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oh-my-moomin · 3 years

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NGE: You Deserve Love

This is an analysis based solely on the og NGE anime series and not the movie or rebirth series so I won’t be mentioning those.

NGE is a psychological horror/apocalypse story dressed up as a mecha. This farce is only totally dropped in the last 2, even 3 episodes. This can make the ending jarring and seem in cohesive, but ultimately my understanding is that none of the ‘plot’ really matters. Seele doesn’t matter, where the angels come from doesn’t really matter, and the final battle doesn’t matter. This is a story exploring loss, the need for connection, loneliness, and humanity. We see this through not only the interactions of the human characters but also through the angels.

THE HUMANS

The Children

A defining trait of all the characters is that they are lonely. The isolation from human connection is brought on both by the high stress apocalypse they all live in, as well as the personal demons they face. The characters all attempt to create bonds with other people, but are held back by their insecurities, fear of vulnerability, and past traumas.

Let’s start with Shinji, as the main character. Having lost his mother at a young age, and being abandoned by this father, he was never able to feel secure. Therefore he takes on a people pleaser attitude, constantly apologizing. His want for validation (particularly from adults in his life) causes him to continue to take action that he doesn't want to, including piloting the EVA. His self hate and insecurity makes it hard for him to make and trust his own choices. So he relies on others to guide him. When this fails, when he doesn't get the love and validation he craves he tries to quite entirely. But this often leads to the people he cares about being hurt. He's trapped between a rock and hard place.

Asuka was also abandoned, however rather than craving support like Shinji, she chooses to live for herself. She craves independence. She needs to know that she is no longer a child that can be hurt and vulnerable. This is largely shown through both her overt sexuality, and her piloting the EVA. She must be in control of the EVA, she must have power, she must be able to prove herself as the best, the strongest. Because inside she still feels like that hurt desperate child, and that is what she hates most about herself. Unlike Shinji, Asuka is brash and rude, and she expects others to give her the same. She barks and expects you to bark back, but can’t always handle it.

Both of these characters are constantly looking for connection, with both their peers and adults. While Asuka often pushes herself on to people, out of a need to be seen. Shinji cannot take active moves to make meaningful connections, and will shy away from people trying to connect. Asuka hates herself and needs to prove that others love her. Shinji hates himself and cannot imagine that people love him.

The Adults

One of the running themes in the show is motherhood. Typically it is the mother that is expected to love and care for the child, to raise them, show unconditional love, give unwavering support. None of the characters have had this, Shinji and Asuka search for validation that they lost in adults in different ways. Unfortunately for them, none of the adults present are suitable to be parents.

The show makes a point to show that the adult characters are all more complex than the children. They have lived longer and therefore had more time to make mistakes, to get stuck in toxic ideals, to ‘be problematic’. They are not concretely good or bad people (mostly), but rather the result of people who grew up in a post apocalyptic world, trying desperately to stop the salvage it, while also trying to make their own connections. Like the child characters, their past traumas make it harder for them to be more open, vulnerable, and weak, to form that human connection.

I am going to focus on Misato and Ritsuko, since they act as foils when it comes to human connection.

Misato being left as a lone survivor to a terrible accident has left her scared both physically and mentally. Before this she had issues with her parents, as her father seemed to abandon his family in favour of work, leaving her mother devastated. Misato doesn't want to become like her mother, abandoned by a loved one, and she also doesn't want to be her father, a slave to work. To counter this she looks for easy connections, but she never wants to get too close.

When her relationship with Kaji was beginning to feel too real, she began to find flaws. His resemblance to her father was terrifying, so she broke it off. Similarly, when in scenes with Shinji, talking about his insecurities or his want to give up, she is hidden by shadow. She cannot be seen as weak, she cannot offer comfort, she cannot be a mother figure to Shinji. Other ways her searching for easy connection is her drinking beer, or eating take out. She searches for the most basic ways to fulfill her needs, so that she can focus on her main goal of defeating the angels.

Ritsuko is also desperate to find human connection without vulnerability. By fully closing off the whole world she can have no weakness, something which she resents in Misato. She views herself as above the need for connection in that way, and would rather follow in her mothers foot footsteps as a scientist and a woman.

She loved and admired her mother, and hated her. She wants to follow in her footsteps but also would hate to fail in the same ways. She saw how her mother failed to actually mother her, and chose to completely reject that part of herself. Instead she cares for cats, and uses those as a surrogate to having a child. She continues her mothers work as a scientist, constantly striving to improve. And when it comes to the ‘woman’ that her mother was, she knew a stubborn woman who focused solely on one man. So Ritsuko also focused on him, to the point of giving up her cat to her grandmother. Both women tried to create an easy connection with him, both felt that they were his equal, and that they found the one connection that mattered. When it was proven to them that they were a second (third) woman this caused them both to break down. For Ritsuko this meant that even though she closed off the whole world, except for one man, she was still too vulnerable. And her only response was to completely shut down. Because she had no one else.

All of the characters are constantly searching for this connection, trying to show affection without getting hurt. Trying to make sense of the end of the world while also making sense of interpersonal relationships. Their own inner demons getting in the way of honest connection.

Rei

As a clone Rei is a particular case. She is aware that she is not a ‘person’, she isnt meant for human connection. Her isolation is so ingrained into her, planned before she is even ‘born’ so she feels no need to care for anyone except Ikari. She latches onto him, would do anything for him, and has no value in her life because she is aware that she is not real.

However, she still has a human source, Shinjis mother. A human person, who also needed human connection. Rei, when given the chance, does care for people. Shinji is the first person to see her as a peer, and to treat her with kindness. With this start of forming connections, she begins to feel more human, to develop a further need to connect. Even if it's hard to fully separate from the man who created her.

THE ANGELS

The angels act as a foil to the human need for connection. While all of the human characters are lonely and searching for connection with each other, the angels are also lonely and trying to learn what that even means.

There is no scene where the angels are working together, they are solitary, all having the same goal of reaching Adam, but incapable of planning together to achieve it. They instead try to create connection to humans, trying to bond and understand them, without knowing that their methods are harmful.

I believe this can be first seen with the 12th angel. When Shinji is absorbed into the EVA, it is safe to say that the angel was able to understand the merging of human and EVA. This connection allowed Shinji to control the EVA to break free of the angel's shadow. The following month where Shinji is trapped within his EVA, is our first insight into what the human instrumentality project will be like, as well as the goals of the angels.

Since angels cannot connect to each other, the 15th angel attempts to create connection by forcing itself into Asukas mind. It wants to understand her, her emotions, her thoughts, her connections, her love. For her this is a painful experience, akin to rape. She feels dirtied after it. But the attack is a beam of light, with holy music playing, what should be a calming experience. I believe it is fair to say that the angel cannot understand that it is putting her through pain, as it cannot understand any human experiences. Angels are incapable of understanding their own feelings/experiences/wants, and try to use humans as a study from which they can learn.

The following angel confronts Rei about her loneliness. Instead of breaking into her mind through light, it directly entered her body. While talking with her, it questioned what loneliness was, trying to understand its own pain and isolation through understanding hers. Its solution is to merge with Rei, as it believes this would solve both problems.

However, when she refuses, the angel then tries to find another source of connection. Rei cares about Shinji, as both a clone of his mother, and a friend as her own person. The angel can see that this connection is something that she finds precious and tries to take it for itself, as it cannot understand why Shinji wouldn’t feel the same. It cannot understand how complex human connections are, that it cannot simply take Reis form. However, it has learned what pain is, and how to communicate its own pain. As seen when Shinji attacks it. Whether this pain is physical or emotional doesn't matter, because it is the first pain that the angel could express.

The angels discovering what loneliness is acts as a way for the human pilots to begin to explore their own isolation in more depth. For better or worse.

THE FINAL MESSENGER

Our introduction to the final angel is him singing. He takes a human form, can fully communicate to other humans, and doesn’t immediately attack them. This is such a contrast to all other angels that it isn't immediately clear that he even is an angel. Kaworu's first words are (as per the netflix english subtitles)

“Arent songs great? Songs enrich the heart. They're the crowning achievement of Lilin culture”

He loves humans, human culture, human lives, and the human world. He is the first angel who is able to show this. His ability to understand humans allows him to form human connections, and he does so with Shinji.

Kaworu loved Shinji. He would seek out Shinji, take time to bond and communicate with him, and help Shinji open up. He wanted to be close with Shinji, and knew how to be gentle in ways that no other human or angel could. He was patient, because he had time. And Shinji was able to open up to him more than with any other character. Shinji was able to take the initiative to ask to stay with him, to try and form that connection.

All the human characters are struggling with their own demons, with an apocalyptic world. The whole earth is at war and Shinji is in the front lines, surrounded by adults who may want to help him but ultimately can't. Saving everyone is a higher priority to saving one kid, especially when that kid is your strongest soldier. Throughout the series Shinji is given conditional love. It is only when he pilots the EVA, defeats the angels and saves the day that people give him validation. Then comes this boy, who is gentle and kind, who listens. And it's easy, its comfort, its understanding and unconditional love, and its exactly what Shinji has needed for the whole series.

But as a messenger he could never stay, he's temporary and by the end of the episode he understands this. He still is driven to ‘Adam’, he has a mission, but instead he is confronted with Lilith. Kaworu understands that humans and angels cannot live together in harmony, only one can survive. Both Adam and Litlith were made in god's image, but only Adam could stay in the garden of Eden. Death and Life hold equal value to Kaworu, so he doesn't mind the sacrifice, he would rather die to protect humans, to protect Shinji. He can also understand that this is difficult, this is murder, this is killing a friend. So he says “thank you” and he waits.

In other episodes when in a battle, Shinji is constantly being yelled at, told what to do, under constant pressure. But here there is just the same patient understanding that Kaworu has always shown him. No rush for him to take action, just time to process and grieve. Because Kaworu knows Shinji will make the hard choice and he waits, and he smiles, and he continues to love Shinji.

The final angel came down as a messenger and said

“You are important.

I want to talk to you, to know you.

You are in pain, you are fragile and should be protected.

You are worthy of my affection.

I like you. I love you. I was born just so that I could meet you.

Our kind cannot survive together, one of us must die. And you deserve to live.

I will take this burden of death because you deserve a future.

I am glad I could meet you, thank you.

I know this is hard, and I know you need time. I will wait.

Thank you.”

That was the last message to humanity.

And because Shinji is human he says back

“We are the same. I love you too. If only one of us could have lived it should have been you. You are better than me. You should have survived.”

#nge #neon genesis evangelion #shinji ikari #nge analysis #asuka langley sohryu #misato katsuragi #rei ayanami #ritsuko akagi #gendo ikari #kaworu nagisa

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bakerolivias-archived · 2 years

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honestly i think one of the major reasons im not a huge klaroline stan is because i dont think without caroline over all rejecting him he never would have come to terms with how sensitive he really is how to be vulnerable aka some of the things that make klamille amazing

okay my answer for this ask has actually been deleted three times now and unfortunately they were very long meta answers because tumblr’s a real piece of work.

anyways; tldr: so true bestie! caroline was, more or less, really important to helping klaus come to the self-realization that he can be hurt, and what it meant to build a real, mature, and stable relationship. klamille and klaroline were both significant in terms of klaus’s development, klaus cared for them both so intensely, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, even though fandom likes to perceive it as such and generalize klamille/cami as a “copy” of klaroline/caroline (which is an incredibly misogynistic and poorly constructed take, but ya know.)

it’s clear klaus has a type: brilliant, headstrong blond women (maybe because of his mommy/sister issues but of course klaus probs doesn’t see it that way LOL). that’s pretty much where the similarities end because cami and caroline are both incredibly three dimensional and unique characters (and klaus has very good taste.) there was a huge difference in the way both dynamics were approached, even if they may have started out in relatively the same way. klaus was intrigued by caroline, admired her tenacity and the way she shamelessly refused to hold back her opinion, and appreciated how she did not hesitate to call him out and reprimand him for attempting to flirt using expensive gifts and showing her dramatic art pieces, instead of establishing a “connection” as klaus defined it, based on mutual understanding. he “enjoys” the strength of character she’s displayed, the way she pushes him to be real and transparent instead of only show a polished version of himself - which would be pointless anyways since she already knows the terrible things he’s capable of. because she’s so blatant and honest, something klaus deeply appreciates, klaus finds himself able to confide in her, and caroline reciprocates, maybe a bit out of boredom, but also because she finds him interesting and she has her own grief/troubles she’d like to communicate. she’s also incredibly perceptive and intelligent, despite what others (namely d.amon and perhaps matt at one point) would think, which klaus is more than aware of and likes about her. caroline understands that klaus doesn’t want to be lonely, that he wants to be loved, listened to, and understood. that’s truly all that anyone wants. but she also calls him out for what he can’t seem to grasp: he is the cause of his own loneliness, pushing loved ones away out of anger and paranoia, and she’s able to see this after only a few conversations.

where KC went wrong was that they had very different interpretations of love, and how it was expressed. while caroline was endeared by and supportive of klaus’s personal growth that he’d shown on TOs5, not out of some misguided attempt to convince her he’s changed but simply out of genuine selflessness, he acted, and thought, very differently when it came to what acts of love and kindness looked like: for example, “haven’t you experienced the attraction that comes when a person capable of terrible things, for some reason, only seems to care about you?” or, “kindness, mercy... i’ve shown it all for you.” caroline is attracted to people that are good, who do good deeds, and tells klaus that, in her opinion, terrible people are just terrible people, which means klaus doesn’t have to be the person that he is and can choose differently. she’s not going to be the singular person klaus is supposedly “good” for, the sole person responsible for making klaus a better person, because she deserves better than to be a moral compass, or forced into that role unwillingly, unless klaus showed some potential for better behavior. what she wanted for klaus, as she said in TOs5, was for him to be able to do that himself, for himself, and not as some kind of appeasement to a love interest, but klaus couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong. to hear caroline basically call him a terrible person hurt him, even if he is self aware of his own actions. klaus didn’t have the patience to attempt to process what caroline was trying to tell him, and neither of them were in the right place to pursue a deeper romantic relationship.

enter klamille. cami’s a literal therapist: she has a psych degree and is supposed to “analyze” and help people like klaus, for a living. while i think she should have had more of a narrative beyond the klamille dynamic, camille and klaus had an infinitely more functional relationship (although i suppose that could be because the writers were never intending to have KC end up together in the first place). since klaus was staying in NOLA long term, he and cami were in the right proximity, and places in their life because cami had already graduated college while caroline still needed to find the direction her life would go in, to work through the different stages of their relationship and get to know each other. because of cami’s occupation as a therapist, klaus is allowed to be understood in a way i don’t think he ever has been, and when cami tells him uncomfortable truths, klaus is far more receptive and willing to listen. he’s also much more comfortable being vulnerable and working through his issues in a semi-healthy and semi-professional environment. while therapist-patient relationships aren’t necessarily healthy in the real world, klaus and cami make it work because they’re both mutually invested in their romantic relationship and there’s always a sense of respect, autonomy, and friendship in their dynamic. klaus could have seen him and cami building a life together, side by side, because they make each other better: she helps him fulfill his capability to be good, and allows him to feel human, and he gets under her skin in ways few people have (which is also true vise versa). cami’s essence and humanity and her connection to klaus, despite her vampirism and then eventual death, was immortalized by the way he remembered her, the way she “saved” his soul (as caroline worded it in that one ep i haven’t gotten to yet - anyone capable of love is capable of being saved, which establishes how much klaus cares for other people and also, in a way, foreshadows what klamille would mean to him).

in some ways, klaroline certainly laid the groundwork for the klamille dynamic and allowing klaus to accept his humanity, as well as his human needs.

