#w the context of both the actors' thoughts on the scene and how they talk about hamlet's disgust and betrayal

[aq2003]

i enjoy how hard he's chosen to die on this hill he just like me fr

[fill-me-with-your-memes-daddy]

Watching the Rise of the Titans movie and I'll be documenting all of my thoughts/reactions here. [Spoiler Warning]

So instead of reblogging every new update, I'm just going to have this post up on my phone as I watch and type my reactions in a bullet list format.

Nari's human disguise is so cute. As someone who does have a cottagecore aesthetic, I want to cosplay her so bad

Are Skrael and/or Belroc non-binary coded? Regardless, I'm also obsessed and I want to fuck Skrael and be Belroc.

STEVE CARING ABOUT JIM BEING HURT YESSSS!!! My god his redemption has probably been one of the greatest there is because he doesn't just suddenly go from being a bully to a completely good person. You can see the gradual shift in learning better throughout the shows which is awesome.

IN NEW YOOOOOOORRRRRRRK!!!!!! CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!

The mugshot montage reminded me of season 1 of trollhunters when toby and Jim were arrested at the museum.

STRICKLER PUT A RING ON IT??? HE'S THE ONLY DILF IVE EVER ACTUALLY AGREED WAS HOT WYM I CAN'T HAVE HIM??? well I'm still really happy about his arc over the series probably one of my favorite character growths.

Eli my guy got his growth spurt!!! As an 18 year old who is still 5'0", I'm happy but envious for him

So I went into this movie without watching any trailers or promo, but I doubt anything could have prepared me for the existence of mpreg. In fact, I wasn't going to document my reactions until I saw that.

NAMURA!!!!!!!!! MY BELOVED!!!!!! I CAN STILL THIRST FOR YOU WITHOUT GUILT

The coach teacher just called the kids zoomers so I have to dock one point from my final rating just because of that. Unforgivable

Those husky animation models suck lmao

Oh fuck the titans got power ranger zords!!

God why did they include the mpreg??? This movie would have been perfect without it.... After that plot point being revisited only one time I'm already beyond done with it

Like it's bringing me back to the v*ltron days where they're was a suspiciously high amount of klance omegaverse and mpreg fics and art created and it physically hurts because Steve and Keith's voice actor is the same person meaning this is especially cursed to me since I was unfortunately in the v*ltron fandom and remember all of that

But like on another note, how old are these characters again??? I haven't checked any wikis because of spoilers but is Steve an adult??? I know aja might be technically a lot older than 18 because alien but is whatever age she is equivalent to an adult as far as emotionally and physically in Akaridion development??? IS THIS A TEEN (M)PREGNANCY IN A KIDS SHOW????

Like bruh I saw a singular post on here before going into the movie that was like "rott spoilers without context" and there was a pregnant belly but I was absolutely not expecting the actual context of it. I'll find the post after I finish and edit this post to tag the creator right here: @makoden

This entire post is just gonna be me ranting about mpreg huh

Anyway I love the whole roundtable allusion to the legends of king arthur (not the toa version but the one he's based off)

THERE'S 3 TO 5 BABIES????? I need to take a break bruh this is just too much

Alright I've taken a 30 minute break got some food and did some things i love (decompressed by tactile stimming with some owl plushies and watched some videos on my favorite owl, Garu. He lives in Japan with his owner and is a domesticated eagle owl who basically just acts like a sky cat. If anyone else needs some eye bleach, here is their YouTube channel)

Blinky and ARRRGHHH!!! saying their "if one of us doesn't make it" talk my god one of them is going to die I can see it and I will be utterly crushed. Jim can't lose another father figure and Toby can't lose his wingman again I will riot if this happens

On a similar but unrelated to the movie note, can we just talk about how toa started with Jim having 0 dads and (if strickler and blinky live to the end) will end with 2 dads? Like I just really feel happy for him that he has two dads who actually figured out how to put the past behind them to not have any infighting between them so that both of them are healthy father figures. Jim has already been through literal hell and back losing his actual humanity in the process so if he loses one of them, I'm going to be really pissed because at this point, this is just Jim torture porn. Y'all know how as SpongeBob SquarePants went on, the show just became Squidward torture porn? It's starting to feel that way for toa and I really hope they cut the shit by the ending

Jlaire is such a good ship but like I feel like it's too perfect they never disagree with each other

YESSSSSSS Someone finally doesn't treat toby like a fat waste of space who messes stuff up!!! I think out of all the characters that would have been most deserving of a rewrite, it's Toby. Sometimes I just feel he's only comic relief and any heartfelt moments he's had in the series was also born of stupidity (ie his flour baby project being unharmed was seen by him as divine intervention from his parents but was actually just Eli and Steve behind the scenes).

Ohhhhh yesssssss Archie's father!!! I was hoping I'd see him again because we got so little of him last

Ooooooooooh Asian trollmarket!!!!!

Oh never mind slavery trollmarket

Bruh titanic camelot

I feel like we're not seeing enough of the villains because I completely forgot about the power ranger zord things

NAMORA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY LAST CRUSHHHH

STRICKLER NO NOT YOU TOO PLEASE

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE ONLY TWO CHARACTERS I SIMP FOR ON THIS SHOW DIED WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF EACH OTHER

THAT WHOLE ASS RANT I WROTE IS COMING TRUE FUCK THIS MOVIE THIS SERIES IS JUST JIM TORTURE PORN

WAIT JIM'S SPERM DONOR INFO?

Oh thank God I don't want to know anything about that person

For the record, I call that man Jim's sperm donor because he has no business being called a father to him. All he did was donate some swimmers to the creation of him and give him abandonment issues

Oh another blind troll elder???? This fucker is just if vendel was a bad guy

Bruh I was grieving

PACIFIC RIM WITH GUN ROBOT VEX AND THE BELROCZORD? I've never seen that movie but I know the reference

Bruh Blinky doesn't read horoscopes? Does he realize conspiracy theories are just the manly version of horoscopes?

NO DON'T KILL VEX STOP KO-ING FOUND FAMILY MEMBERS

Oh thank God he's okay

NO NOT ARCHIE AND CHARLEMAGNE OH MY GOD

oh never mind they're just gonna coup de tat I believe in them :))

But I want to see him again

But I'm glad to see vex

Yay they're in arcadia!

But yeah I wondered why the trolls and Merlin didn't keep the whole "daylight doesn't hurt trolls" feature from the eternal night but now Guillermo del Toro I see you were playing the long con in that just to kill my girl Namora :(((

Oooooh I love the animation of the Narizord over Chihuahua!! It looks very good and realistic (if only they could have put some of that into those huskies from before smh)

Bruh the character designs of the arcane order are so good I want to be them

Nari making sure the Skraelzord doesn't crush the bus

DAMN DOUBLE HOMICIDE

Bruh I'm just glad we finally have an answer on why arcadia had everything going on as opposed to literally anywhere else!! I always found that as a weird coincidence for plot convince.

BRUH WERE BACK TO THE MPREG IM SO JEALOUS I FORGOT ABOUT THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF MY LOVELIES.

Oh that's real convenient that the ninth configuration meant all of them. Way to not decide which character gets more attention. Though it probably was a smart way to not have any infighting in the fandom between each character's stan group.

Bruh I just realized where is Barbera did they just ditch her on the Camelot ship???

And where are the other trolls that migrated at the end of trollhunters s3? They said something about new jersey but obviously Jim and the other main characters got on Camelot instead.... This feels like a plot hole

And we never learned the process of how changelings are made and bonded to humans and stuff. We just know it's super painful but I'm curious ffs!!!!

THE DONT THINK BECOME HERO SPEECH ALL SAID TOGETHER!!!

BRUH THEY REALLY HAD TO SHOW HIM GIVING BIRTH??????? WAS THAT AN ABSOLUTE MUST??????

Plus the main audience for this series is little children (the rating for the movie is literally TV-Y7) so even though my adult ass is not in the target audience, I STILL DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WOULD MPREG AND ANAL BIRTH WOULD BE AN IMPORTANT THING TO 7 YEAR OLDS???? THIS IS A LITERAL FETISH HIDDEN IN KIDS CONTENT ITS ELSAGATE ALL OVER AGAIN Y'ALL 😭😭😭😭😭

Though it's probably hypocritical of me to think fetishes don't belong in kids tv when I've openly admitted to thirsting for strickler and namora

HUZZAH

NEW AMULET WAZ GOOD????

STAB THAT BITCH JIM

WAIT NO I SAID STAB NOT GET STABBED

Alright good job just missed the directions at first but you fixed it

SEVEN KIDS?????????

T O B Y ????????????

W A I T NO

N O

IS HE ACTUALLY

OH MY GOD THERE'S HOPE

NO THERE ISN'T

F U C K THIS SHIT THEY REALLY JUST HAD HIM TO BE BULLIED THEN KILLED

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING THIS NEVER HAPPENS

I NEVER ACTUALLY GET SO EMOTIONAL OVER MEDIA THAT I CRY IT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE AT THE END OF VOLTRON BUT AHHHHHHHH

W A I T

HE'S GONNA BE BROUGHT BACK?????

HOLD UP THEY'RE JUST GONNA BRING ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE BACK??????

WAIT IS HE

BLINKY CALLED HIM A SON

HOLD ON IS THIS GOING TO BE A CLIFFHANGER???????????

BRUH THEY REALLY JUST CAN'T END THE SERIES WITHOUT CLIFFHANGERS like there's always an open ending

TROLLHUNTER TOBY????? You know what forget the whole rants I had on how toby was written they just redeemed it all

And that's all! I'd rate it a 6.5/10 because it's definitely the weakest of all the sequels but still had amazing animation and some good plot points. It's just really hard to look over the bad stuff enough to rate it any higher.

[buck-yyyy]

so i just finished season 4, and BOY do i have thoughts

******SPOILER WARNING FOR S.4 OF STRANGER THINGS*******

note: absolutely none of this is going to be in chronological order. my brain is going 100000 miles an hour, i cannot be bothered to sort my thoughts into a proper timeline.

holy. fucking. shit. that season was AMAZING. i think season three may still be my favorite, but GODDAMN DID THEY PULL THROUGH??????

okay, firstly: i got the whole "the orderly is 001 and also victor creel's son" spoiled for me, when i was trying to find the actor and found out like- 2 minutes before the big reveal about what exactly was going on with the dude. tbh, though, it didn't ruin it for me, it just made me more excited to see what came next.

also very proud of the fact that i was able to clock that he was vecna before the actual reveal, both because of his eyes- bright, unnaturally blue, and because of the way he killed the kids. doesn't matter in the slightest but i felt smart for a few minutes so

i cannot WAIT for everyone to reconvene and exchange information. this is what i'm pretty sure everyone has to share, i dont think i'm missing anything?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

joyce/murray/hopper: hopper's alive, the russians have a demogorgon

mike/will/jonathan/argyle: more information on the nina project

el: origin of the gates, brenner's alive, has her powers back, where vecna came from, more information on the nature of both her powers and her personal history

nancy: more information on vecna, saw henry's backstory and will be able to add to el's context on henry/vecna

steve/nancy/robin/eddie: the upside down is stuck in the past on the exact date that will went missing, demo..bats?, more information how communicating through the upside down works, info on watergate

dustin/lucas/max/erica: where the gates are coming from, catch everyone up on what the police know/are doing, save people from vecna w music ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

pretty sure that's everything? i think? lmk if i missed something. but the point is, thats a HUGE amount of information that everyone is going to have to process all at once. at the same time, the more information they have on the upside down, the clearer it'll be on how to beat it.

i would also like to say that That Scene (tm) with max and the running up the hill is quite honestly one of my favorites of the whole show, 'twas beautiful.

i really liked fred for the short amount of time he was on screen, and same with chrissy- i wish they didn't need to die :(

that bitch DESERVED the roller skate to the face and we should be talking about it. fuck her.

cannot wait to see joyce's reaction to finding out everything that her kids/her kids' friends have been up to. she thought she was going wild, skipping off to russia secretly to rescue hopper, meanwhile her children are trying to solve homicides that are being committed by an otherworldly creature that has no clear way to be killed. picturing a completely blank, dead look when they fill her in. petition to let her say fuck, specifically for that scene.

we stan suzie. "i think we spooked a skunk" who's gonna tell her that's weed. and a lot of it. i will take no criticisms of my love for suzie.

also, if steve 'the hair' harrington dies in part two, i die with him. no questions asked. (for legal reasons that's mostly a joke.

but maybe most importantly, the scene where el creates the first gate in order to,,, banish? 001 raises SO many questions. dustin's initial thought as to how vecna fit in with the mindflayer was that he was some sort of five star general, as opposed to the demogorgons being foot soldiers. but considering that vecna/henry/001 seems to be the first thing in the upside down, does that mean that it's kind of the other way around? i feel like vecna has somehow created the mindflayer/demogorgons/demodogs, but now the question is how. i mean, he's been creating the gates by killing people through psychic whatever it's called, but how does that translate into the other creatures? is there another party on hand, one that we don't know about yet? is that how season 5 is going to wrap up the show, with the characters and us gaining a full understanding of the creation of the upside down?

god, i love this show so much. they've done an absolutely INCREDIBLE job this season, i'm in absolute shock. i cannot wait for part two, im going to SCREAM and immediately drop EVERYTHING the day it comes out.

anyways, anyone else have thoughts?

oh, and finally: give the people what they want. give us canon byler.

[tomatograter]

Hey, I just listened through your Jake's Life playlist, and I was wondering if you could talk about some of the songs you chose and their order? I really liked it and keep giggling at "non-binary manipulator music"

GOT ANOTHER ONE.... yeah I can definitely do some DJ commentary on this one, I chose the track order to be chronologic so a few of the songs have a specific context I was going for.

Ill put the thoughts under the cut, here's the link to the playlist to preemptively answer anyone looking for it

STARTING AT THE TOP: this cover is a full-cycle family ordeal. I think you can read it as jake about jade or jade about jake, seeing as both their parental relationships involved their own form of longing and protectiveness that ends up as abandonment for heroic ends. As much as the beginning is hopeful the end refrain feels really helpless/desperate, which fits.

I call this bit the childhood/developmental cycle. All of these are recurrent jakethemes in no specific chronology. 'Classic J dies and goes to Hell' is a song I come back to often with him so I put it right at the top even though it could fit pretty much anywhere. We've got the loneliness/hopeful/weirdo/yearning/gender thing estabilished with these, and that's pretty much all the beats of the upcoming songs. Oh, also, Skeleton Appreciation Day starts the thread of 'grief-as-love' or just vaguely morbid love songs since 'jade's death' and 'dirk's constant state of practical suicides' play off one another hard.

IDK if I'm a Boy feels like the stars aligning for this playlist because it is explicitly a song about being gender non-conforming, not knowing if you even fit into the definition of nonbinary, getting mad about your body image, and also your name is Jake.

THIS bit is by far the most fixed sequence. Bar none. The creation of AR + Brobot + Brain ghost dirk are an interlinked ordeal (we literally learn of both through brain ghost dirk's flashback, in which we see young Jake encouraging dirk to go through with it/ how brobot was sent to him as a gift to stave off his loneliness, which is what Mr. Sandman is there for.)

Songs 9 - 12 are the monkey's paw consequences of the initial plea, where instead of Dirk's company Jake is more or less buried under a pile of his counterintuitive splinters. Mr. Roboto serves as both Hal & Brobot's mission statements, Your imaginary friend is for the absurdity of BGD's existence, while The Hound and the Fox is actually based on the birthday scene/flashback where BGD is reenacting all the words coming Dirk during the very long dirkjake conversation - the song is about corrupt governments and a main actor being exposed for willingly playing the part of a dunce, and that’s on brand for Jake.

