☆ FAVORITE GIRL
ᝰ you think he's just another frat boy with meaningless flirty words for the person he sits next to in a boring class (he's down horrendous)
frat boy satoru x f!reader, college au, somewhat established relationship you guys are classmates, sfw no smut, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, just lots of him being an idiot with a massive huge earth shattering crush <3
"And how's my favorite girl?"
"Worse, thought you'd skip this class again and we'd have some peace." You roll your eyes as you slide the straps of your backpack over the back of your chair.
Satoru Gojo, nuance Sig Ep and unfortunately glued to your side since the first day of statistics for reasons unknown to you. You'd made an effort to avoid members of greek life on campus, not wanting to get involved in party culture or whatever new dramatics were unfolding with its subgroups. That only seemed to encourage him though, casually throwing his arm around you through the duration of lectures and begging in that whining tone of his for you to come by the house.
You never did, you also pointedly ignored most of his text messages and actively regretted ever having to give him your phone number after the one assignment you'd been paired up for. Outside the occasional drunk text where he'd plead for you to show up, which did make you feel both bad for ignoring him and a little high off the attention. Not that you'd ever admit to clicking your phone lock and grinning to yourself in bed on those nights.
"C'mon, I'm the highlight of your day!" He shoots you that signature megawatt smile and you stick out your tongue at him, scooting your chair in the opposite direction and creating a wide gap as you sit down.
You see him frown and for a half second it looks genuine, making a pang of guilt reverberate through you so you scoot back to where you were and he resumes pestering you with some latest escapade in the Eps house as you both wait for the stream of students to peter off and the lecture to begin.
"Hey so, why you been ignoring my texts?" He pulls a pout and god you wish it wasn't actually cute.
"You send me weird combinations of emojis Gojo, what can I say to that?"
"It's Satoru," he quips almost immediately, barely allowing you to finish.
"Alright, Satoru, it's because you send me weirdo shit. Say hi every once in a while and maybe I'll say it back." You shrug, opening your laptop and preparing yourself to block out his incessant whispering for the next hour while you take down notes.
~
"You actually came!"
The sheer volume in the cramped, would-be living room of the house made you wince in tandem with his shout as Satoru threw an arm around you.
"I'm just humoring you so you stop bugging me!" You shout back, accepting a cup of god knows what from his hands and already formulating a plan of when it would be polite to bow out for the night without a barrage of where'd you go texts.
He doesn't answer you, too busy immediately yelling at some other guy over the volume of the music but you don't miss the way his hand slides down your back to settle at the lower curve, just above your ass. It makes you smile a little, despite your own misgivings about the scene you're in.
But quickly it becomes too much, being jostled by a permanently sweaty and horny crowd in such a cramped space, and you find yourself drifting outside to a patio sparsely populated with only a handful of smokers. The alcohol buzzing inside your brain makes you crave one, a thick, acrid stream of smoke spreading like thick flower petals blossoming inside your lungs.
One girl catches your eye and slowly you meander over to where she's perched, away from the rest on a railing that's seen one too many coats of poor paint jobs.
"Could I bum one off you?"
"You got a dollar?"
Lamely you pat your hips, absentmindedly searching for one until she lets out a soft laugh and extends the pack in her hand out to you. Marlboro lights, the gold top of it shimmers faintly in the dim light as you slide one out and accept the lighter she passes you.
"I tell myself lights mean I'm working on quitting. What a load of shit." She huffs out a laugh to herself as you flick the lighter and it gives a few sparky coughs before the flame catches, burning the tip of the cigarette into a solid ember cherry.
"I'm Ieiri," she says cordially as you hand back the deep purple lighter.
You give her your name before taking a deep drag of the cigarette, enjoying the feeling of it settling in your chest.
"They should invent a kind of cigarette that doesn't kill you." You say absentmindedly and she cracks a smile.
"Too bad the "healthy " cigarettes of ye old days had asbestos in them."
That makes you laugh, enjoying the way it flows into the air with the breeze that plays against your skin, like a lover running fingers over it and giving you gooseflesh.
"Wait, you're the girl Satorus got statistics with right? Tuesdays and Thursdays?" She asks between puffs, flicking ash off into the dark.
"Yeah, the very same. I figured I should finally take him up on the offer to come over, I've blown him off so many times." Saying out loud makes you feel a little like an ass, he may get on your nerves but he's never been anything but sweet to you.
"You know he's like, obsessed with you, right?" She says with another laugh and it makes you raise a brow.
"Oh yeah?"
She shakes her head, another drag before continuing. "Oh yeah. Gets too drunk every weekend and cries in the bathroom because you didn't show, has a crisis every day because he doesn't know what to say to you in texts. I've never seen him excited about a math course before this semester either, usually it's any excuse to cut class until a prof bitches at him."
