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#(and at one point it just. changes. neither believed the other to be genuine and then they.... just were)

sehodreams · 3 months

Note

Riize reaction to you giving them a lap dance!

Tw and tags: a couple of them are nsfw, suggestive, fluff (?)

Comment: this is how I think the boys in real life would react, hope you didn't expect anything too explicit because I was giggling the whole time I wrote and imagined this, I think it's adorable!!!

Again, please don't visit my blog if you don't enjoy mature or dark content.

Eunseok would say no to the idea the minute you tell him, "what you on? you can't even follow an easy choreo in just dance". However, when you pushed him to his seat, he'd smile with expectations, and even if he denied it, he would love every second of it, containing himself to not put his hands on you the whole time.

Sungchan would laugh out loud at first, like to the point tears would appear on his eyes, then he would shrug in his place, not believing you're actually doing it when he hears the song playing, but not much after he'd genuinely enjoy the show with a grin on his face, giving you a breathtaking kiss to thank you the minute you finished.

Shotaro would have an ear to ear smile, finding adorable how you're trying to dance in front of him. He'd try to not touch you, keeping his hands to himself as long as he could, but the minute you sat over his lap and pushed your chest in front of his face, that smile would change to a desire expression, surprising you when his hips met yours, making you a blushing mess at the end.

Anton would love every second of it, he would laugh just like Sungchan thinking it was a joke, but when he saw you put the music on he'd do his best to not laugh anymore and take you seriously, and still with with a grin on his face, he'd focus on the way your body followed the song. Also, when you were closer to him he wouldn't be afraid of touching you with his big hands, trailing with his palms all the way from your thighs to your waist, making you bounce over his half-hard member when you tried to stop him, laughing at your embarrassed expression.

Sohee would blush and laugh, not daring to look at you the second the music started, but he's just a man, and soon he wouldn't be able to apart his eyes from you, following every step of your routine, he'd sigh content when you dropped to your knees teasing him, wishing for the song to continue, admiring you down there.

Seunghan would be pretty shy and giddy about it, like he'd immediately say yes when you offered to distract him with a lap dance, and he'd even pull his chair waiting for you to start, but when he heard the music he would completely change his demeanor to a shy one, turning red for a minute to then, when he finally relaxed, shamelessly touching you every time you got closer, and if you passed your hand around his body, he would even grab them to give them a quick peck to thank you.

Wonbin wouldn't know what to say, smiling but at the same time doubtful since he had never received one before, not that the others had neither, but he'd be a lot more tense than the others, not daring to fully enjoy it until almost the end to then ask you for another one with a wide grin.

#riize x plus size reader #riize x reader #riize smut #anton x reader #eunseok x reader #wonbin x reader #sungchan x reader #shotaro x reader #sohee x reader #seunghan x reader #riize fluff #riize imagines

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corvase · 2 years

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oblivious idiots in love prompts

feel free to use :)

one character trying to hold the others hand and failing miserably

so then they make a fool proof plan they think will work just to hold their love interests hand

the talk with their best friend like “should i just give up? at this point you’d have to be pretending not to know”

character b going in for a kiss and when they both accidentally bump heads character b can’t stop laughing at the insanity and character a is just confused because they genuinely didn’t know b was going in for a kiss

the stomach drop when your main character has to see their love interest w someone else or simply hear about them liking someone else

the spider-man meme where they’re all pointing at each other but it’s a conversation like “i said i didn’t like you like that because you said you didn’t like me” “but i said i didn’t like you because you were literally in love with someone else” then “i only said i was in love with them because you didn’t want me!”

one character being like “yeah im soooooo bored this weekend. when you are free. You know. i have NOTHING to do. oh what ever will i entertain myself with!!! WHOOeverrr should i entertain myself with.” and the other is just like “huh. yeah that’s pretty sad”

“i changed my schedule for you, you idiot.” “wait i don’t get it. why?”

one character going in to touch the other characters face and the other character freaking out like “WHAT????? IS THERE A BUG??? WAIT GET IT OFF”

^ but twist if they’re enemies and the other character thought they were gonna like throw a punch

your character being convinced they like everyone BUT them

“i can’t believe you didn’t know.” “YOU WANTED ME TO READ YOUR MIND??!!??!”

“marry me.” “what?” “what?”

OH OH BUT ALSO one character is asleep and the other whispers “i like you.” and they wake up like “what” and the response is, once again, “what”

“can i love you?”

“i told you i liked you!” “i thought you were joking!”

“but i don’t know how to love.” “me neither.” “okay. shall we figure it out together?”

“i like you.” “wait what? but i like you.” “HUH?????”

“i just don’t want you to hurt me. i don’t know how to do this, /name/.”

“be honest. do you know?” “know what?” “that i like you!” “you like me?” “OH MY GOD.”

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55sturn · 3 months

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𖥔 ݁ ˖ WISH YOU’D LET ME STAY

↳ masterlist!

↳ summary: in which matt and y/n have a complicated relationship, they label it friends with benefits, but deep down they both know it’s much more than that, however neither one wants to crack first, but one of them is pushed to their breaking point and makes a decision they can’t take back.

↳ pairing: fwb!matt sturniolo x fem!reader

↳ warnings: swearing, partying, mentions of alcohol + drugs, alcohol + drug consumption, mentions & allusions to smut, possessive!matt, jealous!reader, jealous!matt, verbal arguments, mentions of physical fights & injuries [descriptions of blood].

↳ author’s note: i know the triplets are sober but for the sake of this story, they are not!

THIRD PERSON POV

the first thing anyone will tell you when considering a friends with benefits situation, is to not pursue it with a close friend. the second thing they tell you, don’t enter any emotional territory. do not get to know the person outside of what they like in the bedroom. that’s why people opt for an acquaintance that they are comfortable with but don’t have a tight-knit bond with. if you decide to pick up a friends with benefits situation with someone you’re comfortable with but don’t know much about, you don’t end up seeing them as someone more than who you’re having sex with, you don’t start to feel guilty when the inevitable happens.

what is the inevitable you ask?

someone is bound to catch feelings.

sex is rather intimate, for the most part. you see someone in their most vulnerable, most bare state. and it’s rare for someone to be vulnerable nowadays, to see someone bare their entire being is incredibly special.

so to pursue that with a close friend, it’s dangerous. because the intimacy of the bond changes, slowly but surely it begins to manifest into something more than just sex. it becomes more than just two people using each other to get off. it becomes something special, where you learn more than just surface level stuff about your best friend. you do not only get to be there for them and make them feel good emotionally, you get to do it physically.

and that is what slowly morphs the reality of what you’re doing.

so when matt and y/n decided to take up a friends with benefits situation, they ignored the warnings from those they confided in. they were adamant that they weren’t going to let it ruin the friendship. they were so sure it wasn’t going to be another cliche that is seen in movies that they had even said the infamous last words.

“if things get to be too much, we stop and stay friends. we’re not gonna let this wreck the friendship we have.”

and they wholeheartedly believed themselves for the first four weeks after their initial agreement. they had been hooking up almost daily without spending too much time with one another once they had both cum, but silently, over time, things became much more difficult. feelings started to arise and were getting harder and harder to ignore they longer they spent in each other’s beds after many hours of exploring each others bodies with their hands, eyes, and mouths.

matt knew from the get-go that partaking in this type of relationship with y/n was going to end badly, given the fact that he’s secretly harboured feelings for the girl since middle school. he figured if he couldn’t be her boyfriend, he could at least be the person she turned to when she was insatiably horny.

and y/n knew she was emotionally fucked from the last time they hooked up. it was the first time she had genuinely kissed matt for the sole reason of just wanting to feel him close. she normally kissed him because she wanted to get to the point of them being locked away in some room. but that fourth hook up had changed things for her.

it didn’t help that hooking up had changed the way they hung out with each other. from careful and safe physical interaction came pointed, comfortable teasing and flirting. they figured that physical affection shown in the same way couples would show it, was acceptable given the fact that they were fucking on the low.

it also didn’t help that matt would say the sweetest things to her during and after sex, his words would have her heart swelling and melting, and the pet names he used would have her feeling like a schoolgirl sitting beside her crush. and the fact that y/n would always have a change of clothes laid out for matt to change into after sex and showering so that he could feel comfortable, and the fact that she always made sure to bring him water and food after they cleaned made him feel butterflies swirling in the pit of his stomach. he knew that y/n’s main love language was acts of service, so for her to show that to him considering she didn’t show it to people she wasn’t extremely comfortable or close with, had him questioning if maybe his feelings weren’t unreciprocated.

