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yandere-fics · 1 year

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The Yandere Alphabet with Sawyer

♡ Sawyer's Yandere Alphabet ♡

(Tbh it's been awhile since I looked at the full thing I had to look up a resource for it just to remember half the things on it.)

♡ Affection: How do they show their love and affection? How intense would it get? ♡

♡ Sawyer shows her affection with gifts and providing you a life of luxury. You're her prize for all the work she did for centuries and so she'll treat you like her beloved treasure. Anything you need to be comfortable within her hold and it's yours. She's not one for physical affection, she's just really busy but if that brings you joy she'll change the layout of her office so you can cuddle as she works. The only time you'll see her really affectionate is around heats(shh that's a secret for later) ♡

♡ Blood: How messy are they willing to get when it comes to their darling? ♡

♡ She herself does not need to make her hands messy however most of the time she will choose to get messy behind the scenes. There's just a sense of catharsis that comes from knowing she just slaughtered someone who offended her darling. Or that woman who bought you a drink at the bar the one night she decided to allow you to club with your friends. ♡

♡ Cruelty: How would they treat their darling once abducted? Would they mock them? ♡

♡ In terms of yanderes, she's less cruel than some of the others I have but she's not above isolating you and depriving you of your niceties. She pays for you to be comfortable in HER hold, meaning if you want to step out of line and not be her good mate, those things will vanish. She has a bland, boring room set up for when you're not yet ready to be hers, but other than that you still will get fed and properly loved on(Loved on meaning you get to come to work with her and sit on her lap at the office for the full day. Lucky you!) ♡

♡ Darling: Aside from abduction, would they do anything against their darling’s will? ♡

♡ She's not one who needs your touch often but if she feels you aren't behaving as a mate should then she will need to compensate for the luxuries you won't allow her to give you, with her touch and attention instead. This might mean forced cuddling for hours or just making you sit on her lap all day. Otherwise she doesn't enjoy forcing things on her darling. Even during heat it has to be mutual, just don't move out of her grasp or her instincts might force her to take action more than you're comfortable with. ♡

♡ Exposed: How much of their heart do they bare to their darling? How vulnerable are they when it comes to their darling? ♡

♡ What heart? No but seriously it may not seem like it but her giving you a lavish lifestyle is how she bears her heart. Every time you use her card to buy even a little coffee, she feels a pinch of excitement and love. Whenever she returns to the penthouse and you've bought cute new bedding, she feels like it's a very intimate moment. A perceptive darling can tell because she always greets you with a longer hug, maybe even a long inhale, when you've used her money that day. ♡

♡ Fight: How would they feel if their darling fought back? ♡

♡ She sees it as prolonging the inevitable, while she would rather have her darling love her sooner than later, you have centuries together, she'll endure your silly tantrums. ♡

♡ Game: Is this a game to them? How much would they enjoy watching their darling try to escape? ♡

♡ It's very much not enjoyable at all, if her darling views it as a game then that would only anger her slightly. Don't worry she's a patient brat tamer, you will behave. You will be hers. ♡

♡ Hell: What would be their darling’s worst experience with them? ♡

♡ Heats, she's suffocating with her need for affection during them, they could last months if she's not getting what she wants, and during this time you literally can't even go to the bathroom alone, she needs to wait outside the door and you have to do it quickly or she might start to get antsy. Luckily they only happen once every year or two. ♡

♡ Ideals: What kind of future do they have in mind for/with their darling? ♡

♡ She imagines you replacing your wardrobe with the nicest things every year, the penthouse full of the expensive collectibles you've gathered over the years, and you at the center sleeping comfortably on a blanket that probably cost 10,000$. ♡

♡ Jealousy: Do they get jealous? Do they lash out or find a way to cope? ♡

♡ For such a powerful being, surprisingly yes she gets very very jealous, other the most insignificant things. She tries to justify it as she's simply getting rid of a pest for her darling but really it's just jealousy. ♡

♡ Kisses: How do they act around or with their darling? ♡

♡ She's condescending when you aren't behaving, you just don't know how to act yet, you'll pick it up soon enough. When you do act like her mate then she's more quiet. It might not seem like she's happy but again, a perceptive mate can notice that she's gotten her work done quicker than usual so she can take you home and eat dinner together. She's much more gentle in the way she commands you when she's happy. She might even be nicer to her employees by a small fraction. ♡

♡ Love letters: How would they go about courting or approaching their darling? ♡

♡ She'll just call you into her office and expect you to understand that you are her mate instantly. If you are confused then she will explain but she really needs it to get through your head. ♡

♡ Mask: Are their true colors drastically different from the way they act around everyone else? ♡

♡ Yes, she's way meaner around everyone but you, she acts like a lot of the others in the city do with their mates, but if you told anyone else that they'd look at you like a freak because to them, she's the vicious boss. ♡

♡ Naughty: How would they punish their darling? ♡

♡ She'll just take away your luxuries and put you in a bland, boring room except for when you accompany her to work, you'll break soon, mostly from boredom, isn't life nicer when you let her spoil you? ♡

♡ Oppression: How many rights would they take away from their darling? ♡

♡ Friends are a right that get taken away quickly as they soon become an obstacle in your relationship. You are allowed to have time to yourself though as long as you are within sight of your guards, there are four of them assigned to watch you. Time to yourself is removed if you aren't being a good mate because then you have to come with her to the office daily. You're also allowed to wander the penthouse, there's nothing there that could possibly harm you. ♡

♡ Patience: How patient are they with their darling? ♡

♡ She's immortal darling, she has all the time in the world to wait for you to come around. ♡

♡ Quit: If their darling dies, leaves, or successfully escapes, would they ever be able to move on? ♡

♡ Let's say you did die, she would simply bring you back to life, but if you did die she would be changed forever. She'd likely quit being the boss and ferret you away to a cabin in the woods for the rest of your eternities. But on the off chance that she can't bring you back, she would never move on, I think she'd massacre every creature hoping to sped up the end of the world so in the next lifetime she'll find you again. ♡

♡ Regret: Would they ever feel guilty about abducting their darling? Would they ever let their darling go? ♡

♡ Never, next question. ♡

♡ Stigma: What brought about this side of them (childhood, curiosity, etc)? ♡

♡ Her kind(???) are always very possessive and obsessive about their mates but her centuries alone have certainly made it a bit worse. ♡

♡ Tears: How do they feel about seeing their darling scream, cry, and/or isolate themselves? ♡

♡ It's your own fault that you won't allow her to comfort and care for you as a proper mate. She'll feel bad watching you but there isn't anything she can do until you come to her for comfort. ♡

♡ Unique: Would they do anything different from the classic yandere? ♡

♡ She rarely tells you how much she loves you with words, only the perceptive would know. ♡

♡ Vice: What weakness can their darling exploit in order to escape? ♡

♡ Good luck trying, this is a god tier threat. If she had a weakness, then the gods would have struck her down ages ago. ♡

♡ Wit’s end: Would they ever hurt their darling? ♡

♡ No, she doesn't need to, she just needs to wait, even years doesn't feel too bad compared to centuries alone. ♡

♡ Xoanon: How much would they revere or worship their darling? To what length would they go to win their darling over? ♡

♡ Her darling is her treasure, the culmination of all her hard work over centuries, over bloody, cruel wars and battles. Her darling is placed on a high pedestal no matter how stupid her darling might act at first. The moment she's decided on you as her mate, you're elevated above even herself. ♡

♡ Yearn: How long do they pine after their darling before they snap? ♡

♡ Not long, she decides you're her mate quickly, and takes you quickly. ♡

♡ Zenith: Would they ever break their darling? ♡

♡ No, even if she did break you hypothetically, she'd try to erase your memory and fix you again and not repeat the mistakes of last time. ♡

#yandere oc #yandere lesbian #my oc sawyer #yandere scenarios #yandere asks #yandere x reader

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fozmeadows · 2 years

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revenge of others finale

this is an extremely niche complaint but the final episode of revenge of others was so goddamn rushed and underwhelming and I’m PISSED about it. I mean, look: this is very much a show with melodrama vibes played straight, and it succeeded so admirably at that for eleven out of twelve episodes that I’m not even really mad about the last minute jaebum/jaejoon is-it-a-split-personality-or-is-it-a-ghost reveal despite the fact that it is objectively dumb and bad. what I am mad about is how jaebum’s arrest somehow magically nixes all the investigations into the shit sooheon actually did, even though jaebum can confirm sooheon’s guilt - like, I could potentially buy that he took the rap for it out of shame and loyalty, but goddamn, if you’re going to imply something that emotionally meaty, you need to show it to me! and especially when sojung’s whole deal has been Good Anti-Corruption Cop, even with her sympathy for sooheon, the fact that the whole school covers up for him when it comes to a clear-cut instance of self-defense is like... noble, or whatever, and gives us a good callback to an earlier plotline, but it also doesn’t jibe with her as a character to accept it, or make sense that THIS was the thing he needed to be shielded from (fighting for his fucking life) as opposed to the things he actually did (beating up sexually violent dudes). we don’t even get an explanation about how taeyeon was able to safely come back, even though the whole point of her leaving was so that she didn’t get pressured by the police, who I guess just... gave up? on her? as a witness?

we don’t get a solid confirmation on whether osung is dead or just badly hurt, let alone see how that all plays out at the police station with his dad and sister; and even more importantly, we don’t get to see a proper reveal of everything he did and why, especially re: setting chanmi and jihyun up to be enemies with the fake nude plotline! both those girls deserve catharsis with each other over the ways they were manipulated and used, and I wouldn’t say no to a callback explaining what actually went down with that really early flashback about the fake pregnancy thing osung was involved in, too, now that we know what his whole deal was! we don’t even get to see what happened with him and jihyun! the implication is that he forced a kiss on her and recorded it, but we don’t get to see or hear her side of things, which feels like a major elision!

the fact that sejin waited until the very last minute to tell chanmi that he and wonseok were dating also felt cheap - like, yeah, even though he told her about his dads and she was cool with it and he helped with literally everything else, I can still see him having been nervous to bring it up, but I want more details, especially when osung claimed that jaebum had dated wonseok and jaebum thought it was true. like, what was going on there? at the very least, you’re suggesting jaebum is potentially enough into dudes that when osung told him, ‘hey, you dated this guy,’ he thought it was plausible, instead of being all ‘what the fuck, I’m straight’ - like, it’s kind of a massive lie for osung to try and tell if he’s got no pre-existing deets on jaebum’s sexuality, but no, we’re just gonna gloss over that because Reasons.

and then, most annoyingly of all, the chanmi/sooheon situation ends with him dropping out of school and her going into the marines, and they’re just... together, but also we’re not going to revisit the brain tumor thing? we’re not going to have even a single scene where they talk about how he could potentially drop dead at a moment’s notice but she’s going to go off into the army? really? we’re just going to paste over it with an attempt at happily ever after, as though all the previous emotional tension doesn’t exist? we’re not even going to have chanmi question her career choice, or at least view it in a new light, after all the trauma and violence she’s just been through and the fact of sooheon’s diagnosis?

just, goddamn. I would like to think there was originally another episode’s worth of material fleshing out the ending that was forcibly cut for shitty network/production reasons while the writers got angrily drunk about it, because it really does feel like there’s a whole bunch of missing scenes in play, and the alternative is that everyone involved was like ‘yeah, this seems fine’ about a final episode that completely ignores all the stakes and consequences, emotional and otherwise, which fueled the plot to that point, in favor of ‘the cute straight couple are fine, so everything is Good.’ AUGH.

#revenge of others #kdrama #spoilers #revenge of others spoilers #foz rants

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hisoknen · 4 years

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kinktober day 6: praise warnings: smut, rope bondage, suffering, breathplay wc: 2.9k

a/n: hi hello reader!! super excited to share this one as a rope fanatic! however, this is NOT a guide/blueprint to any kind of play you want to try. thank you so much to @10millionyearsdungeon for beta reading and giving me amazing feedback! this is a softer more sensual kinktober day i hope you enjoy!

“And your safewords, kitten?” Aizawa secured the hardpoint, doing a few more checks to the bamboo before coming down to your level. His hand reached out to cup your cheek, waiting patiently for your reply.

After discussing the scene he had in mind, it was time to begin. He was crouching down in front of you while you were kneeling at his command. Dressed in only a pair of silk panties, you could feel the air in the room kissing your naked flesh.

“Red stop, yellow check-in slow down and green good.” You breathed, he was lightly pinching at your cheeks, your eyes threatening to shut and absorb the feeling of him caressing your skin. Your heart was racing, mind and body hungry for anything he was ready to give you.

“And if something's your mouth?” he presses a small ball into your palm, a little bell jingled inside of it as he wrapped his yours to close it.

“Drop the ball, red. Uh, uh uh, is yellow, and for green, nod.”

“Good girl,” he sits down, “turn around.” You do as you’re told, untucking your knees and turning your back on him. Your body sinks into his hold, his thighs on each side, trapping you in place. He begins littering kisses on your neck and shoulders, calming your racing mind with soft words and chuckles.

Ever since you found your way into Aizawa’s arms, you’d experienced more than you could list in one sitting. Together you slowly explored your boundaries, trying new things out and pushing each other to grow. You had a genuine and deep submission. It was the heartfelt kind that came from trust, respect, lust, emotional connection.

You’d always found a strange comfort in suffering. Nothing aroused you more than suffering for someone you loved and having them look into your pleading eyes and offer you their tender violence in return.

When you could do something that made your partner feel good, you felt the world around you bathe you in warmth. You found catharsis erotic—a harmonious battle between instincts and surrender.

But this desire always seemed to put you into sticky situations. You’d find partners who didn’t care for your soul or body. They wanted your suffering for their pleasure and theirs alone, treating you as though you were disposable. Broken people sought out broken people, or so you thought.

Aizawa was different. It was an exploration for both of you, an equal exchange. He cared for your mind as much as he desired your body. He treated you like an invaluable treasure. It always felt so safe being wrapped in his ropes, no matter the sadistic ideas he would bring to fruition.

Trailing his fingers up your shoulders, kneading softly at the muscles. He leaned in, placing a kiss at your neck's junction right behind your ear. Your mind is already spinning from the small ministration. His breath tickled the spot he knew sent spots to your vision.

"Are you ready, kitten?" He purred against your ear. Without even brushing his fingers against the aching spot between your legs he already had you dripping and feverish.

Nodding, you turn your neck to the side to give him more access. He nips at the skin, slowly bringing your arms behind you, hands rubbing up and down, easing your shoulders back.

Dragging the rope slowly a few inches above your wrist, he ties a single column securing your wrists together, pulling the tension up. Aizawa wraps two bands around your front above your breasts, over your other arm to the right. Skimming his fingers against your chest, he looks into your eyes, silently asking if everything feels right.

Lazily smiling up at him, you rub your middle finger against the thumb's padding to check, nodding. You feel the tug as he drags the ends through where the initial rope went from your wrist to the arm, reversing the tension and locking it off. The push and pull were like a lullaby rocking you to sleep.

There was a tug when he secured a knot in the back, his fingers feeding between the rope and your arms and where the jute is placed, fixing the tension evenly. He continued to the left, wrapping two more bands a few inches below the first, trapping your breasts in between.

After months of playing with Aizawa, you had his movements memorized, it was like dancing. Each time he moved, your body followed obediently as he secured the stem, feeding rope into the harness.

Pushing your body forward, his warmth leaves you. He brings the rope over the bamboo, pulling your body up in the slightest. Reaching down, he takes it through the bite created on the stem pulling it taut.

“It’s been a long week, hasn’t it? Not enough time to play. I hope you’re not upset, kitten,” his husky voice sinks into your ears. It’s smooth like honey, and the tender promise it leaves has your skin prickling. His foot pushes against your shoulder, body leaning to the side just enough to feel the tension applied.

“I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” He steps away, pulling the rope on the upline. The tug has you on your knees once more, slowly getting onto your legs as he aids you with a steady pull. Once both of your feet are flat on the ground, he secures the upline stepping out of your line of vision.

He lightly taps your ass, and you quiver at the touch. Crouching down, he wraps two bands around your ankle, securing a single column and capture loop. His hand grasping the pit of your knee, hoisting it up.

You stare in awe at each movement he makes, watching his fingers work rapidly. Balancing on one leg you search his eyes as he pulls your leg up, tossing the ends of the rope over the bar. He brings the working ends into the bite and back over the bar to secure the knot.

The shift in weight adds pressure to your hips and gut. Your knee is at the same height as your hips, restricting your breathing slightly. While it’s nothing crazy, it does spike your interest. He was being far too gentle. You don’t notice that he’s untied the line to your harness, jerking it up in one swift motion.

A yelp resounds throughout the room, your entire body weight now depending on your ability to hold yourself up by your toes. There is tension on your arms and leg in the air but nothing compared to what it will be if you happen to falter.

Your breath hitches and you start to relax your body, checking your thumb once again to see if it’s numb. Your head is bowed, watching the shake in your legs as Aizawa circles around you. He pulls your chin up roughly, his eyes dark scanning your features.

That was the look you were waiting for. He presses a fervent kiss against your lips, fingers flicking across the heat he’s left behind.

His other hand comes up, waiting at the entrance of your mouth. Licking your lips you open wide. Slowly he eases his fingers in, circling the pad of your tongue, edging closer and closer to the back and gagging you. Your throat convulses around him, only prompting him to go back even further fingers tickling the back of your tongue.

He lets out a muffled groan pulling his fingers out, gliding the slick digits down your neck to your breasts, swirling around your nipple and pulling.

Your eyes are fixed on him as he moves the rope holding your leg further from your body, setting your body off balance. Breathing through your nose you hop, trying to reset your toes on the wood.

"Tongue out, kitten." You obediently loll it out from your mouth. His hands disappear to his back, bringing out a clothespin. He opens its teeth and clamps it down onto your muscle. Wincing and letting out a pained groan, you look up at him with pitiful eyes filled with affection and adoration.

Grabbing another rope, he wraps it around your waist tightly, pushing out your breath. He connects it to the bamboo, leaving you sputtering around the wood, pulling desperately for the room's air to trickle into your lungs.

Aizawa drops down, settling onto the floor. Grabbing your shaking leg, he rubs the skin and leaves lingering kisses, taking a final rope from his side. Trailing his fingers sensually up your calf, he sets the jute below the bend of your knee, pulling it through and trapping your calf into place.

Your eyes widen in horror at the realization of what he's about to do. He pulls the rope tight, pain shooting up your leg and straight to your center. A strangled gasp ripples past your open lips, saliva beginning to drip from your tongue onto the floor slowly.

“Already?” His lips are parted, watching you intently through hooded eyes. He runs his hands through his hair, gazing up at you hungrily.

“We just started, kitten.” He holds the rope tight, tying it around your trapped muscle, each one tighter than the last until he reaches right above your ankle. The dull ache of the clothespin is nothing compared to what awaits you.