With every word a strange sense of giddiness grows in tandem with the alcohol drenching your brain, and you can't help but think about those devastating blue eyes. The opposite of rose colored glasses but it fits, a shade of comfortable blue that tints the world because of him and suddenly you're gripped by the urgent need to go back inside and find him.
"Hey, thanks for the cigarette but I'm gonna go find him. See you inside?" You crush the butt out with the toe of your shoe, grinding it down and giving Ieiri a wave goodbye as the wall of thumping bass and neon light swallows you back up.
It strikes you as incredible how a house can turn into a labyrinth when filled to the brim with bodies and only offering the occasional flash of strobe or neon lights to guide you in the dark. After when feels like hours and checking nearly every room you come across for Satoru, without luck, you find Ierie once again leaning against a closed door with a particularly bored expression.
"Satoru she wasn't saying she was leaving she said she was coming to find you, dummy. Open the door."
As you sidled up beside her she shot you a conspiratorial glance before pulling you closer so you could hear her over the din.
"Can you tell him you're right here? He's such a whiny drunk." She rolls her eyes but you can tell it's playful, although you get the feeling this has happened more than once.
Hesitantly you put your palm against the door, feeling the distant bass thrumming through the wood. "Hey Satoru? I didn't leave, I'm right out here with Ierie!"
There's silence on the other side, making you frown in concern until the door is suddenly wrenched open and you nearly fall right against him. Despite clearly being drunk his hands come to grasp your upper arms gently to steady you before yanking you inside the hazy dark of what you assume was his bedroom.
"You're welcome!" You hear Shoko yell through the door as he sits down in a huff, still holding onto you, against a well worn futon.
You can't help but giggle at the way he almost curls around you, as if determined to attach to your side like some sort of sucker fish. With a bit of wiggling you manage to pull back, sweeping a few stray strands of hair from those baby blues as you do.
It's in that moment, when your fingertips brush his skin, that everything seems to pause. The noise outside seemingly vanishes, and it's like only the two of you exist in a comfortable bubble of silence. You never really noticed how his eyes looked almost crystalline before, too pretty to exist.
"Who gave you eyes like that?" You murmur, more to yourself but nevertheless he beams down at you.
"So you do like me, huh?"
The way he says it, so boyish, so... happy. You can't help but smile back, a shy thing that barely tugs at the corners of your lips.
"Duh, of course I do."
That makes him frown a bit, brows knitting in thought and somehow it made him look even cuter. No fair.
"Then how come you never showed up before? And you don't text me back?" A little pout forms on his lips as he finishes and you're struck with the overwhelming urge to kiss him.
With a superhuman effort you keep yourself focused on answering him. "You're, well... All this," you gesture broadly with your hands as you pull away slightly. "And I'm just a girl you have stats with. I thought maybe you were just yanking me around, being flirty in class but that's it, you know? I didn't wanna look stupid getting my hopes up."
"A girl I have stats with? You're joking, right? You're everything." He says incredulously, eyes wide as if more shocked than insulted that you could've looked at the situation that way.
Heat rushes beneath your skin at that, you're everything, and you know it's not the alcohol making you lightheaded. In your silence he continues.
"Y'know I'm not just messing around with you, I think about you all the time. Sometimes you're all I think about all day-"
With a surge of confidence you grab him by the front of his shirt, pulling him down and cutting him off with your lips pressed against his. It grips you like a fever, a crushing need to taste him. It's all sloppy teeth and tongues and spit but it feels perfectly serendipitous at the same time, an otherworldly calm that takes hold of your mind as your lips move against one another.
As you open your eyes into his you can't help the grin that now stretches wide across your mouth, giggling as you press kiss after kiss against his lips, his cheeks, his forehead and soon enough he's dissolved into a puddle of giggles and faux pouts in your arms.
"Will you tell me I'm your favorite girl again?"
"I'll tell you that forever."
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Over the past 13 years, Tom Hiddleston has died more times than he can recall. “Let me think about this,” the actor tells us, pausing to count in his head. “I think, officially, there were two big ones.”
He’s referring to his many exits from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the blockbuster franchise in which he’s played shape-shifting Norse god Loki Laufeyson since Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 film “Thor”—the son of Asgardians Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and Frigga (Rene Russo), and the half-sibling of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the god of thunder.
The character has since bounced between villain and reluctant antihero across five films, a handful of post-credits scenes, and Michael Waldron’s Disney+ spinoff series “Loki,” which Hiddleston also executive produces. The show wrapped its second—and supposedly final—season last November. The finale presents an end for the character, but not one of the aforementioned “big ones.”
