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wisteria-lodge · 3 years

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Archetypes: Sorting Hat Chats

I’ve been asked about my rationale for naming different primary/ secondary combinations. I did this originally as a tool to help me sort characters - I wanted to see how these types tend to be used, so I could more easily see what subversions looked like. I'll run through my thoughts, but know there’s a lot of variation within each category. But even WITH that variation, I do think that each one has its own specific energy that makes it interesting to talk about. An explanation of the terms I'm using.

DOUBLE LION “THE REVOLUTIONARY”

Pretty straightforward. The Lion primary knows something is wrong, they know it in their bones even if they can’t articulate it, and they’ve got to go out and do something about it. Probably charging at whatever power structure is directly in front of them. It’s unlikely you find a character leading a revolution who isn’t a Double Lion. These guys are intense, inspirational, single minded.

The villain version of the Lion primary tends to be the person who “went too far" or "became the monster they were trying to fight.'' But I think that the much more interesting Lion primary villain trope is the Traitor. Since Lions work from their feelings, and their philosophies can’t necessarily be articulated or linked to individuals outside of them - they can definitely have their head turned while still feeling moral about it.

One of my favorite examples of this Revolutionary archtype is actually Christian Bale‘s character from Newsies. He’s the spark that starts the unionizing revolution, but 100% needs his Badger and Bird lieutenants to keep him focused and keep him from defecting

LION SNAKE “THE ROBIN HOOD”

These guys are similar to the Double Lion - they will recognize a cause or injustice revolutionary style - but Robin Hood doesn’t go up and bang on wicked Prince John’s door. His move is the snake secondary one: confront the problem indirectly. Undermine the regime by stealing tax money and re-distributing it to the poor. Be simultaneously Robin Hood the outlaw and Robin of Locksley the noble, infiltrating and getting information. The Lion Snake is more likely to work within society (or deliberately separate from society) versus just breaking everything down.

LION BIRD “THE LAWMAN / THE VIGILANTE”

The fact that the Lion Bird can either be the Lawman or the Vigilante shows off the very clear hero/villain split you get with Bird secondaries. We also see this with the Snake Bird (simultaneously the Mastermind and the traditional Villain) and the Double Bird (either the Scientist or the Mad Scientist.) This is why I think I had such trouble naming the Badger Bird. I wasn’t leaning into the duality of the Bird secondary enough. The Badger Bird can be the King Arthur, or he can be the Mob Boss, and he’ll look kind of similar either way.

The Lion Bird also has that Lion primary conviction and drive, but they want to follow up on it with investigation, evidence, and plans. I actually think there need to be more stories about Lawmen turning into Vigilantes and vice versa. Because Lion Birds are their Cause no matter what external alignment gets attached to it.

LION BADGER “THE LINCHPIN”

This is my own sorting - although when I came up with this name I still thought I was a Double Bird. The linchpin is the pin-axle thing at the center of a wheel that prevents the whole thing from falling apart, and I think it's a good way of talking about the energy of this combination. The Badger secondary means they’re a lot less single minded than the other Lion primaries: their power comes from being part of a group. They become the emotional “heart” a lot, and have a way of quietly keeping things together just by existing. They can be leaders, but a Double Lion will lead from up front while a Lion Badger will lead from in the middle (if that makes sense.)

I do think it’s really funny that this is a common sleeper villain trope. Peter Pettigrew, Prince Hans, and Randall Boggs of Monsters Inc. all became integral to a group, and then exploit their position within it. They’re kind of the evil bureaucrat. Maybe that's a good trope for children’s media

DOUBLE SNAKE “THE TRICKSTER”

This is another straightforward one. Double Snakes are in it for themselves (and maybe like three other people.) They're going to be clever and tricksy about how they get what they want, and will not mind doing things backward and unofficially. And they won't mind if you know that's what they're doing. There’s something very unapologetic about the Double Snake which makes for very attractive characters. They are consistently voted the sexiest... and when they’re villains they’re fun villains. You know what they want, and what they want is not that complicated. I think that’s a big reason for the appeal of Snake primaries in general. They’re the easiest primary to understand and explain.

SNAKE LION “THE LANCELOT”

I used to call these guys “The Rebel,” which... is too generic, doesn’t really mean anything. So I started thinking about the Lion secondary as the Knight secondary, and I liked that. Double Lions are the Crusader Knight, riding for their Cause. Bird Lions are Grail Knights, riding for their own personal truth. Badger Lions are Champion Knights, here to help the helpless and defend the innocent.

And if that's that case… Snake Lions have to be the Knight Errant, the knight who rides for his lady. It is that simple. Lancelot might be a Knight of the Round Table, but he’s riding for Arthur the person, not Arthur the King. And for his lady, Queen Guinevere. I feel like his dilemma is one that’s common to a lot of Snake Lions: what happens when they’re forced to split their loyalty? It’s tragic, but Lancelot can’t have Arthur and Guinevere simultaneously.

(At least not until my awesome Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot OT3 which I will totally write at some point :)

SNAKE BIRD “THE MASTERMIND / THE VILLAIN”

The classic. We see a little more of the Bird Secondary split, and well… this is your stereotypical villain. They want power. They’re going to use an elaborate plan to get it. There’s a lot you can do with this sorting, but I actually do think it’s fun that whatever you do, this slight undercurrent of villain and/or mastermind… never quite goes away.

SNAKE BADGER “THE LOVER”

The Love Interest sorting. Chances are very good that if there is a love interest (who does not serve some other role in the story...) they're going to be a Snake Badger. Devoted to one person, solving problems by caretaking. This is the Badger secondary who is likely to have the smallest group, which is just going to make them look excessively devoted to their friends. This type is pretty gender neutral, which is fun. A lot of female love interests, but also your Mr. Darcys and Peeta Mellarks.

One of my favorite things about this trope (mostly just because I think it’s funny...) is that if you write a character who is not supposed to be a love interest, but who is a Snake Badger... subconsciously I think people are going to read them as a love interest anyway. Looking at you Jaskier, Horatio, and even Captain Barbossa.

DOUBLE BIRD “THE [MAD] SCIENTIST”

I think that (especially if you aren’t a Bird Primary yourself) your response to hearing a fictional Bird Primary’s motivation is kind of …huh. That seems random. Or oddly specific. You get your Hannibal Lecters, whose entire motivation is... wanting to eat people while drinking nice wine.

Double birds seem especially unusual, just in terms of society. They are Bird secondaries and they interact with the world through gathering data, but their Bird primaries mean that data can literally lead them to any conclusion, no matter how potentially wacky. These guys consciously build themselves from the ground up, and that can make them kind of detached - either in a logical way, or an unmoored way. They're written as either really stable, the rational mentor figure. Or really... not. And that’s how you spot a Bird villain. They’re not after money/power/safety, they’re after something weird.

BIRD LION “THE GRAIL KNIGHT”

This is the trope of Perceval or Galahad, questing after the Holy Grail chalice... which is really just meaning, and truth. It’s a personal quest. Grail Knights tend to ride alone, and a lot of the things that concern them are metaphysical, to do with identity, purpose, things like that. You can have extremely different Bird Lions, but I do think there is a sort of spiritual core there. Doctor Harleen Quinzel sees freedom and truth in whatever the Joker is doing, and then once she recognizes his hypocrisy, has to go build her own meaning.

I actually think these guys are pretty easy to spot because of that Lion secondary. When they change direction, they change direction, and there’s probably a period of despair between the direction changes. I’ve talked about how Bird Lions having a habit of falling apart pretty dramatically, and that’s where this idea comes from.

BIRD BADGER “THE SURVIVOR”

A rare sorting, but an interesting one. I call this one “the Survivor” or “the Last Man Standing” because, well, they seem to be. They seem remarkably stable. This is the Bird primary least likely to be a villain, and maybe the sorting least likely to be a villain. I think what’s going on is that they are grounded and integrated in whatever community they happen to be in (because of that Badger secondary), but they can define themselves and rebuild themselves in the Bird primary way. This makes them uniquely suited to building a new version of themselves for whatever situation they happen to find themselves in.

Maybe a better name for these guys would be “The Adapter.”

BIRD SNAKE “THE ARTIST”

Like all Bird primaries, these guys are inspired by their own projects and their own worldview, but because of that Snake secondary, Bird Snakes have a more easy-going ‘take the world as it comes' kind of energy. They are “the Artist” because everything they do is art: they want to use themselves and the world around them, put all of that towards whatever their Bird primary happens to be interested in.

You can have villains like the Nolan Joker, or the Talented Mr. Ripley, who kind of turn the world into their own personal philosophical social experiment. Or Scotty from Star Trek whose meaning is solely the well-being of the Enterprise. Maybe they just like traveling, and that's all they need. (It's a way for the Bird primary and the Snake secondary exist very happily together, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was pretty common.)

DOUBLE BADGER “THE PEACEMAKER”

Badgers are interesting, because while I think they’re generally regarded as “correct,” they’re also seen as kind of boring. That’s the case with both Badger primaries and Badger secondaries, which means it is doubly reflected in the Double Badger. They often get written as simplistic, the sweet Jane Bennet type who loves everybody and caretakes everybody and just wants everybody to get along.

They are often the targets of what TV Tropes used to call “Break the Cutie.” What could be more interesting than making this character, who wants to be happily part of a community, be forced to build protective models, be all tortured and angsty? I actually think we’re seeing a return of the Double Badger as an interesting character in their own right, with people like Aziaphale, and I'm here for it.

BADGER LION “THE PROTAGONIST”

What can I say? There are a lot of protagonists that are Badger Lions. They want to help the group - so we know they're the good guys - and then they charge and make stuff happen. Lion secondaries are very useful in fiction - you drop them into a situation and stuff just happens. I also think of this as the Starfleet officer sorting - because if you’re a Starfleet officer, either you are the sorting, or can model it really well.

I will say that this is kind of the stock Protagonist sorting, the way that the Snake Badger is the stock love interest and the Snake Bird is the stock villain. There’s just something sort of generic good guy about this one, which is why I want to see it used as a villain sorting more. Badger villains - mostly people who define ‘human’ very narrowly - are insanely terrifying.

BADGER SNAKE “THE ADVISOR”

Possibly “the Power Behind the Throne.” This is another one I had difficulty pinning down. I called it “the Politician” for a while, which unfortunately came off as a little bit more negative than I meant it to, since I think this sorting has a lot in common with Lion Badger, the linchpin of a heroic team. The difference is that Lion Badger takes on that role kind of unconsciously, while the Badger Snake does it very consciously.

Their loyalty is to the group, but their skill set is all about subversion and different ways of going around the group, which is why there’s an interesting contradiction at the heart of Badger Snake. A lot of real life Badger Snakes struggle with feeling like “bad people" and it's too bad. These guys are ridiculously powerful and competent when they are sure of themselves, and I love seeing them in action

BADGER BIRD “THE KING / THE MOB BOSS”

Another difficult one, despite (or because) I really like them. I was calling them “the Architect” because “The City Planner” sounded too boring… but that’s what they do. They’re all about the community but they problem-solve the way all Bird secondaries do, by prepping, and gathering knowledge. I talked more about this in the Lion Bird entry, but Bird secondary seems to have this villain split going on, and that’s what I see here too. This is a controversial love-them-or-hate-them sorting, and I think that’s why. There’s a lot of room in whether or not you see this sorting as villainous.

#sortinghatchats #masterpost #wisteria sorts #archetypes #writing #long post

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swimmingleo · 3 years

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Changes: or to take the higher ground before it's too late

I'm going to be real here folks, I cry ugly tears to this song. Bad.

Changes is a song on Cam's album "The Otherside". It's country, it's folk and it's an album a bit influenced by changes in Cam's life (a change of label, personal life). She collaborated with Harry on the song Changes, as she opened for him on a venue and was already working with Tyler Johnson.

From what I gathered: Harry sent her the demo of the song, implying he made most of the writing on this one. What I'm basing this claim on is her interview for Rolling Stones (read it here):

I heard [the demo] and was just like, “Oh, this ache to outgrow something that you don’t want to outgrow!” It felt so good. I normally don’t take outside songs [...]

‼️DISCLAIMER‼️when analysing this song, I'm gonna go from the idea of it being written with a queer mindset (how surprising of me). Cam rendered the song beautifully and it is very much her own, but I believe Harry's input is consequential. After all that's his lil whistle and cute fishsona in the MV.

Sad queer analysis ahead.

Let's analyse the lyrics first:

There is a town

Somewhere down a country road

The speaker describes the town to us, from memory, from experience. "There it is, down the road, can you picture it ?"

I see it now

I take it everywhere I go

The speaker doesn't currently live in the town, they're on the move (nice throwback to the coutry road). But despite all the travelling, they realize the sedentary smalltown never leaves them. It's part of them. It left a mark on them.

The river sways, I can almost hear it now

As if to say, "You're not the only one who wants a way out"

The town is so real to the speaker they can sense it, eyes and ears. But it gets a bit dark: the river sways like it's trying to leave its bed. The river is envious of the speaker who managed to leave. The town is so toxic even nature wants to get away from it. Or the speaker resents the town so bad that they project their own resentment on the river.

So, I go

'Cause I don't wanna feel like I don't know you anymore

I memorize those roads

This is the call for the speaker to leave for good. Their motive doesn't seem to be ambitious or anything grand. They leave because they apprehend a feeling. Apprehending a feeling, something that may not even happen, is the way of an anxious person. Anxiety is the motive of their departure. However, they still memorize the roads leading to the town, just in case. Perhaps one day they'll come back.

Somewhere out in the big wild country

Someone's fallin' in love in a backseat

Givin' it away

Like their hearts won't ever break

Suddenly it's about love ! Young love, one that is lived in the small compartment of a car, somewhere hidden and safe in the big wild country. As if the countryside was unexplored and threatening.

God bless the young hearts sippin' cheap wine

Gettin' drunk with their friends for the first time

Thinkin' nothing's gonna change

'Til everything changes

The speaker looks at the youth with tenderness, wishing them the best. But once again, they're not in the town in the present time, they don't see the youngsters fooling around, they can only guess from first-hand experience. And it's very specific: falling in love, getting drunk with friends and thinking everything's gonna be easy like that forever until it's not and heartbreak ensues.

From there I hop in with the raw queer theme of those lyrics. It started by falling in love and it ended up in a heartbreak. In between, the speaker got drunk for the first time with their friends, people they trusted enough to let go a little, but in the end everything changed. Why ? Alcohol makes you forget about code of conduct, how you're supposed to behave. It makes you say or do things you might not have done sober.

We can interprete this chorus as the beginning of the end for the speaker. It's the only part of the song evocating the past, and it's fun and easy, but it's also where things started to get bad the way they are in the present. Something might have happened that first time the speaker got drunk and it marked the end of innocence and careless childhood, and it probably has to do with love as no other factor is provided apart from falling in love and heartbreak.

They never leave

They're all havin' babies now

Watchin' daytime TV

Livin' off the gossip of a cruel small town

They. With Harry, it's always You, Me, and They. They are having babies, all of them, like it's not a very difficult thing to do, it's just natural. They have the leisure of the day, not a thing to worry about, if not gossip. It's not implied anymore, the small town is downright cruel. Gossip fuels it, but on behalf of someone else, and that someone is most definitely the speaker who left and who describes its inhabitants in the most mundane way, perhaps with a hint of contempt. The speaker seems bitter.

So, I go

'Cause I don't wanna feel like you don't know me anymore

Don't recognize my face

Reprise of the pre-chorus except now, the speaker provides another reason for their departure. Not only they feared they wouldn't know the town anymore, they also feared being seen as a stranger. It's not like the speaker actually changed physically: but it might as well feel like it. Again, apprehension, anguish. As implied in the chorus, things changed to the point where the speaker feels they would seem like a whole another person to the rest of the town, a stranger, a threat to the integrity of the conservatives. So they leave before this shift in perception can happen.

There ain't nothing here for me anymore

They say they don't hear from me anymore

And I don't wanna hear it anymore

The town is not outwardly hostile. It's still the town that saw the speaker as a kid. The town doesn't understand why the speaker left, but the speaker won't give in and get in touch. They want to be as far away as possible, until they don't hear the questions, the river, everything. It's almost like the speaker doesn't carry the town in their heart at all. They want to forget it all, and it hurts everytime the town tries to lure them back in. The way Cam sings it is painful to me man

Somewhere out in the big wild country

I was fallin' in love in a backseat

Givin' it away

Like my heart won't ever break

Had such a young heart sippin' cheap wine

Gettin' drunk with my friends for the first time

Thinkin' nothing's gonna change

'Til everything changes

Yeah, just the confirmation of the chorus being the speaker's experience. I went ahead and assumed it was already lol but it's like a plot twist effect. It's dramatic. It's a personal song to someone.

TO MAKE IT SHORT to me this song is intense and very in touch with the queer experience. Though it describes a specific situation, it is surprisingly not that detailed or full of metaphors the way Harry often writes: this town could be literally any smalltown in the countryside. The backseat could be the one of any car, cheap wine is something any teen can afford. I like to think Harry wrote it for himself but is also aware so many people went through the same thing, and still will. I have to admit I'm heavily biased writing this, as the experience of a queer kid struggling to find their place in a well settled smalltown is familiar.

GETTING DRUNK AND QUEER IDENTITY is an analogy Harry already used in Fine Line when he sang "We'll get the drinks in so I'll get to thinking of her". To drink is to let go, to unveil the most subconscious aspects of yourself you might not want to deal with otherwise. You don't care about judgement and you get to explore those parts freely. In Changes, this is the last memory they recall before stating the changes and their departure. Perhaps getting drunk for the first time would be when they realized they're queer. Or acted upon it, causing their little world to shake. They chose to leave before it eventually wouldn't feel like a choice anymore. There is no life for people like them in a cruel smalltown.

SMALLTOWN BOY

This song reminds me an awful lot of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat. The song is about a queer boy having to leave the smalltown where he grew up because of persecutions and no future prospects.

Mother will never understand why you had to leave, Smalltown Boy

They say they don't hear from me anymore, Changes

But the answers you seek will never be found at home, the love that you need will never be found at home

There is nothing here for me anymore

Other people not understanding why they leave. People who can't truly empathize even when they mean no harm. They would never understand the speaker's departure, because those people get to find love and have babies and live a peaceful life in the countryside.

You were the one that they'd talk about around town as they put you down

Livin' off the gossip of a cruel small town

Yeah yeah. I really struggle with just seeing this song as nostalgia when such harsh words are being used. I do believe there is a part of fondness for that town, that countryside setting and the early days. But it's not all tender memories.

CHANGES AND ERODA

Of couuuurse we all noticed the adorable purple fish with the pearl necklace. It represents Harry, no question, as it whistles Harry's part. And of couuuuurse we all made the link with the erodian fish, and some even noticed they formed the bluegreener pair when their colors are inverted.

It makes sense for those fishes to be connected with this interpretation of Changes. Both works are about a small town, lost in the nature, where the people are watching, aware of everything that isn't normal, that is peculiar. The early life of the peculiar boy is similar in every way to the early life of the speaker in Changes. The fish in Adore You grows too big for the island and has to leave, and though Eroda makes amends with the peculiar boy, he leaves as well because his future, his fulfilment, is somewhere else. So does the speaker in Changes.

IN CONCLUSION

The more I write posts like this, the more endeared I am by Harry's world. How Harry writes for himself, but also for other people with songs like this. How nature finds its way in all that he does. How grounded he is, how he doesn't seem to forget where he came from. It really is such a rare thing to see in a mainstream popstar's writing and art. How can someone say he sold his soul to LA is beyond me

#very dear to my heart this song #was in the drafts for quite a long time too #but hey i took louis' new song as a cue lol #they do have parallels #though i feel like louis' change is way more accepting #louis' way more at peace with the idea of time passing and leaving the town behind #not saying harry still struggles or not but the story told in changes is more pain than healing to me #anyway love their brains love them muahmuah #my analysis #song analysis #harry styles

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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it’s a fucking metaphor!

Titans 3.08

i’ve finally gathered the mental and emotional resources to do this thing, so let’s go! as always, i’m typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. on watching this opening scene, i was thinking back to how gar was in s1, or even the early bits of s2. the way he idolised the others, particularly dick, and his readiness to go along with whatever they said, and the way he practically bled the need for acceptance. and here he is now, openly defying dick, fully open to and aware of the flaws of the people he loves and admires, knowing he is accepted no matter what and extending that generosity elsewhere. it’s a remarkable bit of character growth that’s... sort of blossomed in the background and so rewarding to see and acknowledge.

1.25. i guess what i really love about this conflict over how to respond to jason--as clumsily as it is sometimes written--is how their histories and individual traumas inform each character’s reaction. dick is torn between his guilt over what’s become of jason and his drive to do what batman had essentially given up on doing: he is motivated to track down red hood at all costs but there’s a sense that he’s not completely sold on the idea that the only way to stop him is to kill him. (he might go the comics route and try to put him in arkham? god, imagine if the season ended with jason in arkham.) kory’s never had much of a connection with jason in the first place, and jason has done one of the worst things he could do in her book: track and kill a member of her newfound family and is threatening to kill more.

and gar... sure. look. the idea of jason and red hood as separate entities appeals to him; that red hood emerged when jason was drugged to the gills by scarecrow and lost his usual inhibitions. gar’s struggled with what he becomes when he’s pushed to his limits, too--he did rip open that experimenting scientist with his teeth way back in 1.07, after all, and he was brainwashed by cadmus in s2 into becoming a literal monster. he needs to think, to know, there’s a dichotomy, a line that can only be crossed under extreme duress or by outside influence.

and he says--and we say--that he was accepted back into the titans in spite of what he’d done, but was he really? gar’s always struggled with his footing in this group; relegated to the caretaker, the tech guy, the gatekeeper, and sometimes punching bag even though everybody’s paying lip service to how much of a family they all are. perhaps gar reaching out to jason and offering acceptance is aspirational on his part: perhaps this is the effort he hoped the titans put/or will put into getting gar back, even when it would seem like he’s too far gone.

1.5. anyway my point is that i don’t think it’s worth discussing this in terms of right/wrong decisions because all of their reactions make a lot of sense given their backgrounds/personalities. gar is doing a fine job here of tracking down jason’s friends and trying to find him that way, but we the audience know that jason is ultimately going to end up an anti-hero/eventually-hero character, so with that knowledge in mind we know that gar’s reaction is the right one. it’s knowledge that the other characters don’t have, so to judge them on it is... uh, unfair.

1.8. also, molly is awesome, yay!