#tribridbibrid #anna's messages #meta tag #ignore me pls that was wayyyyyy too long #i just have a lot of thoughts about KC and CK :)

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pterodactylschreech · 3 years

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Entangled

(One-shot based on this post)

Lena looks beautiful tonight.

She's all Kara can think about, despite being surrounded by everyone she loves. Her eyes track back every few seconds no matter where she treks in the apartment or how much her family and friends vie for her attention. It's their first game night post-Phantom Zone and post-The Break, as Kara thinks of it. The first time everyone is back together, smiling and laughing and happy, in over a year. And they all want Kara's attention, her presence the glue for the family after her absence.

But all she can think about is Lena.

Lena sitting close on the couch while they play games. Lena passing her the last pot sticker on her plate without thought. Lena standing in the kitchen refilling her wine glass and mingling with Kelly and Brainy, at home among their friends. Kara focuses on her, intent to memorize every single detail of the other women as if she may never see her again. The crinkles by her piercing eyes when she squints in laughter at one of Nia's corny puns. The play of light on her features accentuating the sharp angle of her jaw and the soft curve of her lips. The gentle, bright look she shares with Kara when she catches her looking, a hard won relief radiating out from the woman after months of fighting one another. Kara could practically taste the joy on the air, surrounded by her little family.

Kara hopes that look means everything that her matching expression means: I love you. I'm home again, and I missed you. Hopes beyond all reason that Lena understands and is sending the same message back.

It's been a week since she returned to find Lena unemployed and living at the Tower out of a hastily packed suitcase. A week since she refused to let Lena remain in the cold and impersonal lair and convinced Lena to unofficially move in with her. She wouldn't admit it, not even to Alex, but one of the reasons Kara insisted so strongly was because she couldn't bear to sleep alone. The memories of her nightmares from her childhood after landing on Earth were enough to drench her in fear of the coming nights, the darkness and isolation that pulled her under the waves of terror. It turned out to be the best decision for both of the women as they both suffered and only found peace and reprieve when sleeping next to one another.

And it's been two days since Kara bared her soul to Alex, finally admitting the depth of her feelings for Lena after her sister told her about the decision they had been forced to make: Kara or National City. Her feelings that lay dormant for years due to her fear but surfaced to crush her under their weight during the year spent away from Lena, that grew like ivy through her heart until they covered every inch of her life. Kara sobbed into Alex's shoulder, for time lost and hope and comfort from her one constant through everything. Alex, for her part, seemed decidedly less surprised by Kara's outburst than she had expected. She let Kara expend her tears, then quietly told her it was time for Kara to choose her own happiness first. To put herself before the world and her past and her decades of fear. To tell Lena and let them be happy, together.

So now, Kara sits on her couch, surrounded by family and basking in the warmth of their love and closeness, nervous and fidgeting while she anxiously replays her prepared speech over and over in her head. For one terrifying moment, the whole situation felt excruciatingly familiar and terror spikes through her. Alex lays a hand on her bouncing knee, a distraction and reassurance that all would end well if Kara just trusted herself and Lena.

The night wore on in pleasant company until the group thinned out, pair by pair. Only Alex and Kelly remain on their way out of the apartment. Alex lingers in the doorway to give Kara an extended hug and whisper encouragement in her ear. "Good luck, Kar. Love you." She and Kelly say their last goodbye to Lena, and Kara quietly closes the door for the evening.

After taking a deep, steadying breath, Kara turns back to find Lena tossing empty take-out boxes into the recycling bin and setting their empty glasses in the sink. With her hair in a haphazard bun, Kara's NCU sweatshirt, and her cheeks pink tinged, Lena leaves Kara breathless in the entryway. The domesticity and familiarity of Lena in her clothes, in her home and cleaning up; in her glasses, forgotten after a particularly spot on impersonation during charades and still perched on the bridge of her nose, have Kara dreaming of their possible future. Of games nights and family dinners and quiet nights in that begin and end with Lena by her side.

Kara's tongue darts out to wet her lips and her hands twist together as she moves closer to Lena who has rinsed the glasses and is drying her hands on one of Kara's novelty printed dish towels. When she turns and spots Kara, hovering nearby but without fully approaching, she watches the simple movements of Kara's hands with rapt attention and smiles the same gentle grin from throughout the night. The corners of her mouth turn down slightly when she notices the focused crinkle between Kara's eyes, the unfailing sign she was deep in thought or struggling to vocalize something she found important.

Kara hardly registers the soft padding of Lena's socked feet across the floor until she reaches up to smooth the offending crinkle away with her fingertips. Kara's eyes drop closed at the gentle press, and she exhales a long held breath, focusing entirely on the point of contact and warmth to ground herself in the moment and chase any final doubts away. "Lena," Kara's voice puffs out into the quiet of their closeness. Lena's hand drifts to brush a stray curl behind Kara's ear before answering, matching her reverent tone. "What is it, darling?" Kara's eyes slide open to take in the gaze fixed on her: Lena promising safety and trust trust with nothing but the vulnerability in her eyes and the press of her hand to Kara's chest, just over where her crest materializes. It's enough to set Kara's heart beating wildly in anticipation.

"I need to tell you something. We promised each other, no more secrets. And there's one more thing I need you to know before we try this again. Our friendship, or you know, us."

Kara can see Lena's response to her words and hesitated. Lena's shoulders immediately tensing and her mouth drawing into a tight line, fighting trembling lips. She places her hand over Lena's on her chest to keep her from pulling away preemptively and to draw the strength she needs for what may come next. "Kara, what-?" "Wait, please. It's not bad, well, I don't think so, it's just, um-" Kara stops to regroup her frantic thoughts.

"Just, um, let me say what I need to say. And, if you don't, you know, feel the same or want anything to change, then none of this will matter."

Lena relaxes minutely, squinting at Kara's phrasing in suspicion and confusion. She lets Kara hold her hand in place. Once she feels Lena's tension release enough to prove she's listening, Kara plunges into her speech.

"Lena, you are my best friend. One of the two most important people to me. When we were fighting," Kara sucks in a deep breath at the lingering pain of their separation. "that was one of the hardest years of my life. All this terrible stuff was happening, and my person, the one I go to when everything feels like its falling apart, was gone. You were gone. I could still hear you and see you, but I couldn't have you. You were gone, and it was all my fault."

Hot tears spill free from Kara's eyes. When Lena reaches up to wipe them away, Kara leans heavily into her warm palm.

"Kara, darling, it's okay. We've forgiven each other. You don't need to apologize again."

A soft laugh escapes Kara's lips before she turns her head to press a kiss to Lena's palm. She speaks into Lena's hand, too nervous to see what Lena's reaction will be to her next words.

"I'm not. I'm just being honest. I lied to you for years. Willfully. Cruelly. Because I was selfish and stupid and scared. Rao, I was so scared to lose you. So, I rationalized lying day after day because I knew you'd leave when I told you. I knew the moment I said the words, it was over. No matter what I did or said, I would lose you."

The apartment was silent but for Kara's sniffles and her overflowing words.

"I did lose you." The whisper carries a year's worth of pain and longing.

"But, me being Supergirl isn't the biggest thing I haven't told you."

Lena's sharp inhale draws a fresh panicked round of tears from Kara who holds tighter to Lena's hand on her chest and forges onward quickly.

"You have to understand why I haven't said anything. It's not that I haven't wanted to; it's all I can think about sometimes. Most days now. But I couldn't. How could I- it would've been-" Kara stops and looks at Lena again, to read the expectation and shock flaring behind her green eyes. "I had to be honest about who I am before I could be honest about how I feel."

Lena joins Kara now with the first of her own tears breaking free to run down her cheeks. Kara can hear the quickening pace of her heart and focuses on the sound.

"Lena, I met you, and my whole world changed. You didn't know me during my first year as Supergirl, didn't see the rage that I could barely control or the reckless way I threw myself at every enemy. I struggled. A lot. But you showed me that we aren't bound by our family's sins. That I could hope and change and-" Kara feels the weight of the word on the tip of her tongue, rolls it around in her head another second and tastes the letters as they spill out for Lena to catch or watch shatter on the ground. "love. I met you, and I realized how deeply and fully I can love. I've lost so much, so many people, and I tend to be very protective of the love I share. But, I've learned that, despite what I've lost, the pain and the loneliness, I can love with my entire self. With all of who I am. With my heart, my body, and my soul. All that I am; all that I've experienced and will experience, everything. I can love through it and find strength in those who love me."

It was now Kara's turn to gently brush the fallen tears from Lena's cheek, one hand still holding firmly to Lena's hand on her chest.

"I've been drawn to you from the first day we met and every day after. I've never been able to fight it. Never wanted to, even when we were on opposites sides. I could never quite see through my love for you. Alex used to find it extremely frustrating, but I think she's finally come around."

Their watery laughs mingle together.

"You asked me once if I knew anything about quantum entanglement. I may know more about it than I admitted. And since that day, I haven't been able to think of you in any other way. I love you, but it isn't just that I love you. I am tethered to you, pulled across the universe to orbit you. The true source of my strength. I am entwined with you on a molecular level and in my soul. My parents sent me here to save me and to protect Kal, but something more, something bigger, maybe Rao himself, brought me to you."

Kara carefully absorbs Lena's body language, her stillness and continued silence. She seems to barely be breathing in the wake of the confession. The only sign Kara has that Lena is still listening is the furious pounding of her heartbeat reverberating through Kara's ears. Normally, even moments ago, the steady rhythm calms Kara, so much that she would take to flying over L-Corp during the past year just to hear the familiar sound. But now it leaves her uncertain and nervous. She fills the empty charged air with rambling, too anxious to wait for Lena to resume her normal functioning.

"I understand you might not feel the same, and after everything, I don't blame you. I mean, I did lie and then call you a villain and treat you pretty bad, so yeah." Kara trails off, cringing at the less than stellar stream of words her mouth chose. "So, um, if you don't want anything to change, then it doesn't have to. It won't. We can keep being friends and having game nights and movie nights. And you can obviously stay here as long as you need. I just, um, needed you to know how I feel."

The tide was open, and Kara couldn't find the ability to lock the flood gates on her mouth. Tears begin a fresh descent in the wake of her expelled anxiety.

"And I feel that I love you. That I am in love with you. I am in love with you, Lena."

Salt brines her lips, and her tongue tastes the clinging mineral as it slides out to wet them. Lena remains stoically still in her position pressed to Kara and swimming in her own trickle of tears. Kara notes the slowing of them, the crystalline droplets that drip from her jaw to the floor. She watches Lena's lips part and the quick flicker of her green eyes over Kara's face, landing first on her own blue eyes, then her nose, her cheeks, the scar above her eyebrow, before settling lower on her trembling lips.

She can't stand the limbo, the electric deja vu and mixture of fear and hope.

"Lena, please say something."

In reflection, Kara knows the moment, the span of seconds between her plead and Lena's reaction, only lasted the length of a heartbeat. But in the beat between her words and Lena's movement, Kara felt the weight of every loss she's suffered, every end. And every beginning. Every beautiful Earth sunrise and blossoming friendship. Anticipation swelled painfully behind her ribcage, her heart preparing to drop or soar.

In that moment, Lena held more power over Kara than any amount of Kryptonite ever could. With one second she could either crush Kara beneath one more disappointment and loss, or she could fuel Kara more powerfully than the yellow sun.

Kara's throat tenses with choking tears as she opens her mouth to withdraw every word to ever steal its way past her lips, but Lena blocks any hasty retreat half-formed with her own lips pressing firmly against Kara's. She pushes forward, bumping their noses and pressing her body impossibly closer, their hands still trapped between the mingling beats of their hearts.

Locked and entwined. Entangled over an invisible crest.

When her lips meet Kara's, soft but sure and insistent, Kara's mind blissfully silences but for the rapid fire pleasure of feeling and Lena. The burning desire in her chest spreading through her limbs and begging for more. More skin, more lips, more pressure. More Lena. All around her, flooding her senses until there's nothing left but the two of them.

It's everything and more than she imagined. Her nose fills with nothing but the sweet perfume Lena wears daily, and the lavender undertones of her own conditioner in Lena's hair. For once, the world quiets in Kara's hypersensitive ears, condensed to the sighs escaping Lena's mouth as she leans further into their kiss. And it's the taste that leaves Kara dazed and desperate for the next kiss. The fruity wine clinging to Lena's tongue and the underlying taste that is distinctly Lena. Unlike anything Kara has ever tasted and addictive from the first touch of Lena's tongue to her own.

They remain in their embrace, erasing any space that crept between them during their fighting and time apart. Even after breaking for air and resting their foreheads together, reveling in one another, they stay close. Kara can't fight the broad smile stretching across her face, and she hears Lena's matching grin in her words, reverently whispered in their shared breaths.

"And I love you, Kara. All of you. Always."

AO3 link

#supergirl #supercorp #supercorp fic #kara danvers #lena luthor

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pitiless-achilles-wept · 3 years

Text

Not dead yet!: Marking my 2-year anniversaries

On Sunday I marked my two-year “cancerversary” of my diagnosis and on Tuesday a member of the support group I co-founded (for young women who are stage 4) died. Like me, she had triple-negative breast cancer. Like me, she was diagnosed stage 4 two years ago. Like me, she had exhausted several types of treatment (because triple-negative is a beast) and was looking for the one that would work. She asked me about Saci (Sassy!) and proposed trying it to her doctor less than a week before she died. Nine days before she passed she joined our Sunday cancer yoga group from bed at the hospital to join our meditation exercises. Like me, she remained confident and positive and absolutely refused to give up hope. (Like me, she also wore her hair purple sometimes.)

There were many things that are unlike about us too. She had two teenage children who now don’t have their mother. She was twelve years older than me and had had Hodgkin’s before she had breast cancer--even worse luck than mine, to triumph over one cancer only to get this diagnosis. Unlike me, she wasn’t strong enough for Saci, the only targeted triple-negative line of treatment, because her body had reacted badly to immunotherapy. She was in the hospital for two weeks with somewhat mysterious symptoms all of which added up to her body shutting down. On Saturday she went home with her family in hospice care. 2 days later she was gone.

It’s not usual for things to go so fast. Typically, doctors, patients, and family members all have some advance warning and patients spend a solid amount of time in hospice care. I am sure that people will ask me why it went that way for her. I’m asking myself why too, since it is so shocking and so entirely unfair. The fact that it can happen that way at all is frightening to me as a fellow patient since it’s the scenario of nightmares. That really could someday be me. No one ever wants to think that--and I cannot live my life focused on it either--but it has to be acknowledged as a possibility.