Hiddleston’s first “official” farewell came in Alan Taylor’s 2013 sequel “Thor: The Dark World,” which saw the god of mischief take a sword to the chest to save his beefy brother. “As written in the first script, it was a true sacrifice,” Hiddleston says. Unfortunately for Marvel’s long-term plans, the actor had done too good a job playing the trickster.
“When Marvel [executives] were testing the movie, they’d given [viewers] questionnaires that said, ‘Is there anything you didn’t understand?’ ” he remembers. “Literally every single audience member said, ‘Well, obviously, Loki’s not really dead.’ ”
In classic comic-book fashion, the character did return, gallivanting alongside his brother in Taika Waititi’s 2017 follow-up “Thor: Ragnarok.” He died again one year later (“big one” number two) in the Russo brothers’ “Avengers: Infinity War.” There were no smokescreens or questionnaires this time; audiences watched as Loki’s neck was crushed by the purple fist of intergalactic warlord Thanos (Josh Brolin).
Hiddleston remembers arriving in Atlanta to shoot his final scene and immediately bumping into Brolin. “He came up to me, gave me this huge hug, and said, ‘I’m so sorry, man.’ ”
He meant it, too; everyone meant it. The sun, it seemed, had actually set on Hiddleston’s MCU journey. “At the end of that scene, I got a big round of applause, and everybody was so sweet and kind and gracious,” he says. “I got notes and emails saying, ‘Tom, you’ve done so much for us—what a journey. Come and see us anytime.’ I really thought that was the end.”
And it was, for real, right up until it wasn’t—when the time-traveling shenanigans of 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” blasted a younger version of Loki out of the established canon and into his own series. Over two seasons, the multiversal storyline envisions the title character as a figure who exists outside time and space. Across all there is, was, and may come to pass, there will always be a Loki, in some form, wreaking havoc.
Hiddleston has long since accepted what this means for him as an actor. Maybe “Loki” Season 2 really was his last time in the role; or maybe he’ll play him until the sun burns out. “I’ve realized that, in human consciousness, that’s who Loki is,” he says. “Loki is this ancient, mythic character, who, in our collective mythology, represents the trickster, the transgressor, the boundary-crosser, the shape-shifter—somebody who’s mercurial and spontaneous and unpredictable who will always confound your expectations and wriggle out from underneath your certainties and convictions. Someone who we need and [who] is necessary.”
Hiddleston pauses, getting emotional. “Maybe Loki escaping death a couple of times is sort of an emblem of who he is in our culture,” he says, grinning at his own gusto. The actor has a habit of being self-deprecating about the depth of the character’s lore. “I spend a lot of time thinking about Loki. You can probably tell.”
You can tell, and it’s incredibly endearing. Talking to Hiddleston about Loki feels like discussing Shakespeare’s Richard III with Laurence Olivier or Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois with Jessica Lange. They were actors who put their definitive stamps on those roles by returning to the well and constantly digging deeper.
In conversation, Hiddleston is equally as likely to reference comic-book arcs as he is the ancient, anonymous Old Norse scribes of the “Poetic Edda” or Richard Wagner’s epic four-cycle opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” He speaks reverently of actors who embodied the trickster god before him, like Jim Carrey in Chuck Russell’s 1994 comedy “The Mask” and Alan Cumming in Lawrence Guterman’s 2005 sequel, “Son of the Mask.” He also heaps praise on those who played the part after him, such as his “Loki” costars Sophia Di Martino, Richard E. Grant, Deobia Oparei, and—in one very surreal Season 1 moment—“some alligator they found somewhere.” He cites legendary Marvel creators Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Walter Simonson alongside the likes of English essayist Walter Pater and Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who once wrote of life as a “splendid torch” to keep burning for those who follow.
“Loki is ‘a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,’ ” Hiddleston quotes, “and I want to make it burn as brightly as I can before passing it on to future generations.”
This level of study started before he even landed the role. He recalls the 24 hours leading up to his “Thor” audition, when he was 28 years old. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2005, he quickly earned small-screen and stage acclaim—but he hadn’t yet achieved a major breakthrough. When he received the script for “Thor,” it felt familiar. “I remember thinking, This is almost Shakespearean, this language,” Hiddleston says. “What’s the best example I can [look to] of an actor who managed to humanize and make real this elevated world of myth?”
He found the answer in Christopher Reeve, who played the title role in Richard Donner’s 1978 blockbuster “Superman.” “He’s masterful in that film,” Hiddleston says. “In a way, it’s a similar premise: He’s a god or he’s a being from a different realm, and it’s not naturalistic in the way that we might expect. He does it so truthfully, and it’s so clear and clean and open and honest. I thought, If I can even approximate or get close to the kind of clarity that Christopher Reeve had in those films, I’ll be lucky.”