From 3-legged dog to No Halo things are more abstract and game-event related. Its up to interpretation. I think 3-legged dog could easily be a grandpa song, we have a few romantic anguish/breakup tunes (cold weather, spellbound, sum of my cares) general group dysfunction w/ You don't know me, etc.

Land Where Money's Nightmare Lives + No Halo ALSO work as our trickster/crockertier/hopesplosion connection and, incidentally, just Jake growing up in general. Theres no song celebrating the end of the game, we jump right into Earth C Jake next.

I think these are self-explanatory.

This is another bit that I envision as a package, we start and end on a lullaby note of "I'm changing into something, I don't know what, and it may be terrifying" or as the actual lyrics in Some Kind of Ghoul have it: "Change for the better, or for worse." All of these songs are very gay but also very conflicted and a mite self-destructive. Roddy brings us back to it and also more or less introduces us to the epilogues-related zone, very plainly

Coincidentally this song has sort of the same vibe/postioning as Dark Red (on Dirk's playlist) that also introduces the epilogueszone.

From here on out things get more abstract but also a lot clearer if you keep in mind that context.

Fancy is a little bit about gender, a little bit about feeling indebted to your mother, and broadly about sexual exploitation to afford a safe haven. Throw dice and decide if this is beta, meat, or candy Jake. Works any way. Get Famous is still about fame and implosion, but to the literal level.

Jake's gay and self-sabotaging, what else is new. All of these songs are about loving and covering it up with erratic behavior?

Aaaaaand we reach the finale. The grief-as-love theme comes back full force into these. Special mention to Graveled Guts for being the most sentimental but also the most morbid of the bunch, also directly correlated with grandma's death via the constant use of pyre metaphors.

A friend pointed out that the Mr. Sandman cover way back there sounds like a jake-pov song in direct dialogue with the viewer about his emotional state, and I think theyre right, but also that this happens twice more. It would be sandman for kid jake, I Wanna Boi for freshly adult jake, & Graveled Guts for middle age/old jake. They're all half-spoken, half-sung. The last one is real good.

The rest of the songs in this sequence are a bit fatalistic or pessimistic tbh, Calm me down is another plea, As the World Caves In a confession, Elephant Gun is a looooong time favorite but pretty much mourning a long lost fantasy life (while calling for the current king to be put down), Graveled Guts is a post-mortem lovesong.

Though we end with Pillar of Na, a whopping 8-minute production that is much hopeful than all the previous ones. References a struggle with addiction, an exhaustion with repetitive cyclical reinterpretations ('Either version's cool, But I like the original'), and is the telling of a story that promises to go on indefinitely, eternally, as an unbroken circle, until the speaker and their loved one can get it right this time.

That’s it for our nonbinary manipulator music!

[datingdonovan]

Aaawwww I'm sorry that you're sick cece!! Hope you rest up and take care of yourself!!

Fun things: today I was hit HARD by ennoshita brainrot (yes I am an ennoshita lover to answer ur question from your answer in the ask game) and I just want to hang out with him and be domestic with him. Just lay in the same room with a movie we're both half-paying attention to, and sometimes he'll be like "omg watch this part" for a scene and then ramble about some fun fact about the production or the actor or something about lore of the movie, and I'll do the same ;___;

Other fun things: I'm playing animal crossing new horizons again. What chars do you think would have the most organized, decorated island with the best themes, and which would have the most wilderness and disorganized didnt even try island?

stop I just wrote an extremely long paragraph being super nostalgic about my film classes in the context of ennoshita and then accidentally deleted it somehow thanks tumblr but the jist was that he’s so unpretentious and it’s not him teaching you it’s just both of you nerding out together which I love🥰and it’s so great bc you’ll take separate classes but come back and watch the movies together and report to each other on every little thing you learned!! And you support each other thru the endless rewatches necessary to write your essays & discussion posts I literally wrote a whole thing ab how ennoshita has to write ab the searchers and you find it so corny the 2nd or 3rd time thru but you keep watching it w him to be supportive lol, and likewise you both are crying your eyes out rewatching the ending of in the mood for love for you to write your discussion post I’m very angry at tumblr for deleting that lol and omg if there’s a special guest for one of your classes you both campaign SO hard for the other to get to come to the lecture, and if they can’t you watch some of the guest’s movies & relay in such detail to each other everything they talked about with the production, the editing, whatever it may be. ok I honestly think I’ve probably reproduced the majority of what I typed the first time. ugh. film student lovers w ennoshita, be still my small heart.

Hahahahahah on the animal crossing topic, this is just a list of ppl popping into my mind. Oikawa has a freaking gorgeous island, same with yachi. Makki’s is sooooo disorganized and kyoutani’s is probably also a mess but he doesn’t care ab how it looks he’s just glad nobody knows he plays. I feel like hinata & Noya would also have kinda garbage islands bc they don’t have the patience for it even tho they want to try lol. Kageyama probably tries briefly before he also loses patience and his results are….. ehhhhh😂😂😂 asahi’s looks great tho. Suga’s too. OSAMU’s is great and Atsumu is extremely jealous bc his is a flop. Probably Suna’s is pretty good too & he also makes fun of Atsumu but watch out suna what if some… catastrophic mistake… happened…….. what if you experienced some dreadful….. sabotage???? Tendou’s island is fantastic. He puts so much care into fictional worlds and no one can convince me otherwise. Gets the game for ushijima who has no clue what he’s doing, but actually is trying for his friends sake, so his islands mediocre. Futakuchi’s is terrible and embarrassing and frustrating to him despite all his best efforts lol. Kenmas is obviously stellar. Daichi tries so hard but he just doesn’t have the designers touch like suga lol. Kuroo just pesters kenma for help but it mostly just annoys kenma lol so kuroo kinda still ends up w his looking a lil blah. Terushima’s is surprisingly really good—he spent all his time working on it instead of actually doing his hw. I should shut up now I don’t know why I started just rattling off everything I thought of oh my word lol

[lycheej3lly]

assorted thoughts about farewell my concubine which i watched the other day w my mom who like sparknotes’ed the movie for me as we went along. she’s my no fear shakespeare. anyway putting them on tumblr bc i find it better for archiving purposes. ty to max for talking the movie out w me after 😊

spoilers obvi

the whole "by nature i am a boy/girl" stuff reminded me a lot of the concept of sexual inversion which was like when old homophobes assigned men the action of "liking women" and vice versa. thus linking gay men w femininity bc they like men which also sees a trend just like in Society(tm). at the beginning everyone else is super happy when douzi gets the line right but there's still smth like hollow? about that scene to him. when he adopts the baby, taking on the traditionally feminine role of caretaker. and then at the end when they both get the line "wrong" but he like almost reclaims(?) himself as a boy. yeah. and ofc when leslie cheung says that thing about a good actor is androgynous in one of his later interviews

but then right after that he kills himself which could be bc he recognizes that their socially conservative society won’t allow them to be together or bc he wants to end his life w what he sees as a symbol of their love..? or maybe it just isn't more complicated than what xiaolou says earlier in the movie when dieyi asks why the concubine has to die: because that's the play!

that said it is very weird that people take that line to mean that playing the concubine made him confused about his gender and start liking men or whatever, which is smth my mom said and apparently a lot of articles online. like gd that Is the concept of sexual inversion which is obvi not how being gay works but also just narratively dieyi's feelings for xiaolou def started before he started playing that role

i also think there's a lot to do w fate, like when juxian leaves the brothel and the manager person (i know there has to be a better word for this but god i cannot think of it rn) gives the whole "once a whore always a whore" speech. and then in the end when juxian is villainized bc she used to be a sex worker

but then i’m also kind of confused bc when they first introduced the story of farewell my concubine (the opera) they said it means you only control your own fate...? hm.

also there was SOMEONE talking about karma earlier in the movie which i remembered when dieyi starts yelling about retribution at the denouement but i can’t remember who and in what context and it’s nagging at me

maybe the sword as a symbol of their struggles? it always appears at important moments in their life as almost this recurring character - douzi wanting to give shitou the sword when they were younger, when yuan and dieyi first meet (ew), when yuan and dieyi drunkenly recreate the opera scene and dieyi puts it to his neck, when xiaolou is being interrogated, i’m def forgetting some - but then it's interesting bc when xiaolou throws it into the fire, it's juxian who goes to retrieve it and returns it to xiaolou before hanging herself like she recognizes its significance

smth smth subversion bc xiaolou who is supposed to play the Man is the first to crack, whereas juxian never snitches on anyone even as she is forced into the spotlight

also think it’s weird that people don’t think dieyi’s love was reciprocated? xiaolou left juxian after her miscarriage to go find dieyi and slapped her for telling their shifu that dieyi was addicted to opium. there’s def more but those are two scenes that stick out to me

anyway i too am in love with leslie cheung and gong li. xiaolou kinnie moments

ALSO the behind the scenes vid was so fun and insightful. can’t believe the scene of juxian jumping into xiaolou’s arms and the scene of their shifu beating xiaolou as an adult were real wtf. and having to film the scene in front of the fire in 90 degF beijing weather in full opera costume omg

really appreciate the research that the actors put into their roles - like gong li reading books about sex workers in that era of china and leslie cheung’s extensive training for his accent and jingju such that they didn’t even have to use the doubles they’d hired

love love love all the callbacks throughout the movie - when xiaolou says “i’m the one to blame, hit me instead” like what douzi did at the beginning of the movie after he and laizi ran away (oh and laizi also. man.), when dieyi says the same thing to juxian and rejects smth she offers at her and xiaolou’s wedding party and after no one tells dieyi that xiaosi was supposed to replace him as concubine yu

the editing for the part where the eunuch rapes douzi was so chilling and so good - the pan to the painting and then the bell toll, and douzi staying silent when shitou asks him what happened. fuck.

also really enjoyed the scenes when dieyi and juxian would be petty towards each other for more shallow reasons lol

i have thoughts about xiaosi that have not really crystallized yet. passing down the torch gone wrong etc etc...

[flying-elliska]

I finished watching the Umbrella Academy, thoughts :

- The concept, cinematography, actors and music are all pretty dope but this really strikes me as the example of a show that doesn't really focus on the interesting things/characters

- Instead a loooooot of the scenes feel repetitive. Or they're just People Arguing about the same things over and over again. Especially the two macho guys fighting about how they are Better Alone and are Very Angry and ugh....I'm just tired of these macho male characters who are written to be in opposition to everyone else always it's so very tedious. I know they Have Issues but there ought to be a more interesting way to show that that buys less into how cool and tough they are.

- Allison and Klaus are my two faves but they also don't get storylines that feel very interesting or relevant to the plot. Klaus veers dangerously close to the cliche of the promiscuous greedy queer/loser junkie, but the actor is just so fascinating to watch. Allison's s2 storyline with the Civil Rights Movement is pretty interesting but her thing w Luther is just weeeeeird

- Vanya is interestingly tragic and I loved her dynamics with her siblings, esp Allison and Ben. That moment in s2 when Ben talked to her about how her anger was justified but she didn't need to let it turn her into a monster was my favorite in the series. Ellen Page does indeed not know how to play straight but her s2 romance with a farm wife was very sweet.

- Both seasons are slooooow to start but the seasonal endings are pretty fun. Liked the s2 60s shenanigans. S1 was kind of a drag though. Five is hilarious. The Handler was a great villain I love that actress! I only started warming up to most characters in s2 when they started to show some growth. I mean it makes sense since they were raised in such an emotionally stunting context but watching the characters make the same mistake over and over again with funky music gets tiring so fast.

- Yeah I don't have that much to say about it it's a bit style over substance tbh, still a lot of fun and I will def watch s3

[callboxkat]

Second Chances part 5: Roman’s Story (2 of 2)

Author’s note: Hello! Welcome to the installment of Second Chances that got so long I had to cut it in half! This is Roman’s story. 

I encourage you guys to read the warnings. If you can’t read this story for whatever reason, don’t feel bad! The rest of the au will still make sense. It’s most important that you guys take care of yourselves.

One thing to remember as you read is that this is Roman’s view of the events that happened. This is how he remembers things, and how he perceived them at the time. As such, there may be some small details that aren’t quite accurate to reality, whether he’s purposefully altered them or not.

Warnings (for part 2): homelessness, insecurity, emotional manipulation/pressure, bad relationships, lying, arguments, breakup, false major accusations (some are not specified, the other is academic dishonesty), gossip, peer pressure, implied homophobia, avoiding your problems, rejection, Remus is talked about but doesn’t actually appear

Word Count: 6172

Second Chances Masterpost!

...

It started almost slowly.

One day, Roman came to school, and felt like everybody was staring at him. To be fair, Roman often felt this way—he was a fashion icon, after all, with talent to boot, why wouldn’t they stare?—but today, that attention didn’t exactly seem positive.

He thought at first that, maybe, he was simply imagining things. That he was paranoid after his breakup. But it soon became clear that he was not in fact imagining the stares, the whispers that would suddenly cut off when he entered a room or looked in their direction.

He tried to figure out what could be going on. Had they found out about his breakup? About him being gay to begin with? Neither of those seemed like likely causes. He couldn’t see why people would suddenly care about the end of someone else’s relationship (one that hadn’t exactly been public knowledge to begin with), and it wasn’t exactly a secret that Roman was gay. He was pretty open about it.

Maybe it had something to do with the play coming up? Although Roman wasn’t sure why that would garner negative attention.

He decided to just wait and see if things went back to normal the next day.

…

Roman tapped his pen against his desk, agitated. People kept casting him looks. Whispers carried up to him from the back of the room. He caught his name a couple of times, and even, he thought, Jay’s.

Jay wasn’t in school that day, Roman noticed. Now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t seen him the day before, either.

His teacher had already stopped class twice to announce that they needed to pay better attention to the lesson, but most people didn’t seem to care.

Roman didn’t go to his next class. He hid in one of the stairwells. It wasn’t where he usually went to skip class, which wasn’t common to begin with, and it certainly wasn’t the best place to avoid being spotted. Regardless, he was starting to think that he’d made it through the whole class, when, ten minutes before the bell, there were footsteps at the top of the staircase. Roman, sitting at the landing where they switched direction, froze and looked up.

A girl stood there, maybe a year behind him, clutching a hall pass in one hand. She, too, had frozen at the sight of him.

“Um,” she said. “Sorry.” She made to leave, probably to use another stairwell, but Roman stood up.

“Wait,” he cried, sounding desperate. He didn’t know why he said that. He’d never spoken to this girl in his life. He’d seen her a few times, but he didn’t even know her name.

She hesitated, then slowly turned back around.

“Do you….” Roman sighed. “Do you know what’s going on? Why’s everyone been so weird the last couple of days?”

She frowned, looking back at him. She looked at him for a few seconds, then seemed to take pity on him. She clutched her hall pass more tightly, like it was a lifeline, and made her way down to where he stood. She got out her cell phone, and took a few seconds to navigate to something on it before shoving it towards him. It was a group chat. From the look of it, it must have included half the school. That couldn’t be good, especially since Roman wasn’t included.

He distantly noticed that the girl’s contact name was Brittney.

“Is… is it true?” the girl—Brittney—asked hesitantly.

Roman frowned. “I genuinely have no idea what you mean,” he admitted. He scrolled to the beginning of the chat, past all the replies. There, at the top…

…was a message from Jay.

…

Roman stared at the message, which took up the whole screen and then some. His hands were shaking, and he had to put both on the phone to keep from dropping it as he tried to read the solid block of text. The girl who’d lent the phone to him shifted from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable.

Roman swallowed. He felt somehow as if he were being simultaneously baked alive and submerged in icy water. He willed himself to scroll down past the first message, and then he saw the photos.

Fake photos, of course, or photos that had been taken completely out of context. Roman, for the first time, wished that Jay wasn’t so talented at storytelling and photo editing. Most of the photos didn’t directly confirm anything that Jay had said about Roman, but they certainly supported the idea that he wasn’t who he claimed to be.