[More below the cut about memories from 2 years ago today and hopes for the future. Also, an invitation to contribute to some writing if you want.]

Today, January 28th, is the 2-year anniversary of my stage 4 diagnosis. In a way, it feels more significant than my initial cancer news. I had four days being horrified, but thinking that I would get through this as a phase in my life. It would be terrible--I’d have a double mastectomy, scorched-earth chemo, radiation, anything to get rid of the cancer--but then it would be done. On the Monday following my first set of CT scans I learned that that was not true. My lungs were full of tumors. (Later, after lots of waiting, MRIs and biopsies, I'd find that my lymph nodes, spine, and liver were affected too. I still have tumors in all those locations, but no new ones.) I wrote a description of getting that news in an email to a friend over the summer, after I had read Anne Boyer’s "The Undying”:

“The worst part about the lung tumors for me was that my dad had gotten a very early flight and I learned the news while he was in the air. My mom told me we could not text or tell him on the phone, that he would need to be with us both. So I drove to Newark straight from the doctor's office. It was in the teens outside and windy as we slogged to the baggage area where we were to meet. I saw my dad in his warmest and ugliest puffy orange down jacket, looking small in it, forlorn and horribly vulnerable. I fell into his arms, thinking at least that airports were such horrible places, so impersonal and banal, that no one would look twice. 'It's in my lungs,' I said into his shoulder so that I would not have to see his face. I was crying into the jacket that somehow smelled of winter cold even though he had been inside for hours. 'Please, Daddy. Fix it, please.' I spoke like a child because, on some very deep level, I think I really did still believe that my father could fix anything. I was embarrassed, though, and so I tried to stem my tears as he put his big hand on the back of my head and said, 'Oh sweetie, we'll get through this. We will.' I knew that really he could do nothing--and that this was his nightmare of powerlessness--and so I sniffed and blinked and I did not let myself cry again until June.”

Two years later this moment seems as if it just happened. The impact of my diagnosis on everyone dear to me, and especially my parents, is one of the worst things about it for me. We all know that there’s only so much “better” I can get, with the current science, and we’re all playing for time while the research moves forward towards something better, something that would make this a treatable chronic condition. I go back and forth, emotionally, on how likely I think that is and how good my position is for the future. Right now, comparing myself to the group member who died, I feel relatively fortunate, even as chemo exhausts me, I lose every scrap of hair that was ever on my body, and I spend half of my days being almost unable to eat from nausea and loss of taste. I feel glad that I was able to get Saci, that my body has so far stood up to the ceaseless trials I have put it through, with four treatments and surgery (and full-time work and living alone etc. etc.). I feel strong, not scared, even as I feel the emotional toll of terrible loneliness from covid isolation, winter, and carrying a sick body through my days alone.

I do not love the “fight” metaphor because so much of having an illness is completely out of your control and I never want to take myself (or anyone else) to task for “losing.” And so instead I will praise my body for enduring. I will praise myself for my enduring also, in both an emotional and physical way. I checked back in on how I was feeling as this anniversary approached last year and was pleased to see how much better I feel about it now, partly as a function of being in a treatment that is (likely) keeping me stable rather than in the midst of choosing another new one. Here is what I wrote back to my group of friends in November 2019, the run up to the one-year mark:

“I’m feeling like I can’t plan and don’t want to celebrate, like I can’t perform “fine” for the people in my life to spare them from the pain I’m causing by not doing better and feeling horrible about it. Perhaps it would help if I let them know that they didn’t need to perform “fine” for me? I understand the desire to protect me from the obligation to take care of them and appreciate it. But sometimes it can feel like I’m the only one experiencing anger or grief or pain, though I know I’m not. Feeling so isolated in my emotional response provides no catharsis for it. Compassion and sympathy function on the notion of “fellow feeling.” If you’re just out here, feeling by yourself, you can’t expect any comfort. As always, I think of the moment in the Iliad when Priam and Achilles cry together over dead Hector. Grief (and you can grieve for many things aside from a death) is something explicitly to be shared.” So I guess I’ve shared it here. I can do that. And I can do another thing, which is to tell you I love you. People don’t really say it enough and reserve it too entirely for romantic contexts. It’s weird--it’s not like we are wartime rationing love! And every time anyone says it to me it helps. It’s an affirmation that I am integral in some way to people’s lives which, in a society that so greatly valorizes marriage/partnership and children, is something I can be in doubt about.”

There are some things I like here, though, and that I would now like to reiterate and invite you, my far-flung friends, to do for my 2-year milestone. Never has the notion of “fellow feeling” in times of grief and depression hit harder or been more important than during covid. In a way, the nation (or even world) was forced into much the same position, emotionally and practically, that my cancer put me in. People are isolated, unable to perform “fine” and wondering if other people feel the same way, or even if any of us can take care of each other at all. I am here to tell you that you can. Maybe not immediately but--sooner than you think--you can. Emotional reserves may be low but reaching out to support someone else can actually replenish them. You do not have to feel alone, or to feel, alone.

And for me, for this milestone and for the cancer-related depression that I certainly do have, I’d like to invite you to help me, so that I can do the same for you. I invite you to write something about how this milestone feels for you (either about me or not), how it relates to all the other insane things going on in the world or with you (not about me at all), how you felt on the original day when I shared my stage 4 diagnosis (definitely about me)--really anything that is on your mind or in your heart.

“Oh great,” you may think, “the English PhD has asked us to do homework!”. But no! It's up to you what you do. Write in whatever form you want, however long, even anonymously. And if you do I will write you back! Not with grades or comments, but with something to connect to what you shared. It is a way to create fellow-feeling; to open up, connect, heal. With me, yes, but also as the group of extraordinary people who have gone with me so far on this hard road. It’s a very different proposition to support someone through time-limited treatment with a good outcome than it is to sign on for whatever comes next. You are all, truly, pretty extraordinary.

Anyone who wants to send a note or reflection can email me or drop a file or post in this Google drive folder. Like I said, feel free to share whatever and do it anonymously if you’d rather. You can also askbox me here (better than DMS) or submit a post to this blog. (I'm taking a chance with open DMs for now...we'll see if that needs to change.)

I am grateful for all of you every day, but especially today.

Love, Bex

p.s. The title of this post refers to the cinematic classic "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," a film my high school self and friends loved. They, along with other wonderful folks. gave me a "cancerversary" cake with "Not dead yet, motherfucker!" on it this Sunday. p.p.s. The average life expectancy for people who get this diagnosis is 18 months to 3 years. Hitting 5 years would be extraordinary. Starting Year 3 is a huge deal and I have every intention of being extraordinary. (Never been average at anything in my life...I either succeed spectacularly or fail epically!)

#my life as a cancer patient #cancerversary #stage 4 #mbc #metastatic breast cancer #personal #memories #bex writes #writing invitation #quarantine life

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fishoutofcamelot · 3 years

Text

I am once again thinking about a BBCM Mystery Skulls AU. Now, for those of you who are so woefully unaware of what Mystery Skulls is, allow me to set the scene.

(This ended up WAY longer than I was expecting, so I decided to put it all under the cut-off)

Merlin, Gwen, and Arthur have been friends since high school. Gwen is a spunky yet affectionate employee at a book store and despite her cutesy pastel aesthetic she has a bizarre interest in the occult/paranormal.

She came up with the idea for the three of them to form a ghost-hunting troop, and they call themselves the Mystery Skulls. And while Merlin and Arthur aren't nearly as invested in the idea as she is, since this is pretty much her hyperfixation, they are both very supportive nonetheless and enjoy going on adventures together.

Gwen has a pet lizard named Kilgharrah, and it's been in the family for a very long time, since before she was even born. Are lizards supposed to be able to live that long? She's never really given it much thought, but sometimes it seems almost...intelligent. Unnaturally so. Nevertheless, the weird and unexplainable is kinda their whole brand, and Kilgharrah has become something of a mascot for them, so they all let it slide.

Arthur is the Fred of the group. Muscular and almost-but-not-quite-a-himbo, he's the one driving the van with a cocky grin. Fearless, popular, everyone loves him, and besides some family issues he's got a good life. He and Gwen are in a relationship, and they're very lovey-dovey about it. He doesn't know much about the paranormal, certainly not as much as his girlfriend, but the idea of punching a ghost in the face is very alluring to him.

And then there's Merlin. He lives with his uncle Gaius due to...unexplained family drama, but the two of them have a good thing going. Gaius runs a mechanic shop on the edge of town, but his age is starting to catch up to him so Merlin has slid in as his replacement. Which makes sense, considering Merlin's near prodigy level of skill with machines. He's the one who fixed up an abandoned beat-up van and offered it up for their ghost-hunting endeavors. He quite likes Kilgharrah, ever a fan of pets and animals and the like, and Kilgharrah appears to begrudgingly return the sentiment.

Merlin has been third-wheeling Arthur and Gwen since high school. But he's not bitter about it, really he's not. He definitely doesn't feel left out, doesn't feel like an outsider, doesn't constantly worry that they would prefer it if he wasn't around, doesn't constantly feel forgotten and cast aside as he watches them get so absorbed in their two-way whirlwind passion. Not at all. So Merlin sits and smiles, because he truly is happy for his friends, and he pretends the loneliness doesn't bother him.

One day, they decide to investigate a mysterious cave. There are rumors of it being haunted by some kind of demonic entity. Merlin, as always, says it's a bad idea and they should turn back. Arthur, as always, teasingly calls him a coward. Gwen and Arthur exchange excited grins at the prospect of facing a real ghost. Merlin watches them wistfully, longingly. He fails to notice the way that Kilgharrah is getting increasingly anxious the closer they get to the cave.

Merlin has a really bad feeling about this cave, and a gut feeling tells him to go back to the van and head home. No one heeds his instincts.

There are two diverging paths in the cave, and Merlin dreads the moment that Arthur will inevitably suggest they split up. They usually split up between Merlin and Kilgharrah, and Arthur and Gwen. Because of course Arthur will want to pair off with his girlfriend.

Arthur notices that Merlin is scared, which makes sense because Merlin is always scared during their investigations. Gwen is sympathetic yet encouraging like she usually is - but notices that Merlin is more frightened than usual, so she suggests that Arthur pair off with Merlin instead this time, while she takes Kilgharrah. This doesn't make Merlin feel any better.

Arthur and Merlin head down one path in the cave, which eventually leads them to a cliff. All the while, Merlin keeps hearing whispers. Whispers that speak of horrible, macabre, terrible things, and all those whispers keep rattling in his mind like sharp-edged marbles. Arthur says he hears nothing at all, and they both conclude that Merlin is just hearing things.

He is not, in fact, just hearing things.

Arthur comes to the edge of the cliff and peers over to see the sharp, jagged stalagmites at the bottom. He beckons Merlin to come over and check out this cool view - but Merlin can't.

Merlin is...frozen. Petrified. Unable to move because of all the whispers attacking his mind from all angles, pounding into him with a righteous headache. His thoughts have turned to static, and his vision is quickly growing dark. Starting at his fingertips, his arm begins to go numb. The numbness gradually crawls deeper and further into his body, until he knows no more.

The spirit of the cave, the demon, the entity, whatever it is...it sapped into him through his misery. Through his loneliness. Through his pain. His pain has made him vulnerable for possession, and the demon plans to take full advantage of this.

The possession begins at the fingertips, its demonic wispy presence infecting him from the hand up. By the time its control has reached all the way to Merlin's face, it has enough strength to surge Merlin's body forward while Merlin himself is unconscious.

The half of Merlin's face that is still free from possession remains slack and unaware, but the half that has fallen into the demon's clutches is alight with a grin. It pushes Merlin's hand into Arthur's chest and gives a powerful shove.

As Arthur falls from the cliff, he doesn't have time to notice how Merlin's normally blue eyes have turned a sickly green, nor to notice the jaundiced hue pervading his friend's flesh, nor the spectral mist clouding all around Merlin's body in a haze.

No. As Arthur falls, as Arthur crashes into the ground and feels a stalagmite rip into his chest, all he sees is the half of his friend's face that has been contorted into a demonic smile.

Meanwhile, Gwen and Kilgharrah's path led them down a different part of the cave, and eventually they reach the bottom of a deep chasm filled with stalagmites.

Gwen spots Arthur at the top of a nearby cliff and waves up to him, but her excitement is short-lived as she watches him fall. Watches a stalagmite pierce his chest. Watches blood splatter everywhere.

It is said that if someone wishes for something passionately and profoundly enough as they die, then their dying wish might be granted. In this case, Arthur wishes more than anything for Gwen not to see him die. To not remember this. To just forget.

His wish is granted, and Gwen faints from the sheer force of his dying wish turning all her thoughts into static.

Kilgharrah sees the demon at the top of the cliff. Sees the wretched beast puppeteering Merlin's flesh, and snarls.. How dare that horrible thing possess one of his humans!

You see, Kilgharrah is no ordinary lizard. But rather, a very ancient and very powerful dragon masquerading as such, tasked with the protection of Gwen's lineage - the reasons for which only he is old enough to know or remember.

But while he is supposed to look after just Gwen, he has taken quite a liking to her friends as well. All three of them are under his protection, and it would be a disgrace to let this pitiful demon steal Merlin away under his watch.

So Kilgharrah unfurls from his false lizard form and embraces his true form - that of a massive dragon - and does whatever he can to purge the demon from Merlin's vessel.

Unfortunately, there's only one thing he can do. Since the demon has so vehemently lodged itself in Merlin's arm, quickly spreading out through the rest of his body, Kilgharrah has only one option left to stop the demonic infection.

Hating himself for it all the while, Kilgharrah bites off Merlin's arm.

A day later, Gwen wakes up in the hospital. Not only can she not remember watching Arthur die, but she can't remember anything to do with Arthur at all. She wakes up in the hospital with no recollection of how she got there, her pet lizard a blood-spattered coil on her lap, and with everyone telling her that her best friend Merlin is in surgery.

When Merlin wakes up, he also has no recollection of what happened to Arthur. He remembers going into the cave, splitting up...but everything goes blank after that. He doesn't know where Arthur is. Doesn't know what happened to his arm.

And he certainly doesn't know why he has become so debilitatingly afraid of Kilgharrah. Kilgharrah, who is by all accounts an ordinary lizard, but in Merlin's dreams transforms into a massive beast with bloody teeth.

Gwen gets a glazed look in her eyes and suffers horrible migraines whenever anyone mentions Arthur, so Merlin eventually gives up trying to remind her. Her memory problems have made her a lot more...scatter-brained, and although Merlin gets easily spooked he's willing to go to a thousand seances if it'll help Gwen act like her old self again.

He also tries to go back to the cave, but it has mysteriously vanished from where he knows it was meant to be. Gwen says that if a place is haunted by something powerful enough, it can change its own location, or can make it so that it will only be found if it wants to be found.

But Merlin refuses to give up. He uses the spare parts lying around his uncle's shop and builds himself a mechanical prosthetic, and loses himself in a never-ending quest to find his friend, to figure out what happened to his arm, and to find a way to restore Gwen's memories.

