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get-shiggy-with-it · 3 years

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Ch. 2

Shigaraki Birthday Celebration! 18+ MINORS DNI

Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x fem!reader

Word Count: 3k

Warnings: reader is marked fem cause Tomura is a little sexist and hates you cause you’re a woman, no pronouns, incel!shiggy, collage au/no quirks, tomura is an asshole, gratuitous swearing, like so much, shiggy has a dirty mouth, mentions of shigs being anxious, brief male masturbation, tags will be added for smut in the next two parts

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6

Summary: In which studying is done, unwilling connections are made, and Tomura thinks about the way you smell a totally normal amount.

AO3 mirror

Taglist: @dillybuggg (just shoot me an ask if you want to be tagged!

Tomura hadn’t stopped staring at his phone since he left the apartment. It was second nature by now—head down at a nearly ninety degree angle, hoodie pulled up to hide hair he hadn’t bothered to comb in weeks, and phone out, held just far enough away that he could see the pavement behind the screen.

He’d found that people tended to naturally avoid him this way and he didn’t have to risk accidentally making eye contact. It was still a bit nerve wracking to venture into buildings he didn’t expressly have to for classes, so he was still hesitant to make the voyage from his apartment to the library. But he’d made the mistake of mentioning plans to his roommate and the bastard wouldn’t leave him alone about it afterwards until he was practically shoved out with the door locked behind him.

He was half tempted to make up some excuse last minute and go hide out at the only cafe on campus he could tolerate, but Tomura knew he was just delaying the inevitable. Biting the bullet now would help to not prolong his suffering.

Your text thread glared up at him in stark white on blue as he pushed past a crowd of students by the library entrance and flashed his ID to the attendant.

Group Project Bitch:

— hey I got us a room on the third floor, all the way in the back

—text me when you’re here I’ll wave you in, it’s kinda hard to find T-T

sounds good—

He shot off a quick text to you that he was hoping on the elevator. The other two guys in the lift may have given him a dirty look for only going up to the third floor, but Tomura sure as hell wasn’t going to risk the physical exertion of stares when just the thought being stuck in a small room alone with you for god knows how long already had him sweating.

When he stepped out, you were leaned against one of the 90s-green shelves, scrolling aimlessly through your phone. He panicked momentarily, thinking he’d have to get your attention cause just walking up without saying anything would be weird right?

He wasn’t sure.

He didn’t do shit like this.

Thankfully, you looked up at the chime of the lift and waved him over. His red sneakers squeaked as they scuffed the linoleum floors and he already regretted choosing his tighter fitting pair of sweats. The tapered legs that hugged his ankles and thin calves rubbed against his skin and stung the raw patches.

“Hey, thanks for coming,” you said softly and he nodded, following as you began to weave through the stacks. “Sorry it was short notice, graduation’s coming up so I'm swamped with meetings.”

“It’s fine, I didn’t have anything going on.”

He cringed internally at the way his voice cracked, trying to keep the usual rasp to a minimum. His roommate said it was from the innumerable hours he spent shouting at his monitor or on discord, which was probably true but to you he was sure he just sounded like a fucking teenager.

“Cool, I’ve been set up for awhile so feel free to move some stuff,” you talked a bit louder now that you’d both stepped into the study room and shut the door.

Tomura looked around. You’d snagged one of the nicer ones at least, with the big monitors he could cast his screen onto and those comfy chairs he liked but could never beat anyone too on the lower floors.

You were right, there was shit all over the big table at the center of the room. Notes and printed out readings with highlights galore and sticky notes littering the pages were scattered all over. What a show off. You probably tossed all this stuff out so he’d think you were actually intelligent or some shit.

Kicking a pile off of the nearest plush armchair, Tomura took a seat and pulled his laptop out. There was a jack in the middle of the table and you plugged yours in to cast onto the big monitor.

You made a fucking power point for him.

This couldn’t be real.

“So I know I ran some stuff by you in class but essentially I was thinking we make like a simple Twine type thing using the rhetorical argument Swift is making…”

You started rambling again and Tomura almost immediately tuned you out. His eyes drifted between the rough outline you were flicking through on the board and the laptop you had your nose buried in.

It was covered in stickers, pretty obviously stereotypical for someone as obsessed with being ‘cool’ as you clearly were. But as he scanned through the various old meme phrases and aesthetic shit, he caught a couple of game references he recognized and a panel cutout from one of his favorite manga.

He almost fell into your trap for a moment, feeling a rush at the prospect of someone—much less a chick—being into his main hyperfixations.

But it was quickly crushed under everything his years trolling subreddits had taught him. People like you didn’t actually have interests beyond the attention and dick it got them. Plus that manga was pretty popular anyway, you probably didn’t even read it, just thought the line was funny or made you sound quirky. That had to be why you felt the need to drop it in your first texts.

“What do you think?” you asked, making good on your new habit of startling the hell out of him.

Tomura blinked, gaze instinctively turning to you but the blatant way you stared made his mouth turn to sand paper, so he looked resolutely back at the color-coded bullet points on the screen.

“Look’s fine,” he mumbled.

The more he glanced over it, the more it actually did look fine. A bit more than fine, really, which pissed him off even more. The little choose-your-own debate style story was not a terrible way to make fucking Whatever Swift interesting and it kinda looked like you’d bothered to google some simple coding which gave him a better idea of what you were looking for.

It was...good.

And that so fucking annoying.

Well, he wasn’t sure if annoying was the right word for it, but the proposal coupled with your apparent lack of disgust at working with him made his face hot and that only ever happened otherwise when his roommate left the dishes out for weeks or when some newb on his server fucked up their raids.

Then, you had the audacity to plop down in the chair next to him and—

“You can tell me to fuck off if you want,” you began, shuffling in the chair to cross your legs on the cushion, “but I was hoping you’d be willing to show me how you do some of the coding stuff? I tried on my own, but I have literally no clue what I’m doing.”

He could smell you again, like the whole fucking health and beauty aisle at the grocery store. When he turned his head a bit to look at you around the curtain of his hair, you were crooked—back against the armrest and facing him.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, sounding a bit less rude than he would have liked to.

You just fucking stared right at him though, didn’t wrinkle your nose at how greasy his roots were or how he was wearing the same hoodies as yesterday.

“I’ve always been interested in it, but my program is kinda stressful and I don’t have much free time so I never learned,” you offered and for once Tomura found he didn’t feel his skin crawl under your unwavering gaze.

The dry, cracked area around his eyes burned though as sweat beaded on his forehead and he quickly wiped at his face with a loose sweatshirt sleeve. The garment hung off his shoulders, bought a size too big that he never ended up growing into.

“What’s your major?”

He found the words slipped easily from him. It was the quintessential question you asked of anyone in college when you met, but he’d never been interested in the answer before.

You babbled a bit about your specific area of study and your voice was surprisingly not as infuriating as he remembered it being before. It was softer, he thought, than when you were soapboxing in class about the sexist implications of old as fuck poetry—it had a less grating quality and was almost pleasing to the ear.

Or Tomura would have said that if he thought you deserved the compliment.

But, obviously you didn’t.

So he didn’t.

He just pretended to care about what you were saying and didn’t hang onto every word at all. Actually he was more enraptured in the way your lips moved when you talked. You used your hands a lot too, but his eyes were ensnared on the way your mouth quirked and dipped, at the occasional flash of your tongue between strong teeth. When he leaned in a bit, he could smell your breath too: fruity gum and the remnants of whatever you were always drinking in that loud as fuck cup. He wondered now what exactly it was, so he could buy it and get a better idea of what you mouth might taste—

Nope.

No, see this was exactly what he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. How were you doing this to him? What a fucking slut.

Tomura steeled his nerves as you started explaining the extracurriculars you did on the side.

“My roommate freshman year actually started a gaming club and so I’ve gotten more into that over the years,” you explained, pointing at the stickers on your laptop case.

“Are you talking about The League?”

“Yeah, I didn’t know if you’d heard of it,” you shrugged.

He knew of the gaming club on campus. He’d thought about joining when he enrolled but the allure of anonymity online gaming provided was too strong. Plus his discord server didn’t have annoying weekly meetings.

The thought of you, up late and illuminated by the blue light of a tv screen, tucked away in one of the basement rooms in the media building was...strange. It also prompted an array of new images—you in those fucking cat ear headsets, seated in his lap as he trashed you in Mario Kart which was even stranger.

Tomura had to physically shake his head to dislodge the thought.

“Uh, we should probably work on this right?” he cringed at the way his voice cracked compared to your own, smooth tone.

You should narrate those fucking sleepy time mediation things. His roommate used to hide wireless speakers in his room and blast those when Tomura stayed up too late. It was annoying as shit then, but if it was you talking, he probably wouldn’t have minded so much.

Or no, no he would definitely mind.

Yes. It would have been worse if anything.

“Oh shit, you right. It’s been like two hours.”

He glanced down at his laptop and saw that it had, indeed, been two hours since he got there. He’d willingly spoken to you for two goddamn hours. It felt like no time had passed at all, but the sun was definitely setting, the overhead fluorescent bulbs taking over as the main light source in the room.

Weird.

So you settled back in your chair, typing away like you always did, but the sound wasn’t nearly as frustrating as before. Occasionally, you’d glance over his shoulder and ask questions about what he was working on, but mostly the two of you settled into a comfortable silence.

This pattern continued for the next few weeks. As the weather warmed, you began to show a bit more skin. He never worked up the nerve to comment on the thick expanse of bare thigh that tapered off nicely into your calf, or the curve of your arms not hidden behind knit sweaters—hell even your fucking shoulders were hard not to look at.

Maybe all those high school dress codes weren’t actually so full of shit after all. Cause he was definitely distracted by the way your neck swooped into the exposed skin of your shoulder and down your back on more than one occasion.

Did all girls know that? Was it some kind of massive conspiracy to crumble the patriarchy or some crap to go flashing bare shoulders everywhere?

Regardless if you really were trying to hypnotize him into liking you, Tomura stayed resolutely in his monochrome, long sleeved attire, and if you noticed the behavior you never said a word.

Never said a word about his allergy ridden skin, peeling lips or scarred throat. Never commented on his terrible posture or said his eyes were creepy. Even when he’d occasionally toss a negative remark your way, you never retaliated maliciously. Just brushed him off with a jovial ‘don’t be a dick’ and a playful, but hard slap to his chest or the back of his head.

The two of you always met in the same, secluded room on the third floor. You’d talk with him in class sometimes or shoot him texts about random bits of inspiration or a late night game memes, but for the most part, your conversations were confined to that room. He found he preferred the study room ‘you’ best. You weren’t as stiff. There was more of a solidity to you, like he’d seen when you told off that Kai bastard.

It...grew on him.

He was irrationally anxious that there would be a time when you couldn’t secure this particular room—with it’s big monitor and comfy chairs and less annoying ‘you’—but he’d been reassured after your third work session.

Someone had knocked softly at the thick, wooden door and a head of wild, bright pink hair peaked around the crack.

“Sup bro,” the intruder quipped, as they stepped fully into the room.

“Hey, Spinner,” you mumbled back, looking up momentarily from the essay portion of your presentation before going back to typing.

Spinner had seemed to notice him at that point and offered a small wave in his direction. “Oh hey, sorry, thought you were alone,” he said quickly.

“Nah, this is Tomura,” you said, glancing up again and jerking your thumb in his direction.

Tomura nodded and tugged at his hoodie strings to stop from scratching under the newcomer’s gaze. He’d gotten used to you, but other people still made him a bit nervous.

“Nice to meet you,” Spinner had a nice smile, bright and flashy when he spoke. He leaned against the door and crossed his arms, looking around the room. “You got the nice one, huh. How’d you manage that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you half closed your laptop and stretched a bit. “Jin was working the front desk, so I’ve just been bribing him with vending machine snacks.”

“He hasn’t gotten himself fired yet?” Spinner laughed incredulously, but not unkindly.

“Surprisingly not, but he’s completely corrupt now,” you were picking at the cuticle of your thumb and Tomura fixated on the way the skin split off at the nail. Just like his. “A couple packs of chips and a Monster and I get the most bitchin study room whenever I want.”

“Damn,” Spinner chuckled again and Tomura really wished that he’d leave already. He was beginning to feel himself fading into the upholstery as the conversation left him in the dust. The divergence of your attention away from him or the project was even more annoying that you were. “Well, are you coming to The League meeting tonight? We’re busting out a Smash tournament.”

“That’s tonight?” you asked, eyes perking up but sliding subtly in Tomura’s direction. “Sorry, I think Tomura and I are gonna be working on this project for a while longer and I’m kinda burnt out. But next time, yeah?”

Spinner rolled his eyes but nodded and kicked off the wall. “That’s not very sexy of you,” he chided and waved a hand in parting. “Gonna work yourself directly into the fucking grave.”

“Jokes on you, I welcome death.”

You buried yourself in the screen again and Tomura actually felt a bit grateful for you ending the conversation before he got too painfully awkward.

But Spinner stopped before he left, looking Tomura up and down from the frayed strings of his black hoodie to the tips of his worn red sneakers.

“Nice to meet you, man,” he said with a wide grin. “Feel free to tag along next time if you want, we always need more players.”

The door clicked softly shut behind him and Tomura relaxed back into the silence.

He did end up tagging along—though he spent most of the time hanging off your heels like a lost puppy—to the next meeting of your gaming club and the one after that. Frustratingly enough, he learned that your interests did also extend into skills as you almost bested him in a few rounds Smash. Your profile, lit only by the flashing screen lights, was even more striking outside of his imagined imitations.

So much so that it found its way into his head late at night when he was too tired to log onto his server. So much so that it had his cock growing firm and tenting his grey sweats without even the visual aid of his go to porn clips. So much so that sometimes, he felt inclined to do something about the throbbing between his legs. So much so that he thought about the way you picked the skin by your fingers. How it looked like his. How your hand might feel like his but softer. Smoother around the edges. With your sweet voice whispering in his ear, making him whine and pant and spill white ropes of release onto his stomach.

But it was only because you were hot.

And you were practically begging for him to jack off to the thought of you with those outfits and liking all the shit he liked and noticing when he shrunk away from conversations or including him in them when he started to feel that awful sense of fading into the background.

Yeah.

Everybody jerks it sometimes to their group project partners if their ass is nice enough.

Right?

#tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura x reader #shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki imagines #bnha fanfiction #college au #bee.writes

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agentnico · 3 years

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The Suicide Squad (2021) Review

This may be the better of the two, but the first Suicide Squad film will always hold the crown for managing to win an Oscar... somehow.

Plot: The government sends the most dangerous supervillains in the world -- Bloodsport, Peacemaker, King Shark, Harley Quinn and others -- to the remote, enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese. Armed with high-tech weapons, they trek through the dangerous jungle on a search-and-destroy mission, with only Col. Rick Flag on the ground to make them behave.

“So that’s it, huh? We’re some kind of suicide squad?” says Will Smith in the original first film, with the line in itself being a poor attempt at a fourth wall break, yet, that movie never reached that promise of being a true Suicide Squad film. Because hardly anyone died, and as a whole David Ayer’s film was a generic mess, regardless of studio interference or not. In comes James Gunn from Marvel, who seems to have cracked the code for how to bring this comic book series to live action in proper gratuitous form, with even the ‘The’ in the title symbolizing that this is the one!

I remember going to see the first Guardians of the Galaxy film at the cinema, and back then I was still only just getting acquainted with watching western media, and that included superhero films. Heck my first ever Marvel movie was Thor: The Dark World! I know, what a banger to start with.......NAAAWT!! Anyway, I went to see Guardians and it was one of the first superhero films I came out of feeling like I truly witnessed something special. It had action, comedy and a good heart to it, and wouldn’t you know, my good old pal James Gunn was behind that flick. I don’t know why I called him my good old pal, I don’t even know the fella. Except in my dreams, but we don’t talk about that. So, flashforward to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which I absolutely hated, and for that movie I’m pretty sure Marvel gave Mr Gunn mostly full reigns of creative freedom, as long as he kept it family friendly, and the result was a mess. Hence naturally now I was really sceptical when James Gunn ended up at Warner Bros. following the controversial moment when cancel culture decided to aim it’s slimy fingers at him, as he was given directing and writing duties for this new The Suicide Squad film, and also it was heavily insinuated that Warner Bros. basically told him he could do with the movie whatever the f*** he wanted, excuse my French. And we remember how it panned out last time when James Gunn was given a lot of creative freedom.

Flashforward to present day; here I am wondering and scratching my head thinking what in the heavens has happened, as by golly I am happy to report that The Suicide Squad is a total winner and a blast with a capital B - Blast! Gosh goodness golly goblin, this movie is so much fun from beginning to end. Right from the opening sequence you know that this film isn’t holding back any punches. It’s going at a 447.19 km/h speed of a Koenigsegg Agera RS crashing through any barriers like it’s nothing. Speaking of the opening sequence, it establishes why the movie is called what it’s called from the get-go. You straight away are proven how not a single character is safe, minus the obvious one that we know who it is, as there ain’t no way Warner Bros. would have allowed James Gunn to kill off that one character. But besides that person, everyone else feels like they could die at any given moment. That’s really a big charm of it, as it is frustrating how in many superhero films, let alone any blockbuster action flicks, so many characters always feel so safe and unstoppable, no matter how many times they get shot or how many buildings crash down upon them. And yes, this movie features a certain CGI character that constantly gets that treatment and survives, although it’s very self aware in that regard and is purposefully humoristic. But overall the entire set of characters feel easily disposable, and so so many of them die in such gruesome fashion, so indeed don’t get attached, as they don’t.

Speaking of which, this movie is hardcore gory! You see limbs and intestines flying round left and right, a guy gets ripped in half by a humanoid shark, another’s face gets teared off by a shotgun bullet and so on forth in all kinds of gruesome fashion. Visually this is one for the big screen, as here’s the thing: you’re either a mummy’s boy or you grow some cojones and go see a man’s heart get stabbed with a piece of debris glass in 4K high rate definition! Your choice! Oh, and it’s not just the violence, also the cinematography and the practical set pieces all look incredible. This is easily James Gunn’s best looking movie. The entire think LOOKS incredible!

We also have to talk about the cast, as they are all great! There literally isn’t a single weakling among them. Each one, no matter how big or small their role is, brings something to the table. I can’t talk about all of them, as we’d be here all day, so I’m simply going to mention a few of the stand-outs. Idris Elba comes in to replace Will Smith as a character called Bloodsport, who is in some ways a different character but evidently is a replacement of Smith’s. But that’s no bad thing, as with any ensemble movie you still need a main character to latch onto and have an emotional hook towards, and he is that character. In fact, I’d say he’s arguably better than Will Smith in the last movie, or at least he seems to be having more fun here. He works as a solid leading man, however what works even more is his banterous competitive genital-size-measuring back and forth with John Cena’s Peacemaker, who by the way is awesome as that character. He is not a good character, in fact he is as bad as a bad guy can get, especially cause he’s someone who believes that what he is doing is right, making him much more of a dangerous wild card. This is easily John Cena’s best role, with him adding to the comedy one-liners, but also delivering such an interesting character who I’m looking forward to seeing more of in his standalone spin-off show confirmed for next year. Oh, and he wears a toilet helmet on his head which he defines as “a beacon of freedom” which says it all. We also have returning characters from the last film Joel Kinnaman and Viola Davis as Rick Flag and Amanda Waller respectively, and both are given much more room to stretch their talents and spread their beautiful acting wings like the Hollywood angels that they are. Kinnaman’s Rick Flag is the moral compass of the group, as even though Elba is our main guy, he’s nonetheless a villain still, whilst Flag is a genuinely good guy and what is defined as a true American hero, to which Kinnaman fits the part well. And Viola Davis as Amanda Waller is on an absolutely different level. You can tell she’s an Academy Award winner through and through, as she plays such a serious character in an otherwise goofy movie, and so her presence is felt and it is felt BAD! She’s such a despicable yet intimidating personality and she gravitates all of the screen presence to herself. Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn, and she gets even more chance to develop this character that she’s played in multiple DCEU films now, and as per usual the Harley Quinn shtick works well for her, though I do kind of wish she didn’t always get all the attention. Look, I think she’s a fun character and Robbie plays her well, however she’s constantly used to overshadow others in these films which I don’t think is too fair, and its evident as ever in this film too. Anyway, the remainder of the cast including Jay Courtney as Captain Boomerang, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, Michael Rooker as Savant, Nathan Fillion as TDK, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2 (who gave me strong A Plague Tale: Innocence vibes) and many more all play villains, but villains that don’t have particularly great superpowers. This is where the tragedy of Task Force X as a team plays a part, as many of these villains aren’t even good at being villains. They are useless, and the movie is really self aware of this and so treats all characters as they should be. Dare I also not forget to mention the CGI characters in this film, with both Weasel and King Shark being absolute scene stealers!

