory for the sake of their passion, but there’s really not much else to be said. She acts as Nagisa’s life coach sometimes when she has anxiety about her future, and helps her confess to Fuji-P, but she really does take a backseat this season next to Hikari. With that said, let’s talk about Hikari!

Hikari is, of course, a new character for this show, and thus her character arc is the most prominent of the trio. She also has more room to grow, since she starts out as basically an empty shell. Even if she is the Queen’s Life, she fully develops into her own person with her own life, friends, interests, and personality. Her overall kindness is probably a side effect of the Queen but she’s still not the Queen. She goes to school, makes friends, gets a job, builds a family, and generally discovers the joy of life. She’s a really enjoyable character to follow, because her journey isn’t just friendship like Nagisa and Honoka’s was, but becoming human. The tragic irony of her character is that the more of an individual person she becomes, the closer the Queen’s resurrection is, which means losing Hikari, and by rights this should form the backbone of the show’s conflict, but they don’t really seem to get this until the last quarter. They raise the question periodically but they don’t give it the discussion it deserves, and that’s a major weakness of the series. They ignore the problem until they can’t anymore. If they had given the audience the sense that this was intentional, that they were actively ignoring the matter, then it could have been interesting. Unfortunately, we never get the sense that Nagisa and Honoka were deliberately ignoring the inevitable question, and it seemed more like they just didn’t care.

As Shiny Luminous, Hikari somewhat changes the team dynamic, but she’s also not just a third fighter like Black and White. She is less combative, except when she has to be, and instead her abilities are more support-oriented. She stays back and activates barriers, slows down the enemy’s movements, and powers up Black and White. Her lack of combat skills means that sometimes Black and White have to protect or save her during fights, which interrupts the flow of battle and can make the fights a bit more drawn out than in the first season. I appreciate what they were trying to do by adding Luminous, and I am not in any way calling her a bad addition to the team, but her particular skills aren’t a very good fit for the style of fights that this show was built on. A lot of times she hides away from fights instead of transforming, making her more vulnerable. It seems like the staff wrote themselves into a corner with that aspect of her, and weren’t sure how to properly utilize her abilities.

The villains in Max Heart are an odd bunch. They’re slightly more memorable than the Seeds of Darkness, but no more competent. Their fights are meaningless, because Baldez is the only one who understands what’s going on with Hikari and Hikaru and the Dark King’s resurrection, and he doesn’t explain anything to the other three, so sometimes they just straight up defy his orders because he hasn’t told them what their objective is. I’m fine with villain infighting but I want there to be a good reason, a clash of ideals or something, not just straight up lack of communication. They have personalities, but that doesn’t play into their fighting styles in any meaningful way. The most interesting thing about them is how they form a family around Hikaru, and try to nurture and protect him while he grows. It brings out the soft side in some of them at home, and causes them to lash out in anger if he comes in contact with the girls somehow. Watching how Hikaru grows and parallels Hikari’s growth was a nice subplot. I’ve never been certain if the audience was supposed to recognize that he was the Dark King’s life before they reveal it in the series, but I really hope they were. Hikaru goes from a carefree kid content with living in the manor to wanting to get out of the house and see more of the world, which leads him into contact with Hikari on a few occasions, spiking each of their innate powers. Since he’s younger, though, he never reaches Hikari’s level of emotional maturity, which actually makes him a little more tragic because he’s just a little kid who unknowingly hosts this great evil. He just wants to do his own thing. Fortunately, in the end he is able to have a life with Hikari and Akane, even after the Dark King is destroyed. Which brings me to.....

Baldez. The final arc where Baldez revives the Dark King and then reveals that he himself now has the power of the Dark King is a neat subversion on expectations. He was always the most mysterious villain of the bunch, he was absent for half of the series and when he was around he played his cards close to his chest. He encouraged Hikaru’s growth by stoking Hikari’s development, and got in the way of Uraganos, Circulas, and Viblis when they tried to defeat her outright. He was a large threat to the girls whenever he did appear, and in a lot of aspects he seems like a precursor to Gohyaan. Ultimately though I can’t say he left a big impression. Most of the time he sat around the mansion saying “They’re developing nicely, the Dark King’s revival is soon....” and rarely set foot on the battlefield. He had no personality to speak of, and didn’t answer to anybody, so he was just flat and boring.

The next thing I want to discuss about Max Heart are some continuing storylines. I discussed the evolution of Nagisa and Honoka’s characters, but their friends get some further development as well. Shiho comes to mind, of course. In the first season she flexed her creative muscles by directing the action version of Romeo and Juliet for the cultural festival. In the sequel she goes a step further, deciding that she wants to be a Hollywood movie director, and chooses to incorporate special effects into their school play. It’s not a lot, but since not a lot of the side characters even get a character arc, it sticks out. However, there’s one character from the first series who didn’t get much to work with who suddenly is a lot more interesting when she recurs in this season, and that is Odajima Yuka, which is especially surprising since she only appeared in one episode, but due to it, all her past appearances suddenly make more sense. This is the episode where she, as a high schooler, joins the middle school science and lacrosse teams on their annual retreat, and ends up challenging Nagisa in a game. She gets out there, works her hardest at a sport she’s never played, and goes toe to toe with the team’s star player. They never outright say this, but what Yuka needed was to be challenged, to compete against somebody at her level. In all of her encounters, Nagisa is the only person who can outrun her. Nagisa may be clumsy at times, but she excels at athletics and gives Yuka the challenge she craves. In fact I think Yuka even envied Nagisa’s laid-back lifestyle. It is remarkable to me that the writers brought her back for Max Heart at all, and saw fit to conclude her story. She was never an important character, but she was memorable, largely because of this season. Later seasons with more main characters tend to sideline their supporting cast, so it’s nice that a minor character gets this kind of focus.