When Arthur wakes up, he discovers he has turned into one of the same ghosts he and his friends used to hunt. He looks down and sees his body, bloody and broken and cold as it lays impaled on a stalagmite. He can't look at it for long without feeling sick.

He also feels angry. Very, very angry. While his death had happened fast, too fast, he can clearly remember Merlin pushing him. Merlin, who he thought was his best friend. Merlin, who he grew up with. Merlin, who has always been there for him.

Surging with betrayal and fury, Arthur's now spectral body floats out of the cave. He has only one objective on his mind: vengeance.

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vnights · 3 years

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Muse notes: Six’s timeline.

The timeline for lil’ ole Six. Just like for FNAF, I follow things exclusively by what I can make/interpret from the games alone, with no outside sources. (The comics and such.) I’m also guessing/assuming random bits and pieces since, within the games, AS FAR AS I’M AWARE, these certain details aren’t really explained, and LN’s logic tends to be loose to begin with. Enjoy??

SHORT VERSION: Six is taken from her normal home and sent through hell, jumping from The Nest in Very Little Nightmares, to The Pale City in Little Nightmares 2, to The Maw in Little Nightmares. Full versions below.

Humble Beginnings: ‘Six’ resided in a rather small house in a culdesac with many other kids her age or older, yet didn’t know a single one of them. Her mother, though loving, was unintentionally negligent, and often let Six wander and do whatever she pleased, simply as long as she behaved and cleaned up after herself. Her father was a very busy man, and was away at work for most of her home-life. Something Six was raised with, however, was knowledge and solutions to Stranger-Danger, as her mother was incredibly paranoid of the very thing that was soon to plague their family. Six was taught by mother-dearest that she should never give her name to strangers, always be wary of strangers, no matter their age, and feel no shame in causing a scene or fighting back if someone’s trying to harm or take her away, even if they’re a friend or family member. Simple values given to protect herself. Six was also given the gift of self-preservation, something she would learn to utilize for safety in the near future.

Waiting for her father to come home passed midnight, Six was, according to her mother, in the family room watching television anticipating his arrival, when she, and many other vulnerable children in the area, seemed to simply vanish. They were each taken by an otherworldly entity, and brought to a distorted, falsely-sized, sickly realm, where their small group began to plan for their survival. Keeping her mothers lessons in mind, she hadn’t introduced herself by name like the other kids, and only allowed them to know non-important personal details about her in order to address her. She was 6 years old at the time.

Very Little Nightmares: Six’s group was split apart and picked off one-by-one over the course of a whole year, eventually leaving Six alone inside a mansion known as The Nest. Inside her new isolation and loneliness, Six took all the tactics she learned through passed endeavors, and made a break for her escape. Eventually, she comes across a girl in a yellow raincoat, thus initiating the following events of the game. By the time her raincoat-sporting acquaintance unfortunately dies at the bottom of the cliff, Six is able to take the raincoat left behind on her journey across the water. She thinks of this raincoat as the girls final act of selflessness, continuing to aid her even in death.

Six spends quite a long time on the water before finding land, a small beach-like scene that leads up to a very calm, peaceful forest. This is where she stations herself for up and over a year, living off of berries and fruits, and stealing off of much larger threats until her rather big section of land begins to turn up dry of edible produce, forcing her to expand her horizons in search of more.

Little Nightmares 2: Eventually, Six finds herself caught in a trap deep inside the woods, which, to release herself, she slips out of her raincoat and abandons it, leaving the trap-setter to find said raincoat, and throw it out. This is a terribly emotional loss for her, and it’s not the first time she let’s herself into a position like that. Six inches much too close to a foreign area of the woodlands and ends up getting caught by The Hunter, being held captive in a basement for 29 long days. During this time, she was terribly abused, and used as The Hunters outlet for his aggression, often coming into her cell-like-room to throw loud, destructive tantrums, and leave her cowering beneath the dresser. During one of these events, he threw a heavy metal object into room before storming out, which ended up being a music-box, something Six grew very attached to for its comforting tune. This was her only source of joy at this time. Just before a full month, her room is broken into, introducing her to Mono, a young boy who’s wandered into The Hunters home. Six and Mono team up and make off like bandits, managing to escape into the Pale City, where they both triumph and fail many times, eventually leading to a reward of some kind. Her raincoat is found, and some peace of mind is restored, being back with such a familiar, comforting item.

Throughout their time together, though growing close, Six grows desperate, and eventually finds each and every loss or failure becoming more and more frustrating and upsetting, no matter how big or small. After being taken for the final time by the Thin Man, she is cruely deformed and placed back inside that cold basement room, left with nothing but her thoughts, fear, and once beloved music-box. Upon feeling betrayed and heartbroken over Mono’s destructive and painful actions, Six is sent into an uncontrollable rage, which never truly leaves, even after she is cured. She begins to realize that she is currently incapable of helping herself, and Mono is only influencing this. The road ahead is dark and uneasy, and in order to survive, she has to find her own strength and will to continue. Self-preservation, if you will. Six proves to herself she can carry on by ‘leaving Mono behind,’ thus removing all fall-back from her life, and forcing her to power on. This impulsive decision was most definitely encouraged by her anger, pain, and fear, and due to said fear, Six refused to allow herself to regret it.

Little Nightmares: Six once again ages another year until she is at some point, once again, taken hostage and placed upon The Maw, where she manages to escape her cage, and spends much time simply surviving within its dark depths. This is when the games events take place, officially wrapping up little Six’s timeline. During those 3 years and whatever months, she has forgotten her name, her parents faces, and her primary goal for returning home. All she knows now is, she doesn’t belong here.

#Muse #muse hc #muse hcs #muse notes #timeline #LN #Little Nightmares #Muse: Six #//finally got this done #//I’m in a big LN mood today??? idk I like six bro’s :/#spoilers #spoiler warning

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mercyxkilling · 3 years

Text

memory meme

@emptyvictory asked: ☽ - a memory of their father

it was getting dark, the sky painted with the brilliant oranges and pinks, slowly fading into purples as the waning sunlight began to disappear and make way for the night. it was fairly clear with little cloud cover, and the air was warm without being stifling. it should have been a perfect evening.

but mercy couldn’t enjoy any of it. she was restless, anxious, and wanted to be anywhere but home. her mother would still be awake, probably drunk by now, and if she walked through the front door mercy knew that miserable bitch would start in on her. it would escalate and she’d end the night in her room, throat raw from screaming with tears streaming down her face. it was pathetic really. no matter how much she tried to steel herself from that woman and her verbal and physical onslaughts mercy never could seem to find the right kind of armor to wear into battle. it was a shame it was so late; she’d have gone to benny’s house to hang out if she could. there were times that she’d stay over, the two of them awkwardly sharing a bed because they both refused to sleep on the floor, pretending as if the circumstances that drove her there weren’t so dire and awful. and no matter how sad and vulnerable she might have felt, benny never once tried to use that as a foothold to get into her pants. instead he was supportive and respectful, though mercy knew she was toeing a line each time she’d crawl under the covers and ask to be held. there was nothing romantic about it to her, it was only a reassurance that she was capable of being cared for by another human being, but... well. she wasn’t stupid, either. maybe it was better she couldn’t head over there now. there were boundaries she wanted to keep in place and she refused to let their friendship to be breached because she was sending all the wrong signals.

so instead she found herself out in the garage and under the hood of the nova, trying to figure out what needed to be replaced or repaired so she could finally get it up and running. it had sat out on some lot in the midst of weeds and decay and the moment she laid her eyes on it she knew that this was going to be her dream car. most might have thought her odd to have such a fascination with vehicles, but her dad encouraged her and told her she could damn well like whatever she wanted to, and that was good enough for her. his word was law. he was a cop after all.

the sound of a car pulling up into the driveway made her turn to look over her shoulder. speak of the devil. when he got out and thumped the car door shut with his hip, she noticed that he had two cups in each hand, and mercy lifted a brow and cocked her head in confusion. why did he need two coffees? and at this time of night?

“hey, kid i kinda figured you’d still be up, so i got you somethin’. coffee?” he lifted his left hand, then said, “or tea?” and lifted the other.

“uhh. tea?”

after all, she couldn’t imagine her dad ever drinking tea even once in his life. it just didn’t suit him and his gruff demeanor.

“wrong. it’s coffee. they’re both coffee. take it.”

“ugh. daaaad,” she groaned, but still couldn’t help but grin, especially when her father looked so damn pleased with himself and his terrible jokes.

“all right, all right. i’m sorry. now. since you’re out here,” he grunted as he sank down in a nearby lawn chair that they’d had set up ages ago for nights like this. “i assume your mom’s lost in the sauce tonight and you’re tryin’ to ride it out?”

“mmhmm,” she nodded as she sat in the chair next to him, both of them staring ahead at the rusty old nova rather than each other. but mercy was thankful that her dad talked to her this way. something about it made it easier.

“i’m sorry, kid. how’re you holdin’ up?”

“all right, i guess. just tired.”

“hi, tired. i’m dad.”

“oh my god, if you keep doing this i’ll never talk to you again, dad, i swear.”

he laughed and reached out to affectionately pat her on the shoulder. he wasn’t very big on hugs, but at least he made an attempt to let his daughter know that he loved her, regardless of how bad he was at doing it.

“okay, okay. i’m done now. for real this time.” the man cradled the coffee cup in his hands for a moment, then brought it to his lips to take a swig. he grimaced, then spoke again. “terrible stuff. you should try it.”

“i’ve never understood that. why would i drink it now after you just told me it was gross?”

“because i want ya to see how bad it is for yourself.”

“no. that’s stupid.”

“yeah, i guess that’s fair.”

and then they were quiet. it was easy to talk about things on the surface, the superficial and unimportant garbage that surrounded them each day, but... it wasn’t quite so easy to tackle the deeper issues. neither of them knew how to handle emotions, either experiencing them or helping another through them, though it didn’t mean that either of them didn’t want to. it was just starting the conversation that was particularly hard, at least for mercy.

she set the cup down on the concrete floor of the garage and started tugging on a stray dark curl. then her knee started to bounce and she moved on to biting at her fingernails.

“hey, hey, hey. stop that. talk to me. what’s on your mind?”

she didn’t know what to say or how to say it, so mercy just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“dad. do you think i’m weird?”

“definitely.”

“no, dad--that’s not--i meant--”

“mercy. of course you’re weird. but i don’t mean that in a bad way. in fact, i think it’s what makes ya goddamn amazin’. when you’re a kid the world tells ya that ya hafta fit in with everyone else. that bein’ different is bad and makes ya a monster or somethin’. but when ya get old the world says, ‘fuck ya, individualism is the way to go,’ and then ya realize... no matter how much ya don’t want it, you’re just as average as everyone else. but you, kid. you,” he reached out and grabbed her hand to pull it away from her mouth, partly to stop her from gnawing what was left of her fingernails off and partly because he just wanted to be supportive. “you got somethin’ special about ya. and i’m so damn proud of ya for knowin’ who ya are this early in life. not a lot of people get that luxury.”

“but mom said--”

“fuck. her. mercy... ya know you can’t believe a goddamn word that comes out of that woman’s mouth. she’s a fuckin’ snake and wants to cut ya down because she’s threatened by ya. that fire that drives ya forward no matter what happens, to keep pushin’ through... she’s jealous of that. scared of it even.”

mercy turned to look at her father askance, hiding behind her thick tresses so he wouldn’t try to conceal anything from her if he knew she was watching. despite all that caustic bite to his tone she could see in his eyes that there was a profound sadness there, and perhaps even a bit of loneliness, too. he had to have loved her once. and she might have been a different person then, someone who wasn’t a cold-hearted bitch capable of destroying others without a second thought. he must have been in so much pain, but he never talked to her about any of it. who was going to be there for him to lean on when he needed it?

mercy opened her mouth to speak, but her father started talking again before she could say anything at all.

“listen to me, kid. ya owe her nothin’. ya hear me? absolutely nothin’. and i know how much ya wanna hang on to the idea that she could change, and i know ya’ve tried to make her proud, but... there’s no pleasin’ that woman. and it doesn’t matter anyway. the one person that ya hafta live with for the rest of yer life is you. not me, not yer brother, not yer mom, not benny... it’s you, kid. so ya need to focus on makin’ yaself happy before anything else. i don’t want ya chasin’ after yer mother’s approval when ya could be spendin’ time makin’ yer mark on the world. and my god, mercy, i know yer gonna change things and leave the world in better shape than ya found it.”

she couldn’t stop the tears that were streaming down her face, but they were happy tears. how long had it been since she could say she’d cried because she felt such warmth, affection, and genuine fucking happiness? her dad had never opened up like this to her before, but she was glad that he did tonight. mercy needed to hear all of that, to know that he believed in her. as long as she had her dad in her corner she knew she could do anything.

“thanks, dad.”

“any time, weirdo.”

“you’re such a dick.”

but she still laughed as she playfully punched him in the arm.

“that is very true. now. while i’m here and we’re both still up...let’s take a look at that engine. i think the camshafts might need replaced. whaddya think?”

that was very much like her dad, to deflect once things got too heavy or emotional to deal with. but mercy was actually pretty thankful for it since she didn’t want to sit in silence bawling her eyes out next to him. she’d rather do something with more purpose. so with that she got to her feet and made her way over to the nova to look under her hood again.

“you’re probably right. crankshafts look all right, though...”

and for a good long while they worked together, dissecting the engine and deciding what needed fixed or replaced, so they could make a list of parts to get in the morning. because that’s what you did when things were broken. you swapped out what didn’t work for the things that did, and you just kept moving forward.

and now she had the extra incentive to do just that.

#emptyvictory #meme #so uh #this #ended up being way longer than i ever intended it to be #but #i've never really been able to write anything about her dad #so #i kinda went ham

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cosmicjoke · 4 years

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Ash, Yut-Lung, and the Fundamental Difference between them:

Okay, so I rewrote this, better able to get into words what I originally intended to say.

Something that gets talked about a lot are the similarities between Ash and Yut-Lung, and the theory that if Eiji hadn’t come into Ash’s life, Ash himself might have become as monstrous as Yut-Lung. What makes them similar gets discussed plenty. They both had brutal, abusive upbringings, they were both trained and utilized by their abusers to be efficient killers, etc… But I want to focus on what makes Ash fundamentally different from Yut-Lung, and use that difference to argue for why I don’t think Ash ever would have become like him, with or without Eiji’s influence.

That fundamental difference is this. Ash chose, and was able to choose, love, while Yut-Lung chose, and was only ever able to choose, hate.

That may not sound like a lot, but it is an objective truth about these two characters that, when boiled down to their most essential selves, means everything.

Ash always had a heart open enough to receive and give love, despite the cruelty and miserable brutality of his life. Because of that openness of heart, when he was offered kindness, when he was offered friendship, he was able to accept it, and trust in it. That’s remarkable, when one considers Ash had been given, in his young life, every reason NOT to trust in anything or anyone. When he’d been given every reason to be wary, and suspicious of everyone, and to suspect ulterior motives behind every, friendly gesture. And Ash does often approach people at first with that wariness and suspicion. He approaches everyone at first with caution. He would be a fool not to, given his life experiences. But even still, with all of that fear and uncertainty, ingrained in him by years of enduring the most severe and traumatic kind of abuses, he is ABLE to TRUST. That is simply extraordinary.