The Suicide Squad is the type of wham-bam-thank-you-mam batshit crazy entertainment which exists for the pure reasons of fun. It doesn’t set out to be the best superhero film ever, nor does it need to be. It’s an exhilarating, shocking, funny and amusing ride from beginning to end, with the energy never stopping, and is easily the best time I’ve had with a comic-book film in a long while, and I’m even talking about before COVID! Do yourself a favour and watch this one as soon as you can, as I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - The Suicide Squad is a BLAST!!

Overall score: 9/10

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brawltogethernow · 4 years

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So, I don't think I've ever asked you this... what IS the whole point of the Spider-Sense? It really seems like something that only exists for writers to ignore or work around when they want to inject Legit Tension into a story.

I’ve thought about this power so much, but never with an eye to defend its right to exist, so I needed to think about this. The results could be more concise.

Ironically, given the question, I have to say its main purpose is to ramp up tension. But it’s also a highly variable multitool that a skilled creative team can use for...pretty much anything. It does everything the writer wants it to, while for its wielder always falls just short of doing enough.

I went looking through my photos for a really generic, classic-looking example to use as an image to head this topic, but then I ran into the time Peter absolutely did not reimburse this man for his stolen McDonald’s, so have that instead.

A Scare Chord, But You Can Draw It

That one post that says the spider-sense is just super-anxiety isn’t, like, wrong. It’s a very anxious, dramatic storytelling tool originally designed for a very anxious, dramatic protagonist. I find it speaks to the overall tone of the franchise that some characters are functionally psychics, but with a psychic ability that only points out problems.

Spidey sense pinging? There’s danger, be stressed! Broken? Now the lead won’t even KNOW when there’s a problem, scary! Single character is immune to it? That’s an invisible knife in the dark oh my god what the fuck what the fU--

Like its counterpart in garden variety anxiety, the only time the spider-sense reduces tension is in the middle of a crisis. But in the wish fulfillmenty way that you want in an adventure story to justify exaggerated action sequences, the same way enhanced strength or durability does. Also like those, it would theoretically make someone much safer to have it, but it exists in the story to let your character navigate into and weather more dangerous situations.

For its basic role in a story, a danger sense is a snappy way to rile up both the reader and the protagonist that doesn’t offer much information beyond that it’s time to sit smart because shit is about to go down.

Spidey comic canon is all over the board in quality and genre, and it started needing to subvert its formulas before the creators got a handle on what those formulas even were, and basically no one has read anything approaching most of it at this point, so for consistent examples of a really bare bones use of this power in storytelling, I’d point to the property that’s done the best job yet of boiling down the mechanics of Spider-Man to their absolute most basic essentials for adaptation to a compelling monster of the week TV series.

Or as you probably know it, Danny Phantom. DON’T BOO, I’M RIGHT.

DP is Spider-Man with about 2/3 of the serial numbers filed off and no death (ironically), and Danny’s ghost sense is the most proof in the formula example of what the spidey sense is for: It’s a big sign held up for the viewer that says, “Something is wrong! Pay attention!” Effectively a visual scare chord. It’s about That Drama. And it works, which won it a consistent place in the show’s formula. We’re talking several times an episode here.

So why does it work?

It’s a little counterintuitive, but it’s strong storytelling to tell your audience that something bad is going to happen before it does. A vague, punchy spoiler transforms the ignorant calm before a conflict into a tense moment of anticipation. ...And it makes sure people don’t fail to absorb the beginning of said conflict because they weren’t prepared to shift gears when the scene did. Shock is a valuable tool, too, but treating it like a staple is how you burn out your audience instead of keeping them engaged. Not to go after an easy target, but you need to know how to manage your audience’s alarm if you don’t want to end up like Game of Thrones.

The limits of the spider-sense also keep you on your toes when handled by a smart writer. It tells Peter (everyone’s is a little different, so I’m going to cite the og) about threats to his person, but it doesn’t elaborate with any details when it’s not already obvious why, what kind, and from what. And it doesn’t warn him about anything else-- Which is a pretty critical gap when you zoom out and look at his hero career’s successes and failures and conclude that it’s definitely why he’s lived as long as he has acting the way he does, but was useless as he failed to save a string of people he’d have much rather had live on than him.

(Any long-running superhero mythos has these incidents, but with Peter they’re important to the core themes.)

And since this power is by plot for plot (or because it’s roughly agreed it only really blares about threats that check at least two boxes of being major, immediate, or physical), it always kicks in enough to register when the danger is bearing down...when it’s too late to actually do anything about it if “anything” is a more complex action than “dodge”.

Really? Not until the elevator doors started to open?

That Distinctive, Crunchy Spider Flavor

The spider-sense and its little pen squiggles go hand in hand with wallcrawling (and its unique and instantly identifiable associated body language) to make the Spider-Person powerset enduringly iconic and elevate characters with it from being generic mid-level super-bricks. Visually, but also in how it shapes the story.

I said it can share a narrative role with super strength. But when you end a fight and go home, super strength continues to make your character feel powerful, probably safer than they’d be otherwise, maybe dangerous.

The spider-sense just keeps blaring, “Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! God, why aren’t you doing something about this!?”

Pretty morose thing to live with, for a safety net! Kind of a double edged sword you have there! Could be constantly being hyperattuned to problems would prime you for a negative outlook on life. Kind of seems like a power that would make it impossible for a moral person to take a day off, leading them into a beleaguered and resentful yet dutiful attitude about the whole superhero gig! Might build up to some of the core traits of this mythos, maybe! Might lead to a lot of fifteen minute retirement stories, or something. Might even be a built in ‘great responsibility’ alarm that gets you a main character who as a rule is not going to stop fighting until he physically cannot fight anymore.

Certainly not apropos of anything, just throwing this short lived barely-a-joke tagline up for fun.

One of my personal favorite things about stories with superpowers is keeping in mind how they cause the people who have them to act in unusual ways outside of fights, so when you tell me that these people have an entire extra sense that tells them when the gas in their house is leaking through a barely useful hot/cold warning system that never turns off, I’m like, eyes emojis, popcorn out, notebook open, listening intently, spectacles on, the whole deal.

It also contributes to Peter Parker’s personality in a way I really enjoy: It allows him to act like an irrational maniac. When you know exactly when a situation becomes dangerous and how much, normal levels of caution go out the window and absolutely nothing you do makes sense from an exterior standpoint anymore. That’s the good shit. I would like to see more exploration of how the non-Parker characters experiencing the world in this incredibly altered way bounce in response.

It’s also one of many tools in this franchise hauling the reader into relating more closely with the main character. The backbone of classic Spidey is probably being in on secrets only Peter and the reader know which completely reframe how one views the situation on the page. It’s just a big irony mine for the whole first decade. A convenient way to inform the reader and the lead that something is bad news that’s not perceivable to any other characters is youth-with-a-big-exciting-secret catnip.

Another point for tension, there, in that being aware of danger is not synonymous with being able to act on it. If there’s no visible reason for you to be acting strange, well...you’re just going to have to sit tight and sweat, aren’t you? Some gratuitous head wiggles never hurt when setting up that type of conflict.

Have I mentioned that they look cool? Simultaneously punchy and distinctive, with a respectable amount of leeway for artists to get creative with and still coming up with something easily recognizable? And pretty easy to intuit the meaning of even without the long-winded explanations common in the days when people wrote comics with the intent that someone could come in cold on any random issue and follow along okay, I think, although the mechanic has been deeply ingrained in popular culture for so long that I can’t really say for sure.

It was also useful back in the day when no artists drew the eyes on the Spider-Man mask as emoting and were conveying the lead’s expressions entirely through body language and panel composition. If you wiggle enough squiggles, you don’t need eyebrows.

Take This Handwave and Never Ask Me a Logistical Question Again

This ability patches plot holes faster than people can pick them open AND it can act as an excuse to get any plot rolling you can think of if paired with one meddling protagonist who doesn’t know how to mind their own business. Buy it now for only $19.99 (in four installments; that’s four installments of $19.99).

Why can a teenager win a six on one fight against other superhumans? Well, the spider-sense is the ultimate edge in combat, duh.

Why can Peter websling? Why doesn’t everyone websling? Well, the spider-sense is keeping him from eating flagpole when he violently flings himself across New York in a way neither man nor spider was ever meant to move.

How are we supposed to get him involved with the plot this week???? Well, that crate FELT dangerous, so he’s going to investigate it. Oh, dip, it was full of guns and radioactive snakes! Probably shouldn’t have opened that!

Yeah, okay, but why isn’t it fixing everything, then? Isn’t it supposed to be why Peter has never accidentally unmasked in front of somebody? ('Nother entry for this section, take a shot.) That’s crazy sensitive! How does he still have any problems!? Is everything bad that’s ever happened to characters with this powerset bad writing!? --Listen, I think as people with uncanny senses that can tell us whether we are in danger with accuracy that varies from incredible to approximate (I am talking about the five senses that most people have), we should all know better than to underestimate our ability to tune them out or interpret them wrong and fuck ourselves up anyway. I honestly find this part completely realistic.

*SLAPS ROOF OF SPIDER-SENSE* YOU CAN FIT SO MANY STORIES IN THIS THING

The spider-sense is a clean branch into...whatever. There is the exact right balance of structure and wishy-washiness to build off of. A sample selection of whatevers that have been built:

It’s sci-fi and spy gadgets when Peter builds technology that can interface with it.

It’s quasi-mystical when Kaine and Annie-May get stronger versions of it that give them literal psychic visions, or when you want to get mythological and start talking about all the spider-characters being part of a grand web of fate.

Kaine loses his and it becomes symbolic of a future newly unbound by constraints, entangled thematically with the improved physical health he picked up at the same time -- a loss presented as a gain.

Peter loses his and almost dies 782 times in one afternoon because that didn’t make the people he provoked when he had it stop trying to kill him, and also because he isn’t about to start “””taking the subway’’””’ “‘’“”to work”””’’” like some kind of loser who doesn’t get a heads up when he’s about to hit a pigeon at 50mph.

Peter’s starts tuning into his wife’s anxiety and it’s a tool in a relationship study.

It starts pinging whenever Peter’s near his boss who’s secretly been replaced by a shapeshifter and he IGNORES IT because his boss is enough of an asshole that that doesn’t strike him as weird; now it’s a comedy/irony tool.

Into the Spider-Verse made it this beautiful poetic thing connecting all the spider-heroes in the multiverse and stacked up a story on it about instant connection, loss, and incredibly unlikely strangers becoming a found family. It was also aesthetic as FUCK. Remember the scene where Miles just hears barely intelligible whispering that’s all lines people say later in the film and then his own voice very clearly says “look out” and then the room explodes?? Fuck!!!!

Venom becomes immune to it after hitchhiking to Earth in Peter’s bone juice and it makes him a unique threat while telling a more-homoerotic-than-I-assume-was-originally-intended story about violation and how close relationships can be dangerous when they go sour.

It doesn’t work on people you trust for maximum soap opera energy. Love the innate tragedy of this feature coming up.

IN CONCLUSION I don’t have much patience for writers who don’t take advantage of it, never mind feel they need to write around it.

#spiderman #peter parker #spiderverse #spidey #marvel #danny phantom #one day you'll see what i'm doing with it in the project i'm collabing on w/ my brother and then you'll all be sorry and hopefully impresse #mirrorfalls #asks answered #essays

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hms-no-fun · 3 years

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I'm curious about the way you write physical violence in Godfeels. There's a LOT of it, of course; you could fill a good-sized text document with a list of all the ways June has been put through the wringer. And yet it never feels gratuitous and it's always gut-wrenching to read. That can't be an easy balance to strike.

so i guess in a lot of ways i view narration primarily as a way to break up the dialogue to change scenes or provide dramatic breaks. narration is a function of the scene, and it's the primary indicator of the tone in which the dialogue exists. its job as far as i'm concerned, besides conveying to the reader who is present and what they're doing, is to expand and contract in tension with the dialogue.

i've always been fascinated by violence in media, and i find it really compelling as a way to give the narration and the scene as a whole a sense of subjective expediency. you learn a lot about june in the way she panics in the face of violence, the way her retaliations are always haphazard and sloppy. compare that to dirk, who calmly describes his fight with roxy while a sense of guilt eats away at him. where june is rarely in control when violence strikes, dirk is only ever in control. what he struggles with is not a fear of death but a clinging, irrational sentimentality that makes him want to take pity where he knows he shouldn't.

every scene needs to have an element of this, right? there needs to be some sense of propulsion. because narration in godfeels is inextricably rooted in character, it is uniquely suited to pulling double duty as both a mechanical conveyance of information and as a more fluid means of exploring character. so for me a scene is dead if there isn't some momentum, some tension between what's being said and what's being felt that is pushing the scene forward. this is the case for a lot of scenes between silverbark and june, where june keeps wanting to ask more questions but knows that silverbark will refuse to answer.

anyway. this is a story about trauma and violence. i am driven so much by the longterm impacts of trauma, the way it affects everyday life long after the event in question. in order to sell the extremity of that trauma, it's absolutely necessary that i depict the offending violence with gravity and clarity. and the thing about violence is that you can't revel in it. i mean, you can, but only in very specific circumstances. mostly though, violence is quick and dies quicker.

dirk breaking june's arm is such a vivid, painful moment, but it happens REALLY fast. it's a visceral OOOOF that only lasts two or three lines. the key is to then have that wound recur in various ways throughout the rest of the scene until it gets dealt with. and that's what i think separates my approach to violence from like... at least all major hollywood action movies? when someone gets cut or breaks a limb, it doesn't just hurt, it leaves you rattled. and it gets worse as time goes on! eventually it gets so bad it affects the perspective character's ability to narrate at all. on a longer timescale it can lead to psychological or emotional issues. what matters is less the violence than what the violence does to its victim.

the knife that cuts you leaves. the scar stays with you forever.

i never want to be gratuitous about violence because i actually find it quite tasteless when done without good reason. this is why we didn't see june's retconned murder spree, and why davepeta getting vaporized was instantaneous and without warning. from a story mechanics perspective, these scenes aren't really very interesting. i find skipping right to the part where the survivors react works much the same way that not showing the monster does in horror movies. save the visceral violence for the moments when it's REALLY called for, and otherwise let your audience do the hard work for themselves. it'll make the story better and the readers will thank you for it lmao

#violence in stories #godfeels #homestuck #writing advice #idk #sarahposts

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wicked-ghoul · 3 years

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Probably No One Else Will Care But That’s Fine This Is Mostly For Me:

Thoughts on my two Fav Franchises:

How To Train You Dragon:

HTTYD 1: The best of the three films! Very few complaints, just a damn solid movie!

Gift of the Night Fury: Cute short film. Watch it every Christmas! The best/most memorable part is definitely the ending with the tail fin ;.; I cried man, I cried.

Riders/Defenders of Berk: It’s fine. Nothing really noteworthy. Many episodes retcon the films characterization and world building for the sake of episode plots which is annoying but it’s otherwise a cute little show. I watch it when I want Dragons but not the EMOTION of Dragons.

Race to the Edge: I watched the first two seasons and Hated it so much I had to stop! I’ve heard it gets better as it goes but I was never invested in the shows enough to stick around and find out.

HTTYD 2: While it’s a step back from the first film in terms of writing, it’s still my personal favorite! Hiccup’s outfit, Toothless becoming Alpha to protect him, VALKA <3 Also it’s the darkest of the trilogy but never feels gratuitous about it which is nice.

The Comics: Never read them...

HTTYD 3: I was so determined to enjoy this film when it came out I ignored a lot of the criticism of the film, but looking back now and seeing what people have to say it’s definitely got a lot of problems in it’s execution and I totally understand why people were so put off by it. I still enjoy it though, but the criticisms are valid and reasonable.

Homecoming: Fuck this short. Aside from a couple funny/cute moments, it’s filled with awkward characterization and retconning Zephyr’s thoughts on Toothless to justify it’s existence.

Steven Universe:

Og Steven Universe: This is easily one of my favorite shows of all time! It’s got a focus problem and you can tell they were rushed to finish it but it works in spite of it’s flaws. It helped me through a really hard time and I will always be grateful to this show and the ending message in it’s finale Change Your Mind.

The Movie: The best thing in the franchise (writing wise at least). Like Dragons 1, I have very few complaints! Spinel is My Problem Child/Serotonin Machine and the musical numbers slap!

Future: Obviously well intended but very poorly executed. The episodes on their own were mostly well written but they all had different ideas of what Steven’s charactor arc actually was and so it never really Goes anywhere. The final episode tries to show the Gems and Steven have grown and are healing but it comes across like a reinforcement of all their problems and like they didn’t grow or learn at all and the “healing” feels phony. Has plenty of good things in it, but the whole’s not greater than the sum of it’s parts and the ending is disappointing.

Attack/Save/Unleash the Light: Never played them, they look fun though!

Dove Ads: Pretty hokey but that’s to be expected from PSA’s lol The ads are cute and I appreciate the messages they send.

Anti-Racism PSAs: Pretty much same as above. The Garnet one felt off for some reason but the ones with Pearl and Amethyst were great and have really important messages that, again, I’m glad they’re sending.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #wickedghoul posts stuff #how to train your dragon #steven universe #don't mind me guys just being a nerd

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airgetlamhh · 4 years

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Thoughts on Lostbelt 3

So, Lostbelt 3.

Just came out, and this time I played it in good time. Hopefully that’ll continue! Spoilers ahead for Lostbelt 3, and also for Qin Shi Huang’s interlude which has yet to come to NA. I’ll mark that section specifically so people can skip over it.

You might remember that I did one of these for Lostbelt 2, and if you haven’t seen that you can find it here. These are freeform and have no real set structure, they’re just one big post for me to gather and explain all my thoughts about the story. I’ll talk about characters, themes, pacing, etc. as they occur to me, and so expect this to be fairly chonky.

Now, once again, I’m going to lay out the thesis statement ahead of time, so people can feel free to skip over or read as they please. I expect this will be somewhat more controversial than my opinion about Gotterdammerung.

Lostbelt 3, the Synchronized Intelligence Nation, is bad.

I had wondered how to start this, but over time my thoughts kept coming back to the pacing. There are sixteen chapters in the Lostbelt, and almost nothing of any consequence whatsoever happens for the first eight. We fight Akuta, she runs, we fight Akuta, she runs, we spent like eight battles fighting the beasts Koyanskaya let loose and they amount to nothing and have no plot relevance whatsoever, we fight Xiang Yu and then he runs, and then we fight Xiang Yu and Lanling and then we’re forced into a truce and then nothing happens until Spartacus leads the people of the Lostbelt to rebellion and Qin drops the meteor and the march to Xiangyang begins.

Nothing happens.

Obviously that’s an exaggeration, there some events. Qin examines the Shadow Border, we meet some of the characters, but that’s all, really. A solid half of the Lostbelt is almost entirely useless faffing about, and then it rams the accelerator so absolutely nothing has any time to land and we speedrun our way through it. To put it in perspective, it’s one chapter shorter than Gotterdammerung, which was already five chapters shorter than Anastasia, and it feels significantly shorter than Gotterdammerung too. I complained in my write-up of that that it felt like things just happened for no reason, but at least things happened. In comparison, half of Lostbelt 3 feels bereft of content, the only important events of which could be condensed into about three chapters tops.

It feels like it’s a mid-year 1 Singularity. We have detours to kill random beasts unrelated to the actual plot, we get interrupted by fights as we try to talk, we faff about for ages and then speedrun our way to the actual climax. By the end of the Lostbelt, I was left with a lingering sense of “Wait, is that it?”

Moving on from the pacing, I think I should probably address the characters next. This is likely to be the largest section, since so much of the issues in the Lostbelt come from the characters and it’s only by talking about the characters that I can really engage with the themes. I’ll start from the least relevant and work my way up, meaning that I’ll be addressing basically the entire conglomerate of characters that aren’t Qin, Yu, Xiang Yu, Spartacus, Liangyu or of course Jing Ke.

Red Hare and Chen Gong, they’re comedy, make no mistake. They’re there to add a bit of humor to scenes and it’s fine, they’re funny. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to follow such a powerful scene as Spartacus saving the villagers and it inspiring them so much that the Lostbelt reconnects with the Throne of Heroes by having it result in nothing but comic relief, but they’re inoffensive.