2. dick and barbara flirting over the phone is so cute! i love to see this side of dick: lighter, peppier, willing (even if somewhat reluctantly) to put his mission aside to go out on a date with his girlfriend. and i love how easy this makes his dynamic with kory too: it’s all very domestic and utterly delightful.

(also, re: the water leak in barbara’s office--you’re saying GCPD could afford fancy-schmancy table-wide touch screen computers and evil-lair lighting but needs its frickin’ commissioner to catch leaking water from above her desk with mugs and fishbowls????)

2.2225. this is probably a teeny tiny thing and i’m not sure i want to bring it up at all BUT. the fact that dick feels compelled to lie to barbara about not liking fancy gala food and eating something more substantial before the date? not a terribly great sign, though i wouldn’t call it a red flag per se.

“this from a man who forced his students to eat cauliflower crust pizza...”

3. so.... conner and kom are a Thing. huh.

in theory i really like the idea of them bonding over an innate alien-ness and longing for a place they could really belong. both of them are alien twice-over: conner a mix of kryptonian and human, practically generated in a test tube, and kom being somebody that was born different and rejected by her own people, now stuck on a planet dominated by an entirely different species. i even like them exploring this bond physically. i guess it’s the sense of... uneasiness around what we do and don’t know about kom that makes this scene land slightly left of centre to me. i think titans, especially through s2, has cultivated in its audience a sense of distrust even until the final episode, just in case somebody vital to the season is suddenly revealed to have had ulterior motives (i’m even low-key suspicious of leslie). i really want to see this kom-conner dynamic play out but the anticipation of watching the other shoe drop is sucking out the enjoyment.

4. for fuck’s sake dick, gar’s not your gatekeeper.

TIIIIIIIIMMMMM \O/

4.5. i love this nod to tim’s origins in the comics, the way he just comes in and lays out all his evidence and makes it clear to dick that he needs tim’s help as robin. the fact that he was there at the flying graysons’ last performance, he was obsessed with their acrobatic moves, and was observant enough to connect those moves with that of robin and later nightwing... all of this came together to put him where he is right now.

(i also love how he can’t contain his giddy excitement when talking about the day dick grayson’s parents died... to dick grayson. even if dick weren’t nightwing, that would be a deeply uncomfortable thing! yet tim can’t help himself, and i love him for it.)

4.8. it’s a testament to how much dick’s caught off-guard that he can’t come up with a better response to tim’s allegations other than “uh... he stole my moves! as you know, no two gymnasts in the world are allowed to do the same moves. now, let me escort you out while pretending poorly that i’m not at all shaken by this...”

4.9. i’ve talked about this before, but i find the logic around secret identities in this universe utterly fascinating. the titans don’t make much effort in keeping their identities secret: everybody seems to know that kory is starfire for instance, or that gar is beast boy. dick grayson is seen hanging out with kory a lot, especially at crime scenes. it won’t take a lot of sleuthing to find out that the titans are currently camped out at wayne manor, and to put two and two together.

my theory was that superheroes and villains have become such an integral part of daily society that it’s almost not worth it to seek out their secret identities, or that it’s just not a big deal anymore. like politicians or diplomats, not everybody bothers to look into who exactly their local politician is, but the people who know just... know. it’s a sort of unspoken social contract.

tim’s broken this contract by confronting dick about his identity, and dick’s not ready to deal with it. not entirely.

look at him! *pinches his cheeks*

5. ngl, it was quite satisfying to see jason knock the scarecrow out like that.

5.5. i guess... the question of jason’s culpability is always going to be a thorny one and would make for a great courtroom drama spinoff. there are a number of factors to consider: jason’s personality, the rough circumstances under which he grew up, his undoubtedly stressful transition to being robin, bruce wayne being... well, bruce wayne, never feeling accepted by the titans and having most of them turn on him, being roundly defeated and almost killed by deathstroke, alfred’s death, a fuckload of ptsd, his violent death, crane’s manipulations, coming back to life, crane plying him with a drug. but there is no easy line to draw between any of these factors to his actions. i think it would be a disservice to jason’s character to attribute his actions entirely to these things and rather irresponsible to do so. i think jason has to reckon with the fact that when he took crane’s drug, he wasn’t reckless and chaotic like the thugs he gave it to; the planning that went into hank’s death was meticulous and the way hank died--dawn essentially tricked into pulling the trigger that blew her lover into bits--is so drawn out and cruel.

5.75. it’s occurring to me that crane might have given jason a placebo. maybe jason’s dependence is psychological, and he’s externalised his fears in such a way that he believes crane’s drugs literally wipe them out, however temporarily.

in any case, the boy needs (more) therapy.

6. “he walked like robin...” fuck, tim

“gait recognition sweep” god, this show. i don’t know whether to laugh or cry. hey, once we’re done doing this gait recognition thingy, can we get a goddamn plumber in the house??? or move the commissioner’s desk so that sewage water isn’t dripping on her head or the million dollar touchscreen desk???????

6.5. oh no dick!!!!!! i am delighted that you got hurt but i feel ashamed about it! that looked like it really hurt!

he’s really not having a good time of it, is he. from being shot by a sniper to slamming at full speed into an suv, he’s got to be really fucking battered by now. and that’s just the physical side of it.

“can you believe that just over a week ago i was sitting in san francisco eating cauliflower crust pizza and feeling good about myself for the first time in five years...”

7. kory’s having visions again! now that she’s figured what they are, do you think the show’s just dropped justin? it’s curious that HPG hasn’t been brought up in a while after featuring relatively heavily in the beginning. hmmm.

8. dick’s in hospital but... he looks remarkably whole for someone who took a spill like that. you’d think he’d at least have a bruise to show for it. on the other hand, i love that the first thing he says is ‘i need to call home’. reminds me of season 1 dick and his clumsy attempts to explain away his found family as an ‘alliance of necessity’ or some bullshit. what a long way he’s come!

*gasp* dick’s hallucinating again!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m doing the dick’s hallucinating dance! can you believe that we’re carrying over these huge honking issues unearthed in season 2 onto season 3? can you believe?!!! all that time and effort i spent talking about dick’s mental health from last season has not gone in vain!!

... ahem. anyway. more on this later.

“hold on barbara, i think kory gave me the number to this therapist that she kept calling Hot Psychiatrist Guy...”

9. just an interlude to say that i’m barely halfway through the episode and i’ve already written 2k+ words... ugh. i’m going to try and be more concise.

10. man i fuckin love it when titans goes all out with its weird mindscapes and i’m extra glad that kory’s the focus this time. is that baby kom or maybe a secret sibling that neither of them knew about? was that lady luand’r? and is this place where kory was circling where the secret sibling is? it’s all very intriguing.

(if justin turned out to be that sibling... we’ve a real luke/leia situation on our hands.)

11. aw, i knew that nice security guard was going to die, but it still hurt to see him go :(

12. this show is so bizarre. like i get the mindscape as a narrative device, but jason using sex workers to try and vocalise his guilt about killing hank was just weird. like. i have to use tamil, sorry: idhulaan yaaru pa room pottu yosikara??? some things just can’t be translated into a second language.

i guess one way to interpret jason’s reckoning with what he did to the titans as a sign of him coming off crane’s drug, but i think it’s more to do with the disillusionment of realising that he was a mere pawn in a more sinister plan, and not, as he thought, a player in control of his destiny, rising to the purpose of liberating gotham of its fears in a way batman never could. along the way, he’s done some truly irreversible damage. it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

13. another hallucination! it’s really intriguing that it’s a young dick(?), younger than we’ve ever seen him, wearing an early-era robin costume from way before he even became robin. (this is also interesting in that it gives credence to the idea that ‘robin’ is an identity that dick created entirely on his own, and as a possible homage to his family.)

“old road, old house... it’s all gone.” i wonder what it all means.

13.5. it’s entirely likely dick’s hallucinating because of a brain injury from the accident, though just hallucinations without any other focal neurological deficit is unusual. he might’ve been microdosed with fear toxin at some point, though i wonder when... did jason do so after dick’s accident? did he get dosed at the factory from last episode?

it’s also possible it’s a continuing manifestation of dick’s issues from last season--which, if you remember, he never told anyone about and therefore never properly addressed. maybe he was hallucinating bruce wayne in a psychotic episode accompanying an acute stress reaction and maybe that’s what’s happening now. nobody’s denying that he’s under an extraordinary amount of stress right now. another way to look at it is that this is how he externalises conflict that he can’t bear to suppress anymore; if in s2 halluci!bruce manifested his insecurities and self-loathing, then these hallucinations... something to do with his fears, no doubt.

yet ANOTHER way to look at it might be: rachel is reaching out to him through their, well, psychic bond. after all, they were able to use that bond unconsciously last season to get the titans back together; maybe rachel has learned to gain a degree of control over it in themyscira and is sending across warnings? it’s all very intriguing.

anyway:

“i hear you skipped over the discowing suit in your evolution to nightwing... how could you??”

14. can you imagine, gar did all the work of reaching out to jason via molly and jason wants to meet dick? smh.

14.5. “i’m just a regular guy doing regular things” he says, standing at the opening of a secret old tunnel, like a secret person doing secret things, confronting someone who can now officially be called his stalker. neither of you guys are ‘regular’

14.8. ‘my dad was a cop and he taught me how to investigate’ - hmmm. i guess they’re trying to Explain Tim but i don’t think that’s really necessary. so he’s smart and he’s obsessed with batman and robin--that should be enough, imo.

15. that scene with scarecrow and his mother was... wow. i’m just laughing here helplessly, because what the hell? for a while i thought it was an extended dream sequence and i’m still not entirely sure that it isn’t...

anyway. i still love that titans is happy to throw out its plot in favour of extended character-exploration sessions.

15.5. it seems to me that this scene with crane and his mother (i have no idea if there’s anything in the comics similar to this) serves to move forward this season’s theme of harmful legacies and how parents can damage their children in the name of their mission. in a way it’s been the underlying message of the entire show but we’re really seeing it being reinforced this season. the titans, serving as a foil to scarecrow, are using the damage to rebuild themselves and actually work through their issues together, instead of spiralling further and further into the morass of their issues.

other than that... god, that scene was painful to watch. i can’t say i like this version of scarecrow or how this actor plays him at all.

16. i wonder what’s jason’s play here. i think he’s smart enough to realise that the titans aren’t going to just forgive him and let him be a titan again after what he did, and that dick agreeing to it is just a bid to pin both him and crane down. maybe it’s a ploy to trap them, get back on scarecrow’s good books so that he can have the drug again. who knows.

17. i absolutely felt dick when he said “we’ll bring him in and then re-assess the situation.” what the fuck else is he going to say? the priority is to get him.

so kory and dick are both hallucinating while potentially trying to rehabilitate their murderous siblings. CONFIDE IN EACH OTHER ALREADY

18. TIM NOOOO! you beautiful, reckless fool!

18.25. just to quickly address it here because i know it’s been brought up before: i think it’s perfectly justified to not have conner take tim to the hospital via superspeed because a) i don’t think we’ve seen conner do that with anybody so far and b) it’s probably not a good idea to submit tim’s body to that kind of stress without knowing what it would do to him. the paramedics with actual equipment and experience would be there in a few minutes, so on a risk assessment, i would say dick and conner absolutely made the right call.

18.5. i guess we won’t know what jason really intended to when the titans came to the pump to see him, but this is definitely going to set a big wedge in his relationship with crane. then again, crane got what he wanted--using starfire’s powers to blast through to the underground pipes--so jason can argue that this is exactly what he was working towards, too.

anyway, mortal peril, hallucinations, murderous family members, creepy visions and robins sprouting left and right. time to get rachel and donna on the scene, i think.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #garfield logan #dick grayson #koriand'r #jason todd #tim drake #jonathan crane #conner kent #komand'r #aaaaah this is 3k+#*collapses in a heap*

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mrslackles · 3 years

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what do you think are gg's biggest flaws?

Ooh, Anon! It’s like you’re in my head.

I’m busy making a video (that will probably never see the light of day) about this -- my distance from the show has really helped with some super objective clarity -- so I’ll use my notes from that to help me answer.

I’ll preface this by saying what I was most shocked by after putting down all the points was that Rio isn’t even mentioned until really far down??

Anyway, let's get into it.

These are Good Girls' greatest flaws in my opinion (and relative to season 1 -- while I think it had its flaws too, the list is far smaller and I think that's a separate post)

1. It didn't stick to its guns

What set this show apart from others in the 'Everyday person does crime (poorly)' genre was its comedic lightness, strong friendship element, relatability and emphasis on girl power.

a) By season 2, the lightness was already slowly disappearing to make way for season 3's darkness. (Quite literally; this show said sunlight scenes for WHO.) It also stopped being as fun. Remember how it genuinely used to be fun? I mean let's not forget The Best Scene Ever where Ruby shoots Big Mike by accident and we all laughed our asses off. (Compare and contrast to a similar-in-tone-and-context scene -- or even the whole episode -- like Boomer popping up behind them as Rio's package in season 3.) I think season 3 had some great lines and laughs, but in general, the fun element was completely missing for me.

b) As was the friendship. We already know Annie and Ruby basically became Beth's backup dancers in season 2, but at least then they still seemed to have some type of agency. In season 3, they rarely question Beth's (truly questionable) decisions, don't talk to her about shit like why she's still with her horrible husband and have very few true friendship moments as they did in season 1.

c) Which made it less relatable, but what also contributed was the major plot holes (it's less easy to relate when you're constantly having to remind yourself to suspend your disbelief). And, to be honest, their stupid actions. Just the most common-sense things weren't followed, like not taking your children to a crack den or not putting a hit out on a gang leader. It's frustrating watching a TV show -- where characters are supposed to learn things, have arcs and improve over time -- and feeling like you have more logical sense than all the main characters in every scene. (WHO would think a hitman was going to use a sniper rifle on people in broad daylight on the side of the road???)

d) You don't have to look any further than the title or the stans who shout "THE SHOW IS ABOUT THE GIRLS" -- or, hell, the first 10 seconds of the show where Sara is literally talking about the glass ceiling -- to know that the main characters being women is very important to the show. If not formally feminist, it was at least supposed to be empowering or feel like "girl power" (a term I hate, but we won't get into that now).

And I think it did it pretty well in season 1 -- it actually played on my favourite theme of the show, which is the world's perception of these women being what ultimately allows them to get away with so much. (Rife with opportunities for commentary about white privilege, but also a genius way to upend patriarchal beliefs.) But more and more it seemed like the show was asking you to accept empowerment as simply "these things are being done by women, yay".

And, well.

2. Its marketing

I'll keep this one short because I think we all know how messed up this situation is. Basically they're selling a show (every week!) that they're not making while ignoring all feedback on every social media platform. Which brings us to...

3. The marriage of Death

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times -- Beth's character development starts with getting rid of Dean. Her growth is stunted by him on multiple fronts and it's frustrating to viewers since she's constantly put forth as the main character. Not to mention how the audience, separately from Beth, was originally conditioned to see Dean as the scum of the earth (think of scenes like him crashing his car because he was perving on a woman jogging) so keeping them together is really... a choice. To actively root for this marriage (which seems like what the show wants, at least for the protracted moment) means either thinking Dean is a great person (which, as I said, we've only seen the opposite of) or believing he's all Beth deserves. Which leads me to...

4. Beth's (socio)path(y)

Is sociopath a 'good' word? Probably not. Have I seen dozens upon dozens of posts talking about whether Beth is one? Yes. And I see it from a huge variety of people -- from viewers who just binged the show last weekend to those who've been watching for years, the question keeps coming up. And I entirely blame the writing of the show that, by the way, I don't believe is deliberately creating Beth to get this reaction. I think she's written (and, to an extent, acted) in a way that is much too aloof and I'm not convinced it's meant to come off as cold and unfeeling as it does. Everything else leads me to believe that the audience is supposed to root for Beth, but it's just so difficult.

Beth does a lot of messed up shit that requires dialogue to sympathise with her and the inner workings of her mind, but in the later seasons Beth rarely gets to express herself verbally. And every time she does get to speak about her emotions, the dialogue is a pick-your-own-adventure between "She's in so much denial", "This person feels no emotions" and "I'll go find an analysis/fic later to explain this" (scenes like "Nothing" or "I was just bored"). Compare and contrast with some of the great scenes in season 1 where she emotes, like her paralysing shock after they first rob the store or admitting she enjoys crime, or (one of my favourites!) the one in the park where she's mimicking the other mothers beside her.

5. Brio

I said in the beginning that I was shocked Rio doesn't get mentioned until this point and that's because I've always felt like he was an integral part of the show. When people say the show is about the girls, they're truncating -- the show is about the girls getting into crime. That crime is represented by Rio over and over again -- they never bring in another criminal at his level (which is another one of its flaws, but that's also a different post); Rio is it.

And though I stand by Rio's importance, the truth is that Brio isn't as essential to the show, by which I mean that if all of the above were done well, it wouldn't be as sorely missed. In lieu of riveting plot, a fun friendship, character development and empowerment, most viewers have glommed onto Brio like a lifeboat (or ship, heh).

Unfortunately it's also what the show has most stubbornly refused to develop significantly.

It's honestly a toss-up for why I feel Brio is a flaw: is the flaw that they got together? That they never got together well enough? That the writing keeps bringing in these 'chemistry-filled' scenes that are ultimately filled with air?

I don't know. Maybe all of them; maybe just one, depending on the day.

6. Its criticism falls flat without intersectionality

This is a big one because Good Girls is *trying* to do something very clever. As mentioned previously, my favourite theme of the show is how the women's apparent innocence/vulnerability in the eyes of society is their biggest strength. The show plays with this and other interesting themes with varying levels of success, but ultimately they all fall a little flat when they don't feel intersectional.

When Ruby gets sidelined. When Turner, who sees and all but calls out by name Beth's privilege, is portrayed as the villain. When Rio is told he's gonna "pop a cap" in his young child's "ass". When the racist grandma becomes a sympathetic character whom we must later grieve. (And she really didn't have to be racist, now that I think about it? It was just that one line for laughs and that was it.) When, despite the real-world implications, Dean can loudly announce in a store that he's buying a gun to kill someone with and the show just glides past it. When Ruby has to grovel for forgiveness from Beth for trying to protect her husband and family from the system, with no acknowledgement from Beth about how their realities are different. When Rhea gets booted off the show as soon as she's done serving Beth's plot. When Rio gets treated like a prostitute for absolutely no reason. (Oh, and is accused of raping Beth and is literally spoken of as an animal and starts only existing in zero dim lighting as a one-dimensional stereotype... the list goes on.)

7. PR/The actors

I'll risk my life here to sprinkle this in because I do think it's a massive problem. The Manny/Christina of it all is just the tip of the iceberg (although wtf Good Girls? There's nothing you could do to get these two into an interview together??). The main actors do the bare minimum to promote the show and it's weird. I also think it's the height of unprofessionalism to keep characters on the show against the wishes of the majority of the audience just because you enjoy their actors (Boomer confirmed; Dean highly suspected). While, on the flip side of the coin, limiting a character's screentime because you aren't best buddies with them. Having less and less Rio when he's such a fan favourite is dumb; as is not including him in any series marketing material. It feels personal and that isn't how a TV show should be run.

8. The entire hair and wardrobe department needs a stern talking-to

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

Note

Not sure how I feel about anon bringing Yang not showing Salem empathy in that moment as a bad thing. Like if an immortal witch was trying to murder/kill all of my friends my reaction probably wouldn't be "how do you feel though"

That's been my response too, anon, though I understand where the previous anon is coming from. Though Salem started out as a generic Big Bad with no redeemable qualities, Volume 6 showed us a captive woman who was later tortured by the gods and sought death, only to find herself changed instead, thereby raising the question for the audience, "How much of the Big Bad's action is Salem and how much of it is the evil grimm magic acting upon her?" Just as important, Volume 8 gave us Cinder's backstory and a scene of her crying on the rooftop, alongside the forgiveness of Emerald and Hazel. I could go on another rant about how this sympathy didn't extent to Ironwood and, in a different way, didn't extend to Ozpin either, but outside of that there's been a very strong message of, "Abuse victims and people who have just generally suffered - lost a sister, lived on the streets - should be shown compassion and given a second chance," which becomes a problem when we consider that the most prominent villain with an abusive backstory since Volume 6 has not been extended that compassion. Gender dynamics aside, it's the same problem fans have with Adam's ending considering that his brand was revealed right before he died. The go-to explanations of, "But Adam was his own abuser who stalked Blake" and "Salem is literally trying to destroy the world" fall a little flat when pit against "But it's okay for Emerald to manipulate Pyrrha into killing Penny?" and "Hazel has also knowingly helped Salem try to take over the world. And also murdered countless huntsmen. And also was torturing a kid." It's not so easy to go, "The story shouldn't show them compassion because they're The Worst" when the story is already showing compassion to people who... are also The Worst. I say all this not as a way to excuse any one character's actions - I'm not in the business of going, "[insert horrific choice here] is fine actually!" - but rather to acknowledge that RWBY lacks a clear divide between what actions are forgivable and what actions are not. Fans aren't wrong to go, "If you expect me to feel for Cinder after everything she's done since Episode 1 and you expect me to laugh along with the cast after everything Emerald has done, why isn't Salem Adam Ironwood Ozpin getting that same sort of work?" Given the "trust love" message and the strong push to sympathize with/outright redeem heinous characters, a lot of fans are wondering why our cast hasn't even mentioned all the shit Salem went through. It's been months now since they watched Jinn's vision and they're accepting former villains into their ranks now because Life is Hard and they deserve that chance, but no one cares to even mention everything Salem went through and debate her own responsibility. Surely if they can forgive Emerald for willingly working with her, there's at least some room to discuss the question of Salem's morality in the context of two Gods' manipulations and a magical pool having some kind of impact on her. There's a disconnect here. The story can't go, "These heinous people are Good deep down, actually" without extending that to all our villains, Salem included.

(All of which, btw, is tied up in the frustration that the group hasn't discussed the vision at all. The question of Salem's morality is tied up in the question of her defeat. For example, if they decide they're not comfortable with killing her, that might lead to theories on how to contain her instead...)