And then, the morning of his “Thor” audition, Hiddleston went for a run, “which is my habit before doing anything unusual,” he explains.
Running has remained a constant throughout the actor’s MCU tenure. At any given moment over the last decade, the god of mischief was likely doing laps around Marvel’s go-to shooting location, Pinewood Studios (now Trilith Studios) in Atlanta. “Life is movement; I really believe that,” Hiddleston says.
“I find when I’m running or walking, the repetitive nature of it relaxes the mind and allows ideas and inspiration to come from a deeper place. I see my work as an actor—especially in preparation for a project or a scene—as almost preparing myself to be open and ready to receive ideas, to receive energy from other actors, to receive energy from my imagination.”
Hiddleston found the technique particularly helpful when he was filming a scene for the “Loki” series premiere that he calls “one of the most thrilling challenges I’ve ever had as an actor.” In it, Loki has been poached from the flow of time itself by the temporality-policing Time Variance Authority and forced to watch what is, essentially, a highlight reel of his entire MCU arc. It’s one of the most deeply existential moments you’ll ever find streaming alongside the likes of “Bluey” and the “Cars” movies. Here is a man watching the sum total of his life—his hopes, his dreams, his failures, his own death—play out in a 30-second clip that ends with the cold, clinical words: “End of file.”
“I just kept imagining: If you were afforded the opportunity or forced to watch your own death as a bystander, it would bring about an existential shock and crisis unlike any other,” Hiddleston explains. “It was a scene where I thought, I don’t have a reference for how to play this. I just have to allow shock, disgust, disgrace, shame, disbelief, acceptance, incredulity, and sorrow to exist in the center of me.”
As an executive producer on the series, Hiddleston had a say as to which of Loki’s many misdeeds would play in the sequence. He chose clips like Frigga’s death in “Thor: The Dark World” and his father’s final words in “Thor: Ragnarok”—moments Hiddleston knew would most fill the character with regret. As production was preparing to shoot the scene, he asked first assistant director Richard Graves for a 20-minute warning.
“I decided to jog around the stage and internalize as many of those memories of those people, those characters, those actors [as possible]—to try and find the center of my own vulnerability,” Hiddleston says. “Part of the joy of it was just going back to basics, trying to simplify this very complex thing…. Go for a jog, get into your body, allow yourself to be open, and just be there; just feel it.”
One “Loki”-like time jump later, Hiddleston found himself in a similar situation as he was preparing to shoot his final moment of Season 2—a scene that effectively caps Loki’s 13-year arc. Across 12 episodes, the show guided its title character toward a truly heroic end: With all of existence on the verge of collapse, he steps out of time to tie the strands of every reality together. As the credits roll, Loki sits at the center of time, holding in place all that is—alone.
It’s a lot for any actor to internalize, especially one who’s performing solo in front of a blue screen. With 45 minutes to cameras rolling, episode co-director Aaron Moorhead made a suggestion. “He said to me, ‘Why don’t you go back, if you can bear it, and watch some of your work [over] the last 15 years?’ ” Hiddleston remembers. “ ‘Take it in, see what it means to you, and then carry it when you step out onto the stage.’ ”
The actor took Moorhead’s advice to heart. And suddenly, without meaning to, he was mirroring the moment that started the series: absorbing the sum total of Loki’s MCU run. But this time, his regret had been replaced with gratitude. Hiddleston watched clips from “Thor,” remembering a time when he and Hemsworth had yet to ascend to the A-list. He recalled working with powerhouses like Hopkins and Russo, and the bonds he forged with the “original six Avengers” in 2011. He thought about how fun it was to film “Thor: Ragnarok” with Tessa Thompson and Jeff Goldblum, and of the more recent friendships he found with his “Loki” castmates Di Martino and Owen Wilson.
“I thought, What Loki is doing, he is doing for his friends. And so, Tom, why don’t you do it for your friends?” Hiddleston says. “That’s where the two of us met in that moment. And then I was so grateful I had this most amazing crew, and we did it together.”
The actor is, of course, noncommittal as to whether this is actually the end of his MCU run. The franchise is scheduled out until at least 2027, and Hemsworth has mentioned his desire to make another “Thor” film. And if Loki’s past has proven anything, even the most official endings can be undone.
Either way, it seems to Hiddleston that something significant has ended, even if it’s just Loki’s full-circle arc. “I hope it feels redemptive because his broken soul is partially healed; and you see that this character, who is capable of love, has made a decision from and for love,” he says. The actor cites the “beautiful prologue” of the first “Thor” film, in which Hopkins’ Odin tells his two sons: “Only one of you can ascend to the throne, but both of you were born to be kings.”