It’s often Shorter who is given as the first, real example of a person who Ash was able to befriend and trust, but rather, I think, it’s actually Blanca. Blanca’s later betrayal aside for the moment, let’s really look at this relationship, and what it tells us about Ash.

Blanca came into Ash’s life when he was 14. Ash, at that point, had been trapped within the clutches of Dino for at least three years, possibly four, depending on whether Marvin had found Ash at ten or eleven. Ash was repeatedly raped and abused by Marvin and Froggy before being sold by Marvin to Dino to work as a child prostitute in Dino’s underground sex trafficking ring posing as a seafood restaurant, drugged and passed around between high powered clients, treated in every way as a disposable commodity, before being chosen by Dino to act as the man’s personal sex slave, raped God only knows how many times, before Dino decided to turn Ash into his own, personal weapon as well, utilizing Ash’s brilliance and natural abilities for his own, personal gain. While all of this was happening, Ash continued to be preyed upon and targeted by Marvin, who continued to rape Ash whenever the fancy took him. Ash’s experiences previous to that were in Cape Cod, where Ash was repeatedly and brutally raped by his baseball coach, blamed for it by the police, and, after his father’s abject failure to protect him from said abuse, was forced to kill his abuser to save his own life.

Well, just think about all of that for a moment please. Really THINK about it.

It’s the most horrific fate imaginable for any child. Truly. It’s beyond words. Beyond any logical explanation. Beyond any kind of reason. It’s a hellish nightmare, almost unspeakable in its grotesqueness.

So, enter Blanca.

When Ash first meets Blanca, he doesn’t trust him. No one can blame him for this. At this point in his life, what reason would Ash have to trust anyone? Ever? In truth, it’s a wonder that Ash is even still functioning in any kind of meaningful way. It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone completely insane, or simply committed suicide. With the kind of hell his life has become, like he later tells Eiji, it would have been a mercy simply to die. It would have been better, than to live the life he was living. One can assume, then, that only Ash’s veracity of spirit and powerful mind kept him from perishing. From giving in yet to total despair. Ash always was and always would be a fighter. But after suffering the kinds of sickening abuses he did, after experiencing the true depths of evil for which mankind is capable, enduring the worst kinds of atrocities one could commit against a child, Ash’s ability to trust in any person ever again should have been destroyed. It should have been.

But it wasn’t. Beyond all reason, beyond all expectation, beyond all probability, it wasn’t.

Ash comes to trust in Blanca. A trust which runs deep enough that Ash is able to reveal his true self around him. A trust deep enough that he can look up to Blanca with the honest admiration that any boy with a normal life would his father, or older brother. A trust which runs deep enough that Ash is able to look at Blanca with a genuine hopefulness.

Blanca finds Ash after he’s been raped by Marvin, and Ash, thinking Blanca is there to do more of the same, succumbs to a full blown panic attack. He stops breathing, his eyes go blank with terror as he can only fall paralyzed with horror and resignation, waiting for the inevitable.

But Blanca doesn’t rape Ash. He doesn’t assault him. He instead holds him, and coaxes him to breathe, and lets Ash cling to his chest while he cries. He comforts Ash, and Ash LETS him.

Later, while still in the hotel where Ash has so recently been brutalized, Ash opens up to Blanca, and tells him about the abuses he’s suffered at the hands of Marvin and Dino, and again he cries, expressing his pain and rage. And then, maybe most remarkable of all, Ash shows Blanca who he really is. He laughs freely and with the abandon of a little boy at how hopelessly square Blanca is. He completely lets down his guard and simply trusts this giant, dangerous man whom he’s known only a scant, few days. He lets Blanca see his pain, and his loneliness, and his despair. And he lets Blanca see how much of a child he still, truly is.

Later still, when Blanca rescues Ash from Marvin, and Ash looks up at Blanca with so much open admiration, we see again the depth of Ash’s trust. He believes completely in Blanca at this point. He believes completely that Blanca won’t hurt him. He believes completely that Blanca cares.

After asking in a tone of pure reverence how it is Blanca was able to break Marvin’s wrist so easily, and after Blanca explains that he’ll show him, Ash looks up at him with the most naked and vulnerable hope, and it’s one of the most heartbreaking panels of Ash there is, for how completely you can see his trust in this man. Exemplified too by how readily Ash goes with Blanca afterwards, following on his heels, sticking to him like a shadow, showing him the kind of trust a child would a parent.

All it took was Blanca showing Ash compassion once, for Ash’s wariness and suspicion to fall away, and for Blanca to help him once, for Ash to trust in him fully.

After years of the most horrific and terrible abuse imaginable, after years of being lied to, betrayed, failed, and used by every single adult in his life, Ash, with unreasonable quickness, trusts in Blanca, and believes in him. Believes in his honesty. Believes in his kindness.

This trust is later extended to Shorter, and Skipper, and Eiji, etc... The moment they showed to Ash genuine kindness, he took them at their word, and trusted in them without qualm. With everything precious to him.

Ultimately, it was Ash’s openness of heart and willingness to believe in people, despite all that had happened to him, that allowed him to find so many loving, caring people in his life. His own ability to trust, and his own capacity to love, which made it possible for him to make so many genuine, kindhearted friends who were so loyal to him, and who loved him just as much. It started with Ash’s ability to love, trust and believe in others. It started with Ash’s willingness to open his heart up to them.

And herein lies the fundamental difference between Ash and Yut-Lung.

Yut-Lung’s heart was never so open as to trust in anyone the way Ash was able to trust in those mentioned above. After the abuse Yut-Lung suffered, his heart shuttered closed and refused to open for anyone, and thus he became consumed by his own hate and lust for revenge. He wasn’t able to accept or believe in the shows of kindness offered him, the way Ash was. And in his inability to accept or believe in kindness, Yut-Lung lashed out in petty jealousy for the way Ash’s open heart drew friendship. loyalty, and love from others, trying in that petty jealousy to take those things away from Ash, enraged that his own, closed heart was unable to inspire the same.

Ash was ABLE to believe in love, in spite of the torments he’d suffered through. In spite of the pain, loneliness and trauma of his life, Ash was ABLE to love and be loved in return. Despite it all, defying all odds and expectations, Ash was able to believe in other people. Yut-Lung, suffering much the same, was only ever able to believe in hate.

#Banana Fish #Ash Lynx #Yut-Lung #Meta #Commentary #Akimi Yoshida #Manga #Anime

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calliecat93 · 3 years

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Top 15 Star Trek TOS Episodes (Part One)

I debated on doing this until I did the second watchthrough/reviews... but heck with it. I don’t see it changing too terribly much after and I thought it would be fun. It’s been a fun ride with TOS and I didn’t expect to love it, but here we are. It ain’t a perfect show, but a good one with good characters, strong themes, and just the right amount of intrigue and silliness. I had a blast watching it, but let’s face it, some episodes are better than others. Some are goofy but enjoyable, some... well, they tried. Everyone’s got what they like and dislike, and these are the ones that I liked best. All is only my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. So to finally cap off this watchthrough before I start the second one and also plunge into TNG, here is the first half of my favorite TOS episodes~

#15. Bread and Circuses

I didn’t realize this until I saw someone else point it out... but this is essentially Star Trek’s version of The Hunger Games, only combined with Roman gladiators. We have our main trio get captured by the government whom have already caused another Starfleet captain to succumb and he sentenced his entire crew to death. Thus we have Kirkg ivent he option of either doing the same, or he can remain in defiance and risk Spock and McCoy’s lives. Either way, he loses. It’s a good episode, showing Kirk given one of the most sadistic choices that you can give him... and yet he doesn’t break. Oh he gets plenty of hardship. He makes the choice to keep the crew form beaming down, which morally is te best decision. After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Kirk, unlike Captain Merik, chooses to preserve his cew’s safety as a captain should. Whatever happens to him makes no difference... but because Spock and McCoy are with him, him making that chocie means that they suffer theconsequences as they are not only thrust into gladitorial combat for their lives, bt Kirk is forced to watch and can do nothing. He tries to when Bones is down, but restrained form doing so. But even then he doesn’t back down or even consider it. Merik may have thrown away his whole crew, but like Hell Kirk is going to and concerning the other two, he accepts execution after Spock breaks the rules to save Bones, emphasizing the point more. It;s a really god episode to show just how much Kirk truly follows that responsibility.

We also have some great Spock/McCoy content here as the episode does put their relationship int he spotlight a bit. Their relationship is the most interesting to me so this was a great one. They bicker pretty much all episode with even the other guy they got caught with asking if they’re enemies, which Kirk just replies that even those tow don’t know. But I think if there’s any doubt that they don’t care about each other, this one promptly shuts it up. Spock, despite knowing that he can’t, defends McCoy and saves his life. This leads tot he excellent scene int he cells where Spock is trying to figure a way out, despite fully well knowing that he can’t break through the bars. Logically it would be pointless to continue fruitless efforts, but he tries to anyways. When McCoy tries to thank him for saving him, with Spock both hiding behind his usual logical shell while still focusing on the futile escape effort. Thus we get McCoy confronting him about being afraid of living and not knowing how to handle even one warm feeling. It’s a really good scene performed excellently by Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley and is just a really good insight into their relationship. I’ll keep from going into any huge detail for if that review project makes it this far, but still an excellently performed scene, especially when it caps off with McCoy simply saying that he’s worried about Jim too, the one thing that the two CAN agree on without doubt.

This is at fifteen mainly because of a few small factors. I only know a few things about Roman history so anything about it went over my head and the ending also baffled me likely due to that. We also have it implied that Kirk did... it with a slave girl. Mind you the slave girl went to him and again it’s implied. But that still makes me feel... very uncomfortable once the girl did it under orders, and therefore not fully without consent. I’m gonna have to watch it again when I dot he more in-depth analysis, but... yeah. The ending also leaves without a real resolution to the planet, remaining as they are until they eventually fall just like the actual Rome did. I guess that was the intention, but... just kinda sucks that nothing truly got accomplished. Still from a character standpoint, it was a really good one for the Triumvirate and a great watch.

#14. For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

So for those who have been following me since I began this venture, you know that McCoy is my absolute favorite character. So when we got to a McCoy-centric episode, I was excited! And overall, it was a good one. Not one of the best, but perfectly fine. We have McCoy diagnosed with a terminal illness and given a year to live. When he and the other two transport onto a meteor-esque spaceship, they encounter the priestess Natira and her people headed for essentially a promised land witht he ship controleld by The Oracle. As Kirk and Spock try to learn more, McCoy is left with Natira who has grown smittenw ith hima dn wishes for him to remain as her mate. Sadly, I feel like this pisode wasted a lot of potential. Bones, the Chief Medical Officer who is always taking care of everyone else, is now the sick one and has only a eya rleft, if event hat. But the only real signs of this is he’s a little weaker than normal, which tbf it was just diagnoses so he may not have the most severe symptoms bu it also kidna makes the fact feel... less urgent. Using that time to set up himw ith Natira also felt wasted since we have the potential of a very emotional story where McCoy sis truggling with his lfie and the others have to come to terms that e’s going to die and likely struggle to find some way, any way to save him... and we spend it with a Girl of the Week who we’ll never see again and on a romance that while it is kinda sweet, ultimately leaves zero impact. It just feels like there was so much wasted potential and the emotional weight that you DO get... it feels less strong if you don’t know McCoy’s history. We know it now cause of supplementary material and such, butt he audiece of the 60’s certainly didn’t, hence why this is fourteen on the list.

That being said, the episode is still good. What makes up for the lack of impact about McCoy’s status and lack of history is DeForest Kelley. The man put his all into this episode (he did in every episode, but especially here when he gets ot be center stage), expressing McCoy’s sadness and loneliness as he talks to Natira perfectly. You can feel that loneliness, that longingness for what Natira’s offering him, that need to just have... some kind of happiness and intimacy that he was just never able to truly have, especially now. He just feels so... sad and vulnerable. Even though we’ve seen him interact romantically with women before, he comes off as so nervous and uncertain about what he’s doing. Like it’s been so long since he’s been intimate with anyone that he is at an utter loss on what to do with it. Natira essentially takes the lead and is even perfectly fine with caring for him in the limited time that he has left. There is someone willing to be with him and to love him for the first time in who knows how long and willing to continue to do so despite him dying... is it any shock that he chose to remain? And even then he did so in part to save Kirka and Spock from death when they got caught... and even then when he found out how to get the ship on it’s actual course and out oft he way of danger, he called them immediately for help. Yeah he almost got his brain fried for it which tbf he didn’t know would happen, but it still shows how selfless he really is, still placing others well-being before his own. As a good doctor would and should.

We also have Kirk and Spock’s reactions to the news. Kirk only knows because Chapel pretty much forced Bones to tell him and the man looks like a kicked puppy when told. He even tells Bones that he doesn’t have to go on the mission with them when normally he’s all gung-ho about dragging him along, only allowing it because this time Bones actually wants to go. Spock finds out after they all get zapped with Bones taking longer to wake up/being briefly unrsponsive, where Kirk admits it to him. Spock is noticibly concerned, emphasized when he holds onto McCoy’s arm for a good 30 seconds just to help the man sit up. McCoy can already tell that he knows before Kirk say it...a dn chooses to just let it be and get back to the matter at hand. Then there’s McCoy after he made his decision and faces the two for as far as he knew the final time. Kirk argues with him and is all but begging him to come back since otherwise he’s gonna die, which McCoy refuses since...well, he’s gonna either die from collision or being shot down, or he dies of xenopolycythemia. Either way he’s on borrowed time, so why not at least let him live it hacving a shot at happiness? Kirk is upset. Spock is as upset as a Vulcan will express. McCoy’s not happy about it, but firm in his decision... so firm it kinda makes the end where he does decide to go back kind of a juxtaposition, but I ain’t complaining either. The cure is also too convenient, but again not complaining. It doens’t seem like that much of an episode at first glance, but once you sit down and reallye xamine it even if you know nothign about McCoy’s backstory or peornsal life, it relaly leaves an impact. Again, a testemant to Kelley’ performance. As such even wit it’s issues and waste of potential, I adore it~!

#13. Obsession

I don’t see this one talked about much, but I found this one... well I hate to say the word but fascinating. What can I say? I’m a sucker for character studies, and BOY do we have a good one with Kirk here. In this episode we have a mysterious gas creature thing killing the crew and eventually get into The Enteprrise. Kirk reacts badly to it. Why? Well his crew dying of course, but the big reason is because he’s dealt with this creature before when he was a lieutenant where due to hesitaitng for a brief moment, mass casualties including his commanding officer were killed. So now with this creature’s pesence, Kirk is ont he hunt to take it down once and for all. But as the title indicates, he’s leaning towards becoming obsessed with it. We se Kirk acitng more angry and reckless than usual, especially when he continues to choose this over getting out of the space to diver some vaccines whent heya re desperately needed... yeah we’ll try to ignore how uncomfortable that is int he current times for now. The on of his former CO is also part of the Enterprise crew, and Kirk is spreading that obsession onto him, even punishing him for hesitating as he had when you’d expect him to be more sympathetic. It’s an episode that really unsettles you because Kirk isn’t acting like Kirk. Even in Consciousness of the King when dealing with the man who... you know, caused a genocide that Kirk was a victim of, he mostly held it together.