“Are you ready to breathe again?” You hadn’t even noticed that you’d stopped, too busy imagining what he was about to do. Taking a deep breath through your nose, you hold it nodding down at him.

“1, 2-” you breathe out the second he gets to two, knowing he never waits until three. Your gut tightens as he crosses over the rope the opposite way, constricting your calf more than before, creating spaces where the rope touches and the muscle remaining is pushed tight against the confines, pulsing.

A single poke of his finger will have tears surfacing in your eyes. But maybe he wouldn’t press on it this time. He forces his finger underneath the rope to lock it off, sending waves of agony course through you.

You rip your leg away from him, bringing it to your chest to relieve the pressure, but the moment you do, all of the weight shifts to your chest, arms and the opposite leg. A frustrated grunt leaving your wet mouth. It was as if he had woven the rope around your body with a banner that said, choose your preferred method of suffering.

Landing your foot back gently back onto the ground, you look down at him with pleading eyes. With the weight of your body resting on one painfully constricted leg, your muscle tries to escape the confines, pulsing against the rope and radiating up your side.

“Whas dah for?” Aizawa pulls a metal rod from his pocket. He grabs onto your leg, pressing the metal into your constricted flesh, a shriek leaves your lips and you strain. While the tension in a section lessens at the push, another side begins to ache and throb. That was the game. Your body and bottom leg are aligned, but the leg in the air is forward, hips sinking along with your chest. More pressure. Less air.

“Can you take a little more for me?” He looks up at you with admiration and lust, chest rising and falling heavily. A sob wracks through your body, your instincts tell you to scream no, but your body wants more. You had your safewords. Aizawa would listen to you if you needed to stop. Shaking your head, you try desperately to hold onto each gulp of air, remembering to check your fingers.

You nod down at him as he presses down again. The more your breathing falters, the less you can manage the pain and hold your body up. Your leg is trembling, threatening to lose its hold on the ground. You can hear Aizawa’s breath falter as he takes in your cries and plea’s. His pupils are lust blown with a devious glimmer.

Standing up, he comes to face level, pressing down on the pin and releasing the pressure. The moment it’s removed, the ache comes back tenfold, blood returning to where it was restricted. Sucking in the droll on your lips, you stare up at him defiantly.

“Sick fuck,” you spit out. You want to scream and lash out at him. Rake your fingernails down his back and draw blood.

“‘Sick fuck’ is not your safeword.” The moment the words leave his mouth, tears of frustration bubble into vision.

“Use your words.”

“It hurts Shouta-” you blubber through quivering lips.

“I know.” He purrs, stroking your face with fingers wet from your tears. He understood that you were suffering. That this was painful and frustrating for you. But most of all, he understood that you were suffering for him.

“Good girl, I’m so proud of you.” You smile, shivering at the warmth of his praise. He kisses your nose, bending down to untie the binds on your leg. Wincing at each shift you moan at the release.

Aizawa’s fingers stroke the imprints left behind fingers kissing your sensitive flesh. You glance down seeing his cock straining against his pants, a damp patch showing just how much he was enjoying this.

“Please,” you whisper, pulling against your restraints. He follows your eyes, running his hands along the length of his covered cock, squeezing. It’s been so long since you had tasted him, felt him.

“What is it, kitten?”

“I want to touch you,” he chuckles, lying on the ground to watch you, hair pooling around his head as he looks up. Your chest is rising quickly and heavily. Looking into your eyes, he waits. You nod to signal green, and he presses his foot into your stomach, absorbing the choked cries you let out while you struggle to take breaths in.

Your only comfort and control are swept away from you as your leg is lifted off the ground. Your tears land onto his face, one at the corner of his lips. He dips his tongue out, pulling it into his mouth.

“You look so pretty like this, kitten.” He pushes himself off the ground with his elbows. The pain was distressing, bleeding into your veins, but he continues to praise you for taking it. Your head is spinning, and your cunt is dripping, the pain and pleasure rolling off one another.

He stands in front of you, fingers dipping down to push your panties to the side. His fingertips brush against your soaking core, body still shaking with sobs.

“If it hurts, why are you so wet, Y/n?” You look up at him shamefully, his voice is condescending, head tilted and eyebrows quirked. His fingers glide over your sensitive clit, slowly circling over it. You bite your lip to hold back a needy moan. Aizawa’s fingers plunge into your cunt, curling his fingers immediately, ripping the cry from you.

He starts roughly jerking his hand, pounding his fingers against your g-spot. You let out whimpers and grunts as he rubs at your insides. The pressure from the waist rope increases and floods your cunt as your leg begins to give out.

“Shouta plea-” you hiccup, begging for more. With one hand reaching out to hold onto your raised thigh the other continues to search the depths of your pussy for the orgasm you owed him.

The insistent squelch coming from you is pathetic; the pain of the rope and the brutality of his ministrations begin bleeding together. Looking down, you can see your arousal spilling out from your cunt all over his hand.

He breathes heavily against your ear. “You’re so good to me, kitten. Suffering so beautifully for me.” Mewling between sobs, you want to ask for more. You can feel that you’re about to cum, your cunt squeezing around him desperately.

Your leg loses its strength below you, the pressure of the rope squeezing your waist, pushing you even closer to the edge. But he pulls away at the last second, leaving you clenching pathetically around nothing.

You let out a silent scream, frustration, and desire filling you, thick tears falling from your eyes. Your breath is faltering, mind hazy and racing.

“Such a needy little slut.” Aizawa walks behind you, untying your leg from the rig, holding it as he places it on the ground. The waist rope is next to loosen and fall to the ground. He welcomes your body tightly against his own, as he lowers the final upline until you are both on the floor.

Your body feels like jelly, thoroughly spent, head leaned back against his chest while you breathe in the sweet air, filling your lungs. Bringing your legs up to your chest.

Small whimpers still fall from your lips when your legs are torn apart, his fingers plugging back into your abused hole. You can feel his erection prodding against your back. You pant, grabbing onto his wrist to anchor yourself. He holds your limp body against his solid chest.

“You did so well for me today," his fingers explore you, setting flame to the dwindling embers. Kind words and praise in tune with the thrusts of his fingers, your vision flickers.

"Cum for me," the soft commanding words are all it takes to send you over the edge, the pressure of your orgasm pushing out his fingers as you soak the floor. Rubbing at your clit he helps you ride out your orgasm.

You can hear Aizawa sucking on his fingers between closed eyes, tasting the mess you made before kissing the top of your head. Your body is spent, shivering and aching, a soothing hum of satisfaction riddling your veins.

He is caressing your arms' marks, memorizing what is left of the memory of you in his ropes. He pulls the blanket over to your sniffling body, holding you tightly.

"Thank you, kitten." he hums as darkness takes over.

—

kinktober masterlist

tags <3 @thewheezingwyvern @linestrider @idratherliveinbooks @mx-minxx @kenmasmyvibe @leeswritingworld @katsukis-sad-angel @trafalgar-temptress @dabis-kitten @stainedglass-wings @thirsthourdemon @zyrielwolf @shadowmountain @secondhand-trash @tomurasprincess

#aizawa x reader smut #aizawa smut #tw overstim #bnha x reader smut #bnha smut

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clementineskesh · 2 years

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Kenobi finale spoilers

I feel like this show started off fine and the last 3 episodes dipped dramatically in terms of writing. Like. Who is roken did he and obi wan know each other before? They're super familiar with each other!! Who are sully and wade?? Why the fuck should I care wade got blown up he was onscreen for 5 seconds. Why did the fighters show up? Like with han, he refused but returned, so he had knowledge and motivation; obi wan and tala said they were going alone and the speeders were explicitly called unsuitable? Like idk that's where everything started to feel like there were missing scenes or something.

Like obi wan trusts leia to haja repeatedly and explicitly for??? Why? No reason. Why did Vader fake the grand inquisitor's death??? To make reva show her hand and attack? If he knew she was a youngling and went to all that effort to trap her why didnt he just kill her out of hand? In THE SAME EPISODE obi-wan says he doesnt have patience! Multiple times! And he kills his underlings all the time!

Reva got stabbed which is instant kill for most but next episode she's not even hurt. Why didnt they finish her? Did she literally just survive bc revenge reasons.

Not to mention the dumbass bullshit of obi wan getting anakin on his knees incapacitated and walking away?!?!?! Like "it doesnt matter to me how much untold harm and oppression you bring to the galaxy, I have achieved catharsis and relinquish any responsibility for my part in who you became 💖" like TBF that's COMPLETELY in character for OT obi-wan but adds a WAY darker side to "I will manipulate you into killing your father which I failed to do not once but TWICE, the second time on purpose and for my own peace of mind and damn the galaxy"

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fabdante · 3 years

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Ok, last one. The Kat and Artemisia post. Incase you missed them, this is part of a trio of posts on Baroque art and the DmC reboot trio and a separate post on the DmC reboot and the Baroque as an art movement.

The other posts if you want to check them out: Dante and Caravaggio, Vergil and Benini, DmC and the Baroque

Today for the final installment in this little mini series, we’ll be discussing the artist who won the Baroque, Artemisia Gentileschi, and her painting Judith Slaying Holofernes, featured below.

Analysis of this painting, why it’s such a bop, Kat, and the devil may cry reboot below the cut!

Content Warning: discussion of abuse as it relates to Kat.

I guess we start with the beginning and the beginning is who Judith is.

Judith is a biblical character. Upon impending invasion, she is unsatisfied with the response of her people and decides to infiltrate the enemy camp with her maid, intent to stop the enemy army. After gaining the trust of the people there, she eventually seduces general Holofernes and is invited to his tent. Then she beheads him with what I am left to assume is his sword. I suppose given the painting that part’s a little spoiled.

A lot of paintings focus on the beheading or Judith posing with the decapitated head in victory. But a lot of them don’t have the impact of Artemisias, as seen above.

Judith, as painted by Artemisia, is full of rage. She is not serene or delicate. She is not posing or unsure. She is angry, certain, and out for blood. Everything in her expression and her movements is full of force and intent. It’s the little details like his hair between her knuckles from where she’s gripping it and the forceful twist of her wrist on his sword that she’s taken. To her rolled sleeves in her incredibly fancy dress. And it’s not afraid to be gory to. Perhaps this is tame by modern standards of blood and gore but for the time it’s very bloody and violent. Supposedly the violence was too much for the first owner who kept it hidden for some time (allegedly). I think it’s important that while the focus is Judith doing the act, her maid is not passive in the violence. She’s holding him down with just as much force as Judith. And unwavering to, despite how we can see how Holofernes was trying to throw her off before he died, his hands still limply in the air. The maids full of as much determination as Judith is. Judith’s dressed up for this to, in a fine gown with her hair done up. This is likely part of the ruse Judith set up before she got Holofernes alone, but I like the detail none the less. That she’s dressed up for this murder.

The key to why this painting fits Kat so much to me is how it is not only full of anger and femininity and violence but how in Artemisias hands, the image feels like a bloody catharsis. There’s something personal in Judith's glare, in her rage. Something kind of interesting to in how she’s forced Holofernes to look away from her, like he hasn’t earned the right to see her victory even if by this point he is surely dead (I mean, the sword is nearly through his neck). Or like she doesn’t want to look at him at all, like he’s not worth looking at.

Likewise, for Kat, hunting demons is personal. The Order is personal. Why she’s here doing this is personal.

It’s personal because Kat killed her abusive foster father. I don’t think how impressive this is truly gets conveyed. It’s almost a throw away statement. It’s just that one line, ‘I killed the bastard’, and that’s that. Like it was easy or something. In the reboot universe, though, she’s not even in the same dimension as her foster father. We don’t get a lot of information about how much a demons human form impacts their demon form. We are told Mundus is fused to his human form, but we’re also told this is because he’s been in it so long and also there’s the matter of his relationship to the hell gate. We’re not even told how long he’s been in this form. Has it been years, decades, centuries? How long is so long that it led to this fusion? So, I don’t think we can base the average demon to this. As far as we know in canon, it’s Kat against a being in another dimension. A dimension she cannot engage with physically and to which he can escape to at any time.

And yet she kills him anyway.

She is the only human we know of in canon who’s done this, to. To be fair, she is the only human mentioned at all in the reboot canon but by how Dante positions himself as human savior and by how certain Vergil seems to be that humans cannot take care of themselves, this must be rare.

I cannot express enough how important it is that Kat is the one who kills him to. It’s not Vergil. She doesn’t say it was Vergil. It’s also not her and Vergil, she doesn’t say that either, she doesn’t say ‘we killed the bastard’. Kat says explicitly that she killed him, ‘I killed the bastard’. It’s Kats kill. No matter how much Vergil helped her, she did it. She killed her abuser despite the odds against her.

I can’t imagine the sort of catharsis Kat must have felt in that moment. We don’t know how she killed him, she never says. The greatest crime of the comics, in my opinion, are how they take this kill away from Kat and give it to Vergil instead. Which means no further elaboration there on what went down. But I can imagine her in that moment after, unsure how to feel with the rush of adrenaline and power and newfound safety. She’s done it. She’s done something she must have thought was impossible. And she tells us in game how this made her feel emboldened to handle the rest of demon kind. She doesn’t tell us in that many words, I suppose, but she says that she wants to deal with them all because she killed her foster father.

To Kat, this is personal. To Kat, mankind is something worth saving that she is willing to do everything to save. We don’t see her violence in game, but we know she’s willing to kill for this freedom. We know she’s willing to die for it to, given the aftermath of the Orders fall. It’s personal. And Kat sees it as something far bigger then her.

Often Kat I think is written off as someone who is naïve and weak and in need of saving. I’ve complained at length how I feel about her being called naïve. In game we see a very interesting, complex person in Kat I think. I’ve said before that it’s kind of fun to just watch her in scenes. Like really watch her. She has very deliberate body language that often betrays this calm she’s fighting to display, particularly around Dante for the first half of the game or so. It’s little things like how she physically contains herself after the ‘I like it rough’ comment, shutting her eyes and taking in a deep breath, but things that are there. She’s someone who, despite everything, is fighting to be a softer, kinder person even if she’s still got a lot of anger (Vergil does compare her and Dante, after all).

And being soft and kind does not make someone weak. Existing in a world where you are at a disadvantage to the things that aim to hurt you is not weak. Entering into your enemies tent armed with nothing but an elaborate gown and your anger, waiting until you spot a sword and an opportunity is not weak either.

I think something about Kat that is so often forgotten in the drama of the twins and everything else (because lets face it, no matter the media, female characters tend to get side lined for...everything else really), is without her the twins would have failed. It’s Kat who gets Dante and safely brings him to the Order. It’s Kat’s spells that bridge the human world to Limbo. It’s Kat who saves Vergil in the server room by way of bringing Dante to him. It’s Kat who ultimately gives the twins the final plan to get to Mundus. It was her. Dante says so at the end, to. The game recognizes that without Kat, the boys have nothing. And it's still Kat at the end who saves Vergil, and saves Dante from the guilt of killing him.

With Kat taking so much into her own hands despite her disadvantage, despite just being human, despite her softness, despite this rage boiling under her skin (or perhaps because of it), she is so much of why the world is free from demons.

I mean Artemisia herself got that treatment, largely left out of artistic canon until very recently despite her success during her time. I also debated for a very, very long time across the many, many iteration of this essay on how much I talk about Artemisia’s personal life. I suppose if you made it this far you’ve seen that I’ve chosen not to, despite how it could be relevant to this discussion. But I think her work stands on it’s own without me having to justify the anger Artemisia may have personally felt and conveyed here without bringing up her personal life in depth. Though, if you want to know, I assure you that pretty much any information you look up on Artemisia will go into detail on her personal traumas and how that might impact her work. And it could definitely be relevant angle in discussing Kat and Artemisia, I just felt it overall did not add to this essay.

I often wonder, if she was in a different game or a different medium or a different story, if Kat might get more love. So often she’s called weak for the crime of not having a big weapon and a trail of dead demons behind her. So often she’s reduced to a love interest or a damsel despite how she is really the thing that saved the day, despite the fact her relationship with both twins is much more then ‘potential love interest’. And how many times have you guys seen a post on your dash about wishing a character picked to enact revenge on an abuser? How they fought to be soft despite their trauma and pain? But I suppose, as is often the case with women in any story, she might have gotten this treatment anyway.

So, here’s to Kat. The brain cell, the Nephilim baby sitter, the girl who wanted to throw Vergil off a cliff, the hero Limbo city got who will never get enough credit, and forever the girl who deserved more.

Those of us who love you will love you enough for the whole fandom, it’s alright.

#dmc devil may cry #dmc reboot #devil may cry reboot #dmc kat #devil may cry kat #kat devil may cry #kat dmc #dmc: devil may cry #devil may cry reboot kat #tw decapitation #fab talks meta

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readingrobin · 3 years

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#TBRBusterChallenge September Pick: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

Finally, an Ursula Le Guin book I can say that I've enjoyed. I've dabbled in her work before, but the writing style was a major hurdle for me. Her writing focuses more on setting up a scene and introspection, with little dialogue to break these moments up, leading to several instances where my eyes tend to glaze over. This happened to me with Left Hand of Darkness and Voices. And, to be honest, it happened here and there in this book as well, but Ged's characterization, arc, and ultimate confrontation with the Shadow at the end more than made it worthwhile. I loved the emphasis of an emotional catharsis and self acceptance over a drawn-out physical conflict that pits the typical good vs. evil. Le Guin makes the tale more nuanced, opting for an ending that, while anticlimactic to some, perfectly delivers the overall theme and beliefs that make up the heart of Earthsea.

Okay Spoiler Time By giving the Shadow his name, Ged brings the culmination of all his mistakes, pride, selfishness, and yearning to be known and have power, into himself and makes them a part of who he is. In Earthsea, the most treasured belief is that of Equilibrium, total balance. As Ged accepts and becomes aware of the misdeeds of his past, he becomes a more knowledgeable and capable wizard. He is both light and dark, and it will be interesting to see if that is explored in future installments in the series.

End of Spoiler Time

There are some things that I think could have been shown a little more effectively: his rivalry with his schoolmate Jasper, his friendship with Vetch, basically just his relationships to the other characters, as we see so much of him alone that it's hard to become attached to the others. But really I don't think there's anything else to improve upon, other than yeah, Le Guin really struggled with writing women in this series didn't she? Seeing how progressive her works are, I was surprised that there weren't any capable female wizards and the ones that we saw were either evil or using a weaker kind of magic. Researching it, it seems that came more out of a need to write more from the male gaze, as that's what publishers wanted in the 60s, which is a darn shame. Still, it's understandable why this book is seen as foundational in children's fantasy and the genre as a whole. It knocks down so many typical fantasy conventions, while also taking inspiration from fairy tales and legends of old, resulting in a story that's sure to last in the hearts and minds of readers young and old.