Lastly, there was some attempt to develop Akane early on. There was a three episode arc where a man from her old job stopped by and the girls all thought he was trying to pull her back into an office job. In the end, she declined his offer but he was still interested in dating her. She seemed to take to the idea, and there had been some hints that she wanted to get married and have kids someday, but after this arc, her potential suitor was never seen again and nothing more ever came out of it, beyond her effectively adopting Hikari and Hikaru as her children. It would be interesting to see adult romance play out, even in the background. The first season had Ms. Yoshimi getting married but we never saw any of her life outside the classroom, so giving Akane a little bit more spotlight would have been nice. Sadly, this was not the direction the show took.

Max Heart also got the theatrical treatment, and the movies were honestly very good. Famously, it’s the only series to get two movies, because the first film was originally intended to be just a FWPC film. They share a premise of whisking the girls off to a different land to resolve a problem that the locals are having, and they have their friendship tested along the way before coming out as better and stronger friends than before, acquiring exclusive new forms to defeat the villains. These would become signature elements of all Precure movies.

As I said earlier, the ending to FWPC was very finite, and that was strange juxtaposed to the fact that there was an imminent second season. There’s some strange irony, then, that the finale to Max Heart, the final series that will ever follow this cast of characters, feels a lot more open. It ties off loose ends, of course, and Nagisa and Honoka graduate from middle school, but while it’s implied that Mepple and Mipple go to sleep again, and Hikari is gone after reviving the Queen, less than two minutes pass for the viewer before they find out she and Hikaru are living with Akane, and that all their fairies are awake and as energetic as ever. Even though there ultimately weren’t any shows with these characters, there is room for more. Could they have known what the franchise would become? Could they have had any idea that these characters would still be popular 15 years later?

Futari wa Precure Splash Star (2006)

Splash Star is of course the first full reboot. I don’t know why, maybe they didn’t think they could continue the story of Nagisa and Honoka into high school. Could’ve been neat, but I’ll save the “what ifs” for another time. It rebooted the series, and that set a precedent for shows to follow. It keeps the two girl dynamic of course, and the visual similarities are hard to ignore, but those are fairly superficial, and it manages to find its own identity while improving on the ideas of the prior shows. The theme of the show changes from yin and yang to nature, and that affects everything: the aesthetics of the heroines and villains, the objectives they fight for, and most especially the combat style.

Once again, one girl is athletic while the other has a more academic hobby. Saki has two major friends on the softball team where Nagisa had two major friends on the lacrosse team, but Mai’s companion in the art club is less notable than Yuriko was to Honoka. This time they attend a coed school, and their circle of friends includes a couple of boys, as well as another girl who isn’t a member of either of their teams. Splash Star does the best job at managing its recurring and ensemble cast out of these three seasons. Characters are introduced, have their focus episode, and continue to make notable appearances, often hanging out with the main characters. Kenta even helped Miyasako find a hobby outside of being a class representative. They keep the number of recurring characters lower than FW/MH, use them in better roles, and the result is that they’re better developed and remembered. The romance plots are less fleshed out than in FW, but that’s about the only drawback. Also, Saki and Mai’s relationship with each other is much more immediate. Nagisa and Honoka took a few episodes to warm up to each other and only really cemented their friendship after a big fight, but Saki and Mai are fast friends by the second episode, and all attempts by the villains to introduce discord just backfire because they have absolute trust in each other.

The villains are also extremely fun and memorable. Whether you like them or not, they leave a distinct impression, much like the generals in the first half of FW. They have unique designs, quirky personalities, and at the end of the series we get to see them interact with each other. Karehaan was fairly straight-laced and I don’t like him much. Moerumba has a spicy personality, his problem is his short-sightedness. Dorodoron gets a laugh from me for being so timid. He might have been boring on his own, but he got to spitball with the Kiryuus, which helped him a lot. Miss Shitataare is powerful and cocky but completely inept. Kintolesky was easily my favorite of the lot, being honorable and straightforward and impeccably muscular. Aside from Karehaan’s overall blandness their biggest problem is not having enough cross talk with each other, with that being saved for their revival arc. Later shows do this a lot more often and better, thankfully.

Speaking of villains, however, Gohyaan stands out. He kind of serves multiple roles as both the comic relief of the villains, like the Zakenna Butlers, and as the right hand to the big bad. He spends most of his time sucking up to Akudaikaan, but occasionally he does go out on the field and demonstrates how powerful he actually is. His memorable personality and the twist where he reveals he’s the mastermind all make him a welcome addition. And just to reiterate, that twist had very minimal foreshadowing! Akudaikaan himself was the opposite, very not memorable, he’s blander than the Dark King, and that’s no easy feat. The most interesting thing about him is his physical design, as rather than being an amorphous blob like the Dark King, he has a defined face and a robe. His head resembles a Samurai helmet and a demon mask, and he has fire in his eyes. It’s a shame this theme didn’t really amount to anything.

Michiru and Kaoru’s redemption arc has to be the highlight of the show. The writers took some cues from Kiriya’s similar storyline in the first show but they gave the sisters a lot more time in the limelight, which allowed their characters to be better fleshed out. Over the course of the second quarter of the show, we get to see these girls go from a faux friendship with Saki and Mai into a legitimate one, because they actually listened and learned about the beauty of the natural world. They start to understand what it means to be cared for, to be appreciated for who you are, and not have your value be dependent on what you can provide for someone else. If more villains would take the time to see things from the perspective of the people they’re trying to defeat, they might also understand this, and truly some of them do. We’ll explore several types of redeemed villains in the shows to come, and I look forward to comparing and contrasting them with this. The biggest problem I have with the Kiryuus is that they were absent between episodes 25 and 41, and barely mentioned. Mai and Saki worried for them, and Miss Shitataare gave them hints that they were still alive, but it was sad to see them shoved aside for half the show with no particular explanation being given about what Gohyaan was doing with them. That’s my only major strike against Splash Star.