FLASHBACK

y/n smiled at matt as made his way into her apartment after she buzzed him up. the two of them had hooked up earlier that day but matt was bored out of his mind at home alone after chris and nick had gone to some random ass party. so he shot y/n a quick text that read “buzz me up in 15.” and she happily obliged.

“hey, need your dick sucked again?” she laughed as she made her way to her couch, tucking her legs beneath her body as she sat down. if she had known matt was coming back over, she would’ve put more effort into her outfit. she definitely wouldn’t have worn a ratty college t-shirt that she had bought from urban outfitters and something prettier than a plain black thong.

“nah, nick and chris went out and i didn’t feel like going to a party so i decided i’d come over.”

“i just figured you needed something, yknow, sexual.” she teased as she tossed him the remote, letting him pick the show to movie for the night.

“that’s not the only reason i come over, y’know.”

“i know, it’s just been the only reason we’ve seen each other lately.”

“i know and i feel like a douche about it.”

“nah it’s okay matt, i promise.”

the two fell into a comfortable silence, the only sounds being the tv that played the office and their occasional laughs as they quoted the show. the two had gradually gotten physically closer as the night progressed, ending with y/n sitting with her head on matt’s chest as they watched tv. but eventually, matt had to leave after chris called him about fifteen times, both he and nick completely shitfaced, and they need a ride home.

so when matt solemnly got up to leave, she did as well so she could walk him to the door, what happened next left them both questioning their feelings for the first time.

“okay text me when you get home so i know you made it.”

“of course pretty girl, can’t have you spending all your time worrying.” matt laughed as he slipped into his shoes. y/n rolled her eyes and leaned up, pressing a quick kiss to matt’s lips, pulling away before he could reciprocate it.

“fuck i’m sorry.”

“it’s okay but i should go.” matt spoke quickly, briskly turning to the door and walking out, letting it shut softly before standing outside her door, his chest rising and falling quite quickly as he processed what happened.

he knew it wasn’t rare for them to kiss but what was rare was them kissing without it leading to sex.

the two slowly began to pull away, spending more time lost in their own minds instead of lost between each other’s sheets.

FLASHBACK OVER

as y/n made her way through the crowds of people littered around the rented out mansion, she sighed sadly. she had been looking for her favourite triplets, needing to get drunk with nick for the first time in months but she hadn’t been able to find them. nick said that they were planning on showing up, and if they were there, they had done a good job of not wanting to be spotted. however she figured matt was the reason behind that.

ever since their accidental kiss, matt hadn’t reached out to her asking her to come over to his place or asking if he could go over to hers. it had been completely silent between the two of them.

y/n had felt like she’d appear clingy or desperate if she texted him first, and matt felt like he’d come off as a complete douchebag if he asked to fuck after their accidental kiss, so he settled for using his own hand and her pictures.

y/n had tried getting off on her own but it was to no avail each time, and she didn’t really like the idea of reaching out after kissing him unexpectedly so she suffered in silence. but tonight, she decided she was going to go home with someone new, she was sexually blocked and she needed to forget about matt for a little while. she figured that the radio silence between them meant that their little situation was over.

as if on cue, she felt someone tap her shoulder, turning she was met with the most gorgeous brown eyes she’s ever seen.

“hey i’m jake, i noticed you earlier and i’ve been working up the courage to talk to you because i think you’re the prettiest girl here.” he smiled, his cheeks were dusted a deep pink as he shyly met her eyes.

“i’m y/n, and thank you.” she giggled, sticking out her hand for him to shake. the two spent a few minutes talking, getting to briefly know each other before one of her favourite songs came on.

“wanna dance with me? please? i love this song!”

“how can i say no when you asked so nicely.” jake flirted, making y/n giggle and roll her eyes as she dragged him to the middle of the makeshift dance floor. she pressed her back against his chest, slowly grinding and swaying her hips against, letting the tension and friction slowly build as his hands roamed her sides. she leaned her head back against his shoulder, turning to face him, pressing her lips against his. the two of them losing themselves in a heated make-out, unaware of the eyes burning holes into the side of jake’s head.

matt watched the scene unfold with a disgruntled expression, his eyes narrowing as y/n pulled away from the random guy, wiping her lip with her thumb. matt felt his anger build as she turned to fully face him, leaning back in to kiss him again, and before matt knew it, he was charging to the unsuspecting pair.

without a moment’s hesitation, matt ripped jake off of her, whipping the stranger around to face him as he pulled back his fist, letting it fly forward with as much power as he could muster. jake dropped to floor in a crumpled heap as matt loomed over him, ready to keep punching until the guy was nothing but a bloody mess but y/n’s hand wrapping around his bicep, her nails digging into his exposed flesh had him stopping. however jake had other plans as he stood up, cocking back his fist and swinging, clipping matt in the jaw hard enough to make matt bite his tongue which drew blood.

matt was quick to rip his arm out of y/n’s grip, quickly delivering blow and blow to jake’s abdomen, making the six foot something guy quickly double over, giving matt the opportunity to punch him square in the nose, which left jake curled up on the floor.

“you better stay the fuck away from her, you hear me?” matt seethed, spitting out blood on the floor beside jake’s curled up body.

matt’/ chest slowly starts heaving as y/n tears him away from the crowd, toward the deck. as they stand outside, away from prying ears, y/n paces slowly, her face in her hands as she shakes her head. looking up at matt, a blank expression covers her face.

“matt what the actual fuck is wrong with you? what was that?” she spits, unable to wrap her head around matt’s behaviour.

“i didn’t like seeing him all over you like that.”

“why?“

“because you’re mine!”

“excuse me? you’re the one that ghosted me out of fucking nowhere because i fucking kissed you! it wasn’t the first time we’ve kissed so i don’t understand why you pulled away matt.” she replies, a dry and bitter laugh following.

“so me ignoring you for a couple days gives you the right to throw yourself at anything with a dick?” matt spits out, rolling his eyes at her reaction.

“what the fuck is your problem?” she scoffs, her chest heaving slowly as she steps toward him, getting ready to slap the smug look off his face.

“you are! you fucking kissed me. you made me fall in love with you. you have taken over every single fucking inch of my brain, of my fucking room, of my entire life! you are everywhere and i can’t fucking breathe without smelling your perfume on my sheets, on my clothes, everywhere in my fucking room. you are lingering everywhere in my life and i’m so sick of it because i am so fucking helplessly in love with you and i have been since we were in middle school. and i thought that being fuck buddies would help that feeling go away. i thought that if i had even a little bit of you, i would see what it’s like and i would be able to move on. but it didn’t work, it made me go absolutely fucking crazy over you, y/n because i don’t know what you feel, so that’s my problem. you are my fucking problem.” matt yells, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he realizes he just confessed his love for her.

“you’re such a fucking idiot, matt.” she rolls her eyes, roughly gripping the collar of his muscle shirt, yanking him towards her and pressing her lips against his. his hands immediately find her waist and he tugs her impossibly close as he hands move up to either side of his neck.

“i love you matt, you dumbass, i have for years.”

↳ taglist: @dylsdunbar @soursturniolo @4sturns @sturnsclutter @spencerstits @meanttomeet @bluesturniolo333 @graciereid @abbie13sworld @ghostofbrock @l9vesick @mylifeisevenstranger @bethsturn @ifilwtmfc @verosivy @themattgirl @lovingmattysposts @lacysturniolo @freshsturns @forevergirlposts @sturniolo-fav-matt @cupidsword @strawberrysturniolo @lustfulslxt @sturnifyed @carolsturns1 @teapartyprincess4two @mangosrar

#Spotify #matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #matt sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo x you #matt sturniolo x fem!reader #matt sturniolo imagine #matt sturniolo oneshot #matt sturniolo smut #matthew sturniolo x reader #matthew sturniolo x you #matthew sturniolo x fem!reader #matthew sturniolo oneshot #matthew sturniolo smut #matthew sturniolo imagine #sturniolo triplets x reader

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demxters · 1 year

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elle dear, how are you? i saw you opened blurb requests so what about jake holding his girl’s hand in public and doing pda with her for the first around his friend and they’re both just genuinely happy/enjoying the beginning of the relationship?

lyra

—𝐈 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐌𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑

jake seresin x gn!reader

wc: 595

warning(s): none i don't think

find on ao3 here!

a/n: ty for sending this in lyra, i love it and ily. i hope i did this one justice!! <3 got hit by the writing bug this morning and thought i’d attempt to get back into some writing after disappearing for a bit…. i hope everyone is well and i’m sending lots of love!!!!