Brittney cleared her throat, and Roman jumped. He realized he’d been staring at the phone in silence for a long time. The screen had gone dark without him realizing.

“Oh… um, here,” he said, his voice a croak. He handed back the phone.

“Thanks,” she said. She awkwardly pocketed it, then studied him for a second. “I, um… I need to go.” She held up the hall pass as an explanation.

“It’s not true,” Roman said. He was suddenly very aware of what the rest of the school must have thought about him, and he was very aware of the fact that he hadn’t yet tried to change anyone’s mind. “None of that is true. I—I mean, we were dating, and we broke up, but… none of what he’s saying is true. None of it. I swear.”

Brittney took a half step back at his earnest tone, her eyes widening slightly. Roman deflated, taking a couple of steps back too. He didn’t mean to corner this girl in a stairwell.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “Just—just go.”

She started down the stairs again, then glanced back. She chewed her lip for a moment, seeming to debate saying something, then clearly changed her mind. She took the rest of the stairs quickly, and she disappeared from view.

Roman put his back against the brick wall and slid down to the floor.

…

By this time of the story, tears were silently rolling down Roman’s face. He kept his gaze fixed determinedly on the puzzle that he and Patton had put together, still laid out proudly on the coffee table. Logan and Patton were both silent, neither moving. They didn’t seem to know what to do.

Neither did Roman, except to keep talking.

…

Roman didn’t know what to do.

He tried to talk to his friends, but none of them would let him get close. He tried texting them, tried explaining that it was all a lie, that Jay was the one in the wrong, but no one responded. Half of them didn’t even read the messages.

He went home that day feeling utterly crushed.

His parents knew something was wrong, of course, but they probably thought Roman was still merely upset about his breakup, and they didn’t push the subject.

Roman couldn’t tell them what had happened. What Jay had said about him. He could only hope that no one else would tell them. Roman was always on his best behavior, unwilling to let anyone, let alone his parents, think that he might be anything other than the chivalrous Prince he presented himself as.

It was a touchy subject, and for good reason.

Something that most people didn’t know about Roman was that he was not an only child. In fact, he was a twin. But Roman didn’t exactly see his brother very often. He… wasn’t like Roman. Or, he was, but he was like Roman’s reflection if he stood in front of the world’s most disturbing fun house mirror. He'd sent Roman to the doctor more than once when they were "playing" as kids. He had been in and out of juvie since they were twelve. It seemed only a matter of time before he ended up in jail, especially since their eighteenth birthday was coming up in only a few months. Roman knew his brother would never change.

The last thing Roman wanted was for his parents to think he was following in his brother’s footsteps. And he knew, he just knew, that if they found out about what had happened and what Jay had said about him, they would probably believe it. Roman and his brother—who no one in his family talked about unless they absolutely had to—were identical. It would have been easier had they been fraternal twins, but they were not. Roman knew that somewhere inside of him, there had always been the potential for him to be just like his brother. And his parents surely knew it too.

…

On Wednesday, Jay was back in school. He was constantly surrounded by a crowd. He suddenly had more friends than he ever had before. And Roman was alone for the first time in his life.

He was so, so alone.

He tried going to theater practice that night. He didn’t know why he thought it would be any different, but he hoped so. Maybe he thought that the other students would care too much about the upcoming performances to treat him any differently. But it wasn’t so.

He kept getting dirty looks from Jay’s crowd, and practically everyone avoided him. If anything, Roman realized, it was worse being among the theater students than among the school as a whole. It seemed to Roman that in the school at large, about half knew of Jay’s messages in the massive group chat, but almost every single person in the theater department did.

…

“I didn’t,” Logan interrupted, very softly.

…

By the time they actually got to running through some of the scenes, Roman was feeling very bitterly, jittery, and not-very-glittery. He kept forgetting his lines, and each time he messed up, the other actor he was working with would roll their eyes. The usual good-hearted laughter and encouragement of the rest of the group was gone.

After a while, Logan, of course, came up to him. Just what Roman needed.

“What do you want, Book Germ?”

Logan sighed and started explaining Roman’s lines in that overly level voice of his. Roman didn’t know or care if it was intentional, but his tone felt very patronizing, and the strong smell of hand sanitizer that followed Logan like a cloud wasn’t helping Roman’s mood. He could feel his face growing red the longer Logan spoke. He knew his lines! He’d been practicing them for months!

“If you think you can do it better, maybe you should, you obnoxious nerd,” Roman snapped.

Logan cocked his head to one side, pinching his lips together. “That is the purpose of an understudy, not a dramaturge. I am not an actor.”

“Then stop telling me how to act!”

“I am merely attempting to explain your lines to you, since it is clear you are incapable of memorizing them unaided. The opening show is in less than—”

“I know when the show is!”

Logan licked his lips. He adjusted his tie, which was so straight that Roman wondered if he ironed it between classes. “Then I suggest you act like it,” he said.

“What do you want from me?” Roman asked, glaring at him. “Do you want me to quit? Heck, maybe we should let the understudy do it! Is that what you want?”

A few students around the room, who had naturally congregated to watch the argument, were nodding. Several whispered to each other. If it were even possible, Roman’s face turned redder.

“Excuse me,” a voice said before Logan could come up with a response. It was one of the faculty members of the theater department, the director of the play they were meant to be practicing. His arms were crossed. “Would it be alright with the two of you if we continued the rehearsal? I’d hate to interrupt your argument.”

Logan hesitated for a second, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not the teacher was being sarcastic. Roman rolled his eyes.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Roman said coldly, looking around at everyone, not just the teacher or Logan. He started off the stage, already removing pieces of his costume. A hat was cast to the wooden floor, then each glove. He made it back to the dressing room before his composure broke, and the tears started to fall. No one came to retrieve him.

It wasn’t unlike Roman to make a dramatic exit. He had a few times before, during arguments with his nemesis. But this one felt much more final.

…

Roman said nothing to his parents about what had happened. Not about how Jay had treated him, not about the lies his ex had told, not about the play. It was partially out of fear of Roman’s parents believing Jay’s lies, and partially out of sheer embarrassment about them knowing of the situation. He felt like he had failed. So, he pretended, to them, that everything was fine. He knew that they probably could have helped, that they could have talked to his teachers and gotten everything straightened out, but Roman decided that it would be better to try to deal with it himself, or if worse came to worst, to simply ride it out until graduation. He could deal with his newly found status as an outcast until he left for school. He still had another month of high school and the entire summer until that finally happened, but it seemed preferable to Roman to wait it out than to have to ask for help. He didn’t want to be known as the person who had to run to his parents because some kids at school were being mean. A Prince should fight his own battles, Roman told himself. 

(He would grow to regret this decision later, unfortunately; but at the time, it seemed reasonable.)

His parents, of course, weren’t completely clueless; but Roman did his best to keep them in the dark. If they asked why he wasn’t eating as much lately, he claimed that it was nervous excitement about the play, about going to Saint Gabriel, about anything other than the real cause. If they asked why he didn’t hang out with friends from school much anymore, he claimed that it was because he was busy studying and practicing for the play.

Of course, Roman had dropped out of the play. It was clear that no one wanted him there, so he stopped showing up to practices. The only one who had contacted him about it was one of the theater department faculty members, who simply asked if he was planning to return or if they should plan to put the understudy on stage that weekend. He didn’t sound surprised when Roman refused. While he was perfectly polite during the exchange, Roman got the feeling that some of the other students had talked to the teacher and told him some details of Roman’s supposed… negative character traits.

…

“Wait,” Logan interrupted, sounding confused.

Roman glanced up at him, lifting his gaze from the puzzle on the coffee table for the first time in a while.

“Pardon me if this seems inconsiderate to ask—”

“Logan,” Patton said softly, as if this were something he’d had to tell his boyfriend several times in the past, “if you have to say something like that, that’s usually a clue that you shouldn’t say whatever you were going to say next.”

“No, it’s fine,” Roman sighed, glancing at Patton in appreciation. He blinked a few times and sat up straighter. “Go for it.”

Logan coughed, glancing at Patton with a slightly more self-conscious expression. “I was going to ask what any of this had to do with you becoming homeless,” he said. “Based on your story so far, it seems to me that this situation was all simple high school drama that should have passed as soon as we graduated. If you had actually gone to your parents or the school for aid, many of these issues could have been mitigated; but regardless, they should not have followed you for so long. I do not intend to belittle the pain you felt; but I simply do not understand how it could possibly have led to your later predicament.”

Roman swallowed. He could feel some resentment at Logan’s seeming dismissal of his problems starting to bubble up, and he did his best to push it back down. Logan probably didn’t mean to be rude. And Roman really was in no place to be upset with the man. He reminded himself that Logan had been pretty much a loner for as long as Roman had known him. He’d never known what it was like to be popular, let alone what it felt like to have that ripped away from him. And he figured he couldn’t relate to being with someone like Jay, either, or to how upset Roman had been at losing him. Logan was with Patton. The embodiment of sunshine. As far as Roman knew, Logan had never been with anyone else.

“Sorry, Ro,” Patton put in. “He’s just trying to understand is all.”

“No—I know,” Roman assured him. “I’m not mad.”

Patton released a breath, seeming relieved.

Logan glanced between them. “I’ve been told I sometimes lack tact,” he said slowly.

Roman just rubbed at his eyes. “You’re good, I guess,” he said. “This stuff is important, though, I swear.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to give us a condensed version?” Patton asked gently. His tone made it clear that he wasn’t asking for Roman to do so because he was bored or anything. He was asking simply out of consideration for Roman.

Roman shrugged helplessly. He… well, he sort of felt like he couldn’t do that. He hadn’t actually told anyone all of this before. He was still leaving out quite a few details, but he felt like he needed to tell as much of it as he could.

It was freeing, in a weird, simultaneously mortifying sort of way.

Patton looked like he wanted to say something else, but Roman cleared his throat, and they both let him continue his story.

…

The play’s performance came and went. Roman did not show up. They didn’t want him there, he knew. While a part of him wanted to show up to spite everyone, to prove that they—and especially Jay—hadn’t gotten to him, he also just wanted to curl up in bed with some cinnamon hot chocolate and his laptop and watch old episodes of Glee.

(He couldn’t do that, either, though, since his parents thought he was performing; and he couldn’t very well have them find him in his room during the show without having to answer some awkward questions).

His parents would usually have attended the show, but Roman told them that the tickets had sold out. They had wanted to call the school and complain about it, but Roman convinced them not to. He was glad that that worked. That would have been an awkward phone call, and very hard to explain.

After Roman missed the play’s performance, things only got worse at school. The other students of the drama department, of course, only avoided him more. Roman saw Logan on Monday morning by his locker, and the dramaturge had looked him over once before scoffing and turning away. No doubt he was angry that Roman hadn’t shown, even if he probably thought the production had been better off without him. Maybe he was just annoyed that all the time he’d put into berating Roman’s performance had gone to waste.

Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. Logan hating him was nothing new. It didn’t sting the way losing his friends stung, or ache the way not getting to be in his last high school play made him ache. Not at all.

Honestly, Roman’s biggest regret about dropping out of the play was the sheer amount of satisfaction he was sure that Jay got out of it.

He got what he wanted, Roman thought. He had ruined his social life, taken away his friends, spoiled everyone’s impression of him, and pressured him into giving up the starring role in the last play of his high school career. Maybe, Roman hoped, Jay was satisfied.

…

The end of the school year was coming up fast.

Roman was getting ready for college, finishing final papers, studying for exams, and generally preparing to no longer be a high school student. He was quite eager to leave this building and never set foot inside again.

Classes had just finished for the day, and Roman was on his way to talk to his chemistry teacher about one of his assignments. The science department was on the opposite end of the school from his last class, so he had to walk past many of the other classrooms on the way.

One of those classrooms happened to be his English classroom. Roman heard voices coming from inside. He ignored them at first—it wasn’t exactly uncommon to hear voices in a classroom, obviously—but when he recognized who was talking to the teacher, he froze in his tracks.

It was Jay.

Roman slowly stepped back a few paces until he was in front of the doorway. Inside, Jay stood in front of the teacher’s desk, his head bowed as if embarrassed. The teacher, Ms. Dawerst, looked absolutely furious.

Roman had a bad feeling. Jay was toying with a ring around his right middle finger, something he did when he was lying. Roman inched closer, trying to hear what exactly was being said.

“I meant to tell you sooner, Ms. Dawerst, but… I guess I was just nervous. Roman is… well, you know Roman. He’s—”

“He’s what?” Roman demanded suddenly, announcing his presence. Suddenly, he’d had enough. “Standing right here? Tired of you lying to everyone because you can’t take—”

“Mr. Prince,” the teacher said, a warning in her voice.

“He’s lying,” Roman insisted.

“And how exactly would you know that if you don’t even know what he’s saying?” She arched an eyebrow, folding her arms carefully as if she’d caught him in her spider web.

“Because—because that’s all he’s been doing! He’s been trying to sabotage me for months!”

“Why would he do that?” she asked, seeming exasperated.

“Because I broke up with him!” Roman snapped, seething. “Because he can’t take that he’s alone and I don’t want anything to do with him anymore!”

“Mr. Prince, I couldn’t care less about your lovers’ squabble,” she said. “This is a matter of academic dishonesty.”

Roman paused. Academic dishonesty? What did that even mean? He glanced at Jay, who looked like he was trying to become one with the wall, refusing to even look at his former boyfriend out of fear. All an act, obviously, but Roman had to admit that it was a convincing one. It certainly didn’t help that their English teacher had never been fond of Roman, and had especially disliked him since he’d started missing her classes more often.

“Jared here—”

“Jay,” Jay corrected in a whisper.

“Jay here has claimed that, while you were dating,”—she said the word as if it left a sour taste in her mouth, which only made Roman angrier—“you forced him to write large portions of your essays for this class, and he claims to find it very likely that you plagiarized other sections as well. Do you deny this?”

“I—what?!” Roman’s voice was shrill. “Of course I deny it! I didn’t make him write anything! And I wouldn’t plagiarize!”

“That is no way to speak to your teacher,” Ms. Dawerst said. “Can you prove that you didn’t cheat?”

“What? Of course—” Roman broke off. How exactly could he prove that he hadn’t cheated? It was just Jay’s word against his own. “I swear to you, I would never cheat. Not on an essay or anything else. I promise you, there is no evidence that I cheated. You won’t find any. Because it doesn’t exist! I did not cheat!”

The teacher looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Very well, Roman. I will be looking over both your and Jay’s papers for the term again, and I will be looking closely for signs of plagiarism. If I find evidence that either of you cheated, you will be receiving a failing grade in this class. If I don’t, then the three of us can forget that this conversation ever happened.”

Roman nodded, supposing that this was the best he could hope for. “Thank you, Ms. Dawerst,” he said quietly. He left the room and stood in the hall, staring up at the ceiling. Jay slunk out a few seconds later. Roman looked at him hard. Jay had just tried to make him fail his English class! Roman couldn’t believe it. He could only be glad that Jay had apparently failed.

Except… Jay sure didn’t seem all that disappointed. He grinned at Roman as he sauntered past. Roman suddenly felt his blood run cold. A horrible feeling of dread fell over him.

“What did you do?” he asked softly.

“Me? Nothing,” Jay promised lightly. And he left.

…

Roman failed English.

Not one but two of his papers contained lines that appeared to be directly lifted from other academic papers. They were lines that Roman didn’t remember writing. He couldn’t think of any explanation for them being there, not unless Jay had put his plan into action well before they had broken up and sneaked in the lines during one of their study sessions. One of the papers had been turned in just after Roman first applied to Saint Gabriel. Had Jay really been planning for that long to destroy Roman’s life? Was it some sort of twisted backup plan, to try to keep Roman from leaving their hometown?

The school asked to speak to Roman’s parents about his apparent plagiarism, of course, and it wasn’t as if he could keep them from finding out about this. Roman wasn’t asked to attend the meeting, so he got to spend the evening pacing up and down the length of his house, too stressed to sit down.