#tbrbusterchallenge2021 #bookbanditchallenge #a wizard of earthsea #ursula le guin #children's fantasy #fantasy #classic fantasy #ged #sparrowhawk #earthsea cycle #reviews

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leamy-world · 3 years

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Some afterthoughts on The Devil Judge (spoilers for all the drama!)

Hello everyone! I hope you’re doing well!!

I wanted to write my thoughts after the finale aired because ep. 13-14 made me a mess and were too nerve-wracking! After these two episodes, i only wanted the week to go by fast to see how the finale unfolded (but at the same time, this drama entertained me sm i didn’t want it to end haha).

Watching this drama each week and reading your reactions and thoughts made me enjoy it even more, i’m glad i came back on tumblr! It was a really nice ride (more like an emotional rollercoaster haha)! It motivated me to write my thoughts and analyses on fictions i watched in the future, especially My Mister and Beyond Evil!! I forgot how much fun it was to do that and putting my thoughts into words gave me a little closure to my watch haha

These are just some afterthoughts & personal interpretations i had and were maybe probably already discussed, but i couldn’t get them out of my head haha

See you around and take care!!!

THE CAST. It left a strong impression on me and i can’t see other actors playing their respective roles!

— Yohan portrayed by Ji Sung … i have no words, this devil judge left me speechless! His character, to his Devilish Smile (and hollow laugh in front of CKH and his son, or Gaon), his variating voice intonations (like damn, he’s a living ASMR like Lee Sung Kyung), his held back emotions and touch-starved and even desperate touches when it came to Elijah and Gaon, to his rage and unhinged moments!

I winced seeing him contort in pain when Sunah revealed Elijah accidentally lit the church fire, and the two times he hugged Elijah totally destroyed me. His last scene with Gaon showed how gazes & micro-expressions alone could convey unspoken words as strongly. I’m weak for these kinds of scenes, My Mister for example did it and killed me haha

For this post, i rewatched some scenes and damn, Elijah and Yohan’s support of Gaon after Soohyun’s death was really emotional …

(They had no business in making Gaon have this kind of dream, those german scissors left a ... strong impression on him haha)

— Kim Min Jung’s depiction of Sunah’s was hauntingly beautiful, a femme fatale who kept a broken child deep inside (and at the same time surfacing on her manners and personality) and a strong businesswoman. It’s a fascinating character i loved hating as a villain but still sympathized with. The scene where she murdered the former foundation’s president sent me chills down my spine (i still have her shot of her, sitting at his bureau and manipulating his speech video)!

The melancholy slipping through her facade when she visited the mansion the first time in a while, as well as her devastation in front of the President’s scheme, by the young girl’s bed at the hospital were memorable. The tension between her and Yohan was incredible: they both managed to keep a very disturbing but enthralling aura, tangled with nostalgia at the same time each time they met.

(Looking at her reflection is a recurring pattern for Sunah’s character, i found this shot above interesting, divided in the two ends of the mirror, as if her self can’t be found on the other side anymore)

— This was the first time i saw a drama with Jin Young and i really loved his playing! Never thought I’d say one day i enjoyed someone’s tears and rage on screen, but his crying scenes stuck with me, especially in the prison yard and the last episode (he deserves therapy after all he went through, really) … And his letter to Elijah … (i’m glad nobody harshly revealed the truth to her, i’m really glad!)

I loved to see how his gaze evolved through this journey with Yohan. His endearment to Soohyun, Elijah and Yohan was very precious ;; Even though Yohan was the one who was first seen feeling lonely, Gaon’s loneliness since his parents’ death slipped through his seemingly fine world, i found that interesting! (And on a lighter note, i’ll always remember the truth behind Mrs. Ji’s cooking, Gaon’s epic reaction, and the pure comedy she gets to own a healthy food shop thanks to Yohan!!)

I also enjoyed his supportive friendship with Jinjoo!!

— Park Gyu Young’s acting was also on point! It’s really too bad she didn’t get more screen time because i wanted to know more about Soohyun!! I felt robbed haha, because when TDJ began airing, they introduced her as one of the ‘main’ characters of this story ;; The scene when she was on CKH’s suicide scene really left a mark on me + when she was confronting Yohan, especially after she took Elijah out!

— Elijah. Just Elijah, our best girl!!! Apparently it’s one of Jeon Chae Eun’s first roles, she did so well!! Along with Ji Sung and Jin Young, she gave a whole new definition to the Domestic Scenes, i swear. These scenes will keep a special place in my heart for a long time! Her adorable smile and cheekiness were a refresher in this show!

(They could change TDJ’s concept in a second season and make us a domestic slice of life series, i wouldn’t mind AT ALL! Take my money!!)

Seeing her complicated relationship with her uncle unfold before us deeply moved me. The complete loneliness she silently depicted moving to her bed in the wheelchair, after Gaon left the mansion was heart-wrenching. And also the scenes after Soohyun’s death, hurting with Yohan seeing Gaon’s pain (the way she spoke her worry for the two of them, Yohan couldn’t let the words out properly to Gaon).

— CKH’s character, played by Jang Young Nam, was amazing. Her acting already shattered me when i watched Nobody Knows! Her cold gaze, her harsh tone, she was badass i have to admit!

The narcissistic rage was well depicted in her character, and even though i get where many’s opinions on her death come from (i share it too sometimes, but i feel it more for Sunah), i found this final decision fitting to the character, especially if you look how she treated her own son (each hold felt like a grip from rage eg. in ep. 3, as she maybe felt her son was the cause of her demise).

(HUGE SPOILERS FOR BEYOND EVIL BELOW!!!!)

She reminded me of HKH’s ending: seeing his path to success was crushed with no way out of it except death on his own accord (in his eyes, because it was his absolute life aim, every single being, to his own wife and son, and means, even bending the justice independence, were his expendable ways to pave his path), HJW’s father was set on suicide before his son barged in.

(Funnily enough, the filming spot for CKH’s house is the same for HKH’s house haha)

— And also … Lawyer don’t-worry-i’ll-get-you-out-on-probation Ko deserves a round of applause for the best lawyer he is hahaha

THE STORY’S DEVELOPMENTS (AND SCRIPT). I feel like this story could very well have been developed on 20+ episodes! Even if i know some scenes in a script are sometimes (bound to be) cut in the drama, TDJ’s script leaks make me feel there was SO much more to be told, and so much more to explain some plot events in the airing drama!

Because the story was ambitious, both character and plot(twists which give you whiplash)-driven (and also the filming context with the pandemic), i feel like some choices were made.

The lines of thought about justice and the drama’s attempts at its ‘true’ definition are not lost on me. It was really interesting!

On a side note (there will be many, bear with me haha), the symbolic behind the app’s name, DIKE, which i’m pretty sure (correct me if i’m wrong, i only have some very rough basics in korean haha) is the korean romanization of Nikè, or in ancient greek Νίκη, the greek divinity of Victory ( ‘ㄴ’ in korean sounds like an ’n’ but its pronounciation is more abrupt/brisker, to the point of what could be sounding to ears like a ‘d’).

Nikè is most of the time represented as an attribute to other greek divinities who also embody the victory eg. Zeus or Athena, thus seen as a bestower of victory (in any domain, be it war, games = interestingly enough, the live court is set in a colosseum-like room, arts, …) to the humanity on behalf of these gods (Nikè sometimes stands in her palm as an attribute of Athena, like the owl or the helmet). But sometimes Nikè was also revered an independent protective divinity.

Nikè is represented as a winged divinity in a long robe, flying above the victorious, assisting the humans in their works/challenges eg. handing them a laurel crown as a sign of victory, or a helmet, etc. Its mostly known representation is the Winged Victory of Samothrace (or The Nike of Samothrace) sculpture in the Louvre. The brand Nike also used it in its logo.

It calls back to Yohan’s line: « I make sure i win before the game starts », and in fact, since the beginning, unbeknownst to everybody witnessing the trials and participating to them, the app was his way to win. It foreshadows the ending of the story, Yohan finally taking down the foundation. It also adds to his god/devil image: he assumes the role of the intermediary/abyss of the « gods » (the Justice), taking in all the hubris of the society in order to bring the justice (well, guess we could say it put some hold to the cycle of the powerful culminating to chaos?) back, in some sort of catharsis through DIKE.

It might be a stretch, but Nikè’s winged representation could be found on Gaon’s tattoo (at first to me, it looked like a phoenix/winged angel, which symbolizes a ‘reincarnation’/new beginning for Yohan finding peace, a second chance to his past and Elijah thanks to Gaon & Gaon finding a new world even if his first crumbled ie. his parents and Soohyun’s death and professor Min’s betrayal).

(The whole virus plot by the end of the story made me feel a little uncomfortable given the actual context and the conspiracy theories that are spreading, but it wasn’t used carelessly and served the commentary of the powerful and how far they would go, i think? That said, a fiction, especially a dystopia like this, stays a fiction but when they used it, it gave me a forced laugh haha)

Now, if someone gets to translate some script bits, i’m really looking forward to:

K’s backstory!!!!!

Isaac and Yohan’s past!!!!

More about Elijah!!

Where’s the cat???

What was the script saying for Gaon and Yohan’s confrontation in ep. 12? When Yohan faced the window, waking up from a nightmare after Gaon left?

ABOUT SOOHYUN’S BACKSTORY. (Now, this will get long, i’m sorry but i needed to let my thoughts out haha) The drama introduced her as one of the four main characters with Gaon, Yohan and Sunah. I had so many expectations for her character! Especially from the three scenes we got of her:

➔ In the first episode, we see her save a young girl in the street from two men, looking up at the poster « A safe Korea will be realized from now on. »: it was a great introduction to the blatant lie of the ‘safe’ dystopian world that was being created in the story. It also showed how Soohyun felt in front of this insecure world. A side note, but seeing her hug the young girl like that reminded me the hugs she gave Gaon: she wanted to protect him from this unjust world with all her might (especially the scene in the restaurant where she hugs him). ➔ Her two confrontations with Juk Chang! ➔ Her dilemma and emotional turmoil when she erases Gaon’s presence in CKH’s office.

She was portrayed in the story as Gaon’s pillar since his parents’ tragic death and his moral compass. She’s the lawful citizen, despite feeling helpless to the world’s changes, who hopes it could be saved as long as the rule of law is preserved by everyone, and this begins by respecting it themselves.

But she was not standing around and i kind of regret this was not shown more in the story: she kept doing her best in the « system », fighting from the inside the injustice hoping the little changes could make a difference someday. Because she couldn’t take Yohan’s path, in no way: the system/the law must be respected for it to be sustained. And i’m glad they addressed this point in the drama: Yohan chose to take on the role nobody wanted or even dared to assume, knowing fully well he became a criminal the second he began his plans (just as lawyer Ko said he was no longer a lawyer once he sided with him).

This must not be glorified, nor vilified. As he said, it was a choice he decided to make. She mirrors his choices to some extent and i would have loved to see more of their interactions or her thoughts about that! And how she worked through the system to change things, her vision of the justice. They showed us the flashback of her career choice in high school, and it could have been interesting to learn more about her!

A backstory about her saving the youth and meeting Sunah by accident would have been very interesting (given Sunah knew all about her since the beginning and ordered to kill her). Their meeting wouldn’t have foreshadowed Sunah’s plans, quite the opposite, and it would have given more ‘substance’ to her plans. We were robbed of this relationship haha!

And of course, seeing her side with Yohan & Gaon for a short while (because seeing her team up with them all along the way could’ve been a little ooc) would have been dope. Her arresting Juk Chang while the two of them stop the gang was the closest thing we had to their teamwork ;;

Among the drama’s main focuses (the self-pity of the powerful and the never-ending cycle of their greed, the power displays it ensues which come in many forms in the system’s game), the conception of justice was developed all along the drama. It would have been really interesting to see whether Soohyun’s conception of justice could have changed in her own way!

And professor Min’s potential manipulation of Soohyun!!! Some scenes on their interactions could have been nice to see and explain why she focused solely on Yohan, the only side of the whole story she knew! Her reporting to the professor about her investigation (and him feeling she got too close to the truth) would have made sense because, as she saw Gaon growing apart from her as he was getting closer to the Kangs (especially since she saw him interact with Elijah when they invited her to the café, like Sunah saw how Gaon fit in their family at the dinner scene), she would’ve wanted to protect him without him knowing because she knew it’d have hurt him. It could have paralleled Gaon’s reports on Yohan to the professor at the beginning of the drama. And that could have explained (aside from the whole love triangle dynamics they had) her reluctance to tell Gaon Yohan was the one who told her his whereabouts when he was in danger in ep. 13 ; this scene also was one of the only moments addressing the lack of communication in their relationship. Seeing her feeling confused over Yohan could have been interesting!

(This also got me wondering whether in the script, Yohan’s injury was ever addressed.)

Also, i’m curious about her family, if the script mentions something about them: did they know Gaon?

About the loveline between Gaon and Soohyun: while the friendship could have stayed as is (it already felt pretty genuine in my opinion and strong friendships also deserve to be portrayed in stories), i’m convinced this drama wanted to set Gaon as the center of a subtext love & morality triangle between Soohyun and Yohan (and K and Sunah on Yohan’s part). I think i would’ve appreciated Gaon and Soohyun’s loveline so much more if they developed it more! And it had to develop in the very same episode she died: apart from the confession and kiss scene (i’m curious about the scene’s description in the script), the flashback of their moments, seen from Gaon’s pov, came just right in to ‘explain’ it!

Of course it wasn’t the main focus of the story and there was already so much happening, but their new relationship development and her death almost had no impact on me even if it was set as a turning point for Gaon (and K for Yohan, as a cement to their respective decision to fight the system and how they would do it), and it made me really really sad! Of course it was a plot device (and i now wonder what would’ve happened if she or K wasn’t dead), but if it was bound to happen, the emotional impact was lessened!

Jinjoo’s character development and her relationship with Sunah happened really really fast, and i wonder how the script describes it!

Sunah’s involvement with the juvenile care center!!! Her scene at the hospital left me really sad.

(Also, on the love plot, Gaon and Yohan jealousy bits weren’t used later as an expression of their envy towards the other’s status/life/etc. and were actually directed to people outside ie. Sunah/K/Soohyun in the plot, which makes me think they really wanted to set it as a love triangle!)

ABOUT SUNAH’S DEATH. I feel really really conflicted on this point. Her story was a parallel to CKH (and of course Yohan, i’ll talk about it below): two women — coming from totally opposite backgrounds — climbing their way up by their own means in this power circle. And despite all their accomplishments unnoticed (because they were the ones seeing through their plans while the others were mainly seen tearing each other into pieces), they could still be ruthlessly ejected from this world any day, part of it because they were belittled as women all the same, and chose to end her life on her own accord, still having agency over it.

As someone else pointed it out, it also acts as a « poetic » retribution for her murder of Soohyun and K. BUT her exiting the scene in some other way staying alive could have contrasted with CKH’s suicide (especially since she overthrew the president who was the only one on her side getting in her way and even killed him in the end). Especially in a show that deals about how the justice can be carried out!

Of course, Yohan and Sunah were a foil to each other in their respective fights and traumatic past: the drama showed us how having someone to reach out to and protect (Elijah, Isaac and Gaon to Yohan ; Soohyun, Yohan and Elijah to Gaon) can become a driving force. Sunah, despite thinking this could be a weakness, also longed for companionship (from Yohan mainly, but also from Jaehee), and had no one to stop her crossing the line and preserve her from herself and the world. At least someone hearing her story, staying by her side and trying to understand her.

Each time she said ‘can you be a little nicer to me?’ to Yohan made me feel for her (and also that one call with Jaehee), it was the only cries of loneliness she silently let out!

On a totally random note, i would have loved to see her interact more with Gaon (especially by the end of ep. 15, when Yohan was arrested)!

The story gladly didn’t end Yohan’s traumatic past and growth in death, but what about Sunah? In any case, Sunah was a really good and complex character, i enjoyed her character!

What about Jaehee? How did she react to Sunah’s death???

What about CKH’s family after her death???

I would have loved to hear more about Sunah’s plans as well! Scenes where she would play with Gaon for example (in Yohan’s presence or not, like at the photoshoot)!

(This comment above foreshadowed, along with the dinner scene in ep. 11, she used him all along!)

Her involvement behind the scenes was only exposed in ep. 15 but i wanted to know more about her (motivations aside from her focus on Yohan, what did she plan to do before finding out a look-alike to Isaac, ...)! Given the elements in the plot, i get the idea she planned this whole business with the foundation first to reach the top and wanted to bring Yohan up with her (eg. leading the foundation or becoming the president) or down without her along the way, because she wanted his companionship. Maybe the script expands on it more? Did she really believe in the Dream Home project? Because as we saw her speech in the juvenile care center and her strong reaction to the youth being harmed in these schemes, i believe she kinda wanted to protect them as the best revenge on her past, because nobody could do it for her?

THE ENDING SCENE. The ending was pretty good and didn’t give us an all-out tragedy, so i’m really glad! I still can’t believe Gaon was ready to blow his life away once he learnt Yohan’s death AND wanted to die with him (falsely) realizing Yohan wouldn’t change his mind, dead set on his decision (no pun intended!). And Yohan’s reaction to this ............... Now, their last scene is left to the viewers’ interpretation, but it felt to me like a new beginning to Yohan and Gaon’s relationship! As it was already said by many people on tumblr, Yohan wasn’t sure if Gaon would still be by his side despite it all, and he didn’t expect Gaon to feel this way. They’ll definitely meet again, it’s a promise of more in the future (especially Yohan’s nod, on the verge of tears and Gaon’s two relieved/endeared smiles, full of forgiveness). Gaon will join his new world once he’s done or they’ll come back to him once Elijah’s recovered.

And this game of hide and seek/hunt reflected their relationship development: Yohan felt unattainable at first, but he chased after him in the maze that was his devilish game, symbolized by the crowd, chasing him motivated by his suspicion, curiosity, anger and hate, disbelief and disappointment, empathy, worry, affection, desperation and love, until he finally reached him and they understood each other among all the crowd, living metaphorically in the same time, facing each other on the same (ground) level.

(A scene in the first episode, Gaon seeing a maze of Yohan’s reflections, maybe symbolizing he could not see through his facade in the beginning, being an enigma to him at first sight ; the choice of the reflections in the mirrors through the drama is interesting and reflects the story: depending on the angles, a story can hold as many meanings as there are points of view, the complete image surfacing once everybody’s story is told)

(Just like how, in ep. 4, Yohan shows Gaon the wicked system right under their noses, Gaon’s enraged and confused gaze directed right at Yohan after they all block his view by clinking glasses ; Yohan hoped he would understand what lies beneath but Gaon understands it fully through his own past in ep. 7-8)

(The crowd is cleared from their/our view in the final scene, leaving the two of them facing each other without any obstacle/reflection on their path)

Gaon kept Yohan’s watch all the time even in moments of doubt, sorrow and rage (the best PPL in drama history so far haha), Yohan finally got to Gaon and entered his world as Soohyun did, reaching out when he needed it the most, to stop him doing something he would regret deeply. It was symbolized by the scar he got on his left hand from preventing Gaon from stabbing him (that’s also why he caresses his scar in a bittersweet way, lost in thoughts, reminding him of their last meeting).