So ALL OF THAT is churning in the back of fans' minds. I agree 100% that the group's capture was not the time to extend any sympathy for Salem and I've got posts out there saying the exact same as you, anon: "You really expect Yang to be compassionate after Salem was torturing Oscar, captured them, was planning to kill them, is attacking the city, and just reminded her of her dead mom? C'mon." The problem lies in the fact that we haven't gotten this kind of work anywhere else, the cast has barely mentioned Salem anywhere else - outside of freaking out over her arrival - so when a member of our main group is suddenly right next to her and they're discussing the concept of loss, some fans are like, "AHHHH TALK ABOUT WHAT SALEM HAS LOST TOO GODDAMMIT." It's putting an unfair expectation on Yang and the scene because, again, I don't think that was the time or place for discussing the nuances of morality in a fantasy setting, but because everything else around Salem has been so badly written, and Yang's scene was the closest we've ever gotten to scratching that itch... fans get frustrated that it didn't happen, no matter how unfair or ridiculous that frustration might seem. Really, I don't think fans, in a general sense, actually want Yang to sympathize with Salem then and there. That would be a whole other, messy can of worms given the context. But they want something and at this point "something" has become accepting even really bad versions of what they're looking for. Since no one discussed the vision at the farm, or at Argus, or any time in Atlas, fans are metaphorically throwing up their hands with a, "Well, if we have to delve into Salem's character only when she's doing the most damage in the entire series then fine! You didn't do it earlier when you should have, so this is just what we're left with! Better then nothing! I'm sick of watching Cinder cry and Emerald make quips and Hazel go out in a blaze of heroics and we still haven't even mentioned that our primary antagonist went through more shit than the three of them combined. Am I supposed to be compassionate towards the bad guys or not? Make up your mind, RWBY."

RWBY is a hot mess and the mistakes the story has made, sadly, are not easily separated from one another. Frustration over Yang's scene is prioritizing one problem over another. Namely, the problem of Salem's characterization over the problem of having your hero go "How do you feel though?" while the bad guy is about to kill her. RWBY has backed itself into a corner, both problems exist, but we can only easily discuss one at a time. Similarly, if someone goes, "Ugh they really need to work on Emerald's redemption in Volume 9" people are correct to go, "But if they do that then Volume 8 will look even worse since they've already forgiven her" or "But that's going to be so messy if they're flip-flopping between Vacuo and the island world. Should they even redeem her without the main girls around?" And it's like yes! Exactly! None of these are good options. RWBY has written a situation where ANY choice is going to be a problem on some level because none of this story has been well thought out. So it comes down to which problem an individual fan considers to be, well, more of a problem. In Yang's case it's going, "I will gladly sacrifice the integrity of this scene to get some acknowledgement of a theme that has existed for Salem since early Volume 6 and is now being heavily pushed on other characters in Volume 8. If a stupid moment where Yang is kind to Salem while she's captured is what it takes to start this conversation then fine. I'll take it. Especially when Oscar was kind to Hazel while captured and tortured. You already gave us the stupid scene - just do it again and actually get something out of it this time!"

It is, as said, a twisting, turning mess.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas

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jungshookz · 5 years

Note

Idk if this has been sent before but imagine like baker jin and forgetful y/n like she needs to get a cake for yoongi asap bc she forgot his bday and jin is completely okay w working at supersonic speed for this cute little teary eyed person who seems to be in big trouble

➺ pairing; kim seokjin x reader

➺ genre; baker!jin duh, fluffier than jin’s popular angel food cake!! jin and y/n are a couple of cuties :’)

➺ wordcount: 3.9k

➺ what to expect; “okay! that’s easy. a birthday cake is doable! see? nothing to get teary-eyed over, darling!”

➺ note; i’m not going to lie the one thing that motivated me to finALLy write this request was the phrase ‘cute little teary-eyed person’ i am soFT! I AM SOFT! okay bye i love baker!jin

»»————-　🍰　————-««

you’ve been sitting in your car for the past twenty minutes trying to remember what exactly it was that namjoon asked you to do for yoongi’s birthday

you know it wasn’t to get everyone to sign his birthday card because that was your job lasT year and also jungkook is in charge of that this year because last week he literally asked you to sign yoongi’s card

and it definitely wasn’t to decorate the venue because namjoon always takes care of that (because he likes things done a certain way and doesn’t trust anyone else with the important job of whEre to place the balloons)

and it also wasn’t to wrap his birthday gifts because according to jimin your wrapping skills are awful and you have the cutting skills of a toddler using those play scissors

it certainly wasn’t to pick yoongi up from his apartment because if that was your job then yoongi would be in the car with you right now (it’s hoseok’s job this year)

and taehyung was the one who curated the invite list aNd took care of the music playlist so you know that wasn’t your job either

so what… in the world… did namjoon ask you to do?

your memory has always been pretty shitty so you probably should’ve written it down

actually you dID technically write it down the day namjoon asked you to take care of it because you remember vividly using your pen and writing it on the back of your hand and then you remember namjoon scolding you and delving into a lecture about the dangers of ink poisoning

but then you washed your hands

and once it was wiped away from your hand it was wiped away from your memory

and that was two weeks ago

so now

here you are

in the parking lot of the venue (you guys are celebrating yoongi’s suRPRISE party at his favourite video game arcade) sitting in your car in complete silence hoping that whatever task you were supposed to complete will just naturally come to you

the party starts at 8 and it’s 7 right now so you still have an hour left to think

you came early to help namjoon set up but then the whole ‘i feel like i’m forgetting something’ thought creeped into your mind and now here you are

and you’re a little afraid to go in and ask namjoon about your mystery task because you feel like he’s going to skin you alive if he finds out that you have noT completed the mystery task

but then again he’s namjoon and namjoon wouldn’t hurt a fly!!!! he’s a sweetie pie!!!

whatever your task is it probably wasn’t that important because namjoon should know better than to send you off with completing something that is integral to the success of yoongi’s surprise party

“you have three seconds to tell me that you’re kidding before i actually lose it.” namjoon presses his lips together before exhaling slowly

okay

quick breakdown of what happened after you decided to leave the safety of your car

you came in

said hello to everyone

complimented jimin’s gift-wrapping skills

snuck one of the mini cheeseburger off the foods table

asked tae if he could add dancing queen on the playlist because no party is complete without some ABBA

snuck a mini corndog off the foods table

and then wandered over to a busy namjoon to say hi but before you could say hi namjoon asked you where ‘it’ was, to which you responded with “what… what is ‘it’?”

“by it, i mean the birthday cake. yoongi’s birthday cake. yoongi’s birthday cake that you were supposed to take care of this year because of the revolving system that i- y/n, i need you to say something and stOP staring at me like you don’t know what i’m talking about-“

“oh, the birthday cake!” you snap your fingers before putting your hands on your hips “god, thanks for clearing that up for me. i was literally scratching my head over it for like an hour.”

well there we go!

the mystery has been solved!!!

now you know what namjoon asked you to do for yoongi’s birthday

you were supposed to get his birthday cake!

…

…hollup

the smile immediately drops from your face

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GET YOONGI’S BIRTHDAY CAKE

“oh my- oh my goD-“ your eyes practically pop out of their sockets when it finally registers that you were supposed to order a custom birthday cake for yoongi and you definitely did noT order anything for yoongi

“y/n, i asked you to do one thing-!” namjoon groans and throws his hands up into the air

“i know, i know!!!!! it’s okay, i’ll fix this!” you reassure as you rummage through your purse for your car keys “what flavour should i get??? classic birthday cake?? lemon curd??”

“lem- leMON CUR- oh my GOD i want to hurl you into the middle of a busy intersection-“ namjoon feels like he’s about to have a stroke christ almiGHTY

LEMON CURD????

yoongi’s not turning EIGHTY

“lemon curd??” your voice is turning piTchy and that’s an indicator that you are PANICKING “was that a yes for lemon cur-“

you freeze in fear when namjoon suddenly reaches forward and squiSHes your face in between his hand

“shut up and listen to the words that are about to come out of my mouth.” he says lowly and you swallow thickly before nodding

you’re not sure if you like this namjoon

“a four layer cake. alternating layers of chocolate cake and confetti cake. light blue buttercream frosting in between the layers. dark blue buttercream frosting all around. black sprinkles around the cake - not the top, just around the cake, it’s crucial that there are no sprinkles on the top. in black buttercream frosting, ‘happy birthday yoongi’ in block letters.” he almost growls and you feel like your heart is about to fall out of your ass

if anything will teach you to nevEr forget anything again it’ll be this version of namjoon

he’s like bridezilla except instead of a bride he’s a self appointed party planner

“four layers. chocolate. confetti. light blue in between. dark blue all around. black sprinkles all around, not on top. happy birthday yoongi. block letters. black letters. block black letters??” you probably look like a crazy person muttering things to yourself as you huStle back to your car

namjoon said that if you don’t get back to the party with a custom birthday cake by the time the clock strikes 9:00 he’ll kill you and you beLIEVE him

since you’re not going to be there when the party starts jimin said he’ll come up with some buLLshit excuse about you running late so that yoongi doesn’t get too suspicious about your whereabouts

he mentioned that he didn’t really want a cake this year but all of you know how much yoongi loves cake

and you love seeing him make that ‘i’m pretending i’m surprised but in reality i knew this was going to happen all along’ face

it’s so cute!!

you slam the front door shut and hurry to buckle yourself in as you type ‘custom birthday cakes near me’ on google maps

it’s fine! you’ll be fine

you wiLL definitely be able to find some bakery to put together a suPER last minute custom birthday cake

more specifically, a four layer cake with alternating layers of chocolate cake and confetti cake slathered with blue buttercream frosting and covered with sprinkles around it (not on top! just around! very important!) and also it should say ‘happy birthday yoongi!’ and the writing should be in chunky letters using black buttercream frosting

“why do bakeries close so early???” you wonder out loud as you continue to scroll through the results

literally everything is closed

if there’s one thing you’ve learned from this it’s that bakers are noT night owls

c’mon come oN

you’ll take anything at this point

you nearly scream in joy when you see that there’s one bakery that a) specialises in custom cakes and b) is still open for another thirty minutes and c) is not that far from you!!!!

according to google the place called sweet kimfecjins

oh dear god

what the heLL kind of a name is that???

whA-

and it is far from you!!!! it’s a twenty minute drive away from you!!!

under these circumstances that’s not close at aLL

you need a place that’s at the most thirty seconds away from you (you are noT kidding you really need this cake right here right now)

what other options are there

well

there’s a mcdonald’s near you

maybe you can just buy a bunch of those apple pies and use the oreo mcflurries to glue them all together to buiLD a cake

sure, it’s literally the farthest thing from what namjoon told you to get, but it’s a cake!!!!!

…okay you can’t do that to yoongi

if you were presented with an apple-pie-mcflurry nightmare as a birthday cake you would be pretty bummed out

so this means one thing

sweet kimfecjins here we come

surprisingly enough you make it to the bakery in twelve minutes time without running any red lights oR running any pedestrians over

you did honk at a couple crossing the street but you made sure to shoot them an apologetic smile

they still flipped you off but the point is you made it to the bakery with like fifteen minutes left to spare until they close up for the night

and-

“oh- oh no- nonONoOnONONO-“ your eyes are as wide as saucers as you practically slam yourself up against the glass doors right as the (presumable) owner is flipping the sign to ‘closed’ “oh, please- please, google said that you’re not closing for like another fifteen minutes, please, you haVe to help me i nEED a cake-“

namjoon is going to have your head on a stick if you don’t get this cake so you are going to have to beg like you’ve never begged before

jin sighs to himself as he watches the clock tick tock tick tock

it’s been a slow day today

he had a couple people in this afternoon but they only bought like one strawberry turnover to share in between the two of them

who shaRES one single strawberry turnover???

psychopaths, that’s who

and also he had some tourists come in and they bought a box of his carrot cake cupcakes so that was pretty good

he also managed to convince them to buy another box of red velvet cupcakes >:-) it was actually pretty easy because he just had to flirt with the two girls and they immediately were like okAY more cupcakes won’t hurt

…what???

he has to make a living!!!

yoU would do the same if you had to make money

but other than that business has been a little slow

last week he had a bachelorette party cake request and he spent five hours moulding a penis out of fondant so that was pretty exciting

they even gave him a bonus tip because they said it looked very realistic

what can he say?? his hands are magical

but now he’s bored out of his mind and honestly he wouldn’t even mind if he got another request for a penis cake

he just wants to maKE something!!!

he made a couple cakes this morning and put them in the display cases hoping to lure people in to buy them but they’ve been untouched!! so he’s just going to pack up all the leftovers of the day and deliver it to the food bank

hopefully they’ll enjoy all his delicious treats.,.., that they’re getting for free.,,.., even though he would much rather prefer getting compensated for his hard work

do you SEE how beautifully braided the puff pastry is for his apple tarts???????

since no one seems to be buying baked goods at this hour jin decided to close up a little earlier tonight

he’s going to clean up a little bit and do some prepping for tomorrow (his secret to the best chocolate chip cookies is chilling the dough overnight) and then he’s going to pack up all the leftovers and deliver them and thEn he’s finally going to go home and maybe order some dinner or something

as he flips the sign to ‘closed’, he-

“jeSUS fuCJK-“ jin jumps thirty feet in the air when someone suddenly slams up against the glass doors

goD

“oh- oh no- nonONoOnONONO- oh, please- please, google said that you’re not closing for like another fifteen minutes, please, you haVe to help me i nEED a cake-“

thank god the doors are locked because whoever you are you seem INSANE

“i’m sorry, i’m closing up for the night!” jin replies and gives you a shrug “come back tomorrow! i open at 7am sharp-“ jin immediately stops talking when he notices your eyes starting to well up with tears

oh god

he didn’t mean to make you cry!!

why are you crying????

is 7am not early enough for you??

“i- um, i mean i guess i could open at 6:30 but to be honest i might pass out while frosting your cake that early because my beauty sleep is-“

“no, you don’t understand- it’s my friend’s birthday tonight a-and we’re throwing him a surprise party and i was supposed to get the cake for him because that was the task that namjoon- he’s another one of my friends - that he assigned to me but i- well, i wrote it down on my hand but then i washed my hands and then i kinda forgot about it but that was two weeks ago and now i have to get yoongi - that’s the birthday boy - i have to get him his special cake otherwise namjoon’s going to be so upset with me and-“ your mouth is running like a motor and jin can barely keep up with this story because you keep throwing in new details and also it’s hard to hear you through the glass

something something birthday cake something surprise party something bukjoon something something

okay

you know what

you made a fair point

he iS technically still open so he’ll let you in

(and also you’re…,,. kind of cute so there’s that)

a fat tear threatens to roll down your cheek as you continue to blubber and jin holds a finger up

you immediately shut up and jin offers you a smile before opening the door “i’ll help you if you stop crying.”

you nod quickly and reach up to wipe at your drippy eyes

your nose has gone a little pink and your eyes are glossy and jin can’t help but find that even moRe endearing

“now - what did you need?” jin asks calmly as he leads you towards the front counter

“a birthday cake.” you sniffle before clearing your throat

“okay! that’s easy. a birthday cake is doable!” jin claps his hands together after he makes his way behind the counter “see? nothing to get teary-eyed over, darling!”

okay woAh

he’s not sure where the pet-name came from

it just rolled off his tongue so naturally!!!

you hiccup and your nose twitches and jin feels his heart pit-a-pat in his chest

o boy

“but i- it has to be four layers and it has to be chocolate confetti chocolate confetti and then i need blue- light blue buttercream frosting in between the layers and… and i think dark blue buttercream around- or maybe it’s dark blue in between and light blue around-“ you start to ramble again and jin’s eyes widen

chRist

this birthday cake might not be that doable after all

usually he just has to write ‘happy birthday ____!’ on top of a cake and maybe make some pretty frosting roses on top and that’s it

“how about-“ jin interrupts you agAin with a gentle smile, “how about i get you a pen and paper and you can list out all the requirements for this special cake? in the meantime, i’ll heat up a cup of my homemade strawberry milk for you and- are you a fruit person or a chocolate person?”

“chocolate?” you pull a chair out from a table and drag it over so that you’re sitting right by the front counter “i like milk chocolate.”

“lucky for you, i use milk chocolate for my chocolate mousse cake. do you like whipped cream?” jin asks as he slides a notepad and pen over to you

you nod before offering him a shy smile

okay

so far so good

your cake actually isn’t that complicated! it just has a loT of different pieces that have to be put together

and it’s a good thing jin still has some pans of cake that he baked this morning (usually he bakes the cakes in the morning and then lets them rest for the night and then he frosts them the neXt morning so that it’s ready for his customers)

unfortunately he didn’t have any confetti cake so instead he replaced it with plain vanilla cake and then in the blue frosting he threw in a whole handful of sprinkles

and the buttercream frosting is easy to make because he makes them by the buCket so all he had to do was dump food dye in it

and he knows about your time limit so he’s working as quickly as possible

he really wants to strike up a conversation with you but a) he needs to focus and b) for some reason he can’t seem to turn his usual boyish charm on with you because you seem so… delicate?

and you seem to have calmed down from earlier

you’re still working through the chocolate mousse cake and-

jin’s lips press together in a poor attempt to suppress his smile when he notices whipped cream on the corner of your mouth

you seem to be enjoying the cake which is a good thing

“this whipped cream is like, really good-“ you look over at jin (you asked for his name when he first started putting the cake together and just like that the name of his bakery suddenly made sense) ((and now that you think about it it’s actually a pretty clever name so braVo to him!!)) “what brand is it from?”

“oh, it’s- i actually make my own whipped cream, so it’s my own recipe.” jin smiles proudly and stands up a little straighter

“what do you put in here that makes it so good??” you wonder out loud as you scrape some off the top of the cake before sucking it off your pointer finger

“it’s easy, i pretty much just-“ jin suddenly stops whipping the frosting before narrowing his eyes at you playfully “actually, that’s for me to know and for you to nEver find out. how do i know you’re not from some rival bakery??”

“-if i was from a rival bakery i think i’d probably be able to make this cake on my own. instead i came to you and started crying when you said you were closed for the night.” you raise a brow before narrowing your eyes baCk at jin

“touché.” jin snorts as he starts to pipe the message on the top of the cake “so, um-“ he clears his throat and glances over at you briefly “this yoongi - he’s your boyfriend, you said?”

“yoongi?” you laugh lightly before shaking your head, “no, no way. yoongi is not my boyfriend. god, that’d be…. nO, yoongi is not my boyfriend.” you wipe your mouth with a napkin before dropping it on the plate

“right, right- and namjoon is-“

“namjoon is dEFINitely not my boyfriend- i don’t have a boyfriend, so-“ you lean back against the chair as you watch jin slowly piping out yoongi’s name

“ah, i see, i see.” jin nods in understanding

a moment of silence goes by

…he doesn’t know how to continue this conversation

when did he get so awKWARd at flirting????

maybe if he tries to sell you a box of cupcakes like he did with those tourists he’ll become charming again

“do you have a- is there, like, a mrs sweet kimfecjins-“

…and it’s just hitting him that yoU seem to be just as awkward as him when it comes to subtle flirting

“well, if you play your cards right you might just end up with that title, darling.”

your cheeks immEDiately go bright red and jin can’t help but smirk to himself

he’s still got it

“thank you so much for doing this at the last minute, you’re a literal life saver-“ you gush as you dig through your purse for your wallet

there are approximately 18 minutes left until the clock strikes niNE so if you drive as crazily as you did when getting hEre then you should make it back to the party before namjoon gets the chance to bite your head off

“oh, you know what?” jin shakes his head as he makes sure the cake is secure in the box “you can just take the cake - i feel like you’ve been through enough, so this one’s on me.”

“what?? no, i can’t do that to you! it’s such a nice cake!! i can’t just take it-“

“how about-“ jin stops you before you can get into another one of your five minute rambles (you seem to do that a lot) “how about in return for the cake, you let me take you out on a date?”

you blink owlishly at him and jin beams when he sees colour rising to the apples of your cheeks once again

“you- you want to take me out on a date?”

“the journey to becoming mrs sweet kimfecjins has to start somEwhere-“ jin jokes lightly before shaking his head “if you don’t want to, that’s totally fine, but i’m still going to give you the cake on the hous-“

“no, i want to!” you blurt out a little toO enthusiastically before clearing your throat and rEELing it way back “i mean- yeah, a date sounds nice… or whatever.”

“or whatever?” jin teases as he slides the box over to you “i wrote my cell number on the back of the receipt, so… text me, or whatever. let me know when you’re free and we can sort something out.”

good lord

jin seems to know the way to a woman’s stomach aND her heart

‘i scrape fresh vanilla beans into the whipped cream - that’s what makes it so yummy! there’s also another ingredient but i’ll tell you what it is on our date. see you soon, darling. -your favourite very super unbelievably handsome baker, jin’

help me help you make your wishes come tru (aka send me a request)

requested drabbles masterlist

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ashesonthefloor · 3 years

Text

oh, captain, let's make a deal (where we both say the things that we both really feel)

summary: Ashton strikes a bet with Michael to get him to ask Calum out. It doesn't go according to plan. ao3 found here

prompt: "Person A bets that they can get Person B to go out on a date with them via Person C or a group of people etc, but what the 3rd party doesn't know is that persons A and B are already dating" from @thenervousduckwrites except, as expected, I didn't stick to that

content rating: PG-13 (cursing, probably, one allusion to sex, alcohol)

word count: 1422 words (short baby <3)

A/N: look at me! this is the first time I've posted something I've written since November! look at me go! but anyway, yes. if anyone has any other cute short prompts, I will happily take them. I make no promises about whether I'll get to them or how quickly, though. and as always, I happily take validation <3

“Alright, Christ, that’s the fourth time you’ve brought Calum up in the last thirty minutes,” Ashton interrupted Michael mid-rant. Michael frowned and sipped his soda, leaning back (harder than necessary, to prove a point) into Ashton’s stupidly comfortable couch.

“And?” Michael asked, raising an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with me talking about Calum so much? Who else am I supposed to be talking about him to?”

Ashton shrugged one shoulder. “My point is maybe you should be talking about him less and talking to him more. Why don’t you just ask him out already?”

Michael hummed, nice and noncommittal, and just sipped his drink. “Dunno.” He slumped down a little against the couch, messing up the back of his hair. “I just haven’t.”

Ashton sighed and Michael had to hold in his pleased smile at frustrating him so easily. And all it had taken was several weeks of talking nonstop about Calum almost every time they hung out to wear him down. Ha. Take that, Ashton. “I’m sure he likes you. Didn’t he compliment your eyes last week?” Michael nodded his affirmative. “And didn’t he literally spend the night with you the week before that?” Michael nodded again. “So he obviously likes you, Mike. What’s it gonna take you to actually ask him out?”