“At the end of Season 2, Loki is sitting on a kind of throne; but it’s not arrived in the shape he expected, and there’s no glory in it,” Hiddleston explains. “There’s a kind of burden, and he’s alone. He’s doing it for his friends, but he has to stay there without them. There’s a poetic melancholy there which I found very moving.”
For now, Hiddleston “can’t even conceive” of his life without Loki. He only hopes that he’s lived up to his guiding ethos as an actor, which he sums up with a plea from E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel “Howards End”: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.”
“The feedback loop for actors is that we get to inhabit a fiction,” Hiddleston says. “But hopefully, that fiction bears the shape of a truth that we recognize about life—that what we do reflects the ups and downs, the peaks and troughs, and the breadth and profundity of all of our lives.”
Hiddleston exists in that space between fiction and reality, the work and the resulting art, the prose and the passion. Long after we’ve moved on from our interview and started casually discussing the cherry blossoms blooming in New York, his eyes light up. He’s made another connection, remembered one more thing—just one last thing he’d like to impart about Loki.
He spends a lot of time thinking about Loki. You can probably tell.
“I’m so aware that the reason I’ve been able to play him for so long is because of the audience’s curiosity and passion,” Hiddleston says. “I’ve been delighted to find that for a character of such stature, he’s remarkably human. Many of the characteristics that people connect to in Loki are deeply human feelings. That’s been the pleasure, is infusing this elevated character with humanity.”
Even then, honestly, it feels as if Hiddleston, like Loki, could go on forever. Unfortunately, outside of the MCU, time moves in only one direction. Once again, he has to run.
This story originally appeared in the June 6 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe to In the Envelope: The Actor's Podcast to hear our full conversation with Hiddleston (out 6/6).
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Ok unpopular opinion but
I kind of appreciate the love triangle
Yes I get frustrated as crap with it sometimes with me thinking why she can't just pick one and call it a day
Then I realized
That's not very realistic
Cause in all of my Middle grade books (and a good bit of YA) that I read
When there's a love interest it's basically set in stone
Listen don't get me wrong
I love percabeth and Hallia and Merlin and all of those ships
But come on
How many people actually end up with the first person they like, or that they kissed, or dated
Not many
So I can appreciate Sophie not knowing exactly what she wants and taking her time deciding
Real people have to date a few people before finding the right one and make mistakes
She was willing to test things out instead of just going "it's Fitz I want and I won't settle for anything else"
Cause she kissed Dex (even though I cringe at that scene 😖)
She was willing to test it out cause she was curious and even though she didn't like him she also didn't shoot it down immediately
When she found out she was unmatchable and her and Fitz broke up
She was heartbroken (which I completely understand) but she also started to think maybe it would be better if they were only friends
When Ro told her Keefe liked her
She was still trying to figure out what she wanted with Fitz
But she was also starting to realize its ok if she has more than one option to choose from
She can like one person but then realize maybe they aren't the best fit for each other
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so i think the order of events in (a)synchronicity is this. btw this is going to fully lean into shinigami shenanigans incuding...... sexy shenanigans
minato saves tori and she decides she is going to kill him
tori makes minato soup
some other stuff happens including minato tracking her back down and her breaking minato's arm
minato is obsessed with her now
over the course of this tori has been killed a few times to really drive home what happens when she "dies"
jiraiya and kushina both promise minato they will help him get laid
minato is reporting on tori at the beginning but he lapses and fails to communicate adequately to anyone how deadly she is. he's in love, okay, and the only people he respects are egging him on
he kills a bunch of people at her request and tori decides she DOES like him back. this isn't even the "kill one thousand iwa-nin in one go" thing btw
the "kill one thousand iwa-nin in one go" thing happens and it's not even on konoha's orders. minato just does this to get his girlfriend back. he's super happy about it too because now they're together <3
konoha is finally like: wait. wait what the F U C K
hiruzen is like: drop yur girl and take this genin team
and minato is like: no i can do both >:(
konoha goes to check out tori but she's just. some. lady????
and so konoha is like. oh my god, the yellow flash has completely lost it. let's wok him to death
and then that DOESN'T WORK
konoha decides the solution is to kill tori. but they want to send minato a lesson because he's actively ignoring direct orders to dump her and they can't let him realize they actually can't stop him from doing whatever he wants.
so the plan is: use jiraiya to distract minato with a mission. kill tori and physically cut the hiraishin marker off her skin. then move her somewhere and mutilate her corpse for the "lesson" part. thy'd prefer to mutilate her FIRST but also they don't know if she has a way to summon minato. so the priority is to kill her and get the marker off
however jiraiya is not stupid and also he's a nice guy who really does want to get minato laid. he realizes something is up after minato says something incongruent with something hiruzen said to him
minato show up just in time to see tori is freshly dead, and then all the konoha-nin still on the scene just. die? he didn't even do anything???