As @i-guess-it-rains said + according to the BTS’ editing (it passed off as a joke but i can’t erase it from my brain now haha), the way the scene where Yohan defused Gaon’s bomb was framed looked at the same time like Yohan was also carefully handling Gaon’s heart (the bomb countdown clock radiating a red glow on his chest), on the verge of exploding. Now i have The Nights lyrics in my head haha (« My heart is going back to you, i just don’t know »)

On another note, i realized that in ep. 12, after Gaon left, he’s seen trying to call Soohyun in order to reach for her since their last confrontation, but right before, his finger glides over his contact, hesitating on Yohan’s contact before choosing to call Soohyun.

While in ep. 8, he only reaches out to Soohyun after his breakdown in the prison yard (without thinking to call Yohan because he was in the core of his doubts and pain at that time and needed space to reflect on all the events):

And it parallels to Sunah attempting to reach out to Jaehee in her loneliness at the top, hesitating before deciding to call her.

Now i hope TDJ will be on Netflix! It’d be very nice to get to watch the drama in high quality and have more people to see it!

I heard it got a webtoon adaptation so i also look forward to it once it will be translated!

A SECOND SEASON? When i first saw the ending, i thought it got wrapped up nicely and didn’t « need » another season, but it also left some parts open and laid out a new background for further developments (the system repeats itself but in another form, Yohan leaves the scene with his signature smile, maybe up to something else again, saying metaphorically or irl to Gaon he’ll come back if he doesn’t do well), kinda like Stranger/Forest of Secrets s1 or The Guest ending (the corruption doesn’t end there). I also heard it got high viewing rates in SK, so maybe it will be taken into account? And well, i’ll miss the cast so i would welcome the idea haha

THE SOUNDTRACK. The whole OST was stellar (and their titles are on point really!)! Getting to hear it without voices or noise over and with my headphones on made me realize it was even more beautiful! Because I Have You, Warmth That Melts Loneliness and If Only… are the end of me (especially If Only aaaaaaa)! Don’t get me started on Enemy of Truth’s title to the OST playing for the church fire because it’s devastating ;;;

If Only’s title … It leaves us filling in the blank space, the dots to Gaon’s thoughts when he learns about Yohan’s past and how it impacts him to this day.

The 4 songs were amazing (there’s also Different from the Outside but i still didn’t get its lyrics). Tempest was definitely etched in my mind as TDJ’s main theme haha And The Nights was my favorite!

➔ Tempest was Yohan’s iconic theme and depicted his lonely path to revenge after the tragic events in his life, and his (fated) encounter with Gaon, how deeply it will change him in this journey in ways he didn’t expect. It perfectly introduces (with Chet Faker and Flume’s Drop the game) and concludes the drama!

➔ What you gonna do was THE revenge epic song making everyone revel in the ‘bad guys’ despair and Yohan’s badass moves!

➔ The Nights felt like it was both Yohan and Gaon’s theme and Gaon’s sorrow after Soohyun’s death: at first i thought it was only Yohan’s, but his revenge and the last episodes proved me wrong! The song’s lyrics mirrored themselves (‘my/your night shines on you/me’), as if a complete understanding between Yohan and Gaon was found on their dark road. Yohan’s night shines on Gaon: Yohan’s broken past and all his misunderstood or hidden sides, his dedication to Elijah. Yohan’s rage (almost wrath since the biblical and god symbolism are there haha) and desire to take the inique system down waked Gaon’s own rage, buried deep inside, and made him move forward too. Gaon’s night shines on Yohan: all the time he spent with the Kangs, Gaon’s deep empathy and understanding, helping him reconnect with his niece, their dinners at night, his rage exploding when the truth about his parents was revealed, his desperation on the last two episodes (in ep. 15, seeing Gaon’s realization everything was a lie and Yohan was innocent, and in ep. 16, Gaon wanting to die by his side). Gaon’s night also shined on Soohyun, who wanted to protect him with all she got each time she saw him crumbling down.

There was still light on their dark road (which looks like a callback to Nightmare’s lyrics, « Save me from myself / Save me from this darkness that has lost its light »).

➔ Nightmare felt like it was Yohan and Sunah’s theme. When it last played when Sunah’s death happened on screen, it left me speechless (and if i remember correctly, the ‘save me from myself’ bit was played right when she shot herself … o u c h)!

#the devil judge #tvn drama #my ramblings

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rocket-bear · 4 years

Text

shinsena ghost fic outline

SO. on my last list of shinsena fic ideas I had written "shinsena ghost AU (yes, like the patrick swayze movie) but with an actually happy ending". I have decided that I'm not actually going to write this fic because 1) it would take forever and I have other ones that are bigger priorities for me and 2) the inspiration for it was really the MOUNTAIN of IT fix-it fics I was reading in early 2020 because I was Going Through It where I then shunted that inspiration over into a fandom I was actually comfortable writing for, and at this point I have moved past that stage and no longer need the catharsis,

BUT! I do really like the bits that I did already write for it, and I still love the idea, so I'm just going to go ahead and post the WIP bits that I did get finished, and then flesh out what the rest of my plan was after!

The fic takes place in Sena's second year of college! It's a ghostfic so, y'know, warning for major character death and copious discussion of grief, haha, but it gets better!!! Also, in addition to ShinSena there's BG mentions of HiruMamo in both the fic excerpts and bulletpoints for the rest of the planned plot. Text below the cut is about 6k words!

---------

"Aw, beans," is the first thing Sena hears after he dies.

He doesn't really process it in the moment, too busy blinking up at the bright, unclouded sun and distantly noticing that it doesn't hurt his eyes. He sits up, running through the last few moments in his mind-- a bouncy ball dotted with pink flowers, skipping merrily over the sidewalk into the street, a girl in her school smock tottering on chubby legs after it, a car unavoidably close, his view of everything blurring as he throws himself forward without even thinking about it--

Oh.

"EHHHH," he shrieks, and scrambles away from his body, and it doesn't come with him.

"I'm going to be in ;so much trouble," that voice says again, and Sena whips around because it's the only thing he can actually hear clearly, even though he's pretty sure he should be able to hear-- the other people around him, looking at his body without looking at him, everyone unharmed but most of them in tears, and he doesn't want to think about that.

So he looks, and sees-- something. It almost looks like an afterimage, at first, the kind of light-dark luminescent spots your eyes put up when you look away from a light you've been staring at too long, but it stays put as Sena stares at it, a kind of void of shifting light just stamped in the way of his view of the bushes lining the sidewalk.

"Um," he says, and the Thing kind of goes more dark-light than light-dark for a moment as it… sighs?

"Yeah, sorry, you're not getting me at my best, this wasn't supposed to happen," it says, and Sena feels like he would be hyperventilating if he had lungs, but he doesn't anymore.

"No, listen," the Thing says, and it starts to get bigger, which Sena belatedly realizes is because it's moved closer to him. With the way it doesn't actually seem to take up space, it's hard to tell. "Let's move away from here, okay? It's going to be hard for you to listen with all this going on."

And, well-- Sena casts a glance back behind him, to the people with their hands over their mouths and tears in their eyes and the pointless things they're doing to his body to try to bring him back to it, and he scrambles up to his feet and follows the thing.

"Okay, here goes," the Thing says as they move further away from the-- the scene, and then its voice changes. "Fear not, mortal, for your time on this plane has elapsed, and you have accomplished all that you were intended for. Your current form--"

"Wait," Sena says, fighting against the mesmerizing effect of the Thing's shifting lights in combination with its new, multilayered voice, high and low at once but somehow soothing. "I thought you said this wasn't supposed to happen??"

"Well, okay, yeah," the Thing says, its voice reedy and thin once more. "Your time actually isn't supposed to be up, but-- okay, did you know you're like, really fast? Like crazy fast. I was just supposed to nudge the driver once they stopped the car in time, you know, typical near-death experience stuff, but you jumped right through me before I was in place."

"You kill people by touching them?!" Sena skitters away from the Thing, and gets the distinct impression that the silvery flush it pulses in response is decidedly unimpressed.

"I can't kill you again," it says. "And we don't kill things, anyway. We just… mark them as finished. I got you out of the oven too soon, that's all."

That sounds a lot like it was only different from killing things in terms of word choice to Sena, but he doesn't say so.

"C-can-- can we fix it?" He asks instead, the first shards of ice-cold realization sinking in at last. He's dead. He's dead?

The Thing flares sigh-dark, and says, "You know this kind of thing has only happened like, four times before? Ever! Since the dawn of humanity! It's been like 20,000 years since the last time! I don't know off the top of my head, kid, I'm gonna have to look it up."

"Then-- there's a chance? How long will that take? What if-- I mean-- they're gonna take me to the hospital--"

The ice shards sink further into his body, but the Thing's voice is dismissive.

"If there's a way, that's not the body you're going to be coming back to; there's no way we're gonna be able to do this without rolling back the clock. So don't worry about the morgue, okay?"

Which-- was a relief, but Sena feels an empty sensation at the word "morgue" that he's pretty sure would have been nausea if he had a working stomach left to experience it.

Some of that must show on his face because the Thing comes to an abrupt stop, and its voice is more gentle as it says, "Okay, gameplan. If there's a way to get you back, it's gonna have something to do with the energy left over from your presence among the living. So go see your friends and family and see what you can figure out. Right now, you're a ghost, so there's got to be some way to tap into that energy."

Sena nods a little numbly at first, working on auto-pilot, and then nods more firmly as he actually processes the Thing's words. A plan! That means-- there's something he can actually do, while the Thing goes to-- "look it up." That's good! A plan!

And then, the Thing goes yellowish, and its tone turns apologetic.

"And… Speaking of ghost stuff, I didn't get to finish this part before. Your current form will let you move around this plane to visit your loved ones and grant yourself any closure you desire, but you won't be able to interact with the living world, and if we're not able to fix this in time-- when the time comes, you'll have to make a choice. Move on completely to the next plane, or stay here with your loved ones until there are none left who remember you."

Sena blinks, going still, and the Thing glows even more yellow.

"So we've got about [a month] to figure this thing out. I'll do what I can, kid. You hang tight."

And then it's gone, and Sena is left alone on the sidewalk.

He does all that he can do, and goes to find Mamori.

------

He doesn't think through the consequences of that until he gets to her apartment and finds her in tears and Hiruma on the phone, calling them an escort to the hospital. Every awful minute of that first day feels like nothing more than a smear in Sena's memory by the time his funeral comes around. He spends the time in-between trying his best to do something, anything, that will let his friends and parents know that he's still there. He does his absolute best to go full Hollywood Haunting on everyone he knows, trying to knock over pictures or rattle windows or flick lights on and off, but nothing works. Every once in a while, when he's flopped beside Mamori on the floor as she goes through photo albums, he almost thinks she hears him as he talks about the photos she's flipping through-- but it always just ends up being a fresh round of quiet tears that brings Hiruma over to her side.

The funeral seems to be no different. He'd hoped, somehow, that maybe having so many loved ones gathered in one place to think about him would somehow give him the energy to make himself solid-- and there are so many people there, not just Sena's family and closest friends, but people from nearly every team in the Tokyo American football community, some of them who he only ever remembered seeing across the field.

All of the original Devil Bats are there, of course. Kurita sobs his way through the service. The Ha-Ha Brothers stand stony-faced, and Juumonji scrubs a rough hand across his eyes, but Sena never sees any tears. Suzuna clings to Monta's arm as they both cry openly with Riku in the row behind Sena's parents, Mamori, and Hiruma.

His parents cry. Mamori seems too exhausted to, just sitting quietly and taking in the service with bruised red eyes. Hiruma puts his arm around her shoulder at one point, and Sena finds himself surprised by how much tenderness he's seen between them in the last few days. Hiruma had handled almost all of the arrangements, actually-- Mamori and Sena's parents making the decisions, and Hiruma diligently rising from each discussion to make the appropriate phone calls.

In the middle rows, Sena finds himself looking at Shin and Sakuraba. He shouldn't have been surprised to see them-- and he really wasn't, not really, he knew he would be devastated and would definitely show up if the situation was reversed-- but something on Shin's face startles him into looking again.

He looks tired. Sena doesn't think he's ever seen Shin tired, before, not even after playing full-out through an entire game, not even after the most intensive of training. But Shin's face is undeniably drawn, and the skin underneath his eyes is bruise-dark.

Sakuraba tears up, and Shin doesn't, but it's Sakuraba who lays a comforting hand on Shin's shoulder. [UNFINISHED SCENE-- also I had intended to go back and make this scene more accurately reflect Japanese (vs Western) funeral traditions but have not done that since, I'm not finishing the fic]

----------

He finds himself seeking out one of his and Shin's old training routes from high school, when they lived close enough that it made sense to share. It's been years since he ran this route, but it makes sense, he figures, that he would be revisiting old memories like this. It was a good route, anyway-- at one point it ran alongside the river, and Sena remembers reaching it on hot summer days, and noticing that even Shin tipped his face into the breeze when the sun was really beating down.

He walks along the path at first, but before long finds himself jogging, the force of memory and habit alike drawing him into those quick strides. It doesn't feel the same without the sensation of the wind on his face, or the heat of the sun on his body, or even the sweat beading up stickily between his skin and his clothes, but it's something.

Without fatigue or fear of obstacles to keep him vigilant, Sena finds himself startled before too long by the sound of steady footfalls coming up behind him. He automatically shifts his path to make way-- though it doesn't matter much now, he thinks with a frown-- and looks up as the lone jogger makes to pass him.

It's Shin.

Sena's not-heart squeezes painfully at seeing him unexpectedly, and Sena gapes.

"Shin-san--" He gasps, and of course Shin doesn't respond or look his way. Sena swallows the painful reminder and adjusts his pace to match Shin's.

They run together, and of course it's quiet, because Shin doesn't know that he has company. Not that companionable silence was atypical for their runs together before-- running was for focusing on technique, including breathing, so they would save the chatting for before and after.

Sena wonders if Shin had kept to running this path all along-- he was so sure that they'd both abandoned it when they'd made their way to university. Or at least, Shin had apologetically told him so, when he'd moved on to Oujou University and Sena was still in his third year at Deimon.

Maybe Shin's feeling nostalgic too, Sena thinks, and then shakes his head. He doesn't want to be sad, and it's nice to have Shin at his side, even if Shin doesn't know he's there.

He tries to sink into the feeling of running. It's still hard-- he can't feel much of anything, after all-- but with Shin there, it's a little easier to fall into old memories and let those guide him. He can pretend-- to feel the gentle breeze off the river cooling the sweat on his face, to feel the push of the sidewalk under his feet launching him into his next step, to feel how the sun is hotter on his back and shoulders than anywhere else as it crawls its way up the sky.

It almost feels like normal, finding that rhythm alongside Shin that has their steps striking the pavement in tandem, Sena's extra stride to make up for their heights a little accented half-note; that peaceful, focused haze that has them inhaling and exhaling in synch. It's so perfectly familiar that Sena can almost imagine a lump rising in his throat and the sting of tears in his eyes, nearly overcome with the twin sensations of having and loss--

--when Shin startles hard beside him and skids to a stop, with a gasp that has Sena's blood running cold before he even looks back for him, the image of the oncoming truck flashing through his mind.

But there's no truck here, of course. They're on a running trail, on a totally separate level than the road, but it's obvious enough what drew that terrifying, uncharacteristic noise from Shin's lungs when Sena looks back, and his eyes meet Shin's.

Shin sees him.

[UNFINISHED SCENE, this is the last of the actual fic that I wrote!]

---------

FROM THERE here was the plan:

- Shin being able to see him only lasts a split second. Shin's super shaken and keeps looking around and rubbing his eyes for a couple moments, and then he turns around and walks back to the train, and Sena-- thinking, like, "holy shit, Shin never skips training"-- follows him back, because even though it's super heart-breaking seeing Shin so shaken up it's also the closest he's gotten to making any progress the whole time

- Shin gets back to his dorm and just like. sits down at his table with his head in his hands. Sena's motivation to keep trying to get his attention kind of dries up so he pokes around Shin's dorm room instead and notices, like. a bunch of half-eaten meals/snacks in the trash, "Practice" scratched out on his calendar for the next few weeks, unmade bed, evidence that Shin's only really gotten dressed to go out jogging over the last few days and is only wearing his pajamas otherwise-- he's just not doing good.

- Just as Sena's like, really starting to grasp this, Sakuraba shows up at the door-- Shin gets up to answer the door with his back to Sena and like, whatever Sakuraba sees on Shin's face just stops him in his tracks and he immediately pulls Shin into a hug, which Sena is kind of shocked to see that Shin totally sinks into

- Sakuraba sits down with Shin at the table and they talk. Shin admits that he thought he saw Sena while he was jogging, and both of them are just brushing it off as like, a grief-induced sensory memory, stuff like that happens, etc. Sakuraba comforts him and encourages Shin to take it easy, it's okay to take time off of even his own personal training, it's okay if he needs more time, and also like fusses about Shin not getting enough to eat especially if he IS going to keep training

- Sena meanwhile is like, feeling awful with guilt but also just kind of overwhelmed with the realization of how important he was to Shin, and this is where I would've like, laid the groundwork for how they'd gotten closer during the rest of high school/early college but Sena still never rrreally understood how much Shin cared about him because 1) he's got self-esteem issues baybee, and 2) Shin is not exactly, like, super forthright about his feelings,

- but, while Sena DOES feel awful about how much Shin was shaken up about seeing him, it's the only thread he can think of to pull on to try and bring himself back, and he ALSO feels guilty about having to watch everyone grieve for him, so, well,

- he starts haunting Shin!! Shin does not listen to his good and helpful friend Sakuraba and goes jogging again the next day, but it's obvious that he's still feeling Off and he's having a hard time getting into a rhythm, and Sena isn't able to tap into ~whatever it was~ that made him visible the previous time and is feeling super defeated about it, UNTIL,

- Shin takes a break at the midpoint of his normal route, which is a thing Sena knows he does not generally do from their own training together, and is basically just slumped over on a bench with his head in his hands again and Sena's also feeling awful and helpless and does the same thing,

- and then Shin tenses up beside him, his breath getting shallow, and Sena notices and tentatively calls out to him. Shin slowly, slowly looks up, and they make eye contact for just a second again, before Sena can tell he's not visible anymore because Shin's eyes kind of unfocus and he looks away, and just gets up and goes home.