The fallout did have one bright side: he still got to graduate. The high school wouldn’t expel him, which had been a very real fear of Roman’s, or force him to stay another semester to repeat the class, since he had technically fulfilled his graduation requirements even without the class. Roman could only be grateful to his mamá, who had found a section of the course catalog that stated that the screenwriting class he took junior year could be used as English credit.

Somehow, his parents even convinced the school to keep the incident off of his academic record, since it was the first time he’d ever been “caught” doing anything of the sort. He was a good kid who’d just been stressed in his last semester, they claimed. He didn’t have a history of disciplinary issues. Roman had never been suspended before, and he’d only received a handful of detentions in the four years he’d attended.

From what Roman gathered, Jay’s name had never come up in the meeting. Apparently, Ms. Dawerst had made it sound like she, the dutiful and ever-observant English teacher, had noticed some inconsistencies in Roman’s writing, and had taken it upon herself to recheck Roman’s papers, ultimately finding the plagiarized lines. Roman wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for or resentful of this. On one hand, he didn’t have to address the whole Jay situation with his parents. On the other hand, because he still didn’t want to admit to them what had happened, he didn’t have much evidence to work with as far as making them believe he hadn’t committed plagiarism went.

Because, of course, his parents hadn’t believed that Roman didn’t put those lines in his paper. And when they asked where else they could have come from, Roman didn’t have a good answer.

“I am very disappointed in you, mijo,” his mamá said that first night, when they got home from the meeting.  She looked very sad.

Roman, who had finally stopped his pacing when he heard his parents’ car pull up to the house, stood on the opposite side of the kitchen table and stared morosely down at the floor. “I didn’t cheat,” he said softly, feeling as if he’d already said the words so many times that they had lost all meaning.

“We want to believe you, Roman,” his dad sighed. “But you can’t expect us to believe that the lines showed up in your papers all by themselves.”

“I’m not saying they did,” Roman said, “but it wasn’t me, I swear—”

“Roman, I do not like liars,” his mamá said, sounding very tired. “Please, do not lie to me.”

“Te lo juro, mamá,” Roman practically sobbed. “¡Te lo juro, I didn’t cheat!”

His mamá set down her purse and came nearer. “Roman… you know if you were having trouble in school, you could have come to us, no? We could have gotten you a tutor. You didn’t have to do this.”

They didn’t believe him. Of course, they didn’t believe him. Why would they? Even Roman had to admit that his defense was pretty pathetic. And besides, even if Roman had always tried his best to be a good son, a good person, his twin brother was… very much not. Maybe, to his parents, this whole thing only confirmed what they had suspected all along.

Standing there in the kitchen in the lengthening silence, Roman considered telling his parents about Jay. He really did consider it, as much as he very much didn’t want to open that can of worms. But… he didn’t feel ready to go into all that. And the last thing he wanted was to potentially give his parents more reason to think he was an awful son. What if they believed Jay’s version of events?

He couldn’t do it.

His mamá stared at him, disappointed. His dad looked away, his jaw set, his posture stiff.

Roman turned and fled upstairs.

...

Two days after graduation, Roman got a letter in the mail.

He stood outside in front of the mailbox, looking down at the logo on the envelope. It was the very familiar symbol of the Saint Gabriel Academy of Fine Arts.

Every time Roman remembered that he was going to that school in the fall, he felt a bit better about everything that had happened. Sure, he had lost his boyfriend, his friends, his starring role in the high school theater department, the trust of his parents and teachers, any joy that might have come from graduating high school, and even his new car (his parents had taken that away with lightning speed); but at least he still had Saint Gabriel. He still had a promising future.

As Roman grabbed the stack of letters and turned to head back to the house, he wondered what this letter could be about. Saint Gabriel had sent a few in the past. Maybe it was another pamphlet about their most promising courses, or a map of the campus, or an invitation to visit. Roman would have appreciated becoming more familiar with the college he was set to attend. Or maybe it was simply a congratulations on his high school graduation.

Roman opened the door to the house and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He set most of the mail on the kitchen table where his mamá would find it, then took the cream-colored envelope for himself. He tore it open with gusto and a lack of precision that would have given his former theater department nemesis an aneurysm, and he took out the letter within.

“Mr. Roman Prince,

We are regretful to inform you that upon further reconsideration of your application and of all relevant documents, we have decided to retract our previous offer of admission. Any tuition that has already been paid will be promptly returned to—"

The letter fell from Roman’s hands.

…

Roman barely left his room for a week after he got the news. He didn’t know what to do.

He knew that Jay was behind his preemptive expulsion from Saint Gabriel, whether it was because of the plagiarism, or because of the other lies that he had already told, or because of some other thing that he had done and Roman didn’t even know about yet. Roman wasn’t sure exactly what had moved the college’s hand. But he knew that the decision was final. He would never convince Saint Gabriel to take him now.

He should tell his parents. They’d find out eventually, he knew. Roman was trying to figure out how to break it to them, but it was hard when he really didn’t want to tell them at all. He wanted to live in denial for as long as possible. He wanted his family to be proud of him again. He didn’t want to see the disappointment in their eyes as he told them that his picture perfect future was truly ruined.

Roman shoved his face into his pillow and screamed.

Soon after, there was a quiet knock at his bedroom door. Roman pushed himself up on his elbows and looked over his shoulder.

“Roman?” a familiar voice called. His mamá, of course. “Do you want some hot chocolate?”

Roman sniffed, looking back down at his pillow. “Not today, Mamá,” he called back.

“With cinnamon,” she tempted.

“No.”

“Okay,” she sighed, sounding disappointed. “Let me know if you change your mind. Te quiero.”

Her footsteps retreated back down the hall.

…

Roman could admit that he did not always make the best life choices. He didn’t always think them through as much as he should have. He’d made a lot of mistakes. But there was one life choice that must have been the worst he’d ever made.

That choice was the decision to pretend to go off to college.

Roman’s bags were all packed, money tucked into his wallet to purchase textbooks that Roman would never need. With his car still confiscated, Roman’s dad was driving him to a bus station. From there, he could catch a bus and go the rest of the way to Saint Gabriel. Of course, Roman planned to get off the bus a bit early.

Before he left, Roman gave his mamá a long, tight hug. She hugged him back just as firmly.

“I’ll miss you, little prince,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Have a good time at school. Te quiero muchísimo.”

“Te quiero,” Roman murmured back. He didn’t know what he was going to do after today. Where his life was going to go. But he was hopeful. He’d get an apartment, a job, maybe find a school that would accept him… he’d be away from Jay and from all his problems. And when was ready, he’d return, and he’d make his parents proud.

He’d get a fresh start. A second chance at the amazing life he wanted.

At the bus station, once Roman had his ticket and knew where to go, Roman and his dad said their goodbyes. Their hug didn’t last as long as the one between Roman and his mamá, nor was it as tight, but it was warm all the same.

“Make sure you keep your head on straight,” his dad said seriously as they broke apart. “No funny business. I know you can do well, Roman. I believe in you.”

“Thanks,” Roman said quietly. The word tasted like sawdust.

“Good luck.”

“Bye,” Roman said. He watched until his dad disappeared. Then he grabbed the handle of his rolling suitcase and made his way to the bus.

…

“As you can probably guess,” the present-day Roman sighed, “my amazing ‘fresh start’ didn’t turn out so great. I got my apartment, all right, but I ran out of money after a couple of months… didn’t manage to get a job before I was kicked out. Made some more bad choices. And, well… here we are. That’s it, I guess. That’s… why I was homeless.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Patton sat up straight.

“Roman, I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest with me.”

“Um… okay?”

“Do your parents know where you are?”

Of course he would ask about that. Roman should have known.

“Roman?”

“…No,” Roman admitted. “No. I haven’t talked to them since I left.”

“Can we call them? Do you know their phone number?”

Roman shook his head.

“Well, that’s okay. We can find them online, or in the phone book…. Would that be alright with you?”

Roman stared. He hadn’t spoken to his family in years. Would they even want to hear from him? Wouldn’t they be angry that he had left without saying anything, that he had lied about going to college? What if they told him he should have stayed away?

But they were his family. And Roman had to admit that he missed them.

“Yeah,” Roman blurted, before he could change his mind. “Yeah. That would be alright.”

[juicemitio]

Alright I went to Louisville Galaxycon and saw Travis and Clint twice, for their worldbuilding workshop and their Q&A. Here's some interesting stuff I learned (I didn't include stuff they talked about that's pretty common knowledge or they talked about on the last ttazz)

Graduation 

Fitzroy was originally going to be a jock that was weak bc he no longer had a team, Travis told Griffin that that didn't really work for the world so they reframed it as him training to be a hero, was great academically and behaviorally, but had a problem no one had seen before and no one felt like dealing with. It specifically wasn't "barbarian fails bc he can't keep his rage in check," it was that no one was willing to deal with his magic so they shipped him off

Someone asked Travis to explain fitzroy's magic, so from the DM's mouth- he's a barbarian subtype with elemental magic which has a random effect while raging, which we haven't seen yet (path of the wild soul if you want to look it up and see what he can do) and he took a feat which gives him the ability to cast 3 cantrips of his choosing. What I thought was interesting was that Travis described Fitz's magic using the word "elemental" twice, even though that isn't specifically stated in the path of the wild soul entry

Travis knows Argo's secret and is very excited about it 

Clint has a pirate fiction book he reads every night before they record to get into the headspace to play Argo, he told us the name but I forgot it 

There is one small little concept that made the whole of graduation make sense to Travis and is what the arc will be about, and he only figured it out a few days before recording. Obviously he didn't tell us what it was

Originally it was going to start with everyone starting at age 11 and slowly killing the other kids off, but Justin didn't feel comfortable playing a game surrounded by kids dying 

The accounting scene is already one of Travis' all time favorite taz scenes

The pegasus scene informed Travis on exactly how he was going to treat the firbolg

Also Travis referred to Justin's character exclusively as "the firbolg," which means "master firbolg" is solely a thing going on with the npcs in the game which I find hilarious. They just all decided to give him a dope title bc he deserves it, meanwhile no one will call Fitzroy "sir"

To Fitzroy, social threats are an extremely real and serious thing, like the Biggest thing to him (we were talking about what characters found threatening in the workshop, for context)  

There's some big concept/idea that comes up in the next episode that travis almost let spill and had to quickly stop himself from saying it

Someone mentioned eating breakfast in their question in the workshop and Travis goofed on it for a second, then said "cereal world" suddenly, and Clint had to pick up the question bc Travis had to take a second to make a note of it in his phone 

Travis started brainstorming graduation in March and they recorded the first episode in October, and his main job in that time was working on graduation 

Before Buckminster was adapted for graduation he could not fight at all, if he got into a fight he would die, he poured everything into charisma and could talk his way out of any fight (even the big bad of the game he crit 20d his check and the big bad walked away from the fight) 

Travis is really into psychology and how if you assign a label to someone they're going to act more like it (ie you tell a kid they're amazing and smart and talented and they become more like that, you tell a kid they're annoying and dumb and a problem they become more like that), and how that was a major contributor to play into hero/villain/sidekick/henchperson dynamics, you get assigned this arbitrary title of good/evil/subservient and you become like that to fit the role, and then the inevitable pushing against that mold

Travis is fully aware of his story being compared to harry potter and he doesn't care bc it's apt (people in a school arbitrarily divided into four groups and one of them is the Bad One), also he knows people describe it as "sky high meets Harry Potter meets my hero academia" and he actually finds that really flattering bc he thinks that sounds cool and like something he'd want to watch 

On that note, Travis is a self-identified Slytherin and he's always upheld that the reason Slytherin is depicted in a bad light is bc Rowling decided she didn't like them, and he's always sympathized with the idea of a first year Slytherin working their ass off following the rules and doing their work and getting points, and Dumbledore rewards three idiots for breaking like every rule and pulls the trophy away from you. This was a big inspiration for graduation, of one group getting a bad rep and being portrayed as evil for literally no reason 

Amnesty

Clint & Travis's favorite scene they've ever done together was Ned & Aubrey's final scene together 

Aubrey and Dani do move in with each other at the end of amnesty

Balance

Travis' main emotion around taz is pride and he's most proud of the scene in stolen century with the spirits in the robots, bc they had to record it a second time bc it got way too dark and ended in a really grim way and about 20 min after they finished they all decided that they weren't happy with it, that it didn't fit the tone, he's really proud they didn't just leave it be and they took the second pass at it to make it right

I'm pretty sure he's talked about wanting to kill Magnus off at the beginning before but he mentioned that it was only at the end of petals to the metal he actually realized he wanted Magnus to live, bc Hurley had to sacrifice herself to save Magnus bc Magnus had been so reckless, that hit Travis really hard. Travis realized that Magnus' recklessness was getting people hurt and so Magnus did too, so Magnus become a bit more cautious and took up rogue training to try not to get anyone killed again 

Dust

Dust wasn't designed to be anything more than a one off and the workload was completely unsustainable, the document of notes for dust was about 100 pages and only about 10% of it got used

The reason Travis loved it so much was bc it was a mystery and he found it really fun

Commitment

Clint would love to revisit commitment, but probably not in podcast form bc he didn't find himself really being in the moment as much bc of all the different things he had to keep track of, he'd like to see a comic adaptation/continuation if possible

It was based of a comic he wrote that never got published bc the company producing it failed (he still cashed his paycheck) so he reused it bc he still liked it a lot, it was about how America was founded as a monarchy instead of a democracy and what that changed in the usa's (united sovereignty of america's) history, and how people now were fighting to establish a democracy. Also there were cowboys and spaceships and other cool stuff he put in there bc he liked it

General adventure zone

The reason why they're are able to do romantic relationships w/o being weirded out by it (they joke about it but they don't actually care) is bc it's never done in an explicit or sexual way and since it's the decision the characters would make to pursue the relationship then that's the decision they make. He reframed it as it wouldn't be weird if a family were writing a script together and there was a romance and one person wrote lines for one character and the other wrote lines for the other. He did mention that two siblings playing characters in a relationship as actors on screen wouldn't be cool though

They sometimes get comments that some of the stuff they do is "fanservice," but they feel that they owe their success to their fans and they owe some to them 

They are both aware of and proud that Justin is the best at character creation, Clint specifically really was talking about how Justin's strong suit is definitely character creation and characterization

General mcelroy stuff

They walked pretty close to me when they entered the stage room for the q&a and like… they're short, like shorter than you think

Travis referred to his unborn child as "baby dod" (I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure) which I looked up and is a nickname for George, and given with their older kid being named Barbera and nicknamed BeBe and Travis talking before about how he and his wife like classic names with cool nicknames it makes sense

Travis had an earing in his right ear, I didn't get to see his left ear and I couldn't tell if it was an actual piercing or a fake, it looked really good though. Also his tinted glasses look a lot cooler irl than they do in pictures

Clint told the teenage mutant Ninja turtle story with the signatures that griffin told on mbmbam, but Clint remembered it as happening at King's Island, not Disney. This story was prompted by the question of the biggest lie he ever told his kids, and he only came clean about this a few months ago

Travis told a story about how he finished a videogame when he was younger and was so excited that he picked up a plastic knife, yelled "throwing knife!" threw it directly at Griffin who dodged it and it hit and shattered a window

[barryallenis]

I agree about Twitter. I just don’t understand why ppl want to engage w/others in there especially celebs. The amount of hypocrisy that goes on is ridiculous. I had to walk away from all that ugliness and keep it moving. Fans think they know these celebs because they get a quick peek at their lives. Seriously, we don’t know what these ppl are doing 99.9% of the time. Yet ppl try to tell them how to live their lives. I used to say when you start paying my bills then we can talk until then bye

It’s truely wild what people think they have the right to say behind the guise of social media. It’s the accessibility and the anonymity. All it takes is an @ and you know your name is going to show up in that person’s notification. But while you know who THEY are, they have no idea who YOU are. I know I’m not announcing any huge revelation saying that trolls thive off that hidden identity. But it’s true about comments good and bad. Your absolutely right, when I said we KNOW who they are, what I meant was we know their name, their face, their occupation. That’s, pretty much it. 99.9% of them? The stuff that really matters? We don’t. And it’s the twisted mindset social media has created that makes people think that they do.