It’s these kinds of episodes that always fascinate me. What happens when we put this character into a situaitont hat completeley unnerves them? How would they react? How would it affect their usually rational actions? What would drive them to behave in such a way? How do those around them react? Kirk is very much dealing with a trauma and while eh is able to convince Spock and McCoy that e IS sound of mind and fit for duty, it doesn’t change that he’s allowing the trauma and guilt to morph into a dangeorus obsessiont hat is risking numerous lives. Not to mention afecting a young man who is in a similar position to him and also lost a loved one, yet the one that you’d expect to have Kirk’s sympahty is the one he’s treaitng harshly because of what he himself went through. Yes Kirk realizes it at the end and both corrects his mistakes and takes outt he monster, and it was good to see that he was able to pull himself back. But it was still just so interesitng to explore Kirk in this kind of position.

Spock and McCoy were also on point with both knowing that Jim isn’t acting right and ultimateley confornting him. The whole scene where McCoy gives Kirk essentially apsycological analysis, bringing Spock in once Kirk gets partiulalry heated, and them both laying down the line and holding firm until Kirk properly assures themt hat he is fit for duty was such a great scene. So was Spock actually seekign Bones as he knows that he can better understand Kirk’s emotional issues and him trying to comfort Garrovic was nice... it failed but he was stillt rying to do the right thing when Jim couldn’t. It’just one of those episodes that a character analyist like me eats up. As far as flaws go, notign comes to mind, but that might change on rewatch. I had just had others I liked better that placed it here, but it was very much an episode that got my attention.

#12. Operation: Annihilate

I still remember the suspense that this episode had me in. So we have the crew arrive at a colony that is uner attack by these parasites that are infecting thema nd leading them to painful deaths. Its already bad when Kirk finds his brother dead and his sister-in-law dies in utter agony, leaivng his young nephew’s fate uncertain. But it gets worse when Spockg ets infected and while he does his best, he’s having a difficult time managing the pain. It shows too in not only the scene where he pretty much goes balistic, but every scene after where he’s moslty under control, you can see the pain in his body lamnguage, tone, and eyes. Nimoy did an excelelnt job at keeping up that usual Spock demeanor, but converyign everything through body language alone. The team has to work to find a way to get rid of these parasites before it kills anyone else and exterminate them fromt he colony.

IMO, this was when iot felt like the writers realized what they had with the Triumvarite. At that point it was mainly abotu Kirka dn Spock and hwile Bones got it better than a few of the others, he still didn’t feel... quite there yet. I mean Kelley wans’t evne including int he opening credits until the next season. Here though we have all three with something major going on that’s important. Kirk is trying to figure out how to deal witht he situaiton which has cost him two fmaily members and may cost him his kid nephew. Spock is n pain due tot he parasite but still trying to perform his duties,e ven beaming down to get one of the parasites sicne as he’s already infected, he’s not at risk. McCoy is tryign to figure out how to get rid of the things and is the one having to keep both Spock and Peter alive. These all intersect together and the three just have this great chemistry. Their dynamic isvery mucht he thignt hat I loved most whenw atching the series, and this is when it felt like it clicked into place. The climax isalso heart-breaking. They figure out that bright lightcan kill the parasites, but McCoy is worried about what that intensity can do to Spock. He’s reluctant, but both Kirk and Spock push him to do it and while it’s successful in killing the parasite, it elaves Spock blind. Then Bones finds out that he didn’t need to turn it up that high and would have know had he just waited a few moments. While Spcok accepts it as a necessary loss, Kirk can barley hold back his fury... thoguh I DON’T like how the blame all get put on Boens when Kirk made him do it. Evenw hen Kirk tells Bones later that it wasn’t his fault, just by Bones’ face you can tell that he fully blmes himself.

That does bringmy big criticism though that lande dit at twelve. The ending is... nto good. I mean yay the succeed, but it felt like this was meant to be a two-parter, they couldn’t get the seocnd part, and had to make a hasty resolution to clear up the plot quickly. Not only is Peter’s face never mentioned or do we see Kirk’s reactionw hether good or bad, but Spock... is fine. He had a second eyelid that NEVER comes up again and he had just forgottena bout it. I now that TOS wans’t a serialized show but it not only felt like a waste of some potential story and character development for all three of our boys, but like haivng Spock blindd at all and sending McCoy down that guilt trip was utterly unecessary to begin with because it all happened int he last five minutes. I’mg lad that Spock was okay, and the end where Bones asks Kirk to not tell Spockw hat he said about him being the best First Offficer int he fleet, which Spock ehars and thanks him for half-enuinely, half-jokignly, again it feels like it was unecessary with how lat eit happened and how little impact it ultimateley had. Because of that, it landed here. But it’s still an enjoyable episode that again, felt like when the Triumvirate truly clicked into place and gave us even more good material after,

#11. The Naked Time

When I got to this episode, I had to remember how I quit as a teenager right before this and proceeded to yell ‘why didn’t you just go ONE more episode you idiot?!” to my past self. I really enjoyed this episode mainly for the concept. A virus that erases one inhibitions and self-control. Some of them are wa ky like Sulu with the fencing sword, which was also the most entertaining part of the episode. But it’s still interesting as we see these characters just give into whatever they’re desiring without any sort of thought and it erupts into chaos. It WAS a tad uncomfortable cause... you know, we’re watching a spreading virus that came about cause someone failed to follow proper safety guidelines while we’re living in a pandemic. But that’s not the episode’s fault.

It especially got interesting when Spock got it. This is the fourth episodes aired (I think it’s later in production order but I watched the order Netflix gave me) but even then we saw that Spock was a logical, very in-control character. We din’t know all the details anout him yet or that much about Vulcans, but we’d seen enough to get the general gist of the character. Then due to the cirus, those mental barriers begin to crumble rapidly. The scene where he is alone, trying to force himself to gain control of his emotions and ultimately failing as he breaks down... damn that was an excellent scene. Apparently it was thought of on the spot by Leonard Nimoy and he only had time for one take. Boy did he nail it. That was the moment I became invested in Spock as a character and in his and Kirk’s relationship as Kirk tries to snap him out of it, even risking getting infected himself because he needs Spock. I think that there are episodes that I enjoy more and the weird time travel ending made the ending really weird. Hence why this just barely missed the Top 10. But back when the show mainly gripped me for it’s science fiction concepts, this was a really good episode. It was the first one I went and watched twice before moving to the next one. I’m just so interested in the idea of losing your self-control and how you and others around you deal with it. Maybe it’s the analyst in me talking, but damn those mental concepts always get to me! A fun watch that was essentially the episode that convinced me that yes, this show is good and this time I wasn’t backing out.

#10. Mirror, Mirror

Top 10 now! Here we go! So.. mirror alternate reality. We’ve seen this a billion times in just about every media ever. IDK how common it was when Star Trek did it, but I always love this kind of concept snd seeing how a character would act if things had gone even slightly different. The Mirror Verse is admittedly a little too cartoonishly evil, but does come across as a fascist dictatorship, so I can’t really complain. Anyways, Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura and up there and now have to figure out how to get home without anyone catching on that they’re not their counterparts. One thing I love is that it gives Scotty and Uhura some much needed focus and they are both awesome with Scotty being his usual miracle worker self and Uhura kicking ass as she gets info and outright threatens Sulu when he tries to come on to her. God I love that woman~

The Mirror Crew are essentially one-dimensional monsters with the exception or Mirror Spock. He’s still the logical being that we know him as, but much colder and ruthless as well. Yet he still is the closest to matching his usual self and has at least some level of decency compared to everyone else. It’s probably why Kirk was so convinced that he could cause a turn around at the end. He’s not good, but he’s still more good than anyone else on that ship. Yeah the guy who forcibly mind melded McCoy without consent (and how much we judge that I’ve seen varied but I consider it a horrible invasion of privacy that they shouldn’t have brushed off) is still FAR better than anyone else if that indicates how bad this universe is. Seeing his and Kirk’s interactions was super interesitng as clealry Mirror Spock caught on quickly that something was up, but chose to prolong it until near the end. It’s interesitng to observe. I also just love seeing our four heroes handling the situation. They all act effectivlynd manage to keep up the masqurade very well with only Spock and Marlena figuring it out. It’s one of the more diverse ensembles and I wish they had done more diverse dynamics than here, but it was great to see.

I think my only issues aside form McCoy’s potential trauma being glossed over (though I do love how he insisted on saving Mirror Spock and risk not making it home cause damn it, he’s a doctor no matter what) is how we don’t get to see the four’s mirror selves aside form once, where only Kirk gets a characterization as a cartoonishly violent brute. We hear a few things about them like Mirror McCoy’s sickbay essentially being a torture zone, but that’s it. I guess it was due to only having an hour, but I wish we had gotten to see how Spock’s end of things and how he interacts with them aside form Kirk, which that didn’t amount to much anyways. Ah well, fanon has covered both of these pretty extensively from what I can tell, so I shall settle on that. Still it was an enjoyable episode. I’ve seen better Evil Universe stories (nothing’s gonna beat the Justice Lords from Justice League for me tbf), but still a good one with a good ensemble, good character moments, and a unique threatening situation for our heroes to navigate through.

#9. Amok Time

AKA, the episode that more or less created the Slash Genre as we know it. But we’ll touch ont hat later. For now, one thing that I was really hoping for when I got to Season 2 was learning more about Vulcans and their culture. We knew a few things by then, like certain physiological differences between Vulcans and Humans and of course their logical philosophy. But S2 explored them and their culture more, and this was a big one. Spock is acting uncharacteristically agressive and refuses to explain why. Eventually he reveals that he is undergoign Pon Farr, aka going into heat. Unless he goes to Vulcan and does... ugh... mating and soon, he will die. IDK how they got away with this on a 60’s show, but I ain’t complaining. It does that exploration into Vulcans that I was hoping for. Hell we grt to finally see Vulcan... well a section of it but we still got to see it for the first time! It was interesitng to learn about Pon Farr and the rituals that go into it like how maitng works (weird that the logical Vulcan species has arranged marriages, but whatever) and seeing more Vulcans outside of Spock. It’s the kind of world building that does my heart good~

It had a lot of really good moments. Spock explaining everything to Kirk while trying to keep himself from killing him. Chekov being uttelry done with everything as they keephanging course to and from. Ulcan. Spock inviting not only Kirk to the ‘wedding’, but also McCoy, showing that despite their arguments he undoubtedly considers him a close friend. Hell McCoy imo is the true hero of the episode for being the one to catch that something was worng with Spock and his in-genius plan to fake Kirk’s death to keep his two idiot best friends from killing each other without pissing off any Vulcans. Seriosuly, the man needs all the appreciation in existence. And of course, we have the kal-if-fee where T’Pring (great antagonist BTW, will explore her when ai do an a tual review) forces Kirk against Spock. What ensued, while I fully believ eunintentional, forever generated a whole wave of slash and outright invented the term. While I’m not even close to as into Spirk as others, there is no denying how impactful the ship was to fandom culture and to the LGBT+ community. It is a legavy that I hold respect for since it really gave people like myself creativity and enpowerment for over 50 years, and is still generaitng works even now. That is something to respect.

As for it’s placement... the ending was a litle weird. It felt like they didn’t know how to have Spock cured without him either killing someone or doing hanky panky, so he just... gets over it agter thinking that he killed Kirk. It is a good moment, especially his reaction when he sees that Kirk is alive. That was a very justified emotional response that made me smile... and laugh when he tried to deny it haha. ButI find it hard ot buy that a biological funciton like that just... went away. But ah well. It was still an ejoyable episode with some great Vulcan content, McCoy being an underrated badass, and the moments that slash shippers will forever be grateful for. But speaking of slash...

#8. All Our Yesterdays

Sorry Amok Time, but THIS is the slashiest episode in the whole show. While I didn’t get into Spirk much, I got head over heels for Spones. IDK what it was but their dynamic has always been enjoyable and it just... really drew me in. Most of my favorite moments were between this two like the moment in Bread and Circuses and more I’ll go into later, This is essentially The Spones Episode despite what actually happens. Our heroes are to clear a planet that’s sun is about to go supernova, only to find it already gone. Kirk ends up going through a portal when he hears cries for help and when Spock and McCoy go agter him, they end up in an arctic-like area. They were all sent to different points of th eplanet’s past, Kirk in some old timey point and Spock and McCoy even earlier. Now they have to figure out how to get back and survive their situaitons. Kirk’s plot has nothing special tbh and with a few adjustments could have been written out entirely, hence why this is at 8. But Spock and McCoy? Ho boy, their scenes MAKE this episode.

Spock and McCoy try to survive the harsh conditions, the latter almost dying of severe frostbite. He outright tells Spock to abandon him with Spock being VERY adament that that’s not happening. They’re rescued by a woman named Zarabeth and Spock proceeds to spend most of the episode interacting with her while tending to McCoy. Which he gets VERY touchy feely with the latter. Like... a lot more than normal, which tvh the whole seaosm felt that way between those two if what I said about The World is Hollow... counts for anything. Now he DOES end up ‘falling’ for Zarabeth, but there’s a reason for that. Spock is regressing to how his ancestors acted at the time, which was like ‘barbarians’. When amcCoy starts to realize that something’s wrong, it leads to two very intense but really well done scenes with McCoy using logic against Spock to make him realize that he’s lost himself. And while Spock pretty much gave up greitng home due to all of this, McCoy refuses with or without him, even outright going back into the storm to find the portal because damn it, he wants his life back. Then when we find out that Spock and McCoy HAVE to go back together or not at all, it doesn’t take Spock even a second to decide to leave Zarabeth behind. It’s sad because Zarabeth will die a cold, lonely death and she cdoesn’t deserve that at all, so it’s bittersweet. But man next to the katra thing int he films, IDT it gets more symbolic than that.

Like I said, Kirk’s scenes in the past are the only real issue I have since aside form explaining a few things about he situation, feel like they’re just there so that Kirk can still be in the episode prominently. I had some problems with Spock’s OOC behavior, but that got an explanation and has some credibility with how Vulcans are psychically linked. Would explain why McCoy and Zarabeth never seemed to regress. But it was still a good episode with great Spock and McCoy scenes, we FINALLY git a snow environment after forever (and a time travel plot to boot), and a bittersweet but nice ending. Seriously when Spock and McCoy make it back safely and Kirk just touches them on their shoulders in relief is such a nice moment. God I love those three~! Season Three wasn’t a strong season but it still had it’s standouts, and this was very much one of them for me. But I AM biased cause Spones, so take that for what it’s worth!

And that’s enough for now. The last seven will be in another post. Thank you for reading everyone~!

Image Source: TrekCore TOS Gallery

#tos #callie reviews #star trek tos

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agentrouka-blog · 4 years

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"Show yourself!” Lyanna Stark and her three Elsa Starks.