- This kind of refreshes Sena's determination, and over the next few days (IT WAS GONNA DEPEND ON HOW LONG I WANTED TO TORTURE SHIN) they repeat the same pattern, with Sena going on Shin's jogs with him and occasionally achieving small flashes of visibility(/audibility, though Sena isn't ever able to get out anything helpful before the universe mutes him again) which Shin seems to be determined to just brush off as grief illusions even as he gets more and more tense each time

- Until finally as they're jogging, Shin sort of tersely asks "Are you there?" and instead of saying anything Sena just tries to barrel into him for a hug because clearly auditory-visual haunting only isn't WORKING and we've gotta get some TACTILE FEEDBACK in here,

- and it works. He knocks Shin off of his stride, and Shin grabs for him in turn, and there's a moment where they both stare at each other in total shock and relief before Sena starts trying to frantically tell Shin the whole story and disappears out of his arms like, three words in.

- Shin has a little tiny mental breakdown in the middle of the sidewalk where he cycles from devastation at Sena disappearing again to trying to pull himself together like, "okay if this is real then this isn't my last chance because it's happened a lot over the past few days" to a kind of giddy catharsis because it's real Sena's really here to kind of shutting down over the idea that maybe it's STILL not real and he's just going REALLY crazy to actually pulling himself back together and going to find a bench to sit down on, and just like,

- talking things out, out loud, in hopes that Sena can hear him. He can only see Sena when they're running, which is something they used to do together, so maybe recreating old memories is what triggers it. He's noticed that even when running, he usually sees Sena in moments when he's feeling least conflicted/emotionally complex-- either pure grief or pure nostalgia or pure just-zoning-out-running, not as much when he's really struggling to process and has a lot going on internally at once. Maybe the stability of the emotion is part of it.

- Sena meanwhile is having his own meltdown from sheer overwhelming relief over FINALLY FINALLY making contact and Shin FINALLY FINALLY believing he's there and also just like making hearteyes at Shin for immediately going into full methodical Ghost Scientist mode after getting his own meltdown over and done with

- speaking of going full Ghost Scientist, Shin announces his intention to do exactly that by saying he's heading back to his and Sena's old running trail to test out the "recreating memories" theory right that second, and they head over.

- They jog, and Shin talks out some of his memories with Sena from his own perspective, which is a surprise for Sena because he doesn't even remember some of the things that Shin does and also it lets him actually understand what Shin was thinking in those moments.

- And most importantly: it works. It's not constant, but the longer they practice, the longer they're able to keep Sena in view for longer stretches of time, more of an unsteady flicker than the total off-or-on that it was before. They stay out for a long time (and in the process discover that other people still can't see Sena when Shin can as he continually gets weird looks for talking to thin air) and Shin actually eats a real meal when he finally goes home.

- Sena and Shin keep practicing over the next few days, which makes Sakuraba SUPER concerned because Shin spending hours and hours jogging every day looks like Shin further depression-spiralling from his perspective, but he's somewhat mollified by the fact that Shin's actually getting back to eating and getting dressed etc. normally, even though he's still not going to practice.

- During this time, Sena and Shin bond when they're actually able to communicate. Sena notices that Shin's parents haven't checked in on him even once despite the fact that he just lost a friend, and Shin confirms in one conversation that he basically doesn't have a relationship or emotional connection with his parents at all. (But watch, hang in there, I'm gonna fix it,)

- In the meantime, Shinigami-san tracks Sena back down and they both share what they've learned. Shinigami-san says that Sena has to gather energy from as many of the people he's formed bonds with as possible to chain himself more strongly to life, and gives him a pendant to wear around his neck that will store the energy. When Sena talks about his and Shin's experiments, It says that it makes sense that being emotionally and physically in-sync would help bolster the connection between them to the point where other people would be able to see him, and that if they practice enough they might even be able to just use one or the other (emotional sync or physical sync) without needing both.

- After Sena laboriously relays this to him through flickers, Shin gets a metronome and they both practice tapping their fingers to the rhythm, and they're finally able to see each other at Shin's dorm room vs having to be on a run and actively reminiscing together. They develop a system where when Shin wants/needs to see him, he'll tap his finger against the side of his leg and Sena will do the same thing so they can actually talk.

(- There is at least one moment in the development of this that, when Sena successfully appears in front of him, Shin smiles fondly and very softly says, "There you are," and Sena immediately disappears again because he's so shaken to his disaster bisexual core that he can't even handle it.)

- During this process they find out that Sena's pendant glows when Shin is reminiscing or otherwise talking about his feelings (but not the capital-L feeling) about Sena, which lets them know how to go about "gathering energy" from Sena's friends.

- With the clock counting down on Sena's deadline, Shin starts approaching Sena's friends to "check on them," or, to sit down with them and talk about Sena. It's a little awkwardly sweet on both sides, because no one expects Shin of all people to be making sympathy housecalls and Shin's not very good at talking about feelings, but the conversations are surprisingly genuine and cathartic for all parties (including Shin, who is still processing some weird sideways grief even with his new connection to ghostSena, and Sena, whose self-esteem issues have a hard time standing up under a deluge of people talking about how much they cared about and miss him), PARTICULARLY:

- Monta and Suzuna, where the reminiscing works a little too well and they actually see a flicker of Sena sitting at Shin's side during the conversation and freak out. Shin immediately changes tacks and tells them that Sena is there and that he's trying to bring Sena back and he needs their help, and at first this makes them freak out more because what the fuck but by virtue of Shin being… Seijuurou "Overly-Serious-Stoic-Never-Overreacted-In-His-Life" Shin, he convinces them to try the tapping technique to bring Sena back into view.

- Sena has Shin describe a memory involving the three of them while they tap along to Shin's rhythm, and the combination of reminiscing and tapping works well enough that they're able to get frequent enough flickers of Sena to believe Shin. Yes, they do get a least one good long group hug out of the flickers, I'm not a monster.

- Shin still has to do most of the communication for Sena because it would take a lot of practice for the Sena-Monta-Suzuna combo to get enough in-sync to be able to communicate effectively, but he explains the whole situation and all the information they've gotten from Shinigami-san. They decide that it still makes the most sense for Shin to field the energy-gathering housecalls for the same communication-based reasons-- Sena can guide Shin through the conversations by suggesting memories to bring up with his friends-- but all the same, Shin suddenly finds himself with two tiny new best friends who want to hang out with him all the time. (And not even just to talk to Sena! Suzuna and Monta become pretty attached to and curious about Shin after he shows them more of his vulnerable side in the conversation leading up to the point where they actually see Sena themselves.)

- I was going to go through little flashes of Shin's conversations with a lot of Sena's friends across the football world, but the other Big One was going to be Mamori, of course. (And a little bit of Hiruma, who refuses to sit down for an Emotional Conversation with fucking Shin, but will gladly peanut-gallery Mamori's out of his own repressed desire for catharsis and also to make sure with guns loaded that Shin doesn't fuck up the fragile acceptance Mamori's been building since Sena's death.)

- Having learned from the experience with Suzuna and Monta, Sena wisely sits out of view during the conversation because he actually doesn't want to put Mamori through the rollercoaster of seeing him again, especially if his and Shin's efforts fail.

- Shin does not fuck up his conversation with Mamori and so Hiruma doesn't have to murder him! It's actually the most honest-- and healing-- conversation he has with anyone. Mamori finds herself feeling very fond of Shin, who she didn't know was so close with Sena and could be so supportive and empathetic under all that stoic strength, and Shin finds himself immediately adopted by another one of Sena's loved ones.

(- In their conversation, Mamori also mentions that just after Sena passed she kept finding herself thinking she heard Sena's voice, because that seed in the actually-written bit above was in fact foreshadowing ohoho.)

- I was not going to Go Into It because not even I have the strength, but to continue the theme of Shin finding a new family via his bond with Sena, there was going to be a brief scene referencing that Shin's visit with Sena's parents went much the same, with the addition that Shin was surprised Sena's parents already knew so much about him (because as it turns out Sena talked about him FREQUENTLY.)

(- Also within the housecalls there's a comedy scene where Shin makes Sena solid just long enough for Sena to log Shin in on Skype so he can talk to Panther without sacrificing a computer, and they discover that international friendship energy gathering does in fact work.)

- AND THEN: SAKURABA. The fic would switch to Shin's POV from here! In Shin's energy-gathering conversation with Sakuraba, things are going well at first, with Sakuraba reminiscing about Sena and then turning the conversation toward Shin himself to talk about how he's noticed Shin's seeming a lot more steady and like he's been doing some real healing lately. Shin obviously does not explain the ghostSena situation, but does honestly say that his conversations with Sena's other friends have helped him process his feelings a lot. And Sakuraba, being a supportive friend, very gently says that he's proud of Shin for reaching out, and for doing so well when he's going through something so hard, because he can't imagine losing the person he was in love with.

- Shin freezes up, and Sakuraba tries to reassure him that it's okay, he's known for a long time, he's so sorry that Shin never got to actually process those feelings with Sena, and Shin doesn't have to talk about it but if he ever wants to Sakuraba's there for him-- and Shin very stiltedly deflects the whole conversation because he doesn't want to totally shut Sakuraba down when he's just trying to be supportive but also Sena is right there

- After finally, awkwardly shooing Sakuraba out the door, Shin sits back down and tries to Talk About It with Sena, but he's so emotionally frazzled that he's not able to get a stable connection. Since they can't have a two-way conversation, he just launches into apologizing-- he's sorry, he understands if it makes Sena uncomfortable, Sena doesn't need to feel obligated to respond to it and of course Shin is going to help him finish getting what he needs regardless--

- Sena's just RAPIDLY flickering in and out of view, with the time he's not visible getting longer and longer as Shin keeps talking because they are incredibly emotionally out-of-sync, and with Shin only able to tell that Sena looks upset whenever he's able to see him, he makes some Assumptions about Sena's feelings about his accidental confession.

- Things don't get better over the next day or two. They try to do their synchronizing exercises, but even reciting memories doesn't help because Shin is too anxious and ashamed (and sleep-deprived from stress) to connect to them emotionally, which is only compounded because he realizes that Sena's deadline is fast approaching and they won't be able to finish in time if he can't get his shit together but that anxiety Does Not Help with relaxing enough to synchronize when he's spiralling over the thought of losing Sena again because of something that he "did".

- Finally, Sena apparently gets desperate and snatches up the metronome during one of the moments when he's solid for just long enough to do it.

- Shin doesn't see him for a while after that, and assumes (correctly) that Sena has taken the metronome with him to try and sync with Monta and/or Suzuna instead, and also assumes (incorrectly) that this is because Sena is extremely disappointed with him at best and totally hates him at worst, and that either way Sena probably doesn't want much to do with him anymore even if he is able to be brought back.

- He spirals for like, A Day, after which he does in fact break and go to tear up very stoically on Sakuraba about how yes he was (is) in love with Sena and it hurts him that he'll never get to express that properly (now that Sena wants nothing to do with him) and how he feels like he let himself (and Sena) down by not being able to act on that earlier (when it wasn't a literal life-or-death situation) and how maybe he's just not cut out for emotions and connections with other people actually, just look at even his relationship with his parents???

- Sakuraba comforts him and very gently tells him he's being a catastrophizing dingus and shows him, like, a mountain of texts on his phone not ONLY from concerned fellow Oujous, but also from a bunch of the people that Shin's talked to about Sena over the last few weeks, all of them expressing the general sentiment of "wow I was super surprised when Shin came around to talk to me about Sena but I'm so glad he did, it looks like he's doing well, keep an eye on him for me" in varying levels of transparency because after all they are Manly Footballers, but regardless: look at that, Shin is actually perfectly capable of forming relationships with other people, and they like and care about him.

- This results in some decidedly less stoic tears, and Sakuraba and Shin successfully patch things up after their previous awkward discussion about Shin's feelings for Sena. When Shin leaves he immediately heads for Enma to try and find Monta, because even if Sena and his friends don't want to see him he absolutely can't just shrug and sit back and just wait to see if they manage to save him.

- When he's like halfway there, he comes across Monta and Suzuna heading in his direction, and they cut off his questions by just being like NOPE SHUT UP COME WITH US and dragging him over to like, a park gazebo for some semi-privacy.

- Suzuna gets the metronome out of her bag and sets it on the park table and turns it on. Monta pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and starts reading.

- It turns out that after he left Shin's, Sena ghosted up into Monta's room and just plopped the suddenly-appearing metronome down on Monta's desk, scaring the shit out of him but also giving a very clear signal of WE NEED TO TALK. Monta called up Suzuna and the three of them had spent the last day and a half working on synchronizing non-stop, and while they still aren't nearly as good as Shin and Sena had gotten with weeks' worth of practice, they got far enough along that Sena was able to have them slowly write out some of his memories with Shin, this time from his perspective, through the unsteady connection.

- Suzuna and Monta take turns yanking the paper back and forth between them to read out the description of Sena and Shin's memories, and with Shin tapping along to the metronome, he's able to see Sena more and more clearly over time until he's solid more often than not.

- As it becomes increasingly clear, even to Shin, that these specific memories Sena has chosen to share are a record of him coming to realize his feelings for Shin, Sena is eventually able to take Shin's hands and hold them without disappearing, tapping not needed. He interrupts Suzuna and Monta to try to finish off the confession himself: Shin didn't need to be scared when Sena found out about his feelings, because--

- Absolutely overwhelmed by everything about the last 36 hours and having no ability to process any of it in words ANYMORE but moved by the SPIRIT OF COMMUNICATION regardless, Shin gambles on the pretty sure bet that he and Sena are in-sync about this, and kisses him.

- It connects. (And connects, and connects...) Sena's pendant starts to glow brighter and brighter until he's totally enveloped, and--

- Switch back to Sena's POV! He wakes up on the street in front of the truck again, scraped up but otherwise totally unharmed. So are the little girl, who he successfully pushed out of the way, and the driver of the car, who stopped in time regardless. Shinigami-san is also there, and Sena tells It to leave the driver alone because It owes him one, and Shinigami-san congratulates him and tells him that hey hey that was the plan along!! (The onlookers assume that he's confused from the near-accident when he starts talking to thin air.)

- Sena waves off all the concerned onlookers and runs off to find somewhere to sit where he's not going to be gawked at so he can text literally everyone he knows. By the time he finds a bench, he's already gotten HOLY SHIT WE JUST TIME-TRAVELED ARE YOU OKAY??? texts from Monta and Suzuna, which he responds to and incites a flood of emoji-based cheering. Everyone else he texts is politely puzzled by his "are you okay???" message, including Mamori and his parents to his intense relief, except--

- He gets a call from Sakuraba, who sounds very confused as he tells him that Shin wants to talk to him. Sena reassures Shin that he's okay, and tells him to meet him at the park that they left off at, and also that he loves him because he can't restrain himself after not getting to say it before. Shin says it back, and Sakuraba therefore sounds both confused AND delighted when he gets the phone back from Shin to say goodbye.

- Sena texts Suzuna and Monta to meet him at the same place, since it's about halfway between Enma and Oujou, and starts running.

- Shin and Sena, being… Shin and Sena, get there before the other two, and there's so many tears and so much hugging and so many I Love Yous and also some apologies. Monta and Suzuna eventually arrive and there's another round of tears and hugging and I Love Yous, and when everyone is less punchdrunk off of trauma and catharsis, they sit down and figure out that it's only the people that actually saw Sena as a ghost that remember the other timeline.

- With the group understandably not ready to be separated under the circumstances, but also with Sena desperately wanting to see his parents, Mamori and Riku, he comes up with a thin excuse for an impromptu dinner party at his parents' place later in the day (celebrating passing a tough test? beat the Cupids in a football game? national pancake day?? doesn't matter!!!), clears it with them, and invites Mamori+Hiruma and Riku over as well. (Shin lets Sena arrange takeout for everyone on his dime so that Sena's parents won't have to cook for an unplanned dinner party.)

- Fic ends with the group heading toward Sena's parents' house, Shin and Sena holding hands, with Sena feeling content and confident in his relationships as his phone continuously blows up with people responding to his check-in text, and Shin admitting that he's feeling pretty hopeful about the idea of getting to form connections with Sena's family all over again.

END. Thanks for indulging my "I'm too lazy to write this but NOT too lazy to bulletpoint each plot detail beat-by-beat" post, haha!

#shinsena #eyeshield 21 #my fic #kind of!!!

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midweekblues · 4 years

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Names, Violence and Empire: a The Terror/Black Sails Rant

Ok I've been thinking of writing something coherent on this for ages, but I've given up on coherence and I'm just gonna rant about this because I found myself with extra time off and i need to get it out. Please feel free to chime in, I got so many Feelings. I’m putting this under a cut because it’s both rambly and spoilery AF.

Part 1: A tale of two Jameses

We are introduced to James Fitzjames (or rather, he introduces himself) as a war hero during the officer's dinner on Terror. He tells the story of being wounded during the Opium War, which earns him sympathetic looks, even a comparison to Lord Nelson, but also nonchalantly states that, as enemy soldiers burned, "the whole view smelled like roast duck", a jest received with polite, amused laughs. Both the wound and the smell of burning meat will come back to haunt him episodes later; for now, his narrative is that of the Imperial hero, who excels at violence sanctioned by the Empire. He's climbed the ranks through military prowess, but also, as we'll see later, through political luck, through his social connections and his ability to navigate the rigid Victorian society. Yet he believes himself a fake because of the circumstances of his birth: He's very much embedded in the morals and prejudices of the Empire (I'm not even fully English), and it's only after years in a space devoid of Empire, only after leaving the ships behind, after the Navy hierarchy has already started to disintegrate under his feet (Blanky's telling of Fury Beach was, indeed, a warning) that he allows himself to open up about it; and he opens up to Crozier (!) in a scene so full of vulnerability that it set HMS Fitzier to sail for a whole bunch of us. He introduces himself again, now as a man whose name was made up for his baptism, building himself a gilded life (I don't know much about the historical JFJ, but this post and the linked article bring up some interesting points) where war and imperialism are sources of anechdotes and glory.

The one character he chooses to disclose his origins to, Crozier, quite clearly dislikes him through the first few episodes; he does not seem to object to his violence though, but to how pompous he is about it, and how it seems to buy James credit and lift him up in the hierarchy. During the dinner scene, his retort about Birdshit Island seems to aim at demystifying his narrative, not discrediting his worth as a soldier; he will later call his feats acts of valor, reassure him he's not a fraud. In confessing It's all vanity, James becomes more real to Francis; at the revelation of his parentage, one can't help but think that Francis (Irish, middle-bred Francis) feels closer to him. Crozier is just as much a part of the Empire as Fitzjames, no matter how much he seems to disdain or resent it. But more on that later.