Now it was Michael’s turn to sigh, and he made it as loud and dramatic as possible. Just to make sure Ashton was fully and properly annoyed. That was mostly how their friendship worked. Michael loved him, so he annoyed him as much as humanly possible. And Ashton put up with it because he loved him back. It was absolutely perfect.

“Look, I bet you your next pizza he’ll say yes.” Ashton wasn’t the smartest person if he thought that would get Michael to stop talking about Calum. If they went out, Michael would only start talking about him more. The bet really only benefited Michael. But, being the opportunistic person he was, he decided against pointing it out. Ashton wasn’t an idiot - not usually, at least - so it was better to avoid patronizing him by letting him know, anyway. Or that was what Michael told himself, trying to pretend his reasons for accepting the bet were because he didn’t want to insult Ashton by turning it down and thus sullying his integrity. Or something like that.

Michael tilted his head, pretending to consider it. “What if he says no?”

Ashton huffed slightly. He didn’t need to say anything; Michael spoke Ashton (a side effect of being friends with him for so long), and that was as good as him saying it wasn’t going to happen. “Then you apologize to me for talking so much about a guy that doesn’t care about you.”

“And you apologize for being wrong. And I get bragging rights about it,” Michael added, quick to sweeten the bargain. Would Calum say no? Probably not, but he was going to make sure he was covered just in case. He didn’t want to have to deal with a broken heart and not get to blame Ashton at least slightly.

“Yeah, sure.” Ashton shook his head and sipped his soda again. That meant that he didn’t believe he’d say no, but he’d given up on arguing with Michael. Michael almost missed not having Ashton in his head.

“You’re on, then. It’s a bet.” Michael held a hand out expectantly, waiting for Ashton to shake it.

Ashton held his gaze for a moment, not reaching for his hand. “Ah ah ah. You’ve got two weeks to ask him out.”

“Fine,” Michael agreed. Only then did Ashton reach out and shake his hand. God, he drove a hard bargain. “Now you’re on.”

-----------------------------------

Michael’s phone vibrated on the table exactly two weeks later, while he was busy getting his hair played with, head on Calum’s thigh. He let out a dramatic huff and gave Calum his best puppy dog eyes. Like with Ashton, he and Calum had made their own silent language, communicating with nothing but subtle head tilts and eye contact. It was just better with Calum because, well, it was Calum. So he didn’t have to ask for anything before Calum let out a soft laugh and wordlessly passed him his phone, scratching at Michael’s scalp a little, before turning his attention back to whatever shitty movie was playing on the TV.

Ashton: It’s been two weeks. You ask him yet?

Michael: yea, got a date 4 tmr

Ashton: Nice! I knew he’d say yes

Ashton: I’m out with Luke tomorrow

Fucker probably knew Michael would want to gossip about the date after it happened and was preemptively saying no.

Ashton: You and Calum could grab drinks or something with us afterward? If you don’t think it’s too soon

Michael: nah tht sounds pretty good. c u then?

Ashton: 👍

Michael tipped his head back slightly to look at Calum properly. He was gorgeous from this angle, too. Which was honestly just more proof that he was some sort of otherworldly deity or something, because no one at all should look so good from below like this. “Hey, do you wanna grab drinks with my friends tomorrow?”

Calum pulled his attention away from the movie to look down at Michael with that stupidly fond smile Michael was starting to get used to. “Yeah, sure, that sounds fun.” He scratched at his scalp again. “Like a double date thing or like a me meeting your friends thing?”

Michael paused. “Uh, both? It’s Ashton and Luke, so...maybe a bit of both.”

Calum hummed, gaze shifting back to the TV. It didn’t stop Michael from feeling exposed, still, suddenly vulnerable under the weight of his feelings. “That sounds fun.”

-----------------------------------

The evening had gone splendidly. Michael hadn’t really expected any less; Calum was such a sweet, caring person, and spending time with him was so easy and effortless. Dating him was just the same, only better, because now he got to hold his hand, and Calum didn’t hold back his fond or adoring looks anymore. Suffice to say, it was pretty perfect.

Calum got along just as well with Ashton and Luke, Michael was pleased to learn. He bantered back and forth with Ashton just as well as Michael did - maybe better, but Michael wasn’t about to admit that - and he was sweet with Luke.

Everything went well until Calum was coming back from the bathroom and heard Ashton make some stupid joke about Michael asking him out properly.

“What’ll it take you to ask him to be your boyfriend?” Ashton teased. “Will I have to bet you a week’s worth of pizza for you to get your courage?”

“What do you mean ask me?” Calum asked, confused. “I asked Michael to be my boyfriend earlier this week.”

Ashton’s eyebrows raised immediately. Uh oh. “You’re boyfriends?”

Michael flushed and gave Ashton a sheepish smile. “Uh...yeah?”

“Since when?”

“Since Tuesday…?”

“It’s Saturday. How did you not tell me-”

“I’ve been distracted,” Michael said helplessly, looking at Calum and doing his best pleading look to get some backup. Luke had gone to get their next round of drinks, and Calum liked him, so surely he wouldn’t mind.

Calum nodded. “It’s true, he’s been distracted. He’s spent every night since then at my place.” Michael nodded along with him before flushing darker at the implications and tipping his head back against the sticky back of the booth immediately, prepared to die right then and there of embarrassment.

Ashton shook his head slightly. “He’s been talking about you for weeks, I’m surprised he didn’t mention that you asked him out when it happened.”

Calum grinned. “For weeks, huh?”

Ashton gave him a returning grin. The same grin that meant nothing but trouble, that he was about to stir up shit in Michael’s life. “Yep. For weeks. I’ve heard about how pretty your eyes are at least thirty-seven times now.”

Ashton continued, and Michael resigned himself to being mortified for the rest of the evening, if not the rest of his life. Maybe introducing the two of them had been a horrible idea. Deep down, though, he was sort of giddy at the fact that they were getting along so well, even if they were teaming up to make Michael’s life a living hell. Finding Calum had been like the last puzzle piece slotting into place, rounding out his life into something whole and balanced and perfect. And he wouldn’t change it for the world, even if he had to endure a little mortification.

#malum #5 seconds of summer #michael clifford #calum hood #5sos #5sos fanfic #5sos fanfiction #my writing #5 seconds of summer fanfic #malum fanfic #lashton #luke hemmings #ashton irwin

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anncanta · 4 years

Text

Dracula BBC as an alchemical novel

I noticed a long time ago that the stories that S. Moffat and M. Gatiss tell do not just have two or three layers (in fact, much more), but most often turn out to be such a complex field in which all the numerous levels work independently and at the same time manage to merge into a holistic melody. Actually, this is why their texts often ‘from the outside’ look strange, incomprehensible or meaningless (apart from those cases when they really are like this).

The thing is that stories of this kind are arranged in such a way that the plot, as a frame, ‘holding’ ideas and meanings on itself, is, so to speak, open — like a system of corridors leading in different directions, up and down, into those dimensions of the narrative that are currently needed by the authors in order to convey their statement.

In this respect, the genre is very important, because by structuring the story at the formal level, it allows, let’s say, to enter it and understand where to move from the entrance. And there — well, depending on how far you are willing to go.

One of the best definitions of the Dracula genre that I have seen among the reviews written so far is a metaphysical detective.

Some might say that the term looks artificial, but bearing in mind that the story itself seems to be enough… hybrid, it would be fine to start a conversation.

This really has everything a good detective novel needs, plus philosophical and (almost) religious motives organically woven into the narrative, the idea of self-knowledge that pushes the boundaries of any genre, and a mysterious ending. So it’s easy to agree with the above definition.

But I would say that this is an alchemical novel.

Let me remind those who have not come across the works of C.G. Jung, who in his later work paid much attention to alchemy and secret religious practices: in the context of his research, alchemy is a way of self-knowledge and one’s own psyche in order to achieve a higher level of development and gaining mental and spiritual integrity.

History of literature knows several rather interesting attempts to describe the alchemical Work and, since cinema in this sense is no worse, if you wish, you can immediately name a dozen films that also touch on this topic. Well, Sherlock, being viewed from a certain angle quite fits into this paradigm, and I will not even start about Harry Potter — this is a classic of Jungian thought, expressed in literature and successfully transferred to the cinema.

What about Dracula? Everything is very interesting in it.

The first thing to note is that Dracula’s structure is not a mini-series. It’s not a TV show at all. This is a three-part film, all parts of which are closely related to each other so that none of them can be ‘taken out’ from the text without losing meaning and understanding what is happening here.

The second, — it is undoubtedly a novel. The novel as a genre has many definitions, I will not give them here, I will only mention an element that is important for our conversation, without which a modern novel is impossible. This is the growing up and inner change of the hero. If the hero came to the end of the work, being not the same he was at the beginning, most likely we have a novel. Another question is how the hero came to these changes.

And here the third aspect is important — the way the story is told and the ‘language’ used by the authors.

Act I

Dracula begins with a young man standing in the middle of a dark forest and waiting for a carriage that will take him to the medieval castle of some mysterious Count. A girl comes out of the carriage in which the young man reached this place, and asks him to take the crucifix with him, assuring him that he will certainly need it. The carriage leaves, the young man remains in the forest.

Look, you can ‘exit’ from this scene both into a gothic novel (in principle, an entertainment genre, to which you can add a couple of additional meanings if you wish) and into an alchemical story. The exposition will be the same. Let’s suppose we are talking about an alchemical novel. For now, just suppose.

Dark forest is a place between worlds, between everyday life and the other world, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between daytime reality and nighttime. Place of transition, no one’s land. The laws of consciousness are no longer dominant here, but the unconscious does not yet dominate. You can also talk with those who live in the real world and get from them the so-called ‘magic item’, which may help the hero in the future, but it is already difficult to return. And — what is important — you can only travel further with a guide from the unconscious. Carriages from the outside world don’t go there.

The young man is picked up by a strange cart with a mysterious charioteer, after which, having driven some distance through the forest, he finds himself at the gates of an ancient castle. Going inside, he sees an empty room and a table set for dinner. This is the second point of transition if you follow the logic of archetypal storytelling. While Johnny is nothing more than a guest, a stranger, a man who has nothing to do with this castle or its inhabitants. He crossed the border of the unconscious but did not enter into a relationship with it. And here he does what the fairy tales strongly advise against doing to everyone who finds himself in such circumstances — he tries local food.

The game is on. From that moment — not from the first bite, but from this moment, Johnny enters the reality of Dracula, the reality of his castle, and begins to interact with forces that are incomprehensible and beyond his control.

But this is not the most interesting thing.

Let’s skip the moment of the Count`s appearance — here the authors again make a nod to the gothic novel, and the whole situation logically unfolds like an old horror movie, exactly until the moment when several new details appear in the narrative.

The first is the invisible inhabitants of the castle, who write on the glass with inverted letters ‘save us’, and the second is a journey through the castle-labyrinth and the discovery of the map.

Remember I said that this story could be a gothic novel, and the plot is quite like a gothic novel? So, forget it. From now, there is no way to return to this genre. The gothic novel is about controlled horror. It’s about tickling your nerves in a safe environment. In this form, it moved into the cinema and settled there in the form of horror films. It has no other functions and building blocks. Moreover, the symbolic details. The scary house there is always just a scary house, and the worms crawl out of the walking dead because it looks disgusting, and the viewers love the thrill.

But let’s back to Dracula.

Why are the castle-labyrinth and map important? On a metaphorical level, the house represents a person, that Self that a person knows, ‘builds’ throughout life and which belongs to it. A castle-labyrinth in which it is easy to get lost, which does not have a map, indicates a lost person.

And it was not Johnny who was here lost.

Have you ever thought about why, after being sucked dry and killed, the lawyer threw himself from the roof of the castle and was fished out of the river by fishermen, Dracula did not leave him alone and went to the convent after him?

What does this ‘bride’ mean to him, in no use as a food, dagger stares and pursed lips, and even threatens to fight Dracula while walking on the ground? Although it is doubtful he could fight — he could barely keep his feet.

Pride? Wounded amour-propre? A sense of ownership?

No.

In order to understand why Dracula came for Johnny, you need to return to the search for the map and remember where Harker found it.

In the depths of one of the corridors of the castle hung two portraits — the image of the architect who built the house and his wife. About which ones the architect himself refers in his notes as the Moon and the Sun.

It is noteworthy that a woman is the Sun here, while in the alchemical tradition, the solar energy is male, and the lunar energy is female. I think this is part of the inverted reality of the Count`s psyche, where landmarks are confused and roles are changed. For what it’s worth, such landmarks are enough for Harker to find a way out.

But it’s important for us to understand who Johnny is.

He is not a victim of Count Dracula. Rather, from the point of view of the plot, he is his victim, but at the symbolic level, his function is completely different.

Jonathan Harker is a figure from the outside world who comes to the house of a person whose psyche is immersed in chaos, who himself does not know what is in his house, and is able to get lost in it himself, keeps monsters in the basement and feeds on them. This person has lost touch with reality in the literal sense of the word. (For anyone interested, read about literalized metaphors in British literature.) And then someone comes to him, and involuntarily begins to order his chaotic world.

It is no coincidence that during one of his conversations with the Count Johnny hears a crying baby. At the level of the plot, this is a real baby that Dracula carries for his next ‘bride’ imprisoned in the basement of the castle. But at the symbolic level, where all the inhabitants of the castle are parts of the soul of the Count himself, the baby is his split-off child self. Of course, destined for murder. And turned into a child of the night.

What happens next? At the moment when the process of ordering the psyche and contact with the outside world is launched, it is already difficult to stop it. Therefore, Dracula with a manic passion rushes to the convent and tries to regain Johnny. But the function of the guide has been exhausted. Other forces come into play.

Act II

The central scene of what is happening in the convent is undoubtedly the scene of the meeting between Dracula and Agatha. And in their meeting, everything is important, literally every detail. Strikingly, it is harmoniously built both on the plot and on the symbolic level. There is literally no redundant element there.

We will only note the main ones so as not to get bogged down in details.

The first moment — Dracula went out into the outside world, but he cannot just appear there. Until now, his whole life has passed in darkness — both literally and symbolically. We do not know what made him so, but he obviously at some point in his life fell back to animal, primitive instincts. Therefore, in order to leave his world and exist in the real, in the world of consciousness, he needs to transform.

This is the first transformation of the hero that we see — when at the gates of the monastery Dracula is ‘born’ from the skin of a beast.

Having been born, he approaches the gates, which are opened to him by a genuine, not escheat, and fake bride — Agatha. Anima.

And she doesn’t give him any indulgences.

In Jungian literature, it is often mentioned that meeting with an archetype is a difficult and rather painful thing. Especially if the person is not ready for it. And, of course, it is extremely dangerous to project archetypal qualities onto a real person who can represent them for a specific man or woman. But this is in life. And a work of art`s entitled to combine symbolic and real layers in one context.

Agatha treats Dracula harshly, in a semblance of an erotic scene, giving an outlet for his insane disordered sexual and animal energy, in some way, ‘shaking’ him and allowing his inner chaos to restructure and acquire a consistency suitable for connecting with the new and the unknown.

And then the victim, close contact, an attempt to absorb — and the hero falls into his Anima and at the same time goes to a new world on a journey on the water.

Act III

I think that the symbolism of water (amniotic fluid, the water of the unconscious, water as an information and life medium) is not worth explaining. But what is happening with Dracula in the sealed world of the mother’s womb — the ship, in order for no one to have any doubts, called Demeter, needs to be considered more closely.

From this moment, from the moment when his romance with Agatha starts and begins to develop, Dracula’s relations with other people become extremely important. Until now, he had no relationships with people. The ‘brides’ in the castle are nothing more than food and separate parts of his own personality. The first person he established a real relationship with was Johnny. And this — on one of the levels — is another reason why Dracula was so attached to him. You never forget first love.

On Demeter, the Count consecutively comes into contact with several people.

What kind of people they are is very important.

The first is still just a victim. A sailor-helmsman, whom Dracula eats only because he needs a specific quality that the man has. This is how children are friends with those from whom you can ask for a useful thing or write off homework. After the object’s function is completed, the friendship ends.

It’s more difficult with the Grand Duchess. This is a story about memory, desire, and youth, Dracula`s question to himself — can I be liked, and if I can, then why: because my appearance evokes memories of youth or because I am interesting on my own? The dance as part of their interaction indicates an attempt to ‘taste’ the relationship (the Anima looks in-depth with a smile) but turns into a bloodbath.

What is important here is that as the ship sails further into the sea, and the relationship between Dracula and Agatha becomes more and more intimate, the Count begins to get more and more nervous, and his instincts, at first completely tamed for a distant goal, become more and more out of control.

He collected these passengers in advance, calculating how many people he needed to eat in order to safely get to England. And in the first two days, he ate half of them. The tension rises, the anxiety elevates, no one is safe. Including Dracula.

The meeting with Dorabella on deck (I just want to say — ‘date’) is a naive attempt to flirt, a conscious — not a vampire’s natural — desire to please, a short, but independently built with great difficulty dialogue. The portrayal of her possible married life shown to the girl is a gift that is discouraging in its brutality. And the conclusion: no, nothing will come of it. ‘I am a vampire.’

But if you have already gone out into the outside world, do not expect that you will be able to hide. Whatever you think, but you have made your choice.

After the murder of Dorabella, the ship literally ‘boils’, the hidden truth comes to the surface in the literal sense, and Agatha reappears on the scene.

Act IV

Many viewers ask: why did Agatha take command of the ship?

And who else should be the captain of the ship called Demeter under these circumstances?

Falcons give way to turtle doves.

But let’s back to the text.

The confrontation-connection of Dracula and his Anima lasts for some time, after which it logically ends with immersion of both in water.

And here is another interesting point. The first part of the alchemical Work is completed, the hero went through two transformations, began to communicate with living people, and even made some progress, but in order to consolidate the result, the psyche must close off from the world and allow deep processes to take place inside. Therefore, Dracula falls asleep at the bottom for 123 years, and Agatha fell off the map.

In the XXI century, the updated Count discovers that everything has changed, but the hunt for vampires is still relevant, and he himself is quite ready for new achievements.

The trouble is that he has already learned the taste of the genuine, and therefore surrogates are not to his liking.

When I watched the film for the first and second time, I just couldn’t understand why Lucy was needed there. Silly, superficial, narcissistic, she has no interest in anything other than herself and her Instagram images.

‘How could such a girl interest Dracula?!’ viewers around the world yell. And they are right.

How indeed?

Well, she couldn't.

In order to understand what Lucy’s role in this story is, you need to watch the film from the very beginning. Then it becomes clear that Dracula’s relationship with her, their dialogues, interaction, jokes and flirting, her willingness to voluntarily let him drink her blood is a complete parallel, a repetition of the Count’s relationship with Agatha. Having found the experience of deep love within himself and has found a connection with his soul, the hero is desperately trying to reproduce it — and fails.

Review these scenes. How he looks at Lucy, how he walks arm in arm with her, how he tells her what a brave and extraordinary girl she is, how he holds her on his lap, and asks where she wants to go. In fact, he does everything he did with Agatha. But doing all this, he has empty eyes. An indifferent look, mechanical movements, and bitterness at the bottom. He has a young beautiful woman in his arms, she is obviously in love with him, although she hides it, she is ready for anything to make him feel good. And he is bored.

In the eyes turned to Lucy, not the greed of a vampire is — there are darkness, sadness, and endless repetition: ‘Not her, not her, not her.’

But the psyche, especially the psyche of an adult, does not simply abandon its habits, so Dracula repeats with Lucy the entire cycle that has already passed with all his ‘brides’. The catch is that Lucy is not attached to him, but to admiration for her own beauty, and when beauty disappears, their illusory connection falls apart, turning into horror and contempt. But here, too, not everything is so simple.

In the scene in Dracula’s house, where Lucy realizes who she has become, an important parallel arises.

Look. There are four characters in the room. The situation is difficult, tense, the conflict reaches its limit until it is resolved through love. But how is it resolved?

I mean, what does it look like structurally?

It’s very simple. The man and the ‘monster’ stand and watch the kissing of the man and the ‘monster’ next to them.

And then something happens not only with Jack and Lucy, who finally managed to find peace but also with Dracula. This is the highest point from which there is only one path — to catharsis. The fact that Agatha led him there is logical and obvious, but up to this point, he was not ready for it.

And the final scene. When all the pieces are on the board, all conflicts are realized and all the ghosts are brought to light, there are no enemies left. Except for himself. Except for that, which he didn’t allow himself to do. Except for the fear of being yourself.

The ending of this film is the pinnacle of the alchemical process. Transformation. At the level of the plot, physical death, freeing a five-hundred-year-old vampire and a woman who loved him for many years. And at the symbolic level — going beyond one’s own limits and gaining integrity.

Therefore, in the final, we see the sun. The sun is a symbol of a purified consciousness, transformed and fully realized itself.

Epilogue

For those to whom the interpretation that I have presented here seems strange or stretch, I will separately note the following. Any interpretation is, to one degree or another, a figment of the imagination of the viewer or reader, although, unlike postmodern literary scholars, I believe that there are right and wrong interpretations. And the correct interpretation is not at all what the author wanted to say. This is what the story wanted to say. Often they are not the same thing.

And the second, closely related to the first: no, I do not think that S. Moffat and M. Gatiss put such meaning in their story. I think that European culture, with its multi-layered nature and the ability to reflect on complex experiences through symbolic stories, is that powerful semantic field that generates such tales regardless of the wishes of screenwriters and writers. And that seems wonderful to me.

#dracula 2020 #bbc dracula #count dracula #agatha van helsing #meta

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c-optimistic · 5 years

Text

unrequited

Sometimes, Lena forgot who Kara truly was.

(She knew her for so long as just Kara Danvers the meek but so utterly kind reporter, that the glimpses of the alter ego still threw Lena for a loop.

Glimpses of steel in Kara’s eyes, pride in the set of her shoulders, god-like strength in the way she stood.

Lena had ignored these signs, once upon a time. Had written it off as a Kara Danvers, the meek but kind enigma. Tossed it in with everything else that so puzzled her about Kara.)

Lena shouldn’t forget who Kara truly was, though. She couldn’t afford to.

(She now saw lies where she once saw nothing but truth. She saw a morally flawed superhero where once she only saw a friend with integrity.

Once she believed there was trust, friendship, honor, but now…

But now, she realized she saw only what she wanted to see, and even the thought of it was excruciatingly humiliating.)