My son has been enjoying Frozen II every once in a while lately, while he’s doing his three-year-old part to containing the pandemic by staying home, and “Show yourself” is really a heart-stopping piece of music. Gorgeous. The way it builds and what it is about. And it gives me massive ASOIAF feels.

This seems a bit silly, but I have yet to come upon a song that as perfectly captures the emotional relevance of the revelation of Lyanna Stark as Jon’s mother, the relevance for all the remaining Starks. The fit of the emotional arc is amazing. Basically, if you want to feel what GRRM wants us to feel about Lyanna Stark, watch “Show yourself”.

I’m going into self-indulgent detail About how Frozen II relates to them, and what Lyanna means to Bran, Arya, Sansa and Jon, below the cut.

So, Frozen is a pretty universal story that also applies to ASOIAF.

The figure of the “always different” special child, estranged from others, who has battled to fit themselves into the world around them and now stands on the precipice of an existential challenge - that applies to all the surviving Stark children. They are all Elsa. They all vitaly need the confrontation with the hidden voice calling them (mother Iduna = Lyanna) in order to reach a balance, to achieve harmony in their world, to enable their non-magical inner Anna to reign in a living world rather than perish, abandoned in one destroyed by chaos.

They have all grown up in the non-magical “Arendelle”, caged by imposed secrecy. That’s Ned, that’s king Agnar, the regular human man. Regular, as in regulation, as in rules. No one must know Elsa’s magical (female) powers. She is locked in a room, contained, lonely. Olaf (love, spring, summer) is a suppressed memory.

Patriarchy, blind duty, the suppression of their inner selves lead to their ruin: Bran the climber who may not climb but then falls, Arya the fighter who may not fight but then murders, Sansa the artist who may not create a dream but instead becomes a liar, Jon the beloved, noble son who is kept in isolation and must be motherless, friendless and damned. Elsa’s magic is harmony but she must hide it and thus brings eternal Winter to Arendelle.

Lyanna, the way Ned refused to talk about her and kept her secret, the effect of that is perfectly illustrated in Elsa’s journey in Frozen I, she is isolated from her emotional needs (Anna, lonely, hungry for connection, full of bad judgment), she has no control over her magic, it turns into something terrible. She pays the price in loneliness and then struggles without proper guidance to “grow up”, to harness her inner strength. She does gain control but it’s chaotic and leaves her vulnerable to abuse and betrayal (Hans) and everything almost falls to ruin, until the power of love creates a last-minute save and a spot of recovery. That’s when they retake Winterfell and reconvene. They all go through this journey and meet at the stalemate.

Frozen II is about connecting to the source of that magic and reconciling with it, about validating it, returning it to its proper place. They find out that Mother Iduna had magic, too. They find out that Elsa’s magic is the key to harmony, that she is not just accepted but necessary just as she is. What was forbidden is now essential. Elsa is finally free to be herself, she applies her magic to save the world and then peacefully lives in it. Anna has a safe space to fullfil her emotional needs and bring all her own talents to life. She is no longer lonely and without purpose, she is queen, soon to be wife, likely to be mother. The other, equally valid side of Iduna.

Lyanna, the previously hidden and locked power of the female Stark magic: mother, sister, lover; lady, fool and knight, she-wolf, caged bird and the most beautiful flower grown with love from an inhospitable place. She has all the good and bad sides of Bran, Arya, Sansa and Jon, and each in their own way are healed when they follow the call and find her. Their true selves will be validated in every aspect, by being mirrored in Lyanna.

Bran: his true purpose is to uncover THIS secret while “climbing” a Broken Tower of Joy. His ability to “fly” to learn the truth from the weirdwood memory, it gives meaning to everything that happened to him. Their failure: to break the rules in secret, leading to their unprotected fall. They are ruined, broken. Their redemption: This fall later unlocks the key to saving the world. Lyanna begets her beloved son Jon. Bran discovers his greenseeing abilities. Being discovered for their true selves makes Bran the Lord of Truth, it makes Lyanna the Queen of Love and Beauty once more, they can leave the Tower the proper way, climb out of that window and fly home. Lyanna comes home, not just her bones, her true self. The truth will set you free, and it turns the potentially destructive, secretive nature of the Three-Eyed Raven into a savior, it turns Winter into Summer.

Arya: Lyanna, the beautiful Stark maiden, who rode a horse and weilded sword and lance and defended the innocent and tried to create justice. The true Lady Knight. Their failures: her impatience and anger at injustice make her heedless and lead to a dismantling of the world, others pay the price in blood (Rickard, Brandon and Lady, all of Arya’s kills). They become a source of death and destruction that eventually destroys her, too. Their redemption: They choose life by choosing Jon. (Make all the abortion jokes you want, but Lyanna LOVED Jon, she chose him in her heart.) Lyanna saves the world by giving it Jon. Arya does the same. She loves Jon first with all her heart, which enables him to love the world in turn, to free Arya by giving her Needle, which then will in turn be the instrument to Arya’s swan song, where she defends the innocent and enacts justice and saves Jon one last time. Found and validated by her spiritual mirror Lyanna, the Queen of Love and Beauty, Arya paves the way for life and the real Spring, not the false Spring. It paves the way for Lyanna’s dream. The blood red tears of the weirwood, of Lady Stoneheart, turn into the image of the Laughing Tree,

Sansa: Lyanna, the dreamer, the lover, the idealist, the mother-in-waiting, the girl who wanted it all: Life lived with emotional fulfillment. Who believed in her heart that there is worth in her dreams and that she was inherently worthy of seeing them realized. Lyanna’s desire, her love, her dreams are Sansa’s. This shared aspect is the most feminine part of all the Starks, the Summer in all that Stark Winter imagery. And Sansa is ridiculed for it because there is no counterbalance to the hypermasculity of their world. Sansa and Lyanna are both betrayed by this imbalance. The oppression inherent in their paternatlistic world takes their softness and turns it into weakness, takes their life-giving bodies and turns them into a weapon against them. Marriage for love becomes rape and birth becomes death. The Sping turns false and, as their dreams die, so does Winter kill life in the world. Their “failure”: Both rebel by turning traitor. They lie, they leave, they turn their backs on their family, they unwittingly deliver themselves into the hands of the enemy. They are made fools. As objects, they inspire the violence and death that Arya herself deals out as a “dark knight”. Their very absence means death to dreams for those who want to live them. Persephone in Hades. Their redemption: Becoming Anna, the non-magical sister. Becoming the real, worldly Queen. Taking control. Giving power to the feminine. When Sansa embraces her own self-worth, she inspires devotion, decency, nobility. When Sansa begins to actively create, she forges a world in which dreams can thrive and when they make their dreams come true, life wins out. She will leave the Tower alive, she will meet her love. Chaos is reigned in, they create stability, beauty, bounty. The true Spring happens when they come into power and preside over all their creations and children with love at their side. Happiness. Spring is coming.

Jon: He and Arya and Sansa are tied together, obviously. The sun and stars (the sun is a star, after all), and the moon of life. Jon is the “true” Elsa, the fifth spirit, her magical heir. He is Lyanna come again, fulfilling what life promised her. Their failure: Believing there is no love for them, they are pressed into a life that abnegates all feminine energy, all dreams. Where Lyanna rebels and becomes a fool, Jon, as a man, flings himself into self-denial and still becomes a fool. As a motherless Stark bastard he can never be his true noble self because the world leaves no room for all he has to offer. Like Lyanna, he is trapped by the rigid rules. Like Sansa, he is ridiculed. Like Bran, the secret in the tower is the source of his misery. This almost turns him into an ice block. It leaves him vulnerable to false love, harmful secrecy, betrayal, death. Their redemption: true love. It is Ned’s love that leads him to keep looking until Lyanna is found and to preserve her legacy. It is Arya’s love that keeps Jon from turning into a rigid, unbending Stannis, it will have her looking until Jon is found again, it will have her lay down her life for his. It will be Sansa’s love that leads Jon back to life after death every time. Real life, Anna’s life. It will be Bran’s love that uncovers the truth. This truth will melt the ice. Lyanna saves Jon when it is revealed that the mother he dreamed of all his life was real. Noble and kind and beautiful and loving him with all her heart. Not some man’s bastard but his mother’s beloved and “trueborn” son, the brightest star in our sky, the gillyflower. This will unlock his ability to fulfill his Destiny, save the world, realize his own dreams and Lyanna’s: a true Stark, the fool knight who wins the love of his Lady, saves her from a tower, marries for love, a parent to children of his own blood. Masculine in harmony with the feminine to create and preserve life.

Lyanna is the key to all of them. Like Iduna’s call leads Elsa to discover her true purpose, the fact that her life is a gift to the world, Lyanna validates the qualities of all the Stark kids. None of them can fulfill their destiny without touching upon her, not until she becomes visible. But when they do, it will be epic.

And “Show Yourself” just sort of captures the whole range and magnitude of this emotional arc. It really is a brilliant song.

#asoiaf #frozen #lyanna stark #jon snow #arya stark #bran stark #sansa stark

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border-spam · 4 years

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Twins Prompt 8: Wolf in sheep’s clothing

Note - I am SUSTAINED by comments. If you like any of these prompts, or want to see more of a specific one, hit up the replies. That’s my motivational juice right there

You could feel Tyreen Calypso in the air before you saw or heard her, storming down the corridor towards the COV media department at 3AM, vile mood warping the atmosphere around her as she marched.

She rolled her eyes at the few acolytes up at this time as they scurried out of her way and down dimly lit side aisles as soon as they caught sight of her, wide eyed and terrified of finding out why exactly she was so pissed.

Another terrible night’s sleep, another handful of wasted hours sitting in the decadence of her personal ship, massive solid gold bed surrounded on all sides by statues and stained glass of her own image. Alone. Completely alone. Like always.

Tyreen could deal with it, she’d dealt with it her entire life so far, it was the norm, and it’s not like she needed the affection anyway right? She had literally billions of people in love with her. There was no one else in the universe as wanted as God Queen Calypso, she reminded herself, tired eyes squinting past the makeup that was smeared under them as her focus stayed unmoving on the door she rapidly approached.

The red “EDITING” sign above it flashed on, off, on off, confirming her target was inside.

There wasn’t a huge amount Tyreen found worked when this mood hit. She could sit and brood on her own, face the reality of her crippling loneliness and deal with some extremely uncomfortable truths, OR she could go find her twin. Troy always helped, one way or another.

Crying her eyes out in his tight hug? That helped.

Taking out her frustration and anger on the only other person in the galaxy who mattered? That.. helped too.

She stopped at the door and quickly ran her hands through her messy bed-hair, straightening up her mantle and hastily dressed belts. Deep breath in, deep breath out, then she rolled her shoulders, stood tall and regal, opened the door with a press of the wall mounted button, and stepped confidently into the dark room.

…. to find Troy asleep instead of working.

He was out cold, quietly snoring into the crook of his flesh arm as he hunched over the massive desk he usually edited from, his array of flickering screens laid out above and around him lighting his shape in the dark.

The small editing team who worked directly with the God King paused in silence at their desks as she entered, eyes flicking nervously from each other, to their sleeping lord, to the clearly enraged Queen standing in the doorway.

He was asleep. He was meant to be editing that last stream for release in the morning. She felt her jaw tighten as she stomped towards him, seething. He was asleep while she was having such a shitty night and needed his help, the lazy, good for nothing asshole.

She raised a leg and stomped violently at the side of his chair with a studded boot, jolting him awake with a shock as he lurched to the side and fumbled with the headphones that had slipped across an eye, tripping a little over the chair legs as he clambered to his full height and towered over his furious twin.

“Ty- Tyreen.. what are you doing here?” he muttered, side eyeing his team who were doing their best to not make eye contact, typing furiously now in an attempt to not be paying attention to what was about to be a total scene.

She felt her anger begin to bubble over. He looked embarrassed, he looked like he didn’t want this to happen in front of his team, and somehow that made it all the better to do it, made it feel so much better to let her mouth start running.

“Ohhh just checking up on you, Holy Father. How’s the editing coming along? Very important release due tomorrow morning riiight?” She mocked, picking at her nails like this was the most mundane thing in the world, as her twin fidgeted awkwardly in front of her.

“Interesting to see you take your duties this seriously, while I work my ass off creating the content for you to butcher. Or not even bother to work on at all it seems?” she singsonged loudly at him, patronising grin widening as she caught the concerned glance from one of his editors from the corner of her eye.

His expression darkened, blush fading to pale skin, and she knew this was a bad idea now. She knew she should stop… but it felt too good to see him squirm like this, be berated and vulnerable in front of the others. She had had a terrible night and he’d been laying here enjoying himself, he deserved to be embarrassed by her like this. He deserved it.

“..Ty, can we not do this here. I’m sorry, I was exhausted, I couldn’t keep awa-”

“HAH!”

She barked, interrupting his quiet, calm tone.

“Allllways sorry Troy. Not good enough, get this shit done.” She hissed, pointing a finger into the solid line of his sternum, ignoring the ice in his eyes as she squinted up into them, ignoring the tight line of his mouth. His slow, controlled breathing.

“This was meant to be uploaded and queued an hour ago and you’ve fucked it up as usual haven’t you. Do I have to do everything little brother??” She shrieked up into his face, slamming her hand down on his desk and causing his crew to jump in their seats.

“Fucking pathetic, you have one job Troy. One, and you can’t even do it. You’re a joke.” She finished with a scowl. Spinning on her heel with a self satisfied smirk, Tyreen turned and began to strut out of the room, completely aware of the other God’s cold blue eyes burning into her back, knowing that she had gone too far, that she had pushed that way past where she should have in front of staff, but it had helped. It had helped her so much, and her Twin’s embarrassment felt more than worth it.

Troy stood in silence, still staring at the door she had left through, eyes narrowed in controlled rage. His editing team continued to work, refusing to acknowledge that their God had just been shamed in front of them, brought low and mocked by his sister.

They’d seen this happen before, saw what had happened after. A newer member of the team, some cocky Promethean kid, had laughed under his breath when Tyreen was done and had left Troy glaring at his monitors in silence.

Troy had turned, locked eyes with the kid, beckoned him over with a curl of a long finger, and crushed every bone in both of the little shit’s hands in the grip of his prosthetic fist. They’d never seen that idiot again, but they knew for all his snapping fury, God King Troy was not cruel like his sister. He’d not take his rage out on them as long as they didn’t prompt him to, and a shaking sigh of relief echoed through the room as he stalked towards the doorway like a predatory animal and left to track after his sister.

As Tyreen reached her private Sanctum and waited for the scanner to grant her entry, the burning anger and sadness in her stomach slowly faded, only to be replaced with gnawing worry as she entered.

It.. wasn’t the first time this had happened. He’d warned her before, he’d warned her very seriously to not make a scene in front of followers again, that it damaged the reputation he carefully cultivated for them..

And sure enough, she heard the door open behind her, and the heavy footfalls of his boots as he entered.

“Hey, Tyreen.”

She turned to face him, clearing her expression of guilt and facing her twin with an air of relaxation, only to second guess how this was about to go down as she took him in.

He stood calmly, massive frame held loose, flesh palm held gently in the cup of his mechanical fist, looking down his nose at his much smaller sister.