Koyanskaya, she’s Koyanskaya. There’s a bit more hinting about her true nature here, but besides that she’s exactly the same. Nothing much happens besides that truly gratuitous torture scene that made me glad FGO’s story isn’t voiced, because it really was just deeply uncomfortable. I think that after two chapters and a prologue full of her being untouchable and smug and constantly ahead of everyone she did need to stumble a bit, but having her get punked by Shuwen and then gruesomely and gratuitously tortured while she screams and begs for help was completely unnecessary.

Han Xin and Li Shuwen, they’re fine. I’m not much of a fan of the whole stuff about Li Shuwen being so powerful as to stand up to four Servants, three of whom are meant to be insane powerhouses in their own right, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Han Xin when he’s allowed to just go apeshit at the end is one of the very few genuine delights about the Lostbelt, I really enjoyed him.

Lanling is a disappointment not because he’s badly written, but because he’s barely written. We start the Lostbelt to a flashback of his death and it sets us up to expect a bunch from him, but all that we really get is that he’s loyal to Yu. His only purpose in the story is to function as a connection for her outside of Xiang Yu, and boy howdy does this whole thing fail, we’ll get to that too. If he’d had more time, I expect he’d be quite good, but as it is he’s barely in the story and his only major character moment outside of Yu is when he tries assassinating Guda and admits he’s not really built for it.

Mordred and Nezha are there respectively to bounce off Spartacus and to reveal that Xiang Yu is based on her body respectively. That’s it. They vanish from the story for a good few chapters and I didn’t notice because Nezha becomes irrelevant as soon as you meet Xiang Yu and Mordred becomes irrelevant as soon as Spartacus died. You could remove both and the story would change not at all, and while I do think that Mordred’s role in giving Spartacus someone to bounce off of was nice and I enjoyed their interactions, introducing a whole character just to bounce off another means that when the other character is gone, the one you’ve introduced is just there. It’s insanely noticeable with Mordred.

Gordolf is a genuine delight. I think my honest favorite scene besides Spartacus’s in the chapter is when he and Guda have to decide who gets the only dose of antidote. Guda flat out telling them what hand they’d throw was perfectly in character but I genuinely adored Gordolf completely throwing the match and faking that it was an accident and that Guda got the antidote fair and square, after having it pointed out that he never once tried to lord it over Guda that he saved their life from the poison. When Guda forces him to drink it, Gordolf’s complete dedication to getting them the antidote and refusing to let Guda die because he’s the director and he is personally responsible for all their safety, that’s good stuff. I love Gordolf very very much, and I think that this Lostbelt really gives him some shining moments that emphasize why he’s so wonderful.

I think that is basically all the minor characters barring the village boy, who I will get to in a bit, but if you’re noticing a trend it’s that they’re mostly fine, inoffensive. Nothing stands out as truly genuinely very bad, but for the most part they’re all wasted potential. They exist to fulfil exactly one role, and then hang around long past their welcome in most cases, with Han Xin, Li Shuwen, and Lanling managing to avoid that, albeit in the first two more due to their overall lack of presence until the very end.

Now, Liangyu. Here’s where things start to break down a bit.

In this Lostbelt, Qin Liangyu is a warrior who distinguished herself enough to be frozen in Mt. Li, where Qin keeps their heroes to be used when necessary. Alongside Han Xin, she’s defrosted to handle the Chaldea threat. Her major point of focus in the chapter is engaging with the “Confucianism” that Chaldea represents. She’s the one who hears the poem first, she’s who reports it to Qin, she’s who steals the Shadow Border and who ends up confronting Chaldea first when they get to Xiangyang. When we finally get to hear her conviction, why she is so willing to fight for her home...

It’s revealed that Qin destroyed her village, her family. They had been inspired, not to rebel, but to simply seek to govern themselves and live as a nation outside of Qin’s domain. Qin’s response was to fire a meteor at their village. When the instigator escaped, he tried to do it again, and that was why Liangyu fights. To avoid the needless death and suffering that is guaranteed by opposing Qin.

No one is horrified by this. No one reacts to her blaming the victims for wanting a better life. No one points out that her loyalty comes entirely from a place of fear and loss, that Qin took away everything she held dear and then threatened to do it again and again and again. She fights because Qin would otherwise wipe out everyone, and this is heralded as splendid loyalty and honest devotion, despite the fact that it’s effectively the same logic as why someone might not resist their abusive partner. That is all Liangyu is meant to do, show us some kind of loyalty and validity to Qin’s path, and they even have Mashu lost for words when she is confronted. All to show us that true loyalty is submission, and that it’s a valid and good reason to fight, to be too scared of the tyrant above you wiping out everything if you don’t. Not something to oppose Qin for, but something to commend them for inspiring.

That reading, despite being a clearly obvious one, isn’t ever once entertained by the story. No one points out Qin’s tyranny as the starting point for Liangyu’s suffering, even though it clearly is. It’s not that it’s refuted, it just never once comes up, because the characters acknowledging it or challenging it would hurt the clumsy point it really wants to make.

As a digression, this Lostbelt is a step back for Mashu. Her climatic character moment in Part 1 is rejecting a world without suffering and having the purest conviction necessary to block Ars Almodel Salomonis, but now she’s shaken and starts thinking that maybe that was a mistake all because it was only a possible future she rejected with Goetia, instead of the actual people in front of her? I can’t see that as anything but a regression, considering it was a point that her conviction was able to overcome the most powerful attack in the series even as it destroyed her body to protect those behind her. It’s done almost entirely to make us question whether or not Qin has a point, and given that the answer to that is a resounding and obvious “no” all it ends up doing is taking a hammer to Mashu’s solidly built up character every time she responds to an obviously flawed argument with “...” to give it unearned validity.

Spartacus next. He is an honest to goodness genuine joy. There are a few bright spots in this Lostbelt and Spartacus is one of them. He is very well written, allowed to think and philosophize about the nature of rebellion and whether it’s needed, and his musings on why he rebelled and whether or not it was justified to rebel against Qin when their people smiled so innocently like he’d always hoped for was unironically fantastic character work. His sacrifice reigniting the will to ask for more inside the people to the point of connecting to the Throne once more is absolutely fantastic, and his interactions with Mordred are great too. I absolutely do not have a single bad thing to say about him, he’s just wonderful.

Jing Ke. She’s a delight. She is a constant denier of everything that Qin suggests, and she functions as a beacon of good sense in the chapter. Where others are falling prey to some nonsense writing that makes them wonder if they’re doing the right thing, Jing is constantly pointing out the horrible, horrible tyranny going on, and constantly reminding people that Qin is in fact, a monster. Her final moments, getting to trick Qin into downloading a virus, arguing against them on philosophical grounds and then mocking them when they’re surprised that she would use that as a chance to kill them, and the argument itself of humanity’s virtues being in its ability to communicate and progress even if they don’t have a certainty of peace ahead of them, all of it was great. I’m sad she died and never got a chance to see Guda again in the Lostbelt, but all in all, she was well written.

Xiang Yu and Yu Meiren. This is where things get really, truly, genuinely disappointing. As concepts, they’re really cool. Xiang Yu as a machine built from the body of a god with the ability to calculate and compute the future giving him an inhuman mindset is a really neat idea, as is Meiren being effectively a True Ancestor. Them finding love as two non-humans who understood each other where no one else did is good in theory.

In practice, Xiang Yu and Yu Meiren’s romance, the emotional core of the chapter, is without question the worst romance written in the Lostbelts thus far, and probably the worst romance in the game. It isn’t until chapter 13 of this 16 chapter game that we get any exploration of it at all beyond Meiren being devoted to Xiang Yu to the point that she completely cripples her own agency as an interesting and individual character to work entirely for Qin when they threaten Xiang Yu’s life, and the exploration we do get is just...explaining how Xiang Yu is a robot and how he lived in Panhuman History. No examination of their mutual feelings, just Meiren describing how her Xiang Yu lived.

This Lostbelt is not a reuniting of lovers long past. This is Meiren finding a man who shared an origin with her lover and devoting herself entirely to him, even though they aren’t the same person at all. This could have been an incredible hook!

Imagine if this Lostbelt looked at Meiren’s two thousand years of stagnation in mourning for Xiang Yu and her sole desire being to be reunited with him and then it gave her her wish. She betrayed her own history for the Lostbelt’s, because it gave her a chance to see her beloved again, but this Xiang Yu is not her Xiang Yu. He doesn’t even answer to the same name, doesn’t recognise her at all. Having thrown away everything that connected her to Panhuman History just to see her beloved again, she is now trapped in a world she doesn’t recognise with a man who isn’t her Xiang Yu, her sole connection being...Gao Changgong, a regular human from Panhuman History. The greatest of ironies, her only meaningful connection being one of the humans she hates, because she sacrificed everything for a man who doesn’t even know her name.

Lostbelt 3 is a story about stagnation and the dangers of easy ignorance, but Meiren’s story doesn’t engage with that central theme whatsoever. Hers is a story entirely about how she merely existed just to exist before she met Xiang Yu and after he died, and her only experience being happy was with him. A few short years in literal millennia of existence are all that she cares about, and indeed she doesn’t change even slightly over all those years. And despite this stagnation leading her to consign her own history to death, the history that her Xiang Yu is from and fought for, the story never once engages with that. She is, in fact, rewarded in the end by becoming a Heroic Spirit and getting reunited with her Xiang Yu.

And really, that’s what gets me. They have a perfect setup to tie into the theme of the Lostbelt, how an uncertain future of progression is sincerely better than a stagnant peace born of ignorance, and they don’t tie their Crypter into it nearly as well as LB1 or even LB2. Kadoc is obsessed with conflict and overcoming Guda to prove his own strength in a reflection of how Lostbelt 1 is a hellscape where might makes right, and Ophelia is stuck doing nothing but following her role without a choice in a reflection of Surtr existing only to fulfill his role, being capable only of destruction and incapable of changing that. In contrast...Meiren doesn’t engage with SIN’s theme of the worthiness of peace at the cost of stagnation at all, really.

I’m talking a lot about what she could be instead of what she is, because what she is is obsessed with Xiang Yu. Her sole concern in every single appearance besides her single moment of independent characterization with Gao on his deathbed is Xiang Yu. She sacrifices her initial independence to obey Qin for Xiang Yu’s sake, she fights for nothing more than Xiang Yu’s sake, she wants nothing more than to be with Xiang Yu forever, even if it’s not her Xiang Yu, even if it’s sacrificing the world her Xiang Yu fought for. She chooses the peace of stagnation and is never once punished or even questioned for it. She tells Lostbelt Xiang Yu about his history in her world, and then he tells her that he understands why her Xiang Yu loves her, and then decides on the spot that he loves her too. That’s it.

Every other existing romance that they play back into in Fate is one that they put effort into selling. I mean, just think about Sigurd and Bryn! Imagine if, instead of all the little touches and bits in the chapter where they go in hard on selling that Sigurd and Bryn are madly in love with each other, they just didn’t have that. Imagine if Kadoc and Anastasia barely interacted except for Kadoc telling Anastasia how her past went. It really feels like Urobuchi looked at Meiren and Xiang Yu’s existing famous romance and decided that he just didn’t need to sell it, even though it literally wasn’t the same people involved.

And to be clear, I understand the intention. Xiang Yu has an alien mindset because of his calculation of the future, and this alien mindset means that he does things that are hard to understand for us. But at the end of the day, Lostbelt Xiang Yu hears a single story about himself in Panhuman History and decides that it makes sense that, given everything he and Meiren experienced there, that they would fall in love. And then he chooses to fall in love too, in the span of a single conversation. That isn’t believable, but more to the point it isn’t satisfying. This isn’t a great reuniting of lovers, it’s Meiren telling a stranger how a hypothetical alternate timeline version of him lived and him deciding he loves her because of that one single story.

And the way this love is represented is...it’s kinda typical Urobuchi. Meiren’s tragedy is undersold and given second billing to talking about how tragic Xiang Yu’s life was and how bad it made her feel and how she wished she could have done something, while LB Xiang Yu ignores her plea to stay and to not fight anymore by declaring that he must fight for the Lostbelt because of his programming, not for her, and then after he’s defeated and Guda beats Qin he declares that he’s actually madly in love with Meiren and will ignore her stated wishes again to fight until he dies, whereupon he promptly talks about dying with regret for leaving Meiren behind and quotes the poem and everyone claps. This great romance begins by Meiren telling Xiang Yu about how sad his life was in her history, is defined solely by Xiang Yu doing anything he wants at any time while Meiren feels sad about it, and ends with Xiang Yu ignoring Meiren’s wishes to sacrifice himself for absolutely nothing and to have it later revealed he knew exactly how she would react to this and did it anyway.

It’s not that I don’t buy the romance, it’s that I can’t buy it. It’s every terrible romance you’ve seen in fiction before where there’s no chemistry to sell it but the author keeps telling you how perfect they are for each other, only in this case the author tells you how perfect Meiren and Panhistory Xiang Yu are for each other and then shrugs and decides that Lostbelt Xiang Yu is basically the same anyway so it works. And it really, really does not.

The Xiang Yu of Panhistory is somewhat interesting from what we hear in the chapter, but Lostbelt Xiang Yu is very bland and Yu Meiren is just a tragically wasted character. Instead of a story of being shaken out of stagnation and learning to grow and move forward, we get a story of stagnation being the good and right choice for her. Instead of a story of trying to make the past happen again instead of acknowledging that they are two different people who cannot simply pretend everything is as it was, we get a story where Lostbelt Xiang Yu decides it makes sense that an alternate universe version of himself would fall in love with Meiren, and then skips all the actual development to decide he’s madly in love with her too. Instead of a story of Meiren realizing that her closest connection for the longest time was a living human and that she can live for more than just the memory of a man long dead, we get Meiren’s character being solely, completely about Xiang Yu from beginning to end, and even later in Chaldea where she exists for nothing more than “haha married couple” jokes.

There is, to be clear, an attempt at relating this to the other theme of the chapter, humanity. Meiren and Xiang Yu are both discriminated against for their inhumanity, and it’s pointed out that they’re so fitting for each other because they, as non-humans, understood each other. I think this could have worked if it was given more emphasis, but as it stands it just kinda...isn’t. It, and they, take a backseat to Qin’s emphasis on this theme, so all this theme does for them is another justification as to why they are totally in love and why Urobuchi doesn’t have to write them actually being in love.

And then Xiang Yu dies, and Meiren goes crazy because her entire world and every facet of her character revolves around one man, and we have to kill her because he ignored her pleas and then died knowing he would die and knowing she would go crazy when he died. This, after spending the entire chapter from the first time we meet her being completely ineffective and failing at every turn, only becoming a threat once she devours her own Servant and even then only for a few minutes before she ceases to be relevant. Thanks, Urobuchi. Love it when you write women.

It’s a genuine disappointment, because you could do so much with Meiren and Lostbelt Xiang Yu bonding as themselves, not as Meiren from 2000 years ago and Xiang Yu from Panhistory, and with Meiren being able to honour her love without letting it chain her down to stagnation like it did in practice. But they don’t do any of that. They tell us that this great romance exists without putting in any of the work, and then expect it to work. And for me? It didn’t, at all. It is again, without a doubt the worst romance in this arc, and probably the worst romance in FGO.

Finally, Qin.

I think Qin is a fantastic villain. They are completely, utterly loathsome in every way, and the early chapters with Spartacus and Jing Ke around really highlight it. Spartacus’s musings about rebellion culminate in a reassurance that it is in fact right and just to rebel against the oppressor that is Qin despite the peace they offer, and Jing Ke consistently and constantly responds to all their justifications by pointing out what absolute drivel they are. It is a sincerely excellent setup for a Lostbelt King that isn’t a tragic case of someone trying to save what they can after a horrible accident, but one who in their arrogance created a hellscape that was pruned solely due to their own tyranny. Qin is the perfect balance of hypocritical and arrogant and cruel while being utterly convinced of their own perfection to make a fantastic villain to break out of the “tragic king after apocalypse” type we’d had for the first two Lostbelts, and has the perfect ingredients to a tie-in back to Goetia and how Goetia earned the title of “King of Humans” in their final moments.

But, unfortunately, the chapter starts softening up on them as it goes on. Where before, we had people calling them out for tyranny and obvious wrongdoing, by the end we have Holmes praising them for shouldering the difficult responsibility of humanity all by themselves and being the one we get on our Lostbelt CE, a spot reserved before for the inhabitants of the Lostbelt that we befriend. Because, ultimately, the Lostbelt doesn’t want to condemn Qin.

What Qin does is monstrous in the extreme, but by the end of the Lostbelt it feels like the game has forgotten that. Instead of pointing out the obvious problem in Liangyu’s loyalty being based on the certainty that Qin would murder everyone if she didn’t do it for them, Mashu and Guda have to just accept that it’s valid. Instead of reminding themselves of Spartacus and Jing Ke’s rejection of Qin as a tyrant, they praise them for taking over the responsibility of humanity. Instead of having the Lostbelt represented by the boy who dared to look up and dream of something more, it’s instead represented by Qin descending to live among humanity in their final days. Even Qin’s final act for Meiren has them claim without irony that they guide their people by the light of reason, when the entire chapter has been about how Qin uses threats of incredible violence to control everyone and how they had to conquer the world by force to enact this horrible regime, and no one points out the shocking hypocrisy in Qin claiming that they guide through reason instead of, you know. Giant meteors.

I didn’t name that boy, because the story doesn’t name that boy. In a story that is ostensibly about the horror of humanity being stripped of everything that makes them an individual and showing us that the spark and drive to be different and to learn and grow and change still exists even after over two thousand years of Qin trying to stamp it out, they don’t name the boy. This isn’t because names don’t exist in Qin’s empire, because explicitly the heroes are all named, and implicitly such a massive divergence would need to be highlighted in some way, so it’s not an intentional dehumanization which would actually fit.

Instead, despite this child being the first citizen who dares to enjoy a poem and who dares to step outside the boundaries of his village, despite him being proof positive that Qin’s tireless attempts at stamping out the human spirit are doomed to failure even after ruling the entire world for hundreds of years, despite him being inspired by Spartacus’s cry of rebellion against the tyranny of the world he was born in...he doesn’t have a name. And that really hurts the Lostbelt, I feel, because it just doesn’t take the time to even name our Lostbelt friend. He is, ultimately, not important. The symbol of the Lostbelt is Qin as the ultimate human, despite the entire point of the Lostbelt being that it’s a rejection of this concept, that Qin’s choice of becoming the one and only human is wrong and that the individuality of Panhistory is superior. Instead of enshrining the boy who dared to be different in the CE, pride of place is given to Qin.

That’s my biggest issue with Qin, really. We are given a perfect setup for Qin as a villain and indeed do reject their whole worldview and ideals and everything as being completely wrong, to the point that Holmes even rejects the idea that they are a human. In the final parts of the chapter, Holmes declares that the defense Qin dedicated themselves to is the domain of a god, and that despite their insistence that they did so as the only human and that they rejected becoming a god, ultimately they were deluding themselves, having simply taken on the role of a god while declaring themselves a human. This is the harshest condemnation that Qin ever gets and the final culmination of theme of humanity and what it really is that’s there throughout the Lostbelt, a complete and total rejection of the idea that one can do what Qin did and still claim to be human.

But instead of engaging with this, the story softens up on Qin by the end because it wants you to roll for them. It’s exactly what happened with Skadi, a solid character and path built up from the beginning and then swerving towards the end to make them more likeable. That Qin is the one on our Lostbelt CE and that it’s all about how Qin did their best to “shoulder the responsibility” for mankind instead of highlighting their tyranny is just kinda emblematic of how the story treats it once Jing Ke is gone, because when she’s not in the party people stop pointing out the obvious tyranny going on, and when she’s dead everyone starts acting like Qin is almost reasonable and that their path was a valid one that wasn’t so wrong, even though theirs was more right. It even completely ignores Koyanskaya pointing out that Qin loves humanity like an owner loves its pets, not as actual individuals, but this love is treated as completely valid thereafter instead of being a huge problem.

Big Big Spoilers For Qin’s Interlude Now, Skip Ahead To The Next Bolded Section If You Don’t Want To See Them

One of the reasons I’m so harsh on them for what could, in context, be seen as relatively minor softening up on Qin compared to the actual defeat we deal them is because of this Interlude. As a brief overview, Qin completely ignores the ending of their Lostbelt, which lasts for three months despite every other Lostbelt lasting a day at most before it vanishes and the implication of the final chapter being that it’s ending soon, returns to Epang Palace despite it having been destroyed and corrupted with a virus and despite having promised to live as a human on the ground with the rest of the world until the end, and then uses the data on the Shadow Border that somehow survived the virus and destruction of the palace to somehow construct a machine that allows them to create Singularities.