The fighting in the series is still punchy, but this time the spirits spice things up. There’s bursts of spirit energy whenever they kick and punch, they can concentrate the spirit power in certain parts of their bodies to jump farther, punch harder, and block attacks. As Bright and Windy they have elemental attacks using the light and wind. It’s an evolution of what the first series started, and I enjoy it. Finally, the victories feel meaningful, because every battle they get the reward of a Miracle Drop. Every seven episodes or so they collect enough drops to revive a fountain, and Princess Filia grows more and more complete. There is constant progress throughout the series, so even the slow parts of the show feel meaningful.

Of course, the series got a movie, and it was very similar to the prior two in overall plot: Tension arises between the two, they’re thrust into another world before they can resolve their feelings, the villain takes advantage of their personal conflict to overpower them, they get separated, then they make up with each other and come together stronger to defeat the villain. The closes they get to a movie form in this one is a glowing outline surrounded by the spirits of the zodiac, somewhat bucking the trend, but it’s an excellent movie. That really isn’t something I can say about all of them, so I’m grateful that these early films are so strong.

Splash Star has been described as the perfection of the Futari wa formula, and overall I have to agree. Of the three shows, it is the most consistent in all regards. There’s constant progression, character growth, meaningful supporting characters who you really sympathize with, and a fun and enjoyable cast of both heroes and villains. The first half of FWPC may be more fun, but the second half drags it down. Max Heart as a whole isn’t really sure where it wants to go. Splash Star sets a destination and arrives there at the right time, with some twists and turns along the way. I strongly recommend it to anyone trying to get into the series for the first time.

Unfortunately, despite Splash Star being arguably the best of the three seasons (both Eastern and Western fans ranked it above Max Heart), it tanked in sales after its first quarter, so it was decided that, if the franchise was going to continue, they needed a new look. Thus, they turned to the most enduringly popular magical girl series around for inspiration for their next season. But that’s a story for later.

Analysis

The most obvious shared elements between the three shows is the two-girl team, which they each used slightly differently. In FWPC, it’s the two of them against the world. That’s it. Max Heart switches things up with a third hero, who is not combative, but supports them, and they have to protect her at times, sidetracking their fights. Splash Star goes as far as to introduce two more fighters whose power stems from the darkness but they use it for good. They help the Cures out and the Cures help them out, but it’s Bloom and Egret at the core. The key aspect of this period of Precure is that the duo are regular girls who can only transform when they’re together, and that their powers become stronger when their feelings are in harmony. The shows each explore the pros and cons of this setup, concluding that their teamwork is the most powerful force in the word, and this is quite possibly the best thing to come out of this period of the series. The thing I especially like, however, is that being Pretty Cures means that the protagonists have an especially close bond with each other, moreso than their other friends. Since they have to transform and work together, they more intimately understand each other, and they share experiences their other friends will never know about. They look out for each other in every aspect of their daily lives, they have absolute trust in each other, and they will go through hell to protect each other. Pretty Cure’s most powerful weapon is friendship.

As far as their individual personalities go, Saki tends to be more optimistic than her counterpart. Nagisa is lovable and relatable as all heck, but she had kind of a pessimistic view of the world at times. It’s evident even in their catchphrases: Nagisa always says “I can’t believe this!” while Saki proclaims she’s “In top form!” Neither of them would ever hesitate to help a friend, and especially their partner, but during the daily grind Nagisa is more likely to be upset at her circumstances. Meanwhile, Honoka and Mai are even more dissimilar to each other. Honoka has a scientific mind, she’s very astute and good at picking up details. She kind of struggles with making friends but she tries to help people out, always, especially when they don’t want to help themselves. She puts up with a lot of crap but she will chew you out in the name of making you a better person. Mai, however, is observant but she tends to hyperfocus on one thing while drawing and space out a lot. She is a little timid but not afraid to express when she’s upset. Both Mai and Honoka serve to temper and balance out their more energetic partner, serving as the voice of reason when they get heated, and in general keeping them grounded. I love how, despite the differences in their friendships, both sets of partners help to round each other out and make each other better people. It’s a testament to what a good friend can do for you, and of course the central motif of the shows.

Consequently, other friendships form a big part of these shows, too. The small cast means that the girls have friends besides each other, and in each series we see how the protagonists influence their friends, their friends influence them, and we even get to see Hikari make new friends of her own. Again, all the shows handle this well, and it’s something that will be missed next season, since the larger team size means their friendships are more insular. Having friends outside the team grounds the shows in relatable situations as the protagonists go about their daily lives, hanging out with their friends who become beloved characters and get story arcs of their own. Shiho, Rina, Yuriko, Nao, Miu, Hitomi, Yuuko, Kenta, Miyasako, and Kayo are all memorable and important pillars of the shows. They encourage the leads when necessary, get into hijinks with them, explore their own interests, hang out, and have fun together. This also allows conflicts to be resolved without the Precure. In most superhero media the central conflict of the episode is between people’s feelings or beliefs rather than a physical altercation, but the fight usually resolves things somehow, while in Precure, since the combatants are often not the ones with a disagreement, it instead helps them figure out how to help their friends resolve their troubles.

Since these are the stories of regular girls dealing with regular adolescent issues, love is not a strange subject. Nagisa and Saki each had crushes on slightly older boys in their shows, and they handle it remarkably similarly. They get flustered, embarrassed, and have trouble even speaking to their partner about it. However, Honoka is shrewd enough to discern Nagisa’s feelings, while Mai never learns that Saki has a crush on her brother. The writers even approach their romances differently. Nagisa tends to be more proactive in exploring her feelings. She makes active efforts to make gifts for Fuji-P and confess her love to him, ultimately culminating in that fateful Max Heart Christmas episode where she yells it for all the world (but him) to hear. Meanwhile, Saki tended to just admire Kazuya from a distance, except when he came to her. She got jealous when it appeared he had a girlfriend, but she never acted on her affections in a direct way. I theorized that Fuji-P might actually suspect Nagisa’s feelings, and possibly share them, but he wants her to be ready to tell him. Meanwhile, as far as we can tell, while Kazuya finds Saki interesting, he doesn’t really see her as anything more than a friend. I like these different representations of young love, they show how much or how little of a priority it can have in someone’s life.