(ik i said i wasn’t writing on here anymore but i felt guilty for all the blurbs in my inbox so depending on how i feel after this maybe we’ll come back?)

There's a familiar tug in his chest that coincides with the one on his fingers. The lovesick smile on his face hasn't faltered since you walked into The Hard Deck with your fingers laced with his. As the two of you approached the group of aviators huddled in their same booth in the back of the bar, he expected the usual unravel of your fingers from his as you took your spot beside Phoenix.

This time, however, your hand never left his. In fact, it stayed tightly clasped with his own. He loosened his hold on you just a tad when he took his seat beside you, giving you the option to release him if you chose. His actions were only met with the tightening of your fingers around his. You glanced up at him with a small smile that made him freeze on the spot. The way you grabbed onto his hand like it was your lifeline made his heart burst with adoration.

Affection between you and Jake wasn't unfamiliar territory. Public affection on the other hand, was something neither of you had discussed. Your relationship was new. The feelings you elicited in each other was new. He had everything to lose when it came to you. So he let you take the lead. It didn't matter how badly he wanted to hold you close and smother you in kisses in front of his friends. He swallowed that urge to keep you comfortable. To make sure you felt safe.

Which is why he almost couldn't believe his eyes when you failed to let him go as the night went on. Your hand never strayed too far from his and when it did, you had at least some part of your body touching his. Once the initial shock faded from his system, he finally began to reciprocate your actions.

It started with a subtle thumb rubbing gently circles upon your intertwined hands. Then, he was tugging your legs onto his lap under the table, shifting your body to face his ever so slightly.

You fell completely into him, tucking yourself into the crook of his neck right where you belonged while only half listening to your friends' never ending banter.

The two of you felt lighter than you ever have before, being in the comfort of each other's arms despite the public setting. Neither of you really cared that the bar was bustling tonight and that everyone could see you.

You were the only one Jake could see.

Your friends noticed the second the two of you sat down. The dopey smiles never left your faces even as they shifted the topic to things like politics and climate change just to see how you'd react. But the two of you would only nod with those same looks on your faces and silently agree with every point that was made. It was clear to them that neither of you were listening, too caught up in one another to even think about anything else.

They didn't take your absentmindedness to heart. They were actually quite amused by how something as simple as you was able to calm down the usually rambunctious Hangman.

He softly brushes his lips to the top of your forehead in response to the ones on the side of his neck and smiles down at you. All other noise is drowned out as you look up at him with stars in your eyes. This, he realizes, is what he wants to hold onto forever. Just you and him, right here and unabashedly in love.

tgm! taglist: @joaquinwhorres @harrycherrylove @smoothdogsgirl @t-nd-rfoot @dempy @ollyoxenfrees @potato-girl99981 @averyhotchner @2guysonascooter @loveforaugust @blue-aconite @fandom-life-12 @stiles-banshees @iamdannyday @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @bradshawseresinbabe @breezemood @emorychase @eli2447 @angelbabyange @finelytaylored @pono-pura-vida @hecate-steps-on-me

#jake seresin x reader #jake hangman seresin #hangman x reader #jake seresin x you #jake seresin x y/n #hangman x you #hangman x y/n #jake seresin imagine #jake seresin oneshot #hangman imagine #hangman oneshot #tgm blurb

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acourtofthought · 2 months

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Genuine question, but why do you want Elucien together if they aren’t in love? They aren’t currently attracted to each other right now. They can’t even be in the same room.

Is it just the potential? Or promise of the mating bond or something?

Because I shipped Elucien too when they were declared mates. But by ACOFAS, I didn’t understand why suddenly SJM decided to have them not even interact. If they ever have a conversation I might jump back over to elucien, but so far-there’s nothing between them.

And we know there can be mates that aren’t good romantic pairings. Like Rhys’s parents. All signs are currently pointing to the fact that Elucien is also one of the incompatible pairs.

Idk I just don’t understand why I should keep rooting for them if there hasn’t been any development on the page? Am I missing something??

Genuine question: Why would I want to read a love story that starts with the couple already being in love? Were Claire and Jamie from Outlander in love at the start or was she in love with and married to another man? Where she married Jamie and STILL wasn't in love with him? Were Daphne and Simon in love at the start of Bridgerton? Was he not FORCED to marry her even when he didn't want to ever marry or have children? Were Elizabeth and Darcy infatuated with one another at the start of their book? You have no canon evidence that Elain isn't attracted to Lucien. The only canon evidence we have of anything is that Elain didn't want a male or a mate. Just like Nesta didn't want a mate in her book. But guess what? Those things change. Those are just hurdles for a character to overcome. By the end of her book Nesta proudly called Cassian her mate but she got into a fight with him over it at first. Yes Elain "shrinks back" from Lucien but why are you defaulting to one possible answer "she's not attracted to him"? When you look at SJMs style of writing, isn't it more likely that Elain withdraws from Lucien because he sees her too clearly and that scares her? When Feyre tells us that Elain has even Az beat for secret keeping, isn't it possible that Lucien is the one person who can see through the secrets Elain hides and it's intimidating? Because he might see that she's not as fine and content as she'd have the others believe? Something she wants them to keep believing as she's possibly worried about disappointing them? (Rhys's words). You're right, there are couples who might not be right for one another, evidenced by the example you provided with Rhys's parents. Rhys's father was cold and vicious. Does that sound like Lucien? Rhys's father immediately stole Rhys's mother away the second the bond snapped and married her that night. Does that sound like what Lucien did with Elain? Rhys's mother pleaded with his father to ban wing clipping but he refused. Has Elain asked anything of Lucien that he was unwilling to give her? I like Elucien because neither has to be anyone different if they end up together. Elain doesn't have to struggle with cruelty bothering her as she would if she ended up with a torturer. She doesn't have to hide in the shadows as she would if she ended up with Az. She would get to enjoy balls and party and socializing in a way she wouldn't if her partner was Az who prefers his alone time. She'd get to share her love of nature with someone who the author also confirms is happiest in nature. I like the thought of Elucien because it's so clearly written on the wall that they are right for one another though it's normal that Elain isn't ready to face that yet as she's still processing trauma and figuring out who she is as a fae female. Or maybe she does realize it and it's what scares her, she already suffered rejection and a broken heart from Graysen, I don't imagine she's prepared to run into someone else's arms who has the power to hurt her. My guess is SJM hasn't had them interact because the second Elain and Lucien have a real conversation, it's over for both of them. Their hearts will be gone, flying into the palms of the other. It's more exciting to read about all that in their own POVs rather than someone else's. You don't have to root for anyone you don't like. Hell, Elucien could be endgame and you still don't need to root for them. But I grow a little tired of people acting clueless as to why Elucien's still love the idea of them together and why it's really not a problem that they aren't talking right now.