“..Troy.” She greeted. Voice betraying her in a nervous crack.

“.. Look I’m so-”

“Shut your fucking mouth.” he whispered, cutting her off with only the barest of effort, controlled tone emphasising each word.

Completely in control of what was about to happen, exactly like she knew he would be. He was so much better at this than she was.

She dropped her eyes to his boots and waited for him to continue. God she shouldn’t have gone as far as she had.

“Tell me Ty-die, what’s your business strat for this upcoming financial quarter?”

She winced. Here we go. He was always better with words, ever since they were kids. Never needed to raise a hand to you to flay you to the bone.

Could do that effortlessly with a silver tongue and gold capped fangs.

“Who’ve you got in line for the next group of sponsorship deals? Give me the rundown of the numbers. What profit margins are you expecting, what losses, sis?” He piqued, leaning his weight to one hip, tilting his head to glare down at her.

“Troy.. look, point made, I’m sorry I shouldn’t ha-”

“Excuse me, did I say I was FINISHED?“ He bellowed, causing her to jump as he took another step towards her, slowly leaning down to lower that vicious mouth closer to her ear.

“Hows that legal dispute over the DeLeon copyright claim goin? That one I’ve been spearheading for 7 years now under your nose, you know, that one? Oh..you don’t? Hmmm…”

Slowly beginning to circle her, still hissing questions she could barely even understand the terminology of at her.

“Hows our growth targeting going, God Queen? What you got for the shareholders this month end? What you got planned for that? How’s the SnV-merger going, Tyreen?“

She shook her head and raised a hand to her temple, rubbing it delicately as she sighed. “I don’t.. know, Troy, I’m sorry! I get it, I get it, I shouldn’t have done that in front of your team.”

He stopped at her left, sneering down at her in disgust.

“No, you shouldn’t have. But you love acting big around me don’t you Ty, love making it seem like you’re in charge when you’re feeling down and want to shit on me for a while, huh.”

He was right. It had made her feel so much better for a short while, but she should have just come to him privately. She should have put her arms around his waist and cried, and he would have been there for her, but she had lashed out instead, and he was right to be pissed now.

“Maybe I’ll do your job for a while and take a break from mine, hmm? Maybe I’ll go on camera and squeeze my lil tits together and drone braindead bullshit at morons while you run the entire fucking cult, huh? Would you like that Ty?”

“… Would you like everyone to see how fucking stupid the God Queen is when you don’t have me playing you like a puppet and getting none of the credit?”

She just stayed silent now, waiting for him to be done, no real way to defend herself against his knife blade truths, watching him turn and begin to stalk slowly towards her doorway before pausing at it, resting his monstrous arm on the frame and looking over his shoulder to consider his defeated sister.

“You’d do well to remember who made you Tyreen. Who runs this entire shit-show so you can play at being a God. I don’t get anything out of this bullshit.. lie.. bar easy access to a warm hole when I want a good fuck. Sorry you don’t have that option.. I really am…”

She felt her stomach cramp as he turned to open the door and step through it.

“.. Just remember who I’m exhausting myself for next time you find me asleep.”

The door shut behind him.

#troy calypso #tyreen calypso #calypso twins #my hcs #my writing #borderlands 3 #borderlands #bl3

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yellowocaballero · 4 years

Note

for the directors cut thing: Bell, Book, and Candle, any part :)

Me typing all these out when I’m supposed to be responding to emails: this is my revenge against my workplace for nobody fucking muting their line during the staff meeting today putting me in an echo chamber hellscape -

Anyway, this section specifically is at the request of my sibling @jimhensonreject, who refuses to send me an ask like a normal person. I’m not sure if I’ve already talked about this passage, so if I have please let me know and I’ll do another passage to make up for it!

“I’m an entertainer, Jon. I love the thrill of thousands of people listening to my voice.” Georgie’s gaze remained fixed on him, piercing, questioning, but warm. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve been obsessed with being known. I’ve always needed people to understand me, who I really am. That was what I liked about you - we were similar, and we had known each other for so long, I felt as if I was finally with somebody who understood every centimeter of me. I’ve always needed to express myself. I can’t bear the thought of dying with nobody having known who I am. What do we leave behind but our imprints, right? If there's somebody out there who knows me completely, even after I pass, did I even really die?”

Jon was silent. Weirdly, irrationally, he thought of Martin. What did it mean, to be unknown, but to be cared about anyway ? Finally, all he could say was, “Loneliness is a terrible thing. But to be known and understood is...terrible, in its own way too. I’d rather have nobody know the real me than to have somebody know who I truly am, and reject me.”

“But you’ll never be accepted if you don’t take that risk,” Georgie argued. “We all open ourselves up for heartbreak when we allow ourselves to become close to somebody. Our hearts heal when we’re rejected. But an acceptance is forever, isn’t it?”

Jon didn’t say anything. He found his fingers drifting to his hair, which he had long since given up on making manageable, and settled around his face in a puffy cloud which was far from professional.

“You keep on pretending to be somebody you’re not,” Georgie said lowly. “I swear, if you were a woman you would relax your hair.”

It’s rare for me to put the ‘point’ of a story so early on, but I’m glad I did - I feel like it conveyed to people on the fence about continuing what I really wanted this story to be about. Namely, three things:

1) The mortifying ordeal of being known

2) That Jon comes from a background he is ashamed of, and has oriented his personality around pretending to be somebody he’s not

3) Georgie will be instrumental to Jon’s growth as a person over the course of this story, because she symbolizes this past that he’s ashamed of, and that when they accept each other it will also metaphorically be a self-acceptance.

I changed Jon’s backstory a lot for this fic to make it more similar to mine so I could continue projecting onto him for story purposes. Georgie in this fic is very different from canon (just because I hadn’t actually seen her in canon yet lol whoops), because as a childhood friend she’s someone who sees through him and his defense mechanisms. I’ve seen people interpret Jon’s privileged and pretentious attitude as him genuinely coming from a privileged and suburban background - nah, son. The only person who is that desperate to be taken seriously is someone who is afraid that nobody will. In this fic, Jon came from nothing, and he’s terrified of someone finding out and knowing that he is nothing.

It’s impossible to bring all of this up and not talk about race issues, but for the most part I try to stay in my lane and talk about class issues. Jon’s intersection of identities, of being both a man and black and queer and low-income, intersect with each other in a meaningful way that I just tend to symbolize through talking about class. The house moving scene was cool, but it was also intensely metaphorical of Jon “trading up” in life, finally attaining that ‘perfect life’ at a terrible cost.

In regards to this conversation specifically, it’s based very deeply off a series of conversations I’ve had with my own childhood friend (hi honey!). Georgie’s my mouthpiece here: there is a reason why I keep on putting my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences in my fiction. I really want people to know me. I want that acceptance that I can’t give myself. Jon’s my friend, but also kind of me: what if you open yourself up for that acceptance, but it’s rebuffed? That’s heart-breaking. But you can never have that acceptance and love you want if you never have that vulnerability. There will be times you are hurt and damaged by that vulnerability, but the heart can heal from that. A heart that goes without love or understanding for its whole life can never heal.

A lot of Socratic dialogue in my fics, haha. But the beauty of Jon & Georgie in this fic was that they approached each other from a place of knowing everything about each other, of understanding each other completely...and hating each other. They had hurt each other, both had mental illness issues, and they both viewed the other person as kind of toxic. But what differentiates this fic from canon is that Jon opens up to Georgie way sooner and way more completely, and Georgie reciprocates. Georgie is the person who forces Jon to open himself up and rely on other people for love and home and family, and Jon’s the person who helps Georgie find direction, purpose, and meaning in her life. I never stated it explicitly, but Georgie was just kind of drifting before Jon re-entered her life.

On some level, it is kind of scary hanging out with someone who remembers all the shitty stuff you did as a kid. But for someone to see that about you, and like you anyway? It’s very priceless (Hi honey!). This scene is them seeing that they are two messy, fucked-up, not great people, and asking themselves if it was possible to try again. To choose to be good, and choose to love. That it was more valuable to have someone who knew and loved you on your team than it was trying to do it alone.

Thanks for the question!

#my writing #it is a minor miracle my shit is as thematically coherent as it is considering the fact that it is all written entirely off the cuff #i think that's why the same themes tend to pop up over and over again

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cacti-are-like-flamingos · 5 years

Text

One Piece Imagine

A/N: I made this like a really long ass time ago and idk I thought I might as well post it. I did some fixes but only briefly so yeah. Like I didn't really read it so oops lol

Ace x Fem!Reader

Angst | Soulmate

________________________________________

They say it’s the worst feeling…

The feeling of such a sacred bond being broken.

A one of a kind bond.

A bond between soulmates…

They told, ”Once you are born, you are bonded to another. The bond only stenthes with time for it is all it has. In due time, the bonded shall meet, and they shall live happily.” This thus began to norm of young individuals going out into the world, desperately seeking for their own soulmates. In all honesty, it was a beautiful sight to view. The coming together of two who have been bonded together, neither knowing the other. Watching as their eyes met, the pair holding nothing but adoration and love for the other, as they shyly or sometimes, boldy, embraced each other. The new couple sharing small shy kisses, others shared one full of passion. It was romantic.

However, every good thing had its downs.

They missed, ”Yet, there are times when the bonded do not meet. For one of the two have passed. These are moments of pure obscurity. The heart cannot comprehend such impactful emotions, in most cases, the heart physically fails due to such agony. The feeling of losing your bonded and knowing well-enough there is no chance of meeting them does something to the human mind…” No one spoke these words for they feared it would happen to them. Saying such meaning you’d be cursed for just voicing them.

No one spoke about the true feelings the separation between two bonded caused. They refused to do so I'm fact.

For it brought great sorrow…

The feeling yet to be identified as

Loneliness.

There was no more movement as they all stood by, gazing upon the body that laid before their feet. The lifeless body of their brother, comrade, and friend, laid on the grey brick road, face facing down to it. Cuts and scrapes littered its tanned complexion, which soon faded into a pale grey. A hole sat on its chest. No words were exchanged, no look was given, they all just stood idly peering at it with sorrowful gazes. They ignored the stinging of their eyes, the cloud of sand glazing over their beaten up figures. They felt numb. This war, a war that could've been prevented, a war that should've been prevented. SO many unnecessary casualties, him, being one of them. Flashbacks raced through their empty minds.

The laughs…

The smiles…

The teasing…

The warmth...

He managed to individually impact every one of them in a way that no one else could ever do. He’s amaz---he...was….amazing… Tears streamed down the dirtided cheeks of his younger blood-brother, his skinny figure kneeled down beside the corpse. Hands tightly gripping onto the bodies tattered clothing, his big brother’s tattered clothing. He struggled to keep the screams trapped in his throats, small gurgles managed to escape. His hands soon became bloody, his skin mixing with the blood coming from him.

Oh how he missed him.

He never even got to say goodbye to him.

A light suddenly appeared. It was shaped much like a string of sorts, its end seemed to be tied to the body’s chest, more specifically the heart. It shimmered in a soft golden hue, amazing its spectators.

“The string of fate. Once broken, it is a force to be reckoned..”

The string seemed to extend forever, passing all the tall buildings that surrounded them, all the way out to sea. Then with no warning, it broke.

Clink!

The sound sounded much like a small bell. The areas, in where the majestic strain had been cut, were lit on what he thought was fire. The orange flames consumed the rest of either sides, giving no mercy as it continued on its course. The young boy quickly realized.

“You never met her did you, big bro?” His voice broken and hoarse. It hurt just to speak. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to live. Frowning at the lack of response, the young teen sobbed quietly ignoring the piercing stares of his family on his figure. His small frame shook at the force of his cries, his hat shadowing his eyes. “Bu-But don't worry..”, he sobbed,”I’ll f-f-find h-her for y-you…” A large hand palmed his shoulder, glancing to the side, teary eyes met agonized ones. “Come on Luffy. The war is over. We must go now.” Helping the younger male stand up, they both stumbled as they stepped away from the sight, Luffy sparing one last glance towards his brother's body.

“I’ll find her for you. I promise.”

A young brunette froze at that every moment. A searing pain shooting straight through her chest, one that physically caused her to bend over her hands dropping the paintbrush as they gripped onto her shirt. What was this feeling? It was terrible! Dropping to her bare knees, she tried to reach for something to support herself with, only to take down the painted canvas with her. Coloring her in dark shades of blue, purple, and red. The female watched as a golden colored string appeared in the midst of her mysterious pain. The end disappearing straight through her…..her eyes widened in horror. This couldn’t be happening to her right now. No. No….! NO! She refused to believe this. He couldn’t be dead, he just couldn’t! She would never get to:

Hear his laugh.

See his smile.

Sense his touch.

Feel his warmth.

All those moments where she dreamed of his arms wrapped around her, his lips mouthing sweet nothings into her ears, whilst a smile adorned his handsome face. She imagined the moments in where she longed to be held. In the midst of midnight, both laying on their shared bed, in content with the other's company. Her back against his chest, hands intertwined. They spoke of their future, they spoke of each other, they spoke of their love for one another. They would stare into each other's eyes as they kissed passionately only breaking apart for air. There, underneath the blankets in a dimly lighted room would they share their first ‘I love you’s’. There she would be truly happy. There she would let down her mask drop, she would atlast become vulnerable.

However, now she could never do so.

For her bonded has left the realm.

Has left reality.

Has left the world.

He has left her truly--truly, alone.

But as single tear ran down her unlinked eyes, she whispered, “I’ll still love you, my love.”

A loud scream echoed throughout the earth, leaving no ear untouched. Those who had once been walking through the openmarket, stopped in their tracks. Political leaders who had been arguing in their meetings paused in silence. Elders who had been observing the world as it passed by silently prayed and sent their regards, knowing looks adorning their wrinkled features. Eyes full of sorrow yet sympathy. Soldiers who had been clashing against each other, stood still , weapons lowered. Each one of these people stared at the sky, frowns edging themselves on their lips.

The scream sounded more like a cry.

A cry for help.

And a cry for help.

A cry for a comfort that can never be given.

A wave of emotion pushed the air out of the populations lungs, they struggled to breathe. Tears rushed down their faces as they were suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that could only be described as…

Hell.

They stood silently, gazing up at the sky, mumbling quiet prayers because they knew they could do nothing.

“W-What was that?” A young child asked, his expression curisour yet confused as to why the world seemed to have frozen. Never once meeting the boys stare, a nearby elder answered,”That, my dear child, is the cry of one who knows they shall never meet their bonded.” The boy gulped nervously at the answer. His face contorted into one of horror as the cries continued.

It was as if the woman who cried was there in front of him. That's how loud they were. The pain they held behind their voice, indescribable---It just 'couldn't. There was literally no way to describe the severity of that voice, the impact of it--- no way at all. It just couldn't be described not matter how hard one tried to. It just wasn't meant to be, instead, it was just meant to be heard.

The elder then quietly muttered under his breath, knowing his words would never reach her, but nonehtless he muttered,

“I am so sorry, my dear. For you shall never be able to feel his love. And for that I apologize.”

She never even got to say hello to him.

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