Famously, Honoka also got a brief pseudo-romance with Kiriya. She helped him grow as a person, he challenged some of her overbearing ways, but they clearly respected each other. She was distraught when he was taken back to the Dusk Zone, and that was one of the most heartfelt episodes in the entire series so far. There were echoes of his impact on her in the rest of the first series, but I never felt like they explored that story to its full potential, and he was not even mentioned in Max Heart. Mai never got a corresponding love interest, and Hikari’s love was more familial: for Nagisa and Honoka as her partners, for Akane as her guardian, and for Hikaru as the only person who could possibly understand her existential crisis. She learned about romantic love but never experienced it herself, which is fine. Girl has enough to worry about as it is.

The physical fighting pioneered in FWPC set the groundwork for the rest of the series, and you can see it slightly evolve over the course of these three shows. While FW is pure punching and kicking except for finishing moves, Max Heart introduces a character with support spells to help the team, and Splash Star gives the combat a bit of flair and style with the spirit trails and elemental attacks. Each show has carved out its own little niche, and I really think that’s one of the fascinating elements of the series. YPC5 will usher in special weapons, which are a genre staple that the original trilogy avoided. That will become standard for all series going forward, so these three shows with their almost entirely unarmed battles are a true highlight of early Precure to me. They manage to keep the fights interesting, always, it’s not just straightforward sparring. The girls do a lot of jumping around, flipping, fighting in sync with each other or tag-teaming. They always have to find weaknesses in monsters that are designed specifically to be hard to beat. Sometimes they’re fast, other times armored, or they’re heavily offensive, they have special abilities of their own, or the commander is threatening someone else. Always, the heroines find an innovative way to defeat their opponent and save the day in a visually exciting manner.

When it’s not showcasing awesome girls fighting for friendship and love, Precure is about selling toys. Bandai has a long history of designing toys to coincide with Toei’s Sunday morning shows, and they put their experience to work here. Nonetheless, they had some difficulty with the rather nondescript themes of the early shows, so the toys sometimes come across as very out-of-place. The transformation toys are generally cutesy enough to pass, the powerup braces stand out, the mid-season fairy’s compact forms are extremely gaudy (ESPECIALLY the Splash Commune, it’s literally just a computer in a show about nature), and the macguffin storage object of each show (Prism Hopish, Queen Chairect, Fairy Carafe) starts a proud Precure tradition of being a large, expensive toy first and a sacred artifact later. Additionally, there’s at least one object in each show that is Precure-branded merch in the real world which has no combat use and is forced into the plot of one episode before being quickly forgotten. As the years go on, the toys will be more unified with the theme of the show, and we’ll see some new patterns emerge.

One last element I realize that I forgot to bring up before now, but that becomes a franchise trend, is a trademark food and a restaurant of sorts. In FWPC and Max Heart, of course, their food of choice is takoyaki from Akane’s Tako Stand, where Hikari winds up working in Max Heart. Splash Star’s restaurant is Panpaka PAN, the Hyuuga family bakery, and their signature food is chocolate coronets. The restaurant or food stand is always a recurring location, where the girls and their friends often meet to talk and hang out and eat some delicious food. This is certainly not exclusive to Precure, or even the magical girl genre, as having recurring locations saves on the budget, both in animation and live-action, and food is an easy way to get people to congregate. Nonetheless, it’s sort of brought up in Precure All Stars, and there’s some truly great food ahead of us, so I wanted to point out that the trend goes all the way to the start of the series.

Obviously, 2004′s Futari wa Precure wasn’t intended to kick off a franchise, so when it got popular they stuck to what they knew for the second season. I’m not sure why they didn’t take the Doremi approach and keep aging them up a year for more seasons, but perhaps they thought they had exhausted the storytelling potential of the original cast and realized that it had franchise potential if they followed the annual reboot model of other superhero shows. The biggest issues with the first two shows are pacing, which is fixed in Splash Star, and you can see them tweaking and refining the formula in other ways through the three shows as well. If I had to describe this era in a word, relative to the overall franchise, it would be innovative. While the two-girl partnership would take a break for a few years after this, these shows laid the foundation for plot structure, villain organization, toy integration, and combat that would be utilized and enhanced by the rest of the franchise, so it’s cool to trace the roots of many Precure conventions back to their origins. What began as a humble action show for girls meant to sell some toys got popular, and continued past its intended conclusion. It was even referenced in other pop culture of the time.

Powerpuff Girls Z (2006)

The series had gotten the attention of the masses and was a proven success. We got five memorable and lovable heroines, a bunch of beloved supporting characters, some wonderful villains, and even some welcoming food stands. Of course, there were bumps in the road. The series was still finding its footing during this period, and will continue to do so as we head into Yes 5, but without these three shows laying the groundwork for the franchise, I might not be here talking about it.

That’s my ode to the Futari Wa era of Precure, I hope you enjoyed it, I’m sorry that it took so long to get out. Look forward to Yes! Precure 5 reviews coming your way shortly, and remember:

Your best! My best! Ups and downs! Together We are Pretty Cure!

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Futari wa Precure #Futari wa Precure Max Heart #Futari wa Precure Splash Star #Precure Bonus Day #PCD Bonus

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labelma · 4 years

Text

Say Goodbye to My Demons and All My Break Evens

Sequel to Carry Me Home in Good Health

Read here on ao3

Sometimes you just have a bad day.

Maybe you miss your alarm and you don’t have time to eat breakfast, or maybe your boss scolds you at work.

Or maybe you get assaulted by a group of homophobic douchebags, watch a man get stabbed and find out said man married your ex-boyfriend when the ex arrives at the scene in an ambulance.