Sometimes, Lena just…forgot. Forgot how angry she was, forgot how hurt she was, forgot that somewhere along the line Kara took something and broke her in a way Lena didn’t understand, wasn’t capable of understanding. Because somewhere along the way, Kara made Lena feel loved.

And Lena Luthor had an inexplicable, unexplainable relationship with the word ‘love.’

She loved sushi. She loved Star Trek, loved her collection of fountain pens, loved the vinyls her father used to play before bed (pulling her towards him, allowing her to scuff his shoes as she stood on his toes and pretended to dance, the two of them swaying and laughing). She loved watching the sunset from her balcony at L-Corp, loved the wine Lex had gotten her as a graduation gift, loved the way she could sometimes close her eyes and feel fifteen again, before Lionel was dead and Lex was crazy and Lillian stopped forcing herself to play nice.

Lena loved feelingloved.

She loved the coffee Jess made every morning, the one person she'd allowed herself to bring from Metropolis, the one person she allowed herself to trust. She loved a lingering remnant of a memory, the fading warmth of a kiss pressed to her forehead, a woman's soft voice echoing through her skull, repeating a strange phrase that Lena was sure was just from a dream, never a reality.

She loved how her very first girlfriend used to curl into her in bed, tugging her hand and entangling their fingers, pressing kisses to each one of Lena's fingertips almost reverently (and Lena allowed it to fill her from within, the warmth spreading from her chest to her every extremity, tingling and leaving her wanting for more). She loved the tears in her girlfriend's eyes the day they broke up, Lena off to her 'bright future' and the girl she cared so much about shaking her head as she claimed she couldn't follow.

But for all that love—for every moment she craved an action, a gesture of affection, breathlessly waiting for the confirmation that she was somehow worth loving—Lena was woefully incapable of it herself.

She never really managed to return Jess's smiles.

She hadn't gone to her father's funeral.

She pretended she didn't recognize her ex when she ran into her.

She hadn't been able to offer Lex the help he needed and wanted.

She sent her own mother to prison.

(She'd read somewhere once that there was more than one way to say 'I love you,' that it was said in between laughter, inscribed in the motions of tucking someone in, tacit in breathless concern and hands hovering just shy of skin, searching frantically for injuries.

She wondered what her own actions have said. I don't appreciate you? I'm selfish? I hate you?)

Lena loved the feeling of being loved. She craved it, needed it, desperately attempted to hide her desire for it.

But loving? She didn't think she even knew what that meant.

Except…

Well, except—

Except that if there’d been anyone left in her life who’d be interested enough to ask, she could’ve rattled off the exact moment she fell in love with Kara Danvers.

She would have smiled, ducked her head, and explained it was a Tuesday afternoon. She would have described the light filling her office, how it seemed like Kara was literally bathed in some angelic golden hue. She would have talked about Kara’s blue eyes, the ready smile, the way fingers fiddled with glasses, unnecessarily straightening them.

She would mention that it was on a Tuesday afternoon that she fell in love with Kara’s voice, Kara’s faith in others, Kara’s smile—the fact that shecould elicit that smile.

On a Tuesday, sipping the coffee Kara brought her and wondering how she’d gotten so lucky, Lena would close her eyes and just take the plunge.

(She didn’t think she’d ever admit it aloud, the fact that she dived in headfirst, that she fell so hard and so fast that it left her reeling.

No, never out loud. But in quiet moments—when she was staring into the mirror and traced the twist of her lips with her eyes, ran her fingertips over the hard edges of her frown—she admitted to herself that she willingly, happily, thoughtlesslyfell for Kara.

And that was the problem in the end, wasn’t it? The thoughtlessness.)

It was extraordinary in and of itself, this concept of a Luthor falling in love (she wasn’t quite sure that was even possible, had never seen evidence that any Luthor was even capableof love). But Lena especially—

On a Tuesday afternoon, drinking her coffee and staring at Kara Danvers with nothing short of awe and thinking she’d do anything to keep that smile on Kara’s face, Lena had thought she’d cracked some kind of code, that she broke the Luthor curse—that her mangled, malformed, and misshapen DNA had finally found a semblance of normalcy—and figured that maybe she knew a little more about love than she first thought.

(She wasn’t sure what day it was that Lex destroyed her world with only a few words, what day it was that the pain of pulling the trigger was overwhelmed by the knowledge that her lovemeant nothing, what day it was that she was forced to remember her distorted, deformed, and disfigured DNA always had been, and always would be, Luthor.)

Yes, Lena loved the feeling of being loved. She craved it, needed it, desperately attempted to hide her desire for it. It was why it was so easy, sometimes, for her to forget who Kara was, for her to closer her eyes and pretend none of it was real.

But love? For someone to genuinely love and care about her? To be in love with someone? She didn’t think that even existed outside of fairytales.

At least, not anymore.

For as long as she could remember, Lena had been told that Luthors should smile but could never laugh. It had been a message engrained into her by Lillian when she was barely old enough to read, reinforced when Lionel took her into the office when she was a preteen and taught her about what it meant to run a business.

Smile more, Lillian had urged. It’s all about creating the proper image.

Smile more, Lionel had taught her. You want to make the deal.

(Not to brag, but Lena had turned smiling into an exact science. She knew exactly how wide and expressive her smile was to be based on what she wanted to convey.

Threats were accompanied by small smiles, no teeth, thin lips, and unwavering eyes.

Persuasion required more finesse, a half grin, almost to catch her adversary off guard and make them believe she hadn’t planned each word, each blurted idea, meticulously.

Cheerful smiles at galas, polite smiles with those she wasn’t quite sure about yet, smiles that hid her boredom as another aging white man attempted to lecture her about her own company.

She knew how to defuse a situation with merely an upturned tick of her lips. She knew how to get the deal done with the barest hint of teeth. It was an exact science...with one glaring exception.)

Kara Danvers never asked her to smile. In fact, Kara never asked her to do anything except be true to herself, providing support and faith and uninhibited, heartfelt looks. And somehow, it was Kara Danvers who drew out a true smile, Kara Danvers who seemed to notice it for what it was—her eyes brightening, biting her bottom lip as if in an attempt to hide her glee, her expression becoming more open, more honest, more herself—

—and if all that was something Lena looked back at with barely concealed fury at her own stupidity, her blindness in allowing a pretty face to delude her so long, it didn’t do much to detract from the fact that Kara Danvers was still the onlyperson who could draw out Lena’s true smile.

(“It’s the eyes,” Kara had confessed once, her fingers twitching in her lap as if she was itching to reach out and touch the thing that betrayed Lena’s confidence so easily, as if her fingers wanted to immortalize the moment, the sight. “It looks like the moment right before someone bursts into laughter, that second before the body has to expel some joy because there’s just too much for it to hold in. I guess that’s why I like it, it means you’re happy.”

Lena had swallowed down the rush of emotion at Kara’s words, had broken their gaze, had busied herself with pretending she was reading an important email.

“I’m a Luthor, Kara,” she had said flippantly. “Don’t you know we don’t do laughter?”

Kara had remained silent for a moment, long enough that Lena looked back up and immediately found their eyes locked once more.

Her eyes had been stone-cold serious as she said, “Oh, but you’re so much more than just a Luthor, don’t youknow that?”)

Lena sighed, placing the memories, the feelings, in tiny little boxes and setting them aside, needing to concentrate on the present moment.

The world was in danger again. (It never seemed notto be anymore.)

The DEO, Alex, Supergirl needed her help again. (And Lena wasn’t quite sure how to shelve the boxes furiouswith Kara for keeping this secret for so long, how to navigate this new, awkward truce between them, how to meet Kara’s—Supergirl’s—blue, blue eyes and think anything other than, why you, why of all the people in her life destined to hurt her, break her, shake her down, why was Supergirl—Kara—one of them too?)

Kara was looking at her again.

“If my calculations are correct, and they are correct,” Brainy was saying, “there is a 98.67% chance the seismic event will occur 100 miles outsideNational City. This, of course, still means National City and the surrounding area will be—”

Lena tuned him out, unable to help it.

(Kara’s eyes on her made her feel as though her skin was on fire. There was an intensity to it, a purpose Kara seemed to think she could convey with only the heaviness of her gaze. But other than shaky hands and the sudden need to breathe in more deeply—her lungs set aflame and unable to expand fully—Lena was in the dark.

Long gone were the days that she and Kara were in sync, in tune, capable of understanding one other with looks and sighs and trembling hands, when a single word in a text could set off alarms and had them trying to figure out what was wrong.

Now, Kara stared, and Lena pretended she didn’t notice.)

“—right, Lena?” Alex said, breaking Lena’s train of thought, but also mercifully forcing Kara to break her gaze.

“Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

“Brainy needs help with some of the calculations. You can work with him, right?” Alex repeated, her eyes narrowing a little, darting between Lena and Kara with poorly concealed suspicion. Lena wondered how much she knew, how much she suspected, if she’d been able to suss out Lena’s feelings. The very concept terrified her.

“Yes, of course,” she said, proud that her voice remained firm and strong. Alex nodded approvingly then turned to Kara.

“Supergirl, we’ll need you in the sky to monitor—”

“Is that really necessary?” Lena interrupted, unable to help it. Alex frowned, Brainy blinked several times in quick succession, and Kara kept lookingat her—knowing, understanding, expecting. It grinded her gears, it set her on edge.

She hated, hated, hated—

“Is what necessary?” Alex asked dangerously, tone hard.

“Calling her ‘Supergirl,’” Lena clarified, refusing to cower before the flash of protectiveness in Alex’s eyes. “We all know who she is, what’s the point of all this nonsense?” One of the DEO agents who had been approaching with some kind of scanner in her hand—a woman named Vasquez, Lena thought—stopped as Alex held up a hand and immediately turned around, directing other agents to also give the four of them a wide berth.

“How could you—” Alex began hotly, but she never got to say her piece. Kara gently cut her sister off with nothing but the barest of touches against her arm, Kara’s eyes never leaving Lena’s.

“She doesn’t know, Alex, it’s not her fault,” Kara said softly, still not looking away from Lena. “The truth is, quite a few of the agents didknow. I was here a lot, as myself,” Kara explained, her expression changing, becoming so utterly broken, that Lena felt herself fold first, tearing her eyes away and focusing on Brainy’s contemplative expression. “But with everything that happened last year,” she didn’t have to say it, Lena knew what she meant—Lockwood, the Children of Liberty, the President working for Lex, becoming public enemy number one—and her heart twisted once more, “it was too dangerous to let the people here know who I am.” Something on Lena’s face must have shown her confusion, because Brainy cleared his throat and expanded on Kara’s answer.

“J’onn wiped the DEO of all their memories of Supergirl’s true identity,” he said. “Even Director Danvers. Unfortunately, this is irreversible without lasting and potentially catastrophic effects for the human mind. Director Danvers only remains intact because of the emotional trauma of seeing Supergirl die—”

“—briefly,” Kara hurried to add, looking panicked and reaching out to touch Alex’s shoulder, as if to reassure her, “it was only briefly.”

“Briefly,” Lena repeated, almost dazedly.

(She didn’t know, how could she have known? But it made her wonder just what else she didn’t know, what else was she supposed to find out in an offhand remark, what else was she supposed to discover and hopelessly stand there, heart beating wildly and hands shaking, and all the while lying to herself.

She hated, she hated, she hatedthe fact that even after everything she was still in love with Kara.)

“What Brainy means,” Kara said softly, hand still on Alex’s shoulder, but her blue, blue eyes focused as ever on Lena, “is that a lot of people I care about, my friends like Vasquez, could be hurt if we aren’t careful. So I hide here too,” she tacked on listlessly, tonelessly. And it was odd, it was terribly inconvenient, but in that moment, Lena just knew.

She and Kara had been so out of sync, so out of sorts, but one phrase managed to cut through all the static and all the distance between them, ringing out loud and clear in her mind: I hide here too, she was saying, so careful to get the words out without changing her inflection, yet unable to disguise the pain in her eyes or the alarms that wailed in Lena’s chest at the sight. I hide heretoo.

Hiding in the one place she’d once been able to be herself completely. Hiding among friends who used to know her full, entire self. Hiding and acting and pretending to be something else, all the time.

Constantly.

“Okay,” Lena said, and Alex huffed, clearly unenthused by the response. She shrugged off Kara’s hand and shook her head, stalking off with Brainy hot on her heels, apologizing for bringing up Kara’s ‘brief’ death. But Kara didn’t move. She just kept looking at Lena, and for the first time since Lex rocked her entire worldview askew, Lena looked back steadily.

“Okay,” Kara repeated after a long pause, her eyes both bright and soft, biting her bottom lip as if in an attempt to hide her glee, her expression becoming more open, more honest, more…herself.

(And though Lena took a deep breath and turned away, pretending not to notice, she knew exactly why Kara reacted the way she did.

Because for a brief moment, between finding herself capable of filling her lungs completely after what seemed like an eternity of suffocating and the knowledge that she’d somehow come close to losing Kara and hadn’t even known it, so utterly grateful Kara was still present—still here—regardless of all her anger, Lena was happy.

And she was sure it showed in that one real, true smile that only Kara was ever able to elicit.)

ii.

The second Kara Danvers stumbled into her office, Lena knew something was wrong.

(There were a lot of reasons, Lena would tell herself later, a lot of tells. There was the way Kara’s shoulders were stiff with discomfort, not straight and proud and willing to carry any weight. There was the way she nodded, awkwardly and forced—as though she wasn’t quite sure how to move her own body. There was the fact that Kara hadn’t come by her office since long before Crisis, as though by some unspoken agreement, as though she knewLena well enough to know that L-Corp and Lena’s apartment were off limits to Kara Danvers for the time being.

But most telling of all, the thing Lena wouldn’t admit really gave it away, was that Kara wouldn’t meet her eyes. And never—never—had Kara been unable to gaze at Lena, Lena equally too weak to turn away from those blue eyes.)

“Who are you?” Lena asked the Kara Danvers imposter, her hand reaching for the watch Kara gifted her, the watch that she’d taken to wearing again since the conversation at the DEO, the watch that the realKara would’ve noticed immediately upon entering Lena’s office. “What do you want?”

The imposter didn’t answer. Instead, their hand went to their ear, seemingly listening intently. “I don’t have a lot of time, Ms. Luthor,” they finally said, before facing Lena fully and dropping their hand. “We need your help.”

“I’m not going to—” Before Lena could finish her comment, the imposter Kara was glowing in a bright red light, and where Kara’s figure once stood was J’onn. “What—what are you doing? Where’s Kara? Why are you impersonating her?” She didn’t say the again, but she didn’t have to.

“There’s been a situation,” he told her gravely. “We really need your help.” He watched in silence as Lena got to her feet, rounding her desk and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Help with what?” she asked, working hard to maintain a blank expression. But on the inside…on the inside, she was falling apart.

(A situation? Like the kryptonite in the atmosphere that almost killed Kara? Or like the time Kara died—briefly—and she hadn’t even known?

Would she always feel her heart pound with equal parts worry, fear, and angerevery single time Supergirl’s visage appeared on the news, every time J’onn or Alex graced her office with the words we need your help? Would she always be waiting with bated breath, simultaneously craving her next conversation with Kara and fearing that her hurt and anger would be the last thing between them that ever reached Kara’s ears?

Would she always, always, be half in love with the person who broke whatever remained of her mangled, dysfunctional heart—always willing to rush to her aid, wanting to make sure she was okay, needing to make sure she was okay?)

“There was a substance created by Lord Technologies years ago,” J’onn said slowly, as if intending to wordlessly remind her that what he was saying was top secret DEO information, not that Lena needed the reminder. “It…affected Kara quite negatively.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lena told him, genuinely confused. Then again, between Lex and the death by a million cuts of the Luthor last name, Lena hadn’t been paying much attention to Supergirl until the superhero became her motivation for moving to National City. But Lena also didn’t need J’onn’s grave expression to know that whatever Lord did had had disastrous results—Maxwell Lord had always been too arrogant and shortsighted for his own good.

J’onn opened his mouth—either to explain or to tell her they didn’t have time for this, Lena didn’t really know—but before he could get a word out, his hand flew to his ear, clearly listening intently to whoever (likely Alex) was on the other end of his earpiece. “Okay, understood,” he said, eyes flitting over to Lena’s balcony as if he was expecting something to come through the window at any moment. He tensed and moved slightly as if ready to shield Lena with his body if he needed to. “I’ll take care of this end, you make sure you contain her.”

“Contain her?” Lena said, balking slightly. “Are you talking about Kara? What’s going on, J’onn?”

“Can you cancel any engagements or meetings you have for the rest of the day?” he asked rather than respond, eyes still flitting over the expansive windows.

“I—um, yes. Of course,” Lena said, protest dying on her lips as J’onn met her eyes for the first time since walking into her office and she saw the thing he was so desperately trying to hide: fear.

“Do you know anywhere where there’s a heavy press presence? Somewhere where you’ll be sureto be photographed if you had lunch with your best friend?” J’onn asked, shining red once more. When he stood before her as Kara Danvers, Lena had the brief, hapless thought that she was stupid for ever being fooled by J’onn’s lackluster acting.

“Any restaurant,” Lena said with a wave of her hand, “as long as we walk and don’t take my car.”

“Good. Then let’s take a walk.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what is going on.”

For a moment, nothing but half a second at most, it looked like J’onn would refuse on principle to say anything else. But then his features—or Kara’s features, really—slackened, his tight shoulders loosened, and he shrugged, acting so muchlike Kara in that moment that Lena’s heart nearly stopped.

(Because for a moment, half a second really, it looked like the last time Kara was in this office, the last time she stood by Lena’s door, the last time she allowed Lena to push her away without much of a fight.)

“A group, remnants we think of CADMUS, same ones you helped with several weeks ago, threatened to release Kara’s identity to the world about a week ago unless she capitulated to some…demands.” J’onn cleared his throat, and Lena tried to blink away her discomfort with hearing Kara’s voice and seeing Kara’s mouth refer to herself in third person—attempting to remember who was underneath the cardigan and the glasses. “Kara, of course, refused. She and the DEO attempted to capture the group earlier this morning but….”

“But what?”

“It was a trap, Lena,” J’onn said softly. “Kara’s been exposed to some sort of Red Kryptonite analog—it doesn’t work quite the same as Maxwell Lord’s but, well. She’s not herself.”

“And what do you need me for?” Lena asked, mentally reminding herself to research Red Kryptonite and the events that occurred before she came to National City.

“Well, first, we need you to establish an alibi—to protect Kara’s identity. After all, how could she be Supergirl if she was photographed extensively with her best friend?”

“And second?” Lena prodded, ignoring the second mention of Kara being her best friend.

“Kara has agreed to allow us to protect her identity and treat her for whatever she was exposed to under the condition youare involved every step of the way.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Of course, she’s having a hard time with an integralpart of the plan, and doesn’t seem to want to trust us to get you to her. Which we will if she gave us half the chance.”J’onn hissed his last sentence, clearly not meant for Lena, but for an alien with superhearing, miles and miles away. Lena briefly imagined Alex’s frustration as her sister refused to listen to a word said, all because she didn’t trust the DEO.

She allowed herself a tiny smile at the thought.

“Well, there’s a restaurant about three blocks away, which I think will give the press plenty of time to grab their cameras. Ready for a walk?” Lena asked, grabbing her purse and coat and brushing past J’onn towards the door. But he didn’t move. “J’onn?”

“You’re going to agree just like that? But you won’t ask if she’s okay?” He sounded legitimately confused and more than a little protective, and Lena raised her eyebrows in response.

“I’ll always be there for Kara if she needs me, but this? Means nothing.”

(It was a lie, she knew it was a lie.

She felt it with every stabbing beat of her jagged heart, with every rugged, shuddering breath of her icy lungs. It was a lie, and it burned as it came out of her mouth, as she forced it past her lips. Because she wanted to be there for Kara, neededto be there for her, would always, always, always, be half in love with the person who always saw the good in her. It meant everything, her mangled, broken, not-quite-right heart be damned.

It was a lie, she knew it was a lie—and from the way J’onn looked at her, heknew it was a lie, too.)

iii.

Alex hovered nervously.

“Remember, it’s not her,” she said, swallowing hard, as if pushing down some memory. Or, well. It isher. But it’s the parts of her that are deep, deep,” she cleared her throat, “deep, inside.”

“It’ll be fine, Alex.”

“Just…don’t take what she says personally,” Alex warned, grabbing Lena’s arm and pulling her to a stop. They were standing right outside the room Kara had been “contained” in, the faint green glow of kryptonite (provided from, oddly enough, the Man of Steel) visible from the gap between the door and the floor. “We all have demons. We all have thoughts and feelings we’re not proud of.”

“I don’t think there’s anything she can say that would hurt more than what she’s already done,” Lena said, her eyes on the door and not on Alex as she shrugged off Alex’s hand.

“Oh Lena,” Alex muttered, and when Lena turned to look at her, she was shaking her head. “Sometimes I forget how much you two love each other.” She didn’t give Lena a chance to argue, to say no, that’s not what she meant at all, to ask what Alex had been smoking to get thatconclusion from what Lena just said. Before Lena could even make a face, Alex pushed the door open and led her inside.

The room was small, mostly lit by ghostly green and one glaringly bright light directly above the hospital bed situated in the middle of the room. Tucked away in the corner, almost haphazardly, almost like an afterthought, were computer screens, tablets, a centrifuge, dozens of empty flasks, a Bunsen burner, and various test tubes. Alex followed her gaze and shrugged apologetically.

“We’ll get you whatever you need. This has been, uh, well. We weren’t quite prepared.”

“I can make you a list,” Lena offered helpfully, wanting to assure Alex she wouldn’t have to stick around, not when it was so obvious she was so stricken by Kara’s current state, and Alex smiled in relief. (Lena had never really cared about making anyone other than Kara feel comfortable, feel as though she’d have their back, but now…Kara would’ve wanted this, and so Lena was helpless to do otherwise.)

“That would be great,” she said, nodding.

From the hospital bed, the bed that both Alex and Lena were avoiding looking at, came a loud, unamused snort.

“Supergirl’s fate rests in the hands of two people who aren’t even willing to lookin her direction. Yes, I feel so safe now,” Kara said, her voice icy and dripping with sarcasm. Lena finally gathered enough courage to look over, having to clench her hands into fists to keep them from shaking once her eyes fell on Kara.

Itwasn’tKara. Not really. Her blue eyes still shone brightly, a stark contrast to the red vein-like glow that spread out from her eyes, across her cheeks, down her neck, and all up her arms and legs. She was straining against the restraints that bound her to the bed, muscles tight and tense. The flimsy hospital gown she wore made her seem more harmless than she actually was—even with the kryptonite dampening her powers, Lena had no doubt that if Kara wantedto be out of her restraints, she would be.