I think the thing that has always bothered me about twitter specifically is that it has always felt superficial. Which is fine, if you want to post about what you had for dinner, but not when you’re trying to have bigger discussions. No one can have full, healthy, understandable and constructive discourse in 280 characters. What has anyone ever learned from 280 characters? Why would people waste their time reading and writing hundred paged books and texbooks and 50 paged research papers on one single topic if it could all somehow be dumbed down to to 280 character? like??? To fully understand something, too add to a discussion, prove a point, to change someones mind, what you say must come with facts, context and explanation. And that means, sorry! You’re gonna need to use a few more words!

On the simpler end, I noticed how much this was true amidst fandoms specifically. There’s often talk of a “twitter fandom”, an “instagram fandom” and a“tumblr fandom” but at the end of the day I have, and always will, choose spaces like tumblr to engage in any fandom. Not only is tumblr a place where people have so much more space to express their creativity in things like edits, gifsets, and fanfiction, but it also leaves more room for ACTUAL INDEPT DISCUSSION. I write multi paragraph responses/post on the regular, thats the NORM on this site! Sure, some of it’s about silly stuff, but a lot of it goes deeper. Whether that be disecting an actors facial expressions in an emotional scene or a conversational dialogue or talking about overarching thematic storylines or character development. And they’re not being done so that an actor, actress, writer or producer can see them, they’re being done just, for the joy of it. Because it’s fun and interesting to dicuss the stories we see play out in front of us. I mean why do we all get so invested in fandoms in the first place!? We get invested in the story and the characters. Or at least, that’s the case for most.

I’m not saying you have to thoroughly disect every single piece of content you consume, that would be insurmountable for most of us. There are so many tv shows, movies or books that I don’t engage with fandom wise at all. (I watched a show called Burn Notice, twice all the way through, and I literally could not name a since actor in that entire show lol). I’m not saying you can’t have surface level discussion about things, but ... call them what they are. Don’t write a sentence with no context and think it’s worthy of acknolwegment from the person it’s about. ESPECIALLY when that thing is critical. If you are going to critique something to someone who directly created an aspect of the thing you’re critiquing, you BETTER COME AT IT WITH FACTS. And it BETTER NOT COME AS A PERSONAL ATTACK. If someone has an example of a constructivly critical tweet that could actually be used to make real, systemic change and not just one that makes an over simplified claim directly to the person in a way that is really no help at all, please let me know. Those kinds of things should be filtered before they’re shared and maybe simply thought about and digested before saying. But that’s never really been twitters whole stick. Twitters vibe to me has always been that of a tumblr liveblog but at all times; comments made in the heat of the moment without much thought of the impact or reprocussion despite the fact that it has the most means of impact than almost any other social media platform.

In the most broad sense, Tumblr is for people who want to contribute, Twitter is for people who want to be seen. And what’s most upsetting about it is that they ARE the most seen. I mean, Taylor Swift is the only celebrity I know of, right now, that is an active participant on tumblr (I’m sure there are more but that’s the one I’m most familiar with). Meanwhile, nearly every celebrity has a twitter. No one comes on here looking to be seen (minus some of the Taylor Swift fandom but thats kinda to the point). And yet it’s the thought provocing, factual based critiquies AND appreciations that are so often found on THIS site that are the ones that should be heard by the people that make those pieces of media.

TLTR: What celebrities see of the general public’s perception of them and whatever their art form is, is largely through twitter replies and instagram comments. No wonder they are often so emotionally wreaked by the feedback they hear! There is largely, no real substance behind very bold claims (of both critisim and praise! Not to the same extent obviously, but what does shouting out “I LOVE YOU” to a person you do not know really doing?). I so wish that we could simply talk to celebrities on social media (and, really, anyone on social media) like we do people in our normal day to day lives. What an ideological world it could be without people recieving egregious death threats on the daily huh? Imagine.

All I know is, whatever the solution to the problems we all have with interacting on social media, the answer is not going to be found on twitter.

[fleimkepakosskairipa]

Meaning no hate because I hate ET and Clarke as much as you do but could you please give examples of how she's been biphobic?

Hi!

So, basically, she said her favorite part about playing a Bisexual character is getting to kiss boys and girls and called Clexa a lesbian relationship. Here is a post by @dylanobrienisbatman​ . If links aren’t working, here’s what it says:

I’m always so mad that ejt got asked the best part of playing a bi character and instead of talking about how much she loves that she represents a community or that her show does so well about having gay characters that just ARE or literally anything she fucking talked about “kissing boys AND girls” like the bi community doesn’t have enough of a stigma about us only wanting to have more options and being sexually promiscuous. I can’t stand her god damn.

And this is a post I made summing it all up. Again, if links aren’t working:

So, I tried to look for the exact video and in THIS ONE, she says Clexa is a lesbian relationship, so she’s basically saying if a bisexual woman is in a relationship with another woman, it’s a lesbian relationship and she’s a lesbian. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be so offensive, but if she’s gonna play up Clarke and The 100 being so diverse and inclusive, maybe she should learn, ya know?

I couldn’t find the exact video, I think it was in the middle of a panel so I might find it later, but THISpost by @DYLANOBRIENISBATMAN sums it up:

“I’m always so mad that ejt got asked the best part of playing a bi character and instead of talking about how much she loves that she represents a community or that her show does so well about having gay characters that just ARE or literally anything she fucking talked about “kissing boys AND girls” like the bi community doesn’t have enough of a stigma about us only wanting to have more options and being sexually promiscuous. I can’t stand her god damn.”

Both of those Not Good^TM on their own, but especially when you compare it to how Sachin Sahel answered the question ‘How do you feel portraying an LGBT character?’ on an Instagram Q & A that was uploaded to Youtube:

“Um, Amazing, because not only do I get to represent Indians on TV, I get to represent another group that deserves a lot more, uh, visibility on television and media and, uh, to do that, is an honor.” (Timestamp: 1:03)

I remember those interviews! How can you possibly misunderstand your own character so badly? It’s okay to play the bad guy! It’s okay to realize your character isn’t perfect! You’re not gonna get fired if you play a villain and you’re not saying your character is terrible in general if you say they have terrible morals.

Again, comparing to another co-star, Richard Harmon is perfectly fine with people thinking Murphy is a villain and always says that Murphy’s not perfect and has made mistakes and used to be bad. And because he thought that, he understood his character better and could play him better. But if you’re convinced your character is one way when the story is taking them another way, you’re gonna fail because you’re fighting against the story that’s being told and it won’t work.

#I HAVE A LOT OF ISSUES W/ EJT IN GENERAL BUT HER COMMENTARY ABOUT PLAYING A BISEXUAL CHARACTER … I WILL NEVER RESPECT HER #ESPECIALLY BECAUSE SHE 1) NEVER WALKED IT BACK AND 2) MOST OF THE TIME WHEN SHE TALKS ABOUT IT ITS STILL IN THE CONTEXT OF ‘KISSING’ #IM SO TIRED#AND ALSO SHES JUST…. NOT A GOOD ACTRESS… LIKE CERTAIN SCENES SHES VERY GOOD BTU OTHERS… IDK MAN IT JUST DOESNT COME THROUGH#AND SHE JUST… DOESN’T SEEM TO GRASP HER CHARACTER VERY WELL #WHICH I USED TO VERY MU CH BE LIKE 'THE ACTOR KNOWS THE CHARACTER ITS THEIR CHARACTER’ #BUT AS IVE GOTTEN OLDER I REALISE THAT NO MATTER HOW WELL THE ACTOR DOES PLAYING A  CHARACTER ON TV (OR HOW POORLY) #THEM KNOWING THE CHARACTER IS TOTALLY SEPERATE FROM THAT #AND EJT JUST…. DOESNT. LIKE IM NOT A BLARKE ANYMORE BUT HER GENERAL REJECTION OF THE IDEA THAT BELLAMY IS CLARKE’S PERSON IN S1-S4? #LITERALLY UNTIL PRESS FOR THIS SEASON SHE BASICALLY WA SLIKE 'NAH HE DOESNT MATTER TO HER THAT MUCH’ LIKE… #GIRL WHAT?!?!

That, too! A year or two ago at Comic Con there was the whole debate about whether she said ‘Bellarke shit’ or ‘Bellarke ship’, but either one, she said it while she was insulting Bellarke. She’s constantly said Lexa was the most important person to her and then Madi, in the beginning she kind of joked about Bellarke, but she always made it clear she didn’t ship them.

And then this season came along, and all of a sudden she loves their relationship and thinks it’s so strong and important???? Did she think she was losing followers and wanted to bait the Bellarkers more so they’d come back? Did someone tell her to start playing it up? I don’t know what happened, but it was a really quick change that came out of nowhere. Even Bob didn’t change his tune that much after he was bullied over his looks. He seemed to talk about Becho less, but he hasn’t all of a sudden gotten on the Bellarke train, he’s always said they were important to each other, but it’s platonic, and that hasn’t changed.

So, basically, she doesn’t know her character and she can’t keep up with what she thinks about her! Even better!

It’s not a lot, so it’s not like she’s actively insulting bisexual people, but it’s still something and it still annoys me. But hopefully this explains it at least a little bit!

[boglog]

HILL HOUSE NOTES !!

Objectively speaking, I like the show as a weird crossover between Transparent and American Horror Story but there are always some cons :/ One thing I will say is that I find it hard to review horror bc I'm too busy swimming in cortisol to notice plot holes but I watched the scary scenes w subtitles and no audio and that will have to do!!!

Cons:

The diologue is occasionally awful.

Scratch that it's terrible and the more the show goes on the more it nears Grey's Anatomy levels of nauseating

Firstly, there are way too many name drops esp when there are only two characters in the room, sometimes even one sentence after another, it's exhausting.

i.e. 'Stay right here, honey. I'm going to talk to the police now sweetie, I'll be right back.' // 'You eat people, Steve. You are a parasite, Steve.'

Second of all, 'Don't do that ever again. Don't do that. Where were you? I thought the house thingy got you.' kids don't talk like this. I know irl children tend to imitate the adults around them but the sheer amount of stock cliches these child actors are required to say is incredible

And honestly overall there's too much talking period. There are dozens of scenes where a character monologues for almost five minutes!!!!

I loved mind doppelgänger Leigh's speech but really let's tally it up: we've got Mrs Dudley's monologue, Olivia monologues a few times, Theo's monologue, Luke 2 or three monologues, one from Shirley, Hugh is not much of a talker so thank god they were consistent. And of course a lot of these are important to the story and even close to entertaining (see also: Nell yelling at Steve) but it's way too much and anything actually significant is diluted in this deluge of info-dump-y speeches

Why god??? Why?

Like this is television not radio but I guess it's another case of Forced Diegesis when summarising w flashbacks would actually be way easier on my psyche but Tacky for these Kinematic Auteurs

I would've liked a more in depth exploration of Olivia and her childhood experiences of paranormal tragedy to give us a better context for her morally grey slip into an evil mother

Still somewhat peeved at how, bc of supernatural instinct, we can justify Theo and CPS taking a child away from her home. Obviously the show can't waste so much time on what's only supposed to be a quick detour into Theo's character and it works within the world of the show given that the guy did confess but portrayals of police, first responders, social workers, ad nauseum making snap descisions like that is Not Good for people's real world perception of their rights. Just sayin.

Maybe a scene where Steve and Hugh apologise for being garbage humans or something idk that would've been nice

This show has many layers and interpretations which could either skew towards clever ambiguity or clumsy indescision and while I'm leaning toward the former, I will say it does go a little all over the place for me.

Are the Crains' superpowers genetic, from their mother? Did it come from the house? Why is the house was so vindictive? What does it want? Or is it more symbolic of the emptiness inside the characters? Why is Olivia decidedly an over controlling mother but Nell is an innocent? Is really the only thing Steve had to do to save his marriage was reverse the vasectomy? Nell died of her own paradoxical haunting that began when she was six so was the cause ultimately a sadness within herself before the house of strictly the house's pull?

Like it's v unclear (probably deliberately) wether or not the story was Psychosis All Along or it was the house's vendetta or bc the Crains specifically are a supernatural mutant family

We never find out what Nell does for a living and I'm curious

Finally: it's really white sometimes. Like. Painfully white. Granted, the Crains come close to my favourite kind of white person, the quirky dysfunctional family of adult children scattered all over the country who only reunite at their dead sister's funeral. Still, the POC tally up to two love interests (one of which DIES), one cop, one naïve widow, and one poor daughter-less foster parent. One could argue only a middle class white family would stay in a haunted house for so long ://

Pros

The show juggles seven characters and two plots flawlessly. Each character is recognisable w a distinct personality after about only two episodes, the nonlinear structure as we alternate between the present day frame story and the main plot in flashbacks before ultimately converging when the family reunites at the house for the last time is not only clear but parses its information in way that's not only not confusing but strengthens the tension and dread. Even while they show the flashbacks' ending (w Olivia and later Nell's death) as well as the epilogue, the build up still feels entirely justified. This is peak plotting right there.

Furthermore, Nell's ghost still manages to be in the spotlight with some jumpscares even after we know who she is

My soul pretty much left my body when Nell's ghost attempts to bond w her sisters via screaming as they argue in the car

A quintessential microcosm of the show's representation of time and memory is Nell's final speech: whimsically disjointed at first, poignant and clear by the end

It's a horror show that is completely dedicated to its characters (and I'm sure some of you already know my love of dysfunctional families) and centres around human themes of connection, mourning, and trauma and the necessity of vulnerability and letting go in order to live a full life. That's very rare in horror where we usually get gratuitous gore with a small spattering of sentimental scenes to further the gore.

Olivia's Forever House served as an excellent symbol for her need to control, the house's monicker implying her fear of change.

An incomplete but not bad portrayal of trauma, a decent addition to the topical and ever-expanding mental illness discourse

Also ft. meta commentary on writers

In the beginning, Olivia really was portrayed as a concerned mother who was always trying to be considerate of her children's emotional well-being despite her occasional snaps. One has to wonder wether her slip into an irrational need to control might reflect society's paradoxically oppressive expectations of motherhood: to have absolute control of your children while also being a benevolent saviour to them 24/7. I mean in all fairness to Olivia, she was working and raising 5 kids. I'd lose my marbles too.

Or maybe I'm giving the creators too much credit and they were only angling for an Other Mother thing. I like this Foucaultian nihilism though so we're gonna go w that.

The show's acknowledgment of Useless Dad and Entitled Eldest Son syndrome.

Spat my tea when doppelgänger Leigh ripped Steve a new one, and since she's a representation of his psyche maybe that means that Steve himself has gained some self awareness. (He should still... apologise to his family....)

I mean they were really spot-on with how birth order family drama goes.

Human portrayal of a lesbian as an adult and a child! As tumblr user Lesbeet said, this is very rare and deftly done!

Theo doing literally anything

Shirl is p adorable

Theo and Shirl: the comedy duo we absolutely need in our lives

Arthur and Nell's romance is joining Up's prologue in the golden vault of world's greatest ten minute love montages. (Both of which ended in tragédie. ☹️)

Shirl's AU dream sequence, which unlike the others, presents us with an extramarital faux pas that we were not previously aware of, manages to seem totally appropriate for her character

The set and costume design are perfect for the primordial fear of the unknown aesthetic the show was going for. Fairy flappers! Gothic stairwells! Punk rock leather gloves! A McMansion that doubles as a funeral home! Motels! A curvilinear LA mansion! The absolutely insane brutalist million dollar rehab centre! Oh boy!!!