Yeah, that sure was an eventful day.

At the time that it happened, Trevor was just glad someone had come to his aid. All too often people see larger men ganging up on a smaller guy and they walk on by, pretending it never happened. Trevor isn’t afraid to fight back, but well, he isn’t exactly tall or bulky. He doesn’t want to think about what could have happened had Mickey not thrown himself into the fight.

And then he got stabbed because of it.

So it’s safe to say Trevor feels a little bad. The guy got stabbed because he came to Trevor’s aid, and well, he wants to thank him somehow.

It’s just that there’s the nagging awkwardness of Mickey being married to Ian Gallagher.

Of course Trevor has long since moved on from Ian. Two years removed, he can look back and recognize that their relationship was doomed from the beginning, for various reasons, but not least of all because Ian was still in love with someone else.

When Ian almost ran off to Mexico with his escaped convict ex boyfriend, Trevor pretty much gathered that Ian was never going to be as committed to anyone as he was to Mickey.

And Trevor likes to think he’s a non judgemental person, but he had already formed an image in his head of Mickey, before he’d ever met him, and he does think he’s somewhat justified, after all, the first time he learned of Mickey by name, it was from the cops informing Ian he had escaped from prison.

In his head Mickey was not the kind of person to jump to the aid of a complete stranger. He was not the kind of person to talk about his husband with a fond look on his face, or caress his face as gently as he did.

Now Trevor’s image of Mickey seems to have flipped on its head. If he’s honest, despite the fact that he has very much moved on, there’s a small part of him that harbored a bit of ill will to the man who broke up his relationship with Ian.

But well, he doesn’t think he feels that way anymore.

Seeing them together, seeing the way Ian’s face switched from scared, to worried, to relieved within the space of seconds, and the way they held their foreheads together, breathing each other in, he can’t help thinking that maybe everything worked out in the end.

So yeah, he feels like he needs to thank Mickey.

And that’s why he finds himself frantically fanning his smoking oven while the fire alarm blares because he forgot to take the cookies out of the oven.

Another one of his kids got kicked out of their foster home and he was already at capacity at the shelter. He’d spent all morning calling around to other shelters to see if they could take the kid in, but no luck yet.

Most of the kids he worked with came from broken and neglectful homes, dealt with abject poverty, childhood abuse, sexual assault, mental illness, sometimes all of it together. As a social worker, he’s been trained to recognize the signs of these things, and he liked to think he was at least competent at his job.

Which is why he can’t believe all the signs flew right over his head when it came to Ian.

He realized it some time after his relationship with Ian crashed and burned, that maybe Ian’s background was far more similar to the kids he worked with than himself.

Ian was so confident and competent when they first met. He was interesting, had an impressive job, and he was hot as hell. He forgave all of Ian’s missteps about Trevor’s gender identity because it was clear he simply had never learned, and Trevor took great pleasure in introducing Ian to a whole world he seemed to have never considered before.

Still, he should have seen it. He should have recognized Ian’s desperation to please as a symptom of childhood grooming. He should have made the connection between Ian’s age, and his stories of working the back rooms at a gay club and realized Ian must have been underage at the time.

He’d been so caught up in memories of his own trauma, that when he met Ian’s mother, and saw Ian’s pain he should have been more sympathetic.

He should have seen it all.

And he does feel bad. He’ll never say it, but there’s a part of him that feels guilty. Like maybe it was his fault that Ian ended up at the vanguard of a movement he couldn’t control and eventually in prison.

But the larger part tells him he shouldn’t feel bad. Ian was an adult. An adult who stopped taking his antipsychotics, and made his own bad decisions. That’s the part of him he chooses to listen to.

And at the end of the day, he was glad to get a clean break from the man who broke his heart, and who he knew would never truly be his.

The fire alarm finally stops going off, but the cookies are beyond saving. Trevor sighs and decides to just go to the store.

That’s how he finds himself standing on the Gallagher front porch, a place he never thought he’d see again, holding a pre-wrapped bowl of produce, willing himself to knock on the door.

It’s a Sunday, so while he really has no idea what the Gallagher work schedules are like, he figures someone will be home.

Finally he knocks on the door, holding the fruit bowl to his chest with his right arm.

For a while, nothing happens. With how many people were in and out of this house on a daily basis, someone has to be home. Right when Trevor is considering knocking again, the door swings open slowly.

Trevor looks down to find a small red headed child staring up at him. She’s got a finger digging up her nose, and she’s considering him with her big green eyes.

Trevor remembers when he dated Ian that his little sister had a child, a reality which seemed to cause much tension for the Gallaghers.

She’s still looking at him, totally silent and Trevor isn’t quite sure what to do. Should he leave and come back later? Drop the basket with a note?

He’s saved from making a decision by a sleepy, very adult voice coming from the region of the couch.

“Franny, how many times have I told you not to open the door for strangers?”

A concerned looking Mickey Milkovich appears, hand on the girl’s shoulder. His expression calms when he sees Trevor but then his eyebrows knit in confusion.

“Um, if you want to talk to Ian, he’s at work.”

If Trevor had to guess which family member would be left home to watch the toddler, he wouldn’t have guessed Mickey, but his assumptions up until now have all been wrong so he guesses he should just stop assuming entirely.

“No actually, I’m here for you. I, uh, I wanted to thank you. For helping me the other day. And you know, check in, make sure you were okay.”

He thrusts the fruit bowl towards Mickey, who doesn’t immediately grab it.

The girl, Franny wanders off, evidently bored by the awkward conversation happening.

Mickey reaches for the bowl, considering it with raised eyebrows.

“So you’re the guy who turned my husband onto Kind bars?”

And the situation is so damn weird, Trevor can’t help himself when he starts laughing, and can’t stop.

Mickey looks bewildered for a moment, but chuckles eventually. He steps back.

“Do you uh, want to come in for coffee?”