#pro elucien #elucien #lucien vanserra #pro lucien vanserra #elain archeron #anti e/riel

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myuiis · 3 months

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lookism ch 484 semi analysis semi rant

ok so MAYBE im just projecting good character writing onto lookism because frankly, after the shitshow that was 1A, i have lost a lot of confidence in ptj's writing abilities, but i GENUINELY think the ending sequence of today's chapter was incredibly done

like... idk...

it's not that vin jin didn't want to be saved. he did. he spoke out against the shaman and the village and probably secretly wanted someone to agree and to change their ways and save him; it's just that he felt like it was too hard and too embarrassing to be saved by a village that hated his very existence. every time he tried to speak out against what was happening to him, he would only be punished, so he was gradually taught that wanting to be saved was something shameful and that would be punished. and since he would only get disappointed again and again by trying to look for salvation, he decided he would stop looking. he takes pride in that, really. he takes pride in growing up and fending off the bullies and being strong and he hates the idea of needing to be saved because... why wouldn't he?

it's never worked in the past. a mix of his defense mechanism of being a mean person to stop others from hurting him and his internal self-hatred that secretly believes that he brings suffering to the people around him and that he is a monster combine to create a sort of "i'm good enough on my own. i neither want nor need to be saved" kind of mentality. he doesn't want to be vulnerable enough to admit that he really wants to be saved so seeing him take that first step admit that "yes, i want to be saved" is SUCH a cathartic moment. it's like that one kim dokja "ah, as i thought, i'm glad i survived" moment. it's not a particularly poetic or life-changing statement, but the fact that it comes from someone that, before this point, has only ever wanted to die and has never expressed that they wanted to be save or keep living just makes it hit a lot harder.

and the fact that he is validated for the first time after this, not only because he realizes that seongji, someone he perceives as cool and strong and noble is also a "monster" like him (thus indirectly implying that he can also change his circumstances and improve his station), but also because he was finally recognized as anything but a monster.... i think the expression in that panel really expresses that emotion well. the sort of warmth and shock from being cared for and approved of for the first time since his mom died.

its just so UGH... but maybe im reading too much into it.

#lookism #lookism manhwa #lookism webtoon #seongji yuk #vin jin #jin hobin #lookism rant #looksim 484 #literature analysis #sort of #more like a rant #hehe #so surprised that ptj can still write because the cheonliang arc has been rlly great so far #hopefully it doesnt fall off #my girl mary only deserves the best

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selenestarmoon · 1 year

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The Collector: Another Victim of Belos' Abuse

We know that Belos is a abuser in every sense of the word and that although he has abused all of the Boiling Islands as a whole, his favorite targets are children, he focuses on children because they are much easier to manipulate and isolate.

Belos has abused children before: we saw it with Hunter and the other grimwalkers,

he wanted to do it with Luz

but what many forget is the fact that Collector is a child and was also abused by Belos.

While Belos may not directly physically abuse Collector, there are many ways to groom, manipulate, and abuse a child that do not involve physical contact at all.

In this post, I mentioned how abandonment and isolation had affected Collector and he was desperate for any kind of company and to be free and Phillip took advantage of that, promising to free him if he taught him magic and the draining spell in return. This made Collector easy prey for Belos as even though he finally had company, Collector was still isolated as the only one he could see and interact with was Belos.

Belos controls everything in his life: who he sees, who he talks to, when he can talk, when he can even experience something about the world.

Also, from the way we saw their interactions, Collector genuinely believed that Belos was his friend, he taught Belos powerful magic and draining spell without hesitation because he believed that Belos wanted to be his friend even when he started to doubt him at the end. Collector still considers Belos his friend and decided to trust him and was willing to keep his promise to help him first while Belos only manipulated him and isolated him, he could barely stand it as he was about to hit him when he told him that the human world had changed or that when Collector complains to Belos for not fulfilling his part and he only covers him with a blanket and throws him off the bridge.

Collector's trust towards Belos is bolstered by the fact that he is the only one Collector has interacted with for 400 YEARS since his imprisonment as Belos keeps him hidden and has not interacted with anyone else to the point that no one knows about his existence, Kikimora only knew that Collector existed because she was eavesdropping on Belos and Luz and Hunter only found out about Collector's existence by seeing Belos' memories but if it hadn't been for those facts neither Kikimora nor Luz nor Hunter would know that Collector exists. This is an abuse tactic in which the abuser keeps the victim isolated so that the latter completely depends and trusts only the former, this isolation tactic was also used by Belos with Hunter and the other grimwalkers.

Many comment on how Collector dismisses grimwalkers as objects that Belos creates to destroy them and how Collector sees the hunting of Titans, the lives of others and the destruction as a game making him look cruel but contrary to what everyone believes, Collector is not cruel out of malice but for this:

What Sundowner means by this is that children do cruel things not out of malice but because they simply have no morality in the beginning so they don't know right from wrong until someone teaches them and if no one teaches a kid that what is right and what is wrong, the kid will simply do horrible things because they believe that it is normal or that they are right and if a kid is surrounded by adults who do bad things and/or teach them to do horrible things as a good thing, the kid will simply imitate them because it's all they know. Basically kids do bad things because in their own innocence they don't know they are doing something bad in the first place.

The Collector is a kid and kids mimic the adults around them. We know that the other collectors preserve life by force and kill anyone who opposes them

and Collector isn't interested in doing the same as the other collectors and he just wanted to play and have friends

but he imitated the other collectors way of acting because they were the only adults he had and therefore they were the only thing he knew. After the war between his kind and the Titans, and by extension his imprisonment which was for an incredibly long time, the only adult in the Collector's life has been Belos, who is a person who has done a LOT of horrible things, so even putting aside the fact that they have unbelievable cosmic powers over reality itself, of COURSE he have no concept of the value or life or the suffering of others, of COURSE he sees people as toys, that's what's been modeled for him by the literal los only adults in his life at all for hundreds of years!

Collector is literally a kid with a lot of power in his hands who was surrounded by adults but all of them did horrible things and none of them bothered to show him that what he was doing was wrong because they didn't care about Collector as a person but only about his power and/or get some benefit out of it, this is clearly isolation, exploitation and neglect and all of these are forms of abuse.

This is even seen with King because despite the fact that, unlike the other collectors, titan trappers and Belos, he only wanted Collector to use his powers to save his friends but that doesn't take away from the fact that he used him and that he didn't care about Collector as person and only released him by his power. All these cases make Collector probably believe that it is normal to hurt others, lie and that friendships are utilitarian and friends always betray each other when in fact friendships aren't forged by the use that people have nor are they something that is forced on others but are forged for the love, respect and trust that exists between people. However, unlike the other collectors, titan trappers and Belos, King recognizes that Collector is still a child and that he is afraid of being alone and wishes to talk to him.

Little by little with the help of King and other people and healthy relationships that Collector builds, Collector will learn to distinguish between good and evil and that not everyone wants him for his power, but rather for who he is, Collector will gradually learn what a true friendship and/or healthy relationship is like, and with this Collector will grow as a person, learning to have a moral and emotional maturity by having people who love him for who he is and not for what he can do.

#the owl house #the owl house spoilers #the owl house meta #the owl house analysis #toh #toh spoilers #toh meta #toh analysis #the collector #toh the collector #the owl house collector #philip wittebane #emperor belos

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fullmetalpotterhead · 3 months

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I think there is a cruelty in expecting your idea of a happy ending is the one a person wants for themself and I think it’s an idea we see within tgcf AND within the fandom treatment of the characters.

(Warning below cut for novel spoilers and also the fact some of you may get defensive. Absolutely enjoy fandom the way you want I just think narratively and analytically it feels hollow).

FX and MQ struggle with who XL has become because they believe they understand who he is supposed to be. They believe they know best the happy ending he is supposed to want. Their idea of a happy ending for him does not include scrap collecting or ghost husbands. It does not include roaming around the mortal realm. And so it is hard for them to fully face who XL is and the fact he can be happy in a way that is different from this preplanned scenario for him. (One that admittedly a younger him would agree with! Their belief is well founded, it’s just misguided.)

And mostly, I see fans understand this. That XL’s happy ending is the soft epilogue of a quiet life not caring much about heaven or important events but doing what he wants to spread kindness and enjoy love. But sometimes still I see fans who talk about how perfect he’d be as the new heavenly emperor and I wonder “don’t you get it? Don’t you see that he doesn’t want that?” The responsibility of that. The burden of managing heaven like that. It’s not what XL has ever really striven for even when he was more “ambitious”. He’s the kind who likes to go down and get his hands on things, not sit back and take this mantle of ultimate authority that ties him up in buerocratic red tape. He’s never wanted to manage the gods, that’s not the kind of power he sits happiest in. He could be happy in spite of being given such a role, but when I see fans give him this they pose it like a gift. Like an honor. It is neither of those things to a man who genuinely does not even care anymore about being seen as a god by anyone but his husband.