They then use this to create a bunch of Singularities related to “what-ifs” where they were a cruel king who ruled over Xiangyang and murdered all their subjects so they can piggyback on the Human Order instead of being destroyed with their Lostbelt and everyone in it, and then keeps the Singularities around as time bombs to destroy Panhistory like Goetia did if they ever feel like Guda might lose. When this is figured out, no one in the know bothers to tell Guda to protect their feelings, and no one intervenes in any way or challenges Qin in any regard besides telling them to believe in Guda.

This interlude turned Qin into the most loathsome character in the game for me. They declared they would put it all on the line challenging Guda and then lost and stepped aside, even helping to destroy the Tree of Fantasy, and even having Da Vinci praise their grace in stepping aside when it was clear that they had lost. But that didn’t happen.

Instead, Qin lied. Qin pulled the trigger on everyone in their entire world and then decided that they didn’t actually want to uphold their end of the bargain, so they abandoned the people they swore to live alongside until the end and constructed a scenario where they have the sole authority to destroy all of human history forever if they feel like it, something made possible only because author fiat dictated that they still had the data and the capacity to use it after the twofold destruction of the Epang Palace and only because author fiat dictated that their Lostbelt lasted for months after the Tree was destroyed when every other Lostbelt disappears after hours. And all this happens because fundamentally, they don’t want Qin to be wrong, and they don’t think Qin was wrong. They pay lip service to the idea, but the end result is that Qin is always meant to have a point, and that despite having people point out their obvious hypocrisy at ther start like Jing Ke, by the end of the Lostbelt and beyond you are meant to take them at face value as a Hard Enby Making Hard Decisions doing their best to save the entire world.

SPOILERS FOR THE INTERLUDE OVER, YOU’RE SAFE NOW

To begin the summary for Qin as a character, I’d like to point out Fate’s relationship with Great Man theory. This theory is, in brief, a suggestion that the course of history is largely influenced by exceptional individuals and leaders that exert their will on the world as a result of their own superb capabilities, such as being more intelligent, charismatic, powerful etc. than all other men around them. This is obviously a theory with a bunch of holes, but what’s interesting is that Fate has always engaged with this idea and has always refuted it conclusively.

In Fate, if you are a single human trying to save the world, you will fail. Kiritsugu’s chasing of the Grail and his ultimate failure because of his own flaws making it physically impossible for him to consider a path to salvation that didn’t involve killing is a rejection of Great Man theory. Shirou understanding that one single person cannot possibly save everyone in the world is a rejection of Great Man theory. Amakusa’s inability to save the world in any way besides erasing free will is a rejection of Great Man theory. Goetia’s decision to erase history and start again to make something better and his ultimate defeat is a massive rejection of Great Man theory. Zelretch, for all his insane power, is literally paralyzed by that selfsame power into not being able to do anything, while someone like Aoko who doesn’t think of anything but what’s right in front of her is actually able to accomplish things because she doesn’t try transcending the limits of what a human is capable of. It is one of the Nasuverse’s most consistent themes, that it is fundamentally wrong and doomed to fail if you ever attempt to impress your will on the entire world in a misguided attempt to save it.

And yet Qin simply doesn’t engage with that. Qin is Great Man theory distilled into a character, and by the end of the Lostbelt and beyond the game gives up on challenging that. They declare themselves as the ultimate human with the sole responsibility to administrate mankind and despite losing, the game respects them and their path and refuses to condemn them the same way that it condemned Ivan for doing all he could to save his people, even if it meant inflicting his own ideas on the entire human race. And that’s a consistent problem with the last two Lostbelts, but it sticks out more for Qin because Qin didn’t face an apocalypse. Qin brought the world to an end with their own two hands, but the game simply cannot keep up the condemnation as much as it should, because it wants you to like them and wants you to roll them and spend money to do so. And that’s where Qin falters for me. They’re a fantastic villain, but the game doesn’t let them be a villain, regardless of how much it clashes not just with FGO’s themes, but with one of the overarching ideas behind a lot of stuff in the Nasuverse as a whole.

I’ve basically talked about the thematics and the characters together in the last section, so this is just me talking about its construction as a story here as a short(er) final roundup.

It’s badly written, really. Like I mentioned earlier, basically nothing happens for about half the chapter and then the latter half puts the pedal to the metal and speedruns its way through everything. Nothing is given the time or dedication it needs besides Spartacus’s sacrifice in the chapter, I feel, and that works to its extreme detriment.

In terms of things that happen, it strained my sense of disbelief as bad or worse than Lostbelt 2 did. I knew it was going to be rough when Mordred, one of the Knights of the Round Table who was easily able to go toe-to-toe with Siegfried and stomp most people she fought in previous appearances, ends up firing her Noble Phantasm at Xiang Yu and doing no damage whatsoever despite being a direct hit, and then Xiang Yu ends up defeating a group of four Servants including powerhouses like Mordred and Spartacus without breaking a sweat and explicitly while holding back.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, that I’m starting to sound like some BLer who cares for nothing besides calculations and VS debates and whatnot, but that’s not what I’m about. I don’t care to argue whether my favorite Servant could beat Goku or not, partially because the answer is an obvious yes because they’re my favorite, but mostly because that’s just not really relevant for a story.

What is relevant, however, is the idea of suspension of disbelief. In telling a story, you don’t need to be realistic, but you need to be consistent. Having internal consistency is a vital part of selling your work to the audience, because if they start thinking that anything can happen at any time because the author wants it to happen, they can get pulled out of the story real quick. If you introduce someone as being Double God and being able to wipe the floor with every single one of the protagonists without breaking a sweat, you have to make sure that when or if they are defeated, their defeat is internally consistent. Either they lose their strength somehow, or the protagonists find some way to power up or change their tactics or do something different to defeat them next time they fight. When you pull a victory or defeat out of your ass without some kind of internal consistency, you had better make sure that you’ve got your themes on point, because if you’ve failed in making something internally consistent and you can’t justify the event happening because it fits perfectly with the themes of the work, then it takes people out real quick.

That’s where this Lostbelt falls down really hard in terms of story construction outside of its characters, because it has neither. Xiang Yu is introduced as an unstoppable murdermachine that we can only hold off temporarily or wait for him to retreat, even when that means devaluing our own Servants’ capabilities and making Mordred who is a Knight of the Round table look like a chump. But then later, Spartacus vaporizes a meteor with nothing but his Noble Phantasm, except Xiang Yu was just straight up too much for him, even though Xiang Yu is pretty much the greatest symbol of Qin’s oppression and its source, the incredible violence that they are willing and able to visit upon anyone at any time if they feel like it. Spartacus loses horribly to one symbol and then annihilates the other and it feels weird.

Later, we’re also introduced to Meiren being a True Ancestor with infinite mana who curses us so badly that we only survive with Koyanskaya’s aid. Even Koyanskaya is urging us to run and there’s explicitly nothing we can do to her. That’s fine! It’s a good setup for a really tough boss! But what it means is that now we have two people set up as completely unbeatable even with all the help we have, including Red Hare and Chen Gong. That’s an awkward setup that really needs a solid resolution, especially when the final battle with them is fighting both, together, while both are completely fresh and Chaldea has just fought their way through Xiangyang, defeating Liangyu, Han Xin and the royal guards, and Li Shuwen.

And the game doesn’t engage with it. We beat them both despite them both individually being able to wipe us out earlier in the chapter, and despite nothing having changed for us. If anything, they should have the advantage of conviction, or at least Xiang Yu should. But we beat them and Nezha gives some nonsense about how Xiang Yu lost because he never had any rivals to fight against, despite him having been used to conquer the world, and despite him having fought alongside the great heroes enshrined in Mt. Li during these conquests. Meiren isn’t even acknowledged, which isn’t much of a surprise, but it is disappointing. Despite her being held up as an insurmountable threat at first, she’s not even considered worth mentioning in favor of talking about Xiang Yu.

That problem continues along with Qin, who comes at us with a Grand class Saint Graph and whom we end up defeating all by ourselves, not as a battle of wills but flat out defeating them, even though we only have Mashu, Red Hare, Nezha, and Mordred who have all been exhausted fighting through all of Xiangyang. People are hyped up as insanely dangerous and then lose not because of the thematics and not because the story has constructed things so that their loss makes sense, but just because the author says it happens. All the battles are handled with in-game battles, which the game grew out of a long, long time ago. The difference between the climactic battles with Ivan and Surtr and the climactic battle with Qin in terms of actual writing is night and day, and the sole saving grace, that it is explicitly characterized as a conflict between the two philosophies and a battle of which one comes out on top, just isn’t enough to overcome the insane hype of being on par with a Grand that Qin gets for absolutely no reason. It devalues Grands and it made the victory against them feel unearned even with the idea that it’s a conflict of philosophies, which I usually eat up. To compare it to the great example of that in Fate, it feels like Shirou VS Archer, except instead of the point being that Archer cannot bring himself to fully deny Shirou’s ideals and is defeated by Shirou reminding him of their beauty even though he wields the power to crush Shirou instantly if he wanted, it’s like Shirou proved his point about ideals by beating Archer up fair and square. It just isn’t nearly as well written.

It isn’t all bad. Like I mentioned, Spartacus, Jing Ke, Gordolf, they were all genuine delights that I loved. The meteor, the assassination, those were both excellent scenes. But overall, the Lostbelt was half nothing happening and then the latter half made up of one or two cool moments with a hell of a lot of bad shit connecting them. Its theme of stagnation is indecisive and muddled because of Qin and Meiren, its theme of humanity has its conclusion ignored and conflicts with the overall idea of Great Men in the Nasuverse, its treatment of its female characters barring Jing is uncomfortable at best, and it tries to sell us a romance without putting in any of the actual legwork to make it believable.

I wish Lostbelt 3 had been better. I can see easy routes to make it better. But more than anything I wish that Meiren had been done better. She’s an immortal True Ancestor who has lived for thousands of years and seen the birth of modern humanity, living through so much of our history, and instead of having a story of learning how to break free of her stagnation she’s just obsessed with a male character who isn’t remotely as focused on her to the extent that every choice and decision she makes in the chapter is focused entirely around him. It’s just...uncomfortable.

For all the hooks she had as a character, Meiren is reduced to an accessory for her man, and I think that’s a crying shame.

#FGO #Fate/Grand Order #Fate Grand Order #cosmos in the lostbelt #Synchronized Intelligence Nation #SIN #lostbelt #FGO spoilers #Lostbelt 3 #Shi Huang Di #Qin Shi Huang #Xiang Yu

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alyblacklist · 3 years

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Hi Aly, i feel bad to say this because im such a fan of the show, but am I the only one who found this episode kind of useless? I mean we found out nothing new, all we saw was torture and still no Liz. I understand it's a creative choice but im just tired of it. I hope they have a good explanation for all of this, for all her choices i dunno. I feel so conflicted and confused atm

Don’t feel bad, anon. I actually agree with you on this episode. It felt like a lot of gratuitous torture for no real narrative purpose because in the end, we really learned nothing of substance that we didn’t know already. So while I thought both James and Hisham gave fantastic performances, the whole thing overall fell really flat for me. I found the Blacklister herself underwhelming after all the hype. I also felt her backstory lost whatever compelling weight it might otherwise have had by virtue of the fact that her reaction to her mother’s suffering at the hands of white doctors was to become someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others - including a fellow black person - and especially at the direction of a white man! We’ve seen Blacklisters take on unusual personas in the past as a result of personal trauma but there really seemed to be a cause and effect disconnect here between the backstory and the character.

The Task Force was practically useless (how many times did Ressler get the line “we’re securing the scene”) and reduced to spouting platitudes about how Liz would or wouldn’t do certain things. I feel like we the audience are just spinning our wheels and it’s been way, way too many weeks of this right now. I’m almost at the point of not wanting to watch until I know for sure Liz is back, but I also know myself well enough to know I probably won’t be able to resist the new ep live despite those growing feelings. But I already reached my limit a few eps ago on how many eps I am willing to endure quietly where she’s talked about and not shown. They better have a really, really good reason for doing this in the end because I will be livid if they made her a villain and then didn’t let us see that play out from HER perspective. Show us if she’s conflicted, show us her emotions and her reasoning. Without it, she’s a faceless villain persecuting beloved characters and I suppose that’s probably the point, but six weeks of this with no end in sight is way too much for my taste.

#anon #8.10 #and as usual the majority on Twitter and Reddit seem to be relishing Liz's absence #it makes me so sad

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feverinfeveroutfic · 3 years

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chapter one: from rhode island with love

*chapter one of book two of course

Zelda smelled of old books and soapy perfume, something which made Sam reminisce about her old life on the West Coast. She had taken her seat on the arm of the couch, right next to Marla, and she let the toes of her shoes hover about an inch above the floor. She held the drum sticks in either hand and she twirled the one in her right hand. She dropped it at one point and she stooped down to pick it up from the hard floor beneath her.

She twirled the stick again, that time with two fingers. She had long, slender fingers which held and twirled the stick like a series of serpents: Sam took a second look at her hand to find deep dark green nail polish on her fingernails that shone under the daylight from the window across the room. The men in the front room burst out laughing at something and she tossed the stick in the air. She caught it as if she had twirled a baton. Zelda turned her head to the two of them with a glimmer in her eyes.

“Are you in a band at all?” Marla asked her with a bit of excitement to her voice.

“I am, yeah!” Zelda declared. “The Cherry Suicides, we're called. We're a tiny li'l gang of girls who play loud, raucous, and kinda sexy hardcore punk. Straight outta Narragansett.”

Sam hesitated for a second.

“Rhode Island?”

“Correct a mundo.” Zelda showed her a smile, one where her cheekbones actually resembled to ripe cherries right off the tree. She crossed her slender, toned drummer's legs as Billy emerged from the hallway once again, that time with little white cups in either hand.

“This is courtesy of Eric and Steve,” he declared as he handed the cup in his left hand to Zelda. He handed the one in his right to Marla.

“I'll be right back for you,” he continued with a gesture to Sam, and he ducked back into the hallway.

“Our goal at the moment is go on tour with either Black Flag or the Ramones,” she continued as she tipped the cup back into her mouth. She knocked back whatever was in there in three large gulps. Marla cradled her cup in her lap. “How 'bout you ladies?”

“We're artists,” Sam told her.

“Like, actual artists?”

“Yeah.”

“She's waiting to hear back from the school people,” Marla explained with a gesture to Sam. “I'm already in school.”

“Oh, that's cool! Our lead singer and guitarist, Morgan and Minerva—they're sisters—they tried going to school a couple of years ago and Morgan said she hated it. Min survived the two years and said, 'fuck it, I'm a guitarist.' I thought of doing it when I got out of high school but at that point, I met Min and she invited me to jam with her and Morgan. We've gone through about three bassists already.”

“Why's that?” asked Sam, to which Zelda shrugged.

“Our first bass player, Di—she didn't want to commit, like she wasn't comfortable with going out and touring, which I don't understand because that's the whole point of being in a band, if you ask me. Our second, Victoria, she had bad chemistry with both me and Morgan, like she called Morgan controlling—which is complete bullshit. Morgan's been my friend since high school and she's anything but controlling. And she called me enabling, which is... fucking weird.”

Sam chuckled at Zelda's gratuitous swearing: the way in which she did it sounded so natural and fluid to her train of thought.

“And now our current bass player, Rosita, she's been doing real good with us.”

“So third time's a charm?” Sam followed along.

“Apparently so! And it's funny you say that, too—what'd you say your name was?” Zelda knitted her eyebrows together.

“Sam.”

“Sam! It's kinda funny you say that, 'cause we actually have a song titled 'Third Time's a Charm'. It's gonna be part of our demo tape.”

Billy returned to the room with two cups in either hand again, and that time he handed the one in his right hand to Sam.

“Thank you,” she said with a sweet smile.

“The speed metal paradox—the boys are inexperienced with girls and yet complete and total gentlemen,” Zelda remarked.

“What kinda metal?” Sam asked her as she took a small sip of the cold water.

“Speed. Quick, to the point, sharp, and yet kinda... melodious. At least, that's what I always hear it being called in the past—year or so, since we started comin' to New York City from Rhode Island.” Zelda turned towards Billy. “I assume that's what you guys are.”

“Stormtroopers?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged in response as he brought the cup to his mouth.

“I guess? We're just Stormtroopers, if you ask me and Charlie.”

“Charlie says Anthrax are just... y'know, Anthrax,” Marla replied with a shrug herself.

“Labels are for cans of soup, not people,” Sam declared.

“Yes!” Billy said with a point to her. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“We just call ourselves punk because we like punk,” Zelda explained as she twirled the drum stick in her right hand again. “We like punk—we like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, and I like to play fast like Charlie. But we don't really go anywhere beyond that, though, for the same reason.”

One of the guys from Legacy, a slightly hefty boy with a round face and a sheet of lush curls spread down his face, emerged in the doorway right then with his hand up by his chest.

“Bill's in a room full of girls,” he joked with a little nod of his head.

“At least we take care of him,” Marla retorted, which brought a laugh out of him. He rested his large hands on the sides of the door frame for a second, and then he lunged for them.

“I didn't introduce myself, by the way—I'm Steve.”

“Better known as Zetro,” Billy added as they each shook hands; “if anything, he actually goes just by that. Everyone knows him as Zetro.” His hand dwarfed Sam to the point it made her think of a bear paw.

“Why Zetro?” Marla asked him.

“It's been with me since I was a kid,” he explained. “Let's just say I've got a thing for cartoons.”

“Us, too,” Zelda replied with a gesture to Marla and Sam, even though the three of them had only known each other for a few minutes.

“By the way, we're handing out cups of water because we have a couple of dudes runnin' around here who aren't twenty one yet, Frank and—”

“Oi! Zetro!” Another of the boys from Legacy emerged from behind him. He had smooth straight inky black hair, part of which spread over the side of his forehead and hid his left eye a bit, and a round little boyish face with smooth, slightly angled dark eyes. Even though Sam didn't want to think that, he looked as though he could have walked right out of the Chinese neighborhood of San Francisco.

“Zetro,” he repeated as he flipped back his hair with a flick of his head.

“Yeees?” Zetro replied with a flick of his tongue.

“We're outta cups,” he said.

“How are we outta cups?” Billy asked him.

“I asked Jon and he was like 'we're fresh outta cups.'” He nodded to the three girls on the couch. “So—keep those in hand, ladies.”

Zetro gestured over to him with finger guns.

“Rhythm guitarist Eric Peterson,” he introduced him.

“I'm half Swedish, half Mexican,” he explained. “My dad came here from beautiful Sweden.”

“Oh, wow, I feel dumb right about now,” Sam blurted out.

“Why's that?”

“I thought you were Asian at first.” Eric burst out laughing at that and smacked his knee.

“I thought you were Asian!” Sam insisted. “I feel so dumb for that now.”

“Don't be,” he said with a sharp gasp so as to catch his breath. “If it makes you feel any better, you're not the first person to think that.”

Marla and Zelda glanced over at Sam with raised eyebrows and little smirks on their faces; the latter giggled a bit.

“Well,” was all she could muster out from her lips. He was kind to her to top it all off.

“By the way, when's your gig?” Eric asked Zelda.

“At five,” she replied with a toss of her drum stick.

“Are we all going together?” Billy folded his arms across his chest.

“Who, us an' you guys?” Eric gave his hair another toss back with a flick of his head.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I think we are.” Eric turned to Marla and Sam. “Would you girls come along? We're gonna see Zelda's band at this little bar down the block. We're all walkin'.”

“At least we're walking!” Marla exclaimed.

“Yeah, I don't really wanna get back into the car again,” Sam confessed. “I don't think Aurora does, either.”

“Just goin' right down the block here,” Zelda repeated Eric's words, and she dropped the stick on the floor again. “I'm gonna get ahead of you guys in a little bit 'cause I'm in the band, y'know.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Zetro, “it's imperative you've gotta. It's important. It's necessary. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's—”

“Yes!” Zelda cut him off as she picked up the drum stick. She stood to her feet and followed Eric out of the room. Sam and Marla climbed to their feet but they stood there for a second. Billy ran his hands over the crown of his head and he turned to them with a thoughtful look on his face.

“A metal show last night and now a punk show today,” he stated, “I'm kinda jealous of you girls.”

“And Aurora's comin' along, too,” Zetro added as he followed Eric out of the room.

“The three of us and all you guys,” Sam stated, “when we were driving together over here, I swore it all felt like a dream.”