And Trevor’s day can’t really get any weirder at this point so why the hell not.

He follows Mickey through the living room, which looks quite a bit cleaner than it ever did before. Franny is sitting on the couch, enthralled by some cartoon playing on the television.

They enter the kitchen to find a young black boy who must be Liam asleep, head on a pile of papers.

Mickey walks towards him, and shakes his shoulder gently.

“Get up punk, you gotta finish your homework.”

The boy lifts his head blinking the sleep out of his eyes and groans. Mickey laughs and pours him a glass of juice, which Liam dutifully sips from. His eyes turn to Trevor, first unrecognizing, but then his expression clears.

Trevor isn’t quite sure if Liam remembers him, so he decides to introduce himself anyways.

“Hey Liam, I’m Trevor, I used to be a friend of Ian’s.”

“I remember. You used to date him.” He says matter of factly before turning back to the papers on the table and beginning to write.

Mickey clears his throat,

“So, uh, coffee?”

“Sure, I’ll take it black.”

Mickey nods and begins preparing two mugs. Trevor hesitates for a second before moving to sit at the table with Liam who doesn’t even look up from his work.

Mickey sits across from Trevor and slides a mug to him. He takes it but decides to let it cool before taking a sip.

“So how are you doing?” He asks, motioning towards Mickey’s midriff. The motion is unclear, but Mickey understands.

“I’m doin’ okay. The knife didn’t hit anything important, I just needed some stitches and antibiotics. It only hurts if I move too suddenly.”

Trevor makes a noise of sympathy.

“And you like, had your tetanus shot and everything?”

“Are you kidding?” Mickey scoffs, “in this neighborhood? You bet your ass my tetanus is up to date.”

Trevor nods, and the conversation stalls, silence broken only by the scratching of Liam’s pen on paper.

“And you? Are you okay?” Asks Mickey genuinely.

“Me? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I’m used to it honestly.”

Mickey grunts.

Trevor has never been one to hold his tongue, and so even though he probably shouldn’t, he asks, “Why did you help me? That day I was being attacked? Why did you jump in when you didn’t know me?”

The room is quiet, even the sound of the pen has stopped, Liam evidently interested in the conversation happening in front of him.

Mickey lets out a breath and leans back in his chair, considering.

“I don’t know, I didn’t really think about it at the time. I guess I just know what it’s like to get beat on for being gay.”

And this has to be the biggest revelation for Trevor, that Mickey is a good person. The kind of person who watches his four year old niece, who assists his brother in law with homework, who helps out someone on the street without thinking.

“You know, you really aren’t what I expected you to be,” Says Trevor earnestly.

Mickey huffs out a laugh.

“Yeah I’m not surprised. You probably thought I was some violent thug right?”

“Honestly? Yeah I did. No offense.”

Mickey laughs again, and Trevor thinks that he has a nice smile.

“None taken. You’re not wrong. That’s what I was raised to be. My father was a neo-nazi, organized crime was the family trade.”

Mickey is still relaxed, but the information is jarring to Trevor. A gay kid being raised by a neo-nazi sounds like one of the worst possible situations he can imagine.

“Jesus, and I thought my childhood was rough. I mean, it’s never easy to be transgender, but my parents got used to it eventually. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be raised by someone like that.”

Mickey shrugs, but Trevor can see that some tension has crept into his jaw.

“It sucked, there’s no point sugar coating it. My dad was, still is, a piece of shit, I grew up hating myself, it took a lot of work to unlearn,” his face breaks into a small smile, “I got to where I am today thanks to Ian. I mean, if it wasn’t for him I’d be dead or in prison. Growing up I never could have imagined I would be happily married to a man, with a stable, legal income, but here I am.”

Trevor smiles, and he finds that what he says next is not remotely a lie.

“I really am happy for you guys. I mean, Ian and I weren’t right for each other, and not just because he was still in love with you the whole time we were together. Our backgrounds are so different, it just wouldn’t have worked.”

Mickey scratches his eyebrow, clearly fighting with himself over whether to say something. But he does eventually speak.

“You know, I am sorry about how things went down when you guys were together. Like I know Ian and I had history, but it always sucks getting cheated on, and it was partially my fault. I knew he was dating someone when I asked him to come with me to Mexico.”

“I forgive you,” says Trevor, and he realizes that he does, “I don’t know exactly what happened with you two, but if not even prison, Mexico, and a neo-nazi father could keep you apart, it’s clearly meant to be. I’m glad you have each other.”

Mickey smiles, and his eyes are distracted, mind elsewhere.

“Yeah, me too.”

When Ian gets home from work, the house is oddly quiet for nine pm.

“I’m home,” he says loudly enough to announce his arrival, but quiet enough so as not to wake anyone sleeping, he hopes.

It’s silent for a few moments as Ian drops his pack and peels off his jacket. Then the sound of footsteps on the creaky front stairs draws his attention, and he turns to find his husband walking towards him, a small smile on his face. Mickey’s eyes are soft, and Ian’s breath is momentarily taken away by the thought that he is the only person who gets to see Mickey like this.

When Mickey reaches him, Ian cups a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him into a brief kiss.

“How are you feeling? Pain any better?”

Mickey takes hold of Ian’s hand and leads him into the kitchen where he begins reheating whatever they had for dinner.

“Yeah, it wasn’t so bad, I mostly spent the day napping.”

Ian grins, he knows how much his husband loves to nap.

“Why is it so quiet?” Asks Ian, still confused by the odd stillness of the house which never seems to stop moving.

“Liam went to bed early, I think he’s spreading himself too thin at school, poor kid. I put Franny to bed at the same time, Debbie said she’d be home late. And I have no clue where Carl is.”

Mickey places a plate of reheated white people stir fry in front of him, and Ian eagerly tucks in. He loves his job, but it never fails to leave him wiped out when he gets off.

“Mm, this is good. Did you go shopping today? Where did you get the vegetables for this?”