And then I see Xuan Ji. A ghost who lingers in obsessive, crazed love-hatred. And when she fades, it is because she has finally let go of her attachment to PM. She’s at peace. She can rest. Her reason for lingering isn’t like HC’s, it was never a happy thing. She lingered in traditional ghostly fashion as a sick twist against nature and when at last she was settled she could finally move on to let her soul continue to her next life instead of being trapped within her crazed grief. So it’s important she fades. It’s important she finally gives up and rests. To linger any longer isn’t her happy ending. To let go is to move forward for her. It’s not that her happy ending was dying— she was already long dead. All that remained was unwell. It’s not the same as killing her off, she’s not human. MXTX is giving her a chance at rebirth by letting her fade.

The one I see the most is SQX. I see many fans want SQX to ascend again. Many fans write and talk as if in a few years SQX could ascend on their own merit and return to heaven with grace and that would be their glorious happy end. But such an end… it really feels against the spirit of SQX’s own wishes. SQX lives as a beggar with other beggars in repetenance for what his brother did. He finds new friends and new joy among his fellow beggars. He is resolved and ready to eventually die a mortal death. His brother, his closest family, is now gone and he himself has lived centuries of a very good life. Lived far beyond the years of the average happy mortal. (SWD, in trying to bait HX points it out: they’ve already won. They lived worshipped and comfortable for centuries as gods.)

To ascend again is, for one, not something SQX was ever capable of himself which is part of the point, but second of all… to what end would he ascend for? To what purpose would he desire immortality? His family is gone. His worldview is drastically changed by what he’s gone through. Could he happily return to a frivolous life in heaven? Should he go through the gossip that would no doubt follow him in heaven regarding the circumstances of his first ascension and fall forever? Why? What does heaven and immortality give him that he is lacking in his end now? It doesn’t offer any more family or stability than he’s already found for himself. He’s carved out his happy ending with a family of beggars and he’ll carry the weight of what his brother did and one day he’ll die a mortal death. As we all will. That’s not a bad thing. That’s not an unhappy ending.

XL’s happy ending was not found in heaven, but heaven will forever be part of his reality. Many fans seem to understand this. So I don’t understand why that logic doesn’t follow SQX. To return to heaven doesn’t feel like properly facing his character arc to me. It feels like the same thing FX is trying to do in believing XL’s happiest ending is fixed to the picture perfect ideal. Happy endings are personal things that should suit the one who earned them. And this is the one SQX has crafted. I think he’s done a rather beautiful job.

#tgcf #again this isn’t a personal attack against those who like the other things #it’s a love letter to the fact that a happy ending is a deeply personal thing

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aziraphales-lawyer · 5 months

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Archangel Michael Changing Sides in s3 (?)

I don't have a whole lot to back this up but I've noticed that there isnt a whole lot of theories about Michael and Uriel—especially Michael since Michael *is* one of the most prominent Archangels alongside Gabriel Raphael, Uriel, etc. And they knew that! Basically appointing themself as Gabriel's unofficial replacement (and its safe to assume that Michael expected to be the official replacement once they find (and then fire) Gabriel. Even AZIRAPHALE knew that, saying "Michael" immediately after the Metatron asked him about who would be the next Supreme Archangel. It seems like everyone is aware of this hierarchy. And the Metatron is very very aware of this hierarchy, needless to say, the bitch does NOT care. The Metatron let Michael play leader for a while and even let them believe that they're the next Supreme Archangel.

That being said, what happens to Michael now?

By the time s2 ends, Michael STILL thinks that they're going to be the next Supreme Archangel!! The Metatron made all the angels (except Aziraphale and Muriel) go back to Heaven. Michael is unaware that they are, in fact, NOT the next Supreme Archangel - but rather the traitor angel who has gone 'native' and, as far as they're concerned, immune to Hellfire.

Michael is also considered a prince of heaven, much like Gabriel. They're considered Chief Prince and would be the one to supposedly lead all the angels to victory against evil in The End Times (this role sounds awfully familiar). But now their role seems to be taken by Aziraphale. (Oof). So it seems like they will either be Aziraphale's right hand like they were Gabriel's (unlikely – and I'll get more into that later), or (the only other option) defy the Metatron's plans.

They know Aziraphale is as much of a traitor as Gabriel (trying to stop Armageddon AND "Fraternizing" with a demon!! – and Michael is aware that Aziraphale did it first anyway!!!) So, the Metatron appointing Aziraphale? It Does Not Make Sense. So either they take Aziraphale being Supreme Archangel at face value or NOT. Which will probably start a small Arc of them questioning Her Plans.

Not that Michael is all-innocent, either. After all, they're the angel who has direct contact - not just to *Hell* but to the *Duke of Hell*. Regardless of whether or not Gabriel knew about this contact.

Michael seems to be cautious, hiding it from the other angels despite their authority over them. They know they're not supposed to "fraternize" will Hell, yet they do. And this probably won't be the last time they do it! Michael already has one foot in the door, just needs a push to get them through. That being said,

They also provided Hell with Holy Water and brought it down there themself. Now, regardless of whether this was an agreement between Heaven and Hell to trade Hellfire/Holy Water, it's still striking that it was Michael who brought it Down To Hell, seemingly not even bothered by the fact that they're surrounded by demons. Michael - who, in Christian belief - being the one who led the army of angels who cast down Satan and his army of rebellious angels into Hell. Michael basically waltzed into the teritory of Every Person Who Hates Them Ever and didn't give a fuck. This may be due to their trust of Heaven/Hell's truce to execute two beings. Though I doubt Michael WOULD trust the truce (again, Michael walked into the Michael Hate Club HQ). No, Michael is aware of their power over the situation of their power over the demons because they've done it before. Being around a legion of them doesn't scare Michael, and they're probably prepared to smite any demon who even tries their patience. They were only genuinely worried when Aziraphale (as Crowley) went into the bathtub unscathed. At that point, Michael realizes that they have power against every demon in Hell. Except One. Which brings me to the next point–

I dont think Michael will play nice with Aziraphale being the next Supreme Archangel. And neither will Aziraphale to Michael. To put it in a parallel (kind of), Aziraphale probably hates Michael as much as Crowley hates Gabriel. Beelzebub may have put Crowley in trial, but it was Michael who personally brought down the Holy Water. Maybe Aziraphale expected something horrible from the demons ("You're The Bad Guys") but Michael? "Archangel Michael?"//"I made Michael miracle me a towel", no, Aziraphale is just as pissed, and I believe he's playing it down like Crowley. Aziraphale was surprised it was even Michael at all, not the Holy Water, the fact that The Archangel brought it down themself for the destruction of his beloved demon. (Ineffable Idiots is a separate post, honestly). And now they're supposed to work together to bring about the Second Coming while Aziraphale just took the Major Role that Michael would have played in it? That doesn't sound like they'd work well together – that's why, I think, they wont.

And here's more things to consider:

(Images via @noneorother )

In the image– Composition is very important! But guess what- Michael is not just NOT WITH THE OTHER ANGELS but also ISOLATED on the OTHER SIDE! Their body is facing away from the other angels but towards Shax (who is now Duke of Hell by the time s3 rolls around, I suppose???) Which we know Michael has contact to (or knows how to contact). Theyre also facing the same direction as Gabriel, now if that means much – and this is a shot about as long as the Bentley/Aziraphale body swap theory – but the Va Va Voom Yellow paint was something they weren't even expecting people to notice so I'm taking this opportunity anyway!

Anyway, like I said earlier, Michael already works with demons and has been since s1. They obviously know how to access "back channels". With their dispute with Aziraphale, questioning why the Metatron appointed him of all angels– well, Michael has more than enough (albeit, selfish) reasons to do it again. (Sometimes a selfish reason is enough, worked with Gabriel after all) I wouldn't know what their plan would be but all their motives to do so are already spelled out for us.

And as a cherry on top

On the next image, its pretty easy to see how the character/backgrounds are tilted. Most of them "line up" with their respective backgrounds-except for- you guessed it. Michael. (And I think Saraquel too?) BUT while the angels are tilting one way - a different direction than the rest of the gang - Michael's tilt is the same direction as the rest of them even though their background is tilting another way (like Uriel's). This can either be read as changing sides despite their percieved respective side - OR - they are playing both sides, or will be.