150 years earlier, Lieutenant James McGraw comes from a humble family and he's a rising star in the Royal Navy when he meets the Hamiltons; he's also an Imperial hero, no stranger to violence, very much concerned with propriety and rank but also indifferent to the brutality of the system he's part of. He views pirates as criminals, their violence as savage and opposed to civilization; he is utterly confused as to why or how would Thomas Hamilton try to solve the issue with pardons instead of sheer force. The glimpses we see of McGraw, of Flint's past, show us a man who's no stranger to violence as a way to achieve an end; it’s only that the man before Nassau, before the Hamiltons, seems happy enough with enforcing violence in the name of the very same England he will later despise; but only after England rejects him, strips him of his rank and takes his love from him. As we discover this, throughout the seasons, we see that James McGraw is at the very root of Captain Flint: his comfort with using violence to uphold the Empire is the very same he will show to try and tear that Empire down. He will don the mask of Captain Flint, the monster, after England calls him a monster, but the man he was before was no stranger to violence either.

The one person in Nassau that knows (knew?) James McGraw, Miranda Barrow, starts as an even more enigmatic character than him. As their backstories are revealed, we are forced to understand her longing for the Empire, for civilization. Not just the material comforts she enjoyed, but a sense of freedom, of safety, that she'll never find in the island. We see her living a recluse life, away from the vibrant but dangerous Nassau, alone but for the visits of a man she seems to both love and resent (and sometimes fear?). She seems the only one to see past through Flint's cries of Freedom, to see the anarchy of a Pirate Republic ends in the same amount of violence, or more, as England's rule. She is the last thread tethering him to the man he was before, to the man he loved before, and she almost, almost succeeds in finishing what the man she loved started. Almost.

Is it her death that finally brings Flint over the edge? Or is it the fact that she dies right after showing, for the first time, the extent of her pain and her rage? It is indeed her last words that get Charles Town burned to the ground, and as viewers we can't help but somehow thank her. We know Flint is a violent, manipulative bastard by now, but the catharsis of the season finale makes him transcend the pirate archetype, his rage now Achillean: we're left with a man that simply said I will wage war on the Empire that took you from me, and then did it, twice.

James Fitzjames will die a hero in the Arctic. Past the end of vanity, we'll see him fire rockets at a monster, we'll see friendship, brotherhood, and then him succumbing to the very wound he suffered, originally, while fighting England's wars. It is tempting to only remember the last words Bridgens says to him: There will be poems. But the bit before that is just as moving. You're a good man. Here where there's no Empire, no glory, no praise, a good man (a steward, a kind man, an intelligent man, a man who loves another) thinks you're good, James. Not even talking about Francis here because, There will be Fix-Its.

And James McGraw? We're led to think he'll live. That he'll get rid of Flint, like a snake molds its old skin, and live. But then again, as the show approaches its end, the narrative belongs less and less to him, and more and more to Silver, in more senses than one. And that deserves its own damn post because this one is getting long enough. Stay tuned for E.C., Long John Silver, and more Flint. And more Crozier.

#the terror #black sails #james fitzjames #james mcgraw #rant #rambling about Boat Shows

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brentwatchesmovies · 3 years

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Brent’s Top 10 Movies of 2019

Scorsese is probably my favorite living filmmaker, but I’ll be honest, when I heard that Scorsese was making this movie, and *how* he was making it (heavily digital de-aged actors) I was a bit skeptical. De Niro and Pacino haven’t been turning in interesting performances in quite awhile, and Pesci came out of a decades-long retirement for the movie as well. On top of that, the first trailer released did little for me. All that to say I was an idiot to doubt the master.

Scorsese returns to the crime genre that he re-invented many times over the years, this time with the eyes of a man in his 70’s, looking back on his life and career. The movie is very long, but in my opinion, it needs the length. The viewer needs to *feel* the totality of a life, and as is his intent with The Irishman, the *consequences* of this specific life. The final hour or so of this movie feels like a culmination of Scorsese’s career in many ways. The energy and entertainment of a crime/mob epic, with the fatalism and philosophical leanings of a movie like ‘Silence’. It’s a 3.5 hour movie that I’ve already rewatched, and actively want to again, so that alone ought to speak volumes.

Harmony Korine made one of my favorite movies of the 2010’s, the neon-soaked and often misunderstood ‘Spring Breakers’, so I was already in the bag for whatever he did next. When I heard it was a freewheeling stoner comedy where Matthew Mcconaughey plays a guy named ‘Moondog’ costarring Snoop Dogg, I reserved its location on my top 10 list.

This movie doesn’t have the empty heart at its core that defines Spring Breakers, opting instead for a character study about a ‘Florida man’ poet after his life pretty much falls apart. It’s basically plotless, stumbling from one insane, borderline hallucinatory sequence to the next, but I just loved living in the world of this movie. Beach Bum almost feels like a deliriously fun VR simulation of hanging out with Matt McConaughey and his weirdo friends down in the Florida keys. This is one that probably won’t pop up on many top 10 lists but I really adore, and will surely rewatch it a dozen times in the years to come.

Let the record show, I’ve been a huge fan of Bong Joon-ho since I first saw his monster movie/family drama ‘The Host’. Some time later, he went on to make ‘Snowpiercer’, one of my favorite movies of the last decade. All that to say, I think Parasite is probably his best movie, and a true masterwork of thriller direction. It also has his usual brand of social commentary and a script filled with darkness and humor, following a South Korean tendency to juggle multiple tones throughout, sometimes all in one moment or scene.

Parasite also follows a big 2019 trend of commenting on class and social dynamics between the rich and the poor. I think that’s part of why it’s done incredibly well at the box office (especially for a Korean language film), the fact that people can relate in a huge way, regardless of which country your from. Parasite is one of the most entertaining movie viewing experiences I’ve had this year and I’d recommend everyone check it out.

If you were to ask me what the funnest movie-going experience I had in 2019 was, I’d have to pick Rian Johnson’s ‘Knives Out’. Hot off making one of the best Star Wars movies ever made (don’t @ me) Johnson decided to make a passion project in the vein of classic Agatha Christie style murder mysteries, and the results are a total blast. Filled with clever twists and turns, weaponizing the structure of murder-mysteries against the audiences expectations, it stays one step ahead of you the entire time.

Aside from the clever mystery of it all, it’s the actors performances and chemistry that really sell this thing. Jamie Lee Curtis and Toni Collette are expectedly great per usual, and Daniel Craig is having the time of his life as Mississippi private-eye Benoit Blanc, but the heart of the movie is relative newcomer Ana de Armas. She brings an emotional weight and anchor to the movie that always keeps you emotionally invested amidst the terrible, money hungry backstabbing by the other heightened characters. I hope everyone sees this movie and Johnson is able to give us another Benoit Blanc adventure somewhere down the line, I’ll be there opening day.

Nobody makes an upbeat, feel-good movie like Ari Aster does! After last years light and breezy ‘Hereditary’ (which I liked a lot but didn’t totally love) he’s back with a completely riveting and emotionally draining (not to mention horrific) masterpiece. What I connected to most in Midsommar is the journey of Dani, played incredibly by Florence Pugh. The way the film portrays the relationship between her and her dog shit boyfriend played by the (usually) charming Jack Reynor keeps you invested in every twist, perfectly paced out over the movies admittedly long runtime.

I won’t get into spoiler territory, but where this movie goes in the end is what makes this a fully 5-star movie for me. After putting you through hell, like Aster loves to do with bells on, Midsommar ends in a euphoric, psychedelic orgy of music and violence that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Midsommar rules so hard and I can’t wait for whatever twisted thing Aster cooks up next.

One of my increasingly favorite brands of movies is a finely crafted, primo slice of dad-movie cinema, and James Mangold has made one with Ford v Ferrari. The story chronicles the partnership of ex-racer and designer Carroll Shelby and racer Ken Miles as they work to make a Ford that can compete in the 24 hour race of Le Mans. Bale and Damon are a blast to watch bounce off each other and the race sequences are pretty damn thrilling, combining (what I expect is) a solid amount of great VFX with practical racing to great effect.

I also didn’t expect it to have as much to say about the struggle to create something special by passionate people and not committees while also inside the very machine that churns out products on an assembly line. Just a random note, this original movie was just put out by 20th Century Fox, now owned by Disney but that’s completely unrelated and I’m not sure why I’d even bring that up??? Anyway, I love this movie and dads, moms and everybody else should check it out.

If you saw my list last year, then it must appear like I’m some diehard Mr. Rogers fan. I don’t really have many memories watching his show as a child, but what the documentary ‘Won’t You be my Neighbor’ and this film by Marielle Heller have in common is a shared fascination of his immense empathy and character. It’s only right that America’s dad Tom Hanks should play him, and I was surprised at the end that I was able to get over his stardom and accept him as Rogers. He’s not doing a direct impersonation, and I think it’s all the better for it, instead opting for matching his soft tone and laid back movements.

On a pure emotional level, this movie was a freight train. It didn’t help that the movie covers a lot of father stuff, from losing your own to becoming one yourself (2 big boxes on the Brent bingo card). Heller’s direction is clever in its weaponizing of meta/post-modern techniques, such as one incredible fourth wall break in a diner scene. It literally breaks down the barrier between Mr. Rogers, we the audience, and the films intent to make us feel something.

I cry a lot at movies, that much is well known, but it’s rare that a movie makes me weep, and this one did. Even thinking about scenes right now, days later, my eyes are welling up with tears thinking about the messages of the movie. Mr. Rogers and his lessons of empathy and emotional understanding have rarely been as vital and important as they are right now in our world.

Robert Eggers first film ‘The Witch’ from 2015 is one of my favorite movies of this decade, possibly of all time, so my hype for his black and white, period piece two-hander ‘The Lighthouse’ was through the roof. Even with sky-high expectations, it still blew me away. With dialogue reminiscent of The Witch in its specific authenticity to its era, to the two lead actors giving all-time great performances, It was one of the most entertaining film viewing experiences I had this year.

There’s something about both of Egger’s movies that I really keyed into watching this one: his fascination with shame and the liberation from it. Where Witch was from the female perspective, Lighthouse literally has two farting, drunk men in a giant phallic symbol fighting for dominance. It’s less a horror film than his first, but still utterly engrossing, demented and specific to his singular vision. I can’t wait to see 20 more movies from this guy.

This is another big movie of 2019, like The Irishman, where you can see the director looking inward, at what his films mean and represent. It initially caught me so off guard that I really didn’t know how to feel about it, but after seeing it again, it’s one of my favorites of the year, and probably Tarantino’s filmography overall. More akin to something like Boogie Nights or Dazed and Confused, letting us live with and follow a small group of characters, it mostly doesn’t feel like a Tarantino movie (until the inevitable and shocking explosion of violence in the third act, of course).

‘Hollywood’ is the most sincere and loving movie Tarantino has made, interested in giving us a send off to an era of Hollywood and artists that have been lost or forgotten (Some more tragically than others). In the end, the movie functions similarly to ‘Inglorious Basterds’ in it’s rewriting of history to give us catharsis. “If only things could have worked out this way.” Luckily in movies, removed from the restrictions of reality, they can. And once upon a time in Hollywood, they did.

Uncut Gems probably tripled my blood pressure by the time the credits rolled. A slice-of-life story about a gambler/dealer in New York’s diamond district, the movie follows Howard Ratner, played by Adam Sandler in easily the best performance of his career. Ratner is basically addicted to living at the edge of a cliff, being chased by violent debt collectors, juggling a home life and a relationship with an employee, and fully relying on risky sports bets to stay afloat. It makes for a consistently tense and unique viewing experience, expertly directed by the Safdie brothers.

Something that might not work for everyone but that I personally loved, is the chaotic way in which the movie is shot. What feels like loosely directed scenes, with characters talking over each other and multiple conversations happening at once, adds an authenticity and reality lacking from most other movies. It’s more adjacent to Linklater (thanks to Adam for the comparison) or Scorsese’s earlier films (also fitting, that he’s a producer on this). Following Howard Ratner as his life descends into chaotic hell was one of the best times I’ve had watching a movie this year.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

AVENGERS ENDGAME

DOLEMITE IS MY NAME

BOOKSMART

JOHN WICK CHAPTER 3

THE FAREWELL

AD ASTRA

#top 10 #movies #2019 #top 10 movies #midsommar #uncut gems #the irishman #martin scorsese

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sweetlittlevampire · 4 years

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Rima’s Wangxian Fic Rec

So I’ve compiled these specifically for @inessencedevided , but hey, we’re all here to spread the love, so please, share and reshare to your heart’s content! :D

I’ll start with “Personal Favourites” - there are many more that I would consider a Personal Favourite, but I’ve picked those specifically because I thought you’d enjoy them. AU fics will also be included, because there are some real gems out there, and some still take place in canon universe, but with a twist, so...yeah.

Main pairing is Wangxian; I somehow don’t tend to read much else. ^^;

This thing is going to be loooong, so please find everything under the Read More. And feel free to let me know if a link doesn’t work so I can fix it.

Personal Favourites

爱不释手; never let me go by yiqie

Rating: Explicit

Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Length: 68713 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s summary: “Wei Wuxian has certainly hoped so ardently in his two lifetimes, for so many different things, in so many different ways, that he could have summoned the demon to his front door with his bare hands. His eyes wander to Lan Zhan, settle on the back of his head, the blue-black curtain of his hair. Oh, how he has hoped.”

A case fic! And one of my personal all-time favourites as well! It is so well-crafted, with an engaging and captivating plot, a TON of OCs who actually do contribute to the story, and a few scenes that are so beautiful I could weep. Got hyped up on twitter, and rightfully so. It’s a delight to read.

Rabbit Heart by Suaine

Rating: Mature

Warning: N/A

Length: 56590 words in total

Chapters: 6

Status: Completed

Author’s summary: “ Wei Wuxian walks his lonely road, but he’s not going to leave Lan Wangji entirely alone. That would be boring. “

Another case fic! Set after the show’s ending, Wei Wuxian goes his way, but leaves the paper man behind to keep Lan Wangji company. I loved this one to pieces - it has intriguing subplots and will make your heart melt several times.

Those are actually thonly two case fics I’ve read so far, but for more, be sure to visit @wangxianfics ‘s Case Fic section. It has many more, and I am planning on reading several of them.

the earth remembered me by remux

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 30321 words so far

Chapters: 2 out of scheduled 4

Status: Ongoing

Author’s Summary: “All around him, summer throbs like a heartbeat, undeniably alive. Wounds begin to heal. And Wei Wuxian, with sweat on his brow, feels ripe. Wei Wuxian, with his hands deep in the soil and mud between his toes, remembers something simple and primitive and utterly transformative: It feels good to make things grow. OR: Wei Wuxian’s travel guide to finding your place in the world.”

This fic changed me. Like, literally. It’s still ongoing, but I don’t even care. It’s not a case fic, but I’m 100% sure you’ll love it. It’s pure poetry and catharsis, and it hurts so much, but it’s so necessary. I think I cried several times while reading each of the chapters, and I’m eagerly but patiently awaiting the next one. It follows Wei Wuxian’s journey after he leaves the Cloud Recesses in episode 50 and tells the story of what he does and experiences before he returns back to Lan Wangji. So it’s absically only Wei Wuxian, Lil’ Apple, and the people they meet along his way.

Begotten by ecorie

Rating: General Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 37279 words

Chapters: 6

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “He’s mine.” He echoed what had once been teasingly said in jest, and added, “This is my son.” Against all odds and without a choice, Lan Zhan brings A-Yuan back to Cloud Recesses. Xichen keeps his brother’s secrets, and shields the child when Lan Zhan could not.“

Also known as: Filling in the blanks with everything that happened in those 13 years. I loved this one. Wangji = Best Dad, Sizhui = Best Son.

Canon Universe

(not necessarily canon compliant though)

the soft animal by cafecliche

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 5046 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “You don’t think that’s strange?” he says. His voice, his new voice, is familiar now. But sometimes it almost startles him, hearing it come from his mouth. “It’s been nine months. I’ve used them almost every day. I should know how long these legs are.” (Or: Wei Wuxian has a plan to train Mo Xuanyu’s body. The results aren’t quite what he expects.)“

A very interesting take on Wei Wuxian, and how he comes to terms with his new body. Something I had not seen previously explored, and I really loved how the author handled it.

Come let me love you (Come love me again) by obsessivereader

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 9105 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “The notes from the dizi cut off as Wei Ying goes absolutely still. Over the quiet whisper of the wind through grass, Lan Wangji can hear the rapid beat of his own heart. Wei Ying's hands drop to his side slowly, so slowly, as though time has slowed down for both of them. He turns, a look almost of fear on his face. And then...And then, Wei Ying smiles—slow and beautiful and warm and relieved as though Lan Wangji standing before him is a treasured dream fulfilled. "Lan Zhan," he breathes.“

A “What happens after the end of the last episode?”-fic. I’m kind of a sucker for those. This one is very sweet and tender; I absolutely loved the interactions between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, and the gentleness of it all. I also adore the song it’s been titled after (”Annie’s Song” by John Denver, if you’re curious).

Death of a Ghost by Gotcocomilk

Rating: Explicit

Warning: N/A

Length: 107397 words in total

Chapters: 30

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “There was a ghost that haunted the decks of Lotus Pier, it was said. If you stepped across the wooden planks at night, walked along the endless docks and flying purple banners, he would appear. He was always in darkest black, dressed as specter and shadow. In the emptiness where a face should be was a thick fog, features washed away and leaving behind only glimmering red eyes. He looked ferocious as a ghoul, it was said. Jin Ling thought he looked sad.“

Full disclosure - I am five chapters into this thing, and I am already recommending it, I am that intrigued. There is some serious Yunmeng Bros stuff in there which I think you are going to love, and the interactions between said ghost and Jin Ling are - aaaah! Cannot wait to continue!

wrap your name tight around my ribs by sasukepositive

Rating: General Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 8728 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “ In true Wei Ying fashion, his return comes with a dose of mischief. “

Another “What happens after the end of the last episode?”-fic, with a good dose of Wangxian family feels. In fact. the whole thing is a huge chunk of feels. A very soft, delicate, and sweet fic, which will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy.

please linger by sasukepositive

Rating: General Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 5636 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “ When A-Yuan begins crying, Lan Wangji knows it makes sense. He understands that crying will not harm him — he logically knows that. However, A-Yuan’s little face turns red so quickly that it leaves Lan Wangji a little panicked.“Ah,” he begins helplessly, stepping forward in an attempt at — something. He doesn’t know what. “It’s okay.” or: sometimes the man you love assures you that his mysteriously acquired child will nap until he gets back from shopping. for sure. “

If you liked the Dad Date Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian had with A-Yuan in Yiling, then you’ll love this one. It’s a fill-the-gaps fic in which Lan Wangji returns to Yiling several times to see Wei Wuxian and A-Yuan. Still follows canon events though, hence the bittersweet ending, but it is still so so lovely.

I hope that you will come and meet me by feyburner

Rating: Mature

Warning: N/A

Length: 28385 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “ The second time Lan Zhan said Wei Ying, come back, Wei Wuxian did. “

Another one of tehse post-show-canon fics. I love everything feyburner writes, and this was the first fic of theirs I came across. I love the feeloings described in it, and just how sweet it is. One of those fics in which the way the mature part is executed just makes the whole thing even sweeter.