Mickey snickers and points his thumb to a basket of fresh produce sitting on the counter.

“We had a visitor today.”

Ian knits his eyebrows together, still confused.

“Trevor came by. Apparently he wanted to thank me, he brought us fresh fruit. What a fucking yuppie.”

Ian laughs, and to say he’s curious would be an understatement.

“Was it… okay?”

It’s not that Ian is truly worried, it’s just that Mickey has a history of being territorial and Trevor can be confrontational and a bit of an asshole. The two don’t mix.

“Yeah man, it was fine,” Mickey looks at him knowingly, “I invited him in for coffee, we spoke for like five minutes, then he left us with a bunch of produce I don’t know how to use.”

Ian smiles and takes the hand that Mickey has resting on the table. Ian loves Mickey. Has loved him for years. He loved him when he was a dirty, shit talking punk, he loved him behind bars, but he especially loves the confident man he has become, without the threat of Terry looming over their shoulders, and self hatred long since unlearned.

He’s living a life his sixteen year old self wouldn’t dare to have dreamed of.

And despite the ever present pressure of poverty, the felonies on his criminal record, the knowledge that his mental illness will rear its ugly head eventually, Ian is happy. He’s happy because he has Mickey by his side to weather all of it.

“Hey,” Mickey’s voice pulls him out of his musing, “Stop thinking so hard, you look like you’re going to burst a blood vessel.”

Ian laughs. He really does love him. And he tells him so.

“I love you too,” says Mickey softly. His hands come up to Ian’s face and Mickey’s eyes meet his. He pulls him into a soft, lingering kiss.

Ian breaths in the feeling of Mickey, relaxing against him. Mickey pulls away, resting their foreheads together.

“Let’s head up to bed. I know you’re tired from work, and babysitting the kids all day really took it out of me.”

Ian smiles at Mickey, places his dish in the sink and follows his husband upstairs.

If this is what his future looks like, coming home from a job he loves to a husband he loves even more, Ian thinks he has a lot to look forward to.

#shameless #gallavich #Ian Gallagher #mickey milkovich #ian and mickey #fanfiction #I hope this shows up in the tags #trevor pov

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sassysnowperson · 4 years

Photo

Total Words Posted 2019: 263,964!

Total Works: 30 works in 7 fandoms with 30 different relationships (counting Gen pairs - also, it was not, in fact, a pairing per fic, but a couple repeats, and a multi-pairing fic).

As compared to last years: 269,752 words, 64 works, 3 fandoms, 40 different pairings.

Compare/Contrast between this year and the last: Roughly the same wordcount! Again! I've been pretty consistent these last three years. I wrote fewer, longer works, but remained very open in terms of pairing. We're growing the fandoms, but Star Wars definitely wins still (though, breaking it up by TYPE of Star Wars, I diversified this year - learning to write more broadly across the canon! Star wars is about 12 fandoms in a trench coat, after all).

Major thing(s) I learned this year: Narrative courage, I think might be the best way to sum it up. I feel like I've taken more chances than I have in past years - I've learned how to write different characters and different settings than I've written before.

I feel the need to shout out Arrivals, Connections, Departures here. It's my WIP longfic that I started this year. It's already nearly 50k, and it's nowhere near done. This story is going to be LONG, and honestly, it's intimidating for me! There are so many things I want to write, and a fic like this requires commitment. I think it's a story worth telling, through, and I'm enjoying sharing it with folks. But I'm learning how to pace myself when I'm not writing fic all in a rush, breaking it up with breaks for smaller fics. Trying to find the balance between loving my WIP and getting to chase creative spark.

I also got way more involved in exchanges, the gift-swap is fun, as is a chance to write something I've never written before.

How I did on my Goals for Last Year: One of my goals was to go back to my ongoing series and I...did not. I had a sort-of idea for how Bodhi Lives would roll out going forward, and I feel like I've grown enough as a writer that I'm not satisfied with my tentative outline anymore. I'm not sure what the solution to it is - I still love the universe, and I'm not ready to close the book on it yet, but at the same time, I'm not sure how to move forward. Will require thought.

HOWEVER, my other goal was to get Arrivals, Departures, Connections started, and I did! We've got the ball rolling!

I also had the goal to write more gift fic, interspersed with my giant fic, and I did that too! I think probably about two-thirds of my fic output this year was written as a gift for someone else.

Goals for the Coming Year: I think I want to set the goal of finishing my massive WIP in 2020. At least the draft - hopefully getting it posted, too.

I also want to close some of the "open tabs" I have in my fic writing brain. Off the top of my head, that's the Bodhi Lives conundrum I talked about earlier, my Bodhi/Cassian series (am I ever actually going to write them having sex? It's a mystery), my K-2SO narrates wildlife fic, and I've got a bunch of prompts sitting in my tumblr inbox. Next year, I'd like to either decide that I'm not going to write them, or start sitting down and getting them out into the world.

I'd also like to read and comment more - I've been a good writer this year, but a bad fan community member. I think it might be fun to do fic read-a-thons together, or something like that.

Under the readmore is a round-up of the fics I wrote in 2019. I'm going to group them by fandom, sub-fandom for Star Wars and Marvel, and then by date posted.

If you’ve been reading my work, talk to me!

What’s been a favorite story? Most unexpected? What was the first thing of mine you read? What are you hoping I’ll write more of in 2020?

Note: Titles below are links to the works.

Star Wars

Rogue One

Critical Flaws - (Galen Erso/Lyra Erso/Bodhi Rook) (50458 words, 21,847 posted this year) - Galen, Lyra, and Bodhi form complicated plots for how to kill the Death Star, and also have to figure out why they are to each other, now that Galen has reunited with Lyra. (A continuation of the Lyra Lives series, where Lyra decides to go with Jyn instead.

Entirely Useless - (Cassian Andor/Leia Organa) (1780 words) - Cassian and Leia make time for something entirely useless.