“It is kinda like a dream, isn't it?” Billy showed her a little grin. He led them out of the room to meet up with the huge group of guys, and they all walked together up the block to the little dark lit bar at the end of the block. Marla linked arms with Charlie and Sam and Aurora strode behind them right next to Frank; right in front of them, Zelda broke out in a run at the second cross walk.

Sam peered behind her to see Scott and Billy side by side, followed by the other two guys from Legacy. Meanwhile, behind them, bringing up the rear was the boy with the yarmulke. At some point, he had removed his yarmulke and he revealed that little plume of white at the right side of his head. She couldn't see it for very long but it shone under the afternoon sun like a little pearl. He ran his fingers through his otherwise jet black hair as she returned to a forward position.

It was implied he was the other one under twenty one, or so she assumed. He looked under twenty one with his boyish round face and slightly prominent little tummy at second glance back at him. When they stopped at the first crosswalk together, she glanced back at him again. Even with his little tummy, his waist was slender and almost delicate, and even with his blue jeans, she could tell his thighs were toned and slim. Aside from the little plume at the crown of his head, he was quite striking and even if he was closer to her, he could have stood out in that small crowd of people: he had a prominent aquiline nose and brow, sharp high cheekbones, and smooth sensual lips, and add to this, he was long and lanky; quite tall for a youngster.

“Sam!” Aurora exclaimed over the traffic.

“Huh?” She whirled around to find them crossing the street, and she clutched her purse even though she had slung it over the opposite shoulder.

“Hey, it's Joey,” Frank remarked as they came closer.

“You sure that's Joey and not Zelda?” Aurora asked him.

“Zelda's not that tall,” said Charlie.

“Well, Joey isn't, either,” she pointed out.

But indeed, it was Joey as his thick black curls entered their view. Zelda meanwhile emerged from the side of the bar with a bottle in her hand. The men meanwhile, each showed the man there at the door way their ID cards: Sam gazed on at the boy at the back, and she knew there was no way he could get in.

“I should tell you ladies,” she started in a low voice, “I can probably get you both in for no charges if you'd like.”

“How's that?” Marla asked her. Zelda turned to the man at the front door and pressed her hands to her hips.

“I'm with the band,” she proclaimed. “And these two chicas behind me are with me.”

“Lemme see some identification,” he commanded.

“Here's your identification—” Without hesitating for a second, Zelda lifted up her shirt part of the way up her stomach and he stopped right in his tracks.

“Okay, okay, but none of that in a little while, okay, sweet heart?”

“We'll be the judge of that,” she sneered at him as she dropped the hem of her shirt, “and don't call me sweet heart.”

“Wait, what about him?” Aurora gestured to the boy at the back.

“It's okay, Aurora—I'm with all those guys, too.” His voice was even striking, like it didn't match up with his body. He looked so odd and he sounded so powerful, like he knew what he was doing and his body just dripped with testosterone.

“If you're underage, you can come in at least until nine—that's when the kitchen closes.”

“Okay, good.” Aurora gestured for him to follow them into the tiny but bright lit bar. The wooden floor looked as though it had just been polished and all the dark tables and accompanying spindly chairs looked brand new; at the right side of the room stood a small, cramped but bright stage with Zelda's drum kit already set up. Sam took another drink from her cup when Zelda herself darted across the wooden floor from the bar on the left side of the room.

“Morgan!” she called over the chatter of the gathering crowd in there. “Morgan!”

Joey, Frank, and Charlie had ducked over to the bar, as did the boy with the stripe in his hair. However, Sam watched him at the far end and by the mere look on his face, she could tell he wasn't asking for a drink like the three of them behind her. Aurora huddled closer to her and adjusted her bra strap with a jerk of her arm. Marla joined them and she gazed on at the bar herself.

“How old is he, by the way?” Marla asked Aurora; Sam followed her gesture to the boy with the stripe in his hair.

“Who, him?”

“Yeah.”

“He's—” Aurora paused for a second. “—seventeen. I think? Seventeen or sixteen. I'm drawing a blank on his name, too—Eric told me all of their names, but I forgot to write it down because Jon was trying to talk to me at the same time.”

“You had all that paper with you, though,” Sam chuckled at that.

“That was all the legal, business nonsense,” Aurora pointed out. “The stuff you don't see that comes when you're handing in a demo tape or a recording of literally any kind and signing to a major label. The stuff that's like totally mind numbing, but—you know, somebody has to sift through it. Anyways, of the five of them, all I know is Eric and Zetro because they talked to me first and the two of them did all the talking no less.”

“I'm just—drawn to that little stripe in his hair,” Sam confessed with a gesture to her head.

“Yeah, it's—it's—” Aurora ran her tongue over her top row of teeth.

“It's odd,” Marla finished for her.

“It's odd and it's interesting, too,” Sam added. “Like, why does he have it? And right there of all places?”

“My grandmother from North Korea had something similar to that,” Aurora said, “like just a single part of her hair was gray and the rest of it was solid black, almost exactly like his. Except hers was—on the side of her head, like her temple, not over her forehead. It's a mutation, I think? According to my dad, she didn't have it show until she was like fifty years old, though, and that was when he fled the North and went to Seoul.” She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and frowned. He just sat there at that little table with the yarmulke hanging out of his jeans pocket and the glass in hand: from across the room, Sam could tell it was club soda. He glanced about the room like the kid in the cafeteria whom no one wanted to sit with at lunch time. “Let's keep an eye on him—he looks lonely.”

“Yeah, maybe we should,” Marla added. “Poor guy's underage and he pretty much had to shout at the guy at the door just to get in.”

“I think Eric is underage, too?” Aurora recalled. “He told me their ages and he told me he doesn't turn twenty one until the middle of May. But he's almost like a high school student, though. He's a sixteen year old baby.”

“A sixteen year old baby who's already going gray,” Sam said in a soft voice.

“Exactly!”

He glanced to his left and he brought the glass up to his lips; Frank came over to him to talk to him about something and his eyes sparkled under the warm lighting of the bar. Sam thought about the man in her dreams, and she wondered about him. Zelda breezed past them with one of the bar backs.

“I told them I was going to get them into the club—” Sam couldn't hear the rest of it given she fell out of earshot. She watched Zelda weave her way through the crowd once more; she disappeared behind a large black speaker, and Sam caught the abrasive sound of a downtuned guitar in that direction. Several more patrons gathered around the stage and all around right in front of them: the three girls stood at the back of the crowd.

Every so often, Sam glanced over her shoulder at the boy at the far end of the bar. At least he was talking to Frank, who was underage himself. But he still looked so out of place there: out of place and alone.

Within time, Joey and Charlie joined them with drinks for themselves. Joey showed her a little grin and a raise of the brown bottle; he did the same for Aurora and Marla, too. Charlie meanwhile put his arm around Marla's shoulder and offered her a sip from his bottle.

“Quite the place to be, isn't it?” he asked her over the roar of the crowd.

“Absolutely!” she replied with a smile and an adjustment of her purse strap. He tipped the bottle into his lips and she thought about the night before. She was about to ask him what he had done upon leaving her place when that distorted guitar sliced through like a knife. Lead guitarist Minerva and lead singer Morgan were both little black girls with short bobs of black dread locks: Minerva had bright white dyed shocks that dotted her hair and a little red star tattooed on her shoulder. Morgan meanwhile had a big red ring on her right middle finger and long red and white striped acrylic fingernails, and she wore nothing but a black lace brassiere and a black leather mini skirt. Bassist Rosita had long black hair down to her waist and wore a black satin camisole over a pair of black leather jeans and matching black leather boots: before she took to the stage, she set a big floppy black hat atop her head and Sam could see a blue rose and a fiery red rose embedded at the brim.

The Cherry Suicides were loud and fast, and powerful, and yet they were straight to the point. Morgan had an abrasive voice that filled out the whole room: Sam was mesmerized by her and the way in which she ran her fingers through her dreads and down around her chest, and the way she closed her eyes at certain points. At one point, Rosita put one foot up and she showed off the inside of her thigh and the bell shape of her jeans. She had big narrow heels on her boots that resembled to knives. Zelda, meanwhile, was the only white girl up there and she barely moved her arms when she drummed.

Sam noticed a tattoo of cherries on stems on Morgan's right hip. Cherries on stems that looked to be bleeding. The Cherry Suicides.

She turned her head again and the boy with the little pearly stripe in his hair stood on the far side of the room with a little glass in his hand. He looked so out of place there in that club, given he was so young and the look on his face was one of confusion. Sam turned her head to Marla and Aurora, both of whom were in awe by the sight of them.

They began that song Zelda had talked about before, “Third Time's a Charm”, which was slower and a bit more heavy in comparison. Morgan crooned out about wanting to make her lover climax three times after he tried to use a knife, and that the third time was a charm.

Sam turned her head yet again, and for a fleeting moment, she pictured herself pressing her lips onto those smooth sensual ones. She shook her head at that thought.

No, she thought. No, no, no. Bad Sam. He's only sixteen!

He took a sip from his glass as Zetro and one of the guys from Legacy joined him so he was a little less lonely, or so she assumed. They huddled near the corner of the room like three boys in a strange place.

Third time's a charm after a dance with the knife. Third time's a charm after a dance right with your wet cock...

Joey, who stood on her left, took a swig from his bottle and flashed her a wink. She had no idea if he was tipsy yet, but he had already been loosened up from that single bottle. It was such an odd place to be right at that moment with the lyrics coming out of Morgan's cherry lips; Marla, Aurora, Charlie, and Joey on either side of her; and that boy with the plume in his hair, right on the other side of the room.

Zelda gave her right drum stick a twirl and she caught it between her thumb and her index finger as a final touch. Sam and Marla glanced at one another in awe as the crowd before them erupted into applause.

“They were badass!” Aurora declared.

“Loud and not giving a single fuck,” Charlie added, “that's pretty rock n' roll if you ask me.”

“By the way, you ladies want get something to eat?” Joey offered them. “I was talking to Kirk a little bit ago and he offered us to go and meet up with Metallica across the street.”

“So,” Charlie added, “again, we won't have to drive anywhere.”

“Big ol' party,” Marla remarked. Zelda emerged from the crowd in front of them with a glass in one hand and a soft blush in her face.

“Didn't even break out a sweat!” Sam said.

“Not even feelin' it, fellas,” Zelda boasted as she took a big drink from the glass.

“Wanna get sump'n to eat?” Joey offered her.

“Oh, definitely—I could use a bite to eat. I'll ask the girls, too.”

“From Rhode Island with love?” Sam asked her.

“From Rhode Island with love, kids,” Zelda echoed with a raise of her eyebrows and a raise of her glass towards them.

#fanfic #fanfiction #chapter 1 #chapter 17 #fever in fever out #fever in fever out fanfic #deadly nightshade #book two #anthrax #anthrax fanfic #legacy #joey belladonna #frank bello #charlie benante #billy milano #eric peterson #steve souza #also on ao3 #text

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allyvampirelass29 · 4 years

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Murder at Cripple Creek

A NOS4A2 Review By: Allyssa J. Watkins

A boomtown swimming with ghosts Dead eyes can't hide Their hedonist living Drinking, debauchery and sinning Scarlet ladies having babies But a whorehouse is not a home Trading flesh for coin Tempting patrons, at the sacrifice of your boy Little Charlie grew up in the hellish dark The sins of the mother Scarring the son's heart Murder brewing in this simmering fleshpot Oh Hateful Harlot, Mother Manx Is is to your neglect and bitter thanks Your baby boy, molested, and you can't protect Your little dreamer from the wicked world you wrought for him Blood on a beautiful boy's hands But the only thing murdered here Is his innocence. Sending his rapist and that lustful bitch Back to hell Charlie, Charlie you're not a villain You had to save yourself.......

Is...... anyone alive out there? It's been days, and I'm still sobbing, my heart desolated by the roiling emotional turmoil, my ignited rage murderous. I don't know about you guys, but...... I'm an absolute wreck. WHY are you DOING this to me, NOS4A2!?!? After the brilliant turn of last week, the sleek sophistication, and glamourous entrapment, "Cripple Creek," was a backhand strike, a blatant violation that I never saw coming, and I spent the entire episode, quivering, sobbing, pleading desperately behind my hands plastered over my face, watching between my fingers, helpless to stop the punishing abuse My Charlie suffers in two different timelines, his bruises of an abused childhood mingling with the fresh wounds of now, as he is tortured, beaten and berated by Bing Partridge!!!

I hated this episode. I HATED it. There, I said it. But I think you're supposed to, I think that was the sole purpose of this traumatizing ordeal. However, as far as Bing (GO TO HELL YOU FILTHY BASTARD) is concerned, the writer's motivation seems drastically convoluted. If this was supposed to be Bing's Big Epiphany, his "redemption," (Ughhh seriously?) This episode fails miserably in accomplishing that. And if this episode was meant to do, what I had predicted back in Season One, cement him as the actual villain of NOS4A2, making him the more immoral evil, be his rise in notoriety, his coming of age as it were, into the monster he was always going to be, giving Charlie and Vic someone to unite their hatred against, it fails to do that too. The biggest misstep of the series, after so elegant a triumph, I'm going to drown my sorrows in ice cream, and try to forget that any of it ever happened. Close your eyes, and think of Christmasland........

I audibly groaned when we opened onto Bing at the Lake House. After so much needless repetition in an otherwise FLAWLESS episode, I REALLY did not want to relive Bing's point of view of the siege, unless it was him getting shot by white knight Chris McQueen over, and over, and over........ Thankfully, the rewind didn't last too long, but I was having NONE of his, "Are you there, God, it's me, Bing Partridge," moment!!! On his knees in the graveyard, (Why...... why are we in a graveyard?) Bing appeals to the heavens, proclaiming his own innocence, asking God to show him what he should do next. I snickered coldly, the whole thing melodramatic, and absurd, as he cries, "I've been so good!!!" Secretly, I was fantasizing about Buffy SLAYING his creepster ass in the graveyard, beating him bloody, before staking him in the heart with a witty saying like, "It's been a gas, Bing, but I get the last laugh!!!" Alas, alack, no such luck. His appeal to the heavens was answered not in divine intervention, but with bird droppings splattering in his mouth, which of course, translated in Bing-A-Ling Logic to, "Kill the FIRST person that tries to help you, bury him in the freshly dug grave, and take his keys!!!" It's PRAYING Bing, you dolt, not preying!!!

While the side quest FINALLY explains how Bing was able to catch up to Charlie and Wayne, after previously believed to be on foot, not to mention shot, which would have been IMPOSSIBLE, supernatural car not withstanding, it's altogether unnecessary. It was the less than scenic route to get to last week's blood-curdling cliff hanger, and I really think we could have done without all the maudlin hullaballoo, and picked right up from there. Also, it creeped me out BIG TIME hearing Bing Partridge say, "Hidey holes," because that's what I called them last week, when Charlie was adorably telling Wayne about his hiding places. "Look at you with your hidey holes, Babe!!!" Needless to say, Bing has ruined that phrase for me FOREVER!!!

"Charlie, Charlie, telling lies, soon he will be crying cries......" A chilling foreboding that was like ice in my veins........ I was definitely crying cries...... I literally WEPT with this horrid little rhyme, and even still I was so naïve, unprepared, for the gut-churning horror that waited in the shadows of a broken little boy's murdered childhood, and the degradation of the beautiful soul that survived it. It's one of the most grueling, and disturbing things, I've ever watched, and like my Darling Boy, strapped to the chair, enduring forced interrogation by gassing, brutal beatings by Bing's homicidal, ham-fisted punches, and some....... deeply unsettling sexual innuendo, I felt like I was the one getting tortured.........

I did utterly enjoy Charlie's feigned relief, as he uses that silver tongue, in valiant effort, to slip his way out of this sickening predicament. "Bing, My Dear Fellow, thank the stars! I thought you had been done in by those wretched McQueens!!" Charlie gasps, thankfully, knowing full well he'd left Bing behind to die, and for good reason. Any other time, this would have worked, Charlie would have used his coaxing charm, and Bing's oafish gullibility, twisted them into a breathtaking manipulation, weaving the lie that he had no choice but to leave him behind, and Bing would have eaten it out of the palm of his hand, because he wants that badly for it to be true. But Bing watched it happen, his face falling, as Charlie sped off without him, and he's DONE playing. Charlie's pleas fall on deaf ears, as Bing drugs him for answers, revealing the fatalities of every single one of Charlie's former accomplices, and with the finality of one apocalyptic truth....... Bing descends into a frenzied, foaming madness.

"Cripple Creek," is the double edged sword that none of us were meant to survive. Switching between the stabbing scenes of Charlie's withering assault, his lifeline to The Wraith, cruelly severed, and the slicing violation of his childhood self, his innocence massacred before our very eyes, our bleeding hearts never stood a chance. I always knew that Charlie's childhood was going to be horrid, downright Dickensian, devoid of magic and light, unloved by his drunk, whore mother, but I had no idea the HELL this beautiful boy endured at so tender an age, forever scarred, betrayed by the one person he trusted, respected, desperately in need of a father figure, only to be exploited in the most heinous way. It's a MIRACLE My Precious Love can even function as an adult, much less still manage to find wonder and beauty in the world, clinging, clawing to hold onto his ember, his remnant of pure light that persevered in a life of darkness.

The inexplicable joy at seeing a young Charlie Manx, aged 11 or 12, tapdancing on stage, along with the giddy marvel that this young actor looks just like our leading man in miniature, is short-lived, as a stranger takes an uncomfortable interest in him....... I don't know how, maybe it was the intent way he watched him dance, or the way he touched his shoulder a little too long, but I knew........ I KNEW this man was going to sexually abuse Charles, I felt it gnawing in my stomach, instantly unnerved, and I hoped with all my heart, my first instinct was wrong....... I'm devastated to say........ it was not.

Not only does this manipulative pedophile Son of a BITCH molest my baby, he first uses him to persuade other boys to flock to his house, knowing full well how much the young ones look up to Charlie, as their leader. He wins Charlie's favour and trust by befriending him, and giving our little darling the one thing he wants more than anything else. Escape. Escape from the vulgar, gratuitously sexual environment, that no young boy should have to endure, a chance to make money, have an honest, respectable living. A chance to have a father figure, a man to look up to, learn from, and take him under his wing. The shop owner offers all of that, with a crooked smile, the charade falling dangerously away, as he knocks back a shot glass, eying our boy, and then says in the cruelest, most chilling voice. "You've earned yourself some fun........"

Thankfully, NOS4A2 was not overly graphic in this lewd portrayal, but the innuendo was enough to make me ugly cry, and seethe, as this sweet child is violated by someone he admires so much, realizing in horror, that he led all of his friends to be mishandled in this same disgusting manner, like lambs to the slaughter. But our brave little Manx was NOT going to let this sin go unpunished, and I clapped, cheering him on, as he uses his sled, now tainted by its means of acquisition, to kill the shopkeeper, dark fire flashing in his eyes, blood splattering on the shot glass, and I've never been so happy, or nervously relieved to see someone die.

His mother comes to him, and instead of crying, and taking her boy in her arms, stroking his dark curls, soothing his fear, and assuaging his guilt, she just scoffs at his accusation, the picture of apathy, and places the blame back on him. "You knew too, Charlie!!!" You WHORE-ABLE Mother!!! Your son was just sexually ASSAULTED, and YOU DARE make it his own fault, like he'd turned a blind eye, and therefore deserved to get raped!?!? Charlie might not have killed her, if she'd actually had a maternal bone in her body, if she'd done SOMETHING, shown any sign of regret or compassion, but she doesn't, and I feel nothing but proud as he finishes her off too. Her death was surprising, given the admonishing way Charlie talks about his mother, creating the impression that she'd been a bane on his existence his entire life, and yes, as a writer, I wanted to see more of a direct conflict between them to make that defining moment that much more satisfying, but as a viewer, I was just grateful she was dead, and Charlie was free. The only murder perpetrated, the only death I mourned at Cripple Creek, was that of Charlie's innocence, his childhood slaughtered.

Meanwhile, Bing continues to torture Charlie in the present day, my chest shuddering with every thrown punch, and I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming. What was the deafening truth spoken that sends Bing Partridge into a flailing rage, you ask?

"Christmasland is for children. We are special...... That's why we can't go......."

Charlie was never going to take Bing to Christmasland. All that this poor dope had lived for, dreamed of, for eight years, amidst his conning his way into dentists' offices, and offing mothers, and it was always a lie. I had suspected it the entire time, especially after the mention of a, "special feast," but what SHOCKED me the most, was the unimaginable heartbreak of Charlie's own deepest secret coming to light, and as Bing draws it forth, it's like drawing blood. In spite of being the architect of his lifelong dream, and greatest solace from a life full of abject misery, Charlie doesn't think he deserves Christmasland, because he sees himself as ruined........