“I’ll be going then,” Alex said softly, eyes on the ground, “let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“Yes, Alex. Go. You’ve done quite enough, haven’t you?”

Alex briefly met Lena’s eyes, then turned on her heel and left—not once looking in the direction of her sister.

(Lena had looked it up, the last time Kara was exposed to the Red Kryptonite. She read about Supergirl throwing Cat Grant off her balcony, how the city was terrified of her, how it took quite some time to earn back her forgiveness.

And from J’onn, during their lunch, Lena learned more: the clothes, the odd behavior with James, the cruelty of her words, how Kara had hurt Alex.

And Lena didn’t fault Alex one bit for wanting to keep her distance this time.)

“So,” Lena said tonelessly, picking up a tablet, and walking closer to the hospital bed, eyes on her screen. “Let’s start with the basics. How is this time different from last time?”

To Lena’s ultimate surprise, Kara responded. “I don’t feel the overwhelming urge to throw anyone off their balcony,” she said, and despite the cold tone of her voice, Lena would’ve swornshe was joking.

“Right. Any pain, nausea, anything?”

“Let’s talk about you, though,” Kara continued, completely ignoring Lena. “Why are you here?”

This made Lena look up, meeting Kara’s eyes, hating they looked so normal, so like her, when nothing about this was normal. “You asked me to be here.”

“And you came running?”

“Far be it from me to question why this city loves Supergirl so much, but it does. So I’ll do my part to help when I can.”

“Doesn’t it get tiring to lie to yourself all the time?”

“Did you only ask me here to talk?” Lena demanded, frustrated, feeling exposed and vulnerable.

Doesn’t it get tiring to lie to yourself all the time? Well, yes. Of course, it did.

“Why are you here, Lena Luthor?”

“Because Supergirl needed help.”

“You’re a liar,” Kara spat, straining against her binds, looking for a moment like she was ready to reach out and grab Lena and shake her. “I’m tired of all your lies.”

“The only one of us who’s ever lied is you!” Lena shouted, the tablet falling from her hands and to the floor, miraculously unscathed by the sudden crash. But neither Lena nor Kara paid it any heed—both were staring at each other as if hoping to get a sense of what was in the other’s mind.

(And Lena thought she knew Kara. Knew the meek but so utterly kindreporter, knew the steel in Kara’s eyes, the pride in the set of her shoulders, the god-like strength in the way she stood.

Once, Lena would’ve said she knewKara. Knew her even when the lies were bared, even when her heart was broken, even when every instinct told her to shield and distance herself and she could do nothing but remain in Kara’s orbit.

But the truth…the truth was more complicated. What Lena knew, without a doubt, was that she loved Kara Danvers. She loved the meek and utterly kind reporter, the woman with the pride in her shoulders and the steel in her eyes. She loved Kara’s commitment to others, her selflessness, her gentleness, her smile, that stupid ‘S’ on her chest.

The truth was that there was so much about Kara that Lena didn’tknow. She didn’t know the depths of her pain, didn’t understand the importance of that ‘S,’ had never seen her shoulders stoop and the steel in her eyes crumble. Lena had never really knownKara, had never been allowed to get too close, allowed glimpses but never truly let in. And the one time that Kara hadlet down all her guards and walls, the single time she’d been vulnerable—completely and totally—Lena had just…turned her away.)

“You’re a liar, Lena,” Kara told her icily, tugging on her bound wrists as if to accentuate her point. “Anything, right? You’d bring up anythingto avoid what the real problem is.”

“And what’s the real problem, then?”

“You’re a coward. You’re running scared because you don’t know how to deal with your own feelings.”

“Youlied—”

“—it wasn’t your secret to know!” Kara shouted. “Ihad to grow up lying about who I was. I never got the chance to choose who to tell, others made the choice for me. Have you ever stopped to wonder for a second whyit hurt you so much that it was Lex who told you and not me? Whyyou’ve been so angryabout—”

“—shut up, Kara,” Lena mumbled, but Kara was on a roll.

“Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t owe you that part of me, not when you’re still unwilling to admit even to yourselfhow you feel?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lena snapped, stepping forward, glaring at Kara, their eyes locked. (And Kara’s eyes were so blue, so lovely, so full of anger.)

“Don’t I?” Kara asked, the rhetorical question slipping past her lips like acid, and Lena felt its inexplicable burn. “I’ve had your back, stood up for you, been there for you every single day since I’ve met you. I risked my life, my reputation, my friendshipsfor you. But that’s not enough, is it? Because you and I both know the real reason you’re so angry—not because you’re hurt that I lied to you, not because of some stupid secret I didn’t even owe you, but that you’re terrifiedthat my not telling you means that I don’t love you back. And you’re too much of a coward to ask me the one thing that matters, the one thing you actuallywant to know. Because it’s easier isn’t it, to pretend you care about the Supergirl secret when deep down we both know you guessed at it a long time ago.”

Lena stared at Kara, her heart hammering away in her chest, as if desperate to escape its cage of ribs.

(Lena fell in love with Kara on a Tuesday. She fell willingly, happily, thoughtlessly. She fell, with no thoughts to the consequences, no speculation on the outcome, no fear at the drop.

Lena fell in love with Kara on a Tuesday, falling, falling, falling, panicked and terrified halfway in her jump because she suddenly realized she’d never considered making sure there was a parachute attached to her back, a soft landing when she inevitably crashed to the ground.

She fell, only then realizing that she didn’t know if Kara would be there to catch her, didn’t know if this fall would end well or end in a lot of pain.

She fell, and it was a sign that Kara didn’t tell her about being Supergirl; it was a sign that Kara didn’t trust her; it was a sign that Lex’s maddening laughter still rung in her ears as he gleefully twisted the knife in her back.

And at some point during the fall, it felt safer to remain in midair, in limbo, to never touch the ground at all, than it was to risk the crash and a heart shattered beyond repair.)

“You don’t need me here,” Lena guessed softly. “The DEO already has the antidote to the Red Kryptonite.”

Kara laughed without amusement, settling back into the bed for the first time, relaxing into the pillows. “Lord made plenty before he disappeared—seemed to feel guilty about what he did to me,” she said, still laughing. Lena scoffed, turning her back on Kara and stalked towards the door, pausing only when Kara spoke up once more. “You asked what was different between this time and last time? Last time I wantedcontrol—over what people did or said to and about me, control over what I did or wore or said. Worst thoughts, come to the surface,” she said, chuckling. “This time, I want to losecontrol, because my worst thought is how much pain I would’ve been spared if I just never met you.”

Lena blinked away tears and left the room without a word or once looking back.

iv.

Right after Crisis, Lena saw Kara once.

It was what led to their tense stand-off, their silent agreement for a truce. Lena went back to being a normal (or whatever was normal for her anyway) CEO, gave up the cliched evil Luthor thing she’d momentarily been crazed enough to chase, and Kara…Kara kept her distance, respecting Lena’s desire to be left alone.

Except for onetime.

She showed up on Lena’s balcony still dressed as Kara Danvers, entering Lena’s apartment without waiting for permission. And wordlessly, expressionlessly, she handed Lena a small metal box.

“Did you know there’s an Earth where Batman successfully kills my cousin?” she asked, meeting Lena’s eyes evenly, the blue in them so…cold, vacant, hard. “It’s funny, really,” she continued, though neither one of them seemed to find anything in that statement funny, “how different things could be if there were just one or two tiny changes in our lives. Entire universes where I never come to Earth, where you and I never even meet.”

(Lena didn’t like that thought when Kara said it then, and in the millions of times she went over that strange night in her head, she liked the thought of never meeting Kara even less.)

“What are you doing here, Kara?” But Kara wasn’t listening.

“There’s only one universe now, only one shot. And when I think about it, it occurs to me that the trajectory we’re on is one I’ve seen happen hundreds of times with Lex and Clark, and it breaks my heart.” She began to unbutton her shirt but rather than reveal the blue of her suit, there was nothing but skin. Once a good chunk of her sternum was exposed, she fell to her knees. “I know not telling you about Supergirl hurt you,” she said, swallowing hard, “and I don’t really know how to fix that. I don’t know how to explain that I didn’t tell you because I didn’t wantto, because I was scaredto, because I didn’t know howto. I don’t know how to explain that it was never about trust. But I can showyou I trust you. With everything.” She pointed at the box in Lena’s hand. “Open it.”

Lena didn’t even break eye contact.

“No.”

“Lena—”

“We’re not Lex and Clark. And I don’t want…whatever this is. I just want—” You, she didn’t say. She just wanted Kara. She was soin love with Kara. “I want some space.”

Kara’s blue eyes were windows to her soul. Steely, full of strength, warm, kind, gentle, crinkled with laughter. But for the life of her, Lena didn’t recognize what was swirling in their depths as Kara stared up at her.

“Okay,” Kara said softly, slowly getting to her feet. “Okay. I can do space.” She buttoned up her shirt and accepted the box wordlessly, eyes never leaving Lena’s. Then she blinked and turned away, taking graceful steps to the balcony. “Millions of possibilities for us, Lena,” she said softly, “and I would give anything for it not to be this one.”

Lena closed her eyes, and Kara was gone, the box now on Lena’s coffee table, where it remained untouched, even weeks and months later.

It took a few months, but the DEO finally managed to wrangle the last of the group they were sure was a remnant of CADMUS. Off and on, Lena’s help was requested, though Lena’s relationship with Alex strained further.

(“You knew I wasn’t needed and you pushed me in that room with Kara anyway.”

“She agreed to come in quietly and receive the antidote if she got to talk to you first. What was I supposed to do? Put others in danger and give her the antidote without her consent?”

“Right, because you waited for her consent the first time, did you?”

“Look, Lena, I’m sorry. Truly I am. I just—I don’t like seeing her that way and I wanted to get her back to herself as quickly as possible.”)

Things between Lena and Kara were…well, chilled. Lena made great efforts to not be in the same room as Kara for any amount of time, and Kara allowed it, her features impassive every single time they were forced to spend any amount of time together.

It was miserable. Awful, really. And Lena wondered, perhaps for the first time, if she had anyone to blame for it except herself.

You’re a coward, Kara had said. But that…wasn’t true.

She’d gone up against her mother, an advanced alien race, she’d fought against her brother and his henchmen, stood up to Lockwood, didn’t back down when Morgan Edge attempted to bully her, fought and clawed her way back from every setback, constantly and consistently throwing herself in the deep end to help her name, her reputation, her company.

And yet….

And yet, she was so afraid of telling Kara how she felt, hiding behind being friends and distancing herself when she felt she’d been too open.

Lena rubbed her eyes and walked over to where the box sat, still unopened from when Kara had left it. And suddenly, she knew what to do.

Within half an hour, she had the box tucked under one arm, the other balancing a box of doughnuts, standing in front of a familiar door with little idea what to do next. She must have been standing there for quite some time because suddenly the door swung open.

“I wanted to wait till you knocked,” Kara said apologetically, “but it’s been twenty minutes. I worried. Want to come in?”

Lena nodded, but didn’t move. “I wasn’t angry or hurt because you didn’t tell me,” she said, causing Kara’s eyes to widen. (Blue, so blue, so full of that thing Lena wasn’t sure she recognized.)

“Okay,” Kara said gently, motioning for Lena to enter the apartment. After a second, Lena did.

“There was truth to what you said. I amscared to ask you the one thing I actuallywant to know. But I,” Lena said, setting the doughnuts and the metal box on Kara’s kitchen island, “but I don’t need to know the answer to my question. What I’m scared of is admitting the truth aloud to you. That makes it real, and this isn’t something I’m very good at or experienced with.”

“Lena, it’s okay, you don’t have to—”

“—I’m falling in love with you,” Lena blurted, ignoring her fear, ignoring her worries, ignoring everything but the truth. “And I was scared that not being part of the Supergirl secret meant something. I was hurt and angry and I…I pushed you away because admitting I was scared of feeling something real was too hard, and it was easier to just be angry at you for my unrequited feelings.”

“Oh Lena,” Kara breathed out, shaking her head, “that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for months and months now. Your feelings aren’t unrequited.” Kara’s eyes brightened, and she bit her bottom lip as if in an attempt to hide her glee, her expression becoming more open, more honest, more herself. “For someone so smart, you really struggle to listen,” she teased, taking the bite out of her words by stepping forward slowly—clearly to give Lena plenty of chance to say no, turn away—before pulling her into a tight hug. “Of the millions of possibilities for us,” she whispered in Lena’s ear, her words mending a jagged, scarred heart, her gentle touch warming icy lungs, “this one is my favorite.”

And Lena’s fall finally came to a halt: safe in Kara’s arms.

#new #supercorp #fanfic #kara danvers #lena luthor

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tuiyla · 4 years

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She-Ra’s like, really good, people

It’s been over a week since She-Ra season 5 came out and I binged it and this is not going to be coherent but I just want to rant about it a bit before writing some more structured metas. I deffo wanna write about Catradora and how I think SPoP is the true spiritual successor to the Avatar.

But first, let me just scream about how good this show is. I already started rewatching it, pretty much straight after finishing it, and I don’t rewatch tv shows often. The exception is Avatar (seen it like 15 times) and sitcoms. But She-Ra is so layered that I felt like I needed to watch it again just to appreciate the dynamics even more.

I already enjoyed the first season but it kept getting better and better. I’m not in love with the art style and it’s definitely for a younger demographic overall than my other favourite animated shows, but like any good kids’ show it balances tone well. It doesn’t talk down to its target demographic but also includes more traditionally mature themes in a digestible and entertaining way. Not all the jokes landed for me but as the series went on I learned to appreciate the tone and the type of humour She-Ra goes for.

It’s funny to me because this is definitely the type of show I would have rejected as a kid, with all the princesses I would have deemed it “too girly” and therefore not for me because screw gender roles. There’s a degree of internalized sexism to that, for sure, a rejection of the feminine because it’s always been seen as less somehow. But there’s also a truth that, at least in my childhood of the late 90s and early 00s, children’s media targeted at girls often had a poor quality to it, at least when compared to “boys’ stuff”.

She-Ra is not only a clever, heartfelt, complex story, it also transcends that binary of having to be either for girls or boys. I know most of modern animation rejects that as well, but She-Ra embraces so many traditionally feminine qualities while also going beyond gender roles and even the gender binary. This show is so queer, man, and I love it. It’s especially impressive when you consider the source material that was literally just the girly version of He-Man. I have no beef with 80s She-Ra, haven’t seen much of it, but this is such an upgrade.

That being said, I would have loved to watch She-Ra as a kid. I’m so incredibly envious of kids, aged around 10, who get to watch this show as they’re growing up. But I am so, so, so happy for them and for the future of animation that shows like She-Ra can be made now, that they’re being made. I’m going to go into spoilers soon, but just before that: She-Ra’s a perfectly enjoyable show in many aspects. I think the worldbuilding’s pretty cool, the story feels coherent and planned out, it’s lighthearted and so genuine. That’s the word that I ultimately choose to describe the series: genuine.

I feel like so much of TV aims to be dark and gritty nowadays, animation included, and though that’s slowly turning to dark comedy or a balance between fun and serious, it’s still the norm. At some point in the last decade, creators became terrified of being judged as cheesy. Even something like the MCU bathes in bathos to avoid being cheesy. But She-Ra proves that creators shouldn’t be afraid of being genuine, of basing characters and storylines on the simple power of love. Like, it’s such a cliché trope but I think that’s mostly because it has become stale.

Noelle Stevenson has talked about the importance of love in her story and I’m so grateful for that. Through, She-Ra, she’s truly proven how powerful love can be in a story and how it doesn’t have to be cheesy. It’s just so unabashedly genuine. The power of love and friendship literally saves the day several times but it’s always so genuine and more importantly it always makes sense that it doesn’t get boring. If the foundation wasn’t there, then I’d say “well this is just super cheesy”. But the show makes a point of building relationships and making them the focal point of the story.

Alright, so, spoilers because I need to talk about character arcs and THAT KISS and just everything. I really need to write more in depth about Adora and Catra and their relationship but for now I feel like it’s so important to appreciate how they’re developed. Everything from their shared childhood to their trauma with Shadow Weaver and the finding their way back to each other, it’s just *chef’s kiss*. It’s so well-written and believable. Ngl, I do have some minor issues with Catra’s redemption arc. Let’s just say that on a scale from Kylo Ren to Zuko, she’s definitely closer to Zuko. I also appreciate Shadow Weaver’s death scene and how it allows them to move on. I didn’t see that one as Death as Redemption and it shouldn’t be. Again and again the show made it clear that she was abuse towards both girls and nothing will negate that.

From what I can tell, the fandom really latched onto Catra, even when it wasn’t clear whether she’d get a redemption arc. I think that’s important, because unlike some characters in animation, Catra’s actions were almost always framed appropriately. There was always an understanding as to where she’s coming from, how she’s acting from a place of hurt, and yet her actions weren’t justified. They weren’t suddenly all okay just because she’s hurt, too. I especially loved in the season 3 finale when Adora was allowed to finally say no, to say that Catra’s actions were not her fault. That season as a whole was beautiful, like, episode three when Adora’s struggling so much and Catra has the opportunity for a better life but she still fails to choose her own happiness because she’s too bitter over SW and Adora? It’s poetic cinema. I love that angst, so well done.

It would be so easy to misfire in Catra’s storyline and either a) write off all the awful things she does because she’s just “misunderstood” or b) irredeemably stuck in her abusive environment with no hope of escape. They balanced quite well there and managed to handle such a complex character with delicacy. I’m quite happy with how Catra was portrayed because on the one hand, she’s painfully relatable to me and I assume to many others. The audience can see their own mistakes reflected in her character because we’ve all been too stubborn, done things out of spite, refused to acknowledge that we were wrong because we were hurting so much. At the same time, I always felt like the show gave me enough space to judge Catra’s actions and acknowledge that she was in the wrong. I honestly think I would have been a better adjusted teenager is if saw this show just before my angsty years, lol.

I’m going to write more about Adora at some other point but I love how vulnerable she’s allowed to be. Protagonists never used to be my favourite characters because they all seemed the same, with two major categories: the stereotypical male hero who can do no wrong or the angsty boi who can be shitty and the text still frames him as awesome. It’s only recently with series like The Legend of Korra and She-Ra that I go “damn, protagonists can be like that, huh.” Adora is a dumb jock who tries so hard and she deserves all the hugs in the world.

Also, Catradora? Breathtaking, amazing, groundbreaking. No doubt She-Ra needed shows like Adventure Time, LoK, Steven Universe and the likes to pave the way but still, it went there. I saw people be anxious about whether they were gonna be queerbaited, but I always, idk, knew? Trusted? That She-Ra would follow through. I didn’t wait six years for Bubbline to happen for Catradora to not get their big damn kiss. The series has been so effortlessly queer from the get-go that it just made sense that they were always heading there. I did see a gif of the kiss before watching s5 and ngl, that spoiler kind of bummed me out in a way that I wanted to be surprised. But even before I saw that I wasn’t worried. And the context of their journey in season 5? That cannot be spoiled by a simple gif. You have to experience that to fully appreciate it and that is the marker of good storytelling.

I understand that, though this should be the norm by now, Noelle Stevenson still had to be smart about how she approached the execs and she wasn’t sure this could happen. I cannot tell you how happy I am about what she said regarding how Catradora was so integral to the story that the execs couldn’t not allow it. That’s so brilliant, and it feels so natural in the story. Queer love saves the day and it’s not ambiguous, it cannot be censored because you lose a part of the story without it. You did it, Noelle, you funky little lesbian, what an icon. I can’t wait to see more stuff from her.

In other news, I appreciated other characters as well, like how all the princesses got to be different and awesome in their own unique way. Season 5 was great for so many characters, Mermista got so much to work with and Spinnerella and Netossa got so much more characterization than in previous seasons. Glimmer continued to be the third most important character in the story and I’m happy about all the relationships that also got to be canon. Good characters and dynamics all around, no wonder since the show is built on that.

Such a satisfying conclusion and one that makes you feel like this is just part one of a much bigger story. Such genuine, heartfelt moments, well-developed characters, complex themes explored in a respectful and digestible way, and such an unapologetically fun show. Melissa Fumero as a side character? Yes please. Catra’s new haircut? Heck yeah! She-Ra’s new design? Oh my.

I’m not even like, super into She-Ra, and I usually don’t write so much about things I only watch casually. But this show is so good and important that I had to rant. And I will write more about it eventually, but for now I needed to get all of this out. I’d give it a better structure but if I really get into I might never end up posting it so for now here, have this ramble of love. She-Ra, of all shows, deserves that.

#she-ra #spop #she-ra and the princesses of power #catradora #spop spoilers #my thoughts #that's pretty much it for now

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fimflamfilosophy · 4 years

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Characters Akimbo, and How to Create Them

A long time ago, I wrote an article called “OCs Akimbo and How to Make Them”. This was in the golden age of the internet when people still owned their own websites and we walked uphill, through the snow, both ways because it was good for our glutes. We didn’t need to be fed a constant stream of memes produced by bots in Malaysia because we were not yet living in a post-ironic, dystopian future where many are forced to work from home or not at all. The joy came to us naturally in those times, and a “meme” was a thing that saved bandwidth, so you couldn’t spam them – bad memes were a waste of money and a waste of good internets.

But that article has been lost, swallowed up like so many other web-ventures of old by the insatiable beast known on Walstreet as FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google; Netflix is in there because the acronym is rude otherwise). Also, people don’t write articles anymore. They’re too efficient and only run ads at the top and bottom of the page without interrupting what you’re trying to read, unless the author is one of the sub-human monsters that puts ads in the middle of his articles and makes you scroll past them just to get the rest of his insipid opinion. Rest assured, my insipid opinions come without ads in the middle. And likely without ads at the top or bottom, either, because maybe only a hundred people will read this and that’s worth about $0.01 today.

So characters! You want to make a character! Put your hands down, we’re not taking questions until later, so for now we assume you’re reading this because you want to make a character for something. I don’t really care what. Whether it’s for a roleplaying game, which has become more in vogue recently thanks to the show “Stranger Things”, I hear, or because you want to present yourself as a foxy cat-girl getting busy with a catty fox-man in your dirty, filthy Discord group.