Suboptimal Shape and Texture - (Cassian Andor/K-2SO)(100 words) - A moment of quiet.

Instinct and a Winning Smile - (Davits Draven/Antoc Merrick/Mon Mothma) (5208 words) - Antoc Merrick never wanted to be in the middle of Mon Mothma's fling with her spymaster. But that's exactly where his substandard sabaac face has landed him.

Poet with a Problem - (Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso/Bodhi Rook) (2774 words) - University Professor AU, where Professor Rook should really know better than to get a crush on both his best friend, and his best friend’s nemesis.

Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

Trade - (Obi-Wan Kenobi/Owen Lars/Beru Whitesun) (5839 words) - When one-and-a-half year old Luke’s Force powers start acting up, Owen and Beru reach out to the man that brought him in the first place.

Flustered - (Padme Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker) (5500 words) - Padme Amidala has a horrible crush and her husband is not helping.

Knight Amidala - (Padme Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi) (18865 words) - At the end of RotS Anakin dies, Padme wakes up with all his power, and the galaxy changes.

Star Wars Original Trilogy

Obvious and Intractable - (Dak Raltar/Luke Skywalker) (13717 words) - Considering all the problems in Wedge's life, it's impressive that the issue of Luke Skywalker's gunner even shows up on his radar. But Dak Raltar's obvious and intractable crush on his commanding officer is a problem, and it's growing more complicated by the second.

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Keep Coming Back - (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy) (5515 words) - Han finds Rey on Jakku. She’s not ready to leave, so Han keeps coming back.

Insult and Intimacy - (Lando Calrissian/Poe Dameron) (9365 words) - A Regency AU in Space featuring Titles and Genteel Understatement and Suitible Matches, as well as some scandal and a bit of kidnapping.

What I Wanted to Tell You - (Finn/Rey) (557 words) - What was it that Finn wanted to tell Rey?

An Awful Legacy - (Rey’s Mother/Rey’s Father) (879 words) - Rey’s mom reacts to...certain revelations.

Scorch Marks - (Wedge Antilles/Luke Skywalker) (910 words) - Wedge leaves the new generation to their celebrations, and considers an old familier X-Wing.

Calrissian Sass - (Lando & Jannah) (1181 words) - Lando loves showing Jannah all the things she missed out on, growing up.

Just My Type - (Zorii Bliss/Rey) (1058 words) - Rey is really interested in Zorii’s relationship with Poe, and Zorii has no idea why.

Star Wars Legends

Truce - (Wedge Antilles/Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker) (15038 words) - Wedge and Mara don’t like each other and they don’t trust each other, but they’re both willing to do what’s needed to save Luke.

Star Wars Intra-Universe Crossover

Sharpened - (Rogue One/Solo) (Jyn Erso/Qi’ra) (17490 words) - Jyn’s found the score that will let her stop running. Unfortunately Qi’ra of the Crimson Dawn stands between her and her target. Podfic Available.

Whatever You Want - (Sequel Trilogy/Rebels) (Rey/Ahsoka) (6782 words) - Ahsoka slept for forty years, and Rey wakes her up.

New Lands for the Living - (Original Trilogy, Sequel Trilogy) (Poe Dameron/Luke Skywalker) (50241 words) - Time-travel fix-it AU where Poe Dameron winds up on Tatooine before the Original Trilogy, winds up married to Luke Skywalker, and is desperate to fix things.

Hoping It's Mutual - (Rogue One/Sequel Trilogy) (3247 words) - Bodhi Rook and Poe Dameron have eighteen hours together before they take on a stupid, risky mission that could lead to both their deaths. They make the most of the time.

Eight at the Most - (Original Trilogy/Rogue One) (Luke Skywalker/K-2SO) (8332 words) - K-2SO has questions he wants answered and no concept of social niceties. Luke Skywalker, honestly, finds this a refreshing change from gentle respect everyone treats him with these days.

Arrivals, Departures, Connections - (Sequel Trilogy/Original Trilogy/Rogue One) (Wedge Antilles/Bodhi Rook, Luke Skywalker/Poe Dameron) (WIP - 46,751 words written in 2019) - A sprawling, story of loss and love, friendship and romance, and all the messy ways those things collide.

Star Wars Extra-Universe Crossover

The Face Underneath - (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/Rogue One) (Cassian Andor/Elim Garak) (300 words) - Injured and alone, Cassian finds a familiar face in a very unfamiliar environment.

Various

Remixed: 100th Fic Fest - (K-2SO & Bodhi Rook, Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook, Bodhi Rook/Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles/Bodhi Rook, Poe Dameron/Bodhi Rook) (500 words) - A what-if drabble series in my existing universes, along with end notes - much longer than the drabbles, amusingly - musing about these AUs

Marvel

Captain Marvel

Galactic Response Time - (Carol Danvers & Nick Fury) (5130 words) - All the OTHER times Nick paged Carol.

The Avengers

Return Policy - (Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers) (8888 words) - A missing scene fix-it that shows how exactly Steve returns the Infinity Stones.

Good Omens

Life's Little Pleasures - (Crowley/Aziraphale) (1758 words) - A statue in Crowley's apartment sparks an unexpected discussion.

Russian Doll

The Messed Up Motherfuckers Afterlife Movie Club - (Nadia Vulvokov & Alan Zaveri) (2991 words) - After everything, Nadia and Alan watch a movie.

Sailor Moon

Destiny and Property Destruction - (1055 words) - Instead of getting Moon Powers, Usagi gets a giant mecha.

#fic talk #2019 fanfiction year in review #year in review #This is always so much formatting #worth it #but man #About halfway through each one I'm going...I need to write less. For sure #also this didn't fit in the above #but another thing I'm proud of this year is New Lands for the Living #it's a 50k fic that I wrote in like...two months #because it was for an exchange #it was not supposed to be 50k #but I got it written!#and I'm very proud of it #:D

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