Either way, I don't think Michael will continue to play with the Metatron's games after the Metatron took away their biggest role in The End Times and gave it to Heaven's most notorious traitor.

#good omens #good omens michael #archangel michael #ineffable meta #my metas #good omens theories #good omens s3 theory #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #archangel aziraphale #good omens s2

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minichrismd · 1 year

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Childhood Friends - Ominis Gaunt (Part 2)

Requested! - My requests are still open!

Word Count - 1317

Themes - Fluff & Angst

The next morning, you’d purposely left your curtains open so you’d wake early to the sun shining through your window. You laid still for a minute, listening for any movement in the house, but everything was still. Your parents must still be in bed.

You slipped out of bed silently, changed into your outdoor clothing and silently left your room, creeping down the stairs to the front door, glancing at the clock which stood on the floor, it was 6:30 in the morning. You made quick work of unlocking the door, closing it behind you slowly as to not make a sound.

You took off running as you had done the previous day, heading towards the oak tree. The town was silent at this time of the morning aside from your footsteps echoing as you ran. Eventually, you made it back to the oak tree, climbing quickly to your spot from the previous day.

After what felt like hours you heard the faint sound of footsteps approaching, quietly peeking from your spot in the tree, you spotted Ominis. He’d come to meet you even after the events of the night before. You jumped down from the tree, landing a few feet away from him.

“Ominis?” You spoke softly. He motioned for you to come and sit at the base of the tree with him. He tried to smile but it couldn’t hide the sadness that was clear on his face.

You sat there in silence for a while before either one of you spoke.

“I’ve never really had any friends, no one wants to be seen with me because of my family name.” He whispered, so quietly that you almost missed what he said. A small tear slid down his cheek as he spoke.

“I’m your friend though, I don’t care about your name.” You replied, resting your small hand on his shoulder. You didn’t understand why everyone was so cruel to him, why would nobody want to be his friend? He leant into the hand you placed on his shoulder.

“I feel safe with you. I don’t feel safe anywhere else.” He said solemnly. You felt a wave of sadness rush over you, not knowing what to do. After a while Ominis got up from beneath the tree, pulling you to your feet also.

“Can we play a game or something? I just want to be a child again.” He asked quietly, you smiled sadly, agreeing with him that a game was needed now. Ominis suggested hide and seek, to which you agreed, it was one of your favourite games. You hid first, believing that you had the best hiding spot in the area, but Ominis still found you, whether that was down to skill or using his wand to cheat you were unsure. The two of you took it in turns hiding and seeking for hours, the game eventually evolved into hide, seek and chase meaning that you were running away from each other as fast and as erratically as possible.

Laughter rang out across the grassy fields for hours, and you both truly felt safe and free. By the time the evening came, neither of you wanted to leave each other, genuinely saddened by the thought of leaving.

“We’ll meet again tomorrow?” You asked, Ominis looked thoughtful for a moment until his expression fell.

“I’m going to be away for a week, but we could meet again here on Saturday?” He countered. You couldn’t help but feel saddened by this, but agreed regardless looking forward to Saturday, even though it was a week away.

You both said your goodbyes and parted ways for the evening, as you walked away you couldn’t help but look back. You were worried for your new friend, and you wanted him to be happy. Walking home, you were trapped in your own thoughts, you’d never had a friend like Ominis before. Not one that you had immediately felt a connection with, you found that often it would take a long time for you to build friendships to the point of being comfortable around the person but with Ominis it was different.

Walking into your home, your parents were waiting for you sat around the kitchen table. You could tell that they were worried when you saw their expressions as you walked through the door.

“Little one, where have you been?” Your father asked, worry lacing his voice. You walked over and hugged him tightly, doing the same to your mother after.

“I’m sorry, I met up with Daisy this morning and we were laying out in the grass fields. I forgot what the time was.” You answered, it was only a small lie. Your father smiled and stroked your hair.

“As long as you’re being safe, that’s all that matters. Now, dinner is ready, go and wash up.” He spoke softly, much calmer now.

The next few months passed in a blur; you’d meet Ominis at the oak tree as often as you could. You’d spend all day together, playing games and telling stories, talking about your lives. Ominis had opened up to you about what had happened the day that you’d met him. His father had tried to make him cast the cruciatus curse on a muggle and he’d refused. Because of his refusal, his father had made his older siblings cast the curse on him which was why he ran and found you. He told you about how when he returned home that night he relented to his fathers wishes and cast the curse and about how awful it made him feel after. He hated his family and the dark magic that they used.

“Are you going to Hogwarts in the autumn?” You asked hopefully, it was the school that your parents had decided to send you to so you hoped that your friend would join you. Ominis nodded, he was excited to be able to go to school with the person he now considered to be his best friend.

“I’m looking forward to it, it will be nice to have a friend to go with.” He motioned to you; you laughed thinking about all of the adventures that you’d be able to have while you were there. You rested your head on his shoulder as you sat up against the oak tree, listening to the sound of the grass rustling and the birds chirping.

“What if we aren’t in the same house?” You asked quietly. Ominis laughed at that, causing you to frown.

“You don’t exactly seem like a Slytherin to me (Y/N). You’re too kind.” He chirped, it made you laugh slightly but a worry settled in your stomach. You wouldn’t be able to see him as much.

“We’ll still see each other though, right?” You asked with a hint of sadness. Ominis wrapped his arm around your shoulder and hugged you tightly.

“Of course we will, I’m never going to leave my best friend behind. Do you remember what I told you the day we met back at the tree? You make me feel safe. I’m never going to abandon you.” You felt a tear slide down your cheek at his words. Ominis had honestly become your best friend and you cared deeply for him.

The sound of apparition broke you out of your thoughts. You looked up at the figure in front of you and Ominis to see your father.

“(Y/N) stand up.” Your father demanded. Ominis quickly removed his arm from your shoulder and you pushed yourself onto your feet, panic setting in. “I told you months ago to stay away from him, how could you disobey me?” Your father asked, sounding hurt. Tears began to flow down your cheeks rapidly. Your father walked up to you and took your arm, quickly apparating you away. The last thing you saw was the sadness on Ominis’ face as your father grabbed your arm.

Link to Part 3

#ominis gaunt #ominis Gaunt oneshot #ominis gaunt imagine #ominis gaunt x reader #ominis Gaunt X you

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heretherebedork · 11 months

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Alright, let's talk internalized homophobia.

Kawi is the poster child for internalized homophobia and how it can cause you to both avoid your own feelings and to attach yourself more strongly to any ideas that can keep you away from what you might actually desire in an effort to keep yourself safe.

This is a immature man who has never gotten past the kneejerk reaction he has to people assuming he's attracting to men. These are two strangers who think he's dating Max... who he's had a serious falling out with and who is, currently, barely willing to speak to him at all and obviously not in contact with him in the future at all.

Kawi is constantly thinking about how people see, how people view him, what will make people like him and what will lead to him being liked by people. And being gay? That won't do. Neither will being poor but he can't really do anything about that, not directly.

Kawi truly doesn't believe that who he is is something people can like. And it goes past being a messy eater, being a bit of a glutton and into just the very concept of who he is. Of him being poor, of having to work through university, of being awkward, of being bi/gay. None of that is acceptable because none of Kawi is acceptable except for the parts he molds to what he believes people expect from him.

This truly comes back to self-acceptance again and again. Kawi is so certain that if just changes himself enough other people will like him and so he rejects every aspect of himself that doesn't fit into that image. He doesn't eat with Pear, he doesn't talk to Max, he couldn't give or explain a broken gift, he can't admit he doesn't have money because none of those are part of how he thinks he has to be, who he thinks he should be but isn't.

It doesn't help, at all, that Piseang is drunk and upset when he grabs him in the future, a decade or more of pining behind him and facing marrying a woman he doesn't love coming out in a way that only pushes Kawi farther away from anything he might desire. (Not that he does at this point, I will absolutely argue that Kawi does not want anything from Piseang at this point in the narrative and will have to learn about his own feelings over the course of the story. Right now he genuinely and wholeheartedly loves Pear.)

That is disgust and discomfort and it is focused on the kiss.