tori flips out bc the shinigami si still possessing her and it gets ~greedier~ every time she dies but she LIKES minato and NOT HIM--!
the shinigami is like: you know what. you're right. even though i'm perpetually starving, this guy is the only one who's ever filled me.
and then the shinigami is like: in want him inside us though, right now
tori: minato. fuck me. right now
minato, confused and overjoyed and also sensing something is weird and terrible: you were DEAD???
tori: i'm fine. we want you to.
minato: all the grass around you is dead
jiraiya has been completely ignored in this and he's run off to hunt down someone from the konoha team who went off as a messenger. jiraiya takes him captive to come back to tori alive again and doing. whatever the fuck that is
minato instinctively kind of knows what happened and he's freaked out but also. that's his cute girlfriend and someone stabbed a senbon through her neck. :<
they get the full story out of jiraiya's captive
this is some sort of moral turning point. tori decides she does want minato for forever, and to do that she'll have to end the war and maybe konoha itself. minato suddenly finds his faith in his own village tanked. jiraiya is beginning to suspect hooking up with tori is a bad idea
also
tori: please? pleeeease?
minato, in tears: no i'm NOT going to choke you to death in bed to have kinky shinigami sex
tori: i have never been hornier for you though :<
minato: (sobbing)
and maybe
tori: hey if the shinigami kills everything but you while we do it. do you think you're shooting blanks or what
minato: please stop trying to run experiments on my dick
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the people who have all this empathy for jaune “i’ve been alone for so long!” but turn around and have absolutely none for salem who was alone for. orders of magnitude longer. they confuse me
misogyny is always a contributing factor to this sort of double standard, but also in this case it is absolutely driven by narrative framing and familiarity: we’re introduced to jaune as this sort of pathetically obnoxious loser who transforms into an all-around pretty decent guy once the machismo bullshit has been soundly knocked out of him and he settles down with his true strengths (caring about his friends a lot and quietly doing things that need doing), so his extreme out of pocket behavior in v9 is shocking. it’s not like him at all; it’s a side of him we’ve only seen glimmerings of before in his worst moments.
in contrast, salem is the villain and for the first five volumes of the story the only things we really know about her is that she’s a grimm-person who kills people and hates the huntsmen academies for the presumable reason of being a grimm—AND THEN the horrific tragedies that made her this way are presented to the audience through the very biased lens of ozpin’s perspective, with the result that her humanity in all this is elided because oz has spent the last few thousand years (not) coping by desperately trying to convince himself that salem is and always has been ontologically evil.
which is to say, the lost fable only humanizes her if you, as a viewer, are willing to set aside preconceived notions about her built up over the previous five volumes and question the narratorial voice telling you that she’s always been Horrible. this is not an accident—the whole narrative hinges on the obfuscation of salem’s humanity and the very gradual erosion of these stories told about her by other characters—the story is playing a long game, here. so there’s nothing especially shocking about the lost fable; to a viewer who isn’t interested in knowing why salem does these awful things, it only fills in details confirming that she’s Just a Bad Egg.
that’s also why—imo—6.4 is equally as crucial as 6.3, because the scene with hazel et al returning to evernight and everybody expecting salem to shoot the messenger only for her to pointedly not do that, and then make a point of sending everyone out of the room and struggling to restrain her anger when she actually does lose her temper, is surprising and is in contradiction with what we’ve been told, by qrow and ozpin and raven and jinn, to expect from her. so that’s how it is annotates the lost fable by subverting the expectation that salem is going to kill or maim someone in retribution for the loss at haven. surprise is a powerful narrative tool.
of course, that’s still much more subtle than the stark change in jaune’s character, so it too gets overlooked by… anyone who wasn’t already inclined to read between the lost fable’s lines.
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Hello! Hope you're having a good time on the planet!
Are there any fics where the 1941 magic show goes wrong? I'm mainly thinking of if Aziraphale did end up getting shot, but a fic wherein any part doesn't go as smoothly would be good. No tag limits/stuff to avoid.
I've tried looking but unfortunately people tend not to tag their fics with the episode name.
Thank you!
Here are some fics in which the magic show doesn't go as smoothly. Mind the warnings on a couple of these!...
Shoot Your Shot by Skywing80 (T)
Crowley struggles with the fact that he has to shoot a bullet at Aziraphale. The nerves eventually get to him.
Panic on the Streets of London by krowtenretsnom (G)
“Aziraphale would forgive him like he always did, but Crowley wasn’t sure if he would be able to forgive himself.”