Alternate Universe

(but sometimes within the canon universe?)

Merman Lan Wangji!AU by FleetofShippyShips ( @fleetofshippyships here on tumblr)

- which is a series of connected fics, and not one long fic with chapters, hence why the formatting is different here. 5 entries so far; ungoing. Teen And Up Audiences

...which is definetely a personal favourite of mine, - you might have noticed, since I’ve been drawing a ton for this particular AU. But since I don’t know if yu’re into merfolk!AUs I didn’t list it up there with the personal favourites.

It is following canon so far, only that Lan Wangji is, as the title suggests, a merman - with secrets.

I adore the atmosphere of this series so much, and the way Zoe writes it is just so beautiful. It’s a story in which I could live, and if you’re in for the ride, I can assure you that there will be many surprises to come.

Welcome to Gusu by perkynurples ( @bilboo here on tumblr)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 30853 words so far

Chapters: 5 so far

Status: Ongoing

Author’s Summary: “ Deep in the lush forests of Gusu hides an aging resort that hosts dozens of children every summer for an unforgettable couple of weeks. It’s where Lan Wangji grew up alongside Wei Wuxian, and when his childhood friend (for the lack of a better term) surprisingly returns years later in the position of Senior Counsellor, seemingly hell bent on causing the same kind of mischief that got him kicked out of Gusu in the first place, but also taller, broader and tanner than ever before, Lan Wangji knows he’s In Trouble. Or, this fic has it all: longing looks over campfires, found family dynamics, ill-timed skinny dipping, teenagers inappropriately shipping their counsellors, LAKE MONSTERS “

Annie wasn’t lying when she said this fic has it all. What started as some kind of crack fic turned into something beautiful that completely owns my heart. The interactions between the characters are so heartwarming, and while I sense that some major drama is going to occur soon, I also know that this will eventually have a happy ending. It’s delightful, and it does belong to my personal favourites as well.

Some of You by tangerinechar

Rating: Mature

Warning: N/A

Length: 60640 words

Chapters: 7

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “Lan Wangji gets drunk and tweets a love confession, Wei Wuxian panics, and all of twitter decides to matchmake Lan Wangji and his mystery guy. “

A social media fic! And a hilarious one at that! If you’re in the mood for an extra panicky, extra obnoxious Wei Wuxian? This is the fic for you. It has one of the sweetest love confessions ever. There’s some background Xicheng too.

Window Shopping by thunderwear

Rating: Explicit

Warning: N/A

Length: 18000 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “Lan Wangji didn't look out across the other apartment building often, but now, as he scooped up his escaped rabbit, he looked over only to see a piece of paper taped to the window of the apartment across from him. It was written on purple construction paper in big block letters, like a child had written it. WHAT'S YOUR BUNNY'S NAME???“

I did already rec this one to you, but WHO CARES? A Quarantine fic! The first one I came across, and I loved it! A friend of mine thought Wei Wuxian was OOC, but I disagree - he didn’t exactly grow up in the same circumstances as in canon, and his life situation isn’t 100% the same, so I still think it fits. A-Yuan makes an appearance, and the interactions between Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, and the boy are just so very cute!

Home is Where the Heart is by Alipeeps ( @alipeeps here on tumblr)

Rating: General Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 10036 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “Wei Ying’s expression is tight and unhappy, his entire body held rigidly away from Lan Zhan.He doesn’t look at Lan Zhan as he says, “You don’t have to worry, Lan Zhan, I’m never going to touch you.”The distaste in Wei Ying’s voice makes Lan Zhan’s blood run cold.“Just because our families have arranged this marriage, we don’t have to be together… like that…” Wei Ying’s mouth twists unpleasantly. “It can be a marriage in name only. A...” he swallows, looking like he might be sick, “...a business arrangement.”

Arranged Marriage AUs are also one of my weaknesses, especially if the two soon-to-be-married people are actually in love with each other but have yet to confess, This one does the trick. It’s modern era with no cultivation, and the mutual pining is REAL in this one.

what else is there? by mme_anxious

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 12917 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “Did you hear the terrible news? Yiling Laozu Wei Wuxian has gone beyond the pale! He has murdered Hanguang-Jun!”This is the first thing the swan hears flying over Yiling, and it sets him to hissing. It’s the kind of sound he would never make as a human, but as a swan—a mute swan— hissing is the only form of communication available to Lan Wangji. So he hisses. -Jin Guangyao transforms Lan Wangji into a swan. Only an act of love will break the curse.”

A fairytale!AU based on Swan Lake. You might have seen my Swangji drawing; this is the fic it was drawn for. It takes place in canon universe and is super lovely and magical. I may have cried a bit.

all your life you’ll dream of this by Attila ( @attilarrific here on tumblr)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warning: N/A

Length: 22668 words

Chapters: 1

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: “Lan Wangji should refuse. He should. He looks back down at the mask. Beneath it is the soft creamy paper of the invitation. He could present this at the door and slip into the palace and—“Go see him, Wangji,” Lan Xichen says quietly, and Lan Wangji feels his resolve crumble beneath him”

Another fairytale!AU - this time, it’s loosely based on Cinderella, with Lan Wangji as Cinderella and the forehead ribbon as glass slipper. Such a lovely lovely fic. May also have cried a bit; it’s heartfelt and magical and so warm and sweet.

Love wakes me by dea_liberty

Rating: Explicit

Warning: N/A

Length: 42812 words in total

Chapters: 4

Status: Completed

Author’s Summary: "It starts with a bet. All mistakes, Wei Wuxian thinks, start with a bet. It’s starts with a bet and ends with Wei Wuxian losing everything. Nine years ago, Wei Wuxian made a bet with disastrous consequences. Now, he is part-owner of the popular and eclectic Yiling Cafe, years and miles away from his old life, making the best of things and trying to leave the past where it belongs. When Lan Wangji walks into his cafe by accident, Wei Wuxian finds himself doing what he thought he'd never do again; reclaiming some small part of his past, and hoping for a future he'd given up as lost.”

If someone had told me that I would fall head over heels in love with a Coffee Shop AU, of all things? I would have laughed...yet here we are. I’ve read this thing in one sitting and cannot stop thinking about it. I absolutely have to reread it; it’s slowly but surely becoming one of my personal favourites.

#Wangxian #Fic Red #The Untamed #MDZS #CQL

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remythologise · 4 years

Note

i. omg. i cannot believe they're not even gonna ACKNOWLEDGE the confession scene i'm in hysterics. like usually it's relatively easy to just Refuse To Acknowledge canon when it sucks, but they WENT THERE only now they didn't???? really resent being manipulated by the cw almost, embarrasingly, to the point of tears but here we are. anyway feeling v grateful for your posting today it's much more cathartic than this show will manage in its last gasping breaths

I’m asking everyone very politely but sincerely that if you have any like. Ability to influence news write-ups or opinion pieces, I really think that this is something we need to publish about in order to make CW aware of how shitty it was, bc that’s the only recourse we have left of complaint. Like Desti-hell memes did to some extent but the method in which they led queer fans on, put down the subtext for Dean to reciprocate, put down the narrative layers, put down the found family and then just completely fucked everything for the sake of the two brothers being alone at the end. WHILE saying fuck you to their queer main character who has been now rendered even more tragically than before. And honestly if they had done Jack and Cas’ character’s justice in their exit I would not be as mad as I am now. If we’d gotten good speeches and moments of emotional catharsis, I would not be as mad as I am now. But instead, we are struggling to reassemble a broken canon that said ‘fuck you’ to its own message of found family. Where the Cas, the Winchesters and Jack suddenly stopped being fathers and son, where Dean and Cas’ romance was just abruptly used as an unreciprocated end point to not be re-addressed because GOD FORBID Dean Winchester be gay or Castiel, the incredibly tragic, textually queer, character of the show, have a happy ending.

And the thing I’m so angry about is the way the writers are trying to excuse their own writing, like people pretending the Empty is ‘peaceful now’ (nowhere is that text, and nowhere does that mean Castiel is at peace, just non-existent when he could be in Heaven had he been a human, and EVEN then Heaven is just a loop of memories. Argh.) And saying like, oh Jack is God now so he’s a bit more detached and like, one with everything. Cool, why can’t he hang out with the Winchesters ever again or have a drink or, I don’t know, BRING BACK CASTIEL? ‘hands off’ ok he brought back EVERYONE ELSE??? Jack just hates his gay dad I guess! Anyway I’m glad I could be cathartic. It’s so insulting to me that literally any of us, ANY OF US, could have written and edited a better show than this. I’ve seen your fan-vids and fanfic like it is outrageous that this ‘canon’ was entrusted to people who are so incompetent. We are easy fucking marks, Supernatural, we have fifteen years of feelings about this show, and you still managed to fuck it up with your dumb montages, nonsensical plot points, shitty editing and appallingly bad writing. On the second to last ep, no less. Fuck me.

#ask #anonymous #spn spoilers #supernatural spoilers #ok but like the fact this show is on the cw I feel like we're just going to... we can't just let this slide guys #like some people genuinely out there like 'oh this ep was fine' like 0 IQ reading of basic competence even just technically #just please watch a good episode from season five and then return to this ep and compare and maybe you'll see

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pretoriuspictures · 4 years

Photo

https://www.talkhouse.com/on-the-virtues-of-cinematic-failure/

///

Most journalists who have spoken to me about my new erotic drama PVT Chat (starring Peter Vack and Julia Fox and streaming now on most VOD platforms) assume it’s my first feature film. Actually, it’s my third. My first two features never played a single film festival and haven’t been seen by more than a few hundred people (mostly friends and/or curious followers of my rock band, Bodega). They were financial failures (even though they were made extremely cheaply), but you couldn’t call them critical failures because nobody has ever reviewed them. I spent the last decade working on these films and yet their cultural footprint is practically nonexistent.

Despite that, I still believe in them and hope one day I’ll make a movie (or record) that inspires people to seek them out. My early cinematic attempts certainly failed at behaving like normal movies, but to me it is precisely this failure that makes them interesting.

Godard said of Pierrot le Fou (1965), “It’s not really a film. It’s an attempt at a film.” This is a purposefully cryptic statement, but I think I understand what he meant. There is a sketch-like quality to his films from that period. He was less interested in following a particular plot through to its conclusion than suggesting narrative ideas and moving on. He enjoyed employing classical narrative tropes but didn’t want to waste screen time on the proper pacing required to sell those tropes to an audience. Instead he filled his screen time with spontaneous personal, poetic, and political ruminations that occurred to him literally on the day of filming. Many found – and still find – this approach infuriating, but for a select number of Godard disciples, like me, this type of filmmaking is still revolutionary. I remember seeing Weekend during my sophomore year of college at the University of South Carolina and having my mind completely ripped open. Suddenly the world wasn’t a small, mediocre, predictable place – it was full of music and color and philosophy and eroticism. There were people out there genuinely disgusted with the status quo and boldly proclaiming it with style.

Godard’s work is a fulfillment of the dream of the caméra-stylo – a term coined in 1948 by Alexandre Astruc that argued it was theoretically possible for someone to compose a film with as much direct personal expression as exists in prose. In order to achieve this level of expression, one often needs to move beyond the realm of mere plot and narrative naturalism, the principle that what you are seeing on screen is real. (On most movie sets, the filmmakers and actors work overtime to sell this illusion.) Films that focus solely on plot, character psychology, and one literary theme have to direct the majority of their screen time toward plotting mechanics and emotional manipulation of the audience. What you gain in dramatic catharsis you often lose in intellectual honesty. There’s always a tradeoff. I am invested in a cinema of the future that veers toward self-expression, but doesn’t need to avoid dramatic catharsis as Godard’s films did. Certainly many filmmakers my age are working to achieve such a synthesis of intellectual directness and narrative pleasure. Experimentation is required and many “bad” films need to be made to pave the way for future successes.

I graduated college in 2010 high on this dream of the caméra-stylo and philosophy (my field of study) and in 2011 started filming my first feature, Annunciation, with experimental filmmaker Simon Liu. Annunciation is an “adaptation” of the Mérode Altarpiece, an early Northern Renaissance oil painting triptych by Robert Campin. The film features three short separate narratives, one for each panel of the famous 15th-century painting. I wanted the performances in Annunciation to be controlled and somewhat surreal, as if the whole film existed in a heightened but slowed-down hypnotic state; I was thinking about Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni and, of course, Godard (particularly his work from the ’80s). There is some plot, but the main goal of the movie was to reveal the miracle of existence in the everyday. And because the Mérode Altarpiece depicts the scene in Christianity where the Virgin Mary was impregnated by light alone, the film had to be shot on 16mm film.

Now picture this: a 22-year-old walks into a conference room in Midtown Manhattan and gives this pitch to a producer who was then investing in thriller movies: “Every time light strikes a piece of celluloid, a miracle similar to the Annunciation scene occurs: an image appears in the likeness of man that redeems our fallen world and reveals it to be the beautiful place that we take for granted in our normal day-to-day.” This wasn’t met with the enthusiasm I was hoping for. “Don’t you see,” I said, “this is a film about the ecstatic of the quotidian! This is a film that audiences will flock to! It could do for Williamsburg and Bushwick what Breathless did for Paris!” Looking back, I am both shocked and charmed by my youthful naiveté, courage and idiocy.

I was laughed out of the room, but the producer was kind enough to wish me good luck and welcomed any future pitches, should I come up with something any “normal” person would want to watch. I never thought of films in the tradition of the caméra-stylo as being elite works only for the gallery or the Academy. I, like Godard before me, have always assumed that audiences are intelligent and long for thoughtful, challenging movies. That belief I carry to this day and thankfully it sometimes seems to be true. How else could you explain the recent success of heady films by Josephine Decker or Miranda July?

Thanks to small donations from family members (and credit cards), I was able to shoot Annunciation without any official backing. I cast the film with a mixture of non-actor friends and some undiscovered Backstage.com talent and dove head first into the production. Right as our principal photography began, Occupy Wall Street gained momentum, so Simon and I spent time at Zuccotti Park filming our actors experiencing the movement. The hopeful promise of OWS seemed to reflect the yearning desire of our film’s protagonists as well as our own idealist cinema experiment.

When the film was finished and edited, I naively assumed that we were well on our way towards global cinematic notoriety. Surely, I thought, this important film that manages to blend fiction with actual footage of OWS would premiere at Cannes or Berlin and the Criterion Collection would issue the DVD shortly after. In actuality, it was rejected from every single film festival we submitted to.

Undeterred, I conceded that maybe there were a few minor structural flaws in the edit. It was probably a little too long and perhaps the three separate narratives would work better if they were crosscut more. A year later, this new edit was again rejected from almost 100 festivals. Stubbornly, I thought that perhaps what could really bring the movie together was a comic voiceover by my then cinematic muse Nick Alden (who is a lead in both Annunciation and my second film, The Lion’s Den). Audiences seemed to ignore the comic tone underlying Annunciation. If only I could unearth it, they wouldn’t be put off by the pretensions to greatness the movie wore on its sleeve. There is nothing so offensive to American audiences as pretentiousness.

I didn’t send the overcooked voiceover version to festivals. I knew it was forced and worked against the core concept of the film. But it was then that I started for the first time to have doubts about Annunciation. Maybe my film wasn’t as emotional or clever as I imagined. Maybe it was bad? “No,” I decided. The film, whatever its flaws may be, has value. Herculean delusions of grandeur come in handy when you are trying to become an artist.

I opted to edit the film back to its original state, but without some of the weaker, obviously didactic moments, then hosted a few local screenings in NYC (most of them at DIY venues where my rock band would play) and put the film up for free on Vimeo. Around this time, it occurred to me that editing Annunciation had been my film school. Failure is a wonderful learning tool. Editing the same raw material in a myriad of different ways taught me about pacing and tone. Still to this day, when I find myself in a certain state of mind, I open up the Final Cut sessions and do a new edit of the footage just for fun, like some sort of DIY George Lucas tinkering with the past. Last year during quarantine, I did a new edit of Annunciation and uploaded it to Vimeo without telling a single person. It has become my own little cinematic sandbox to play in.

When people did chance upon one of my myriad edits, they often commented that they enjoyed its style but found the acting too unnatural. My response to this was to make my next film, The Lion’s Den, a cheaper HDV feature that doubled as a political farce and an essay about naturalism in cinema. The film is about a group of ding-dong radicals who kidnap a Wall Street banker and plan to donate his ransom money to UNICEF so salt pills can be provided for dehydrated children. The UNICEF plot was drawn from Living High and Letting Die, a 1996 work of moral philosophy by Peter K. Unger. It was both a serious attempt at political philosophy and a total slapstick farce; I was imagining the comedy of errors in Renoir’s The Rules of the Game mixed with the Marxist agitprop of Godard’s La Chinoise.

The acting style in The Lion’s Den was purposefully cartoonish; at no point in the film could an audience member believe that what they were seeing was real. I like to think that The Lion’s Den was an attempt at theatre for the camera, part Shakespeare and part Brecht. This was my own personal response to our epoch’s hyperrealism fetish. At the time, I believed that the current obsession with neo-neorealism, mumblecore and reality TV was worth combating. Art with a realistic aesthetic, I thought then, was inherently conservative and accepting of the political status quo (whether the artists were aware of this or not). Art with an imaginative anti-realistic aesthetic, so I thought, was utopian. It opened new vistas and ways of thinking and being. It dared to believe in a more beautiful world than the one we are living in.

The making of The Lion’s Den was extremely difficult. It was by far the hardest thing I have physically done in my life. At the time, I was malnourished and broke, not unlike the character of Jack in PVT Chat; my diet for that month we made the film consisted mostly of coffee, rice and beans, ramen, light beer, and the occasional waffle or fruit smoothie from the vegan frozen yogurt stall I worked at. Unlike Jack, my addiction wasn’t cam girls or internet gambling, but independent filmmaking. I begged, borrowed and scrimped $10,000 to make a film I knew I wouldn’t be able to sell. Despite having some key collaborators near the beginning of the shoot, most of the film was made with just me, the actors and a loyal boom operator, all living together in a house in Staten Island. This meant that I had to assemble all of the cumbersome lights for every setup, handle the art for every scene (which involved a lot of painting), block the scene and direct the actors, throw the camera on my shoulder and film, and then at the end of the day transfer the footage while logging the Screen Actors Guild reports and creating the call sheets for the next day’s scenes. Exhausted both mentally and physically, I often couldn’t stand up at the end of the day’s filming.