If you’re designing a character for amorous roleplay, I assume the reality is that you are fundamentally playing yourself, with all the same excruciating hang ups and personal insecurities, except as an animal. But suppose you didn’t want to play as yourself? How to go about that. Well, there are several ways of thinking about it, but since I’m the author, I will use my tyranny of the mic to write as though my perspective is the only valid one.

You Choose Your Shirt, You Choose Your Life

We’ll start with the basic way to make any character and have it work. Figure out how they feel, and then play everything around coping with those feelings. No, seriously, it’s the simple banality of human existence and anything else you can think of is just going to be taking a back seat to whatever your personal psychosis is. That’s all you are – a wet sack of flesh with crippling mental problems and a strategy to overcome them.

To put this in terms you shouldn’t understand, think of how you choose to put on a shirt in the morning. Maybe you choose the shirt because it says something on it, or because you like a specific color, but how do you know you like that color? How do you know you like the band, or the terrible joke you should be embarrassed to wear in public? When asked these questions, many people will try to draw a string of logic. They’ll say that red is a dominant color, or they want to support their favorite musician, or they’re being post ironic and the point of their joke shirt is that it’s not supposed to make anyone happy.

But these are all falsehoods. Every time you put on a shirt, you don’t actually examine the whole wardrobe on an intellectual level and compare their relative advantages and disadvantages on factors as minute as color. People who do such a thing are considered to be obsessive compulsive, which is considered a disorder because they are barely able to make choices. The more time you spend trying to logically examine such a thing, the less able you are to do anything. The truth is, you pick your shirt on a whim because you feel like it, and you like the color red because it reminds you of succulent berries, or your monkey ancestor’s big red ass, or something. The insistence that red is a “power color” is just something people make up.

Many snap decisions come down to your lizard hind-brain and your feelings. People argue that their intellect is so huge, this is no longer true for them, but emotions actually control most of our decisions because emotions work quickly and easily. If you see something and it makes you scared, or angry, you react accordingly and right away. You don’t have ten minutes to evaluate the sight of a snake and determine based on its colors and head shape whether or not it’s venomous. If your kid climbs a tree, you don’t get to do a lot of math about their weight and the height they’re climbing at before you get nervous. Your instincts and your emotions are the same thing, and it’s how you make the majority of your choices.

There are some exceptions, when you have time, where you can try to evaluate facts and figures and try to let that shape how you feel about something, but in this day and age I’m sure everyone has had enough heated political arguments to realize that for many people, feelings can be difficult to change. In fact, much logic is only presented to specifically alter your feelings, and not necessarily to provide you with more comprehensible information. Ultimately, even things you spend a lot of time thinking about eventually get processed on an emotional level.

The Past and the Future are the Same Thing

So what does all this mean for making a character? Well, let’s divert into a little anecdote. I enjoy role-playing games as a hobby, and learned to play in a group that enjoyed a lot of theater and acting. We often shunned systems that were heavy on rules and templates, and focused mainly on having dynamic character personalities with clear motives, then playing those games around those characters. This made running games fairly easy for the guy in charge, because all he had to do was invent a colorful cast of faces for the group to interact with, and then see who they hated the most, then go from there.

But most groups are not especially fond of acting. Dungeons and Dragons is handily the most popular roleplaying system out there, and it’s no coincidence that it’s also one of the most restrictive in terms of describing your job within the group and telling you what you’ll learn as the game progresses. In D&D, the fighter fights, the wizard wizzes, the rogue steals everyone’s money and has to do everything in secret or otherwise the whole rest of the table declares a spot check every time he does literally anything.

And it was while running a game with a D&D sort of group that I first encountered a player who had written four pages of backstory for their character. Just to reiterate, I learned to play with a group that focused entirely on character motives and acting, and I had never been given a four page backstory before. Once we had enough experience, my old group could typically sum up a character backstory verbally, in a few sentences. It would be easy to remember and you wouldn’t write it down because all the important details were short.

There’s something to delve into regarding brevity, but to focus on this four page character – none of the backstory made sense or really conveyed how the character felt about anything. This character, as far as I can recall, obtained magic powers because he walked down an alleyway, was accosted by cultists, the cultists cast a spell, the cultists exploded, and then the character could cast magic. I think he may have also been some kind of zombie, but I don’t remember because it wasn’t an element that was integral, except, I believe, the player used it as justification to hide their magic powers. They were embarrassed about being undead, or something, and even though the rest of the group was doing magic, the character thought their magic would be linked to their lack of pulse. It wasn’t even useful magic – it was the ability to throw fireballs, so hiding it was the best possible way to make the character non-functional.

The rest of the writing was irrelevant. There was information about family history, past work, blood type – whatever – I barely remember it because it was frosting with no cake. The player never wrote a character. They wrote an expository list of events that were all linked to one person without any sort of personality. That is, the player never really understood how this character felt, or how that shaped their life, and it’s clear they hoped that by writing enough things, eventually a character might take shape. As though you might learn a lot about a man by listing what kinds of weeds were growing in his back yard, or by listing the cities he’s lived in, or by listing a chronological sequence of events the person was present during.

This player, and frankly nobody, should ever require a four page back-story for a character. When it comes to writing a character, the core element of who they are, the past, present, and future are all the same. If this person has anger problems, they probably have a pattern of lashing out, and solving their life’s problems by being too frustrating to deal with. If they’re timid, they probably have a history of conflict avoidance. If they’re smooth talkers, they think they can talk their way through everything. Whatever emotional way people engage with the world around them, they’re likely to behave like that through their past, present, and future. You can know who someone is in the present and know who they’ll be in the future without examining an in-depth historical report of their past. Indeed, how else could we interact with other humans if this weren’t the truth?

People get confused easily, and will quickly insist that the backstory makes the character because they see on TV, constantly, stories about the past. A show will say, “this man is like this because of something that happened to him years ago”. But what you have to realize is that when TV does it, and when it does it well, it’s not the past that defines the character. The past events being described are conflict. Say it with me: CONFLICT. Not character.

Conflicting Over Conflict

Conflict is what a character reacts to, and it drives the story forward. So let’s consider, if you were to show a character’s past, how is that story structured. Well first you begin with a character, right? Because without the character, how do you know how this person will react to conflicts? You don’t. So the character is designed before the backstory. So what is this story of the past? It’s a story about some conflict and how the character interacted with it.

If your character in the present is a knife-wielding maniac, then one plausible story about their past would be when they were confronted by a problem that was solved by stabbing the problem. What this shows you is that the character moved towards this behavior of violence, and it worked for them so they kept doing it. Over time, they came to believe that most problems could be resolved by stabbing things, and that’s just how they live now, but it still takes a specific kind of person to try stabbing something the first time.

If you imagine a violent person, you may also imagine they tried conflict avoidance and it didn’t work. Perhaps they tried being confident, and they were quickly ground down. Finally they resorted to violence and achieved success, but that may have been after a long progression of abuse, which is why they also don’t form personal attachments or trust anyone. These looks at the past can add a lot of flesh and explanation to why your character feels certain ways about certain things – why they feel their life’s coping strategies are the best ones. That’s why when you see them, a good story of the past gives the viewer the feeling that they’ve developed a better sense of who the character is.

Whether the past defines the character or the character defines their past is a chicken and the egg question, and something you as a writer would have to decide. There’s no one answer and there are good ways to go about both approaches, so long as you know who your character is before you start doing any writing at all. Because whatever you write, the event you describe will merely be a conflict, a moment, and how the character reacts to that conflict tells a viewer who that character is.

In and Out of Character

Speaking of role-playing games: you’ll find the overwhelming majority of players are on about the same level as those guys pretending to be cat-girls in their filthy, unspeakable Discord group. That is, most people just play themselves, but with a gimmick. They play themselves, but with a stutter, or they’re french, or a they’re a cat-girl, or a they’re a samurai, or they’re a robot; they can be anything, but not anyone.

This gets a bit more into acting, which actually does play in to every work of fiction. To act properly, you need to be able to put yourself comfortably in the mind-space of your character and behave as though you only know what your character knows. The generations-old story of the rogue that steals from the party is a great example of the challenge at work here.

Imagine you’re facing a lot of life-and-death situations back to back with somebody, but this person is also slippery and difficult to trust. They never let you down openly, but they’re constantly wrangling you into bad contracts that benefit them, and you think they might be embezzling the group’s funds. In terms of writing a story, this is a good opportunity for conflict. A good role-playing group can handle this on the fly, while a typical role-playing group absolutely can’t.

A typical role-playing group always has the same response. Whenever the rogue tries to skim a little money off the top, the whole table rolls “spot checks” to catch the thief in the action, and then prevent him from stealing there in the moment. This is what the people playing the game regard as an enforcement action to prevent stealing – as long as the whole table rolls, someone is usually going to roll high enough to catch the rogue before he gets away with it. But how does every character in the game know to be hyper vigilant all of the sudden? Well, they don’t, and just rolling dice at people isn’t how we solve conflicts like this in the real world.

A good group will actually start to develop suspicions they’re being stolen from only after it happens, as they do their accounting and realize they’re short some cash. They may suspect the rogue, but they rely on him to find and disarm traps, and he’s somewhat irreplaceable. So the conflict now becomes trying to solve that problem without simply executing the rogue on a mere suspicion. The other players have to go out of their way to try set some bait or catch the rogue in the act, and if they prove what he’s done, then there can be a punishment. If the rogue keeps getting away with it, perhaps the party starts establishing rules to try to cull the potential for stealing, and now the rogue has to work around these new restrictions.

The second group is more nuanced and more believable. They’re facing a conflict and trying to figure out a way around it, instead of just using game mechanics to stop it entirely. And while this may seem like it begins and ends with roleplaying groups, the logic here works for most every other medium. You can never just have characters behaving as though they know things they aren’t supposed to know, and the way your characters react should follow the fundamentals of how they feel. Characters react to what they know, not what the audience knows.

Another example that would follow closer to other fiction is the following: quite recently I played a super hero game as a “reformed villain”, which basically meant I was playing a villain. The main hero died, leaving a vacuum in leadership, and at the same time a new, young hero joined the group. My villain character quickly swept in and began mentoring this fresh, young recruit, introducing him to as many morally gray aspects of the job as possible. Using deception to get closer to villains, fighting people who were too insane to know better, sometimes even doing lasting harm to ordinary people in the heat of the moment.

As the game went on, the group demonstrated that being a super hero was a very fine line that was difficult to apply idealism to, but my villain never quite killed anybody. He maimed people. He once dressed as a pizza delivery guy and threw a pizza so hard it knocked somebody unconscious. He sold hotdogs on the street without a permit. All while mentoring this kid and showing him the advantages of tap-dancing on that fine line.

Until the villain did kill somebody. A super scientists who was building deadly “Iron Man” style suits for a gang of terrorists used an ejection seat to try to escape the scene, and the villain threw his shoe. The shoe was thrown so hard, it caused the scientist’s head to burst like it’d been hit by a cannon ball. It all happened in the blink of an eye, against the wind, as the ejection seat rocketed off at dizzying speeds, and the villain claimed the murder was not intentional, even though it was clear at the table that I, the player, the author, had killed the scientist on purpose. It’s something I’d done as a snap decision in reality, because I thought the scientists was dangerous and it seemed in character to make that choice.

What ensued was much less in character. The young ward my villain had been mentoring turned on him instantly and carried on, from that point forward, as though the villain had intentionally killed an innocent man. He used the justification that my villain was very accurate and “never missed”, even though my villain missed his aim plenty of times throughout the adventure. He did not respond to any argument about the potential threat of the scientist, or about the very real possibility of an accident in the heat of the moment.

The player knew it was on purpose. The player felt his naive young character was a fundamentally good person. Ergo, he and the villain were now at mortal odds and could never reconcile. It’s a delicate situation and something that some actual writers could fall into, where the audience is shown the intent behind an ambiguous situation, and somehow the characters come to the same conclusion the audience does even though the characters don’t have the same information.

In television, this is sometimes due to run time limitations. Perhaps the character was supposed to gather more evidence before coming to the conclusion the audience was given, but the evidence gathering was cut to save time. But in a book, or a roleplaying game, there’s really no excuse. Everything should be handled based on what the character knows, and not on what the audience – or in this case the player – knows. At least if you’re a purist. I will be honest and admit there have been some popular works of fiction where characters side with the audience in spite of, in narrative, not even having the same moral system as the audience, let alone their knowledge of the plot.

What you actually should have between the villain and the ward, is a major point of conflict. Not in that the ward knows the villain killed someone on purpose and has an issue with it, but that he doesn’t know if the villain intentionally killed someone. That, in and of itself, is a very real moment of awakening to anyone with idealistic opinions on a job that entails violence and apprehension. It requires soul-searching, and even coming to the conclusion that the villain did kill someone and that it was wrong revolves around a complex set of emotional and moral beliefs.

Such a moment is pivotal to a character. It puts them at their lowest point, where they question all they know and all they ever wanted. Where they doubt everything. And how they come out of that situation? That’s the character’s arc. Denying them of that arc, and simply using the audience’s knowledge to make a fast choice obliterates the character’s development and robs them of an opportunity to tell a story within themselves and to their audience. Using the audience’s knowledge is quick, and keeps you on the same page as the viewers, but it is dirty and tells a less interesting tale.

And Your Point Is…?

So like I mentioned at the start, none of this is actually universal. Some stories are more event-driven, and expository writing can be fascinating as well. You really could write a tale about a sequence of events so long as the events were interesting and kept the audience reading, so a strong character isn’t even always necessary. But for what it’s worth, I think knowing how to make a character in such simple terms makes the whole process of writing much easier. If you know your character, you know how they’ll respond to conflicts, so every story is as easy as thinking up a conflict.

But hey, it’s also true that in some settings, trying to follow the rules of a good character or a good story may hurt you. A lot of role-playing groups will shun that type of thing because they’d rather roll dice at the rogue, and they think the person playing the rogue is in the wrong for trying to skim money from the party, because these people aren’t playing characters, they’re playing a game. They don’t care about an opportunity to have a character conflict with the rogue, they want their money, damnit. The fact they have nothing to spend it on in 5th edition D&D is another matter entirely.

#essay

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brekkerisbae · 4 years

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The Grisha Trilogy

“WHAT IS INFINITE?

THE UNIVERSE AND THE GREED OF MEN”

Leigh Bardugo’s debut trilogy might not be as well written as the Six of Crows duology, but it packs almost all the elements that make a YA fantasy novel click among the readers. We get an elaborate background of Ravka and it’s neighbouring lands- Fjerda in the north, Shu in the South and Kerch in South East- find out more about the lives of Grisha and the monarchy in Os Alta. The story follows the lives of two orphans- Alina and Mal, childhood best friends in love with each other, who serve their country as a cartographer and tracker/soldier respectively. While crossing the dangerous shadow fold, Alina accidentally uses her hidden Grisha power as a Sun Summoner, in order to save Mal from the clutches of death by a volcra, and becomes an important key in the Darkling’s plans to unlock Ravka from the fold’s devastation.

The first book in the trilogy, Shadow and Bone, is a little weak in plot development, since it mostly focusses on introducing the characters and building the atmosphere around the setting. The ending is action-packed and leaves the readers on a riveting cliffhanger. The Darkling is an interesting character, initially starting off as a patriotic general, then slowly revealing his true evil colors. Alina was an insufferable annoying spineless whiny bitch throughout the book, who got thrust into the world of court politics, at the same time enjoying the luxuries and makeovers in a royal palace, yet complaining at the drop of a hat- I was this close to hurling myself off a cliff while reading her inner monologues. Mal was quite alright, his hurt was justified- although his feelings towards Alina felt a little abruptly sprung onto the plot.

The second book, Siege and Storm, was the most enjoyable read according to me. It was fast-paced, there was a lot of action right from the beginning, and we got introduced to the young prince Nikolai who kinda lifted the burden of the entire book on his shoulders- he was the comic relief side character who won everyone’s hearts with his quick wit, easy charm, gallons of sass and brazen flirting. You can’t help but fall for his frivolous yet dependable personality. Another interesting development was the discovery of Alina’s antihero personality- tapping into her darkest desires and embracing the selfish and primal instincts that were an integral part of her. Her character growth is a welcome relief, although she keeps pining after Mal to an extent that seems disturbingly gross. The subplots of finding the amplifiers and sudden attacks on the crew were well executed, despite the odd pacing. Any romance between Alina and the Darkling made me throw up in my mouth, because, well that shit’s nasty. Her chemistry with Mal is also pretty off. They both were coming to terms with the fact that they couldn’t be together because of fate, but still, it made for a painful read for the reader. Nikolai and she would never be endgame which I could just feel in my bones. On the other hand, David and Genya are the cutest ship, so are Tamar and Nadia. Genya showed so much growth and her character arc was very well done. She is one of my favorite characters in the series. The Darkling is a compelling villain- exploring an interesting juxtaposition between ambition and greed. He is morally ambiguous, which just adds to his magnetic allure. The Apparat is literally the creepiest, worst character in the book i hate his guts.

Ruin and Rising felt a little underwhelming as a conclusion, since the ending was extremely rushed and halfway through the book, there were so many threads spread loose that I knew it deep down that somewhere we would be snubbed off a compelling climax. True to my expectations- the end fight was a letdown considering the previous build-up, but other than that, I did enjoy the series! It was entertaining, and I got attached to the characters. I was looking forward to reading about Zoya and Nikolai in the latest novel King of Scars, and it was a delight!

#grisha trilogy #leigh bardugo #nikolai lantsov #the darkling #alina starkov #mal oretsev #ravka #os alta #sun summoner #ya fantasy #bookblogger #bookblr #book review #booksofinstagram #books

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wehavethoughts · 4 years

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Six of Crows Review!

Six of Crows

By: Leigh Bardugo

YA Fantasy Novel

Henry Hold & Company, 2015

Rating: 4.5/5 Waves

Summary: Six rag-tag teens are offered the job of a lifetime: more money than they know what to do with and all they have to do is spring a scientist from the most heavily fortified prison in the world. A daring adventure filled with magic, love and betrayal.

The review CONTAINS (mild) spoilers for the novel Six of Crows.

Content Warning for Six of Crows: Blood, Violence, Death, Forced Prostitution (mentioned), Fantasy Racism, Sexism, Slavery/Indentured Servitude

“No Mourners. No Funerals.” – All of these wonderful characters right before they do something insane.

I can’t tell you how refreshing it was for me to pick this book up and read in three days. It’s been years since I’ve found a book that I simply could not put down. From the writing style to the pacing to the clever characters, this book had everything I didn’t know I needed. Before I dive into why this book knocked my socks off, I want to give a shout out to the several friends who recommended this book to me over the years (you know who you are). You were right! I loved it <3

Aside from how highly recommended this book was, I knew pretty early on that this book was a great fit for me. The first clue was that there are not one, but two maps in the front. I might be the only one, but a good map to start off my fantasy book always puts me in a very good mood. In my version of the book, the maps are illustrated by Keith Thompson and they are beautiful. The detail and imagination that went into these maps, particularly the Ice Court schematic really allowed me to immerse myself in the story, especially since one of the characters actually sketches the Ice Court in the novel. It is so easy to imagine Wylan hunched over a piece of parchment drawing this spectacular map.

My second clue that I would love this book was that it is a heist novel. In fact, knowing that this book was about a fantasy heist was at least half the reason I decided to read it, and Bardugo did not disappoint. What I find to be most compelling about this heist story is how she lays out the mission as nearly impossible, but never gives the reader a reason to doubt the characters’ resolve. Sure this heist seems insane and doomed to fail, but our faith in the characters keeps the reader invested. Bardugo also did a great job with her foreshadowing. The plot twists and the way the characters solved their problems, while surprising, always made sense in hindsight. There were never any instances where I felt like Bardugo used her magic system to ‘cheat’ the character’s out of a bad situation or where the characters were just so clever there was no way I could have ever guessed what they were going to do. The book kept me on my toes, but it never made me feel stupid.

As I mentioned in my About Page, I love me a good magic system, and Bardugo delivers fun and vibrant magic with clear rules and expectations that just beg to be broken. She also does a great job integrating the magic into a world that feels complex and expansive. This world has both a history and a future in a way that makes me feel like the author put a lot of good work in and loves this world as much as I do. My favorite detail is how Bardugo used language and language barriers in the story. The main cast are from different countries within this world and logically speak different languages, though fortunately most are multilingual. I just love the little details like how Wylan speaks schoolroom Fjerdan because he learned it from his tutors and how Matthias only just learned Kerch during his time in prison. It gives the world a fun realistic dimension.

Hands down the best thing about this story is the characters. Usually at this point in the review I have to sigh and tell you that it was a fun book but the diversity was lacking. Fortunately for us Bardugo gives us a beautifully diverse cast of well rounded and compelling characters. Of the six main cast, only one is an able-bodied straight white man (I am making some assumptions about Matthias’ sexuality so you will have to forgive me) and in an age where I am still reeling from the Avenger’s lineup this crew was a breath of fresh air. Every single character comes out of the gate interesting, three-dimensional and just a delight to read. This book is constructed so that every chapter we switch point of view and I found myself excited to see how each character thought and reacted to the wild situations they ended up in. Also, the way Bardugo gets the reader to care deeply for her characters does a fantastic job in creating high stakes with real tension. I found myself holding my breath and flipping pages with much more force than necessary during some high stress scenes. Even the characters that were clearly not good people had me checking my moral compass from time to time and cheering for them anyway.

I think it’s also important to include how much I liked the writing style of this novel. Everything I listed above wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable if the flow and pacing of the writing were not enjoyable to me. This novel is written in a fairly typical YA style of fantasy, fast pace and dialogue heavy, which I loved. There was enough description that I never felt lost, but I also never got bogged down in details I didn’t care about. Bardugo also made a fun choice to break the book up into six parts and at the end of each part there are two full black pages with the part title. The first couple times I mostly ignored it, but when a character is in physical danger and you flip the page and it’s just black! That is a great use of your physical medium! I got chills.

I have one nit-pick that didn’t deeply affect this book’s rating, but could be a deal-breaker for other readers. First of all, this novel is the first in a duology and it does not stand on its own as a story. While the main conflict does get resolved, another plot starts in the last couple chapters and the story does not end at the end of the book. It is clear that a single story has been broken into two books and it came as a shock to me. Fortunately, unlike the poor suckers who read this when it came out in 2015 and had to wait a whole year for the sequel, I only have to wait about a week for my library to have it available. Still for people who want a stand alone book or enjoy when all of the books in a series have a neat and tidy ending, this is not the book for you.