Or, Crowley can’t bring himself to shoot Aziraphale during the magic act in 1941.
And Eden Sank With Grief by Pockykierra (T)
When the gun slipped from Crowley’s shaking, sweating hands and his finger caught the trigger, the sound from it was deafening, the flash of light from it blinding. Even with his glasses, he had to close his eyes against it - though in those few milliseconds after, he began to wonder if it was actually because of how overwhelming it all was rather than the light. Whatever the reason was, his eyes were closed.
And they really, really shouldn’t be. Why did he close his eyes? That was incredibly stupid of him, completely idiotic. He opened them.
When he saw Aziraphale staring at him with wide-eyed surprise, a hand pressed to his bleeding, broken chest, he wished he hadn’t.
or
The bullet catch scene doesn't go quite as it did in the TV show
The Night of the Living Turnip by runningturnip (T)
During Aziraphale's 1941 magic show, while the miracle blocker was in place, his attempts at miracling the turnip into an inkwell didn't just fizzle out. They built up, paused in place, and when the miracle blocker timed out...
Well, it turns out that a pile of increasingly frantic miracles by a somewhat panicking angel (concentrated upon a singular point) resulted in giving a turnip sentience—and little arms and legs. Of course, while Aziraphale and Crowley argued about what to do, the turnip took its first opportunity to explore the theatre and cause inadvertent mischief.
Cue the Benny Hill music.
And You're To Blame by YamiSnuffles (E)
“The miraculous Bullet Catch requires the use of a trusted stooge and confidant.”
As though Crowley needed the reminder. He’d looked at the manual too late but the words were burned into his memory. They existed as a testament to everything he’d done wrong. He didn’t appreciate having them thrown in his face and he made it known with a curl of his lip that bared still sharp teeth. “To be successful, perhaps. Did that look like a successful trick to you?”
-
The Bullet Catch goes terribly wrong and Crowley shoots Aziraphale. Crowley has to find a way forward in a world where he discorporated his best friend.
You Blow My Mind Away! by MimeOfATime (M)
The amazing magic act of Fell the Marvelous goes wrong.
- Mod D
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KEEP QUIET —★
NSFW under the cut! ⊹ Nijiro x Reader
[warnings — quickie, p in v, unprotected, swearing, cumming inside, semi public]
-,' syn – Nijiro needs an outlet for his adrenaline. Shooting fight scenes as Kazutora and then having to wait for others to shoot theirs, it's throwing him off more than usual tonight.
[AN] no cuz guys, Nijiro literally never shows his arms. Like bro is always wearing long sleeves, jackets, or yk just baggy shirts in general. So this 40 second clip of him (where he's literally just in his own little world on the TR set) WEARING A SINGLET like I can't deal fr, I feel like a Victorian man seeing a woman's ankles for the first time, like it's driving me up the wall.
----------------------------------------------------
"mm-ngh! Niji, fuck" your small whines were quickly silenced by Nijiro's hand covering your mouth. He had previously swept you away from the set, you weren't acting in the Tokyo Revengers movie but since your boyfriend was, you watched from behind the camera with the rest of the crew. It was so cool seeing your boyfriend in his element, you usually weren't allowed to be with the crew since you don't actually work for them, but the TR production was pretty laid back and let you stay to watch. Which is what you were doing, until about 5 minutes ago.
Nijiro was frustrated with the way they were filming. Usually they'd film a single characters scenes all at once, so they wouldn't have their actors coming on and off constantly, but for some reason they changed it for tonight. The night where Nijiro had to film his biggest fight scene.
It was really pissing him off, the way he'd get fully committed to the character, and then be told to go off and take 5 because they needed to shoot someone else. Why would they change the formula? It was perfect the way it was, now the production will suffer.
And above all else, Nijiro was told to take 5 right when his adrenaline would reach its peak. Naturally, he needed an outlet, a way to keep his energy up. Luckily, his favourite thing to put his energy into was standing right infront of him.
"keep quiet f'me baby.." he whispered, gently covering your mouth with his hand. The only lighting in the bathroom being from the dim street lamps outside, increasing the secretive atmosphere. You were pinned against the bathroom wall as Niji buried himself in your cunt, practically imprinting his shape into your walls. Your eyes travelled down to his arms, fuck. You mentally thank the costume team for finally getting Nijiro to wear a singlet, he never wore shirts that showed off his arms, so you made sure to remember this session over the rest. His sweat gleamed in the faint warm light, decorating his neck and collarbones, your eyes fixated on his fake neck tattoo. Fuck, you'd have to convince him to cosplay or something after this, the sight mixed with the pleasure was making your head spin.