I do think that a lot of Kawi's issues with internalized homophobia stem from whatever happened with Max but also from his own visceral discomfort with himself. Kawi is filled to the brim with self-hatred and the only real break he's ever had from it has been with Pear. Pear, who took care of him with him having to ask. Pear, who smiles at him. Pear, who represents someone from a 'better' kind of society accepting him. Pear represents who Kawi thinks he is supposed love but also who he thinks he's supposed to be. He is supposed to be a straight, rich man who isn't awkward, who takes care of someone else easily, who can be there for her and marry her, who can make his father proud by being exactly who society says he is supposed to be.

But he also experiences disgust at the thought of Piseang kissing him because he is still caught on the idea that he should marry Pear (he, in this case, meaning frankly either one of them) and that it isn't right not to want to marry Pear. I am unwilling to wipe his disgust under the rug because this moment is important. This is not Kawi's reluctance alone. This is someone who has accepted society's idea that being kissed by the same gender is inherently worse than being kissed by someone of the opposite gender. Which feeds, again, into how Kawi is focused on how society views him and believes everything society says about gay people, poor people, shy people, awkward people, sober people, lonely people, so on and so forth.

Kawi is being faced with a choice right now but it isn't what he thinks it is.

He is facing a choice between himself and the world. Between who he truly is and who he wants to be to fit into society.

And to even begin to face that choice, he is going to have to face his own homophobia and his own views of the world. He is going to have to face Max and Knot and Piseang and Pear. He is going to have to look at everything he has experienced and lived and realized that he has been trying to change a fundamental part of himself, many fundamental parts of himself, for his entire life.

Kawi needs to look past what society says about people, about him, and find out for himself what he thinks.

(I am absolutely terrified of how the show might handle this. There are so many layers and so many complications inherently built into the narrative we're seeing and this is based on Jittirain who does not handle nuance well. At all. And who definitely does not handle low self-esteem well. And characters in Jittirain stories tend to bow to whatever she wants the plot to be so... fear. Intrigue... but fear.)

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antialiasis · 5 months

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Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives the two of them visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with the winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But… it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they’ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

#musicals #chess musical #chess the musical #ramble #review

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hyperfixatedfandomer · 1 year

Text

He cared

Summary: Sullys find out what Spider did and he crumbles as the pain he’s been holding in for his entire life finally comes to the surface .

“You…you what?” Kiri asked, her voice shaking.

“I…I saved him.” Spider’s heart hammered against his ribcage in guilt and fear, but he looked bravely into her eyes. He had to be honest, had to tell them because it was the right thing to do.

Maybe he was writing his own death sentence, but Eywa doesn’t like liars, and neither does Spider himself. He was taught better than that, and it was better to rip off the band-aid sooner than later.

Seconds felt like years as the family all collectively went into shock, the realisation dawning on them slowly, painfully so, and suddenly the boy was overcome with terror. What had he done? He shouldn’t have stayed with them after what he did, he should have ran away or thrown himself off of a cliff or—

“Why did you do that?” Jake began, standing up slowly, growing louder with every word. “WHY?!” He took Spider‘s shoulders and shook him, looking rather pained than angry, like a part of him hoped there was some obscure explanation for why this boy saved a monster who was responsible for traumatising so many people in the past few months and promised to kill them all.

Honestly, the boy didn’t expect be given an opportunity to explain himself. Spider actually believed someone would snap his neck before he could open his mouth again, so he hasn’t thought it out this far, and the question was a simple one, however…he didn’t know the answer.

Or, well, he knew, there were many, but had no idea which one to give them, which one would make them understand, which one would stop them from killing him, although at this point he kind of felt like he deserved it.

Quaritch saved my life. Twice. I was only returning the favour.

He is not the same man who led the war on Pandora, he can change, he can redeem himself.

Eywa said all life is sacred, I couldn’t leave him to die, it would be wrong.

These were all real factors, honest feelings he had about his father captor, but deep down he knew that none of those played a role in that moment, when he saw that man drowning, for there was only one thought on his mind, only one feeling.

Fear. He feared for him. For this broken, twisted man who nevertheless had good in him, in these rare moments they’d share, the little smiles he’d give the boy when he was around simply because being with him made Quaritch happier, and it felt amazing to be wanted, and when he was wanted, Quaritch no longer felt like a horrid monster. Rather, he was simply a person forced into an identity of a dead man, trying to play the role he was given because it was all he had.

Until he got Spider.

And back on that burning ship, when the kid almost got murdered, he saw it.

He saw that Quaritch too, feared for him, and his mask crumbled as he let Kiri go.

So how could he let him die? The man who took him from everything he ever knew and kept him hostage but also…looked out for him? Genuinely gave him his all, even if his all was the bare minimum? Who tried, for him? Who gave up his mission and practically doomed himself to failure, for him?

“TELL ME!” Jake shook the boy more violently, locking eyes with him. Neytiri was too devastated to even move, recalling that dreadful day and imagining how she’d have to deal with it again.

Lo’ak’s breathing was heavy and sure enough, he began hyperventilating at the possibility of meeting Quaritch again.

The panic of other family members caused Tuk to start worrying too. She knew what Quaritch’s survival meant but she couldn’t be mad at Spider for not allowing someone to die, he was just being a good person, she thought, trying to push the traumatic memories of a Na’vi dressed in camo looming over her. Spider wasn’t a bad guy, she knew that much, so she put her small hands on her mother’s shoulders, trying to shake her out of the shock. “Mommy..?…”

“SPIDER GOD DAMN IT!” Jake became more distressed, cupping the kid’s face to force him to snap out of whatever brainstorm he was having and start talking. After all it wouldn’t be long until Neytiri comes out of her trans and she just might go wild again, spurred by the horrid memories.

“How..how could you!? How could you DO THAT!?!?” Lo’ak was now coming toward the teen with wide strides and Jake outstretched his left hand to force a distance between them. This was getting out of control and Spider still hasn’t said a word after his confession. “After EVERYTHING HE DID! TO NEYTAYAM! TO KIRI AND TUK! TO US! TO YOU!!”

“BECAUSE HE CARED, UNLIKE YOU!!!”

The hut went silent. Spider never raised his voice like this before, pouring his hurt and frustration into every syllable, but it felt so damn selfish to admit it, that at the bottom of it all, this was the real reason.

Quaritch simply gave him more attention in several months than the entirety of Omatekaya, Jake and Neytiri did in his entire life and it felt pathetic to admit that he got attached so easily.

He begged Eywa to forgive him, but at least he was being honest, the great mother couldn’t blame him for that.

“He chose me…even when he had nothing to gain…” Spider then mumbled with a shaky breath. “Even when he didn’t have to…he chose me.”before breaking eye contact with Jake and looking away.

Meanwhile, Jake’s anger was now nowhere to be found, and neither was Lo’ak’s. Kiri held an understanding expression and even Neytiri’s fury subsided.

The father looked at Spider with an increasingly guilty expression, his grip on the shoulders weakening, turning gentle before he embraced him ever so tightly, pouring all of shame, all of his regret and affection into it.

And that’s all it took for the boy to break down into tears as he weakly put his arms around the man’s neck.

Lo’ak couldn’t move, he knew that Spider felt this way for a long time but never made a substantial effort to do anything about the problem. He thought it would blow over but instead, his friend got so neglected he trauma bonded to the first man who treated him with basic affection. He felt guilty.

Kiri moved forward, hugging spider and her father tightly to support her friend, and soon her brother joined her, then Tuk.

And then, with something akin to pity, Neytiri did too, putting her hand on the back of spider’s hair. She brought this on herself, this self-fulfilling prophecy…but it didn’t have to be that way.

It will take time, and they’ll make mistakes, but Spider is no longer a stray cat and so, they have to try, really try this time.

To show him he is no longer alone, that he no longer needs to go for the worst option just to stay afloat.

To show him what love really feels like.

And Quaritch? If that man shows up again, they’ll face him, and they’ll do it together, like a fortress.

Because Sullys leave no one behind. Not anymore. Not ever again.

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tinyozlion · 5 months

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The Char Aznable Problem

Here’s a take for the MS Gundam fans in the audience: Using the Zechs-as-Char analogy will actually hinder you in understanding the finale of Gundam Wing.