Accurate mortician portrayal: they really do gotta wire the corpses' mouths shut. Those damn chatty dead people.

Tldr:

Diologue is lengthy and cheesy while the characters are Too White. The rare portrayals of POC and how social services work were lacklustre. 👎

The show's incredible ambition and dedication to its characters and themes of trauma, dysfunctional family relationships, and the consequences of coping via trying to control your life is amazing. Theo, especially, is amazing. It's a very goth show with clinically depressed ghosts.👍

[lexidanger]

My TLJ (way longer than expected) analysis/rant/review

DISCLAIMER: I work for Hasbro but knew NOTHING behind the scenes for this movie like I did for TFA, so I didn’t have any outside influence...also

SPOILERS GALORE, IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS MOVIE I SUGGEST SEEING IT FIRST ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE A SW FAN

I honestly have a lot of mixed feelings about this movie, because while there were things I absolutely adored in it, but there were also choices made that I really still can’t wrap my head around and ultimately have left me pretty disappointed, I’m not going to go over every little thing but if you have a question about how I felt about a certain character/scene etc just shoot me an ask and i’ll rant at you there. Anyways I’m gonna start with the good shit since I might get a tad ranty with the bad

THE GOOD

The opening sequence- The opening scenes were phenomenal imo, that was absolutely the way to start off the movie, It honestly held a lot of that SW nostalgia and felt really great action/tone wise, it pulled you in like a good hook should.

Leia- So i’m legit a huge emotional baby when it comes to stuff I love, I was already crying as soon as the opening crawl hit, but it wasn’t until they showed Leia the first time that both me and the girl next to me started sobbing (she turned to me and offered some tissues saying she made sure to bring a bunch so it was nice to have some emotional solidarity) But anyways Leia was great and i’m beyond happy with how they handled her which leads me to my next point…

LEIA USING THE FORCE- Everyone in the theater was crushed when she was thrown out into space, and as soon as the shot closed in on her body and she began to use the Force to bring herself back, you could hear the sigh of relief and amazement come from the crowd (as well as the sniffles because everyone was crying at this point) and it was such a magical moment to see her finally use the Force in a tangible way and shut up the fanboys who thought she wasn’t Force Sensitive. And speaking of one half of the twins...

Luke- As always Mark is an absolute delight and gift to this role, and it was so nice to see him back on screen again. A lot of people are crying out about how this movie “””””ruined him”””” by showing his more grey morality (THAT HES ALWAYS HAD B T W) but even as a dark sider I’ve always adored Luke and his views and he made me super proud in this movie. I’m honestly not ready for people to start demonizing him for "almost killing their precious Ben bby uwu” because again that was a moment with a lot of complexity on both sides that I think could bring up a lot of great conversations about Luke’s trauma in the war and wanting to prevent the loss of billions of lives.

Also as a side note I just want to say how heartwarming it was to see Luke reunited with R2, the moment he recognizes him the bitter old facade melts away and we see that sweet excited boy from Tatooine when he gets to talk to his best friend again after so long.

I’m so so sad to see him go, but honestly I couldn’t think of a better way for him to go out, I’m glad it was done in such a peaceful way (except maybe him actually going to Crait and pulling an Obi proper but thats a whole other issue)

Snoke- I adored Snoke, plain and simple. The few scenes he was in he commanded attention and I was honestly captivated by Serkis’ skills as a character actor once again. The CG work done on him was remarkable, his personality was actually very enjoyable and I really wish we got to see more of his Force mastery, it’s so rare we get to see it controlled on that grand of a scale and so effortlessly too (For those of you who read Darth Plagueis you know the difficulty that comes with using the Force on someone over hologram/long distance, so it was definitely a treat to see that). The potential of this character is remarkable and if anyone involved with SW media is smart they will tap into it and release more content with him ASAP

Rey’s Parentage- As someone who was an avid Rey Palpatine theory supporter, I just want to say how glad I am that Rey’s parentage proved to be of no significance, because in a way it still holds kind of what I wanted to see from her being related to Palpatine. I wanted them to show that really in the end, your bloodline doesn’t make you who you are, you decide who you want to be, not your past, and in a way they did that. They showed that someone from humble beginnings, like Rey and even Finn, can rise up to do amazing things, you don’t have to be part of a dynasty like the Skywalkers to be great.

Imagery/Portrayal of the Force- If theres one thing I can really commend this movie for, it’s the visuals. From the color contrasts of Crait to the trippy Force shenanigans everything was visually stunning. Leia using the Force to glide through the void of space to safety was such a magical moment I will never forget (and anyone calling it Mary Poppins or Superman flying is honestly just afraid to have whimsical moments in their SW and therefore a coward) the blend of CG and puppets was super great and using a puppet for Yoda’s return was such a great callback to the original trilogy. After watching so many Transformers movies its nice to watch an action flick that doesn’t rely on shaky cam to sell the intensity of a scene, but instead uses the art direction and imagery as it should.

Also as far as the Force goes, i’ve been so happy that we’re moving away from the two extremes. The Dark Side in not completely evil and the Light Side is not completely good, i’m just glad we’re finally showing that in the movies, and if it makes people mad then good, the truth hurts but they need to understand not everything is black and white.

Humor- Some might argue that a lot of the humor was oriented more towards the younger audience, but tbh most of the bits really hit with me (probably because I am a child) and provided some nice warm moments in what might be considered a tense and dark movie. We’ve been debating for years now how Luke’s first interaction with Rey would go, what would he say to her? What would he do? and it’s my belief that they could not have gone with a more appropriate choice than for him to toss the saber over his shoulder as he did (Luke’s “reach out” moment with her was also so nice and I’m 1000% convinced it was improv by Mark) The bits with the guardians of the island were great, the porgs were surprisingly enjoyable (if not still a bit bizarre) and my favorite running joke of all, turning Hux into what i’ve always seen him as, a huge joke, a slapstick prop to be tossed around and ridiculed, it was quite satisfying.

Additional things- Despite the fact that there wasn’t a saber on saber fight the entire movie, the Snoke’s Praetorian guard fight scene with Rey and Kylo will go down in history as one of the great fight scenes in SW history. Rose was such an amazing addition to the cast and Kelly is so talented, I’m happy she’s a part of the SW family now. And BOY you want to talk about memorable moments, Holdo’s lightspeed crash into Snoke’s Supremecy was absolutely breathtaking. The way it was shot, the sound design, everything was perfect and people are going to be talking about it for a very long time.

THE BAD

Snoke’s Death- The moment Snoke was killed off is the moment I feel like everything shifted in the movie, I was enjoying it quite a bit up until that point, and then as soon as the saber bisected him this huge wave of disappointment and disbelief washed over me, which is why this is probably one of the biggest mis-steps in the movie besides Phasma’s treatment. For years now we’ve been theorizing and trying to piece together who Snoke could possibly be, whether it be the return of an older character or him being his own thing and with every tiny piece of info that came out we were further pulled in to the mysteries that surrounded him. Who is he? What is he? Why does he look that way? How did he come to power? I never expected all of these questions to be answered in TLJ, but a piece of info or two thrown our way to reward our patience and interest in him would have been appreciated.

Instead what we got was nothing and a swift ridiculous death half way through the movie. To say that i’m crestfallen is a bit of an understatement. Those that know me are aware that I’m a huge dark side fan and an even bigger fan of Sheev Palpatine, he’s a compelling character in a lot of the ways Snoke has the potential to be, so to see another great antagonist along the lines of Palpatine just thrown away without any second thought or explanation is an awful thing to see.

And I’m aware that they are probably going to throw his backstory into a book or comic, which part of me is grateful for (especially since James Luceno, author of Darth Plagueis might possibly be writing it right now) but tbh you shouldn’t throw the responsibility of portraying a character off on someone else when you have more than enough time and opportunities to show it in the film. As someone who is heavily invested in the alternative media surrounding SW I still don’t think that you should put your viewers through that, making them ask questions about a character, pay for a ticket to possibly have some of those questions answered and then pull the rug out from under them like “Nope sorry you’ll have to buy the book when it comes out next year” it’s very in-accessible and just downright disrespectful to the writers that set him up for a decent arc.

Plenty of uninteresting things were prioritized over the interesting so don’t tell me they couldn’t have taken 10 minutes out of something inconsequential to slip in some context for this character. It’s such a shame to see an opportunity to flesh out a compelling character passed over for the purpose of subverting everyone’s expectations, cheap and unsatisfying. #AndySerkisDeservedBetter

Phasma- I want to say for the record that I am absolutely outraged, not only did we get even less Phasma than we did in TFA, but they “killed her off” in a way they can either bring her back and do what they said they were going to do after TFA which was give her a decent amount of screen time, or leave her dead. It’s honestly a travesty that they continuously recruit these talented actors to portray these characters and they get shafted as far as content and inclusion goes. I can’t even put my excitement into words when Phasma was first announced, I just wanted female Stormtroopers period but having a woman play a fierce Stormtrooper commander meant everything to me. But alas, just as Snoke it seems these directors can’t seem to find a place to put them amongst the other pointless plots that are stuffed into the film which brings me to…

Canto Bight- A beautiful planet/setting but very unnecessary as a whole. I mean the whole idea of them needing to go to a planet to get a random codebreaker to get on the ship in the first place is absolutely absurd when they’ve had countless ways upon these ships in the past. And the fact that they had to call up Maz so they could poorly stuff her into the movie for 2 minutes as she quickly rattled off their mission in a very Battlefront 2 manner was absolutely ridiculous. The casino itself was neat and I’m glad they touched upon the fact that these people got rich by selling weapons to both sides, but the whole animal chase sequence and everything with DJ felt so out of place and long and distracting from things that would have far better served the characters and plot.

Length- As someone who sat through Age of Extinction after drinking a large soda at the beginning of the film, trust me when I say I know when a movie feels long and this one felt unbearably so. Every time I thought to myself “oh this is it this is going to be the climax and resolution” they would set off on another escape plan. It’s like they came up with 5 different endings and couldn’t decide which one to use so they just kinda tacked them on to the end of each other. After learning that this movie was 3 hours at it’s original cut, I cannot imagine sitting through another hour of squished together side-plots and escape plans, if those cut scenes had more Snoke and Phasma it might’ve been worth it but something tells me it didn’t. We wont know until the bluray with all the deleted scenes comes out next year.

Rey as the future of the Jedi- There was fanboy outcry at the end of TFA saying that Rey was a “”””mary sue””” for being able to defeat someone like Kylo Ren with no lightsaber training/understanding of the Force, but all their arguments are bullshit and there was nothing unbelievable about Rey’s skill with a staff translating to a saber and embracing the Force to gain an edge over Kylo and defeat him.

Now in TLJ Luke’s training of Rey was set up (like many things) to be a main focal point in the story when in reality, it lasts maybe two days and in that time not much training happens at all, in fact Luke tries to show Rey why the Jedi should NOT continue. But in the end it’s very much eluded to that it’s now up to Rey to continue on the Jedi ways and teach a whole new batch of bright eyed young light siders. Rey was skilled enough in TFA to handle herself, but she was still very much a student in need of a teacher herself, something she got only briefly. I honestly have little faith that they can convincingly portray this if they choose to go this route.

Confusing moments with Holdo/Mutiny- I don’t know if was just me but with the movie as a whole being an overwhelming stream of events and developments, the whole Poe mutiny against Holdo was an absolute clusterfuck to me. It was obvious that Holdo was planning something and wouldn’t share it with Poe to the point where it was almost as if she was a traitor/spy and was running everyone into the ground on purpose, and I thought my suspicions were confirmed when she broke back out of custody, but then suddenly Leia shows up and stuns Poe?? Was she a Changeling??? What the fuck was going on??

And then it turns out that she just had a plan to stay with the ship and to get everyone to the Rebel base on the planet below THAT SHE WOULDN’T TELL ANYONE. Like if she would have been a little more up front with this plan I think things would have gone smoother and the whole Poe mutiny thing could have been avoided. It was all very necessary and created conflict and complexity where there didn’t need to be.

Confrontation- While the final confrontation between Kylo and Luke is impactful in it’s end, I think it would have been even more so had it not been needlessly complicated by having him project from Ahch-to. I mean he probably wouldn’t have survived the Walker blasts, but if he could project across the galaxy like that then he could’ve figured something out. When he showed up at the base out of nowhere my suspension of disbelief was already running thin with the loss of Snoke and Phasma, but seeing him look so different from what he looked like minutes ago just ruined the surprise of him not actually being there. I would have liked to see him reunite with Leia in person before becoming one with the Force, and I just think him being there and pulling an Obi Wan by disappearing and leaving the cloak behind just as he did with Vader would have been a nice call back.

Rose/Finn- This moment I did not see coming because tbh, there was no build up to it, and just like the infamous Steve Rogers/Sharon Carter kiss from Civil War, it was awkward and unnecessary and I’m fairly convinced this was added last minute to subvert fans from the whole Stormpilot ship, because you know, how dare us gays want to be included in SW right? Rose is a BRILLIANT character, and even tho Finn suffered the short end of the stick as far as development in this movie went, neither of them needed this rushed moment to make her action or their friendship any more meaningful.

Payoff- Although I was happy with Rey’s parentage I don’t like that it was made to be such an issue that ultimately ended up not being a big deal. Now a lot of this comes from the fact that Rian took it upon himself to “fix” some of JJ’s weaker elements from TFA, but instead of fixing them he eliminated what would have been really nice payoffs for the fans who’ve invested so much time and love into discussing this series. This also goes for Snoke, why create this mystery around this character and have people talking about him if you aren’t going to give them some kind of payoff in the end. That bit of satisfaction that we hoped to get just slipped away and  we’ll have to wait another 2 years to have another chance at it, or maybe not at all and thats incredibly frustrating.

In the end I had fun, but that fun just can’t make me forget about the glaring issues this movie had. And they’re not just issues, they’re needless issues, things that could have been easily avoided or fixed. At this point i’m not even really invested enough in the characters that are left to be excited for the next film.

So yes this film had problems, but is it the worst SW film ever? Is SW really dead? Absolutely not, everyone is being far too dramatic, which honestly isn’t surprising seeing as most of them still pretend the prequels had nothing of value and don’t exist.

It had problems.

Fix them.

Do better next time.

It’s as simple as that and if the filmmakers can’t recognize this film’s shortcoming to avoid making the same mistakes again, then it’s their own fault for the criticism they get. The film isn’t a total loss in the slightest and hopefully some of the deleted content will shed some light on a few things we so very much wanted to see.

[thebluelemontree]

What do you think about valientned's theory that Sansa invented the Unkiss to explain the situation in her recollections, versus the prevailing SanSan theory that she invented it because she wanted it (later)? One puts stock in the Unkiss as proof of Sansa's fear, and the other as proof of her desire or love. Not that those are mutually exclusive. +They both make sense and have evidence. IMO, the fact that Sansa makes it up after she starts having erotic dreams indicates desire for him, not fear

**Edit** I do follow valientned’s tumblr and I enjoy their posts.  I was not aware of their position on the unkiss or read anything about it from them personally, so I’m taking your word for it.  But I will answer from the position that some people have about the unkiss being about processing trauma or fear.***

It’s sooooo not about fear or trauma.  Just, no.  That makes no sense and here’s why.

I think to understand the unkiss, we have to look at it first in a literary way and why the Blackwater scene was written the way it was. What is GRRM (not Sansa) trying to say to the reader with not just the unkiss, but everything connected to it?  He obviously can’t write a literal romance between them in the early books for so many horrifically unconscionable and logic-defying reasons.  George is really following a literary tradition using sexual and romantic symbolism to speak directly to the reader without the characters being aware.  It’s a classic Gothic literature theme of exploring sexual desire that is fraught with fear for it being taboo or somehow non-prescribed by society.  Or in Sansa’s case, that it is not the ideal.  (See the Bear and the Maiden Fair).   