The two things keeping this book from a perfect score were the fantasy racism and how the women were framed in this world. I am using the term ‘fantasy racism’ because there is systemic oppression in this fantasy world and that systemic oppression is a clear metaphor for real-life racism, but in the story the minority group is the one with magical powers and not an ethnic minority. Generally, I think this author did a good job at showing the damage institutionalized racism can do to specific countries and the world as a whole. What I did not enjoy was the sub-plot of one of the main cast (Matthias), who was a member of the highly bigoted ruling class of the most racist nation in this fantasy world, overcoming his racism not through critical thinking or learning to understand the value of lives that are different from his own, but rather because he fell in love. I am open to the idea of racists learning to respect the cultures they were prejudiced against and when done right can be a very powerful thing, but when romance is the key motivator it feels very hollow. Also I have trouble conceptualizing a woman of the minority group falling in love with someone who is literally a part of the military death squad in charge of hunting down her people (Nina I know he’s hot, but what the hell?). Either way, the idea of reforming a racist with the power of love is not a trope I enjoy in my media.

The second thing keeping this book from a perfect score is the treatment of the women characters. One thing I noticed early on is that nearly all of the women characters had been forced (either financially or physically) into prostitution or slavery. It makes the reader think that in this fantasy world the only places to find women are the brothels or in chains. This world is vibrant and full of so many interesting things and people, yet for women the world seems so very limited. I found myself disappointed that even in a novel written by a woman, a well loved character is described during the climax as ‘a half-naked girl in shreds of teal chiffon’. To be fair, I have read fantasy books that have done their women characters much, much dirtier, but it’s unnecessary and exhausting. I notice it even in small doses and I’m sick of it. Fortunately, neither of these issues I had with the novel got a ton of page-time and there was always something else going on that I could focus on, like the strong female friendships and the brilliant disabled protagonist.

Tldr; Overall, best book I’ve read in a long time. I couldn’t give it a 5/5 because of some issues in how the fantasy racism and women were handled, but I would still highly recommend this novel to anyone who likes fantasy stories, diverse characters and/or a really good heist.

~TideMod

#TideMod #book review #fantasy novel review #six of crows #soc #soc spoilers #spoilers #fantasy #heist #leigh bardugo

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chimie-chat · 5 years

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The Big Book: A Roy Harper recovery fic

It was funny how a situation that should have been perfectly normal could suddenly be so stressful. A clink as glasses tipped against one another. The oh-so-familiar EDM bass beat that filled the air until it practically vibrated against his skin. The clammy feeling in the palms of his hands…

Roy took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to occupy his thoughts with literally anything other than the 1.75 milliliter bottle just on the other side of the table. His eyes were trained on the deep honey color of the liquid inside while his fingers traced the circle of condensation his own cup left behind on the vinyl tablecloth.

Stop staring. Come on Harper. You can do this. He tore his eyes away, screwing them shut as he brought his cup up to his lips and took a sip of shirley temple. The artificial flavor of grenadine tasted way too sweet, but the bubble of the soda against his gums made him relax ever so slightly. That was the feeling he loved. Not exactly, but it was pretty damn close. Not a day went by that he didn’t imagine the ghost of beer fizz on his lips, but if he could mimic it, even slightly, then it made this shitty situation just that much easier.

Living Sober, a book written by and for alcoholics, suggested keeping a sweet drink in your hand any time you would be near alcohol. Needless to say, ever since he managed to start this bout of sobriety, Roy had kept nothing but sugary drinks in hand at all times. His soda intake had gone through the roof. But hey. At least he wasn’t drinking.

He wasn’t drinking.

That would be great… If he wasn’t surrounded by people who were. It was some kind of get-together; a bad attempt at rekindling friendships between his former Titans team, his current Outlaws, and various other vigilantes in their age range. That was a lie. IT was just gonna be the Titans. At least, that’s what it started as. That’s what the plan was. To be perfectly honest, Roy hadn’t wanted to go at all. Did he like his friends? Sure. That was the word for it. They were like a second, third, and fourth family to him after all. But he knew them all too well. He knew that spending time with them would mean white knuckling it as they drank. Them pretending they were being conscious of his predicament while simultaneously clinking their shot glasses together. God he didn’t want to be here.

“So then Wally turned to the guy and saidー”

“No! You’re gonna do it wrong!” The speedster cut Dick off with a hand over the guy’s mouth. Wally. The only other member of this ragtag group that wasn’t some form of intoxicated right now. It wasn’t by choice though. No matter how much the man drank, his metahuman genealogy made it impossible for him to get drunk. What a lucky prick. “So I turned to the guy and saidー”

Roy took another sip of his shirley temple.

“Hold on. I’m gonna go get another one.” Donna pushed up from her seat, and Roy couldn’t help but look at her face. The woman’s face always got a pink glow after she’d had a few. It was a sure tell that she was getting close to her limit, but everyone knew she wasn’t going to stop any time soon. She walked with her highball glass to the bar counter on the other side of the sleazy joint they were in and waved down the bartender.

“Oh yeah. Another!” Dick reached for the bottle of gold Jose Cuervo and poured himself another shot. That was just like Dick. Always sloppy.

Still. Roy watched the tequila pour and couldn’t help but lick his lips. God he loved tequila. He remembered when he first started drinking, and would still pour salt on the back of his hand and bite into a lime wedge with each shot. When had he stopped relying on tricks to keep it down? When had it started going down like water? By the time he was about… Eighteen maybe? No. Probably seventeen. The ginger man felt a shiver roll down his spine. Right. That’s why we quit. Because it was too easy not to.

He reached for his pocket, opening up his wallet and peaking at the orange colored coin inside. Two months. Two whole months. He pulled it out slightly and reach the inscription on the back.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The prayer played on repeat in his head like a broken record. He could do this. Just an outing with friends. He could do this.

“ーgrade, right?”

It took a moment for Roy to realize someone was talking to him. “Huh?” He slipped his coin back into his wallet and looked up to find Lilith staring right at him from across the table. To be honest, he didn’t remember talking to this girl all that much. At least not recently. Not since she moved to the… Oh lord where had she moved to. West coast? That sounded right. Wow. He was a really shitty friend. “Sorry, what was that?”

“Lian. She’s in the first grade now, isn’t she?” The red headed girl swirled her straw through her strawberry daiquiri.

“Oh uhー”

“She’s still in kindergarten.” The voice came with a weight leaning down on Roy’s shoulder, and the man didn’t have to look up to know exactly whose it was. Jason fucking Todd, hopefully here to save the day.

“That so? How nice.” Lilith seemed to accept this, smiling over the lip of her drink, and for some reason not using to straw to take a sip. Why? What was the point of that? Using the straw made it easier to get straight to the rum that settled at the bottom of the glass.

“Hey Jaybird. Better late than never, asshole.” Roy smacked the guy’s arm away.

“Hit some traffic.” The man just shrugged before dragging a chair away from another table and somehow fitting it between Roy’s and Donna’s. Probably for the better. “Didn’t realize yous guys would get the party started without me.”

“What? You think we’re just gonna wait for ya?” The archer did his best to flash a grin as he lifted his glass, tipping it back against his lips, only to find out that it was empty. So instead he pulled one of the ice cubes into his mouth and chewed on it. Ok. That worked too.

Jason eyed him for a second. “Want me to get you another?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine.” Roy placed the glass down, tapping his fingers against the sides of it.

“Hold on a sec. Hey waiter!” Jason called out towards some poor, underpaid girl in a waist-apron. He waved her over. “Can we get anotherー Wait what were you drinking?”

Roy felt his nerves spike. He didn’t like announcing his prissy, sissy drinks to the world. He had this manly persona to keep up. Someone like him should be ordering a glass of whiskey. Someone like him should be getting ready to slam down another jägerbomb, then disappear into the bathroom to do a line of some sketchy shit he bought off some random guy in the parking lot. “The usual.” He muttered.

“Alright so Imma need a gingerale, and a shirley temple. Make sure to put a few extra cherries in there for me too, if ya could.” Jason rattled off the order without any need for clarification. Damn. This bastard really knew him too well.

With the waitress gone ー he was oddly nervous about eavesdroppers ー Roy felt like he could relax again. “You’re not drinking?”

“Nah. I’m good.” Jason shrugged before stretching an arm over the back of Roy’s chair. It was casual. Nothing odd about it at all.

“Oh. Ok then.”

“Jayyy?” Dick’s slurred words interrupted. “When’d you get’ere?”

“I’ve been here this whole time.”

Roy couldn’t help but snort at the confused expression on the man’s face as he sincerely tried to remember whether or not Jason had, in fact, been with them since the beginning. Eventually, the acrobat just shrugged, and took a sip of some highlighter blue drink he’d somehow acquired. Well, Donna was back, so maybe she brought it for him.

“Dick slow down.” Wally tried to grab at the end of the glass, but their drunken mess of a leader pulled it tight into his chest instead.

“No! I’m only on like…” They all watched as the man counted on his fingers, before holding up one hand. “I’m on drink seven. I’m fine!”

What a lightweight. Seven drinks was nothing. Roy needed bare minimum twelve strong ones.

“What an idiot.” He heard Jason mumble.

“Our fearless leader.” Roy dipped his fingers into his cup and pulled up another ice cube. If this is what he was stuck with, then that was fine. Damn. When was that new drink gonna get here?

Jason looked him over. “You doing ok?” The question was whispered.

There was a pause as Roy just let the ice cube melt on the top of his tongue. He sucked on it lightly, tasting the residual sugar that it must have picked up from the syrup. “Yeah. I’m alright.”

“Don’t lie to me, Harper.”

The stern tone in Jason’s voice made Roy chuckle and roll his eyes. “Yes Mom.” He looked off at the decorations on the wall of the pub, lifting his hands to adjust the cap on his head. He couldn’t quite decide if he wanted it to face forward or back, but he decided to settle on forward for now. “Yeah. I think I’m ok. I’m making it by at least.”

“Alright, man."

They somehow integrated themselves into the conversation again, though it was mostly Jason making sarcastic comments on whatever trash left their increasingly drunken friend's mouths, while Roy stayed on the sidelines. The waitress coming back was the biggest blessing he'd had since sitting down. He immediately pulled one of four maraschino cherries out and popped it into his mouth, the cool gush of the juice kicking his senses back into gear.

There were several moments where he thought of jumping into the conversation, and putting in his two cents. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, and thought about which AA meetings he could get to this week. As fun as the seven thirty am meeting was, it seemed like he would be out late tonight, so he probably wouldn't be able to get up for it. He could probably get to a noon meeting, but he really preferred the noon NA meetings. It's been a skinny minute since he's gone to NA actually…. Well he didn't really have anything to do tomorrow, so he could go to that, and then stick around for the four o'clock AA, and then pick up a Happy Meal for Lian for dinner. Yeah. That would work. She loved getting those toys too.

It wasn't until Jason tapped on the back of his chair that Roy realized he'd really let himself zone out. He frowned. That wasn't like him at all. He needed to be more active in the conversations; at the very least, crack some jokes. He listened in on Donna attempting to lecture the rest of their teammates on the buddy system, before he finally jumped back in.

"Oh come on, baby. How much trouble could they get in?" He grinned, leaning on his elbows.

Apparently, this question caused some kind of horror, cause the star-spangled girl immediately looked at him in shock. "A lot, actually."

"Nah. They'll totally be fine." He waved her off, crossing his arms behind his head. Did he know the context? Not at all. Fake it 'til ya make it, am I right?

"Oh my god you really are all dumbasses." The woman hung her head in her hands.

"Uh hey. Don't lump me in with this." Jason frowned. "I'm not part of your little troupe."

"No you just stole Roy from us." Wally jabbed, pushing the now empty tequila bottle to the other side of the table. When did it get empty? Who drank it? Who drank the most tonight?

"This idiot? You can have him back any time."

"Ouch. Tell me how you really feel."

The chatter stayed pretty consistent, and for a while the archer was actually feeling quite comfortable. This was easy. Talking. He could do that. Now that drinks seemed to be done with, and they could all collectively agree to give Dick shit for how he was acting, this was all fine. Wow. Being sober was great. Going out with friends, knowing that he'd remember getting home? Amazing. Not googling the nearest ATM so he could get cash to blow on smack? Definitely saving the bank.

He could do this. This time, he'd make it work. This time he'd go through the steps, and rely on his sponsor when he needed it. He’d do a ninety in ninety, and collect those chips like they were Pokémon cards. He could build a display for them. He loved building things, and tinkering, and he’d been looking for a new project. He could make enough spots for a whole years worth. It would give him that bit of motivation he needed.

He vaguely caught a whiff of a glass of wine being served at another table, and flicked his wallet open again to see the picture of his daughter he kept over his license. That right there was his main reason for keeping clean. That smile.

He had to do this.

“Dude, you ok?” Wally’s voice shook Roy out of whatever train of thought he’d somehow wandered down.

“Huh?” He rubbed his thumb back and forth over the photograph.

“Idunnoman.” The fellow redhead shrugged, tipping his chair back on its hind legs. “You just seem out of it. Really weird too. You’re not talkin’ all that much either.”

“Um…” Roy pulled the lip of his baseball cap down over his face, and took a breath. “Yeah, man. I’m doing fine.”

“You sure? Cause like, you just seem different andー”

“He’s the same as he always is.” Jason practically slammed ー well, loudly placed down ー his soda. The action itself wasn’t very threatening, but the glare that came along with it wasn’t one you’d want to be on the other end of.

For some ungodly reason, rather than just dropping it, this asshole just had to keep pushing. Man, fuck speedsters. Sure, Wally was one of his best friends, but like… Screw you, man. “But like… I dunno it just doesn’t really seem like you wanna be here.” He doesn’t. “Like you didn’t have to come, but since you’re here you could likeー”

“What?” Roy felt his face drop. No. No that wasn’t what he was thinking at all. “Dude, I was the one that suggested we get together in the first place.” It was his sponsor’s idea. Rekindling old friendships was supposed to help him relearn how to be social.

“Not to start an argument here,” Oh god Donna not you too. “But I do agree that you’re acting different than you normally do. If something’s wrong, you know you can talk to us.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Nothing’s wrong with you guys, but everything’s wrong with him. Roy felt his heartbeat picking up. Was he really that… weird? He thought… He thought he was doing so well…”

“You surー”

“Leave it.” Jason cut in again, this time a lot more forceful. Thank his Higher Power for this guy. Honestly? Where the hell would he be without this guy? The angry, warning voice came with a hand on Roy’s thigh, which he hadn’t realized was bouncing at about a mile a minute. It gripped, and Roy stilled.

“It’s fine, Jay.” He whispered, though he placed his hand down on top of the other’s. “It’s…” He took a deep breath. “Actually, can I go?”

Jason just nodded, instantly pushing his chair back. “It’s pretty late. You probably gotta pick Lian up from the sitter, right?” Thank you for making up an excuse. Thank you so much.

“Shit. You’re right.” He did his best to feign like he’d completely forgotten about that. He didn’t actually have to pick Lian up until the morning. He’d made plans just in case he fucked up tonight. She didn’t deserve to see him any kind of distressed, or under any kind of influence. She didn’t deserve to know her daddy was such a fucking mess. He looked back towards his friends, making sure to smile even though he really didn’t feel up to it. “Sorry guys. We should do this again next week though.”

“Totally!” Lilith jumped in with a smile. She was always nice. Wow. He seriously needed to talk to her more. At the time, it didn’t occur to him that she was a psychic, and could probably read the sheer distress that was rolling through him. No. That was something he wouldn’t realize until tomorrow. “I’ll make sure to keep my weekend free for you. Oh, could you bring Lian next time? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

Any excuse to think about his little Squeaker was an excuse to actually feel good. “I’ll send you a picture of something she drew a few days ago. I think you’d like it. Well uh…” He looked to Jason, who was pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket ー no wallet apparently ー and dropping it on the table. It was more than enough to cover both of their drinks. “Yeah. I’ll see you later.”

He vaguely registered a very drunken goodbye from Dick, and what sounded like Wally getting smacked ー he deserved it ー as he pushed his way out of the pub, his feet carrying him faster than would be deemed normal, but he wasn’t quite running, so that was probably fine?

The cold night air filled his lungs when he stepped into the parking lot and it was… It was so much. The combination of finally able to release that tension from white knuckling it through the past few hours, and the shame of apparently being a bad friend made him just.... Men don’t cry. They don’t. They’re not supposed to, but right now, standing outside of a shitty dive joint he didn’t even want to go to in the first place, stuffing his hands into his armpits because of course he hadn’t brought a jacket, he could just feel the sting in the corners of his eyes; the pool, and the threat that this of all places was where he was finally going to break down, and… God he just… He felt so useless.

Hinges cried out as the door opened and slammed shut, before a body was standing right next to him. He didn’t have to look up to know is was Jason. It was always Jason. Soon that slightly stained, definitely thrifted leather jacket that was so iconically him was being draped around Roy’s shoulders. First he felt the warmth. The smell of cigarette smoke came as he muttered his thanks, and adjusted the coat so his arms could be shoved into the sleeves. One of Jason’s hands dug through the jacket’s outer pocket, and pulled out a Marlboro box and an old fashioned zippo. The only sound between them was the repeated flicks of the lighter, before Jason took his first drag. “Want it?” He held it between them.

Roy looked at it, before shaking his head. “Stopped that too.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Nah. It’s fine. You didn’t know.” He pulled at the collar of the jacket, and took a deep breath. “It was the easiest thing to quit.”

“I bet.” The cigarette was only half finished when Jason tossed it to the ground and snubbed it out with the toe of his boot. “I know you didn’t drive. Want me to take you home, or do you want to come back with me?”

Roy thought about it. Home would be empty right now. That didn’t sound great. Of course, Jay would stay if he asked. But they both knew who had the more comfortable bed. “Your place.”

“Cool.” A finger and thumb pinch at the hem of one of Roy’s pockets and gave a tug. “Come on. My bike’s over here.”

Roy let himself be led. “Don’t you think a car would be smarter in this weather?”

There was a slight hum, though they both knew there was no way Red Hood would ditch his bike for a Honda Civic. The only reason Roy traded his out was because a carseat couldn’t fit on his Harley. “Nah. I think I’m good. ‘Sides. I got good tires.”

Jason was parked on the other side of the lot, which was awfully far from the entrance to the pub, but really close to the road. He always did that. Closer to the road meant it was easier to get away. They did a lot of that; getting away.

The second seat popped open, and Jay pulled out the ever-iconic Red Hood helmet, holding it under his arm as he held out a second, all black one out. “Can’t have your brains splatting all over the road.”

He couldn’t help the chuckle that left him. “Damn, how bad did your driving get?” Roy took the helmet and just… Stared at it. The tinted face shield would make it impossible for anyone to identify the wearer, but it still somehow caught a glare from a nearby street lamp. He felt himself frowning at it. “Hey… Jay?”

“Yeah?”

“Am I…” He swallowed. He didn’t actually know what question he wanted to ask. Words were never his strong suit. Action always worked best for him. Punching things, and shooting things, and… and… What else did he like? Maybe he didn’t need to ask a question right now. Actions. Doing things. Yeah. That’s what he needed right now. He needed to do something. Anything. Anything that would make him not think about the bees in his teeth. “Sorry. I’m being and idiot.”

“Hey. None of that.” Jason hung his helmet on the handlebars before stepping in and pulling the one out of Roy’s hands, placing it on the leather seat. Hands found their spot on Roy’s shoulders, squeezing them in a really awful massage, then traveled up to grip much more reassuringly at the back of the man’s neck. One pulled at the brim of Roy’s hat and twisted it around. “You’re doing great, Roy. You’re doing really great.”

He nodded, letting his partner step into his space. His head fell when thumbs rubbed into the tangles on the back of his neck.

“Roy. Bud, at me.”

He shook his head.

Hot breath fanned over his face in time with the forehead that pressed against his own. The leather strap from his cap made it awkward, but neither man made any effort to move. “You’re going great, Roy. I’m so proud of you for getting through that.”

“I justー” The archer swallowed the lump in his throat. “I need it to stick this time. I can’t mess up this time.”

“You won’t.” Jason whispered.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Cause I know you, and you’re a hard ass.” It broke the tension just enough for both of them to give a slight laugh. Then, Jason pulled back, smiling as he looked into Roy’s eyes. “You can beat this. I know you can.”

Roy swallowed and nodded. He reached forward, gripping into that shitty, high-thread count polo shirt the other man was wearing. God he hated how that one piece of clothing probably cost more than his own full outfit. Every fiber of his being craved everything he couldn’t have. He craved the absolute lack of control and massive confidence boost alcohol gave him. He craved the clarity and creativity LSD opened his eyes to. He craved the euphoric rush of cocaine, and peaceful relaxation of weed. First and foremost, he craved the mellow, the “world is beautiful” feeling, the “life is worth living” feeling…. He craved just how fucking nice heroin was. Roy felt himself shaking, as he met Jason’s eyes, and he just knew what the pleading expression on his face looked like. A glance of blue eyes over his absolute mess of an expression, and he knew Jason had figured it out too.

Lips pressed together, groundless and chapped, but enough to fill that last craving up. For now. Roy sighed and leaned in close, ignoring the voice of his sponsor in the back of his mind telling him just how stupid he was to be starting something with his best friend right now. No offence Waylon, but you’re an idiot if you don’t think this hasn’t been in the works for years, and an ass for trying to get him to stop now.

“Better?” Jason asked, pulling back just slightly.

Roy closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his senses filling with that cigarette smell that clung to his partner. “Not really. But thanks.”

“Is there a meeting tonight I can take you to?” A hand gently pushed the motorcycle helmet back to Roy. “Or I can take you in the morning. I’ll go with you.”

“Tomorrow…” Roy nodded. “I wanna go to my homegroup. It’s in Star City though.”

“Easy.” Jason grinned, and stepped back, grabbing his mask and throwing it on, before swinging a leg over his bike.

“You sure?” For the first time in what felt like all night, Roy felt that stupid, broken smirk of his form on his face again. “The early bird meeting is at seven thirty.”

That seemed to make Jason pause for a moment. Bats weren’t exactly known for being early to rise. “I’ll make it work.”

“So difficult.” He took his cap off and jammed it into the inside zipper pocket of the leather jacket, then put his own helmet on, before hopping on the bike. He gripped at the strap of Jason’s belt, curling his fingers tight around it. He wasn’t about to be caught dead wrapping his arms around the dude’s waist. “Thanks, Jaybird. I mean it.”

The engine roared to life, and he shut his eyes, once again reciting the usual prayer in his mind.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Keep coming back. It works if you work it.

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