Once we’d wrapped and everyone had gone home, I stood in the middle of our set and played Beethoven on my headphones. Within seconds, I began bawling my eyes out, partly from exhaustion but also from the melancholy that all my friends had left and I was now alone for the first time in a month. I collapsed and slept for hours. When I woke up, it was my 26th birthday. I celebrated by watching Citizen Kane alone and then started the process of painting the walls back to a neutral white. The actor Kevin Moccia (who has been in all three of my films and actually works as a house painter) heroically came back to set and helped me. I told him that despite all of the agony of the past weeks (my bank account was now in the red, with overdraft fees piling up), I was happier than I had ever been. Working passionately on something that has great value to you is, without a doubt, the key to happiness.

Shortly after returning to the real world and my job at the vegan yogurt shop, I passed out while on the clock and was taken to a hospital by my very supportive girlfriend. Turns out, all I needed was an IV and some nutrients to get back on my feet, but unfortunately the trouble with The Lion’s Den had just begun. At some point, I formatted the production audio memory card and, in one instant, accidentally deleted everything on it. For the next two years, my friend Brian Goodheart and I worked with all of the actors to dub all of the dialogue and sound effects in the movie. Each actor had to completely re-do their verbal performance. It felt like remaking the entire movie. The result made the film especially un-naturalistic (which pleased me at the time) and it turned out far better than I think Brian and I expected.

By then, I had some hopes that The Lion’s Den could reach a small audience. It is aggressively philosophical but also features a love triangle, a car chase and a final shootout. Its comic style, I was hoping, would attract people who were put off by the purposeful flatness of Annunciation. Nevertheless, the movie was also rejected from every conceivable festival. I now realized that submitting an aggressively experimental narrative film without a single famous person in it to festivals is basically like flushing your money down the toilet. Yet I continued submitting, like an addict at a casino putting all of their savings on the roulette table. You never know, right?

In hindsight, I now see The Lion’s Den as a very angry film that perhaps uses comedy to soften the blow of some of its hotheaded fervor, and suspect some of its critique of capitalism and naturalism came from hurt and jealousy. “You think my work isn’t natural enough, eh? I’ll show you motherfuckers naturalism!”

Sometime in 2017, to my surprise I became smitten with certain neo-neorealist filmmakers (Joe Swanberg, in particular) and decided I wanted in on the mumblecore party, albeit from my own outsider perspective. I began to see how I could work symbolically with naturalistic performances, which led me to my latest film. PVT Chat is by no means a work of strict realism, but nevertheless focuses on believable dramatic performances. The film’s cast blends some actors from my past work (Kevin Moccia, Nikki Belfiglio, David White) with some heroes of the modern neo-neorealist indie cinema (Peter Vack, Julia Fox, Buddy Duress, Keith Poulson).

I want to end with a bit of advice to other filmmakers: Don’t put your self-worth into the hands of festival reviewers or distributors. The future of the moving image will belong to the films that are willing to risk cinematic failure. If you make an earnest film that doesn’t behave like a normal movie, I want to see it, even if it is full of technical or narrative mistakes (which it most likely will be). There’s no right way to make a movie. Follow the dream of the caméra-stylo and make a film that if nobody else made, wouldn’t exist.

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elegant-etienne · 4 years

Text

Catharsis

WARNINGS: Abusive/toxic relationship talk generalized abuse talk, drugging and substance abuse, suicide, self-loathing, externalized and internalized transphobia, complicated feelings and bitterness, sex talk. This ship was Yikes On Bikes.

And a special shout out to @avenai / @stormandozone for the tarot reading mentioned a few times in this (and @likeadistantstar / @celestialalignment who recently posted an amazing piece about responding to tarot readings!), that led me to think about how Etienne wanted to finally make peace with things. I decided they’d write their ex-husband a final letter.

Don't hold your breath, forget you ever saw me at my best You don't deserve what you don't respect Don't deserve what you say you love and then neglect

- Lucy Dacus, Night Shift

"This is Sizha'to. He doesn't talk."

You used to wear that mortarboard hat. Even in the Quicksand, really, it was adorably clueless. And as I quickly found out, you were alright writing notes back and forth. I perched on a stool, leaning over in the crush of bodies and sweat and folks looking to drink, forget, and get laid, not necessarily in that order. You were alright if we spoke slowly. You were just surprised, you said, that someone like me would talk to someone like you. People didn't take the time. We were outsiders in Ul'dah together. I made you little bouts of ice in front of the Ossuary.

It was nice to just talk. I had the reputation back then for being frigid. For telling men loudly I didn't want to fuck them. I didn't want to back then. I didn't want anything to do with anyone. I thought I'd always feel that way because I felt it intensely then. A kind of intense argumentative rebelliousness.

You said you fell in love with me in a few days, the day I chewed out a man who teased you about your stutter. I had forgotten that I even did that until you told me.

I tried not to speak for you, usually. Once or twice you wrote me a note, and I read it to someone else, but more often, I tried to get them to slow down - to let the asking and answer take their own forms. It was better, I thought, to simply not force things to happen before their time. While we were together, I watched you blossom. I watched you run Medica, patch up adventurers. You were the good one, the innocent one, and I was the dirt for you to grow in. That is how I viewed it.

It is not really your fault that is how I viewed it.

But.

Something is wrong. I can't say anything.

When is the first time I had that thought, about you and me?

Far later along in things than it should've been. A full turn after we met? Later? A turn and a half? To be honest, I ignored the worries in the pit of my stomach the sun before we got married. I did anyway. I promised. I couldn't think of a good enough reason not to. I wanted to be the kind of person who would get married, I wanted you to want to be my husband. Even after your dark shadow said he'd kill me. Even after the nights of shouting at each other about necromancy. Even after you did the ritual that left you so addled you no longer remembered me. No, those were all problems I blamed on myself. So I think it was after Henri abducted me. After your heroic rescue.

Back then, I spent a lot of time on that bench in Medica, staring at the medicine cabinet across from it. You were always working late with patients late into the night, and I was always waiting. I'd bring up a tray of tea and fresh-grilled crumpets from the kitchen downstairs and wait. I never looked behind the curtain.

I sat there that day, after we both staggered back hurt, and begged with my mind, Tell them I'm hurt. Tell them I need help.

No one noticed I wasn't speaking.

I thought, Please tell them I'm hurt, and you kept not mentioning me, even though the whole thing was because of me. And everyone was telling you that you were brave and stupid for going to help me. I'd been missing for almost a day. What a good husband. What a frightening experience.

Finally, one of your medic friends approached me and realized I could not speak, my breathing was coming in wheezes. I'd been beaten to the seventh hell. Everything tasted sour and bloody and bitter and nauseating. Everything hurt. And I wondered if I had pushed you forward, in front of me, if I had shaken my head and indicated that I'd be alright. It could've easily been my mistake. But that's the first time I recall thinking things weren't going well.

As my throat was recovering, I spent a lot of time thinking about how much I wanted to speak now that I couldn't. Hardly anyone we worked with knew what my voice sounded like, and therefore most did not notice its absence. I wrote to you, Ask me what happened when I can speak again. You never asked. Mayhap I was never ready to speak.

It's a joke to think there's narrative symmetry here, that there's structure, that there will be a moment of revelatory truth toward the end. That this story has an ending. You tried to force one, but I made a mistake and kept living.

It’s just ironic when I write it all down. This started out without you not talking. I suppose it’s fitting, then, that you didn’t say a thing when you left.

Did you leave because you were disappointed I didn't have the balls to leave you? I threatened you only twice, toward the end. After all, if I even asked to be alone for a little while, you started to cry and beg me not to leave you. You fucking prick. You cheated on me while I was in the long-term care after the suicide attempt. The third one I had because I did not know how else to get a moment away from you, and I kept having thoughts like I cannot get away and this will not change and he will not let me leave him.

How many suns was I in care before you got bored and started fooling around? I was only gone two sennights.

And I don't care if you fucked him or not (You absolutely fucked him. I know you did. But even if you didn't--). You lied about his feelings for you and pretended I was insane for noticing how he stared. You lied about what you were doing. You, in fact, did every single thing I asked you not to do. To me, that is cheating. And I don't care if you fucked him or not. But you absolutely did, I could tell. I scared the shit out of him when I came looking for you.

You once told me that you would be disgusted if I ever had breasts. That you hated them, feared them really. What a thing for a medic to say. Perhaps, you said, you would have come to think of me as an older sister and cared for me that way, but you would not have ever loved me. I thanked you for your honesty and thanked my body for its shape. When I fucked you on the couch I thought I should be grateful. I should be grateful anyone at all would want this body. I should be grateful the makeup never bothered you. I should be grateful you did your best to switch pronouns. Some would find filing for divorce easier than changing pronouns.

While we're being honest, darling, I was broken before I met you. It's possible I was born broken. I told you everything, and you held it, and I thought there would never be anyone else who would try. I trusted you because you listened, long before I knew what you were really like. That was my fault.

I had a glamour prism I wore sometimes to the market. It made me look feminine. I showed you once, and started crying, and put it away. You asked if it was because I felt like I couldn't have that. You asked if it was because I was sad when the illusion was done. I wondered if you remembered what you said before. I said it felt wrong. I said I wanted a child one day, too, and I hate I could not give you one, though you had not asked for one. We were always going to adopt. We call this future faking. Sometimes I forget that you were the first person I told all that because it hurt too much to consider in the days you left. Because I knew what you truly felt. You'd told me. And staying would've been a compromise.

You promised you would try and understand, try and find a way for us to have that child. You dealt with my tears with promises, usually, or drugs. You could've just told me no. I suppose you did, eventually.

I'm not saying you forced me back into the closet. I was too afraid that others would reject me, it's true. But. Well.

I've changed so much since you left me. I will probably adopt children one day. I don't need anyone's help with that.

If you wanted to leave, you should've just said. I could've taken it. I would have understood if you couldn't love me anymore. If you made the distinction that it was because you no longer desired me, I would not have grown to believe it was because I was an inconvenience. Perhaps this is quibbling. Most folks do not receive itemized lists on why their relationships fell apart.

I don't really remember the morning you left. Even growing up during the war, I'd never felt someone disappear so completely. Not without saying goodbye. Not without a prayer or a personal effect to hold onto. I couldn't stay in the apartment. It was the skeletal belly of our marriage: white, bleached, echoing. Though I was no longer being digested, my skin still burned.

Did we kiss each other goodnight the last time I saw you? I don't recall. Probably. I digress.

Back when you brought me to that boy of yours, the one I already knew about, I started seeing double. Your dark shadow, the poor vulnerable thing you pretend to be when you want men to love you, and my husband, spineless, but mine, damn it. Mine and worth fighting for. Your dark shadow huddled against him. You sat next to me too. The light was dancing through leaves, everything green and sweet-smelling and indistinct. We sat on the stone benches in the view of the waterfall and the blooming flowers. That was the idyllic scene in which you told me the truth of it all. I think all three of you expected me to be shocked and to cry. I was shocked by how calm and unsurprised I was. I told you how little I thought of you. I told you just what a violation it was, from the beginning, how much it had taken for me to trust you. How you lied to my face about the nature of the relationship when I suspected, both you and your shadow and your boy. I told you both in no uncertain terms who I was, the person you all betrayed. I suppose I ended it when I said if you ever put me in such a position again I would leave. I suppose, from a certain perspective, you were the one who had to gather up the strength to go.

I suppose I was unreasonable. We had not discussed the terms of our marriage. I had assumed you would not lie to my face. I had assumed you would not run off with some little boy while I was in care. I had assumed after I nursed you through your agonies that you could care for me similarly. I say you abandoned me in the night without warning. That is wrong. You abandoned long before that. Some part of me had accepted it by the time you brought me to those stone benches. Most do folks do not leave your life all at once. They leave little by little like the color leaves bones bleaching in the sun.

I write this as if it is entirely your fault you felt you had to split yourself between him and me. It is not. I can say now with confidence I would have been fine if you left me for him. I might have even let you keep seeing him while we were married if you hadn't lied. I can that now with confidence because I was fine. But. I know you were worried. If only had been a bit more calm and stable when you twisted me up in a web I couldn't seem to escape. If only I hadn't thought I needed you so much. If I only I were as beautiful and immutable as a sword. Then I would've been able to let you feel the freedom to leave. Then I would have been sharp and strong, and I could have cut our cords with a light, clean snap.

You hurt me, alright.

You hurt me and it's so godsdamn humiliating. Does anyone meet someone with my height and my broad shoulders and my cleverness and level-headedness and experience and think that some spineless, stammering healer could reduce me thus? How dare you. How dare you embarrass me like that. I made excuses about you to my friends. You made me look like a fool.

Who could I tell about it? Who would have believed me? The wedding that dozens of our coworkers attended? You never hit me. And the way you cowered when I shouted at you. I was a monster every time I was angry. I had a beast inside me that I fed drinks. When we were together, I lost the capability to win arguments or be right about anything, but I foolishly kept trying.

You hurt me and recently the stars or the cards or a girl said I need to admit that it hurt. I have wanted to be above it for so long. When I look behind me to the road I paved with the mistakes I made getting away from you, I don't like to acknowledge that you had anything to do with it. I am too proud to be hurt. I was hurt for a little while and I got over it when I realized I was better off. That is how I tell the story. I was relieved you left. That was the truth. I put myself back together. I went to parties. I cried a little. I recovered. That is how I tell it.

Grief is not static, grief is not a river that you jump over. I am still here with this grief. But you were not the 'before,' and now is not the 'after.' I should have admitted a long time ago that I never really got over being abandoned like that. Not because it was going well when you did it. Not because I had no idea what was wrong.

Your leaving added insult to injury.

I should have left, but you left. I deserved one victory, but you left.

It's so embarrassing. I would have let you kill me.

Maybe the stars or the cards or a girl meant that you were hurt, you needed to admit that hurt. I'm sorry. I think I wanted you to be someone you weren't. If I hurt you, I'm sorry. I have examined every angle and I am not sure what I could have done differently aside from throwing you out. Imagining I knew your feelings and told you to be honest with yourself about them. What else can I apologize for?

I'm sorry I tried so hard to make it work.

I'm sorry I was your first.

I'm sorry I'm a drunkard.

I'm sorry I struggled to remain well.

I'm sorry I wasn't the man you thought you married.

I'm sorry for pressuring you with my expectations of marriage.

I'm sorry for trying to keep you on the path I saw as good.

I'm sorry you felt like you couldn't leave, so you had to sneak around. And then away.

I'm just really sorry it ended like this. I wish I could have said goodbye, but I might've just told you to fuck off and die, so, perhaps your instinct was correct.

I know folks who can do exorcisms, but you can't exorcise the memory of a person. That is the problem. You can't drink them away, either. Little pieces of you will always be embedded in me, shards of glass. Your nickname for me. The way you'd yawn and stretch in our bed. The jobs I joined and left for you. The jolt of the seal on the door when I touched it the time you locked me in. The steady quality of your voice as you adjusted the dose and promised it wasn't habit-forming. The way your voice sounded the first time you threatened me. The color of your eyes. The way you'd smile and call my name. Your vows.

(What color tuxedo did you wear to our wedding? I wore pink. I don't remember. Red? That sounds right.)

(Actually, what color are your eyes?)

Did you even love me? Do you even know how to love? Or do you just like folks to push, folks to test things out on, folks to bleed into inkwells and then write spells with? Did you even like the food I cooked you? Did a fresh fried fish taste as good as forbidden aether?

I could be falling again. I am afraid to say I am falling again. I'll tell you that because you were my first love (You weren't. You were my first love since I was free.). I'll tell you that because I hate the thought of you believing I never moved on. I hate the idea of you getting off to the fact that you broke me, broke my heart, was never anything more than what I was when you pinned my arms over my head or talked me off a ledge (Which of those things did I ask you to do for me? Which was for my own good?). I think I am terrified of you coming back and saying, very sincerely, with a very sad face, that you are sorry. I am equally terrified that you never, ever will. I am terrified you are dead, and I am still angry, and I want us to remain connected by the intimacy of how thoroughly we ruined each other's lives. Except you aren't here, so it's just me. I'm ruined. If you told me to live my life and be happy because I deserved more than you, I think I'd slap you across the face. Nothing in life is about what you deserve, there is only what is and what isn't. And you weren't. I wasn't.

If we were to look at it that way, my darling, my sweetest one, my one and only, my beloved, my dearest, my dear heart, I think we deserved one another just fine. I wanted to be punished, and you gave me just that.

I know I'm supposed to say it's all your fault. Victims can't change their abusers. But victims are allowed to feel a lot of things. And what's hurt the most over all these years is my impotent frustration at not getting the ending I wanted. I didn't get to stand with my hands on my hips, triumphant to have defeated you. I didn't get to hear you sincerely regretted any of it, or that you didn't mean it, or that you were wrong. My friends have told me the best revenge is living well, and damn have I ever lived well. But I don't feel better about it. I don't know if it's something I'll ever feel good about.

We were both so stupid. Oh. Darling.

I asked the stars or the cards or a girl about you, and she said you had the potential to be happy, or maybe she meant I do, because you were not present. You are living some other life now, and you probably haven't thought of me in a very long time. She said I was an amazing person and I deserved for someone to treat me as the priority I am. I said I am trying, and I hope it happens.

You hurt me. You hurt me. You hurt me. You hurt me.

You didn't respect me. You didn't deserve me. But I was still willing. I was still so willing.

That will always hurt, but it's a hangnail, not an open wound. I'll let someone else rip me open again. I know I will. I want to. I'll keep trying until someone pours my inside into a jar that I like the shape of. I look at him now and I think, oh, he could ruin my life, but I won't let him. Oh, I hope I don't ruin his life.

I hope I ruined your life.

I need to get out from under the shadow cast by your loss. The job I took out of guilt, the life I live to try and somehow alter all the ways I've been broken, as if somehow if I bled nothing but light and sunshine and fucking grace and sweetness everywhere it would cancel it all out. Not just you. Not just Henri. All of it. The being-born-in-a-body-I-hate thing. The-raised-away-from-my-own-people thing. The alcoholism. The grooming. The institutionalized abuse. The coercive abuse. The Church. The suicide attempts. I thought I could cancel it all out if I was just a good enough person. I'd be satisfied if I somehow approached some enlightened state of self where I never felt guilty about anything. How arrogant of me.

How arrogant to assume the abuse only happened because I was secretly good because if I was secretly bad, I deserved it. No. I know I fucked up.

I was arrogant to think I could ever change you. All we can ever really do is love one another, and sometimes we do it entirely wrong. We could have been amazing, but we weren't. And that's all I really have to say. It’s true that you hurt me. It’s true that it still hurts. But... I hope you are well. Not sarcastically. I hope you are doing as well as I am. I hope you are not hurting anyone else, but there’s nothing I can do if you found someone new to abuse. I could do no more than I did.

I’m ready to be done. It isn’t a river I jumped over, but the water only barely covers my feet now. A little more time, and perhaps I will do the unthinkable and simply step out.

Your loss, love.

Goodbye.

#writing #retired ship name here #ic #i mean idk some of this is a repetition of other things i've written but i needed to write something new and get things out of my system #i've been feeling so depressed and stagnant

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