The Blackwater scene itself is not actually sexual, though it is terrifying, to say the least.  It is however very sexually and romantically symbolic in its wording.  The dagger as a phallic symbol, the “wetness that was not blood,” the blood-stained cloak evocative of loss of virginity, etc.  BTW, we were already pre-exposed to Sandor holding a blade against Sansa’s neck and she was not scared (kind of unimpressed actually).  Swords and daggers are dicks and they are everywhere.    

What we’re really talking about here at the Blackwater is metaphoric wife-stealing and it’s important to understand what wife-stealing actually is.  It’s a ritual among Free Folk to demonstrate to the woman a man’s prowess and worth to be considered as a suitor.  They value traits of being brave, clever, and quick.  Ygritte has no fear or trauma from Jon unwittingly stealing her at knife point because she is interpreting the events through her cultural lens.  She enthusiastically accepts “his suit” because he passed the test.  It is not an assault on the woman or an actual kidnapping.  The man might get the shit beat out of him, but the woman is never supposed to be hurt.  In the end, the woman has the final say if she will have him, as Tormund’s daughter Munda did with Longspear Ryk after he stole her.  This custom is set apart from the already existing sexual freedom for both sexes to hook up.  Wife-stealing is a public declaration of a serious romantic relationship.  It’s a marriage proposal.  Sandor fails the wife-stealing test metaphorically at the Blackwater.  He’s drunk, scared, barely holding on mentally and he is refused.   

So GRRM has given us extensive literary set-up to place the Blackwater in a symbolically romantic context.  Why?  So he can make the unkiss just about Sansa processing fear and trauma?  That makes no sense.  Now that we have the proper literary context, we can look at Sansa’s progression of thought toward the unkiss logically.   

This is before the first incarnation of the unkiss:  

1)  It’s implied she’s already forgiven Sandor after he leaves her room wrapping herself in his cloak.  She was cold, but she was already in her own bed.  She has cloaks of her own.  That does not speak of fear and trauma after the fact to seek out his cloak and remain under it for some time.  It speaks of subconscious emotional attachment.  

2)  Still so hint that she was traumatized.  This passage takes place approximately one month later according to the ASOIAF timeline.    

I wish the Hound were here. The night of the battle, Sandor Clegane had come to her chambers to take her from the city, but Sansa had refused. Sometimes she lay awake at night, wondering if she’d been wise. She had his stained white cloak hidden in a cedar chest beneath her summer silks. She could not say why she’d kept it. The Hound had turned craven, she heard it said; at the height of the battle, he got so drunk the Imp had to take his men. But Sansa understood. She knew the secret of his burned face. It was only the fire he feared. That night, the wildfire had set the river itself ablaze, and filled the very air with green flame. Even in the castle, Sansa had been afraid. Outside … she could scarcely imagine it.                 

 She wishes the Hound were there for his advice.  She’s has spent more than one night considering the events of the Blackwater, so she’s already processed it.  She secretly kept his cloak with her future wardrobe, though she can’t give a reason she is consciously aware of.  She understands why things happened the way they did from a non-emotionally charged place and with critical thinking.  The only fear she emphasizes is the fear of the wildfire, both inside and outside the castle.  By “wondering if she’d been wise” (that slight pause over her choice but without overwhelming regret) says she might have chosen differently if he had approached her the right way.

Now we get to the first incarnation of the unkiss.  Compared to what actually happened, let’s look at what’s stayed the same, what’s changed or added, what’s been removed:

Sansa wondered what Megga would think about kissing the Hound, as she had. He’d come to her the night of the battle stinking of wine and blood. He kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a song.

He did not not come to her.  He was already in the room.  It’s been changed so he’s coming through the door where she can see him instead of startling her in the dark.  The first thing she says is that she kissed him.  The whole tone of the passage is matter-of-fact.  Not emotionally charged either positively or negatively.  No mention of the knife at her throat.  Then he kisses her.  Then he threatens her and makes her sing him a song.  So the kiss comes before any threat and is tied to the song instead.  The kiss didn’t come under duress, the song did.   

We know from Sansa’s fantasies of Loras Tyrell, she imagines herself being an actor, not just acted upon.  All while the Bear and the Maiden Fair is sang LOUDLY in the background (pointing to the subconscious) by Butterbumps just to drive the point home it’s the bear that satisfied the maiden.  Loras is still very much her conscious ideal at this point.  It’s the type that she is supposed to be with.  He’s what the songs are made of and she wants her life to be just like a song.  Sandor doesn’t fit in that superficial equation at all.  That’s the struggle.  The unkiss is not about coming to terms with trauma.  It’s coming to terms that deep down her erotic desires are the stuff of Gothic literature.  She’s not scared of Sandor, she’s scared of what wanting him says about her.  Miss dutiful, oh so proper lady that she is.  Ha!  

Her first erotic dream that replaces Tyrion with the Hound in the marriage bed is definitely not a nightmare at the end.  It comes the night of Lysa and Petyr’s very loud bedding after their marriage and after Lothor Brune (who she initially mistakes for Sandor) saved Sansa from Marillion’s unwanted advances.  So if the dream is coming after she’s being reminded of sex by the wedding night and Sandor is replacing and protecting her from the unwanted, doesn’t that make his presence wanted? Desired?  The context in how we interpret these things is key.

Finally, let’s get to the second and last (so far) incarnation of the unkiss:

Before she could summon the servants, however, Sweetrobin threw his skinny arms around her and kissed her. It was a little boy’s kiss, and clumsy. Everything Robert Arryn did was clumsy.  If I close my eyes I can pretend he is the Knight of Flowers. Ser Loras had given Sansa Stark a red rose once, but he had never kissed her … and no Tyrell would ever kiss Alayne Stone. Pretty as she was, she had been born on the wrong side of the blanket.

As the boy’s lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak.

It made no matter. That day was done, and so was Sansa. 

Once again, we must look at the context of what sparked this final version: Robert’s clumsy kiss.  Clumsy and cruel are now tied together.  Although Sansa has no desire to reciprocate Robert’s crush, she does want to be kissed again.  Her first inclination is to pretend he’s Loras, but that doesn’t work. She’s accepted the reality that courtship among the noble class is first and foremost about pedigree and politics.  The rose given was an empty gesture.  She can’t make him the focus of her desires any longer while accepting the truth.  Then her thoughts pivot to her “memory” of the unkiss. 

This version is far more poetic in tone than the first.  The wildfire outside is now turned into a vivid backdrop to the scene, not a horrific apocalypse.  There’s no knife, no threat, no vomit, no wine, no startling her in the dark, no fear.  She’s removed all unwanted elements and kept only the intensity of the moment.  Remember that Sansa wants to be an actor, not just acted upon.  As far as she knows the unkiss is her first real, mature, and erotic kiss.  And it was impulsively done (clumsy) under circumstances where she wasn’t prepared to meet it like an equal participant.  And he left!  The cruelty is making her desire him and leaving her nothing but a bloody cloak.  While the addition of the cloak is factual, it speaks to what she was given, what she was left with, was ultimately unsatisfying though she kept it all the same.  “That day is done,” there’s no going back.  He upended her usual fantasies and rocked her world view.  No other erotic fantasy will measure up now and it’s over before it can be satisfied.  We know from the preceding passage about Loras that her conscious desires now hinge upon accepting the truth.  This isn’t fear or trauma, it’s disappointment.  Like “I kissed the Hound and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”  She’s consciously accepted her desire and must put it behind her immediately because he’s gone.

But not to worry because literarily speaking, GRRM has set us up for a do-over and she’s due to see him again really soon. ;)                

[antthonystark]

anyway things that were amazing about 2x11

VISUALLY what a lovely episode!!!! that awful green colour grading from 2a seems to be gone (or mostly gone) and yeah, the lighting is still dark, but i feel like they’ve finally struck the appropriate balance between season “looks like a commercial’ one and season “who the fuck even is in this scene?” 2a lol. like if you look at the rooftop scene from 2x05 compared to 2x11, it’s night and day. 

speaking of visual effects, did anyone else love love love the way the end part of the episode looked, when azazel was fuckin screaming into everyone’s ears or whatever? the pentagram and everything and then like the ash and i really liked the effect where azazel evaporated into bats or what fuckin ever

GOLDEN EYES JACE HOW COOL IS THIS plus basically that whole badass leap and sword thing whatever you wanna call it i just loved that whole thing it’s like this really really cool mythology coming to life and i really liked the aesthetic of it all with the glowing runes and eyes

azazel recognizing magnus was my favourite thing in the entire world tbh like ohhh man i really hope they go down this route when they’re exploring magnus’s backstory and the way alec in the background just kind of looks between them.....is there anything better than this 

starting from the top, i really love the institute courtyard set! i don’t think we’ve seen it before? but anyway it was really nice and it set a really cool atmosphere for both the demon summoning scene and the parabatai sparring scene and i really hope we see more of it 

and uhhh speaking of the parabatai sparring scene.... i mean.....is there anything better than this just tbh

like i said before i love the set and the atmosphere of it i thought it was super cool and it wasn’t even that poorly lit for being at night lol and the music was nice! i love the kind of electro techno what fuckin ever im too old for this stuff they play during the sparring scenes

and the fight choreography this season has been out!!!! of this!!! world!!!! personally i loved the sword/axe fighting they did but the hand to hand was just as fun and more cute and almost like play fighting between brothers and i just loved it 

the teasing!! the smiles!! just a really good lighthearted scene that didn’t feel extraneous either 

okay hate climon if you will but that scene was really pretty visually

the attempted hug between jace and simon had me in stitches dom and alberto are so perfect at their dynamic whether you ship it or not it’s fantastic 

im glad we’re seeing a more increased presence of the clave because it’s only appropriate and it rounds out the world better and is hopefully going to make certain things implied about the clave more explicit

plus......herondale reveal.......soon hopefully lol

ive seen that restaurant multiple times in person that azazel decimated and i think that’s a cool fun fact irrelevant to everyone but me 

I LOVED THE SCENE between alec and izzy....like i did not like the yin fen plot but it seems like we’re wrapping that up thank god...and it was just so damn sweet!!!! alec is so sweet and nurturing and caring isn’t he :)))))

oh lord that sweet sad little smile that they exchanged when he said “they all think you have the flu” kill me now that was perfect 

matt and em have such a damn perfect dynamic and chemistry it kills me every single time and em was also fantastic in all of the withdrawal scenes

when she’s trying to put her makeup on is especially touching and i think it’s as good a character moment for izzy as we’ve gotten recently and i really liked it 

motherfuckin luke alpha garroway that was so badass and i loved every damn second of it (plus idk about you but that “detective garroway” was nice)

luke being 100% done with ollie was hilarious and i loved it 

his excuse about taking notes on his phone was great too i just loved that whole scene tbh

loved the moments between simon and maia!! i’m so glad they’re not trying to put any unnecessary drama between them and just having them move on and stay friendly with each other!! 

magnus’s outfit basically saved my life so there’s that 

i want his coat and someone in that costume department deserves literal emmys

plus whenever magnus just....knows everything....all the time...... i love it

love the boyfriends working together!! solving problems!! helping each other out like real people do and i also really liked the aesthetic of the scene with that garbage can fire lighting it up....probably not gonna be fun as a gifmaker but it looked cool as hell (esp with that coat)

GOODBYE!!! UNECCESSARY!!! INCEST!!! ANGST!!! hello to a sweet and healthy relationship being allowed to form w/o unnecessary incest angst :)))

i actually loved the scene between the two of them right after, when clary is a little bit upset and tells jace to “feel something” i feel like it’s really indicative of the different ways they look at the world and themselves and yes i enjoyed it 

cute bonding moment between luke and maia!!! im really glad that they’re acknowledging the problems while not ruining their relationship, because i love it a lot and it just really shows how much trust maia has in luke and vice versa

the scene........with.............jace and alec on the rooftop..........is there anything better than this......i just love how it was completely wordless and yet you understood the emotions perfectly and the little pat alec does on jace’s head fuck me up man

more scenes like this please where emotions aren’t thrown in our face through over-expressive dialogue and the actors are allowed to act because holy shit it was perfect

speaking of which, SUBTLETY!! with ollie being potentially ??? who knows with that pic she took of luke and maia, plus the tiny little hints (i mean we all know who he is but if we didn’t) about sebastian (also kudos to will tudor for a fantastic first episode!!) like the way he talks about jocelyn which is some pretty sick dramatic irony for us at this point, and the weird hand burn thing he was doing......i really liked it and i think will is gonna be amazing and i’m excited to see what’s next

like it’s not punching us in the face with information and i really appreciate that 

alec and izzy’s phone call!!! it’s so cute and im so glad they’re handling their conflicts in character because they just care and love each other so so so so so much and you can see that so clearly and i love it 

though im not a fan of the trope in this context, i cannot fucking wait to see harry shum fuckin jr killing the game next episode because he will and it will be phenomenal tbqh

[heroineimages]

Bree’s date with Becca

So in my first story about my pikewoman OC Bree, Bree mentions going on a date to the theater with her future wife Becca. I went ahead and wrote that scene out, just for the heck of it, if anyone is interested. There’s a few things I’m not super happy with, so feedback is most welcome. (Also, my other Bree story.)

“I suppose it was entertaining, on the whole,” Bree admitted as she left the theater, arm around Becca. “The acting was competent, and I liked that they were able to make the melodrama semi-comedic without it feeling overdone or silly. But at the same time the story and characters felt overly… trope-reliant, and making the elf princeling’s forbidden half-elf lover a lad instead of lass didn’t really add anything to the story.”

“Those’re fair points, but you’re missing a lot of the literary and cultural context,” Becca explained. “The play is high elf in origin, and high-elf society is often highly insular and untrusting of outsiders; stage romances between elves and half-elves or non-elves always serve as cautionary tragedies in high-elf theatre. Human characters are always depicted as near-sighted and reckless, dwarves are always greedy and untrustworthy, wood-elves are flighty with short attention-spans, Halflings are either sneaky or flamboyant to hide ulterior motives, and gnomes are hardworking and trustworthy but ultimately kind of dumb. Half-elf characters, meanwhile, either struggle with their divided parentage in ways that ultimately lead to their tragic downfalls, or they seek disproportionate revenge on their elf-parent out of bitterness for this aforementioned divided parentage—depending on whether they’re a protagonist or antagonist. And keep in mind that all of the characters are traditionally played by elf actors.”

“Sounds like a lazy, ethnocentric set of tropes, to me,” Bree scowled, though somewhat amused at the thought of some elf acting on his knees with a fake beard and dwarvish accent. “But I think I see what you’re getting at. By taking this traditional high-elf play and casting humans as humans, dwarves as dwarves, and half-elves as half-elves, the producers are deliberately satirizing those lazy, ethnocentric stereotypes, thereby thumbing their noses at the original elf writers.”

“Well, and elf theater in general tends to take itself far too seriously,” Becca added. “They’re hyper-focused on maintaining authenticity—especially as far as costume, setting, period, and staying to script—and tend to discourage deviation and experimentation with the original material. Which, frankly, takes all the fun out of their theater and is probably why it’s largely inaccessible to non-elf audiences,” she shrugged. “It’s why I love seeing this kind of experimentation with high-elf drama.”

“Good evening, Corporal,” Lady Theodora’s voice came from behind them. They turned to see the tall Aasimar noblewoman smiling politely, hands clasped in front of her scarlet dress. It was a surprisingly humble gesture that felt out of character to Bree. But then, Bree was used to seeing her ladyship wearing enchanted mithral plate armor, wielding a poleaxe or zweihander, and splattered with blood from some giant-kin or goblinoid. “I thought that was you. I appreciate seeing my people immersing themselves in culture during their leave time—I wasn’t aware that you enjoyed the theater,” her lady said.