His arms and shoulders flexed with each thrust as he held you up by your thighs, fucking into you like this was the last time he'd ever get. It took everything in you not to scream out his name, along with a nicely crafted string of cuss words, letting everyone hear how good he fucks you. Small whimpers were the most you could let out, not wanting Niji to get punished for having a quickie mid set.
"You're so good f'me... fuck baby" His voice was intoxicating, his touch made you feel ways you've never felt before. Your arms rested over his shoulders, not that they needed to — his strong hold kept you up with no issue. You were sure that if he fucked you any harder, you'd end up bringing down the wall you were currently pinned up against. He felt the need to groan louder, feeling it build — his mouth soon found your neck, sucking on your sweet spots, only bringing you closer to the edge.
You felt Nijiro's hips stutter, followed by his teeth digging into your skin a little harder than before.
"m-mmh cum, cum with me baby" His hot breath laced your jawline as he rutted into you faster than ever. Feeling that familiar knot in your stomach about to snap, you couldn't stay silent anymore.
"mmh- cumming.. cummingcummingcummi- ahh!" You cried into his neck. Shortly met with the feeling of your walls being painted white by Niji's hot white seed, filling you up, keeping you warm. You could swear you saw heaven for a second, his touch made you drunk, reaching a state of euphoria you could never get anywhere else.
His arms gently let you back down, still keeping you steady with your bodies pressed together as you could barely stand. Whispering sweet praises in your ear as his hand went down to fuck his cum back into you, not letting any leak out. You smiled weakly as his words laced your eardrums, almost forgetting he was in the middle of his job.
"Nijiro! Wherever you are, you're back on in two." The director shouted.
"Fuck, 'm sorry baby. I'll take care of you when we're home ok? I love you" He said, getting his pants back on at the speed of light. Not bothering to wash his hands, but instead resorting to licking your combined juices off his fingers, and with a quick kiss to your cheek, he was gone.
You knew he'd keep his word, now all you'd have to do was wait till you got home to recieve his aftercare.
can't wait.
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this is a labor of love but jfc ;~; still a wip (and i've decorated more since taking these) but here's a couple sneak peeks at the new house :')
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I pull out so many random facts about the making of Lord of the Rings that people usually respond with, 'how do you even know that?!'
oh, friend.
my brother, a most pretentious lotr fan, snatched up the extended edition hot off the shelf and for weeks it was the only thing on the tv all day long. I've seen every commentary, every special feature . . . twice. maybe more. I didn't have a choice.
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Rhaenyra getting more shit for staying on Dragonstone instead of in King's Landing to play the political game or whatever than Viserys gets for recalling Otto as Hand, thus pretty much handing power to the faction he knows to be his heir's political opponents and metaphorically shooting Rhaenyra in the political kneecaps, is one of the most Takes in a fandom full of Takes
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Finished my run of Mortum’s romance and.
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well, i didn't think much of death on the nile 2022. what's with this trend in recent adaptations of old works trying to make the work "progressive" with some of the most halfhearted stuff i've ever seen? making white characters poc and in the process doing things like recharacterizing a formerly white, now brown financial trustee character into "a slippery snake, no one but [his cousin] trusts him" when the character's crook behavior was not at all apparent to anyone for most of the book and was only revealed towards the end, inventing queer relationships where there were none and handling all their oppressed characters with kid gloves!
this movie features hercule poirot deducing that two women are a couple out loud in front of them while they look on, terrified that he's found out their secret and might destroy them- but of course, since poirot is the main character, he can't be bigoted (never mind any old-fashioned ideals he may have possessed in the books), so all he does is use this as an opportunity to rather pointlessly wax poetic about "people killing for love" even though no one watching with half a brain ever really suspected either of them as being the killer. the problem, though, is that he says all this in front of a stranger. there's a friend of his, who the women don't know, in the room with them, listening to all this. death on the nile has their main character out a closeted queer couple to someone they don't know and don't trust in 1937. the character doesn't use it against them, of course- he's supposed to be a good guy too- but my god, imagine if you were in their shoes! you could potentially make a case for poirot knowing the man wasn't homophobic since they were friends, but that's doubtful, and it's still a really shitty thing to do. and we're just supposed to accept it as a display of how nice, how woke poirot is! i doubt this movie had a single queer person in the writers' room. death on the nile tries really really hard to make you believe it's got thought-provoking stuff in there, but ultimately it's just a shallow cash grab dressed in period clothing masquerading as the brilliant source material.
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Stuart Damon plays pretend as secret agent Vince in The Adventurer: Poor Little Rich Girl (1.2, ITC, 1972). Damon was initially cast as a recurring supporting character, one of a group of assistants that work with lead Gene Barry, but he was dropped from the series (almost certainly at Barry's behest) and appears in just two episodes
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