I know there are unavoidable reasons for the comparison! Zechs is a deliberate homage, that's not in question. But I’d like to argue that taking Zechs’s actions on their own terms is the only reasonable way to evaluate them. Understanding Char’s Counterattack will certainly make Zechs’s performance more nuanced and recognizable, but expecting him to be the same person with the same copy-pasted goals is to miss the purpose of his character.

Neither of their goals make sense outside of their respective settings and character arcs, in the same way that MS Gundam and Gundam Wing are related thematically but are both telling very different kinds of stories in different ways.

Zechs doesn’t do a heel-turn and become a Char just because the hand of the franchise swooped in and forced him to; he does a heel turn and puts on a Char Costume (…mask?) because he is playing the villain, and the villain he is playing is Char.

Why? Because Char from Char’s Counterattack has no place in the universe of Gundam Wing. Standing up and saying Char Stuff™ in After Colony 195 makes you sound like you got the space madness.

White Fang Milliardo shows up out of nowhere with this new kind of racism he just invented and delivers a treatise about how humans from Space have become biologically superior to humans from Earth within a couple generations... in a setting where Newtypes aren’t a thing. There is no established precedent in AC 195 for declaring that space colonists are a super-evolved utopian master race OTHER than to blatantly manufacture conflict.

And like... ding ding ding, that’s the point.

Char from Char’s Counterattack is a complex, disillusioned, flawed man who is trying to make the earth uninhabitable for complex, flawed reasons that he genuinely plans on carrying out.

Milliardo is a complex, disillusioned, flawed man pretending very hard to want to make the earth uninhabitable because it’s an Ozymandias Gambit intended to galvanize all remaining forces to take part in a war that will ultimately burn through all of their military resources.

Char from Char’s Counterattack exists in a timeline where the earth is a polluted wasteland, and the space colonies are pristine, self-sustaining eutopias with ten billion people living in them.

Gundam Wing is a timeline where the earth is pristine, and the space colonies are oppressed dystopian slums with marginal populations still largely dependent on earth’s resources. Staging the KPG 2.0 in this context would be a death sentence for the colonies as well as the people on earth.

Char believes it’s his destiny to punish the people of earth for their selfishness and their inability to change or allow future generations to evolve. Milliardo believes the only thing he’s good for is to rid the world of people like himself, SO that the future generation has a chance to change for the better.

I’ve found that the more I know about MS Gundam, the deeper an appreciation I have for what Wing chose to adapt and where it diverged; I think that some of Wing’s greatest achievements are born from the moments it purposefully broke from its predecessor, and some of its greatest flaws come from when it chose to adapt things that just don't make sense outside of their original context-- I don't necessarily think that Milliardo pretending to be Char is one of those moments.

On the whole, what Wing feels like to me is a poignant echo of the Universal Century, as if we are seeing the reflections, the shared rhythms, of people and struggles across time and reality. Zechs is like a variation of the Char leitmotif transposed into a new composition.

…And anyway, Zechs isn’t even the Char Clone of Gundam Wing. Zechs AND Treize are the Char Clone of Gundam Wing.

The Red Comet is an ace pilot simultaneously admired and hated for his abilities and the respect he commands as a soldier. He has the luxury of being chivalrous on the battlefield because no one can compete with him, and because his ultimate goals differ from those of the ruthless organization that holds his reigns. He has the burden of a spotless reputation hiding a dark, secret purpose. He eventually turns coat and becomes Quattro, a mentor figure to the talented pilots who idolize him and walk the same path he does. The complexities of war erode his confidence and understanding of what is right, of what is actually worth fighting for in a world where the grind of battle never stops, and the same points have to be made over, and over, and over again, paid for in the blood of young people– people just like him, who he encouraged to fight, who had bright futures ahead of them– each and every time.

The glorious Neo Zeon leader is a wheeling and dealing homme-fatale who can play the game of politics, who knows how to put on an inspiring show for the adoring masses, all while getting what he wants through deceit, charm, treachery, abuse of his charisma, even his sensuality. He is willing to do anything for what he views as the best future for humanity– particularly for the humans he thinks are worthy of that better future, all while knowing he is not one of the chosen ones. He will always carry a seed of self-loathing and insecurity with him. He knows that the version of him that people idolize is only a mirage, but he is willing to use that mirage to steer the future where he believes it should go, sacrificing whoever he needs to for an end that justifies any means.

Zechs is the ace pilot. Treize is the glorious leader. They’re both variations on theme of Char.

Char’s story takes place over the course of his lifetime, spanning multiple series-- Zechs/Milliardo simply doesn’t have time to be everything Char was in the time frame of Wing. Instead his influence is played by two people, representing different eras of his life, existing simultaneously and in coordinated opposition to each other.

Nobody can really be Char except Char, and Char can't really be substituted for Zechs or Treize within their own universe. Even clones grow up differently when they're raised in different environments.

#gundam wing #milliardo peacecraft #zechs merquise #char aznable #treize khushrenada #gundam wing meta #gundam meta #parsing post #tinyozlion pgw

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tillwehavefaces · 23 days

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I have literally never posted about Buddie before, but I want to add my two cents to the whole Buck/Tommy debate. I know there are mixed feelings and both sides have valid points, but to those who were expecting a Buddie kiss this soon - I don't get it?

Ever since I found out abc had picked up 911, I was and remain cautiously hopeful for Buddie endgame - in fact, the kiss makes me far more hopeful than I was a week ago. Because the truth is that if they'd gone straight for Buddie, it would have been bad storytelling. Offensively bad storytelling.

Hear me out. I agree with y'all that the storytelling that's happened up until now makes it clear that Buddie are in love with each other. I also happen to think that the storytelling that's happened up until now makes it clear that neither of these himbos have any clue that they're in love with each other, or that they even could fall in love with a man.

And it's not for lack of opportunity, if the writers had wanted to go that way, obviously! There's was Buck's reaction to Eddie being stuck in the well and Eddie making Buck Christopher's guardian in his will and both of them almost dying and Eddie having a literal breakdown over all the trauma he's repressed and they've both been to therapy and they've both broken up with women who were all wrong for them ... I could go on and on.

But not only did the writers not take any of these opportunities to make at least one of them realize their feelings for the other might not be platonic (certainly, no explicit indication on screen), but because fox was so afraid of losing viewers if they made both their supposedly straight male firefighters queer, they doubled down on Eddie and Buck seeing their relationship as platonic. Every time one of them went through some kind of life-changing experience and questioned deeply held beliefs about themselves yet never questioned their sexuality, it made it seem less and less likely that *anything* would make them realize they might be queer and in love with their best friend.

Honestly, I think if abc had gotten the show at a different point, they might have been able to go straight into Buddie. For example, a season earlier? Eddie's just gotten through a ton of trauma with the help of a therapist and is returning to the 118, and it would've been easy to write a storyline where he's realized his feelings for Buck and tries to do something about it. Or maybe right after Buck's near-death experience. But they both got through those traumas and started dating new women, as oblivious to the love right in front of them as ever. And that's how S6 ended.

So I don't think there's anything abc could have done to convince me that either one of them suddenly realizes how they feel without something happening. If that Buck/Tommy kiss had instead been a Buddie kiss, I would have loved it, but I wouldn't have really believed it. It wouldn't have felt genuine.

Excuse my nerdy science brain, but it's like inertia - Buck and Eddie have both been going in one direction for so long (the 'we're straight best friends!' direction) that it's going to take some kind of force to knock them off that path. It can't be near death experiences, cause they've both been there and it hasn't worked. It can't be finding new girlfriends or breaking up with said girlfriends. No, it's gotta be something really obvious.

That force is Tommy. A canon gay character who recognizes Buck as queer even when Buck doesn't recognize himself as queer. Who (unknowingly) forces Buck to confront that part of himself by kissing him, which will in turn force Eddie to confront his feelings and reaction to seeing his best friend and co-parent now dating a man. I can't say for sure that Buddie is coming, but I honestly think this (not Tommy specifically, but a queer man who is outside the whole Buddie situation) is the only way to tell this story in a way that makes it feel true to life, given the mess that fox created.

#buddie #9 1 1 abc #evan buckley #eddie diaz #buck x eddie #9 1 1

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