I broke down sobbing, that pain, that anguish, that he's so long carried with him, ripping through me, and I'm tearing up even as I write this, remembering....... Charlie denying himself his own dream, seeing himself as a ruined article that might profane its pure vision, is a tragedy that I can't come back from. It's a sorrowful, aching confession, and yet somehow it explains so much, and in this, his greatest pain, his darkest secret, I felt intimately closer to him. At last........ we see why Charlie never stays long in his Christmas kingdom, why he's so focused on the next child, and the next, sacrificing time with his own daughter, because they deserve Christmasland, and he doesn't. Always the courier, never the partaker. Christmasland is for children, and Charlie Manx never got the chance to be one.

The searing pains of his past still guide so much of who he is today, placing a strict emphasis on propriety in every aspect of his person, in manner, speech, and dress, because he was robbed of his dignity as a child. I also, FINALLY, after two seasons, understand why he turns the children into vampires, a contradiction to his love of them, that has remained frustratingly elusive to my grasp. Charlie's childhood was taken from him, brought to a vulnerable, violent end, and by turning the Lost Children, theirs becomes eternal. They never have to grow up, and lose that purity, that innocence. I also realized, that by giving them their bite back, they are able to defend themselves, meaning no one can ever hurt them again.......

There was so much awful going on, so much inflicted misery, and disorienting chaos, that I was sure I'd heard wrong when Bing decides on an even more dehumanizing method of torture. Did Bing just...... call Charlie a BITCH!? I shook my head, but there it was again, and at this point I'd HAD it. Somebody give me a GUN, I will WASTE this SICK BASTARD myself!!! The skeevy sexual threat against Charlie felt like overkill to me, utterly ridiculous, a cheap shot at adding dramatic effect, especially in the face of his childhood shame. Bing has exhibited absolutely no inclination of...... swinging that way, as it were, before, and yeah they kind of threw in last minute that he'd done this to Mike's father, offscreen, but I don't know WHY he would do that, especially given his particular affinity for Mike. Charlie, himself, pointed out that there was no indication in the Graveyard of What Might Be that Mike needed saving, or that his father deserved punishing. It's awkward, and disturbing, and there seemed to me no method in this madness.

"If I'm a monster....... who deserves to die....... You deserve so much worse." BAM. Hell yeah, Babe!!! Thank GOD, Charlie's quick enough to convince Bing that he too is a monster, and we are spared any further asinine innuendo. Bing, after these series of unfortunate events, beating, berating, and threatening Charlie with rape, suddenly, deus ex machina-esque has a change of heart, and an epiphany that comes a LOT TOO LATE!!! We're both monsters, we BOTH deserve to die....... What we're doing is WRONG. Was I happy when Bing urged Wayne to go, and tell a police officer that his mom is Vic McQueen? Yes. Do I believe he did it out of the goodness of his heart, and has finally seen the light? Freaking HELL NO!!! Bing, after losing Christmasland, has nothing left to live for, and this is his way of giving up. If I can't go to Christmasland, Wayne can't go...... and he decides a bizarre murder/suicide in The Wraith is his final act of redemption.

Before they even showed the car crusher, I was already sobbing profusely, losing my freaking mind, because I had figured out exactly where Bing had taken Charlie.

"There's going to be two less monsters in the world........"

Meaning to crush them both, and kill the Wraith irrevocably, Bing puts on his mask, and presses the button. At first Wayne laughs, and thinks it's a game, his inner vampire child coming out, but when it hits him that Charlie's in actual danger, he realizes he has a choice to make....... Save Charlie Manx, or let him die, and go home safe to his Mom and Lou.

"No, My Boy, this isn't a game, it's time to play, Save Father Christmas!!!"

Charlie calls out frantically, coaxingly to his young charge, and I loved that so much, my heart overwhelmed with emotion. Yes, Wayne, PRETTY PLEASE save Father Christmas!!! A lot of people despised him for what happened next, screaming at Wayne for his choice, even calling him a stupid kid, but I, myself, felt even more love in my heart for that already dearly cherished little lad, as he smiles, and slams down on the button, halting the crusher, and saving Charlie from imminent death.

It's a profound moment, the abductee choosing to save his kidnapper's life, and many cried out strongly against it, but you have to understand....... Charlie Manx has become so much more to Wayne than the scary face in his mother's paintings. Here is a man that has shown genuine interest in his life, his hopes, his dreams, who has treated him gently, fussed over him, concerned, and who has come to love him like a father. Couple that with The Wraith's effects on Wayne, slowly tying the two of them together, it makes perfect sense to me, how this unexpected bond has formed. Yes, had Vic been there, herself, he would have chosen her over Charlie in a second, but when faced with the reality of letting Charlie die, our tender-hearted Bats just couldn't do it.

"Do think of me at Christmastime, won't you?"

CHARLIE. LIKE. A. BOSS!!!! The single greatest moment, and brightest scene in an hour of plunging darkness, is definitely Charlie, snapping back into his delectably dark, unrivaled perfection (although, I must say I still found him incredibly dashing in his distinguished grays) charging Bing Partridge, murder striking in his wild, smouldering eyes, stabbing him, with a reveling whisper, twisting the knife, with this most PERFECT line, that gave me wonderous, reverberating chills!!! I also LOVED how Charlie glowers in his lumpy face and says, "You were never special." DAMN that's HOT!!! My only grievance with an otherwise ENTHRALLING moment, was that inexplicably, yet again, CHARLIE DIDN'T KILL BING!!! Charlie has KILLED for so much less, and while he did offer a vague explanation about prison being so much worse for Bing than hell, it felt like hell frozen over that Charlie would ever let Bing live. I know this is the writers wanting to keep Bing around to creep another day, but MY GOD, hang that Partridge from a pear tree, and HAVE DONE already!!!!!

This was an especially dark episode, but there were flashes of some really beautiful, albeit fleeting moments, first with Wayne and Craig, and then with Millie and Cassie, though the reoccurring theme, the common thread, did seem to be Innocence Lost. I was startled with the The Wraith's sneaky trick of causing a child to forget their parents the longer they are in the car, and BLESS YOU, Craig for helping your son remember his mother, and fight the transformation!!! He tells Wayne that Vic's favourite movie was Jaws, and Wayne tells him that her favourite holiday is the 4th of July. (Which is really cool, because it's my favourite too!!!) This slows the Wraith's effects on Wayne, and becomes a very special moment between father and son, as they fight to keep Vic's memory alive.

"How do you know my mom?"

"She was my best friend."

More overwhelmed sobs, because apparently I haven't cried enough this episode!!! Craig decides not to tell Wayne that he's his father, but our little Bats is ingeniously clever, and I think he's going to figure it out before long!!! Another mini heart attack comes with a second lost tooth. The suspense of Wayne's slow turning, mirroring the tender emotion in this scene was fantastic.

Millie and her mother have a similar moment, and I thought that was BRILLIANT of her to introduce Vampire Millie to her former human self. The two play with dolls, and human Millie talks about how she can't wait to go on a date, and have adventures when she grows up! It's such an endearing scene, and also incredibly sad, as the pale, gaunt shell of Vampire Millie envies her bright, and bubbly human counterpart, seeing the hope and innocence that she's so long been bereft of. "She's me...... Who I'm supposed to be." Cassie explains that her father's sad fantasy is depriving Millie of the gift of growing up, and explains that there's nothing Charlie Manx fears more than a woman with her own mind, and that's the LAST thing he wants his beloved daughter to become. A woman that would eventually leave him. More tears. Poor Millie. Poor Charlie!! Can I just give everybody a hug!?

"Cripple Creek," lingers like BAD Dream, and all I want to do right now, is curl up with Charlie Manx, hold him in my arms, stroke his cheek, soothe him with the tenderest hands, and softest words, tell him he's beautiful, and that he deserves Christmasland, and the world, that he's not ruined, but PURE!!! This was my least favourite episode in the entire series, and just like, "The Gas Mask Man," will be skipped indefinitely in the re-watch, but like I said, it endeared Charlie even more to my heart, and I feel fiercely protective over him, over that goodness that still glows in his dark eyes, despite lifetimes of feeling unloved, and in ever-present pain. All I ever wanted in Season One, was a glimpse into the past that crafted my mysterious and refined vampire chauffeur, and this entire experience, My Darlings, is an exercise in, "Be Careful What You Wish For..........."

#nos4a2 #nos4a2 review #charlie manx #wayne mcqueen #bing partridge #christmasland #the wraith #cripple creek

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panharmonium · 4 years

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some disjointed thoughts about stranger things 2 under the cut (concealed to hide spoilers from my sister)

so, season 2!

i’ve gone into every season of this show knowing absolutely nothing about it. i’ve had no exposure to the fandom or to reviews or anything that would indicate what it was about or how good the seasons are in relation to each other, which i like, because i know my opinions are my own. season 1 i watched back in the winter, i think, and it was amazing. blew me away.

i just finished season 2 and i’m like...not as into it?

and i’m glad i had no preexposure to anything, because if i had, i’d worry that i was just being influenced by other people’s opinions, but i genuinely don’t know what people think of the various seasons. i’ve been stringently avoiding anything about this show, have it blocked on tumblr, etc, so i could watch it cold.

i’d have to watch it again to really pin down the places where my investment was flagging, and i’ll probably do that eventually, because i know my roommate will want to see it, but my general impression was this: they had me hooked in the beginning, and then they started to lose me.

- i feel like overall it was 9 episodes where very little substance actually happened. plotlines were stretched out over a reallllllly long period of time and became paper-thin. like nancy and jonathan? the only thing they really did over those entire nine episodes was make a tape recording and send it to the paper. that was their whole story, and it could have fit in one episode.

- and what did happen felt like it suffered from a lack of focus. can i explain this in more detail without watching the show again? not really. but i just mean that in S1, i could tell you what each of the main character’s arcs were, and i could lay out how those arcs had clear beginnings, middles, and endings. in S2, i can really only do that for El (and even that i feel like got messy by the last third).

- the horror vibe was different this season. it was LESS scary, to me. S1 was a CREEP factor that had my skin crawling - it wasn’t like...creature horror - it was the unsettlingness. the whole parallel world thing was so - well, the only word for it is unsettling, like. you felt like you could take a step and accidentally wind up somewhere no one should be - the idea that you can be trapped so close to somebody and yet so far away - you just felt like the world was inside out (or upside down, if you will). and so much of the fear in the first one came from how incomprehensible and uncertain the entire situation was - you didn’t know how things worked and nobody believed you when you tried to tell them what was happening. that scene where the christmas lights spell out R-U-N? scariest fucking thing i’ve ever seen. but S2 changed it to be like...it felt like more of a monster flick. like a zombie movie or something - lots of creatures running around that you can just shoot with a gun - that’s just not really the same vibe as the first season, and i didn’t find it quite as interesting.

- i don’t want to be That Person, because i liked maxine as a character in general, on her own terms, but from a writing perspective - what even was the purpose of her introduction? her and her brother both, honestly, the whole family. i feel almost bad for saying that, because i can guarantee that there were people out there complaining about her being introduced because “they just wanted to have another girl; it’s so stupid, blah blah,” cue more sexist stuff, etc, and that’s really not where i’m coming from, but for me, from a general storytelling perspective, i don’t understand why she or her family were introduced. they were superfluous to the story. they didn’t need to be there. and since i don’t even feel like the returning characters got enough development this season (see point #2), i don’t understand why we spent so much time on her/her family/her introduction to the Party. it felt like filler.

- stranger things S2 did that thing teen wolf does where 2/3 of the way through the season it drops a tonally-different expository/flashback episode that does a lot of the legwork tying other shit together while also being completely disconnected from the rest of the plot, which is basically an info dump and is my least favorite way of relaying plot/getting characters to the spot the writer wants them to go. i think kali was the most interesting new character we met this season; i was rapt every time she was onscreen, but i don’t love the “we’re going to shove all of the character development and background info into this one episode and at the end El has had her turnaround and goes back home.” it didn’t feel believable to me. are we ever going to see those people again, or were they just a plot convenience to serve the aforementioned purpose? (idk, i haven’t watched S3 yet, so...we’ll see.)

- some weird...minor tonal changes/dropped plots? in S1 one of the running undercurrents was how mike and nancy’s mom wanted them to talk to her and she really did care about what was going on but they couldn’t connect to her and that bothered her, whereas in S2 it’s like - that theme has been dropped; she’s not involved in their lives really at all, and her and ted’s spousal relationship is just being played for laughs, and there was that REALLY weird scene with her like...lusting after billy?????? that was so fucking bizarre.

and until one line in the very last episode, they dropped the whole thing about hopper’s daughter, too - the way they wove that into the first season was brilliantly done, and just - you don’t see a bit of it in S2, and that felt off, to me.

- killing bob was a bad call. it was gratuitous, AND it was contrived - who the hell is running for their life and then just stops dead in the lobby to smile at their girlfriend? ANY SENSIBLE PERSON WOULD KEEP RUNNING FOR THE DOOR. like - bob died, but the doctor survived???????? the doctor, who was attacked and immobilized and defenseless in a stairwell, somehow wasn’t killed?????? of course not, because he needed to survive, so he could get El her papers later....that entire thing irritated me. it made no sense. that was actually the point where i said to myself “uh-oh. first Bad-with-a-capital-B decision this show’s made.”

- lack of consistency in terms of how, exactly, Stuff Works. in S1 it was like - the Upside Down is everywhere. the demigorgon could come through anywhere, if you were unlucky. that was part of what made it so creepy - there’s this whole other world and it is RIGHT THERE with you, and sometimes the fabric separating the two universes gets scary thin, and bam, you’re somewhere no human has any business being. whereas in S2 it’s like - ok, things are coming through this one portal and spreading through tunnels underground, in our own dimension??? like at first i thought hopper had actually entered the Upside Down in the tunnels, but then it seemed like the tunnels were still on our plane, just gross-looking. so why in S1 could the demigorgon come through the ceiling of will’s house, or through that tree in the woods, or take barbara through the pool? why did the lab people think burning that little gate would help, when the first monster from last season was obviously popping into our dimension from all sorts of other places?

- this is a minor quibble, but it was driving me up the WALL in the last couple of episodes - what in god’s name were they injecting will with??? and HOW. mike just grabs that syringe off the counter like “we need to make will go to sleep” - there is NO reason that anyone in the room would know what was in the syringe or what the correct dosage was or HOW TO GIVE AN INJECTION IN THE FIRST PLACE. joyce gives it??????? by stabbing straight down???????? into will’s arm???????????? what the hell kind of injection technique is that?!?!?! that’s not....how that works. ever. and maxine does it to billy too, in his NECK - just straight in there. there is no....look, people in human medicine can weigh in better than me here; maybe things are different, but just from the veterinary perspective, you can’t just stab a creature any old place you want, and giving something via any route that isn’t intravenous isn’t going to drop an animal immediately, AND you do not have control over how long they’re going to be out. if you give a sedative, you can’t just wake an animal up by wafting ammonia under their nose. AND the animal is likely not going to be actually asleep until you also give an anaesthetic induction agent, and if you do give an anaesthetic induction agent, you’d better have some monitoring equipment and a breathing apparatus hooked up to your patient!

look, it just - the “go to sleep” injection was used to solve too many critical situations for me to just ignore it. it bothered me.

anyhow. overall, i didn’t hate it. but i thought it was way less cohesive than the first season, and therefore way less effective. i’m still curious to see what happens in S3, but my expectations are lower now.

[if you wanna talk to me about this, you have my permission, but ONLY if you’re able to do it without talking about S3 in any capacity, including your own personal evaluation of how good/bad it is in relation to the other seasons. i like to watch without knowing other people’s opinions of things, otherwise i feel like my viewing experience is colored by what i hear. thanks! :) ]

#interdimensional babysitters club

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moveslikebuckywrites · 4 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Slow Show - mia_ugly Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Erasmus/William (Warlock - Slow Show) Characters: William (Warlock - Slow Show), Erasmus (Warlock - Slow Show), Joshua (Warlock), Julia Chattox, Harry the Rabbit (Warlock) Additional Tags: fireside contemplations, introspective, gratuitous thoughts about stitching, idk what else to tag this with, Warlock (TV), mia_ugly's Slow Show Universe

It’s real angst hours in here today my friends. Have y’all noticed that Harry the Rabbit is the same color and pattern as the tunic Erasmus wears in season 1 (but randomly changes to a green one in season 2)? Because I DID.

Here be sad about a stuffed rabbit.

mandatory @averyfell tag

Deep in the woods, under cover of the snowy pines, William and Joshua rest with Arthur near a crackling fire. The cold is seeping into their bones and the lack of food is starting to weigh heavy on William’s mind.

That, and other things.

Splitting up had been the right thing to do, but that hadn’t made it any easier. Not for the first few days where all Joshua could do was cry for Erasmus or Julia, but mainly for Erasmus. It’s hard for a small child to understand; sometimes hard things must be done, sometimes people have to leave for a while.

William has never been good with children, and he’d been against this decision from the get-go. But Erasmus had the experience and Julia’s spells would be needed while they searched for the other half of the prophecy, so it fell to him to look after the child.

William loved Joshua, of course, that went without saying. He just had no experience when it came to entertaining children; even after so long on the run with Joshua he never seemed to connect.

At least the boy had Harry. He loved that silly little rabbit, almost as much as he loved Erasmus.

William feels a shiver run up his spine and pulls his robes tighter around himself. They’ll need to find real shelter soon. It’s still the early days of winter, but the dark depths of it are coming at them faster than can be ignored. He looks over at the boy, curled up and sleeping in the fur of that Godsend of a dog, clutching his little toy rabbit close.

William doesn’t often get a good look at the little thing. It’s very nice, though, surprisingly so, a soft burgundy twill with linen for the lining in the ears. Joshua rarely lets it out of his sight. The only times he does, he’ll take it to Erasmus and shove little ‘Harry’ towards him. “Watch rabbit,” is all the small boy says. He never gives the toy to anyone else.

Erasmus had been the one to give it to him, showing up in camp one day with the stuffed toy. Tossing it to the boy like it was nothing.

When William had asked, Erasmus had said he’d stolen it from a shop in town. The priest had wanted to berate him for it but couldn’t bring himself to when he saw how quickly Joshua was taken with it.

He is staring at Joshua and the dog now, musing his thoughts, when the boy shifts in his sleep. The boy’s grip loosens and little Harry falls into the dirt.

William shakes his head and stoops to pick up the toy. He pauses, turning the bunny over in his hands. It’s hard to tell in the firelight, but he could swear the deep burgundy material is diamond twill…

…

“Keep up, priest, come on then!” Erasmus yelled over his shoulder, “Haven’t you ever climbed a hill before?”

William didn’t know how they moved so fast. Julia was far ahead at this point and the priest was sure carrying Joshua was the only thing slowing Erasmus down at all. Sometimes he still had a twinge of doubt about this whole thing.

When Julia had arrived at his parish begging sanctuary, he hadn’t hesitated. When Erasmus had, reluctantly, joined up with them, he had been apprehensive. Erasmus never truly seemed to care; more of a mercenary type. If the conman didn’t owe them a debt of gratitude for saving him, William didn’t think he’d stick around at all. When they had come to the conclusion that the village was no longer safe for them, he’d begun to doubt. He’d grown quite attached to the small boy, and knew this prophecy was bigger than any one of them could tackle on their own. But leaving his village, leaving home. That was difficult.

His faith was in flux. Not his faith in the Lord, of course, that he was steadfast in. But the Church there was the rub of it.

And he doubted himself. Would he really be of any use? What if it came to blows? What could a soft old priest hope to accomplish against armored inquisitorial guards? Erasmus’ teasing only served to remind him if they were to be captured, it would ultimately be his fault.

He opened his mouth to tell Erasmus such but was stopped by a loud yelp.

Joshua had gotten fussy and decided he’d rather be with Julia, and in his attempt to clamber off Erasmus’ shoulders he’d knocked them both tumbling down the hill. Julia saw to Joshua as William helped Erasmus to his feet.

“Are you alright, dear boy?” William asked as Erasmus grumbled.

“Damn urchin knocked me over,” Erasmus shouted, picking twigs and leaves out of his long red hair, “no bloody respect around here!”

“He’s two, what’s he supposed to know about respect?” Julia asked while seeing to Joshua’s very minor wounds.

“Well still, ought not to climb around so much.” The mercenary stalked off, shouting behind him, “Gonna get someone hurt one of these days!”