“Fair evening, my lady,” Bree bowed in return. “And yes, I’ve enjoyed theater since I was a girl. My father helped build the theater house in my hometown, so we went fairly regularly. He, ah, knew people who could get us free admission. You’ve met Becca?” she asked, introducing her girlfriend.

“I don’t believe so,” Lady Theodora admitted, taking Becca’s hand. “You are Sergeant Orrin’s widow, yes?”

“Yes, my lady,” Becca smiled. “It’s lovely to meet you at last.”

“I apologize that I was unable to give my condolences in person,” her ladyship offered, clutching Becca’s hand in both of hers. “I was on an expedition in the Underdark with part of the company, and didn’t learn of his death until after the funeral had taken place. How have you held up, my dear?”

“I’ve gotten by,” Becca admitted, “though the months since his death have been… difficult, emotionally. And every day it saddens me that my Amya will have so few memories of her father, and Adorabella will have none at all.” She sighed, wiping a tear. Bree slid a comforting hand up and down her back.

“But Bree has been my saving grace,” Becca continued, smiling again and sliding her free arm about Bree’s waist. “I don’t know how I’d have handled any of this without her.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” her ladyship said, squeezing Becca’s hand once more before turning to pat Bree’s shoulder. “I’d tell you to take good care of her, Corporal,” Lady Theodora smiled wryly, “but I suspect I needn’t worry on that account.”

“Of course not, milady,” Bree smiled back.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, my dear,” her ladyship bowed politely.

“And you, my lady,” Becca bowed back.

“A pleasant evening to both of you.”

They watched for a moment as Lady Theodora left. Bree smirked to herself as her ladyship linked arms with a delicate Moon-elf courtesan with bright blue hair.

Keeping their arms around the other’s waist, Bree and Becca discussed drama and literature as they made their way home. It had been a pleasant evening, all around; the girls were with Orrin’s mother, giving Becca a much-needed night off. On leave for a few days, Bree invited her to attend the local theater. Becca wore a dark blue dress with a black corset while Bree wore her cream-and-crimson surcoat, dress uniform, infantry gloves, and her corporal’s broadsword.

Bree leaned over to kiss the top of her tiny girlfriend’s head. They were such an oddly complementary yet contrasting pair. Both had dark hair, Bree’s the shade of dark chocolate, while Becca’s was more of an obsidian color. Both also had browned skin, Bree’s from her southern-coastal heritage and years on the campaign trail, Becca’s from her wood-elf grandparents. But, gods, their height difference was jarring. Becca was tiny, slender, delicate, and barely as high as Bree’s armpit. Bree was a colossus by comparison: tall, broad-shouldered, and fairly muscular. Lifting Becca in her arms took virtually no effort; in fact, Bree’s chainmail and campaign kit easily weighed more than Becca did.

Becca’s house wasn’t in the worst part of town, but it was as deep into the rougher parts of town as the constables were willing to venture at night. Stabbings, muggings, and burglaries were not unheard of, and both of them felt safer when Bree stayed the night while on leave. This wasn’t to say it was an entirely bad neighborhood—good people lived there and looked out for each other when necessary. But as a small, half-elf widow living on her own, Becca was particularly vulnerable to break-ins, mugging, or even rape. While Orrin was alive, she’d been one of the safest people in the neighborhood, none of the local hoods wanting to mess with a veteran infantryman, nor incur the wrath of Lady Theodora’s company by taking out one of her soldiers.

Hence another reason Bree continued to visit Becca and her daughters. Though not as experienced as Sergeant Orrin had been, Bree was taller, stronger, and more physically imposing. Too, Bree wore her uniform, surcoat, and broadsword when she came to visit: a reminder that she was also part of the company and not to be messed with.

At least, that was the theory.

Bree felt a zephyr of movement as they passed the alley next to Becca’s favorite bakery. It was all the warning she needed for her training to kick in. She stepped back and unwrapped her arm from Becca, twisting to her left to let her surcoat partially deflect the dagger thrust. Gripping her assailant’s wrist with her left hand, she jerked him off balance and stuffed her right elbow into his throat. The sandy-haired half-elf attacker gagged and stumbled, but kept his grip on the dagger. Twisting his arm upside-down, Bree slammed her elbow downward against his, breaking his arm. She finally released his wrist as the half-elf dropped his dagger and staggered back, screaming and clutching his arm.

Not drawing her sword just yet, Bree stepped into an unarmed-combat stance, keeping her body between the alley and Becca. Two more thugs—human teens—stood at the mouth of the alley, daggers drawn but looking hesitant.

“Now, this is interesting,” Bree commented, eyeing her opponents but keeping her senses open for attacks from other directions. She felt Becca’s hand gripping the back of her surcoat. “If you were just random footpads, you’d have either run for it or come to your friend’s aid by now. But you’re hesitating—which means you know something that’s making you uncertain of whether it’s worth trying. Tell me what you know, and you walk away under your own power.”

“Don’t tell her shit,” the injured half-elf managed to grate out. “Get her!”

“I kill bugbears and ogres for a living,” Bree informed them calmly. “Three footpads with cheese knives can’t do much more than annoy me. Trust me that you’ll want to come clean on this.”

“G–Gideon Freeling,” one of the youths stammered. “He–he hired us to take you out. It w–was supposed to look like a mugging turned violent.”

“And then he just happens to show up to ‘rescue’ me at the last moment,” Becca suggested icily. Bree could almost hear her scowling.

“Who the hell’s Gideon Freeling?” Bree asked, not taking her attention from their attackers.

“A yeoman merchant who’s obsessed with me,” Becca explained louder than expected. “He inherited his father’s little trio of merchant scows, but, unlike his father, he gets his lieutenants to do all the work. He used to come around even before Orrin died, trying to bribe or sweet-talk me into running off with him.”

Bree felt the edge of her mouth curl as she realized why Becca was talking so loud.

“The man’s a disgusting hobgoblin-spawn who thinks he’s entitled to whatever he wants and can’t accept the fact that someone said ‘no’ to him,” Becca fumed, though Bree could feel her tiny hand trembling as it clutched the back of Bree’s surcoat.

“My dear Becca, that’s hardly charitable,” a new voice objected, storming in from another nearby alley. Gideon Freeling was a tallish, slightly muscular, basically handsome human male with wavy, dark-brown hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. Bree noted Freeling wore cheap imitations of some of the local nobles’ doublets and hose. She suspected his rapier was an heirloom of some kind. “I’ve been entirely generous with my gifts, but—”

“But my affections can’t be bought!” Becca cut him off with a snarl. “You want to know what I did with all of the gifts you gave me? I sold them! I sold them and used the money to pay for rent or groceries. During a good month, I put the money into a fund to pay for my daughters’ schooling once they’re older.”

Freeling looked taken aback. “Dearest Becca, why didn’t you tell me of your financial—?”

“Because it wasn’t any of your fucking business,” Becca cut him off again. “I love my husband and my daughters—and I love Bree. I don’t know what made you think you could steal me away from them. The biggest mistake I ever made was ever attempting to be polite to you. I should have told you to fuck off that first time we met!”

“But a woman so beautiful as you deserves—”

“For hell’s sake, this isn’t about what you think I deserve!” she snapped. “And it’s even less about what you think you deserve. Stay out of my life!”

“You! You turned her against me,” Freeling accused, jabbing a finger at Bree.

“Really?” Bree cocked an eyebrow. “You’re going to take that track? I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit.”

“I saw you at the good Sergeant’s funeral,” the idiot went on, still glaring. Bree didn’t recall seeing him but didn’t really care if he was telling the truth or not. “Already you’re taking advantage of a disenfranchised widow. You’re naught but a thug in a uniform: a common mercenary and an infantrywoman at that. Good for nothing but fodder for goblin arrows.”

“I can also hammer nails and saw boards pretty well,” Bree shrugged, crossing her arms. “Or did you not notice the repairs to Becca’s roof and door?” she asked, motioning her head toward Becca’s house, just down the street.

“Ogreish barbarian,” Freeling mocked unimaginatively, drawing his rapier. “I challenge you to a duel! Defend yourself!”

Bree made sure his hired footpads were staying out of the fight, then shifted to face the lout, adopting a bare-knuckle stance. The footpads were, in fact, in the process of skulking away while her attention was on Freeling.

“What are you doing? Defend yourself!” Freeling demanded, gesturing to her broadsword.

“I am,” Bree said.

Scowling, Freeling adopted a competent fencing pose, a sign that he’d had lessons at some point and maybe practiced a bit. Stepping in, he thrust the blade at Bree’s chest. Bree dodged a step to her right, then stepped in to grab Freeling’s right wrist with her left hand. Gripping his doublet with her right, she flipped him up in the air, over her head, and onto his back hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

Stepping up beside his prone form as he lay gasping for breath, Bree used the toe of her boot to kick his rapier into the air, catching it left-handed.

“I have to ask, Freeling, exactly what were you expecting to accomplish?” Bree wanted to know as she pointed the tip of the rapier at his throat. “Even if you somehow managed to kill me, what makes you think you’re even in the top hundred candidates for Becca’s undying affection, let alone directly after me and Orrin? Just something to think about.”

Raising the rapier, Bree let Freeling pull himself into a sitting position. “Consider yourself lucky,” she warned him. “I’ve no qualms about killing you, but that kind of thing reflects badly on the company. And, frankly, I’ve had entirely too pleasant a night to want to spend the rest of it down at the constabulary. But if you ever come near Becca or her family again, I swear I will beat you until there’s blood in your stool, understand?”

Without waiting for his reply, Becca turned and laid the rapier atop the bakery’s door sign, high out of Freeling’s reach. Down the street she could see the hired footpads slinking away, one of them supporting the injured half-elf. Bree was slightly surprised none of the neighbors heard the ruckus and decided to investigate, though it wouldn’t have surprised her if a few were watching from their windows.

“I’d vouch for you if you did decide to kill him,” Becca admitted, taking Bree’s arm as they continued homeward.

“He’s not worth the trouble I’d get into,” Bree assured her. Behind them she heard Freeling fuming as he tried to retrieve his sword. “I’ll let you watch if I ever find need to beat the hell out of him, though,” she offered.

“I’d pay good money—” Becca cut off in alarm as she noticed blood on Bree’s surcoat. “Oh my gods, you’re bleeding!”

“Yeah, a little,” Bree shrugged, looking at the gash below her left breast. Her surcoat’s crimson dye made it difficult to spot. “That half-elf dinged me on that first stab. Bastard keeps his knife plenty sharp.”

“Gods, you’re lucky the knife wasn’t poisoned,” Becca murmured, blood on her fingers as she examined the wound. “Lucky Gideon didn’t hire some Drow assassin to take you out.”

“If it’d been a Drow assassin, or any professional assassin, really, I wouldn’t have heard them coming in the first place,” Bree admitted.

“You’re not reassuring me,” Becca scolded. “C’mon, let’s get you patched up.”

They were silent for several minutes as they continued homeward. “Is that why you didn’t draw your sword?” Becca asked as they approached her front door. “Because you didn’t want to accidentally kill him?”

Bree chuckled to herself. “No, I didn’t draw my sword because I’ve never fenced against a rapier.”

“What?” Becca stopped, frowning up at her with one hand on the door handle. “But… you’re a professional soldier!”

“I’m trained to fight with polearms or with sword and shield,” Bree explained. “I can defend myself well enough against an opponent with a longsword or broadsword, or a mace or axe, but rapier-fencing is a different art entirely. A rapier fighter keeps their sword arm forward at all times, while an infantry fighter keeps their left shoulder toward their opponent, for example. Plus, his rapier is longer than my broadsword, so drawing on Freeling would have given him advantages I didn’t want him to have. On the other hand, I know how to box, grapple, and wrestle, which let me use my height, strength, and leverage to my advantage.” She shrugged as they entered the house. “When I took his sword earlier is the first time I’ve ever even touched a rapier.”

Becca just stared at her for a long moment. Eventually she grinned and closed her eyes, shaking as she chuckled silently. “I suppose bugbears and ogres don’t tend to carry rapiers very often,” she giggled. “Meanwhile, poor, stupid Gideon is terrified of you because you bested two armed opponents tonight with your bare hands—and you made it look easy.”

While Becca left to fetch bandages, Bree sat at the kitchen table and removed her surcoat and doublet. She was going to get one hell of an icy scolding from Miss Cloven, the gnome woman who was the company’s head laundress, Bree realized as she examined the blood on her shirt. She pulled up her chest wraps to get a better look. The wound itself was more of a poke than a cut, really, she decided as she examined the injury. And it wasn’t that deep a poke.

“I… wow,” Becca murmured from behind her. Bree turned around to see Becca blushing in the doorway, holding bandages, ointment, and a washrag and basin. “You… you have amazing shoulders.”

“Good stock,” Bree shrugged it off as Becca wetted the rag and started cleaning her wound. “My parents, my sister, and my brothers are all tall and sturdy. And I grew up hauling boards and swinging hammers.”

“You’re practically an Amazon,” Becca teased, sitting on Bree’s left knee as she cleaned the cut.

“Not quite,” Bree laughed, shaking her head. “We’ve got three Amazons in the company, and the shortest is almost a half-head taller than me.”

“You’re still my Amazon,” Becca smiled up at her.

Bree watched her tiny girlfriend work, again struck by the size difference between them. Even while sitting on Bree’s lap, Becca’s head wasn’t much above Bree’s shoulder. Bree had been with a few Halfling ladies who were smaller than Becca, but some of them not by much.

“Y’know, it’s kind of funny, I’ve always been so intimidated by people a lot bigger than me,” Becca admitted. “I’m not very strong, and I’ve always been scared of people who could easily overpower me. But I always feel so safe with you. I–I know that you’ll protect me, no matter what,” she said as she finished applying ointment.

“Of course I will,” Bree assured her, kissing the top of her head.

“This isn’t very deep,” Becca said as she looked over the wound. “The bleeding already stopped, and I don’t think you’ll need bandages.” She set the bandages aside and snuggled closer, tucking her head against Bree’s shoulder. Bree wrapped her up in both arms.

“Draxa, that Drow teammate of yours, told me something interesting the other day,” Becca said after a moment.

“Draxa says a lot of interesting things,” Bree shrugged, trying to anticipate where this might be going. With Draxa it was hard to predict.

“She confided that you haven’t lain with anyone since before Orrin was killed,” Becca explained. “She said that the two of you used to visit brothels together or pick up buxom tavern wenches. But you haven’t participated in almost a year. Do you mind if I ask why not?” she asked, looking curious but not accusatory.

“Because I met you,” Bree answered, simply and honestly. “Even though I enjoyed drinking and wenching with the other infantrywomen, I enjoyed my time with you more. Talking with you, drinking tea, fixing your roof, reading stories to your daughters: I found all of that more… fulfilling than getting drunk with my comrades or getting laid with random tavern girls.”

Becca’s big, dark eyes studied her for a long moment. “Even when you’re away on campaign, you still didn’t get laid because of me?”

“I was saving myself for you, and I didn’t want to rush you or pressure you into anything you weren’t comfortable with. And I especially didn’t want to rush things while you were mourning your husband.”

“You don’t have to save yourself any longer,” Becca whispered, leaning up to kiss her.

It was a nice first kiss, Bree decided as they held close. There was something honest about the way Becca kissed—honest in her passion and feelings. She had none of the exaggerated passion of some camp-follower hoping for extra coins nor the nervous enthusiasm of an ale-girl taken in by the novelty of a woman hitting on her. As they broke their kiss, Bree lifted Becca almost effortlessly, carrying her toward the bedroom.

“Please, be gentle,” was Becca’s only request.

Bree chuckled. “I don’t have much practice with ‘gentle,’ but I’ll certainly do my best,” she replied, if somewhat self-deprecatingly.