Julia shot William an exasperated look. The priest just shrugged and made to follow Erasmus. He caught up quickly, finding him pacing in a circle and cursing.

“You know,” William said softly, not wanting to spook the man, “Joshua could’ve been hurt a lot worse. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone did their best to make sure they took the brunt of the fall instead of the wee fellow.”

Erasmus shot him a glare, which was met with a knowing smile.

“Don’t get any ideas, priest,” Erasmus said, pointing an accusatory finger at him, “I’m out for one person and one person alone. Me. Myself. Just the one, end of discussion. I’ll not have a bloody man of the goddamned cloth tarnishing my hard-won reputation.”

William raised his hands in a gesture of deference, willing to let the man believe whatever he felt like. However, William prided himself as a judge of character, not one to be put off by brazen displays of aloofness. No, Erasmus most definitely was a soft touch at heart. William was sure he deeply cared for the boy. Nothing Erasmus could say would convince him otherwise.

“Ah SHIT , stupid little gremlin!” Erasmus shouted, breaking William from his thoughts.

“You hear me back there!” Erasmus shouted towards the witch and the boy, “You’re done for! Do you even know how expensive diamond twill is? How hard I had to work for something as nice as this!”

His deep burgundy tunic had been ripped almost completely, ruined as it were. William rewrote his inner thoughts a bit; maybe he was off. Maybe Erasmus was just what he said he was.

Erasmus went to stalk off again but stopped noticing the look on William’s face.

“What are you looking at, priest?” he hissed in William’s face, “I’ll be back, I just need to go be pissed off for a minute.”

“Understandable, it was a very nice tunic.” William said dryly, not bothering to hide the edge in his voice. He watched Erasmus stalk off further into the woods.

…

William had been wrong to jump to that snap judgement, of course, as he knows now. But that can’t possibly be the same burgundy diamond twill of Erasmus’ old tunic, he must be mistaken.

But there it is, this pattern and this fabric. From the tunic that had been ruined two years ago.

This is silly. Ridiculous. Absolute nonsense. He has to be going mad if he’s getting this distracted about the origins of a stuffed rabbit. His paramount duty is to protect the boy, not get caught up in a bunch of what-if nonsense that doesn’t really matter. And that’s the crux, isn’t it? Why does this matter? Why can’t he shake it?

He doesn’t put the rabbit down, just keeps turning it over in his hands. It’s soft and worn from being well loved.

The stitching on the ears makes him stop; an odd looping thing. As he runs a finger over it William is sure he’s seen that before as well…

…

They had made camp near a river, about four months after leaving the village. They wouldn’t stay long; they never did. Just enough to sleep, maybe to eat a bit. William had proven to himself that he could be useful and managed to catch a couple of trout (don’t say he never learned anything from his father, not that he ever tried to teach him much).

The smell of the fish roasting over the campfire was drifting through the air and everyone was in good spirits. Julia was playing with Joshua, keeping him distracted and away from the fire. The two-year-old had developed a habit of grabbing anything within arm’s reach, and it wouldn’t do for him to go grabbing hot fish and burning himself. Erasmus had wandered off some time ago.

“Julia, my dear, will you keep an eye on the fish for me?” William said, standing and wiping his hands off on his knees, “It’s almost ready, I’m just going to pop off for a bit and find where Erasmus ran off to.”

He followed the river, retracing the steps he saw Erasmus take earlier. It didn’t take long to find him. He was sitting on a log on the riverside, tunic (a new one, in a deep forest green) draped over a branch1. He was fiddling with the hem of a spare linen undershirt.

“Are you sewing?” William said, slightly surprised.

“Yea, gotta keep things in order somehow,” Erasmus said as he laid stitches along the hem. “These things wear out, can’t really go around getting new ones.”

“No, I suppose not,” William said as he watched Erasmus’ hands, deftly moving the needle to and fro, in and out.

It was obviously a well-practiced skill. William remembered the nuns, when he was still learning the priesthood, taking the time to darn socks that were wearing out rather than replacing them. Vows of poverty and all that. They would work so quickly you almost couldn’t keep up if you watched. It was soothing. Sister Loquacious tried to teach him once. It hadn’t gone well.

Erasmus’ needle moved with precision, even if the stitch looked rather odd. There was the usual straight stitch he was used to seeing, but then he would pass the needle through loops he made at the edge. Very odd, compared to anything in William’s small knowledge of sewing.

“Where did you learn to do that?” William asked, voice soft and almost a whisper. One might mistake it for reverent if one were listening.

“Don’t really wanna talk about it, if it’s all the same,” Erasmus said as he finished his stitch.

“Right, of course,” William watched as Erasmus took his tunic down from the branch. “Dinner is almost ready, thought I’d come find you. You know how Julia is, we’ll be lucky to have any left when we get back.”

“Ha,” Erasmus scoffed, “Right, because she’s the one who goes through our stores. Don’t think I haven’t seen you sneaking around at night through the rucksacks, priest.”

They both caught the scent of fire-cooked fish wafting towards them. Erasmus sauntered in the direction of camp with William following close behind.

A few weeks later, Erasmus had shown up in their camp and tossed a burgundy rabbit at Joshua, who immediately named it Harry.

…

That loop stitching is familiar. It adorns so many things of his and Julia’s now, where Erasmus has volunteered to fix them. And here it is, unmistakable, along the ears of this rabbit.

William feels something warm bloom in his heart. His feelings, this infatuation for Erasmus has been bubbling for a while, no matter how hard he tries to stomp them back down. His justification has always been that Erasmus is not in this for them, in the long run. The man had told him straight out. Erasmus does things for himself and no one else, no matter how false the priest knew that to be in his heart.

But this was unmistakable. Sewing a toy rabbit for a scared child. Sewing it out of his own ruined clothes. How long had Erasmus held onto that ruined tunic? How long did it take him to make it?

William feels tears start to prickle at the corners of his eyes and holds back a sob. It feels like something is cracking open inside of him, and when whatever it is spills out, he’ll never be able to put it back.

He misses Erasmus.

He’s alone in the woods with only a small boy and a dog, doing his best to keep them all safe, and he misses Erasmus so much that it physically hurts him. This is a new feeling to William; attachments like this weren’t allowed in the priesthood.

He remembers the dream he had, almost a year ago now (though not a day goes by that it doesn’t haunt him). The soft brush of lips on his, that euphoric feeling of being home ripped away so suddenly by the coming of daybreak.

William sits by a campfire, holding a small burgundy rabbit in his hands.

William sits by a campfire and heaves a sigh, hugging said rabbit the same way a small child would. The same way a small child does almost every day.

William is in love.

He’s in love with Erasmus, and he’s finally admitting this to himself.

And there’s no going back now.

---

1 - He stole it, of course. Can't expect a conman to go around paying for nice tunics.

#fic #slow show #warlock (tv)#erasmus #William of neath #razzywill

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loudsuitlover · 5 years

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Bad Kisser

The sun was setting right behind the big commercial ship among the trees they were yet flling with products for the new mall. Alice was walking towards Harry’s car, which seemed almost lonely being the only car parked on the ridiculously big parking lot for the new mall. You wondered if there would be a time where so many people would come to the mall all at once so that all the parking spaces would be used up or if half of them were just a waste. Alice had been half scolding you for the past twenty minutes but then she started giving little, gracious hops because she had seen Niall’s back as he chatted to Harry and then you smiled. You hadn’t looked at Harry yet, but he was smiling too, and even though part of it was after seeing Alice’s little demostration of bliss just with the sight of his friend, he was a little scared- for some reason he had been silently waiting for you to arrive- and he was a little scared too because he hadn’t known that, he hadn’t really thought about it until he saw you walking towards the car and he felt somewhat relieved so he knew he had indeed unmindfully been waiting for you.

Alice took a few steps back so that she could join underneath the power lines which cut the cloudy lilac sky. She looked up just to enjoy the colour. It was her favourite- spring sunset lilac- and then she gave you a little smile.

“Do you think Harry have told him?” She stressed.

“No.” You smiled. “If there’s something Harry isn’t that’s a secret teller. You can trust him.”

She nodded before sighing because maybe, even though the idea had seemed horrible just ten seconds prior, some part of her had wanted him to tell him all along because then things would be a lot easier. She would at least know whether her crush- now sweeping adoration- was reciprocated or if instead he was disgusted by the idea and then she would know what to do or what to say or she would at least know if losing- for they weren’t being wasted- those hours of study for her Calculus II test was at all worth it.

“Hey girls!” Harry smiled, opening his arms for the both of you as you walked towards his embrace. “How was your day?”

“It was good.” Alice replied. “Y/N’s was better than mine though, right Y/N? Although she kind of messed it up again.”

You narrowed your eyes at her but your lips had curled into a knowing smirk as Harry stared at you with an amused smile, his brows frowned in curiosity. You hugged Niall hello and then turned back to your friend, returning his smile as you shook your head trying to discredit your girl friend’s comment.

“Can I have a sip?” You asked Harry as you borrowed his bottle of beer from his hand even before he could answer and he simply nooded, secretly loving to watch your lips pressing againts that tiny whole made out of glass, especially when you did that in front of other dudes and he could see the disappointment on their eyes- so she’s taken- even though you weren’t.

You had met Harry just seven months prior while he was having breakfast at your kitchen after spending the night with your roommate. You had spotted Elsa at the balcony hanging some white washing and had smiled at him before you smirked when your back was to him, taking some orange juice from the fridge and pouring it in a glass.

“Hi” he started “you must be Y/N.”

You remembered it surprised you, both his British accent and how much you have liked the way he pronounced your name. He had a beautiful voice too, somewhat velvety, and he was unquestionably hot; so you took a mental note to congratulate Elsa on this one later.

“Yeah.” You smiled. “Would you like some juice?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“You were loud last night.”

You smirked, trying to supress your laughter. If Elsa was to hear you, she would scold you for days, but she was still at the balcony and this was something you did quite a lot with Elsa’s conquests. You figured, since you had to put up with having breakfast with a different guy every saturday, at least you could have some fun; but Harry’s reaction was beyond funny. Some guys had been sassy about it, teasing you back; and some others had been smug; the average were between embarrassed and creeped; but the way Harry’s whole face turned into a poppy really gave you a hard time when it came about not laughing straight in his face.

“God, I’m sorry. I- I...”

“I’m kidding.” You almost laughed when you saw his green eyes, wide opened, staring at you somewhat between amused and slightly annoyed of being made fun of this early in the morning. “Relax man, I’m a heavy sleeper.” You grinned. “Like you could be Elsa’s roommate otherwise...”

He chuckled then, looking down at the table before he looked up at you and you remembered how your heart suddenly got up even before you had had a coffee and then you smiled when you remembered the stupid crush you had on him at the very beginning.

But now, seven months later, he was staring at you with a foolish smile on his lips and if you were to ask him he would also remember that morning and he would say he had also noticed how extremely beautiful you were and that for weeks after that, he would smile when he remembered that moment. But before that you hadn’t had anything in common and after that it had just been his friendly attitude towards Elsa that brough him if only discreetly closer to you; yet all that had been before that one time he had dared to sit next to you on the cafeteria where you were having lunch alone- for he was going to have lunch alone too anyway- and it had all come down from there.

“So what did you do, young lady?” He joked as you gave him his beer back.

“Nothing.” You smiled, shaking your head and both of you chuckled when you heard Alice puffing exasperatedly.

“She still hasn’t kissed Noah.”

You rolled your eyes at your best friend’s blatant comment, God bless her and her big mouth, and then you rested your back on Harry’s car boot right next to him accepting the beer Niall was handing you with a smile.

As if trying to save you, even though you were sure he didn’t know he was doing that, Niall engaged blatant Alice in a conversation about some club he had recently been which she would definitely like and you smiled at the subtle way of asking her out he was seeming to be about to display.

Naturally, and even though neither of you quite knew it, Harry and you went to your own little world as the two of them made conversation. He started telling you about his sister’s last article and how stressed she had been on their family dinner just two days ago and somehow in the expanse of an hour you had talked about everything a person could possibly tell the other. Alice didn’t pay as much attention as she used to anymore because after all those months she figured your relationship with Harry was beyond her understanding. She would swear you liked each other- lately she would swear Harry was in love with you- because she hadn’t failed to notice the way he smiled at you, almost drooling whenever he could blatantly stare without the fear of being caugt; and she had also caught up on the fact that you two, now and usually, were way closer than necessary. Sure he was showing you something on his phone, but your head was practically on his chest and that kiss on your temple was just gratuitous. How could you not realize?

Harry had been trying so hard not to let the conversation fall upon Noah. He didn’t really want to know, even though there was a teeny tiny part of him that was just very faintly curious but just the thought of you thinking about someone else that way kind of broke his heart a little. It also made him wonder how stupid could he be, for he had let too much time pass without making a move, enough so that now it would be way too weird to make it but despite how many times he had tried to fool himself with the mantra that you were just friends, just friends, just very, very good friends; he couldn’t get you out of his mind and those fucking full lips...

Alice and Niall announced they were going to the convenience store on the far corner to get some snacks and you asked for crisps and gummy bears for Harry, even though he knew you wanted them for yourself too. You were getting tipsy, and this was probably Harry’s favourite version of you, when your eyes were a little glossy and you would lick your lips more often and if you were wearing make up- which wasn’t the case now- you wouldn’t notice your eyes were a little smudged and he wouldn’t wipe it off because he liked it better that way, when only he knew you weren’t perfect but you sure felt like it. You bit your bottom lip still smiling at him as your friends walked towards the convenience store together and Alice playfully swatted Niall’s arm for something he had said. Oh, you were so happy they were getting it right. Harry chuckled.

“What?” You chuckled.

“Nothing.” He shook his head.

You looked ahead towards the convenience store, Alice and Niall had divided the tasks so they were both choosing junk food and that reminded you of that one time Harry picked you up at 11 pm on a school night and he drove the two of you to that hill where you could see the city lights and had McDonald’s on his car. You remembered Elsa asked you when you had started dating that night and you started laughing so hard you almost scared the neighbours. As if Harry would ever see you like that. He elbowed you taking you away from your own memories. You were thinking about him like that again...

“You wanna go?”

“Where?”

“Don’t know.” He smiled. “I was thinking we could get a pizza and drive to the fairground?”

“Are you okay to drive?”

“Excuse me?” He laughed. “I haven’t been drinking in like an hour, you’re the one who’s drunk off her ass.” He laughed.

You grinned. He knew you loved it there, which was why he had suggested it, so you collected the few empty bottles surrounded you and dumped them on the nearest trash. You said your goodbies to both Alice and Niall and then he drove away while you took control over the radio and sang along to every single song even if you didn’t quite know the lyrics. He damned that Noah guy all the way to the fair, lucky bastard...

He had parked the car right behind the carousel and you were both sitting down on the grass on the small hill next to the fairground staring into the city lights. The pizza had been long gone and now the empty box rested next to your feet and soft music was coming out of your phone on shuffle. His back was resting on the trunk of the tree you were under and wanting to rest yours and also searching for some close proximity, you moved closer to him and rested your head on his shoulder. You could feel his breathing and you could also feel how he had tensed up for just a second before he relaxed under your head. This was the best he had felt in a week. He closed his eyes.

First by Cold War Kids was blossoming from your phone and you stared at it as if you were annoyed the shuffle mode had chosen this song for it made you think about your lunch date with Noah and how fun he had been and how much you had laughed and how you had turned your head when he was surely going to kiss you after he had taken you home. You knew Alice was spying on the two of you through the peephole even though she would never admit it but it wasn’t that what had made you turned your head if only the slightest bit. You liked Noah. As a matter of fact, he was the only guy who had attracted your attention since you had developed your stupid crush on Harry but you just couldn’t take your ex’s words from your head. You knew it was impossible that Noah knew about that, after all that had happened a year and a half before and at your hometown at that so yes, it was impossible that Noah knew, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to do that again. You hadn’t kissed anyone in a year and a half.

“Harry” You started.

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm... Do you... Do you think I’m atractive?”

You felt his shoulders tensing up and then he straightened his back and he wanted to talk because he was afraid you would also hear his alarmingly fast heartbeat.

“Eh.. Well, I have eyes, Y/N, so yes.”

You were glad of your position so he couldn’t see your smile. Considering you were asking this because of someone else, his words should probably not make you this excited, but maybe it was because you were still a little drunk or because he smelled so good or because that song by Two Feet always made you feel a little more confident in your body or because maybe, you too, were feeling like you were drowning.

“But like” you confronted him, getting up from your position and straigtening your back so you could look into his eyes “I want you to be fully honest, yeah?”

He nodded. Man why is she so pretty? You licked your lips and he sighed. At that point he didn’t even care if you were to realize he was into you. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“If we weren’t friends” he’d swear you had never sounded sexier “and you... If we hadn’t met on my kitchen six months ago-”

“Seven” He corrected.

“Seven” You smiled “if we hadn’t met in my kitchen seven months ago after you had slept with my roommate” you raised your eyebrows “and instead you saw me on a club sometime... Would you... would you hit on me?”

His eyes fell to your lips and all of a sudden you realized it was as if a new atmosphere had been made around you. You didn’t remember a time where this feeling had felt over your shoulders with Harry but right in that moment it felt like those minutes before you had sex with someone, that intimacy being made out of nowhere, sometimes literally out of nowhere, sometimes growing from a different feeling- out of friendship, out of love- and right then you weren’t sure which one was it that you were feeling.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I want to know.”

He took yet a few seconds to think about it. He didn’t know what the right answer was so because he didn’t know what was it that he should say- he decided to speak the truth. He had heard once that one can’t be wrong when one is talking the truth. So he imagined that, him walking into a club where this same song was playing and spotting you on the bar- for he knew he would just see you straight from the door- and he thought it would be impossible for him not to try.

“Of course I would hit on you.” He almost chuckled. “I can’t think of someone who wouldn’t.”

To save himself, making his own opinion universal to save himself, for it wasn’t something that he thought but rather something that anyone would think and that didn’t make him so vulnerable for he belong to the group and we all belong to one.

And then you looked down for you had noticed his defense mechanism and you didn’t like that he would separate his own appreciation from the circumstance because even though it had all started as an innocent question, kind of wanting to know what he as a man thought- so you could related to Noah- now it was personal and you wanted to know what he, as Harry, as his own person, would have done had things been different.

“But where is this coming from, love?” Your eyes shifted back to his eyes at the pet name. “Is this about that Jonah?” For he would never say his name right.

“You know it’s Noah” you smiled knowingly and he rolled his eyes, not caring anymore that you’d know he was jealous.

“You can’t ask me these things and then tell me about him.” He whispered.

“I couldn’t wait forever.” You whispered too and that drunken confession took you both off guard.

He looked up at you and his green eyes took some time to study your face. What were you saying? His heart caught up with it before his brain did and it started trying to wake him up as your eyes dropped to his pink lips.

He hadn’t thought of that possibility, but maybe the reason you hadn’t kiss Noah still was because Noah wasn’t the one you wanted to kiss on the first place. He licked his lips and noticed a breath coming in to your mouth through your parted lips.

“Has he tried to kiss you?” He whispered.

Of course he has you idiot. Who wouldn’t? But you just nodded, fidgeting with your thumbs over your belly.

“Why didn’t you let him?”

You stared into his green eyes and he thank God you couldn’t tell how nervous he was but he swore he hadn’t been this nervous in years for then he felt as if he was fifteen years old and he was going to kiss the pretty girl on the seven minutes on heaven thing. Could you tell him? You blushed.

“I... I’m not a good kisser.” You blurted out.

You embraced yourself waiting for his reaction- please Lord don’t let him laugh- and you watched how he frowned until his eyebrows were just one and his lips parted as his whole face just wrinkled and you were if there was a facial expression for a question mark that would be it.

“What? Why would you say that?”

“I’ve been told.” You confessed.

You didn’t want to see his next expression so you just moved your face until all you could see were the city lights and you could pretend he was not there and you had not just say that. But he lifted his back from the tree and rested his hand on your knee. He wouldn’t turn your face, he wouldn’t want to push you, judging by the way your eyes were shining bright with the city lights he knew if he were to push you some you would start crying.

“Who the fuck was the asshole who said that?”

“You don’t know him.” You whispered.

“And he should thank God for that.” He said and only then you allowed yourself to look at him. You were surprised he had taken it seriously. “So... This happened before we met.”

“A year and a half.” You whispered. “I haven’t kissed anyone in a year and a half because every time I’m going to I keep hearing it on the back of my mind. He told everyone too so everyone at home was talking about it.”

“Fuck, Y/N” he frowned “come here”

And then he opened his arms and maybe you didn’t understand it right or maybe you pretended you got it wrong but instead of just letting him wrap his arms around your body, you straddled him and rested your head on his chest. He took a deep breath but you were going to need this closeness for what you were going to ask of him.

“You know that’s not true, right?”

“How do you know that?” Your eyes bore holes into his and once again he got nervous.

Because it’s not possible that a bad kisser have those lips and because he had seen you licking ice cream and... Yeah, there’s no way.

“I just know.”

“That doesn’t count.” You crossed your arms over your chest and pouted like a little girl and he smiled.

“So... That’s why you haven’t kissed Noah.” He reasoned and you nodded. “But you want to.” You didn’t nod that time, instead just staring at him and he kept talking so that you wouldn’t answer because that he didn’t want to hear. “Well if you want to what that stupid guy said shouldn’t stop you. He probably wanted more out of you and when you didn’t give him he just got his ego hurt so he wanted to hurt yours. That’s what jerks do.”

You took a deep breath and then you rested your elbows on his shoulders. He had never had you this close, on top of him, and he was afraid if you were going to move your hips you might notice your touch alone could get him hard.

“You and I are good friends, right?”

“Yeah.” He whispered.

“And... You would do anything for me, right? Just like I would do anything for you.”

You would? So you would stop seeing Noah then? But he just nodded.

“Okay, then... Will you kiss me?”

He didn’t want to, because then you would surely know, but he couldn’t control his eyes as they drop to your mouth.

“What?”

He didn’t even know why he had asked that. He had heard perfectly fine your request but it was as if he didn’t have control over anything he was doing or saying then.

“I want you to kiss me.”

He had daydreamt about you saying that as many times as he had dreamt about you moaning his name so despite his better judgement, his hands moved to your hips and he squeezed your flesh softly before he slipped his thumbs underneath your t-shirt and caressed your skin.

“I’m sorry, Y/N, but I can’t.”

His words felt like a punch straight to your nose. You were not seeing that coming so even though he had every right to say no, you got really mad and you didn’t know whether it was because you had never been more embarrassed or because you felt as if he was going to- what with the way he was looking at you, and the heat he was radiating, and his hands on your hips- and instead he just led you on and then rejected you. You frowned, you would not cry in front of him, and then you lifted your leg from his lap and changed your position, sitting down farther from him leaving space enough for two people between you two.

“I’m ready to leave when you are.” You stated.

You weren’t looking at him, but from the corner of your eye you could tell he was shifting.

“Can you please not get mad?” No answer. “You’re ignoring me now? Love, how is this fair?”

“I just want to go home. I’m not mad, I’m embarrassed and I don’t want to talk about it.”

With that you got up from the grass and started cleaning the back of your shorts as he just frowned and sighed.

“Well I’m not taking you home like this.”

“Really? So you mean I have to call someone?”

“Well you can call Noah, can’t you?” He snapped and even if he hadn’t meant for it to slipped his mouth, it got you turning your head to give him a questioning look as he stood up too. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.”

You sighed and all of a sudden was as if you had realized how drunk you really were and what you had just asked of him and if that wasn’t enough you had gotten mad at him for gently saying he was sorry but he couldn’t? And still there he was apologizing.

“No, I’m sorry.” You shook your head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have asked that from you, especially after telling you I’m a bad kisser” you smiled to try to lighten the mood and his lips curled into a smile despite himself “it’s not like I made it very tempting.”

“Okay, it’s crazy how you can be so academically smart and at the same time sooooo dumb sometimes.”

“What?” You frowned, surprised at this unexpected turn of events and he sighed.

“Yeah, Y/N you asked me if I found you attractive and what did I say?”

“You said yes.” You answered.

“Exactly and then you asked me if I would hit on you on a club and what did I say then?”

“You also said yes.”

“I’m pretty sure I said of course which is more enthusiastic than yes.”

“Enthusiastic?” You smiled. “What is this? Are you improvising one of your sociology essays right now in front of me?”

“I said I couldn’t kiss you, I never even said I didn’t want to and you got mad? And didn’t even ask why?”

“Well quite frankly I don’t want to know why.” You shrugged. “I don’t want to hear that I have a weird mouth or that my breath stinks or that you think I would just use my tongue the wrong way or-”

“For the love of God!” He exasperated. “Are you seriously telling me you have never thought I am attracted to you?”

“What?” You frowned. “You? Attracted to me?”

“Yes!”

He was looking at you as if you had grown a third eye because he truly couldn’t bring himself to believe you were the only person in the world who hadn’t noticed he liked you. He knew he was so obvious. Everyone had told him that but he didn’t even care, he was sure you knew, you just weren’t interested but now he was starting to doubt that judging by the way you really seemed to have been just hit with realization.

“You really didn’t know?”

“How was I supposed to know? You never said anything.”

“Well I didn’t think I had to, thought I was being pretty obvious.”

“What? But then... Why the hell didn’t you just kiss me? I... I was... It was so easy.”

Only then he blushed and it seemed stupid really, that he had been able to say all that to you, to confessed his adoration without getting even slightly hotter, and now that you brought that up he could feel his temperature raising and he was sure the blush was going to reach his collarbones.

“I didn’t want to kiss you like that.” He confessed, his voice sounding a few notches lower and suddenly everything became calmer. “I don’t want to be your training so you can kiss another guy.”

You were afraid you were going to puke with all the movement that was happening in your belly, it had flipped at least three times in the expanse of a minute and you could hear your heart beating. He... Harry wanted to kiss you? You approached him, if he didn’t step back you might have a heart attack but instead he moved closer too, his green eyes staring into your own and waiting until you made another move.

“Do you...” your mouth was dry so you swallowed before trying to speak up again “do you still want to kiss me?”

He laughed, shutting his eyes and everything, but that time it didn’t make you feel embarrassed; instead you just grinned as you stared at him waiting for his laughter to die down. He was grinning when he opened his hand in the air and placed it at your waist height.

“Well, come here.”

But you barely had to give one step towards him for his hand to pull you closer to him from your waist until your chest was against his. He was still smiling wide as his other hand rested on your left cheek so he could lift your face but he just smiled at you, still waiting for you to be the one to initiate it.

“Hey” You whispered, raising your eyebrows and giving him an almost childish smile, making him chuckle.

“Just kiss me, Y/N.”

“But what if I do it wro-”

He cut your words pressing his lips to yours and you felt your heart going crazy in your chest. He pressed some innocent pecks against your lips before he turned his head to the sight, both your mouths still closed and then your hands, that had been limb against your sides, grabbed the fabric around his waist and pulled him even closer to you as his tongue timidly brushed your bottom lip. Your hands caressed his chest against his shirt as you parted your lips for him and he hummed in appreciation, carefully slipping his tongue inside your mouth and you had never thought just a kiss could feel like that. Your hands moved to the back of his neck without your consent and his lowered to the small of your back and without even thinkin you let your tongue explore him, wanting to get a taste. It was timid at first, just giving small brushes with the wet tongue and driving him crazy in the process. He moaned, almost demanding more, and your fingers tangled on his hair as you let your tongue move freely. You don’t know for how long you stayed like that, just exploring each other and tasting one another for the first time but when you pulled away you both were out of breath and his lips looked red and swollen. You touched his lips with your finger and he stared at you. He didn’t even know what to say.

“Not bad for a bad kisser.” He joked and you clicked your tongue, playfully swatting his chest. “Kidding.” He chuckled, pecking your lips again.

Those words from Cortazar were hovering his mind “words never reach when what you have to say overflows the soul” so instead he grabbed your hand and placed it on his chest over his heart so you could feel how fast it was beating and you grinned at him when you understood.

“I hope Noah likes it as much as you did.”

Your attempt at supressing your laughter failed as soon as you saw his expression and even though he knew you were joking, he could play too, so he removed your hands from his neck and started walking away.

“No, no!” You begged after him trying to get him to turn around. “I was kidding! I was just kidding!”

“Well that’s not funny!” But he was smiling even though he was giving you his back.

“Hey” you called and he eventually stopped so you circled him and stopped right in front of him, wrapping your arms around his waist and staring into his eyes while he smirked.

You just kissed him again. And again and again and again and again

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redandfranticfeelings · 4 years

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i am a whole month late but i saw frozen 2 and i actually have Opinions TM? which may not be very good, im not a good movie analyst, but this was a weird one. spoiler alert!

i like the backstory of anna and elsa’s parents and i like the idea that elsa’s powers are a gift, even though they really could have played into the powers being a gift more given how often she’s seen them as a curse. but they also kind of put the parents on a pedestal too much considering how they emotionally abused anna and elsa in the first movie. i would have loved to see the girls grapple with that trauma as well as remembering the good about them and feeling bad about their deaths.

on that note, they reference the first movie so much but it feels very gratuitous because a lot of elements feel detached from similar elements in the first movie. olaf recapping the entire first movie was funny but didn’t need as much time as it got.

that sums up olaf well too, actually. his anti-nihilistic personality was so batshit to me that it amused me, i like the idea of him dealing with maturity and change because it almost seems to be a deconstruction of his character archetype, and something that a lot of people who have aged since the first film could relate to. but it kind of came out of nowhere and then went nowhere, and he ironically ended up acting even more immature at times than he had in the first movie so it felt like they had no idea what to do with him, which sucks when he’s given entire scenes that don’t connect much to the plot. his song was probably my least favorite part of the movie, it felt even longer than his song in the original which at least served as a funny establishing character moment back then.

kristoff’s plot was sitcommy and meh and he was inconsequential to the story so much they p much forget about him in the second act but i gotta admit his song was so batshit bizarre it cracked me up. plus he is really endearing, even though they did not elaborate enough on his relationship with anna at all (and the first movie was already a bit rushed in that department). i would have liked more on how he sees her as a guiding figure in his otherwise very directionless life. in fact that could have even been subtle foreshadow for her role as a leader at the end of the movie!

as for anna herself...i like the idea of her plot! i like that she’s so paranoid and traumatized about elsa going anywhere alone and has to overcome that when elsa basically ascends to a higher power. i think people are too hard on her, i get her being overprotective and worried about not being around for her sister given how long she was shut out. it’s one of the few elements that actually seems like a proper follow-up to events from the first movie. i like that elsa is so gung-ho about taking all this responsibility alone but anna has to take up the mantle when she thinks elsa is gone, rather than sit alone and cry about it. however, i do wish her being queen had been built up more. maybe highlight her connection to the people arendelle, or even the northundra people, to show that she has leadership skills when not obsessed with elsa (since she is very personable). granted idk if she actually is qualified to lead a kingdom given how the first frozen is one of the few movies to reference how queens have to deal with things like the economy, but i’m willing to shrug that off since most movies of this kind don’t see queenhood as a responsibility thing but a title of honor.

i like elsa seeking out her history and heritage since that was kind of robbed from her as a child, but it would have been interesting if anna, who actually had her memories wiped, showed more interest in these memories being visualized. however i feel a lot of things came too easily for her. i like the idea that she had to conquer all the elements before she could find the truth about arendelle but idk it seemed like she didn’t struggle much, it just sort of Happened? it didn’t feel like her character developed or changed much. she started off hearing a call, decided to pursue it early on, and outside of a tragically-brief grapple with her parents’ death, just went through these individual challenges with nature basically the same way, by using magic. like as soon as the forest realizes elsa is magic each time it calms down. i get that she’s basically the chosen one but i would have liked a bit more emotional struggle, maybe more leftover insecurity about honing her powers or gaining new ones, maybe a stronger reaction to the fact her grandfather was basically willing to perform genocide due to the same beliefs about magic that had her hating herself throughout most of her life. i guess maybe her freezing to death might represent that, like how the truth hurts, and how her sister trying to make it up to everyone with a massive sacrifice is how she unfroze might be some sort of meaningful metaphor, but idk it felt a little too similar to the resolution of the last movie, and again things felt too easy for her.

super disappointed at how little the sami characters did. given how i’d heard they consulted sami folks to properly represent the culture, i expected the new characters to have a more direct role, but all they did was provide some mild exposition, and even then, anna and elsa found out most things. why couldn’t the people of the forest, especially the elders, just explain what anna and elsa’s grandfather did to them? honeymaren and ryder were cute but did basically nothing, which is sad since i heard so much hype about honeymaren being shipped with elsa.

also the people of northundra being shut out from the outside world by magic is a great parallel for elsa’s situation in the first movie but that connection was barely made because the new characters got sidelined so badly.

it would have been pretty cool to destroy arendelle and rebuild it, or maybe to give the northundra a new gift to replace the false one. but the whole thing with the dam generally felt a bit anticlimactic. and i appreciate a message about reparations and twisted nationalistic history but i dont really know what message they were going for there, and whatever it was, it would have been stronger if we got to know the actual people of the forest better.

the salamander was cute but it didn’t have much of a point any more than the other elements of nature and is almost as much of an Obvious Plush Toy Design as pua from moana. (btw, this movie reminded me a bit of moana, thematically, just way more complicated.)

the songs were nice but i dont remember most of them. ‘show yourself’ was my favorite. i like it better than ‘into the unknown’ lol, maybe because it came later in the story even though i wished there was more power struggle in the scene itself.

#frozen 2 #frozen II #text post #i have a lot of thoughts! surprising!

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musutofu · 5 years

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【 Dating Hawks 】

Takami has a certain distaste for formalities even upon first meetings, and though he means well, the lack of formal greetings and introductions especially in a place like Musutafu, Japan doesn’t make for the best first impression. His rank as Number 2 Hero makes the informalities easier to forgive since Heroes are known for their friendly demeanors, yet Takami is laid back almost to the point of cockiness. It rubs you the wrong way and his first greeting leaves a bad taste in your mouth. There isn’t just one thing that he did to deter you, it was his whole demeanor. He seemed too calm, too jovial to take anything seriously. Much less a committed relationship.

Contrary to how put off you were by his casual attitude towards just about everything, Takami was immediately taken with you. Everything about you was just right and it made him want to pursue you with a reckless abandon. The fact that you hadn’t fallen prey to his suave words and good looks made you that much more desirable in his eyes. Rejection has always been a foreign concept to him as a high profile Hero, so for you to do so with little thought had him tripping over himself to get to know you better. He wanted to prove himself to you, to earn your affection because of who he was instead of what he was. As a man instead of a Hero.

It becomes almost routine for Takami to show up at places you frequent seemingly out of nowhere. There’s no real rhyme or rhythm to his appearances. Some days he’s there and others he isn’t. It’s easy to ignore him at first, simply scoffing at his audacity and continuing on with your day, but after realizing he isn’t going to quit you begin to entertain his company if only to make his little visits a bit more palatable. But giving him that one inch of acceptance prompts Takami to take a mile. If you thought he was persistent before it’s nothing compared to when he’s actually been acknowledged.

His constant presence and tendency towards intimacy with you leads many to believe you’re dating long before he’s even asked you out. Which is fine with him because he has every intention of making your relationship official. The less competition there is the easier it’ll be for him in the long run. And while it’s annoying to you because you most definitely didn’t agree to go out with him, Takami quite enjoys seeing the look on all your would-be suitors’ faces as he shows them none too subtly that you’re off the market. Even if he hasn’t yet mentioned it to you in so many words; you’re his and he wants the world to know.

To prove himself to you, Takami starts with the basic necessities. Whether you want him to or not he’ll bring you food constantly and insist you eat at least some of it in front of him so he can be sure you aren’t going hungry. He’s constantly reminding you to drink enough water and be mindful of the weather. If you’re ever hungry, thirsty, or even remotely sick in his presence Takami takes it as a sign that he isn’t doing his job as your provider and protector. It’s a bit overbearing, but just like everything else involving Takami you’ve learned to adapt and enjoy.

Protective doesn’t even begin to describe the way Takami feels when you’re out of his sight. He’s well aware that you can take care of yourself and have been doing so for years before he came crashing into your life, but he can’t help but feel like it’s his fault if you’re hurt when he’s not there to look after you. He’s a Hero, after all, it’s his job to protect the citizens of Japan whether they need him to or not. Simply walking to another aisle in the grocery store will set him on edge and you’ll often find one of his smaller feathers riding around in your back pocket so he can keep track of you. It’s as annoying as it is endearing.

It takes him a while to realize that you’ve gotten over your initial distaste for him. Takami isn’t a hard man to please when it comes to keeping him company. He’ll gladly carry on a conversation with himself as long as someone is there to hear his idle prattling and you’ve grown used to not having to answer if you don’t have anything interesting to add. For a while Takami felt a bit self-conscious, thinking he shouldn’t talk so much, until he somehow talked himself into a subject you’re passionate about. He’d been thoroughly surprised when you started rambling on with him beat for beat.

Touching is more of a subconscious habit than one he purposefully perpetuate. Takami is never too far from you when he can help it as he enjoys spending as much time as he can in your company. Holding on to you has become second nature even when in public. He’ll hold your hand, your waist, whatever’s closest to him. His favorite thing to do is cling to you from behind and wrap his wings around you. Sometimes he’ll take flight and cling to you like an anchor while you drag him along with you. You’ve gotten used to his clinginess and it’s something you’ve picked up by association, but Takami doesn’t mention the returned skinship for fear that you’ll try to regulate yourself.

Even though they don’t fully function like a normal bird’s, Takami’ wings are still big and heavy. His favorite thing to do after a day of lugging them around is fall face first into the first comfortable place he can find and whine until you come rub his shoulders. Most times he’ll fall asleep under your touch, but if he wakes up he’ll just go right back to whining if you’ve disappeared. He doesn’t like when you leave even when he isn’t awake to keep you entertained.

The media has been clambering for any scrap of information regarding your relationship with Takami since he first started courting you. Many a fan has accused you of stealing Takami from them and in the beginning you’d insist that they could have him back if they really wanted him. But time has past and now you can simply shrug off their words. The media is harder to avoid seeing as reporters have a real knack for getting under people’s skin, but you didn’t brave through months of gratuitous compliments and forlorn looks from Takami to be swayed by a bunch of idiots with microphones and cameras.

Being candid by nature means Takami has no aversion to sharing how he feels with you. He knew from the very beginning that he wanted to be with you so saying “I love you” comes fairly easily to him. He isn’t offended if you can’t say it back or if you don’t say it as often. The fact that you haven’t thrown him out of your life–though his feverish courting ritual almost did the trick–means that you care about him in your own way. He’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes to hear you say it.

[ NSFW below the cut ]

Takami is young and in love and his body reflects that. You don’t have to do much to get him going and once he starts it’s hard to stop him. He’s not embarrassed about being caught with his hand down his pants when he doesn’t want to bother you. Most times he’s loud enough to draw your attention anyway. If you’re in the mood to assist he’ll carry you to the bedroom himself.

Leaving marks on your skin is a sadistic game for him. Most times he’ll place them strategically in places that will be easy to cover, but only if your clothes stay in place all day. If you lift your arms there’s a hickey just above the waistband of your pants. If you lean forward there’s a bite mark just below your collarbone. It’s only when Takami is in one of his inconsolably possessive moods that he’ll go out of his way to leave a mark in an place like your neck or collarbones.

Things like who falls into what role don’t really matter to Takami. He’s swayed more by the mood of the moment than a fixed mindset. But he goes to extremes on each side of the spectrum. When he’s submissive he’s soft and compliant, having no qualms with whining and begging for you. And when he’s dominant he’ll return the favor tenfold. If you aren’t completely spent by the time he’s done with you then he didn’t do it right.

Because he can control all of his feathers individually and feel everything interacting with them, Takami’ wings are a particularly interesting erogenous zone. He’s used to the harsh treatment that comes with flying and fighting, so to feel you touching them with such tenderness would immediately turn him to putty in your hands. Especially that spot just between his wings where nothing ever touches. It’s a surefire way to get him to fall into the submissive role for the night.

No matter what role he’s in, Takami is always on top. His wings make it hard for him to lay flat on his back when he’s focused enough to keep them awkwardly folded against his body, but it’s uncomfortable and hard to manage when he can’t think of anything other than you and how amazing you feel. His control will slip the closer he gets to the edge, losing it completely when he reaches his peak. His wings spread to their full majesty for a few glorious moments before sagging happily.

Postcoital cuddling is a ritual that has persisted since the first time you slept with Takami. It doesn’t matter to him that you’re both sweaty and tired, he just wants to hold you. If you desperately need something he’ll send one of his feathers to ferry it back to bed, otherwise there’s a slim chance you’ll be moving out from under him anytime soon. He likes being close to you and praising you for how well you did and receiving compliments from you in kind. He usually starts going on about nothing important, just murmuring against your skin until you fall asleep.

#hawks #mha hawks #bnha hawks #hawks x reader #hawks headcanons #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia

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